#i am not the future American Wife

[obeythedemons]

Anime Expo 2023 with the amazingist boyfriend!!!!!!

[variantia]

Renata in her early 20s : *loud and aggressive, foul-mouthed, bad-attituded, forced into villainy via generational trauma family bullshit, a genuinely scary villain but did not like it, angry 24/7, seemingly unwilling to be helped* Toshinori : Toshinori : Toshinori : Toshinori : I can fix her (no really I can)

[renard-dartigue]

Hi now i'm curious what is the beef with the rappers

Man this is going to be long so I'll try to keep this simple and entertaining. I hope this comes across as clear cause I'm shook right now.

Here is a glossarie to break thing up:

Prologue (The Spark 🔥)

Round 1.1 (Physical Education 💪🏾)

Interlude part 1 (Roots 🏠)

Round 1.2 (2 Warning Shots 🔫)

Interlude part 2 (Pusha the Seer 👁)

Round 2.1 (Knifes Out 🔪 )

Round 2.2 (The Nuke 💥)

Epilogue (All eyes on him 👀)

My Theory 🤷🏾‍♂️

Highly recommend checking out the tracks yourself while you read along.

Prologue (The Spark)

Let it be known that I am a neutral party and that I don't take sides when it comes to rap beef. I was here for the music and creativity. I am just trying to recount events to the best of my knowledge. Sorry if some details are inaccurate.

Okay so basically, Drake, J Cole, and Kendrick Lamar are the Big 3 of the rap world right now.

A month ago, Future and Metro Boomin (two rapper who supposedly don't fuck with Drake anymore) released a song with Kendrick Lamar called "Like That". In the song Kendrick took a shot at Drake and J Cole, saying there isn't a big 3, its only him on top.

4 weeks ago J Cole dropped a track called "7 Minute Drill" that is dissing Kendrick. However, in a move that is very uncharacteristic of J, he took down the official track and formally apologized to Kendrick. Thus signaling his exit from the rap battle.

ROUND 1.1 (Physical Ed)

Drake on the other hand dropped "Push Ups" 2 weeks ago, a diss track that went after other rappers he doesn't like but mainly Kendrick. In it, he made fun of Kendrick's height and his contracts. He then ends the song with "I was really try'n keep it PG" meaning he has a nuke on Kendrick that people don't know.

Not long later, Drake dropped ANOTHER diss track "Taylor Made Freestyle" with Ai voices of Snoop Dog and fucking 2PAC! Kendrick has stated before that 2pac is one of his idols so this must have been a deep cut. In the song Drake claims Kendrick doesn't write his own music and uses the writers of Taylor Swift. Relating a rapper to pop music is seen as disrespectful.

INTERLUDE PART 1 (Roots)

Before I continue, I want to give a brief run down on how the public perceives these two rappers.

Drake portrays himself as a superstar, he's always on social media flaunting his success and partying with other celebrities, seeing alot of women and living a lavish lifestyle. His music is catchy, something you put on in the club. Most of his fan base praise him for his sick beats and witty lyrics. He's been in the music industry for a while and is no push over.

Kendrick Lamar is a very private person, doesn't expose anything about his personal life unless its on a track. He almost never gets into fights with anyone. He is a family man, stressing the importance of being there for his wife and son and encourages other fathers to do the same. His fan base praise him for his creative lyrics and highlighting the black American condition.

ROUND 1.2 (2 Warning Shots)

2 Day ago, Kendrick Lamar came back with his first official diss track on Drake called "Euphoria". In this song, Kendrick goes in on Drakes fake personality. Drake has always been known around the community as a bit of a poser, he grew up in Canada and was raised by his white mother, a relatively comfortable childhood. He was a star on the popular show Degassi when he was young. garnering him a fan base early in his career. Kendrick doesn't approve of Drake appropriating black American culture and acting like he some tough guy. When in reality he is a Canadian nerd thats disrespectful to 2pac. All throughout the song, Kendrick hits at things that many people have know about Drake, such as his behavior around underage girls. He also called Drake a deadbeat father who isn't in his son's life, even referencing his lost battle to Pusha T. Then Kendrick finally warns him that he has more dirt that he is willing to share if Drake takes things further.

Similar to Drake, Kendrick dropped another track called "6:16 in LA" later that day. This song focuses on Drake's environment, specifically the people he hangs with. Kendrick implies that Drake paid people to dig into his background and when they didn't find anything, Drake made up stuff instead. Kendrick then says that someone in Drakes group is leaking information to him about something even more serious. Also planting a seed in Drake's mind that his supposed friends don't actually like him, just like the clout from hanging around him.

INTERLUDE PART 2 (Pusha the Seer)

Taking a quick break again, we need to discuss something that occurred long before Drake's battle with Kendrick.

5 years ago, Drake was in a rap battle with rapper Pusha T, someone who was smaller than Drake at the time in terms of popularity. Pusha dropped a song called "The Story of Adidon" where he dropped a bomb that Drake had a kid and wasn't taking care of him. Drake initially denied it but it was later revealed to be true.

Since then Drake has never responded to Pusha T's diss track, making Pusha the current winner. And Kendrick is bringing it back into the light.

Round 2.1 (Knifes Out)

Around 2 am EST time of May 4th, Drake drops his diss track, "Family Matters" one of his strongest songs, switching his flow 3 times in the span of 7 minutes. In true Drake fashion, its a club song with a catchy beat. Like his previous diss, its aimed at multiple people but the main focus is on Kendrick, even bring up "I was really try'n keep this PG".

Drake doubles down on his black identity and mocks the fact that Kendrick and other rappers are saying he isn't black, (incorrectly assuming that they are coming at him for being mixed when the real issue is that he is appropriating black American rap culture as a Canadian mixed man who grew up in a safe environment) Drake not only calls Kendrick a fraud who only raps about black issues for attention, Or that his activism is performative. He makes a shocking claims that Kendrick is a wife beater. Then Drake says that Kendrick's son doesn't belong to him and implies Kendrick's producer was the real father.

The track caused an uproar. But only for the span of 15 minutes. Because Kendrick did the unthinkable.

ROUND 2.2 (THE NUKE)

Almost as if expecting Drake's move, Kendrick Lamar did what no one saw coming. He dropped his diss track "Meet The Grahams" about 15 minutes after Drake released "Family Matters".

This time around, in a fashion almost unheard of from him, Kendrick strips all the usual metaphors from his lyricism and structures his track like he is speaking to Drake and his family, 4 parts per individual.

Kendrick begins by speaking to Drakes Son, Adonis, the same son Pusha T exposed Drake for neglecting 5 years ago. He's apologizing to him for his father's behavior. Kendrick speaks to him softly but sternly like a mentor, telling him not to be like his father. Kendrick tells Adonis all the things Drake did and warns him not to do them too: involved with escorts, plastic surgery to appear more black, surgery to look more muscular, hiding a kid. (Kendrick stresses that Adonis is black regardless of being mixed, further highlighting that he isn't discrediting Drake's blackness because he's mixed but because he isn't being himself.) Finishing of by telling the kid to be proud of who he is.

The second half is Kendrick addressing Drake's mother and father, Sandra and Denise. Kendrick speaks to her like he's revealing tragic news, explaining to her that her son is involved in disgusting things. He goes down a list of things, his tone growing more intense and angry. Kendrick then claimed that Drake is employing and enabling pedos in his group, and hopes they die. Even implying that his group is going to be raided by the feds some day.

The third half is the MOST shocking of all. Kendrick begins talking to an unnamed individual, simply calls her babygirl. Similar to Adonis, Kendrick takes on a somber tone and apologizes to her for Drakes behavior. He says its not her fault Drake abandoned her, says that she is deserving of love. He warns her not to become a target for people like Drake to pray on and says she has so much to offer the world.

Kendrick revealed Drake has ANOTHER kid and isn't in their life! (Allegedly)

To close of, the fourth half is Kendrick speaking directly to Drake, his tone tired. He tries to reiterate that he doesn't have hate for him. However, Kendrick says Drake was the first one to go after his family and he couldn't let it slide. He once again calls for Drake to take the mask off. Then says this isn't a rap battle anymore, tells Drake he is fighting himself.

Epilogue (All eyes on him)

And so here we are, waiting for what will happen next.

Drake posted an Instagram story denying the claim he has another kid. But given what happened with Pusha T, we can't quite take his word for it yet. We should wait a bit to see if anything comes out.

Kendrick hasn't put out a statement on Drake's claims about him but given the recurring theme of Drake being a manipulative lier, Kendrick clearly denies it. Given how private he is, its difficult to prove or disprove it. Much like Drake's claims, we will have to wait and see if any evidence comes out about it.

Drake and Kendrick stans are at eachothers throats right now, arguing over who one and whats real or fake.

Right now everyone is looking to see if Drake is going to continue the battle or stay silent like he did with Pusha.

My Theory

Personally as an outside observer who only followed the beef for good music. I think this goes beyond a simple rap battle.

Here is my theory: Someone from Drake's clique told Kendrick that Drake and his producers were writing something about him. Real or fake, Kendrick was pissed. And so he drafted 3 tracks, dumping everything he hates about Drake into them. And then, with the leaker's help, Kendrick baited Drake into a battle, goading Drake to drop the "Family Matters" track so he can shut the battle down with "Meet the Grahams". Or maybe his first 2 tracks were a warning to Drake that if he released a track with lies on him he would reveal he has another kid.

I do think Kendrick initially had good intentions in trying to help Drake be a better person. But maybe the more he learned about Drake the less sympathetic he felt.

But I don't know thats just how I see it.

Thanks for reading my essay. I hope it made sense heh. I encourage healthy discussions in the comments and reblogs please. But everyone agrees that Drake is inappropriate with young girls. We won't argue over that.

[aviscarrentals]

some logan fic recs to get us through this unpleasant time <3

blurb/one-shot ♡ series ✩ smau ✧ fluff ୨୧ angst ❈ contains mature content ୭

✩୨୧❈୭ blur the line (by @landhoehoehoe) f2!logan x prema driver!reader (THIS IS MY FAV OF ALL TIME THIS FIC>>>>)

✧୨୧ a case of the cuddle bug (by @astonmartinii) logan x piastri!reader

✩୨୧ moonstruck (by @serpenttines) logan x wife!reader

✩✧୨୧ american boy (by @uluvjay) logan x norris!reader

✩✧୨୧ moon the racoon (by @vivwritesfics) racoon dad!logan x reader (may sound a bit odd, but it's so adorable trust me)

✩✧୨୧ the alex albon approval test (by @planetpiastri) logan x alex's childhood bff!reader

✧୨୧ texan egg hunt (by @verstarppen) logan x ricciardo!reader (i'm gonna have to own up to it, i am obsessed with star and i may happen to be the one that sent this request in...)

✩✧୨୧ red, white, blue (by @beiasluv) logan x albon!reader

✧୨୧ fire me (by @planetpiastri) logan x williams admin!reader

✧୨୧ behind open doors (by @verstarppen) logan x childhood bff!reader

✧୨୧ party in the u.s.a. (by @lewisvinga) logan x american student!reader

✧୨୧ my american boy! (by @lewisvinga) logan x student!reader

♡୨୧ (there is a follow-up smau part as well!) pda (by @sinofwriting)

✩୨୧୭ summer in the 305 (by @dilemmaontwolegs) logan x american!reader (that's only slightly implied though so it can prob be ignored)

✧୨୧ teammate's sister (by @f1enthusiastsstuff) logan x albon!reader

✧୨୧ he's her lobster (by @agendabymooner) logan x oc

✩❈ (a bit of smau as well) out of the woods (by @everythingne) logan x ferrari driver!oc

and literally anything by @disneyprincemuke, the valiant leader of ls2 nation🫡

i'll probably update this in the future, but here ya go for now pookies

[iamred-iamyellow]

⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ˚ The Last Great American Dynasty

♥ masterlist | request rules | based on this request

♥ pairing: logan sargeant x fem!driver!reader

♥ synopsis: logan gets replaced at williams mid season by you, his girlfriend. luckily his racing career and f1 story is not over yet.

♥ smau - fc: women on pinterest - as always none of the pictures are mine <3

♥ warnings: swearing, hate comments, and james vowels slander !!!

♥ a/n: logan gets the happy ending he deserves (by taking james' job lol).

-August 26, 2024-

liked by logansargeant, oscarpiastri, susie_wolff, and 3,592,602 more

williamsracing Y/n L/n to race for the remainder of the 2024 season

view comments

logansargeant proud of you ❤️

yourusername thank you logie. I can't wait to see where racing takes us both. I love you ❤️

user6 the fact that he's still so supportive of her... I love them your honor 🥺

alex_albon You gave it your all brother and it’s been a pleasure being teammates with you. I know whatever you do next, you’ll be awesome. I can't wait to race along side you as well @/yourusername. Lets make history.

user9 HOW ARE WE FEELING LOLEX NATION 😭

user1 the tears that are coming out of my eyes right now

user2 😧

user7 I felt my heart break in real time

user4 ... james I am in your fucking walls

user5 I am so proud of y/n but damn.

user21 can someone explain please??

user7 logan, the driver y/n is replacing is her boyfriend

user9 I cried.

user60 imagine taking your own BOYFRIENDS job. he deserves so much better

user51 poor logan 💔

user10 lets not let the sad news about logan leaving impact our support for y/n. shes the first woman to race in f1 in a VERY long time and that's an incredible achievement

user3 say it louder for the people in the back

user12 this !!!

user4 James vowels is the common enemy

user8 @/user4 TRUE

✧˖ °. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁‧₊˚ . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁˖°✧

✧˖ °. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁‧₊˚ . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁˖°✧

-Logan's Insta Story-

✧˖ °. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁‧₊˚ . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁˖°✧

liked by logansargeant, susie_wolff, lilymhe, and 609,427 more

yourusername oh look i’m winning

view comments

user1 yes you are queen

user2 you don’t have to brag 😔

user5 POINTS

landonorris @/logansargeant maybe you should get her a dog

pierregasly 💀

user1 landooo 😭

user8 how is she so gorgeous

user9 oh to be y/n

user6 prove the haters wrong !!!

✧˖ °. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁‧₊˚ . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁˖°✧

liked by yourusername, patriciooward, Indycar, and 984,582 more

logansargeant back in blue

tagged; @/andrettiindy

view comments

yourusername 🩵

logansargeant 🩵

patriciooward good to see you again

user7 SHUT THE FUCK UP NOT ANDRETTI SIGNING HIM FOR 2025

user9 HAHAHA

user3 the personal beef andretti has with f1 is inspiring 😩

user8 WHAT THE FUCK IS A KILOMETER 🦅🇺🇸

user5 lets go logan

user1 oh we are SO back.

✧˖ °. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁‧₊˚ . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁˖°✧

liked by yourusername, oscarpiastri, andrettiindy, and 2,459,302 more

logansargeant today I got the privilege of marrying the most talented, beautiful, and kind woman I have ever met. you have stood by me since the beginning of my career and I am honored that you chose me to support you throughout the future of yours. I love you so much

comments are limited

f1 our favorite paddock couple

indycar double it and give it to the next motorsport

alex_albon congratulations to the both of you!

lilyzneimer thank you for making me your maid of honor 🥹 you looked absolutely stunning today

yourusername lilyyyy 😭🫶

williamsracing so who caught the boquet? 👀

yourusername lily mhe 🤭

lilymhe we might be needing those brides maid dresses again soon

✧˖ °. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁‧₊˚ . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁˖°✧

✧˖ °. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁‧₊˚ . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁˖°✧

-December 2035-

It has just been announced that former F1 driver Logan Sargeant and his wife, Y/n L/n will be the new team principal and CEO of Williams Racing.

The F1 American Dynasty

If you're unfamiliar with the story of Sargeant you may not understand the significance of this change for Williams. He had a spot on the grid during 2023-2024 before being dropped mid-season and replaced by his now wife Y/n L/n. He then went on to drive for Andretti, an American Indycar team and Y/n won four championships during her time in F1. The two of them have continued to carry on the legacy of American drivers in Formula 1, encouraged by the Andretti family.

✧˖ °. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁‧₊˚ . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁˖°✧

liked by andrettiindy, susie_wolff, oscarpiastri, and 1,362,503 more

yourusername CEO life

view comments

lilymhe GORGEOUS

yourusername no YOU <33

williamsracing glad to have you back @/logansargeant

user2 even admin is a logan fan

user4 oh FUUUCK YEA

user7 stop the middle picture-

user9 I want what they have 😭

user1 their ULTIMATE revenge

user12 fuck james vowels

user3 all my homies hate james vowels

✧˖ °. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁‧₊˚ . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁˖°✧

end notes: thank you so much for reading! even though logan isn't on the grid I'll still have a few fics coming out for him soon <3

[deliciousangelfestival]

The Imperfect Couple - 6

Character: politician!Bucky x ex-wife!reader

Summary: A separated couple must pretend to be happily married while the husband runs for Vice President, dealing with old issues and political pressures during his election campaign.

Warning: The couple's arguments could be triggering.

Chapter 1 , Chapter 2 , Chapter 3 , Chapter 4 , Chapter 5 , Chapter 6 , Chapter 7 , Chapter 8 , Chapter 9 , Chapter 10 , Chapter 11 , Chapter 12 , Series Masterlist

Main Masterlist || If you enjoy my work, please consider buying me a coffee on Ko-fi 🙏🏻

Thank you to everyone who has read this chapter. Leave a comment and Reblog, please. I'd love to hear your thoughts. ❤️

“How long have you known him?” Bucky’s voice was calm, but his eyes were sharp, watching every reaction.

“Five years,” you answered, keeping your tone steady. You didn’t want him to pick up on any hint of tension.

Bucky frowned, a strange sense of familiarity tugging at him. Ian seemed like a typical journalist, but something else about him gnawed at Bucky's instincts.

He rarely interacted with foreign reporters, so why did Ian’s presence feel… off? He was sure he'd figure out why this feeling wouldn't leave him.

Before either of you could say more, Greg appeared, clipboard in hand, and gave you both a pointed look. “Alright, you two, time to get ready. The event’s about to start. Let’s make sure everything runs smoothly.”

You nodded, feeling the butterflies in your stomach begin to stir. You’d been on stages before, but not like this. Not with Bucky, not under the gaze of an entire country.

Bucky noticed your hesitation and moved closer, placing a firm hand on your lower back. “It’s going to be fine,” he whispered, his voice low and reassuring. “I’ve got you.”

You looked up at him, trying to read his eyes. Was he just saying that for the cameras? Or was there something deeper there? It was getting harder to tell. You nodded anyway, more for yourself than for him, and straightened up. You had to play your part, just as you always did.

At the Convention

The large venue buzzed with excitement, lights shining down on the stage like spotlights in an arena. When Steve Rogers walked up to the podium, the room went silent, all eyes on him. He was the golden candidate—charismatic, confident, the embodiment of what the people wanted.

The room buzzed with anticipation as Steve Rogers approached the podium, every eye in the venue locked onto him. He stood tall, his presence commanding, radiating the quiet strength he was known for. After a brief moment, he began speaking, his voice steady but filled with passion.

"Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Americans," Steve’s voice echoed with gravitas, "Today, we stand at the threshold of a new era. We face challenges that require not just strong leadership, but leadership rooted in integrity, honor, and the unyielding belief in the power of the people."

The crowd quieted further, hanging on his every word.

"For too long, we’ve watched division grow. But I believe in the strength of unity, the strength of standing together—one nation, bound by a shared responsibility to protect our freedom, our families, and our future. And I pledge to lead with the same unwavering commitment that I’ve given to this country my entire life."

He took a brief pause, allowing his words to sink in, then continued, his tone growing more impassioned.

"I am not just here as a candidate, but as a father, a husband, and a son," he said, gesturing toward his wife, Peggy, and their children standing nearby, his parents behind them. "I want a better world for my family—just as I want a better world for yours. A world where opportunity isn’t reserved for the few but shared by the many. A world where every child grows up in safety, with access to education, health, and the opportunity to pursue their dreams."

The applause began to rise, but Steve held his hand up gently, signaling for quiet once more.

"This is not just my campaign. This is our campaign. Together, we will fight for a future that respects the dignity of every individual. We will build an America where justice is not selective but a right for all. Where leadership is about service—not power."

His voice crescendoed, igniting the room.

"Because I believe in us. I believe in the promise of America, and I believe in the strength of the American people. Together, we will rise to meet the challenges of today, and together, we will create a brighter, fairer, and stronger tomorrow."

The room erupted into thunderous applause as Steve’s words settled over the crowd. He stepped back, waving, as Peggy and their children joined him at the front of the stage, a living testament to the family values he championed.

With that, Steve Rogers sealed the moment—an electrifying speech that echoed far beyond the walls of the convention hall.

The crowd erupted into applause as Steve stepped aside, making way for Bucky.

Now it was his turn.

You watched as Bucky walked to the podium with the practiced ease of a man who was born for this. His dark suit was perfectly tailored, the overhead lights catching the sharp angles of his face. As soon as he began speaking, the room hushed again.

“I want to thank everyone for being here today,” Bucky started, his voice strong, yet warm. “Serving alongside Steve has been the honor of my life, and I am proud to stand here as the candidate for Vice President. My family—my parents Julius and Caroline, my siblings Shawn and Hazel, my nephew Nate, and my brother-in-law Tim—are with me today.” He motioned to the side, where they all stood. Caroline’s expression was as rigid as ever, while Julius offered a rare smile.

Then Bucky’s eyes found you.

“And of course, my wife. She’s been my rock. She’s stood by me through the hardest times, and I can’t imagine being here without her.” His voice softened, but the sincerity in his words cut through the noise in your head.

You smiled on cue, the kind of smile you’d perfected over years of practice. But inside, everything felt muddled. Bucky spoke as though you were his whole world, but you knew the truth. This was a performance. A calculated move to protect his image.

The applause was thunderous, but it sounded far away as you fought the emotions swirling inside you. Bucky looked the part—strong, dependable, built for this kind of role. He was doing everything right.

But you? You were pretending. The smile you wore for the cameras wasn’t for him; it was for the part of you that wanted to see Caroline suffer, to see her envy every look Bucky gave you on that stage. But underneath the spite, you felt something deeper, something far more complicated.

'Can I really keep doing this?' The question lodged itself in your mind as the applause rang out again.

You watched Bucky continue his speech, looking every bit the man of the moment. He thrived in this atmosphere, while you felt like you were drowning in a sea of lies. Every glance from the audience, every flash from the cameras, reminded you that none of this was real.

When he finished, the room erupted in applause again. Bucky turned to you, offering his hand. The warmth of his palm against yours was meant to be reassuring, but it only deepened your confusion.

As you both exited the stage, his grip tightened slightly, just enough for you to notice. He leaned down, voice low in your ear. “You did great,” he whispered. His words were laced with a strange tenderness that made your stomach flip.

You nodded, but deep down, the weight of this act was crushing you.

🌸🌸🌸🌸

As the convention wrapped up and the crowd began to disperse, you and Bucky maneuvered Tim’s wheelchair carefully. The excitement of the day was still buzzing in the air, but you could sense the underlying tension between Bucky and Ian as Ian approached you and Tim.

Ian greeted you with a friendly smile. “Hey, I’m working on a piece about the election from the perspective of the candidates’ families. What’s it like for you and your family during all this?”

Bucky, standing beside you, made a subtle move to place himself between you and Ian, a protective gesture that didn't go unnoticed. “I’m not sure if that’s appropriate,” Bucky began, but Tim cut him off.

“Of course! I’ve never been interviewed before. It’ll be good to share my side,” Tim said eagerly, his eyes bright with enthusiasm.

Bucky looked at Tim, then at you, his frustration evident in the tightness of his jaw. He sighed and stepped aside, unable to argue with Tim’s excitement or your reluctance to refuse a friend’s request.

Ian turned to you, his expression curious. “You never mentioned your brother before. It’s clear you two have a strong bond.”

“She’s a private person,” Tim interjected with a hint of pride.

Ian raised an eyebrow, glancing back at you. “You really seem to know her well.”

“We may not always show it, but we’re very close. She’s been like a second mother to me, especially after I lost my leg,” Tim said, his voice carrying an unusual warmth.

You felt a blush rise to your cheeks at the unexpected praise from your brother. It was rare to hear him speak so openly about his feelings.

Ian smiled as he jotted down notes. “This story is going to resonate with a lot of people.”

After a while, Tim excused himself, leaving you and Ian alone. Ian’s demeanor shifted subtly, becoming more serious.

“Thanks for giving him the chance to speak,” you said with a slight edge. “You know, it feels like you just handed him a chance to embarrass me.”

Ian chuckled softly, his eyes glinting with a hint of mischief. “Isn’t that what siblings do? Cherish these moments of difference before it’s too late.”

You raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean,-?”

Before you could ask, Ian pulled you aside, his face set with determination. “I heard there’s a divorce in your marriage.”

You stiffened, your eyes widening in surprise. “How did you find out?”

Ian’s smirk was almost smug. “Don’t underestimate my skills. You vanished, then reappeared, acting like everything’s perfect. I pieced it together from the campaign.”

He leaned closer, his frustration evident. “Not once did you mention him. And now, suddenly, you’re playing the loving wife. It’s irritating.”

You crossed your arms, feeling a wave of anger and discomfort. “Are you planning to use this information?”

Ian’s expression softened, though his eyes were intense. “I don’t know yet. But a few people already know.”

You flinched at his words, a shiver running down your spine.

Ian’s voice dropped to a reassuring whisper. “Don’t worry. They’ve only heard rumors. No one has solid evidence. I could protect you. Because you deserve someone better.”

You gulped, unable to speak. Ian’s concern seemed genuine, but you couldn’t shake off the pain from your marriage with Bucky. Your emotions were still tangled, and you didn’t want to get involved with Ian’s feelings, especially now.

You glanced up and saw Bucky watching you from across the room. His eyes were locked on you, his gaze sharp and intense. It felt like he was assessing every movement, every word. The tension in his stare made your heart race, and you could almost feel his frustration and jealousy from afar.

🌸🌸🌸🌸

As the car sped through the night, the backseat felt increasingly cramped, the air thick with unspoken tension. You stared out the window, trying to avoid Bucky’s piercing gaze. The city lights flickered past, a blur of neon and shadows, as you stewed over the conversation with Ian and the unresolved questions it left.

Bucky's silence was more oppressive than any words. His jaw was set tight, and the muscles in his neck were rigid. When he finally spoke, his voice was cold, laced with an edge of command. “Don’t meet Ian anymore.”

You continued to look out the window, your reflection a ghostly image against the darkened glass. “He knew about the divorce,” you said, your voice barely above a whisper.

Bucky’s breath hitched, his grip on the seat tightening. He was silent for a moment, the weight of your revelation settling in. Then, unexpectedly, he chuckled, a dark, humorless sound. “Well, that means I’m on the right track. Every politician has skeletons in their closet.”

You turned your head sharply to face him, eyes narrowing. “You’re not afraid if the rumor leaks out?”

Bucky’s gaze remained steady, but his jaw tightened slightly. “I’m not gonna lie, I am afraid. But I’m more worried about how it’ll affect you.” He paused “But look at the bright side. It narrows down the list of people who knew about our marriage.”

You turned to him, eyes narrowing in frustration. “You’re playing with fire, Bucky.”

He leaned closer, the space between you shrinking rapidly. His expression softened into a smirk, but his eyes held a dangerous glint. “I’ll win this for you. I still remember that moment when you wished me to win, just to spite my mother. I need that brave Y/N.”

You could feel the heat from his body, his breath mingling with yours as he drew nearer. The car’s dim lighting accentuated the intensity in his eyes, a smoldering gaze that made your pulse quicken. “Don’t make this about me,” you said, trying to keep your voice steady.

Bucky’s smirk deepened, and he moved even closer, his face inches from yours. “But babe, this is all for you,” he murmured, his voice a low, seductive growl.

His proximity was overwhelming, and you could feel the heat radiating from his body. You swallowed hard, the line between anger and something else entirely blurring as his lips almost brushed against yours.

Your breath hitched, and for a moment, you were caught between the anger at his manipulation and the undeniable pull of the unresolved feelings you still harbored for him. The confined space of the car seemed to shrink around you, the air charged with a mix of frustration and unspoken desire.

Bucky’s gaze locked onto yours, his smirk fading into an expression of intense focus. His hand reached out, fingertips grazing your cheek in a feather-light touch that made your skin tingle. “I need you to trust me,” he said softly, his voice carrying an almost desperate edge.

You hated him for the pain he’d caused, but his touch betrayed your emotions, making it hard to stay firm. And he knew it. You wanted to wipe that smug look off his face.only the charged, almost unbearable closeness between you.

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[lolacelest101]

No Need For Privacy

18+ MDNI

Hii!!! This is my first story or anything like this that I write and publish so I am sure it will be bad. I would love to get your feedback and let me know if I missed anything in the TWs. I am a big fan of F1 and other mainstream spaces so I will try to do more in the future.

Happy Reading!

Word Count: 6131

Themes: Lando!Norris x Fem!American!reader, Embarrassing moment turn spicy, next door neighbor, close proximity

Smutty tings: wall pinning, voyeurism, exhibitionism, masturbation, mirror sex, p in v, unprotected sex (please practice safe sex!!!!), spanking, oral sex, slight edging, fingering, gagging, praise and degradation kink.

Your POV

I moved to Monaco a week ago with my two best friends from work, Liana and Aaliyah. It’s been a dream come true for all of us, especially since our company launched a new project in the Monaco branch and requested our expertise.

Settling in has been a breeze, mostly thanks to Alexander Qasemi, the top manager of the Monaco office. He has multiple investments in the area and offered to rent out one of his properties to us at a discount. It’s conveniently close to the office, and his wife, Catalina, has been a lifesaver, helping us get set up, showing us around, and pointing out all the spots we need to check out. Coming from Florida, Monaco feels like a mix of Palm Beach and Miami, but it’s still a world apart from Tampa, where we grew up.

The house has three bedrooms, each with its own view from the second floor. We picked rooms based on the views, but I ended up going for the one with extra closet space—even if it has a “boring” view of the street and a direct line of sight into the house next door. And judging by what I’ve seen, the neighbor isn’t big on privacy; I can see right into what looks like the main bedroom.

I wake up to Liana singing loudly to what sounds like a new song by The Weeknd, her voice filling the house. Squinting as sunlight streams into my room, I reluctantly drag myself up and into the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth, choosing to ignore my messy bed hair. Liana’s door is open, and she spots me staggering around like a zombie.

“Good morning, sunshine!” she shouts, singing along with the song. All I can think is, It’s way too early for this.

I shuffle back to my room and glance at the clock on my nightstand. It flashes 10:32 AM, and panic hits—I remember that Catalina mentioned she’d be here around 10:45 AM to show us more of the area, and she insisted we make time for it.

I rush back into the hallway, suddenly wide awake. “Liana, why didn’t you wake us up? Catalina’s gonna be here any minute!”

Liana smirks and says, “I did, about 30 minutes ago. Aaliyah’s already up and made coffee. You told me I was ‘handsome and sexy’ and asked for five more minutes.” She’s trying not to laugh, and my face goes red as I realize I was probably having an almost wet dream.

“Well… he sure was, wasn’t he?” I say, trying to brush it off. “But we still need to hurry.”

After a quick change into something suitable for the weather, I throw on some black skinny jeans that hug my curves, a short flowy black-and-white striped top, and sneakers.

“Y/N, come down! Catalina’s here,” Aaliyah calls up the stairs.

I see her car pulling up from my window, so I run down to grab a quick sip of coffee before she knocks on the door. Liana’s sitting on the couch, putting her shoes on, and I lean against the counter, downing my coffee like it’s a race. Aaliyah opens the door, greeting Catalina with hugs and kisses. I set my mug down, go over to greet her, and offer to make her a coffee before we start the tour.

Catalina’s dressed in a floral top and white pants, looking like the definition of “aging like fine wine.” Despite being in her 60s, she doesn’t look a day over 40. She radiates warmth, like a grandmother everyone wishes they had.

Liana goes back to grab her phone, and as Catalina and I step outside, we bump into a man with dark hair and intense eyes. Catalina lights up as soon as she sees him, opening her arms for a hug.

“Oh, Max! I didn’t know you’d be here!” she says, surprised, pulling him in for an embrace.

“It was very last-minute for the Monaco GP,” he replies, hugging her back. When he lets go, he glances at me expectantly.

“Max, this is Y/N,” Catalina says. “She moved here a week ago with her friends.”

Max extends his hand, and I shake it, trying to keep my cool. “Nice to meet you. I guess we’ll be running into each other a lot,” I say, smiling.

Holy shit, Max Fewtrell is staying next door! My mind races, and I make a mental note to change my Quadrant phone case ASAP—I don’t want him thinking I’m some obsessive fan.

Max’s voice snaps me back. “Ah, an American accent! Nice to meet you, Y/N.”

I laugh lightly as Liana and Aaliyah join us. I introduce them, and Max shakes their hands before introducing himself.

“Nice to meet you,” he says. “I’m not exactly your neighbor, but my best friend lives here, so you’ll probably see him more often than me. Oh—there he is now,” he adds, looking over my shoulder.

My heart skips. The only person this could be is Lando Norris, and I’m about to pretend I’m way cooler than I actually am.

I snap back to see Lando Norris, head down, fiddling with his car keys. When he looks up, he immediately spots Catalina, a smile breaking across his face.

“Hey, you! How’ve you been? I already miss having you as my neighbor,” he says, giving her a hug.

She laughs, “I’ve missed you too, but I brought you some new company, so you won’t miss me too much.” Catalina turns to us with a smile. “Lando, these are the new neighbors: Liana, Aaliyah, and Y/N.”

Lando shakes each of our hands. His grip is firm, his fingers slightly calloused, probably from hours on the simulator. When he gets to me, I feel his gaze linger a bit longer, like he’s trying to place me.

“I don’t mean to sound creepy, but… you’re the one sleeping in that room, right?” He nods toward my bedroom window.

Caught off guard, I stammer, “Uh… yeah, that’s mine. Why?”

A faint blush crosses his face, a sly grin forming as he glances back at me. “You might want to, uh… move your mirror. Just saying.”

It takes a second for the realization to hit, but when it does, I’m mortified. I remember putting my large gold mirror directly across from the window and how, last night, after a long day of rearranging, I decided to… “treat” myself, lights on and all.

My mind races back to that memory—me stripping down, lying on my bed, a vibrator in one hand…

I force myself back to the present, trying to salvage what little dignity I have left. “Oh! I didn’t realize anyone was home over there… It looked empty all week.”

Lando chuckles, his grin widening. “Yeah, I just got back last night. And… well, let’s just say I got quite the welcome back.”

The heat rising in my cheeks is unbearable, and I quickly turn to Catalina. “So, Catalina, you mentioned we have a lot of places to see today?”

I feel Lando’s eyes on me, making my skin prickle with heat.

“Yes! Let’s get going.” Catalina waves goodbye to the guys, and we start heading toward her SUV. As I walk away, I can still feel Lando’s gaze burning into me, like he’s savoring every second of my embarrassment.

-------------------

Later That Night

The night air is warm and slightly humid, with a faint breeze blowing in from the sea. We’d just gotten back from the club, laughing and chattering as we climbed out of the cab. Aaliyah and Liana are still buzzing with energy, but I hang back a bit, enjoying the cool air on my flushed skin.

Liana nudges my shoulder. “We’re going inside to get some water. You good out here?”

I nod, waving them off. “Yeah, I just need a moment to cool down. I’ll be right behind you.”

They head inside, leaving me alone in the quiet of the street. I close my eyes, letting the night’s calm settle around me, when I hear footsteps. I look up, and there’s Lando, standing just a few feet away with Max at his side. Max offers a friendly nod before slipping inside, leaving Lando and me alone on the sidewalk.

“Well, look who it is,” Lando drawls, a smirk playing on his lips. “Didn’t expect to see you out here this late.”

I shrug, trying to act nonchalant. “Just needed some air. The club was loud.”

He steps closer, his gaze intense. “So, have you moved that mirror yet?”

I feel my cheeks heat up despite the cool night air. “Why do you keep bringing that up?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he says, his tone teasing. “Maybe because it’s hard to forget. Didn’t realize you were such an exhibitionist, but hey, I’m not complaining.”

I scoff, rolling my eyes. “I didn’t know anyone was watching. And I’m not an exhibitionist.”

He raises an eyebrow, the smirk never leaving his face. “Could’ve fooled me. You looked pretty comfortable up there, totally absorbed… didn’t even close the blinds.”

The tension between us is thick, the memory of last night making my pulse race. I cross my arms, feeling his gaze linger on me. “Well, you could’ve looked away.”

“Could’ve,” he agrees, stepping even closer until he’s barely a foot away. His voice drops lower, his tone laced with something dark and enticing. “But I didn’t want to.”

A shiver runs through me as his words sink in. We’re standing close enough now that I can feel his warmth, his eyes scanning my face, searching for something. His gaze drops briefly to my lips, and I can feel the air crackling between us, heavy and charged.

I tilt my head, giving him a challenging look. “You get off on watching your neighbors, then?”

His smirk deepens. “Not usually. But you’re not just any neighbor, are you?”

I swallow, feeling my resolve slipping. “And what makes me so special?”

Lando’s hand lifts, his fingers brushing a stray strand of hair from my face, lingering just a second too long. “Something about you… can’t quite put my finger on it.”

His voice is rougher now, barely above a whisper. Every nerve in my body is on fire, my breath hitching as his gaze drops to my lips again.

“What are you waiting for, then?” I murmur, my voice betraying a hint of a dare.

He chuckles softly, his fingers trailing down my cheek. “You sure you can handle it?”

I lean forward, closing the space between us just enough that I can feel the heat of his breath against my lips. “I think I can manage.”

Lando’s hand moves to my waist, pulling me a fraction closer until there’s barely any space left between us. “Careful, princess. Once we start, I might not stop.”

His words are a warning, but his eyes tell a different story—one that has me aching to close the distance, to see just how far this tension can go.

Just as Lando leans in, his hand firmly on my waist and his eyes locked on mine, the front door swings open, breaking the moment.

“Y/N!” Aaliyah calls out, her voice bright and oblivious. “You coming? We need you to settle a debate on which of us danced better tonight!”

I pull back, startled, and glance over at the girls standing in the doorway. They don’t notice Lando standing in the shadows just out of their line of sight.

“Uh, yeah, I’ll be right in,” I call, trying to keep my voice steady, heart still racing from the almost-kiss.

Lando chuckles softly, his hand slipping from my waist, though his gaze doesn’t leave mine. There’s a mischievous glint in his eyes as he leans down, his lips grazing my ear, voice low and teasing. “Guess we’ll have to pick this up some other time, hmm?”

My breath catches, and I turn to give him a playful glare, but he’s already smirking, enjoying every second of my flustered expression. I can barely think straight, still caught up in the heated moment we were just sharing.

“Goodnight, Y/N,” he murmurs, his tone laced with a promise that has my heart thudding against my chest. He steps back, giving me one last lingering look before turning toward his house. He pauses, glancing over his shoulder with that signature smirk.

“Don’t let those blinds stay open tonight,” he says, voice dripping with suggestion. “Or do. Your call.”

I feel a blush rising to my cheeks as he disappears into the darkness, leaving me there with my heart pounding and my mind racing.

I turn back toward the house, trying to regain my composure as I walk inside. Aaliyah and Liana are too caught up in their dance debate to notice the flush on my face or the slight tremble in my hands.

But as I head upstairs, all I can think about is Lando’s words, his hand on my waist, the almost-kiss that left me wanting so much more. That smirk, that challenge—it’s all burned into my mind, and I can still feel the heat of his touch lingering on my skin.

I lie in bed, staring at my mirror across from the window, replaying the night in my mind. And, despite my better judgment, I leave the blinds just a little open.

--------------

The Next Morning

I wake up to a quiet house, the morning sun streaming in through my half-open blinds. Liana and Aaliyah left early to grab some groceries, promising to be back soon, but I decided to stay and sleep in. After a while, though, I find myself wide awake and craving something sweet—specifically, chocolate chip cookies.

I slip into some cozy clothes and head downstairs, popping on some music as I pull ingredients from the cupboards. Soon, the smell of warm cookies fills the air, and I feel a little proud of my spontaneous baking session. Figuring it’d be a nice way to break the ice, I plate a few to bring next door later.

Just as I pull out the last tray from the oven, there’s a knock at the door. I wipe my hands on a towel, open it, and, sure enough, there’s Lando, standing there with his signature smirk.

“Morning, sleeping beauty,” he says, stepping in before I can even invite him. “Saw the girls head out and figured you’d still be here. Thought you’d sleep all day after last night’s… excitement.”

I feel my cheeks heat instantly, but I roll my eyes, trying to brush it off. “Good morning to you, too. And no, I don’t sleep all day. I’m actually productive.”

He glances at the mixing bowls and cooling cookies. “Productive, huh? Baking cookies for the new neighbors?” He reaches over, snagging one from the plate. “Are these just for me?”

“They’re for the neighbors,” I say, crossing my arms with a smirk. “But you’re welcome to have one.”

He takes a bite, savoring it with an approving nod. “Alright, alright—not bad. Didn’t peg you as a homemaker.”

“I’ve got layers,” I tease, nudging him lightly.

He chuckles, but his gaze drifts around the kitchen, taking in the scattered ingredients and my little baking mess. His eyes eventually settle back on me, a glint of mischief lighting them up.

“So, I gotta ask,” he says, leaning against the counter, “did you actually move that mirror? Or should I go check?”

I feel a flicker of heat under his gaze, but I keep my tone even, hoping he won’t catch on. “Of course I did. You were right—it needed to be moved.”

He raises an eyebrow, clearly skeptical. “Oh, yeah? Somehow, I don’t quite believe you.”

Before I can stop him, he’s already heading for the stairs, and my heart leaps. “Lando!” I laugh nervously, following after him. “You don’t need to go up there!”

“Need to see for myself,” he says over his shoulder, that smirk still on his face. “If you really moved it, then you shouldn’t mind me checking.”

He starts toward the stairs, and I blink, realizing what he means. “Wait, Lando—”

But he’s already halfway up, glancing back with that mischievous glint in his eye. “Come on, Y/N. Don’t tell me you’re shy now.”

I trail him up the stairs, heart racing. The truth is, I didn’t move the mirror—it’s still in the exact same spot, right across from the bed. And now he’s about to see it.

He steps into my room and glances around, his gaze landing on the mirror across from the bed, right where he left it in his memory. The corner of his mouth lifts, and he lets out a low chuckle, clearly amused.

“You didn’t move it,” he murmurs, his voice low and pleased.

I cross my arms, trying to play it off. “I like it where it is. Why should I change it just because you got an eyeful?”

Lando steps closer, his gaze never wavering from mine, a smirk tugging at his lips. “Maybe I want another one.”

The tension between us thickens, the air electric. He’s close enough now that I can feel his warmth, his gaze dropping to my lips before returning to my eyes. His hand moves up to gently brush a strand of hair from my face, lingering just a moment too long, fingers tracing down my jaw.

“You’re not afraid of a little attention, are you?” he asks, his voice soft, teasing.

I swallow, trying to steady my breathing. “Depends on who’s watching.”

He leans in even closer, his breath warm against my skin. “Then tonight… don’t close those blinds. And don’t move that mirror.”

The words hang in the air, heavy and filled with promise. My heart races, every nerve tingling as I meet his gaze, a challenge sparking between us that’s impossible to ignore.

Lando’s fingers linger on my jaw for just a moment longer, then he pulls back, that smirk still on his lips as he steps away.

“Enjoy your cookies, Y/N,” he says, glancing over his shoulder as he heads back downstairs, leaving me standing there, breathless, the echo of his words replaying in my mind.

As I watch him leave, I can still feel the heat of his touch, the thrill of his words searing into my memory. And tonight? Well, let’s just say I don’t plan on closing those blinds.

----------

Later That Night

As the sun dips below the horizon, casting Monaco in a warm, golden glow, I stand in front of my bedroom mirror, adjusting the last few things on my dresser. The blinds are open just enough, casting a soft reflection of the room and inviting in a sliver of the night. I glance over my shoulder at the window, knowing full well who might be watching.

I breathe in, feeling the excitement build. Tonight, I’m ready to give him that “show” he teased me about. I settle onto my bed, relaxing against the pillows, and allow myself to sink into the evening’s quiet. There’s an awareness in the air, the thrill of knowing that maybe, just maybe, I’m being watched.

I reach over to my nightstand, casually bringing out my favorite toys, a purple vibrating dildo and a vibrating toy in the shape of a tongue. Slowly, I begin to lose myself in the moment, all too aware of the tantalizing possibility that Lando might be watching from his window.

Just as I’m truly relaxing into the scene, there’s a firm knock at the door, shattering the silence. My heart jumps as I glance at the door, pulse racing. I hesitate, but something inside pushes me to go see who it is.

I make my way downstairs, opening the door just wide enough to see Lando standing there, his eyes dark, filled with that same mischievous look that’s been driving me crazy. He raises an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth lifting in a smirk.

“You left your blinds open,” he murmurs, his voice low and laced with suggestion. “Thought I’d come by and… check on you.”

In one swift motion, he closes the space between us, his hands sliding around my waist, pressing me firmly against the wall, his body heat igniting every inch of me. His gaze locks onto mine, daring me to pull away, but there’s no chance I would. He dips his head, his lips grazing my ear as he whispers, “You knew exactly what you were doing, didn’t you?”

I shiver, the thrill of his words sparking something wild and eager between us. His hands roam, fingers slipping under my shirt, exploring every curve as his lips capture mine in a kiss that’s hungry and unapologetic, each movement demanding a response.

As he carries me to the bedroom, there’s an electric anticipation, an unspoken promise that fills the space between us. The moment we reached my room, he pressed me against the wall, his hands firm on my waist, holding me steady. His gaze meets mine in the mirror across from us, dark and intense, every look fueling the thrill building between us.

He leans in, his voice a low murmur against my neck. “You knew I couldn’t stay away, didn’t you?” His words send a shiver through me, and he slides his hands along my waist, drawing me even closer, his touch both possessive and gentle, filled with the heat we’ve been holding back.

“I did—but I didn’t anticipate you barging in at this hour,” I manage to say between kisses, each one feeling more primal than the last. My core seems to have a mind of its own, my hips grinding against him, wanting more. Needing more.

He grins against my lips. “Didn’t take you for the needy type, princess.” He pulls back, sitting on the bed, leaving me craving the contact.

“Well, princess, not everything comes easy,” he murmurs, his gaze growing hungrier. “You teased me, so now it’s time you learn your lesson.”

I rise from his lap, tugging his shirt off in one motion, my hands exploring his toned chest and feeling his muscles tense under my touch. I trail kisses from his jaw down his neck, my lips grazing every inch, each one making my core ache with anticipation.

Sliding to my knees between his thighs, I reach the waistband of his trousers and boxers, sliding them down to let his hard cock spring free. My eyes, full of lust and need, are fixed on him, my mouth craving the feel of him. I waste no time wrapping my hand around his length, bringing my mouth to the tip, letting my tongue swirl slowly around the head before sliding down, inch by inch.

His moans and grunts grow stronger, more primal by the second. His hands grip my hair, pulling it into a makeshift ponytail, giving both of us a clearer view in the mirror.

“Fuck, princess, look at you, being such a good girl for me,” he growls, tilting my head to see his cock sliding deep into my mouth, the tip pressing at the back of my throat. Our eyes meet in the reflection, his grin never fading, eyes bright with satisfaction at the sight.

I try hard not to choke or gag as he picks up the pace, using my mouth for his pleasure. I can feel my own need intensifying, wetness pooling as I slip my free hand between my legs, seeking a hint of relief from the ache.

Just as I feel his cum on my tongue, sliding down my throat, my moans vibrate around his length, making him twitch in my mouth. His gaze shifts to the mirror, catching sight of my hand as I touch myself. In that instant, he releases his hold on my head and pulls his cock from my mouth, leaving a mix of confusion and hunger on my face.

“Princess… did I tell you that you could touch yourself?” Lando leans in, lifting my chin so our faces are close, his breath warm against my lips.

“No, you didn’t,” I reply, a hint of rebellion mixed with anticipation flashing across my face.

“Well, bad girls need punishments, so let me think of something.” An idea lights up his eyes as he guides me up onto the bed, positioning me on my hands and knees, facing the mirror. My mascara has smudged, trailing down my cheeks from the tears shed while he was in my mouth.

Part of me craves for him to finally take me and fill me up, while another part wants to see just what punishment he has in store.

He stands beside the bed and instructs me to keep my ass up and face down, so I adjust to ensure we’re both visible in the mirror. Once I settle, Lando’s hand trails from my hair down the arch of my back and onto my ass. He rubs my cheeks, his fingers dipping lower to feel my wetness, sticky and creamy, dripping onto the mattress.

“Look at you. So wet and needy for me,” he murmurs, bringing two fingers coated in my arousal back to my lips. I open my mouth, ready for a taste, and he slides his fingers in, letting me lick them clean. His breath is warm on my neck as he leans close to whisper in my ear.

“Good girls don’t touch themselves unless I say so.” He nibbles on my earlobe. “But it seems like you might just be my needy little slut instead.”

He steps away, the cool air hitting my sensitive core, sending shivers down my spine and adding a thrill to the moment.

Without warning, a sharp smack lands on one of my ass cheeks, the pain mixing with a tingling heat. He rubs over the reddened spot before delivering another smack, this time to the other side.

“Since you teased me twice, you’ll be getting four spanks—unless I see you haven’t learned your lesson.” He counts, “One,” landing a solid smack, then “Two,” and repeats on both sides. By the time he finishes the fourth, his hand has left my skin bright red, each touch leaving a sensitive, electric throb. A mix of pleasure and pain shows on my face with each strike.

“That’s it, my perfect princess,” he murmurs, brushing his fingertips gently over my sore, reddened skin. “You did so well. I think you’ve earned a reward, don’t you?”

“Yes, please,” I breathe, arching my back and raising my hips higher, my aching core desperate for attention. A grin spreads across his face as his fingers slip into my folds, rubbing my swollen clit, drawing a moan from my lips with every heavy breath.

Lando’s hunger grows more possessive as he slips a finger inside me, filling my tight heat. The sensation sends my body into overdrive, and the pleasure on his face only fuels the fire inside me. He slides another finger in, his free hand roaming along the curve of my arching spine.

His thumb continues to circle my sensitive clit, his pace quickening as he pumps his fingers in and out, each movement leaving me trembling with need. I bite my lip, trying to muffle my moans, but the pleasure is too much.

“Lando… I’m—close,” I manage to breathe out between gasps and moans.

“Oh, princess, I can see that,” he murmurs, sliding his fingers out of me suddenly, leaving an unbearable emptiness in their wake.

My wetness clings to his fingers in a glistening string as he pulls them away. “Fuck, you look so good on my fingers,” he growls, his gaze fixed on the sight of my arousal. Slowly, he brings his fingers to his lips, wrapping his tongue around them and sucking them clean.

“FUCK. And you taste ten thousand times better.” His eyes flutter shut for a moment as he savors the taste, the heat in the room climbing higher. The sight of him tasting me sends my brain spiraling into bliss, my gaping mouth wordlessly wishing for more.

Moments later, he leans down, his tongue sliding through my folds, the sensation stealing the air from my lungs. He places a light, teasing kiss on my core before beginning to suck and eat every inch of my pussy with eager determination.

“Fuck, you’re addictive, princess,” he murmurs against my entrance, the vibration of his voice making me shiver. His hands grip my ass firmly, spreading me wider, giving him full access to devour me.

His tongue teases my entrance, flicking and dipping inside, making my body twitch and ache for more. My hips start to move on their own, thrusting slightly, begging for him to go deeper.

Without warning, he flips me onto my back, positioning me for a better view. His hands grasp my thighs, and with quick precision, he pulls me to the edge of the bed. Dropping to his knees, he toys with my clit, his fingers circling and pressing before diving back between my legs, tongue working with unrelenting fervor.

“Now this, princess,” he murmurs between kisses and licks, his voice dripping with satisfaction, “I’d eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the rest of my life.”

His words push me closer to the edge, my climax approaching rapidly as my legs begin to tremble. His grip tightens on me, holding me in place, preventing me from pulling away from his relentless mouth. My body shudders suddenly as the wave of relief I’ve been craving washes over me.

My fingers tangle in his hair, pulling him closer as I grind against his mouth, riding out every pulse of my orgasm, my breaths coming in ragged gasps.

I feel my arousal spill into his mouth as he greedily licks and sucks, not letting a single drop go to waste. He stands, his eyes dark and filled with hunger, leaning in to kiss me. The taste of my release lingers on his lips, and I moan softly, lost in the sensation.

His hard cock presses against my core, grinding against me with desperate need, and I instinctively move my hips, craving to feel him inside me. His kiss grows rough and possessive, his hand sliding down from my neck to my breasts. He pinches one of my nipples, sending a jolt of pleasure through me and drawing a gasp that he swallows into the kiss, his grin wicked and satisfied.

“If my needy princess wants something, she has to ask for it,” he whispers, his lips parting from mine with a teasing grin, his breath warm against my ear.

His hand slides down to my clit, his fingers circling and flicking, sending jolts of pleasure through my body. My breath hitches, and a soft moan escapes my lips, my mind struggling to process his words.

“Use your words, princess. Tell me what you want,” he growls, his voice firm yet tantalizing, his fingers working me into a frenzy.

“Fuck me, please,” I murmur, my voice trembling as the heat builds in my core, every nerve in my body begging for him.

“Say that again, princess,” he demands, his tone dripping with playful dominance. “A little louder for me.”

“Fuck! I need you to fuck me—to feel you inside me. Please!” The frustration and raw need are evident in my voice, my body aching for him to claim me.

“That’s my good little slut,” he murmurs, satisfaction clear in his tone. He adjusts himself at my entrance, teasing me for a moment before slowly sliding inside, letting me adjust to his size. The stretch is overwhelming, and my fingers instinctively trail down his back, nails digging in and leaving marks. He jolts forward at the sensation, filling me deeper and making my head fall back, my back arching as I gasp at the sudden invasion.

He growls into my neck, leaving a trail of kisses and soft bites as he begins to move, his thrusts slow and deliberate at first. The rhythm shifts, his chest lifting from mine, giving him a full view of my bare body beneath him. One hand slides to my stomach, pressing down lightly as he picks up speed, fucking me harder and faster, his thrusts deep and commanding.

“That’s it, princess,” he growls, his voice raw with pleasure. “Fuck, you’re so tight. Let me stretch you just enough to make your pussy become a ring on my cock.” His hips slam into mine with a hunger that matches my own, the sound of our skin meeting echoing through the room.

As his thrusts grow more desperate, his hand reaches for the vibrating tongue toy on the nightstand. Without missing a beat, he presses it against my clit, the sudden overload of sensation making me throw my head back, a loud moan of his name escaping my lips as my hands clutch the sheets for dear life.

A wicked glint of satisfaction flashes across Lando’s face, his grin smug and proud. He leans in close, his lips brushing against my ear as he whispers, “Princess, as much as your moans are music to my ears, we can’t have your friends interrupting us right now—or finding out that their sweet little friend is such a good slut for the guy next door.”

Before I can respond, he grabs my black lace panties by the bed—the ones I’d removed during my earlier “show”—and gently pushes them into my mouth, muffling my cries of ecstasy as he continues to claim me.

My pussy clenches and twitches around his cock as his thrusts grow wetter, the sound of our movements filling the room. My orgasm teeters on the edge, his cum seeping into me, intensifying the sensation.

His growls and moans grow deeper and more primal. “Fuck, princess, you must be close,” he murmurs, his face satisfied as he watches my trembling legs and the euphoria written all over my face.

My muffled cries escape past the panties still in my mouth, vibrating softly in the heated air. “Cum for me, princess,” Lando commands, thrusting into me twice more. His words send me hurtling into my second orgasm of the night, my body convulsing around him as waves of pleasure consume me.

Lando’s thrusts grow sloppy, his grip on my waist tightening as he buries himself deep inside me. My pussy milks every last drop of his release, the warmth of his cum splashing against my inner walls. With a low growl, he slides out of me, both of our arousals dripping down my thighs and pooling onto the mattress.

He steps back, his eyes lighting up as he takes in the sight of my used, naked body, glistening and dripping with his cum. Slowly, his gaze traces every inch of me, savoring the evidence of what we’d just done.

“You know,” he says, his voice still thick with lust, “I might want this view every hour of the day from now on.” His tone is intoxicating, and he steps closer, gently removing the panties from my mouth before placing a soft kiss on my lips. “What do you think? You agree?” His smirk deepens, a dimple just beginning to peek through.

“I think that can be arranged,” I reply, wrapping my arms around his neck, a cheeky smile spreading across my face.

“Perfect,” he says, brushing his lips along my skin in a trail of butterfly kisses. “Let me start a shower for you, and then you can get some rest.” His voice is softer now, but still filled with care.

As he moves toward the bathroom, I pull myself up onto shaky feet, my body sore in all the best ways. Each ache is a reminder of every moment we’d just shared. I follow him, leaning on the sink in front of the mirror, catching a glimpse of my reflection—flushed, satisfied, and completely undone. The sensation of his cum still seeping out of me draws my attention, and I can’t help but slide a finger down to catch a drop, bringing it to my lips. I shut my eyes, savoring the taste.

Fuck, I need more.

Lando calls to me, his voice echoing softly under the sound of the shower. I walk toward him, wrapping my arms around his neck as he turns to face me. Pulling him into a sensual kiss, I whisper against his lips, “Are you up for a round two?” A glimmer of mischief dances in my eyes.

Lando grins at my request, his hands sliding down to rest on my hips. Leaning close, he murmurs under the steam of the shower, “I could never deny you a request like that, princess.”

The End

[flem17ng]

Vault Dweller's guide to perpetuating America:

Lucy Maclean x Fem!reader

Summary: Lucy is getting married and reader is forced to watch. but vault tech never planned for the inevitability of Sapphics…

Content: Fluff and angst, systematic homophobia, happy ending, no use of y/n

Authors note: Let me know if you want more of this or have any prompts to send it :)

Word count: 3.1K

Gay people were not a thing according to Vault Tech. They did not add to the breading pool, they did not fit into the nuclear future, they simply did not fit in the vault. Unlike sperm, cola, and corn, homosexuals did not play a key part in perpetuating the American dream. This was a good enough explanation for anyone willing to enquire (and enquire they had in the early years of Vault 33), but overall, as the years of confinement and isolation dragged on, and marriage for the sake of breading continued, homosexuality was quite simply... forgotten.

Rely on a schooling system created by greying, rich, white men to eradicate historical depictions of minorities. Education in the vaults was about the great west, cowboys, the splitting of the atom, the creation of the commonwealths, and the importance of capitalism; education was certainly not for understanding the distant Stonewall riots or the ancient tunes of "Freddy Mercury". heck! This was the new world! a once in a lifetime opportunity to reshape society! If Vault Tech could systematically remove a section of society that could not reproduce and thus could not recolonize the wasteland then they sure as hell would do just that.

Now let's be clear: Vault Tech loves and values all its customers! The fight against the Reds was the fight for American freedom, for the dream, for the nuclear family, for the blue, white, and red! America celebrates freedom for all! but even in the great year of 2077, scientists at Vault tech simply couldn't work in the variable of homosexuals into the Vault system. At least not into the control vaults. Systematic eradication is, by all means, easier than acceptance.

Vault 33! One vault in a triad with 31 and 32. A dedicated meritocracy built on the values of one's good deeds. Lucy Maclean prided herself on her merit and her ethics. She knew how to de-escalate a conflict, she knew how to stand up for her beliefs, and she knew the importance of kindness. She also knew her valuable role as a woman in the Vault 33 society.

As a woman, the daughter of the overseer, she would be a community leader, a history teacher, and maybe later in life, she would run for council. As a woman, she would also get married (preferably not to her cousin) and have little vault babies who would grow up, learn their own merit, and so on and so on. To say that Lucy was comfortable and fulfilled by this prediction of her life would be... a vast exaggeration.

Yes, she understood her importance as a potential mother! Yes, she loved and valued her community, her family, and her job. But something stopped her from becoming stagnant. Something about this perfect path she had been given just wasn't right for her. It grated at her relentlessly, a thorn in her side, a nagging hunch she couldn't shake. Surely it would change on the day of her wedding. She would meet her husband, kiss, make babies, have cake and everything would settle. The unease she felt would lessen and she would accept her designated role.

~

"I am so glad your marriage application was accepted! I just cannot wait for you to join us wives!" Steph squeaked, one hand cradling the ever-growing bump in her tummy while the other waved around to illustrate her excitement. Steph was the carbon copy of what Vault Tech stood for: she was a wife, a soon-to-be mother, smart and strong-willed. She was drop-dead gorgeous with well-maintained hygiene. when you thought of the "American dream" you thought of Stephanie Harper.

Lucy grinned back, fighting the urge to roll her eyes (eye rolling was rude and there were more effective ways to respectfully communicate your disdain).

"Oh golly! to think in a few short hours I’ll be on my way to furthering the vault's great aim!" She smiled for real this time because she knew her discomfort did not stem from contempt for motherhood.

"Oh, Lucy spare me the lewd details!" Steph giggled before winking.

"I know you don't mean that Steph. you and me both know you want as much detail as I can give." Lucy chuckled, picking at the canned tuna on her plate.

The dining area near the cornfield was particularly packed today; everyone wanted one last glimpse of Lucy Maclean before she was assigned to the ranks of wife. The stares and whispers were not unwelcome, however. They reminded her of the community that she was a part of the community she had been raised to help and to eventually add to.

"I hope he's handsome" Steph breathed, looking begrudgingly at her own husband who was standing awkwardly next to the Nuka-Cola machine with Chet. Lucy just swallowed hard and nodded. It was easier to think about the more fun parts of marriage than linger on the particulars of her mystery partner.

She was grateful for the marriage of course. It meant an excuse to cut things off with Chet who had been steadily grating on her nerves since she was 15 (he seemed to love her and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't begin to think of him like that in return. his warm body was truly his only perk.) It was also a milestone for her, a badge of honor to her community service. This is what vault tech wanted! This is what America wanted!

Lucy pushed back from her chair, suddenly feeling nauseous. 

"Lucy, are you ok? you look a little pale dear?" Betty called from the seat next to her father. At the sound of her voice, the vault dwellers looked up to find Lucy standing awkwardly by her table.

"Oh! Yes, quite alright thank you!" she shrugged, teeth glinting with faux charm. "I just... I just wanted to have a nap before it gets too chaotic." lying was wrong. You were taught that very young in Vault 33. Lucy pushed down the stab of guilt before turning on her heels towards her family's shared apartment.

~

You watched her stand up from her table with a start that made you furrow your eyebrows and look away quickly. You would never admit to anyone that you had been staring at her, but you knew you had been. She was easy to stare at! She was a figure of authority, in a sweet and slightly clumsy way. Your excuse, should anyone catch you, was simply that you admired her can-do spirit! (that wasn't a lie though you couldn't label it as the truth either).

The other part of the truth was that you had been staring at her like a lost puppy since her marriage arrangement was announced. You and Lucy's friendship was... complicated. You had grown up together (as all vault children did), and your families were close (but not related as a "fun class DNA test" had proved during your school years). things got rocky as you got older though: Lucy was outgoing, confident, and stunning. All together just all the things you wished you were. That is, not to say you weren't pretty! In fact, you had received a few proposals in the past year (mostly from an anonymous admirer you knew was Davey, and a couple from Chet after he realized things with Lucy wouldn't work out). You and Lucy where still close, and to her, probably as uncomplicated at a friendship could get!

The complication was simply that to you it had become increasingly obvious that you were desperately in love with her.

You had noticed it first when you were about 14. Lucy was stunning, having never suffered the "awkward teenager" phase of adolescence, and was quickly discovering her hypnotic power over Chet. You weren't jealous of course! at least... not at first. But then it was more than Lucy's teasing flirtation: it was kissing, it was spending time with him more than usual. Suddenly you were jealous. Jealous in a way that couldn't be explained by the "Vault-Tech: Guild to female friendships" or "Vault-Tech: female adolescence in the Vault" or even by your mother's trusty copy of "surviving the teenage years: a manual sponsored by General atomics."

It got worse when you turned 17. Sex Education was vitally important in Vault education. it prevented the spread of disease, enabled knowledgeable future mothers and fathers, and fostered respect and dignity between men and women. It was in one of these detailed lessons that you caught yourself watching Lucy's expression: laughing at times, cringing at the birth diagrams, blushing at parts with a quick side eye to you. 

The realization hit you like a ton of bricks as your eyes fluttered to her lips and lingered there for a moment too long. It hit you again at 18 during your "prom" when Lucy danced with you slowly as the light from the 2.5D Telesonic projector scattered across her cheekbones and lit up her doe-eyes. you remember almost pushing her away from the force of it. The force of the feeling, the emotion, the unholy urge to press your lips to hers that caught you like a punch.

That night you had curled in a ball and prayed. you did not know who "god" was, but you'd heard about him in class before. You prayed to him to make you a boy, to change your emotions, to make things make sense again. Your mother had stroked your hair, not truly understanding your grief but accepting it and holding it for you like only a mother can.

In your world of perfect underground utopia, the truest sorrow you had ever felt was the realization that you loved Lucy Maclean.

~

It took you a split second to stand up and follow Lucy out of the atrium. A second in which your mind reeled and hesitated sickeningly before you shut it up. Lucy was your friend, and she needed you now. Your footsteps echoed down the hall as you took the familiar path along the "street" toward Lucy's home. The door was only just sliding shut as you reached it and you rushed to duck under.

Lucy was where you expected her to be: knees to her chest, curled up on the sofa. Her hands were clenched in front of her, and her eyes were set at some point just beyond the "radiation king" television set that was blasting its usual nature documentary. She didn't look up as you entered, but the slight dip in her shoulders told you that she knew you were there.

"Lucy?" you called quietly, kneeling on the rug near her. she turned to you slowly and smiled politely as she was raised to.

"hey" she muttered, clearly trying to keep her tone cheerful.

you fixed her a look before sitting softly next to her on the sofa. She remained in her tight ball.

"pre-wedding nerves?" you asked, ignoring the lump that formed just next to your heart at the thought of Lucy's marriage. You watched her expression for confirmation, but it never came. Instead, she furrowed her brows and looked back at the nothing behind the TV.

"I'm sure everyone gets nervous before their wedding Lucy. Steph could tell you a million stories of her 'pre-wedding wobbles'" you chuckled, remembering Stephs wedding day not long ago.

"Its... it's not that." Lucy finally responded, tightening her grip around her legs.

"Then wha-"

"What if I don't want this... Like I thought I did" she blurted, the words mushing together as she fought to get them out of her mouth. You pursed your lips, desperate for her to continue. After a moment of silence, she started again, quieter and more measured.

"I feel so... Wrong. and I don't know-" she cut herself off, swallowed, and began again, "I don't want what Steph has anymore." 

"What? the wedding? I'm sure your father would agree to a smaller celebration if you told him! I think he just likes to make a fuss of you."

Lucy shook her head. Finally, she let her legs fall away from her chest as she turned to face you with a dramatic sigh.

"I've always been so certain. and now... well I am certain but just not of the things I should be." She shut her eyes, needing to get away from your face for a moment. The lessons flashed in front of her eyes in quick succession: reclamation day, the purpose of the vaults, reproduction, male anatomy, romance, how to be a wife, the American dream. It flashed and flashed and then sank into her gut like an over-set Jello cake. 

You watched her face shift from carefully masked to strangely tortured and back again before she opened her eyes once more. how you missed those eyes in that moment you couldn't see them.

She reached forward and held your hand, her finders dusting over yours curiously as if she was handling some strange new specimen. she'd held your hand before, countless times in the 20 years you'd known each other; and yet her fingers felt tentative in a way they hadn't before.

"Lucy... it's ok to be scared, it's ok to feel unsure. heck, you know I spend most of my time feeling unsure." you cast her a weak smile, "I know you, and I know you will be an amazing bride to whoever you marry. You'll be a perfect wife; you’ll be an amazing mother and one day I know you'll make an amazing overseer as well. And Lucy? even if it feels hard, you know I'll always be here." You had long ago settled into your role of best friend, nothing more. You would be there, and you would love her (in a way approved by social expectations).

Lucy stayed quiet for a long time, still slowly tracing over your fingers with her own. It had clocked for her the moment you had entered the room after her dramatic exit from the atrium. she wasn't unsure, she wasn't uncertain. I fact, she felt as though she had never been more certain in her whole life.

Maybe it had started when she was 12, when you had helped her take her first ever stimpack: holding the needle steady, wiping her eyes with your own hand and giving her a little Vault-Boy band-aid to cover the little hole. 

Maybe it had started when she was 15 and getting a steady stream of attention from boys (mostly Chet) and could only watch your disdained reaction to her suitors. Even then she had a hunch that she cared more about your opinion on her "boyfriends" than the boys themselves.

Maybe it was when she was 18, pulling you through a maintenance tunnel by your hand with a high-pitched giggle and a determination to find a good meeting place for when you no longer had school to attend. She remembers your initial reluctance, followed by rebellious cheek that pushed you both further into the guts of the vault than you had planned on. She remembers the oil that had got on your face that she insisted on wiping away herself.

She tore her eyes away from your hands and stared at you with all the intensity and authority that the overseer’s daughter should possess.

"I’m not scared. and golly I feel about as far from unsure as a girl can be." her hands tightened around yours. "This vault... we are told what we do and what we feel. heck, they even tell us who we should marry! Maybe I'm being silly but that doesn't fit into the 'American dream' they are always yammering on about!" her voice rose had she got more passionate. you watched her with a mix of shock and awe (an emotion you often felt yourself feeling when you were around her)

"I've always nodded along to what they've told us! who am I to doubt the rules?" she continued, her eyes never leaving yours, "but this marriage... I don't want that!" she concluded with a huff, finally blinking and pursing her lips as if she'd suddenly gotten shy.

It was your turn to reach out to her now, freeing one of your hands from her grip and placing it softly on her shoulder. you put on a calm expression, but your heart betrayed you: beating rapidly as if trying to escape its spot behind your ribs.

"What is it you want if not the marriage?" you whispered, feeling the moments fragility.

a beat.

Lucy sighed, stealing herself. her eyes were no longer full of angry passion, but rather softer, watery. her expression seemed to mirror the way you knew you were looking at her.

"I think- no, I know... Gosh, I want you so badly" she breathed. 

Another war could have started and ended, and you wouldn't have noticed. The air stilled despite the constant circulation of the vents and the clock on the wall must have stopped ticking. Silence, a long silence that must have only spanned a fraction of a second.

Her words, like the flash of light as a fission reaction begins, followed by a lull followed by...

You launched forward before Lucy could hesitate, before you could leave her hanging, before she could dare think that you didn't want her back. her lips touched yours and it reminded you of the desperate prayers you used to send to the man called "god" (you thanked him now that he never changed you). There were no fireworks like the books said, no large, forced explosion, no splitting of an atom. Instead, it felt... inevitable, like the slow decay of an element, like aging gracefully, like coming home.

Her lips slotted against yours perfectly, softly and she gasped as she kissed you back. you kissed not for the purpose of "perpetuating America" or building the next generation of vault dwellers, but simply because you wanted to. 

She pulled back after a while, bleary eyes and pink-cheeked with a grin that made your heart grow.

"I did... know we could..." she let out before laughing, one hand covering her mouth while the other found its way to the side of your face where it lingered. You laughed too, sides splitting and eyes watering.

"Who the hell cares" you spluttered between laughs, leaning into Lucys hand.

"If it wasn't clear... I want you to. in a um... kissing way"

"Oh really? I wouldn't have guessed" she drawled playfully, "well then... I think we have a wedding to wreck."

"What will you tell them?"

She shrugged and scooched a little closer. "That's a future Lucy problem. Current Lucy is preoccupied..." She smiled at you in a manner that was really more of a smirk.

You had barely enough time to squeak out a rather excited "Okey Dokey" before it was her turn to shut you up with a kiss.

[coco-loco-nut]

Mister England

Paring: Lando Norris x Reader

Summary: One more time you involved your boyfriend in something American, and two times the coin flipped.

requests open masterlist part one

—————————

“Baby, why am I awake so early?” your sleepy boyfriend asks, rubbing his eyes as you take seats in front of the entertainment.

“Because it’s Groundhog Day, silly. Phil is going to tell us if it’s an early spring or more winter,” you smile, his tired eyes looking confused.

“Like that movie?” Lando asks causing you to snort.

“That’s blasphemous,” you chastise him, a lighthearted laugh escaping your lips.

“Even so, are the groundhog hats necessary?” an amusemed smile graces his face.

“Yes!” you gasp, mocking offense. You used to come to Punxsutawney as a kid and somehow convinced Lando to come with you. He bought the VIP tickets so you could be close, but he didn’t want to show up even earlier to fight the general admission crowd.

“How long?” he yawns, his sleepy demeanor slowly taking over. You had already been here for an hour and despite the live entertainment, there is nothing he would like to do more than cuddle up to you in bed.

“A couple more hours, Babe,” you kiss him, putting a smile back on his face.

“I’m gonna go get some food and hot chocolate, I’ll be back,” he squeezes your hand and disappears. Half an hour later he reappears, handing you a warm cup.

“Are you Lando Norris?” a soft voice causes both of you to turn around. You heart melts as a young girl holding a groundhog plushie looks up at the two of you. Lando imagines this is what you looked like as a kid. He bends down to her and nods.

“What’s your name,” Lando asks, holding his arms out for a hug.

“Marie,” the girl says and you see her mom, tired and frazzled, approach.

“Would you like a photo?” you ask her with a small smile, and the mom nods gratefully, quickly snapping a picture of the hug. “Lando, turn and face the camera,” you tell your boyfriend, who is more than happy to take pictures with the young fan.

“Thank you,” the mom says, “let’s go Marie, tell Lando bye,” she takes the girls hand and leads her away. The last hour or so passes by quickly, and Lando is much more enthusiastic about the day.

“Early spring!”

“Let’s go!” Lando yells, getting it all on camera.

“SPRING!” You cheer. “Love you, Lan, thank you for bringing me,” you hug him.

“Anything for you, I love you, Y/n,”

“I’m sorry, Lando, repeat that?” you ask, utterly confused.

“I cleaned the hob,”

“The hob?”

“You know, where you cook with pots and pans?”

“You mean the range?”

“My love, you have lived with me for over a year, at this point, take the piss,” Lando says, rummaging in the pantry.

“LANDO!” you gasp, completely scandalized.

“Ah shit, the bread’s gone off,” you toss the towel you’ve been holding on the counter and walk out of the kitchen, brain not comprehending his words anymore.

“Baby? Y/n? What did I say?” Lando whispers the last bit to himself, rethinking the conversation and coming to a silent realization. “No, god, I really have to teach you slang,” Lando laughs, sitting beside you on the couch and pulling you into his arms.

“That might be helpful,” you pout, causing him to laugh more and kiss you.

“Taking the piss means you’ve embarrassed yourself, maybe not a good choice of words to say to my long-term girlfriend and future wife,” Lando says causing you to raise your eyebrows at him, he just brushes the comment off. “Bread’s gone off, it’s moldy, not really supposed to be fuzzy,” Lando explains the terms he’s used.

“Thank you, I think I need to spend more time here,” you blush a little and Lando holds you tighter.

“Forever would be nice,” his voice drops a little, kissing your cheek.

“Mmm, maybe when you finally propose,” you wink, Lando has half a mind to propose right now. He knows that you wouldn’t mind, but he wants to make a big, romantic gesture.

“Not before I ask your father, gotta make it official,” he lies, fully knowing he asked last month.

“Lan, I would rather watch the most boring F1 race than this. Even a tame grand prix has more action than this,” you groan, sipping your beer.

“It’s the better football,” you give him a look, “yeah, I guess I do like going to your alma mater’s football games more, but this is the real football,” Lando says and you shake your head.

Truthfully, you were just lost. You knew hockey, but that wasn’t helping as much as you thought. Lando noticed how uncomfortable you were and slowly started to subtly explain things to you.

Before you knew it, he was explaining almost play by play what was happening so you could understand. He knows how much you love sports and hate that you didn’t know it. To be fair, you suggested a rugby game instead, but he already bought these tickets.

“Thanks for explaining it to me,” you blush in embarrassment, not quite meeting Lando’s eyes.

“Of course, Love. You do the same for me,” he wraps his arm around you, as the game progresses you are able to get into it more, his guidance lessening as time passes.

“Halftime!” You cheer at the end of regulation and Lando blushes. Maybe he still has work to do.

[haythemnabhan]

$50k/$75k

Friends..

Please don't scroll..

My daughters Nirvana and Milad lived in a tent for seven months without the minimum necessities of life..

Under these difficult circumstances, I decided to launch my campaign several months ago and we succeeded in reaching a little more than halfway in order to make my family of eight live in safety and stability..

My older brother Ramez lost his wife and three children.. He needs to start a new life away from wars and displacement..

My father and mother lost their project that they had always dreamed of in Gaza and now they have no source of income and the economic conditions are very difficult and the prices are exorbitant..

My daughter Nirvana was studying at the American International School and her school was destroyed and now she has lost two years of her school year and her future is unknown..

My little daughter Milad is 3 years old and has lived very difficult days between the tent, displacement, bombing and destruction..

My beloved and I, after 12 years of marriage, decided to buy the apartment of our lives and unfortunately it was burned down due to the war..

Under these difficult circumstances, my campaign It is very slow and I need to activate it again in order to reach the desired goal and reach $75,000...

I am counting on you, my friends on Tumblr, to help and contribute, not only to donate, but to deliver the link to my campaign to the largest possible number of people around the world..

I will also attach a link to my two accounts on Twitter, and I look forward to your support and the help of my daughters and family..

@fancysmudges

@aleciosun @khizuo @timetravellingkitty

@rhubarbspring @anyonghalimaw

@memecucker @palestinegenocide

@akajustmerry @sar-soor

@annoyingloudmicrowavecultist

@feluka @tortiefrancis @tsaricides

@visenyasdragon @belleandsaintsebastian

@ear-motif @kordeliiius @brut

@raelyn-dreams @troythecatfish

@theropoda @tamarrud @tamamita

@el-shab-hussin

@nabulsi @buttercuparry @fancysmudges @brokenbackmountain @aleciosun

@fluoresensitive @khizuo @lesbiandardevil

@transmutationisms @schoolhater

@timogsilangan @appsa @memecucker

@sayruq @malcriada @palestinegenocide

@sar-soor @akajustmerry @annoyingloudmicrowavecultist

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[ladylaviniya]

Wails of Wedded Bliss

Chapter 6 || Masterlist || Chapter 8

Chapter Summary: Upon meeting the Baroness you are enamoured by her devotion.

Pairing: Sherlock Homes x wife!reader

Chapter Warnings: 18+ Dead Dove Do Not Eat, (No Smut), typical historical misogyny and sexism, mentions and discussion on miscarriages. Implied domestic abuse and infidelity.

Word Count: 9k

Author Notes: This is an important but rather sad chapter. I beseech you all to read the warnings. The details of this chapter are important to the plot of the missing Baron Thaddeus Pennicott.

Inspiring Song: "Flightless Bird American Mouth" by Vitamin String Quartet

8:30am Wednesday 7th May 1890, Grovelands House, The Bourne, London, England. 

Sherlock tucked your arm into his side as you three entered the Groveland house foyer. The floor was made of fine marble tile and with ever step a light echo raced down the halls.

The inspector called upon a nearby dusting maid to fetch the head of the house. Who returned was a thin and tall man in a butler’s uniform with a sliver pocket watch hanging from his chest. His hair was the colour of autumn leaves and his face littered in freckles.

He bowed, “I am mister Edward Redmayne, head butler of the Groveland estate, how may I assist you?”

The inspector shook his hand and stated quickly, “We spoke on the telephone yesterday? A telegraph was sent.”

The butler smiled with a relieving gasp, “Detective Holmes?”

Lestrade sheepishly looked over his shoulder to you and your husband. He nodded. His expression wore a emotion of embarrassment mixed with annoyance. Perhaps he was jealous of your husband’s successful published case stories. You wished you could have told the constable not to fret as Sherlock was nothing short of a arrogant mule...yet again- the mark on his face...he probably already knew that.

8:42am Wednesday 7th May 1890, Grovelands House, The Bourne, London, England. 

Upon meeting the lady of the house, you stood frigid by your husband. You felt somewhat self conscious by her grey eyes that lingered over your dress. Perhaps you should’ve worn your Sunday best before meeting a woman of such a high status.

The baroness was unmistakably pregnant. Her belly was bold and rounded beneath her maternity gown. She had been sitting calmly on a resting chaise, knitting a small bonnet for her future child. Her hands were covered in fine burgundy velvet gloves to match her modest dress.

Her face was framed by a light brown curls, that appeared almost white in some places, twisted into a bum at the base of her neck. Her pale face was blotchy with pink flecks and slight acne.

“Lady Pennicott, I am Inspector Braydon Lestrade of Scotland Yard,” the British officer proclaimed as he bowed dramatically forward. You withheld a girlish giggle by how low the man had bent his head and presented himself foolishly, and from the corner of your eye you manage to catch the whisp of Sherlock’s smirk.

The inspector waved his arm behind him and moved aside, “-and with me is Detective Sherlock Holmes and his wife, Mrs Holmes.”

You produced the baroness a respectable curtsy, your eyes glued down to the beautifully patterned carpet. You wondered how the servants could keep it so clean and freshly unstained by dirty guests. It must have been new.

The baroness shuffled her knitting needles and ball of woollen yarn into a Whicker basket and disposed of it beside her.

A slow stretching smile graced her thin lips as she spoke to you, “Oh, are you the little dear who solved that factory match girl incident?”

You weren’t sure how to answer her question. You weren’t entirely sure what the baroness was referencing until Sherlock stepped closer with your arm still cradled in his.

“No dear Baroness,” Sherlock pat your hand gently, “That would have been my sister Enola Holmes, she has her own detective office at present moment. My wife is here on my invitation. I wished to gift her a sight of the grand park and estate while I was here upon duty.”

The Baroness cocked her head, from her ears hung pearls that swung and hung like rain drops.

“Come forth dear,” she lifted her hand and beckoned you, “I would like to have better view of you.”

You wondered if she could smell the sweat beginning to drop down the back of your neck. You bit your tongue and tried to refrain from trembling. You were nervous. Her eyes were cold but her smile warm, two conflating details that you couldn’t understand. The last thing you needed now on top of a terrible start to your marriage was to be scrutinized by a haughty pregnant baroness.

She flickered your fingers for you to bend down to her. As you leant down, you swore you could smell copper, a metalic scent. A vein on your scalp pulsed. She scanned your face of its details. You dared to wonder what she was searching for. And then it clicked...the smell...

‘Dear god, you prayed, please don’t let her smell my blood, please let this not be my blood...’

You should have sprits on some perfume before leaving baker street.

She glanced behind you and questioned angelically, “How does it feel having such a clever husband?”

Your lips opened and closed. You resembled a fish. You were stumped to answer quickly.

‘Miserable, infuriating, torturous, pleasurable mixed with a cup of agony...’

She lifted her brows until you hurriedly blurted, “He is...formidable and righteous...” you stood up tall and took a step back, adding with a monetarism of truth, “I am very lucky to have become his bride.”

‘Lucky, while incredibly resentful.’

You reached back, Sherlock adopted your arm back into his hold once more.

Lady Pennicott rubbed her belly, her eyes started to twinkle, “And soon you will have a plethora of children that will look like him I gather.”

Your eyes fluttered. Sherlock’s hand tightened around your glove and his throat bobbed. You felt hot in the face.

Yes that’s right, that’s what normal husband and wife did isn’t it? They have children. That was your role, to be the mother of Sherlock’s offspring...

You couldn’t answer.

And there. That dear girl is when you questioned for the first time. ‘Is this what I want?’ and ‘Do I want Sherlock’s children.’ Because having a knowing of his barbarism conflated a fear in your belly...would Sherlock hurt his own children if he could easily hurt you, his wife?

When you hesitated for too long to answer her again, Sherlock said with a strained tone that was masked in a hopeful joy, “One may only hope, Baroness.”

“Lady Pennicott,” Graydon interrupted, “We have come to ask you on the whereabouts of Lord Pennicott and the evening he was last sighted.”

Her eyes narrowed at the inspector and with an annoyed twinge she muttered and wiped her hands on a nearby blanket, “I already informed the police of what I was informed of by our butler Edward.”

She glanced up next her right. Mister Redmayne observed her, looking down. The pair smiled to each other. She reached out to him. She grabbed his hand and they squeezed.

The inspector laughed nervously, “Indeed but Detective Sherlock Holmes was not presently involved in the case until yesterday.”

Her eyes flickered quickly to your husband and her face flared with confusion quickly to be matched with a impressed smile, “Of course, please sit all of you as I am near a indisposition with my child,” she gestured to the mirroring chaise and a chair beside the fireplace, “Edward, please tell Martha to bring tea and biscuits for our kind service men and Mrs Holmes.”

The butler bowed to you all and left the sitting room.

Lestrade took his place on the lone chair while Sherlock sat you beside him on the chaise. You took your time to lower yourself. Sitting on your bruises was uncomfortable while another cramp hit you. Your fingers dug into his palm.

From Lestrades breast pocket he pulled out a notebook and small pencil.

“Lady Pennicott,” Sherlock softly hummed, “Please, could you tell me what your husband is like as a person?”

The woman who you believed was in her late thirties smiled and stated softly, “My Thaddeus is a noble man, good taste in wine and very devoted to his work. He likes to go hunting and we share a passion for gardening,” she glanced up at the ceiling and paused, “He prefers to plant vegetables to donate to the church and orphans, whereas I have always loved to grow my flowers.”

The way she described him, her devotion was deep and honourable. She touched her round belly.

Sherlock looked over to the fire place behind the baroness. On the mantle was a magnificent portrait twice your height, painted on the canvas was who you recognised as Lord and Lady Pennicott. He was sitting up straight on a fine red cushioned chair with his dirty blonde hair and softened mutton chops while she stood at his right and her ringed hand on his shoulder. The similarities were there but Lady Pennicotts hair had lightened in reality perhaps from all the years that separated her likeness and her reality.

“I was informed Lord Pennicott is a father of five?” Sherlock asked.

The Baroness smiled proudly and pat her tummy softly, “Six soon.”

You couldn’t help notice something was missing from the painting, Sherlock also had a similar thought.

Where were the children in the portrait? Where was a family portrait in the house?

“Forgive me,” a breath of air escaped from him, “are the children away at school?”

“Oh,” her uncanny smile remained while her brows angled down, her throat tightened as she spoke, “I fear they are in the loving embrace of angels now. All of them were taken from us by God,” her eyes glanced to you, “They came out sleeping.”

Your heart sunk to the pit of your belly with sorrow and pity.

Five babies lost, five babies gone…five pregnancies… four and a half years of pregnancy and for what? Five angels.

A woman had one holy role in life, to bare her husband children, and when a woman was defective or produced a sickly child, it was a symbol of failure in society. But you never saw it that way...you imagined it must’ve been agony to lose so many babies. One or two was a common occurrence but five? Five was a curse to experience and relive over and over.

“Well,” you interrupted Sherlock rudely, cutting him off from his next abrasive question by squeezing his hand a little too hard.

You could see the mourning in the baroness’ face. You saw the classic look of all women made uncomfortable by something a man has said. What the hell would the detective know about a woman’s emotions after how coldly he has treated all women and yourself.

You shuffled on the opposite chaise and smile softly, “I will pray this one will come swiftly and feel the warmth of their mother.”

The baroness’ face lifted and warmed. She smiled happily and nodded, “Thankyou, oh I’m just so excited! This one really is a big one, I can feel it. I hope it’s a boy.”

Sherlock was staring at you intensely as the maid Martha finally delivered a pot of tea and poured the steaming liquid. His brows were knitted and his eyes held suspicion as he kept you in his sight. You politely nodded your head once at him before reaching for a hot cup and lifting it to your lips.

Sherlock sighed and turned back to his questioning, “You would say you liked your marriage?”

The baroness appeared offended by your husband as her face wrinkled and a sneer spread her thin lips, “Of course, any woman who doesn’t like her marriage should not be married in the first place. She is a burden to her husband if she cannot perform her duties as a wife.”

Lady Pennicott leant forward and collected her own cup of tea, she delicately pinched a biscuit and dunked it into the contents.

…you felt Sherlock drag his thumb across your fingers. You felt chilly, could he read your thoughts? Did he know truly how much you already hated him and his ideas of intimacy in your marriage? He clear his throat when both your glancing eyes caught each other.

“Can you tell me what happened,” Sherlock pressed, “The night of your husbands disappearance?”

“Well...after dinner,” the baroness sighed in thought and nibbled on her moist biscuit, “Thaddeus wanted to speak with me in his office about a spending I had made a week ago. You see, I had bought a cradle for the nursery. The one we had originally was broken and beyond repair, we disposed of it a month prior. Thaddeus was not pleased with the price and claimed it was an unnecessary purchase,” she paused and set her cup aside before she touched her belly again; rubbing in soft slow circles, she began to blushed, “He was sorely hurt by my choice. He then became very cross with me and left his office in a huff.”

She looked to the yarn, to the tea pot and then finally to the painting on the mantle, “I deemed that he would find forgiveness in his heart by the morning and brush it off. I returned back to the nursery to tidy up before I went to my rooms and went to bed to sleep in my quarters of the east wing. Thaddeus keeps himself to the west wing most nights.”

The detective nodded, “What time do you believe it was when you went to your bed, Baroness?”

She hummed softly while pursuing her lips, “A quarter to nine in the evening.”

“And how did you realise your husband was missing?” Sherlock stole a scone off the tea tray and lifted it to his lips. He paused amidst chewing it slowly.

The noble woman sighed and recollected, pragmatically, “In the morning Mr Redmayne informed me on how Thaddeus took off into the night astride Arion, our prize stallion Clydesdale. Thaddeus had not returned by the next morning and that is when concern drew near. I sent members of my staff to the factories to investigate his whereabouts and none had come upon him. I knew something had to be wrong so I alerted the authorities by the second morning.”

Your husband took a deep breath and discarded the half bitten scone, he wiped his hand unceremoniously on his jacket and throatily asked, “Do you recall if Lord Pennicott has any potential persons he might be deemed as an enemy towards?”

“Only his company competitors, Detective,” She said saccharinely with her smile, “He was a very loveable man.”

“Do you have a list of the names of staff who were working that evening here in Groveland House?”

The butler stepped forward and cleared his throat, “That would be in Lord Pennicotts office,” he pulled out a pair of keys, “I can you show you gentlemen in and where he keeps his accounts and other paraphernalia to his business if you’d like?”

Both Sherlock and Lestrade smiled and stood up.

“Baroness,” Sherlock gently requested, “Would it be overly bothersome if my beloved wife remained and kept you company while the inspector and I look in your husband’s office.”

Your heart jumped to your throat. What was Sherlock doing leaving you behind with the Baroness by yourself!?....what if you spoke out of turn or said something too presumptuous for your status!?...

“Most certainly not,” she beamed “I will gladly accept such delightful company,” She held out a hand, palm down to her right. The butler speedily stepped to her side and leant her his hand. She winced as she scooted forward on the cushioned lounge before struggling to rise to her feet.

Sherlock leant down and kissed the back of your wrist again, so scantily in front of the baroness. You tried tor refrain from loudly gasped and bringing anymore dangerous attention to yourself. Your husband left your side and followed the butler with Lestrade out of the sitting room.

So the party turned to two married women. The baroness was pleased.

She stepped closer to you and reached for your arm. You were surprised by her familiarity but you would not deny the assistance of a woman so desperately swollen and ready to birth any day.

“My dear, would you care to have a stroll with me in my garden?” She smirked and jerked her chin, “Knowing how dear Thaddie kept his space organised I suspect the gentlemen might be a while.”

You nodded and quickly made the warning assurance, “Are you in a condition to move great feets Lady Pennicott?”

“Fret not,” She giggled girlishly and waved her hand casually, “The physician told me fresh air is delightful for the health of the babe,” she tapped the top of her belly, “I have a month or so before they come.”

Your eyes widened, she looked huge enough to give birth now, surely she wasn’t a month away!! Maybe she was going to be blessed with a pair of twins. You had such a limited knowledge of pregnancy in women. Your grandmother hadn’t given birthed a child in the last forty years before your birth!!!

She pointed the way out of the main mansion to enter the garden paths. The sun was perfect today amongst the clouds. It was neither cold nor hot nor humid and dank...it was pleasant and you could smell the fresh nature of bushels and flowers.

“How long have you been known as, The Mrs Holmes?” She inquired cheerfully with her shining silver eyes.

“...Not very long,” you replied warmly before risking a white lie, “We recently finished our honeymoon.”

She grinned and waddled passed a wooden bench, she took a quick stop to rest and pat the seat for you to join her instead of standing dumbly.

“Shall I share some words of advise?,” She hummed, “From a woman that has been married for twelve years?”

“I would be ever so grateful,” you said rushed and desperate. You wouldve listened to anything she had to say. A woman of her standing must’ve held adequate wisdom.

She warmly cupped both your hands and squeezed them. And yet there was an ice creepy into her gaze. She appeared to dissociate, her voice losing its youthful lilt. Her lip wobbled slightly.

“Men are visual creatures. While you are so young and beautiful, you must become pregnant as soon as possible,” Lady Pennicott ran her palm across your waist, her eyes like razors cut across the yard to a bush of red rose buds, “It is inevitable that our husbands will stray their gazes to other women, it is in their nature,” those grey stones in her face rolled back and weighed you down, “as I said- visual creatures. The sooner you make a babe, the easier his devotion comes,” A joyous grin returned to her thin lips, she playfully tapped the tip of your nose and stated, “Trust me upon this.”

You clenched your hand behind you and strained a smile, “I thankyou for such wise words Baroness. I will endeavour to do what I must to conceive.”

At this moment in time Sherlock had proved himself a monstrous villain. Would it be possible for you to fall pregnant?

You looked out at the divine lush greenery and exhaled softly.

“Do you garden Mrs Holmes?” the baroness queried.

You chuckled softly and removed your gloves, you flashed her a sight of your palm, “I am afraid my hands have never been introduced. My grandmother preferred I focus on mastering piano and embroidery.”

The grey orbs fluttered back at you with a surprised him, “Embroidery is a lovely skill,” she pat your hand and pointed across the field, “Please help me up Mrs Holmes, let us take a look at my lilacs.”

You stood straight up and leant out your arm, she was surprisingly light for a woman her size. She leant against you and took small timid steps to her flower patches.

She stood and admired the flower patches, pointing to different types and explaining the breeds of flowers she hoped to grow in the future.

You finally bent over enough and cupped the petals of purple to hold up to your nose and took in a wiff “They smell lovely,” from the corner of your eye was a line of crimson, “I see your roses will soon be in bloom.”

She pinched a bud that was peaking to bloom soon.

“Oh yes, the soil is rich and healthy,” she giggled, “I can’t wait for Thaddeus to return, he liked the roses. He would stand here for a while and think. I know he will love the red colour. It is his favourite shade you see...” She sighed dreamily with her eyes scanning the bushes of scarlet rose buds, “I miss him terribly. I hope he’s alright. I want him to come home soon before the baby arrives.”

A fly smacked into your eye and you sputtered, battering it away. When you gracelessly composed yourself, you stood back up to your feet beside the Lady of Groveland.

You could see how her eyes puddles with droplets of mournful tears. You felt bad for any woman that did not know where her husband was. Especially if there was a rumour about him fleeing the marriage and abandoning her in her serious pregnant condition.

Taking the chance, you boldly took both your hands into yours and now squeezed them. Another buzzing from a fly sat on your shoulder.

The day was growing warmer and a bead of sweat rolled down your neck. The fly tickled your neck and suckled along your salted skin.

You tried your best to ignore the annoying creature.

“I am sure he will Lady Pennicott,” you soothed with a soft welcoming grin, “And he will be most happy when he returns.”

She sighed solemnly and glanced back at the rose bushes. You felt obligated for her happiness in that moment. Glancing back to the house you felt a opportunity come to you.

“May I visit your nursery Lady Pennicott, so I may have references for my own in the future?”

Her eyes flickered up, her face shine bright and her hand tightened over your wrists excitedly as though she was still as youthful as a school girl.

“Why of course Mrs Holmes,” she spun on her heel and wobbled a slight, she lifted her hand and called to the maid Martha still packing the china set inside, “Please inform the detective that I am taking his wife up to the nursery.”

“Yes Baroness,” she said with a humble curtsey and scurried off while Lady Pennicott took you totally inside the house and up a grand stair case from the foyer.

9:03am Wednesday 7th May 1890, Grovelands House, The Bourne, London, England. 

Up, up, up you both climbed the stairs. You noticed how the stairs didn’t bother her ladyship once, she was fit and stridden widely whereas you were breathing a little hard by the top step.

She pulled you down a hallway to a white painted door.

She excitedly opened the door wide and practically skipped inside to show you around her future child’s room.

The walls were covered in light blue and yellow paint. There were small peonies covering the trim of the room. There was no carpet but who needed one when you had a newborn.

“Welcome to the resting nest of my baby,” Lady Pennicott proudly exclaimed, spreading her arms out at the room around you.

There was a tall shelf filled with stuffed animals and teddy bears. There was a rocking horse, a doll house, spinning tops, tin cars and rubber balls all waiting, collecting dust, awaiting the arrival of a playmate. There was a permabulator by the window sill. There was a rocking chair in one corner and against the wall closest to the door- you smiled and swaggered over curiously, “Is this the cradle you bought?”

It was made of fine cream painted wood. You chewed your bottom lip in the thought. It was a lovely crib, why was Lord Pennicott so upset by such a delightful purchase? He didn’t have money issues. You put it down as that you didn’t understand the way men thought and men will never know what women think.

“Yes,” Lady Pennicott chirped, “it is from William Whitely department store in Baywater next to the Howard & Co dress department.”

The Baroness sat down into her rocking chair and slowly moved it back and forth, watching you admire the nursery she spent hours and years consistently curating.

You clenched the edge and looked over the railing down at the empty bedding. There was a teddy lamb in the corner, you pinched it’s fluffy white tail and sighed. For a brief moment you let your eyes close and your imagination wander far.

One day you’d have this...with Sherlock. An empty cradle to be filled. You caught the vision of a tiny hand squeeze around your finger and the sound of soft gurgles with the warm pressure of a hand on your waist...was that Sherlock’s hand? Was that your child?

One day you’d have a baby to care for, to provide these things that meant love...yet, was any child of Sherlock’s capable of love? He certainly wasn’t as far as you were concerned.

You bit down a shudder and opened your eyes, feeling hot tears glide down a cheek. You pushed back and sighed, “I am most confident on one thing Lady Pennicott.”

“And what is that Mrs Holmes?” she said softly, she could see the unspoken pain in your face. You swallowed hard and your face fell into a smile, you flashed her a wink.

You laughed softly, “Your child will be spoilt rotten by the love you give.”

She chuckled with you and nodded.

“Have you thought of a name?” you inquired, waltzing over to the chested drawers of baby knick knacks on display.

“Thaddeus Colin if it’s a boy,” she hummed, “or Theresa Grace if it is a girl.”

“Theresa?”

She giggled gently, “That is my name dear.”

Mrs Theresa Pennicott. It suited her. Her old soul eyes reflected her devout name.

A shine of glass pierced a ray of sun into your eyes, you pinched the glass object carefully. You touched a long black tube pulling out of it. You couldnt understand it’s purpose, your eyes narrowed at the rubber end that was shaped like a thumb or a cows udder. There was a second tube attached to the first with a rubber squeeze ball at the end.

“What is this?” you humoured.

“Oh that? It’s a fantastic invention,” The baroness said, “It’s a pump for breast milk with a tube that syphons the milk into this baby feeding bottle. When babies start to teeth they can scar your breasts. This is an effective and modern method I look forward to trying.”

Your eyes widened, scarring!? Babies teeth could scar a breast!?

You placed the bottle bump back and helped Lady Pennicott when she beckoned to stand back up from the rocking chair.

“Have you ever felt the sensations?” She suddenly, “In which they kick within?”

Your face must’ve looked idiotic as you asked plainly, “Kick?”

She giggled and nodded, “Give me your hand, perhaps you may feel them moving.”

She plucked your palm and pulled your glove off your fingers. She pressed your entire hand intimately to her belly. You felt a sense of taboo shame, she was making you touch such a beloved spot.

“Do you feel it?” she then asked.

Felt what? Confusion flooded your mind. Your hand moved around her belly slowly.

“I am afraid I don’t know what I’m meant to be feeling?”

She moved your hand and again you felt absolutely nothing.

“They are very brutal on my body,” Lady Pennicott sarcastically assured, “trust me there is a kick.”

She made a point to push your hand harder, but all you felt was the hard material of her corsetry beneath her main dressing materials.

“Baby’s kick you inside?” you marvelled with stunned horror. This was the first time you’d ever heard of such a notion of a baby beating it’s mother inside.

“Not out of malicious intent Mrs Holmes,” she reassured, “mostly it is the baby using its limbs to move their cramped bodies inside or excitement at the sound of voices, I truly believe they can hear us while still inside. Fear not, to you it will feel like a faint touch like this-”

Lady Pennicott softly tapped your wrist, “Like that.”

And there again was new knowledge you heard from a woman on matters of pregnancy. You moved your fingers around, seeking the supposed feeling of a kick...

Still nothing. You frowned, was there something wrong with you that the baby was choosing not to reveal itself.

“How interesting...”

A soft knock on wood alerted you both to glance at the door.

“Mrs Holmes,” the butler from earlier politely spoke, “the detective is requesting your return, I believe he intends to depart.”

Your face fell. You couldn’t believe it but you’d found this experience immensely enjoyable. You had surprisingly made a friend of the Baroness.

The fair lady hugged your side and sweetly exhaled, “Then I shall escort you back to your husband, Eddie fetch me my cheque book.”

He nodded and walked ahead of you both. You solemnly shut the nursery door, trying to remember every precious detail as possible. It was a innocent place to escape from the crude world.

You returned to the bottom of the foyer and smiled at your husband that stood by Lestrade at the front doors.

By the bottom step you faced the noble woman and curtsied.

“Thankyou Lady Pennicott for your kind hospitality and agreeable cooperation to the case,” you heard Sherlock’s voice float over your shoulder.

“Of course detective, please,” the Butler returned with her cheque book, “find my beloved Thaddeus.”

She scribbled speedily with a modernised ink pen, a sharp tear of paper flashed to his direction, “Here. Thirty pounds. I am sure you are busy with other clients considering your reputation, but I beseech you to seek out my husband quickly.”

Sherlock bowed his head as he deposited the cheque into his pocket, “We shall try our hardest. Good afternoon Lady Pennicott.”

Your mouth might’ve collected flies. Thirty pounds. THIRTY pounds. That was a hefty wage for a year to many men.

Sherlock was granted his coat and walking cane along with Lestrade.

He opened the front door and left slowly, glancing over your shoulder back at the heavily pregnant Baroness.

9:21am Wednesday 7th May 1890, Grovelands House, The Bourne, London, England. 

Sherlock and you walked up the gravel path in silence for sometime. You weren’t in much of a mood to speak to him despite well knowing conversation would need to spark eventually.

The three of you slowed down beside the inspectors horse cart.

Thankfully it was Sherlock who destroyed the silence with a stretched sigh. Lestrade grimly smiled at that sigh and rocked on his heels.

“Lestrade, show a useful skill,” Sherlock slapped a coin purse into his chest, “Find my wife and I a decent ride homeward. You still need to return back to the office and finish writing those reports on the Spring heeled Jack sightings....” he snickered.

The mutton chop male grumbled and left you pair alone to walk down the path into the main parklands to hail a cabriolet or another hackney carriage.

Sherlock pulled out his pipe and lit it quickly, he inhaled fast and asked curiously, “Did you learn anything else from our suspect?”

You squinted and felt a gasp pop from your lips, your hand snapped out and dug your nails into his arm with a scolding hiss, “Suspect? Look at the state she is in Sherlock. She clearly loves her husband. How could such a indisposed woman do anything to her husband?”

He smirked, “Perhaps a jealous one?”

Your brows pulled together. Jealousy wasn’t something you would’ve describe Lady Pennicott as especially with such a privileged life. Such an emotion wouldve been beneath her...but.. ‘It is inevitable that our husbands will stray their gazes to other women, it is in their nature.’

Sherlock pinched out a piece of card from his pocket, a business calling card, he flashed it through his fingers and let you carefully pluck it from his hand.

“it is no wonder Thaddeus Pennicotts name was so familiar,” Sherlocks huffed a puff of air, “He visits a like minded establishment.”

On the front of the card was a single image, a dove holding a olive leaf, and when you turned the card around there was a woman modelled in immodest clothing with text and an address in perfect hand writing.

“The Mayfair Row Dove club.”

You almost dropped the card in the mud at your feet.

He tucked the card back into his breast pocket and hooked his arm around yours, walking you closer to Lestrade waving his hands back at you both.

“I’m curious who his go to bird is there,” He chuckled.

You shook your head and scoffed in disbelief, “but she’s pregnant.”

“Men have needs,” Sherlock sighed, “I thought you’d have learnt that from last evening?”

Your nails dug harder into his arm and grit your teeth. Not everyone was as depraved as Sherlock, surely not. You couldn’t imagine Mycroft or your grandfather practicing such atrocities on women, especially women that weren’t their wives.

You noted snootily, “She said her husband liked to stand out by the roses to think. Perhaps he regretted his choice.”

Sherlock laughed cruelly and hard enough to almost drop his pipe from his lips. He plucked it out of his mouth and kissed you hard and squarely in front of Lestrade and any passing people that shook their heads in disgust at such public affection.

The taste of his tobacco filled your cheeks and floated down your throat into your chest. You could feel how his breath became your breath. Your head grew dizzy from it. His release left you trembling and collapsing against him briefly. His arm grabbed around your waist and held you totally against his chest.

“You see too much good in the worst people,” he whispered wetly into your ear.

“Not true,” you panted, you blinked your eyes hard and tried speaking again. You weakly pushed away from him back onto your own two feet. From the corner of your eyes you could see the inspector standing beside another hackney carriage.

“Not true,” you repeated and swallowed hard, “...I don’t see any good in you Sherlock.”

He grinned devilishly and walked you both to the carriage, He ignored Lestrade entirely except for retrieving his own purse.

“None at all?” Sherlock asked as he helped you step up inside of the carriage. It jostled as he plotted himself next to you instead of opposite.

You thought hard on his question for a time. You shouldn’t have ever been as petty as him. So you kept your silence before you could decide on a eloquent response. You did try to find the good in him. The trouble was you barely knew Sherlock and the side that you’d encounter was nothing short of a blagged, insufferable man that happened to be very experienced in the arts of the bedroom. So you tried to think about qualities you hadn’t seen in him but had at least heard of him.

“You help solve cases and even sometimes restitution, these deeds could be counted as decent and beneficial...perhaps good...”

He smirked until you finished hastily, “However your mistreatment and lustful addiction is nothing short of that than a person that suffers in his sin.”

A long annoyed sigh drew from his lips, however the corners jerked up.

He tug out his pipe and tapped it’s contents out the moving window, “Might I ask Mrs Holmes...” he inquired as he tucked in his pipe, and wiped his lips thoughtfully, “Do you think yourself better than me?”

The silence shared between the horses trotting along the cobblestones allowed you a chance to glare long and hard at Sherlock.

It was a jab, a jibe, a joke, a trick, a trap...

He wanted you to say yes... You could see it in his eyes the way they flicked to your lips and almost drooled with anticipation. He wanted to start a fight.

You didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking at you, you turned your head away and scoffed, “You may have quick wit and a expansive knowledge Sherlock, but I at least carry myself with the fairest morals.”

And that? The reply was granted a omen of Sherlock’s sickly chuckles and his heavy warm hand to sit over your thigh, running his them over the fabric of your skirts.

“We will see how fair a baker street whore morals really are when we arrive home then shall we?”

You leant against the wall of the carriage and chose to ignore him. You closed your eyes and held Sherlock’s hand to prevent it wandering anywhere else. His thumb rubbed along the back of your gloves hands.

You couldn’t understand Sherlock. And feared you never would.

HELPLINES:

If you are a victim of sexual abuse, assault or domestic violence or know someone who is please reach out to these links that share helpline services, phone numbers or emails. Consent and respect is important in every relationship whether between friends, family or even strangers.

Australian Helpline Services

UK Helpline Services

American Helpline Services

India Helpline Services.

[missadangel]

Little Bird in a Cage (Javier Peña x Reader)

Part 16: Pregnant

Gifs by jdmorganz - icegif

----------- All episodes here --------------

It was late evening when your father called.

He chose a very bad time, you'd just had after-dinner sex with Javi and it was amazing, you were still in bed, covered in sweat, cum, satisfaction, waiting for your breathing to settle.

To answer the phone, you sat on the bed, and had the longest phone call with him ever.

Javi slipped out of bed when he heard his voice on the phone, standing in front of the window with his back turned, lit a cigarette, yes, he had started smoking again recently, facing the truth that there really was such a thing as premarital stress.

Actually it wasn't the idea of marriage, you were both happy with to become husband and wife, to live together, but your father insisted that things should be a bit more his way.

Perhaps because he was a four-star minister and loves to give orders.

‘No, dad, of course that's not gonna happen!’ Javi turned his head and snickered at you, who looks and sounds like a little girl right now.

You frowned.

Getting married in Colombia wasn't an option and he didn't want it to be, the city you used to live in was still not safe, thanks to the drug cartels that still working tirelessly.

So you wanted to get married in Texas in a small wedding, but your father was angry that you didn't want a big ceremony. He also wanted it to be a cultural wedding, he wanted you to do all the Colombian customs, which made you angry, but it was very difficult to convince him.

When the phone call ended you hung up the receiver and sighed, did it really have to be so hard?

‘Dad's got me cornered,’ you said as you got out of bed and approached Javi.

He put out his cigarette and turned towards you. ‘Don't worry baby, he'll come round eventually.’

‘You think? He wants a big church wedding, plus with all the Colombian traditions,’ you sighed, “that's a lot of stress and I don't even want to think about the media, they'll want to cover a day like this,” you buried your head in his bare chest.

He wrapped his arms around you, ‘If that's what he wants,’ he murmured as he played with your hair. “Maybe we should do this.”

You lifted your head to look at him. ‘Would you really do that? Doesn't it bother you?’

He smiled, ‘Why should your traditions bother me? After all, you're going to be my wife at the end of the day, aren't you? Mrs. Peña?’ his lips rubbing your ear.

You giggled, it was so nice to hear that word from him. You raised your hand to check the diamond ring you wearing on your left finger. “Yes, I am.”

-----

Fortunately, Mexico and Colombia were very similar culturally. The language, the food, the dance, the wedding customs, and apparently even the fathers. As a Mexican-American, Chucho insisted on following Mexican customs, as did your father.

So you tried to convince them to have a bicultural wedding. Your father coming to Texas tomorrow to discuss the details and to meet your future father-in-law.

You had been feeling very tense and tired lately, and the wedding had been on your mind a lot. You had almost forgotten what day it was, so you were surprised after breakfast when Chucho changed the calendar page on the wall to the May.

Javi has been back from Washington for over two weeks. That meant your period should have started a week ago. And you'd never been this late before. Javi leaned across the table to you as you froze, fork in hand.

'What's wrong, why aren't you eating?

You smiled at him, 'Nothing, just,' avoiding eye contact, you looked down at your plate to eat the rest of your food. ‘Please don't worry anymore cariño, we'll talk about it together when your father comes.’

‘I know, Javi, can we go into town today?’

He finished his orange juice, got up from the table and came over and kissed the top of your head.

‘Of course we can, we have to do shopping anyway, Chucho is going to visit Andre today.’

Andre was in state care and Chucho wanted to adopt him, but the procedures taking time. Suddenly you felt excited thinking what a good grandad Chucho would be, but you didn't want to think about it until you were sure.

So you had to go to the pharmacy in town to buy a pregnancy test, you weren't sure how to do it without Javi noticing.

But it was impossible, he never wanted to leave you alone after what happened last time.

‘Every time I leave you alone something happens to you, wherever you're going, we’ll go together,’ he said as he parking the car.

That's why you decided to tell him, but it was a pain in the ass, the possibility of you being pregnant before the wedding and God forbid, your father finding that out. And the feeling that you were definitely not ready to be a mother yet.

Why is everything so complicated.

You stopped in front of the pharmacy, ‘Javi I'm -’

Just then, Javi's tía Sophia was approaching from down the street.

You both panicked, not only she has been bombarding you with questions since she heard about your engagement, but it would have been a disaster for her to see you with a pregnancy test in your hand.

‘Javi...’

He grabbed your hand. 'Fuck, let's run, baby,' he pulled you around the corner.

As you ran together, you looked at each other and laughed mischievously. After a short distance, Javi pulled you into the back of a store and you leaned against the wall to catch your breath. Standing right in front of you, he looked at the direction you ran from, panting.

'I think we're safe,' he smirked.

You gasped in relief, he put his hand on the wall next to your head, kissed you. You wrapped your arms around his neck, you couldn't help it, it had become a habit to do that every time he kisses you.

But this was the middle of the street, people were walking by, looking at you and laughing, Javi pulled back, a mischievous look on his face.

'Now that we've given the town another rumor mill, shall we go home?'

You chuckled, "We're moving soon anyway, so fuck it.'

Javi laughed out loud, he couldn't help laughing every time you used foul language.

While the two of you were walking down the street, someone called your name and you turned around. It was Juan, he must have seen you passing by the shop.

'Oh hello, how are you? Javi, this is Juan,' you looked at him allusively.

Javi raised his eyebrows, then looked at him closely, this time frowning.

'How you doin?' they shook hands. You could tell right away that Javi didn't like him by the way he looked at him with a pursed lip.

'Nice to meet you," then he turned to you. "You left one of the paints you bought last time in the shop, I wanted to give it to you.' 

'Thank you,' you said with a smile. I haven't even started yet, it's been a busy week.’

'Yeah, I heard about all, you ok now?'

'Thanks, I'm fine.’

'Actually, since I bumped into you, I was wondering if I could ask you for something, I need some help with this painting I'm doing,' he pointed inside.

‘Sure,’ you went in quickly.

Javi put his hands on his waist, frowning. You looked at him and waved your hand, beckoning him.

Juan sat down in front of the painting and you sat down next to him.

Javi narrowed his eyes as he walked in, taking a quick look around, but his eyes were on you. Leaning against one of the shelves, he crossed his arms and watches you as you grabbed the brush, working on the painting.

Juan touched your hand as you showed him a few things on the painting with the brush. Javi tensed up, he didn't like another man touching your hand so easily, but he didn't want to be rude so he waited patiently, finally when you were done you stood up, but it was fast, suddenly you got dizzy and sat back in the chair. Juan put his arm around you. ‘Are you all right?’

That was too much, Javi pushed his arm away a little roughly. I'll take it from here, man,' he said and helped you to your feet. 'You okay, cariño?' he wrapped his arm around you this time.

You nodded, 'Yeah, just, my head is spinning, maybe because I'm hungry,' you put your hand on your head.

‘Come on, let's get something to eat,' he said as he led you out of the shop.

Looking over your shoulder at Juan, you waved goodbye, but you couldn't turn around, Javi's arm wouldn't let you.

---

The next day, the day your father arrived, you and Javi wanted to go to the airport to meet him, but since he was still a minister, there was a small official welcoming ceremony. So you went to the hotel to meet him in the embassy suites in Laredo, he was going to stay in the room reserved for him.

As soon as you saw him, you ran to hug him, you missed him so much. He wiped away your tears and scolded you for crying, then told you he had a surprise for you, and you were delighted to see Caroline and Dolores following close behind.

You and Caroline hugged and laughed. When Dolores pursed her lips you hugged her too, you really missed them so much.

You had dinner at the hotel restaurant and talking about everything. Javi and your father talked mostly about work, and you were annoyed that he still called him 'Agent Peña'.

"Dad, why don't you call Javi by his first name?'

'Well, hmm, Javi, I'll have to get used to that,' he frowned.

'Maybe in the future you can call him son,' you said with a grin, blinked at Javi.

Javi decided to take a sip of his drink instead of reacting.

'We'll see about that in time, missy,' he rolled his eyes at you.

Javi was no different, still calling your father sir. You smiled to yourself, sure he would call him by his first name later.

Everything was so new, and you believed that marriage would develop the relationship between the two families in time.

It had to be.

After dinner, while Javi and your father were still talking in the hotel lobby, you asked permission to go out with Caroline. Javi didn't want to be alone with your father, you could see it in his eyes, so he asked for permission to take you wherever you wanted to go, and fortunately for him, your father was tired and has long diplomatic phone calls to make, so he retired to his room. But you wanted to be alone with Caroline, so Javi dropped you off near the shops. He'd be back to pick you up later.

'I loved it here,' Caroline smiled as she looking around the shops.

'Caz, we need to get to a pharmacy first, help me,' you tugged at her arm.

Noticing pharmacy was very close.

'What's wrong?'

'I need a pregnancy test,' you whispered in her ear.

She opened her eyes wide. 'What? Shit, Is it really your test this time?

'Yeah, let's get the test, I have to do it now and make sure asap.'

You got the test and rushed back to the hotel, ran into Caroline and Dolores' room. You bought three, just to be sure.

And they were all positive.

'Dios mio!' Dolores' voice startled you, she has seen the tests when she entered the room.

'Shh,' you shushed her, your father's room was right next door, the last thing you needed was for him to hear.

'Oh my God, you're pregnant,' Caroline said as she hugged you happily. Then her smile faded, expression changed to worried. 'Oh my God, you're pregnant and you're getting married soon.'

'I know,' you mumbled.

'Cariño, don't worry,' Dolores sat down next to you and put her arm around you. 'It's nothing to be upset about. It's a gift from God.’

You didn't know how to react or what to think, of course it was a gift, but the timing was wrong, at least you thought so. You stood up and started pacing nervously.

‘How am I going to tell Javi? What about my dad? Will I be able to get into the wedding dress? We need to get married asap, before anyone finds out, and Javi was just starting his new position at work. Are we ready to be parents?’

Caroline grabbed you by the shoulders. ‘Honey, calm down, sit. Of course you're ready, don't worry, everything will be fine. And Javi will be so happy, believe me.’

‘You think so?’ You were getting more worried than happy. You didn't feel ready to be a mother, but you had to. You blamed the contraceptive pill you couldn't get from the pharmacy that day. But then you gave up, it was already done.

‘What kind of a mother am I going to be if I can't even take the stupid contraceptive pill in time?’

Caroline hugged you as you added sobs to your tears.

‘Come on, of course you'll be a great mom, but don't think about that now. Should I tell Javi or?’

‘No, I'll tell him, but I need to clear my head until he comes to pick me up.’

‘Okay, sure, if you need us we’ll be at lobby,’ Caroline gave you another hug and left the room with Dolores.

----

You opened your eyes with a sudden urge to pee.

Were you asleep?

This is very strange, you thought, remembering why, and took a deep breath. You were still alone in the room. You looked at your watch to check the time, you couldn't believe you had been asleep for two hours.

Javi should have been here by now, you quickly washed your face and left the room, feeling ready to tell him.

When you came into the lobby and you saw him, your heart started to race with excitement, but it wasn't new thing, you feel the same way every time you saw him. How could you love him more and more every day? But you did, and you were sure you would feel this way forever.

Caroline was the first to notice you, "Are you feeling better?

Yes," you said confidently.

Javi turned his head, got up and came to you.

'Are you okay? Caroline said you were tired, have you been walking a lot?' You blushed as you put your hands to your face, wondering how to say it.

Your father called you over, 'Honey, we've set the wedding date, come, sit down.'

'Your dad is thinking the end of the month, but I...'

'What? That late?' You interrupted Javi. 'Three weeks is a long time,' you sat down, pursing lips.

Your father frowned. 'That's a bit eager for a bride-to-be, don't you think, what's the rush?

Javi grinned as he sat down next to you and looked up at you, wondering what your answer would be.

'I, I just don't want to wait, waiting means more stress for me, that's why,'  Javi grabbed your hand when you sounded tearful.

"And I should become US citizen asap," looking at Javi, blinked at you.

"Yes you should," he mumbled.

There was silence for a while and Caroline moved closer to him.

'It's normal to be stressed because all the traditions will be fulfilled, sir, isn't there a chance that it could be a little earlier?'

Your father stood up and crossed his arms behind his back, it was his thinking pose. You looked over your shoulder at Caroline and thanked her with your lips, mouthing.

'I thought you'd be more stressed,' Javi whispered to you, 'so I'm actually the one who extended the time.'

'No, I'll tell you why when we're alone,' you whispered back.

Your father cleared his throat. 'Well, if you say so, next week, and we have to get ready asap, I arrange a planner.' his voice wasn't angry at all, you were surprised.

'Thanks, Dad," you said as you walked towards him wrapping your arms around. You wondered what his face would look like when you told him about your situation. But there was still time.

'I'll go to the reception venue with Pops tomorrow to book a date,' Javi said as he stood up.

You looked at your father in surprise. 'So the reception will be all Mexican, huh?'

He shrugged, 'Our traditions are very similar, honey, and our food will be served. And I wouldn't mind a mixture of cambia and salsa, would you?' He and Javi smiled at each other.

You felt as if a weight had been lifted from your shoulders. They had both agreed on this, it was a quiet relief.

----

On the way home, Javi noticed that you were quiet. You were still trying to figure out how to tell him, how he'd react. Would he be angry with you for not taking the pill, or would he be happy? Would he not look at you the way he used to? You thought about it all the way home, so you were surprised realizing you arrived home already. There were no lights on in the house, Chucho must still be in town. Javi opened your door and leaned in, his brown eyes locked with yours.

'Are you going to tell me what's going on? I'm starting to worry.'

'It's nothing to worry about actually,' you said with a smile. 'I was just thinking about your reaction and...'

He cut you off with a kiss and slipped you into his arms. You were almost out of breath.

'Maybe you need to relax, do you want me to comfort you?'

He kissed you again as he carried you inside, he was very good at it. He broke the kiss and laid you down on the couch and within seconds he was on top of you. He started kissing you again before you could even open your mouth, but you wanted to tell him right away. You broke the kiss and sat up on the couch. You cupped his chin in your hands.

'Javi wait a minute, I really need to say this.'

He pulled his face back a little, but he was still leaning against you, one arm resting on the couch and the other around your waist. His eyes locked with yours, you took a deep breath.

'I'm, I'm pregnant, Javi, there I said it,' you huffed.

He was silent for a moment, trying to process what he just heard, the silence was starting to make you nervous, but his lips curled into a half smile and he kissed you.

Then he pulled his head back and looked at your face, "You're sure, right?

'Three pregnancy tests, yes, I'm sure."

He laughed, his brown eyes sparkling with joy. 'That's great, baby, I don't know what to say, but that's more than great.'

'Really? I thought you'd be mad at me because it was so unexpected, but...'

He frowned. 'Mad? Don't be silly, you don't know how happy you've made me. I love you so fuckin much, you're the best thing that ever happened to me,' he wrapped his arms around you pressing you against his strong chest.

'I love you too, Javi. I love you so much.'

He loosened his arms to look at your face and then kissed you passionately. You weren't sure if it was the effect of this wonderful moment, but the sexual tension between you increased immediately. The deeper the kiss went, the more you wanted him.

As you pulled him closer with your arms wrapped around his neck, he slipped his hands under your dress to cup your hips. This gave you the opportunity to unbutton his shirt.

When you were both down to your underwear, he grabbed you by hips lifted you into his lap, you wrapped your legs around him. Without breaking the kiss he hurried into the room as your giggles echoed down the hall.

---

The next day, you and Javi had decided it would be a good idea to go to the gynecologist, so after breakfast you went down to the center of town. It was a small but busy clinic.

'Senorita Botero Llano?'

You stood up excitedly, Javi holding your hand and he was no different.

When you entered the doctor's room, she told you to lie down on the obstetric table. She set up the ultrasound machine and Javi stood right next to you, never letting go of your hand. You flinched as she put the lubricating jelly on your abdomen, then she started asking questions without looking at you as she gently presses the device against your tummy, moving it back and forth while checking the computer screen.

'When did you find out?'

'Two days ago.'

'According to the blood test, you're three weeks along, is this your first pregnancy?'

'Yes,' you said, looking at Javi who winked at you.

I mean, it's too early for us to see it here, but I can see the amniotic sac, if we zoom in a little bit, yes, there it is,' she said as he showed the unintelligible image on the screen.

Javi frowned, 'I don't see anything.'

The doctor laughed. 'It's only the size of a pinhead, it's an embryo, it will grow and develop.'

'Did you really expected to see a big baby?' you asked, laughing at him. Turned your head to check screen, 'It is so tiny.'

'It is, but we can hear its heartbeat,' the doctor said, saying something ordinary to her but surprising to you.

'Really?' you said excitedly, looking at Javi seeing him also excited.

'Sure, let's have a look,' the doctor turned a knob on the ultrasound machine to the right.

There was a small crackling sound, then a wheeze, then a heartbeat. A very fast heartbeat.

It was so beautiful.

The doctor looked at both of you. 'This is your baby's tiny heart saying 'hi'.'

You couldn't hold back your tears, it was an indescribable feeling, so beautiful, so mesmerizing, Javi wiped your tears and kissed you on your head.

There was not much to say at that moment, you kept listen.

'But it beats so fast," you said suddenly.

The doctor grinned, turned off the machine and turned to you. 'Honey, that's normal, newborns and even children have a faster heartbeat than adults.'

'Wow,' you murmured.

'Now I'm going to talk to you about a few things,' the doctor said.

Javi helped you to take off your hospital gown. Then you sat down on the couch across from the doctor's desk.

'You need to take the vitamins I prescribed regularly, you need to go to the emergency, if you'd have any bleeding, everything looks good now. The first three months are very important, please don't get tired and don't try to lift anything, stay away from stress, okay?'

You nodded.

'See, you have to stay out of trouble, best stay at home and don't go out,' Javi giggled.

You rolled your eyes. Then you remembered something that happened during sex yesterday.

'Is it normal for me to have breast tenderness, to want to go to the restroom all the time, and an increased libido?'

'Yes, it's all normal in the first trimester, as for sex, it won't harm the baby, there's no problem as long as it's not too rough.'

Your cheeks flushed. Javi looked at you out of the corner of his eye and grinned.

He was still snickering when you left the room.

I was worried that she would forbid sex. Luckily, she didn't,' whispering into your ear.

You elbowed him in the stomach, 'Cabrón.'

----

The next evening, your father came to his house to meet Chucho. 

After dinner, as you were discussing the wedding details, things got tense at times. They were talking so fervently even they didn't notice when you never touched the beer or kept going to the bathroom to throw up because of the smell of the food.

Javi kept an eye on you and tried to calm his father at the same time.

You and Javi wanted to tell them after the wedding, it was gonna be better thing to do.

When you went to the kitchen to get a drink of water -becasue you were thirsty as hell-, Javi came behind you.

"Did you take the vitamin? Didn't she give you medicine to stop you vomiting?" he asked in low tone.

"Don't worry, it's just the smell of meat. I feel better now."

"Whatever!"

You startled when you heard your fathers loud voice.

"Then so be it!"

You both turned your heads to look at those grumpy men in the living room.

"Thanks for having my daughter in your house all this time and taking care of her, by the way," your father looked away angrily.

"She's my daughter too, of course," Chucho said, also looking away, frowning.

"Daughter-in-law, you mean?"

"Whatever it is," Chucho murmured something in Spanish but mexican accent, probably cursing him.

You looked at Javi with a confused face, "Do you think they are insulting each other or thanking each other?"

Javi laughed. "Both."

At the end, everything worked out, it was nice that they were on the same side, even if they didn't like each other much. Your father excused himself when it got late and then came to you.

"You're coming with me, señorita."

"What? Why?"

"Because the wedding is in four days and you two shouldn't stay in the same house or should I say room. It's bad luck."

"Dad, this is ridiculous, no way I'm leaving!" your hormones made you angrier so your voice was loud. Javi grabbed your shoulder and tried to calm you down.

"Sir, let her stay tonight, we're flying to Washington tomorrow anyway, will check the house and buy furnitures and stuff. I'll take her to the hotel when we return."

It was true, Javi's buddy Steve has found a house for you in the same neighborhood so he and his wife has invited you over for dinner tomorrow.

Since there was no time left, you liked the idea.

"Okay then, but the night before the wedding you should definitely stay apart. "

"You're too superstitious for a minister," Chucho grumbled.

"Let's just say I'm traditional," he said, then turned to you. "I almost forgot, you need to find a godfather and a godmother."

"Yeah, right," you mumbled. Javi looked at you, "Los Padrinos and Madrinas," you explained.

In Colombian wedding traditions, there is no best man or maid of honor. Instead, the couple chooses a godmother and a godfather, and it can be anyone they want. In Mexican weddings, the couple chooses a padrino and a madrina, which means the same thing.

That's why, since neither of you had a very large family or were very close to them, Javi chose Steve as the padrino and you chose Caroline as the madrina.

All that was left was to tell them, and it has to be asap, the wedding was very near.

[indierpgnewsletter]

Every Game I Played in 2024 (So Far)

It’s time for one of my favourite posts to write every year. Here is every game I’ve played in the first half of 2024:

Series

Fathoms Deep (as GM): Let’s get my own game out of the way first: I’ve ran about 11 playtest sessions of Fathoms Deep, a game about a community of salvagers aboard a living ship in a flooded world. The game is my big project. If I was studying game design, this would be my masters’ thesis. It’s got a lot of parts – action-packed underwater dives using my flavour of card-based Forged in the Dark, a cool map where you move your ship around, downtime scenes, campaign arcs based on survival, hope and salvation, etc. There’s a lot of tinkering left to do and I am in no hurry to finish because, deep breath, it’s about the journey! Like in the game!

Pasion de la Pasiones (as GM): We took the spanish telenovela game and set it in a X-men-like school. Sadly we didn’t get to play past the first couple sessions but it’s a slam dunk concept and a great game. My game of the year for 2023 if I remember correctly!

The Wildsea (as GM): This was the big campaign that marked the first half of the year in my (online) home game. It has a lot of overlap with my own game, Fathoms Deep – both are pirate-games-without-pirates. But Wildsea has a very different tone – it’s optimistic high fantasy in the vein of some of the best D&D 5e games I’ve played. I would easily recommend it as a game for people who are playing 5e and want something to easily switch to. The world and setting is lovely – a solid thematic core garnished with a variety of fun ideas, great flavour, and lots of stunning, evocative art. I had so much fun playing zany characters to match the vibe of the zany world. The system isn’t my cup of tea for a variety of complicated reasons but this is a fantastic achievement, especially since it was the designer’s first game afaik!

Rich Kid Problems: Last year, I played Capitalites by Sam Mui and this year, we returned to that classic genre of rich people behaving badly with this game by Maria Mison. It’s a light storygame – improv heavy but good fun.

Last Fleet (as GM): We’re one month into this Battlestar Galatica-inspired game by Josh Fox. It’s far future space opera with humanity on the edge of extinction – all inter-personal politics and feelings in the face of almost certain doom. I love this game already. It meshes perfectly with my directorial GM style and helps me serve up some fantastic moments. It feels like every session, I am throwing some impossible decision or loyalty-threatening revelation at my players who pick up the ball and run with the ball unflinchingly. It definitely helps to think about it as prestige TV and frame scenes using that language – lots of walking and talking in corridors, that sort of thing. The characters aren’t on the same side, there aren’t missions – just agendas and obstacles. Will write about some of the cool design stuff going on when the campaign is done.

One Shots

Okay, got to rush through these!

This Ship Is No Mother (as GM): I ran 4 great games of my little lets-make-Mothership-a-storygame game. These were mostly at online cons or things like that. I love playing this game.

Wizards Grimoire and Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands: Getting to play two games from the Bakers was a real treat. Wizard’s Grimoire is the start of a series of games that flip the GM-player relationship in great ways. You should check it out. Firebrands is a game of daring mech pilots told in dramatic vignettes where the less you force a narrative, the better!

Steal away Jordan and Tales of a Fisherman’s Wife: These are two games from designer, Julia Ellingboe. I think Steal Away Jordan is my favourite of the two. Even as you wrestle with the discomfort (if you’re not Black) of playing Black slaves in the American south, it’s still a game about being heroes with a lot of delight and joy at the heart of it! Fisherman’s Wife is a game of Japanese ghost stories with tentacle porn on the cover. I’m not sure what else to say!

Navathem’s End (as GM): This game by Pam Punzalan and Sin Posadas fits well with Wildsea on this list because it feels like an alternate take on the genre that is D&D 5e. It’s that light-hearted brand of heroic fantasy but with a different ethos – less colonial, more grounded in community.

Yazeba’s Bed and Breakfast: A book which is probably as fun to read as play. You probably have heard about it enough but if not, go listen to the Yes Indie’d episode about it.

After the Mind, the World Again: This is a Disco Elysium inspired game where there’s one player and four GMs who play facets of a detective’s mind. It’s not really a one shot game – definitely takes 4 hours or more but we rushed the ending and got somewhere. Also, free!

City of Mist (as player): I always joke about wanting to read this game but bailing as soon I as open the PDF to see that it has more than 500 pages. The new version has cut half of the system out so maybe I had a point.

The Hunted (as player): This is a slick one-shot game – Forged in the Dark folk horror in the vein of Blair Witch Project and the like. Easy to play and run, would do again.

Swords without Master (as GM): This game should’ve inspired a whole design lineage. The text is a bit tricky to parse but if you get a chance to play this, you should take it!

Damn the Man, Save the Music: If you like Empire Records and don’t mind doing some improv, this game is great.

Cloud Empress (as player): The giant psychic cicadas are a great linchpin for a setting. If you play the game, head straight for them.

There was a bit more here and there. I already wrote about playing older games like Metamorphosis Alpha, Bunnies & Burrows and Dallas RPG on here. There was also a lot of playtesting including a very fun session of Protect the Child by Mint about a found family of monsters looking after a child a la Monsters Inc. Overall, another very satisfying half-year.

[mariacallous]

In the first half century of his career, Robert Jay Lifton published five books based on long-term studies of seemingly vastly different topics. For his first book, “Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism,” Lifton interviewed former inmates of Chinese reëducation camps. Trained as both a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst, Lifton used the interviews to understand the psychological—rather than the political or ideological—structure of totalitarianism. His next topic was Hiroshima; his 1968 book “Death in Life,” based on extended associative interviews with survivors of the atomic bomb, earned Lifton the National Book Award. He then turned to the psychology of Vietnam War veterans and, soon after, Nazis. In both of the resulting books—“Home from the War” and “The Nazi Doctors”—Lifton strove to understand the capacity of ordinary people to commit atrocities. In his final interview-based book, “Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism,” which was published in 1999, Lifton examined the psychology and ideology of a cult.

Lifton is fascinated by the range and plasticity of the human mind, its ability to contort to the demands of totalitarian control, to find justification for the unimaginable—the Holocaust, war crimes, the atomic bomb—and yet recover, and reconjure hope. In a century when humanity discovered its capacity for mass destruction, Lifton studied the psychology of both the victims and the perpetrators of horror. “We are all survivors of Hiroshima, and, in our imaginations, of future nuclear holocaust,” he wrote at the end of “Death in Life.” How do we live with such knowledge? When does it lead to more atrocities and when does it result in what Lifton called, in a later book, “species-wide agreement”?

Lifton’s big books, though based on rigorous research, were written for popular audiences. He writes, essentially, by lecturing into a Dictaphone, giving even his most ambitious works a distinctive spoken quality. In between his five large studies, Lifton published academic books, papers and essays, and two books of cartoons, “Birds” and “PsychoBirds.” (Every cartoon features two bird heads with dialogue bubbles, such as, “ ‘All of a sudden I had this wonderful feeling: I am me!’ ” “You were wrong.”) Lifton’s impact on the study and treatment of trauma is unparalleled. In a 2020 tribute to Lifton in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, his former colleague Charles Strozier wrote that a chapter in “Death in Life” on the psychology of survivors “has never been surpassed, only repeated many times and frequently diluted in its power. All those working with survivors of trauma, personal or sociohistorical, must immerse themselves in his work.”

Lifton was also a prolific political activist. He opposed the war in Vietnam and spent years working in the anti-nuclear movement. In the past twenty-five years, Lifton wrote a memoir—“Witness to an Extreme Century”—and several books that synthesize his ideas. His most recent book, “Surviving Our Catastrophes,” combines reminiscences with the argument that survivors—whether of wars, nuclear explosions, the ongoing climate emergency, COVID, or other catastrophic events—can lead others on a path to reinvention. If human life is unsustainable as we have become accustomed to living it, it is likely up to survivors—people who have stared into the abyss of catastrophe—to imagine and enact new ways of living.

Lifton grew up in Brooklyn and spent most of his adult life between New York City and Massachusetts. He and his wife, Betty Jean Kirschner, an author of children’s books and an advocate for open adoption, had a house in Wellfleet, on Cape Cod, that hosted annual meetings of the Wellfleet Group, which brought together psychoanalysts and other intellectuals to exchange ideas. Kirschner died in 2010. A couple of years later, at a dinner party, Lifton met the political theorist Nancy Rosenblum, who became a Wellfleet Group participant and his partner. In March, 2020, Lifton and Rosenblum left his apartment on the Upper West Side for her house in Truro, Massachusetts, near the very tip of Cape Cod, where Lifton, who is ninety-seven, continues to work every day. In September, days after “Surviving Our Catastrophes” was published, I visited him there. The transcript of our conversations has been edited for length and clarity.

I would like to go through some terms that seem key to your work. I thought I’d start with “totalism.”

O.K. Totalism is an all-or-none commitment to an ideology. It involves an impulse toward action. And it’s a closed state, because a totalist sees the world through his or her ideology. A totalist seeks to own reality.

And when you say “totalist,” do you mean a leader or aspiring leader, or anyone else committed to the ideology?

Can be either. It can be a guru of a cult, or a cult-like arrangement. The Trumpist movement, for instance, is cult-like in many ways. And it is overt in its efforts to own reality, overt in its solipsism.

How is it cult-like?

He forms a certain kind of relationship with followers. Especially his base, as they call it, his most fervent followers, who, in a way, experience high states at his rallies and in relation to what he says or does.

Your definition of totalism seems very similar to Hannah Arendt’s definition of totalitarian ideology. Is the difference that it’s applicable not just to states but also to smaller groups?

It’s like a psychological version of totalitarianism, yes, applicable to various groups. As we see now, there’s a kind of hunger for totalism. It stems mainly from dislocation. There’s something in us as human beings which seeks fixity and definiteness and absoluteness. We’re vulnerable to totalism. But it’s most pronounced during times of stress and dislocation. Certainly Trump and his allies are calling for a totalism. Trump himself doesn’t have the capacity to sustain an actual continuous ideology. But by simply declaring his falsehoods to be true and embracing that version of totalism, he can mesmerize his followers and they can depend upon him for every truth in the world.

You have another great term: “thought-terminating cliché.”

Thought-terminating cliché is being stuck in the language of totalism. So that any idea that one has that is separate from totalism is wrong and has to be terminated.

What would be an example from Trumpism?

The Big Lie. Trump’s promulgation of the Big Lie has surprised everyone with the extent to which it can be accepted and believed if constantly reiterated.

Did it surprise you?

It did. Like others, I was fooled in the sense of expecting him to be so absurd that, for instance, that he wouldn’t be nominated for the Presidency in the first place.

Next on my list is “atrocity-producing situation.”

That’s very important to me. When I looked at the Vietnam War, especially antiwar veterans, I felt they had been placed in an atrocity-producing situation. What I meant by that was a combination of military policies and individual psychology. There was a kind of angry grief. Really all of the My Lai massacre could be seen as a combination of military policy and angry grief. The men had just lost their beloved older sergeant, George Cox, who had been a kind of father figure. He had stepped on a booby trap. The company commander had a ceremony. He said, “There are no innocent civilians in this area.” He gave them carte blanche to kill everyone. The eulogy for Sergeant Cox combined with military policy to unleash the slaughter of My Lai, in which almost five hundred people were killed in one morning.

You’ve written that people who commit atrocities in an atrocity-producing situation would never do it under different circumstances.

People go into an atrocity-producing situation no more violent, or no more moral or immoral, than you or me. Ordinary people commit atrocities.

That brings us to “malignant normality.”

It describes a situation that is harmful and destructive but becomes routinized, becomes the norm, becomes accepted behavior. I came to that by looking at malignant nuclear normality. After the Second World War, the assumption was that we might have to use the weapon again. At Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, a group of faculty members wrote a book called “Living with Nuclear Weapons.” There was a book by Joseph Nye called “Nuclear Ethics.” His “nuclear ethics” included using the weapon. Later there was Star Wars, the anti-missile missiles which really encouraged first-strike use. These were examples of malignant nuclear normality. Other examples were the scenarios by people like [the physicists] Edward Teller and Herman Kahn in which we could use the weapons and recover readily from nuclear war. We could win nuclear wars.

And now, according to the Doomsday Clock, we’re closer to possible nuclear disaster than ever before. Yet there doesn’t seem to be the same sense of pervasive dread that there was in the seventies and eighties.

I think in our minds apocalyptic events merge. I see parallels between nuclear and climate threats. Charles Strozier and I did a study of nuclear fear. People spoke of nuclear fear and climate fear in the same sentence. It’s as if the mind has a certain area for apocalyptic events. I speak of “climate swerve,” of growing awareness of climate danger. And nuclear awareness was diminishing. But that doesn’t mean that nuclear fear was gone. It was still there in the Zeitgeist and it’s still very much with us, the combination of nuclear and climate change, and now COVID, of course.

How about “psychic numbing”?

Psychic numbing is a diminished capacity or inclination to feel. One point about psychic numbing, which could otherwise resemble other defense mechanisms, like de-realization or repression: it only is concerned with feeling and nonfeeling. Of course, psychic numbing can also be protective. People in Hiroshima had to numb themselves. People in Auschwitz had to numb themselves quite severely in order to get through that experience. People would say, “I was a different person in Auschwitz.” They would say, “I simply stopped feeling.” Much of life involves keeping the balance between numbing and feeling, given the catastrophes that confront us.

A related concept that you use, which comes from Martin Buber, is “imagining the real.”

It’s attributed to Martin Buber, but as far as I can tell, nobody knows exactly where he used it. It really means the difficulty in taking in what is actual. Imagining the real becomes necessary for imagining our catastrophes and confronting them and for that turn by which the helpless victim becomes the active survivor who promotes renewal and resilience.

How does that relate to another one of your concepts, nuclearism?

Nuclearism is the embrace of nuclear weapons to solve various human problems and the commitment to their use. I speak of a strange early expression of nuclearism between Oppenheimer and Niels Bohr, who was a great mentor of Oppenheimer. Bohr came to Los Alamos. And they would have abstract conversations. They had this idea that nuclear weapons could be both a source of destruction and havoc and a source of good because their use would prevent any wars in the future. And that view has never left us. Oppenheimer never quite renounced it, though, at other times, he said he had blood on his hands—in his famous meeting with Truman.

Have you seen the movie “Oppenheimer”?

Yes. I thought it was a well-made film by a gifted filmmaker. But it missed this issue of nuclearism. It missed the Bohr-Oppenheimer interaction. And worst of all, it said nothing about what happened in Hiroshima. It had just a fleeting image of his thinking about Hiroshima. My view is that his success in making the weapon was the source of his personal catastrophe. He was deeply ambivalent about his legacy. I’m very sensitive to that because that was how I got to my preoccupation with Oppenheimer: through having studied Hiroshima, having lived there for six months, and then asking myself, What happened on the other side of the bomb—the people who made it, the people who used it? They underwent a kind of numbing. It’s also true that Oppenheimer, in relationship to the larger hydrogen bombs, became the most vociferous critic of nuclearism. That’s part of his story. The moral of Oppenheimer’s story is that we need abolition. That’s the only human solution.

By abolition, you mean destruction of all existing weapons?

Yes, and not building any new ones.

Have you been following the war in Ukraine? Do you see Putin as engaging in nuclearism?

I do. He has a constant threat of using nuclear weapons. Some feel that his very threat is all that he can do. But we can’t always be certain. I think he is aware of the danger of nuclear weapons to the human race. He has shown that awareness, and it has been expressed at times by his spokesman. But we can’t ever fully know. His emotions are so otherwise extreme.

There’s a messianic ideology in Russia. And the line used on Russian television is, “If we blow up the world, at least we will go straight to Heaven. And they will just croak.”

There’s always been that idea with nuclearism. One somehow feels that one’s own group will survive and others will die. It’s an illusion, of course, but it’s one of the many that we call forth in relation to nuclear danger.

Are you in touch with any of your former Russian counterparts in the anti-nuclear movement?

I’ve never entirely left the anti-nuclear movements. I’ve been particularly active in Physicians for Social Responsibility. We had meetings—or bombings, as we used to call it—in different cities in the country, describing what would happen if a nuclear war occurred. We had a very simple message: we’re physicians and we’d like to be able to patch you up after this war, but it won’t really be possible because all medical facilities will be destroyed, and probably you’ll be dead, and we’ll be dead. We did the same internationally with the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the Nobel Peace Prize. There’s a part of the movement that’s not appreciated sufficiently. [Yevgeny] Chazov, who was the main Soviet representative, was a friend of Gorbachev’s, and he was feeding Gorbachev this view of common security. And Gorbachev quickly took on the view of nuclear weapons that we had. There used to be a toast: either an American or a Soviet would get up and say, “I toast you and your leaders and your people. And your survival, because if you survive, we survive. And if you die, we die.”

Let’s talk about proteanism.

Proteanism is, of course, named after the notorious shape-shifter Proteus. It suggests a self that is in motion, that is multiple rather than made up of fixed ideas, and changeable and can be transformed. There is an ongoing struggle between proteanism and fixity. Proteanism is no guarantee of achievement or of ridding ourselves of danger. But proteanism has more possibility of taking us toward a species mentality. A species mentality means that we are concerned with the fate of the human species. Whenever we take action for opposing climate change, or COVID, or even the threat to our democratic procedure, we’re expressing ourselves on behalf of the human species. And that species-self and species commitment is crucial to our emergence from these dilemmas.

Next term: “witnessing professional.”

I went to Hiroshima because I was already anti-nuclear. When I got there, I discovered that, seventeen years after the bomb was dropped, there had been no over-all, inclusive study of what happened to that city and to groups of people in it. I wanted to conduct a scientific study, having a protocol and asking everyone similar questions—although I altered my method by encouraging them to associate. But I also realized that I wanted to bear witness to what happened to that city. I wanted to tell the world. I wanted to give a retelling, from my standpoint, as a psychological professional, of what happened to that city. That was how I came to see myself as a witnessing professional. It was to be a form of active witness. There were people in Hiroshima who embodied the struggle to bear witness. One of them was a historian who was at the edge of the city who said, “I looked down and saw that Hiroshima had disappeared.” That image of the city disappearing took hold in my head and became central to my life afterward. And the image that kept reverberating in my mind was, one plane, one bomb, one city. I was making clear—at least to myself at first and then, perhaps, to others,—that bearing witness and taking action was something that we needed from professionals and others.

I have two terms left on my list. One is “survivor.”

There is a distinction I make between the helpless victim and the survivor as agent of change. At the end of my Hiroshima book, I had a very long section describing the survivor. Survivors of large catastrophes are quite special. Because they have doubts about the continuation of the human race. Survivors of painful family loss or the loss of people close to them share the need to give meaning to that survival. People can claim to be survivors if they’re not; survivors themselves may sometimes take out their frustration on people immediately around them. There are all kinds of problems about survivors. Still, survivors have a certain knowledge through what they have experienced that no one else has. Survivors have surprised me by saying such things as “Auschwitz was terrible, but I’m glad that I could have such an experience.” I was amazed to hear such things. Of course, they didn’t really mean that they enjoyed it. But they were trying to say that they realized they had some value and some importance through what they had been through. And that’s what I came to think of as survivor power or survivor wisdom.

Do you have views on contemporary American usage of the words “survivor” and “victim”?

We still struggle with those two terms. The Trumpists come to see themselves as victims rather than survivors. They are victims of what they call “the steal.” In seeing themselves as victims, they take on a kind of righteousness. They can even develop a false survivor mission, of sustaining the Big Lie.

The last term I have on my list is “continuity of life.”

When I finished my first study, I wanted a theory for what I had done, so to speak. [The psychoanalyst] Erik Erikson spoke of identity. I could speak of Chinese Communism as turning the identity of the Chinese filial son into the filial Communist. But when it came to Hiroshima, Erikson didn’t have much to say in his work about the issue of death. I realized I had to come to a different idea set, and it was death and the continuity of life. In Hiroshima, I really was confronted with large-scale death—but also the question of the continuity of life, as victims could transform themselves into survivors.

Like some of your other ideas, this makes me think of Arendt’s writing. Something that was important to her was the idea that every birth is a new beginning, a new political possibility. And, relatedly, what stands between us and the triumph of totalitarianism is “the supreme capacity of man” to invent something new.

I think she’s saying there that it’s the human mind that does all this. The human mind is so many-sided and so surprising. And at times contradictory. It can be open to the wildest claims that it itself can create. That has been a staggering recognition. The human self can take us anywhere and everywhere.

Let me ask you one more Arendt question. Is there a parallel between your concept of “malignant normality” and her “banality of evil”?

There is. When Arendt speaks of the “banality of evil,” I agree—in the sense that evil can be a response to an atrocity-producing situation, it can be performed by ordinary people. But I would modify it a little bit and say that after one has been involved in committing evil, one changes. The person is no longer so banal. Nor is the evil, of course.

Your late wife, B.J., was a member of the Wellfleet Group. Your new partner, Nancy Rosenblum, makes appearances in your new book. Can I ask you to talk about combining your romantic, domestic, and intellectual relationships?

In the case of B.J., she was a kind of co-host with me to the meetings for all those fifty years and she had lots of intellectual ideas of her own, as a reformer in adoption and an authority on the psychology of adoption. And in the case of Nancy Rosenblum, as you know, she’s a very accomplished political theorist. She came to speak at Wellfleet. She gave a very humorous talk called “Activist Envy.” She had always been a very progressive theorist and has taken stands but never considered herself an activist, whereas just about everybody at the Wellfleet meeting combined scholarship and activism.

People have been talking more about love in later life. It’s very real, and it’s a different form of love, because, you know, one is quite formed at that stage of life. And perhaps has a better knowledge of who one is. And what a relationship is and what it can be. But there’s still something called love that has an intensity and a special quality that is beyond the everyday, and it actually has been crucial to me and my work in the last decade or so. And actually, I’ve been helpful to Nancy, too, because we have similar interests, although we come to them from different intellectual perspectives. We talk a lot about things. That’s been a really special part of my life for the last decade. On the other hand, she’s also quite aware of my age and situation. The threat of death—or at least the loss of capacity to function well—hovers over me. You asked me whether I have a fear of death. I’m sure I do. I’m not a religious figure who has transcended all this. For me, part of the longevity is a will to live and a desire to live. To continue working and continue what is a happy situation for me.

You’re about twenty years older than Nancy, right?

Twenty-one years older.

So you are at different stages in your lives.

Very much. It means that she does a lot of things, with me and for me, that enable me to function. It has to do with a lot of details and personal help. I sometimes get concerned about that because it becomes very demanding for her. She’s now working on a book on ungoverning. She needs time and space for that work.

What is your work routine? Are you still seeing patients?

I don’t. Very early on, I found that even having one patient, one has to be interested in that patient and available for that patient. It somehow interrupted my sense of being an intense researcher. So I stopped seeing patients quite a long time ago. I get up in the morning and have breakfast. Not necessarily all that early. I do a lot of good sleeping. Check my e-mails after breakfast. And then pretty much go to work at my desk at nine-thirty or ten. And stay there for a couple of hours or more. Have a late lunch. Nap, at some point. A little bit before lunch and then late in the day as well. I can close my eyes for five minutes and feel restored. I learned that trick from my father, from whom I learned many things. I’m likely to go back to my desk after lunch and to work with an assistant. My method is sort of laborious, but it works for me. I dictate the first few drafts. And then look at it on the computer and correct it, and finally turn it into written work.

I can’t drink anymore, unfortunately. I never drank much, but I used to love a Scotch before dinner or sometimes a vodka tonic. Now I drink mostly water or Pellegrino. We will have that kind of drink at maybe six o’clock and maybe listen to some news. These days, we get tired of the news. But a big part of my routine is to find an alternate universe. And that’s sports. I’m a lover of baseball. I’m still an avid fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers, even though they moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1957. You’d think that my protean self would let them go. Norman Mailer, who also is from Brooklyn, said, “They moved away. I say, ‘Fuck them.’ ” But there’s a deep sense of loyalty in me. I also like to watch football, which is interesting, because I disapprove of much football. It’s so harmful to its participants. So, it’s a clear-cut, conscious contradiction. It’s also a very interesting game, which has almost a military-like arrangement and shows very special skills and sudden intensity.

Is religion important to you?

I don’t have any formal religion. And I really dislike most religious groups. When I tried to arrange a bar mitzvah for my son, all my progressive friends, rabbis or not, somehow insisted you had to join a temple and participate. I didn’t. I couldn’t do any of those things. He never was bar mitzvah. But in any case, I see religion as a great force in human experience. Like many people, I make a distinction between a certain amount of spirituality and formal religion. One rabbi friend once said to me, “You’re more religious than I am.” That had to do with intense commitments to others. I have a certain respect for what religion can do. We once had a distinguished religious figure come to our study to organize a conference on why religion can be so contradictory. It can serve humankind and their spirit and freedom and it can suppress their freedom. Every religion has both of those possibilities. So, when there is an atheist movement, I don’t join it because it seems to be as intensely anti-religious as the religious people are committed to religion. I’ve been friendly with [the theologian] Harvey Cox, who was brought up as a fundamentalist and always tried to be a progressive fundamentalist, which is a hard thing to do. He would promise me every year that the evangelicals are becoming more progressive, but they never have.

Can you tell me about the Wellfleet Group? How did it function?

The Wellfleet Group has been very central to my life. It lasted for fifty years. It began as an arena for disseminating Erik Erikson’s ideas. When the building of my Wellfleet home was completed, in the mid-sixties, it included a little shack. We put two very large oak tables at the center of it. Erik and I had talked about having meetings, and that was immediately a place to do it. So the next year, in ’66, we began the meetings. I was always the organizer, but Erik always had a kind of veto power. You didn’t want anybody who criticized him in any case. And then it became increasingly an expression of my interests. I presented my Hiroshima work there and my work with veterans and all kinds of studies. Over time, the meetings became more activist. For instance, in 1968, right after the terrible uprising [at the Democratic National Convention] that was so suppressed, Richard Goodwin came and described what happened.

Under my control, the meeting increasingly took up issues of war and peace. And nuclear weapons. I never believed that people with active antipathies should get together until they recognize what they have in common. I don’t think that’s necessarily productive or indicative. I think one does better to surround oneself with people of a general similarity in world view who sustain one another in their originality. The Wellfleet meetings became a mixture of the academic and non-academic in the usual sense of that word. But also a sort of soirée, where all kinds of interesting minds could exchange thoughts. We would meet once a year, at first for a week or so and then for a few days, and they were very intense. And then there was a Wellfleet meeting underground, where, when everybody left the meeting, whatever it was—nine or ten at night—they would drink at local motels, where they stayed, and have further thoughts, though I wasn’t privy to that.

How many people participated?

This shack could hold as many as forty people. We ended them after the fiftieth year. We were all getting older, especially me. But then, even after the meetings ended, we had luncheons in New York, which we called Wellfleet in New York, or luncheons in Wellfleet, which we called Wellfleet in Wellfleet. You asked whether I miss them. I do, in a way. But it’s one of what I call renunciations, not because I want to get rid of them but because a moment in life comes when you must get rid of them, just as I had to stop playing tennis eventually. I played tennis from my twenties through my sixties. Certainly, the memories of them are very important to me. I remember moments from different meetings, but also just the meetings themselves, because, perhaps, the communal idea was as important as any.

Do you find it easy to adjust to your physical environment? This was Nancy’s place?

Yes, this is Nancy’s place. Much more equipped for the Cape winters and just a more solid house. For us to do all the things, including medical things she helps me with, this house was much more suitable. Even the walk between the main house and my study [in Wellfleet] required effort. So we’ve been living here now for about four years. And we’ve enjoyed it. Of course, the view helps. I wake up every morning and look out to kind of take stock. What’s happening? Is it sunny or cloudy? What boats are visible? And then we go on with the day.

In the new book, you praise President Biden and Vice-President Harris for their early efforts to commemorate people who had died of COVID. Do you feel that is an example of the sort of sustained narrative that you say is necessary?

It’s hard to create the collective mourning that COVID requires. Certainly, the Biden Administration, right at its beginning, made a worthwhile attempt to do that, when they lit those lights around the pool near the Lincoln Memorial, four hundred of them, for the four hundred thousand Americans who had died. And then there was another ceremony. And they encouraged people to put candles in their windows or ring bells, to make it participatory. But it’s hard to sustain that. There are proposals for a memorial for COVID. It’s hard to do and yet worth trying.

You observe that the 1918 pandemic is virtually gone from memory.

That’s an amazing thing. Fifty million people. The biggest pandemic anywhere ever. And almost no public commemoration of it. When COVID came along, there wasn’t a model which could have perhaps served as some way of understanding. They used similar forms of masks and distancing. But there was no public remembrance of it.

Some scholars have suggested that it’s because there are no heroes and no villains, no military-style imagery to rely on to create a commemoration.

Well, that’s true. It’s also in a way true of climate. And yet there are survivors of it. And they have been speaking out. They form groups. Groups called Long COVID SOS or Widows of COVID-19 or COVID Survivors for Change. They have names that suggest that they are committed to telling the society about it and improving the society’s treatment of it.

Your book “The Climate Swerve,” published in 2017, seemed very hopeful. You wrote about the beginning of a species-wide agreement. Has this hope been tempered?

I don’t think I’m any less hopeful than I was when I wrote “The Climate Swerve.” In my new book [“Surviving Our Catastrophes”], the hope is still there, but the focus is much more on survivor wisdom and survivor power. In either case, I was never completely optimistic—but hopeful that there are these possibilities.

There’s something else I’d like to mention that’s happened in my old age. I’ve had a long interaction with psychoanalysis. Erik Erikson taught me how to be ambivalent about psychoanalysis. It was a bigger problem for him, in a way, because he came from it completely and yet turned against its fixity when it was overly traditionalized. In my case, I knew it was important, but I also knew it could be harmful because it was so traditionalized. I feared that my eccentric way of life might be seen as neurotic. But now, in my older age, the analysts want me. A couple of them approached me a few years ago to give the keynote talk at a meeting on my work. I was surprised but very happy to do it. They were extremely warm as though they were itching to, in need of, bringing psychoanalysis into society, and recognizing more of the issues that I was concerned with, having to do with totalism and fixity. Since then, they’ve invited me to publish in their journal. It’s satisfying, because psychoanalysis has been so important for my formation.

What was it about your life style that you thought your analyst would be critical of?

I feared that they would see that somebody who went out into the world and interviewed Chinese students and intellectuals or Western European teachers and diplomats and scholars was a little bit eccentric, or even neurotic.

The fact that you were interviewing people instead of doing pure academic research?

Yes, that’s right. A more “normal” life might have been to open up an office on the Upper West Side to see psychoanalytical, psychotherapeutic patients. And to work regularly with the psychoanalytic movement. I found myself seeking a different kind of life.

Tell me about the moment when you decided to seek a different kind of life.

In 1954, my wife and I had been living in Hong Kong for just three months, and I’d been interviewing Chinese students and intellectuals, and Western scholars and diplomats, and China-watchers and Westerners who had been in China and imprisoned. I was fascinated by thought reform because it was a coercive effort at change based on self-criticism and confession. I wanted to stay there, but at that time, I had done nothing. I hadn’t had my psychiatric residency and I hadn’t entered psychoanalytic training. Also, my money was running out. My wife, B.J., was O.K. either way. I walked through the streets thinking about it and wondering, and I came back after a long walk through Hong Kong and said, “Look, we just can’t stay. I don’t see any way we can.” But the next day, I was asking her to help type up an application for a local research grant that would enable me to stay. It was a crucial decision because it was the beginning of my identity as a psychiatrist in the world.

You have been professionally active for seventy-five years. This allows you to do something almost no one else on the planet can do: connect and compare events such as the Second World War, the Korean War, the nuclear race, the climate crisis, and the COVID pandemic. It’s a particularly remarkable feat during this ahistorical moment.

Absolutely. But in a certain sense, there’s no such thing as an ahistorical time. Americans can seem ahistorical, but history is always in us. It helps create us. That’s what the psychohistorical approach is all about. For me to have that long flow of history, yes, I felt, gave me a perspective.

You called the twentieth century “an extreme century.” What are your thoughts on the twenty-first?

The twentieth century brought us Auschwitz and Hiroshima. The twenty-first, I guess, brought us Trump. And a whole newly intensified right wing. Some call it populism. But it’s right-wing fanaticism and violence. We still have the catastrophic threats. And they are now sustained threats. There have been some writers who speak of all that we achieved over the course of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first century. And that’s true. There are achievements in the way of having overcome slavery and torture—for the most part, by no means entirely, but seeing it as bad. Having created institutions that serve individuals. But our so-called better angels are in many ways defeated by right-wing fanaticism.

If you could still go out and conduct interviews, what would you want to study?

I might want to study people who are combating fanaticism and their role in institutions. And I might also want to study people who are attracted to potential violence—not with the hope of winning them over but of further grasping their views. That was the kind of perspective from which I studied Nazi doctors. I’ve interviewed people both of a kind I was deeply sympathetic to and of a kind I was deeply antagonistic toward.

Is there anything I haven’t asked you about?

I would say something on this idea of hope and possibility. My temperament is in the direction of hopefulness. Sometimes, when Nancy and I have discussions, she’s more pessimistic and I more hopeful with the same material at hand. I have a temperament toward hopefulness. But for me to sustain that hopefulness, I require evidence. And I seek that evidence in my work. 

[sl3epy-c0rvid]

☆|| corvid's intro post!! ||☆

constantly being edited smh

greetings and salutations! my name is corvid, and i welcome you to my silly little blog! here, you will find miscellaneous content, varying from art, nonhumanity, fandoms i indulge in, and just random, silly things!

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thats a lotta boxes whoops

☆ my main content!

the things i usually post are inconsistent, of course, and are usually drowned in reblogs lmao, but they typically include things such as:

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lost a few, sorry!

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[daeneryseastar]

hotd episode three thoughts:

episode was titled ‘the burning mill’ for the battle of the burning mill and we only get to see the aftermath. no black aly, no bloody ben, just pain and suffering.

“i can’t fault him for upkeeping his oath.” is such a lame excuse, since he tried to kill her last episode, they could’ve just had her say she wants to honor erryk and his sacrifice by allowing him to have peace with the brother he still loved despite everything.

i went from ‘i still kind of care about you even though i’m not a big fan of the changes’ in regard to rhaenys to full on dislike. good job condal!! “maybe you can talk peace with alicent (she has proven time and time again her demon spawn will not listen to her) 😜 luke taking aemond’s eye started the war (a 7 year old defending his brother 6 years ago caused the war, sure jan) 🤪 im gonna imply you being practical about the war’s inevitably will cause me to stop supporting you 😋 just in a silly goofy mood 😛😛”

i liked mysaria and rhaenyra’s conversation, and appreciate the setting up for addam claiming seasmoke.

gwayne fucking hightower had more speaking lines than jace. glad to see he pissed his pants when confronted with moondancer however.

baela>>> arguably best part of the episode. dany’s theme playing over her and moondancer’s entrance is reaffirming my fancast <3

corlys whining about joffrey only being six and knowing nothing of the sea is honestly hilarious since that’s how most heirs start off as? also not surprised he doesn’t consider rhaena good enough to be his heir when he’s proven time and time again he’ll only support women in power if it benefits him. can’t wait to watch greencels bend over backwards and claim this is rhaenyra’s fault once again !

actually the way rhaena was treated this episode is just major ick vibes. the writers have this obsession with making every non-dragon rider targ a liability to their family? which makes no sense at all, but they couldn’t even include one line of rhaenyra saying she was sending rhaena to the vale for her safety to? i’m glad she told her upfront she was entrusting the future of their house to her (an omen for morning? i’m not holding my breath) but still.

you mean to tell me aemond’s biggest adversary in life wasn’t his toddler nephews??? but instead his big brother??? who has no redeeming qualities and proves he’s willing to hurt him to feed his own ego??? shocked, i tell you. absolutely shocked. ‘true brotherhood’ defenders are going to lose their shit when aemond attempts to kill aegon next episode (apparently twice? for once i’ll be on his side i guess).

the showrunners brought dyana back just to have her serve the man who raped her and be sexually assaulted again, what a feminist take!

had to see a dude get sucked down in the same scene. now i need luke to take my eye(s) out too.

i did NOT need to see aemond’s dingaling what the fuck

baelon’s… bastard… son? the same baelon who was head over heels in love with alyssa? the same baelon who never took another wife nor even looked at another woman after her death? the same baelon who’s sister couldn’t even convince him to take her to wife? vaegon having a bastard would be more believable.

helaena apparently doesn’t give a shit about jaehaerys! more absolute bangers from the writing department. instead of going mad over this loss and deliberately throwing herself out her window she’s going to see a really pretty butterfly that she must have and accidentally tumble over the balcony.

rhaenys praising jaehaerys is so fucked, he’s the reason you’re not queen right now, and he laid the groundwork for the greens to have any claim at all EAT MY ASS

why is alys american.

daemon’s harrenhal arc seems very interesting -so far- it was great to milly’s rhaenyra again (also am i the only one that thought she was holding a baby, jace or a hypothetical ‘what if daemon married her to begin with’ and not sewing up jae’s head) also “you will die in this place” is peak foreshadowing honestly.

alicent continues to pull the ‘i didn’t think the leopards would eat MY face!!!’ “i have perhaps been unkind but never dishonest” copium much??? you deliberately made rhaenyra and her kids life’s a living hell bc she managed to find happiness in her situation and you couldn’t stand that.

that sept scene was dumb as shit but at least rhaenyra has exhausted every single option possible for no war and her antis can shove it and be reminded that she’s the only monarch that gave a shit about the destruction about to happen. ‘team neutral’ team fucking idiot more like.

episode is rated 2/10 for baela, rhaena, jace/joff/aegon/viserys crumbs, and house blackwood mention.