#i got out of the house and went to buy new foundation and felt like a fucking eyesore the whole time but i did it

[khaotunq]

ppffftthh

[giasfolklore]

DADDY’S HOME

꒰ synopsis ꒱ྀི being a beautiful freshman in college isn’t fun at all when all these young men in your class just want a hit or chance, until you meet someone who rocks your world upside down.

꒰ content warnings ꒱ྀི porn with plot, nsfw (17+), fem! reader, fingering (f! receiving, slight domination, mainly praise, unprotected sex, creampie, virginity breaking, confessions.

｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆ ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆ ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆ ⋆ ˚⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡

ﾟ｡⋆ when you entered college you never knew your life would be so complicated.

until you met the one and only toji fushiguro.

he was one of the third years and you were still a freshman, one day you decided to get lunch from the canteen because you didn’t really bring lunch so as you reached there you stood on the waiting line as the other students were buying food too, you see a large figure overshadowing the area you were standing on.

you turn around to land your eyes on the most the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen with the perfect chiseled abs, he seemed like god’s favourite, you turned back to the line again and blushed and told yourself to focus as the line got small your turn eventually came and you asked for a bagel as you saw you didn’t even get much money, shit that’s one way to feel embarrassed.

the cashier said “ that’ll be 10 dollars ” you only had 5 on you and you pleaded that you’ll get the other 5 by tomorrow the cashier asked you to get the fuck out of the line as you slowly moved out, the man who was standing behind you said “ is that how you talk to a woman? ” furiously and the cashier was confused “ ah I- she didn’t have the money, she shouldn’t be in the line. ” he explained, “ she’s new here, that means she’s new to everything, I’ll pay for it ” toji takes the bagel and throws the money on the cash counter.

“ hey? miss?.. here is the bagel you wanted, sorry about the guy he doesn’t really know how to talk. ” toji explains. “ oh it’s okay! really thankyou so much for this, I promise I’ll pay you back for this tomorrow. ” you plead “ it’s on the house. ” he gives you a sweet smile and walks away.

and that’s how you both met for the first time.

˚ ✧ ──────────────────────

as time passed you both became friends and with that toji even started liking you romantically and you? you always had the crush on him.

one day when you both were assigned together during a project and it went successful so toji’s friends threw a party at a bar and as toji’s good friend you were invited.

you got home quickly made the bed, cooked for night and went to the living room for getting your makeup done, you lived alone. it was a small 1 bhk house and when you were done with your makeup you checked how you look, you did basic makeup not too much foundation, not too much concealer, not too much mascara or lipstick, just basic makeup.

you got dressed quickly, you were a pink glittery dress which touched your curves well and they were hugging your ass good and you look like a princess in that, and with those legs anyone could be in love.

you called on the cab and as you reached the party you found toji already there but he looked like he didn’t even like parties, more like he would go home, study and rest.

“ hey..toji! ” said the excited you. “ oh hey.. oh you look- “ weird? biggest crap in the world? let me guess a clown?- you were interrupted by toji’s sudden choice of words “ perfect. ” you smiled at him and sat beside him peacefully until haibara decided to grab you by your wrists “ come on get up! you have to dance !! ” he screamed. “ ahaha okay… okay. ” you got up and you swayed against him as a little time passed you didn’t even notice when you were grinding against him.

nanami forced you to take shots and you did, but a little way too much that you started feeling dizzy on a different level, NEWSFLASH !! you’re a virgin and this is your first time even drinking, you got up from the bar’s table and you felt yourself almost collapsing as your eyes were way too heavy, but instead a strong pair of hands catched you and you looked, it was toji, the toji you fell for.

“ that’s it! I’m taking her home. ” he explained himself with you in his arms almost sleepish and took you out of the bar immediately and then he took his car and put you on the backseat, you were really very sleepy to notice.

he drove and you felt a strong pair of hands picking you up again and moments later you were put on your bed. “ take care, okay? call me if you need anything! ANYTHING! ” as he left you managed to catch his wrist “ t-toji? please don’t leave me, stay with me please? ” uhm.. he sat down and said “ you shouldn’t have drunk so much when you know you are a lightweight. ”

“ I never got drunk, this was the first time. ” he smiled and patted your head. “ t-toji I-

“yeah? ”

“ I love you. ” holy freaking caramel you said it, you ACTUALLY SAID IT!!

“ it’s uh okay I get it if you uh- “ I love you too angel. ” he kissed you with passion and you held onto his shoulders as you kissed him back.

“ I want you. ”

“ say it again and I’m yours. ”

“ I want you toji. So bad- you didn’t even realise when he lifted up your dress and took off your white laced panties in a flick of a finger as he kissed your wet cunt.

“~ damn baby, so wet for me? ” he exclaimed. “ yes baby only for you! always. ” holy shit you looked like a tasty little doll.

before you could react his teeth dug into the soft skin on the side of your neck, tears stung your eyes as you could feel a purple bruise forming on the delicate piece of flesh.

he takes off your dress completely along with the bra now fully exposing your chest purple hickeys bloom across your chest as toji makes his way from shoulder to shoulder pinching bouts of delicate skin between his teeth just with that he starts sucking on your right nipple just to play with the other one and then he does the same to the other one.

he goes down and touches your wet like water soft pussy before you could process what was happening, his tongue flicked between your folds like a man starving. Immediately, you dropped to your elbows as your body shivered in heavenly pleasure. he threw your plush thighs over his shoulders as he reached out to intertwine his hands with yours.

“I had to see if you tasted as delicious as you looked~”

your legs were trembling on a next level as his tongue circled your clit like a lion going in for the kill. your hands tightened against his as small mewls and whines fell from your lips. as your back hit the wooden table beneath you, your body trembled as a thin layer of sweat covered your skin. toji then took the swollen bud between his lips, sucking lightly. Your eyes shot open as you release soft moan. 

when you tried to pull your hands away, toji’s eyes met yours in a threatening glance as his tongue flicked over your exposed nub again and again. The pounding of your heart was drowned out by the slick, lewd noises coming from your cunt as the love of your life feasted. the arousal in your stomach began to coil up tightly.

“t-toji p-please slow down a little. ”

your hands moved to try and grab at the raven locks on his head but toji was too quick as he snatched up your wrists and pinned them down to the bed. the honeyed arousal dripped from his chin as your orgasm crashed into you without warning. the bed shook as his tongue sent tremors of white-hot pleasure throughout your body.

“t-toji!” You gasped as your thighs threatened to close around his head. toji’s hands moved from your wrists down to your thighs to force them open as his assault against your clit continued. the overstimulation made your brain foggy as you were desperate to catch your breath. your chest heaved as your hands tangled into the silky locks on his head. 

toji was relentless as he pawed at your plush hips and thighs. he was devouring you whole as your second orgasm of the night was ripped away. he held you close as he worked you through it. as your body trembled, you sat up to see your honeyed arousal dripping from his chin as he licked his lips. the sight alone nearly had your teeth biting through your bottom lip. 

before you could properly recover, toji flipped your body over with one hand as the other unbuckled his belt. the loud chime of his belt buckle hitting the wooden floor rang in your ears as his fingertips gently trailed up your spine.

“ my delicate angel, you’re like a flower blowing in the summer evening breeze. angel, I promise to cherish you, but..

toji let out a low chuckle as he leaned forward to whisper seductively in your ear as he pulled your hair back, tightly wrapping it around his hand before continuing.

“ tonight I must devour you.. my sweet angel. ”

in a matter of seconds he’s inside your pussy walls the drag of his cock is delicious, hitting that special spot at just the right angle from the way he has you laid out on the couch, both legs thrown over his shoulder with your head propped up on a cushion.

your nails find its way to his neck and then strands of his hair pulling him from your neck, and a sloppy kiss being shared the second after. he tasted.. uh well considering where his mouth went before.

you tug on his hair, his cock hitting your spot perfectly at this angle as he kept a tight grip on your thighs. you are unable to answer his question and lay your head down onto his shoulder in embarrassment.

“ g’nna cum soon ” you whimper, your head hitting the wall and he nibbles at the center of your neck.

“ ah fuck.. cum for me my little angel! ” you could feel he was close too. the sound of skin slapping against skin filled the empty halls of your home. watching the jiggle of your ass against his abdomen nearly sent toji over the edge.

“ m’ close toji. ”

when your hand moved back to press against him, he quickly snatched your wrist and pinned it against your back.

“ me too, sweetheart. together, okay ? ”

all you could manage was a decent nod as your gummy walls clenched around him. toji’s thrusts quickly became sloppy as your third orgasm of the night crashed into you. your eyes rolled back into your skull as the air in your lungs seemed to disappear. clear cum squirted out from your abused hole. looking at the mess you made caused toji to lose all composure he had as he wrapped his arm around your throat, holding you in a headlock as he pumped you full.

“ good girl, take everything daddy gives you. don’t you dare waste a single drop. ”

he chuckled in your ear before standing up and admiring the creamy ring you created around the base of his cock. toji took his time pulling out, occasionally giving you small thrusts just to make sure all of his cum stayed inside. meanwhile, your body felt like a pile of mush on the dining table as he gently turned you over onto your body. a small groan of protest left your lips as your eyes squeezed shut. the soreness was already settling in as toji peppered sweet kisses across your collarbones.

“ you did wonderful, my sweetie. should we run a bath for you?”

your bullied pussy fluttered in response as your eyes shot open and narrowed.

“ mhm. ” he took you in his arms and quickly took you for a bath as you were tired.

[nickymortis]

Survive the Final Act: Alone in the Dark Showdown

There's something totally rad and kinda nerve-wracking about reviving a classic survival horror game from 34 years ago while also ensuring you have enough funds to buy Xbox games. Alone in the Dark was the OG in its genre, laying down the foundation for games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. But, you know what? Despite my doubts about bringing back a game that old, this gothic mystery vibe slid right back into its groove like it never left. It delivered intense vibes, killer voice acting, and a bizarre yet captivating story that totally hooked me as I dove into its supernatural Southern world.

Exploring Characters in "Alone in the Dark"

When I fired up the game, I noticed it had some basic accessibility stuff like choosing different subtitle sizes to enhance my experience and maybe even find a good deal to buy PS5 games. But honestly, for a game dropping in 2024, I expected more—like audio descriptions, better options for low-vision players, and text improvements, especially since this game is heavy on text. But I'll dig into that later. If you're into nostalgia and want to revisit your childhood, there's an option to play Alone in the Dark with the original characters in their retro Derceto 1992 costumes. It's got that old-school polygon look and some cool vintage horror filters. I passed on that, though, 'cause I wanted to check out all the visual upgrades. I went with Emily Hartwood to tackle the Jeremy Hartwood mystery. I'm a huge fan of Jodie Comer from Killing Eve, and I was curious to hear her American accent in this 1920s-themed game, even though her face animations were kinda stiff. Next time, I might try Edward Carnby played by David Harbour to see how the story changes—it's cool how NPCs and the manor respond differently to each character but still hit the same story points. That's definitely gonna make me replay it.

Mastering the Puzzles of Alone in the Dark

The story unfolds in the murky bayou of New Orleans, and I was blown away by the sheer size of the sprawling southern Derceto Manor. It's all about soaking in the mood—from the shadows and beams of light peeking through curtains to the Art Deco lamps and nature-inspired architecture of the conservatory. This haunted house spread over three floors, is designed for exploration, and the non-linear gameplay nails it. Beyond Derceto, the vibe stays strong—from Emily's trippy nightmares in the French Quarter to the misty swamps of Louisiana and even surreal Ancient Egypt scenes. And the soundtrack? It's fire, mixing that rhythmic jazz of the 1920s South with just the right amount of creepiness for a whodunnit setting. But what really shines in Alone in the Dark, besides its killer environments, are the puzzles. They range from chill to challenging, clearly showing the devs put serious time and brainpower into crafting these mind-benders—like rearranging meds and paintings, or hunting down keys to crack open locked doors and boxes. Just a heads-up though—if you're not into reading heaps of text, this game might feel like a word salad at times.

Lonely Atmosphere in Alone in the Dark

Man, unraveling the story in this game meant wading through a ton of letters and info dumps. Sometimes, it got so overwhelming—plus, the font was tiny and hard to read unless you were practically glued to the screen. I ended up doing this awkward dance of sitting down and getting up from the couch just to catch all the details, which totally messed with my flow. They really needed better accessibility options for that. It struck me as weird that this lavish mansion, which was supposed to be a sanctuary for the mentally drained, felt so empty. Sure, there were other guests around in cutscenes, but the place itself was kinda desolate. If it wasn't for the puzzles sending me all over the house, it would've been a seriously lonely vibe. I would've loved to see more people wandering around, maybe hearing creaky floorboards or stumbling upon someone unexpectedly—it would've cranked up the creepy factor big time.

Immersive Thrills in Alone in the Dark

Sometimes, moving the character felt awkward, especially during fights with enemies—it wasn't as smooth as it should've been. And when I tried to escape from creatures, I got stuck on invisible walls a few times and had to reload my last save. The devs say they're fixing these issues before release, though. Despite that, Alone in the Dark is totally worth the 15-hour playthrough. The puzzles are solid, the environments are breathtaking, the atmosphere is creepy as heck, and the nightmare landscapes are wild. Unraveling Emily's backstory and how it connects with Jeremy and the Dark Man kept me hooked with well-written story moments that left me hungry for more. But there were parts where I wished they'd expanded more to really elevate this already amazing game.

[scarlettriot]

Mina Ashido Headcanons!

@jewel116 requested some headcanons of our Alien Queen and I am here to deliver!

Some of these also could be considered BakuSquad HCs, hope that's alright.

I also went ahead and included some Adult Mina and 18+ Mina Headcanons too. Both are below the cut and clearly stated. Warnings are posted at each header mark.

If anyone has any other requests, lemme know!

Basic Mina Headcanons

Warnings: It's as fluffy as her dang hair! (Swearing)

. Most definitely has ADHD! In class, she is constantly tapping her foot on bouncing her leg as a means of trying her best to keep focused.

. Has a collection of shirts that she has designated for sleep and loungewear because she's burned acid holes in them by accident. Sometimes she'll wear them to concerts and shows if the design is cool enough.

. Loves piggyback rides! Frequently will run and jump on the backs of the guys in the BakuSquad. Even Katsuki himself puts up with it after a while.

. While Katsuki is the 'mom' of the squad, Mina is the one everyone goes to when they need comfort. Denki will curl up in her lap after a long day, Eijiro frequently goes to her when his insecurities creep back in, Hanta shows up late at night and they talk in her room about nothing just because he doesn't want to be alone, and Katsuki, well, he shows up to her room, slams the door and complains for a solid half-hour after reading a particularly heartbreaking scene in a manga while she listens to every word and validates his feelings.

. Mina worries far more than people believe she does. Her bubbly, loud, personality usually masks it but she knows when people are lying to her about what's going on in their heads.

. Sitting properly in a chair physically bothers her. She'd much rather be hanging upside down off it.

. She lowkey likes that the boys get protective over her.

. Mina is the type of person who gets A LOT of random thoughts that pop up in her head and one of the few people who actually will engage with the sheer randomness of the ideas is Shoto. Not only does he engage, he comes up with his own! The two can talk for hours.

. Loves hosting 'spa parties' in the common area of the dorms, everyone is welcome to join.

. When road trips happen, she's making the playlists (technically, she and Kyoka switch off).

. Tries teaching Tenya, Izuku, and Shoto how to flirt. After a very embarrassing first hour, Shoto didn't learn a single thing, Izuku was only good at it when paired with Shoto and Tenya... Tenya had her SHOOK! Man has game and she made sure everyone knew!

. Has weekly meetings with Yuga where they drink tea and spill the tea.

. She is so damn ticklish. Hanta was teasing her one day, she warned him to stop, he received an elbow to the face for not listening.

. Tried to grow her hair out once but it didn't grow down... it grew OUT. Mina thought she rocked it, and she totally did but ended up having it cut back down so poor Tsyu could see in class.

. Wakes up early three days a week to practice her hand-to-hand combat with Eijiro. Mina wants to improve her technique and Eijiro needed to work on his mobility, it benefits them both.

. Just Dance is her favorite game, she dominates.

. Easily forms new interests.

. Won't admit it but she gets jealous super easily.

. Will be the first to attempt to throw hands for a friend! I HC she was picked on as a child for looking so different but it never really phased her too badly, she likes looking different but understands that not everyone thinks like she does. So, if someone were to say something about Mezo's facemask, she's stepping in to defend the guy without hesitation.

. Knows every TikTok dance EVER. If a new one comes out, she's mastered it by end of the day and her account is always up to date.

. (Popular idea but important to reinforce) Mina and Eijiro co-founded a club, Horn Buddies, specifically to make Eri feel more welcome. They take her on trips and group outings. The only horned person who's not allowed to join is Pony because she was rude as heck to Mezo.

. Mina gets extra competitive over board games.

. She can ice skate and roller skate like a champ.

. Mina is resilient, dedicated, and passionate. She has goals and the girl will achieve them.

Pro Hero - Adult Mina Headcanons

Warnings - Mentions of alcohol use and swearing

. Gets several tattoos and piercings.

. Starts a roller derby club with most of the girls from 1A.

. Loves going out to the hottest dance clubs just as much as she enjoys staying in and munching on take-out food with friends.

. The Horn Buddies club she formed with Eijiro has now expanded into regular society and both young heroes couldn't be more proud. Together they've formed a foundation that strives to help those with non-flashy, unconventional, or misunderstood quirks feel welcomed and loved.

. Does her best to shop small whenever she can. Mina wants to help her community in as many different ways as possible.

. Becomes a fashion icon for many small, just starting out, alternative clothing lines. They love her look and the standard she sets.

. Goes to fashion and runway shows with Momo on the regular. While Momo prefers buying right off the rack, Mina goes to thrift stores and buys items that are coming back into style.

. Does her best to stay in touch with her classmates. She really cherished the friendships she made and goes the extra mile to make sure everyone stays connected.

. Has told off Shoto's father. Sent the man an anonymous bag of flaming dog shit as well for making his son so damn stressed. Sorry, not sorry.

. As long as she isn't in the middle of a fight, Mina will always stop to take a photo with a fan or sign an autograph. In or out of costume, she doesn't care.

. In high school, Mina's room was always decked out for the holidays. She goes decoration crazy and it is always done well. But, now that she's an adult with that pro hero money and her own place, she's the best house on the block decorated for each and every holiday! Inside and out! Also throws holiday-themed parties.

. Got absolutely trashed with the BakuSquad one night and taught them all how to twerk. By the end of the lesson, she deemed Katsuki was the best of her students.

. Loves to drink. Is a lightweight. Katsuki and Eijiro have carried her home more times than they can count.

NSFW 18+ Mina HC Below - Minors DNI

Warnings: Drinking, rough sex, mentions of orgies, handcuffs, impact play, and praise kinks. Subtle sexual relations with BakuSquad, Jiro, Todoroki, and Ochaco.

. The Queen of stripteases and lap dances.

. If any of her friends are at a party or some event and they need a fake date, Mina is their go-to person. She's handsy. She's flirty. And has no problem with platonic make-outs.

. Always encourages kissing-themed games at parties. Seven Minutes in Heaven, Spin the Bottle, those sorts of games. Mina also loves to play cupid and has rigged a game or two to get people together.

. Has made out with every member of the BakuSquad at least once as well as Kyoka, Shoto, and Ochaco simply because she was curious.

. Has attempted to start an orgy with the BakuSquad before when intoxicated. Still mentions it in passing just in case they change their minds.

. Has gone further with Katsuki and Eijiro though. Maybe both at the same time once or twice or several times...

. Wonderfully filthy dirty talk. Can even make Katsuki blush.

. (A personal favorite of mine that was in a previous post) When they were first years, Eijiro asked innocently enough, to touch her horns. He was gentle but that didn't matter. Our poor girl was so damn flustered! Her face turned red bright, she felt hot, and she had to go take a very cold shower!

. Ei felt terrible about it. It took them both maturing for her to explain exactly why she reacted that way... and then asked him to do it again.

. Is likely to send NSFW texts and photos while people are indeed at work. She is a Pro Hero though so only certain people are allowed to have those photos. A scandal is the last thing she wants.

. Very good at communication and is not afraid to speak her mind about what she wants and needs out of a relationship and her sex life.

. Loud, very loud, very needy.

. Fuzzy handcuffs in every color she can think of and adores impact play.

. Let her know she's doing a good job, Mina responds well to praise.

. Big cuddler after sex. Wants to snuggle into you and more than likely take a nap.

[adventures-in-poly]

I want to be there

Last year, on September 24, I wrote a long post about my insecurities in my marriage and then nervously made it private.

One week later, we got into a three-day argument. We worked it out. We had a plan for how to make things better. I felt tentatively optimistic, like we had hashed it out and unsettled all this uncomfortable stuff but now it was out in the open, we could do something about it, we could heal.

One week after that, he left and never came home.

We are getting divorced.

It’s been 8 months now. I live alone in the apartment we used to share. Our cat died. Our sweet baby Tater Tot got sick two months after M left and died. My life as I knew it was ripped away from me. I have a new cat, my Millie. I have new furniture. I turned the apartment into the place I wanted it to be. I am trying to do the same with my life.

I don’t know how to write in this blog because honesty has always underpinned everything I say, and I don’t know how to divulge my feelings without airing our dirty laundry. As Beyoncé said, “You know I’m not gonna diss you on the internet, ‘coz my mama taught me better than that.” Gotta listen to Beyoncé. I still want to be respectful to M, to a point. We are civil but we aren’t in each other’s lives anymore. We have a business relationship. Getting divorced is a business. Taking each other off the insurance. Dividing up our things. Delivering mail that’s been sent to the wrong place. It’s all cordial but there’s no love in it. I write friendlier emails to colleagues I know 1/10th as well.

And another reason, which is also the reason I hadn’t written for so long before, is that poly just isn’t a huge part of my life right now. It hasn’t been for a while. The problems between M and I were deeper than that. We split for much more foundational reasons than that. The things I want to write just aren’t really relevant here. Maybe I’ll keep it alive in case anybody cares. Maybe.

I’m still dating Crow. Our relationship hasn’t changed. There was a hot second there when I thought it would. After M left, and my body broke down, I left my house for two weeks, left Tater Tot with a sitter. Part of that time I went to go stay with Crow and his wife. They were there for me when I needed love. I had my birthday during that time. Yes, he left five days before my birthday. We had had plans to celebrate in the town where Crow lives. I guess I kept those plans. They took me to the place where M was supposed to buy me cake. I didn’t eat normally for about two weeks but I still bought a cupcake. Crow’s wife tried to buy it for me, but I said I wanted to buy it because my money was still technically M’s money, and I wanted to do it out of spite. That made her laugh. Spite won over her ingrained need to be a good hostess. That night Crow cooked a delicious salmon dinner for all of us. It was the first time I had eaten real food since M left. We watched Ratatouille. It was as good a celebration as I was going to have, given the circumstances. I felt loved but gutted.

A few months later and Crow and I were talking about changing the nature of our relationship. Exploring an attachment relationship. I wanted to get closer to him, to rely on him, and he wanted the same. He talked with his wife and she was into it. All the pieces were coming together. But that fell apart, too. Part of it was when Tater died. My world was shaken up again. Five days before Tater died, Crow and I were talking about marriage. He’d said that if he were allowed to have multiple spouses, he would have proposed to me years ago. But when Tater died we kind of stopped talking. He also had a lot going on. A close friend, like family, was in the hospital. Another friend’s mom died. All in the same week. Crow is caring and he doesn’t know how to set boundaries around his caring, so he burns himself out and then isn’t able to help others or himself. He’s a care worker by profession and I’ve seen him set those boundaries in his job, so I don’t know... anyway. The world was dead to me at that point anyway. I didn’t feel close to him anymore. We talked about moving in together, with his wife, and that fell apart. That’s when I realized that we aren’t going to get closer. It’s just not in the cards for us. And I’m okay with that. Really, I am. I always liked being his secondary, and him mine. And now I’m on my own, I need to be my own primary. I can’t jump out of one person’s life and into my own. Before M left, I’d only been single as an adult for a small handful of months. Now I’m not single, but unattached. I like that word. It describes what I am beautifully. I’m dating Crow, I love him, but I’m unattached. I would like to be attached to someone, some day. But not any time soon. Only myself. And Millie. I need to figure out what I want my own world to be.

I’m reading The Midnight Library and questioning everything. In it, she quotes Camus. “If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there.” I haven’t been there in many, many years. I need to find my way back to myself.

[mimzy-writing-online]

Writing A Blind/Visually Impaired Character: Canes, Guide Dogs, O&M

Wow, back in June I decided to take a few months break from blogging to recharge and focus on my mental health. About a month ago I began writing this specific post, slowly and in stages because of how demanding, detailed, and long it is.

I’m not sure when I planned to come back. I have about 200 posts with tags and image description in my drafts folder, waiting to be queued, but I wanted to finish this guide before I fully came back.

Come back with a bang, right?

But this blog, and specifically, my Writing a Blind or Visually Impaired Character  guide, has gotten so much traffic and support that I felt incredibly motivated to come back now.

So I finished the guide, and now here it is. It’s been a year+ in the making. Since the very beginning of this writing advice series about writing blind characters, I’ve promised to write a guide specifically about canes, guide dogs, O&M, and other accessibility measures the blind community relies on. 

In fact, if you look at my master post for this guide (now pinned at the first post on my blog) you’ll find that it was reserved as Part Four, even as other guides and additions were added over the last year.

In this post I’ll be explaining 

What Orientation and Mobility (O&M) is

How one learns O&M

About canes, from different types of canes and their parts, as well as how to use a cane. 

I will be explaining the sensory experiences of using a cane and how to describe it in narrative. 

I will include small mannerisms long-time cane uses might develop. 

At the very end will be a section on guide dogs, but this will be limited to research because I have no personal experience with guide dogs, being a cane user.

Disclaimer: I am an actual visually impaired person who has been using a cane for nearly three years and has been experiencing vision loss symptoms for a few years longer than that. This guide is based on both my experiences and my research. My experiences are not universal however because every blind person has a unique experience with their blindness

What Is Orientation & Mobility

Orientation and Mobility (O&M) is the specific skill of understanding and navigating the world safely and confidently with vision loss.

I’m going to quote Vision Aware’s specific definition [link]

"Orientation" refers to the ability to know where you are and where you want to go, whether you're moving from one room to another or walking downtown for a shopping trip.

"Mobility" refers to the ability to move safely, efficiently, and effectively from one place to another, such as being able to walk without tripping or falling on steps or elevation changes, crossing streets, and using public transportation

O&M can involve :

-learning how to use a cane, as well as what cane works best for you

-safely navigating obstacles with your cane, including stairs, ramps, elevators, uneven or curved sidewalks, through crowds, around furniture

-learning safe strategies for crossing the street

-planning routes to new or recurring locations

-using technology enroute, including GPS and apps like Uber and Lyft

-safely accessing public transportation

-how to ask for help when needed

-working with human sighted guides

A Note on the Blind Community and Their Relationship with Canes

The Perkins School for the Blind estimates that only 2-8% of the blind community rely on canes for navigation. The rest rely on remaining vision, guide dogs, and sighted guides. Only about 2% of the blind community relies on guide dogs however, and to get a guide dog in the first place, a person must go through O&M classes and use a cane for six months before they can sign up for a guide dog.

What this means is that 90% of the blind community don’t use a cane.

I didn’t know this fact until I begun research for this guide, and that number astounds me. 

Truth be told, while I have navigated my life without a cane before, I can’t imagine going back to the way it was before I got it. Even if I only need my cane some of the time, I can’t bear to not use it in the situations I need it. Having a cane made my life a lot easier, a lot safer.

I don’t know what to attribute this number to.

I might attribute it to the concepts of invisible vs. visible disability, internalized ableism, or the feeling of ‘not being blind enough’ for a cane, as well as accessibility to the blind community and knowledge, and access to buying a cane in the first place. I could write a thing about it, but if I try it’s gonna be its own post.

Onward~

How Do You Learn O&M? How Will My Character Learn?

You will have to find an Orientation and Mobility instructor and have them personally teach you O&M skills.

The O&M Instructor is a sighted adult who has gone to school for a bachelor’s degree and gone through O&M training themselves while blindfolded, usually fulfilling a certain requirement of hours (one program required 400 hours of O&M practice blindfolded before you could become certified), and apply for certification to teach O&M.

(Or, as is the process to become an instructor in the United States, where I am from. Becoming an instructor would vary in other countries, I’m sure)

To find an O&M instructor, you would reach out to your local school or foundation for the blind. Finding your nearest school for the blind could be done through…

Google search

Your Ophthalmologist (eye doctor) referring you to a school for the blind

A Social Service Worker reaching out to you and helping you contact the school

Possibly your school (as in grade/primary school, high school, university) reaching out to the nearest school for the blind on your behalf.

Unfortunately, there is not an abundance of schools and foundations, so your nearest might still be a far travel distance. My local school is a 45 minute drive away. For some it might a few hours away. 

This is, again, a U.S. experience, because our land mass is spaced out, and something like a six hour drive feels like nothing to most people (although is highly impractical and very difficult to a blind person who cannot drive themselves), but in other countries a six hour drive would mean crossing several borders, and other countries have different social programs.

There is not a full and complete database of every available school for the blind either, no one website to find every possible option. For example, the school I went to wasn’t listed in most of the website resources I found, even though it has seven branches and locations. 

This is more a complaint at the real life struggle to find disabled services, that there are few comprehensive resources out there. If you ask me, it should be made significantly easier to find and access your local blind communities. Accessibility and disabled services should be easily available everywhere.

If your story is based in a real world location, googling ‘school for the blind (city/county/country)’ should suffice in finding the one most local to your setting.

What might a school for the blind provide for your character?

Well, on top of helping your character connect to an O&M instructor, a school for the blind might provide other rehabilitation classes and access to additional resources.

Those rehabilitation classes could include lessons on:

-Reading/Writing Braille & using brailling machines

-Technology classes for screen readers, magnifiers, etc on your computer and smart phone.

My local school has separate classes specific to Andriod, iOS, JAWS, Zoomtext Fusion

-Independent Living skills (cooking, cleaning, organizing, planning how to get groceries and medications)

-Self Improvement (dancing, art, music, self defense. These were classes my school taught)

The additional resources form these schools might include- 

Referrals to counselors for coping with vision loss

Access to their audio-book and braille library

Access to magnifier devices, brailler machines (think of a typewriter for writing braille)

Some schools also offer grade-school or high-school education, meaning blind children/teens learn there instead of a mainstream school.

Some schools have lodgings for clients to stay at while going through rehabilitation, especially if the vision loss is sudden and severe. They live on-campus and take part in classes. Other schools only have day classes offered and you need to find transportation for every visit. Many schools might have a rehabilitation specialist or O&M instructor visit you in your home.

My local school did the last two. They had on site classes, but the school is a 45 minute drive from me, so I only visited a few times. They were able to send an O&M instructor to me. 

On Wednesdays at 3 pm she would drive to my house and give me lessons on using my cane. Those included her driving me to different locations to practice certain skills (like using stairs and escalators at the mall, or crossing a moderately busy intersection, or visiting a bus station to practice boarding a bus safely and communication with a bus driver where my stop was).

She also brought multiple different types of canes for new students to try out and determine which felt best for them.

The Many Types of Canes

Long Canes are used to sweep the immediate area in front of the cane user as they’re walking. This is the cane type that the general public is most familiar with seeing. There are several sub-types of long canes. They can also be called white canes or probing canes.

[Image Description: Man in business clothes traveling on the side walk with a white and red cane. End Image Description]

White cane can be a misnomer for two reasons: One, the concept of the standard cane for the blind can look different in different countries. In America, the standard is white with a red tip. In some countries the standard is an all-white cane. In some countries an all white cane might mean the user is blind while a white cane with a red tip means the user is deaf-blind.

Two, some companies like Ambutech allow customers to customize their cane colors and tips. Example: Molly Burke’s hot pink cane. My white cane with a purple tip. An all black or all sky blue or all red or all purple cane. A black cane with a blue or purple tip. Ambutech also allows customers to request neon-colored reflective tape to make their canes more visible at night.

Probing cane is not a term I’ve personally heard before, but it is a term Vision Aware uses on their website.

There are three main types of long canes:

Non-folding Canes: a cane that has no sections, cannot be folded or collapsed.

[Image Description: stock photo of man in business suit with a non-folding all white cane. End Image Description]

Folding Canes: The cane has 3-6 sections depending on its height. The taller the cane, the more sections it has. The sections are separate pieces that are made to snap together and are held together by a strong elastic rope inside the sections.

[Image Description: a folding cane with four sections, white with a red tip, and a rolling marshmallow tip. End Image Description]

Telescopic Canes: in which the sections slide into each other, similar to a telescope/spyglass, rather than pulling apart and folding. The handle is the widest section, and the tip section is the thinnest.

[Image Description: Three stacked images of a blue telescopic cane. First is of the cane completely collapsed. Second is of the sections partially sliding out. Third is the cane sections completely out and locked.]

Beyond that is also the Identification Cane. The function of this cane is to visibly identify the user as blind. It’s not used for O&M the way long canes are, there is no sweeping out the next two steps. It can be used as a support cane, however. 

It’s appeals most to the elderly who not only make up a huge percentage of the blind community, but might also benefit most from having both a support cane and an identifier for their blindness, in case they need assistance. 

[Image Description: identification cane with curved handle. All white with red tip. End Image Description]

A note: From what I’ve heard in the blind community, some people prefer solid/non-folding canes over folding or telescopic canes. The reason for this is that solid canes transfer vibration better than folding or telescopic canes. It’s said that the more sections a cane has, the less precise the vibrations are. 

Some cane users train themselves to understand the vibrations of the surfaces their canes are touching. It tells them what kind of surface they’re on (wood vs. marble vs. concrete), if there are nearby objects to their cane. While I rely somewhat on cane vibrations to tell me what surface I’m walking on (more on that later), it is beyond my current O&M abilities to use cane vibrations to sense nearby walls or objects.

Cane vibrations are just an additional information-sense to add to the others in use, and extra bit of data input.

Parts of the Cane: Materials, Handle, Tips, Sections, Elastic Band

Material

The three most common types of materials used to make canes are aluminum, carbon-fiber, and fiberglass. Each material has some drawbacks and benefits.

The ideal cane is lightweight and durable. It should be strong enough to withstand hitting something solid without bending or splintering.

Aluminum is strong and durable, but heavy. If it’s damage, it’s more likely to bend than break entirely. A bend can be straightened out, but it takes considerable strength.

Carbon-fiber is lightweight and durable. It’s stronger than fiberglass, and it can bend out of shape rather than splintering.

Fiberglass is lightweight but a bit rigid. If it breaks, it splinters.

Handles and Elastic Bands

While some canes can have specialized grips (plastic, wood, corkboard) the most common handle material is a black rubber handle that is about ten inches long, give or take. In the previous photos you’ve seen, the canes have had black rubber handles.

Here is an example of a cane with a wood-mesh material used as the handle.

[Image Description: a four section white cane with a red tip and a orange wood mesh handle, with black elastic band attached. End Image Description]

The benefits of black rubber handles over others are that it’s easier to hold onto, especially if your palms are wet or sweaty, than a plastic or polished wood handle. It also wouldn’t show the indents or scratches from wear and tear daily use. I’m guessing that is cheaper to make on the manufacturing standpoint, and thus is conveniently the standard.

Pay attention to the black elastic band attached to the handle in the above photo. Notice how it has a tied off loop? That is so that when the cane is folded, that loop can be stretched over the folded sections to hold it together.

[Image Description: a four section folding cane folded up with the black band around them. End Image Description]

Additional benefits or functions of the elastic could be to use it as a wrist strap while using the cane, or hanging it up on a hook while not in use. I tend to have my cane folded up and tuck my wrist under the strap to hold it more securely while carrying it. Images of that ahead in my cane-isms section.

Cane Height

Ideal cane heights depend on the user. For most users, you want your cane height to be to your shoulder, give or take a few inches. You might need a longer cane if you are a fast walker with long strides, or a shorter cane if you prefer to hold your cane at a lower angle than is traditional.

What I mean when I talk about holding your cane at a certain angle is that the standard is to hold your cane handle in your dominant hand and position it in front of your belly button, moving it side to side with each step. Traditional grip methods are holding your hand palm side up with your cane in hand, or to hold the cane at the section joint closest to the handle with what is called the pencil grip, holding the cane like a fat pencil.

Depending on the height, a cane can have anywhere between three and six sections. Longer canes have more sections. The top section includes the handle, and the last section includes the stripe color (traditionally red, unless customized) and the tip. 

The sections of the cane are generally slightly reflective, regardless of color. If you hold a cane up to the light you’ll see tiny specks of light reflected back, almost like very fine, tiny particle glitter paint. This detail is important in cane production because it makes the cane more visible at night, especially if something like car headlights reflect off it while someone is crossing.

Additional visibility at night can be added by wrapping stripes of reflective tape along the shaft.

Cane Tips

There are several different tip options for canes.

[Image Description: four different types of cane tips on a blue background with labels. From left to right: marshmallow tip, ball tip, pencil tip, glide tip.]

[Image Description: a rolling marshmallow tip with a blue background. End Image Description]

[Image Description: Bandu basher tip with a white background. For anyone not familiar with the name, the long, curved cane tip that looks like a hockey stick. End Image Description]

Some of these tips are better for the tap-tap method of cane travel, as in tapping the spots where you plan to step. They can also be used to feel out the shapes of objects, stairs, etc. 

marshmallow tip, pencil tip, 

They should not be scraped over surfaces, the tips will wear down much faster than they should. There are better tips for rolling over surface

Some tips are better for the rolling method of cane travel, which is the method I use. They aren’t great for tapping, but it can be done in a pinch. 

rolling marshmallow tip, ball tip, glide tip

The Bandu Basher tip, the hockey stick shaped tip, is best for hovering an inch off the ground and lightly tapping objects. It could be tapped. It should not be scraped over the ground like a rolling tip. It hovers.

After enough use, the tips will wear down and need to be replaced. The part of the tip that has the most contact with the ground, usually the edge of the shape, gets scrapes, sands down, and eventually begins to look like it was shaved off while still having bits of plastic still gripped to it.

Never fear, cane tips can be removed and replaced when they wear out, replacing the whole cane is not necessary.

Some tips slip on or twist on. Others hook on. By hook on I mean that the elastic that keeps the cane sections together also has a loop at the tip end that a hook onto and stay held into place. Look back at the photo of the rolling marshmallow tip and you will see the hook that attaches to the black elastic.

Cane tips sell for about 5 - 10 U.S. dollars, plus shipping, so it’s advised to buy several back up tips with your cane. I replace my rolling marshmallow tips once every six to twelve months. I don’t know if that’s considered too much or too often. The last time I needed to replace mine was June 2019 (It’s July 2020 at the date of writing this, but I’ve hardly left my home for the last six months because of COVID-virus related quarantine/social distancing.)

Sensory Details/Describing What Using a Cane Feels Like

Every surface type feels and sounds different when tapping or rolling a cane over it. It’s this difference that tells us a lot about our environment.

It tells us when we stepped off the side walk onto the grass, when we’ve walked inside because the concrete changes to wood or carpet flooring. These little details become trail markers too, useful for places we anticipate traveling to a lot.

Example: A week before every semester in college, I would travel to each of the classrooms and learn necessary routes. I learned that certain paths had giant cracks in the sidewalk that would be distinct enough to use as a trail marker to where I was on a path, or that certain paths went from cement to gravel, or cement to brick.

Carpet: The sound is very soft, and if you’re rolling your cane across carpet it sounds like a quiet swish-swish-swish. Tapping sounds depend on how thick the carpet padding underneath is, the thicker the carpet the softer the sound. If there’s a lot of padding then taps don’t make much sound, but if the padding is thin or underneath the carpet is tile or concrete then you hear a louder thudding tap. It’s still pretty quiet. If you’re rolling the cane you would feel a little bit of drag, the cane moves slower over the carpet. The thicker or shaggier the carpet is, the more drag it has.

Wood floor: Cane tips make rumbling sounds when rolling over wood floors. The smoother the wood, the less it rumbles. There’s a little vibration moving from the cane tip, through the cane and into your hand as you roll over wood planks. Very small. The more sensitive you are to vibrations, the more you feel it. Tapping makes hallow, thudding sounds on the wood. Sometimes they sound a little snappish if you’re tapping harshly. You feel stronger vibrations when tapping. Older wood feels softer, with more give. New wood is stronger, more vibrations in the cane.

Tile:It depends on the size of the tiles and the wideness of the grout lines, but it’s not a pleasant feeling. Tiles have grout lines, which are little divets between the tiles. The smaller the tiles or rougher the grout lines are, the more the cane vibrates in your hands. Every bump is felt running from the cane to your hand. The sound is a little grating too. Imagine fifty sets of stiletto shoes walking on tile, that’s what it sounds like when you roll your cane over rough, small tiles. Larger tiles with smoother grout lines aren’t so bad. Tapping the tile with your cane sounds like one really loud step of a stiletto heal, one step for each tap. Tile floors are usually found in bathrooms, kitchens, and industrial locations where the room is going to have harder walls (more tile, concrete, etc) and few furniture, so the room echoes more.

Linoleum: is a smooth even surface. It feels like your cane is gliding when you roll it, barely feeling any vibrations. The rolling sounds are very soft because of the lack of bumps, however tapping sounds are a bit louder. Not as snappish as tile or marble, but almost.

Marble: is similar to linoleum in its smoothness. Your cane glides when rolling. Tapping sounds are sharp. Because marble floors are common in high end malls, luxury homes, and fancy office building entries, places that usually have high ceilings and hard walls with minimal decorations and minimalist furnishing, those sharp tapping sounds may echo. Assuming there isn’t too much noise and the environment is relatively quiet.

Concrete: (I’m referring to concrete found in parking garages and industrial buildings, not sidewalk) It depends on the age of the concrete and how it’s maintained. Old concrete with lots of cracks and mini-craters feels very different from smooth concrete that was set less than a year ago. With old concrete there’s a rattling sound as your cane tip rolls over the bumps and those vibrations travel up your cane. New concrete can feel similar to marble or linoleum. The taps are loud thuds on dull concrete and sharper on new concrete.

Sidewalks: are made of concrete, but in my experience they feel a little different than the above example. Sidewalks have a grittier surface, they’re slightly rougher, more dry. There’s a bit more rolling cane vibration with sidewalks and the taps have more of a thud sound. And because they’re outside, you’re unlikely to hear any echoes unless you’re walking in an alley or between buildings.

Asphalt: is one of the worst surfaces in my personal opinion. Asphalt is the material used in roads and it’s made to be rough and gritty so that car tires can grip onto it and not lose traction while driving. The older and more damaged it is, the rougher it is. Because it’s rough the vibrations are much stronger, sometimes irritatingly so. I can’t roll my cane over asphalt because the bones in my hand can’t handle those kinds of vibrations, so I almost always use the tapping method instead. The sounds are gritty and dull. Unfortunately, asphalt is an unavoidable surface, unless you can find a way to never need to cross a street or walk through a parking lot.

Note: the white or yellow lines that have been painted into asphalt sometimes feel smoother because of the material they’re made of and because they’re added after the asphalt has been laid down.

Note: There’s something called tarmac which is similar to asphalt, used for a similar purpose, and more common in the U.K. (I believe) but I can’t say that I’ve ever knowingly walked on it so I have no personal experience to give you.

Gravel: Another one of those evil surfaces. Gravel is just loose rocks and they’re common in rural roads, driveways, some landscaping. The looseness of them is what makes them untrustworthy. It makes a crunching sound. If you roll your cane, you’re likely to end up tossing small bits of rock and dust here and there. If you tap, you’ll hear the crunch but your brain might not translate that into “it’s gravel” until you’re walking on it and only realize when you walk over it and the sharp rocks begin digging into your shoes.

Wood Chips: I don’t have any experience with this since vision loss and getting a cane, so I’m using my memories of being on the playground in grade school because the surface on the playground was wood chips. I’d say wood ships are a love child between gravel and wood floors. The surface is loose and rolling your cane over it would kick up loose chips and dust. It would probably sound similar to walking on sand I think, because wood chips are much softer than gravel but not as consistent as wood. If it’s rained recently, then the waterlogged wood chips sound even softer.

Hard Dirt: I’m thinking dirt roads here, which are a lesser evil to asphalt and gravel. They can be rough like all roads, but the material isn’t has hard and solid. Rolling your cane will kick up dust on a dry day, but if it rained a few days ago you might hear a soft crunch as you roll over wet dirt. Tapping will have a very soft thud.

Soft Dirt: Think gardening dirt. Because it’s so soft, it makes very little sound and is easily kicked up. There’s a bit of drag, about the same or slightly more drag than grass or sand. Tapping has almost no sound but you might feel a slight give as your tip lands in the dirt, a slight resistance as it sinks in.

Mud: Yuck. I’m imagining this getting in my cane tip and how gross it would be after. Sound and feeling depend on how wet the mud is. Wet mud sounds slurpy. There’s more squish if you roll or tap your cane. Your character might not identify it right away until their shoes begin slipping as they walk over the mud. This is a personal experience. Drier mud sounds soft and feels almost solid underneath your cane. Wetter mud has more drag for a rolling cane. Muddy areas are also generally uneven because top soil has been displaced, so muddy hills and fields have unexpected but usually subtle changes in elevation.

Puddles: have both a slurpy and splash-splash sound. The slurpy sound is more common with rolling cane techniques. The splash sound is more common with tapping. The deeper the puddle, the louder is sounds and the more drag you experience. I am not fond of this texture/experience.

Snow: I have zero experience with snow since the development of blindness. So no experience of what it’s like to walk through with a cane. This is something I hope a blind reader can inform me on so I can edit this at a later date. My best guess is that it has a soft crunch, softer than the crunch of shoes in snow. A lot of drag too. Rolling through snow would probably be near impossible, especially if it’s deep snow or hard packed. Again, my best guess. The last time I experienced snow was when I was twelve.

Grass: One of my least favorites personally. Too much drag. Worse than shag carpeting. It’s very soft and doesn’t make much sound either. Like a crisp crunch you can barely hear. If the grass is wet or frosty you hear it a bit more crunch.

Surface with fallen Autumn leaves: Leaves everywhere! This is a bit dependant on whatever surface the leaves are on. It would soften the sound of cement, but there would be a louder crunch on grass. If the leaves are big and very curvy/pocketed then they’re easy to push aside. Smaller, flatter leaves don’t push as easily. The driest ones will crunch under your cane. It’s fun sometimes, if you’re the kind of person who likes stepping on leaves on purpose, but if you can’t see the leaves it might lose some of its fun and be more unexpected. 

Sand: I’ve never personally taken my cane to the beach, despite living so close to the coast. The reason is because beach sand is so squishy and loose that it’s already impossible to stay steady on your feet. The sand is always sinking under your feet, unless you’re next to the water line and the dampness has made it firmer. So a cane isn’t very useful to me at the beach. Not to mention that sand isn’t something you want inside your cane joints if you want the cane to last. Sand will erode and damage the joints, regardless of if they’re metal or plastic. If I were to take my cane to the beach, it would make the softest crunching-swishy noise of sand sliding over sand, similar to what your footsteps sound like on sand, but possibly even quieter because canes are lighter.

Side Note: My mother sarcastically asked about rolling your cane through dog poop or gum left on the floor. Can’t say I’ve ever rolled through it, so couldn’t tell you. Use your imagination I guess, Mum

The Invention of Tactile Paving

These are amazing! Tactile Paving are those yellow (or sometimes grey) bumpy squares you see on ramps leading into parking lots or when crossing the street. In 1965, Japanese engineer Seiichi Miyake used his own money to develop a tactile brick that you could feel even when walking over it with shoes, and he designed this because a friend of his was losing their vision and he wanted to help. These are amazing, and accessible to everyone, even the blind who don’t have a cane or guide dog. These are literal life savers. Before I got my cane, if I felt those bumps under my shoes I knew to immediately stop because I was about to walk into the road. Because less than 10% of the blind community uses canes or guide dogs, this is the most accessible form of blind aide available.

[Image Description: a yellow rectangle of tactile paving in front of a ramp leading into a parking lot. End Image Description]

Note: similar detail, most doors in commercial buildings (in my localized experience) have a metal plate on the threshold to hold the door in place so there are no cracks underneath. The metal scraping sound when you roll or tap your cane on it is distinct but temporary and non-repeating, so it’s a good indication that you’ve reached and passed the threshold.

Blind-isms

I have a section in this guide about blind-isms, but these ones are focused specifically on cane use.

-Do. Not. Touch. My. Cane. Don’t. Just fucking don’t.

-The above ism comes from the fact that our cane is our safety net, an extension of our body, our eyes, the one thing that makes sure we’ll get somewhere safely. For that reason, blind people hate having their canes (or their on duty guide dogs) touched by strangers, acquaintances, friends we’re not very close to, some family members.

Important Note: That is a universal thing for disabled people. Don’t. Touch. Their. Mobility Aides. It’s assault. Touching someone’s wheelchair or pushing them around without their expressed permission is assault. Moving their wheelchair while the user is currently standing is assault. (Most wheelchair users are not paralyzed, but they still need the wheelchair because of their medical condition, which is not your business to know). It doesn’t matter if the wheelchair is in the way, the disabled person needs it right there, do not touch it. Touching or grabbing someone’s support cane or their long cane is assault. Touching or moving someone’s walker is assault. Touching, poking at, or tampering with someone’s hearing aids is assault. Touching their oxygen tank or cannula is assault.

Back on topic-

-Idle motions with your cane while waiting in line. I often rest my chin on my cane or lean on it

-twirl my cane like a staff when I’m alone and no one can see. I would not ever do this in front of anyone because I don’t want anyone thinking it’s a toy or they can just touch or grab it. I’m just a little childish and bored sometimes and idle motions are a common thing for people with ADHD.

-When carrying my folded cane inside (like say a store) I hang it from my wrist by the strap.

-Keeping my cane within arms reach at all times, even in situations where I don’t need it currently. Example: if we’re doing a classroom assignment where I need to leave my desk, I know the classroom well enough to not use my cane, but I won’t leave it at my desk, ever. (This does not apply at home. And in the homes of a very few, very trusted friends I will leave it somewhere I deem safe.)

-Having a set, specific place in my home (living with my immediate family, who almost never have guests) for my cane. In my case, it’s the top of an antique dresser in the living room, across from the door. It has a little bowl for my sunglasses as well. If I move out and have roommates, my cane will be in my room.

-Love me a bag or backpack that has enough space to discretely store your cane, but most of my bags cannot do that.

-People with folding canes develop a muscle memory for folding and unfolding their cane, so they can do it without really thinking about it.

-Unfolding my cane: I hold the black handle between my thumb and palm with my other fingers folded over the remaining three sections, cane tip pointing up. I slide the elastic over the tip, loosen my four fingers and roll my wrist to the side. The red colored section unfolds first and snaps into place with its neighboring section. I roll my wrist in the opposite direction so the next white section can unfold and snap into place with it’s neighboring section. Roll it back in the first direction and the third section snaps into place with the handle. My four section cane is now unfolded and straight.

-Sometimes I just grab the black handle and let the sections fall and unfold as they will, but this is less controlled and risks your cane bumping into something or someone.

-Folding my cane: I start with the black handle, lifting it up so the joints unlock. I fold it down, grab both sections in my hand and lift the second section away from the third and fold it over. Wrap my hand over all three sections and unlock it from the red section.

-Because I have a four section folding cane, the cane tip and the handle are on the same side while the metal joints are on the opposite side. Those metal joints are what my elastic slips over.

-A three or five folding cane will have the head of the handle (and its elastic) on the opposite side of the cane tip, and you will be folding the elastic over the cane joints and tip.

-A six section cane has the tip and handle facing the same direction like the four section cane.

-People with non-folding canes like leaning their canes up against walls and other objects when not in use. Corners are popular, the corner of a desk up against a wall too.

-But oh god the frustration when the cane randomly rolls out of place and hits the floor, it’s a combination of “Not again” and “did that really just happen” and “you had one job. one job.”

-Sitting with our cane tucked between our legs. Picture a bit of man spreading, the cane tip leaned against the side of our foot to keep it stable and the cane leaning against our shoulder or opposite knee, possibly also held securely with our fingers too.

-The no-manspreading alternative of that is with the cane leaning against our shoulder, cane tip resting on the toe of our shoe or the outside of it, held securely with our fingers or our arm wrapped around it, elbow hooking it.

(Okay, a while back I was looking for photos of someone using a cane to use as a reference for drawing Ulric. I only found three, and two of them were Daredevil promo photos. Which, no offense to Charlie Cox, but he is not blind and he does not use a cane in his daily life, he does not have that relationship a blind person has with a cane and the concept of a fifth limb, and it shows. So the photos were stiff and unusable, so I had to like use several photo references of different poses and Frankenstein them together to get what I wanted.

And I still haven’t finished the painting... fuck)

-In a car with a non-folding cane: 

-Right passenger seat- The cane tip goes all the way into the corner of the foot well to the right of my feet, with the handle resting over my right shoulder or on the seatbelt. It pokes a bit past my headrest. The longer the cane, the harder it is to tuck into a car.

-The U.K. / Austrailian / New Zealand / Japan version of this (because they drive on the left side of the road with their drivers seats on the right side of the car) it’s like this: Cane tip in the foot well to the left of my feet, handle on my left shoulder or on the seatbelt.

Backseat: the absolute worst. There’s less foot well room, and if you’re in a sedan there is almost no room behind your shoulder for the handle. I position my cane diagonally with the handle on the shoulder closest to the door and the tip next to the foot closest to the middle. 

-For this reason, no one with a non-folding cane will want to be sitting in the backseat.

About Guide Dogs

While my knowledge of guide dogs is limited only to what I can research and not personal, I will give you some basic facts and practical knowledge from said research.

Guiding Eyes for the Blind estimates that there are 10,000 guide dog teams out there in the world. That makes up 2% of the blind and visually impaired community.

Guide Dog Training

Becoming a guide dog is the most difficult form of dog training there is. The majority of dogs who enter guide dog training wash out and either become family dogs or go into a different type of service dog training, like medical response or PTSD/anxiety response, or possibly become therapy dogs, which is a career altogether different from being a service dog.

Guide dogs go through two or three years of training, which includes puppy training, basic socialization, proper behavior when on duty and actual guide training. Most service dogs only go through a year to a year and a half of training before they are partnered with a disabled handler.

Between the cost of training, the cost of housing and feeding the dog and the cost of vet bills from birth until being partnered with a blind handler, the overall cost of a guide dog is something like 30k to 40k. While most service dog training organizations require handlers to fundraise and pay for the cost of training (usually something like 15-30k), guide dog organizations give their dogs to qualified blind clients for free. These organizations pay for the dog costs through their own fundraising and charities. Fortunately for these organizations, guide dogs are a highly respected field and have a lot more charity directed their way, while other service dog types have less public interest when it comes to charity.

Guide Dog organizations have an application process, requirements, and a wait-list before you can be partnered with a guide dog.

Requirements to get a guide dog are (usually) as follows: 

Must be legally blind (as in not visually impaired, but legally blind) and have had at least six months of O&M with a cane and demonstrate enough O&M stills to navigate by oneself. They also require you to be responsible enough to independently care for a dog, able to keep up with training and retraining of the dog, as well as financially able to handle food and vet bills (which are at least a few thousand dollars every year).

The reason for cane training before getting a guide dog is because the dog cannot do everything for you. You, the dog handler, are responsible for knowing where you are and how to get where you need to be.

The dog can’t read stop signs or tell when a light is green or red, nor do they have GPS to find a brand new location nor can they learn that route on the first try, nor will they know exactly where you want to go when you say “Starbucks” or “library” or “school” or “mom’s house” and guide you all by themselves. That falls on you, the dog handler, having enough orientation and mobility skills to know when a street is safe to cross and knowing how to learn new routes and how to keep on route and make sure you make the correct turns. A guide dog can’t communicate with bus drivers for you either, they don’t know which number bus to use or what stop to choose. That falls on the blind person’s own skill.

Other Guide Dog Resources

Molly Burke is a guide dog user and has made several videos about what kind of work guide dogs do, her personal experience being a guide dog user for over ten years, how she got a guide dog, specific commands, unique experiences with things like travel, etc. She has a playlist all about guide dogs, but here are some of my favorite videos.

How Guide Dogs Guide A Blind Person

Guide Dog User Answers the Most Googled Questions about Guide Dogs

How I Met My First Guide Dog

Final Thoughts:

There is a lot more to be said about Orientation and Mobility, such as:

How do you safely cross the street with a cane?

How do you learn new routes?

How does getting a cane significantly change your life?

How do family, friends, and strangers react to you “suddenly” having a cane?

I could also write a ton on other tools the blind community relies on so strongly, such as screen readers, magnifiers, etc. In fact, I originally promised to include those in my master post when Part Four was titled  Part Four: What Your Blind Character Needs to Survive and Not Die. However, this guide is ages long and it feels better to focus on this specific topic for here.

Did you like this guide?

Consider checking out my other guides, links of which can be found on the master post here.

Follow my blog, I write and curate writing advice guides outside of blindness, I reblog writing memes with image descriptions, reblog soothing aesthetic photos with image descriptions, talk about disability, lgbtqa+ issues, ableism, and mental health.

If you want to further support me, this is the link to my ko-fi (however there is no such requirement nor pressure to do so, and please don’t worry about it, especially if you are in a financial situation that can’t afford it)

[ohheyitsokay]

earn

pairing: Din Djarin (The Mandalorian) x reader

wordcount: 2k

warnings: implications of an abusive household/family

summary: this started out as a fic about the fact that the Razor Crest was destroyed, and ended up being a fic about the reminder that your value to a person should not have to be earned

>>

You needed to sell your cousin’s ship.

Well, you didn’t really need to – he had given it to you when he settled down. A gift, he said, for the only other adventurer in our family. Your mother hadn’t heard, or she would’ve glared even more.

Since you could remember, she had not liked that you yearned to search and explore the stars. She did not like your desire to help people, to be your own, to change.

She hadn’t liked that you’d chosen smaller adventures on your planet, either, but you had finally learned that she could not stop you, even if you still avoided extra conflict. You helped and narrowly escaped the local authorities depending on the day, and tried not to resent the mediocrity of both.

The ship should’ve just been yours. It could’ve been, would’ve been, had your grandfather not held your hand with his frail fingers asking you to stay a little while longer. It was a big ship too, flown better with another person, and you had no one who understood your desire to leave your little planet. And you couldn’t stand the beautiful thing nestled under tarps, mocking you. If you sold it, you could at least buy a more modest one for yourself later.

That’s what you told yourself, as you spread the word all around that you needed a buyer. Selling it bought good favor it bought with your family, which you used to take your time as you looked for a suitable sale, searching for stories as to warm your heart.

When the two Mandalorians created a stir a town over, and you were there immediately, drinking in the interesting shapes and veiled voices hungrily, wishing the excitement of their lives could rub off of them onto you.

They had a woman with them, tall and lithe and wary and you saw your future in them, and ached. Tucked in a corner of the gathering area, you watched for awhile before averting your eyes, knowing they were like your ship all those miles away. Just salt in the wounds left by your invisible shackles.

The night was lovely, too beautiful to be fair, as you walked towards your home town, and you kept your eyes off the sky.

As your crossed into the outskirts of town one of the Mandalorians was standing at in the shadow of a tall plant, as if he was waiting for you.

“Why were you watching us?” He moved into the light and his armor gleamed and it was distracting, how unmarked it was.

“It does not matter,” you said stupidly, carelessly. He wouldn’t have asked if it didn’t matter, and his straightened shoulders snapped you back into reality. It should have been muscle memory by now, to watch yourself around a dangerous person.

“I have a ship to sell,” you corrected yourself quickly. A half truth.

“So I hear,” his voice rumbled, but it was amused. “You’re lucky I was the one who noticed you, little one.” You flushed, out of embarrassment and just a little bit of pride.

“It just so happens that I need a ship,” he stepped closer to you and you stood frozen as he drew up his full height, forcing you to bend back to meet his visor as he added, “and the whole truth.”

You told him a little too quickly for your pride. About needing to get out, wanting to make a difference, do something with your life, and seeing that in his little party. His posture changed again, when you spoke of your family’s control over you, and again when you spoke of staying, for your grandfather. The reputation of cold, stern, self-interested warriors did not match the understanding and instinctive protectiveness he was demonstrating. It was fascinating, baffling, almost too good to be true.

And he made you an offer before he even saw the ship.

At your grandfather’s house, you whispered it to him, as you smoothed the blanket over his stomach.

One boney, loving finger traced from the apex of your forehead down, over your nose and lips, to your chin. He was letting you go, and you swallowed, willing yourself not to ask twice. You kissed his cheek, and took the deal.

-

The other Mandalorian and his companion had looked you over and shrugged as you defended your usefulness, and left the planet before you and your new… boss? Comrade?

You did not know. You were still afraid of him, just … less than you were of staying, and it was your single chance. To take the ship and the adventure and not look back.

The agreement was that he would take you with him, and he would pay you for it over time. You’d get your shot at adventures, at freedom, and he got a near free ship for his use, a strangely perfect fit.

Despite such a dubious beginning, it didn’t take long for you to adjust to the life.

It was amazing, to see the bits and pieces of his work, to help him set up carbonite for his bounties and rearrange to make the ship more effective. He didn’t speak much at first, but you craved knowledge of the galaxy and he quickly realized you learned from the stories, soaking in information and connecting context like a sponge in water. Slowly he shared more and more, and realized beyond making you more useful, he enjoyed it.

Feeding you information paid itself back, as you always gave him eager, bright smiles in return, or helped him process information that even his sharp mind hadn’t thought of.

Sitting side by side as you shot through hyperspace felt more like home than either of you had bargained for.

Your first job on your own coincided with a longer hunt of his, when a mechanic offered you a quite high amount of credits to be an extra set of hands. In the morning you would roll out of your cot, set up the protocols for the ship, and trudge over to carry boxes and bins and hold tools and wires and panels of sheet metal. Part of the deal was that you would smile and make nice with the more advanced workers, as well as his clients, and you provided as best you could. At first, it was enjoyable, your learning curve was steep, and you liked to see creatures with lives from all over the galaxy. But you quickly began to understand you had little time for that, and were forced to duck your head down and, as always, do what you were told.

It was worth it, you told yourself, to be doing something productive while he was away. Already it felt like the ship was almost his, and you were grasping at your new freedom like an eel in the water. If you were useful, and brought in your own income, it would help you and least find your footing in the mud. 

When he returned, you told him proudly of your work, showing him the credits like they were your first piece of beskar. His voice had a smile in it, as he watched you, and his gloved hand had touched you cheek gently. It was good, he told you.

-

Din liked the feeling he got in his chest when you were around him, when you looked at him, and especially when you smiled his way. He went out of his way, from then on, to create similar opportunities for you, to try new things and use your skills. For once in his life, he wasn’t hurting for credits, but it was lovely, to see you be proud of yourself. The missions were shorter than that first one, though, because he preferred being with you to almost anything else. 

It made him feel lighter, after the chaos of the last few months, to work, and come back to a ship where you were waiting for him. He had never met anyone like you – selflessness disguised as ambition, as smart and careful and kind as you were strong and capable. After the child had been taken from him, he didn’t know if he would ever open himself up again, but he couldn’t resist.

After you came into his life, ship aside, there was no going back. You found ways to make rations more interesting, took the time he never had to scour the markets for tiny improvements, always kept a hand free when he needed something to hold on to. It made him feel like man, not simply a bounty hunter or even a Mandalorian.

There was no other feeling in all his travels, that compared to that of your weight against his side. It startled him, even though he had been the one to pull you there as the two of you stood, staring at the cargo bay, but it became as necessary to him as his armor. Din would reach for you, hand finding your opposite hip, and tug you against his ribs and you would melt into it. Your warmth seeped through the cloth, and the tension would ebb out of his muscles so much he could almost sleep standing up.

He tried to tell you sometimes, but words rarely felt necessary or like they actually communicated what he wanted to. And the way you touched his arm or hugged his clunky armor made his heart full, so he could only hope his touches and actions did the same, for you.

Still, you asked for words sometimes, so he told you stories of the Mandalorians, his childhood, and his adventures with Cara and Boba, and even the child. Once, he pulled your forehead against his helmet and told you his real name. Those were the words that sunk in like the roots of your relationship. The grounded you both, the foundation for understanding between two healing souls.

When he returned from a shorter mission to find you glossy eyed and frustrated in the kitchen, and you dropped his hand after a single squeeze, he was lost. Moving through the area, he grabbed food, trying to put it together the way you did, clumsily trying to show you he cared, how you did, to him.

It coaxed out of you the story of your day – the problem and the fall out. On the surface, he didn’t understand. 

You had tried to get work and it fell through, everyone was feeling grumpy and you didn’t have the skill set they were looking for. Din wanted to shrug – it happened, and ask you if you enjoyed your day off.

But there was something more, of course there was, or else you wouldn’t be here with storms in your eyes, flinching from his touch.

“I’m sorry,” you concluded and he reeled. You were sorry?

“It’s fine,” he didn’t know what it was, but he was sure of it wasn’t already, it would be. You flinched, like he had confirmed something was wrong, and Din was even more confused.

Then it dawned on him.

All this time, he thought you knew. Not really one to say things so plainly, he thought for long moments over the exact right words he wanted.

“You… don’t have to earn your right to belong here,” his voice was sincere as it filled the dry air.

The tears slid down your face, and he rushed over to you, cautious but concerned. You were sitting in a chair and he knelt by your side, not touching you yet, but watching and listening closely.

“Really?”

If you could see his face, then you would see his unruly dark eyebrows draw together.

“Of course,” his hands reached for you then, brushing off your tears, and willing his honestly to sleep into your skin through his gloves until you believed it. “You do not have to earn your right to belong here, in my life. My family.”

There was a quiet crack in his voice, and it broke something in you, but the break was good. Like a tree you’d seen once, split open to let the poisoned sap ooze out a litter quicker. Din moved his hands to hold yours and you let him and the air was quiet, and for the first time fully peaceful, content. 

- 

Someone once told you “unhappiness cannot stick to a person’s soul if fit’s slick with tears” and you knew it was true when you rolled out of your cot the next morning. It would be a long process, to unlearn lessons you’d been taught grow, but as you walked into the cockpit, you felt for the first time you didn’t need the strength for it. He would help, and you would help him.

“Good morning, Din,” you murmured, and he looked up at you, warming you all the way through. “Where are we going?”

He didn’t answer you for a moment, just checked that everything was in place, and you waited. Then he stood his full height, and you almost had to bend to meet his visor - but you weren’t afraid. Pulling you into him, you could almost hear his smile when he spoke.

“Somewhere where there’s nothing to do, mesh’la.”

His forehead found yours, and it helped you not to ask are you sure?

After all, he wouldn’t have said so if he wasn’t.

<<

taglist:

@fangirl-316 @scribbledghost @writeforfandoms @beautyagegoodnesssize @princess76179

[notbleachtea]

Favorite Shirt

Okay time to post again. Slight warnings, mention of death, toxic relationship, slight emotional abuse.

Word count ~2.9k

"Tch, I guess it’s about time I clean my desk. I can't work with all of this crap on it." Jotaro annoyedly says.

While cleaning off the countless stacks of paper he pauses. All desire to clean is quickly knocked out of him. He sits back down in his desk chair holding the group picture you all took in Egypt. He glances over each face in the image, some happy memories, some not so much. He would give anything to go back in time to change the way things played out. So many stupid mistakes. His eyes immediately halt when he gets to yours. His face expressed sorrow and longing.

His favorite memories of the two of you start to come rushing back to his head, and for a moment, he smiles. The constant flirting that always occured between the two of you. The silent stares you each felt from one another. No matter how much the others teased you two, you still weren't sure if admitting your feelings was the best idea. You each had your own reasons for keeping distant. The mission was much more important anyway, and so was your friendship.

He recalls one of his favorite memories with you.

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

It had been a long week of tiresome stand battles, the closer you got to Egypt, the more intense they became. He noticed this was taking quite the toll on you and made the gang find a hotel that night so you could get some much needed rest. In the meantime he suggested that you use him as a pillow in the car on the way there.

Honestly, you took him up on the offer. You took everything you could at the time knowing that it would never go any further no matter how bad you wanted it to. Your head rested on his large chest, which was surprisingly soft for how tough he was. Every now and then he'd tug on his hat to cover his face when in fact he was just trying to steal a few glances at your peaceful, resting figure.

"Alright, we're here, group up and we'll get going into our rooms," Joseph states.

"I ca-"

"She's staying with me. There's no discussing it." Jotaro then picks you up and carries you to your room.

You started to wake up from the movements and the background noise going on in the hotel, and the first thing you saw was Jotaro's face when you opened your

eyes.

"Clearly I must be dreaming," you thought.

"Look who decided to wake up." he scoffed at you. "Really left it up to me to carry you all the way up here."

"I'm so sorry! I won't let it-"

"That's enough. I was just kidding anyway. You fought really hard today, it's the least I could do."

You smiled back at him as he set you down on the bed. That was honestly all the thanks he needed.

"Anyway, I'm going to go get something to eat, I'll bring something back for you if you want, but you should probably get some real rest soon."

You began to crawl up into the bed in your dirty and torn clothes from the day you just had.

"Good grief, what do you think you're doing? You're really going to sleep in a nice clean bed in your dirty clothes??"

"Well, I don't really have any clean clothes left right now, so, unless you have a better ide-"

You were quickly cut off with a soft hit to the face. Jotaro threw one of his clean shirts at you.

"Here. You can use this. It'll be more comfortable anyway."

Jotaro had left to go pick up some food and when he came back he was greeted with his favorite shirt filled with his favorite person. Wearing only that shirt made you look much smaller than you actually were, it practically went down to your knees.

"Thanks Jotaro! I promise I'll get it back to you as soon as I can."

"Keep it. It looks better on you anyway." He cooly tried to say as he pulled his hat down over his eyes.

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

After everything that had happened in Egypt, you just wanted to get away from it all for a while. Go out on your own to a new place with no reminder of the loved ones you lost and all the feelings you never acted on. As a thank you for your hard work, the SpeedWagon Foundation offered to pay for everything of whatever you decided to do. You thought maybe you'd try going to school in America for a while. It was great, you had all the experiences you grew up seeing in movies and on TV. You made plenty of new friends there and even dipped your toes in the dating pool.

Right after you finished school, you and your boyfriend got married. You thought that's what you ought to do, you've been with him for so long. Everyone thought you were the perfect couple. He always took you out on extravagant dates and bought you expensive jewelry. Every girl wanted to be you. But that was only because they didn't know what happened behind closed doors. He never physically hurt you, not many people could, I mean you could hold your

own in Egypt, you're pretty tough, but mentally, he knew you were weak. You would confide in him in the beginning of your relationship about all your friends back home that you missed. He never let you call home or talk to them either. The ones you could never see again. Everytime he wanted you to hurt he would just remind you that they were dead because you weren't there for them, you weren't strong enough to save them. Countless letters came in from your friends and family and he'd throw them away before you could see them. He would even tell you that no one was writing to you anymore.

Every now and then you manage to chat with Jotaro. He'd call you on your lunch break at work from time to time just to play catch up. Asking things like 'how's life?' and 'are you doing okay?' and the sort of thing. Everytime you told him you were doing great. You love your husband and you even try to brag about how well he treats you by describing all the luxurious gifts he's been buying you. Everytime Jotaro ended the call saying he was happy for you and then a

quick update on his life.

To be honest, Jotaro wasn't falling for your phone calls. He knew something was wrong, but he never knew how bad it really was. He thought it was strange that you never wrote to him or called him outside of your work hours. It was also strange how you never really went into depth about your personal life either.

One fateful day, you're having a routine call with Jotaro when your husband decided to stop by to take you out to lunch. He asked the secretary why your door was closed to which she simply responded, "Oh, she's talking to her childhood friend Jotaro! He usually calls about this time every week."

He walks into your office catching you off guard while you're still on the phone. The shock alone causes you to drop the phone with a quiet screech.

"Y/n, are you there?" Jotaro stays on the line worried about what he just heard.

Your husband shuts your office door leaving just the two of you in there and is yelling just loud enough to where your coworkers can't hear him.

"I thought I told you no one wanted to talk to you anymore? They're all fed up with you, can't believe you let your friends die back in Egypt. They'll never

forgive you for that."

"You're right I'm sorry just please don't do this here."

"What makes you think you can tell *me* what to do? That's not how this works. And who gave you permission to talk to other guys? There's going to be some serious consequences for this when you come home." He walks out of your office smiling at all of your coworkers like nothing had just happened, followed by a shut of your office door and your muffled cries.

"Y/n?? Are you still there? Are you okay? Did he hurt you?"

"Wh- what did you hear?" You managed to squeak out, choking back tears.

"I heard enough y/n, he's not a good guy. I knew something was wrong. We have to get you out of there."

"No. This is my life now. I don't need your help, I told you I'm perfectly fine."

"Y/n I'm not kidding, you have to get out of there *now* and I won't take no for an answer."

"I can't, okay! I have nowhere to go. No one would believe me if I said the things he's done to me. Anyone who I try to run to just rats me out to him and the situation gets worse."

"Y/n, go pack your most essential things while he's out of the house. I'm buying you a ticket home for tonight. You'll be safe here this time tomorrow."

The instant care Jotaro had just shown you only causes you to cry more. How could you let yourself get like this? You really weren't okay. You were just too headstrong to admit anything was wrong.

"Thank you." You were able to muster through even more tears.

After picking yourself up off the floor and drying your face, you left your office, no intention to come back. You rushed home to grab only your essential items while your husband was finishing his day at work. You grabbed a few sets of clothing, your toothbrush, hair and makeup accessories, a few pairs of shoes, and your folder of important documents. Everything else was replaceable and or retrievable at a later date.

You take a deep breath and get the courage to call a ride to the airport.

Free from your husband's control, you weren't scared to text or call Jotaro on your own phone now. You called him letting him know that you were on your way.

One short plane ride across the ocean later and Jotaro was waiting there for you to take you home. You're not sure how long he was there for but you're convinced he was waiting there since before you even took off.

"Y/n, over here." He waves you over.

You walk over shyly and ashamed of what he had witnessed just the day before. You couldn't even pick your head up enough to look him in the eyes.

"Y/n it's okay now. You're here with me, he can't get to you right now."

"Ye- yeah I guess you're right. So where do I go now?"

"C'mon, I'll take you back to my place."

"We're stopping there before the hotel?"

"I'm not letting you stay alone right now. You're staying with me at my house. The only reason I let you fly alone was because it got you out of there faster."

Jotaro takes your bag and you both head to the taxi.

"C'mon short stuff, get those legs movin' faster."

"Hey! Not everyone can be freakishly tall."

Jotaro raises one eyebrow, "So I'm a freak, aye?"

"Sorr-"

"Don't apologize, you're already more vocal when you're free around here. I like it."

The taxi drops you two off at his house. The drive felt like an eternity when in reality it was only a few short minutes. You stared out the car door window in awe.

*So this is what he's been up to this whole time*

"Well c'mon now, let's get inside."

You quickly follow after him like a lost puppy.

"There's a spare bedroom upstairs and down the hall, why don't you take this time to relax and freshen up while I make us something to eat?"

"You really don't have to do this for me Jotaro, but I appreciate it."

You head upstairs with your bag. It really was a long flight. You decide to take a quick shower and put on some clean clothes.

About an hour goes by when Jotaro comes by your room to collect you.

"Dinners ready y/n."

"Okay, I'll be right out, I just have to put some makeup on first."

"Uhh, what for? We're not going out anywhere."

"I don't know. I just always do. He always made me wear makeup, even at the house, I guess I'm just used to it."

Jotaro quickly turns around and starts heading towards the kitchen, but not without leaving a remark, "well don't. You look better without it anyway."

You follow soon after him with a fresh blank face. The table has already been set beautifully and you can already smell your favorite dish. He brings over two plates of food followed by a new bottle of wine.

"Why don't we catch up for real this time?" He asks.

Hours go by at the dinner table along with a few bottles of wine. The two of you bickering just like the old days. You missed this. You needed this.

You finally caught a glimpse of the time and stood up to help clean up the table.

"You don't need to help clean this up y/n. We can even clean it up tomorrow. Why don't we go talk in the living room for a bit longer?"

You move forward as an attempt to get to the couch, finally realizing how much you actually drank, you're quite tipsy in fact. Jotaro moves over to the couch to join you. Sitting side by side he grabs your hand with a guilty look on his face.

"Y/n, I'm so sorry this happened to you. It's all my fault."

Clearly he's a bit tipsy too if he's actually trying to admit being at fault right now.

"None of this is your fault Jotaro, what are you going on about?"

"If I was just straight with you when we were younger. If I actually had the courage to say something to you. Maybe you would have stayed. Maybe you would've ended up with me instead. Instead I thought you were too good for me."

Your eyes start to swell up. "Don't say that. Ever. I'm the one that's not good enough for you. Why would you ever want someone like me?"

"Well, you're you, that's why. You're strong, you held your own in the desert, you tried your hardest for us and you made it out. I've never met anyone as strong as you, and to know that someone took advantage of you? And I wasn't there to protect you? I'm so sorry for all of it."

Now full on ugly crying again, Jotaro wraps his arms around you and pulls you in for a hug.

"I'm so sorry Jotaro. Can you forgive me?"

He lifts up your crying head by your chin and brushes all your loose pieces of hair out of your face. He holds you here until you return the look into his deep aqua eyes. He moves forward, crashing his lips into yours. There was no hesitation on your end, you kissed him back just as hungrily. Neither of you needed words to figure out what the other one was thinking. You could feel the admittance of your love for each other from just that embrace. Jotaro pulls back and pushes your head into his chest so he can hold you once again. He pats your head.

"It's all okay now, I'm sorry it took this long," and he leaves a kiss on the top of your head.

The moment is only ended by your yawning since you've been up for lord knows how long. Jotaro picks you up and carries you in his arms to his room. He notices the slight confusion in your face.

"I was thinking maybe you sleep in here with me tonight, kinda like old times?"

"Okay, just let me go change into my pajamas. I don't want to get in the nice clean bed in my dirty clothes.".

You walk back into his room in just his old t-shirt you kept from the desert.

"You really kept that old thing?" He spouted.

"I really did. It's how I kept you close that whole time I was gone." You said with an embarrassed smile.

"It really does look better on you ya know?" He says through a full face of blush. Just seeing you again in that shirt made him think of all the things he wanted to do to you now and then.

You moved to go lay down alongside Jotaro in his massive bed. He always wanted to know what it'd be like to hold you in his arms in his own bed.

Jotaro pulls you into his chest to hold you tight, with no intention of letting you go. He places a delicate kiss on your cheek. You squeeze his hand as a subtle sign of acceptance and nuzzle into his broad figure.

“Goodnight y/n. Sleep tight.”

[bush-viper-cutie]

Chapter One: The New House

Pairing: Snape x OC

Word Count: 2,472

Rating: E

Plot:  Severus, forced to live with his parents once again, moves into a new house with them… except the house itself isn’t new. Its old, very old indeed.

Warnings: none

A/N: Snapetober! I will be posting chapters often to this slice-of-life gothic slow-burn romance I have in my head :D Not following any prompts but I hope the general atmosphere of these chapters are spooky? Mixed with some gothic… maybe some supernatural elements ahead ;) Enjoy :D

Posted: 10/1/21

Chapter List

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~*~*~ = time skip

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Severus Snape hated his life. His parents were awful, his family had no money, no support from anyone, and everyone he'd ever known hated him. The majority of his 20 years of life had been like that, except for a small bit of it where it wasn't, where it had been alright. For a few quick years, he had one friend who understood him, although it was now as he sat in the backseat of his father's car, looking up at the clouds, that he wondered if she ever did.

The clouds coated the sky, covering every sliver of sunshine with thick grey. No light broke through and as a result, everything looked as miserable as his life felt. The droning of the car engine and tires on concrete grated his ears as he tried for peace of mind.

His father's suitcase - sandwiched above Severus' trunk and his mother's large bag - dug into his side, poking at him deeper with every turn the car took. They'd been driving for almost an hour but he knew they weren't even close to their destination; they were still inside the city, still inside its limits. He didn't need to know where they were going, even if he'd like to, he knew his father couldn't afford to move to any city nor any country home close by.

His mother sat quietly in the passenger seat, watching classy houses with nice, white picket fences and short little rose hedges pass by as they drove. She looked away from the window when they stopped at lights or when his father needed to look at the map for directions; Severus suspected she didn't want to know if any of the four-member families out on their daily evening walk around their block looked in to see who owned the beat-up little pile of scrap metal driving by their house.

He didn't care though. He hardly cared about anything lately. The last time he could remember caring was the scroll parchment he'd received for graduating Hogwarts. That was all he'd wanted for two years. After he'd lost his only friend - his only best friend - he focused on school and school alone. He thought everything about his life would change the second he got hold of that certificate. For a few long days it had felt like a first-place trophy, but it wasn't. It was what it was: A certificate, of completion, of participation. Nothing more.

Maybe he could have been something. If he'd gotten a job, saved up while living with his parents, and finally moved out, leaving them behind forever... But he didn't do that. He spent two years wasting time meddling in a bigoted cult working, selling potions for scrap. Hardly making enough to stay off the streets pretending like it was better than living at home just because the new sinking ship he'd found himself in was with his friends. Maybe eventually he could have made it work if it hadn't been for the Aurors who busted their small section of Death Eaters dedicated to making money selling illegal potions.

He supposed they threw themselves a party, thinking themselves big-shots, catching a handful of young adults making money out the back of a shady pub. He remembered the headline in the Daily Prophet: "Fourteen Death Eaters caught and awaiting sentencing". He supposed his mother thought herself a saint now too, bailing him out, saving him from days of "possible abuse" as if it were any worse than the prison he'd lived in all his life.

At first, he couldn't figure why - not for the life of him - she'd even care what happened to him. He wasn't a child and he wasn't her problem anymore. He knew she derived some sick pleasure knowing he not only owed his existence to her but now his freedom as well... and then it all came out. They bought a new house and it wasn't built to be kept up by two people, hell not even three but he was sure his extra pair of hands would come very handy to them.

They didn't even need to pay him. Not only was he their child, but that bail money was something he couldn't even attempt at paying back, and not because it had been a lot. She'd paid it in wizarding money left over from her witch days and she knew his wand had been broken as part of his sentencing. He'd have to beg some stuck-up department deep in the government for a wand permit which cost money. Then he'd have to buy himself a new wand, then work to pay her back all while "bumming" it at home while his father yelled about getting a "real job", one that didn't involve "devil magic" in the "devil society" that was the wizarding world. And he was sure he wouldn't be able to show up for work with a bruised eye or swollen jaw, even if by some miracle his employer could look past his new criminal record.

He held in a wince as the car turned again and the top luggage fell onto his head. He was back to old habits trying to pretend he didn't exist.

"Hey," Tobias said, glancing at him in the rearview mirror. "Fix that."

Without a word, Severus shoved the luggage back onto the pile behind the driver's seat and sat back. They were on the outskirts of society now. The scenery had turned to country, and the smog of the city had cleared, though the skies were still dark.

His father stopped for a few moments and refolded the map on his lap. His mother carried on watching the world outside, unresponsive to either of them or the happenings inside the car.

"What's that say," Tobias handed Severus the map and lit a cigarette while he waited, not bothering to open the window.

Severus brought the map up to his eyes and squinted. His eyesight was poor and worsened by the approaching dark. "S-starts with 'c'..."

"S'got a double 't' or 'h'?"

"'H'." Severus handed it back and Tobias started driving again.  He took several turns and headed onto a rougher road.

Within minutes the tame country became wild and morphed into a long stretch of woods. For the first few minutes, he hadn't even noticed despite being completely focused on the environment that passed them, like his mother still was. The first few trees seemed to go on, and just when he thought they'd clear them and continue driving past open fields, the trees persisted until he realized they were deep inside a forest now.

A few more minutes passed and they finally did exit the forest into a wide field of dead chopped trees cleared to the side on either edge of the steep hill the car was climbing. Severus sat up finally, hearing his spine crack and snap into place after being hunched over for the better part of the day. He liked the colorful mushrooms and bright green moss growing on the black logs of the discarded trees.

"Here," Tobias grumbled, rolling down the window. He flicked his cigarette butt and rolled it back up.

Severus sat forward and looked out the windshield up at the house they were approaching. It was large and clearly abandoned, probably for a good decade. The shingles were covered in dead leaves, the paint was chipping, the windows were gray and smeared with dirt likely blown during wind storms. The porch was missing a step and the columns holding up the covering were slanted. It was more yellow at the top and browner at the bottom - rot on the foundation most likely.

He slumped back in his seat. At least, if it turned out horrible, if it came down the second they stepped inside, or the walls melted from mold before their eyes, their old home was still waiting for them, the cursed thing. Almost all houses back home on Spinners End were abandoned. No one to sell to, no one to buy decrepit eyesores in the shadow of rundown factories. But at least he still had the option if it all went wrong.

~*~*~

Severus stuffed his suitcase into the closet, kicked it in, and shut the door. Unpacking could wait. He turned around and looked at his room as a whole. It was small, located up the stairs in a corner. It had a slanted roof which was odd, considering there was a third floor above him. It would do though, it was on the opposite side of the house as his parent's room, so it would certainly do quite nicely.

He moved to the window and looked out to watch the mist settle below. His father was gone to town to purchase things they'd need: a lighter apparently for the fireplaces since this house was built before furnaces and never renovated. He felt like a poor house servant to a rich Lord, but it was better than feeling like a roach in his old home. They needed coal too, or maybe wood, whatever old metal kitchen stoves and ovens used.

Severus walked out of his room to look down the hall again. It was a larger house than he was used to - it practically felt like a palace - and was sure it would take a few days to memorize how to find the correct corridor places.  It wasn't Like Hogwarts, which typically took several years to memorize the right paths.

He walked down the opposite way he came and observed the way the dust clung to the walls giving the blue wallpaper a very muted look. The original owners liked their colors, practically every room had a different color to it. Corridors were blue, bedrooms green, dining room orange, library red, kitchen white, bathrooms pink... At least none of the colors were very offensive to the eyes, even without the dust they were all very muted and earthy.

He had explored the bottom floor, the second floor had all the bedrooms, and the third-floor stairs must be around somewhere, hidden. As he walked a new corridor he noticed there were spaces on the wall which had, at one time or another, held frames or mirrors but they were long gone. He turned the corner to a long hallway with very tall windows on one side. He could see the mist again and possibly behind it was more to the forest surrounding the house. He mentally noted which turn brought him to the back wall of the house. He walked on and at the center were the stairs to the third floor tucked into a gap in the wall opposite the windows.

The handrails were covered in dust and between the wood pillars were cobwebs that swayed as he crept up. There was an open floor filled with ghostly sheet-covered furniture. A chandelier holding half-used candles lay on the floor with a long chain still connected to the ceiling. Its crystals refracted light from the large windows on either side of the room.

He sat on a couch - not bothering with the cloth - and sighed. Eventually, they'd put him up to getting all this old stuff down so that his father could sell it, although, they'd already been inside once before and said they couldn't find the stairs to this floor - or large room.

He got up and walked back down the stairs peering into the small crevice between the handrail and wall. When he reached the bottom step he noticed the indent on the edge of the left-hand wall and pulled on it. A little ring popped out and when he pulled on that, the wall rolled out. No, it was a door. He pulled it further and closed it behind him. He stepped back against the windows. The wallpaper blended seamlessly and would have been hard for him to tell that it was a door at all. He pressed the blue-colored ring back against the wall and walked back to his room.

~*~*~

Severus heard a car door slam and sat up in bed. His father was finally back with the supplies to hopefully get dinner started. His nap must have been a few hours because the sun had already dipped below the tree lines.

"Severus," his father called out to him, his echoes from one side of the house bounced off every wall to reach Severus' ears. "Now."

He swung his legs over the bed and left his room, stumbling down the dark hallway towards the front of the house. He stopped at the foot of the stairs looking down. His father was smoking again and had dropped several grocery bags on the floor. He blew the smoke out of his mouth and looked up at Severus, then motioned for the bags and pointed in the general direction of the kitchen.

Severus obeyed and carried them in, placing them on the counter - which had been dusted - and started taking out the contents. The only modern appliance in the house was the fridge, tall silver and brand new; it must have been the real major cost of the house.

His father had bought a large head of cabbage and a pack of sausages. There were matches but no coal which means they might be having cold soup for dinner again. He put everything away and came back to stand at the door.

He stepped aside as Tobias entered the house again. Severus thought about stepping out and walking around for a bit, not wanting to be in the same house as his parents, but felt the distance between his room and theirs was enough for today.

He turned to the stairs and saw his mother holding the banister looking down at him.

"Tomorrow there'll be a list of chores for you in the kitchen," she said. Her stiff voice echoed throughout the house and she kept her eyes on him waiting for a response.

He gave none and she left, unbothered. It was the way of their relationship. She'd ignore everything he said, and he'd do the same. He walked up the stairs, hearing how they creaked and groaned under his weight, echoing off walls and resonating down the hall. He headed to his room and closed the door. It was only around nine, fully dark, but he was done with the day. Dinner wasn't worth facing them and staying awake any longer wasn't worth the boredom and loneliness.

He took his pillow out of his trunk and fell onto the bed, almost disappointed it didn't break and send any amount of adrenaline or chemical of any kind to his brain. He moved his pillow, slid his arm under it, and closed his eyes.

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Chapter List

Next Chapter –>

[haworthiaace]

I’ve recently discovered that writing may be a little bit fun so. Here’s something for @shadeswift99 ‘s ghostbusters au (this post right here) :]

Tango didn’t believe in ghosts.

Why would he? There had never been any reputable, scientific evidence, and despite what his friends have told him countless times, ‘feeling a presence’ didn’t count as scientific evidence. However, his conviction didn’t seem to deter Zed and Impulse at all, who regularly barged into Tango’s apartment with their latest ‘discovery’. 

“Tango, guess what?” The sound of his poor, battered door slamming open once again and Zed’s excited voice disrupted the peaceful silence that had dominated the room for the past few hours.

“Hi Zed, Impulse, good to see you guys too.” Tango didn’t have to look up from his laptop to know that Impulse was standing right behind Zed, too polite to barge in without some sort of invitation. Not polite enough to stop Zed, unfortunately.

Zedaph didn’t even acknowledge the greeting, continuing his thought the second he flopped down into a worn armchair. “Impulse and I were talking, and then we got on the topic of those guys who visit haunted places and hunt ghosts, and then I said ‘Well why can’t we do that?’” He sat up, eagerly looking at Tango, who could not for the life of him figure out what the man wanted from him.

Impulse, in his infinite kindness, noticed his friend’s confusion and filled in the gaps Zed had left in his excitement. “Zed and I want to start a ghost hunting business, and we need you to join us because you have a car.” He sat down much more gracefully than his companion, holding a small bowl of chips stolen from Tango’s kitchen.

The room was silent for a moment. “Hold on, what?”

“We-“

“No, I heard you, I’m just not exactly sure why you would think to ask me.” Tango never went on their other adventures no matter how many times they asked. After all, he had better things to do than chase wind and broken air conditioning, and it was dangerous to set a precedent. “You’re the ones who believe in all that fancy mystical stuff, not me.”

Zed stopped bouncing, and Impulse quickly brought forward the second, more practical half of their pitch. “We know you don’t believe in any of this, but even if ghosts aren’t real-”

“Which they are!”

“Right. A lot of people believe they are real, and will pay good money for some help handling them.” 

Tango pondered this for a moment, making A Face for effect that made Zed giggle. Impulse had a good point, as was often the case unfortunately. Tango didn’t have a stable source of income at the moment, and an actual business could help quite a bit with groceries, especially if Impulse was going to keep stealing his snacks every time he came over. And working with friends would certainly be a bonus.

“What the hell, I’m in. Worst case scenario nothing happens and I laugh at you two.” Zedaph lit up like an over ambitious Christmas tree, resuming his bouncing with even more enthusiasm than before. 

Impulse just grinned, “And best case scenario you finally figure out the truth.”

“In your dreams, Impy.”

-

Tango opened his eyes, and found himself lying prone on the floor. What was I doing? The dark, musty room plus Impulse and Zed looming over him struck a bell in his head.

They were on a job, as was the case most nights. Why Zed and Impulse insisted they do this at night was beyond him, but that was an argument for another time. A nonsensical ventilation system and a questionable foundation caused strange happenings in the home, and the trio had been called in. But even Tango had to admit this house was strange, and different from the others. The moment he entered, the hairs on the back of his neck raised, and he felt a chill. Their whole visit had been shadowed by a sense of wrongness. 

“...Tango? Is that you?” Impulse’s voice broke the silence, with a hint of uncertainty that shouldn’t have been there.

“Yeah dude, of course it’s me. What happened?” Tango groaned, pushing himself up into a sitting position. His head spun, but he forced himself to stand.

Zed raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Alright, I know this is going to sound really strange, but we think you got possessed?” 

Tango stared blankly at his two friends, and finally through the fog in his head realized they were dead serious. “Really guys? Come on, I know you believe in ghosts and all but isn’t possession a little bit much?”

Impulse started wringing his hands, and Zed spoke up, quieter than before. Neither one would make eye contact. “You… you weren’t yourself Tango. You looked angry, and kept throwing things.” Huh. Well that explained the broken furniture scattered around the room, and why Tango was so sore. “You knocked over a salt shaker, then suddenly passed out when the salt touched you.”

Tango was fairly certain he had never done that before. He was unnerved by the gap in his memory, but he tucked that into a corner of his mind to unpack later. Right now he had to convince these two knuckleheads that he wasn’t possessed.

“I haven’t eaten today, it was probably that.” They gaped at him, but whether it was because of his adamant skepticism or his poor eating habits Tango couldn’t tell. “It might be like… a low blood sugar thing.” Tango tried his best to be nonchalant, but his friends didn’t look relieved.

Zed stood up, the worry in his face replaced with anger as he crossed the room in long strides towards the door. “I really can’t believe you. Here we are, worried for your life and soul, and you call it low blood sugar.”

That wasn’t meant to happen. Tango rushed to fix his mistake. “I- I’m sorry man. I know you guys are worried, but I’m fine now! Whatever it was, it seems to be gone.” A small smile crossed his friend’s face, and Impulse moved to stand behind Tango, clapping a hand on his back.

“All that matters is you’re alright. Anyway, I think the salt scared the ghost off, so how about we head home, get some post mission pizza for that low blood sugar of yours?”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” Tango grimaced at the disaster that he had apparently made. “How about we tell the homeowners that the ghost did this?”

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

The ironic thing is that he wasn’t even on a mission at the time.

Tango was on his way home, cradling a bandaged hand that he would surely have to explain the second he walked into the apartment he shared with his business partners. His mind repeated the events of the past hour as he made his way down the sidewalk.

He had been browsing a thrift store, searching for a new pair of boots after his old pair wore out. He loved them dearly, but when the sole ripped off for the third time, Impulse drew the line and sent him off to find a new pair. His wandering/ moping brought him to One Man’s Trash: a rickety, rundown looking thrift store that was absolutely perfect. In Tango’s experience, all the good stuff got snatched up too fast at more popular stores, and there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with this place other than its appearance. 

He delicately pushed the door open, greeted by a dusty smell mixed with cleaning supplies, and  a loud, clear bell that was hung above the doorway. The interior walls were plastered with peeling, faded orange wallpaper that Tango guessed was at least 50 years old. They were decorated with dozens of picture frames containing vintage photos and postcards, each with its own price tag. The grey, carpeted floor complained where he stepped, and it was covered in tables with items for sale. It seemed people donated plenty, but never shopped here. Nobody was attending the front counter, which wasn’t a surprise for a place that probably only saw one customer a month, so Tango began his quest for the perfect pair.

After spending a good hour searching every nook and cranny of the disorganized sales floor, he found a sturdy pair of black leather boots hidden underneath a table, almost knee high with a one inch heel. They were covered in buckles and looked like they would be featured in a suburban parent’s nightmares. In the entire time he was there nobody had come out of the doorway in the back of the room, which Tango admitted was a tad strange. He even checked the sign in the front window to be sure, but the word ‘open’ was still lit up in neon just as it had been when he entered. He tapped the bell next to the cash register, but after a minute still nobody had arrived. He rang it again, and once more after that, still with no answer.

“Hello?” He tried, walking towards the only other doorway in the room, searching for a break room or something where the cashier might be. Maybe they fell asleep. “Is anyone here? I’ve got this pair of boots I want to buy.” 

Still no answer.

He felt awful about invading the back room like this, but he was growing concerned. What if something had happened to the cashier? What if someone was in trouble? So, he pushed open the door, and found himself staring up at someone; a man with frazzled black hair and a brown suit that looked about as old as the wallpaper. 

Except he could also see the break room. Through the man’s chest.

He blinked rapidly, trying to process what was certainly just a trick of the light. It was obviously just a shadow on the fabric that looked like a couch behind him. A very detailed couch, covered in a floral pattern with two overstuffed pillows on either end. The strange man didn’t say a word, simply staring at Tango with an increasingly malicious grin, watching his mind try to wrap itself around what he was seeing. 

Then, without warning, he snatched Tango by the wrist, spinning him around and leaving bleeding scratches where the man’s claw-like nails had torn into Tango’s skin. Before he could even register the pain, the man charged at him and Tango braced for impact, but felt a deep chill instead. It was the coldest he had ever felt, as if every winter from the next hundred years had come to take out their wrath on one man. 

It passed half a second later, leaving Tango shivering and clutching his bleeding hand. The man was gone. “How did he- oh shit.”

Sometimes, there comes a time when a person must accept defeat. When they’ve lost the battle, and are left with nothing but their pride. As Tango kneeled on the carpet, frozen to his core and holding his bleeding hand, the boots long forgotten, he could only see one logical explanation for… all of this. 

“...Ghosts are actually real.”

So it turned out that the shopkeeper had to step out for a few hours due to an emergency, and also that ghosts exist and haunt thrift stores.

The cashier was really quite nice about the whole ordeal, offering Tango some first aid and the boots he found for free as an apology for their otherworldly roommate’s “antisocial habits.” As Tango walked home, boots in his uninjured hand, he had another revelation, albeit not as earth shattering as the first. He didn’t actually have to tell Zed and Impulse what happened while he was out. It would keep them humble to have someone constantly denying the validity of their work, and Tango may or may not have found it a little, tiny bit funny. He was doing them a service, really! Tango grinned to himself, delighted by how much his friends would appreciate* his help**.

*they did not appreciate this, and were in fact greatly annoyed

**this was not remotely helpful to anyone

-

Tango woke up, finding himself on the floor as he now did more often than most people would consider normal. Then again, most people weren’t an optimal vessel for otherworldly entities. This time though… something was wrong. More wrong than usual.

He was cold, despite the thick summer air, and he felt like his lungs had shrunk to a quarter of their size, his breath coming in short puffs. He noticed that he was in the same room from before he lost consciousness, and that it was in the same condition he had left it in, which didn’t happen often. Usually ghosts took advantage of corporeal hands to do some property damage, but this time the modern, expensive looking couches were thankfully unbroken, same with the family pictures on the walls. 

... What was on his face? Tango felt a liquid slowly running down his cheek. Had the ghost been crying? That was a first. He reached a hand up to wipe away the tears and saw a flash of red. There was a smudge of blood on his left hand, but no injury.

He felt dread settle in his stomach, and slowly reached up with his clean right hand to touch what he had assumed was tears.

Sure enough, his fingertips came away red. “What the hell?” He asked, to nobody in particular.

“Tango! Oh my god, are you alright? Of course not, why am I asking that?” Zedaph burst into the living room, seemingly invited by Tango’s outburst. He grimaced at the floor and Tango followed his gaze to see a concerningly large pool of blood surrounding Tango. This would certainly explain why he felt so much worse than usual. “It threatened you and forced us to leave but then I didn’t leave and I snuck some sage into the room and then I heard a thud and-”

“Zed, slow down.” Tango groaned, holding his spinning head in his hands. “I can’t process a word you’re saying right now.” 

Zed seemed to remember his friend’s recent blood loss, looking sheepish. “Right, my bad. It’s a long story, but we need to get you to a hospital or something. Not to be rude, but you look awful.” 

“It’s alright, I feel awful so at least I match on the outside.” Zed started to walk across the room, trying not to step in the puddle whilst also trying to help Tango up.

Eventually he managed to pull Tango up by the hand, holding him steady when he started to sway.

Impulse greeted them with relief when they made it out to the car, Tango leaning on Zed’s shoulder, but he looked horrified once Tango’s face came into view. “Oh my god!” He covered his mouth with both hands, then immediately dropped them as though he had been rude. “Oh man, sorry about that, it’s just- your eyes…”

Tango shrugged, “Yeah, they seem to have sprung a leak.” 

“Well I knew about that, but…” His eyebrows furrowed as even he, a believer in almost anything supernatural, was confused about whatever disturbing thing this ghost had done. “They changed colour? They’re red now. Like, the whole eye, even the white bit.”

“Cool.”

Zed piped up from his position under Tango’s arm. “‘Cool’? What do you mean ‘cool’?” He did his best to make air quotes without dropping his friend, who had clearly gone mad. “You literally got possessed and started bleeding from your eyes, and now they’ve changed colour, how is any of that cool?”

Tango, in his noble quest to annoy his friends, just shrugged again. “Probably burst a blood vessel or something, and it got in my eyes. Man, why is it always ghosts with you two?”

A Look came across Impulse’s face. Probably Zed’s too, but Tango couldn’t exactly see him. It was a Look that meant Tango had completely baffled them with his supposed obliviousness, which had only happened a few glorious times.

“Ok he’s clearly delirious, we should take him to the hospital.” Impulse pushed himself off the hood of the car and opened the back door, placing a towel on the seat. After all, this was Tango’s car and Impulse figured he probably wouldn’t appreciate blood all over the back seat.

“I mean, regardless of his bullshit he definitely needs to see a doctor, there was a lot of blood on that floor.” Zed quickly followed, helping Tango into the backseat then sliding in next to him. Tango supposed it was to keep an eye on him, which was great because he felt ready to pass out again.

On the bright side, he caught a glimpse of his eyes in the rear view mirror and they did in fact look cool as hell. Of course, Zed and Impulse later disagreed because it could have been a ‘serious medical issue,’ but that was their problem.

-

At the end of a very long and very strange day, the trio sat around on a variety of couches and chairs in their living room, four half eaten pizzas scattered about the room. Although, they weren’t exactly a trio anymore - a new member had decided to join them regardless of what Tango, Zed, and Impulse had to say about it. An entity (for he surely wasn’t human) known only as the Beetlejhost sat cross legged in an armchair, looking completely at home despite only having been there for about two hours.

If asked, none of the ghost hunters could precisely recall how the Beetlejhost had joined them. One moment they were on a job like any other, the next they were being insulted up and down by a ghost in a black and white striped suit. After that first encounter he hadn’t left them alone, despite their efforts including but not limited to: every ghost busting method they had ever heard of, and others that they hadn’t. 

Impulse sat up straight for no discernable reason, smacking the arms of his chair and startling everyone except for, of course, the Beetlejhost. He turned to Tango with a shit eating grin, which was absolutely a cause for concern.

“Hey Tango?” Uh oh. If the grin wasn’t bad enough, the singing tone in his voice solidified that whatever thought just entered his mind was truly devious. That or incredibly embarrassing. Maybe both. “It seems like our new roommate has a few… strange qualities. Supernatural, one could say.” He looked expectantly at Tango, that awful grin never leaving his face.

Uh oh.

Tango supposed that the jig was up. It had been a good run, he supposed. “Yeah, whatever. Ghosts are real, you happy?”

Just because he was busted didn’t mean he couldn’t sulk, so he crossed his arms and sank into his chair, completing the look by sticking out his bottom lip like a child who was just told ‘no.’

Zed piped up from where the others had assumed he was napping, not bothering to remove his face from where it was planted on the couch. “Absolutely.” The word was muffled, but it got his point across. Meanwhile, Impulse was smugly eating another slice of room temperature pepperoni pizza. Vindicated at last, after over a year of exasperated arguments and comical obliviousness. 

“I hope you know I’m only admitting it because I’m afraid of what the Beetlejhost would do to convince me.” Tango gave up on his sulking and walked across the room to the box of cheese pizza precariously balanced on the edge of the coffee table. The man (or ghost? I suppose one can be both.) in question was looking off into the distance, lost in assuredly horrible thoughts. “And for the record, I figured the whole ghost thing out months ago, I just really liked annoying you guys.”

“Months ago?” Impulse held his pizza inches away from his mouth, the grin wiped off his face. “Are you telling me that when a ghost literally put you in the hospital and you still denied it, that was all just to annoy us?”

Now it was Tango’s turn to be smug. “It worked, didn’t it?”

-

So no, Tango didn’t believe in ghosts. But after everything he’d seen, he sure as hell believed in them now.

[blatant-attitude]

I couldn’t think of a good title for this one. It’s not one of my favorites I’ve written— but I can’t find any other area of this mini fic to try to spruce up and make better. I hope you guys enjoy it! ;)

Emily is jealous of Beth; Aaron is oblivious.

She can't tell if the headache is from the hangover lingering in her skull, or from the glaring across the table at the brown-haired woman with the overpowering cheap perfume from the over bubbly smiling-to-early-in-the-fucking-morning smile and laugh making google eyes at her boss.

JJ passes her a Tylenol as the waiter sets down Emily’s order of a hamburger, no onion in front of her. The waiter sets a grilled chicken salad in front of that wanna-be brunette bimbo who has an arm wrapped around Aaron’s own arm. Emily pops the Tylenol with a gulp of her large water before springing up from the table, mumbling something about peeing and washing her hands before she eats.

She can feel the team's curious eyes burn into her back as she disappears down the hallway that contains the bathroom. It's not long before JJ and Garcia are both coming to the bathroom after her. They study her with curious eyes while Emily washes her hands and refuses to acknowledge the two that just walked in.

“Em, honey, are you ok?” JJ asks her tentatively, stepping forwards and placing a hand on Emily’s shoulder. Garcia stands back still, watching with curious eyes.

“No. I'm not ok, JJ, because I am crazy head over heels in love with that man out there and he has another brunette wrapped around his arm, and she's not even that pretty.” Emily responded in petty, eyes welling up with tears. Her hands wipe at her eyes, clearing them of her unshed tears.

“Oh, honey.” Garcia pouted to Emily as she wrapped her in a hug, squeezing her to her chest. “You are going to be just fine, do you want me to shut down all of her credit cards? Or maybe make her nose and forehead look bigger in all of her pictures?” She offers up, which is enough to have Emily letting out a little laugh.

“No, let's not incriminate you in the process. Besides, her looking bad in pictures won't change her looks in real life.” Emily responds, pulling back and wiping her eyes again. “I think I'm going to head home. I'm still tired, and I can't promise I won't say something I might regret come Monday.” She opens the door, not leaving any room for conversation.

Morgan, Reid, and Rossi watch her as she exits and asks the waiter for a box. Aaron twists his head around and looks for a minute before turning back to the woman next to him. Garcia and JJ rejoin the group, giving a simple ‘she-just-isn't-feeling-well’ as an explanation for her sudden departure.

________________

Several days pass by before Morgan begins questioning her about what happened. ‘You weren't actually sick Saturday, were you?’ he begins which makes her roll her eyes.

“Derek, I really don't want to talk about this.” She sighs, wishing they were trapped in this car for another hour with each other. “I was hungover. That’s it.”

“Oh, so it doesn’t have anything to do with Beth and the obvious eyes you’ve been making at Hotch since you got back?” He slings at her, which makes her anger begin to explode.

“Derek Morgan, I told you I did not want to talk about this. If you say one more word I will unleash hell onto you.” She seethes, teeth clenching and brows furrowing.

He remains quiet for the rest of the ride, but she knows her outburst was enough of the answer he needed. Derek Morgan knows that Emily Prentiss is in love with her boss, and said boss has no idea.

________________

The coffee is shit, and so is the weather outside in Seattle is much the same. It’s been stormy, raining constantly, who’s is to be expected of Seattle. She can only assume that Rossi has just come inside from the rain because he steps up next to her soaking wet and begins pouring coffee.

“He is truly oblivious, isn’t he?” He comments as he brings the coffee to his lips, turning and leaning against the counter. Emily follows his gaze from where she stands, letting it land on Aaron hovering above a table and reading a file with JJ and some rookie cop.

“I’m not sure what you're talking about.” Emily denies it, leaving it there. They both let her say it, and they both don’t mention it’s a lie. They let silent understanding settle between them before he gives a silent nod and leaves her in the room to be by herself again.

Emily plasters on an unbothered face once more and heads out to solve the case.

________________

“How did it go with Hotch?” JJ questions when Emily and the man in question arrive back from interviewing a family member. JJ sits down at the desk chair next to Emily in the conference room of whatever town they're in this weekend. Emily just glances up from where her head is bent down into a file, dark hair falling around in a curtain around her as she does.

“It went like it always does. We found things out and we left.” She snapped back to her friend before turning her head back into the file in front of her. JJ just gives a sigh, not budging. She’ll get more information from the brunette soon enough.

It takes two hours before Emily is pulling JJ into a bathroom with frustration plastered across her face. “Why is he so stupid? Am I not being obvious enough? I mean, I don't want him to be unfaithful to his...whatever they’re calling it-- because I know his fidelity means so much to him. Especially after that stunt that blonde bimbo he married pulled on him. I don't know what to do anymore, JJ.”

Emily is upset; that JJ can see. JJ also knows that Emily just needs someone to listen to her so she can get the frustration out. “Feel better?” Emily just glares up at the question, scoffing in amusement. “No, but thank you for listening.”

The two leave the bathroom with curious looks from deputies, and the rest of the team members. JJ brushes it off, but Emily sends glares to her colleagues of the FBI. Hotch returns her glare, face set sternly as it meets hers across the room. Reid glances down, seeming to wish he could disappear with the tension in the room. Morgan and JJ just watch the two, eager to see who’s going to break first. Rossi gives a little chuckle, shaking his head as the two brunettes continue to stare at each other head-on. Emily turns away first, choosing instead to return her mind to her file.

________________

Emily’s morning spent with Derek looking at houses and talking about foundations has her rethinking even buying a house. The case comes in while they’re still looking at homes. They arrive on the scene quickly, and Emily has to force her mind to focus. Why does he have to look so good in a plain t-shirt and some jeans?

When the bomb went off in the bank, the only thought in her head was how she was going to tell him how she felt, because she wasn't sure she would make it through the day if this is how it was going to go. Covered in soot, she worked her way into a room where she could hear a faint scream for help and found an older couple.

By the end of the day, she was disarming a bomb around her best friend's man while still covered in the soot from the first explosion. She clips the wire with the hope that she's got it right, and feels her body break into chills of relief when she does. She leans to the side, feeling her racing heart slow with her panting breaths as she leans back. Body weak with the crushing adrenaline high.

Morgan and Aaron come running up the stairs to where she’s now sitting next to an equally breathless Will. Morgan begins to clip the chains around Will while Aaron offers Emily a hand to pull her up. The slight contact has Emily’s heart rate picking up and her stomach clenching together as she remembers what she’d told herself earlier in the day.

A wedding is (secretly) planned for the next day and everyone is leaving in favor of a shower and sleep before she's got a chance to pull Aaron to the side by herself. She stands in the shower letting the scalding water run down her body, doing what she told Clyde she would do. The conversation plays over and over in her mind, keeping her awake through the night.

“...but um..If I had more help-- say, running the London Gateway Office. You’d get your answer a lot quicker.”

“Yeah, you should fix that.”

“Well, I'm trying.” A job. He’s offering her a job.

“You have always had bad timing.” She thinks of Aaron. Of his new love for this brunette. Of her infatuation with him that he can’t see.

“Oh, come on Emily, don't you miss this?” She does...somewhat.

“I--Yeah. I will.”

Emily zips her dress with the conversation on her mind still. A job running the London office. Even thinking about it has her head spinning so much she’s unsure of when she arrived at the party… wedding.

Emily’s conversation with Derek ends with a sad sigh and Penelope spewing something garbled into her drink as she leaves and Hotch, Jack, and her enter the room. Derek leads Jack and the other woman away to the fountain, leaving her with him. “How are you?” He questions with an easy smile that has her shaking her head with a deep sigh. “That bad, huh?” Easy conversation leads to an agreeable breakfast date where they can talk about it, but Emily knows deep down she won’t go to that date. She’ll say what she needs to say tonight, and that’ll be the end of it.

Easy dancing on the boxed-off yard with the team, being passed through their arms until she lands in Aaron’s arms has her laughter flowing freely. Being held here, in his arms, is what has her realizing that maybe she always knew they weren’t going to last. Maybe that part of her is what made her want to accept the job in London.

“We both know that I won’t be at breakfast in the morning. Clyde Easter offered me a job running the London Office. I've decided to take it. You and I both know that I was always going to leave again. I can't grab onto my life the way it was before Doyle.” Her words are whispered softly against his shoulder as she leans close to him. Soft hands trace to grab his face, turning his eyes to meet hers. “Aaron Hotchner, I love you. I have loved you since I first saw you all those years ago in my mother's home, and I continued to love you all this time. Until the next time.” With a sad smile and a chaste pressed kiss to his lips, she pulls back and leaves the yard.

The rest of the crowd stare in shock. Emily has just kissed Aaron in front of his date. “Aaron?” Emily hears Beth because that's her name, Beth, question in shock as she steps up to him and grabs his arm gently. “Beth, I’m-- I’m so sorry. I've got to go after her.” Aaron’s voice carries across the yard as he jogs after her, following her inside and catching her arm just inside the door.

“Emily, wait! How long? How long have I been blind?” The question has her giving a dry laugh but his hand tightens around her wrist in seriousness. “After your divorce. I knew before then you wouldn’t have gone for anything offered because you are too good of a man. After the divorce, I started flirting then, but it seemed that you were the only one who hadn’t noticed. Then Foyet and Doyle happened, and now here we are. You're with Beth and I’m flying across the Atlantic to take a job with Interpol.” There’s a slight pout to her mouth when she finishes talking.

Aaron feels the pulse speeding up in her wrist where he holds it. His other hand reaches up and cups her sharp jawline. He presses another kiss to her lips, pressing hard enough she feels her lips will bruise. Foreheads rest against each other when he pulls back. “I’m sorry I didn't see it earlier. Maybe we could've had something amazing.” He drops his hands from her, backing away from where she stands and he leaves. Walking back outside to inevitably explain everything to his girlfriend, who stares at the both of them in complete shock.

@florenceremingtonthethird - A tag as promised : )

[iknowyouthinkimbulletproof]

The Scar- Calum Hood

A/N: another 5sos fic! Calum hood x y/n. Y/n’s gender is female for this fic, it just made it easier to write, my apologies to anyone it might upset, but you can always request. Feel free to correct any mistakes! there will be a part two!

WARNINGS: this fic does contain multiple mentions of an abusive family, read at your own risk.

Not my gif!

plot: y/n and Calum meet for the first time!

2430 words

-

When y/n was still a child she had always dreamed of becoming a celebrity, like every other kid. unlike the other children though, it seemed impossible to her. To y/n, she sounded horrible, not to mention the looks. y/n had always thought this way because there was never one person to tell her otherwise. It's not like anyone knew what she was struggling with to be fair. Years of practice and motivation from her parents, the only time they encouraged y/n, lead to y/n being the perfect actor in front of others. No one would notice the damage done to y/n because the walls built around her took a team of three to build and would most likely take an even bigger team to deconstruct. Or at least that's what she thought. Apparently all y/n needed was a wrecking ball.

Day after day y/n would wake early to sit in front of her mirror with a brush. She normally wasn’t the type to hate anything, other than her parents, because nothing could compare to the years of trauma her parents had stocked her up on. So when y/n said she hated her foundation brushes, she meant it.

Makeup used to be one of her favorite things, she used it as a pastime. When she was a young teen, she spent most of her time in her room trying as many looks as possible. It wasn’t like her to believe that you could only have one aesthetic, she would change her look up as many times as she wanted. Going from “emo” looks one day to “kawaii” looks the next. It only made sense that she would do the same with her makeup as well. Her parents didn’t seem to mind the looks. Whatever would cover up the bruises they gifted her seemed to be helping them in some twisted way. One day it all fell apart though. Everything her parents had built was destroyed. 

The process left y/n with a humongous scar on her face. The scar started right above her right eyebrow. If it had ended below the eyebrow, it would have just seemed like she wanted an eyebrow slit, she might have even been able to cover it easily with a brow pencil. If it had ended there, but it didn’t. It ended right above her jaw bone. It wasn’t straight either. Most scars can go away with time, but hers was too deep. It would never go away. It showed her and the world her past. She hated it. 

So, as much as she hated the foundation brushes she used every morning, she continued to use them. That hideous scar needed to be covered up. Especially with all the attention she was getting. Once news came out that two well liked members of y/n’s small hometown abused their child, people were furious. Many tried helping y/n. One of the teachers at school had convinced her to try out for the drama club. She received the leading role in Annie for the school’s play. News spread fast in the town and soon people had begun to call colleges and agencies to come watch her performance, all of which y/n had no clue they were doing.  One specific agency had agreed to work with her for free until she got off the ground. She almost rejected the opportunity. That was until her foster mother had informed her that her parents weren’t going to spend as much time in jail as they had hoped. Taking the opportunity had forced y/n to continue high school in Los Angeles. She was also set up with a new foster home. Throughout all of this, the scar was hidden. She didn’t want her chance to leave to be taken away. 

Years later and no one she surrounded herself with knew of her past, or even seen her scar. Not even the makeup artists she’s worked with. She always showed up a foundation on and since it was a perfect match to her color, the makeup artists let it slide and just continued to transform her into her characters.

y/n had in fact gotten off the ground, it was now a daily thing for her to be recognized. She even met some celebrities she grew up with.

There was one day though, soon after her 23rd birthday, that y/n had not put on foundation. She felt that she wouldn’t be recognizable without it, so she wanted to try it. She had woken up later than usual then dressed herself in shorts and a tee. She went on a run and low and behold, no one recognized her. She ended up at her usual cafe. Just like every morning, she walked up the cashier and ordered her usual. The cashier, Linda, a nice old lady, who had worked there every morning tried not to stare.  It was a weird experience for both of them. Linda could have sworn that y/n looked familiar, but she shrugged it off. y/n was holding back an expression of surprise, she thought that out of everyone Linda would have noticed her. Once she received her coffee, she went to leave. That is when she ran into her wrecking ball, not that she knew it. y/n had spilt her coffee all over the strange man she knew as Calum. She didn’t know much about Calum, she only knew his name from the few times she had heard his name being called for his coffee. She also knew that Cal was well aware of who she was, with makeup that is.

“Im so sorry!” y/n exclaimed. She might’ve still been in shock from the events that had happened so far into the day, but there was no way she could have missed the look she received from the man. It wasn’t one of disgust, but more of one of surprise. The look he had however, didn’t match hers. He wasn’t in surprise from the coffee he had spilt on him, but rather the girl in front of him. 

“It’s fine really.” Calum stated as kindly as possible. There was no way he could ever even think of being rude to a lady so beautiful. 

“It’s really not, I can pay for the shirt and for whatever you were gonna order.” she offers in a hurried tone even if she wasn’t in a rush. This is because she thought he was trying not to give her pity. 

“No need, I actually feel as if I should buy you another one-” he offers, “- it was my fault anyways, i'm so clumsy i’ve been in this situation before.” he lied. y/n was well aware of the lie. Most of the time she was here before him and left after him, she had not seen it happen. An argument be that he’s done it before she moved into the neighborhood, but that also wasn’t true because y/n had witnessed him and Roy struggling to carry a couch into their home while on her run. She had actually had a conversation with Roy and she probably could have become good friends with him if she had tried. 

“It's fine really” the words coming out of her mouth this time. Before they could interact anymore though, Linda had appeared to usher them both out of the way to clean the mess that was made. She had begun to lecture Calum, one of her favorite clients, on making a mess when y/n slipped out of the Cafe. she stuck her head back in though to apologize to one last time to both of them before running off. 

She had made it home and took a shower when there was a knock at the door. Realizing that her scar was uncovered, she tried to cower. 

“Y/n, it’s Roy! I...um brought cookies to celebrate your new movie! Oh and a friend.” That was the last thing she had expected to hear through her door. She knew the friend had to be Calum, she also knew she would have to explain herself to the men. Finally getting the courage, she opened the door. Before you could say anything Calum had begun to talk. 

“Hey, it’s you again. What are you doing here?” he asked. Suddenly feeling shy y/n lowered her head. 

“Are you ok?” Calum pressed. Looking up again she can see both the boys now wearing concerned faces.

“Y/n?” Roy questioned. Gulping, y/n decided to just rip the bandage off.

“Yep, that's me. Nice to see you Roy.” slightly shaking she opens the door wider as if to invite them in. Roy understood what she meant and walked in, his expression now gone and replaced with his original smile, Calum on the other hand still wore his as he followed his friend in. She led the men into her living room.

“Sorry for the mess.” she states. Calum and Roy looked around to see what she was talking about. Cal’s brows frowning more. There was no mess. To them anyways, to y/n her only thought was that her parents would murder her for having friends over without vacuuming and tidying every corner of the house. They sat down and y/n left to go get them drinks. While in the kitchen she could hear them whispering about her. Wiping any look of sadness from her face, she picked up the drinks and headed back into the living room. Handing them their drinks, she places coasters onto the table for them. They have a light conversation, them being Roy and y/n. Cal was too busy staring at her. He was confused, how could he have not realized. How come he didn’t know that the beauty of both women was actually the beauty of one. Finally giving into the stares y/n sighs.

“I know you’re probably confused about the...um you know-” she says, gesturing to her face, “i just didn’t want anyone to find out about it yet. There’s not really any good memories that came with it. You understand right?” 

“Of course!” Roy claims, nodding his head then nudging his friend, who also nodded but not nearly as harsh as Roy had done. 

“We won’t say anything if that's what you’re asking” Calum states, he could see that them agreeing with her hadn’t reassured her enough. She smiles gently at him as Roy agrees again.  The conversation had now been a lot more free. All three of them were involved now. The conversation drifted to her movie and their music at points. y/n felt bad as she had genuinely gotten a liking to them, Calum in particular. She wanted to talk to them again, but her past was coming to haunt her, she couldn’t. The cookies were amazing, store bought, but amazing. They trio all slowly coming quiet, they had spent hours together chatting. It was now 4 in the afternoon. It seemed as neither man wanted to leave. It had been a while since they had made a new friend. Calum excused himself to the bathroom, leaving y/n and Roy. she tried her best to hint that it may be time for them to leave without seeming rude. Roy helped her bring the cups and trash into the kitchen. He watched as she cleaned each cup multiple times. To him it must have seemed as if she were nervous because she was being watched. To her though, each mug needed to be perfectly spotless or something bad would happen. It was rooted into her mind. If you dug deep enough into it, you would see y/n’s memories of being yelled at and having dishes and pots thrown at her for not having the house perfectly cleaned. Calum, finally out of the bathroom, joined Roy. together they watched the woman dry her hands before turning towards them. Before she could get a word out, Roy suggested that they should get going. Cal’s eyes couldn’t have missed her smile quickly dropping before resuming back to its original place. y/n nods before leading the kind men back to her front door. Roy leaning slightly to give her a hug and saying a quick bye, she responded as she knew how. 

“Goodbye.” It was a simple statement really, but she was taught to never try to stay in touch with people outside of necessity. Though she did give him another kind smile, one that shows her teeth in just the slightest way. Now facing Cal who, unlike his friend, was staring at the floor. Roy, waiting for him at the gate, tries his hardest not to watch their interaction. From his point of view, he can see them talking before y/n goes completely still. y/n was in shock, she had never been in this situation before. She didn’t know how to respond. Cal had asked for her number. She didn’t have anyone who wasn’t work related on her phone, should she let herself add a contact for Cal? She didn’t know the answer, she stayed still, evening out her breathing while she felt two different sets of eyes on her. Still as stiff as humanly possible, she smiles and hands her, now open, phone to Calum. He grins so softly that y/n missed it, he handed her his unlocked phone as well. He creates a contact in her phone with all his information before snapping a quick photo of himself. He listed himself as “cute neighbor”, which is quite bold seeing as he had no idea if y/n liked him, and pressed save. On Calum’s phone, y’n had simply only typed her phone number and listed herself as “y/n”. Before she could press save, Calum handed her phone back to her, she looked at the contact and her lips lifted. She turned off her phone and put it in her pocket. She looked back to Calum’s phone and changed her name to “scar girl” before saving the contact and passing the phone back to him. Unfortunately for her, Calum didn’t look at the contact and just shut off the phone. Which might have been better if she thought about it. She didn’t want to see Calum’s reaction to the name, she just hoped it was positive. As they looked into each others eyes, a blush formed onto their cheeks. y/n whispered a silent goodbye before walking back into her home and softly closing the door. 

[imaginesmai]

Tom Holland - Forgotten aniversary

So, I heard Tom was thinking about taking a break next year! I’m really happy for him, becuase I think 2020 is going to be pretty stressful. Anyway, I got a fic idea because of that. I hope you like it!

Plot: working so hard had consequences. 

Angsty and fluffly! 

The water burned as it flowered over your hands.

Hands that tightly gripped a sponge as they angrily scrubbed away at the pan. You muttered unintelligibly under your breath as your hands worked away at the cooked on bits. Cooking wasn’t your strong point, and more than once you had burnt the food on the pan, creating a mess. But that wasn’t the case. The pan was hard to clean, because it had been just too long for the food to stick to the material.

Your breath hitched as your hands finally recognized how hot the water had actually gotten, and you cropped the pan into the water, splashing yourself in the process.

“Fuck!”

You moved quickly to cut off the water, the silence welcoming you like a needed blanket. As you grabbed the edge of the counter and closed your eyes, you forced the tears back and focused on breathing through your nose in normal patterns.

You weren’t mad. You were mad two hours ago, when the dinner you had cooked grew cold on the table you had set up in the balcony, and the screen on your phone had remained black. You were mad when you were taking off the new lingerie set your best friend had helped you pick last weekend in favour of the ratty pyjamas you wore normally to bed. You were mad as your phone finally lit up, only to be a message from your mother asking how the anniversary was going, and to wear condom. Then, as the clock hit midnight and you poured yourself your third glass of the expensive wine you were going to open up for the occasion, you weren’t mad at all.

Pissed. Disappointed. Sad. On the verge of crying, too.

The sound of keys rustling outside the door made you open your eyes, and you knew it was Tom who was outside the door. He sounded in a hurry, the keys falling to the ground twice before he finally put them right. You heard him curse under his breath, and finally the door opened and Tom walked inside the apartment; where he was supposed to be two hours ago, when the food was still hot.

Secretly, he had hoped for you to be asleep. It wasn’t his intention to be late, but Harry had wanted to wrap up their last project and he had promised him that it would only be a few minutes tops. Turned out, it was longer than that; and when he had finally looked down at the clock and had seen your single message of ‘everything ready, luv u’, he had ran out of Harry’s house and ignored a few traffic laws.

When he looked inside, he saw you nowhere in sight, so he left his jacket and his papers on the desk and spared a glance at the table in the living room. He knew it had been in the balcony for a long time, since it didn’t have the usual ornaments on. He looked at the kitchen, where there was no proof of any kind of food. Only an open bottle of wine.

“Darling?” he tried, walking a bit farther into the apartment. He repeated the name, with a little bit of more power. “Y/N, you there?”

Tom stepped into your shared bedroom and saw you sitting on the bed, propped up against the headboard with your legs crossed. You spared him a quick glance, and Tom got the message clear enough; you were mad. You had all the reasons to be, but sometimes Tom wished you a different type of mad. The one who screamed and kicked, the one who cried or the other who talked things out. From the few fights you had had, he knew you weren’t neither of them, but rather the one that kept everything inside.

Nothing and lames ‘I’m sorry’ was what came into his mind, so he decided to give it a little time before he could screw it up even more. So he started by taking out his shoes, sitting on the bed to take out his socks and shirt. Every button that came down was another brick of guilt on his back. When he had put the whole set of pyjamas, he was close to tears himself.

He turned around and hoped that you were already looking at him, demanding an explanation or something. Instead, he got more silence and wall staring. Tom wasn’t known for making very sharp choices when he was under pressure. Probably, there was only one thing that he could say that would make the pressure cooker explode.

“Hey” Tom started, standing up and crossing his arms in front of his torso. “So, happy anniver –“

“What?”

Tom gulped at your sharp words, and finally met your eyes. They weren’t the sweet loving orbs that he looked everyday at, not even the annoyed ones from when he teased you too much. Instead, there was pure anger behind them. Tom didn’t have time to say anything else, because you shifted until you were on your knees in front of him and talked again.

“So you dumped me in our anniversary, didn’t call in all day, not even a message, and you appear two hours late with a fucking happy anniversary? Really, Tom?” you spat at him. “Not to talk that I’ve worried sick because I haven’t known anything of you since this morning”

“Darling, I’m sorry” he said and took a chance by stretching his hand forward. You swatted him away. “Look, Harry told me –“

“No! You’re not sorry!” Tom blinked surprised at the sudden outburst. “Maybe, when you would’ve been just thirty minutes late, maybe you would have been sorry. Or maybe, if it was the first time it happened, you can be sorry. But it’s our anniversary, you promised you would be here, and I fucking believed you like the last ten times!”

There were tears in your eyes, and Tom’s heart broke with them. It was true that, lately, he had been too caught up with work to have life outside of it. All the projects he was working in, the brother’s trust foundation, his own film with Harry… It wasn’t the first time he was late for one of your dates, and that it was your anniversary only made it worse.

“I… um, I – I” Tom tried to come up with something to say, but his stuttering only made more tears be contained in your eyes; and that made Tom stutter more.

“You were – have you been cheating?” you said, finishing in a small cry that let the first tear fall. “Is that why –?”

“No! No, I’m not cheating!” Tom let his knees fall on the top of the bed, so that he was almost at the same level at you. “I promise I would never, ever – I wasn’t… I w-was with Harry! We didn’t, we lost track of time and – and –“

“Is your work more important than me?”

The question wasn’t yelled, just whispered. You voice had finally cracked and the tank of tears that you had been keeping at bay for almost two hours broke. Big, fat, droplets of water went running down your cheeks as you tried to keep your sobs down, while Tom could only babble incoherent things.

It was as if someone had tied a brick to his heart and had let it to drown, because suddenly he couldn’t breathe. You had had the same argument before, when he had forgotten a date or missed an important event for you for his work. But never, not once in your relationship, had he seen you cry over it. Tom was a pretty emotional guy, so he couldn’t do nothing against his blurry vision.

You fell back to you butt in the centre of the bed, propping your elbows on your thighs and covering your face. Your breaths were becoming raspy and the hiccups were the only thing cutting through the sobs. Eventually, Tom moved fully into the bed, until he was in front of you and could drag you into his lap.

The bed that you had bought in IKEA two months ago wasn’t perfect. You were in a hurry because the last one had broken a leg, and you decided you would have time to buy another one. At one in the morning, the decision to buy online hadn’t been the brightest; but you had had so much fun putting it together, that Tom and you had decided to keep it.

It cracked when Tom sat on the bed with you on his lap, still crying. He missed the way your hands would wrap themselves around his torso when he did that, but he understood that he didn’t really deserve you attention. It was enough for him that you weren’t pushing him away.

“I’m sorry” he sighed, and kissed the side of your head. “I’m sorry, Y/N. I promise. I’m sorry”

The sounds of the city leaked through the window. Cars horning, people shouting in the distance, some laughs. All of that was insignificant in front of the sound of your despair, which Tom wished more than anything to go away.

He held you as you cried, sometimes whispering how sorry he was, sometimes crying with you. The minutes passed by, and he knew it wasn’t just one night tears. It had been going on for a while, the obsession to do as many things as possible was finally having it’s consequences.

The time you took to calm down, was the time Tom used to put a solution to all of that.

“Y/N” he called your attention when your tears were almost gone. You didn’t look up, but tried to move away. “Y/N, please. Listen to me”

“Why, Tom? So you can tell me how busy you’ve been with Harry?” you snapped. “How this new project is just very long and hard? I’m tired of you putting your work in front of me always”

“I won’t anymore” Tom’s grip lessened, and he ignored the pang of hurt when you finally moved to your side of the bed.

“Until next time, right?” you gave him a tired glance. Your eyes were swollen and red, and your lip was trembling again. “I just want to go to sleep. We can talk about it in the morning”

“But – “

“Night, Tom”

You went to lay on your side, back facing Tom. The clock showed twelve forty-five in the morning, and you turned off the night lamp. Darkness filled your room and you closed your eyes, trying to fall into a dreamless sleep that let you calm down.

Tom, however, had different intentions. You felt the bed dip under his movement and the light being turned again. That time it was farther, on his side of the bed; and then, he moved towards yours and rolled you on your back by your shoulder. You were ready to yell at him a bit more when you were met with his face inches away from yours.

His hair was longer than what you had noticed last, the first notice of curls showing, and his smile was sadder. You tried to think of a time where you had stopped and just looked at him, enjoying a lazy morning between lovers. Sadly, you couldn’t find none. Tom took a while to talk, seeming as memorized by you as you by him.

“I’m sorry. And I mean it. Sorry for being away for so long, for putting my work before you and for forgetting that you’re the most important part of my life. You’re my family, and that’s always before everything and anything” Tom let out in one row, stopping barely to breath. “I’m sorry I’ve forgotten the anniversary, and your mother’s birthday party, and the date at the Italian restaurant. I’m sorry”

Tom waited for you to talk, and when you didn’t, he took it as a good chance. He breathed the nerves out and continued.

“I… I was thinking about taking a break for a while” he went back to his part of the bed, leaning against the headboard. It was your turn of moving up and open your eyes wide.

“What?” the sheets fell out of bed. “I-I didn’t mean, like – like a break! We’re, we’re – we can –“

“Not from you!” Tom quickly corrected you, before you could start crying again. He seemed horrified that you could think something like that. “I wasn’t – God, I meant for work! A break from work! Like – a sabbatical year, or something. We could… we could go somewhere. Or stay here. Whatever you want. If you want. Because – because I wouldn’t want to take a break with you. But if that’s what you need, I guess –“

“You don’t have to take a break just because I cry” you scoffed out, interrupted him.

There was something that neither Tom or you tolerated; pity. When you made a decision for each other, it had to be because it grew out of your love, not because you thought it was the best thing to do to stop the other one from being sad.

You crossed your arms and sat against the headboard too, and almost laughed. To anyone who was outside, it seemed that you were an old couple ready to go to sleep after taking out their prosthetic teeth. You stood serious and focused on your socked feet, covered by a cute pair of spiderman socks that had small Christmas trees and webs all over. You entertained yourself moving your toes while Tom decided how he wanted to express his thoughts.

“I’m not doing this because what has just happened” Tom started, voice as low as a whisper. You had to lean a little closer to hear him. “I just – I’ve tried to do more. I want to achieve great things, and there are a lot of good opportunities coming my way right no”

“You don’t have to leave all of that behind for me, Tom” you tried to reassure him, in case he didn’t want to do so. Because even if it meant you and Tom broke up, his happiness would always be your one priority.

“The thing is, I’m searching for the perfect life in the industry, and sometimes I forgot that I already have it here with you” Tom declared.

He turned his head to the right so that he was looking at you. His cheeks had a pinkish colour and his jaw was clenched tight. For a second, you didn’t see the grown man that was working every day until late night and missing all your dates. You saw the boy who asked you out with a bouquet of flowers when he was allergic to them. The boy who you fell in love right when you finished highschool. And the man you had loved and wanted by your side till then.

“I promise I won’t forget any other anniversary, dates or birthdays. I’ll be home more, and we’ll do things together. And if I do forget, you’re allowed to fill the house with cats” Tom joked, giving you a hesitant smile. When he saw your fond one, he finally relaxed. “I love you. And I’m sorry, I’ll say it as many times as you want”

“Maybe another thirty will be necessary” you teased back. “But tomorrow. I really want to sleep now”

Tom was ready for you to turn your back to him again and go to sleep on his own, but got pleased when you scooted closer and forced him to lay down on his side. It had been probably months since you had laid down that close, cuddling like when you had time for each other.

You laid your head on his shoulder and trapped his body with your arm, that gripped the pyjama. Tom wrapped himself more tightly that what he used to and closed his eyes tightly, thinking about how lucky he was that you were by his side. Just when he stretched his arm to turn off the light, he heard your sleepy voice.

“Don’t think you’re off the hook because you made me a promise” you warned him, and he actually stopped his movements. “But I love you too, Tom”

Tom smiled softly and finished turning off the lights. You nuzzled your nose against his neck and he closed his eyes peacefully. If it was necessary, he was sure he could give up his whole career for you. Because nothing was more important to him.

Want to know more about me? Here is my Masterlist! Feedback is always appreciated!!

Tom Holland and Peter Parker Taglist

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[dreamboatisland]

when i met you | j.w.

Summary: You weren’t supposed to meet Jeff in the middle of a random bar three days after your ex left you for someone else, but here you are.

Pairing: Jeff Wittek x reader

Word Count: 1534

Warnings: drinking, small mentions of cheating

A/N: Well, may I present to you my first piece of writing. I don’t know, it sounded good when I wrote it at 2am, but do let me know what you think!

The day you met Jeff, you were drunk, managed to spill an entire glass of vodka on him, and rant to him about how your boyfriend broke up with you to get back with his ex. Needless to say you didn’t leave his side that night. And the next morning, when you woke up on his couch in his hoodie, you left a thank you note underneath a camera on the coffee table.

This didn’t happen often. Or at all. Always perceived as the good girl of your friend group, you seldom went out at all. Instead preferring the company of some good old Netflix and popcorn. Whenever the girls went out and insisted you come with, they knew to expect some other plans to come up for you. And while they were not real most of the time, they were for a good reason. It wasn’t that you didn’t like your friends, it was just the social aspect you didn’t like. And they understood that. Sometimes.

That changed when you met him. You met Jonathan in the library looking for a book for Alison, your friend who wasn’t able to go because she got called into work early. And you offered to go for her and when you saw him, it felt like fate. Granted there was an immediate attraction, but that connection between you two grew over the course of several dates. After you thanked Alison for sending you to pick up her book about how to properly know your weeds from your flowers.

But you should have recognized the signs. Everything was perfect for the first six months. You were infatuated with him and he with you. Until he wasn’t. It started with forgetting dates scheduled beforehand. Then it moved to the petty small arguments he started over something insignificant. It eventually reached the point where your friends would tell you they were seeing him with other girls around town. It’s not like you didn’t believe them, you just refused to acknowledge it. That was until he told you he was dumping you. Really the signs were all there, but why you didn’t connect the dots was a mystery. And that’s why on the third night after the break-up you called up Alison and told her you wanted to go out and to let the others know.

You weren’t ready to meet Jeff that night. Not at all. He was just in the way of you coming from the bar to getting to your friends and the table you claimed. But with his long swooping locks and the piercing eyes, you couldn’t help, but get involved. If you were sober, it would have been different. You would have held your own. Apologized for spilling your drink and moved away from him. But he was a force to be reckoned with.

And after many drinks consumed by you and water by him, you were too intoxicated to even locate where you were.

He took it upon himself to look after you. You who had spilled alcohol all over his sweatshirt and grabbed the nearest napkin and began wiping it off all while apologizing profusely. He noticed the glossy look over your eyes. You were already drunk and who was he to blame. He was after all the one who bumped into you. And when you started going on a rant about how you were always messing things up and how you were a failure, he softened towards you. Before even knowing why you were here in this lousy excuse of a club, one that David had dragged them all to upon discovering the cheap alcohol prices which was as good as any excuse for content, he knew you were going through some things. He’s been there. Who hasn’t. Just wanting to forget. Forget the pain or the guilt or just any feelings at all. So later when you wouldn’t leave his side and continued to talk to him about mindless things, he was okay with that.

Eventually when you became too intoxicated to even stand, he found some of your friends you had pointed out while in conversation with him. Unluckily for him, they were all just as drunk as you or even worse. Without having any clue as to where you lived, he took the gamble. Rather you go home with him where he could keep an eye on you than with some creep out on the street who might’ve taken a liking to you.

Explaining to David that he was leaving, he brought you outside to wait for an uber. Leaning on him throughout the ride and explaining which was the better phone brand between iphones and androids, all he could do was smile at you. He hadn’t ever met anyone quite like you. LA was filled with a lot of fake people who would do anything to climb the social ladder. You were a breath of fresh air. If you were like this drunk, he would like to know what you were like sober.

Over the course of four hours, he managed to learn a lot about you. Things you only said to people you were close with, but of course those things came out when you were drunk. He knew that you preferred to sleep with a blanket but no bottoms. You felt more comfortable. You liked to have a hot cup of tea in the morning. A great way to start the day. You enjoyed taking long, hot showers. It helps your stress. So when he helped you into his apartment and sat you down on the couch, he left to get you some clothes to change from the dress that was undoubtedly uncomfortable and sticky due to the heat of the club. He checked his cabinets to see if he had any tea and medicine to help when you woke up with a hangover. He didn’t. Which he made a mental note of. Maybe to head to the grocery store before you woke up. He knew a shower was out of the question for you at this time, so he instead prepped it for when you woke up.

After some help with changing you into a pair of shorts, he didn’t want you to wake up bottomless in a strangers’ apartment, and a recently washed hoodie of his, he tried helping you walk to his bed, where he just changed the bedsheets. But you knew, deep down you understood that he was already too generous. Which led to you being adamant about sleeping on the couch. He realized after a few minutes of arguing that you weren’t going to budge, so he instead resorted to making you as comfortable as possible on the couch. He brought out plenty of blankets for you and some of the fluffiest pillows he could find. And once your head touched those pillows, you were out.

He didn’t understand why he felt the need to take care of you. Yeah you weren’t like other people he had met in this town, but it didn’t help pinpoint why he had decided to let you stick by him. If it had been any other person who had spilled their drink on him he was sure that he would have ended up in David’s new vlog for being in a fight. But he gazed into your eyes and they swayed him. Your eyes managed to render him speechless. There were so many emotions going through them. He wanted to know you. Wanted to understand those intense feelings behind those glossy covered eyes. Not only feeling pain, due to the talking you had with him about your ex, but other emotions there too. Almost as if they were lying dormant. And he knew without a doubt that he could uncover those emotions.

So that was why when he woke up earlier than you on purpose, he set out on going to buy some tea for you. As a foundation to try to get you to warm up to him. While you certainly opened up to him last night, he wanted to know sober you.

And when you woke up tangled between some blankets in a house that wasn’t yours, you panicked. Until the memories started to slowly resurface when you looked around. You didn’t hear any noise throughout the room, so you assumed he was sleeping in his room. Which is why that led to you leaving a thank you note for him. Although you understood he had done a lot for you last night, you didn’t think you had enough courage to face him. You weren’t acting like yourself last night. Granted, it was the you that you hoped to be, but didn’t have enough of the courage to actually be. After locating your clothes that you wore last night and your phone which was unsurprisingly dead, you decided to leave.

But what you didn’t expect was for him to be standing at the door when you opened it, keys in hand, bags in the other, and a smile on his face. And you couldn’t help but smile back.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Do you maybe wanna stay for breakfast?”

“Yeah I’d like that very much.”

[risottoneroo]

hey there stranger, pt 9

a/n: im not sorry. yall are gonna be sad

warnings: jealousy, domestic fighting, infidelity

You got up and walked after him, slipping out of your shirt and skirt. The bathroom was as open and airy as his bedroom, with the same floor-to-ceiling windows next to a huge tub. 

Wes was sitting on the edge, running his fingers under the water. He was naked, and moonlight was shining off the planes of his muscles. You ran your finger up the curve of his spine, and he shivered. “Shit, scared me.”

You smiled. “Is the water warm?”

He nodded and stood, kissing you gently. “I figured we could keep the lights off. The moon is bright.”

You smiled and slipped into the warm water. “Sounds good.”

He slipped in beside you, and you leaned into him with a soft hum. You glanced down into the water, putting one hand on his leg. “What are the scars on your calves from?”

He shifted a little and coughed softly. “My brother cut off my legs when I was trying to get him to see reason.”

You nodded. “And who-”

He smiled. “Jolyne sewed them back on.”

You sat up, frowning. “Jolyne isn’t a nurse. How-”

He looked away. “It- It was temporary. Until we saw a doctor.”

You sighed softly. It still didn’t seem right, but who were you to question it?

The next few weeks were blissful. You slept over at his house whenever you could, and he gave you your space when you wanted it. He was a frequent customer at your work, and always visited you on your breaks to bring you lunch or buy you coffee. You had only been dating a month, but your heart was full enough to burst. 

Jotaro was back in town, and he was over at the apartment frequently to help Jolyne. She was working on a Physics degree, and she needed help with math. Jotaro was the only one she’d let help her, even though the rest of you had science degrees. You were still working on your doctorate in oceanography, but you’d had to pause due to lack of funding. 

But you’d taken calculus courses, so it was easy to shout answers at Jolyne. You usually did it faster than Jotaro, who preferred to let her find her own way. You also enjoyed how irritated it made Jotaro, who usually shot you a dirty look. He still scared Hermes, but he didn’t scare you.

You noticed it first when you’d come over to help them solve a particularly tricky derivative. Wes was in the kitchen, making fried chicken, and you’d been helping him until Jolyne called you. She was hunched over her textbook, Jotaro sprawled next to her on the couch. He was taking up the whole couch, and she was in the corner. It was a small couch, but still. You nudged his leg. “Hey, big boy. Let me sit.”

He sat up and pulled his legs in, one hand tipping his hat down. “Sure.”

You sat next to him and reached across for Jolyne’s textbook. She set it in her father’s lap, and you both leaned over to it. You rambled for a bit about the different aspects of the book, until you gestured too far and brushed your hand over Jotaro’s thigh. 

He tensed a little and looked down at you, and you noticed his cheeks were flushed. You swallowed and kept talking, but Wes had seen it. The room felt colder suddenly. Jolyne swallowed, and winced. “My ears keep popping.”

You looked up. “Weird.”

Wes called to you, “Y/N, can you come make the sauce you always do?”

You nodded and got up. “Jolyne, you got it?”

She nodded back, grinning. Jotaro didn’t react as you left. When you got over to Wes, he pulled you into a rough kiss. You giggled and kissed back, and Jolyne shouted, “Get a room!”

You pulled back, gasping a little. “What was that for?”

He chuckled. “Just because I love you.”

His hands lingered on your waist as you got out the ingredients for your sauce. 

Jotaro was over at your place frequently, and you got to talking with him several times about his projects. When he told you about the starfish that had won him his own doctorate, you joked, “Should I call you Doctor Kujo instead?”

His cheeks turned faintly pink, and he swallowed. “Just Jotaro.”

You’d nodded. “Have you ever done any oceanographic surveying?”

Just as Jotaro began to answer, Wes had walked in the door to pick you up. You jumped up and kissed his cheek. “Jotaro was telling me about the coolest shit.”

Wes grinned, kissing you back and straightening his suit. “Oh. Cool.”

Wes was jealous of Jotaro. You knew that. You never considered how he’d deal with it, but it seemed like he’d about reached his breaking point. He dropped heavily into a chair, pulling you down into his lap. “So, Doctor Kujo.”

You settled onto his thighs, swallowing a little. This was too intimate for an everyday conversation. Jotaro looked between you two, his blind eye moving with his sighted one. Wes groaned. “The new scar is cool, but the eye is creepy.”

You gasped. “Wes, you can’t just-”

Jotaro chuckled. “He’s right.”

Wes’s jaw was set. He knew what he’d said was insensitive, but he couldn’t stop himself. “So, can’t the Speedwagon Foundation fix it?”

Jotaro shook his head. “No, they can’t. My eye was split, and they didn’t want to take it. It clouded over like this from scar tissue.”

You tried to shift, but Wes’s grip on you was strong. You pulled away from him. “Wes, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

He blinked. “Sitting with my girl.”

You pushed on his chest. “No, this is some fucked up power play. Let me go, you fucking prick.”

He did as you asked, but he looked angry. “It’s not my fault you’ve been flirting with him. Or that he’s been making eyes at you for as long as we’ve been together!”

You gritted your teeth, standing over him. “And you never thought to, I don’t know, talk to me about it? Rather than pulling this shit? He’s my friend’s dad! I couldn’t do that to her.”

Wes stood too, his eyes hard. “You’re not saying you weren’t flirting.”

You clenched your hands into fists. “You don’t trust me.”

Wes sighed loudly. “I didn’t say-”

You shook your head. “Don’t.”

You walked out, fuming. 

You sat on the steps in front of your building, the humid air hanging still and hot around you. You heard the door open and sighed. “Go home, Wes-”

A voice with slightly more bass cut you off. “I’m not Wes.”

Jotaro dropped onto the step next to you. “I’m sorry.”

You sighed. “I appreciate it, but believe me, it’s not your fault.”

He swallowed. “It is, I think. I-”

You turned to look at him. He was staring down at the pavement. You frowned. “What?”

He turned to look at you. “I know you said you couldn’t do that to Jolyne, but- Wes wasn’t wrong.”

You blinked, and he sighed. “I’m bad at this. I think you’re gorgeous. I always have.”

You flushed, too shocked to speak. He took off his hat, running his fingers through graying black hair. You breathed, “Your hair looks so soft.”

He flushed and looked back down. “I really do like you. You’re-”

You touched his cheek. “Jotaro, don’t. You know I- You know we can’t.”

He swallowed, and suddenly he was very close. His lips were inches from yours, and you could feel his hot breath. He bit his lip, his eyes flicking down to your lips and back up to your eyes. “I know, but-”

You kissed him before he could finish, holding his face in your hands. He grunted softly and kissed back. He was clumsy, but you could feel the need surging in him. His hands pulled you closer by your waist, closer until you were on his lap. You felt his cock against you, hot and hard in his pants, and you pulled back. “I can’t. You know I can’t.”

You got up and put your hand on the door handle back into your apartment. “I’m sorry.”

You went back inside, and started climbing the stairs. Wes met you on the stairwell. “Y/N, I’m so sorry. I don’t- I don’t know what I was thinking. I was so angry, and i was dumb. I-”

You sighed softly and kissed him. “It’s okay.”

He hugged you tight. “Okay.”

You put your head on his shoulder, your mind swirling. Things had just gotten a lot more complicated. 

[popolitiko]

How The New York Times is Visualizing the Smartphone Tracking Industry

By Erin Merkel | April 29, 2020

“I used to look at my phone like, ‘What a fun and convenient trick that I can get an alert when I walk near a pizza place.’ It’s not a fun trick. It’s a business, and you’re the commodity.” — Stuart A. Thompson, The New York Times

Editor’s note: Since this interview was originally published in February, the global coronavirus pandemic has shed further light on how location tracking data is collected and the potential risks of how it’s used. Google is releasing aggregated location data reports to show how people’s movement patterns are changing around the world, while privacy advocates are sounding the alarm about governments’ efforts to obtain more location data from telecom companies.

A phone application company you have never heard of before likely knows where you are right now. That information is being bought and sold right now. Those apps and their partners have joined a lucrative industry at the expense of the privacy of smartphone users. It’s an issue of national security, and it’s virtually unregulated.

The New York Times’ Privacy Project is directing attention to this issue. In Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy, Stuart A. Thompson and Charlie Warzel visualize phones as dots being tracked around the country, from the Pentagon and the White House to the streets of San Francisco.

Storybench spoke with Warzel, a writer-at-large for the Times’ Opinion section, and Thompson, the head of Opinion’s visual journalism department, about why they chose to create these visualizations and the challenges that arose in constructing this data-driven, yet very human, story.

The article opens up to a visualization of blinking dots on a map of different buildings. It looks like it should be in a spy film. Why did you decide to make this the first thing people see?

Stuart A. Thompson: So, the Times had approached this topic one year prior with a news piece and this is building on the foundation of that. We never really had a good sense of scale for how much data there is. The data that we had was of several cities and super dense and covered everything. And we wanted to give people that visceral reaction. It’s not one person or some strangers. It’s everything everywhere. And we had that idea really early on to do a zoom-out of a city and the idea was to start at one dot and keep going, and going, and going, and it would never end. I think that was the idea, to have an emotional connection to something you never get to see.

Charlie Warzel: It is really hard to wrap your mind around how much information is out there, how many phones, and how much is being sent. I think this is one of those stories that had a lot of the words before the visuals were on the page. As soon as I saw what Stuart had made, I was like: “We don’t even really need the words. The visuals tell the story better.”

Did you specifically ask to have these graphics rather than have a picture or video?

Thompson: The way that newsrooms used to be set up, and a lot of them still are, is you have reporters doing interviews and writing text and you have a bunch of graphics people making bar charts who sometimes do more visual stuff. They’re sort of just sitting in the corner of some dark closet in the newsroom (laughs). The Times for the past decade has been trying to marry those two things closer together and that’s the origin of the team that I run, which is the visual journalism team in Opinion.

Rather than making visuals like the window dressing on a nicely reported piece, let’s find the stories and tell the stories that you can’t tell without visuals or can’t tell nearly as well. Like you could probably write this story without any visuals and it would be a good story that people would read, but the impact really comes from seeing it all together. They’re not separate things.

A reporter might think of a headline while they’re writing and we might think of the visual that we want to lead the piece because that affects what is written. In the first text-only drafts of the piece, it had bubble points for that stat and little annotations around it so editors will know what we’re trying to do there. We show them that you have to imagine this idea with these images. Whether it is a video or it’s animated that it is for additional flair but it does pull you in a little bit more gradually.

Could you walk us through how you were introduced to this story and your research process?

Thompson: So the Privacy Project, which is a year-long look at privacy and technology, approached us with the data and they were worried about the implications. They thought it could use someone with a voice to argue for change. We went out to learn about an industry that’s pretty opaque and hard to understand because it’s totally invisible. When you’re on your phone, you can’t see what’s going on. A lot of the business deals are not announced publicly. The connections between different companies and what they do with the data … none of that stuff is that well exposed. It was a huge research undertaking and there was a lot of data work.

Warzel: This is one of those situations where the data led everything. It was the story, and a lot of the reporting was either to confirm things or get more contact for things in the data. This was sort of an interesting reporting process because a lot of the times you’re going and calling up people or going to visit people. We went to Pasadena for one story. It was an inversion of the general reporting process.

Usually you go to people and are like, “Please tell me this thing. I need to know information.” And we actually had all the information and we’re asking people to see it. It was sort of a weird mode. It was data driven in the sense that the data helped provide so much for those visuals, but it was also in the sense that it was giving us leads and anecdotes. The reporting was just trying to run that down and make sure it made sense or it was accurate.

Did you know at the start from looking at the data how you wanted to organize the story? Was it when you started to talk to people that it took form?

Warzel: Before we started talking to people we found in the data, we had the outline of the story. We made our outline based on our research of companies who promote assumptions. We had problems with that. One assumption was that the data is anonymous, and we felt pretty comfortable saying that it was not. [The companies say] it is really hard to keep this data anonymous and secure, and we obviously had the data so how could it be secure?

We had [the data on] Washington, so we knew that national security would be part of our series. It ended up being the second story of the seven. I think we had a pretty good sense of the parameters of it. That Pasadena story didn’t come until pretty late. Only a couple weeks before. We had stories in the main pieces about the people we had, but it seems like there was a little more to say when you isolate a region … The first stories were big high-level stories about business and the industry and the national security apparatus. The data is also a story of communities, and towns, and people living their lives, going to Best Buy and church. There was enough there that we could make a full story out of that. We wanted to zero-in on an area where there was a mix of different stories to tell.

Was there a situation where someone didn’t want anything to do with this story? How did you handle that?

Warzel: That was a major thing in this. It was actually another reason to go to Pasadena. Originally, we didn’t know how many stories it was going to be, but we identified a lot of people through this and wanted to do the due diligence of contacting them and just getting them to talk about the experience of being in this data set. It was people we found at political rallies, people who might have been in government, a whole slew of people who were relatively famous to those with no public profile. Not a lot of people wanted to talk.

A lot of people thought it was maybe like a scam. You’d think coming from a Times’ email address, the whole premise of it sounded kind of outrageous. Like, “We have reason to believe we’ve tracked all your movements. We work for The New York Times.” And a lot of people were like, “Is this an email scam?” Or people [believed they were being] phished. I think that’s part of the reason we zeroed in on a neighborhood and put ourselves to the ground and do the work of knocking on doors of people cold and had that awkward interaction of explaining.

There were people on the ground who didn’t want to talk. There were people in religious organizations or other community organizations who felt vulnerable and didn’t want to talk to the piece. When we were able to show certain people what we had, and communicate what the project was about and it had this advocacy about it, there were a lot more people who were interested.

You included the companies who use data collection, as well as their logos, in the piece. Is that a definitive choice you felt you needed to do?

Thompson: We talked about that quite a bit. I thought it was really important that companies are identified because, for one reason, is that they operate pretty much behind the scenes. They’re literally hidden in the apps you download. I’ve identified like 80 companies that were working around this. We had to feel comfortable with the ones that we include and make sure it was fair, because companies that work around the industry might not engage with what we are talking about in the story. [They] might have other priorities and might have a smaller part in the business, so we ended up plucking the ones we felt most comfortable with.

Warzel: I was a little more on the outside of that process until we got to this point of needing to talk about it, who we wanted, who needed to be in there, sort of talking to the companies and needing to vet them. That was maybe one of the most frustrating parts of the reporting because it really did highlight just how opaque the advertising industry is and the ways they manipulate language in order to shield themselves.

There were a number of companies that, when you contact them and tell them they’re going to be identified in a mobile data location space, they say no, we don’t do that…instead, they say they track some sort of customer journey path. They change the words around so they don’t fit into the category, but it’s effectively the same thing. It’s very difficult because it is so technological. It is so nuanced and varied. A normal consumer doesn’t stand a chance when it comes to that decision.

Because this process was so frustrating, especially with these companies saying what they did, were there any statements you were careful not to make?

Thompson: The other reason we wanted to identify apps is because when you see a bunch of names, they’re all these weird companies. It’s like, “Wait, these are the ones that have my locations?” It’s not like Google, where we understand that they have everything. It’s more like a startup that you don’t know about. We were careful around apps. It’s tough to talk about apps and companies without isolating one. You want to include everything. That’s what people want to know. When we publish this story it’s like, “Okay, what apps do I need to delete?” And it’s really hard to say. That’s part of the whole system. It’s hard to know what they’re doing.

I talked to Foursquare and brought the CEO a list of apps that were receiving locations and how they were disclosing that to people. He said they do get locations, but you know it’s like we can do it under this specific contact and we don’t use it. We keep it briefly and we throw it out … You have to be really careful reporting the industry because it is so complicated and the companies are so adept. The whole basis of their business is to be confusing to people. That’s part of it: the misdirection that goes on with privacy policies and disclosure screens. They control all the language and they try to make it as finely tuned as they can to get everything they want out of it. Overall, it’s a good idea to be careful about how we talk about companies and what they do and feel comfortable it can be understood totally.

Did that influence why it was published in the Opinion’s section?

Warzel: The sources came to the Opinions section because of the Privacy Project and the ongoing work we were doing in this space. Also, because there was a genuine worry about this information, a desire to advocate for change, and pressure lawmakers, tech companies, and the advertising industry to feel the need that there is something wrong here that needs to be addressed urgently. That is the type of work the Opinion section is well suited for.

Sometimes a newsroom is constrained by that lack of opinionated journalism: “You need to decide for yourself what do think about this.” But our piece didn’t do that. It said that we want you to know this is the argument. This is out of control, this is invasive, this needs to change. And in a couple of ways the final piece we publish in the series is an editorial by the editorial board at The New York Times that argues explicitly that lawmakers need to do something.

Americans didn’t sign up for this, and a federal privacy law is needed. That’s just something that a traditional newsroom is not going to be comfortable doing necessarily, and I think all the rigor of reporting, all of the vetting, all the careful use of language and responsibility… that’s the Times’ standard of reporting and fairness. Our ability to advocate as well was the real reason why they came to us to do it in Opinion.

Screenshot: The New York Times

In the Opinion section, you have the ability to advocate for change. What do you hope readers will take away from this article, the project and the information you’re putting out?

Thompson: I hope they’re afraid. Like, I’m afraid (laughs). Maybe change some of their behavior, but that’s not gonna do very much for the world. I think some of this stuff is a slow build, you know? Congress is pretty distracted right now with some other important matters. I don’t think this story is triggering a new law next week, but what I hope is that it pushes the conversation forward on privacy, how important it is, how far companies have gone in a system where privacy is unshackled, and they can do what they want.

You can argue for banning all this stuff, but for people who are like, “I don’t really care. I have nothing to hide”… I think you can have nothing to hide and also have some limits on what these companies can do: how long they can keep it for, how granular it can be — in some circumstances they can get you down to a few feet of your location — and how often they can do it.

My ultimate hope is that people be concerned. Like Cambridge Analytica changes the view of Facebook, this can change the view of this area of how people look at their phone. I used to look at my phone like, “What a fun and convenient trick that I can get an alert when I walk near a pizza place.” That was so innocent a couple of years ago, and I hope that people change their minds after they read this, that is not an innocent thing anymore. It’s not a fun trick. It’s a business, and you’re the commodity.

Warzel: On my end, I hope that people for the first time, at the scale we are able to show it, understand what they are opting into. The onus is not on the consumer to fix this and police themselves. These companies need to be the ones that change. Lawmakers need to be the ones that put that pressure on them, but the service that I’m most happy to provide people is an understanding of what’s going on on their devices without their knowledge. I think in general, it’s so helpful to know what you’re up against.

I look at everything from Cambridge Analytica onward — and I think the Privacy Project is a part of this — as a greater reckoning with our devices and our privacy and the safety of our information. I think that’s a slow building process and one of the biggest tools in that fight is knowing what it is you’re up against. That’s why I’m so glad to see the way Stuart and his team were able to present this, because I think it gives people that understanding to know what they’re participating in.

This article first appeared in Storybench and is reproduced here with permission.

Erin Merkel studies journalism at Northeastern University. Storybench was founded in 2014 at Northeastern University’s Media Innovation graduate program in the School of Journalism as a “cookbook for digital storytelling.”

https://gijn.org/2020/04/29/how-the-new-york-times-is-visualizing-the-smartphone-tracking-industry/