#i know the mimic is around that long but why not make the company merge happen at a point AFTER the original bullshit

[bravevolunteer]

THE MIMIIIIIIIIIC??????

[lilhemmo]

WHY HAS NO ONE ASKED FOR ARRANGED MARRIAGE!AU SWEET PEA?? I would like that and love confessor ;-)

send me two au’s from THIS list + a ship/character 

a/n: please please please love this!! i love arranged marriage au’s lol hope you guys like it too!!

THIS IS OVER 5K WORDS SO BE PREPARED FOR SOME ANGST AND FLUFF AND LOVE 

-

The day you are engaged is the first day you meet your betrothed.

He’s tall with dark hair and deep eyes to match, towering over you as he walks towards you with your father in tow. He’s speaking to him and they’re smiling, which you hope is a good sign.

“My love,” your father reaches out to you and you walk towards him. He grins and you force yourself to mimic the expression, “Please meet Pearson Sweetwater, your betrothed.”

“So nice to meet you,” you force the words from your lips. You swallow thickly, introducing yourself by name even though he probably knows it already. He reaches his hand out, and you accept it. His lips are warm against your knuckles and if this weren’t an arrangement, you might admit that he were handsome and alluring.

But this is an arrangement, so you refuse.

The wedding is set for three months from now, and you are not going to be any part of it. You won’t pick the flowers, or the wine, or even the color scheme. You won’t support this patriarchal event because you don’t agree with it. It’s the least you can do to put your foot down where it counts.

You hardly see Prince Sweetwater in the time between when you were introduced and now, two weeks later.

He catches you off guard one night when you’re tending to your horse, Peaches. You’re brushing out her mane, considering taking her on a ride, when he materializes out of nowhere.

“Milady.”

You gasp, clutching your hands over your heart. You sigh when you make out his frame in the moonlight, relief flooding your shoulders.

“I apologize if I startled you, milady,” he takes a gentle step forward, using his hands as he speaks. His throat bobs as he approaches you, “Your father mentioned the stablehands prepared me a horse to ride for tomorrow. I just wanted to get acquainted so she wouldn’t be startled when I took her out tomorrow.”

“That sounds…” you pause, licking your lips, “reasonable.”

Prince Sweetwater smiles, looking down at his feet, and you take the moment to drink him in and appreciate his physique.

“D-Do you want to go for a ride?” you find yourself asking. “I, uh, I know the best trail.”1

He is quick to answer, “I’d love to.”

You mount your horse and he does the same, being ever so gentle and speaking to her sweetly. He pats her neck and grabs the reigns, holding them firmly in his grasp. You look over the back of your shoulder and smirk.

“Ready?”

Prince Sweetwater nods to answer, a gentle smile on his lips as you both urge your horses to trot forward.

You guide him towards the lake, but just before you get to the clearing that parts to the shore, you dig your shins into your horse and Peaches begins to gallop. You laugh to yourself as the wind whips through your hair, breeze chilling your skin.

You pull up on the reigns to heed your horse by the lakeshore. You turn Peaches so you can watch as Prince Sweetwater struggles to tame his horse into going at the speed he would like. You’re laughing as he approaches, his hair a mess and his cheeks bright red from embarrassment.

“I should hope that this will not be how our entire marriage will be,” he says, breathless, with a smile on his lips.

You shrug, a light smirk tugging your mouth skyward, “What can I say? I like to keep my company on their toes.”

You both slide off your horses and tie them to a nearby tree. Together you walk down the lakeshore, watching as the moonlight glints off the water. You’re silent for the first few minutes, but it is the Prince who breaks the quiet.

“I’m sorry about all of this,” he turns his head to look at you, a wild curl hiding his forehead. Prince Sweetwater licks his lips, “I hate that this is how we met. I wanted to come and visit sooner, I didn’t want-”

“It’s okay,” you reach out and touch his arm. You shake your head, as if that will give him further affirmation, “You’re a good man, Pearson.”

“You can, uh,” he stutters as his cheeks grow redder, “you can call me Sweet Pea.”

-

“I have been standing here for so long,” You whine, batting your arms around just enough to make your point but not enough to pierce your skin with the pins holding the fabric in place. “This is miserable.”

Your seamstress scoffs, “Milady, this is no way to treat your staff. Do not be ungrateful.”

“I am not ungrateful, just particularly unkind,” you sneer. “This is an affair of the patriarchy, not of me. Why don’t you have my father and the Prince sit through this miserable affair?”

The seamstress, Julianne, chuckles at your outburst, “Would you like to see the Prince in a wedding dress?”

You roll your eyes, “Does that mean I get to wear the pants?”

Instead of antagonizing you further, Julianne returns to her work and may stab you with her needles accidentally on purpose.

You cannot help it when you make your way to the kitchen. The servants there will make you anything you like, and right now you would like nothing more than a piece of dense cake and a large cup of fresh milk.

“That kind of day, huh?”

Sweet Pea’s voice makes your throat bob, and you almost spat out your milk. He smiles as he joins you at the table, leaning across it. The servants try to offer him something to eat, but he waves them off with two fingers in the air.

“I have been poked and prodded as if I were some sort of rat under experimentation,” you grumble. You stab another piece of your cake and belligerently shove it between your lips with a scowl.  

“If it makes you feel any better, I had to spend the entire day with your father, discussing how to merge our kingdoms,” Sweet Pea rubs his face with his hands and you can’t help the smile that splits your lips. “Talk about a difficult afternoon.”

You reach out and grab his hand in your own. Over the past few weeks, the two of you have developed some sort of camaraderie, an understanding of sorts. It keeps you sane to discuss your days with one another, as no one outside of the two of you could ever understand how the other feels.

“I would rather be in meetings about how to feed our people and how to keep the servants warm at night than be sewn into a dress and berated with peonies versus lilies.”

“Lilies,” he looks you in the eyes. His cheeks burn but he speaks anyway, “I-I like lilies.”

Biting your lip, you match his gaze, “Lilies it is.”

-

You thread your arm through his as you walk through the garden. It’s warm out, so you’re wearing a lighter gown that is gauzy and flows with the breeze. Your hair is up, allowing the wind to send a chill down your neck.

“I finally understand your pain,” Sweet Pea tilts his head downward to you, “I’ve had to do my fittings, and it’s misery.”

“Well, I’m glad I have someone to share it with.”

The two of you walk further through the garden, and Sweet Pea pauses for a moment to pluck a bright yellow flower from the bush. He turns, facing you and a bright smile tugs on his lips. He reaches up and brushes a stray lock of hair from your eyes and in the process, tucks the flower behind your ear.

You blush, “Thank you, your Highness.”

“Oh, stop that.” Sweet Pea runs his thumb down your jaw bone. He can’t fight the smirk, “You know I hate that, especially from you.”

“What was it I said the night on the lake?” You lean into his side and allow him to wrap an arm around your midsection. “I like to keep my company on their toes. I can’t let you believe I will make your life easy, my prince.”

“At least I won’t be wed to someone without a brain.”

Sweet Pea holds you close, so close that neither of you notice the group of royals looking on from their balconies, observing the budding relationship between two betrothed.

-

“They are starving, father!” You shout, your voice ringing out in the castle hallway. Your cheeks are stained with tears as you cry out for your people. “We cannot sit idly by while the neighboring kingdom is offering an alliance, and food! We must do som-”

“You will head your place, child.” Your father’s hand shakes by his side and you wonder for a fleeting moment if he may strike you across the face for your belligerence. 

“I will not stand and watch while my people suffer,” you seethe before unceremoniously stomping out of the room.

Sweet Pea finds you later, pacing in the stables. Your cheeks and eyes are bright red from your tears and he feels a small piece of his heart break at your appearance.

“Darling,” he squats beside you and cups your cheek between his fingers, “What are your tears for?”

You swipe at your cheeks and sniffle, “My father will not accept the truce with Edenburg. His ego will not allow it, even though they offer the resources that our people need.”

“Edenburg would storm the halls and take the crown,” Pea smoothes your hair. He smiles sadly, “A king could not afford to provide an alliance to Edenburg. They would steal our land, our people, out from under us.”

“Look at you - we’re not even married and you’re already speaking as if you’re the king.”

Sweet Pea scoffs at your comment and instead of snapping at you, he kisses the crown of your head. He sighs, “Maybe we could expand the farming land? There are unexplored plots to the east and the south. They are probably rich with fertile soil, as the mountains would provide minerals in the run off from the heavy rains.”

“I cannot watch another one of my people suffer because we cannot provide,” you say with a firmness even you are surprised with. You muster a steady voice, “We sit, high and mighty in the castle with our food and drink, while they struggle to find clean water and some bread. We can provide for them, but we are too busy stuffing ourselves to pay attention!”

“Come here.” Sweet Pea opens his arms and you find solace there. His lips are buried in your hair and your arms find their way around his midsection. You sob into his shoulder, the sadness of your people a contagion as it seeps into your bones and culls itself in the form of your tears.

The next day, Sweet Pea is at your room early in the morning. He knocks on the door, asking if he may enter your chambers. You know how this will look, what with the wedding still weeks away, but you don’t care. You don’t plan to bed him.

“Get dressed, but not in your usual attire.” Pea is breathless as he speaks, his own clothing confusing you. He is wearing generic brown pants and a green tunic, nothing special, nothing telling of his status. His hair is mussed, his dark eyes shining.

You do as he says, a simple dress adorning your frame and flat shoes on your feet. You pull your hair back into a braid and don’t bother with any powders on your face. Sweet Pea offers you his hand and in haste, the two of you make your way to the stables and ride your horses off into town.

“What are we doing?!” You screech as you breach the castle gates. The guards let you by, on Sweet Pea’s authority, and you’re riding down the trail into town before you know what’s happening.

“I packed the horses with supplies,” Sweet Pea motions to the backs of your steeds. Surely, they are packed down with satchels and baskets, filled to the brim with food and water.

He smiles over his shoulder, and you feel your heart beating quickly in your chest.

You visit houses, attempting to remain anonymous so there is no attempt on either of your lives. You give out food and water, and commune with the commoners. They tell interesting stories of the town and the wedding soon to be had for the princess who lives alone in the castle.

Before too late, it is evening and the air has cooled to a balm, settling on your face and neck. You are around a fire with the fellow villagers, the meat and fruit you brought to them being passed to one another and shared - as it should be. 

“I hear that the Prince is handsome,” a young lady pipes up, a bashful blush on her cheeks.

You nod in agreement, deciding to mess with your companion, “Yes, I hear that he has beautiful eyes and a kind heart. The princess is lucky.”

“I hear that they are in love,” another teen girl speaks. She brings her bowl of soup down from her lips, “I hear that it was once an arranged marriage, but now they are so smitten with one another, they spend every waking moment together. How romantic?!”

One of the younger ladies looks to you, “Do you believe in true love?”

You lick your lips, your heart in your throat. You take a deep breath and force a smile, “I used to. My father and my mother were very much in love, but she fell ill. Had she not been courted to his side, she might not have died. She may have been able to live on and love another.”

“But she loved your father!”

“And it killed her,” you quip, your eyes stinging with tears.

Sweet Pea goes to grab for your hand, but you are standing to your feet and mounting your horse before he can react.

-

The wedding is a mere week away and you feel more overwhelmed than ever. You’re up to your neck in last minute decisions, none of which you really want to make, and everyone is looking to you. You want to crumble, but your status and your ego won’t let you. 

You’re tasting desserts to be had at the after-party when he finally notices the tears brimming in your eyes and the paleness of your cheeks.

“Everybody out!”

The servants scatter in mere seconds, leaving the dining hall bare save for you and the Prince.

Your facade breaks and you sob into your hands.

“We’re getting married, Sweet Pea!” You cry, your voice shaken. You sniffle and swipe at your face, “This is all for our wedding, to unite our kingdoms and build an empire.”

“Yes?” Pea phrases the word as a question as he slides onto the bench beside you, thighs touching. He pushes your hair from your face and gently drags your hands away so you can no longer hide your expressions.

“Do you not want to fall in love and marry her?” Your eyes are honest as you beg him for the truth. “Do you not wish to have your true love?”

“My princess,” he starts, a gentle smile on his lips, “I am beholden to you in a binding that I cannot break. You are my dearest friend, and I would not wish to have anyone else by my side as we go into this next chapter of our lives.”

“That’s just it, Pea!” You shout and stand to your feet. You snort out a sarcastic laugh, rolling your eyes, “I don’t want it to just be the next chapter of our lives! I want to love the father of my children. I want to love my life partner. I don’t want to throw away my entire life for someone to halfheartedly stand by my side and call me wife. I want someone to want me, to love me!”

 You spit on the ground, “I cannot take this any longer.”

Before you allow him to speak, you are gone between the double doors.

-

Sweet Pea has never felt fear in the same way that he does now. It is the day of the wedding ceremony and he is in the most uncomfortable of fabrics. His stockings are itching and his shoulder pads are stiff. He is stood at the edge of the alter, awaiting your arrival that he fears may never come.

You surprise him, though, with both your appearance and your beauty.

The ceremony proceeds as expected, predestined vows are shared and wine slips down your throats. You take one another by the hand, and the fated words are spoken by the priest.

“Do you take this Princess to be your lawfully wedded wife?” he asks, turning to Sweet Pea.

He is sturdy, as always, and he does not hesitate as he replies with his lines. He then takes the ring - the most stunning of rings - and slips it onto your finger. He gives you a look, as if telling you that this is your last chance to turn it all down and go your separate ways. And you know that he is honest and true, that he would let you go without a second glance and never hold you accountable for whatever happened next.

You interrupt the priest’s words with your own - “Of course I do, now give me the ring.”

The crowd erupts into laughter and the ring bearer places the gold band in your shaking fingers. You slide the ring onto Sweet Pea’s large fourth finger, your hands hovering over one another for a moment too long to just be an arranged marriage.

The priest ducks his head and says the final words: “You may now kiss the bride.”

You suppose you should have practiced this part, but Pea does something to surprise you. He takes you by the jaw and turns your cheek so his lips just barely touch the corner of your mouth.

Everyone sitting in the pews begins to clap, throwing flower petals as the priest declares you husband and wife.

It is not until later, when you are alone in your chambers, that you ask him why he did it.

“I want you to have your first real kiss with the person you love,” he speaks honestly. “I couldn’t take that away from you. Even if it means it isn’t me.”

-

The two of you share a room, share a bed, but you do not share the same body, not yet. Sweet Pea sleeps on the very edge of the bed, keeping his warmth and his body as far from you as he can without falling on the floor. He respects you - he waits for you to dress before using the facilities. He does not sleep in the nude and he normally wakes before you, so you’re used to being alone when you open your eyes first thing in the morning.

This morning you decide to go exploring. It has been eight months since the two of you were wed, and yet nothing has changed. You have not been declared Queen, your father has not stepped down. The tension between your country and the Sweetwater’s has ebbed, which was the entire point of your arrangement, so you’re delighted.

You pass through the halls, greeting your servants as you go by. They smile at you and wave in return. You’re not questioned as to where you’re going, but you know in your soul where your journey will take you.

The pads of your feet take you to the stables, where you see Peaches perfectly groomed and ready to take out for a morning trot.

You’re surprised to see Sweet Pea in the stall next to Peaches, but his back is to you. You reach your hand up to get his attention, but realize that he’s speaking to someone else. Instead of interrupting, you duck under the nearest stable wall and wait until he’s gone.

“I-I can’t just-”

“You can, and you will, Sweetwater.”

The voice is oh-so familiar. It is the voice of Sarah, your closest maiden. She is the one who brings you the doctor when you are sick or sneaks you an extra dessert after dinner is over. She is the one who ends your fittings early and always picks you the most suitable fabrics. She is your most trusted maiden, the one who you would do anything for. 

Why is she meeting with Sweet Pea?

“I love you,” Sweet Pea grunts out. “I love you, and I don’t want to live my life without you. I cannot stand to be under the sheets without your body to keep warm, to give me shelter. I cannot continue on without knowing that you will stand by my side and be my partner in life, and in love. I have been in love with your soul and your spirit since the day I met you, and I cannot contain it any longer. Will you be my wife?”

You didn’t expect your heart to drop from your chest to your feet. You didn’t think that you would spill over with tears fat enough to coat your cheeks. You didn’t believe that you would begin to shake until you can’t tell which finger is which in the blur.

The ferocious side of you wants to turn around and rip them limb from limb. How dare they conspire behind your back to have a secret marriage? Sweet Pea had all but given you an out the day of your marriage, had he not thought he could do the same?

You push yourself away from the stable and force your legs to carry you up the hill and back to your room. 

That is where you stay, that is where you never leave.

Sweet Pea is no longer allowed in your quarters. There is a secret chamber that is attached to your own, and you have Elizabeth, an older maiden, lead him to it. You have the servants move his clothing and bathing materials to the secret chamber, getting rid of anything that reminds you of him.

He beats on your door the first day, begging you to let him in, to tell him what is bothering you.

Instead, you become the silent princess.

Word spreads that the princess has fallen ill, which is why no one has seen her in three months. Rumors sprout from different mouths, some believing that you have found a new lover, some believing that you are highly contagious, and others believing that you’ve been murdered or taken your own life in your grief.

Only you know the truth - you have fallen ill to the sickness of unrequited love.

Months pass, and you really do feel like you’ve begun to catch an illness. You decide that you must get out in the sunshine, so you wake early the next morning and sneak down from your room to the stables. You push away the feelings that wind like a vice around your heart, remembering the last scene that played before your eyes when you were here.

“Peaches, you are my only friend now. This is a horrid place, full of liars and harlots,” you swing your leg over to mount your horse. You smack her on the backside and she carries you to your favorite place, the only place that can calm your errant mind.

You spend all day at the lake, soaking in the sun and dipping your toes in the water. You have cried until you have no tears left, your energy sucked out of your very soul until you find a rejuvenation here at the lake.

Finally, you fall asleep against the tree trunk, ankle-deep in the lake water with Peaches napping a few feet to your left. There is a book in your lap, but you forgot where you were minutes ago when your eyes began to grow heavy.

When you wake, the cool of night has taken over and the moon casts a shadow against the lake. Your toes are wrinkled and your horse is restless, but you know you must wait until later to go back. Others will spot you if you leave too soon.

You return to your novel, but your concentration is broken when Peaches begins to neigh and whinny, her eyes off in the distance. You grab the knife you stashed in your satchel, unsheathing it as you get ready to use it.

“Slow down, Princess,” the smooth voice speaks and your heart breaks all over again, “it’s just me.”

“Get away from me!” you shout, shoving the knife in his direction. “Do you not understand?”

“I understand that you’re hurt,” Sweet Pea takes a delicate step forward, his hands in the air. “What I don’t understand, is why.”

“I am not beholden to you, Prince,” you shout. The knife shakes in your hand. “I do not owe you an explanation and neither do you deserve one!”

“Darling,” his voice is sad, heavy, “please don’t do this. Please talk to me.”

“You don’t deserve me,” you shake your head. You swallow thickly, tears forming in your eyes and dripping down your cheeks. “You don’t deserve to have me beholden to you on behalf of your people. You got what you wanted, and now I am your slave!”

“Princess, I don’t know what you speak of. I don’t understand. Please help me to understand.”

You can’t help it that your heart softens at the sight of him. His eyes are so deep, his hands so inviting. You miss his hugs, you miss him holding you around the shoulders and burying a kiss in your hair.

“Please put down the knife,” he implores you, his voice breaking. “You don’t want to hurt me, I know that. I know you’re hurting, but you don’t want to hurt me. That is not who you are.”

“You don’t know me!” You snap, gripping the knife even harder. “You never knew me! You used me to get what you wanted, to get what your kingdom needed and then you began your own personal affairs. Why shouldn’t I run you through right here, right now?!”

“For one, that knife is too small to run me through. You would cause some damage, but you wouldn’t kill me.” Sweet Pea takes another step forward and daringly wraps your wrist in his fingers, slowly prying the weapon from your hand. “You’re hurting, please let me help you.”

“I don’t want your help,” you whimper feebly. You shake your head, tears still falling, “I want to be free of this burden.”

“What burden, darling?” Sweet Pea asks as he tosses the knife across the meadow. “Please help me to understand. I’ve missed you.”

“Do not lie to me,” you seethe through your teeth. You glare up at him, “Do not pretend that you do not occupy another’s bed. I gave you that chamber as a gift, and you dare flaunt it in my face?”

“Another’s-wh-what?” Sweet Pea flounders to put the pieces together as your sadness chips away to anger. It builds in your stomach, a fire being stoked in your belly. The heat crawls up your spine and flushes your cheeks.

“Did you ever think that we could love each other, Pea?” Your tough facade finally breaks and you let a sob seep out of your mouth. “I thought that I could push past the lack of natural love born between two people and see that I had to fulfill duties for my kingdom. I thought that I could learn to love you, that I could be okay with our arrangement. I thought that-”

You lick your lips and look up at him, meeting his glassy eyes with your own. You stand strong, shoulders square and jaw defined, “Was any of it real, Sweets? Any of the conversations and the hand-holding and the secret-confiding?! Or did you string me along until you no longer needed me? Was I but a means to an end?”

“What are you talking about?!” Sweet Pea grasps you by the shoulders, holding you square in front of him. “All I’ve ever done is love you!”

“Don’t lie! Do not lie or I will have you beheaded for it.”

Sweet Pea’s lips part in a cry and he drops down to his knees in front of you. He grips the backs of your thighs in desperation, tears of his own traveling a path down his cheeks and dripping onto the ground below.

“I’ve never lied to you,” he speaks. “I knew from the moment I laid eyes on you that I was beholden to you, even if not of my own volition. My heart took one look at you and decided that you were the end for me. I would die by your side, chained to you at the soul.”

Sweet Pea ducks his head against your stomach, burying his face into the fabric of your dress. He sniffles, and when he speaks his voice is muffled by the clothing, “I tried my hardest to keep from loving you because I couldn’t bear it if you didn’t love me back, but the more time I spent with you, the harder I began to fall.”

Looking up at you, he continues, “I fell and I fell and I fell and then we were wed. I wanted to kiss you so feverishly that day, but I had to restrain myself because I knew you did not love me. How could you? I came into your kingdom, stole your hand in marriage, and forced you into a life of captivity. You are a free spirit, unable to be tied down by anyone, even me. I could not bear it if I was the reason that you felt chained.”

The rawness of his voice makes your soul ache and you cannot stop the tears as they fall relentlessly down your cheeks. He takes a short, labored breath and continues on bearing his heart to you.

“I wanted you to love me so badly that I wanted to propose to you like a proper lover,” he admits quietly. “I-I wanted to give you my own ring, a ring I received from my great grandmother.”

Sweet Pea withdraws a ring from his pocket, producing a simple gemstone slotted against a silver band in front of your eyes. Your lip trembles and you stutter, “B-But Sarah-”

“It all makes sense now.”

He laughs, standing to his feet, “I was practicing on Sarah. I needed to run through my speech before I went to the castle to speak to you. I had a whole evening planned. I made us a picnic basket to take to the lake - I even helped Janie in the kitchen to cook your favorite tarts.”

Pea’s face falls as he turns the ring in his fingers, “And then I found out that you were banishing me, refusing to see anyone. A piece of my soul died that day when you refused to let me in.”

You reach up to cup his cheeks in your hands, “You were going to propose to me? After we’d already been wed?”

“I know it’s foolish,” he admits, “but I wanted us to have our own story. And I love you.”

Fresh tears surface and you wrap your arms around his neck, holding him close to you. You swallow thickly and sniffle before whispering, “I love you too, Pea. I-I’m so sorry I didn’t come to you before.”

“Doesn’t matter now, my love,” he nudges his nose along your jawline, leaving a fire everywhere he touches. “All I need to ask you now is…”

Sweet Pea drops to one knee, the ring in his hand. Before he can muster up the words, you’re tackling him to the ground and kissing him senseless.

Your lips are on his relentlessly. His hands hesitate, but soon he is gripping you by the hips and kissing you back with fervor. Your teeth knock together but you don’t care how sloppy this kiss is. It is long overdue.

“I want to be your life partner,” Pea whispers against your neck, kissing over the hot flesh there. He drags his tongue and teeth down your shoulder to your collarbone, murmuring along the way. “I want to stand by your side and see you as my equal. I want you to be mine, body, soul, mind. I want every piece of you.”

You gasp as his teeth are bared against your skin, sending a shock of excitement down your spine. He smirks with his lips still at the crook of your jaw, “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

Your hands are in his hair, bringing him back to your lips so you can kiss him again. It’s deeper this time, and you wonder if you’ll ever want to come back up for air.

Thankfully, you have the rest of your life to figure it out.

[bluemoonpunch]

⭐The BTS Rap Line Triad - Connection and Relationship - Tarot Reading

[This reading covers the relationship dynamic between Kim Namjoon, Min Yoongi, and Jung Hoseok on a subconscious and energetic level. This particular reading has been altered to fit three people and can cover romantic, platonic, and familial relationships and is designed to put a connection between three individuals into perspective, showcasing what is gained from the relationship as well as the highest potential of it. For this reading in particular, I use 2 decks — the Rider-Waite Tarot deck and the Linestrider Tarot Deck. This spread is an original design by me. This reading lasted 3 hours.]

This reading was performed on November 29, 2018.

Pre-Reading:

The only way I am going to be able to get through this reading is if I go through the whole damn thing and explain the Soul Body and how that shit all worked out because the way they worked together there is nearly identical to how they work now on a soul level, which reverberates through to their conscious connection. Plus I had gotten more questions from when I posted that channeled nonsense about how the timelines were folding over and that’s why things seemed like they were getting worse or whatever, so I thought I could try to clear things up here.

Obviously, to explain the Soul Body, i have to start with Namjoon disconnecting himself from the source energy that they were getting their transmissions from, which for a long time I did not fully understand how that happened either, especially since they were still able to make ports and whatever else, but that channeled post pretty much threw it all at me to explain it. 

I have drawn pictures of what I was shown to try and make it a bit clearer so, hopefully, it will make things easier to understand.

-full reading with photos under the cut-

So, this would be Namjoon’s shit. 

The bottom circles are his layers of consciousness — the outer layer being the conscious mind, the middle being the subconscious and the very small inner circle would be the unconscious mind. 

Directly connected to the unconscious mind would be Namjoon’s energy center, his Higher Self, which is what makes up the Soul Body. The bit above the energy center, the circle with the satellite looking thing is… I mean, I guess it is pretty much a satellite. In a very weird and not accurately described way, it is like the Higher Self’s Higher Self, or the energy center’s energy center. it is the “remnant” of the old body when they were existing as one. As long as they, all seven of them, are connected to the remnant, they are perfectly in sync, in balance, and able to connect with their source energy.

In the beginning, I kept saying that Namjoon was consciously disconnected from the energy center, from his soul, from his Higher Self, but that was not really the case, which is kind of obvious, but you know… The disconnect was actually between the energy center and the remnant, which was caused by a “distancing” between the unconscious mind and the energy center. The line there was never broken, it was just being stretched.

So, pretty much on a conscious level he stopped trusting himself, stopped listening to his gut feelings, stopped fully living through the soul, and that caused him to distance himself from his subconscious mind, which distanced him from the unconscious mind, and so on. 

As things got further and further away from each other, those energy lines connecting them, just like the energy lines between people, got dimmer as the vibration started to lower. Then the energy center completely broke off from the remnant because it was not able to hold that vibration anymore.

This caused the entire Soul Body to start shifting out of balance. I understand now that in the natural state of the Soul Body everything will always ripple down through each energy center, so it was like a domino effect with everyone else. From what I can tell, it took about two months for everyone to be disconnected and then another two months for things to start manifesting on the conscious level.

So, with Namjoon’s Guides — each of them have multiple, but there are three separate Guides that direct and watch over them collectively, they’re more focused on the Soul Body — they started trying to “hand deliver” transmissions, pretty much filling in for that source energy and directly administer the transmission to the energy center, but even then it would only get to the unconscious mind. 

At that point, it was completely on Namjoon to be open to receiving them subconsciously and consciously, and he was not. He was still getting them, but he was not actually taking them in with the right intent.

There was still unconscious knowledge of how and where to put in the ports, but at that point, it was almost completely unconscious, especially with group music because that’s is where the most self-doubt was at the time. He was more likely to take in his own understanding with his own personal work, which is why Mono had more transmissions than the first two group albums in the Love Yourself series. That’s also why they were stronger as well because they were being channeled directly through the layers of the conscious mind.

For the group work, which is what those three Guides care most about, Namjoon was completely unreachable. Again, he still had an unconscious awareness of where and how to put the ports in the music, but none of them were being filled because he was not channeling it, he was disconnected. 

it is like getting a bowl out of the cupboard but refusing to put cereal in it because you think there’s a mouse in the box, so you just leave the bowl there and wait for someone else to get cereal so you can be sure there’s no mouse. That kind of filtering pretty much distorted a lot of what they were able to get through and made it extremely weak.

Now, when the Soul Body started to go out of balance everything in it started to shift. I know now that the positions of the energy centers in the Soul Body were actually mirroring the soul/energy connection between them within the layers of consciousness. The only difference was that based on the positions of the energy centers, their purpose, and their own individual connections, the lines that were connecting them started to “turn off” and be used as anchors to literally hold each other in place because they were starting to drift. So, half the lines were energy exchange and the other half were empty and just being used to hold everyone in place.

The remnant dropped down to the very center of the body and also acted as a tether which put them in this weird position of trying to pull themselves closer together and also trying to keep themselves from getting too close. If they got too close they could have started to merge because of how close that remnant was.

Compared to the Energy Body, they were way more imbalanced. In the Energy Body every line between them is being used to exchange energy and because of that, they are all an equal distance apart. it is a perfect little structure. The Soul Body, while trying to mimic that balance, was already extremely unstable because the vibration, it is own collective energy, had dropped so much. So, there were like a million things wrong on the inside and that kind of gave birth to the three-way exchange at the head of the body that I lovingly referred to as the “Rapline Triad.”

Out of every other position and exchange in the body at that time, this was the most complex one.

As I have mentioned many times before, Hoseok is extremely receptive to cosmic shifts to the point where he can experience personal retrogrades and be mentally affected by planetary transits. it is part of how they balance for him to be grounded into the physical energy of physical bodies even if he is not consciously receptive. His body will take the energy in which is why it affects his physical and mental state. 

Because of his ability to receive energy from the planetary bodies, half of their collective Guides started to literally send transmissions to Hoseok by bouncing them off of the Moon and Mars. They could have used other planetary bodies, but I only ever saw those two being used.

So, half of their Guides were focused on that while the other half was forming the net around the Soul Body which was meant to help balance the energies inside while also providing protection while they were disconnected. 

The connection to the source energy allows the body to vibrate at a frequency that literally cannot be touched by anything beneath that frequency or vibration, so once they disconnected and everything got all wacky, they became extremely vulnerable to attack and manipulation, which was already being allowed to occur on a conscious level through Namjoon as well as the company.

So, try to keep that straight. Half of their collective Guides were projecting transmission off the planets while the other half was completely wrapped up in projecting this net around them, which means in terms of guidance and keeping things on track with the souls, it was left up to the energy centers, their Higher Selves, to be in complete control of the conscious layers, which was already extremely difficult to do.

The transmissions that were being sent through Hoseok’s energy center were not transmissions for the collective, they were frequencies specifically to trigger a reconnect, which is why this energy would cycle through the three of them rather than going through Hoseok and immediately dropping to the remnant of the Soul Body. 

You can think of Hoseok’s energy center as a defibrillator at this point in time. It was basically these very raw frequencies, literally like pure electricity versus the radio waves that were coming through from the source energy. 

The problem with that was that these raw frequencies, because they were being bounced off the planets and being directed at Hoseok on an unconscious level with all the other energy he gets from cosmic shifts, and then being delivered to the energy center, they were picking up a lot of “dust” and losing a lot of the vibration. 

So, once it got to Hoseok’s energy center it would be filtered. One of Hoseok’s jobs in the Soul Body is to filter things going in and coming out, but in this situation, because of the energy centers lower vibration and instability, it was very rough on him to actually be doing that, even on a conscious and physical level.

Once the frequencies were filtered through Hoseok they were sent directly over to Yoongi’s energy center which was straight across the way.

Out of everyone, Yoongi always seemed to be the most coherent out of all of them, even when he was working with Jimin’s energy center to restructure the Soul Body and heal Hoseok later on, and that’s because his layers of consciousness were all connected and he pretty much never experienced that distancing from his own energy center or Higher Self. 

On a very conscious level, he could feel that imbalance, and he was very, very sensitive to those shifts, especially collective shifts that were going through around the time of Tear where he was starting to experience the ascension symptoms which would have him wavering in and out of the connection. 

All very complicated, but it is just important to know that Yoongi was always receptive.

Yoongi was acting as a “translator” which is pretty close to what he does in the Soul Body, but it is more of a translation of concept to an image rather than code to words. 

Literally, the first time I was shown this it just looked like waves of frequency being sent to Hoseok, and then being converted to binary code (1’s and 2’s rather than 1’s and 0’s), which Yoongi would translate into plain words and send them off to Namjoon’s energy center, who would do some fancy shit with it and just send it down to the remnant.

The thing with that is it really seemed like Namjoon’s energy center was not doing anything other than being used to send things down to the remnant, so mostly, while Namjoon was disconnected, it was just Yoongi and Hoseok that were manning the head. 

Actually, now that I think about it, every time I was in the Soul Body, even recently when I did Namjoon’s solo reading for December, it seemed like he, or his energy center, was not really all there. Like in terms of communication and kind of having a mind, I guess. Which leads me to believe, as he is in the position of the Crown Chakra, his energy center is just a conduit. Which would line up with what I got in his Elemental Alignment reading where I said he was born already integrated with his Higher Self. 

So, pretty much that energy center is the conduit, Namjoon himself is his Higher Self (kind of, at least in terms of integration), and the other guys are his layers of consciousness that he works through. Kind of.

Something that was shown to me this time around was that the frequency, or the code, or the words that Namjoon was receiving was actually being split in two. 

One half was being sent down to the remnant while the other was being projected out of Namjoon’s energy center towards Yoongi’s conscious layer. Why was Yoongi’s energy center not just doing that on its own? I have no idea. I am sure it has something to do with whatever Namjoon’s energy center was doing, followed by a “path of least resistance” kind of thing, but I do not know.

So, Yoongi was channeling some of the transmissions but it just so fucking happens that a lot of his work that he was doing was getting rejected for albums around this time, so a lot of them did not even make it to the public… which is interesting.

The other half of the transmissions would be sent down to this middle point between Yoongi and Hoseok where — how I was seeing it — Fire energy was being produced. 

There’s this whole thing about the Soul Body not being able to or allowed to carry too much Fire energy specifically because it would raise the vibration too much and they would pretty much move too fast. Like them being around for a few years before blowing up and then having a very steady rise in popularity was exactly how it was supposed to happen. If they had gone up too fast they would have pretty much burnt out and would have not been able to carry out what they are meant to do due to a lack of development with the public connection as well as an inability to handle the pressure mentally… which I guess was still a thing since Namjoon disconnected due to pressure, but that’s okay.

So, this Fire energy was being produced in this funny little space because the Soul Body on its own was not carrying the right level of vibration anymore, so this energy had to be created or built up. 

There was a risk to this as the Fire energy, this very high-frequency energy, could throw things off or make things move too fast. So, Jimin and Jin, who were across from each other just like Hoseok and Yoongi, but very far apart, would push and pull that energy once it got to the remnant, which was between them.

You can imagine them as a machine pulling hot syrup into a taffy. They were stabilizing it and turning it into a “solid” form that could then be passed down slowly, very slowly, to Taehyung and Kook who were at the bottom, sitting across from each other, but very, very close together, to the point where they were almost working as one.

The energetic attack that affected Hoseok came through a literal hole in the net around the body that was there to let those transmissions from the planets get into him. Low-vibe nonsense literally infiltrated that space, fucked with the frequency, and pretty much loaded Hoseok with Fire. Like they were burning his energy center, loading it with so much energy that it was starting to rip and break apart. At least that’s what it looked like happened to it. It was quite graphic when I actually got to see it during the Soul Body Healing process.

This severely affected Hoseok on a conscious and physical level and it made it very difficult for that process of exchange to continue on, and things became even more unbalanced as Jin and Jimin, the book holders of the bodies on all levels, were completely focused on trying to balance and cool down that energy in the remnant.

So, that was where they were at when I first started getting things about the Soul Body back in April of 2018. It was “the wobble” that I talked about in the original OT7 2018/2019 Outlook reading at the very beginning. It was the reason they were not all able to integrate their Higher Self when they were meant to around June or July. 

It was all a thing and very dramatic and I spent about 2 months with @lunar-lepus trying to figure shit out because… shit was complicated.

While that manipulation was happening there, it was just affecting the guys on a conscious level. Not a lot, but enough to make things slightly off and weird, especially for Hoseok who I am pretty sure was experiencing physical symptoms from this.

Then all hell broke loose when the low vibe manipulation dropped into down Taehyung’s energy center where the projected energy of the body, the frequencies that meet the public, and it started pumping out insane amounts of this extremely distorted energy. 

It was a literal psychological manipulation through public perception. 

Around this time a lot of rumors and controversies started popping up and I kept telling people, especially after the healing, to not focus on it because it was manipulation and feeding into it causes it to take much longer to die out. 

No one listened of course. 

Also, the same thing is happening now because of the timelines folding over and that energy is being presented again, but it is very hollow on it is own. it is only being upheld by public perception, there’s no manipulation to it now.

Taehyung’s energy center being attacked is what spurred the healing because, from my perspective, it seemed like that was going to be the downfall of the body, which would be the downfall of the group as they would literally start to fade out the public eye as they wouldn’t be carrying the right frequency anymore, which would just fuck everything up with their job in the ascension process. Again, it was very dramatic.

But the healing was done and everything was fine after that, but it did take a couple of months for the body to be fully restructured, even longer for Hoseok’s energy center to be completely healed, and then a little while longer, literally around late October for everything to manifest on the conscious level completely. 

The ports were filled through the Answer album and, of course, a lot more transmissions came out through Mono.

So, this is what the Soul Body looked like when it was all out of whack and under manipulation:

And this is what it looks like now in its proper form:

Very different.

The structure underneath the current Soul Body is that energetic connection, or soul connection between the seven of them. it is very similar to what the previous state of the Soul Body looked like, but it is much more evenly distributed and balanced between all of them in terms of how energy is exchanged. In this Soul Body, everything ripples through from top to bottom and is then spread out through the unconscious minds of the individuals, which has them perfectly in balance with each other.

Namjoon, Yoongi, and Hoseok are in the “area of reception”, Jimin and Jin are in the “area of balance,” and Taehyung and Kook are in the “area of projected energy.” Then at the very bottom, there are the receptors for the Soul Group and the general public that the projected energy is being put out toward.

I have noted there on the side about how the bit between Namjoon’s layers of consciousness and the Soul Body is where there’s this collection of unconscious knowledge, which is what he channels when he writes, whether it be for an album or a blog post, that has all of the ports, symbolism, and frequency in tones as well as how to use them and put them into his work. 

it is completely unconscious and handled between the aspects of the Higher Self and unconscious mind. 

Honestly, on a conscious level he probably just thinks about something looking cool or sounding cool, but he will always gravitate towards those specific images and sounds for that reason. 

If you listen to his music or what he’s produced for the group with headphones you can hear the same patterns and tones being used in songs in the background. it is also why he tends to mess around with the tone of his voice in his solo music and why he does that weird breathing as backing vocals for a lot of his solo stuff. 

He’s putting out tones that trigger parts of the brain and push people that are already receptive to it along with the ascension process.

A lot of media does this and it triggers things unconsciously in the individual so, unless you’are already in the know, it is not going to really be noticeable, or even if it is, most people wouldn’t think about it being something to alter the brain and expand consciousness for the sake of human evolution and ascension… right?

The way they function within the Soul Body still vibes with how they function together on a conscious level. They mesh well in spite of there difference in perception, understanding, and energy because they literally just move together really well. They sync up really well.

This seems a bit too on the nose, but what can you do?

The 3 of Cups is that meeting point where the three of them come together as I’m sure you could have guessed, but how on point and accurate the other three are in describing their energy is almost too much for me, lol.

The Star is Hoseok with his energetic connection to the cosmic bodies, the Ace of Cups is Yoongi’s open channels and receptive nature, and The Chariot is Namjoon’s streamlined and focused awareness towards what their purpose is, a literal leader. 

Just like I said before, they all carry something extremely different, have different jobs in the group and in the Soul Body, but they are able to meet and work together in the most seamless way possible.

The Reading:

Energetic Contributions To The Relationship:

Namjoon: Death

Hoseok: The Magician

Yoongi: The High Priestess

Before I get into this, can we just talk about how many majors came out for this reading… like wow okay pop off, I guess.

For sure though, all three of these cards are gorgeous representations of their energy and what they actually bring to the table in their relationship both on a personal level and with their work.

Namjoon’s place as Death is more in line with that very forward focused kind of progression on an internal level that is projected through their music and what they stand for as a group. 

I was really focused on the image of the card. It’s a classic image of a skull with flowers growing out of it, a great symbol of killing parts of yourself in order for new things to grow in their place, letting go of bad habits to form better ones, recognizing and accepting your flaws so they can be utilized for something good. 

It’s like Namjoon, because of his alignment with his Higher Self, experiences ego deaths constantly, like mini-bursts of self-reflection and awareness that forces this kind of mental purging that ripples through everyone else.

He provides this stable cleansing for everyone in the group which leads to this kind of vibe where no one is allowed to stagnate, no one is allowed to stay in one headspace for too long. It’s very unconscious as well which goes with what I talked about in his Elemental Alignment reading a while back where I said he teaches as he is being taught, he guides as he is being guided. 

He’s not really enforcing anything, he’s suggesting and encouraging and leaving it up to everyone else to move through the process on their own.

Then there’s Hoseok with that Aquarius vibe being all innovative and making very hard jabs that really make things move. Where Namjoon causes change internally, Hoseok causes change externally. He’s the off the wall thinker, he’ll just bring up something out of nowhere that sets things in motion and they go pretty far. 

You can see how far he can actually push things when it comes to his solo performances, his solo dances, and his solo music. He pushes the boundaries and in a way, he’s constantly opening new chapters or presenting entirely new books for the others to look at and broaden their perspective on a very conscious and intellectual level.

It’s more hands-on than Namjoon, or at least it feels that way. Namjoon is inspiring, he’s doing things for himself and he presents it as a sort of anecdotal sort of thing rather than preaching it, but Hoseok is like wearing these concepts, handing them out on fliers. It’s very physical and at the forefront of the mind.

Then Yoongi, Mr. Pisces Man Min Yoongi, is over there in his Water World with The High Priestess sort of in the background drawing these ideas and concepts into existence. It’s very difficult to explain how I’m seeing his position here. 

I said it earlier that he projects the image from a concept, and that’s a great way of summing up what this is here. It’s like he processes what Hoseok and Namjoon do and actually forms it.

It’s just a lot quieter, not a lot of it is being pushed out for other people, or at least not pushed outside the group, it’s just something within this energetic exchange that he does. It’s very calming as well, this very smooth feminine energy to balance out the more bombastic masculine energy that Hoseok brings into the mix.

There’s also this nice balance in terms of where things are at on the levels of consciousness as Hoseok really brings forward the conscious state, the very physical and 3D aspects of understanding, while Namjoon brings forward the awareness of the subconscious, the self-exploration, and then Yoongi connects them to the unconscious mind, the silent connection to what is neither seen or understood fully by either the conscious or subconscious awareness.

Very cool.

How They See The Relationship:

Namjoon: Strength + Temperance

Hoseok: Wheel of Fortune + Justice

Yoongi: The Moon + The Empress

Again, a lot of fucking majors here… like, they’re all majors.

It’s actually so interesting how these combinations of cards go with everything that was just laid out above in terms of how they help each other cope with being sort of settled into those specific layers of consciousness.

Namjoon, with that connection to the subconscious, the awareness and maybe even an over-awareness of the self and his own mind and mortality can become overwhelmed very easily. 

He overthinks things and gets in his head about small things long enough to turn them into big things and then he has an anxiety attack and collapses for a while. These two people literally bring him strength, he sees them as his support system, what sends out the life raft when he starts getting into the deeper waters. Temperance, when compared to Hoseok’s Justice card, shows his view on both of them as being what allows him to find stability within the subconscious mind, a balance between conscious and unconscious.

Then Hoseok, with the Wheel of Fortune, sees both Namjoon and Yoongi as being a source of big change in his life on a very grand level, and with that comes this very big wave of energy that seems to always be put towards something. 

I kept going back to the whole “get the ball rolling” thing where Hoseok can have all these big ideas and either not know how or not have the confidence to implement them and act on them, and Namjoon and Yoongi give him this foundation, these resources to do it. 

Like, in the past, they were the ones to literally teach him how to rap and how to write. They gave him tools that he then built up and extended with his own flair and individuality. It’s kind of like that, that’s what the Wheel of Fortune is.

The Justice bit, as I mentioned, is in line with Namjoon’s Temperance, but it’s much more conscious, much more physical as things tend to be with Hoseok. 

A lot of his mental issues, his stress, anxiety, and mood swings tend to be intellectualized and shoved down, which can cause these very upset and difficult moments of what seem to be very big outbursts that last literally just a few minutes. 

In those moments, maybe even before they happen, Namjoon and Yoongi, who have that deeper sense, can see it coming and are able to balance him out. This is especially true with Yoongi which I talked about in his and Hoseok’s relationship reading (Part 1 / Part 2). This, of course, comes from Yoongi’s sensitivity to people’s energy and emotions.

Yoongi’s cards are pretty interesting as well because usually The Moon always gives me kind of heavy vibe as it shows this hidden and mysterious kind of energy, a representation of the unconscious or what people can be unconscious or blind to, but that’s not what this felt like. 

This felt very hopeful actually, and quite happy and open. 

I was really focused on the Moon itself in the image, the brighter parts of the image. It’s this vibe of being allowed to bring light to what was usually hidden. In terms of Yoongi’s open honestly about his personal struggles, his beliefs, all that kind of stuff — the comfort and confidence towards sharing that came from Hoseok and Namjoon, which makes a lot of sense considering Namjoon’s inner development and progression and Hoseok’s outer development and progression.

Being able to see them be open on these different levels made it possible for him to express that, they gave him that platform, foundation, however you want to look at it, to speak openly without any fear of judgment or ridicule. 

Yoongi does that for a lot of people, but as it tends to be with a lot of old-soul Pisces, he sometimes doesn't follow his own advice.

Speaking of foundations, the presence of The Empress is just that for Yoongi. 

My first thought when I see The Empress is “Mother Earth,” it’s the fertile soil that people can build on and work through, it’s very comfortable energy. It’s very open and loving. 

Stability was a big thing here which is exactly what someone who’s very rooted in their unconscious mind, very sensitive to energy, and very empathic need. They need something to ground them and help them feel more present, something to allow them to connect externally. That’s what Hoseok and Namjoon do for Yoongi. They’re literally his bridge to the outside world, just as the subconscious bridges the unconscious to the conscious mind.

Current State of The Relationship:

Knight of Swords

Currently, and this may be because of the different levels of integration that they are currently at, they are all mostly connecting to each other on a conscious level. 

This isn’t bad, it’s not imbalanced in any way, in fact, this may be a great sign that a lot of that integration is pulling things to the surface where they are able to connect consciously through those different levels of awareness, which would put them in a great position to start working more directly on their music again.

There’s really not a lot to say here other than that there is a lot of stimulation between them on a conscious level, a lot of plans about to be put into motion, which is very exciting.

Highest Potential:

The Sun + Ace of Swords

Again, there’s not much to say here, it’s pretty simple in the sense that this is clarity on both ends coming through the full integration of the Higher Selves for all three of them. The Ace of Swords is the conscious connection to The Sun or the collective awareness and perception through all levels of consciousness.

If you recall from the solo readings for December with all the members, the Sun was a big factor as the light integration was becoming very focused on acting through the heart, or living through the soul, expressing the soul in its entirety. 

One of the things that’s gotten away from them over the past year, year and a half is the soul expression, the deeper connection to the music for the sake of progressing the collective, and that’s what this is. The highest potential between the three of them is these equal projection of the soul, the projection of the dominions of the layers of consciousness, a literal projection of integrated awareness and conscious expansion.

Pretty deep, but they're literally like right on the cusp of being at this level again.

That’s all I have for this reading, I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you so much for reading it all!

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[sakurauchiha2018]

A Little Faith

This is an AU story that I’ve recently started, it was originally two prompt writings but I’m joining them into a longer story. There will be certain chapter where it chances up POV but this will mainly be a BoruSara fic but there will be hints of SasuSaku and NaruHina. Oh and thank you @kairi-chan for giving me the confidence to do this! This story if for you

Rating: T (could change but only because of language)

Word Count: 3406

Chapter 1

“They party starts in just a few hours Sarada! You and Boruto need to get dressed in the outfits I laid out.” My mother’s voice echoes through the large hallway. I can’t help the eye roll that ensues when I plop down on my desk chair, letting my forehead thud against the hard wood. Tonight my grandparents are coming over for dinner and after that the rest of my family is coming for an importance announcement. Grandpa Fugaku is retiring as CEO of Uchiha Corporations and tonight he’s naming his successor, which will most likely be my father since my Uncle Itachi has no dream of running the company.

The door clicks open and I watch Boruto enter from the corner of my eyes, a noticeable shit eating grin plastered on his face. I haven’t even inspected the ridiculous clothing cluttering my bed but knowing my mother there’s an elegant formal dress and brand-new suit waiting on us. Whenever my great grandfather Madara comes to our estate she gets into this frenzy of making everything perfect. He’s never approved of my mother, I honestly have no idea why either. Sakura Uchiha is the country’s leading surgeon, she runs two of the country’s top cutting-edge hospitals and even opened up her own children’s mental health clinic. Patients travel from around the world to be treated by her and there’s a two-year waiting list to become an intern with my mother. Needless to say, she’s impressed me more than my great grandfather ever has.

“When are the old geezers coming over?” My best friend/ boyfriend snorts out as he takes a seat on the small couch tucked against the large window. He’s never been a fan of the way my mother is treated either. It doesn’t make things any better that our families are very close personally and business wise, Uchiha Corporations and Uzumaki Technology work hand in hand. Hopefully when my father takes over we can merge the two into one.

“Sooner than I want. Great Grandfather Madara will be here to harass my mother, so her pride is going to be chipped away soon.” I say before lifting my head to scroll through the new emails in my box. A few weeks ago, Boruto and I graduated from college and now dozens of companies are requesting interviews with me, but honestly, I have no intention on working for anyone other than my father. I’ve spent my life trying to catch up to him and Uncle Naruto, one day I want to be able to run both of our companies with pride.

The sound of crinkling plastic catches my attention and I spin the chair around to see the ensemble my mother picked. It’s a deep red, floor length dress with simple crystals sewn into the bodice while Boruto has a standard suit with a matching red tie and pocket square. Part of me knew not to expect anything less from my mother, rolling my eyes I sink into my chair.

“I’m not wearing a tie!” Boruto whines as he releases the clothing to fall back on the bed. Whenever Uncle Naruto and Aunt Hinata throw parties Boruto does whatever he wants, I’ve only seen him wear a tie to company meetings and graduation.

“Well I wish I could say I’m not wearing a dress, but I have to.” I frown sets on my face before I spin back around and slam the laptop close. Mama always goes overboard with these things. As always, my father lets her too, he does anything to make her happy. Closing my eyes, I prop my head up and release a sigh I had been holding in.

“You’ll wear whatever Sakura has set out. Tonight, is a big night for everyone.” A deep voice cuts through the silence and my eyes snap open to see my father leaning against the door frame. He’s already dressed in a jet-black suit, matching his hair almost perfectly, although his tie is missing. A casual smirk adoring his face as eyes stare daggers into my boyfriend, it seems I have no choice but to wear that monstrosity.

“Auntie Sakura always gets frazzled whenever they come over Uncle Sasuke. It’s starting to get annoying.” I cut my gaze over to the blonde idiot and mimic my father’s glare. Even if it’s the truth, you never speak that way about Mama in front of him. My father has fired many employees for that same tone or just looking at her in the wrong manner. I look back to my father and see him take in a deep breath.

“Sometimes we have to do thing we don’t necessarily want just to make others happy. My grandfather is still a skeptic of Sakura, he doesn’t believe she’s worthy of the Uchiha name. So, my wife put every ounce of pride and dedication into these things to prove him wrong.” He stops just for a moment to take a sip from his glass, I didn’t even notice he was carrying one. My father only ever drinks on two occasions, formal parties and after tough days in the office. Judging by the look on his face it’s the latter.

“As you both know, I’ll do whatever it takes to make Sakura happy. So, either you two dress yourselves or I will.” For a moment I see my father’s eyes go red, a shiver runs up my spin as I reach for my dress and take off into the bathroom. Father-1, Sarada-0.

Hours later, Boruto and I make our way down the stairs into the large dining room. I’m shocked to see Uncle Itachi sitting at the table and a large smile comes across my lips. He’s been away on business for almost two months and I missed him at my graduation, but now he’s home and we can talk later. My eyes lock onto my mother who is speaking with my grandmother Mikoto. The best days of my childhood where spent with those women, they helped mold me into the person I am today. I notice my mother is wearing a dress almost identical to mine except in black, opting to go simple just for my father.

“Ah Sarada. Good we can get started with dinner.” A blush creeps across my face as I’m escorted to my chair, at least Boruto can behave at the right times. He takes his seat beside me and I can’t help but smile as I lock eyes with my uncle. I’ve missed him more than I care to admit. His eyes look to the left and I follow his gaze, Madara sits at one head of the table while my father is on the other end. Even in his old age Madara looks almost youthful, his black hair never grey and a few wrinkles but nothing more than my grandfather. A shiver runs through my spine as his dark orbs shift over to me and a smile cracks across his lips, like he’s trying to force a simple smile.

“Congratulations Sarada for graduating. When do you plan on starting at the office?” The small sip of water I took causes me to choke slightly. Always so blunt and to the point.

“I’m waiting on an offer. I can’t start working just because of my last name. Although I’ve had offers from dozens of companies.” I say before my attention turns back to my Uncle, a smirk of approval is displayed and from the corner of my eye I can see one on my father’s face as well. Boruto can’t help but nudge me slightly causing my cheeks to heat up, hopefully I ended that conversation.

“Of course you can, it’s your birth right. You are an Uchiha after all, well mostly Uchiha.” My eye twitches at the low blow to my mother. These are the things that really infuriate me, all night we will have to hear comments like this about my mother. Refusing to answer I begin to eat my dinner and look over to my mother, a fake smile displayed on her face but in those green orbs I can see the comment hurt.

“Grandfather Kizashi offered me a management position at his firm. It may not be as large as Uchiha Corp. but they are a steady business with large profit margins.” I reply without even looking at the old man. My other grandparents may not have been born into success but they built a reputation for themselves. They started a small law firm right before my mother was born, at first it was only taking on petty cases but after a while it grew and it’s one of the top law firms in the city. The smirk that displays on my lips while I look over at Mama only encourages her own smirk, I may not be all Uchiha but my Haruno half is still just as strong.

The rest of dinner goes by relatively quick, after Madara’s insult the conversation ended and we were able to eat in peace. I stay behind with my mother as we watch the other make their way to the backyard. She stays standing by the table watching the back of my father until it disappears from sight.

“Don’t let him get to you Mama. We all know how amazing and talented you are.” Her laughter makes me look at her in confusion.

“Sarada I’ve been around your great grandfather since I was a child, I’ve learned to live with it over the years. Long before your father and I dated we were childhood friends and classroom rivals. Madara hated that I was always beating your father for top student, even more so he hated how Sasuke-kun didn’t care. Only when we got married it became more of an obvious annoyance.” By obvious annoyance she means how she stands out in a room. The brightness of her long pink locks and piercing green eyes are a sight to be seen. In all my life I’ve never seen someone who comes close to my mother in beauty. The Uchiha’s are typically dark colored in nature, brown or black hair but we all have the same coal colored eyes. My Uncle once referred to her as the living embodiment of spring, that statement is still true to this day. But there’s also another reason why Madara doesn’t like her either, my parents married young. During college they decided to marry in secret and I was born while they were still in college. If it wasn’t for my grandmothers I don’t think my parents would be as successful as they are.

“Let’s catch up with the others. The announcement is going to be made soon.” Her smile warms me and I follow beside her, the backyard has been transformed into a dance floor. Lights hang from the trees and tables are set up along the edges, almost a hundred people are here and three stand out from the rest. We make our way to the table of misfits to say. Uncle Naruto and Papa are in a deep conversation about who knows what, Boruto and Uncle Itachi are both staring at the screens of their phones and Aunt Hinata is painfully aware of our absence.

“You’ve outdone yourself again Sakura. This is amazing.” The quiet voice of my aunt comes across the table and I see the familiar glow of my mother return.  Aunt Hinata is the polar opposite of her husband and son. She comes from a family like mine, manners and etiquette were engraved into her head at an early age. It took her father by shock when she married Uncle Naruto, but I don’t think any other woman could handle him.

Looking around the crowd I notice a group of people I’ve never seen before, they certainly aren’t Uchiha or Uzumaki related. The one that stands out the most is a man who appears to be the same age as me, his eyes locked onto my table examining us the same way. The speakers crack as my grandfather straightens his tie. I’ll have to ask about them later.

“Thank you all for coming. I’d like to thank my daughter-in-law for making all the arrangements and preparing a wonderful venue.” Smirking at his words I can’t help but feel like that was a direct insult to Madara.

“It seems that my time as CEO has come to an end. When I took over the company we were just a small corporation that was still trying to get deep roots. I’m proud to say that in my thirty years I’ve paved the way for the company. Now it’s my turn to pass the torch.” A wave of silence has taken over the yard, even Boruto is entranced by his words. I scoot on the edge of my seat in anticipation.

“The title of CEO comes with many responsibilities but requires a certain level of passion. If you are too timid, then your company with falter. If you are too head strong, then your company with stay stagnant. It’s because of these reasons why I have chosen my succorer, I have faith that he will lead Uchiha Corporation into the future. Sasuke Uchiha, my youngest son, will be acting CEO beginning Monday morning.” I can’t help but snap my head over to my father and smile at him in amazement. Cheering and applauds are heard throughout the back yard. In the background my grandfather dismisses himself and the real party beings. My mother is the first to rise from her seat and practically jump into my father’s arms.

“Congratulations Anata! You’ve worked so hard.” Displays of this nature are rare between my parents. Normally they are very reserved but tonight that’s been thrown out the window. I lean my head against Boruto’s shoulder and a yawn escapes my body. I’ve been up since dawn getting folders ready with Mama and researching the numbers on her hospitals.

“Don’t tell me you’re already tapping out.” I hear Uncle Naruto snicker from across the table. A blush creeps across my face and I can’t help but shrug my shoulders. A hand rests against my shoulder and I see my father standing over me.

“I’ll walk with you to your room.” I nod and excuse myself from the table, squeezing our way through the crowd takes longer than anticipated. Everyone wants to speak with my father or take his photo, which he dismisses to stay focused on the current task. The house is quiet for once and I bend down to remove the unnecessary heels my mother bought for me. My father offers me his arm which I gladly accept as I lean close.

“Congratulations Papa.”

“Hn. Thank you Sarada. I wanted to speak to you about what you said at the dinner table.” I gulp whatever air I can and stiffen against him. My words were meant to anger Madara, not my father. At the top of the stairs he leads me into his study and motions for me to sit in the leather chair across from his desk. His hand extends a file out to me which I take reluctantly, cracking it open I skim over the cover page.

‘Sarada Uchiha- Vice President of Research and Development’

My jaw drops at the title and I hear my father chuckle at my reaction. I just graduated from school and now I’m being named Vice President…

“I’ve known for weeks that I was going to be named CEO. This was just the public announcement. Naruto and I have already signed the deal to merge our two companies, along with your mother’s hospitals and clinics.” I skim through the paper and see names of the employees that I will be in charge of. Some of them have worked for the company longer than I’ve been alive. How can I just walk in and be their boss?

“Your mother will be in charge of the Medical Division, Naruto will oversee the Technological Division, Itachi will be the Marketing and Human Resource VP. Sarada, your first assignment is to thoroughly break down the numbers and tell me where each individual company is at percentage wise. There will be a meeting on Friday to go over everything.” Good thing I already started going over the numbers with Mama, this is going to take forever but at least I have a team that can help me with week.

“May I ask who were those people were? They clearly aren’t related to either Uchiha or Uzumaki.” The boldness in my question just makes my father smirk even more before my uncles and mother come walking in. Seems we’re having an impromptu business meeting.

“They are business acquaintances. Danzo is an old Vice President and was hoping that Fugaku would name one of his employees as CEO.” Naruto says nonchalantly before pouring himself a glass of scotch, another rare indulgence for the man.

“It doesn’t mean we can take them lightly. His daughter is an investor in my clinic and a highly skilled nurse.” The tone in my mother’s voice is completely foreign to me, it’s almost harsh. Uncle Itachi told me when I was in college that my mother is ruthless when it came to business. Now I can see that is the utmost truth.

“Danzo is the one we should be watching out for. When he learns that Sarada is a VP he may pull all funding completely.” Uncle Itachi stands at the doorway to voice his concern, probably keeping an eye out for the unwanted guests. My father takes the second glass from Naruto and I watch as he drinks the strong liquid.

“When does the merger take effect?” The voices around me stop and I look at the two men sternly. Uncle Itachi is concerned that we’ll lose funding, but how is that possible if we are gaining more than what we are losing.

“Monday Morning.”

“Looking at it from a business stand point, it does help to have as many investors as possible but with this merger it isn’t necessary. If we consolidate our staff and our locations then we can stand to lose a few without seeing any effect in the bank.” There’ s more to it but without having all the numbers I can’t be so certain. This was the part of business I craved, knowing the numbers and being able to calculate each move precisely in order to gain profit and recognition.

“She has a point Sasuke-kun. We’ve been trying to figure out how to get rid of that old man for years.” Mama’s voice is still stern but I can tell that she’s working the numbers as well.

“Monday morning we will discuss all of this, but Sarada you are correct. We can afford to cut ties with numerous investors without feeling the loss. For now we need to be silent about the merger, only the five of us know.” Papa takes another sip of his drink signaling the end of the conversation, my brain still wrapping around idea of being a VP at 21. My legs shake slightly before I make my exit from the room.

“Thank you. I won’t let you down.” I smile proudly at my father before exiting through the door, I see Boruto leaning against my bedroom door. The closer I get I notice that he’s ripped his tie off and has it scrunched up in his hand. Honestly I’ve never been so relieved to see him, he’ll be able to take my mind off of the overload of information and help me relax. Smiling weakly I turn the doorknob and collapse onto the large bed gaining a laugh from the blonde.

“Seems you’ve had a long day. Wanna ditch this place?” If only escaping from this was possible, although getting together with the old crew would be a fantastic idea. Springing up I look at him with a fire in my eyes and an idea forms in my head. If Itachi is so worried about losing an investor, I’ll just have to come up with something better to replace it with.

“Call the gang, tell them to meet us at the barcade. Oh make sure Mitsuki is there.” The trademark Uchiha smirk forms on my face as I move to rid myself of the skintight dress. I hope this plan works, because if it does we may just take our company up a notch.

This will be updated twice weekly if I have the time, if not it will be weekly. I hope everyone who read this enjoyed it! 

[gallifreyanlibertea]

Love You Like That

a/n: this was inspired by a song of the same name. I just watched a sappy movie and I feel sappy so this is sappy. This is also a fill for a request that I’ve posted at the very end

“I’m free this week, finally.”

Arthur hummed in agreement, spoon hovering by his lips, “There’s that New Year’s Ball you have to prepare for though, remember?”

Alfred groaned and Arthur took a smiling sip of his soup.

See, Arthur had discovered that his fiancé was impatient. Well, there was nothing quite new about that fact if one really knew him, but seeing as Arthur had barely met the man before they’d been engaged, any bit of information was new to him.

Alfred was a sweetheart, and there was no doubt about it. His kingdom loved him, and he loved it. He loved every citizen, he loved every law enough to enforce it, he loved everything about his country so dearly in order to rule it as well as he did.

There was only one problem. Alfred, with his big, boyish heart, seemed to love everything except for Arthur.

“You like the soup?” Alfred shovelled in his pasta. “I had it made specially for you, since you loved it so much at that party in the Clubs Kingdom.”

“That’s kind of you,” Arthur said, and he dabbed his lips with his napkin, watching as Alfred inhaled his bread.

He would be a great husband. He was a great king.

Why wouldn’t he be? A king who single-handedly expanded the kingdom without a war or a conflict deserved some sort of praise, even if Arthur had been angry in the beginning.

And he’d had every right to be angry. To watch through the crack of his bedroom door as an arrogant child of a king told Arthur’s father he would make him rich upon merging kingdoms, something Arthur’s father agreed upon almost instantaneously due to the fact that he just wasn’t fit for rule.

The alpha was silver-tongued. He could convince anyone to do his bidding, it seemed. The talent of a true king. 

Besides, to Arthur’s father, it was killing two birds with one stone. One, to give away the kingdom that caused him so much stress; and two, to give a well-known, powerful king his omega son’s hand in marriage, securing a seat in the Spades Kingdom.

“I can just skip the practice for the ball,” Alfred concluded upon minutes of furrowed-brow pondering. “It wouldn’t be bad, it’s just one time, right?”

Alfred left no room for a response. “Besides, it’s not like anyone would protest me wanting to spend more time with my fiancé, now, would they?”

Arthur’s smile wavered. He gripped his spoon tighter in his hand. “No, I would think not.”

Arthur Kirkland, a man that used to be a prince, was reduced to an excuse.

That’s where the problem lied. See, he was regarded as goods to be traded. Arthur always knew his marriage would lie in politics, and he supposed he should be glad he was given to a younger king rather than one with a snowy beard like the ones he’d feared he’d have to call a husband when he was a child.

Despite this, Arthur also supposed it was his fault for expecting a fairy-tale romance to unfold, like the ones in the novels.

He supposed it was his fault for agreeing to meet his betrothed rather than be locked away in his room until the marriage.

“King Alfred wants to get to know you.” Arthur’s brothers had taunted, and it was his fault for stepping out, red-faced, to greet the alpha he’d wanted to strangle up until then-

And for looking into those beautiful blue eyes as the king brought Arthur’s hand up to place a kiss on its knuckles.

Arthur would’ve been better off convincing himself there would be nothing there. Instead, he’d signed himself up to suffer as he was dragged about the castle at the alpha’s convenience- so Alfred could get out of practices, so he could get out of work, so he could take a break.

An excuse. An item. A trade.

“Do you have to be home a certain time?”

“I don’t do much after dinner, so no,” Arthur muttered absent-mindedly, fingers tapping at the petals of the plump roses lined around the castle walls.

It warmed his heart, just a little bit.

He remembered telling Alfred, no- he remembered snapping, back when he was still in denial, back when he’d first trodden on the garden grass, after Alfred had made yet another smug comment about his vast kingdom.

“For an alpha so powerful, your castle looks awfully plain.”

Alfred had baulked, that arrogant expression on his face had slipped for just a moment before a smirk spread back onto his features, “And what would you have me do about that?”

Arthur had crossed his arms. “You could take a few lessons from my kingdom.”

Arthur had single-handedly planted every rose that dotted the grounds of his own palace, and he was proud of it too. He loved them- such regal flowers they were- so strikingly beautiful with a scent so fresh and faint.

“You could’ve picked any other flower, you know.” He had said, lips parted in silent awe as Alfred had led him into his garden for the second time, a garden newly teeming with roses of seemingly every colour that ever existed.

“They remind me of you.” Alfred had said with a grin. “Your scent… it’s of roses.”

Cheesy. Alfred was one for grandness, whether it meant parties or, in Arthur’s sorry case, courting.

A king with a reputation like his? An alpha with an ego like his? Arthur shouldn’t have expected less than a gift per day.

He wondered what today’s would be.

“You were right, you know? These roses make the castle look better.” Alfred said, breath coming out in puffs. Arthur shrugged into his clothing. It was chilly out. “And you seem to like them too, you’ve been looking at them for ages.”

Alfred chuckled and Arthur blinked. “Oh, I- they’re beautiful.”

Arthur liked the way his hands looked beside them. He’d always been a pale fellow but that didn’t seem too bad when it was beside a blood red rose. Long, creamy fingers, with a diamond ring glinting alongside silken petals.

It was picture perfect.

“I’m afraid I don’t make good company, Alfred, you would’ve been better off at that practice tonight,” Arthur said with a clear of his throat, turning to find Alfred’s gaze turned to the stars.

“And miss all of this? You know-”

Alfred bore his blue-eyed gaze into Arthur’s eyes, and Arthur couldn’t look away. “I don’t get to see the stars, or do anything remotely enjoyable when I’m not with you.”

“I suppose that’ll change when we’re married,” Arthur said.

It would, wouldn’t it? Alfred would have no more excuses when Arthur was already his. No more surprises, Arthur would be the silent husband, the silent queen, and they would meet every month to satisfy Arthur’s heats, and Arthur would bear Alfred a child, and on they would go living a mundane married life.

Arthur knew how royal-couples were. He’d grown up with his parents, who’d sported not one ounce of love for each other.

Respect, yes. Not love. And Arthur would have to settle for that.

“Maybe.” Alfred said, and he shrugged, “Things are bound to change, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it, eh? I can only hope you don’t get bored of me.”

Arthur rolled his eyes, “One can hardly call themselves bored in your company.”

Alfred pressed his palm onto his chest in a mock gesture, as if he’d been touched. Arthur wasn’t quite one for compliments. “I for one know if there’s one thing I’ll never tire of, it’s that accent of yours.”  

“M- my accent?”

“And the way you smell.” Alfred continued. He came closer and Arthur could say the same- Alfred’s scent was something Arthur would never get used to. It was nothing new either, seeing as His Highness had been so kind as to lend Arthur articles of his clothing to keep Arthur satisfied during his heats.

“It doesn’t really help, though, does it? With your heats?” Arthur’s brother, Allistair, had said to him.

In fact, it served to make his heats worse. The scent of an alpha that wasn’t there in person- it drove Arthur wild with want, clutching and tearing at Alfred’s poor coat.

“That’s what he really wants.” Allistair had said. “He’s got you craving his scent at your weakest moment. Cunning fellow.”

Alfred certainly didn’t seem so cunning in this light, Arthur noted. The soft yellow of the torches that lit the castle made him look, if it were possible, more handsome than he usually was. Arthur found it hard to swallow.

“Your scent isn’t too bad either.”

“Thank you.” Alfred laughed. Just a little. “Although, I can say, I’d like your scent a lot better mixed with mine.”

Whatever faint smile had been on Arthur’s lips before dropped.

“When I’d have marked you.” He said, tapping at Arthur’s neck as if Arthur hadn’t spent countless days in heat, thinking about the same thing, scratching at the same place in a feeble attempt to mimic what it would feel like. “Mated you.”

Alfred leaned in to kiss him and Arthur’s father would have been proud of how fast Arthur had ducked away.

He’d never been so quick with his reflexes when he’d been taught how to wield a sword, but Arthur found this situation to be more needing.

Alfred turned around to find Arthur practically cowering behind a tree. Alfred sputtered, “Wh- I… jeez, did you not want me to-?”

Arthur hoped the cold air would cool his cheeks. “You can’t just do that!”

“I’m sorry, I thought you wouldn’t mind!” Was Alfred’s response.

“I… I don’t.”

Arthur cleared his throat.

“Then I don’t see the problem,” Alfred replied with a crossing of his arms. He then sighed, lips spreading into a small smile, “Did you want me to wait until marriage?”

“No.”

“Then enlighten me as to what this just was?”

“I’m not your property to do with what you wish.” Arthur found himself snapping, and Alfred seemed taken aback by the accusation. He seemed a bit angry. Arthur could tell by the hint of lemon in his scent.

“I don’t think it’s fair to blame me for something I haven’t done, it was a simple kiss, I-”

“It might’ve been simple to you, but it would’ve been my first.” Years of Arthur being saved away for whoever would be his future husband lead to this. Arthur hadn’t felt the touch of another on his lips- he’d never even known what to imagine of it. “Granted, it would’ve been as romantic as they are in the novels, I don’t think it’s fair for you to take it whenever you please, without my permission. It makes me feel worse than I already do.”

“You-” Alfred furrowed his brows, “You don’t like this marriage?”

“I never said that,” Arthur said, yet the look in those blue eyes softened his words to follow. Words he’d bit back since he’d first met Alfred, ones his father had told him not to say, ones that people all his life had told him not to think about. “I just don’t think I can do it. I can’t be married when my own husband doesn’t… love me.”

Alfred’s reaction wasn’t something Arthur had expected, and he’d thought of everything. Arthur had dreamt up every reaction imaginable to the words he’d said- Alfred scooping him into his arms to profess his love to him with a kiss under the moonlight, or Alfred telling him that’s how it is with a scoff, laughing at Arthur’s naivety.

He had not, however, imagined Alfred’s expression to smooth back out into one of nonchalance, “You read a lot of romance novels, don’t you?”

“Pardon?”

“You read a lot, right?” Alfred crossed his arms, “So you must know what love really is. Tell me.”

Now was definitely not the time to be condescending, but Alfred was doing it anyway, and Arthur parted his lips to tell him off. He had no tolerance for childish behaviour, and those smug eyes, as if Arthur couldn’t have his own definition of love, it was insulting, it was-!

“Because if it isn’t breaking my neck to get these roses in the dead winter, and planting half of them myself, scouring the markets for hours for spices indigenous to the Clubs Kingdom for a soup you’ll take minutes to eat, skipping practices upon practices and letting work pile up on my desk just to spend an hour with you, please tell me Arthur, what exactly is love?”

Arthur was going to punch him.

Not even the cold could save his reddening cheeks, and those were most definitely tears swimming in his eyes, and he’d never gotten so much attention in his life, it was embarrassing.

It was embarrassing and relieving at once, and Arthur wanted to bruise Alfred’s face with a punch. He wanted to bruise Alfred’s lips with a kiss.

“You could just bloody say it, you know?” Arthur found himself saying, lips bordering on wobbly, and Alfred smiled.

“I- I know I’m not always clever with the words I use.”

Alfred was holding him now, and Arthur wasn’t quite sure how he got there, but he frowned, “You’re damn right you aren’t.”

“But those novels you like to read-” Alfred’s shoulders sank, as if he was sighing, just as Arthur was sighing in relief at the words that followed. “I love you like that.”

“I do too,” Arthur said, barely a whisper, and if Alfred wasn’t listening for it, he wouldn’t have heard it.

He apparently was, because he grinned. “Can I kiss you now?”

Arthur didn’t know him, not yet, not completely. But what he did know was that Alfred was impatient, he was an idiot who couldn’t express his feelings, and Arthur was going to marry him. He was going to discover the bad as well as the good, and as long as Alfred kept looking at him the way he was doing just then, Arthur would be fine. 

Even if he didn’t say the words.

Although, that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to say them until Alfred didn’t even have to think about replying.

“Yes.”

[jenniferisacommonname]

Voiceactors in my Head

One of my many contradictory feature sets is a silent, circumventing stubbornness paired with a pathological fear of confrontation. I will get what I want, and I will not stand my ground if verbally pressed on it. I concede points like it’s an Olympic sport. But as long as everyone's still smiling—gently, snidely, or otherwise—then I can go on forever. Case in point, I once trolled a stranger on the internet for over a year. (Don’t worry; by the end of the story you’ll be on my side again. And if you’re not, well, I mostly agree with you.)

It all started with a CD which was, at the time, exclusively available through the record label’s website. This was back in 2005, when online retailers still ran on frontier justice and only fools uttered the words “free shipping.” Needless to say, I did not have an existing account.

But we do what we must. So I bent the knee, and delivered my modern-day rogation of name, email, and PII governed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in order to receive my one CD—then I defiantly wasted that effort by never patronizing their establishment again. I mean, the album was fine, and I’m sure they had other struggling artists whose work I would have enjoyed, but apparently I’m against creative expression and the American small business owner or something.

Anyway, five years of blissful non-interaction go by. Then one day in 2010, I get a mass email from the founder of this little indie record label. It was—or at least it aspired to be—a classic “starting a new chapter” kind of announcement, letting everyone know that he had sold his (incredibly!) successful company, and was using the proceeds to start a charity that would bring music lessons to inner city children.

And, hey, I thought, that’s cool. Music is great for kids. Except… the tone of the email was weird. It was more than just casual; it was chummy. The concept of a YouTuber didn’t exist back then, but here was its primordial ancestor, testing the beachhead with its nascent flipper-legs of peppy chic.

“Yo, J-dawg, how's it hanging? Remember back in [mail-merged year] when you bought [whatever]? What a great album, am I right?! Anyway, it's been so long since we rapped, I thought I'd update you on my sitch…”

Obviously, I’m paraphrasing, but that’s how the voiceactor in my head performed it. And it just rubbed me so hard the wrong way. I mean, look, I get it—we live in a promotional society, and there's no avoiding that. I’ve done my fair share of book pimping, and if you have a legitimate fan base the intrusion can even be a welcome one. So, fine. Tell me about your thing—once—and maybe I'll buy it. But don't act like we're friends, like I have some kind of obligation to you beyond this basic consumer relationship that we've established.

So my gut reaction was a hard pass, pleading children’s eyes be damned. But the email didn’t include a link to unsubscribe. This spammer was so brazen, he had sent the message from his personal email account, as if threats like “more updates to come!” belonged in anything but a ransom note font. If I wanted my name off the list, I would have to actually write him back, creating exactly the kind of low-stakes, one-on-one confrontation that we all know is worse than torture.

How would I even phrase it, knowing that his overture was from the heart and my rejection would travel right back along that path? “Listen, amigo, I know you probably spent an hour composing this raw, honest self-reflection on your priorities, but it’s garbage, and I never want to hear from you again. Please keep in mind that while you have failed to inspire me, you’ve also failed the children. Because you’re a failure.”

The actual words wouldn’t matter; I was sure that’s what he’d hear. In fact, I would argue that a polite rejection is often worse, because it leaves no option for the rejectee to write off the loss as a dodged bullet. They really were a nice person, and you’ll probably never find anyone so humble again, you loser.

So instead, I got out my favorite piece of social armor: the ironic “yes, and.” In improv theater, if a scene partner implies that you’re the best of friends, you don’t argue with them. You commit to the bit. So I did.

“Oh my God, Steve, it's so good to hear from you!” I wrote (except I used his real name, of course.) “I can’t believe you still remember our special album. Makes me weepy just thinking about what it meant to us. Anyway, here’s what’s been going on in my life...” Then without warning, I dumped several years’ worth of emotional trauma on him—about severe autism, and how hard day-to-day life was, and how each treatment brought hope and frustration in equal measure while somehow never easing my crippling fear of the future. It was a therapy session on steroids, directed at a stranger under the guise of bitter sarcasm. My flippant sign-off left no doubts about my true feelings: “Anyway, as I’m sure you can imagine, we are flat broke with medical bills, bruh! So I'm gonna need you to take us off your list. But in the meantime, here are some autism charities that you could donate to on our behalf, since we're such good friends.”

To be clear, open snark isn’t remotely in the spirit of “yes, and.” But it felt better in that moment than honest rejection, and I figured he’d take the hint.

Instead, the guy wrote back.

“Wow, what an amazing story!” he said. “Crazy world we live in. I'll go ahead and take you off the list, but I do hope you'll think of us in the future.”

Ugh. He had met my bad behavior with empathy, and I felt moderately ashamed. Then again, you couldn’t argue with results, and at least I knew this ordeal was behind me.

Except he didn't take me off the list. A couple of weeks later, I get another fake-personal email, which I must again paraphrase, though I remember with furious precision the way it made me feel. “Heyyyy Jenn-ster, it's me again! I know how much you've always loved music, so I know you're gonna want to hear about this...”

BITCH. YOU. DON’T. KNOW. ME.

“Steve, what happened?!” I wrote back. “You used to be such a good listener! I think the money's changed you, man.” And I asked once again to be taken off the list.

This time, he ignored me. No reply, and the spam kept coming.

So I just decided that this was going to be our thing. Every time he sent me an email full of stuff I didn't care about, I was going to send him an email full of stuff he didn't care about. Except I kept pushing it a little farther each time, like, “Ooh, potty training's not going so great, let me tell you all about it...” And at the end of every email I'd always remind him, “Hey, anytime you want to stop getting updates on my son's bowel movements, all you have to do is take me off your list.” Sometimes I bolded it; once I super-sized it into a 40-point font. But he never did.

This went on for over a year.

But I won.

It’s a trite saying, but sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. The last email I ever got from this guy was short, which was unusual for him, and it said something like, “Great news! We've just graduated our first class of students—check out these pics!” (Why am I paraphrasing so much, when email is forever and I could just go back and give you direct quotes? Stop asking questions and roll with me for a minute.) Anyway, embedded in the email, like already loaded and filling the screen HTML-style, was this giant picture of… I don’t know, a kid kissing a trumpet or something. It was probably super cute, to be honest—but I was on a mission.

“Great news!” I wrote back, trying as always to mimic the exact structure of whatever he had sent me. “My son just had a colonoscopy—check out these pics!” And I pasted the actual medical photos of my child’s rectal passage into the email, pre-loaded and filling the screen, so he’d be forced to view them against his will, just as I’d been forced to endure his endless marketing crap.

Sure enough, he never emailed me again.

Pretty good story, right? And that closer—I mean how can you top sending medical photos to a complete stranger just to gross them out? Unfortunately (or fortunately; I’ll leave it up to you,) this one has a weirdly philosophical denouement. If you like your narratives sassy and single-layered, I suggest you duck out now.

Around 2015, I was trawling my past for wild stories that could be condensed into a tight three minutes for open mic night, and ‘that time I emailed colonoscopy pics to a spammer’ was an obvious contender. Once I had the basic structure written down, more or less exactly as I remembered it, I went digging through those ancient emails to finalize the details.

And what I found was… not what I remembered. The story I told above clearly had some emotional embellishments (see: paraphrasing), but it was fundamentally true in circumstance, I thought. And, yes, I really did send this guy two pictures of my son’s colonoscopy, though they were just thumbnail attachments, not embedded. But the text of my actual emails to him barely came off as snarky at all, and I never once told him in clear terms to take me off his list. There are a few lame hints at irony that you can pick out if you really squint, but by and large I was just… writing him back. Like we were friends.

Which is a good thing, because his emails to me were even less accurate in my memory than mine had been. He hadn’t cut me off; he’d replied to every single email I’d sent, in a way that made it clear that he’d watched every video and read every article. He was cordial, empathetic, and seemed genuinely interested in my kids. It was a therapy session on steroids, all right—minus the steroids.

BITCH.

YOU. KNOW. ME.

And in return for all this kindness, I had sent him horrific medical photos for no reason. To which he had replied (and this time I’m not paraphrasing,) “Thanks for the update on your son. I appreciate it. Keep up the good work. All the best to you both.” The updates from him had indeed ceased after that, but from what I can tell it was just a coincidental winding down of that particular enterprise, not a removal of my name from any specific list.

Eventually, I ended up emailing him again, this time as a penitential mea culpa to ease my own conscience. I explained the situation, and apologized for my unfair judgment of years past, plus of course the unsolicited sigmoid landscapes. He thought the whole thing was hilarious, and admitted that he’d never once picked up on my poorly-conveyed bitterness.

More important than the personal amends, though, was the lesson I had to swallow about how emotions don’t just cloud memories—sometimes they invent them out of whole cloth. I swear, I swear I remember a photo of a kid graduating from his charitable music lessons, but I can find absolutely no evidence of it anywhere. My brain made it up to retroactively justify my behavior: yes, I sent a photo, but only because he sent a photo first. It’s not even a remotely good justification, but I guess it took the edge off just enough to keep seeing myself as a good person.

It was an important lesson professionally, too. History is nothing but a mashup of inherently self-serving memories, and multiple perspectives can only draw a narrative closer to objective truth by half-steps, never to fully reach its destination. Even hard evidence is fallible, because my emails as written did not accurately represent how I felt when I wrote them, which is an important part of the story in its own way. Misinterpretations and flawed perspectives are inevitable, but they’re also necessary, and stripping them out as a historian is just as wrong as taking them at face value. A story is both what the participants think it is, and what we know it isn’t—especially when those two conflict—and every non-fiction piece I write is just somebody else’s therapy session on steroids.

[universeinform-blog]

Cloudera plans to launch data science software, cloud services

New Post has been published on https://universeinform.com/2017/03/15/cloudera-plans-to-launch-data-science-software-cloud-services/

Cloudera plans to launch data science software, cloud services

Big statistics software company Cloudera will announce new facts science software later this week

on the Strata + Hadoop International convention in San Jose, VentureBeat has found out.

The company will release records technological know-how Workbench software that enable facts scientists and records engineers to work collectively and integrates with Python, R, H2O, and different tools, two assets acquainted with the matter informed VentureBeat. This follows Cloudera’s 2016 acquisition of startup Sense, which constructed a statistics science collaboration tool.

Cloudera becomes keen to construct information technological know-how software before the Sense acquisition but in the long run ended up acquiring rather than freeing its own device, Charles Zedlewski, Cloudera’s senior vice president of merchandise, advised VentureBeat in an interview. On account that the purchase Cloudera has evolved integrations with Apache Spark, Kerberos, and the Hadoop Distributed File Gadget (HDFS), Zedlewski stated.

Cloud-based and on-premises variations of the software program can be available, Zedlewski said. A private beta of the software program became available 3 months in the past, and 30 clients are on the waiting listing for it, Zedlewski said. Competition includes Domino information Lab.

Additionally, Cloudera is preparing to unveil new cloud-based services, which VentureBeat said on in August.

A few of the new products is a managed model of its Organisation statistics Hub (EDH) that will run on the Amazon Net services (AWS) public cloud, the first source said. Cloudera will cope with the management of nodes so clients don’t ought to. This will distinguish it from AWS’ personal Elastic Map Lesson (EMR) and different cloud offerings that operate versions of certain components of the Hadoop open supply software program for storing and processing plenty of different styles of statistics.local service password

There will also be a cloud-based totally version of Cloudera’s Impala vastly parallel processing (MPP) engine, with which people could be able to run queries on records saved in Amazon’s extensively used S3 storage carrier, the primary supply said. The launch will follow AWS’ advent of the Athena querying carrier. Impala got paid for Amazon S3 final yr, Zedlewski stated.

And there can be an Altus metadata carrier going for walks on AWS

Infrastructure, sources said. The name is a reference to the Apache Atlas open supply metadata and statistics governance software. The resources had been not sure while the 3 cloud offerings would release.

Cloudera brought in $330 million in sales in its 2016 economic yr, which ended in January, the primary supply stated. Zedlewski wouldn’t comment on that, nor would he talk approximately the imminent offerings other than the statistics technological know-how Workbench. He did say the company is always searching for methods to make Cloudera software program simpler to run on public clouds. In the past three years, it has emerged as greater famous to run the business enterprise’s software on public clouds rather than in on-premises data

Less expensive Search engine optimization Services For Small Business

As a small Commercial enterprise proprietor, building a web page is just a part of the technique of getting your Business noticed online. Search engine optimization is surely a key part of the puzzle, and websites that get the exceptional scores from search engines like google and yahoo, certainly have a tendency to get the most organic traffic as well.

Regularly, however, small Business does no longer have the time and budget to cognizance on advertising problems, and they alternatively favor to depend on reputable Seo corporations to do the job for them. This does not imply that they depart everything inside the palms of a third-birthday party, as their wishes to be certain tests and balances in a region to make certain that they get value for money. The following fundamentals ought to be considered whilst procuring Lower priced Seo Offerings.

 Searching for out the excellent search engine optimization groups for small Enterprise

These provider carriers can have the revel in and self-belief of working in a gap place. They will be cozy with the usage of legitimate white hat Seo methodologies to installation or revamp a website. One of the strategies they would rent is using several short articles concerning a similar topic around your Commercial enterprise, instead of opting for one prolonged article. Very lengthy pages get a decrease weighting than shorter ones by the search engines like google and yahoo, and lots of visitors will truly not study the whole lot if it takes a few monitors to do so.

 Optimize your website to enhance your visitor experience

This is an essential attention and only becomes feasible if the internet site is relatively enjoyable whilst also capable of keeping the vacationer attention. You do need first-time traffic and go back traffic to live on your internet site for extended intervals of time. no longer best will These additional traffic growth your sales, but the engines like google will growth your rating as a consequence.

Take benefit of header tags.

search engines like google and yahoo use the headers to rank websites. Use special tags – like H1 or H2 – to emphasize your services and products. Visit competitor’s websites and consider their supply codes and tags. That lets you in on their very own Search engine optimization techniques, together with key phrases and while you might not wish to mimic their strategies, this bit of advertising and marketing intelligence gathering can make you watched of other key phrases and things to strive.

Leftist Journalists Are Destroying Self-assurance In Science

The general public, along with Reporters and Science Writers don’t completely read or recognize the research papers they are writing approximately. They read the minimum – summary, end, identify and go with it, lamentably this causes plenty of problem and misunderstanding with the public as to what the Technology is all about. Rarely will each person study thru the information – that is a pet peeve of mine as I examine the headlines in articles approximately Weather Technological know-how and Global Warming. No longer long ago, I used to be discussing this trouble with some NASA employees who work within the Weather Technological know-how division, as they have got watched their Technological know-how misused for high-effect newspaper headlines and provocative internet site click on-bait titles on articles.gilead sciences

Nevertheless, and additionally, in Weather Technology today, I discover the careful use of desire records, extrapolations, merging of information,

Constantly mistakes on the facet of proving the principle correct (it’s human emissions of CO2 at fault), akin to the political games of records; specifically – figures lie and liars parent. The media makes it worse taking studies papers out of context after which aggressively titling articles for predominant headlines, click bait. It’s Now not cool both, and while it can garner a public following, 75% of the public believes International warming is actual, and whilst that can assist bolster endured runaway funding to academia and the bureaucracy to hold to prove them right, sooner or later the Technology of all of it were given misplaced. Meanwhile, while folks purport things like; “it is been settled” or “97% of scientists agree” we never see what the so-called scientists agreed too, however right here it’s miles:

Why Your Business Have to Use On-line Accounting Software program

Cloud Software program has revolutionized the arena of modern-day Commercial enterprise, allowing human beings to paintings together remotely in real-time -wherever they’re in the international. The Cloud allows a couple of users to collaborate on portions of labor and feature gets right of entry to the equal documents and company files from a Pc, laptop or cellular phone.

If you’re acquainted with cloud sharing, you may have also heard of cloud accounting. In a whole lot the same manner that The Cloud permits users to collaborate on portions of work and get right of entry to files remotely, it also enables Commercial enterprise proprietors and their accountants to work collectively to stability the books whilst on the pass.

If you’re unexpected with cloud sharing, you may be daunted through the possibility of Online accounting Software program. you can fear it’ll be difficult to put in force and complicated to understand; you might also be concerned approximately the security of your account statistics, in particular, If you’ve now not used cloud Software before.software download

But Online accounting becomes created with the goal of creating life less complicated and more bendy for Business proprietors. It

Will allow you to hook up with your numbers, in addition to financial advisers, at any time the use of any device. now not only that But you Need to receive a complete setup, implementation schooling and ongoing assist from your provider.

no longer best will you be capable of access your accounts at any time, However, the usage of On-line accounting Software program may even offer you with a time-saving payroll solution. You may have got admission to a photo of your payroll and leave statistics and splendid bills at any time. splendid bills and tax updates could also end up automated.

Which means that You may now not need to spend hours inside the returned office manually entering your payroll information, or pay a person to do it for you: a sensible computer gadget will contend with it while you get on with running your Commercial enterprise.

You may even get right of entry to your payroll in your cell smartphone, so In case you’re on the road extra frequently than you are sat at a desk, You’ll have everything you want to manage your Enterprise out of your pocket.