#i worked 10 hours then came home and took a nap and then went back for another shift

[st-kitten]

707

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WARNINGS: (m.) masturbation, nicknames (baby, babygirl, good girl, princess, pretty girl) little megumi being painstakingly adorable

life as a single father trying to make ends meet was hard for toji fushiguro. his job as a security guard for some company didn't pay much. whatever he earned went into bills, rent, and groceries, leaving next to nothing for him to save or even spend. how he wished there was a simpler way to earn. he'd be exhausted by the time he came home and crashed, only to be woken up by megumi. as much as he loved the kid, getting him ready for school and out the door was harder than an mma fight.

all the babysitters he hired were useless. most of them agreed just to get into his pants so, when they found out that they were hired 'because' he couldn't be home, they left in disappointment.

toji never relied on his neighbours either. partially because they were too old or kids themselves, with parents who also hired babysitters. the closest anyone ever came to being a candidate was his next door neighbour, you.

but he vowed to never approach you. even if it meant leaving megumi to cry midday, over a glass of spilled milk. why?

[flashback]

toji had just helped megumi catch the school bus. waving him goodbye, he went back inside the building. the days got colder each passing day, which meant that he was going to have to repair the broken heater and buy some warm clothes. how ever was he going to afford it in time?

collecting the mail, he stood in the temporary warmth of the elevator, yawning. he really wanted to go back to sleep. his work began at 10 am, so he still had two hours, maybe he could take a nap. or fix that heater himself.

he stood in front of his apartment, looking through his pockets for the keys when he heard muffled noises from the apartment next door. he had only seen you once, when he accidentally took your mail instead of his and had to give it back to you. you always seemed distant and cold, so hearing you softly, yet loudly screaming a series of "yes! yes! keep doing that!" at 8 am made him wonder what the fuck was wrong with you.

he let it slide. people had lives.

but you didn't stop there. when toji came back from his work at night, holding a bag of vegetables, he heard you again.

"oh god! yes!"

and two days later when toji brought megumi home early as he got sick in school, "just like that, baby!" he had to keep babbling random trivia to his son so that he wouldn't hear you. how many times is she going to do this?

when it was toji's day off, and he was taking a nap on the couch, he heard you moaning again. it wasn't that loud, but the single wall between your apartment and his did a terrible job at muffling it. toji was glad that megumi was at school.

[back in present time]

months had passed by and he was still not used to hearing you. he'd forgotten what you looked like, so he didn't recognise you whenever you passed by him or even when you were in the elevator with him. all he knew was that he hated you for being so disturbing.

the day he was dreading finally came when he wanted someone to look after megumi for the night as he had to cover someone's shift, and not a single person was available. with an ale tankard of reluctance, he rang the doorbell, truly expecting you to open it naked, some angry fucker peeking from behind 'cause he didn't get to finish...

so when you opened the door looking the complete opposite; wearing loose sweatpants, a barbie hoodie, house slippers and your hair tied in a messy bun, half a banana dangling in your mouth... toji held back a sigh of relief.

"hey... i'm toji, i live next door," he said, trying to sound sincere.

"i mow woo yooah," you said, chewing the banana quickly, and swallowed it.

"right... listen, i gotta cover an extra shift and i need someone to look after this brat for the night."

you held back a laugh upon hearing him refer to his son like that. you'd only seen megumi from a distance. but, you had no reason to refuse.

"sure! i'd be happy to!"

toji was still unsure about this, but there was no backing out now.

"cool. i'll send him in twenty minutes." toji vanished before you could say anything else. you chuckled to yourself. for a man of his size and built, he sure was a chicken when it came to communication.

you cleaned your living room before he could come back. your place was kid-friendly enough. you made sure you prep the kitchen in case he hadn't had dinner.

your doorbell rang and you scurried to open it.

"here's a list of things you'll have to do... he's... a little tough. but he's a good kid."

you took the list and gave it a brief look and nodded.

"alright, megs, you're gonna be staying with this lady today. i'll be back soo-"

megumi began tugging his father's pants grumpily, upset at his words.

"don't be like that, kid..." toji sighed. he didn't like to exhibit his personal life in front of others.

"please? i'll get you ice cream."

megumi's ears perked upon hearing ice cream. "chocolate?" he cooed.

"yes. now go inside."

clutching a tattered dog plushie (with two heads for some reason), he stepped inside your apartment, looking down.

toji knelt down to meet his eyes. straightening megumi's sweater, he said, "i'll be back tomorrow morning. behave, okay?" megumi nodded, almost on the verge of crying. you held back the 'awwws'.

"alright... i'm trusting you. don't f- mess it up," said toji, looking at you with a glare.

"i won't..." you just smiled solemnly. you'd say the same if you were in his position.

toji wanted to tell you to not have sex for that one night, but he chose not to add fuel to the fire. who was he to tell you not to fuck? if anything, he was mildly jealous that you got to enjoy it so much.

toji left and you turned back to megumi, who was standing in your living room, anxious to move a muscle.

you sighed. "hello, megumi. i'm y/n." you crouched down and held out your hand to him. he hesitated before holding three of your fingers and shaking them. you smiled.

"sorry about this... you don't know me at all and now you're stuck with me. must be weird."

megumi stayed silent. you got up and went to the kitchen, which was open and visible from your living room easily. you opened the fridge and pulled out a carton of chocolate milk that you'd gotten free with something.

"would you like some?" you shook the carton. megumi loved chocolate in any form. not wanting to sound too excited or desperate, he gave a curt nod. you poured him a cup of milk and handed it to him.

"you can sit down wherever you want."

megumi scanned the room and spotted a bean bag. he'd never seen one. he looked at you and then back at it.

"you wanna sit there? sure!" you placed a hand on his head and led him to the corner. you held his cup for him while he tried to sit. he immediately sank into the bean bag, hearing the sound of tiny malleable balls that shifted as he sat down. megumi's eyes widened as he tried not to bolt out of there. when he was settled down, he found it pretty comfortable. he liked how he could stretch his legs and sit at the same time.

"comfy, right?" you said, handing him his cup of chocolate milk. the way he held it with both hands made you want to scream in a pillow. no way that asscrack of a man was his father.

you went over the list once more. it was simple. bedtime was 9 PM, no allergies, likes sweet food, but easily gets a sugar rush, etc. you laughed at the numerous spelling mistakes in it.

"so, what do you like to do?" you asked, sitting down on the floor in front of him.

megumi didn't like talking to babysitters. mostly because they never paid attention to him. he didn't like how they bossed him around. or how they got mad when he asked them if they could play with him. so he would stay silent. nobody ever asked him what he liked to do, so your question caught him by surprise.

he thought about it. what did he like to do?

"paint..."

"you paint?" you asked. you always liked the idea of kids drawing and painting.

megumi nodded. he was obsessed with a box of paints his father had bought him ages ago. the paints were long dried and over. but he still dipped his brush into them, watering them and painting with whatever colour came out of it.

you didn't have paints or brushes that he could use... but an idea struck you and you wondered whether he'd like it.

"wanna paint my room?" you suddenly said.

megumi's eyes lit up with curiosity. won't your walls get damaged? what if he spilled paint on the floor? or on you?

"the walls in my room are sad and empty. i have some paint cans that the painters forgot about when i was renovating. there are some colours still left. what do you say?"

megumi nodded. you got up and went into your room, searching for a shirt you give him as overalls. you pulled out the paint cans from under your bed. you took an old shirt of yours and brought it to him in the living room.

megumi had finished drinking his milk, so he thought he'd keep the cup back. hearing you call his name startled him and he dropped the cup, watching it shatter into pieces. he tensed up and felt his eyes water. you were going to scold him, punish him, maybe even hit him. he deserved it. he broke your cup.

"oh my, are you okay?" you rushed to his side, crouching and checking him for wounds.

"sorry... sorr-" megumi tried his best not to cry. he was expecting an earful at any moment now.

"why?" it was all you asked.

megumi looked at you in shock.

"cup..."

you chuckled sympathetically. "so? cups break all the time."

"i break cup..."

you stood up, unsure of how to convince him that he did nothing wrong.

"okay... you broke the cup." there it was. you were angry. megumi was going to get scolded.

instead, he watched you pick another cup from the shelf. you took the cup, and angling it far from megumi, you threw it.

"and i broke a cup too. guess we're both clumsy..." you shrugged and picked up the pieces, swiping the rest with a broom and tossing them in the garbage.

megumi didn't know what to say. had he really done nothing wrong? it was just a cup... yeah, just a cup.

"come, let's paint my room," you held out your hand to him. slowly, he grabbed it, walking behind you towards your room. your hands were soft and warm. and you didn't pull him or drag him. instead you were walking slower just for him. why were you so kind?

you brought him to your room and asked him to help you spread newspapers on the floor. then you handed him a shirt, helping him put it on since it was huge for him. he looked like a penguin.

"megumi... please, i'll give you more chocolate milk, but can i please take your picture? you're too cute," you asked, clutching your heart.

megumi blushed and nodded, looking away.

you clicked at least twenty pictures of him in your shirt, holding a thick paintbrush, standing on newspaper barefoot. you made a mental note to send these to toji.

"alright, pick your colours."

megumi carefully scanned each colour. then he looked at you. he didn't want to mess up this opportunity. it wasn't every day that he got to paint a wall instead of paper. he wanted to make sure you'd like it.

you seemed the type of person who would appear stern, but on the inside, you were really soft and caring. like a marshmallow. he wanted the room to suit you. being the observant kid, he looked around the room and learned that you liked necklaces, most of which looked like fancy saturns (iykyk). you also liked flowers as there were vases on your nightstand, windowsill and some were on your bookshelves. you also had a lot of books. what really caught megumi's attention was that you had three guitars hung on the wall. your room was totally your personality. he knew what he wanted to paint.

megumi pointed to a few colours and you handed him a few brushes of different sizes. he dipped one in red paint and began painting a few strokes on the wall (only after glancing back at you a hundred times in case you changed your mind). you sat on the bed, watching him focus. he was definitely smarter than kids his age. you admired him.

after a while, you left the room, telling him that you were going to make dinner. curry rice got an approval from him, so you occupied yourself in the kitchen, humming to yourself. you wondered what all he had painted in your absence. you didn't really care about the wall; you only hoped he'd feel safe enough to be a child.

you finished cooking and plated the food, setting on the kitchen island you used as a dining table. you pulled a chair and stacked some couch pillows on it, increasing the height of the seat. you called to megumi, but he didn't answer.

you stepped into the room to call him for dinner again, but no words came from your mouth as you stared at your wall, awestruck.

megumi had painted so many flowers and vines that ran across your wall in different colours. he'd even mixed a few colours and created new ones. he drew the saturn orbs matching your jewellery in the center of some flowers. though he could only paint a part of it and couldn't reach higher, the wall looked full of life.

"megumi..."

he looked at you, anxious to hear what you had to say.

you stood behind him, admiring the wall.

"you made my wall magical. this is so beautiful!"

megumi had a tiny smile on his face.

"you're an artist, gumi" you said, ruffling his hair, and he blushed at the nickname you gave him. nobody ever gave him a nickname apart from his father. people would often forget his name.

he felt his chest swell with pride and happiness. he did a good job.

"let's put fairy lights on the wall!" you chirped and he nodded.

you helped him out of his shirt, tossing it into the laundry basket. you sat him down on the high chair and you both sat down for dinner. megumi liked the food. but he truly loved how you let him be himself without bossing him around. it finally dawned on him that he had broken your cup, painted your wall, and was eating your food and you had absolutely no problem with it. he felt himself breathe freely.

after dinner, he helped you clean the room and stick fairy lights all across your room. you went overboard with it, but when you switched them on and lay on the bed watching them twinkle, it felt worth it.

"we did a good job, today." you gave him a high five.

megumi yawned and you took it as a sign to prep him for bed. toji forgot to give you his toothbrush, so you tore him a new one. you wouldn't dare let a child sleep in the living room, so you tucked him in your bed. you were so glad you bought that expensive comforter because seeing megumi snuggle into it turned your eyes into beating hearts.

upon his request, you tucked in his ominous dog plushie with him and bid him goodnight. megumi fell asleep easily, snoring softly. you made rounds to the room to check on him and felt your heart melt every time. he was definitely an active sleeper. his positions would get bizarre every time and you'd pull the comforter on him properly each time.

you finally slept on your couch around midnight.

toji didn't sleep a wink. the world's most boring job had him awake all night, opening gates for rich snobs who partied and returned to the semi-residential building at odd hours.

the only thing on his mind was megumi. he prayed that you weren't fucking someone with him in the house. he wondered if he'd eaten. he wondered if he was asleep right now. he hoped you gave him his demon dog to sleep with.

when dawn broke, he was out of there. he drove his dying truck straight to the parking and dashed out of the car. he decided to grab his and your mail, just so he'd have an extra excuse to knock on your door.

he didn't bother asking you for a key. he just yanked open the letterbox and it easily came into his hand. he grabbed whatever was in it.

"did you hear apartment 707? so loud.... that too in the morning"

"how could i not? but, im not surprised..."

toji heard two ladies gossip, waiting for the elevator. 707... his apartment was 706, so it had to be you. he was going to murder you.

he sped in and out of the elevator, rushing to your place. expecting to hear the sound of sex, he stopped in his tracks... you were not having sex? your door was conveniently ajar and toji spotted a few empty cans of paint outside.

he opened the door, peeking in, only to see... his adorable five year old son, jumping around and dancing with you to a christmas song, decorating a large tree in your living room. (christmas tree farm by the one and only... blondie)

if toji could explain how much he wanted to giggle at the sight, he would. but he only watched the two of you, leaning against the doorframe, hands folded, a small smirk tugging at his lips.

"where every wish comes true!!!" you sang, hanging the ornaments miscellaneously. megumi poked your leg and you picked him up, helping him tie a bell around a branch.

you swayed and danced to the beat with megumi on your shoulders, who laughed loudly.

toji felt his heart melt upon hearing his son laugh. he hadn't heard that sound in a long time.

he looked around and spotted a plate of half-eaten pancakes and glasses of milk. did you drink milk with him? he held back a laugh.

as you turned around, you spotted toji and nearly threw yourself in the tree.

"dad!" megumi chirped, happy to see his father. toji took it as an invitation to come inside. seeing megumi almost as tall as him, he chuckled and looked him in the eye.

"here's your ice cream, stinky," he said, holding a bag full of ice cream cups.

megumi giggled.

toji smiled widely and you sobbed at how cute the kid was. you placed him down and he ran to his father, clinging to his knee. you took the ice cream bag from toji and placed it on the kitchen counter taking the contents out.

[next song: under the tree by sam palladio]

you handed megumi a cup of chocolate ice cream and the uselessly small wooden spoon that came with it.

"which one do you want?" you asked toji who had yawned at least a dozen times by now.

"anything is fine."

you tossed him the pinkest strawberry ice cream cup. he rolled his eyes, but began eating it anyway. you sat next to him on the couch. megumi insisted on sitting under the tree, on the tree-skirt, looking up at the lights and the ornaments from below.

"oh! look!" you said, pulling your phone out to show toji pictures of little megumi in an oversized shirt holding a paintbrush.

"what's this?" toji asked. though his kid looked cute, he still didn't know what happened when he was away.

"yeah, he painted my wall," you replied.

"HE WHAT?" toji asked, surprised. megumi never misbehaved. but i guess he finally snapped.

"yeah! it's so beautiful, i can't stop staring at it," you began mumbling.

this kid ruined your walls and you're happy about it? he thought you'd scold him.

"come, i'll show you," you signalled him to follow you and toji did, worried about the mess his son had made.

he also did not want to see your room, given that he'd heard you have sex plenty of times for it to etch in his mind like a song that just doesn't fucking leave.

he was not expecting for your room to be so... pleasant and unsuspecting. you had a queen-sized bed with fluffy pillows, plants in the room, some equipment on the desk. hell, instead of sex, it smelled like coconut.

you showed him the art megumi had blessed your wall with.

"he's great at painting!"

toji's eyes widened at the intricate designs on the wall. had megumi really painted this? was he this good at it?

"it's... good..." toji didn't know what to say. he felt really sad that his son was capable of something so great and yet toji couldn't do more for him.

you smiled, somehow understanding what he was feeling. it was the same thing you felt about yourself when you realised your love for music.

toji asked you to send him the pictures and you complied. he looked around your room in silence, not knowing what to do. but he decided to address the former elephant in the room.

"can i ask you something?"

"sure," you said, looking down at your phone.

"i don't have the right to pry in your personal life, but... next time you have someone over, keep it down? i don't want megumi to hear... that..."

"huh?"

"you know... what you and your boyfriend do..."

"i don't have one?"

"then whoever you bring home to fuck... just please, keep the volume low," said toji impatiently.

"i didn't bring any... oh, you heard that!" you said as it dawned on you.

"yeah, whatever that is..." toji wanted to hide his face. it felt like giving a child 'the talk'. and you weren't that old too...

"toji..." you called, holding back your laugh. he wondered what was so funny.

"i'm not having sex in here. what you've been hearing..." you almost held it back... "was me recording for quinn."

"huh?"

you sighed as you explained, "it's an app for people who like listening to spicy stories... i'm one of their narrators... i try to pick times when people are busy or not here... but oh my god, i'm so sorry you had to hear that..." you said with a laugh, grabbing his arm apologetically.

toji digested every word you said.

"why on earth would you do that?"

"it pays really well, you know..." you shrugged.

now you had toji's attention. "you get paid for speaking dirty?" he asked, genuinely curious.

"and narrating, reading lines, moaning, whimpering, shouting... the works."

"that's an odd job..." he commented. it truly was. he had no idea things like these existed.

"i'm a singer by profession, so this is just a side hustle. my room is soundproof so i can't hear outside noises, but sadly..."

"you're not ashamed?"

"why would i be? it's great that people like it. you should try listening to some."

"please, no," toji held his palm out to her. he heard you chuckle. "aren't you worried that people might find out about you?"

"of course i don't use my real name."

toji shook his head in disbelief.

"i know you're ancient, but try it someday. who knows, you might end up liking it," you said, showing him the app on your phone.

toji stared at you with a blank face. he wasn't that behind the times, was he? he snuck a glance at your screen, his eyes falling on your username in a corner. embarrassed, he swatted your hand away and you chucked.

"anyway, thanks for looking after my kid." toji got up and left your room as you trotted behind him.

"anytime!"

toji left with megumi, after thanking you once more and making his kid do the same. megumi had definitely enjoyed he spent with you. he wished he could do it again.

a few days passed by and megumi started to become more interactive with you, waving at you, telling about his day when you rode the elevator together, giving you some small sketches he made after you gave him a sketchbook and some colour pencils.

toji still hadn't warmed up to you, but he wasn't as dismissive as he used to be. in fact, he had gotten slightly curious about you. you lived a quiet life, or so it seemed on the outside. but he knew what you did and how unbothered you were about it.

why would people pay to listen to strangers moaning? it seemed bizarre to him. he tried to ignore it.

he was stuck on another night shift, leaving megumi with you. he was glad that his son didn't mind you. and you'd proven to be a capable babysitter. yet, all he wanted was to be near his son. home. the night couldn't get over any sooner.

toji sat in the booth provided to him, watching the streets. nights when people came and went by were just as boring as when nobody showed up. he contemplated taking a nap, but the last thing he wanted was to be fired for slacking off. especially when the night shift paid him a bit more.

he turned side to side in the swivel chair, groaning in frustration. so far, he'd watched eight mma matches on his phone, cussing at how pathetic they were. nothing entertained him enough to keep him awake.

that thing embedded in his subconscious mind suddenly resurfaced, making him gulp in guilt. he could do it. it's not like she'll know... as if he was being watched, toji switched the light off in his booth and discreetly took his phone out, lowering the brightness and pulling out a tangled pair of earphones, and plugged them in. he downloaded that app, signing in with a random email he'd created ages ago.

[mention; compromised: victoria pedretti, on quinn]

he remembered her username and typed it in. not wanting to dwell too much on it, he clicked on the first 'story' he saw. he didn't read the description. he had no idea what he was to expect. thankfully, the audio started with some context. he instantly recognised your voice. based on what he understood in the first few minutes of the introductory chapter, it was a story about an agent watching over the witness she was supposed to protect. he realised that it was a woman x woman story. not that he minded. he just enjoyed listening to your voice. you surely had a singer's voice.

the more he listened, the more engrossed he was in the plot.

"i can stay on the line, sure..." you said, as your character stood below a hotel, at a distance, watching the woman you were on the phone with, from the window, keeping an eye out.

"you're not wearing anything underneath... i might not be the only person watching, you know," you chuckled. your laugh sounded better all over, probably due to the recording quality. toji paid attention to everything he heard.

"...tell me where you're touching...does it feel good?"

"i wanna see your other hand on your breast..."

"do you want me in that room?" your voice was laced with quick breaths...

"now i'm gonna hang up...no, not to touch myself... I don't care that you're close!"

toji sighed in exasperation, truly engrossed in the story.

"wait, shit, there is a man... fuck i think he's armed..."

toji had never clicked on 'next' that fast in his life. okay, he was hooked. when he first heard about this from you, he thought it was just audio-porn. he didn't expect a full on story with a plot, internal monologue, the background noises. it was as if it was happening around him.

the next chapter had you grunt and scream as you fought some attacker. how on earth did she record this shit? was she also fighting in the apartment? he smirked, realising what a double life she was leading.

"i saw that smirk, don't get any ideas..." you said coincidentally and toji had to look around him for a moment.

"you're very, very distracting..." your voice seemed closer whenever the background music got fainter. maybe it was the mic or some technical tweaking. but it really sounded like you were speaking in his ear.

your pants were now mixed with small laughs. it sounded blissful.

"don't ever be sorry for kissing me..." toji was surprisingly okay with hearing sounds of you kissing, probably another woman.

"oh, these lips... can i? touch them? fuck..." you moaned slightly... and then laughed. "did you just bite my thumb? you're so bad... i might have to punish you."

toji had to grasp his phone tightly as heard you make out, hearing your breaths mingled with the sounds of your lips moving against someone else's. you sounded so different, so confident.

"you like that, don't you? me on my knees... touching you, licking you, tasting you..."

fuck

toji knew you were saying this to a woman, but he couldn't help picturing himself in her place. your hums, whimpers, breaths, they were all elevating his senses. he felt his pants tighten.

"yes, fuck..."

"i love your neck..." you panted. toji raised his head, gulping.

"you're so hot... fuck... me..." your moans had started to get louder, breathier.

"what if i don't wanna hurry? what if... i wanna make you beg for it?" toji instinctively let his hand wander down his body, to his pants. he loosened his belt. he slid his pants and boxers down just enough for his dick to spring out, harder than he expected it to be. your constant moans, whimpers and dirty words became music to his ears as he stroked his cock slowly.

"tell me how good it feels..."

toji groaned, quickening his speed, his eyes closed, his mind visualising your face. he imagined you doing everything he heard you do on the phone. touching him, licking him, tasting him... he fisted his cock to the sounds of your sweet voice, shamelessly.

"so good..." he hissed, as if to answer you, gliding his fist up and down his thick veiny cock, its tip glistening proudly.

"come for me, yes! yes! yes! fuuuuck..." you moan loudly, dragging the last word, breathing shakily.

"god..." toji gave up any restraint he had and let his cock burst like a dam, spoiling his pants.

he was high. high on your voice, your moans, your words. he wished he could experience it for the first time again.

a shrieking honk from the gate snapped toji back into reality. he zipped back up in a hurry, shoving his half-hard cock in his pants. he tied a jacket around his waist to hide it and scurried out of the booth to open the gate.

toji came home early in the morning, feeling floaty. he couldn't forget last night's events. not when you were right there. next door. probably recording the next one. toji didn't know how he was to face you, but he was damn sure about hearing you again.

and hear you he did. for days. he was finding the plot interesting too. but he was addicted to your voice. how were you so confident? how did you manage to record the perfect moans. did you have help? did you get off just to get a good audio? all these questions plagued toji's mind. he really wanted to ask you about it.

but how was he to do it without sounding like a creep? or worse, a pervert? but then again, you did tell him about it yourself.

so, when he had to collect megumi from your house after coming back, he came up with the simplest excuse.

"see you later, gumi!" you ruffled his hair, watching him run to his father, who told him to go inside and wait for him.

before you could shut the door, he shoved his foot inside. "hey, uh... i had a question."

"come in..." you moved aside.

you were hungry, but didn't have the time to buy groceries. so, instant ramen it was...

toji followed you to the kitchen, rehearsing the imminent conversation in his head.

"what's wrong?" you asked, looking at his tensed brow.

"i'm a little starved for cash. megumi's birthday is coming and i want to give that urchin something good this time."

"awww..."

"you uh..." was he really going to ask that? would she even listen? "you were talking about that..."

you on the other hand, knew exactly what he wanted to talk about. so many of your friends had tried to do that same. the fact that toji was considering doing that made the composer in you mildly excited.

"you want to earn cash on quinn, am i right?"

toji's head shot up, looking at you, slightly horrified and ready to get his ass kicked out the door.

"alright."

"wait, what?"

"i'll help you... sell your voice."

"are you serious?"

"do i look like i'm joking?"

"would i even... be able to... you know..."

you leaned on the kitchen island, looking at toji, who had sat down in a chair across from you.

"just do it..."

"you expect me to do it just like that?" he asked.

"what, like it's hard?" you snorted.

toji just looked at you blankly. "you mean, you do it just like that?"

"women are expert at faking it, you know?" you smirked.

toji scoffed in disbelief, rolling his eyes.

wickedly, you began panting, whimpering, opening your mouth as lewd moans spilled out of you. you gripped the edge of the kitchen island, and whined, "yes! toji! just like that!"

toji felt like he'd been shot in the head... both his heads... he felt a bulge in his pants. hearing you moan and actually seeing you moan were two different things. the way your eyes shut tight, brow creased, mouth opened and chest heaved, toji couldn't take his eyes of you.

you saw his reaction through squinted eyes and stopped, reverting to your normal self, scratching the back of your head, completely unbothered.

"so yes, toji... just like that..." you said, without the moans this time.

toji gulped.

"so, do you wanna record a demo? i can send it to my agent. if she likes it, she'll ask you to record a proper script."

toji sighed... what was he getting into? he didn't actually imagine himself doing it. would it be embarrassing? no, fuck it. he could really use the extra cash.

"no one can know," he said sternly.

"you can use a pseudonym. you can literally put an emoji as your name."

"whatever. as long as nobody can trace it back to me."

"i guarantee you they won't. let's send an anonymous demo, 'kay?"

"fine. but, i don't know how to do this shit. it's too... fucking dumb."

you chuckled. "it is. dumb and fun. but doesn't it make you feel... like a king, knowing that the world gets off to your voice?"

toji scoffed and smirked. oh, how he wished she knew that he had been getting off to her voice nearly every damn night, palming his dick, picturing you saying all those dirty things to him.

he followed you to your bedroom where you had set up your mic, your laptop, you desk, under a labyrinth of wires and cables. he was made to sit in the chair facing the mic. the fuck am i doing...

you tapped on your laptop, leaning forward on the desk. toji's hammering anxiety took a break when he realised how close you were. your tits were practically in his face. he'd only ever seen you in baggy clothing, so this was a pleasant surprise. they were big. but they'd easily fit in his hands. he was a little disgusted by the fact that he was severely attracted to you.

"okay... what would you like to say?"

"i don't know..."

"what are your go-to swear words?"

"uh... fuck?"

"and?"

"i don't swear because of my kid... so, i don't know... this is difficult, y/n..."

"what do you have to fear?"

she was right. what was he to lose? to fear? nothing. he knew how hot was. he knew ladies threw themselves at him. he knew his sex appeal was impeccable. so then why was this so difficult?

oh, he knew why. you. it was because of you. the way he'd listened to your moans all week, stealing glances at you whenever he saw you, and now that he was in your bedroom with you...

fuck that! this bitch just faked an orgasm in front of me without a problem. i can at least spit out a few sentences.

"how do you start?"

"well, i usually have a script and there's good enough build up."

"so, give me one of your scripts."

"really? you wanna say, 'touch my pussy'?"

"fuck no. ugh, this is frustrating," he groaned loudly, leaning back and running his hands through his hair.

"hey, wait, that's good!"

"huh?"

"say it again."

"this... is frustrating?"

"tojiiiii," you rolled your eyes and smacked his arm. "say it like you did before. with the groan and all."

"i can't just do it on command."

"do you want me to leave you here alone with a gravure magazine then?"

toji's narrowed his eyes at her. "you read those?"

"no, but, you get the point."

toji sighed. you thought of another way to get him riled up. if a sexy audio wasn't gonna happen, then an angry one it was... there were plenty of angsty stories in demand. you clicked on record without him knowing.

"stop acting like a virgin, toji," you said and he shot you a glare. you let your mouth run a marathon, "no, for real, you're a grown ass man with a nice, deep voice. you look like you'd be pissed off if someone so much as looks at you wrong. or worse, if someone tries to mess with your son-"

"watch your mouth," toji growled, grabbing your jaw with his fingers, pressing it tightly.

"or what?"

"or you regret ever letting me in this house. that kid fucking loves you. you keep him out of this. do not... ever use him... to use me," he snarled.

you pressed the spacebar to stop recording. toji pulled his hand back, putting two and two together.

"that... was something."

"i mean it."

"sorry... but damn, angry toji... is sexy..." you commented.

"yeah? you like that?" toji said with a smirk. you squealed, regretting not recording that.

"SAY THAT AGAIN." you began recording again.

toji let out a deep chuckle. "you want me to say that again, pretty girl?" oh, he was starting to get into it.

you nodded.

"beg for it..." toji whispered, slightly closer to the mic. he watched you hold back another squeal.

"use your words, baby."

you were almost jumping up and down at how good he sounded. you really wanted to use his voice. you figured your agent would ignore yours and focus on his.

you exhaled, "please, please say it again!"

"hmm..." toji's baritone voice reverberated in the mic. "that doesn't sound so convincing, princess..."

you banged the air above the desk, pursing your lips and grinned.

"please please please! i'll do anything!"

oh, toji was starting to see the fun in it. "anything, you say..."

"yes! whatever you say!" you too were blending well with him.

"get on your knees then, baby..." he said brusquely.

your jaw dropped, morphing into a wide smile as you silently cheered him. toji found your reactions entertaining. true, you'd been doing this longer than him, so you were probably used to hearing all that. you were genuinely enjoying him.

you gave him a thumbs up and he made his closing statement, making sure to murmur, "good girl..."

you stopped recording and grabbed toji by his shoulders, shaking him. "AAARRRRGGGH. you are a natural!!!!!"

toji smirked. that was oddly easy to do. mostly because you helped him into it.

"well, i'm not one to brag..."

"no, please brag."

"heh. do you think your agent will like it?"

"she will eat it. she will want to become it."

"how much do you make exactly?" he asked.

"i had to do a lot of small freebies until i got my big break. i made [good amount] per episode. i've done three stories, each with two to three chapters. im working on a fourth one... so it's incomplete."

that must have been the one toji had listened to the first time. he did click the first thing he saw. he'd been replaying the first three episodes over and over, coming undone to them. but now that you'd said there were more...

"that's actually very..."

"rich, right? i was surprised too."

"so, you're gonna send it to your agent now?"

"yep. she'll like it. under what name do you want it?"

toji thought about it. he couldn't have this traced back to him. not with megumi's life at risk. it had to be something entirely random. yet meaningful...

"how about... 707?"

you grinned. that was a smart pseudonym. "done."

"well... tell me how it goes. and once again... not a word about this in public. what happens in this room, stays in this room," he warned you.

"WAIT SAY THAT AGAIN!"

toji chuckled as he stood up to leave and rejoin his son. before he did, he inched closer to you and whispered in your ear, "beg for it, babygirl."

you groaned and flapped your hands, fanning yourself. "you're so good at this!"

you'd sent that clip to your agent and got a response from her a few days later. to say the least, you were surprised by her request.

so, you stood at toji's door, phone in hand. he opened it.

"'sup?"

"it's my agent."

toji shut the door behind him, not wanting megumi to hear anything.

"what'd she say?"

you simply held out your phone and the text she sent you.

'WHO IS THAT?' 'GIRL LOCK THAT MAN IN THE BASEMENT' 'he's got the job if he wants it. i just got a killer script! the only condition is'

toji raised an eyebrow at the last message.

'you both have to do it together'

[phoenixeclipse-lmkau]

The Cursed Warlords - Chapter #One – Into the Unknown

A bad day at work? All you want is sleep… not whatever this is!

You let out a sigh as the last customer left for the day. The door clicked shut and you made your way to pack up. You still needed to get home, cook dinner and help clean that up before you would be able to go to sleep. You tried to surpass a groan as you thought about all the things you still needed to do during the day.

“You look exhausted,” You heard Janet, your co-worker say causing you to turn and look at the short, curly, red-head. She was a sweet woman who always offered to help you whenever you wanted or needed it.

“Yeah. I still have a lot to do today though. Yay adulthood,” You gave a sarcastic whoop causing her to laugh. She knew all too well how ‘fun’ adulthood was.

Your co-worker looked at you with sympathy as she clearly understood your exhausted nature of the day. Working for 8 to 10 hours a day sucked, it was tiring and then going home and helping with your siblings didn’t help. That was a lie it did help some, you loved your younger sister and brother but taking care of them took so much energy. So the little to no sleep because you were able to get was an absolute blessing truly.

Letting out a low groan you leaned over the cash register for just a moment before standing up straight and stretching your arms. You couldn’t let your boss see you ‘napping’ on the job even if you were so close to the end of the day.

You looked at Janet with a smile, she didn’t need to be stuck with negativity all the time, “Let’s get this show rolling!”

At your new chipper mood Janet just laughed before she went about the last duties that she needed to finish for the day. You also finished cleaning whatever if was you needed to clean before practically running out the door. The fresh air was such a nice contrast from the headache of work.

“You look like you’re in a rush,” You heard Janice call causing you to hold back a groan, Janice was your team leader of sorts and she loved to hold you and Janet back from getting home on time.

You forced a smile before turning around, “Of course, I need to go help with my siblings after all. You know that.”

Janice’s smirk remained as she looked around for anyone before approaching you, for a second you thought about just bolting but you knew that wouldn’t do anything but cause more headaches. She was about to open her mouth when Janet came out of the building locking it and handing the key over to Janice with a big grin spread across her face. You had to hold back your laugh at the look of pure shock that spread across her face.

“We’re locked up and ready to go boss!” Janet said almost smugly.

Janice seethed angrily, “I was supposed to double check your work!”

You rolled your eyes when she turned to look at Janet. Your team lead was NOT one to actually check things over. She would look around and not pay attention to any of the important things she’s supposed to do.

“Don’t worry everything is taken care of,” Janet said in a sweetly tone.

Janice was clearly about to yell again when Janet turned her attention towards you with a joyful grin. “You get on your way, I know how impatient your younger sister is.”

Janice of course did NOT take this well and shouted immediately afterward. You wanted to groan, she never liked to make this easy for you whenever it was time to leave for the day. Normally you’re able to get passed her before she can catch you, today it just seemed like an unlucky day.

“It is not time to go home-,” Janet cut her off with a sweet smile and calm voice.

“She is off the clock which means that yes it is time for her to leave, unless you want the manager to hear about this,” That made Janice shut up immediately and Janet said it all with an oh so sweet smile across her face.

You really wanted to get back to your family and make sure that your younger siblings had been well behaved like they were supposed to. “As much as I would love to hang around I really need to get back to my family. Mom needs my help with the kids.” You’re words were sarcastic at first but the need to help your family was true.

“Pfft! Seriously? You think YOU have it rough? I still live with my parents and they force me to have a job and pay them rent! Like seriously they have their own money, why can’t they just cover me?” Janice sneered with her words and both you and Janet deadpanned.

“I have never heard such a stupid sentence in my life,” Janet slapped her forehead as she spoke causing Janice to gasp in anger.

“HOW DARE-,” You heard her yell as Janet pulled you away without another word, completely undisturbed by the yelling woman.

You two didn’t talk for long before Janet made her way to leave for her own home. You almost wished that she lived in the same direction as you instead of the opposite. She was much better company than silence was on the long walk you had to trek. Your car broke down a week ago and you didn’t have the funds to fix it, it would take a few more weeks before you could bring it to the repair shop. Letting out a sigh you grumpily thought about the fact that you would have to walk to work every day for a few more weeks.

For a moment you thought you could hear a bell chiming through the air.

You barely closed your eyes for a moment, and everything around you suddenly went silent. There was no sound of the barking dogs, the cars that passed by on the road, no sound of the ever moving wind. Confusion filled you as you opened your eyes, fear immediately flooding your system as you snapped your head around.

“WHAT THE HELL!?” You shouted in shock.

Around you was a vast hallway of sorts, black in color with doorways scattered on each side. Within each was a dark orange and black spiral that continually swirled around. You could practically feel strange energies that bounced out of each, dangerous auras emerging from others. Everything looked so big around you.

Your foot moved back and you felt it nearly fall. Twisting around your eyes widened when you realized you were standing in front of one of the doorways. However it was shifting, changing, the swirls turning from one direction into another.

You were dreaming, this wasn’t real. You were just on the sidewalk. You weren’t in whatever this place was. You didn’t even realize that you were almost hyperventilating when a voice echoed through the corridor.

A young man dressed in long black robes that covered most of his body came running over to you. He seemed almost frantic.

“FUCK! Gosh are you okay ma’am!? I am so sorry, I didn’t mean to-,” His words cut off as you whirled around accidentally decking him across the face as you did.

His head snapped to the side. You were about to say something when he turned back to look at you. Vibrant orange eyes looked back at you and you couldn’t help but yelp in shock and take a step back.

“NO!”

Orange and black invaded your vision as you fell backwards. The sound of a bell rang around you. A shout left your lips as you tripped over your own two feet barely feeling the solid ground below you. Turning you gasped at the sight of an old woman staring at you in shock, with vibrant blue eyes, long dark brown hair and… a tail!?

“Cha-,” Her words were cut off by the sound of a bell.

The bell chimed through the air around you, echoing in your ears.

You didn’t have time to think about it as you stumbled back again and fell onto the ground. Groaning you opened your eyes for a mere second, then a scream left your lips as you came face to face with what appeared to be a humanoid spider. Dark purple skin covered her… was it a her- body. Her poisonous green eyes pierced through you in disgust, while you could only stare at her large arachnid legs. Eight long black legs that connected the her bottom half.

“What the hell-,” She began when everything faded once again with the chime of another bell, that rang through your ears like a siren.

You fell backwards again and fell straight into a river, water soaking though your clothes as you choked up water near the shore. Your head was spinning, what the hell was going on, you didn’t know what to do or what to say. You could barely look around when you found yourself staring face to face with a small child, one that had a long scaly green tail, dark green eyes and pitch black hair. The young ‘boy’ looked at you in shock.

“NO!” A voice rang behind you as you fell once again, you didn’t know why- was that the man from the hall!?

You fell onto your butt and quickly stood up looking back and forth before finding yourself staring at a tall woman with fox-like features. Short blond hair, with six fox-like tails swishing behind her. Her eyes widened before looking at the deer like man beside her.

“Who are you?” Her voice was filled with shock as she spoke but you weren’t given time to answer before the chime of a bell once again rang through the air.

Everything vanished in a whirl of orange and black, and you fell once again flat on your face. A low groan left your lips as you looked up, your mouth immediately closing as you sat up to your knees at least. Your head was pounding, and spinning as pain and confusion whirled through it constantly at what you had just witnessed.

The land around you was a beautiful vast forest, with large trees towering above you. Rubbing your head you attempted to make out what was going on in front of you as your vision flickered between blurry and black. You forced yourself to look straight and saw a barely burning fire in the middle of a small encampment of what looked like people. But- after everything could it be- you shook your head trying to rid yourself of the thoughts.

“What the hell?” A small, whispered voice muttered causing you to whip your head to see a young- monkey?

Your eyes widened at the sight of a young girl or monkey with pitch black fur covering her arms, legs and part of her neck. She had grayish white eyes that were wide with shock, surrounding them was a light blue butterfly marking across her face. A long tail wrapped around her leg. She leaned forward and rested her hand on the cage bar.

… Cage bar?

You looked around her, surrounding her was a small metal cage. With dried red blood on the floor of it, and your eyes widened in horror. Your chest tightened at the sight before you unable to understand exactly what you were looking at. This was impossible- no it was possible but… you couldn’t believe you were seeing this.

The door on the front of the cage was held closed with a thick metal chain and a simple looking lock. Trafficking? Rage boiled in your chest at the thought of it. Anger burning behind your eyes as you set a hand close to hers on the bars. They were ice cold to the touch.

“Who- who are you?” You asked trying to hold back your anger, your rage.

“Chu Spirit… you need to get out of here. They could wake up at any moment,” She jerked her head to the side to show you the three large, sleeping men who were clearly the ones who hurt this small girl.

She was barely three feet tall, and seemed rather young. She was covered in injuries like scratches and scars across her arms and legs, the only places you could see. There was no telling how else this girl could have been hurt. There was no telling what these men did to her before you got here.

Your hands clenched around the bar as rage bubbled through your chest, your breathing quickened with each thought that came through your head. A small hand gently settled against yours as she spoke. Her eyes narrowed at you as she spoke.

“You NEED to leave. If they wake up then they are sure to capture you as well, don’t worry about me. Worry about yourself,” Her voice was slightly snappy as she spoke, attempting to get you to leave before the men woke up.

You found yourself clenching the bar tighter as anger crossed over your face. There was no way that she was actually telling you to leave her alone with these men. Her eyes watched you carefully before she grabbed your hand and pried it from the bar pushing you away.

“Go, you’ll put yourself in danger if you stay-,” You cut her off with harsher words than you would have liked.

“No. No one deserves to be treated like this, you’re hurt and need to be helped. I can’t just leave you here like this when I can clearly help you,” You snapped, quietly but still harsher than you would have liked.

Her eyes widened in shock before a glare passed over her own face, she couldn’t believe what you just said to her, there was no way that you seriously just said that. Just as she was about to open her mouth she heard one of the men groan in his sleep, causing her to look over at him. Grinding her teeth together she wasn’t able to do anything but sit here.

“I’m not leaving until I know that you are safe. Which means you are going to have to deal with me helping you,” You said as quietly as possible.

No one deserved something like this. There was absolutely no one that deserved to be caged and hurt like this. You could feel your blood boil even more at the mere thought of it. Not only that she wasn’t even trying to get you to help her, no she was trying to get you to leave, to save yourself. Gritting your teeth together you looked at the lock. You didn’t have a key, but this was one of the simplest locks you had ever seen.

Standing up you walked over to the lock, picking up a stone into your hand. Clenching it tightly until your hand turned red as you inspected the lock. Yeah, this would work.

“What are you- no you’re going to make too much noise,” Spirit hissed angrily at the thought of you doing this.

>>>

“Shit. Shit. Shit,” His voice was quiet but his panic was very real as he looked around for you, he knew he shouldn’t have done this!

The man from the hallway, the reason that you were here was frantically looking around for you. He had pulled you away from the dragon child but now he couldn’t find you at all. He was cursing himself under his breath as he flew around attempting to find you. He knew you hadn’t left the world, he would have sensed that.

But now- now he was stuck trying to look for you! Your chaotic energy was so small, it was near impossible to track. He couldn’t find even the smallest hint of it. Not with portals popping up everywhere and he couldn’t pinpoint where they were in his panic. Shit! He really fucked up this time!

<<< Arc #One - Cursed

Chapter #Two - Escape >>>

[elizais]

the longest day

summary: your ability hurts your body after prolonged use and you end up in yosano's office dazai osamu x fem!reader, comfort/fluff warnings: reader gets injured

every time you had used your ability, your muscles were sore, you felt tired and it was never a pleasant experience afterwards. usually, you just took a nap and felt better. but today, you were asked to stop another ability user. being such a strong ability user - you went by yourself, leaving the rest of the agency as it didn't seem severe enough. you and everyone else were certain you could complete this task by yourself with ease.

hours went by with no response from you, the other members starting to get worried. infact, atsushi had asked kunikida how long you were meant to be out for and that was when tensions really started to rise. eyes began to turn to dazai, fidgeting with whatever was on his desk. it was then that fukuzawa requested that someone is sent out for you.

about an hour later, yosano walks towards dazai as he is leaving to go downstairs to the cafe, still looking as anxious as ever. she calls out his name but he is so lost in his own world he can't hear her over his own thoughts. yosano taps him on the shoulder "dazai? she is in my office." her voice is barely above a whisper as she knows how anything louder would but a grenade in the thick tension around him. "thank you." he says as he turns around but she follows him, informing him that "her ability has made her really disorientated and the medicine she has been put on to ease her surroundings has made her high as a kite. give her some time, please." reluctantly, he nods and forgets about his previous trip to join junichiro, atsushi, kunikida and ranpo.

osamu tried his best to occupy himself until the end of his work day. kunikida was easier on him, dazai even done his own paperwork (surprisingly). the last 10 minutes were the worst, he knew you were probably sleeping it off but his mind kept on thinking the worst. if yosano didn't need to use her ability and just used meds, then your body would heal itself. as soon as his shift was over, he threw his coat on and made his way towards the room you are in.

as he expected, you were fast asleep. dazai whispered your name as he looked at your pretty hair across the pillow. he whispered your name and you stirred, half opening your eyes. "'samu?" you slurred, absolutely out of it. "oh darling, what did i say about overusing your ability?" osamu whispered back as he laid a hand on your arm, allowing his ability to help your pain subside, at least a little bit. "can we.." you paused, a sharp pain behind your eyes. but before you could complete your sentence he finishes it. "yosano will be back soon, let her check you over again and then we can go home, dear." you nodded ever so slightly.

sitting up slowly, you squeezed your eyes shut in an attempt to counter the overwhelming dizziness. osamu chuckled at your scrunched up face before helping you up. the door opened and yosano came in holding her documents. "you can go, but please try to not use your ability to this extent in the future." you flashed her a grateful smile and a small "thank you, akiko" before leaving. holding onto osamu's arm for balance and for his nullification ability.

walking out, you were under his sandy coat with your weak body attached to him, he was essentially carrying your half asleep figure. he didn't mind though. he would rather you be less stubborn on going by yourself next time though. "i'm sorry, osamu", you slipped out of your mouth. "don't apologise, i will be here for you every time."

[charmercharm3r]

Masterlist

warnings: smut, oral (f receiving), just a very jisung-like conversation

thinking about Jisung knowing your body so well...

There was absolutely nothing special about today. You didn’t bother putting on any makeup, ran some errands in a tattered pair of sweats and your boyfriend’s hoodie, came home and took a nap, and here you were now. Laid up in bed in nothing but one of Jisung’s extremely oversized shirts and some panties, you scrolled through your phone and sent a quick text to ask your boyfriend what he wanted for dinner.

Asking what he wanted for dinner was your way of encouraging him to come home at a reasonable hour, even if that reasonable hour was 10 p.m. and you were just barely starting to put something quick and tasty together. That’s why your midday naps came in handy, so you could have enough energy to spend time with Jisung before you both called it a night.

Except this time, you’d over slept a bit too much and just felt groggy. It was the kind of nap where you didn’t realize what time it was and thought you’d slept through the night into the next day. But Jisung wasn’t wrapped in your arms, so that couldn’t have been the case. He never liked sleeping without you there.

You were only awake for maybe thirty minutes when the door was unlocking and closing suddenly. Quick footsteps made their way into your bedroom where you still laid on your belly, relaxed. Looking over your shoulder, Jisung huffed and puffed, looking at you with big, worried eyes.

“You okay? Did you run home?” You laughed, rolling over just a little and propping up on your elbow to face him. 

“Yeah, I did! You texted me so late, I was worried,” Jisung sighed and immediately stripped off his shirt, tossing it somewhere forgotten. Before you could question him, Jisung was crawling up the end of the bed and using your legs to flip you on your back and slotting himself between them, just laying his head on one thigh then clamping them around his neck. Your legs were like his own personal pillow, squishy and comfortable in every sense of the word. He was home in the middle of the day, you should’ve asked more questions but his presence alone was something you wouldn’t let go to waste.

“Sorry, babe. I took a late nap but ‘m still tired,” he cooed sympathetically. Soothingly he kneaded the flesh of your thighs, lightly massaging the muscles as he placed kisses to the skin.

You kept your eyes closed and let your head fall back into the pillows, relaxing under his touch. Just as you were getting comfortable again, Jisung sucked in a deep breath. “I’d ask you how your day went, but I think I’d rather taste it.”

Still in a daze, you didn’t look as he rearranged himself to lay on his tummy, “what are you talking about?”

Jisung bent your knees, sweetly kissing your ankles and trailing up the insides of your calves until he came to your knees to start lightly teething at your thighs. Safe to say he has an affinity for them, “just so versatile,” he’d say.

“You smell so good. I think I could tell exactly what you did today.” You didn’t protest as he reached the hem of your panties, nuzzling his nose into the gusset and breathing in your scent. You weren’t even thinking about being intimate, but Jisung has a way of provoking you embarrassingly quick. The brief mention of him wanting you already had you soiling your underwear.

“Tell me how that works, baby.” The words weren’t sarcastic, but you didn’t expect him to be serious about it.

“Before I tell you, I want you to know I love every single part of you and any kind of body odor is 100% natural and that I’d go to town on you in any one of these stages.”

Jisung looked up at you from between your legs, wrapping his arms around your thighs so he could tug at your panties. He’d only slipped his hand under the band and was gently pinching at the skin. You’d quirked your head down at him, opening one eye, “there’s stages to my smell?”

“Yeah, but don’t think it’s bad! I just like your pussy so much that I can tell.” Shrugging, you slumped into the mattress again. “First stage is fresh out of the shower, so there isn’t much there other than your body wash. Tastes great. Second stage,” he scoot in closer, freeing his hand from your underwear and grazing his fingers over the front of your cunt. Jisung sucked in another breath full of you and exhaled with his eyes rolling back, “lounging around. Didn’t do much so it’s the most ideal for some guys. Still delectable. Me?”

Jisung grabbed the top band of your panties with both hands and yanked the fabric up to reveal the sloppy outline of your pussy, you to squealed into a laugh and reached for his hair. You appreciated his dramatics, it made you feel loved and valid, even if he was suffocating himself in your crotch. Jisung shoved his nose into your clothed pussy and sniffed, shaking his head back and forth against your clit. It made you moan and tug his hair harder, the post-nap daze making you all the more sensitive.

“My personal favorite is stage three. You ran some errands today, didn’t you baby?” He smelled again, “grocery shopping aaaand… post office?”

“How did you know?” you giggled as Jisung’s thumb found its way to your bundle of nerves, lightly circling it with practiced precision. “Told you, baby. This cunt is my favorite meal.”

“What’s stage four?” 

“Tarte… like after we go clubbing and we’re both a sweaty mess. With a bit of alcohol, it’s like a treat.” He smiled, pampering you with soft rubbing and loving kisses.

By now, you were sure the panties were completely soaked, he knew how to work you up so easily. “Whaddya say, babe? Let me taste how your day went.”

“Mmm, yes please,” was all you said before Jisung was stripping away your underwear and laying on his belly again.

He dove into you unapologetically, no slow start, just a pussy-starved man and his favorite confection. Fat stripes, saliva ridden and messy, your lower half was covered in juices, yours and his, and it was adorable how much Jisung enjoyed himself. There weren’t many areas he lacked in, tongue skill definitely not on that list. He made sure to round your clit quickly and with the perfect amount of pressure, never letting you get too comfortable as he switched to sucking you in. You knew he was doing it on purpose, he was prolonging his own fun at the sake of your orgasm. Of course you didn’t mind though, you’d let Jisung eat you out for hours, and you have. The only thing that kept him from going all night was the unfortunate situation with the human body needing oxygen.

When he pulled away from you, he quickly filled the void by prodding one finger into your entrance. The obscene squelching of liquids was only intensified when he filled you. Jisung smiled at the fucked out look on your face, deliriously arching into the pillows, hair spread around, cheeks cute and rosy. As Jisung clamped his lips around your clit and sucked again, your walls convulsed around his single finger, falling head first into a sleep-veiled, blinding hot orgasm, your boyfriend helping you joyride through it.

As you relaxed into the palm of his hand again, Jisung didn’t pull away. You were whining and pulled his hair tighter, hoping to get him away but there was no energy left in your body. You should’ve known he was in one of those moods, helplessly rutting into the bed through his jeans. What a pleaser, Jisung loved when you felt good, it made him feel good. Jisung wasn’t necessarily a pleasure dom, but his kryptonite is the face you make when you cum. If you’re loud and screaming his name, it’s icing on the cake.

Which is why he didn’t stop. Jisung kept his eyes open and looked up at you from between your legs, loving your body writhing under his touch. He inserted another finger, then decided you can take one more to count a total of three digits in your pretty, glistening pussy. Jisung took a second to admire the way you stretched around him, clenching as if you had been deprived of pleasure when that was far from the case.

You bucked your hips up, wanting more of him, deeper, harder. Your eagerness made Jisung chuckle and dive back in, curling his fingers just right to reach your sweet spot and continue to suckle away. The overstimulation was so good, bordering pain and pleasure that eventually turned into only pleasure, white and blinding and oh so good. A call of his name and back bending into a bow, your juices dripped down his arm to which Jisung licked away.

When you finished, he sat up and popped his fingers in his mouth, licking away the residue with his eyes glued onto your spent form. Your shirt was ridden up to only expose the underside of your breasts, taunting your boyfriend to no end and you didn’t even realize it.

He palmed himself over his jeans and groaned, “baby… you tired?” Jisung asked, hopeful and  desperate.

You didn’t answer him, only taking his hand and pulling him down. You could taste yourself on him, loving it and loving the way his hands ravaged the rest of your body. Hand finding his erection, you pressed hard into it and swallowed every one of his moans. A lazy smile on your face, “show me how your day went.”

-

A/N: I saw one clip of just a bunch of guys talking about eating pussy and thought wow...that's something jisung would say...now here we are

tags: @sensitiveandhungry @babebatter @aliferousminho @changbinluvr @epiphanynaffit @fawnpeaks @linovely @dumplinbokkieracha @finnydraws @naturules @djeniryuu

[strawburry01]

Strawberry Wine

Summary: Continuation of Northern Attitudes fic, but can be read on its own (extra backstory in We're Going to Be Friends and Enjoy the Silence). Once I figure out how to link shit I will lmao. Hotch has to leave to go home, but neither of them is making it easy.

AN: Sorry I disappeared. I graduated lol! I don't think anyone really noticed but I'll be back for a while now that it's summer :) Sorry if this makes you cry I think I got into some weird cathartic state writing this.

Word Count: 3k

Sure enough, the case was linked to a newly forming underground cult. Luckily you and the BAU team were able to infiltrate a meeting before the next human sacrifice took place, but it wasn’t without weeks of planning every move down to the second. Spencer and you worked well together when it came to preparing every Plan A, B, C, D, all the way to Plan X, and figuring out the best ways to get everyone in and out safely. Spare a few bruises and potential religious affiliated trauma- the team got off pretty uninjured which you did pat yourself on the back on knowing that this poor group didn’t need any more problems to deal with. Not too shabby for a small town bureau like yourself. 

But that’s where the trouble emerged. If the case was closed and the right people arrested, the job was done. The job was done here. They were going to have to go back to Quantico for the next mission, the next case, the next task. 

And you were going to be here. Waiting for the next drunk teen to run a red light. 

All you could think about was the ever-growing elephant in the room of Aaron leaving again. He’d just stumbled back into your life after all these years apart, and god- it felt good to have him back in it. After shifts you would always commiserate over the recent years in your respective forces at the local coffee shop (to the point where the baristas learned his order), and you both just instinctively knew each other on a level the BAU just wouldn’t know. You knew how his eyebrows furrowed when he was thinking, and you knew the line his mouth formed when he heard bad news, you knew how his thumb fit into his balled up fist at his side if he absolutely despised whoever he was talking to, which was usually the moment you’d step in to try and diffuse whatever the situation may be. But also he knew yours. He knew what you needed based on your headache throughout the day, as it unfortunately hadn’t changed much. If it was before 10 am you needed more sleep and he’d make you nap in his car for 20 minutes, if it was between 10 and 2 he knew it was coffee and he’d always magically appear with your order, if it was after 2 pm he’d make you actually eat lunch, and if it was after 8 pm he knew to be dragging you out of the bar. Which unfortunately was the case the last night the team was in town. To celebrate the successful case, as well as saying goodbye, as the two teams had gotten fairly close, everyone went out to the local dive bar in town.

“Where are you?” you furtively texted Aaron on your phone. A shiver running down your spine as you brought a cigarette to your lips trying to focus on the warmth. Aaron hadn’t shown up yet. Sure the party had officially started only half an hour ago, but it was still unlike him to be late. The door of the bar swung out, the janky country music from inside spilling out into the night. 

“What’re you doing out here?” Spencer asked as he stepped outside in line with you. You tap your cigarette, and ash falls into a puddle.

“Just having a smoke,” you say, but the ping from your phone exposes you. Spencer raised an eyebrow and you tried to keep the urge to answer your phone immediately. You mumble a few curse words under your breath as you pulled out your phone.

“Sorry, got a call from Quantico.”, Aaron texted back. You chewed the inside of your cheek. Not the right answer.

“But now you’re on the way…RIGHT?”, you quickly sent back before shoving the phone back in your pocket. You look up to make eye contact with Spencer who can’t help but break into a smirk.

“Hotch not coming?”, he quipped.

“Kid-”, you said, flicking your cigarette out into the ashtray, and placing a hand on Spencer’s bony shoulder, “ you’ve got to keep some of those thoughts inside okay?”, with a reassuring squeeze. He laughed.

“Why do people keep telling me that?”. 

“Because you’re the smartest guy in the FBI who can’t keep his mouth shut,” you replied, just as your phone pinged again. 

“Parking”, he texted back, and you couldn’t help but quickly smile before remembering Spencer was analyzing your every move. He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, Aaron strode out from the rows of cars. You couldn’t help it, but him in a black t-shirt and slacks nearly had you melting on the spot. He’d been wearing stuffy suits this whole time, and seeing him back in more… peopley clothes, drove you up a wall. 

“Evening you two,” he said with a nod.

“Evening Hotch, how was your call with Garcia?”, Spencer asked as he pushed open the door for his boss. You caught Aaron’s eyes after he not so subtly looked you up and down. Perhaps you were purposeful in choosing your crop top and jeans for the night.

“Mmm, fine,” he answered curtly, his thoughts long having left that conversation. You smile up at Aaron and you briefly catch his mouth waver upwards before turning back to Spencer and stepping into the bar. 

Inside the bar, the two teams had chased anyone else out with their rambunctiousness. 

“You got some catching up to do Aaron,” you said, elbowing his side as the two of you went to the bar. 

“Seems like you do too,” he retorted back, with an eyebrow raised.

“Can I say I was just waiting for you?” you said, which garnered a sharp laugh out of him before he ordered a beer for himself. 

“2 vodka shots for us, and whatever cider you have,” you said once the bartender turned to you.

“You’re trying to kill me,” Aaron said as the bartender set out two shot glasses in front of both of you.

“Do you even hear yourself? Come on Aaron the world is going to be okay if you let loose a little tonight,” you said as you scooted closer to him at the bar, your elbows touching now. Instead of pulling away Aaron stayed in place as he watched the vodka get poured.

“If you insist,” he sighed as he picked up the shotglass in time with you.

“Cheers, to a successful case,” you said. 

“Cheers Y/N”. The two of you downed the alcohol and you couldn’t help but cringe at the way it tore up your throat as it went down. “What happened-you were so confident?” Aaron chuckled as he stacked the glasses.

“I don’t think I’ve done that since college truth be told,” you said as you quickly tried to wash down the aftertaste with the cider.

“Holy shit Hotch did you just take a shot??” Derek shouted from behind you two, a little tipsy already based on his volume, “I didn’t even think you’d come!”. Aaron shrugged as he slowly sipped his beer trying to hold back another laugh.

“Guys you’re making me feel like I’m not fun,” he said, which all the BAU team side-eyed each other at. 

“Damn they just burned you,” you laughed, watching his team all try to justify their reactions. Aaron scoffed with a smile finally drawing across his face.

“Guess I need to go out more,” he said, only loud enough for you to hear.

“I could’ve told you that,” you said as you leaned closer to him, which he once again did not move away from.

The minutes turned into an hour which turned into hours. After a failed game of pool against JJ you were more than a few celebratory shots and ciders in, but you were still aware of your surroundings. You were right on the level of having far too much confidence for your own good…

Most of the local and BAU team had left by now, leaving a few stragglers at a booth with you and Aaron at a table in the corner, to not make the teams feel too stressed about saying the wrong thing. You washed your hands in the sink of the bathroom catching the time on your watch. 1:16 am. God dammit time really wasn’t stopping for you. You ran a hand through your hair to try and mentally psych yourself up. You were realistically never going to see Aaron again after tonight. The team leaves at 10:00 am tomorrow, well today now technically, and there’d never be a reason he’s out here again.

Shit

You marched back out of the bathroom and ordered one last shot for good measure, which Aaron watched you take from the table with a look of being impressed, and slightly worried, but he was starting to feel the alcohol himself. You sauntered back over to the table with you and Aaron, and stood in front of him in his chair with your arms crossed. 

“What is it?” he asked, looking up at you, “what’s got you upset?”. 

“You leave tomorrow,” you said, not being able to stop it from coming out of your mouth. His eyebrows furrowed and his mouth thinned.

“I know,”. 

“I don’t want you to leave Aaron,” you blurted out before sighing. You looked over at the booth where everyone was still deeply wrapped up in their own conversation. The table was far enough in the corner amongst all the regulars trickling back in they’d never notice. You took a step between Aaron’s legs and his hands as if second nature moved to hold your thighs, keeping you in place. You slid a hand of your own to his cheek as you pursed your mouth into a frustrated corner. “It’s just- what the fuck are the odds even, I just-” you tried to rationalize out loud as your thumb brushed his cheek. He wasn’t that young boy anymore you met in university, but you couldn’t help but always see him just like that. A snapshot of a simpler time for both of you. Aaron moved a hand from steadying your thigh to being placed over your hand.

“I know,”. 

“You don’t think it means anything?”.

Aaron tighten his hand over yours, linking his fingers through yours and bringing it to his lips, gently kissing your hand.

“I don’t know,”. 

“My house is 2 blocks away,” you said. Your voice sounded grave, despite the alcohol still in your system. The reality of your situation slowly falling upon both of you. Aaron silently stood up and left his hand interlocked with yours, silently giving you the okay to take you both back there. JJ only had to kick Derek under the table once to keep him from shouting out at the both of you as you stepped by.

In the parking lot you gestured to Aaron’s car and opened your mouth, but before you could speak-

“I packed all my stuff. I’ll just get it in the morning,” he said. You silently nodded as your grip on his hand tightened. He tightened his own hold in return. 

The walk to yours was silent. What was there to say? What could’ve made this any better? It was a comfortable silence despite it all.

“Are you excited to see Jack?” you finally said breaking the silence, not being able to handle it anymore. You had been pretty surprised when Aaron told you he had a son back home, making you feel all the more selfish for wanting him to stay here.

“Of course. He usually has a lot of fun with his aunt though,” Aaron said with a small smile, thinking of his son.

“Maybe I’ll meet him someday,” you mused. 

“I’m sure he’d love you,” Aaron nodded into the night, brushing his thumb over the corner of your hand. You couldn’t help but softly smile at this.

This could be every night. Simple, quiet, nice. He admitted himself he was less stressed out here. He could bring Jack out here. There were some nice schools in the district. You and Aaron would be on the same team, both getting off before nightfall and being able to go home to make dinner at a decent time before putting Jack to bed. 

You paused in front of your house, waking yourself up from the fantasy.

“Do you think I’m stupid? Are you just doing this out of pity?” you asked as you turned to look at Aaron, your insecurities starting to spill out as you realized how ridiculous a fantasy you’d crafted in your head. Before you knew what was happening Aaron had grabbed your face and pressed his lips onto yours. He was aggressive, but in a good way. You couldn’t help but lean forward into him as you wrapped your arms around him. You broke away for air as your laid your head on his chest, hearing his heart thumping as he gently traced an arm around your back, with the other hand resting on the back of your head.

“No,” he finally said, which caused you to laugh as you stood up, moving off of him, as you fiddled with your keys to get inside. You finally swung open the door and kicked some spare shoes into a haphazard pile as you stepped inside. 

“Welcome welcome,” you mumbled as you flicked on a few lights, “it’s not much, but it’s home,”. Aaron stood in the entrance as he took in the certainly cozy home. “Do you want tea, water, or anything?” you asked, trying to remember in your waning alcohol haze what home owners offered people. Aaron smiled and shook his head as he kicked off his own shoes. You sighed the breath you didn’t know you were holding out of your nose as you tried to figure out the next move. 

“You’re overthinking Y/N,” Aaron said, recognizing the contortions your face went through when this was happening. He stepped forward and held your face in his hands again, tilting your head up so he could look at you. 

“Perhaps,” you said before yawning, “fuck I’m sorry. I’m not usually up this late,”. 

“I’m not either- believe it or not,” Aaron said with a soft smile, “do you want to just go to bed?”. You nodded, and Aaron dropped his hands, letting you lead the way to your room. Luckily you’d just cleaned it so all the clothes were at least in a drawer. Entering the bedroom you turned, once again having a moment of how surreal it was to be in a bedroom, your bedroom, with Aaron. 

“I don’t- did you want to- like - um-” you stammered as you resorted to gesturing to the bed awkwardly, “fuck?” you gave up and spouted out.

“Do you want to?” Aaron asked as he stepped closer to you. Like a magnet you drew close to him and wrapped your arms around him.

“I don’t think I do…I just want to be with you tonight,” you said quietly, which might as well have echoed throughout the silent house. Aaron ran a hand down your hair and gently pressed a kiss to your forehead.

“I feel the exact same” he hummed.

“Alright alright,” you huffed as you stood back, “but get comfortable at least. I’m going to change you can uh, look if you want I guess,” you said, which got a laugh out of Aaron as he did watch you rummage through your drawers for a shirt to sleep in. He took off his own shirt and pants and left them folded on the nightstand as he slid into your bed. You’d be lying if you said you weren’t blushing. You threw your clothes off as you put on an oversized band shirt, feeling Aaron’s eyes watching you from bed the whole time. 

“I didn’t know you had tattoos,” he said as you moved to the side of the bed. He was referencing the large star constellations you had on each shoulder. 

“Yeah, I got them a few years ago…” you said as you slowly moved in next to him, instantly feeling and appreciating his heat. You hit the light beside you, engulfing the room in total darkness. You felt Aaron’s arm weave under you, and after a little adjusting you were both on your sides facing each other.

“So this is it,” you murmured. It wasn’t some sort of rhetorical question anymore. You knew this was it.

“I have loved every moment getting to be out here with you Y/N, and I’m truly so grateful I got you in my life again, even if it was only a few weeks,” Aaron said slowly tightening his grip on your waist, bringing you closer. You placed a hand on his chest and aimlessly traced along it.

“I have too Aaron,” you sighed, “maybe in another life this wasn’t just some stupid Shakespearan drama,”. He chuckled and you felt his chest move as he did so.

“I really wish I was in that other life,” he softly admitted.

“I do too,” you said. There were a few seconds of silence before you spoke up again, “If you wake me up when you leave- I’ll never let you escape this room I’m afraid,”. He gently kissed your forehead,

“I know,”. 

There were a few more moments of silence as you two readjusted, this time with him holding you close behind you as you were spooned up against him. You shut your eyes and were slowly drifting into sleep before Aaron said the last things he would say to you.

“I love you,”. You shifted and precariously kissed his cheek.

“I love you too,” you whispered back, before falling into sleep. 

It was another cold morning in your room. You rubbed your eyes as a headache began in your head. You spotted a glass of water with 2 Advil on your nightstand, and that was all Aaron left. You sighed, as you swallowed the pills and water, before retreating back under the covers.

[nurgletwh]

Update part two (this is the rest of it, there isn’t any more… at the moment O.o).

February 2024

It took all of two days for my BP to return to my ‘normal’ (the value I expected and where it’s been for a few years now).

It took over a week for me to feel mostly better, and two to approach feeling normal.

Chug away through the rest of the month, but I’m not energetic at all.

March 2024

Nothing super-exciting, although I slowly but surely feel more and more drained—almost exactly the way I felt when I went in because my blood sugar was high. Which was very confusing, because it was great.

Late March-April 2024

I felt awful again. I could barely get the energy up to do anything, and I was back to sleeping all the time. 14-16 hours per day on the weekend, falling asleep in my chair when I got home from work, waking up enough to crawl into bed and go right back to sleep for the night. Which also adds up to 14-16 hours per day.

Warning: diet talk

———

Remember how I started Ozempic? It does weird things to how I perceive hunger. Add that to how well I remember to eat and…

At some point I realized that in the last three days the only things I’d eaten each day were a couple of pieces of toast w/peanut butter for breakfast, nibbled on jerky for lunch, and maybe ate some more toast for dinner.

Thinking back further, I couldn’t figure out a recent time frame where I had done better than that. I had weighed myself in early February, and remembered wondering if dropping 25lbs. (11.3kg) in eight weeks was a good idea.

Shit.

(FYI: no*, it isn’t.)

So I got my exhausted ass out of the house and grabbed a case of Ensure, multivitamins, and other snacky crap I knew I’d eat. My goal was to get things back together enough to get the energy to start fixing my diet, nothing more. I knew aiming higher wouldn’t work until after I could do something besides work and nap.

(*Experts recommend an initial weight-loss goal of 5% to 10% of your starting weight within 6 months. For me, it should have taken nearly seven months to hit that 10%. Granted, these rates are for ‘unassisted’ dieting.)

———

It took all of three days for me to feel significantly better. Not great, but better. I still didn’t have much energy, but my sleeping patterns altered drastically. I was still napping after work, but I would wake up two hours later and accomplish something before going to bed. I didn’t accomplish much, but it was more than sleeping and more sleeping.

Things slowly got better, but again, getting to “ok” was faster than getting back to “normal.”

I know I dropped off the face of the earth, but it felt like every time I announced that things went wonky but I was feeling better now and put out a few chapters, things would blow up again. I wanted to make sure things were better this time.

Which was a poor choice; I should at least have posted something that said I was fucked up but working on it. I apologize for that lack of communication, although things did blow up again…

April 26, 2024

TORNADO.

A FUCKING TORNADO WENT RIGHT THROUGH OUR WORKSITE.

FUCK FUCK FUCKITY FUCK!!!

I know I posted about it. It wasn’t very strong (HA!) by the time it came over the hill and destroyed the house at the top of it, merely (MERELY!!) tossing over a few rail cars and flipping a few semi-trailers.

We got lucky. This very same tornado absolutely wrecked Elkhorn (west of Omaha, NE).

I’ve stated I live and work in the Omaha area, so I’m not too worried about posting this, but here is an overlay of that tornado’s path on top of Apple Maps with my little blue dot while sitting at my desk.

May 2024

Most of May went fairly smoothly. I even got a little writing done!

Unfortunately, I had fallen so far behind on projects at work during all of the above that I was now trying to get caught up. Said project was over four months late at this point. I was working a bit late (not crazy-late, but about an extra hour most days) while still drained, so I didn’t have a whole lot of extra mental energy for writing.

I was, however, finally back to plotting and planning! Yay! Progress!

Until… (is anyone shocked at this point?)

The Friday before Memorial Day I felt a bit drained.

I woke up Saturday with a headache, feeling achy and sore. It didn’t get better, so I took my temperature around noon. 100.1ºF.

Wonderful.

I took a Covid test (that’s my default action to feeling crappy now), but it came back negative. Note that I wasn’t coughing, and I didn’t feel particularly short of breath or anything.

Nothing improved over Sunday, but it didn’t change much, either.

Same for Monday (Memorial Day). But this now made three days with a fever (also three consecutive negative Covid tests).

I agreed to @grumpyoldsnake’s and their friend’s demands to get my ass to a doctor the next day if I still had the fever, although I really wasn’t feeling too bad other than achy. Note: still no coughing (I promise this is important).

I woke up in the middle of the night when I heard something that sounded like a goddamn goose in my bedroom.

Have you ever woken yourself up by making some weird-ass noise that you then can’t duplicate? Even though you know you made it?

I was able to duplicate it. Without much issue. It fell under “well, that’s odd,” and I went back to sleep.

A bit later I woke up to a different weird noise, but I was sidetracked by what I heard and felt after I coughed a few times. My chest was making a sound like a freshly opened pop can. When my mouth was open, it was even worse. I could feel it bubbling away (it didn’t hurt).

Fuck.

Guess what?

PNEMONIA!!

Fuck my life.

Prior to Friday, I hadn’t been sick. They tested me for the flu; that was negative.

Pneumonia is almost always a secondary infection, not primary. You have a cold, or Covid, or bronchitis, and it turns into pneumonia when bacteria settle into your irritated bronchi.

Me, on the other hand…

I never really coughed all that much. Reviewing the blood oxygen data from my Apple Watch, I could peg when the infection started really kicking in, although it looks like something started about a week prior to that (when I did a round-trip plane trip, spending five or six hours on a plane and in an airport two days in a row…).

It took a week to get to a place where my breathing to start feeling easier, nearly two before the oxygen levels started crawling back up.

I did start coughing.

And coughing up… liquid. It was the weirdest sensation. I’d cough, and end up with a mouthful of what felt like slightly thick water. It didn’t really taste, and was nearly colorless.

I coughed that shit up for nearly three days.

I never coughed up the stuff that had any sort of color, although it did get thicker and more ‘traditional’ for stuff you cough up when you get sick. Which puts to lie that you can tell you have a chest infection by the color of the crud you cough up. :-/

It took another nearly two weeks after finishing the ten days of antibiotics to feel like my breathing was normal. The first day back to work was one hell of a reality check, though. I hadn’t been moving around much, and I knew I was short of breath, but I made it all of fifty feet from my car, then about ⅓ of the way up the stairs to my office before I had to stop. I couldn’t catch my breath and was dizzy.

That was the first time I thought, “that could have killed me.”

Not walking up the stairs, but what led to me standing on the stairs, gasping like a landed fish.

It was emphatically hammered home when I made a joking comment to a coworker that it thankfully wasn’t that bad.

Her response?

“Oh, no. Your x-ray was bad.”

>.<

I’ve been getting better. My nutrition went sideways again due to being utterly distracted, but I think that is fairly understandable. :-P

I refuse to say “I’m doing fine now!!”

Fate doesn’t need the temptation.

I hope to get back to writing. I hope even more that I can tackle the monster my inbox has become (both at AO3 and my personal email, which has been just as neglected).

Take care, everyone. Stay healthy.

[lionlena]

You're hot... (JavierPeñaxsick!reader)

So, this is a surprise for @creedslove​

I hope you feel a little better after reading this. You deserve Javi to take care of you, honey.

Warnings: None, just fluff

You liked Javier Peña. He was your boss and you thought he was the right man to take down the Cali Cartel. You've heard what others have said about him. That when he was chasing Escobar, he was working with Los Pepes. That he was an asshole... a manwhore. And yet, you couldn't think badly of him. Maybe because he was nice to you from the start. He never ordered you do something. He always used the word "please." It was the same this time: "Y/N, can you sort the papers I left on the couch in my office, please. I have to do something urgent and I don't know if I'll be back today."

And how could you refuse? First, he was your boss. Secondly, he was looking at you with those puppy brown eyes. And three, he was so damn hot.

Unfortunately, you were having a hard time sorting the documents. Normally you handled these things better, but today you felt bad. You had runny nose and a headache since morning, but you thought it was just a slight cold.

You ran your hand across your forehead, "Damm, why is it so hot in here?"

You looked around your boss's office and groaned. There was still a pile of papers on his desk. It was early evening, everyone else had gone home, and you were terribly tired. You looked at the couch. Maybe if you lie down for 10 minutes, your work will go faster after a nap. You just close your eyes. For while.

You curled up into a ball and fell asleep.

You woke up to the feeling of something pleasantly cool touching your forehead. You stretched, opened your eyes... Jesus Christ!!!

Warm brown eyes looked at you with tenderness. Javier Peña, your boss, caught you sleeping at work and was now kneeling by the couch, dangerously close to your face. You didn't know what to say. He spoke first.

"You're hot."

Okay, maybe you just dreamed it.

"Umm... Thank you, I guess."

Javier let out a small chuckle.

"I mean you're hot, you've got a fever, hermosa."

Well, if you had a fever, it was Javier who made you hot as hell.

You sat down awkwardly, being careful not to hit him in the process as Javier was still kneeling by the couch. You looked half-consciously around the office and realized with horror that you had fallen asleep for over two hours.

"Oh shit, I'm sorry... I was going to finish sorting the papers, but..." A sudden shiver went through your body. "I was so tired."

Javier started looking around, you thought he was looking for documents, but it turned out he was looking for something for you. When he realized there wasn't any blanket around, he got up and took off his jacket, then placed it over your shoulders. The material was warmed by his body and you immediately felt better. You have blushed, but he couldn't see it because of the fever.

"Don't worry about it. I shouldn't put so much work on you."

"It's nothing," you whined.

"I'll drive you home."

"What about the documents?"

"Fuck it," he said and extended his hand to you.

All the way to his car, he held you gently and you couldn't help but snuggle into his body. You were sick. You needed comfort, and he obviously didn't mind. As you sat in the car, he asked you for your address and if you needed anything from the store. Medicines? Food? He was so caring. Would others call him "an asshole", now? He certainly wasn't like that in your eyes.

Javier came home with you. He made sure you had the medications you needed. He made you sit on the couch saying, "I'll make you some hot tea."

"You don't have to. I'll be better soon. I have leftover soup in the fridge, I'll warm it up and eat it.”

He shook his head and covered you with the blanket you always kept on the couch. You were still wearing his jacket, but he didn't seem to care.

"Sit here. I'll take care of everything." He raised his eyebrows. "It's official order from boss."

You didn't have the strength to argue with him. You were so comfortable on the couch. You've been watching your boss move swiftly around your kitchen. He warmed up the soup, made you some tea, and set it on the table along with the pills. Then he sat next to you and made sure you ate everything. It was quite funny.

"You know, I'm not a baby," you murmured.

"I would have believed it if I hadn't found you sleeping in my office with a high fever."

You put your head down and whispered:

"I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't fall asleep there."

You felt Javier put his hand on your knee.

"No, it's not like that. I'm not mad at you for falling asleep. I just don't understand why you agreed to help me if you weren't feeling well?"

You looked at him and shrugged. What happened next was like a dream. Javier gently stroked your cheek.

"Next time tell me you're not feeling well." He got up and grabbed the empty soup bowl. "You're free tomorrow. Rest while I clean up."

You ran out of words. Your boss pulled up the sleeves of his shirt and went to wash your dishes. Normally you'd feel embarrassed, but after you ate the warm soup and took your medicine, you were really ready to go to sleep. And Javier's jacket smelled of his perfume. You lay down and fell into a light sleep.

What happened next must have been a figment of your imagination.

Before leaving your apartment, Javier leaned over you and kissed your forehead whispering:

"Que duermas bien, mi dulce"

You might even think it was all a figment of your fever-ridden mind, but when you woke up in the morning you were still wrapped in his jacket. You smiled. Maybe Javier Peña was an asshole, but not to you.

[ironychan]

Scary Monsters

@dysphoria-sweatshirt @30spiders @sweatersexual @angrylittlesliceofpizza @writer652

Part 1/? - Rocco’s Closet

Part 2/? - School for Monsters

Part 3/? - The Waternoose Family

Part 4/? - The Terrifying Humans

Part 5/? - Hiding Places

Part 6/? - Nobody’s Fault

Part 7/? - Edge of Disaster

Part 8/? - Caged Monsters

Part 9/? - The Journey Home

Part 10/? - Portorosso

Part 11/? - A New Family

Part 12/? - More Obstacles

Part 13/? - Out and About in Genova

As a note, both San Francesco di Paola and the Palazzo Spinola are real places in Genoa, and if you ever visit they're worth a stop. Also check out the aquarium, which not only has adorable catsharks but is also where the world premier of Luca was held!

---

Giulia started to run to the window for a look, but her mother grabbed her and held her back.

"Don't!" Helena exclaimed. "There's broken glass on the floor, and we're all in our bare feet!"

Giulia growled in frustration. "Get dressed, ragazzi," she ordered, pointing a finger at the boys. "We've gotta find him!"

"Where's he gonna go?" Luca asked, as they ran back to their own room to get their things. "He doesn't know where anything is in Genova, and I don't think his kind of monster has that extra sense where they can find their way back to places. The first time we took him through town he was in the pram and could barely see, and the second time he was in the suitcase!"

"He can't even ask anybody for help," Alberto agreed. "Anyone who sees him is going to freak out."

"Then he can't go far!" said Giulia firmly. She opened a dresser drawer and started pulling clothing out. "We'll find him. If he's smart, he'll stick to the roofs."

"I'm not sure he's smart," Alberto said cynically.

Somewhere outside, a dog began to bark. Luca lit up.

"I've got an idea!" he declared.

Helena put her shoes on and set to work cleaning up the remains of the broken window, while the kids got dressed and went straight to the neighbour's home where Helena had dropped off Nerone the dog. Giulia knocked hard on the door and called out.

"Signor Traverso! It's Giulia!"

After a few seconds they heard stumbling footsteps and the bolt slid back. The door cracked open, and Signor Traverso, a tall, skinny man whose face was mostly moustache, blinked down at them. "What on earth are you doing here at this hour?" he asked through a yawn.

"We're here to pick up Nerone!" Giulia replied, as if this were a perfectly normal thing to be doing after midnight. The boys on either side of her nodded.

Signor Traverso blinked sleepily. "What? Now? It's..." he glanced at his wrist, but was not wearing a watch. A moment later, however, a clock somewhere nearby chimed twice. "It's two in the morning."

"Yep! Right now." Giulia nodded and smiled, making it silently clear that she would not explain.

Signor Traverso must have been too tired to argue about it. He shut the door again, and came back a few minutes later with the dog on his lead. Nerone himself was perfectly happy to be awake in the middle of the night, perhaps unsurprising for a creature who spent most of his days napping. He trotted up on his short legs, and greeted Luca and Giulia with happy licks. Alberto, of course, he didn't know as well, but he seemed happy enough that this was another friend of his humans. Perhaps Alberto smelled enough like Luca to satisfy him.

"Thank you, Signor Traverso! We owe you one!" Giulia waved cheerfully as they headed for the stairwell.

"Good ni... good night, Signorina Marcovaldo," the man replied, having to pause in the middle of the sentence for another yawn.

On the next landing, Luca pulled out an object he'd brought with him - Harry's little sailor cap. "Okay, Nerone," he said, offering it to the dog. "Smell this."

Nerone leaned towards it, his shiny black nose twitching as he took in the scent. Then he shook his head and backed away, disgusted.

"Yeah, he knows who that belongs to," said Alberto.

"Can you find him for us?" Giulia asked. "Can you find Harry?"

They made to continue down the stairs, and Nerone seemed to get the idea quickly. He began straining at his leash to run ahead, bouncing eagerly down the steps towards the street with his hindquarters sometimes nearly trying to overtake his head on the way. The kids ran to follow him, and he led them back to the street and uphill to the building where Giulia and her mother lived.

The apartments were built around a little courtyard that resembled a medieval cloister, though much smaller, with a covered walkway bordering an open rectangle with potted plants and a tiny fountain. The window in the bathroom looked out over this, which meant that after breaking it, Harry would have climbed out onto the walkway roof, and from there would have been able to drop to ground level. It was easy to spot the broken window. Helena had the light on as she finished cleaning up.

They led the dog to the most likely place where Harry would have landed, and directed him to sniff the ground. Nerone was willing enough to do so, turning in a circle with his nose to the ground and his tail perked up. Whatever he smelled, he didn't seem to like it, and made the same disgusted face as he had at Harry's hat.

"Yes, that's right!" Luca urged. "Now, follow him!"

Nerone started sniffing at one of the potted plants. The kids watched him, waiting for him to do something, but he took his time, moving from one plant to another and stopping to pee on one of the pots.

"What's taking him so long?" Alberto complained.

Helena's face appeared in the window above them. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"We're trying to get Nerone to track him by smell," Luca explained. "Like in the movies."

Helena frowned. "You... you do know that those dogs have to be specially trained for that, right?"

Luca had not, in fact, known that. He looked at his friends to see what they thought. It was pretty clear they were surprised, too.

"Nerone's barely trained to wait five minutes while I open a can of dog food," said Helena.

"Oh." Luca's shoulders slumped. "Sorry," he said, embarrassed. "I thought that was a good idea."

"It sounded like a good idea," Giulia agreed, and grimaced as the sound of more barking came from elsewhere in the city. "The dogs are really upset tonight. It's..." her eyes widened. "Of course!"

Luca had the same thought at the same time. "Nerone doesn't like Harry! Neither did the gelato man's dog!"

"Come on!" said Alberto.

Helena lived in the San Teodoro district. The sound of barking was coming from the south, closer to the harbour. The kids ran through the narrow, twisting streets. Because Genova was so much bigger than Portorosso and the people there worked at less demanding jobs, it had a nightlife that the smaller town lacked. There were a surprising number of people out and about, even as 'late' turned into 'early'. People and cars were in the streets, and the windows were bright in bars and dance clubs.

Nerone didn't know what was going on and certainly had never understood that the kids wanted help finding a missing monster, but he did know they were going for a run and that was one of his favourite things. Furthermore, they were running towards other dogs who were barking up a storm, and that was something he definitely wanted to be apart of. He sprinted along with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, letting out an occasional yap of his own to let the others know he was on his way.

"What is their problem tonight?" a woman asked, as the group ran past a restaurant entrance.

"No idea," said one of the friends with her, lighting a cigarette. "They're sure excited about something."

Nerone barked again as they got closer, and then, from up ahead, they heard a scream.

The kids had been getting tired at this point, but now they found a second wind as they sprinted the last few metres to turn the corner into the piazza in front of San Francesco da Paola. Several dogs were barking at something wrong the buildings, and one unfortunate man who'd been taking his spinone for a late-night walk was holding on to the leash with both hands as it tried to get free to bark at Harry, who was standing in front of the metal doors of the church with his arms crossed over his chest.

"What in god's name are you?" the man with the dog demanded.

"I'm a monster!" snapped Harry, annoyed. "Now, take me to the train station, and I won't hurt you!"

"What are you going to do?" asked the man, "gnaw my ankles?"

Harry responded by hissing and scurrying towards him with his arms held up. The man yelped in terror and ran, dragging his dog behind him even as the animal continued to bark.

"Chicken!" Harry shouted after him.

The kids came running up. Harry looked towards the sound of people approaching, then yelped as he realized these ones were likely to trap him in a suitcase again. He turned to run, but Nerone bit into one of his many legs, prompting a pained screech from Harry, and the boys grabbed his arms while Giulia got the dog off him.

"What do you think you're doing?" asked Alberto.

"Going home!" snapped Harry. "You can't tell me what to do. Neither can any of these humans - they're all too scared to do anything. Ercole was too scared to even tell me not to sleep in his room. He would do anything I told him to! He needed you guys to take me away for him!" he huffed, and then stood up straighter. "These humans are so easy to scare I don't know why my Dad even bothers with the door thing. We could just come right in and scare them all, and they wouldn't dare do anything about it!"

"Yes, they will," Luca insisted.

"They totally will," Alberto agreed.

The bronze doors of the church of San Francesco da Paola and the adjoining mendicant monastery had been closed for the night. Now they opened a crack and a monk in his dark habit stuck his head out. "What is going on out here?" he asked. "You children should be in bed, not roaming the streets."

"Shut up!" Harry said, and spun around to snarl at the man.

The monk stared, then made the sign of the cross and slammed the door again.

"See?" Harry turned back to the other kids. "Just because you're not scary enough to make them do what you want..." he began.

Then they heard a renewal of barking. A light came on in a building across the piazza, and a voice shouted, "in front of San Francesco!"

"Come on!" Alberto tugged on Harry's arm. "We gotta go!"

"No!" snarled Harry. "Watch - they'll do whatever I want!"

The man with the spinone appeared around the corner again, his shaggy black and grey dog barking excitedly as it pointed its nose towards Harry. "There!" he shouted.

A policeman was the next to step out, and by he light of the streetlamps the kids could see a half-a-dozen other people behind him, men and women both. Some of these gasped at the sight of Harry, while one woman exclaimed, "my God! What is it?"

The policeman put his whistle in his mouth and blew it to summon help. "You kids!" the policeman pointed. "Get away from that thing!"

"Wait!" Luca held up his hands. "We can explain!"

Harry pushed past him. "Everybody!" he addressed the gathered humans. "My name is Harry Waternoose and I'm..."

The policeman stepped forward and kicked Harry in the face.

This was a shock to the kids, but to nobody moreso than Harry himself, who staggered backwards with his hands over his bloodied nose. "Who do you think you..." he began, then had to duck as the policeman swung at him again.

Behind him, the doors of San Francesco opened again, and half a dozen monks came out, carrying bibles, crosses, and censures - and two carrying the tall metal candelabras that were used to light the church for night services. These were over six feet tall and well able to be used as weapons. The abbot, marked out by his broad black hat, strode towards Harry with a cross held out, repeating a prayer.

Harry didn't know what any of that meant. He backed away from it, but that brought him closer to the policeman, who had his truncheon out. Two more police, another man and a woman, had arrived, and various other people were gathering with improvised weapons. He looked around. The piazza was shaped like a triangle, with the wide end towards the north. There was another road there, leading uphill - the one Luca, Alberto, and Giulia had come down. Harry started to head towards them, but then there was another chorus of barking dogs.

The kids looked back. Another policeman was coming from that way, with a couple more people behind him. There was now only one way to go, and that was south, where a brick path wound its way down a very steep hill towards the harbour.

Giulia knew Genova well enough to know, however, that the winding road wasn't the only way down. She rolled up her sleeves, transferring Nerone's leash from hand to hand as she did.

By now it had gotten through to Harry that he was in terrible trouble. He hunkered down in the middle of the piazza and covered his head as people got closer.

"Don't hurt me!" he begged. "I'm sorry! Don't hurt me!"

"Grab him and then follow me," Giulia ordered, and took off for the path.

The boys dived on Harry. Alberto took the monster boy’s left arm and Luca his right, and then they just kept going, dragging him past the startled and shouting people and the policeman ordering them to stop. They followed Giulia as she passed by the gates of the walled garden at the south end of the monastery and rounded the corner. The path continued there, turning right to hug the side of the steep hill, but Giulia didn’t go that way. Instead, she and Nerone ran up to a green wooden door in the wall on the left side. Giulia threw herself against this and it burst open, revealing a steep dirt track that went directly down through the trees, bypassing the winding road.

The boys dashed through, Harry scuttling as hard as he could to keep up with them, and Giulia slammed the gate behind them. The path was not an easy one for people in a hurry, and the group ended up doing more sliding than running. The main route went right, to join back up at the road with another door, but Giulia turned left and went through the trees. This wasn’t much easier, but at least by holding on to branches and shrubs they could keep from falling down.

The trail brought them between a pair of apartment buildings and into a small garden, divided from the road by a tall fence. Alberto, Luca, and Harry climbed over, and Giulia hefted the dog over the top for Alberto to catch. Then she scaled it like a lizard on a wall and jumped down the other side, and all of them, including Nerone, were able to stop and catch their breath.

“We can’t stay too long,” Giulia cautioned. “They’ll figure out where we went eventually.”

The sound of voices shouting and more barking dogs told the boys that she was right, but they spent a few more moments leaning on the fence, breathing hard and trying to swallow the metallic taste of exertion in their mouths. Harry was in the worst shape of all, holding on to the fence with both hands as he panted.

“They weren’t afraid of me,” he whimpered finally.

Giulia rolled her eyes, but then she reached out and patted his back. “Yes, they were,” she said. “That was the problem – they were scared to death. When humans are scared of something and it’s just one or two of us, we run away, but when there’s more, we get together to hurt it before it can hurt us.

Luca nodded. “That’s what happened to us, too. We got rained on in front of the whole town, and if it hadn’t been for Giulia and her dad I dunno what would have happened.”

“Yeah, we never even threatened them or anything,” Alberto agreed. “Unlike some people.”

“What did Giulia and her dad do?” asked Harry. “Did they fight them?” He looked both hopeful that this was the case and skeptical that it could be.

“No,” said Luca at once. “They just reminded everybody that we’d been there all along and never tried to hurt them.”

“Although Massimo would have fought them all if he had to!” Alberto said proudly.

“So why didn’t you just tell all those humans I wouldn’t hurt them?” Harry asked.

“They wouldn’t have listened. They don’t know us,” Giulia pointed out. “Everybody in Portorosso listens to my dad because they’ve known him forever. Genova is too big for that. Nobody here even knows about Luca, except for the teachers and a couple of friends we really trust.”

“Remember Dorotea and her mom?” asked Luca. “They don’t even know.”

“Also, you actually were threatening to hurt people,” Alberto reminded Harry.

Harry hung his head. “No wonder Dad doesn’t want humans to know about us.”

That was a sobering thought. If the parents of the world knew that there really were monsters in their children’s closets, they would probably camp there waiting for them, just like Luca and Alberto had in Rocco’s room... except that the parents would bring harpoons or even guns and that would make everything so much worse. None of the kids had been born yet when the War had happened, but all had heard the way the adults talked about it. Even the sea monsters, who weren’t involved, had been affected by the warships and submarines. Nobody wanted anything like that to ever happen again, and a war across two worlds, between humans and monsters who really had nothing to fight about besides that each found the other frightening, would be both terrible and pointless.

“I wanna go home,” Harry complained.

“Like... home home?” Luca asked cautiously. “Back to your world?”

“Yeah,” Harry said.

Giulia stood up and brushed off her hands on the seat of her shorts. “Let’s go, then.”

There were several close calls as they crept through the narrow streets of the city back up the hill towards Helena’s apartment. Fortunately, Genova was a positive maze of winding medieval streets, and every time they were almost caught, they were able to find a trash bin or a side street where they could crouch in the shadows until danger had passed.

They arrived to find Helena, still in her nightgown and slippers, pacing anxiously in front of the entrance to her building. A man across the street came out the door of his cafe to leave the garbage for pickup, and spared a worried glance for her, but seemed to decide not to intervene. He brushed his hands off and went back inside, locking the door behind him.

Once he was out of sight, the kids hurried out to meet Giulia’s mother, who greeted them all with hugs – even Harry.

“What were you thinking,” she asked him, as she got a hold of the rambunctious dog. Nerone was wagging his tail, not knowing anything about what had just happened except that it had been an unexpected adventure.

Harry didn’t answer.

“Hes’ fine,” said Giulia. “He says he wants to go home now.”

Harry nodded miserably, and Helena patted his shoulder.

“I hope you’ve learned an important lesson, young... monster,” she said.

“Yes, Ma’am,” he replied, cowed.

Upstairs, Helena had cleaned the bathroom floor and taped some plastic up over the window so that the birds and insects couldn’t come inside, so there was nothing more to do but send everybody back to bed. Nobody said very much, although Luca did wonder what would happen if Harry tried to escape again. He probably wouldn’t, but what if his change in demeanour was just an act?

It seemed he needn’t have worried, though. Come morning, Harry was still there, and was still very quiet as he ate his breakfast. They did not discuss what had happened last night. Once the meal was finished, Luca and Alberto helped clean up the dishes, while Giulia and her mother packed up the things they would need for their ruse.

They had decided it would look best if the kids wore school uniforms. Alberto borrowed one of Luca’s, choosing the short-sleeved jacket so it wouldn’t be obvious that his arms were a little too long for it. It was a bit narrow across the chest, too, restricting his movement, but the part he really didn’t like was the necktie.

“You really have to wear this every day?” he grumbled, tugging at it.

“You get used to it,” Luca assured him.

“All right,” said Helena. She was in work clothes – a pair of paint-spattered overalls and a man’s striped shirt, with her hair tied back under a kerchief. “Is everybody ready?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” said Luca. Harry just nodded.

“Let me do the talking,” Helena told them. She unzipped the suitcase for Harry to climb in. “Unless somebody asks you something directly, and even then you can just say you don’t want to talk to strangers if that’ll help. I’m the one who knows the people in there.”

The kids agreed. Harry curled up inside the suitcase without complaint this time, and they trundled their way down the hill and around the harbour to the Palazzo Spinola. Luca had read about this place in a newspaper, and couldn’t resist the urge to talk about what he’d learned to his friends as they wound through the tangle of increasingly dim and claustrophobic streets in the old city centre.

“The building is almost four hundred years old,” he told Alberto. “Like Singora Marcovaldo said, it used to have a third floor, but that got bombed during the war.”

Alberto frowned. “How did they bomb the third floor without getting the ones under it, too?”

“I dunno,” said Luca. “A few years ago, the owners gave the whole thing to the city, along with all the paintings and furniture in it. It used to be somebody’s house, so that somebody probably would have had kids and it makes sense that the monsters would have portals into their closets.”

“Not so loud!” Giulia said, as a woman passed them with a dog on a leash. The dog sniffed at the suitcase, its ears back, but its owner hurried it along.

“Sorry,” Luca said. He leaned down a bit to whisper to the suitcase. “You okay, Harry?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Harry muttered. “Are we almost there yet?”

“Almost,” said Helena.

The main facade of the palace was on the Piazza di Pellicceria, which was a wide-open public space by the standards of the cramped medieval part of Genova, but tiny to people used to the Piazza Calvino in Portorosso. The main entrance was boarded up and covered with scaffolding for the restoration work, so Helena walked right past it and around the side, to yet another very narrow and dark alleyway that reminded Luca and Alberto of an underwater trench. Buildings rose up like cliffs on either side, and only a few thin shafts of sunshine managed to make their way down through the forest of roofs and chimneys above.

Here was a door with a sign on it that said Avviso: Solo Personale Autorizzato, and a bored-looking security guard standing next to it doing a newspaper puzzle. He looked up and smiled.

“Buongiorno, Signora Marcovaldo,” he said. “I didn’t know you were going to be here today.”

“I called ahead to management,” Helena replied. “Signor Zaccaria said I could bring my daughter and her school friends. They’re supposed to get pictures of a historical landmark this summer, and they’re very excited to see one that nobody else can get into.”

The kids did their best to look enthusiastic.

“Well, be careful,” the guard warned them. “Don’t touch anything. There’s a lot of damage in there – and one of the upstairs rooms is supposed to be haunted!” He winked.

“That’s great!” said Alberto.

“Yeah! Imagine if we get to show the class a real ghost!” Giulia clutched her camera.

“They’re prepared,” Helena told the guard.

The man unlocked the door for them, and they headed inside.

The outside of the Palazzo was fairly drab. Some of the fancy plasterwork had survived the war, but especially around the sides and back there was little to distinguish it from the humbler buildings nearby. Inside, the first floor was being used to store building supplies and old furniture covered in cloth. They passed that by and went up the first flight of stairs.

The second floor had been the Spinola family’s living area at the height of their wealth. It was now dusty and mostly unfurnished, with broken mirrors and missing light fixtures, and in one large room the entire frescoed ceiling had fallen down. People were laying out the bits of plaster on a drop cloth to reassemble the image like a jigsaw puzzle. Yet for all the ruin, it was clear that this building had once been magnificent. There were fancy tiles and marble mosaics on the floor, dozens of hooks on the ways for hanging giant mirrors and paintings, and places for fancy lights and chandeliers. What was left was almost nothing like the old black and white photographs from the newspaper, and yet Luca could see where that grandeur had once been.

Giulia was impressed, too. She raised her camera and began taking pictures.

“This looks like Harry’s place after a tidal wave hit it,” was Alberto’s assessment.

“The haunted one is supposed to be the green room,” said Helena. “It should be through here.”

Like many of the grander buildings in the city, the palazzo was arranged around a small central courtyard, one room leading into another rather than wasting space by having them branch off a hallway. That made it easy to get confused as they seemed to turn corner after corner, but Helena knew where she was going and brought them to a room where the walls were a bright spring green. Much of the paint had now come away from the walls during the bombing, along with the plaster underneath, leaving bare brick walls. What little remained was mostly in the corners and along the street-facing wall. There was no furniture and, more importantly, no sign of a closet.

“Is this it?” asked Alberto, opening the door opposite to the one they’d come in by. This, however, only brought him to the next room over, which had half the floor taken up to replace some damaged joists. The workmen looked up in surprise at this unexpected intrusion.

“Sorry!” said Alberto, and closed the door again.

“Where is it?” asked Luca, worried.

Helena smiled. “The people who lived in this palazzo were worried about looks, not practicalities. Things like closets had to be hidden. She let Harry out of the suitcase, and then went to a corner and used her fingers to brush dust away from a seam in the paint job. About half a metre away was a ring, and when Helena pulled on that, the hidden door opened to reveal...

... the scaffolding outside. It hadn’t been visible from the street, but the outer wall here had partially collapsed, leaving the interior of the closet as a narrow shelf with a wall on the right and the back, and open air on the left.

“Santo Parmigiano!” said Giulia.

Helena quickly closed the door again and looked at Harry. “Ah, does that matter?” she asked.

“Nah,” he shook his head. “There’s ground in our world, so it’s fine.”

“Good to know,” she decided. “So now we just have to wait.”

They made a show of touring the rest of the house, and let the people working there overhear Helena describing the delicate process of restoring things like the broken ceiling fresco. Giulia and Luca pestered the workers with questions, most of which were happily answered, while they left Harry hidden under a cloth in the green room, trying his best to look like a pile of masonry.

At lunch time they had a picnic in the central courtyard, eating sandwiches and drinking lemonade. Then Helena announced it was time to go, and they went around thanking everybody once again, as if they were about to leave. They did not, however, do so. Instead, they went back to the green room and joined Harry in hiding under drop cloths. When the end of the day came, nobody would remember having actually seen them leave, but nor would they remember them being there in the afternoon, and the workers and guards would conclude that their guests must have left hours ago. Nobody would suspect they had any reason to still be hiding inside.

Unfortunately, that meant there was nothing to do in the afternoon but listen to the sounds that echoed inside the building. There were hammering noises from the men replacing the joists next door, and clinks as they began putting the floor tiles back. Voices spoke on the street outside, and at one point somebody tried to bring a dog into the building. The animal must have smelled Harry, because it began barking in a frenzy and had to be dragged back out.

Finally, people began to go home for the evening. The smell of cigarette smoke and the sound of laughter suggested men weren’t working as hard as they had been. The door to the next room opened, and the workers from there came through in a cacophony of tramping boots and loud voices. Maybe some of them noticed that there appeared to be objects in the green room that hadn’t been there before, but if so, they didn’t think it was worth investigating. They went out through the other door, and could be heard descending the stairs.

Even then, it seemed to be forever before Helena became confident that everybody was gone and let them come out from under the cloth. They couldn’t turn any lights on for fear of being noticed, so they just sat in the gathering dark and listened to Harry describe what they were likely to find.

“The research labs will have a bunch of door stations,” he said. “I’ve visited them loads of times with Dad.” His confidence was starting to return now, as the time came closer to return to his own world. “They’ll probably only be using two or three at a time, because they’ll be testing different stuff. You know, one will be opened normally, and then another one they’ll have done something to.”

“They’ll have a control group,” Luca nodded. Another thing he’d learned about in school.

“There’ll be a bunch of scientists,” Harry added, “but I’ll tell them who I am and that I wanna talk to my father, and it’ll be fine. I bet he’s looking for me!” This idea seemed to perk him up even more. “I bet there’s a big reward out for my safe return. I am his only child, after all.”

Alberto wondered... if he’d gone missing, would his father even have bothered to look?”

“Anyway,” Harry added, “as long as you guys are wet, it’ll...” he stopped, frowning.

“Yeah, we know,” Alberto said, rolling his eyes. They’d filled buckets from a sink on the ground floor and were ready to use them. After what had happened last time, they weren’t likely to forget.

“No, I think I heard something, too,” Luca said, and put a finger to his lips. “Alberto, sssh!”

Alberto fell silent, and there were a series of noises from outside – specifically from the other side of the closet door. The kids moved closer to Helena as a series of thumps, creaks, and grunts came closer and closer. Was there something wrong with the scaffolding, perhaps? Or were the monsters getting to work early?

“Are those the sounds the maids hear?” Giulia whispered.

“I don’t know,” Helena replied. “I’ve never heard them myself.”

“Should we look?” asked Luca.

Giulia stood up and got her camera ready. “You open it,” she said. “If it’s something bad, I’ll set off the flash.”

Luca and Alberto stood on either side of the closet door, water buckets ready, and Harry reached to pull the ring. Helena got behind Giulia, ready to grab her daughter and run.

“Good luck, ragazzi,” Helena said.

“Here goes!” Harry announced. He wrenched the door open – only for him, Luca, Alberto, and Giulia all to let out a scream at the sight of something scarier than any eight-metre drop or monster scientist could possibly have been.

It was Daniela Paguro.

[captain-n-crunchies]

$50

Rich Bf/ Itachi x Black/Chubby Reader

' 60% OFF SALE AT FASHION NOVA SUMMER DEALS FOR THE HOES!"

Summer deals for the hoes??? Now Fashion Nova play too much I thought as I scrolled down the site on my iPad, hitting the flashing sign on my screen. Endless amounts of outside and summer outfits littered my screen...but that's no sale! $30 for a 2-piece top and bottom!? Yes, it gave brunch or mimosas at the beach but still, it only 10% off but, I tap my size and the color and continued adding endless amount of clothes, shoes, and earrings into my cart.

' Tachi gon whoop my ass after this one..' I thought when reviewing my entre cart, Itachi loves it when I spoil myself or put a dent in his wallet but, lately he's told me to spend a little less, I understand it thought I filled up my walk in closet to the max and my shoes is practically covering the wall; when I walk into the closet you'll think it's a mall just full of outfits from the summer time to winter chic to spring flings etc. I delete a few items the cart only depleting by a smidge, I look down at the price...a whopping $640.87 but, I got free shipping! I open my cashapp my balance is $800 buttt I could ask tachi to give me just a bit more, right? I bite my nails and think should I order it with my money and be an independent baddie on a budget? Or be a baddie with a walking wallet on her with no budget? As I think I hear the door open.

" Baby? Com'er for a second"

' Tachi's home!' I thought as I put on my Ugg slippers and went quickly down the stairs, Itachi now sitting on the couch with his glass of whiskey and his computer; I tip-toe behind him and cover his eyes with a childish giggle.

" Guess Who?" I say with a smile, he chuckles and hums for a second.

" Hm? Is it my wonderful reader?"

" No, it your wonderful, gorgeous, beautiful, breath taking, sexy, darling reader"

He just chuckled and kissed my hand as I come around to sit beside him, my plush thighs connecting with his when he lifts my legs onto his thig and rubs my calf. I lean closer a give him a peck whispering a welcome home from his long day at work. He kisses me back and he tells me about work, his eyes now calmer and less tense. We talk about what we have planned for the week and other things that came into our brains.

" Darling, have you did what I asked of you for today?"

Shit! I forgot, Itachi told me to try to clean out one side of my closet so I can have a tidy area for the rest of the year so going bit by bit I did see some shoes I didn't like but, I didn't donate them or threw them away NO! I put them in the attic because I couldn't let them go to waste! What if pink Chanel come back in style and I can just bring the whole collection back? Through my inner turmoil Itachi watches me with a black expression as I awkwardly try to explain.

" Well, I did clean out some but, I got tired, so I took a nap, then I made me a little snack for the hour because I only ate a bagel and-"

" So, you didn't clean out much?"

" It's progress...You just have to lean into it! See if you look at it from my point of view it very hard for a girl to get rid of -"

" So, you didn't clean, nor have you gotten rid of anything dear?"

I just sighed and nodded, putting my head down and looking away. Itachi sighs and lifts my chin up and kisses my lips.

" Let's see how much you've done then we can go on from there hm?"

" But! You've been at work all day, Tachi! It wouldn't be fair to let you help my mess."

" Nonsense dear, up now let's see what 'progress' you've made"

He airs quotes progress and picks me up from the couch onto my feet and walks to our bedroom while I slowly walk behind him, he's too calm...like Itachi would never hurt me but, he doesn't do the not listening thing. When me and Tachi first started this, he set clear rules that disrespect and disobedience would come with spanking, a short allowance, and no sex for week or 2 months depending on what I did, usually I'm a peach! only go punished a few times when I got a bit too bold with him. As I finally gotten into our room, he's standing there with a disappoint look.

" Only five pairs of shoes are in a box and two tops darling? This looks like 30 minutes of work-"

" Actually, an hour! It would hard because I love the leather heels but, they kind of hurt my feet but it's my only pair of leather heels I mean, I do have dark denim thigh highs but, they aren't giving the way those heels did, so I did a process and-"

" Darling."

I stopped talking and looked at his stern face, he sits on the bed and pats his thigh, and takes the band from his long hair down and loosens his tie.

" How many you think hm?"

" How many what?"

" You know what baby don't act dumb, unless you are as dumb as I thought.

My legs tighten as I try to explain how I should get away from this one punishment ranging from pleas to bargains but, Tachi just shakes his head and pats his thigh again.

" Not going to say it again baby, you've got 10 seconds before it 30 spankings and no cumming till the entire closet is clean."

He started counting and I quickly bend over his lap.

" Please me gentle Tachi" I said small and meek

" No promises my angel"

*SMACK!*

*After her ass got tore up*

" Your going to listen to me more hm?"

" Yes sir.."

" Good, now tomorrow I'm off I'm going to help you clean out some of it okay baby?"

I just nod snuggling into him, he tore my ass up and then gon try to be all loving after? Thats real bipolar but, whatever; I grab my phone from the table and see the sale is almost over.

" Tachi?"

" Hm?"

" Can I borrow $50?"

He looks down at me with one eye and I show him the sale, he rolls his eyes and pats my head.

" Later dear, go to sleep"

I nod, shutting down my hand and climbing on top of his thin frame hold his shoulders and laying my head on his chest.

" Night Tachi"

" Night baby"

..." Can I borrow $50-"

"No"

A.N: ( Im back like crack! Yall tis was my mannnn back in 89' like when I tell you he was BAD! He was, and yall I've been so tired like I tried to write but I couldn't so I'm post more now that I'm motivated.)

Like and comment who yall wanna see next!

[being-addie]

How to bounce back after vacation

I just came back from a long holiday trip right now, and it's been pretty easy falling off the wagon while vacationing, I'm not gonna lie. Our first stop was extremely hot and humid and I don't do well in those conditions so I was blowing through bottles of soda and bowls of ice cream. During the road trip we took I snacked constantly. Then we went to a spot that was below freezing. I didn't take care of my hair at all so it's frizzy and dry. You can imagine how badly sticking to a routine went.

It's challenging to stay disciplined while holidaying, so I cut myself some slack. Four flights and 17 hours of driving combined in a week? Of course I wasn't going to be able to follow my routine. But now that I'm back, I've been actively working to get back on track ASAP.

Here's how to recover from a long trip and get back into the flow as efficiently as possible.

Recover: Keep a few days to just relax at home. You'll probably think it's counter-productive, but recovering from a late-night flight or a 10-hour road trip is vital if you want to do anything with full productivity. I usually take 1 day to recover, but I recommend limiting them to 2 days maximum (otherwise you're going to feel lazier)

Try to ease into it: Do not jump into your routine. Your body will not be used to a 3-hour study session or 10 kg dumbells after it's not kept up. Be gentle with yourself. Do a 1-hour study session, instead of 3. Go for a walk, rather than an intense HIIT workout.

Eat properly: If you haven't had any good, healthy food during your trip, eat some goddamn veggies. Your body will be happy. Although I ate light, like soup and chicken during my trip, eating normal, home-cooked food worked wonders for me

Nap: Catch up on sleep. Unfortunately, I drank a large coffee before my 9pm flight back home, so I got zero shuteye. I've been napping in the afternoons to get back to normal.

Clean: Unpacking always makes a huge mess, and my room can testify to that. Make sure during the process, you don't mess up the rest of your (already clean) room. Wash your clothes, and rearrange your skincare products back where they belong.

Prep: Since my classes are starting next week, I've been restocking my supplies, filling my sketchbook, and completing any extra college assignments due. Staying prepared will help you manage time better when work or school starts again. Complete any time-consuming work, like meal prep, or laundry.

Pamper yourself: Traveling doesn't suit everyone, so yesterday, I took out time to have my Everything Shower, I put on music and read while I treated my body to some much-needed TLC. My hair looks much better.

Feeling frazzled after holiday isn't unusual. We're expected to come back to work with 100% productivity. If you're not able to do that immediately, don't beat yourself up about it. Take it easy, and you'll be back in your routine after no time. xoxo

<3

[yana-marie]

Woke up at 4:30, had a breakfast at home — something I am currently training myself to do — and cleaned the apartment. At 9 I went for a coffee and to organise some things on my laptop. At 11 rehearsals started. We managed to go halfway through the text and: we are only ten days in.

The dramaturge is ill and I got to substitute her completely again. Things are working out very well. The director and the sound&video designer praised me for prompting, being in charge of the lights and editing the script all at the same time. I felt weird receiving their compliments, because I do still feel rather bored. In the four hours of break I took a nap and had to research some things for the play. When I came back I arrived to a jazz concert we were showing in our space tonight. We were able to have it play in the background until we finished at 10. This time I joined them to the boheme pub. Only because the sound&video designer asked me to — we had bonded earlier today when I shared some gossip about the theatre with him. Young actor boy made sure to walk with me to the pub and later sit next to me. He behaves like a little puppy: he wants to impress and show all his good qualities: being interested in politics and being very informed and such. He leads the conversation and tries to be very serious, and I just mess around with him. He’s a good boy. In the beginning we were somewhat divided into pairs that were defined by their age: the two gen x (the director and one of the actresses), the two millennials (the sound&video designer and another one of the actresses) and the two gen z (me and mr young actor boy). The latter had to leave rather early — but I stayed long. That turned out a good decision. We had rather serious discussions about politics and the state of theatres and the arts within the current troubled times. Particularly, there is one specific dilemma we are facing. The theatre will host a discussion and reading event with a famous politician of the Christian democrat party in our foyer in a few days. When just recently there was a controversy about this party to grossly part with the right winged (and right extremist) party. Thousands of people in the country protested against those parties. And now, we will host an event of theirs! The dilemma being that many people, particularly the rich old people (amongst which is the mayor of the town), are great supporters of the theatre that we depend on. We agreed the least the theatre should do is to make a statement on what we stand for and what not. Additionally, I proposed we should offer the public the chance to attend one of our plays about bigotry and discrimination that plays the next day for free. The director added we should offer them soup and a place to discuss in the foyer. The director by the way also likes me. He claimed to be marxist and told me he could tell I had “an affinity for Rosa Luxembourg”. Anyway, dreamy ideas beside, I am very sure our ideas are not feasible, because most definitely the theatre director will not want to lose the money for Friday and additionally spend money and organise soup and stuff.However, the conversations felt genuine and not pretentious. It felt good to have this exchange with people from different backgrounds. It felt good to be able to prove that I am more than a silly assistant. The director had invited me for the beers I drank. I just came home and drank a hot chocolate. My boyfriend went to this event with this person I have never heard about before. I like that he watches those movies and involves himself like that. I always wanted to be with a person like this. Especially one that is not pretentious about it (which he is not). Today was a long day. But I don’t feel good about what I got done. I still did not do many things I have to tackle about my own studies and stuff. That’s the plan for tomorrow…

[newhologram]

10 whole years ago, Cleo died and my world came crashing down. My mental and physical health tanked, with 6 new diagnoses within a year. I dropped out of acting class, and auditions and set work came to a screeching halt for a while. For years, it took me hours each day to get out of bed. I had to navigate disability and illness in young adulthood alone, with those closest to me telling me what a burden I was because I was too sick to work full time and move out. So I forced myself to work multiple jobs even when I was in and out of the ER and constant appointments (like I still am today) when I really should've been resting and taking care of my body. I was in constant burn-out, throwing up in secret at work, because the feeling of shame and being a useless loser being put upon me was so great, I felt like if I didn't "earn" being alive, that I shouldn't be alive at all. I felt completely worthless.

I almost didn’t survive the past 10 years. But I did, and I don’t think any of it made me “stronger." But it did teach me a lot that I'm glad I can use to help others. I'm proud of how far I've come and I like the person I've become. But I don't think suffering in isolation like that or enduring abuse is necessary to make us strong; we should be there for each other, not turning away from another's suffering out of discomfort (that's selective empathy and it kills). This path was like being put through a spiritual meat grinder and it forced me to make a lot of “cuts” to who is allowed access to me. It showed me what my family really thinks of me and which friends were real friends. 4 years ago, on the 6th anniversary of Cleo's death, I brought Ashley and Maxwell home. It was a beautiful way to bring things full circle and that feeling is even stronger now. It's hard to reconcile that 10 years went by because I couldn't see myself living past my 20's in this same sort of situation: at home, disabled, too sick to follow my dreams. I feel like a ghost, or a misplaced collection of memories put into a body and a life that I can't always identify with. Especially after last year, with over a hundred appointments, so many tests, and being monitored for multiple different kinds of cancer while on ketamine therapy... That was a new sort of trauma that has given me a strange mixed sense of numbness and freedom. Somehow I've come back around to a piece of myself that was lost in trying to be "something" or "not a waste/burden" 10 years ago, when this started. Now I can just be. There will always be more that I want to do with myself in this world, dreams that I want to make real, creative ambitions to fulfill. There is so much medical care I need but can't access in this broken country. For me, there will always be depressive or CPTSD relapses to recover from, agonizing chronic illness flare-ups to manage, new medications to try. But ultimately, happiness is simple. It's sitting here on a rainy morning with Maxwell asleep next to me and Ashley running around with her favorite toy. It's taking a nap after editing videos or enduring stressful doctor appointments. It's long baths to help with the pain and playing video games after. The only thing to do is to live. There is no "wasting" when you're having fun, even with these apparent "little things." I'm grateful to Cleo for her love, and for the things I learned losing her as well as losing Opie and Jeremy. I'm grateful to Blue, Ashley, and Maxwell for teaching me again, or maybe for the first time, the simple contentedness of just being alive.

[marcholasmoth]

OSRR: 3211

after sleeping in and confirming plans, i fell back asleep this morning and woke up finally with my "you should be leaving now" alarm. i got up real fast, showered, died of heat exhaustion, dressed, and left in like twenty minutes. not quite a record but damn close.

i went with a friend and her mom to get lunch at a vietnamese place and cupcakes from my favorite bakery. for lunch i got beef pho and dumplings and it was all really good. i ended up with leftovers, which was surprising, but the dumplings were filling. so i put it in a container, grabbed a spoon and chopsticks, asked for a bag, and packed it all away, and we left.

at the bakery i picked up some cupcakes and a flower cookie, the kind i usually get when i go there, the ones that are my favorite. i picked a blue one today. i'm very excited to eat it.

(i'll die on the hill that klemm's bakery is the best bakery in new hampshire. if someone can prove me wrong i'll still die on that hill.)

after that adventure, i went back to joel's and i took a nap. it had gradually been raining harder and harder over those few hours, so by the time i got back it was pretty loud on my little car. but it was dull out and gray and comforting, and it was definitely sleep-inducing. i was happy to go back to bed for a while.

i woke up a little after 6, having slept about two hours. i picked up my stuff and headed home, leaving my laptop there because i didn't really need to bring it home. i also put the cupcakes in the fridge.

i got home around 7, and i sat and talked with my momma for a bit. it'd been a few days since i was last home, so i wanted to check in on her to see how she was feeling, plus that's the one place left to sit in the house, and i just missed my momma.

i opened my mail, which included a lego set, a thank you card from gramma, and the order i placed from the northeastern bookstore. i was actually able to read gramma's handwriting, which was nice, because that doesn't usually happen. the lego set is one of the four things i ordered from the lego website on star wars day, because they were having a star wars promo if you spent like $75. so i did. the rest are back ordered so i'm waiting on those still.

i grabbed my switch from my room to download a game which crow and cricket sent me money for as a graduation gift. which was super nice! because i got to play with them too! we spent two hours playing mario party together and it was so fun! i'm so happy they're my friends.

once we were done it was past 10pm, and i still hadn't had dinner. i went downstairs, and it turned out mom hadn't had dinner either, not really. that's like the one thing i don't really enjoy about being home, is having the responsibility of coordinating meals between four or five people when one of them works until 9pm, one doesn't really care, one doesn't contribute, another is judgmental and has dietary restrictions, and the last one is me.

it's frustrating, that's all.

anyway, i ate my soup leftovers. i took out onion as i went, reestablishing my distaste for white onions and reinvigorating my detestation for green onions. i also took out the meatball. it had a bad texture.

but it was still good! it's better fresh, but it was still good.

i grabbed some ice cream and munched on it while watching the baseball game before momma went to bed.

i washed out one of my new cups and filled it for the evening with ice water, and i hung out with chels for a little bit before deciding to head to bed. i packed up my cookie so it's still fresh when i have it and so it's protected from being crunched.

i care about little things. i care a lot.

a few other things.

when i was sleeping in this morning, joel came back into the room twice, once when i was sitting up having taken my meds, probably around 9:40, and once around 10:30 or something, when i had covered myself in blankets as well as blooper and the puppy. he said "did you fall back asleep??" and i slowly popped my head up from behind the stack of squish and said "no." he said "did you take your meds??" "i did take my meds, and i'm sleepy." "how are you still sleepy??? i'm WIRED." "my meds quiet everything else so i can sleep." he shook his head before saying "you're silly" and patting me on the head. he grabbed whatever it was he needed and left again.

i didn't open my computer today, but i tried to fix my gmail nonsense that i've got goin on. i set up forwarding a long time ago but it doesn't forward everything, so i need to open it properly so i can see the shit that doesn't go to my other email account. rip.

speaking of emails, i saw, in my inbox, a message as i was cleaning out the new garbage emails. it was from one of the places i applied to this week. they want to schedule a time to talk about the position. i double checked the posting to see if it was the one i thought it was for, and it is - it's the daytime, full-time shift that i was realistically hoping for. so i'm hoping to talk to them on monday or something. that'd be nice.

that's where i am about now. excited, didn't think i'd get this far, tired. hungry. tummy grumbling. time for sleeping.

[pbandjesse]

I accidentally took a two hour nap this afternoon so now I feel very much not ready for bed and also daylights savings continues to confuse my body. So it's after 10 and I'm just starting this.

I had a good day though! Just busy. I slept a little better last night. But waking up was super hard. I would get out of bed and found myself just with a stiff neck and feeling really tired. I was just moving really slow.

James had jury duty today. So they would leave right after me. I wore the wrong jacket and would be very cold. But it was fine. The car would be warm enough.

I stopped for breakfast and went over to the museum.

We had a highschool tour first thing. None of us realize it was an extended tour. So once the school was there we were like. Okay!! Add in transportation and pharmacy. And it was fine. They were such good kids. Some of the other groups apparently weren't very chatty but our little group was and they were really fun. Had excellent questions and made me laugh. At once point in the begining I asked them what industry meant and they were all quiet and one goes "guys!! We gotta get this!! Our teacher is gonna kill us!!" And it was just so funny.

We didn't have much time after the tour to grab a drink. Because we had a 1st-3rd grade tour right away. We don't normally have tours for that age. And it was funny jumping right into that from 11th graders. It was a nice tour though and the kids were super sweet. I also liked the teachers a lot. They were Monasori kids so I was looking forward to seeing how they approached balls and track later one.

We would have a break for lunch. I ate my sandwich and worked on my knitting. I would finish my first ball of yarn before the end of the next program.

And the kids enjoyed building. But also just watching me knit. Kids are so funny though asking if I can give them my project when I am done. And I'm like. I'm not going to be done before you leave?? Silly geese.

They would soon leave me. After a visit to the car. And I would sit in the back talking to Gaby and Mubtasin about toy collecting and how stupidly expensive thrift stores have gotten. And then I had to go.

I went to get pizza at 711. And then drove to my rhumatologist for my appoint.

And everyone there is so nice the woman at the front desk is always so lovely to me. The doctor is great. The medical assistant. The woman who does the injections. The only person who gives me weird energy is the phlebotomist. She just seems so annoyed at me every time and I don't understand it.

At least the nice guy who checked me in last time was there. And I got to show him my art and we talked for a bit. And then the doctor came in and she said she isn't to worried about my nose but wants me to get set up with a new dermatologist anyway so this is a good time to start working on that. And then it was time to get some blood taken. Which again. Weird energy. She also said I was dehydrated and my blood was moving slow. So I gotta be more mindful of that next time I get blood taken I guess.

The injections went just fine. Quick. Only a little pain. My one leg bled a lot for some reason but it was fine. I set up my next appointment and headed out.

I got really really tired in the drive home. I drank all my water. And had a snack and made it back in one piece but man was I tired.

I would get inside and get in bed and wait for James to come home. They did not get picked to be on a jury. And would lay in bed with me for a few minutes. Eventually I fell asleep.

They woke me up around 6. And I was very disoriented. But I was okay. I had a salad and a vegetarian chicken patty for dinner. And made two more bear designs.

Auni suffered a make one based on a former congresswoman that was known for her hats. And so I did that. And made an old bay themed one too. It was fun. Eventually I would move to the studio to try to cast some bears. I'm still struggling getting my resin to set consistently. But we will keep trying.

Brandon came over tonight. And we talked for a bit while I worked on my knitting. And now James and Brandon are watching a show and I'm hanging out with Sweetp and texting with Laura about America-core and it's very funny to me. I hope she comes back to camp this year.

Tomorrow I have my first class at the hospital! I hope it's fun. And then I have my meeting with the craft castle. Fingers crossed cause I think it could be really great!! Goodnight everyone! Be safe!!

[twobillionseconds]

December 20th - December 26th 2025

December 20th:

Woke up and went to the gym. Got some stuff done. I met up with someone. Hung out with them for a bit. Came home and cooked dinner. Can't remember much except I was able to recapture some level of clarity and peace for a brief moment.

December 21st:

Damn it can't remember much. In the evening the wife and I went to one of her friend's holiday event. I was the only guy there. Thank god it was only for an hour. Afterwards we got dinner at a restaurant to celebrate her birthday. Afterwards we got gelato and set up our new TV.

December 22nd:

Went to church with the wife. Made lunch at home. We had a lot of stuff. Just prepped for the trip tomorrow to LA.

December 23rd:

Went to the gym in the morning so that the wife could attend a class. After we came home and had lunch and packed and got ready to go. We got to my parent's place around 3. Went to Costco after to pick up dinner items for Christmas. For dinner I met up with some old high school friends. When we got back I had a couple beers with my brother and his friend.

December 24th:

Woke up and went to the beach with the wife to walk our dog. He's been anxious in a new environment. After we got some coffee and brunch. I went to the gym after. I started prepping for tomorrow's dinner. My brother picked up some dinner. It was bleh. Anyway. The brothers and I had a moment around a bonfire.

December 25th:

Christmas morning. We had breakfast to celebrate my brother's birthday. We opened gifts and what not. Afterwards the wife and I went to the beach. I went for a long run. We got home and I took a long bathroom break. I started prepping dinner. We had 11 people. My brother's in laws and all that. We had a good dinner and laughs. Took some photos. We had to drive back that night because the wife had to work the next day. We got home around 10. I just had to unwind.

December 26th:

Woke up and did the morning routine. Met a guy to mount our TV. After I cleaned around the house and had lunch. Took a nap and went to the gym. Picked up some take out for dinner. Just gonna enjoy the couple days off.

[jodilin65]

MONDAY, APRIL 30, 2007 Tom said she didn’t wake him up on her way to work, but I’m not sure what my case is. I wake up a lot just because. One of the times I awoke was right around the time she’d be going to work.

We’re in for rain in a couple of days, but today, being in the 70s, clear, and a weekday, means it’s going to be utterly maddening. I’m going to throw in an earplug when it starts getting really bad.

SUNDAY, APRIL 29, 2007 We still haven’t decided on an exact date to move, but we should have one in a couple of weeks. Tom’s researching during commercials while he watches a car race. He wants to try to avoid areas where there’s more crime, but since there’d be no way to afford a ritzier area down there, I doubt there’ll be much of a choice. Especially when we’re going where 21% of the people are Mexican and 15% are black. That’s what they do; they rip shit off and sell it. That’s how they make their living, and why not when it’s easy, tax-free, and a simple cry of discrimination gets them from having to answer to it?

Yesterday I crashed as the sun was setting with an earplug. It’s rather sad to have to sleep that way, but I didn’t get woken up, even though Tom said there were a few really loud stereos that went by. The question is, how loud is going to be too loud for society in general? How loud? When we can hear them from other states? When the vibration’s so fierce it literally knocks people’s houses down? What will it take for someone to finally do something about this problem?

Kim’s been an annoyance at times, too. She still usually doesn’t play music, but sometimes I can hear it loud and clear what with the warmer weather we’ve had. What’s most annoying with her is the slamming in and out during the mornings.

I got fed up with the Yves games, so I decided to get a basic Glinda doll for the same price. I got her from the Doll Peddlar because they were cheaper than the other places I usually shop at. I just hope she’s in stock.

Jessie’s cold is better, but now she has allergies so I’ll see if I can influence that for her, too.

They’re having another Delbert cruise, only it’s embarking from San Diego. Yeah, I figured Nancy was full of shit when she tried to tell me that I may’ve cost them their contract with House of Blues and Sandy Beaches Cruises. She sure tried, though!

Later…

Tom just woke Kim up doing the yard. She came out and asked him if he’d do it on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, saying those were her days off. He told her, “Sure.” Watch, now she’ll go and use this as an excuse to play her music louder, or maybe slam doors harder and more often. But at least she’d be easier to wake up again, if she did, unlike that bitch at the duplex. I couldn’t have woken her up without waking Tom up. At least we’re almost out of here! If she thinks she’s going to sleep peacefully during the daytime, though, with people moving in here in the middle of summer, she’s in for one “rude awakening!” The chances of the newcomers not barbecuing in the backyard or doing something else back there aren’t very good. Of course, if God really has it in for her in any way, He’ll sic a little kid on her whose mother sends it outside to play. A preschooler who’s home all the time. I don’t see how she sleeps with that damn dog as it is. Certainly, it’s got to be louder to her as the stereos are to us.

SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2007 I’m depressed, frustrated, pissed and tired, and my undying hatred for God only continues to grow while I’m at it, too. They woke me up twice yesterday, then I woke up twice more, once when I was hungry and once when I was sweating. I got up at 10:00, did my work, then took a 3-hour nap from 2:00 – 5:00. It was so nice to do it with no sound machines, too. Had Tom gotten up to pee, yeah, it would’ve woken me, but there was absolutely nothing but the computer’s fans whirring in the background and it was nice for a change.

Tom wants to research the Sacramento area this weekend, but whether we end up in the $400 apartment or the $800 house, it’s all going to be maddening and so I’ve already made up my mind to starve to death just as soon as I get my hands on that Claritin. I’ll be damned if I’ll live like this another 5-14 years, more like 14. I just can’t believe any retirement home would let a couple in with one being under the age limit, so fuck this Tom-and-Jodi-are-only-allowed-to-live-in-noisy-places rule our fucking God’s slapped on us! I can’t deal with these things that only get louder and louder each year for another decade and a half. Hell, the freeloaders’ stereo wasn’t nearly as loud as they are today! If they had been I’d have assaulted them for damn sure and ended up at least somewhat deserving of the shit they put me through. And no one’s ever going to do shit about them either. They’d have done that 10 years ago if they were.

I’m just sick of life. Sick of humanity. Yet the more I try to escape it, the more I just get stuck right in the middle of it. I can run, but I can’t hide. Not as long as I live, and this is no way to live, trust me. I’m simply not allowed to have anything I want, no matter how simple it may be. All I want is a peaceful place and some money, but sure enough, that dream Tom had just had to be that 1% of the time that it didn’t pan out. Gee, why am I not at all surprised?

Anyway, it’d be nice to have a place lined up for when we get down there so we don’t have to waste money in motels for too long, but at the same time, I don’t want to do the sight-unseen thing again either. There’s no way we could stay in motels indefinitely, though, on the Unemployment. It won’t be enough to cover the higher rates down there.

FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 2007 I’ve been stressed out over the upcoming move, and a bit depressed, too. Especially with knowing how maddening it’s going to be down there with the stereos on a daily basis, year-round. And the barking and God knows what else. The thought of having to live with this year after year just makes me want to drop dead! Even if the fucking stereos didn’t exist, though, dealing with all the barking and car door slamming right outside the wall of our place is bad enough. And so is dealing with struggling to make ends meet, which we’ll be doing for God knows how long.

I’m also not looking forward to returning to all the Mexicans and blacks, but seeing that the entire southwest was once Mexico in the 1800s, there’s no avoiding it. But I do miss the warm climate and the palm trees so I don’t want to deprive myself simply because people can’t shut up and are rude assholes.

It’s back in the 60s and 70s here, so it’s been quite maddening. I can’t sleep well during the daytime, so I’m going to have Tom get me some melatonin and start trying to train myself on a day schedule so I can try to find work when we get down there.

I’ll just try to remind myself when I’m listening to the stereos, the screaming, the barking, the door slamming, etc., that thanks to God’s being obsessed with my living in places I hate, that’s just all the more security for us. The more I hate a place, the more impossible it’d be to get evicted from it. I’ll also try to remind myself that a chaotic day only makes for a more special and appreciated night. I really enjoy the peacefulness of the nighttimes all the more on account of it being so maddening during the daytime. I never take it for granted. The same with those few scattered bursts of money we have throughout life. We’ll probably be broke for the next 2-3 years, but come the next time we’ve got extra money, it’s going to be all the more wonderful.

On the other hand, I also know I don’t have to take it. I don’t have a gun to shoot myself with or a garage to fill with carbon monoxide, but I can stop eating anytime I choose to and simply drift away. God can make me suffer, but he can’t make me eat, and I would think that death by starvation is a relatively easy death. You just get weak and tired.

I decided we should keep the truck. It’d not only make getting around a brand new city all the easier but there’s no way we could get something new as soon as we got down there. Even the biggest piece of junk is going to cost hundreds or even thousands down there, and making it drivable would cost thousands, too. This $500 truck cost us 2 grand to bring to life as it was.

It’s been a month and I still haven’t gotten my order from Yves! It turns out that the first time around they didn’t process it due to a glitch. This time around it’s because credit card companies are clamping down on different first names, even if the addresses are the same. The account was in my name, but the card was in his. I created a whole new account in his name and added a few more items that are on sale. We’ll place the order this weekend and hope Yves doesn’t fuck up again. This is the first time they’ve fucked up on me.

The good news in all this is that my eyes are better than ever! I found that if I go cross-eyed for a few minutes each day, it helps a lot. I’ve been working all night without glasses. What was cool was that it was noticeable as soon as I got up, and when I first wake up is when it’s usually the hardest to see.

It’ll be interesting to see how Jessie’s cold is. She emailed me a few days ago saying she’d been sick. I told her I’d try to ease it for her as best I could.

Anyway, this weekend we’re going to really check into the houses down there and do our best to see if we can figure out what types of neighborhoods they’re in, what’s around it, etc. It’s just that you can’t always know till you get there. You can’t “see” if there’s a stereo living right next to a particular house you might want. Not all satellite pictures will show you which yards are decorated with dogs, and even if they could, they’re outdated photos. I doubt most houses in the mainstream down there will be much quieter than an apartment or duplex, but at least I won’t have to worry about someone complaining about me when I want to blast my stereo or run around with the rat. I weighed the pros and cons of living alone, versus connected to others, and I still say it’s best to go solo if God will allow this much to be up to us for once.

I hope there’s also a way to find out who owns the houses down there. We do not want to end up next to a city house again!

MONDAY, APRIL 23, 2007 There’s this same dog that goes barking by in the back of a pickup regularly and it really gets old. But hey, it’s another good way to be obnoxious and get attention.

I never heard from Jessie over the weekend. The kid must’ve kept her busy.

I won 5,000 points again on Netwinner and am now just under 30,000 points. They definitely do compensate you, though, afterward. I haven’t been winning nearly as much ever since, so I won’t bother to play much for a few days.

For as long as he can remember, Tom’s gotten solutions to various problems in his sleep. It’s not like he’ll dream that a person’s telling him the answers, he just wakes up knowing something he didn’t know the day before. He says the answers prove correct 99% of the time, so if this is that 1% where he’s wrong, that’s all the more reason to believe something up there really wants to tease us badly with money. The question is why. We’ve never ripped anyone off or anything. If anything, we’ve done nothing but be a profit to others, so if anyone’s owed money and deserves it, it’s us! Anyway, he said it’s not like he got the answer that’ll get us rich (though he still feels that’ll happen at some point), but that will up the win percentage, giving us a small profit each day, instead of the usual, win some/lose some trip we’ve been on. I say it’s just another tease (as if God has nothing better to do than pick on us), but if we ever do get rich somehow, then I’m no longer psychic!

I’m not sure if I can say my eyes are better or not. They sure don’t seem to be at the beginning of my day, but then they do seem to get better. It’s really weird. Yet when I think of the inhalers and snot sprays I influenced myself off of, and the dairy products I influenced my stomach to be able to handle, it gives me a little hope. It seems it’s the more tangible things that are easier to influence. If only I could influence my metabolism! Once again it does seem like I’ve maxed, though I don’t think I’ll stay this weight forever if I continue to eat all I want.

FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 2007 Just like I was saying that I couldn’t believe it was early April back when we were having that warm spell, now I can say I can’t believe it’s nearly May! Not with the cold and snow we’ve been having. It’s just some dustings but it’s still snow.

As much as I have to bitch about and worry about, I know I’m living the right life when I think of Jessie getting up each morning to go to an accounting job of all things, then going home to a 4-year-old. But it suits her well. It’s just a matter of individual priority and preference. I’d rather have a life, even if it’s not always the life I’d like to have.

Sometimes I think of contacting Mary, who appears to still be in jail since I can’t find anything new on her, but then I think of how sensitive she can be and what a pest she’d no doubt make of herself once she’s released and I say, nah. Even Tom says he wouldn’t bother.

Jessie emailed me at 7 AM her time this morning to say she was on her way to work and to have a fun day.

It’s so hard to believe we’re in touch again! At the same time, it doesn’t feel like there’s a 15-year gap there, what with how far we go back. I updated her on how my psychic skills have advanced and how Tom feels I’m more of an influencer than clairvoyant. I’m trying to “influence” my eyes back into focus, but it isn’t working yet. This text is maybe a little clearer, but that could be pure wishful thinking on my part! We’ll just have to see as I continue the spells.

I told Jess she could be a character in one of my books sometime, but that I can’t use her as a main character. She’s as straight as I wish my hair was.

I hunted through my photo albums yet was unable to find the picture of us I had for years. Bummer! We’ll see if she has any.

I told Tom about her years ago but filled him in more since our little electronic reunion. If anything, he and she are more similar than she and I are. She’s a lot like Mary but without the religious fanatic BS mixed in.

It sucks that her kid’s so young. That sort of shoots down any possibility of her being able to visit us for quite a while if she wanted to. It used to be that none of my friends had kids, but ever since the 90s, almost all my friends have had kids, and as selfish as it may sound, it can be a drag. On the other hand, it keeps them from having the time to bug me.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2007 I have quite a shocking update – an email from Jessica S! The message was sent under the name Bonnie S, but she hasn’t told me who that is yet. She sent the message a few days ago saying she received my letter a while back and misplaced it till now, and to let her know if I have the same email address.

I replied, letting her know I was glad to hear from her, and that we were moving to Sacramento soon. Then I sent her a detailed update of my last 15 years in the wild, wild west and she replied saying her life seemed dull in comparison.

I responded by letting her know that sometimes dull is better than adventurous and that I was looking forward to hearing all that’s been going on with her.

Today she said she got an accounting degree at HCC, got married, went through a bunch of shit, got separated, had a beautiful daughter, and is now trying to work things out with her husband. Between work and a 4-year-old, free time is sparse.

I told her that’s why I opted not to have kids (if ever I really did have the freedom of choice in the matter in the first place); so I could have a life. I told her it’s all a matter of priority, but if she’s happy, that’s all that matters. I sent her the links to my photo albums and she’s seen some of them. She never answered a fraction of the questions I had for her or even told me her daughter’s name or how her son was doing, so I figured she could tell me what she wants when she wants. With a job and a kid that young and probably a man who doesn’t give a shit about either one of them, I can see where she’d have no life. I figured that like with Paula, her life would be pretty much the same, though she’s certainly a lot more with it than Paula, whom I finally spoke to earlier today.

The only new thing Paula told me was that she’s moving after 8 years of being in the same place. She gave me two different reasons as to why she’s moving. First it was because her landlady won’t renew her lease, and then it was because of the freeloaders upstairs. She’s moving to another 3-family house in Chicopee, but will still have the same PO Box in W. Springfield. She’ll be on the first floor, under an old lady. She says the lady can ask her son to turn down his music if she wants, but she better not make a habit of it. Justin’s been really mean to her, she says, and she’s having problems with him.

Gee, Paula, I wonder why! Like maybe you weren’t a great example for him perhaps?

The biggest shocker was that she got married last October, but hasn’t told anyone, not even Justin. I don’t know why the secrecy, but anyway, the guy turned out to be a real psycho, so it turned out to be the biggest mistake of her life, she says.

Tom thinks it’s just water, but it looks to me like my weight hasn’t maxed after all. Figures, huh? It looks like yes, I will keep gaining indefinitely if I eat all I want, it’ll just be a slow process. I’m back to 137 pounds, but I still doubt I’ll do much about it till I can get a hold of the Claritin.

SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 2007 I guess now’s a good time to get caught up here since I can’t start sweeping till 2:00. I don’t like to start earlier than I did the day before because some of the ‘dailies’ are really ‘24s’ and they won’t let me enter till it’s been exactly 24 hours.

If we really leave on June 1st, we now have just 48 days left to go!

I was browsing this weight-loss tip site and didn’t believe it when they said switching from soda to water really makes a difference, but it does. It’s only a few-pound difference, but it’s a difference just the same.

I’ve also changed the way I exercise my lower abs muscles.

I was surprised to read there are certain foods said to boost the metabolism. They don’t recommend having less than 1200 calories a day, but I still intend to starve myself once I get a hold of that Claritin because it’s faster and easier. Then I’ll try taking some of their advice to keep it off for a while like having 2-3 ounces of cheese, sliced meat, fish or egg with every meal. They also recommend peanut butter, dark chocolate, sunflower seeds, whole wheat bread, bananas, dried apricots, honeydew melon, baked potato with skin, miso soup, spinach, lean red meat, fortified bran flakes and raspberries. They say not to let 4-5 hours pass without eating as that’s all it takes to put your body into “starvation mode,” and to eat when you get up. Lastly, they recommend taking 3 deep breaths 10 times a day.

Tom set us up to download movies from the Starz network. We can also watch what’s currently playing on their channel, too. It’s pretty cool and makes for good time-fillers when I’m done working and don’t feel like doing anything else like writing or reading. The first two weeks are free, then it’s $10 a month. At first I wasn’t sure the selection would be worth it after two weeks, but they’re constantly adding new stuff, so we’ll see.

MONDAY, APRIL 9, 2007 Some guy’s out in the yard next door now with a girl of around 8 flying a kite. This is the first time I’ve seen a kid over there, so I’d say she’s visiting. In the bedroom with the music going, it’s no big deal. I’m surprised they don’t have a car stereo thumping away while they’re at it.

Anyway, today’s cooler and windier and it’s been much quieter stereo-wise.

Tom said gamblers are superstitious and that they would definitely give him a hundred bucks or so if they won big from his picks. Just like people are superstitious about leaving a payout on a slot machine, they are with this too, he tells me. That’s something God would do too; have someone win big from his picks, while we hardly got shit.

Won a boring DVD and the best shirt for Tom ever. A $50 polo shirt. It’s actually a Nautica deck shirt. I won him a fiery red one and next time I’ll go for a black one. They give away 50 shirts each week, then the grand prize winner gets 22 shirts, each in a different color.

SATURDAY, APRIL 7, 2007 The doll finally came and is way nicer than my other Tonners. She’s a little bigger, but a lot better proportioned. I love the drop-down ankles and more detailed toes than the typical Tonner has. Just like my porcelain bride doll, Summer Dream, one of her hands is fist-like so she can hold her flower bouquet.

I hope I don’t lose any of these dolls once we move! But if we do end up in total poverty, and if we’re not smart enough to kill ourselves, we sure do have a lot of stuff we could sell.

There was an instant sweep where I won a “naughty & nice” towel set, and apparently, I got the win notice in error. And although this company isn’t required to give prizes to those affected by their mistake, they did send a T-shirt and a watch with 3 different colored bands, so that was nice.

The trees are in bloom now and so are the bees and spiders. Tom’s going to spray the outside of the house today, then we’ll bomb next weekend. I love seeing the cherry and apple blossoms. They’re so beautiful but so short-lived.

I was reading various posts on the global warming debate. Some feel it’s all hype, but others believe it is a genuine crisis, pointing out that 80-degree temps in March aren’t normal. Someone even said they wore shorts in NYC for the first time ever in January, although they did get slammed with tons of cold and snow shortly afterward. Has it ever been 76º in early April in Klamath Falls, I wonder? That’s what it was yesterday. I was so hot under this heavy comforter that I had to sleep with the fan on. It didn’t warm up till June of our first spring here, then last year it warmed up a month earlier, but this year it’s over two months earlier. Tom said it won’t affect us personally, but those billion or so people who live by the sea will be displaced by the rising sea levels. It could affect us, however, if many of those people decide to come live with us. That’d really suck cuz the cities are crowded enough as it is! I got a kick out of how one lady said, “I’m 73 years old, and why should I believe their weather predictions for the next 50 years when I have yet to see them get the next 3 days right?”

A couple fell 50’ from the balcony of a cruise ship near Mexico. They survived, and although no reason for the fall was mentioned, I’d say they were trying to kill themselves. Not even the drunkest of drunks would be dumb enough to fall off a cruise ship like that!

Another cruise ship sunk in the Mediterranean Sea in Greece after striking a rocky reef. Two people are missing. Guess these things still aren’t unsinkable!

THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2007 I was checking into houseboat rentals, hoping to find something affordable that was long-term, but sure enough, all I could find were vacation rentals that cost a fortune. You can buy boats too, but I couldn’t find anything smaller than a 4-bed boat for $234,000. A houseboat would’ve been awesome. Probably more so than a rural or a retirement type of place. You couldn’t take it out to sea, but you wouldn’t have car stereos to deal with or a pack of brats bouncing basketballs for 5 hours at a time. Barking dogs may be a problem, and kids may go running up and down the docks constantly, but the boat’s windows would be watertight and that cuts down sound big-time. Typical me, always wanting what she can’t have. I’m still just as happy to go to Sacramento as opposed to staying here in the cold and snow, but I can’t see us avoiding an apartment while we’re at it either. I picture us ending up in a complex like what’s common in Arizona, and seemingly, most of California, too. Those are noisy as hell, but at least the place would have central AC/heat, a dishwasher, and hopefully a washer and dryer that was at least on the grounds if not inside the apartment. I just hope that if we have to live in a complex, since it’s up to God only and not us, we’re not on the pool or parking lot. Knowing we’ll have the shit “luck” to get next to the freeloaders with the 16 siblings visiting, and to get below the stomping elephant, and above the stereo blaster will be enough to deal with as it is, on top of the constant outdoor projects. You know, the mowing, the blowing, the painting, the re-roofing, etc.

The procrastinator never sent the tracking number like she says they always do and the doll didn’t arrive yesterday, so let’s hope this time she meant it when she said it’d go out Wednesday if it didn’t make Monday’s shipment. Then she should arrive tomorrow. First I was tempted to leave negative feedback, but then that may prompt her to leave me negative feedback, so I may give what I get and go back on my own word as well by leaving nothing. She hasn’t left me anything. On the other hand, she did give me a good deal on this doll and may be waiting to leave me feedback once I leave hers, so maybe I’ll just write “Good deal.” I had a dream last night that there was another problem getting the doll to me, so let’s hope it was just a dream.

Kim had company yesterday. Some old car was there. Even though we have just 57 days left, I hope she doesn’t go back to being the company junkie she was last fall. I’m going to have enough indoor and outdoor door slamming to listen to down there, so I don’t need it up here, too. Today I think she might’ve brought someone back with her.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4, 2007 Tom hasn’t yet admitted his program’s a bust, but he is at least ready to “prepare for the possibility that I’m right,” so he says, but setting things up to sell his picks. It’s like with psychics who sell winning lottery numbers; they hope someone wins big and will be kind and generous enough to share some of it with them. That’s totally something God would do too, have someone else strike it rich of off something he did. And no one’s that kind or generous either!

Meanwhile, I still have my bouts of anger and depression over it being just another joke on us. It was a hell of a cruel tease, and of course, God sat back and allowed it, as always, because the joke was on us. And if it’s us, why that only makes it all the more funny, doesn’t it God?

I’ve come to resign myself to the inevitable living conditions that are in our fate and that simply can’t be changed and so I try to see the good in it. If we did own a nice place on some land that wasn’t noisy, God would just take it away from us. If we don’t own anything, well then we couldn’t lose what we didn’t have. I’ve had a zillion apartments yet I’ve only been evicted once due to being the kind of prankster I haven’t been in years. Meanwhile, we lost the Maricopa house and we nearly lost the Phoenix house too, at one point, even if our lives were hell there. So while it’s easy to complain about the things that go bump, bang, and bark all the time and all the wake-up calls, an apartment is something I know we could never go wrong with or ever lose. And while it’s easy to say I want to live in peace, living in noisy places is all I know for the most part, and while it may be nice to live in peace, it may seem rather strange. The longer I live a certain way, the harder it is to adapt to something else, even if it’s better. Noise – can’t imagine life without it!

I’m determined to learn to tune out what I haven’t been able to tune out as of yet and to fight the sleep problem God has cursed me with in order to supplement our income. Just because we can’t live in peace doesn’t mean I want us to ever again suffer the kind of poverty we suffered upon coming here. If I hadn’t been so damn lazy and if I hadn’t been so damn submissive to God’s shit, we wouldn’t have had such a hard time. He could break my legs or something to stop me, I know, but I’ve got to at least try to fight Him. Maybe that’s what He wants; to see me finally fight back. Maybe then He’ll cut me some slack. Besides, daytime sleeping in an apartment is virtually impossible. I remember that all too well.

In better news, the last doll of ’07 will be here either today or Friday. Now she says she’s not sure if it made Monday’s shipment in which case it’ll go out today.

It took me about 30 DVDs to do it, but I finally won one worth watching.

SUNDAY, APRIL 1, 2007 As excited about the move as I am, and as anxious as I am to get out of this dump, the more nerved up I become. I keep trying to tell myself, “Relax, you’re not going back to Brattleboro, Valleyhead or jail! You’re going to California.”

California! A place you’ve always dreamed of living. Yet sadly enough, while it may be California with its warmth and palm trees, it’ll also include poverty for us and a very chaotic place to live. You know, all the things that my fantasies never included when I’d imagine living there?

My ingrown toenail’s been bugging me even though Tom just trimmed it. I was tempted to burn the damn thing off with the head of an incense stick, but the only way I’m going to learn to adapt to chronic pain and noise is to stop fighting it! A good way to start is to forget about getting that thing to curb a dog’s barking. Besides, it shouldn’t be my responsibility to shut the damn thing up anyway.

The only thing that keeps me from ending it all is knowing that my death would be leaving Tom alone for 35 years and feeling guilty. Guilt was something I always felt he didn’t feel so easily, like back when he’d casually make false promises to me, but I think he would if I killed myself, and probably even get lonely, too. Not for sex, of course, but for companionship. It’s just that knowing that I’ll never be able to live in peace, never live without pain or some kind of medical problem, and will probably never again have money makes me wonder if any good times mixed in are really all that worth it.

I don’t just loathe God for the shit He’s allowed me to go through in my life, but just hearing about this Uganda lesbian that sought asylum in the US confirms all the more that God really truly is an evil being in every sense of the word. It isn’t just what He allows to happen to me, but to others like this woman as well. The Arabs, I could care less, they can all kill themselves, but when I read that this woman’s family was so angry and ashamed to learn she was a lesbian that her relatives hurled insults at her, pummeled her and, stripped her and held her down while a stranger raped her, I had to wonder yet again who the hell people think they’re kidding by praising and worshiping any kind of God that could let this happen. And yes, He’s just as guilty for allowing it to happen. What did these sickos think having her raped would do, make her love guys?

Ah, the nearest but not so dearest. It just goes to show once again that quite often our “family” isn’t those we’re born to, but those who love us as we are. I have to admit that not even my twisted family would do such a thing, and they’re bad enough. Bad enough that they never deserved me. I don’t know why I gave them as much of myself as I did after I turned 18, but building the self-esteem, self-respect and courage to break away from abusive people can take time.

Anyway, Africa’s one fucked up continent. Homosexuality is illegal in Uganda, though no one’s ever been convicted. The woman’s hiding out in Minnesota right now, pending the outcome of her case. My first thought was that she’d lose because she’s gay and she’s a woman. But she’s also black and those aren’t very deportable. We have Abe to thank for that for when he freed the blacks he forgot to send them back home where they belonged, and so we got stuck with them, and the people of today are paying for it and so will the people of 200 years from now, assuming an all-out war hasn’t killed everyone off by then.

Here’s another classic example of how I have to pay for fighting back. I’ve been getting spam like crazy from these damn Brits that are running this scam, trying to take advantage of people’s stupidity. I can’t block them out because they use a different email address for each of the 15 messages a day I get. So I decided why not spam the spammers? So I’d reply to all the messages with various mumbo-jumbo, then next thing I know it tells me I’ve sent all the messages I’m allotted to send within a 24-hour period. I didn’t even know there was a limit! But the point’s the same; I’m being punished for jamming up their mailbox like they do mine with absolutely no punishments attached whatsoever on their side. In fact, I’m sure they’re making a good amount of money for all the credit card numbers they must’ve sold by now or else they wouldn’t still be at it. The object of the game is to claim someone won a lot of money in a draw they never even entered, then ask that they call them. This is when they promise to deposit the money into your account or on your card if you give them the account information.