#if this post fails i’m throwing in the towel

[cabbagegunk]

did a haunted portrait of my dog as her eyes hold the soul of a tragically deceased lighthouse keeper

[seventh-district]

.

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Not a Word 2

No tag lists. Do not send asks or DMs about updates. Review my pinned post for guidelines, masterlist, etc.

Warnings: this fic will include dark content such as noncon/dubcon, age gap, and possible untagged elements. My warnings are not exhaustive, enter at your own risk.

This is a dark!fic and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: You live a life in hiding, away from your father and the world, until a man decides to drag you into the light. (non-verbal reader)

Characters: Captain Syverson

Note: 😻.

As per usual, I humbly request your thoughts! Reblogs are always appreciated and welcomed, not only do I see them easier but it lets other people see my work. I will do my best to answer all I can. I’m trying to get better at keeping up so thanks everyone for staying with me.

Your feedback will help in this and future works (and WiPs, I haven’t forgotten those!) Please do not just put ‘more’. I will block you.

I love you all immensely. Take care. 💖

You hear your father in the garage. It’s a comfort knowing he isn’t in the house. You’ve learned to navigate so that you rarely run into him. The fact of your existence only ever seems to irk him. 

That day, there’s a low rumble between the clank and clunk of his tools. You’re not sure it’s the engine or something else. The last time you glimpsed inside the garage, the engine wasn’t even in that old Bronco he’s worked on for seven years. 

You rub smooth the lines in your forehead and give a long blink. You’ve been squinting at the diamond art for much too long. You sit up and roll your shoulders. You need a break. 

As you emerge from your room, you feel guilty. A break from what? Doing nothing. That’s what your dad always says. Then he laughs and finds something to throw at you. 

You take his lunch box from the floor by the shoe mat and bring it to the kitchen. You open it up and clean out all the containers. Those things you do, as small as they are, like cleaning and making his meals, aren’t enough. He doesn’t fail to remind you of that. 

You dump the uneaten crust from his ham and cheese sandwich as the door from the garage clatters open and lets in the smell of oil and dirt. You turn your attention to the sink as you put the container with the rest. It’s only as you flip the faucet on that you realise the steps aren’t your dad’s. 

“Scuse me,” Sy says. “Don’t mean to bother, but, uh, had a bit of an accident.” 

You face him as he holds out the front of his tee shirt. You gulp. There’s a smear of shiny oil across it, ready to drip onto the floor. Your eyes round. 

“I can clean it in the bathroom, I see you’re busy.” 

He goes to turn away and you put your hands up. The oil won’t come out if he just wipes it into the shirt. You would know since you deal with your dad’s stained jeans.  

He nears as you sidle down to grab the baking soda from the cupboard. He looms, his shadow moving in your peripheral, and you shift the faucet to off. You grab a paper towel and turn to him. You hesitate to reach for him, that seems too much but before you can make a move, he peels his shirt off. 

You flutter your lashes and point to the counter. He lays the shirt out and you open the box of baking soda. He stands back and watches. Heat trickles down your back as you focus on the task. You sprinkle the powder over his shirt. 

You let it soak up as much as it can then blot daintily. 

“You’re clever,” he muses. “Helpful.” 

You shrug. 

“How lucky’s that daddy of yours, huh? You out here cleaning all his mess. You make his lunch?” He peeks over at the sink and you follow his gaze. You nod. “Hm, think he’d be nicer then, wouldn’t ya? Well, I know him, he ain’t a nice fella.” 

You return your attention to his shirt. If your daddy isn’t so nice, why does he come around? You wouldn’t ask even if you could. You can barely concentrate with him exposed like that. 

Your eyes dart over in a fleeting peek. His chest is hair and his stomach thick, his arms too. You’re always aware of how big he is but at that moment, he seems even larger. You look at his shirt. It’ll need more time to soak and wash. 

“Could wash it with the hose, don’t wanna ruin your machine,” he offers as if reading your mind. 

You frown and shake your head. You hold up your finger and flit away with his shirt. You put stain remover on it and dump it in the machine. You set the cycle then hesitate. What will he wear now? 

Your dad isn’t as big. He’s a pretty small guy. He might have something... 

You hurry into the closet of old things and search around. There’s one of those tees he got from a case of Labatts. They always pack the XLs and nothing else. It has some sports team logo on it. 

You go back to the kitchen and offer it to Sy. He crosses to you and accepts it with a smile, “thanks, sugar. That’s mighty nice.” His fingertips brush yours.  

He unfolds the shirt and shakes it out. He pulls it over his head and your eyes crawl down his torso unintentionally. You back up a step as he tugs down the hem, though it hangs short of his belt. Even that is too small for him. 

“You’re not scared of me, are ya?” He asks as he curls his shoulders as if to make himself smaller. 

You shake your head. Shy is all. You’re not eager to mingle with anyone. Nor they, you. 

“You know, I might have a word with your daddy. He shouldn’t be so nasty to ya. ‘Specially all the work you put in.” 

You shake your head frantically and clasp your hands. You know better than that. Even if he’s trying to be nice, it’s the worst thing he can do. 

“What’s wrong? Huh? Just wanna tell him what a good girl ya are,” he crosses his arms and seems to double in size. 

You pout and press your hands together. You cower and takes another step back. His expression turns dire. 

“Sorry, sugar, hope I didn’t upset ya there. I was only... only bein’ nice, ya know? Seems you’re not used to all that.” He drops his hands to his hips. “Fine then, I’ll just have to save them sweet words for you, huh?” 

You look down and chew your lip. You’re not used to the attention. Your dad’s other friends, if you can call them that, just ignore you or laugh at his jokes about you. You nod and turn, gesturing to the sink. You walk up to it, clinging to the excuse to get away. 

“Yeah, I know, you workin’ hard,” he praises. “I’ll be outta ya way now.” 

You bob your head and turn the tap on again. You work at scrubbing the containers, waiting and listening for him to go. When he does, you can breathe again. You’re not so sure why he’s being nice. Not like you can do much but stare. 

💘

When your dad’s at work, you’re as close to peace as you’ve ever been. There’s still that constant restlessness that follows you. The gnawing reality that time is passing you by. That you have no purpose. No direction. 

You envy others. That they have a reason. That they have everything you don’t. They have other people, ones that care, not those burdened with them; they have important work to do; they have fun things to celebrate; graduations, new jobs, marriages. They have voices and you remain unheard. 

You busy yourself with the tidying when he isn’t there. If you try to clean with him around, he only antagonizes you. There’s a roast out for dinner. It will last a few days. Most times, you lose your appetite. You spend all day craving and making the food then lose all desire the moment it’s before you. 

The small pleasures you once treasured fade with each day that starts and ends the same. You can’t feel too bad for yourself. Your dad doesn’t have to keep you. You’re an adult now. Maybe he’ll never say so, or even show it, but he must care, right? 

You finish mopping and start on chopping up the potatoes. You arrange them in the roasting pan around the slab of beef. Then carrots and celery. You save the onions for last because they make you cry. You’re saved from tears by the rumble of thunder on the horizon. 

Curiously, you set the knife down and go to the window. Would your dad be home early? Some days, they shut down the shop when business is slow. 

It’s not him but you recognise the grating on the truck’s nose. The large truck sends up dirt and gravel as it cuts across the worn roadway. Your confusion floods to panic and you rush out the front door.

Is your father hurt? Why else would Sy be here? 

You hover on the top step as he grinds to a stop and shuts the behemoth truck off. The driver’s door creaks as it opens and Sy jumps down. Instead of his usual camo cargo shorts and sweat-dampened tee, he wears a button-up with short sleeves and a pair of brown slacks. It even looks like he combed his beard. 

Your face twists in a grimace. What’s going on? Why is he here? 

He reaches back into the truck and brings out something behind his back. You can’t see it as he keeps his arm bent behind him and shuts the door. He grins and walks up to the house as you watch. 

“How’s it goin’?” He asks brightly. 

You blink. You look at his collar, the top button straining against his thick neck. You lower your gaze to your loose blue tee and barrel jeans. You’re dressed like a laundry line. Your clothes offer no shape, nothing. They just do the job. 

“I, uh, I wanted to surprise ya, and uh, I was thinkin’ ya know, this place deserves a bit of colour,” he chuckles then clears his throat, “and you deserve good things, so, uh, here.” 

He reveals the flowers from behind his back and you blanch. You stare at the dainty petals, white with violet edges. They are pretty. Too pretty for this place or for you. Besides, why would he do that? 

“You don’t like em? Should I have got roses?” He asks. 

You flinch. You don’t want to hurt his feelings. You come down the steps and cautiously reach for the paper cone. He hands it over and you stare at him. Then you smell them. You think that’s what you’re supposed to do. 

“Smell good?” He asks. 

You peer over the petals at him and nod. You’re not sure how to react. What do you do now? You can’t just leave him out in the yard. You raise your thumb and point it over your shoulder and tilt your head. 

“Sure, I’ll come in,” he accepts. 

He steps forward, a bit too close, and you hop backward up the step. You barely keep from tripping. You get onto the porch and spin around, scurrying to the door. You open the door and step to the side to hold it for him. 

He laughs again, “now, I’m a gentleman, sugar.” 

He grabs the door and gestures you through. You take his directive without pause. You hurry inside and he follows. As he stops to take off his shoes, you continue on into the kitchen. 

You search for an adequate holder for the flowers. You find an old canister and set them in it with some water. His presence lurks behind you. You put the bouquet on the table as he looks around. 

“You cookin’ a fine dinner, huh?” He says. “Like I tell your daddy, he’s a lucky man. Any man’d be lucky to have that waitin’.” 

You shrug. He shifts. 

“I don’t mean to take advantage of your kindness but I was gonna ask ya a favour.” 

You look at him blankly. He reaches in his pocket. He pulls a length of silk. A tie. 

“Couldn’t figure this out,” he explains. “Thought maybe you might...” 

You stare at the tie. You remember tying your daddy’s for your grandma’s funeral. That was a long time ago but you think you could remember. 

You swallow down your nerves and approach him. You take the tie and he glances around. He pushes a chair out and sits. He leans his head back. 

“Just wanna make sure I look good for ya,” he says. 

You flip up his collar and bring the silk around his neck. As you do, your thumb brushes his coarse beard. He hums. 

“Don’t worry bout pullin’ my hair,” he scoffs. “Won’t bother me none.” 

You line up his tie, knuckles brushing his shirt as you go through the steps in your hand. You pull the tie snug and fix hit collar. You step back and he sets his head straight. You hug yourself and give him a questioning look. 

“Ya like your surprise?” He asks. 

You look at the flower then nod. 

“And what about the other?” 

You face him again and your brows draw together. 

“Me,” he snorts. 

You purse your lips and shrug. What does he mean? 

“We’ll wait for your daddy, huh? Then I’ll ask his blessing.” He rests his elbow on the table, “and you’ll have dinner all ready, won’t ya?” 

[madwomansapologist]

──────〃✰ KINKTOBER DAY 5: 𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐒𝐓

title: a small favor synopsis: a movie night turned into you being a good girl for your older sister. if only she had warned you of what it truly meant. [1.1K] cw: t!karlach, plus size!reader, incest, lil sis/big sis, dub con, gaslighting, obssessive behavior, apologetic, spit, dry humping, pussyjob, premature ejaculation.

PREV POST ✰ NEXT POST

Your smile oscillated at the lack of Karlach’s laughter. Lifting your torso from the couch, weight supported by your elbows, you searched for her burning eyes. “Are you being serious?”

Sitting at the end of the couch with your feet resting on her lap, Karlach continued to simply face the television. It’s been a while since you stopped paying attention to it, boredom lulling you into a fragile slumber. Maybe you misheard her, maybe you were half-dreaming and just imagined it all.

“It would help”, Karlach said, showing how wrong you were. “More than anything else.”

Dropping your head behind, your nape burned. Blurred shapes appeared on your vision as the lamp burned your eyes. “I… but won’t it be weird?”

Her tail wrapped around your ankle. A soft caress that never failed to bring you comfort. “C’mon, gorgeous”, Karlach smiled. The hold on your ankle became tighter. “It’s you and me. You don’t need to worry your pretty head when I’m around.”

“I know,” you murmured. Sitting, you felt as the strap of your nightgown slid down your shoulder. “I just never heard of something like that before.”

Karlach held the strap with her index finger, placing it back into the right place. Her claw stroked lightly the skin of your shoulder. So cold. “I’ll do everything”, she whispered. “All you need is to turn around and wait.”

You sighed. Karlach has never been anything but amazing to you. And when the girl you love the most in the entire world tells you she’s in pain and there’s something you can do to help, of course you agree. It can be weird and it makes you worry because she told you it needs to be a secret, but you agree either way.

Kneeling on the couch, feet hanging from the cushioned seat, you placed your head over the pillow back. Raising your hips, you tried to face Karlach. “Like that?”

Karlach got up from the couch, thanking entire pantheons of gods for her legs to still work. Behind you, her fingers played with the hew of your nightgown. She lifted the fabric, your legs closing as you got exposed.

At the moment, Karlach could combust in shame and lust.

Being a sinner is easier when you’re unaware of god’s rules. After you discover the rotten nature of your actions, nothing can make you forget that lesson. It takes innate talent to be such a good liar you manage to fool yourself.

A lifetime ago, Karlach didn’t knew what shame felt like. Back then, she didn’t collect hidden diaries and secret desires. Talking in her sleep wasn’t something to fear. Her conscience wasn’t consistently telling her just behave.

Holding your hand when crossing the street. Cleaning the warm traces of tears with her thumbs. Her tail, constantly wrapped around your legs. Sleeping next to you. Putting bandages over every scratch. Getting your towel when you forget to do so.

She resents the moment she was taught civility. Everything was normal before, she was normal before, but they had to force her eyes wide open. Without any other choice, Karlach understood. Being herself, wholeheartedly herself, was wrong.

The things Karlach did could be normal, but not the things she felt.

People will call her broken, depraved, filthy. Karlach will accept every curse throw at her. She deserves them. Others will make excuses for her behavior, lying to themselves to not admit how they failed to see her true nature. She’ll accept them too. As long as they don’t say she wasn’t aware of the seriousness of her action and desires.

This is wrong. This is so wrong. And Karlach knows. Still, she can’t stop herself from sinning. No. Another lie. Karlach can stop, she just won’t. Like a predator lurking over a trembling prey, smelling fear and still drooling over their soft fur.

The shame is there, but so is the never-ending hunger.

“Stay just like that”, Karlach purred, unbuttoning her pants. “You’re the best, sis.”

If only you weren’t so soft. That’s something she never was. Wide smiles, eyes so bright Karlach swears your soul is leaking through them. No sharp edges or second intentions. Nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of. No one can compare to you.

Being around you is enough to make Karlach forget about decency. To watch you being yourself is enough to burn away the shame. And she is always watching. As you bend to clean the bathroom, or when you wash dishes with that old almost see-through t-shirt. But this nightgown…

Karlach could go berserk because of it. Her blood was boiling beneath her skin. Such a tiny thing. This satin fabric showing all your curves and lines, so tight it left little to imagination. Have you noticed? How it barely covers your thighs, holds your breasts inside it?

Her hands involved your ass. Is there anything not soft about you? Anything not worth touching? Karlach’s fingertips stroked the skin around your blue panties, her claws sinking into it. She stopped herself from asking you to take them off.

You tried to move away, knees almost slipping away from the couch. Karlach held your waist before you could fell. “Don’t worry”, Karlach held you in place. “It’s just you and me.”

When you nodded, Karlach took a last deep breath.

Slowly, she pumped her cock. It was already leaking. Pressing her thumb against her maroon head, Karlach guided her length towards your core. Such a soft tissue. So thin she could feel your lips moving inside it.

Drooling, Karlach knew she had to be quick. If not, she wouldn’t be able to stop there. She spat on her hand, spreading the drool all over her cock. She grabbed your hips, this time more firmly as Karlach placed her foot on the seat.

“Close your legs”, she demanded. “Tightly.”

You obeyed, squeezing her cock with your thighs. You relaxed when Karlach moaned, babbling something you couldn’t really understand. Good. This is really helping her.

“I’m sorry”, Karlach cried out loud. And she really was. Fucking your thighs, Karlach trembled. You were so warm. So perfect. “I… uhm. Fuh-fuck, oh shit. Hells. It’ll be over soon. I will-”

Resting her head on the curve of your neck, Karlach mounted you. You felt cold tears falling on your skin. Her jaw dropped, eyes rolling back. Her orgasm washed over her, her thick load staining the insides of your thighs white.

“Thank you”, Karlach babbled. “Thank you so much.”

With your head pressed against the pillow, trying to ignore a weird feeling at your core, you nodded. “You’re welcome.”

This is so wrong. Karlach knows that. It just feels so right.

taglist: @ffinosie @lovelyy-moonlight @alzaira @s2-angells @eyes-ofhell @inlovewithmariah @chiiyohiimee @shaquilles-0atmeal @bloodyziggy @salemey @kcch-ns @notanalienindisguiseblink @py-schi

© all rights reserved to MADWOMANSAPOLOGIST

[mugiwara-lucy]

So if you all are unaware, yesterday it was revealed that Georgia apparently wants to not only hand count their ballots but MAGA is trying to make Nebraska do a “winner take all” process.

My thoughts on this? I say let them. Let’s not forget they tried this same nonsense back in 2020 when Trump was in power but now he’s just a candidate. And if anyone is feeling discouraged I HIGHLY recommend THIS:

They tried this fuckery four years and failed and will fail again.

Even though I’m VERY angry at how the “party of values, law and order 🙄 “ are partaking in tactics they’re supposedly against, I’m relieved to see people are angry and not throwing in the towel.

Why? Because let’s channel that frustration into ENERGY and use it to vote out these jokers and FINALLY be done with the nine year nightmare known as Donald Trump!! Did we let this stop us four years ago? No! So let’s get even more energized and fight back!!

And I’ve seen lots of early voting posts which makes me even more confident!

Remember, we’re close to the finish line now let’s ride it out ‘til the end!!

[hmhas-00]

Ch. 11

Hit Me Hard & Soft

A/N: i've been so busy but here's ch11!! I hope you like :)

Billie’s POV

I waited a while, checking my phone for a reply constantly but got nothing. I forced myself out of bed to get ready for rehearsal. I start the bath and undress, putting a Netflix show on my phone. I lower myself into the hot, bubbling tub and prop my phone up on the side.

I spend a while here, leaning my head back on the rolled up towel I set up for myself. I zoned off, thinking about switching out a few songs for tonight’s show.

As I drifted off into a daydream, my phone began buzzing. I opened my eyes to see it was Remy calling. Before I could dry my hands off, it slid towards the edge of the tub. My attempt to catch it failed, and my phone fell inside the water.

“FUCKING HELL BRO.”

I fished it out of the bath water, trying to answer the call anyways, but the screen was completely glitched out. Immediately, I got up and tried to dry it with a towel, shaking the water out of the charging port, only to realize my phone was completely messed up.

“You have to be fucking kidding me!” I grunted, sitting back down in my bath and throwing my useless phone at the floor. This is the least relaxing bath I’ve ever taken in my life.

I quickly drained the bath and took a shower, trying my best to not get into an irreversible horrible mood. When I finished getting ready, I threw an oversized hoodie over my outfit, put my hair in a pony tail, and left for the venue to start rehearsal.

******

“In the bathtub? No wonder you weren’t answering me.” Finneas tuned his guitar, prepping for sound check.

It was already 4:30pm, and we were getting ready before the concert at 7pm. Finneas joining me on stage for the next three days was the main thing keeping me going.

“Yeah, I was gonna ask, do you have an extra phone I can borrow for now?” I laughed, waiting for our sound guy’s sign to start testing the mics.

“We can get the team to get you a phone by tonight.” He laughed along with me.

“Actually, I was gonna tell you… Before I drowned my phone, I texted Remy.”

“You did?” He looked at me, wanting to know all the details.

“Yeah, I don’t know if you saw her instagram post, but when I saw it, I just wanted to talk to her… Tell her how much I miss her.” I looked down at the mic, fidgeting.

“What did you text her?”

“It’s literally so dumb. I feel so stupid, dude…”

“Tell me!” He begged, excitedly.

I cleared my throat and paraphrased, “I said… I saw your wall, it’s incredible.”

He laughed, leaning back and smacking my arm. “Literally no one… Trump fans.”

“Shut the fuck up!” I cringed at myself, laughing with him. “And then I just double texted her, and told her I missed her, and I wished I was with her in her newly painted room.”

“That’s rough, man.” He caught his breath, finishing up his guitar sound check. “Please tell me she answered before you destroyed your phone.”

“She called AS my phone jumped in the bath with me, dude.” I groaned, pouting while stifling a laugh.

“Fuuuuck!” He chuckled. “You wanna use my phone and give her a call back?”

“I was gonna call her from the hotel phone after the show. I don’t want her to think I purposely ignored her call.”

“So this is your first time speaking in over three weeks, huh? That’s almost a month. Have you thought about what you’re going to say?” He walked with me to the greenroom as we talked.

“Sort of. I’m going to apologize for sure. Hopefully, it goes well, and she forgives me. Hopefully it won’t lead to an argument. She’ll probably want to talk about it, though. I just don’t want to mess up and say the wrong things, you know?”

“Just speak from your heart. Don’t hide anything, leave it all out in the open. That’s just my advice.” He patted my back and grabbed a snack from the table.

“Yeah. I hope I can do that. I hope she even answers.” I shrugged, thinking about the possibility that she may not even want to talk anymore.

What if she changed her mind. What if me not answering hurt her feelings. What if she was just calling to tell me to go fuck myself instead?

“Let’s see right now.” Finneas immediately dialed her on his phone, putting it on speaker.

“No!” I covered my mouth and held my breath. I guess there would never be a better time to rip the bandaid off.

It rang for a while, the dial tone continuing on, until her voicemail greeting played. He hung up.

“Maybe she’s busy?” He looked at me, trying not to let me down.

“Maybe.” My heart drops. She usually answers Finneas, so the fact that she didn’t, made me feel like she didn’t want to hear from, or about me. Like she figured I was still on my bullshit and Finneas was calling to fix it for me. I fucked up. She’s probably hurt. I double text her, then I decline her call. She must think I’m the worst.

Finneas pats my back and gives me a sympathetic smile. “Don’t worry.” He says.

The day goes on, my body traveled through space and time in autopilot. It passed by in a blink, and suddenly it was time to perform. I tried my best to get excited for the show while Finneas and the rest of the crew hyped me up. Before I knew it, I was on stage catching that adrenaline rush that was so familiar to me.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

After the show, I ran under the stage and back to the green room to grab some water and have a breather. Finneas trailed behind me, plopping on the same couch from earlier. It was a pretty known ritual of mine to immediately have some alone time to catch my breath after a show, mostly to keep the crew or management from rushing me all at once. I gave Finneas a heads up that I’d be getting un-ready in my dressing room, and made my way over.

I stretched my arms over my head and let out a giant yawn as I approached my room. Turning the knob, I swung the door open, exhausted from quite the performance I had put on, both physically and mentally.

Inside the room sat a pretty brunette facing the vanity mirror, holding an enormous bouquet of white, long stem roses. She straightened her posture and watched me through the reflection. Her back faced me until I stepped in and closed the door behind me.

“Remy?” I took a step closer. She turned around, remaining seated in the velvet stool. I almost didn’t believe it was real. I wanted to pinch myself but I was found half paralyzed, barely able to form full sentences.

“Hey, you.” She shyly spoke, her voice filling my heart with warmth and relief. She held the flowers out to me, standing up and looking at the brown-paper wrapped two-dozen in her hands. She struggled making eye contact and her arm was a bit shaky.

I stepped forward, moving the flowers out of the way and pulling her into my arms. We said nothing for a while, steadying our heartbeats. I indulged in our embrace, swaying back and forth out of habit. I focused on the reflection on the mirror in front of me, taking a mental picture of this moment. Her chin rested on my shoulder, her head only half an inch lower than mine. Her arms wrapped around my torso, and my hands on her upper and lower back. For three weeks, alI I needed was this hug.

Finally we broke the silence, “I’m sorry.” We both blurted out.

I pulled away, looking at her delicate face. She looked back down at the flowers, avoiding my gaze. Her makeup was done so lightly tonight, with a thin winged eyeliner standing out. I looked at her perfectly high cheekbones, noticing just a bit of shine added to them. Her hair was done in loose, wavy curls, with her curtain bangs remaining straight. Her lips were brushed over with a sheer gloss, her lips naturally plump and mauve. At the sight of them, I tucked my bottom lip under my top one, thinking before I let myself speak and ruin everything.

“Remy, I’m the one who should be sorry.” I finally mustered up the courage to talk, although careful not to reveal too much. “I fucked up. I didn’t know what the hell I was saying. I’m an idiot, I thought I was helping, but I was just being selfish. And this whole time I thought I was angry at you, but really-“ I stopped myself, noticing her long eyelashes batting at me.

I paused, taking a deep breath and giving myself a moment to think before continuing. “I was angry at you for nothing. I was wrong. I shouldn’t expect you to listen to everything I say, or make decisions about your career based on-“ I sighed, feeling like I could never find the words. I was tip toeing around the real problem, just like Finneas said. I wanted to be honest with her so badly, I did. I knew I couldn’t. It wasn’t the right time.

“It’s okay. I forgive you. I’m sorry, too.” She looked directly in my eyes. Her stare felt like knives jabbing into my soul.

“No, don’t apologize-“

“Let me apologize. Please.” She started, handing me the bouquet that she had trimmed and prepared herself. “I know I’m not the easiest person to be friends with. I have a lot of baggage, and-“

“Stop. Don’t say that-“ I hated hearing that. I hated thinking I contributed to her feeling this way.

She protested, “No, it’s true. We’ve been friends for so long, and you’ve been there through everything. You did pick me back up, and maybe that does give you the right to feel like you have to protect me and shield me from everything.”

I swallowed, admiring the roses in my hand, while listening to her soft voice.

“But you have to let me make my own choices and my own mistakes. And I need you to support me, because you’re all I have.” She began to cry, “Billie, this month has been so hard without being able to just text you or call you, and then you casually text me-“

I quickly put the roses on the vanity next to us and brought her into another hug. “I’m so sorry, Remy. I’m so stupid. I should’ve been more supportive. I’m stubborn and I think everyone should just think like me. I just wanted you to be happy. And it just felt like you’d be happier if I didn’t butt in on your life…” I gently placed a hand on the back of her head. Her hair smelled like jasmine and vanilla, and felt silky smooth. “It just hurt. Some of the things you said hurt, and I’m so fucking stubborn.”

I pulled away, grabbing both of her hands. A small gasp escaped my lips, “And today, when you called me, the reason I didn’t answer is because my phone fell in the bathtub and it fucking broke, I swear to god I wasn’t ignoring you. That time.”

She nodded, smiling a bit. That smile she held back from me, although minuscule, meant the world to me.

“I promise you, no more telling you what to do, no more harsh, unnecessary comments about your work. I’m going to support you, no matter what. If you ever kill Joe, I’ll be your alibi, we’ll bury the body together.”

She let out a small laugh. I made her laugh. Thank God.

“That was a joke.” I smiled. “I’m sorry for being so-“

She shook her head, “Me too. I’m sorry for complaining so fucking much. I understand why you want me out of there so bad. But I need to keep pursuing this. I feel it. Trust me, okay?” She smiled, letting go of my hands and wiping her tears. “And I’m sorry for saying that shit about you before I left the car. It’s not true. You’re not like that at all.”

I nodded. “It’s okay, I deserved it. I was such a dick, Remy.” I rubbed my eyes and took my hair out of the messy ponytail. “Let’s get out of here. We’ll go anywhere you want.”

“Billie.” She grabbed my arms, grazing my skin softly with her fingers. Her touch gave me goosebumps.

“Yeah?”

“I know you love me.” She looked directly into my eyes.

“You do?” My heart dropped all the way down into my ass. My stomach turned and my knees weakened.

“Yeah, you’re the greatest friend I could ask for.” She smiled.

The word friend echoed in my head, giving me the urge to break my neck right in front of her. However, I thanked my lucky stars that’s what she meant. This meant nothing had changed, and we’d continue as normal. As best friends…

[saltpepperbeard]

Are you still feeling hopeful? I’m trying really hard not to feel demoralized these last few days…

Hi, darling anon! I totally understand where you’re coming from. We’ve been at it for weeks (almost THREE) and things have seemingly slowed down, there’s drama both in-fandom and out, and there’s just sort of an ever-creeping feeling of disheartenment. And on top of everything, it’s JANUARY (DEROGATORY).

But you know what? Despite all of that, despite it all, I am still clinging onto hope. Call me stubborn or whatever else lol, but yes, I’m still hopeful. I think I will be until I see Djenks wave some sort of white flag, or until a lot of time passes with no forward momentum. And even with the latter, I’ll probably still have the stubborn wish to get something like a movie or whatever else in the future.

Now, I’m clinging onto hope for a few reasons. One, and this is the most important one, we really don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes right now. I think that mentality can also swing into negative territory, but I’m using it to propel me into hopeful territory. We don’t know what all is being discussed, we don’t know if anyone’s interested, and we don’t know who all is fighting and how hard.

Again, could be twisted into a “nothing is happening” type view, but when I look at David? At Taika? And how much the show means to them? How passionately they’ve spoken out about it? And how gracious David and the rest of the cast/crew has been? Idk about you, but I’d like to think they’re trying to push for a continuation as hard as they can. *Stede voice* I don’t think…any of us have let go, actually.

Not to mention that the cast and crew have not stopped posting/interacting with renewal campaign efforts. David hasn’t told us anything that would allude to failed deals, and Ruibo still posts #SaveOFMD type things. It just feels like they’re still riding alongside of us.

Secondly, and sort of along those lines, I’m holding on to the knowledge that every renewal is different. There have been some giant campaigns with zero results, but there have also been smaller campaigns with success. There have been campaigns that have only landed a few more episodes, whereas there have been others that landed more seasons, a movie, etc etc.

Each case is unique, and really has to do with what’s going on behind the scenes. Why the show was cancelled in the first place, if the platform is willing to shop it out, if other platforms find it desirable/profitable, etc etc.

And I think along those lines also, there comes a mentality that makes people even more disheartened and sad. I think there’s this thought that if we’ve slowed down, if we’re not pushing enough, we won’t get renewed. And I don’t really think that’s the case; I don’t think renewal rests squarely on our shoulders like that. Because, again, I think a lot of it really has to do with money, and with negotiations between studios. I think we’re very good for visibility and noise, and subsequently, I think any sort of effort is great effort! I think any work that has been conducted is good work.

It’s also important to think about how we’re sort of in a transition stage of the campaign right now, too. Things are significantly different than they were just a week ago. There are campaign leadership changes going on, the focus is different, and new plans of attack are being ironed out.

So, we all just need to give ourselves some grace. We’ve done so much, and things have moved so fast, and the cast and crew have felt so loved. We’ve made it into publications, made it onto physical ads, and gotten the attention of outside entities (shoutout to Astroglide WJDJW). We’ve also all come together, which is VERY wonderful considering how divided things felt towards the end of October. We’re doing wonderful all things considered, and so for that reason among a few others, I’m still hopeful.

Also, there’s this post by @pehmokoira that goes into even MORE detail of why we shouldn’t throw in the towel/lose hope.

SO. TLDR, there is a lot weighing down on “the atmosphere of this ship,” but I still encourage you to keep those fingers crossed. Help maintain the momentum however works best for you. Take a break, take a step back, and take care. But keep that stubborn little fire burning if you can 💜🏴‍☠️

[midwestmade29]

Sweet Girl 🤍

Well, @coleskingdom's efforts to turn me into a Jay White lover haven't completely failed because here I am posting a smutty fic about him! Thanks for opening my eyes to this handsome man with the most delicious accent 🫠 This story is for you girl 🖤 Word count: 1.2k Divider by: @saradika-graphics GIF is not mine • Disclaimers: Cursing, oral sex, unprotected sex. Read at your own discretion.

After changing the plans he had with you, Jay finds a way to make up for it...

Life had been pretty busy lately for you and Jay. The original plan for your evening was for the two of you to spend some much-needed time together, but that got thrown out the window when Austin and Colten called. They asked if Jay would join them at the gym, catching him hook, line, and sinker when they mentioned they wanted to discuss their next course of action against their own father and his scissoring counter parts.

You knew something was up when Jay kept looking in your direction during the phone call all while responding to questions with a simple “Mhmm” or “Yeah.” When he finally hung up, he gave you a sympathetic grin as he walked over to you, his gray eyes silently pleading with you to not be mad at him for what he was about to say.

You held up your hands to stop whatever was about to come out of his mouth, saying your own thoughts instead, “Let me guess, there’s been a change of plans?” His silence was all the answer you needed. You crossed your arms and scoffed, turning your head to the side to break eye contact with Jay. He walked up to you and rubbed your arms with his hands while keeping his voice low and sweet.

“I know tonight was supposed to be our night sweet girl, but the children need me,” he joked, leaving you less than amused.

“Seriously, you’re breaking our plans for Austin and Colten? They’re practically glued to your hip, Jay! I think they’ll be just fine without you for one damn night,” you hissed.

“I promise, I won’t be gone long. When I get back, I’m all yours! I’ll find a way to make it up to you, sweet girl,” Before you could protest, Jay kissed your forehead and nearly darted for the door.

An hour went by, and your anger finally dissipated. Instead of sitting around and stewing, you decided to pour yourself a glass of wine and enjoy a hot bubble bath. When you walked to the kitchen to place your empty glass in the sink, you nearly jumped out of your skin- and your towel when Jay snuck up behind you!

He wrapped his arms around your waist, pulling you close and nuzzling his face into your neck.

“Miss me?” he asked arrogantly.

You shimmied free of his embrace, turning around so you could see him.

“Actually, I didn’t think about you once,” you quipped. You tried to stand firm, but your body was already giving you away. 

The truth is, he’s all you thought about during your bath. Your thoughts had nothing to do with him ditching you, instead, they were focused on how good his hands felt on your body whenever he touched you. They were focused on how soft his lips are and how much you wanted to kiss them. Your thoughts were focused on the way his muscles were taut and predominant after a good workout.

Jay already knew you were bullshitting him, so he called you on your bluff.

“You sure about that, Y/N? The flush of your cheeks says otherwise,”

You didn’t dare stroke his ego, so you rolled your eyes and continued to deny everything, “That could just be from the wine you know,” 

Your determination to throw him off your scent made Jay let out a soft chuckle. He took a few steps forward and pinned your body up against the kitchen counter with his own.

“No, no. I don’t think that’s it. But there’s no sense in arguing when I have yet to show you how I plan on making tonight up to you,” he said with a smirk. “Care to know what I had in mind?”

With Jay’s lips being mere inches away from your own, and the feeling of his body pressed against yours, you knew you were already done for. You swallowed hard and nodded your head “yes,” giving Jay the green light to continue. Within seconds, he removed your towel and lifted you up before placing you down on the countertop! He admired the view that was now before him before pulling your lower half closer to the edge and spreading your legs with his hands.

“I’d hold onto something if I were you, sweet girl. I don’t plan on stopping until you’re a quivering mess,”

Jay expertly maneuvered his tongue around your most sensitive parts, drawing moan after moan from you. His tongue flicked and swirled against your clit while his fingers worked their magic inside of you. He could tell you were on the brink of orgasming when your fingers weaved themselves in his hair and pulled, a string of unintelligible words and curses fell from your lips.

He made sure his word was good when he made you cum so hard that it made your entire body shake against his mouth!

“Mmm, I could listen to you make those noises all night,” he murmured against your thigh. He planted a soft kiss there before standing up, “In fact, I think I will. Come on sweet girl, I’m not done with you just yet,”

With your weakened legs wrapped around his waist, Jay carried you to the bedroom and placed you on the bed. You watched intently as he removed his clothes and tossed them aside before positioning himself between your legs. The tip of his hard length brushed up against your core, causing both of you to groan at the sensation!

“So, so wet for me! I know you’ll feel just as good as you tasted,” Jay purred against your neck.

His facial hair brushed up against your delicate skin there, causing goosebumps to cover your entire body and you to melt underneath him even more. He positioned himself at your entrance and rested his body weight on his forearms before inching himself inside of you painstakingly slow. His length stretched and filled you, your walls tugging and pulling him with each drawn out push of his hips.

“Please, Jay! I need more,” you cried out. “F-fuck me, I want you to fuck me!” He heard and understood your plea when he began moving in and out of you faster and much deeper than before. He was hitting all the right spots inside of you, each time his cock brushed up against them you felt yourself getting closer and closer to toppling over the edge.

“You’re so beautiful like this, Y/N. All tousled and consumed by bliss! I was a fool to leave you earlier.” Jay said breathlessly.

His movements became sloppy and erratic the closer he got to his release, but he wanted to make you unravel first.

“Come on, Y/N! Let yourself go for me a second time. Give me one more, sweet girl,”

Jay captured your lips with his as you came for the second time that night. Your body trembled while he continued thrusting his hips as he chased his own release. You felt his length twitch inside of you as ropes of his cum filled you to the brim. Jay’s breathing was ragged as he savored every last second of pleasure coursing through him, all the while he planted kisses around your face.

“My sweet girl, you did so beautifully for me,” he whispered. “It would seem that you did miss me while I was gone after all…”

[velvetstreets]

Can you do one where jacks BEREAL goes off during sex and reader has hickies all over her and their friends react and she’s tied to the bed?

Realer than Real

Jack had been teasing you for 20 minutes, and you were reveling in his attention. You were completely naked, with the exception of your thong, and tied to the posts of his bed.

He had wanted to take his time with you this evening, so you let him take the reigns. He started off with soft sweet kisses, to your lips, all around your face, leading down to your neck - to which they became aggressively needier.

“Jack..” you moaned out, feeling him suck a little harder into the skin of your neck, knowing he was starting to mark you up.

“Hm..?” He feigned innocence, not stopping his delicious assault across your neck.

“N-no, no hickies-“ you told him, but there wasn’t an ounce of sternness in your voice.

“Yes, hickies-“ he countered, sucking and lapping at your skin, proud with the darker marks starting to show.

“But, people will see..” you groaned as he made his way down to the swell of your breasts, giving them a soft nuzzle as he hummed against you.

“Don’t care, hope they do, you’re mine aren’t you?” He asked, teeth nipping just above your nipple, making you gasp.

“Yes, I’m yours, only yours baby.” You confirmed, his touch sending straight fire to your core. Your body ached for him, literally and figuratively as the ropes gave a sickeningly sweet burn against your skin as you whined and wriggled.

You were too in your own world to hear the buzzes that both your phones made on the side table. But Jack was more attentive, and peeked at his screen before smirking.

“ As a matter of fact, let’s let them know what’s up.” He said as he picked up his phone and the weight of his body left yours momentarily.

You whined at the loss of warmth and contact before opening your eyes to see Jack sitting up, hovering over you with his phone.

“Cover your tits, baby.” He chuckled, trying to get a good angle.

“Jack!” You squealed at him. “Oh my god-“ you laughed at him before covering your breasts with your hands, the rope tugging at your wrists.

“Say, Jack’s about to destroy my pussy!” He laughed before taking the picture, and then angling the front camera his way for the selfie.

“You’re such an idiot.” You giggle, attempting to pout, but failing as you see his dimples cave into his smiling bright face.

“Yeah, but I’m your idiot.” He grins at you.

“My idiot.” You repeat, grinning back at him.

“And this idiot, is gonna take care of his two favorite girls.” He said kissing you a few times before sliding down to the end of the bed where your legs were spread.

“So fuckin’ pretty..” he adored your figure one last time, littered in dark purple bruises. You blushed as he chuckled, placing kisses along your inner thighs.

“I’ll never get enough of you.” He muttered before diving into his second favorite girl.

-

You stepped out of the shower with Jack, and he wrapped you in a towel before doing the same to himself. He snapped a quick picture of the two of you in the mirror; fresh faced, wet hair, and all smiles.

“I like that one. Think it’s my new favorite.” You told him, kissing his cheeks.

“Me too. S’a good one.” He kissed your forehead, before scrolling on his phone as you did your skin routine.

“Urban said to tell you ‘nice tits’” Jack laughed.

“Huh?” You turned to him.

“Though he wonders if your alive or if I’ve eaten you alive, with all the bites I left.”

“Oh god.” You muttered, shaking your head at the two juvenile boys.

“S’all good, told him I devoured you perfectly.”

“Jack!” You laughed, jaw agape at his comment.

“What! I’m an honest man, cross my heart.” He said putting his palm over his heart.

“Jesus Christ-“ you said rolling your eyes and throwing your wet towel at him.

“Oooh, round 3 already baby?” He asked before quickly scooping you up and running towards the bedroom; both of your giggles loudly filling the apartment.

————————————

Tag list: @hoodharlow @moody4world @watercolorskyy @lcandothisallday @harlowthot @triplexdoublex @thinkingaboutjharlow @bbyharlow @jackharlows-world @primadxna-girl @curlyhairclub @dessmxsworld @inluvwithladybug @babyharleezy @thysagclub @harlowcomehome @rebelxsun @jackharloww @harlowsbby

[molarbeardoc]

Hey!

I started writing this like back when I first posted the MR Morse code video! Hope you enjoy

I present to you:

A WRITTEN Infection Regretevator au

Erm yeah big reveal idk where I’m going with this enjoy :3

"DAMN IT!"

It hissed, glaring at the beakers that sat before it.

It had been struggling to perfect the perfect poison for decades since that stupid cat was arrested. Yet each time it thought it had something, anything, it blew up in its face.

Sometimes literally…

"What am I doing wrong?! Why must this happen to me?! That flea-bag spent years and prison and come out shooting lasers from her eyes! Yet I can’t perfect basic science! I was head of my league! I controlled everything that happened within my time. I brought life to things who floated in jars! Even if they did turn their backs on me in the end…"

"WHY MUST I FAIL TIME AND TIME AGAIN?!"

It bellowed, its voice awakening its unwilling partner in crime and bringing attention to it from the yellow fool. God did it hate his overly pitched hysterical and nasally voice.

"Maybe it’s just not meant to be. Give up maybe? But then again, you’re about as stubborn as mule, hehehe."

"Silence freak."

"Well he’s got a point MR…"

The shackled being sat up, yawning as he butted in with his own opinion.

"You’ve been workin’ on this project for years. Maybe it’s time to throw in the towel.."

"I fail to see why your thoughts matter?"

"Command heard and followed…"

Despite it not being much of an instruction, MRManeuver knew that the rock downplaying his voice meant to shut up. He learned that the painful way and preferred to not be melted down into a mush like before hand…

"How typical of you! Silencing your lackey when he’s correct. Oh how you never change!"

"Didn’t I tell you to shut up?"

"Hey, my shop my rules. You agreed to follow my terms as long as I allowed you to reside here without fear of Ms. Retro, Jermbo, or Mach attacking you… Again…"

"I don’t fear them."

"It says, its hands trembling as it holds the beaker in its claws."

Enphoso chuckled at the joke, though the rock found it less than amusing, snapping its fingers and watching malicious as the man convulsed and held his throat.

"You test my patience every second you open your mouth. You work for me, understand..?"

It listened for a response from him as his mouth foamed before he choked out a silent ‘yes sir’. With the mover being reminded of his place, it returned the air to his lungs, ignoring his heaving gasps and coughs.

"And I thought I was cruel…"

The yellow grinning face adjusted his clothing, shooting a sympathetic glare towards Maneuver.

"You don’t compare to a God…"

"A fallen God you mean!"

MR let out an infuriated growl, but Enphoso knew he was correct.

Falling from the heavens weakened him significantly. Whatever he did, he could return with equal power.

"You and I both know I’m right…"

"My hatred for you grows daily."

"You hear that? It loves me."

"Shut up."

"Nuh uh…"

"You’re worse than that gradient."

"Okay wow… That’s an insult if I’ve heard one…"

"You’re right, that was too harsh, sorry…"

"It’s okay sweetheart."

MRManeuver listened to them, growing uncomfortable…

"MR?"

"Yes Enphoso?"

"I don't know if I can regret in this elevator alone."

"Me neither."

"It's just so scary without you…"

"I don't wanna lose you…"

"I have to tell you something-"

"Ever since the day I saw you-"

"You were special I can't lose you."

"I'll be so sad-"

"You’ll be so mad-"

"I won't be glad-"

"Here without you-"

"I'll be so sad if you walk away"

"This elevator just won't be the same"

"I'm the only person left to blame-"

"This digital circus just won't be the same"

"Ever since the day I saw you-"

"You were special I can't lose you."

"I'll be so sad-"

"You’ll be so mad-"

"I won't be glad-"

"Here without you-"

"I'll be so sad if you walk away"

"This elevator just won't be the same"

"I'm the only person left to blame-"

"This elevator just won't be the same"

MRManeuver could only watch in horror as they made out. Jaw dropped as confused terror filled his eyes.

"What the fu-"

Lmao

Happy April Fools day

Keep fooling around my silly little critters!

And if you’re upset about it not being serious

Don’t worry

Some of this is taken from the actual fic wink wink nudge nudge

[punk-octo]

Hi I had a flieder dream post in my rp and wanted to share here :>

Copy and pasted from discord so forgive any format weirdness

As Flieder rests, her train of thought drifts in and out of consciousness. The sound of her violin echoing in her mind trudges up a memory she attempted to bury on her trip to the mining facility, one of her life before.

0056’s hooves hitting the pristine tile echoes down the estate hall, bouncing off tall walls and curving with the coved ceilings. She looks down at her watch as it clicks, the rhythmic sound of the gears turning inside brings 0056’s focus to it. ‘21:45, right on time.’ she thinks as she stops at the bedroom door at the end of the hall. She puts on a warm smile before knocking three times and then entering the room.

She opens the door to the young madam’s room, immediately noticing that she’s laid her toys out on the floor to play with them again. While this did ruin 0056’s organization, she couldn’t be mad at the child for being happy. The bedroom walls were covered in rudimentary drawings of the household gestalt family and some of the replika workers. Her favorite, though, was the one of the young gestalt girl holding hands with a green-eyed Eule, it made her smile even widen when she saw it.

The young gestalt girl was sitting on her bed in the back center of the room, her nightwear already on. Her face was scrunched in frustration as she held an instrument in her hands, one far too large for her little fingers as she attempted to slide the bow across the strings in vain. Her eyes lit up as the Eule entered her room. Her face was blurry in the memory, Flieder tried to focus on it but her mind failed her, all she could recall were the bright brown eyes of the girl and the slightly crooked, toothy smile.

*“Flieder!” the young girl exclaimed, 0056 was shocked for a moment, she was surprised the new nickname had reached the ears of the gestalts. Nevertheless, she smiled back. “Hello, █████, it’s time for bed.” She responded as she walked over and sat on the foot of the bed.

"But I’m not tired!” the girl pouted as Flieder began to pull the covers up and arrange the pillows.

Flieder chuckled a bit as she finished, “You say that every night but then fall asleep as soon as I leave, dear.” She reached to gently grab the instrument away from her, “I see you’ve been practicing the violin.”

The girl lays down under the covers and crosses her arms in frustration, “It’s too hard! I can’t press the strings. It’s stupid.”

" Oh come on, practice makes perfect █████, I’m sure your father wouldn’t appreciate you throwing in the towel so early.” Flieder looks down at the violin in her hands, she doesn’t play it herself so it’s a bit hypocritical to scold the child for it.

█████ thinks for a moment before her face brightens with an idea, “Can you learn it? Then you can teach me!”

Flieder’s eyes widen with surprise, not expecting the request, “Me? I don’t think I’d be a very good player…”

The young gestalt sits up slightly with renewed energy, “You will be! You taught me other stuff so this should be easy! Then I won’t have to practice so much on my own.”

Flieder sighed, if it was a request, she couldn’t exactly refuse. She thinks for a moment then gives in “Alright fine, I will try. But that doesn’t mean you can skip out on practice, ok? We’ll have to learn it together.” She pulls the covers up over the girl as she falls back on the feather pillows, “And you can’t make fun of me when I’m bad at it.”

The girl laughed a bit as she sank into the mattress, getting tired just on time. “Ok, I won’t I promise.” Her eyes began to shut as Flieder went to turn off the bedside lamp. “I love you Flieder…” she whispered.

Flieder tensed for a moment, she knew she wasn’t supposed to show the child too much affection but her heart ached if she didn’t. “...I love you too, █████. Goodnight.”

The child muttered back as Flieder got up to exit the room, violin in hand. As she closed the door she looked down at it. She would learn how to play it, just for her.

----

Flieder woke from the dream memory with a start, coolant drops forming on her brow. After a moment, she sighed and put her head in her hand, moving her bangs out of the way. The cold suffocating metal of the room only reinforced the difference between what she once had and what she is stuck with now.

She looks over to see the violin next to her on the bed, she must have forgetting to put it away last night. The sight of it makes a pit of sadness in her chest, her throat bobbing as old memories still play in her mind. Not being able to bear it, she gets up and slides the instrument under her bed where it belongs. She gets up and moves towards the mirror. The night left her looking messy, no where near her own standards. As she goes to adjust her hair, she sees her left eye twitch, creating an ugly asymmetry on her face. She looks up and barely touches the lower lid as it spazzes and lets out another sigh.

"Work. Work will take it off of my mind." After attempting to fix her appearance a bit more, Flieder moves past her bed once again, the thought of the violin still burning like a flare under her bunk. She moves into the hallway and begins her day.

[aeori-o]

I think everyone has basically accepted that Vere and Kuras don’t have red choice options in the Touchstarved Demo and despite the fact that I am haunted by the promise of a hidden/secret ending on some of their social media posts and in the tutorial I am throwing in the towel on this.

I don’t know if they’re counting the red option for Ais and Leander as “secret endings” or if maybe they’re counting the death with Vere as a “secret ending” (even though that is in no way secret) but the game is just buggy enough that I’m not sure if I’m going to miss something from the game just not displaying it. I feel too disheartened by the thought of wasting a bunch of time when a weird bug might make something not display correctly. (The Ais and Leander options don’t seem susceptible to bugging out but Mhin’s red option will always appear if you play on an ‘Alchemist’ save and then switch to/load an ‘Unnamed’ or ‘Hound’ save but will disappear again if you start a new game under ‘Unnamed’ or ‘Hound’ and the same is true of the opposite: if you don’t start a new game under ‘Alchemist’ when you were previously playing a different background it won’t appear.) (Edit: My wording was unclear here I meant if you started a new game under ‘Hound’/’Unnamed’ and then switch to/load an ‘Alchemist’ save it still won’t display.)

But just in case anyone has more patience than me to crunch through this I’ll go over what I know and have done below.

Okay first thing’s first. Everyone seems to be able to get Ais and Leander easily enough but there are only two options that actually matter for getting each of their red options. It does not matter what background you pick. It does not matter what else you click anywhere else you will always get the option if you click these two (or the game is bugging out).

Leander:

You’ve gotta take those flowers.

Regardless of how you come to be touching him you have to keep doing it.

It does not matter if you choose to drink the same thing as him, it doesn’t matter if you dunk on all of his friends in the ending segment after choosing him, it doesn’t matter if you hold back from touching him in the first place. All that matters is taking those flowers and giving into your fascination with how his skin feels so you can later give into the impulse to feel up his face.

Ais:

You’ve gotta tell him to fuck off.

You’ve gotta pat the Soulless (Princess).

Again it doesn’t matter what else you do. Doesn’t matter if you call Princess cute later or say you didn’t trust it not to kill you, doesn’t matter if you ask for help or demand to know what he wants. You can choose anything and as long as you picked those two you can have a little nibble as a treat.

Mhin:

As mentioned above their red option sometimes bugs out. The way to get it is to start a new game with the Alchemist background, it should show up during your first interaction with them after the three option dialogue choice and before the options “You know what? Fine.” and “I just need help finding my lodgings.” No special choices are needed, just the background.

I will note that I also had it fail to show up when using he/him pronouns once, but then trying another new game with he/him pronouns it did show up with all the same choices. It has to be a new game, if you load from a previously made Alchemist save it’ll fail to show for some reason. If you play through as a new Alchemist and then get it, then load a Hound or Unnamed save it’ll still show up despite the ‘wrong’ background now being chosen.

Everything Else I Know From Playing A Stupid Amount Of Times:

Since Leander and Ais have two options that supersede all the others in terms of mattering it stands to reason Vere and Kuras might be the same. Vere is easier to test on since you get a total of three one-on-one dialogue choices with him before the ending segment where you choose someone to follow (and for Ais and Leander none of the options in that section matter for the outcome).

Unless the game was bugging out I could not trigger any red option with Vere with any Background and any combination of responses to him before choosing to follow him. I would probably move onto trying different combinations of the ending conversation next but I am tired and did not try that.

For Vere I also tried being as rude as possible to everyone (triggering the red option with Ais since Vere likes Ais and making sure to not trigger it with Leander). That didn’t work. So then I tried making sure I was as rude as possible to everyone and also not interesting to Ais. Also didn’t work.

Kuras you have five options with before also running into him with Mhin which is more than anyone else has so I definitely have not been able to run through all combinations for Kuras interactions. I also tried getting along with him, Mhin, and Leander and avoided triggering the red option with Ais and shut down Vere to see if that would trigger anything with Kuras. It didn’t.

Also worth noting for anyone else grinding away at this: - The enter key is not your friend, it will select the first option before you see it every time. Spent a big chunk of my first play through wondering when I’d get to choose anything before I realized I needed to mouse-click instead of hitting enter.  - Using ‘skip’ will always stop at choices or new dialogue. Different pronouns than what you’ve used in previous saves counts to the game as new dialogue. - This might be exclusive to my computer but the game somehow messes up my headphone audio, it makes everything extremely quiet even with the audio turned up to 100. Restarting fixes it, but it’s really weird. Edit: This was a weird result of my motherboard and CPU having beef and had nothing to do with the game, I’ve updated chipsets, UEFI/BIOS, and my OS and it no longer does this.

I guess my expectation for ‘secret’/’hidden’ endings with visual novels is for it to be Very Obvious that’s what it is. I’ve been assuming that you need all five red options to get it. But I also have to consider this is just a demo and referred to as the first chapter by the devs so maybe they really do just mean the death ending, or the two ending red options that are available.

I don’t know! But I have too many things to do to keep bashing my head against this as much as I want to. So if anyone else does discover anything further and you’ve read this far please let me know. I’m at a loss.

Edit: The Devs made a post saying not all characters have red dialogue prompts in the demo (but every character has bonus rewards/scenes and I am reasonably certain I’ve found all of those) so at this point (I have put over 7 hours into this demo) I’m pretty sure there isn’t a secret/hidden ending in the way I was expecting (being a clear, alternate end that differs noticeably from the ways the demo ends just running through it) but all of the alternate scenes with characters are great and I would really recommend running through until you’ve seen everything you can!

Edit 2: Someone reblogged this with some very sweet tags which spurred me into re-reading this where I noticed typos and some unclear phrasing so I fixed those. Also struck out my weird volume issue, that turned out to be related to some major computer issues I was having at the time and was actually unrelated to the demo.

[giggly-squiggily]

Forget Me Not (Black Clover)

Happy Valentine's Day! I wasn't planning on posting anything, but in a sudden boom of motivation, I've decided I'm posting a fic! Yunleo makes me soft, and I haven't yelled about them in a minute, so here we are! :D I hope you like it!

Cloud 9 (Taglist Peeps):

@duckymcdoorknob @rachi-roo

Summary: It's the day before Valentine's and Leopold completely forgot. He scrambles to put together the perfect gift for his boyfriend.

Leopold was in quite the predicament.

You see, it all started a mere few hours ago…

~~~

“Perfect-oh, wait- no. It spread.” Mimosa sighed, brows furrowing as she looked at her tray of misshapen heart cookies. “They look like potatoes!”

“Yum!” Leopold grinned as he snagged one, frantically shoving it in his mouth before he could burn his fingerprints off. “They taste good! Nothing like a potato.”

“Why did you..nevermind.” His cousin shook her head with a small laugh as she put the tray down, grabbing her cookie cutter in hopes of reshaping them before they cooled. “At least they taste good. I suppose that’s the important part.”

Leopold hummed, mouth too full to speak. He watched her curiously, tilting his head as she reshaped her handiwork. “What’s the occasion? Are you guys having a celebration or something?”

“You could say that- it’s for Valentine’s Day. I’m gonna frost these and give them to-” She looked back at him, blinking when he went pale. “Leo?”

Oh.

Oh no.

No, no, no, no, NO!

How did he forget???

~~~

“What about… that’s not gonna work. Oh, now…no, that’s dumb!”

Leopold was pacing around his room, hands in his hair as he struggled to think of something. It felt like the hours of his day were flying by with each failed attempt at securing a date. Most if not all the local restaurants were full with reservations for the big day, and shopping proved fruitless.

Then there was the question of what Yuno even wanted for Valentine's day. Past experience proved asking was pointless; his boyfriend always said the same thing when asked what he wanted: “You.” It was cute and never failed to make Leopold blush as dark as his hair; but it didn’t make surprises like now easier.

That left only one thing remaining; a handmade gift.

And Leopold…wasn’t exactly a craft man.

“Why is making paper flowers so difficult!?” He cried in frustration after the seventh failed attempt, tossing yet another crumpled mess into the pile growing on his bed. Mimosa was kind enough to show him how to make them on such short notice, but it didn’t mean much in the end. Littered on the floor were various paper hearts he tried to cut out like a heart- but even those were lopsided and ugly. Little scraps of paper and a dash of glitter coated his room like a thin film with the redhead sitting in the middle of it all, fighting the urge not to cry.

“Come on, don’t give up! You’re a Vermillion! We don’t throw in the towel!” He grunted through a lump in his throat, closing his eyes as he willed himself to take deep breaths.

Paper hearts and flowers were out. He couldn’t cook to save his life, so forget that. Yuno was one of those weird people who didn’t like chocolate, so that wasn’t an option- what was left? What could he..

Opening his eyes, he peeked at the remaining paper and pens before him; survivors of his crafting storm.

And just like that- he had a plan.

~~~

February 14th. It was officially the big day.

Oh great Wizard King save him.

Throughout the day, Leopold was a mess of anxiety and excitement; alternating between joy of sharing his gift with Yuno and dread that he’d hate it. They weren’t meeting up until the evening; both of them had a day full of team tasks to do before then- giving the fiery mage even more time to panic.

What if Yuno saw right through him? His gift was certainly last minute; nothing flashy or intricate- Leopold feared it would come off as disappointing; leaving his boyfriend to question if Leopold truly did love him.

Oh god- what if Yuno hates it so much they break up? The idea made his legs feel heavy, dragging his feet up towards their usual spot as he went to face destiny. His heart raced a mile a minute, threatening to bust out of his chest.

I want to run.

I want to run away.

I can’t face you; I’ll only disappoint you.

He started to turn-

“Leo?” That voice- soft and low- called out to him. Leopold felt himself freeze, everything in him coming to a complete standstill. He had been caught. “Hey.”

“Y-Yuno! Fancy meeting you out here! Hehe, hi!” Leopold twisted to face him, smiling big in hopes it’d hide his fear. “W-What a night to meet! Hehe, so what’s u-up?”

“You invited me out?” Yuno raised a brow, concern in those golden eyes as he watched him sweat. “Are you okay? You seem a bit-”

“Happy Valentine's Day!” Leopold practically shouted, making them both flinch. There, he said it! Yuno blinked at him, eyes wide.

“Oh…Oh! Right- Happy Valentine's Day, Leo.” He smiled gently, relaxing as everything came together. “Is that why you invited me out here?”

“Huh? What- I-” Breathe! He took a shaky breath, willing himself to calm. “Yes- that’s exactly why! I have a-”

He’ll hate it.

Three little words was all it took. Leopold felt his voice fade out as he froze once more, paling beneath the stars. He..he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take that risk.

Yuno raised a brow, giving him a small encouraging smile. Leopold took it to his heart as he let out a shaky breath.

“Yuno…I have a present for you.” Leopold reached into his pocket, hands shaking as he went to grab said gift. He couldn’t even get his hand in his pocket. “But…I’m scared to give it to you.” At his boyfriend’s raised brows, he hurried on. “I’m just- I just really nervous all of a sudden cause it’s kinda last minute and I usually put more thought into things like this and I don’t want you to hate me-the gift and-EH!”

Fingers pressed into his sides out of nowhere, making him jump up with a squeak. He hadn’t realized Yuno got so close. “So you're saying…you’ve lost your nerve?” Yuno asked, something teasing in his tone as he pressed in more, making Leopold giggle and squirm. “In that case, I’ll help you find it.”

“Y-Yuhuhuhuno! Ahehahahaa- wahahahit!” This was certainly not how he planned tonight to go. Dancing in his boyfriend’s arms as Yuno gently tickled his ribs, his face pressed into his chest as he lightly batted at his chest. “Hahhahahang ohoohohn, I gohohohotta fihihiihnd it ohohoohohn my ohohohohohown!”

“Sorry, no can do. We’ll be here all night.” Yuno grinned as he pulled the redhead into his chest, wiggling his fingers against his belly and making him squeal. “Not that I mind that, really.”

“YUHUHUHNO!” Leopold thrashed in his arms, kicking dirt and stardust around them as he laughed like a goon. Out here in their usual spot, not a soul could hear them. It felt both freeing and devastating at the same time. “YUHUUHUHNO PLEAHHAHAHSE!”

“Please what?”

“DOHOOHOHN’T DHOOHOOHOHO THAHHAT!”

“Do what? You gotta be more clear, Leo~”

“TIHIHIHICKLE MEHHEHEHE- NHOOOHOHO WAHHAHAHIT!” Leopold all but shrieked when Yuno bit his shoulder, blowing a raspberry against the clothed fabric. Low and behold- he found yet another spot on him that was ticklish! “YUHUHUHUNO!”

“What? I’m just doing what you asked me to do!” Yuno grinned, moving his fingers back to his sides as Leopold calmed. “Do you feel better now? Ready to share with the group?”

“Ahehaha! Fihihihine, fhihiihhine! Ihiiihhih’m reahhhhahahdy!” Leopold gasped out, falling back against the other with a soft sigh as Yuno supported him. “Yoohohu’re teehehrrible!”

“Hm.” The wind mage smiled as he pressed a kiss against Leopold’s cheek. “You love me.”

“I do.” He replied automatically, his voice hushed with sincerity. He felt Yuno jolt in surprise; not quite used to hearing it. It gave Leopold the push he needed. “Hey, can you let me go for a sec? It’s important.”

Yuno did so, watching him as the redhead took a few steps away. Turning back to his boyfriend, Leopold reached into his pocket, pulling out the folded paper. “I wrote this and…well, I know it’s not much, but if you’ll have me, I’d like to read it to you.”

“Poetry, Leo? Who would have known.” Yuno teased good naturedly, leaning back on his heels as he waited. 

“I’m not much of a poet- but I tried.” After another breathe, Leopold began to read.

“First of all; Happy Valentine’s Day. It’s our first, and I wanted to do something special for it. However- this is where I must confess. I kinda…forgot.” Leopold winched. Yuno gasped, clutching his pearls.

Then he chuckled, easing away Leopold’s worries.

“Sorry about that. I’ll remember going forward. But this letter isn’t about my forgetfulness; it’s about something much more important…it’s about you.

“When we first met; it was during my sister’s bootcamp. I remember when I first really looked at you- I thought to myself: ‘This guy’s really cool. And he looks strong. I have to defeat him!’ I declared you my rival and set my goal to surpassing this really cool guy with fluffy black hair and eyes like sunlight by any means necessary. I challenged you to many duels, and not once did you turn me down.

“I think that’s when I started to fall for you. I can’t pinpoint an exact moment; maybe it was the way you carried yourself- or how you always talked about your siblings with such love. Maybe it was during a battle- or how you declare your ambitions like obtainable goals rather than distant dreams. I thought my admiration for you was simply that; a feeling of mutual respect for my fellow mage.

“But then you looked at me and I realized it was more than that. It was love. A love that burned within me like a burning candle wick- new and different than anything I’ve felt before. It grew and grew until there were times I simply couldn’t be around you cause all I wanted was to tell you how I felt. I was scared you wouldn’t feel the same, so I kept that burning wick to myself for months.

“And then…you returned my feelings. You said you liked me back! I couldn’t believe it! Sure- things were a bit rocky at the start, and there was a moment I was scared my wick would blow out, leaving me cold within, but you kept it burning and you still do.

“Did that sound good? I’m not exactly good at this poetry stuff. The point is- I love you, Yuno. I love your ambitions and your dreams, I love your faith in me when I don’t have any left. I love when you smile at me, when you take my hand in yours and never let go. I love how you look at me when you talk- like I’m the only one here. I love how passionate you are about what you want to do with your life. I love your bravery, your kindness, your competitive spirit and how you always make me feel loved and treasured. Your love comes as easy as breathing, and I want to keep breathing it in, letting it do whatever air does to our bodies- something about blood cells and whatnot.

“I probably killed the vibe with that last part; the point is- I love you, and for as long as I live- I’ll always love you. Even in death I’ll love you. My heart is yours for all eternity. Happy Valentine's Day, Yuno. Let’s have many more.”

Finishing the letter, he stared at the page, suddenly too shy to look up. What would he see when he did? Would Yuno fight off laughs? Would he be bored? Disgusted? Disappointed? He was scared.

Be brave.

He looked up- and stared. Yuno was crying.

“Babe..” He whispered, but that’s all Leopold got out before he was engulfed by arms, a cloud of pine and forest invading his nose as Yuno clung to him. “Yuno?”

“Not much of a poet my ass.” He choked out, a wet laugh coming though his voice. “Leopold…That was so…I love you so much.”

Those words were like coming up for air after nearly drowning. More than that- it felt like he was ascending. His body felt light with relief, almost numb as he brought them around his boyfriend- grounding him and filling him with warmth. “I was worried you’d hate it.”

“Never. I loved every word.” Yuno pulled back, eyes shiny with tears. Leopold reached up, brushing them away with his thumb. “I hate that I don’t have the words to describe how I feel right now…”

“More than words?” Leopold asked, earning another wet laugh. He closed his eyes as Yuno leaned in, capturing his lips with ease. Where words failed him, Yuno’s kiss told him everything he so desperately wanted to hear. His hands ran through black tufts of hair as Yuno grasped his hips, pulling him against him until only the pounding of their hearts were between them.

~~~

“I feel kinda bad now. I didn’t get you anything for Valentine’s Day.” Yuno confessed after some time. They were lying beneath the stars, his head on Leopold’s chest as the redhead played with his hair. “I kinda forgot too.”

“What?” Now it was his turn to clutch pearls. “Yuno!”

They looked at eachother. Then they were laughing.

“We’re a match made to be!” Leopold wheezed, shaking beneath Yuno as he giggled himself silly. “God, I love you.”

“I love you too.” Yuno smiled, scooting up so they were nose to nose. “I still want to give you something. Is there anything you want?”

“You.” Leopold grinned, watching Yuno flush pink, starting to laugh once more as he lightly slapped his chest.

“Jerk- that’s my line.” He laughed again, the sound muffled by Leopold’s lips on his. He was melting against him in minutes. “I still want to get you back.”

“You already did. Your love for me is the greatest gift I’ve ever received.” Leopold smiled, pressing his forehead against Yunos. “What more do I need when I have you?”

Instead of words, Yuno kissed him again and again.

Even if they both forgot the rest of them; Leopold would always remember this Valentine’s Day.

Thanks for reading!

[cornfields-td-nonsense]

are there any other songs u relate with specific TDN cast members

Boy howdy hey ARE THERE

Oh No by MARINA is possibly the most Lloyd song I have ever heard in my life. Branching from that, Allies Or Enemies by the Crane Wives is him and Rod post-betrayal

Speaking of TCW, Take Me To War is Ming's song through and through. And I can imagine an animatic of Ming and Alisha singing Busted from Phineas and Ferb, about Lloyd and Esther, respectively.

And I could be inclined to cite Top Of My School as an Alisha song. No further comment.

Paper Towels by Jack Stauber is Lara's song. Learning to accept the inherent chaos and messiness of life and whatnot. And circling back to MARINA, Hermit the Frog is her talking about Art.

I feel like Isla would love the song Sunflower from ITSV. It really fits his vibe and I reckon it's the kind of music she'd listen to.

God I Hate Shakespeare from Something Rotten feels so Charlie @ William to me. Please let it be known that I have never seen Something Rotten and do not know any of the context behind the song or who is singing it.

My cocreator tells me that Internet Yamero and Failed Normie are Matt songs. I haven’t listened to them yet but he is the one who made Matt so I’m going to take his word for it.

And I’ve mentioned this before but Art Is Dead, Kiss Me Son Of God, and The Main Character are all Art songs. And… yeah maybe throw White Guy 1985 onto the pile too.

[aarghhaaaarrrghhh]

What Lastochka Left Unsaid/О чём молчит ласточка - Chapter One

Master post here

Chapter One - A Guest from the Past

Late August, 2006, Kharkiv.

Silence reigned in the empty office. Like a graveyard, thought Volodya in passing. Trying to forget even just for a little while why he had had to stay at work until eight o’clock in the evening, he turned several thoughts over in his mind: about the contract with the supplier, about the project budget, about yet another case about which he had had to call the lawyers during the day. 

Out the window, the drops falling from the air conditioning unit beat on the awning and that faint sound was the only thing that broke the silence. But then a pen fell out of his diary and clattered against the tabletop, and sheets of paper rustled against the bottom of their box. Volodya placed the last file in there and looked around his cleared work desk. He lifted a heavy gaze around his manager’s office: the beaten-up door was ajar and the jamb was warped; a crack ran through the wood and the lock was broken. 

I have to, he said to himself as he pursed his lips. He picked the box up and walked to the edge of the office. 

The squeal of his ringtone shattered the silence and made him jump, as though he were coming out of a trance. After returning the box to his desk, Volodya got to his phone and, having looked at the screen, exhaled.

“What’s up, Vov, are we still on?”

“Damn… Yes, we’re still on, it’s just I… got caught up working on something,” he lied. “I forgot to book a room. Can you do it yourself?”

“Alright, I’ll send you the address, we’ll meet there in half an hour. Which room it is, I’ll text you later.”

Volodya nodded mechanically and ended the call. Almost immediately, the phone pinged with an incoming message. He read it and sighed: it would take no less than thirty minutes to get to the hotel - he would be late. But on the other hand, the urgency gave him a reason to quit the office as soon as possible. 

As he switched the light off in the open-plan and shut the door behind himself, Volodya once again took a look around his head office.

Tomorrow, he promised himself. Everything’ll be fixed tomorrow and I’ll move my things in there.

***

As he got out of the taxi and took a look at the inconspicuous premises of the mini-hotel, Volodya pursed his lips and grumbled to himself under his voice:

“Uh-huh, not too much to look at.” Then: “Room twenty-seven. I’m expected,” he said to the administrator at the reception.

She did not try and check his documents; the girl simply smiled welcomingly:

“You’re on the first floor, right along the corridor.” And promptly she hid her face behind her computer screen.

Volodya went up to the unlocked door. His concerns were unfounded - the totally neat and fashionable room smelt of hotel cleanliness. The sound of water came from behind the closed door to the bathroom and shoes, a shirt, and a phone were strewn upon the still-made bed.

He went to the window and watched the narrow street, illuminated by a few yellow streetlights. He opened the top window, and the sound of passing cars and the evening air, not yet cool after the hot day, came into the room. 

After a couple of minutes, the sound of water in the bathroom fell silent and the door squeaked.

“Oh, finally!”

Volodya turned to the voice. Igor, stood with a towel around his thighs, smiled. Volodya affected a smile at him in return, and scanned the half-naked body before him with an inquisitive look, trying to find something new about it. He failed. And he felt nothing - absolutely nothing. 

“Miss me?” Igor came closer and placed his wet palms on his neck. “I’ve missed you - a lot.”

Volodya brushed him aside and headed to the bathroom, throwing back over his shoulder:

“Not today.”

Igor replied:

“Understood.”

In the bathroom, Volodya approached the fogged-up mirror. He wiped away the moisture and saw at least half of his face in the reflection. He looked himself in the eyes and tried to prick his ears up to hear the echoes of the least feeling of any kind. He was deaf.

For the last few days, he had felt like a robot - he did what was asked of him without thinking, but his soul seemed like it had frozen solid. Occasionally needles of fear, longing and faithlessness would prick him sharply or weigh upon his shoulders and make his back crooked. Then they would suddenly disappear. So it was in that moment. 

He stood beneath the shower and turned the dial almost up to boiling - and he less so felt, than accepted as a fact, that the water was burning his skin. He added some cold and stuck his face beneath the stream. 

He thought about Igor. They had agreed to meet a week ago by that point. Back then, Volodya had genuinely wanted this meeting, he had looked forward to it. He did not care that he knew Igor long ago, did not care that this meeting would bring nothing new. He was almost dear to him, almost a significant other, he knew so much about him…

As he returned to the room, Volodya overheard an excerpt of conversation:

“Yes, I get you, the views are very nice, but could you just be clear if they do children’s cartoons there?”

As he saw Volodya come out of the bathroom, Igor pressed his finger to his lips - “shush”.

“Alright, I’ll call the travel agency tomorrow and find out. Take care of your flowers, don’t stress. Bye, honey.”

He pressed the button to end the call, waited for the screen to flash and only raised his gaze to Volodya once he was certain that the call was definitely over, explaining:

“We’re planning a trip, to Turkey, but you’d think we’re going to space or something. I suggested to Lidka to postpone it ‘til next year, but she groused at me: ‘How come? September is the off-peak season…’ And now she’s raised this whole racket - she found some kind of trip round some mountains, but whether you can get there by car from the resort town, she doesn’t know. And the connection is bad at the dacha, she can’t get through on the phone…”

He carried on saying something else. For a long time - and all about his family: about how Sonya, his daughter, would hardly stand the trip, and about how it would probably rain in Turkey at the end of September. Volodya made as though he were listening to him; he nodded, even replied out of turn, and thought to himself about Igor’s wife. He remembered how once she had almost caught them: she had returned from the dacha earlier than expected and merely by sheer luck happened to call Igor, asking whether she should swing by the shops. Igor then kicked Volodya out the door without giving him a proper chance to get dressed. As he buttoned up his shirt along the way, Volodya bumped into her on the ground floor: a normal woman, well-tanned, exhausted, pretty in her own way. Just like in the photographs in Igor’s apartment. At that point, out of anger and humiliation, Volodya cursed at her to himself: You gullible idiot, why did you call? He wanted her to have caught them and for her to have found out the truth about her husband at long last. But, after he calmed down, he felt ashamed of these thoughts. After all, he knew perfectly well that Lida was perhaps more of a victim than even Volodya himself. Than even Igor. 

Volodya of all people should have known what it was to collect from among the shards of your own broken heart someone else’s. To glue it back together with a lie that disgusted even himself, to guard against pain and sleepless nights. 

Why don’t you want me anymore? There’s something wrong with me, right? I put on three kilos, it’s because of that, isn’t it?

After Sveta, how could he not know?

Volodya interrupted Igor’s story:

“Let’s get down to business.”

Igor nodded and, abruptly pulling Volodya to himself, tried to kiss him, but the latter turned away.

Volodya took his tie off from around his neck, wound it around his wrist and offered the end to Igor.

“Are you sure?” asked Igor. “It’s been a long time since you asked-”

“Go on,” Volodya demanded and laid on his stomach. 

Igor did not argue. He tightened the knot around his wrist and passed the tie through the slats of the bed’s headboard, then wound the end around his other wrist. Volodya gave a tug to check whether it was tight enough. 

He heard a rustling from behind him. Volodya buried his face in the pillow and screwed his eyes up shut. Yes, it really had been a long time since they had done this. But right then, it seemed like exactly what he needed. To finally feel something, anything. 

A belt buckle rattled and the bed creaked, bending under Igor’s weight. Volodya could not restrain a groan as a burning wave of pain form the scathing blow radiated along the small of his back and lower down. Right away, a second, in the centre of his back.

“Harder,” wheezed Volodya and immediately felt one searing blow after another on his shoulder blades. 

His back burnt; he could practically feel the stripes left on his skin by the belt. But he asked for more and more. Rhythmically. And harder. Volodya chewed on the cloth of the pillow as he stifled his moans. 

The pain gave him nothing. Repulsive and aching, it was just pain, no anticipation, no lust, not even fear. 

When his typical groan had become a scream, Igor threw the belt aside. He laid a warm palm on his back, and Volodya flinched as though he had been touched with red-hot iron. 

“What on earth’s going on with you?”

��Keep going.”

“If we go on like this, I’m just going to mutilate you. Has something happened to you?”

Volodya exhaled and wiped his damp face on the pillow - he had not noticed that the pain had brought tears to his eyes. 

“Yeah, you’re right, untie me.”

Igor untangled the knots in the tie. Volodya sat up, pulled the covers to himself and drew them up to his thighs. He massaged his temples with his fingers. Igor looked at him fixedly, waiting for an answer, while Volodya did not want to talk. Not that it was with Igor, he simply did not want to talk about it. To pronounce it aloud would be like affirming it to himself, bringing the thought to the forefront. On the contrary, he wanted to send it far away, to not think about it, to not know about it. 

“Father died.”

Igor was silent for half a minute as he studied Volodya searchingly. The latter mentally begged him, Just don’t give me a dutiful ‘Accept my condolences’, don’t wind me up, but Igor merely asked:

“When?”

“On Wednesday. The funeral was yesterday.”

“Why didn’t you say anything right away?”

Volodya shook his head. 

“I don’t want to, I’m not ready yet. I’ll get my head together and then we’ll talk. It’s useless at the moment anyway. I don’t feel any grief. At all. I’ve done what was needed of me: I organised the funeral, I protected my mother from all of that. But I don’t feel anything myself. I try to force myself to, but I just don’t…”

“That’s normal, Vov.” Igor laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “I… And what are you planning to do next? I mean, a lot’s going to change, the firm was his.”

“No, Igor, nothing’s going to change. I’ll move into his office and… and that’s it. The to-do list, duties - everything will stay the same as before. I’ve been heading the firm fully by myself for almost a year. I work like I used to and live like I used to. At work, I’ve long since coped without his help and advice. While in my life… in my life, too.”

Igor nodded.

“How are you sleeping? Badly?”

Volodya rubbed the bridge of his nose. 

“Yeah, I’ve not slept for two nights now. I’m so tired, but I can’t sleep.”

“Anxiety? Nausea? You need sleeping pills. I’ll write you a prescription.”

“Yeah, go for it.”

Igor immediately found a prescription form in his briefcase, filled it out and handed it to Volodya.

“Take them, they should help-” Igor wanted to say something else, but his phone began to ring. Volodya noticed Lida’s name on the screen out of the corner of his eye. 

“Shit, what, it’s ten already?” Igor nervously hung up the call.

“Quarter to,” Volodya corrected, having looked at the clock. 

“I need to pick up Sonya from my mum’s. You were late and we were… busy for a long time.”

“And in vain,” chuckled Volodya. 

“Well… We’ll make up for it,” smiled Igor as he pulled his shirt on. “I’m sorry for dropping out on you like this, we should still talk some more. That’s what you need right now. But you get it…”

Oh yeah, of course, I get it: your family, your kid, thought Volodya. But out loud, he said:

“It’s all fine, go.”

“Call me if you need to talk some more, I’ll always hear you out.” He leant forward and kissed him quickly. “If not for Sonya, I would have stayed with you ‘til morning. Never mind ‘til morning, I’d stay with you forever. There’s nothing to it, in no time at all, I’ll get a divorce and then…” Without finishing his sentence, Igor gave a smile multilayered in its meanings. He stood at the threshold of the room and began to wait for Volodya to make his mind up and get ready to go. At their parting, Igor thrust upon his lips again and whispered, “See you, babe.”

As he went down the staircase, Volodya overheard Igor talking with Lida over the phone while he stood by the lift:

“I’m already on my way, yeah. Alright, I’ll get her a Kinder egg. Yes, and juice. Alright, kisses. Uh-huh. See you, babe.”

Volodya chuckled sceptically:

“‘Babe’ - how convenient. He can talk to me like that as well as his wife.”

‘In no time at all, I’ll get a divorce - Igor’s words from a minute ago came back to him. Volodya laughed. And how many times had he heard that over the past eight years?

But he had long since given up harbouring any offense on account of it. At some point long ago, yes, perhaps he had wanted Igor to belong wholly to him, to not share him with anyone. But all that had passed. The passion had passed, the jealousy too. All that remained were encounters like these in hotels - more for the body than the soul. And conversations too. More important than anything else was that he could speak with Igor without hiding anything. 

Still, Igor remained a close person to Volodya. Not close as in ‘dear’ or ‘beloved’, but as in ‘the same’. More than a friend. Someone whom he knew well and who knew a lot about Volodya himself. Perhaps even too much. 

True, Volodya had never been in love with him. He knew that love looked and felt differently. That when you love someone, you are ready to do anything for the chance to be near him. But in their case, anybody whosoever could fill Igor’s place, what was important was that he was a man. But it was good that it was Igor - because he had once been able to pull Volodya out of the mire into which he had driven himself. Because it was Igor who had helped him to figure out, understand and accept his nature. 

***

The scent of paper, wood, and perfume: old-fashioned, homely - it had always hung in the air in that office. It felt like even when there had been no office there, no home, that scent had been there. Before, Volodya had gone there often, and the aroma calmed him and instilled him with confidence. But he understood that that was an illusion - it was because of the person who used to spend all day and night in that office.

Now, though, spending day and night, resting and working there fell to Volodya.

The office looked like a museum gallery: a massive oaken table in the centre, bookshelves in the same style along the walls, a big leather sofa by the window, but not one personal item, neither papers, nor even a speck of dust - an emptiness particular to uninhabited premises. 

Volodya went around the table and sat in the comfortable leather seat, lowered his arms onto the lacquered rests, smooth and cold. He turned to the left and checked for missed calls on the telephone - the only modern object in the office. He looked in front of himself: in the centre of the table, there was a stationery organiser, absurd, decorated with bronze lions, and an utterly useless item in the computer era - an ink blotter. As he looked to the right, Volodya made a wry face. There was a photograph there: against the backdrop of the large window of the office, there stood frozen a short, fragile woman - his mother, and hugging her, Volodya, young, twenty-eight and still in glasses. And next to him stood a man, also tall, also in glasses, also brown-haired - his father.

Volodya recalled that the moment captured in the photo was the office’s opening. Back then, his father had said to him, “Some day, this will all be yours… but until that day comes, don’t you dare touch, much less move, my desk!” Volodya smiled as he remembered how he had tried to talk his father out of putting such a huge piece of furniture in the small office; they had even argued, but, evidently, not seriously.

And here it had come, eleven years later, the day when ‘all this’ because his, Volodya’s. According to the documents, it had not happened on that day: his father had sorted everything out earlier. But it was then that Volodya finally and definitively understood that his father was no more. Right then, when he came in without making a noise, sat in the armchair like the man of the house and, like the man of the house, laid his arms on the huge, cold armrests. 

At that moment, there was a knock on the door for him - a new door, refitted that morning. It was Braginsky, an old friend and business partner of his father’s. Back in the mid-Nineties, he had helped move his father’s business from Moscow to Kharkiv literally with his own two hands, his connections, and his intellect. He helped afterwards, as well: all this years, he had been a true friend and mentor to Volodya.

“So, how’s it going for you in your new place?” Braginsky began, but, taking a look at Volodya, he abruptly fell silent.

I’m not in my place, he said in his head, but to Braginsky, Volodya replied:

“Alright.”

“What say you I get some vodka and we drink to his memory?”

Volodya shook his head in refusal.

“I’m driving later, in the evening.”

“Then maybe just some tea? My wife baked some biscuits and gave them to me to share.”

Volodya kept silent.

“Well, alright,” Braginsky sighed heavily, and, coming closer, clapped Volodya on the shoulder. “Call me if you need anything.”

“Right,” the latter replied, rising.

Left to himself, he gathered up his father’s organiser, ink blotter, and photo frame, and took them to one of the bookshelves. Volodya understood that the ‘museum’ feeling of the office would not disappear until all the furniture was changed, but for the first time ever, he did not want to escape from it. He began to get his files of documents, his diary, post-it notes, stationery, and his laptop with its heap of cables out from his box. In the blink of an eye, the desk ceased to look so big. 

In his moving box, Volodya found a whole ream of hospital forms and papers; there were more than a dozen cardiograms alone. That meant that his father had known that he was ill - and said nothing to him. Like always, ‘like a man’ he had acted rather than speaking - in the previous year, he had formally handed him the reins of the firm. In essence, they had run it together, but in the last year, his father had more and more often trusted him with making the big decisions himself. Volodya knew it all, he was not afraid of anything, not surprised by anything, and that played a cruel trick on him. If he had been worried about his work and anxious about his managerial duties, he might have had something behind which to hide from thinking about his father and his death.

Strange, but before last Wednesday, Volodya had never once called him dad. Even back when he was a child, it was just ‘father’, at work - Lev Nikolayevich. But on that day, as he hammered upon the door, he had called him it. He could still hear his own shout in his ears: Father. Father! Dad! And then he had called him it again in his mind when he broke open the door and had no breath left to speak.

When the door gave way, Volodya burst in and saw him. He was half-laying in the armchair in an unnatural pose: back arched, leg crooked, face twisted in a terrible spasm. It was a very good thing that they had sorted everything out at the morgue so that neither his mother, nor the partners, nor his relatives had to see his father like that.

And now Volodya was himself sat in that armchair. He needed to get to work.

“Lera,” he said, pressing the speakerphone button on the telephone, “bring me the week’s reports, please.”

After a couple of minutes, his secretary laid out the papers on the desk in front of him, commenting in passing what was worth his attention in each one. The telephone hummed with a short text; Volodya quickly glanced at the screen and chuckled knowingly.

“Lera,” he addressed her, cutting her off mid-word, “I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t happen to know where in town I could buy a Barbie mermaid doll, would you?” He double-checked the description on the screen and specified: “With a purple tail and sparkly hair.”

His secretary regarded him with obvious disbelief, but almost immediately her facial expression softened and she smiled.

“If it’s a proper Barbie you’re after, then they’re probably only selling them in the Detsky Mir in the city centre. I could phone there and find out.”

“Well…” In a moment, Volodya grew embarrassed - such a phone call had nothing to do with Lera’s duties. “If it’s not too much of a problem for you, I’d be very grateful.”

“It’s no issue. If they have it in stock, shall I ask them to set one aside?”

“Yes, until the evening. Thank you.”

Once Lera had left, Volodya looked gloomily at the stack of reports laying in front of him and sighed. My my, he thought, you can’t just buy any old mermaid, nothing will get past this kid.

***

From behind the door, voices and the gleeful shrieks of children could be heard. Volodya, already anticipating the chaos into which he would be plunged in a few seconds, pressed the doorbell. 

Pashka opened the door for him.

“Hello,” he nodded, allowing Volodya into the apartment.

“Heya!” replied Volodya. “Wow, you’ve had a growth spurt, you’re already as tall as me!”

“I’ve been doing sports with my old man all summer!” he shrugged.

Volodya did not even have the chance to bend down to unlace his shoes - something immediately flew at him, hugged him around the knee and began to howl:

“Hooray! Godfather’s come!”

“On God, Olka, if you were bigger and a bit stronger, you would have knocked me off my feet!” Volodya affected indignation as he squatted down.

Pashka gingerly slunk away between them, while Irina looked in from the hall. 

“My girl, give your godfather the chance to take his shoes off first, and then you can jump on his head,” she ordered strictly.

Olka took an unwanted step backwards while side-eyeing with suspicion the garish package that Volodya was unsuccessfully hiding behind his back.

“Here you go, my silly goose. Happy birthday!” He offered her the package. Olka immediately spun on her heels to go run to her room and open her present, but she froze stiff when her mum called her sternly:

“And what do we say?”

Sighing, she turned back to Volodya, who was untying his laces.

“Thank you, godfather.” And she gave him a quick peck on the cheek. 

He smiled at her and patted her on the crown of her blonde head.

“No problem.”

“Come through.” Irina invited him into the hall. “Did you find a mermaid?”

“Was ‘not finding one’ an option?”

In the hall, around a long table covered with a cloth, fifteen people were gathered. Of course, there were not enough chairs for everybody, so people were sat on everything: on the sofa, on kitchen stalls, and even on a computer chair. 

“Oh! Volodya, hey!” Zhenya waved at him from the opposite side of the table - the father of the household. He made as though to get out, but found himself stuck between the wall on one side, and his mother-in-law on the other. Separate greetings resounded from all sides of the table.

“Take a seat,” Irina addressed Volodya, “I’ll just go get you a clean plate.”

“How about over here?” Masha leapt up from the sofa - Volodya had not noticed her at first. She indicated a spot next to herself and pulled up an empty stool and a wine glass.

Volodya waved his hand sit down. To get to Masha, he would have had to disrupt the others and climb through half the table. 

The man next to whom Volodya sat promptly shouted loudly in his ear as he grabbed a bottle of vodka:

“Here’s the late-coming godfather! Take a penalty!”

Volodya did not remember what he was called - whether he was a Nikolai or a Vasily. He only knew that he was a trainer from Zhenya’s section who had worked with him previously at the same school.

“No, thank you, I’m driving.” Volodya covered his glass with his palm. 

“What?” The guy was outraged. “It’s your goddaughter’s birthday party and you won’t drink?”

“That’s for certain, Vladimir, you have to - it’s a tradition,” the old man sitting opposite, Irina’s father, added in support with an intelligent air.

You have a tradition, while I’ll have a taxi home and a car left in the city all weekend, Volodya bemoaned to himself, but he removed his hand from over the glass.

After one glass, according to the classic ‘between the first and the second…’ he was poured the next. The woman next to him, Zhenya’s sister or aunt, dutifully put two servings of salad on his plate and offered him a dish of herring.

On the whole, this party did not differ from any other - Irina, Zhenya and whoever else’s birthdays were all celebrated in the same way, and also New Year’s, Easter, May Day… Grandmothers, grandfathers, other relatives, close friends, close colleagues and their children, everyone all assembled.

Soon, Olka’s classmates left and the birthday girl was left the only one of the children. She sat in a chair in the far corner of the hall and began to play with her doll. 

Volodya dispassionately listened to snippets of conversations, trying not to intrude nor to support any of them.

“...Hey, do you remember Borya Kravchenko? What a wimp he was!” the older man sitting nearby cozied up to Zhenya. The latter was chewing on a piece of sausage and nodded. “Just one year I’ve had with him and what a warrior he’s become! The day before yesterday, he came third in regionals!”

“...Hey Masha, what’s up with the fur coat, do you know? Ira didn’t answer me…” a woman Volodya did not know said to Masha.

“It’s already on its way, it’s at the port in Odessa, we’re waiting for it. It’ll be here next week, I asked Ira and we’ll set one aside for you…”

Volodya could not even pick out the high-pitched child’s voice over the general hubbub until Olka was tugging on the sleeve of his shirt.

“Hey, godfather!”

“What is it?” He half-turned on his seat and bent down to face her.

“Look at her hair.” She thrust the doll at him. “Lo-o-ong! And there’s a comb in the box! And also these pretty little stars, I need to stick them to her hair! Can I stick them on you? It’ll be beautiful!”

“Olya!” Irina raised her voice sternly. “Come on, stop pestering your godfather with your toys, let him eat!”

“Everything’s alright, Irina, it’s her birthday, she’s allowed today.”

“For real, I’m allowed?”

Volodya winked at her and bent further forward, while Olka deftly attached a couple of sparkly little stars to his fringe. 

“Do you want to sit on my lap so that you can see everyone at the table?”

She nodded energetically, but Irina got in the way again:

“She’s already sat with the adults today, enough with her!”

Frowning, Olka quietly - so quietly that only Volodya could hear her - grumbled:

“This how it always is: it’s my birthday and all the adults are drinking vodka. I wanted cake by now, actually!” and she stomped off to her room, offended.

After sitting for another ten minutes, Volodya got up from the table.

By the way, Vov!” Zhenya exclaimed at him. “Go to the bathroom and take a look at how your workers did the tiling. It’s not half bad, I’ll say.”

“Alright, I’ll take a look later,” nodded Volodya.

“It’s good to have a friend in construction,” laughed Zhenya. “For renovations and repairs, it’s right to him. I suppose you’re sick of it by now?”

He shrugged:

“It’s not hard for me to make a couple of phone calls.”

“By the way, about repairs, Vova!” Irina, red from the rowanberry brandy, smiled. “When are you going to invite us to your new-build village?”

Volodya chuckled vaguely:

“What new-build, Irina? I’ve been living there five years already.”

“Just so! And you’ve never once invited us.”

“You know it’s not the best…” he tried to evade, but someone called out to Ira just in time.

Volodya went to the children’s room, knocked quietly and peeked inside without waiting for an answer.

Olka was sat on the bed, carefully combing the doll’s hair.

“Hey, silly goose,” Volodya called to her. She turned and burst into a smile as though she had not been upset at anyone fifteen minutes before. “Can I come in?”

She nodded, delighted, and budged up to invite Volodya to sit next to her.

“How about you show me your doll?”

Olka was nine that day, and each time that Volodya came to that home, she never left him alone until she received a scolding from her mum or dad. She wasted no time showing him all of her toys - and she had a veritable sea of them. Further - by all means, she had to hang off her godfather’s neck, play him a little ditty she had recently learnt on the piano, brag about her collection of cartoons… The list could have gone on forever, as she kept coming up with new ways to entertain him. And Volodya was not against spending the time messing around with her. However, he could not help remembering his years as a camp counsellor: if someone had told him back then that in twenty years, he would love spending time with kids…

“Wait, we should put her in the bath!” babbled Olka in delight. “She has su-u-uch long hair, it’ll look so cool…swimming! When I grow up, I’ll grow mine the same!”

“And what else have you gotten today? Anything even better than the mermaid?”

“Well… My parents and Pashka gave me some Lego - it’s over there, look.” She jabbed a finger at the windowsill. “A princess castle! Grandpa Vanya and Grandma Nadya got me a collection of Kinder eggs, but mummy told me not to eat them all at once.” At that, Olka frowned and mimicked Irina: “You’ll get an allergy-y-y! My godmother couldn’t come, but she gave me a watch. Look how pretty it is, with Mickey Mouse! But Grandad Stasik brought me, get this, a massive book!”

Volodya smiled. Yes, Irina’s father taught at a university, and to give a child a ‘smart’ gift was entirely his style. 

“And what book is it?”

“It’s laying around over there.” She pointed behind Volodya. There really was a book on her pillow, thick and clearly heavy. The Captain Nemo and The Nautilus Trilogy in One Volume, he read.

“Olya, a book doesn’t just ‘lay around’. It should be stacked properly on a shelf, especially Jules Verne!”

“Bah! Books are boring!”

Volodya lightly prodded her on the forehead.

“Silly. Books are good, they’re knowledge! Come on, why do you think your godfather is so smart? Because he read a lot of books when he was a kid!”

Olka stuck her hands on her hips and said moodily:

“I’m not so sure that you even are that smart!”

“Ah, you little jerk!” Volodya burst into laughter. “Now I’m going to… tickle you!”

Olka, squealing and laughing, ran away to the wall. 

Volodya wanted to bound after her and make good on his threat, but he heard a knock at the door. Masha came into the room.

“Volod… I’m not getting in the way, am I? I need to talk.”

Volodya frowned: he had only a vague idea why Masha could need him, so he just shrugged. She sat down next to him.

Olka was running around the room and gathering her toys up in her arms, counting them:

“Let’s see… you, Tyndik, and you, Murka, and you, Kesh, and you, Persik…”

The toys would not fit in her arms and they fell on the floor, but she stubbornly continued to run and count them.

“Alas,” sighed Masha. “Irina’s lucky to have a daughter and not a son…”

Volodya looked at her with suspicion.

“You haven’t forgotten that they do have a son?”

She smirked somehow gloomily:

“Well, yeah, of course… But they have a complete family, Pashka is a good guy…”

Volodya frowned more than before, while Masha suddenly reached out to him and grabbed him by the wrist.

“Volod, I just wanted to ask you-” And she faltered mid-sentence. 

“What?”

“Um… I…No, it’s nothing much, just…”

She reached out and took the doll accessories out of his hair.

Olka burst into the conversation, pouring a heap of toys onto Volodya’s lap:

“Here, get to meet them, you’ve definitely not seen these ones yet! Persik and Gavka for sure!”

“Right… And which one of them is Gavka?” Volodya took a lively interest.

“The robot dog, obviously! Here!”

“Oh-hoh!” He turned the transformer robot, which was already missing a leg, over in his hands, but he still did not understand why it was a dog. 

Masha continued to hesitate, standing at the threshold of the room. Volodya turned to her. 

“So, what was it you wanted to ask? Tell me.”

She gave one definitive shake of her head.

“Oh no, I can’t like this!” And she left.

Volodya shrugged and picked up, he assumed, Persik, although it was a stuffed rabbit. Meanwhile, Olka was already hurtling to the other end of the room and opening the lid of her piano. 

“I’ve just learnt a new étude, now you’re going to hear it,” she declared in a tone that brooked no refusal, as she looked at Volodya severely. 

“Aye-aye, captain!”

***

The hour hand was getting on for eight in the evening. The office had long since emptied and only three people remained: Volodya was clacking away on the keyboard of his laptop as he wrote a stiffly-worded letter to a contractor, Lera was rustling through some papers in the entryway, and the security guard was downstairs watching the television. The fact that each of the three could hear what the others were doing made it cozy, homelike in its mutual trust. It was very easy to work in such an atmosphere, but it got very hot. The beginning of September in Kharkiv did not hurry to take pleasure in autumn coolness. Even though twilight had already descended upon the city, the temperature seemed not to be planning to fall, and there was no point in the air conditioner. They had had to throw all the doors wide open to allow a draught to waft through.

“Lera, is it not time for you to go home?” said Volodya in the hallway. 

The fact that she was still at work made him uncomfortable, as though he were forcing her to stay. 

“Yes, Vladimir Lvovich, I’ll finish this plan for tomorrow and leave.”

A couple of minutes later, a ring of someone entering came from the front door on the ground floor, and the security guard grumbled:

“It’s closed already, everyone’s gone home.”

Lera poked her head in the boss’s office and asked whether they were expecting someone? Volodya shook his head. Lera strode off downstairs, while Volodya dove back into his letter. Footsteps made him come back up for air - Lera was coming up the stairs, and not alone. The footsteps clearly belonged to a woman - there was the clack of high-heels. 

“Vladimir Lv-” Lera began, but fell short when she saw Volodya in the doorway. He was stood there looking perplexedly at his visitor - an embarrassed Masha, smiling as she glanced out from behind the secretary’s back.

“Hello?” Volodya asked more than he greeted.

Masha did not greet him at all, and the uneasy smile disappeared from her face.

“I really need to speak with you.”

“You could have called…” Volodya remarked, but he stepped aside, inviting her in. 

Masha hesitantly passed through the hallway and froze on the threshold to his office.

“It’s not a conversation for the phone. And… I need to speak with you urgently,” she repeated. “May I?”

Behind her, something crashed - Lera had begun bustling about and dropped a hole punch. She was throwing her things indiscriminately into her bag: a stapler flew in after her mobile phone. The situation had taken on different meanings for different people: a woman had come to Volodya’s office, while his secretary was trying to hurriedly get ready for home, in order to leave them alone together as fast as possible. By her behaviour, Lera seemed to be demonstrating what she thought Masha’s role in his life was. In his private life. But the thing was, there was nothing going on there to worry about.

“Come in, take a seat.” Volodya pointed out the sofa. “Only, I’ll warn you: I don’t have much time. There’s still things to be done today… I need to take my mother to the airport.”

“That’s why I came. Zhenya was right when he said that you’re forever busy.”

So that’s who told her where I work, thought Volodya, but Masha cut his thought off:

“I was going to talk to you back there at Irina and Zhenya’s, but Olechka was in the room. And what I wanted to ask was-” Masha sighed raggedly and pursed her lips. The door to the office closed behind her and the lock clicked, barely audible, but Masha still flinched. And burst into tears: “It’s so hard! I’ve got such a big problem at home!”

Volodya rubbed his temples, exhausted.

“What happened? He came close to adding ‘this time’.

If anyone besides her had turned up on the doorstep of his office and talked about big problems, Volodya might have been worried. But it was Masha. All she could arouse in him was disappointment that the time spent with her had gone to waste. This person was as uninteresting to Volodya as people were generally capable of being uninteresting. Over the course of several years meeting her at Irina and Zhenya’s parties, Volodya had only heard ‘men are such asses’ in various contexts. And if Masha was not talking about that, nor complaining about her life, then she was going on some vapid and pointless rant: about boring work, clothes, stupid customers, clothes, low pay, clothes, blah, blah, blah. They never really made conversation with each other. Until that Friday. 

“You’re the only one who can help me!” Her face was twisted in despair. “You’re my only hope!”

It looked as though something truly serious had befallen Masha, but why should he, in particular, be her only hope?

“I have a hard time seeing how I can help you,” began Volodya. He faltered - Masha was staring at him so pleadingly, her gaze full of prayer. “But I’m prepared to hear you out. Will you have anything, tea or coffee?”

“No, I don’t need anything,” she shook her head as she sat on the leather sofa by the window and looked around.

Volodya began to feel ashamed of the state of his office: stacks of papers, files, and blueprints were strewn everywhere. It was only evident to him, Braginsky and Lera that everything was in its right place, and only to an outsider would it look disorderly. Masha - not a colleague, not a friend, barely even an acquaintance - was the most likely person out of anybody to be considered an outsider, but she did not even raise an eyebrow as she glanced disinterestedly around the backlog of documents.

Volodya cleared his throat.

“Or maybe something a little bit stronger?” he suggested, nodding to a bottle of cognac that Braginsky had gifted him.

“No, tea… is it in bags?” she asked, but, having received a nod as an answer, rethought: “Then no, coffee. Coffee.”

“Okay,” he trailed off as he went out of the office into the empty entry hallway. “Instant, or should I brew some?”

“I don’t mind,” shouted Masha after he disappeared past the door. “Actually, no. Better brew some.”

She’s playing for time, guessed Volodya, and he set to unhurriedly working the coffee machine.

Five minutes later, he placed a mug on the coffee table in front of Masha and took a seat in his armchair. Masha stared at the floor in silence.

“You have my full attention,” said Volodya to pull her out of her stupor. 

Masha took a deep, full chest of air and rattled off, almost without pause:

“I’m here about my son, Dima. He’s in his first term of tenth grade, and I’m working almost without weekends. So, last week I fell ill, and asked Irina if I could go home. I arrived and there was music in my apartment, loud music, at full blast, and shoes strewn on the floor - and not just ours, someone else’s as well. I saw them and thought ‘that means Dima’s not alone’. I wanted to ask him to turn it down a bit, I went up to his door, it was ajar, and I accidentally saw him- that he was making-” Masha froze and made a face and tears began to stream, “making out with a boy!”

Masha’s tragedy seemed far-fetched to Volodya, but his heart clenched in genuine sympathy at the sight of eyes, red from crying. That along with her pose made Masha look truly tormented and pitiful: she was sat hunched over in the midst of his spacious office, decorated with items displaying the pride of the firm and proof of Volodya’s achievements - diplomas and photographs of successful projects. Small, fragile and distraught, with her mascara running and a button hanging by a thread off her wrist, she shuddered as she tried to suppress her sobbing. 

“Uh-huh…” said Volodya, adding as delicately as he could, “So that’s your problem, right?”

Masha sobbed and nodded. Evidently she had followed his gaze - she grabbed her cuff and hid the button, then awkwardly wiped her face.

“Will you help me?”

“With what?” Volodya prompted, confused. 

“But you… You’ve gone through something similar, you know what to do in cases like these…”

“No, I don’t. I truly don’t.”

Masha leapt up, almost knocking her mug to the floor and cried out:

“But you can’t say no to me! You can’t! It’s fate! God helped me see that poster! You turned out so… ideally. Without it, I wouldn’t even have remembered!”

Volodya was finally thrown for a loop. He frowned, crossed his arms and cut her off:

“What poster?”

“Huh?” As though in surrender, Masha sat back down on the sofa. “Poster? Oh yeah, it was about pioneers. It made me remember that you and Konev had something going on and-”

“Did you tell your son about me?”

“No, no, of course not! He doesn’t know that I saw them! I was left in such a stupor, and then shock, and I immediately ran out of the apartment. I was upset, I wondered how it could be. I wanted so badly to catch them, to tear the eyes out of that ‘friend’ of his, but in my right mind, I knew that it wasn’t worth it to make any hasty conclusions, much less to do anything. Because… because I already made that mistake once. It was almost like an episode of déjà-vu. You remember, at Lastochka-”

“I remember,” Volodya cut her short. “Alright. Let’s go through this in order: you remembered that Yura and I used to have something once. And what of it? What came of it? What, specifically, do you want to hear from me?”

“I want to know whether maybe Dima’s just mucking around? Maybe for youths of his age, it’s normal? He’s still only sixteen.”

“Well, no,” Volodya laughed, “two guys kissing isn’t a joke. If they were heterosexual, they wouldn’t be making out, so it follows that your Dima is most likely gay or bisexual.”

Volodya expected that after what he had just said, Masha would fall to pieces, but it seemed like she had been swapped out for a different person. She straightened up, wiped her face, looked Volodya in the eye bravely, defiantly even, and loudly, distinctly pronounced:

“No! That can’t be! Dimochka is a good boy, he’d never-”

With a sad smile, Volodya shook his head:

“Never say never. You might think that you know him inside-out, but he’s a separate person and you can’t get into his head.”

But neither his gestures, nor his words convinced Masha; she continued with even stronger insistence:

“That means he was forced into kissing him, he’s not a homo! That could be the case, right?” Masha’s voice took on a hard edge, such as Volodya had never heard before that evening. The only thing that gave away her uncertainty was the button hanging from her wrist, with which she was nervously fidgeting.

Homo, Volodya repeated to himself, his lip curling, but he replied calmly:

“It could be, it could be, it depends on how DIma reacted.”

“How am I supposed to know how he reacted, I left before-” the thread that she had been harassing snapped and the button struck the floor and rolled beneath a shelving unit. “-Before they finished.”

“And anyway,” Volodya put out there reflectively, “his first reaction doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Even if Dima pushed him away, it’s not a certain fact that he really was against it.”

I once pushed him away myself…, he almost said out loud as he recollected how he had once been in Dima’s position. His memory blazed with the smell of apples, the sight of the big brown eyes in front of him, full of fear, the touch of cold lips upon his own, the sound of blood thumping in his ears.

“Exactly!” exclaimed Masha, scaring off the flickering memory. “It’s his friend that’s got something wrong with him, not Dima. I have to split them up!”

“Don’t even think about it! Dima can choose for himself what kind of friend he needs and what he doesn’t.”

Masha burst into life and exclaimed:

“I won’t let that pervert come even one step closer to my son!”

“Gays are perverts to you, then?” Volodya laughed contemptuously. “You’ve not changed one bit.”

“Well-” Masha immediately faltered and went red. “Not at all, I just meant-”

Her incomprehensible babbling was interrupted by the ringing of Volodya’s mobile. He raised a hand, asking Masha to be silent, and answered it. His mother’s tired voice came through the speaker:

“My boy, are you on your way? I’ve been ready for half an hour already. Maybe I should call a taxi anyway?”

“No, there’s no need, I’ll drive you myself,” he said calmly, but internally, he was effing and blinding at himself. Masha had distracted him. Caught up in the problems of a different mother, he had forgotten about his own. 

“You have to get there three hours before the flight, and it’s already-”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” he interrupted her. “I’m on my way, hang on.”

“Alright… I’ll sit in the drive until-”

Volodya pressed the end call button and swore through gritted teeth without restraint. He closed his laptop with the letter still unfinished and looked at Masha.

“This conversation is certainly captivating,” hissed Volodya as he got up from his chair, “but I need to say goodbye, I have things to do.”

“No, Volodya, wait. I didn’t mean you!”

Volodya chuckled sceptically as he put his jacket on:

“Whatever you say…”

They left the office and, while Volodya turned the key in the door, Masha was justifying herself, looking over his shoulder:

“You’re not a pervert. It’s Konev that led you astray - that’s what I wanted to say.”

Volodya said nothing in reply. 

When they had descended to the ground floor, Masha turned her head to the security guard and added quietly:

“Besides, I have no right to judge you.”

“But you do have the right to judge Yura?” asked Volodya once they were outside. He anticipated a new flood of explanations and reassured her: “Fine, I understood you Mash, forget about it.”

“No, you’re still… Anyway, I’m sorry,” mumbled Masha, abashed. “We’ll stay in touch, yes?”

“See you, Masha,” said Volodya, immediately regretting that he had not said ‘farewell’.

***

Despite the fact that Volodya had been kept behind, they made it on time for the flight. The road to the airport felt interminably long - all because of his mother’s conversation, because of the topics she raised. But Volodya did not try and close the conversations down; he knew that his mother was unable to keep quiet about such topics. 

“Are you sure you need to go? Perhaps you’d be better off at home? Familiarity is good for you…”

“I can’t stay here anymore,” she sighed heavily. “Before, when someone died, even if it were a relative, I didn’t think about what a shame it was that they were no longer there. I didn’t grieve with their loved ones. I was scared that it could happen to me - that, at some point, someone truly close to me would die. So close that I couldn’t live without them. What would become of me when Levushka, my husband, half of my life, left me? And now that day has come.”

She spoke quietly, but it was frightening for Volodya to listen to her words, her voice even more so. Usually so high, girlishly musical, now it sounded dry and lifeless. Volodya wanted to ignore her, but how could he? Of course he could not. Therefore, he drove without taking his eyes off the road and listened to her patiently. In the corner of his eye, he saw that his mother was also looking straight ahead. That was probably why she continued to speak without noticing the pain distorting her son’s face:

“That’s why I want to go. It’s too much for me here. I feel his absence too strongly here. I walk around the apartment and I don’t want to live by myself. But I can at least change the scenery. I’m unused to living alone.”

They fell silent. But the silence weighed down even more oppressively, it became thick and icy. Quite literally icy - goosebumps ran down Volodya’s back and he went as far as turning off the air conditioning.

“Is the price of a life with someone you love not too high?” he said, the first thing that came into his head, just so as not to be silent. His own voice sounded impolitely loud. “Isn’t it easier to live alone?”

His question was rhetorical, but his mother found something to say. In the second’s pause before her reply, Volodya had time to reflect and understand that he did not have, and likely never had, someone as close to him as his father had been to his mother.

“It’s the only way life’s worth living. Otherwise there’d be no point in it. You probably think it really is easier to live alone, but I don’t understand how a young man such as yourself can be alone for so long, without a family. How many years have gone by since you split up with Sveta? Almost ten? She was the only girlfriend of yours that I ever knew about.”

Volodya laughed to himself, You’re not alone. I also haven’t known about any others. And really, how do you know how many years it’s been so well? Have you been counting?

Then his mother added:

“Or are you just not telling me that there is someone for you?”

The conversation had swung in the opposite direction, and perhaps his mother had intentionally changed the topic. Volodya did not notice when the stupor brought on by the thinking about death had passed, but it had shifted into a no less unpleasant feeling - as though he were pressed up against a wall.

“No,” he forced out.

“How is that possible? Look at yourself, the girls must be tripping over each other to get at you.”

“I’ve just not met the right person yet, and going after the first person who comes by is a thankless task,” he replied as unaffectedly as he could, feeling his hands begin to get sweaty on the steering wheel. 

“I do understand, my boy. You think that since you’re a man and giving birth’s not your problem, there’s no need to hurry. But old age creeps up on you before you know it, you don’t feel it coming. You’ve been getting worn out more often, haven’t you… but you do work a lot, though, right? Or something starts to hurt - well, fine, when didn’t it hurt?” The smell of his mother’s perfume wafted in tiny, barely noticeable currents beneath the roof, over the dashboard, the steering wheel, his hands, connecting them, tying them together. Volodya kept silent, but his mother continued: “But then old age just lands on you all in a moment. And you think, it’s like you’ve lived and lived, but for who? You know, I’ve only just now realised that nobody needs me: you’re already all grown-up, your father’s not here anymore-”

“Weren’t you just telling me about the ideal love, the whole meaning of life?” He had finally thought of how to reply. “Then don’t hurry me along. And don’t try to manipulate me.”

“I’m not manipulating you, I’m just sharing with you what I’ve been thinking about because of your dad,” his mother justified herself and then fell silent. Volodya followed her example. 

They only started speaking to each other again once they had reached the airport. 

“You need to sort out your father’s things,” said his mother, having paused in front of the metal detector. 

“I already have,” responded Volodya reflexively.

“I meant at home. We need to get rid of all his clothes before the fortieth day. I didn’t want to force this on you but… They’re everywhere I go and I can’t even hold them. Take them, please. So that I can come without bumping into them everywhere.” 

“Alright,” nodded Volodya.

“You understand, I can’t bring myself to do it. You understand, I want everything to stay the way it is, so I can still feel like he’s-” Her voice broke. Volodya gave his mother’s hand a squeeze. She gathered her strength and continued, by then calm and clear: “Give his friends to people you know and whatever they don’t take, give to the poor or the church. Burn the rest.”

“What about his personal things? His books, his phone, souvenirs…”

“Don’t get rid of them. Put them in storage somewhere. Or take them home with you. You have the bigger place, that’s where you should take them.”

“Understood. I’ll do that.”

They were a long, painful time in parting. His mother cried, stood on tip-toes and stroked his head, his shoulders, his chest. She did not let him out of her embrace and kept repeating, “Forgive me, my boy, if I hurt you somehow, if I said something wrong. It’s probably my fault that you’re alone.” Volodya muttered, “Don’t be silly. It’s all okay.” He worried for her: for how she would find her way around, for how she would do on the flight, for how she would be received, and most importantly - for how she would live there without him. But the voice of reason calmed him: Mother’s not going to be left alone. She was flying to her sister in her home city - Moscow. And besides Moscow, she was headed to Tver, to Volodya’s uncle and cousin, Vova, who had not been able to come to the funeral, but still insisted that she come to visit.

The whole way home, he turned their conversation over in his mind several times. It was a rotten thing: her tears clawed at his heart, the pit of his stomach ached with pity and sorrow, his conscience was tortured because of how he had managed to speak rudely to her. It only eased up once Volodya saw a mention of home by the road - a sign with the name of his cottage village, ‘The Swallow’s Nest’. 

“A very unfortunate name,” criticised his father as he accepted the project six years prior. “It’ll be associated with the castle on the crag in Yalta, but is there even anything here that resembles that? No, not the architecture, nor the landscape, nothing has anything in common with the real Swallow’s Nest. And you still insist on calling it that. Why?”

His father had been right: the village was spread among fields and copses that stretched as far as the eye could see. No crag, no mountains, let alone the sea. The two-storey wooden homes in the Scandinavian style with their panoramic windows did not even roughly resemble that specific castle. The village was not named because it stood upon an elevation. Swallows no longer flew there, nor did they make their nests. The river had run dry and the pioneer camp Lastochka had long since lain in ruins. But it was because all that had once been there that Volodya named the village - named his home - thus. But his father had agreed to go along with it with difficulty - and that only after long convincing.

Volodya passed through the barrier into the village’s territory and began to meander his way along the familiar route amongst the identical cottages. His house was at the very outskirts. Identical to the rest, it was differentiated only by its very wide yard, several times larger than those of his neighbours, and by its fence, the tallest of them all.

As soon as Volodya got out of the car, the air shuddered with Gerda’s high-pitched bark. Volodya whistled and she flew to meet him at the gate, trying without success to knock it down. He prepared to open it. It needed to be done with caution, lest the dog knock him off his feet - she was already jumping around like she was possessed. Volodya whistled again, she whined and fell quiet, and when the door was opened, she laid flat on her back, her belly up in the air. Volodya squatted down and began to fuss over her like a child:

“Good girl, go-o-od girl. Did you miss me, my girl? I missed you too.”

As he stroked her furry stomach, he took a habitual look at his house, stood like an unwelcoming hulk against the backdrop of the blue-grey sky.

“We’ll turn the light on and it’ll look better, right?”

After crossing the threshold, he went across the small hallway and into the wide, bright living room, which shared a space with the kitchen. He went to the bathroom, undoing the knot of his tie along the way, took out his contact lenses and rubbed his eyes with satisfaction - they had been tired for the whole day. He put his glasses on.

In the living room, Gerda hurtled like a bullet towards the vast window, stuck her nose behind the curtain and began to howl in despair.

“What is it?” Volodya approached her and looked out into the garden. 

It looked as though there was nothing there out of the ordinary for him or upsetting for Gerda. Everything was like always: sky, stars, the broad glade, the little copse in the distance.

“Oh…” sighed Volodya when he noticed what was disrupting the peace. In a spot of light on the back of a garden chair, there sat, observing them, a graceful swallow.

[studyblrbymaya]

so, i’m back. it’s been a couple of months, we’re moving into my least favourite two seasons where i’m going to experience severe mental illness, far worse than my usual, i’m going into my country’s hardest year of education, we’ve had a pathetic summer (if you can even call it that), and guess what? none of my studying has paid off. al of the hours of studying that i’ve put in throughout my life? pointless. in that 2 hour exam, i destroyed my future.

i spent this whole summer working my socks off for this exam that determines my future, and i failed. i had my heart set on 4 universities, and i am now unable to apply to any of them. any of the tiny hints of certainty that there once were have completely disappeared: all of my hard work, and it went nowhere. a whole summer in my study, for absolutely nothing. i’ve lost faith, cried, had really, seriously nasty thoughts, and a week later, i’m shocked that i’m still here. i wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy: it is hell. absolute hell.

i’m having to alter my original plan for where to apply: i feel like an utter failure. i’m embarrassed, i’m lost, and i have absolutely no clue what my life is going to look like. absolutely no clue whatsoever.

the possibility of anything good happening for me now is all gone: i feel so stupid for hoping for my dreams to come true, so stupid for having fun now because i feel like the stereotypical stupid person who deserves nothing good, and so stupid for wasting a summer working. every single minute of all of my education feels useless and it feels like there’s no point continuing with it. i feel like i’ve let myself and my family down and i really don’t see anything improving. honestly, i’m so lost.

unlike most of my other posts, this one genuinely doesn’t have a meaning. there’s nothing behind it. no special message about how ‘you should never give up, even when it’s hard!!!’ because for me, there is no point. no message about what i’ve learnt from this (apart from that i’m a serious failure), literally nothing. im meant to be preparing my application for sendoff in 2 weeks, and none of it is ready. i’m throwing in the towel right now. i am tired, sick of being hopeful only for nothing good to come of anything. i’m absolutely exhausted, inadequate, reeling, a let-down. all of that wasted money, effort, and time. a whole summer and hundreds of pounds wasted on my failure. it honestly feels like i’ve been being hit by a brick for the past 6 weeks. i’m back to square one with self care, i’ve forgotten what i enjoy, i just can’t. im not okay right now and just feel so embarrassed. i’ve no clue how im going to face school or studying again. everything is so, so unbelievably dark right now.

no tags. i just need to get this off of my chest.