#it depends on which country you're from i guess

[mishkakagehishka]

With the language speaking poll, it varies from country (and state/county in the US)

In my area you're required 2 years of a language course

Most kids take it but do the bare minimum or just don't remember it. Usually you grow up knowing that language/being taught it young. Sometimes we learn jt in school and remember enough to keep taking to learn and remember. We usually offer use it or lose it languages, which most kids don't use it and then they lose it and then no one speaks other languages

Huh! That makes sense, actually, i feel like 2 years is not nearly enough to retain enough knowledge, and not even enough to learn a lot. I think when i started studying italian in 4th grade, we didn't even get to subjunctives by the time i was 8th grade, and subjunctives are a surprisingly common form. At least to the way I speak. And even among those who took the elective third language, i know a lot of folks who don't remember a thing about it, i'm assuming because even four years of a once-per-week class isn't enough for retention.

Well, it's sad, at least to me who is linguistically inclined. Quot linguas calles tot homines vales is something i take personally lololol but right! I guess it's the sort of inertion that happens to speakers of a lingua franca, there's no "need" to learn a foreign language, so even those who are talented for languages might never find out :/

Well, I hope thanks to globalisation, at least those who like foreign languages can find ways to learn even outside of formal schooling :>

[cinary]

I'm curious how many times an avarage person (or as close as a tumblr user can get to being one) has been on a plane so tell me

A trip one way counts as 1 time, so if you flew somewhere and then came back (for example to and from a different country on a holiday) then that counts as two trips because you boarded the plane twice. I have decided to do it this way because I have traveled one way by plane and came back by train a few times and I guess some of you probably did that too.

Also! If you can tell me in the tags how many times you traveled by plane and which country you're from I'd be very grateful! I'm curious if there is any difference depending on a size of a country/continent you're from.

[kaibutsushidousha]

Kodaka April Fools tweets 2024

Lying just because it's April Fools' is so dull. Honestly painful to watch. Lying in general doesn't do you any good. In my younger days, I told every lie I could, saying some genuinely insane stuff about being a supreme leader of evil and whatnot, and thanks to that, now that I'm in my thirties, I got famous for all the wrong reasons and can't find a stable job because people think I'm associated with the yakuza... Sigh, I wanna deck my cringe younger self's face. Quit lying for fun while you can.

My classmates aren't doing great either. Thinking you're hot shit during your school days always comes back to bite you... My advice to my past self: slow and steady effort is worth more than any talent. Also, the part of life you spent larping with that silly horse laugh is not going to be one you'll want to remember later. I wish I could make that clear to him. White lies aren't a thing. Talent is never enough. My class is proof of that. Wanna know what my classmates are like now that we're in our thirties?

Akamatsu became a piano teacher. Her player skills capped off in her teens, it seems. But she's not that good at teaching so she's considered kinda mid at her job. And now she's struggling with the father of a student incessantly hitting on her. Tough world to live in.

Toujou opened a housekeeping company but she was too strict with her employees so everyone quit. And now she's doing everything on her own. Sucks to be in your thirties without any successors or employees. She's a prime example of how being so much better than anyone else doesn't do you any good. Well, she's always working for celebrities, so she's doing well financially, but I heard about some major court fight about a missing item under suspicion of theft from one of her clients. That can't be nice.

Yumeno got to her thirties still saying magic is real, so she's past the point of no return. She agrees that's an unhinged way to live, but she's too old to suddenly change gimmicks. Work takes her all over the country, but her gimmick doesn't allow her to publicly drink, so she has to get plastered alone in her hotel room after shows. I wish she could fix her life with real magic.

Harukawa? ...Haven't heard that name in a long time. Now she was a living edgy fantasy. The past tense was because I hadn't heard of her in a long time. I don't know the details, but apparently, she went to some war zone outside of Japan because her first love didn't want to date her. Takes some real edgelord to react to a broken heart like that, but if she's still alive, I have no idea how her thirties are treating her. My personal guess is that she's a mother of many.

Chabashira opened her Aikido school but is having a hard time attracting students. So she had the idea of starting an anti-sexual-harassment campaign that could double as advertisement, but thanks to her cluelessness when it comes to romance, she got canceled for mistakenly tossing men in regular couples. She's still doing the "degenerate males" bit in her thirties. Girl really needs to get on with the times. Rumor goes that she still downs huge packs of tequila bottles with Yumeno every now and then. Really don't think there's any salvaging her reputation.

Shirogane is an office lady still continuing her cosplay hobby on the side. She could be doing well if she knew how to keep her mouth shut but frequently rambles about cosplay history and etiquette, so no one likes having her around. Stay emotionally dependent on a single hobby long enough and your passion starts to close you off to others. That's her problem.

Angie was the most successful in the class! She made big money both on the art and the religion fronts. However, there were some controversies about her devotees selling counterfeits of her paintings at exorbitant prices and one magazine made a huge news coverage of it, which resulted in her catching the police's attention. She's been recently untraceable, with the rumors saying that she'll never be back to Japan.

Oh, and Iruma... Up until some point, she had the best life of all of us. She made big money off of her inventions' patents. So far so good. Things only started going off-rails after she married an ex-stripper. The two started a YouTube channel together. And later, her husband ran in last year's elections and lost big time. They got an awful debt from his election campaign and she had to get into side jobs to pay it off. And her husband? Disappeared. No word from Iruma herself about what happened. Tough world to live in.

No further updates from Kodaka in the past 3 hours, so I assume he went to sleep and will come back to tweet about the 7 remaining boys in the morning.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Wait, what? England refers to the London and co area and Britain is the whole island? I was so sure it was the contrary! So Welsh people are British?

This ask briefly made me crave unspeakable violence.

BUT THIS IS OF COURSE WRONG OF ME, because you're here and asking, so in the interests of education and to be super clear:

These are the countries of the UK. England is just the bit in orange here look. It's one single country.

The United Kingdom is so named because it's a combo of more than one kingdom, aka several countries operating a Megazord (which it used to wage war on all but 22 other countries on the planet). Great Britain is roughly the same thing as the UK. It's not exactly the same - to be super correct, it's a geographical term rather than a political one and just refers to the landmass that is mainland UK, rather than Northern Ireland and the Crown Dependencies and all that jazz - but honestly, they get used increasingly interchangeably.

Crucially, though, as you can see on that map, England is a separate country from Wales, and Wales is a British country. If you have been calling us English, you need to cut that shit out right now, good lord you could get us all killed.

But! I have noticed a sharp uptick in Americans on this site trying to interact with my Celtophobia posts and saying sentences like "It's terrible how the British oppressed the Welsh", so this is well-timed. It's like everyone heard the sentiment "Stop saying England when you mean Britain" - which is used to try and stop Celtic erasure - and then rather than finding out the difference, they just assumed "England" is a Bad Word and the PC progressive term is "Britain", which... well. Points for trying I guess, but "Britain tried to stamp out the Welsh language by whipping children whose parents spoke Welsh" is a hell of a thing I have repeatedly had to read this year. And meanwhile, on the flip side, I still have to see "England/English politics" tagged onto my politics posts. I am a thousand years old. I am so tired.

Anyway, thank you for reaching out, friend!

[threepandas]

Bad End: Eve

You know how most Otome games are vaguely historical? Usually some non-specific mishmash of European countries? But fluffier and with more bows? It had once "gotten" to me, I think. I remember looking for outliers. Non-joke ones. Something that wasn't just "but this time with hats!"

I found one.

And now? Now I'm not sure if I curse that day or thank whatever force of nature lead me there. I guess... I guess it depends. Would I still have ended up HERE? If I had not found it? If so, then I genuinely and actually fucking rue it. Like... like actual "you'll rue the day! Bwahaha!" Type rue it. That's me. Ruing.

But? If it was always going to happen?

Then I guess...

I guess I'm weirdly glad. Because at least I have some fucking idea of what's going ON. Terrible, as it all is. Fucked, as the situation is. At least I'm not... not confused. Blind and at the mercy of those around me. Ignorance truely isn't bliss. All it does is leave you to try an fill in the blanks yourself. Usually with something far worse.

Not that the situation could GET much worse, by much.

I was in an Otome game. NOT a flower, high society, and dragons kind either. No. I? Was in a Dark Sci-Fi otome game. "Fate of man" was thrown around a lot. Power of luuuuv~ and such. Also, you know, HORRIFIC ethical violations. Human experimentation. Cataclysmic events and humanity "starting over".

All the high drama sci-fi concepts you could expect. It was a romp. Had good art. I'd had fun! Which is why I remember it so clearly.

Less fun when you're IN IT.

When you AREN'T one of the characters you KNOW will survive.

In fact, are one of the characters you know WON'T fucking survive. And will probably die MESSY. Horribly. Cause see, our BELOVED Harem collecting Protagonist? She? Was AN Eve. "AN".

Take a wild fucking guess what THAT project is about.

Did you say "breeding a better race of humans"? Ding ding ding! With humanity currently fucked, they want to FIX the problem by FIXING humanity. And of course, fuck ethics! Volunteers? Why use those?! Let's horrifically mad scientist our way to atrocity-ville! Make it all the more "God rightfully punishing us for our unforgivable sins" when we get wiped out!

Fffffffuck YOU, plot! I have to live here too!

You may, in fact, be picking up a slight note of stir crazy. A "wow, this lady rambles like a mother fucker" vibe. You would TOO, if you were stuck in a FUCKING TUBE. All I can do, day in and day out? Is wake, think, observe, then go right back to sleep. I can't even eat! I got a TUBE for that!

I... I miss showers.

Everything is GOO.

I'm an Eve. And if it weren't for the air tube controlng my breathing? I'd laughing hysterically until I died. And no, not in the "oh how funny" way. God. Oh... oh god. What a way to die. NONE of the Eves survive "the program".

Those IDIOTS are so OBSESSED with making bigger and bigger, better and better, FUCKING JUGGERNAUTS? That the Adams? Have long since reached the point of "mindless killing machine". UNSTABLE is putting it lightly. There is sexual dimorphism and then there's literal incompatibility.

But GOD FORBID the scientists admit that THEY are the ones with the inferior product.

It... it was even part of the game's plot. The scientist who made "Eve" HID her while HE made an Adam. I do not have that luxury. Somewhere, there is an unstable BESERKER being told I'm his "wife". That we're going to be HAPPY together. That he'll get to put his bruising, blood soaked hands anywhere he WANTS... just after he WINS me from the other Adam's.

Got to prove HE'S the best specimen, after all.

It makes my skin crawl. All I can hope, is that I can either provoke the bastard enough to kill me before they have a chance to stop him, or? I use my own enhanced strength to snap my neck. Maybe bite my tounge. Like HELL am I letting an Adam get near me.

The hiss of laboratory doors.

"Perfection at last..." Comes a relieved sigh. "All those HIDEOUS specimens. Why they make me suffer them, I'll never understand. We should have terminated them months ago. My poor project, they really think they're WORTHY of you..."

There's a derisive laugh. The scientist strolling into the lab I've been developing in, familiar. I watch him casually shrug off his lab coat and dump is bag. Hang his coat over the back of his chair. Turn, as he does each day, to STARE up at me. His eyes are a pale, pale purple the likes of which I've never seen before.

They're HAUNTING.

There is almost a red tint to them, though maybe that's the lights. The goo. I can never tell. He always looks ENTRANCED by me. Floating, visored, connected to far too many tubes an' wires. I'd think it was the fact that I was naked if it weren't for the way his gaze doesn't seem to drift lower then my shoulders. Seems more entranced by the way my hair moves, as though under water.

I've never once heard him talk about me lustfully.

But that doesn't mean he doesn't SCARE me.

"Let's begin, shall we? Time for your daily doses, mmm?" He says, voice dangerously affectionate. As though i had CHOSEN to do this to myself. As though he were merely reminding me of my morning medicine and not the hell ahout to come. "Going to be good for me? I know you shall, you always are."

He turned back to his desk, his computer. A few keystrokes... and I could feel the pod above me begin to hum, as it awoke. Oh god. Oh god it never got easier. From the corner of my eyes, bright chemicals slide down thind lines and into my veins. Like lines of lava. Bolts of electricity and pain. It was... AGONY.

My muscles seized. Brain screeched, first to the screaming I wish I could make... then static. With the long practice of daily pain, it took me far away. The click, click, click of keys. The sound of his voice, so terribly PLEASED, as I hung there and just TOOK it. No restraints, no strugging, no damaging myself. Just unbearable fire in my veins and a brain far, far away.

"Good girl~"

Distantly a phone rang. He made an annoyed sound, but picked up regardless.

"What. I'm in the middle of- ...Excuse me? I'm quite sure I did not hear you correctly. I said 'NO'. She's not-....I will NOT BE-...What. Are you out of your god damned MIND? That pile of scraps you call a project is coming NOWHERE near my-! ....you think you're clever, don't you?"

"Fine. You want to TALK? Let's TALK, Anderson. I'll be there in five."

From far away, past the pain, I watched him chance down at something at the screen. Back up to me. He hung up the phone but did not pause the program. Instead, calmly rising from his desk. Shrugging on his lab coat. Rounding the desk and striding towards my bio-tube.

"Hmmm, honestly, it should have been spaced out over a few more days... but you can take it. Endure a bit longer for me, would you, darling? Daddy's going to go deal with something for just a moment, he'll be right back, my perfect girl. Be good."

He leaned forward, pressing his forehead to my tank. One hand splayed next to it like he badly wished he could touch. Could stroke skin. Hold his creation close. It was not the first time he had done this. Small, covetous, little actions like he wanted to crawl inside my skin and STAY there. Like he cursed the glass that separated us.

He pulled back. Shifted to the side and kneeled. He... had hidden something behind my bio-pod? When? Apparently before I had become aware. Because I had not known about it. A black shoe box. I watched him open i-GUN. Thaaaat was a gun! Fuck. Well at least? By the time anyone thinks to look in on me? The overdose will probably have killed me?

There is a cold, terrible smile on his face as he rolls to his face. Tucking the gun into an inner pocket. It has a silencer. He leans forward one last time. Lightly kissing the glass of my pod, as though heading off to work and not to very obviously kill somebody. The pain continues. Builds. I watch him leave.

With nothing to anchor myself on... time blurs.

I think? There are alarms? Red lights flash. Then they stop. There is shouting at one point. But then silence. An explosion? Or am I hallucinating? Pain. My nerves are on fire. I don't want to have SKIN. Please... please make it STOP! Calm foot steps? Come to kill me? Please come to kill me. Make it STOP.

The lights died a... time? Ago? Emergency lights on now. Generators in the room are loud. Why can I still hear the feet? Footses? Words. H..hurts. please.

Click.

The pain eases to a stop. Aching but nothing new. Over? Oh, thank god. I can sleep now, right? But... sound? New. At my feet. Gurgling. Wha-? The very top of my head feels cold. Then my forehead. Then my temple's and ears, cheeks, jaw... wait. Is? Is the tube...DRAINING? I open my eyes.

When did I close them?

He's back.

Standing right in front of the tube. Blood staining the hem of his coat, lingering marks of his massacre cleaned but not quite scrubbed from his body. There are little off red stains on his cheek, from what must be blood splatter. They look like tiny freckles.

I'm... I can't...

I reach as the tube down my throat is pulled almost carelessly away by the machine. Choke, suffocate, as the same is done for my air tube. But then it's done... and I can BREATHE under my own power. Gasp and splutter, as the goo sloshes around my knees. Then it's gone. And the tube I've been leaning my weight against is roughly pulled away.

I collapse forward, my muscles having never actually supported me in this life.

Arms catch me. Wrapping me in a possessive hug. A hand immediately burying itself in long uncut hair, even as the other wraps itself around my torso to lean me against his body in a cradle. My face is pressed to his neck by the hand in my hair, cradling my head and neck. I can feel breath against the goo wet crown of my head.

"Finally~" he breaths out, whispering it against me like a sigh. "My beautiful, perfect girl. My darling creation. It took so LONG. Those retrobates interfering at every turn, lusting after you like ANIMALS, trying to keep you from me. Then, worst of all, trying to toss you to some pack of savages? Oh, darling~ Daddy's been so worried for you."

"But we'll be okay now, won't we? I finally have you. All fresh and finally finished. My perfect Eve. You can pick any name you want, of course. You and I will be leaving this ugly little place. Daddy has PLANS. A fresh new world, just for you, sweetheart."

He laughed, his hug tightening in a way that would have left bruises had I been a normal human. Kisses were pressed to my temple. A cheek, rubbed against my hair. He seemed... seemed GIDDY with it. That nothing could stop him now. There was no glass in his way. I could not move yet. My muscles twitched when I tried, but that was it. I wasn't even sure I could talk yet, if I tried.

"Aaah~♡ Welcome to the World, Darling. My Perfection. My Eve. This time no snakes or Adams to tarnish you. To get in your way. Just you and your Father~"

"FOREVER~♡"

Next: ->

[fairyysoup]

western nights

♫︎ western nights - ethel cain ♫︎

pairing(s): eddie munson x fem!reader

summary: You're on a road trip to nowhere. Eddie wants to get the hell out of dodge. It's a match made in heaven- if only it were, actually, heaven.

words: 13k

cw: explicit, smut, piv sex, oral sex (f + m receiving), exhibitionism, light choking, spitting, eddie is 24, reader's age unspecified (over 21), illegal activities, theft, smoking, alcohol consumption, strangers to lovers, bonnie & clyde type dynamic, mechanic!eddie, eddie's trying hard to be a good boy he's just got issues, pining, perv!reader, some slight dubcon/somno for a sec if you squint, there was only one bed, graphic depictions of violence, a drunk guy being nasty to both eddie and reader, bar fight, blood, arguments, angst, hurt/comfort, panic attacks, an overall janky relationship here, inspired by the song western nights by ethel cain

a/n: *slaps fic* this bad boy can be written with so many cold medicines in my head <3 ethel cain if you see this do NOT interact i have done zero justice to your song and also completely disregarded some key aspects of the themes of it lol this is loosely based at best

ALL MY WORKS ARE 18+ MINORS DNI

He’s never looked more beautiful on his Harley in the parking lot, breaking into the ATMs, sleeping naked when it gets too hot…

You’ve become something of a connoisseur of gas station coffee. 

You know which chains have the best. Love’s always has the best and freshest, with the most options of flavors. Pilot is usually a crapshoot, depending on what area of the country you’re in. Occasionally, if you can find it, Bodega doesn’t disappoint. And the worst, by far, is always Shell. Shell coffee, you think, must come directly from the sewers of whatever backwater town you’re trundling through.

You’re somewhere in Indiana, you guess, judging by the state-shaped keychains on the rotating rack next to the cash register. You grab a state map from a magazine stand and toss it in with the rest of your purchase. You were lucky to have found a Love’s so you could finally afford yourself some proper dark roast coffee; all the watered down arabica stuff you’ve been getting since Cleveland has only been making your head ache. 

“What’s the quickest way to Indianapolis?” You ask the dead-eyed attendant ringing you up, a 20-something year old guy with bags under his eyes and bad skin. 

He chews his licorice like a camel chews straw, staring up at you blankly. “I dunno. Never been.”

You look from him, to the map, and back. “Cool. What town is this?”

“Hawkins.” His bored-by-you attitude is overwhelming.

“Thanks so much for the help.” You afford the attendant a tight smile as you grab your bag of snacks and head out. It’s going to be a long night. 

The air outside is stifling, summer heat hanging in the muggy air like a fog. The humidity makes your hair stick uncomfortably to the back of your neck as you peel off your old green hunting jacket and tie it around your waist. You’ve parked your van under the fluorescent-lit gas pump overhang, providing the proper lighting for you to spread the map of Indiana across the hood and bend over it, using your full coffee as a paperweight. You rip open the singular Slim-Jim you could afford for dinner, and pore over it.

There’s commotion across the parking lot, which stirs you from your rumination over the map. You glance up; there are two guys loitering by a telephone booth in one corner of the lot, sharing a cigarette. Teenagers who have nowhere else to be on a Friday night, you suppose. Five yards away from them, a third crouches in front of a badly vandalized ATM, the cause of the commotion. He seems to be hacking at the wiring with a pocket knife.

You ignore it. So far, on this trip, you’ve seen far worse than a guy stealing petty cash from a gas station ATM. Tracing your fingers across the paper, it looks like if you take state route 13 to I-69, you’ll be in Indianapolis by midnight. Shouldn’t be too difficult, as long as you can find the 13, and then you can find a place to crash in the city.

Grabbing an old highlighter from your pocket, you mark your route in bright pink. The guy from the ATM seems to have gotten what he wanted, moving quickly across the parking lot with his head held high, like he has every right to be there. He approaches a motorcycle parked on the opposite side of the pump from you, and begins feeding dollar bills into the machine. 

“Hey, do you know how to get to the 13 from here?” You can’t see much more than his leather-clad shoulder and hip jutting out from around the pump, the front tire of his Harley sticking out from behind his leg.

There’s a pause, and then his head pops out from around the pump. A curtain of unruly dark hair frames a long neck, big doe-like eyes and flushed lips pouting at you in confusion. It makes you freeze. “Sorry?”

“I, uh-” What were you trying to do? Get on the right course. Right. Of course. “State- uh- state route 13? I’m trying to get to, um, Indianapolis?” You cringe at your own stuttering, nails digging into the paper before you. 

The man stares at you for a long time, dark eyes framed by thick, curling lashes sizing you up slowly. Then, he rounds the pump. “The highway’s just down the road- keep going west and you won’t miss it.” 

“Great, thanks.” You grab up your coffee and the map, crunching it between your tense fingers. He hasn’t moved, still leaning against the gas pump, arms crossed, staring at you. It makes you nervous, in more ways than one. 

“You won’t get far in that heap, though.”

You pause. Your knees threaten to wobble under you as you look up at him. Your hand is on the door, you could simply ignore him and get in, but something in his gaze makes you stop. Is that… genuine concern? Or is he just putting on a show for you? 

“What do you mean?” The heat of the coffee burns through the paper cup and torches your fingers.

“Well, your fender’s bashed in and, I dunno if you noticed, but you have a crack in your windshield,” he gestures at the long crack running horizontally across the glass, just above where your line of sight usually is. “Probably got a lot more shit wrong with it, too, I could hear you coming a mile up the road. Junkyard find?”

“Something like that.” More like, sat in your parents’ garage for so long that you took a chance on the fucked up radiator and bailed. “She’s good, though. She’ll get me another 80 miles, easy.”

“Are you only going 80 miles?” The guy questions, “Or are you going way past that and only doing the 80 miles tonight?”

If he wasn’t so pretty, with a note of flirtation in his voice, you’d be hesitant as hell to tell him. “The second one.” 

ATM guy sucks on his teeth, rocking back on heels that creak with the movement. Rubber soled work boots flash at you from beneath torn blue denim. “Dunno if I should let you go alone, then. You might bust your carburetor halfway there and be stranded.”

That puts alarm sirens in your head. You’d back away if your car wasn’t situated between the two of you. “Thanks, but, uh… I think I can handle myself.”

The teasing smile drops off his face quickly, replaced by a look of subtle desperation. “No, don’t get me wrong, I’m not- I’m not saying you can’t handle yourself. Obviously. Or you wouldn’t be trucking along by yourself through Nowheresville, Indiana,” he chuckles. “I just, ah… let me level with you?”

Your face screws up, but you lean your hip against the fender nearest you- the one that isn’t fucked up. What is it with this guy?

“I’m trying to jump ship. Anywhere’s better than here, but I really want to get to the west coast. I don’t know where you’re headed, but I’ve got my sights on San Francisco. And, uh, I have experience fixing cars, working in a garage,” he confesses. “But I don’t have a ride of my own- this isn’t even my bike, really. So, if you’re heading to the city, and you could use someone to make sure your car doesn’t kick it going over 75, I’m your man. Besides,” he bats his pretty lashes at you, his fingers fiddling with the end of his long hair as he brandishes a wad of ATM-stolen cash, “I have gas money.”

“You want to hitch a ride with me?”

“If you’re okay with it. Otherwise, I bid you fair and safe travels.” He bows dramatically, throwing his hand in the direction of the highway you’d asked about. “But if you ask me, I think you’d be doing both of us a favor in the long run if you let me come with. Just for insurance, y’know.”

“Insurance?” You parrot incredulously.

“Yeah,” he grins. He has dimples, a wide smile that stretches across his face and makes him even prettier than you can stand to look at directly. “Just insurance. No other reason.”

“Mhm,” you grunt, going over the positives and negatives in your head. 

Positives- your car is a piece of shit and you’re sure he’s right, you’re working on borrowed time and you’re less than halfway to your desired destination. Plus, he’s unfairly nice to look at. 

Negatives- you don’t know shit for fuck about him, other than the fact that he’s apparently trying to leave town and makes a hobby of breaking into ATMs. And, hell, even Ted Bundy was supposed to be charming and cute, at first. This guy could be a crazy ax murderer, could be a rapist, could be a junkie who’ll steal your car and leave you stranded, could be, could be-

“MUNSON!”

“Fuck.” ATM guy glances over his shoulder, then ducks quickly around the side of the gas pump as the station attendant comes storming out of the store. He crouches, pressing his hands to the glass window of the passenger’s side and peers through the cab at you on the other side with pleading eyes. “Can you get me a couple miles down the road, at least?” 

“What about your bike?” 

“Not my bike,” he tells you for a second time. “My buddy’ll pick it up when he hears about this, please.”  

The station attendant is making his way across the parking lot now, looking miffed. It’s clearly the most energy he’s put into anything today, but he isn’t moving very fast. 

You’ve made worse decisions in your life. You sigh. “Shit. Get in.” 

“Thank you, thank you.” He pops open the passengers door as you slide into the driver’s seat, tossing the crumpled up map in the back. You guess you’ve found a GPS, for the time being.

“Does my insurance have a name?” you ask as you peel out of the gas station. The attendant hovers by the pump you’d been occupying, looking lamely at the abandoned motorcycle in your rearview. 

“Eddie,” ATM guy says. A ring-clad hand lifts between you, hovering over the gear shift and waiting for your own to settle into it for a shake, “Eddie Munson.” 

You eye his outstretched hand, your stomach doing flips, but you’re unsure if it’s because of him or the very situation he’s just put you in. You lift your hand and bat his with your knuckles, a half-hearted acknowledgement without the formality. “Pleasure doing business with you, Eddie.” 

Eddie coughs, shifting up in his seat to peer behind you at the station. “Fuckin’ Keith. You can just drop me off at the next exit, it’s no biggie.” 

“Hm? I thought you were coming with me to Indianapolis, hot stuff.” 

Eddie whips his head around to look at you. “Seriously? You don’t- you don’t have to, I know it’s a big ask-” 

“You want me to change my mind?”

“Not particularly.” He sinks down in his seat again. “Guess I figured you think I’m more of a liability than anything.”

“I do, but I need all that cash you swiped from the ATM,” you hum with a snarky grin on your face. 

Eddie chuckles, wringing his hands in his lap. His knuckles tighten and relax beneath heavy steel rings. “Yeah, better I do it than you, huh?” There’s an awkward pause, and then he blurts, “Do you have any road music in this thing?” 

You reach forward and hit the volume button for the stereo. You’d been halfway through Danzig’s self titled album- Mother kicks in with the chorus. In the darkness, you don’t see the way Eddie’s eyes sparkle with adoration as he looks at you.

“I think you and I are gonna get along great, sweetheart.” 

You ignore how your thighs press in on themselves while you sip your coffee, and you turn onto highway 13, headed for Indianapolis.

When you step out of the bathroom in the motel room in Indianapolis, you find Eddie hunched over by the window, wearing nothing but a pair of blue plaid boxers. The chain on his wrist jingles as he smacks at the A/C unit beneath the drawn curtains.

“Everything okay?” You ask, pretty much knowing what the answer is. Your hair drips water down your back, but you can still feel the muggy summer heat in the room practically smothering your pores. 

“Damn Motel 6 A/C,” he grumbles as he gives it one last smack on the side, to no avail. “The unit’s broken, there’s gonna be no cool air in the room.”

“That’s okay, we can crack a window.” 

“In this part of the city?” Eddie scoffs, looking over at you. “Believe me, princess, I applaud your optimism- I would have just driven away from me there at the gas station, given the chance. But if we crack that window, we’re gonna get fucking robbed, first thing. Believe me.”

“I believe you,” you huff, clutching the itchy motel towel to your wet skin. Usually you would just pull on a tank and a pair of panties and call it a night, but there’s no such luck for you here. You have a backpack full of old, dirty clothes, and no clean underwear to speak of- you’ve been washing them in public bathroom sinks since Columbus. “Well, I’m just gonna sleep naked, then. You do what you’ve gotta do.” 

“What- you’re gonna- what?” Eddie blathers, sitting back on his heels. You stare at him for a second- he’s a vision of flushed skin and a cloud of brunette hair cascading over his shoulders. Knobbly knees stick up at awkward angles, hairy thighs disappear into the hem of his boxers drawn tight across his skin. Your eyes glance over the ominous bulge in the crotch of them, not willing to think about those parts of a man you barely know. “You really think- I mean- is that wise?”

“Are you gonna get frisky with me, Eddie?” You ask with a teasing voice. You’d learned enough about him on the way to the city- 24 years old, no prospects, big dreams, ran a D&D club in high school, worked in a garage to help pay the bills- that you’re fairly certain he’s a good enough guy to keep his hands to himself. You just enjoy watching his big eyes go rounder at the insinuation.

“No, of course not. Wouldn’t dream of it.” Eddie looks mortified. He backtracks, “Unless- unless you wanted me to, I mean-” 

“Don’t overanalyze it,” you tell him mildly, turning your back to him to rifle through your bag. “We’re both adults, it’s hot, there’s one bed and we’re both paying for it. Something tells me you’ve done worse things than lay next to someone without clothes on.”

Eddie blows a long breath out of pursed lips, not moving from his seat on the floor. He doesn’t deny your accusation, just mutters, “You put so much faith in me, sweetheart.”

“Don’t make me regret it.” 

You drop the wet towel on the floor and round the bed to turn down the sheets. Eddie’s eyes trail you; you can feel them burning into your skin, lit by the dim yellow light on the bedside table. It takes a moment for him to finally move, a single trembling hand reaching up to swipe a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the table.

“You gonna sit there on the floor all night?” You muse as you lay back on the bed. It’s too fucking hot. The dampness from the shower hasn’t dried, but now it’s simply growing with the rate your body is perspiring. Your hair and skin stick to the white sheets, which feel pasty each time you move.

“Just getting my bearings,” Eddie says, his voice tight and hollow. “You smoke?”

“Not especially, but I won’t stop you.” 

The smell of tobacco hangs in the heavy air more potently than you expected. The humidity dampens the vapor, making it sting your nose and leech into your mouth, even though you’re not the one directly breathing it. It strikes you as devastatingly intimate- the thought that you might be breathing the smoke that’s already touched his lungs. 

“Do you mind if I strip down, too?” Eddie asks after a long time of deliberating as he smoked. “Not that- I mean, I don’t have any pajamas, so…”

“Do what you need to do, honey,” you murmur, repeating what you’d told him before. “We can find a laundromat in the morning. Maybe get you a change of clothes somewhere.”

“Right.” He doesn’t say much after that, but you listen to him rustling around, stubbing out his cigarette in an ashtray and flicking off the bedside light. 

He straightens up, silhouette looming in the blue-dark from the curtained window. You watch from the corner of your eye while his backlit form hooks its thumbs in the waistband of his boxers, and drops them.

He clambers onto the bed beside you, careful not to bump any part of you. You refuse to look at him, scanning the asbestos popcorn on the ceiling above you with an overabundance of scrutiny, willing yourself to focus on anything but Eddie’s beautiful body, especially what he has below the belt. It’s a bad idea, no go. You don’t want to see it, don’t even want to think about it- what it looks like, how big it is, how it curves, what kind of hair surrounds it, if any-

You’re thinking about it.

And you told him not to overanalyze it. To be calm about it. What a fucking joke.

“You know, I’m not as easy as I might seem,” you blurt out suddenly, unaware of why you even do. You mostly come off sounding like you’re trying to convince yourself of it.

Eddie’s head rustles against the pillow as he glances at you in the dark. “I don’t think you are.”

“Okay. Just- just making sure,” you stutter out. “All evidence to the contrary, and all.”

“I’m not expecting to get lucky with you,” he tells you honestly, a little flatly, like he’s afraid of any inflection in his voice betraying him. “You know, beyond the ride west.”

“Right.” 

“Right.” 

You both regress into silence. You think you’ve both said your piece on the matter. You might not trust Eddie, not entirely, but you at least know he’s not gonna try anything stupid if you let yourself fall asleep. You actually think that he’s asleep after so many minutes, until he opens his mouth again.

“It’s really fucking hot, isn’t it?” He croaks. His hands twitch by his sides, feet jammed under the downturned covers, but everything else bare to the open room, like you. His pinkie brushes yours, and he nearly smacks himself jerking his hand back toward his stomach.

“Yeah, it’s not… it’s not good.” You blink into the darkness. “Sorry, you must be regretting coming with me all this way.”

“Nah, not a chance.” He brushes it off, waving a hand in the air dismissively. “I’ve been itching to get out of there since I graduated. Feel kinda bad that I didn’t leave a note for my uncle, but it’s not the first time I’ve bailed on him. I can always call him from a pay phone. Kinda wish I had my guitar, though.” 

“You play guitar?” you ask dazedly. You don’t have a hard time imagining it, now that you think about it. He has that rocker look about him, the kind that could grace magazines and be on posters on teenage girls’ walls, if he played his cards right. If he got his lucky break.

“Yeah. Pretty good, too, I guess.” He sighs. There’s a wistfulness in it, like he’s reminiscing on something from his past. “It’s okay. I can pick up another one once I get to California. Dropped a mint on the one I had back home, but I guess Wayne can always pawn it. Maybe get himself a nicer place.”

You chuckle. “And you think I’m the optimist here.”

“I never said it was a bad thing,” Eddie scoffs, then deepens his voice quite suddenly. “Two optimists, both alike in dignity-”

A burst of laughter bubbles from your chest, making Eddie grin as you gesture at your bodies. “Or lack, thereof.”

“In fair Indianapolis, where we lay our scene.” He ends his recitation giggling, the flimsy bed frame jolting with the shaking of his chest. “Radiant Juliet, you never did tell me where your chariot is taking me.”

“I’m not sure, really,” you admit, mellowing your laughter into a quiet giggle. “I just wanted to leave home. I was suffocating there, I needed to get out. See what’s out there for me, if anything.”

“And have you seen much?”

“Not much,” you tell him quietly. “Mostly truck stops and shitty roadside attractions. But we’re in the midwest, you know.”

“Don’t remind me.” He lays his hand back down on the mattress beside you. 

You turn your body towards him, damp sheets clinging to your skin as you move. “California might not be such a bad idea.”

Eddie turns his head and glances at you, dark eyes finding you in the dim moonlight. “No? I’ll have to fix your car, then.”

“You do that, and I’ll make sure to get you where you’re going,” you whisper.

“Deal.” His eyes linger on your face, just inches away from his on the pillow. Flickering in the moonlight, two voids that hold all the stars in the night sky seem to take you in like you’re more beautiful than they could ever be.

This time, when your fingers brush, he doesn’t jerk away. This time, you don’t avert your eyes when you look down at his cock, but you sure do regret it when you don’t reach out to touch it.

He’s so pretty. You want to.

I watched him show his love through shades of black and blue, starting fights at the bar across the street like you do…

Your underwear and his come out of the dryer wrapped around each other. You spend a minute disentangling them, a small heap of clothes in a rolling laundry basket in front of you. The closest laundromat to the Motel 6 had been a five minute drive down the street. 

You’d woken up with your head on his chest, your arm draped across his bare stomach, despite how you’d fallen asleep barely touching him. As if your unconscious body had known more about your wants than you. His hand had been tangled in your hair, palm cradling your cheek and a bit of your neck, like his own unconscious wanted to keep you against him, too. 

The morning had been easy- the easiest it’s been since you hit the road. Eddie seems to have given you a sense of purpose you didn’t have before, driving around aimlessly, only stopping for fast food every once in a while when you remembered to eat something other than beef jerky and coffee. Once you had extracted yourself from his grip, you’d gone to buy him clothes from the resale store next to the motel. It wasn’t hard to find a plain black shirt and jeans, but used underwear was something you didn’t want to mess with. You’d brought it back to the motel, along with some food from the Waffle House across the way, and you ate cross legged on the bed while he showered and put on his new-ish clothes.

But now, you can’t stop feeling his hand cradling your head. His hot, sweaty skin against your arm. Your fingernails raking lightly through the trail of hair on his stomach, dragging through his pubic hair, your knuckles just barely brushing up the side of his length- thick, uncut, and so so pretty. Then, stopping nervously when you’d gotten too bold, fingers skimming over sensitive skin too close to his groin, and he’d twitched in his sleep.

You want him. You don’t even know him, and you want him so badly you can feel it even now, an aching blush between your legs turning into a dull throb when you so much as think about him. 

You toss all the freshly washed clothes into a plastic bag that you’d grabbed by the door to the laundromat, and haul it out to your van. He’d told you to meet him at the bar across the street when you were done, since he needed to make a few calls on their payphone- he’d even given you his weathered denim vest before he left.

“For insurance,” he winked. “Uh, don’t wash it, though… I stitched it by hand, it’ll fall apart.”

You don’t put it in with the clean clothes. It smells like smoke and alcohol and him, the edges frayed and yellowing a bit. You hold it in your lap for a second, plucking at the stringy bits around the arm holes. Maybe you can convince him to let you soak it in a sink somewhere, hand washed and dried carefully over a working A/C unit, wherever you can find one. You don’t know when he last washed the damn thing, if ever.

When you pull into the parking lot of the dive bar, and you clutch the denim vest in your hand as you step out of your van, something sharp prods your thumb. You hiss, slamming the car door shut and examining what it was. The sharp point of a pin on the vest- which reads Motörhead- had come loose and pricked your skin, which now threatens to ooze blood all over the aged denim.

“Fuck,” you murmur, bringing your thumb to your mouth as you lock the car. You struggle with the vest while you walk towards the door to the dive, trying to resituate the pin so it doesn’t go missing.

You find him loitering beside a billiards table, pool stick in hand, a cigarette in his mouth. When he sees you walk in, his eyes light up, and he nearly drops the stick prancing over to you. 

“Told ya I’d still be here- hey, you okay?” His grin turns very readily into a frown when he sees you sucking your thumb like a child. 

“Yeah, no, I’m fine,” you mutter clumsily, “your pin just nicked me s’all.” 

“Oh, shit,” he curses, reaching for your hand. “Lemme see- no, let me see.” He forces your hand open when you try to close it, and scrutinizes the little pin prick as if it’s the worst battle wound he’s ever seen. “Should’a checked to make sure all the pins were right, this happens all the time. I’m so sorry, baby, my fault.”

Baby. Your brain tries to process it. He called you baby. 

He’s also kissing your thumb, cradling your hand with excessive care. He’s tasting your blood, sucking a little on the pin prick like you had been, so your skin is wet with a mix of his and your spit. You don’t think you’ll ever get tired of the way he touches you. Fleeting as his touches have been, anyways. You melt a little under his gaze as his round eyes blink up at you innocently.

“S’okay,” you tell him with a wobbly smile. “Did you make your calls?”

He looks at you softly, a reserved smile on his face. “I did. Wayne’s miffed, but he’ll live. Told him I’d send him a postcard.”

You giggle at that, thinking you’d sign it along with him. Sorry for stealing away your nephew; it will happen again. “Good. Buy me a drink, handsome?”

Eddie beams at you, and his dimples crease his cheeks as he turns to the bartender. There’s a sweet, boyish manner in the way he puffs out his chest and orders you a drink, his arm circling your waist as he moves you smoothly toward the bar. As soon as a whisky sour has been placed in front of you, he turns and squeezes your arm.

“Hey, I gotta finish this game,” he nods at the pool table he’d been stationed at. “I got some money on it. Y’okay with hanging out for a minute?” 

“Sure,” you chirp, sipping your drink. “Wipe the floor with ‘em for me?”

“It’s in the bag,” he whispers at you conspiratorially. You push his vest at him, imagining he wants to take his insurance back now that you know he’s not taking off on you, but he shakes his head. “No, you wear it. It’ll look good on you.” 

His eyes light up when you shrug the vest over your worn out white t-shirt. As you lift your drink, and he turns back to his game, you think you’d do anything to keep him looking at you like that.

Eddie wins. You don’t know how much he bet on the game, but there seems to be hurt feelings when he collects the money that had been placed on the table. You’ve never been much of a gambler, and he hadn’t struck you as one- but what do you know? He certainly bet on you getting him out of Hawkins, and you certainly took a chance on him. 

You don’t think much of it. It’s late afternoon- the sun’s going down, and you figure you’d better get going, but Eddie wraps his arms around you and says, “Dance with me.” And you do.

The jukebox in the corner only plays country classics. Patsy Cline croons over the speakers, taking you back to a time in your far off childhood. Eddie sways with you to the music, and even though there’s barely any rhythm to his dancing, you find yourself falling into it with him. Your head on his shoulder, his curly hair tickling the side of your face. His breath on your neck, cool on your heated skin. 

That is, until a hand wraps around Eddie’s shoulder and jerks him away from you. A man with blond hair, clearly a few too many drinks in, snarls at him, “That game was bullshit and you know it.”

Eddie blinks at him. “If by ‘bullshit’ you mean I beat you, then sure.”

“You di’int beat me, you cheated,” the man sneers. “I want my money back.” 

“Yeah, no.” Eddie claps the man on the shoulder, trying to push him away. “I won the game, I get the money. That’s how gambling works.” 

You step back when the man’s beady eyes fall on you, peering at him over Eddie’s shoulder. “What’re you lookin’ at?” 

“You leave her out of this, buddy,” Eddie growls dangerously, still forcing the man back with one strong hand on his shoulder. He’s trying to put himself between you and the man, you know. Still, you feel the need to fist your hand in the back of Eddie’s shirt and pull him away.

“I ain’t your buddy. Whatcha lookin’ at, bitch?” The man reaches out and yanks roughly on your arm, making you yelp in alarm.

And that’s when Eddie’s fist connects with the man’s jaw.

There’s a sickening crack. In the chaos, it somehow occurs to you that Eddie’s wearing all those chunky rings. You wonder if they could be considered a deadly weapon, in the same vein as brass knuckles.

It takes you a second to get through the initial shock, finding it hard to focus on who’s doing what. Eddie and the man have barrelled through a couple of tables, knocking over chairs. Eddie has the man pinned to the edge of the pool table, a flurry of fists moving from all sides. 

“You don’t touch my girl!” Eddie shouts at the man. “You don’t fuckin’ touch my girl!”  

His girl.

They tumble to the floor. The man curses and spits blood at him from a cut lip. A strong fist hits the side of Eddie’s face once, twice-

“THAT’S ENOUGH!” The words are shouted by the bartender, finally intervening, pulling the blond man off of Eddie. As the bartender restrains the unruly man, a second pulls an equally enraged Eddie away from him, separating the two. 

By the time you collect a bruised and bloodied Eddie into your arms, you’ve already tuned out the rest of the ruckus going on around you. Someone suggests that you should leave, but the words only barely register. You’re already pulling Eddie out the door and to the car.

You don’t even remember if you closed the tab.

Trouble’s always gonna find you, baby, but so will I. Crying only because I’m happy, hold me across every state line…

You don’t know when you started crying. Maybe it was around the time that Eddie fell unconscious.

Tears burn in your eyes like you’ve poured gasoline in them, but no matter how badly it stings you just keep sniffling and driving, tearing down the interstate away from Indianapolis, toward St. Louis. You hopped on I-70 as quickly as you could, and from there you’ve been lost in a world of your own.

He’d almost look peaceful, if it wasn’t for the blood on his jaw and the nasty shiner on his cheekbone. You keep telling yourself it’s not bad enough for him to need to be taken to a hospital. You can’t afford to go to a hospital, and even if you could, you’d have to explain how he got in this condition. It’s a recipe for jail time. You know that. You know.  

You just want to keep him safe, that’s all. 

He hadn’t instigated the fight, not really. He’d just swung first. He was just defending you.

His girl.  

When it gets to be too much, you pull over. Headlights gleam bright and then pass by in the dark with a whoosh of air. You think you must have crossed over into Illinois by now, or you’re getting close to it. The traffic has lightened considerably. 

You rest your head against the steering wheel, taking deep breaths, but the tears keep coming in streams. A while ago, you had a mattress in the back of this van. That was before it started having problems, and it sat in your family’s garage for a year and a half. You should have put a mattress in it when you took off, but you weren’t thinking that far ahead. You were having a breakdown, something like you’re having now, only worse. It was a manic, get-away-or-die-there kind of breakdown. 

Breathe in. You’re not gonna die. Breathe out. He’s breathing.

Once Eddie cracks his eyes open, he flexes his jaw with a groan. You can tell he’s confused by the inquisitive noise he makes, but when he looks at you, all that disappears in a heartbeat.

“Hey, what’re you- oh, god. Sweetheart, don’t cry.”  

As if that doesn’t make you want to cry harder. His hand lands tentatively on your shoulder, stiff fingered but light in touch. He shuffles closer to you, pulling you against him to sob into his secondhand shirt. 

It’s pathetic, you’re sure of it. You feel pathetic, twisting the cheap cotton of his shirt in your hands and saturating it with tears, as he shushes you and soothes a hand over your hair.

“It’s okay, baby,” he whispers into your hair, pressing his aching lips to your scalp in an attempt to calm you down. “We’ll be okay. I’m right here. What can I do?”

For some reason, the question makes you mad. “You don’t fucking fight,” you sob at him, the anger in your voice making him freeze. “You don’t- you don’t get into fights. I can deal with a lot of shit, Eddie Munson, but I can’t deal with that.”

“Okay, honey. Okay.”

“No fighting.” 

“No fighting,” he repeats affirmatively, petting your head. Then he adds, “No gambling.”

“No bars.”

“Well-”

“No bars.” 

“All right,” Eddie resigns, resting his chin on top of your head. Once you’ve stopped crying, from what he can feel, he tells you softly, “I’m not… I’m not like that, you know. I want you to know. I don’t fight, not usually.”

“You did.” 

“I did,” he agrees. “I just don’t like… I didn’t like him touching you. Disrespecting you like that- did he hurt you?”

“No,” you lie. The guy had yanked your arm a little too hard, your wrist still smarting a bit. Nothing near what Eddie had taken. “He hurt you, though.”

“I’ve had worse, trust me.” His tone is ominous, like you don’t really want to know the heavy details of it. “I’m not a fighter. Used to be if I saw danger, I’d just turn tail and run. I usually just take shit on the chin. But I never had anything to fight for before, really.”

You sniffle loudly, grossly. “I don’t want you to fight for me.”

“I’m gonna protect you, sweetheart. No matter what,” he insists. “Long as we’re together, I’m gonna do everything I can to protect you. Okay?”

Long as we’re together. Like you’re a couple, like you didn’t just meet by chance at a gas station a little more than 24 hours ago. Like you’re in love. 

His girl.  

“My dad’s in prison,” Eddie blurts out, raking a shaky hand through your hair. “He, uh… he was a fighter. And a thief. And a gambler. And a liar. He tried his best to make me be like him, but I don’t- I don’t wanna be like him.” Eddie sighs, a sad sound that rips through your already bleeding heart. “I thought maybe getting out of Hawkins would set me straight. Finally give me a chance to make something better of myself, prove I’m not like my old man. I tried, but after high school I got in some trouble, and Wayne had to sell my old van to pay for my bail. Now I’m here, and… Guess you just take yourself wherever you go, huh?” 

“Yeah,” you agree. Your fingers curve against his hip, squeezing the skin there. “So we have to try to change ourselves in the meantime, while we get where we’re going.”

Eddie breathes in, and it sounds an awful lot like a sniffle.

“Eddie. Are you crying?”

“No.” He is.

You lift your head with a wet, coughing chuckle at his futile attempt to hide it. You look up at him, your fingers tucking a lock of unruly, dark hair behind his ear. He’s staring back at you with glassy eyes, the tip of his nose gone red with the tears he’s holding back. He just barely flinches when your knuckles brush the bruise on his cheekbone.

“Hey, handsome,” you coo at him softly, your touch featherlight on his skin. He blinks, a tear dropping from his lashes. “I’m gonna get you cleaned up, okay?” 

“Okay.” His lip wobbles. “Let me hold you a little longer, first?”

“Of course, Eddie.” You fall into his grasping hands, yanking you to him like a child searching for the comfort of his favorite teddy bear. You’d let him hold you as long as he liked.

You wash his face in a dirty rest area just west of Terre Haute. In the middle of the night, no one is around to tell you not to, so you follow him into the men’s room and take your time wiping the blood from his jaw and his hands. You gingerly apply a bandage from your car’s console to his bruised cheek, while he sits in the front seat and brackets your hips with his knees.

He gazes up at you like a man seeing God.

The neighbors beat on the walls, while I'm face first in the bed. Show me how much I mean to you while I’m lying in these sheets undressed…

You sleep in the rest area that night, in the back of your van. No mattress, just your backs to the hard floor of the cab. With no A/C again, you shuck your clothes and spread a single white blanket over your bodies, more for modesty’s sake than anything else. Even though it’s unlikely that a cop is going to run you down in the middle of nowhere, you’d rather not get cited for public indecency. 

He holds you all night long, his arms around you and his chest against your back giving you peace, but he doesn’t touch you in any of the ways that you desperately want him to.

It takes the better part of a day to drive to St. Louis. Eddie swallows a couple tylenol for his face with his truck stop coffee and eggs, smiling softly at you from across a bright yellow plywood table in a cafeteria. From the look on his face, you doubt that he regrets the fight that gave him his wounds.

By the time your old van rattles up to another Motel 6 at the outskirts of the city, Eddie’s shaking his head. “The car’s not gonna take much more than this. I need to give it a good look, maybe borrow a tool kit and give it a tune up.”

“Whatever you say, magic man,” you muse at him. “Let’s just sleep in a real bed tonight, huh?”

His head tilted back, he looks at you sideways with a lopsided smile. You can tell his face is still hurting, but he puts on a brave face and bats his eyelashes at you. “Sounds good to me, princess.”

His touch lingers on you more, now, than it did yesterday. His fingers grazing your forearm as you open the glass door to the motel office, his hand hovering over your lower back as you sign for the room. His arm slung over your shoulder as he follows you down to the room, twirling the key around his finger. 

“You think the A/C will work this time?” He asks you lightheartedly as he turns the key in the lock.

“Only one way to find out,” you return with the same warmth in your voice. If you from two days ago could hear yourself, and that ooey-gooey note of lovesickness in your voice, your past self might keel over and die. When did this happen? 

You drop your bag of clothes on the bench by the bathroom door. Eddie bangs around the A/C unit a bit, until something starts whirring, and he makes a gleeful noise.

“It’s aliiiiive!” He announces dramatically, emulating Dr. Frankenstein. You giggle as he leaps toward you, practically throwing you onto the bed in excitement. “We have cool air. We can actually wear clothes to bed tonight.”

“Yeah,” you sigh, not even trying to hide your disappointment at the thought. The best part of your last two mornings has been waking up to his naked body beside yours, warm and soft and littered with tattoos that you just can’t stop looking at. 

You mean, I won’t get to wake up to your skin on mine tomorrow? I won’t be able to pretend like I’m not staring at your dick and imagining all the things I want to do to it? How will I be able to admire you for my own perverted gain?

You don’t even realize that you’re stroking your fingers across his bruised cheek until he leans into your touch. Then you take inventory of your current position- your back to the mattress, his body hovering over you, half covering you. Caging you in with his arms. His long hair creates a veil around your faces. 

When he blinks his eyes open at you, you can tell where his mind is before he opens his mouth. “Did we have our first fight yesterday?”

You frown, a puff of air exiting your nose. “No, I think I’d call it laying ground rules.”  

“Ground rules,” Eddie nods, his sore cheek rubbing against your hand. You’re starting to wonder if he likes the pain, since he won’t stop pushing into it. “I’m not great at remembering rules. What were they, again?”

“No fighting.”

“Right, and no gambling.”

“No bars.”

He squints. “Is that one still up for negotiation, or…?” He trails off, giggling as you smack your hand lightly against his shoulder. “Kidding! I’m kidding. No bars. Got it.” 

“And that was it,” you tell him sweetly. “Unless there was another one you wanted to add?”

He stares at you for a long moment, his fingers twirling in the hair right beside your ear as he gets lost in thought. Say what you’re thinking, your mind practically screams at him. Please, god, say what we’re both thinking…

Eddie licks his lips and finally says, “No sleeping with clothes on?”

Gotcha. A creeping smile stretches your face, trying to play coy even when your heart’s beating a mile a minute. Eddie’s eyebrows raise at you, waiting for an answer. 

“I’m not easy, Eddie.”

“I know,” he tells you, mirroring your smile. “I don’t expect to get lucky with you.”

“I know,” you hum. Your hand drifts up the side of his torso, a more firm and languorous touch than you’d previously been brave enough to give him. “But do you want to?”

Eddie shudders, and it’s the first honest to god evidence you have that you turn him on as much as he does you. The realization feels rapturous. 

“God, yes.”

He kisses you then, open-mouthed and passionate, his hand cupping your jaw to keep you where he wants you. Your nails scratch up his back with a loud tearing sound against his shirt, and he chuckles as you frantically clutch at him with all your strength. 

“I know, pretty girl,” he murmurs, pecking your lips briefly before descending to bite at your jaw. “You’ve been wanting this since that first night. Feelin’ me up in the morning, like I wouldn’t notice…”

“I didn’t wanna wake you,” you hiccup as his hand cups the crotch of your jeans, rocking the meat of his palm firmly where you’re dying for friction. “Oh, ffffuck Eddie, m’sorry…”

“And here you were, thinking I was the pervert,” he grunts. “‘Least I can keep my hands to myself, hm?”

“I’m sorry, I’m s-sorry,” you babble at him, hands shaking as they grip onto his shoulders. Now that the aching throb between your legs is back, and he’s finally giving it attention, you can’t seem to come up with a more coherent sentence. Your face grows hot, but not at the fact that you’d been caught in your lechery- just because he turns you on more than you can think to admit.

“Don’t be sorry, sweet thing,” Eddie whispers. His dark eyes are lined up with yours, the curtain of his hair shielding them from reflecting any of the light from the desk lamp- it’s just you and the starry voids of space, locked in your own little world. He rubs his hand back and forth with practiced pressure against the front of your jeans, your hips kicking up against him. “I want you to touch me. Want you to do whatever you want with me, baby.” 

“Whatever I want?” Your fingers dragging up his lower back, under his shirt to feel the heat of his skin.

“Anything,” he insists, kissing you again. Wet and sloppy, teeth clacking as you grind up into his palm. Your thick denim jeans are about the most abominable things that have ever existed.

You feel like your head’s on sideways with how pent up you already are. “I want you to fuck me Eddie- jesus chr- can we do that? Right now? Please?” 

Eddie laughs. A happy, whole-hearted, almost disbelieving laugh. “Thought I was gonna be the one begging you, after all this…” His breath hitches, the touch of his hand leaving you so that he can push himself back. “Lemme get you out of these clothes, yeah?”

You nod quickly, earning a pleased hum from him. The way he undresses you is touched by reverence; his fingers slow as they drag the cotton of your shirt over your head, grazing your skin all the way. His lips dancing across your collarbone as he undoes the front of your stupid fucking jeans. You just want them off, done with and laying in a pile to be forgotten about by the motel room door, but Eddie has other plans. 

“Slow.” He grabs your hip to stop your wiggling, fingers curled around the back of the waistband of them as he pulls the denim down your thighs. “We’ve got all night, baby. I’m not leaving. Not going anywhere.” 

“I want you,” you insist desperately, sounding like a broken record. Your distress is evident on your face, in the way you clench your thighs together to hide the obnoxious wet spot growing on your cotton panties. You wonder if he’d felt it when he was touching you over your jeans, if the heat and dampness had soaked through the denim as well. You wouldn’t be surprised.

“You have me, sweetheart,” Eddie ensures. “Don’t… I don’t want you to worry about it. M’gonna make sure there are no worries in that pretty head.” 

He yanks his t-shirt off, the one you’d bought him from the resale store. A cloud of frizzy, dark hair obscures his pretty face for half a second, the shirt landing on the floor somewhere off to the side, and then Eddie’s eyes find you again, grinning at you widely with pointed teeth.

You grab for him, your fingers looping around the chain that hangs from his neck. Tugging him down, you press a gentle kiss to his lips. Then to his sore jaw, where a tiny scab has formed on the right side of his chin. Then to his bruised cheek, where he flutters his eyes shut and groans softly at the brush of your lips. 

“My boy,” you whisper to him, and you don’t even know if he understands the significance of it to you. His girl. Your boy.  

Eddie smiles against your skin. He peppers kisses everywhere he can reach, down onto your chest, dragging his sharp teeth every once in a while just to hear you keen. You’re certain you’ve ruined your underwear now, feeling the wetness grow cool against your skin. 

What a fucking concept. Cool air. 

Eddie seems to have the same thought as you, as he slips his fingers beneath the white cotton and peels them down your legs. Strings of your arousal stick to the wet fabric, dropping off in thick tendrils onto the sheets below you as he groans lowly.

“Fuck,” Eddie curses, shaking his head in chastisement as he settles between your legs at the end of the bed. He tsks, “Just look at you, poor thing. Should’a said something to me, can’t have you going around like this.”

You shiver as he trails his mouth up the inside of your thigh. His day-old stubble scrapes your sensitive skin, making you break out in a cold sweat. “M’not- I didn’t want you to think-”

“That you’re easy?” He coos with a condescending smile. “No, honey. I know, you’re a good girl.” He nips at the widest part of your thigh, plush flesh indenting with the imprint of his teeth. “But I’m no good. You should know that, better than anyone. No good for you.”

Eddie’s tongue burns and soothes at the same time, leaving your brain a scrambled mess on the mattress beneath you. He gathers all of your collected arousal into his mouth, groaning like he’s been desperate to taste it all this time. “Been dreaming of this since I saw you, pretty girl.” 

Pulling your leg over his bare shoulder, he all but crushes you against his face, his sturdy hands wrapped around your hips to hold you still. Your back arched, your hips fully off the bed as he lifts your lower half into the air.

You choke out the first part of his name, your hands fisting in the comforter next to your head. There’s a twist of pleasure deep in your core that makes you whine far louder than necessary, a waterfall of words spilling from you before you can stop them, “Oh shit- Ed- I don’t- s’too good-”

“Too good?” Eddie snickers, eyes bright as he watches you from between your thighs. “Nothing's too good for you.” 

Then he spits onto your already soaked and swollen pussy. You sob, positively crying from the feeling of it, drenched and dripping along your sensitive flesh. Eddie spreads the wetness around with his tongue, and your cunt clamps down hard at the lewd squelch of it, the mortifying slurp of his lips closing down and sucking on your labia. 

“Oh fuck, what the fuck-” you whimper high to the ceiling, mouth hanging open in shock. 

You could have been doing this for days. He could have fucked you like this the first night, when you lay next to him, naked in the dark. Your body aches at the thought of being deprived of this longer than necessary.

“That’s it, baby, just stay still. Let me ruin you, huh?” Eddie murmurs, letting your thigh rest heavy on his shoulder so that he can move one hand, his thumb rubbing tight circles on your clit in front of his face. He watches your cunt glisten and throb for him, listening to your desperate sobs echo through the otherwise silent room, and whispers, “Shit. Like my own little fuckin’ pornstar, sweetheart.” 

Normally, you wouldn’t exactly take that as a compliment- but with the way he says it, with his voice thick and dark like that, and with the way the hot, slick velvet of his tongue dips into your channel and shoots electricity along your skin, you figure he must have meant it like one. 

He goes slow, thrusting into you gently, taking his time to get familiar between your legs. Still, it doesn’t stop you from positively shrieking toward the ceiling when he licks you from hole to clit, the entire expanse of his tongue sweeping along nerve endings that are charged like live wires. 

Eddie chuckles, hot breath spilling out over your feverish skin, and he pauses there. Lets you feel the warm press of his flattened tongue before he just barely rubs it back and forth, back and forth-

“Eddie-!?” You gasp, an erotically loud moan spilling out of your mouth right before you come all over his. You crumble, your hips threatening to buck out of his steady grip as searing euphoria rips through you. He scrambles, ringed fingers locking tight enough on your waist to bruise, keeping you against him as you thrash wildly. 

He keeps you like that for a long time, purring into your spasming pussy while an array of unhinged noises pour from your body- your mouth, your hands tearing at the sheets and at your head, your cunt and all its wet filth drenching Eddie’s bruised face. 

If it hurts him, he doesn’t let on. He just keeps going, and going.

Until something pounds against the wall behind your head. You hiccup, your dazed, post-orgasm brain unable to comprehend where the sound is coming from. That wasn’t- couldn’t have been me…

“Pretty sounds,” Eddie giggles as he finally pulls his mouth away from you. “Guess the neighbors agree.”

“Oh, god.” Your hands cover your face, hot and sticky with sweat. Your eyes feel heavy, fuck-drunk, your heart still pounding in your chest from the adrenaline of the orgasm Eddie gave you. You feel embarrassed, like you ought to be going over to apologize to whatever sorry person happens to be sharing a wall with you, now.

Eddie has other plans. “Think we should give the audience a good show, huh?”

It’s merely a suggestion- you know that you could always find a way to quiet yourself, stuff your mouth with cotton and stifle your moans- but the implication of it makes your toes curl. Your breath rattles in your chest when you inhale. “You… you want everyone in the building to hear you fucking me?”

Eddie crowds you on the bed, your legs still slung over his shoulders so that you’re bent nearly in half. He’s still too fucking clothed for your liking- his leather belt digs into the back of your thighs as he presses a sloppy kiss to your dry lips. “I want everyone here to know you’re mine, sweetheart.”

Your hands cradle his face, pulling him in for a deeper kiss as he slowly lowers your legs from his shoulders. Your over extended legs flop down onto the mattress, and you whine into his mouth as he massages his tongue with yours.

“I’m yours, Eddie,” you moan against his damp skin. “Oh god, I want it- want everyone to know.”

You take the initiative, with one last kiss turning in his grip. His hand slips, catching himself from toppling off the bed as you scoot onto your stomach, your knees planting on the mattress so that you can wiggle your hips up at him. 

Eddie sucks in a sharp breath, smoothing a gentle palm over your ass before he kisses your lower back. He pauses, drawing soft kisses up your spine until his breath sweeps your shoulder blade. “You’re so beautiful. How’d I get so fucking lucky?”

A quiet keen is the only answer you give him, shoving your hips backward to get him to just fucking touch you, but he pulls away too quickly. There’s the clink of a belt buckle, a zipper being pulled, and you tense, your hand closing into a fist around the pillow at the head of the bed. Following the rustle of clothes, you hear the crinkle of a condom wrapper- you hadn’t even realized he had one. It didn’t even occur to you, in your dizzying need to fuck him, like some loveblind idiot.

You almost berate yourself for it, but then you feel his cock press against your entrance, and all those thoughts die away. He rolls his hips, and every single muscle in you tightens.

Eddie chokes on air as pleasure positively tears through you. Your eyes roll back, your mouth wide open and threatening to drool onto the pillow you’ve been shoved face-first into. 

“F-fuck, you’re so big.” It’s the only thing you can choke out around moans. He splits you so wide, dragging through your slick walls that are still so sensitive from your first orgasm. 

“Holy shi- oh my god-” he gasps behind you. “M’so sorry- I can’t- Feels so fucking good-”  

You groan, unable to form words to adequately answer him. All you can manage to do is jam your hips backward in an attempt to get him deeper, as far as he can fucking go inside you. Your body blazes, everything coming up smelling of sex and sweat as you wail hopelessly into the pillow.

Eddie snarls, a deep and dangerous noise in the back of his throat as he draws his hips back and presses into you again. There’s no time for you to adjust, each thrust a little more forceful than the last. His cock hits sharp heaven deep inside you, punching loud and guttural moans from you each time his hips impact your ass. 

“That’s a good girl- so ffffucking wet, goddamnit,” Eddie praises you through clenched teeth, ringed fingers and bruised knuckles wrapping loosely around your neck to lift your head from the pillow. “Let them hear all those pretty noises for me, baby.”

“Eddie…” You hiccup, your voice kicked up into a shrill whine. You swallow against the press of his fingers on your throat, holding your jaw into the air so there’s no place for your sounds to go but to the wall and through it. 

Above your head, the banging on the wall starts back up. Eddie drops your chin and slams his hand on top of the headboard, gripping tightly at plywood that threatens to hit the wall as he ruts into you. Your face hits the pillow again, but your sobbing moans still come out loud and disruptive as Eddie speeds up his hips in retaliation. 

“Doing so good f’me. Feel me, princess? So fucking deep,” Eddie groans. His cock licks up a sweet heat inside of you, and you know you’re going to come. He curses lowly, his hips pistoning into yours hard enough that you have to smack your hand into the headboard to keep from knocking into it. “Taking me so well. So perfect- s’like you were made for me, I know it, I just fucking know it…”

Eddie’s arm wraps around your waist from behind, and he hauls your back into his sweat-slick chest. You almost feel weightless, for a moment, before you’re settled back into his lap, your thighs bracketing his as he kneels beneath you, clutching you against him. 

A gasp tears from your mouth with a loud, “Shit!” His cock hits a different spot inside you, bursting color behind your closed eyelids as you throw your head back against his shoulder.

Eddie’s breath fans across your neck, sweat-damp hair tickling the side of your face. His hand greedily palms at your breasts, bouncing you in his lap as his tongue traces a wet line along your shoulder. 

“Just know you were made for me,” Eddie repeats quietly in your ear, his breath feeling like flames on your neck. “That’s why you found me, baby. You were meant to be mine, my girl.”

His girl.

“Yours, Eddie,” you blubber, reaching back to dig a fist into his hair as his hands squeeze your breasts. “M’all yours.”

“Yeah?” Eddie murmurs, his voice saccharine and velvety. He moans in your ear when your cunt clenches down, a threatening throb at the outskirts of your orgasm. “Say it again.”

A whimper, high and needy in your throat. “I’m yours. Your girl- oh, f-fuck, Eddie- I’m gonna-” 

“That’s right. My good girl. Only easy when it comes to me, right?” 

Eddie’s hand drags purposefully down, fingernails dragging just through your pubic hair, just barely grazing where you want him- just like you did to him, that first morning. The realization makes you seize up, all tense from head to toe. 

“What’s it like, when I do it to you? You like it?” He whispers, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. You suck in a sharp breath, a hiss through your teeth as you nod. His laugh is barely a ghost of a breath on your skin. “Yeah. I did, too.”

Eddie’s voice in your ear says, “Come for me,” and not even a fraction of you would deny him that.

His finger drags slowly your clit, calloused skin catching on the swollen bud, and you come. Your body slumps against him, and you’re so grateful for his arms around you to hold you through it. You’d swear he was splitting you in half with the sounds coming from your mouth. Your head tilted back on his shoulder, every breath is punctuated by a hoarse cry that breaks in your throat. Your hand clamps around his arm, which is still cradling you close to his chest as his own moans ring in your ear, his hips driving up into you as your cunt pulses around his cock. You know that he comes when his teeth wrap around the muscle of your shoulder and bite down.

Silence settles over your sweaty bodies, but thunderous banging is still furiously happening on the other side of the wall. You hear voices, words too muffled by the drywall to be intelligible, but they still sound angry.

Eddie won’t let you go, not yet. He’s clutching you, his mouth still wrapped around your shoulder, even though his teeth aren’t biting anymore. You pet his forearm, and lean forward just enough to knock lightly on the wall.

“We’re done!” Your voice cracks with the effort it takes to call out to the people on the other side.

“Fantastic show, my love. I think we deserve five stars.” Eddie laughs, nuzzling his face into your neck as he finally releases your shoulder from the trappings of his jaw. “I think I’m corrupting you, sweetheart.”

You hum, still petting his arm. “I think you already have, teddy.” 

Eddie freezes, his grip on your waist tightening just a little. “No one’s called me that since I was a kid.”

“What, teddy?” He nods. Your fingernails drag dully down his arm, tracing over a tattoo of a swarm of bats, which breaks out in goosebumps under your touch. “Is that… Can I call you that?”

“Yeah,” he rasps. “Yeah, you can- you can call me teddy.”

It’s quiet after that. He rocks you in his arms until you kiss his knuckles and lift yourself gingerly from his lap, earning a pacified grunt from him as his softened cock slides out of you. You watch him as he ties off the condom and tosses it in the wastebasket a few feet away, then flops backward onto the bed so that his head hits the pillows. 

You chuckle, sliding forward to run your hands along his stomach. “Honey, you still have your pants on.”

He hadn’t taken them completely off, only pushed them down far enough to free his cock and have at you. What’s more, he still has his boots on, too- big, black motorcycle things that nearly hang off the end of the bed. 

Eddie grunts dismissively. “C’n deal with it in the morning.”

“No sleeping with clothes on.”

He huffs petulantly, but the scowl he tries to give you turns into a lovesick grin pretty quick. He tucks his hand behind his head in mock-nonchalance. “Hey, pretty lady. You come here often?”

“Once or twice, so far.” You grin at him as he laughs, rolling your eyes as you move down the bed to finish undressing him. You untie his boots and let them fall with his jeans and boxers onto the floor at the end of the bed, glancing up at him once you’re finished.

His eyes are closed. You don’t think he’s sleeping yet, but he’s flushed, covered in sweat. He’s still so much of an enigma to you, but you adore him. You’re enamored with him. 

You crawl slowly up the length of his body, feline-like in your movements. You appraise his tattoos, smoothing your hands over them as you go. You lean down and press featherlight kisses across his beautiful, bruised face.��

Eddie cracks his eyes open at you with an inquisitive smirk, just barely puckering his lips to kiss you back when you land one on them. “Feeling me up again, sweetheart?” 

You hum, kissing his chest. “You’re hot.” It’s the only explanation you afford him. And once he’s shut his eyes again, you carefully move down his body, peppering kisses across his naked torso.

“What’re you-?” He twitches when you drag your tongue over his cock, still wet and salty with his cum. He groans as you slowly lift it, suckling on the head gently. “Oh… Sweetheart, m’not… I don’t think I can-”

“I’m just cleaning you up, teddy,” you tell him gently. “S’okay. You can go to sleep.”

He hums tiredly, his hand lifting to run through your hair, stroking tenderly against the back of your head. “My girl just can’t keep her hands off, huh?”

“Not a chance,” you tell him, giving him another slow lick. “You’re just too fucking pretty, Eds.”

“And you’re too fuckin’ perfect.” Eddie only really falls asleep after he comes again.

I’m never gonna leave you, baby, even if you lose what’s left of your mind…

A few days later, the car breaks down in Colorado Springs.

It had been acting up for a while, of course. Even though you enjoyed watching Eddie when he was bent over the open hood, bare arms sweaty and streaked with grease in the afternoon heat, you knew it ultimately wasn’t going to end well. 

Each time Eddie tinkered with it, more and more concerning things came to light. “One of your cylinders misfired,” he said one time, shaking his head. He’d insisted on driving it from that point on. Another, “The fucking spark plug has gone out. We have to get a new one.” That was $75 you didn’t have to spare.

You guess the car had just fucking had it when you got to Colorado. You went to start it up at a truck stop, and the whole thing just sputtered and coughed at you, and then you didn’t have an engine anymore.

After Eddie paced around and cursed about it for a couple minutes, you both crawled into the back of the van and locked the door. And now you sit cross-legged across from each other, with everything of value that you have to your name in a little pile in front of you.

When you left home, you’d saved up a couple thousand to live off of until you got somewhere you felt comfortable working and living in. Since then, you’ve squandered it on food and motels and gas, never staying put and now rambling along with Eddie.

From the ATM, Eddie had stolen around two thousand dollars. He’s in the same boat as you, now looking at only a couple hundred in between the two of you. Hardly enough to afford a hotel room or bus fare for the both of you. Certainly not enough to get you a new car, or even rent one.

He scrubs his hands down his face, dirty fingernails pressing into his skin. “You should take it.”

“What?” You squint at him. 

“There’s enough here for bus fare for you, at least,” Eddie murmurs, his fingers poking at the pile and scooting it toward you. “Getcha where you want to go. Get a nice job at a tourist shop in Vegas or Santa Monica or something.”

“Are you fucking kidding me, Eddie?” you snap. You swat his hand away from the pile, looking affronted. “I’m not taking the money, so cut it out. We’ll figure something else out.”

Eddie shakes his head, like he’s already made up his mind. “We had a deal. I fix your car, you take me with you. And I didn’t fix your car.”

“Yeah, but that was before…” you trail off, scrutinizing his expression. He won’t meet your gaze. He won’t look at you. 

Eddie’s mouth opens and closes like he’s a fish out of water. Then, he says bitingly, “Before we fucked?” 

You can feel all the emotion drain from your face, leaving you a blank, hollow screen with dead eyes just staring at him. It’s your best defense against bursting into tears at the very tone of his voice. 

When he glances at you, you can tell that he wants to take it back immediately. His teeth worry his bottom lip, ripping at chapped shreds of skin. “Don’t do me any favors, sweetheart.”

“It’s not a fucking favor- I thought we were doing this together.”

Eddie talks over you. “You don’t need to keep dragging me around with you, okay? You’re off the hook.”

“Eddie, you’re being mean,” you croak at him. Not exactly the quick, biting wit that you can usually whip out- he’s shocked you.

He drops his eyes, his hands squeezing his knees. “Yeeeah,” he grumbles, his fingers tapping sporadically against his denim jeans. “Well, I told you, I’m no good for you. You didn’t listen.”

You told me that while your tongue was in my pussy. The words are balanced on the edge of your teeth, but they won’t fall out. Your hands itch to reach out for him, grab his chin and force him to look at you, somehow. 

Instead, they snatch up the little bit of cash from your side of the pile in between you. You crumple it in your hand and shove the wad into your jacket pocket before you grab the strap of your weather-beaten backpack full of the last things you have to your name, and kick open the back door of the van. 

It’s summer, but it’s windy in Colorado. It must be something about the mountains, you guess, and it being early morning. Condensation hangs in the air, making the air both heavy and cool as you breathe. Funny- if you slept naked, you’d probably have to curl up into each other for warmth, for a change. 

You’re either vibrating from rage or from the abnormal chill in the air. Standing on the street corner with the gas station sign lit up in neon behind you, you kick the crosswalk pole with your dirty converse. You’re still arguing with him, in your head. We were in this together, motherfucker. I told you, I’m your girl. I put all my eggs in your basket. Whatever fucking martyr complex this is, you can shove it right up your stupid-

“I know.” Eddie’s tattooed arms wrap around your waist and pull you into his chest, his face buried in your hair as he whispers urgently into it. “I know, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

So, you weren’t arguing with him in your head. You were actually yelling everything you were thinking, and he chased you as you stormed off. Seems about par for the course. 

“Fuck you, Eddie, did it even mean anything to you?” you blather at him, your voice thick with impending tears. “‘Cause it meant something to me.”

“Course it did,” he rasps at you, his arms squeezing you to him so tight that you’re running out of air to breathe. “I didn’t- I was being shitty. I’m sorry. Please, don’t leave.”

“Then don’t push me away.” The tears collect in your lashes, finally dripping down your cheeks. You turn in his arms and whack your hand flat against his chest. “Don’t treat me like some slut, don’t- I didn’t sleep with you just because I wanted you to fix my fucking car, you jerk.”

“I don’t think that,” Eddie insists quietly, wiping your tears away with his thumbs. “C’mon, now.”

“You said-”

“I know what I said,” he cuts you off. “And I didn’t mean it. I have a bad habit of throwing away the good things in my life, ‘cause… ‘cause of that martyr complex, you said-” He jams his tongue against the roof of his mouth when you hiccup, staring up at him with a wobbly lip. “Don’t let me throw you away. You’re the best thing I’ve ever had, ‘n I don’t wanna lose you just because I’m an idiot.”

You sigh, your head falling neatly into the crook of his neck like it’s meant to be there. He’s too quiet, holding you against him at the street corner. Eddie breathes in deep and kisses the side of your head longingly. 

“I can get us a car.”

You lift your head to look at him. He wears a disappointed expression. “But we don’t have any money.”

“It won’t take money,” Eddie mumbles as he strokes your back. “I, uh… I didn’t want to end up like my old man, but…” he shrugs, his eyes cast away from you. He chuckles sadly. “Nothin’ I can do about that, now, I guess. I mean, look how you met me.” 

Oh. You can infer what he means by the far-off look on his face, like he’s resigned himself to his fate. You lift your hands to cradle his face; the bruise on his cheekbone has faded to yellow, the scab on his chin almost healed. He’s never looked more beautiful to you.

“You’re a good man, Eddie,” you tell him sternly.

Eddie’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Don’t be too sure of that. You might change your mind.”

‘Cause you know I’ll be right there beside you, riding through all these western nights…

The sedan isn’t exactly flashy, or new. It’s a tin can on wheels that’ll crumble into bits if you so much as side-swipe a trash can. You keep a lookout as Eddie jimmies an unwound wire coat hanger between the glass window and the door, and a second later the door is unlocked.

You’re unnervingly calm. How did you get to be so calm about all this? Stealing money, driving getaway cars, stealing other cars when those ones don’t work. Suddenly an accomplice to whatever illegal shit has to happen for you to get where you’re going.

What’s worse, you think, is how badly the sight of him hotwiring the car turns you on. It’s practically horrifying the way your skin crawls and your core burns as you watch his hands fiddle with the wires beneath the console, so quick that your mind can barely process it. You’re not sure if the adrenaline in your veins is from looking to see if anyone’s coming, or if it’s because you want to jump his bones.

"I swear to you," he's saying as he swipes at frayed wires, "I swear, when we get to San Francisco, I'll never- I'm gonna get an honest, real fuckin' job, I'm not gonna do anything to hurt yo-"

The car starts, and you leap into the front seat without giving it any more thought. “Eddie?”

“Yeah, sweetheart?” He looks up at you, his brows tilted up expectantly. He’s still tucking wires back under the dashboard, preparing to take off once he gets the door shut.

“I slept with you because I’m falling in love with you.”

Eddie’s eyes go wide as moons, glittering in the light of a fluorescent floodlight at the corner of the dark parking lot. 

“You don’t have to love me back,” you tell him honestly. “I just wanted you to know. I’m with you. And I’m not gonna leave.”

You don’t know if he loves you back- not yet, anyways. He doesn’t say it to you. But he kisses you like he does.

I'll be screaming your name past the gas stations, trailing down the interstate. Please don’t love how I need you, and know that one day, you and I could be okay.

[certifiedsexed]

can I ask how condoms work? me and bf looked them up and were very confused. we know that certain base material and certain lubes are bad and ruin the integrity of a condom. we’re looking into condoms for penis because that’s what all our local stores have (but have talked about vaginal ones! way in the future though). I guess my question is, how should you determine size, type, and stuff like that? we’ve yet to take measurements (which I wouldn’t share anyway hdkdhsk) but we read someone that it’s good to measure in milimeters?? so sorry for the huge paragraph!!! we’re just confused and wanna condom up

qlso do they ID for condoms? i’m 18, he’s 17 (jic, we’ve been together for about a year now!! we were supposed to be in the same grade) and we’re both anxious to buy them when the time comes because.. condom

Absolutely, you can!

So, here's an article on just the basics of telling if your condom fits. This is a condom size/type calculator that I personally can't rep but a friend of mine recommends! I think millimeters helps you get more precise and makes it a little more probable you're buying the right size but it's not a necessity.

This is a good article on how to choose what type of condoms to use!

Keep in mind oil-based lubes break latex condoms. Water-based and silicone-based lubes work best with latex and if you buy pre-lubricated condoms, you still have to use lube! There is not enough lube on them that you don't have to use lube!

[I know you said y'all knew about some of this shit but I wanted to be sure I gave you as much info as possible.]

Also, it depends on where you live with the ID thing. A lot of countries do not require an ID though [including Japan, Ireland, the UK, US and France] unless you're trying to buy them specifically from a sex shop.

As long as you're just getting them from the drugstore/pharmacy, something like that, you should be fine.

Also, no worries about the paragraph! Good on y'all for doing your research and deciding to stay as safe as possible. Hope this helps! Let me know if you have anymore questions. <3

[sprites4ever]

Since I'm A Solution-Oriented Person, Instead Of Crying, Here's What I'll I Advise Every American And Everyone Else, Who Wants To Hear It

GET TOGETHER AND STAY TOGETHER

The Right and Fascists thrive on division of their opposition. Don't preocuppy yourself with infighting.

You never wanted politics to be a fight, but they've made it one. So remember who your enemies are, and what people can achieve when they have a common threat.

If you're in a red state and are fearing for the life and well-being of you and/or people you know, GET OUT NOW. You have a month until inauguration, so, if you can't leave the country, move to a blue state.

While it is, of course, no guarantee for safety against the MAGA cult, the comparatively limited power of the US federal government over citizens and state governments should buy you some time to prepare for a Trump Nazi Regime and/or WWIII or a second US Civil War.

DON'T DENY THE ELECTION RESULT

I know it's comfortable to think that most Americans wouldn't be so insane to re-elect Trump, but that's not true. The race was pretty much 50/50 and winning over the battleground states put Trump over the edge. There's also the fact that, while a ~65% voter turnout is pretty good for a democratic country, that still means that half of eligible American voters did not vote. So, whatever their ideals are, they did not participate in the choice that impacts them, every other American and, due to the US' status, the rest of the world.

Remember, Hitler too was democratically elected. None of the reasons with which Hitler and Trump convinced voters are real things, but still, those voters believed them and made their choice. May they shamefully rot in the worst pages of future history books, but they made their choice.

This is the inherent risk of democracy: That people can always choose to ruin it.

I'M NOT GOING TO MINCE WORDS:

CORRECTION: I previously claimed that the voter turnout was ~50%, when, in reality, it was around 65%. This is strong for a genuine democracy (fake democracies can obviously force people to vote at gunpoint, or just make up voter statistics), but this still means that a third of the country did not vote and that Trump was elected by a third of the country, not even 50% of the population. By that logic, any election with a voter turnout below 100% would not represent the genuine majority, but you get my point. The reality is that both a lot of American non-voters and Trump voters live in rural areas where the rest of the world, outside their community, might as well not exist. So, of course, they can, for example, take Trump's word on the LGBTQ+ community, because they know so little about the world that they can be told anything and also won't vote responsibly, as, if, for example, there's no LGBTQ+ person in their community, they have no way of knowing what these people, their issues and the threats they face actually are like. A lot of voters also don't care about politics and just vote for the guy everyone else is voting for, or the guy who's face they like better. (I'm not making this up, people from multiple countries have legitimately stated that they vote based on politician hotness.) It's strange, because this type of rural unknowingness is usually typical for countries that are undeveloped and autocratic, so one wouldn't expect it from the richest country where the elections define so much. I guess it's the US' federal system and libertarian economy that have led to this extreme compartmentalization of society, where communities are essentially as different from each other as Stone Age-villages.

WITH TRUMP RE-ELECTED, DEPENDING ON HIS CHOICES, THERE WILL BE WORLD WAR III OR A SECOND AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

I'm not paranoid for saying this, as former US Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Mark Milley, who served two years under Trump and Biden, has stated in an interview with The Atlantic that he and others had to stop Trump from launching nuclear missiles at North Korea multiple times in 2018.

ON A POTENTIAL WORLD WAR III

WWIII means a nuclear holocaust, meaning hundreds of millions of deaths around the entire world within half an hour of the war turning nuclear and billions of deaths in the years following, no way around it.

Cities and areas near government and military instalations in nuclear-armed countries (USA, russia, China, Israel, Iran, India, Pakistan, North Korea, United Kingdom and France) will be most affected, but that doesn't mean those will be the only places to be nuked or affected.

Decades of many nations' strategists' deliberations during the Cold War, the period of tension between the US-led NATO and Soviet russian-led Warsaw Pact after the end of WWII in 1945, which in and for itself ended with the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1991, came to the same conclusion - If another World War occurs, it will be nuclear and it will be global. It can't even really be called a war, as the world's nuclear powers have had the capacity to annihilate each other's militaries and economies within half an hour ever since 1950.

Since then, WWIII hasn't happened due to powerful people being aware of this and due to multiple courageous individuals who chose right in close calls. For example, President Kennedy maintained a cool head during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, during which, for the uninitiated, NATO and the USSR got extremely close to a nuclear war, as they both deployed nuclear missiles right at each others' doorsteps. In that crisis, too, Soviet Naval Officer Vasili Arkhipov prevented his submarine from launching nuclear weapons at the US when the submarine lost contact with Moscow and other officers thought a nuclear war had started and Moscow had been destroyed. In 1983, when the Soviet Politburo had become so paranoid that they believed their own propaganda about an impending attack by NATO, their nuclear forces were on such high alert that a malfunctioning Soviet spy satellite sending a false alarm about an American nuclear launch nearly caused them to launch in what they thought would be retaliation. At that time, the Soviet Command Officer Stanislav Petrov however figured that the computer at his base, which displayed the warning and which had been installed just the day before, was malfunctioning and chose not to relay the alarm to the rest of Soviet command.

Now, much misinformation has been spread around atomic energy and nuclear weapons. Here's the reality about nukes:

Almost all of the aforementioned nuclear powers have the capacity to launch a nuke at any target in the world within minutes, as nuclear missiles, especially Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) can reach insane hypersonic speeds, faster than anything that could shoot them down before the nuclear warheads start the detonation sequence.

While we're talking about the US, the aforementioned decades of deliberation have concluded that is impossible for any country to fire a nuke without it soon turning into a war between all nuclear powers with their nukes. Nukes are just too destructive for decision-makers to not panic in that event.

The currently existing nukes are spread as follows:

USA: ~5500 nuclear warheads total, how many of those are ready-to-launch is classified, launch means are silo-launched Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles with Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) warheads (meaning one missile can drop nukes on multiple targets), Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs), Short-Range Ballistic Missiles (SRBMs), Ground-, Air- and Sea-launched Cruise Missiles, Air-dropped bombs, Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs) with MIRV warheads

russia: ~6000 nuclear warheads total, readiness same as above, launch means are silo- and truck-launched ICBMs with MIRV warheads, IRBMs, SRBMs, Ground-, Air- and Sea-launched Cruise Missiles, Air-dropped bombs, SLBMs with MIRV warheads

China: ~250 nuclear warheads total, readiness same as above, launch means are ICBMs, cruise missiles and SLBMs

Israel: ~100 nuclear warheads total, readiness same as above, launch means are cruise missiles and SLBMs

India: ~100 nuclear warheads total, readiness same as above, launch means are ICBMs, cruise missiles and SLBMs

Pakistan: ~100 nuclear warheads total, readiness same as above, launch means unknown

United Kingdom: ~200 nuclear warheads total, readiness same as above, launch means are cruise missiles and SLBMs

France: ~100 nuclear warheads total, readiness same as above, launch means are cruise missiles and SLBMs

Iran: Does officially not have nuclear weapons, can factually assemble some nuclear warheads within weeks, launch means unknown

North Korea: Official number of nuclear warheads classified, most likely ~30, readiness unknown, launch means are ICBMs, IRBMs, SRBMs and cruise missiles

Nukes cause unrivaled destruction over tens of kilometers with their explosion, emit a flash of Gamma radiation in the moment of their explosion, cause massive shockwaves and fires, can blind people with the brightness of the flash of Gamma radiation and cause long-lasting contamination with dangerous radiation via fallout.

Gamma radiation caused by the initial nuclear fission of a nuke last extremely short. This radiation is quickly lethal, but so fast that is gone within milliseconds. Anyone too close to the source will, however, be hit by so much of said radiation, that they will get extreme Accute Radiation Syndrome (ARS), also known as radiation poisoning, and die within hours, as Gamma radiation is so strong that, in high enough concentration, it passes through the human body and rips out the electrons from the atoms which cellular tissue is made of, degrading them to Ions. (Hence the term 'Ionizing Radiation')

Ions, unlike atoms, are way less stable, meaning that cellular tissue that has been ionized can't uphold itself and falls apart.

The other type of ionizing radiation from nuclear bombs, Neutron radiation, works the same way, but lasts much longer than Gamma radiation. Unlike Gamma radiation, it sticks to most materials, causing them to give off Neutron radiation for years. This is the radiation hazard that comes from fallout. Fallout is the soot kicked up by the explosion, which originates from everything it pulverized. The immense heat causes it to first be carried upwards, forming the characteristic mushroom cloud, before the air cools and allows the now irradiated soot to fall out (hence the name) and back onto the ground. It is affected by wind and weather.

To avoid both types of radiation, the first factor is distance. Any amount of radiation still consists of individual particles that race through the cosmos, so the further away you are from the source, the less likely for its rays to hit you, as they travel in a straight line.

The second factor is cover. Like everything else, ionizing rays can get through certain things and can't get through others. Gamma rays get through everything with a lower density than multiple centimeters of lead and Neutron rays get through anything with a lower density than multiple meters of concrete. So, being underground or in the center of extremely thick buildings, as well as having resources necessary for survival, is key to surviving radiation after a nuke explodes.

The third factor is time. The human body can withstand different levels of radiation for different amounts of time. The easiest way to figure out how long you can stay exposed to how much, is with a dosimeter.

SO, YES, I AM TELLING YOU TO START DOOMSDAY PREPPING

The essentials, of which you should amass a stock that will last you multiple years in a secure location:

Non-perishable canned food

ABSURD amounts of drinking water

Distilled water for hygiene

Nonperishable Grain-based food

Long-lasting milk

Dried fruit and nuts

Eggs

Flour

Sugar

Honey

Salt

Black pepper (hurts like hell, but can be used as a coagulant to stop wounds from bleeding)

Paper towels

Trash bags

Hygiene gloves

Breathing masks

As much replacement clothing, especially outdoors and warm clothing, as you can get

Water treatment tools

Camping cooking equipment

Easily useable heat sources

Tools (Wrench, File, Screwdriver, Crowbar, Fire extinguisher, Knives, Compass, Hammer, Shovel, Pickaxe)

Physical maps

Hand crank-powered radio

Many spare batteries

Many spare rechargeable batteries

Battery charger

Means of power generation (hand crank, solar)

Flashlight

Radio phone

Backpacks

All the medicines you need

Bandages

Hygiene products

Antibiotics

Medicines against cold

Medicines against diarrhea

Disinfectant

Pastes against insect bites

Pastes against sunburn

Soap

Dosimeter

Geiger counter

Hazardous enviroments clothing

Helmets

Gloves

Cups

Buckets

Canisters for water

History books

Important works

A laptop

A smartphone

A camera (don't need it if you have a smartphone)

Print out important documents on put them in a folder

Analog data storage

Physical data storage (hard drives, flash drives, CDs, SD cards)

Devices to read data storage

Means for self-defense

Emergency plans with people you know

Similarly, a second American Civil War would also need Americans to prepare, in order to survive.

IF YOU LIVE ANYWHERE THAT'S NOT THE US, YOU WILL BE AFFECTED, TOO

Don't think the US are far enough away. Of course, the aforementioned nuclear war would affect you, but a second American Civil War and just Trump being re-elected will, too.

Even without WWIII or a second American Civil War, it's pretty clear that:

In Europe, this will invigorate the similar far-Right movements to bring about similar destructive changes as those Trump wants.

Trump will most likely abandon Ukraine like Afghanistan, meaning russia taking it over and attacking Western European countries afterward. Trump is completely on Putin's side and will also destroy NATO, meaning all of the US' allies, including those in Europe, will be abandoned. I live in Germany, which is seeing a rise in popularity by the far-Right AfD party, and which does not have the military means to defend itself against russian expansionism without the US.

With russia's war against Ukraine, China will feel invigorated to annex Taiwan, and just like with Ukraine, nationalist and authoritarian Trump will not do anything to stop it.

South Korea could be abandoned in the face of North Korea.

Trump will continue to support Israel in the Western Right's extremely hypocritical manner, most likely ordering more US military action in the Middle East.

ULTIMATELY, GIVE THEM THE FIGHT THEY WANT

I know that we liberals, progressives, people who don't care about politics and just want to build their own life and even former conservatives who deemed far-Righters like Trump too radical, never wanted a fight. We never wanted to fight for our values in Western society, against the values of those who demonize us. We were always ready to coexist with them, if only each side kept to themselves with living out its values and didn't impair the other.

But the far-Right fascists and religious zealots, with their leaders who don't mean a word of what they say and say anything they want to get power, have made this a fight. By electing a US President who promised to destroy democracy, eliminate women's and LGBTQ+ rights, oppress non-white ethnicities, censor media, give churches and capitalists unprecedented power and abandon all allied nations, the far-Right has declared war on everyone and everything that's true, moral or even just acceptable. Let's remember that they hate diversity, and that we are from many more groups and walks of life than them. Let's use this to our advantage and show to the fascists what happens when you give different people a common enemy.

[pompadourpink]

It's a new beginning!

Hello children,

September is coming, school too for some of you - often a great moment for a bit of decluttering and a few new good resolutions. Here am I, offering myself as one of them!

As you hopefully know, I started this blog in 2016 and have been a private tutor since the beginning of the pandemic. I have room at the moment for several new students, so here is what I offer:

Classes, obviously - the typical schedule is one hour a week, sometimes one and a half, or one every two weeks, or two every two weeks; typically same day same time (I'm always happy to make adjustments if you work shifts)

Homework, if you can make the time for it. I typically prefer it to be finished by the middle of the week so that I have time to take a look and correct it, giving you the opportunity to give it a second try before class!

Depending on your preferences, either just a few activities so we can take our time, especially if you are a beginner, or something a bit more dynamic consisting in five to ten minute long activities to keep you motivated and alert (which seems to be a crowd's favourite as most of my students are neurodivergent).

Talking activities are typically answering series of questions I share from my Notion, talking about your week, summarising a book or a movie, making me guess a word or a person, or a concept I call "alien talk" where you explain something (like a vaccine or insurance) from scratch to a little red man.

Writing activities are often fictional (I have students create a little character on a website and we write an update about their life regularly), they can also be an overview of your month, a letter to quit your horrible job or convince Snoop Dog to marry you because you are a gold digger.

Transcribing activities, especially at the beginning, are either me reading very easy sentences so you can write them down and memorise the way things sound, then it's episodes from young children's shows, extracts from very famous movies, then we hit harder and turn to gameshows or podcasts.

Translating activities, from one language to another, are a written translation of the first page of a novel (I did the Secret History recently), or a newspapers article (we are working on this one at the moment); or an oral translation of songs lyrics, fairytales, children's books, muted captioned playthroughs of your favourite games on Youtube, etc.

Finally, a few games: silly quizzes, crosswords, Wordle and even Quordle, hangman, and sometimes we even sing if you're comfortable with that.

Here is the link of my website where you will find reviews and a list of what to send me to get the process started. A few things to know:

I try to make the activities fit your preferences: get me a list of what you like and that is what we will work on. If your first language is not English, I am happy to include it, I'm always eager to learn (I've been reviewing my Spanish this way!)

I work without cameras. I don't need to see your face, I just need a voice and a good Internet connection. All students are welcome, no matter if you have an accent, a stutter, or disabilities. Do not be afraid of being judged, there is none of that here.

I ask for your contact information to be able to do my billing, no one else sees it and no one will know if you give me the address of a building in your area if you feel more comfortable this way. If you prefer to have a lesson first and decide that you want to continue before sending me your info, that's also an option.

I have a student and a regular rate, depending on what you can afford, and we can make different arrangements if your country's rate makes it too difficult, I've done it before.

Please comment if you have a question!

Much love,

Rose

[avaetin]

Percy Jackson Keychain Giveaway - AKM Edition

Hi! As per the title, I am going to giveaway PJO keychains - AKM Edition (which is the AU I created). I'm sharing it now because I want it to reach as many interested parties as possible. I will keep this pinned on my account as well. There will be a total of 15 designs (9 solo and 6 pairs), 5 keychains each, for a total of 75 keychains (total 75 winners). Below is a list of all the characters/pairs:

Nico

Aeon/Chronos

Alabaster

Hazel *

Reyna *

Percy

Jason

Erebus *

Ananke *

Nico & Aeon

Nico & Alabaster

Nico & Hazel *

Nico & Reyna *

Nico & Percy

Nico & Jason

* Remaining designs to be posted in the future, closer to the date.

A special and many thanks to @nyankocatnyan for all the awesome designs so far! Please check them out if you want to commission from them!

Why are you doing a giveaway? I always wanted PJO keychains, but there is a MOQ when you want this stuff made. I have no intention of selling/profiting, hence this giveaway. Also, I suppose, it's just sharing some positivity to everyone else.

How do I qualify? 1) Not a bot, 2) PJO fan, and 3) Tumblr account (for contact). You don't even need to be following me or be my mutual.

How do I enter? You need to fill up one of the forms (either solo chibi form or pair chibi form) that will be made available on August 27, 2024, 11pm SGT. Here is the timing for other zones:

The forms will be active from August 27 - September 3. It will be closed on September 3, 3024 at 11pm SGT. You don't need to rush to fill up the forms. This is NOT "First come, first serve." Please read the forms carefully, and make sure you submit the correct details.

You can only fill up one form (chibi form or pair form). Make sure you fill up the correct one as I will only consider your 1st submission (unless the one you really want has low demand, then I will consider).

4. How will I know if I won? I will post the results here on Tumblr on September 8, 2024, at 11pm SGT and tag said winners. From September 8 - 15, I will be sending the winners a link to a new google form for them to fill up for the delivery details of the keychain they won. (Please make sure I can message your inbox/messages.)

5. What if I won but don't respond to your message? You're essentially giving up your keychain to another person. The above period is fixed. One week is enough time to respond.

6. Do I have to pay for anything? Unless you are opting for fast delivery and/or tracked delivery, then no. I'm covering the shipping costs.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I'm not liable if package is lost if 1) You give wrong address after I confirm it with you. 2) Other reasons outside of my control. If the package gets returned to me, I will attempt to send it a second time. But if it still gets returned a 3rd time, I will give it to someone else.

7. When will it reach me? Kindly refer to the "Ordinary Mail- Air". Please note, however, that this is just an estimate. It will ultimately depend on your country's postal services.

8. I'm iffy about giving out my name and address. How can I trust you? I have to give my name and address for the return address in case the keychain doesn't get delivered. That's my trust to 75 of you. It's up to you if you wish to trust me back. I can only say that I will delete the forms once all the keychains are sent out, since there is no further use for them.

9. Will you have another batch of these keychains in the future? Nope. This is the one and only time. Which is why if you want one, I encourage you to participate.

10. What do you want in return? I want to joke something about firstborn here, but I guess it might not be appropriate LOL! Umm, nothing significant. All I want, and this is optional, is when you do receive, to share with me - or with everyone else via post - that you received the keychain. That's it.

BONUS: I'm pretty sure there was a post about a Luke keychain... 👀

That will be a separate post lol! Maybe around September/October. I'm still working out if I just want Luke and Ethan, or if I want one with Luke, Ethan and Alabaster. Something like that.

-----

Giveaway Timeline:

August 6, 2024: Posting about the giveaway

August 27, 2024: Official post with the google forms for interested individuals to fill up

September 3, 2024: Forms will be closed

September 4-7, 2024: Checking of accounts

September 8, 2024: Eligible participants' account names will be placed on the "Wheel of Names" to get the names of the lucky winners. Results to be posted as well

September 8-15, 2024: Contact winning accounts to confirm delivery details

mid-September - November 2024: Sending out of the keychains*

* Delivery might be split into two parts. It depends on the keychain production and, er, budget.

The forms will have terms & conditions (most already stated here), and hence would answer most questions you will probably have. But, if you have questions you wish to address now, feel free to send an ask. (Please don't spam my messages, thank you.)

P.S. Please be kind to anyone you're interacting with in this post.

[racefortheironthrone]

Was the Comics Code as bad as the Hays Code?

That's a really good question!

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "as bad" - are we talking about the overall impact of the Code on American pop culture or are we talking about the actual content of the Code and what it banned and/or mandated in terms of artistic expression?

I've written a little bit about the Hays Code here, but my main focus was on subtextual judaism in Hollywood generally rather than what the Code was and what its impact on American cinema was.

So what did the Hays Code actually include?

One of the few positive things you can say about it is that the men who devised it were quite clear and forthright about what would and wouldn't be allowed, in comparison to the vagueness and inconsistency of the modern MPAA. So here's the list of what couldn't be shown:

Pointed profanity—by either title or lip—this includes the words God, Lord, Jesus, Christ (unless they be used reverently in connection with proper religious ceremonies), Hell, S.O.B., damn, Gawd, and every other profane and vulgar expression however it may be spelled; (You'll notice that the Code is very much a snapshot of the transition from silent movies to "talkies," with the discussion of how profanity is spelled as well as produced via "lip.")

Any licentious or suggestive nudity—in fact or in silhouette; and any lecherous or licentious notice thereof by other characters in the picture;

The illegal traffic in drugs;

Any inference of sex perversion; (i.e anything having to do with LGBT+ people and culture. For more on the impact of the Hays Code on the LGBT+ community, see the excellent documentary the Celluloid Closet.)

White slavery; (the 1920s version of sex trafficking, but with added racism!)

Miscegenation;

Sex hygiene and venereal diseases;

Scenes of actual childbirth—in fact or in silhouette;

Children's sex organs;

Ridicule of the clergy;

Willful offense to any nation, race or creed; and (this one was really honored in the breach more than the observance when it came to nations, races, and creeds of non-dominant groups in society.)

The following things could be shown, but "special care be exercised in the manner in which the following subjects are treated, to the end that vulgarity and suggestiveness may be eliminated and that good taste may be emphasized:"

The use of the Flag;

International Relations (avoid picturizing in an unfavorable light another country's religion, history, institutions, prominent people and citizenry); (again, depended a lot on what country you're talking about.)

Arson;

The use of firearms;

Theft, robbery, safe-cracking, and dynamiting of trains, mines, buildings, et cetera (having in mind the effect which a too-detailed description of these may have upon the moron); (I guess the idea was that the MPPDA believed very strongly in the idea that media could affect people's behavior through imitation, but the use of the word "moron" gives me eugenics vibes.)

Brutality and possible gruesomeness;

Technique of committing murder by whatever method;

Methods of smuggling;

Third-Degree methods; (i.e, torture)

Actual hangings or electrocutions as legal punishment for crime; Sympathy for criminals; (this was a big one; Hollywood had done very well from gangster films, so a lot of creators had to do some careful threading of the needle to keep the genre alive. One dodge that they came up with was that they would have a duplicate "final reel" in which the gangster would have their inevitable comeuppance, and then remove the final reel when the censors had left the theater. Very popular with white rural teens.) Attitude toward public characters and institutions; (again, Hollywood shifting from being anti- to pro-establishment.)

Sedition;

Apparent cruelty to children and animals;

Branding of people or animals;

The sale of women, or of a woman selling her virtue;

Rape or attempted rape;

First-night scenes; (i.e, wedding nights)

Man and woman in bed together; (hence the eventual TV practice of showing married couples in separate beds in the 50s)

Deliberate seduction of girls;

The institution of marriage;

Surgical operations;

The use of drugs;

Titles or scenes having to do with law enforcement or law-enforcing officers;

Excessive or lustful kissing, particularly when one character or the other is a "heavy".

So in general, we can say that the Hays Code was extremely sex-negative, very concerned about crime and anti-establishment thinking, sexist, racist, and homophobic, and in general afraid of offending anybody.

So what about the Comics Code Authority?

So this is what the Comics Code looked like in 1954:

Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals. If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity.

Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.

Criminals shall not be presented so as to be rendered glamorous or to occupy a position which creates a desire for emulation. In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.

Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited. Scenes of brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary knife and gunplay, physical agony, the gory and gruesome crime shall be eliminated.

No comic magazine shall use the words "horror" or "terror" in its title.

All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted.

All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated. Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly, nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.

Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited.

Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings are forbidden.

Nudity in any form is prohibited, as is indecent or undue exposure. Suggestive and salacious illustration or suggestive posture is unacceptable.

Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.

Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed. Rape scenes, as well as sexual abnormalities, are unacceptable.

Seduction and rape shall never be shown or suggested.

Sex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden.

Nudity with meretricious purpose and salacious postures shall not be permitted in the advertising of any product; clothed figures shall never be presented in such a way as to be offensive or contrary to good taste or morals.[16]

You'll notice the similarities when it comes to the Codes' attitude to sex, sexuality, crime, and symbols of authority - so to answer the first part of your question, I would say the CCA was pretty similar to the Hays Code (in part because Charles F. Murphy, who drew it up, was deeply unoriginal and basically cribbed off the Hays Code throughout).

However, there are also some significant areas of difference that have a lot to do with the unique circumstances of the 1950s moral panic over comics. See, in the 1950s, superhero comics were considered deeply uncool and old hat - they had been huge in the 40s during the war, but by the 50s the biggest genre in comics were horror, crime, and romance comics (with cowboy comics bringing up the rear). To quote myself from another post:

"This gave rise to a moral panic in the 1950s, although more accurately it was part of the larger moral panic over juvenile delinquency. The U.S Senate established a Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee in 1953 to investigate the causes of juvenile delinquency and comics became a major target. While Wertham’s book is best known today for its assertions that Batman and Robin were teaching young boys to be gay and Wonder Woman was teaching young girls to be lesbians, the main focus of the Subcommittee [edit mine: and Wertham's academic work] was on horror and crime comics for their depiction of sex, violence, and “subversive” attitudes to law and order."

The CCA made it impossible to publish two of the most popular genres in the industry for a generation (the CCA relaxed its stance on horror stuff a bit in the 70s, which is why Marvel trend-chased werewolves and vampires the moment they could get away with it), which not only scrambled the medium (and potentially created space for the Silver Age of superhero comics to flourish) but drove the former titan EC Comics practically out of business. (Indeed, William Gaines of EC Comics believed that the CCA had been specifically worded to drive him out of business.)

So in some ways, the CCA was worse.

[endivinity]

If you're comfortable with answering, where did you start on the path to getting your diagnosis?

A lot of what you described sounds rather similar to what I've felt/went through, but I'm a bit anxiously paralyzed by it all and don't know where to start

Started through my GP! I'd imagine it varies depending on where you are in the world, but I couldn't go through with a diagnosis anywhere without a basic assessment from my GP and a referral, since in NZ the medications are heavily regulated. First I asked for resources for a diagnosis and was given a number of places to choose from, most of which were haphazardly picked out (some of them were specifically for ADHD... in children. Others were physical appointment only, way off on the other side of the country. For some reason one of them was listed as being in the middle of the ocean. It was an interesting time). I emailed the ones that sounded plausible, asking specifically for availability, cost, waitlist, and whether telehealth was possible. From there, I chose a place and had the referral done (I also dragged my heels on it for a solid two months lol). There was no waitlist for this one and it wasn't too expensive. Since ADHD is pretty easy to self-diagnose these days there's a chance of answer bias if you're a milder case, so they did require input from outside parties, a friend and my mother, as well as school reports to try and pick up on a pattern of inattentiveness. There was a bunch of general wellness checks as well but that was discussed and arranged in-appointment, so be prepared for maybe getting those? Mostly it's for medication compatibility and concerns.

I think that covers everything?? best of luck if you decide to go for it! and remember even if you aren't diagnosed (it's natural to second-guess whether you're struggling enough. that anxiety is very hard to shake) adhd-specific coping strategies will always do you some good.

[beemovieerotica]

About your tags on that class post, I was just curious to know where you'd say the line between upper middle class and upper class goes?

I guess 500k isn't all that far from upper middle class the way I see it, like.. it's rich, but not like... "rich rich" you know? Like normal person rich if that makes sense. But I realize I might just be super blind to this stuff, so I'm just looking for some perspective I guess (I realize it might also be dependent on what country you live in, most stuff is expensive where I'm from)

i think the issue is that wealth disparity is so fucking massive that, yes there's always going to be someone so obscenely rich in the room that by comparison, everyone else feels like they have nothing. that's why the family making 500k a year truly believes that they're middle class, because if the fucking CEO of Mattel rolls up to the PTA luncheon then yeah you're second-guessing your entire life.

my family was making around 150k in the san francisco bay area which was beans compared to the average income there - kids who were heirs to insane fortunes went to my high school, but you know what? we were still at the same school. we were sitting at the same table. we were all upper class by virtue of being able to afford to live in that area and attend those schools. like we could get into the weeds of "that family can afford a tesla" versus "that family can't" but the fact that it's even a point of consideration or an option speaks volumes!!

and at the end of the day, it does not matter, i still reaped the privileges of going to those schools which let me springboard into better colleges, better programs - i had family friends and school parents offering me jobs at insanely competitive biotech companies just because i was there and they liked my parents. i think what i'm getting at is it's less about some kind of strict income cut-off value, and it has so much more to do with all the privileges that come with inhabiting those spaces since birth.

but real talk 500k is absolutely upper class and nowhere near the border.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for telling my brother his wife is using him?

This may be long but I want to make sure there is enough info for you to give an accurate judgment. TLDR at the end but I encourage reading the full post

I (25f) have an older brother, J (28m). I also have a younger brother (22m), L. J and I were always close when we were younger then grew apart as we got older, the boys always were close. The year J graduated high school we became close again.

J met his gf A (29-31f, I dont even know how old she is but she's older then J) during college. I remember the first time A came home with him, and she was very sweet but very nervous. We clicked and had a good conversation that lasted hours (we all were at our parents house and us girls had to share a room and the boys did too). Anytime there were holidays we stayed at our parents and did this (big holidays that colleges had off like Christmas and Thanksgiving)

We met up a couple of times and all was fine. It was hard as they lived far away from where we grew up (2-4 hours depending on traffic and routes). Then I moved to the country, about 20 minutes away from them. We met up more often, but only maybe about once every 3 months. No big deal, I was busy working. Then J and A got engaged and it felt like everything changed.

I would invite them to hang out or get dinner, but J and A would make excuses. J would be like "A can't come so we won't make it" even when I said "okay but what if only you came? You're my brother?" He would make excuses. The days they agreed to meet up, suddenly day of couldn't go. He was tired after work, she wasn't feeling good, the car wasn't working. Anything and everything you could think of. I did notice whenever L came to visit me and stay, J and A would always be available to meet up, even if it was last minute.

So I figured...it somehow must be me? And then they got married. And it was beautiful.

Or so im told as it was a private ceremony and I wasn't invited :) I actually was originally told the date, which I asked off of work for, but then I got a text a week prior saying "guess what happened tonight" and then was told they got married. L was there. Our parents and myself were not. A did tell me she didn't feel right inviting our parents if her parents weren't there...but why not me? I was told it was a private ceremony and only L was there as a witness, but one of their friend's posted pictures and it had over 5 different people in them

I tried to let it go but honestly it hurt me and pissed me off and everything kept adding onto it. I have zero clue what the hell i did. I have texted J and asked him point blank if he is mad at me, he would deny. I asked for A's number cause he mentioned she was lonely and had lost friends, I said we could go get our nails done since that's something she likes (I dont but I figured I'd extend an olive branch) he refused to give it to me. It seems its me but again I have zero clue why.

It worsened after me and J got into an argument. They canceled again, and I do know A was having a bought of depression at this time. I understood, as someone diagnosed with depression and anxiety. But J told me I never would understand (A was still going out to places and hanging out with friends, meanwhile there were days I couldn't get out of bed and called into work sick. I know we shouldn't compare mental illness but it seemed like an excuse to me. A also would do things that she has said makes her mental health worse, like reading and watching things that triggers her). The whole reason I wanted to hang out is because I had Christmas gifts from our parents and a few of our childhood friends for them (L was out of the country at this time and had mailed a gift to them). They kept bailing and I tried for TWO MONTHS, I finally delivered the items the week after Valentines.

One of our friends was a baker and TOLD THEM she baked them a cake, special for them because A has dietary restrictions due to a chronic disease. They knew this and it spoiled. So I was upset for my friend, and I lied and said they got it to save her the hurt.

But when J finally told me to drop off the items I blew up at him. We stood outside his house and yelled at each other. He flat out told me to stop being so emotional and that I was letting hormones get in the way of thinking, and that I should understand A being depressed. I did! I yelled at him he should get his head out of his ass and that he is letting down not just me but our friends, especially the baker who has a waitlist and made stuff SPECIAL for them. He didn't thank me for my gift, but texted each individual person for theirs.

That was in 2022. A month after I apologized and he said he forgave me. But nothing has changed. Since then they didn't wish me happy birthday (they called L on his, he is now living with me temporarily, but when I pointed out I didn't get a happy birthday from anyone *literally only one friend wished me a happy birthday and L, even my own parents forgot* A told me I needed to get over myself and that birthdays weren't that important to them so I shouldn't take any offense. I didnt expect them to wish me a happy birthday this year because of that, but my true friends and my parents did remember this year),. They didn't come to my college graduation. I stopped texting J and I hadn't heard a response since. We did see each other this past Christmas coincidentally, not planned as they didn't come to our parents. J was pleasant, A said nothing but watched me the whole time, and I made excuses to leave this Christmas party as I didnt even know they knew the person throwing the party.

I came home early from work this past week and J was visiting L (something J claims he can't do during weekdays cause he works 9-5 during the week...allegedly). J gave me a hug and we all chatted for about an hour, it felt like old times, but then his wife called. It was a smooth conversation then I got brought up, and suddenly A needed J back home immediately. He bailed on dinner plans he and L had (L had spent all day cooking a roast, it was delicious btw and yes L was upset J didn't stay).

I had enough. I called J during his "work hours" on his cell. J answered and I chewed him out. I said our brother was hurt and whatever the issue with me is HAS to stop. If he doesn't tell me whats wrong, I CANT fix it. J told me there was nothing wrong with me and I was reading too into it. I pointed out some of the same instances I listed and he told me I was reading into it. He then accidentally let slip that A didn't want us talking. Which I figured. I blew up and told him A was using him. A was turning him against me and our parents *i am too lazy to go back but he stopped talking to our parents the same time he stopped talking to me but he always talked to L*. I mentioned how she is an adult and if she has an issue with me she needs to tell me, but instead she's a fucking coward. J yelled at me that she has anxiety and I yelled back "bitch I do too! I'm on fucking meds for it" which i know she isnt. J hung up on me.

Not only is everything above an issue, A also: doesn't have a job and only J has the income. Claims its because of her illness, the one that causes dietary restrictions, yet EATS said things even though she knows makes her sick. She won't let J meet up with our childhood friends. A also has stsrted getting J to take edibles with her. If J is tested, it will get him fired from his job. But then she complains he's being a loser if he doesn't do edibles with her.

The kicker is this: A solely used to date women. J is NOT a woman, nor does he want to identify as one. J knows A used to date women, and again tells me I should be more considerate seeing as how I am openly bisexual. However, and I havent told J this, one of the conversations I did have with A after they got married, she told me TO MY FACE "yeah, I never imagined marrying a guy yet here I am." Laughed and I kind of was like oh haha, isnt it crazy how things work out, to which she said "I dont even like men!" Slapped my thigh laughing and continued laughing. I was bewildered and when J had returned and asked what we were talking about we both changed the subject.

I did tell L when that happened and he thought it was weird but we couldn't change anything as they were married. I dont know if I should tell J.

But really I do feel as though A is using J, but now im wondering if I should lay it out more clearly WHY. Or if I should stay out of it. They already seem to hate me, so part of me is like why not go for it. But L is talking me off that bridge (my therapist is also testing me for something that isnt solely anxiety and depression) . I know J is hurt as he told L such, and part of me feels bad I yelled, but also the rest of me wants to key his fucking car and tell him to shove it up his ass and ban him from seeing L at my house as it is MY house even though L is living there

AITA?

TLDR: I yelled at my brother his wife is using him as she doesn't have a job, always falls back on her mental and physical illness yet does things to make them worse, and has also told me she doesn't like men (she used to exclusively date women prior to my brother).

What are these acronyms?

[arumidden]

Hi, I've been wondering about your headcanons about how the nations work. What is their role in the government, how does family work for them, do they have any powers? And stuff like that 😊

I'm guessing you're asking about my Public Nations AU and how Nations work within that universe? Get ready, this is gonna be a long post. I'll break it into parts for each section of your question :)

Note: I edited this recently so it reads more smoothly.

Role in the Government

As long as Nations have existed for, they've always been important advisers to their leaders. I think they mostly functioned as advisers, ambassadors, translators, etc. I imagine they have to remain apolitical when it comes to modern systems like political parties; they don't want to seem too supportive of any one political party, no matter what their personal opinions are. If they are gonna make a statement about something, they're expected to do it not as a Nation, but as an individual. That's partly why America's youtube channel uses his human name; it signifies that the channel is just a place for him to goof off, so nothing he says there is to be taken as a representation of the country. I think people still get those roles confused though. There’s gotta be tons of people who see Alfred stating his personal opinion and assume that that’s the government’s official statement as well. Plus I think lots of people just aren’t well versed in how the government works, so they probably misunderstand Alfred’s role as well.

I also think they've been put in the military ever since ancient times. After all, kings used to lead their militaries into battle, so I imagine their Nations would be right alongside them, both for the symbolism and because of how useful it would have been to have an immortal with lots of battle experience on their side. I can’t say that Nations always wanted to be on those battlefields, but they would often times get put there anyway.

Family

What counts as family is incredibly fluid and ever-changing for Nations. Nations aren't created through reproduction, so I don't think very clear-cut blood relations are truly possible. As a result, how Nations are related can vary and change. Why do America and Canada resemble each other so closely? I don’t think even the Nations themselves know. Sometimes Nations take this resemblance to imply familiar relations, sometimes they don’t. (I think this is more just my frustration with canon. Who is related to who makes no sense and has changed over time as Himaruya wills it. Why are England and America brothers instead of father and son? Why are America and Canada clearly twins when they didn't even belong to the same empires when they were born? I give up)

I also don't think they have the same standards for what is taboo and what isn't. Things can get waved away as "human ideas” which doesn't apply to them. Plus, Nations can't reproduce the way humans do after all, so I don't think they consider “incestuous” relationships to be nearly as scandalous. America and England might have a father-son relationship or a romantic one and I don't think they would have a problem going back and forth between the two. Not to mention the fact that after however many centuries, I assume practically all of them have slept with each other.

Of course, humans get uncomfortable with that fact, so that aspect of their relationships is usually kept private. Basically, Nations can have any kind of relationships with each other, but stick to only letting humans know about the ones that are socially acceptable.

Powers and Abilities

Nations draw life from their human populations, and as a result have a connection to those humans. Nations can tell if a human is theirs or not and identify them by name.

They can suffer from two different kinds of injuries: Direct and Indirect. Direct injuries are when their bodies are injured; they can heal from practically any direct injury, but the rate they heal depends on how well their country is doing. An injury incurred during a war may take multiple weeks to heal, while a random injury incurred during everyday life will heal much quicker.

Indirect injuries are what happens when their population is harmed or killed. Major tragic events can result in injuries suddenly appearing on their bodies. Some rare events can leave them with permanent scars (9/11, London Blitz, French Revolution, Atomic Bombs, etc). If their people are sick with a disease, they will show symptoms as well despite not actually being able to get sick themselves.

For either type of injury, if a limb in severed, it can be reattached, but will otherwise turn into dirt if left separate for too long. If the injury is direct, the limb will grow back. An indirect injury resulting in a missing limb will likely be permanent.

Whether or not they have super strength depends on their status as a world power. America only gained his strength in the 1880s when he became a major economic power, and even then, he wasn't as strong as he eventually became post-WWII. America currently has this superhuman strength, but during the height of the Cold War, Russia had it as well.

Nations can sense other Nations around them, and also when a foreign Nation enters their territory.

They cannot leave the Earth. Once they've been outside Earth's atmosphere for 72 hours, they start to become violently ill and will begin to decompose into dirt unless they return to the planet.

Okaaaaay, I think I've covered everything! Let me know if I answered all your questions, and if you have any others! I always love to talk Nation lore XDDDD

[alicedash2]

( not reviewed )

Refugee

Izou x Child!reader

°•°•°•°•°•°•°°•

Everything seemed so normal that day, it was just a cold and rainy day, but everything seemed to go well, well, just for the crew.

The thing was that the island was in a process of war because there were people that the navy was after, and in that somehow later on I will go into detail, it resulted in a war, a war of a country against navy

And guess who was running to avoid going to the battlefield against the navy? Yes, a child group

Just like the navy, the government on that island was horrible, they used the elderly and children to fight, that was the situation on that island

In that, when Whitebeard's ship arrived at a new island, a large island, however, simple, it was so common that it had nothing special until then, except, a small child

The crew went looking for supplies, Whitebeard stayed on the ship while the others explored the island, Marco would go looking for medical books, he was just a young boy who learned about medicine to maintain his role as a doctor, Thatch would go looking for food, and Izou, would go for clothes, he had the day off

That was until a small child caught the attention of him and other people around, the girl's situation was precarious, she should have been between 14 years old, thin and shivering with cold, but the cold did not bring down the fast and light child, who stole food quickly, was a child who wasted no time

- brat! Come back here! YOU COWARD!- the seller screamed, while the little girl ran away with a good amount of food in her lap

- I'm sorry! -the girl apologized, she didn't want to steal and much less be judged for her decisions, she was just a child that the government threw her into battle, but a child doesn't have the strength to hold a gun

"Coward?" Izou thought, he looked at the girl again, his curiosity slowly piqued.

°°•°••••°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•

- I finally ran away from the battlefield, I can't let them find me!- the child said to himself, the clothing was a little different from the locals, it looked more like a uniform, the white shirt with brown pants, the child she was bruised and malnourished as it was winter and the country depended on other countries at the time

For some reason, Izou's curiosity piqued, he tried to ignore it, but what caught his attention the most was an emblem on the child's shirt, what did that emblem mean? Was it military? And why did the girl steal when she was in uniform? Why would someone in military uniform steal?

Why did a child wear a military uniform?

Izou didn't think twice and went after the child, who crossed a forest, as the child ran, he noticed the footsteps of a man behind, which made him speed up his steps.

- Hang on! - Izou shouted, making the girl get scared more and run more to her hiding place, which is a hut made of wood, it was crooked but it was well made for a 12 year old child

The girl arrives at her hiding place, which was another cabin in the forest, seeing if the man who was no longer in her field of vision had lost her sight.

-Here...I got a lot, enjoy- the girl was delivering the food to other children who also fled from the battle

- How did you get so much, YN?- a blond-haired child, called Zart, said with a big smile

- at certain times, I manage to be very quick to catch a lot -

- YN, you're the best! - Koki said while picking up the food and tasting it, a girl with long black hair

- I'm responsible for you, we were the only ones who managed to escape from there, but they're still after us - YN, who spoke with a sad look, remembering the times they managed to escape from the military

- I'm afraid of them - Zart said shakily, thinking of the times they tortured them to form the perfect soldiers, they could be worse than the navy

- everything will be fine, we'll get out of here soon - YN said while hugging them

- Hey you. - the male voice came quickly in their ears, making them take a fright

- Wh-who are you?! - YN quickly prepared to attack, picking up his only weapon, which was a knife, and pointing it at the man

- a-ah! I know him! - Koki said

- he's a pirate - Koki completed

- pirate? - YN said, lowering her knife

- I'm not going to do anything to you -

Izou said, he tried to approach but the children retreated more

-...they must be scared-

Izou smiles sweetly, he holds out his hand, hoping to gain the confidence of the older child, who looks at him while pointing the knife at him, knowing that she doesn't stand a chance against him.

- come on, I won't do anything-

Izou gestures, the older child holds Izou's soft and warm hand, which pulls her out, Izou gently throws a cloak over the child, making her startle at the sudden gesture

- did you like it? -

- ....it's...it's warm... - The cloak was light pink, with white edges made of cotton, made like the snow that had begun to fall before them slowly

- ah..- the children looked on with curiosity, seeing the affectionate interaction that YN received from the oldest, wanting to receive the same attention, they ran to the man and looked at them in a loving way, like a dog asking for some food

- You can have mine - Izou took back his winter clothes and distributed them to the children, who dressed happily, the children looked at each other and Rien of the situation, seeing that they were not treated in an abominable, tragic, unhappy and unfortunate way

- and now? - Izou came closer

- Can you tell me where you're from? -

°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°

The children look at each other again, giving the oldest confidence to say that they are refugees from a war

- we... - YN started to speak

- Yes? - Izou listened attentively

- we are war refugees! - YN said, her cheeks blushing with the comfortable feel of the cloak

- war?-

- Yes! -

- what do you mean? -

- ahmm... We were summoned to war, but we ran away from there -

- which war? -

- the war against the navy, the government has soldiers, but it is using civilians to fight too, and we fled!-

- it's a government where they use children for experiments to turn them into perfect soldiers, and we are one of those experiments -

- and since then we've been waiting for a pirate ship to get away! -

- I can't understand, how can a government do this? -

- good... -

- navy does almost the same thing, so the government thought it could do the same -

- by any chance, do you still have refugee children?-

- yes, some are around here, we decided to separate if they found us, we would have a way to escape -

- And how long have you been in this war?-

- in some years, we were called when I was 6 years old -

-And how is the current situation?-

- it seems that the navy invaded the southern coast and they are taking things, they are going to destroy the island- the girl said with a scared look

- ... Please! We get out of here! We don't want to die!

- ... Stay here, I'll notify my captain and take you with me, if only to adapt to a new island - Izou said getting up

- serious?! Would you do this for us?

- I'll do it, but I want you to do something, you, what's your name? -

- YN LN -

-it's a good name, come with me, and you, gather as many refugee children as possible and hide here, I'll be back soon-

Both kids nodded, doing as Izou said

°°°•°°°•°°°°•°•••••°•°•°•°•°•°•°•

Izou ran with YN on his lap, hurrying faster and faster

- everything will be fine? -

- come on, you can trust me -

- You didn't know anything, did you? They try to cover it up -

-...dictatorship?-

- not much related, but this is also included -

- We need to get out of here! -

Izou arrived at the ship panting, still with YN in his arms, Izou called the attention of the crew and the Captain

- Izou, what happened? Who is the child? - Whitebeard asked

- Ah... The country is at war! We need to get out of here! -

Izou screamed

- Why do we need to leave here?

- the country is in crisis! Using children to battle! That child...is a refugee!-

Izou took off the robe under the girl revealing the heavy uniform the girl was wearing.

- do you know the situation, brat?- Whitebeard asked the girl, intimidating her

- The navy already took a good part, the government was against the navy and now we have to deal with them, in addition to the government's experiments - the girl said quickly, taking the mantle back and putting it around herself

- please help us! My friends are waiting- -

The girl's voice was cut by a flash of light and then a gale, knocking Izou and almost the ship

- What happened?!- Izou asked

- an explosion... An explosion! Oh no! My friends are still there!- the child left Izou's lap and ran to her hiding place that she had built herself

- it can not be! - the girl was fighting people running towards her to run away, while she saw people being fallen and others lying on the ground injured

"Please..." the girl pleaded.

- please... They are the only ones I can call friends! -

Images came to YN's head when remembering that she brought them and as time went by, they improved the hiding place

When she finally arrives after crossing the woods, it's all over, the explosion hit the head made of wood, with trees and rocks over the cabin, YN couldn't see anything in the small exposed hand.

- do not look! - Izou covered her eyes girl, but it was too late when he felt the tears falling and heard the sharp sound of the child who already understood the concept of death

- go fast! -Izou held her tight as she ran to the ship

- they're still there, boy!- YN said to the tears, seeing the hut disappear little by little

Izou didn't say anything, he just took her to the ship, where she was last seen on the island already destroyed by the navy.