#it takes me a gallon just to leave TOWN

[dragonpyre]

Not to be a communist but gas shouldn’t cost $50 a tank

[aothotties]

Some more Farmer!Reiner for everyone

Warnings: MDNl, Cunnilingus (f. receiving), fingering, a lil fluff at the end.

◝꒰ ´ ˘ `♡ ꒱

Farmer!Reiner becomes your new best friend within the first few weeks of your stay.

Farmer!Reiner who learns that you're opening up a small bakery in town and would love to be business partners.

Farmer!Reiner brings you your order with a few extra cartons of eggs or gallons of milk just because he can.

Farmer!Reiner does these things out of the kindness of his big heart, and in hopes that you'll let him take you on a date.

Farmer!Reiner is shocked when it's you who asks him out before he even gets the chance to.

Farmer!Reiner promises to be on his best behavior for your date tonight so that he won't scare you off.

Farmer!Reiner is about to lose an internal battle with himself when he sees how divine you look.

You invite him over to a home-cooked meal and on the off chance the night takes a turn, it's better to be a few feet away from the bed.

Reiner knocks on the door with flowers in his hand and you take a nice long look at him. His blonde hair is washed and styled handsomely, large muscles are bulging under his shirt, Christ, and the way his thighs are screaming under those jeans.

Reiner is no better if not worse than you are. His eyes steadily trail down your curvy figure, if the word perfect had a picture in the dictionary, he's sure the hat they would use one of your pictures to capture the meaning. All he can do is fantasize about what you're hiding under that long skirt, the way your dark skin shimmers due to your body butter entices him.

Farmer!Reiner manages to act civilized while you two have dinner and dessert.

Farmer!Reiner falls in love with you by the second every time he eats more forkfuls of your delightful chocolate cake.

Farmer!Reiner doesn’t let you move a muscle after dinner and insists on doing y’all’s dishes himself.

Farmer!Reiner holds back a moan when you jump up onto the counter next to him and rub his shoulder, mumbling a sweet “thank you”

Farmer!Reiner gets distracted by you telling a story and sprays you both with the faucet.

Farmer!Reiner is standing between your legs while wrapped up in a large blanket since you don't have any clothes his size.

Farmer!Reiner can't help but draw small circles on your thighs while you tell him your entire life story.

Reiner can’t help himself from leaning in just a tad bit too close to attach your lips, but it’s okay because you wanted this just as bad if not more.

Your wraps wrap around the blanket covering his shoulders and he pulls you in as close as he can. You both sigh in contentment as the tension slowly leaves the room with each kiss.

The blanket falls to the floor as he pushes you down so your back is flat against the countertop. You barely have time to react to how quickly your panties are removed and his lips are wrapped around your clit.

“Reiner!” You exclaim, you grip his soft blond locks between your fingers as his tongue switches between your nub and dripping hole.

His poor cock twitches at the sound of his name falling from your lips, his pants growing tighter by the minute. He tests the waters but inserts a finger in your cunt.

You hum at the sensation of his thick finger massaging your walls while his skilled tongue lapped at your clit like a madman.

He adds another finger next to the first one and your back arches off the counter, the scene in front of you has you insanely close.

You make eye contact with Reiner as he gives your bulging clit all the attention she craves. He curves his fingers to rub against your g-spot and you let out a long moan.

“I-I’m coming! Fuck Reiner I’m coming.” You warn, your body twitching in pleasure as you release onto his tongue and fingers.

He drinks up every last drop and pulls away from you to give your poor pussy a break. He stands up fully and wipes his mouth with his thumb.

“Are you okay, I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry.” He helps you to your feet, grabs the fallen blanket, and covers your bare half.

“Reiner you’re fine, trust me I enjoyed myself. You’ve got nothing to worry about, are you okay?” You ask, nodding down to the bulge in his pants.

“Don’t worry about me, I want our first time to be special. Or at least not in your kitchen maybe?” He suggests and you let out a chuckle.

“Yeah, that might be a good idea for next time.” He places a kiss on your forehead and takes you to the couch.

A movie plays in the background as you two doze off at some point in the night. His clothes are long forgotten in the dryer, but this will be a night to remember

[morganbritton132]

was thinking about that wayne buying little steve cereal text post and was wondering if you still plan to write the fic its inspired? if so i am definitely looking forward to it and am cheering you on. if not that's cool too, i was just curious!

Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll ever actually write the fic. But! I will tell you what I had in mind because it wasn’t supposed to be a sad fic!

Wayne starts noticing this kid around town.

He shouldn’t. He doesn’t notice any other kid, and this boy is well-dressed. He seems polite enough and well-behaved. There’s no reason that Wayne should pay him any mind, except… the hair. It’s a mess. It’s brushed up and backwards like the person who fixed it didn’t quite know what they were doing.

He keeps seeing that hair everywhere.

It’s asking questions at the hardware store about lightbulbs. It’s distracting Bob at the Radio Shack. It’s taking up half the aisle at Melvard’s with a cart it can’t see over, and asking Wayne, ‘Mister, can you reach the floss for me, please?’

There’s nothing out of the ordinary, honestly, but Wayne feels a might uncomfortable every time he sees this head of hair (a bit more stylish than the last) doing something that a parent might do. Especially because he never sees a parent.

It comes to head when he’s three people back in line at Melvard’s and people are complaining. He sticks his head out to see what the hold up is and sees that head of hair again, counting out quarters and dimes at the counter for a box of cheerios.

Davey, in front of him, swears under his breath and bounces on his feet like he’s about to say something, but Wayne beats him to it. Wayne takes the few steps up to the counter, looks Donald in the eye and wishes that it had been Joyce Byers instead.

He sits his carton of eggs and gallon of milk down on the counter next to the kid’s cereal and tells Don to ring it all up together. Then he tells the kid, “Put your money away, boy.”

He tries to talk to him outside the store, but the boy squeaks out ‘thanks’ and is running before Wayne can get anything out. He doesn’t see him for a while after that, and he can’t stop thinking about how hungry he looked.

A month and some change later, Wayne finds himself sliding into a booth at the diner across from the kid with the hair. He’s devouring slices of toast, pennies and nickels counted out on the table next to him.

The kid startles, and Wayne cuts to the point, “You hungry?”

The kid nods in that skittish way that reminds him of his nephew and Wayne orders two plates of pancakes. He lets the boy eat before he asks where his parents are. He gets no answer. He asks if he has enough food at home. The kid’s eye flicker to him and then back down, “Usually.”

He clicks his tongue, swears internally, and asks how often he’s left alone and hungry, and the boy says, “Their flight got delayed.”

The boy shrugs his shoulders and explains the money they leave him, and how sometimes he’s runs out but he’s learning better. It crushes Wayne just a little that he seems so proud of himself. Wayne gives the kid his number and tells him that if he’s ever hungry to call him.

For a while, Steve would call sporadically. Sometimes goes weeks, sometimes months. They’d meet at the diner and eat. This eventually lead to Wayne cooking for him in his trailer, then to him teaching Steve the basics, then to them cooking together.

Steve got older. He got a credit card. He got busier with school, and sports, and his friends. He didn’t need Wayne to feed him anymore, but they still tried to have dinner at least once a month.

When Eddie came to live with Wayne, he told him that Stevie came to dinner every third Saturday of the month. Eddie assumed Stevie was Wayne’s girlfriend.

The first Saturday that passed, Steve had to cancel because he had a basketball game. The second Saturday, Steve’s parents were in town so he couldn’t come. The third, Steve no showed, called the next day delirious with flu and apologized to Wayne.

The fourth Saturday rolls around and Eddie is thinking, “Man, this chick does not like Wayne. He needs to break up with his girlfriend before it gets really sad.”

Then there is a knock at the door, and Eddie opens it to the biggest jock asshole in the school.

Eddie stares at Steve in horror, and Steve stares back in total confusion, and then they both get annoyed like, “What are you doing here?”

Then cut to Eddie calling Steve out on bullying and Steve tattling about Eddie walking on the lunch tables. They bicker and argue, and Wayne secretly loves it.

[sparklefangs]

my library is saving my mental health

I was diagnosed with epilepsy in January and am no longer allowed to drive.

I live in the ass-end of nowhere - my town has about 1600 people in it according to the last census - and all the third spaces in a 45 minute drive radius, every single one, have been shut down by landlords who kept driving the rent up. (Seriously - a gaming cafe that had been there for 11 years and was always packed, a local institution, just closed a couple months ago because they couldn't afford the rent anymore.) I also can't walk anywhere at all because the roads have no shoulders, and locals in unnecessarily massive pickup trucks drive as though coming 3 inches from hitting pedestrians is their favorite sport.

Over the last 7 months I've felt my soul slowly leaking out like a nosebleed. There's so much I can't do. I can't go anywhere. I don't have friends or family to visit. Have you ever had a mental breakdown because you physically couldn't go buy a half gallon of milk? It's not great. I mean, obviously, a fair number of people experience that, but if you haven't, and suddenly that's your reality, it's pretty jarring. Even if you're an introvert, you still have the option available to you. Now imagine you don't anymore, even if you feel like you could. You just legally and by circumstance of location cannot leave the house unless someone takes you.

So, once a week, my partner drives me the half hour to our tiny little library and drops me off. It's not in walking distance of anything, so I sit there for six hours reading. Just chilling out in my favorite chair with a book. It's great.

I'm not the only person who does this. No matter what day of the week I'm there, I see the same people sitting in their favorite spots, doing the same thing I am. It's mostly older people, but also younger folks with various visible disabilities, and I assume others, like me, who probably have less visible disabilities and nowhere else to go.

This is an extremely conservative area but the staff managed to find a corner of the YA section for a tiny little pride-themed book display. I thought it was just for June, but it's mid-July and the display is still there.

I'm so grateful for this library. Even if you buy a lot of books or mainly use audible or kindle, go visit yours from time to time. Check out books, even if you don't get around to reading them. Sign up for events they might have - ours does a monthly "blind book date" thing where you tell them what you like to read, they pick out a couple books for you, and give you a few little themed extras in your box. Show that they're important so they can keep getting funding.

They need to stick around and you might not even realize how important they are until, like me, you have nowhere else to go. I've always valued libraries but now I find myself one of the people who actually really, truly needs it in a very personal and immediate way.

PS - And tell the library staff how much you appreciate what they do. They get yelled at all the time by jackasses who probably don't even use the library but are mad because they heard there are rainbows on some of the books.

[milkygothgf]

Such a disgusting pervert for staring at your own coworker while she's pregnant. She is in a vulnerable state and is in need of support from as many people around her as possible, and all you can think about are her plump, swollen baby bump and her bulbous, milky tits. You have no idea how she's feeling right now.

But maybe you should.

You need to be punished, to be put in her shoes.

*I* am going to breed you every day until your tits are swollen and leaking, and your belly is round and massive. Months of nothing but having your eggs smothered in gallons of rich, fertile baby batter. Then, once you're showing so much that it's impossible to hide, I'm going to make you feel how humiliating it is to have people stare at you so much when you're pregnant, except I'm going to make it so much worse for you.

Cow print leggings that squeeze your swollen thighs. Completely topless save for a jangling bell around your neck and a cow print bikini top that has been roughly pulled open to expose your gorgeous udders. A beautiful cow ear headband with big, floppy ears - [you know the one I'm thinking of, yes, that one]. A pretty ring gag to keep you from speaking, to make you drool lots and lots, but nothing in the way to keep people from hearing your embarassing "moos." A long black and white tail plug ending in a cute fuzzy tuft. Binding leather mitts that completely remove the functionality of your hands and six inch black and white platform heels - or perhaps I should call them your "hooves." Electric breast pumps, afixed to each of your fat, leaky udders like spigots. Half a dozen pink rubber vibrators on their highest setting stuffed cruelly up into your thick, dripping cow cunt.

And, of course, a lead.

I'd drag you into your workplace and apologize to your pregnant coworker on your behalf, assure her that you are being punished thoroughly for your perversion. Perhaps I'd even offer to let her punish you herself for a while. I would be carrying a cattle prod and a riding crop with me, of course, so she could whip you and shock you and make you jolt and shake and scream and moo lots and lots as revenge for being such a nasty perv. Then, merciful, patient, and kind woman that she almost certainly is, she would let you off easy.

I, on the other hand, would not be so sweet.

I would parade you through town, handing out the milk being pumped out of you to strangers and letting them grope and ogle and punish you as much as they want. Before too long, I'm sure - perhaps even before we left your workplace - you would begin to hurt from being in those platforms, lugging around your swollen body, and losing your balance. Without even a prompt from me, you would start crawling around on all fours like the cow you are. Your udders would bounce and swing so low that the spigots on your pretty fat nipples would scrape across the ground. You would leave a trail of drool and discharge everywhere we went. You'd be trembling constantly, orgasming every couple of minutes all day until you were so sore you couldn't take it. You'd be in less pain than you expect, but only because you're so numb from all the shocks, you feel like your brain is going dumb.

And it must be, because...

No way.

This was a punishment.

You shouldn't he *enjoying* this.

Wow... truly a new low.

You love being a pregnant free-use masochist milk cow.

If that's how you're going to be, then fine.

I'll just punish you by ruining your existence and making it impossible for you to go back to a normal life.

I'll break you.

Make you a proper hucow.

You'll be wracked with orgasms just from someone looking at your tits.

You'll leak from your nipples *constantly.*

Every time you cum will be a wet, messy fountain.

Going anywhere, doing anything, without your ears, tail, and cow print, will leave you with such crippling dysphoria that you'll do nothing but cry and beg me to put them on you. And once I do, you'll be so thankful.

Every time after your pregnancy term is over, you'll crawl back to me and beg me to breed you again so you can have your pretty tummy and beautiful udders back.

I'd make you get a "MILK ME" tattoo on your chest and a "BREED ME" tattoo over your womb.

And every night, I'll break you in more. Shock you, spank you, hypnotize you, annihilate your brain cells en masse, and rewrite them according to my vision.

Cow will be your whole identity.

Until then, why don't you go ahead start the process early?

Go "moo."

Right now. You can do it.

Moo.

Moooo... I didn't mean to be a pervert 🥺 It's not my fault her noticeably larger tits make me jealous. Or her baby bump that just dropped so she's really showing. It just makes me want it so bad... Mooooo..... But I didn't mean like that 🥺 I understand though. I deserve to be punished for that. Moooooooo..... I'm being a gross creep and I deserve to see how it feels however you see fit. And honestly, so long as I'm pregnant moooooo... and constantly leaky,,,,,how bad can it be really? How bad can it really be being a pregnancy free-use masochist milk cow..? It's what I wanted right..? Moooooo....

[eldritch-spouse]

Krulu just subtly putting a piece of paper on the back of admins skirt that says "use me" and letting her go about her work unaware

[Fuck yeah, that's the shit.]

Guess who's bending you over first? Sybastian.

He's always the first to get into the break room at the start of a shift, so when he sees you walk in fresh with that note, he's being the opportunistic little shit he always is and bending you over the counter of that small kitchenette to stuff you with cock. You don't even know what's happening, but there's a sweet lulling mumur in the back of your mind telling you to let it happen and enjoy yourself. So you do.

By the time Grimbly walks in, Syb is close to finishing and only hurries up in case the bat's here to steal you from him. Naturally, the waiter's more than a bit scandalized, but he understands what's going on when he catches a flash of the note on your clothes. So, of course, he more than a little forcefully tugs the top of your outfit away so he can fondle your tits and go to town. He has the decency to apologize and smile sheepishly as he fucks himself between your breasts.

Eventually, news of what's happening spreads. And the first to hunt you down is obviously Santi. He's barelling through the floors and pumping out pheromones the moment he sees you, making the most out of the opportunity to fuck you stupid in front of clientele and make sure you're a drooling mess. He leaves sloppy kisses everywhere before letting you rest on the bar counter.

And Gallon picks you up swiftly, of course. You need a little break, how about he envelops you like a big warm blanket, and you don't have to think about anything for a while except how good it feels to have his cock and several tendrils inside you?

Fank-e's no fool, he's prying you out of Gallon with the force only a man of metal could sport. You get to hang off his head tubes while he grinds into you with an unshakable, merciless rhythm. When the video is saved, he lets you off with his cock detached, buzzing inside you.

Someway, somehow, you'll end up in Morell's kitchen, likely tugged inside when the cook sees you passing by. You don't even get to say a word, he's making you hang onto a bloody meat hook for dear life while he plows you from behind like he intends to put a child in you.

Your legs hurt by the time you make it to the shop, trying to actually get work done. Naturally, Nebul's more interested in making you model different toys for the clients currently present, including several ropes and tentacle toys. You get fingered nice and sweet for behaving.

Belo eventually catches you outside, and while he's upset that none of his coworkers are being decent to you, he guiltily begs for a quickie against the wall before fixing you up to the best of his ability.

Vinnel grabs you like a hawk. You're made to put on a stupid slutty and colorful dress, the note reattached to it, before he introduces you to his stage and audience. You leave bruised, cut, sore and coated in his strange black cum after he shoots a load on your face as the finishing act.

Patches eventually weasels you into his laboratory with gentle conversation, though once you're there, he uses vines to tie your ankles and wrists, taking advantage of you wriggling on the floor to drape over your body and fuck your sloppy hole, moaning about how gross it all is and how he doesn't mind being the last one because you look really cute and hot when you're totally disoriented and fuckdrunk.

You eventually manage to get yourself free and standing, trying to fix your mess of a look before heading to your Lord-Master's side. Krulu sits on his altar with a vaguely satisfied look of second-hand afterglow. You're praised heavily for your work thus far, but the higher claims you haven't dealt with everyone yet.

You understand what he's talking about when you're manually transported to the aquarium floor. And he tells you to come back after you've been to the garden as well.

Oh, the things you do for your savior.

[uniasus]

To Die With You - Part 3

To Die With You is a DP whump fic written for @whumptober, with parts shared in order of prompts, not plot. Follow the To Die With You tag to read throughout the month, or stay tuned for the whole fic to drop on Ao3.

-------

Jazz sprinted across the living room, pulling open the door to the lab. Halfway down the stairs, she froze. 

The portal was gone. 

Slowly, she walked down the steps. The portal was always gone. Maybe the gates were closed, but the green glow always seeped from the edge.  

That wasn’t this.  

She never watched her parents build it, but had heard the digging and drilling. The portal had hide how deep the excavation had gone – she didn’t realize her parents were in the metal clad cave until she’d stood right in front of it. 

Her eyes turned to the red button on the left. It was fine, but the panel around it was warped, heat-colored metal veins snaking up toward the ceiling like a witch’s hand. The fingers ended in whirls that she was convinced matched Danny’s fingerprints.  

She swallowed. Jazz knew her brother died here, but she never thought she’d ever see the evidence, the physical marks.  

“Jazzy-Pants!” 

Jack Fenton’s booming caught her attention and she finally noticed what her parents were doing – ripping the portal apart.  

“What are you doing?” she gasped.  

“Well,” Maddie stopping trying to get a screwdriver under a metal panel. “Your father and I talked. As much as shutting the portal hampers our research, we just can’t leave it open anymore. It’s a risk to Amity Park.” 

“All those ghosts can’t terrorize the town if they can’t use the portal to get here!” Jack chirped. “We’ll find other things to research, but now that ghost boy-“ 

“You turn it on right now!” Jazz stomped her foot.  

This was why her little brother was dying. It didn’t matter why, but she knew instinctively if the portal went, Danny went too. 

“But Jazz,” Maddie said, “You can’t tell me you want ghosts to continue to terrorizing the town.”  

Her phone buzzed and Jazz fished it out. Two texts: one from Sam telling them to hurry, one from Tucker saying he was in the car. 

But it didn’t matter if Tucker poured gallons of ectoplasm down Danny’s gut if the portal was destroyed. It’d only delay things. 

And maybe that’s what the portal did too. Danny should have died in the accident. Or at least, died and not come back. But he did, powered, somehow, by the portal. On, off. Alive, dead. 

“Fix it!” Jazz yelled at her parents, fingers flying as she typed. Found cause. Trying to reverse. Tucker, take the car. 

“Jazz, you can’t be serious-“ 

She ignored her mother, staring up the stairs, praying that Tucker took the car without taking the time to answer. Maybe she heard the engine, maybe she didn’t.  

Her phone buzzed again. Sam. 

Break all the laws, Tuck.  

Jazz blinked quickly, getting rid of the water that had gathered in the corner of her eyes.  

“Actually, Jazz, why are you here?” Her mother was a foot away, frowning. “It’s still school, isn’t it? We’d hoped to be down taking down the portal before you got back.” 

“Danny got sick,” Jazz spilled out. “As soon as you turned that off, he got sick. He’s connected to it, cuz of the accident. Please, please turn it on.” 

Maddie pulled Jazz into a hug. “I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, sweetie. We checked Danny out afterwards, remember? He wasn’t seriously injured, just had a high concentration of ectoplasm dumped into his system.” 

“That’s still strong enough to confuse the Fenton Finder!” Jack added. 

“I mean, that is strange,” Maddie said. “You’d think after two years his levels would have come down. Ours fluctuate.”  

She didn’t have time for this. Danny was dying, dissolving in some hidden corner of the school. Tucker was on his way to stabilize him, but based on Sam’s texts and Tucker’s near breakdown in the car, it’d buy them an hour at most. 

Jazz marched into the portal, ignoring the shiver that ran down her spine as she crossed the threshold from cement floor to metal. This was Danny’s grave. This was Danny’s lifeline. 

She picked up one of the panels her parent had already removed and held up to the wall, covering the exposed panels. “Put this back on if you don’t want Danny dead by the end of the day.” 

“Jazz,” Maddie started, “I highly doubt –“ 

“I don’t.” Jazz stared her mother down, still holding the panel in place. The salt from her tears was starting to itch, but she refused to put down the sheet metal. She turned her gaze to Jack.  

“Please, Dad. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m right. But please, please, put the portal back together.” 

Jack stared at her through his safety goggles and dropped his shoulders. “Okay, Jazzerincess. Let me get the welder.” 

[justadeadreaper]

CW: Gore, Death, Puke, Decaying flesh, Buboes, Blood, Description of the symptoms of the different plagues in The Black Death, Gruesome description of how the representation would look like, Please tell me if anything that should be put as a warning was not, thanks.

The most feared plague in history, The Black Death.

Mainly the bubonic plague mixed with its two more deadly brothers the pneumonic plague and septicemic plague. It was the deadliest plague of the time as it ran through Europe, Africa, and Asia and conquered any village, town, and city it found itself in, flooding the streets with blood, mucus, and rotted flesh as once healthy humans dropped dead from the plague that seemed to come from nowhere before it dragged everyone to the Hell it had seemed to have spawned from. It did not care who you were, it did not discriminate, rich or poor, loved or hated, known or not, it would blow out the little life that you had. It thrived off the fear and only seemed to grow stronger as another soul joined the long chain of victims that had already succumbed to the disease. Anywhere from twenty to sixty percent of the population of the time was taken by it.

The perpetrator? Yersinia pestis. The carriers? Fleas. The spreader? Rats but some say it could have actually been hamsters that were stowaways. But how were the rats able to spread? Trading ships that jumped from town to town leaving a deadly gift as it sailed away that would lead to the death of all that were unfortunate enough to live there.

Now you may ask what would happen if you were to catch it and let me tell you it was living torture. It would start with a simple flea bite but that flea was infected with Yersinia pestis causing it to build a barrier in its stomach so no blood could be digested or go into its stomach causing it to build up and be infected by the bacteria, and this blood would be thrown back up by the flea onto the wound infecting it as it would be absorbed into the bloodstream. From entering the bloodstream it could take one of three routes: the lymphatic system, continuing through the bloodstream, or directly to the lungs. If you were lucky enough for it to infect your lymphatic system then you had a sixty percent chance of dying meaning you had a forty percent chance of surviving. Even though you had more chances of surviving it did not mean that you were saved from not suffering, from one to seven, or if you were lucky eight, days of contracting the disease was when it would show symptoms. At first it would trick you into the false belief that you only had the flu. You would have a general feeling of being ill, lethargic and weak which only grew into worse fatigue as the days went on, followed by chills and a high fever which anyone would know just seems to be like a normal cold but then that soon developed into muscle cramps in your aching limbs as seizures overtook the body. Then it would present the symptom that gave it the name the bubonic plague, buboes. These were when the lymph nodes would balloon to become large, painful, smoothe swellings which would occur near the original area of infection alongside the groin, neck, and armpits which would continue to grow until they burst. You also had the issue of your skin slowly beginning to necrotise as it died alongside the lenticulae which were small black dots that would be scattered across your body and gangrene took over your lips, nose, toes, and fingers which all caused severe pain to the point you would rather die there and then instead of waiting it out to see if you had the lucky chance of surviving. Of course there were other symptoms like heavy breathing as your lungs felt like they were being held down by rocks, your own body becoming like the flea as it would start to vomit gallons of infected blood, coughing, gastrointestinal problems, and spleen inflammation, but in some cases even the sleep would be disturbed to the point of insomnia where sleep would be impossible to get as your were forced to stay awake to feel all the pain that riddled your body. But then the worst of the systems came at the final stage as delirium came and took over any rational thought as all organs began to fail from the disease overcoming them and causing them to shut down which only led to a coma, but it all ended the same way, death.

If you were unlucky enough for it to infect your lungs first or just infect your lungs before the other systems became worse then you had a ninety-five percent chance of dying meaning you had a five percent chance of surviving. To make the pneumonic plague even worse you could develop it even after being infected by either the bubonic plague or the septicemic plague; it could also be caught from not just it infecting your lungs after a bite which infected the bloodstream but by also breathing in air borne droplets of the bacteria from another thing that was riddled with the plague. As it would normally be caught after having bubonic or septicemic plague it meant that at first you would present all the symptoms from the other plagues before experiencing the specifics of the pneumonic plague. At first you would think you have a fever but a severe one as headaches, nausea, and weakness run rampant as if it was trying to warn you that this would be no normal bubonic or septicemic plague. Luckily compared to the bubonic plague the time you would suffer with this plague was a great short, even though it would take around three to seven days before the symptoms showed as soon as the symptoms worsened or even showed you could guarantee that you would be dead within thirty-six hours, most likely less. You would be constantly vomiting for three days straight as your lungs slowly began to feel as if they were being sewn shut at each bronchus, only leading to each breath becoming shorter and shorter as you seemed to constantly be coughing and rasping for the tiniest bit of unrestrained air. Then soon enough your lungs would spew out a bloody and watery mess that would stain your tongue with its mercury taste which you would continue to cough out in between the vomiting until you went into shock as your full respiratory tract went into failure and just stopped, finally leading to death.

But if you were the most unfortunate person alive on Earth at the time that every God seemed to hate since it stayed in your bloodstream and completely infected your blood it meant you had no chance of surviving as you had a hundred percent chance of dying. It made the other two diseases seem like child’s play as it normally only took around fourteen hours before it shut down the body, worse of all it could even kill you without showing any of the symptoms. Like the others you would think it was a common cold due to the fever, chills, and low blood pressure but soon enough severe abdominal pain would set in as it felt like you were dying due to the extreme amount of diarrhea which would be accompanied by nausea that only led to severe vomiting. But soon enough the vomit and diarrhea would be filled with blood until it was fully red as the body lost most of its clotting resources from the tiny blood clots that had formed throughout the body so it could no longer control the blood which started to bleed into the skin and organs creating red or black patches of rashes or bumps which could be seen on the skin. The blood clotting also caused necrosis as tissue and organs would die from the lack of blood flow as it all leaked into where it should not, the most obvious spots of the decay were the gangrene in the fingers, nose, and toes. Then the bleeding would extend from not just bleeding in the body but blood coming out from the rectum but most noticeably the mouth and nose where it would come out like a waterfall. Obviously due to the blood leaking into everything it would cause difficulty breathing as it would fill the lungs and deprive it of the blood outside the lungs that was needed to exchange the carbon dioxide for oxygen. And with no blood to deliver the oxygen needed for the organs to live they all would go into organ failure causing the body to go into shock before the final moments where everything went back as it was taken over by death.

As it can be seen all of them had the same outcome, death.

Luckily nowadays the plagues are a simple pest if the person has access to treatment to stop it from progressing further but at the time that The Black Death ran rampant no one had the luxury of those treatments leading most to die who caught it. Masses upon masses of bodies continued to build up only attracting more of the rats then the ones that had already been attracted to the large towns by the excrement and rotting butcher’s meat that made a river through the streets. With more rats that withered away from the disease it just meant more fleas would jump to more human hosts to use which only led to more living corpses to roam the streets as the disease turned people into skeletons while still living before turning them into an actual corpse.

It was understandable as to why humans of the time would be so scared of such a thing as to them it just seemed like their fellow mortals were dropping like lowly flies that would eat away at the flyblown flesh that continued to pile away in mass graves to create more nests for their larvae and eggs to incubate inside. Imagine the terror and fear that must have filled their minds as they did not understand pathogens at the time, to them it would have seemed like divine wrath but no one could think of a reason as to why their Almighty would betray them like this as everyone appeared to be on their best behaviour. They needed something to blame. They found something to blame. 

Simple rumours turned into truths.

Somewhere in England there was said to be a village. Small, nothing of concern as it was like every other village of the time. Like every other village it had a butcher, a silent man who was rumoured to once be a knight but no one knew why he was not anymore. He tended to be quiet, avoiding others who were not his friends and family. It was said that he loved his nephew and that if he had enough swigs of barley that you could get him singing and dancing on the roof or you could convince him to give you his primest cuts of meat. He was deemed as normal, he was like everyone else, until one day.

No one knew what happened. It was supposed to be a joyous day to celebrate the coming of winter but it was far from that. Nearly the whole family was found butchered with a precision only expected to be known by a trained killer. The lower left leg and most of the fingers of the right hand of the older brother laid in a puddle of blood but they could not find the rest of his body; the mutilated body of the brother’s wife was spread around slightly from each different part as if when she was being attacked the culprit had went after another member while still holding onto the part it was hacking off; the body of their son was curled into the corner clutching onto the leg of his mother while out of the stab holes that covered his body in ten folds nearly making him unidentifiable oozed out blood into a bloody puddle that collected around his body; and finally the grandmother of the family who was found decapitated in her rocking chair with her head being found outside within the well. The only one not found dead was the butcher and when he returned, covered in blood, everyone turned their suspicions to him. When he tried to explain that he had been out hunting but had been attacked by a large grey man no one believed him, especially when they saw the crazed look within his eyes that could only be produced by when they had let Beelzebub into their soul. Everyone agreed to grab their pitchforks and chase him out so no more could be hurt.

It was only a few months before the figure started to appear across the world. People from the village murmured to other villages and beyond when they heard what the figure looked like in its earlier stage that they believed it to be the same butcher infected with the plague of Beelzebub to infect the world with their sin to bring more to Hell. Everyone believed him to be the reason for the spread of the plague. It was said that if you were to see him within the fields outside of any town, village, or city that all the inside were destined to die. 

The Ghost of The Black Death.

A figure that would strike the fear into the hearts of all.

A horde of rats followed behind him in trails as flies buzzed around his head, if he was near you would always see a Black Shuck which commanded a storm alongside it as if they were his hounds of doom brought along to give the townsfolk warning of their dire fates and to pray to the Almighty while they were still apart.

A black coat hid the majority of his body as bloodied rags of old hunting gear of a peasant hung off of skeletal remains with a jaw hanging off his neck as if it was a necklace as it was tied there with rope. Messy blonde hair spread out in all directions as blood leaked out from the tear ducts in a false mockery of the tears that millions had split in their last moments. No nose or bottom jaw could be found, decayed off long ago. The face looked skeletal as teeth, gums, and a tongue were exposed to the bitter air that reeked of death and loss as the cheeks were tattered in form as more skin continued to flake off as it continued to decays; once blue eyes so full of life were left sunken, dead as if they were another victim that had succumb to the plague that the Ghost was said to bring alongside him. A trail of buboes surrounded his neck as if it was a noose to which he could hang himself with as the tail was marked by a diversion of buboes that wrapped around and under his arms to around his groyne. His spine and ribs jutted out for all to see underneath the greyed skin which was littered with blackened patches of decay as branches of red veins leaked and bleed out to leave a path of blood in his wake for all to track him by. Still, as he rotted away, vague faints of the muscular body that had been far gone from its prime lingered where it once remained. The bottom of his calves with his feet and the bottom of his forearms with his hands had turned black and mummified from the decay and gangrene that had taken them over, leaving no remaining sensations within the hands to feel the warmth of a human ever again for the rest of eternity.

If you were to see him late at night, staring into your soul you better pray that The Ghost does not turn you into another soul like him.

[crossedsabers10s]

hey i was wondering if you have any headcanons or theories on what if enzo had been the one to escape augustine instead of damon? i know enzo probably wouldn't leave damon but what if something happened and he does. idk i just find the idea really interesting that's all.

ah so, someone actually asked me this once and this is what i told them (paraphrased a lil):

To the person who asked me this the first time: thank you this is still one of my fav ideas <3

And to the anon who reminded me this exists: thank you, ily <3

So. The way i figure, Enzo wins the rock paper scissors, but Damon actually gets disappeared earlier. Enzo gets told that he was disposed of--like old equipment or a sharps bin or something--that keeping two vampires was too much a risk or getting too costly. Plus. Like. I'm sure Whitmore knew all of Enzo's baseline stats, maybe he noticed he was improving? (Which. Makes me question how the hell they didn't notice one of their patients was a step away from desiccating in canon but--) But Damon actually got given to someone else doing a different project. And Whitmore throws Enzo Damon's ring as proof, probably in effort to break his spirit.

So Enzo carries out their plan alone--it was more difficult, but he'd been drinking both his and Damon's rations for long enough that he manages. He escapes goes on a very bloody rampage and burns Augustine to the ground. He finds Maggie, or Maggie finds him. They get their love story, at least for a while, bc Maggie doesn't want to turn (or maybe she does and they stay friends? or lovers and friends or--)

Eventually, he wanders into Mystic Falls—because, the thing is, Damon had told him about Katherine. There had been a day or week or long month where he had been sure he’d die in Augustine and he’d made Enzo swear to get her out for him. Told him about the amulet and the comet and the tomb. 

So. Enzo rolls into a town where—well, first, Gale and Sarah are alive and living with Zach—and second, Damon’s brother is there. Enzo watches Stefan stalk Elena for a while—he’s never seen Katherine, but he had heard Damon describe her enough that he absolutely knows Stefan is Being Weird about this—before dropping by the Boarding House, very polite and chatting with Sarah, Gale, and Zach before Stefan walks in and clocks him for a vampire. Enzo keeps on being polite like ‘yes, also a vampire, not here to hurt you, don’t worry about it’ and tells Stefan that his brother is dead. He’d died decades ago. (He does Not show him the ring he keeps on a chain around his neck, right next to the wedding ring, if he ended up married to Maggie. Maybe he should give what’s left of Damon to his brother—since there hadn’t been a body, Enzo’d been told he’d been cremated—but he Does Not Want To. There’s a thought there about how Enzo had been the one to mourn him while Stefan hadn’t even known he was dead.)

Anyyyway. Canon happens with a bit less collateral damage, as Enzo had his emotions on and wasn’t quite as invested in fucking with Stefan as canon!Damon was. He gets the amulet, Emily, with the excuse that it was Damon she made the deal with and Enzo does not have the right to use her amulet as a key, still intervenes, but eventually the Tomb gets unsealed and Enzo discovers that, hey, Katherine was a giant bitch. Who knew? (He makes it a life goal to kill her, after that. Remember that time Katherine /did/ end up trapped in the Tomb? Enzo shows up with a few gallons of gasoline and some smokes and scared the unlife out of her.) 

Canon continues to happen—as Enzo sticks around to try to find Katherine/and then to protect what’s left of Damon’s family once the Originals roll into town. (Lexi is also there, because she isn’t dead. Both of them take turns filling Damon’s original role of protecting Elena/turning Caroline/dealing with Mason so on and so forth. Lexi is the one to get bitten by Tyler, Stefan still sells his soul to Klaus for a cure. He’d just discovered that he lost his brother—and, you know, didn’t even notice—he doesn’t want to be left Alone for the rest of eternity.)

Canon remains mostly on track—a few differences here and there, but Esther still gets re-alived and the Ball still happens. 

So. Uh. Right as the toast is going down—the one that would link all the Original Sibs to each other so their mother could gank ‘em all at once—someone walks in and—uhhhh, well. Enzo drops his drink. 

Because, the thing is. Damon isn’t dead. 

Damon, had, in fact, been sold to yet another mad scientist, this one obsessed with magic. Like, the guy wanted to unlock the secrets of vampirism, but not how their blood heals. He wanted to unravel what makes them. Like reverse engineering Esther’s spell. Maybe even he’d been after/interested in Silas and rightfully liked vampires as the next step down from it. Or he’d even tracked down Silas’ doppelganger bloodline and mistakenly thought it was Damon instead of Stefan due to the blood they share. 

So Damon spent fifty years being put through ritual after ritual, used as ingredients, had his mind, body, and very lifeforce played with like putty. He’s got magic runes and sigils inked and burned into his skin, scars that refuse to heal from magic so dark it makes Expression look like Glinda the Good’s bubble spells, and a whole host of new issues because he’d been alone for fifty years. 

Like. Anxiety, severe depression accompanied by an emotional flatness that often ends in dissociation. (I’ve legit been thinking of this as: In Which the Author Gives Damon Salvatore Anxiety *Evil Cackle*) Plus the magic that’s been dragged out of his soul makes him more prone to like. Just not paying attention to the physical world. He just stares off into space, blank faced and lifeless as any slightly glowing statue.

So. Yeah. After that, Elijah, of all people, finds him. Maybe Evil Magic Scientist died and one of the witches who knew Elijah went, maybe he’d like to hear about this? (As I imagine Elijah was forever looking for some way to break Klaus’ curse/restore Kol’s magic, he just never mentioned it to not get their hopes up, and he just. Kept up the habit even after he thought Klaus yeeted their sibs into the ocean.)

Elijah rescues him, debates killing him out of mercy, but doesn’t. And Damon spends some time recovering on a beach in like France or something. Elijah is the one to break it to him that Katherine is alive and free, that his Augustine friend is too, is living with his brother in Mystic Falls—and like. Damon wants to go there, but also—he’s traumatized, with powers he can barely control, and there’s the nasty thought that he’s been replaced. That Stefan has a new, better brother in Enzo, that Enzo has a new best friend who isn’t broken and moved on with his life when Damon’s been stuck missing him for more decades than he cares to remember, that if Katherine never cared about him at all, what does he have to live for? 

So. Damon walks into the ballroom, skin still tingling from the magic burned into him, a scar curving under his eye from where it had been cut out, spelled, and then put back in, and gives most of the people there a variety of heart attacks when he very casually knocks Elijah’s drink out of his hands, says ‘oops’, and then walks back out. 

…

There should be better music. 

The town’s rebel son coming home after half a century should rate better than a lackluster rendition of Clair de Lune. Like AC/DC. He likes Back in Black. It’s exactly the kind of music his father would have had a heart attack at, which automatically puts it in the running for Best Things About the Twenty First Century. 

Right up there with the clothes—or the lack thereof—the cars, and the sheer magnitude of the internet. 

…

“You’re late,” Elijah says, acting as if Damon walking into the black tie party of the year wearing jeans, a flimsy T-shirt, and motorcycle boots was the plan all along. He doesn’t even have a jacket, putting all the silvery scars and stark black arcane sigils on his arms on display.  

Hell, maybe it was. Elijah is hard to read at the best of times. Let alone right after his long dead mother pries her way out of the afterlife to throw herself a party. He’d been oddly reserved in his correspondence lately, not giving his opinion on the events one way or another. Just another reason for Damon to come to Mystic Falls in person. Elijah going cagey after Damon had grown used to the man being bluntly honest, if somewhat polite about it, had been disquieting. 

And it’s a good thing he had decided to return home at long last—after months of avoiding even the thought—with what he’d learned not even half an hour ago. 

“Sorry,” he says, shallow as any of the myriad of glitzed out people staring at the scene they're making. Somehow, despite all the eyes making his skin prickle, no one is really registering as real quite yet. No one but Elijah. And if he’s deliberately keeping it that way by purposely focusing on the Original, then at least there’s no one else in his head to call him out on it. Right now. That he knows of. “I didn’t want to come.”

He snags a champagne glass off the tray as he walks towards the staircase. The dirt on his boots from where he’d been lurking in the garden and not giving himself a pep talk flakes off into the polished floor. 

He used to be good at this, being the center of attention, going to these things all the time. When he was human and otherwise. 

He can do it now, when there’re actually things of importance on the line, but he’s no longer so at ease in his own skin and the crowd of people is leaving him—

Not nervous. 

Damon doesn’t get nervous. 

Uneasy, maybe. 

Paranoid, definitely. 

…

The entire room watches as champagne drips down the stairs. 

Belatedly, he says, “Oops.”

…

He’d been hanging out on the window to Esther’s spell room while she was with Elena and Finn while in the form of a crow—a nifty power that he actually likes. He actually prefers being crow shaped to human some days—and overheard their whole plan. Including Finn and Esther’s jabs at Elijah. Who he is spectacularly attached to, even if they both prefer to pretend that he isn’t. 

…

“You told me my brother was dead.”

Enzo doesn’t look away from the ghost across the ballroom. Faintly, he says, “I thought he was.”

“You lied to me,” Stefan says, so quietly that he could scarcely be heard over the noise of the room. 

Enzo manages to tear his eyes away Damon’s tense silhouette. It takes a certain amount of willpower to not immediately turn back. He looks at Stefan, whose hands are clenched around an empty champagne glass so tightly it is just as much a miracle as Damon’s appearance that it hasn’t shattered. “I didn’t—I wouldn’t—“ 

All of Enzo’s words abandon him at the soul-deep betrayal Stefan can’t hide. 

They hadn’t gotten along in the beginning, he and Stefan. Not when Enzo had only known him as the man who hadn’t even noticed his brother’s absence. Not when Stefan had only known him as someone who had barged his way into his perfect high school fantasy, bringing bad news and worse intentions as Enzo had done his best to fulfill Damon’s wish to see Katherine free. 

(He’d been almost glad that Damon hadn’t been there to see that godforsaken tomb, to know that the woman he’d died for had skipped merrily away while he’d devoted his life to getting her back.)

… 

“No big deal. I owe you, remember?”

“Damon.” Elijah steps forward. Damon doesn’t flinch as a hand settles into his shoulder and squeezes. Elijah’s eyes are firm as he says, “For this, any debt you think you owe is more than repaid.”

“I don’t think—“

“If anything,” the man continues, “I owe you. You put your life at risk to save my family.” 

And hadn’t that been a delicate way of skirting around the fact that it was family that had put the rest of them in danger. 

“I hung out on a windowsill for five minutes,” Damon protests. 

…

“You,” he says, scarcely an inch away from Damon and staring like he’s two seconds from slicing him open to see what makes him tick, “are not a vampire.”

“News to me,” Damon says lightly, in direct contrast to the blatant way he takes a step away from the Original. That brand of curiosity is one he is more than familiar with and he doesn’t appreciate it. If that step takes him closer to Elijah, then it’s a coincidence. “Should I not be drinking blood, then?”

“Vampires,” it is proclaimed as Kol draws even nearer, “cannot do what you have just done.”

“Have they tried? It’s not that hard,” Damon says, taking another step back. His arm brushes Elijah’s. Who sighs, but takes a single step forwards, extending an arm as he does. 

Damon doesn’t sigh in relief, but he does lose some of the tension he hadn’t realized was in his shoulders. Not all of it. But some. 

Kol frowns down at where Elijah’s finger is touching the center of his chest, stopping him in his tracks. He exhales petulantly, but stops staring at Damon like he wants to weigh his liver. “‘Lijah, your pet turns into a bird. How?”

…

“What have you brought into the house?” Rebekah asks her brother, eyes on Damon. 

…

Damon isn’t a witch or anything, his powers are like. The result of having the magic that made vampires stripped bare, broken down, and amplified. It gives him powers closer to what vampires had in the Vampire Diaries books—though def not as strong as his much older book counterpart. 

This, of course, leads to Kol going on a research spree, because this is the closest he’s come to getting his magic back since it abandoned him. Cue multiple scenes of Damon running tf away while Kol pokes him with a stick. Elijah dumps all of Evil Magic Scientist’s Research on his brother to cut down on the instances of Damon hiding somewhere in the rafters. 

Klaus absolutely tries to use him as an asset, except Elijah is fond of him and Damon can and will find a flock of crows to chill with for a week or two to hide. 

…

“And you thought that what? Taking over my life would be atonement?”

“I—“

“My town, my family, my brother? Leaving me there wasn’t enough, you had to replace me?”

“Da—“

…

Enzo slams him into the wall. Damon falls silent. The placid look on his face can’t disguise the rage, eyes glinting like ice in the light. It’s the most emotion Enzo’s seen from him since— 

It’s the most emotion Enzo’s seen from him since he’d popped back up, miraculously alive and in the company of Elijah, of all people. 

…

“Because the memory of you was all I had left!”

…

So. That. Stefan, who has been feeling guilty over Augustine and everything, is relieved that Damon isn’t dead. Enzo, who has spent. Years of his life loving Damon’s ghost, now has to deal with a walking, (sometimes, not often) talking man who looks through him more than at him. 

 Elena, Bonnie, Caroline, ect. Try to be supportive while also being not as trusting, bc Damon is v obviously on the Originals (Elijah’s) side. Though he won’t hurt them or anything, and, in fact, is more likely to zone out and leave the room, he’s still like an active obstacle to getting rid of the Mikaelsons. And then there’s a whole new subplot that Stefan and Enzo are invested in called Getting Damon Away From the Originals. 

(Damon barely notices this. He’s in Mystic Falls again. It’s weird. Whenever he’s human shaped and not with Elijah and Stefan/Enzo and all the complicated feelings he doesn’t get as a crow arent at home, he basically haunts the Boarding House like a ghost. The human relatives keep giving him food he doesn’t eat and Sarah keeps sending him playlists on the phone/computer he barely knows how to work. She eventually makes him an actual mix tape on a tape recorder he knows how to work called Music My Grandpa Doesn’t Listen To. Gale will show him baby pictures and like. Will occasionally get a very disjointed anecdote from Stefan’s childhood in return. Zach will sit with him in nervous-at-first—on both ends lol—silence and watch TV. Damon absolutely won’t drink something if any of them pour it, esp Zach, they notice this and stop trying.)

Eventually, Katherine rolls into town and tries to start a makeout sesh with Damon to make Stefan jealous. (She makes Enzo jealous instead) and Damon. Uh. bites off her tongue. It’s a thing.

So, there’s a long road of Damon coming back out of his shell, being more present, complete with the occasional backslide and a few instances of him forcing himself to act like he used to to be ‘more normal.’ Enzo stays very patient through all this, helping him recover, respecting his boundaries, and just generally trying to do what Maggie did for him. Stefan does his best too—the more Damon gets more used to everything the wilder he gets, which Stefan both appreciates and does Not lmao. The Originals move on to New Orleans, Damon stays in MF, which both he and Elijah decide is a Good Thing for him, bc he’s more stable/is less codependent these days. Still visits tho. Which. Skews things a lil bit, to have a magic vampire dropping by in NOLA. 

I did end up using some of this in my Feral!Damon series actually, tho the beginning is different, mostly the interactions w his human family

[peppermint-toads]

𝚟𝚒𝚛𝚐𝚒𝚗 𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚢

𝚗𝚘𝚝𝚎𝚜 this is gonna be slowwwww burn. and it’s the first thing i’ve written in a long time so go easy on me

𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 pregnant reader, reader is really struggling like fr, eventual smut just not in this chapter

𝚜𝚞𝚖𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚢 eddie moves to another dingy little town in south carolina and works at a dingy little grocery store where he meets you! a pregnant twenty something year old.

𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚘𝚗𝚎

The air inside of the Piggly Wiggly was stale, and the squeaking wheel of your shopping cart was giving you a migraine. But you needed the cart, you had to have something to lean on so your nausea didn’t completely take over.

You could hear fruit flies buzzing over the produce as you picked through the pile of oranges. You counted your losses, leaving the produce section with no success. Passing by the onions and garlic, you nearly gagged, holding your breath as you pushed your rickety-wheeled cart towards the dairy.

Clutching the underside of your rounded stomach, you stretched your arm up to grab the last half gallon of chocolate milk. You strained trying to reach it. It wasn’t that you were particularly short, or that the shelves were particularly tall, everything was just difficult ever since you passed fourteen weeks. Precariously you leaned forward on your tiptoes, finally grabbing the plastic handle.

You dropped it in your cart, taking a long moment to catch your breath and readjust your dress. Next you needed—god what did you need? The brain fog was growing frustrating. You shoved your hand into your purse, fishing around for the list you scribbled onto the back of a receipt. And sure, it was just a little thing, forgetting what else you needed to get, but that’s just the thing. The little things just kept on piling up, and the pile grew bigger and bigger until all you could do was cry. Cry in the middle of the grocery store.

You sniffled, willing your tears to go away as you kept pushing the cart. But then your shoelace got caught in the shaky wheel, nearly pulling you to the ground.

A pair of warm hands were on your shoulders, making sure you stayed vertical.

“Woah, woah. You alright?”

You nodded your head and wiped your eyes, dismissing him without a glance because you were too embarrassed to look him in the eye.

“No, really.” He stopped you from moving. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, just my shoelace, that’s all.” You tried to appease him enough so he would leave you alone, go about his day and remember you as the helpless, crying pregnant lady he saw at work today.

It was pointless though, because then you were trying to bend down to tie your dirty shoelace and you couldn’t reach it. Your belly wasn’t even that big, your entire body was just so sore, you couldn’t possibly bend down all the way to tie it properly.

So, the stock boy, as it seemed, was kneeling in front of you and patting his thigh.

“C’mon, let me help.” He smiled up at you, not caring about how dirty his pants were probably getting from the visibly gross tile.

You were flustered to say the least, and it wasn’t like you could do it yourself. Shakily, you lifted your foot to rest on his thigh, grabbing onto the cart for some stability. Looking down, you saw his cheap, plastic name tag. Edward.

“Bunny ear, bunny ear, jumped through the hole, popped out the other side, beautiful and bold.” He murmured while he tied your shoe, and it made you giggle.

He was seemingly pleased with your laugh, smiling as he stood back up.

“My uncle taught me that when I was a kid.” His eyes drifted to your stomach as he said that.

All you could manage to do was stare back at him with glossy eyes. You were scared if you opened your mouth to talk, your voice would crack and you would just blubber at him in the middle of the aisle. He noticed that, too.

So he distracted you, snatching the crumpled receipt paper from your hand, smoothing it out and scanning over it.

“Alright, looks like the next stop is frozen foods.”

He started making his way to the end of the aisle, turning back when he didn’t hear you following.

“You coming? This frozen pizza isn’t gonna get itself!”

As strange as the interaction was, you found yourself trailing after him.

He led you around the store, asking which brand of thing you wanted before placing it in your cart, repeating that until the end of the list. All the while he was talking your ear off about anything and everything.

He even guided you towards the checkout, unloading everything onto the belt for you, gently swatting your hand away when you tried to lean over and help.

And god forbid he let you load your own groceries into your car, didn’t you know “pregnant ladies shouldn’t do any heavy lifting?” Even though you hardly considered a half-gallon of milk heavy lifting.

He slammed your trunk closed, dusting his hands off on his apron.

“Well, Edward. Thank you for your help.”

He smiled sadly when you said his name. “It’s just Eddie.” He regained his normal cadence after a beat. “But, you’re welcome. It sure beat stocking shelves.”

You were unsure how to leave it. Did you give him your number? Did you smile politely and never return to the store ever again? You couldn’t do that, the prices were too good.

“Well, um,” you smiled awkwardly, sliding into your front seat. “See you around.” It was more of a question than a declaration.

But he smiled reassuringly, giving you a yes, you’ll see me around nod.

[java-dragon]

Covers Bookbinding for beginners by a beginner- The Home Stretch

*drinks half a gallon of coffee*

COVERS!

You've gotten your typeset done for the fic, you've battled the demon that is your printer, folded pages, stitched pages, glued pages, glued end pages, and end bands. Made the cover, covered the cover in potentially homemade book cloth.

Now it's time to design a cover.

It's time to make this thing into a fully functioning book and slide it on your shelf and have a nice bout of "Laying on the Floor while Questioning the Human Condition (TM)".

There are a few options.

It depends on what you want.

I can only take you so far with Cricut/vinyl applications. But I researched enough to maybe, MAYBE give you the run down on at least how to get your cover from Canva to the software to cut out your vinyl. I'll start there since this is what I know the least.

Open up your version of Canva.

Make a document, I've seen some fanbinders make all this in the cricut software but I can only smile and nod along. But for me- this is the best I've figured:

go to the search bar and type in book cover (or use the drop down menu) click on a random template.

Fiddle and fart your way into a design you like. Text and Font Options are available in drop down menus and find some designs that are "Easy to Weed" which I understand as "Getting rid of all the stuff that's not going on the cover".

For Example:

Do you like it? It took me 40 seconds, I'm very proud of it. But this isn't to impress you really I just need to show you how to save your file so you can make the leap from one software application to the next.

Hit "Share", Hit "Download", File Type- Hit the down arrow, Hit "PNG" I missed this for the first few times--- BUT!

Click the "Transparent Background"

If you're doing more than one colour Vinyl you're going to duplicate the page that is located right next to the lock icon above the document. Hit that. Delete the stuff that you want to be different colours. Otherwise it will just cut everything out as one colour and I've seen some vinyl covers that get damn fancy.

You can also build a title cover just measure the spine and height of your spine and rotate your text to horizontal if you please.

Now for how I do mine. I use Printable Iron On Vinyl. Keynote there is a difference, there is stuff for light fabrics, and stuff for dark. Choose for what your primary book cloth will be but the paper itself will be white.

Make your design.

I have 3 different covers for Celestial Navigation by Sabrecmc just because of how LARGE the fic itself is. I had to split the text block up for ease of handling.

I saved as a PNG, and loaded up my fancy printable vinyl into my printer and went through the software for printing, I had to do some fiddling but for my purposes I had to get the whole cover in the right size on the page- it took some fiddling yours might be simpler it might be more complex. But once I got it printed I trimmed off the white and was left with a peel-able rather velvety feeling thing.

Remove the backing. Get the iron on and go low and slow with the provided barrier material to prevent melting and damage to the print you've just done.

I made spines as well and made an 11 x 8.5 (Or brochure template)

And lined up my spines accordingly as to not waste materials. There will be grids that pop up automatically to let you know if things line up.

Print them out on the "highest quality" out put for your photo software.

It peels like a sticker. It may take a bit to get it going.

Line it up as nicely as you can on the cover (double check on the still exposed board).

There is a protective sheet that comes with it USE IT. Set your iron to a low heat and move it around frequently.

If you're in a relatively humid area (I live in a coastal town so the humidity is pretty high all year). Have a heavy book to squish your covers down with to try and get out any bends that may happen post ironing (also why we want low and slow).

Leave to cool.

Now you have a text block and a cover.

For all intents and purposes for my demonstration I'm leaving the spine off and am redoing everything with this fic from the ground up. There are aspects and mistakes that I have made that have irked my brain. So I will be leaving the spines off for this round. This is the learning curve and since a lot have things have clicked into place since beginning this series that have given me the "AH HA! CLARITY!" moment. I have completely reworked EVERYTHING in my text block of Celestial Navigation. Plus I've a perfectionist issue that is a lot milder than what it was.

But these two text blocks will work as my "Ground Zero" and will be the books I compare all potential future binds too.

As a note that I said in the beginning of this endeavor:

THIS IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY. FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK DO NOT SELL WORK THAT DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU!!!! YOU HAVE ASKED PERMISSION (I dearly hope) TO DO THIS DO NOT BREAK TRUST WITH THE AUTHOR.

IF You want to offer a copy to the author- GO FOR IT. Close friend that is showing interest in the fic?? Sure ok.

But if you sell it for monetary gain? I hope you stub your toe, and just before it finally heals you stub your toe again and may all your breakfast cereal turn to slugs.

DO NOT BE A DICK. I am writing this whole 'How To' Series as an experiment of Good Faith that you, the potential binder, will do right by the community and not compound an issue that has been cropping up. Etsy sellers, and this horrible Facebook community that will steal other's typesets, and begin selling them.

Like I said- this is a breech in Fair Use.

Now with that lecture, again, out of the way lets settle the rest of this series.

You will need:

Glue

Book Press

glue brush

Wax Paper.

Your Cover.

Your Text block.

Get your textblock and cover lined up with some wax paper in the middle of the decorative pages (if you're doing them other wise the page you glue down to the cover and the rest of the text block.

Fiddle, fart and dry fit until you are satisfied.

Lay down a layer of glue on the page NOT THE COVER ITSELF.

DON'T BE ME. I FUCKED UP HARDCORE AND DID THE COVER WITH THE GLUE. HOOOOO NELLY LET ME TELL YOU HOW BADLY THAT FUCKED SHIT UP.

HOW BAD WAS IT? BAD. VERY BAD. DON'T BE LIKE ME THAT FIRST ROUND, BE LIKE ME ON THE SECOND ROUND AND PUT GLUE ON THE END PAGE.

Line up the textblock for a final time and then apply the paper to the cover open the textblock and smooth what you just glued down. Flip over and repeat.

Then add weight to the text block put it back in your press, or if you're like me and have a reprint in the press just throw books atop the block.

Allow glue to cure over night.

Shiver, shudder, and lay on the floor. Your fic is now a book that you can put on your shelf.

Welcome to the wild wild world of bookbinding.

I've been your host trying their best to explain all the things.

I will likely continue this series with "OK SO I LEARNED SOME SHIT ALL THAT SHIT I WROTE BEFORE FEEL FREE TO LISTEN BUT I'VE GOT BETTER SOLUTIONS NOW" time stuff.

[dollsonmain]

omg

Another chaotic day, but chaotic in a different way.

She added even more tasks to my morning which I don't appreciate. I already struggle to get anything done.

Right when I discovered that the reason the floor in the cooler has been sticky is because someone spilled a whole gallon of milk in there and never told anyone, which of course I was told to clean up because I work there, and it was horrible because it already was stinky and clumpy, and I only had like 20 minutes left before it was time to go, a customer dropped a Monster and it exploded covering two whole panels of products.

The milk spill was in THE most inconvenient place in that furniture will have to be moved, the 20 foot floor mat will have to be pulled out and hosed down, then let to dry, and I physically just fucking can't especially in only a half an hour.

And the Monster Mangler was so sorry. He was like "Um..... I'll pay for that uh..." and I was like "Nah, man, that sort of thing happens." He didn't break anything, he just made everything sticky.

Then she gave me Tasks and I tried to find the sausage patties, looked right at the box, and didn't see it because it was well past Eat Time but I didn't get eat time because I was only scheduled 5 hours today, and both my blood sugar and pressure were dropping and I saw something entirely different in that box. I saw bread rolls.

I'm actually still not convinced that box isn't full of bread rolls.

So I don't know.

And like... The whole cooler needs to be dumped out and hosed down. It's disgusting in there. There's stinky milk, there's mold, there's soda spilled, there's Monster...

And she's like Ok do Task when I had like 10 minutes left which is when I should be counting my drawer and doing my dishes, and Task, which I guess I'm the official sandwich maker now and I do not like that I hate making food and it's such a pain because I have to take the gloves on and off to ring up customers and I get stuck in the gloves because my hands sweat.

I think I need to take some simple cotton gloves to wear under the work gloves maybe. I do have a bunch of those somewhere.

And it's just the same shit you can buy at Walmart and put together yourself and you're just paying like 400%. Because I made it.

Like....

You get one sub roll, 3 thin slices of cheap turkey sandwich meat, and 2 slices of even cheaper American cheese for $5.

The "Cold Cut Sub" is literally a sub roll, 2 slices of Oscar Mayer Bologna, and 2 slices of American cheese.

...

And I just.... I hate making this shit.

But that's apparently my job, now, even though I didn't retake the food handler's course and didn't apply for sandwich lady.

It was already half an hour past when I was supposed to leave, and I still had to tally my drawer, which I couldn't because I couldn't count anymore, because the sugar.

And I also don't get to pee which is bad because of my kidneys. Which is isn't that I'm not allowed to go pee it's just that I don't get a chance. I'm the only one on the floor. So it'd been from about 5:30 since That Guy was able to drive me to work this morning, until like.... noon, until I got to pee and that didn't smell great which is a bad sign. I have to monitor the smell of my pee for kidney infection smells.

I'm chugging water rn to flush everything out.

And it EXTRA sucks because I wanted to go to town this weekend to go to Goodwill and get a keychain bracelet thing or a lanyard for the store key so I can better keep track of it until I give it back to Manager when she gets back from her trip week after next, but I can't do that because That Guy took the car for the weekend. He'll be home Sunday.

So.

I can't do that until Sunday evening or Monday after work at least.

I have fewer hours next week. I guess in case no one else is in the store to give me a chance to go eat at lunch time. Manager said her sister will try to be there when I get there in the morning but there's no guarantee, and the way she's setting things up it sounds like she half expects her sister to not show up at all. Their dad, the owner, tends to show up around my lunch time but doesn't get on the floor. He does admin stuff in the office while he has his breakfast.

Multiple of my fingernails split so I have to cut them all off again.

I'm so.

I'm

tired

[eugenedebs1920]

Does the, Leave it to Beaver, Happy Days, I Love Lucy, heck, Cheers, have any roots in the real world behind them? These television shows, where the characters find themselves in certain, hilarious situations. It’s not the comedy I ponder. It’s the way in which the society, community, group that they were a part of, that they interacted in. Did things use to be that way? Because my experience has been so detached from anything that resembles those ecospheres those people existed in.

The Columbine School shooting happened just down the road a few miles from where I went to high school. I was a high school sophomore when it happened. Ditching school, smoking pot because it was 4/20. For the longest time I don’t think I truly wrapped my head around what had actually taken place. Yet. Life went on.

I had graduated high school in the spring of 2001. That summer I took my graduation money and traveled around the east coast and Midwest, seeing terrible jam bands with my high school sweetheart. Driving around in a 1992 VW Golf, that got almost forty miles to the gallon highway. Not that that mattered much, the average price of gas was $0.99 a gallon. When we were heading towards the Atlantic, going through Kansas it was $0.76 a gallon!

I, to this day, have never felt so free. Traveling the country, with this pretty little hippie girl I was in love with, selling contraband at shows, seeing live music constantly, and experiencing these little towns, these midwestern folks, so in awe of these two shitkids passing through their town. Honestly, we were in awe of them as well.

I remember we stopped at some greasy spoon, roadside breakfast joint. The waitress, an older lady, but when you’re 18 everyone is an older person. She asked where we were heading, we told her, she ended up suggesting we take an old state highway, that it would get us to the same place at roughly the same time. This was back before GPS was really a thing other than backcountry hikers and emergency crews, how we made it anywhere I do not know. We took her advice and went the route she suggested.

Traveling this state highway, seeing these near ghost towns that the interstate had diverted traffic away from, limping along on their last leg, we saw a billboard that boasted, “worlds largest collection of vinyl records”, I collected vinyl at the time and starting to feel the trance from starring through a windshield for too long.

We find the little record store, when we walked in it was an homage to Roy Rogers. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, was Roy Rogers paraphernalia and records. It had to be the owner, who came to greet us. Me, this dirty hippie fuck, in patchwork corduroy pants, say to him, “So, this is the world’s largest collection of records huh?” He looks at us with a disapproving smirk and gestures to follow him towards the back of the store. Mind you, this is backass nowhere Indiana or Illinois, one of the two. In the back of this, what one would think was a Roy Rodgers museum, is rack after rack after rack of vinyl records, had to be ten feet high, both sides of what could be considered a small warehouse, full of records! It was overwhelming. We rummaged through records for about an hour before getting back on the road with our little treasure.

The summer came and went and the air became crisp as the leaves changed their hue from green to red to gold. As fate would have it, my high school sweetheart’s birthday was, haha, probably still is, in early fall.

Because I had thrown inhibitions to the wind, traveled half the country using my graduation money, relinquished my duties at the fine, part time job I had at the thrift store, when tour was over, I stayed at my moms, in the basement (mind you I was 18).

It was girls birthday, so first thing, in the mountain time zone, on the morning of, September the eleventh, two thousand and one, I gave my girl a call to wish her a happy birthday. She answered the phone, I said, “Haply birthday darling!! GOOOOD MORNING!!” there was a pause on the line, finally, with an, almost rasp to her voice, she said, “Yea. It’s real happy..”, I said back to her, “what’s wrong?” She asked if I had watched any tv yet (mind the younger readers. There was a time when we didn’t have all the information we could ever need in the palm of our hands and we got news and sports and whatnot from the television set) I had to chuckle because I rarely watched tv. She advised me to turn on the tv and give her a call back.

I don’t recall if I ever did call her back. There are images from that day that are forever tattooed in my brain. These scenes, just seared into my mind. I’m nat an empath but I have a lot of empathy, sympathy, compassion, that burdens me at times, I can put myself in moments of duress and imagine the feeling, the thoughts, the anxiety of that situation. When I saw those people, those humans, my countrymen, my fellow American, I just thought of that moment they were in. The contemplation of, do I burn to death in this building or do I leap to my death? I thought about what that must have felt like, the despair, the stress, the utter feeling of hopelessness to make that choice and jump out those windows. The fear that had and would grip you in those final moments. Too see, I don’t know how many but, five, eight, a dozen human fucking beings, dive to their end. I. America. The world. Would never be the same.

The events that would precede that, although expected, it didn’t make it right. It didn’t fix it. It didn’t undo what I had seen, what they had seen! What we saw. There was no amount of murder that was going to remedy the murder that happened on the morning of September 11, 2001. The world would never be the same.

That was hard to write. It Fuckin hurts. What makes it even more painful is that it got worse before it got better. More of my brothers and sisters died because of that morning. To add insult to injury, my fellow citizens that were dying on the battlefields, in some desert, halfway around the world, they were dying for me. It doesn’t matter the war, those service members are fighting for us. For me. In my name. For the cause of freedom.

Thousands and thousands of Americans died for me to live in this country. A country where the foundation of our whole system of governance is based on the notion that all peoples are created equal, that we are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these right are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said (maybe more than once) “Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hatred cannot drive out hatred. Only love can do that”. The killing of poverty stricken Afghans and Iraqis, and too many others in the Middle East, around the globe, it didn’t make it better, it made it worse.

God! Was it 20 years or more that war went on. It got a little better, then it got. A whole lot worse.

When I see the division in this country right now. When I see the anger in this country right now. When I see the conflict we are embattled in right now. It breaks my heart.

For you are my brother, my sister, my countrymen, my fellow American, a fellow human. You are not my enemy and never will be. We are on the same team!

That brings me back to my original question. Was there a time? When things were simpler? When we showed respect and kindness towards each other? When we cared for each other? When we could disagree but not hate each other? And how do we get back there?

[gvfgal]

Bound- Chapter Nine

Chapter Eight

18+ minors DNI!!!!!!!

A/n: Don’t wanna spoil anything for you guys… just want to say, you’ve been waiting for this. I’m honestly so excited for the direction of the story, you guys will probably hate me for awhile but it’s all in the love of fan fic. Hope you guys enjoy. <3 P.S. There are definitely some cute little Easter eggs in this chapter, hopefully you can catch some of them!

Content Warnings: explicit sexual content, cheating (whoopsie), unprotected sex, light fingering (f rec.), lots of fluff, heavy pining, passionate sex… think that’s it

Word Count: 5.8k

Waking up to the smell of breakfast wasn’t a luxury you were used to. August was the type of person who could burn water without having to try too hard, which left you doing all the cooking.

So when the smell of bacon wafted across your nose as you woke that morning, you were completely caught off guard, and the unfamiliar surroundings that greeted you when you opened your eyes didn’t help the situation.

The navy blue sunken couch you were laying on was a stark contrast to the plush white sofa you had back home, and the blanket draped across your body smelled heavily of cigarettes and brown liquor, and a little of Jake, bringing you a strange sense of comfort.

You pulled the blanket tighter and slowly peeked over the back of the couch into the kitchen where a shirtless Jake was busy cooking over the stove. He had music playing quietly from the radio that sat in his windowsill, and he was humming along to the tune. The same jeans he had on from the day before hung loosely around his waist, leaving his black boxers clearly visible.

It was impossible not to stare, the extra weight that he’d picked up over the years suited him well, and you found yourself daydreaming about wrapping your arms around his bare skin. You bit at a piece of skin hanging from your thumb as you watched him move around the kitchen, his muscles flexing with even the smallest of movements. You silently willed yourself to look away before your urges consumed you.

“Mornin’ sleeping beauty,” he spoke without turning around. His sudden voice startled you, causing you to accidentally bite down too hard on your finger.

You cursed and shouted mutely as you flailed your hand around to relieve the sting, but as soon as Jake was facing you, you stopped, attempting to appear as calm as you could.

He was wearing a smirk as he slid the omelet from the pan onto a waiting plate, “you sleep alright?”

You pulled your knees to your chest and nodded, “honestly I don’t even remember falling asleep.”

“Yeah,” he chuckled, “you uh, crashed when we were outside last night. I was gonna wake you up to take you to a hotel, but I figured you were pretty tired from travelin’ and everything so I just brought you in and let you sleep,” he stopped what he was doing to look you in the eyes, “I hope that’s alright.”

You smiled at his seemingly permanent southern hospitality, “that’s alright.”

He returned your grin before retrieving the sizzling bacon from the stove and placing it on the plate beside the omelet, “there are plenty of nice hotels in town, though. We’ll pass by a few when I show you around,” he pulled a glass from one of the cabinets, then a gallon of unopened grapefruit juice from the fridge, “you just pick whichever one you think you’d be most comfortable in and I’ll make it happen.”

The way you were feeling as he spoke alarmed you. Even in that unfamiliar house, in that unfamiliar city, you were already starting to feel at home. Being under the same roof as Jake again brought you a forgotten feeling of peace that you hadn’t felt since the day he left. You missed that feeling so much, you were afraid that even being away from him to sleep at a hotel would hurt too much.

And Jake, it was taking all of his strength to appear so lax about the topic when all he really wanted you to do was curl up in his bed with him and never leave. He wanted you right there, forever, but he was afraid to push too hard.

You sat at the counter just as he was sliding the plate and glass towards you with a smile, “but first breakfast.”

An omelet, bacon, and grapefruit juice. The same breakfast he made for you years ago. Well, almost.

“Oh,” he exclaimed, “almost forgot.” He opened the fridge again and pulled out a smaller bowl, placing it in front of you.

Strawberries and watermelon.

You looked up at him brightly, eyes twinkling in adoration as you felt yourself falling in love with him just a little bit more.

He grinned at you lazily, “eat up.”

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

After breakfast, Jake allowed you to use his guest room to get ready. You paid a little extra attention to your appearance, coating your lashes in mascara and pinkening your cheeks with blush. You put on a little more perfume than you normally would, and you made sure your hair was pulled out of your face.

As he drove to town, you were constantly checking yourself over in the mirror, trying to decide if you should put on lipgloss or not. Jake could sense your uneasiness, but he found it precious.

Some things never change.

He reached a hand over the counsel and placed it on your thigh, but rather than tensing up, you relaxed completely. The first real touch since being reunited, and it was everything you’d been missing in life.

He grinned at you, appearing as if he wanted to say something, but instead he turned his attention back on the road, his hand remaining in place for the rest of the drive.

He pointed out different buildings and sights as he drove through the town, telling you small stories attached to each. You listened with your full attention, enjoying learning about new parts of his life. He was so comfortable, so relaxed, that it was hard to take your eyes off of him long enough to marvel at the things he pointed to. The calm energy he was radiating made him that much more appealing to look at, that much more tempting to touch.

On the other side of town was a hiking trail. Jake pulled into the parking lot and stopped the car, looking over at you in anticipation, “ready?”

Your eyes scaled the mountain in front of you. It was a lot smaller than the surrounding ones, but still colossal nonetheless.

Jake chuckled at the bewildered expression on your face, “it’s not as bad as it looks, I promise. Plus the view makes it all worth it.”

You were less worried about the exerting walk and more worried about what it would do to your appearance that you worked so hard on. But you’d have to get over it.

You smiled at him as you unfastened your seatbelt, “let's do it.”

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Two hours later, you made it to the top of the hill, and just as Jake said, the climb was worth it. You could see all of Kalispell, a quaint little town set on a backdrop that mirrored the postcard you received in the mail weeks ago.

“It’s beautiful, ain’t it?” Jake asked as he stood several feet behind you, allowing you to enjoy the moment.

You sighed, “I don’t think ‘beautiful’ does it justice, Jake. It’s… majestic.”

“Yeah,” he smirked, “I guess that’s a better way to put it.”

“Do you come up here often?” you turned to look at him briefly before returning to the view.

He shrugged, shoving his hands into his pockets as he sauntered up beside you, “I did when I first moved here. Kinda a good place to clear your head. Haven’t been up here in awhile, though.”

Jake thought back on the many times he’d stumbled up that mountain at sunset with only a bottle of whiskey and a flashlight to accompany him. He’d sit and drink till the bottle was empty, then stumble his way back down to sleep in his car. He still couldn’t understand how he’d managed to do that in his drunken state, but the scratches and bruises he always woke up with proved it wasn’t an easy task.

“If I lived here, I’d come up here every day,” you shook your head in astonishment.

He smiled over at you, admiring the way the tip of your nose was beginning to turn red from the cold breeze that blew by.

“If you lived here, I’d bring you up here every day.”

Your heart shot up into your throat then back down again. Jake always said just the right things.

You stood no chance.

After lingering at the top for a little longer, you made your way back down (which was a lot easier), and headed back into town for lunch. You laughed and joked the entire time, falling back into your familiar ways. By the time you left, it was as if no time had passed with you two apart, it was as it was always meant to be.

Lunch rolled into window shopping, and window shopping rolled into ice cream. You and Jake sat on a bench outside of the ice cream shop, you with a strawberry cone topped with sprinkles, and Jake with plain vanilla. As you enjoyed, you argued about where the two of you would go for dinner, and when you couldn’t come to an agreement, Jake had the brilliant idea of going to the grocery store and letting the aisles decide for you.

That store run was full of stolen touches that lingered for longer and longer as time progressed. A brush of a hand here, a gentle palm on the back there, it was as if each touch advanced the next one, until you and Jake could hardly remove your hands from the other for fear of letting the other slip away.

The sun was setting as Jake began making his way back home, his hand once again resting on your thigh as he navigated through town.

Your sights were set out the window, watching as people passed by, your mind in a million different places, then it hit you.

“Can we stop at a payphone, please?” your voice was quiet, as if you were afraid to ask. You knew he was more than likely aware of your need for the phone, but he was in no position to comment.

So he nodded, “there’s one at the junction, we’ll stop there.”

Nothing more was said after that. He withdrew his hand from your lap, and the rest of the ride was silent.

Once he pulled up to the booth, he reached over into his glove compartment to retrieve a pack of cigarettes and a quarter for the machine.

His hand didn’t brush against you this time.

“Thank you,” you squeaked as he handed you the coin, and without answering, he climbed out of the car and leaned against the hood, pulling a cigarette from the box.

You made your way over to the payphone, slipping the quarter in and dialing the number stored deep in your brain. The line rang three times before someone picked up.

“Hello?” August’s smooth voice coasted through the receiver. Just from the tone of his voice, you could tell that he was more than likely elbows deep in work. You smiled at the image of him hunched over his desk reading hundreds of confusing documents, completely in his element, then you looked over at Jake.

“Hey Aug, it’s me,” you did your best to sound chipper as you pulled your eyes from where he stood.

“Well hey there stranger,” his voice rose an octave, “I was starting to get worried about you, hadn’t heard from you since you flew out yesterday.”

“Yeah… sorry about that. My flight was delayed so I got in a lot later than I thought, and it’s just been nonstop from there.”

You heard some shuffling on the other line, “well are you at least enjoying yourself?”

Once again, you peered over at Jake. He was standing with his back towards you, a large cloud of smoke appearing above his head as he took a long drag.

“Yeah,” you smiled, “I am.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re having fun, but I miss you terribly.”

Your smile broadened at the mock sadness laced in his voice, “I miss you too.”

“And I love you.”

“I love you too, Jake.”

You couldn’t stop his name from spilling past your lips, and right after it did, you clamped a hand over your mouth.

Your heart was beating overtime as silence lingered on the phone.

“Wh-what?” August chuckled nervously, not sure if he heard you correctly.

“I… I said I love you too…babe. This service out here is real spotty, it’s probably breaking up.”

Another brief moment of silence, “yeah,” August sighed, “maybe so.”

You winced at the way his voice sounded, like he didn’t quite believe the excuse, but figured it was probably better to do so.

“Well hey look,” he spoke up again, “I’ve got a shit ton of work to do, babe, and I need to get to it so I’m not up all night.”

You nodded even though he couldn’t see you, “okay.”

Just as he was about to hang up the phone, you stopped him, he said nothing as he waited for you to say what you needed.

“I love you, August.”

Nerves crawled through your veins, “I love you too.”

Your stomach turned at the reference, but you ignored it.

You hung the phone back up and made your way back over to Jake’s truck, doing your best to forget the conversation you just had.

Jake was already back in the driver’s seat, watching as you climbed in with an involuntary pout on your face.

“You alright, doll?” he asked as he buckled himself in.

You wanted to say no. Hell no. This, all of it, is confusing. But his syrupy sweet voice that was laced with care and concern had everything else feeling rather small.

Jake was the biggest force of them all.

You simpered, “I’m fine, just hungry.”

He knew you weren’t being truthful, but if you didn’t want to tell, he wouldn’t push.

The truck roared to life, and he put it in reverse, taking you home.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

By the time you finished cooking and eating, you were back to your normal self. Jake always had a way of doing that for you. Whenever you were around him, it was Jake, and only Jake. The rest of life's worries simply faded into the background, forgotten and unimportant.

Jake opened a bottle of wine after dinner, and the two of you were now dancing around his living room as the contents of the bottle dwindled and dwindled.

At first, you were bouncing around like a couple of maniacs, but after wearing yourselves out, Jake switched the record to a much more tame album, leaving you slow dancing in circles, closer than you’d been in a long time.

Your head was against his chest, the rhythm of his heart all but beating to the cadence of your name.

You could feel it in the atmosphere, all the love you couldn’t give to each other for the past five years spilling out into the room, causing you to pull him a little closer.

“Y/n,” he muttered, almost so softly that if your ears weren’t so tuned to his voice, you’d miss it, “thank you for coming to me.”

His words stunned you, so sincere and dripping with appreciation, like he needed it more than anything.

Which he did.

“Thank you for asking me,” you peeped back, looking up into his heavy eyes, “I don’t think I could’ve been as brave as you.”

Jake smirked and shook his head, “It wasn’t bravery.”

You blinked, “what was it, then?”

Blame it on love.

Before he could answer, the song switched to Only You by The Platters, and you and Jake found each other's eyes swiftly, both wearing an awestruck expression.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

February 12, 1963

Townsend, Tennessee

Jake stood in the corner of the school gymnasium beside his twin, staring you down from across the room.

The Sweethearts Dance was a well looked forward to event at your school, and every single student at your middle school (all 50 of them) were piled into the small rundown gym.

“Jake, quit being a wuss,” a twelve year old Josh teased as he shoved half of a cupcake into his mouth, “just ask her to dance with you, it’s not that hard.”

You were sitting by yourself on one of the benches, legs swinging your white patent leather shoes back and forth as you fiddled with one of the blue bows on your dress.

“She just looks so pretty, Josh I-I can’t…”

And you did look very pretty. Your curls were pulled into pigtails and each decorated with blue ribbons the same shade as your dress. He always liked when your hair was pulled away from your features.

“Exactly,” Josh stressed, “and if you don’t go ask her to dance right now, Richard Frank is gonna beat you to it.”

Jake turned his attention to where Richard was standing eyeing you from another corner of the gym, and he narrowed his eyes.

Jake never liked Richard Frank, he had two first names.

And the thought of you dancing with Richard instead of him was enough to shatter his nerves.

“Okay, fine.”

On wobbly knees, he began making his way over to you, and when you noticed him approaching, you perked up in your seat.

“Hi Jake,” you greeted in your soft voice as he came to a stop in front of you.

“Hi y/n. I- I like your dress.”

You looked down at it then back at him with an appreciative smile, “thanks. I like your tie.”

Jake rolled his eyes, “my mom made me wear it.”

You threw a hand over your mouth and began giggling, and the sound of it sent a wave of calm rushing through him.

He turned to look back at Josh for some support, and his goofy twin sent him a thumbs up.

“Do you maybe wanna dance…? With me?”

You sat up a little straighter as the butterflies in your stomach roared to life. You figured his parents probably put him up to this, a sympathy dance for the too shy girl-next-door, but you didn’t care. You spent every day leading up to that night hoping that Jake would dance with you just once.

And here was your opportunity.

“Really?”

Jake grew bashful as he nodded his head.

“O-okay.”

Jake held out an awkward hand for you to take, and you accepted it, letting him lead you to the middle of the dance floor.

You could feel the jealous eyes of some of your classmates that had school girl crushes on Jake, and you began to grow nervous. But when you looked to Jake, he didn’t seem to notice any of them. All his attention was on you, not even a bouncing Josh could catch his gaze.

The song changed to Only You by The Platters came on just as Jake pulled you nearer.

The two of you swayed awkwardly, bodies still several inches apart as Jake did his best to lead you. He’d never done it before, he didn’t know what the hell he was doing. But for some weird reason, it felt natural for him to lead you this way. Even when his movements were sloppy or off beat, you moved in time with him, conforming fo his odd way of dancing.

He thought it was strange for him to feel this way at such a young age, but the way you two were so in sync at the moment had him feeling like you were made perfectly for him. He marveled at that idea, someone being made specifically for him, and even better yet, that someone being you.

“I like this song,” you whispered, tearing him away from his thoughts as you laid your head gently onto his chest.

“Me too,” he smiled, his heart beginning to beat in the cadence of your name.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

You could tell by the look in Jake’s eyes that he was recalling the same memory you were, and in the flickering lights of the fireplace, you swore you could see tears welling in his eyes.

You felt similar emotion stirring deep inside you as you peered into his glassy eyes. Everything, everything, that happened between you and Jake from the very beginning led you to this point. This strange, confusing point.

It was messy, and it hurt sometimes, but it also felt so good, so right. Engaged or not, you felt like you were supposed to be there, exactly in the way you were.

Others may have seen it as cruel, but they also didn’t know what it felt like to be loved by Jake Kiszka.

He hadn’t taken his eyes away from you, he felt like he simply couldn’t.

He couldn’t even began to count the nights he dreamt about seeing that look on your face again. That look that could steal the air right out of his lungs and crumble the earth beneath his feet.

You were looking at him like he was the only person in the world, like he was the only person that mattered.

Like you loved him, and like you knew how much he loved you.

He missed it more than he could put into words, and seeing it grace your face again was like he was seeing it for the first time.

It was the kind of look that could heal him entirely, erase all the wrong he did and bring him back to himself. And as he stood there staring into your eyes, he could already feel that change happening.

Which is why he couldn’t contain himself from doing what he did next.

His hand reached up and stroked a tear that slid down your face, partially to comfort you and partially to make sure you were really there.

“Don’t cry,” he whispered as he kissed the apple of your cheek. Then he leaned in and his lips brushed against yours so delicately that it almost could’ve been missed. A soft gasp left your mouth as you stepped away from him. The way such a simple, almost-kiss left you feeling was scary. Your entire body was humming with a combination of guilt and lust, but more than anything, it was alight with love.

Jake took notice of the socked look on your face, “I- I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…”

You blinked at him, seeing the embarrassment seeping through his pores as he waited in agony for your next move.

There was no reason to deny yourself or Jake anymore at that moment. You wanted him, and he wanted you. You missed him, and God did he miss you.

Neither of you could manage to say it out loud, but that didn't stop it from being the truth.

In one swift movement, your bodies simultaneously crashed into each other’s, lips attaching in a heated kiss as your hands wandered frantically.

Jake was panting into your mouth as his tongue explored inside of it. Though he was a nervous wreck, his movements were controlled and confident. He refused to mess up this moment that he waited so long to experience again.

You were kissing him just as urgently, fisting the back of his shirt in your hands as you pressed your body against his.

“Jake,” you ghosted out as his lips began trailing to your jaw and down your neck.

“My love,” he called back to you, soft as can be as he nipped at your collar bone, “I missed you, babydoll, I missed you so much.”

Your eyes, which were screwed shut, fluttered open as your hand came up to brush through his tangled locks. As you did, you caught a glimpse of the twinkling engagement ring on your finger.

“Will you… marry me, y/n?”

“Jake wait,” you gasped as you shoved him away from you, his eyes narrowed in confusion.

“We- we shouldn’t—”

He took a step towards you with his arm outstretched, “baby wait, look—”

“Jake no stop I—”

“Hey, hey wait,” Jake cupped your face in his palms, forcing you to look at him, his eyes pleading with yours, “can you just stop and listen to me for a second?”

Once he had your full attention, he began speaking again, “if you really don’t want to do this, if you really wanna stop, you tell me and its done. I’ll take you to a hotel and we’ll pretend this never happened,” he swallowed so harshly you could see his adam's apple bob.

“But can you just do me a favor, please? Can you just think about yourself and what you really want? Don’t think about what August wants, or what your mom wants, or even what I want, what do you want?”

You were sputtering nonsense, your mouth opening and shutting like a fish out of water, not producing a single cohesive sentence.

There was urgency in the way Jake gripped your face tighter, but still careful with his force as his eyes pierced deeper into yours.

“Please, please tell me what you want baby,” he pleaded in his southern drawl that made your knees buckle.

There was only one answer that would be the right one. It may not have been the morally correct choice, but when it came to Jake, you always seemed to lose your sense of rationality.

“Please,” he begged once more.

You took a deep breath, and upon exhaling, you muttered the four words he needed to hear the most.

“I want you, Jake.”

It was as if your words crescendoed around him, melting him where he stood holding you so closely.

Once again, you both sought out each other’s mouths in a desperate kiss, hands once again wandering each other’s bodies. The kiss you were sharing was one that was more impassioned than you’ve ever shared before, five long years of yearning finally surfacing in a fervid way.

“I missed you, babydoll, I needed you so badly, baby, you don’t understand,” Jake expressed as he licked across you collarbone, pulling your shirt down for better access.

You cradled his head in your hands and threw your head back with a sigh, “I know Jakey, I know… I missed you too,” your nails gripped into his shoulder as his teeth grazed your skin, “so, so much.”

“You don’t know how much I needed to hear that,” he spoke in between kisses, “I spent the last five years thinking I lost you forever.”

Your heart melted at the way he sounded so doleful at the thought, and you pulled him a little closer, “you could never lose me, Jake. I was always meant to be yours.”

One of his hands cupped your breast, and your mouth fell open. Jake pulled away to watch your expression with a lopsided grin, “mine… look at you. God, you’re so beautiful,” he tucked a strand of hair behind your ear as his other hand continued rubbing your breast, “I didn't think it was possible for you to become more beautiful. But right now,” he shook his head and disbelief, “the woman you’ve grown into babydoll, seeing you this way, after everything that’s happened, it’s indescribable.”

You nodded your head, unable to say all the things you were thinking, so instead you left him with an, “I love you, Jake.”

He pressed a soft kiss to your lips as he smiled down at you, “I love you too, babydoll.” The hand he had on your chest dropped down to your waist and squeezed, as his pupils dilated ever so slightly.

“And I’m gonna show you.”

His hands began manically removing your clothes, and you did your best to aid him in his disposal.

“I’d love to taste you right now, and lord knows I’d love for you to taste me,” he had rid you of your shirt and bra and was now working on undoing your jeans, “but if I’m not inside you in the next thirty seconds, I might not live to see tomorrow.”

He tugged your pants and underwear down in one swift movement, moving back to allow you to step out of them.

You were standing with your back towards the fireplace, and the heat from the flames was warming your backside. Normally, you’d feel awkward with someone staring at your naked body the way Jake was, but in that moment, you had absolutely no shame.

You were offering yourself over to him, all of you, for all of him. ‘I’m yours’, you were saying without murmuring a word, ‘just like I was always meant to be’.

Jake stood with his fist over his mouth, tapping his foot rapidly against the wooden floor. Your body was even better than he remembered it, and it took all his strength not to reach out and grab you.

He took a step towards you then reached out before he retreated back.

You watched him closely as he appeared to be in deep thought, staring past you into the flames of the fireplace.

Finally, his eyes found yours again as he began fumbling with his belt buckle, “lay down. Right there.”

Without missing a beat, you obeyed his command, dropping down to the floor and sprawling out on your back as he removed his pants. Your eyes dropped to the large bulge in his boxer briefs, and his hand retreated to palm over it.

You gulped and looked back up at him as he pulled his t-shirt over his head with a smirk.

When he dropped his boxers, and his cock was visible to you, you let out a soft whimper at the way it leaked with need.

Apparently he missed you just as much.

Jake dropped to his knees in front of you, pulling you by your ankles closer to his body.

He began stroking himself with one hand, using the other to stroke his fingers languidly along your slick, “missed you so much, babydoll. I need you.”

Without waiting for you to respond he dropped his mouth onto yours and sank into your cunt until your bodies became one.

He swallowed down the moan that you let out, his own mouth dropping open at the way you were pulling him into you involuntarily. It was as if your body was responding to his presence on its own accord.

“Jake,” you purred as your nails raked down his back, more than likely leaving angry red marks that he’d admire later. You wanted to say more, tell him how perfectly he fit inside of you, like he was made to live there. Tell him that you missed the way he treated your body with so much care like no other man had ever been able to do. You wanted to tell him you loved him, but the words wouldn’t come out.

All you could do was repeat his name again, the tone of your voice conveying everything you couldn’t manage to say.

“I know baby, I know,” Jake cooed tenderly as he stroked over your head. He was completely still inside of you, “feels so good, doesn’t it?”

“So good,” you parroted.

He dropped his head into the crook of your neck as he rocked his hips into you once, his breath stuttering as he did so.

“God, baby. I just wanna fuck all of my love into you. All the love I couldn’t give you in the past five years, I want to give it to you right here, right now.” He pulled back to look you in your eyes that were pooling with euphoric tears, “can I do that, babydoll? Can I love you again?”

You blinked to release the tears that wanted to escape so badly. Nirvana was the only was you could describe that moment. You didn’t think you’d ever be able to experience this again with Jake, and it sometimes left you feeling downtrodden. But you felt like all the waiting at wanting led you to this exact moment. This perfect, heavenly designed moment.

No matter how sinful it was.

“Please Jake,” you wrapped your legs around his waist and rolled your body against his, making him hiss as he squeezed your tits roughly, “please. I need you.”

His head dropped to your shoulder again as he began thrusting into you at a steady, punctuated pace. Your body jolted with each firm stroke he gave you, and he was huffing with every reunion of your bodies, warm tingles of his breath oozing down your skin.

“I can feel you pullin’ me in,” he growled into the shell of your ear, “it’s like your body knows nobody else could ever fuck you like this, could ever love you like this…”

“No-nobody,” you cried out as you arched your back away from the floor.

His pace began to pick up, but his movements were still full of nothing but love and devotion. You could tell he was growing desperate, though, by the way his strokes were growing sloppy.

You were dazed and breathless at the way he was fucking you, so possessive and primal but yet still so delicate and careful. It was as if he were trying to prove to you how dedicated he was, little did he know he hardly had to work that hard at all.

“Gonna cum,” you trembled, locking your legs around his torso tighter.

“Please, God please, need to feel it,” he mumbled out as he dropped a hand to rub over your clit.

“Look at me,” he ordered gently, and your body lurched forward, eyes wide as you gave him exactly what he asked for.

“I love you, babydoll,” he insisted as he continued his action, “I love you so fuckin’ much it hurts.”

You fought to keep your eyes open as you felt your orgasm creeping closer and closer.

“Hey,” he rasped out, tapping your leg to gain your attention again, “tell me you love me, then you can cum.”

“Jake… I- I lo…” your word trailed off into a moan as he hit that perfect spot inside of you.

“Come on babydoll, I just need to hear it one more time, I missed it so much.”

His thrusts were beginning to grow sloppier, signaling that he was approaching his end as well.

“I love you,” you mewled, meaning it with everything you had left in you, “I love you Jake.”

Without waiting for him to say anything else, you came hard around him, your body tensing and dissolving into the pleasure you were feeling. It was more than just what he was doing to your physically, it was the way that you felt his love in every stroke, the way he breathed your name repeatedly like some kind of sacred mantra, the way his hands held onto you like he was afraid you’d dissapear before his very eyes.

Damn feeling it in your stomach, you could feel his dick in your heart.

“Ah shit,” Jake shuddered , pulling himself out of you and pumping along his throbbing length until he was releasing hot spurts of cum onto the floor beside you.

“Oh fuck… oh shit, y/n,” he growled through clenched teeth as the last of his release spilled from him. When there was nothing left to get rid of, Jake fell backwards onto the sunken couch in his living room with a grunt.

You giggled, and peeled your body from the ground to crawl over to him.

Draping your body over his, you began sprinkling his sweat dampened skin with sweet kisses, causing him to grin lazily.

“I don’t think you ever fucked me that good when we were younger,” you teased as your thigh brushed against his softening cock.

He jerked forward and let out a small exhausted chuckle.

“Well what can I say, I missed you too much.”

You hummed as you brought your lips to his in a slow sensual kiss, “can we do it again?”

Jake pulled back to look at you with a smirk that mirrored yours, “hell yeah.”

And that’s exactly what you did for the rest of the night. Once more on the couch, again on the kitchen counter, outside on the patio, his bed, his shower.

While others were fast asleep in the comfort of their beds, you and Jake had turned his home into your own love den, christening every square inch with passionate sex that was only heard of in romance novels.

Jake did exactly what he said he would do, implanting his love back inside of you through the tip of his aching cock. Reminding you over and over how much he loved you and missed you, you returning every sentiment.

By the time the sun touched the horizon, you and Jake had made so much love that it was impossible for either of you to remove yourselves from the floor in front of the couch, ending in a similar place you started in.

You fell asleep right there in a tangle of limbs as the embers in the fireplace flickered to a halt.

August was the furthest thing from your brain at that point, the guilt the shame, all of it. Forgotten and unimportant.

It was Jake, nothing but Jake. As it usually always was, and as it was always meant to be.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Chapter Ten

Taglist: @jakesgrapejuice @fretaganvleet

@josh-iamyour-mama @why-ami-on-here @objectsinspvce

[harrison-abbott]

When I was about fifteen or so, I was at a party with my friend Curtis. And, some other lad who was in the above year started on Curtis. You know when kids drink alcohol – they can’t handle it and go totally crazy? Well yeah: this idiot grabbed my friend Curtis by the throat. So I just stepped in instinctively and blocked the idiot. I took his hand away and walled Curtis off from him. And the guy cowered away. Curtis got upset and went outside and cried for a little bit.

There was another time when I was with my friend Ross. We were smoking in the park. And suddenly this man appeared and threatened to call the police on us. A man who must’ve been in his 40s. Maybe older. Then all of a sudden he grabbed Ross on the coat. So I stepped in and told him “Take your hand off my friend.” I kept saying that and looked directly at him. There was a tussle. I didn’t hit the man because I didn’t want to. But, he finally backed off. And Ross and I left. The bizarre thing was that he and I were only 17 at the time.

Another occasion, my other friend Josh had just left my house after visiting. He’d been over for the evening, and was going home. He was walking down the street. And shortly afterwards I heard these lads shouting at him in an aggressive tone. So I went outside with a big stick, to check that he was okay. The lads saw me and went a different direction down the road, and Josh was left unharmed.

Josh, Curtis, Ryan and I once walked out of Edinburgh along to North Berwick (which is a pretty long way). It had been a baking day. And by the evening, Ryan was tired and irritated. He got drunk and started shouting at us. Josh then got angry back at him, and they started fighting. So I stepped in and broke the fight up.

I really cared about my friends and had a natural instinct to protect them. I’d gone through high school with them. Loved them.

One night, after all of the incidents above, this group of bullies who we knew from school started following us in their car. They were carousing around the town at night and threatening us with the vehicle – as in, they kept racing up to us and yelling at us from the windows.

We ran off. And the bullies got out their car and chased us. Curtis, Luke and Josh were all there with me. They ran into a woody patch of trees and bushes, and they hid in them. Whereas I stayed where I was. And was suddenly confronted with the three bullies. Three on one. I figured they were going to attack me, so I just went up and smacked one of them. And, well, they all mashed me up quite quickly. Although I wasn’t damaged that bad.

But, Curtis, Luke and Josh all hid in the bushes whilst the beating took place. And they knew it was going on and they didn’t do anything. Just stayed there. In fact, they were still there after the bullies left, and I had to call them out to tell them that it was okay. Curtis and Luke apologised for that incident. But Josh never did.

Fast forward a few years later. I was a bit older now: 20 years old.

Was out in Edinburgh with the entire gang from high school. We were at this club which was playing dub music. Curtis’ Dad was the DJ. It was an event we went to every month or so. And, on this particular night, I had way too many beers.

As I say, I was young, and back then I drank gallons and gallons, and simply had too much.

My friends and I went outside for a smoke. And then we headed back to the club. And the bouncers singled me out of the whole pack and told me I wasn’t getting in.

And, without a word, all ten of my old friends from school simply walked away from me without saying anything and they went into the club, leaving me behind.

I got cheeky with the bouncers. Being young and naïve, I was trying to wind them up. I’ll admit that. I admitted it at the time.

And the bouncers just jumped me right there on the street. They crushed me into the pavement, directly there in public, with people passing by. One of them, the bouncers, whilst he was kneeling on my back said, “Oh, you’re just a pussy aye!”

The following morning there were bruises all over my body. On my neck, chest, hip. And I had to go to the GP about it, and because the pelvis was so mucked up they had to do a piss test to check if there was any blood in it.

I told the story to my friends. Told them what happened. We had this group chat thing on Facebook, back then. And not one of them responded to me about the incident. Curtis did mention to me one-on-one, in a personal conversation box, that he hadn’t meant to side with the bouncers. That’s pretty much all he said about it.

Initially, I kind of accepted that I had insulting to the bouncers, and that my behaviour wasn’t angelic either.

Then I realised that days and weeks had gone by and not one of the friends had said anything about what happened – and the assault had actually been quite serious.

A month later, I was hanging out with the friends again, and I mentioned to Ross and Curtis that my pelvis was still mucked up from the attack. Ross said, “Yeah but you did provoke them.” And Curtis said, “You probably did deserve it on some Karmic level.”

As I’ve been writing these stories this morning, I realise how old they are. I’m 31 now. And I haven’t been in a fight, thankfully, since that incident with the bouncers, 11 years back. I suppose I just wanted to write about them on this blog because I’m trying to clear up the memories.

I stopped hanging out with that old clique of mates after what happened with the bouncers. And none of them ever apologised for abandoning me that night. Nor did they care that I got beaten up.

For a long time I was furious with them. But these days, I think the most valuable thing is that I learned to stay away from danger. My whole life I have always attracted aggression from other males. Almost entirely without provocation. And I still do. Just last month, for instance, there was a group of lads carousing about at night in a car (just like the story up there ^^) and they saw me and hollered at me from their windows, when I wasn’t even doing anything.

Do these little tales seem trivial to you, as the reader?

Bearing in mind that most of them happened when I was in my adolescence, and the last one when I was 20.

Violence has had a great impact on my life, from a young age. There are various other tales which I’ve written about on this blog before.

I believe I was right to quit communicating with that old clique of ‘buddies’ from school. And at the same time, I try to forget about everything related to high school, and all of the connotations associated.

Since I stopped hanging out with those friends, I studied at two different universities, achieved an MA and an MSc. And I became a published poet, short story writer and novelist in subsequent years. And I also met a whole bunch of other people throughout these years, met many terrific folk who are my real friends.

I suppose I wanted to write this personal piece as a way of moving on from all of those ugly moments in youth. And I will keep being creative, keep writing, for the rest of my life.  

[writing-good-vibes]

you are now leaving illinois

before the weird sex and the american dreams and the realisations that only the open road can bring, there was the beginning (well, almost). or: corey and michael leave illinois for the first time.

WARNING for mentions of shoplifting, carjacking, smoking and very mild angst, but this is actually pretty mellow. idk corey cries a little bit but that's not out of the ordinary for him.

taglist: @slutforstabbings @ethanhoewke @voxmortuus (if anyone else wants to be tagged in corey related things, just let me know !!)

The first stop they make since leaving Haddonfield is at a Walmart about 20 miles from the state line. Corey goes in, hood up and head down, just to grab some essentials for the road.

Bags of chips, cans of soda and bottled water. An armful of cup noodles and a loaf of bread. A half-gallon of chocolate milk. First aid supplies because he knows he's not the powerhouse that Michael is; rolls of bandages and gauze, a bottle of painkillers, antiseptic cream. He grabs the cheapest electric razor they sell.

He thinks about 'lifting his haul, but he doesn't want to draw anymore attention to himself than he has to -- not before they make it over the state line, anyway -- so he pays at the checkout. It'll make a dent in his wallet, but he'd saved enough to last a while, and it's an expense he's willing to spend for now. He's sure Michael won't mind them scrimping a bit in the future. Hopefully.

The checkout lady tries to talk to him, those empty niceties that he was so scared of before now feel maddeningly absurd after the week he's just survived. Even so, he tries to act as normal as possible, giving her a tight smile that has no chance of reaching his eyes.

Michael waits in the car, parked in a dark corner of the lot. He's wearing the mask, of course, he'd put it on as soon as he'd wrestled it back off Corey. He knew he was going to be in big trouble over that one, but Michael would have to wait a while to exact whatever revenge he wants on his new... accomplice? Amid the raging sea of emotion that is churning his gut, Corey feels a sick sort of thrill at that thought, at taking whatever Michael will deal out to him once they're in the clear.

Jogging back to the car, Corey throws the grocery bags in the backseat before sitting up front. Corey slides slightly across the bench when Michael makes a sharp turn out of the lot and back towards the highway.

Darkness surrounds them on both sides again, as they head out of town. Corey reaches back and routes through the bags until he finds the razor. He unboxes it in his lap, finding the charging cord and plugging it into the port on the dashboard.

"They're gonna be looking for us," he says, slumping in his seat and watching the side of the road where their headlights just about reach.

Michael doesn't say anything, but Corey knows he understands. Michael's been on the run before, he should know what he's doing. Although he has no practical experience, Corey had wiled away his adolescence thinking about how he could run away, far enough that Momma would never find him. There are worse people to worry about than Momma now.

At the next gas station they make another stop; a run-down mom-and-pop place, the type that Corey had assumed didn't exist anymore. The type of place he assumes won't have company policies or CCTV that backs up to a cloud.

Corey leaves Michael in the car again and heads into the garage. The burning adrenaline is starting the wear off, and he buys fresh pack of cigarettes to soothe his obliterated nerves, then makes a beeline for the bathroom, a single stall with a toilet and basin.

Corey's hands grip the edge of the sink and he looks at himself in the cracked mirror, the aged silver surface mottled around the edges. He'd never thought much of his looks, never had anyone to impress or any real reason to care, especially after the accident. But now, oh god now he feels like this is the last thread connecting him to his old self to everything he's done and did not do, and it's not as easy to cut as he expected.

He picks up the razor, clicks it on and feels the vibrations through his hand. Watching, eyes fixed on the halo of curls around his head, he brings the razor up, runs it through his hair, just above his ear. A tuft of hair drifts into the sink. He looks down at it, and even as he squeezes his eyes shut, the tears make their way out anyway. Pathetic, he thinks.

The sink fills up, tawny like a birds nest, and when Corey is finally finished, he almost doesn't recognise himself. He looks so different like this. Running a hand over his buzzed hair, Corey steels his gaze.

Corey had never been to Missouri before. In all fairness though, there were a lot of places he'd never been. Michael doesn't seem too affected, as they cross the state line, the Mississippi River raging beneath them. Missouri didn't even seem much different than Illinois, though in the dark of the night, he supposes he can't really tell. He's heard there are more cornfields, maybe, but other than that, the long stretches of highway felt the exact same as back home.

Home. Shit.

He wondered what home even meant anymore. It felt strange to even think they'd never be going back to Illinois, though he was pretty sure at this point they never would. Michael's home was gone, razed to the ground in a bid to wipe him clean off the face of the town that had ruined him; Corey had nothing to go back to either, nothing that hadn't ruined him, nothing he hadn't torn to shreds and set a blaze before leaving behind.

For the first time in his life, the open road seemed like the only real, tangible thing. Not just a pipedream or a childish fantasy anymore. He'd been stagnant, wasting, for so long he'd forgotten what it felt like to really move. Corey felt alive and he wasn't going back to the way things were, not ever.

Just on the horizon, Corey can see the watery grey-blue of the sunrise approaching. He doesn't notice that the white-noise rumble of the road beneath them is soothing him to sleep until his head drops to Michael's shoulder. Michael's eyes stay firmly on the road, and Corey decides, like most things about their partnership, that as long as Michael will let him have this indulgence, he's going to make the most of it.