#muff would fall for her so bad

[gojoest]

here is my daughter markie :D

she's a pretty lady :3

oh my god SHE IS GORGEOUS 😍😍😍😍 i’d kill and die for her 🥹 look at those big beautiful eyes, she can make me do anything with a single meow 😩

[hazelfoureyes]

A Doe in Fall (part 7)

⟢HumanAlastor x FemaleBurlesquerReader - A Doe in Fall

Part 1 - Pretty in Red smut💦 Part 2 - Liar smut💦 Part 3 - A Tragedy smut💦 Part 4 - Enough Part 5 - Too Much Part 6 - Learning smut💦 Part 7 - Recognition smut💦 Part 8 - Trust sexual 🥵 Part 9 - Shiny Things Part 10 - Good Deeds Part 11 - Caught Part 12 - Eddie Part 13 - The Release Part 14 - Someone like her smutty💦

Part 7 Recognition

It was time to start again. Alastor couldn't forget what his mother had wanted, even if she didn't ask it of him directly. And while he finds his comfort again in killing, Detective Brady finds a lead.

「Warnings/Promises: Human Alastor x Fem Burlesquer reader, smut, reader's thighs as ear muffs, referencing cruel racists in the early 20th century south, reference to marital violence, pussy eaten, p in v sex, no creampie BOO, bad dancing, Alastor's southern accent, Alastor's mother, gossip, murder, greed , two idiots pretending they aren't madly in love, poor family planning, lots of 1920's slang with notes for your ease」

I think I fixed the broken tag list!

....it's been over a month. Here's nearly 9000 words of our favorite idiots. I feel weird labeling this smut now as...we are...kinda past the smut point and just making sweet sweet love. lol ugh gross. thank you to everyone whose offered help, donated, and shared the word about my mom! It’s been an immense help and has made her a little emotional (in a good way) <Florida stole my moms teeth— explanation and donation link> unrelated, anyone want some RadioDust?

Minors…. Minors. My inbox counts as interacting when you’re literally in there requesting smut. I know your bio has no age but baby honey darling I can tell by your writing. 🔞 Do Not Interact 🏠🚗

A development he knew was coming even if no one else believed him. A drug addict with debts to the local crime syndicates disappearing was neither suspicious nor a mystery. Everyone was confident it was obvious Tommy was at the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain or halfway to California.

But not to him, not for Detective Brady. He had been on the beat for the better part of a year, convinced there was a connection between some of the disappearances in town.

No one wanted to hear it though, most people didn’t even care the people were missing. Only the occasional wife, concerned how she would keep a roof over her head and food in her kid’s bellies with the man of the house gone. But other than that, no tears or chest beating for the missing men and women.

Which made him confident there were countless more unreported cases. Just because no one missed them, a crime is a crime.

But, no bodies, no blood, no crime scenes… he looked like he had lost the fucking plot to his colleagues.

The city didn’t want the bad press, not to mention the fact there was no actual crime to be reported. Someone up and left down? Okay, he was a wife beater? Probably left with his mistress. The cruel den mother of the home for unwanted kids? Her assistant takes the lead and she moves onto a new town to menace. Probably running from the people angry with her.

But he finally had something. Tommy was pimping out dancers, and even laid hands on one. Surely there was a man looking for revenge for that. Can’t knock around a man’s woman and have it go unanswered.

So he tried again to find the woman whose only name he knew was a moniker. Autumn Hind.

Every time Brady came to the theater, another excuse. You left early. You were on the roof smoking—- oh, you slipped out the back. Weekends were your off days, so that was useless.

“You’re obsessed.” Detective Freeman threw an eraser he’d picked off his pencil at Brady. He had seen the man devolve slowly over the past couple months.

“Thanks.” Brady was staring at his notes.

“Not a compliment, Kenny. Shit happens, people leave town. You’re acting like a handful of no shows are some conspiracy.” Freeman came to stand behind Brady, leaning over to read his notes, “How can you even read that chicken scratch?”

He clapped the notebook shut, “Every report was a person less than liked. What are the chances they all leave town in the middle of the night, last seen in the same general area?”

Freeman patted his shoulder, “Did you just ask me why a bunch of assholes,” he stood up and made a show of stretching out tired muscles, “who liked illegal hooch* and jazz with plenty of enemies disappeared?” (*booze)

Brady slapped his desk, “There! You said it! They had enemies. But what— what if they had one enemy in common. A bar manager or — or a,” he was still looking for that link.

“Kenny, the boogeyman isn’t roaming New Orleans killing people. If the higher ups don’t care, if the families don’t care, it doesn’t matter. Let it go.”

The sleep deprived detective sunk into his wooden chair, swiveling side to side anxiously, “Tommy’s mother cares.”

“Yeah well mom’s are famously bad judges of character.” Slipping on his jacket, he shot a worried look to his partner, “Ya gonna go home? Janet’s probably a mess. You’ve been keeping late hours.”

“Nah not yet. I gotta get to the theater before this dame goes ghost on me again.”

“Yikes, still? You’ve been chasing her for a while.” He was making a slow inching walk to the door.

“It’d be easier if I had some support. I gotta do this on my own time.” A deep sigh, well past the point of hiding his frustration with his colleagues and bosses. Freeman looked over the wrinkled shirt and wilted tie, evidence of a man losing his grip.

“Welp, good luck buddy. Hope you get to the bottom of whatever this is.” He gestured at the messy desk and disheveled man, “See ya tomorrow.”

Brady waved without looking up. His eyes were staring into the black leather of his notepad. Tommy was the only recent assumed victim with any real suspicion. The woman whose husband disappeared after going to see a show? Only enemy to him was her, and she wasn’t strong enough to take him down. Deadend.

Most recent, nice young man from up north. Went out for a good time, hoping to catch a little lady for some stress relief, according to his coworkers. Never showed up at work the next day. No one had a bad word to say about the man. Making him an outlier, but still. He was young, strong, soft spoken. Not an enemy in sight but no family to worry, either. Deadend.

But Tommy. Someone cared he was gone. He was in the jazz game, the drug dens, the illegal drink business, and had a heavy hand. He was the perfect bad man, right?

He looked across his desk. Bad men. The occasional unsavory woman. Maybe it was just their time. They pissed off the wrong people.

Or the wrong person.

Someone who worked downtown, someone into dance and drink, someone with nights free to do his work. Maybe a hired gun? No, some of these people didn’t have the money for that.

Plus, one person and so many missing? That would be unheard of, it’d be some kind of record for Louisiana.

A record Brady could claim.

When he entered the theater James, the manager who replaced Tommy, noticeably rolled his eyes, getting in front of the man. “It’s real bad for business to have a cop in here all the damn time. Come on, if you’re not here for a raid then could you be a little less obvious.”

Brady looked past him, “What do you mean?”

“You’re— what is it? What can I do for you?”

“Here again for Miss Autumn. Care to give her real name yet?”

“No can do. Ain’t my business to tell. She’s finished her set, asked to head home early.” Brady turned and kicked a chair over, a large man approaching behind the manager before seeing the hip badge and backing up. “Nah we’re not doing that. We’ve told her you’ve come by but she’s a busy lady. Several gigs here and there. Enough, you’re harassing the dancers now.”

With a snap, Brady had his finger in the manager’s face, “Whatcha gonna do? Call the cops?”

“She. Isn’t. Here. What the fuck do you want? For me to tie her up and bring her to your station?”

That’d be ideal.

A month, nearly. Coming once or twice a week to try and speak to you but every time he missed you. He was going to snap if he heard one more time you were gone. Maybe everyone was in on it. Maybe you werenin the back right now laughing at him.

Brady scanned the room, “Where’s she live?”

“How the fuck would I know— please, leave.” James gestured to the doors.

He lifted his badge up, waving it at the patrons seated closest to him, “Yall know it’s still illegal to partake-,”

“Jesus! Enough!” The manager pushed him back, flashing an apologetic smile to the guests, “She moonlights Sundays at The Dime near the park on 5th, singing for a friend. That’s all I got about her life off stage. Will you fucking go?”

The detective perked up, “See, was that so hard?”

Finally, he could feel his fingers grasp the shifting shadow that was his only lead.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

“I never said sorry.”

You turned your head, not expecting him to say something serious. Waiting, he didn’t add explanation. Sorry? What had he done… ran out of milk? Forgot to bring in the towels before it rained last week? A quick search of your memory yielded nothing.

“For what?”

He was staring off in front of him. “For putting you in danger before. In the park. I am sincerely sorry.”

You’d somehow almost forgotten. It’d been weeks. Every bad feeling that night had brought you had been carried away by good morning kisses and gentle words before sleep. Nearly every night was spent in his bed, Alastor dropping you off at your apartment when he went downtown for work. The incident in the park was a different lifetime already.

Had he really put you in danger? Or had you rushed into the danger of his hobby to feel closer to him?

“I put myself in that situation. You didn't throw me at that guy. I don’t do a damn thing I don’t want to do. You should have learned that by now.”

Tough act for a woman who jumped up to pour some man’s coffee.

You shook your head, you had to stop equating doting on Alastor as a show of weakness. It wasn’t. Even if admitting that meant admitting you were wrong.

But he had put you in danger’s way, he knew it. “No, you wouldn’t have ever been in that situation if it wasn’t for me.”

Your laughter bounced off the car windows, “Alastor, you met me getting choked to death by a strange man. People will always make dangerous situations for women to be in. Don’t act like you’re special.” A sly smile to ease his anxious heart. “I’d rather be in danger for you than just because I’m a woman. If it’s gonna happen anyway, might as well be worth something.”

His hand slipped onto your thigh, expression softening before his own smile grew again, “Don’t lie to my face so easily. I am very special, we can all agree.”

You looked around, the two of you alone in his car on a side street, “All? You know the trunk is still empty, right?”

“Oh, is that so? You’re quite dangerous yourself, I nearly forgot why we were here.” He patted his pockets to make sure he had what he needed. “When I give you a wave, back up to me, okay? Don’t leave the car. Just drive off if-,”

You kissed his cheek, “Shut it. Not a chance. Go give em hell, baby.”

Alastor crumpled against his steering wheel momentarily, your words cutting his heart open in a most wonderful way. He could never have predicted getting kisses before beginning his dark work. What had he done to deserve this? Perhaps proof someone in hell was in full support of his actions. Straightening his back and checking his hair and glasses in the mirror, he flashed you a smile before slipping out of the car.

When Alastor said he was ready to begin killing again, you were a mix of excited and scared. Excited for normalcy to return but scared of the dangers presented there in. You’d been dodging the blue eyed detective for a while already, and moving forward meant possibly making mistakes he could grab a hold of. Not mentioning the risk of someone hurting Alastor again…but for your part in everything, you and Alastor found a compromise.

A deal had been made. You’d stay in the car and bring it to him when he was done. He had asked you flee if something went wrong but you both knew that wasn’t going to happen. Crawling into the driver’s seat, you tried to remember what he had taught you. How to get it started up, how to make it go backwards. How to make it go, in general. You’d never driven a car. Well, not until Alastor insisted on teaching you. Driving up and down the long stretch of road he lived on, Alastor white knuckling the door handle as you jerked the car forward with every failed shift. You had started on his land, but he feared for his home's safety with you behind the wheel.

Your hands slipped down the steeling wheel, big and round. Your mother would’ve had a hoot had she seen you in the driver’s seat. Clearing your throat, you leaned into the back of the car and double checked the canvas was properly secured.

Another man tonight. The few times you’d both gone out for leisure, having preferred to spend time alone at home, Alastor had gotten gossip that piqued his interest.

You remembered the way the woman’s hand touched his arm when she leaned in. “You didn’t hear it from me but it’s best to avoid French Study on Thursdays. Real piece of work slipping something in drinks and robbing people.” He reported what she had said back to you. It’d panicked you, realizing you were closer to being on Alastor’s list than you’d realized.

“No, the issue isn’t the stealin’. It’s what he does with the people with,” he had been delicate as he said it, taking another long sip of whiskey, “other things of value. And the fact this man has no need to steal. It’s ridiculous! His family has been land ownin’ and well off for generations.” Alastor was always impassioned when discussing the things he hated, even when slipping into drunkenness. His accent came through when he had too much to drink, his real accent. The accent his mother had. “You robbed men for power balance, for their assumptions you were easy to manipulate to begin with. He? Uh, Him? He’s just a piece of shit. He thinks he’s better than everyone else. And no one would report him ‘cause his family name.”

His drink spilled a little, when you had offered to clean it he just slipped the button up off. He lost his usual classy air as the bottle emptied. Which you actually liked.

The benefits of drinking on his back porch was no need to worry about decorum. Music was softly spilling from the open window behind you, Alastor’s prized record cabinet spinning the newest presses.

“It’s like there’s a little bug under my skin,” he wiggled his fingers over his sternum, “It’s gonna dig into my bones if I don’t cut it out.”

Despite your own drunkenness, you nodded and followed along, “So, ya gonna kill ‘em?”

Alastor pouted, making you snort, “I don’t want to think about that right now.” He enunciated every word clearly in his practiced and professional voice.

You’d ended the evening playfully arguing the merits of prohibition on the jazz scene and watching Alastor dance around the wrap around porch. But the conversation hadn’t ended for him.

Little hints he was still focused on it popped up over the following week. Alastor randomly asking you how it felt to be drugged, did you wake up in pain? Embarrassed? Scared? You caught him staring at the greenhouse from the window one morning, lost in thought. Before he had finally said he wanted to go out again, you understanding what that meant, you’d seen him turning a dinner knife over and over in his hand impatiently.

And now here you were. In the car beside a park late Thursday, Alastor having done some scouting while you’d finished up early at the theater.

It took hours. Which was good, it meant Alastor wasn’t rushing. He liked the stalking aspect of killing, of watching someone from across a room knowing exactly how their night would end. And as that man whose name would soon be buried with him alternated smiling and barking orders at staff, Alastor felt his stomach flutter. Like watching a slab of meat slowly turn over the fire. The crueler he was, the worse he acted, the more Alastor found his fingers tapping on the bar with anticipation. Perfect. Damn yourself more. No fake smiles or double faces, no, people like him didn’t even try to play the game others were forced into. Born with money and land already theirs, they didn’t even know the rules.

But Alastor did. Alastor mastered them at the tender age of 14. When he realized his father’s features were a shield. His mother’s lessons on manners and charm his weapons. The first time he was in mixed company, when someone leaned in and whispered a cruel “prank” he had planned for a young dark skinned woman on the other side of the room, he understood. They pulled back and smiled at him, and he managed to muster one of his own. Just smile, they’d take it to mean whatever they wanted it to mean because they thought he was of the same mindset. They assumed it. Like so many other things people would assume about him as he grew.

When he told his mother the story after getting home, she shook her head. When he had asked her what he should have done, she set down her book.

“Well, I’d love to say you should have stood up for her. But I’d also like to have my son above ground.”

He asked her why she couldn’t have both.

“Sweetheart, we don’t usually get the choice to do either, let alone both.”

He offered a solution, after a moment of thinking, “I shoulda buried him first then.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice if that was how the world worked?” She returned to her book, “If God just struck em down dead as soon as they hurt people. Better yet, before.”

It would be nice. It was nice. Because Alastor couldn’t wait for God to make the world his mother mentioned. He grinned ear to ear, gloves a second skin, as the man crawled backwards in the grass like an animal cornered. His heart was pounding in his ears. Where to cut first? The gut, his family fat and soft from the money they made off the labor of others? The pale neck of a man who never spent a day outside, instead indoors drugging strangers for sport? The chest covered in a fine cotton shirt he didn’t appreciate?

He wished he had many arms, as many as he could imagine, to slash and tear in tandem.

“What do you want? Money?” the animal asked him.

Alastor shook his head no. No, he didn’t want money.

“Do you know who I am?”

Alastor nodded. “That is precisely why I am here.”

Would he beg? Cry? Bargain? Experience told him it’d be the latter.

“Alright well, if you know who I am you know you’re making a mistake. Here.” The man opened his wallet and pulled out a few greenbacks, holding them out for Alastor. Alastor’s smile softened slightly, remembering tossing you a wallet once before.

He reached down with his left hand to take the money, but instead grabbed the man’s wrist. Swiftly, quicker than the man could process, he took the knife tucked into his belt behind his vest and stabbed the man in the stomach.

Staring into his eyes, he could see his own image looking back at him. Smiling.

Alastor grabbed your face with both wrists, hands bloody and one still holding the knife, and kissed you when he’d flagged you down.

“Is this for bringing the car around without running you over?” Your eyes glanced at the knife beside your head. He apologized, tossing it into the trunk.

“No, just happy to see you.” A mischievous grin that made your knees weak, his body shimmied closer until he was pressed against you, stealing another kiss. His arms stretched out to keep from bloodying you. Your fingers slid up his cheeks to return the kiss. “Thank you, dear.”

When you returned home, to his home, that is, you took to task bringing in the laundry he’d left on the line and putting away the things still on the counters from breakfast. You couldn’t resist going to the second floor room and looking down into the greenhouse. You couldn’t see perfectly well, but you could see nonetheless. Alastor didn’t want you in the greenhouse yet when he was working. He said it was the ugliest parts, the kind that would sure give you nightmares or rob you of your appetite.

Considerate. But, it only made you more curious. Would you be sick if you saw? Would you never eat meat again?

What would you do if you didn’t have any reaction at all?

You watched Alastor leave the greenhouse and lock the door behind him, so you hopped down the stairs to meet him in the hall beside the kitchen.

He’d been sweating, shirt open to reveal a thin white undershirt, and under his arm was a canvas roll. He lifted it up, “Tools. Rinsed them off but I’d like to dry them under the electric lights.” You grabbed the aprons from the wall hooks, Alastor letting you slip it over his head and tie it for him. “Why so tight?”

“I like the way it makes your waist look.” You’d seen him wear it when making biscuits. It made his shape so clear. It reminded you of watching water drip down his sides and roll off his hips in the shower.

He beamed, “I’m listening. What exactly do you like about my waist?” Sharp brows raised as that friendly tongue peeked out at you.

“Hush.” You cooed.

You stood on the long side of the table, him at the short, and took turns wiping the tools dry and checking the other’s work.

As he grabbed each one he would tell you what he used it for. Holding up the garden shears and explaining the point along the blade that had the strongest force. The advantage of curved pruning blades when used on a human body. His eyes were gleaming as he spoke, looking so lovingly at each item like it was a loyal pet.

He finally noticed you were grinning and chuckling softly, so he dropped his smile for dramatic effect, “What? What’s so funny?”

Shaking your head, you set down the next item for him to inspect, “Nothing. You’re just so cute when you’re talking about your passions. Your face lights up from the inside out.”

His breath hitched, smile actually lost as he processed every syllable. Your turn now to notice him staring as you looked up from your work. You recognized that look though, the wide eyes and serious lips. The air of the kitchen felt like the atmosphere before a thunderstorm rolled in.

Alastor set the tools back onto the canvas one by one and carried them to the counter. Before returning he picked up a small knife and set it near the edge of the table.

“Come here.” He nodded his head to space in front of him. The way he said it, that tone, made your heart begin to skip beats.

You slid between him and the table, Alastor lifting you up with a startling ease and setting you onto cool wood. Kicking your legs a little, you set nervous hands onto your lap. You wanted to touch him. To pull him by the apron straps into you.

“How do you always say the right things?” He closed the distance between you, one hand on your neck while his mouth came to your ear. “The things I didn’t know I wanted to hear?”

Swimming. Your mind was swimming. “Why is your idea of right the same as my idea of the truth?” You could feel the grin. Sighing into your ear, down your neck, his hands grabbed your hips and pulled you off the table enough to press your core into his clothed erection. Even through his pants and the apron, you could feel him clearly. When did he get so hard? You always wondered in those moments if it was the topic of discussion. Or the knives. Or your need. Biting your lip wasn’t a thought out action, but Alastor loved to see it. Rolling his hips into you in response.

“Wanna go upstairs?” you asked.

He shook his head, slipping off his glasses.

“Oh no, don’t even wanna see me?” You teased, but firm hands held you tighter to him in response.

“I won’t be letting you get far enough away from me for that to be a problem.”

When he leaned down and his lips so very gently pressed into yours, you could feel it. That missing something from before. It was in the air, it was rolling off of his body and dampening your senses. A desire, a drive that you felt that first time you had sex with him in that apartment above the theater. A motivation that was lacking last time in his bed.

His eyes were staring down into yours, waiting for your response. Eagerly you replied by chasing his mouth with yours. A chain of kisses as you tried to ever remember enjoying kissing another person as much as him.

Not a single soul. Why did it feel like this was all you ever needed? Eyes closed and lips on lips, hands in his hair, it felt like you’d been holding your breath all of your life. His body on yours was a gasp of air.

For Alastor, he couldn’t even think of breathing when around you. Let alone when your mouth was on him. Every time you touched him all he could think about was the word ‘affection’.

So when your tongue swiped up his lips, he moaned as he opened for you. Not because he was new to kissing someone with so much lust. He’d grown accustomed to the things you did to him. No, because you were a fever that had taken hold of him and your kiss the medicine that soothed his delirium.

He wondered, was that why people called it ‘love sick’?

“You really like me, don’t you?” He asked, nose sliding up your jaw.

An opportunity presented to you. A chance to spill over the edges.

You pushed it away, legs wrapping around his waist and pulling him closer.

“Something like that, yeah.”

His hands pressed flat against the table to balance the deep roll of his hips against you. One of your own fell behind you to keep from falling backwards, the other flung over his shoulder. When you moaned into his cheek he captured the sound with his mouth and slipped his tongue back into you.

You liked him. He’d known people to love and not like their partner an ounce, but the way you appreciated his quirks made his heart sing in its brittle cage. You never ceased to see him. The issue with always putting on a show is people tend to be disappointed when the actors become human again. But you never met his persona. He was knife wielding, bloodlusting Alastor from the first word. So when he was himself, you recognized him clearly. Because he was all you ever knew.

And you liked him

You appreciated him.

He dared to think maybe he could inspire more from you. A thought that made him twitch below the belt.

Closer. He needed you closer. He needed you so near to him that he’d never forget the feeling of being wanted. It’d be imprinted on his chest and his arms and his lips.

Impatient hands slipping up your sides, along your neck, down your chest. His greedy mouth suddenly understanding the same greed he once marveled at in your own kisses. Hot tongue sliding over yours, delving deeper into you with every return.

When his hands seemed to come to an agreement, they yanked you forward again. You’d fall off ass-first if he pulled you any further.

You watched with only slight horror has he grabbed the small knife and hiked up your dress in tandem. A gulp, worried the other shoe had finally dropped on a too-good situation.

“Are you particularly attached to these panties?” His eyes were looking up and over his glasses.

“No?” Did you really need panties, you wondered. Ever? Girdles we’re falling out of fashion perhaps you’d all be naked again soon enough. Maybe you two could start another Eden. A pomegranate’s juice the new red staining his skin.

Not even a tremble, his hands lifted each side and sliced them free.

“Oh?” You didn’t have a real question in mind when he tucked the panties into his back pocket. Just a need to express you saw it and didn’t understand it.

Alastor took your hand and pressed it against his hardened length, eyes locked onto yours with a sharpness to them. But when your hand took hold of him and squeezed, everything softened in his features. Funny how where one area grew stiff another melted.

He rolled his eyes closed as you finally undid his belt and pants. A struggle you didn’t see, Alastor trying to keep from pouncing on you like a horny virgin. He didn’t want to rut into you, he didn’t need the pleasure. He needed something he couldn’t see or explain. He just knew you held it behind your teeth.

When your skin pressed into his and you both moaned together he was sure you were the same. One person, split into insufficient parts. Finally lined up flush in place.

When you circled your hips against his aching cock, he wondered what you were chasing after. Was it the pleasure? He’d give it to you in spades.

He was on his knees with his face between your legs before you could close your thighs in surprise.

You needed both hands now to keep from falling back onto the table. “Alastor,” a whine.

He knew better than to talk with his mouth full, so he let two fingers work their way into you with shallow thrusts. Easing you open for him.

“Yes?” His eyes didn’t leave his fingers, glistening under the kitchen light. You hadn't thought much ahead past his name, once his fingers were in you and curling up to find your spongy and soft bundle of nerves your mind had gone empty.

“We can just fuck, if you’re horny.” You watched him watching himself.

“Where’s the fun in that?” His mouth returned to your mound, broad tongue forming a point and finding your clit.

A lazy moving tongue would be frustrating if not for his fingers punishing your g-spot. Consistency was key, and his hand was focused and skilled.

Suddenly you remembered the piano in the sitting room. That’s where you knew that movement from. That clearly practiced muscle memory.

Alastor felt confident everywhere but rarely did he feel comfortable. When your thighs came together and squeezed him at the ears, he felt positively cozy. Would you be so kind as to be his ear muffs come winter? He’d have to remember to ask when his mouth was free. How many cold nights he could now rest assured he would have warmth just a little dive of his head away.

Lowering his mouth, nose buried in your muff, he wriggled his tongue in with his fingers. Not enough, rarely was anything enough any more. He stilled his hand and prodded at your sensitive walls with that intrusive tongue, relishing the little movements you made in response. Taking his digits out entirely, he buried his wet muscle as deeply as he could reach.

The huffs of exhales you were making triggered a moan from him that you felt through your skin. His enjoyment was tripling your pleasure.

Goosebumps ran up your arms at the combine sensations of his moaning and prodding.

When his lips and tongue returned to their uneven teasing of your clit, three fingers now swiping past your inner spot with every thrust, your hands came to his head. Fingers slipping through his hair and gripping every time your body shook. Encouragement, the more you tugged the surer he was he was doing the right things.

And oh, he was. You said the right things but Alastor always seemed to act on them. Your senses lodged themselves between the even stroking of your g-spot and the unpredictable movements of his tongue. One kept the pressure rising as your orgasm climbed, the other pushed you along jolt by jolt.

Curious thing. That night in the park he didn’t have much reaction to your enjoyment, but he found himself not fully softening in his lap as he continued. Normally, unless still physically stimulated or the rare time you stirred something in him, he wasn’t very… battle ready.

But the feeling of you pulling him in by the head, fingers in his hair and thighs at his cheeks; this was different than the others. He was sure now it wasn’t just physical pleasure you wanted. His pride said it was more.

Dozens of times before— he truly was a rake in some aspects, though admittedly it was all in the pursuit of avoiding “sex”, as defined by most, not chasing it — he helped a date find release with his tongue. But it never did anything for him. They moaned and said his name and screamed. Which was lovely. Who doesn’t enjoy recognition?

When you said his name, it was heavier. It was material, it had mass and as its gravity began its pull he found his mind circling that sound. He was pleasing his darling, not placating. And it made him react in that unusually crass way.

He felt like an apex predator when killing, tearing open animals made for him to hunt. But you made him feel baser. Prey in your gentle bite.

As your orgasm mounted, you began tugging at his hair to pull him off. You didn’t need him to stop, but everything was suddenly too sensitive. It was alarming to feel your body rocking from overstimulation. A strident cry filled the kitchen as your back arched off the table. He didn’t let up, despite how much you thrashed under his mouth. Rolling pleasure, muscles electrified and shaking beyond your control.

You patted his head harshly, “Good, I’m good. Alas—tor! Fuck!”

Ah, he loved when you swore. It punctuated your otherwise preternatural aura with a touch of humanity.

He stood and leaned over your now reclining body. Your pussy still clenching and legs shaking as he admired his work. You admired his shape in his apron, his broad shoulders and sharp eyes. Caught between your legs like a lion in a mouse trap; he acted like he had no way free of you. His grin widened and he made a display out of licking each finger clean. Eyes never leaving yours.

You knew many men to squawk at going down on a woman. To balk at wearing an apron. To grimace at the suggestion of cooking a meal while their lady took a nice bath or enjoyed a coffee. Alastor seemed to not think twice about any of it. How nice it would be. To have a partner beside you, to not be the woman in the often referenced “behind every great man is a great woman.”

“Alastor, I want you.” You pulled him down by the neck and stole a kiss. When he began to stroke himself fully back to life you pressed that hand to his chest. “Not like that. Though I’m not declining the offer.”

His eyes saw something in yours. “Sweetheart, you have me. There is no part of me that isn’t possessed by you. I know we keep things relatively… tightlipped for safety but I’m your fella and you’re my gal.” His nose touched yours. “But if you want more, I’ll become more. I’ll break myself apart and make myself better.”

Your heart sank. Sitting up to command a little authority, a feat given you were sitting panty-less on a kitchen table, “Don’t you dare. I’ll always meet you where you are, got it? Don’t go… groping around in the darkness for me; trying to find what I need. I’ll always come to you. Because you’re more than enough as you are.”

A little cough to clear his tightening throat, “I’ve not had a day of darkness since you arrived.” A kiss to your forehead before a soft thumbpad wiped at the corner of your eye. “Did I make you sad?”

You wanted to say it. But not now, not like this. You didn’t want Alastor to connect love and sex. To think one was necessary for the other.

While you were coming to learn how lovely it was to pair the two together, it was a fact they were wholly independent things. And you couldn’t allow him to think they were a set.

“You’ve made me too happy. It’s absolutely terrifying.”

But Alastor had found your expressions of acceptance always tumbled the circle of Love to overlap with that of Sex. It was only in that mixed space did he find desire in pleasure.

A wicked smirk, “Let me pile on my affections and drown out your fears.” His hips rolled into you again, a surprising eagerness returned to his lap. “Can I continue?”

With a nod and a smile, “But not another word of change, buster.” You leaned back on your hand for support. Alastor was happy to return to your heat, lining up and sinking into you. An embrace like no other, one he found particularly earnest when with you.

Close. Finally. You began where he ended, a natural extension of who he was and who he could be. The things he could have. A relieved sigh he didn’t try to hide before he began moving, a moment when his tension could melt. You were both an unseasonably warm autumn day and the cool comforting shade of an unfamiliar tree. Both the heat and the relief.

He watched your body rock against the table, even fully dressed you managed to look more scandalous than any show he’d seen downtown. He was grateful he didn’t seek this comfort often in others, the way his mind melted made him feel vulnerable. He couldn’t think straight. And then you began to make those lovely little groans, high pitched and needy, and he was sure his soul was errant.

As his thrusts deepened, cock no longer kissing your cervix but ramming into you with good intentions, you dropped back as you lost the battle against his hips.

Alastor’s arms slid up our waist and pulled your arms towards him, “Too far, I can’t see your face.”

Your arms were slung over his shoulders as your back curved for him, “You don’t need to see my face.”

“Tsk, wrong.”

Your new favorite place was right in front of him, wherever his line of sight was you wanted to be in it. Nose to nose, heads tilting to recapture soft lips and softer moans.

Until the softness left, Alastor’s skin slapping against yours as he dragged those lovely sounds from you. He watched your eyes roll closed, mouth open as you moaned with the safety of the seclusion of a country home. A thought bubbled up, inspired by you.

“I want the neighbors to hear you.” That smile half cocked across his upsettingly handsome face. His hand slipped between you both to repeat the motions he learned before. Hard and fast, no choice but to raise your voice.

Your head fell back, clit still sensitive, “You don’t have neighbors!” A new moan hitting the walls.

“I do— just a few miles down the road, dear.” His mouth latched onto your neck but he didn’t suck like he wanted, he couldn’t bite. Your skin was your job, your body not his to mark. Suddenly he remembered, “Do you still have that make up? For your bruises?”

You couldn’t understand why he would bring that up while balls deep in you but you nodded.

“Would it work on your neck?” He nipped lightly.

It clicked, “Absolutely.”

You felt like a teenager again. When his tongue swiped over your soft flesh before he began to suck on the skin there you could feel the heat rising off your chest. You could feel him everywhere, and with the knowledge he wanted to hear you, you tossed your shame out of the kitchen window and relaxed into the pleasure.

As he moved up your neck he left little marks behind. There was no sense left you didn’t occupy. He could smell the soap and sweat of your skin, taste your cunt still on his tongue, your sights and sounds a decadence he couldn’t get used to. And the feeling of you… velvety walls, a feeling finer than silk as he slipped in and out of you. So incredibly hot on his most sensitive areas, pulling him back in with admirable strength.

He felt his orgasm ratcheting up but tried to hold back. He wanted more time to experience your ecstasy, to wallow in your openness. Even pressed skin to skin now wouldn’t satisfy that deep desire for this unique level of intimacy. So he wanted to enjoy it for as long as he had it.

But, he knew he should prepare. “I don’t want to dirty your dress.” A lust heavy voice penetrating the nap of your neck. He’d made a risky release before at your urging, something he often thought about when work got quiet. But he knew he needed to think clearer now.

“Then don’t.” A terrible reply but you wanted all of him, every drop of his hunger for you. “Keep the mess in me.”

“My dear,” he slowed his hips, autopilot keeping them moving at all, “I don’t think now is the time for,” you tightened around him to trip him up, which worked spectacularly. Alastor had take several seconds before continuing, “talks on family planning.”

A pang of nausea and fear, small and sharp in your abdomen. It wasn’t that you weren’t aware of biology, just that Alastor brought out your baser animal instincts, too. And before, when he came buried as deeply as he could reach, it felt like you’d actually completed some ritual. Bears hibernated, birds migrated, Alastor came in you.

You’d never let a man do that before Alastor. “I just want to… accept everything you are willing to give me.”

He bit his bottom lip to redirect some attention away from his now throbbing member, “And when you’re sure on me, I’ll always provide.”

A pout that he kissed, you accepted the terms. An argument could be made you were already very sure, but you were well aware how naive that sounded when you’d known each other for so little time. Had a coworker told you she’d met a guy and within three months was ready for… the consequences, you’d have laughed and asked if she was drunk or just stupid.

Alastor wanted to provide. But he knew you’d be the one with the raw end of the deal, he couldn’t risk coercing a decision in the heat of the moment. If your mind was half was addled as his with pleasure then you were in no state for big decisions.

Life changing decisions.

Decisions that filled empty homes.

Fuck, why wasn’t he a less considerate man?

When his kiss deepened, so did his ministrations. He was fully sheathed and so unwilling to draw back more than a couple inches you wondered if he had changed his mind. It felt like a man not wanting to stray too far from home. One hand on the small of your back, his other other on the back of your neck. When he pulled out he pressed his tongue further, only stopping the kiss when he came onto the little space of table between your thighs. Soft and swollen lips parted as his breaths ran ragged. A smile spread across your face as you watched his eyes open, witnessing a pleasured blow out of his pupils.

When he grabbed a kitchen towel and cleaned the table, you chuckled at his grimace. “See? My way is cleaner.”

He didn’t reply at first, taking the cloth and hovering over the sink before tossing it into his trash. “Only in the short term. We can finish up tomorrow with the tools?”

Your legs kicked again, not ready to slide off, “Mm, it’ll be easier in the daylight.”

“Instead,” he zipped his pants but removed the belt and set it on the counter, “Let’s get zozzled* and sway around the sitting room? Crash where we land.” (*drunk)

“I’ll pour if you get the music on.”

He turned to leave but paused, “No, I’ll handle the drinks. You always have too heavy of a hand.”

“I didn’t hear you complaining last time…”

“I’m not sure I remembered I was at home and not at a drum* last time…,” He uncorked the label-less whiskey, grabbing two glasses with one hand. “Didn’t wanna insult the pretty waitress.” (*speakeasy)

Fair. You weren’t much for drinking and always underestimated the strength of illegal hooch. Some were weak and some could kill you. But fancy Alastor had connections with the kind of people no one dared to risk harm to, so he always had the most trustworthy goods.

Good music, great whiskey, and even better company. You thanked him for being safe while working, he praised your ability to learn new skills so quickly. After a few drinks he pushed the coffee table against the wall and you drunkenly swayed around the room to something playing smooth and low. As much as you enjoyed your conversations, having your head tucked under his chin as neither of you said a word somehow filled in the little cracks of your heart more so than any talk. For him too. No tension after sex, no stress of how long he’d get to breathe before the next instance of prodding to do it again. He could smile and close his eyes and feel the room swing and sway in total safety.

A safety neither of you knew was being threatened from afar.

When you woke, Alastor was gone. A note on the table letting you know he’d run out to grab some things for breakfast. Telling you to relax and recover.

You put the furniture back, bringing the glasses to the kitchen and his belt to the bedroom.

Coffee and a slow perusal of his home. Intimate details you tried to not stare at when he was there. The rare photo of his mother, a woman you didn’t speak about, a conversation you didn’t need to have, but someone you knew existed fondly still in his life. A silent thank you to her.

No photos of a man to give thanks to you so you turned to the little curios and mementos. 

Little seashells and sand dollars, a small gator’s skull. Books, about anatomy and history. Novels about crime and love and mystery. Ticket stubs for films he’d seen. Little bits of his mother scattered in. A woman’s necklace. A chatelaine* with all of the accessories and tools. (*wikipedia page)

When you felt you’d spied enough, you crawled into his side of the bed and inhaled as deeply as you could. His pillow smelled like him. You let yourself sleep off the hangover surrounded by pieces of Alastor.

Pieces you couldn’t contain. Pieces left around town as a dick* hunted for his personal monster. (*a detective, but also, a dick, fuck this dude?)

Beth, or Betty as you called her, the friend you often sang for, was cleaning up from the previous night when Brady walked in. She tried to tell him they were closed, but he took a seat at the counter anyway.

“I’m looking for a singer named Autumn. She been around lately?”

She paused, knowing the name was tied to your work. This man didn’t know you. “Whose asking?”

“The city of New Orleans”, he set his badge on the counter top.

“Is she in some kinda trouble?”

“She the kinda dame to get into trouble?”

Beth laughed, “She doesn’t try to but men, liquor, and jazz tend to make it happen. She’s okay, right?”

He took a deep sigh, trying to blink away the exhaustion and remember he needed to be someone strangers trusted. Being honest hadn’t been working and being rough barely got him a lead. “Well I was hoping you’d know. Found out someone roughed her up a bit ago and just wanting to make sure she’s okay. But I don’t have her legal name, no address, nothing to track her down.”

Shaking her head, she leaned onto the counter, “What? Some egg* forget it’s just a show?” Brady shrugged. “I can’t say. She hasn’t been by in a couple weeks.” (*man)

He asked why. Feeling the deadend approaching.

“She was just doing me a favor. Once she got a guy she didn’t have much time.”

Fighting the urge to slam his fists against the wood and sling his notebook across the bar, Brady took slow breaths. Jaw clenched as he grabbed his pencil, “That is wonderful news. Hopefully a fit guy who can… keep her safe.”

Beth laughed a little, “I don’t know about that. He’s kind of a daisy*, but real kind.” (*a non-masculine man)

“Could I get a name? Or her address? Wanna follow up. See for myself that she’s doing well.”

She tapped the bar with two fingers and winked, “Ah no can do. Flatfoot* or not, I don’t tell men where to find sleeping ladies. But her fella is in radio though. I recognized his voice right away. Popular too, really ritzy air about him.” (*cop, detective)

As he left, he slapped the notebook against his palm over and over. When he stopped to take a second to congratulate himself something caught his eye. Across the street was a park he knew well. Following the block and turning, he could see the white and green awning of the cafe he’d seen you at before.

Had he been there? He hadn’t questioned why you were alone on such a nice day. But maybe you weren’t. Maybe you’d been playing him from the start.

Enough games.

When you took the stage that evening, a Friday show with a promising crowd, you felt like solid gold. Alastor would be there to pick you up in a few hours, you had every need met. And now you had the adoration of strangers to pump up your chest.

Until you passed your come-hither eyes over the crowd and a striking ocean blue pair knocked the wind out of you.

James was standing behind Brady, mouthing an apology. You missed a beat in your routine but forced your smile back. It took a second, to slide back into the actress you were when away from Alastor. Every time it got harder and harder to fall back into that role but you managed. His eyes never left your face, and you thanked God your heaving chest could be seen as fatigue and not the sheer panic that had taken ahold of your body.

When you were on the other side of the curtain you considered rushing out the side door, into the alley and down the street. But you couldn’t. You’d successfully brushed him off for so long but now that he had seen you, had made it clear he was there for you, you couldn’t flee. Innocent people don’t hide from cops.

Feet dragging, you saw some of the dancers standing around the dressing room door. “He’s out of his gourd if he thinks I’m changing with him in there.” One said loud enough to ensure Brady heard. When you entered the room he was sitting at your make up table, legs spread and your shoes in his hands.

“There she is!” standing, he extended the shoes to you, “Don’t stare like a deer in the lights. I’m sure you knew I was coming. Slip these on, we’re going for a ride.” He gave them a shake, “You can call your mac* from the station and let him know you’ll be late.” (*man)

˖  ݁𖥔.Summoning the Horny Little Deer Cult.𖥔 ݁ ˖

@cxrsedwxrlds , @nonetheartist , @tsunaki , @janchei ,  @moonmark98 , @hoebihoeshi , @pansexual-opera-house , @polytheatrix , @lorddiabigmommymilkers , @backinthefkingbuildingagain , @harley2223-blog  , @poinappel l , @midnightnoiserose , @spookieroz , @missmidorima a , @ivebeenthearchersstuff , @downbadforfictionalppl , @xx-all-purpose-nerd-xx , @sleepylittledemon , @aether-th3-enby , @dontfuckbutimfab , @breathlessaura , @aperfectidiot , @certainlygay , @jth12 , @star-kujo-platinum @ivebeenthearchersstuff , @rubyninja1 , @simphornies

, @readergirlstuff , @berry-demon , @chirimeimei , @fairyv-ice , @olive-frog , @thonethatflies620 , @tiredkiwiii , @ilikemyteawithmilk , @whateverlololo , @psipies , @howabouticallyou , @roxxie-wolf ,  , @fizzled-phoenix ,  @phobophobular  , @mariaclarade-la-cruz1 , @whateverlololo    , @a-case-of-attachment , @multifandomfanatic02 @watereddownmilk   , @bontensbabygirl 

[wintfleur]

Do you have any more fun facts about Stella?

ꔫ more fun facts about Stella!

˖ ་ 💭 roro’s notes ( thank you so much for requesting!

°. — ( feel free to send any requests of things you would like to see in this series, or if you just want to share some thoughts! I would absolutely love that! Please comment if you would like to be added to the tag list! )

au masterlist — you can find asks under #💌stellahughes!

°. — asks about stella and rut are under #⋆ ˚｡⋆୨🩷୧˚ stella & rut!

Stella has a public tiktok account where she likes posting, random videos/short vlogs, sometimes dance covers, and just trending challenges/pranks.

Stella loves, and I mean loves redbull! If she could she would live off it.

Stella has a driving license, but doesn’t like driving

Stella absolutely loves animals! She really wants a dog!

Her favorite superhero is Batman!

She was a twilight girl, is known for forcing her brothers and friends and boyfriend into watching the movies with her!

Besides hockey and figure skating, her favorite sport is F1

She’s a mclaren girle

She’s always making playlists, and she shares them the most with Trevor and Cole!

Stella loves going to concerts

went to the eras roro with Trevor and Jamie! And then went again with cole

Loves playing golf with her friends, usually playing with Trevor and cole during the summer, and she’s not that bad

Her specialty is putting and driving the golf cart 

Forgets the rules of golf every time

She can fall asleep anywhere

Always falling asleep in the car, shoulders are her best friend

She’s a window sitter, she gets really nauseous

Her brothers always joke about her being obsessed with a clean room, she’s very organized and hates when people move around her things, especially at her desk. She likes to know where everything is.

SHE LOVES STUFFED ANIMALS

She loves going on bike rides

She loves hot showers, and hates taking ice baths

Jokingly calls people pookie

Cole gifted her a heated blanket and she cried, she loves it so much

She loves eating, but looses her appetite a lot

Not a fan of syrup 

Refuses to answer waffles or pancakes’ she loves them both to much

Has a habit of forgetting to take her iron pills

Will get random texts throughout the day from Jack asking if she took her iron

Hates going to the doctors alone, and now that Luke left Rutger goes with her whenever he can

She’s always liking nhl memes on twitter

She’s always vibing and singing along to the music playing at games

Has a lot of cute ear muffs, that she wears to the games because sometimes the loud noise gets to her, especially when she doesn’t feel to good

she loves hot tubs

She loves watching edits, she has many folders

She gets extremely thirsty out of nowhere

She has no problem sleeping with it without socks, she doesn’t care, most of the time she wakes up with her socks mysteriously off her feet.

The Canucks and devils social media admins love Stella so much

Stella cried when Jamie got Injured and she is always texting and calling him to make sure he’s okay

The same with Trevor!

She’s Quinn’s biggest fan

Not the biggest NFL fan but she loves watching the games with her brothers and rut

She’s so good at pool

Her brothers love spoiling her

She gets baby fever way to much

She will cry when things are to cute

Stella’s kinda a cry baby but it’s okay

Breakfast club and mama mia are her favorite movies

Always brings her earphones or headphones with her

SHE LOVES LONG DRIVES

As long as she doesn’t get car sick

Refuses to talk about or remember her embarrassing moments, to her they don’t exist

She finds hockey fights absolutely hilarious

hates getting hiccups, hers are so painful

Has to sleep holding somthing!

She likes, saves, and sometimes comments on all the edits of Rutger! He has his own special folder

She will be in her bed, Rutger by her side and she will be giggling and kicking her feet as she watches edits of him

Rutger will be like “you know I’m right here right?” 🤨

It’s crazy how he gets jealous about edits MADE OF HIM

˖ ་ 💭 roro’s notes ( i love Stella so much, she’s so cute. PLEASE DONT BE A SILENT READER 🫶🏻)

°. — taglist ( @privatemythss @bradenschneider )

°. — ( feel free to send any requests of things you would like to see in this series, or if you just want to share some thoughts! I would absolutely love that! Please comment if you would like to be added to the taglist! )

[eomma-jpeg]

bc i might have been motivated by comments on twitter and my own hubris... here is part 2 of the post trimax vashmeryl baby au

part 1

Snorting into wakefulness, Vash’s hands tightened, immediately feeling for the baby. He was relieved when he felt her familiar weight on his chest, his tense frame relaxing back into the plush couch. Falling asleep was not something he had intended to do, but ever since crossing that threshold the night before he had felt an uncommon reprieve from the title of ‘outlaw’. Perhaps it was because he was under the protection of Meryl Stryfe.

Meryl.

Sitting upright and clutching his daughter to his chest, Vash turned his head around the room, seeking for any sign of his friend, but he was only met with the dim light of the early morning. It laid in little dots on the wall and countertops, the single sun peeking in through the blinds. 

“Meryl?” Vash called, but the sound only summoned his daughter’s whining, her face buried in his chest for a bit too long. Pulling her into a more comfortable position, Vash said, “Sorry, little one, but it seems we have lost our host.”

Venturing through the small apartment, Vash was unable to find any signs of human life. The insurance agent had seemingly disappeared into thin air. He suddenly felt a wave of anxiety.

Why did she leave? Where could she have gone? It was still so early in the morning. Far too early for work or any other proper errands. Did she leave to go get camera equipment? This would be the perfect opportunity to catch him while he was down, unable to run from an interview. Maybe she wanted to exploit the baby for views.

Vash shook off those intrusive thoughts, feeling guilty for allowing himself to think of Meryl in such a way. Despite the fact he knew they had moved on from insurance to video journalism, he had a strong feeling that Meryl (and Milly) weren’t likely to expose him during his lowest points. Although, he wouldn’t consider the small child in his arms one of his lowest points. 

Deciding to have faith in the woman and squash his fears, Vash shifted the baby in his arms and began scavenging for something to eat. He'd just repay Meryl (somehow) for the food, so she shouldn’t mind if he ate the veggies in her fridge that looked like they were about to go bad. He also found a can of generic chili, excited to eat something spiced with his various dry vegetables. 

The babe squirmed, her chubby arms freed from her swaddling and waving about. Vash set his breakfast down to try and stick her arms back in, but she had a discontented look on her face, frowning ever so slightly at him with pouting lips and round knowing eyes. He wondered if he had once looked like her. 

Vash quickly swallowed the strange hot bile that rose anytime he thought about how much he and this little girl must resemble each other, seeing as she would almost certainly only contain his genetic makeup. And that meant she contained the same makeup as Knives. He swallowed again at that thought, focusing more intently on his scrappy meal and less on thinking.

Lucky for Vash, he was exhausted even after his short descent into sleep. He didn’t have much room for thinking or reminiscing (not that there was much to reminisce on). Instead, he let his skilled hands do the work of carrying a child and pulling flowerettes of broccoli from the head. He plopped them into a pot, intent on filling it with water and boiling the green vegetable. He’d apologize to Meryl about the smell later.

Letting the veggies boil, Vash searched for another pan, hearing the creak of the cabinet door and the front door. It took far too long for the signals to reach Vash’s brain, likely getting stuck in that hot goopy emotions he had swallowed earlier.

“Good Morning, Ma’am! I brought some breakfast. Just some poppyseed muffins I-”

Vash turned just in time to see Milly freeze, one hand on the door knob, the other holding a plate of fluffy muffins. Her jaw hung open, but she didn’t wait long before sliding the muffins onto the couch and rushing forward.

“Mr. Vash! It’s been ages since I’ve truly been able to talk to you! I had hoped you would-”

Milly froze once again, this time just shy of wrapping Vash in a tight bear hug. Vash’s face was scrunched up in apprehension as he pulled his limbs in and clutched his baby to his center.

Surprise turned to awe and then to excitement as Milly ran through her spectrum of emotions. Then, far too loud for a man who had only slept three hours in the last week, Milly shrieked, “A baby! Is that a baby?! I love babies!”

Waving a long finger in her face, Milly made little cooing noises while the baby looked back, a bit unimpressed. That was to be expected, seeing as she was only three days old; appeasing others was not yet on her to do list.

Milly’s smile was quite lovely to see this early in the morning, adding to the brightness of the rising suns. Her eyes flicked over to his, “What a lovely little baby. He or…”

“She,” informed Vash, his voice rough.

“Well, she’s adorable. What’s her name?”

Taking in a deep breath, Vash realized he hadn’t said the name aloud yet.

“Tesla.”

That vivid smile of hers continued to keep his spirits up, “That’s so pretty! I’ve never heard a name like that before.” Milly waggled her finger again and Tesla nearly caught it with her own chubby fist that had once again broken free, “She has such pretty eyes, just like… well, just like yours,” she said matter of factly. Then, standing to her full height, Milly looked at him curiously, “Where.... Vash, where did you get a baby?"

Speaking frankly, Vash said, “She’s mine.”

Eyebrows raising, Milly said, “So I was right: she does have your eyes. But when did you get Meryl pregnant?”

Vash felt his heart stop

Milly barreled forward, “And how did she hide it from me? She’s so small and would have such a hard time keeping it a secret, unless it was cryptic. My mom told me that she had a cryptic pregnancy with my little big brother, but they’re so rare. Was it during Octovern? The time frame would make sense but I didn’t think we had any alone time to-”

Vash was reeling from Milly’s ramblings and assumptions, “Milly!” he said, interrupting with a bit too much force that was certainly influenced by his overwhelming embarrassment, “She is not Meryl’s!”

Cocking her head, Milly let out an awkward laugh, “Well then, whose is she?”

Looking down at Tesla, Vash’s tense brow relaxed, “She’s just… mine.”

Milly gave him one last skeptical look before accepting his vague answer, likely accustomed to his aversion techniques, “I’ll get the answer out of you eventually, but for now it honestly looks like you need breakfast and a nap.”

“I just woke up.”

“And yet,” Milly said, which was only the beginning of a sentence, but it clearly described her opinion of his situation, “Why don’t you take a seat and eat a muffin.”

Vash graciously took one, biting down and enjoying the fluffy texture immensely. His last month had consisted of dry rations and the rare drink he could afford at the even more rare saloon, but as of the last few days Vash hadn’t eaten anything.

He took three more muffins.

“I’m glad you like them,” said Milly from the kitchen where she adopted Vash’s mismatched set of ingredients, “I added just a hint of lemon to them. I’ve had too many overpowering lemon muffins in my time.”

Vash just took another bite while she spoke. Tesla wiggled slightly when a crumb fell on her face. He wiped it away.

“It seems you have the makings for a pretty good omelet,” Milly noted as she rolled an onion in her hand, “But I don’t see why you’re boiling broccoli.”

“It was going bad,” Vash said through a mouthful of muffin, “Figured I should use it before Meryl gets upset that it's rotting in her fridge.

Milly slid a cutting board out from one of Meryl’s few drawers. The kitchen was certainly compact– a characteristic of many December apartments if Vash’s experience was to be trusted– but it held a vast and valuable collection, “I thought as much, but it doesn’t pair well with your other items,” she turned to him, “I assume you were just trying to get in as many calories as possible?”

Milly Thompson: always able to see though to the very core.

Pulling off the wrapping on the final muffin (which was extremely hard to do with one hand) Vash answered, “Seems like you already know the answer to that one, Milly.”

She just put on that wide, knowing grin, “Then broccoli and eggs and muffins sounds like a perfectly balanced breakfast to me.”

It might not be in terms of flavors, but it definitely packed a significant amount of nutrients for one plant. And for Meryl, if she ever reappeared. 

As if reading his mind, Milly asked while cracking the remainder of the eggs into a bowl, “Is Meryl here?”

He let out an exhale, a bit strained, “No. I haven’t seen her since I got here last night.”

“She didn’t call me when you got here.”

“I guess I should say when I got here this morning.”

“Ah,” she said in understanding, pouring the recently whipped eggs into a ripping cast iron, “Well, she’ll turn up eventually. Especially since we walk to work together in the next hour.”

Vash hoped he could stay awake long enough to see her return.

[lunar-renegade]

you guys didn't ask but im telling you anyway while i work on the ashen wolves. time for golden deer design notes!

the leicester students wear doublets with paned sleeves, with full-sleeved linen undershirts underneath. when they wear swords, they have a rapier with a slightly less fancy hilt than the adrestians, but fancier than the faerghus arming sword.

CLAUDE is HEFTILY inspired by his concept art. the wrapped sash/baldric are fun and funky! he's got a khanjar dagger stashed in his sash, which is a fancy knife often worn as a sign of nobility. his winter cloak is based on the new year's art!

his chemise is dyed cheerful yellow, and is falling out of his doublet sleeves in cute little ruffles. he's Exuding calculated sloppiness, with the unbuttoned doublet/jerkin combo, the loose chemise, and the ends of his chemise sleeves showing.

I Have Curled Him, because he says in hopes that his hair is naturally curly and it just...... isn't . in canon. therefore he is curly now. i don't think the riegan barber knows how to deal with curly hair therefore we've got mr dandelion man over here. i also gave him baby fat on his cheeks because um. he's cute.

HILDA wears the jerkin/kirtle/hose combo we saw with Mercedes! her hose are yellow, but you can't really see them. her neckline is open in a touch of calculated sloppiness so that you can see a peek of her really quite impressive boobs. (She's wearing short stays underneath, which at this time in fashion would push her boobs Up and Together.)

I changed her hair so much haha. The pigtails are Adorable but Hilda is eighteen and a duke's daughter. she would not be allowed to go in public with that. so when i was designing her new style my main priority was making it cute (i gave her a little yellow bow!) and making it heart-shaped! it's two interlocking hearts! actually most of Hilda's design here is heart-shaped — she has a heart-shaped face, her nose is a heart, her lips are a heart, and i gave her a little upside-down heart-shaped chin (to make her look more like Holst).

Her winter outfit is a fur-trimmed overgown, a warm hat (which further makes her face heart-shaped), and a fur muff to warm her hands!

LORENZ is saved from bad hair by the fact that i hate drawing the bowl cut (and the fact that it's two centuries out of date). his pants are Very Tailored and his sleeves are Very Big! he has a yellow sash to match Usurp Claude's design, echoed by the little yellow boot bows. of course I couldn't omit his rose.

for his winter outfit I admit I went a little ham. he's rocking a fur-lined coat with massive hanging sleeves and a HAT. look at my boy's hat!! it's at a jaunty angle! it keeps his head warm! it stops snow from getting in his hair! it's shaped like a bag!

MARIANNE also has the Kirtle Option, with her yellow hose showing. there's really not a lot to be said about her design — her hair was perfect already, and most of her uniform is easily replicated without being ahistorical. I did note that i wanted her to look a little "stodgy" and super buttoned up.

her winter cloak is just, um. she doesn't want people to look at her. hubert wears the big cloak because he wants to be scary when he melts out of the shadows, marianne wears it because she doesn't want anyone to see her.

part three of part one of the redesign!! the golden deer are here, they're queer, and they are FANCY.

deviating from designs This Round include: hefty influence from claude's concept art! putting hilda's hair up into a style that an actual 18-year-old daughter of a duke would wear! giving lorenz hair that isn't two centuries out of date! marianne is perfect however :]

[hellsitesonlybookclub]

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Full book available here

[The novella is short, but the chapters themselves are too long to post all at once, so I'm breaking them in half for convenience]

Chapter I (part 1/2)

One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked.

“What’s happened to me?” he thought. It wasn’t a dream. His room, a proper human room although a little too small, lay peacefully between its four familiar walls. A collection of textile samples lay spread out on the table—Samsa was a travelling salesman—and above it there hung a picture that he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame. It showed a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur boa who sat upright, raising a heavy fur muff that covered the whole of her lower arm towards the viewer.

Gregor then turned to look out the window at the dull weather. Drops of rain could be heard hitting the pane, which made him feel quite sad. “How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense”, he thought, but that was something he was unable to do because he was used to sleeping on his right, and in his present state couldn’t get into that position. However hard he threw himself onto his right, he always rolled back to where he was. He must have tried it a hundred times, shut his eyes so that he wouldn’t have to look at the floundering legs, and only stopped when he began to feel a mild, dull pain there that he had never felt before.

“Oh, God”, he thought, “what a strenuous career it is that I’ve chosen! Travelling day in and day out. Doing business like this takes much more effort than doing your own business at home, and on top of that there’s the curse of travelling, worries about making train connections, bad and irregular food, contact with different people all the time so that you can never get to know anyone or become friendly with them. It can all go to Hell!” He felt a slight itch up on his belly; pushed himself slowly up on his back towards the headboard so that he could lift his head better; found where the itch was, and saw that it was covered with lots of little white spots which he didn’t know what to make of; and when he tried to feel the place with one of his legs he drew it quickly back because as soon as he touched it he was overcome by a cold shudder.

He slid back into his former position. “Getting up early all the time”, he thought, “it makes you stupid. You’ve got to get enough sleep. Other travelling salesmen live a life of luxury. For instance, whenever I go back to the guest house during the morning to copy out the contract, these gentlemen are always still sitting there eating their breakfasts. I ought to just try that with my boss; I’d get kicked out on the spot. But who knows, maybe that would be the best thing for me. If I didn’t have my parents to think about I’d have given in my notice a long time ago, I’d have gone up to the boss and told him just what I think, tell him everything I would, let him know just what I feel. He’d fall right off his desk! And it’s a funny sort of business to be sitting up there at your desk, talking down at your subordinates from up there, especially when you have to go right up close because the boss is hard of hearing. Well, there’s still some hope; once I’ve got the money together to pay off my parents’ debt to him—another five or six years I suppose—that’s definitely what I’ll do. That’s when I’ll make the big change. First of all though, I’ve got to get up, my train leaves at five.”

And he looked over at the alarm clock, ticking on the chest of drawers. “God in Heaven!” he thought. It was half past six and the hands were quietly moving forwards, it was even later than half past, more like quarter to seven. Had the alarm clock not rung? He could see from the bed that it had been set for four o’clock as it should have been; it certainly must have rung. Yes, but was it possible to quietly sleep through that furniture-rattling noise? True, he had not slept peacefully, but probably all the more deeply because of that. What should he do now? The next train went at seven; if he were to catch that he would have to rush like mad and the collection of samples was still not packed, and he did not at all feel particularly fresh and lively. And even if he did catch the train he would not avoid his boss’s anger as the office assistant would have been there to see the five o’clock train go, he would have put in his report about Gregor’s not being there a long time ago. The office assistant was the boss’s man, spineless, and with no understanding. What about if he reported sick? But that would be extremely strained and suspicious as in five years of service Gregor had never once yet been ill. His boss would certainly come round with the doctor from the medical insurance company, accuse his parents of having a lazy son, and accept the doctor’s recommendation not to make any claim as the doctor believed that no-one was ever ill but that many were workshy. And what’s more, would he have been entirely wrong in this case? Gregor did in fact, apart from excessive sleepiness after sleeping for so long, feel completely well and even felt much hungrier than usual.

He was still hurriedly thinking all this through, unable to decide to get out of the bed, when the clock struck quarter to seven. There was a cautious knock at the door near his head. “Gregor”, somebody called—it was his mother—“it’s quarter to seven. Didn’t you want to go somewhere?” That gentle voice! Gregor was shocked when he heard his own voice answering, it could hardly be recognised as the voice he had had before. As if from deep inside him, there was a painful and uncontrollable squeaking mixed in with it, the words could be made out at first but then there was a sort of echo which made them unclear, leaving the hearer unsure whether he had heard properly or not. Gregor had wanted to give a full answer and explain everything, but in the circumstances contented himself with saying: “Yes, mother, yes, thank-you, I’m getting up now.” The change in Gregor’s voice probably could not be noticed outside through the wooden door, as his mother was satisfied with this explanation and shuffled away. But this short conversation made the other members of the family aware that Gregor, against their expectations was still at home, and soon his father came knocking at one of the side doors, gently, but with his fist. “Gregor, Gregor”, he called, “what’s wrong?” And after a short while he called again with a warning deepness in his voice: “Gregor! Gregor!” At the other side door his sister came plaintively: “Gregor? Aren’t you well? Do you need anything?” Gregor answered to both sides: “I’m ready, now”, making an effort to remove all the strangeness from his voice by enunciating very carefully and putting long pauses between each, individual word. His father went back to his breakfast, but his sister whispered: “Gregor, open the door, I beg of you.” Gregor, however, had no thought of opening the door, and instead congratulated himself for his cautious habit, acquired from his travelling, of locking all doors at night even when he was at home.

The first thing he wanted to do was to get up in peace without being disturbed, to get dressed, and most of all to have his breakfast. Only then would he consider what to do next, as he was well aware that he would not bring his thoughts to any sensible conclusions by lying in bed. He remembered that he had often felt a slight pain in bed, perhaps caused by lying awkwardly, but that had always turned out to be pure imagination and he wondered how his imaginings would slowly resolve themselves today. He did not have the slightest doubt that the change in his voice was nothing more than the first sign of a serious cold, which was an occupational hazard for travelling salesmen.

It was a simple matter to throw off the covers; he only had to blow himself up a little and they fell off by themselves. But it became difficult after that, especially as he was so exceptionally broad. He would have used his arms and his hands to push himself up; but instead of them he only had all those little legs continuously moving in different directions, and which he was moreover unable to control. If he wanted to bend one of them, then that was the first one that would stretch itself out; and if he finally managed to do what he wanted with that leg, all the others seemed to be set free and would move about painfully. “This is something that can’t be done in bed”, Gregor said to himself, “so don’t keep trying to do it”.

The first thing he wanted to do was get the lower part of his body out of the bed, but he had never seen this lower part, and could not imagine what it looked like; it turned out to be too hard to move; it went so slowly; and finally, almost in a frenzy, when he carelessly shoved himself forwards with all the force he could gather, he chose the wrong direction, hit hard against the lower bedpost, and learned from the burning pain he felt that the lower part of his body might well, at present, be the most sensitive.

So then he tried to get the top part of his body out of the bed first, carefully turning his head to the side. This he managed quite easily, and despite its breadth and its weight, the bulk of his body eventually followed slowly in the direction of the head. But when he had at last got his head out of the bed and into the fresh air it occurred to him that if he let himself fall it would be a miracle if his head were not injured, so he became afraid to carry on pushing himself forward the same way. And he could not knock himself out now at any price; better to stay in bed than lose consciousness.

It took just as much effort to get back to where he had been earlier, but when he lay there sighing, and was once more watching his legs as they struggled against each other even harder than before, if that was possible, he could think of no way of bringing peace and order to this chaos. He told himself once more that it was not possible for him to stay in bed and that the most sensible thing to do would be to get free of it in whatever way he could at whatever sacrifice. At the same time, though, he did not forget to remind himself that calm consideration was much better than rushing to desperate conclusions. At times like this he would direct his eyes to the window and look out as clearly as he could, but unfortunately, even the other side of the narrow street was enveloped in morning fog and the view had little confidence or cheer to offer him. “Seven o’clock, already”, he said to himself when the clock struck again, “seven o’clock, and there’s still a fog like this.” And he lay there quietly a while longer, breathing lightly as if he perhaps expected the total stillness to bring things back to their real and natural state.

But then he said to himself: “Before it strikes quarter past seven I’ll definitely have to have got properly out of bed. And by then somebody will have come round from work to ask what’s happened to me as well, as they open up at work before seven o’clock.” And so he set himself to the task of swinging the entire length of his body out of the bed all at the same time. If he succeeded in falling out of bed in this way and kept his head raised as he did so he could probably avoid injuring it. His back seemed to be quite hard, and probably nothing would happen to it falling onto the carpet. His main concern was for the loud noise he was bound to make, and which even through all the doors would probably raise concern if not alarm. But it was something that had to be risked.

When Gregor was already sticking half way out of the bed—the new method was more of a game than an effort, all he had to do was rock back and forth—it occurred to him how simple everything would be if somebody came to help him. Two strong people—he had his father and the maid in mind—would have been more than enough; they would only have to push their arms under the dome of his back, peel him away from the bed, bend down with the load and then be patient and careful as he swang over onto the floor, where, hopefully, the little legs would find a use. Should he really call for help though, even apart from the fact that all the doors were locked? Despite all the difficulty he was in, he could not suppress a smile at this thought.

After a while he had already moved so far across that it would have been hard for him to keep his balance if he rocked too hard. The time was now ten past seven and he would have to make a final decision very soon. Then there was a ring at the door of the flat. “That’ll be someone from work”, he said to himself, and froze very still, although his little legs only became all the more lively as they danced around. For a moment everything remained quiet. “They’re not opening the door”, Gregor said to himself, caught in some nonsensical hope. But then of course, the maid’s firm steps went to the door as ever and opened it. Gregor only needed to hear the visitor’s first words of greeting and he knew who it was—the chief clerk himself. Why did Gregor have to be the only one condemned to work for a company where they immediately became highly suspicious at the slightest shortcoming? Were all employees, every one of them, louts, was there not one of them who was faithful and devoted who would go so mad with pangs of conscience that he couldn’t get out of bed if he didn’t spend at least a couple of hours in the morning on company business? Was it really not enough to let one of the trainees make enquiries—assuming enquiries were even necessary—did the chief clerk have to come himself, and did they have to show the whole, innocent family that this was so suspicious that only the chief clerk could be trusted to have the wisdom to investigate it? And more because these thoughts had made him upset than through any proper decision, he swang himself with all his force out of the bed. There was a loud thump, but it wasn’t really a loud noise. His fall was softened a little by the carpet, and Gregor’s back was also more elastic than he had thought, which made the sound muffled and not too noticeable. He had not held his head carefully enough, though, and hit it as he fell; annoyed and in pain, he turned it and rubbed it against the carpet.

“Something’s fallen down in there”, said the chief clerk in the room on the left. Gregor tried to imagine whether something of the sort that had happened to him today could ever happen to the chief clerk too; you had to concede that it was possible. But as if in gruff reply to this question, the chief clerk’s firm footsteps in his highly polished boots could now be heard in the adjoining room. From the room on his right, Gregor’s sister whispered to him to let him know: “Gregor, the chief clerk is here.” “Yes, I know”, said Gregor to himself; but without daring to raise his voice loud enough for his sister to hear him.

“Gregor”, said his father now from the room to his left, “the chief clerk has come round and wants to know why you didn’t leave on the early train. We don’t know what to say to him. And anyway, he wants to speak to you personally. So please open up this door. I’m sure he’ll be good enough to forgive the untidiness of your room.” Then the chief clerk called “Good morning, Mr. Samsa”. “He isn’t well”, said his mother to the chief clerk, while his father continued to speak through the door. “He isn’t well, please believe me. Why else would Gregor have missed a train! The lad only ever thinks about the business. It nearly makes me cross the way he never goes out in the evenings; he’s been in town for a week now but stayed home every evening. He sits with us in the kitchen and just reads the paper or studies train timetables. His idea of relaxation is working with his fretsaw. He’s made a little frame, for instance, it only took him two or three evenings, you’ll be amazed how nice it is; it’s hanging up in his room; you’ll see it as soon as Gregor opens the door. Anyway, I’m glad you’re here; we wouldn’t have been able to get Gregor to open the door by ourselves; he’s so stubborn; and I’m sure he isn’t well, he said this morning that he is, but he isn’t.” “I’ll be there in a moment”, said Gregor slowly and thoughtfully, but without moving so that he would not miss any word of the conversation. “Well I can’t think of any other way of explaining it, Mrs. Samsa”, said the chief clerk, “I hope it’s nothing serious. But on the other hand, I must say that if we people in commerce ever become slightly unwell then, fortunately or unfortunately as you like, we simply have to overcome it because of business considerations.” “Can the chief clerk come in to see you now then?”, asked his father impatiently, knocking at the door again. “No”, said Gregor. In the room on his right there followed a painful silence; in the room on his left his sister began to cry.

So why did his sister not go and join the others? She had probably only just got up and had not even begun to get dressed. And why was she crying? Was it because he had not got up, and had not let the chief clerk in, because he was in danger of losing his job and if that happened his boss would once more pursue their parents with the same demands as before? There was no need to worry about things like that yet. Gregor was still there and had not the slightest intention of abandoning his family. For the time being he just lay there on the carpet, and no-one who knew the condition he was in would seriously have expected him to let the chief clerk in. It was only a minor discourtesy, and a suitable excuse could easily be found for it later on, it was not something for which Gregor could be sacked on the spot. And it seemed to Gregor much more sensible to leave him now in peace instead of disturbing him with talking at him and crying. But the others didn’t know what was happening, they were worried, that would excuse their behaviour.

[wondernimbus]

two sworn enemies pt. 2 — draco malfoy

pairing: draco malfoy x female!reader

summary: maybe being fancied by draco malfoy isn’t so bad, after all.

requests are closed for now. please refrain from plagiarizing my work!

click here to read pt. 1!

"Why is it so bloody cold?"

[Y/N] is decked out in full winter apparel; a knitted Gryffindor sweater, ear-muffs, and a scarf that she has half of her face buried in.

Sitting in the Quidditch stands with the rest of her friends, she grumbles, "It's not even a Gryffindor match. We don't really have to be here freezing to death."

"Well, it's common courtesy," says Hermione, but she's just as cold as [Y/N] is; there's bits of snow stuck in her hair and the tip of her nose is pink.

Ron snorts loudly. “We’re here to watch Slytherin lose," he says matter-of-factly, still in the process of smearing streaks of blue paint across his cheek.

[Y/N] watches him, nose scrunched. "Well, aren't you the Ravenclaw fanatic."

He gives her a grin and holds out the small tub of paint. "Want some?"

She bunches up her lips in thought, then reaches out to take it. Annoyingly enough, Ron pulls back at the last moment, grinning wider than ever, and says, "Or d'you want to show support for your boyfriend Malfoy? Hermione, why don't you turn this green—"

[Y/N] dives over Hermione and Harry to smack Ron round the head, only for the pair to hold her back and push her into her seat.

Exasperated, Hermione huffs, "Honestly, Ronald, will you stop bringing that up?" She glares at him. "You know fully well [Y/N] doesn't like it."

Ron (and Harry, although he isn't as boisterous about it as the redhead), thinks that the "blond ferret" taking a fancying to her is one of, if not the most hilarious thing to have ever happened in history. Annoyingly enough, Ron has made it a habit to tease her about it every chance he gets—this one being one of them.

"If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought Ron fancied Malfoy with how much he talks about him," grins Harry. This earns him a smatter of blue paint across his face; Ron had flicked it at him.

With one last eye-roll, [Y/N] tears her gaze away from Ron and digs her nose further into her scarf. It really is very cold; snow is falling from the sky, seeping into her clothes, some landing on her hair and on her face. Thankfully there's not so much of it that the players on the pitch wouldn't be able to see around them, but still—[Y/N] imagines that it'd be a lot colder for them, having to fly around the stadium with the cold wind whipping at their robes.

There’s a buzz of loud chatter hanging in the air as conversations from all around them overlap over one another. The entire stadium is slowly filling up; students trickle into the stands, a majority of which have adorned themselves with blue accessories as a show of support to Ravenclaw. One side of the stands, however, is entirely green. Through the snow, she can see a big serpent-shaped balloon hovering over the Slytherin side.

"They’re coming out!" someone exclaims.

Sure enough, when [Y/N] looks down at the pitch, players from both teams have appeared and congregated at opposite ends of the pitch. Slytherin and Ravenclaw; whichever house wins will play Gryffindor for the house cup. Most bets are on Slytherin, but [Y/N] would have to be dead before she is caught anywhere supporting them.

"Look, it's [Y/N]'s boyfriend," gushes Ron.

More out of habit than anything, [Y/N] shoots the redhead yet another brief, scathing look. Draco Malfoy is there, even though he's nowhere near being her boyfriend, pale face set into a stoic expression of calm as he stands with the rest of his team, one hand on his broom and the other on his hip—and this specific image has her thinking back to what happened two weeks ago on this very same pitch, except the stadium was empty and it was only the two of them on the grounds; when he'd confessed to liking her.

As if Malfoy has somehow heard her thoughts over the noise of excited chatter coming from all over the stands, he looks up, eyes sweeping the seats in search for someone before finally, they land on her.

When he meets her gaze, [Y/N]'s breath isn't knocked out of her chest, nor does she start blushing madly. But she doesn't burn red with annoyance, either. All she does is stare at him, eyes narrowed, watching as his lips split into a wide grin and he raises his hand to wave at her.

She rolls her eyes, but thankfully—thankfully, the scarf tucked around her neck, reaching up to her nose, conceals the smile that tugs at her lips.

"May I ask everyone to please find themselves in their seats before the match begins," McGonagall’s voice echoes around the stadium, giving [Y/N] a reason to break eye contact.

She tears her stare away from Malfoy’s, inhaling a deep breath through her nose, feeling oddly exhilarated.

But this isn't anything new. That slight feeling of breathlessness, that unfamiliar sensation tickling at her stomach whenever she spots a certain someone in the hallway; she's been feeling it a lot lately, and though the cause seems to be pretty obvious, that is another thing she'd have to be caught dead before doing: admitting that she reciprocates some of Malfoy’s.. peculiar feelings.

"And they're off!" Dean Thomas announces. [Y/N] watches as the players soar high into the air until they're mostly level with the stands, a blur of blue and green robes rapidly zooming around the pitch. Slytherin is already in possession of the quaffle; not a surprise, considering Ravenclaw isn't exactly known for their exceptionally talented Quidditch team.

Malfoy, meanwhile—[Y/N] tells herself that the way her eyes dart around the pitch in search of a certain platinum blond is because she wants to watch the game properly and not for other reasons.

She spots him hovering somewhere above the rest of the players, face screwed up in concentration as his gaze moves around the pitch in search for the golden snitch. He looks even paler in winter, set against a backdrop of a cloudy sky and snow—

[Y/N] jars herself out of her thoughts and blinks, side-eyeing her friends (specifically Ron) to make sure they hadn't seen her.. observing the Slytherin seeker. (Not like it matters; it's not as though she fancies him, but Ron would certainly take it the wrong way.)

"Go Ravenclaw!" Ron practically screeches, waving his Ravenclaw banner in the air—when did he get that? "Kick Slytherin’s arse so Gryffindor can crush you in the finals!"

[Y/N] snorts. "Have it all thought out, don't you, Ron?"

"Go on and cheer for your Slytherin boyfriend, [Y/N], no one's stopping you," says Harry, grinning. She turns to face him, mouth open in disbelief, and lets out a quick breath of incredulous laughter.

"So, Harry," [Y/N] says, suddenly deadpan. ”I see you've chosen Ron’s side."

Harry snickers, then shrugs.

"Oh, Malfoy’s seen the snitch!" someone shouts from beside them. [Y/N] turns back to the game to see Malfoy zooming down the pitch, clutching the front of his broom as he swerves past Slytherin and Ravenclaw players alike in pursuit of the tiny golden ball all the way on the other side of the stadium, where [Y/N] and her friends are sat. He has the upper hand—Ravenclaw's seeker is only just now starting to fly after him, but she's a good distance behind and Malfoy is gaining speed.

"He’s gonna catch it!"

"Ravenclaw's even worse than I thought," grumbles Ron, slumping down in his seat.

But just as Malfoy passes by them, somehow, despite the fact that he is in pursuit of the bloody golden snitch and on the brink of securing victory for his team, he slows down just the tiniest bit, and then, in true Malfoy fashion—theatric as always in his displays of affection—he catches her eye and yells “This one's for you, [Y/N]!”, a grin on his face before he hurtles down the pitch, stretching out his hand towards the fluttering snitch—

"Malfoy’s got the snitch!" Dean Thomas screams into his microphone. "Slytherin wins!"

[Y/N] stares, feeling oddly warm despite the wintry weather, as Malfoy spins around in mid-air, triumphantly holding up the snitch for the rest of Hogwarts to see.

"Blimey," gapes Ron, wide-eyed, staring not at the Slytherin seeker but at [Y/N]. "That was—"

[Y/N] looks away from Malfoy to meet Ron's gaze, maintaining indifference. "He’s quite the charmer, isn't he?" she mutters, and hopes that her friends will think that the blush on her cheeks is because of the cold and not because of something—someone else.

But that's ridiculous. It is because of the cold, isn't it?

"It may be Malfoy," says Ron slowly, shaking his head, "But you can't deny that was bloody romantic. Felt like I was watching something out of one of those Muggle films."

"Yeah, we'll have to ask him for tips," says Harry, and starts laughing when [Y/N] rolls her eyes in response.

—

Malfoy may have stopped sending her Howlers, but that hardly matters because he has found every other way to pester her.

This includes consistently yelling out her name and shouting random pick-up lines every time he spots her in the hallway, as well as sending people to do her bidding—no longer first-years, but Crabbe and Goyle, who show up at random intervals everyday presenting her with a batch of different pastries. She always sends the pair off, but only after Ron and Harry accept said pastries for themselves.

"Blimey, this is heavenly!" gushes Ron, taking a passionate bite off of his second red velvet cupcake. "You sure you don't want a bite, [Y/N]? Hermione?"

[Y/N] offers him an exasperated smile. "No, thank you, Ron."

"Don’t thank me, thank your boyfriend."

The four of them walk into the dingy Potions classroom. Snape is nowhere to be seen, but it's only a matter of time before he swoops in all bat-like, so [Y/N] and Hermione quickly take a seat at their regular desk, right next to Ron and Harry.

"Have you done your homework?" asks Hermione, pulling out an assortment of parchment from her bag.

[Y/N] hums in response. "I doubt mine is half as good as yours, but hopefully I’ll scrape an acceptable."

"Oh, you're a good student, [Y/N]. Don't bring yourself down."

"Hard not to when I’m sitting next to the brightest witch in our year," she nudges Hermione’s shoulder, smiling. Hermione huffs, rolling her eyes, but it's clear by the pleased look on her face that she doesn't hate [Y/N]'s honest flattery as much as she lets on.

[Y/N] drums her fingers on the desk to pass time, not quite paying attention to the students filtering into the classroom. Or at least not until one of them calls her name and drawls, "Is someone sitting here?"

[Y/N]'s head snaps around to see none other than Malfoy, gesturing to the desk to the left of hers and Hermione’s. "Mind if I,” he pauses, grinning, "Slytherin?"

She purses her lips into a thin, tight line, inhaling deeply as she fights to keep her cool. Yes, there are times when Malfoy's gestures have her questioning her own hatred for him, but this—this is not one of them.

"That," she says, voice mostly level. "Is your seat, Malfoy. I don’t see why you have to ask me."

Which is a lie. [Y/N] knows why, of course. To get her attention. To woo her. But part of her wishes that Malfoy would realize that everything he is doing, from the overbearing pick up lines to the cupcakes to his constant public declarations of love, isn't something that [Y/N] thoroughly enjoys. Does she want him to stop yelling at her in the hallways? Yes. Does she want Crabbe and Goyle to stop bumbling up to her everywhere she goes (outside of the girl's bathroom is one example) offering cupcakes and pie and tarts? Yes. But does she want Malfoy to stop trying entirely?

Maybe not. Maybe part of her wants to give him a chance. He does seem to truly hold feelings, judging from his confession back at the Quidditch stadium, unless he's a terribly good actor.

And it wouldn't just be him she'd be giving a chance, either. Perhaps she'd also be doing so to herself. Because, over the past month, it's baffled her how quickly her feelings for him have shifted. Or maybe it's not a change of feelings, but rather realization that under all that sneering and pureblood prejudice, Draco Malfoy is a boy.

An annoyingly attractive one.

But there is so much more that [Y/N] dislikes about him. His snootiness. His arrogance. His lack of consideration for other people's feelings. He may be tall and lithe and undeniably handsome, and he may have very soft-looking platinum blond hair and stormy grey eyes like dark clouds, but he is also a prick. And that wins over everything else, no matter how.. visually pleasing he is.

So when a paper bird flutters in front of her halfway through the lesson, when Snape’s back is turned, [Y/N] hesitates. She knows fully well who it's from, despite not having to look to the side and meet his gaze.

From beside her, Hermione whispers, "Get rid of it, before Snape sees."

Exhaling, [Y/N] snatches the paper bird and quickly unfolds it.

She doesn't know what she's expecting to see, but it's certainly not the words "meet me at the Astronomy tower after dinner" scribbled across the parchment. And with a drawing of a face blowing kisses, no less.

[Y/N] sighs.

—

[Y/N] has no real feelings for Malfoy, so succumbing to his mysterious evening request at the Astronomy tower shouldn't mean anything.

Scratch that: it doesn't mean anything. Not to her. (Or so she tells herself.) This is a chance for her to tell Malfoy to sod off and to stop courting her. And for good, this time. No matter what that annoying little voice inside her head tells her, she can't possibly even consider the idea of actually giving in to him. (And to herself.)

So she's going to put a stop to it, once and for all.

"I’m going," she decides over dinner, slamming her palms down on the table.

"Going where?" asks Harry.

"The Astronomy tower," she replies resolutely.

"What, to go star-gazing?" Ron snickers. [Y/N] glances at him and realizes, quickly, that telling them had slipped her mind—she'd been far too preoccupied with her own conflicting thoughts.

She shifts in her seat. She doesn't necessarily need to tell them, does she? It's not as though it's important enough to share. And besides, Ron would only badger her about it. Mercilessly. [Y/N] can already picture him in her head, talking about Malfoy and snogging under the stars and Merlin-knows-what-else.

"Nevermind," says [Y/N], taking a bite out of a muffin and looking away. They don't need to know; it's not as though it's important.

—

After [Y/N] has walked up all of the stairs to get there, only taking one or two shortcuts, she's out of breath, but she creeps into the Astronomy tower anyway. It’s mostly dark save for the faint moonshine filtering in from the open sides, and, well—there he is.

Malfoy’s arms are crossed over his chest, his back mostly turned as he stands dangerously close to the railing, looking out over the dark landscape. Dim light catches on the side of his face, illuminating the grey of his eyes.

The curve of his nose.

Pale skin.

White-blond hair.

[Y/N] finds herself staring, one hand on the doorframe as though for support, brows furrowed in the middle in a slight frown as she watches him.

He looks lost in thought. Even from a few feet away, [Y/N] can see the far-off, distant look in his eyes. Like storms brewing behind dark clouds, she thinks to herself. It’s a quiet little whisper in the back of her mind that has her heart doing odd little flips inside of her chest that she never knew it was capable of.

But then she blinks.

This is the last thing [Y/N] needs. To see Malfoy stripped of his arrogance—to see him as he is, bathed in moonlight, glowing, almost. To look at him and to see a boy with eyes like molten silver and nothing more—it's the last thing she needs to convince herself that she doesn't feel something for him that isn't hatred.

No, she doesn't need this.

She turns around, breath caught in her throat, and starts walking down the steps. Accidentally, stupidly, her foot catches on a metal step and a loud clang echoes around the silent tower.

[Y/N] pauses, eyes wide.

"[Y/N]?" Malfoy's voice says. He can't see her. It’s too dark, and [Y/N] is too far down the steps.

She swallows. But instead of dreading what could come, she finds herself waiting, half-hoping that he'd check the staircase, that he would see her and—

And then what?

[Y/N] rushes down the steps, ignoring the loud noise her footsteps make on the way. This is the last thing she needs.

—

[Y/N] doesn't like Malfoy.

[Y/N] doesn't like Malfoy, and she is determined to make that clear. (Both to herself and to her friends, although the former seems to be taking a lot more convincing.)

"What is there to like about him? He’s nothing but an annoying pain in the arse who has an overwhelming amount of pride and arrogance simply because of his blood—which is not only something that he never rightfully earned but is also something that shouldn't even bloody matter, except he thinks that it does solely because he is an absolute nutter who has nothing better to do with his life other than leech off of his parents' money and shove it in other people's faces."

Ron meets Harry’s gaze from across the table, who seems to be trying very hard not to laugh. Swallowing down a forkful of pancakes, Ron looks back at [Y/N]. "I’m sorry," he begins slowly. "But remind me again why we're talking about Malfoy?"

"I’m not finished, Ronald," [Y/N] snaps, shooting him a dirty look. Ron raises his eyebrows. "As I was saying before someone so rudely cut me off, Malfoy is a nasty little git who finds joy in making other people suffer. he probably has tiny puppies locked up inside his basement just so he can laugh in their faces and revel in their misery because he is that horrible of a person—"

Harry lurches with poorly suppressed laughter.

"An absolute terrible excuse for a human being! He basks in other people's humiliation—mine, for example!—and I would much rather snog the Giant Squid than ever actually consider his—" She pauses, gritting her teeth. "Odd.. requests."

"It’s not like he's asking you to murder house-elves," Ron mutters.

"Something that I would rather do than date him!"

"[Y/N]!" Hermione gasps, looking genuinely offended as she, for the first time since they'd arrived at the Great Hall for breakfast, looks up from the homework she's rushing to finish. (As if her five pieces worth of parchment aren't enough—Flitwick had only asked for three!)

"Sorry, Hermione," [Y/N] says, offering her an apologetic look that she only half-means. This quickly turns into a fierce look of challenge as she swivels back around in her seat to face the redhead sitting next to her. "Honestly, since when have you started defending Malfoy?"

Ron blanches. "I’m not defending him!" he says indignantly, setting his fork down on his plate. "It’s just.. yeah, it's a bit odd that he's declaring his undying love for you out of bloody nowhere, but he's stopped badgering us, hasn't he? Nasty little ferret hasn't said a word to Harry for weeks! And that goes for me and Hermione, too!"

[Y/N] narrows her eyes at him. "So you think it's great that he's stopped annoying you at the cost of my suffering?"

"What suffering!" Ron exclaims. "He’s been treating you like a bloody princess!"

"Oh, why don't you just snog him yourself, then, if you think so highly of him?"

Ron’s jaw drops in shocked offense.

"Alright, that's enough!" Harry announces, reaching over the table to shove the two apart from each other. "Why doesn't one of you switch seats with me before you end up strangling each other?"

"I don't know, Harry," [Y/N]'s lip curls. "I might have to hold Ron back before he goes running off to his ferret prince—or should we just let him? Merlin knows he'd love to, won't you, Ronald?"

Ron’s teeth are gritted; his eyes dart around the food on the table as though looking for the most effective weapon. He seems to be choosing between a green apple and rhubarb pie.

Thankfully, Ron never gets to take his pick. The bell rings, saving everyone in the Great Hall from witnessing what could have possibly been a brawl between friends. "Come on, let's go," says Harry quickly, relief evident in his tone of voice as he ushers the pair to their feet. "Wouldn’t want to be late for class."

—

[Y/N] doesn't like Malfoy.

[Y/N] doesn't like Malfoy, but why does she find herself staring at him whenever she comes across him in the hallway the next day? Why, when Malfoy meets her gaze, does she look away and pretend to be immersed in something else?

And why in the bloody hell, when Malfoy playfully winks at her during Potions class, does she find it very, very hard not to smile?

She walks out of the dungeon classroom in a hurry with Ron, Harry, and Hermione, not wanting to spend a minute more in Malfoy's presence; she doesn't particularly enjoy being suddenly hyperaware of every move he makes, every little glance he sends her way when he thinks she isn't paying attention. It’s as though something in her system has gone awry. Is that why her heart feels like it's about to hop right out of her chest? Is that why she can't stop wondering what would've happened if she'd stayed at the Astronomy tower?

"Hey, wait up!” Harry calls loudly as they walk up the stone steps leading away from the dungeons and into the main hallway, which is bustling with students.

[Y/N], who had been walking far too fast in front of the three, looks back over her shoulder and sees that they're a few feet away. She stops, seemingly flustered, and waits for them to catch up.

"You look like you've wet your pants," says Ron.

"I’m not you, Ron," she retorts.

"Oh, can you two please stop bickering for once?" says Hermione, exasperated.

From behind the three, Draco Malfoy emerges from the potions classroom and begins walking up the stone steps. [Y/N]'s hands clench into fists at her side as she discretely presses her back to the stone wall at her sides.

The blond doesn't even as much as glance at Ron, Harry, and Hermione as he passes by them on the steps. [Y/N], however—once Malfoy has reached the step below the one she's standing on, he pauses, no less than two feet away from her, and quirks an eyebrow.

"What?" [Y/N] scowls, trying not to look at the strand of blond hair dangling in front of his eyes.

Malfoy’s gaze dances over her face. "Was it you?"

She meets her friends' eyes over Malfoy's shoulder. Ron and Harry have their eyebrows raised; Hermione looks concerned. [Y/N] takes a moment to compose herself—tries to force her heart back into her chest—before she folds her arms across her chest and looks at the Slytherin. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"At the Astronomy tower," Malfoy says, and moves up one step so that he's standing on the same one she's on. A foot away. "I heard someone last night, while I was waiting for you."

Oh, Merlin.

"You came, didn't you?" he presses on.

"No," [Y/N] lies, and hates how defensive she sounds. She shifts a little on her feet, her eyes skirting away to look at a random spot behind Malfoy. "I was.. at the library. Doing things of actual importance."

There’s a slight pause as Malfoy's nose wrinkles. "Must’ve been someone else spying on me, then," he finally says through a scoff, but [Y/N] knows disappointment when she sees it. He rolls his shoulders back and puts on his signature smirk, inclining his head towards her as he takes another step up the stairs. "Better hurry and give me an answer, [Y/N]," he tells her, grinning. "Before one of my admirers get to me first."

[Y/N] watches as he walks up the steps and disappears into the hallway.

"The library?" a voice says incredulously. She turns back to Ron, whose face is scrunched in disbelief. "No, you weren't! We were waiting for you there and you never came."

[Y/N] folds her arms across her chest indignantly but doesn't respond, instead walking up the stone steps.

"Malfoy said he was waiting for you at the Astronomy tower," says Hermione slowly as they trail after her; [Y/N] speeds up her pace. "Is that why you mentioned going there during dinner last night?"

[Y/N] emerges into the main corridor first. "No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did!" bursts Ron, sounding downright triumphant.

"Congratulations, Ron, you don't have the memory range of a teaspoon, after all," [Y/N] mutters, looking around. Malfoy is walking down the hallway a few feet ahead of them, Crabbe and Goyle at his side.

Ron ignores her. "I bet you did go. I bet you did spy on him—" And then he gasps, looking as though he's unearthed the secret of life. "Merlin’s beard, you really do fancy him, don't you?"

[Y/N]'s footsteps falter. Ron, Harry, and Hermione stop right with her.

Hermione is the only one who doesn't look stunned out of her mind. Looking between the two boys, she rolls her eyes and scoffs. "Honestly, is that so hard to believe?" says Hermione, frowning. "I understand that it's Malfoy and he is a prick, but [Y/N] is perfectly entitled to fancy whoever she likes." She turns to [Y/N]. "It’s fine, [Y/N], you don't have to feel guilty about it. Anyone would catch feelings if someone started doing such sweet things for them, even if it were someone like Malfoy."

"Blimey," says Harry, breathless. "Which part sealed the deal, [Y/N]? The pick-up lines? Or was it the cupcakes?"

[Y/N], who had been opening and closing her mouth like a fish blown out of water, finally stops trying to find words that just aren't there and instead drags her palm across her face in frustration. "I don't.." she says, sounding defeated, but really—now that she's faced with such confrontation, it's easier to admit to herself that maybe.. maybe she does fancy Malfoy.

Ron’s lips have split into a jubilant grin. ”I called it!" he says, smacking Harry's shoulder. "Bloody knew it!"

Hermione reaches out to rub [Y/N]'s back. "Don’t feel too bad about it, [Y/N]. I sort of knew—you looked at him differently after he confessed to you on the pitch."

[Y/N] sighs, realizing that no amount  of denying it will convince her friends. Or herself.

She does fancy Malfoy.

Properly acknowledging it—finally admitting it to herself—is oddly relieving. She’s been keeping her feelings cooped up inside of her chest despite the fact they are so much bigger than her, and now that she's letting them burst free.. now that she's coming to terms with them..

Well. It’s not the worst feeling ever.

Ron is still beaming, looking as though he's won the lottery. And apparently, in a way, he has: "Fred and George said it'd take you a month longer to give in. I said it'd take you less—guess I’ve won myself two galleons!"

[Y/N]'s mouth falls open. "You bet on this?"

Ron raises his eyebrows, as though surprised to hear that she didn't know. "Uh, I and the entire bloody castle."

Struck by a sudden burst of both annoyance and confidence, [Y/N], scowling, detaches herself from her friends and strides down the hallway towards Malfoy, full of intent. He hasn't noticed her yet; his back is still turned, but she catches up to him easily. And when she does, she unceremoniously bumps her shoulder into his and grabs his hand, quickly interlacing her fingers through his.

"What the hell—"

Malfoy, obviously taken aback, tries to pull his hand away, sneering, until his gaze lands on [Y/N].

"Keep walking, Malfoy," she says scathingly, not quite looking at him.

Baffled, Malfoy stares at her, then down at their hands, which are now tightly interlocked between them. [Y/N] scowls resolutely at the hallway ahead of her.

And then Malfoy laughs, more out of disbelief than amusement.

"Keep walking," [Y/N] repeats, this time turning to look at him, fighting to keep her gaze indifferent. The last thing she wants Malfoy to know is that there is an onslaught of tiny little butterflies rampaging in her stomach and a tingly feeling spreading from their hands all the way up her spine and into her heart.

Malfoy’s lips tug up into a wide grin—a real one, [Y/N] thinks. Not an arrogant smirk or a deprecating sneer; one that she can't ever recall seeing. But now that she has, she finds herself wishing he'd do it more often.

[Y/N] tugs him along as she walks, feeling the stunned stares of her friends boring into her skull from behind. (Ron is going to have a field day about this.)

"So," Malfoy begins, and she doesn't have to look at him to know that he's still grinning down at her. "Changed your mind, haven't you?"

[Y/N] rolls her eyes; she doesn't fail to notice the way that the students they're passing by are staring at them, eyes wide, whispering to themselves. "Isn’t this what you wanted?"

Malfoy shrugs. "Among other things."

She side-eyes him, muttering, "Does that include snogging?"

He makes an amused sound at the back of his throat. "You said it, not me."

[Y/N] has to grit her teeth to stop the corners of her lips from tugging up. They turn a corner down the hallway, disappearing from both their friends' views (assuming they haven't followed them). At this thought, [Y/N] takes a brief glance over her shoulder—and sure enough, there's a redhead peeking out of a group of very confused Ravenclaws.

Cursing Ron Weasley inside her head, she turns her gaze back ahead of her. ”I have Charms class next."

Malfoy raises his brows. "And what do you expect me to do with that information?"

"Walk me there," says [Y/N] briskly.

She can practically feel the surprise radiating off of the blond next to her. A moment later, he throws his head back in a loud laugh. "And you want me to be late to Transfiguration? It’s all the way on the other side of the castle."

[Y/N] hums. "Can’t even do that for the girl you fancy?"

There’s a beat of silence. His grip on her hand falters a little as he says, voice still nonchalant and yet at the same time holding an undeniable sense of sincerity, "I could if I knew she wasn't leading me on."

"She isn't," [Y/N] says, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.

Malfoy is staring at her with his brows pulled in together just slightly at the middle, giving off the impression that he's trying to decide whether or not she's being serious. He slows down his pace until he comes to a full stop, urging [Y/N] to halt alongside him until they're standing in the middle of the hallway, oblivious to the stares following them and the redhead a mere few feet away.

"How do I know this isn't a prank?" says Malfoy, lip slowly curling as he narrows his eyes at her, the first few traces of suspicion etching itself onto his face now that the whole ridiculousness of the situation has finally sunken in. [Y/N] can't blame him; her antics—suddenly marching up to him in the hallway, grabbing his hand and walking with him as though they've been doing it for years—all of it is uncalled for after having ruthlessly turned him down so many times before. But [Y/N] can't delve into a discussion of her conflicting emotions—at least not right now—so she hopes, at least for now, that he will take her word for it.

She clears her throat.  "Well," she begins, looking down at their hands; Malfoy’s grip has gone slack. "If I wanted to hold your hand, I’d do it because I wanted to. Not because I wanted to get a rise out of you." She lets her gaze go back up to his, brows rising in familiar challenge. "I don't stoop that low, Malfoy. You’ve been in love with me for years—shouldn't you know that by now?"

There are a few seconds in which the blond standing before her still looks at her with a scrutinizing gaze, lips set into a thin, hard line and his eyes swimming with conflict that [Y/N] wouldn't have been able to see from afar, but sees in perfect clarity now that she's standing a mere foot away from him. But then, after what feels like ages, Malfoy nods, slowly, frown smoothing out into an expression of—could that be relief?

"I will be late for Transfiguration, you know," he says, lips quirking up into a grin.

[Y/N] laughs. (A real one, Draco thinks to himself.) This time she doesn't try to stop herself from smiling; just lets her lips do so of their own accord. It feels nice. Freeing. "Better just one of us than two, don't you think?" she says, mirroring his playful grin. "And besides, Goyle can stand in for you. You two do have quite the resemblance."

"Oh, sod off."

And it really is very odd, because everything about this shouldn't feel right; they've been enemies for the longest time, and a year ago, [Y/N] would have been revolted at the mere idea of ever coming close to Draco Malfoy—but it does. That is, it feels right. Like they've been this way for ages and this playful, harmless banter is the most natural thing.

Draco isn't perfect—Merlin, does he have a long way to go—but if he means to stop being a prat as long as [Y/N] is at his side, then she is willing to venture into whatever has formed between them.

And if this little bond is going to involve any more of this—this being her and Draco exaggeratedly swinging their arms between them as he walks her to Charms class with their fingers still intertwined, snickering, waiting for one of them to start complaining about their arm sockets hurting—then maybe it isn't the worst thing ever, after all.

[ivorjerome]

(cont.)

At that the boy sprang up, so lightly that it was as if he were made of a dusting of snow. “I hate them! I won’t. You are only a baby, what could you know? It’s dreadful and awful and I won’t go. I’ll swim to the sea and make friends with selkies and then I’ll crash the silly merchant ships and gather their gold and make myself my own crown and then they’ll be sorry!” The boy stamped his bare feet in the snow and gnashed his rather sharp teeth. “Or mayhaps,” he said, glaring at Snow White, “I’ll go wander into the mountains and get eaten by dragons and they will drop my bones into the River and then they’ll wish they’d never made me go.” The boy wilted to the ground, hugging his knees.

What would Mama Queen do? What would Papa? The boy was rolling as if in anguish, with one eye open to see if Snow White was watching.

“This is Lucinda,” said Snow White at last, holding out her doll to the strange boy. “She is my most—trusted adviser,” she said with a nod. “It would give me great honor if you were to accept her on this assignment.”

“A Bargain?” As the boy said this the sun seemed to dim and he seemed to brighten. He grinned. His teeth were indeed unusually sharp. “You wish to Bargain with me?”

“It is a gift from the crown, not a bargain.”

The boy pouted, squinting up his blue eyes. “I don’t need silly Man-Gifts. You are a very rude baby.”

Snow White’s pale cheeks had been growing quite flushed and finally she stamped her foot. “I am not a baby! I am a princess! You are a dreadful, wicked, beastly brat crybaby and I don’t know why I’ve listened to your blubbering for so long! I bid you farewell,” she added, bobbing her head in a bow as her mother did when saying goodbye. It all came out much more rushed than perhaps it should but even a princess’s patience wears thin eventually.

She turned up her nose and gathering her skirts began to stomp off away from the riverside, when she felt a blisteringly cold grip through her coat. She squeaked and pulled her arm away from the boy, who was now sparkling like fresh snow. The princess rubbed her arm which had briefly become numb with cold.

“Don’t run off now. I only was very wanting to make a Bargain. It would have been my first. Are you certain you do not want to? I wouldn’t make it very tricksy.” He clasped his hands together and looked a little bit pathetic. “No toads or spiders or anything like that.”

Snow White pulled on one of her curls, a habit neither Mama Queen or Nurse could break. “No, but the crown thanks you.” She held out Lucinda one last time. “She’s a good friend. She listens and goes on adventures when the castle is asleep and she keeps the bad dreams away.”

The strange boy showed very little emotion now, but at last he took the doll, looking at it and then back at Snow White. “You will miss her,” he said, calmly and almost coldly.

The princess took in a deep breath and tucked her hands in her muff. “Yes, I cannot pretend that I won’t. But you need her, I think. And I must be a good princess.” She could not say more and she blinked to keep her tears from falling.

The boy, odd as he seemed, looked much more, well, human as he hugged Lucinda to his chest. “You must not cry. I command it.”

He approached her and took the necklace of silver from around his neck. “Let me see, how would Papa do it…”

“Do what? I said no bargains.”

“It is not a Bargain you dolt. It’s a Gift, at least it will be if I phrase it the right way…hopefully there will be no spiders…here!” As he clasped the necklace around her neck, the snow swirling around them both in a way that was not natural, and sang out a rhyme: From Earthly princess to River prince Such Kindness shown to me This silver from ‘round my neck Shall now and forever yours be And when in danger This princess finds Only rub the silver One times and three And where you are there shall be me

Snow White felt a warmness wrap all around her, like the kitchen hearth, and the smell of cinnamon and oranges in her nose. Then a sharp, not-quite-pain in her heart like a bite of ice or a spark of fire.

As the world settled back, the boy lept, clamping his hands. “I did it! My first Gift! Won’t Papa and the Weavers be proud! And you aren’t a toad or a spider!”

The princess was not sure what to say, but she started to laugh in spite of it all, for the boy’s joy was infectious. “You’ve done a very good job with…whatever you just did,” she said, “The crown thanks you. As do I--.”

“Only I can’t come in summer, try as you might. Too hot, I’d fall to pieces,” the boy interrupted, looking at Lucinda almost tenderly.

“Oh—of course. I would not intrude upon your comfort.”

“Now, you should hop off to where you came from. Go on, shoo.”

The bow motioned her back to the woods. Snow White realized that indeed the sky had become a deep winter red, and something about it felt strange.

“Oh my, the sky has never looked like that before, I have been gone so long, Nurse will be worried sick.”

“Bother nurses, mines covered in prickles and spits fire. Just be off the way you came. Papa will let you out. You’re so scrawny you aren’t worth keeping.”

Snow White curtsied, ignoring that the boy did not return with a bow, but was engaged in picking his ears.

“Until we meet again.”

The boy only responded with a squint and started making his way along the river. Snow White watched him until he was out of sight, before realizing she had never asked the strange boy his name.

Excerpt from the Snow White short story turned novella retelling I am working on called The River and the Doll. Context is that Snow White is around 8 and meets a curious boy when out on a walk one day.

***

Some days after, pleased with herself and also relieved to have a break from kitting and sewing, Snow White carried Lucinda in her apron pocket under her fur-lined coat whenever she went out of the castle walls to play in the snow. She was not allowed to go out alone and she was not alone: Nurse had fallen asleep, all wrinkled up in blankets against an old stump. The princess had held up her ear to the nurse’s nose to make sure the old woman was snoring before stomping off into the woods in search of—well, she did not know what, but a good princess must “keep good council and govern her realm,” although she was not certain what Mama Queen meant by such words. Mama had been staying in bed much more than usual and had been telling Snow White all about being a good princess when she was not asleep, and the child tried very hard to keep it all straight. Still, the cold forest on the edge of wilderness to the north called to her young heart and she wanted to slip away from lessons and lectures for an afternoon and have a little adventure. She stuffed her pockets with holly and pine twigs, and tried to lure the few remaining song birds that fluttered between the trees onto her palms, without success. The sun grew higher in the sky and she found herself wandering one of the snowy paths to the river that the fisherman and women used on laundry days. But through the crunching of her boots and the few bird calls, Snow White heard something else, faintly sounding as it had come from the river. “Is it a stoat or a fox caught in a hunter’s trap?” she thought, trying to follow the sound as best she could. It did sound like crying. Perhaps a child had gotten caught instead? Oh how dreadful, thought the princess, picking up her speed. By the frozen river, so enormously wide that Snow White could hardly see the far bank even in the full sun of the day, the wailing and screeching grew quite clear to her ears and she was drawn to the source of it. A pathetic lump flailed on a snow covered log. Snow White got a quite close before she realized two things: one, that the figure was a little boy, about the same age as herself, and two, that this boy was wearing nothing but a cloth around his waist and a silver chain as thin as spider silk around his neck, even in the midst of freezing cold. “Oh!” shrieked Snow White, her cheeks turning almost as red has her lips. Instantly the wailing ceased and the boy sprang up, his sharp features struck with surprise and fury, and he stared at the princess without saying a word.

The boy had hair as white as winter light and his eyes were as blue as the winter sky. His face was red with crying and snuffling and he kept wiping his nose upon his bare arm. His skin seemed patterned with lacy designs that reminded Snow White of spider webs. “You!” he pointed right at her, bounding up on top of the log as graceful as a snow flurry. “Peasant! Voyeur! Run for your life or I’ll make a crown of your teeth!” Snow White had step back, heart pounding, but she took a breath and steadied her nerves. Straightening up and folding her hands in front of her, she spoke: “I beg your pardon, but I am no peasant. I am Princess Snow White.” “I don’t care what you are. I’m in charge here—or at least Papa is—and I want you out out out!” “I beg your pardon—I do believe you are mistaken. My Papa is in that castle behind the woods,” she said, pointed back through the trees. “And he is King.” The little boy stomped and stamped. He reminded Snow White of little babies at mass who were at the end of their temper. “You stupid creatures! But I won’t, I refuse to bicker with you. I haven’t the time now, though I could.” “But whatever is the matter?” “None of your beeswax.” “You were crying a good amount just now.” The boy sniffed. The tears on his cheek had frozen on his flesh, but now fresh ones dripped down his face. “I was not crying. I was in Mourning.” Snow White thought that if she had been a hen she would have ruffled her feathers and given him a good scratch. Still, she tried to keep the irritation from her voice. “And what was it led you to such mourning?” “What is it to you? You wouldn’t understand it. Human’s have tadpoles for brains and girls' only slime.” How she wanted to push him off that log into the snow bank! The princess had to squeeze Lucinda for patience. “My mama says sometimes a kind ear helps. Maybe if you tell me your sorrows you will feel much better.” The boy crouched down again on the log, folding his arms in front of him. “Oh very well, peasant. Since you insist upon trespassing. Papa says he is sending me off up river to a horrid, awful, slimy, old bog, the worst you’ve ever seen, full of weeds, and cramped too. I am to be taught by this old bat of an uncle in a boiling cesspool how to bow and say lies ‘your new broach becomes you, aunt Jenal’ and not say truths like ‘you’ve gotten awful fat aunt Jenal’, and which sort of fish you must eat first and how to speak the babble of the nymphs and how to talk to these awful wretched monsters called girls and he shall starve me and beat me and feed me to the nuckelavees.” The boy’s head flopped back as if in anguish, and from around his neck glinted the finest silver chain Snow White had ever seen. “But I am sure it won’t be as dreadful as you imagine,”she began, trying to think of what Mama Queen would say, “Doesn’t your papa love you?” “He insists he does but I think it is a Trick. He is fattening me up to eat me.” “But if he loves you he wouldn’t send you off to somewhere so terrible. It very well might be very happy indeed.” The boy only moaned and draped along the log. He seemed to be muttering something under his breath and the snow around him swirled even though there was no wind. “What of your mother?” she said, “What does she think?” At that the boy sat up, his pale eyes stinging with fury. “You stupid dolt. I haven’t got one.” Snow White brought her mitten to her mouth. She had made an assumption—Mama was always warning her about those. “I’m—the crown is terribly sorry.” “Sorry this or that, it doesn’t mean a bit to me." The princess was silent, wriggling her fingers inside her mittens. “But it will make your Papa and your uncle happy if you go.”

[kookies2000]

I'm pretty sure it's midnight where Katie is. Not to mention it's most likely midnight in Canada to! So, Happy birthday Katie! And since your birthday is close to Jordan's birthday, May 23rd, I thought I would create a story in your guys honor! The three of us ship Fendra and there's not much of that in the fandom so I thought I would make a fanfic about them! I'll try to update a chapter everyday until the 23rd. So about the story, it's mostly about what could've happened off screen during the show. Like Fenton and Gandra reuniting after their first date to when she gets kidnapped and even after The Last Adventure. Hope you guys enjoy it! Again, Happy birthday @theofficialkai517 and Happy Early Birthday to @therealjordan23 . Hope you feel better soon, I really miss you!

Here we go!

Chapter One

The night was cloudy and the sound of rain drops slamming against the glass windows could be heard. A certain scientist was walking along the sidewalk with a pitch black hood over her head, making sure no one saw her tear stained face. A flash of lightning illuminated the sky with a bright purple making the women flinch. Usually electricity wasn't an issue for her, in fact she loved thunderstorms, but tonight was different. Tonight her body felt like it was burning from the inside out.

"Come on Gandra, the lab isn't that far aw-" the woman felt a jolt of electricity shoot through her body. She was able to hold in her screams but she grunted in pain. She lost all feeling in her legs allowing her to fall to her knees.

"Ma'am! Are you ok?" She heard a man call out to her. Seconds later she felt someone place their hand over her shoulder, her first reaction was to pull away as fast as she could.

"Don't touch me!" Gandra grunted in pain. The man didn't listen and placed his hand over her shoulder once again.

"Ma'am? Do you need help-" the man felt a giant electric shock go through him. He instantly let her go and fell to the wet ground. Gandra was breathing heavily, trying to look over at the frightened man she just accidentally electrocuted.

"S-sorry….." Gandra said through her pain. Another electric shock raced across her body, this time much stronger than the last. She let out a yelp of pain before getting on her feet and running off.

Her mind was racing, she knew what she had to do and where to go, but the question was will she make it on time? Not even a minute later, another jolt of electricity shot through her. This one was strong enough to make half her body go numb, causing her to fall flat on pavement. She laid there on her belly, her face buried in her arms as she let out a few sobs. She turned her head slightly to her left, her electric blue eyes catching sight of a dark alley. At that moment she knew what she had to do.

It was 12am and a majority of Duckburg was asleep by now. In his room, Fenton was asleep on his desk. His head flat on his keyboard and the light of his computer illuminating the room. The calendar on his wall had x marks of the days that passed. One crossed out box in his calendar read Night With Miss Dee. 14 boxes were crossed out after it meaning two weeks had passed since that night. Fenton mumbled under his breath when he felt his phone start to vibrate.

"Mamá, ahorita me levanto. Just 10 more minutes," Fenton squirmed in his seat. He eventually lost balance and fell off his chair. The hard impact was enough to wake him up in less than a second. He shot back up and soon realized it was his phone vibrating. He clumsily picked it up, almost dropping it. Once he got a good grip he pushed the answer button, held it up to his ear and tiredly said, "Hello?"

"Sorry to wake you up Suit," he recognized her voice right away. His eye's shot open in surprise, he was sure after how that night ended he would never hear her voice again. But again, they didn't end on a bad term right?

"No worries. What's happening Gandra? You ok?" Fenton noticed the pain in her voice.

"No, I'm far from-" she was interrupted by a loud zapping noise, causing her to let out a small scream of pain. This was enough to make Fentons heart sink down to his stomach.

"Gandra what's happening?" Fenton repeated. He rushed to his closest and took out a warm coat and an umbrella. He froze for a moment before asking, "Do you need GizmoDuck?"

"No, not GizmoDuck," Gandra let out another grunt of pain, "I need you Fenton. I need-"

She didn't even finish her sentence before letting out a scream of pain.

"Where are you?" Fenton was already in his rain clothes and out the front door. He hopped onto his bike and was ready to rush to her aid.

"Near the park in the alley way of the two apartments." Gandra was barely able to get out. Her voice sounded so weak, like she was tired of screaming.

"I'm on my way, just stay on the phone with me ok?" Fenton rushed away on his bike.

"I'll-" the phone call was cut short when he heard a loud zap before a long beep, indicating the call had ended. Fenton silently mumbled something to himself as he picked up the speed. He made it to the park in record time and looked around for any apartments. Fortunately he spotted a flash of blue and white between two buildings. Fenton hurried his way over, knowing that must be where she is.

Her eyes were heavy, she could barely keep them open. She kept her eye's focused on her ungloved hands where the damaged nanites were. The sparks were flying from how broken they were. She eventually shut her eye's, tired of fighting to keep them open.

"Gandra?" She heard a familiar voice call to her.

It was faded, like if she had ear muffs on. She heard the man repeat her name over and over but each time she didn't have the strength to respond. She felt his warm hands grab her shoulders but soon enough another electric shock came. She let out a tired scream and saw a blue flash before her eye's. She didn't know how much longer she could handle this, she was sure her blood was boiling at this point. She was able to hear a short scream but mostly out of shock. She didn't need to open her eye's to know he was staring at her in horror.

"Gandra what do you need?" She could barely hear Fenton ask.

"Need?" Her voice was low and raspy, "My nanites….. their damaged….. I…. "

She felt another shock go across her body. This one lasted much longer than the others. It was enough to make her whole body go numb, letting her fall to the ground. She was barely awake, she could barely feel Fenton wrap his arms around her. She felt herself get lifted up from the ground and someone holding onto her tight.

"..... I got you……. lab, I need….. lab." Fentons voice was barely audible. She could only hear parts of what he was saying but at least it was comforting knowing he was there. She put all her focus on opening her eye's, at least just a crack. Her vision was too blurry to identify where they were. All she saw were the street lights passing and even those were blurry. Eventually, her eyelids felt too heavy. She couldn't keep them open any longer, she was too numb to even scream in pain when another shock tracked through her body. Eventually, the last thing she saw was a flash of blue before going dark.

Short but more is to come, I promise. You guys can title this story because I have no idea what to title it. 😅 Hope you two enjoy! I love you Katie, I love you Jordan! ❤

[rattatooe]

Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis (1915)

I.

One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug. He lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes.

"What's happened to me," he thought. It was no dream. His room, a proper room for a human being, only somewhat too small, lay quietly between the four well-known walls. Above the table, on which an unpacked collection of sample cloth goods was spread out—Samsa was a travelling salesman—hung the picture which he had cut out of an illustrated magazine a little while ago and set in a pretty gilt frame. It was a picture of a woman with a fur hat and a fur boa. She sat erect there, lifting up in the direction of the viewer a solid fur muff into which her entire forearm had disappeared.

Gregor's glance then turned to the window. The dreary weather—the rain drops were falling audibly down on the metal window ledge—made him quite melancholy. "Why don't I keep sleeping for a little while longer and forget all this foolishness," he thought. But this was entirely impractical, for he was used to sleeping on his right side, and in his present state he couldn't get himself into this position. No matter how hard he threw himself onto his right side, he always rolled again onto his back. He must have tried it a hundred times, closing his eyes so that he would not have to see the wriggling legs, and gave up only when he began to feel a light, dull pain in his side which he had never felt before.

"O God," he thought, "what a demanding job I've chosen! Day in, day out, on the road. The stresses of selling are much greater than the work going on at head office, and, in addition to that, I have to cope with the problems of travelling, the worries about train connections, irregular bad food, temporary and constantly changing human relationships, which never come from the heart. To hell with it all!" He felt a slight itching on the top of his abdomen. He slowly pushed himself on his back closer to the bed post so that he could lift his head more easily, found the itchy part, which was entirely covered with small white spots—he did not know what to make of them and wanted to feel the place with a leg. But he retracted it immediately, for the contact felt like a cold shower all over him.

He slid back again into his earlier position. "This getting up early," he thought, "makes a man quite idiotic. A man must have his sleep. Other travelling salesmen live like harem women. For instance, when I come back to the inn during the course of the morning to write up the necessary orders, these gentlemen are just sitting down to breakfast. If I were to try that with my boss, I'd be thrown out on the spot. Still, who knows whether that mightn't be really good for me? If I didn't hold back for my parents' sake, I'd have quit ages ago. I would've gone to the boss and told him just what I think from the bottom of my heart. He would've fallen right off his desk! How weird it is to sit up at that desk and talk down to the employee from way up there. The boss has trouble hearing, so the employee has to step up quite close to him. Anyway, I haven't completely given up that hope yet. Once I've got together the money to pay off my parents' debt to him—that should take another five or six years—I'll do it for sure. Then I'll make the big break. In any case, right now I have to get up. My train leaves at five o'clock."

He looked over at the alarm clock ticking away by the chest of drawers. "Good God!" he thought. It was half past six, and the hands were going quietly on. It was past the half hour, already nearly quarter to. Could the alarm have failed to ring? One saw from the bed that it was properly set for four o'clock. Certainly it had rung. Yes, but was it possible to sleep through that noise which made the furniture shake? Now, it's true he'd not slept quietly, but evidently he'd slept all the more deeply. Still, what should he do now? The next train left at seven o'clock. To catch that one, he would have to go in a mad rush. The sample collection wasn't packed up yet, and he really didn't feel particularly fresh and active. And even if he caught the train, there was no avoiding a blow-up with the boss, because the firm's errand boy would've waited for the five o'clock train and reported the news of his absence long ago. He was the boss's minion, without backbone or intelligence. Well then, what if he reported in sick? But that would be extremely embarrassing and suspicious, because during his five years' service Gregor hadn't been sick even once. The boss would certainly come with the doctor from the health insurance company and would reproach his parents for their lazy son and cut short all objections with the insurance doctor's comments; for him everyone was completely healthy but really lazy about work. And besides, would the doctor in this case be totally wrong? Apart from a really excessive drowsiness after the long sleep, Gregor in fact felt quite well and even had a really strong appetite.

As he was thinking all this over in the greatest haste, without being able to make the decision to get out of bed—the alarm clock was indicating exactly quarter to seven—there was a cautious knock on the door by the head of the bed.

"Gregor," a voice called—it was his mother!—"it's quarter to seven. Don't you want to be on your way?" The soft voice! Gregor was startled when he heard his voice answering. It was clearly and unmistakably his earlier voice, but in it was intermingled, as if from below, an irrepressibly painful squeaking, which left the words positively distinct only in the first moment and distorted them in the reverberation, so that one didn't know if one had heard correctly. Gregor wanted to answer in detail and explain everything, but in these circumstances he confined himself to saying, "Yes, yes, thank you mother. I'm getting up right away." Because of the wooden door the change in Gregor's voice was not really noticeable outside, so his mother calmed down with this explanation and shuffled off. However, as a result of the short conversation, the other family members became aware that Gregor was unexpectedly still at home, and already his father was knocking on one side door, weakly but with his fist. "Gregor, Gregor," he called out, "what's going on?" And, after a short while, he urged him on again in a deeper voice: "Gregor!" Gregor!" At the other side door, however, his sister knocked lightly. "Gregor? Are you all right? Do you need anything?" Gregor directed answers in both directions, "I'll be ready right away." He made an effort with the most careful articulation and by inserting long pauses between the individual words to remove everything remarkable from his voice. His father turned back to his breakfast. However, the sister whispered, "Gregor, open the door—I beg you." Gregor had no intention of opening the door, but congratulated himself on his precaution, acquired from travelling, of locking all doors during the night, even at home.

First he wanted to stand up quietly and undisturbed, get dressed, above all have breakfast, and only then consider further action, for—he noticed this clearly—by thinking things over in bed he would not reach a reasonable conclusion. He remembered that he had already often felt a light pain or other in bed, perhaps the result of an awkward lying position, which later turned out to be purely imaginary when he stood up, and he was eager to see how his present fantasies would gradually dissipate. That the change in his voice was nothing other than the onset of a real chill, an occupational illness of commercial travellers, of that he had not the slightest doubt.

It was very easy to throw aside the blanket. He needed only to push himself up a little, and it fell by itself. But to continue was difficult, particularly because he was so unusually wide. He needed arms and hands to push himself upright. Instead of these, however, he had only many small limbs which were incessantly moving with very different motions and which, in addition, he was unable to control. If he wanted to bend one of them, then it was the first to extend itself, and if he finally succeeded doing what he wanted with this limb, in the meantime all the others, as if left free, moved around in an excessively painful agitation. "But I must not stay in bed uselessly," said Gregor to himself.

At first he wanted to get out of bed with the lower part of his body, but this lower part—which, by the way, he had not yet looked at and which he also couldn't picture clearly—proved itself too difficult to move. The attempt went so slowly. When, having become almost frantic, he finally hurled himself forward with all his force and without thinking, he chose his direction incorrectly, and he hit the lower bedpost hard. The violent pain he felt revealed to him that the lower part of his body was at the moment probably the most sensitive.

Thus, he tried to get his upper body out of the bed first and turned his head carefully toward the edge of the bed. He managed to do this easily, and in spite of its width and weight his body mass at last slowly followed the turning of his head. But as he finally raised his head outside the bed in the open air, he became anxious about moving forward any further in this manner, for if he allowed himself eventually to fall by this process, it would take a miracle to prevent his head from getting injured. And at all costs he must not lose consciousness right now. He preferred to remain in bed.

However, after a similar effort, while he lay there again, sighing as before, and once again saw his small limbs fighting one another, if anything worse than earlier, and didn't see any chance of imposing quiet and order on this arbitrary movement, he told himself again that he couldn't possibly remain in bed and that it might be the most reasonable thing to sacrifice everything if there was even the slightest hope of getting himself out of bed in the process. At the same moment, however, he didn't forget to remind himself from time to time of the fact that calm—indeed the calmest—reflection might be better than the most confused decisions. At such moments, he directed his gaze as precisely as he could toward the window, but unfortunately there was little confident cheer to be had from a glance at the morning mist, which concealed even the other side of the narrow street. "It's already seven o'clock," he told himself at the latest striking of the alarm clock, "already seven o'clock and still such a fog." And for a little while longer he lay quietly with weak breathing, as if perhaps waiting for normal and natural conditions to re-emerge out of the complete stillness.

But then he said to himself, "Before it strikes a quarter past seven, whatever happens I must be completely out of bed. Besides, by then someone from the office will arrive to inquire about me, because the office will open before seven o'clock." And he made an effort then to rock his entire body length out of the bed with a uniform motion. If he let himself fall out of the bed in this way, his head, which in the course of the fall he intended to lift up sharply, would probably remain uninjured. His back seemed to be hard; nothing would really happen to that as a result of the fall. His greatest reservation was a worry about the loud noise which the fall must create and which presumably would arouse, if not fright, then at least concern on the other side of all the doors. However, it had to be tried.

As Gregor was in the process of lifting himself half out of bed—the new method was more of a game than an effort; he needed only to rock with a constant rhythm—it struck him how easy all this would be if someone were to come to his aid. Two strong people—he thought of his father and the servant girl—would have been quite sufficient. They would have only had to push their arms under his arched back to get him out of the bed, to bend down with their load, and then merely to exercise patience and care that he completed the flip onto the floor, where his diminutive legs would then, he hoped, acquire a purpose. Now, quite apart from the fact that the doors were locked, should he really call out for help? In spite of all his distress, he was unable to suppress a smile at this idea.

He had already got to the point where, by rocking more strongly, he maintained his equilibrium with difficulty, and very soon he would finally have to decide, for in five minutes it would be a quarter past seven. Then there was a ring at the door of the apartment. "That's someone from the office," he told himself, and he almost froze while his small limbs only danced around all the faster. For one moment everything remained still. "They aren't opening," Gregor said to himself, caught up in some absurd hope. But of course then, as usual, the servant girl with her firm tread went to the door and opened it. Gregor needed to hear only the first word of the visitor's greeting to recognize immediately who it was, the manager himself. Why was Gregor the only one condemned to work in a firm where, at the slightest lapse, someone immediately attracted the greatest suspicion? Were all the employees then collectively, one and all, scoundrels? Among them was there then no truly devoted person who, if he failed to use just a couple of hours in the morning for office work, would become abnormal from pangs of conscience and really be in no state to get out of bed? Was it really not enough to let an apprentice make inquiries, if such questioning was even necessary? Must the manager himself come, and in the process must it be demonstrated to the entire innocent family that the investigation of this suspicious circumstance could be entrusted only to the intelligence of the manager? And more as a consequence of the excited state in which this idea put Gregor than as a result of an actual decision, he swung himself with all his might out of the bed. There was a loud thud, but not a real crash. The fall was absorbed somewhat by the carpet and, in addition, his back was more elastic than Gregor had thought. For that reason the dull noise was not quite so conspicuous. But he had not held his head up with sufficient care and had hit it. He turned his head, irritated and in pain, and rubbed it on the carpet.

"Something has fallen in there," said the manager in the next room on the left. Gregor tried to imagine to himself whether anything similar to what was happening to him today could have also happened at some point to the manager. At least one had to concede the possibility of such a thing. However, as if to give a rough answer to this question, the manager now, with a squeak of his polished boots, took a few determined steps in the next room. From the neighbouring room on the right the sister was whispering to inform Gregor: "Gregor, the manager is here." "I know," said Gregor to himself. But he did not dare make his voice loud enough so that his sister could hear.

"Gregor," his father now said from the neighbouring room on the left, "Mr. Manager has come and is asking why you have not left on the early train. We don't know what we should tell him. Besides, he also wants to speak to you personally. So please open the door. He will be good enough to forgive the mess in your room."

In the middle of all this, the manager called out in a friendly way, "Good morning, Mr. Samsa." "He is not well," said his mother to the manager, while his father was still talking at the door, "He is not well, believe me, Mr. Manager. Otherwise how would Gregor miss a train? The young man has nothing in his head except business. I'm almost angry that he never goes out at night. Right now he's been in the city eight days, but he's been at home every evening. He sits here with us at the table and reads the newspaper quietly or studies his travel schedules. It's a quite a diversion for him to busy himself with fretwork. For instance, he cut out a small frame over the course of two or three evenings. You'd be amazed how pretty it is. It's hanging right inside the room. You'll see it immediately, as soon as Gregor opens the door. Anyway, I'm happy that you're here, Mr. Manager. By ourselves, we would never have made Gregor open the door. He's so stubborn, and he's certainly not well, although he denied that this morning."

"I'm coming right away," said Gregor slowly and deliberately and didn't move, so as not to lose one word of the conversation. "My dear lady, I cannot explain it to myself in any other way," said the manager; "I hope it is nothing serious. On the other hand, I must also say that we business people, luckily or unluckily, however one looks at it, very often simply have to overcome a slight indisposition for business reasons." "So can Mr. Manager come in to see you now?" asked his father impatiently and knocked once again on the door. "No," said Gregor. In the neighbouring room on the left a painful stillness descended. In the neighbouring room on the right the sister began to sob.

Why didn't his sister go to the others? She'd probably just gotten up out of bed now and hadn't even started to get dressed yet. Then why was she crying? Because he wasn't getting up and wasn't letting the manager in, because he was in danger of losing his position, and because then his boss would badger his parents once again with the old demands? Those were probably unnecessary worries right now. Gregor was still here and wasn't thinking at all about abandoning his family. At the moment he was lying right there on the carpet, and no one who knew about his condition would've seriously demanded that he let the manager in. But Gregor wouldn't be casually dismissed right way because of this small discourtesy, for which he would find an easy and suitable excuse later on. It seemed to Gregor that it might be far more reasonable to leave him in peace at the moment, instead of disturbing him with crying and conversation. But it was the very uncertainty which distressed the others and excused their behaviour.

"Mr. Samsa," the manager was now shouting, his voice raised, "what's the matter? You are barricading yourself in your room, answer with only a yes and a no, are making serious and unnecessary troubles for your parents, and neglecting (I mention this only incidentally) your commercial duties in a truly unheard of manner. I am speaking here in the name of your parents and your employer, and I am requesting you in all seriousness for an immediate and clear explanation. I am amazed. I am amazed. I thought I knew you as a calm, reasonable person, and now you appear suddenly to want to start parading around in weird moods. The Chief indicated to me earlier this very day a possible explanation for your neglect--it concerned the collection of cash entrusted to you a short while ago--but in truth I almost gave him my word of honour that this explanation could not be correct. However, now I see here your unimaginable pig headedness, and I am totally losing any desire to speak up for you in the slightest. And your position is not at all the most secure. Originally I intended to mention all this to you privately, but since you are letting me waste my time here uselessly, I don't know why the matter shouldn't come to the attention of your parents. Your productivity has also been very unsatisfactory recently. Of course, it's not the time of year to conduct exceptional business, we recognize that, but a time of year for conducting no business, there is no such thing at all, Mr. Samsa, and such a thing must never be."

"But Mr. Manager," called Gregor, beside himself and, in his agitation, forgetting everything else, "I'm opening the door immediately, this very moment. A slight indisposition, a dizzy spell, has prevented me from getting up. I'm still lying in bed right now. But I'm quite refreshed once again. I'm in the midst of getting out of bed. Just have patience for a short moment! Things are not going as well as I thought. But things are all right. How suddenly this can overcome someone! Only yesterday evening everything was fine with me. My parents certainly know that. Actually just yesterday evening I had a small premonition. People must have seen that in me. Why have I not reported that to the office? But people always think that they'll get over sickness without having to stay at home. Mr. Manager! Take it easy on my parents! There is really no basis for the criticisms which you're now making against me, and really nobody has said a word to me about that. Perhaps you have not read the latest orders which I shipped. Besides, now I'm setting out on my trip on the eight o'clock train; the few hours' rest have made me stronger. Mr. Manager, do not stay. I will be at the office in person right away. Please have the goodness to say that and to convey my respects to the Chief."

While Gregor was quickly blurting all this out, hardly aware of what he was saying, he had moved close to the chest of drawers without effort, probably as a result of the practice he had already had in bed, and now he was trying to raise himself up on it. Actually, he wanted to open the door. He really wanted to let himself be seen by and to speak with the manager. He was keen to witness what the others now asking about him would say when they saw him. If they were startled, then Gregor had no more responsibility and could be calm. But if they accepted everything quietly, then he would have no reason to get excited and, if he got a move on, could really be at the station around eight o'clock.

At first he slid down a few times on the smooth chest of drawers. But at last he gave himself a final swing and stood upright there. He was no longer at all aware of the pains in his lower body, no matter how they might still sting. Now he let himself fall against the back of a nearby chair, on the edge of which he braced himself with his thin limbs. By doing this he gained control over himself and kept quiet, for he could now hear the manager.

"Did you understood a single word?" the manager asked the parents, "Is he playing the fool with us?" "For God's sake," cried the mother already in tears, "perhaps he's very ill and we're upsetting him. Grete! Grete!" she yelled at that point. "Mother?" called the sister from the other side. They were making themselves understood through Gregor's room. "You must go to the doctor right away. Gregor is sick. Hurry to the doctor. Have you heard Gregor speak yet?" "That was an animal's voice," said the manager, remarkably quietly in comparison to the mother's cries.

"Anna! Anna!' yelled the father through the hall into the kitchen, clapping his hands, "fetch a locksmith right away!" The two young women were already running through the hall with swishing skirts—how had his sister dressed herself so quickly?—and yanked open the doors of the apartment. One couldn't hear the doors closing at all. They probably had left them open, as is customary in an apartment where a huge misfortune has taken place.

However, Gregor had become much calmer. All right, people did not understand his words any more, although they seemed clear enough to him, clearer than previously, perhaps because his ears had gotten used to them. But at least people now thought that things were not all right with him and were prepared to help him. The confidence and assurance with which the first arrangements had been carried out made him feel good. He felt himself included once again in the circle of humanity and was expecting from both the doctor and the locksmith, without differentiating between them with any real precision, splendid and surprising results. In order to get as clear a voice as possible for the critical conversation which was imminent, he coughed a little, and certainly took the trouble to do this in a really subdued way, since it was possible that even this noise sounded like something different from a human cough. He no longer trusted himself to decide any more. Meanwhile in the next room it had become really quiet. Perhaps his parents were sitting with the manager at the table whispering; perhaps they were all leaning against the door listening.

Gregor pushed himself slowly towards the door, with the help of the easy chair, let go of it there, threw himself against the door, held himself upright against it—the balls of his tiny limbs had a little sticky stuff on them—and rested there momentarily from his exertion. Then he made an effort to turn the key in the lock with his mouth. Unfortunately it seemed that he had no real teeth. How then was he to grab hold of the key? But to make up for that his jaws were naturally very strong; with their help he managed to get the key really moving. He didn't notice that he was obviously inflicting some damage on himself, for a brown fluid came out of his mouth, flowed over the key, and dripped onto the floor.

"Just listen for a moment," said the manager in the next room; "he's turning the key." For Gregor that was a great encouragement. But they all should've called out to him, including his father and mother, "Come on, Gregor," they should've shouted; "keep going, keep working on the lock." Imagining that all his efforts were being followed with suspense, he bit down frantically on the key with all the force he could muster. As the key turned more, he danced around the lock. Now he was holding himself upright only with his mouth, and he had to hang onto the key or then press it down again with the whole weight of his body, as necessary. The quite distinct click of the lock as it finally snapped really woke Gregor up. Breathing heavily he said to himself, "So I didn't need the locksmith," and he set his head against the door handle to open the door completely.

Because he had to open the door in this way, it was already open very wide without him yet being really visible. He first had to turn himself slowly around the edge of the door, very carefully, of course, if he didn't want to fall awkwardly on his back right at the entrance into the room. He was still preoccupied with this difficult movement and had no time to pay attention to anything else, when he heard the manager exclaim a loud "Oh!"—it sounded like the wind whistling—and now he saw him, nearest to the door, pressing his hand against his open mouth and moving slowly back, as if an invisible constant force was pushing him away. His mother—in spite of the presence of the manager she was standing here with her hair sticking up on end, still a mess from the night—was looking at his father with her hands clasped. She then went two steps towards Gregor and collapsed right in the middle of her skirts, which were spread out all around her, her face sunk on her breast, completely concealed. His father clenched his fist with a hostile expression, as if he wished to push Gregor back into his room, then looked uncertainly around the living room, covered his eyes with his hands, and cried so that his mighty breast shook.

At this point Gregor did not take one step into the room, but leaned his body from the inside against the firmly bolted wing of the door, so that only half his body was visible, as well as his head, tilted sideways, with which he peeped over at the others. Meanwhile it had become much brighter. Standing out clearly from the other side of the street was a part of the endless grey-black house situated opposite—it was a hospital—with its severe regular windows breaking up the facade. The rain was still coming down, but only in large individual drops visibly and firmly thrown down one by one onto the ground. The breakfast dishes were standing piled around on the table, because for his father breakfast was the most important meal time in the day, which he prolonged for hours by reading various newspapers. Directly across on the opposite wall hung a photograph of Gregor from the time of his military service; it was a picture of him as a lieutenant, as he, smiling and worry free, with his hand on his sword, demanded respect for his bearing and uniform. The door to the hall was ajar, and since the door to the apartment was also open, one could see out into the landing of the apartment and the start of the staircase going down.

"Now," said Gregor, well aware that he was the only one who had kept his composure. "I'll get dressed right away, pack up the collection of samples, and set off. You'll allow me to set out on my way, will you not? You see, Mr. Manager, I am not pig-headed, and I am happy to work. Travelling is exhausting, but I couldn't live without it. Where are you going, Mr. Manager? To the office? Really? Will you report everything truthfully? A person can be incapable of work momentarily, but that's precisely the best time to remember the earlier achievements and to consider that later, after the obstacles have been shoved aside, the person will work all the more eagerly and intensely. I am really so indebted to Mr. Chief--you know that perfectly well. On the other hand, I am concerned about my parents and my sister. I'm in a fix, but I'll work myself out of it again. Don't make things more difficult for me than they already are. Speak up on my behalf in the office! People don't like travelling salesmen. I know that. People think they earn pots of money and thus lead a fine life. People don't even have any special reason to think through this judgment more clearly. But you, Mr. Manager, you have a better perspective on what's involved than other people, even, I tell you in total confidence, a better perspective than Mr. Chairman himself, who in his capacity as the employer may let his judgment make casual mistakes at the expense of an employee. You also know well enough that the travelling salesman who is outside the office almost the entire year can become so easily a victim of gossip, coincidences, and groundless complaints, against which it's impossible for him to defend himself, since for the most part he doesn't hear about them at all and only then when he's exhausted after finishing a trip and at home gets to feel in his own body the nasty consequences, which can't be thoroughly explored back to their origins. Mr. Manager, don't leave without speaking a word telling me that you'll at least concede that I'm a little in the right!"

But at Gregor's first words the manager had already turned away, and now he looked back at Gregor over his twitching shoulders with pursed lips. During Gregor's speech he was not still for a moment but kept moving away towards the door, without taking his eyes off Gregor, but really gradually, as if there was a secret ban on leaving the room. He was already in the hall, and given the sudden movement with which he finally pulled his foot out of the living room, one could have believed that he had just burned the sole of his foot. In the hall, however, he stretched his right hand out away from his body towards the staircase, as if some truly supernatural relief was waiting for him there.

Gregor realized that he must not under any circumstances allow the manager to go away in this frame of mind, especially if his position in the firm was not to be placed in the greatest danger. His parents did not understand all this very well. Over the long years, they had developed the conviction that Gregor was set up for life in his firm and, in addition, they had so much to do nowadays with their present troubles that all foresight was foreign to them. But Gregor had this foresight. The manager must be held back, calmed down, convinced, and finally won over. The future of Gregor and his family really depended on it! If only the sister had been there! She was clever. She had already cried while Gregor was still lying quietly on his back. And the manager, this friend of the ladies, would certainly let himself be guided by her. She would have closed the door to the apartment and talked him out of his fright in the hall. But the sister was not even there. Gregor must deal with it himself.

Without thinking that as yet he didn't know anything about his present ability to move and that his speech possibly—indeed probably—had once again not been understood, he left the wing of the door, pushed himself through the opening, and wanted to go over to the manager, who was already holding tight onto the handrail with both hands on the landing in a ridiculous way. But as he looked for something to hold onto, with a small scream Gregor immediately fell down onto his numerous little legs. Scarcely had this happened, when he felt for the first time that morning a general physical well being. The small limbs had firm floor under them; they obeyed perfectly, as he noticed to his joy, and strove to carry him forward in the direction he wanted. Right away he believed that the final amelioration of all his suffering was immediately at hand. But at the very moment when he lay on the floor rocking in a restrained manner quite close and directly across from his mother, who had apparently totally sunk into herself, she suddenly sprang right up with her arms spread far apart and her fingers extended and cried out, "Help, for God's sake, help!" She held her head bowed down, as if she wanted to view Gregor better, but ran senselessly back, contradicting that gesture, forgetting that behind her stood the table with all the dishes on it. When she reached the table, she sat down heavily on it, as if absent-mindedly, and did not appear to notice at all that next to her coffee was pouring out onto the carpet in a full stream from the large overturned container.

"Mother, mother," said Gregor quietly, and looked over towards her. The manager momentarily had disappeared completely from his mind. At the sight of the flowing coffee Gregor couldn't stop himself snapping his jaws in the air a few times . At that his mother screamed all over again, hurried from the table, and collapsed into the arms of his father, who was rushing towards her. But Gregor had no time right now for his parents—the manager was already on the staircase. His chin level with the banister, the manager looked back for the last time. Gregor took an initial movement to catch up to him if possible. But the manager must have suspected something, because he made a leap down over a few stairs and disappeared, still shouting "Huh!" The sound echoed throughout the entire stairwell.

Now, unfortunately this flight of the manager also seemed to bewilder his father completely. Earlier he had been relatively calm, for instead of running after the manager himself or at least not hindering Gregor from his pursuit, with his right hand he grabbed hold of the manager's cane, which he had left behind with his hat and overcoat on a chair. With his left hand, his father picked up a large newspaper from the table and, stamping his feet on the floor, he set out to drive Gregor back into his room by waving the cane and the newspaper. No request of Gregor's was of any use; no request would even be understood. No matter how willing he was to turn his head respectfully, his father just stomped all the harder with his feet.

Across the room from him his mother had pulled open a window, in spite of the cool weather, and leaning out with her hands on her cheeks, she pushed her face far outside the window. Between the alley and the stairwell a strong draught came up, the curtains on the window flew around, the newspapers on the table swished, and individual sheets fluttered down over the floor. The father relentlessly pressed forward, pushing out sibilants, like a wild man. Now, Gregor had no practice at all in going backwards—it was really very slow going. If Gregor only had been allowed to turn himself around, he would have been in his room right away, but he was afraid to make his father impatient by the time-consuming process of turning around, and each moment he faced the threat of a mortal blow on his back or his head from the cane in his father's hand. Finally Gregor had no other option, for he noticed with horror that he did not understand yet how to maintain his direction going backwards. And so he began, amid constantly anxious sideways glances in his father's direction, to turn himself around as quickly as possible, although in truth this was only done very slowly. Perhaps his father noticed his good intentions, for he did not disrupt Gregor in this motion, but with the tip of the cane from a distance he even directed Gregor's rotating movement here and there.

If only his father had not hissed so unbearably! Because of that Gregor totally lost his head. He was already almost totally turned around, when, always with this hissing in his ear, he just made a mistake and turned himself back a little. But when he finally was successful in getting his head in front of the door opening, it became clear that his body was too wide to go through any further. Naturally his father, in his present mental state, had no idea of opening the other wing of the door a bit to create a suitable passage for Gregor to get through. His single fixed thought was that Gregor must get into his room as quickly as possible. He would never have allowed the elaborate preparations that Gregor required to orient himself and thus perhaps get through the door. On the contrary, as if there were no obstacle and with a peculiar noise, he now drove Gregor forwards. Behind Gregor the sound at this point was no longer like the voice of only a single father. Now it was really no longer a joke, and Gregor forced himself, come what might, into the door. One side of his body was lifted up. He lay at an angle in the door opening. His one flank was sore with the scraping. On the white door ugly blotches were left. Soon he was stuck fast and would have not been able to move any more on his own. The tiny legs on one side hung twitching in the air above, and the ones on the other side were pushed painfully into the floor. Then his father gave him one really strong liberating push from behind, and he scurried, bleeding severely, far into the interior of his room. The door was slammed shut with the cane, and finally it was quiet.

II.

Gregor first woke up from his heavy swoon-like sleep in the evening twilight. He would certainly have woken up soon afterwards without any disturbance, for he felt himself sufficiently rested and wide awake, although it appeared to him as if a hurried step and a cautious closing of the door to the hall had aroused him. Light from the electric streetlamps lay pale here and there on the ceiling and on the higher parts of the furniture, but underneath around Gregor it was dark. He pushed himself slowly toward the door, still groping awkwardly with his feelers, which he now learned to value for the first time, to check what was happening there. His left side seemed one single long unpleasantly stretched scar, and he really had to hobble on his two rows of legs. In addition, one small leg had been seriously wounded in the course of the morning incident—it was almost a miracle that only one had been hurt—and dragged lifelessly behind.

By the door he first noticed what had really lured him there: it was the smell of something to eat. A bowl stood there, filled with sweetened milk, in which swam tiny pieces of white bread. He almost laughed with joy, for he now had a much greater hunger than in the morning, and he immediately dipped his head almost up to and over his eyes down into the milk. But he soon drew it back again in disappointment, not just because it was difficult for him to eat on account of his delicate left side—he could eat only if his entire panting body worked in a coordinated way—but also because the milk, which otherwise was his favourite drink and which his sister had certainly placed there for that reason, did not appeal to him at all. He turned away from the bowl almost with aversion and crept back into the middle of the room.

In the living room, as Gregor saw through the crack in the door, the gas was lit, but where, on other occasions at this time of day, his father was accustomed to read the afternoon newspaper in a loud voice to his mother and sometimes also to his sister, at the moment no sound was audible. Now, perhaps this reading aloud, about which his sister had always spoken and written to him, had recently fallen out of their general routine. But it was so still all around, in spite of the fact that the apartment was certainly not empty. "What a quiet life the family leads," said Gregor to himself and, as he stared fixedly out in front of him into the darkness, he felt a great pride that he had been able to provide such a life in a beautiful apartment like this for his parents and his sister. But how would things go if now all tranquillity, all prosperity, all contentment should come to a horrible end? In order not to lose himself in such thoughts, Gregor preferred to set himself moving, so he moved up and down in his room.

Once during the long evening one side door and then the other door was opened just a tiny crack and quickly closed again. Someone presumably needed to come in but had then thought better of it. Gregor immediately took up a position by the living room door, determined to bring in the hesitant visitor somehow or other or at least to find out who it might be. But now the door was not opened any more, and Gregor waited in vain. Earlier, when the door had been barred, they had all wanted to come in to him; now, when he had opened one door and when the others had obviously been opened during the day, no one came any more, and the keys were stuck in the locks on the outside.

The light in the living room was turned off only late at night, and now it was easy to establish that his parents and his sister had stayed awake all this time, for one could hear clearly as all three moved away on tiptoe. Now it was certain that no one would come into Gregor any more until the morning. Thus, he had a long time to think undisturbed about how he should reorganize his life from scratch. But the high, open room, in which he was compelled to lie flat on the floor, made him anxious, without his being able to figure out the reason, for he had lived in the room for five years. With a half unconscious turn and not without a slight shame he scurried under the couch, where, in spite of the fact that his back was a little cramped and he could no longer lift up his head, he felt very comfortable and was sorry only that his body was too wide to fit completely under it.

There he remained the entire night, which he spent partly in a state of semi-sleep, out of which his hunger constantly woke him with a start, but partly in a state of worry and murky hopes, which all led to the conclusion that for the time being he would have to keep calm and with patience and the greatest consideration for his family tolerate the troubles which in his present condition he was now forced to cause them.

Already early in the morning—it was still almost night—Gregor had an opportunity to test the power of the decisions he had just made, for his sister, almost fully dressed, opened the door from the hall into his room and looked eagerly inside. She did not find him immediately, but when she noticed him under the couch—God, he had to be somewhere or other, for he could hardly fly away—she got such a shock that, without being able to control herself, she slammed the door shut once again from the outside. However, as if she was sorry for her behaviour, she immediately opened the door again and walked in on her tiptoes, as if she was in the presence of a serious invalid or a total stranger. Gregor had pushed his head forward just to the edge of the couch and was observing her. Would she really notice that he had left the milk standing, not indeed from any lack of hunger, and would she bring in something else to eat more suitable for him? If she did not do it on her own, he would sooner starve to death than call her attention to the fact, although he had a really powerful urge to move beyond the couch, throw himself at his sister's feet, and beg her for something or other good to eat. But his sister noticed right away with astonishment that the bowl was still full, with only a little milk spilled around it. She picked it up immediately, although not with her bare hands but with a rag, and took it out of the room. Gregor was extremely curious what she would bring as a substitute, and he pictured to himself different ideas about it. But he never could have guessed what his sister out of the goodness of her heart in fact did. She brought him, to test his taste, an entire selection, all spread out on an old newspaper. There were old half-rotten vegetables, bones from the evening meal, covered with a white sauce which had almost solidified, some raisins and almonds, cheese which Gregor had declared inedible two days earlier, a slice of dry bread, and a slice of salted bread smeared with butter. In addition to all this, she put down a bowl—probably designated once and for all as Gregor's—into which she had poured some water. And out of her delicacy of feeling, since she knew that Gregor would not eat in front of her, she went away very quickly and even turned the key in the lock, so that Gregor would now observe that he could make himself as comfortable as he wished. Gregor's small limbs buzzed now that the time for eating had come. His wounds must, in any case, have already healed completely. He felt no handicap on that score. He was astonished at that and thought about how more than a month ago he had cut his finger slightly with a knife and how this wound had hurt enough even the day before yesterday.

"Am I now going to be less sensitive," he thought, already sucking greedily on the cheese, which had strongly attracted him right away, more than all the other foods. Quickly and with his eyes watering with satisfaction, he ate one after the other the cheese, the vegetables, and the sauce. The fresh food, by contrast, didn't taste good to him. He couldn't bear the smell and even carried the things he wanted to eat a little distance away. By the time his sister slowly turned the key as a sign that he should withdraw, he was long finished and now lay lazily in the same spot. The noise immediately startled him, in spite of the fact that he was already almost asleep, and he scurried back again under the couch. But it cost him great self-control to remain under the couch, even for the short time his sister was in the room, because his body had filled out somewhat on account of the rich meal and in the narrow space there he could scarcely breathe. In the midst of minor attacks of asphyxiation, he looked at her with somewhat protruding eyes, as his unsuspecting sister swept up with a broom, not just the remnants, but even the foods which Gregor had not touched at all, as if these were also now useless, and as she dumped everything quickly into a bucket, which she closed with a wooden lid, and then carried all of it out of the room. She had hardly turned around before Gregor had already dragged himself out from the couch, stretched out, and let his body expand.

In this way Gregor got his food every day, once in the morning, when his parents and the servant girl were still asleep, and a second time after the common noon meal, for his parents were, as before, asleep then for a little while, and the servant girl was sent off by his sister on some errand or other. They certainly would not have wanted Gregor to starve to death, but perhaps they could not have endured finding out what he ate other than by hearsay. Perhaps his sister wanted to spare them what was possibly only a small grief, for they were really suffering quite enough already.

What sorts of excuses people had used on that first morning to get the doctor and the locksmith out of the house Gregor was completely unable to ascertain. Since they could not understand him, no one, not even his sister, thought that he might be able to understand others, and thus, when his sister was in her room, he had to be content with listening now and then to her sighs and invocations to the saints. Only later, when she had grown somewhat accustomed to everything—naturally there could never be any talk of her growing completely accustomed to it—Gregor sometimes caught a comment which was intended to be friendly or could be interpreted as such. "Well, today it tasted good to him," she said, if Gregor had really cleaned up what he had to eat; whereas, in the reverse situation, which gradually repeated itself more and more frequently, she used to say sadly, "Now everything has stopped again."

But while Gregor could get no new information directly, he did hear a good deal from the room next door, and as soon as he heard voices, he scurried right away to the appropriate door and pressed his entire body against it. In the early days especially, there was no conversation which was not concerned with him in some way or other, even if only in secret. For two days at all meal times discussions on that subject could be heard on how people should now behave; but they also talked about the same subject in the times between meals, for there were always at least two family members at home, since no one really wanted to remain in the house alone and people could not under any circumstances leave the apartment completely empty. In addition, on the very first day the servant girl—it was not completely clear what and how much she knew about what had happened—on her knees had begged his mother to let her go immediately, and when she said good bye about fifteen minutes later, she thanked them for the dismissal with tears in her eyes, as if she was receiving the greatest favour which people had shown her there, and, without anyone demanding it from her, she swore a fearful oath not to betray anyone, not even the slightest bit.

Now his sister had to team up with his mother to do the cooking, although that didn't create much trouble because people were eating almost nothing. Again and again Gregor listened as one of them vainly invited another one to eat and received no answer other than "Thank you. I've had enough" or something like that. And perhaps they had stopped having anything to drink, too. His sister often asked his father whether he wanted to have a beer and gladly offered to fetch it herself, and when his father was silent, she said, in order to remove any reservations he might have, that she could send the caretaker's wife to get it. But then his father finally said a resounding "No," and nothing more would be spoken about it.

Already during the first day his father laid out all the financial circumstances and prospects to his mother and to his sister as well. From time to time he stood up from the table and pulled out of the small lockbox salvaged from his business, which had collapsed five years previously, some document or other or some notebook. The sound was audible as he opened up the complicated lock and, after removing what he was looking for, locked it up again. These explanations by his father were, in part, the first enjoyable thing that Gregor had the chance to listen to since his imprisonment. He had thought that nothing at all was left over for his father from that business; at least his father had told him nothing to contradict that view, and Gregor in any case hadn't asked him about it. At the time Gregor's only concern had been to use everything he had in order to allow his family to forget as quickly as possible the business misfortune which had brought them all into a state of complete hopelessness. And so at that point he'd started to work with a special intensity and from an assistant had become, almost overnight, a travelling salesman, who naturally had entirely different possibilities for earning money and whose successes at work were converted immediately into the form of cash commissions, which could be set out on the table at home in front of his astonished and delighted family.

Those had been beautiful days, and they had never come back afterwards, at least not with the same splendour, in spite of the fact that Gregor later earned so much money that he was in a position to bear the expenses of the entire family, costs which he, in fact, did bear. They had become quite accustomed to it, both the family and Gregor as well. They took the money with thanks, and he happily surrendered it, but the special warmth was no longer present. Only the sister had remained still close to Gregor, and it was his secret plan to send her next year to the conservatory, regardless of the great expense which that necessarily involved and which would be made up in other ways. In contrast to Gregor she loved music very much and knew how to play the violin charmingly. Now and then during Gregor's short stays in the city the conservatory was mentioned in conversations with his sister, but always only as a beautiful dream, whose realization was unimaginable, and their parents never listened to these innocent expectations with pleasure. But Gregor thought about them with scrupulous consideration and intended to explain the matter ceremoniously on Christmas Eve.

In his present situation, such futile ideas went through his head, while he pushed himself right up against the door and listened. Sometimes in his general exhaustion he couldn't listen any more and let his head bang listlessly against the door, but he immediately pulled himself together, for even the small sound which he made by this motion was heard near by and silenced everyone. "There he goes on again," said his father after a while, clearly turning towards the door, and only then would the interrupted conversation gradually be resumed again.

Gregor found out clearly enough—for his father tended to repeat himself often in his explanations, partly because he had not personally concerned himself with these matters for a long time now, and partly also because his mother did not understand everything right away the first time—that, in spite all bad luck, a fortune, although a very small one, was available from the old times, which the interest, which had not been touched, had in the intervening time gradually allowed to increase a little. Furthermore, in addition to this, the money which Gregor had brought home every month—he had kept only a few florins for himself—had not been completely spent and had grown into a small capital amount. Gregor, behind his door, nodded eagerly, rejoicing over this unanticipated foresight and frugality. True, with this excess money, he could have paid off more of his father's debt to his employer and the day on which he could be rid of this position would have been a lot closer, but now things were doubtless better the way his father had arranged them.

At the moment, however, this money was not nearly sufficient to permit the family to live on the interest payments. Perhaps it would be enough to maintain the family for one or at most two years, that's all. Thus, it only added up to an amount which one should not really draw upon and which must be set aside for an emergency. But the money to live on had to be earned. Now, although his father was old, he was a healthy man who had not worked at all for five years and thus could not be counted on for very much. He had in these five years, the first holidays of his trouble-filled but unsuccessful life, put on a good deal of fat and thus had become really heavy. And should his old mother now perhaps work for money, a woman who suffered from asthma, for whom wandering through the apartment even now was a great strain and who spent every second day on the sofa by the open window labouring for breath? Should his sister earn money, a girl who was still a seventeen-year-old child whose earlier life style had been so very delightful that it had consisted of dressing herself nicely, sleeping in late, helping around the house, taking part in a few modest enjoyments and, above all, playing the violin? When it came to talking about this need to earn money, at first Gregor went away from the door and threw himself on the cool leather sofa beside the door, for he was quite hot from shame and sorrow.

Often he lay there all night long. He didn't sleep a moment and just scratched on the leather for hours at a time. He undertook the very difficult task of shoving a chair over to the window. Then he crept up on the window sill and, braced in the chair, leaned against the window to look out, obviously with some memory or other of the satisfaction which that used to bring him in earlier times. Actually, from day to day he perceived things with less and less clarity, even those a short distance away: the hospital across the street, the all-too-frequent sight of which he had previously cursed, was not visible at all any more, and if he had not been precisely aware that he lived in the quiet but completely urban Charlotte Street, he could have believed that from his window he was peering out at a featureless wasteland, in which the grey heaven and the grey earth had merged and were indistinguishable. His attentive sister must have observed a couple of times that the chair stood by the window; then, after cleaning up the room, each time she pushed the chair back right against the window and from now on she even left the inner casement open.

If Gregor had only been able to speak to his sister and thank her for everything that she had to do for him, he would have tolerated her service more easily. As it was, he suffered under it. The sister admittedly sought to cover up the awkwardness of everything as much as possible, and, as time went by, she naturally got more successful at it. But with the passing of time Gregor also came to understand everything more precisely. Even her entrance was terrible for him. As soon as she entered, she ran straight to the window, without taking the time to shut the door, in spite of the fact that she was otherwise very considerate in sparing anyone the sight of Gregor's room, and yanked the window open with eager hands, as if she was almost suffocating, and remained for a while by the window breathing deeply, even when it was still so cold. With this running and noise she frightened Gregor twice every day. The entire time he trembled under the couch, and yet he knew very well that she would certainly have spared him gladly if it had only been possible to remain with the window closed in a room where Gregor lived.

On one occasion—about one month had already gone by since Gregor's transformation, and there was now no particular reason any more for his sister to be startled at Gregor's appearance—she arrived a little earlier than usual and came upon Gregor as he was still looking out the window, immobile and well positioned to frighten someone. It would not have come as a surprise to Gregor if she had not come in, since his position was preventing her from opening the window immediately. But she not only did not step inside; she even retreated and shut the door. A stranger really might have concluded from this that Gregor had been lying in wait for her and wanted to bite her. Of course, Gregor immediately concealed himself under the couch, but he had to wait until the noon meal before his sister returned, and she seemed much less calm than usual. From this he realized that his appearance was still constantly intolerable to her and must remain intolerable in future, and that she really had to exert a lot of self-control not to run away from a glimpse of only the small part of his body which stuck out from under the couch. In order to spare her even this sight, one day he dragged the sheet on his back and onto the couch—this task took him four hours—and arranged it in such a way that he was now completely concealed and his sister, even if she bent down, could not see him. If this sheet was not necessary as far as she was concerned, then she could remove it, for it was clear enough that Gregor could not derive any pleasure from isolating himself away so completely. But she left the sheet just as it was, and Gregor believed he even caught a look of gratitude when, on one occasion, he carefully lifted up the sheet a little with his head to check, as his sister took stock of the new arrangement.

In the first two weeks his parents could not bring themselves to visit him, and he often heard how they fully acknowledged his sister's present work; whereas, earlier they had often got annoyed at his sister because she had seemed to them a somewhat useless young woman. However, now both his father and his mother often waited in front of Gregor's door while his sister cleaned up inside, and as soon as she came out, she had to explain in detail how things looked in the room, what Gregor had eaten, how he had behaved this time, and whether perhaps a slight improvement was perceptible. In any event, his mother comparatively soon wanted to visit Gregor, but his father and his sister restrained her, at first with reasons which Gregor listened to very attentively and which he completely endorsed. Later, however, they had to hold her back forcefully, and when she then cried "Let me go to Gregor. He's my unlucky son! Don't you understand that I have to go to him?" Gregor then thought that perhaps it would be a good thing if his mother came in, not every day, of course, but maybe once a week. She understood everything much better than his sister, who, in spite of all her courage, was still a child and, in the last analysis, had perhaps undertaken such a difficult task only out of childish recklessness.

Gregor's wish to see his mother was soon realized. While during the day Gregor, out of consideration for his parents, did not want to show himself by the window, he couldn't crawl around very much on the few square metres of the floor. He found it difficult to bear lying quietly during the night, and soon eating no longer gave him the slightest pleasure. So for diversion he acquired the habit of crawling back and forth across the walls and ceiling. He was especially fond of hanging from the ceiling. The experience was quite different from lying on the floor. It was easier to breathe, a slight vibration went through his body, and in the midst of the almost happy amusement which Gregor found up there, it could happen that, to his own surprise, he let go and hit the floor. However, now he naturally controlled his body quite differently, and he did not injure himself in such a great fall. His sister noticed immediately the new amusement which Gregor had found for himself—for as he crept around he left behind here and there traces of his sticky stuff—and so she got the idea of making Gregor's creeping around as easy as possible and thus of removing the furniture which got in the way, especially the chest of drawers and the writing desk.

But she was in no position to do this by herself. She did not dare to ask her father to help, and the servant girl would certainly not have assisted her, for although this girl, about sixteen years old, had courageously remained since the dismissal of the previous cook, she had begged for the privilege of being allowed to stay permanently confined to the kitchen and of having to open the door only in answer to a special summons. Thus, his sister had no other choice but to involve his mother while his father was absent. His mother approached Gregor's room with cries of excited joy, but she fell silent at the door. Of course, his sister first checked whether everything in the room was in order. Only then did she let his mother walk in. In great haste Gregor had drawn the sheet down even further and wrinkled it more. The whole thing really looked just like a coverlet thrown carelessly over the couch. On this occasion, Gregor held back from spying out from under the sheet. Thus, he refrained from looking at his mother this time and was just happy that she had come. "Come on; he’s not visible," said his sister, and evidently led his mother by the hand. Now Gregor listened as these two weak women shifted the still heavy old chest of drawers from its position, and as his sister constantly took on herself the greater part of the work, without listening to the warnings of his mother, who was afraid that she would strain herself. The work lasted a long time. After about a quarter of an hour had already gone by, his mother said it would be better if they left the chest of drawers where it was, because, in the first place, it was too heavy: they would not be finished before his father's arrival, and leaving the chest of drawers in the middle of the room would block all Gregor's pathways, but, in the second place, they could not be certain that Gregor would be pleased with the removal of the furniture. To her the reverse seemed to be true; the sight of the empty walls pierced her right to the heart, and why should Gregor not feel the same, since he had been accustomed to the room furnishings for a long time and in an empty room would feel himself abandoned?

"And is it not the case," his mother concluded very quietly, almost whispering as if she wished to prevent Gregor, whose exact location she really didn't know, from hearing even the sound of her voice—for she was convinced that he did not understand her words—"and isn't it a fact that by removing the furniture we're showing that we're giving up all hope of an improvement and are leaving him to his own resources without any consideration? I think it would be best if we tried to keep the room exactly in the condition it was in before, so that, when Gregor returns to us, he finds everything unchanged and can forget the intervening time all the more easily."

As he heard his mother's words Gregor realized that the lack of all immediate human contact, together with the monotonous life surrounded by the family over the course of these two months, must have confused his understanding, because otherwise he couldn't explain to himself how he, in all seriousness, could have been so keen to have his room emptied. Was he really eager to let the warm room, comfortably furnished with pieces he had inherited, be turned into a cavern in which he would, of course, then be able to crawl about in all directions without disturbance, but at the same time with a quick and complete forgetting of his human past as well? Was he then at this point already on the verge of forgetting and was it only the voice of his mother, which he had not heard for a long time, that had aroused him? Nothing was to be removed—everything must remain. In his condition he could not function without the beneficial influences of his furniture. And if the furniture prevented him from carrying out his senseless crawling about all over the place, then there was no harm in that, but rather a great benefit.

But his sister unfortunately thought otherwise. She had grown accustomed, certainly not without justification, so far as the discussion of matters concerning Gregor was concerned, to act as an special expert with respect to their parents, and so now the mother's advice was for his sister sufficient reason to insist on the removal, not only of the chest of drawers and the writing desk, which were the only items she had thought about at first, but also of all the furniture, with the exception of the indispensable couch. Of course, it was not only childish defiance and her recent very unexpected and hard won self-confidence which led her to this demand. She had also actually observed that Gregor needed a great deal of room to creep about; the furniture, on the other hand, as far as one could see, was not of the slightest use.

But perhaps the enthusiastic sensibility of young women of her age also played a role. This feeling sought release at every opportunity, and with it Grete now felt tempted to want to make Gregor's situation even more terrifying, so that then she would be able to do even more for him than now. For surely no one except Grete would ever trust themselves to enter a room in which Gregor ruled the empty walls all by himself. And so she did not let herself be dissuaded from her decision by her mother, who in this room seemed uncertain of herself in her sheer agitation and soon kept quiet, helping his sister with all her energy to get the chest of drawers out of the room. Now, Gregor could still do without the chest of drawers if need be, but the writing desk really had to stay. And scarcely had the women left the room with the chest of drawers, groaning as they pushed it, when Gregor stuck his head out from under the sofa to take a look how he could intervene cautiously and with as much consideration as possible. But unfortunately it was his mother who came back into the room first, while Grete had her arms wrapped around the chest of drawers in the next room and was rocking it back and forth by herself, without moving it from its position. His mother was not used to the sight of Gregor; he could have made her ill, and so, frightened, Gregor scurried backwards right to the other end of the sofa, but he could no longer prevent the sheet from moving forward a little. That was enough to catch his mother's attention. She came to a halt, stood still for a moment, and then went back to Grete.

Although Gregor kept repeating to himself over and over that really nothing unusual was going on, that only a few pieces of furniture were being rearranged, he soon had to admit to himself that the movements of the women to and fro, their quiet conversations, and the scratching of the furniture on the floor affected him like a great swollen commotion on all sides, and, so firmly was he pulling in his head and legs and pressing his body into the floor, he had to tell himself unequivocally that he wouldn't be able to endure all this much longer. They were cleaning out his room, taking away from him everything he cherished; they had already dragged out the chest of drawers in which the fret saw and other tools were kept, and they were now loosening the writing desk which was fixed tight to the floor, the desk on which he, as a business student, a school student, indeed even as an elementary school student, had written out his assignments. At that moment he really didn't have any more time to check the good intentions of the two women, whose existence he had in any case almost forgotten, because in their exhaustion they were working really silently, and the heavy stumbling of their feet was the only sound to be heard.

And so he scuttled out—the women were just propping themselves up on the writing desk in the next room in order to take a breather—changing the direction of his path four times. He really didn't know what he should rescue first. Then he saw hanging conspicuously on the wall, which was otherwise already empty, the picture of the woman dressed in nothing but fur. He quickly scurried up over it and pressed himself against the glass which held it in place and which made his hot abdomen feel good. At least this picture, which Gregor at the moment completely concealed, surely no one would now take away. He twisted his head towards the door of the living room to observe the women as they came back in.

They had not allowed themselves very much rest and were coming back right away. Grete had placed her arm around her mother and held her tightly. "So what shall we take now?" said Grete and looked around her. Then her glance met Gregor's from the wall. She kept her composure only because her mother was there. She bent her face towards her mother in order to prevent her from looking around, and said, although in a trembling voice and too quickly, "Come, wouldn't it be better to go back to the living room for just another moment?" Grete's purpose was clear to Gregor: she wanted to bring his mother to a safe place and then chase him down from the wall. Well, let her just try! He squatted on his picture and did not hand it over. He would sooner spring into Grete's face.

But Grete's words had immediately made the mother very uneasy. She walked to the side, caught sight of the enormous brown splotch on the flowered wallpaper, and, before she became truly aware that what she was looking at was Gregor, screamed out in a high pitched raw voice "Oh God, oh God" and fell with outstretched arms, as if she was surrendering everything, down onto the couch and lay there motionless. "Gregor, you. . ." cried out his sister with a raised fist and an urgent glare. Since his transformation these were the first words which she had directed right at him. She ran into the room next door to bring some spirits or other with which she could revive her mother from her fainting spell. Gregor wanted to help as well—there was time enough to save the picture—but he was stuck fast on the glass and had to tear himself loose forcefully. Then he also scurried into the next room, as if he could give his sister some advice, as in earlier times, but then he had to stand there idly behind her, while she rummaged about among various small bottles. Still, she was frightened when she turned around. A bottle fell onto the floor and shattered. A splinter of glass wounded Gregor in the face, some corrosive medicine or other dripped over him. Now, without lingering any longer, Grete took as many small bottles as she could hold and ran with them into her mother. She slammed the door shut with her foot. Gregor was now shut off from his mother, who was perhaps near death, thanks to him. He could not open the door, and he did not want to chase away his sister who had to remain with her mother. At this point he had nothing to do but wait, and overwhelmed with self-reproach and worry, he began to creep and crawl over everything: walls, furniture, and ceiling. Finally, in his despair, as the entire room started to spin around him, he fell onto the middle of the large table.

A short time elapsed. Gregor lay there limply. All around was still. Perhaps that was a good sign. Then there was ring at the door. The servant girl was naturally shut up in her kitchen, and therefore Grete had to go to open the door. The father had arrived. "What's happened?" were his first words. Grete's appearance had told him everything. Grete replied with a dull voice; evidently she was pressing her face into her father's chest: "Mother fainted, but she's getting better now. Gregor has broken loose." "Yes, I have expected that," said his father, "I always told you that, but you women don't want to listen."

It was clear to Gregor that his father had badly misunderstood Grete's short message and was assuming that Gregor had committed some violent crime or other. Thus, Gregor now had to find his father to calm him down, for he had neither the time nor the ability to explain things to him. And so he rushed away to the door of his room and pushed himself against it, so that his father could see right away as he entered from the hall that Gregor fully intended to return at once to his room, that it was not necessary to drive him back, but that one only needed to open the door, and he would disappear immediately.

But his father was not in the mood to observe such niceties. "Ah," he yelled as soon as he entered, with a tone as if he were all at once angry and pleased. Gregor pulled his head back from the door and raised it in the direction of his father. He had not really pictured his father as he now stood there. Of course, what with his new style of creeping all around, he had in the past while neglected to pay attention to what was going on in the rest of the apartment, as he had done before, and really should have grasped the fact that he would encounter different conditions. Nevertheless, nevertheless, was that still his father? Was that the same man who had lain exhausted and buried in bed in earlier days when Gregor was setting out on a business trip, who had received him on the evenings of his return in a sleeping gown and arm chair, totally incapable of standing up, who had only lifted his arm as a sign of happiness, and who in their rare strolls together a few Sundays a year and on the important holidays made his way slowly forwards between Gregor and his mother—who themselves moved slowly—always a bit more slowly than them, bundled up in his old coat, all the time setting down his walking stick carefully, and who, when he had wanted to say something, almost always stood still and gathered his entourage around him?

But now he was standing up really straight, dressed in a tight-fitting blue uniform with gold buttons, like the ones servants wear in a banking company. Above the high stiff collar of his jacket his firm double chin stuck out prominently, beneath his bushy eyebrows the glance of his black eyes was freshly penetrating and alert, his otherwise dishevelled white hair was combed down into a carefully exact shining part. He threw his cap, on which a gold monogram, apparently the symbol of the bank, was affixed, in an arc across the entire room onto the sofa and moved, throwing back the edge of the long coat of his uniform, with his hands in his trouser pockets and a grim face, right up to Gregor.

He really didn't know what he had in mind, but he raised his foot uncommonly high anyway, and Gregor was astonished at the gigantic size of the sole of his boot. However, he did not linger on that point. For he knew from the first day of his new life that, as far as he was concerned, his father considered the greatest force the only appropriate response. And so he scurried away from his father, stopped when his father remained standing, and scampered forward again when his father merely stirred. In this way they made their way around the room repeatedly, without anything decisive taking place. In fact, because of the slow pace, it didn't look like a chase. Gregor remained on the floor for the time being, especially since he was afraid that his father could take a flight up onto the wall or the ceiling as an act of real malice. At any event, Gregor had to tell himself that he couldn't keep up this running around for a long time, because whenever his father took a single step, he had to go through an enormous number of movements. Already he was starting to suffer from a shortage of breath, just as in his earlier days when his lungs had been quite unreliable. As he now staggered around in this way in order to gather all his energies for running, hardly keeping his eyes open and feeling so listless that he had no notion at all of any escape other than by running and had almost already forgotten that the walls were available to him, although they were obstructed by carefully carved furniture full of sharp points and spikes, at that moment something or other thrown casually flew down close by and rolled in front of him. It was an apple. Immediately a second one flew after it. Gregor stood still in fright. Further running away was useless, for his father had decided to bombard him.

From the fruit bowl on the sideboard his father had filled his pockets. And now, without for the moment taking accurate aim, he was throwing apple after apple. These small red apples rolled around on the floor, as if electrified, and collided with each other. A weakly thrown apple grazed Gregor's back but skidded off harmlessly. However, another thrown immediately after that one drove into Gregor's back really hard. Gregor wanted to drag himself off, as if the unexpected and incredible pain would go away if he changed his position. But he felt as if he was nailed in place and lay stretched out completely confused in all his senses. Only with his final glance did he notice how the door of his room was pulled open and how, right in front of his sister—who was yelling—his mother ran out in her undergarments, for his sister had undressed her in order to give her some freedom to breathe in her fainting spell, and how his mother then ran up to his father, on the way her tied up skirts slipped toward the floor one after the other, and how, tripping over her skirts, she hurled herself onto his father and, throwing her arms around him, in complete union with him--but at this moment Gregor's powers of sight gave way--as her hands reached to the back of his father's head and she begged him to spare Gregor's life.

III.

Gregor's serious wound, from which he suffered for over a month—since no one ventured to remove the apple, it remained in his flesh as a visible reminder—seemed by itself to have reminded the father that, in spite of his present unhappy and hateful appearance, Gregor was a member of the family, something one should not treat as an enemy, and that it was, on the contrary, a requirement of family duty to suppress one's aversion and to endure--nothing else, just endure. And if through his wound Gregor had now apparently lost for good his ability to move and for the time being needed many, many minutes to crawl across his room, like an aged invalid—so far as creeping up high was concerned, that was unimaginable—nevertheless for this worsening of his condition, in his opinion, he did get completely satisfactory compensation, because every day towards evening the door to the living room, which he was in the habit of keeping a sharp eye on even one or two hours beforehand, was opened, so that he, lying down in the darkness of his room, invisible from the living room, could see the entire family at the illuminated table and listen to their conversation, to a certain extent with their common permission, a situation quite different from what had happened before.

Of course, it was no longer the animated social interaction of former times, which Gregor in small hotel rooms had always thought about with a certain longing, when, tired out, he had had to throw himself into the damp bedclothes. For the most part what went on now was very quiet. After the evening meal, the father fell asleep quickly in his arm chair. The mother and sister talked guardedly to each other in the stillness. Bent far over, the mother sewed fine undergarments for a fashion shop. The sister, who had taken on a job as a salesgirl, in the evening studied stenography and French, so as perhaps later to obtain a better position. Sometimes the father woke up and, as if he was quite ignorant that he had been asleep, said to the mother "How long you have been sewing today?" and went right back to sleep, while the mother and the sister smiled tiredly to each other.

With a sort of stubbornness the father refused to take off his servant's uniform even at home, and while his sleeping gown hung unused on the coat hook, the father dozed completely dressed in his place, as if he was always ready for his responsibility and even here was waiting for the voice of his superior. As a result, in spite of all the care of the mother and sister, his uniform, which even at the start was not new, grew dirty, and Gregor looked, often for the entire evening, at this clothing, with stains all over it and with its gold buttons always polished, in which the old man, although very uncomfortable, slept peacefully nonetheless.

As soon as the clock struck ten, the mother tried gently encouraging the father to wake up and then persuading him to go to bed, on the ground that he couldn't get a proper sleep here and that the father, who had to report for service at six o'clock, really needed a good sleep. But in his stubbornness, which had gripped him since he had become a servant, he insisted always on staying even longer by the table, although he regularly fell asleep and then could only be prevailed upon with the greatest difficulty to trade his chair for the bed. No matter how much the mother and sister might at that point work on him with small admonitions, for a quarter of an hour he would remain shaking his head slowly, his eyes closed, without standing up. The mother would pull him by the sleeve and speak flattering words into his ear; the sister would leave her work to help her mother, but that would not have the desired effect on the father. He would settle himself even more deeply in his arm chair. Only when the two women grabbed him under the armpits would he throw his eyes open, look back and forth at the mother and sister, and habitually say "This is a life. This is the peace and quiet of my old age." And propped up by both women, he would heave himself up elaborately, as if for him it was the greatest trouble, allow himself to be led to the door by the women, wave them away there, and proceed on his own from there, while the mother quickly threw down her sewing implements and the sister her pen in order to run after the father and help him some more.

In this overworked and exhausted family who had time to worry any longer about Gregor more than was absolutely necessary? The household was constantly getting smaller. The servant girl was now let go. A huge bony cleaning woman with white hair flying all over her head came in the morning and evening to do the heaviest work. The mother took care of everything else in addition to her considerable sewing work. It even happened that various pieces of family jewellery, which previously the mother and sister had been overjoyed to wear on social and festive occasions, were sold, as Gregor found out in the evening from the general discussion of the prices they had fetched. But the greatest complaint was always that they could not leave this apartment, which was too big for their present means, since it was impossible to imagine how Gregor might be moved. But Gregor fully recognized that it was not just consideration for him which was preventing a move, for he could have been transported easily in a suitable box with a few air holes. The main thing holding the family back from a change in living quarters was far more their complete hopelessness and the idea that they had been struck by a misfortune like no one else in their entire circle of relatives and acquaintances.

What the world demands of poor people they now carried out to an extreme degree. The father bought breakfast to the petty officials at the bank, the mother sacrificed herself for the undergarments of strangers, the sister behind her desk was at the beck and call of customers, but the family's energies did not extend any further. And the wound in his back began to pain Gregor all over again, when now mother and sister, after they had escorted the father to bed, came back, let their work lie, moved close together, and sat cheek to cheek and when his mother would now say, pointing to Gregor's room, "Close the door, Grete," and when Gregor was again in the darkness, while close by the women mingled their tears or, quite dry eyed, stared at the table.

Gregor spent his nights and days with hardly any sleep. Sometimes he thought that the next time the door opened he would take over the family arrangements just as he had earlier. In his imagination appeared again, after a long time, his employer and supervisor and the apprentices, the excessively spineless custodian, two or three friends from other businesses, a chambermaid from a hotel in the provinces, a loving fleeting memory, a female cashier from a hat shop, whom he had seriously but too slowly courted--they all appeared mixed in with strangers or people he had already forgotten, but instead of helping him and his family, they were all unapproachable, and he was happy to see them disappear.

But then he was in no mood to worry about his family. He was filled with sheer anger over the wretched care he was getting, even though he couldn't imagine anything which he might have an appetite for. Still, he made plans about how he could take from the larder what he at all account deserved, even if he wasn't hungry. Without thinking any more about how they might be able to give Gregor special pleasure, the sister now kicked some food or other very quickly into his room in the morning and at noon, before she ran off to her shop, and in the evening, quite indifferent to whether the food had perhaps only been tasted or, what happened most frequently, remained entirely undisturbed, she whisked it out with one sweep of her broom. The task of cleaning his room, which she now always carried out in the evening, could not be done any more quickly. Streaks of dirt ran along the walls; here and there lay tangles of dust and garbage. At first, when his sister arrived, Gregor positioned himself in a particularly filthy corner in order with this posture to make something of a protest. But he could have well stayed there for weeks without his sister's changing her ways. In fact, she perceived the dirt as much as he did, but she had decided just to let it stay.

In this business, with a touchiness which was quite new to her and which had generally taken over the entire family, she kept watch to see that the cleaning of Gregor's room remained reserved for her. Once his mother had undertaken a major cleaning of Gregor's room, which she had only completed successfully after using a few buckets of water. But the extensive dampness made Gregor sick and he lay supine, embittered and immobile on the couch. However, the mother's punishment was not delayed for long. For in the evening the sister had hardly observed the change in Gregor's room before she ran into the living room mightily offended and, in spite of her mother's hand lifted high in entreaty, broke out in a fit of crying. Her parents—the father had, of course, woken up with a start in his arm chair—at first looked at her astonished and helpless, until they started to get agitated. Turning to his right, the father heaped reproaches on the mother that she was not to take over the cleaning of Gregor's room from the sister and, turning to his left, he shouted at the sister that she would no longer be allowed to clean Gregor's room ever again, while the mother tried to pull the father, beside himself in his excitement, into the bed room. The sister, shaken by her crying fit, pounded on the table with her tiny fists, and Gregor hissed at all this, angry that no one thought about shutting the door and sparing him the sight of this commotion.

But even when the sister, exhausted from her daily work, had grown tired of caring for Gregor as she had before, even then the mother did not have to come at all on her behalf. And Gregor did not have to be neglected. For now the cleaning woman was there. This old widow, who in her long life must have managed to survive the worst with the help of her bony frame, had no real horror of Gregor. Without being in the least curious, she had once by chance opened Gregor's door. At the sight of Gregor, who, totally surprised, began to scamper here and there, although no one was chasing him, she remained standing with her hands folded across her stomach staring at him. Since then she did not fail to open the door furtively a little every morning and evening to look in on Gregor. At first, she also called him to her with words which she presumably thought were friendly, like "Come here for a bit, old dung beetle!" or "Hey, look at the old dung beetle!" Addressed in such a manner, Gregor answered nothing, but remained motionless in his place, as if the door had not been opened at all. If only, instead of allowing this cleaning woman to disturb him uselessly whenever she felt like it, they had given her orders to clean up his room every day! One day in the early morning—a hard downpour, perhaps already a sign of the coming spring, struck the window panes—when the cleaning woman started up once again with her usual conversation, Gregor was so bitter that he turned towards her, as if for an attack, although slowly and weakly. But instead of being afraid of him, the cleaning woman merely lifted up a chair standing close by the door and, as she stood there with her mouth wide open, her intention was clear: she would close her mouth only when the chair in her hand had been thrown down on Gregor's back. "This goes no further, all right?" she asked, as Gregor turned himself around again, and she placed the chair calmly back in the corner.

Gregor ate hardly anything any more. Only when he chanced to move past the food which had been prepared did he, as a game, take a bit into his mouth, hold it there for hours, and generally spit it out again. At first he thought it might be his sadness over the condition of his room which kept him from eating, but he very soon became reconciled to the alterations in his room. People had grown accustomed to put into storage in his room things which they couldn't put anywhere else, and at this point there were many such things, now that they had rented one room of the apartment to three lodgers. These solemn gentlemen—all three had full beards, as Gregor once found out through a crack in the door—were meticulously intent on tidiness, not only in their own room but, since they had now rented a room here, in the entire household, and particularly in the kitchen. They simply did not tolerate any useless or shoddy stuff. Moreover, for the most part they had brought with them their own pieces of furniture. Thus, many items had become superfluous, and these were not really things one could sell or things people wanted to throw out. All these items ended up in Gregor's room, even the box of ashes and the garbage pail from the kitchen. The cleaning woman, always in a hurry, simply flung anything that was momentarily useless into Gregor's room. Fortunately Gregor generally saw only the relevant object and the hand which held it. The cleaning woman perhaps was intending, when time and opportunity allowed, to take the stuff out again or to throw everything out all at once, but in fact the things remained lying there, wherever they had ended up at the first throw, unless Gregor squirmed his way through the accumulation of junk and moved it. At first he was forced to do this because otherwise there was no room for him to creep around, but later he did it with a growing pleasure, although after such movements, tired to death and feeling wretched, he didn't budge for hours.

Because the lodgers sometimes also took their evening meal at home in the common living room, the door to the living room stayed shut on many evenings. But Gregor had no trouble at all going without the open door. Already on many evenings when it was open he had not availed himself of it, but, without the family noticing, was stretched out in the darkest corner of his room. However, once the cleaning woman had left the door to the living room slightly ajar, and it remained open even when the lodgers came in in the evening and the lights were put on. They sat down at the head of the table, where in earlier days the mother, the father, and Gregor had eaten, unfolded their serviettes, and picked up their knives and forks. The mother immediately appeared in the door with a dish of meat and right behind her the sister with a dish piled high with potatoes. The food gave off a lot of steam. The gentlemen lodgers bent over the plate set before them, as if they wanted to check it before eating, and in fact the one who sat in the middle—for the other two he seemed to serve as the authority—cut off a piece of meat still on the plate obviously to establish whether it was sufficiently tender and whether or not something should be shipped back to the kitchen. He was satisfied, and mother and sister, who had looked on in suspense, began to breathe easily and to smile.

The family itself ate in the kitchen. In spite of that, before the father went into the kitchen, he came into the room and with a single bow, cap in hand, made a tour of the table. The lodgers rose up collectively and murmured something in their beards. Then, when they were alone, they ate almost in complete silence. It seemed odd to Gregor that, out of all the many different sorts of sounds of eating, what was always audible was their chewing teeth, as if by that Gregor should be shown that people needed their teeth to eat and that nothing could be done even with the most handsome toothless jawbone. "I really do have an appetite," Gregor said to himself sorrowfully, "but not for these things. How these lodgers stuff themselves, and I am dying."

On this very evening the violin sounded from the kitchen. Gregor didn't remember hearing it all through this period. The lodgers had already ended their night meal, the middle one had pulled out a newspaper and had given each of the other two a page, and they were now leaning back, reading and smoking. When the violin started playing, they became attentive, got up, and went on tiptoe to the hall door, at which they remained standing pressed up against one another. They must have been audible from the kitchen, because the father called out "Perhaps the gentlemen don't like the playing? It can be stopped at once." "On the contrary," stated the lodger in the middle, "might the young woman not come into us and play in the room here, where it is really much more comfortable and cheerful?" "Oh, thank you," cried out the father, as if he were the one playing the violin. The men stepped back into the room and waited. Soon the father came with the music stand, the mother with the sheet music, and the sister with the violin. The sister calmly prepared everything for the recital. The parents, who had never previously rented a room and therefore exaggerated their politeness to the lodgers, dared not sit on their own chairs. The father leaned against the door, his right hand stuck between two buttons of his buttoned-up uniform. The mother, however, accepted a chair offered by one lodger. Since she left the chair sit where the gentleman had chanced to put it, she sat to one side in a corner.

The sister began to play. The father and mother, one on each side, followed attentively the movements of her hands. Attracted by the playing, Gregor had ventured to advance a little further forward and his head was already in the living room. He scarcely wondered about the fact that recently he had had so little consideration for the others. Earlier this consideration had been something he was proud of. And for that very reason he would have had at this moment more reason to hide away, because as a result of the dust which lay all over his room and flew around with the slightest movement, he was totally covered in dirt. On his back and his sides he carted around with him dust, threads, hair, and remnants of food. His indifference to everything was much too great for him to lie on his back and scour himself on the carpet, as he often had done earlier during the day. In spite of his condition he had no timidity about inching forward a bit on the spotless floor of the living room.

In any case, no one paid him any attention. The family was all caught up in the violin playing. The lodgers, by contrast, who for the moment had placed themselves, hands in their trouser pockets, behind the music stand much too close to the sister, so that they could all see the sheet music, something that must certainly bother the sister, soon drew back to the window conversing in low voices with bowed heads, where they then remained, worriedly observed by the father. It now seemed really clear that, having assumed they were to hear a beautiful or entertaining violin recital, they were disappointed and were allowing their peace and quiet to be disturbed only out of politeness. The way in which they all blew the smoke from their cigars out of their noses and mouths in particular led one to conclude that they were very irritated. And yet his sister was playing so beautifully. Her face was turned to the side, her gaze followed the score intently and sadly. Gregor crept forward still a little further, keeping his head close against the floor in order to be able to catch her gaze if possible. Was he an animal that music so captivated him? For him it was as if the way to the unknown nourishment he craved was revealing itself. He was determined to press forward right to his sister, to tug at her dress, and to indicate to her in this way that she might still come with her violin into his room, because here no one valued the recital as he wanted to value it. He did not wish to let her go from his room any more, at least not as long as he lived. His frightening appearance would for the first time become useful for him. He wanted to be at all the doors of his room simultaneously and snarl back at the attackers. However, his sister should not be compelled but would remain with him voluntarily. She would sit next to him on the sofa, bend down her ear to him, and he would then confide in her that he firmly intended to send her to the conservatory and that, if his misfortune had not arrived in the interim, he would have declared all this last Christmas—had Christmas really already come and gone?—and would have brooked no argument. After this explanation his sister would break out in tears of emotion, and Gregor would lift himself up to her armpit and kiss her throat, which she, from the time she started going to work, had left exposed without a band or a collar.

"Mr. Samsa," called out the middle lodger to the father and, without uttering a further word, pointed his index finger at Gregor as he was moving slowly forward. The violin fell silent. The middle lodger smiled, first shaking his head once at his friends, and then looked down at Gregor once more. Rather than driving Gregor back again, the father seemed to consider it of prime importance to calm down the lodgers, although they were not at all upset and Gregor seemed to entertain them more than the violin recital. The father hurried over to them and with outstretched arms tried to push them into their own room and simultaneously to block their view of Gregor with his own body. At this point they became really somewhat irritated, although one no longer knew whether that was because of the father's behaviour or because of knowledge they had just acquired that they had, without knowing it, a neighbour like Gregor. They demanded explanations from his father, raised their arms to make their points, tugged agitatedly at their beards, and moved back towards their room quite slowly. In the meantime, the isolation which had suddenly fallen upon his sister after the sudden breaking off of the recital had overwhelmed her. She had held onto the violin and bow in her limp hands for a little while and had continued to look at the sheet music as if she was still playing. All at once she pulled herself together, placed the instrument in her mother's lap—the mother was still sitting in her chair having trouble breathing for her lungs were labouring—and had run into the next room, which the lodgers, pressured by the father, were already approaching more rapidly. One could observe how under the sister's practiced hands the sheets and pillows on the beds were thrown on high and arranged. Even before the lodgers had reached the room, she was finished fixing the beds and was slipping out. The father seemed so gripped once again with his stubbornness that he forgot about the respect which he always owed to his renters. He pressed on and on, until at the door of the room the middle gentleman stamped loudly with his foot and thus brought the father to a standstill. "I hereby declare," the middle lodger said, raising his hand and casting his glance both on the mother and the sister, "that considering the disgraceful conditions prevailing in this apartment and family"—with this he spat decisively on the floor—"I immediately cancel my room. I will, of course, pay nothing at all for the days which I have lived here; on the contrary I shall think about whether or not I will initiate some sort of action against you, something which—believe me—will be very easy to establish." He fell silent and looked directly in front of him, as if he was waiting for something. In fact, his two friends immediately joined in with their opinions, "We also give immediate notice." At that he seized the door handle, banged the door shut, and locked it.

The father groped his way tottering to his chair and let himself fall in it. It looked as if he was stretching out for his usual evening snooze, but the heavy nodding of his head, which looked as if it was without support, showed that he was not sleeping at all. Gregor had lain motionless the entire time in the spot where the lodgers had caught him. Disappointment with the collapse of his plan and perhaps also weakness brought on by his severe hunger made it impossible for him to move. He was certainly afraid that a general disaster would break over him at any moment, and he waited. He was not even startled when the violin fell from the mother's lap, out from under her trembling fingers, and gave off a reverberating tone.

"My dear parents," said the sister banging her hand on the table by way of an introduction, "things cannot go on any longer in this way. Maybe if you don't understand that, well, I do. I will not utter my brother's name in front of this monster, and thus I say only that we must try to get rid of it. We have tried what is humanly possible to take care of it and to be patient. I believe that no one can criticize us in the slightest." "She is right in a thousand ways," said the father to himself. The mother, who was still incapable of breathing properly, began to cough numbly with her hand held up over her mouth and a manic expression in her eyes.

The sister hurried over to her mother and held her forehead. The sister's words seemed to have led the father to certain reflections. He sat upright, played with his uniform hat among the plates, which still lay on the table from the lodgers' evening meal, and looked now and then at the motionless Gregor.

"We must try to get rid of it," the sister now said decisively to the father, for the mother, in her coughing fit, was not listening to anything. "It is killing you both. I see it coming. When people have to work as hard as we all do, they cannot also tolerate this endless torment at home. I just can't go on any more." And she broke out into such a crying fit that her tears flowed out down onto her mother's face. She wiped them off her mother with mechanical motions of her hands.

"Child," said the father sympathetically and with obvious appreciation, "then what should we do?"

The sister only shrugged her shoulders as a sign of the perplexity which, in contrast to her previous confidence, had come over her while she was crying.

"If only he understood us," said the father in a semi-questioning tone. The sister, in the midst of her sobbing, shook her hand energetically as a sign that there was no point thinking of that.

"If he only understood us," repeated the father and by shutting his eyes he absorbed the sister's conviction of the impossibility of this point, "then perhaps some compromise would be possible with him. But as it is. . ."

"It must be gotten rid of," cried the sister. "That is the only way, father. You must try to get rid of the idea that this is Gregor. The fact that we have believed for so long, that is truly our real misfortune. But how can it be Gregor? If it were Gregor, he would have long ago realized that a communal life among human beings is not possible with such an animal and would have gone away voluntarily. Then we would not have a brother, but we could go on living and honour his memory. But this animal plagues us. It drives away the lodgers, will obviously take over the entire apartment, and leave us to spend the night in the alley. Just look, father," she suddenly cried out, "he's already starting up again." With a fright which was totally incomprehensible to Gregor, the sister even left the mother, pushed herself away from her chair, as if she would sooner sacrifice her mother than remain in Gregor's vicinity, and rushed behind her father who, excited merely by her behaviour, also stood up and half raised his arms in front of the sister as though to protect her.

But Gregor did not have any notion of wishing to create problems for anyone and certainly not for his sister. He had just started to turn himself around in order to creep back into his room, quite a startling sight, since, as a result of his suffering condition, he had to guide himself through the difficulty of turning around with his head, in this process lifting and banging it against the floor several times. He paused and looked around. His good intentions seem to have been recognized. The fright had lasted only for a moment. Now they looked at him in silence and sorrow. His mother lay in her chair, with her legs stretched out and pressed together; her eyes were almost shut from weariness. The father and sister sat next to one another. The sister had set her hands around the father's neck.

"Now perhaps I can actually turn myself around," thought Gregor and began the task again. He couldn't stop puffing at the effort and had to rest now and then.

Besides, no one was urging him on. It was all left to him on his own. When he had completed turning around, he immediately began to wander straight back. He was astonished at the great distance which separated him from his room and did not understand in the least how in his weakness he had covered the same distance a short time before, almost without noticing it. Constantly intent only on creeping along quickly, he hardly paid any attention to the fact that no word or cry from his family interrupted him.

Only when he was already in the door did he turn his head, not completely, because he felt his neck growing stiff. At any rate he still saw that behind him nothing had changed. Only the sister was standing up. His last glimpse brushed over the mother who was now completely asleep. Hardly was he inside his room when the door was pushed shut very quickly, bolted fast, and barred. Gregor was startled by the sudden commotion behind him, so much so that his little limbs bent double under him. It was his sister who had been in such a hurry. She had stood up right away, had waited, and had then sprung forward nimbly. Gregor had not heard anything of her approach. She cried out "Finally!" to her parents, as she turned the key in the lock.

"What now?" Gregor asked himself and looked around him in the darkness. He soon made the discovery that he could no longer move at all. He was not surprised at that. On the contrary, it struck him as unnatural that up to this point he had really been able up to move around with these thin little legs. Besides he felt relatively content. True, he had pains throughout his entire body, but it seemed to him that they were gradually becoming weaker and weaker and would finally go away completely. The rotten apple in his back and the inflamed surrounding area, entirely covered with white dust, he hardly noticed. He remembered his family with deep feelings of love. In this business, his own thought that he had to disappear was, if possible, even more decisive than his sister's. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three o'clock in the morning. From the window he witnessed the beginning of the general dawning outside. Then without willing it, his head sank all the way down, and from his nostrils flowed out weakly his last breath.

Early in the morning the cleaning woman came. In her sheer energy and haste she banged all the doors—in precisely the way people had already asked her to avoid—so much so that once she arrived a quiet sleep was no longer possible anywhere in the entire apartment. In her customarily brief visit to Gregor she at first found nothing special. She thought he lay so immobile there because he wanted to play the offended party. She gave him credit for as complete an understanding as possible. Since she happened to be holding the long broom in her hand, she tried to tickle Gregor with it from the door. When that was quite unsuccessful, she became irritated and poked Gregor a little, and only when she had shoved him from his place without any resistance did she become attentive. When she quickly realized the true state of affairs, her eyes grew large, she whistled to herself. However, she didn't restrain herself for long. She pulled open the door of the bedroom and yelled in a loud voice into the darkness, "Come and look. It's kicked the bucket. It's lying there, totally snuffed!"

The Samsa married couple sat upright in their marriage bed and had to get over their fright at the cleaning woman before they managed to grasp her message. But then Mr. and Mrs. Samsa climbed very quickly out of bed, one on either side. Mr. Samsa threw the bedspread over his shoulders, Mrs. Samsa came out only in her night-shirt, and like this they stepped into Gregor's room. Meanwhile, the door of the living room, in which Grete had slept since the lodgers had arrived on the scene, had also opened. She was fully clothed, as if she had not slept at all; her white face also seem to indicate that. "Dead?" said Mrs. Samsa and looked questioningly at the cleaning woman, although she could check everything on her own and even understand without a check. "I should say so," said the cleaning woman and, by way of proof, poked Gregor's body with the broom a considerable distance more to the side. Mrs. Samsa made a movement as if she wished to restrain the broom, but didn't do it. "Well," said Mr. Samsa, "now we can give thanks to God." He crossed himself, and the three women followed his example.

Grete, who did not take her eyes off the corpse, said, "Look how thin he was. He had eaten nothing for such a long time. The meals which came in here came out again exactly the same." In fact, Gregor's body was completely flat and dry. That was apparent really for the first time, now that he was no longer raised on his small limbs and nothing else distracted one's gaze.

"Grete, come into us for a moment," said Mrs. Samsa with a melancholy smile, and Grete went, not without looking back at the corpse, behind her parents into the bed room. The cleaning woman shut the door and opened the window wide. In spite of the early morning, the fresh air was partly tinged with warmth. It was already the end of March.

The three lodgers stepped out of their room and looked around for their breakfast, astonished that they had been forgotten. "Where is the breakfast?" asked the middle one of the gentlemen grumpily to the cleaning woman. However, she laid her finger to her lips and then quickly and silently indicated to the lodgers that they could come into Gregor's room. So they came and stood in the room, which was already quite bright, around Gregor's corpse, their hands in the pockets of their somewhat worn jackets.

Then the door of the bed room opened, and Mr. Samsa appeared in his uniform, with his wife on one arm and his daughter on the other. All were a little tear stained. Now and then Grete pressed her face onto her father's arm.

"Get out of my apartment immediately," said Mr. Samsa and pulled open the door, without letting go of the women. "What do you mean?" said the middle lodger, somewhat dismayed and with a sugary smile. The two others kept their hands behind them and constantly rubbed them against each other, as if in joyful anticipation of a great squabble which must end up in their favour. "I mean exactly what I say," replied Mr. Samsa and went directly with his two female companions up to the lodger. The latter at first stood there motionless and looked at the floor, as if matters were arranging themselves in a new way in his head. "All right, then we'll go," he said and looked up at Mr. Samsa as if, suddenly overcome by humility, he was asking fresh permission for this decision. Mr. Samsa merely nodded to him repeatedly with his eyes open wide.

Following that, the lodger actually went with long strides immediately out into the hall. His two friends had already been listening for a while with their hands quite still, and now they hopped smartly after him, as if afraid that Mr. Samsa could step into the hall ahead of them and disturb their reunion with their leader. In the hall all three of them took their hats from the coat rack, pulled their canes from the cane holder, bowed silently, and left the apartment. In what turned out to be an entirely groundless mistrust, Mr. Samsa stepped with the two women out onto the landing, leaned against the railing, and looked over as the three lodgers slowly but steadily made their way down the long staircase, disappeared on each floor in a certain turn of the stairwell, and in a few seconds came out again. The deeper they proceeded, the more the Samsa family lost interest in them, and when a butcher with a tray on his head come to meet them and then with a proud bearing ascended the stairs high above them, Mr. Samsa., together with the women, left the banister, and they all returned, as if relieved, back into their apartment.

They decided to pass that day resting and going for a stroll. Not only had they earned this break from work, but there was no question that they really needed it. And so they sat down at the table and wrote three letters of apology: Mr. Samsa to his supervisor, Mrs. Samsa to her client, and Grete to her proprietor. During the writing the cleaning woman came in to say that she was going off, for her morning work was finished. The three people writing at first merely nodded, without glancing up. Only when the cleaning woman was still unwilling to depart, did they look up angrily. "Well?" asked Mr. Samsa. The cleaning woman stood smiling in the doorway, as if she had a great stroke of luck to report to the family but would only do it if she was asked directly. The almost upright small ostrich feather in her hat, which had irritated Mr. Samsa during her entire service, swayed lightly in all directions. "All right then, what do you really want?" asked Mrs. Samsa, whom the cleaning lady still usually respected. "Well," answered the cleaning woman, smiling so happily she couldn't go on speaking right away, "about how that rubbish from the next room should be thrown out, you mustn't worry about it. It's all taken care of." Mrs. Samsa and Grete bent down to their letters, as though they wanted to go on writing. Mr. Samsa, who noticed that the cleaning woman wanted to start describing everything in detail, decisively prevented her with an outstretched hand. But since she was not allowed to explain, she remembered the great hurry she was in, and called out, clearly insulted, "Bye bye, everyone," turned around furiously and left the apartment with a fearful slamming of the door.

"This evening she'll be let go," said Mr. Samsa, but he got no answer from either his wife or from his daughter, because the cleaning woman seemed to have upset once again the tranquillity they had just attained. They got up, went to the window, and remained there, with their arms about each other. Mr. Samsa turned around in his chair in their direction and observed them quietly for a while. Then he called out, "All right, come here then. Let's finally get rid of old things. And have a little consideration for me." The women attended to him at once. They rushed to him, caressed him, and quickly ended their letters.

Then all three left the apartment together, something they had not done for months now, and took the electric tram into the open air outside the city. The car in which they were sitting by themselves was totally engulfed by the warm sun. Leaning back comfortably in their seats, they talked to each other about future prospects, and they discovered that on closer observation these were not at all bad, for the three of them had employment, about which they had not really questioned each other at all, which was extremely favourable and with especially promising prospects. The greatest improvement in their situation at this moment, of course, had to come from a change of dwelling. Now they wanted to rent an apartment smaller and cheaper but better situated and generally more practical than the present one, which Gregor had found. While they amused themselves in this way, it struck Mr. and Mrs. Samsa, almost at the same moment, how their daughter, who was getting more animated all the time, had blossomed recently, in spite of all the troubles which had made her cheeks pale, into a beautiful and voluptuous young woman. Growing more silent and almost unconsciously understanding each other in their glances, they thought that the time was now at hand to seek out a good honest man for her. And it was something of a confirmation of their new dreams and good intentions when at the end of their journey their daughter got up first and stretched her young body.

This translation has been prepared by Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC, Canada, released October 2003.

[sweetwritertanya]

Stormy Night (Original)

Summary: A snow storm leads to you losing your chance to not only see your boyfriend, as it was planned, but also communicate at all with him as the blizzard worsens. Little did you know, that would be the last time you would ever spend a stormy night alone.

Warnings: HORROR! Nothing too bad, hopefully it just sends those spooky scary tingles down your back. No trigger warnings, no violence or anything of the sort. Tell me what you all think of it, if you can! Did it spook you a bit? Did you guess what was about to happen?

Word Count: 2345

“Hun, I hate this” you complain into the phone in your hand against your ear, pacing around in the living room and looking out the window to the dark threatening sky.

“I know, muffin, I know. I hate it too” your boyfriend reciprocates on the other side of the call.

“I mean, I had everything ready, I was going to make your favorite meal, went to the supermarket and got all the freaking ingredients and whatever, bought the expensive wine, booked the tickets to the play and…” you sigh heavily. “All for nothing.”

“We couldn’t have predicted this, Y/N. I mean, this storm came out of nowhere, not even the weathermen saw it coming” he tries and console you, like he always did whenever you were frustrated at something you couldn’t quite control.

“It just… sucks! I haven’t seen you in three months!”

You didn’t mean for the last sentence to come out almost like a sob, but your pent-up feelings surface quickly and you start snuffling as you try to keep the tears from falling.

“Fuck, baby, I know and it’s killing me too. I just want to hold you in my arms again and kiss the pout I know you have right now away” he confesses, sounding every bit as disappointed as you. A small smile comes to your lips when he mentions the pout that you, in fact, had been sporting the entire call. “If only I had booked a flight one day earlier, I could have been snowed in with you during the storm. Keep you protected and warm.”

“It’s not your fault you’re so busy with work. You know one of the things I love about you is how dedicated you are.” It’s your turn to console him and that somehow helps you feeling better, focusing on making him feel better instead of pitying yourself any further.

“The only thing I hate about my job is how it keeps me away from you so much” he murmurs, groggily.

“You know what? It’s fine. This is fine” you decide with a renewed determination, walking out of the living room you were at and making your way to the kitchen. “We’ll meet after the storm is all over and we’ll make it an even better stay! I’ll get refunded for the tickets, use the money to instead take us out for dinner so I don’t have to cook and we can have our own movie session at home. Which is better anyway, because we can get comfortable and snuggle how much we want without disapproving eyes all around.”

You gasp loudly and jump in place as a loud thunder shakes the ground, lightning tearing apart the cloudy sky outside. The wind seems to pick up in response and you can only see a blur of white snow falling out your windows.

“Y/N? M-ffin, are yo- o-y?”

The signal of your phone call weakens and you can barely make out what he is saying from the other side.

“Babe, I’m okay! Can you hear me? I’m fine, but I think I’m losing signal” you yell into the phone, hoping that he can still comprehend what you are saying so he doesn’t worry.

“I hea- you. Ok-y, you’re oka-. Cal- -morrow?”

“Yeah, I’ll call you tomorrow! Love you!”

“Lov- -ou, bye muff-” And the call ends abruptly.

“Damnit…” you whisper in a sigh. “Was supposed to be spending the day with him and now I can’t even have a phone call or a video chat with him. Stupid weather!”

As you had predicted, both your wi-fi and even the television feed were struggling due to the conditions outside, so you weren’t even bothering turning them on. Taking out all of the candles you had available, which were mainly scented candles you received from people you barely knew, you left at least one in each room and picked the largest one to carry with you around the house, expecting the lights to go out some time during the storm.

When living alone in a small one-bedroom house in the outskirts of town, one could never be too prepared. Especially a woman living alone. So, you have thought of every situation you could find yourself in and came up with solutions that didn’t depend on someone else coming over to fix. The candles were a wise decision, as it turned out, since early in the evening, while you were trying to entertain yourself by reading a book in bed, the only lamp turned on by your nightstand went out and the moonlight was all you had.

“Figures” you dryly say, reaching for the lighter you kept on the first drawer and lighting the large vanilla and coffee scented candle.

Even though it was earlier than when you usually went to sleep, there was really not much you could do without the modern commodities you were used to, especially in the dark of the young night, so you just laid down in bed and covered yourself with the blankets, keeping the candle going in case you needed to go to the bathroom during the night and the lights weren’t back on yet.

Surprisingly, it doesn’t take much for you to fall asleep, even with the wind owling loudly outside and the occasional thunder. And yet, it was a loud crash coming from somewhere in the house that wakes you in a jerk, sounding like one of your plant pots had fallen and shattered on the ground. You grimace just thinking of having to get up and clean it all up, but the thought of just leaving your plant on the ground to wither guilt trips you into doing so.

With a grunt, you remove the covers and put on your slippers, picking the candle up and opening your bedroom’s door. Walking to the kitchen, much like you suspected, you find that the plant you kept on the windowsill above your sink had fallen to the ground and the window’s doors were blasted open with the furious wind, making you shiver from head to toe at how cold it was.

Automatically, you go and close the window before anything else, making sure to close the latch securely this time. It was such a mundane task, something you did every night before going to bed, that you almost missed it.

Just as you were about to turn around and pick up the broken pieces off the floor, your numb mind picks up something strange. You look back outside, frowning as you don’t quite understand what seems strange. It takes you maybe five solid seconds of staring for you to see it.

The footprints, on an otherwise completely immaculate white veil above the ground. The snow was falling so quick and so much that the tracks were starting to be covered up again, soon to disappear beneath a newly fresh layer of pristine snow. But you still saw them.

And they were leading straight to your window.

Your whole body freezes, heart stops and your breathing comes to a frightening halt. Blankly, you stare at the outside for a few more moments before the terrifying realizations hits you. Your silent hammer switches to a hammering beat against your chest, blood rushing loudly in your ears and sold sweats prickling up your skin as you slowly turn around and scan your house.

The dirt of the pot, it had been moved. A snow trail melting in your wooden floors, from your sink where the open window was to across the kitchen. Your eyes follow it and you fight back a fearful whimper once you notice the opened door to the small basement. A door you always closed and seldomly opened.

Your mind races, working in overpower as survival mode seems to set in. There was someone at your house. Someone broke in. Your first thought is to run to your phone and call for help, but your last phone call proved that the storm was interfering with means of communication. And you didn’t have a landline.

You slap your hand against your mouth as a shriek escapes you and you scrunch down to your knees when a creak comes from bellow. Your eyes start to swell up with dread and you force yourself to silently move away. The basement door was made of cement, which meant the creaking could only be made if someone was coming up the stairs.

There were only two options in your brain now. Fight or flight. You couldn’t call for help, hiding would do you no good when there were only a handful of places to do so, and even if you screamed in hopes that your only neighbors from across the street would hear you, the loud storm would drown you out.

The stairs creak again and you are maybe seven feet away from your front door. The door to the basement is still within your view and you wide scared eyes miss nothing at this second. So you see it. Even with the only light sources being the candle you left on the counter and the streetlight from outside, you see it.

The large grey hand with dark dirty nails that clutches around the side of the door, as if about to open it. And the sparkle of something metallic coming from the darkness.

Gathering all of the strength you could master in your panicked state, you stand up and run towards the front door, fighting with the latch to open just as you hear heavy footsteps that didn’t belong to you. Swinging the door open, you run into the blizzard with a shrieking scream that contended with the owling wind, barefoot and only in your pajamas, too caught up in the moment to even feel how cold it was.

You are screaming the entire path across the street, even as you hammer against your neighbor’s door so heavily you might actually break down their door.

“HELP! HELP, I NEED HELP! SOMEBODY! HELP!”

The man from the mid-aged couple is the one who opens the door for you, looking half worried and half annoyed, the woman coming down the stairs hurled up in her robe with concern.

“What the hell is go-”

“Call the police! Somebody broke in to my house and they are there right now. Please, call the police!” you beg, starting to shiver as the cold starts to get to you.

“Dear God, let her in a lock the doors!” the woman tells her husband immediately, taking off her robe and giving it to you as you enter their home.

Thankfully, their landline telephone was still functioning despite the storm and the police was contacted. They arrive an excruciatingly long thirty minutes later, knocking at your neighbor’s door and asking what happened.

That’s when the weirdest thing happens. You walk with the officers back to your house, feeling more secure now that you had two people with guns next to you. The blizzard had almost erased the footsteps from you running away from the house, your door still swinging open and moving with the strong wind. Looking around, you don’t see any tracks other than yours leading out of the house. One of them goes inside the house first, the other keeping you safe outside.

“All clear!” the policeman yells from inside.

Frowning and uncertain, you and the other officer enter the house to inspect.

It’s mind boggling, really. How immaculate all of it was. The flowerpot that had fell to the ground was gone, no indications of any dirt on the ground, all completely clean as if it never happened. The window was still shut just as you left it, candle still burning on your kitchen’s counter. No snow or water trails on the floor anywhere.

They checked the basement and found nothing; it was just as you always left it. The policemen made you search for any lost valuables, any expensive items you might have had that could be stolen, but everything was in its place. Nothing was missing.

You beg them to look for fingerprints, namely on the door where you know you saw a hand. After a bit of pressure, they grant your request and gather all of the fingerprints around the spot you assured them the person had their hands. It would take a few days for them to come back with any result.

Obviously, you didn’t stay back in that house. In fact, you were almost entirely decisive on moving out as soon as possible. The only way you would even consider staying there again was if the police found and imprisoned the person who broke in.

They never did. The fingerprints they collected at the scene, as it turned out, were all yours. There was no indication of anyone ever having broken in. And with nothing stolen or damaged, they couldn’t continue the case and it was closed.

Up until months after you moved out, you were still bothered by vivid nightmares of that night. If you were ever home alone and it was dark, you would see grey nasty hands in the darkest corners. And you made sure from the on to never spend a stormy night alone ever again.

[mayraki]

top 20 fave songs

bro I’m going to do atm because oh lord I have so many

1. plastic hearts by miley cyrus (honestly her last album is so good y’all should listen to it)

2. rock show by halestorm (lzzy hale could stab me repeatedly while singing and I would still be singing with her)

3. vacation by simple plan (I know this song because of the olsen twins pls)

4. working for the weekend by loverboy

5. smells like a teen spirit by nirvana

6. sk8ter boi by the queen herself avril lavigne

7. monster by paramore (hayley williams made me bisexual and it’s an honour)

8. church by chase atlantic (if we’re having sex and it doesn’t feel like this song I DONT WANT IT)

9. gloves up by little mix (my pop queens PLS I LOVE THEM)

10. bad romance cover by halestorm (oh my god. that’s all I have to say)

11. THE LIVE VERSION OF LET THE FLAMES BEGIN BY PARAMORE JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

12. azul by cristian castro (this song makes me want to dance and sing my heart out EVERY FUCKING TIME)

13. lloviendo estrellas by cristian castro (again, this motherfucker has BANGERS)

14. expierence by ludovico einaudi (this song takes me out of this world I swear to god)

15. to build a home by the cinematic orchestra (CRY CRY CRY)

16. bird set free by sia (THIS WOMAN)

17. edge of seventeen by stevie nicks

18. kids in america by the muffs

19. phoenix by league of legends (this songs makes me feel fucking POWERFUL)

20. my songs know what to do in the dark by fall out boy

this was so hard to choose but HEY I DID MY BEST

[windbournefree]

HOW MAGGIE KILLS CHARLIE: Bad Decisions and the Butterfly Effect

Having seen the series once through and only just rewatched Season One it is now clear that Maggie is responsible for Charlie's death although not intentionally. Here's that line of reasoning, beginning with the story background needed for context.

Backstory: After Jim & Maggie's S1 E10 rom-com moment, the kiss that usually ends the movie with true love found, they part with an implied understanding that there can't be anything more between them until they resolve their current relationships. The restaurant scene with Lisa that set up the rom-com moment reveals that Maggie believes in Don's theory about Jim coming to see HER two weeks earlier, NOT her roommate. The kiss confirms it. Now the ball is in Maggie's court. That she understands this is revealed through her attempt to compose a breakup speech on the way to see Don. She muffs it. Taken aback by Don's romantic offer to move in with him she pushes her feelings for Jim to a back burner and accepts. That Jim should have said more - something about how strongly he wants to be with her - is obvious; it may have changed Maggie's answer. He misses his moment, though. Jim tries calling, probably to say just that, but Maggie has already decided to go with the sure thing rather than the passionate maybe. She doesn't take the call. Later, in S2 E1 Jim will admit to Mac that he screwed up. The next day when Jim & Maggie see each other at the office they awkwardly confirm that they're still with the same people. When Maggie doesn't pick up Jim's call he figures that she'll move in with Don so he lies to Lisa and tells her it was her after all that he came to see. Now the chain of events leading to Charlie's demise.

A) Maggie chooses Don over Jim after a passionate moment.

B) Jim's feelings don't go away so he has a hard time working so close to Maggie. He finally asks Mac to embed him on the 2012 Romney campaign trail so he can get away from the office for awhile.

C) It's because of Jim's absence that Mac hires Jerry Dantanna to take over as Supervising Producer temporarily.

D) Jerry edits the raw footage of the interview with the General then covers up what he's done with the rest of his team, including Mackenzie.

E) The Genoa story gets aired, in part because of Dantanna's edited interview, and then totally falls apart when the producer's deception is revealed. He is fired.

F) ACN deals with the fallout in the form of lost credibility, vociferous criticism, a severe drop in the ratings, loss of revenue, and reduced staff morale. To add insult to injury Dantanna sues for wrongful termination which eats up legal costs and time better spent.

G) Leona tries to do the right thing and stand by her staff but the only way for everyone to keep their jobs is for her to sell off ACN, the news division of parent company AWM, to someone who won't just gut it and sell it for parts.

H) The new buyer they find wants to change both ACN content and the newsgathering process to appeal to younger viewers. His ideas fundamentally alter the trustworthiness of reported news.

I) Charlie fights with both the new owner and his staff constantly, trying to be a go-between but failing to do more than piss everyone off. It's this new, undue stress that triggers the heart attack that kills him.

Therefore: if Maggie had chosen Jim over Don then Jerry Dantanna would never have had access to the newsroom and the Genoa story would have been disproven before airing. ACN would still hold credibility with viewers and been allowed to continue its mission within the larger AWM. Charlie would have experienced joy rather than stress and still be alive. By failing to follow her heart, Maggie kills Charlie.

[rukia-writes]

✨Sugar Daddy Levi x college student reader (AU) (Part 6)✨

✨Rated: R, smut✨

“Hold on tightly (Name).”

It was too late as Levi sees (Name) fall on the ice.

Levi and (Name) had just arrived in London, England, after putting their stuff at the hotel (Name) decided she wanted to go ice skating.

Levi was teaching (Name) how to ice skate, she was learning at great rate it was just all so new to her.

It was also very cold.

Skating up to (Name) he holds out his hand for (Name) to take, which she does.

“Are you okay? You fell pretty hard.”

“I’m okay. My ego might be a little bruised.”

Levi smirked as heard (Name) as he pulls her off the cold ice floor.

“Well, if you want I’ll check your ass when we get back to the hotel.”

“Levi!”

(Name) felt shy and almost lost her balance on her skates again.

After spending the while afternoon skating the two decided to go to the Christmas markets at Hyde park.

From there, the two went Coppa club and the two talked away.

From talking about what (Name) wanted to do after graduation to Levi and his younger days.

“So, where are we going tomorrow?”

“We’re going tea shopping tomorrow.”

“What about the tea at the hotel?”

“It’s great, I just want more to take home-“

Levi then sees (Name) dig in her purse, then taking out a few brochures of where to get tea.

“Here, I got some of these that might help.”

Levi took the brochures and read them.(Name) could tell the man was happy by the look in his eyes.

After that, It was late so the two decided to go back to the hotel.

(Name) was in the bathroom getting ready for bed while Levi had just finished making a nice cup of tea.

If it was one thing he liked about coming to London it was the tea.

Levi heard music coming from the bathroom too. He was pretty sure it was the song “7/11” by Beyoncé.

Perhaps (Name) was having her own concert in the bathroom.

It was starting to snow and Levi noticed from the living room as he sipped his tea.

All the man said was,

“It’s snowing.”

“What’s it doing Levi?”

“Huh? It’s snowing-“

At that moment the bathroom opened quickly, the music was cut off abruptly,(Name) running towards the window with nothing but short silk robe on, exposing those legs of hers, and half her face had on a green face mask the other was side was wet as where she had washed off the mask.

“It is snowing! It’s so beautiful!”

Levi looked at her a few seconds slackjaw, a chuckle from Levi made (Name) come to her senses on what she was wearing and her face.

“You could’ve finished washing your face first.”

“But I had to see the snow...just give me a few seconds. I’ll be back.”

“What is that stuff for anyway?”

(Name) was now in bathroom washing her face as Levi watched from the door. Bending over slightly Levi could see up her robe that was short.

“My skin has been dry lately so I got a face mask.”

(Name) couldn’t see as she had splashed water on her face and her eyes. Levi was a step ahead and grabbed a face towel for her to take.

“Here.”

(Name) grabs the towel from Levi only to feel both her legs lifted and being carried bridal style.

“Levi!”

“That’s my name.”

Levi carries her from the bathroom to the bedroom and places her on the bed, her shirt exposing those legs that Levi loves so much.

Those thighs.

He loved them too.

“Are you ready for bed?”

“Well I-“

“You don’t have to answer that. You are. I know.”

(Name) silk tie that was once on her robe was now tied around her wrist as Levi had her bouncing up and down on his cock. It was quite the sight and experience. Seeing her breast bounce up and down with each upward thrust inside of her and feeling her tight pussy around his cock was simply delightful. Levi glances at the silk tie for a second then smirking to himself that this was a great idea. 

“Levi! Please untie me-“ 

At that moment Levi hit a spot inside of his sweet sugar baby, cutting off her plea. 

“No. I’m not.” 

 Was all Levi said as he moaned and continued his pace. (Name) wanted to the tie off but Levi had it on her pretty tight. Eventually, (Name) forgot about the tie and began feeling great pleasure, as the moans kept leaving her. Levi could tell she was nearing, he knew. With that, Levi thrusts himself upward one last time, grabs (Name)’s hips, takes his cock out, puts her on her back on the soft bed, then as he has done before, Levi then puts his cock inside (Name), while his thumb softly and slowly rubbed (Name)’s clitoris. 

Before (Name) knew it, Levi had her both her legs over his shoulder, the more Levi did the more moans left (Name), the tighter she became in Levi’s cock, and the closer the two came to their orgasm. 

 “Levi!” Was all Levi needed to hear to know (Name) was getting ready to orgasm. Soon, (Name)’s orgasm came and so did Levi’s. 

“Fuck.” 

(Name) hears Levi say and she knew why, as she felt for the first time a warmth inside of her. Both were panting a little as Levi laid down beside (Name), and pushes back his black bangs. 

“That was amazing.” 

“Sex is always amazing with you.” 

(Name) smiles at Levi’s words, moving slightly she remembers her wrists being tied. 

 “Levi, please untie me.”

In the morning, (Name) was the first to be up. After making tea, (Name) looked outside to see the snow falling and that it was sticking to the ground. Thinking back to yesterday, how much fun it was with Levi. As though to say, she couldn’t wait to see where they would go today. 

 It would be Christmas and Levi’s birthday in a two days and (Name) had Levi’s gift ready. Hopefully, he would like it. Once Levi had waken up from his slumber he notices (Name) was gone. He called for her a few times, and he got no answer. Levi was starting to feel his pulse beat a little fast. 

 Luckily, the front door open to see (Name) bundled up in a coat with ear muffs and gloves. A bag she had she moved behind her back before Levi saw her. 

 “Where did you go?” 

“To the store..is everything okay? You look a little..worried.”

 “I’m fine.”

 Levi sits on the couch, then hearing a bag rustle in the kitchen.

 “(Name), what are you doing?”

 “Nothing. Nothing important.”

 Levi wasn’t convinced but he let it slide. 

 “Well, could you make me some tea?” 

 “..Now?” 

 “Yes now.” 

 “..okay give me a second.” 

 Levi shrugged his shoulders as he turned on the television. A few minutes later Levi heard a “Oh no” from (Name) in the kitchen.

 “...Everything okay in there?” 

“Yes. I’ll be there shortly.”

 Levi knew (Name), could make tea. Tea the way Levi liked it. Once again, Levi hears a “Damn it all” from the kitchen. 

“Okay, I’m-“ 

 “N-no! It’s fine I’ll be there in a second.” 

 Levi tells himself that, “She’s up to something”. Eventually, (Name) made it to the couch and sits beside Levi while holding a tea set tray on the table. It was a fancy one that wasn’t from the hotel. Levi looks a bit taken back as he sees the porcelain and gold trimmed tea set.

 “It’s an early Christmas and birthday gift from me.”

 (Name) didn’t hear anything from Levi for a few seconds as he admired his gift.

 “It’s not bad. Thank you.”

 (Name) received a kiss on the lips. Making her smile, turn bashful as Levi then takes her left hand in his.

 “Burned yourself?”

 “Just a little.”

 Levi nods and kisses her index finger. 

“Be more careful.” 

 “Mmhm. I will.” 

 (Name) could feel her heart beat, (Name) didn’t even notice Levi had poured her cup too until he called her name.

 ✨Rukia-Writes✨

✨Masterpost✨

[mermaidxatxheart]

Baby It’s Cold Outside

This is my submission for @mypassionsarenysins​‘ #mypassionsaremysins1k celebration. Congratulations! 

Prompt: Baby It’s Cold Outside by Michael Buble and Idina Menzel

Pairing: Bucky X Reader

Word Count: 3656

Summary: Bucky wants to see his girl again and begs her to come over. 

This is a continuation of my 1040s!Bucky story Here in Your Arms

The phone on the kitchen counter rings. An obnoxious sound, disrupting your breakfast. You frown at the machine, wondering who would be rude enough to call you so early. 

 You set your toast down and cross the creaking hardwood floors, picking up the heavy receiver before they hang up. 

 “Y/L/N’s residence.” You answer politely. 

 “Doll.” Bucky’s voice greets you, relieved. “I was startin’ to think you might still be sleepin’.” He says softly and you can hear the smile in his voice.

 “James.” You sigh, amused and teasingly annoyed. “I figured you wouldn’t be up until at least noon.” You reply. 

“And miss spending the day with my girl?” 

 You can hear the party line getting restless, other people trying to make their own calls and you cringe at the thought of anyone overhearing your personal business. 

 “Bucky, the point.” You remind him.

 “I have some decorations to put up and because I have, how’d ya put it?” He thinks for second before snapping his fingers. “Boy brains, I don’t know how to do anything useful. I was hoping you’d come over and help me put ‘em up.” He says, his nervousness just barely audible over the ridiculous amount of charm. You want to chuckle at the reminder of your conversation the night before, but the chatter on the line is distracting you. 

 “You don’t even have a tree.” You say, glancing around your kitchen. “And I have so many things to do, and it’s supposed to storm real bad.”

 “Please? I need your help, sweetheart.” He begs.

 Begs. 

 You let out a long suffering sigh. “Fine. I’ll be there in a little bit. I expect hot cocoa.” You say and he laughs lightly.

 “I am yours to command, doll.” 

 You huff and hang up the phone, setting it down a lot harder than you mean to. “Curse it all, James.” You groan before going up to your room to get dressed. 

 You look around your bedroom, it hasn’t changed much over the years. A desk added for your school work, a lamp for you to read by so you don’t have to strain your eyes, an expanded closet that your father installed years ago. 

 You have it decorated for the Christmas season, small holiday lights strung up around your window and over your bed. This is one of your favorite seasons and you readily decorated the rest of the house in your parents’ absence. 

 You open the closet doors, looking through your dresses. Something simple, but something you know he’ll like. You have a dress to match his perfect, sky blue eyes, but that’s not his favorite color; not on you. 

 No, his favorite color on you is a deep emerald green. So lush, so full of life. You pick up your favorite dress, long sleeved, white lace collar, white lace trim on the bottom, heart shaped buttons from the waist up. 

 You had been wearing it the first time he saw you, and in a way, you’ve come to consider the fabric your lucky dress. Something good always happens to you when you wear it, mostly concerning that daft idiot you’re so in love with. 

 You lift the hanger off the bar and hold it up against your frame, looking at your reflection in the full length mirror positioned in the corner of your room. 

 Perfect.

 You discard your robe and pajamas, pulling on the soft fabric over your undergarments. You find your favorite Christmas thigh high stockings, a thick white set of thigh high things with fur lining, just the perfect thing to keep you warm on your walk to Bucky’s neighborhood. 

 It isn’t far, a dozen blocks or so, but with the bitter December wind blowing, it will feel like a lot longer. You’re a little nervous that the romantic atmosphere from last night will have dissipated, leaving an awkward tension behind. 

 You sit at your vanity, applying your subtle makeup. A touch of blush, your wickedly sharp eyeliner wings, mascara, and a small bit of red lipstick. Nothing outrageous, but it compliments your skin tone nicely. 

 A quick brush through your hair before pinning your long curls up with some bobby pins, not much effort put into taming it today, you’re too eager. 

 You head down the stairs and pull on your white boots, lacing them up your ankles. They’ll protect you from the snow covered sidewalks. You pull on your thick, white coat and pause to check your reflection in the front hall mirror. 

 Satisfied, you pull your ear muffs on, followed by your leather gloves and your purse. You open the front door, stopping short at the sight of the big man in front of you. His hand is raised awkwardly, clearly ready to knock, and just as surprised as you are.

 “Brock.” You start, recovering your wits and stepping outside.

 “Am I catching you at a bad time?” He asks. His voice is rough, a smoker’s voice. He’d be good looking enough, if it weren’t for that rotten attitude. His eye is swollen and bruised badly. Bucky got him good.

 “Actually, a little bit. I’m headed out. Was there something you needed?” You ask, pulling your door closed behind you and quickly locking it. 

 “I was hoping to talk to you about last night at the dance. I wanted to apologize, my behavior was unacceptable.” He says, walking down your front steps with you. 

 “Oh. Well, apology accepted.” You say, knowing full well it’s going to happen again. He’s too much like his daddy.

 “And I’m sorry if I hurt you. I know I got a little rough.” He adds sheepishly. 

 More than a little, but you nod all the same. “Apology accepted.” You repeat.

 He doesn’t say anything about the names he called you. “Are you going to see Barnes?” He asks, almost managing to control the annoyance on Bucky’s last name. 

 “Not sure what business it is of yours, but yes.” You reply.

 “I’ll walk you there.” He offers. 

 It’s simple, casual. There’s no hint of malice, or bad intent. But you’ve been burned too many times by Brock Rumlow to ever fully trust him. 

 “You don’t have to. It’s not that far.” You say with an offhand smile. 

 “It’s no trouble. And I’d rather make sure you got there safe and sound.”

 “Also, irritating Bucky?” You ask, eyebrow raised.

 “Just a perk.” He admits, scratching at the back of his neck.

 The walk is quiet. He seems unsure what to say to you. Snowflakes start to fall about halfway there. You look up to the sky, seeing the dark clouds gathering.

 “Gonna be a nasty storm tonight.” He says, following your gaze. 

 You nod in agreement, walking just a little bit faster. You turn onto Bucky’s street and Steve is standing on the corner, chatting with another man. He looks cold, nose all red, cheeks wind-blown. He looks up at the movement as his blue eyes get wide. 

 “I’ve been spotted.” Brock chuckles.

 “You should probably go.” You say, glancing at him. 

 “Y/N.” Steve calls, heading towards you, his big feet wkicking puffs of snow out of his way.

 “Hey, Stevie.” You reply, folding into his hug easily. 

 “Bucky’s been waitin’ for ya.” He says, the way he glances at Brock makes it clear he said it for the other man’s benefit.

 “He was just walking me.” You say, linking your arm through Steve’s big one. “Bye, Brock.” You add, feeling it would be rude to not say something. 

 “Are you going to the dance this Friday?” Rumlow asks.

 “I’m not sure.” You answer honestly. The last one took the fun out of them. And the only reason you had been going was to flirt and dance with Bucky.

 Steve gently tugs your arm, guiding you towards Bucky’s house. “He’s gonna be pissed Rumlow was with you.” Steve says quietly. 

 “He showed up at my front door. I couldn’t exactly get rid of him.” You sigh, reaching up to brush snow out of Steve’s hair. 

 “What did he want?” He asks, slowing down just a little. 

 “To apologize for last night, and if he hurt me.”

 “And you believe him?” Steve raises an eyebrow. 

 “I believe he means it for now. Until he drinks again.” You say honestly. You know he’s going to tell Bucky, you won’t try to stop him. You just hope that Bucky will choose staying with you over chasing down Rumlow.

 Steve stops in front of the Barnes’ house. “Stay behind me.” He says with a wink and climbs the stairs. I follow his footprints and stand behind him, his massive frame hiding me from view. 

 He knocks sharply on the door and it yanks open, the latch catching roughly on the wood.

 “Steve.” Bucky sighs, voice deflated. “I’ve already told you, I can’t hang out today.” He says. You peak very carefully and Bucky is distracted, eyes searching down the street for something.

 “Yeah, I know. You’ve got plans.” Steve says with a smirk. 

 “She should’ve been here by now.” Bucky mutters, running a hand through his normally neat black hair. Today it’s a mess, frantic. 

 Sexy.

 You like this look on him, rough at the edges. Not so composed. It’s more real. You love the charm and the way he smiles at you like you’re the only person in the world. But this side of him, worried that you might choose not to show up, not knowing that he already has you wrapped around his finger. So... unsure. 

 You find this just as attractive. 

 “You mean this beauty right here?” Steve asks, reaching behind him and grasping your hand. He gently pulls you into view and Bucky’s beautiful eyes land on you. 

 “Rogers.” Bucky says flatly. 

 Steve is snickering. “Yeah, Buck?”

 “Get the hell off my porch.” Bucky snaps, holding his hand out for yours. 

 Steve cackles and you grin, tugging on his jacket collar. He leans down, still grinning and you press a kiss to his cheek. “Thanks.” You say before stepping inside. You set about taking off your boots while Bucky stands outside for a minute longer, talking to his best friend. 

 “Rumlow walked her here. She said he was apologizing.” Steve says quietly. But you can still hear. 

 “Fucking hell.” Bucky curses and you glance at the door. 

 “She’s fine, right in there with you. He didn’t do anything, Buck. He just wanted to talk.”

 “I’m gonna kill him. I warned him.”

 “I know. But you’re not gonna just leave her here all by herself. You’re gonna go inside and decorate your house with your girl. We can deal with Rumlow later.” Steve says firmly and you quietly thank god for Steven Grant Rogers.

 “Fine. But he will be dealt with.” Bucky says. The two men say goodbye and you struggle to kick off your boots. He shuts the door and turns towards you, a bemused smile on his face.

 “Oh, doll. What am I gonna do with you, eh?” He asks, kneeling down and deftly untying your boots. He lifts your leg, his big hand cupping the back of your calf intimately as he slowly slides your boot off. He makes quick work of the other one, his hands lingering not nearly long enough. 

 He stands up and gently removes your earmuffs, setting them on the radiator to dry. Your gloves follow and then he helps you out of your coat.

 “Damn.” He mutters, draping your coat over the radiator to warm it up.

 “What?” Your hands fly to your face, worried that your makeup got messed up in the snow. 

 He captures your wrists gently. “Stop, you’re perfect.” He promises. Any fear about the separation from last night vanishes as he looks at you. “Perfect.” He mumbles again.

 “Then what are you cursin’ about?” You mutter.

 “Weren’t you just listening?” He grins at you, linking his hand in yours. 

 “I’m not sure we were hearing the same conversation.” You sigh, lifting his hand to look at the bruises. Dark purple splotches cover his tan skin, veins spiderweb out from the center and your heart twists slightly. You trace them slightly, frowning.

 “Doll?” He starts, drawing your gaze away from his hand.

 “You shouldn’t have hit him, Buck.” You bite your lip. 

 His thumb is gentle as he carefully frees it. “I’m fine, sweetheart. Nothin t’worry about.” A mischievous spark in his eye flares and you know that look well. “Well, nothing a little kiss won’t cure.” He grins and you roll your eyes.

 “I should have seen that coming.” You sigh dramatically, but you lift his hand to your mouth, gently pressing your lips to his bruised flesh. Your kiss is tender, soft. It’s a slow second before you lower his hand, flicking your eyes up to his.

 “Better?” You ask, trying to refrain from smirking. 

 “My hand is.” He answers and you frown, not understanding the distinction. 

 “I don’t-“

 “I promised you hot chocolate.” He says suddenly and the brightness of it makes you take a step back.

 “Right. You did.” You nod, following him into the living room. 

 Boxes fill the space, looking new, at the very least, not used a lot. He steps around them into the kitchen and you look at the big tree taking up space in the bay window. 

 “Buck, how did you even get this thing in here?” You laugh, looking at the perfect tree.

 “Steve and some of the boys helped.” He says, coming back in with a mug for you. He turns it around so the handle is ready for you to take. 

 You look at all the boxes, the brand new tree and up at his handsome face. “If I ask you a question, will you answer me honestly?” You ask, setting the mug down on the coffee table.

 “You sound so serious.” He shifts nervously.

 “Why do you want to do this? Why ask me?” 

 He stares at you, his eyes getting wide as his cheeks twinge pink.

 “I thought it was obvious.” He scratches at the back of his neck. “I remembered you sayin’ Christmas was your favorite holiday. You couldn’t stop talkin’ about how you were gonna decorate your house and how you have your own decorations for your room. I bet it looks like a frosted winter wonderland in there.” He smiles, his beautiful eyes crinkling at the corners. “And, god, doll, I just want to spend time with you. This house hasn’t been decorated in years, not since Becca left, and I thought, why not? It’d be nice to feel like it was a home again for a while and since you love doin’ it so much, it won’t feel like such a chore.” He lifts a shoulder, staring at his feet. 

 You’re quiet for a long time, watching him shuffle nervously, hands fidgeting with his hair and his shirt.

 “Can you say somethin’ please?” He sighs and you crack a smile.

 “James Barnes, you’re sweet.” You say finally and he looks up at you.

 “What?”

 “How can I resist helping a knight in distress?” You grin. “But, you don’t have to make up reasons to see me. You think I would walk across town for just anyone?” 

 “Doll,” he closes his eyes with a small smile. 

 “Let’s get started.” You clap your hands, rubbing them together. 

 Pointing to a box of string lights, you start there. You screw the light bulbs in as he wraps it around the tree in a near perfect spiral. 

 “Is your sister coming home for Christmas?” You ask, watching him work. 

 “Nah, she’s spendin’ it with her new family.” He sighs. 

 “So, you’ll be alone?” You frown.

 “I’m okay, darlin’.” He flashes you a charming smile, but it’s his empty one, the one he uses to get out of trouble. 

 You hand him a twist of loose garland and together you start draping them over the branches like silver icicles. 

 Your mind is racing. You can’t let him be alone. Not Bucky. 

 “What’s Stevie doing?” You ask and he shrugs.

 “Same as me, I s’pose.”

 You take the left over garland from him, your fingers brushing against his and you can’t shake the overwhelming feeling of your heart breaking for him. 

 “Doll, you’re staring at me.” He says, tilting his head.

 “Admiring the view.” You say offhandedly and his lips part in surprise. 

 “Very bold, miss Y/L/N.” He says teasingly and you shrug.

 “Not like I’m hiding how I feel about you.” You say, picking up a bag of hooks 

 “You’re not?” He asks, tilting his head.

 “Am I being too subtle?” You reply, handing him an ornament to hang on a branch. 

 “Hmm, coy. I think that’s the word. Isn’t that what women are supposed to be to ensnare a man?” He asks and you look at him, bewildered. “I know nothing.” He amends quickly, holding up his hands in surrender.

 You hang your head for a second, eyes falling on something in the boxes. A ball of mistletoe. Perfect.

 “Well, are you ensnared?” You ask, handing him the ball and pointing to the doorway between the living room and kitchen.

 He takes it and goes to hang it up. “Definitely.” He answers. 

 You follow him over, standing a little behind him in the doorway, waiting until he’s done before tapping him on the shoulder. He turns and smiles a little. 

 “Then the time for being coy is over. Are you really not sure?” 

 His hands cup your face gently, thumbs tracing your cheeks. “A guy can hope, but does anyone really know what goes on in a dame’s head?” He asks teasingly. 

 “No. Least of all the dame. But I know I want you, James Buchanan Barnes. Never doubt that.” You reply. “Now, tradition states-“ he cuts you off with a searing kiss, lips stealing your breath away, his gentle hands cradling your face. 

 Your fingers rake through his hair, making a mess of his dark locks as you cling to him. He pulls you against him, crushing your tiny body against his muscular frame. He pulls away sharply, eyes dark, breathing hard.

 “We should finish... b-before the storm gets bad.” You mutter, feeling a little dazed. You never thought kissing a fella could feel like that.

 “Yeah,” he agrees, blinking his eyes rapidly. 

 Your lips are swollen as you turn back around, taking a sip of your hot chocolate. 

  The decorating is fun, he makes you laugh and asks you a thousand questions. Things that time in the school yard can’t answer. 

 Honestly, you could spend forever talking to Bucky and it just wouldn’t be long enough. 

 It’s not until the wind rattles the windows with a particularly hard gust that you realize how late it’s gotten.

 “I should get goin’.” You say, pushing yourself up.

 “We aren’t done yet.” He protests.

 “Bucky, the storm is rollin’ in. I gotta get home before it’s too late.” You head for the door, pulling your boots back on. “I’ll come back over tomorrow and we can spend all day together again. Okay?” You promise, wiggling your foot into the fur lined boot.

 “You’re gonna freeze out there, sweetheart.” He says. “Just stay here. It’s warm and there’s no chance of you losin’ fingers or toes.” 

 You shake your head. “What would people think?”

 “Let ‘em think what they want.” He sighs, running a hand through his hair.

 “Easy for you to say. My dad will kill me if he ever heard that.” You mutter, lacing up your boots again.

 “Doll, please don’t go?” He whispers. “I like when you’re here.” 

 You turn to face him slowly, taking in his face, slumped shoulders. “James Buchanan Barnes.” You say softly, cupping his cheek. “What are you so worried about? I’m comin’ back tomorrow. First thing, just like I promised. And I’ll spend all day with you.”

 “I’m not worried about anythin’, doll. I just don’t want ya to go, is all.”

 “Is this about Brock?”

 “I warned him to stay away from you.” He clenches his fists.

 “James, promise me you won’t go lookin’ for trouble. Rumlow isn’t worth it. I like you in one piece and not in jail.” You allow a soft smile to creep up your cheeks. “I can’t kiss ya if you’re in jail.” You remind him, reaching for your coat.

 “That’s a good point.” He sighs. “Are you sure you can’t stay for another cup of hot chocolate?” He asks, catching your hands and pulling you close. 

 You trace the collar of his shirt, fixing it slightly. “I’m sure, Bucky. I need to go before it gets any worse.” You let out a small sigh and rest your forehead against his chest.

 “I should walk you home.” He mutters.

 “Nonsense. I’ll be fine.” You pull on your coat, reaching for the buttons, but he beats you to it. His long fingers take their time buttoning you in. 

 “Baby, it’s cold outside.” He insists and you can’t help the smile.

 “All the more reason for you to not make the walk twice.” You say, pulling your earmuffs on. “I’ll call you when I get home, alright?” You say gently, sliding your hands into your warm gloves.

 “I don’t like this. I should at least walk you home if you won’t stay.” 

 You pull him close and kiss him sweetly, feeling him relax in your hands. “I’ll be fine, my love.” You promise and turn towards his front door.

 He opens it for you and you stop dead in your tracks. Snow is piled as high as your waist on his front porch. There’s no way you can walk home through that.

 How had the storm gotten that bad this fast?

 You clear your throat and slowly turn to Bucky who’s doing a terrible job of hiding his grin. “You said something about some more hot chocolate?” You mutter and his perfect smile cracks through. 

 “I’ll put on the kettle, gorgeous.”

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[hinktypinkty]

Metamorphosis

by Franz Kafka

Translated by David Wyllie

I

One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked.

"What's happened to me?" he thought. It wasn't a dream. His room, a proper human room although a little too small, lay peacefully between its four familiar walls. A collection of textile samples lay spread out on the table - Samsa was a travelling salesman - and above it there hung a picture that he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame. It showed a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur boa who sat upright, raising a heavy fur muff that covered the whole of her lower arm towards the viewer.

Gregor then turned to look out the window at the dull weather. Drops of rain could be heard hitting the pane, which made him feel quite sad. "How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense", he thought, but that was something he was unable to do because he was used to sleeping on his right, and in his present state couldn't get into that position. However hard he threw himself onto his right, he always rolled back to where he was. He must have tried it a hundred times, shut his eyes so that he wouldn't have to look at the floundering legs, and only stopped when he began to feel a mild, dull pain there that he had never felt before.

"Oh, God", he thought, "what a strenuous career it is that I've chosen! Travelling day in and day out. Doing business like this takes much more effort than doing your own business at home, and on top of that there's the curse of travelling, worries about making train connections, bad and irregular food, contact with different people all the time so that you can never get to know anyone or become friendly with them. It can all go to Hell!" He felt a slight itch up on his belly; pushed himself slowly up on his back towards the headboard so that he could lift his head better; found where the itch was, and saw that it was covered with lots of little white spots which he didn't know what to make of; and when he tried to feel the place with one of his legs he drew it quickly back because as soon as he touched it he was overcome by a cold shudder.

He slid back into his former position. "Getting up early all the time", he thought, "it makes you stupid. You've got to get enough sleep. Other travelling salesmen live a life of luxury. For instance, whenever I go back to the guest house during the morning to copy out the contract, these gentlemen are always still sitting there eating their breakfasts. I ought to just try that with my boss; I'd get kicked out on the spot. But who knows, maybe that would be the best thing for me. If I didn't have my parents to think about I'd have given in my notice a long time ago, I'd have gone up to the boss and told him just what I think, tell him everything I would, let him know just what I feel. He'd fall right off his desk! And it's a funny sort of business to be sitting up there at your desk, talking down at your subordinates from up there, especially when you have to go right up close because the boss is hard of hearing. Well, there's still some hope; once I've got the money together to pay off my parents' debt to him - another five or six years I suppose - that's definitely what I'll do. That's when I'll make the big change. First of all though, I've got to get up, my train leaves at five."

And he looked over at the alarm clock, ticking on the chest of drawers. "God in Heaven!" he thought. It was half past six and the hands were quietly moving forwards, it was even later than half past, more like quarter to seven. Had the alarm clock not rung? He could see from the bed that it had been set for