#my money's on the mosquito

[quaranmine]

i don't have any plans this friday night do you think the city would let me drive the mosquito truck again

[morgg-g]

bitches (bugs) love me!! they love me for my swagger (my general bug-ish aura) swatting these bitches (bugs) away like flies (they are flies)

[ludinusdaleth]

me enjoying slowly actualizing my life dream of being a big hairy farmer bear. vs getting infinitely sweatier as i transition, in the texas heat present even in goddamn spring. fight

[omegasmileyface]

I WAS RIGHT MY DAD FUCKING BOUGHT SURPRISE FIREWORKS CMON

[globodamorte]

it's 5:30 am and I'm here crying bc I went to feed the cats and there was a bat outside and their rabies shots are not up to date and I don't have money for them or for the Ubers I'll need to get to give them the free one. it's also Saturday and the free ones only available during the week I'm so scared I'm so fucking scared. I don't even know how much it costs to vaccinate them thru private clinics I just know its money I don't have rn. I'm so scared.

[inkskinned]

i got rickrolled today but it didn't work because i have adblocker installed, so youtube just told me i violated the terms of service. yesterday i was trying to edit a picture as a joke for my girlfriend, and google made me check a box to prove i'm human because i wasn't "searching normally".

it isn't just that capitalism is killing fun and whimsy, it is that any element of entertainment or joy is being fed upon by this mosquito body, one that will suck you dry at any vulnerability.

do you want to meet new friends in your city? download this app, visit our website, sign up for our email list. pay for this class on making a terrarium, on candlemaking, on cooking. it will be 90 dollars a session. you can go to group fitness, but only under our specific gym membership. solve the puzzle, sign up for our puzzle-of-the-month-club. what is a club if not just a paid opportunity - you are all paying for the same thing, which makes you a community.

but you're like me, i know it - you're careful, you try the library meetings and the stuff at the local school and all of that. the problem is that you kind of want really specific opportunities that used to exist. you are so grateful for libraries and the publicly-funded things: they are, however, an exception - and everything they have, they've fought tooth-and-nail to protect. you read a headline about how in many other states, libraries have virtually nothing left.

do you want to meet up with your friends afterwards? gift your friends the discord app. you can choose to go to a cafe (buy a coffee, at least), a bar (money, alcohol) or you can all stay in and catch a movie (streaming) or you can all stay in bed (rent. don't get me started) and scream (noise complaint. ticket at least).

you want to read a new book, but the book has to have 124 buzzwords from tiktok readers that are, like, weirdly horny. you can purchase this audiobook on audible! your podcast isn't on spotify, it's on its own server, pay for a different site. fuck, at least you're supporting artists you like. the art museum just raised their ticket price. once, they had a temporary exhibit that acknowledged that ~85% of their permanent art galleries were from cis white men, and that they had thousands of works by women (even famous women, like frida! georgia o'keefe!) just rotting in their basement. that exhibit lasted for 3 months and then they put everything away again.

walmart proudly supports this strip of land by the street! here are some flowers with wilting leaves. its employees have to pay out-of-pocket for their uniforms. my friend once got fined by the city because she organized a community pick-up of the riverfront, which was technically private property.

no, you cannot afford to take that dance class, neither can i. by the way - i'm a teacher. i'm absolutely not saying "educators shouldn't be paid fairly." i'm saying that when i taught classes, renting a studio went from 20 bucks an hour to 180 in the span of 6 months. no significant changes to the studio were made, except they now list the place as updated and friendly. the heat still doesn't work in the building. i have literally never seen the landlord who ignores my emails. recently they've been renting it out at night as an "unusual nightclub; a once-in-a-lifetime close-knit party." they spent some of those 180 dollars on LEDs and called it renovating. the high heels they invite in have been ruining the marley.

do you want to experience the old internet? do you want to play flash games or get back the temporary joy of club penguin? you can, you just need to pay for it. i have a weird, neurodivergent obsession with occasionally checking in to watch the downfall and NFT-ification of neopets. if i'm honest with you all - i never got into webkins, my family didn't have the money to buy me a pointless elephant. people forget that "being poor" can mean literally "if i buy you that toy, i can't afford rent."

you and i don't have time to make good food, and we don't have the budget for it. we are not gonna be able to host dinner parties, we're not made of money, kid. do you want some kind of 3rd space? a space that isn't home or work or school? you could try being online, but - what places actually exist for you? tiktok counts as social media because you see other people on it, not because they actually talk to you.

there was a local winter tradition of sledding down the hill at my school. kids would use pizza boxes and jackets and whatever worked, howling and laughing. back in september, they made a big announcement that this time, rules were changing, and everyone must pay 10 dollars to participate. when im not scared shitless, i kind of appreciate the environmental irony - it hasn't gone below 40. so much for snow & joyriding.

i saw a bulletin for a local dogwalking group and, nervous about making a good first impression, showed up early. the first guy there grimaced at me. "sorry," he said. "there's a 30-dollar buy-in fee." i thought he was joking. wait. for what? the group doesn't offer anything except friendship and people with whom to walk around the city.

he didn't know the answer. just shrugged at me. "you know," he said. "these days, everything costs money."

[inbabylontheywept]

the house i grew up in was a little bit of a fixer upper. for the first 19 years, my dad just sort of slowly fixed it, but pretty early on in college, he came into a large amount of cash and decided to just do the whole thing at once. so he rented a different house for like, 2 months that was just a block down from us, and then got a bunch of contractors to fix original house ASAP. it was kind of crazy, but it compressed many years of work into like, three months.

the sitting in a new house for three months was actually pretty fun. and i shouldnt really complain at all (staying at home while in college is a sweet deal)

but.

but. my parents are fairly hard of hearing, and their bedroom in the old house was in the furthest possible annex from everyone else. wheras in the rental it was just in the middle of the house. so without going into details, i was extremely aware that my parents were having sex like, eight times a day. my dad had just retired and i guess they were celebrating, which is great i guess, having parents that really like each other is way better than the alternative, but also, it did make me envy their deafness. i kept headphones on for so long that year i got literal ear calluses.

at the same time, the house my buddy from the shoe incident grew up in flooded. turbo flooded. they burst like, two pipes at once and the damage was so severe they had to redo all the flooring and all the drywall. his family actually had homeowners insurance, which is either incredible or suspicious for a family that used the drained pool in their backyard to store rusty scrap metal. so insurance was handling the work, but in the meantime, they were crammed into a very small hotel room space. we did the math on it then, it averaged about 80 square feet a person.

so one day i got home, and i was chilling, and then six rolled around, and apparently six o'clock was sex o'clock because my parents decided to flex their cardio. i grabbed my headphones and prayed that god would do for me what he did for beethoven, but that failed to work, and then seven rolled around and my parents were still at it, which again, very impressive, but was pushing me to swap out judas for mozart in those prayers. there's a definitive point where you stop praying to be deaf and instead pray that god could take you to a nice field and pop you like a gore-balloon.

i was about five minutes away from that point when my friend called me and basically said i have been stuck in a 500 square foot space with 6 people and i didn't have many marbles to start but what few i had are gone. please. if we are friends, if we were ever friends, take me out of here just for a moment.

and i was still pretty mad at him, but i had pity on the poor guy. also helped that i was desperate to leave the house. so i drove the chickenshitmobile to the hotel and i picked him up, and then we did our normal hangout activity, which was go to food city and buy produce. his normal house was, on a good day, nasty, and his backyard was, as i stated before, mostly used to store mosquito larvae and rusty metal, so what we'd always done before was just walk to the grocery store a half block away and leer at vegetables.

so we did that and it was like old times again. they had some radishes that were expired, so i could buy like, literally an entire grocery bag of them for about $5. so i did. i really like radishes. he got a coconut because he liked fruit and beating things with hammers.

which probably would've been great except we didn't have a hammer, so instead we spent about 30 minutes stomping itike it owed us money. when it finally cracked we cheered like we just got the winning touchball at the superdome and then he ate some of the flesh, and i ate some of the radishes, and we admired the black, starless sky of the city before i took him back to his hotel room.

and then we got pulled over.

i forgot to turn my lights on because the street all around the food city was ludicrously well lit. so it went from being pretty bright, to pretty bright and flashy, then i pulled into a parking lot and a cop came to ask us for IDs which is where everything went to shit:

i’d forgotten my license at home. 

the cop was was actually kind of chill about it - he said he could get by with just an address. except i did not know my address. i hadn't memorized the new one yet. so i told the cop, my house is getting remodeled, i don't know my address right now. and then he went to my friend, and my friend said the exact same thing. house getting remodeled, staying somewhere else, no address, sowwwwwwy.

now the cop genuinely didn't know what to do. he went back to his car, and i was stressed that i was about to get into HUGE trouble so i started eating the radishes and my buddy started eating more of his coconut, and we actually managed to eat like a quarter of both before the cop came back. we ate enough produce that he could smell something weird in the air, and he asked what the smell was, and i said radishes, and my buddy said coconut, and the cop said which, and then we produced a large bag of droopy radishes and an absolutely brutalized coconut, and the cop was just like

so my buddy tried explaining how he was sharing a 500 square foot apartment with 6 people and wanted a fruit he could fight with power tools, and i tried explaining how i'd actually tried buying my parents like, board games and puzzles and stuff but nothing worked - the only thing my parents seemed to like doing right now was each other, and we both went on long enough and pathetically enough that the cop eventually went:

ok. stop.

and we stopped.

and he said do you know why i pulled you over?

and i said, because of my headlights, and my friend (who is hispanic) and the cop both looked at me like like i was the dumbest person in the entire world. and then the cop said no. that's why i'm allowed to pull you over. i checked your car because this neighborhood has a terrible sex trafficking problem, and i pull over every car i can to make sure no one is buying or selling sex. and you two are obviously doing neither. now i could give you, like, four tickets right now, but that would do nothing to make this area safer, so just turn your lights on, go home, drive safe, and try to be less stupid in the future.

and i said okay but i was thinking, you know, damn, this is just how i live man, i don't have a hidden third gear i can shift into. people can't just get smarter because it would be convenient. it's always convenient to be smart. i am literally trying my best.

but i didn't say anything because i was, slowly, learning how to filter what i said. instead i nodded and the cop left then i dropped my buddy off, and the last thing he said was said he owed me for responding to his SOS. I said he owed me for a lot of things, and he agreed that was true. then i drove home with my lights on, 5 under the speed limit, and arrived to a peaceful quiet home. I could’ve wept with relief but instead I went to bed.

the relief was short lived. i was woken up at 6 am by my parents. i swore, and then i prayed, and when i did not explode, i swore again. then i got up to make breakfast before my first class.

[buckbutch]

I've lived my whole life with Angry Cis Men and I can't wait until I don't have to anymore..... screaming swearing saying slurs kicking and hitting shit over extremely minor inconveniences that you can hear through the whole house when their lives are much easier than mine it's so obnoxious and ridiculous

[so-you-melted-22]

I’d genuinely rather die than ever do online banking with my father ever again

[aakeysmash]

you manage to make college!sukuna take yuuji trick or treating

college!sukuna masterlist

You barely put your foot inside the apartment when you hear sniffling coming from the kitchen.

“Please ‘Kuna, I can’t go alone,” Yuuji mumbles, moving a single piece of spaghetti around his plate.

Sukuna huffs, standing up from the table. "Can't you just go with that kid you invited over the other day? Meg... Meg something?"

"No! I already told you I can't, like 3 times!" Yuuji starts, getting progressively more frustrated.

"Don't throw a fucking tantrum, Yuuji, you know I hate that shit," the older grits out, cleaning his plate.

"But-"

"Hello...?" you say, peeking inside. Two sets of eyes fix on you, and silence engulfs the three of you for what feels like the longest three seconds ever. "Y'all are weird," you whisper, getting inside and going to the fridge. Yuuji waves at you, trying to be polite even if you can see he's on the brink of tears, before the two brothers in the room with you resume their conversation.

"Brat, I'm not coming. I have assignments," Sukuna sighs. He doesn't turn around, he knows Yuuji is pouting and he might or might not have lied. Well, not completely: he does have to turn in two different projects for his economics class, but he's almost finished. He did say he would take a double shift the night Yuuji is asking him about though. They're tight on money, but it's not like he wants to admit that to his little brother. Is this what guilt feels like?

The little pink haired boy sniffles, then nods. "It's okay," he slurs out, cleaning after himself in silence. For the next 5 minutes, you can hear a pin drop from how silent it is. Sukuna keeps on washing dishes, Yuuji keeps on cleaning the table.

You're still standing by the fridge, trying to mind your own business, but seeing the whole scene makes the hair on your nape stand up. The two siblings would have the same stoic and unmoving face if it wasn't for Yuuji's lip trembling imperceptibly from time to time.

"I'm going to my room. Sorry for having bothered you, 'Kuna," the little one says, opening the door to the kitchen softly, and closing it even softer. Sukuna inhales strongly, putting his hands on the counter in front of him and closing his eyes. You feel like if you breathe harder than what a mosquito does, he'll crash out.

He pats his pockets repeatedly, searching for something. He takes out a pack of cigarettes and turns around to reach for the lighter you keep in the first drawer, when your voice startles him. Seeing him startled startles you too. He's never startled. What is going on?

"I thought you quit."

"Mind your own fucking business," he snarls, snatching open the drawer.

"What's got your panties in a twist?" you reply, matching his rudeness.

"Can you shut the fuck up? Damn," he continues, glaring at you, taking one big drag of the pressed tobacco between his fingers.

"No, I'd like to eat a normal dinner with both of you today, so are you going to tell me what is going on or do I have to ask your crying nine year old little brother?" you hiss out, snatching the cigarette he just lit and tossing it in the sink, still wet from when he washed his dishes, effectively turning it off.

He's on you in a second. "Don't piss me off, woman," he says, trapping you between the sink and his body. He's towering over you, and he has to bend down to look at you properly. "Stay out of it," he says, menacingly. You gulp, but you're not finished. And most importantly, you know him. You've been living together for forever, or maybe it feels like it because you're always together, either for Yuuji or because... wait, why are you always together?

"I'll stop when I feel like it, Sukuna," you say, getting closer to his face. Your voice is clear, your nose an inch from his own. You look into each other's eyes so intensely that if you had the power to shoot lasers he'd be blind by now. You're about to speak up again, when he headbutts you. Hard.

"Ouch!" you yelp, punching him in the arm as hard as you can. He just traps your fist in his, squeezing until you wince, then lets go, smirking.

"Don't play with me, girl," he says while getting off of you. You pout, rubbing the spot he hit on your forehead.

"Asshole," you mumble.

"Mh? What'd you say?"

"Nothing, sir," you respond mockingly, assuming the position of a soldier. "You know what, I'm going to report you to the police for domestic violence," you continue, still pouting.

He throws you a single cube of ice. You raise an eyebrow.

"That's all we have, make it work. I ain't got the money for court," he shrugs.

Something clicks in your brain. You know he sees it. You see it from the way his eyes widen waiting for you. "Is this what this was about?"

He sighs, then sits on the floor across from your figure, which is still standing by the sink. You raise the ice cube on your forehead. This feels nice.

"Yuu asked me to accompany him trick or treating on Halloween."

You wait, but he's not looking at you anymore. He seems distant.

"Oookaaay, and...?" you push. He sighs again. His hand repeatedly passes through his pink locks.

"I picked up a double shift for Halloween like... last week. I can't lose the money right now, or I won't have enough for rent on the 1st," he grits out, keeping his head low. You hum. You throw the melted ice cube in the sink near the cigarette. The image makes you smile. It looks like you two.

You get down on the floor too, the tip of your sock clad feet grazing his.

"You could've asked me, you know," you say, trying to sound nonchalant. He scoffs.

"Baby, I know you're whipped, but I didn't think you wanted to be a sugar mommy at twentytwo," he says smirking. You try kicking him, but he just gets out of the way, snickering. "I'm not asking a girl for money, that's fucking humiliating."

"I'm serious, idiot. If you didn't want the money I could've taken Yuuji for you, it's not like it's the first time," you tell him, rolling your eyes. "He tried to be strong for you at the end, I know you know," you add, delicately this time, Tentatively. He stares at you and sighs for what feels like the hundredth time. He grabs your foot again and manspreads, just to position your calf on his thigh. This position feels incredibly intimate, and you try not to stiffen. You two have never been the cuddly type of roommates, but he looks like he could use a little bit of physical contact.

"It wouldn't be the same. He wants me there because all of the other kids are with their families, even if he doesn't want to tell me so. Satoru texted me about it this morning. He's taking the two brats he basically adopted too," he rambles. Sukuna is not one to open up, so you just let him talk, absorbing everything like a sponge.

"Couldn't you like... move the appointments up by a few hours?" you ask.

"I could, but I still have two fucking assignments for Halloween. If I don't turn them in I'm fucked, and I need the scholarship," he grits out. His thumb caresses your exposed ankle mindlessly. Shivers run up the entirety of your leg.

Suddenly, an idea pops into your mind.

"But what if you had an amazing roommate who oh so happened to love your brother so dearly that could turn said assignments in for you if it meant to see him happy?" you say, looking at him expectantly.

"I can't ask you that, come on," he rolls his eyes. You jump up, almost falling over him in the process. "I'm not doing that for free."

"I knew you were a bitch," he growls. You just whistle, going toward the door. He squeezes his eyes hard, before opening them, jumping up too and grabbing your wrist before you can exit the kitchen.

"What do you want?"

You grin.

That's how you find yourself holding a badly sponged muscled up Tarzan-Yuuji's little hand while going from door to door, your cute yellow Jane dress on.

"Might have given you a concussion the other day, doll," Sukuna, dressed as a monkey, grumbles next to you. You laugh, and he throws you a mean glare.

Yuuji leaves your side and runs up to his friends, screaming "Trick or treat!" with them, beaming. He looks back at you from time to time, smiling, offering you something every time the people he rings the doorbell of give him more than one candy.

You suddenly feel an arm drape over your shoulders roughly, before getting slammed into a hairy side.

"Thank you, y'know," Sukuna mumbles near your ear, pressing your head in a way where you're not able to see his expression. Then, he pushes you away. "Not for the fucking costume, that's for sure," he adds, disgusted, scratching his neck and arm at the same time. You just stand there, mouth gaping a little, in front of him.

"Cat got your tongue, sugar mama?" He tells you after a while, grinning.

You scowl, fake mad, before chuckling. "Who knew you were capable of saying thank you?"

"Don't get used to it."

[feeshies]

An urgent and urgent appeal. Please do not stop reading. I am Safaa Asaad, a university student. I am 26 years old and married. I gave birth to my first child during the war. My life was full of love and optimism. I was distinguished in the field of law. I was diligent and had dreams and ambition. I intended to open my own law firm and defend the rights of others, diligence and perseverance. In restoring the rights to their owners, I got married while I was a student. I married the right man whom I had always been waiting for. We loved to always be together. He suffered before he married me. He worked hard to build the house and collect money to propose to me. His source of income was very good, and we got married and lived a good life. As time passed, the war came, and I had not completed the year. My marriage and our home were destroyed. My husband lost his job. My father, after seeing the destruction that befell our area, became unable to speak and became paralyzed from the outside. My husband, two months after entering the war, gave birth to my first child under difficult circumstances in a small tent full of insects and mosquitoes. I and my son could not live in a tent because of the insects, so we fled to escape. The border is under the shadow of the wall. We are suffering greatly, and now, after exhaustion and exhaustion, I decided to create a donation link to go out and save my family from Gaza. We were insulted and humiliated by the occupation army. The relative died and the relatives were killed. We were displaced. I cannot describe what happened to us. I ask you to save my family and get us out of Gaza with a donation. To us via the link, please donate, even if it is $10, it will make a difference to us. They can save us from death, and your donation will be a reason to save our lives, so my son can live the life I dreamed of, open a law firm, and open a project for my beloved husband. Please donate and support the💔💔😭😭 campaign.https://gofund.me/b25cb4bf

I hope you donate it will really help save my family. Even if it is $10 or $20.

Hello Safaa. Thank you for reaching out to me, and my heart goes out to you and your family. I would be happy to do everything I can to help you and your family get the safety, security, and success you deserve.

Safaa's fundraiser is verified and user @/ana-bananya made a more detailed post about her family. The fundraiser is currently at $9,097/$75,000 and is in desperate need of donations. Every bit counts, so please donate if you have the means.

[waynes-multiverse]

Florida!!!

Summary: One fishy monster hunt, one sweaty afternoon at the beach, and one innocent popsicle – Florida is fucking hell for Dean.

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader

Warnings: +18 language and smut in the form of dirty fantasies, severe pining, one idiot in love, humor, Florida, one popsicle, unresolved ending & feelings

Word Count: 2.8k

A/N: My entry for @chevroletdean's 500 Follower Celebration! Congrats again, lovely, and thank you so much for hosting this challenge and creating this awesome moodboard!! I was immediately inspired (and have wanted to write something set in Florida for an eternity). This was perfect and so much fun! 💛🧡🩵

Main Masterlist || DW Masterlist || Tag List

Florida can eat his ass.

Dean’s decided this at least seventeen times today. He has known this little fact since the first time he set foot here at nineteen, chasing a ghoul through backyards full of pink lawn flamingos and chainlink fences.

And Dean doesn’t mean the good kind of eating ass, either. Nope, he means the swamp-ass, sunburned, get-mauled-by-an-alligator kind.

Because no matter how pretty the scenery looks – sugar-powder beaches and sea-glass tides, slats of the boardwalk bleached bone-white under a honeyed sky – the whole damn state feels cursed.

It’s humid enough to drown standing still, and the sand sticks to everything, including parts of him he’s not ready to confront.

And between the humidity thicker than chowder and the scent of fried seafood and moldy flip-flops lingering like a bad decision, every drone-sized mosquito here is carrying at least three diseases and a vendetta. The crime rate also looks like a Mad Libs page: “Florida Man assaults alligator while wearing tutu and high on bath salts.”

It’s too hot, too wet, and too damn weird and crazy. Every breath here tastes like sweat, regret, and a hint of swamp water.

Florida’s not even a real fucking state. Can’t be.

Dean’s convinced it’s a bad trip someone had in the ‘70s that somehow got voted into the union. The sun feels less like it’s shining and more like it’s attacking. Everyone’s either a retiree, a guy named Skip with a neck tattoo of a flaming dice, or some batshit meth-head who thinks they saw Bigfoot behind the Waffle House.

Dean hates it with every fiber of his being. Florida is Satan’s back porch.

And now, thanks to a string of weird drownings at a no-name beach town outside Destin, Dean is trapped in the sweaty armpit of the country, baking alive in jeans, while trying very hard not to stare at you.

Which is impossible.

Because you’re right next to him in a little turquoise lounge chair and a skimpy bikini the color of wild citrus – or tangerine, maybe. You hum a little tune – that stupid Weezer song that only plays on the radio during summer. You kick your feet lazily in the sun, flashing him a smile so bright he’s pretty sure it could get him legally blinded.

The bikini strings are tied in neat bows at your hips, a popsicle melting bright mango-orange between your fingers, and you’re working the thing over like it owes you goddamn money with the most sinful mouth he’s ever had the misfortune of knowing.

All tanned legs and unapologetic sunshine. A vision of temptation under the molten saffron sun.

Dean sweats. Internally and externally. Better than that: He is cooked. Absolutely fried. Every casual motion of yours is branding itself into his frontal lobe forever.

Your tongue flickers out again – pink and wet and glistening – smoothing a drip from the rounded tip, completely oblivious to the fact that you’re currently starring in every X-rated daydream Dean’s ever had.

His vision whites out at the edges.

You hum absently, flipping through the manila folder in your lap. Your voice floats over, sweet as saltwater taffy. “So,” you say, casual and sunny, “are we thinking mer-creature, or like, a shapeshifter with a thing for boats and aquatic cosplay? Or what if it’s a water demon? Like a kelpie, but more murdery?”

Dean makes a strangled sound that’s supposed to be a word but comes out more like a dog’s dying whimper.

You blink at him. Tilt your head. Wait.

Dean clears his throat. “Yeah. Mer-thing. Whatever.”

“Or,” you muse aloud, tongue darting out again to lap at a drip, “maybe it’s like–… like a water wraith? Something that sucks the breath outta your lungs?”

You pop the popsicle out of your mouth with an obscene little smack. Dean’s mouth works soundlessly. Because all he can imagine is you on your knees, tongue slick against him, big eyes wide and innocent while you–

Focus, he barks at himself. For the love of fucking God, focus, Winchester.

Dean swallows hard, dragging his eyes off your mouth and back down to the battered folder in your lap.

This isn’t normal. He’s doomed. Maybe even cursed.

Yeah, that’s gotta be it. He’s probably been hit with a lust spell. Florida is full of weird shit, right? That would explain why he’s three seconds away from dropping to his knees and offering to be your loyal, desperate, sunburnt servant.

But then again, this isn’t entirely new either.

You’ve been driving him nuts for goddamn years. Laughing too loud at his dumb jokes. Sitting too close in motel beds when you both casually watch movies. Calling him Winchester in that honeyed voice that makes him feel like he’s being dared to fuck up and kiss you.

And still, he’s always been good. Good at pretending. Good at stuffing all that want somewhere deep under rib and bone and battered leather jackets.

But this? This is fucking torture. This is some bikini-clad Greek tragedy, starring one dumbass in boots on a beach who can’t stop fantasizing about licking saltwater off your thighs.

He should be thinking about the case. About that water-witch or whatever the fuck they are hunting this time. He should be thinking about hex bags and salt rounds, not about how your bikini bottoms ride up just a little when you stretch your arms over your head–

Stop it!

You lean forward to show him something on a photocopied page and tap a newspaper clipping about the latest victim – some unlucky fisherman who swore he saw a “golden-scaled woman” before getting dragged into the shallows.

But the little bow at your hip shifts, skin glinting like bronzed sugar under the clear sky. Dean makes a small, wounded noise in his throat, and his brain immediately supplies another vivid fantasy:

You perched in his lap, that bow coming untied with a lazy pull of his fingers, your thighs slick and hot against him, the ocean thundering in the tropical background while you ride him so slow it borders on a religious experience.

He blinks against the burning sun, feels himself slipping again, heat and blood rushing downward. The image hits him so hard he has to adjust himself in his jeans, subtle as a heart attack.

His dick twitches miserably.

He slouches lower, trying to think of anything not filthy – taxes, Sam’s hair care routine, the time Bobby caught him naked in the kitchen with a meatball sub – but it’s useless.

“Dean? You even listening?” you ask, laughing, poking his leg with your sandy toes.

Dean grunts something noncommittal that might be English, jaw clenched so tight he’s surprised his teeth don’t shatter. He tries to answer. Really, he does. But the words get bottlenecked behind the visual of you dragging your tongue slowly up the side of the melting treat.

You bite your lip, thoughtful, tapping the end of the popsicle stick against your mouth. “Maybe it’s something worse,” you continue. “Like a siren who doesn’t seduce you to death, just… I dunno. Sucks you off and leaves you floating.”

Dean’s soul physically leaves his body.

You tilt your head, grinning wickedly. “You want me to suck you off too, Dean?”

Time freezes. The ocean quiets. The gulls still midair. Dean’s pulse slams loud and dizzy in his ears. His world narrows to you, your suntanned legs, the glint of sea-salt crystals on your skin, your bright and glistening mango lips.

Jesus fucking Christ.

You just–

Did you–

He stares at you, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. “Huh? What?” he croaks, voice pitched embarrassingly high.

You blink at him, then repeat – slowly, sweetly, “I said: Should we check if it sucks the breath outta people like a leech?”

“Uh, yeah,” he croaks. “Suckin’. Life. Outta dudes. Totally.”

You stare at him a second longer, suspicious, before shrugging and going back to the file.

Dean exhales, trying to will his hard-on into submission through sheer force of shame. You’re systematically dismantling his ability to think in complete sentences. His entire brain is on fire.

His internal organs shut down one by one. He drops his head back against the lounge chair, squeezing his green eyes shut. He is too old, too tired, and too desperately in love with you for this shit.

The sun beats down, hot and merciless, painting everything in shades of clementine and burning copper. Apricot umbrellas dot the beach like slices of candy. The ocean blinks lazy and endless, a rolling quilt of bottle-green and blue-fire sapphire. Seagulls wheel overhead, shrieking insults.

Dean’s mind drifts again.

He imagines dragging you down into the frothy surf, your hands curling into his hair, your giggles swallowed by the sea.

He imagines you mouthing at his jeans, impatient and greedy, while the sun sets behind you in a tangle of electric clementine and bruised lapis skies.

He imagines you kneeling between his legs, licking a stripe up the underside of his cock like you’re taste-testing it, humming around him, sweet and filthy and happy about it.

He imagines you under the boardwalk, hips rocking against his like the waves, bikini strings snapping loose with frantic fingers.

He imagines you bent over the hood of the Impala, bikini tangled around your ankles, hands bracing against the hot metal while he rails you like a man possessed.

He imagines your thighs caging his head, that same lazy, teasing look on your face, and him savoring your taste of sugar and salt and heat, while the whole crazy, humid, goddamn state of Florida spins off its axis.

“You’re quiet,” you chirp, tossing a sideways glance at him. “Florida getting to you?”

Dean clears his throat, gruff. “Yeah. Somethin’ like that, sweetheart.”

You raise your sunglasses, peeking at him over the frames. “You know, Winchester, you’re the only guy on this beach dressed like he’s about to sell used beach towels out of the back of a van."

Dean frowns, looking down at himself: worn boots, jeans, his favorite faded black tee with a sun-bleached flannel thrown over it. Practical. Battle-tested. Entirely inappropriate for beachside Florida.

“First of all,” he says, lifting a finger, “this is classic Americana ruggedness. Chicks dig it.”

You lean your head back and laugh, all bright and cruel. “You’re sweating through your ‘Americana ruggedness.’”

Dean scowls, dripping like a busted fire hydrant. “I told you. I’m not gonna wear fucking board shorts like all the other frat boy idiots here.”

You laugh again, the sound bright as bells, and Dean’s heart trips hard enough to hurt.

“You’re gonna die of heatstroke,” you tease. “Right here. Buried in Florida sand. Some old lady’s gonna find your corpse and knit you a ‘Bless Your Heart’ sweater.”

He snorts a chuckle. “I’ll haunt this beach just to piss you off.”

“Promise?” you ask, giving him a cheeky wink.

Dean is about five minutes away from lighting himself on fire. And honestly? Florida would probably consider it normal Tuesday behavior.

Your gaze drifts out to the ocean beyond your feet and sandy calves with a blissful little sigh. “It’s kinda pretty, though, isn’t it?”

Dean looks at you – skin kissed by flame-petals and sunset sugar, hair blowing soft in the briny breeze, popsicle stick clutched between your fingers like a crime scene weapon.

Yeah. Pretty.

Pretty much the goddamn end of him.

“Victim said he saw orange,” you murmur thoughtfully. “Bright, like-… like a koi? A clownfish?”

Dean is about to make a dumb Finding Nemo joke when you lick a bead of melted popsicle off your wrist, slow and absentminded.

And all Dean wants is to dig a hole right here in the sugar-white sand and bury himself alive in this cursed, gator-infested sandpit.

“Dean?”

He snaps back to reality so hard he gets whiplash. “What?” he wheezes.

You arch an eyebrow. “I said, should we check the tide charts? Maybe the creature only comes out during low tide.”

Dean coughs into his fist, face hotter than the sun overhead. “Uh, sure. Tide charts. Definitely. Research.”

But all he can think about is those legs locked around his waist, sand clinging to your thighs as he fucks you into the waves. You moaning into his neck, salty and sweet, fingers yanking at his shirt like you can’t stand to have him dressed another second.

You nibble at the edge of the popsicle, teeth scraping the melting mango sheen, and Dean watches helplessly as a single sticky bead runs down your wrist.

He fantasizes about leaning over, licking it off your skin, trailing his mouth up your arm to your shoulder, your throat, your mouth. He imagines you gasping against him, laughing breathless.

He fantasizes about hauling you out of that chair and onto his lap, mouth on yours, sticky hands sliding under the knot of your bikini top, tugging until you’re bared for him and only him, sunshine turning your skin to gold, and–

Greatly frustrated, Dean runs a hand down his freckled face. Why the fuck can’t he bring himself to stop? You’re unraveling him atom by atom.

But then, the fucking frozen treat drips again, and you lean forward to catch it with your mouth, lips wrapping tight around the end. Dean watches you hollow your cheeks slightly when you suck, head tilted thoughtfully like you’re considering footnotes and not absolutely wrecking his entire being. You pull the melting syrup back again with a soft, wet pop.

At this point, he wants to fucking throw himself into the ocean and let the sharks tear him apart like Hellhounds. He’s pretty sure his soul leaves his body, too.

He grips the arms of his chair so hard they creak in protest, knuckles turning white as he’s trying to tether himself to reality and not his fantasies.

Florida is hell.

You are hell.

And he’s a good man being punished for crimes he hasn’t even committed yet.

Dean shifts in his chair, crossing one leg over the other like that’ll hide the state of emergency going on in his jeans. He’s surprised no one here has asked any questions yet or called fucking 911.

Meanwhile, the world keeps spinning. The ocean rolls in lazy, glassy sheets of turquoise and teal. The sun licks liquid gold down your shoulders. The salt air curls the loose strands of your hair into a halo. And Dean – miserable, desperate, wildly in love – watches you polish off the last inch of your popsicle, tongue flicking the stick clean.

“Earth to Dean,” you sing-song, waving a hand in front of his face and kicking sand lightly at his boots.

Dean jerks back into consciousness. “Yeah?”

“Should we check out the marina witnesses after this?” you ask, tossing your popsicle stick into the trash bucket next to your chair.

Before he can say something catastrophic (like “Marry me right now” or “Please put your mouth on me, I'm begging”), Sam comes jogging up the beach, waving his phone like a savior in flannel.

“Got a lead! Marina worker said he saw something with gills and claws dragging people under.”

Dean launches out of his chair like his ass is on fire. A man escaping execution.

“Awesome. Let’s roll!” he barks, voice too loud and way too eager.

You tuck your notes into your beach bag and sling it over your shoulder, grinning wide and bright as the sunset. The same grin that ruined him long before the bikini did.

You hop up beside him, laughing, brushing sand off your thighs with maddening slow sweeps, and Dean bites back a groan so hard it nearly gives him a hernia.

“You sure you’re okay, Winchester?” you ask, teasing. “You looked like you were about to pass out there for a second.”

“I’m great,” Dean lies, voice strangled, letting the sun melt him into roadkill. “Peachy.”

“You sure? Seriously, you’re a walking heatstroke PSA,” you quip, hip-bumping him lightly as you fall into step beside him.

Dean coughs. “'M fine, sweetheart. Just… dehydration. And Florida. And mermaid murder.”

As you brush past him, the smell of your sunscreen and coconut shampoo punch him square in the gut. Dean follows, trying very, very hard not to watch the way your hips sway like you own the whole damn coastline.

He thinks about how easy it would be to slip his arm around your waist, how natural it would feel to lean in, to kiss you like he’s wanted to for years. Instead, he shoves his hands deep into his jeans pockets and marches grimly through the sand, already planning a quick, ice-cold shower and about eight beers after this job’s done.

Yeah, Florida is one hell of a drug, but you’re the one that fucked him up.

Okay, I may have had way too much fun with torturing Dean here. Forgive me, guys 😂☀️🏝️

Hope you enjoyed this one! 🩵

Tag List Pt. 1:

@alwaystiredandconfused @xlynnbbyx @lyarr24 @deans-spinster-witch @blackcherrywhiskey

@deansbbyx @foxyjwls007 @ladysparkles78 @roseblue373 @zepskies

@agalliasi @yvonneeeee @hobby27 @iamsapphine @globetrotter28

@lori19 @lacilou @feyresqueen @suckitands33 @onlyangel-444

@syrma-sensei @perpetualabsurdity @yoobusgoobus @jessjad @dayhsdreaming

@hunter-or-the-hunted @k-slla @just-levyy @mrsjenniferwinchester @illicithallways

@muhahaha303 @ultimatecin73 @nancymcl @leigh70 @brightlilith

@nesnejwritings @samslvrgirl @xx-spooky-little-vampire-xx @fromcaintodean @barewithme02

@impala67rollingthroughtown @star-yawnznn @spnaquakindgdom @thej2report @americanvenom13

@lamentationsofalonelypotato @supernotnatural2005 @stoneyggirl2 @kr804573 @m0e0v0v

[thedarkestrivernymph]

A Heart Of Gold pt.2

Y! Noble Child Nicholas x Mother! Maid! Reader x Y! Maid Maria x Y! Baron Charles

word count: roughly 10k

warnings: heavy angst, mentions of abuse (both physical and verbal), mentions of death, murder, violence, gore, blood, yandere tendencies/behaviour, weird relationship dynamics, anger issues, morally gray reader, child loss, mentions of alcohol addiction, domestic violence, breakdowns, morally grey yanderes, creepy behaviour, generational trauma, religious themes, reader in this is christian, cursing, not accurate depictions of history!

©Copyright - 2025 - thedarkestrivernymph - All Rights Reserved

Author's note: Phew, this turned out a very different than the initial idea I had. haha Still, hope you enjoy it!

“God, let me repent in your name. Allow me to witness the beauty and grace of nature, to cry and scream and know of my faults and erase them in your name. Let me love my neighbours, like you loved me. I will do only good, I promise, just grant me my new golden heart. Please, I beg you, free me.”

The seasons shifted again.

They morphed into the other, faster than you could blink, quicker than you could run after them and plead to stay, swift and merciless.

Death was the same.

Breathing in ice particles for air, snow crunching under the weight of your boots, you made your way down-hill. The sun hadn't come out yet, not that she really planned to anyways in the middle of winter—but the villagers were hopeful, at least tried to be. But you weren't. You knew frost had crusted the earth and left only destruction in its wake. The others were simply to optimistic. A bunch of idiots really, thinking this winter could be different, that the nobles would care about you, at least somewhat more, after the new baron had taken over the lands.

A new head only meant one thing; trouble and higher pay. The already scarce crops which were salvaged would only serve to fill his pockets. If you commoners were mindless worker ants, then the nobility sure enough were bloodsucking mosquitos draining you all until nothing but dust remained of your crumbling bones.

Perhaps you wouldn't have had to worry about any of this—not about your frozen solid fingertips from the worn-down knitted gloves nor about the burning in the bottom of your stomach from the lack of anything edible, if you just had not married him.

At first he had seemed promising, a nice clean face, good salary, stern tone—he had been a baker for god's sake, what could go wrong!

Oh how naive you had been.

Before you knew, heavily pregnant with your second, his bakery was in ruins, all the customers avoiding his bakery specifically like the plague. At first you were confused—he was a good baker and kept everything neat. Then he came drunk the first time. Reeking of cheep booze, he completely blacked out on your shared martial bed—which at that time at least had possessed a bedframe. You were furious with him, after all you were an only child and your parents had carefully picked him out, because of his financial status and now here he was wasting his money on alcohol while his baby was growing in your womb.

You couldn't break free from him, even after the birth of his second child, even after the tradegy of your first. Your wings were clipped—you were married, you had duties, responsibilities, children. Running away would only bring pain and shame upon you and your whole family. You didn't even want to imagine what the villagers would do to you if they found you after fleeing. All the blame would be placed on you—you the cruel mother, the miserable daughter, the horrible wife. Much rather, you would pluck your own hair than experience any of such shaming.

But death was a constant threat. And one that terrified you at that. After having closed down his bakery, you had been forced into work, anything you could find, really, anything that paid. Yet even that seemed to have not been enough for the monster your husband unraveled to be—because soon enough his explosive episodes started. He would roar and cry, stagger from wall to wall in your shared home, pant like a beast as he hunted after you, just to reach for your hair, clutching it as if he wanted to rip it out for you, before—

You hissed, digging your blunt nails into your scarf, this was in the past, he no longer could terrify you so. Keeping your gaze on the road on the pearly white snow reaching up to your knees you remembered to breathe, to calm down. You needed a crystal clear head for the interview.

No matter how much you wanted to melt away like the snow under the sun’s rays—which never seemed to grace you—you couldn't. Your life meant something to others, if you weren't there anymore, if you would actually choose to travel with the wind and disappear, then you would allow that man victory. But you just could not after having managed to slip through his grasp and land an opportunity at a new life.

So you walked, pushed through, even as you grimaced from the odd sensation of needles pricking your toes—your shoes not suitable for the weather, because nothing would stop you from at least trying for a better life. A life without him.

The estate was huge.

And admittedly, you were frazzled on how you managed to even land this job in the first place. If it weren't for Aunt Jane, you probably would've never even laid eyes on something so majestic, dressed in soft brown, winged windows and with elaborate woodwork and sculptures; it was a mix of everything you could only ever hear tales about.

Not that you minded, you did resent the nobility and the royals with all their spendings as if they didn't bleed you and the others dry on a daily to finance their overindulgence that was slowly leading the empire to ruin. Or at least you imagined it to be so.

Nevertheless grandmother surely would've scolded you for being so cynical. The only other person besides your aunt that you had known to be humane and she was six feet under your childhood home’s apple tree.

You sighed, shaking your head. This wasn't the time to be sentimental. She was dead, for years now. And you had moved on, like everyone did. So brushing over your skirt for the last time, you stepped even closer to the gate. God, even the gate was twirly and whimsical; something one could only achieve through the hands of a master with years of experience—or so you imagined, you had no clue actually.

“You—you the new maid?” you flinched, eyes darting to meet the eyes of a gruff man, armor covering him.

You nodded, eyes fixed on his face—really the only feature bare to the sight of others, which did make you wonder if he wasn’t cold with nothing protecting his nose or throat. Bennet, your little boy, if he had stood here instead of him, he surely would’ve caught a cold by now.

“Come. I ain’t got all day woman.” the stranger’s voice was as harsh as sandpaper, which did make you wonder if they provided him with meals or water at all. Odd. Weren’t soldiers—also guards usually the most well-taken care of? But also what did you know, really.

So scurrying, with a soft sigh and enlarged eyes you stepped past him and immediately you felt so out of place.

Carrying scars of a past similar to that of a lot of commoner’s yet pushing through a gate meant only for the elite—it felt wrong, illegal even, as if you were committing a crime. You looked over your shoulder hastily, suddenly overcome with trepidation, with the image of being tackled and shackled by the very guard who let you in. What if he had mistaken you, accused you of trespassing, what if your aunt had messed things up and your children would be left motherless and—

“Just follow the cobblestones, then turn left.” he grumbled, and you calmed again. Seems he got lazy with you, sensing you were not a threat—see, you didn’t need to worry. You weren’t a criminal, like some others commoners vying for the riches the wealthy withheld, you were just here for a job you desperately needed, no one had ever been thrown into prison for this, right? At least you hoped so.

The freshly fallen snow crunched under your shoes again, the same ones you always wore—with a big hole under the left heel. If you had more of what others had, such as the lord (even if you still resented the aristocracy) you hopefully would be working for, then you wouldn’t have to worry about this, in fact then you wouldn’t need any of this—no begging, no pleading, no kneeling. You would be independent, no need to rely on your fool for a husband, you could just cut him out of your life, or cut him off. Shivering at the thought you pulled your scarf much tighter, clenching your hands around eachother.

Little did you know that all of this was the starting point for a life of sin your soul had sworn to repent from.

The interview had went well—as well as it could for your circumstances that is. They wanted you to live here, in the servant's quarters, and nothing you did could change the old woman's mind. That meant leaving your child in the hands of your Aunt Jane.

You loved your Aunt, she was truly a saint—albeit overly strict at times and very ignorant, but she was old, too old for your liking and could never emate the same warmth your grandmother had. Sometimes, in rare cases such as these, you did wish your own grandmother would crawl out of her grave and fix everything for you—like how she used to when you were a child, brewing you tea from pines during the cold winter months while telling you tales of all kinds. You wished that she now would stand in front of you, promising you that everything you were doing would benefit your darling and that he could truly flourish and live a life he deserved.

Because your sole reason in life was your child—your little pearl with his red runny nose, sniffling with each spoon-fed of his soup. You just craved to abandon all the shadows of the past.

Yet life wasn’t gentle with you neither then nor now—God seemed to really not favour you as one of its pawns, because why else would you be assigned to take care of the most bratty child you had ever met?

“Water.” the new heir, to pratically everything, snapped, voice smoother and deeper, not betraying his juvenile features and his childish antics you had learned and grown accustomed to in the few weeks you had been working here.

Swiftly, you poured him a cup of water, handing it to him with a somewhat strained smile. It was a warmer day than usual, which was why the window of his study was left wide open—and your teeth made to chatter the whole time you tried to serve and appease him.

Only, it seemed, that nothing could appease the brown-haired young man this morning, because in the blink of an eyes a glass shattered next to your head, making you jump up in surprise. Suddenly your pulse was pounding in your ears and for a moment you were back in that small hut again next to the river, with the face of your husband red from anger and the shattered bottle laying at your feet like the pieces of your broken heart, as your baby was crying. Why was he crying? Unconsolable and—

“Are you trying to poison me?” you snapped out of it as he spat out the words. Swallowing you tried to come up with an excuse, something to calm the storm in him.

“Master Nicholas of course I wasn’t—”

“Then serve me water instead of lukewarm piss!”

Silence.

Your face fell—you weren’t sure if it was due to exhaustion or just having to endure his childishness or it was the possibility that if he continued to complain about every single thing you did, you would lose your job. And you couldn’t have that, no matter how much you resented him for being as explosive as the man who's name you refused to utter, he was an aristocrat and not him.

So sighing, collecting the remains of yourself, you did what you always had done when your own mother used to have meltdowns due to delirium in her old age—gift her with love she didn't deserve but this time it was directed to a (man)child who you at least assumed to deserve it—because a mother's love was something sacred.

You hugged him.

It wasn't really a conscious decision per se, you had just wanted to show him some love; but to pull him into your embrace—you hadn't thought that you actually would dare to; not just out of courage but be able to stomach touching one of the upper class, who most definitely thought commoners and even servants were on the same level as pigs; stupid and dirty, probably carrying some time of diseases.

That's why you had dreadfully expected him to push you away, to scream to cry out in revulsion, perhaps even raise his hand against you; he was allowed to after all—yet nothing.

He froze instead.

“Maid—” he didn't even know your name, didn’t need to. You were just a fly; someone he could swat away with the back of his hand and no one would bat an eye. And you had the audacity to hug him, you, how dare you, you vile, little, tiny ant. His hands raised, clenching into fists, teeth grinding together in absoloute annoyance and yet he couldn't find it in himself to push you away.

Your arms, your beating heart; something about you was human. Oddly human. Much more human than he ever could be. And then your scent engulfed him. Moss and wet—like the open fields. Warm and motherly—like her.

He failed to take notice of you pulling away. His gaze was glossy, something was pinching his chest and he was disturbed. It hurt. Your touch itself and also the absence of your touch was agonizing.

“I apologize, I overstepped.” anxiety rung in your tone, lips pressed into a thin line. He knew that look, the fear of losing something precious—the fear of having ruined another banquet because he had smashed a teacup to the ground. And the fear he felt now, as you slipped back to being a remote figure; a background character, you wanted to fade away from between his fingers like sand, disappear in the billions of your kind when he had finally sighted something of his liking.

“I—” he cleared his throat, scowl moving back into place—the noble façade returning after the too often happening slip-ups. “I will excuse you this once.”

Yet no matter how much he tried to hide it, you took notice of the slight twitch in the corner of his mouth, but you didn’t give it much thought, much more relived to be allowed to continue working here.

If only you had suspected something— if only you had known what you had awakened in Nicholas on that fateful day.

You met the lord of the house some time after.

It was an accident really, you hadn't even meant to be on the staircase at such a dubious hour—it all had been just for Nicholas; he requested you to bring him warm soup and bread after refusing to eat dinner with his aunt, for reasons that made your chest ache and tighten in guilt.

Still you froze, clutching the tray in your sweaty palms, hoping and praying that he wouldn't demand of you to know who you were rushing the tray to—you were beyond exhausted, just having returned from the village; travelling by foot took up time and patience and it only broke your heart every single time to leave your baby behind in the hands of someone else; especially in the hands of a woman as old as Aunt Jane was. You were guilty of being a bad mom, you knew as much, but Bennett was so easily frightened and you weren’t allowed to take him in and—

“Are you new?”

You froze.

Just having passed by him, in hopes he wouldn't take notice of you, you truly had believed he would just let you slip by. At least you had wished he would. You didn't want to converse with another soul, especially not a man with a voice similary deep to that of your deadbeat husband's.

Still you had to say something. You couldn't just flitter away.

So you opened up your mouth.

“Yes, your lordship.” you recited the title you had been taught.

“Who hired you? I have never seen you before.” his tone was demanding, clipped and stern, but there was a soft edge to it, that made you take a peek back over your shoulder, only to startle at the sight. He was standing a few stairs below you, stoic as a statue and with a face hidden by the shadows of the night, the castle only dim-light by the tea-lamp in his grasp held too far away from his features to make anything out—except the penetrating stare you could feel slicing through you; judging and scrutinizing you.

Calm down, you're not a criminal. You're just doing your job.

You turned around, bowing your head and glancing away—somehow showcasing submission felt the right thing to do.

“The head maid, your lordship.”

“Ah.” you could hear some tension slip. “Good.” he probably nodded and you assumed he was finished with his questions until you heard him clear his throat, stepping closer.

“Do you work in the kitchen?” he took another step up, until you both stood on the same step.

“No, your lordship, I serve the young lord.” you answered while feeling his breath blow at your forehead—was it just you or was he standing too close?

“I see.” again with the stern yet awkward answer, as if he himself wasn't sure what more to ask—as it already was obvious that you weren't a robber nor a thief, just a servant working dutifully as he expected of them.

Yet there was something about you, a certain something emanating from you that just made him—

Time seemed to stand still and he with it after he leaned forward, nose so close to your crown it nearly bumped into it.

Sniff.

Was he—was he sniffing you?

You face immediately morphed into abject horror, worried that you stunk, you had been travelling all day and that mostly by foot. You gritted your teeth, cheeks flush with colour, ashamed; not having considered the possibility of sweat sticking to you like a foul-smelling perfume.

“Unbelievable.” he murmured, mumbling more to himself than you really. You could see his right hand, the one without the lamp, twitch as if he was tempted to reach out to you.

“You smell exactly like—” he cut himself off, and his features morphed into something unreadable as you stole a few glances at his face.

And before anything else could unfold he was gone, having sprinted down the stairs to god-knows where, having left you puzzled and confused by his reaction. Finally continuing to climb up the stairs you started to conclude that the entire nobility had to be weird people that were oddly obsessed with smell.

Life slowly but surely took some shape—as some sort of routine settled.

Even with how often you were stuck between work as a maid and being a mother, pendling between the manor and the village as often as you were allowed to, you still somehow felt more put together than before. As if each piece of you was slowly glued back together; as if God slowly saw you too and each of your prayers, one by one, would slowly be answered by him. And all came with the arrival of Spring; endless hope bloomed in your chest for a better world—for a less burdened life.

Yet your momentary happiness was ripped away again, replaced by somberness because what the fuck, god?

What was, she doing here?

Your childhood nemesis, as childish as it sounded—the girl who was always smarter, prettier, better than you, so much so that your mom couldn't shut up about it; Maria.

“(Y/n)!” she chirped, voice like nails against a chalkboard.

She repeated your name again—chanted it like a prayer that would be whispered under one's breath in sermons on sunday mornings. Only hers sounded like she was trying to summon something evil that would split the word apart—or at least your head, because it was buzzing in pain from her nagging tone.

“For God's sake Maria! What is it?” you clutched the edge of the kitchen table, huffing in exasperation, having just spent the last five minutes listening to her call your name while you were busy preparing the Master's dinner. A vein was surely about to pop out of your forehead, because this woman just giggled in response and painfully stupid at that.

“What’s with the sour face?” she chuckled, resting her cheek on her palm, black streaks of hair falling over her shoulders because she—like everyone else besides you and the lord's son—was already ready for bed.

“I am trying to haste! And you're chatting my ear off again—.” you quiped, gaze narrowing at her like you usually did when you were disapproving of something—hoping you managed to look as intimidating as your grandma did back then when she had caught you with your entire fist in the jar of strawberry jam. “Besides, why are you still up? You should be off to bed, shift starts early as always.” hopefully she would take the hint and leave.

Instead, she laughed.

Of course she would. Like she laughed when she stole your favourite red ribbon when you both were eight.

“You’re still up and I don't see anyone scolding you for it. So why is it wrong when I do it?” she snickered, truly the bane of your existence, especially because she slipped off of the chair, in her nightgown—shamelessly; she was not worrying about one of the others, let alone the lord, seeing her like this. Actually, scratch that, she probably wanted him to see her like this.

“Come on, you're so tired all the time, I thought I would offer you some of my company.” she drew closer, until her breath rung loudly in your ear, and her piercing blues for eyes slithered over you like a serpent’s tail.

“Laughing keeps young. You should laugh more.” she observed and it almost felt like a threat— she wanted you to react, to show visibly whatever it is that she managed to evoke in you.

You recoiled from the proximity, almost spooked by the sudden closeness. If it weren't for the wooden crucifix dangling from your neck, you almost would've feared that she was a demoness with those piercing eyes of hers. But even if she wasn't, her eyes still betrayed evil buried so deep in her core that you could only shudder and the snappy words you usually would retort with died on your tongue. She always had been weird, but it somehow was only more unsettling seeing her act the same way as a grown woman.

“I—I really should haste.” you were quick to pick up the tray you had finished preparing and even quicker to leave, without looking back at her even once.

Well, perhaps it had been for the better, because if you had looked back you would have seen the wet muscle of her mouth flicking out of its enclosure to lick over where you just touched on the counter.

You, the girl who's ribbons she had stolen, who's knitted scarf she would inhale when you weren't looking—just another kid from the neighbourhood but you were so much more than that, so much more to her. You the woman who clung so pathetically to religion, hiding behind it, when you both knew about the kiss at nine. Only you seemed to have forgotten—but she hadn’t.

Often times dealing with the young lord was bone-scraping work. Hard, exhausting, as if you were plucking weeds from the crops instead of following him like a shadow.

Somehow at some point, you had migrated from being just a maid to being only his personal maid, aiding him with everything. Truly puzzling, yet somehow endearing—because maybe you were too prideful and cocky, but you liked to imagine your own little Bennett growing into such a fine young man as Master Nicholas (only appearance-wise). He was lean, tall with a fair face and soft brown curls that were reminiscent of your own child’s wild locks (even if it was the one feature his father had passed down, you still found it endearing).

But truth be told, maybe that's why you were so inclined to serve Master Nicholas with more softness than you usually would—not just out of fear and respect of the wealthy, not because the thought of losing this job would send you spiraling into a meltdown.

“Maid” his voice was startling, as usual. Maybe it was because it did not match his youthful face or maybe he would bark at you like a dog to command you around.

“Yes, Master Nicholas.” you addressed him, staying put on your spot next to the window overlooking the estate—the snow had melted by now. You wondered if Aunt Jane would allow him to play in the snow before it completely faded. Bennett would surely be upset if he had to wait a whole year to feel the ‘potato milk’ he had called it as a two-year old. The term still made you crack a smile even now.

“What are you looking at?” he startled you again; you hadn't notice him getting up to his feet and dragging himself closer to you—steps heavy against the creaking floorboard of his study. “You seem so—” he continued only to quiet down and come to stand an arm length away from you.

You glanced at him, waiting patiently for him to finish—even when all you craved to do was think about your little baby. But even as you gave him all the time he needed, the end of his sentence never came, instead he huffed and leaned against the wall joining you in on your habit of looking out the window with his arms crossed in front of his chest.

His eyes darted over the landscape—noticing the returning of the splendor of birds in the garden.

“Ugly birds.” he spat, “they're thieves.” he was glaring down at the magpie’s dancing around in the garden, flying from branch to branch and picking at the grass.

Your eyes flicked to him, then they averted back down. “At least they're free.” your muttered and your finger instinctively touched your ring finger—it was a simple band of metal, something cheap but something so binding it felt suffocating, as if you dared to pull it off of your finger you would be cursed, even if you hated the burden marriage laid on your shoulders.

“Free?” he looked over at you—really looked at you, scanning you from head to toe, then scoffed. “So you aren't free, maid?” he still hadn't bothered to learn your name, perhaps never would, but his eyes belied real softness underneath his constructed politeness.

“I thought father was more lenient with you servants.” he furrowed his brows, green eyes a shade darker—growing upset at the lord.

“No, Master Nicholas!” you quickly cut in, not wanting to cause dispute between father and son, startled that he was even able to make our your senseless mumbling.

“His lordship is a fair in his handling with us servants. You needn’t to worry.” you claimed surprising even yourself—but to some extent it was true. You never thought you would side with a noble, but here you were defending the lord’s honour; because truth be told he geninuely didn’t seem like a bad man, but he seemed like a strange man.

“Are you certain?” he blurted, insisting oddly enough. How atypical of him when he was usually apathic to everything not concerning him.

“Yes, Master Nicholas.” you nodded, a strained smile on your face, when you only could smile at Bennett earnestly with a clear conscious—and without betraying god. Still some things had to be done. It gets the job done. You could recall your grandmother saying each time before she whipped out the same old rag to clean the floors, that was barely on; only throughdreams and prayers alone. So yes, it wasn’t truthful, but it got the job done.

So stillness took over you both again and you truly believed he wouldn’t initate a conversation with you again.

“Call me Nicholas.” it seems you were wrong.

“Master Nicholas I can't—” your eyes had grown wide.

“Call me by my name.” he demanded again, his narrowed.

You swallowed thickly. This was definitely crossing some sort of boundaries—nobility and commoner's shouldn't mix, shouldn't be too familiar you both knew that, yet he still asked of you the impossible, insisting even. But seeing his softened gaze—the longing and craving for affection, the same way Bennett would look at you whenever you had to part from him—begging you to stay with him, you couldn’t let a word of protest slip from your tight throat. Your heart felt scorching hot in your chest and your tongue heavy as lead. God, please don’t let me lose this job.

“Nicholas.” you let his name slip—it felt odd, it was bare without the title.

He didn't say anything anymore after. And you would've assumed it was because of indifference if it wasn't for the cocky smile that spread across his lips.

Oh, if you just had known that he didn't just feel satisfied at the little trick that he played on you—that actually his heart beat a drum faster when you called him that. That he felt little shocks of electricity zap at his skin and run down his spine.

You just had confirmed it,

—that you were like her, his deceased mother, but so much better. You were like the mother he had always wanted, the one that was quiet, loving and nurturing, who was there for him, showed emotion, behaved like a human rather than someone with a stick up their ass. You may have smelled like her, like the open fields and woods she so loved more than anything else, including him, but you weren’t her and for that he was forever grateful, because—

you were beneath him.

You would have to do whatever he wanted. Whether it was accompanying him, bringing him dinner, calming him down from one of his meltdowns or sleeping together with him in his bed like he always wanted his mother to do.

He could keep you here with him.

For him you were just another dog on a leash anyways.

A week had passed by now, and you had grown accustomed to calling him by his first name, albeit only in private, for obvious reasons that is.

Only it seemed that his father still caught wind of it, because why else would the lord of the house specifically request you into his study, a frown on his face, his scrutinizing dark brown gaze travelling over your form.

“So,” he cleared his throat and you were screaming internally—you couldn't lose this position, you needed it, desperately so, your child need it. You couldn't start from zero again, being a servant for a noble paid better than most other jobs and even provided you with the meals and the housing—the Baron couldn’t just throw you out because of the request his child had made! At least you hoped he wouldn’t.

“—I heard my son favours you.” he blurted out, his words felt like a good lashing with a belt that made you want to recoil.

“I wouldn't know, your lordship.” you were quick to answer, hot in the face, blunt nails digging into your palms, hoping, praying, pleading with God that he wouldn't throw you out. That he was as nice as you thought he was; that he would continue to prove you wrong about the secret evil of the wealthy.

He paused, looked at you and the longer the silence between you stretched on the more you felt stifled by the threat looming over you like a shadow you couldn't shake off.

You couldn’t stand it anymore, so you spoke up.

“Please I—”

“Your presence is doing him good.” his voice cut yours down and you lowered your head, heart beating against your ribcage rapidly, he was going to— Wait.

What?

“Your lordship? Pardon?” you blinked. It seems that the years spend on this earth hadn’t made you much wiser because you were baffled by his comment.

He sighed, ascending from his seat to step in front of his desk. Clad in his usual sade suit crossed his arms over his chest and let his eyes were stray from your figure.

“I want you to continue as you are. You know, his mother passed away when he was young and it has,” he paused, “affected him since.” he finished putting emphasis on the last words while leaving out that affected meant Nicholas’ emotions being all over the place; so much so that one moment he could be calm and the next he would trash his entire study. But you didn't blame the lord for not elaborating, admitting such a thing was probably ashaming.

“I understand, your lordship.” you replied, heart heavy now for another reason as the fear faded—every child deserved a mother. Your own hadn't been the one for you, emotionally neglecting you, yet your grandmother had. So you sympathised with him; perhaps nannies had tried to fill the void, but they never quiet could've, not like a mother could at least. Maybe that’s why a part of you had been searching for something more—maybe that’s why a piece of you had been missing until Bennett was born.

“I will be there for him.” you replied. No matter how insufferable you had assumed the upper class to be— and truth be told they were — there were still human, as you, nothing but your worth differentiated you from them. They were just born better; richer, with more possibilities at hand, but Nicholas' life of hardship proved to you that even born with a golden spoon in one’s mouth, one’s soul could harbour hunger.

And somehow this made you feel closer to him. Initially you had feared him because he had reminded you of your dreaded husband you had fled from, but slowly you realized that he was like you in a sense; of your childhood self. His gaze would often mimic Bennett’s disappointment everytime you had to leave. In a way, you felt relieved at the lord’s encouragment, seen and acknowledged but to also supported to offer a fraction of your love to Nicholas too.

A smile stretched across your lips—not a fake one this time.

“That’s—”he exhaled, slumping sideways ever so slighty, with gentle curls slicked back, “that’s good to hear, (Y/n).”

You let your smile widen and eyes soften. His visible relief felt rewarding and his words bordering on praise were flustering. Everything about the lord was stern but gentle, a walking contradiction some might say, but somehow it just made sense for him to be this way—a baron, a lord to his people and servants reigning over his land with a firm hand yet a loving father, tender in the way he would speak about his heir’s battered soul. He would’ve been a man grandmother would’ve liked.

As the words died down on the both of your tongues, you awaited him to dimiss you. However he didn’t, in fact he didn’t even move—still as a statue. So you took it upon yourself to inquire whether you should leave him alone in the privacy of his study.

“If that was all, shall I take my leave now, your—”

“Do you—”he paused, “do you wear perfume?”

Your brows scrunched up.

Oh God no, not again. Did you perhaps stink again like that night. Hopefully not, because if you did, you would start to scrub every layer of your attire—from chemise to the outer layer of your skirt.

“No, your lordship.” you answered thickly. God, you hoped you didn’t smell of sweat.

“I see.” he answered ambigously, not comfirming nor denying your worries. Besides, he should know that you as a servant could hardly afford such a luxury—so was he actually mocking you, telling you to wear perfume? You hoped that it was just an odd fixation that all nobles beheld and not the latter.

“You’re dismissed.” he finally exclaimed and you felt relief. Quietly you stood up, nodding politely, before turning on your heel and exiting his study.

Oh, only if you knew how enticing you actually smelled to him. Like Juliane, but with something motherly and tenderly sticking to you, a better version of his deceased wife. A commoner, so ignorant to the life of nobility, that wasn’t even aware of how her features tugged into different directions every second, so unsued to using titles that he could tell you sometimes were about to slip-up and not address him properly.

You were remisicent of his first love; love that was fiery and strong, but you were like the spring, a budding rose with dull thorns. He felt the aching pang of love in his chest whenever your startled gaze met his and that scared Charles. To think his heart would start beating again after a decade—and that for nothing but a maid. He knew he had to be sensible, love was fictious in the life of the upper class and to experience such a gift for the second time was laughable.

But if that love was you — someone so sweet, even his own son started to soften around the edges— then maybe he could induldge himself a tad; enjoy life a little with you by his side.

Yeah, Charles would like to enjoy this life together with you, after forced to experience this perputel loneliness for nearly a decade. Maybe you two could even gift Nicholas a little sibling in the future, only after having slipped a ring of your finger that is.

Yeah, he would like to indluge. After all, one was only born once, right?

Life was sweeter now—not as sweet as the cherries you would pick in secret from the neighbour’s tree at seven or the first taste of sugar you ever had at twelve, but it was worthwhile.

Especially with your little toddler sticking to you like glue; Aunt Jane had brought him here to visit you, after having whined the entire last week because of you failing to visit him again. So your clever little boy had suggested that he just visited you.

“Mommy, you live here?” you chuckled softly at the awe in his voice.

“I work here, Ben’.” you replied, smiling at the familiar face of the guard, nodding at you.

“So that's the little lad.” the man you had learned was Jonathan and surprisingly younger than you by a few years—which his broad shoulders and gruff voice would never hint at.

You nodded looking down at your child as he babbled a greeting to the guard. Now you were standing a tad straighter, eyes softening as your grandmother’s always used to and as your mother’s never had for you.

You were transfixed with your own little one; standing there next to you, finally close to you with a heart you knew hadn’t felt agony the same way yours had. So your mind wandered off and you questioned if he ever would experience what you had, but you knew he wouldn’t, because you simply wouldn’t allow fate to be this cruel to him as it had been to you. God was still listening to your prayers afterall. And suddenly you couldn't help but imagine Bennett grown up, flourished into a strong man as Jonathan with broad shoulders and biceps that could make anyone shudder in fear or perhaps like the lord himself, with a clipped tone yet a soft gaze and presence that was overwhelming.

“Good day to you too lad.” he nodded at your little extension, watching how proud you were of him—and he had to admit he liked it. The smile on your face was sweeter than the scent of flowers hanging in the air and your little buddy was shyly adorable. He offered you another one of his own smiles that inevitably ended up looking grim, while you both passed by him to disappear into the manor and leave him to sigh to himself again.

“Mommy—Mommy look that looks like a person!” was the first thing that left Bennett’s mouth, brown curls bouncing up and down with his jumps, big-eyed fascination clear across his face as he stared at the oil painting of the lord and his son hung up on the staircase. Even though you were feeling bleak from all the unfortunate circumstances, your soul ripping apart that you had been forced to neglect your son for so long— you couldn’t help but chuckle at his enthusiasm feeling warmth spread in you from the fact that your baby was with you in the moment.

“Shh, quieter Ben’.” you scolded him as you grabbed his tiny fist, leading him towards the kitchen, worried someone might take notice. You didn’t want to get yourself into trouble—and because you knew how strict the head maid could be, you lead your little boy into the kitchen.

However the moment you entered you wished you hadn’t because for the love of god, what was she again doing here, just loitering around; doing absolutely the bare minimum.

“If that isn’t my most favourite person ever!” she immediately chirped, as she usually did, stopping chewing on the piece of pastry in her hands to round the courner of the counter, adamant on annoying you on her short lunchbreak as always with the fattest grin anyone could have on their face—only to gasp.

“What—” her eyes widened, almost dropping her meal.

“What, what is that?” she pointed at your child as if he was a weirdly coloured bug that had slipped in. Unbelievably crude and rude.

“That's my son, Maria.”

“Your son? That's Ben you can't shut up about?” she grimaced and you felt your eye twitch, because you had mentioned him once in her presence.

“Bennett for you.” you were tempted to roll your eyes, picking your son up to sit him down on one of the many empty fruit boxes, perfect to be used as a chair. Maria just stared at you funnily.

“Do you want something Ben’? Mommy can make you anything you want.” you smiled at him, and somehow, in some way this just felt right. And for a moment you fantasised that this nice kitchen was yours—that this home was only yours and Bennett's. That you were free.

And then Maria’s obnoxiously loud stomping snapped you out of it again and you threw her a dirty look as she left the kitchen to do god-knows-what.

Only unbeknownst to you, not only the black-haired little snake and a few other maids, which were either adoring or annoyed caught you, but also the lord's heir—the one searching for you almost frantically, because you had not come when you usually would.

Where were you?

He was hurrying down the stars, frenzied, desperately searching for you—you were practically promised to him now; promised to stay by his side day-in-day out. You were just a servant for fuck’s sake—you didn't and shouldn't have autonomy to just anything. Could a dog walk without its owner? No. So where the fuck where you—

That's when he caught sight of you in the kitchen, with a little demon by your side, making you smile and yap so sweetly that it could rot teeth.

Straining his memory to figure out what that leech was that made you beam in a way that you never had at him before in the entire year you had been working here—his anger only heightened the moment he finally remembered.

”Oh, my little Ben absolutely loves..”

That's your kid.

Your child; this little ant.

How dare he, an insufferable brat, who probably still shits himself from time to time, dare consume your attention so entirely that you would neglect your duties and dote on something so tiny and powerless compared to him.

Why was it him, this fool, this insufferable little devil that took you—why couldn’t your eyes soften as much as when they laid on him. It was unfair, criminal. He was the heir to the entire land his father had inherited from his grandpa and to think with all the influence he held you would still go and pick a toddler over him was maddening. To think that you another insect scurrying around together with all the others could dare to be picky.

No, he was lying. You weren’t just another insect, you were his mom-to-be.

“Mother.” he spat under his breath, knuckles white from how tightly he clutched the pearls of his actual deceased mother's in his hand—he had specifically fished them out of her jewellery box that sat abandoned in one of the many rooms of the manor to gift you them but now here he was watching you betraying him.

“I have lost a mother once.” he was slowly ripping the poor necklace apart—the band holding on for dear life.

“I won’t lose one twice.” the pearls all spilled to the ground like blood.

So he laid a curse on you; one so cruel that you wouldn't have any other choice but to accept your rightful position as his dog.

Just you wait and see.

---♡---

Life sometimes developed in strange ways, did it not? Because you never would've imagined to sit with Jonathan under a cherry blossom tree.

The summer was fading and cold, cruel days were arriving, but somehow everything felt much better this way. It felt right. This fragile understanding of affection—you were glad the colder days would put some distance between the two of you, force you to part, because after the young man had confessed to you, you couldn't help but feel the flattery get to your head—allowing yourself to wish and long for something unattainable.

“I—” awkwardly clearing his throat he looked over at you, “I want you, m’lady.” scratching the back of his neck, he looked down.

“I am big and strong. My position is stable—my salary isn't half bad. I am quite a catch.” he declared cockily, with his chest puffed out proudly, trying to feign arrogance, when you knew he was nothing but a puppy in love.

You couldn't help but chuckle, “Jonathan, you're sweet, but—” you protested half-heartedly, more amused than anything. Mostly because you both knew you were officially still married.

“No—no, lady! I am serious, as I am about my feelings for ya.” you found his drawl endearing and found your fave heating up the moment he leaned closer, the lines on his forehead deepening.

“Stop laughing m’lady!” you couldn't help but laugh more—it was comical how he kept on addressing you as if you were noble yourself, as if you were above him.

“Just tell me what to do, so you'll believe me.” you didn't say anything anymore, instead you just smiled bashfully as he kissed your knuckles before fleeing inside again.

But, it seems luck despised you because father like son, Charles was glaring down at the scene from his study, feeling his heart rip at the sight of another man vying for your hand, while another already had bound you in marriage.

It wasn't fair, why was everyone getting a piece of you, why were you giving everyone something to cherish but you let him starve?

He so desperately wanted you, he craved you, but unlike his son, he would never take anything forcibly, especially not you a delicate rose with blunt thorns. Rather he would wait for all the flies around you to die by themselves so that your soul could find its way back to his, where it rightfully belonged to.

---♡---

No.

You refused this reality.

This couldn't be happening.

Crying nor screaming changed what had occured; you had murdered your child with your own two hands. All because you couldn’t take him with you, make him stay close to you.

Still you had tried to lie to yourself. To believe and to fantasize that your baby somehow could be well without you. You had hoped that your husband—as horrid as he was—at least would never reach him; never get too close to your treasured pearl, but he did. He managed to tear everything down and he took Bennett with him; he dragged him back into the lion’s den only to let his own son rot like a beggar out on the streets.

You had hoped. You had prayed daily, trusting god. But trust alone just wasn’t enough.

It never was.

He had died because of you—because you were stupid, foolish and worse than your own mother. Your grandmother would’ve died a second time if she had witnessed you now—a vile excuse for a human; picking up the cold corpse of her child, of a toddler with chubby cheeks that now were icy to the touch.

Tears brimmed at your eyes and you wondered if they would wet your cheeks first or your heart would shatter first—frail like glass. Memories flushed back into your head. Willow had died in your hands too—sick and frail as a baby, but Bennett, he had been a lively child, sticking to you like glue no matter how lithe he was. He was alive—had been alive for god’s sake! And now—now his chest didn’t rise anymore.

He was gone.

And it was your fault.

Until you sighted the man who had driven you away from your babies—who had inevitably caused their deaths.

So who could blame you now? An eye for an eye—wasn’t this what priests preached; wasn’t this god’s holy words? So as any good mother would do, following nothing but instinct, you followed the path of the holy to succumb to sin.

You tackled him—it was easier than you thought it would be. He was still weary; having just awoken from a drunken slumber, peacefully snoring away while your baby had lost the battle to a fever, that would’ve needed care and attention to heal; but it could have subsided, he could have lived. The only reason he was dead was this monster under you, now starting to struggle—roaring at you to get off. But the knife was already secure in your hand.

You had found it in the kitchen; it was a big butcher’s knife, one that your mother’s mother and her mother had owned to slice through a chicken’s neck like butter.

“Hey—what are you doing? Get off me you madwoman!” he yelped and cried, nearly managing to throw you off and tumble forward before you could swing. Nearly.

But as you had been too late, he also was, and the blade sliced through his neck without any resistance, tearing almost through everything.

He was dead before he could blink.

Still, you dropped the blade on his throat a few times more—just for good measures really—until his head rolled off; empty as it was, spilling all it was worth on the ground.

For a moment all you did was pant and stare, now he was just a shell spilling crimson in gallons, his blood your tears.

You stared until you couldn't anymore, until bile rised in your throat and you scrambled to your feet gagging.

Stumbling over him, skirt drenched in red and the floor slippery you crashed back to your knees, clawing your way back to your child like a mole, trying to navigate through the blurring of your sight. Yet the moment you felt his cold hand you cradled him, clutching him like a lifeline—like if you pressed him close enough to your own heart, his would start beating too like a match sharing its flame with another.

Even if all you wanted was to embrace and mourn your little boy, there was something inside of you—a certain fire, a nagging in the back of your head that screamed at you to get up, to get moving, that not all hope was lost yet.

And so you were quick to scramble to your feet, disoriented like a lamb but staggering forward and out the door. The wind whipped at you—untangled your scarf from you. It was winter, the north wind bitter cold, yet he couldn’t affect you, nothing could and the snow that had risen to your ankles inevitably bloomed in red with each of your steps as you continued to push through, to drag your feet forward, agains the bellowing howls of the wind. Your hands were red too, everything was, but what made you cry out was the filthy colour staining your baby. How dare he. To dirty him even in death, monster.

You were going to safe your son from the paw’s of his father that extended even death, you would bring him to safety and that safety was the manor—the only place where you once had felt warmth blossom in your chest that had beheld a functioning heart.

The walk was long, it took an hour. A whole hour out in the cold, ice nipping at your skin, and snowflakes decorating your hair—but all that didn't matter, it couldn't matter if it meant a way to save him. The lord was a powerful man, he could summon a doctor knowledgeable enough to save Bennett—you were sure of it. He would save your baby.

Yet, by the time you arrived, having left terrified figures behind you, the guard at the gait immediately jumped forward.

“Fuck (Y/n)!” Jonathan spat in surprise, eyes round in terror.

“What happened to you? Are you hurt? Did someone attack you? What is it him?—” and he would've demanded more, already reaching out to touch your shoulder, if he hadn't seen little Bennett in your arms—pale as snow and frozen on the spot. Something was deeply disturbing about the picture of the little boy in your bloodied arms and the longer he stared the more his hand trembled.

“He—” he started but cut himself off with a look at your face. He was worried, terrified for you.

While he could do nothing but stare in shock —like all the villagers you met on your way had looked at you—you slipped into the garden, striding forward to the manor, only hearing panicking behind you accompanied with heavy stomping after you slipped through the front door; already inside. And nothing could stop you from bringing your son back to life.

Fear was a stranger now.

So you climbed up the stairs and burst into the baron’s study unprompted, with no use of the usual manners you portrayed.

“Please—” you were quiet, so quiet you feared he wouldn’t take notice of you.

But it wasn’t just the lord, Nicholas was also standing there consumed in a lively discussion until you entered and both of their heads whipped towards you, eyes immediately widening.

“He’s stopped breathing. I don't know why—he was just laying on the floor without moving. I have tried everything, but he just doesn’t want to wake up, please, I don’t know what to do anymore and—” you were a broken machine, only able to repeat yourself over and over again, in hopes they could read between the lines of your anguish; that they could decipher your pleading for a doctor, even if you were just a maid. And even if your life was worth nothing compared to them, Bennett’s life was something worth to you and you hoped that they could see that. That even if your child was a commoner as you, he was worth the world.

“What happened?” the lord was the first one to speak up. He stepped close enough to look at the boy in your arms.

“Why are you drenched in blood? Are you hurt? Did someone hurt you? You look pale as a ghost. Where are you bleeding—” Nicholas questions rained down on you, yet you could do nothing but stare into his father's eyes, ignoring his fuzzing.

Slowly, the lord outstretched his arms.

“Come. I will help. Give him to me.” he urged, shutting Nicholas up.

You didn’t want to. This was Bennett, your little boy, a seed that had sprung from you and had grown under your wing and to hand him over to someone else, while the same blood pumped through our veins seemed odd; cruel even. But this was the lord, wasn’t he—he was kind, understanding and your only flimmer of hope. Only he could save your baby, your Ben.

So you let him take the one thing of value in your life; your child.

And that's when your world’s edges blurred and foreign arms wrapped around you.

“Mother—” yor sweet baby was talking to you. At least you heard his voice one last time.

“Don’t worry, you’re safe now mother.”

Only you didn't pass.

But your soul had.

“Bennett?” you were calling out for him until your throat was raw, but he never came.

“Mother, calm, I am here. It's alright mother. Your son is here.” Nicholas muttered again, chanting the string of words like a mantra, as if they would ring true when reached a certain number of repetition, as if you would magically start believing in them after a certain time.

“We’re here for you, love.” the lord muttered, calling himself Charles, telling you it was fine to mourn to cry and rage, but that you had a new family now. And that this new one would ensure your utmost happiness till the end of time. Everything was so bizarrely confusing—and all you wanted to do was scream.

Maria was ominously around you too; always in the shadows, serving you, whispering to you when she would hand you a glass of water and wipe your sweat-covered face, trying to awaken from yet another nightmare.

Yet no one mentioned Bennett. No one even spoke his name; it was like a taboo, almost like his mention would curse you all.

You prayed harder and stronger, yet no one ever heard you, or seemed to care. Nicholas' grip never loosened on you, he never stopped calling you mom and the baron not once failed to call you his beloved—and both expected you to wear it like a badge of honour when all you wanted was to be reunited with your child.

Finally you concluded that God had abandoned you long ago.

Just this time, please, don’t let me be reborn again.

[kari-sims]

Tomiko Moriyama (she/they) as my entry for the Total Drama Sims season 3 by @jonquilyst!! (thanks for letting me participate <3)

also huge wall of slightly amusing text below the cut (you've been warned!) cause i was caffeinated and ended up having some fun with this ৻( •̀ ᗜ •́ ৻)

👩 Age: 14 🪐 Lives in: Strangerville 🐛 Goals in life: to open a bug museum 💖 Orientation: thinks girls are cute, but doesn't want to waste their short teen years chasing them around (that's what the 20's are for!) 🎶 Hidden talent: encyclopedic knowledge of kpop girl group's songs and dances 🥇 Honorable titles: -> 'Mighty Collector of the Fun Hats' -> 'Prestigious Ambassador' at the ''International Bug Diplomacy Federation'' (only actual human member, but it'll grow, just wait!) 👍Likes: iridescent beetles / cut rock hard candy / slippery mud you can draw on / putting googly eyes on random things 👎 Dislikes: homework / cleaning things that'll get dirty again / humans evil bug killing inventions (unless it's a laser shooting death ray gun for mosquitoes, cause yeah, even a bug loving girl hates those bastards!)

[RECORD 434, another sunny day in strange Strangerville]

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(sound of someone clearing their throat, followed by what's obviously a kid trying to speak in an exaggerated deep voice)

Tomiko: "Tomiko is a girl who didn't need a home with walls or windows - the roof to her 'home' has always been the sky above." (pauses, mutters to themselves) Ooh that's a good one! Wait, people will think i live in the woods, no? Wouldn't that be the dream…

(moment of silence as Tomiko daydreams, then remembers she just started recording)

"Tomiko doesn't have many friends, because she was destined to be a free-spirited loner. With the exception of Clarisse, a girl who dreams ofbecoming a marine biologist. Clarisse was made fun of by strangers on a dumb internet show she went to one day, all because she wanted to win the money and go on a trip to Sulani. Now everyone calls her the 'Dolphin Girl'. After Tomiko decided to console her at lunch in school, both of them ended up bonding over their crazy obssession with nature. They've been inseparable friends ever since."

(another pause, followed by an audible sigh)

"Well, they were inseparable, until Tomiko moved away. Now Clarisse is being weird for no reason... anyways, where was i?

(forgets why they went on a Clarisse tangent and starts to fumble with their unorganized notes)

"Oh yes, destined to be a free-spirited loner, ya-da ya-da. Unfortunately, Tomiko was forced to live in a boring house made of bricks, with white furniture, and a mom who was always mad about her muddy boots on the carpet."

(voice shifts to mimic the mom's screech)

- I'm not gonna raise a savage wild child! Since you love dirt so much, go live with your bum of a father in that Strangerplace world, or whatever it's called.

"Best thing to ever happen to me!" (voice switches to normal accidentally, then goes back to the fake deep one) - I mean - best thing to ever happen to Tomiko! Even though her dad looks kinda weird lately, walking around aimlessly at night in search of his mother. Classic dad, being a weirdo. No idea how this man got married..."

- Dad, I told you grandma still lives in Willow Creek. Why do you think she's in the middle of the desert? Also, she wouldn't be caught dead wasting away her fabulous heels in this god-forsaken place.

"Tomiko pretends she doesn't see it, because now she can do whatever she wants, why complicate things? The only problem is, there isn't much to do in Strangerville with the infection rumors going on, and all the damn sus soldiers. Also, the taste of travelling for the first time has left her wanting to see more. Imagine all the bugs she could find?! But you need money for that, sooo… what to do, what to do…"

(voice returns to normal, a bit defensive)

"Okay, fine, I'm the one recording this… (sighs) I know what you're thinking - "just steal from your dad!". Seriously, who do you think I am? Anyways, I did something else instead. I heard there's this competition with other teens where you get to travel the world, and guess what? I signed up for it! Without my parents knowing, of course, but that is irrelevant. They won't even notice I'm gone, I fear. I just hope the organizers don't ask for their permission, because Clarisse was the one who knew how to fake signatures, but now she's hanging out with other kids at school, and thinks she's better than me."

(inhales, then proceeds to speak loudly at a wall, probably)

"Like... Nina? The enemy? Be so for real right now Clarisse! My life is just grand without you! I'll get to travel the world and educate people on how bugs are friends, and definitely NOT disgusting or too dangerous! Well, most times. I'll also prove that even if you're a weird bug loving kid like me, you can still have a chance at a game that requires you to make friends. It'll be eaaasy! In a few weeks I'll be like, Clarisse who? Hahah!"

(brief pause on their flex-rant, which is totally NOT a defense mechanism because she's hurt by them growing apart. They return, slightly worried)

"Do you think I can die in there? Cause gosh, let's hope not! Imagine going on an adventure of a lifetime and not being able to tell people about your heroic deeds... that'd be so lame! Anyways, I'll see you when I see you, whoever is listening to this… Tomi out!"

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[RECORD ENDS]

wow if you're still here, thanks for reading, you wonderful bean! here, have a cute snail

(´・ᴗ・)>~🐌

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Keeping a suspense file gives you superpowers

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

Two decades ago, I was part of a group of nerds who got really interested in how each other managed to do what we did. The effort was kicked off by Danny O'Brien, who called it "Lifehacking" and I played a small role in getting that term popularized:

https://craphound.com/lifehacksetcon04.txt

While we were all devoted to sharing tips and tricks from our own lives, many of us converged on an outside expert, David Allen, and his bestselling book "Getting Things Done" (GTD, to those in the know):

https://gettingthingsdone.com/

GTD is a collection of relatively simple tactics for coping with, prioritizing, and organizing the things you want to do. Many of the methods relate to organizing your own projects, using a handful of context-based to-do lists (e.g. a list of things to do at the office, at home, while waiting in line, etc). These lists consist of simple tasks. Those tasks are, in turn, derived from another list, of "projects" – things that require more than one task, which can be anything from planning dinner to writing a novel to helping your kid apply to university.

The point of all this list-making isn't to do everything on the lists. While these lists do help you remember what to do next, what they're really good for is deciding what not to do – at all. The promise of GTD is that it will help you consciously choose not to do some of the things you set out to accomplish. This is in contrast to how most of us operate: we have a bunch of things we want to do, and we end up doing the things that are easiest, or at top of mind, even if they're not the most important things.

GTD recognizes that you can be very "productive" (in the sense of getting many things done) and still not do the things that you really wanted to do. You know what this is like: you finish a Sunday with an organized sock-drawer, all your pennies neatly rolled, the trash-can in your car emptied…and no work at all on that novel you're hoping to write.

You can't do everything, but you can control what you don't do, rather than just defaulting into completing a string of trivial, meaningless tasks and leaving the big stuff on the sidelines. Organizing your own tasks and projects is a hugely powerful habit, and one that's made a world of difference to my personal and professional life.

But while good to-do lists can take you very far in life, they have a hard limit: other people. Almost every ambitious thing you want to do involves someone else's contribution. Even the most solitary of projects can be derailed if your tax accountant misses a key email and you end up getting audited or paying a huge penalty.

That's where the other kind of GTD list comes in: the list of things you're waiting for from other people. I used to be assiduous in maintaining this list, but then the pandemic struck and no one was meeting any of their commitments, and I just gave up on it, and never went back…until about a month ago. Returning to these lists (they're sometimes called "suspense files") made me realize how many of the problems – some hugely consequential – in my life could have been avoided if I'd just gone back to this habit earlier.

My suspense file is literally just some lines partway down a text file that lives on my desktop called todo.txt that has all my to-dos as well. Here's some sample entries from my suspense file:

WAITING EMAIL Sean about ENSHITTIIFCATION manuscript deadline 10/24/24 WAITING EMAIL Russ about missing royalty statement 10/12/24 WAITING EMAIL Alice about Christmas vacation hotel 10/8/24 10/20/24 WAITING EMAIL Ted about Sacramento event 8/12/24 9/5/24 10/5/24 10/20/24

WAITING CALL LA County about mosquito abatement 10/25/24 WAITING CALL School attendance officer about London trip 10/18/24

WAITING MONEY EFF reimbusement for taxi to staff retreat $34.98 10/7/24

WAITING SHIPMENT New Neal Stephenson novel from Bookshop.org 10/23/24

This is as simple as things could possibly be! I literally just type "WAITING," then a space, then the category of thing I'm waiting for, then a few specifics, then the date. When I follow up on an item, I add the date of the followup to the end of the line. If I get some details that I might need to reference later (say, a tracking code for a shipment, or a date for an event I'm trying to organize), I'll add that, too, as it comes up. Creating a new entry on this list takes 10-25 seconds. When someone gets back to me, I just delete that line.

That is literally it.

Every day, or sometimes a couple of times a day, I will just run my eyes up and down this list and see if there's anything that's unreasonably overdue, and then I'll send a reminder or make a followup call. In the example above, you can see that I've been chasing Ted about Sacramento for months now (this is a fake entry – no plans to go to Sacto at the moment, sorry):

WAITING EMAIL Ted about Sacramento event 8/12/24 9/5/24 10/5/24 10/20/24

So now I've emailed Ted four times. Maybe my email's going to his spam, and so I could try emailing a friend of Ted and ask them to check whether he's getting my messages. But maybe Ted's trying to send me a message here – he's just not interested in doing the event after all. Or maybe Ted is available, but he's so snowed under that he's in danger of fumbling it, and I need to bring in some help if I want it to happen.

All of these are possibilities, and the fact that I'm tracking this means that I now get to make an active decision: cancel the gig or double down on making sure it happens. Without this list, the gig would just die by default, forgotten by both of us. Maybe that's OK, but I can't tell you how many times I've run into someone who said, "Dammit, I just remembered I was supposed to email you about getting that thing done and I dropped the ball. Shit! I really was looking forward to that. Is it too late now?" Often it is too late. Even if it's not, the work of picking up the pieces and starting over is much more than just following through on the original plan.

Restarting my suspense file made me realize how many of the (often expensive or painful) fumbles I've had since the pandemic were the result of me not noticing that someone else hadn't gotten back to me. In essence, a suspense file is a way for me to manage other people's to-do lists.

Let me unpack that. By "managing other people's to-do lists," I don't mean that I'm deciding for other people what they will and won't do (that would be both weird and gross). I mean that I'm making sure that if someone else fails to do something we were planning together, it's because they decided not to do it, not because they forgot. As GTD teaches us, the real point of a to-do list isn't just helping us remember what to do – it's helping us choose what we're not going to do.

This is not an imposition, it's a kindness. The point of a suspense file isn't to nag others into living up to their commitments, it's to form a network of support among collaborators where we all help one another make those conscious choices about what we're not going to do, rather than having the stuff we really value slip away because we forgot about it.

I have frequent collaborators whom I know to be incapable of juggling too many things at once, and my suspense file has helped me hone my sense of when it would be appropriate to ask them if they want to do something together and when to leave them be. The suspense file helps me dial in how much I rely on each person in my life (relying on someone isn't the same as valuing them – and indeed, one way to value someone is to only rely on them for things they're able to do, rather than putting them in a position of feeling bad for failing you).

Lifehacking gets a bad rap, and justifiably so. Many of the tips that traffick as "lifehacks" are trivial or stupid or both. What's more, too much lifehacking can paint you into a corner where you've hacked any flexibility out of your life:

https://locusmag.com/2017/11/cory-doctorow-how-to-do-everything-lifehacking-considered-harmful/

But ever since Danny coined the term "lifehack," back in 2004, I've been cultivating daily habits that have let me live the life I wanted to live, accomplishing the things I wanted to accomplish. I figured out how to turn daily writing into a habit and now I've written more than 30 books:

https://www.locusmag.com/Features/2009/01/cory-doctorow-writing-in-age-of.html

A daily habit of opening a huge, ever-tweaked collection of tabs has made me smarter about the news, helped me keep tabs on my friends, helped me find fraudsters who were trying to steal my identity, and ensured that all those Kickstarter rewards and other long-delayed, erratic shipments didn't slip through the cracks:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/25/today-in-tabs/#unfucked-rota

Daily habits are superpowers. Once something is a habit, you get it for free. GTD turns on decomposing big, daunting projects into bite-sized, trackable tasks. I have a bunch of spaces around the house – my office, my closet, the junk sheds down the side of the house, our tiki bar – that I used to clean out once or twice a year. Each one was all-day, sweaty, dirty job, and for most of the year, all of those spaces were a dusty, disorganized mess.

A month ago, I added a new daily task: spend five minutes cleaning one space. I did the bar first, and after two weeks, I'd taken down every tchotchke and bottle and polished it, reorganizing the undercounter spaces where things pile up:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=37996580417%40N01&sort=date-taken-desc&text=tiki+bar&view_all=1

Now I'm working through my office. Ever day, I'm dusting a bookshelf and combing through it for discards to stick in our Little Free Library. Takes less than five minutes most day, and I'll be done in about three weeks, when I'll move on to my closet, then the side of the house, and then back to the bar. A daily short break where I get away from my computer and make my living and working environments nicer is a wonderful habit to cultivate.

I'm 53 years old now. I was 33 when I started following Getting Things Done. In that time, I've gotten a lot done, but what's even more relevant is that I didn't get a ton of things done – things that I consciously chose not to abandon. Figuring out what you want to do, and then keeping it on track – in manageable, healthy, daily rhythms that bring along the other people you rely on – may not be the whole secret to a fulfilled life, but it's certainly a part of it.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/26/one-weird-trick/#todo.txt