#not to mention the harassment of if it’s not and you’re calling a straight person gay simply because you feel like they are

[theamazingannie]

I’ve literally had multiple people ask me straight to my face if I was bisexual because they suspected I was and even tho I knew in all three of those situations that the person I was talking to was safe (either queer themself or an ally), it was really scary to be forced in that moment to come out without my consent, or feel forced to lie about it in order to protect myself, regardless of whether I needed to or not. I can’t imagine being a world famous celebrity and having fan pages dedicated to my alleged sexuality, analyzing every behavior I did and whether or not it was queer, calling all of my relationships PR relationships or beards because they are so convinced I am a homosexual. Either erasing my bisexuality to call me a lesbian or forcefully outing me. People who don’t even know me. It’s scary and honestly creepy enough having someone who knows you personally do it, but someone who’s never even met you? And doing it in front of the whole world? I would never feel safe enough to come out, not just because of the risk of homophobic attacks, but because the people who claim to support me are the ones that made me do it

[kendyzzlewp]

i just can’t stop thinking about husband!art and how protective he is over you. jfc, he will kill anyone who even looks at your direction

just imagine

you’re getting ready for a stupid work event, adjusting your dress in front of the mirror. art sits on the edge of the bed, arms crossed, a frown plastered on his face as he watches.

‘i wish you didn’t have to go’ he said, giving you the usual puppy dog eyes.

with a sad sigh you turn, walking over to him and standing in between his legs. ‘I know, but howard will kill me if i miss this one.”

at the mention of your sleazy boss he tenses, his frown turning into a scowl as you ran a hand through his short blonde locks

‘fucking hate that creep,’ he mutters, his hand softly caressing your bare legs. ‘if he tries anything, promise me you’ll call.’

with a soft smile, you nod bending down to plant a kiss on his furrowed brow. ‘I will,’ you promise.

you get to the art gallery that’s hosting the event, leaving your car in the valet and entering the building. it was already filled with newly rich influencers much to your annoyance. still you plaster on a smile.

spotting your boss from across the room, you made it your mission to avoid him at all costs. not in the mood to stand his advancements that teetered on the edge of harassment.

the night went on, your face hurt from smiling too much, the champagne in your hand already warm as you moved around the space

‘Y/N!’

you couldn’t help but physically cringe as the older man made his way over to you. the smell of whiskey and sweat making your stomach churn

‘howard,” you greet him, short and polite, looking around for a chance to escape.

but it’s too late because he’s already all up in your personal space, saying how beautiful you are and how art is a lucky man and how your dress hugs your curves but he takes it too far, pushing the boundary between inappropriate to straight up assault

his hand finds its way to the small of your back, slowly traveling down until it landed on your ass. you froze, heart racing, legs trembling and eyes opening in absolute panic. no one around you seems to notice your predicament.

“donaldson really is a lucky bastard,” he whispered into your eat, making your skin crawl.

with the smallest ounce of courage left in your body, you push him away. angry and shameful tears cascading down your cheeks in big fat globs.

“fuck you,” you hissed, running toward the nearest bathroom.

locking the door behind you, you fetch your phone from your purse, dialing with a trembling hand,

‘hey, baby. you almost home?”

art’s voice seems to bring you back down to reality, the feeling of shame settling in the pit as your stomach as you bite back sob

‘art,’ you manage to choke out, your breath coming in short burst. ‘I can’t, he…tried to…”

‘hey, hey,” he said, his concerned tone driving you over the edge. ‘what happened?’

letting out a big breath, your hands grip your hair in utter frustration. ‘Howard…he tried to, god. he grabbed my ass and he wanted…”

You couldn’t even finish the sentence.

“where are you?” his tone was urgent now, you could hear rustling of movement and keys.

“in the bathroom,” you whispered, your breath hitching between sobs.

“I’m coming to get you,” he said, his voice firm and reassuring.

minutes felt like hours as you waited for your husband to arrive. surprised you didn’t create a hole in the marble floor with the amount of pacing you were doing.

a soft knock caught you by surprise, followed by a muffled. “its me.”

a wave of relief fell upon you like a soothing balm, rushing to the door, you unlocked it, opening it. art’s mouth fell into a frown, you must’ve looked like a mess but you didn’t care. he instantly pulled you against his chest as you fell apart, his presence a anchoring reality to what happened.

“let’s go home,” he whispered, pulling back slightly and cupping your face in his hands. “and you are not working again, do you understand me?”

you nod silently, grateful for his support and you let him lead you out of the bathroom. murmurs and whispers could be heard but it wasn’t anything new. you husband was art donaldson, tennis superstar and olympic gold medalist. he was used to the stares and the commentary.

“mr. donaldson,” the familiar voice sent your heart into a panicked frenzy. “what a nice surprise.”

ugh, that disgusting piece of shit.

art froze, his expression darkening as he looked over his shoulder. he spotted your boss, sporting a smug smile on his face as he lifted his glass. the bastard.

without a word, art dropped your hand and made his way over to him. it was all a blur, but you could recall his fist connecting with howard’s jaw, you remember barely hearing the gasps of the attendees over the sound of your beating heart.

howard effectively fell to the floor, his hand cradling his jaw in surprise. art stood over to him, his fit frame casting a shadow over the now small and cowardly man.

“if you ever come near my wife again, i will fucking kill you,” he growled. “you even breath near her and you are done.”

not waiting for a response, he turned and dragged you out of there.

[genderfluid-insomniac]

hi! can i ask modern au(i'm not sure if thats what its called but yk where we live without the superpowers) hcs with shenhe and kafka x reader? the reader could be fem but if you dont write that gn is okay too. just hcs about how it would be like to date them and what kind of stuff they'd to etc. hope you have a nice day!!!

hi! of course! I'm soooo sorry it took this long!!

Modern Au!Kafka and Shenhe with dating headcanons (fem!s/o)

Shenhe

As in the game, this tall intimidating woman is a bit hesitant as she’s still learning more social cues and being able to smoothly get into a conversation. You love her dearly but sometimes she scares others by casually suggesting violent solutions to certain problems like it’s completely normal. As much as you joke about giving her classes on social cues and how to not seem like a robot she asks you to actually do that.

She’s hella protective. She has you carry one of those multi purpose keychains with a window break (which could be used as a shank as she’s suggested), pepper spray, a small knife, etc and tells you to look out for signs of any danger. You’re both trained in self defense and know additional safety combat techniques. Shenhe just really doesn’t want anything to happen to you since you’re one of the best things to happen to her.

Please help her cook because Shenhe badly wants to cook you a meal and not set off the fire alarm or somehow make an abomination of sometype. It can also be a fun date where you both bake a cake or a favorite if yours. She’ll get confused if you put frosting on her nose jokingly but very flustered when you lick it off or kiss it off.

You adore her cuddles and how she is the perfect size for being a little spoon, not to mention those soft plush breasts she has that make perfect pillows. Your girlfriend adores cuddles more than anything since you’re so adorable already and hers.

This is a strange one but please take her to the zoo she’s absolutely enamored with all of the animals and it doesn’t matter if she’s already seen them Shenhe will watch them all day and read the facts on the stand in front of the habitat. Despite the fact that you can see it too she’ll tell all of her favorite things about said animal. She is fascinated by giraffes and flamingos because giraffes according to her are “stretched horses” where as flamingos remind her of a bright pink version of a crane that used to frequent a lake next to her house.

Kafka

Let get one thing straight gay your girlfriend is a tease and loves to play harmless mind games with you from anything to receiving affection to coaxing you into making a decision. She’s not going to manipulate you ever it’s just she likes to keep you on your toes and loves the reactions you give.

Her love language is more physical touch and words of affirmation than anything else. There are countless times that you’ll be in her arms and cuddle into her as she praises you for being so good to her and for her. How you’re the best person she’s ever met and brings out the best in her. You’d get cavities from how sweet she is to you.

Kafka is someone who others can’t figure out and tries to solve her like an old riddle fabled to hold untold riches but only you hold the answer. She’s purposely tries to be standoffish to make sure others don’t harass you or think they can hurt you in any way. Especially since she has some enemies that would love to have you in their arms in order to get one over Kafka but she’ll ensure you that you’re forever safe with her. If something does happen she’s rushing you to the hospital first off to make sure you’re okay or any injuries you sustained will be taken care of and then calling up her friends and associates to take care of whoever decided to hurt her girlfriend.

You’re being taken on meaningful and charming dates that have clearly been thought through and they sometimes are as simple as a picnic or a movie night at home to having dinner at a high-class restaurant or taking you out on a night in the city and spoiling with gifts that you’ve been eyeing.

[s-4pphics]

why am i falling in love w scumbag/toxic abby…can we get more please 🤲🏾

some quick brainrot bc i miss her!!!! ily nonnie kissie😙

wc;cw: 300 or so idk, mentions of sex MDNI!!!, dubcon!!!!, just sb!abby being a trashy thot 

THE ULTIMATE GASLIGHTER!!!!! 

makes ppl she fucked think that they're the most important person in her life in that moment

tells them how much she wants them

how much she loves them

how she wants them by her side forever 

even has the decency to drive their wobbly asses home after wrecking their shit if she finds them… special

but then when she disappears and declines their calls for weeks she makes it seem like she never said the things she did!

“… but you said you loved me!”

“i didn’t mean it like that! you’re acting crazy!” 

only to call them back months later if she’s thinking ab their cunt and how hard it squirts on her dick

“i miss you so much, i’m sorry we fell out, can i come over?🥺” 

and they always let her :( poor babies

get a grip!!! she doesn’t miss u!!! she wants to stir your pussy up!!!! :(( 

LOVES A CHALLENGE!!! x3

it’s very rare that abby comes across somebody that doesn’t want her like bffr

it only happened twice and she still considers it one of the best fucks she’s ever had 

she was told no for 5 months straight by them!!! and yet still continued to find subtle ways to lure harass them into her bed 

she hated how desperate for pussy she looked whenever she saw them

but when she finally got it!!!! 

she came 6 times in her harness <3 she was drooling for that pussy 

and it was drooling for her!!!! that’s real love!!!!!

she’s a fucking panty stealer yall already know 

has a whole box of panties that she stole from unassuming virgins and milfs 

fun fact!! she hung the first milfs she ever fucked panties on her door to reminisce when she first moved into her apartment <3 such a soft gooey pussy!!!!

loves sucking out the juices when she masturbates after they leave her apartment <3 it makes her cum harder 

also has a crazy obsession with scent 

loves when ppl she wants 2 fuck smells good 

like flowers and springtime and honey 

she secretly loves missionary bc she can stick her face in their neck and inhale <3 see she kinda cute guys!!! 

HER COCK COLLECTION IS CRAZY

has all kinds of dicks in her designated drawer 

the vibrating ones!! strapless!! and her cocks are so fucking fat!!! and veiny 

obsessed with breeding like she wants to get somebody pregnant so bad 💔💔

has a size kink

loves watching her bitches struggle as she rips them open <333 it makes her go dumb 

overall she’s a hoe and she sucks!!!! but her pipe goes crazy!!!

[broadwaybalogna]

Omg guys the anti’s mentioned me!! I feel so validated

I’m gonna be a little less silly and goofy here because these are some genuine things that need to be brought to light regarding my personal stance on this

They wrote a lot about g3n0c1de and Aang and considering that I am white, I’m not gonna speak on that. That’s for the people of color who have experienced these types of things to argue over. I am, however, going to say that I don’t think Aang, Katara, Sokka etc’s trauma was all that deep in the show. Once more, they were written by white men who havn’t experienced a day of being a minority in their lives. ZK’s have a tendency to look at things for a doylist perspective rather than a watsonian perspective that this person may be confusing.

Also, the STW was never a colony. Neither were the air temples. They were never “a [tribe/temple] under the full or partial political control of another [nation], typically a distant one, and occupied by settlers from that [nation]”.

<Also have to appreciate the “some one guy called broadwaybalogna” here>

My main point here will be addressing the whole “sending people to bully others” claim, because I 100% stand by it.

Take a moment to close your eyes and image the first thing that comes to mind at this term

“Atla fandom”

If your imagination came up with something along the lines of “ship wars”, then you’ll probably understand where I’m coming from here.

Kat/ang and Zutara shippers are CONSTANTLY at each other’s throats. It’s one thing after another of constant harassment (from both sides). When I say that someone is “sending people to harass and bully” members of the ZK fandom, I mean simply that they do not care whether their post that emphasizes peoples names and blogs activates a certain sensitive group of people in this fandom to harass them.

In other words: is does not matter if you’re trying to or not, you not only included peoples blogs in your post, but reiterated who they were and why everything they said was “so wrong”. You can say what you want about being morally superior or whatever, but your actions speak louder than words (ew I sound like an elementary school teacher. The fact that I have to phrase it like one is crazy though).

“I never told anyone to bully these people”. You are so so right, you gave them the opportunity to, you quite literally led them straight to these accounts. You did nothing to ensure that “oh, maybe since this fandom is constantly trying to kill each other I should probably protect these peoples identities so they don’t get unnecessary hate.” Because it WILL happen.

And I probably wouldn’t be this bent about it if this persons ENTIRE account didn’t revolve around hating on ZK shippers.

This is my main problem with the discourse, ZK’s May hate a character or two, but KA’s hate the people.

So once again, I stand my ground.

I’ll get back to writing fanfiction and making fanart now.🫡

[just-antithings]

(TW: Rape mention) Resident Evil is a horror game that has human trafficking, implied rape, cults, kids getting hurt/killed, a baby being torn apart, 10 year old Sherry Birkin was impregnated by her father in RE2, a toxic incestuous co-dependent relationship and many more horror elements.

That part of the fandom: “oh mah gawd, if you write and read about non-con dark content, you are a gross loser and we’re gonna cyberbully you to oblivion and start harassment campaigns and make blogs dedicated to harassing a 19 year old rape victim with an eating disorder all because they wrote that nasty, nasty content about OUR Leon, we need to protect Leon our 2D husband!”

Red Dead Redemption is a game where you play as an outlaw and there is a gang in the game that kills and rapes women.

Anti with Arthur Morgan profile pic who is also in the RE and COD fandom: “If you seriously enjoy this non-con crap, you’re a rape apologist, and if you were a rape victim who writes about this, keep that crap to yourself!” Literally this was their first and only post before I blocked this person.

Not even gonna make a joke with the oversimplification of what I’ve seen, because I don’t think I even need to explain the irony of people demonizing and bullying dark content writers in the CALL OF DUTY fandom.

If it’s because they can’t separate fiction from reality, they need help. If it’s because they hate the content, they should’ve blocked and moved on. If it’s because they think that write that type of content means “condoning it” or “it will encourage someone to do it” one, then if you played Resident Evil, you’re condoning murder, corrupt governments, human trafficking, etc, so that argument doesn’t work and two, that person was already thinking of trying to do something heinous before they even read a single letter of that dark content fic.

TL:DR, Resident Evil is naturally a Dead Dove series, and there are antis that straight up bully Dead Dove writers because it’s okay when a company does it, but never okay when an individual does it. 🙄

Like I get your point, but that is not how that goes with Sherry. Sherry goes through a lot, but her dad did not rape her she got infected a different way. Incest and rape definitely happens in the RE games though RE2 the chief of police kills and rapes a character of screen and in code Veronica (side game) there is incestuous twins. So, like again, your point still stands, but Mr. birkin didn't do that.

[olderthannetfic]

To the person in the replies of the one ask saying “I’ve seen so many popular posts that say ‘op is a terf, this is just terf rhetoric’ so that proves that radfems are reaching people!” oh, how I wish I could be you. I’ve seen people claim it’s “terf rhetoric” to just say basic feminism 101 shit like “men have privilege over women.” Even when those posts explicitly mention trans women as included in the category of “women” (though as a trans person I def feel some kind of way about so many cis “allies” needing that kind of explicit acknowledgment in feminist posts!) I’ve seen people who are explicitly not any kind of terf or radfem and in fact regularly criticize them, harassed as “terfs” by people with axes to grind against them over unrelated issues, who take advantage of the fact that trans people are very cautious online and will often block suspected terfs without question. I’m very glad that you’ve been lucky not to see any of this but honestly you must be naive or new to Tumblr if you haven’t because it’s all over and has been happening for years. I’ve been told I’m transphobic myself (again, I’m trans) for not blocking a longtime mutual over a “terf” accusation — that was based on a “blocklist” made by an anti who is just calling all pro shippers in their fandom “terfs.” The existence of “terf” accusations alone does not prove those accusations are credible, it just proves that Tumblr hates TERFs (as they should) and has learned that calling someone one even without evidence is enough to ruin their good name (not so great). Anyway you’re not disproving anything the OP is saying as they acknowledged that TERFs are a problem with a lot of reach online, they were specifically referring to non-TERF radfems as being irrelevant compared to right wing Christianity.

Also if someone is claiming “this is just TERF rhetoric minus the transphobia” that’s a meaningless statement because transphobia is the main and only feature of what TERFs believe. Most TERFs aren’t radical or any kind of feminist anymore except to get people to sympathize with them, they believe things that contradict feminism and some (like Posie Parker) have explicitly said they’re “not feminists.” If someone is saying “this is TERF rhetoric minus the transphobia” that’s a great blinking red light that they’re full of shit, and it’s always been a feature of the people trying to claim that 101 feminist statements like “men are a privileged class in the same way white people or straight people are, yes not every man benefits from sexism or in the same way and men can support feminism, but as a class they benefit and are privileged over all women including trans women” is somehow “terf rhetoric.”

You’ve gotta use your critical thinking skills, read up on what radfems actually believe so you can learn how to spot and combat their rhetoric on your own. Tumblr won’t help you it will just confuse you.

--

[anti-katsuki-lounge]

I’m glad you’re back with your criticisms, I’ve always like reading them because you make extremely valid points.

I know I’m only one person, but as a BKDK shipper I’m so sorry about how we treat other people within this fandom. It’s like you can’t even have an opinion here anymore without someone knocking you down. And yes, all my BKDK thoughts are completely fanon and personal interpretations, but canon Bakugo is an asshole and it should be talked about, because the fact of the matter is that Izuku SHOULDNT forgive him and anything he’s done to him.

When it comes to shipping in the MHA community, I don’t think it’s solely a BkDk problem. The reason I rag on BkDk Stans is cause they’re the loudest and have the most influence over the fandom. The shipping wars and the harassment that comes from it is more of a problem with the MHA fandom. There’s nothing wrong with shipping something, but people have to learn when to separate fiction from reality. For example, you know that your ship isn’t canon and your thoughts are from personal interpretations and your own head-canons. In the same vein, my favorite MHA ship has not interacted a single time from what I can recall and I only ship it cause I like both the characters in it and because of my own head-canons. Liking a ship isn’t the problem as long as you can differentiate between canon and non-canon while also respecting opinions that differ from yours. The MHA fandom somehow doesn’t quite understand this. I’d say it’s cause they’re young teens, but I’ve seen grown ass adults obsess over ships as if it’s their lifelines.

To really emphasize on the unhealthiness of MHA’s shipping community, let’s pick on the two biggest groups, BkDk Stans and IzuOcha Stans, cause ultimately, the two communities are different sides of the same coins. Reminder that I’ll be talking about Stans, not fans.

BkDk Stans are, simply put, delusional. Never have I seen a group of stans insist that their non-canon ship is canon more than I have BkDk stans. They’re the champions of mental gymnastics and they’ll do everything they can to argue why BkDk is endgame. They make shit up about both characters (such as how Katsuki bullied Izuku to protect him and how Izuku deserves to be bullied) and are so wrapped up in their fantasies that they ignore canon evidence. In fact, they become outright hostile towards it and will lash out immediately if someone even mentions they don’t like the ship outside of their bubbles. It’s as if criticizing the ship is like criticizing someone’s religion. They also have huge victim complexes too. You call one out for being a dick to you and there’ll be a swarm of them harassing you instead.

If BkDk Stans are delusional, IzuOcha stans are arrogant. They know IzuOcha’s the endgame ship, and it causes them to have a superiority complex. They look down on other ships for not being canon. If you say you don’t like IzuOcha, they’ll slam you with evidence of why it’s canon. Part of their drive comes from homophobia too. MHA’s fandom has a lot of gay shippings, most of them revolving around Izuku. IzuOcha stans see this and will immediately point out that Izuku is straight as another “haha gotcha” and “this is why IzuOcha’s the best” moment. Sure, in canon you can say Izuku is straight, but why does that matter? If people wanna make him gay, trans, etc. in their own fanfics, there’s nothing wrong with that. Whereas BkDk stans are too wrapped up in their delusions, IzuOcha stans are too wrapped up with canon and won’t let people do what they want.

Ultimately, MHA has a huge problem with the culture around shipping. Something about the series makes people go bonkers when it comes to shipping in ways that exceed fandoms with similar issues such as Danganronpa and Undertale.

[persephoneed]

I’m very old and tired so I’m not going to fight or argue with anyone who disagrees but these are some of my Thoughts™️

I’m a very normal amount of obsessed with Hunter Doohan so I listened to that entire podcast episode he was on recently the one where we all lost our minds because he used the words “Wednesday,” “Tyler,” and “sexual compatibility” all in the same sentence

At one point he brought up Wenclair and he was really cute about it! He said that he found it to be the “great irony of his life” that he would play the love interest that “gets in the way of the queer ship” because he’s gay and happily married to another man irl. He even said how the Wenclair shippers are sweet to him, and he loves their enthusiasm for the show and the characters.

He also talked at length about online harassment he gets…he never mentioned any of it being stemmed from shipping wars. All of it was related to his personal life and his sexuality, which is unfortunately very reflective of the recent backlash we’ve been seeing towards the lgbt+ community.

I want more love, hype, and support for Hunter from everyone in the fandom regardless of shipping preferences or opinions of Tyler. He’s really sweet and talented, seems like a down-to-earth guy, and he just deserves it!

Does it get annoying to hear people call Tyler “boring”? Or frustrating to see people dismiss the grooming and manipulation that happened to him? Does being a Wyler stan sometimes feel like you’re on board a sinking ship? Absolutely.

But honestly the best way to be supportive of Hunter (or Tyler or Wyler) isn’t to become defensive against queer interpretations of characters. Whether Wyler remains canon or not, Hunter is not going to lose his job; the writers seem invested enough in his character to keep him in the storyline whether Wednesday is romantically involved with him, someone else, or no one at all.

On a smaller scale, the best way to support Hunter is by being supportive of those queer character interpretations; on a larger scale it’s to be a good human and be supportive of the lgbt+ community. Because that’s what actually affects him on a daily basis. Being so “anti” towards Wenclair (even if you’re in equal amounts against Wavier) isn’t helpful towards that goal. Nor does it do any favors for the actor playing one half of your OTP.

Honestly, it isn’t a betrayal to Wyler by imagining any of the characters as anything other than straight - for whatever reason that may be. Just because on the surface Wyler is a heterosexual ship doesn’t inherently mean that either or both characters have to be heterosexual, nor does it mean that any of us are forbidden from having lgbt+ headcanons.

And it especially does not mean that we tolerate homophobia or biphobia in our community.

[soranihimawari]

Good as Hell

A drabble of sorts inspired by this list:

Sunflowers by Van Gogh

SingleParent!Kita x reader

Supporting cast: Kita Hae (6years old); Miya twins

Word count: 1.7K

Rating: KSF (kita shinsuke fluff)

Warnings? Read the disclaimer below ⬇️

Disclaimer/Brief backstory:Kita’s unnamed ex has been out of the picture for about four years, abandoning the farm and leaving behind a two year old Hae on the screen porch along with papers to surrender mother/parental rights thus leaving Kita the sole guardian of his child; Miya twins agree to help their former captain out by becoming godfathers and it is also fair to imply that the rest of the notable players from Inarizaki are Hae’s precious, formed uncle squad.

It’s not everyday that the farmer’s market near the Mori-Kita farmlands would host a night market, but alas, there comes a time for firsts like this summer night. On the eve of the summer solstice, all former students of the Inarizaki sports team had been contacted especially to help one former captain put on an excellent stand for said night market. One half of the Mori-Kita farm owners, Kita Shinsuke, had an easy time setting up the night market stand after receiving a few critiques on the product being sold via his financier, Mori-kun. Regardless, the former captain enlisted the help of all his underclassmen as much as he could to have the stand market-ready by the end of July.

The prep time had been scheduled about a month before the date of the local night market, yet you happened to be off from your inner-city job in the downtown area this particular weekend. A few coworkers from the motorcycle dealership had decided to take a few days off together for team building purposes and attend the summer solstice festivities in the country-side. You had received an invitation as the newest staff member in the mechanic division, suffice to say the men and women whom you work with were using this time to not only get to you know a little better, but to also ask those personal, yet kind of awkward family questions (ex. You have a boyfriend/girlfriend? Where did you learn to ride and fix motorcycles or dirt bikes? etc.). Your calm and nonchalant demeanor caused a few rumors to spread outside of the garage. To be fair, you do your job as best as the rest of them, but when you mentioned you had lived alone for an x-amount of years, your shop buddy, Kunei-senpai, had seemed to thwart any other awkward questions. He was able to shoo away those pesky up sellers from the showfloor out of the garage when they had been very clearly harassing you for dates and the like.

Thankfully, by the end of the first two work weeks, you had been included in very many lunch breaks and even had been invited to a bar by the shop owners to gain familiarity with everyone you work with. A few nights before the night market, you receive a call from Kunei, mentioning to meet up around 6:30p.m. by the old YMCA pool center:

“Apparently, that’s where the motorcycle parking will be, see you tomorrow YLN-san!”

Flash forward after busy work week, the night of the official night market arrives. You meet up with the others at the appointed time in the parking lot where Kunei-san had mentioned. You’re walking by the official banner entrance and you all eventually branch out. You’re at the warmed yams stand when you spot a lost kid who in their heightened panic runs straight to you, panic crying no less. You pay the stand owner and you ask for a sliced version of what you ordered, attempting to soothe and calm the kid. You kneel down after paying for the second portion as you introduce yourself:

“Hello, I’m yn-san. Can you tell me your name?”

The kid sniffles and bops their head.

“I’m Hae. Kita, Hae,” they straighten up and try to formerly shake your hard.

“Say, I have some extra sliced steamed yams here, are you allergic?”

Little Hae shakes their head and you notice how fair their platinum blonde hair is along with their bronzed fox-Iike eyes. It’s like they hit the generic lottery and that kid would break a lot of hearts when they’re older. Regardless, when Hae says they aren’t allergic, you hand them the little to-go boat with a disposable fork in the steamed vegetable. You’re eating yours as you suggest that you two stick together until Hae finds their way back to their parent’s stand.

“Daddy’s got a stand here tonight,” Hae says after taking a sip of the water you provided at a soda stand.

“And how did you get lost?” You wonder.

“My goddofāzās, ´Samu & ‘Tsumu, went to help my daddy bring stuff from the truck and I saw a cat plushie I wanted, so I walked to find it,” Hae looked dejected and embarrassed when they said that.

You try not to laugh, this was serious matter after all, but you’re sure whoever Hae calls ‘daddy’ is busy scolding his friends who were left in charge of watching the kid. Honestly, on the defense of the godfathers, Hae seemed really put together for a six year old. Sure, a little shaken up, but now with a stomach filled with a vegetable snack and water, you’re sure the kid is more determined to help you help find their parent.

Along the way, a few of your coworkers saw you being friendly with little Hae. They sort of send out a text chain saying that the kid looks like the spitting image of the owner of the sponsored booth for the night market. Luckily, your phone goes off and though Hae holds your hand, you use your free hand to read and catch up with the text chain. The ambient sounds of the night market around you calms you as you observe and let Hae lead you down a row of booths they think seems familiar. You give your thanks to your coworkers as they helped narrow down the booths and probable solo guardian of your one new pint-sized friend.

Elsewhere, a set of twins are getting an earful from a worried and angry father:

“Hae’s the most precious person t’me and you both lost ‘em?!”

“We sent out the Bat-Signal to the team, kita,” one of the godfathers says.

“Don’t worry, Hae’ll come running back here in no time,” the other says.

“For both your sakes, I pray my kid comes back in one piece…” Kita grumbles a string of curses as he reluctantly goes back to his stand to man the register.

It takes another fifteen minutes for Hae to start recognizing some familiar booths and although they complain about how much their feet hurt, you notice how the kid’s feet had already outgrown the shoes…

“Say, Hae,” your voice calms down their excited heartbeat.

“Yeah?”

You step in front of Hae and ask if it’s ok with them for you to pick them up and the serendipitous moment Hae says yes, you’re literally almost tackled to the ground by two men who wear the same face—so you scream and push Hae’s head into your shoulder as you make a run for it and those two fools slam into each other chest first. Hae’s laughing the entire time and now your brain is hitting overdrive as you let the adrenaline sink into your bloodstream until you hear a deeper voice call out to Hae. Judging by how much Hae squirms in your arms, you presume this was their father’s voice you hear.

Slowing to a stop, you see the kanji in large font as the cashier jogs to meet you.

“Daddy!” Hae excitedly exclaims as their father who by the way, seems to have been original in terms of strong inherited genes. You put the kid down and you watch Hae run off to their father’s waiting arms. The two gentlemen from before come back defeated and after a few minutes of scolding alongside a heart to heart with not following strangers, you clear your throat.

“Technically not a stranger, “ you point to yourself. “New friend, right Hae-Chan?”

Hae nods much to their father’s dismay, although when he looks at you in your black jeans, smudged crimson striped shirt, dirty under the fingernails from motor oil from the latest tune-up in the shop, and sensible boots, he can’t help but soften the scowl on his face.

“Hae, promise me you’d stay with your godfathers this time, ok?” Hae’s father says he lets them go into the other men’s care.

It’s only apparent to you now that the gentlemen from earlier are not only the godfathers, but also twin siblings who can be heard making small bets with Hae when they depart the stand for a few minutes.

“So,” Hae’s father begins. He sheepishly gives you a small smile while stuffing his hands into his jeans pocket.

“Umm…YLN, YN,” you extend a hand for him to shake.

He shakes your hand while apologizing for his child’s behavior—

“It’s alright, really,” you chuckle. “I liked their company…”

“I think I might like yours too,” he says.

You blush a bit, nodding along while he sort of chortles over speaking his mind.

“Over coffee sometime?…would that be ok?”

He pulls a business card from the register: it has a star and small cornucopia of seasonal vegetables on it: KITA FARMS INC.

He takes a pen and scribbles down his phone number for you on the back and hands it to you.

“I’ll call you sometime,” you say, squinting at his precise penmanship. “Kita Shinsuke.”

His eyes are a softer bronze tone when you say his name for the first time. It’s like you’re a bit unsure for a moment before he says your name back to you and it seems delightfully whole; the confidence in both of you rise and you make a very bold choice.

“If it’s not too much to ask, mind if I buy a few of those blueberries? I muddle them with some soda water and ginger beer at home…”

Kita smiled warmly at this and you hand him some spare yen notes.

“Keep the change,” you say as the register opens. “The first round of coffee is on you. Oyasumi, Shinsuke.”

A light breeze follows you as you disappear into the night crowd, Hae and her godfathers return with some ice cream and other souvenirs, and all three of them have this smug and impish look on their face.

“Daddy, did you ask YN-san to marry you?”

Kita denies it defending that he’d only do it after you had coffee with him.

Yet, his friends, his faithful kouhai since high school, the twin godfathers of this sharply witted child, burst into laughter when Hae goes to call their father out: “Your face is all red…”

“…they had a sunflower tattoo,” Kita says this to himself proud he finally felt the universe deliver a much needed ´win’ especially since it’s been four years since the mother of Hae had wanted nothing to do with either of them.

And for the first time in the four years since he came home to an empty place and an abandoned two year old inside the screened porch during the early spring, Kita felt this calming wave of genuine goodness the second he saw you with Hae, running through to get to his stand. He sees you now, a few yards away, and you lock eyes with him as you make your purchase of a blown glass sunflower pendant. His phone vibrates in his pocket and he reads the text from you:

I’m free day after tomorrow, does coffee sound great then? —Hae’s new friend✌🏼

[ordonianhero]

Story time

Cw: mention of harassment

When I was in high school around early 2000s I joined “gay straight alliance”. During that time I studied the numbers of those apart of the lgbtq+ were discriminated against in schools when identifying as lgbtq+ and how schools felt with that. It grabbed the attention to our local news paper asking me to make a commentary piece in it. Mind you I was a junior in high school.

I wrote the piece with facts and proof how it was still on going. How schools need to change their policy on “S.H.” To included those apart of the lgbtq+ community. We brought a visual with desks that showed what daily life was like for those who are lgbtq and stories of people murdered based on their sexual and gender identity.

That summer school changed their policy, adding sexuality and identity of lgbtq+ being included based on things I said and did. In my senior year. I was saved by said policy. And here is how. I was in a class where I helped with disabled teens (since I couldn’t do p.e. For my health) there was a student who I friended and who begin reporting false reports I was making advanced on her. This was only when she found out I was a trans. Every day I was pulled out of class for false reports.

On Halloween i was nearly kicked from school till my parents slept in and explained what was going on since apparently nobody else would listen to me. I was was having panic attacks over this. Like imagine this. You’re in a class and being pulled out of it by a police officer to tell you to quit making advances on someone who you weren’t making advances towards. Yeah. That!

The school then finally recognized I was the true victim. Sadly their way of dealing with it was locking me in a class room for my safety I stead of dealing with the student making the false reports. My friends (bless them) took me side and went after the person and called them out on their behavior once they knew what happened.

The person left our school. This person used their religious belief to S.H. Me and make false reports because they thought they could get away with it. So…….

With all that going on in the Linked universe with this server. And then publicly posting (we got recites idiots) of their true behavior and such. Reminds me of this all over again. So no! I Will not let this happen again. NO WHERE IN YOUR RELIGION GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO TARGET US IN THIS FANDOM. YOUR VIEW IS FAKE NEWS! (Also don’t quote the Bible, cause Bible was written like a fanfiction by people who had no connection to god/goddesses.)

So this my personal experience on this issue. Do I hate religion. No. I think religion is good in helping people better themselves in a spiritual side. However nowhere does religion excuse the amount of judgment a person makes. God/Goddesses love you no matter who you are. If your lgbtq+ they love you. If you believe differently (region wise) they love you. Racially different, you were loved.

Along the line of schools showing porn to children, people who have been found to be false. In elementary all we learned in separate gender classes about what to expect from our body changes. Middle school to high school was about being smart and using protection and about sexual transmitted disease. Nothing bout sexuality. Which was hardly touched on. Nothing pornagraphic! Doubt they are doing that even now! Your proof and reports are in fake reports. So hi. We are calling you out because you’re the reason majority of those who identify as lgbtq+ and such are the target of misinformation and people with dangerous ideology. Ones where many may ender their life due to your comments. To lot worst. So don’t “@“ me. I won’t respond, but will expose you, so people know who not to trust.

I am here to protect my fellow people. You didn’t need to say what you said, because now we all know in a app and fandom surrounded by people of all walks of life. Who we know not to trust. Don’t want to make it politics, well fuck. That was on you when you publicly announced the server. “Don’t like pride on a political commercial” guess what. Many died to make pride to happen. That ain’t political or commercial. That was wanting equality rights. To be allowed to love who they love and not be thrown in jail over it. Gay marriage, I can’t tell you how sad it is that people are so stuck thinking gay marriage ruins those who are straight. It harms no one. You’re the one worrying how it impacts you.

Gender affirming surgery is necessary. I know each state delt with that differently and yes a small percentage detransition. However Majora is medically necessary. Many doctors refuse to do surgery on those who are of teenage, unless parental okay and a clinical counselor signs off it is needed so this person gets ontop of hormone therapy. You facts are incorrect and done by people who have been found incredible.

So go on, play like we don’t know or seen your true shit. Your facts are false. Your language is harmful and we ain’t throwing an tantrum. We are calling you out. Your views are false views based of fake documents. And if your religion truely telling you to discriminated a whole community of folks based of how they are. That ain’t a religion.

Any ways. Enjoy your life. Must be hard to spend so much you life hating people based on fake shit.

[sarasilverspring]

Redamé

Fandom: Outer Range (Amazon Prime)

Summary: A singing cowboy, the adoptive Abbott daughter, and too much damn free time after the Colter Wall concert goes south. What could go wrong?

8.0k words. Childhood friends/family enemies to lovers. Self-indulgent Billy Tillerson/poc!OFC.

Smut with feelings, breeding kink, unsexy use of a knife. Marriage epilogue. Spoilers for Seasons 1 and 2, but not in great detail.

Saw the gifs of this man in the bathtub and went feral. Good and absolute mercy.

I’m way too horny over this damn boy. I’ve been talking about this fucking fic on my main blog but I’m too cowardly to post it there. Oh well. Enjoy, folks.

Cross-posted on AO3 at terraincognita777.

TW: narrowly avoided harassment/assault.

A young woman sways at the counter, covered with sandwich materials next to the farmhouse-style sink, singing along with Juice Newton, “just call me angel of the morning, angel.”

The exterior door into the parlor shuts. The woman at the counter, making herself a sandwich, quickly turns the radio off.

“Hey there, Abby,” Royal says, taking off his jacket and hanging it on the hook row in the kitchen. The young woman turns around.

“Hey yourself, Dad,” she said, walking to him and embracing him. She bends her wrists to make sure she doesn’t get mayonnaise on his shirt. “How was the game?”

“Oh, good. Amy scored a couple of goals on the other team. I’d reckon she outplayed all the other girls on that field.”

“That’s amazing. Wish I could have seen it. Where’s she now?”

“Gone for a hike. She’ll be back for supper.”

“Okay. You can have her sandwich, then.” She stacks three turkey sandwiches onto a plate, setting it at Royal’s place at the table. He sits.

“Thank you, sweetheart.”

“You’re welcome, Dad.” She presses a kiss to his temple.

They are silent as Abby works to clean up the lunch mess. She climbs the stairs, changing from her tee shirt and girlfriend jeans into bootcuts, a black tee, and a maroon flannel, pulling on her nicer pair of boots and heading down the steps, going back into the dining room to speak to Royal.

“Oh, I forgot to mention. I’m headed into town, needta pick up some stuff at the general store and then Colter Wall’s playing at the arena. I’ll be back around nine or so. Don’t wait up for me, I already told Mom I wouldn’t be home till later.”

“Okay, then.”

“I’ll see you tonight before you go to bed.” Abby smiles at him, pulling her jacket and hat off the hook and heading for the front.

She puts on her hat as she shuts the door behind her and struts to the square-bodied old Ford.

The radio blares as she turns over the ignition. “…highs in the low 60s and lows in the low 20s today, folks, with a cold front coming in overnight to drop the next few days’ temps to the high 30s during the daytime—“

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Abby says, queueing up her driving music on her phone as she turns the radio off. The engine sputters and hums, idling the truck under her.

The opening strains of Fleetwood Mac’s “Rhiannon” begin, and she shifts the gear into drive, peeling out down the long, long driveway and speeding toward town, singing of supernatural women, believing herself to be a Rhiannon all her own.

“All your life you’ve never seen woman, taken by the wind, would you stay if she promised to you heaven,

Will you ever win?

Will you ever win?”

—

She’s pulled into her usual parking spot in front of the store when she feels something distinctly off in the air. It’s a normal afternoon, and everyone is running their various errands. Abby’s hackles are raised more when she steps out of the truck, shutting the door behind her.

She walks into the store, greeting the clerk with a “Hey, Mae, how’s your mom and ‘em?” and heading straight for the personal wellness aisle. Abby picks a few boxes of light cotton pads off the shelf, and two bars of chocolate in the candy aisle.

“$11.11,” Mae says when Abby’s at the counter. Thank God she's a woman, she thinks absently.

“Cash or card?”

“Uh, card.” She hands her First National Bank of Wyoming card over, and is returned it quickly. The older woman bags the items. “Thank you very much, ma’am, have a good day,” Abby says with a wide smile. Mae returns the farewell, and as Abby leaves the store, she still can’t shake that oddly sinking feeling.

There’s a red Ford behind her sky-blue one. She tilts her head and peers at it. Also square-body, also old, longer bed, single cab. That damn Tillerson boy.

Billy Tillerson has just left Wabang Drug, and is crossing the street to his truck, when he sees a young and heavily muscled brown woman, not Indian or Mexican, just brown, grocery bag in hand, staring at his Ford.

Their eyes meet. Hers widen. Seeing a Tillerson outside their territories of the family ranch, the bank, and the town bars is almost a sin.

Billy tilts his head down at her once he’s at the drivers side door. This isn’t the first time she’s locked eyes with him since they were about eighteen, and if he has any say in the matter, it won’t be his last, especially tonight at the Colter Wall show.

Her brown eyes are white and wide as saucers and she’s rooted to the spot. Move, goddammit, she’s chanting to herself. Stop looking at the boy and move. Who cares if you were friends back when.

“Hi, Billy,” she manages, twitching her fingers in a little wave. Her coiled dark brown hair shakes with the motion of her arms.

“Hey yourself, Abby,” Billy says. “Ma’am,” and he touches his hat, getting into his truck.

He’s chugging off down the street when Abby comes to again, shaking her head and hauling herself into her own truck.

She pulls out of the parking space and heads to the library, where she devours a sci-fi novel in just over five hours curled up on the floor in a nice back corner, away from where the majority of patrons tend to congregate or browse the shelves.

She checks her watch at last, the silence having grown to a fever pitch. It’s nearly sunset, from the dust motes swirling by the windows in golden light. Abby rises from the floor, dusting her jeans off and reshelving the book.

—

The opening act is already going strong by the time that she arrives at the arena, tires on the truck kicking up dust, but Abby’s only come to see the main event.

Which she does, alone, swaying in the crowd of people and stamping her feet. Alone like Royal and Cecilia would probably narrow their eyes a bit at because she’s been in their lives long enough to be their daughter, essentially. the gray soil fills her nose as Colter declares the last song of the set; the opening notes of her personal favorite, “The Devil Wears a Suit and Tie” play out.

A couple of yards behind her, Billy Tillerson is watching her coily hair move with her, slowly, simply, as if to tease him. He’s mouthing the lyrics to the song and sipping off of a beer when he remembers it’s there.

His peaceful night’s watch of Abigail “Adoptee” Abbott, family enemy and forbidden interest since childhood, is interrupted when she’s pulled out of her spot by a bullrider he’s seen around town, mostly at The Handsome Gambler during the day and The Pit at night, when he’s deigned to go to either or dragged out by Luke or Trevor.

Where did they go? he asks himself, and sets out to hunt her down. He’s a tracker, and while he can’t identify her like a bear, he knows how to find whatever animal he’s after - including the one that took Abby.

—

Fifteen goddamned years of martial arts training, I can wrassle wolves, and I can’t get rid of this weirdo? Abby thinks as she’s yanked off toward the parking lot. Second location is the only phrase running through her head.

She’s practically short circuiting, but she catches just a hint of his cologne on the wind. Brian Riggins, one of Rhett’s friends, bullfighter. I can’t shake him easily, the music is loud, but maybe it’s still early enough to where someone’s out.

“HEY!” she shouts. “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, BRIAN?!”

She can’t figure out in the darkness where exactly in the parking lot they are, but the arm she’s being yanked by is used to swing the rest of her body around, pinning her back against a truck.

So it’s definitely a power display and he doesn’t give a shit I know who he is, great. Which means he’s probably at a higher risk of killing me. Even better.

“Hey, Abigail,” Brian mutters, “I know you’re pretty damn smart, so I don’t know how you ain’t gotten this through your thick little skull yet, but there ain’t no one out right now, and that concert’s too big a noise for anyone to hear the two of us. Which means, sweet thing, you’re all mine and I don’t have to worry about getting interrupted.”

Abby can see the light glaring off his eyes as tiny pinpricks bounce off of them in the night. Bastard.

Her yanks are proving ineffectual, and no number of obscenities or amount of spittle she can fling at him is working to keep his filthy lips off her neck, when her savior comes around in the form of a man in all black from head to toe.

Abby is frozen in fright. Still stock straight against the truck and still clothed, she can only listen in horror to the sickening crunch of bone and subdued groans of pain as blow after blow lands.

The man straightens from the ground at long last. “Hey, Abby. You alright, there?” He says, gently, so gently.

“Yeah, I’m fine, I think,” she stutters, voice evening eventually.

“Are you wanting to go back to the concert or would you like me to drive you home?”

Abby can tell by the soft edges of his voice it’s that neighbor boy Billy Tillerson, but damn if he didn’t come in just in time.

She needs the softness.

She welcomes the pad of Billy’s thumb against her cheek, wiping away a stray tear and bringing it to his mouth. “You’re too pretty to cry, Abby Abbott.”

The young woman snuffles, wiping at her nose with the cuff of her flannel. “Thanks, Billy. I don’t really agree, but thanks.”

He smiles at her without teeth in the night. “You’re welcome. Concert or home?”

“Uh, home, please.”

“Okay. That sounds good. Let’s get you home,” Billy says, offering his arm to Abby. She wraps one hand around it, and then the other.

The stars are bright, and forgiving in their light, and she is happy, oddly, in the warm and lax half-embrace of this protector.

It’s only a couple of minutes, she reckons, for them to reach the truck, a fine layer of dust coating the red paint, dull in the darkness. Billy opens the passenger door for her, offering her a hand up.

“Really getting the princess treatment tonight, huh?” she asks.

“You deserve it.”

He shuts the door, walking around to the driver’s side and getting in. “Do you want to play any music? I usually don’t, but if you want to, you’re more than welcome.”

“No, I’m good. Thanks.” There’s a hint of a smile in her voice, Billy notices.

“Okay, suit yourself. Let me know if that changes.”

They’re silent for a long time, and Abby’s lost in a thought from earlier that day when she begins to absently, quietly, sing “Rhiannon” to herself. She’s about halfway through the second verse before Billy picks it up, just as delicately. His voice echoes a millisecond after hers like a feather-light touch.

They finish the song and are silent for a couple of minutes more, until Billy begins to hum the beginning of “Dreams”.

“Big Fleetwood Mac fan, are you?” Abby asks.

Billy laughs. “You could say that, I guess. I just love Stevie’s voice.”

Abby lets him sing the rest of “Dreams” alone, and just as he’s finishing, she notes the big Y-split driveway for their respective homes coming up.

She feels terribly nauseous in a half-second; that gut instinct everyone tells you about, forces words up into her throat: “Take me back home with you. Please. I have a bad feeling.”

Billy nods silently. “You got it.”

Abby takes her phone out of her back pocket, tapping at the screen. She curses at it when it fails to illuminate. “You kidding me?” She sighs.

“What’s up?”

“My phone’s dead. Not the end of the world. I was just thinking about calling my parents and letting them know I’m not going to be home tonight.”

“We can charge it once we get up to the house.”

“Awesome. Thanks.”

They roll up the gravel and park in front of “the house”, which by Abbott standards could only be called a mansion.

“Yay,” Abby says weakly, opening her door.

“Need any help getting out?” Billy asks.

“No, thank you.”

Billy waits outside the truck for Abby to get out, and once she does, her heavy breathing is quickly evident to him. In the front floodlights of the house, he can see her breath creating mist in the air.

“Hey, you okay?” Billy asks.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Let’s just get in the house, I’m really cold,” she laughs, shaking more than before.

Once they’re inside, Billy takes Abby’s jacket from her. “Dad? Luke?” he calls out.

“In here,” Abby hears Wayne Tillerson’s voice from the study.

“Your dad’s here?” Abby hisses. “Jesus, I can’t be here. He’s gonna flip out.” She throws up her hands in frustration, but Billy can sense her panic.

“He won’t. You’ll be fine.” He smiles at her, pure and genuine.

And then he offers her his hand.

She feels that nauseous sensation roiling in her stomach again. Her underarms prickle with nervousness. She takes his offered hand, and Billy leads her to Wayne Tillerson, the one wolf her father told her never to wrassle with.

Wayne Tillerson, ranch hand and owner, has no tolerance for bullshit, and certainly not in his own house, so when he sees his darling, blessed youngest son, a fully-grown man but famously devoid of genuine women, waltz into his bedroom hand-in-hand with the only Abbott daughter, all he can say is an impeccably accented “Well, shit.”

Both Billy and Abigail are praying that Mr. Tillerson is in a good mood. It seems like it’ll be the difference between her life and death.

Abigail’s eyes widen, and she bows a little. “Hello there, Mr. Tillerson, sir,” she says with hopefully unevident fear and trembling.

“Boy, what are you doing bringing the damn Abbott girl home?” Wayne growls.

“I—” Billy starts.

“And you better explain real good real quickly. You got about fifteen seconds left of me toleratin’ this.”

At that deadline, Abby steps forward, head low, and when Billy tries to pull her back, she snatches her arm out of his grasp.

“Sir, your son Billy here was gracious enough to lay into Brian Riggins. He was trying to run off with me and wasn’t having my trying to put up a fight against him. Billy offered to drive me home after he put the son of a bitch down and I got a real bad feelin’ when we were about to split off for my parents’ and so I asked if I could stay with him tonight and he is very kind to let me sleep here overnight. I know you and my daddy don’t get along well, sir, but—”

Wayne nods. “Well, alright then.” Billy’s almost startled at the benevolence in his father’s voice.

“Sir, you don’t—” Abigail begins. Wayne holds up a hand.

“I understand, Miss Abbott. I’m proud of my boy. And who knows, maybe you’ll like it here so much your daddy’ll be willin’ to trade you for that strip of land off the west pasture.”

Abigail is rather shocked, but then, this is Wayne Tillerson, who bore a dynasty out of fire, blood, and toil. She wouldn’t put it past him to keep her there, for as long as any of the Tillerson men wanted. Alarm bells rung faintly in the back of her mind–but then again, they nearly always did.

“Only if I’m worth that much, sir,” Abby laughs with little mirth. “Only if I’m worth that much.”

Wayne leans back in his chair, recrossing his evening robe over him. Then at the sight of Abby still with her head bowed before him, his face breaks into a smile– closer to a smirk, but close enough to a smile.

“Well, then, I don’t suppose I have any more questions for you. Y’all go on.” He pauses a second. “Darlin’, I hate to ask you to leave without your host, but I’d like to speak to my boy just a minute in private.”

“Yes, sir,” Abby says. Billy opens the door of the room, and Abby murmurs her thanks as she leaves. The click shut echoes through the gargantuan house, thankfully still lit by chandeliers and recessed lighting. All she can hear is one baritone and one tenor voice, both very low and calm.

After minutes, likely, the door opens again. Billy exits, shutting it behind him.

“Should I ask what that was about?”

“Hm, probably not.” He half-smiles.

“I won’t, then.”

“Better for your health anyways.”

She follows Billy down the hallways back into the main room, and down another hallway.

Billy opens the door on the right, and the scent of cedar already prevalent in the house is supplemented with pine and mixed with incense as she steps into the room.

“How about that phone charger? I’d text my dad soon.”

“Yeah, I would, too.” He unplugs a charger from his bedside. ”Here. Plug it in wherever you’d like,” he says, handing it to her.

“Thanks.” She crosses to the wall with windows, plugging the phone in and setting it on the will. Billy drapes her jacket over the footboard of his bed. “So. Um. Where do you think I can sleep? I’m not expecting to take a guest room, or. Yeah. I don’t know. I think I’d rather stick around you, honestly.”

“You can take my bed,” Billy says nonchalantly. “I can go sleep out on the couch.”

Something in this strikes her as still wrong, as being separated from him even in sleep as wrong. She can’t stand it.

“I’d actually prefer for us to sleep in the same room. If that’s okay with you, of course,” she adds quickly, nervously fiddling with her fingers.

Billy nods then, like his father. “I can do that.” He takes a seat on his bed, one leg up to turn his body toward her.

The silence hangs uncomfortably between them.

“You know—”

“You’re really—”

Billy and Abby laugh at the same time.

“You go first,” Billy says, waving a hand at her. She leans against the wall, crossing her arms.

Abby chuckles. “You’re really not how I expected you to be. I thought you’d be more of a womanizer like Luke. Seems like he goes around dippin’ his wick in anything that moves.”

Billy laughs with his stomach. “He sure as hell does, doesn’t he!” This is the first time this city-looking boy has sounded country, and it suits him better, Abby thinks.

Abby suddenly pictures Luke as an anthropomorphized candle dipping its wick in other candles.

She begins to laugh too, doubling over. “Oh, Jesus,” she says between fits of hooting. “Oh, mercy, this is too bad. Oh, that’s just too bad.”

She comes to, through her laughter, heat growing in her stomach and blooming up to her face as an idea rotten as an onion takes root in her mind.

“What’s too bad?” Billy asks, leveling his gaze at her.

She looks like a moonflower to him, or the moon itself, by the window, palatial, regal, and delicate, and he can taste the iron in his mouth as he bites back desire in his tongue.

He can practically feel blood draining out of his head, out of his legs and fingertips. Could he smell her from here? How could he catch her perfume on the wind of the ceiling fan?

He’s being consumed, he imagines, by fire, just as she is. The only way that she can rationalize her own reaction is that her brain is trying to overlay the near-assault with something good, something positive and beautiful, but why does she want it with her family enemy?

“Abigail.” Billy says. Shit.

“Hm?”

“You didn’t answer my question.” His blue eyes are dark across the room as his body is backlit by the bedside lamp, but she knows he watches her like a hawk.

“What were you asking?” Abby’s fidgeting again.

Billy rises from his spot on the bed, ambling towards her in that not-quite-city, not-quite-country cowboy manner he’s so fond of.

“What’s too bad?” he nearly whispers, coming to a stop about half a yard from her, and she has to look up just a tad– but before she can, he is lifting her chin with a pointer finger.

“I know that we just got into it with Brian, but is this alright with you?” he asks gently. She is hallucinating the moon in his eyes.

She nods, blinking her eyes to their closure and swallowing confused phlegm out of her throat.

“Yes.”

It takes so much of her self-control not to keen, and she’s already swaying toward him as if they’re magnetized.

His hand inches up to her cheek, and he steps in until he’s fully in her space. They are sharing breaths, warm and heavy near the exterior wall, near the autumnal night.

“What’s. Too. Bad.” He says, making sure to enunciate fully and punctuating the words with miniscule kisses to her cheeks and nose. Abby’s body shakes, so close to him. “Hm?” he murmurs.

Abby only stutters.

“Don’t make me have to get it out of you, sweet thing.”

A half-cried moan is out of her mouth before any intelligible thoughts, and his cologne is in her nose, his thumbs pressing against the pillowy flesh of her full mouth, and his other hand trailing down her side, crossing her hip to the dip of her jeans, where his middle and ring fingers press gently, but insistently.

Abigail bucks against his initial light touch, and she grins, opening her mouth to sigh happily.

“If I get really quiet, keep going until I make noise, okay? I’ll say red if I want you to stop.”

Billy bends over her, cages her smaller body against the wall. “I’ll keep that in mind, little girl.” He presses into her again.

An instantaneous “oh, fuck” escapes her mouth. “I’ll tell you. Fine.”

His hand lessens its pressure.

“Billy, I’ve been meaning to say it’s just too bad that I want you like I do. I mean, Christ, our parents hate each other and your dad’s trying to take my dad’s land and we really only met alone for the first time this afternoon, but that damn hole take me if I don’t want you right now.”

Billy wraps his arms around her, hands rubbing her back gently.

“Yeah, Abby. I don’t know if I could really call it love, but I want you too, and I don’t just mean it in a physical way.”

“I think I get what you mean.”

“Would you let me love you, Abigail Abbott?”

“Can I call you William?” she says, smiling up at him.

“It makes me feel a little old, but you sure can.”

“Then yes, William Tillerson, I’d let you love me tonight and or as many nights as you’ll let me love you back.”

“All I needed,” Billy murmurs, and he lifts her by the backs of her thighs. Instinctively, Abby wraps her arms around his neck and locks her ankles behind him, just at his upper thigh.

“I can’t tell you how long I’ve wanted to treat you like I saw you, like the Abbott princess you were instead of the Abbott trash my family kept preaching about.”

“Likewise,” Abigail utters. “And I’m not expecting you to be rough, but if you want to, go ahead. I can stand to be tossed around a little.”

He takes that in stride and upends her onto his bed, so she’s on her back, at his mercy.

“You’re telling me Little Miss Abigail Angel likes to be a dirty girl?” He bares his teeth at her, laughing darkly. “Honestly? It doesn’t really surprise me.”

He takes off his jeans, unbuttons his shirt, climbs onto the bed.

Abby takes her flannel and undershirt off, leaving her bra on.

“Oh, it doesn’t, huh? Well, I’ll tell you, I sure as hell didn’t expect the baby Tillerson boy to grow teeth.”

They’re face to face, Abigail under William, and he rakes his hand over her hair.

“Did you, now,” he murmurs low, words ghosting past her ear.

Voice heavy with lust, his tenor has sunk to a baritone, still sweet but ready and dangerous, like a pointed candy cane.

“Did you expect to be in bed with the boy you snuck off with to play in trees out near the rez?”

She laughs at the memory. “You got me; I sure as hell didn’t.”

“I know I wanted you, though. I always thought about singing to you. Singing for you.”

“Me too, actually. Together.”

Billy laughs. “Not to sound corny, but,” he says, taking her jeans off, “I’d love to make you sing for me, tonight.”

“I’m— I’m not on the pill. Or anything. Just so you know,” Abby blurts out.

“Who says we need to have sex for me to make you sing, sweetheart?”

“But I have–hair.” She whispers the last word like it’s a sin.

“We all have hair. I have hair,” Billy says, with the same intonation. “It’s fine, darlin’, don’t worry about it.”

His hands trail up Abby’s muscular legs to her underwear. He places kisses onto the soft skin there, working his way up from her knees to the heat between her thighs.

He was dragging the breath out of her with every press of his lips, and he knew it.

“Billy, we– we shouldn’t be doing this. Jesus fuck,” she says, curling her fingers into his hair.

He feels the scratch of her fingernails against his scalp, pulling at the soft waves there, insisting that he move higher, and he does, mouthing against the bone through the cotton of her underwear.

“Still think we shouldn’t be doing this?” he asks. “We can stop whenever you want.” A string of saliva runs from his mouth to her clothing, she sees when she props herself up on her elbows.

“Billy, all due respect, I don’t think I could ask you to stop at this point, motherfucker.”

“Can I take these off, then?”

She drops back, slackly, onto the bed. “Yes. God, yes,” she breathes on the exhale of a heavy sigh.

She didn’t think the fleshiness of his torso gave way to any strength whatsoever, but that faulty assumption is alleviated when he picks her up by the hips with one arm, using the other hand to pull her underwear down her long legs and toss them away, and between the two of them maneuvers her up until her head can be cradled by the bevy of pillows on his bed.

Jesus Christ. Her stomach flips.

His mouth moves back to the juncture of her thighs to kiss there, gently.

“Please don’t try to eat me out, okay,” Abby asks.

“Okay. Certainly ain’t a requirement,” he says, and begins to lick a delicate stripe up her body, to her chest. Chills run through and over her bare arms, and she twitches under him.

Billy hovers over her chest, looking directly into her eyes. He is peering into her with those baby blues, reaching around her to unclasp her bra.

He’s flipped the noise switch in her, she thinks. He’s blown her corruption wide open and left her wanton.

Abby mewls under him as he latches onto one breast, nipping lightly at her areola as his tongue runs over it. He uses his hands to greedily grasp and knead what flesh his mouth doesn’t cover.

She wraps her legs around him, forcing him down to her chest by digging her heels into his lower back. His cock, still covered, is so close to her body that all he wants to do is ram up into her, dry-humping her unclothed sex.

But he wants to be a good boy for her, and so he behaves himself and moves to her other nipple when she makes an animal, guttural noise in her throat and tugs his head there, steering him like a horse.

“Thank you,” Billy groans, between the wet, sucking noises of his mouth on her. At the title, desire that’s almost painful emerges in her upper abdomen, just under her sternum.

“You’re such a good boy, Billy,” she growls. “Rich fucking Tillerson boy worshipping a filthy fucking Abbott. You belong like this, pleasing this worthless fucking gardener.”

He whines, and Abby feels the bed and his body move, as he begins to fuck the mattress, desperate for relief. She thumps a foot against his back, pulling him up by the hair to make eye contact. His mouth is covered in his spit as he gapes at her.

“Did I tell you you could do that? Don’t do it again,” Abby bites out sternly.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says. “Sorry.”

There’s some sadness, some genuine pain back in that sweet voice he used, to the point that she smiles at him a little sadly. “It’s okay, baby. I’m sorry for hitting you in the back.” She strokes through his hair with her fingers, deftly.

Billy nods, smiling innocently before he begins to kiss her across where her bra’s underwire sat against her ribs and made deep red marks. He looks up at her with adoration in his gaze after each one. She can feel how much he loves her. She hopes he knows how much she returns the sentiment.

“You’re being so good right now,” she says lovingly, until he bites her nipple, and her back arches, forcing her stomach into his chest. “Fuck, Billy!” she grunts.

“Did that feel good?”

“Yes, do it again, please, mercy,” she begs. He bites the other one, this time, and she cries out a moan, holding his hair tighter in her hands. He slips a hand off her chest and down to her pubic bone, where he pauses, she exhales, and he begins to rub firm circles against her clit.

She tosses her head against the pillow, overwhelmed by the dual sensation. “Fuck, stop,” she pants.

He does.

“Nonono,” she rushes out, “stop means keep going, please keep going,”

He resumes his double work, moving up from her chest to her mouth, and their lips are on each others’. It’s a messy kiss, sloppy and more open-mouthed co-breathing than anything, but they would call it a kiss, recounting it to their siblings.

She takes her hands out of his hair, bringing one to his back, trailing the other down his chest, dragging it down with her nails, and he hisses lightly, laughing after she does.

She brushes his cock through his underwear, and he jolts, highly sensitive to the one touch.

“Oh, we need to get you harder than this if you’re going to fuck me.”

He nods, swallowing.

“Words, William,” she says lowly.

“M- yes, ma’am,” he says off of the back of a moan, the start to a string of half-muttered curses when he begins to jerk him off through his briefs.

“I love you, William,” she says moments later, when her hips are rocking against his hand on their own, and he’s forgotten to stop kissing her.

“I love you too, Abigail,” he breathes. “So much, pretty Abby, so much.”

She can feel her stomach bunching and unbunching like a spring that needs a windup, and when it tightens this final time, her knees snap together, locking Billy’s hand in place as she comes, annoying her when her walls clench with nothing to resist against.

Her body undulates with her breathing, and their body heat feels holy to her as it mingles. His hand is still working between her thighs, stimulating her through her orgasm.

She’s only breathing now, her body still working. She can feel how puffy her pussy lips are when he pulls his fingers away, finally freed from the iron-vise grip of her inner thighs.

“Sorry I didn’t make you come, Billy,” Abby says mournfully, running a finger along the outline of his cock.

“It’s okay. I’d much rather it be inside you anyways,” he says, looking down at her with what’s left of his delicateness he can muster.

She shudders out an exhale. “Do you mean that?”

He kisses along her neck, biting at her collarbone. “Mm, yes. S’what my daddy told me to do, was breed you full of Tillersons.”

“Oh, you’re gonna give me your babies, now, is that what we’re doing?” she breathed.

“I fully intend on doing that, yes ma’am.”

She slides her fingers underneath the waistband of his boxer briefs, tugging downward. “Just doing what your daddy tells you to, hm?” Abby can see the beginning of light brown curls under his hipline. “Is that all who you listen to? Just your daddy, your daddy, your daddy,” she says mockingly.

Billy’s brows furrow. “What? No.”

“Just big bad Wayne Tillerson, huh? That’s who controls you, that’s who owns you.” The curls are there, certainly, soft like Billy is.

His face drops into neutrality, almost innocent, but there is a hard edge, flinty in his eyes, Abby notices. “You’re treading on some dangerous ground, Abbott.”

“Oh, so I’m Abbott now, daughter of the enemy,” she nearly cackles. “Would you look at that.” Her wicked hands have pulled his briefs down just at the top of where his cock begins, and while he wants nothing more than for her to touch him, she’s also being a real brat.

Billy slaps her hands away from his torso. “Cut it out, little girl.”

She pouts. “Why should I? I’m just trying to help you out.” She moves back to his underwear, restarting her attempt to debrief him, literally.

This time, he grabs her wrists, leaning over her just slightly to pin them above her head with such force she laughs breathlessly. “You’re not. Fucking. Helping. You’re just trying to piss me off.” There’s no joking in his voice.

She smirks. “Well, obviously it’s working, then.”

“A little too well, yeah,” Billy says, with a smile more wolfish than strictly characteristic of him.

Abby is scared now, of what he could do to her. This is not the boy she knew. This is a man, who wants to take her as his rightful property.

She does not mind the prospect of belonging to him entirely. This betrayal of her family kills her, a little, inside.

“It’s working well enough that I just want to fuck you into this bed,” he says, biting at her lower lip, “until you scream my name,” he leans over her to his nightstand, pulling out a knife – Abby watches the motion out of the corner of her eye and they go wide – “so loud that my father hears. Maybe even your father,” he says, making no eye contact with her, as if it’s just another Thursday night for him. “Maybe even your whole family. But I’ll make goddamned sure everyone knows,” he runs the blade along the outsides of his underwear, “who you belong to.” He tears the underwear away and tosses them over the bed and the knife onto the nightstand. She is frozen between fear and arousal, her breath catching in her throat.

He takes his cock in one hand and moves the other hand that was for her restraint to her ankles, placing each one of her legs over his shoulders. “William.”

“Gage.” She can feel the tip of him rubbing against her pussy, still a bit overstimulated, but slick nonetheless. He brushes her clit accidentally, and her pelvis jerks.

“Tillerson.” He pushes into her, fully and deeply, letting himself get lost in the feeling of being inside her, at long last.

She is warm. She feels like home to him, more so than Luke or his mother or Trevor, and maybe even more so than his father. She’s warm like sunlight, like the fire they built in her parents’ north pasture the winter when they got frostbite and couldn’t tell anyone. She returns emotion to the marrow of his bones when he feels the velvet of her walls around him.

Abby feels at home with him inside her, finally, filling her in the ways she only daydreamed about, in the last days of the summer before they turned fifteen, hanging from the pine trees just onto the Shoshone reservation. She feels normal. Even. The chaotic sea within her is not simply flat, the sun is shimmering across it, and it is a clarion Caribbean blue, she’s seeing for the first time. She’s full of his wide cock, not long but girthy, and the stretch borders on unpleasant.

“I wonder if I can make you a Tillerson tonight,” he says, making shallow movements into and out of her. “Would you like that? To become one of us?”

Her breathing is dysfunctional. She only nods.

“Baby, I can’t move until I get an answer out of you,” he says, pushing her to verbalize what she needs. He halts his motion but doesn’t withdraw, waiting for her.

Abby only makes a minor quivering noise, shaking, scrabbling her hands at the surface of the quilts covering his bed, needing him, needing that which Billy wants to corrupt her with.

Her teeth show, and she grits them together at him. “Please,” he makes out of the tortured hiss she emits.

“Please what?” he says, tilting his head to the side.

“Please make me yours.”

“Oh, not just mine, baby — my family’s. A Tillerson through and through, once I’m finished with you.”

“No. No, please. Don’t do that to me,” she says, and she knows it isn’t genuine. She knows how dead that ranch is, save the hole in the west pasture. She knows she’s too old to still be living in the same place, same as Rhett. Someone’s gotta leave Royal and Cecilia sometime.

But her? To the Tillersons?

“Darlin’, it’s too late for that. I’m gonna breed your cunt full of my come, gonna make everyone else sees you’ve got my child in you.” He begins to thrust into her, slowly and shallowly. “Now I’m gonna need you to make a lot more noise, here, so my daddy knows how good a girl his daughter-in-law is, okay?”

She nods vigorously. “Please just fuck me,” she pants.

“Oh, baby, do you really mean that?” he says in a mockingly saccharine tone. He touches her chin chillingly and brushes a stray lock of curly hair from her face. The kindness of the gesture isn’t lost on her.

“Mm, Billy, I do.” Her tone’s become a whine, the country accent slipping back into her voice unconsciously.

“You gonna make me happy and scream nice and loud for me?”

She chants “yes”, eyes shut. He leans over her, pressing her knees towards her chest, grabbing her face and squishing her cheeks. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, missy. Keep those pretty eyes open.”

“Okay,” she says. He pats her cheek. “Good girl. Good girl,” he says, lifting his hips and driving them down into hers. She wraps her arms around him, curling her fingernails into the tender flesh of his back, dragging in long trails to leave welts.

“I can’t- I’m sorry—“ she interrupts her sentence with a high wail.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. Don’t worry about the words now, sweet thing.”

She’s lost inside her mind, out on a different plane of her existence. She is twisting, dancing with him and dancing with time. Vaguely, out in this space, she is aware of Billy fucking her. She wants to be alive to him, for this.

He hits her cervix; he’s not long, but he thrusts deep, especially with her legs over his shoulders. He does mean to breed her, no doubt of it.

The noises that come from her throat over and over again, short choking punched moans, don’t sound real. But this is her, this is her reality. Her childhood friend is inside her. He wants to marry her.

“Billy,” she says, her tongue wading through her confused mouth like it is full of peanut butter. “Billy, I love you.” Her nails simply dig into his vertebrae now, no movement save from that through her body as he fucks her pussy, rhythmically shaking the bed. They are together upon the sea, full of endless motion, creating the waves in it. He creates the wave, generates the heat, driving her to completion with one hand between their conjoined sexes and one hand cradling her head at the base of her skull. In the violence of his thrusting, he treasures me, Abby thinks, brokenly. She thinks fragments of words, woven into the tapestry of their conjugation.

“I love you too, Abby. I do treasure you,” he says heavily. “Wanna treasure you for the rest of my life, baby. Wanna give you my children.”

She chokes on a word and a breath at first. “I’m— I’m gonna—“

“Me too, baby. Me too, you gonna come?”

“Down from five?” she asks.

“Yeah, yeah. Five.”

“Mhm, five.”

“Four.”

“Fuck me, I want your come inside me,” she whispers.

“Three.” They lock eyes, now.

“T-two,” Billy says, and cries a stuttered “fuck” through his bottom lip.

“One—“

His hips falter against Abby, her legs shaking, and they cry as one a wordless word against each other in a singular orgasm, breaking the Wyoming night apart.

“I—” Billy starts, then sighs with relief, rolling away from her before he collapses onto the bed. His bones ache with his love for this woman, with all he’s given up to her in sweat and blood. He is entranced by Abigail, chest heaving mightility as she stares at the ceiling, breathing with her mouth open.

“Thank you.”

Billy props himself up on his side. There is a thin sheen on her high cheekbone that he brushes with his thumb. “Thank you.” He presses the finger to his lips. “You’re more beautiful than a full moon, you know that?”

Abby shakes her head. “No. Not really. I don’t agree with you.” She huffs a chuckle.

He crawls over top of her. “Don’t say that, Abigail. Promise me you won’t again.”

“I can’t and I won’t.”

Billy’s fingers run down her sides to her waist. “Oh, really, now?”

Her knees draw in first. “Don’t… don’t tickle me,” she laughs.

His fingers move over her, brushing the skin delicately. “Not my fault you’re ticklish!”

She pulls his hand away, bringing it up to her face. “No, it ain’t. But it’s your fault I like you so damn much.”

“Your fault making me likewise, Abby.”

She is all smiles at him. “Let me up,” she says, beginning to lift herself off the bed. “Gotta pee.”

“Me too.”

“Could I possibly have some water?”

“Got some snacks, too, if you want ‘em.”

Abby slides off the mattress, walks to the bathroom. “Yes please, and thank you much.”

“You got it.”

She holds her head in her hands, sitting on the toilet. “This does not feel real.” Did we really just have sex?

Shit. Apparently so.

There’s a knock on the door. “I got water for you,” Billy says softly through the heavy oak.

“Thanks.” Abby groans, sighs.

“You okay?” It comes out as more of a mumble.

“Huh?”

“Are you okay?”

“Dude, just come in at this point. It’s not like it’s anything you haven’t seen yet.”

He opens the door, handing the water to her. “How are you doing? You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m amazing, just trying to pee.” She drains the glass quickly. “Thanks. I needed that.”

He smiles at her, taking the glass back. “Head hurt at all? You looked like it.”

She shakes her head. “Nope. Thank goodness.” She tilts her head at him. “You really are cute as hell, you know that?”

He looks down shyly. “You don’t have to say that,” he says, scuffing his foot on the tiled floor.

A moment.

“What about you? How’s your back? I feel like I scratched you pretty bad.”

“Feels okay.” He leans against the door. “Obviously not too badly.”

“Can I clean your wounds? Just in case.”

“More than welcome to.”

“‘Kay.” She flushes, washing her hands.

They are sitting on his bed upon two new comforters (at Billy’s plea – “I’ve never had to share a bed with someone before, and I move a lot”), Abby treating the shallow pink scratches on the pale skin of his back, when she finds herself speaking.

“Did you mean it?”

“Mean what?”

“When you said you loved me?”

“Well, I’ll remind you that you said it first. But yes, I did mean it.”

“Yeah, I guess I did say it first. Thanks. I meant when I said it, too.”

He turns around suddenly. “Would you marry me?”

Abby’s eyebrows dance in confusion. “I– that’s an interesting proposal,” she laughs nervously.

“I meant it when I said I’d make you a Tillerson. And I mean properly.”

“You got a ring?” she jokes. “Not that I’m expecting you to have one.”

“No, not yet.”

“I just—I.” Abby sighs. “I know we were friends when we were younger and all, but I’m not sure you’d really want to marry me. There’s so much—” Billy interrupts her with a chaste kiss on the mouth. It is full of love, this time, no lust in it whatsoever.

He pulls away to speak. “There’s so much I want to learn about you. I can’t wait to make up for the years we’ve lost, to both our families. To college. To the ranches.”

Tears well up in Abby’s eyes, and she smiles at him. “I think you mean that.”

“Better believe it,” he says, laying a gentle kiss on Abby’s damp cheekbone. “Let’s get some sleep, huh?”

“Yeah, that sounds good.”

They tuck themselves under the covers, and Abby’s back is pressed to Billy’s chest. He mumbles against her shoulder, just before she succumbs to unconsciousness, “we can go look for a ring tomorrow, there’s a place in town.”

She dreams of a beautiful wedding on the mountainside, in a tranquil clearing among the pine trees. Everything is shrouded in snowy white, including the boughs of the trees. She is warm, as well as all in attendance, and she sees her father and her new father-in-law, arms around each other’s shoulders, proudly looking on at Abby and Billy’s union.

She wonders, in her reasoning outside this dream-body of hers, whether this could come true.

A whole season passed where a girl named Autumn raised hell and it showed itself out, and Billy had his fair share of arguments with Abby. But Amy was returned back to her grandparents’, and Billy resurrected by the odd magic of the time-hole in the west pasture.

Five months after her dream, it came true. Abby became Abigail Hendry Abbott Tillerson, and while the feud between the two men took two years to subside, it was much shorter than it would have been without the marriage.

When they are sitting on the porch swing five years after that, watching Hendry Gage Tillerson and Anna Marie Tillerson playing in the yard of a plot of land in Texas that they bought, Billy asks Abby, “Have I made up for the lost time yet?”

Abby smiles at him, a careworn, motherly-exhaustion smile, but full of love all the same. “I could stand to spend the next few decades letting you find the definition of redame.”

He tilts his head at her. “What’s that?”

“To love in return.”

“Of course you’d say something like that,” Billy snorts. “Only my Abby.”

She leans against him. In this, he knows he won’t ever be able to prove it, but he knows the definition of redame to his core when he feels the weight of her soul on his own.

[void-galaxy-shenanigans]

Happy employment update:

So,, after almost 4 months unemployed we finally got a job. It’s fast food, but one of the better corporations that’s not known for wage theft and has better food safety practices & whatnot.

Not gonna name them for personal safety & also because it’s against policy (could get me fired), because I’m not an official voice of the organization.

But!!

This is one of their slower locations, by almost half (6 to 10 ratio on profit). I was hoping that would mean a better work environment, and so far it seems I was right. They’re a bit more laid back and their peak periods / rushes are...way less than I got used to.

~~

A couple downsides:

- still fast food. still that same line “sense of urgency”. still timed but in a different way (tracked differently).

- still not physical disability friendly. will be unable to use a mobility aid, & they wouldn’t accommodate that if asked.

~~

But,, 5 upsides & then I’ll share the happiest upsides:

(1) They actually want you to stay home if sick, to the point where there were three separate training videos on this & the management *actually finds someone to cover you* if you’re sick & call in— you don’t have to find someone yourself like other places. (You only need to find someone for non-sick vacation requests.)

(2) They have very clear, non negotiable food safety practices. actually have chemicals to clean *all food* and doesn't just rinse them off (unlike previous job, who I won’t name for similar legal reasons). They also have several training cards showing exactly how to do each of these steps to maintain food safety.

(3) Their training actually mentioned explicitly, twice, LGBT+ rights in the workplace!! They acknowledged that assuming sexuality is also harassment, and that harassment isn't just ‘man → woman’ & can be any combination of gender(s) or directions. They also acknowledged that 50% of LGBT+ people worldwide had reported harassment was present in their workplace, and 26% of transgender people alone, just in the United States, had either been fired or been pressured into (cut hours, undesirable tasks, etc.) quitting their jobs. They clearly defined what retaliation can look like if you report this or any other harassment / inappropriate behaviour.

(4) ¡Their benefits plan included counseling / therapy! I won’t need it right now, but it’s a good sign & made me feel comfortable openly saying I’m in therapy. ¡They thought me/us being in therapy was positive and a good sign!

(5) ¡They want me to work mornings!! That was my favorite shift at my last job. Because instead of getting home 7 to 11p and having to basically go straight to bed & do it again, coming home in the afternoon gives me a few hours to wind down, do self care, and reset. I’ll actually have cool down time before bedtime to exist and recover before I have to work again. I will have to get up a bit early, but I’ll take that over getting out of work late evening to nighttime 😅. They also are giving me the shorter 7 hour shift, which will be slighter easier on our physical disabilities (last job wanted us to work 9 to 10 hour shifts often).

~~

The changes I’m most excited about:

- They have very clear, very detailed training manuals on everything. They actually understand fast food is an entry level job for many, including high schoolers, and are prepared for that. They even had exact, detailed steps typed out, with pictures included, for how to wipe tables down (including which chemicals to use), which a lot of places assume is “common sense”. They have clear recipes with photographs for their grill operators & food prep store-openers. Absolutely everything is written down with photos and detailed instructions that aren’t to be deviated or improvised from. They even had books with papers & a folder for loose papers to track training and have managers sign off on what you had already learned, which allows other managers to see where the gaps are and allows you to prove you’re trained on a position and want to talk about training for a promotion.

- The manager who interviewed me actually used to be a crew member. She will become the general manager (basically store owner) in a month, as the current GM leaves.

- !I have the ability to text managers directly, and not have to (a) call the store and hope for a manager to be available or (b) use a messaging app and hope they check it! It’s much easier to get ahold of management if I have questions or just need to let them know I’ll be a couple minutes late if I accidentally leave late. They’re also chill about it when I forget to clock out (the first shift always gets me 😅) and updated it without complaint after I texted.

- They actually introduced me to other staff, to the point of telling me which position those people were so I know which people will be my managers & trainers. The staff were incredibly welcoming and already joking around with me, and I watched crew members willingly joke around with managers in a display of trust (which also showed that they weren’t afraid of management & were comfortable). I saw someone dance along to the music as they were taking dishes to the sink, and no one told them off.

- ¡They have music!! The dining room has its own corporate-approved playlist, but as long as it doesn’t drown out the dining room, we can have our own music in the kitchen. The music was loud enough to make the food service sounds (scoops / metal on metal sounds, sizzling, etc.) not overwhelming for me the way it usually is.

- I had to message my GM (the one being promoted) because I have therapy on Mondays. I asked to consistently have Mondays off, with wiggle room for some exceptions. I felt comfortable being honest that it was because therapy is difficult to reschedule, and also pointed out it’s easier to do other tasks like replacing parts of my uniform on a weekday. I did mention that still leaves Tuesday through Sunday open, because I can work weekends, and I can work holidays too (because we’re pagan and have different holidays). I expected questions at best, or a hard no, because fast food tends to want 100% availability with zero exceptions. But I actually got a yes!! She said “I can do that, thank you for telling me!” and didn’t get upset in the slightest. ¡I can keep my predictable (and difficult to reschedule) Monday routine, with morning therapy and necessary Adulting™ afterwards!

~~

Overall, I’m very excited and hopeful. 💖

If they follow through on their promises and accommodate our autism, I’ll/we’ll be successful and content in this role for a year to three years (our goal), until we’re ready to go back to school full time. ☺💜

~Nico

[queenofthekings]

@eddiesbuttcheeks

Miles,

I know you’ll most likely ignore this message and tell the entire server an edited version of events, since that’s what you did when I DMed you on Twitter, but I don’t care what you do. I have screenshots of fucking EVERYTHING so don’t try to spin this shit.

In the short time I’ve known you, I literally have never seen a fully grown adult demand so much attention from a bunch of strangers on the internet. To the point where if anyone else said anything, it was irrelevant to them. But your word was gospel.

The amount of gaslighting you and your friends did when I said to you PERSONALLY that I felt like I was ignored and unwelcomed was insane. I could recount so many instances of where I was straight up ignored, but your friends said, “so many people talk, messages get lost”. Please, I have literally been in servers with more members and that are more active than yours and nobody’s messages were so blatantly ignored than many people’s in your server.

I would literally just post something in main, but everyone else would be practically having an orgy in the NSFW chat or selfies. Which, by the way, is not a normal way to talk to your friends. You shouldn’t want to fuck every single one of your friends, and you shouldn’t surround yourself with people who literally faun at your feet. That’s not reality.

But on top of those things; your apology you posted before deleting your whole account. You called yourself a victim – a victim of what exactly? This is why I know you have a victim complex because every single person who is genuinely a victim of something would never say “I am a victim; I’m not just acting like it” but then never say what they’re a victim of. If you were genuinely a victim of anything, you would never need to say you're a victim.

You also blame your BPD, which you say is undiagnosed but have brought it up constantly. Either you get diagnosed or you stop talking about a mental illness you think you have from googling your symptoms or other people have lead you to believe you have.

For whatever reason in that apology, you told people to go to you if you’ve hurt them to talk it out. But yet, you ignored my Twitter DM which was an opportunity to talk things out like adults. You knew my Twitter, Discord and Tumblr, you had multiple days to reach out and apologise and talk it out, but instead you told your friends an edited version of what I had said, leaving out key details and made me seem like the bad person when I literally DMed you privately to avoid drama and to hopefully be able to talk it out like actual fucking adults but clearly you never want to do that.

In your newest bio you claim to also have autism, yet I have asked a couple of people who have actually known you and none of them have told me that you’ve mentioned having autism. If you truly have both BPD and autism, you’re not stable enough to even be on the internet with the way you’re acting and reacting to things.

As someone who does have autism but never broadcasts it, I’m fucking ashamed that someone as old as you is acting like a fucking child. Grow the fuck up and stop thinking you’re gods gift when you’re not. You’re giving people with autism a bad name and it’s fucking embarrassing.

The reason why so many people don’t like you is because you’re a selfish, manipulative asshole who puts up the act of being this dude who gets bitches, when in reality all the bitches you get are your just as hypocritical friends.

I don’t give a fuck if your friends hate me and harass me; I can see you for who you truly are while their rose-tinted glasses only get foggier. And I know I’m far from the only person who feels this way.

I would say “I hope you realise how much you’re hurting people” but frankly, you’re a lost cause.

[kimsiever]

Have you ever noticed how much queer identity is sexualized?

Like, I know of someone who had come out to an adult when they were 10 or 11, and the adult responded by asking, “Aren’t you a little too young?” But then the same adult doesn’t say anything when other 10 year olds mentioned their hetero crushes.

Or when a queer couple is accosted on the street just for holding hands, because the person harassing them equates queer handholding with queer sex. Yet, they never approach cishet couples when they’re holding hands.

Or when a person comes out to their partner and their partner is immediately worried that they’re going to leave the relationship or have an affair, as though queer people are more likely than straight people to leave relationships or have affairs.

It’s no wonder queerness is attacked so much.

People oppose drag shows but not beauty pageants because drag shows represent queer sex and beauty pageants are just about beauty.

People oppose educational material about queer families but not educational material about straight families because queer families are about sex and straight families are just about families.

Cisgender, straight relationships have become normalized. That’s why it’s called “cisheteronormativity”. As such, anything normalized will be seen as sexualized.

No one will ever question a 9-year-old girl saying she has a crush on a boy in her class. But watch the reactions if she says she has a crush on a girl in her class.

No one questions a man falling in love with a woman in a movie and the film ending with them kissing. But whatch the reactions if it’s two men.

If a child is raised as a boy and identifies as a boy, no one makes anything of it. If that same child instead tells their parents that they’re a girl (or have some other gender identity), watch the reactions.

It’s no wonder they accuse use of sexualizing their children. If they equate queerness with sex, then of course they’re going to think that exposing people to the lived experience of queer people is sexualizing children.

Except we’re not sexualizing your children. You’re sexualizing us.

[qnewsau]

The Gold Coast queer musician taking on misogynistic "fans"

New Post has been published on https://qnews.com.au/the-gold-coast-queer-musician-taking-on-misogynistic-fans/

The Gold Coast queer musician taking on misogynistic "fans"

Queer Gold Coast-based artist Majelen is speaking out against abusive and misogynistic fans online. 

It’s been a big year for Majelen. The singer-songwriter and guitarist has released a load of new music and had videos go viral online.

She’s also grown a social media presence with hundreds of thousands of followers. 

Her rise was recognised with two nominations at the Gold Coast Music Awards for Breakout Artist of the Year and Musician of the Year. 

Drawbacks on social media

However, despite the positives, the rise has also come with some drawbacks.

So-called fans, particularly straight men, have been commenting and sending inappropriate, sexualised messages directed at her and her wife Courtney. 

It’s something Majelen has had enough of. 

“We should celebrate our love and my musical journey without being objectified or harassed,” she said. 

“Unfortunately, it’s not a new thing. It’s been there from the beginning and everyone is constantly like, ‘Oh, just ignore it, that’s just men being men.’

“I know so many women who have put up with really bad treatment from men in their lives and I was like, why am I saying nothing?”

  View this post on Instagram

  A post shared by Majelen (@majelenmusic)

Majelen has a relaxed and warm personality during our interview, but when she speaks about any abuse towards Courtney, she has a visceral reaction.

“To be honest, I don’t care what people say to me, but people have said nasty things about Courtney and that’s 100% not okay,” she says with defiance. 

“One of the main reasons that I wanted to do music in the first place was because if you have a microphone and you’re standing on a stage, that’s a platform to try to use that for good and to create positive change in the world. 

“I’ve always wanted to use that to help women so I’m not going to be silent anymore.”

A team effort

When it comes to Majelen the music artist, it really is a team effort. 

Courtney and Majelen met on Bumble just before COVID started.

“I met Courtney online and we went on a couple of dates, and then the whole country went into lockdown,” Majelen says. 

A romance blossomed into a wedding and now the pair tour together across the country. 

Courtney has taken to the new life well and does much of the work behind the scenes. 

“I’ve had to become a videographer, a social media marketer, a sound tech and I do the admin,” she explains. 

She’s obviously doing an incredible job as Majelen now has a following of 130,000 on Instagram and 52,000 on TikTok.

Music videos that the couple feature in are also racking up hundreds of thousands of views. 

The positives

Despite the unwanted comments, social media has also been a positive experience for them. 

“It’s a really handy tool to connect with people and we’ve got fans supporting us all over the world,” Majelen says. 

“It’s quite an empowering experience for musicians,” Courtney adds. 

“You don’t need managers or anything like that if you can build a presence online and get into a position to pick and choose who’s on your team and where you go.”

It’s clearly working as Majelen, with Courtney’s support, has a huge year ahead. 

  View this post on Instagram

  A post shared by Majelen (@majelenmusic)

A new EP and album are in the works and an upcoming Cole Clark guitar is being named after Majelen herself. 

March of 2025 will see them embark on a national tour or major and regional before heading overseas to tour the UK, Europe and America. 

They’ll then follow up all of that with an international tour of the UK plus some other secret projects that they can’t mention yet!

One thing is for certain though, as a team they are both ready to take on the world and they’re not going to put up with any shit along the way. 

You can follow Majelen @majelenmusic on Instagram or visit her website for tour tickets majelenmusic.com

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For the latest LGBTIQA+ Sister Girl and Brother Boy news, entertainment, community stories in Australia, visit qnews.com.au. Check out our latest magazines or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.