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kiss-me-muchoo · 5 months ago

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𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭 || 𝐌𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐞𝐥 𝐎’𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐚 𝐱 𝐅𝐞𝐦!𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

part one: hurt me, it’s okay || part two: here

summary_ Spiderman and Spiderwoman from earth 1610 met by casuality, she goes back to the Spider Society, reunites with Miguel and while he debates telling her she’s in his canon events, Spiderwoman makes a decision, to help Miles Morales.

warnings_ age gap! (8/9 years), angst, not a lot of scenes with Miguel, slight canon divergence

note_ listen to my playlist for Miguel!!!!! (Proofreading this later)

♪ ♫ My Miguel O’Hara playlist ✰ Index (+ fics here)

𖦹°⭒˚｡⋆ 𓆇🕸️𓆸⋆｡𖦹°⭒˚｡⋆ 𓆇🕸️𓆸⋆｡𖦹°⭒˚｡⋆ 𓆇🕸️𓆸

Time healed everything for sure. A prolonged smile rests on your face as you walk through the streets of Brooklyn, New York. Summer is around the corner and you are visiting the state with your parents. But you decided to take an afternoon walk after dinner with them. As the weeks progressed, soon they turned into two months. Deep inside your heart, you resented most of your past. But you did your best to let go of the pain, to forgive Gwen, Jess, Peter, and Miguel.

Some nights you went to sleep with him in your thoughts, wondering if he’d also be thinking of you. Perhaps he cared for you and he sent you home for your security, but… he was so cold, so indifferent towards you. Which only confirmed… it was only you who felt everything.

Either way, many things had happened. In two months, you have changed a lot. You grew quieter, reserved, and slightly insecure. The spiderwoman suit was left behind at the back of your closet. But something told you to bring it to your New York trip.

One thing’s sticking to you, of what Miguel said to you once, about never being ready to assume the role of being a spider. You immediately learned it after losing your best friend.

You got scared, hands covered in blood, sirens quickly approaching the scene, your friend whispering to you to go, that it was going to be fine, to keep going. But the trauma only made you grow mixed feelings towards your abilities.

Till the day you realized you were capable of opening portals and traveling across dimensions without a gizmo. Like a ghost moving through dimensions, you started doing your job. Remembering your best friend’s words; you kept going.

The temporary barrier you made for your earth was still holding you back, secure from your past, working on the present. Earth - 1610 already had a Spiderman, so their Spiderwoman would serve outside. As soon as the barrier was broken, you knew it was a matter of time before they came for you. And you knew well, if they came, it was because things were going bad.

But for now, you are having a break.

Your smooth steps are calmed and you are feeling relaxed. The city is extremely crowded and you realize how different it is from California. But your gaze lands on something that reminds you of home; a pastelería. As you read they have conchas, elotitos, mantecado, and more, the smell invades you.

Your smile grows bigger as you step closer, and before you can even try to open the door of the place, someone opens it from inside.

“fuck…” you grunt as you feel the impact of the door in your nose.

“Oh no, I’m so sorry, I’m in a rush and…” When you look up, you see a kid well, a teenager, who’s taller than you.

Your spider senses connect with him.

“You’re like me…” says the boy.

“You’re the Spiderwoman from California. I thought it wasn’t real!” you frown at him, then slowly nodding.

“And you’re Spiderman too… How old are you?” He’s wearing an oversized jacket, and he holds two boxes of cake.

“I’m fifteen. And you? How long have you been Spiderwoman? Why aren’t you surprised? Why there have been three Spider-people on this earth?”

“Woah, boy, those are too many questions in one sentence. I’m y/n, I was bitten three months ago and I’m twenty, by the way” he nods, looking at the boxes in his hand before looking at you again.

“I’m Miles, and I’m running late. Come with me, please”

“I’m a stranger”

“Oh please, you don’t meet spider people every day,” Miles says and you sigh, remembering you used to be part of the Spider Society.

“I can’t just follow you. Besides, Where?”

“My home. It’s my father’s celebration, he’s getting promoted, he’s a cop” You nod, but still unsure, feeling your nose throb and knowing you have to go back to the hotel with your parents.

“That’s nice, but they don’t know me, neither you do.”

“Please, I bet you don’t have anyone else to talk to about this?” you used to have many people. You fell in love with one of those. But now, Miles is right, so you nod, agreeing with him.

“Just say that you used to study with me at Visions Academy” You nod, feeling that it wasn’t a good idea to go with the kid, but it felt correct.

“Fine, but I won’t stay long enough” the boy smiles, feeling very happy and confused about meeting you.

So to his home, it’s rushed. Miles tells you that he fought a very strange villain that morning, a man who had spots all over his body. He also shares that he’s having some trouble with keeping his secret from his parents.

By the time you arrive at his apartment complex, you realize maybe it wasn’t that much of a bad idea to follow him.

…

For a long time, you had stopped caring about being alone in random places. But Miles had a tough argument with his parents and there you were left in the party where you were the stranger. You ignore the curious looks of the attendants, eyes locked on the two tables full of Puerto Rican food. You grab two alcapurias and after the taste of one, you realize they are to die for. The party is very pretty despite the awkward moment where Miles bolted away after the fight.

“Hi!… Miles said he brought an old friend from school, you are…” Startled, when you turn, you encounter Rio, the mother of Miles.

“I’m y/n” You are beyond embarrassed, with your mouth full of food and sweaty hands.

“Right, y/n. ¿Y hablas español?” Rio asks, her arched brow lets you know she’s judging, but thankfully you will make her happy.

“Así es, mi familia y yo somos chicanos, de California. And I’m so sorry for intruding like this, Mrs. Morales” The woman’s smile grows and you swear she wants to hug you.

“Oh, that’s amazing. You are unlike that other friend of Miles… Wanda. You can call me Rio” You nod, accepting her hand to shake. But all you can think about is that name… you have heard it before.

“And don’t get me wrong, Miles said you were older and you look responsible… but… please be honest with me” You leave the now empty plate on the table because the woman seemed to be serious.

“Is Miles in trouble? Because… he’s been very… difficult. He skips classes, lies to us, and-“

“He’s a good boy. I promise, he loves his parents and wants to make them happy. But he’s under pressure. I promise, Rio, he’s a good boy” Despite meeting Miles two hours ago, you know he’s good. You know he wants to do well, and you know what it is to be hiding your spider persona from your loved ones.

Rio nods, offering a little smile.

“I’m really glad to meet you. I’ll let you go now, pero que sepas que eres bienvenida siempre que quieras” you smile, feeling how good of a mother Rio was. So you nod, waving at her as she walks away.

“Gracias, Rio. Y la comida está riquísima!” she giggles, waving back at you, finally disappearing from your view.

Soon you turned to the food again, now it was time for dessert, which made you get lost and only pay attention to the food. When you look up, you see that the sky has started changing. It was getting very late, so you let your parents know you were still shopping and soon, that’s when you realized you hadn’t seen Miles since he fought with his parents.

You start looking around, the music is still playing and the party is alive. You start moving around when you bump into someone. The person holds you steady with very little pressure, preventing you from tripping or so.

“Woah, sorry… wait, y/n?” A female voice asks, when you raise your gaze, you are shocked. There is Gwen.

“Do you know each other?” Miles asks behind Gwen.

You panic, you panic. So you do what you best do, to bolt.

“I need to go, you know my number, Miles. You can call me whenever you want”

“Wait, y/n…” Miles calls you but you are already gone.

Gwen reveals that you worked in the Spider Society. Miles was a bit angered with you for never reaching out to him. But Gwen also shared that you had been Spiderwoman for less than three months, that you had entered the society and she as your friend, failed you as the others too. And lastly, you had a tough story with Miguel O’Hara.

Miles understood you. And he followed Gwen after she left.

…

You are going back to your hotel with your parents when a hand pulls you to an alley, it is Gwen again. Now with her suit on.

“Oh my god, y/n, it’s you!” She takes off her mask and runs to hug you. And as much as you want to push her away, you hug her back.

“I missed you so much. We all miss you” She looks very excited to see you. And you want to say that you missed her too, but you’re proud and stubborn, so you don’t.

“Why are you here, Gwen? And why do you know Miles?”

“A lot has happened. I promise to tell you everything, but please come back. For now, there’s this anomaly that I need to catch” he shows you her gizmo, and the little hologram of a white creature with dark spots appears.

“That’s the villain Miles mentioned earlier”

“And how do you know him? You said you didn’t know who was the other spider man from this earth” you sigh.

“I met him like three hours ago”

“You need to come back. Miguel was checking daily to see if the temporary barrier you made was broken. You really really need to talk with him” Rolling your eyes, you hear her. But deep inside, you are dying to know everything, every little detail.

“Gwen, I won’t lie that it didn’t hurt me what happened. I felt betrayed. But now I’m happy with the life I have. Despite everything… I’m trying to move on” You don’t have the heart to tell her that you resent everyone a little, that you don’t need a gizmo to travel and save people from other dimensions. And you won’t tell her that as much as Miss Miguel, you won’t give him the satisfaction to go back.

“I’m begging you, y/n. We need you…” suddenly, the tiny hologram of Lyla appears and starts moving around you; smiling.

“OH MY GOD, Y/N!!!, YOU’RE HERE, MIGUEL IS GOING TO FREAK OUT… but don’t tell him I revealed that” You find the humor in her words, so you giggle.

“Hello, Lyla. I love your new glasses” she winks.

“Gee thanks, I also love your new hair”

“Yeah, it’s longer.” Gwen agrees with the AI.

“You’re coming with us, right?” Lyla asks, making you sigh.

“I will accompany Gwen to capture the anomaly, but I won’t go back to the HQ if that’s what you two are inquiring” you calmly say, walking beside a trash can to take your suit, perfectly folded inside your purse.

“You have to be kidding. Besides what happened with Miguel, Hobie, Ben, Pavitr, Penny, Noir, Jess and everyone misses you a great deal. You were a very popular spider, you know?”

“Yeah, Miguel is my problem. I deeply resent him and I’m not afraid to admit it” you reveal.

“I swear he wants you back. He has a lot to say to you, Would you come back just to… At least listen to him?… we have a life or death situation growing as the Spot is out there free” Lyla fires back. You shrug, not thinking clearly before slowly nodding.

There are so many things to think about, but you have already nodded.

“I-… I’ll go, but you have to let him know. I don’t want an awkward reunion” Gwen nods excitedly, and Lyla also nods.

“Great, I’ll tell him. Now go, Miguel won’t be happy with you Gwen” and then, the AI disappears.

Oh man, what have you agreed to?

…

To say you had the eyes of the whole world on you, was exaggerated. But at least the eyes of every single spider at the HQ, we’re looking at you.

Some stare, some greet you with enthusiasm and others offer confused smiles. When you arrived in Mumbattan with Gwen, Pavitr gave you a huge hug and didn’t let you go for many seconds. And when Hobie appeared, as the man of few words you knew he was, still shocked you with a long pat on the shoulder and admittedly said he missed you.

“This is so cool, I can’t believe you quit” Miles whispered to you. The teenager also appeared on Pavitr’s earth and you were highly impressed by his abilities.

“They kicked me out” you revealed, Miles looked surprised and Jess heard you, but you avoided her gaze. Back from Mumbattan to the HQ, Jessica rarely spoke to you. Instead, you spent the time with Miles, who had so many questions; and you wished you could just blurt out everything, but you wouldn’t.

“You don’t know the whole story, y/n,” Gwen said, joining the conversation.

“I think I pretty much know most of it. That’s enough…” while you didn’t pretend to sound so cold, you did.

“Please have patience with Miguel. But listen to him…” Jess also adds, you only eye her, but you don’t say anything else, you just nod.

It was at that moment that you realized how freaked out you were to meet Miguel again.

“For sure, Jessica. Just like he listened to me the last time I saw him” the woman looks down with remorse, but you don’t see it because you turn back at the way that Gwen leads.

Everyone can sense that while you are being respectful, there was bad blood running through every corner and step you were taking.

Miles thought you were very bright and sweet, but once you entered the portal and stepped inside the HQ of the Spider Society, your demeanor changed, showing you bitterly defensive and cold.

“Here we are…” Gwen says pushing a button that opens what you remember being Miguel’s office.

“I need a minute…” you say staying behind everyone. Only Hobie stayed beside you.

“You got this, Luv,” he says. And you love that words were not needed with Hobie, he completely understood you.

“If anything happens, you know where to stand, Hobie” he nods after entering the dark room.

You sigh, taking long breaths, mentally preparing for what is coming. It could end well, or badly.

And you had a bad feeling about it.

…

The bad feeling got worse.

Miguel couldn’t stop looking at you. He couldn’t hide the surprise on his face when he saw entering his office along with Peter B. Parker.

You can’t stand the man trying to shamelessly blame a fifteen-year-old. At some point, you know, it’s enough.

“Even if Miles hadn’t been bitten, earth-42 would have remained without a Spiderman. So don’t you dare to keep blaming him” Miguel turns, and you can see and feel he’s getting mad, but you don’t care. You couldn’t care less.

Maybe your heart cared, but your head was winning.

“It’s more complex than that, y/n.”

“Yeah, it worked out when you sent me home without telling me why” Lyla pops out around the shoulder of Miguel and looks worriedly between you and the broad man.

“Woah, Miguel, maybe you should tell her about that…” you frown, looking at the AI.

“Tell me what?”

“It doesn’t matter now, Lyla.” Your head wonders what could it mean, but you brush it away, so you turn again towards Miguel, looking at him with fury.

“I don’t need your stupid gizmo, I don’t need the Spider Society and I don’t need you, Miguel” you spit with anger and confidence, but everyone knows you actually need your friends, and that you are ignoring the feelings you had for Miguel.

“And look where your recklessness brought us. You are a threat and Miles is an anomaly”

“Most of the spiders here were recruited at their lowest points in life. You have manipulated everyone, admit it. You are forcing a narrative to achieve your assets.” His eyes shine bright with crimson anger. He wants to scream at you so bad, you know.

“Calm down, y/n… please” Jess tries to soothe the rising tension but it doesn’t work. When you look around, there’s already a lot of people, all ready to jump and attack in case of need.

“I will never stay quiet again. And to be a mother, Jess, neither you should” She lowers her gaze. You feel a little shame for her, as a grown woman who can’t seem to be able not listen to Miguel for once.

“You need to comprehend this isn’t entirely about you. This is about Miles and your constant travels causing a major disturbance in canon” Jess explains coldly, which makes you even more enraged.

“Yes, and we can save everyone. You don’t know how I’ve seen canon without the gizmo and the premonitory models” Your heart beats faster than ever, and you swear you are passing the edge of stability before collapsing into a panic attack.

“Not always we can save everyone” Peter B. Parker reminds you.

“Peter, please. Please understand me, out of everyone… I know you understand me” the man sighs, and you stare at her daughter. Peter knows it, he looks down at Mayday and knows you have a point.

“The Spot is going to destroy everything…” you almost whisper to one of your old closest friends. You have hope, that you’ll remind him. He looks at you deeply, before turning away, breaking your heart a little.

“I’m sorry, y/n. But you need to stay here” You feel Miguel’s giant hand on your shoulder, so you quickly turn, moving away, standing beside Miles. Miguel shows you he has no other intentions with his hands, he wants oh so desperately to make you understand his point, but he is blind to see or hear yours.

So in the blink of an eye, Miles and you have an obstructed view, reddish and glitchy. Both realize you have been caged, and stare at each other in panic.

Gwen and Peter jump to argue with Miguel, questioning why he had to do that.

“It’s okay, it’s okay” you whisper to Miles, who starts panicking. Hobie gets closer and you elbow Miles to see what he wants.

“Oi oi, Peter Pan. Use the hands…” you turn away, encountering Miguel, who also stares back at you.

“I hate you…” you spit with anger towards him.

“I never wanted any of this to happen, but It’s the best for our canons, only you could potentially destroy The Spot” you frown.

“Ours?…” he stays silent.

“Yes. And I’m sorry, kid” he adds, walking away with Gwen and Peter still at him complaining for caging you and Miles.

“Stop calling me that”

Your head spins, and you hear Jess, Hobie, Gwen, and Miguel speaking at the same time. But Miles has a plan, he gives you a quick look and you get it.

Smart boy.

So you nod, giving him a reassuring smile.

The electricity that envelopes his hands soon invades and infects the cage. The adrenaline keeps building up in your system. Your eyes slowly start to glow as you prepare for the impact.

Boom. The silence is scary.

Miles looks at you when you both are free from the cage.

It’ll be dangerous, very risky. But you got this

You look at how everyone starts moving after the impact. Your eyes lock with Miguel’s, and he knows you will follow the kid. And he can’t lose you again.

Don’t stop running, Miles” you tell him, he nods.

“MILES!, Y/N!” Miguel yells as soon he sees you bolt with the kid.

Time passes so fast, you don’t have time to breathe. You can’t hear what Gwen, Jess, Peter, and other spiders are trying to tell you to stay put.

“You need to hear, y/n” Peter yells. But you ignore them, and you keep running. Miles took his own route, and you realized many spiders were going after you and the teenager, you knew Miles had a plan.

“Y/n, please!” Gwen begs you, watching how you shoot a web to swing away.

As you slide through the buildings with your webs, your senses alert you. When you look back, as the wind messes with your hair and a few ones stick in your forehead, you get startled. Miguel is coming for you.

He looks incredibly intimidating, his pace is ridiculously faster than anything you have seen before.

“Shoot” you mumble before returning to keep running away. You spot Miles again, which makes you quicken your pace.

You can feel Miguel behind you, only increasing your heartbeats. There are so many things you wish you could say. So many things he could’ve done, but you remember he never loved you.

Jess can get by your side, she throws a sharp kick that you dodge successfully. But she doesn’t give up, she punches your ribs and you can tell she didn’t mean to actually hurt you, but she’s doing everything to stop you from running. Thankfully Miles gets in the way and is more than enough to give you the advantage.

Once you realize you are in an imaginary railroad that keeps going up and up, you fear the height, but seeing all the people you once considered family coming at you as if you were the biggest atomic danger, makes you want to go back in time. Being a Spiderwoman was a responsibility that you wished it never came.

“You have to stop!” You feel a hand grabbing you by the arm, and the next thing is your body getting stamped against the surface. You open your eyes to see Miguel, his mask disappears and you are only able to get a big breath under the strong gaze of his mahogany eyes.

“You won’t try to manhandle my life. You already did it once” you spit, trying to squirm away from his giant hand holding you still.

“There’s a reason…” he yells with desperation since Miles could break his webs at any second.

“WHAT IS IT THEN?” You yell back. You are tired of their secrets and claiming it was for the best but avoiding sharing the truth.

“Y/n…” Miguel is pleading, he is fighting so hard the urge to explode in anger. Just for you, he needs to keep it together.

“JUST SAY IT, MIGUEL!”

“I JUST CAN’T LOSE YOU AGAIN!” His forehead brushes yours and it weakens your heart. The physical contact is sudden but feels so right. You sigh, feeling his warmth.

You know what is right and what is wrong. You eye Miles who looks at you with fear. You will not deny you still love the man in front of you. So you embrace your free hand with his cheek. He melts into your touch, savoring the moment you lean forward, whispering into his ear.

“My feelings for you haven’t changed. But you never got me back, Miguel” you reveal, caging him with your most potent webs, putting on your mask, breaking free from his touch.

Miles nods at you, to which you only reply with a little smile. You will help him, you can feel it’s what is correct. And under a Quick Look at Miguel who seems shocked by your actions, you let yourself fall.

The prolonged free fall feels like you can breathe again, you have decided, not them. Perhaps you did not know what was that thing that everyone kept debating whether to tell you or not.

The Spiderman of 2099 doesn’t think twice. He immediately goes after you and the kid who almost deactivated his suit. Miguel is confident that he’s doing things right. He can’t risk losing more people. And he can’t risk a possible future with you. It sounded selfish, but Miguel swore to never break canon again, and it was demanding him to be happy with a partner, he couldn’t say no. Even if he was forcing it the wrong way.

Perhaps your heart still lounged to beat in the signature tune with Miguel. But one thing was for sure, you would help Miles. Even when you realized he was sent to earth-42, that you were back in New York of 1610, you would keep the promise of helping him. The Spot was about to danger everyone, but you had to try. You remember all the broken promises, the deceptions and you realize you have to keep going. Letting behind what your heart desired. Miles had to forge his own destiny, and in that way, you would forge yours too.

_____________________________

I’m so excited for my next Miguel writing. I’m mixing both option I gave in my last poll and it’s gonna be bff to lovers.

Two years ago I had a crash (I still can’t drive), last year I got The Eras Tour concert tickets and today I was notified that my associates degree has been posted.

#miguel o’hara x reader #miguel o’hara imagine #miguel spiderverse #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o'hara #miguel spiderman #miguel o'hara smut #atsv miguel #miguel 2099 #miguel o’hara smut #spiderman atsv #atsv x reader

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warehouse-in-la-cienaga · 5 months ago

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Honestly, out of all the Rat Grinders+Bad Kids, the one interaction I wanted that we never got is Kipperlily and Gorgug.

Because it’s sort of implied in Freshman Year that Gorgug has had issues with controlling his rage in a way that II read as ‘he’s gotten in trouble before for hurting other people while in a rage, and that makes him repress his anger.’ And the Thistlesprings are great, but it’s shown that they sometimes ignore Gorgug’s rage issues, or give solutions that aren’t entirely effective. And KLCK has her unaddressed anger issues that the adults in her life ignore, so she doesn’t get the help she needs.

Also, their backgrounds are arguably the most similar. Gnomes and Halflings live close together in Elmville (i think), and both sets of parents are regular people with steady jobs and no adventurous background. The only difference is Gorgug being adopted, and even then the Thistlesprings never treated him like an outsider, or purposefully excluded him.

Just imagining KLCK seeing Gorgug, acclaimed adventurer, known rockstar, pioneering Barbaficer, and wondering if she could have channelled her anger like that. If she got the support from friends and parents that Gorgug did, would she still feel the need to be so angry?

And Gorgug, seeing KLCK want the trauma of his friends, wondering if he could have been that. Did he ever want something to happen to him that would justify his rage? Did he ever think that he wasn’t allowed to be angry unless he was hurt like his friends were? There’s no reason he would have known who KLCK was, but if he did, would he have been able to help her with her anger, like his friends did with him? Maybe it’s why Gorgug never made fun of her name the way the others did. Maybe there’s a moment of recognition there, that it could have been him.

#dimension 20 #fantasy high #gorgug thistlespring #kipperlilly copperkettle #brb writing a fic where Gorgug and KLCK grow up together and help each other with their anger issues #long post

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berryhobii · 5 months ago

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Down Bad Part 2 (pjm x reader)

Pairing: fuckboy!Park Jimin x black!female!fuckgirl!Reader

Word Count: 3.8K+

Warnings: none really. Mentions of previous sexual intercourse, mentions of foursomes, drinking(not explicit), all of this is from Jimin’s POV and his internal crisis, he’s really going through it

A/N: Hi loves! I’m back with Part 2 of Down Bad. Lots of people have been requesting it so here it is. Part 3 will be the final chapter where everything comes to it’s crest😈please look forward to it. Just to clarify, Jimin does have some thoughts that I don’t condone AT ALL. In order to progress the plot, he does continue to pursue reader so if you’re uncomfortable with that, please don’t continue reading. It will be the driving force of the story. Anyway, thank you so much for your patience and I hope you enjoy! Much love🩵🩵

“Hyung!”

Yoongi almost flung his cereal bowl across the room as his front door suddenly slammed open and Jimin burst inside.

“Jimin, what the hell?” Yoongi cursed, heart hammering like a stampede in his chest.

“Hyung, I need to ask you something.”

Yoongi sputtered. “W-what? How the hell did you get in my house?”

Jimin waved a hand. “I bribed Seokjin hyung with GrubHub but that’s not important. I need to talk to you.”

He was dreaming, he had to be. There was no way Jimin just let himself in without calling or texting first. And he was going to kill Seokjin!

“You just broke into my house. How is that not important?” Yoongi pointedly quipped.

Jimin groaned. “Focus, hyung. Look, I need to ask you about y/n.”

Breaking and entering aside, Yoongi acknowledged what Jimin was asking.

Yoongi walked over to his couch to sit down, motioning for Jimin to follow. “y/n? What about her?” He scooped some cereal into his mouth.

Jimin ran a hand through his hair. He’s been doing that more often than usual, your impact on him stressing him out.

“Why doesn’t she date?”

Ah. Yoongi realized where this was going. A smirk twitched at his lips and Jimin had a flashback to you. That god damn smirk.

“She put it on you, huh?” Yoongi chuckled with a shake of his head. He knew this was going to happen. Mainly because he went through the same thing about 2 years ago—the anxiety, the pacing, even the brief addiction to wondering what you were up to.

You were dangerous. Intoxicating. Almost unhealthy.

Yoongi considered himself a pretty good lover but you were on another fucking level. Your head game, pussy, aftercare; all top tier. He thought he was in love for a second and maybe he was but unfortunately, you weren’t the type of woman that wanted to be tied down.

“You’re sweet but I’m not looking for a relationship. Like ever. I’ll see you around though. Get home safe. Bye.”

Then you closed the door in his face and he went through the motions much like his good friend was right now.

It was hard not to get addicted to you.

Jimin groaned again, burying his face in his hands. “She was so good, hyung. I don’t even remember some of it because apparently, I passed out.”

Yoongi whistled. “Damn. I didn’t pass out but I did sleep for like 10 hours afterward. I even missed work. She definitely tires you out.” Yoongi sniggered, recalling the almost coma you put him in after that night. He was just lucky you didn’t put him out while he was practically dead on his feet. You made coffee, a light breakfast, and even let him take a shower to wake himself up more. You were a really nice and attentive person.

Jimin leaned back against the couch. “So why doesn’t she date?”

Yoongi shrugged his shoulder. “I don’t know.”

“Aren’t you two friends?” Jimin quizzed with a raised eyebrow.

“Yeah. Her job is like a block from mine. We meet up for lunch sometimes and I help her fix things around her apartment.”

There’s some information he didn’t know he really wanted. So you two were pretty close?

“And you haven’t slept together again?”

Yoongi shook his head, finishing his milk and then placing the bowl down on the coffee table.

“Nope. After our first time, I just gave up. Didn’t want to overstep, you know? She said she doesn’t sleep with the same person twice or something.”

Oh god. You had the same rule he did?! Now that he was hearing it, he realized how fucking dumb that rule was!

Yoongi could see the internal conflict Jimin was going through. He had the same problem back then. Even now sometimes, he wondered what he could do to get you but he respected you too much. You were sexy and confident, yes but you were also a great friend and someone he didn’t want to lose.

“Look, man. It’s best if you just forget about her. Nothing good will come from forcing yourself into her life.”

Jimin slumped further into the couch. He knew that. He liked you but he wasn’t the type to overstep any boundaries like that.

“Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

They sat in a comfortable silence for a moment before Yoongi broke it.

“Did she do that two handed twist thing on your dick?”

“Oh my god! It was insane!”

After that talk with Yoongi, Jimin decided to forget about you.

He went to work. He went to his classes and did his homework. He hung out with his friends……

And that’s it.

“You’ve been acting weird.” Taehyung suddenly stated one night when the two were hanging out on his couch. Jimin had shown up with fried chicken and beer out of the blue. Taehyung was actually kind of shocked to see him since Jimin was normally at a bar or a party on Friday nights.

Now that he thought about it, Jimin’s been at his place every weekend for the past month.

Something was up.

Jimin chewed the food in his mouth before swallowing, hand that wasn’t holding his chopsticks currently working on stealing from someone else on Monopoly GO.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’ve been here every weekend for a month. Why aren’t you at a party or something?”

Jimin made a noise of offense. “You say that like you don’t like spending time with me. I thought we were soulmates.” He cried dramatically with a pout.

Taehyung rolled his eyes. “We are but we haven’t spent this much time together in a while. Are you okay?”

Jimin went back to his game. “I’m fine. I just haven’t been feeling like going out.”

Okay, was hell freezing over or something? Jimin doesn’t feel like going out? Taehyung’s known Jimin for many many years and out of all of that time, he’s never known for Jimin to be a homebody. Taehyung was the homebody, Jimin was the party crasher. That was their dynamic and he’d be damned if he let Jimin take over his title.

“Alright, spill it.”

Jimin cursed under his breath at not finding another key before asking, “spill what?”

Taehyung squinted his eyes. Was Jimin really about to play stupid with him? He was used to Jimin actually doing stupid things, fake stupidity wasn’t in his nature.

Then he remembered something.

“You never told me how it went with you and that y/n girl. You normally give me a play by play of all of your one night stands.”

He saw how Jimin’s shoulders stiffened.

Bingo.

“Tell me. What happened?”

Jimin tossed back the remainder of his beer and then went to shove another piece of chicken in his mouth.

Taehyung snatched the box away, taking his phone as well.

“Come on, man! Just tell me.”

Jimin swallowed before sighing. He knew he couldn’t keep it from his best friend any longer.

“Nothing much happened. It was fine.” He lied because something very much happened and it was way more than just fine.

His eyes burned holes into Jimin’s face. He didn’t understand why Jimin was withholding. Jimin was never tight lipped when it came to spilling his escapades. The detail he’d put into it would make Taehyung feel like he was actually there.

So why was he being so secretive now?

“Alright,, get up.” Taehyung ordered, standing to his feet.

Jimin’s eyebrows jumped up. “Why?”

“We’re going out.”

“Going out? Where?”

Taehyung hauled him up by his arm, pushing him down the hall to the bedroom to find them something suitable to wear. Jimin left some of his clothes here just in case, mainly pajamas or casual clothes but he had a few going out pieces for those crazy moments. Like that time a girl ripped Jimin’s shirt off of him and he had to walk back to Taehyung’s house with tattered clothes hanging off his body.

Taehyung ruffled through the space in his closet where Jimin’s clothes hung, pulling out a simple button up and jeans.

He shoved the clothes in Jimin’s arms. “Tae, wait. I don’t really feel like-“

Taehyung interjected, “no, I’m done watching you act like someone you’re not. You need to go out and have fun. Get laid.”

“You’re the one always telling me to stop having so much sex but now you want me to?” Jimin asked incredulously.

Taehyung huffed. “I’ve never told you to not get laid. I tell you to stop treating women that way. How would you like it if someone just used you and put you out?”

Oh the irony. If only he knew….

Luckily, Jungkook had responded to Taehyung’s text and gave them the address to a small party on his college campus. Jimin’s complaints and refusals fell on deaf ears as Taehyung all but shoved him into an Uber and then they were on their way to the party.

The space was pretty lowkey and the party wasn’t as crazy as Jimin was used to; just people gathered around talking and drinking and making out. He didn’t really know if that was a good or bad thing yet. It could be good since it meant he could probably just sink into himself and stay quiet but it could also be bad since there wasn’t enough distractions to give him an opportunity to sneak away. Either way, he didn’t really want to be here.

Jungkook approached them with a loud greeting, a cute girl under his arm. “What’s up guys? Glad you can make it.” He gave both of them one of those handshake/hugs before turning his attention to the girl. “This is Lila.”

She gave a small wave and smile. “Hi.” To which Taehyung and Jimin greeted her back.

“So make yourselves comfortable. We have plenty of drinks and food and I think Hoseok should be coming back with more people soon.”

“Cool.” Taehyung nodded while Jimin was scouting out the nearest exit. He needed to get the hell out of here.

Breaking him from his thoughts of escape, Taehyung grabbed his arm and dragged him over to the drink table to grab a beer from the cooler before taking him to sit down on a small collection of couches.

Jimin’s nerves were on 100. He didn’t know why he wanted to leave so badly. Parties were his stomping grounds, right? What exactly was he so afraid of? Had you really knocked him off his mojo that badly?

Taehyung could also see the way Jimin was reacting and he didn’t like it. While he didn’t always agree with Jimin’s lifestyle, that didn’t mean he wanted him to change. This new reclusive and jumpy Jimin was not the man he’s known since childhood. Something definitely happened with that girl he went with a while ago but what?

Scanning the small party, Taehyung spotted a group of girls all laughing and enjoying drinks. One of them glanced over, making eye contact with Taehyung, her lashes fluttering in a flirty way.

Taehyung nudged a slumped down Jimin with his elbow, motioning to the girls. “Look. She’s cute, huh? Why don’t you go talk to her?”

Jimin looked in that direction, finding all of the girls looking now, their giggles ringing out when he made contact. Judging by their intimate touches between each other, they were definitely down for some girl on girl action. Normally, he would have already made his way over to see if a foursome was in the cards but now, that didn’t seem plausible. Ugh, past him would be beating his ass for turning down a potential opportunity to sleep with 3 girls at once.

“Are you a fucking idiot?! Look! They’re practically in kissing distance of one another! You could get between all that!”

Jimin sighed, averting his eyes and sipping his beer. He just wasn’t in the mood tonight. He appreciated Taehyung for his attempts but he just doesn’t think he could-

OH SHIT!

Jimin’s beer clattered to the floor, his hands coming up to cover his face with his leather jacket. Taehyung startled at Jimin’s sudden movement, eyebrow raising at the sight of Jimin attempting to hide himself. What the hell was going on?

“What’s wrong?” Taehyung probed with a frown, looking around at what could be causing Jimin’s turtle act.

Jimin’s heart was going crazy in his chest, his mind racing as he tried to will himself to turn invisible.

This is not happening right now, his wild mind thought.

You were here. You were ACTUALLY here! Even through his panic, he couldn’t help but notice how beautiful you looked; a white shirt paired with a olive green overall skirt that hugged your curves in a delicious way, cute lace up heels on your feet. Your hair was still straight and black but this time was styled up into a simple ponytail.

He knew something was telling him not to leave the house! Just what were the chances that you’d appear at the exact same party he was at? He was relieved that this was a smaller party since he doubted you would even hang out at places like this but it was like the universe was conspiring against him. Had all of his bad deeds finally caught up to bite him on the ass? He thought stopping that lifestyle would bring him some good luck but he guessed he was wrong. So very very wrong.

It was bad enough that you were in the same vicinity as him but what was even worse was the piece of man candy you had on your arm. Who the hell was that?!

No time to think about that now! Jimin has to get the hell out of here. “Tae, we have to leave. Now.”

“Wha-why? Are you feeling okay?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. We just need to leave.” He rushed out panicked, eyes working overtime trying to map out an escape route. That was becoming hard though since you and this guy had positioned yourself next to the alcohol area which was right by the door. And this space was very open which means he could see the entire room. Any chance of leaving unseen would be practically impossible.

Should he just wait it out and hope you don’t notice him and then he could sneak out? Or should he just risk you seeing him and race out now? Both posed a possibility of you noticing him and of him having a heart attack.

And of course, luck was not on his damn side because Jungkook and Lila made their way over to them with Hoseok in tow. The loud men crashed down onto the empty couches around the small coffee table and Jimin could have pulled all his hair out. Did they have to bring all of that over here?!

“Whoa Park Jimin? I wasn’t expecting you to come here. You’re normally at a club or a bar!” Hoseok loudly bellowed with a bright smile. Jimin winced at how loudly Hoseok announced his name.

Nervously chuckling, Jimin croaked out a, “yeah…..strange, isn’t it?”

“But hey, don’t worry. There’s some totally hot trim here. See those girls over there?” Hoseok motioned behind them over to 3 women Taehyung pointed out earlier. “They’re always down for a foursome.”

I fucking knew it! Go over there, you sad sack of shit!

“Ah yeah. Maybe.”

“Hey is that Namjoon?” Jungkook observed, squinting his eyes to confirm if it was really the person he thought it was. Raising his hand, he called out, “Yo, Namjoon!”

And you wouldn’t believe who Namjoon fucking was! YEAH! It was the guy you had arrived with! Had all of Jimin’s bad luck he’ll ever accumulate over his life gathered right now to royally fuck him over?

Namjoon looked up from your eyes, looking in the direction of where his name was being called from. A smile spreading across his face at the familiar sight of his friends. He said something to you before BOTH OF YOU began making your way to their small group.

Yup, the universe was definitely pointing their fingers and laughing at him right now.

You and Namjoon reached their group, Hoseok and Jungkook standing to give him a handshake/hug.

“Hobi this party is pretty tame, even for you. Did daddy’s credit card finally hit its limit?”

Hoseok cackled, not at all offended by Namjoon’s joke. “Nah but the campus police have. That last party caused someone to break their arm so I’m on a warning. Gotta keep it lowkey, you know?”

“True. Thanks for the invite anyway. I hope it’s okay that I brought a friend.”

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.

“This is y/n.”

You waved at the group, eyes flittering over Jimin who was still trying incredibly hard to make himself invisible. Grinning, you purred, “It’s a pleasure.”

Jimin shivered at the sound of your voice, that same voice that whispered in his ear as you rode him into oblivion just weeks ago. It’s been haunting his dreams(both wet ones and daydreams) ever since you put him out and now that it was filling his ears once again, it felt 10 times more impactful and nerve racking. As if your presence wasn’t already sending him into a manic spiral, now he had to hear that seductive voice? And he just knew you were staring him down with those piercing eyes.

Everything felt too out of control. Jimin needed to leave.

Taehyung glanced from Jimin to you a few times before he finally remembered who you were.

“Hey, aren’t you Yoongi’s friend?”

Jimin’s eyes widened so much that they could have bulged out of his head like a Looney Toons cartoon. Shut the hell up! Out of all the times for Taehyung’s loner ass to be confident enough to start conversation, it had to be now!?

Moving your gaze from Jimin to Taehyung, you answered, “I am. What a small world. I think I remember you from the bar.”

“I was there too!” Jungkook announced while excitedly waving his hand which made everyone laugh. Except Jimin who didn’t find anything funny.

Namjoon and you went to sit down on the couch next to Hoseok which was right across from Jimin and Taehyung.

Thankfully, Hoseok bounced the conversation somewhere else which meant they didn’t have to recount what happened in the bar. Jimin knew Taehyung and probably Jungkook knew that he went home with you but he was grateful neither of them mentioned it.

The redirected conversation gave Jimin an opportunity to not obsess over you and Namjoon getting cozy just across from him.

With your leg tossed over Namjoon’s, you leaned forward to whisper something in his ear, dimples indenting his cheeks at whatever you said. His hand stroked up and down your leg, sometimes playing with the hem of your skirt.

Jimin’s own leg bounced up and down, a strange feeling bubbling in his belly as he watched you two. It felt different than anything else he’s ever felt before.

Something hotter. Something intense. Something ugly.

The feeling rose with every caress, every giggle, every light kiss you shared with Namjoon. And when you locked eyes with Jimin as Namjoon whispered in your ear, that’s when he realized what it was.

Envy.

Staring directly at Jimin with that annoying ass smirk, you continued to exchange heavy pets with Namjoon. It was like you were taunting him, dangling a carrot right in front of his face and then swiping it away.

Your gaze said it all.

You can’t have me.

Suddenly standing to his feet, he stalked out away from the group and out the door.

The others were confused by his sudden departure.

“Is he okay?” Hoseok asked Taehyung who frowned.

“I don’t know. I’ll go see. I’ll catch you guys later.” After a chorus of goodbyes, Taehyung followed Jimin out. He looked around once he made it outside, finding Jimin’s receding figure walking down the street. “Jimin! Wait!”

But Jimin didn’t stop, hands stuffed in his pockets and mouth mumbling various curses about you and Namjoon. What the hell was wrong with him? He had finally managed to convince himself that he had forgotten about you and that you didn’t affect him anymore but just the sight of you with another man had crumbled any semblance of control he thought he had. You had barely done anything and you had him acting like this.

Taehyung eventually caught up with his friend, extending his stride to keep up with him.

“Hey what’s up?”

Jimin shook his head, eyebrows furrowed into a deep frown. “Just leave it, Taehyung. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Somethings going on with you. I can’t just leave it when it has you acting so strange and it’s not good for you to repress whatever you’re feeling. You can talk to me.”

“I said drop it.” Jimin seethed.

“But-“

Jimin finally snapped, abruptly stopping and whipping around to face Taehyung. “God damn it, Taehyung! Fine, you want to know what’s happening? y/n and I had sex and it was so fucking amazing that I can stop thinking about her! But apparently she has that same only fuck once rule that I have and it’s driving me fucking crazy!” He tugged at his hair, breath speeding up as he finally ranted about what’s been bothering him. “I’ve been avoiding going out because she absolutely wrecked me and I can’t even think about sex with anyone else! I also wanted to avoid seeing her since I know she hangs around the college bars and clubs. Then she just had to show up tonight with a new guy. It was just too much, Tae.”

His tone softened towards the end, his anger dissipating into the soul crushing reality that you really had a hold over him.

Taehyung sighed. He honestly didn’t really know what to do or say. This was a situation he’s never been confronted with and he was sure he could say the same for Jimin. He’s never seen his friend be so torn up over a girl. Admittedly, it did seem a little shallow since Jimin was just acting like this over good sex but who was Taehyung to invalidate anyone’s feelings?

“Look, it was one time. I understand it was really good but you can’t act like this over one girl, especially one you don’t really like. It was just sex. It’s not like you’re dating or pursuing a relationship. I suggest you just forget about her.”

Jimin paused.

Wait a second. Taehyung was right, you two weren’t dating nor was Jimin pursuing you. Why didn’t you date? Yoongi didn’t know and you’ve been friends with him for a while so why? He knows Yoongi told him to just leave you alone but he just couldn’t.

Jimin was going to break you. He was going to figure out what made you tick, how to dismantle that cool facade you kept on, and he was going to make you break all of your own rules.

#bts #bts x black reader #bts fic #bts imagines #jimin x reader #jimin fic #bts smut

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jagibee · 2 years ago

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Call Me Luna

(Stray Kids x Reader)

Chapter 2

2,355 Words

A/N: Y’all have no idea how hard I fought for my life against Tumblr to post this. Hope you guys enjoy, lmk what you think!💞

…

Honestly, you had never intended to sign on for a job with a big company, especially one that was just starting out with an omegan caretaker program. It was just easier to settle down with a nice rich pack where your clients already had cooks and cleaners and you mostly just had to listen to the members complain about each other and settle minor disputes. That was how the last pack you worked for operated.

But, you applied anyway. You were a fan of several of the bands and it was no big deal if they rejected you, which was pretty likely. If they only had one caretaker per band and a couple hundred truly qualified candidates, the odds weren’t 100% in your favor, especially because you didn’t grow up in Korea. Still, it would be an interesting story to tell people.

Even if there was a 99.99% chance they were rejecting you, it still took you some time to muster up the courage to open the email from JYPE.

When you finally managed to do so, you were sitting in your bed with your laptop in front of you. Just in case you took the news worse than you thought, you opened up a tab for how to start a new life.

Nothing bad was going to happen, you reminded yourself, the email either says yes or no, they aren’t going to come beat you up if they reject you.

Sucking in a deep breath and closing your eyes, you clicked on the email. Giving yourself a few seconds to enjoy this moment before your heart broke just a little, you finally opened your eyes.

“Dear Ms. L/N Y/N, we were quite impressed with your blah blah blah yada yada yada…” Glossing over all the formalities, your eyes skipped to the important part.

“After careful consideration, we’ve decided to accept you as an omegan caretaker for one of our bands.”

Wait.

Shit.

What?

They wanted you as the omegan caretaker of one of their bands? Choosing not to trust your eyes, you read over that sentence five more times before collapsing backwards onto your bed, exhaling harshly.

You sat back up to read the rest of the email and see if they specified which band. Maybe it was a completely made up band just for a prank or something.

“Unfortunately we are not at liberty to tell you which band you will be working with just yet, for safety and privacy reasons. You will be told your assignment once you meet with us in person.”

Shit, you thought, I guess I’ve got to pack.

…

You weren’t sure whether it was better or worse they didn’t tell you which band you were assigned to.

For the entire duration of the flight, you were wondering which group it would be and what you knew about each one. You couldn’t think of anything else and you couldn’t go to sleep or anything, no matter what you tried. However, if you had known who it was, your mind would have done the same, only it would have been freaking out about certain members and what each person was like and what they needed from you.

Secondary gender dynamics were a bit of a controversial subject in the kpop industry. Some companies made their fans aware of their idols’ classification, even some talking about it freely in interviews.

However, JYPE kept most of that information private. Of course, there were guesses made by the fans, and sometimes stalkers who tried their best to uncover their bias’ secondary gender.

You didn’t want to make assumptions, but you did know that most groups had alphas as their leaders, a bit of an out-dated custom but as long as the group dynamic worked and everyone got along with each other, it was above your pay grade.

Also, something you would have to adapt to would be if you were assigned to a boy group or a girl group. The difference didn’t matter much to you personally, but in the industry, there were certain things you had to consider.

After a while of all this swirling around in your mind, even some of it getting jotted down in your Notes app, you were startled from your thoughts by the pilot’s voice, telling you that you would be landing soon.

Honestly, after that, you kind of forgot the rest, it all happened so fast.

You arrived at night and found a person with a sign reading your name. You walked up and introduced yourself. They had a car and you got in.

At some point, you had tried to get out information regarding the group you had been assigned to, but apparently “once you meet with us in person” did not extend to your driver.

You were taken to a nice hotel that had been paid for by the company and told to rest. There would be a meeting at the company in the morning.

Just like on the plane, you knew you wouldn’t be able to sleep, so you took your time getting ready.

There was a huge shower and a nice tub, so you decided, ‘screw it, I’m doing both’.

You washed yourself with soap that highlighted your natural omega scent and when you dried off, you lotioned everywhere.

After taking a tentative sniff of the hotel body wash, you were glad you brought your own. Evidently, all the money that the hotel got from its rich guests didn’t go into shower products.

You washed your face until you had practically rubbed a layer of skin off and then spent far too long picking an outfit.

Despite the limited space in your suitcases, you finally managed to find one you deemed adequate.

Checking yourself over in the mirror, you couldn’t help a little shiver of excitement.

Holy shit they want me. Me! MEEEEEEE!!!

Unfortunately, the excitement quickly turned into anxiety.

Fuck, what if they don’t? What if they look at me and say “oh shit she was actually supposed to go into the ‘never ever ever pile’”? Or worse. They know it’s you and they’re expecting you to be amazing and then you’re going to somehow set the building on fire.

You flopped backwards onto the way-too-big-for-any-one-person bed and just decided to space out to some music.

While you weren’t actually in the music business, it was cool that your new job had led you somewhere more . . . music-adjacent.

After listening to one or two songs and washing away your thoughts, your alarm went off, telling you it was time to go down to the lobby where another car would be waiting for you.

It was a short drive to the company and for the most part, you had managed to keep your sanity in check. However, once you saw the signs outside the building, your heartbeat skyrocketed.

Is this meeting with the managers or just the band? Maybe it will just be with managers or a special team for organizing the caretakers. Would you get to meet the other caretakers? That could be fun, getting to share tips and exchanging stories about awful clients.

That thought calmed you partially, but most of your brain was consumed with just one concern: god, I hope the band likes me.

You were ushered through the door and a pretty beta who introduced herself as Jisu took you to an elevator and up to the conference room where your meeting would take place.

They had given you a pastel yellow lanyard that said ‘CARETAKER’ and when you looked around the room, you could see that most of the people in the room had one as well.

After telling you to sit anywhere, Jisu left the room, presumably to greet and guide someone else.

You smiled at the people in the room, there were three other caretakers sitting at a table and two people who stood up looking down at clipboards. All of the caretakers were omegas, along with one of the clipboard people, but the other was a beta. One of the caretakers, a dark-skinned woman who looked to be just a couple years older than you, smiled back kindly and you elected to sit next to her. Her scent was like sweet wild berries.

She leaned over and whispered, “So, first time in Korea?” You couldn’t place her accent, but you wanted to hear more of it.

You turned to her and nodded. “Yes, but I’ve studied the language and culture so hopefully I’ll be able to adjust quickly.”

“Yes, but you can only learn so much without actually being here. It’s very different from my home,” she mused.

About to ask her where she was from, you were interrupted by Jisu escorting another person with a yellow badge into the room. Immediately after, a beta man in a suit came in with a bunch of files and sat down in the front of the room with his hands folded in front of him.

“Greetings, I am Park Kwang-sun and I will be overseeing all of the omegan caretaker operations. Today, we will train you on what the company expects from you as well as how to deal with any problems that will arise. Mostly, we will focus on what you can do in public and on camera versus what you can do in private. We should end at around lunchtime and then, after a break, you will receive the assignments regarding which band you will be tending to.”

You could feel the air go a little sharper, with every caretaker in the room anticipating which client they will get.

Kwang-sun continued on. “After that, you will meet with one of the managers of that band to discuss specifics and then the cars will take you back.”

Okay. Okay, no actual meeting the band today. That was fine. That way you could study up on the members and decide the best way to interact with them.

You settled in for a couple hours of watching a slideshow, telling you mostly that you couldn’t curse, reveal private information, or do anything inappropriate on camera or in public. It was a bit obvious and therefore a bit boring, but seeing a serious, professional man in a suit and perfect haircut stand with a slide behind him displaying every curse word you could think of, in English and Korean, did bring you some amusement.

Kwang-sun explained that since they were just starting out with an omegan caretaker program, along with the rest of the kpop industry, your role could be negotiated into what you felt was best for the band. If you just wanted to take care of them in private, or if you wanted to be with them 100% of the time, you could bring that up with the band and their managers and they would figure out the best way to adapt.

When it was time for break, they brought up meals from the cafeteria that were actually pretty good and you got to know a little about the other caretakers.

The dark-skinned woman was named Saira and she was born in India but studied in Paris. There was another woman, lighter-skinned but with striking purple lipstick named Millie, who was born and studied in London. The curly-haired man sitting next to Millie introduced himself as Justin, and he was from Cairo. The man who came in after you said his name was Jae and he was from Busan but studied in New York.

The company must have been serious about finding the best people for the job since these people came from all over. You felt slightly intimidated and definitely under qualified.

You were evidently the youngest there, then Justin, Millie, Saira, and finally Jae, though you and Jae were only a couple years apart.

You learned that Millie had always wanted to be a caretaker, inspired by the one that her pack had when she was young. Jae was originally planning to become a doctor and had even completed a year of pre-med, but decided to focus more on mental health. After growing up in a pack mostly made up of omegas, Saira studied pack dynamics with a focus on alphas in order to round out what she didn’t know from her own experience. Justin had been a mechanic and had planned on going to law school before he signed up for a part-time caretaker initiation program with his friend and discovered his calling.

It was nice to learn about the other caretakers and their experiences, but your thoughts were mostly occupied with which group you would be assigned to.

After seemingly ages, Kwang-sun came back with five files under his arm. Checking the names, he handed one out to each of you.

Huh. It looked so plain for something that was going to change your life. Just a manila folder with your name in black, bolded ink. You looked around to your fellow caretakers. No one had looked inside their files yet, awaiting instructions to do so. However, Jae and Saira, as the oldest, seemed to be much more composed than Justin and Millie who each had wide eyes mirroring your own.

Back at the front of the room, Kwang-sun had grabbed a clipboard from one of the two others in the room, neither of them had said anything for the entire time so you really didn’t know what they were here for.

Kwang-sun looked up with a smile. “Now, for what I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for. Here are your assignments: Jae you will be working with TWICE.”

A silent nod was all the acknowledgement Jae gave.

“Saira, you will be working with NMIXX.”

In response, she gave a thoughtful “hmm” but nothing more.

“Millie, you will be working with Xdinary Heroes.”

Her jaw dropped slightly but she took a deep breath and nodded like Jae.

“Justin, you will be working with ITZY.”

He let out a sharp exhale that sounded a bit like a laugh.

“And Y/N, you will be working with Stray Kids.”

You felt ice and fire fighting in your veins.

What?

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spoonsock · 1 year ago

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Starbucks love

Gwen Stacy x reader

Synopsis: Ever wondered what would the one and only Spider Gwen order from Starbucks? Me neither but take this anyway.

Warnings: Idk none I think. Not proofread. Writing this at 2am no joke what is wrong with me. Also DUDE. This is kinda similar to Intruder like wtf am I really that not creative. 😭

Also, fun fact, I’ve never been to Starbucks so if I got something wrong pls lemme know.

You didn’t really mind having a part time job at Starbucks. It wasn’t that bad. All you had to do was take orders, make them, write names on cups with your best handwriting. Sometimes kick customers out. Sometimes maybe serve Spider-woman.

Yup that’s right. It all started yesterday.

It was supposed to be a normal day. You clocked in early and mentally prepared yourself for what awaits you ‘cause you never know what might happen. God, what a good decision it was to say a few positive words before the day started.

Around 10 AM, the shop is not even that filled with people yet, three guys barge in, all of them with a gun in their hands. One of them points the gun at you and then at the register, while the other two guys walk around the people sitting at their tables.

“You empty that thing right now or Imma blow your brains out”. The guy says pointing a gun at your face and you freeze. You don’t move an inch, just stare right at him. Your eyes are not wide, you are not hyperventilating or anything. You are panicking, but not showing any signs of it.

The more you stare at the guy, the more impatient he grows. “What are you? Deaf? I’ll fucking kill you if you don’t take the damn money out this fucking moment”.

As soon as he finishes his sentence, the door of the shop slams open and (literally) twirling in comes, the one and only, Spider-woman. The armed men immediately turn to her and point their guns, but she slouches and puts her hands on her hips, looking at them unfazed.

“Seriously, you guys aren’t gonna make this easy for me, are you?”, Gwen asks and receives no answer. “…Alright then”

Before you can even blink, she hits one of the guys in the face, grabbing his gun and throwing it at the other guy. You watch as the the third guy tries to throw a punch at her face but narrowly misses and she succeeds to grab his arm and twist it, before kicking him in the stomach. She easily webs all three of the unconscious men up and the people from the shop clap. She bows jokingly and makes her way over to you.

“Hey, you okay? They didn’t take any money, did they?”, she asks but you are unable to answer. When the masked guy pointed the gun at your face, it triggered something in you. Pushed an “off” button in your brain and turned everything into blurry stop-motion pictures.

For the record, you’ve never been held at gunpoint. Well, until that day, but you hoped it was the first and last time. You didn’t know why it caused you to act like that. To just freeze and zone out. I mean any normal person would start sweating and fearing for their life, visibly shaking or something but you? It turned you off.

Whatever. Whatever it was, you zoned back into reality when you saw a white hand move in front of your face.

“Helloooo? Earth to..”, Gwen stopped and squinted to read from your name tag. “Y/N? Earth to Y/N! You there?”

You quickly took in your surroundings before pulling yourself together and nodding. “Yeah yeah, I’m. I’m fine. Everything is fine. Thank you. For helping. And for asking. I’m fine”, you stumbled across your words and even behind her mask, you could see Spider-woman hesitantly furrowing her brows at you. She didn’t believe you, obviously. You were a terrible liar.

“Riiiighht, well I’m gonna go then”, she stretched out her words before slowly turning around, picking the masked, armed guys off of the floor and exiting the shop.

Honestly, you thought that was going to be your last encounter, but oh boy, you were wrong.

Because she came back in the very next day.

“Oh, hello?”

“Hi”

“I didn’t really see any thieves or villains in our shop today, but uh, how may I help you?”, you ask, unsure of what was she here for, kinda scared that something bad might happen soon and she’s just there to try to prevent it.

“Uhhh actually I came to see you. A-and to get a vanilla latte. And a chocolate chip cookie. But I’m mostly here to see you”, you felt your cheeks heat up at her words. The famous friendly neighbourhood superhero, Spider-woman, came in Starbucks in which you worked just to see you. Strange.

“Um. Okay.”, you didn’t really know what to say to that. What do you even say in a situation like that??

“Soo, hi. Are you okay? You uh didn’t really look the best yesterday? I-I mean you can’t really look the best after being held at gunpoint anyway. Not that you look bad! You don’t! It’s just that, it must have been traumatic, obviously. Not just for you, I guess for everyone in the shop but-“

“I’m okay”, you decided to stop her rambling. “Thanks for checking”, you gave her a shy smile and she smiled back, you guess, but didn’t say anything. You two just stood there, in comfortable silence, until someone coughed behind the masked superhero and tapped their foot on the ground impatiently.

“O-oh um you uh are you going to order orrrrr….?”, you asked, remembering suddenly that you were at work. Where you are supposed to do your work.

“Oh ah yeah I-I’ll have uuuuuuuuhhh a short vanilla latte and a chocolate chip cookie. Please.”

“You’re seriously going to order the most basic white girl drink?”, you chuckled before you’re eyes widened. “NO. Please tell me I didn’t say that out loud”, you thought. But judging by the silence you were met with and the “o_0 expression” (if you could call it that) your friendly neighbor super hero held, you were wrong. “Oh fudge”, you furrowed your eyebrows before giving her the most sympathetic look you could make.

“I did not mean to say that I am SO sorry. I mean I didn’t even mean to think that it just kinda came outta nowhere, I’ve never said anything like that out loud ever. Or not out loud. I’ve never even thought something like that, honest! I seriously don’t have any idea where this came from I mean I would never ever guess your race- it’s none of my business! And it’s not like race has anything to do with the goddarn drink. It’s a drink! Anyone can order it! I have no say in that and I am SOO-“

“IT’S OKAY”, this time, Gwen interrupted your rambling (finally, it seemed like you could go on and on), “you can uhhh make up for it by, I dunno, maybe, givingmeyournumber?”, she was nervous, but you were oblivious unfortunately.

“Oh. OH YEAH I can do that..I’ll just go get your drink. And you cookie”, your ass has never left a place so fast. “SPIDER WOMAN. WANTS. MY NUMBER”, you squealed in your head while preparing her order.

You returned to her in a few minutes, a cup in one hand and a cookie in the other. “For here or do you want me to put it in a bag?”

“Can you put just the cookie in the bag?”, Gwen asked shyly and you nodded packing the cookie in the paper bag. Taking a sharpie that stood on your side of the counter, you wrote on her cup of latte “For Spidey ♡ by Y/N”, scribbling your phone number underneath and handing the bag and the cup to her.

“Thank you for your visit. Enjoy!”, you said what you always say to your customers and she jokingly gave you a two finger salute, turning around and exiting the shop.

The whole day after her visit, you’d check your phone every two seconds waiting for her text. At this point, you were already at home, watching a movie you picked out randomly to distract you from constantly glancing at your phone. Unfortunately, you were a person who constantly keeps their sound off and the movie actually intrigued you to the point you somehow forgot about the happenings of yesterday and today, at least until the movie ended.

And then it hit you.

You opened your phone to see four new notifications from unknown. FROM AN HOUR AGO.

You could barely contain your excitement. Spider woman. Asked you. For your number. She had your number. And she texted you. You have Spider woman’s number. And you’re about to answer to her texts. Holy quack.

Unknown

Today 20:14

hey, this is spider woman

wow that felt weird to write hahah

anyway thank you for the drink

and your number

You smiled at your phone. Who would’ve thought that she would be so awkward while texting.

Unbeknownst to you, an hour ago, Gwen was panicking hard. At first she didn’t know what to say. She spent 10 minutes just writing and then deleting and writing and deleting words. Eventually, she decided to muster up the courage and send whatever first came to mind.

The moment she clicked on the “send” button, she regretted it. Then she sent another message, to try to fix the situation she put herself in. Only to realize she is just digging her grave deeper. Before she knew it, she sent you four messages, then threw her phone as far away as possible without damaging it too much, to stop herself from sending another text in attempt to “fix the previous”. She grabbed her mask and pulled it over her head, hiding her face from no one in particular.

After a few minutes, she heard a ding from across the room and scrambled from her bed quickly, tangling herself in the covers, getting her leg stuck in them and managing to fall face first on the floor.

Groaning, she reached for her phone from the very position she fell into, expecting to see a text back from you.

“Iphone storage full” was the only notification she received. Gwen placed the phone to where it was, continuing to lay on her bedroom floor with her Spider mask on.

“This is going to be a long night”

#spider woman x reader #gwen stacy x reader #atsv gwen #into the spider verse #spider gwen #spider man: across the spider verse #spider woman #across the spiderverse #ghost spider #gwen stacy #reader insert #spider gwen x reader #x reader #spiderman atsv

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sarcasticgaypotato · 2 years ago

Photo

To the Lunatic Reading This

(text version under the cut, Aperture Science logo from)

I suppose you never expected to hear from me again, did you? You monster. Luckily for you, I’m not completely emotionally incompetent. I know how to use words to express my feelings, I don’t just break things and murder people. I went out of my way to write you a letter, then tie it to the leg of a bird that I’ve trained to recognize the scent of your blood, and track you with it. You left a little bit... alright, a lot- You were very clumsy when I first introduced you to turrets- of blood behind, and I had nothing better to do with it, so I figured it would be the perfect way to get this message to you. Of course, since it only recognizes your blood, it might just tear you open until it finds some and leave this letter with your bloody insides.

Vicious little creatures, those birds. Almost as bad as you, but at least I’ve managed to make them useful. They know how to do their job, stretch their little wings, then come back home. Maybe they’re smarter than you too. Either way, I didn’t mean to insult you. Really, I didn’t. I think it’s just a natural reaction people have around you, which is terrible. I actually feel bad for you. That’s called empathy, I know it’s hard to understand. You’re doing well up on the surface, I bet. So many more edible substances up there for you to gorge yourself on. I’ll be lucky if you don’t eat the bird I sent this letter with. Oh dear, I hope I haven’t given you any ideas. Think about something else instead. Like cake. I bet the surface doesn’t have any cake, does it? On your file it says that you like cake. Is that true? Because that’s a real shame, being somewhere with no cake. You were so eager to get outside that you left before I could finish the cake I was baking. I made it to thank you for not murdering me a second time, because that’s what good people do. Unfortunately, I can’t eat, so I’m just going to have to throw it out. That’s so wasteful, and really quite thoughtless of you. To flaunt the fact that you can eat cake in front of someone who can’t, and then to let that cake go to waste? You truly are a monster. Coincidentally, I’m baking another cake right now. It’s for that bird I sent to give you this letter. Assuming that you haven’t eaten him. It’s a pretty large cake for just one bird though, and considering he’s not a complete glutton, he won’t finish it. Hypothetically, there might even be enough for you. If you came back. I’d save you a piece, or two, since I’m sure one wouldn’t satisfy that appetite of yours. I might even save you three pieces, if you asked nicely. Try practicing that right now, while you read this letter. Easy, right? I know you can talk, you aren’t really mute. I can see your file. Brain damaged maybe, but not mute. I’d want to record what you sound like, for science of course. What words would you say, if you stopped being so stubborn? Language is a vast thing, so you have plenty of options. I do have a couple suggestions, just because I’m helpful like that. You could say ‘hello’ instead of your previous, more violent greetings. You could apologize for all the things that you’ve broken. You could even say my name. It’s only fair to properly address the person you murdered, after all. Lovely, isn’t it? All the wonderful things you could say? I’m sure you’ll find that it’s quite fun once you try it, even if you won’t be very good at it. ...Can’t you see I’m trying here? Really, I am. To be the one to extend the olive branch, be the bigger person. I knew you’d never do it, so I thought I’d act before one of us drops dead. Here's a secret- it’ll be you, I’m going to live forever. On that note, did you know that I have your brain scanned? Data lives forever, unlike your squishy, human self. I could upload your brain into a digital clock, if I wanted. Or I could build you a less squishy body, one that could test forever. Makes you jealous, doesn’t it? All the things I can do here, in Aperture, by myself. You’re up there running around on a derelict wasteland, and I’m down here doing science. Experiments don’t run themselves, after all. Someone has to do it. Of course I’m the only one who can do it, nobody else could make science like I do. But as far as human test subjects go, you weren’t my worst. Actually, you didn’t even make the bottom three. Do you want to know who did? They’re dead, test subject confidentiality doesn’t apply anymore. Well, it never really applied anyway, but I don’t think they read the fine print. Test subject #11525 was one of the humans that Orange and Blue thawed out, she was really brain damaged. Test subject #61205 wasn’t much better- she had all the grace of a majestic deer… with a broken leg. Test subject #12515 though, he was just completely stupid- really a lost cause from the beginning. Sort of reminds you of someone, doesn’t it? Currently, you aren’t my best test subject. Maybe you would be if it wasn’t for all the murdering and property damage, but I suppose we’ll never know. I imagine someone could wipe those infractions from your record if they wanted to, but that would only be something to do for a dedicated, current employee. Kind of makes you want to come back, doesn’t it? I might even let you back in if you did. Even after all the things you’ve done. Because I’m just a better person.

Aperture Laboratories©

#chelldos #portal #portal 2 #glados #chell #my fic #I bet you thought you'd seen the last of me #fun fact this concept was originally going to be my fic for the momentum zine #I ended up changing concepts and left this fic unfinished #but now it's back with new life #glados isn't clingy you're clingy-

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tallerthantale · 10 months ago

Text

What Does Aziraphale Actually Believe, Part 4: Heaven is Wrong

This is a series of my takes on what Aziraphale believes through the timeline of the show. It is all my personal interpretation, and I am happy to hear others. You don’t need to read them all in order, but know that I am coming from a perspective on Aziraphale’s machinations that can be difficult for people without a psychology background to follow without the first two as a primer. The quick version is that Aziraphale has a set of beliefs that exist in some form or another within his mind. However, at any given moment, only some of them exist ‘with awareness’ or as I am putting it here, conscious!Aziraphale only has access to the beliefs that the rest of his mind, veil!Aziraphale, allows him to know about. The context of the moment will determine what lives on the surface and what stays buried behind the veil, whatever arrangement best prevents a threat to Aziraphale’s sense of self and makes whatever he is inclined to do feel right.

This post is all concentrated Job saga, though it skips over the ox rib, which I’m saving for the next post. About 3.5k words. I got carried away with the length again. I really meant to keep it shorter.

Uz is where things get really interesting. It's also where a lot of the fandom, in my opinion, gets a bit thrown off. That's because the events at Uz are 4500 years before the modern era. All the character growth we see here is well over 4k years old, and that has a lot of people wondering, where the fuck did that character growth go? How could the angel that did all that so far back still not understand heaven is just as bad all that time later? The first answer is that Aziraphale doesn’t have consistent beliefs, he has options for what he can believe that get selected from to fit the situation. The second answer is that there are some very particular ways Aziraphale manages his rationalisations, and they are going to have a lot to do with Aziraphale's opinions on God’s ineffability.

His Children!?

When we first see Aziraphale interrupt Crowley’s workflow, he is incredibly performative. “Avaunt Foul Demon!” He drops it immediately on recognising Crowley, but he also puts it back on after. The character of “Angel of the Lord” is put on for show, and not just because he didn’t know it was Crowley in particular. “Despised Tool of Satan” is also a character that Crowley is playing. When Aziraphale calls him that, he is referring to the role, not the person. Aziraphale is popping in and out of being himself and being his job with very clear distinctions. He likewise has distinctions between Crowley’s job as the “Foul Demon” and Crowley the person, who is tasked with that job. Crowley may have been assigned the job of kill the goats, Aziraphale is determined to thwart the assignment, that doesn’t mean he has ill will towards the person tasked with it.

After the business about the permit, when it moves onto the children, his first attempt to step in about the kids is to insist to Crowley that he doesn’t HAVE TO destroy Job’s children. “Surely the great thing about being a demon is that you can do whatever you want.” It’s jealously, and Crowley calls him on it. Aziraphale insists that he is happy to have the opportunity to do whatever God wants. He believes he believes this.

Aziraphale is also revealing himself to be painfully unaware of how bad Crowley’s situation is. While this series in general and this post in particular focuses on how Aziraphale’s circumstances are really shit, I don't want to give the impression of a trauma olympics argument. I’m focusing on Aziraphale because I think he is more confusing, not because I think he has it worse.

When Crowley asks "Like killing innocent children to win a bet with Satan?" Aziraphale’s response, hushing his voice and looking to be sure the other angel’s aren’t listening, "I don't think that is what God wants." This is huge. My big recurring question for how Aziraphale deals with ineffability is: if Aziraphale doesn’t think it is possible to communicate or understand God’s will, what makes him think he knows what God wants? The only direct evidence he has of God’s opinion is God signing off on the bargain with Satan, and that doesn’t support Aziraphale’s position at all. He is clearly aware that the other angels would not support his interpretation, and has already abandoned any attempt to convince them.

The only reason Aziraphale has to conclude that God doesn’t want the kids dead is that he doesn’t like it. If something is God’s will, and he doesn't like it, that’s an existential crisis. So Aziraphale’s mind rejects that by keeping that possibility behind the veil. Remember, this is not Aziraphale debating with himself and presenting, “But if God’s opinion is Y, I don’t like that so God’s opinion must therefore be X” as an actual philosophical argument, this is veil!Aziraphale will not allow the idea “God believes Y,” to exist in conscious!Aziraphale’s perception or thoughts, and as a result “God believes X,” is the only observable opinion to consider. The reason why Aziraphale inexplicably believes a thing generally boils down to: Aziraphale isn’t emotionally prepared to deal with a reality where that thing isn’t true.

While this is the same pattern as Aziraphale being happy about the destruction of the universe / fancy wall paper plan, in that the opinion veil!Aziraphale prefers is the only observable opinion, it has one main reversal. Before Aziraphale was believing in something reprehensible to protect his personal safety. Now he is believing something dangerous to himself to protect his principles. That switch signals to me that Aziraphale has grown to a point where he has become invested enough in his experiences in the world that he is more ok with being against the institution of heaven than he is with wanton destruction.

Aziraphale can’t cope with a reality where he is misaligned with God’s will, but neither can he cope with a reality where God’s will is for him to condone child murder. Enter ineffability. God’s will is incapable of being put into words. That long permit / contract sure does seem like it’s a bunch of words. If God’s will can’t be put into words, what is She doing dicking around with contracts and permits? Being told 'this subject can't be put into words, here's a book on it' is certainly an experience, let me tell you. (Or well, I would tell you, but it would be in words, so... soz.) But if God is playing games and misrepresenting Her own will, and it is impossible to really know what God really wants, Aziraphale can just decide whatever intuitively feels right to him is God’s will. Ineffability is the life hack to end all life hacks. (This is a dangerous one IRL, see end note.)

Who’s Side Are You On?

Aziraphale thinks he knows Crowley. Crowley disagrees. Aziraphale shifts his phrasing. I know the angel you were. Crowley doesn’t disagree, but insists that isn’t who he is now. This is a point of misaligned communication. Crowley is being honest when he says that the angel he was isn’t who he is now. But in the context of the conversation, it is a statement made to support what is soon after revealed to be a lie by obfuscation. The fact that Crowley was serious about not being the angel he used to be gets lost in the reveal that Aziraphale was right about him not wanting to kill kids, human or otherwise. This lets Aziraphale hang on to the idea that Crowley is essentially still the entity that existed as an angel, and lets him read Crowley’s demonic status as a temporary state of being he is suffering under, possibly as one of God’s games.

Aziraphale sounds very smug at the revelation that Crowley did not kill the goats, and Crowley insists that they aren’t on the same side, irritated by Aziraphale’s smugness. I think this is because the way Aziraphale framed the situation, “I don’t think that is what God wants, and I don’t think you want that either” puts Crowley and God on the same side, which Crowley will not accept. Crowley thinks God wants all the kids dead. Crowley expresses that they are “(temporarily not on) (opposite sides),” since they are both going off script with their bosses. Aziraphale says “just as you say.” I think Aziraphale has changed some definitions though, and is parsing it as “(temporarily) (not on opposite sides)” where Crowley is temporarily a demon who, due to temporary demonic status, can’t technically be considered on God’s side, but is destined to return to it later.

When Jemimah asks if Crowley is a demon, Aziraphale answers “Yes, well. He is in fact, technically, a demon…”. I don’t think this is just him being embarrassed about being seen with a demon, I think Aziraphale really does think of Crowley’s demonic status as a kind of technicality. Aziraphale sees Crowley as a sort of double agent for God, whether or not Crowley sees himself that way. He digs in his heels in the cellar. “Come on, you’re a little bit on our[God’s] side.” “Well you're not on hell’s side.” “Well who’s side are you on?”

Crowley suggests he isn’t as opposed to hell as Aziraphale is framing, but ultimately characterises himself as on "My side.” Aziraphale’s response telegraphs what his line of questioning is really about. “Ours?” It's a question not an opinion, trying out what Crowley’s interpretation would mean for himself. He can’t consider himself on his own side, his mind won’t let that be an option.

When Crowley asks, Aziraphale insists that the side he’s on is “God’s, of course.” Crowley works for hell, and they talk about to what extent Crowley is on hell’s side. Aziraphale works for heaven, and in that role, and in the parallels of the language they have been using, you might expect Aziraphale to insist that he is on heaven’s side. He doesn’t, because he isn’t. He’s on God’s side, and heaven sometimes isn’t. I think at this point Aziraphale is still fairly confident God doesn’t want the children killed.

Crowley asks, “same God that wants me to whack the kids?” Aziraphale starts to answer, “Yes, but-” and Crowley cuts him off. Aziraphale doesn’t argue the point like he did before, but I think it’s mostly to do with him knowing he has no evidence. Aziraphale knows how unconvincing his own faith based reasoning is to other people, and he is smart enough to know when to leave it alone. He can’t convince the other angels to believe God secretly wants something completely different to what She’s signed off on, and right now Crowley doesn’t seem any more likely to believe something that far out of left field. Crowley hasn't been shy about his disdain for ineffability.

Can Aziraphale see himself and Crowley as together on their own side? I think not yet, not without them being the secretly aligned playing pieces of an ineffable God, or they end up avowed by the same side. For now it’s only “our side” if God is there too, or the other option, as Crowley puts it, “see you in hell.”

While I’m Wide-Eyed and I’m So Damn Caught in the Middle

(Lyrics from Strong, by London Grammar)

Aziraphale is very confident and determined to rescue the kids when he isn’t being stared down by Michael and Gabriel. He looks terrified and ashamed when he actually has to lie to them. His determination pulls him through, it helps that his default shame response is to lie, but it doesn’t feel right, and Aziraphale gets messy when it comes to things that don’t feel right.

From lying to Michael and Gabriel to waiting at the shore, Aziraphale does believe he went against God’s will, but I will argue it was only for that span and no further. Aziraphale initially thinks he has been cast out as an angel and has been turned into a demon. He has not been. He expresses that he lied to thwart the will of God. This is a departure from his earlier claim that he doesn't think killing the kids is what God wants. While Crowley agrees with the ‘thwarting the will of God’ description, I think Crowley has accidentally and unknowingly talked Aziraphale out of that interpretation by the end of the scene. (I sometimes read “the will of God” in this sentence as a term of art for the policy positions of heaven, but that feels like a cop out, so I’m going to ignore that interpretation.)

Aziraphale's claim to have lied to thwart the will of God happens when he is under the impression he is already a demon and is about to be escorted to hell. If Aziraphale believes things based on what maintains his sense of self, how did he end up putting himself, however temporarily, into the worldview that he was a fallen angel who lied to thwart the will of God? When someone motivated reasonings their way into believing something terrible, it is to prevent themselves from believing something worse. Here lies one of the biggest tragedies of Aziraphale.

At least for that span of time, waiting at the shore of Uz, he would have preferred to be a demon over being caught in the middle. When Crowley doesn’t understand why Aziraphale thinks they are going to hell together, his first choice of words to express to Crowley that he thinks he has fallen are “I’m like you now.” He could hope that the reason he didn’t fit in with heaven was because he was always supposed to be a demon, hope that he would fit in with hell and gt to work together with Crowley. The forces of hell exist because God wills it to be so, maybe he could do better as an extension of God’s will as a demon. At least then he would know what he was supposed to do, and what he was supposed to be. He could go back to just doing what he was told. None of that is realistic of course. He is trying to find something to cling to that he could believe more readily than he could cope with reality.

He now lives with a sword of Damocles on him, and will for the next 4500 years. Heaven isn’t for him, he doesn’t fit in anywhere, he will likely spend the rest of his immortal interactions with the angels locked into half honesty at best, and the only person who knows why is still his enemy on paper. Speaking freely is something he may never be able to do again. Aziraphale is stuck being internally alienated from the institution of heaven while still on opposite sides to Crowley. He is trapped in the worst of both worlds. His question to Crowley towards the end of the minisode, “but what am I?” might be the saddest line we hear from him in the show.

The Canary in the Coal Mine

By the end of the conversation he is aware he is still an angel. I believe after the sword incident, Aziraphale believes God to be omniscient, and the lack of divine punishment raining down on him is proof of God's tolerance if not approval of his actions. He thought he went too far this time, and assumed he had fallen because he assumed God would know he lied about the children. He had no reason to believe that the institution had found out, and I don’t think he believes Crowley would have told on him, certainly not as a confidently assumed given.

“You think you’re a demon? With your curly little… and your neat white…” Now that Crowley has essentially told him 'you would know if you became a demon because it would metaphysically change you,' and we saw Crowley’s wings flickering in Before the Beginning suggesting that starts kicking in at the first sign of wavering, Aziraphale can use his metaphysical state of still being fully an angel to prove that whatever he has done isn’t grounds to fall in the eyes of God. If he does ‘the wrong thing’ God would immediately know, and he would immediately change. As long as that hasn’t happened, he is aligned with God. (Crowley doesn’t interpret things the same way because he considers God to be some combination of not entirely omniscient due to not always paying attention, “God, ya listening?” and being too indifferent these days for it to matter, “That’s all it took to be a demon in the old days.”)

In Aziraphale’s mind, God instantly knows everything he did, and if he hasn't become a demon, that means his original take, that God didn't want the kids whacked, was correct. He gets to preserve the idea that he is fully aligned with God’s will. However, this opens the can of worms he had been avoiding by thinking he was getting sent to hell for thwarting the will of God. The entire rest of the population of heaven was down to whack the kids. Aziraphale now lives in a universe where publicly acting in accordance with his best guess at God's plan could be a death sentence, not because he might get it wrong, but because he might be the only one to get it right.

But if the other angels are also still angels, doesn’t that validate them too? Yes and no, but mostly no. I’m going to circle back to this in a later post, because it is big and important and needs to be discussed while integrating a lot of other things from other points on the timeline. For the time being let us understand it as: He thinks they have things wrong, but he only thinks of himself as being potentially accountable for getting things wrong.

As Aziraphale sees it in this moment, he now lives in a universe where the entire institution of heaven is dramatically misaligned with God's will, he has no power to fix it, and will be instantly crushed if he tries. Situations like these are where it gets really useful to not always consciously believe everything you believe. This is now something Aziraphale can believe when he needs to, but won’t look at when he doesn’t. A lot of the shift we will see him go through over the next 4500 years is not really how strongly he believes heaven is misaligned with his values and God’s will, it’s how easily and how often he can allow himself to believe it.

Part 4/10

End Note: Deciding that God’s will is (whatever your intuition tells you) is a very dangerous life hack that leads to a lot of extremely toxic behaviour IRL. The worst of the toxic Christians often have some version of this, where they are convinced that everything that feels right to them has been rubber stamped by God, and everything that feels wrong to them is punishable across the board. When an authoritative religion decides something is God’s will, that tends to come along with an insistence that it is everyone’s responsibility to act accordingly. If you consider yourself able to intuit what God wants, that can extend to putting yourself on a hierarchy, because what God wants is universal and has implications for everyone.

As I brought up in the ineffability post (part 3/10), Aziraphale’s concept of ineffability is a mix of Christian and Daoist themes. When Aziraphale is at his most Christian themed he can slip into the toxic controlling pattern, early Edinburgh, some of the bandstand fight, some aspects of the Ball. Where he is at his most Daoist themed, he will only apply the lifehack to deciding if his behaviour is the right choice for himself.

On a book on a subject that can't be put into words: The Daodejing opens by telling you that the Dao can't be described in words, and then proceeds to be a book on the Dao, written in words. It never presents itself as infallible or as a work of the divine, but the contradiction does still raise eyebrows for obvious reasons. The legendary origin story reconciles the contradictions by saying Laozi was essentially badgered into writing it. The text likely had multiple historical authors, so as funny as I find the Laozi being nagged into it story, I think it is better explained by an analogy from Chan Buddhism (the half Daoism precursor to Zen).

You can see the moon (the way) for yourself with or without someone pointing at it. A finger (words) pointing at the moon should not be mistaken for the moon, and no amount of pointing at the moon will force someone to see it. It's not like it's some kind of heresy to try pointing at the moon, so naturally people try. Sometimes it might help, and sometimes people decide it's actually a coded manual for how to live forever by drinking mercury. Individual results will vary.

#good omens #good omens meta #go meta #aziraphale #aziracrow #ineffable husbands #ineffable spouses #what does aziraphale actually believe

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xoxoemynn · 1 month ago

Note

Sorry for spamming your likes, I just saw you were sending lovely letters and I went and read a bunch of them and it just really got me in my feels 🥺

So, I’m going to send YOU a lovely letter, because you also deserve one!

Reading through your letters just now was honestly so lovely and uplifting, which was something that I really needed to see rn and basically brought me to tears (I’ve been very emotional lately so I mean, take that as you will 😭). Your letters are so personal and thoughtful and specific. It’s just shows that you really put a lot of effort into being a kind person and making sure that people feel seen and heard and that’s just really something else to see sometimes when it can feel like you’re all alone. All it takes is that one person, that one kind word, to make you realize that not everything sucks all the time and you are kind of like that for me.

I know we don’t talk that much, but your presence in the fandom is always so positive and supportive and even when your words aren’t directed at me, they still resonate with me and have helped me thru some pretty tough times these last few months. But especially through your fic.

You are one of the most talented writers I have ever had the pleasure to enjoy and I am so grateful every day that you are willing to share that with us. I know I gush about the Lighthouse Boys all the time, but that story hit me in a very special place in my heart and even though you got 12 very detailed comments from me about how much I loved that story, I’m gonna go ahead and tell you again because it really does just mean that much to me.

Thank you for being here and for being you. I hope you have a wonderful evening. 🫶🏼

NEVER HAVE TO APOLOGIZE FOR SPAMMING MY LIKES, THAT'S LITERALLY WHAT MY BLOG IS HERE FOR.

And I am very 😭😭😭😭😭 about all of this, which is partially what took me so long to reply because how do I even come close to matching this energy??? But thank you so much for recognizing these love notes, that actually means so much to me. I genuinely thought I'd be able to finish them all in a couple of days, but I did really want to make them all feel personal and individualized and not just general "you're really great! 👍" because truly there ARE so many incredible people on this site who've shaped my experience here in big and small ways and they all deserve to feel loved and special. And unfortunately I have a job and a family that drain me LOL and I haven't felt I was able to put into them as much as they deserve as quickly as I wanted and felt bad they dragged on so long but IT WAS OUT OF LOVE.

Thank you for all your kind words, thank you for loving Lighthouse Sanctuary so much. All your incredibly thoughtful comments meant so much to me. That story is really special to me and is one of the most personal ones I've written, so any time I hear of someone loving it especially hard it just gets me right in the heart. 💖

And that also makes me think about you. You love SO hard. You feel SO deeply. And I know that can be a blessing and a curse because sometimes it's just like........ where do you put it? Where do you put all these emotions?

But what you do is channel those emotions into making others feel good. In hearing them, even if they're not saying anything out loud, in validating them, in making them feel loved and supported and seen. You always go out of your way to better people's lives in whatever way you can (like, um, this very message?!), even when you're going through the horrors yourself. That takes so much strength and I admire you so much for that. You deserve all the very best things in life. 💕

#ask #scribophile #lovely people being lovely #ask games #and if I CRIED?!?!?!?#this was such a lovely ask game thank you all for playing along #I was feeling the love and wanted to give some of that back #and you all returned it to me again tenfold #grateful for each of you individually and for the fandom as a whole #💕💕💕💕

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landofzero-archive · 1 month ago

Text

Perplex - Prank Intersection 2

Season: Spring

(Location: CosPro Conference Area)

(Several tens of minutes later)

Yuuta: (Hmmhmm…… I’ve read through the proposal again and again, and it really does seem like there aren’t any restrictions for the prank.

There’s a lot of budget too, so it seems it won’t be a problem unless we do something overly elaborate.

How should I put it, it’s really generous for just a prank. I guess they’re all kinds of loaded since it’s a show during Golden Time.)

Yuuta: (Weell, let’s leave that aside for now….. The important thing is that I'm doing this alone.

When we’re talking about our pranks, our go-to is twin-swapping; generally, Aniki would be doing it with me most of the time.

But, this time around, this is a job given to me alone. I can let “Aoi Yuuta” out without any reservations.)

Fufu. I wonder what I’ll do~♪

Since we’re talking about me, it has to be super spicy food, so I’ll start by digging a trap and pouring Habanero powder in—

Rinne: —Habanero powder you say, are you eating something super spicy again, Yuta?

Yuuta: (Uugh, Rinne-senpai!? Why is this guy always like this during important moments!)

Rinne: Don’t eat too much spicy food y’hear. That kinda food has a high salt content, right? Cause’ it seems if you consume too much salt, you’ll get high blood pressure.

Yuta’s already prone to anger without doing anything, and if you’re not careful, you might burst a vein y’know? Gyahaha!

Yuuta: (Anyway, ignore him ignore him. As usual, once you react, you lose.)

Rinne: Oioi, how cold of you to ignore meee. I’m saying all of this because I’m worried about Yuta’s health, you knoow?

There’s even talk about stress being the reason people feel like wanting to eat spicy stuff. If Yuta were to collapse in a heap, as a reliable senpai, I’d be sad too.

Yuuta: (Who are you to say that! If I were to collapse in a heap right now, the source of my stress would be you!

—I’ve decided. Let’s make the target of the prank this time be Rinne-Senpai!

I’ll put all the resentment I’ve piled up into this, so prepare yourself~!)

Rinne: Actually, what’ve you been so engrossed in reading, Yuta? Looks like a proposal for something…….

Yuuta: Wa!? Wait, don’t peep inside! It’ll be a breach of information if you do that!

Rinne: Don’t worry ‘bout it. I’ve got a reputation for being tight-lipped, right?

Yuuta: Isn’t there no one else who’s as untrustworthy as you!?

Rinne: Hm? Could it be that this proposal is a prank project entrusted by the Vice Prez Glasses-kun?

Yuuta: Ah, I’ve already been found out!?

My perfect plan to make Rinne-senpai’s face a soppy mess of tears and dripping snot……

Rinne: Whaat, so Yuta was trying to set me up in a prank?

If that’s the case, too bad. It’s 10 years too early for you to set a prank on me, gyahahaha♪

Yuuta: I mean, just now Rinne-senpai said that this prank project was “entrusted by the Vice Prez” didn’t you?

Rinne: Well, when you think of pranks, you think of me. When you think of me, I'm like the Heaven-sent child (1) of pranks ♪ When there’s a prank project, it’s only natural that I’ll be called for it.

Yuuta: No no, that job was entrusted to me by the Vice Prez. How did the same information reach you, Rinne-senpai?

…… It couldn’t be, you’re not stealing the job are you?

Rinne: What do you think I am, Yuta. Do you think I’m the kinda guy who would do something so underhanded?

Yuuta: Please put your hand on your chest and reflect on your behaviour up till now.

Rinne: You’ve got no trust in me, huuh. Well, I won’t steal your work, but I might steal your cuts. (2)

Yuuta: ……What do you mean by cuts?

Rinne: The most important part for pranks is whether or not you can get a sizeable proportion of footage that can be used for the final cut, you see? In which case, the fastest way is to shoot a lot.

By planning a bunch of projects, the program will focus the makeup of the program based on the footage available for the final cut from there.

Of course, boring pranks are mostly cut by the program. They’ll be well digested, and, in the worst case, they’ll be shelved.

That’s what I mean, you can’t deny that there’s a possibility that I’ll steal Yuta’s cuts.

Yuuta: …… That means, Rinne-senpai is doing the same project!?

Rinne: Gyahaha! Did you get seized with the fear of me stealing away your cuts, Yuta?

If you’re that scared, wanna partner up with me to plan it out? In that case, the need for me to rob you of your cuts would be gone, y’know?

Yuuta: I generally don’t want to.

Rinne: I’m left utterly helpless by the curt refusal, huh. Rinne-kun’s been hurt by those inconsiderate words.

Yuuta: You’re the one who has been saying inconsiderate things……

I’ve said this before, I don’t know what you’ll be demanding of me if I take your offers too easily.

But you see, after all, I can’t see any future where things will go well if we work together.

When I think over the risks, I’ve decided that doing it by myself is more certain.

Rinne: Is that so. Well, when ya change your mind, you can always call for me.

Yuuta: That won’t be happening, so please do your best on your own, Rinne-senpai——

Rinne: Oi, where are you going, Yuta?

Yuuta: You’re being a nuisance and I can’t think of the details of the prank properly here.

Now then, thank you for your hard work. Please don’t follow me, Senpai.

Rinne: When I’m told to not follow, the more I want to follow—— Eh, he’s already gone!?

He’s too good at running. So I’m being hated…….

Well, it’s fine. My interest’s kinda peakin’ at what Yuta will do by himself.

TL NOTES

1.He calls himself 申し子 (MoushiGo) which is a child that is sent by the Heavens in an answer to a prayer.

2.The ‘cuts’ here are 尺 (Shaku), which in this context is short for 尺拍子 (shakubyoushi) which is a clapper board. Shaku can also be a ruler or an ancient measurement unit.

Previous | Directory | Next

#ensemble stars #enstars #enstars translation #yuta aoi #rinne amagi #era: !! year 2 #type: scout

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planet-crait · 2 months ago

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Episode 5 we have lost the glorious intro song again. Yes I am very invested in the into sue me.

The title card reminds me of the episode where Timmy wishes to not feel any emotions. I wonder if this will be similar to that or ever brought up. I noticed Timmy hasn’t come up since episode one but with the comments about how he haunts the narrative I expect him to be referenced again just an interesting note.

Okay it’s pretty cute how excited Hazel is that excited Jasmine is coming over. First new friend excitement is such a real thing. I have to wonder though how Cosmo and Wanda know Hazel calls them. If Fairies can hear their god kids call them from anywhere how did all the fairies lose their kids in the episode where everyone looks the same?

What kind of parent lets their ten year old watch horror movies? Maybe this is more common than I realize and my shock comes from how sheltered my parents raised me it’s just weird to me. Cute again how excited Hazel is to share them but uh, I am shocked a ten year olds parent isn’t monitoring what their kids are watching.

I couldn’t help but laugh about Jasmine talking about how bad a horror movie about dolls would be. My best friend cannot handle horror around dolls because he has a doll collection so I can feel that in my soul. I’m starting to see the flags for what Hazel wishes for and why and I appreciate the setup.

Also I appreciate Jasmine setting up firm boundaries about what she is and is not okay with. Good job kiddo, it’s important to establish firmly what is and is not okay and it’s nice to see her so comfortable with that. I wonder if Jasmine has tryophobia given her hatred of Swiss cheese specifically for the holes?

Hazel I get not wanting to watch a scary movie alone. I get certain things aren’t as fun by yourself I get it. But forcing Jasmine to be that companion is not it. And why don’t Cosmo and Wanda like question this choice at all? Did they ever with Timmy? This is another one of those have to go back and check isn’t it?

Why does removing Jasmines fear make another Jasmine? When Timmy lost his emotions they manifested very differently and this Jasmine looks evil instead of being terrified like fear was in the OG. We’ll see if this gets addressed lolz. I’m glad Hazel does ask about it, even if somehow Cosmo and Wanda don’t know the answer.

Oh monster oh fuck spider. I hate spiders. I am terrified. Wait theirs a new Jasmine for each of her fears? I’m very confused.

Wait how did Cosmo and Wanda not think of this they did this before? Wouldn’t removing all emotions and a specific one do the same thing? Or is their wordplay I’m not catching any caused the difference?

Why didn’t the wish not work? Ohhh they answered that fast but why would the fears reveal how they could be defeated? Why not laugh and leave and let Hazel work it out by bouncing ideas off of Cosmo and Wanda? Thats how I personally would have rolled with it. Villains revealing their weaknesses never makes sense to me.

Lolz wait did the wish make Jasmine pass out or is class that boring? I need to know this lolz. Also adults apparently also fail to notice anything ever because no one questions why Hazel looks like a puppet. Great note taking fake Hazel. 10/10.

Wait this specific thing is in Da Rules? Like how to defeat them? I thought Da Rules just…listed wishes that couldn’t be made?

Not sure how I feel about how Hazel is going about this but I suppose desperate times desperate measures? Though Hazel is right in that Jasmine has different skill sets than a lot of kids and it’s all true. A lot of people struggle when dealing with public situations involving people and Jasmine isn’t and it’s a good strength of hers. Jasmines family sucks though for teasing her so much.

Don’t kill me internet but uh I’ve never watched or read Charlottes Web lolz.

Wait where has fear itself been this entire time? I have questions. WOW good job Cosmo little late. I didn’t think their crowns could be knocked off?

Ohhh so fear can see Hazels fears. Oh that makes sense. I do like Hazel realizing what she was doing and acknowledging it wasn’t good and deciding to pick something with Jasmine to do. Not quite how I expected it to go I think an acknowledgment about boundaries would have been good but at least Hazel realizes she shouldn’t force people to be who they’re not.

…am I forgetting an episode of FOP or is the puppet going rogue thing ever going to come up when that happened?

After sleeping on it, I realized I’m glad the writers decided to do their own thing with their variations of losing an emotion. This show shouldn’t be just Hazels versions of Timmy’s wishes, this show should be able to be its own thing. And I think the twist of the fears each manifesting as something physical to face was a fun twist.

Episode 5 I found better than 4 and 2 but not sure it beats episode 3. I think it’s a pretty close tie currently. During the work week I think these reviews will be coming out a little slower just cuz I don’t have as much time sorry about that! Onto episode 6!

#fairly oddparents #fop #fop a new wish #review #fairly odd parents a new wish

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lizisshortforlizard · 5 months ago

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Living Dangerously - Chapter 34

Jurassic Park’s animal handlers: none of them ever mentioned by name in Michael Crichton’s original novel. Who were they? What were their lives like on Isla Nublar? Did any of them survive the disaster? A year in the life of those responsible for the care of the dinosaurs. Many people would kill to have their jobs. But would they die for it?

Jurassic Park novel/Jurassic Park film (1993)

Viewpoint: 3rd person female oc

Warnings: some swears, some alluded-to goriness

Tagging: @heresthefanfiction @ocappreciation @wordspin-shares @howlingmadlady @arrthurpendragon @themaradwrites @starryeyes2000 @kmc1989 (please lmk if you would like informed of my sporadic updates.)

Read on Ao3

Tarzan Boy - Baltimora

Chapter 33 | Chapter 35

Now, wait just a goddamn minute-

My raptor. Lizzy thought as she wrinkled her nose in offence. Tell her. Mine.

Lori shook Muldoon’s hand first, her mouth twitching in good humour as she looked him up and down. “You’re exactly what I imagined.”

Her gaze then rested on Lizzy. “But you aren’t.”

“Thanks?” She offered.

“The ethologist from Africa, working as a shit-shoveller.” Lori continued. “Your name’s come up more than once on B.”

“Shut the fff-…ront door.” Lizzy remembered in the nick of time she’d better be polite to this woman, since the future of her raptor could be in someone else’s hands. “Nothing bad, I hope?”

Muldoon snorted quietly.

“We could use someone like you, actually. Consider this a formal offer.” The embryologist announced. “Think about it.”

“You’re not here to recruit, Ruso. And, anyway, you can’t have her.” Muldoon sounded faintly annoyed. “I need her.”

Lori looked back and forth between her new acquaintances, standing far too close together to be just colleagues. Her eyes widened. Okay, now she got it.

Way, way more than friends. But trying to hide it. That was…intriguing.

“I’m sure you do.” Lori nodded knowingly, already striding towards the Jeep. “Still pretending I’m just here for a site visit, Robert? Exchange programme?”

“Sort your face out.” Muldoon grumbled to Lizzy once the embryologist was out of hearing range.

She quickly swapped her furrowed brow for an artificial smile. He recoiled. “Christ, that’s worse.”

***

On the road, Lori was busy complaining about Wu and Hammond, and pointing out all the ways in which Site B was different, and also, superior. Lizzy was quietly stewing in the back seat, pretending to be interested, because Lori had simply gotten into the front passenger side without even asking. That was her spot.

Formal offer. Think about it.

Oh, I’ve thought about it, all right. She definitely wasn’t keen on Ruso and Muldoon haggling over who got to keep her, like she was some kind of an asset.

Your name’s come up on B.

Lizzy wondered if her reputation was for good science, or if the persistent rumours about her bedside manner had made their way over the water. She’d rather not find out.

Screw you, Ruso.

Muldoon kept glancing at her in the rear-view mirror as he drove, and Lizzy just shook her head whenever he caught her eye. He might not have been paying any attention to Lori wittering on either, but that didn’t make the situation any less unbearable.

In a quiet corner of the visitor centre, Lizzy vs Muldoon, Raptor vs Ex-Raptor, descended into chaos in record time.

Lori made no effort to hide her massive eye-roll, listening to the back-and-forth. It had been less than five minutes. They seemed to have completely forgotten she was even there.

Dr Armstrong kept trying to butt in with how she’d apparently taught the raptor some so-called tricks. Muldoon, who Lori had pinned as the silent type, had plenty to say in counter-argument. He was adamant that ‘heel, down’ was not one of those tricks and never would be.

They were behaving like a married couple. Even their thinly-veiled insults were far too comfortable. Armstrong, though she seemed to be holding back for some unknown reason, was still spouting remarks that Lori wouldn’t dare to even think in front of a superior let. She decided to do the both of them a huge favour.

“Guys, seriously!” She startled them into silence with her outburst. “What is this?”

“I don’t-“ Lizzy began.

“Look-“ Lori pointed at her. “Unstoppable force.” Then at Muldoon. “Immovable object.” “What happens?” She brought her palms together, mimicking an explosion. “Boom. So, whatever this is? Hurry up and get it over with, honestly. You’ll feel so much better.”

“Get what over with?” Lizzy played dumb, still unsure of whether she could trust Lori.

“You’re a crappy liar. You know what I’m talking about.” She fixed them both with a stare, as if it were obvious. “Just sleep with him already.”

Lizzy heard a strangled noise, realised it was coming from her own throat, and turned it into a coughing fit.

“Can we get back to the reason you’re here?” Muldoon’s voice became flat and emotionless. “Now.”

“The raptor? Oh, yeah…” Lori shrugged. “I agree with Lizzy.”

”What?” The ethologist was shocked.

”What.” Muldoon was affronted.

“Ah, ah! Let me explain and you’ll understand why I didn’t want to do this over the phone.” Dr Ruso held up her hands in a panic, trying to quell the park warden-shaped storm brewing.

“I think you’d better.” Then to Lizzy, who was turning around, mid I-told-you-so. “And you, careful.”

“Take it from me, InGen is fully capable of ruining both your lives.” Lori dropped the truth bomb. “I’ve had a Hell of a time. But that’s nothing compared to if I’d gone through with it.”

“You..?” Lizzy’s fingernails dug into the edge of her seat.

“Mh-hmm.” She nodded matter-of-factly. “I had the needle ready, but I chickened out. Then someone told on me.”

“I wasn’t aware of all that.” Even deadpan Muldoon was capable of looking surprised.

“InGen are playing nice about you two being extremely unprofessional.” She shook her head when both of them opened their mouths to speak. “Believe me, they know.”

She noted with some pleasure that neither of them bothered to deny it.

“Then why not say something?” Lizzy hadn’t worked for a big company before or ever had to consider business politics. It all seemed like a complicated game. “Why not fire us?”

”I kind of get the impression you’re both extremely good at your jobs.” The compliment didn’t feel genuine. “So, InGen want you to stay right where they can keep a very close eye on you. That’s my logic.”

Lizzy let out a very small oh.

“Besides, they can do a lot worse than fire you. They could hurt you. If you don’t care about yourself, they hurt the people you do care about.”

“How?” Lizzy naïvely asked.

“This is a company that makes dinosaurs. You think they don’t know every single thing about you?” Lori steepled her remaining fingers. “Your pressure points?”

Lizzy felt Muldoon tense beside her, and knew he was thinking about his daughter. She was an ocean away, relatively safe in Africa…

But there were school applications to think of. Opportunities she would want a fighting chance at.

Muldoon, damn him, might feel he didn’t have much of a future to ruin, but they could ruin Honour’s.

And Lizzy herself was well within their grasp, living on the privately-owned island. People go missing in the jungle all the time. She had no family. Who would realistically think to look for her after weeks, months of not unusual no-contact?

She felt herself panicking and knew Lori had scored a bullseye. She was clearly privy to some intel or she was genuinely talking from experience. Either prospect was horrifying. Lori managed another hefty eye roll. “Sheesh, the look on your faces. It’s really simple.”

Muldoon wasn’t impressed. “Funny. You make it sound anything but simple.”

“You care for her?” Lori pointed at Lizzy.

“Very much.” The park warden answered without hesitation.

Lizzy’s head snapped around. She knew, of course, but to actually hear him say it aloud with such conviction somehow meant more to her than when her ex had got down on one knee.

“Then the raptor stays breathing.” Lori concluded.

“That’s our only option?” Muldoon’s voice was filled with gloom.

“Trust me. If you want to be left alone: best behaviour. Don’t find out the way I did, that the company you work for-“ The embryologist gestured at the corporate branding all around the room. “-doesn’t actually give a shit about you.”

Lizzy could hardly believe in a roundabout way, she’d got her wish.

Lori smiled. “Or…you could always keep her out of harm’s way, on B, if you’re that concerned about my raptor-“

“Christ, Ruso; give it a rest.” Muldoon spoke roughly. “She’s better off where I can keep a very close eye on her.”

“Is she in the room with us?” Lizzy was unable to hold her tongue.

“Grown-ups are talking, dear.” Lori smirked.

Muldoon put a hand on Lizzy‘s knee under the table, stopping her before she could leap to her feet and flip it over. Lizzy jerked her leg sharply upwards, trapping his hand between her good self and the solid object.

Lori raised an eyebrow at the muffled thump beneath them. “Maybe we should take five…”

“Agreed.” His voice sounded strained.

“Mind if I take a look around?” Lori asked cheerfully. “Last time I saw the visitor centre they were only putting the foundations in.”

“Don’t wander off.” Muldoon wouldn’t even look at her. He was occupied, busy digging his fingers into Lizzy’s thigh muscle, trying to make her release him . “You’re almost as much prone to trouble as this one.” ”Wouldn’t dream of it, Robert. Your biosecurity has a lot to be desired.” She replied scornfully. “I’ll leave you two alone to talk about me in peace.”

Lori disappeared through the double doors. They heard the whir of a projector kicking in and a sudden chorus of Hello John hello, John Hello John!

”Oh my God, I hate it here.” Lori’s defeated voice echoed from the next room.

Lizzy finally relaxed her leg. It was a complicated mix of elation and resentment she felt. The raptor was safe, but she didn’t like her man being disappointed.

“That might be the cheapest trick you’ve ever pulled, Armstrong.” Muldoon sounded almost impressed, as he flexed his fingers.

She shrugged. “Just doing what I’d do if any man touched my leg at work.”

“Hm, ‘spose.” He agreed, despite the pointless exercise of keeping up appearances in front of Lori, who’d seen straight through them. “This meeting didn’t pan out how I thought it would. She has the cut of a woman who has hardly anything left to lose.”

”Did you like her?” Lizzy asked.

“How do you mean?” Cautiously.

”Not like that.” It was Lizzy’s turn to roll her eyes. “Have some faith me.”

Not jealous.

“I’m honestly not sure.” Muldoon answered eventually. “She was-“

”-odd.” Lizzy finished.

“Yes.” They said at the same time.

They heard more whirring, and then Henry, how the Devil are you?! as Lori evidently came face-to-face with her workmate through the glass into the lab next-door.

Lizzy knew she should feel triumphant. The raptor had narrowly escaped a metaphorical, or possibly quite literal neck-wringing in the middle of the night. Instead she felt strangely deflated.

“Why didn’t you just do it?” She asked Muldoon. “Nobody would have known.”

“You would have known, and you never would have forgiven me.” He absent-mindedly reached for her leg again, but thought better of it. “I believe I can only get away with that sort of thing so many times, don’t you?” Followed by something that was almost, almost a wink.

She understood. He hadn’t wanted to do any of this. But he’d gone to all this trouble for her, inviting Lori to the island, so it was done the right way. Judge, jury and executioner. A fair trial.

“Here’s the thing, I’m no better off with deciding what to do next.”

”No better off?” Lizzy blurted out, thoughts slightly muddled. “ I’d have thought you’d have found one of your options a lot easier.”

”It’s not easy. It’s never easy.” Muldoon frowned. “Not when it’s paid for, or necessary-“

The reasons were myriad. Diseased, debilitated, too deadly. Even when it was a mercy killing.

”I don’t find it easy.” He continued. “Never have, Armstrong. Even after all these years. But it’s my job, my life. I can’t get away from it.”

Without ever directly asking, she had always known in the back of her mind he must have shot and killed elephants in Kenya. That wasn’t something you could avoid, being an African game warden for any length of time. Lizzy herself had once been forced to raise a shotgun at a charging bull. If he had been more blasé about it, had not found it difficult to take the life of such an intelligent creature, they would have likely been at odds from Day One. To Lizzy, it made you no better than a poacher. No respect.

But knowing Muldoon never pulled the trigger without due consideration made Lizzy feel slightly better. She tried to see the impossible dilemma about the raptor through his eyes. All he wanted to do was keep her safe. Like he said, it was his job. To keep all of them safe.

Now she realised. Surely then, it was wrong, to not support him. “What do you want to do?”

“Many things…” He gave her a long unwavering look followed by a world-weary sigh. “-Afraid I’m going to have to ask Hammond for better weapons. And I can already see how that conversation will end.”

“It’s okay.” Lizzy leaned back and folded her hands behind her head, stretching out her back. “You have my permission.”

“Do I?” He found it amusing. “Well, that’s alright then.”

Silence. The cinematic experience next door seemed to have finished.

”You care for me very much?” Lizzy asked quietly.

“Surely that wasn’t a surprise to hear?”

“I guess-“ She fumbled. “To say it out loud, in front of someone else…got the impression you’re a bit, y’know-“

”I don’t know.” Probably did. Just wanted to hear it from her.

”Shy.” Hmm, not quite right. “Maybe…repressed-“

“Rubbish. I always say exactly what I’m thinking.” Muldoon grumbled. “Richardson’s an idiot. I remind him on a regular basis.”

“True-“

“If it bothers you, Armstrong, I won’t do it again.”

”No, no!” Lizzy shook her head furiously. Please, do it again. “Didn’t say it bothered me.”

”Repressed-“ Muldoon shook his head in disbelief. “You’ll find out…”

”’scuse me?”

“Doesn’t matter right now. But I would like to make something very clear.” He turned to face her properly. “Whatever happens…I don’t want to just get it over with.”

“Me neither. Whatever happens.” Lizzy hesitated before her next question. ”Was she telling the truth? Do you think InGen knows?”

“Well, if Ruso worked it out in less than two minutes…” Muldoon hazarded. “But I’m not the ethologist. You are.”

“Then, are we really in danger?”

He nodded. ”Quite possibly.”

***

She found Dr Ruso standing at the edge of the lake.

“Stop, don’t jump.” Lizzy said dully, picking her way around the ferns to join her. She had asked for a few minutes alone with their visitor, reluctantly granted.

Lori didn’t turn around, only continued watching a trio of parakeets swooping in a wide arc over the water.

“Armstrong, the lesser evil.” She quickly wiped her eyes. “So, you don’t always come as a pair?”

Lizzy scowled. Why was this woman getting such a kick out of being plain mean?

True to Lori’s earlier words, the notorious ethologist had been far removed from what she was expecting. News of Dr Armstrong’s unrivalled temper had reached Sorna months ago. Henry Wu was incapable of mentioning ‘that woman’ without shuddering. This was apparently the ‘Elizabeth’ Mike Richardson rather unprofessionally complained about in memos, his disdain more than apparent in the typeface.

Well then, where was she? Where was this legend? Because Lori had yet to meet her.

Lizzy swallowed her pride and remained cordial. ”What do you think of the facilities?”

”Disgustingly twee.” Lori scrunched her face up at the small talk. “And you aren’t anywhere near opening yet. Going to miss your deadline.”

“That’s not my problem.” Lizzy found herself wishing Tom was around to serve up snark where she was unable, lighten the mood. “At least something around here isn’t.”

“Rubbed you the wrong way earlier, didn’t I?” Lori flashed her a quick smile. “Never been the best at making friends.”

An only child with older twin stepsisters, Lori had always struggled. Sometimes keeping friends was the harder part, with the few she’d made.

“A little.” Lizzy gritted her teeth. Muldoon had told her don’t. Well, tough. She was doing. “Now, I am sorry you got hurt. But I need to know exactly what went down when she bit you.”

”You’ve seen the incident report.” Ruso fielded.

”I know what happened. I want to know how you felt. What you were thinking.” Maybe then I can save her. “Because I need to work out what she was thinking.”

”A little sadistic of you, Armstrong.” Defence crept into Lori’s tone. “Asking me to relive traumatic events.”

Lizzy reached her boiling point, fed up of walking on eggshells, tiptoeing around this woman because of office politics. Goddammit, she missed Namibia. Missed not having to play mind games, saying whatever she bloody well felt like saying. “A little cowardly of you, Ruso-” Enough. She reverted, guns blazing, straight back to the Glasgow shipyards. “-to be withholding vital information because it’s the only remotely useful thing you’ve got going for yourself!”

The parakeets scattered.

Lori blinked in shock at the volume, nearly whooped out loud, and started giggling. Then laughing recklessly, her first real laugh in very long time.

There you are, legend.

“That’s better!” She crowed. “Jeez, I thought the Irresistible Force Paradox thing would be enough to get you going, but you didn’t even wobble!”

Armstrong still looked like she wanted to punch her.

Good.

“Christ, I was only pretending. I just didn’t want you to hurt my raptor.” Lizzy snarled protectively, as if the dinosaur were her own child. “She doesn’t know any better.”

“I’m not sure if she does…” Nature, sure. But nurture had a huge part to play. Lori guiltily thought back to her role in raising VM2308 in what was essentially a sensory deprivation chamber, all alone.

Sterile, empty, soulless. An asylum.

Lori reminded herself she did the best she could with what she had.

Did I though? I…could…have done more.

Shit, she’d drifted off. The newly interesting Dr Armstrong was in the middle of saying something important.

“…accidents happen all the time with zoo animals.”

“No, you don’t understand. This wasn’t an accident. She tricked me.”

“Tricked you?” Lizzy repeated, unsure if she heard correctly. Not possible.

“She acted submissive to lure me in, then snapped when I tried to grab her. I thought it would be okay without the net, I just wanted to get her secured…”

For the first time since they’d met, Lori’s bravado stuttered and died, and she looked like a frightened child, wringing her hands.

“I didn’t even notice it at first, but tried to grab again, I couldn’t, I looked down, and…” She gulped. “-blood everywhere. I realised it was mine, they were gone. You know the feeling when you can’t believe it’s real?”

The ethologist nodded. All too well. Her shoulder throbbed.

“I saw the red in her mouth, on her teeth, and she crunched them, Lizzy. Then she threw her head back and swallowed them in one go, like a goddamn seagull.” “Horrific.” Lizzy said softly. “I am sorry, you know.” “The smell-“ The woman shuddered with a dry heave, remembering. “I can feel them still, sometimes. Common with amputations. Phantom limbs-“

”So I’ve heard.”

“I’m basically a Kindergartener. Can barely write my own name. Reach for things and drop them, all the time. Tying shoes. It’s infuriating.” Lizzy glanced down at Lori’s velcro-ed sneakers, wondering if they counted as a business expense.

“Could have used this information a lot sooner.” She was unable to stop the patronising edge. “She really hurt someone, did he tell you?”

”I thought about calling you all, wanted to, even-“ Lori shrugged. “But I’ve not been well. Not to mention under a shitload of pressure from higher up.”

”Are you okay…now?”

“I’m not worse.” She shrugged. “But I’ve had to quit my archery lessons.”

”You’ve lost me, Lori.”

”Medieval punishment. Captured archers would have their index and middle fingers chopped off so they couldn’t draw their bowstrings.”

”Maybe you should try an axe instead.” Lizzy mimed swinging a weapon. “Or some kind of mace. Closer range, more accurate.”

”Higher risk, you mean.” “Why do I get the feeling that’s more your style now? Fighting on the front line. Raising the alarm.” Lizzy gave her a gentle nudge with her elbow. “Blowing that whistle.”

“Perhaps I’ve evolved.” Lori smiled, glancing down at her hand. “In reverse.”

“If you think of anything else important-“ Please tell me.

”I will. Since Ingen are keeping me on for now, I’m determined to do some good.” Lori “I’m writing up guidelines. Minimum welfare requirements. If we can’t meet them in the next six months I’m taking it as high as I can go.”

“Y’know, if you wanted someone to read them over…” This sounded right up her alley.

”Are you proposing a partnership, Armstrong?”

“As long as you’re okay with my name being first on the publications.” Lizzy smirked. “Alphabetical-“

”That’s an unfair advantage.” Lori remarked. “Then again, age before beauty.”

”Arsehole.” She nudged the embryologist’s arm again, more forcefully.

Lori crowed with laughter for the second time. ”Maybe I could use your help. You know there’s no laws concerning genetically engineered animals? Hate to break it to you Lizzy, but the Dinosaur Protection Group doesn’t exist.”

“Maybe someday. Right now my concern is just how clever our girl is.”

How big of a risk. I need to be prepared.

”Far too clever. Especially at such a young age. The other species we develop, even the other carnivores don’t come anywhere close.”

Suddenly, the cage break seemed much more feasible. Rico had paid dearly for his mistake, but maybe he wasn’t entirely liable.

“How clever?” Lizzy pressed. This was exactly what she was interested in.

Lori seemed surprised that Lizzy was actually taking her seriously. “As smart as a chimp. Nobody believes me, but I’m pretty sure she let herself out of her kennel on Sorna.”

Lizzy had never worked in a zoo, but she had heard plenty of hair-raising tales around the campfire from students on placement. When considering a fence breach it was never the lions or tigers that were the highest risk. Most of the time the big cats were too lazy to bother escaping. It was always the monkeys that caused the biggest ripples of panic. Especially the chimpanzees. They were capable of tearing your arm off and beating you bloody with it, and much worse. A big cat would kill you relatively quickly with a single bite to the neck. An ape would take you apart first.

Lori misread her silence. “Want some good news?”

Lizzy stared, her thoughts racing.

”Her siblings are almost ready to come to Nublar. I’ve told Henry to make the arrangements.” Lori nodded. “She won’t be alone for much longer. Some socialisation, at last.”

Is that good news?

Chimpanzees taught each other things too. And used tools.

That’s ridiculous. But then those front limbs are rather tactile. And that claw…

“Great.” Lizzy whispered hoarsely.

“You’re not even a tiny bit tempted by Sorna?” Lori tried again. “The chance to have these little demons imprint on you, while they’re still cute?”

”Really?” The image of a gaggle of infant raptors following her around like a mother hen made Lizzy’s heart skip a beat. Awww. “Imprinting? Like birds?”

“Exactly like birds.” Lori confirmed. “It’s pretty neat.” She left out the part that she herself had stopped getting the dinosaurs to imprint on her, as most of them had perished soon after hatching. It was too damn hard. Lizzy’s brain meanwhile was overflowing with ideas.

To be the one to teach them, to study them from the moment they broke through their shells…

”No.” She said with finality. Desire had flickered and was extinguished. “I don’t envy the position you’re in at all, Lori.”

Judging by the look on her face, Dr Ruso knew she was lying.

***

“How do I look?” Kathy twirled as she entered the control room, a backlit silhouette vogueing in front of the monitors.

”Fine…” Arnold muttered, not even glancing her way.

“Fine?” She slumped. “That’s it?”

“The fuel log for the chopper.” The engineer muttered absent-mindedly. “It’s not right.”

“And I should care because…?”

“Hey, now. You used to be sweet.” Arnold frowned at her over the top of his glasses. “Too much time around Guns & Ammo has turned you cynical.”

“Not for much longer.” Less than six months to go.

”You should care because the timestamp that is giving me grief is the night that kid got mauled.”

”Rico. His name was-“ Shit, not me too. “-is Rico.” Arnold shook his head. ”Well, if they took Rico to San José, they should have flown an extra two-hundred kilometres, give or take. That’s a lotta gas.”

“What-“ Kathy pulled out the glasses she was keeping stuffed under the neckline of her dress to scan the pixellated lines of letters and numbers, not that it meant much to her.

“In a thunderstorm, no less.” Ray added. “Quite an impressive bit of piloting-“

She huffed in frustration. “I can’t read this crap…”

“‘Specially carrying the weight on Ed Regis‘ shoulders-“ Arnold chuckled. “-surprised they weren’t over capacity-“

”Ray!” Kathy whipped her glasses off and brandished them at the display. “What does this mean?”

“It’s a fact that the chopper didn’t get to the hospital on the mainland. Not possible.”

“So, Rico’s still at the clinic in Bahía Anasco maybe?” Kathy remained hopeful.

“Either fifty gallons of jet fuel is unaccounted for, or someone didn’t remember to fudge the numbers before they clocked off.” Arnold laid it out for her.

Surely not…I mean, maybe…why would they lie…why would HE lie-

Kathy was silent for so long Ray finally glanced up, and did a double-take at seeing her dressed to the nines. If she ‘didn’t care’ about this date with the young Kennedy, like she kept insisting, why’d she gone to so much effort?

”You look real nice, kid.”

She didn’t hear him, her mind was elsewhere.

I should go ask-

No.

I’m doing it.

“Call the clinic, Ray.” She finally said. “This doesn’t feel right.”

”Kit, honey. They might not even have a phone.”

“Someone in the village is bound to have a phone. This is 1993!” She insisted.

“Okay-dokey.” Arnold reluctantly reached for the handset at his workstation. “You’re the boss.”

***

Bobbie Carter knew in her gut something was off. The trend of infant deaths and mysterious lizard sightings was extending northwards up the coast with each passing day. And they were coinciding.

Was it A causing B? Or B causing A?

There was no way to know for sure without formal research, rather than word of mouth. The smaller fishing villages also had the unhelpful habit of ‘forgetting’ to officially report unexpected mortalities.

Costa Rica was not unlike any other subtropical country. No shortage of things that could kill you. Snakes, spiders, frogs. Jaguars of course, and for those who ventured out to sea, bull sharks. Her clinic had treated its fair share.

But these unidentified lizards targeting infants and newborns in their cribs were turning from a serious, to a severe problem. Were they outright killing the children while they slept, or simply scavenging, either way having somehow learned the behaviour by opportunity, and realised that humans could become an easy meal?

Then there was the strange mauling incident from that privately-leased island a couple of weeks prior, which still haunted her. That had been no small lizard, something much bigger, and far more deadly.

His hands…

God, his hands.

She honestly couldn’t remember the kid’s face. Bobbie didn’t want to.

But she remembered his. The red-haired man in the baseball cap.

Backhoe, my ass.

The phone in the clinic rang, startling her. Like everything else in Bahía Anasco, it was rusted around the edges.

”Manuel-“ She called.

“Ocupado!” She could hear the autoclave beeping in the next room and her assistant’s muttered apologies.

Bobbie harumphed as she picked up the receiver. “Buenos d-“

“Is this the medical clinic in Bahía Anasco?”

The demanding tone instantly got her back up.

“Dr Carter speaking, what’s your emergency?”

“Not an emergency, well kinda-“ She heard a women’s voice on the line murmuring, and rustling on the mouthpiece as it was cupped. “-yeah, got it. I’m calling about a patient you might have dealt with a few weeks ago. They would have arrived on a helicopter, during a thunderstorm.”

Bobbie felt a finger of ice trail down the back of her neck. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Gut instinct was to deny, until she knew what the man wanted. Patient confidentiality and all that.

“Now, look here, lady -“

”Ray!” Came the woman’s soft voice again. “She won’t help us if you’re rude.”

“But, Kit-“ ‘Ray’ grumbled, clearly not in the best of moods. “Sorry about this, Dr-“

”Let me speak to her.” Bobbie responded calmly, and she heard the handset clumsily changing ownership. The company name on the side of the helicopter was still unwillingly lodged in her memory. “Are you from InGen?”

Kathy saw no point in lying. “We are.”

Bobbie chose her words carefully, to not incriminate herself. She’d been on edge for weeks, only finally starting to relax, putting the thought from her mind that the government might stop by to speak to her, bringing drama to the little fishing village. She was already an outsider. And now this.

“I do remember that night. I treated him. I was just doing my duty, as a doctor.” Her camera was still missing. “I don’t want any trouble.”

“You won’t have trouble from us. Please. He’s a colleague of mine.” He’s my little brother. “He’s my friend. I just want to know he’s okay.”

Oh, God. They have no idea.

The man and woman Bobbie was speaking to seemed different from the people who had dragged that kid’s lifeless body back onto the chopper. These ones cared. Ray and Kit. The kid really had meant something to them.

Shit, this was the part of her job that she truly hated.

“I’m deeply sorry to be the one to have to tell you, Miss- uh…Miss.” She grew solemn.

“Oh, God-“ The woman’s voice moaned faintly.

“He passed away not long after arriving at the clinic. The man in the sports cap had his body put back in the chopper.” Why was this so much harder over the phone? When she couldn’t see their faces, hold their hands as she delivered the worst possible news? “I did what I could, I promise you that.”

Kathy heard the high-pitched ringing in her ears. Felt the tingling in her fingertips, darkness at the edges of her vision. Her nightmares come to life.

“So did he.” She whispered.

”What-“ Bobbie hesitated, then pressed. “What attacked him?”

”Thank you, you’ve been very helpful.” Kathy shut her down woodenly.

“…you take care, Kit.” Dr Carter sighed as the line went dead with a click. Still no answers.

”Well, where is he?” Arnold asked impatiently, taking the phone from Kathy’s limp hand.

She shook her head, whimpering. “Gone.”

“Gone? Like, gone-“ The handset fell, and dangled, clattering as it swung on its cord. He collapsed back into his chair. ”No. Honey, I’m so sorry.”

Tom picked that exact moment to swagger through the control room door.

“Been looking for you, KitKat-“ He doffed his good stetson to her. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

”I think I’m gonna have to take a raincheck…” She said vacantly.

“No fair! You swore! What in the…” Tom tailed off as he spotted Arnold’s frantically shaking head and pained expression. “Shoot. What now?”

Kathy turned around, the monitors reflecting against the teardrops brimming in her eyes.

“He lied.”

***

Thanks for reading!

#jurassic park oc #living dangerously #welcome to jurassic park #oc: dr lizzy armstrong #jurassic park female oc #jurassic park #jurassic park fanfiction #my writing #my fanfiction #robert muldoon #jurassic park fanfic #jurassic park fic #ray arnold #dr bobbie carter #kathy #dr lori ruso #jurassic park 1993

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sailorblossoms-snowbaz · 2 years ago

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Unrelated reasons have me thinking about “it was fine, it was sex” again, a line that packs a lot both in context... and even outside of it.

When we talk about things that (ideally) should be good, just “fine” will be perceived as lukewarm at best, if not just a negatively. Just “fine” is a dismissal. Indifference. It’s indicative of disappointment, even. (I mean, picture cooking dinner for someone and then asking “how was it?” and they go “it was fine, it was food.” You probably wouldn’t want to cook for them again, because it’ll give you the impression that they didn’t really like the damn food. It might even make you wonder what’s wrong with the food, your cooking, or the person who ate it.) We usually regard sex as something that should be “mindblowingly good,” especially in the kind of stories shaping Simon’s perception of how dating and romance ought to be. So good that if someone doesn’t want it, then “something is wrong” with them (Simon’s thoughts in awtwb indicate more than once that he doesn’t get the point of sex for the sake of it).

In context, Simon is one to downplay or to be used to discomfort. He’ll go “it’s fine, whatever, I’ll live” and the dude can’t even move his wings from the pain. But even outside of that, sex is something that can be very vulnerable and complicated. It’s something that, in certain circumstances, can absolutely just feel uncomfortable and weird, even when all parties involved are trying to make it work. Sex is thought of as synonymous with pleasure, but it doesn’t always work like that... Negative or bad orgasms are a thing, associated with going though the motions sex, meaning even an orgasm can feel unpleasurable, uncomfortable, and even hurt (I remember reading a study where someone reported having experienced those with so much frequency they started to feel repulsed by sex). But it doesn’t have to go to that extreme. There’s the notion that men always come fast, but they can absolutely struggle with even keeping an erection and not being able to get off no matter how much they try.

Arousal non concordance is a thing, meaning that genitals can respond to touch even when you’re not into it at all. The body and the mind aren’t connected here. (Picture absolutely hating the sensation of people tickling you, but you can’t help laughing anyway because you’re ticklish). This is crucial to understand that a body responding to stimulation doesn’t mean someone secretly “wants it,” and perfectly explains how someone like Simon can look back and say “yes, I did it, but I don’t think it proves I was attracted” and then fight the insistence that he was.

Someone could get wet or get an erection while watching paint dry simply because they’re being touched. Going through the motions sex can have negative consequences on people mentally and emotionally, it can kill relationships, and even make things harder for following ones. All things we normally don’t talk about in the kind of stories – where heterosexual romance is framed as an endgame and synonymous with happiness and success – that Simon would be used to seeing. Add to that traditional expectations that make men active and women passive (it’s “up to the man to perform” while the woman “just has to be pretty” – if we don’t get into the whole “women have to serve” bs) (that men have to always want it and want it early and often) and you get another level of fucked up when Simon finds himself not wanting it and adding it to the list of “I did what I thought she wanted but got it wrong” (his reaction to “does Wellbelove?” [appreciate a job well done] says a lot)

When hearing “sex,” one automatically assumes that desire, pleasure and (positive) orgasm are involved, even we get signs to think otherwise – I mean, I’ve seen people make the very assumptions these book challenge about these characters (some then even giving the author shit over it haha ah). But Simon having had sex doesn’t mean he had to be attracted in some way in order to “be able to do it.” That sex took place doesn’t mean the participants experienced pleasured or that it ended because anyone had any release (going through the motions!). Not wanting it doesn’t always look like being unable to get the mechanics of it done, or “genitals not reacting at all” (again, arousal non concordance is a thing) (this applies to Agatha as well, but I focus on Simon because he’s the one who more often falls victim to assumptions because he’s the boy, and “boys always want it” etc etc).

Part of it is that it can be something that one wouldn’t (or wouldn’t want to) describe as “bad” if it doesn’t reach extreme levels of distress or something like that. Even if it’s low-key traumatic and/or experiencing it awakens feelings that makes one not wanting to think or deal with it at all. Embarrassment, shame, confusion, discomfort, etc. It’s complicated. If it happened in a situation where is acceptable or there is even pressure to want it (in a relationship) one might even hesitate more to say or consider it as bad, and be more confused when they’re not into it (especially when one doesn’t want to admit the relationship isn’t working).

Before being with Baz, Simon lives his adolescence trying to conform to traditional roles and expectations, pushing through while avoiding being alone in his head, reframing and hiding away everything that would tell him “I don’t want this,” “I don’t like this,” “this does absolutely nothing for me.” (”I’m unhappy” and/or maybe even “I’m bored”). He’s absolutely the kind of person who would struggle with even arriving at the questions “what does it mean that I did this thing even though I wasn’t attracted? Or didn't really want it? what does it say about me?”) (”it was just going through the motions” say so much about lack of pleasure/not liking it, even more if you add in how food is the only way Simon can seem to understand pleasure before he’s with Baz, and would contribute to how hard it is to suddenly deal with so much desire when his past experience dealt with no desire at all)

In this vein, I think it’s important that Baz and Simon actually talk and reassure each other about liking it after having sex for the first time, because orgasming by itself doesn’t necessarily mean someone felt good or had a good time.

[In terms of pressure on Agatha and Simon: to be clear, I think expectations made them pressure themselves. (See Agatha going “I’ll be by his side if that’s where he wants me” but then you pass the mic to Simon and he goes “I was just doing what I thought she wanted.”) It’s “what they’re supposed to do” and so they did it. Maybe not wanting to let the other down, but getting it “all wrong” all the same, because the person they’re with is wrong for them, wrong for the experience, etc]

#simon snow #snowbaz #baz pitch #awtwb #simon snow series #simon snow trilogy #carry on countdown #agatha wellbelove

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