#passports are supposed to take SIX TO EIGHT WEEKS

[robotslenderman]

I WENT IN ON MONDAY?!?!?!

[ladyazulina]

Azu is Talking - Just Another Week

It feels like a lazy week but only because I’ve been working really hard with outside world stuff and less with the online side (where, to be honest, it’s my whole life basically). And when I'm back, I need to decompress and let my body relax.

The relaxing part took me the rest of the week, but what can I do when my body is begging me for it?

I’ve decided to withdraw from my Monday class already, but I still scheduled to go to the photo place one last time. Welp, it was not possible. I woke up with an allergy. I spent the morning wearing the reaction down (after it goes through a certain threshold, there’s no going back—I have to ride it to the end), and after it ate up all my energy, I dragged my ragged self to the kitchen because I had to fix myself breakfast or it would just continue rolling south.

Instead of crashing and leaving me K.O., my body decided to change into energy-saving mode. I spent the rest of the day in bed. I’ve finished business with both the [REDACTED] adventure and the book I was reading (though I didn’t start the next one until half the week passed), so I figured I could just… rest and breathe.

Rest and Breathe seemed to be The Main Task™ of the week ‘cause on Tuesday my body went through another… episode, I guess.

I did go out. I was supposed to go accompanied, but while I was dressing, my sister bailed out on me and I had already put the effort into getting up and changing clothes, it would have been a waste to change back and get into bed again, so I decided to just roll with it.

I’ve never had tremors before. My hands tremble when I’m hungry, but I made a point of pausing to eat something before starting the whole adventure. I wasn’t hungry. And my hands weren’t the only ones trembling.

I can’t remember exactly when it started, but I was grateful on the bus to get a chair, and the ride in the subway was a challenge between my will to keep myself together versus my body on the brink of breaking down. Having jumped in the wrong direction line, going up and down two sets of stairs to get to the right platform had me praying and considering if I was capable of asking for help—my muscle legs were shaking so much I thought I was going to fall.

For your information: I am not. When I enter this state, I can only go forward by inertia, the only thing stopping me is reaching my destination.

I tried to. Call a person who was going down the stairs with me, but they ran down the stairs to avoid missing the subway that was already there. Seek the security police on this side of the platform, but that would have required me to let go of all my will busy keeping myself together. So I did not. I’d rather fall. I was so close to it.

But I miraculously reached the photo place and interaction seemed to snap me out of it. I still had leg tremors until I sat down, but I was scared for so long, I needed to destress nonetheless.

I downed a small cup of coffee in case I needed sugar and some water. And stayed until the passport site approved my photo. It just took two takes—that day. I rather not count how many photos total.

My mom insisted that I take an Uber, so I did that and went back home. Finally able to get to the next step in the process. No one wanted to help me choose the day to go leave my biometric data (signature and fingertips), so I scheduled it for the first hour the next day. A whole other adventure.

I didn't get to share it everywhere but my weekly, automatic, Iron Valley, Linney's Campaign post, the last one so far, was live this Tuesday.

On Wednesday, I left home with my mom at six thirty ‘cause she has to be at her job at seven. Or rather at eight, but if she wants a free ride with her sister—they work one next to the other—and avoid traffic, she has to be ready by then. And me with her.

I had to be in Passports at nine.

It gave me time to sit for an hour or so and I got comfortable enough I took off a little late. At the subway station, though, I noticed I didn't have my subway card with me. I remembered taking it out of my wallet the day prior and keeping it in an outside pocket of my handbag for easy access. I didn't need it ‘cause I went back in an Uber. And I never put it back. I didn't bring my handbag but my backpack. And if my mom wouldn't have given me some cash, I would have been short of money. It was supposed to be used for my breakfast, but welp. Stuff happens.

I bought a new subway card and I was so close to running the two blocks to Passport when I arrived at the station. No need, though, there was no one to hold me accountable.

The attention was stressful for a hard-of-hearing person. The people welcoming and directing me were impatient and rude. The areas were so noisy. I was glad the receptionist only made me one expected question because otherwise, I would have lost it. The staff helping inside was nice, or I was looking too close to lose it already. The people managing my biometric process, though… that was awful. I wasn't hearing a word because of the intensity of the noise and they weren't being expressive either. I was on the brink of tears from the frustration alone. We managed, somehow. And I needed three solid minutes before storming out to hold myself together.

Another step of the process done. One full week before returning to receive my passport. Finally. Next week I'll tell you how that certain adventure went.

I stayed in bed the rest of the day, until my partner and I’s ASL class. (We skipped a video without noticing, so now we're one week away from finishing the Essentials.)

On Backstage Thursday, I started the next book on schedule and, to be honest, I'm not feeling it. I thought it was temporary, but I'm understanding the author's choices more than feeling entertained by them. I find small moments I like here and there, but overall, not my type. It's fine, we grow, totally normal. I want to end it just to close the chapter, but if I don't do it with nice emotions, I'll pass from the review. I want to help indie authors, but if I don't have nice things to say, I rather say nothing—not because a book is not for me I have to ruin someone else's experience.

I got to do my themed task though, which made me feel good cause it was the last one of the section and I can start a different one. Cheers for finishing long-term tasks 🥂

On Secret Friday, I made sure everything was ready for Monday, ‘cause the day finally came. My partner is having his birthday tomorrow and it's my first time celebrating it with him. I have a whole lot prepared (and had stressed myself so much trying to keep the schedule), but it's all about to come to life. Some stuff didn't work out, but that's part of life. I'm so excited, we're starting to celebrate today because he'll be gone for a few hours tomorrow and I don't want to miss a single thing. I just planned too much! Maybe I will hold back a bit next year.

I was still checking stuff and tuning everything for Monday on Saturday while getting more solo games to check out. I'm feeling so happy about it, I just hope to get enough time for all of it.

And so, that was my week.

I have the first level 5 English quiz next Thursday. The passport on Wednesday. A possible visit to an embassy to get a visa on the same day. Maybe I'll get an answer from the editor on the [REDACTED] adventure? We will see.

I have nothing against my weekly updates, but I may be writing too many themed posts about particular stuff and it may or may not become the norm in the future instead? Only one way to find out 😉

[redbus2germany]

 Moving To Germany – Part 1

We know that you want to move to Germany. There are a lot of people who follow their desire to move to Germany for many reasons. These reasons could be anything like pursuing love, living in a place with a higher quality of life, getting a benefit of a unique education system, and getting an education without paying thousands of euros in tuition fees. It also could discover a new culture.

Table of Content

Eight Things To Prepare Before Moving To Germany

Find a Job or Get a German University Enrollment

Get Health Insurance

Apply For Visa On Time

Book Your Flight Tickets In Advance

Find A Place To Live In Germany

Get An Appointment To Register

Look For Which Bank You Want To Use

Start Learning The Basic German Language

Eight Things To Prepare Before Moving To Germany

You must be thinking about how you can make this happen. In this article, we will talk about eight steps that explain how to move to Germany as a foreigner. You will get eight things to take care of before moving to Germany.

Find a Job or Get a German University Enrollment

The best way to prepare for your move to Germany is to find a job or enroll at a German university. It depends on your nationality; however, it is the most hassle-free way for you to move and stay legally in Germany.

Foreigners moving to Germany from other EU countries such as Canada, the US, New Zealand, Australia, Israel, Japan, or the Republic of Korea, may visit Germany as a tourist and start job hunting. Later they can apply for a work and residence permit from within Germany.

The expats who hold a different nationality except the ones listed above can apply for the job seeker visa. It allows you to stay six months in Germany to find a job.

The people who are graduates and skilled professionals from Non-EU countries may apply for the blue card visa in Germany. The blue card is a quick entrance to Germany and the EU and a work permit for up to four years.

Get Health Insurance

One primary requirement to get a German visa is to opt for health insurance the German government accepts. You can sign up for German health insurance if you already have a job.

Suppose you are planning to find a job after arriving in Germany or want to work as a freelancer. Then you can opt for expat health insurance for your visa. It works as temporary health insurance for the time being. You can look for employment and decide which health insurance is best for you. Moreover, you can refer to our article on insurance in Germany to get information about other additional insurances.

Apply For Visa On Time

The waiting time for the visa application range from one to four months. It depends on your home country and the type of visa you want to apply for. That’s why you should check for your visa requirements in advance. You should apply for a German visa three months before your planned departure date to get the passport and visa back on time.

Book Your Flight Tickets In Advance

Your flight ticket booking should depend on the city where you found a job or university. It also depends on where you plan to job hunt and ensure to fly to the nearest international airport. Every big city has its airport. The three largest ones are in Berlin, Munich, and Frankfurt.

You should note that most airlines allow you to travel with one checked bag weighing up to twenty-three kgs. You should book in advance if you are planning on taking an additional bag. 

Find A Place To Live In Germany

You should find a place to stay before you arrive in Germany. If you have an apartment already, select one in Germany that will ease your life. It will allow you to register your home after your arrival. You can check many furnished apartment rental websites such as Homelike.

Get An Appointment To Register

Once you arrive in Germany, registering your accommodation is the most important thing. Most of the cities in Germany require you to do so within the first two weeks of your arrival.

In Germany, the registration process is known as Anmeldung. The process is that you present yourself to a government office and register your address. By following this process, you are letting them know there is a new resident in the city.

The address registration typically takes fifteen minutes. Once you complete the process, you will get a critical piece of paper. This important document will help you get German services such as opening a bank account and contacting an internet service for your apartment.

Look For Which Bank You Want To Use

Once you arrive in Germany, you should look for which bank you want to use. You can refer to our articles opening a bank account and bank account comparison to get the suitable choice for you. Your employer will ask for a German bank account to credit your salary. That’s why it is a crucial thing to do.

Opening a bank account depends on where you live in Germany. You can open a bank account from abroad by using mobile bank services. Suppose you want to use the services of a traditional private German bank such as Commerzbank. In that case, you can open a bank account once you are in Germany.

Moreover, you can choose the money transfer services before moving to Germany. It will help you wire transfers from your foreign bank account to Germany. You should avoid using a regular bank because their bank fees are very high. You can choose Wise, which is a fully digital and modern provider. It offers the real exchange rate without any increased charges.

Start Learning The Basic German Language

If you are still not good at speaking German, you can move, live and work in Germany. However, there are a lot of benefits to speaking and understanding the German language. There is no doubt that the German language is challenging. If you are new to this great and beautiful country, do not expect to speak German fluently during the first few months. Sometimes it takes years to be proficient.

It would help if you took the time to learn some essential German words and sayings before moving to Germany. Here in Germany, the natives do not mind speaking English. These days there are a lot of resources available to learn the basics of German. However, the best way is to actively use the language and get direct feedback from a professional teacher. Lingoda is one of the online language schools, and they have small classes and great flexibility.

Conclusion

We hope you are clear about what to do before moving to Germany. We assure you that you will happily follow these steps and make them happen. In the beginning, moving to Germany might be a long and complicated process. But if you have clear criteria for what to do before moving, then it will ease your life. Now we will proceed to the next part of moving to Germany. Here we will talk about the essential things you need to do once you are in Germany.

Originally published at - https://redbus2germany.com/moving-to-germany-part-1/

[imnotoverlyobsessive]

Number Nine

Chapter Three: With You Beside Me

AO3 author’s note/info one two three four five six seven eight epilogue extra

All my work is 18+.

So cut the headlights, summer’s a knife. I’m always waiting for you just to cut to the bone. Devils roll the dice, angels roll their eyes, and if I bleed, you’ll be the last to know.- Taylor Swift, Cruel Summer

It was the beginning of April, and Lea was eating breakfast Tim had made her one morning when he stuck his head around the corner from where he’d been doing something on his laptop in the main downstairs living room.

“Hey, you have a passport, right?” he asked out of nowhere. “It’s not expired or anything?”

She stared at him. “Uh… I have a non-expired passport, yeah. Why?”

He grinned at her. “No particular reason.” With that, he went back to whatever it was he’d been doing.

“Well, that was a lie if I’ve ever heard one,” she muttered under her breath.

Two weeks later, she found out why.

“Okay,” Tim said as he strolled into his bedroom, “I may have gotten you an early birthday present. But you won’t be uhh… using it, I guess, until your actual birthday.”

“What is it?”

He smiled down at her before going into his closet for a moment and coming back out. He was carrying six boxes of varying size, and she rushed over to help, taking the top three from him. 

They put the boxes on his bed, and he wrapped an arm around her waist, bent down to press a swift kiss into her hair. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

Lea smiled up at him adoringly, leaning into him. “You don’t have to get me so much stuff, y’know,” she murmured, fiddling with the hem of the off-white Ciao Lucia dress where it fell to the middle of her thighs.

He kissed the top of her head again. “First of all,” he started, “I like getting you things. Second, you haven’t even seen what it is yet.”

Giggling a little with excitement, Lea took the lid off a thin white box with MELISSA ODABASH printed on the top and removed the tissue paper. Inside was a loose white dress with blue trim that looked like it would be short on her, but very flowy and soft. 

“This is cute,” she observed, holding the garment up to examine it. When she saw the lace-up style of the bodice portion, however, she winced and said, “I’ll have to double knot it so my boobs don’t pop out, though.”

Tim chuckled softly, moving to wrap his arms around waist from behind and rest his chin on the top of her head. “Open that one next, then.” He pointed to another slim white box, this one with AGUA BY AGUA BENDITA printed on it. She did, revealing a bikini with wired cups, ruffled straps, and high-waisted bottoms covered in a dark blue floral print against white fabric.

“I’m supposed to wear these together, I take it?” Lea guessed.

“If you want,” he told her. “This is just one set; I got you quite a few. Open the others. Smallest one last, though.”

She hummed in acknowledgement before reaching for what was very obviously a shoebox. It had Gianvito Rossi printed in cursive, and inside were a pair of sandals with light brown soles and woven straps made of white leather. “Also cute,” she pointed out, putting the lid back on the box. 

Tim nuzzled her hair as she reached for a box labeled EUGENIA KIM. Inside was a white sun hat with a dark blue ribbon.

“This is gonna make a really awesome outfit,” Lea observed as she reached for the second smallest box, this one slender and about the length of her hand. The top was printed with TOM FORD, a designer that Lea knew Tim favored. Inside was a really nice pair of cat eye tortoiseshell sunglasses with lenses that looked like a sunrise.

“These are gorgeous,” she told him, turning her head to give him a quick peck on the cheek.

“No,” Tim insisted, “you’re gorgeous. I just want the things you wear to align with your perfection.”

Lea giggled, nestling herself back against his chest. “You do realize who you are, right?”

He waved her off. “Never mind that. Which set are you wearing right now?”

He asked her that sometimes, when he wanted to know what her undergarments situation was. And he always wanted to know what her undergarments situation was.

“The light pink ones,” she told him. “With all the hearts.”

He groaned, burying his face in her hair, presumably at the image she’d put in his mind. “Please open the box so I can get you out of this dress. The way your tits are bulging out of it is driving me crazy.”

Lea rolled her eyes. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Chalamet.”

“No can do, I’m a permanent resident there,” he told her nonchalantly.

She laughed, reaching for the final box. “Okay, fair enough. After this.”

“Good,” he murmured, kissing her neck and trailing his hands up from her waist to squeeze her breasts.

She ignored this, instead choosing to open the box. Inside was a key. She picked it up, examining it. “This is… cool, I suppose. What’s it for?”

“Your birthday,” he said happily. “I borrowed my friend’s jet so I can take you to Thirasia.”

Lea’s heart stopped, and the key fell onto the bed with the clothes he’d gotten her. “Take me where?” she squeaked out.

“Thirasia,” he repeated. “It’s an island in the Greek Cyclades, right next to Santorini. Very similar to Santorini, except it’s smaller and much less populated. Thought we could both use the extra privacy. I know I’m going to.” 

With that, he reached into the white fabric of her dress with one hand, sliding his fingers beneath the fabric of her bra and squeezing her breast, his other hand trailing up her thigh to grip her ass through her panties.

“But— but a private jet, Tim?!” she exclaimed in a stutter.

“Well… yeah,” he said, his hands pausing their ministrations. “It’s got a private bathroom, complete with a shower.”

Lea froze. “Does… does it have a bedroom?”

She felt him smirk against her neck. “With a nice big bed.” His hands resumed roaming, and he lifted the shirt of her dress, smacking her ass lightly over her panties. “So I can do this.”

She yelped in surprise when he grabbed her and tossed her on the bed amongst the boxes, which he shoved off onto the floor. “Tim!” she scolded. “Those are nice things!”

He shrugged a shoulder. “They’re in the way of me eating your pussy, so.” He grabbed her ankle and yanked her towards him. “Now,” he sighed, pulling his shirt over his head and letting it fall to the floor, “if you don’t want that dress ripped off of you, I’d suggest removing it.”

Lea hastened to undo the small tortoiseshell buttons down the front of her dress, shrugging the fabric off her shoulders.

He groaned when he saw the bra and panties she had on: a pale pink set—she had never bothered to wear sets before he started buying them for her front, left, and center—that looked like it was made of hearts rather than printed with them, and bent over her, trailing his fingertips from where the bottom of her bra met her skin to where the hem of her panties began.

Slipping his fingers beneath the hem to tease her just a little, he breathed, “Take them off,” in her ear. She immediately started rushing to slide the smooth fabric down her hips, but he gripped her jaw firmly. “Nuh uh. Slowly.” With that, he stood back up, towering over her. “Let me watch you.”

Feeling her heartbeat in her ears, Lea slid her panties down slowly, watching his face to make sure she was doing it the way he wanted. God, all she wanted was to please him, to make him happy.

“That’s it, angel,” Tim breathed as her panties hit the floor. “Spread those legs for me. Show me that pussy, c’mon.” He didn’t wait for her to process his words enough to obey them, instead falling to his knees and prying her thighs apart himself and running a finger up her folds, brushing lightly over her clit. “You’re already soaked,” he chuckled softly.

“Like I don’t know that,” she grumbled in embarrassment.

Tim smacked her inner thigh lightly. “Don’t act like you don’t want my mouth on you, licking you until you scream.”

She gulped. She could use their safe word, she knew, but she didn’t want to. All she wanted was everything he was going to give her— that deliciously sweet bliss of existing only for him, to please him.

Instead of responding to his command directly, she very softly asked, “Do you want me to take my bra off?”

He stared at the garment in question for a moment, considering. Finally, he decided, “No. No, don’t take it off. I wanna see your tits bounce right out of it from how hard I’m gonna make you ride me.”

She whimpered at the image, and then he dove in, lapping at her clit like his life depended on it. Lea gasped, lifting her pelvis and digging her hands into his curls so as to hold him against her.

Tim stopped abruptly, however, pulling back slightly and biting her inner thigh just enough to sting. “Bad girl,” he scolded. “If you want to touch, ask first.”

She whined, her core throbbing with need for him, but pulled her hands away nonetheless. “May I touch you, please?” she requested timidly.

He smirked. “No.” His tone was firm, but his eyes were affectionate, sweet. “Hands above your head.”

Lea nodded shakily, hoping her compliance would get him to continue.

Thankfully, it did, and he was back between her thighs, his tongue flicking over her clit as he plunged two fingers inside her and started to curl them.

He was occasionally gentle the same way he’d been when he’d taken her those first few times, but usually he seemed to want to fuck her so hard and so fast she couldn’t so much as move afterwards, generally opting to fall asleep in his arms instead. This suited her just fine; she had very quickly discovered that she quite liked to be turned into a boneless heap of orgasm-induced mindlessness, all non-Tim thoughts fucked out of her.

Currently, he seemed to be of the latter mindset, and even as he lapped away at her, driving her closer and closer to orgasm, she was giddy with excitement for what was to come.

“I want you,” she whined, clenching needily around his fingers as he curled them within her. “Please, Timothée, I want you inside me, please—“

He pulled back slightly so his lips brushed against her throbbing, sensitive clit when he spoke. “You’re going to take what I give you, angel,” Tim said lowly. “You get my cock when I say so, not before.” He kissed her clit, making her whine, her hands gripping her hair so she wouldn’t grab his. “And I say you’re going to cum from my tongue before I fuck you. Understand?”

He stared at her, and he looked so deliciously lewd there between her legs. Still, he was waiting for an answer. “I— I understand,” she stuttered out, anxious to have his mouth on her again.

Tim smirked against her clit, and her hips twitched. “Good girl.”

With that, he resumed his attentions to her clit, and she very quickly discovered that the stimulation of him speaking directly against her the way he’d done had been stimulating her the entire time, because she was already getting close.

“Oh,” he chuckled into her heat when he felt her walls fluttering around his fingers, “you’re already about to cum, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” she begged. “Yes, Tim, you’re gonna make me cum, fuck—“

He was so good at making her cum, at making her spasm. He could make her cum even faster than she could manage on her own. It was like he knew her body better than she did herself. He could play her like a finely tuned instrument, his fingers and tongue expertly bringing her hurtling towards release at a speed she’d never considered possible before.

Just when she thought she’d die if he didn’t finish her off, he took her clit between his lips and sucked on it gently, still managing to flick the tip of his tongue over it, and she came with a desperate moan, her hands yanking her hair as her back arched off the bed.

“Fuck,” Tim groaned as he stood back up to pull his pants down and kick them off to the side. “I love making you cum. It’s the sexiest thing on the face of the earth.”

Lea was hardly listening, though. She couldn’t do much but stare at his cock. Long and thick and pink— perfect, really. She hadn’t ever considered that she could find a guy’s junk pretty, but his absolutely was.

He plopped down on one of the chaises (the bastard had two in his bedroom alone) and crooked his finger at her, beckoning her closer.

Lea stood, legs trembling a bit, and he propped himself up on his elbows to watch her move towards him, smirking as he observed that she wasn’t very steady on her feet due to the orgasm he’d given her.

“You could’ve asked for help, y’know,” he told her, that sly grin still on his stupidly perfect face. “I’d have carried you.”

Blanching, she firmly insisted, “Absolutely not. I can walk just fine on my own, thank you.”

He hummed, sitting up the rest of the way and wrapping an arm around her waist to yank her towards him the rest of the way.

“C’mon,” he murmured, reaching up to tug lightly on one of the curls hanging in front of her face. “Unless… you don’t want to?”

Lea’s eyes widened, and she shook her head rapidly. “No!” she insisted, her voice almost urgent. “No, I want to!” Then she remembered herself and flushed at overeagerness.

Tim laughed softly. “Don’t be embarrassed, sweetheart.” He wrapped both arms around her and pulled her close, pressing gentle kisses to her stomach. “I want you, too, y’know.”

She did know that. It was really quite evident. There was visual proof that he wanted her.

He kissed her stomach again, right above her belly button, and then he looked up at her through his curls. “Lea,” he said softly, “can I tell you something?”

She frowned, concerned. When he saw this, he tightened his arms around her. “What’s wrong?” she asked. 

“Nothing,” Tim assured her hurriedly, sounding somewhat nervous as he returned to staring at her stomach. “Don’t freak out, okay?”

“Okay…” she said hesitantly, not sure whether she’d freak out or not. 

“I just…” He paused. “I was just thinking about how sexy you’d look pregnant.”

Lea froze. “W— what?”

“I don’t mean right away,” he assured her hurriedly, then paused. “Well, okay, I’m not going to lie and say I wouldn’t love it if you were ready for that right away, but I’m not asking for that.”

Heartbeat thundering in her ears, she breathed, “What’re you asking for, Tim?”

“Do you think you would ever want that with me?” he asked gently, gazing up at her. 

Images of what her children with him might look like flashed into her mind. 

“I think I’ve always wanted that with you,” she confessed quietly.

He pressed his face to her stomach, his hands trailing down her lower back to squeeze her ass. “You should finish school first,” he sighed against her skin, sounding disappointed. “Which is unfortunate because I’d do just about anything to fuck a baby into you right now.”

She shuddered with delight, closing her eyes at the image; him filling her with his cum, fingering her after they’d finished so it all stayed inside her, putting his baby inside of her— god, Tim’s baby, fuck—

“Would you do that for me, angel?” he asked gently, still squeezing her ass. “Would you let me get you pregnant? I’d keep your pussy nice and full, suck on your tits so they don’t get sore from having too much milk. I’d take such good care of you, I promise.”

“S— suck on my—“ she stuttered out.

“Mhm,” Tim hummed, reaching up to squeeze her breast and angle it towards his mouth so he could suck softly on her nipple. “And I’m the only one who’d get to,” he breathed against her skin. “If I fuck you good enough to get your tits full of milk, it’s all for me.” He paused. “But you didn’t answer my question. Would you do that for me? Would you have my baby?”

Lea whimpered at the images he put in her mind, her core clenching even though she’d just orgasmed. “Yes,” she exhaled. “Of course I would.”

He kissed her stomach again. “That’s my girl.” He laid back down, taking her hand in his and threading their fingers together. “You’d do anything for me, wouldn’t you? Give me anything?”

She couldn’t breathe properly as she nodded down at him. Her lungs wouldn’t fill completely no matter how hard she tried.

Tim smiled at her adoringly. “We’ll have it someday, y’know,” he told her. “I’ve never wanted this with someone so badly before. I really want it with you.”

A small smile graced her lips. “I want it with you, too,” she admitted bashfully.

He squeezed her hand. “My sweet girl.” Then, “Now, sit on my cock.” When she squeaked in surprise at the sudden change of tone, he tugged her closer so her knees were against the soft black fabric of the chaise. Flushing bright red, she straddled his waist. “C’mon, Lea. Gimme that pussy,” he breathed, staring at where she was just above his length. She must not have obeyed fast enough because his gaze snapped up to hers abruptly. “I said give it to me.”

Lea hastened to do as she’d been told, lowering herself onto him with a moan. “You’re so big,” she whined.

“Mmm,” he hummed. “Or it could be that you’re so tight.” She was still adjusting, but he got impatient rather quickly. “Ride me, baby. I know you know how ‘cause I taught you myself.”

Lea rolled her hips forward, resting her hands on his stomach. He’d gotten so muscular lately; he had a fucking six pack now, for god’s sake, and it was warm under her hands, like there was a fire inside him burning for her, only for her.

“That’s it,” Tim encouraged lowly. “Show me how good I make you feel, how much you want me.”

“Feels so good, Tim,” she whimpered, continuing to roll her hips. “God, you feel—“

It felt like he was impaling her, but in the best possible way. He was so big that logically, it probably should’ve hurt her, she’d always thought, but it didn’t. Once she got used to the stretch, it was delicious.

“D’you wanna cum again?” he asked gently, trailing a hand up her torso to grip her breast.

“Yes, please,” she breathed, rocking her hips forward and watching his face closely.

He hummed in delight—he loved making her cum, said there was nothing sexier than the sounds she made when he took her apart with his fingers and tongue, nothing more beautiful than the expression on her face when he brought her pleasure—and reached to where they were joined, rubbing his thumb over her clit. Lea threw her head back with a moan, moving her hips faster.

“Nuh uh,” Tim snapped sharply, pressing on her clit hard enough to make her yelp, the sensation was so intense. “Don’t you dare take your eyes off me, Lea. You get my dick, but you have to watch me give it to you.”

She gazed into his eyes, and he resumed rubbing her clit in gentler circles. She watched him—the way his eyes darkened when she touched his lower stomach or ran her fingers over his ribs, the way his jaw tensed as he focused on not cumming yet (he could hold out for a pretty long time, she had discovered).

“Fuck, sweetheart,” he groaned when she started to spasm around him, still moving her hips as fast as she was able. “Feel so fuckin’ good when you’re about to cum. C’mon baby, give it to me, you can do it.” 

When Lea came, she moaned so loudly that she half wondered how likely they were to get a noise complaint as she collapsed against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her hair softly, letting her body calm down somewhat.

“Can you sit back up for me, angel?”

“Why?” she grumbled in annoyance.

Tim chuckled. “So I can watch you bounce on my cock.”

She hummed, pleased at the thought of how he reacted when he saw himself entering her; the best word for it was probably ‘feral’, if she were honest. That was fine, though. It was better than fine, actually. It was awesome.

Lea lifted her head, cupping his cheek. It was just a little bit rough from his barely-there stubble, and leaned in to kiss him. He kissed her back hungrily, his hands finding her hair as he thrust up into her a bit.

“I’d do anything for you,” she murmured against his lips. This only served to make him kiss her harder, which she had expected. 

What she did not expect was for him to bite her lip before suddenly shoving her upright and demanding, “Then bounce.”

Lea pushed herself up onto her knees again and used what little thigh muscle she possessed to lift herself off of him before lowering again with a soft moan. “You feel so good,” she whined, repeating the motion. 

“Yeah?” he breathed, reaching up to cup her breasts and tweak her nipples before trailing one hand down to grip the flesh of her stomach. “You said you’d do anything for me,” he reminded her. “You said you’d let me get you pregnant.”

She rose off of him again, moaning, “Yes,” as she did.

“You want that?” Tim wanted to know. “If you want that, I swear I’ll put my baby inside of you the second you graduate.”

“Yes, please,” she told him, lifting off him again, her hands on his stomach to help give her leverage. “I want you to. I want you to get me pregnant, Tim, I want it, I want it—“

“I’ll give it to you, angel. I promise,” Tim assured her. “God, you take my dick so well,” he groaned, gripping her hips to help lift her body off of him. “No one makes me feel the way you do, baby.”

“Fuck,” she moaned, bouncing outright now, his hands gripping her ass, fingertips digging into her skin as he guided her up and down his length, watching himself disappear inside her. “So good, please—“

“Please what, Lea? What do you want?”

Her thigh muscles had long since started burning, but she didn’t care. As long as she could have this, as long as she could have him inside her, she didn’t care.

“More,” she begged. “I want more. Please, just don’t stop, I want more of you, please—“

“I’m not gonna stop, baby,” Tim swore, watching her breasts bounce in her bra. “Not ever, okay? My sweet girl can have my cock any time she wants. You’re never gonna be empty, I promise.” One of his hands migrated to her stomach to squeeze it, even as she continued to impale herself on him. “Can’t wait to knock you up, fill you with my cum.” She nodded vigorously, but he continued.

She bit her lip, leaning forward to run her hands over his chest and choosing to rock her hips instead of bouncing on him. “I want your cum,” she told him. “I want your baby.”

“Fuck,” he groaned. “You’re gonna get my cum now if you keep talking to me like that.” She smiled down at him, continuing to rock her hips. “Your tits would get even bigger, heavy and swollen and full of—“

“Milk?” she cut him off softly, reaching behind her back to unhook her bra and let it fall to the floor.

“Yes,” Tim growled, reaching up with one hand to squeeze her breast roughly. “Who gets it, angel?”

“You,” she whimpered, clenching around him.

“Anybody else?”

“No,” Lea insisted.

“Good girl.” She rocked her hips faster and faster at the words, the sounds of skin against skin bouncing off the high walls of his bedroom.

“Get me pregnant,” she pleaded. “I want it, I want it so bad, please, Timothée, want your cock, want it—“

“God, how are you such a slut for it now?” he demanded, smacking her ass sharply and guided her up and down him so she was bouncing again. “Is this what I’ve turned you into?”

“Only for you,” she moaned, her need to cum again rapidly increasing. “Only for you, Tim.”

“Fuck,” he grunted. “I really get this pussy all to myself?“

“You own me,” Lea promised. “Every part of me is yours.”

“Lea,” he groaned, clenching his jaw. “Wanna cum, wanna fill you up.”

“Yes,” she gasped out in delight as he reached between them to rub her clit furiously. “Get me pregnant, Timothée, give me your baby, give it to me—“

As soon as he wrung her orgasm from her, he allowed himself to follow, pulling her down to kiss her hungrily as he flooded her.

Tim carded his fingers through her hair as they came down, kissing lazily. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured against her lips.

She hummed contentedly against him, propping herself up on her elbows. “Did you mean it when you said you wanted kids with me?”

He paused his movements. “Yes. Is that okay? Do you want that?”

Lea flushed, and he smiled softly, brushing her curls from her eyes. “Yeah.”

He kissed her again. “Good.”

She noticed the boxes on the floor in her peripheral, and suddenly recalled what they were for. “Tim,” she started softly, “are you serious about the whole… Greece thing?”

He cupped her cheek, stroking it with his thumb. “Of course I am. Why do you ask?”

“I dunno,” she mumbled, nestling herself against his neck. “Guess I just think it sounds like an awful lot of money to throw away just for me.”

“Hey,” Tim said firmly, lifting her chin up. “You deserve the world.”

She giggled at that. “I dunno about the world.”

“Yes,” he insisted, picking her up and depositing her on the floor, reaching over to slide his fingers into her so his cum wouldn’t slip out. “The world. The universe.” He sat up, the sunlight from his tall bedroom windows glinting off his body, his skin pale against the black fabric of the chaise. He wrapped his arms around her waist, gazing up at her adoringly, a sleepy grin on his lips. “My favorite girlfriend deserves every single thing her heart desires.”

She froze. “Your— your what?” 

Tim frowned, his lips forming an adorable pout. “My favorite girlfriend. Don’t tell me you weren’t aware of it.”

Lea tensed, stumbling awkwardly into the bathroom to grab a washcloth from under his fancy black-and-white marble sink. She turned the faucet on and wet the washcloth. By the time she was wringing it out and cleaning herself between her legs, he was behind her, and Lea discovered this when she jolted slightly upon glancing up at her reflection in the mirror only to find him standing behind her, still naked and frowning with hands on his hips. 

“You’re being evasive,” Tim observed. “Why?”

She shrugged, rinsing the washcloth out and hanging it over the faucet. “I just. I didn’t know you saw me like that.”

“Like what? My favorite?”

“Well…” Lea sighed. “I guess I didn’t think about how you saw me,” she admitted. “I definitely didn’t think you saw me as your girlfriend.”

He sputtered out a surprised laugh. “Seriously?”

She pursed her lips at him.

“Okay, okay,” he conceded, holding up both hands in surrender. “Sorry, I forget you’ve never…” he trailed off. “Okay, c’mere.”

With that, he took her hand and led her to sit beside him on his bed. He didn’t let go of her hand, stroking the back of it idly with his thumb.

“Look,” Tim started, “I’ll admit maybe I’ve never said it explicitly before, which is odd, but you are definitely my girlfriend in my eyes. I’ve considered you my girlfriend since our first night together.”

“Really?” she asked, smiling so wide her cheeks hurt.

He squeezed her hand. “Yeah.”

“You said I was your favorite,” she reminded him, strangely timid despite the fact that she was so comfortable being naked around him by this point.

He smiled down at her, brushing her hair from her eyes. “You are,” he told her with a nod. “It’s strange, because I’ve been with you the least amount of time, but I’m more attached to you than I am anybody else. I’ve never felt this level of a connection with anyone before.” She must’ve been staring at him in awe, because he hastily added, “Please don’t tell me the feeling isn’t mutual.”

She shook her head. “No, I… I feel that way about you, too.”

Tim grinned, pulling her under the covers with him. “Honestly,” he told her as he settled his arms around her, “I think we’re probably soulmates or something.”

Lea nestled in close to him, fully prepared to have a nap. “You think?”

He tightened his arms around her. “Yeah, I think so.”

She smiled, nuzzling his jaw affectionately. “Me, too.”

Tag list: @meetmyothersouls @ellamaianderson @shika1200 @blackqueenstarseed1 @gatoenlaciudad @esmaada @mariaelizabeth21-blog1 @softhecreator @timolaurence @timmymyluv @oddlyenoughiamweird @leecrunchybones @s-we-e-t-t-ea @almostg @vampire-reanimator

To be added, please ask 💗

[ohtheseboysilove]

The life ahead of us I/III [Billy/Four x F!Reader]

Words : 4, 200 K +

Warnings : fluff, smut, angst, blood…

Summary : Billy and reader decided to quit the Six Underground team after three years fighting the bad guys. They agreed to help them finish this last job before starting their new life. Only three more missions to go for a life of freedom.

Note : Hiyyaaa, first 6 Underground writing and I’m beyond excited ! (and bloody nervous too!!!) I had this idea few days ago and I didn’t want to start writing it because I have a lot of other stuffs to finish/edit but I just couldn’t stop thinking about it so…The whole story is already clear in my mind, divided in 3 parts (was supposed to be a simple OS but I got carried away as usual���). Anyway, I hope you’re gonna like it as much as I do and don’t forget to tell me what you think (even if it’s just a meme or a heart emoji, I’m surviving on these little comments!). Lots of love xx

x Masterlist x

General Headquarters of the 6 Underground team.

His mouth was hot, almost burning against yours, tongues and legs intertwined together in a passionate and lustful mess.

His thrusts were becoming sloppy as he was coming closer to his orgasm, his fingers quickly working on your clit to bring you with him and he was doing an amazing job as usual.

“Fuck…baby I’m so close” He breathed against your face before devouring your neck with light bites and small kisses.

“Me too, babe” You whined and sunk your nails into the skin on his shoulders, a low grunt escaping his throat at the gesture. “Come for me, Billy” You murmured and grabbed his face, your teeth tugging on his bottom lip as his whole body tensed, his strong orgasm washing over him followed by yours few seconds later.

“Holy shit” The blond moaned as he rested on top of you, still inside you, too lazy to move immediately. “I got—”

“Are you done fucking in here ? We’re leaving in ten !” A loud bang echoed through Billy’s trailer and the sweet and melodious voice of One could be heard. “If you’re late again, I will shoot the both of you myself !”

“Give us a minute !” The blond yelled back, his voice slightly croaky as he still breathless from his previous activities. “Fucking wanker”

“I heard you, Four !” You giggled quietly at One’s answer and sighed when you could hear his footsteps on the sand, signalling he was walking away from the trailer.

“We better get dress” You whispered and pressed a single, loving kiss on Billy’s swollen lips, earning a little groaning. Sex before a mission was probably your favourite. You were both giddy and full of good nerves, fucking them out in the best way possible. “Come on, babe” You pushes away few sweaty locks from his forehead and he gently kissed the inside of your wrist, mouth hiking up higher on your arm. “Billy” Instead of sounding like a warning, it was more like a desperate moan and it made him smirked proudly.

“In few months, we will finally be able to have as much sex as we want…” He dropped his mouth above your chest, his tongue lazily lapping between the valley of breasts, your throat going dry at the incredible feeling. “…without any disturbances…“ He cockily sucked on the love bite he made earlier under your right boob, just on the little mole which he found insanely sexy. You hissed, fingers grabbing his roots roughly. ”…no One…or Two…or Three…zero fucking numbers…“ His lips came back on yours for long, lazy kiss which always made your head spin. ”…just you and me, baby" You sighed loudly, the idea bringing butterflies in your belly.

You and Billy had decide to quit the team at the end of this major mission. It wasn’t an easy decision but it was the right thing to do. You arrived few months after Billy in the team as Eight and the both of you immediately clicked. It was the last thing you excepted when you integrated One’s little team. But only few weeks after you arrived, Billy and you started seeing each other and you never stopped since. You didn’t have family or close friends and you were quite good with a gun and especially with explosives, he made you an offer and you didn’t even think twice before accepting. You never regretted your choice once.

But now, three years later, Billy and you agreed that it was time for a change. But you couldn’t just quit and let the others handle the rest of the job by themselves. You would first finish this job, three more missions were planned to wrap the operation. But the desire to leave was itching through your veins a little bit more everyday. Everything was ready. Passports and new identities. Flights ticket toward Costa Rica. A beautiful house right on the beach. A good amount of cash to survive few years without raising a single finger.

“Three more missions, babe” You whispered, his smile matching yours immediately.

“Three more missions” He repeated with dreamy eyes.

You couldn’t wait to start your new life with Billy by your side.

***********************************************

Mission 1/3.

“Eight, how it’s going ?” You breathed slowly as the voice of One echoing in your earbud, your fingers perfectly stable as your worked on the explosive device.

“Slowly but surely” You murmured quietly as if you spoke louder everything could explode. Which wasn’t possible of course, but you needed all your concentration for the job. “Two more wires to go” You added as you carefully cut a black wire, Five next to you was holding a flash light right on the bomb.

“Copy that. Four and Seven, how is looking up there ?”

Five immediately plugged out your earbud and you murmured a quick thank you. It was one of your rule for this kind of job, you couldn’t listen to Billy because you would just be distracted and then risking stupidly yours and everyone’s life. Sometimes your heart would beat so strongly because of the blond that you couldn’t hear anything else and it was the last thing you needed.

Few more agonisingly long minutes later, you switched back on your earbud and murmured Billy’s favourite words : The bomb is disconnected.

It was for him the most stressful moments of these missions, waiting for you to confirm everything was fine. He was always worried to, instead of hearing you, hear the loud explosion which would result if you failed your mission.

But you never failed.

***********************************************

Your bigger job was over, the bomb wasn’t a danger anymore and you made peoples evacuated the building without really being noticed. Everything was going as it was planned.

“I have my eyes on the target” Three announced with his thick and easily recognisable accent. “Two, mi amor, do you see this hijo de puta ? Leaving through the second elevator”

“I got a visual” The french girl confirmed. “But call me like that one more time and the next bullet is for you, imbecile”

“You never complain when I call you like that in bed, mamacita” Javier was pushing his luck and One let out a little groan, ordering him to focus.

You couldn’t repress a little giggle at their familiar teasing. Javier and Camille were adorably cute and domestic at the base but during mission, Two was dead serious and you knew that Three loved to tease her about that.

Your heart ached a little at their kind of cute interaction and you couldn’t help yourself but checked on your amor.

“Billy, everything’s good on the roof ?” You didn’t let your voice betrayed your worry even if it was obvious for everyone.

“All clear, babe. Seven and his rifle can be quite useful” He always had this cheerful tone and sometimes it was driving you mad because he sounded so reckless. But he also always managed to come back to you.

“I save your ass at least a thousand time, you ungrateful wanker” Blaine chimed in.

“I bet you did, hiding away from the real danger” Billy teased gently and you could hear his quick breathing, indicating that he was running or doing some parkour shits.

“Oh shut the fuck up” Seven groaned and the blond chuckled loudly.

“Alright, Blaine stopped distracting him, he need to focus” You murmured and you could guess Seven was rolling his eyes at your comment.

“Yes, mom” He replied sarcastically.

“You heard the lady, Sniper ? Stop bothering me”

“Asshole”

"Enough, the three of you” One cleared his throat and you immediately complained, claiming your innocence in this stupid quarrel. “Especially you Eight, you’re the one distracting Four” One added, completely ignoring your previous words.

You humphed with annoyance and Billy laughed quietly.

"Can’t argue with that one. She can be very distracting”

***********************************************

You grimaced, the throbbing pain on your cheekbone was making your head spin and you almost throw up at the feeling. Your ankle was also slightly touched, swollen and red but hopefully nothing too serious that few days of rest couldn’t fix. But you didn’t have time for any of that right now, the mission was done but more and more guards were deployed on the building and it was time for you to evacuated quickly.

You were the last one with Five. You lost her somewhere between the third and fourth floor, after a man assaulted you, knocking the butt of his gun right in your face. You managed to take care of him but Amelia was nowhere to be seen. You hoped she was okay, your earbud had fall somewhere during your fight, you couldn’t imagined how Billy must be worried.

“One more floor, come on” You encouraged yourself as all your muscles were sore and begging you to just stop and lay there.

The evacuation was on the roof, a zip line carefully installed by Billy and he already evacuated everyone except the both of you. His worry was growing as you still weren’t here, the sound of shotguns echoed through all the building, not helping his nervousness.

When you finally reached the roof, your gaze frankly searched everywhere for Billy, a relieved sigh leaving your mouth when you saw him, waiting patiently next to the zip line.

"Took you fucking forever, was about to leave” He falsely complained, the relived smile on his face was contradicting his words.

“You wouldn’t dare” You said as you quickly walked toward him before stopping net at the sight of large man right behind him. “BILLY !” You yelled and barely registered his surprise face as the man jumped on him, both of them falling loudly on the floor.

You grimaced as Billy’s head knocked painfully loudly on the concrete, the sound seeming to echoed through your head as you made your best to reach him. You weak ankle was slowing down drastically.

One punch.

Two punch.

At the third punch Billy’s head fell on his side as he spat blood on the floor, his eyes watching you as you came closer.

You didn’t have any more bullet or this fucking asshole would already be dead. The blond tried to take back the control of the situation but he was clearly still a bit dazed from the violent punches he just received. He was struggling to hit him back as his arms were stuck under the big guy, a groan of exasperation and pain falling from his mouth.

When you saw the man grabbing a large knife from his belt, a rush of adrenaline courses through your veins. You literally sprinted there just in time to see the man roughly throwing his weapon toward Billy’s chest, trying to stab him. And he almost did. You let at a strangle cry at the gesture and almost tripped over but thankfully the blond rolled on himself at the last second, avoiding the – probably – deadly stab.

“Don’t touch him, you sick fuck !” You threw yourself on his back, not really your smartest move but you couldn’t think straight when Billy was in danger.

“Get off me, bitch !“ The man tried to dodge him from his back but you didn’t budge and quickly grabbed the thin rope from your belt, wrapped it around his neck and putting as much as pressure as you could.

The man started chocking immediately and Billy didn’t lose a second, pushing himself off the ground and stabbing the man with his own knife, right through his heart. A weak gasp escaped his throat as blood started dripping from the corner of his mouth, Billy quickly helping you get off from under his back.

"You’re okay ?” You immediately cradled his face, checking the bruises already forming on his beautiful face.

“Peachy” He mumbled, hissing quietly as he wiped the fresh blood from the scrap of his forehead. “Thanks to you. Would be dead without you” He added with a little smile as you both walked to the zip line, your hands still shaking at the previous events.

You could have lost him so easily. That was also why you both wanted to stop being part of the team. Always worried about your other significant, wondering if he would make it alive today.

“You scared the shit out of me, Billy” You whined as he quickly and skilfully hooking you to the zip line from the belt you were already wearing. "I thought he was going to…"A sniffle fell from your mouth and you immediately cleared your throat, it wasn’t the time to let the emotions drowned you.

"I know babe” The blond pressed a short kiss on your hairs and hooked himself to the line too as you took a deep breath. You weren’t safe yet. “Let’s go home” You both walked to the edge of the building and you hugged tightly Billy as he jumped off the roof, sliding fast down the safe place where the other were waiting.

***********************************************

General Headquarters of the 6 Underground team.

“How you’re feeling, Nick Fury ?” One snorted as soon as you strolled in the HQ, wearing this stupid patch on your left eye.

“Ha-ha, very funny, One” You rolled your eyes, well your eye and took a seat at the large table, slamming of piece of paper in front of your boss.

“What the fuck is this ?” He asked, a spoonful of cereal crushing loudly under his teeth.

“You said you were going shopping later, I need that” You slid it toward him and threw a quick glance without any real interest.

“Why on earth would I do your shopping ?”

“Because I look like a fucking pirate and I practically can’t walk because of this stupid ankle” You glanced angrily at your foot which forced you to stay in bed for the past five days.

“And what about Skywalker ? Too busy doing nothing ?” One groaned exasperatedly.

“In fact, I’m too busy doing my darlin’ girlfriend” Billy chimed in a he walked in the living-room, biting in an apple. “Maybe you should try and get laid too One, couldn’t hurt you”

You pretend to be annoyed by his comment but your amused smile betrayed you. It was hard to resist his cheeky grin, especially when he was looking so good, all sweaty and just back from the gym.

“You’re fucking gross” One stood up and grabbed your shopping list before leaving the room mumbling quietly.

You and Billy exchanged a fond gaze, knowing that under his shell, the big boss considered all of you like family.

“You’re supposed to be in bed” The blond commented as he walked to you, dropping a little peck on your hairs.

“Yeah but I wake up and you weren’t there anymore” You shrugged and giggled stupidly when he crouched down at your level. “Billy, seriously I can walk to the trailer, it’s not that far”

“Up on my back, missy” You shook your head childishly and watched your boyfriend stood back up, brows arched. “You’re not supposed to put pressure on your ankle, back to bed now” He softly pushed few locks of hair behind your hairs, giving you the sweetest look ever.

His way to convince you to go back lay down on your bed.

“I’ve been laying in bed all week Billy” You whined with a pout. “I’m so done staying in this damn freaking bed. It’s boring” You crossed your arms, remembering that you already asked him three times to go buy a new mattress and still nothing.

“Well I don’t know for you…” He tilted his face close to yours, his lips hovering above your mouth but quite not kissing yet. His warm breath gently caressing your face making you momentarily forgetting about his request. “But I, have few ideas to pass time in this damn freaking bed” His cocky and raspy tone sent a wave of electricity directly to your core, your fingers involuntary curling against your palm.

“Oh yeah ?” You grabbed the hem of his tee-shirt, tugging him closer to you and he smirked wider at your receptiveness. “Like what ?” He slid a finger under your chin and tilted your head toward him before pressing a hot, dirty kiss on your desperate mouth.

“Like…"He broke the kiss but didn’t let go of your bottom lip, tugging at it with his teeth until you hissed, feeling him grinned against you. ”…fucking you face down onto this mattress that you love so much…“ You didn’t even mind the irony about this damn mattress, too occupied with the hotness growing inside your body. "Sound good to you, babe ?” His question was useless and you both knew it. The unsteadiness of your breath and the way your hands were tightly clasped around his forearm were enough hints to understand the situation easily.

But he loved hearing you saying it anyway.

“Yes” You breathed out quietly, his digits rubbing dangerously high on your thigh, each of his stroke deliciously burning your skin.

“Yes what ?” He repeated with a teasing smile, earning a little whine from you.

You should have excepted that from this cocky bastard.

“I want you to fuck me with my face down against the mattress Billy” You repeated and internally cringed about your desperation. “Hard, please”

For all answer he gave a predatory, toothy smile which made your core throbbed with need before grabbing you roughly by the waist, throwing you on his shoulder like a rag doll. You gasped loudly, scolding him for his brusqueness and he only chuckled carelessly, delivering a sharp slap on your covered arse, a little moan leaving your parted lips.

***********************************************

“BILLY !” You screamed his name again and again, trying to reach him but you couldn’t move. “Billy…“ You let out a strangled sob at his pleading eyes looking toward you.

He was being tackled against a wall by a man, a hand tightly wrapped around his neck, applying a strong pressure on it. The lack of air in Billy’s lungs were obvious as his head was slowly turning a worrying shade of red. The little vessels on his eyes were bright red, his eyes popping out of their sockets from the urge to breath.

You could see his hands trying to push away the man from him, little desperate gasps chocking out from his parted lips.

The man decided to move away his hand and instead threw him violently on the floor, kicking his ribs roughly.

Billy coughed loudly, thin dash of blood escaping from his mouth.

"Let him go !” You yelled again, forcing your body to move but a sharp pain on your wrists made you looked down. Ropes. So tightly wrapped around your skin that every little move was burning, atrociously scratching your body.

You looked back at Billy and this time he was on his knees. Arms crossed behind his back, his face covered in bruises and dry blood. You opened your mouth to call him but nothing came out, unable to make a single noise.

The same man from earlier came back, holding a gun in his hand, walking straight for Billy. You eyes widened at the sight and you tried your best to wriggle out of your chains, gaze fixed on your boyfriend.

No, no, no.

Please, no.

Everything went horribly slowly as you watched the man raising the hand holding the deadly weapon, tears obscuring your vision. Billy stayed still, his chest straight as he fixed the man, jaw clenching firmly.

“Are you afraid ?” The man whispered dangerously low, gun pointing directly on his head.

For a split second you locked eyes with the blond before he looked back at the man.

“Never” Billy growled before spitting a bit of blood on the floor, gaze fierce and burning with anger.

The man chuckled darkly. Completely useless, you watched the man’s fingers taking off the security of his gun. The unmistakable sound brought shivers down your spine. You barely noticed the spams in Billy’s jaw because of your whole body was shaking violently.

“Liar” The man murmured with a satisfied smirk, slowly pressing the head off the gun on his forehead.

A strangle sob escaped your throat painfully at the gesture. That caught Billy’s attention. His beautiful green eyes fell on yours, tears silently falling on your cheeks. His lips mouthed something to you but you couldn’t understand it. The loud thumbing of your heart against your rib cage was making your head spin.

The deafening sound of a bullet leaving the gun tore the heavy silence, echoed loudly in your head. And then the noise of Billy’s body collapsing on the ground, the thick smell of powder and iron making you sick.

“BILLY !“

You jolted awake on the mattress, eyes wide opened, sweat dripping from your forehead and heart beating too quickly.

You let out a loud, throaty sob, your whole frame shaking and shivering violently at the vivid memories of Billy’s dead body. You didn’t even notice your movements, rocking yourself in poor attempt of calming your nerves, gaze staring at Billy’s empty side of bed.

You didn’t hear the sound of the door’s trailer opened before two soft hands clasping around your shoulders.

"Baby, what’s going on ? (Y/N), (Y/N) !” You felt someone cradled your face, warm digits stroking your wet cheeks. “Breath with me, baby. Inhale…exhale…just like that, love” You did as he said, feeling your pulse starting to slowing down and your breathing becoming easier.

Several seconds later, you could finally see him. Billy, alive and well, looking worriedly at you.

“You…“ A small cry fell from your mouth and the blond pressed a kiss on his forehead before bringing you against his chest. “You were dead” You breathed out almost painfully, hands desperately grabbing him, the fear that he would disappeared making you sick.

“Still having these nightmares ?” You nodded weakly, nose pressed against his jumper, feeling a little bit more at ease with his familiar scent. “You know I’m not going anywhere, baby. There is no way I’m leaving you alone, love you too much for that” A small hiccup escaped your mouth, bringing Billy to only hug your tighter.

You had absolutely no idea for how long you stayed like that. Minutes ? Hours ? ? All track of time was lost in his strong, safe arms, his lips gently kissed your hairs and murmuring sweet nothing to you until you finally calmed down.

“You were out ?” You mumbled sleepily, head resting in the crook of Billy’s neck, exhaustion growing in your bones.

“Yeah, couldn’t sleep. I went for a run then I heard screaming when I was coming back” He pushed back the bed cover with his free hand and gently moved you under the warm blanket, chuckling softly at your drooping eyelids. “M gonna go for a quick shower, okay ?” He kissed your shoulder as you barely managed to murmur a little okay before settling comfortably in the bed.

Those nightmares weren’t new for neither of you. It was the normal consequences of a constantly dangerous life. Always worrying about each other. About your friends. Wondering if it was your last day truly alive.

For you it was always the same way. You fell asleep and suddenly everything seemed so real that you couldn’t tell if you were awake or no. Usually you were so scared you whole body were just freezing, not able to wake up until either your boyfriend did it or something really intense happened in the dream. Translating by Billy’s death most of the time. Gunshot. Stabbing. Falling. Drowning. And every time you woke up, you were terrified it happened for real one day.

That was mostly why you and Billy were leaving the team. You didn’t want to worry every time you were apart for few hours.

For him, it was different. He couldn’t fall asleep. Someday his mind would race about the dangerousness of the missions you were all doing. The thick tension which wrapped around his body each time you had to take care of explosives. It was a deep, freezing kind of fear running through his veins. He would remember that you would have to do it again and again. He would just lay in bed, making sure you were next to him, keeping his eyes open with the fear of seeing something he didn’t want to if he closed them. So, sometimes he would go for a run, changing his mind or running until he was too exhausted to even think about anything.

Few minutes later, you were fighting the sleepiness drowning you, eyes closing by themselves every two seconds but you wanted to wait for Billy. Too scared to just go back right into this nightmare. You felt the mattress quietly creaked as the blond joined you in bed, switching off the light before sliding under the covers behind you.

“Try to sleep, baby” He murmured lazily, knowing you wouldn’t fall asleep without him. He pressed his chest against your back, one arm sliding under your head and the other one resting gently on your stomach. “Good night, gorgeous” A small kiss dropped on your hairs and you sighed quietly at the gesture, relaxing against his warm frame.

“Two more missions” You quietly said, eyes closed and hand linked with Billy’s one.

“ Two more missions” The blond repeated in a soft sigh, his head resting on top of yours, the sound of his steady heartbeat quickly lulling you to sleep.

2 more missions left.

[underthewingsofthblackeagle]

After her marriage with Frank Randall has failed and Claire Beauchamp flees from her violent husband, she finds refuge in the house of the Fraser/Murray family in Berlin-Wilhelmshorst. But then tensions arise between Britain (which has since left the EU) and some EU member states. All holders of an English passport are required to leave EU territory within six weeks … and suddenly Claire’s fate looks more uncertain than ever.

This story was written for the #14DaysofOutlander event, hosted by @scotsmanandsassenach​

Note: This chapter contains references to domestic violence and suicidal thoughts. If these things trigger something in you, please skip this chapter.

Chapter 3: 14 Seconds (1)

         Etienne Marcel de Provac Alexandre was satisfied. No, Etienne Marcel de Provac Alexandre was not satisfied. He could not be satisfied at all, because in reality he did not exist. It was James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser who was satisfied that Etienne Marcel de Provac Alexandre, his alias, had also successfully completed this assignment. Neither the negotiations nor the conclusion of that special trade agreement with the Argentinians had caused any problems, so he was able to finish his job in the time allotted.

“Buenos Aires - Skyline” by maymuc

         The success with which he had been able to complete his mission helped him to get over the inconvenience of his onward flight to Boston. It took more time for these 8,500 kilometres than for the return flight from Boston to Berlin. So he flew from Buenos Aires-Ezeiza shortly after eight in the evening first to Lima, where he had an 80-minute stopover at the Jorge Chavez International Airport. Then he was able to board a plane that took him from the Peruvian capital to Florida. He used the time on the plane to get some sleep.          When he arrived at Miami International Airport, he first had an extensive breakfast. Then he wandered around a bit, just to move his legs and afterwards he immersed himself in various wine magazines. While he was still reading and waiting for his connecting flight to Boston, an elderly gentleman approached him.          According to his legend, Jamie introduced himself as a French wine merchant who, on behalf of the Berlin-based company "In Vino Veritas - International Wines and Spirits", searched for new wines worldwide or brokered wine sales to partners.          This company - "In Vino Veritas" - really existed. And if anyone should have the idea to make further investigations about the firm, he would find nothing else but a flourishing wine and spirits trade, based in the German capital. Every time James Fraser mentioned this name or passed on his business card bearing this company’s name, he had to force himself not to smile. The irony of this name had made him laugh out loud when Ernst Neuenburger first told him about it. Because there was no truth in the wine that this company sold at all. On the contrary, this wine was nothing but deception. "In Vino Deceptio" would have been the correct name, but for very understandable reasons, that name had not been chosen. Ernst Neuenburger had acknowledged Jamie's loud laughter by saying:

         "Irony is one of the best gifts to survive the challenges of this life."

         The elderly gentleman who approached him at the airport in Miami made a harmless impression. He showed no great interest in the personal background of the person he was talking to, nor in his business relationships. It seemed as if he was simply trying to bridge his own waiting time by philosophizing with someone he liked about a topic in which both were interested. For Jamie, that was o.k.          It was due to his thorough preparation by Ernst Neuenburger's staff that Jamie was not only very well versed in European wines, but also in Australian, New Zealand, North and South American wines and their respective markets. On their behalf, he attended the Austrian Wine Academy and completed his training as a Wine Academician with the Wine Diploma, also known as the "International Wine Specialist". He was thus not only accepted into the "Club of Wine Academics", whose members were active in 41 countries around the world, but also acquired the prerequisites for the "Master of Wine" degree. Jamie was happy to take the trouble of this training, which not only helped him to fulfil his covert mission, but also raised his status in his real business life. The fact that his certificates and diplomas were issued in his alias name and in the name of James Fraser was also taken care of by Neuenburger’s staff.          Etienne Marcel de Provac Alexandre talked for almost an hour with the older American, who introduced himself as Bob Snider ("the one from Boca Raton, not the folk singer from Canada"), mainly about American, French and German wines. Then his flight was called and Etienne Marcel de Provac Alexandre said a hearty farewell to his interlocutor.

“Terminal - Miami International Airport” by Martin St-Amant (S23678) - Eigenes Werk, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6281155

         When James Fraser took his seat on the plane that was supposed to take him (finally!) to his next destination, he first wrote down the content of his conversation with "Bob Snider" and all the details he could remember about the man he had spoken to. The senior may have been harmless, but the mere fact that a stranger had come to speak to him obliged him to report this contact to his employer.          It was shortly after three in the afternoon when his plane landed at Logan International Airport. He took a taxi to the hotel where "In Vino Veritas" had booked the so-called "Boston Studio" for him. When he entered the room, he had to smile. The arrangement of the furniture in the various hotels around the world amazed him again and again. Here, it was the mixture of modern furniture and furniture trimmed on old that made him shake his head slightly. He would never really feel comfortable in such a mixture. But maybe it was better that way. The discomfort he felt in such rooms made him want to return home all the more. All that mattered to James Fraser was that the hotels booked for him had a fitness area that was open 24 hours a day. And that's exactly where he went after having a light dinner in the hotel restaurant that evening. One hour of workout and a long shower later he returned to his rooms where he went over the planning for the next day. Twenty minutes later James Fraser, alias Etienne Marcel de Provac Alexandre, sank into his bed and fell asleep contentedly.

“Luftbild des Hafens von Boston” by ArnoldReinhold - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83686125

         Just a few blocks away from Fraser's hotel, Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp Randall was lying in the bed of her conjugal bedroom. Tears were streaming down her face and wetting her pillow. Although she had been lying under her warm blanket for more than half an hour, she trembled all over her body as if she were standing outside the house on a frosty winter's night without a coat.          Behind her lay another evening of arguments, insults and humiliation. Frank, her husband for almost 10 years, had left the house at some point in a rage. She knew that he would now be sitting and drinking in one of the nearby bars. If he picked up any woman who wanted to spend the night with him, he was never expected to come home soon. But if he left  the bar empty-handed, he would return ‘home’ and the night could turn out even darker.          Frank Randall could not find a woman that night who would voluntarily share a cheap hotel bed with him. He returned to the house he and his wife had once called ‘home’. That night, Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp Randall's worst fears came true.

         The next morning, James Fraser woke up well rested and full of energy. His first course, after a brief visit to the bathroom, took him back to the hotel gym and then to the shower. Just as he was getting dressed for the new day, the room service brought the "Continental Breakfast" that he had ordered the night before. He had breakfast, reading on his tablet the various international newspapers whose online editions he had subscribed to. Exactly the peaceful and quiet morning time, as he appreciated it.          There were still four hours to go before his next appointment, a business lunch with “Paul Smith”. That man was also on Ernst Neuenburger’s payroll but had a completely different legend. Jamie had decided to use this time to have a look around the area of his hotel. The hotel's limousine service first took him to Paul Revere's house, and an hour later he was driven from there to the Old North Church. He would also have liked to visit the Museum of Fine Arts, but there was not enough time left and so he let his driver take him to the steakhouse where he should meet "Paul Smith".          When he arrived there, his "business partner" was already sitting at the table reserved for them. The men, who had never seen each other in person before, greeted each other like long-time friends. No one would have suspected that they knew each other only from photos that Ernst Neuenburger had placed quite innocently in the advertisements of a wine magazine some time before. They ate and drank and had lively conversations (and for those sitting nearby with ears too big) about current trends in the wine scene, prices, order quantities and shipping options. At the end of the extensive business dinner, they signed each other's contracts, both of whom knew that they would never experience any real economic development, and then toasted each other loudly with champagne to this glorious "business deal". Shortly before three o'clock in the afternoon, "Etienne" and "Paul", who called each other by their first names only and addressed each other as "brother", left the restaurant. Their sunny mood was in stark contrast to the dull, autumnal weather that swept over the city of Boston that afternoon.          Paul waved at a passing taxi and got in. Jamie waited for the limousine service, which was parked a bit far away, and due to the rather cold weather was quite happy that the car started moving in his direction immediately.          While he was still waiting, his eyes fell on an advertising flyer, which was driven across the sidewalk by a light wind. A name that was emblazoned on this flyer caught his attention. It was the name of a painter - Gerhard Richter. Jamie not only admired the paintings of the professor, who had taught painting at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf from 1971 to 1993 and whose works were among the most important and expensive of any living German artist. He was also fascinated by his life story, to which Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck had set a monument in his film "Never look away" (”Werk ohne Autor”). Without thinking for long, Jamie bent down and picked up the flyer. Still in the car he began to read. A small gallery not far from his hotel advertised an exhibition documenting Richter's life and work. Jamie put the flyer in his left breast pocket. He would love to spend part of his free evening visiting this exhibition. But now he had to hurry, because a small, private teleconference with the "managing director" of "In Vino Veritas" was scheduled for three o'clock in the afternoon local time, and he didn't want to be late. 

         While Etienne Marcel de Provac Alexandre reported to his boss in faraway Berlin about the successfully concluded contracts with "Paul Smith", Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp Randall made her way through her neighbourhood. Although the weather was unusually cold for the time of year, with 13.8 degrees Celsius, she could no longer bear to stay in her "home" after everything that had happened the previous night. At first she had thought of going to a nearby café that she visited regularly in the past. But the thought of having to sit on a hard wooden chair had made her refrain from doing so. Not far away there was also a church that she had visited repeatedly and the fact that the pews were furnished with soft seat cushions lead her steps hopefully towards this building. But her hope was to be disappointed. On the - closed - main portal there was a handwritten notice that on that day the doors of the church would stay closed due to a sudden illness of the sexton. Resigned, she turned around. Where could she go now? Her gaze fell on a small gallery that was open until six o'clock in the evening. That was still three hours away. Three hours in which she could look at the pictures there, or sit down in front of one of the works of art. Three hours in which nobody would approach her or ask her about anything. Three hours in which she could think about her next steps in peace. Somehow she had to find a way out of this misery. But she did not know how. Only one thing she knew with one hundred percent certainty: She would never return to Frank Randall. Not a single moment would she voluntarily stay in the presence of this monster again. She would rather put an end to her miserable existence. Claire had already thought about this once before. Back then, on 31 May 2018, when Longfellow Bridge was reopened after five years of repairs. But when she stood on top of the bridge, she was not sure whether a jump from there would bring the longed-for end to her agony. She had turned away and had returned. Returned to her life with Frank, whom she knew was cheating on her regularly. Returned to a life of lies. Returned to a life where she tried to numb all her pain with alcohol and pills. But if her experience had shown one thing, it was that no drug in the world could cover those wounds, especially not those that Frank had inflicted on her the previous night. Something had to happen. 

 “Ausstellung” by beludise          Twenty minutes before 4:00 pm Jamie had finished the conference call. Through one of the windows of his room he looked outside and noticed that the sky was darkening. A strong wind had come up and rain began to patter against the windows. But even if the thunderstorm was about to start, he would not be deterred from visiting the small gallery whose flyer he still carried with him. He dialed the number of the reception and ordered the limousine service again.          On the way to the lobby of the hotel he thought about how much he would have loved to get in touch with Jenny, Ian and the kids via video conference. But that was not possible. The chance of endangering himself, his job and possibly his family was too great. But it would not be long before he would finally see them again. The following evening his flight left and the following day, with a small detour via the headquarters of "In Vino Veritas", he would arrive back home and see them all again. He was already looking forward to it very much. For him, his family was the most valuable earthly possession and he wished for nothing more than to be able to start a family himself one day. Up to now he had always pushed that thought away. While he was still living in Scotland, the administration of his parents' estate and the political activities took up all his time and energy. Moreover, he would not have wanted any women to be the wife of a man who was a convicted traitor, being held in a London high-security prison and therefore not able to provide for his family. But more important than this was the fact that he had not yet met "the" woman with whom he really wanted to spend his whole life and with whom he wanted to start a family. When he entered the foyer and the receptionist told him that his limousine had just arrived, James Fraser had no idea that he was less than an hour away from that very encounter.          Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp Randall had entered the gallery, paid the entrance fee and accepted an exhibition guide, which she had immediately stowed in her handbag. She had wandered aimlessly through the rooms until she found a small bench in one of the back exhibition rooms. It stood in front of a picture showing an older man with glasses, standing in front of a reddish wall. But she only took note of it peripherally. Much more important in her present situation was that there was soft upholstery on the bench. Carefully she sat down on it and yet the pain went through all her limbs.

         When Jamie's limousine stopped at the curb in front of the gallery entrance, it had already begun to rain in torrents. The sky had darkened to black and now and then a loud roll of thunder could be heard. Carl, the limousine driver, parked near the entrance and then quickly jumped out of the car with a large black umbrella bearing the logo and name of the hotel in golden letters. He opened the door on the rear passenger side and held the umbrella so that Jamie could get out without getting wet. The chauffeur accompanied him the few steps to the gallery, then quickly hurried back to the limousine where he would wait for the guest to return.          As soon as he had entered, Jamie was greeted by a friendly member of the gallery staff. He paid the entrance fee and received the exhibition catalogue. Then he slowly started his way through the exhibition. It took him about forty minutes to reach the back room of the gallery. Already from a distance he saw the well-known photo that showed the painter in front of his famous work "Wall". Only once had Richter had himself photographed in front of this work. This photo had then adorned the title page of the art magazine "art".

“Locken” by KRiemer         In front of exactly this two-meter by two-meter picture sat a petite woman, whose head was surrounded by an only slightly tamed, dark brown mass of curls. Carefully and anxious to make as little noise as possible, Jamie approached her with some distance. A few minutes passed, then he heard the woman sniffing softly. She opened her handbag and was obviously looking for a handkerchief in a hurry. Jamie reached into the right pocket of his jacket and pulled out a pack of Tempo tissues, which he opened and held out to the unknown woman.

         "Please, take one of these.”          The woman turned her head up to him and looked at him with big amber eyes, red from weeping. Later, James Fraser would tell again and again how  those first 14 seconds, when he looked into the most beautiful eyes in the world, decided his future path of life.

[sincerelyreidburke]

Omg can I please have a fic where Quinn (possibly backed by all of SMH) absolutely throws down N*te. And then maybe comforts a Sad Nando bc nando is Soft and needles all the cuddles and support

Okay, this has been in popular demand for quite some time now. It may be 1:31 AM, but I’m counting this as a little birthday present for Nando.

Set during Quinn’s summer in Arizona. :D

//

One of the first steps of taking your boyfriend home for the summer is showing him around.

For the past six days, that’s what Nando has taken it upon himself to do. He can’t believe, actually, that he and Quinn have been home from school for an entire week already— well, a week tomorrow, but still— and yet here they are, arrived at the last day of Nando’s extensive tour of the Phoenix metro area. They’ve spaced it out— something one day, something another— like dinner at Tio’s one night, an afternoon meeting his best friends from home, showing Quinn his childhood rink.

He’s satisfied with his own performance as a tour guide, but tomorrow means his first shift at Tio’s restaurant, which means that summer job season is really beginning. Which, like, obviously he and Quinn can still hang out— they’re living under the same roof; and if it’s not Mama or one of the girls, Quinn is the first person he sees every morning. It’s just that once he has a summer job schedule, their days won’t be entirely their own anymore.

For Quinn, he knows, that might be a little weird, at least for these first three weeks until Gabi and Rosa get out of school. Once they’re done, the summer theatre stuff starts up, and Quinn is getting paid to do that, so he’ll have something to do.

In the meantime, though, Nando knows he brought things with him. Like his knitting stuff. And a few books. And his camera.

And until tomorrow, the time is still theirs.

“Okay, my love,” Quinn says, at the kitchen table, over his toast and eggs. The morning is all theirs; Mama is at work, so once they got the twins out the door and onto the bus, Nando made him breakfast. “What’s on the agenda today?”

Nando grins at him. “Oh, you’re curious?”

He shrugs. “In a way.” He’s wearing a baggy KMH shirt tucked into his pajama bottoms, and he hasn’t even done his hair yet. Nando lives for seeing him like this— his obsessively proper boyfriend, who won’t be caught dead in jeans outside of a party, in his pajamas in his family’s kitchen.

It has been six days, and having Quinn at home has given him enough fuel for domestic daydreaming to last a lifetime.

It’s going to be a good summer.

“Well, I saved a good thing for last,” Nando tells him, reaching for his hand across the table. “We’re going to the beach.”

Quinn raises his eyebrows, skeptical. “In Arizona.”

“Yes,” he chirps back, because two can play at this game. “I’m driving you eight hours south to the ocean. Do you have your passport?” Quinn laughs a little, and he adds, “No, baby, the beach by the river. There’s a little park there. We can sit by the water in the sun.”

“Ooh.” Quinn smiles. “That sounds lovely.”

“But first,” he adds, squeezing his hand. “I’m taking you to my favorite Starbucks.”

Quinn cocks his head, with amusement in his smile now. “You have a favorite Starbucks?”

“You don’t have a favorite Starbucks?” he replies.

“I…” He trails off a little. “I can’t say I do, actually.”

“Well, I’ll educate you.” He brings his hand to his face, kisses it, and says, “Maybe this one will become your favorite.”

Quinn’s smile is the cutest shit he has ever seen. “Maybe so.”

*

In the truck, on the way there, Quinn is watching out the window. “So why is it your favorite?”

“Huh?”

“The Starbucks.” He looks to him across the console. “Why is it your favorite?”

“Oh.” Nando grins. “Well, okay. It’s, like, classic Arizona architecture, and—”

“Wait, you like it because of the architecture?” Quinn chuckles a little. “Are you Ben?”

“Jesus, baby, are you chirping me?” Nando jostles his arm, and Quinn laughs. “You’re a regular KMH member. I’m impressed.”

Quinn shrugs. “I suppose you’re finally rubbing off on me.”

“Wow.” Nando loves his boyfriend. “I’m honored. But FYI, I was only starting with the reasons I liked it.”

“Okay, continue, then.”

“Okay, so it has a lot of really nice outdoor seating.” Nando pauses. “It’s, like, near a shopping center, but it’s separate from the rest of the stores, so it’s not just some ugly spot. They always have the good cake pops, and plus, the manager is cool. They have blue hair and they wear a bunch of pride pins on their apron.”

“Okay.” Quinn nods, as Nando watches him process. Or at least sort of watches him, because he is, technically, still driving a vehicle, cute as the boy in the passenger’s seat may be. “That does sound like a good Starbucks.” He pauses. “What do you mean by the good cake pops?”

“Lemon ones,” he replies. “And chocolate. And, during Pride month, rainbow.”

“Oh my goodness.” Quinn closes his eyes, like he’s having a moment. “Now I’m craving a cake pop.”

“Well, it’s a good thing we’re on our way there,” Nando replies, and he laughs.

It only takes a few more minutes to arrive. The parking lot is sort of crowded, but it doesn’t look like a mob scene, which is nice. Nando sees an empty table for two under a palm tree on the patio that has their name on it.

“Here we are,” he remarks, parking the truck across the lot from the door. “Our cake pops await.”

Quinn puts on his sunglasses. Their lenses are rose-gold and circular, and he looks criminally adorable in them. And also kind of super hot. That’s the thing about Quinn. He’s the cutest thing in the world and he’s also the source of literally all of Nando’s thirst. And he can turn on a dime. “I’m ready,” he tells him, combing back his hair. Already, with the past week in the sun, it’s gone a little lighter blond on the top. “I’ll have you know, my expectations are extremely high.”

“Oh, this won’t disappoint you,” Nando assures him. “I promise.”

They walk hand-in-hand across the parking lot, and Nando grabs the door for him. Inside is sweet air-conditioned bliss, and it smells like fresh-roasted coffee beans and the bakery case. Nando hasn’t been in here since Christmas break, and it’s been too long.

There’s a small line, but it won’t take more than a few minutes to get to the register. He tries to see who’s working, in case it’s Shai, but he can’t get a good look at the cashier, and there’s no sign of their blue mohawk among the baristas making the drinks.

Shai is actually, like, thirty, and possibly married, but they memorized his drink order in high school and always complimented him on his pride shirts, so they’re one of those older queer people Nando has just imprinted on. And, okay, yeah. He was totally excited to bring his boyfriend in here to meet them. It’s the little things.

Going around town with Quinn is like showing him off, and he has never been happier.

As they get in line, Quinn wraps his hand around his elbow, leaning into him. “It smells good in here,” he hums, with his head against his shoulder.

“I told you,” Nando replies, kissing his temple. “This is a magical place.”

He checks his phone, briefly, while they wait in line; he hasn’t actually looked at it since he woke up this morning. He has a few Snapchats in the cricket group chat, plus one from Nursey (he and Dex just got engaged, which, !!!!!!), and a separate text from Rhodey (it looks like he sent him a TikTok; Rhodey is obsessed with TikTok). He opens the cricket group, turns his front camera on, and snaps a selfie. Quinn is smiling with his cheek against his shoulder, and he himself looks like a little bit of a meme, but Quinn looks cute, so he saves it before he types the caption (coffee run y’all want anything) and sends it through.

In exactly twenty seconds, Rhodey replies. It’s a picture of himself in his work uniform— he delivers pizzas in Providence— and he’s flashing a peace sign at the camera. His hair is in a pink, blue, and yellow striped scrunchie. ya get me an americano. also yall are gay

Quinn snickers. “Well, I would sure hope so, Ben.”

Nando pockets his phone and hooks his arm around his neck. “Super gay.”

Quinn leans into his shoulder. “Mm.” He nods. “The gayest.”

They move forward a spot in line, then another. In fact, they move forward three entire spots without incident. Quinn is humming some showtune— it’s from Spring Awakening; he recognizes it— and Nando is keeping his eyes peeled for Shai, or at least someone he knows. Look at me! I’m in love and I’m happy.

But then God says, be careful what you wish for.

Because as they move into the spot where they’re up next to order, he catches the sound of the cashier’s voice. “... and can I get a name for the order?”

All of the life leaves Nando’s body.

“Holly? Great.” The voice is nasally, and a little artificially cheerful. He hasn’t heard it— outside of a few drunk voicemails— in over two years, but it evokes a visceral reaction in him. He feels sick, all of a sudden. “That’ll be right up.”

He must be tense all of a sudden, because Quinn peers up at him. “Sebastián?” he asks, and what a difference between two voices. “Are you alright?”

He tries to take a deep breath. “I, um.” He pauses. “I think we have to leave.”

“Next customer, please?”

“Leave?” Quinn squints. “But we’re next!”

The people in front of them step to the side counter, and Nando sputters too long. “We, uh—”

But when the way is clear, it’s too late. “Sebby!”

Nando wants to die.

“Holy shit!” Nate has a different haircut, and a Starbucks apron, but otherwise he’s the same— the same pasty pale skin, the same bony stature, the same face so easily twisted into a scowl. Right now, though, he’s smiling, which, honestly, is an expression that looks alien on him, based on Nando’s memory. “You didn’t tell me you were home from school!”

What he wants to say is, Nate, why the fuck would I tell you I was home from school, but what he does say is, “Uh, hi.”

He is going to cringe himself to death. He’s been home for no less than six days, and he is already running into his ex with his boyfriend.

When did he start working here?

“It’s been forever!” As Nate keeps on this weirdly cordial tangent, Nando feels Quinn still next to him. Quinn knows vaguely what Nate looks like, but what he knows better is the way he used to act, and the fact that he used to call him Sebby. Also, he’s wearing a nametag. And Nando feels as stiff as a board. “How’ve you been?”

Very carefully, Quinn unwinds his arm from his, and takes a firm, obvious grip on his hand.

“Jeez, I keep trying to reach out to you,” Nate continues, like they’re old friends running into each other, and not exes with a toxic history. “We really should catch up sometime, now that you’re in town.”

Nando takes a long breath, like it’ll fix the tension in his chest. He squeezes at Quinn’s hand, which helps a little. Quinn leads when they step up to the counter, and he inhales like he wants to order, but Nate is still fucking going. “Who’s your friend?” he asks.

“Boyfriend,” Quinn blurts, in his I’m pissed and I mean business voice, which, thank God for this boy. “I’m his boyfriend.”

Nate raises his eyebrows a little, looking at Quinn like he’s a five-year-old having a tantrum. “Oh,” he says, shrugging. “My bad. Although, I should’ve known.” Nate’s eyes dart to him for a second, and Nando wants to scrub himself clean of that gaze. “He tends to go for the little guys,” Nate continues, to Quinn, gesturing between the two of them like he’s comparing their heights. Then he shrugs again. “Gotta balance it out, y’know?”

Nando’s stomach turns. It stings, so much, and as soon as this is out of Nate’s mouth he feels Quinn squeeze his hand so hard it’s like he intends to break bones. He squeezes right back, and God, he knows it’s cruel and unnecessary and shouldn’t bother him, and it’s been almost three fucking years since he had to deal with Nate, but it still hurts. It hurts just as much as every comment like that did from him. It sends him back to memories of hating and second-guessing himself, and he just. He feels so fucking humiliated.

Quinn takes a very long breath, his eyes on Nate, while he digests this, and then he says, “Can I get a peach green tea, please.” He pauses, still squeezing the circulation out of his hand, and it is the only thing keeping Nando from tearing up. Which is pathetic. But he’s just. It hurts. “And he’ll have a—”

“Mocha frappe. Yeah. I know.” Nate chuckles a little, already grabbing a cup. “Extra whip, right?”

Quinn bristles, face flushing, and finally, Nando finds his voice. “Actually,” he says, “no.” Because even though that was what he was going to order, he doesn’t want to give Nate the satisfaction of thinking he still knows him that well. His Starbucks order may be the same, but there’s so much about him that’s changed since Nate knew him. So much about him that’s better now. Without him. He orders his second favorite. “An iced vanilla latte.” And then, because even though he really doesn’t feel like being polite to him, he feels like Mama might manifest in this Starbucks and kick his ass if he doesn’t say it, he adds, “Please.”

“Hm, my mistake,” Nate says, with a shrug, as he’s writing on the two cups. “I guess you’re a new man, Sebby. We really should catch up.” Quinn’s death grip intensifies, because he knows how much Nando cannot stand being called that. He brings his other hand back to wrap around his elbow, too, like he’s being protective, and Nando has never been more grateful for him.

“Anyway, that’ll be right up.” Nate looks so unbothered, just the way he always did, years ago, when he’d make a comment that left Nando’s self-esteem reeling for days afterward. “I guess I don’t really need your name for the order, huh?”

He’s writing on the cup, and Nando can’t see— or just doesn’t want to— but Quinn must be able to, because he says, “His name is Sebastián.”

Nate raises his eyebrows. “Ooh, feisty.” And of course Quinn sounds mad— but Nate making fun of him will do nothing but add more fuel to the fire. Nate looks to him, past Quinn entirely, and adds, “Does he speak for you all the time like this, or—?”

Nando wants to melt into the floor. “Just give us our total, Nate,” he says, because the faster they can get out of here, the better. Quinn is bristling next to him, but stays quiet. 

Nate sighs, shrugs a little, and punches into the cash register. “If you say so,” he says, then announces, “6.23.”

And he thinks that’s going to be the end, but then, as he’s handing over his card, Nate keeps fucking talking. “Oh!” he says, still all faux-fake. “Sebby, you should take him to the lake. Remember, when we’d go down there in high school?”

Quinn’s grip on him tightens. This transaction cannot process fast enough. “We had a lot of fun,” Nate says, like he’s reminiscing. “Always did. It’s a shame; I feel like we never really had closure.”

Finally, finally, after what feels like a million years, he hands his card back, and Nando pockets it in a hurry. “C’mon,” he says to Quinn, because he cannot stand here for one more second, and as they walk away, Nate calls after them.

“Hey, give me a shout sometime!” He’s doing the fake-smile thing again. “We should really hang out, now that you’re in town again.”

Nando squeezes his eyes shut and takes a tight breath; he didn’t realize it before, but it’s hard to breathe. He feels sick and humiliated and awful, and when they’re far enough away to be out of earshot, he looks to Quinn and whispers, “Baby, I am so sorry.”

Quinn is surprisingly calm, at least in comparison to his clear irritation at the register. He shakes his head and rubs his arm with the free hand that’s not holding his. “Don’t apologize,” he says. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“But I just—” He wants to melt. “I had no idea he started working here; I haven’t even seen him since before freshman year, and it just— like, it figures, right—”

“Sebastián,” Quinn says, and his even voice pulls Nando out of his head. “I’m going to get our drinks, and then we can get out of here, okay?”

Nando lets all his breath out at once, then nods. “I— yeah. Okay. That’s— perfect. I’m sorry, baby.”

“Do not be sorry.” Quinn rises on tiptoe and kisses his cheek. “None of that was your fault.”

Quinn seems surprisingly collected for someone who was just ignored and insulted a minute ago, and Nando has this feeling, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he’s planning something, some kind of revenge— but what could he do, with Nate just working?

They station themselves against the wall by the pick-up counter, and it isn’t lost on Nando how touchy Quinn is being— not that they’d hold back in public for any reason in general, but he’s definitely going the extra mile right now, rubbing the inside of his elbow and leaning his head on his shoulder and holding his hand all at once. Not only is the touch grounding; Nando is also fully aware that Quinn is trying to rub it in Nate’s face should he glance over from his spot behind the counter.

Which, good. Let him fucking stare if he wants to. Nando hasn’t felt that humiliated in a long time.

And he hates that he let it hurt him, that one stupid comment— but it was such a reminder of worse times, times when he’d have to process things like that from the person who was supposed to be his partner all the time, and it was just. It was always hard, and it was always awful, and being with Quinn has helped him work so much on all of that. Quinn taught him, so early on, that he deserved better. Everything with Quinn is better.

He just focuses on holding Quinn’s hand for a minute, until Nate puts their drinks out at the pick-up counter. “Stay here, honey,” Quinn tells him, squeezing his hand before he unwinds his fingers from it. “I’ll be right back.”

“Okay,” Nando replies, and watches him go.

Quinn squares his shoulders, takes a short breath, and walks to the counter. Nando is suddenly very aware that something might be about to happen. He leans against the wall and listens in, as he watches Quinn take the two drinks from across the counter.

He’s right. Quinn looks Nate dead in the eye and says, “Hi, could I just remind you of something?”

Oh my God. Nando widens his eyes. Is Quinn about to chew him out?

Nate says nothing, but looks unamused, and Quinn continues. “You broke up with him,” Nando hears him say. “After you cheated on him, by the way. Just in case you forgot.” Nate raises his eyebrows, but stays silent. Quinn is reeling now, and there’s no stopping him. “And I happen to know an awful lot about the way you treated him, and how much that hurt him, so don’t you dare try to act so friendly, like you didn’t break him.” Nando is frozen in place, as Quinn picks up both of the drinks. “He owes you nothing. He clearly does not want to reconnect with you, and I sure as hell wouldn’t want to do that either with someone who did nothing but make me feel awful about myself for two years.” Quinn isn’t even making a scene— the only reason Nando can hear what he’s saying is because he’s not standing that far away— but Jesus Christ, if this isn’t the most satisfying thing to witness in the world. Nate is red in the face and absolutely silent, and Quinn is staring daggers at him; if looks could kill, he’d be dead on sight. “If you wanted to be his friend, maybe you shouldn’t have stomped all over his heart.”

Nando cannot believe his ears.

“And,” Quinn adds, like it’s the end of a big monologue, “I’m going to need two straws.”

Nando is so in love with this boy.

He watches, trying not to smile or even laugh, as Nate fumbles into the thing of straws and shoves two in Quinn’s direction. Quinn takes them, flashes a big, stage smile, and says, “Thank you!” before he turns and walks back in Nando’s direction.

The fake smile turns self-satisfied in a second flat, as he meets Nando’s eyes again. Nando is still kind of frozen, but he wants to kiss him, right in the middle of Starbucks.

All he can say is, “Baby.”

Quinn is all smiles. He looks the way he does when he comes out of the stage door after a great show. “Ready to go, honey?”

“Am I ever,” Nando says, and they join hands again as they head for the door. He’s not sure if Quinn knows that he heard what he said. “That… was kind of the most satisfying thing I’ve ever witnessed in my life.”

“Oh,” Quinn replies as he sticks his straw into his iced tea, “trust me, Sebastián. It’s the most satisfying thing I’ve done as long as I can remember.” He pauses, as he takes a sip, and then adds, “I’ve been wanting to do that for longer than I can even say.”

“It was hot,” he says, because, well, it was. “And just… jeez, I— maybe something good did come out of this situation.”

“Of course it did,” Quinn replies. His smile is kind of maniacal, and Nando is into it. “I got to have the confrontation of my dreams, and I got an iced tea.” He holds up his drink. “Cheers!”

Nando bumps his vanilla coffee against it and laughs. “Cheers, baby.”

Quinn squeezes his hand. They walk back outside into the summer day, and Nando doesn’t look back.

Not even a glance.

[dailyexo]

[INTERVIEW] EXO - 191220 Teen Vogue: K-Pop Stars EXO Reflect on How Far They've Come — and How Far They'll Go

"As Chen tells Teen Vogue, this year has been “a time for EXO to reflect” on their past, present, and future.

Chances are, even if you didn’t know it at the time, you’ve seen the members of the legendary K-Pop group EXO before. Their musical prowess speaks for itself, but even beyond that, their careers have taken over TV, fashion, celebrity culture, and more in the past year.

Maybe you've seen rapper and multi-instrumentalist Chanyeol, 27, shaking hands with Zendaya at Paris Fashion Week. Or perhaps it was breathtaking dancer and rapper Kai, 25, cracking 7th place on British GQ’s Best-Dressed Men of 2020 list. Or singer and composer Lay, 28, becoming Calvin Klein’s first-ever Chinese global ambassador. You might’ve watched rapper and youngest member Sehun, 25, on Netflix’s detective program Busted, or glimpsed leader and vocalist Suho, 28, waving from the red carpet as an honorary ambassador of the International Film Festival & Awards Macao. These are just a few of the places and memories that stamp the proverbial passport of EXO’s lives this year.

It’s been an equally powerful year musically for EXO too. With two members — Xiumin, 29, and D.O., 26, — currently completing their mandatory military enlistment and Lay promoting in China, the remaining six members of EXO have explored their own individual musical identities in 2019. Power vocalist Chen, 27, released two solo albums that chronicled love and heartbreak through mature, heart-warming ballads, while Baekhyun’s groovy solo album, City Lights, broke the highest monthly sales record for a solo artist in South Korean chart history with over 500,000 copies sold. Sehun and Chanyeol teamed up this summer for the debut of EXO-SC, EXO’s hip-hop sub-unit, while Baekhyun and Kai joined forces to “jump and pop” in SM supergroup SuperM.

As Chen tells Teen Vogue, this year has been “a time for EXO to reflect” on their past, present, and future as they reunite to promote their sixth album Obsession.

It’s December 4th, 2019, and the six members are dressed in thick, woollen, neutral-toned sweaters and trenchcoats to protect themselves from the arctic winds billowing throughout Seoul. There’s a warm camaraderie to their interactions as they laugh amongst themselves and take sips of their iced coffees. The atmosphere feels comfortable and familial, born from an understanding of each other’s mindsets and quirks that has been learned organically over the group’s career.

“It’s been seven years since we debuted and we’ll be hitting eight years next year; that’s a long period of time,” Chen says. His humble, calm demeanor is a balm for the rest of the group who cling to his introspective thoughts. “We reflected on our past journey and tried to make improvements in this new album. It’s been a grateful and fun time.”

This desire to continuously push boundaries both musically and creatively has been at the crux of EXO’s identity since their debut in 2012. Originally split into two groups, EXO-K and EXO-M, EXO performed their shared discography in both Korean and Mandarin in an effort to appeal to two major music markets simultaneously. The groups came together in 2013 to release their debut album, XOXO, and the album’s repackage released later in the year saw EXO’s popularity hit a fever pitch with the funky, dance-pop single “Growl.” Since then, each of EXO’s last five albums have sold over a million copies in South Korea alone, earning them the title “quintuple million sellers.”

The group is not only a staple in South Korea but across the globe too. From performing in front of the world at the closing ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics to becoming the first K-Pop group to have their faces projected on the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, EXO has stamped their name in the annals of pop history with their devotion toward their music, fans (called EXO-L), and each other. As they’ve matured over the years, that dedication hasn’t wavered.

“In our early years we just played together, whereas now we’ve grown up and matured,” Baekhyun replies. The singer’s personality is brighter than his shining white hair, and he thrives on the reactions to the jokes he makes throughout our chat. “We share a lot about where we’re headed in life, what we want to do for the upcoming album, and discuss how we can come together closer as a team to improve our teamwork.”

That tight-knit teamwork manifested itself in multiple ways throughout this year. From congratulating each other on Instagram like Lay did for Baekhyun’s solo debut to Xiumin and Sehun emceeing Chen’s solo album press conferences, the members have made it a point to support one another with every milestone they achieve, both individually and as a group. It also took center stage as the group embarked on their fifth world tour, Exo Planet #5 – The EXplOration, this July.

Part of the decision to go on tour, according to Suho, is because it makes the fans “happy,” which in turn makes EXO happy; this treasured time spent with fans also one of the reasons why the group worked tirelessly to release their new record in between their jam-packed personal schedules.

“Since the year EXO debuted, we’ve released an album every year. We’ve never skipped a single year,” Suho answers. With attention-grabbing ruby red hair, the leader holds himself with a quiet confidence and classic charm. “Even though it wasn’t a formal promise we made, it’s been a tradition to release an album each year, even if that means we have to make the promotion period short. Everyone’s been having hectic schedules, but it’s very meaningful for us to spend the end of the year with the fans.”

Heavily rooted in the group’s constant state of reinvention, the concept for Obsession sees EXO face off against their evil, superpowered doppelgängers X-EXO. Superpowers have been a common thread that has tied EXO’s music video multiverse together since their debut single “MAMA”, with each member utilizing their own signature power ranging from Chanyeol’s pyrokinesis to Kai’s teleportation abilities. When X-EXO arrives ready to destroy the planet in the group’s music video, the result is an explosive, superhero-style brawl between good and evil that leaves viewers enthralled.

In the lead up to shooting the music video, EXO emphasized the importance for both of their characters to have their own distinct, contrasting identity. While EXO dressed in weathered, straight laced black cargo pants and berets as if ready to march into war, X-EXO celebrated their eccentricities with jewel toned hair colors, white eyelashes, and uniquely cut clothing that bridged the gap between menacing and seductive.

“Our main focus was to draw a big contrast. All of us thoroughly discussed with our makeup and hair artists to bring that contrast, almost to the point of exaggeration,” Chanyeol says. He’s as jovial as his bubblegum pink hair and is openly expressive with his emotions, which light up his face whenever he speaks. “We tried to make X-EXO look very dark. EXO, on the other hand, was the good, righteous EXO like what fans have seen in the past. They came easy and naturally.”

“Like Chanyeol said, we discussed thoroughly with the makeup, hair, and costume team so that you could see the contrast right away,” Kai continues. Conscientious and thoughtful, Kai surveys the older members before answering so he doesn’t interrupt them. “Our attitudes also play a key role because they add to the strong visuals. Since it was a video, we all tried to make our performances convincing. X-EXO showed something that EXO had never done before — something mischievous.”

Amongst the members, X-EXO wins in a landslide over the team they liked the most.

“X-EXO had a stronger visual impact,” Baekhyun explains. “Personally, I wish that we made the plain EXO look cooler. That would have been right, because EXO was supposed to be the revolutionary army against X-EXO! I feel like they were visually weaker; I wish we had expressed more passion as EXO.”

With every album, EXO releases a bold title track that shatters the current K-pop paradigm, like the sinister “Obsession” or the reggae, EDM hybrid track “Ko Ko Bop." The remainder of the tracks on the albums typically allow EXO to explore new genres and make them their own, which range from hip-hop dance tracks like “Ya Ya Ya”, which samples ‘90s vocal trio SWV’s “You’re The One”, to heart-fluttering ballads like “Butterfly Effect."

Kai’s favorite track on the album is “Jekyll," which he loved from the first listen. “It starts off like a sweet R&B song, but the chorus suddenly changes into this shouting, which I think is in line with the duality expressed in the album,” he says. “I immediately thought that we could show a very different type of performance for this song — I can’t wait to perform this on stage and show the fans.”

“I like “Obsession” the most,” Sehun answers. Although under the weather, he makes a point to attend the interview to support his older members. “It was good enough to make the title track, so it’s my favorite.”

Chen picks the dreamy “Groove” because: “I love all the other tracks, but this song made me wonder if I could pull it off when I first heard it because it was such a different genre. It was challenging while recording it, but I love the result. It’s one of the songs that I feel most attached to.”

Chanyeol also fell in love with “Jekyll”, but is also partial to the similarly haunting reggae track “Trouble”. “The song came out to be great; I think we pulled it off pretty well,” he says happily.

“‘Day After Day’ for me,” says Baekhyun. While the other members have been discussing their favorites, he’s been silently exchanging silver rings with Suho. He nicks Chanyeol’s wire-rimmed glasses and puts them up his face backwards, reveling in the laughter he receives. “The song reminds me of a certain type of weather. I like songs that remind me of something — a song with a theme or story. ‘Day After Day’ does that for me.”

“I was going to say the same,” Suho says, shocked. A mischievous grin spreads on Baekhyun’s face. “Stop it,” he teases.

The room is whipped into uncontrollable laughter as Suho jokingly grasps the collar of Baekhyun’s sweater, as if he’s about to wrestle the other singer mid-interview. Suho’s faux fury only makes Baekhyun’s smile grow wider and he lets out a loud ahh, ahh! before Suho lets go.

“It reminds me of rain!” Suho complains, but a smile is working its way across his face too. “That’s because the lyrics have the word ‘rain’ in them,” Baekhyun dryly quips. “Choose something other than ‘Day After Day’,” Kai urges in between laughs. “Day after tomorrow? Two days after tomorrow?” The laughter doubles.

In the end, Suho chooses “Baby You Are." “The song uses band sounds and I really like the sound of the guitar,” he answers, before replying in English: “The intro is the best!” He flashes an assured smile and gives a thumbs up to further prove his point.

“The intro is your part!” Chen lovingly chides. “It’s because you sang that part!”

The most emotional track on the album is “Butterfly Effect," which is a direct callback to the group’s 2013 song “Don’t Go” (which literally translates to “Butterfly Girl”). The song, according to Chanyeol, was selected as a way to thank fans for their unwavering support over the last seven years.

“After viewing the different universes portrayed in EXO’s albums, you’ll be able to see a connection between Obsession and our previous records,” Chanyeol says. “In songs like ‘Don't Go’ and ‘Butterfly Effect’, there are butterflies that resist the Red Force [the canonical evil force mentioned throughout EXO’s music videos] and protect EXO. To us, these butterflies represent our fans, who are always beside us no matter what. They are why and how we exist.”

He continues: “Because of our fans — through their love and support — we are able to overcome any difficulties [we face as a group]. This is probably one of the biggest messages that we wanted to share on this album.”

Prior to their debut seven years ago, the members’ goals for the future were heavily built upon their dream to debut together. Chanyeol recalls that, before they were ever officially called EXO, each member was bonded together by a “common goal to create good music as one” as well as their frequent discussions while training to “work together for a very long time."

“At the time of our debut, we had achieved nothing and everything was up in the air. We talked about working together for a long time, hitting number one on the chart, winning awards, and more,” Kai replies, tone contemplative as he leans closer. “Personally speaking, when we eventually achieved all those goals, I realized, yes, winning awards and being successful is important, but more importantly being able to perform happily as an artist is what mattered the most. There were times when I obsessed over our sales record, stages, and something tangible, but now my goal and dream is to be a happy artist, being satisfied with what I do.”

At the end of Kai’s answer, EXO breaks out into a hearty round of applause. Kai bashfully shines on the encouragement with a soft grin. “He’s like a supervisor,” Baekhyun teases. Chanyeol concurs, “He’s like a CEO!”

Looking ahead, EXO’s goals for the upcoming year aren’t the grandiose, tangible achievements of their youth, but rather to keep the promise they made to each other all those years ago: to make music together for a really long time. “I’m wishing all the members’ health and happiness [in the future],” Chen says.

“Being able to perform for a long time as one, being able to meet the fans for a long time…” Kai reflects. “That’s the most important.”"

Photo links: 1, 2, 3

Credit: Teen Vogue.

[nikkzwrites]

Yesterday Once More | Dark Fix-It Fic Series | Chapter 11

A/N: This fic is one that I started with my OC because honestly, I personally didn’t like how season 3 ended. So I am rewriting all of Dark with my OC Annalise Dahlheim. I hope you all like it. Some things will be expanded more on just for more depth to Dark that season 3 kinda skipped over so…. yeah.

CW: Canon Typical Triggers: Smoking, Sex, Language, Drugs, Drinking, Death, Violence, Suicide Mentions, Cutting, Violence.

Word Count:  5k

[First Chapter] [Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter]

Jonas and Annalise both shot up awake at the same time in different times both having a dream about the moment that was supposed to be the happiest moment of their lives that was actually just the moments that would cause the disasters that would destroy Winden. One of the two in 2053 and the other teen in 2020. Their movements mimicked each other as the two turned to get out of his bed and pull out a letter. His addressed to him to open when his father died. Hers addressed to open now. They both sighed and walked down the stairs into the main areas of the empty Kahnwald house. Annalise’s stairs were silent to cause Jonas’s stairs to creak twice as loud. As if they were both ghosts in this once happy and lively home. They both took a moment to look at the calendar in the kitchen and walked out to walk amongst the living.

Joans walked around his old town gathering supplies before going back down into the bunker to start his work back up. He found the appropriate tape for that day and placed it into the player to listen to it. 

A woman’s voice rang out, “My name is Claudia Tiedemann. I am one of the few survivors of the apocalypse of June 27, 2020. Almost three months have passed since the catastrophe. It’s still unclear what exactly led to the events in Winden. But the God Particle… If we can stabilize it, maybe it is a way back. Back to the past. Maybe we can save them. All of them.”

Annalise walked down the roads. She walked down to the store to grab something to eat before heading her way back into the woods not too far from the Kahnwald’s or Tiedemann’s. She laid down on her and Jonas’s rock looking up at the leaves above her. She quietly wondered if any of them were the same from that day as she quietly hummed the old song she would sing to Jonas and Mikkel. 

The radio on throughout Winden called, “Wake up, late risers! It’s the first week of summer vacation and it is perfect beach weather.” Across Hannah’s walls were newspaper articles about her son and the rest of the missing people. Several of them with pictures of Annalise as well. “Local News. Over six months after the mysterious disappearance of five teenagers, a senior citizen and a local police officer from the town of Winden, despite one of them being found, there are still no clues as to their whereabouts or the circumstances. A federal police task force will now assist with the investigation.”

Hannah marked off the date on the calendar and looked at the old christmas photo of her small little family. Her tear stained face reeking of how she felt on the inside.

“How do you feel today,” The doctor asked Regina, unaware of Bartosz spying on the conversation, “Still having joint trouble? Nausea? To be honest, your lab results worry me. We should treat you in the hospital again.”

Regina shook her head, “No. Absolutely not. I want to stay here.”

“Fine,” The doctor nodded, “We’ll wait for the next MRI results. We may have to switch from hormone treatment back to chemo.”

Bartosz looked down at his phone to see a text from his girlfriend asking him to go to the bridge.

Clausen stood on top of the podium to give his speech. He was the new head of the Winden task force. Today he was taking over the missing persons cases. He was ready to reopen all the cases and review everything about them until he could solve it. He informed that some people had received summons for renewed interrogation in regards to the cases. He also made a statement that they were going to start trying to push more answers from Annalise as well. 

This received some backlash from many of the people in the town annoyed that not only would they send only one person to help, but the government decided to keep Charlotte on the case as well. 

Magnus looked at Franziska as they sat next to the lake, “Does your mom talk at home? About the investigation, I mean.”

“Not to us,” she replied.

Magnus shook his head, “We sit around and wait. And nothing happens. We know as little as we did eight months ago. Sometimes I think it’d be better if they were dead.”

Franziska rubbed the boy’s shoulder, “Don’t say that.” Slowly, the two teen’s lips met for a passionate kiss. It wasn’t long before that got interrupted by a text tone for the girl. She looked back at Magnus and told him, “I have to go.” She stood up to walk away.

“Where to,” Magnus asked.

“To pick up Elisabeth at a friend’s,” Franziska told him, “I’ll call you later, okay?”

Sensing that Franziska was lying, he waited a moment before following her.

Katharina walked through the woods. Her backpack ready with a map and flashlight. She knew the caves had something to do with all of this even though the police swore with Annalise that this wasn’t the care. Annalise had made a comment that she simply had run away due to stress and came back. She also claimed that Jonas would be back soon, though they went their separate ways so she had no idea where he was presently. Yet it’s been a full month and he still wasn’t back. Katharina prepared herself for her cave journey before walking inside.

Jonas trekked up to the power plant’s broken gate. He walked over to the wall to look at the sign, then made his way to the church. He passed the graves of many of the past residents of Winden there. He knelt down to place the picture of his family on his father’s grave then turned to look at Martha’s.

Martha rode her bike down to the bridge. She parked her bike and hiked down to see Bartosz already sitting there waiting for her. She sat down near him and looked at him.

“I’ve been trying to reach you for days,” Bartosz commented. 

Martha shook her head, “A lot was going on.” She watched as he turned away from her and she tried to say, “I wanted to talk to you. I’ve wanted to for a long time.”

“Save your breath,” Bartosz told her without even looking at her. He sighed and looked over to the girl, “It’s probably better that way.” Martha huffed and looked away from the boy causing him to turn, “So… that’s it then.” Martha slightly nodded, then looked down. Bartosz’s anger erupted, “Because of him? Because of Jonas?!”

“What?!” Martha growled back at him. She tried to fight back tears, “What’s that got to do with it? We hardly ever see each other. I don’t know… You’ve changed! I… What about her then? Annalise? She’s back for a month and you're willing to just throw it all away for her?” Martha shook her head and turned back to him, “I feel like you’re hiding something. I don’t know what’s up with you!”

Bartosz argued, “What’s up with me? What the fuck? My mom is dying! And… there’s stuff I can’t tell you.”

“Why not,” Martha accused.

Bartosz swallowed hard, “I just can’t. Okay? If you knew the crap I’m going through...”

Martha’s anger spewed out, “The crap you’re going through?! In case you forgot, my father and brother disappeared. My ex best friend is the only lead, she is lying to everyone, and won’t speak to any of us because of some stupid thing I said that she is claiming made her disappear for seven months! My mom is crazy and couldn’t care less about me! And you want to tell me about your crap?!” She quickly turned away as Bartosz shrunk down. She panted angrily, ran her fingers through her hair then repeated, “It’s better this way.” She stood up and stormed away.

Bartosz sat there wringing his hands anxiously. He watched her go before receiving a text telling him simply, ‘This evening.’

Aleksander stood in front of all his employees and gave a somber speech. He thanked them all for their loyalty and explained that the plant would be decommissioned in six days. After the speech, he followed his nuclear engineer. They put on their yellow hazard suit and walked inside.

The engineer explained, “Everything has been prepared for transport as planned.”

Aleksander asked, “And the demolition plans?”

“Everything at the ground level will be left and become part of the greenfield,” the other man explained, “The radiation of the barrels will be traced to the pool’s previous use.”

Hannah placed down the box with Aleksander’s once gun and passport inside. She took out the pistol and pointed it under her chin when she was interrupted by a set of keys opening the door. She quickly hid the gun and stood up to look to who that could have been. “Hello,” she called out. When she saw a bearded hooded man walk in, she asked him, “Who are you? What do you want? Why do you have a key?”

“It’s my key,” Stranger Jonas told his concerned mother. He slowly took off his hood so that she could get a better look at him.

Hannah, still not understanding, asked, “What do you mean, it’s yours?”

Jonas tried to calm his mother, “I know it sounds like it makes no sense, but hear me out.” He placed his bag down and walked towards her, “Do you remember the yellow bike? The bike you and dad gave me on my eighth birthday. I rode it into the ditch the very first day. I gashed my arm open. Here.” He rolled up his sleeves so that she could see his scar. 

Hannah panted. She couldn’t believe someone could play such a cruel trick on her. “Get out,” she commanded.

Jonas looked down trying to find what else he could do to convince her. “Here,” he tried again, “Dad was making pancakes here. He dropped the pan and spilled the hot oil here.” He motioned down to the stain on the wood then said, “I vanished from your life six months ago. You found me over 33 years ago. I knew it was you right away. It was raining, remember? Grandpa and you wanted to take me along in the car. You said it was still acid rain because of Chernobyl. I was wearing my yellow coat.” He took a step closer to her, “Momma. It’s me.” He held his hand out to her.

Hannah sobbed realizing he was telling her the truth. She put her hand on his arm and looked up at him, “Jonas?” She gently touched his beard in disbelief that her son would grow one, “But that’s impossible.” She cupped his face as she cried. She moved his hair away and watched him relax at her touch. She pulled him into a hug. 

Franziska walked to her drop spot for Bernette and put the information in before leaving to go get Elisabeth. Katharina squatted down in the cave and marked more places on her map before continuing forward. 

In 1921, Noah comforted his younger self from killing the older man. He told the boy that everything would be revealed in due time and that some things needed to stay hidden away for then so that later they could come into the light. 

“How do we know what’s right and what’s wrong,” the younger boy asked through gritted teeth and tears, “What is good and what is evil?”

Noah replied, “By heeding our inner voice. By not following anyone else but ourselves. Our true nature reveals itself not only in our deeds but also in their purpose. I am you. I am your voice. Never forget that. Everything is connected. You. Me. The past. And the future.” 

In 2053, Jonas walked through the forest of hanging bodies. Soon he heard gunshots and a man shouting. Jonas looked and ran towards the yelling. There was a crowd standing there at the execution. Nuclear gear carelessly tossed to the side as the man yelled. “Who are you,” he yelled, “You are hiding it! There, behind the wall! We saw it! We followed the signal. Till the dead zone. You’re hiding God! You mustn’t hide God. He’s not yours alone!”

Elisabeth nodded her head at the team. They pulled tightening the rope around his neck as he plead. She slowly turned away and looked into the small crowd. She signed and her translator Silja spoke, “No one can enter the dead zone. Any attempt will be punished by death. Those are the rules. We are the future! Sic mundus creatus est.”

The crowd repeated, “Sic mundus creatus est.” Then they departed leaving Jonas alone with Elisabeth and Silja.

“Where were you,” they questioned the boy, “There’s nothing out there. The passage is our only hope. The faithless are dead. The prophecy will come true, the passage will open and we will be led into paradise.”

“The faithless are dead,” Jonas asked back, “Everyone is dead, my family, my friends. Everyone dies in six days, in my time! I don’t need your damn paradise! I just want to go home!” He looked at Elisabeth, “What did they want behind the wall?”

Silja signed to Elisabeth what Jonas had said and awaited for her response. 

Jonas, however, did not have the time to wait, so he turned and left.

In 2020, Elisabeth looked up at her father, “Why did mom keep all of Great Granddad’s things? He’s been dead for years.”

Peter signed back, “I think because it’s the only thing that reminds her of her family. Some things are hard to let go of.”

“It’s a shame I never met Grandpa and Grandma,” Elisabeth told her dad, “Does Mom remember them?”

Peter explained, “Your mother was still little when they died. Come on.” Peter walked more into the shop to look. He turned to see Elisabeth had pulled out a picture of her mother and great grandfather from 1986. Peter chuckled. 

Annalise looked at the time. She bit her lip and started to sneak back towards the Kahnwald house only to be given pause by Bartosz. He spotted her and walked over to her. He stood in front of the girl and said, “Hey.”

“Hey,” She commented back trying to look past him. She then turned to him and gave a small smile, “Is there something I can do for you?”

Bartosz stared at her. Frustration rose in him, “I wish you would just stop fucking lying. Could you do that?”

Annalise started to walk past him, “Honestly, Bartosz. I really don’t know what you mean. I’ve told everyone the truth. Jonas and I ran away after the fight. We found a cheap cabin right outside of a different town not too far from here that we rented while we tried to find a permanent place. We got separated about a month ago. I came back after a week of waiting for him like we planned. He will be back soon. I don-”

WHACK! Bartosz’s fist hit the tree, “Anna! We both know that’s bullshit!” He grabbed her wrist, “We both know about what’s going on here. Please talk to me. You are the only one who I can talk to. Please.”

Annalise tried to wiggle away, “Bartosz, you’re hurting me. Let go. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know about Noah,” Bartosz growled into her ear, pulling her close to him. “I’m part of it too. Just talk to me.”

Annalise pulled away and told him, “I have no idea what you’re talking about! I told everyone what happened and honestly I’m only still here to make sure Hannah doesn’t kill herself and to wait for Jonas to get back so we can both go back home!”

“We both know that isn’t what’s happening,” Bartosz told her.

Annalise turned back to him, “You’re right Bartosz! Jonas left me and he’s never coming back! I should damn well just run off with you! Is that what you want to fucking hear?!” She had tears in her eyes. She grit her teeth as she tried to keep the tears inside. She stormed up to him, “Do you want to run away with me Bartosz?! Leave your dying mother behind and I leave behind a grieving mother on the edge of putting a gun to her head?! Is that what you want?”

Bartosz felt tears building up inside him as well. He looked down and whispered down to her while caressing her cheek, “That isn’t fair. I know you’re scared, but don’t take it out on me.”

“You don’t know the first thing about me,” She hissed and turned away as she felt the tears start to fall.

Bartosz watched her leave and whispered, “I know I love you at least.” He let his tears fall watching her knowing it would probably be best to try and give her space. She knew she could always come to him now and that he would never judge her. He watched her go not realizing that this moment could have possibly been the last he would see her again.

Martha knocked on her brother’s room door. “Mom,” she called into the empty room. She looked around. There on the floor and walls were papers, trails of what her mother was thinking. Martha sat down onto the ground and opened a box to pull out a file. There in front of her was the investigation file. That was when Martha got the thought into her head that maybe it was their turn to start snooping around.

Katharina continued searching in the caves hoping to find her answers. She had no idea if she was going to get them but she had hope that she would. She needed to find her son and husband. She needed to make things right.

“It’s remarkable people don’t crack, given the futility of their own existence,” Adam told Noah, “An endless cycle of life and death. Where is the origin of all this suffering?” He paused then asked, “Did you tell Bartosz?”

Noah turned away from the painting of The Fall of the Damned and nodded to the man.

“And he didn’t get at all suspicious,” Adam asked sitting crossed legged in a chair. He spoke to himself after seeing Noah shake his head, “He has always been naive by nature.” He took a large breath and walked up to Noah, “The apocalypse has to happen. Are you having doubts?” He watched Noah shake his head then asked, “What do you do with an old forest so new trees can grow?”

Noah replied, “You burn it down.”

“There isn’t much time left,” Adam told the man. “The missing pages… you must find them.”

Noah nodded before being interrupted by an older Franziska, “Adam? They’re waiting for you.”

Adam turned back to Noah and said, “Six more days.” He turned and walked out.

In 2020, Magnus turned hearing a rustle near him. He looked to see Bernette going to the drop site and replacing an envelope with another one. She looked around not noticing the boy and walked back to her trailer. Magnus trailed after her. He opened the door and walked in.

“I’m on my break,” Bernette told the person who walked in. When she turned, she was surprised to see a young man there, who looked just as surprised himself. She strolled over to him, “Oh, well… Blow job 40 euros, anal 85. Kinky stuff costs extra, but I need to eat first.” She opened up a ramen cup. Then turned to the young man, “Well, get undressed.”

Magnus panicked. He took a few breaths in before dashing back out of the trailer.

Bernette, confused, walked towards her window and watched as Magnus rushed home.

“You can say I exist infinitely,” Jonas explained to his mother as the sun slowly made its way down to sleep and Annalise climbed her way up the side of the house to sneak into Jonas’s room once more, “I’m here now. And I’m in every second between my birth and my death. I’m always Jonas. I’m the same. And yet not the same.” Hannah looked at the older version of her son as he continued, “Like you’re not the same person who came through that door an hour ago.”

Hannah asked him, “But where is Jonas? Where is my Jonas?”

The Stranger Jonas sighed, “He’s in the future.”

“In the future,” Hannah repeated back as a question.

The older version of her son nodded, “Yeah. He can’t come back. I tried to destroy the passage, but I only closed it. That’s why he’s still there.”

Hannah shook her head and sighed, “Why are you here?”

Annalise walked down the stairs right at that moment causing both of them to stare at her for a moment before resuming the conversation. He said, “To put an end to it all. Once and for all.”

Annalise smiled gently and asked, “Ada- Jonas?” She gently shepherded him up from his chair, “It’s really you.” She collapsed in his arms. She pulled him close to her and took in a deep breath to inhale all of him. Her fingers curled into his back pulling his shirt into her fists. She buried her face in him trying not to let him go. As if she were to let him go that he would be lost to time once again.

He smiled tenderly down at her. His beloved so close to him made him feel truly home. He pet her head gently. He placed a soft kiss against the top of her head as he whispered, “I am Lise. It’s so good to see you again.” He held her close treasuring this moment. It was near ecstasy for her to be so close to him again after so long.

She slowly pulled away and placed a warm kiss against his cheek. “You should get to bed,” Annalise scolded him, “Take a shower then head to bed. You sorely need it.” I can tell just how weary you are.”

Jonas nodded with his eyes half lidded looking at her, “Alright.” He dreamily smiled before going upstairs to do just as he was told.

Elisabeth tried to keep herself occupied as her father went through the boxes. She used this time to start trying to look through books. While looking through one, she found a picture. Surprised she brought it to her father and pointed out the man saying, “That’s him! That’s that man.”

“Which man,” Peter asked his daughter.

Elisabeth explained, “The man with the watch. That’s Noah!”

“Noah,” Peter asked his daughter. He looked down at the picture and stared. There staring back at him was just as his daughter had described before and he knew that it was true. There was Noah.

Back at Sic Mundus, Noah stared at a trifold of pictures of everyone important in the loop. The Doppler’s, the Kahnwalds, the Nielsen’s, the Tiedemann’s, and David and Annalise Dahlhiem. He turned and walked away with his briefcase off to do more of his work.

“Watch out for the tiniest deviations in their statements,” Clausen told Charlotte, “Every detail is important.”

Charlotte turned hearing her phone vibrate. She picked it up seeing a message from Peter telling her, ‘I’ve found Noah. Come to the Bunker.’

 Clausen looked at the woman and asked, “Something wrong?”

“I have to go,” Charlotte tried to rush out.

Clausen interrupted and commented, “I don’t have a driver’s license. I assume it’s okay if I ride with you tomorrow?”

Charlotte turned to him, “Yes.” She walked out to go meet up with her husband.

In 2053, Jonas walked around the desolate forest. He hiked to the bunker. He turned on his spherical light and lowered himself inside. He studied his map then grabbed his Geiger counter before heading out.

Annalise, in 2019, crept into Jonas’s father’s studio. It was actually the first time she had ever been up here. She searched for something where she could toss the letter that she needed to burn. It wasn’t long before she found the metal bucket. But there was something strange. A covered painting. Something inside of her called to it. As if it were meant for her to pull the sheet. The girl grasped the cloth and pulled it away to reveal, looking back at her, a smiling girl. The resemblance was uncanny. Annalise fell to the floor. Her breathing hitched inside of her chest. Tears fell from her eyes seeing her happy naive face staring back at her. She was so full of love. Annalise scrunched her face, she had never met Jonas’s father had she? Much less when she was the age she was in the painting. The pieces slowly came together. She breathed heavily. “Mikkel,” she whispered. She started to sob. Annalise quickly snapped herself out of it. She grabbed the bucket, lit the letter on fire, and dropped it into the bucket watching it burn.

Martha scattered the papers and documents around trying to find any clue she could. Magnus slowly opened the door to see his sister on the floor acting erratically. Martha looked up to defend herself, “Mom didn’t lock it.”

Magnus took a breath and asked, “What’s that?”

“Dad’s stuff,” Martha replied, “Police documents and maps of the cave. That’s why Mom goes there every day. I think she’s looking for this.” Martha handed Magnus the file.

Magnus studied it, “A door. In the caves?”

Martha nodded, “It goes to the nuclear power plant. They all know something we’re not supposed to know. Mom, Bartosz, The police, Annalise.” She sighed shaking her head, “Each with their own shitty secret.”

Angry, Magnus started to breath heavily trying to process that maybe that thing Martha said at the very beginning, the day Mikkel went missing, was true.

Bartosz trekked to the caves alone. He stood there waiting for Noah only for the man to approach from behind him, coming from deep inside the cave.

“Are you ready,” Noah asked the boy.

Bartosz nodded and followed the man into the cave, but not before turning back to take a look at Winden again.

Woller walked out of his sister’s trailer and complemented, “Thanks for the coffee.” He pulled out an envelope with money and handed it to her in exchange to the keys of the large shipping truck parked next to her trailer. 

“I’m glad to get rid of that thing,” she commented nodding towards the truck. 

Woller was just about to leave. He didn’t like that this was how he and his sister were communicating. He looked at her and said, “Call Mom again. Okay?”

Bernette nodded and allowed herself to hug her brother before he left with a simple exchanged ‘bye.’

Charlotte drove to the cabin and climbed down into the bunker. When she got there her husband turned and showed her a very old photograph.

Peter pointed, “That is Noah.” Charlotte looked up at him surprised, then took the picture to study it more closely. Peter continued, “Elisabeth found it at the store. It was in a book. She said that’s the man who gave her the watch.”

Charlotte turned it over to see the date on it was January 8, 1921. She read aloud, “Sic Mundus Creatus Est.”

“Charlotte, who are these people,” Peter asked her, “Why did your grandfather have this?”

Charlotte shook her head, “I don’t know.”

Peter scoffed before Charlotte added it to the evidence on the walls of the bunker. They turned to each other in disbelief. 

Franziska tried to call Magnus again as Elisabeth napped with her head on her older sister’s lap. He kept rejecting her calls. 

Hannah sat on the edge of Jonas’s bed as Annalise walked in. She turned to the girl and motioned to her older son’s scars. Annalise made no inclination of change in mood. Her face looked empty and devoid of any feelings once so ever. The two switched places as Hannah walked down stairs to go to sleep herself.

Regina slept in her bed in the house as her husband poured the concrete over the waste. He stared at it as Clausen stared at his board of missing persons.

The young Noah walked out of Sic Mundus and the young Jonas walked through the trees trying to get to the plant to sneak inside. There he found a tunnel which he crawled through and followed the signal to where the pool once was. 

Feeling the shifting of weight on the bed, the older Jonas jerked awake. He quickly and effectively grabbed Annalise and tossed her under him. His breathing fast and heavy until the hasy mist of sleep dissipated from him to reveal who it was. Seeing her face calmed him. He gently cupped her face and smiled through tears. “You really shouldn’t sneak up on people like that,” he commented rolling over to lay down once more.

Annalise turned onto her side so that way they were face to face as they spoke, “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. I just…” She swallowed, “You are so injured my love.” Tears fell from her eyes onto his pillow. 

He nodded, “Yes, but it’s all to end this. I’ve seen far worse than what those scars tell you.” His thumb traced her cheek as he spoke quietly to her. He tried to soothe her tears away. He joined their hands together. He pulled them up to his rough and battered lips so that he could kiss her soft smooth knuckles before linking their fingers together. He kissed her forehead and confessed, “I am so sorry for everything. If I were only wiser, we wouldn’t be tangled into this knot and you would never feel any of this pain.”

A small smile fought its way onto her face as she tried to comfort him as well, “My dearest, it is alright. I know you will fix this. You will always be with me,” She kissed his cheek, “Please never let me go.”

The younger Jonas found it. He slipped into the yellow radiation suit and stared at it. They were right. There in front of his was the God particle. He turned and looked at all the documents surrounding it before turning his attention back to the black throbbing tendril-filled swirling sphere.

[winnipegpatty]

when you’re gone | s.m. one-shot

a/n: feedback is very much appreciated, and if you enjoyed please consider supporting me on ko-fi.

“You do this every time you leave, Shawn.”

It’s not that Y/N wasn’t used the the hyper sensitive and moody way Shawn acted before he left for any length of time, but there was just something a bit different about this. Usually, if Shawn were about to leave, maybe for a run of promo or for a month long festival run perhaps, he’d get clingy the weeks prior. He’d hang all over Y/N, never wanting to leave her side, and he’d just attach himself at her hip. He’d want her to cancel plans so they could spend time together. And he just wanted to soak up as much of her as he could before he had to leave.

She understood it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t annoying sometimes. Sure, Shawn was great. And Y/N loved him with her whole heart, but Shawn was just overly sensitive when he got like this. Like if Y/N wanted a night out with the girls, or alone even, it was suddenly a high crime to want time off from her boyfriend. And it wasn’t time off, exactly. It was just like...a night. Here and there. Without Shawn holding her to his side like he’d fucking die if she were gone for even a second.

She just wanted to feel like her own person sometimes when he got like that.

But this was different.

Y/N wasn’t quite sure why it was different, but it was. Something felt different. Shawn was getting ready for his tour, which was going to take the better part of a year. They’d never been away from each other that long before, not that the entirety of the year would be spent apart. Y/N would visit him obviously, and she’d probably spend a few weeks with him in the summer while she had a break from school. And Shawn even had a couple times between legs of the tour when he had breaks where he’d probably come home to her. It was a longer time, yeah. But Y/N was confident they’d be fine.

Even with this indescribable mood Shawn was currently in.

“Yeah, well I’ve never left for this long,” Shawn says, biting his nail.

“I know, but we’re gonna see each other.” She tries to encourage him, make him realize that she’s not going to just give up on this. Y/N loves Shawn and it’s not something she’s just going to let go because he has to do his fucking job.

Shawn sat silent for a couple of minutes. On the other side of the couch, she could see the worry evident in his eyes, his brow knitted together in fear of the coming months.

“You’re supposed to enjoy tour,” she whispered, scooting closer to him. “Don’t worry about us, we’re gonna be fine.”

“I want you to come with me!” Shawn blurted out, and instantly his face broke tension. And Y/N realized this was it. This is what was different. He’d been keeping that in.

“What?” She questioned.

“I want you to come on tour with me.” He whispered a second time.

“Shawn, I have school...and you leave in two days.”

“Yeah, but you could like...take the semester off,” Shawn suggested.

Y/N’s expression harded, “What?”

“Take off the semester, and just come with me!” Shawn said excitedly, like it would be some fairy tale. “And then you can stay the summer, and then just go back in August. Then I’ll be home by the holidays.”

“Shawn, I can’t just take off a semester.”

“Sure you can, people do it all the time.”

“Shawn…” Her face went blank.

“It would be fun. And we wouldn’t have to spend an entire year apart!”

“Shawn, you know I have my internship this semester. I can’t just leave. I have an obligation.” It’s not that she meant to sound disgusted with his proposal, but it was just a bit annoying that Shawn thought she could just drop everything to follow him around for the better part of eight months.

“You could rearrange it?” Shawn questioned, his expression falling.

“No!” Y/N yelled, frustrated. “No, Shawn! I can’t just rearrange it. It took me months to secure that internship, and I’m lucky I got it at the place I wanted. If I bailed, I’d never get this opportunity again. I can’t just throw that away.”

“Sorry for thinking you’d wouldn’t want to spend an entire year away from your boyfriend.” Shawn responded with as much vigor.

Y/N pulled away from his side, shocked. “God, Shawn. Really? That’s not what this fucking is and you know it.”

“Whatever,” Shawn responded, “I guess I’ll just see you when I see you then. And just hope this doesn’t die out or something.”

Y/N balked, “You’re fucking kidding me right?”

Shawn didn’t respond.

“Fuck you, Shawn.” Y/N responded with no mirth behind her words, only sadness. Fuck Shawn for not understanding she had obligations. She understand his obligations, despite the fact that it meant 12 months of separation. Fuck Shawn for thinking she could just uproot for him. She understood that Shawn couldn’t just plant himself in Toronto so they could stay together. Fuck Shawn for expecting her to give up her own dreams to follow him. She’d never expect Shawn to give up his dreams of performing music just so they could have more time.

Y/N got up from the couch, heading to the bedroom to grab an overnight bag. There’s no way she was spending the night here. Not when her boyfriend was being a fucking prick. Not even ten minutes later, Shawn still sitting still on the couch unmoving, Y/N stalked out past Shawn, duffel on her shoulder.

“Where the fuck are you going?” Shawn heaved, pushing himself off the couch and following her to the door.

“To Julia’s.” She responded, not even sparing him a look.

Shawn scoffed, and who knows, maybe he responded. But she wasn’t around to hear it.

__

Shawn: My flight out is at 3:30, if you care. I’m going to the airport at noon.

It’s been two days since the fight, and this was the first time Y/N had heard from Shawn. He was leaving for tour today, and everything fucking sucked. Shawn had made no effort to apologize, and Y/N had made no effort to make amends. So she’d stayed at Julia’s for two nights and hadn’t heard from her boyfriend. Assuming he was still her boyfriend.

Of course he’s still your boyfriend. You got in a fight, you didn’t break up.

Y/N didn’t respond to the message, but did decide that she’d at least see him off to tour. She knew she’d regret it if she didn’t. So a quarter till noon she drove over to their shared apartment, and opened the door. Shawn’s bags were sitting at the front door, and she could hear him rustling through some drawers in the bedroom.

Y/N headed toward the sounds before lightly knocking on the door to get his attention.

Shawn looked up in shock. His eyes were bloodshot, and honestly he looked horrible. But Y/N didn’t let herself think about that. His face softened a touch when he saw her standing in the door frame wearing his Lost in Japan hoodie.

“Do you know where my passport is?” He asked quietly. “Can’t find it.”

Y/N smiled softly, “Night stand, second drawer on my side.”

Shawn looked at her confused, “Why is my passport in your nightstand?”

“You came home when I was in bed, practically mauled me, and tossed the passport on my nightstand. I put it away the next morning.”

Shawn nodded, vaguely remembering the night.

“You want me to drive?” Y/N asked.

“Please.” Shawn said running a hand through his lengthening curls.

Minutes later they were headed out, and piling all the bags and Shawn’s guitar into the Jeep. The ride to the airport was silent, and Shawn didn’t reach over for your hand like he normally would. The silence was just slightly uncomfortable, and Y/N hated the tension. But she did nothing to fix it. And Shawn did nothing either.

At the check in for security, Y/N knew this was the point of their goodbye.

Shawn turned to look at her, setting his guitar on the floor by his feet. He sighed, still not mentioning the prior fight. He simply reached forward, his hand finding a familiar home on her neck, and he kissed her. It was soft and sweet, and a goodbye.

“I love you,” He whispered as he pulled away.

And Y/N wouldn’t normally cry at these moments.  She wasn’t going to cry now, either. But this goodbye actually hurt, unlike the others. Not knowing exactly where she stood with Shawn, or when things would go back to normal. It felt like an impossible situation. She couldn’t leave with him, even if she had wanted to. And he couldn’t stay.

So it was a goodbye.

“I love you too,” Y/N whispered back. Shawn nodded, bending down to pick up his guitar again.

“I’ll see you soon?” He asked, not sure of the answer.

And she nodded, as he turned around to enter through the gate.

___

Y/N’s internship had her completely swamped. She was running around at all hours of the day and night, fetching things for people. This is what it was like to make your way up the ladder, you started at the bottom. But Y/N was okay with it. Despite everything, she was thrilled for the opportunity, she’d always wanted to work for this company doing what she loved. And sure, interning wasn’t what she loved, but it was a step in that direction. School had also started, and so on top of the internship her professors were already handing out work.

Y/N had no time to herself. Sleep was for the weak, and frankly breathing was overrated anyway. Over the past week that Shawn had been away on tour, she’d almost been able to forget what had happened just because she had so much going on. They hadn’t talked in five days, or well...Y/N hadn’t talked to Shawn in five days. There had been a couple of times when Shawn had texted and she’d missed two of his phone calls while at work. She honestly wasn’t ignoring him on purpose. She was still mad at him, sure, but that had nothing to do with her radio silence. She just really had no time. If she was interning, the only thing her phone was for was calls from her boss. And if she was at home, the phone was in a different room because she had to focus on getting as much school work done as possible.

She kept telling herself she’d respond later. Call him later. Talk to him later. But she just never had.

It really wasn’t intentional. Just situational.

It wasn’t until Saturday, six days after Shawn’s flight, that Y/N finally thought she might have time to talk to him. It was her first day off from the internship, she’d be getting zero calls from anyone, and she only had a handful of things due for school on Monday.

She was sat on the couch of her apartment watching an episode of Friends on Netflix when her phone dinged. She picked it up, seeing Shawn’s name light up the screen.

Shawn: Look, I know you’re mad, but I’m starting to worry, okay? It’s been six days, please talk to me about it?

Y/N decided she’d call Shawn back when the episode was over, and they would talk about it. Not that there really was that much to talk about. It had been completely unfair for Shawn to just expect Y/N to completely change her life like that. It was unreasonable, and the fact that Shawn didn’t seem to value Y/N’s dreams in the same way she valued his was disheartening. It made her feel like she couldn't even confide in him. He’d wanted her to give up the internship of a lifetime, and so now it just seemed like he wasn’t there for support. She couldn’t call him on a particularly rough night because he’d probably just say “Well, I asked you to come with me.” But it just wasn’t fair of him to ask her to do that. And unless he finally recognized that, well Y/N just wasn’t sure what there was to talk about.

About fifteen minutes later, Y/N picked up her phone to call Shawn, but it went straight to voicemail. Y/N rolled her eyes and laughed a bit to herself. Guess “please talk to me” didn’t mean a whole lot to Shawn unless she’d called the second he wanted to talk.

She pushed those nasty thoughts out of her head, reminding herself that Shawn was on tour. It was busy and crazy, and he was probably just getting ready for something. Doing a rehearsal or sound check or whatever. He probably had a show in the matter of hours tonight.

Not actually sure of Shawn’s schedule, she pulled up his website on her phone. He’d had a show Friday night, but now didn’t actually have another show until Tuesday. Yesterday’s show wasn’t even that far away, only a handful of hours driving. Even less if he were to fly.

And suddenly Y/N just wanted to go to sleep. Knowing Shawn was practically within reaching distance and yet felt like he was on another fucking planet, hurt in a way that she couldn’t even describe. It was only eight o clock, but she pushed herself down on the couch, curling into Shawn’s YOUTH hoodie, trying to catch his scent. She missed him. He hurt her, but she still missed him. He was at the beginning of a four day break, but wouldn’t even answer her phone calls.

__

Y/N had fallen asleep with tears staining her cheeks, but somewhere around one, she was startled awake by a rustling of the front door. Someone was jiggling the handle trying to get in. Her heartbeat picked up, as she jumped off the couch, wondering what she should do. Should she hide? Wait and see if someone would make it in? Who the fuck was trying to break into her apartment? She heard a grunt on the other side of the door, and the sound of something hitting the door out of frustration, and she pushed herself further into the living room.

Finally the door swung up, “Fuck, god I need a new key.” Shawn grunted in aggravation as he threw his bag on the ground.

“Jesus Christ, Shawn,” Y/N shouted from the living room, heading towards him, “You scared the fuck out of me. I thought someone was trying to break in.”

Shawn’s face softened the moment he saw her in his YOUTH hoodie, hood pulled up, eyes hooded and red.

“Were you asleep?” Shawn asked shocked.

“Well yeah, it is one in the morning, Shawn. Normal people are asleep right now.”

Shawn laughed a little bit, before stopping. Looking at her, realizing they weren’t probably supposed to be laughing because they were in a fight. But Shawn didn’t fucking care that they were in a fight, he just wanted to be with her. He fucking missed her. It’d only been six days and he couldn’t imagine another day, let alone twelve months. This was going to fucking suck.

Shawn sighed, feeling himself breakdown a little bit. He reached out for Y/N and pulled her into his body. He was ready for this to end. This was so fucking stupid to begin with and he shouldn’t have even let it get this bad.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” he mumbled into her hoodie. He pulled back and kissed her lips lightly. “I should have never just expected you to come with me.” He pulled away, holding her at an arms distance. “And I should have never made you feel like I didn’t value your dreams or goals or what you were doing. I know you can’t just jump on a plane and follow me everywhere. And that is going to make our lives harder because we’re going to have to work that much harder to stay together, but I am willing to do that. God, Y/N you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I’m not willing to fuck that up. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. If you ever want to come on tour with me, or anywhere for that matter, you’re welcome. But I don’t want to ever make you feel like I’m mad at you if you don’t put me above yourself. Sometimes, sure that’s what a relationship is. You sacrifice for each other, but you still have to be growing and becoming who you want to be. I can’t stop you from that. I can’t hold you back like that. So I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

Y/N stumbled back into his arms, hugging Shawn tightly, never wanting to let go. “I love you. I love you so much,” she mumbled into his chest.

Shawn kissed the top of her hair, “I love you too. I love you so much. Please know that I was a fucking idiot.”

She laughed wetly into his hoodie, nodding her head. “You were, but I forgive you.”

Shawn pulled away, looking at her as she looked up at him, “So it’s okay if I stay until Monday right? You’re not gonna kick me out?”

Y/N laughed, shaking her head. “No, god please stay. I miss you when you’re gone.”

tagging: @rosecth @peacedolantwins2 @justanotherfangurl272 @unhealthyobsessionwithmarvel

[redbus2germany]

Moving To Germany – Part 1

We know that you want to move to Germany. There are a lot of people who follow their desire to move to Germany for many reasons. These reasons could be anything like pursuing love, living in a place with a higher quality of life, getting a benefit of a unique education system, and getting an education without paying thousands of euros in tuition fees. It also could discover a new culture.

Table of Content

Eight Things To Prepare Before Moving To Germany

Find a Job or Get a German University Enrollment

Get Health Insurance

Apply For Visa On Time

Book Your Flight Tickets In Advance

Find A Place To Live In Germany

Get An Appointment To Register

Look For Which Bank You Want To Use

Start Learning The Basic German Language

Eight Things To Prepare Before Moving To Germany

You must be thinking about how you can make this happen. In this article, we will talk about eight steps that explain how to move to Germany as a foreigner. You will get eight things to take care of before moving to Germany.

Find a Job or Get a German University Enrollment

The best way to prepare for your move to Germany is to find a job or enroll at a German university. It depends on your nationality; however, it is the most hassle-free way for you to move and stay legally in Germany.

Foreigners moving to Germany from other EU countries such as Canada, the US, New Zealand, Australia, Israel, Japan, or the Republic of Korea, may visit Germany as a tourist and start job hunting. Later they can apply for a work and residence permit from within Germany.

The expats who hold a different nationality except the ones listed above can apply for the job seeker visa. It allows you to stay six months in Germany to find a job.

The people who are graduates and skilled professionals from Non-EU countries may apply for the blue card visa in Germany. The blue card is a quick entrance to Germany and the EU and a work permit for up to four years.

Get Health Insurance

One primary requirement to get a German visa is to opt for health insurance the German government accepts. You can sign up for German health insurance if you already have a job.

Suppose you are planning to find a job after arriving in Germany or want to work as a freelancer. Then you can opt for expat health insurance for your visa. It works as temporary health insurance for the time being. You can look for employment and decide which health insurance is best for you. Moreover, you can refer to our article on insurance in Germany to get information about other additional insurances.

Apply For Visa On Time

The waiting time for the visa application range from one to four months. It depends on your home country and the type of visa you want to apply for. That’s why you should check for your visa requirements in advance. You should apply for a German visa three months before your planned departure date to get the passport and visa back on time.

Book Your Flight Tickets In Advance

Your flight ticket booking should depend on the city where you found a job or university. It also depends on where you plan to job hunt and ensure to fly to the nearest international airport. Every big city has its airport. The three largest ones are in Berlin, Munich, and Frankfurt.

You should note that most airlines allow you to travel with one checked bag weighing up to twenty-three kgs. You should book in advance if you are planning on taking an additional bag. 

Find A Place To Live In Germany

You should find a place to stay before you arrive in Germany. If you have an apartment already, select one in Germany that will ease your life. It will allow you to register your home after your arrival. You can check many furnished apartment rental websites such as Homelike.

Get An Appointment To Register

Once you arrive in Germany, registering your accommodation is the most important thing. Most of the cities in Germany require you to do so within the first two weeks of your arrival.

In Germany, the registration process is known as Anmeldung. The process is that you present yourself to a government office and register your address. By following this process, you are letting them know there is a new resident in the city.

The address registration typically takes fifteen minutes. Once you complete the process, you will get a critical piece of paper. This important document will help you get German services such as opening a bank account and contacting an internet service for your apartment.

Look For Which Bank You Want To Use

Once you arrive in Germany, you should look for which bank you want to use. You can refer to our articles opening a bank account and bank account comparison to get the suitable choice for you. Your employer will ask for a German bank account to credit your salary. That’s why it is a crucial thing to do.

Opening a bank account depends on where you live in Germany. You can open a bank account from abroad by using mobile bank services. Suppose you want to use the services of a traditional private German bank such as Commerzbank. In that case, you can open a bank account once you are in Germany.

Moreover, you can choose the money transfer services before moving to Germany. It will help you wire transfers from your foreign bank account to Germany. You should avoid using a regular bank because their bank fees are very high. You can choose Wise, which is a fully digital and modern provider. It offers the real exchange rate without any increased charges.

Start Learning The Basic German Language

If you are still not good at speaking German, you can move, live and work in Germany. However, there are a lot of benefits to speaking and understanding the German language. There is no doubt that the German language is challenging. If you are new to this great and beautiful country, do not expect to speak German fluently during the first few months. Sometimes it takes years to be proficient.

It would help if you took the time to learn some essential German words and sayings before moving to Germany. Here in Germany, the natives do not mind speaking English. These days there are a lot of resources available to learn the basics of German. However, the best way is to actively use the language and get direct feedback from a professional teacher. Lingoda is one of the online language schools, and they have small classes and great flexibility.

Conclusion

We hope you are clear about what to do before moving to Germany. We assure you that you will happily follow these steps and make them happen. In the beginning, moving to Germany might be a long and complicated process. But if you have clear criteria for what to do before moving, then it will ease your life. Now we will proceed to the next part of moving to Germany. Here we will talk about the essential things you need to do once you are in Germany.

Originally published at - https://redbus2germany.com/moving-to-germany-part-1/

[honeypiehotchner]

Deception -- part two

Hello lovelies! Here’s another part xx. (Also, I promise she meets John in the next chapter!)

As Mycroft said, Sherlock is waiting for us on the plane at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. But not as Mycroft said, Sherlock has no idea I’m who Mycroft was picking up.

           It’s evident on his face that he wasn’t expecting me, which only leaves me fuming. Mycroft Holmes and his stupid web of lies to bend people to his will. Sometimes, it can be most annoying.

           Once we’re in the air, the arguing begins.

           “Why is she here?” Sherlock practically yells, then looks back at me. “No offence.”

           “None taken,” I shrug.

           “She’s here because I asked her to be,” Mycroft explains. “And because we have something to talk about.”

           “What now?” Sherlock groans. “I was supposed to be in Iraq yesterday.”

           “Yes, I know,” Mycroft sighs. “But this is about Dr. Watson.”

           “John? John’s fine.”

           “John is not fine, Sherlock, and you know it,” Mycroft snaps. “You want so desperately for me to keep him safe while you are gone—”

           “Because when I return, things are going to go back to normal. I’ll need my doctor.”

           “Yes, well, your doctor hasn’t left Baker Street in an entire week since your funeral and he has an appointment with a therapist tomorrow.”

           “So?” Sherlock shrugs. “He’s seen therapists before.”

           “Dr. Stewart is going to be John’s therapist,” Mycroft announces, or shall I say, throws me completely under the bus.

           “What? Why?”

           “Because Dr. Watson is not safe,” Mycroft hisses. “And if I am to keep a close watch on him while you are gone, I need a different way.”

           “So you brought an agent out of retirement to be— Oh.”

           “You’re getting slow, brother mine,” Mycroft smiles sweetly. “Yes, I brought Dr. Stewart here out of retirement to be John’s therapist and to keep a close eye on him.”

           “An undercover mission,” Sherlock shakes his head.

           “Twins,” I mutter quietly, trying and failing to add some humor into this awful situation.

           “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

           “Because I knew you’d object.”

           “And my opinion means nothing to you, is that it?”

           “Yes, that’s exactly it,” Mycroft replies coldly. “You wanted to disappear completely, well, that comes with consequences. Consequences that we cannot ignore if you want to eventually return to England.”

           I give Mycroft a strange look.

           “What?”

           “I hate that you have a point,” I breathe. “I hate to say it, Sherlock, but he’s right.”

           “So what if he’s right? It’s boring.”

           “And now you’re throwing a tantrum,” I roll my eyes. “Seriously, Sherlock, you went out into the world and made friends. A good friend. And you got him swept up in this mess, and you expect him to be fine when you die?”

           “Oh, please, I’m not actually dead.”

           “He doesn’t know that!” I cry. “When are you going to get it through your head that people care?”

           “When I can find data to back it up,” he counters.

           “Ladies and gentlemen, the endlessly ignorant, Sherlock Holmes.”

           “Oh, don’t start that again!”

           “I’m going to start that again,” I laugh. “You know why? Because you’re acting like an asshole, Sherlock. You want to disappear? Fine. Go. Disappear. But if you think for one second that your disappearance won’t affect anyone, you’re wrong. Do you want to know how it felt when Mycroft told me you’d died? Cold. Frozen. I didn’t know what to think. And I hadn’t spoken to you in a long time. Imagine how much more amplified that feeling must be for John.”

           “If I worried about how everyone feels, then I’d never get anything done.”

           “I’m not asking you to worry about everyone, Sherlock, I’m just asking you to care about your friends. Because that’s what you do when you make friends. You care about them.”

           I’ve had enough of his bullshit for the time being, so I excuse myself to the back of the jet to lie down and gain some of my senses back. We’ve got roughly eight hours on this plane together and if I don’t sleep for some of it, I think I’ll explode.

~~~

I wake sometime later to Sherlock knocking on the wall, letting me know he’s ventured back here. I lift my head and sit up, motioning for him to sit next to me.

           “You know, I almost didn’t agree to do this. Because I don’t like it.”

           “Like what?”

           “I don’t like lying to innocent people, Sherlock.”

           “An undercover agent with a guilty conscience,” he smirks. “Quite the pair.”

           “It is an unconventional life I lead,” I chuckle. I can tell this is troubling him, too, though, so I say. “Is there anything you want me to know about John? That, I don’t know, might help him.”

           “You want to help him?”

           “Of course I do,” I shrug. “So. Is there anything?”

           “He told when he was standing at my grave that I was the best man and the most human human being he knew.” Sherlock pauses. “So, I guess you should know that he is the man who brought that out of me.”

           “Okay,” I nod, smiling. “Thank you for sharing that.”

           “You can go back to sleep now,” Sherlock murmurs. “We’ve still got another six hours.”

           “Fun,” I chuckle. “But I’m a bit hungry, so I think I’ll order some food.”

           “Alright,” he nods, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he walks ahead of me back out into the main area of the plane.

~~~

“This is your ID,” Mycroft hands me the plastic card. “Your passport, your birth certificate, etcetera.”

           I nod as he hands me the rest of the documents to put into my briefcase. Everything has Dr. Jane Stewart on it. I haven’t decided yet if I would’ve preferred going by a completely different name, but I suppose there’s no time to change that now.

           “There’s a change of clothes in the rest room for you to change into and some makeup for you to use, if you see fit—”

           “Mycroft,” I cut him off with a laugh. “I know. I’ve been here before, remember?”

           “Yes, well, it has been a while. I just wanted to be sure you remembered everything.”

           “How could I forget,” I scoff, closing the briefcase. “I’ll be off to get changed.”

           “Your new phone and laptop should be here when you are finished.”

           “Alright,” I breathe, yanking the door to his rest room open. There on the counter sits my new change of clothes, completely different from the summer outfit I traveled here in.

           It’s a navy-blue dress which I despise – dresses, not the color – but if I’m going to be someone different then I am to wear something different, something I would never wear. It’s standard protocol, so I tug on the dress without another thought.

           The shoes – heels, rather, are quite nice, though I know my feet are going to protest soon. I slip my feet inside all the same, straightening the dress over my shoulders as I glance at myself in the mirror.

           I take my hair down, letting it flow over my shoulders. I suppose a haircut won’t be in order because I already wear it so many different ways. Still, I pin some of it back and leave some strands loose. I imagine this person, this Jane Stewart is professional even when she is not practicing. Always elegant and eloquent, even when she doesn’t need to be. She’s a strong woman, and therefore dresses that way and holds herself that way. I square my shoulders, tilting my chin up in the slightest. She’s sure of herself and sure of this world. She walks her own path and doesn’t think twice about the next step she takes.

           Oh, what fun it will be to pretend.

           I use some of the makeup provided, like the foundation to cover some trouble spots and the mascara to add something to my eyes without doing a lot. There’s no lipstick here, but I might buy some sometime soon. It’s been a while since I’ve worn it, and Jane seems like someone who would.

           I zip the makeup bag up and grab my old clothes, walking back into Mycroft’s office with a smile. I hand the old clothes off to someone to burn – or at least, that’s what I’m assuming they’ll do with them. That’s normally what happens, but who knows.

           “Do you have a watch?” I blurt, setting the makeup bag down on a chair. “It just seems odd that there wasn’t one.”

           Mycroft nods to his desk. There, sitting on top of the documents in my briefcase is a watch. The straps are brown, but the face is a simple black and white design. It’s perfect to what I had in mind.

           “Thank you,” I take the watch and strap it on my left wrist without looking. I’m too focused on what Mycroft is looking at. “What is that?”

           “Terror cells that my brother is trying to infiltrate,” Mycroft replies easily. “If he doesn’t get himself killed, it’ll be a miracle.”

           I frown. “That doesn’t sound promising.”

           “It’s not,” Mycroft leans back in his chair. “But when Sherlock makes up his mind, the decision is final. Anyway,” he shoves the file away, sliding over a laptop. “This is yours to use. And here is your new phone. I have my number under a code name—”

           “What is it?”

           “What?”

           “Your code name.”

           He practically glares at me. “Mikey.”

           “Mikey!” I laugh. “Are you joking?” I pick up the phone and go to the contacts. “Oh, that’s golden.” It’s my nickname for him and has been for years. Only to annoy him, though, as I see it still does.

           “Yes, I knew you’d find it amusing,” he smiles tightly. “Now, I probably will not call you often. I’d prefer if our meetings are handed through email or in person – in person is most preferred, if you can bear it. If I do call you, it will most likely be in the event of an emergency.”

           “Gotcha.”

           “I don’t see there being an instance when someone other than yourself would have ahold of your phone, but in the event that they do, my name is ‘Mikey’ and not Mycroft.”

           “Do regular people really know your name?”

           “The right and wrong people do, yes. And John Watson knows it well,” he sighs. “Now a car is waiting outside to take you to your home. I can have a car delivered for you later today if you want to drive yourself around, if not, that’s fine as well.”

           “I think I’ll want a car,” I reply, thinking of how Jane is. “So, yes, send one. If you don’t mind.”

           “Not at all,” he leans over to make a note on some pad by his phone. “Here is a file on Dr. Watson. It’s all background information and some key pages from his blog, though I suppose if you wanted to read his blog, you could read it online.”

           “Thank you,” I pack away the laptop, phone, and file into my brief case, shutting it and flicking the locks. “Is that all?”

           “I believe so.”

“Well,” I smile. “It was nice meeting with you, Mr. Holmes.”

           I can already feel everything shifting. It’s the one thing I did not miss about going undercover.

           You have to become someone else. You have to adapt a completely different identity, personality, demeanor, everything. You can lose yourself doing this. And I almost did a couple of times.

           Maybe it isn’t such a bad thing now, having my middle and last name intact, as well as my profession. I do have a degree in psychology, just never used. Being an agent somehow swept me along before I could use my degree elsewhere in social services.

Well. I suppose there is a right time for everything. And I suppose the right time for me to be a therapist is now.

~~~

The house I am dropped off at is in the suburbs, which I expected. Therapists normally do sessions out of their homes, especially private therapy, which I’m assuming is John’s preferred method seeing as his last therapist did the same.

           He’s a private person. I’ve gathered that much from skimming his file on the ride here. He’s very reserved, even when he’s all in the papers because of Sherlock.

           The house is nice, though. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms. It has a large living area with two chairs set up by the big windows toward the back. I assume that’s where John and I will be sitting tomorrow for our session. The kitchen is sized fairly well. I’m not that great of a cook, though, so regardless that doesn’t do me much good. My bedroom is nice, larger than what I’m used to, with a bathroom connected. The guest room – which I don’t know why I have, other than the fact that this is all for show – is nice as well. A bit smaller, but not suffocating.

           It’s decorated nicely. Modern. Not my usual taste, but then again, I’m not the one living here. Dr. Jane Stewart is.

           I throw myself down on the couch, wanting nothing more than to go to sleep and wake up – as myself – back in America. Where I’m not a spy. Where I’m not Dr. Jane Stewart. Where I’m not Agent N. J. Stewart. Where I’m just Nicole. And that’s it.

[andrea-lyn]

Malex fic where they secretly got married at some point in the last ten years so Michael would be told if Alex was injured or killed?

In 2016, Alex comes back to Roswell quietly on the heels of a scare with his health and his first stop is to a trailer in the middle of the junkyard, where he’d found Guerin last time. He’s heard that he’s been hopping around dairy ranches, but the last one went out of business and he’s back with Sanders while he looks for the next gig.

They’d found something when Alex had gone in for his physical and for the scariest few days, Alex had waited for tests to be run. He’d withdrawn from everyone during those days, not knowing what he’d do if he suddenly was given a timer that counted down his last moments.

When the diagnosis had come back benign, it had been like a spotlight.

He’d made a list. It’s not a bucket list, not really, but it’s a list of things that would make his life meaningful. First up, here at this junkyard, a man that may or may not even let them talk.

Michael opens the door and stares at him for a long, uncomfortable moment. The silence draws out to the point that Alex starts fidgeting. He’s about to tell Michael that he’ll leave when Michael steps down to the ground with a heavy landing, his eyes roaming over Alex’s body.

“What are you doing here?” Guerin asks, when he walks into the trailer and Alex is sitting there.

“Can we talk?”

It doesn’t turn out to be much talking. Alex barely tells Michael about the health scare before he’s being lifted onto the counter and Alex is kissing Michael with the kind of angry desperation that he’d felt when he’d been waiting for his test results.

It’s thrown everything into perspective. It’s shown him exactly what he wants.

This. He wants this.

“How long are you here?” Michael asks, stroking his fingers over Alex’s bare chest when they’re collapsed on the shitty bed in the trailer and Alex has caught him up on the test, on the scare, and how he’s absolutely fine.

Alex rests his chin on Michael’s collarbone, hating that his answer won’t make anyone happy. “I have a week of leave,” he says, the next words stuck in his throat. “Listen, I didn’t just come to see you.”

“You kind of came all over mmfhf…”

Alex claps his hand over Michael’s mouth, because this is serious.

“I’m serious. I’m here because I don’t want to put off what I want just because my father scared me out of it, because I was young and stupid.” Michael doesn’t say anything, but then again, Alex is still covering his mouth. Eventually, he hears a muffled sound, something like ‘what do you want, Alex?’ He takes in a deep breath and decides that the worst that can happen is Michael kicks him out of the trailer naked.

It’s the junkyard. He’s sure stranger things have happened here.

“Marry me.”

Michael squints at him, prying the hand off his mouth. “I think you fucked me into a coma, because I could swear you just proposed to me.”

“Yeah.” Alex lets out a breathless laugh. “Yeah, I did.” And, also, “You haven’t said anything yet.”

“I mean, you show up out of nowhere eight years later, worried about your health, and now you’re proposing. You’re sure that test was fine, you don’t have a weird tumor…”

Alex shoves Michael back down to the bed and crawls on top of him with a disbelieving look.

“Marry me,” he says again. “If something did happen to me, I’d want you to know.” And there’s something more than that. “And, I realized that if I was facing down death, my life’s got a bunch of regrets, but the biggest one is walking away from you.”

Michael stares at him, reverently in awe.

Oh god, he’s still not saying anything and it’s killing him.

“Guerin,” he pleads.

“Yeah,” Michael finally says, like he can’t believe he’s hearing the word. It’s soft, touched, and filled with fondness. “Yes.”

It’s not much. They have to grab a stranger milling around outside city hall and the rings are things that Michael’s found over the years in old cars. They sign papers and Alex knows that no matter what happens, at least they can’t cut Michael completely out of his life.

Unfortunately, their joy, their giddiness, this brief respite in a sea of despairs only lasts so long, because Alex only has a week of leave and that means six days later, he’s at the local air base with Michael, saying his goodbyes.

“You don’t have to go,” Michael says, a desperate last minute plea.

The trouble is that Alex hasn’t come around to the idea that the air force isn’t an integral part of his life. There’s a family name to live up to and even if his father is terrible, that doesn’t mean Alex isn’t striving to make him proud.

Maybe, just maybe, he can have Michael and he can earn his father’s affection.

“Yeah. I do.” They’re words that he said a week ago, but this time instead of making Michael light up like the night sky, they leave him standing on the tarmac looking like Alex has broken his heart.

The entire flight back, he feels awful that he’d left the way he had. The image of his father in his mind had scared him again, reminded him of all the things he had the power to do, and how Alex had to get back to his duty. He knows Michael may hate him for it, especially after he reads the letter Alex had left for him. It talks about wanting to live up to his family’s legacy (when really, he means he just wants to survive it), but there’s also something hopeful in his words, talking about a future where they can be together and Alex is done with all of this. When Michael finds the letter in his trailer, Alex suspects there might be divorce papers waiting for him on the other end, but he has to think about the part where he’s hoping for an after to his service.

Alex is choosing to focus on the hope.

It’s the connection that he and Michael have, even if Alex has ruined things for now by leaving. It’s the piece of paper sitting in Michael’s trailer that binds them together as husbands, it’s the rings he’s entrusted in Michael’s care, and it’s the knowing that if anything happens to him, then Michael is going to be the very first phone call.

Maybe when his enlistment period is over, maybe he can explain it to Michael and they can get past this. Maybe Alex won’t be so indebted to his dad.

For now, he’ll have to live on the memories of the scant brush with happiness they’d managed to steal.

*

He calls Michael after the drugs are flushed out of his system, feeling scared and tired and alone. “You didn’t come.”

“No passport,” Michael replies, sounding hollow and exhausted. “Funny how your military guys didn’t take my breakdown on the tarmac as a signal to let me on their plane so I could come see my husband.”

Alex knows this is a legitimate reason for Michael to not be there, at his side.

And yet, without his leg and without Michael, the loss seems to compound.

“I wish you were here.”

“Yeah,” Michael’s voice is quiet and given that the only other sound is the heart monitor attached to him, Alex doesn’t want him to hang up.

“Talk to me,” he pleads.

“Why’d you have to go back?” Michael demands, the pain digging new wounds into Alex’s skin for all the pain that’s in his voice. “Why, Alex? Why did you have to…”

He doesn’t hang up, but Alex almost wishes he had, because the sound of Michael’s breath hitching on the line is more than he can take. “Michael,” he breathes, finger hovering on the ‘disconnect’ button, but he doesn’t press it. He can’t bring himself to, even as much as this hurts. “Please, just talk to me. Tell me about your day, about Roswell, please…”

It takes Michael a long, shuddering moment, but eventually, he complies and Alex lets himself drift off to sleep fighting off the worst pain of his life, but with a shred of hope on the horizon.

*

It’s months later and Alex has been doing his best to avoid Michael in a small town like Roswell. What the hell else are you supposed to do after you basically tell your husband that you don’t think it’s going to work out, all the while the town eavesdrops?

He’s in the middle of his PT exercises when his phone rings. Leaning over, Alex checks the caller ID, sending it straight to speaker since it’s only Kyle.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Alex,” Kyle says, “I need you to come to the hospital.”

“If this is about my prosthetic, I’m coming in…”

“It’s Guerin.”

That stops him in his tracks. Michael kind of hates Kyle, so why the hell would Kyle be the one calling him about his husband?

“What do you mean? What about Michael?”

“He had you listed as his next of kin, even if I had to go digging for it,” Kyle says, with a tone that says he has the feeling that he knows why the information had been so hard to find. “Funny how I managed to dig up a marriage record from 2016. All this time…?”

“It was so that we had a connection, so if something bad happened…”

Alex stares down to his bad leg, where the prosthetic lies beneath his pants.

It turns out that something bad had happened and even their plan hadn’t been able to get Michael to him, but at least it had kept him in the loop. “Look, just, keep him sedated and calm, I’ll be there soon.”

He books it to the hospital, not sure that Michael will want to see him, though maybe he’ll be a lot more willing to see Alex when he realizes that he’s the jailbreak about to happen. He’s never known why Michael hates hospitals so much, but when he’d been insistent about not going after the incident with his hand, Alex had respected him enough to let it go.

“What happened?” Alex demands, when he finds Kyle.

“Sanders brought him in, which is dangerous in itself, the man really shouldn’t be driving,” Kyle scoffs. He hasn’t got a chart, which is strange, but he seems to know the case. “Guerin was helping with some of the gutters on the roof and the wood collapsed. He fell two stories, broke his leg in a few places. I’ve got him in a cast, but he can’t stay here.”

“Why not?” Alex demands.

“Get me out of here!” Michael shouts from inside the room. “Valenti, I swear to god, I’m gonna wedgie you from here if you don’t get me a wheelchair and…”

Kyle points to the room as if proof, opening the door enough that he can show off Alex. “Look who I found. Your husband,” he says sarcastically, giving Alex a light push inside. “You deal with him.”

Michael’s gone completely blank and quiet, gaping at Alex, like he’s embarrassed with the fact that Kyle knows what they did. That shock lasts about two seconds before Michael shifts in the hospital bed, fumbling to grab at the covers, his clothes, pretty much anything he can.

“Good, you’re here, help get me discharged,” Michael says.

Alex can’t do that just yet because he’s too busy being so angry.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he hisses, storming towards Michael, heart pounding with fear. They’d gotten married because they’d always been worried about what might happen to Alex. Michael’s the one in Roswell. Michael’s the one who should be taking care of himself.

He’s not the one who should be lying in a hospital bed, bringing back awful memories to Alex. And yet, Michael’s staring at him with that fondness, that I never look away smile on his lips, like he knows a stupid secret that Alex doesn’t and he kind of hates it, so he’s going to stay mad.

“Next time you decide to do something stupid like try to get something from Sanders’ roof without someone steadying the ladder, I’m going to…” Alex doesn’t finish his warning, because Michael leans up to kiss him, shutting him up. Alex flushes, but he’s not deterred. “You broke your leg! You fell from two stories up, Michael, how could you be so reckless! Now who’s going to help you with your trailer and getting around and showering and…”

Michael is giving him an amused look.

“What?” Alex demands.

“If only I had a husband who could help me out, in sickness and health.”

Alex stares at the ground, wishing he didn’t feel like it was about to swallow him whole. “Even after all that crap I said at the drive-in?”

“I know when it’s your Dad’s voice,” Michael promises. “You can tell me I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am. I think you still love me. I think you’re gonna find me a wheelchair and you’re gonna take me back to your place and we can commiserate about only having two good legs between us.”

Alex tips his head to the side, eyebrows furrowed together.

“All right, too soon,” Michael grumbles, but he’s swinging to the side of the bed, so clearly he’s not joking about getting out of here. “I’m not saying we’re gonna go find ourselves a white picket fence house and I know things are strained and shitty, but…” He trails off, reaching for Alex’s hand to slide it between his own, the scarring and the mangled skin on the bad hand on the bottom, still strong in its own ways. “There’s a reason I never wanted a divorce. I know we can do this.”

“Please tell me you didn’t break your leg just so you could see me again,” Alex jokes.

It’s Michael’s turn to glare at him. “Get me home,” he says. “And let’s work on figuring out what ‘for better’ looks like, because I don’t know about you, but aren’t you getting so tired of ‘for worse’?”

Alex really, really is.

“Fine,” he relents, and he knows that things are definitely far from perfect, but at least he can feel that hope back in him, with the potential to blossom into something stronger.

*

It’s 2019 and they’re out at the Wild Pony. Alex is at the bar to order their drinks and the rings have made it out of storage and back onto their hands. Alex’s bucket list has fewer items than it ever did before and while Make Peace With My Husband hadn’t been on there, Alex feels pretty comfortable in crossing it off.

“Two beers for the asshole who got married and didn’t tell us,” Maria says, with the sweetness that’s really not hiding how annoyed she is.

Alex takes them and salutes her with it, deciding to put something straight. “If that’s what you’re mad about, you’ve got three years to make up for.” Probably the wrong thing to say if he wants her to not be mad, but he heads back to the table and hands Michael his beer, all while Maria probably plots her revenge.

“Everything good?” Michael asks, as Alex reaches in and slides their hands together, hearing the soft clink of their rings as he rests his hand on top of Michael’s, closing his eyes to let that settled feeling wash over him.

He nods, and he knows down in his heart that he means this completely, “Yeah. Everything’s perfect.”

[workingontravel]

If the borders refuse me, I refuse them

(You can read a Swedish translation of this text here.) I mentioned this project to a friend. She immediately said: You should talk to Ghayath Almadhoun. Ghayath Almadhoun is a poet whose poetry has touched me. He is also a poet working with several languages, living and writing in many places. Finding a time when we could meet was a challenge, due to his frequent travelling. I’m happy we managed. His account of travelling for work brings together the personal and the political, the funny and the sad, the historical and the present, in extraordinary ways.

Ghayath Almadhoun: I travel for many reasons that I hardly understand. Some of them started already in childhood. I was born in Damascus, with a Palestinian father and a Syrian mother, in the Yarmouk refugee camp for Palestinians. It was just tents when they founded it in 1948, but now it has become buildings, part of the city. The first questions in my life were: What are we? Why do they say that we are not Syrian but Palestinian? Why, then, am I not in Palestine? 

It was very difficult for my father to explain to a six-year-old why land in Asia provided a solution for the antisemitism and racism against the Jews in Europe. But later, things became even more complicated. I discovered that I am not Palestinian-Syrian. I am a Palestinian from Syria. The Palestinian-Syrians are the Palestinians who arrived to Syria in 1948, when Israel occupied eighty per cent of Palestine. As the United States, the Soviet Union and Europe all accepted this, the Arabic governments understood that the land that was occupied had become Israel. As a solution, they gave the refugees all the papers they needed. So those who arrived from Palestine to Syria in 1948 have the same civil rights as the Syrian people. But our family came after the occupation of Gaza, in 1967. When Israel occupied the Gaza strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights from Syria, Sinai from Egypt and some parts of Jordan, the international community said: “This is occupation, and Israel should leave.” The Arabic nations then decided to not give any papers to these Palestinians in order to not provide any solutions for Israel. I found myself growing up without civil rights. I was not allowed to work. I was not allowed to take driving lessons. I was not allowed to leave the country, and if I did leave for any reason, I would not be allowed back. As we were not allowed to own a house, the house is in the name of my mother, who is Syrian. But if she died, the government would take the house and sell it. This, that I couldn’t inherit, was the thing that hurt me the most.

When I understood that I was already born outside, in exile, as they say, I became fascinated by the idea that there are no borders. If the borders refuse me, I refuse them. When I began to study, I also understood that my father was a poet. I began to think about poetry. I felt connected to many Surahs in the Quran, such as The Poet’s Surah, Surah 26. At the end of the Surah, it says:

“And the poets – the deviators follow them; Do you not see that in every valley they roam And that they say what they do not do?” Travelling is the reality of Arab poets, and poetry is very much connected to travelling in the Arabic tradition. Take the most famous Arabic poet El Mutanabbi. In the 800th century, he travelled, but most of all, his poetry travelled. If El Mutanabbi said a poem in Bagdad, the people in Damascus got it in a matter of hours by pigeon. From there, it went everywhere. His poem would arrive in Andalusia within a week. He himself came two months later.

So, I began to write poetry. My friends all went to Beirut, to Jordan or anywhere. They got invitations to go and read there. But I couldn’t travel, because I didn’t have a passport, papers or even an ID. So, the pressure began to build inside. This continued until I turned thirty, in 2008. Then I left the country. I made a sort of fake passport and went to Sweden. After I got a real Swedish passport, it’s: “Catch me if you can!” The travelling is also connected to my writing. For example, I could visit a place, read about it, discuss it and then I write a poem. I did it for example when Assad used chemical weapons on the suburbs of Damascus. Many people got killed in the first attack with the nerve gas sarin. There were 1,400 deaths, out of which 900 were women and children. I saw these bodies shaking. The pupils of the eyes go small. I started to think about chemicals. And I found that the first chemical attack happened in the city of Ypres in Belgium, on 22 April,1915. I went there for the 100th anniversary of that event. I visited 170 cemeteries. They counted 600,000 graves, and I visited all of them in two weeks. At one gate, they have written the names of all the dead soldiers no matter where they came from – France, England, Canada. They play music in honour of one of them every day and speak about what they know about that specific soldier. They had done this for eighty years without stopping for one single day. Even during the Second World War, they played every day. The problem is that they need 600,000 days to finish the names. I listened to such concerts for fourteen days. Then I wrote a poem that moves between the past and the present, Ypres, Syria and Palestine. Another time, I went to Antwerp to do research about blood diamonds. But during that month, thousands of people started to drown in the Mediterranean. So, my poem started with blood diamonds and ended with Syrians drowning in the sea. By the way, this is not political poetry, this is my life.

So, all in all: I travel in order to write. I’m making up for what I missed when I was without papers. I’m a travelling poet like in the Quran. And I’m born in no country, so I don’t believe in borders. But the main reason why I’m travelling like I have been doing now, 345 days a year and not even staying in Sweden for a full week, is another. When I came to Sweden, I accepted Stockholm as my city because Damascus was in the background. Every time I felt tired of being a foreigner, I remembered that Damascus was there, that one day I could go back and feel relief. In 2011, the Syrian revolution began. I really supported it, and it made my hopes of going to Damascus grow. But people I knew got killed, family members, almost all my friends. Cities I knew were destroyed. And the dictatorship won. The country was destroyed. My hopes of ever going back were lower than ever. Damascus disappeared from my background. Everything was shaken. Also, Stockholm didn’t belong to me anymore. What broke me was my brother. I lost him on 2 April 2016, killed by Assad. I was on tour: I was supposed to spend fifteen days in Holland. The second gig was with Anne Vegter, the poet of the nation. We finished our discussion. I went outside and I put the mobile on. Then my other brother called and told me. I disappeared from the universe for two hours. I woke up with people around me. We went to our friend’s house and I asked him to book me a ticket to Stockholm. The coming twenty-four hours were the most difficult in my life. While the plane was over Denmark, I understood there was something wrong. I wanted to tell the pilot to stop and let me off. Why was I going to Stockholm and not Damascus? Stockholm is even further away from Damascus. What is the difference if I cry in Amsterdam or if I cry in Stockholm? So I started travelling this way. As I see it, the best way to survive trauma is to be on the road. When you arrive, the problems will come. I noticed this in someone I know who was in Syria for four years during the bombings. He lost all his friends. People died in his arms. ISIS arrested him before he left the country. His trip here took eight months. All that time, he was doing ok. But when he got here, it took forty days and then the post trauma hit him. That made me even more scared. So, I began to ask myself: What will happen if I begin to travel and never let myself arrive? The panic attacks will wait for me to be settled. But what if I don’t settle? After the death of my brother I wrote a poem. The writing took place in maybe sixty places, twenty countries. If I would sign it with the names of the cities, that would be as long as the poem. What held me in this is that somebody else paid most of my tickets and travels. In this sense, I survived through poetry twice. On one hand, it’s about writing for survival; writing what hurts me on a paper. But then there are the festivals and the residences and the scholarships bringing me from here to there. Many of these festivals were shocked that I only needed one ticket. Germany pays my ticket from France. Belgium pays my ticket from Germany. Everyone pays only to bring me.

It happens that there are holes in the schedule, maybe even seven days empty. I fill these holes in order to not stay. I ask the festival to make my ticket longer and I pay the hotel myself before I go to the next festival. Or, if the ticket can’t be changed, I book a flight to the Arabic book fairs. In Arabic countries, the book fairs are two to three weeks long. And they schedule them in a systematic way, so they cover the whole year. Any time you want to go to a book fair in an Arabic country, you can. There are around 540 million Arabic-speaking people in the world, in 22 countries with 22 totally different cultures. So, when you go there to sign your book, there will be completely different receptions. You’re a star in Kuwait, they hate you in Libya, and you’re a bestseller in Iraq…

I don’t even remember all the places I have been to, I mix them up. The security personnel in the airport know me and say hello to me. Sometimes I see them in the morning. I go home to throw out the summer clothes and throw in the winter clothes because I’m going to the other side of the planet. Then I see them again in the afternoon. People understand after a while that if they are trying to stop me, they will lose me. If the train is fast and heavy, you should go with it, not stand in front of it. But the routine with friends is you go to their house, bring wine and cook and they come to you next time. When you are travelling again and again and don't have dinner with them, they are not your friends anymore, in a way. You lose your roots.

It is so good when you arrive in places like sunny California, cornfields and wine. And meeting people, discussing with them, having good food, having intellectual exchanges about philosophy, life, racism, patriarchy, everything I’m interested in. But physically it’s tiring. I have a theory I call The Pillow Theory. There are problems in life such as patriarchy, occupation, capitalism and the differences in the shape of pillows in the hotels. I’m fighting for the right of every person to have a size that fits them. Because of pillows and tiredness and lost friends, I’ve started to think I need a strategy to travel less. Also, my girlfriend is involved in this. Our idea is to let my mind think that I’m travelling though I’m not, by taking long residencies outside Sweden. So now I have a five-month residency in Amsterdam and after that a whole year at the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin programme, a scholarship. It works, in a way. When I went to Amsterdam, I started longing for Sweden as my country. Because I understood I would be away for long, I became homesick for the first time. And when I feel the thirst for travel I can make it subtler, because technically, I am already travelling. Through this, I started travelling less. Now, I travel only twice a month.

When I travel, I bring my laptop. They asked me in India what I would bring if the house were on fire. I said my laptop, because there is another house inside it. What is a home for a Palestinian born in a refugee camp if not language? It’s something I inherited from my father. He told me about paradise, the land of milk and honey. When I got my Swedish passport, I went to Palestine. There was nothing. No milk and no honey. It’s only in the dream of the Palestinians. The first time I went there, I was held six and a half hours at the airport. With all the happiness and sadness that I had about being there, finally the Israeli let me in. To this day, I never spoke with my father about that, because they threw him out twice, once from Ashkelon to Gaza in 1948, then from Gaza to Egypt in 1967, and he left his mother there. Until 2012 when she died, he didn’t meet her.

Home is connected to the mother tongue. I miss hearing my name. I used to say to God all the time that I miss Syria and Damascus here in Sweden. But when I asked God to connect me with Syria, he must have misunderstood me. Instead of taking me to Syria, he sent the Syrians to me.

[hecallsmehischild]

Today’s candle (and the candle for the last few days) is Sugared Cinnamon Apple. Not my most favorite apple candle (which probably was Spiced Apple Toddy) but a lovely, gentle scent.

I suppose now is a good time for Current Events.

Thursday night I fractured my pinky toe during Krav Maga warmup. As of yesterday it’s been set and taped and I’ll be six weeks out from class while it heals. The lady at the doctor’s office said to me, “Are you the one who’s paying {for the bone-setting}? You look like you’re twelve!”

I’m nearing the end of two series I’ve been reading since... basically the beginning of March and they’re both lovely works in their own way. Can’t wait to give final thoughts on them.

Spinel from Steven Universe has been occupying significant brain space since I saw the movie. Not sure what will happen because of that. Fic? Drawings? Time will tell.

Monday I fly to Pennsylvania to visit my middle sister over her birthday. Haven’t seen her in person since I got married last year. It will be lovely to spend a few days with her. We’ll be going to see the production Jesus at Sight and Sound Theater in Lancaster, the theater she has dreamed of working for for years now. She lives practically across the street from the facility now, and we hope she can find an in eventually.

Then, a week from tomorrow I fly to Santa Monica. Sergey is spending the week with his tech community there, so I get a chance to tag along and visit family. Also, one of my favorite coffee shops is in walking limping distance, so I’ll have some good opportunity to sit down and force myself to write.

It’s been three months, now, since I tried to re-take my eyebrows. Except for a tiny patch that’s giving me problems, I declare them regrown for the first time since I was eight. I’m so happy with them.

I finally got the certified copy of the name-change order in the mail. Now I can move forward in getting my passport with the correct last name, and once I have that, all other IDs and name changes with the bank will fall into line.

A lot of house decor has come to a standstill. There’s four places in the house that are unsafe for me to try and paint because the ceilings are vaulted or there’s some super tricky niche. I got quotes from three painters and chose one. Now we’re just pending a scheduled day for them to come in and paint four large areas in one two-day fell swoop. That will be marvelous. After that, I think, I’ll be able to move forward again. Heck, after that I might think decor is “done enough” for me to do a video walkthrough, even if it’s not COMPLETELY done.

I’m starting to get excited about cooking. I have some new toys that really help, and by really help, I mean one major roadblock to me having ever wanted to cook was the amount of effort that it takes. Or, the amount of effort that I presumed it takes. Turns out an electric mixer drastically decreases the effort involved in a fresh batch of baked sweets. Turns out a pressure cooker can make a really lovely meal with minimal preparation once you get the hang of its settings. Turns out a food processor... well, I haven’t played with that yet. But I’d like to. Those are my three new toys, and with them I actually am interested in/excited about cooking, because I’m not utterly drained at the end of my efforts. I’ve started compiling dishes I can make and Sergey and I have talked about doing more meals at home WHICH, as home decor winds down anyway, is something I find myself more interested in turning my attention to.

It’s almost like these things I feared I would never be good enough to do (taking care of a house, cooking meals, being a wife) were, in large part, because I was so internally exhausted there just wasn’t the reserve to experiment with new things unless it was absolutely necessary. I have been resting, resting, resting for a long time, now. I left my job in September 2017, and I am finally starting to find in myself not only a reserve to experiment with, but a DESIRE to do so.

I am not boasting. I do not mean, here, to flaunt. I am humbled and grateful and kind of awed. I speak about it and because talking about things is how I process, and again, perhaps there is some small grain in the mess of my brain that someone else can find and use for themselves.

[pastordorry-blog]

Our Father

Lord’s Prayer Week 1

Matthew 6:1-13

January 13, 2019

           I spent much of Monday and Tuesday at Camp Innabah, which is a United Methodist camp just off of Route 100 above the PA turnpike.  I went as part of a pilot group, testing out new program for evaluating Methodist clergy, and hopefully helping us improve!  

The organizer of the retreat asked me if I would bring a game to play on Monday night after we finished up our work.  I decided to bring a game called “Things”. You read a card, everyone writes their response, and then you try to guess who said what.  One of our categories was, “Things you would like to see blow up.”  Part of the fun of the game is playing it late at night, when everyone is punchy and things are funnier.  I will let you use your imagination as to what seven or eight United Methodist pastors might have said about things we’d like to see blow up!

We played for over an hour.  Some of our responses were logical, and some were designed to just get a laugh.  When the question was, “Things you never want to hear your teacher say.”, it wasn’t a surprise to see responses like, “Pop quiz today!”, or “That’s it.  No recess.”  But my favorite response was, “Who brought the lice?”  Turns out, one of my clergy colleagues has a daughter in third grade, and a bunch of kids in her class got lice in December.  Oh boy.  No one wants to hear the teacher announce that there’s lice!

But to me, the best response to that question was, “This is too hard for you.”  Can you imagine a teacher, telling their students, this is too hard for you? Might as well give up, you will never master this.  On the one hand, it might be an act of kindness.  When I took physics in college, I got a 33% on the first test, which turned out to be a C, because of a very generous curve.  It was pretty clear to me, I am not going to be successful in this class.  I dropped it and moved on to try different subjects that were a better fit for my interests and talents.

Even though it might be kind in some situations, to hear a teacher say, “This is too hard for you” also seems unfair.  The teacher doesn’t know everything!  They don’t have a crystal ball!  Maybe if I really apply myself, I will be successful, even if the odds are against me.  Aren’t teachers supposed to see the best in us and move us toward that?

The retreat at Camp Innabah gave me lots to think about, new concepts, new insights.  But as I prepared for today, it was this question, “Things you never want to hear your teacher say”, that stood out most.  In Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, it comes as a response to the disciples asking their Jesus, Lord teach us to pray.  What if Jesus would have said, “No, this is too hard for you.”???

It is very interesting to me that the disciples, who were all Jewish, asked Jesus to teach them to pray.  Certainly they already had many prayers memorized.  They participated in ritual prayer several times a day, and said prayers not only at meals, but upon waking up, upon resting for the night, there were even prayers to be said after having a bowel movement! Their days were filled with prayer long before they asked Jesus how to pray.

But clearly something was missing.  Their days may have been filled with prayer, but their hearts were not filled.  They wanted not just ritual, but intimacy.  They wanted words, not just to mark the moments of their ordinary days, but words that could take them beyond the ordinary!  The disciples had plenty of prayer covering every topic from suffering to joy.  What they did not have was a prayer that allowed them to participate in the spiritual realm the way Jesus could.  

And I think that is the key to praying the Lord’s Prayer.  The Lord’s Prayer is not just a bunch of words worth memorizing and reciting at least once a week.  It is a passport to the spiritual realm!  It is map that not only shows us what matters to God, but it can take us there.  There’s an old story about a group of people who had to choose between two doorways.  The sign on the first door said, “Heaven”.  The sign on the second door said, “Lecture about heaven.”  Guess which door they picked?  You’d think people would want to go straight to heaven.  But instead, most people are content to listen to the lecture about heaven.  They like the idea of heaven but don’t want to go there just yet, because it would mean giving up things that still mattered to them.

When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, I think what they were saying is, “The old things don’t matter to us anymore.  Teach us to be like you.  Teach us to believe like you.  Teach us to think and act as you, because you are heaven itself.”  Being with Jesus showed them that there were greater possibilities than they could have imagined before.  Spending time with Jesus opened up their expectations, and they started looking for more.  And when they asked Jesus to teach them how to get that “more”, Jesus did not say, “This is too hard for you!”  Jesus said simply, “Our Father…”

  I thought that today we would be focusing on those two words.  It seems like a logical place to start when learning about the Lord’s Prayer.  But I felt in my heart that there was something we needed to get clear before that.  We need to understand WHY this prayer is important.  As I said, the disciples already had a slew of prayers memorized, prayers for every occasion.  But there was a posture to those prayers that was not going to be enough.  Those were faithful prayers, powerful prayers, but they were not the prayer of people who knew they were “in on” the greatest gift God ever gave the world.  The Lord’s Prayer allows the prayer to be in the same exact position as Jesus was when he prays:  addressing God as Father.  Abba. Daddy. Jesus gave us this prayer so we could participate as he does in the things of God!  

Knowing that makes a huge difference!  You may not have ever stopped to consider why the Lord’s Prayer is so important to Christians.  It is because, in this prayer, Jesus gives us a new place.  It is the distinctive prayer for Christians, because it is the prayer that makes us “little Christs”!  We are addressing God the same way Jesus did, from his same position of beloved child and member of the divine family.  Last week I spoke about the word flamboyant in my sermon, and I got more feedback from that one word than I ever had from a sermon.  It really resonated with you!  Lima Church wants to be flamboyant, to be a strikingly brilliant witness for Christ.  It might seem plain vanilla then to follow that up with learning about the Lord’s Prayer. But when we keep in mind exactly what this prayer does—that it elevates the prayer to being part of God’s holy family and allows us to participate in the divine life in the same ways Jesus did—well I don’t think there’s anything plain vanilla about that at all!  I think that is pretty darn flamboyant!

On Thursday night at our prayer vigil, one of the phrases I wrote down was, “Respect yourself”.  Prayer the Lord’s Prayer is way to show respect to yourself.  You are a member of God’s holy family.  Which is why I suppose the prayer immediately goes on to say, hallowed be thy name.  We are part of God’s divine family, so the prayer says, let’s act like it!

We will talk more about hallowing God’s name next week, but let’s tune in for just a second on the first two words of the prayer. The first word is “Our”.  A tiny, three letter little adjective that would be easy to gloss over, except for the fact that this prayer comes from Jesus and therefore every word is important. What do you make of the prayer starting with the word, “Our”?  To me, it means, not only respect yourself, but respect each other.  There are other people in God’s family.  People who we might disagree with, who might bug the heck out of us, who have hurt us.  But that doesn’t mean they are not our family members.  There are no only children in Christianity!  

I have several books about the Lord’s prayer on my shelves, and I pulled this one off a few days ago to re-read.  It was put together in 2006 by a group of United Methodists from the Iowa conference.  There’s a little story in the back about how, after a heated debate over human sexuality at one of their meetings, the leading spokespersons for the two competing opinions decided to walk a labyrinth together in prayer.  They started the labyrinth walking as opponents.  They saw each other as theological enemies and adversaries.  But prayer together changed them.  Afterwards they wrote this prayer, “Bind us together as only your love can and help us always to remember that our relationship with Christ is first.”

As we approach General Conference at the end of February, we are going to be focusing on the Lord’s Prayer in worship every week, in the hopes that we can find ways to more fully live out the prayer, “Our Father”.  I believe God is glorified when we find ways to be unified in love, even if we are divided in thought.  And I am sure Jesus would not be a teacher who says, “This is too hard for you.  Don’t bother trying!”  I ask you to make an extra special effort to pray for our denomination in the weeks ahead, and if you’re not sure what else to say, you can just pray the Lord’s prayer!  And if that is too much, just meditate on the word, “Our”.  Do you think doing that would bring about change in our world?  We are all in the same boat, aren’t we?  God’s beloved children.

So on that note, let’s talk for a second about Father.  I know some people have a hard time with the male genderization of God, and this is where we all have to use our imaginations a little bit.  No one thinks God is actually a boy.  Pope Francis tells a cute story about how he understands this second word of the Lord’s Prayer:

When he was five or six years old, Pope Francis had to have his tonsils taken out.  At the time, they did not use any anesthesia for the procedure.  The doctor showed you the ice cream you would get as a reward, they put something in your mouth to keep it open, and a nurse held you down while the doctor used scissors to cut out your tonsils!  Afterwards, his father gave him the ice cream, and then he called a taxi to take them home.  Young Pope Francis was shocked to see his father pay the taxi driver but couldn’t ask because it hurt too much to talk.  A few days later when he could use his voice again, he asked his dad why he paid a stranger to drive them home.  His father explained how taxis work.  Little Pope Francis said, but wasn’t that your car?  In his childhood understanding of how big and powerful his father was, he thought his dad owned every car in the city!  Pope Francis wrote that God is like that—immense, powerful, majestic.  But God will also give you ice cream and help you through when you need loving care.  

Our Father who art in heaven is a prayer given to us to help us find our place in God’s family.  Jesus told his disciples, “I will not leave you orphaned.”  We are not alone.  Each of us has siblings.  Each of us has a heavenly Father.  We are loved beyond measure, and flamboyantly invited to participate in the life of the Divine.

In our gospel lesson today, Jesus taught his disciples that real prayer is not about reciting religious words, or feeling self-satisfied that we have fulfilled some religious duty.  That’s what the Pharisees did.  True prayer is about allowing ourselves to love.  To love our neighbors as ourselves, and to love God, our spiritual, heavenly Father.  As Richard Foster, a contemporary Christian author of several books on the spiritual life puts it, “Real prayer comes not about gritting our teeth, but from falling in love.” Amen.