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mousegard · 2 years ago

Note

I don't know what ask game this is for, but Marianne?

marianne! marianne is i love her yes

favorite thing about them

oh my god i love marianne. she's just. this baby can hold so much catholic guilt and subtextually repressed homosexuality/gender shit. tgirl swag. if anybody tries to tell you that all the catholic aesthetics in fe3h are just superficial window dressing (yes there are idiots in the fandom who still say that last i checked) just point at marianne and tell them to learn how to read

also! also! marianne is just... she doesn't know her own strengths. and i mean that literally, in that she has swordfaire as a budding talent, and in more metaphorical senses. she's shown in a lot of her endings and in some of her supports to have a lot of potential for political acumen... she's a potential leader who's been beaten down and stifled by the stupid myths surrounding crests and a poster child for edelgard's revolution. hell a lot of her paired endings with people like dimitri make it pretty obvious she's the brains of the operation!

if edelgard didn't exist, i wouldn't be surprised to see marianne start some sort of revolution against the church's dogma of her own! it wouldn't look like edelgard's revolution, but who knows? now that could be a fic... hail the mighty marianne...

also tgirl swag

least favorite thing about them

i hate that i'm torn between "the point of marianne's character is that she is literally in no more danger of turning into a monster than any other character in the game who has crests, demonstrating how fodlan's false religion and its crest obsession ruins people's lives" "marianne should be able to turn into a giant monster because hhhhhhhh giant monster angst" but that's not a marianne problem that's a willow problem

favorite line

"The blood of a beast no longer flows through me. I feel human for once."

i really like her paralogue okay. how finding out the truth of maurice and seeing him off to his eternal rest frees her from the long shadow she and her ancestors have all lived under... good for you, marianne. you get that catharsis. you get it good

brOTP

marianne/ferdinand. ferdinand is a good egg and he does so much in their supports to help marianne see her own strengths and value as a person! i don't like, ship them ship them, but i think they have a wonderful friendship

although, the paired ending where ferdinand commissions a statue of her and she's so embarrassed by it that she won't let anyone see it is really funny...

there's also marianne and linhardt, which is really sweet

OTP

who do i ship her with? more like who don't i ship her with?

i think hilda/marianne is very sweet, though i have to admit that it's mainly the aesthetic. can't beat cotton candy pink and blue. also tgirl swag

and then there's dimitri. marianne is really one of the only characters i ship with dimitri. in fact she might be the only character i ship with dimitri. i love how they bond over their shared survivor's guilt and move on together

but i can't stop there. because then. you have marigard. and like yeah i ship literally almost every female character with edelgard because i am extremely gay and extremely thirsty and so is she. but marianne and edelgard is special. you have the shared religious angst. the mutual feeling that they are unlovable in the eyes of the goddess. the survivor's guilt. the shared indictment of the crest system and the church of seiros. the suicidal ideation. the hhhhhhhhhhhh and also edelgard has the whole hegemon thing and GOD i love it when people ship marianne with hegemon edelgard. like fuck yes. hell yes. more please. WHY NO SUPPORTS INTSYS

nOTP

there aren't any marianne ships that i hate. at worst there are ones i'm indifferent to but that's hardly a notp

random headcanon

did i mention the tgirl swag? because boy does marianne have tgirl swag

i would love to write a fic where marianne comes into her own as a political force to be reckoned with earlier, like mid-timeskip, and tips the scales of the leicester alliance into supporting edelgard and the adrestian empire's war on the church, basically turning cf into a cf/gw hybrid

i think marianne and claude would be best friends until politics comes out. then it's knives out. and then the politics are done and they're best friends again. the two things you never do around marianne are talk shit about dorte and talk shit about her trade policy. dorte's trade policy is fair game though, i mean he's a horse, he can't even read and you expect him to understand tariffs

unpopular opinion

marianne has a lot of hidden depths that i think a lot of the fandom glosses over so they can reduce her to "pretty girl with self-esteem issues/shyness/depression/anxiety" and it does a disservice to all of her hidden strengths, not just her strength with a sword but also her political canniness, and also to the root cause of her mental issues and the crushing existential burden she carries—which is, of course, the church

song i associate with them

youtube

i think this song just fits so nicely with marianne's crushing fear of what she might become and the eventual fate of maurice

I have this feeling that my luck is none too good This sword here at my side don't act the way it should Keeps calling me its master, but I feel like its slave Hauling me faster and faster to an early, early grave And it howls, it howls like hell

favorite picture of them

bluestarRaziel

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scullys-scalpel · 1 year ago

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THE house

Another short fic. In between s9 and IWTB

Three years have gone by since Mulder and Scully had been on the run. They never stayed in a place for too long, afraid there was still an ongoing search for them.

Finally they caught a break. Skinner phoned Scully to tell her there was no longer a search to worry about and as long as Mulder made no attempt to enter the J.Edgar Hoover building.

This news excited Scully. Over the years she yearned for stability. She wanted to return to medicine, to cook in her own kitchen, and to have a home with Mulder.

“Mulder, Skinner called to say we can stop running” Scully said through a smile with a single tear running down her left cheek.

Mulder had a thousand thoughts running through his head but all he could say was “So is the basement off limits or is that too much of an ask?”

This made Scully chuckle, “Since you mentioned it, that’s the one request the FBI made is that you are not allowed on the premises.”

“I had no intentions of stepping foot on those grounds Scully, I just wanted to see you laugh.”

“You know Mulder I have known about this for a few days and wanted to surprise you. I made an appointment to go look at home that I think would be perfect for the two of us.” Scully said as she pulled Mulder closer to her.

“And I was just getting to like this motel” Mulder said as he placed a soft kiss upon Scully’s lips.”

*A week later they met the realtor at the soon to be known unremarkable house*

“Scully this doesn’t seem like the type of home you would pick out for us.” Mulder said as he drove their SUV up the unpaved driveway.

“Sure it is Mulder,” she said grabbing his hand and placing a kiss.

“Remember when you said if you were to settle down you’d live in a place away from the city, a place where you do not have to lock your doors, no faxes, modems, or cell phones.”

“I can’t believe you remember that Scully,” Mulder said squeezing her hand tighter, a toothy smile on his face.

“I remember Mulder and I want the same thing” Scully says as she releases her seatbelt.

The realtor is waiting for them in the porch, “You’re both really going to love this home. It may need some updating, but with the land it sits on and the size of the home it’s quite a deal.” The realtor says shaking both Mulder and Scully’s hands, introducing themselves.

The home is the perfect size for them. It's white with a roof that appears to be in good condition, and a wrap around porch, perfect reading the paper and drinking coffee.

They enter the home and a flood of emotions runs through them both as they imagine their future life here. They don’t express it verbally but the smiles laid across their faces tell it all.

As they tour the home Mulder finds a room he knows would be perfect for his office, he has already picked the wall the wants to place an I Want To Believe poster. They are both pleased by the sizes of the kitchen, living room, and master bedroom.

There is an extra room located at the top of the stairs they know would be perfect for a child.

Neither of them acknowledge what the other is thinking. They haven’t spoken of William much over the years. The pain and guilt is almost to much to for either one of them to bear.

Sensing the emotions silently flooding out of both of them, Mulder pulls Scully towards him. Placing a kiss on her forehead. “ Scully I think this house is made just for us,” Mulder says trying to distract them both from thoughts about William.

“Me too,” Scully says. “I saw a Catholic Hospital in town. Our Lady of Sorrows, I believe was the name. I would really enjoy practicing medicine again” she tell him.

They both meet up with the realtor downstairs, who was giving them their space to tour the home.

“We would like to make an offer,” Mulder says.

#the x files #dana scully #fox mulder #a small William mentioned #the unremarkable house #my fic #im trying lol #im not the most eloquent and i have a hard time translating my ideas #another cell phone publication lol #im sure there are typos 🙃#msr #xf fic

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elmflowers · 2 years ago

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Make the PMMN superhero post. Do it

fuckin bet lets go

obvious one: superman/clark kent and madoka kaname

both represent the platonic ideal of hope and both are sort of protected by the plot wherein they will always "win" in the end bc of how they represent hope in the story. what makes it interesting is how they "win", what gets sacrificed along the way (madoka sacrificing her individuality and "humanity" for a greater good and superman being the loneliest being on earth and constantly putting himself in danger and as this icon rather than human, despite clark kent very much being Human)

batman/bruce wayne and homura akemi

other than the clear gay parallels between madohomu and superbat, homura and batman are people who have suffered significant loss and have great love within their hearts, which they use to protect people they love. bruce is strongly motivated by his parent's death + catholic guilt despite being half jew half probably protestant what happened there buddy and homura her catholic guilt upbringing + idolized bestie death combo. both characters are somewhat jaded and not necessarily the pure platonic ideal of hope their bestie personifies, but if you look at them for a little bit, you go, "Oh shit, these bitches are bleeding hearts". also how they interact with their gay partner i mean best friend, wherein batman sees superman as hope and what gives him the ability to keep going because if there's someone as good as him can exist then its worth it, while homura pinpoints madoka as her motivation to keep going, tunneling her vision and essentially being the only reason she still tries to save people and live.

green lantern/hal jordan and sayaka miki

both want to be heroes but are in a system wherein they are exploited using their drive to do good. hal jordan became a poster child for the green lantern corp and basically trapped in this cycle of illusion of choice wherein he supposedly! can quit, but no hes has to keep coming back. he slowly loses touch with his "humanity" (ie his home, his friends, his hobbies, etc) and it gets replaced with his job (literal icon of marx's theory of alienation). sayaka miki wants to be a magical girl because she wants to help other people and save them, she wants to do good and thats in contrast to the fact that being a magical girl does separate her from her "humanity" (her soul got fucking ripped out) and that she does not feel like she will ever be good enough because she is a flawed person (girl youre 13 youre going to have flaws). both are driven to a point wherein their roles are separating them from what they feel as their humanity that they succumb to despair after a final break (for hal jordan his home town coast city being fucking vaporized while he was off world and for sayaka hitomi going out with kyousuke) that makes them realize how fucked everything is and they cant handle it anymore. sayaka becomes oktavia and hal becomes parallax.

john constantine and kyoko sakura

okay im breaking a rule, constantine is a dc character but not necessarily a hero. lol. lmao. anyways

both have fucked up in the past and made a serious mistake that does not allow them to go back to who they were before (constantine in newcastle, kyoko with her wish). they are both jaded people who act tough and seem like they only look out for themselves, but routinely go out of their way to help others because they are inherently good people. theyre both kind of assholes in their own way and also both seriously hotheaded. both are also extremely experienced within their area of expertise.

nightwing/dick grayson and mami tomoe

iconic eldest daughter syndrome kids. pushes a face of happy go lucky vaguely mature and cheerful persona and hides their flaws like theyre going to fucking die if anyone sees that they arent necessarily perfect. incredibly fucked up past. a deep fear that influences a lot of their actions (dick does not want to turn out like bruce did, mami does not want people to leave her as she is a deeply insecure individual). has guilt complexes miles, miles wide. dead parents. both deeply insecure. go eldest daughters!

the jonker from sanic 2 and Cube

just little guys who committed so many crimes

#batman #superman #john constantine #nightwing #joker #dc #madoka kaname #homura akemi #sayaka miki #kyoko sakura #mami tomoe #kyubey #pmmm #elm rambles

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hansoulo · 4 years ago

Text

your heart wears night armor

part 9 of ain’t it a gentle sound (the rolling in the graves)

pairing: Horacio Carrillo/f!Reader

word count: 3.7k

warnings: cursing, discussions canon-typical violence and blood, descriptions of religion, catholic imagery, and praying (it’s 2 paragraphs before the first break and you can just scroll past if you’re uncomfortable/don’t care to read it) uhh…, i think that’s it?? light angst but we kinda been knew at this point

gif credit: my soulmate @pascalplease

A/N: @1zashreena1 i owe u and that first day of school ask my life god bless 🙏🙏 set in like 1991 idk time isn’t real

masterlist carrd

Domesticity during war is a curious thing. You’d left your old apartment years ago and a man had moved in beside you, in your new, promoted house, with his young wife and her stomach swollen by pregnancy. You’d smiled and been neighborly. Teased about play-dates and dinner parties and tight-lipped husbands, the way you used to. Had actually gone to a dinner party and admired their blue-edged china, pouring out the woman’s sparkling water as Isabella grabbed at your wrists.

She’d moved out, alone save for her child and one gifted medal. He was very brave, apparently.

You weren’t surprised when a new couple came by a few months later.

So you lived your life, a good life, a happy one, shielded by shoulders and smiles and rough-hewn hands clasped in prayer. Receiving the good favor of a virgin mother, wearing a painted clay veil and balming men’s conscience. Good Catholic boys, who died in the name of a “something” and looked Saint Peter in the eyes when they met him again. Your good, Catholic man. Rosaries and holy water. Unholy blood. Stained cherry glass and crimson hands. Prayers and prayers and prayers, made by mothers and fathers and wives.

You had prayed, once. Had knelt at an altar and let the wood dig into your knees like a penance for a sin you didn’t remember committing but felt guilty for enjoying anyhow. You pleaded for one promise to keep him safe and thanked a nameless saint for your fortune, sated when you heard the slap of your sandals on marble and the echo of all your thoughts in the high, vaulted ceilings.

Guilt is strange. “Healing” in quotation marks is strange. You always hated the way people phrased it, as if one day you’d arrive someplace and get a lacquered button pinned to your shirt pocket reading a congratulations. Dr. Reyes hated it, too, and you’d smiled when she made some long-winded metaphor about journeys and life and cat posters. For now you were content with walking, one hand held and one hand holding, with white-knuckled palm promises and the warm, curled grasp of a child.

⫸ ——— ⫷

You gripped the car keys, feeling them dig into your palm as you tried to brush off the hand on the doorknob. “Horacio,” you let out, frazzled with all the rush of a January morning, anxious and tired from the previous day’s shift. You didn’t need to work today though, thank god . “I can take my own damn daughter to her first day of school.”

His hand left the door, only to snake loosely around your waist. When you only sighed, not pulling away, a rough thumb came to rub at the curve of your jaw and bid your gaze to meet his. She has your eyes, you’d once said. Dark and sloping, edged by black lashes. Bright. Gentle.

“No,” he said, apologetic but resolute. “You can’t.”

“I can,” you repeated weakly to yourself, your own hand starting to loosen its hold around the cold rings of metal. “Horacio,” you whispered, shaking your head as his arms wrapped a bit tighter. “The guards, the- the guns. They scare her.”

His brows knitted together while you spoke, quiet as to not alarm Isabella - now a few months shy of six - sitting by the kitchen counter in a blue school skirt. She didn’t look up from her the contents of her backpack, so you continued. “I’m just- I’m tired, I guess,” you admitted with a small hitch in your voice, examining the angry red indents left in your palms. You let him shift you until you faced away from the door, tucked closer into his chest, and reached to fiddle with the silver buttons of his uniform while you spoke.“It’s bad enough that they’re always outside.”

You looked up to see Isabella clambering off of her chair with a scrape of its legs against your kitchen tiles. It’s first grade, she’d reminded you the night before in hurried Spanish while you brushed her hair, chiding her to sit still. She’d set out her uniform carefully, insisting on brightly colored hair clips and two tight braids. We can’t be late.

Your now-husband squeezed your shoulders and his lips were pursed - not in annoyance, but in concern. “Mi amor,” Horacio began, cupping the base of your neck and squeezing softly. Mi amor, he called you. A love. His love. Saccharine, maybe, to foreign ears but to him, to him it was doctrine. You let out a shallow breath. “It’s too dangerous without them,” Horacio reminded you, the rough pad of his thumb tracing over your lips. “You know that.”

You closed your eyes, nodding into the lingering kiss left on your forehead. “Yeah, I know.” Smoothing away the pretend lint on his collar, you pressed your nose to his jaw before moving to step away, inhaling the soft scent of laundry and sandalwood soap. The arms around you loosened to let you go. “Doesn’t mean I like it though,” you mumbled, attempting petulance but failing when another kiss was placed on your cheek.

“We’ll be with her,” Horacio reminded you, his voice placating in your ear. “And it’s just Trujillo,” he assured. You perked up at the name and laughed when Isabella did likewise, her steps towards the both of you quick and echoing her new school shoes.

“Is he coming?” she asked, repeating the question in English and then Spanish again when neither of you answered quickly enough for her liking. Bouncing on the balls of her heels, Isabella tugged on the fabric of your pants with an urgency that seemed unfit for the slightness of her body. “Is he here? Is he going to drive us?”

You reached to smooth down the loose curls escaping from her braids and looked back behind you for confirmation, pleased to report in the affirmative when Horacio nodded.

She didn’t wait much longer for you to open the door, bounding down your front steps to meet the man now standing by a shelled vehicle, a tanned hand resting on the holster at his hip.

“The Jeep?” you asked, incredulous.

Horacio shrugged. “It’s bulletproof.”

“Right,” you answered slowly, watching Trujillo bend down to give the girl a hug. “And they couldn’t bulletproof, say, a minivan?” Horacio only chuckled, walking you down to the car, and you grew more serious. “Thank you, though. For bringing him, and not the… cavalry, I guess.”

In sunlight, Horacio's eyes were lighter - edged by shadowed rings but pooling in deep, fractured amber. Apologetic. “It’s the least I could do,” he said.

Isabella glanced back towards the both of you and you caught the flash of a cellophane candy wrapper, accompanied by a no le digas a tu mamá when Trujillo slipped it in her pocket. Waving at you with an impish smile, the officer slid into the passenger seat.

“I heard that,” you called out. He raised his eyebrows, declaring his innocence, and said nothing more.

The weather was slow with its languid breezes, blanketing everything in the soft smell of baked clay and clear mountain air. In the distance, the first swells of morning traffic began their course.

Isabella climbed into the car (or tank, depending on who you asked) and helped you buckle her seatbelt. When you turned to meet the back of the man behind you, you heard the girl plead, “Don’t kiss.”

When you asked why, she wrinkled her nose. “It’s gross.”

“You see us kiss all the time,” you replied, handing her her backpack. Horacio’s hand came to pass gently along your waist, a quiet reminder of the openness of the road you now stood on.

Isabella shook her head, the dark braids tumbling beside her rounded cheeks. “It’s still gross.”

“How ‘bout you close your eyes,” you offered, leaning out of the car and hearing your husband’s quiet laugh. Catching Trujillo’s face in the reflection of the side mirrors, you grinned. “I can count down if you want.”

“Promise?” Isabella asked, raising her hands to cover her face.

“Promise,” you answered. “Are they closed? Good, okay on three. Ready? One… two… thr-” but your count was muffled, turning into a soft mmph by a pressing mouth. Horacio’s hands curling around the Jeep doors as you reached to steady yourself on his shoulders. The kiss was chaste, quick and barely a peck, but you still smiled when he pulled away.

Running your tongue along your front teeth, you could taste the slow dilution of orange juice. “You can open them now,” you assured Isabella. The girl peeked out between her fingers and sighed in dramatic relief, letting her arms fall to her sides. “You too,” you said to the officer in the passenger seat. Trujillo only rolled his eyes in mild amusement, his gaze fixed firmly on a point far, far off in the distance.

Horacio pressed his lips against your temple once more before you moved to sit down, waiting until you’d done your own seatbelt to close the car door behind you. His boots scuffed heavy against the stoned street and you spoke to Isabella as he walked to the driver’s side. “One day, y’know, you might actually like kissing.”

She shook her head emphatically, her expression one of exaggerated disgust. “Never. Never ever.”

“Suit yourself,” you responded, moving to face the front windows to see your husband now at the steering wheel, his expression fighting to keep itself stern. “Y’know,” you added in a stage whisper, “your dad’s a very good kisser.”

“Gross!”

⫸ ——— ⫷

“I didn’t cry,” you said, shaking your head as Horacio opened the car door for you a few minutes after the first school bell rang. When he only hummed and Trujillo (now on the driver’s side) let out a barking laugh, you protested. “I didn’t!”

Horacio hid his unconvinced sincerity with a slow nod. You leant against the edge of the door when it shut, its hollow metal hot from the sun underneath your temples. Orange starbursts swam across your vision when you swiped quickly at your face with your knuckles. “I didn’t cry,” you maintained, feeling the rising stuffiness of your throat. “It’s allergies. I’m very- I’m very... pollen-sensitive.”

That was technically true - he'd bought you enough pink antihistamine tablets and tissues enough times to prove it - but you knew it wasn’t the cause of anything now. The reason for your swollen eyes was sitting in a real, grownup chair after two years of preschool and one year of kindergarten, a pencil case filled to the brim with bright, sparkly markers. At school.

The car floor shifted under your feet when your husband turned back towards you, offering the polaroids he’d taken just moments earlier. “Do you want-”

“-yesthankyou-” you exhaled, grabbing the stack of photos from his hands. Spreading them out across your lap, you tried to swallow the lump in your throat. There was one of her getting out of the car… then her walking up to the front entrance... then another of her backpack, then of her shoes and Jesus, how many were there?

You flipped through the rest, scatterbrained and trying to commit every single picture to memory until something prompted your pausing. It was a picture of you.

He must’ve taken it while you weren’t paying attention, oblivious to the camera and turned away, but you were smiling. A bright, blinding smile that seemed to seep pure sunlight through the waxy white paper, up through your fingertips and back towards the swelling of your quickening heartbeat.

“That one,” Horacio said, taking the photograph from you and tucking it into the front pocket of his uniform. “Is for me.”

⫸ ——— ⫷

The engine rolled as the men parked. “Are you sure he’s here?” Javier asked, taking off his aviators to examine the row of terracotta houses, with their red-tile roofs and stucco walls. It was quiet in the mid-morning, temperate and warm. Medellín, the city of eternal spring, was living up to its name.

Steve stuffed his government I.D (the only way they’d gotten through the gate) back into his pocket and adjusted the belt on his hips. “S’worth a shot. Wasn’t at the office, was he?”

“No,” Javier hummed, scanning the street with his arms crossed, his fingers curling into the fabric of his shirtsleeves. “No, he wasn’t.”

Neither of the men seemed to notice the officer parked beside the street, waiting for his colonel to retrieve some forgotten files before returning to the embassy.

They walked closer towards the house, stepping over a small tricycle that lay forgotten on the front lawn. Steve lowered his sunglasses. “You think it’s his?”

A low laugh escaped Javier’s chest and he shook his head, his steps meeting the front door. “Nah, he has a little girl. From his first wife.”

Somewhere in the house footsteps echoed with a soft voice, too muffled to make out anything beyond the fact that it was a woman. Steve looked back towards his partner, perplexed.

“Second wife,” Javier explained before ringing the doorbell. “Never met her, though.”

The steps grew louder until a pause, with the small peephole of the door waxing their reflections. Steve held up his badge again and stepped back when various locks unlatched until the door was opened, creaking quietly on its joints. The first thing they saw was your arms, balancing a precarious stack of plastic toys while you nudged the door farther open with a struggling foot. Steve rushed forward to take some from your hands and you smiled back at him, letting out a sigh of relief.

“Sorry about that,” you breathed, setting the brightly colored books and toys on the floor beside you. “Caught me in the middle of cleaning up.” The men shared a quick look at each other, schooling their expressions from the slight shock created at your appearance. You were pretty and barefoot, sporting marker-stained jeans and a loose t-shirt. If they were expecting anyone, this definitely wasn’t it. “You’re DEA, right?”

Javier cleared his throat, elbowing the man beside him. Steve spoke up after a moment. “Yes ma’am. My name’s Agent Murphy, this man right here is Agent-”

“Oh!” you interrupted with a soft slap of your palm against your forehead, chiding yourself and opening the door farther. “Murphy? And Peña, right?”

They both nodded, albeit slowly, but you seemed impervious to their surprise, asking them if they wanted to come inside. The men declined and remained on the stoop, Steve realizing he still held a small rubber ball in his hands while Javier tried to keep his eyes above the scooped neck of your top.

“Was there something you needed?” you continued, bending down to kick out a rise in your runner carpet. “Horacio’s talked about you sometimes, y’know. It’s nice to actually put a face to the name.”

“Horacio?” Steve mumbled to Javier, his lips curling back in an amused, Southern cadence. A man - Colonel to them, or maybe just Carrillo, but Horacio to you - loomed near the edges of the hallway and turned closer when you spoke, his face and his voice familiar as it called out your name. “Speak of the devil,” the blonde agent whispered.

When you leant back into the man’s chest, both men quickly cleared their throats. Javier’s hands rested at his hips in a cocked stance, watching curiously as the colonel turned to whisper in your ear. The words were too quiet for anyone else to hear but you cast your eyes down, smiling to yourself before he pulled away.

You looked back up, the open brightness of your face only magnified when it was placed beside your husband’s stern posture. “I think they need you,” you reminded him. Javier confirmed this with some big lead about a “La Quica” and you bit back a snort at the nickname, pressing your lips together to hide your laugh. It must’ve been kismet, Javier thought, that brought someone like you to someone like him. Someone, he suddenly remembered, who worked in a hospital, witness and mender to the very things Carrillo caused. The man’s eyes were marginally softer here, though, and his hand lingered light on your waist. So maybe it worked.

“You’ll call later?” you asked, catching a soft grip on the colonel’s wrist when he moved to cross through the door. Steve glanced upwards when lips pressed quickly against your forehead, a quiet “of course” spoken into your hair before he walked away down the front steps.

“Surprised someone like that puts up with you,” Javier ribbed, bemused when Carrillo rolled his eyes.

Steve chuckled as they walked in steady tandem towards the parked cars. “Jealous?”

Javier hummed a casual maybe, catching the faint edge of a smile on your husband’s face when you looked out the front window, your silhouette a shadow through gauzy yellow curtains.

⫸ ——— ⫷

You leaned down to whisper in Isabella’s ear, encouraging her to take the few steps forward through the threshold of the office as she held a tall, disposable coffee cup. The rest that you’d brought were quickly put down before being taken by grateful men, their thanks muffled by the sound of lips on crinkling styrofoam. A man, the man you’d come to see, looked up to see you standing beside his desk, your frame edged by the evening light fracturing through the windows.

“You didn’t walk here, did you?” Horacio asked, his voice and his brow drawn over with concern. You lay a hand on his arm, a quiet placation as you rested your hip on a rounded wooden edge.

“I didn’t,” you glanced at the cluster of men on the other side of the room. You heard Isabella laugh, her small legs swinging back and forth as she was placed in a newly-emptied seat. “Hugo drove me.”

Horacio’s thumb traced over the slope of your wrist. “Hugo?”

“Pimienta,” you finished with another look towards the mass of dark green shoulders. “The new recruit.” Horacio nodded with a quiet I see and you give another smile, too observed to do much more. “He’s very sweet,” you assured your husband, offering a small wave when the man (or boy, more like) looked back towards the both of you. Hugo’s returning grin was awkward, endearingly so, and you bit back a laugh when you caught the embarrassed ducking of his head, his dark skin hiding any rising blush.

He was young, barely out of training and still learning to hide his fear. They all were. Stoic, maybe, when they opened your doors and carried your groceries, but young. So, so young.

You picked up a stray pen, twirling it in your hands as you surveyed his desk. It was annoying neat, and you huffed as you tried to find something more interesting than typed field reports and stacks of manila folders. “No pictures?” you teased. He only pointed to the top corner and your eyes followed, falling on a small frame holding a color photograph. It was mostly of you, but you could see Isabella’s face peeking out of its bottom edge, intruding on the shot with a goofy smile. Her hair was short, curling in dark loops around her ears, so it must’ve been from a few years ago. ‘89, maybe. Yeah, ‘89, when he took that week off in Panama City and spent the whole time trying to teach Isabella how to swim. “That one?” you asked, curious. “I thought you’d want something more… I don’t know… official? Looking?”

He raised an eyebrow, adjusting the frame to its proper place. “Would you like to pose for another one?”

You sucked in a breath through your teeth, remembering the day you had to pin what seemed like fifty military badges to his uniform. “No,” you said, examining the photo and shaking your head. “No, that one’s good.”

Horacio pulled you into the slight alcove of the office, the one filled with high-backed chairs and radio equipment that lay partially hidden from view. “They’re looking,” you mumbled, suddenly more conscious of the officers standing a few feet away. “They think we’re up to something.”

“Are we?” he asked, smiling. A laugh bubbled up in your throat and you shook your head.

“I...” you began, your voice trailing off. He looked tired, and you were reminded of before, when infants used to cry in hallways and walls were thin. “I probably shouldn’t have come but you said you wouldn’t be home and I just- I just wanted…”

He slid his hands up your arms until they rested at your shoulders, hushing you quietly before speaking. The soft skin of your lips fell from between your teeth and you swallowed, the words resting unfinished beneath your sternum.

I just wanted to see you.

While I knew you were here.

While I knew I still could.

His fingers rested heavy on the juncture of your neck, their tapering familiarity smoothing back the ache of knotting muscle. His watch was heavy, a tactical thing with a million little numbers, and its ribbed black straps dragged against the necklace holding your wedding ring. You heard Horacio’s men making conversation - questions in Spanish about Isabella’s school and her favorite colors, compliments on how nice her new shoes looked and that tu madre fue muy dulce al traernos este café - but they floated out of your head, momentary and paling in importance to the way his hands seemed to smooth out every wrinkle of your thoughts, until they lay flat and rubbed back softer with sandpaper fingerprints.

“You never told me why you needed to stay late,” you whispered. He frowned slightly when you noticed the copper blooms dotting the edges of his sleeves, rolled up to rest at his elbows. “Did something happen?”

Horacio’s expression turned softer. Maybe to tamp down your worry. Maybe to try and make you forget it completely. He was like that with you. More gentle. Earnest. One hand raised to cup your jaw. “Nothing bad,” he said, shaking his head at your widened eyes, their color glassy from the fluorescence of office lamps.

“Promise?” you asked, wavering an echo of a morning’s conversation.

He straightened out, an oak to wrapping, shaded ivy. “Promise.”

#LET'S GET ITTTTT (after like almost two months oof)#horacio carrillo #horacio carrillo x reader #horacio carrillo x you #horacio carrillo/reader #horacio carrillo fanfiction #narcos fanfiction

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smallplaceinthecosmos · 4 years ago

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I think I once called Ranboo a “walking poster child for Catholic guilt” but dude that was a joke Jesus shit is he like. Okay

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atheistforhumanity · 6 years ago

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I was in a church for business recently and I saw this poster taped to a children’s table. Immediately I took out my phone so I could talk about this later, because I was revolted.

This was a Catholic church, of course. They are known for teaching the concept of original sin and threatening children with eternal hellfire. This poster does not reference original sin directly, but let me explain what my problem is with this.

This is meant for children who are under ten years old, who cannot sit in adult size chairs at a normal table. The act of making children beg for forgiveness for being sinners before they’ve even learned their multiplication tables has a detrimental effect on the self-perception and self-esteem. This convinces them they’re doing wrong before they’ve grown enough to ponder what right and wrong is. This creates a mental state or moral paranoia and neuroticism that leads to a vicious cycle of self-hate, doubt, and guilt. The real problem is that people don’t deal with these emotions in a healthy way when they connect them to disappointing a God figure.

Furthermore, this is a perfect example of how church indoctrinates children with the existence of God before children have a chance to gain a grasp on reality. Before a child gains the critical thinking to realize Santa Clause is not real these people are telling them they are failing this imaginary being and they should feel guilty and sorry for being horrible human beings. I can’t think of a worse psychological mindfuck.

No, this is not simply a poster about being a better person, because it doesn’t give you a chance to be a good person. There is a huge difference between recognizing that we all lack perfection and accusatory language in this poster for small children. And in secular society, outside of religions, doing wrong does not mean spending an eternity in a pit of hellfire and torture. Because if we look at the larger picture and follow the doctrine to it’s logical conclusion, that’s what this poster is about. It’s about begging this imaginary figure in the sky not to send you to hell, because he loves you fucking much. How’s that for a mindfuck as a child?

There’s a magic man in the sky that loves everyone so much he sacrificed his son in a blood magic ritual and now you get the pleasure of begging him not to send you to a place where demons will rip your flesh from your bones. Why do you have to be afraid of hell if Jesus washed away all sin? Who the fuck knows, because none of this makes any sense!

#atheism #rant #can't stand this bullshit #religion #catholic #church #god

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weekendwritingmarathon · 6 years ago

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This weekly roundup includes fics written (at least in part) during the 1k1h sprints and/or the Weekend Writing Marathon events.

Fics are ordered first by fandom, then by word count from smallest to largest.

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every sunday's getting more bleak by gunsnships

Good Omens || Aziraphale/Crowley || Teen & up || No major warnings apply || 4,173 words || Complete

Summary: Crowley indulges Hastur's request to focus on one human— he finds a quite interesting priest to tempt, so he takes matters into his own hands.

Other tags: Alternate Universe, Human Aziraphale (Good Omens), Demon Crowley (Good Omens), Priests, Internalized Homophobia, Catholic Guilt, Temptation, Gardens & Gardening, Dining at the Ritz (Good Omens), Alcohol, First Kiss, Tenderness, POV Alternating, Hopeful Ending

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The Corruption of a National Icon by @pherryt

marvel || Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson, Clint Barton/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov, steve rogers/natasha romanov/clint barton/bucky barnes/sam wilson/tony stark || Teen & up || No major warnings apply || 1,790 words || Complete

Summary: Tony finally sleeps with Steve only to find he's not the innocent poster child Tony always thought him to be - now he wants to find out who was responsible for that!

Other tags: Slutty steve, Crack Fic, lots of banter, A little bit of angst, little bit of jealousy, then one big coming together

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Foul Diplomacy by @ramblingandpie

Mass Effect: Andromeda || None || General || No major warnings apply || 1,348 words || Complete

Summary: The crew of the Tempest is tasked with transporting some very important cargo. Chicken cargo.

Other tags: Fluff, Literal Fluff, A bunch of baby chickens

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Just Friends by @pherryt

Star Trek || McKirk || Mature || No major warnings apply || 1,457 words || Complete

Summary: Jim and Leonard are just friends, so why is everyone around them insisting they're something more?

Other tags: non explicit smut, but definitely smut, Denial, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn(sort of - if you take the elapsed time over fic length), Bottom!Jim, Top!Leonard, , Everybody knows

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Thin Walls and Shower Stalls by @pherryt

Supernatural || destiel || Explicit || No major warnings apply || 3,644 words || Complete

Summary: Dean's been pining over his best friend and roommate, even since before he gave Cas a place to stay, and it's driving him nuts. He's pent up and needs release, and he can't exactly take care of himself with Cas in the apartment. Dean knows how thin the walls are, but apparently Cas doesn't know that. Luckily for both of them.

Other tags: shower smut, smut and feels, bottom!cas, top!dean

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distractions by @froggydarren

Teen Wolf || Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski || General || No major warnings apply || 2,748 words || Complete

Summary: There are hunters in town. Young, ill-advised, easy targets for the pack. Still, Stiles knows that walking right into the motel they’re staying at is a recipe for disaster. Since it’s precisely what Derek seems to want to do, Stiles needs a distraction.

Other tags: Future Fic, Canon Compliant, Getting Together, First Date, Flirting

***

Have you posted a fic recently? Any active WWM participant can Submit your fic here by midnight EST Wednesday and it will be included on next Friday’s WWM Fic Roundup post.

#wwm fic roundup #good omens #marvel #mass effect #mass effect: andromeda #star trek #supernatural #teen wolf #fanfic

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hedonistink · 6 years ago

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Title: Dead Boy Walking Fandom: Voltron Pairing: Sheith Rating: Explicit Additional Tags: Sheith Big Bang, HS AU, Blasphemy, Consensual Undereage Sex, Religious Guilt, Unsafe Sex, Coming Out

Fic Summary: Objectively, Keith Kogane should have had exactly zero shot at someone like Takashi Shirogane. The guy was a complete overachiever, a twelfth grade honour student, star of the football team, and overall Good Catholic Boy right down to the purity ring adorning his finger. But Keith couldn't get him out of his head. Ever since the guy had stuck up for Keith when he was being hassled for being gay by some kids on the basketball team, Keith had just found Shiro fascinating. And… Shiro seemed to like him, seemed to like talking to him, didn't seem anything like the other guys and girls in that little pretentious chastity circle. So fuck it, right? You never know until you try, right? Well, Keith was damn sure going to try.

Oh boy this fic has been an adventure. So, once upon a time, a great many months ago, I was listening to Dead Girl Walking from the Heathers soundtrack and this idea popped into my head. One very short idea jamming session later, I shoved it into my google doc of ideas and forgot about it. Then the @sheithbigbang rolled around. And I decided to dig this concept out, dust it off, and turn it into this.

Special thanks to Bel for beta'ing this. Special thanks to my artists for blessing my eyeballs with their quality content and for their patience in working with my space case timeline.

Art by the lovely Uni on his blog here: https://oneveryhornyunicorn.tumblr.com/post/177875754443/dead-boy-walking-by-hedonistink-objectively

There was no way Keith had a chance. Not with Takashi Shirogane. The dude was the poster child of best behaviour. He was the literal top of his class overachiever honor student purity ring-wearing Catholic boy. He went to youth group after church every Sunday for years and now he taught the thing. From what Keith had heard, the guy barely ever even kissed his cheerleader girlfriends. He probably couldn't even masturbate without Catholic Guilt.

Objectively speaking, Keith should have had exactly zero shot at Takashi Shirogane. So why was he marching across the guy's lawn and debating climbing his trellis at well past eleven at night?

Well, because sometimes you just have to go for it.

That, and the fact that there was a very good chance on Monday he was going to be expelled. There was a 'disciplinary meeting' scheduled for him and with how many times he'd gotten in trouble already, it would be a fucking miracle if they gave him another shot. But so what? So he would be sent to some kind of correctional school to try to turn him into a 'functional and successful' member of society.

So maybe, just maybe, he wanted to prove just how fucked up 'functional and successful' society was. And if he could screw his crush in the process, well that would just prove he didn't need to prove himself to them because they were just as fucked up as he was.

He had a countdown clock on his head but that didn't mean he was going down without a fight.

Thirty hours to live, how shall I spend them?

The lyric blasting through Keith's earbuds fueled his motivation and his dedication to his cause.

It wasn't like he didn't know where Shiro lived. More than a few parties had happened at the Shirogane house. Sure, he'd never been the one to technically *throw* the parties as far as Keith had heard but his parents were frequently out of town and his girlfriends 'decided' that Shiro was going to host.

Keith wondered if they only did it hoping to get him drunk and take his v-card. Idiots. They didn't know a damn thing about Shiro if that's what they thought.

Keith's plan was far more simple than that. Takashi Shirogane was a good guy, a kind man, and Keith had suffered from holding a torch for the guy for well over a year since he was a fourteen year old freshman and Shiro had stepped in on his behalf to tell some jerks to back off of harassing him.

Now he was two years older, fresh on the other side of his sixteenth birthday, and determined to seduce the most unattainable guy in school, and a senior, at that, not to mention… straight. But hey, an ass was an ass, right? It wasn't like he needed to date the guy—nice as that would be, Keith wasn't totally delusional to think that Shiro would be into him like that. He was straight. And that was fine. But at least Keith could be his first.

If tonight went the way he hoped it would.

Continue reading on AO3!

Second plug to check out the awesome art here: https://oneveryhornyunicorn.tumblr.com/post/177875754443/

Support me with a Ko-fi?

#sheithbigbang #sheith #voltron #high school AU #religious themes #religious guilt #rating: NC17

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romancatholicreflections · 6 years ago

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16th February >> Daily Reflection/Commentary on Today’s First Reading for Roman Catholics on Saturday, Fifth Week in Ordinary Time (Genesis 3:9-24). The man and the woman now experience the results of their disobedience to God.

It begins with a lovely but sad dialogue between God and the man and the woman. God is looking for them in the Garden. “Where are you?” God, of course, knows where they are but he needs to elicit the confession of their sin. The man says they are hiding because they are naked. Nakedness now fills them with a sense of shame and guilt. They can no longer face their God. Their original innocence is gone; from now on nakedness is linked to immorality and base desires.

“Who told you that you were naked?” God asks the Man, “Have you been eating of the tree you were not supposed to eat from?” God now interrogates the Man, who blames the Woman, who blames the serpent. God’s judgements, however, are pronounced in the reverse order. What follows provides explanations for the origin of some present-day realities – agriculture, prepared or cooked food, childbearing, family of husband and wife.

We now see a pathetic shifting of responsibility to someone else. First, the Man blames the woman, the “woman you put with me” – even God is being held partly to blame! “Yes, I ate the fruit but she made me do it.” She, in her turn, blames the serpent for putting temptation in her way. “He tricked me.” The Hebrew for this verb, hiss’iani, suggests the hissing of the snake.

All now pay the price of their wrongdoing.

First the serpent. He is condemned to crawl the earth for ever eating the earth with a hint that in the original creation the snake was once upright. He will be cursed for ever among all the animals.

From now on, a strange enmity will exist between the woman and the serpent, between her offspring and the serpent’s. “He will strike your head and you will strike his heel.”

Later theology would see here not just enmity between snakes and humans but the serpent is identified with Satan, whose eventual defeat seems implied in the contrast between ‘head’ and ‘heel’. Later generations saw in the passage the first promise of a Redeemer for sinful humanity. In that case, the Woman’s offspring is Jesus Christ.

The New Jerusalem Bible has the following comment:

The Hebrew text, by proclaiming that the offspring of the snake is henceforth at enmity with the woman’s descendants, opposes the human race to the devil and his ‘seed’, his posterity, and hints at ultimate victory. It is the first glimmer of salvation, the proto-evangelium or ‘pre-Gospel’.

The Greek version has a masculine pronoun (‘he’, not ‘it’ will bruise. . .), thus ascribing the victory not to the woman’s descendants in general but to one Son in particular, and thus providing the basis for the messianic interpretation given by many of the Fathers. The Latin version has a feminine pronoun (‘she’ will bruise. . .) and since in the messianic interpretation of our text, the Messiah and his Mother appear together, the pronoun has been taken to refer to Mary. (edited)

The woman: She will experience great pain when giving birth. She will have a strong desire for her husband but will be dominated by him. Women’s historical subordination to the male is presented as a consequence of human events, not an ideal in its own right. Responsibilities of procreation will compromise the freedom of both genders. He will dominate her but he will need her to continue his family line.

The man: In the garden the Man had just to pick the fruit from the trees. Now the tilling of the unfriendly and infertile soil will become a laborious and painful task, resulting often in brambles and thistles. From now on his life will be one of hard physical labour until the day he goes back to the soil from which he was originally made. Agriculture was a major step in human evolution but one beset with difficulty and hard work. Unlike the abundant fruit just waiting to be picked, bread, for instance, requires many steps and much human cooperation in its preparation. And, at the end, he will return to the earth from which he came – the first clear indication of human mortality.

In a final touch, we are told that God made skins for the Man and his wife to wear to cover the shame of their nakedness. Some see in this a new alienation between humans and animals, which did not exist in the Garden. Animals now were being killed by humans for food, clothing and other purposes – and humans were often being killed and eaten by animals. Later, the prophet would dream of a day when the lion and the lamb could lie down peacefully together – Paradise Regained.

At the same time the Man and the Woman were now able, like God, “to know good and evil”. They now knew all the possible extremes, they knew about sex, mortality and moral distinctions of good and bad, right and wrong. There was a danger that they could reach out to the Tree of Life and win immortality. They must be removed from the Garden and sent back to the earth from which they had originally come. They will have to settle for the modified immortality of succeeding family generations – a human family tree.

To the east of the Garden in Eden, cherubim with a flaming sword were placed to keep the Man and the Woman out and away from the Tree of Life.

Lastly, the Man now gave his wife the name of Eve, which means “bearer of life”. She would be the mother of every person to be born in succeeding ages. This second naming of Woman reflects the couple’s new role as procreators. Much later, spiritual writers liked to take the Latin form of her name ‘Eva’ and turn it round to read ‘Ave’, the word of greeting used by the angel at the Annunciation to Mary, our new Mother.

Obviously, all of this is less a historical account than an explanation why things are the way they are. It is part of the answer to the question we raised earlier: If everything God created was so good, why is there so much pain and suffering in the world? Human pain and sorrows are not intended by God. Evil is the result of our misbehaviour.

Again, the New Jerusalem Bible comments:

The punishment is appropriate to the specific functions of each: the woman suffers as mother and wife, the man as bread-winner. The text does not imply that, without sin, woman would have given birth painlessly or that man would not have had to work with sweat on his brow, any more than that, before sin, snakes had feet [i.e. did not have to crawl on their bellies].

Sin upsets the order willed by God: woman, instead of being man’s associate and equal, becomes his seductress, while he for his part reduces her to the role of child-bearer; man, instead of being God’s gardener in Eden, has to struggle against a now hostile environment. But the greatest punishment is the loss of intimacy with God. These penalties are hereditary. The doctrine of hereditary guilt is not clearly stated until Paul draws his comparison between the solidarity of all in the Saviour Christ and the solidarity of all in sinful Adam, Rom 5.

This is the “original sin”.

We should avoid a fundamentalist, literal understanding of all this, as if we were dealing with ‘real’ history. What is being said is that the human race, as far back as we can go, has been infected with sinful acts against truth, love and justice and, in consequence of its own choices, has suffered hardships of all kinds.

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rapidreader · 7 years ago

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Matthew Murdock is the poster child for Catholic guilt.

#the defenders #daredevil #matt murdock #charlie cox

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osoorts · 6 years ago

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War Baby (2019) dir. Dennis Empalmado

Meet Duewand Collier ⁠— Male, 68 years old, American Citizen, a child conceived in the backdrop of the Philippines-American Mutual Defense Treaty, born and raised with Catholic guilt. He has made peace with his past and now tells his story—a story of love. (Synopsis by Jerico Torres)

Poster by Owen Suerte

#Pinoy Film #WAR BABY #Pleasant Dreams Production #Dennis Empalmado #Owen Suerte #John Guiller Abarcar #Jerico Torres #Roy Empalmado #poster

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fultontheauthor · 6 years ago

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A Good Day

Sunrise

When did a sunrise become the ultimate symbol for life’s fresh out of the package moments? Daylin Hutchinson saw God’s little, bouncy ball pop up every morning with nothing new attached to it. It was just the same urine-colored rays of light that disrupted the sleep of the free roaming pack of bums near her bus stop. Daylin often wondered why people got all hung up on celestial bodies. Centuries of ink jockeys were just too afraid to look down at all of this shit, she thought to herself as she watched an old man simultaneously scratch his groin and spit.

“Behold! A new day,” she laughed, lifting her hands dramatically towards the sky. The old man turned in her direction, blinked a few times, and quickly shook his head in disbelief. He shuffled towards her, but Daylin had no desire to be in flea-jumping distance. She quickly stood and waved her arms and started babbling in Latin. The geezer did an about face and dove head first into a nearby cluster of sea grape bushes screaming,

“I’ll get off the shit, Lord. I swear! Call back your Holy Ghost!” Daylin sat there laughing hysterically. When she first started taking the bus from Ft. Lauderdale to her new job at Books on the Beach in the boggy bosom of downtown Miami, she didn’t realize that the bushes surrounding the plastic canopy were junkie condos. They would scurry up behind her and tug on her hair while asking her if she was for real. Daylin delighted in these watered down philosophical musings, but she could not stand anyone touching her without her authorization. Once, she had to deliver a little, hardcore cogito ergo sum[1] in the form of some pepper spray. She had never seen a dope head move so fast and in such a perfectly linear fashion, no less. However, years of Catholic-school-strength guilt made her find him the next day, apologize, and give him twenty bucks worth of good faith. After that, she decided it would be more economical to use her natural charms instead. Lucky for her, the difference between a ghost and a surly albino becomes blurred after you’ve been behind the eight-ball for a few years. She heard the hiss of the number 12 before she saw it snake across three lanes of traffic to reach her stop.

“Good morning, child,” the bus driver, a high-spirited Haitian woman, shouted. Daylin gave her usual silent gaze and small nod combo. It was way too early for cheery sentimentality. Daylin often thought the words “good” and “morning” should start to see other people. Her boss, Ben, was an AM junky and insisted that the bookstore be open at precisely 0700 hours. Ben claimed that his days as a drill sergeant had forced him to look at every morning as being chock full of possibilities. Daylin chuckled to herself, because not once had they ever sold a book before ten. She suspected that another reason Ben opened so early was to catch a glimpse of Miss Maggie, the owner of the salon next store, who just so happened to have a serious hard-on for mornings as well.

“I wonder if Ben has been shot down yet,” she whispered, pulling a newspaper out of her purple satchel. She loved finding connections between the obituaries and the birth announcements. One time she found a family that cut a cord and pulled a plug all in a matter of two days. She had the articles framed and mounted over her bed and next to her Kama Sutra poster of The Milk and Water Embrace. Before she could even get past the wedding announcements, she felt a dozen eyes trying to undress her medically. She lowered the paper and watched as everyone pretended not to be looking at her. This little game of peek-a-boo went on for about 15 minutes, before someone finally whispered the A-word, and put the clinical debate to rest. Except, for two pre-teens who were convinced that she was one of Dracula’s hoes. Normally, Daylin enjoyed a good Stoker reference, but this time it was accompanied by little, gaping mouths and a father too busy scrolling through his phone to correct and check their insensitivity. She had gotten used to the staring by the time she reached adolescence, but when people found it necessary to unhinge their jaws at the sight of her, she took it personally. When the bus pulled up to her stop she made her way up the aisle at a zombie’s pace, rolled her eyes back at just the right moment, and added in a little werewolf drool. They both quickly scooted back in their seats and knocked their noodles against the glass. Daylin thought this was a perfect contraceptive commercial moment. She caught herself smiling in the overhead mirror, as she waited to exit. Her teeth matched her flesh tone, and her eyes were that special type of lavender that only the Cheshire Cat could pull off. It attracted the attention of the bus driver, who slapped her on the shoulder and laughed,

“Nice trick, Pretty Girl.” Daylin winked and vanished in the morning sun.

Morning

Daylin only got about three feet before she felt like smearing barbecue sauce across her breasts and thighs. She quickly dug into her bag for her sun hat and Cyclops shades. When she was born every pediatrician told her parents that they should consider moving to a state where the word “sun” wasn’t used for advertising purposes. Her parents refused, they loved Florida, and they wanted Daylin to be able to stand up to anything, including Mother Nature’s bright and steamy PMS. She remembered her mother basting her in sunblock, placing a sombrero-sized sunflower hat on her head, and sending her off to her first encounter with the school system. Needless to say, Daylin developed an elephant-sized backbone by the time she was six. The only time it wavered was at her father’s funeral. She couldn’t approach the casket without feeling mousy. Her mother wasn’t feeling anything, except for her new fiancé’s bulbous thigh.

When she reached the parking lot of the Starlight Plaza, she was in no mood for pleasantries. She spotted Ben helping Miss Maggie carry some supplies from her car and complimenting her on the condition of her 67 Eldorado. Ben struggled under the weight of the stuffed plastic bags, but he was determined to see this He-Man tactic through. Daylin could tell his arthritis was waging war with years of military-grade pride. Her father had the same cast iron ego. His years on the police force had made it so he had lost his ability to flinch before taking a hit and conceive of a world where damsels could drive past ten o’clock at night. She feared that Ben could only communicate through heroics, and Daylin knew from experience that this was a dead language.

She snuck along the edge of the lot, but she ran into something louder than a chicken with a firecracker up its ass.

“Watch where you going!” Selena Castillo snarled, chasing after her purse. Daylin started to make a grab for it, but Selena snatched it up and hissed,

“This is Prada, Casper… Chica estúpida!” Her heels angrily dug into the cement as she took off towards the salon. Daylin was about to let the fur fly when she spotted Ben making a final attempt to impress his Jamaican Juliet. He was balancing all the bags in one arm and opening the door with the other. His snowy comb-over looked hung-over, and she couldn’t tell if he was blushing or having some kind of allergic reaction. Daylin thought if she were to lodge her foot in Miss Maggie’s best beautician’s ass, his odds would be completely shot. Instead, she decided to take it out on an innocent copy of Candide when she entered the store. Selena had been flying around in her ointment since the day she started working at the bookstore. The two businesses shared a courtyard out back, and it was impossible to take out the trash without bumping into her or one of her acrylic laden sidekicks. Daylin had swallowed a large dose of Cyrano syrup by the time she hit puberty. She could take an insult, whip it right back, and have the whole room laughing in a NASCAR minute. Also, Daylin wasn’t afraid to throw punches or the occasional blunt object. But, again, she didn’t want to be the reason that the only other heart left in this military vet’s life was purple.

“I think… I’m wearing… that little lady down,” Ben huffed, as he came through the door. Daylin smiled and laughed,

“If you keep it up she’ll be the Grand Canyon before she’s your girlfriend.”

“I know, but it’s different for grown folks. You twenty-year-olds date like it’s a raunchy game of musical chairs. Where’s the subtlety? Where’s the woo?” Ben said, unlocking the register.

“Woo?” Daylin replied, with her eyebrows in full arch mode.

“Yes, woo! Whatever happened to paying ladies compliments, sharing umbrellas, and all that jazz?”

“Jazz?”

“Okay, okay! I get the point. I’m way past my skirt-chasing expiration date.” Daylin could feel a dirty cottage cheese joke forming on the tip of her tongue, but she quickly swallowed it when she saw Ben’s eyes drift over his wedding band the way her fathers’ used to when she would bring up her mother’s dating exploits. He sat down on one of the old, reading couches with a defeated sigh.

“You could just ask her.”

“God, I want to! It’s just…we’re both widows and I’m waiting for the right moment…and I want her to feel properly courted,” he stuttered between coughs. Daylin only hoped that this moment was in the near future. An oxygen tank would make for a very squeaky third wheel.

“We got a new shipment of those romance novels in the back. Why don’t you go unpack them, and I’ll take the first watch.” Daylin nodded and went to sort things out among the sexy covers and the silk sheet plot lines. Who am I to be giving out love advice? She thought to herself, as she tore open the boxes in the back room. The only real example of a relationship she had ever witnessed was her parent’s Hindenburg romance. The flames and the fallout were the backdrops of her adolescence. Her mother discovered the independent Cosmo-girl lifestyle after menopause delivered her into the hands of a very free-spirited and handsome life coach. Her father was a Rockwellian montage of fifties sitcoms; he didn’t stand a chance. Daylin fought back the memory of the day when he committed the ultimate samurai taboo. She shook her head and dropped the subject, along with a few books. She always wanted to remember him as the man who reinvented the Sinatra serenade and the purveyor of the lost art of rose covered apologies.

Her own personal experience with love was divided between having some random guy feel her up at a concert and her sixty-page master’s thesis on Jane Austen’s greatest hits. Regardless, she wanted Ben to be happy and for at least one romantic to not end up so God damn hopeless. Daylin found herself assuming the market crash position, along with the rest of the graduating class of 09. College programs wouldn’t touch her without a doctorate, high schools were slashing budgets, and newspapers were sucking on the dot com tailpipe. Ben’s ad in the classifieds saved her from a suffocating waitress uniform and going through serious book withdrawal. This job offered her a safe place to regroup, and she wished she could repay him for taking a shot on someone with no real life experience.

“Don’t worry, darling. We deal in fiction,” he laughed when she brought it up during their first interview. After she finished unpacking the books, she took the boxes out back to the dumpster. She had to pass through the courtyard and a tropical blend of palm frowns and Pall Mall smoke. Selena was perched up on the communal picnic table playfully flicking her ashes into her friend’s half-eaten empanada.

“Mierda![2] Somebody call the Ghost Adventures team,” Selena laughed. She playfully swept back her out-of-the-box blonde tendrils. Daylin continued on and pretended like she didn’t hear her. On the trip back, Selena’s flunky called out,

“You should let us fix you up!”

“We don’t have enough hair dye for that,” Selena snickered.

“You must have used it all on your mustache,” Daylin whispered.

“What was that, snowflake?” Selena shouted. Right before Daylin was about to turn around, Miss Maggie stuck her head out the back door and yelled,

“Luisa, don’t yah be leavin’ that relaxer on Missus Truman. Las’ time you almost burnt her scalp clean off!” The other girl quickly vacated the premises. Selena followed her comrade laughing and acting like her scalp was on fire. Daylin wished she could have provided her with some real motivation, but she had just recently quit smoking.

“Good… Day! Tell your boss I said hello,” Miss Maggie laughed.

Afternoon

Only her father ever called her Day, but Miss Maggie said it with all the same warmth and affection. Daylin wished Ben would step up his game before some geriatric Romeo started wandering around in her garden at night. Miss Maggie was about Ben’s age but was one of those women who defied the hourglass. Time had only managed to scratch up a few crow’s feet and a beautiful nest of silver braids. Daylin always admired the power of Personality Botox. Just as she shut the door to the rainforest of mentholated mist, Ben came scrambling into the back room.

“Listen, I’ve got to go run a few errands. Keep an eye out for our new Twilight display,” he said, putting on his old army cap. Daylin rolled her eyes at the thought of a bunch of pubescent protozoa squirming about looking for their next “hottie” fix. As usual, Ben sensed her disgust with the teen trend.

“I know, but at least they’re reading. Tell you what, I’ll place it next to the Self-Help section, so there’s room for improvement,” he laughed, ducking out the back. Daylin smiled and headed up to the front desk, where Ben had arranged pieces of literature on Doctoral programs.

“He never gives up, does he?” she whispered. Ever since she brought up her degree, Ben had turned the store into an application minefield. He even went as far as leaving a few in the ladies room, which definitely helped loosen up her bowels. The thought of another four rounds in academia made her want to instantly shit her pants. She was exhausted from her first tour of duty and was enjoying her life free of theoretical barbed wire. Daylin knew he meant well, but she was just not ready to commit to anything yet. Suddenly, the door opened and in came the living incarnation of all commitment issues.

“Hi, I’m looking for some books on Van Gogh,” he said, running his hands through his blond buzz cut. Sure you are. Daylin thought as she motioned towards the art section. This guy was a regular and a regular piece of work at that. He would come in every week with a new piece of arm candy and then give the poor swizzle stick the slip a few days later. Today he was flying solo, which meant this was a fishing expedition. His tribal tattoos and his coffee house demeanor caused Daylin to keep stock in tissues. The jilted ones would always return to the scene of the crime hoping to see the little worm. Daylin whipped out her reading glasses and decided to take her frustration out on Ben’s copy of Don Juan. She always enjoyed finding hundred-year-old grammatical quirks and awkward phrasing. She barely made it through the first canto when the reflection from his nasal piecing scurried across the counter.

“I can’t seem to find anything biographical,” he announced as if he had just discovered electricity. She quickly flipped a snarl into a smile and replied,

“I’ll go check the back for you, sir.” Ben was big on customer service, and Daylin had to learn how to fake orgasmic-level sincerity. She checked a few boxes and scaled to the top of the corner bookcase where Ben had a tendency to house the overflow. The Victorian section, in particular, seemed to multiply faster than their customers’ curiosity. She smiled as she glanced over at Dorian Gray and Dr. Jekyll who were within virtual make out distance.

“You boys play nice now,” she snorted. This caused her to inadvertently move a little and the old, off-balanced stool beneath her toppled over

“Oh, crap!” she yelled, grabbing onto a shelf. The bookcase buckled and everything came crashing down in a title wave of Nineteenth-Century Decadence. She opened her eyes to find three copies of Madame Bovary straddling her face.

“Sorry ladies, you’re not my type,” she whispered, trying to lift the case off. It was wedged between the back wall and a crate, and Daylin’s efforts only invited more books to join the claustrophobic orgy. She screamed for help as she heard the front doorbell announce that any would-be Lancelots had officially left the premises. Maybe he’s going for help. She thought as she searched her pockets for her cell phone. Suddenly, she heard her “Ebony and Ivory” ring tone laughing at her from the other room.

“So…not…happening,” she screamed. After an hour, it became painfully obvious that no one was going to save her. The thought of that cunt juggling Casanova strolling merrily on his way made all her tears sizzle up.

“I understand I’m not Disney damsel material, but I’m in distress, damn it!” Another hour rolled by, and she started to wonder if her current situation was perhaps some form of a messed up metaphor for her life. Then she decided that, if it was a metaphor, God needed an editor. Yeah, she was obsessed with books, but this lacked any sort of originality. There isn’t a red pen big enough for this shit! Daylin thought as she felt her anger boil over into the worst type of memory froth. She saw her father in the arms of his gussied up hunting rifle with his frontal lobe open to a wide array of tragic theories and interpretations. What was left of his face held a happy sort of frown with a hint of nostalgia. He decided to face oblivion while facing his favorite photo mantle. This was the only time his dress uniform was anything less than spotless. It was his weekend on the divorce rotation schedule, and Daylin was ready with a fresh list of grievances about her mother’s new boyfriend. She always hated how that paternal poser called her his Little Snowball.

Her father always listened, smiled, and inserted his usual “tally ho” and “sally forth” commentary when he felt it was appropriate. He had this way of laughing at life that felt like there should be a Live TV Audience sign haloing above him. At his funeral, Daylin couldn’t stomach all the questions surrounding the point of impact. When a fatalistic-looking priest entered into the muffled debate, Daylin decided to quash the impending divinity diagnosis.

“Spoiler alert! God didn’t do it,” she shouted. For months, she had teased him about dating out of some childish fear that she would morph into the world’s strangest looking second fiddle.

“Wanted: A woman who digs bald spots and Viagra,” Daylin laughed when her father brought up the possibility of joining one of those fifty and over dating sites, a few weeks before he decided to roll credits.

“Serve ‘em up,” he laughed, polishing his dome. Daylin should’ve remembered that heroes could only admit to weaknesses in the form of well-placed quips, and that’s only if “The End” was lurking a few pages away. The bells on the front door handle brought her back into thinking in the present tense.

“Daylin, could you come give me a hand,” Ben yelled.

“Unfortunately, no!”

“Why no—Oh, Jesus” he yelled, rounding the corner. Ben dropped the new display and quickly set to work trying to free her. He wedged an old piece of wood between the case and the wall and pushed. Then, he set about untangling fact from fiction.

“Are you all right?” he asked. He removed the last of the femme fatales and a rogue piece of the fallen shelf. She didn’t respond and just laid there listening to the wind wiggle its way under the back door. It sounded so soothing, but Selena’s laughter quickly broke up this elemental text message, before Daylin had a chance to pull some meaning from it.

“Post-modernistic, bitch!” She whispered, climbing to her feet. She headed to the door with every intention of dumping a camel load of last straws down that girl’s throat.

Sunset

“We should really go to the hospital,” Ben yelled from the doorway. Daylin appreciated his concern, but it had to be temporarily pushed into her emotional slush pile.

“Mira[3], it’s the Pillsbury puta,” Selena whispered. Her friend playfully spewed her Cherry Fanta, while laughing.

“Yo, did I just hear pops ask you out. Bedpans and catheters are so romantic,” she laughed.

“Does he make you wear a nurse’s uniform?” They all started to playfully thrust their pelvises. At that point, Daylin stopped and turned to see Ben blushing enough for the both of them. Originally, she was just going to tell Selena off, but now the bitch had taken a shot at Ben’s rusty sense of self-esteem. Daylin knew Miss Maggie was probably within hearing distance, and there was no way that Selena was going to pass up an emasculation smoke break. Daylin decided she would disguise a rescue in the form of what she termed Explosive White Girl Syndrome. She stopped about a foot short of her quarry and activated her patented silent time bomb. Daylin’s particular brand of backbone had made it necessary for her to procure a certain amount of legal knowledge from her father. He always told her to never throw the first punch and let the other person provide you with just the right amount of evidence to justify an assault. Now, it was just a matter of getting Selena to wrap her loose lips around the hook.

“What? You gonna do something?” Selena said, getting up. Her friend retreated to the shade and shouted,

“That pendeja[4] is not worth it!”

“What!? She--ain’t—goin’--do nothing’” she screamed, poking Daylin in the shoulder. It had been her experience that most women respond to silence as the ultimate middle finger. Daylin narrowed her gaze to give it a flashing red exclamation point. Selena immediately lunged and grabbed a hold of her throat. Daylin grabbed her wrists and gasped,

“Ain’t… is not a word!” Then, she pushed down and kneed Selena straight in the jaw. She flew backward screaming something that sounded more like ancient Theban than Spanish. She got to her feet and spit out a tooth and some blood-spattered obscenities.

“Dat's enough now!” Miss Maggie shouted, running out into the courtyard.

“Call the cops,” Selena hissed.

“I don’t think so. I saw you lay hands on her,” Miss Maggie laughed.

“Bitch… I run this,” she said. Selena frantically pointed to the salon.

“Cock mouth kill cock! You’re fired,” Miss Maggie shouted. Selena froze and let out a Chihuahua-sized whimper.

“You may be good, but you’re not worth all dis here drama. Besides, you take breaks like you own da place. Time is money and da bank is not stealing my Daylight savings,” Miss Maggie laughed. Selena screamed and headed down the back alley with a matching pair of blue bruises and broken pumps.

“I’m gonna call you, The Editor,” Ben laughed, scrambling over to Daylin with a first aid kit. He started to tend to her acrylic neck wounds when Miss Maggie called him over to the shop. Daylin assured him she’d be fine and ushered him over to his Juliet. She looked up and watched as a few sun-burnt clouds stood toe to toe with the receding sun. She always preferred sunsets because it took more guts to descend into complete darkness.

“She wants to have dinner!” Ben shouted, jutting back across the courtyard.

“You should go get ready,” Daylin smiled.

“You’re invited too, Champ. She wants to apologize for that girl’s behavior. You’re my in, Missy! She even wants to introduce you to one of her doctoral-type nephews,” he said, playfully elbowing her.

“You just don’t quit, do you?”

“Nope,” he said. Daylin playfully saluted him as they laughed their way across the courtyard and into the darkening store.

“Hey, I found this in the debris,” Ben said, handing her a photo of her parents. Daylin took it and looked at her father’s smile. It must have fallen out of her satchel when she fell.

“Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

“A little, but like my father always said… tomorrow is a new day.”

[1] Cogito, ergo sum is a Latin philosophical proposition by René Descartes usually translated into English as, "I think, therefore I am."

[2] The Spanish word for “shit.”

[3] The Spanish word for “look.”

[4] The Spanish word for “asshole.”

#short story #amwriting #writers on tumblr #fiction #New to Tumblr #need followers #leave feedback #leaveacomment #repost #exclusive #original content #my writing #followsback

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milehighcity-rp · 8 years ago

Photo

“My great mistake, the fault for which I can’t forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.”

Name: Anais Lockwood

FC: Oona Chaplin

Age / Birthday: 29 / 1 November 1987

Job: Independent Artist / Art Instructor

Apartment: 104

Personality traits:

+ Intelligent, Introspective, Visionary, Cultured

- Melancholic, Aimless, Enigmatic, Mercurial

tw: suicide mention, toxic relationships, mental health

Charmed isn’t exactly the word that could be used to describe Anais Lockwood’s’ early life, but privileged certainly fits the bill. Being born into a well-to-do family meant that the old adage of “You can be anything you want to when you grow up” was reality rather than a well-meant lie told in order to keep that light of hope in a child’s eyes. Her parents may have made it clear that they expected her to be responsible after she found her start in life, but they were more than willing to pay her way through a private Catholic school and a well-known Jesuit college. What she lacked in scholarships was supplemented with mommy and daddy’s money, though she somehow managed to remain studious and responsible. Her aspirations were worldly – - she wanted to travel, to sculpt, to pain, to cloak herself in hedonism and emerge an enlightened being. The closest she ever got, unfortunately, was a year spent studying abroad between the UK, Italy and France.

School had been unremarkable, for the most part. Her talents were exceptional enough for teachers and professors to push her toward pursuing a degree in fine arts with a minor in business. Beyond owning her own studio and spending her time painting on rooftops or balconies, Anais had very little direction for her future. She was content, it seemed, to move with the natural ebb and flow of the universe. It was in this way that she met Jasper Howl.

In order to acquire extra cash and some extra credit, she acted as a nude model for an illustration class. Jasper was no artist – - actually, he ended up being the professor’s assistant entirely by mistake - – but that didn’t stop him from trying to befriend Anais. Though unwilling to give up any semblance of independence at first, she eventually came around and began to see him regularly. This carried on after she acquired her bachelor’s degree, and provided a certain level of motivation for her decision to drop out of grad school mid-semester. By that time, she and Jasper were living in a nice apartment with their cat; he paid the rent, she chipped in when she could and her family was kind enough to furnish the living space. For the most part, they were happy – - Anais could pursue sculpting and painting while Jasper followed his own passions. Everything was ideal, until it wasn’t.

After two years of living together, Anais began to notice a rift developing between herself and Jasper. Her first assumption was that his job had become more stressful and their lives would continue as normal after he found his footing, but that wasn’t the case. Things grew worse and worse; Jasper spent more time at the office, he expressed little interest in Anais, and he had a million excuses for his negligence. Soon enough, the fighting started; what was a small argument once every couple of weeks became screaming fits nearly every day, with pottery broken and canvases torn in the process. Their life shattered, fragmented and disconnected until neither Anais or Jasper were barely recognizable to one another.

It wasn’t a surprise that he had found someone new, but Anais was the last to find out. The woman – - that other woman Anais so desperately wanted to believe was a figment of her own imagination - – was someone from work, someone young and blonde and rough around the edges; someone more like Jasper, someone who understood him more than Anais ever could. The arguments became more personal, attacks on one another that were made without provocation or concern for the other’s well being. They had become bickering roommates rather than a couple, which became more and more painful as Anais began to find that woman’s clothing or possessions lying around the apartment.

Shades of grey had been cast over the once-vibrant swath of her life. Without realizing it, Anais had begun slipping into a melancholic state. Before she could stop herself, she found her gaze passing over the Golden Gate Bridge with one question at the fraying edges of her mind’s tapestry: What if? What if she ran away? What if she jumped?

It wasn’t a serious thought until she spent a weekend out of town and returned to find Jasper’s girlfriend shamelessly sprawled in the bed he and Anais once shared. Worse than that, the door to their apartment had been left open and her cat – - one of her only sources of comfort and companionship in that domestic prison - – had escaped. Posters were drawn up and rewards offered, but nothing came of it. Finally, Anais took a stack to the bridge and began taping them to the railing one by one.

Though it originally began as an intrusive thought, Anais did end up planting her feet firmly at the bottom rung of the crimson railing. With a mere few feet between herself and the drop that would lead to the dark waters of the San Francisco Bay, Anais released the papers and watched as they were carried off in the wind. Her gaze followed the course of fluttering pages before she found some resignation, eyes closed while she savored the smell of exhaust from passing cars, the oxidation of the Golden Gate Bridge, and the salt of the bay in which she expected to meet her end. It was at this point that a photographer stopped, taken by what they assumed to be a moment of serenity. Unbeknownst to Anais, a photographer took a few snapshots before coming to the realization of what she intended to do. It was a stroke of genius that led him to calling the police before approaching, and one that he would later brag had likely saved Anais’ life.In reality, Anais had been startled by the sound of his voice after he decided to approach. Her footing was compromised, one foot slipped sideways while the other slid through the empty spaces between the spokes. Although she fell backward to safety, Anais experienced a kind of terror that she had never known – - an eye-opening, consuming fear of what would have happened if her trajectory had been altered. In the moments of panic afterward, she was pulled backward by the photographer and was rendered inconsolable until police arrived. The story she stuck to was that she had no intention of jumping, but had wanted a better view of the bay from her position. Though frowned upon, she did manage to escape with a harsh warming and a stern lecture about the dangers of the bridge and it’s macabre reputation. For some time, only she and the photographer who had spotted her knew the truth.

The incident didn’t give Anais the new lease on life that she expected, but it motivated her to pack her belongings and send them to her mother and father’s home while she disappeared for three weeks to seek mental health treatment at Bayside Marin. When she emerged once more, she found that one of the photographs of her near-miss had been entered into various contests and had won quite a bit of money. Perhaps it was guilt that motivated the photographer, but a stipend of the money was given to Anais – - it was, effectively, the main thing that protected him from a terrible lawsuit. His only other saving grace was the fact that Anais wanted to leave San Francisco as quickly as possible. A dark cloud hung over her parents, and seemed to dissipate when she mentioned wanting to take a step toward a different future.

Denver wasn’t her first choice, but the idea of Colarado grew on her after a while. Her parents suggested that she move to Aspen to live in one of their homes, but she was adamant that she wanted an apartment of her own and the ability to start her own business. In reality, she simply didn’t want to risk running into family friends or becoming some sort of hermit in the mountains. Perhaps that was why she chose a studio apartment in a complex that she happened upon online. Queen Apartments had the amenities she wanted, and there was space available quickly. Since most of her things were already packed up, she had no reason to keep herself from moving with a generous gift from her parents – - six months of her rent would be paid as long as she kept in touch and settled into therapy. So that was exactly what she did.

Six months passed faster than she imagined they would. In that time, the photograph of her near-jump gained more notoriety, even a meager spot on Time Magazine’s 100 photos of 2016. Without her name attached to the photograph, she felt comfortable enough with the level of anonymity; there were no interviewers knocking on her door and the correspondence she had with the photographer was brief. Her life may have began when it nearly ended, but Anais’ desire is to put her experience behind her and rediscover herself through art and whatever opportunity may place itself in her path.

#fbio #bio

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