#question is is he going to pump millions into getting them rescued so he will be hailed as a hero

[emmavakarian-theirin]

this whole titanic thing gets funnier/wilder the more i hear about it and the main issue is they've basically lost internet service BUT what i haven't seen people talk about is how the internet service in question is starlink, you know, one of elon musk's great schemes? the rich guy whose cars and rockets explode??

like come on tumblr do your thing tear it apart

[mandoalorian]

Believer [Dark!Din Djarin x F!Reader] *SMUT*

Summary: After two months since your last encounter, The Mandalorian returns to confession. (Part two of Sinner)

Rating: 18+ only

Warnings: 18+ SMUT, religion kink, confession box blowjob, sex in a place of worship, unprotected p in v, female receiving oral, fingering, dark!Din, rough sex, hints of degradation, teasing, orgasm denial, arranged marriage mention.

Word Count: 3000>

Masterlist

REBLOGS APPRECIATED!<3

It had been two months since your encounter with The Mandalorian, and you hadn’t seen him since. Even after your father returned from Naboo, Din remained absent from attending mass. You were beginning to believe you might never see him again, and yet, you clung onto hope. It was all you had. When your father went to bed, you’d stay in the chapel late, hoping he’d come in again. It was exhausting. Surely The Mandalorian still had sins to confess. Your biggest fear was that he was deliberately trying to avoid you. He had this dark aura to him, and so if his only intention that night was to wreck your innocence, you wouldn’t be surprised. The truth is, you’d let him do it a million times over.

You missed him. You missed his gruff nature and his bluntness, and you missed the sound of his voice, with or without the modulator of his helmet. And ah-- his helmet-- the shiny silver beskar. You missed that too, although your encounter with Din had left you yearning to know more. You wonder what he looked like underneath the helmet. You remember the dark trail of hair that started at his navel and led down to the waistband of his underwear. From that alone, you’d made the judgement that he’s probably brunette. You wondered how well groomed he was, whether or not he opted to be clean shaven or don facial hair. But most importantly, you wondered about his eyes. You believed that the eyes were the most telling feature about a person, and that they could hold a thousand secrets. Could they be blue, or green, or perhaps even the most beautiful shade of honey brown?

It was a Sunday night, just shy off two a.m., and you let out a tired yawn. You were beginning to think he’d never show again, and that you were foolish for waiting up so late. You had visions of the Mandalorian waltzing back into the chapel and rescuing from this lifestyle. You had dreams of him whisking you away and showing you the galaxy. So, on this particular night, when Din returned, you weren’t even sure if he was really him.

You weren’t sure how long he had been standing there for, leaning against the confession box, watching you drift in and out of sleep as you curled up on the front pew. His beskar clad arms were folded across his chest and his head was tilted slightly. He was eerily quiet, and when your eyes finally met his (through his visor, at least), his presence was ghost-like.

“Tired?” The Mandalorian asked, his deep, modulated voice breaking the silence. Although it was less of a question and more of an acknowledgement. He was the first to speak, and of course it was a typical cocky remark. You didn’t even realise how much you’d missed that side to him; the rude and degrading side. That was how you knew it was really him. You’d been a good girl your entire life; your mind was simply not equipped to make this stuff up. “Did you miss me?”

You rubbed your eyes and stood up from your seat on the pew, taking a second to process his presence. Did you miss him? You’d been touching yourself to the memory of his cock every single night since your encounter, and he had the audacity to ask if you missed him? Of course, you’d never willingly admit to that. Especially not to him. 

When you didn’t reply, he stalked over to the front pew, his broad shoulders looming over you.

“Went back to visiting brothels,” Din revealed, bringing his gloved hand to your neck and giving it a small squeeze. “But they just don’t do it like you.”

“We aren’t in the confession box, Mando.” you snapped back, and his grip around you tightened as he chuckled. You nervously diverted your gaze from his and he raised his hand so he could grab your chin. He tilted it upwards, forcing you to look at him.

“Well, I’m here to confess.”

As you walked Din back over to the box, you noticed your panties were already slick with arousal. You’d anticipated this moment for months, but of course, you weren’t inclined to give into him that easy. You were excited though, hoping and praying that this would turn into more than just a typical confession session.

“State your name for the records.” you sigh, following procedure as you shuffled down onto your chair. 

“Din Djarin.”

The way he spoke his own name was just as beautiful as you had remembered. 

“And why are you here today?” you asked. 

There was a brief silence before you were met with the Mandalorian’s low, gravelly voice. He’d taken off his helmet. 

“I want you to suck my cock.” 

His request winded you. Blunt and straight to the point. Honestly? You should’ve seen it coming. The thought of him fucking your mouth sent you in a frenzy, and you found yourself fighting the urge to touch yourself right then and there.

“That’s your confession?” you gulped, your fingers fiddling with the royal blue velveteen curtain that separated you both from seeing one another. You sighed and shook your head. “We can’t…” you trailed off, and you hated the way the words tasted on your tongue. This was everything you had waited for and now you were denying him? “It was wrong of us to do in the first place and I— it’s going to take a lot for me to move past it.”

“Do you still think about it?” Din asked, and his question bore a lot of weight as he reminisced on the night you and him spent together.. Inside the confession box was cold, so much so that a  shiver that ran down your spine.

“It doesn’t matter,” you said softly. “I’m… getting married in the Summer.” you revealed, almost shyly. Din felt his freeze over and heart sink into his chest. Married? So fast? When he made no comment, you explained further. You tried to sound enthusiastic and positive, but the words just died as they left your lips. “My father found a minister who preaches on Takodana. He’s a little older than I, and even trained as a monk for several years. I hear Takodana is beautiful. Have you been before?”

Din scoffed incredulously, but you weren’t sure if the noise that came from the back of his throat was answering your question, or if it just signified his response to everything you had just said. He couldn’t believe it. “Just like I told you the last time we met,” he hummed knowingly. “If you marry him, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

This wasn’t the first time he had given you attitude. And it wouldn’t be the last.

“And what do you suggest I do?” you spat back. You weren’t just going to let him stick around if he was only going to make you feel bad for your decisions and what he considered to be poor life choices. 

Din laughed, and if there wasn’t a closed curtain between you both, you would have smacked him right then and there. “I suggest you do what I ask without all the backchat,” he growled. “I suggest you get on your knees, open your pretty mouth, and suck my cock.”

You wanted to argue. You so desperately wanted to argue with him until he was begging for you, but you had waited too long for this too. You were desperate to taste him.

“Stand up, take off your pants, you instructed, biting your lip as you heard his zipper go down.

Once he was ready, Din stood with his hands flat against the wooden wall of the confession box, and you peeled back the curtain. You fell to your knees and wrapped your hands around his thick length, already revelling in how hot and heavy it felt. Din’s eyes snapped shut as you pumped his manhood. He’d missed the feeling of your soft hands. You gathered his precum which was leaking from the pink tip and rubbed it along his shaft.

Teasingly, you pressed a delicate kiss to his weeping slit. The Mandalorian couldn’t help but buck his hips at the tender contact. “More.” he huffed, his once flat hands bunching into a fist when you press in another kiss. But this time, your kiss turns into a small kitten lick as you taste him on your tongue. And Maker, he tastes good.

“Stay still sweetheart.” you grumbled, and your voice sent a vibration straight through his core. Sweetheart? He huffed again.

He was fully and achingly hard now. You opened your mouth and wrapped your lips around his head, sucking longingly. You removed your hands from his shaft and closed your eyes as you pushed down on him, trying to take his full, thick length in your virgin throat. It took about a minute for you to get fully adjusted, but the second you began to bob your head and suck him off, Din swore he was seeing stars. With every thrust of your mouth, you managed to push deeper and deeper until the curve of his nose was pressed against the soft tufts of brown hair just above his cock.

When you felt him twitch in your mouth, you knew he was close. You reached your hand through the dip in the curtain and began to cradle his balls, massaging them as his moans became louder and more guttural. As much as you wanted him to shoot his salty load down your throat, you knew that this might be the only chance you got to dominate your control over him. So, at the very last second before he could cum, you pulled off his cock with a ‘pop’. 

He cursed out loud at the sudden loss of contact, and you wiped the trail of saliva mixed with precum from your lips. You could hear Din fussing from the otherside of the curtain and just as you were about to ask him what was he doing, his hand shot between the material as he passed you a piece of black cloth. Truly, it looked like he’d ripped a piece of his undershirt to craft it. When you took it from him, albeit hesitantly, his voice gave you instruction.

“Put it on,” he ordered. “Blindfold yourself.”

His voice had dropped an octave since you denied him of his orgasm. 

Nevertheless, you obliged, wrapping the material around your eyes so you couldn’t see a thing. “Done.”

Din came out from the confession box and opened the door to your side, carefully guiding you out and walking you over to the candlelit altar.

“Lie down.” he told you gruffly.

It was hard to make a judgement in regards to where exactly in the chapel you were, but for some reason, you felt as though you could trust him. He pushed you back down to your knees and you felt the soft carpet beneath you. 

Your pussy was dripping wet at this point, desperate for some kind of relief. In one swift motion, Din ripped your robe from you and you felt the material tear. He threw the garments to the floor and immediately latched his mouth to your breast. His tongue swirled around the hardening bud of your nipple and with his free hand, he began to caress and squeeze the breast that wasn’t receiving the attention of his lips. He palmed at the soft flesh and revelled in the way your moans escaped from your lips. He trailed his late hand down your stomach and stopped when he hit the hem of your panties. Din pulled off you and swapped over, this time sucking your other breast, even nibbling this time with his teeth. He lowered his hand and began to rub you through the thin white material of your underwear.

You felt him chuckle darkly against your chest as he felt just how wet you were. It was all for him, and he’d barely even touched you yet. He swirled his index finger over your clit and even through the cotton, the sensation was indescribable. You wanted nothing more than for him to rip off your panties the same way he’d ripped off your robes.

Din drew back from you and held you by your shoulders, slowly pushing you down so you were laying on your back with your legs spread open for him. He began to tug at your waistband and you lifted your ass up so he could pull down your panties.

He tossed them by your robes and parted your legs once more. He admired the way your cunt looked under the glowing amber candlelight, the way your juices sparkled like they were asking to be ravished by him.

“So pretty.” Din praised.

Din couldn’t contain himself any longer. He latched his tongue against your clit and began sucking profusely. That’s when you realised one of the questions you’d been dwelling on for the past two months had been answered. He definitely had facial hair. The roughness of his stubble grazing the softness of your cunt felt phenomenal. Every now and again, he’d pull back and separate your folds with his fingers, focusing his erratic tongue on your exposed sweet spot. He’d lap you up like a starved man, moaning at the taste of your arousal on his tongue.

Just when you thought you wouldn’t be able to take it anymore, Din plunged two fingers deep inside of you without warning. You let out a yelp and arched your back as he tongue fucked you even faster. You grew impossibly wetter and he began to stretch you out, prepping you for his thick cock.

He pushed one orgasm out of you first though, and left you shaking and twitching and struggling to regain your breath as you squirmed around on the floor, completely at his demand. Before you could even come down from your thigh, he positioned himself at your entrance and thrust his cock inside of you.

“Oh— oh fuck, I’ve missed this.” he groaned, tossing his head back as pleasure ran through his veins. Tears pricked your eyes, not that Din would’ve known, since you were blindfolded and all. He set a rough and ruthless pace, his hips snapping into yours as he got drunk on the feeling of your perfect walls clamping around him. “‘Missed this.. mi— missed you.”

You chanted his name over and over again like it was the sweetest prayer to ever leave your lips. 

“Oh f—fuck Din,” you gasped, your fingernails digging into the muscles of his back. “Feels so good.”

He couldn’t believe how wet and tight you were. You locked your legs around his ass, signalling for him to keep going. Din looked down at you, revelling in the way you were gasping beneath him. In that moment, he wished he could remove the blindfold from you and look into your beautiful eyes as he fucked you senseless. His gaze dropped down to your pretty, soft lips, and he had to fight the urge to kiss you. 

Din groaned when he increased his speed and their bodies made the most unadulterated wet sounds as skin slapped skin. Your toes curled as you felt another orgasm bubble up inside the pit of your tummy. Din was close too, in fact-- he’d been holding back this entire time. His breathing became laboured and with one final thrust, The Mandalorian let out a strangled cry, his body seizing up as he came. You felt his manhood throb inside of you, the pulsations pushing you over the edge as you clenched around him, tight like a vice. 

Din stayed hovering over you as you both came down from your high, and he waited until his cock softened before pulling out of you and rolling over and laying next to you.

You shuffled into his warm chest and he wrapped his strong arms around you. The silence between you both was comfortable, as it always had been. The dynamic between you both felt so natural, despite both of you heeding very different personalities. 

Once again, Din was the first to speak.

“Leave, right now, with me.” He whispered, cradling your naked body as it warmed by the candlelight. 

“I can’t.” you replied sadly, blinking away the unshed tears that glazed your sparkling eyes. You wished you could. You wished there was a way around all of this, where you didn’t have to stay and marry the Takodanian preacher, but everything had already been planned. And your father, the grand bishop, would never approve.

“I’ve been on the run my whole life,” Din revealed, shifting his weight slightly. His strong arms tightened around you and his fingers traced comforting circles on your tummy. You nuzzled your head into his chest and relished his scent, knowing that this might well be the last time you see The Mandalorian. “I’ve seen the entire galaxy. Takodana is beautiful. I do think you’ll like it…” Din paused. “But I think you’ll like spending time with me even more.”

At one point, you might have laughed at his arrogance, but in the softness of the moment, you realised, he was right. You didn’t want to leave Din and get married to a complete stranger. You just didn’t want to leave Din.

“What can you offer me?” you asked the Mandalorian after a pause. You wouldn’t ask for much. You had grown up in a very minimalistic household after the grand bishop renounced all his material possessions. The question was more so rhetoric.

Din leaned into you, his warm breath fanning over the shell of your ear.

“Freedom.”

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[writingtoforgetreality]

New World Order - TFATWS Rewrite Chapter One (Bucky Barnes x Reader)

[Marvel-Masterlist], [TFATWS Rewrite-Masterlist]

Next Chapter

Summary: You were an Avenger. That was how the world viewed you. Nobody else knew about your past & it was for the better. After all, you had Sam. You had Bucky. That had to be enough. At least for now.

Words: 6,214

Warnings: language, sarcasm, expect some sort of slow burn, there are hints already, this is a Bucky fic, which means that it'll focus on his scenes more, spoilers for TFATWS, (Y/E/C) = your eye color

If you like my work & wanna support me: a coffee would be highly appreciated ❤

You were no superhero. At least, you would never say you were one. Your past was filled with actions you regretted. None of it was your fault. It was not your decision to be the child of the leader of a HYDRA base. It was not your decision to grow up like a warrior. Fighting. Killing.

Your father was the bad guy. You knew that now. As a child, you did not see through his facade. How could you? He was your dad. Someone who was supposed to love you endlessly. Those years had shaped you. Into the person you were today.

Deep down, you wished there was a way to make you forget. Forget about your past. Forget about the pain. Forget about it all. Hell, you were a laboratory experiment. Those powers did not come from nowhere. No. They came from tons of needles, pumping a toxic serum into you veins. You should not even be alive anymore. Not by what now flowed through your body. Apparently, it was for your own good. That was how your dad put it. Absolute bullshit. Growing up isolated from the world, being trained to fight, to kill, daily. Your own good my ass. If it did one thing, then it ruined your damn life.

But at least you had powers, right? Blue flames you could control. Those blue flames that were hotter than anything else in this world. It took an awful lot of time to fully have control. Truthfully, you hated that part of you with every fiber of your being. It had been the cause of one too many deaths. You had been the cause. But weakness was not in your nature. If you did not show strength you would be a disappointment. Something you really did not want to be.

Bucky was the reason you got out of this life. He was the one to rescue you out of this hell hole. He was the one to show you an entirely different part of this world. And for that, you could never thank him enough. If it were not for Bucky, you would have gone insane ages ago. Who knew if you were still here today?

The Avengers were aware of your past. Of you being a part of HYDRA back in the days. Yet, you had never elaborated this any further. If there was one thing you were good at, it was keeping things to yourself. No need to burden others with your struggles. And you did struggle. Every single day. Because your mind was filled with memories. Memories you had tried to burn. Memories you wanted to erase. Memories of you being the bad guy. Just like your dad had been.

Your life changed when you were introduced to the Avengers. They did not trust you. Not right away. But during the fight with Thanos, the one after the Blip, you proved yourself to be worthy of their trust. Especially Steve. He had been there for you. When everyone else failed to believe in you. He was gone now. And it hurt like hell. Giving up was never an option. And the universe did not plan on giving you a break anytime soon. For now, you had to bury your feelings as deep as possible. Your focus should solely be on the new threats of this world. Threats, that seemed to increase daily.

“Bucky is an asshole.” you were on the phone with Sam & the fact that the super soldier had been ignoring him for a while did not leave a good feeling inside his chest.

“What a revelation.” sarcastic comments were part of your life. It was your way of coping with everything. Frankly, it worked. More or less. “Give him some time.”

“More time? No.” sighing loudly. “I have other things to focus on.” he was referring to the mission he was about to perform.

“You sure you’ll be fine on your own?” it was not like you did not believe in his abilities. Just, life had not been the same ever since billions of people came back.

“When have I ever not been?” you could think of a few times but Sam ended the call before you even had the chance to answer. Typical.

Luckily, Sam usually told you about his missions. And you were proud of him. You really were. The situation you found yourself in? With Bucky & him? Well, it was everything but good. Bucky called you. You called Sam. Sam called you. You called Bucky. A circle you kept alive. And it sucked to be their only way of communication. For now, though, both of them were too stubborn to change anything about it.

“Enjoying the Tunisian sun I hope?” whenever Sam went on a mission, you had him call you after it. Simply because he knew you worried.

“You know it.” in the far background you could hear him working on something.

“Is everyone alright? That trainee of yours? What’s his name again?”

“Torres.” he sighed, frustrated by your question. You had asked him about a million times & apparently, you still had no clue. Truth was, you just liked messing with him. “Redwing is hurt.”

“Naaaw, poor baby.” giggling slightly. That man cared more for a piece of tech than he should.

“Shut up.” okay, better not mess with Wilson if it came to Redwing. Got it.

“When are you coming back?” your voice turned serious again. Having him gone for so long did not stick right with you. Obviously, you knew he was doing it for the greater good. But still. “I swear to all the Gods, if you say when we’re done here…” mumbling quietly but loud enough for him to hear.

“When we’re finished here.” a chuckle could be heard from his side. By the way it sounded, you assumed Torres was laughing as well. Rolling your eyes at his antics. He could be such a child sometimes.

“Oh, fuck off, Wilson.”

“Hey, language!” Sam had fun. Yeah, you were the one cracking jokes all of the time but he could deliver, too.

“Okay, you know what? Bye. Text me when you’re back.” now, it was you who did not give him enough time to respond. After all, he would have clapped back with another snarky remark & you were not in the mood for it. At all.

“Steve represented the best in all of us. Courageous, righteous, hopeful. And he mastered posing stoically.” everyone chuckled at Sam’s description. Of him. Steve. Rhodey was standing right next to you. In that suit of his. The one that made him look way more approachable than you. No need for people to approach you. They did not know who you were before. And they sure as hell did not need to. It would turn things complicated. Humans did not like complicated. You did not like it. “The world has been forever changed. A few months ago, billions of people reappeared after five years away, sending the world into turmoil. We need new heroes. Ones suited for the times we’re in. Symbols are nothing without the women & men that give them meaning. And this thing…” he paused briefly, let out a short chuckle. The shield. “I don’t know if there’s ever been a greater symbol. But it’s more about the man who propped it up, & he’s gone. So, today we honor Steve’s legacy. But also, we look to the future. So, thank you, Captain America. But this belongs to you.” the crowd erupted into cheers. Applause was filling the room & you felt out of place. What was he doing? When Sam asked you to join him here today, he left out the fact that he wanted to give away the shield. The shield Steve had trusted him enough to own. And the people surrounding you? They…celebrated him for it? This entire speech was proof enough that Wilson was worthy of this job. So why the hell did he make that decision? Watching the shield being put into the showcase, you could hardly hold in the tears that formed at the corners of your (Y/E/C) eyes. Rhodey nudged you, sensing that something was wrong. Head hanging low, you ignored him, walking out of the room as fast as possible. If you stayed here any longer, Sam would have bruises for sure. Bruises caused by you. You would not risk that. Though, he kind of deserved it.

“Where’s (Y/N)?” Sam asked Rhodey when he finished with the press. You had told him you would wait here for him. There was no sign of you.

“Left a while ago.”

“What do you mean “Left a while ago.”? Did she say where she was heading?” why did you decide to leave? Had anything happened while he held his speech? All Rhodey could do was shrug. An explanation was not given by you. And he knew better than to ask.

“Take a walk?” Rhodey suggested, completely unaware to your weird behavior. The two of you were not that close. So he did not know you like Sam did. You were an adult, after all. If you wanted to go somewhere without asking someone first, then you were allowed to do that.

Disappointment was flooding through your body. Friends told each other stuff like that, right? So why did he keep it a secret that he planned on giving away the shield. With that action, he broke Steve’s trust & you were livid. If only Steve were here right now. You missed him. So much. Next time Sam met you, you could not promise anything. Because anger was all you felt. Anger & disappointment. Grief. But that one you could keep to yourself. At least for the time being. Shit. Bucky. One hundred percent did he watch Sam giving away the shield. Oh, he would be filled with hatred. Compared to that, you were only a small threat. Bucky was the one Wilson should keep an eye on. Well, he had been trying to get a hold of him. So far, without luck.

A gunshot blasting woke Bucky up from another night invaded by nightmares. His changed hair did not put his demons at bay. His look was different but there were some things he could never get rid of. His past. The past he dreaded as much as you did. Probably what you two had in common. Being part of HYDRA & all. His breathing was irregular & there was no way in hell he could go back to sleep. It was in the middle of the night & he hated himself for relying on someone else. But he would go insane if he did not call another person right now. If he did not call you. The only one who seemed to understand what he was going through. The only one who never judged him because of his nightmares. The only one who made him feel like he was a good person. Not the killer he once had been. When HYDRA controlled him. Back, when he was called “The Winter Soldier”. Would he ever move on from that? Grabbing his old phone, he did not overthink too long & dialed your number. One, he knew by heart. Because he had called you so many times. It stuck in his head.

“Buck? Is everything alright?” concern was present in your voice. Usually, when you got a call in the middle of the night, it was him. And you were fine with it. If he trusted you enough to help him with his demons, than you were more than happy to come to his aid. No matter the time.

“I-I…it’s just, ugh, I-“ still shaken up from his nightmare, you did not need him to finish his sentence. You had been in this exact situation so many times. You knew what he needed. Your presence. Your voice. Your comfort. You.

“I’ll be there in a few.” assuring him, you were already grabbing the stuff you needed & walked out of your apartment. Only one destination in mind. Him. “Do you need me to stay on the phone?” it was a simple question. A stupid one, too. Usually, he would not say a word until you were with him. But it felt right to ask him what he wanted you to do. Needed you to do. When he did not answer for a few moments, you guessed he only nodded, not realizing that you could not see his motions. Yet, he did not hang up. Neither did you. Your breathing was enough for him. At least until you were in his apartment.

Knocking softly, as to not wake his neighbors, the door opened almost immediately after. Squeaking ever so slightly. Taking in his appearance, you could tell that it had been a bad nightmare. No, not a nightmare. A memory. You knew that because it was the reason you woke up most nights as well. If it were not for him feeling miserable, you would have drooled by the sight of him. No shirt. Hair sticking around so beautifully. Eyes you could lose yourself in. But it was not the right timing. Besides, Bucky & you were just friends. That was it. Just friends. Though, you would lie if you said that you did not feel butterflies whenever he shot you one of his charming smiles. Whenever his body brushed against yours on accident. Yes, he did have that effect on you. Hell, that was not what he needed right now. Your feelings could be dealt with later on. Bucky was all who mattered now. There was no conversation. No words exchanged. It was enough for him if you were with him. A sign that he was not alone. That he still had you. Even after everything. Even after calling you, night after night, disturbing your own rest. Not that you got much to begin with but he did not need to know that. It had always been a mystery to him. Why you stuck around still. Though you had assured him thousands of times that you were in this for good. If he needed you, you were only one call away. And he appreciated you for it. More than he would ever like to admit. Friends. You were friends.

“So, Mr. Barnes, are you still having nightmares?” another session with Dr. Raynor. Another dreaded session. It was stupid to Bucky. But there was no way out of this. He had to. Seconds of silence went by before she spoke up again. “James, I asked you a question. Are you still having nightmares?” what kind of question was that? A stupid one. That was for sure.

“No.” simple, short. Sufficient. Not for his doctor, though.

“We’ve been doing this long enough that I can tell when you’re lying. Well, you seem a little off today. Did something happen recently?”

“No.” what an answer to move this session forward. Clearly, he was not in the mood to talk today. Not even you were able to get his mind off of things. Though, you definitely made his night easier.

“You’re a civilian now. With your history, the government needs to know that you’re not gonna…” her hand motioned stabbing. Awful action but who were you to judge? Bucky nodded with that look on his face that showed how completely done he was with this situation. Yet, she kept going. “It’s a condition of your pardon. So, tell me about your most recent nightmare.”

“I didn’t have a nightmare.” well, it was worth a try. After taking a deep breath, she grabbed the pencil, ready to start writing into that notebook of hers again. “Oh, come on. Really? You’re gonna do the notebook thing? Why? It’s passive aggressive.” looked like the two of them were going back to the roots.

“You don’t talk. I write.” Bucky sighed at that. He knew he would not get out of this.

“Okay. Okay. I crossed a name off the list of my amends yesterday. Don’t worry. I used all your three rules. Senator Atwood. She was a HYDRA pawn for years. Helped her get into office when I was the Winter Soldier. And after HYDRA disbanded, she continued to abuse the power I gave her.”

“So, rule number one, you can’t do anything illegal.”

“All I did was give some intel to the aide to convict her. And I wasn’t involved in anything else.”

“Rule number two?”

“What was rule number two?” his gaze drifting off, showing he thought about it deeply. How ironic.

“Nobody gets hurt. It’s a big one.”

“Then why isn’t it rule number one?” he did have a point there. No room left for arguing about that. “I didn’t hurt anybody. I promise.”

“And what about rule number three?” Bucky’s mouth opened, yet, nothing came out. “The whole point of making amends is to fulfil rule number three.”

“You know, you’re a cynic, Doc. Of course, I completed rule number three. I am James Bucky Barnes & you’re part of my efforts to make amends.” words followed by that smile of his. That smile everyone could tell was fake. Almost creepy. But efforts, right? It was all about the efforts.

“So, you did it all right, but it didn’t help with the nightmares.”

“Well, like I said, I didn’t have any.” Bucky Barnes, everyone. Still trying to fool his doctor.

“Look, one day, you’re gonna have to open up & understand that some people really do want to help you & that they can be trusted. People like (Y/N).” the mention of your name made his eyes snap up.

“I trust more people than her.” it sounded more like he tried to convince himself more than anyone else.

“Yeah? Give me your phone.” an order. Grabbing it out of his pocket to hand it over. A short look was enough. “You don’t have ten phone numbers on this thing. Oh, & you’ve been ignoring the texts from Sam. Look, you gotta nurture friendships. I am the only person you have called all week. That is so sad…Oh, that’s not right. You called (Y/N) last night. Anything you wanna tell me about that?” closing the flip phone, she threw it over to Bucky which he caught with ease.

“What? Do I need to justify calling a friend?” chuckling & shaking his head slightly, he brushed his hands over his thighs.

“If you call that friend at 3 am, then yes. Because you should sleep at that time. Except if you had a nightmare which you claimed that you didn’t.”

“We just talked. That’s all.” he thought that brushing it off as if it were nothing was enough to get her to shut up. Hell, he had brought you up during his sessions way too many times. After all, he still wanted the situation between you guys to be subtle.

“You’re alone.”

“A minute ago, you said I had (Y/N).” he tried arguing but his attempts failed.

“You’re a hundred years old. You have no history, no family…” right, pouring salt in the wounds. That usually worked.

“Are you lashing out at me, Doc? Because that’s really unprofessional, you know? When did that start? Yelling at your clients?” she seemed to have enough & again went for the little book next to her. “Oh, the notebook. That’s great.” sighing deeply, he braced himself to take her more seriously. “All right, give me a break. I’m trying, okay? This isn’t…This is new for me. I didn’t have a moment to deal with anything, you know? I had a little…calm in Wakanda. And other than that, I just went from one fight to another for 90 years.”

“So, now that you’ve stopped fighting, what do you want?” he had an answer in mind right away. Never ever would he say it out loud. It took him a second to reply. Because what he was about to say came in union with his first thought.

“Peace.”

“That is utter bullshit.” what a nice way to bad talk his answer. Maybe she was expecting something else from him. Maybe she knew the answer just as much as he did. The real answer.

“You’re a terrible shrink.”

“I was an excellent soldier, so I saw a lot of dead bodies, & I know how that can shut you down. And if you are alone…”

“Which I’m not because I have (Y/N).”

“…that is the quietest, most personal hell. And, James, it is very hard to escape. Look, I know that you have been through a lot, but you’ve got your mind back, you are being pardoned. I mean, these are good things. You’re free.”

“To do what?”

Wednesday. Bucky usually went to Izzy. Today, he asked you to join him & Yori. Why he wanted you there with them? No clue. But it was not often he asked you to go somewhere with him so you agreed on meeting them there.

“Take a look.” Yori was a cute, old man. Reading his newspaper like a good citizen. Bucky had yet to give you an explanation as to why you were here right now. But for now, you just sat next to him, quietly observing your surroundings. “Nobody made it past 90 this week.” it was funny, to see Bucky trying his hardest to sound interested. Like he understood.

“So young. Such a shame.” his words made you scoff. Apparently, once you hit the 100 mark, you turn into a sarcastic piece. If you were not one before. If you ever made it to 100? Only the Gods knew what would come after that. Most people called you a sarcastic asshole now. Could that be topped?

“You guys didn’t order the usual, huh? Feeling a little adventurous?” the woman behind the counter directed her words at the three of you.

“Um, actually, I’ve never been here before, so…” you chuckled to avoid the awkwardness that would sure as hell build if you kept quiet now.

“You should ask her out.” Yori leaned over to Bucky & you almost choked on your food at his words. Bucky asking her out? Her? Yeah, she was beautiful & all. But her? Really? Seemed like that Yori dude did not know Bucky as well as he claimed to. You, on the other hand, were aware that nothing good would come out if it. Besides, they would not even make a nice couple. Shit, were you jealous? Oh no. Glancing over at the man next to you, his face showed just how much he despised this idea. At least something.

“Mm-mmm…” shaking his head frantically, he shot you a quick look but before his eyes locked onto yours, your gaze fell down to your plate. Slightly embarrassed. Scared that, if he looked at you, he would notice something behind your look. Something more. Something, that you wanted to keep hidden. For everyone’s sake.

“He would like to take you out on a date.” oh fuck off, Yori. You had nothing against this man but he was pushing your buttons. Could he not see that Bucky was incredibly uncomfortable with the idea of going on a date? With her? “Maybe to bingo or a night of pinochle.” hiding your laugh behind one of your hands, you could not believe that he was serious. Bucky & bingo? Well, it was for old people so you guessed it fit quite well. Not with her, though. Oh no, you really were jealous.

“I’m really sorry about him.” Bucky apologized for his friend’s behavior. Yes, you were sorry for him, too.

“Why are you sorry?” of course, now the woman was flirting with him. It got better & better. Taking a deep breath, you tried to keep your emotions at bay. You could not lash out in the middle of this restaurant, after all. Even though you were this close to doing just that. Deep breaths, you got this. “I’m game.” sure she was.

“Wow.” really? Bucky was impressed? By this? Oh come on, why would he settle for less when he could have so, so much more. But it was not your decision. He was not yours. You did not own him. Neither did you make the decisions for him.

“Tomorrow night, then?” Yori leaned over the counter.

“Tomorrow night’s great.” she replied with a bright smile.

“Hey, I just remembered something.” you spoke up all of a sudden. Bucky’s eyes met yours now & he saw that you were uncomfortable. Though, he could not pinpoint why. “Um, I-I need to go. See you, Buck. Bye guys.” sprinting out of the restaurant, you hoped nobody would follow you. Not in the mood to deal with anyone right now. All you wanted was to be alone right now. Your mind the only one keeping you company. But your mind was not really the kindest to you. Not in this particular moment. So what? Bucky had a date. You knew that would happen sooner or later. He was a good looking man. More importantly, you just wanted him to be happy. Genuinely happy.

Fucking great. Who could you talk to? You still were not done being mad at Sam. And now you were mad at Bucky for something he did not even do. He sort of did. He could have said no. If he really did not want to, he could have said no. Bucky was enough of a man to speak his mind, you knew that. Maybe he did want to go on a date with her. What was her name again? Not that you cared too much. But still. Blinking away the tears that had formed at the corners of your eyes, you kept on walking. Without a real destination. You were stupid. Friends. Why could you not accept this? Usually, you would call Steve in such a situation. Or even Tony. But it was too late now. They were not here anymore. You had to deal with that sooner or later. Whether you liked it or not. Contemplating calling Sam, you eyed your phone carefully. One more button. But nope. The anger was bigger than the need to talk to someone. Stubborn you. Wilson could make you feel better. But you would most likely end up yelling at him. And you knew you would regret your words later on. So might as well stay silent for the time being. Until you calmed down enough.

It was 10 pm. Date time for Bucky. That same restaurant. Being the gentleman that we was, he even brought her flowers. Like it used to be back in the 40s.

“Well, if that’s not the most adorably old-fashioned thing anyone’s ever done.” Bucky felt lost. In her company. “Grab a seat, I’ll be done in a few.”

“Okay.” he could up & leave. It would not be too late. All he knew was that it felt wrong.

“So, have you dated much since half the fish in the sea came back?”

“Not really. I, um…tried the whole online dating thing. (Y/N), the girl who was here with me yesterday, she set up a profile for me because I didn’t understand a single thing.” laughing at the memory, he thought back to when he called you to ask you for a favor. How you laughed at him for wanting to try this whole bullshit. “It’s pretty crazy. A lot of weird pictures.”

“What kind of weird?”

“I mean, tiger photos? Half the time I don’t even know what I’m looking at. It’s…It’s a lot. When I showed (Y/N), she simply said that this was what I signed up for.”

“You sound like my dad.” definitely something a man did not want to hear while on a date. On the other hand, he did not even want this to be a date. “Wait. How old are you?

“A hundred & six.” only he could make it sound so casually. Like it was the most normal thing on this planet. Both laughed at his words. Simply because it was so absurd.

“What’s up with your big gloves?” a sensitive topic she just touched.

“I, um, have, uh…poor circulation.” sure thing.

“Hmm…Hey, what is it about this (Y/N) girl & you?” his eyes widened at her question. What was she getting at?

“She’s my friend. Why?” his dumbfounded expression made her chuckle.

“A friend, huh?”

“Um, yeah.”

“You sure about that?” an eyebrow raised. A questioning stare was sent his way.

“Why does everyone think I don’t have friends?” throwing his head back in frustration, he let out a long sigh.

“It’s not that.” she stopped briefly, thinking about her next words carefully. “Just, you guys seem pretty close.”

“Well, we’ve known each other for years.” he reasoned, gesturing with his hands to bring his point across.

“Yeah? And the looks you’re shooting each other when the other one’s not looking?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You two aren’t really subtle about this, you know?” she wiped the counter & did not even look at Bucky. He, on the other hand, started sweating.

“Subtle about what?”

“Oh, come on. Who are you kidding? I don’t even know why you’re here right now.”

“Because Yori set you & me up on a date.”

“And why did you agree?” she crossed her arms over her chest, waiting for an explanation from the man in front of her.

“I-I don’t know.” he responded truthfully. Because he thought it to be polite? Because Yori was the one who suggested it? Honestly, he was not sure.

“That’s what I thought. Look, you’re a nice guy & all but…just, listen to your heart from time to time. It’s late. You should head out. See you.” she turned around & walked further into the restaurant. Leaving Bucky alone with his thoughts. It was clear what she intended. Did not mean that it made this entire situation any easier. Bucky left without another word. Fresh air would help him think straight.

Your phone rang & you sighed when you checked who decided to annoy you. Bucky. Of course. But wait. Should he not be on his date right now? Did something go wrong? Not that you wanted it to but if you were entirely honest, you would not be mad about it either.

“Hi Buck. What’s up?”

“I need your help with something.” there was no hesitation in his voice. Just him being straight forward.

“Please don’t tell me you need help on how to get the girl.” it was your way to lighten the mood. You did that because you could tell that he was incredibly serious. Usually, this was never a good sign.

“Can I send you an address? Can you meet me there as soon as possible?” his voice was low, deep.

“Um, sure thing. But just to set things clear…I won’t join in on your fun, Buck. That’s between you & her.” again, sarcasm was your way of coping with emotions. Though, it was not the right time to use it right now. His next words were proof enough. You should not mess with him. Not in this moment.

“Can you be serious for a second?” he raised his voice a little. It was not much but it was enough to leave you confused. Bucky was not the person to yell at you. Especially not like this.

“I’m sorry…Um, yeah, tell me where & I’ll get there as fast as I can.” gulping down, you waited for him to give you more information.

Arriving at an unfamiliar building, you could make out Bucky’s form in front of it. Why would he want to meet you here? Where was his date?

“Buck?” your voice barely above a whisper. The night sky only illuminated by the moon that shone brightly. Providing just a tiny bit of light. Enough, to let you notice your surroundings.

“Thanks for coming.” you could tell that he was stressed, tough, you were not sure why.

“Is everything alright? Because I swear, if that woman did anyth-“

“No, she didn’t. Promise.” his warm smile was encouraging enough. It was clear that he was not lying to you. “Just…didn’t work out. But that’s not why you’re here.”

“Okay?”

“My last nightmare. Do you remember?” nodding for him to continue. “How I killed that innocent man?”

“It wasn’t you, Buck. You were being controlled.” touching his shoulder softly, squeezing it to reassure him.

“Whatever…That guy, it was Yori’s son. I want to, need to, apologize. Even though the apology comes way too late.” you nodded at him, your eyes meeting his briefly. Now you knew why he called you. He did not want to do this alone. No. He wanted you by his side. To support him through it. Entering the building together, Bucky led you to the apartment Yori lived in. His hand raised to knock on the door. Surprisingly, he did not waste any time. He wanted to get this over with. Understandingly so. No words were exchanged. You being here, with him, that was more than enough.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” Yori opened the door, his face showed confusion by the appearance of you two. “How was the date?” you could not help but roll your eyes at the old man in front of you. Looking at Bucky, you were worried when you saw him having an internal conversation with himself. Mouth opening & closing again. No words coming out. Risking a look inside the apartment, you noticed a small picture frame with who you assumed to be his son. The one Bucky killed. No. The one the Winter Soldier killed.

“It was…It was good.” Bucky mumbled.

“Bullshit.” you followed after. None of them heard you, though. Luckily.

“Forgot I owed you for lunch.” Bucky handed him money. If you were not mistaken, this was not a form of apologizing. He had a hard time, though, that much was obvious. Afterwards, Bucky turned around & walked away without another word. Which left you alone with a confused looking Yori.

“I’m sorry for the disturbance, sir. Have a good night.” plastering on the sweetest smile you could offer, you followed Bucky outside. Jogging to keep up with the super soldier.

Back outside, you saw Bucky holding his little notebook in his hands. You knew about it. Because you were the only person he talked to when it came to his therapy sessions. A look over his shoulder could tell that his eyes were trained on the name being circled. His body was tense. That was not what he planned.

“It’s okay, Bucky.” your hand stroked over his lower back in a comforting way. Your forehead rested against his shoulder, hoping, that it would ease him a little. You could feel him calm down at your touch. “Give yourself some time.” you mumbled quietly, knowing he could hear you clearly due to the calm night. You just hoped that he would not beat himself up too much. Not more than he already did.

You were back in your own apartment. Still no words from Sam. But that was nothing new. Sometimes, he would go radio silent for a few days but after that, he would always check in with you. Maybe he figured that you were mad at him. For giving away the shield & all. And he probably was busy with work. The work he did with Torres. If he needed your help, he would call you for sure. Your TV got your attention again. Something told you to watch closely. So you did.

“Unrest, in the wake of recent events, has left us vulnerable. Every day Americans feel it. While we love heroes who put their lives on the line to defend Earth, we also need a hero to defend this country. We need a real person who embodies America’s greatest values. We need someone to inspire us again, someone who can be a symbol for all of us. So, on behalf of the Department of Defense & our Commander-in-Chief, it is with great honor that we announce here today that the United States of America has a new hero. Join me in welcoming your new Captain America.” the crowd cheered loudly & someone walked through the door. You could not believe what was happening. Please, this had to be a bad dream. When would you wake up form this hell? A man, wearing his suit, holding his shield, greeted the people. Looking at your hands, you could see small, blue sparks forming at the tips of your fingers. That only ever happened when you had no control over your emotions. Right now, you were everything but in control. Of course he had to wink at the camera like the sick person he was.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me…” breathing out lowly, you put your head into your hands, completely ignoring the sparks there. You did not feel them anyway. If you ever met this son of a bitch it would not end well for him. And the next time you would meet Wilson? Fingers crossed he could deal with your angry & disappointed self. Because you were seething.

~to be continued~

Next Chapter

Published (04/02/2021) by Cathy

Tags: @taina-eny​, @tanyaherondale​, @cool-ultra-nerd​, @toribentleyva, @buckyandlokirunmylife​, @annadier​, @howlongtillidie​, @mizz-kraziii, @theetherealbloom​, @millenniumloki​, @marvelbros-oneshots​, @ajbwasnthere, @bilesxbilinskixlahey​, @mystictimetravelcolor​, @dbrees256​, @sxpxrnxturxl, @dreamydreamerwriting​, @dolllstyles​, @angelicastiel​, @prettysbliss, @infinitelyforgotten​, @sweetserendipity65​, @lilystilinskicullen​, @partypoisonsblog, @btdsprayberry, @sarai-ibn-la-ahad​, @deamus-liv​, @simplybarnes​, @sethcohenluvr (let me know if you wanna be tagged <3)

[icasttourniquet]

Common Misconceptions: Raising the Dead (CPR)

Let's start with the bad news: basically all the CPR you've seen in movies and TV shows is performed terribly.

Here's the good news: most CPR is performed on dead patients, which means even bad CPR is better than nothing.

What is CPR?

CPR stands for (googles hurriedly) Cardio-Pumonary Resuscitation. It has two parts: 1) chest compressions and 2) rescue breaths. Here's a video in case you're still confused, but most people have seen CPR performed a ton of times during the climaxes of medical shows. It comes right before either a) the nurse yells "Clear!" and the patient comes back to life or b) the EMT says "I'm not losing you" and injects the patient with adrenaline right to the heart, and then they come back to life.

Raising the Dead

CPR is generally performed on dead patients. That is, patients without a pulse. In the first responder business, the situation doesn't really get worse than dead, so it provides a unique opportunity for authors because you can't really get it wrong.

Here are some questions I've heard people ask while learning CPR:

Should I perform CPR on pulse-less patients who have chest wounds?

Can I continue performing CPR if I break a rib?

Should I perform CPR on pregnant people?

What if I can't give rescue breaths? Should I still give CPR?

My patient has a lot of broken limbs. Should I fix those before performing CPR?

My patient was electrocuted. Should I give CPR?

Here's the trick to answering all your CPR questions. Is my character dead (no pulse)? Does performing CPR put a) the first responder, b) another patient, or c) a bystander in danger?

If you can answer (yes) (no, no, no), congratulations! Your first responder can perform CPR, even really crappy CPR, even CPR that is ineffective, for as long as the plot requires (ModN's WFR instructor tells the story of a 6-hour CPR session on a dead patient during a journey to care that included a toboggan ride).

(NOTE: there's actually one solid contraindication: if the patient is severely hypothermic, their heart rate may be so slow and weak as to be undetectable. In this case (and pretty much only this case) chest compressions may actually do more harm than good. Other than that, obvious signs of death like decapitation or rigor mortis indicate you don't need to start resuscitation, but there are still plenty of compelling interpersonal reasons to do it – at that point you're doing CPR for the responder and survivors rather than the patient.)

Otherwise, your character should go for it!

The bad news about CPR

Time for the bad news (other than you having a dead character on your hands). In general,* CPR is not enough to bring someone back. Its role is to continue circulating oxygenated blood while you wait for a defibrillator like an AED to arrive. The AED or manual defibrillator is what actually convinces the heart to stop fluttering/beating erratically, and allows it to resume something like a normal rhythm. That means that in the wilderness, CPR is almost never going to work. That said, ModN's WFR instructors had a couple tales of AEDs falling from the sky (via helicopter, not under their own power), so it's worth trying regardless.

* The exception: lightning-struck patients can at times restart regular rhythms with just chest compressions. This leads to interesting triage considerations when dealing with the aftermath of lightning, but that's a subject for another post.

How to perform non-crappy CPR

There are a million videos on YouTube that can talk you through every sort of CPR. Keeping in mind, of course, that some CPR is better than nothing on a pulseless patient, here are some quick tips that could indicate your character has some training:

Your character distinguishes between adult and pediatric CPR. Because children don't tend to get heart attacks, pulse-less children almost always have a trauma or respiratory cause. This means responders give children more rescue breaths.

Your character keeps their elbows locked. Here's a playlist of some examples of bad CPR (and some are really quite bad). Actors generally can't lock their elbows because they'd risk injuring or even killing their scene partner (so, okay, fine, that's a decent excuse), but people with real training will know better.

They do not always give rescue breaths. Any CPR is better than no CPR. Rescue breaths can put the first responder at risk because they can involve lip-to-lip contact, assuming no PPE is available. I once had a paramedic say bluntly that he really only gives breaths to children—it's just not worth the risk to him for anyone else. If this sounds callous, remember, CPR is (almost) only performed on dead patients, and the number one priority in any disaster is yourself.

(ModN edit: in a professional setting your character will always have some sort of PPE for rescue breaths: a face shield at the minimum, or in the front country a full-blown bag valve mask (BVM) that allows them to use their hands to get air into the patient.)

Your character does a blood sweep before staring CPR in a trauma injury. You may have heard the rule no pulse = chest compressions immediately. This is almost always true, especially in the frontcountry, when most pulse-less patients you encounter will have had a heart attack. However, in the wilderness, we can run into a bad situation: chest compressions that pump all my patient's blood out the gushing wound in their side.

Maybe you're thinking, hey! I thought you said my character could always do CPR on a dead patient and they'd be fine! And yes, I did say that—thank you for listening. If your character performs CPR on a patient with no pulse and arterial wound, they have not killed their patient. This is because the patient was already dead. They have not "sped up" the bleeding out process because this patient has basically already bled out. So, I'm not blaming your character for anything.

That said, the pro-est of pros will do a blood sweep after finding no pulse and stuff/apply direct pressure/tourniquet as necessary. As an added note, your character with no pulse and the arterial bleed? Probably not going to survive.

This leads me to...

Writing more realistic necromancy

If your character's CPR is successful, your character has just raised the dead. Thinking about it this way can help you write more realistic resuscitation scenes. Here's the number one thing that will make all your CPR more realistic:

Your dead patient does not go from dead to walking and talking in a few seconds.

When the body has no pulse for a while, it gets unhappy. This is because all its internal organs are dying and also because it is dead. CPR replicates the pumping of a heart, but not particularly well. Most people whose organs are all dying don't get that shot of adrenaline to the heart (this is not part of any WFR or EMT protocol but whatever) and then go back to swashbuckling adventure after a quick sip of water.

In fact, in real life, checking the pulse of your patient is an important part of performing CPR because sometimes they come back to life and you don't notice.

So how might you accurately describe someone who's just come back from the dead via CPR (possibly plus defibrillation)? May I recommend some of the following words (no need to cite me—just plop 'em in your writing):

Unconscious

Unmoving

Pale

Clammy

Weak pulse

Non-responsive to pain

Not dead!!!

An added point: absolutely no one whose heart stopped is now "okay" because their heart restarted. They are "not dead" because their heart restarted. Admitedly, not dead is pretty good in the first response business, but they need to see a doctor. As soon as possible. This is because something caused the heart to stop and CPR did not treat that underlying cause. Many people who come back from the dead die again soon after, and could come back and die multiple times before picking a state more permanantly.

Wilderness-Specific CPR

In the wilderness, we have get one (1) special CPR-related ability and that is the ability to stop.

In the US, there's a thing called patient abandonment that can get folks in trouble. Basically, if you start treating a patient, you need to keep treating them until 1) they are dead, 2) they are conscious enough to refuse further treatment and do so, or 3) someone else with an equivalent or higher level of training is treating them (ModN: as a W-EMT this is tricky – it's hard to find people more qualified in the wilderness to hand a patient off to!).

Because WFRs and EMTs cannot declare patients dead, and a dead or unconscious patient cannot refuse treatment, that means you are treating them until someone else is treating them. (As a side note, my first first-aid instructor told the story of performing CPR for 30 minutes in an ambulance on a patient missing part of his brain [this is bad] because the police officer at the scene didn't want to declare him dead on the highway, which would mean shutting down the road for a few hours).

CPR is unique, however, because it's performed on dead patients. The law doesn't want a poor WFR to be stuck in an endless CPR loop because they can't abandon their patient, so in the wilderness only, your character can stop CPR:

After 30 minutes of sustained pulselessness.

If another patient needs more help.

If continuing is dangerous to self or others.

Otherwise, backcountry and frontcountry CPR are pretty similar.

Summary

CPR is generally performed on dead people.

It is difficult to get worse than dead.

Garbage CPR is better than no CPR.

Recovering from being dead takes time and always warrants more care.

WFRs have a superpower and it is called stopping CPR.

Good luck raising your characters from the dead!

[hwasong]

guardians | poly!ateez

request - if you're still taking in requests, would you be able to write something for badboy!polyot8 and date night out at a club + maybe how they'd protec if their s/o was getting hit on please?

a/n: sorry for the long wait! school is at my ass so my writing isn’t the best atm :(

fluff!!

The excitement of going to the club only sinks in after your about to leave. You’re all dolled up and wearing the dress that Seonghwa bought you a while back. It’s a simple black dress but it catches your curves so well you can’t help but feel gorgeous. You even curled your way Hongjoong likes it and wore the red lipstick that Wooyoung loves so much.

“You look gorgeous, baby” Seonghwa smiles as he encases you in his large arms, pressing a kiss on your head. A large smile crosses over your face “You look so handsome~”

Seonghwa smiles back and runs a hand through your hair. His cologne briefly meets your nose before your whisked away by Jongho who runs a hand down your side, a small smile grazing his lips.

“You’re wearing the perfume I bought you” he seems touched that you wore the perfume. A giggle leaves your throat at his cute self.

San walks into the room in his usual getup for a night out. His black skinny jeans and loose shirt is enough to make you drool over the boy. He smiles brightly once he catches the small crowd waiting to leave.

“Hello my cuties” he bounces over, his personality contrasting with his looks. An infectious smile spreads on his face as he talks. You’re so caught up in San’s features that you don’t realise when the rest filter in and Mingi is passing you his jacket to cover yourself from the harsh night air.

“O-oh thank you” you mumble as you’re accept the jacket, a red flush scattering across your face, visible from under the makeup you wear.

Mingi just smirks, his boyish charm making you weak at the knees.

“I’ll get the drinks!” Wooyoung shouts over the music and pointing towards the bar. The rest of the table nods and sends San off to help Wooyoung with the nine glasses that are incoming. The guys have been out with you so much that all nine of you know each other’s orders like the back of your hand.

The energy of the club is enough to get your blood pumping and heart racing. Even with Yeosang’s hand massaging your own under the table and Yunho’s arms encasing you in a side hug you can’t help but feel jittery.

The table quickly make due of conversation and your so distracted by the booming atmosphere you don’t realise when you’re drink is placed in front of you until Yeosang asks if you’re okay. You nod but you can’t shake the feeling off that tonight isn’t going to me good.

“Let’s have fun tonight, okay?” Hongjoong says as the nine of you clink glasses. A bright smile spreads on your face as Mingi shouts over dramatically. The smile doesn’t leave your face even as you sip from your straw.

The night goes by like a blur full of drunken happiness. You’ve had your fair few shares of drinks but you can still walk (a few stumbles here and there however). You slide from the booth with Jongho to get another round of drinks but due to the crowd you and Jongho got split up temporarily.

Since you reach the bar first you take the job of asking for the drinks. The bartender nods and walks off to make the drinks.

Your eyes flutter across the bar, observing the different people here tonight. You ogle at a few of the pretty girls walking by and a couple good looking boys but nothing crosses your mind as you look at them. Your fingers strum aimlessly against the bar as you do so.

“Excuse me” a voice piped up from beside you. You hum, thinking that your maybe in the way of the person but as you turn around you notice it’s a young guy sitting in one of the seats.

“I can’t help but notice you looking around” he smiles almost smugly, as if he caught you out. A nervous laugh breaks from your mouth as a crooked smile crosses your lips. Your eyes dart about for any of the eight boys but you see none. Had Jongho decided to go back?

You decide to not answer the guy and subtly move away, not wanting to interact again. Luckily you found yourself slowly blending into a crowd of women.

“You disappearing on me?” The familiar voice caused shivers to run down your spine when you had walked back up to the bar to clutch the tray of drinks.

Your fingers gripped the tray harder as you tried your best to shy away and disappear into the crowd once more. Your boys were only so far away but with the music and loud chatter they would never hear you call for them. The drinks shook violently as you weaved through people.

“Hey! I was talking to you” Your heart sank to your stomach once the man called out once more. Couldn’t he tell you weren’t on your own by the handful of drinks on your tray? Fear crawled through your whole being like some sort of monster.

The tray shook in your hands once more as a rough hand caught your arm, causing you to jump. Somehow, the drinks didn’t tip over but Hongjoong’s beer had split slightly. That was the least of your worries though.

“Leave me alone” Your strict tone went over the boys head as he continued to hold onto like some vice. He was so persistent that it made you wish that you said no to helping getting the drinks.

He continued to talk however, but the whole time you were focusing on trying to get out of grip without spilling the tray of drinks all over the floor.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” Your saviour. The world around you brightened as you seen Yunho’s tall figure come to your rescue. A look of relief washed over your features as you saw Jongho following closely behind.

As Yunho approached the mans grip loosens. As soon as you get the chance you quickly skit across the floor and towards Jongho who takes the plate of drinks from you. One hand curls around your shoulders as he walks you back, a worried look on his face.

“I lost you” he states the obvious, sharing a look of concern “Did he do anything to you?”

You shook your head, walking silently beside him, eyes casting down as the table comes into view and the remaining six boys look at you with concern all over their faces.

“Are you alright, doll?” Seonghwa asks as he reads your face. A pout was across your lips as you slid back down into the booth.

“I’m fine” The boys all glanced between each other but decided to leave it until you were home. For now, they just worried about where Yunho was.

“What’s all that shouting?” San asks as he sets his glass down, his hand rubbing Wooyoung’s arm. Seonghwa hums, looking into the crowd. You chew your lip nervously.

“We have to get Yunho” you mumble, eyes casting down to your daiquiri in your lap. Seonghwa looks down at you, him barely hearing you even though he’s sitting beside you.

Seonghwa puffs and sets his glass down roughly, catching the attention of the guys “C’mon, let’s go find Yunho”

Yeosang looks up “Is something wrong? He can find his own way back”

Jongho sits up, pulling his jackets collars “I think he’ll need some help if he’s not back”

Quickly, you stand to your feet as the sound of a glass shattering fills the room. The guys are all quick to stand up once they see you disappear into the crowd once again.

Your heart pounds as you shove your way through the crowd.

You fear what you would find.

“Someone get security!” The guy who served you at the bar shouts over the music. Bartenders had ran from their space behind the bar to run to the scene that was unfolding.

A gasp leaves your lips as you see the scene before you. Yunho has the guy from earlier into a deathly grip, his eyes dark as he breathes heavily, his arm raised as if he was going to swing.

“Yunho!” You shout, trying to defuse him from the situation.

“Yunho! What are you doing?” San shouts from behind you which makes you jump. When had he gotten here? You don’t have time to think as nimble fingers pull you away from the unpretty scene.

“Sangie” You breath leaves your lips swiftly as you catch the blonde haired mans face. He is quick and light on his feet as he pulls you towards the exit. A million questions leave tour lips but he answers none.

“We need to leave now, doll” He simply answers, pushing out of the doors roughly which is much to the dismay of the door security. A frown crosses your lips “Why?”

Yeosang chuckles lightly, stopping in the dark streets. The light a few feet away barely light up his features but he still looks ethereal. He smiles softly, his eyes darkening as he lifts a hand to stroke your face “Because we can’t have you seeing what we do to people who touch you, doll”

[noneya-business-me]

Defenseless in the sun

It started like most of these disastrous training days go. Normal. There was a bit of rain the night before, but that didn’t bother any of the young heroes in training. They had been in worse situations before. Bakugou gazed lazily out the window of the bus as they travelled further and further up the mountain. The expanse of dark forest involuntarily made him shiver as he tried to shake off the feeling of fingers on the back of his neck. “You good dude?” Kirishima asked, leaning into his space trying to see what he was staring at.

The blonde grumbled, rolling his eyes. “I’m fine.” He replied, shoving him back in his seat.

His friend smiled widely at him. “I think it’s good for us to have a change of scenery,” he stated, sensing his apprehension, “we’ve been stuck on the same boring training field forever.”

Bakugou rolled his eyes again but gave him a slight nod in agreement. “Everyone listen here.” Aizawa called, standing at the front of the bus, “we’re going to be pulling into our location any minute now.”

The bus lapsed into silence as they listened to their teacher giving them instructions about unloading the bus to get ready for the day. They soon pulled into a clearing where they all filed out to do their tasks before they would get directions for their exercises. Bakugou shoved his hands in his pockets with a scowl as Kirishima pulled on his arm to bring him closer into the group.

“Today we brought you up here to do a combination of wilderness survival and rescue training.” Aizawa explained, “you’re going to be separated into groups of three and moved between stations for the morning, a break for lunch, and then switch to rescue training in the afternoon.”

He motioned towards the numbered off sections around the clearing with different people standing by for the students to move. “We’re lucky enough to be joined by some instructors from the Musutafu Outdoor Survival School so be on your best behaviour,” he hissed with a glare, pointedly towards the blonde’s own friend group.

When the idiot squad gave him excited nods, he sighed with a shake of his head. “I’m allowing you to pick your own groups today so don’t make me regret it.”

The class murmured excitedly as they moved into their groups of three. “I’m not getting dragged down by some shitty extras.” Bakugou snapped, gritting his teeth audibly.

“Come on man! This is going to be fun!” Kirishima smiled, pumping his fist into the air, “we just need to find one more person.”

He glanced over to the other groups seeing that they were all already grouped up. “You’re going to be my group of two then.” Aizawa stated, quickly noting who was in which group, “there are 7 stations to complete by lunchtime. You’ll spend 25 minutes at each station, and you’ll hear me whistle when it’s time to change. Are there any questions?”

He quickly took the silence as a no and motioned for the students to go to a station. Kirishima quickly pulled the blonde to the first station along the clearing. “Hi guys!” The instructor greeted happily.

While Kirishima replied happily with his own hello, Bakugou simply grunted in acknowledgement. “So here we’re going to learn how to gather the right wood and build a fire.” She stated, motioning to a pile of wood next to her.

Bakugou rolled his eyes as he slumped to the ground. He zoned out as she drawled on about making sure it’s dry and not damp at all, and blah blah blah. “Dude, pay attention,” Kirishima hissed, nudging him with his elbow.

Bakugou glared at him in clear annoyance. “I already know all this shit.” He growled, “I’ve done this a shit ton of times when I’ve gone hiking with my dad.”

“Do you want to do your test now then?” The instructor asked with a tight polite smile.

The blonde shrugged, moving to his feet and sifting through the pile until he found the right wood he needed. He also gathered a small pile of dry leaves. He placed the wood down next to the pile and carefully let out a few sparks from his palms. He had learned from the training camp that even his smallest explosions could be important depending on the circumstances. This was the perfect opportunity to test his control. The leaves quickly started to smoke before a small flame formed and he carefully built it up with more brush and wood. “There.” He stated, standing up and crossing his arms with a huff, “Do I pass now?”

“Well, you were supposed to use one of the techniques that we show you.” The instructor replied, holding out one of the wooden dowels that he was supposed to use.

“I can do it!” Kirishima interrupted with a wide smile. taking the hand drill and starting to gather his own brush, “we’re a team so we can work together!”

The instructor looked apprehensive before giving him her own smile. “All righty then.”

The redhead didn’t have any problems lighting his own fire, slightly impressing the other teen. Before long they heard Aizawa’s whistle cut through the air prompting them to continue to the next station and repeating seemingly the same process. Kirishima being overly excited and Bakugou tuning out but still passing the tests easily. They built shelters, tied knots and lashes, located the perfect place to set up a campsite, and went over navigations with a compass and map. For the fifth time that day their teachers whistle shrilled through the air, making the blonde groan again. He was seriously considering going over to their drowsy teacher and breaking that whistle in half. “Come on dude,” Kirishima whined, “aren’t you having fun at all?”

“Like I said before, I’ve done this shit a million times.” The blonde hissed, stomping towards their next station.

The other boy playfully nudged him in the arm. “Yeah, but it’s beautiful outside and we’re not stuck in a stuffy classroom all day.” He stated, “this is a chance to hone your skills and become the best in the class. You’re already leagues above most of us as it is.”

Sometimes the blonde hated how well his friend could read him. He knew exactly what to say in order for him to see the value in any task, no matter how much he hates the idea of some things. Kirishima could already see the fire building in the other’s eyes. “As if any of you losers could be better than me at anything,” Bakugou smirked, running ahead of the redhead to settle at their station first.

“That’s the spirit Bakugou!” He shouted, clashing his fist together.

“What are we doing?” The blonde snapped at the sheepish looking instructor.

They jumped a bit at his volume but quickly settled again. “You’re refreshing your knowledge of first-aid and CPR.” He replied, sitting down on the ground across from them.

The two of them instantly deflated, disappointed that the adrenaline they had just worked up was wasted on a relaxed station. “Don’t look so sullen,” the instructor stated, adjusting his glasses to flip through the manual in his lap, “First-aid is extremely important especially when you’re going to be pro-heroes. There’s going to be a lot of people that need immediate help that are inaccessible to medical teams right away.”

The two of them quickly sobered up in order to listen to the man. Even the fiery blonde knew how important these lessons could be, especially after his failure at the provisional licensing exam. They re-learned dressing different types of wounds, splinting limbs, and the basics of CPR; practicing on each other throughout. “Good job you guys.” The instructor praised, “I think that’s the best I’ve seen today so far.”

“See I told you.” Kirishima grinned at his friend.

“Whatever you loser,” Bakugou replied with a small smile.

“It’s about to switch groups so you guys go ahead.” Their instructor stated, glancing at his watch.

The two nodded, moving onto their final station. By the time they got close to their next destination they could see Tokoyami, Todoroki, and Koda staring down at a small pile of acorns that they had apparently gathered as food. “I don’t think we could eat this to survive.” Todoroki stated bluntly, “I found some berries though.”

He reached in his pocket, pulling out a hand full of squished berries. He stared at his hand before glancing down at his pocket that was stained through from the squeezed-out juices. “Oh.”

Bakugou could barely contain himself from slamming his hand to his forehead in exasperation. Kirishima looked just as bewildered as he felt. “Technically you can survive off of that if you leech them first but not for very long.” Their instructor laughed before the whistle prompted them to move on.

He turned to the pair as the other group departed. “I guess you guys are the lucky group that gets to gather food for lunch.” He stated with a grin.

“What do you mean?’ Kirishima asked.

“The last group at each station has to contribute to a part of the lunch break like building the fire to cook or building the shelter for shade.” He replied, “and you guys get to gather the ingredients to cook with!”

He handed them a booklet with different pictures of plants circled and locations to find them. “It’s like a scavenger hunt!” Kirishima yelled, grabbing the paper with stars in his eyes.

“That’s a good way to think about it.” The instructor replied, “you guys better get going.”

The pair looked at each other before shrugging and moving into the forest. They walked in silence for a few minutes before the redhead decided to speak up. “I thought there would be a little more lesson than just ‘here’s a picture now go find it’.” Kirishima mused, carefully pushing branches out of his way.

Bakugou growled angrily as a branch flew back in his face, spraying him with water from the rainfall the night before. “I’m about. To lose it.” Bakugou hissed, earning a laugh from his friend.

“Don’t. Laugh.” The blonde growled, clenching his jaw so tight it was almost painful.

The redhead put his hands up in surrender, giggles still on his lips before his eyes caught on sunlight streaming through the dense forest. He unconsciously moved towards the light, like a moth drawn to a flame. “Hey idiot!” Bakugou shouted after him, grabbing for his arm, “we have a shit ton of work to do!”

“It’ll only take a second!” Kirishima whined, pulling his arm away and jogging over to the tree line.

The blonde rolled his eyes but followed after him, breaking through the trees and finally seeing the trail they were supposed to get onto to gather their list of ingredients. He glanced between the path and the quickly retreating back of his friend that had completely crossed the path to the opposite side of the trail. He could hear the twigs and branches breaking as he forced his way through. “This better be quick,” He groaned loudly, throwing his head back.

He rushed after him, shielding his eyes from the sudden sunlight to find himself in another small clearing. This time it overlooked the rolling mountains and hills, swallowed by a sea of trees far below. “Wow,” Kirishima exclaimed in awe, his breath taken away by the sight.

“It’s pretty beautiful isn’t it?” Bakugou stated, standing beside him.

“You don’t seem that impressed.” The redhead teased.

“I’ve hiked up here with dad before.” The blonde replied, scanning the closer mountains and pointing out one of the peaks, “that was the first one that we climbed when I was in elementary school. He had to carry me most of the way, now I’m the one carrying him.”

The mountains always seemed to make him somewhat nostalgic and relaxed.  

The redhead looked at him thoughtfully. “It sounds like you and your dad really get along.”

The blonde shrugged, his expression unreadable. “He’s much different hiking and camping then he is at home.”

Kirishima nodded in understanding. “Maybe we can go hiking sometime too,” the redhead suggested moving closer to the edge to look over the forest, “I want to go up my first mountain to be the same as your first mountain.”  

The blonde gave him a small grin, “that doesn’t sound too bad.”

His grin immediately fell as he felt the first shift in the ground. “Get back here Kirishima!” He suddenly called to the other, moving forward to grab him.

“What-“

Suddenly the ground crumbled beneath them. The intense and heavy rain from the night before caused the ground to soften significantly, the mini landslide was probably going to happen anyway. Although, it didn’t help with their added weight on the small ledge. The feeling of falling was sudden but brief as the two students dropped to a ledge beneath the cliff they had been standing on. Bakugou all but shrieked as pain coursed up from his ankle and rattled his entire body.

“Bakugou! Are you okay?” Kirishima shouted, kneeling down next to him.

“My ankle.” He gasped in reply, grimacing at the already blotchy purple patches appearing on his pale skin, “it’s completely shattered.”

It felt like the world was blurring in and out of focus, the pain was so intense. It was almost ironic, considering he had been in worse situations before. “Good thing we re-learned our first aid today huh?” Kirishima laughed, standing to leave Bakugou to stare at his ankle as he breathed shakily through the pain.

“HELP!” Kirishima started to yell into the sky, “SOMEONE HELP US!”

“They’re going to notice we’re missing eventually,” Bakugou hissed, trying to shift his weight to sit back. He clenched his fists tightly, letting out a long exhale.

“HELP US!” Kirishima screamed again, stumbling a bit as he gazed at the edge of the cliff where they fell from.

The sun was high in the sky, beaming down at them with no shade for them to hide in. Sweat was quickly collecting on him, the constant breeze quickly cooling it on his skin. “Shitty hair you’re just going to tire yourself out.” Bakugou wheezed with a grimace.

The other fell silent and turned partially to stare at him with a blank expression although his brow were knit together tightly. He opened his mouth to say something but quickly shut it glancing back up at the cliff face.

“What the hell are you doing?” Bakugou questioned, his throat starting to knot up. Something was wrong. Very wrong. “Kirishima get back over here.”

The redhead glanced at him before turning to move back towards him. All at once it was like Bakugou��s body completely seized up. His entire core felt bitter cold, his spine went rigid, and the knot that was in his throat completely choked him. Half of Kirishima’s face was covered in blood, fresh blood still pouring out of the open wound on his forehead. He could already see the colour had drained from his friend’s skin, leaving him pale almost grey and his lips were beginning to turn blue. The redhead stumbled towards him, before catching himself on his own foot and tripping to the ground. Bakugou yelped, moving as quickly as he could to his fallen friend. “Are you okay?” He demanded, trying to get the redhead’s eyes to focus on his. He could see now up close that his pupils were different sizes, a clear indication of a concussion at the very least.

“I just tripped it’s no big deal.” He slurred in reply, as the other started ripping fabric off of both their uniforms. The blonde could see the signs from a mile away. He was going into shock and based on the lessons that they had before, the shock could kill him just as easily as the head wound could. “Kirishima, do you know where we are?” He asked frantically as he tried to press the cloth against the wound to keep it from bleeding.

Kirishima stared at him for a moment before glancing to the side taking in the wide expanse of forest. He muttered out a soft, “woods?” under his breath. Bakugou let out a nervous chuckle at his blatant attempt at cheating. “I need you to be specific. Why are we here?” Bakugou urged.

The other stayed silent, in turn making the adrenaline in the blonde’s body skyrocket as he began to go through his first aid steps. ‘ABC’s first.’ He thought, checking through his airways, breathing, and laying the back of his hand on the others forehead to gauge his circulation. ‘He’s really clammy.’

He continued to pack fabric against his head and the blood began to soak through. He could feel his heart beating loudly against his rib cage, trying to not let that distract himself from checking and making sure Kirishima’s was okay. He could feel his own hands becoming sweaty as he worked away at him, making sure to periodically wipe his hands off in case he started to spark off in his panic. It suddenly hit him like a ton of bricks how much he took advantage of the idea of having to perform first aid on someone. He had done it before, plenty of times. There were a few people on the hiking trails that had fallen and needed a brace and a call for help and he had easily done that, but this was different. This was his best friend and it wasn’t a simple cut or sprain, this was his life; and the thought of that sent him into a panic that he had never felt before. All at once, Kirishima’s eyes suddenly fell shut. “No!” Bakugou yelled, “you have to keep your eyes open Kirishima!”

He quickly checked his pulse again. It was slow but it was still there, his breathing shallow to match it. “SOMEONE HELP US!” The blonde finally screamed, louder than he ever had before, which was surprising considering who he was, “PLEASE SOMEONE HELP US!”

Everything was happening faster than he could keep up with, because in the next moment the movement of the redhead’s lungs stopped and he laid still. His hands were jerky and unsteady as he moved to position his palms over the other’s chest. He pushed down firmly, the crack of the other’s ribs raising his panic even more but he knew to push through even as tears began to bead in his eyes. He counted out 30 compressions, leaning down to listen for any sign of breathing. Nothing. He delivered his rescue breaths and continued. “C’mon breathe!” He wailed, his body cramping up everywhere, “Breathe Eijirou!”

He took in a shuddering breath as he choked around his words, “God damn it breathe!” He begged, “I refuse to let you die here!”

His head began to feel fuzzy and out of focus as he began to hyper-focus on the other. The world blurred around him. He could only feel detachment as the sun above them burned at his skin, and sweat pooled at the nape of his neck. He didn’t fully understand as he was pulled away from his friend by someone behind him. He whimpered loudly as his weight was shifted onto his shattered ankle. The sudden shock giving him a sliver of clarity to realize that his CPR was halted. ‘If I stop, he’s going to die.’ He thought, weakly struggling to pull away and continue.

“Bakugou, calm down.” A muddled voice stated, holding onto him more firmly.

“He’s going to die.” He snapped back, his head lolling lazily as another tear rolled down his cheek, “I have to help him.”

“You’ve already saved him.” They replied, steadying the boy’s shaking form.

“Huh?” Bakugou questioned blearily, as he slumped in his arms.

He glanced back, seeing the rigid but soft expression of his teacher. His hair whipped around his face, as a helicopter lowered carefully for the paramedics to safety load Kirishima and take him to the hospital. He stayed silent as Uraraka used her quirk to carefully lift him up the cliffside, the exhaustion quickly overtaking him. He could see the blurry forms of his friends trying to approach him but being pushed off by their instructors from earlier. “He’ll be okay right?” He breathed out slowly, wincing tiredly as his ankle was splinted for transport.

“He’ll be okay.” Aizawa repeated, with a slow nod, “and you’ll be okay too.”

“I don’t care about what happens to me.” The blonde snorted, with a small grin.

His teacher shook his head with his own tight grin, “you’re going to be exhausting as a pro hero.”

“You can count on that,” Bakugou replied, the tension releasing from his body as his eyes began to flutter.

“Just rest up Bakugou. We’ll take care of everything else.”

When he woke up again, he almost felt like it wasn’t dramatic enough for him. His mom and dad were both beside his bed, and for once his mother had the same concerned look as his father. They filled him in on everything to do with his medical diagnosis. His father carefully rubbed ointment onto his arms and neck where his skin was sunburned, and in some places peeling from the sun that essentially baked him alive. His ankle had been shattered like he assumed and had to be fixed surgically upon arriving at the hospital considering their fears that any of the splintered fragments could puncture something. “Stupid weak ankle,” Bakugou muttered as his doctor came in the show him his x-ray and the placement of the steel plates and screws holding him together at the moment.

He almost lost his shit when he was told that the recovery time could be between 3 to 12 months, but quickly settled after a stern glare from both his mother and father. As the doctor packed up their charts, his mom opted to grab some food for the three of them down in the cafeteria. Not long after the doctor left, Aizawa entered to go over the events that lead up to their rescue. He made sure to mention immediately that his friend was safe and in no immediate medical danger. He had hit his head hard as they were falling and had some minor internal bleeding but was projected to make a full recovery. Based on the information they provided to each other, the blonde had kept up CPR for 17 minutes. He belatedly remembered the feeling of zoning solely into performing the task, nothing mattered at that point besides making sure he was doing everything perfectly despite how much his limbs ached and oxygen wouldn’t enter his lungs. “He’s extremely lucky that you started CPR right away,” Aizawa stated, “who knows what we’d be planning right now if you didn’t.”

“Can I see him yet?” Bakugou asked, a bit hesitantly.

His teacher contemplated for a moment before nodding slowly, “you just have to be gentle around him. He just woke up a bit before you.”

“He woke up before me?” Bakugou asked with a baffled expression, “how the hell is that possible?”

“If I knew that I’d be a doctor and not a teacher.” Aizawa drawled, earning an eye roll from his student.

“Just take me to him.” Bakugou snapped in annoyance, throwing the blanket off his lap and sitting up.

“Easy there Katsuki!” His dad interjected, making sure his IV tubes didn’t get tangled up in the bedsheets, “please calm down a bit. You’re still healing.”

The blonde gave him a blank look, before moving to get up again. “Stop!” His father shouted again, moving to go into the hallway, “just let me grab you a wheelchair first at least.”

“I don’t need a damn wheelchair!” Bakugou loudly complained as it was rolled into his room and beside the bed.

“I don’t care!” His father snapped, making the blonde freeze in surprise.

His dad never yelled like that. The twisting in his gut squeezed uncomfortably all over again. “I was scared shitless when I heard that you got hurt and needed surgery.” He stated, his eyes glossy with unshed tears, “so for the love of god just take it a bit easier than usual. For my sake.”

“Okay,” Bakugou replied softly, letting his dad help him into the wheelchair. He was careful to keep the weight off of his bandaged foot.

He could see Aizawa shifting uncomfortably at the doorway. Not wanting to witness his family’s little dramas but still sticking around to take him to his friend’s room. They called a nurse in to the room to attach the I.V to his wheelchair and they were set to go. “You should probably wait for mom or she’ll lose it when she comes back,” Bakugou stated.

His father stared at him in worry before sighing and giving him a small smile. “You’re probably right.” He replied, sitting back down in his chair, “just.. don’t take too long.”

“Don’t miss me too much!” Bakugou called back as his teacher wheeled him out and down the hallway.

He was only a few doors down from his own which surprised him, considering he assumed the other would be in the ICU or something like that. He could hear his booming laughter before they even knocked on the door, followed by a wheeze and a quiet ‘ow’. Aizawa quickly knocked on the door, listening as the laughter quieted down a bit and the door was opened by a smiling black-haired woman. “Oh hi-“ she paused when her eyes fell on Bakugou.

Her eyes watered a bit before she leaned down to softly but firmly hug him. The blondes brows knit together in confusion before she spoke again. “Thank you for saving my son.” She breathed softly.

“Hi Aizawa Sensei!” He heard Kirishima call from his bed on the other side of the room.

“He really is awake.” Bakugou sighed in relief but shock.

His mom nodded in agreement moving back to let the two in. “Bakubro! You’re awake!” Kirishima shouted happily.

His head was tightly wrapped in bandages and he was hooked up to some machines and IV’s but other than that he looked perfectly healthy. “You scared the shit out of me you asshole.” Bakugou choked out around the lump in his throat, “you’re not making me cry again you ass, I’m already dehydrated.”

The redhead laughed loudly again, as his friend was set right next to his bedside. “We’ll give you boys some privacy.” Kirishima’s mom said sweetly, all but dragging their teacher out with her.

“Thank you for saving me Bakugou.” Kirishima stated softly after a beat of silence, “who knows what-“

“Save that mushy stuff for when I feel like it.” Bakugou retorted crossing his arms.

The redhead looked at him with wide eyes before he smiled again. “You got it Bakubro!”

That’s why they worked so well together. Kirishima never pushed him to act a certain way or talk about his feelings about things until he wanted to and vice versa. They would have this conversation someday just not today. Today was about living their lives as if nothing had happened despite the fact that the two of them were covered in bandages and had fluids being pumped into their bodies.

“Are you still up for a hike in 3 to 12 months?” Bakugou asked, motioning to his casted leg with a feral smirk.

Kirishima’s sharp toothed smile widened dangerously as he clashed his fist together loudly.

“Absolutely.”

[serenefreakgeekao3]

😚😚 i got another one if you're willing. Gonna make it a triple so; terror #13 that leads to anger #20 and ends on bliss #14

13. “No, please! No, no no no no no!” -> 20. “Let go of me.” -> 14. “I’m really happy that you’re here with me.” 

Words: 3598

Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter

Tags: Angsty angst, Magically powerful Harry Potter, Happy Ending, no beta

Harry was sitting, dead tired and falling asleep into his long-since cold coffee, when the alarm went off. He blinked warily, glancing around as every other Auror on duty began standing and throwing their robes on. Glancing across the aisle, he spied Ron's empty desk and wondered where his partner had run off to.

He sighed, blinking a few times before standing and grabbing his own red robes. He was struggling with getting his arms into their proper locations when two Aurors had practically sprinted full speed down his aisle. Then, he realized the alarm was still going off. Blinking and rubbing an eye, he glanced up to the lights circling above his head. Dark blue and yellow swirled in circles and he tried to remember exactly what the colour code meant. Dark blue- an Unspeakable was involved. Yellow... yellow...

Harry finally finished buttoning up his robes and had made to open his drawer to grab his Auror booklet before finally the meaning had popped into his head. Yellow: kidnapping. An Unspeakable had been kidnapped? This caused Harry to straighten up a bit, a kick of adrenaline waking him up slightly. This was bad news. Unspeakables knew too much, they knew things that would throw the common population into chaos.

Harry ran out from behind his desk, following the last dregs of the crowd before entering one of the larger conference rooms.

"Where the hell is-" Robards voice was booming from the center of the room before their eyes met, and he began gesturing wildly. "Auror Potter, get over here!" Harry began his push through the crowd, hearing shouts of fear from some Aurors and a few squad leaders trying to calm down and organize the chaos. Harry finally makes it to the center next to Robards, looking down at the map on the table.

"What's happened? Which Unspeakable was captured?"

"Doesn't matter," Robards replied quickly, prompting a raised eyebrow from Harry before his attention was diverted back to the map. He recognized- "This is the map of Godric's Hollow. I was told you were the most knowledgeable about the area. Now, the Unspeakable's wand was pinged here-" Robards tapped a point on the map, then began dragging his finger around it in a circle, "Its accurate up to half a mile, although he could've dropped the wand or had it taken from him when it happened. He managed to send the alert that said he was being kidnapped, but we should be ready to find anything. In a moment of crisis, one might just send any alert, especially if they're being hunted."

Harry nodded, glancing at the surrounding buildings. He did know this place, even better than when he was a kid. There was the coffee shop that his favourite cappuccino served, and where he had pictured taking Draco on their first date; if he ever gathered enough courage to ask. There was the flower shop across the street that always had vibrant flowers on display, the shop where he would buy little narcissus flowers to place on Draco's desk down in the Unspeakable ward when he has a bad day.

Harry took a deep breath, clearing his mind. He needed to focus on this mission. He had missed a few words Robards had said while daydreaming, but it seemed like there were at least five of them, and suspected to be neo-DEs. Nodding slightly, he finally spoke, turning his head to catch Robards gaze, "Alright, what's the plan?"

"First, we'll need to set a perimeter-"

"Why bother with this high level emergency shit?" Harry flinched slightly at the loud voice right behind him. He turned to spy Zacharias Smith sneering at his squad leader and crossing his arms. Harry just rolled his eyes and looked back toward Robards, but the git still continued to be the loudest person in the room. "All these flashing lights and alarms are giving me a headache. And for what, to rescue some Death Eater? I've said it once and I'll say it again, Draco Malfoy should never have been allowed to become an Unspeakable."

Draco Malfoy. The name rolled like a bell in his mind, and suddenly nothing else was reaching his ears. Draco Malfoy, an Unspeakable- he knew this already, of course, but he hadn't thought-

Slowly, Harry's eyes began to trace the room. He finally noticed what he hadn't in his tired but wired state: everyone in the room was a mix of red and dark blue robes. But he didn't see a flash of white hair anywhere.

"Robards."

The Head Auror sighed, hesitating and stopping his speech. The few others nearby that had also been listening began shooting wary glances toward him, but he chose to ignore them for now. "Auror Potter, don't-"

"Is it Draco?"

"The same procedure goes for everyone, regardless of-"

"Is it Unspeakable Malfoy?" Harry could hear the danger lacing his voice, could feel a slight rumble in his chest. He tried his best to contain his magic, but even so he began to feel small invisible tendrils lick up against his fingers. When Robards remained quiet and staring directly at the map, Harry slowly placed a hand on the table, glaring down at the man. It was an Unspeakable on the other side of the table who spoke, and finally answered his question.

"Yes. Draco Malfoy has been kidnapped."

Harry barely had time to see the Head Auror glare at the Unspeakable before a loud tearing sound followed by a bang sounded in everyone's ears. Lights flashed quickly before Harry's eyes, disorienting him for a moment before he landed in a puddle surrounded by darkness.

Well, not quite darkness, but it was night and there was only one streetlamp and a muggle car's headlights to guide his way. It took him a moment to gather himself, but the heavy rain pouring against his head and shoulders helped to stabilize him. His eyes adjusted, and he found himself standing outside a slightly less decorative flower shop- all the colorful plants had been moved inside to protect them from the awful weather.

Harry took a few steps until he was in an alleyway out of sight before closing his eyes and opening his mind. He felt his heart pumping quickly, and could hear the blood flowing in his ears. The adrenaline helped to open his mind more and pour his magic outside of himself before stretching it and shooting it out in all directions as far as it would go. His magic would recognize Draco's, he knew it would. It had to.

Memories flashed through his mind of the few times they went on missions together, feeling both of their magics licking against each other and they both cast spells to keep the enemy at bay. The time when Harry had been cursed and Draco was assigned to break it, the man casting spells that slide against Harry's skin in such a way that he was glad it was Draco and no one else. More memories kept flashing, circling in his mind before everything stopped.

He was in the present time, he was stretching his magic to unbelievable limits, and he had found Draco Malfoy. And not only had he found him, but Draco's magic pulsed, and pulled, and he knew Draco felt him. There was a spark of something there, like hope and a million other emotions, before Harry finally retracted his magic. He gasped quickly, as if dying for air, and his eyes flew open. A hand pressed against his stomach, a burning flare of heat rising in his core before finally settling again.

It doesn't matter, he has found Draco. Harry immediately turns and takes off at a run. He decides to stay near buildings, and darts through alleys as much as he could to remain undetected. Harry didn't exactly place his faith in a hastily cast Notice Me Not to keep him from detection, but he wasn't exactly worried. Whether they saw him coming or not- he would save Draco.

The rain kept pouring on Harry's head, plastering his unruly hair to his head and fogging up his glasses. After tripping over uneven pavement he hadn't seen, he growled and pocketed his glasses, casting a hasty eye correction spell that Draco had taught him before resuming his sprint. Before too long, a long abandoned storehouse came into view, with one lone guard standing under an awning at the door, seemingly smoking a cigarette.

Harry slowed his run to a fast paced walk, staring directly at the man that hadn't noticed him just yet. As the man flicked the ash off of his cigarette, Harry flicked his own wrist and felt the slide of wood that was his wand falling into his hand. He was within five feet when the man finally turned his head and noticed Harry. Not sure exactly what the man had seen, it was enough to put a full blown look of fear onto the man's face, his mouth opening to suck in a gasp. Harry raised his arm and slashed, casting a wordless spell and causing the man to crumple into an unconscious pile on the floor.

Harry cast a few more spells quietly, one to tie up the man on the pavement and restrict his magic, and another to notify Robards of his location. Then he pushed open the squeaking metal door and entered.

"I don't know why you're so enamored with those damn muggle smoke sticks, Josh. They smell disgusting and-" A woman had been speaking nonchalantly, unworried, when she heard someone enter. Until she had seen Harry, walking and dripping onto the floor and glaring directly at her. She was sitting alone at a table in the middle of an empty room, one lamp lighting up her nearby vicinity and a book lying open on the table, an empty chair across from her. She had frozen in her spot, a similar look of fearing crossing her face that had been on Josh's own, before she stood quickly and wiped her wand out. "Aurors!"

Her shout echoed through the building before she shot a curse that whizzed by Harry's ear and exploded against something behind him.

Harry, unworried but furious, raised his wand and slashed again, causing the woman to crumple to the floor as well. He made sure to toss an Incarcerous at her before three sets of footprints approached. The heads appeared from a disillusioned floor and Harry waved a shield in front of him for their first volley of attacks. And then he had felt it again- a surge of magic licking against his feet that could only be Draco.

The next moment were quick, with a multitude of colours flashing in his vision, rage and desperation fueling his veins, and he somehow ended his volley of spells to find himself somewhere he hadn't remembered coming to. Bodies lay on the floor around him, some bleeding and others struggling against magical bonds. And then he felt it again, but it was so much more faint and Harry felt nothing but worry as he chased the magic, turning corners and running through yet another disillusioned wall before finally, finally finding him.

He was tied to a simple wooden chair, alone in the room after everyone had left to attack Harry. But he his eyes were wide, focused on Harry, and his skin was so much paler than it should've been. Running toward him, Harry saw the moment that Draco lost conciousness, and Harry began the painstaking process of removing curses and magical binds that kept Draco rooted the chair. By the time he finished, Harry was breathing heavily and could only see Draco, and Draco's skin was beginning to turn a light shade of green.

“No, please! No, no no no no no!” Harry chanted, shaking his head and pulling Draco into his lap, his dead weight pinning Harry to the floor. "Wake up, Draco, please. You have to wake up, you have to." Harry tapped his cheek lightly to no response before closing his eyes and reaching his magic out once again.

Draco was close, his magical core right next to his own, yet Harry could barely feel it anymore. It felt muddied and fragile and Harry let out a sob as he clutched at Draco. "No, you can't leave me, not you too."

Another tearing sound, not as loud but slightly painful, along with a boom like a strike of thunder, and Harry found himself sitting in the middle of a hall in St Mungos. Doctors rushed past, nurses calling out to one another with medical jargon, and one child that had been sitting in a chair peacefully had startled badly and clutched at her stuffed rabbit.

Harry felt tears in his eyes and a frog in his throat, glancing at the little girl with frightened eyes before gathering Draco in his arms and standing. He called for help as he walked slowly down the hall until someone finally noticed him, conjuring a stretcher to place Draco down on. He followed, keeping his hand on Draco's arm, always standing next to him, until they ended up in the Curse and Disease ward.

There were so many voices, many calling his own name, but he couldn't hear any of them. Draco was fading from pastel green to a deep blue that was worrying Harry, and it hurt him to not know what was wrong. He began feeling a tugging on his arm, and he yanked himself away from them, huddling closer to Draco on the stretcher, practically ready to climb on top of it with him.

"Mister Potter sir, we need to to remove your hand."

"Fuck off," Harry whispered warily, staring down and reaching a hand out to brush a strand of hair from Draco's forehead. After even more insistent tugging, he felt a growl well up in his chest, turning and shouting at a nurse dressed in yellow scrubs. “Let go of me.”

"Mister Potter," An older lady spoke harshly, snapping her fingers in front of his face. "If you don't want him to die, you will remove any skin contact with him within five seconds."

Harry flinched, raising both hands to his side and watching the old woman throw a spell that seemed to shock Draco, making his body lift slightly from the cot but also halted the progress of the blue tint covering him.

"If you want him to live you will go to the waiting room and wait. Having you here will only hinder my ability to heal him." Her eyes were strict, but he also could see a strange sort of affection in them. "I also recommend seeing a Healer yourself, Potter, while you wait. I can feel how magically exhausted your core is from here. Now, leave us."

Harry stood still, in the midst of chaos, as the stretcher and everyone with it sped away and disappeared into an adjacent room. Exhaustion finally caught up with him, the tiredness he held before that had been kept at bay from adrenaline now tugged at his limbs. He wanted to sit right then, but after receiving glares just for standing, his eyes began scanning the rooms around him. As he read, they became blurry, and he had to walk closer to read some signs. When 'Waiting Room A' finally came into his line of sight, he let out a relieved sighed and sluggishly entered the room, finding the first chair he could see and slumping into it.

<><><><><>

Harry awoke slowly to a quiet room full of pastel yellow walls and plenty of natural sunlight making them bright. He felt sore, magically exhausted (like the Healer before had said), and had a hankering for a nice hot cup of coffee. He remembered no dreams, he didn't even remember sleeping very long, as if he had only blinked. Though the sunlight and a lazily cast Tempus told him otherwise.

Sitting up in the stiff plastic chair he had fallen asleep in, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and took a moment to wonder why his entire outfit, including his shoes, felt stiff and rough. Then he remembered being soaked from the rain, and thought perhaps the nurses before weren't glaring at him for standing the hallway so much as dripping and leaving a trail in the hallway. He reached into a robe pocket, sliding his glasses back on and finally getting a good, non-blurry look at the room. There were two other people sitting and talking quietly in the corner, but otherwise he was alone. Taking a breath, he stood, making to leave before spying a muggle coffee maker sitting on a counter next to the door. At least he could fix one of his problems, then.

Taking a styrofoam cup, he filled it with coffee and left the room, not bothering to add anything. He just needed something to wake him up, and he doubted adding anything to it would make it taste any less like hospital coffee.

He approached the main desk of the floor, watching a nurse immediately duck behind the desk quickly after seeing him. He raised an eyebrow, but leaned against the desk anyway, sipping at his bitter drink. Suddenly a note was slid across the desk to him, the nurse handing it over refusing to meet his eyes. Sighing, he took the note and tried to decipher what looked like a doctor's handwriting.

Mister Potter,

I know by the time you wake your only thought will be to see your friend. Anticipating this, I told everyone you're not allowed in until you've been treated yourself. Room B3 is available, just enter the room and the nearest available doctor will come and look you over. After, my nurses will tell you where to find Mister Malfoy.

- Elizabeth Dorret

Blinking slowly, Harry remembered the little old woman who had yelled at him harshly while also looking at him fondly, and sighed. "This Healer Dorret, is she-"

"About five foot tall, full head of gray hair, piercing blue eyes that can see into your soul." The nurse murmured before shivering, pointing at the note. "You can fight that all you want, take legal action if you must, but I am not getting on her bad side."

Sighing again, Harry was too tired to argue with anything. He shrugged, dropped the note back on the desk, and made his way to room B3.

<><><><><>

His checkup was quick. The Healer that had entered his room seemed to know exactly what to look for, and handing him a potion to drink with a quick "No magic for twenty four hours," before leaving and attending his own patients once more. Harry downed the potion, drank bitter coffee to wash out the sour taste, and returned to the main desk. The nurse pointed toward a hallway, murmured a room number, and Harry began walking.

Swallowing around a lump in his throat, Harry entered the room and noticed a few things. One, it was bright and had a window that a lot of other hospital rooms didn't have. Two, there was only one bed, Draco lying propped up on it, his hair shining brightly in the sunlight. And three, Draco was awake and staring directly at him. Harry approached, reaching out and taking Draco's hand as soon as he was within reach.

“I’m really happy that you’re here with me," Draco whispered, and his eyes seemed to shine with extra moisture. Harry leaned closer, using his other hand to place against Draco's cheek.

"There's nowhere else I'd rather be."

"Harry, I was so scared. The entire time, I was terrified." Draco blinked, a tear falling down his cheek that Harry immediately brushed away. "But then I- I felt your magic, didn't I? I didnt know if I was just imagining it, but it felt like you."

"It was me," Harry reassured, leaning closer to place his forehead against Draco's and closing his eyes. "I called for you and you answered. So I was able to find you."

"When they called out that the Aurors were there, they had injected me with some kind of poison." Harry tightened his grip on Draco's hand, breathing in his scent like Amortentia. "Healer Dorret said she was able to extract all of it out thanks to your speedy arrival. I have you to thank for my life."

"Draco, I love you."

Harry wasn't sure why he whispered it, but standing there with his eyes closed and the feeling of Draco in his hands, of Draco safe and there made him want to confess everything. He kept it to that one confession, the root of it all, and waited. Draco wasn't pulling away, but he wasn't talking either. He stayed for as long as he dared before Harry lifted his head and opened his eyes to see Draco.

He was met with a brilliant smile and bright gray eyes before being pulled against the man and assailed with a kiss.

Harry kissed back immediately, removing his hand from Draco's hand to wrap around his hip, his other hand sliding from his cheek to behind his neck. He poured everything into it. The love and hope he had felt before, the devastation at hearing of Draco's kidnapping, the anger he felt when he came across the men responsible. Draco had to pull back, gasping for air, and Harry followed his lips as if they were magnetic but backed away after a moment's hesitation to give him space.

"Harry, you idiot, I love you too."

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 7, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo articulated today what many have been reluctant to say: What is at stake in the Big Lie and all the Republican efforts to keep it in play—the shenanigans in the secret Maricopa County, Arizona, recount; the censuring of Republicans who voted to impeach the former president; the expected removal of Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney from a leadership role in the party; and so on—is not the past election of 2020, but the upcoming election of 2024.

The Republican Party has demonstrated that it intends to control the government in the future, no matter what most Americans want. Iowa, Georgia, Montana, and Florida have already passed voter suppression laws, while other states are considering them. (Governor Ron DeSantis signed Florida’s bill yesterday live on the Fox News Channel.)

As Marshall points out, though, making sure that states return only Republicans to Congress is also about controlling the White House. Republican lawmakers are purging from state election machinery members of their own party who refused to change the outcome of the 2020 election and give a victory to Trump. The former president has fed speculation that he still hopes to overturn the 2020 election, but Marshall looks forward: Is it really possible to think that in 2024, members of the new Trump party will protect the sanctity of any election that gives a victory to a Democratic candidate? If Republicans capture the House in 2022, will they agree to certify electoral votes for a Democrat? In 2020, even before the current remaking of the party in Trump’s image, 139 House Republicans contested them.

Trump is systematically going after leading members of the Republican Party, determined to remake it into his own organization. Several former senior White House officials told Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post that “[t]he defeated ex-president is propelled primarily by a thirst for retribution, an insatiable quest for the spotlight and a desire to establish and maintain total dominance and control over the Republican base.” Republican strategist Brendan Buck noted that Trump seems to relish fighting, rather than victory to achieve an end. “Usually,” Buck said, “a fight is the means to an end, but in this case fighting is the end.”

The Republicans are consolidating their control over the machinery of government in a way that indicates they intend to control the country regardless of what Americans actually want, putting Trump and his organization back in charge. Democrats have proposed the For the People Act (H.R. 1 and S. 1), which would start to restore a level playing field between the parties. The For the People Act would sideline the new voter suppression bills and make it easier to vote. It would end partisan gerrymandering and stop the flow of big money into elections permitted after the 2010 Citizens United decision.

But Republicans are determined to stop this measure. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is especially engaged in its obstruction. He has called it a “partisan takeover” that would “give Washington Democrats unprecedented control over 50 states’ election laws.” He recognizes that restoring a level electoral playing field would hamstring the Republicans’ ability to win elections. Defeating the act is McConnell’s top priority.

The story of how Republican leaders embraced voter suppression and gerrymandering starts back in the 1980s, though the mechanics of overturning a presidential election are new to 2020. Still, their undermining of our democratic system begs the question: Why are leading Republicans surrendering their party, and our nation, to a budding autocrat?

Two days ago, when asked if he is concerned about the direction of his party,  McConnell told reporters that he is not paying attention to it because the Democrats are trying “to turn American into a socialist country,” and that “[o]ne-hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration.”

In his April 28 address before a joint session of Congress, President Biden indicated he intended to reverse the course the government has been on since the Reagan years. “My fellow Americans,” Biden said, “trickle-down… economics has never worked, and it's time to grow the economy from the bottom up and the middle out.”

Republicans have tied themselves to the idea that, as Reagan said, “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem” (although in 1981 he prefaced that statement with the words: “In this present crisis”). Since the 1990s, they have focused on tax cuts and deregulation as the key to building a strong economy, even though that program has moved wealth dramatically upward.

Today, Republicans interpreted a jobs report that showed job growth slowing in April as a sign that Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which pumped $1.9 trillion into the country to help it heal from the coronavirus recession, has failed. Rather than speeding up growth, they say, it is slowing it down. Biden pointed out that the nation has added 1.5 million jobs since he took office and that the recession will not end overnight, but Republicans insist that the federal $300 weekly unemployment checks included in the law are keeping people from going back to work.

The top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, issued a statement saying: “This is a stunning economic setback, and unequivocal proof that President Biden is sabotaging our jobs recovery with promises of higher taxes and regulation on local businesses that discourage hiring and drive jobs overseas.”

Citing help wanted ads, Republican governors in South Carolina, Montana, and Arkansas are ending the unemployment benefit in their own states to get people back to work. Other Republican-led states are suing the administration to force it to let them use the money provided in the American Rescue Plan not to offer help to workers, but to subsidize tax cuts. Meanwhile, still others at home are touting the benefits of the American Rescue Plan to their constituents without mentioning that they voted against it.

Americans appear to like the new direction of the country. Seventy-seven percent liked the American Rescue Plan and 56% like Biden’s proposed American Jobs Plan for infrastructure, while 65% want to tax people making more than $400,000 a year to pay for it. At the same time, a new Pew poll suggests that the divisiveness of the Trump years is easing and that young people in particular are not interested in the culture wars.

Faced with the prospect of voters rejecting their economic policies, Republican leaders are undermining democracy.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[tabloidtoc]

OK, January 4

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Ashton Kutcher haunted by his mistakes

Page 2: Contents 

Page 4: Jennifer Garner ready for romance -- Jennifer has proven she’s fine on her own but she’s eager for her happy ending and has even set her sights on some of Hollywood’s most eligible hunks like Chris Evans but seems happily single; she binge-watched Outlander and was totally taken with Sam Heughan and she also finds Martin Henderson very sexy but heard he has a girlfriend 

Page 6: After a tumultuous few years Hayden Panettiere’s 2021 is looking bright and she’s been working on herself since her split from toxic ex-boyfriend Brian Hickerson -- she’s taken control of her life and is making good choices -- she’s been able to rebuild her life and her relationship with her daughter Kaya who lives in Ukraine with her dad and next on her agenda is reviving her once-hot career

Page 7: Justin Bieber who’s been a devoted member of the controversial celeb-favored Hillsong Church for years is studying to become a minister -- Justin has long credited Hillsong and especially charismatic and recently fired pastor Carl Lentz for saving him from his dark period of drugs, public meltdowns and arrests -- Justin doesn’t plan to give up his music career but he feels there’s a bigger calling out there for him

* Jessica Simpson has signed deals for both a docuseries and a fictionalized series based on her life but not everyone is so pumped about her tell-all tendencies and least of all is her ex-husband Nick Lachey -- for Nick it’s just dredging up a past that’s better left alone and Nick hopes that Jessica goes easy on him in the scripted series but deep down knows there’s precious little chance of that

* Madonna is majorly inserting herself in her daughter Lourdes Leon’s love life and she’s constantly on the phone asking how things are going between Lourdes and her socialite beau of three years Jonathan Puglia and she wants to know when they’re making things official -- Madonna even pushes for double dates so she can bring her 26-year-old boyfriend Ahlamalik Williams -- Lourdes appreciates how much her mom cares but she’s finding all the micromanaging too much to handle 

Page 8: Jason Aldean who boasts an $80 million fortune loves splashing his cash around especially when it comes to his children -- the singer who shares son Memphis and daughter Navy with wife Brittany and girls Kendyl and Keeley with his ex likes being seen as the moneybags and leaves tough love to the kids’ moms and he’s always pulling out $100 bills for his teens and buying his little ones new clothes, toys and high-tech gadgets even though they’re so young -- he’s definitely spoiling the kids but nobody complains about it so he just keeps on buying them stuff because nothing makes him happier 

* The milestone 6-0 is still months away but George Clooney is planning to do some serious partying for his birthday and he’s sparing no expense -- he’s looking at celebrations across the States and Europe plus a boys-only getaway to Mexico 

* Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence are having a blast filming their first movie together so much so that tongues are wagging about the pair’s fiery chemistry on the set -- even though Leo and Jen behave like total pros when the cameras aren’t rolling there’s a running joke among the cast and crew that Jen’s marriage to Cooke Maroney could be in trouble -- of course the reality is that Jen is crazy about her husband and Leo who is dating model Camila Morrone has a strict rule never to get involved with costars but still there’s an attraction that can’t be denied 

Page 10: Red Hot on the Red Carpet -- stars get glamorous in glitzy looks -- Alexa Chung, Tiffany Haddish

Page 11: Maya Hawke, Sarah Hyland 

Page 12: Who Wore It Better? Yara Shahidi vs. Cindy Bruna, Becky G vs. Sofia Carson 

Page 13: Celine Dion vs. Shailene Woodley

Page 14: News in Photos -- Jessie James Decker in a pink bikini in Nashville

Page 15: Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt and their son Gunner doing a Christmas card shoot in L.A., Jessica Alba spent the day handing out Honest goodies at the Baby2Baby Holiday Drive-Thru Distribution in L.A. 

Page 16: Gwen Stefani rocked a cat-themed holiday jumpsuit while on the way to the recording studio in Santa Monica, Leighton Meester surfing in Malibu 

Page 17: Maria Sharapova brought back the 1970s during a photoshoot in L.A., Pink kept it casual during a coffee run to Starbucks in L.A., Tia Mowry returned home with a full trunk of gifts and goodies in L.A. 

Page 18: Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra Jonas exploring London 

Page 20: Let’s Get Physical -- Robin Wright took her bicycle out for a spin in L.A., Chris Hemsworth shows off his ripped body while lifting a tire, Winnie Harlow in L.A. 

Page 22: Deck the Halls -- newly-engaged Jonathan Bennett gushed of spending his first Christmas with fiance Jaymes Vaughan, Jonathan and Drew Scott dressed as elves 

Page 23: Jon Bon Jovi and his dog, Selena Gomez with her dog Winnie in front of the Christmas tree, Brooke Burke kicked off the season by signing ornaments that will be auctioned off by Operation Smile 

Page 24: Malin Akerman arranged the sheets and blankets and pillows at a Hotel Style Collection from Walmart event in NYC, Jeremy Renner filmed a scene for Hawkeye in NYC, Chrishell Stause stepped out for a morning walk with her rescue pooch Gracie in L.A. 

Page 26: Inside My Home -- Marc Anthony’s elegant estate in Coral Gables, Florida 

Page 28: Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart are planning to renew their vows on Valentine’s Day which is 12 years to the day after Harrison proposed to Calista on their sprawling Jackson Hole, Wyoming ranch -- Calista is incredibly touched that Harrison is organizing this and he’s thoughtfully arranging to have her favorite flowers to be flown in and has already booked a local band and a caterer and baker 

Page 29: Emily Blunt and John Krasinski might be ready for baby No. 3 but friends are encouraging them to get their marriage on track first -- the two have had a tough couple of years and John can be hard to deal with and cranky when he’s working -- while the duo tend to put a super-positive spin on their marriage in public not everyone is convinced things are so rosy at home but Emily wants another child and so does John so they’re willing to take the risk 

* Meghan Markle and Prince Harry plan to kick off 2021 with a much-needed tropical vacation -- after an emotionally turbulent year Meghan and Harry are ready for this break -- following a quiet Christmas at home the couple is looking forward to relaxing on a warm beach somewhere, sleeping in, soaking up nature’s beauty and reconnecting as a couple -- they’re considering a private island in Hawaii or off the coast of Fiji 

Page 30: Taylor Swift who’s been collecting bridal magazines and wedding ideas since she was a teen will have to adjust to the idea of a small sequestered affair when her boyfriend Joe Alwyn officially pops the question -- the once-outgoing singer has turned into a hermit since hooking up with the British actor who insists on total privacy and loathes attention and now Tay’s inner circle is said to be worried that in Joe’s continued efforts to fly under the radar he’ll ultimately nix the lavish nuptials Taylor’s long envisioned

* Justin Timberlake and Olivia Wilde have a past -- dating briefly in 2011 and costarring in two films but they won’t have a future if Justin’s wife Jessica Biel has any say -- Justin is eager to work with newly single Olivia again but the collab between the old pals is a total no-no as far as Jess is concerned because she’s always seen Olivia as a threat and particularly now that she’s split from Jason Sudeikis

* Love Bites -- Bachelor Nation’s Emily Ferguson and hockey player William Karlsson are engaged, Christina Milian and Matt Pokora have another baby on the way, Gleb Savchenko and Cassie Scerbo dating 

Page 32: Cover Story -- Ashton Kutcher haunted by his past -- the actor is wrestling with major demons and regrets -- the grisly murder of his then-girlfriend Ashley Ellerin has stayed with him -- Ashton and wife Mila Kunis have weathered some storms but they’re in a good place now

Page 36: Celebrity Dads and Their Darling Daughters -- Michael and Carys Douglas, John and Ella Bleu Travolta, Lionel and Sofia Richie 

Page 37: Don and Dakota Johnson, Phil and Lily Collins 

Page 38: Ryan and Ava Phillippe, Mark and Lola Consuelos, Johnny and Lily-Rose Depp 

Page 39: Lenny and Zoe Kravitz, Clint and Francesca Eastwood, Alec and Ireland Baldwin, Rod and Ruby Stewart 

Page 40: Interview -- Charlize Theron does it all -- the actress, mom and producer talks about taking on projects that are close to her heart 

Page 42: New Year, New You -- kick-start a healthy 2021 with these celeb-approved wellness resolutions 

Page 46: Style Week -- Good American cofounded by Khloe Kardashian recently launched its first-ever footwear collection 

Page 54: Entertainment 

Page 55: Q&A with Brian Austin Green 

Page 58: Buzz -- Prince George and Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis joined their parents Prince William and Duchess Kate on the red carpet for the very first time and held hands on their way to London’s Palladium to watch the National Lottery’s Pantoland

Page 60: Sound Bites -- Gwyneth Paltrow on getting starstruck, Kurt Russell on wife Goldie Hawn’s penchant for sleeping in total darkness, Jimmy Fallon on which SNL costar he’d want to be stuck on a desert island with (Tina Fey), Chrissy Teigen on being embarrassed 

Page 61: Megan Thee Stallion on the guidance she gets from Jay-Z and Beyonce, Frances McDormand on hooking up with husband Joel Coen, Chad Michael Murray on seeing pics from his heartthrob days, Rachel Brosnahan on what the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel fans can look forward to 

Page 62: Horoscope -- Capricorn John Legend turned 42 on December 28

Page 64: By the Numbers -- Larry David 

[queen-of-deans-booty]

the reader is a wolf and she gets taken by a hunter and Sam & Dean have to save her. 🙃🐺

march freebie challenge

a/n: sorry it’s so short and sweet. i wanted to get to the interaction between the reader and the brothers quicker

When you’re in your wolf form, you can only do so much to protect yourself. You can only bark and growl with the threat you might bite if hunters get too close to you. Hunters have weapons, and they know how to use them on animals like you. Why didn’t you change back? You couldn’t. Every full moon, as cliche as it sounds, you’re forced into your wolf form whether you like it or not.

Sometimes, it takes days for you to regain your strength to turn back to your human form. Sometimes, it only takes hours. This time, however, it’s taking longer than usual. Whatever the hunter put inside those tranquilizer darts keeps you from shifting. You don’t know how they’re doing it, but all you can rely on right now is Sam and Dean to rescue you.

“What are we going to do with her?” one of the hunters who kidnapped you asks the other.

“We study her. See how she ticks. Werewolves don’t shift into actual wolves, she does. Why?”

“What about when she shifts back?”

“As long as we pump her with these, she won’t,” he grins and brandishes a dart gun.

He aims it at you, and you cower further into the corner of the small cage.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Dean growls from behind the hunters.

He places the barrel of his gun flush against the back of one of the hunter’s heads, and Sam does the same with the other. Seeing them appear gets you excited, and you have nothing to fear anymore. You stand up on all fours and bark at them.

“Drop it,” Sam orders.

The hunters have no choice and drop the dart gun. With the weapon out of the way, both brothers slam the butts if their guns against the hunters’ heads. They drop immediately, and stay out.

Sam rushes to your cage and pries it open, and you run and jump into his arms. You lick the side of his face, and he smiles so hard that his dimples pop out.

“Good to see you too, Y/N,” he chuckles.

You get off him and run to Dean, jumping into his arms. He easily catches you as if you’ve done this a million times (you have).

“You really thought we wouldn’t come for you?” he asks.

He carries you out of the hunter’s house with his brother. You’re content with being in his arms for the time being. You moan and whimper at his question, but all he can do is kiss the side of your head.

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to let anything happen to my girl,” he grins.

[gofancyninjaworld]

OPM in 2019, part 2

Yup, this was all too long, so I now have to attend to the manga.  This year, Murata kept his promise from 2018 to deliver regular chapters.  Even the passing of his father only made him take a few weeks off.   

By the numbers.  This year, Murata delivered 24 updates consisting of 624 pages.  It may not be the banner year of 2017 2018, but it still averages out at more than 50 pages a month.  He also drew 113 pages for volume releases in extra chapters, volume-only content and chapter redraws.  We thank you for your hard work, Mr. Murata!  

As to the words and pictures, much more below the cut!

beautiful and poignant -- probably the best cover this year. 

Be warned: this contains major plot spoilers

Broad Strokes

Last year focussed on the Hero Association response to the Monster Association, gathering up heroes, sorting out battle plans and sending them into the field. In the course of the war effort, the characters whom we’ve been following most consistently all got parked in one place or another.  We turned decisively away from Saitama, Genos, Garou, Fubuki, Bang, and King to focus on what the other heroes were doing, getting to know many more of them.   

This year, we’ve seen the first triumphant contact the heroes made gradually be eroded away as the monsters launch their counter-attack and one by one the parked characters have been brought back into the story to varying effect.  

2020 is promising to be the showdown year that will give us the final denouement, but I can’t promise that.  What I can promise is a closer look at the major themes of 2019.

Orochi

From half-assed plot to bad-ass plan

The first big thing is just how important Monster King Orochi has been to the story. More specifically, it's crazy how vital a linchpin he has been to Psykos’s humanity extermination plan.  The webcomic that doesn’t have Orochi makes her plan a sick joke. Like, seriously, how was Psykos planning to take over the world? In the webcomic, if things had gone to plan and she'd gotten rid of the heroes sent to the Monster Association, what then?  Not enough monsters to kill billions of people and no way to get the monsters that she does have there.  Monsters are also terribly uncooperative and undisciplined. The long-term cooperation to kill billions of people just isn’t going to happen -- without the clear, limited goal that killing Class S heroes was, they’ll just split up.  Society wasn't about to fall into a weeping puddle: we’ve seen both in the manga and the webcomic that there are loads of strong people, and that people are resilient and adaptable. It's like, that was a total idiot plot from the outset.  It’d end in failure as society adapted faster than the bickering monsters (those that didn’t leave) appreciated. 

yeah, you and what army?

On the other hand, Monster King Orochi makes Pyskos's dream a credible reality.  First, thanks to him, she got the cooperation of monsters like Elder Centipede, who was particularly important in the lead up to the Monster Association’s declaration of war.  It dug enough tunnels that monsters could appear simultaneously in multiple cities throughout the world.  Second, thanks to Orochi, she got millions of monster cells which meant that huge chunks of the population could be simultaneously monsterised in multiple locations, each able to help kill off the rest of humanity.  Their dry run two days previous to the current manga events confirmed that humanity simply couldn't cope with monsters showing up in so many places at once and yes, now they had a shot.  They could kill off the powerful organised heroes and then quickly make civilised life impossible before any credible fight back could be organised. 

This plan works.

when you realise that it’d only take a couple of hours to replenish the Monster Association’s forces

If that's all Orochi could do, it'd be plenty.  It made a bad, half-assed idiot plot into a real threat. But that's not all.  He's a crazy powerful monster, one Psykos was counting on to deal the death blow to the most powerful heroes, especially Tatsumaki.

Unfortunately for Psykos,  Saitama seems to have given Orochi a bad case of the deads.  And Amai Mask seems to have destroyed her precious store of monster cells.   Unless she have a back up depot of monster cells, her humanity extermination plan has hit a real snag. Many fans do hold out hope that Orochi isn't dead-dead and may Awaken to be real trouble.  But we'll see.

Acceptance

Speaking of Saitama and Orochi, something very important happened to Saitama’s character development that simply hasn’t happened yet in the webcomic.  Saitama accepted that yes, he’s just the strongest being alive.

We’ve seen Saitama struggle with not finding a worthy challenge.  He has bargained with it, dreaming of being weak enough to find the Subterraneans a threat.  He has been angry about it, shouting his outrage when Vaccineman died after one hit.  He has been depressed about it; we saw his whole collapse in the wake of the Superfight which led him to opening up to King.  And now, when he heard Orochi trying to introduce himself, he realised that this was just another useless blowhard like the jerk who’d kicked him to the moon and cut it short.  ‘What makes you so special?’ ‘Come at me then, but I’m expecting nothing.’

all according to expectation

It’s so rare to see Saitama show any character development, so this moment, small as it is, is really a profound step forward for the character.  We will see what happens as a result in chapters to come. 

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity

Good luck that is.  And that’s been shining on Psykos despite the setback of losing Orochi.  All the work we’ve seen her put in since chapter 57, observing heroes, sending out monsters to attack them and then seeing how they respond, has finally paid off.  

Between chapters 94 and 112, the manga really showed us precisely why the Class S heroes were so respected as the ultimate answer to the worst of the worst monsters. 

And now, by carefully siccing the right super-powerful monster on hero, Psykos has achieved what looked impossible: defeat Class S heroes en masse.

and bad luck is what happens when lack of preparation meets a challenge

It’s perfect, save monsters have a long-documented love of savouring their prey and aren’t killing the heroes as fast as they should.  Silly things: they leave the window open to rescue.

Machinations

A cyborg makes wild accusations...

Holy moly, has any hero’s stock risen and sunk as fast as Drive Knight’s has? In the space of a month, two updates, this enigmatic hero went from the new darling of the fandom to at best, a very self-interested ‘hero’ and at worst, the very traitor Metal Knight warned Child Emperor about.

We’ve known nothing about Drive Knight, what he did and just why he had a top ten ranking.  Well, we got a great masterclass in why when with a fantastic combination of power and guile, he defeated the cadre Nyan, making him the first hero other than Saitama to do so.  In fact Drive Knight is so polished in both the type of technology he has and the fluency with which he wields it that he makes Genos look like a glorified garage project. Oh wait... that’s accurate, isn’t it?

looking like Boros’s long-lost cousin, Drive Knight’s gold splendour

It’s what Drive Knight did next that set audiences against him. First, we learned that he watched the support heroes get cut down while he formulated the perfect plan. Okay, maybe he’s just a cold operator.   Second, the terrifying efficiency with which he pumped Sekingar for information on the vulnerability of the Hero Association, then failed to protect him when G-5 showed up to stop Sekingar from reporting back to the Hero Association.  Third, while we’ve known that Drive Knight is no fan of Metal Knight, accusing the latter of deliberately supplying the Monster Association is another story.  It has left us wondering whether Drive Knight is simply paranoid -- or is looking to deflect suspicion from himself.  What is not in question is that there really is a visitor from The Organisation harvesting the very data Drive Knight is worried about for the very purposes he outlines.  

Drive Knight did not look best pleased when Genos intervened in affairs and destroyed G-5, but handed over (or cut his losses?) peaceably enough.  For some reason, Drive Knight still seems to think that Genos is on his side, still going ‘we’ and making a distinction between them and the rest of humanity when explaining his desire to leave with Nyan. Why?

We have no idea when Drive Knight will reappear or quite what side he’s on, but one thing is for sure: he’s a powerful mover in this world and is bound to pose some dread challenge when he does. 

...but a greedy old man looks set to pay dearly

Top shadenfreude for me: if G5 didn't successfully remotely transmit everything it'd learned about the Metal Knight back, then Bofoi will be in the painful position of having to acknowledge that Genos got his wrinkly little nuts out of the fire. Yup, that guy Bofoi refused to help and left to die the first time he met.  That guy he started a whispering campaign against at the Hero Association.  That one. 

By the time Sekingar gets back and gives his story, Dr Bofoi will have most of the story. Once Child Emperor reports in,  Bofoi will have put all the bits together.  He’ll understand that he dodged a very large bullet as The Organisation had successfully hacked into his robot. And he was lucky their emissary didn't live to report its findings.   

How did Bofoi get in this shitty position?  By getting greedy.  He was so desperate to get a sample of Elder Centipede’s armour that he had his robot cling on and get carried into the Monster Association base.  And then let it sit and listen in. He didn’t budget on Orochi being able to disable the robot before he could trigger its self-destruct sequence. 

unfortunately for Bofoi, the Monster Association isn’t quite as selfish as he is and had no problem letting The Organisation harvest what it could of the machine they couldn’t themselves use.

It’s super unlikely that the Hero Association will take Drive Knight’s words uncritically, but they’re not stupid people -- they’ll understand that a major security breach has occurred. Suffer a little, Dr. Bofoi.

Old Players, New Roles

This year we have had no new characters introduced.  But we have had cause to re-evaluate several that we thought we knew. 

Sekingar was totally the breakout star here, surprising himself probably more than anyone else in finding that he truly did have what it took to be a hero.  I won’t go into it, full breakdown here.   What I will say is that unlike someone like Suiryu, who is just an ordinary person, Sekingar is very highly  placed within the Hero Association and looks set to be promoted further.  What he has to say and enact about the way heroes operate WILL have a disproportionate effect on the Hero Association, its future and maybe humanity’s safety. 

heroism is what you find when there are no good options but you do the right thing anyway

Genos continued to develop this year.  Last fight, he’d been devastated at not having been able to save any heroes.  This time out, saving people and showing a real resolve to take the fight to the monsters is front and centre of his actions, finally ending the hostage rescue part of the Hero Association plans.

it’s one thing to see a hero standing on top of a dead monster, but seeing this tiny guy on an armoured carrier and knowing that he could kill everybody in the convoy effortlessly did more to sell the insanity of Class S to me than many monster fights could. No wonder ordinary men call them monsters.

Two big changes from the webcomic to the manga have been first, splitting Genos off from the rest so he has to act out of his own heart rather than being carried along/supported by others. And second, giving him information about the monsters so he can descend to Hell with open eyes.  If any webcomic readers thought that Genos was being impulsive and naive when he took on the cadres rather than brave, the manga decisively lays that to rest.  This boy is truly courageous. 

Finally, the hero most known for scheming to lord it over others (in order to feel better about herself), Fubuki, closed out the year by showing an amazing side to her. 

She’s long hated dealing with strong monsters and Overgrown Pochi is her worst nightmare -- a true terror of a monster. She feels it all: inadequate, scared, frustrated, vulnerable.  Accepts that she’s almost certainly going to die.  And then uses her delusion of leading Bang and Bomb as a source of strength to bolster their bodies and protect them from harm for long enough for them to counter attack.

The bloodshot eye, the veins standing proud out of the sheer effort wrung out of her, the blood running down her face as she faces the monster.  No fucks given about decorum or looks: she’s going down swinging.  Bravo! 

Oh yeah, and Garou woke up.  He seems a bit mad. 

the second-best cover of 2019

[yourcloneboyfriend]

Confession pt2

Part two of this ask, it’s a lot less angsty probably

Hahahahahahahatookmeforeverimsorryyy

Hope you guys like it~❤️

——————————————

It’d been two months since you and Cody had been trapped together on the cruiser, and you hadn’t heard from him since.

After you were rescued you wanted to call out to him, you wanted to tell him the truth. But you were sent from medical check up to medical check up, and once you made it back to Coruscant you received a mandatory psych evaluation.

Now you had no idea what happened to him after that, and it was absolutely killing you. Each day you hoped to walk in to the senate building and see senator Organa and Senator Amidala speaking with General Kenobi, with Cody standing at attention behind him, as they often did. And each day you would be disappointed.

But today you’d gotten word the General Skywalker and Kenobi would be asigned to Coruscant, to guard Senator Amidala. And also that Senator Organa was “loaning” you to Senator Amidala, in hopes of getting more work done so that she could be taken to a safe house. And while the threat on Senator Amidala’s life was less than ideal, you found yourself both excited and terrified at the prospect of seeing Cody again.

When the day of their arrival came you were a mess, metaphorically. Anyone who didn’t know you would certainly not have noticed, but Senator Amidala knew you very well.

“(Y/n)?” Amidala called, you jumped at the sound of her voice. You looked up from the documents you were supposed to be reviewing, but your thoughts prevented you from reading past the first sentence.

“Yes, Senator?” You answered quickly hoping she wouldn’t notice your lack in productivity. She let out a small laugh “What has you so distracted today?” She asked innocently, acting as if she and Senator Organa weren’t conspiring against you. But you didn’t know that.

You inhaled sharply at the question, you really had no excuse to give. Amidala saw your struggle and continued to speak. “Would this have anything to do with what happened while you were on the cruiser with Senator Organa?” You weren’t sure if all your blood rushed to your face or drained from it.

You stared at the Senator in object horror and embarrassment, your mouth agape. How could she possibly know about that? You asked yourself, this had to be some sort of sick joke on Senator Organa’s part!

She stood up from her desk and made her way next to you “I don’t know exactly what happened” she started as she took the holopad from your hands “but An-General Skywalker has told me about how commander Cody has been more rigid since then” your gaze never left the hands on your lap. She continued “especially since the both of you were rescued” you simply shook your head, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to spill.

She nodded her head slowly “I think I understand” as she was about to say something else there was a knock on the door. “Senator Amidala” you heard the call from the other side of the door, it was General Kenobi. You swore you felt your heart stop.

You stood up and opened the door, you were greeted with the faces of General Kenobi and General Skywalker. For a moment you felt disappointed, until a few short seconds later when Cody followed by Captain Rex walked through the door.

As he walked through the door the both of you shared a look, and after that you couldn’t bring yourself to look at him, you weren’t sure what you would do. But you felt his eyes on you, for the entire debriefing.

After the debriefing ended General Kenobi and Cody left the room to do their perimeter checks, as Skywalker and Captain Rex we’re left to guard the senator. And so, for the first time in what seemed like forever, you finally took a shaky breath.

And so for hours after that you simply continued to try and fail to get some work done, luckily it seemed like Senator Amidala was to preoccupied with General Skywalker to notice.

“(Y/n), can you please take these documents to the Chancellor?” Amidala held out some documents for you to take, which you did happily. You all but dashed out of the room, finally distracted from the thoughts that suffocated you.

You had barely made it halfway to the chancellors office when an explosion shook the ground, throwing you out of balance and onto the floor. It wasn’t long before another explosion was heard and the power went out.

The emergency power lit the halls with a red hue that made the whole situation all the more terrifying. As you ran through the windowless halls, the documents long forgotten, you could hear the sound of blaster fire getting closer.

As you turned a corner you came face to face with an armed droid. You felt your heart sink as you opened your mouth to scream, only to find no sound would come out. Tears pricked your eyes as you tried to back away from the droid as it aimed its blaster at you.

Before the droid had a chance to fire though, it was hit over the head with a blaster. The droid stumbled to the ground as your savior fired at his head, deactivating the droid.

The clone quickly pulled you behind him and took cover behind a pillar. He fired a few shots at droids that we’re getting two close to the two of you. These few seconds have you time to recognize the orenge paint on the armor. It was Cody.

After he was momentarily satisfied with the distance of the the droids he turned to you slightly. “What are you doing here?” He asked, more of a demand than anything else. You stuttered out your answer as you flinched each time a shot was fired. “I was trying to find the senator!”. Cody eyed you for a moment, not that you could tell from his helmet, and then shook his head slightly. “Stay behind me!” He ordered, to which you simply nodded.

Everything was moving faster than you could process, you could feel your heart beating a million miles a hour. You hid behind Cody as he continued to shout orders at his men. Once you gathered all your courage you finally managed to look over at the scene, only to be met with the gut wrenching sight of a droid arming a grenade. You grabbed Cody’s shoulder and pointed at the droid. “Cody!”

As he looked in the direction you were pointing, his eyes widened as he saw the grenade land only a few meters from them. “Grenade!” He shouted at his men to take cover as he turned to you.

You closed your eyes and braced for impact as you felt Cody tackle you. You heard the sound of the grenade going as well as something collapsing.

You kept your eyes shut for a few seconds until you felt Cody shift from on top of you. “(Y/n)?” He called out, placing an armored hand on your cheek. You opened your eyes slowly, which were met by your reflection on Cody’s visor. You felt him relax, he looked at the rubble behind him. A part of the ceiling had collapsed, leaving the battle closed off and away from the both of you. You could hear the muffled sound of blaster fire.

This all felt so familiar

You looked at him, ad he looked back at the fallen debris, his breathing was labored and his armor had definitely gained some new bumps and bruises. Cody’s armor was riddled with scratches, burn marks and stains that you could only place as blood. He was always in situations like this.

Cody went to lift himself up, but stopped when he felt your hand on his forearm holding him in place. He looked down at you through the visor on his helmet, confused.

You tried to find the words. Your mouth partially agape, staring up at him.

“I-” Cody faces situations like this every day.

Your words were caught in your throat.

He could have died today

“What’s wrong?” He asked you, inspecting you “were you hurt?” Despite the helmet you could hear the worry in his voice.

He could’ve died after the attack on the cruiser, and you would’ve never seen him again.

You shook your head, tears spilled from your eyes and you let out a choked sob. Cody instantly panicked, sitting you up, placing his free hand on your back for support. Your hand never letting go of him, afraid that he might leave.

He could have died before he even got a chance to tell you, and you would have never known.

The tears streamed down your face, you kept trying to calm yourself, but each time you thought you were calm Cody would try to confort you.

He could die tomorrow

Finally, after what seemed like forever, you stopped crying. You tightened the grip on his arm, not that he could tell because of the armor, and took a deep breath.

“I love you too”

Your breath was shaky, and you refused to let him go, not this time. He stood there, paralyzed. You couldn’t tell what he was thinking, his helmet serving as a shield. Averting your gaze, you continued.

“I wanted to tell you back then” you focused on the new scorch marks on his armor “but I was so surprised, and scared, and when I finally felt I could speak, they found us” you kept rambling, desperately trying to fill the silence “I tried to find you afterwards, but they told me you’d already been deployed and I-”

You were caught off by his movements, his hands raised slowly, as if to tell you that he wasn’t going anywhere. Understanding the unspoken promise, you removed your hand from his arm, allowing him to move freely. Bringing his hands up to his helmet, he removed it with a small hissing noise. Placing his helmet next to him, he looked up at you once again, his expression unreadable. And you weren’t sure what intimidated you more, him staring at you with his helmet on, or without it.

Unable to hold his intense gaze, your eyes found thematic paying attention to anything else besides him. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you-” you’d started rambling again, only to be cut off once more by an armored hand, softly caressing the side of your face.

You could hear the blood pumping in your ears, you still refused to look at him. His other hand came up to cup the other side of your face, he made you face him. Still your eyes roamed.

“(Y/n)” he called softly “look at me” he pleaded. “please” You felt the tears coming again. Your anxiety was replaced by relief once you looked into his eyes. You’d been afraid of finding out he’d began to hate you, that he no longer loved you. But when you looked at him, all you saw was joy, he was relieved, just like you.

You cupped the hands on the side of your face, you were still shaking. Cody pulled you to him, and placed a soft kiss on your lips. Your eyes fluttered closed as his thumbs caressed your cheeks, brushing away the tear stains.

Once you broke away he pressed his forehead to yours, he took your hands in his own and placed a small kiss on them. He closed his eyes, and let out a laugh, it sounded more like a relieved sigh.

Loud blaster fire in the distance interrupted the tender moment, among you jump slightly. Cody moves to grabbed his blaster, while he squeezed your hands with his free one. Once the blaster fire seemed to change direction and fade out, Cody relaxed.

He stood up and replaced his helmet, afterwards he helped you stand up. “We need to go, we can’t be cornered by the enemy by ourselves” he stated seriously and with purpose.

You sighed softly, I guess the moment is over, you thought. As he led you away from the rubble, his hand holding yours tightly didn’t go unnoticed you you. And that made you smile.

[aion-rsa]

Psych 2: Lassie Come Home Easter Egg and Reference Guide

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

The following contains spoilers for Psych 2: Lassie Come Home.

As fun as 2017’s Psych: The Movie was, its 2020 sequel Psych 2: Lassie Come Home will likely supplant it in Psych-Os’ hearts, because it’s got 500% more Carlton Lassiter (Timothy Omundson). But how does it stack up to its predecessor in terms of Psych callbacks and pop culture homages? Using our Spencer powers of observation, we’ve tried to catch every recurring inside joke between Shawn (James Roday Rodriguez) and Gus (Dulé Hill), plus all the episodic-specific bits. It’s a feature-length Hitchcock homage, but it’s also the toughest Easter egg hunt of your life. C’mon, son!

Psych 2: Lassie Come Home Easter Eggs and References

The title is a reference to Lassie Come Home, the 1943 Lassie movie about the beloved dog making her way home from Scotland. A German-language remake came out early in 2020.

It’s always a treat to hear the Psych theme song “I Know, You Know,” performed by creator Steve Franks and his band The Friendly Indians.

Lassiter wakes up to Shawn and Gus hovering above him at the recovery clinic is a throwback to when they kidnapped him for his bachelor party in “Deez Nups” and he came to with them screaming “Surpriiise!”

Morrissey the rescue dog reprises his role from Psych: The Movie in being adorable, incredibly nosy, and oblivious to Shawn’s hissing commands.

Sarah Chalke’s nurse character Dolores is most likely a nod to San Francisco’s Mission Dolores church and cemetery, the location for Carlotta Valdes’ grave in Vertigo.

Right out the gate, Dolores is treated to the requisite Gus nickname: “My name is Shawn Spencer, and this is my partner Bill Poopingtons.” However, Shawn and Gus take a sidebar for a very meta argument about their ongoing bit (while fitting in another bit):

“Gus, don’t be the night your dad fell asleep inside your mom. We can’t just stop doing bits we’ve been doing for ten years. We have fans, they have expectations, there’ll be a huge backlash.”

“Shawn, we are two dumbasses, we do not have fans.”

Compromise: Gus gets right of refusal until they land on a nickname he prefers. And so:

Bill Poopingtons > All the Pips in One

Ding-Dong Ditch > Claude O’Dern > Big Poppa Pump > Lemon-a Lemon-a Lemon-a Liiime

Leggo My Eggo > Norman Brown Butter > Dijon Hounsou

Gus also calls himself Jermajesty, channeling some Jackson Five energy.

“Black Jello” was Gus’ nickname in their adult dodgeball league.

The Herschel House is likely a nod to Herschel Daugherty, who directed over two dozen episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents…

Gus and Shawn are still bickering over driving the drivers ed car, even if we don’t see it in the movie. They do manage to be just as bad at turning the right direction when riding a motorcycle together.

“Now I know this ‘goofy little white guy/sexy black dude’ routine the two of you have going like the back of my scrubs.” Sarah Chalke played Elliot on Scrubs, whose JD/Turk bromance walked so that Shawn/Gus could run.

Shawn calls Dolores “the nurse from Color of Night,” the 1994 Bruce Willis erotic mystery thriller that won a Golden Raspberry for Worst Picture.

The boys get Jamba Juice because you never turn down an opportunity for a Jamba.

Shawn likens Gus’ pubic hair to Eddie Murphy’s mustache in his 1987 stand-up film Raw.

Shawn offers the dismembered hand to Gus to “knuck it up softly,” per their penchant for fist-bumping. 

They later do fist-bump outside the old Psych offices, but not before channeling Han Solo and Chewbacca in Star Wars: The Force Awakens: “Gus, we’re home.” “[Wookiee sound]”

Psych has become a French-themed cat café… for now, at least. It’s not an alternative universe from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, but the current subletter’s pop-up business. The proprietor (not the girl from Orphan) is played by Allison Miller, James Roday Rodriguez’s co-star in A Million Little Things.

“I am a psychic. He is a sympathetic pooper.” Poor Gus’ intestinal system gets called out again.

Henry’s (Corbin Bernsen) put-on voice gets compared to Tom Waits, Kathleen Turner, Harvey Fierstein, and Diedrich Bader.

Shawn neglected to tell his landlord that he’d moved, which tracks with his behavior in the series finale “The Break-Up.”

Henry reveals that in addition to telenovelas, he enjoys zeitgeist-y sobfests: “You left behind a slow cooker with a three-pound roast in it. You nearly This Is Us-ed the entire block.”

“This Is Us—Dad, why are you watching that show? They have the same show on ABC but newer”: Shawn’s shoutout to A Million Little Things.

Lassiter mistakes Reese Kessler, his supposed shooter, for country music singer Conway Twitty.

Lassiter’s to-do list includes “tape Galavant,” the short-lived musical comedy fantasy series created by Dan Fogelman (This Is Us), in which Timothy Omundson played King Richard. It also includes items poking fun at Lassiter’s crankiness (“yell at nature,” “chirping bird d-day plan”) and tenacity (“solve black dahlia”), and heartstring-tugging items (“pre-register for ironman” as in the triathlon). He also has written down Shawn’s S.E.I.Z.E. mantra from his short-lived career as Lassiter’s life coach in “S.E.I.Z.E. the Day”: Seize Eggs I don’t know Zebra Eighties.

Juliet (Maggie Lawson) lying to Shawn sounds strange, though not as strange as Lupita Nyong’o—the Tethered Lupita—in Jordan Peele’s Us.

Shawn’s “romantic dinner” for Jules is the menu from A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (jelly beans, pretzels, buttered toast, popcorn, and ice cream sundaes) because it’s all they had at the gas station on the way home.

That prompts an iconic “C’mon, son!” from Gus.

Gus’ ringtone is “I’m Mr. Bootyman,” which is both Henry’s ringtone and the song featured in Buzz McNab’s bachelorette party stripper routine in “Deez Nups.”

Gus’ (technically Jules’) green snuggie bears a striking resemblance to official Psych contest merch.

Lassiter spotting mysterious bleeding figures out his window is an homage to Rear Window.

Richard Schiff (as Dr. Herschel) was Dulé Hill’s co-star in The West Wing.

Potterhead Gus wants to know if there are any people hiding in the pipes of the Herschel House, “speaking in their own tongue, perhaps Parsel.”

The Psych boys’ map of suspects briefly includes the Hell Hag from Gus’ dreams in “A Nightmare on State Street.”

Shawn has only been to Norway once with his brother-in-law Ewan O’Hara (John Cena), but they don’t talk about that… Maybe that’s where Psych: The Movie went after its cliffhanger ending?

Ova’s Norwegian song/chant toast at the Viking’s Ice Den is very similar to the Swedish toast in “Right Turn or Left for Dead.”

Ova’s violent son Per is first described as “the bearded Daryl Hannah.”

Shawn’s excuse to Detective Buzz McNab (Sage Brocklebank) for being in Santa Barbara is that he forgot a frisbee signed by German writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.

Shawn’s first reaction to Jules potentially being pregnant: “You know the windows in the loft don’t even fully close, right? I’m gonna have to replace them, otherwise this is Baby’s Day Out all over again.” As Gus reassures him, he always did get worked up over John Hughes’ worst idea.

At the old Psych offices, Shawn pulls out the jousting lance from “100 Clues”—as well as a pineapple! He looks about to ask, “Should we cut this up for the road?” (his question during the pineapple’s first appearance in the pilot, plus at the end of Psych: The Movie) but stops himself.

When Lassie believes that fellow patient Mr. Wilkerson (Kadeem Hardison) has been walking around, Shawn and Gus have to go “full Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” to interrogate the supposedly catatonic patient.

Shoutout to Jessie Spano’s infamous “I’m so excited, I’m so excited, I’m so scared!” speed speech from Saved by the Bell.

If it’s not Scrubs, the boys are getting compared to Ren and Stimpy.

Mary Lightly (Jimmi Simpson) returns in another incredible, extra-hallucinatory look into Shawn’s brain… this time as a baby, since Shawn’s got fatherhood on the brain.

“We got jackaled!” Gus shouts upon learning that Wilkerson can walk—a reference to “hitting the jackal switch,” or going into stealth mode.

Shawn has always had a thing for singer Jewel, even after the Civil War movie (1999’s Ride with the Devil) and the Bollywood song.

Of course there’s a nasty dance when Shawn and Gus figure out who they think is behind everything.

Gus declares that “I am not going to let you shoot Shules’ baby!” only for the Chief (Kirsten Nelson) to ask, “What’s a Shules?” That’s the fans’ name for Shawn/Jules, a cute nod to a series OTP.

And of course, we can’t forget the fact that Jazmyn Simon, who plays Selene, is Dulé Hill’s real-life wife.

More than once, Shawn quotes The Handmaid’s Tale in reference to Gus and Selene’s baby: “Praise be” and “Blessed is the fruit.”

Dolores compliments Lassiter’s “chest of hair plentiful enough to wake all of Destiny’s Child.”

Shawn comes up with possible names for Gus’ child: Shaft, Shaftie, or D’Shaft—just like Gus’ nickname Sh’Dynasty (with a “God’s comma,” or apostrophe) from “Santabarbaratown.”

They also both coo “c’mon son” to Selene’s womb.

Selene’s proposal to Gus includes his negotiation that he and Shawn have adjacent homes with connecting pools, a callback to Shawn and Gus talking about their dream setup in “The Break-Up”; as well as Pluto! She asks, “Will you make me the happiest woman on this planet, on Eres, and Pluto?”

Shawn tells Juliet that “you’re my person,” the iconic Grey’s Anatomy line (though one would argue that Gus more accurately is his person).

When Lassiter stands (shut up, you’re crying) to meet Marlowe (Kristy Swanson), they place their palms together—like they did when he would visit her in jail, like they did at their wedding. My heart.

Join us on the Easter egg hunt—let us know what references we missed!

The post Psych 2: Lassie Come Home Easter Egg and Reference Guide appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2CDgzPr

[dandymeowth]

On the outskirts of the city, power lines sag and buzz, overloaded with electrons as the demand for air conditioning soars and the entire grid is pushed to the limit. In an Arizona heat wave, electricity is not a convenience, it is a tool for survival.

As the mercury rises, people die. The homeless cook to death on hot sidewalks. Older folks, their bodies unable to cope with the metabolic stress of extreme heat, suffer heart attacks and strokes. Hikers collapse from dehydration. As the climate warms, heat waves are growing longer, hotter, and more frequent. Since the 1960s, the average number of annual heat waves in 50 major American cities has tripled. They are also becoming more deadly. Last year, there were 181 heat-related deaths in Arizona’s Maricopa County, nearly three times the number from four years earlier. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 2004 and 2017, about a quarter of all weather-related deaths were caused by excessive heat, far more than other natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes.

...........

“What will the Hurricane Katrina of extreme heat look like?” he wonders aloud as we sit in a cafe near the ASU campus. Katrina, which hit New Orleans in 2005, resulting in nearly 2,000 deaths and more than $100 billion in economic damage, demonstrated just how unprepared a city can be for extreme climate events.

“Hurricane Katrina caused a cascading failure of urban infrastructure in New Orleans that no one really predicted,” Chester explains. “Levees broke. People were stranded. Rescue operations failed. Extreme heat could lead to a similar cascading failure in Phoenix, exposing vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the region’s infrastructure that are difficult to foresee.”

In Chester’s view, a Phoenix heat catastrophe begins with a blackout.

..........

When the city goes dark, the order and convenience of modern life begin to fray. Without air conditioning, temperatures in homes and office buildings soar. (Ironically, new, energy-efficient buildings are tightly sealed, making them dangerous heat traps.) Traffic signals go out. Highways gridlock with people fleeing the city. Without power, gas pumps don’t work, leaving vehicles stranded with empty tanks. Water pipes crack from the heat, and water pumps fail, leaving people scrounging for fresh water. Hospitals overflow with people suffering from heat exhaustion and heatstroke. If there are wildfires, the air will become hazy and difficult to breathe. If a blackout during extreme heat continues for long, rioting, looting, and arson could begin.

And people will start dying. How many? “Katrina-like numbers,” Chester predicts. Which is to say, thousands. Chester describes all this coolly, as if a Phoenix heat apocalypse is a matter of fact, not hypothesis.

“How likely is this to happen?” I ask.

“It’s more a question of when,” Chester says, “not if.”

Extreme heat is the most direct, tangible, and deadly consequence of our hellbent consumption of fossil fuels. Rising carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere trap heat, which is fundamentally changing our climate system. “Think of the Earth’s temperature as a bell curve,” says Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann. “Climate change is shifting the bell curve toward the hotter end of the temperature scale, making extreme-heat events more likely.” As the temperature rises, ice sheets are melting, seas are rising, hurricanes are getting more intense, rainfall patterns are changing (witness the recent flooding in the Midwest). Drought and flooding inflict tremendous economic damage and create political chaos, but extreme heat is much more likely to kill you directly. The World Health Organization predicts heat stress linked to the climate crisis will cause 38,000 extra deaths a year worldwide between 2030 and 2050. A recent study published in Nature Climate Change found that by 2100, if emissions continue to grow, 74 percent of the world’s population will be exposed to heat waves hot enough to kill. “The more warming you have, the more heat waves you have,” says Michael Wehner, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “The more heat waves you have, the more people die. It’s a pretty simple equation.”

.........

Extreme heat is already transforming our world in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Disney executives recently voiced concern that rising temperatures will significantly reduce the number of visits to their parks. In Germany, officials were forced to put a speed limit on the autobahn because of fears the road would buckle from heat. The U.S. military has already incurred as much as $1 billion in costs during the past decade — from lost work, retraining, and medical care — due to the health impacts of heat. The warming of the planet “will affect the Department of Defense’s ability to defend the nation and poses immediate risks to U.S. national security,” a recent DOD report said. Forests and soils are drying out, contributing to explosive and unprecedented wildfires. Habitation zones for plants and animals are changing, forcing them to adapt to a warmer world or die. A U.N. report found that 1 million species are at risk of extinction in the coming decades. Another study by researchers at MIT suggests that rising temperatures and humidity may make much of South Asia, including parts of India and Pakistan, too hot for human existence by the end of the century. As scientist Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute in California, told me, “There is a shocking, unreported, fundamental change coming to the habitability of many parts of the planet, including the USA.”

.................

But the greatest risk to human health may be in areas that are already hot, where temperature increases will strain habitability. In the U.S., the fastest-warming cities are in the Southwest. Las Vegas, El Paso, Tucson, and Phoenix have warmed the most, each by at least 4.3°F since 1970. Globally, many of the hottest cities are in India. In May, a deadly heat wave sent temperatures above 120°F in the north. The desert city of Churu recorded a high of 123°F, nearly breaking India’s record of 123.8°F, set in 2016. There were warnings not to go outside after 11 a.m. Authorities poured water on roads to keep them from melting. A 33-year-old man was reportedly beaten to death in a fight over water. The preliminary death toll in India for this summer’s heat wave is already more than 200, and that number is likely to grow.

How hot will it get? That depends largely on how far and how fast carbon-dioxide levels rise, which depends on how much fossil fuel the world continues to burn. The Paris Climate Agreement (which President Trump pulled the U.S. out of) aims to limit the warming to 3.6°F (2°C). Given the current trajectory of carbon pollution, hitting that target is all but impossible. Unless nations of the world take dramatic action soon, we are headed for a warming of at least 5.4°F (3°C) by the end of the century, making the Earth roughly as warm as it was 3 million years ago during the Pliocene era, long before Homo sapiens came along. “Human beings have literally never lived on a planet as hot as it is today,” says Wehner. A 5.4°F-warmer world would be radically different from the one we know now, with cities swamped by rising seas and epic droughts turning rainforests into deserts. The increased heat alone would kill significant numbers of people. A recent report from the University of Bristol estimated that with 5.4°F of warming, about 5,800 people could die each year in New York due to the heat, 2,500 could die in Los Angeles, and 2,300 in Miami. “The relationship between heat and mortality is clear,” Eunice Lo, a climate scientist at the University of Bristol and the lead author of the report, tells me. “The warmer the world becomes, the more people die.”

...........

The psychological impacts of extreme heat are obvious to anyone who’s ever felt cranky on a hot day. But the impacts go beyond crankiness. When temperatures rise, suicide rates can go up at a pace similar to the impact of economic recessions. Some aspects of higher cognition are impaired. School test scores decline, with one study showing decreases across five measures of cognitive function, including reaction times and working memory.

The link between heat and violence is particularly intriguing. “There is growing evidence of a psychological mechanism that is impacted by heat, although we can’t yet say exactly what that is,” says Solomon Hsiang, a professor of public policy at Berkeley. Some scientists speculate that higher temperatures impact neurotransmitters in the brain, resulting in lower levels of serotonin, which has been shown to lead to aggressive behavior. So rising heat may literally alter the chemistry in our brains. One study showed that police officers were more likely to fire on intruders during training exercises when it was hot. Andrew Shaver, a professor of political science at the University of California, Merced, analyzed data about conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and found that attacks by insurgents involving RPGs and assault rifles increased with higher temperatures, while planned attacks did not. “During conflicts, higher temperatures seem to provoke more impulsive aggression,” Shaver says. One speculative paper projects that by 2099, due to rising heat, the U.S. could see an additional 22,000 murders, 180,000 rapes, 3.5 million assaults, and 3.76 million robberies, burglaries, and acts of larceny.

...............

A recent poll found that two-thirds of Arizonans accept that climate change is happening, but most elected officials in the state, including Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, are hardly climate activists. Arizona is one of the sunniest states in the nation, and yet only 6.5 percent of the state’s electricity comes from solar power. A statewide ballot initiative in 2018 to require 50 percent renewable power by 2030 was soundly defeated, in part because the parent company of Arizona Public Service, the big public utility in the state, spent more than $37 million on false and misleading arguments about how transitioning to renewable power would raise power bills and destroy the Arizona economy.

“We have a large number of elected officials who don’t believe in climate change, period,” says Stacey Champion, a longtime Phoenix energy and climate activist. “How do you get effective, data-driven policy if you have people pushing hard against it because they are batshit crazy, or they are afraid it will spook companies like Nike who want to come here?”

....................

Air conditioning is one of those paradoxical modern technologies that creates just as many problems as it solves. For one thing, it requires a lot of energy, most of which comes from fossil fuels. AC and fans already account for 10 percent of the world’s energy consumption. Globally, the number of air-conditioning units is expected to quadruple by 2050. Even accounting for modest growth in renewable power, the carbon emissions from all this new AC would result in a more than 0.9°F increase in global temperature by the year 2100.

Cheap air conditioning is like crack cocaine for modern civilization, keeping us addicted and putting off serious thinking about more creative (and less fossil-fuel-intensive) solutions. Air conditioning also creates a kind of extreme heat apartheid. If you’re rich, you have a big house with enough air conditioning to chill a martini. And if you are poor, like Leonor Juarez, a 46-year-old single mother whom I met on a recent July afternoon when the temperature was hovering around 115°F, you live in South Phoenix, where sidewalks are dirt and trees are few, and you hope you can squeeze enough money out of your paycheck to run the AC for a few hours on hot summer nights.

On hot days, Juarez’s small apartment feels like a cave. She has heavy purple curtains on the windows to block the sun. “I could not live here without air conditioning,” she tells me. Because she has poor credit, she doesn’t qualify for the usual monthly billing from Salt River Project, her utility. Instead, to pay for electricity and keep her AC running, SRP has given her a card reader that plugs into an outlet that she has to feed like a jukebox to keep the power on. Juarez turns on her AC only a few hours a day — still, her electric bill can run $500 a month during the summer, which is more than she pays for rent. To Juarez, who takes a bus five miles to a laundromat in the middle of the night because washing machines are discounted to 50 cents a load after 1 a.m., $500 is a tremendous amount of money.

She shows me the meter on the card reader: She has $49 worth of credit on it, enough for a few more days of power. And when that runs out? “I am in trouble,” she says bluntly. Juarez, who works as an in-home caretaker for the elderly, says she knows of several people who lived alone and died when they failed to pay their electric bills and tried to live without AC.

[tcrmommabear]

The Weight of Debts Unpaid

Hi, I’m a terrible fandom mom and best friend, but I’m crawling out of the hell-hole work has buried me in to toss this very late birthday present into the wild, wild world.

So, my lovely @catsafarithewriter, I promised Emara AU, my favorite creation of yours besides the lovely face you maintain (and everything else you’ve written), and by god was I going to give you Emara AU

A few months late.

You can expect your Christmas present on Valentine’s Day XD

Threw in my own theories and slight headcanons, but I’m still excited for when we get the official version of the AU. You know I’ll be screaming and cheering from the stands XD

Let us begin!

He was heavy in her arms.

Not a surprise when his body is half wood and all dead weight. She’s feeling it in her legs as well, the feeling of something viciously sucking at her soul, but really, she’s done this well without legs. Who needs them with arms like these?

He’s still heavy.

The hallways stretch for miles, barely different from one to the next. Swathed in red and carrying the heavy pinging blare of alarms miles ahead of where they started. She doesn’t feel like she’s made any difference running through these halls, finding no relief, no sanctuary, just a million different eyes and guns trained on her limping form.

He’s so god damn heavy.

There’s a door cracked open from fleeing cats who couldn’t be bothered to follow evacuation protocol. She crashes into it and through it, pulling it full shut until the locking mechanism clicked louder than the alarms.

Silence reigned in the small room, the alarms cut off mid dutiful shriek, but the world remained red, flashing through the unnecessary window watching the hallway.

She sets him down as gently as she can spare, sinking a bit more harshly onto her knees before him. He’s still lifeless, torn between two wholes until they couldn’t even form a half. Skin, fur, and wood melted and warred together, fighting for the right to be called “horror”.

In theory, she knew this was what Macavity had planned. Pushing, pulling, twisting, breaking in the name of thoughtless science. Experimenting until every idle curiosity had been fulfilled. Seeing the product of such twisted ideas made her stomach recoil.

His chest rose in sections, eyes startling real glass, and all the rest of him was the exact shade of wrong she wanted to believe the real one was gone, and this was just a fake. She could maybe walk out of here, leaving behind all of this, this world, this fake doll, and go see her real one-.

He is real. He is her real one.

She wasn’t going to abandon him. Not again.

She raised a hand, pressing them against his “scarred” lips, sinking the tips past the teeth and opens his mouth wide. She spares a second for the squeamish and violating feeling, then pulls out the bottle she’d managed to save from the chaos known as Macavity.

She steals a swig of the formula before making his wooden throat choke the rest of it. Her taste gives her enough energy to unlock her legs from their crouch, falling back against the opposite wall. As fast as it came, it tore through her system and flare uselessly out her damaged, mechanical right knee.

For him, it started slow. Chest rising together section by section until it was a whole, left hand shuddering to replace the claws, the right side of his chin shifting between furry and flesh. His chest became more hurried as magic revitalized itself, fireworks beneath his skin until burning out his eyes, green and blue and yellow.

He hacked the formula onto her lap, the blue liquid hitting her legs and sparking up into her chest. She grunted, knee jerking as the black hole was fed, and as quickly as they hit her system, the flared out again, unable to hold much of a charge.

At least the blue left no stain on her clothes. No clean up necessary, mind-numbing sparks guaranteed or your money back. Legs sold separately.

The process of watching him shift, cat, man, wood, was enough of a show she felt an odd motion sickness surge in her gut. Drenched in guilt and expired Creation juice, but she’d really prefer to blame everything on the flashing red lights, cutting streaks across his face like prison bars.

He got his glare back before his words, though she could read “I will eviscerate you” through the context clues. She had told herself a million things as she stalked through the building towards the highest level lab they locked him in.

That she was righting a wrong. That she’d get revenge against the ones who took both sets of legs. That she was helping a friend.

That he wouldn’t be heavy in her arms.

She doesn’t know what to tell herself now. Not when he’s fully back and glaring at her. She never knew the weight of his glare felt like until now.

“Why?” he hisses out, eyes slit in the human face he fluctuates to. His question is followed by a cough, wheeze, and the cat form fully takes over, the human disguise melting away. Less magic being used now that he’s in his more natural state, doing a terribly accurate impression of a badly animated doll. He looks as terrible as she feels, though she’s sure his slightly wrinkled suit would have some words to exchange with her torn and dirty jeans and shirt.

Her heart constricts.

Why indeed.

She's prepared herself for all scenarios. This one scared her the most. She hadn’t the faintest clue for why she did any of this. Maybe because their partnership wasn’t “just a job” anymore? Maybe because of the way he kissed her hand during tea? Maybe because, despite knowing intimately well the soulless depravity, seeing the results up close had been the final straw?

“Why not?” she supplies, going for nonchalant and falling somewhere between robot and blubbering. The answer isn’t an answer, the exact opposite of an answer, a nonanswer that left both of them dissatisfied and hurt.

But was there really any better one to give?

She sold him out. Let him be experimented on and drained of his magic- his very essence, the equivalent of a soul and blood pumping through your veins- until he was catatonic.

His glare doesn’t drop, and a childish impulse tells her to return it. She didn’t want to be an adult when the he, the world, and all the little regrets were being unfair to her. She knows she fucked up. She gave up her partner, her friend, her confusing source of feelings she did not need to identify right now, for…

Hunks of cogs. Scrap metal. Parasites made of the equivalent of an atomic bomb and lighter fluid sucking at whatever scraps of magic a human could contain. All loving connected to the ends of her thighs and twice as shiny.

She focused too hard on distracting herself, a tear slipping through her “brave” facade. She saw him shift, out of the corner of her eye, from murderous to agonizingly sympathetic.

“Haru…” he begins cautiously, eyeing her legs, “Why haven’t you moved your legs?”

“I didn’t want to do it,” she blurts out, instead of answering, “Turning you in. I didn’t even really want to do the whole “Demeter” thing, but hey, who can say no to Macavity?”

She laughs. He doesn’t. She wishes she hadn’t.

“I knew if I turned myself in, let Macavity know I wasn’t going to do this anymore… He’d just send someone else. Someone not me. And where would I be? Locked in a room with no way to get out.”

She takes in a shuddering breath, “No way to rescue you.”

There’s more life to his appearance, more flesh than bark, but he’s just as stoic as when she began. She sits before him, waiting for something to snake across his face so she can get a read, an idea. But nothing. Green eyes, still faintly glowing, remained fixed on lead, and cogs, and betrayal, and a haphazard reason she could barely stand on.

Hardy har har.

“Okay.”

That’s it?

“That’s it,” he echoes back, just as she realizes she’d said the thought out loud.

“But-” she sputters, attempting to lurch up before remembering her body had taken a democratic vote to be everything but useful and complying, “After every- How could you- Do you have- Do you not realize what betrayal is, Humbert?!”

They both paused at the sound of his name, a moment of red light flashing between that’d been all but forgotten. She wonders, dimly, and not for the first or last time, if that was his real name or one he’d picked up over the years.

“You’ve saved my life countless times, Haru, as yourself and as my partner, Demeter. The betrayal was unexpected, and it hurt, but…”

He looks at her, made up of hope and magic, and she realizes how badly she’d read the moments leading here. How easily fear can come across as anger, confusion as hurt.

Oh.

‘Do you trust me?’

Didn’t know the play, but still willing to play the part.

“I think, Haru, I can afford to put a little trust in you.”

Well, now she’s a goddamn fool.

“Humbert,” she chokes out between tears, “I liked you better when you were emotionally constipated. I can’t handle this emotional rollercoaster.”

The laughter bubbles up unwillingly, shared between the two for a second as the whole situation registered into their minds. For a moment, though, she could almost believe they were just back at the tea shop.

If only the “red alert” alarm could be so kind.

The shrieking beeping stops, the flashing red light pinging on and glowing ominously steady.

Lockdown.

“Shit.”

“We’re trapped, aren’t we?”

“Lesson learned, heart-to-hearts saved for after great escapes.”

“With the state your legs are in, we can’t make it much farther, can we?”

Right, those appendages.

They’re busted from the 9th Hell and back, and can’t hold on to much of a charge. At least not the fake magic solutions usually put into the machine. She knows she can’t move. She knows she can’t stay.

She knows she’s too valuable to kill.

“Baron, you need to-!”

She feels a surge starting in her calves where he’d dug his fingers into the grinding gears, frozen lightning blazing through her veins. It shifts, feels like leaves stretching to sunlight, water running through roots, worms churning in the earth, and she’s back.

The light fades, but her legs click before whirring back to life, lowly humming with an abundance of energy. She catches her breath and watches the mirage of flesh melts away until he’s back to the animated wood form that tells her he’s barely got any magic running through him.

He gave her as much as he could.

She’s furious he gave her so much.

She can’t deny that having her legs devour something other than her own energy isn’t a nice feeling, though. She tests it, bends a knee, and watches it move like magic and machine and a normal human limb. It’s foreign and familiar and she wishes it was neither.

Humbert presses against the door, glancing down each end of the hallway through the window.

“We better get moving. I’m not letting either of us get left behind.”

He offers her a hand to stand up, one of many. But this feels different.

Her legs are heavy on her body.

The magic Humbert poured into her is nothing but crumbs for a black hole.

There’s still a dozen more floors before they’re even close to ground level.

She’s pretty sure her foot isn’t supposed to feel itchy.

“Ready, Haru?” he asks.

Well, they’ve had worse days.

Her hand clasps his.

“Ready.”

[bamby0304]

Her Saviours- Ch.9

Series Masterlist

Summary: During an odd case, the Winchesters came across Y/N, a scared young Omega girl who had been used as a lure for a nest of vampires. After rescuing her from the monsters, John and his sons took her in knowing she was in no state to live among ordinary people. But three Alphas and one Omega is a mixture bound for disaster.

A/N: Thank your @sculptorofbeginnings for helping fix some stuff in this chapter :):)

Warnings: Explicit language. ABO dynamics. Angst. Fluff. Violence. Slight attempted/mentions of assault.

Bamby

“No, I haven’t heard from her, sorry boys,” Bobby sighed. “Yeah, of course. I’ll call you the second I know something. You two be careful,” he told them before hanging up. Shaking his head, Bobby turned to stare at you as you sat on the cot in his study. “Those boys are worried sick.”

“They’re only worried because they don’t know where I am. If they knew I was here, with you, they’d stop calling. They’d stop caring.” Slamming your book shut, you unfolded your legs and stood, moving into the kitchen. “I’m just extra baggage they have to lug around.”

He was hot on your tail, storming into the kitchen. “We both know that ain’t true. Those boys love you.”

“Sam tolerates me for Dean’s sake, and Dean likes the convenience of a nearby Omega,” you stated plainly, reaching into the fridge to pull out a beer.

When you’d shown up on Bobby’s doorstep almost a week ago, the old Beta had questions. Of course he had questions. You were an Omega and you were by yourself, which was odd enough, but the fact you’d been glued to a Winchester since they’d found you… he’d known something was wrong in an instant.

You’d had to admit a few truths. You had to explain that things were awkward now that Sam was back and John was gone. That having one Alpha replaced by another felt weird. You had to explain your relationship with Dean, and the toll it was taking on you. You had to explain the fact you were legally allowed to bond with someone, but no one was willing to do it.

“I can’t believe that boy has been using you like that.” Bobby shook his head. “I won’t believe it.”

“Don’t then.” You shrugged. “Doesn’t change the fact I’m not going anywhere,” you noted before starting towards the study again.

Before you could get far, Bobby reached over and snatched the beer out of your hand. As you spun around to glare at him, he cut off anything you might’ve said, “Those boys are worried about you, and they’re gonna keep worrying until you’re back by their side. So we’ve got two options here… either I call them and tell them you’re here, which will cut their case short and annoy both of them. Or you can get your bags and go find them.”

Your jaw dropped. “You’re kicking me out?”

“That’s not what I’m saying, and you know that. I’m not kicking you out, I’m telling you to stop running from your problems,” he corrected.

Scoffing and shaking your head, you turned and continued towards the study. “No. No, I’m not going back. I can’t just go back. If I go back this has been for nothing. They would have learned nothing. If I go back now, I’m going back to what I left behind.”

“Left behind. Left behind,” he scoffed. “You say that like you’re done with them.”

“Maybe I am.” You shrugged as you dropped back onto the cot and grabbed your book again.

Marching into the room, he glared down at you. “Those boys are your family.” When you just looked up at him indifferently, he pushed, “Those boys have dragged you around all these years, because they care about you. They want you around. You just wanna turn your back on them? After everything they’ve done for you and you’ve done for them?”

“Yes,” you answered shortly.

“Bullshit.” He stood his ground. “I love you like you’re my own, Y/N, but I know you, too. I know you’re as stubborn as a Winchester, and as tough as one, too. You might be pissed, but you miss them.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means everything. Like I said, those boys are your family, you need each other. So, grab your things and get goin’.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone. “I’m giving you an hour before I call Dean and let him know you’re here.”

Driving along, you were only half focused on the road as you headed in the direction Bobby had told you to go. Apparently, he’d been keeping up with the brothers’ whereabouts, waiting for you to ask where they might be so you could go to them. Instead, he used it to shoo you away.

It hurt, thinking he didn’t want you around, but deep down you understood. You didn’t want to understand, though. You wanted to be mad… it was easier.

He was right, which is why you’d feel guilty if you gave in. You did miss the brothers, and you knew they didn’t actually think you were extra baggage. You were all family, you’d just forgotten with all the drama going on.

Rolling down the road, you were pulled out of your thoughts as your car started sputtering.

“Shit,” you groaned.

You barely made it to the nearest gas station before the car stopped running.

Getting out and slamming the door, you stormed over to check the hood. Truth be told, though, you had no idea what you were looking at. Staring down at the engine, you had no clue where to start. Dean and John were always the ones to fix the cars.

“Need a hand?”

Spinning on your heels, you took in a deep breath and tried not to gag as the strong stench of stale cigarettes and Alpha filled your nose.

The man standing a few feet away from you was big and burly… you stood very little chance against him without a weapon. He stunk like he hadn’t had a shower in a week but had stuck his dick in at least three things since then. One look and you got the feeling any action he’d gotten hadn’t been consensual.

Unfortunately, you’d gotten out of the car empty handed, leaving you vulnerable.

His lips twitched up into a chilling grin as he took a step forward. “Why don’t you let me take a look under that hood of yours?” His eyes dragged over you, making it clear he wasn’t talking about your car.

“I’m fine, thanks,” you answered shortly, straightening your back.

That did nothing to deter him, though. In fact, he seemed more interested now. “Oh, don’t be like that. Pretty little Omega girl like you… you’ve gotta be real close to legal, huh? What are you doin’, all out here alone… looking for an Alpha to take real good care of you?”

The shudder that rolled through you just made his grin grow.

“I’ve got somethin’ that could help you.” His hand grabbed at his crotch as he adjusted the bulge growing there.

He was still moving closer, but you had nowhere to go. You were pressed against your car. One move and he would lunge for you, that was obvious, and by the size of him you wouldn’t get far. Out running an Alpha on the prowl was practically impossible.

Moving in closer, he left hardly a foot of space between you as he leered down, staring straight at your breasts. “Bend over, and I’ll give you what you need.”

You were shaking now. Despite the confident look on your face, and your tough posture, you were practically shitting yourself. There was nothing you could do, nowhere to go… your life was about to be ruined.

The sound of a shotgun being pumped had both of you whipping your heads over to the truck parked a little ways away.

A man stood by the truck, holding the shotgun. “You’re gonna leave her alone, or you won’t be walkin’ again,” he warned.

Huffing, the Alpha pulled away slightly. “This is none of your damned business.”

Keeping his eyes on the Alpha, the truck driver spoke to you, “Darlin’, you know this man?”

“N-no sir.”

“He botherin’ you?”

“Yes sir.”

He shrugged. “You heard the lady. Now get out of here, ‘fore I put you in a coffin.”

Quickly measuring his odds, the Alpha made the best decision he could and high tailed it out of there. You didn’t move a muscle until he was in his pickup and speeding down the road.

Once it was just the two of you, the man walked towards you. Still tense and waiting for something to happen, you jumped away from him.

He raised his hand- the one that wasn’t still holding his gun- to show you he meant no harm. “I’m a beta, darlin’, and I’m happily married with kids. I got no reason to hurt ya.” His eyes dropped to your open hood. “She doesn’t look good, and you ain’t gonna get any help ‘til morning.” Dragging his gaze back up to yours, he asked, “Where you headed?”

“Toledo. Ohio.”

“I can get you there if you don’t mind ditchin’ the car.”

Without missing a beat, you walked around to the back door, reached in, and pulled out your bag. When he looked at you, shocked, you shrugged. “It’s just a car. I’m not sentimental.”

Nodding, not having any reason to respond, he gestured for you to follow. “Come on, let’s get you outta here.”

Taking one last look at the car, you didn’t think twice before jogging after the man. He might be a stranger, but so far he’d shown you no reason not to trust him. To be honest, your odds were better with him than if you slept in your car by yourself all night.

Frank. Frank Thompson, that was the name of the man who had saved your life. The man married to a Beta woman who was waiting for him back home, which was somewhere in Oklahoma. He was headed to Detroit right now… well, after he dropped you off, of course.

The man seemed nice. You’d talked a little, mostly because he wanted to fill in the quiet moments with some chit chat, thinking it would put you at ease. He was polite, didn’t press for too much information, and let you just listen when that was all you wanted.

Mostly, you wanted to sit in silence. You were trying to figure out what you were going to do and say when you got to Dean and Sam. Were they going to be pissed, or relieved? Were you going to get defensive, or explode? There were a million this that could happen, a million things you could end up doing.

“So, you runnin’ to or from somethin’?”

You turned away from the window to Frank. “What makes you think I’m running?”

“Girl like you, and an Omega no less, doesn’t just get in a car and start drivin’ if she doesn’t have a reason. You’re runnin’, I just can’t figure out why.”

“And what makes you so sure you’re right?”

“‘Cause you remind me of my daughter… before she ran.”

Your heart sank and eyes went wide as you watched the man continue to focus on the road.

“She was headstrong and determined, like you are. Would kick anyone’s ass if she knew she could beat ‘em. My girl, she was an Omega, and her mama and me didn’t know what that would mean. Not really. Didn’t know how to raise her. So when a handsome Alpha boy came ‘round, she fell head over heels.”

“What happened next?”

“Her Daddy happened,” he sighed. “Didn’t understand her, all I knew was that I didn’t want my baby girl ‘round some hot headed Alpha, so I moved us out of town. Dragged her across states. Did whatever I could to keep my baby girl at home.”

“She ran back to him, didn’t she?”

He gave a short nod. “They’re married and got three pups, now.”

You weren’t expecting the happy ending, but then you weren’t used to happy anything. The short bouts of ease you experienced in life were laced with uncertainties and boundaries. Even being with Dean, or Sam, or John, while they might make you feel good, you never knew where you stood.

There was no happy ending in sight for you. None of the Alphas you loved were willing to commit. The life you led wasn’t exactly pup friendly. You were an Omega stuck in the least domestic life and it grated against your instincts like nails on a chalkboard.

“So, you runnin’ to, or from?” Frank asked again.

Pausing a moment, you gave it a thought before answering, “Both. I was taken in by a family of Alphas when I was a young teen, and I grew… attached to some of them. Thing is, none of them can claim me.”

Glancing in your direction, he gave you a quick once over before turning back to the road. “You even old enough to be claimed, yet?”

“By a few months, yeah. That’s not the point.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The father, the head Alpha, he’s missing and without his permission his son won’t claim me.”

“Boy don’t have a thought of his own?”

You chuckled lightly, knowing Dean had plenty of his own thoughts but that he was also the perfect soldier. It was very contradictory. “He has his own thoughts, it’s just complicated. I’m guessing you don’t know much about Alphas?”

“Can’t say I do.”

“Well, they’re headstrong and stubborn, but they’re loyal.”

“So what about the other one?”

“Huh?”

“You said you grew attached to some of ‘em, but then you said the son won’t claim you. One son, one person. So, what about the other one?”

“Oh…” you turned back to look out the window then, “he’s even more complicated.”

That was the easiest answer you had, and the only one you could actually say. Anything else would get caught in your throat. The thought and reminder of what you once had with Sam, and what he had with Jess, was still enough to cause a pain that brought tears to your eyes.

“You love ‘em?”

Tearing you eyes from the window one last time, you looked to Frank again. “Hmm?”

“Do you love ‘em? The boys?”

“I don’t know if it’s love... or habit. Or if I’m holding onto the hope of the young girl whose life they saved.”

“You sure you’re gonna be alright?” Frank asked as he looked down at you from up in the truck.

Tugging the strap of your bag on onto your shoulder, you gave a short nod. “I’ll be fine.”

Sighing, he looked at the dingy motel and shook his head. “I’m gonna trust you, darlin’, but if you change your mind and need another ride, you call me.” Reaching down, he offered you a piece of paper.

“Don’t you have a route you have to stick to?” you asked as you took the paper and looked down at the number.

“My boss is an Omega. They hear I’m takin’ a detour to help you out and I’ll probably get a raise.” He grinned and offered you a wink.

You chuckled lightly. “Thanks, Mr Thompson.”

“You take care, Miss Y/L/N.” Giving you a short nod, he then pulled himself back into the truck before starting down the road, leaving you standing there and watching him roll away.

Once there were no sign of the truck, you turned on your heels and headed towards the motel. It was the only one in town, which meant if Sam and Dean were still on the same hunt they’d be staying here. The Impala was nowhere to be seen, though, which meant you were going to have to wait for them to show up.

Taking a deep breath, you trekked towards the vending machines and wooden bench outside of the reception. Taking a seat, you dropped your bag next to you and settled in, keeping your eyes peeled for any sign of the Winchesters.

When the Impala sped into the parking lot, you jumped to your feet and looked at it with wide eyes. Three doors opened, the brothers and a young girl stepping out. Sam was by the girl’s side in an instant as she kept her eyes squeezed shut and her fists clenched against them.

Dean, on the other hand, froze as his gaze landed on you.

Sam paused and followed his brother’s line of sight, spotting you as you stood there awkwardly. “I’m taking Charlie inside,” he told his brother before turning away from you.

Once Sam and the girl disappeared into their room, Dean was heading towards him as you did the same. You were tense, waiting for him to blow up as his jaw ticked and eyes glared into yours.

“Where the hell have you been?” he asked, still on the other side of the parking lot. He practically had to yell for you to hear him.

“Bobby’s,” you answered honestly, not seeing any point in protecting the man considering he’d kicked you out.

Your answer just made Dean’s jaw clench harder. “He lied to us?”

“No, he lied for me,” you countered.

“Same thing.”

“What do you expect him to do? I show up on his doorstep, bawling my eyes out, and he’s just gonna call and lead you back to me. He’s a father to me, Dean, he would neve-”

Reaching you, finally, Dean grabbed your arm and pulled you to him, crashing his lip to yours. You fell silent and froze as he kissed you deeply, holding your arm with one hand and the back of your head with the other.

When he pulled back, you sucked in a breath your lungs had been screaming for.

“I was scared out of my brain, worrying about you.” His eyes bore into yours as he looked down at you. “Worried you might be dead in some ditch or claimed by some knothead.”

“I was at Bobby’s,” you repeated, still breathless and recovering.

“Why? Why did you leave?”

Looking into his eyes, seeing the truth fear in them, you knew nothing but the truth would fix your problems. “Because I didn’t think you’d care if I left.”

“How could you think I wouldn’t care?” A fire grew in his gaze, flickering amongst the fear. “You’re family, of course I’d care about you.”

“I know that. Which is why I knew that if you did care, you’d hurt… like I was.”

Searching your gaze, he frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means I can’t do this for much longer, Dean.” Pulling away from him, you sighed and gestured to his room. “Who’s the girl?”

“If you think you can just change the subject like that-”

Knowing he wasn’t finished talking about the two of you, but also knowing there was a job to be done, you cut him off, “She’s freaking out and you left Sam all alone with her. You’re in the middle of the case. We can do the chick flick crap later. Who is the girl, Dean?”

The girl was Charlie, a high school Omega who was caught in the middle of a bloody Mary case. As in the real bloody Mary. You never thought the myth had any facts behind it, but according to what Sam and Dean had stumbled across, it was true.

Inside the motel room, you knelt in front of the whimpering and terrified Omega as the brothers worked on covering every reflective surface there was. When they were done, Sam came over to sit  next to her.

“Hey, hey it's ok. Hey, you can open up your eyes Charlie,” he assured her. “It's okay, all right?”

Slowly, she lifted her head away from her hands and looked around before her gaze fell on you.

“This is Y/N,” Sam started. “She’s our-”

“Sister,” you finished for him, with a slight bite to your tone.

It was a bitch move, but you still weren’t over that.

Flinching at the word slightly, Sam didn’t correct you before he moved on, “Now listen. You're gonna stay right here on this bed, and you're not gonna look at glass, or anything else that has a reflection, okay? And as long as you do that, she cannot get you.”

“But I can't keep that up forever.” Charlie looked at him with scared eyes. “I'm gonna die, aren't I?”

“No.” Sam shook his head. “No. Not anytime soon.”

Dean came over to kneel beside you and looked up at her. ���All right Charlie. We need to know what happened.”

“We were in the bathroom. Donna said it,” she explained.

The brother shared a look before Dean tried again,  “That's not what we're talking about. Something happened, didn't it? In your life… a secret… where someone got hurt. Can you tell us about it?”

Charlie took a deep breath before telling him what he needed to know, “I had this boyfriend. I loved him. But he kind of scared me too, you know? And one night, at his house, we got in this fight. Then I broke up with him, and he got upset, and he said he needed me and he loved me, and he said, ‘Charlie, if you walk out that door right now, I'm gonna kill myself’. And you know what I said?” She looked to each of you. “I said, ‘Go ahead’, And I left.” Tears began streaming down her face. “How could I say that? How could I leave him like that? I just… I didn't believe him, you know? I should have.”

Burying her face in her hands, she started crying. She sobbed so hard her shoulders shook. Instinct took over, and as the brothers watched, you reached up and wrapped your arms around her.

“We’re gonna take care of you,” you promised.

With your promise, she crumbled onto the floor and into your arms as she started crying harder.

Getting Charlie to let you go had been hard, but you weren’t about to let the brothers head off without you. They were a bit reluctant to let you join them in the first place, but one look at Dean and that’s all it had taken.

He knew then that if they left you behind you wouldn’t be there when they returned.

So, with the help of the brothers, you managed to get Charlie to calmed down and explained that you were going to help your ‘brothers’ help her. Eventually she let you go.

“You know her boyfriend killing himself, that's not really Charlie's fault,” Dean noted as he drove down the road.

“You know as well as I do spirits don't exactly see shades of grey, Dean,” Sam countered. “Charlie had a secret, someone died, that's good enough for Mary.”

Dean sighed, “I guess.”

“You know, I've been thinking,” Sam started. “It might not be enough to just smash that mirror.”

“Why, what do you mean?” Dean asked.

You watched Sam closely as a bad feeling started to tug on your stomach.

“Well Mary's hard to pin down, right? I mean she moves around from mirror to mirror so who's to say that she's not just gonna keep hiding in them forever? So maybe we should try to pin her down, you know, summon her to her mirror and then smash it.”

Shifting in your seat, you leaned forward and against the back of the seat, poking your head between the brothers. “I thought you said she only comes if you have a secret that led to a death. You said the first victim’s daughter was the one to say the words. What if we don’t have any secrets juicy enough for Mary?”

“She’s got a point.” Dean nodded. “We know some stuff, but I don’t think any of it counts.”

But Sam didn’t seem to agree. “She'll come after me.”

Everything in the car froze.

Dean looked from the road, to his brother, and then back before shaking his head.  “You know what, that's it.”

He pulled the car over, slamming on the brakes. You had to hold on to keep yourself from flying into the front seat with them.

Not missing a beat, Dean turned to glare at his brother. “This is about Jessica, isn't it? You think that's your dirty little secret that you killed her somehow?”

Sam just ignore him, though, keeping his gaze on the window in front of him.

“Sam, this has got to stop, man.” Dean’s concern was growing with every word. “I mean, the nightmares and calling her name out in the middle of the night, it's gonna kill you. Now listen to me, it wasn't your fault. If you wanna blame something, then blame the thing that killed her. Or hell, why don't you take a swing at me? I mean I'm the one that dragged you away from her in the first place.”

Sam shook his head. “I don't blame you. Either of you.”

“Well you shouldn't blame yourself,” Dean told him, “because there's nothing you could've done.”

Looking away from the window then, Sam turned to his brother. “I could've warned her.”

“About what? You didn't know what was gonna happen! And besides, all of this isn't a secret, we mean I know all about it.” Dean gestured to himself and you. “It's not gonna work with Mary anyway.”

“No you don't.”

“I don't what?”

“You don't know all about it,” Sam answered simply. “I haven't told you everything.”

Your blood ran cold.

Dean’s eyes went wide. “What are you talking about?”

“Well it wouldn't really be a secret if I told you, would it?”

Before you knew what you were doing, you threw your door open and stepped out of the car and into the rain.

Walking away from the car, shaking your head, you squeezed your eyes shut and looked up at the sky. Letting the rain fall on your face, you took a deep breath in an attempt to calm the panic raging inside of you.

“Y/N!”

Spinning on your heels, you turned to Dean as he hurried towards you. Sam stood by his door, watching with this look on his face that made you want to scream, cry, and punch him in the nose.

“Hey.” Dean stopped in front of you, searching your eyes worriedly. “What are you doing?”

“I can’t lose him again. I can’t lose anyone again. I can’t do it, Dean.”

“He’s not going anywhere. You think I’d let him go that easily?” he asked, trying to reassure you.

You shook your head, not trusting him. “You said that before. You all said you’d never leave. Everyone’s left,” your voice broke, and just like that he knew it wasn’t just rain rolling down your face.

Grabbing your arm, he pulled you to him. “I haven’t left, and I’m not going to.” Leaning back, he cupped the side of your face and tilted your head until your eyes met his. “Neither is Sam.” Running the pad of his thumb along your cheek, he held your gaze. “Do you trust me?”

Looking into his eyes, you quickly nodded. “I trust you.”

“Now come on, let’s get out of the run.” Letting his hand fall to yours, he intertwined your fingers before leading you back to the car. “Better not ruin the upholstery,” he grumbled under his breath as you slid back into your seat.

For the short second or two where it was just you and Sam in the car, the two of you met each other’s gaze in the rear view mirror. You were still worried, and he was still guilty, but neither of you said anything. You wanted to, though.

You missed being able to talk to Sam as easily as you talked to Dean, but things had changed over the years. Knowing he was about to put his life on the line, and every thought of his would be of Jess… you couldn’t deny that it hurt to think what you’d once had with him years ago was well and truly gone.

You were stuck in the car. The brothers had headed into the store while you were stuck in the car.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, though. It was the middle of the night, in the middle of a case, and the brothers were breaking in. Somewhere in that store was the mirror Mary was connected to, and the plan was to end it all. With so many things that could go wrong, you really shouldn’t have been surprised when Dean ordered you to stay in the car.

Didn’t mean you couldn’t be pissed.

As you sat there, drumming your fingers on the front seat as you leaned against it, you suddenly sat up right as a car rolled into the parking lot beside the Impala.

It was the cops.

“Fuck.”

Two officers stepped out, one of which had spotted you in an instant. With their torch shining into the window of the Impala, they stepped up and gave the glass a knock.

“Come on out,” he ordered.

Swallowing the nothing that had gathered in your throat, you slid across the seat and did as he said, getting out of the car. Stepping to the side, you watched the two officers with wide eyes as they looked you over.

“Wanna explain what you’re doing here, sweetheart?” the one who had knocked on the window asked.

Before you could answer, the store’s door opened as Dean stepped out.

“Hold it!” the other cop ordered Dean.

He raised his hands in defense. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, guys. False alarm. I tripped the system.”

“Who are you?” the cop that knocked asked.

“I’m the boss’s kid,” Dean lied. “And that’s my girl. She was just waiting for me while I grabbed something from the office.”

“You’re Mr. Yamashiro’s kid?”

Crap…

Dean chuckled lightly. “I know, the resemblance isn’t really there. Got my mum’s looks,” he joked. When neither cop responded, he went on, “I was adopted.”

“Really?” the cops clearly didn’t believe him.

Glancing over at the store windows, Dean sighed, “You know, I just… I really don’t have time for this right now.” Before the officer in front of him could blink, Dean threw a punch and clocked him right in the jaw.

The other officer was quick to react, but you were faster and prepared. Reaching out, you snatched the flashlight from his hold. The officer rounded on you, but wasn’t prepared as you slammed the large, heavy, metal torch into his face. The sickening crack that sounded told you that his nose was well a truly broken.

Both officers fell to the ground like two sacks of potato.

“I was handling it,” Dean stated defensively.

Sighing, you stepped over the officer in front of you, and shoved the torch into Dean’s chest. “You’re welcome.” Without giving him a glance, you walked right by and headed into the store.

Dean was hot on your tail, grabbing the crow bar he’d ditched before heading outside. He led you through the store, even though you knew he’d prefer it if you were outside. But you were just as stubborn as he was, so there was no way you were going to to sitting on your ass and twiddling your thumbs.

As you rounded the corner you found Sam… kneeling on the floor and grunting in pain.

Hurrying forward, Dean threw the crowbar at the mirror his brother was in front of, smashing it to pieces.

“Sammy?” Dean reached down and grabbed his brother, lifting his face to look at him. “Sammy!”

“It's Sam,” he groaned back.

Dropping to your knees next to the brothers, you let out a sigh of relief as you took Sam’s face from Dean to check him over yourself. Taking in the sight of the blood rolling from his eyes, you choked on a sob.

“You scared the crap out of me.” Letting him go, you slapped at his chest. “Don’t you ever do that again.”

He chuckled lightly. “I’ll try.”

Dean took Sam’s face back. “God, are you okay?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Come on.” Dean grabbed his brother and pulled him to his feet. “Come on.” He tossed Sam’s arm over his shoulder.

The three of you started to walk out when the sound of glass crunching had you all freezing on the spot.

Slowly, you all turned and what you found had fear coursing through your veins, thick and cold. Mary was crawling out of the broken mirror like something from a horror movie. Pulling herself to her feet, she took one look at the three of you, and you were falling to your knees.

It felt like your head was being squeeze. Like your brain was under so much pressure and the only way to ease it was to pop. Blood trickled from your eyes as you cried out in pain. Everything hurt, every bone, every muscle. What was going on in your head rippled through your body, making you curl into yourself as a pain like no other took over.

Then it was gone.

Dean let out a groan before you heard the sound of another mirror smashing.

“Hey. Hey, Y/N.” Sam was right there, reaching for you, turning you over onto your back until you were looking up at him. “You okay?”

Holding in a sob, you nodded. “I-I’m okay.”

“Guys?” Dean looked over his shoulder at you and his brother. “This has got to be like...what? 600 years of bad luck?”

Pulling yourself up so you were sitting, you looked around at the dozens of broken mirrors throughout the store. “I hate you so much right now.”

Sam chuckled lightly beside you.

Grinning, Dean got to his feet and turned to you, offering his hand. You took it and let him pull you to his feet. “Nice to have you back, sweetheart.”

“So this is really over?” Charlie asked from where she sat beside you in the Impala, which was now parked outside of her house.

Dean turned and rested his arm along the back of his seat before giving her a short nod. “Yeah, it's over.”

A wide smile spread across her face as she looked to the three of you “Thank you.” Taking a deep breath, she slid out of the car and started towards her home.

“Charlie?” Sam called before she could get far. When she turned back to him he went on, “Your boyfriend's death...you really should try to forgive yourself. No matter what you did, you probably couldn't have stopped it. Sometimes bad things just happen.”

She simply gave a faint smile before turning back around and continuing on.

Once she was gone, Dean gave his brother a playful punching, making Sam turn to him. “That's good advice,” he noted before driving off. You were almost out of town when he spoke up again, “Hey Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Now that this is all over, I want you to tell me what that secret is.”

You sunk down into your seat and turned to the window. Part of you wanted to know, you wanted Sam to let you back in. You wanted to be the one he turned to, the one he shared all his secrets with.

Another part of you didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to think about him and Jessica, didn’t want to prolong his pain or cause yourself any more. Didn’t want to risk letting him back in when he could still leave you again.

Sam sighed, “Look...you're my brother and I'd die for you, but there are some things I need to keep to myself.”

You doubted you’d ever have Sam back… not completely… not truly.

Bamby