#rose: ‘hey doctor my phone’s out of storage-’

[whatsfourteenupto]

Fourteen’s replacing the screen on Donna’s phone for like the fifth time right now. They’re the family’s own private iFix guy, and lord is he insufferable about it

[kelkat9]

3 and 4 look sooo good. Would you mind telling a little bit more about either of them or sharing a sentence or two? 😍

3. Nine/Rose Human Nature AU This is a fic set after they meet Jack but he's not with them. They are running from the family and Nine is fobbed leaving Rose to look after him. It's August 1984 in Arkansas. Oh yes this is fake married.

I'll put #4 in a reblog :)

“Hi Maria,” Rose greeted, shifting the weight of the box of supplies she carried. “Como esta Ana, Reyna y Marquito?” By Maria’s smile she must have gotten at least some of the language right.

“Bueno, good, Senora Smyth,” Maria said in tentative English, shifting her infant daughter, Ana, closer to her left shoulder. “Muchisimas gracias por tu ayuda and the Doctor for la medicina y los libros.”

Rose flushed at the word Senora. She wasn’t. But they’d gone with it when everyone in town made the assumption. The Doctor hadn’t said anything other than tease her about how she’d made an honest man of him. Oh, if he only knew.

“We’re, el Doctor and me, are just um muy feliz los ninos are uh better, yeah.” Rose reangled the heavy box. “Lo siento, I have to get this into la clinica. We’ll drop off more books and stuff for the kids later. Que tengas un buen dia.” She winced even though the other woman smiled and wished her the same. Or at least thought so as she squeezed by a few people to walk into the tiny reception.

“Hey Dot, is he with a patient?” The older woman with a helmet of poofed gray hair arched a brow at Rose even as she helped one of their patients fill out an intake form.

“Always with someone. I swear that husband of yours never stops talking or passing out bananas. I can’t even stand the sight of them things after smelling them all day. And we have worse smells here, ya know, hon?”

Rose bit back giggles. Human or Time Lord, bananas were a prioroity it appeared.

“Sorry, he’s a bit of a health nutter sometimes. I’ll have a word with him and get the banana crate moved further back so you don’t have to smell ‘em.”

“I’m teasing you, sweetheart.” Dot waved her on before slipping an intake form into a manila folder and waving the next person forward. “He’s a good man. Cares for his patients and don’t put up with crap from anyone. Solved my gout and never took a dime from me. Did the same for Mrs. Rayburn even though she was complaining about the clinic and our patients chasing off her nonexistent customers. A load of bull hockey, if you ask me. That store’s only open two days a week and she does all her business at the flea market.”

Gossip was a commodity traded like gold. Rose did her best to stay out of it. Although being white, blonde and married to a Doctor seemed to make her part of the inner circle whether or not she wanted to be.

She’d had to run interference with the whole church crowd early on. God, the last thing she needed was to be run out of town because the Doctor got into a philosophical debate over religion. They’d moved so much already. And they had good work to do here. Unless the aliens found them.

She lugged the box to the storage area which doubled as the Doctor’s office in their cramped three room clinic. The flourscent lights flickered in greeting.

“There’s my lovely nurse slash wife slash favorite pink and yellow human!”

Rose startled as he popped up beside her shoving his arm into the box she just plunked down on his desk. Stacked with files, a rotary dial phone, and ripped apart radio and cassette recorder along with stacks of pink while you were out notes, it was his own personal chaos.

His appearance still caused her breath to catch, tight short sleeved t-shirt and jeans revealing his muscled biceps and oh she never knew she had a thing for forearms.

“Fantastic,” he exclaimed pulling plastic bags and wads of ace bandages. “Amoxicilin. Henry came through. Have Dot get a hold of Jazmina to stop by for her husband’s infection. Not as much as I’d like but we’ll ration. Hydrocortisone cream was a nice surprise. So’s the Benadryl. You’re too quiet,” he set everything down and cupped her cheek. “Flushed and temperature a bit elevated.”

Rose tried to calm her racing pulse but too late, he already had one calloused finger pressed to her wrist.

“I appreciate you running the errands, love but you’ve got to hydrate. Don’t need another heat stroke patient.”

“M’fine.” Rose shook herself out of the state of stomach fluttering attraction. “Like they say around here. It’s a scorcher. I got stuck in front of the post office by that cow Mrs. Trowsly talking shite about our patients.”

He snorted and dropped his hand grabbing an armful of supplies.

“Stupid ape.” A bit of her Doctor slipped out. “She thinks she’s some grand time lady, overseeing the town like her own personal Gallifrey.” His brow furrowed as his words caught up with him. Time for Rose to intervene.

“Don’t worry, I sorted her. Promised we’d take people in through the back during the town’s big end of summer festival.”

“What did you do that for?” He shot over his shoulder as he darted into his patient room and began stowing supplies in a cabinet.

“Cause it was easier than listening to a bunch of accusations and her calling the Sheriff. You know how he is and he doesn’t like you very much.”

“Good. As the American’s say, he’s a dick, harassing my patients for walking through town and buying groceries.”

“Yeah,” she agreed and helped unpack bandages and stow rubbing alcohol and sterile pads. “But we’re stuck with him and all of them for now. We have to do the good we can. When we leave, our patients have to deal with it.”

Fall out. The one thing they’d never had to deal with before.

“Always a step ahead in the domestics,” he added with a soft low burr in his voice. Blue eyes lasered into her until Rose practically heard the hum of the TARDIS. She dreamed of it so much now. And a whole lot more, if she was honest. Which she tried not to be and especially with the Doctor nearby. Honesty led to her possibly saying something dangerous. Like talking about her feelings for him. Or the past. Like everything that happened at the Game Station.

“I’m sorry,” He startled her, his tall frame filing the small cubical of a room. Heat poured off him as he took her hands in his. “I drag you into so much. Cross country, small towns, tyrants, old enemies and war. You deserve better.”

“Told you, wouldn’t trade it for the world. You’re stuck with me an we’re going to keep going, yeah? Help these people till it’s time to move on and then we’ll help someone else. It’s what we do…who we are.”

[sdvvillagers]

Fic - Gus

Word Count: 4,475

Summary: Gus has a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Notes:  Thank you to @purpleandgreen13​ (purpleandgreen on AO3) for coming up with this prompt, it was such a fun and inspiring one to work with!  You’re the best! ^.^

From the moment Gus woke up, he should have known that today was going to be an awful day.  Water dripped from the ceiling of his room, plopping onto his forehead and waking him with a start.  The rainstorm forecasted for the day had begun, revealing a leak in the roof that Gus hadn’t known was there until the rain unceremoniously woke him from his slumber.  After clambering out of bed in shock and confusion, Gus wiped the sleep from his eyes and looked upward as another drop of rain landed right in his eye.

“Son of a-,” Gus mumbled, giving himself a wide berth from the bed to avoid getting wet any further.

His sheets had already soaked up some of the moisture, but the last thing he needed was a soaking wet mattress.  Gus rushed to the storage room to grab an empty bucket to collect as much rain water as he could until Robin could come by to fix his roof.  Hopefully it wouldn’t be long or else he’d be back and forth all day dumping the bucket.  It was expected to rain heavily all day long.

The next sign that Gus’ day would be terrible arrived only moments later when Gus stepped on a small puddle of water that had dripped onto the floor, causing him to lose his balance and fall backward.  He slammed his back hard against the footboard of his bed, causing him to yelp out in pain.  His already bad back was now throbbing in pain.  Wincing, Gus rose from the floor and hobbled across the room to at least change out of his wet pajamas and into something warm and dry.

Upon opening his closet, Gus reached for a plain t-shirt and his favorite orange jacket.  It wasn’t until the jacket was on and he reached down to zip it up that he noticed the huge rip in the sleeve of his jacket.  It was likely Emily could mend it for him, but it was another rough blow to his already awful morning.  Gus elected for one of his lesser preferred jackets instead.

Being awake far earlier than he was used to, Gus shuffled out of his room into the kitchen of the saloon.  Usually he wouldn’t wake up until almost lunch time due to being up late every night for his business, but with the rain waking him up so early, he figured he would at least fix himself a meal.  It wasn’t often he ate breakfast anyway, so treating himself to a complete breakfast and a glass of homemade orange juice seemed a decent enough consolation prize.  Robin’s shop wouldn’t even open for another twenty minutes anyway.

Gus stepped into the walk-in refrigerator in the kitchen and began pulling the ingredients he needed to make his breakfast.  Once he had everything in-hand, he turned to leave and heard a high-pitched squeak.  For a moment, it sounded like a mouse.  It was enough of a distraction for Gus to momentarily forget where he was or what he was doing and the armful of ingredients he was carrying fell to the floor as Gus accidentally dropped them.  The squeak, it turned out, came from a squeaky floorboard he had stepped on and wasn’t a rodent at all.  Gus almost wished it was, at least it would have justified his flustered response.  Instead, all he was left with was no ingredients for breakfast and a huge mess to clean while his back was out of sorts.

It took over a half hour for Gus to completely clean up the spill, the cracked eggs seeped down into every crevice and cranny of the walk-in fridge.  Not to mention, it was a very chilly ordeal to clean a mess inside of such a cold space.  Gus had lost all track of time while he was cleaning the mess in the fridge and all thoughts of calling Robin to repair his roof had left his mind until the job was done.  By the time he realized it, he glanced at the clock and saw that she’d been open for fifteen minutes already.  He hoped he wasn’t too late.

“Hello there, you’ve reached the Bennetts!” Demetrius’ voice answered cheerfully when Gus finally picked up the phone to call.

“Hey Demetrius, I’m in a bit of a bind,” Gus began, getting right to his point.  There was no time for pleasantries today.  “The roof of the saloon is leaking.  Right over my bed, actually.  Any chance Robin can head out here and fix it?  I’ve got a bucket under there right now until she can make it.”

“Oh no, I wish I could say she could but she’s actually out of the house right now,” Demetrius answered apologetically.  “Her parents called her first thing this morning, her father is ill and she needed to head out to help her mother.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Gus replied sincerely.  As unfortunate as his situation was, he really was sorry to hear that there were health issues in Robin’s family.  It was a situation where Gus couldn’t in all conscience be mad at Robin for being unavailable despite his desperation.

Once he hung up with Demetrius, Gus heaved a long, heavy sigh.  Someone in town had to be able to help him, there was no way he could put it off.  There weren’t many other people in town Gus could think to ask, but he started at the top of the list and worked his way down.  Sebastian seemed like a decent possibility given that his mother was the very woman Gus needed for the job, but Seb made it quite clear that he had nothing to do with her work at all.  Shane was next on the list, he was actually quite the handyman, but the call went straight to voicemail.  Gus had to assume he was working at Joja today and had his phone silenced.  Alex at the very least was strong, but as Gus suspected he had no knowledge of how to fix a leaky roof.  Gus was even desperate enough to call Lewis who had been the town’s handyman before he was mayor, but of course his old age made him too hesitant to help Gus out.  Not that Gus could blame him, of course, but it was maddening how limited his options were.  He’d have to call a company in Grampleton or even in the city which would end up costing him at least triple what Robin would charge.

One very expensive phone call later, Gus managed to get an appointment with a roofer from Grampleton for 4:00pm , right when the dinner rush would be starting.  As anticipated, the flat fee was already more expensive, plus additional fees for travel and late notice.  Until they arrived, Gus would have to keep shuffling buckets around to catch as much water as he could.

By the time the roofer was sorted, Gus realized that there wasn’t much time left until the saloon opened at noon for lunch.  Having dropped a substantial amount of ingredients earlier in the morning, Gus knew a trip to Pierre’s was necessary.  It wasn’t far to Pierre’s store but in this rainstorm, Gus knew he’d need every protection even for such a short walk.  After another trip to his room for his raincoat, rain boots, and umbrella, Gus was ready to face the elements.  With his back still aching, Gus crossed town square slowly and carefully towards Pierre’s shop.  The last thing he needed was to try and rush to get out of the rain and fall once more.  He chuckled to himself at the thought that Doctor Harvey would commend him for choosing safety first.

The trip to Pierre’s was just as frustrating as the rest of his morning had been.  It took him quite some time just to get out of his wet rain gear and Pierre snapped at him for leaving a puddle by the entrance even though it wasn’t exactly something he could help in a rainstorm.  Pierre’s selection wasn’t great either, he was out of stock on a few ingredients that Gus needed so Gus would have to tweak his menu slightly to accommodate.  He knew he would get an earful that night when Shane couldn’t order pepper poppers.  When Gus went to checkout, he realized he’d forgotten his money at home in his rush and had to practically beg Pierre to let him pay at a later time without having to go all the way back for his money.  It wasn’t until he started to remind Pierre of his own ongoing tab at the saloon, within earshot of Caroline, that Pierre quickly shushed him and agreed that Gus could stop by the following day to pay for the groceries.

The short walk home was plagued with its own difficulties.  Gus had three bags of groceries and with one hand holding his umbrella, the other had to carry three full shopping bags while trying to keep them dry under the umbrella.  By the time he arrived back at the saloon, his hand was aching from carrying the weight of the groceries which had gotten slightly wet despite his best efforts.  Even Gus himself had gotten wet, the jacket he’d put on that morning had a drenched collar and water had gotten into his rain boots and soaked his socks through.  Another change of clothes for the day.

Lunch prep went fine enough other than a small slice of a finger while chopping onions.  On any other day Gus would consider it a terrible misfortune but today, it was nothing compared to everything else that had happened so far.  It wasn’t serious enough to warrant a visit to Doctor Harvey, thank goodness.  Nothing a bandage couldn’t fix.  It did make the rest of his lunch prep awkward and it certainly hurt, but the pain at least distracted him a bit from his aching back.

Because of the rain, the lunch “rush” wasn’t exactly a rush at all, which was fine with Gus on a day like today.  Only a few people stopped by for lunch, mostly to-go orders.  Ordinarily he’d feel bored with nothing to do or worried by a lack of paying customers, but he welcomed the chance to take a break after his busy morning.  His back was still aching from his fall and his finger throbbed uncomfortably under its bandage.  The worst he could say about the lunch crowd was that any time a customer entered the saloon, it meant drying the rain puddles left behind in their wake once they left.  Of course there was also the constant back and forth from the bar to his room to switch out buckets, a task he had to do almost every thirty minutes.

At 3:30 he could hear the door of the saloon open while he was in his bedroom, switching out yet another bucket under the leaky roof.  By now his back was on fire from the constant back and forth, lifting heavy buckets, and mopping up the puddles of water in his room and at the entrance of the saloon.  When he heard the door open, he heaved a sigh of relief knowing that help was on the way.  It was no doubt Emily arriving for her evening shift.  Gus was hoping she could take on a bit of the work tonight to give him some reprieve.  If he could manage to only get away with cooking for the night, he’d be happy.  Yet when Gus reentered the saloon, he was surprised to find Haley standing near the doorway looking around for him.

“Oh, there you are!” Haley huffed, sounding incredibly impatient and irritated.  “Honestly, we thought you were dead, you haven’t answered your phone all day.”

While Haley stood in the entrance, arms folded in annoyance, Gus rushed over to his phone to see what was the matter.  He didn’t have a cell phone as he’d never really had a need for one so he relied on a landline at the bar for any of his phone calls.  Gus groaned when he noticed he hadn’t properly set the handset back down on the charging dock and it had run out of battery.

“Geez, kid, I’m sorry,” Gus sighed, setting the phone back on the dock to start charging.  Haley huffed impatiently in response.

“I had to head all the way over here in the pouring rain just to tell you that Emily can’t come in tonight, she’s sick,” Haley went on, arms still folded angrily.  “First she’s got me running over here for her, then off to Pierre’s to pick up a few things, then over to the clinic for some medicine.  Ugh, this is the worst day ever.”

Gus had to try very hard not to burst out laughing at this response, if Haley’d known the kind of day he was having, she certainly wouldn’t consider a few errands ‘the worst day ever’.  Instead Gus swallowed the urge to rant and smiled kindly in return.  Kind smiles were his specialty, after all.

“Sorry to hear Emily’s sick,” Gus remarked in concern.  “Need me to send you with any hot soup?  Ginger ale?”

“We got it covered,” Haley replied.  “I’m just gonna stock up on cans of soup at Pierre’s, it’s fine.”

Gus cringed knowing that his employee was sick at home and would be having canned soup as her meal, it was something that he would go out of his way to stop if it were any other day.  But between the roof repairs, working solo for the night, and the numerous aches and pains he was experiencing, he begrudgingly accepted that canned soup would have to do.  Maybe on another day he would have to make it up to Emily some other way.

“Tell Emily I hope she feels better soon but that she shouldn’t worry,” Gus went on, his kind smile still plastered onto his face.  “I can handle things here.”

Haley left with a brief wave leaving Gus to sigh heavily the moment she was gone.  He didn’t entirely believe that he could handle things on his own, but there wasn’t much of a choice.  Business still had to continue with or without help.

4:00 came and went with no sign of the roofers.  Gus was getting anxious awaiting their arrival, hoping they wouldn’t cancel on him.  The buckets were filling up quickly as the rain poured down and now he was emptying full, heavy buckets every twenty minutes.  It didn’t help that by 4:00, customers were already starting to pile in.  While the lunch rush was light from people wanting to avoid being out in the rain, it seemed there was the opposite sentiment at dinnertime.  Maybe everyone was sick of being cooped up at home, maybe they didn’t feel like cooking, maybe they liked the ambience of dining in a cozy saloon during a rainstorm.  Either way, business started to pick up quickly and Gus had to strategize every minute to make sure no time, energy, or effort was wasted.  He’d find himself taking orders one minute, slicing vegetables another, running to the back to empty and replace a bucket, then back to refill a drink, then off to the burners to cook a meal, all while coping with a bandaged finger and injured back.  It was chaos.  He’d long since stopped trying to squeeze drying the floor into the mix, instead he setup his wet floor sign and hoped for the best.

Just before 6:30, Gus could hear a clang outside followed by the sound of loud thuds overhead.  The roofers must have arrived and already set to work.  The activity on the roof caused many of the patrons to stare up at the ceiling in annoyance, it certainly wasn’t the most pleasant sound and a lot of the louder thuds and clangs were drowning out the jukebox.  Gus could already see on the faces of his patrons that they were irritated and for that matter, he was irritated as well.  Of course the work had to be done, but it was hard to focus with so many distractions.  He found himself getting side-tracked in the middle of what he was doing and as a result, the orders were coming out more slowly.  This was only causing further irritation among the bar patrons.  Thankfully everyone seemed to realize many of the disadvantages Gus was working with between a bandaged finger, no extra employee to help, and a loud series of bangs outside beyond his control so no one ever complained to him.  Still, he could sense the overall tension in the room and it only added pressure to an already stressful day.  Luckily when Gus broke the news to Shane that pepper poppers weren’t an option, Shane opened his mouth to whine but stopped upon seeing the look on Gus’ face.  Though Gus was ordinarily relaxed and downright jolly, he was sure that today his bad day was reflected in his mood.

It was only a half hour or so later that the doors of the saloon opened and in walked two men Gus had never seen before, absolutely drenched.  It must be the roofers.  Their entrance alone brought a massive puddle at the doorstep of the saloon and as they walked across the room, they left a trail of rainwater in their wake.  Gus would be lucky if no one slipped and fell and slapped him with a lawsuit.

“Well we did a temporary fix for now to stop the leaking, but we’ll have to come back when it’s dry to fix it properly,” one of the men explained.  “Though truth be told, that roof’s definitely seen better days.  How old is it?”

“32 years?” Gus answered uncertainly, screwing up his face in thought to try and recall how old the roof could be.

“I guessed as much,” the other man replied.  “We can fix your roof, but your best bet will just be to replace it.”

Gus’ stomach clenched at this news.  Of course.  Of course on one of the worst days he’s had, he now had to face the prospect of replacing the roof of the saloon.  Even at Robin’s rate it would still be a costly project.  Gus shook his head wearily and looked up to the roofers, not even trying to attempt his usual smile any longer.

“Well thanks for patching it up for the time being,” Gus sighed.  “How much do I owe ya?”

“We’ll mail you the bill in three to five business days,” the first man answered.  A bill that would no doubt include the travel surcharge as well as a late notice surcharge all to do a very temporary patch job.

When the roofers left, Gus stared down at the massive puddle of water in the middle of the saloon and spaced out for a moment, disconnecting entirely from everything going on around him.  The day started poorly enough, but it never let up.  It was the kind of day that beats you down until you just want to call it quits and crawl back into bed to start fresh in the morning.  Gus didn’t often have bad days and when he did, his general optimism was enough to make the best of it.  Today, there was nothing at all to make the best of, no silver lining he could find and no positive twist he could spin.  Today was horrible.  It only got worse when he snapped out of his brief moment of calm to the smell of smoke.  The arrival of the roofers had snatched Gus’ attention from the fish he was cooking on the stove and now the filet was smoking in the pan, most definitely burnt by this point.  Gus rushed to turn the burner off and removed the fish from the heat in a panic.  Just when he felt seconds away from a total breakdown, he could hear a soft, gentle voice to his right.

“Gus… are you okay?”

Doctor Harvey tilted his head with an expression of concern, clearly noticing Gus’ flustered state.  As usual whenever Gus was going through personal problems or having a rough day, he attempted to suck it up and put on a warm, welcoming face for his patrons.  Many of them came to the saloon for an escape from their own problems, they certainly didn’t need to contend with his.  But the moment Gus even tried to plaster a smile onto his face, he could feel his shoulders shaking as a swell of emotion took over.  He was moments away from bursting into tears.

“I…” Gus began in a shaky voice, still grasping at the chance that he could play it off but ultimately failing.  “No… no, I’m not.”

Harvey very suddenly looked on high alert and his friendly concern became far more serious.

“Are you in need of immediate medical attention?” Harvey asked suddenly, already rising from his barstool.  As awful as his day had been, Gus couldn’t help but chuckle at Harvey’s reaction.  He couldn’t explain why, but it was amusing how quickly Harvey was ready to jump into action if needed.

“No, no, nothing like that, Doctor H,” Gus replied, shaking his head.  “Just a bad day.  I won’t bend your ear, I’ll… I’ll handle it.  Sorry for burning your fish, I’ll get started on another one right away.”

Before Gus could even turn around, however, he noticed Harvey shake his head vigorously and pull out the barstool next to him.  Though Harvey was often quiet and reserved, preferring to keep to himself whenever he was at the saloon, in this moment he smiled a kind and welcoming smile as he patted the seat next to him.

“That won’t be necessary,” Harvey replied.  “I can’t in good conscience contribute to your hectic night tonight.  If you’d like to join me and talk about it you’re more than welcome to or you can take a seat behind the bar to unwind for a bit.  Either way, you need a break.  Doctor’s orders.”

It was strange how quickly all eyes in the saloon were on Gus the moment he stepped away from the bar, walked around the counter, and took a seat on the barstool beside Harvey.  Everyone had only ever seen him behind the bar taking orders, filling drinks, or preparing food.  Gus couldn’t recall a time he sat on the customer’s side of the bar during business hours and clearly no one else could either.  A collective silence filled the room and no one even tried to hide their stares.  Once Gus was seated next to Harvey, it was surprisingly Shane who spoke up first.

“You doin’ alright there, Gus?” Shane asked, raising a curious eyebrow.

“Just need a breather,” Gus replied as calmly as he was capable of.  Clearly it wasn’t that calmly, though, because now all the patrons in the saloon looked just as concerned as Harvey had moments earlier.

“Is everything okay?” Marnie asked from the back of the saloon.

“Gus, what’s wrong?” Leah asked, dropping the sketch she was working on to step closer to the bar.

“Lookin’ a little pale there, Gussy, you’re scarin’ me,” Pam remarked, worry lining her face as she stared at Gus.

It seemed all of the attention in the saloon was on Gus at the moment and he wasn’t sure whether that was making this whole ordeal better or worse than it had been.  Gus wasn’t used to the spotlight on him, he was used to being the one shining the spotlight on others, encouraging them to open up and talk about whatever they needed to talk about.  Whether it was gushing over good news, venting over a rough day, or asking for advice from a friend, Gus was always there to support his patrons.  It was odd to have the tables flipped and be the one in need of support.

“Nothin’, nothin’, it’s just… it’s just a rough day,” Gus tried to explain, but no one was buying it.

“Take a load off, Gus,” Marnie offered, pulling her chair out to give Gus a more comfortable seat than a barstool.

“I’ll grab some ice water, you should stay hydrated,” Harvey remarked, already heading to the back of the bar to prepare a glass.

“Want something to eat?” Pierre offered, bringing his plate of fried calamari over.  “I’ve only had a few, you can take the rest.”

Leah hadn’t said another word, she had already started drying the large puddle in the middle of the saloon with towels she had found behind the bar.  Within minutes, Gus was seated in one chair with his feet propped up on another, ice water and food on the table next to him, in the middle of a newly dried saloon.  His patrons surrounded him, close enough to show their support but not so close that it was suffocating, and all looked at him expectantly.

“What else do you need?” Pam asked, rolling up her sleeves as though prepared to get to work on something, she just didn’t know what.

“I’d like to take a look at that bandaged finger,” Harvey pointed out, glancing at Gus’ injured hand.

“Who were those men that showed up outta nowhere?” Shane asked, glancing towards the door.  “Did they say or do anything to you?  I swear to Yoba if they did, I’ll…” Shane trailed off when he caught sight of a disapproving look from Marnie, but Gus caught Shane’s hands ball up aggressively into fists.

“I’m fine, really, I already feel so much better just to have all of your support,” Gus answered honestly.  “Those were just roofers here to look at a leak in the roof, it’s fine.  Really.  It was just one of those days where everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong but putting it all into perspective, it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.”

It was true, Gus was already feeling better just in the few short minutes that had passed.  Moments earlier he had been on the verge of a breakdown but it was incredible how quickly that changed just from receiving the love and support of his community.  It was always Gus who was the one providing support, providing help, providing a shoulder to cry on.  He’d never needed the same in return until now but seeing how his patrons responded in his moment of need was overwhelming.  It warmed his heart to know that if he ever truly needed anyone, they would all be there for him, ready to help and support him.  They proved it tonight.  Today may have been one of the worst days Gus had had in quite some time, but tonight somehow proved in an odd and unexpected way to be one of the best.

[rizlowwritessortof]

Meant To Be - Chapter 8

Dean and Jordan are each trying to escape their painful pasts. Their chance meeting and a dangerous encounter begins a relationship that may give them both a new start.

Pairing: Police Detective Dean Winchester/Jordan Taylor

Word Count: 3085

Warnings: None

Aesthetic by @editsbymichele on Instagram; Dividers by @firefly-graphics​ 

Jordan regained consciousness with a groan at the throbbing pain in her head. She tried to move, to hold her head in her hands, but they were securely bound behind her back – duct tape, it felt like, and she opened her eyes slowly, remembering what had happened and wondering where she was.

The masked man in front of her shoved at the shoulder of the larger man beside him. “Hey – bitch is awake.”

She squinted up at the man who had spoken, defiance in her eyes. “Fuck you.”

He took a step towards her, but his apparent boss grabbed his arm. “Knock it the fuck off. Take a walk.”

Douche-bag flunky stalked away in a huff, and the man in charge hunkered down in front of her. “Sorry things have to be like this, but it’ll be over soon. Just keep your mouth shut and do as you’re told, and you’ll be fine.”

Jordan just glared back at him, then turned her head, letting her eyes scan the room. She was in some sort of garage, or storage building, she wasn’t sure. The windows were painted over, so no view to the outside. She winced as she moved, her jaw aching and her head pounding with every beat of her heart. Oh, God… Sam…

“What about the guy you beat half to death. Will he be fine?”

Her captor tilted his head. “They hauled him off to the hospital. I’m sure he’ll live.”

She stared back at him, venom in her gaze. “He’d better.”

He chuckled quietly. “Listen, all you need to worry about is that your boyfriend does what he’s told. Then everybody can go home, nobody else needs to get hurt.”

“Right. Except him.”

He shook his head. “As long as he does his job, he’s good.”

“I thought this was all about revenge for the shooting.”

“I want one thing, and one thing only, and a cop is the only one who can get it for me. Speaking of… it’s about time to make a call. Since you’re awake and so chatty. Because I’m sure he’s gonna want to talk to you.” He stood back up, pulling a phone from his pocket – it was hers. He placed the call and put it on speaker, waiting silently for an answer.

“Jordan?”

“Wrong. I am Jordan-adjacent, though.”

“She’d better be in perfect health, you dick, or...”

“She’s fine. Just shut up and listen. Remember a couple of months ago, the big drug bust, made all the papers?”

Dean was silent for a moment, and Jordan pictured him closing his eyes, dreading what was coming next. “Yeah.”

“Well, Detective – all that cocaine? That was mine. You’re gonna go to the evidence lock-up, take it all out, and bring it to me. Three duffle bags, no tricks.”

“You’re fucking crazy.”

“Crazy or not, it’s mine – and I want it back. I don’t care how you do it – not my problem. You get me that coke, and your little spitfire here gets to live.”

“I’m not doing shit until I talk to Jordan. I need to know she’s okay.”

“Yeah, I figured as much.” The masked man knelt down in front of her and held the phone closer to her.  “Go ahead, talk.”

“Dean?” Her voice quavered as she fought tears for the first time since her ordeal had begun.

“Jordan, are you hurt?”

“I’m okay. Dean, is Sam...”

“Sam’s gonna be fine. Don’t worry.”

Her captor rose to his feet again. “Okay, that’s enough for now. I’ll call you in one hour with instructions.”

Jordan swallowed a sob, tears slowly trailing down her cheeks as he ended the call. “You’re insane. How is he supposed to steal drugs from the police lockup?”

“He’ll figure it out. He’d better.” He turned and reached to grab her by the arm, pulling her to her feet. “And now, since our little phone call is done – you can go into the storage closet so we can take off these fucking masks. Hope you appreciate how careful I’ve been to make sure you can survive this little transaction.”

She shot him a glance full of spite. “I’ll send you a fruit basket.”

He laughed. “You know, different circumstances, I think I could really like you.” He unlocked and opened the door to a large walk-in closet, windowless and dark except for vents high up near the ceiling that let scant light in from the room outside. He moved farther into the room, lowering her down next to the wall. A blonde sat across from her, arms held close against her body. “Brought you a roommate. Play nice.” He turned and left the room, locking the door with a loud click and walking away.

The girl looked up at Jordan, her expression stoic. “So you’re the one.”

“The one what?”

“The one I was supposed to grab the first time.”

Jordan leaned her head back against the wall. “You’re Megan? What are you doing in here? I thought you were working with these assholes.”

Megan looked away. “I was supposed to do their dirty work for them. Didn’t work out so well.”

“Sucks when you piss off the boss,” Jordan muttered resentfully, and the blonde’s head raised back up, her blue eyes angry.

“Look, I didn’t… I mean, I knew what I was doing, but I just – I wanted justice for my brother. They lied to me. I found out, after… I tracked down a couple of people that were there that night, people that are still hiding because they’re afraid of these fuckers. They told me what happened. That your cop boyfriend didn’t have any choice. And I was pissed, I called these asshats and told them I wanted to meet.”

“I take it they didn’t like what you had to say.”

“I told them I didn’t like being lied to and used, and that I was done. And they told me that was too bad, because they couldn’t let me go since I knew too much. And I tried to get away, but they broke my fucking arm and knocked me out, locked me up in here.”

Jordan was silent for a moment, the only sound the other girl’s agitated breathing as she fought to control herself. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I assumed… Do you know who they are?”

Megan shook her head. “No. They wore masks when I met them, before that it was just phone contact.”

After a few seconds of silence, Jordan spoke softly. “They want Dean to steal cocaine from the evidence lockup and bring it to them. Supposedly, if they get what they want, they’ll let us go.”

Megan let out a derisive snort. “I’ll believe that when it happens. They’re already on the hook for murder, I doubt if they give a shit about a couple more.”

Resting her aching head against the wall, Jordan let out a sigh. “I know.”

Dean gripped his phone so hard that his hand shook, and Donna put a firm hand on his forearm. “Calm down. Losing it right now isn’t going to help anybody, Dean.”

He looked at the technician sitting behind the monitor, and she shook her head before dropping her eyes. “No trace. Damn it, Donna, what the hell am I supposed to do?”

“Cap’s office, now - brainstorm. We’ll figure it out.”

After a quick knock, the partners were invited to enter, and they both plopped down into the chairs in front of the Captain’s desk. “So what are we dealing with?”

Dean filled him in on the ransom call, and the Captain leaned back in his chair, looking Dean in the eye. “You know we can’t just give them the coke, Detective.”

“There’s got to be something we can do. He’s calling in one hour to give us the drop instructions,” Donna said, forcing herself to remain calm. “Can we put dye packs...”

“They said no tricks. They’ll check for that. We can’t risk it.” Dean bit back, and she took a breath before trying again.

“Okay, they demanded we bring the drugs in three duffle bags. We put a tracker in them.”

The Captain spoke up. “In all probability, they’ll expect that and switch to their own bags when we make the drop.”

Dean moved forward, his forearms braced on his knees. “Okay, so we put a tracker in the coke. Let forensics open one up, put it in the middle so it can’t be seen, and seal it back up exactly like it was before. Then we can track it to their destination.” The Captain narrowed his eyes, considering, and Dean continued. “Sir,  I swear on my life I won’t let them get away with those drugs. But you have to let us do this.”

The Captain thought for a few moments before sitting upright and blowing out a loud breath. He nodded, then said reluctantly, “Okay, I’ll sign the order. I’m holding you to your word.”

Dean closed his eyes for a moment, breathing a sigh of relief. “We won’t let you down, Cap.”

The older man’s words followed them out the door. “You damn well better not.”

Jordan looked up as the door rattled, then swung inward. Her captor knelt down in front of her, setting a bottle of water nearby. “Lean up, I’ll cut your hands loose. Can’t do anything in here, anyway.”

She did as she was told, relieved to be able to move her arms, and gratefully accepted the water. “Thanks,” she muttered grudgingly, and he moved over to set water down near her fellow prisoner. “She needs a doctor, you know.”

He rose to his feet and turned, moving back towards the door. “After I have my property, she can see all the doctors she wants.”

Megan looked down at the bottle, shaking her head as the door closed and locked again. “And how the hell does he think I’m gonna open this?”

Jordan stood up, stretching her aching shoulders, and walked over, kneeling down to open the bottle. Megan’s face looked flushed, her eyes glazed over a little, and Jordan laid a hand on her forehead. “You’re feverish. Maybe they’ll at least give us some aspirin.”

Megan huffed out a sarcastic laugh. “Don’t count on it.”

Jordan went to the door and pounded, shouting. “Hey! Anybody out there? Can we get some aspirin?”

A loud bang on the other side of the door startled her back a step. “Shut the fuck up in there! Be glad you got water.”

Megan gave her a half-smile. “Told you. But thanks for trying.”

“Assholes,” Jordan said under her breath, stripping off the button-down she was wearing over her tank top and kneeling back down in front of Megan.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked, watching Jordan fold and re-fold the shirt until she was satisfied with the results.

“You have to be exhausted trying to hold your arm like that. I thought maybe a sling would help.” She carefully slipped the makeshift sling under Megan’s injured forearm, taking the sleeves behind her neck and tying them into a knot. The girl sighed with relief as she relaxed her shoulder, letting the shirt cradle her arm.

“Thank you.” Jordan smiled at her and headed back to her spot against the wall.

“You’re welcome.”

Dean ended his call and stuffed his phone back into his pocket, turning to Donna. “Sam’s out of surgery, everything’s good.”

His partner sighed with relief and smiled. “Thank God. One of the guys from forensics just finished up with the tracker. Everything’s ready to go.”

As if on cue, Dean’s phone rang, and he grabbed it from his pocket, nodding towards the tech who would be trying to trace the call. When the officer signaled, Dean answered. “Yeah.”

“I assume that you’ve got my coke ready to deliver?”

“Yeah. Just tell me where and when so we can get this over with.” The man rattled off an address, and Dean repeated it. “I want to talk to Jordan. Make sure she’s still okay.”

“No more time for socializing right now. She’s fine. You’ll just have to trust me.”

“Like hell I will.”

“You don’t have a choice. Meet me at that address in 45 minutes, come alone, and I’ll give you her location so you can have a nice, long chat with your girl.” The call ended abruptly, and Dean swore, his teeth clenched together in frustrated anger.

Donna put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey. We’re gonna nail these bastards.”

He took a breath, his expression taut and determined. “Fuckin’ right. And she’d better be okay, or I swear to God...”

“She’ll be okay. She’s smart, and she’s tough, and you’re gonna get her back.”

Dean pulled into the parking lot, eyes scanning the area. “You can still hear me?” he asked, and a tinny affirmative reply came through his earpiece. Donna and two other squad cars were parked a couple of blocks away, and the SWAT van was another block over and north, their tracking equipment set up to follow the cocaine after the drop.

A dark, nondescript SUV pulled into the lot and parked a couple of car lengths away. Dean exited the car, tugging his vest down and taking a couple of steps to the front of the car. His contact climbed out of his vehicle, mask in place, moving forward a few steps and then taking a wide-legged stance, his arms folded over his chest. “Okay, let’s get this party started.” Dean nodded, opening the trunk and grabbing the bags, walking forward until the man shouted for him to stop. “Drop the bags right there.”

“Where is she?” Dean responded, still holding them, challenge in his eyes.

“When we conclude our business, I’ll tell you. Now drop the bags.”

He did as he was told, muttering under his breath, “I’m gonna kill this fucker.”

Donna’s voice came back, “No, you’re not. Just take a breath, partner.”

At a motion from the man in charge, a couple of masked men exited the vehicle, empty duffle bags in hand. They knelt on the ground and began to transfer the cocaine to their own bags, and Dean walked back to close the trunk on his cruiser. “What’s the matter, don’t trust me?”

“Oh, come on, Detective. Like I don’t know they’d put some kind of tracker in those bags. I don’t blame you, don’t worry. I’m sure your commanding officer insisted.” His men finished loading the coke and retreated back to the SUV, tossing their prize into the back before getting back inside. The driver pulled a phone from his pocket, dialing and speaking a few quiet words before looking towards Dean and speaking.

“All right. Well done, Detective. You’ll find your little spitfire in a storage building two blocks north of here.” Dean moved quickly towards his door, but the man called out again. “Also, you have a choice – you can have your backup try to follow us – or you can get to that storage building and save those girls. Seems a fire got started in there somehow. Your choice. Better hurry, though.”

Dean was in his car, engine roaring to life, as he spoke to Donna. “Did you hear that? Meet me there, let SWAT track the coke!”

“You got it!” the answer came back, and Dean squealed the tires, heading north.  His foot to the floor, his eyes scanned frantically for smoke as he approached the two-block area, and he screeched to a halt in front of the building, smoke already pouring from a broken window on the side. His backup pulled in a few seconds later as he reached the door, placing a palm against it to test for heat.

“Bring the battering ram!” He shouted, knowing it was futile to try to kick in the steel-reinforced door, and two officers came at a run with the tool in hand. “Call fire!” he shouted over his shoulder as the third slam into the door sent it flying inward, the frame splintering. Donna and two other officers entered right behind him, skirting the fire and searching the building.

Dean headed straight for the closet, hearing Jordan pounding on the door and calling out. “Help! We’re in here!”

“Stand back from the door!” he shouted, waited a few seconds, and let the battering ram do its work. “Jordan!” He rushed into the room, letting his relief wash over him for a split second before taking her arm and shoving her towards an officer. “Get her out of here!”

“Dean! Megan needs help, she’s sick, and her arm is broken,” Jordan called out to him, then let the officer lead her out.

He nodded, heading Megan’s direction. “Okay, Megan, I’m just going to pick you up and carry you out. Can you get your good arm around my neck?” The girl nodded, and Dean bent to pick her up, as careful as he could be not to jostle her arm.

Fire and Rescue were just pulling in, and Dean carried Megan directly to the ambulance, waiting for the EMTs to ready the gurney before laying her down. “You okay?” he asked, and she nodded, and he stepped back to allow the paramedics to do their job. He turned, eyes searching until he spotted Jordan being hugged by Donna, and in a few long strides, he was there, pulling her into his arms.

He held her tight, letting her sob softly into his chest until she quieted down. “Thank you,” she whispered as he pulled back, looking down into her eyes. He touched her face, barely brushing over her bruised jaw and gently touching the cut over her eyebrow, beautifully framing her black eye.

“Got quite a shiner, there,” he said, and she nodded, wincing.

“Yeah, they, uh – they slammed my head into the steering wheel.”

He pressed a soft kiss to her lips. “Baby, I’m so sorry.”

“Not your fault. Sam...”

“Sam’s okay. He’s out of surgery, he’ll be fine, hospital called me.” Another ambulance pulled in, and he brushed his knuckles over her uninjured cheek. “I’m sorry, Jordan, but you need to go in and get checked out.” She looked into his eyes, watching the guilty struggle there, and put her hand over his.

“Dean – go. Catch those assholes. They’ll take care of me.”

After a moment’s pause, he finally nodded. “Okay. Let’s get you in the ambulance, then Donna and I will go help SWAT take out the trash.”

Chapter 9

[imagineclaireandjamie]

There’s no place like home. [Wizard of Oz]

Alone Together  : Chapter 1

“Oh, G, I’m so sorry to hear that.”

Claire stood over Brianna’s cot, gently rubbing her sleeping three-week-old daughter’s back.

“It’s just...soul-crushing, Claire.” Gillian Edgars - fellow emergency room doctor at Mt. Sinai - almost sobbed into the phone. “We’re doing as best as we can. And somehow I feel like it’s not enough.”

Claire’s gaze rose to look out the window, and the afternoon sunlight reflecting off the windows of nearby apartment buildings. Almost blinding in intensity. “I wish I could be there to help you.”

“Bullshit. You stay right there with that little girl and that husband of yours. I can’t believe they said he couldn’t be there in the delivery room. For the birth of his own child!”

“I know. Thankfully Joe pushed.”

Gillian sighed. “When this is all over, you and me are getting rip-roaring drunk.”

Claire smiled. “Sounds like a plan. Give my love to Charlie.”

“At least he’s using this time to be productive - his novel about the ‘45 is almost done. But then again, it was almost done last summer, too.”

Now Claire laughed. Her heart soared to hear Gillian laugh, too. They bid goodbye, and Claire dropped her phone on the bed, still rubbing Brianna’s back.

“Hey.” Jamie padded into their bedroom, rubbing his face. “Everything OK in here?”

Claire turned to face him. “I’m good. Bree’s good. You good?”

He sighed. “I’m getting real Zoom fatigue. Would you believe it if I told you that Angus still has the Tiger King poster as his background?”

She shook her head. “I can believe it. Everybody’s going a bit crazy.”

He opened his arms, and she sank into them. Held him close.

“Everyone’s going a lot crazy,” he murmured into her hair, rubbing her shoulders. “The world is going crazy.”

“Then we control what we can. And take care of each other.”

He sighed. “Yes. I’ll make a run to Fairway after work - do we need anything?”

“I can’t remember offhand. Check the pantry.”

“You mean, the living room?”

She snorted. “I’m rather proud of those shelves you made. At least we have storage.”

“True.” A beat. “I’m glad I have you, Claire. And that we have her.”

Claire pulled back to look at him, and darted in for a kiss.

“Me too. She’s the only thing that makes sense.”

[doyoufancyathought]

Through The Utility Closet Part 2: An Unexpected Visitor

Y/N looked up from where she had landed on the floor. There was a table of open mouthed individuals, and one very confused presenter, looking down on her. Whoops, this is something she'd have to text her best friend about when she got home.

"I'm so sorry," Y/N stood up and dusted off her apron. "I had no idea there was a second door in the closet, and I couldn't find the light switch, and-"

And she was cut off. "Where did you come from?" The presenter asked.

Y/N motioned to the closet she had just spilled out of. "The storage room?"

"That's a coat closet. And we don't even keep coats in it. How long have you been hiding in there?"

"I'm so sorry," Y/N started to back up, not liking the route her evening had taken. "I swear I wasn't hiding, I was just in the room to put a box on the shelf, I was only in there for a minute, I swear."

He looked confused, as did the people seated around the table. "We've been here for 20 minutes, and there's no way you snuck past us carrying a box."

"Oh, there must be a different door that I came through, then. I'm so sorry, I'll be going now."

"Wait a minute," the man walked over and blocked her from getting back into the closet. "This is my coat closet, and I want to investigate where you came from. Rogers, come here please."

A hulking blonde man stood up from the opposite side of the table and started walking towards our heroine. He said a quiet "Hi, 'scuse me." and maneuvered past her and joined the other man in the room.

"Tony, there's no other door, just the one right here." The blond man said.

I suppose it's important to establish that it's not normal to have secondary doors to coat closets unless you live in a haunted Victorian home full of ghosts that have already plotted 63 different ways to kill you by Tuesday.

"I know, Steve!"

"Then where did she come from?"

"I don't know! She certainly didn't sneak in since we've been here!"

The two men in the closet bickered back and forth for a few minutes. Meanwhile, Y/N turned to the room full of strangers who were observing both her and the argument in the closet in equal amounts. She caught the eye of a massive brunet, and gave him the classic smile given to those you wish to scootch past in the grocery store. He looked away, and a man who I could have sworn had just had a red complexion rose from his chair to stand beside Y/N.

"I do apologize for our manners. My name is Vision, what's yours?"

"I'm Y/N."

"Lovely name. And where are you from, Y/N?"

This gave her pause. She assumed that she was from the same place as they were, the town they were all in at this very moment.

"I'm from here?"

"And where exactly do you think here is?"

"What, you think this door teleported me? I'm in (hometown) of course, same as you!" Y/N chuckled as she looked around the room. She caught the rest of the group exchanging looks, and sighed. "Right?"

Vision gently patted her shoulder. "I'm so sorry to be the one to tell you this, dear, but you're not in (hometown) anymore. You're in New York."

Y/N looked between Vision and the others. "What? That's crazy! I'm not - there's no way. You guys are crazy." Y/N looked over her shoulder to see the two men in the closet peering out at the rest of the room. "Did you find the other door? I really should get back to work, and I'm sure you all should get back to your meeting."

They shook their heads and moved out of the closet, although it was a battle between who entered the doorway first.

"I'll find it, and I'll be on my way." Y/N charged back into the closet, and crossed the foot and a half wide floor with one step. Surely she'd be better at finding a mysteriously elusive door than two men, right? She ran her fingers over the walls, looking for a hinge or a handle or even a bump to indicate an opening of any kind. She'd even pull an Alice in Wonderland and crawl on her hands and knees through a hole in the wall if she must.

Still, no luck. The wall was as smooth as a baby's bottom, which were usually quite smooth. So, Y/N returned to the boardroom with her arms crossed.

"Alright, this joke is very funny, but I'm really ready to go back to work now!"

"We're not pulling a prank here, I promise, we're just as surprised as you are."

"Seriously? Who paid you to do this? I don't know anyone who could pay you to pull this off. Who did it?"

"Seriously, lady, there's no joke here. We're not pranking you."

"Then," Y/N paused and licked her lips. "Hey, man, where did you say we are?"

Vision told her that she was in New York now. It was too much. Between the heat and the stress and the exhaustion, Y/N's brain couldn't take it any longer. Steve barely had time to leap back over the table and catch her in his arms before she crumbled to the floor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Y/N woke up, she was still in the boardroom, laid out on the floor, surrounded by good looking strangers. Weirdly, her life was looking better than it usually did.

"What happened?"

"You fainted, dear." A man with a goatee spoke up. "Don't worry, you weren't out for very long. I'm a doctor, by the way. Doctor Stephen Strange."

"That's, well," Y/N searched for a better word to describe her situation. "Strange." The man frowned down at her. "Not you, I'm sorry, just, I don't faint, I'm not really the damsel in distress type. Where am I?"

"This again?!?!" Y/N recognized the man from before, Tony. "You're in New York! Where did you come from?"

"I came from work, in (hometown). I don't just wear this apron around for fun, you know!" Y/N gestured to her apron, which conveniently had the company logo on it. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. "So, I'm in New York. And I came out of your coat closet. And before that, I was at my job in (hometown), just going about my day. How did I get here?"

"Well," the man called Vision came back into the room. "I'm not quite sure, but if I had to guess, which I don't do often, you've just come through an inter-dimensional portal."

"A what now?"

"An inter-dimensional portal. You've travelled through space, clearly, possibly time as well, and I would guess you've also travelled across different planes of reality since you seem to have no comprehension of who we are. Thus, you've crossed into a different dimension that the one you usually reside in."

"That totally makes sense."

"Oh, really?" The blond giant from earlier asked.

"No, absolutely not. That did not make sense at all, Vision. I thought portals only existed in sci-fi, like Star Trek or stuff like that!" Y/N was, indeed, very confused.

"I think the science might be a little beyond your understanding, dear." Vision said. "But it appears to me that your storage cupboard was a doorway to this universe, to this reality. Sometimes these things just pop up, you know."

Y/N looked at Vision. "No, I don't know that these things just pop up! Pretty sure I would have heard about it on the news." Everyone sat for a moment, pondering their next steps. "So does anyone have any ideas on how to get me back to my world?" Y/N looked around hopefully.

The group of people around her all looked at each other, and Tony, Vision, and Dr. Strange looked thoughtful.

"I think that between the three of us we can probably figure out how to get you home." Dr. Strange finally said.

"And how long will that take? Like a couple of hours maybe?" Y/N asked from the floor.

"Uh, no." Tony stood up and started clearing off a whiteboard. "Inter-dimensional portals cannot be figured out in just a few hours, strange lady. It'll take a few days, at best. You got somewhere to stay?"

"Tony, she's not going to have anywhere to stay, she's not from here." Steve explained.

"She can stay with us!" a dark man with a buzz cut offered. "I've got a spare room in the basement still, she can stay there until we figure out how to get her home. I'm Sam, by the way."

"Hi Sam, I'm Y/N. You don't have to take me in, I can just stay in a shelter if there's one nearby."

"Hang on, I'm calling Fury." Tony dialled a phone, and pointed at me while it was ringing. "You're not staying in a shelter."

"No, it's fine, I'm sure it won't be too bad."

"They're terrible, you're not staying at a shelter, you're coming with me." Sam said.

"And why would I stay with you? I don't know who you are, why should I trust you more than some homeless shelter?" Y/N was standing now, and crossed her arms.

"We're the Avengers! You can trust us."

"I don't think you understand how little that means to me. Who are you?"

"The Avengers."

"And what is the Avengers? Sounds like either a league of superheroes or a terrible pop group."

"We're superheroes."

"Oh shit really?" Y/N blushed. "You're superheroes, for real?"

The group around the table nodded.

"So who's got the laser eyes?"

The group looked mildly confused, because none of them had laser eyes, but fortunately they didn't have a chance to answer, because Fury answered the phone, and Tony set it to speaker.

"What can I help you with, Stark?"

"Well, see, here's the situation. We're just sitting here, having our meeting, and the closet door pops open and this girl comes flying out onto the floor."

"Okay, so you have a spy, you know what to do with that."

"I'm not done yet. We thought she was a spy, but we've come to the conclusion that she actually just came through an inter-dimensional portal."

"So you have an alien in your conference room?"

"She's not an alien, Mr. Fury." Vision interjected. "I've scanned her, and she seems to be perfectly human."

Y/N frowned. She didn't like the thought of being scanned without consent. And how could Vision tell that she was human anyways? And did this guy think she was an alien? Were aliens common in this world?

The man on the other end of the phone sighed. "Is she there?"

"Yeah, she's been here the whole time. You're on speaker." Tony responded.

"I'd like to speak to her."

"Talk away, she's right here."

"Hello, what's your name?"

"I'm Y/n." she said, moving closer to the phone.

"Hi, well welcome to Earth. I'm Nick Fury, director of SHIELD. Welcome to Earth."

"Thanks, but I'm already from Earth, I don't really need a welcome."

"Ok, we'll brush past that for now. Have they explained the inter-dimension portals to you yet?"

"They tried, but if I'm being honest that's a little bit out of my league."

"Fair enough. You're in good hands there; we have the best scientists in the world at those labs. As you might imagine, it's not really an exact science, these portals, so it might take our team a while to figure out how to get you home."

"So are you guys like the men in black? Do you have that movie here?"

"Yeah, we have that movie here. I'm guessing that your world is very very similar to ours, so we're going to be taking you down to one of our labs and running a few tests so we can better determine where you're from. In the mean time, I'll let the Avengers take care of you, they don't have any other pressing matters at this time, and just in case you're a violent alien, they're best equipped to deal with you going rogue."

"Uh, well, I guess that sounds good. I promise I'm not an alien though."

"We'll see about that." Fury hung up and I looked around the room.

"I should make introductions, pardon my manners." Vision stood up from his seat (he kinda seemed to float, but maybe he was just hella graceful).

"This is Steven Rogers, you might hear him referred to as Captain America." The blond man who had earlier joined Tony in a closet gave a quick wave and a smile. He seemed very friendly.

"This is James Barnes, he's very quiet, so don't take offence if he doesn't say much to you. He means no harm." Vision pointed to the brunet I had locked eyes with earlier, and he gave a small smile, but didn't wave.

"This is Sam Wilson, as you know. He, Steve, and James all live together in Sam's house, and I suppose you'll be joining them. I'd offer you our couch, but my wife Wanda and I," here he pointed to a lovely brunette woman seated beside him. "are in the middle of renovations, and I'm sure a spare bedroom would be more comfortable for you than a dusty couch."

Y/N nodded. She was going to have a bit of trouble keeping track of everyone's names.

"This is Bruce Banner, this is Natasha Romanoff, Scott Lang, Clint Barton, Stephen Strange, Tony Stark, and of course, I am Vision." They all waved as their names were said.

"Wait, what's your last name?"

"I don't have one, dear. I'm a computer."

"Oh?" Y/N was shocked, understandably so.

"Yes."

"We don't have that in my world."

"Yes, it's uncommon here as well. Are you ready to go do some tests?"

"Um, I guess so. Nice to meet you all."

Vision and Y/N walked out of the meeting room and started down the hallway.

Tony decided to pick up from where they left off. "So as I was saying,"

"Tony!" Steve yelled at him. "What are you doing?"

"Getting back to the meeting we were having?"

"We just had a girl pop through a portal in our closet, and you want to go back to the meeting?"

"Um, yeah. Vision's got her."

"Aren't you curious?"

"Not really."

"The first time something pops out of a portal and doesn't try to kill us, and you're not interested?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, why?"

"Dude, you're crazy. I'm going down to the lab to watch the tests." Scott jumped up from his seat and started making his way to the door.

"Yeah, me too." Steve and Sam stood up, and Bucky followed suit.

Soon enough, the whole team was exiting the conference room and following the path that Y/N and Vision had taken down to the labs. Tony eventually decided to follow them, because he didn't want to be alone.

They got down to the labs, and found Vision waiting in the hallway.

"They sent her to get changed," Vision explained as the team assembled. "If she's staying here for a while, we're going to have to get her some more clothes. I'm sure she doesn't want to stay in her work clothes the entire time."

"Yeah, I'll get Pepper to make arrangements." Tony said.

After a few minutes, Y/N stepped out of a room just off the hallway. She was wearing grey shorts and a black tank top, and nothing on her feet. She frowned as her bare feet hit the cold tile floor.

"Ugh, so cold. Alright, let's figure out where I'm from."

A nurse came and got her, and led her into another room just off the hallway. There was an observation window, and the team gathered around to watch the tests. They watched her as she jumped up on the table, and smiled at the nurse as she began to hook up wires and prep for a blood draw. Soon they would figure out just who this unexpected visitor was.

[abundanceofsoph]

SkyFire 2: Chapter 11

The Mural & The Anniversary: September 201

Word count: 2.1k

Aurora's memorial song is Andie Case's See You Again/The Scientist/Stay With Me

SkyFire 2 MASTERLIST

>Instagram posts

Aurora and Steve were working in their shared art studio a few days later. Aurora was wearing her prosthetic hand as she painted at her easel, thankful to finally be able to hold her palette again instead of piling paint pots on a side table. Ben had instructed her to only wear it for an hour or two each day to avoid injuring herself or creating pressure sores on her stump. She’d spent her hour the previous day at the piano, slowly retraining herself to play again and today she had allotted the time to painting. Both she and Steve had missed the hours they would spend together in the studio, soft music filling the comfortable silence between the two of them. Aurora was chewing at the inside of her cheek, her mind a million miles away as she focused in on the finer details of her mural concept.

“Hey pops?” she finally asked, drawing Steve’s attention away from his own canvas. “Do you have any plans this week?”

“No, why bug?”

“I’m going to be painting that mural at Columbia,” she explained, “and I was… I was wondering if you could come with me. But if your busy, it’s fine.”

Steve picked up on her anxiety almost immediately. There was a fine tremor in her right hand, her paint brush wavering in the air, and her eyes couldn’t seem to land on anything for longer than a split second. He knew if he placed a hand on her chest right now, her heart would be racing.

“I’d love too,” he smiled softly. “Always love watching you work.”

She returned his smile, the anxiety washing out of her in a wave, reassured that she wouldn’t be alone when she returned to the campus for the first time in almost a year.

xXx

As she walked onto campus Aurora was glad that she’d swallowed her pride and asked Steve to come with her. The terror she felt being back there was palpable and she felt herself shaking as she looked at the sprawling buildings in front of her. Happy had dropped them at the closest entrance to the quad, helping Steve pull her equipment from the trunk of the car. She had her backpack slung over her shoulders, full of brushes, paint tins and drop cloths, her prosthetic was mostly hidden under the sleeve of her oversized sweatshirt, red letters spelling out Columbia across her chest. Steve walked over to her side, dropping the ladder and bag of equipment beside her as Happy climbed back into the car and drove away.

“You ready to do this?” he asked, reaching out to squeeze her hand. She let out a shaking breath, continuing to stare out across the perfectly tailored lawn and she knew that without his hand in hers she wouldn’t have had the strength to put one foot in front of the other. She squeezed his hand in reply and it was only when she tore her gaze away from the campus to look at him that she saw her own nervousness echoed in his blue eyes, so like hers. In that moment she knew that he was reliving that day right along with her.

“I’m ready,” she replied. “You?”

“Let’s do this,” he said, smiling softly as he dropped her hand to pick up her supplies again.

Without another word they both strode off up the path in front of them. They quad was empty when they arrived and started setting up. After spreading out the drop sheet they quickly got to work prepping the wall and laying down a base coat of sunshine yellow. The happy colour helped pull them both out of their memories and Aurora set up a little speaker to play some of their favourite tunes. By the end of the afternoon they had finished the base yellow and Aurora had started to rough in the outlines of the figures in the foreground. Once the sun started to set, they cleaned off their brushes and rollers, leaving all the equipment in a storage room in a nearby building that had been cleaned out for her by the Student Union.

Steve wrapped his arm around her shoulder as they walked back through the campus towards where Happy was waiting to pick them up. “Thank you for coming with me Pops,” she said.

“Glad to be here,” he replied. “Feels good to be making better memories of this place.”

“Yeah it does,” she agreed. “I think that’s why I wanted to be the one to paint the mural when it was announced. I used to feel like I belonged here, and I want to take that back.”

“You will.”

xXx

She spent the next two weeks working on the painting, starting with the school mascot kneeling in the centre of the scene. On either side of the anthropomorphic lion, with a hand on each shoulder, were Iron Man and Captain America and behind them were the other first responders; police, paramedics, doctors and nurses, all standing shoulder to shoulder in solidarity, their heads dropped in mourning. The crowd behind the lion steadily lost colour as they moved towards the back of the scene until the furthest figures were only black silhouettes, a faceless mass of support. Across the bottom of the painting, at their feet, was the wreath of roses being placed down by the lion and then, lining the ground in front of them were 43 white pillar candles, one for each victim, their names painted in gold and flames glowing softly. She finished the piece with a frame bordering the image in soft metallic gold paint, the same paint she used for the lettering. When everything was done, she packed all her equipment off to the side and stepped back to take in the finished work. She felt a few tears slide down her cheeks as she read each name on the candles once again, every name burned into her brain, unable to be forgotten even if she wanted to.

She sent a quick email to the Student Union to let them know she was finished and then called Happy to come pick her up from the usual spot. She left all of her equipment in the storage room again, deciding that she was too tired to deal with taking it all home today. Maybe Pops would be free tomorrow to help her ferry it back. She shouldn’t have been surprised when Harry was the one waiting for her on the curb, but she was. A grin lit up both of their faces and he kissed her softly once she reached them.

“Do I not get to see the masterpiece?” he asked as she went to climb into the car.

“I’ll show you tomorrow when I come back with my camera and lights,” she replied. “I just wanna go home now.”

Harry silently agreed, holding open her door for her and then jogging around to climb into the driver’s seat. Aurora had been planning for what she wanted to do when she finished the mural for weeks and was excited to finally be able to enact her plan.

She’d been working on a video idea, and having gotten permission from the Student Union, she and Harry return to the quad the following evening, late enough that the sun has set, and the campus was nearly deserted. Harry helped her set up her lighting rigs, ensuring that the mural was softly lit under a warm glow. While Aurora turned her attention to setting up her video camera on a tripod, lining up the shot perfectly, Harry set up the dozens of battery powered candles they’d brought with them. Finally, everything was ready, and Harry moves behind the camera, hitting record when Aurora nodded from where she’d taken a seat in front of the painting, surrounded by the flickering glow of the candles. The scene was beautiful with the candles providing enough light to illuminate Aurora’s face while the mural was backlit, a faint breeze blowing through the quad to lightly lift Aurora’s long, dark curls. She’d taken her prosthetic off, the stump of her left hand visible below the hem of her black shirt.

Harry pressed play on his phone, music filling the night air as the video camera recorded the scene in front of him. For the past week, Aurora had spent her days on campus painting, and then once the sun set and she returned home, she had spent the evenings in the studio, recording the song now playing from Harry’s phone. It was a medley that Aurora composed of The Scientist, See You Again and Stay With Me, a soft piano track backing her vocals. After an hour, and multiple takes, Aurora was happy with what they had and ready to head home to start editing it all together in time for the anniversary at the end of the week. They quickly packed up the camera, lights and candles before leaving.

“I’m really proud of you,” Harry told her as they headed for the car. “It’s going to be a beautiful tribute.”

“Thanks,” she replied, holding out her hand for his and lacing their fingers together, his thumb brushing softly across the back of her hand.

xXx

◊Mark: The news is reporting on you painting the mural at Columbia. I’m getting bombarded with interview requests.

◊Aurora: and you think I should do one.

◊Mark: With the CMAs around the corner I think this would be a good way to relaunch your brand.

◊Aurora: Relaunch my brand? I’m rolling my eyes so hard at you right now.

◊Mark: Yeah, yeah, I know you hate all of this. Doesn’t make it any less true. Everyone has been itching to hear your side of things for the last year.

◊Aurora: Ok. I don’t like it, but I trust you. Who’s the best option?

◊Mark: How do you feel about Stephen Colbert? We were in talks to get you on there last year before everything happened and they’re planning a memorial episode with some of the other survivors.

◊Aurora: He’s been great to Dad and Pops. Can you make it happen?

◊Mark: Leave it with me and I’ll set it all up.

◊Aurora: I’ve been tossing up the idea of releasing a song and having all the profits go to the ColumbiaStrong fund.

◊Mark: They have musical acts on the Late Show, you feel up to combing the two?

◊Aurora: Perfect.

xXx

Harry and Aurora were curled up on the sofa the afternoon before her appearance on the Late Show, her head rested on his shoulder and his fingers brushed through her hair.

“Hey babe?” Harry asked. Aurora hummed in response, prompting him to continue. “I know we’ve got a lot on our plate over the next few months with the CMAs and then the wedding and the album in the new year, but there’s something I’ve been thinking about… I think I want to sell Erskine after the wedding.”

“What?” Aurora gasped, sitting up suddenly to look at him. “You love that house and you’ve put so much work into it.”

“I know,” Harry agreed, “and I do, but it’s my house and I want to buy somewhere with you. I want to have our house. I know that when we’re here in the states you want to stay in the tower so I thought we should buy a place in London together. Wherever you want. Maybe we could buy something in Wimbledon.”

“Oh, Harry,” she sighed, her voice laced with all the affection she had for the man sitting in front of her. “You’re such a romantic. I would love to buy a place with you. I think we should keep Erskine though. We both have a lot of good memories there. Maybe we could rent it out.”

“We could do that,” Harry grinned. “If we find something new before the wedding it would be handy to let all the family stay at the house after the reception since they’re already there, then we can just sneak out and won’t have to wait until everyone leaves.”

“I like the way you think Styles.”

xXx

The next day Aurora found herself in a green room at the Ed Sullivan theatre with her manager, Mark. “You ready?” he asked her.

“I hope so, because it’s a bit late now to change my mind.”

“You’ll be great,” Mark promised. “He’ll do the monologue and then introduce you. You’ll talk about your recovery and the charity work you’ve been doing with Steve and Tony, then you’ll come back out here for a breather while he talks to the other survivors. You sing Reaper and then join them all back on the couch for the second half of the interview with all of you.”

“Yeah, I know. I can do this,” she muttered.

NEXT CHAPTER

OR CONTINUE READING ON AO3

[emotionalsupportbun-chan]

dani sent me a text without punctuation, which i then interpreted as a very specific fic request

this became so much more than I thought it was going to be and *i guess* there’ll have to be more 

so anyway here’s afab Zhao

nsfw, obv. 

Almost, Almost. Kasuga said it was close. An empty building, still unsold, still draining a dead man’s bank account. It was technically squatting, but no one would think to look for them there and none of them could quite handle a bar right now.

 They leaned on each other, stumbling down the narrow alleys of the Red Light district, the support both physical and emotional. Saeko shouldered more of Kasuga’s weight than Zhao had assumed she could. Themself and Joon-Gi embraced like drunkards on a dance floor, each a load-bearing wall to the other. Just focus. One step after another, one foot in front of the other, until the gaudy facade of an abandoned soapland came into view. 

The door was unlocked. That should have been reason for concern, but “preoccupied” was an understatement. The interior was quiet nonetheless, air stagnant, dank from the lingering moisture of the establishment’s past. A layer of dust covered the front desk, the phone, the pictures of the smiling girls that still adorned the walls. The scattering of bubbly brunettes, headshots subtly retouched, greeted them in the absence of their late boss as the party silently trudged up the stairs, each one picking a room. Zhao went straight down to the end of the hall to a room they knew was still fully stocked with a variety of therapeutic oils and herbs. With the finish line in sight, each step became a battle of its own; each one highlighting a new ache, a yet undiscovered cut, a deep bruise. Their legs felt like jelly, like the bones could slide out onto the floor at any moment. After an eternity, they hit the threshold, not so much opening the door as letting the weight of their body fling it to the side. Inside, they found the room not entirely as expected. 

“Oh…?” Surprise, disappointment, irritation. A great cacophony of feelings arose at the sight of another person in the room, and somehow they all fit neatly into that one word.

“Huh?” The figure rose from their crouched position in front of the sliding doors of the storage closet. It was a woman - inky black hair cut short, face unadorned by makeup aside from striking oxblood lipstick, athletic outfit both fashionable and utilitarian. “Fuckin’ hell, ya look like ya tried to fist-fight a wreckin’ ball.” 

Ignoring the surprisingly accurate comment, Zhao tried to slip into the old Scary Gang Boss performance. They didn’t know who this woman was, but they were fairly certain she didn’t belong here. “Hey! You…” But the energy quickly faded, intensity falling from their voice. “Just get out.” They hoped that tone could carry the rest of the message as the words failed to come. I have a lot of questions, but no drive to ask them right now.  

“I’m serious, ya got fucked up.” There was genuine concern in this stranger’s voice. “Come sit down before ya fall over an’ hit yer head ’r somethin’.” She approached, guiding Zhao to a rickety chair in the corner. “Didn’t mean to cause any problems, I thought this place was abandoned,” she said, resuming her search through some boxes stacked at the bottom of the closet. 

Zhao sank into the seat and watched her, trying not to concentrate on the throb of torn muscle. More questions came and were dismissed, deemed not worth the effort of speech. They couldn’t help but notice how well her ass filled out her athletic leggings, though.  

“Is that so?” They took a breath, gathering the will to continue the conversation-slash-interrogation. “Strange, I didn’t know Kansai thieves came in such pretty packages.” They wanted the comment to be something more aggressive, but the flirtation was instinct; the quip slipped out before they even thought to stop it. It was met with a sharp jab to the side by a single manicured nail. 

“A comedian, huh? Very funny.” She upended another small box. “Damn…”

“But really, who are you? What are you doing here?” They let their voice go quiet and calm, an almost-threat, Serious Business Zhao. Great ass aside, an intruder was an intruder. And sure, they didn’t have the strength to put up much of a fight, if it came to that, but Quiet Menacing usually did the trick. 

“I used to work here.” Another box, inspected and discarded. Finally, she fell back out of a squat, now sitting on the floor in a crab-like position, red faced with the effort of her frantic search. An errant strand of hair fell into her face and was blown away in a huff. She wore her frustration openly. It was cute as hell.  

Oh, now you’ve done it. They tried to come out with something slick and witty. “Hi, ‘I used to work here’. I’m Zhao.” They threw a half-smile on for good measure. Nailed it. 

That frustration gave way to something between second-hand embarrassment and disgust. “Really?” 

She stood abruptly, gracefully. It seemed the athletic outfit wasn’t just for show. “As I was sayin’, I used to work here. Just got back in town and had to pick up some stuff I left behind. Looks like one of the other girls already got to it, though.” She paused, stretching. “Sucks about Nonomiya,” she added, the murder of her boss an afterthought. 

With new found high ground, she looked down at Zhao, licked a thumb, and tried to smudge away a line of blood on their cheek. “What’re you doin’ here?” 

“We, uh, wanted a bath.” They motioned toward the door, shifting uncomfortably through the strange woman’s fussing. “A friend of mine briefly worked for Nonomiya.” 

“Huh.” She began to inspect their various cuts and contusions. “Ya know any first aid? This is gonna take more’n a Toughness to fix.”   

“Not really.” Nothing more than the basics. Usually they’d just go see a Liumang doctor, but that wasn’t exactly an option anymore. 

“Lemme fix ya up then, it’s the least I could do.” She chuckled to herself. “Ya looked like yer soul’d left yer body, seein’ me in here.” She turned and started the bath running, opening the jars and bottles that she’d pulled out of the closet. Zhao watched as she mixed a scoop of this or that into the rising water and popped open a still-sealed medical kit. She tore open and arranged packets of gauze and astringent pads as the bath filled, a mise-en-place that would satisfy even the pickiest nurse. She’d even produced a basic suturing kit. “Go on, get in! I’m doin’ ya a favor here.” She tugged at the collar of their jacket. 

The transition to standing upright was not without pain. “Uh…” Sure, this might as well happen. “Yeah...ok, fine.” They carefully removed the leather jacket, the shorts, the shoes, folding them neatly and placing them on the chair Zhao had once occupied. Knowing my luck, I’d fall asleep and drown if I had to do it myself. 

“Hurry up,” She waved a hand in their direction. “It’s not nothin’ I haven’t seen a million times before.” Unsatisfied with their pace, the woman began to rapidly, procedurally, unbutton Zhao’s shirt, deft fingers working more quickly than they’d assumed the nails would allow. “Oh!” She stopped about half way down as the shirt fell open to reveal the sturdy sports bra beneath it. “Sorry, guess I just assumed…” 

“Don’t worry about it, easy mistake.” It wasn’t exactly a secret. Anyone who’d been in the Liumang long enough knew the old boss never had a son, but Zhao wasn’t going to stop any new blood from making convenient assumptions. They finished undressing themself as the woman stood in contemplation and slowly stepped into the bath, smiling at the stranger’s quiet nice. “If this changes anything…” 

“Oh, no.” She settled onto a short stool behind Zhao’s back and rolled up the sleeves of her sweater. “If anything, my job just got easier. Don’t gotta worry about any wayward, uh, anatomy.” Her tone was cool, casual, but Zhao knew when their body was being appreciated. They had that effect on some people. Mostly girls. Men typically didn’t like someone they perceived as a woman having shoulders as broad and well-muscled as theirs.  

Once they were settled, the stranger set to work. Whatever she mixed into the bath stung as it came into contact with the various cuts across Zhao’s body, but soothed sore muscles and joints better than any concoction they could have come up with. The initial inspection was thorough; the woman was unhesitant in picking up limbs and manipulating skin. She didn’t seem to find anything worth stitches - the few cuts that were a little more than just a scratch got spritzed with wound wash and treated with an antibiotic ointment. She rubbed some kind of cream over the larger bruises. 

Once satisfied with the state of their wounds, she started working the shoulders and neck. First gentle, but firm, presses of knuckles to loosen the knots. Then she really set in, putting her full weight behind an elbow, working just under the base of their neck. It hurt at first, and Zhao almost called it quits, but after a minute or so the tension gave way and their legs - their whole body, for that matter - turned to jelly once again. They had a brief spike of worry - they were helpless under her hands; this would be a perfect opportunity for an assassin - but the thought left as quickly as it came as she moved lower down their back, pushing the heels of her hands into their spine and hitting each vertebra one by one. “Relax, relax. I’m not gonna hurt ya.” She must have felt the moment of tension. Zhao tried to respond, but the words that came devolved immediately into a low moan at the return of the elbow. No use; resistance was futile. They were putty. 

Eventually - unfortunately - the massage ended. As the woman pulled her arms out of the water, Zhao could have sworn they felt the barely-there sensation of her fingers trailing the outline of the phoenix inked across their back. Before they could say anything, she leaned in, pressing the side of her face against theirs. “All better?” she said, lips grazing the bit of neck just below the ear. Not even a kiss, just a whisper of heat. Her voice had changed, becoming something saccharine and syrup-dipped, dripping with anticipated carnality. Oh, a full service experience? Zhao didn’t anticipate this being part of the deal, but who could turn down such a skilled professional? The woman was a master of her art. The hands soon returned, this time settling low on the hips, drifting slowly around to the front of their body. Her chest plastered against their back, chin nestled in the crook of their neck, the first finger slipped between their legs... 

A voice sounded, somewhere down the hall, barely squeezing through a quickly narrowing tunnel of desire. Something about Survive and karaoke and Joon-gi said he’ll sing this time, are you done yet? 

Without warning, the warmth of her body pressed against them disappeared as the woman pulled away and snatched a bag off the floor, leaving Zhao red-faced and stupefied. “Looks like it’s time for me to scram.” Back to business. No more Sexy Soapland Girl. “Put this on yer bruises ‘til they go away,” she said, dropping a tube of cream onto the stool as she hurried toward the door. 

“Wait, who - “ Zhao tried to hoist themself out of the bath only to find their legs still shaky as a foal’s. They slipped back in with a wet plunk, sloshing water over the edge and onto the floor. By the time they’d righted themself, the woman was long gone and Kasuga had come wandering in with a towel to hassle them about their bathing habits. After a moment of teasing, they were left to dry, and dress, and try to pretend they weren’t wet in more ways than one. 

It would be hours until they realized they didn’t remember seeing the woman’s face among the portraits over in the waiting room. 

[maknaesdancersrappers]

eating for two.

special chapter to the baby dont stop series

warning/s: suggestive (mutual masturbation)

It’s been a year and a half of being married the one and only love of your life and it’s been nothing but a dream come true.

Both of you fell into a routine of waking up together, Taeyong would cook breakfast for both of you while you take a shower. Eating together and then he takes his turn in the bathroom while you do the dishes.

You work at the same company; the same nine-to-five office job, but at just different departments. After work and going home, you’re in charge of dinner and he’ll be the one to clean up.

And of course, depending on how draining the day was, you end the night by making love; relieving each other of the stress from work, reminding each other of your love, or as you’re secretly hoping for; making a baby.

Taeyong is in no rush to have a kid, and you’re not either, but it would be nice to have a mini you and/or mini him running around soon. You’ve been long off your birth control and investing in a lot of skincare to keep your hormonal acne in check when your period comes around. At one point, you’re starting to think one of you could be infertile at how you’re still not able to get pregnant. You even made sure to go rounds after rounds on the day you’re period tracker tells you you’re on your ovulation period.

And then it happens.

One early morning, you woke up feeling sick and ran to bathroom to throw up. You don’t want to jump to conclusions, but as you’re trying to find reasons as to why you’re heaving the contents of your stomach into the toilet bowl, you just couldn’t think of any. Your period isn’t due until next week either.

Taeyong was at a small gathering last night with friends and had a drink too many that he’s completely wiped out; he didn’t even budge when you threw his arm off of you to run to the bathroom. As you tuck yourself back in his arms, you decide not to tell him first, just in case it was a false alarm.

You’re incredibly careful at purchasing multiple pregnancy tests and hiding them where he doesn’t usually check - which is almost close to impossible because he does a lot of cleaning around the house, too, so you couldn’t store it away in the storage cabinet. You would hide it where you keep your pads and tampons, but it’s beside the hair dryer both of you use from time to time. You ended up hiding it in your underwear drawer because you’re pretty sure he doesn’t have some weird kink with panties that makes him go through them or sniff them or anything. hopefully

Another thing you had to worry about was how you were going to take the tests and wait for the results without Taeyong wondering why you’re taking too long in the bathroom. Luckily for you, he was chosen by his department head to accompany him to an out of town trip. It was a an overnight trip but it’s more than enough for you to take the tests.

“Have a safe trip, baby,” You adjust your purse on your arm before kissing his cheek. It was Friday night and they were traveling tonight to attend the conference tomorrow noon instead of waiting for the wee hours of the morning to set off.

Taeyong kisses you back on your forehead after he hands you the car keys. “You, too. Double check the locks before you go to sleep, okay?”

“Okay, dad.” You roll your eyes, but you almost blush because he could very well be one in a few months.

“You’ll be gone for a day, Lee. We’ll be back by the evening.” His department head, Mr. Shim Changmin, approaches both of you. “It’s good to have a little solo time, too, in marriages.”

You bow your head at him as he’s still one of your superiors. “Of course. I’ll be maximizing my ‘me time’ this weekend.”

“I got you a few bath bombs to try.” Taeyong informs you, running his hand down your back. “They’re in the cabinet below the sink.”

“Aw, thanks.” You debate for a second whether or not to give him a peck since his superior was right there but Mr. Shim receives a call and he excuses himself to pick it up, allowing you to quickly kiss Taeyong’s cheek. “I’ll try it to tomorrow... do you want pics?”

You say it low enough for him to hear and it immediately brings a bright red tinge on his cheeks. He chuckles, licking his lips, “Well, I’d have to proof that you’re using it, don’t I?”

His hands are itching to tickle your waist, but you’re quick to pull away. “Then I will. I should go ahead, traffic will be piling up soon.”

“Take care. I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too. Text me when you arrive at your hotel, okay?” With one last kiss, you head home. You order food for dinner; too anxious to cook and while waiting for it, took all the pregnancy tests and lined them up on the bathroom counter.

As you wait for the results, pacing back and forth outside the bathroom; your food arrives and for thirty minutes you genuinely forgot about the tests until you had to go in wash up for bed.

You’re looking at the tests, double checking the back of their packages about what the lines and colors mean. And all of them say the same thing: positive. You’re pregnant. You wanted to cry out of joy; there’s life in your belly, a little mix of you and Taeyong. Despite the numerous tests that tell you you’re pregnant, you wanted to be extra sure and planned to go to your doctor as soon as her office opens tomorrow morning.

As you lie down for the night, the bed too spacious for your liking as Taeyong’s spot is empty, you curl up on your side and place a hand on your stomach. You know you’ve been waiting and hoping for it, but you can’t believe a baby is growing in your womb right now. You’re trying not to think ahead of it like what the gender could possibly be or what his/her name is, you’re just glad you don’t have to worry about Taeyong taking the news since you knew he wants to have a kid just as much as you do.

And as if on cue, your phone rings.

“Hey, baby, I just got to my room at my hotel.” His voice fills the room as you put his call on speaker. “Are you in bed? Did I wake you up?”

“Not at all, I just got in.” You hum, fighting off the urge to tell him the news. “Before you ask, yes, I did double check the locks. They’re closed and I’m safe.”

“Good.” He chuckles. You could hear clothes rustling and you’re guessing he’s changing out of them. “What did you have for dinner?”

“I ordered some pork cutlets and jjajangmyeon. Have you eaten?”

“We ate at a Chinese restaurant before checking in. I just had noodles and some dumplings.”

Maybe it’s all in your head or maybe it’s your pregnancy talking, but you’re suddenly craving for some soup dumplings. “That sounds good. Maybe I’ll have Chinese takeout tomorrow for lunch.”

He laughs at this, “Are you really not going to cook for yourself at all while I’m gone?”

“I will, it’s just that I don’t want to cook if my husband isn’t here to eat and compliment it.” You sigh, “I already miss you.”

“I miss you, too... are you okay?”

“Yeah. What makes you think otherwise?”

“I didn’t mean you weren’t, it’s just that... you sound different? A little dreamy? Mellow?”

“Oh... well, I did just have a nice hot shower.” You lied, “So I’m relaxed and ready for bed.”

“We should both get to sleep then, huh? Good night, baby, sweet dreams.”

“Good night, love. Sweet dreams.”

The following morning, you spend a good half an hour vomiting into your toilet bowl and the other half trying to look for something to eat that isn’t triggering you to run back into the bathroom once its’ scent hits your nostrils after calling up your doctor for an immediate appointment.

In the next hour, you’re already at the clinic; texting Taeyong and pretending to be out on an errand like grocery shopping before going through the check up with your doctor.

“Congratulations, [Y/N]. You’re definitely pregnant, about 7 weeks in.” She smiles up at you as she points out the fetus through the monitor of the ultrasound.

You have a photo taken of the ultrasound and after scheduling more check ups with your doctor and going through a list of the things you are now not allowed to do and things you should do as pregnant woman, you head back home.

You decided to run a bath, trying to decide how to tell Taeyong when he gets home. You remembered the bath bombs he told you about and took them out of the cabinet, choosing a lavender scented one. Grabbing your phone, you take a video of you dropping the bath bomb it and letting it bubble up for a good minute before sending it to Taeyong.

Almost immediately, he replies, “You’re lucky we just got back from brunch.”

It’s around 10:30 and you know the conference is at noon so you know he has time to spare. You shed off your clothes and step into the bath, sinking into warm water with a moan. You keep one arm out of the water to dial your husband and wait for the video call to connect.

Once it does, you hear the shower running on his end of the call and you see him trying to look for a place to put his phone up on. “How’s the bath bomb?”

“It smells amazing.” You show the lavender colored water; not even shy about how your breasts were on full display. “I wish you were here. We should try the rose one when you get back later.”

“I’m looking forward to it.” He sighs. You watch him step back into the cascading water, biting down on your lower lip when he tilts his head back to expose his throat to you. It was a little annoying how the camera just cut off below his abdomen; barely showing the base of his cock. “What did you get from the grocery?”

“Hm?” You’re confused for a second until you realized that was the excuse you gave him when you were at your doctor. “Oh, just a few fruits and snacks. I wanted cupcakes, though, so I might go back out later.”

“Can you get me some, too?” He looks back at you through the camera.

“Sure.”

“What are you doing after?”

You sit back against the tub after resting your phone on a stand, massaging your arms with the scented water. “I might lounge around after lunch, maybe clean up the house a bit.”

He’s washed up his hair as you tell them this, rinsing off the suds and reaching for his body wash. As he squirts it into his hand and begins to lather it, he asks, “Can I see you, baby?”

You hum, “Hm? Can’t you see me now?”

“All of you, baby.”

Oh. You sit up a bit to move your phone to the other end of the bathtub, directly across you, and move to lean back. You part your legs, making sure he can see your everything even through the colored water.

Twenty minutes later, the video call ended. He’s satisfied, you’re satisfied, the water’s cold now but your body still feels hot. When you get out of the bath and dress for the rest of day after you dry off, you feel giddy. You’re so excited to tell Taeyong about the baby and you have an inkling on how you were going to announce it to him.

After lunch and lounging around, you head back out to your favorite bakery around six to pick up a few cupcakes and drove through a fast food chain at the sudden craving for something greasy even though you marinated some meat to cook for dinner.

Back in your home, as you munched on nuggets with one hand while cradling a double pattied burger with the other, you keep eyeing the cupcakes on the kitchen counter and hope everything goes to plan and Taeyong would understand what you mean.

Taeyong announces he’s home around ten and you’re running up to him a like giddy little child, jumping into his arms and peppering his face with kisses. “Did you miss me that much?”

“I’ve been wanting to eat the cupcakes all night, but I wanted to wait for you.” You confess, which is actually true. Aside from wanting to reveal the pregnancy, all the salt and grease from your dinner needed to be washed down with something sweet - you would have opted for wine, but obviously, you weren’t allowed to.

He sets his bags aside and laughs, letting you lead him to the kitchen, “You didn’t have to wait. I was planning to eat it tomorrow.”

You stop and turn to him with a frown - almost pout - on your face, “After I waited hours so I could enjoy these cupcakes with you?”

“I’m kidding! What flavors did you get?”

Pulling the box of cupcakes across the countertop, you open up the lid, “Vanilla, chocolate, and red velvet. Which one do you want?”

He hums, resting a hand on your hip and pulling you close, “Chocolate.”

You hand it to him and as he peels the paper off, you drag the remaining cupcakes towards you, “That’s yours and these are mine.”

You’re hoping he comments about it, jokingly or even passively, and he does; giving you a pout, “Why do you get two?”

You inhale deeply, looking at the cupcakes - and although seeing them up close and catching a whiff of its sickeningly sweet scent makes you want to hurl - you shrug as casually as you can, “Because I’m eating for two now.”

“Ah.” He nods, about to take a bite until he suddenly stops, mouth agape and cupcake suspended inches from his lips. He looks back at you, “You’re what?”

“Eating for two.” You repeat, swallowing your saliva. “D-do you understand what that means?”

He blinks at you for a while, gaze dropping to your stomach, and then back up at you. He puts the cupcake down and stares at you for a few more seconds. “Are you pregnant?”

You smile, nodding vigorously. 

“I-” He grins, pulling you by your waist and looking back down at your midsection, “This isn’t a joke? You’re serious? I’m going to be a dad?”

“You’re going to be dad.” You confirm with a little giggle at how his eyes are just wide and sparkling.

“We’re going to be parents?” He asks once more and you’re laughing, answering his question with another nod. He picks you up, hugging you tightly and squealing along with you. “When did you find out?”

As he sets you down, you shrugged, “I felt sick the other day and I took pregnancy tests last night - they all came back positive.”

“Last night? And you didn’t tell me?”

“I had to make sure! So I went to my doctor and-” You flinch, internally scolding yourself for forgetting about the sonograph in your purse. You run over to it and Taeyong curiously follows after you. “I wanted to be very, very, very sure that I was pregnant before I told you.”

“Is this our baby?” He takes the picture from your hands and you quickly show him as what your doctor had said. “I can’t believe this.”

“Do you think we’re ready to have kids?”

He puts the photo down and takes your hands, “I do... and if we’re not, we have months to prepare.”

“Are you ready to have fat, bloated, and moody wife?” You half-joked, pursing your lips at the thought of your belly swelling up in the next few months.

“No, because I will always only have a beautiful, loving, deserving wife.” He kisses you with each description, “I couldn’t have asked for anyone else to be a mother of my child.” 

“Alright.” You roll your eyes before gazing back into his eyes, “I love you.”

He scrunches his nose and gives you an eskimo kiss, eliciting a little laugh from you. “I love you, too.”

bonus end scene:

“Wait,” You pull away from him all of a sudden, your hair disheveled and clothes gone.

Taeyong drops his head to the bed and blinks up at you, out of breath, “What?”

“I have to call you daddy before our kids do.”

“O-okay? But... in what context-”

“As in, I’ve been really, really bad while you were gone, daddy. I need to be punished.” You say in your best sultry voice, tracing the tip of your finger down his abdomen. “I’m sorry, daddy.”

He lets out a little scoff, quickly turning your positions around, “Is that so?”

[da5haexowin]

Waiting

(Just a bit of Supernatural scribbles, 'coz I'm bored. Warnings: umm some kids getting kidnapped, mentions of blood, maybe a bit of swearing? Characters: Sam and Dean, Castiel, first person!reader. Pairings: none)

I sighed, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel as I waited. Dean had taken a lot of convincing, but caved and agreed to take my car. The creepy-crawlie we were hunting had been picking up kids, snatching them away from their beds. When last we checked, the head count was up to 6. There was no way we'd be able to fit six kids, Dean, Sam, Cas, and myself into Baby; so Sam and I had spent all day arguing with Dean to take my 2007 X-terra instead. (If we couldn't get them all in the back seat, we always had the big trunk, we could toss them in '80s style if we had to.)

We'd spent all day prepping my car for the mission. We'd folded every blanket we could find and put it in the trunk. Of gone to the store and got water bottles and snacks of every kind, stashing them in the space behind the driver's seat. Of even found a few old stuffed animals in storage and tossed them back there. (Who knew what these poor kids had been through? I wanted to be prepared for everything.) The plan was simple: I waited in the car. Sam, Dean, and Cas went inside. Sam and Dean found the kids, Cas found the monster and drew it away from them while they got the kids outside to me. We got the kids in the car and hightailed it outta there. (Dean got shotgun with the rocksalt, windows down and on lookout, Sam got the backseat and first aid kit.) Cas would fight wahtever it was and then "beam back to the Enterprise".

Simple.

I pounded my fist on the dash, causing my Guns 'N Roses CD to skip a little. It was taking too long. Who knew what had happened, but whatever it was couldn't be good. I wanted so badly to go inside, weapons flashing and fists flying, but I had my orders.

"Stay in the car, Y/n." Dean had said, firmly pointing a finger at me as he got out of the car. "And keep it running. Don't come in with us."

So thats what I was doing. It pissed me off, but I did it. I let out an angry growl and toyed with my necklace. Finally I heard what I was waiting for. First a gun shot, then a door being flung open. I saw Dean and Sam sprinting towards me. Dean had one kid in his arms, Sam had one on his back and one by the hand.

"Go! Open the trunk! Get in!" Dean shouted, turning for half a second, making sure they had them all.

"It's ok, sweety, its ok," Sam said, helping them hop in, "We'll patch you up, don't worry, kiddo."

Dean opened the back passenger and helpped his pasenger in before jumping in shotgun. "Salt rounds?"

"Glove box, like always." I said looking in the rearview mirror as Sam slammed the trunk shut and climbed in.

"That's everyone! Go!"

"Hang on kids, gonna be a little bumpy." I shouted, throwing the car into gear. "Sam start fixing them up! I'm taking the back roads if we have the time. I'd like to throw it off."

"Yeah, Good. Get us to the hospital, we can have the ER staff call their parents when we get there." Sam said.

"Don't worry about the speed limit, just go." Dean shouted, "the cops know your car, they won't stop us."

I scoff, "When do I ever pay attention to the speed limit, Winchester?"

"ALWAYS." They both say at the same time.

All things considered, it was an easy drive. We did pass a patrol car, screaming at 75 miles an hour in a 35 zone, but Dean was right. He didn't stop us. He just pulled into the road and set up a road block. We got to the hospital to find some parents were already there. "That cop must have called us in." Dean muttered as we opened the car, helping the hospital staff unload the kids. Both of the brothers were a little banged up, so they went with the kids to get fixed up to. I wandered the waiting room, and drank a cup of bad coffee while I talked to Bobby on the phone.

"Yeah, they're all ok. .... Yeah, the guys are too. .....Did Cas come home yet?" I lean against the wall and frown a little. All of the kids that have been patched up have been picked up, except one. "Hey, Bobby? I gotta go. Call ya back. ...ok. Thanks, Bobby." I hung up and walked over to her.

"Hey, hot shot. How ya feeling?" I asked, kneeling in front of her. She lifted her brown eyes to me and sniffed.

"Better."

I smiled. "Good, glad to hear it. I'm y/n, what's your name?"

"Emma."

"Well Emma, did the doctors call your parents?"

She nodded. "But Daddy works far away, and Mommy lives in another state."

I nod. "But Daddy's on his way?" She nods, looking back to the toy in her hands. "Do you want me to wait with you, Emma?"

"Yes please." I sit in the chair next to her and talk a little. She told me everything about herself and her family. At one point, I noticed her shivering and I pulled off my flannel, wrapping her up in it. Wherever her dad worked, she was right. It was a long ways away. By the time Dean and Sam were done, I was holding a sleeping little Emma in my lap, still bundled in my green and yellow plaid, with the sleeves dangling a good seven inches below her hand.

Finally, a man burst into the waiting room. "Em? Emma, Emma honey, I'm here."

Emma jumoed awake and climbed down from my lap, sprinting to her father. He scooped her up and cried into her hair, then walked to us. "I can't thank you three enough. I have no idea..." His voice hitched and I smiled at him, patting Emma's shoulder.

"We're just doing our job, sir. Don't mention it."

He nodded a little then looked at his daughter, "Em, can you give the nice lady her flannel?" As she started to take it of I shook my head.

"Nah, keep it, Hot Shot. It suits you. Besides, I've got more at home." I say waving a hand at her. The three of us start to leave, and as Dean holds the door open for me, I feel someone tackle hug my leg. I look down to see Emma wrapped around me.

"Thank you for waiting."

------------------------

This is the first Supernatural fic I've done so I'm just gonna tag at random?

SPN Taglist: @foreverwayward @supernaturalsammy01 @dammitsammy @sammyimpala-67 @shows-up-naked-covered-in-bees @ruthiesconnells @royalrowena @theonewhoeatscookies aaaannnnnnnd.....let me know if you want me to add or remove you?

[peinde]

I'll try to give solid answers.

1) Sexuality? Pansexual. ((same 2) If you could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be? Ariana Grande, moby, if only to quell t)(e rumours t)(at we look alike. ((IDK i don’t really have anyone 3) Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17. ”She arches )(er body like a cat on a stretc)(. She nuzzles )(er cunt into my face like a filly at t)(e gate. S)(e smells of the sea.” ((i don’t have any books near me ;n; 4) What do you think about most? My wife. ((adult cartoon TV wives, or if i’m angry, Bold and the Beautiful 5) What does your latest text message from someone else say? ”H3Y B4B3 W3R3 OUT OF PIZZ4 ROLLS >:[” ((”hey hun call me ASAP pls” 6) Do you sleep with or without clothes on? Wit)(out. ((with. i need to be ready to outrun zombies in the Canadian winter 7) What's your strangest talent? I can do voice impressions! ((i can’t make impressions, but i can make voices 8) Girls.... (finish the sentence); Boys.... (finish the sentence) Girls don’t like boys, girls like cars and money~! Boys will laug)( at girls w)(en t)(ey’re not funny~! ((honestly...same 9) Ever had a poem or song written about you? A couple of times... ((nah 10) When is the last time you played the air guitar? Just now w)(en I answered number 8. ((same 11) Do you have any strange phobias? No? ((a TON 12) Ever stuck a foreign object up your nose? Yes, but only twelve times! ((no??? 13) What's your religion? Dick. (i’m technically Christian 14) If you are outside, what are you most likely doing? Working, doing c)(ores, doing )(obbies, visiting friends or )(itting t)(e town. ((going to school or going to work 15) Do you prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it? In front. ((both 16) Simple but extremely complex. Favorite band? Don’t ever ask me t)(is again. ((i guess Mother Mother, but there are quite a few 17) What was the last lie you told? ... ((i can’t remember 18) Do you believe in karma? No. ((yes 19) What does your URL mean? I keysmas)(ed, because I didn’t know w)(at to type. ((it’s Peixes + Grande but that’s only OOC knowledge 20) What is your greatest weakness; your greatest strength? My greatest weakness is me wit)(out my wife. My greatest strengt)( is my wife. ((my greatest weakness: my lack of motivation. my strength: my ability to dream 21) Who is your celebrity crush? Jason Momoa! ((Kat Dennings 22) Have you ever gone skinny dipping? Yup! ((nope! 23) How do you vent your anger? I tell me wife everyfin. ((hahaha, i don’t

24) Do you have a collection of anything? You could say t)(at... ((not really? 25) Do you prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online? P)(one. ((neither OMG 26) Are you happy with the person you've become? ... ((yeah. i mean i could be a lot worse off 27) What's a sound you hate; sound you love? I don’t like nails on a c)(alkboard, but I do like nails tapping on a table. ((i fucking hate children crying, but i like anything that can basically be “white noise”, like the hum of a vacuum, or the working of a portable heater 28) What's your biggest "what if"? I don’t want to talk about t)(is. ((i don’t really think about those? i mean they didn’t happen. best to just move on 29) Do you believe in ghosts? How about aliens? Believe in? I mean yea)( sure. T)(ey’re everyw)(ere. T)(ey’re real w)(et)(er I believe in t)(em or not... ((yes and yes 30) Stick your right arm out; what do you touch first? Do the same with your left arm. I’m grasping air. Now, I’m touc)(ing my wife’s face. ((i touched my metal storage thingy. then the wall 31) Smell the air. What do you smell? My wife’s farts. ((nothing. just the way i like it 32) What's the worst place you have ever been to? )(ig)(sc)(ool. ((any public washroom ever 33) Choose East Coast or West Coast? West! ((East!!! 34) Most attractive singer of your opposite gender? Does t)(e Rock count as a singer? ((IDK i used to have a crush on Pete Wentz 35) To you, what is the meaning of life? My wife. ((my Christian ass says God

36) Define Art. Out of my league. 38/ ((a necessity to man 37) Do you believe in luck? No. ((yes 38) What's the weather like right now? Sunny! ((rainy 39) What time is it? 8:23 PM ((11:23 PM 40) Do you drive? If so, have you ever crashed? No, and yes. ((no, and no 41) What was the last book you read? I’m currently reading Written on t)(e Body! ((i think it was a Sophie Kinsella book? 42) Do you like the smell of gasoline? Yes! ((yes 43) Do you have any nicknames? Lots of people call me “Fef”. ((i have many IRL nicknames, but everyone knows me by Tori 44) What was the last movie you saw? Fifty S)(ades Freed (illegally, obviously. I’m not paying for t)(at drivel.) ((Devil 45) What's the worst injury you've ever had? I’ve died, does t)(at count? ((i fell off the monkey bars at age 8 and landed right on my back 46) Have you ever caught a butterfly? Yes! ((no :( 47) Do you have any obsessions right now? I )(ave many, t)(e most important being my wife. ((i guess? i’m always obsessed with something 48) What's your sexual orientation? Wasn’t t)(is asked before? ((yeah 49) Ever had a rumor spread about you? Yes... ((yes... 50) Do you believe in magic? Again, it’s real, so yea)(. ((yup! 51) Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong? Nope! ((Fef you fucking liar yes you do. and yes i do 52) What is your astrological sign? Cancer! ((Pisces!!! 53) Do you save money or spend it? Spend. ((both 54) What's the last thing you purchased? Pizza rolls for my wife. ((a bracelet off Aliexpress 55) Love or lust? Love! ((love 56) In a relationship? Yes! ((nope! 57) How many relationships have you had? I lost count. ((1 58) Can you touch your nose with your tongue? Yes! ((nope! 59) Where were you yesterday? At work. ((at home 60) Is there anything pink within 10 feet of you? Yes! ((yup! 61) Are you wearing socks right now? No? ((yup! 62) What's your favorite animal? My princesses...plus you know, t)(e entire ocean. ((any sea creature 63) What is your secret weapon to get someone to like you? Kindness! ((oh i don’t give a fuck 64) Where is your best friend? Doing activities you s)(ould NOT be questioning. ((online...talking to me 65) Spit or swallow?(; Swallow, you coward! ((i’ve never had the opportunity to do either 66) What is your heritage? Alternian! ((i’m black Caribbean 67) What were you doing last night at 12 AM? 38;3c ((i was on this hellsite 68) What do you think is Satan's last name? Natas??? ((meanie-bo-beanie 69) Be honest. Ever gotten yourself off? Obviously??? ((obviously??? 70) Are you the kind of friend you would want to have as a friend? Yea)(! ((sure, why not? it’d mean i’ll know someone who shares my musical interests 71) You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late one more time you get fired. What do you do? I’ve never been late to work? Plus, it’s a legitimate reason??? ((i’ve worked at my job for far too long and have rarely ever been late, especially too rarely for her to keep track. this argument would be completely baseless. also, it’s a legitimate reason??? 72) You are at the doctor’s office and she has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. a) Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? b) What do you do with your remaining days? c) Would you be afraid? It’d probubbly be fake, so no I wouldn’t say anyfin. I’d just wait until I could revive, and no I wouldn’t be afraid, you fucking coward. ((i’d tell everyone, IDK what i’d do. probably pray, sleep maybe, oh i’d be terrified 73) You can only have one of these things; trust or love. 38( ((trust 74) What's a song that always makes you happy when you hear it? Be Alrig)(t by Ariana Grande ((Arizona Highway by the Darcys 75) What are the last four digits in your cell phone number? 3838 ((i’m not telling you??? 76) In your opinion, what makes a great relationship? Being in one like mine and Zi-Zi’s ((communication 77) How can I win your heart? --Exist. ((LOOOL good luck buddy 78) Can insanity bring on more creativity? It sure can! ((i guess! 79) What is the single best decision you have made in your life so far? Getting married. ((going to therapy 80) What size shoes do you wear? 6 ((10 81) What would you want to be written on your tombstone? “Finally”. ((”i’ll be back” 82) What is your favorite word? Glub! ((intricate 83) Give me the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word; heart. Zi-Zi. ((organs 84) What is a saying you say a lot? Glub! ((”for fuck’s sake” 85) What's the last song you listened to? Girls and Boys by Good C)(arlotte ((same 86) Basic question; what's your favorite color/colors? Baby pink, lig)(t blue, lilac, mint green. ((rose gold, burgundy, olive, turquoise, black, eggplant, fuchsia 87) What is your current desktop picture? Zi-Zi. ((on my laptop? default mountains. on my PC? Mother Mother 88) If you could press a button and make anyone in the world instantaneously explode, who would it be? ??? I don’t know! ((Donald Trump, probably 89) What would be a question you'd be afraid to tell the truth on? ...t)(ere are a lot. ((”are you straight” 90) One night you wake up because you heard a noise. You turn on the light to find that you are surrounded by MUMMIES. The mummies aren't really doing anything, they're just standing around your bed. What do you do? Go back to sleep. ((flip TF out and run 91) You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what's even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What is that power? W)(at would I want t)(at I don’t already )(ave? ((flight 92) You can re-live any point of time in your life. The time-span can only be a half-hour, though. What half-hour of your past would you like to experience again? Being revived. ((??? none of it? leave that shit in the past my dude 93) You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be? --Everyfin from t)(e time I was revived onward. ((what did i just say? 94) You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice. Who would it be? T)(ere are so many options... ((??? 95) You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go? New Zealand! ((Paris 96) Do you have any relatives in jail? I mig)(t, w)(o knows. ((probably 97) Have you ever thrown up in the car? Yup! ((no, but i almost did! 98) Ever been on a plane? Yup! ((yup! 99) If the whole world were listening to you right now, what would you say? Most of t)(e fins I already say. ((”i can’t wait for the apocalypse”

[egopocalypse]

Egotober Day 7: That’s Not a Knife, This is a Knife

“Anti, vhat did I say about you and your knives??” Dr. Schneeplestein scolded as he motioned for the demon to tilt his chin up, inspecting his reopened neck wound.

“Oh please, that b̵̡̧͝á̵͠s̵̢̡̀̕t̛͢͠a̸͘͝͠r͠͡҉̕͜d̵̨͡͞ started it.” Anti snarled, glitching to annoy the doctor. Schneeplestein just sighed in exasperation and pulled out the needle and thread, mentally calculating how many stitches the glitch needed this time.

“I don’t care how it happened, you need to let your neck heal!! Zis is ze last time I’ll be restitching it. Ze next time zhey rip, you’ll have to figure out how to do it yourself!!”

“Well, it’s not my fault Warfstache was being an asshole!!” Anti shouted, his voice grating against the doctor’s ears.

Schneeplestein’s eyes widened in surprise as he dropped the needle he had been holding. “You attacked Vilford Varfstache?? How are you still alive??”

Anti pulled his legs onto the examination chair and crossed them, getting into a more comfortable position as he prepared to tell the story in full detail.

“Well, it all started when I was visiting Dark…”

Anti was whistling as he touched Dark’s computer, downloaded several folders worth of porn onto it and causing it to run out of storage space. He giggled as he caused the casual chaos. Several fans had been debating about his origins, specifically if he was a virus or not, and as a result his abilities to mess with electronics had strengthened a considerable amount, and Anti was taking full advantage of this to mess with people.

He’d invaded hundreds of fans’ computers, televisions, phones, and even a couple of electronic billboards to glitch them out, and had corrupted a few videos to the point that Jack had to re-record them.

Anti chuckled lowly as he remembered Jack’s expression when he realized he would have to replay Cuphead. It had been absolutely priceless. He made a note to himself to use that trick again in the future as he slipped out of Dark’s office, silently closing the door behind him.

“And just what were you doing in Darkipoo’s office, glitch??” An all-too familiar voice cooed behind him.

Anti rolled his eyes as he turned to face the newcomer.

“What do you w̵̛a̵͢͝n̵̕͟t͏, Warfstache??” He demanded, his mood suddenly turning sour. He hadn’t wanted any witnesses, and yet he just had to be interrupted by the most annoying ego of all.

“I want you to answer my question, since I asked first.” Wilford smirked, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

“Can’t I just visit my boyfriend in peace without getting bombarded by his cronies for once??” Anti asked, glitching as he started to grow frustrated.

Wilford’s smirk turned into a coy smile, knowing that he caught the demon in a lie.

“Not when said beau is currently in a meeting and doesn’t even know you’re here.”

Anti’s face flashed in realization before he cursed under his breath, knowing the jig was up.

“What are you going to do about it??” He taunted, pretending he still had the upper hand.

“I could just warp down to the meeting and let him know you’ve hacked his computer, but that would ruin everyone’s day.” Wilford suggested evasively.

Anti narrowed his eyes, getting sick of the pink-clad ego’s game. “Just get to the fuckin’ point.” He growled.

Warfstache scoffed, wondering how Dark was able to handle Anti’s impatience when he was such a methodical planner. Warfstache was always terribly impatient and even he was growing tired of Anti’s constant pushing.

“Fine.” Warfstache spat out. “I want an interview for my show.”  

Anti’s eyebrows rose in shock. He hadn’t been expecting that. He had thought Warfstache’s show had gone down the drain years ago, but apparently he was wrong.

“Why me??” He asked, cocking his head curiously.

“Why not??” Warfstache replied, shrugging his shoulders. “The fans love you, and you’re the only one in a position where you have to agree no matter what. I’m not giving up this opportunity while I still have it.”

“And what’s stopping me from killing you right here and now??” Anti asked through clenched teeth. The longer he stayed here, the more likely Dark would sense his presence and investigate, meeting be damned.

The reporter slipped his dagger out of his lace thigh holster and showed it off to Anti, twisting the blade in his fingers.

“I could always use force.” He stated, a threat vaguely coloring his tone. Anti scoffed and rolled his eyes once again, unimpressed by the display.

“Really??” The demon asked, raising an eyebrow in disbelief. “You call t̶h̸̨̡̀͜a̶̡t͠҉̧́́ a knife?? Pathetic.”

Anti’s chef knife appeared in his hand, the blade much larger than Wilford’s. “T҉͏̵͘h̢̧͟i̶͡҉͡ş̷̡͜͡,” He stated, stressing the word, “is a knife.”

Warfstache’s eyes lit up in delight upon Anti’s threat. Now things were getting interesting.

“Well then, how about we dance, glitchy boy??” He asked, all too eager to rid himself of the boredom that had previously been plaguing him.

Anti grit his teeth and tensed up, preparing to pounce on the pink abomination. “You’re going to wish you n̢e̕҉̷v̧̀͜e͡r҉ said that, Wilfy.”

Warfstache’s eyes narrowed as he started to bend reality around them, casting everything in a pale pink glow.

“Come and get me, glitch bitch.”

“So, vhat happened next??” Dr. Schneeplestein asked as he stitched up Anti’s neck, about halfway through with the procedure.

“I was g̶̛҉e̡ţ̶t̶̵i̷ǹǵ̵ ̷t̛͘o҉̴̶ ̴͟t̴ha͏͝t͏͢!!” Anti exclaimed, gripping the edges of the chair as the doctor worked. Schneeplestein tutted at him as he continued his meticulous work.

“You have to stay still!! If you move, zhe stitches will rip again!!” Schneeplestein yelled, trying to get his patient to listen to reason.

Anti harrumphed as he crossed his arms and hunching over to shield his neck from the doctor. Schneeplestein glared at him for several moments until the demon finally gave in and stretched his neck out once again for the doctor to continue his work.

“Anyways,” Anti continued after a moment of silence. “After Warfstache deliberately provoked me, my vision clouded over and all I could see was red…”

Anti yelled out a battle cry as he launched himself at Wilford, his need for retribution and blood clouding his judgement. Wilford chortled in response before he poofed away, teleporting away from the slash of Anti’s blade. The demon screamed in frustration as he missed his target, and barely missed getting injured himself as Wilford appeared behind him, making his own attempt to stab his opponent.

Anti glitched as he teleported away, hiding in one of the security cameras watching the hallway. He watched as Wilford tried to get him to reveal himself by intentionally exposing his left side, but despite what everyone thought of him, Anti could be patient. So he waited, prepared to strike as soon as Wilford let his guard down.

Wilford was still scanning the area, knowing the glitch was still around somewhere, just waiting to reveal himself. The effect of his powers had cut off the hallway and placed it in its own reality, where only he had the ability to let people in and out. There would be no way for the glitch to escape his grasp, and he was going to make the most out of it. He just had to find the glitch first.

A while passed before Wilford subconsciously relaxed, no longer on guard. Wherever the glitch was, he would reveal himself in due time, and it was just a matter of smoking him out.

Anti didn’t hesitate. As soon as Wilford’s shoulders sagged, he glitched out of the camera and attacked Wilford, aiming to slit his throat.

Wilford felt the static in the air as Anti appeared once again and spun around, dodging the blade and returning a slash of his own. Anti was caught off guard, surprised at Wilford’s quick response time, and barely managed to rip his head back so that he didn’t get decapitated. However, the knife still made a mark, slicing through the stitches on his neck and causing the wound to reopen once again.

Anti glitched several feet away from the pink-mustached menace, clutching his bleeding throat as he felt his lifeblood cascade down his hand. His eyes were black and filled with rage, but as he prepared to retaliate, a grey hand grabbed the collar of his shirt and yanked him back, releasing him from the constraints of Wilford’s power and breaking him out of the void.

Anti screeched in a mixture of pain and anger as the cotton rubbed against his wound, irritating it further. He was pissed, he wanted revenge, he wanted to make Warfstache scream in agony, he wanted to rip his still-beating heart from his chest, he wanted- he wanted-

“Anti,” Dark murmured, the echo of his voice dragging the glitch out of his thoughts. “What did I tell you about coming here without my permission??”

Anti froze, knowing that he was in for it this time. “To only appear in your bedroom to not disturb the others??” He suggested, trying to play it off.

Dark spun him around, piercing crimson meeting black as Dark stared him down. Anti stubbornly matched his gaze, refusing to submit. He needed to show that pink bastard who was in control, he didn’t have time for this!!

Dark sighed, knowing why Anti was acting like this, and called on his aura to hold the other in place as he examined the wound. Luckily for Anti, it wasn’t deep enough to kill him, but it would need to be stitched up again, and Dr. Iplier was fresh out of supplies because Silver had gotten hurt when he was on patrol with Jackaboy Man earlier that day.

“We’ll talk about this later,” He threatened. “But for now, you need to go home and get that fixed.”

“What about Warfstache??” Anti seethed, unwilling to let the reporter get away unscathed. Dark commanded his aura to wrap around Anti further and squeeze, showing that he meant business.

“I will deal with him, but you need to go. Now.”

“Fine.” Anti grumbled, finally dropping his eyes to the ground. He couldn’t believe this. He was hurt, he was pissed, and Dark was just making him leave?? This-

Anti’s thoughts were halted when Dark tilted his chin up and met his lips in a blistering kiss. The green-haired demon took a moment to realize what was happening before he eagerly returned the gesture, his clawed hands gripping midnight black hair and pulling Dark closer as the shadows slowly released their hold on him.

Anti whined and tried to follow Dark’s lips as he pulled back, finally breaking the kiss. Dark leaned down slightly, whispering in Anti’s ear.

“Go get fixed up, and then we can finish this later.” He promised, his husky voice sending pleasurable shivers down Anti’s spine.

“Okay.” Anti breathed out, his stomach curling with lust. Dark’s chest rumbled as he chuckled lowly.

“I’ll see you soon, my darling.” He whispered, the words barely making a sound as they left his lips.

When Anti finally reopened his eyes, Dark was gone, presumably to deal with Wilford. Anti’s mind cleared as he realized that he’d been played, and he let out a string of spiteful curses as a weak retaliation.

Finally, Anti realized he’d been standing there for so long that the blood on the collar of his shirt had dried, sticking the rough material to his skin. He realized that Dark was right, and that he needed to get this looked at before it was too late, so he took a deep breath to ease his frustration and glitched into the nearest electronic, returning home to seek out Dr. Schneeplestein.

“Vell, I did not need to hear all ze details of your relationship vith Dark, but nonezeless, it eez finished.” Dr. Schneeplestein declared as he finished the last stitch, leaning back to examine his handiwork.

Anti hopped down from the chair and glanced in the nearby mirror to examine it for himself, seemingly satisfied with the finished result.

“Thanks Doc. I’ll let you live a little longer as payment. Now, I gotta go, I’ve got a fun night ahead of me.” The demon stated lecherously, glitching out of the room through the doctor’s X-Ray machine before Schneeplestein could protest.

The doctor sighed as the demon left, picking up his flask to take a shot of whiskey. “I’m getting too old for this shit.” He declared, trying to massage the headache forming by his temples.

“Ah vell, hopefully no one else needs an operation today. I need a nap.” He stated to the empty room, taking another sip of his flask.

Suddenly, the door exploded into several pieces as Marvin burst in, an injured Jackaboy Man leaning on his shoulder.

“Schneep, we need help!!” The magician exclaimed, taking no time to greet the man as he dragged the hero to the examination chair.

“Oh for fuck’s sake!!”

[etherexllxght-blog]

alec & aurora death meme. i'm not ready even in the slightest

okay. get ready. i’m not.  I had to put this under a read more because a ) i don’t want people accidentally reading and being triggered ( either by the sensitive content, or because of my bad writing ) and b ) it is about 2500 words. So. That’s fuck off long. 

Also - I had to add the end thing because by the time I was finished with it I just needed to know that something good was going to happen. Don’t ask me to explain it. 

Writing this took me an hour. I also cried about 4 times. 

I think I need to be held for a very long time right now. 

Tuesday / 19th September / 7.45pm

‘Hey baby,’ Alec speaks into the phone. ‘I’m just gonna stop and get some stuff for dinner on the way home. I’ll see you in a bit, okay? I love you forever.’ He hangs up, dropping the phone into his lap. He’d got her voicemail, which was not unusual. Rory rarely had her phone on her. Alec drove quickly towards the store, leaving his phone, on silent, in his back pocket as he quickly bought the things that he needed, and then moved back his car before heading home. You should’ve checked his phone, but he didn’t. Not that it would have made any difference. He quickly arrived at their home, getting out of the car and moving towards the door. There was something off in the air, something wrong. But Alec didn’t pay much attention to the feeling. The door was slightly ajar; he hesitated for a moment, but then pushed it open; she must have forgotten to lock it. ‘Ro?’ He called out, closing the door behind him. There was no response. He moved further into the home, a slight panic beginning to rise up inside of him as he noticed things were in disarray. ‘Rory?’ He called out again, concern in his voice. He moved slowly. Something had happened; books were lying on the floor, cabinets broken, TV smashed. And his wife was no where to be seen. His pace quickened as he moved through each room, searching for the woman. He ran into the kitchen, his heart pounding in his chest, thoughts racing at a mile a minute, and then everything stopped completely when he saw the woman lying there, blood seeping from her. No. He sprinted towards her, falling to the floor and cradling her body in his hands. ‘Rory?’ He called, shaking her slightly before pressing his hands against the wound to try and stop the bleeding. ‘Rory wake up.’ His voice was stern, desperate. Alec quickly put his hand to neck, feeling the faint pulse that was still there. ‘Please baby. Please.’ His heart beating so loud in his chest. He reached for his phone, and his blood soaked hands dialing the emergency number. His call was soon answered. ‘Please. I need an ambulance. My wife has been  stabbed, and she’s not responding…. Yes, faint, but there… 97 Oakland Avenue… Hurry please.’ His voice was manic, his eyes were wide and locked on the dying woman in his arms. He dropped the phone, his hand pressing against the wound. ‘Rory…’ Tears began to well up in his eyes. ‘Rory, please…’ He begged. ‘Please don’t leave me… Please…’ His entire being prayed for a miracle, but as the minutes passed, he knew that the chances of that happening were dwindling. Eventually, the ambulance arrived and took her away. Alec rode with them, but the entire ride felt like a long blur. He just kept his eyes on her, the entire world disappearing around them. When they arrived, she was whisked away into the emergency room. He was ushered into the waiting room, and given a cup of coffee. He waited. And waited. And waited. Every second was spent praying that she’d come back to him. 

Wednesday / 20th September / 3.15am

She’s gone. She’s gone. She’s gone. The nurses voice repeated in his head, over and over, on a loop, like his own personal hell. ‘I’m so sorry, Mr. Volkov.’ He couldn’t look at her. His wiped his tear stained cheeks, standing, and moving away without a single word. He walked out of the hospital, down the street, and just started walking. He felt empty. Like someone had ripped out his heart, and left it somewhere he’d never be able to retrieve it. This was an oddly numbing sensation, like a bubble around his emotions to protect him. Alec walked until 9 in the morning; he wasn’t even sure where he’d ended up. Eventually he found a cheap motel, and booked a room. He lay on the bed, her wedding ring in his hand, but he didn’t sleep. There were nightmares waiting for him in sleep. 

Thursday / 5th October / 12.30pm - The Funeral

Alec had not returned to his home since that evening. His mother had flown down to stay with him, the two moving from that dingy motel to a better apartment. Alec had not been back to work, nor had he been sober much since that night. He either didn’t sleep, or he dreamt of one thing: her. His mother had been in charge of cleaning up the home, placing all of Alec and Rory’s things into storage, until such time as he was ready to deal with them, and planning the funeral (along with her parents’). That morning, he’d awoken early, around 3am, and lay in bed for the longest time, just staring up at the ceiling. At around 5, he got up and had a shower, washing his hair, which was long over-due, and dressing himself in the same suit he’d asked her to marry him in. She would have liked that. He placed her wedding ring in his pocket, and, at around 7am, he went to the cemetery. He was alone for awhile, just looking at the empty grave, and tombstone attached. People started arriving at around 11, and the ceremony started at 12.30. The entire thing felt stupid to him; like people were gathering to honour a women that shouldn’t have been here in the first place. His eyes were locked to the closed coffin, thinking how close she was, and yet how far away. Soon, it was his turn to speak. He hadn’t prepared anything. ‘Aurora.’ He started, tears welling up in his eyes. ‘My love.’ He breathed, looking down at the coffin. ‘She stumbled into my office one Friday morning, and she changed my world… How can you describe a love like that? How can you describe a woman who is capable of doing that?’ The words tumbled from his mouth. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do without her… For there is no life without her.’ Tears fell from his eyes. ‘But, the little consolation that I have is that she’s up there with the angels… Where she belongs better than any of us.’ He looked down at her wedding ring in his hand. ‘I will never stop loving you, Rory. And I look forward to meeting you again in a better place.’ He finished and then moved from the podium, taking his seat again. As if the heavens knew of his heartbreak, it began to rain. Most people moved to take cover, but he stayed. He stayed until she was in the ground, placing a single red rose on her coffin before throwing the sand. She was gone. His forever was gone. 

Wednesday / 18th October / 4.30pm 

It had been nearly a month since her death, and it seemed that life was continuing on as normal. He, however, was still stuck. His days and nights had blurred into one long visit in hell, in this place with no light, no hope. Everything about him had changed; he couldn’t even remember what he’d been like before this, but he could remember her. He remembered her everyday, every second, every minute spend agonising over the things he could have done differently, whether he could have just made food from what they had at home, or whether he should have double locked the doors on their home. Little things. Little seconds, and moments, which amounted to this tragedy. Everyone around him had suggested therapy; his mental health was non-existent, his physical health was dwindling as well. The once muscular man had lost so much weight that he was basically skin and bones. He was dying, and everyone around could see it. He’d stopped eating, living really only on whiskey and cigarettes. No man could survive like this, but perhaps that’s what he wanted. He’d decided to go to see this therapist, purely to appease his mother. He sat on the sofa, watching the woman. ‘You look sick, Aleksandr.’ The woman said, her voice soft. ‘Your mother tells me you are not eating.’ Alec just looked at her for a moment. ‘I just lost my wife, doctor. What did you expect?’ He retorted. Every bit of love and care inside of him was gone. He was a cold man. ‘Tell me about your wife.’ The therapist tried. ‘No.’ He answered sharply. ‘Look, if you’re not going to prescribe me anything, you know, to stop the fucking gnawing in my skull, then you are pretty fucking useless to me.’ His voice raised almost into a roar. He didn’t want to talk to this woman, not about Rory. She didn’t deserve to know about his love. ‘I… I can’t just give you -’ The therapist began, slight fear in her voice, before Alec cut her off. ‘Fine,’ He stood up, moving towards the door. ‘Thanks for your help, doc.’ He said, walking from the office and heading straight towards the bar. He knew of another way to numb himself. 

Wednesday / 18th October / 9.15pm

Alec had been drinking for nearly 4 hours, and yet he felt completely sober. It was as if his mind wouldn’t let him get drunk, wouldn’t let him forget his pain, nor feel it any less. He sat at the edge of the bar, nursing a whiskey and a cigarette. The barman had been watching him for awhile, concerned looks being tossed his way occasionally, but he didn’t ask; no one dared to ask these days. A woman who had also been watching him, decided that he could use some company. Perhaps she thought that sex would help ease his troubled mind. She was wrong. She approached him, ‘Well, you look like you need to buy a woman a drink.’ She purred. Alec looked up at her; she was pretty. But nothing special. Alec wasn’t even sure that he was able to see beauty anymore. ‘I do?’ He asked, retuning his gaze forward, his answer showing his disinterest. ‘Aha.’ She breathed, sitting down next to him. ‘Not tonight.’ He breathed, sipping his whiskey, before lifting his hand. ‘I’m married.’ His wedding ring still on his finger. The woman paused for a moment, then tried again. ‘Well, your wife is a fool for leaving you out here on your lonesome.’ She purred again, lifting a hand to touch his shoulder. Alec’s entire body stiffened, his jaw tensed. The sudden rage that washed over him caused him to crush the glass in his hand, cutting up his fingers and his palm. Blood and whiskey dripped onto the table. He turned to the woman, fire in his eyes. ‘Don’t you ever talk shit about another man’s wife.’ He hissed through gritted teeth. He stood, shaking his hand as bits of glass fell to the floor, and turned to the barman. He placed a few notes on the counter, nodded, and then left. Alec walked aimlessly for awhile, leaving a small trail of blood behind him. Somehow he arrived at the storage unit where all their stuff was kept and stopped. 

Wednesday / 18th October / 11.56pm 

He’d managed to force the unit open, using his phone torch to navigate through the boxes, switching on a main light when he found the switch. He opened up one labeled ‘Pictures.’, and slowly lifted one up. It was from their first weekend away; he was looking at her, and she was laughing. He lifted his hand, and traced his fingertip against her picture. He wasn’t sure that it was possible to miss someone as much as he’d missed her. It was as if a part of him was gone. Alec sunk down to the floor, picture in hand. ‘How am I supposed to do this?’ He breathed, tears streaming down his face. ‘How am I supposed to exist when you are not with me?’ Alec began to sob, holding the picture close to his chest as waves of emotion poured over him. ‘I can’t do it.’ He cried. ‘I can’t do this, baby. I know you want me to, but I can’t.’ There was so much pain inside of him; Alec wasn’t sure that he would ever be able to recover from this sort of agony. And what if he did? What sort of life would it be without her beside him? Without her to love? There was no one else in the world that made him happy the way that she did, no one else in the world that he could love like he loved her. He opened his eyes and caught a glimpse of a small shot gun that he’d kept under his bed. He took a deep breath, moving towards it, the picture still in his hand. He pulled it out, checked that it was loaded, and then put it to his head. ‘I’m coming to see you, baby… I’m coming to see you.’ He chanted at the picture, tears falling from his eyes. ‘We’re gonna be together soon. We’re gonna be together-’ And he pulled the trigger. He died instantly, brains and blood splattered across the wall of the storage unit, tainting all their clothes and boxes of things. He was found the next day by his mother who’d tracked his cellphone. Aleksandr Volkov was buried next to his wife on the 1st of November. 

Somewhere Unknown

Alec slowly opened his eyes, white surrounding him. He blinked a few times, hand moving to his head where he was sure he’d shot. There was no wound. He looked down at himself; there was something different about this. He looked healthy. ‘What the -’ He began, but trailed off as the white began to disappear and his surroundings became clearer. He was in his home. It was exactly as he’d remembered it; everything was where it was supposed to be. He was in his study, the picture of the two of them in his hand. ‘Alec?’ He heard a voice coming from downstairs. He looked up quickly, placing the picture down before moving to the source of the voice. It couldn’t be her. This couldn’t be real. He rushed towards her, finding her in the lounge, sitting on the sofa. ‘Baby… There you are. I’ve been looking for you.’ Aurora said, smiling up at him. She got up off the couch, making her way towards him. Alec looked at her for a moment, his eyes wide. ‘It’s… It’s really you…’ He breathed, bringing his hand up to touch her cheek gently. ‘How…’ His brow furrowed. ‘Does it matter?’ She responded, a smile on her features. ‘We’re together again.’ She added, reaching up to kiss him gently. 

[magicpens]

RILEY

By Johnny Bacala

His body is drenched in sweat, and his fists grab the linens of his bed. His head went sideways till he abruptly opened his eyes and awoke from his slumber. Another nightmare, he reasoned. He glances at his wall clock, and it's just 3 a.m. He only went to sleep a minute ago, which is ironic... He lets out a sigh... He stood up and went to the restroom. He looked at his reflection in the sink of his mirrors. He's thinking hard, since every time he wakes up from his nightmare, he doesn't recall anything, not even a fragment of it... He shook his head, opened the faucet, and let the water run before washing his face.

He didn't go back to sleep that night since he didn't feel drowsy. Instead, he just made his breakfast before heading to work.

Riley Moore is completely alone in his life; he has no family remaining because his parents were murdered in a car accident when he was still a child, which he has no recollection of.

He was raised in a foster home in the country, and no one wants to adopt him because of his strange demeanor. Riley is not like the other youngsters his age. He's quiet, cautious, and doesn't say much. Until he reaches the age of adolescence. He left the foster home, saying goodbye to the nuns who tended to him...difficult, but he doesn't care since he hasn't felt anything since he was a child. He lives in seclusion. Because of his obsession with literature, he didn't even finish his education. He learnt a great deal on his own...

Riley works in a downtown library. His shift runs from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. He only makes enough money to live on.

"Oh? Riley, honey, you're early. Don't tell me you got a nightmare again" --- Rose said. 

Rose is the one lady who embraces him and assists him whenever he is plagued by his Demons... Riley is a shambles. Except for Rose, he doesn't let anyone into his life. Riley is also a gay man. It didn't disturb him, though. Instead, despite his daily struggles, he continued to live...

He simply nodded to Rose and returned to his station, where he swept the floor and cleaned all the books. Riley is a hardworking individual, which is why Rose is pleased with his assistance; he does not complain or react to his surroundings.

Riley is sitting tiredly on a chair, reading his favorite book after cleaning. The Art of Not Giving a Fuck. He's been reading this book since he was in his mid teens.

The bell rings, indicating that someone has entered. He got up and waited... Until he came upon a gorgeous guy standing in front of a shelf. He can't take his gaze away from him.

"Hey? Mr.? I'm gonna pay for this book." 

When a gentle hand brushed his face, he snapped out of his daze. He flinches slightly before refocusing. The guy removes his hand; it's barely a second that the cute man touches his face, but he immediately longs for the softness and warmth of his hands, and the cute man simply stares at him as if he's the oddest person he's ever encountered.

"Are you okay man?" 

"U-uhm y-yeah" the guy stop when he hears his voice

"Relax, Mr. Riley, I won't hurt you."

"H-how did you know me?" Riley asked the guy.

"Hmm nothing. I just know you." He smiled charmingly. 

Riley's heart skipped when Rose showed up eventually.

"Who are you talking to?" ---Rose asked him.

"Uhm?" He roamed his eyes around the store and he didn't find the guy anymore.

"N-nothing." He blushed. 

"Hmmm but your cheeks say otherwise." Rose teasingly smiles at him. 

After his shift Riley went home. While walking he felt the brush of the wind through his skin. 

"You're walking alone? I see.." he didn't respond, he just looked at the Guy walking beside him.

"Oh... You didn't even flinch..." He chuckled.

"What do you want?" Riley asked rudely.

"Nothing. I just want to join you..you're walking right?"

Riley ignored him and he just talked and talked and talked...and after that night ended he felt something... He looked in a mirror for himself and smiled for the first time because of that Guy… One week had gone and he was still expecting; every time the bell chimed, he anticipated to see the Guy, but then he was disappointed when he didn't.

Riley is cleaning one wonderful day. When the bell rang, he was unconcerned.

"Uh.." 

he suddenly stopped from what he was doing when he heard the voice. But he shook his head and continued.

"Mr. Riley, e-excuse me." 

He closed his eyes and his jaw tightened.

"What" he coldly asked.

"I just want to know what's the problem?"

Riley just rolled his eyes and shrugged, he walked into the storage room and kept all the cleaning materials he used. 

"M-mr. Riley!" The Guy shouted to his ear and he jumped off scared.

"What the hell is your problem!" He retorted back but the Guy just smiled at him. Cutely. 

"Hahaha! You're mad, I see." He even nodded his head.

Riley just massaged the side of his head, this Guy giving me a headache.

"Oh! Before anything else. I am Archie."

"Sorry.. I'm not...."

The Guy just laughs so hard until he catches his breath and even holds his stomach. Riley just frowned. 

"Tsk" was the only last word he said.

"W-wait!" The Guy said.

"Wait Riley! You got it wrong!" He grabs Rileys' hand so he stops. 

"Hahaha! I mean, my name is Archie." 

Riley just scratches his nape and feels himself blushing and being shamed.

"It's okay R-Riley, there is nothing to be ashamed of."

The Guy---Archie softly said. 

Oh no, he hates me already... he thought

They started hanging out when they got to know each other. They visit various locations, eat, play, and simply hang out. Riley, on the other hand, is disturbed every time they go out since everyone looks at them strangely... They act as though they don't have the right to go outside.

One day, Rose confronted Riley about his behavior.

"Riley, son. Do you have anything to say?" Rose asked.

Riley stops organizing the books and faces Rose..

"What do you mean?"

"Uh.. is there something bothering you lately?"

"Uh! Rose, direct to the point please?"

"I mean, don't be shocked but who are you talking to?"

"Ah... He--he is A-archie...h-he i-is my f-friend." Riley stuttered, shy and confused.

"Oh.. i-is he n-nice?" Rose aske teary eyed.

"Wh-what's the matter Rose?"

"N-nothing..." Rose left him with a soft smile.

Riley shrugged it off. He just thought that Rose was happy for him...

Rose, on the other hand, pulls out her phone and calls... She dialed the number for the Treatment Center... She went out to seek for Riley after receiving the call.

Riley is alone, laughing and chatting into thin air, and she is taken aback. Her tears started to pour as she covered her mouth... Riley is almost like a son to him. 

She had no relatives or children, so when Riley came into her life and she learned about his background, she was both sad and pleased because she thought fate had a hand in it. Riley was handled as if she were her own and now, she doesn't know what she's gonna do. 

Riley talk with Archie while hes cleaning the shelf, 

"Arch, they're all acting weird, don't you think?"

"I don't know...maybe they're not happy seeing you with me." Archie replied with a pout. 

"Nah! Nonsense!" Riley says playfully. "I think Rose will love you. She's like a mother to me, swear."

Archie just smiles and plays with the books.

Their bond lasts for months as Rose worries about how she will inform Riley that there is no Archie exists. Riley is the only one who is aware of what is going on. There is no such thing as Archie. They hung out every time they went outside. It's all Riley, all by himself... which is why people look at him as if he's insane...Talking alone, Hanging out alone, eating alone, but all Riley knew was he's with Archie..

The idea of Riley being out of himself doesn't sit well with Rose, so she seeks help.

"Ms. Rose McWorthy?" The nurse called...

She followed the nurse and got inside a room. She sitted and nervously waited. The Doctor suddenly comes and sits. 

"Ms. McWorthy." The doctor smiled.

"Uhh..." She hesitates because maybe Riley will get mad at her but she has to do this. She breathes deeply, closes her eyes for a second before opening it again with determination..

"T-this is not about me..." Then she started to tell everything... After an hour... Their time is already done.

"I believe you have to set a schedule for your son Ms. McWorthy...this is painful to hear but some people who have Schizophrenia commits suicide..."

Rose didn't take it well, tears are running down to her face. She cried and cried. Pity for Riley...

The next few months, Riley always talks with Archie, hangs out with the guy who he doesn't know if it's real. Rose didn't take anymore...

"Riley, can we talk?" Rose asks.

Riley looks at Archie sitting beside him... 

"Uhh..I'm having a conversation with my friend here." 

Rose shakes her head and pleads. Until Riley stands and excuses himself to Archie..

"What do you want to talk about?" Riley asks politely.

"I have a friend who can help you.."

"Help me with what?"

"With your condition..Uh...R-Riley. Listen to me carefully."

Confusion was evident on his face. Riley is baffled..

"Your friend isn't real... It's all in your mind.." Rose sighs.

"W-what d-do y-you---Archie? Isn't it real? Stop joking! He's just sitting with me a while ago... And you see it don't you?" Riley raises his voice... 

"No--no. I am not kidding Riley! He is not real! He is just a pigment of your imagination because of what happened to you in the past or what so." 

"No! I don't believe you, he's just sitting right there! Right now!" Riley said while pointing at the door as if Archie was really there.

Riley rushes outside and goes to Archie. 

"See? He's just sitti---" he was cut off when he saw in the mirror that there is no reflection of Archie sitting on a chair. 

He again looks at Archie but the guy is just smiling at him. He just turned to the mirror and it still didn't change. There is no Archie sitting. When he turned his head back to the guy he was gone..

Riley just cried and cried...

"N-no! N-no.. this ain't real." He tiredly seated and brushed his hair with his hands. Frustrated crying. Rose was crying too and tried to touch him but he evaded it and stood and ran outside.

"RILEY!" Rose shouted... 

Riley was at a loss about what to do when he arrived home. He is skeptical of everything he witnesses. He can't tell the difference between what's real and what's not... He wailed quietly, screamed, shouted, and threw anything he could get his hands on.

Everything transpired in his memory like a flashback of his life... He sobbed uncontrollably till he felt a hand on his shoulder. He was taken aback when he noticed Archie smiling at him.

"Everything is going to be okay...Everything's gonna be alright, just stay strong..."

Riley just stared at him and hugged him...

"Th-they say-said y-you're-not re-real!" He cried on his shoulder.

Archie just smiled at him. He let go of Riley... They sit together... Archie hummed a song to him. It's a song his mother sings to him when he's asleep.

Ili-ili tulog anay,

Wala diri imong nanay.

Kadto tienda bakal papay.

Ili-ili tulog anay.

ili ili tulog anay

wala diri imo nanay

kadto tienda bakal papay

Ili-ili tulog anay.

mata kana tabangan mo.

ikarga ang nakompra ko.

kay bug-at man sing putos ko.

tabangan mo ako anay..

kay bug-at man sing putos ko..

tabangan mo ako anay...

ili ili tulog anay

wala diri imo nanay

kadto tienda bakal papay

Ili-ili tulog anay...

***********

The next day, Riley was nowhere...

[theconservativebrief]

Tucked into a blog post published on Google’s website last week, amid news about the launch of the company’s third-generation Pixel smartphone, was the information that the tech giant is “joining forces” with Gwyneth Paltrow’s $250 million lifestyle empire, Goop.

So far, the partnership is limited: Goop will be selling Google Home smart speakers and accessories in its holiday pop-ups and permanent “goop Lab” stores. A Google spokesperson told me the devices will “be available to experience and shop” starting next week at the flagship Goop store in Los Angeles’s Brentwood neighborhood, running through the end of January 2019, and at Goop pop-up shops in various other cities during the holiday season.

Starting the first week of November, they’ll also be available at a new, yet-to-be-announced permanent Goop store in New York City. (A Goop representative confirmed a November 1 opening for the store, which will be in Noho.)

On its surface, this is a weird collab: What does a wildly expensive luxury brand, founded on the premise that not everyone can be beautiful and rich and healthy, want with a brand best known for an unsexy search engine running on the brain power of a bunch of nerds? What could one of the world’s most powerful technology and science companies gain from a startup that was recently fined $145,000 for telling women that putting a piece of rose quartz up their vagina would regulate their menstrual cycle and prevent uterine prolapse?

We really don’t have to look that closely. It’s an example of mutual corporate back-scratching that incorporates two of consumerism’s favorite buzzwords: “wellness” and “luxury.”

Kaitlyn Tiffany/Vox

Google has only been making physical devices for three years, and in trying to increase its market share, it’s been trying to court a more “aspirational” demographic to differentiate itself from Apple, which has a firm hold on the mass market. The Verge’s review of the Pixel 3 phone says it’s the first Google device that feels “premium” — it nixed the “faux-humility” of the Pixel 2’s plasticky coating and is now fully aluminum and glass.

To promote the phones, which cost upward of $1,000 with full storage (comparable to Apple’s last several iPhones, but a markup from the Pixel and the Pixel 2), Google has already hired Annie Leibovitz. The photographer best known for more than 40 years of defining celebrity photography on the covers of Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair will tour the country and take photos with the Pixel 3’s camera. Google also paid Condé Nast to use a Pixel 3 to shoot seven November magazine covers, including those for luxury lifestyle titles like Architecture Digest, W, Condé Nast Traveler, and GQ.

But Google’s new hardware marketing strategy isn’t just about luxury. It’s also about that word you’ve heard so many times it no longer feels like a word, more like a round, lozenge-shaped thing that falls out of your mouth every time it opens. Wellness.

Kaitlyn Tiffany/Vox

The company has been promoting the idea of “digital wellbeing” in its latest hardware and software push, emphasizing Android features that help you limit your time spent in various apps, with appealing graphics to show just how much time you’re wasting.

At Google’s annual I/O event in May, CEO Sundar Pichai promised that Google would bring its customers a new feeling this year, in addition to new products: “JOMO,” or the “joy of missing out.” You can “shush” a Google phone (put into do-not-disturb mode by setting it face down) or “wind down” a Google phone (set a bedtime that switches the screen to grayscale).

In a Wired feature from May, Arielle Pardes pointed out that the idea of “digital wellness” started at Google in 2012, when product designer Tristan Harris sent a company-wide memo about how unethical he thought Google’s Inbox app notifications were. It was a 144-page presentation titled “Call to Minimize Distraction and Respect Users’ Attention,” and earned Harris the role of “design ethicist” — a job created specifically for him, and which he held until 2016, when he left to start a nonprofit called Time Well Spent.

Pardes compared Google’s interest in digital wellbeing to other wellness trends, saying it makes living a more balanced life look easier than it really is. Which, incidentally, is Goop’s whole MO — albeit more often at price points that are totally inaccessible to the average consumer.

When Goop’s first permanent store opened in Los Angeles last fall, LA Weekly’s Jillian Scheinfeld described it as “equal parts ridic and chic as fuck.” It was advertised as a “bungalow” but actually set up as a series of “well-appointed” rooms in a fancy apartment — including a functioning kitchen, an apothecary, a greenhouse, and a living room with “midnight blue” wallpaper and a sheepskin throw on a walnut daybed.

Google’s holiday pop-up hardware store, which opens Thursday in New York, is the tech version of that. It’s in Soho, on Greene Street, approximately 200 feet from the Soho Apple Store, and sandwiched between a Dior boutique and the millennial-first couch company Burrow’s new “experiential” retail store.

Kaitlyn Tiffany/Vox

It’s a “literal interpretation of a hardware store,” except incredibly sleek — attended to by salespeople in bright white button-downs and $200 Timberlands, and full of bright white toolboxes and bright aluminum paint cans with labels that reflect Google hardware’s pastel color palette — sharply different from the bold primary colors of its web services.

There are Edison bulbs and chunks of rose quartz. There’s a bright miniature kitchen with copper mugs and a shiny French press, with an adorable aqua mini-stove and ’60s-vintage-inspired floor tiling that reads “Hey Google,” and a secret candy drawer that pops open upon asking the new Google Home Hub for a snack. (The Google Home Hub is the store’s star attraction, but you can also buy the Pixel 3, Google Home speakers, and other accessories.)

The idea of digital wellness started at Google, just as Goop was building out its empire

Each purchase can be gift-wrapped at a DIY station equipped with six different pastel-printed papers, balls of twine, and gold-handled scissors. You carry it home in a tote bag with one of Google’s new signature colors — “not pink,” “midnight blue,” “aqua,” or, unfortunately, “just white” — printed on the side. It comes with a manual, created by Canadian artist Hiller Goodspeed, which is full of dozens of pastel-hued illustrated guides like “How to take care of your (digital) self” and “How to start your next vacation faster.”

As deliberately Instagrammable, supposedly “interactive” retail experiences go, this one is really nice. The treehouse (there is a treehouse!) is stocked with Nancy Drew books. The smells are all fresh paint and money. There are multiple coloring lounges and dozens of opportunities to request that Google’s voice assistant perform strange tasks for you. (You can ask it to tell you a ghost story!)

It is also, as these retail experiences go, pretty typical, in that it is beautiful and aspirational. Everything that’s available to buy costs a lot of money, and I was dressed so improperly for the experience (in sneakers and a button-down black dress) that one of the store’s attendants came over and asked me to stop taking photos, implying that he wasn’t exactly sure how I’d found my way into a press preview.

All this to say: When Google products move over into Goop stores, the transition will be seamless. It’s the perfect aspirational lifestyle play for Google — and Goop will get some important rebranding from the arrangement too.

Goop has struggled with credibility and with accusations of spreading misinformation. Earlier this year, it was forced to relabel health and wellness advice content on its website with disclaimers like “For Your Enjoyment: There probably aren’t going to be peer-reviewed studies about this concept, but it’s fun, and there’s real merit in that,” and “Ancient Modality: This practice is nearly as old as time — many find value in it, even if modern-day research hasn’t caught up yet.”

In a bombastic and delightfully gossipy (the cigarette!) New York Times magazine profile of Gwyneth Paltrow published in July, she revealed that her company’s plan to launch its own magazine in partnership with Condé Nast (a Google partner) fell through because the publisher insisted Goop use a fact-checker. By partnering with Google, Goop has an opportunity to affiliate its brand with big data and proven fact, without actually validating any of its own claims.

In the Times profile, Paltrow also revealed that the company was worth $250 million, and thanked her haters for her success. Writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner explained:

The weirder Goop went, the more its readers rejoiced. And then, of course, the more Goop was criticized: by mainstream doctors with accusations of pseudoscience, by websites like Slate and Jezebel saying it was no longer ludicrous — no, now it was dangerous. And elsewhere people would wonder how Gwyneth Paltrow could try to solve our problems when her life seemed almost comically problem-free. But every time there was a negative story about her or her company, all that did was bring more people to the site — among them those who had similar kinds of questions and couldn’t find help in mainstream medicine.

Nobody understands the mechanics of this — a great search-engine optimization/clickbait feedback loop scam — better than Google. Google Search placement and Google Trend might be two of the least sexy but most important things any fledgling brand has to worry about. If anyone knows how great Goop is doing on that front, it’s the company that holds practically every internet user’s browsing data.

If Google wants to get seriously into luxury and wellness, nobody’s more tightly associated with those buzzwords than Goop. We don’t know the extent of Goop and Google’s partnership yet, but it makes perfect sense. “The minute the phrase ‘having it all’ lost favor among women, wellness came in to pick up the pieces,” Brodesser-Akner wrote. “Wellness was maybe a result of too much having it all, too much pursuit, too many boxes that we’d seen our exhausted mothers fall into bed without checking off.”

That explains the rise of Goop’s brand of aspirational wellness, but wellness as a concept also arrived because of too many email notifications, too many “active” or “away” status bubbles, and too many tech companies like Google that made every moment of our lives schedulable and therefore monetizable. A partnership between the two makes total sense business-wise — and for consumers, it’s a match made in a rosy, well-lit hell.

Original Source -> Why Google wants to sell its gadgets in Goop stores

via The Conservative Brief

[alshamey]

I Want My Great Memory Back! http://yourgradgear.com/2017/09/27/i-want-my-great-memory-back/

New Post has been published on http://yourgradgear.com/2017/09/27/i-want-my-great-memory-back/

I Want My Great Memory Back!

Blanking on names? Left your iPhone in a cab? Our writer tests whether the latest science-backed recall tricks will really turn your mind into a steel trap.

Jancee Dunn

July 22, 2015

I used to have a memory that amazed people, but in the last few years I’ve had trouble remembering names and movie titles. (“You know, the one about the guy who goes somewhere? It won that award…”) I hope to have many years of sharp thinking ahead of me—I’m in my mid-40s, nowhere near senior-moments territory—so I got to wondering: Is there something I should be doing now to counteract the lapses that already seem to be taking place?

There’s no way around the fact that memory erodes as we get older. The hippocampus, the area of your brain responsible for building memory, loses 5 percent of its nerve cells with each passing decade. Plus, aging slows production of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter vital to learning and memory. Based on these facts, scientists once believed that a person’s mental ability peaked early in adulthood, then went downhill from there. But over the last few decades, research has found that adults’ brains are still able to form new, memory-building neural networks in a process known as neuroplasticity. The reassuring latest thinking: With a little effort, anyone can boost their power of recollection.

To test this theory in the real world, I tried an array of research-backed brain-sharpening techniques over one six-week period. Am I now able to list all 44 U.S. presidents? No. But can I more easily summon up where I put my keys? Yes. And I think being able to leave my apartment and lock the door is a more valuable life skill than remembering James K. Polk. Here’s what worked for me—and what fell flat.

Technique #1: Play brain games

Puzzles like Sudoku and crosswords may improve memory and delay brain decline, though experts are not yet sure why. “My guess is that playing them activates synapses in the whole brain, including the memory areas,” says Marcel Danesi, PhD, author of Extreme Brain Workout. Research so far is decidedly mixed: Some studies have found that, while doing crossword puzzles may make you better at remembering the capital of Burkina Faso, there’s little evidence they’ll boost your performance at more general tasks, like remembering where your car is parked. But a 2011 study showed that participants who played a computer game called Double Decision for six years improved their concentration so much that they had a 50 percent lower rate of car accidents.

So I decided to try an online brain-training program called Lumosity, which neuroscientists from Harvard, Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley have used in their own studies; its creators claim that 97 percent of users improve their memory in just 10 hours of playing time. First I answered a series of questions at lumosity.com to identify which of my cognitive processes, including memory, could use a little help. Then I received a personalized training regimen. A 10-minute daily series of games is free, and a more advanced program is available for $12.95 a month. (Being cheap, I stuck with the former.) The games are pure fun—remembering a pattern of blocks, spotting a bird in a field—and are based on what research has found to improve concentration and other cognitive skills.

My grade: B- By the end of a month, my “brain performance index” score rose 6 percent—not amazing in the Lumosity world, but respectable. The main problem: You have to play the games every day, forever, to keep up the benefits. I’ve mostly kept up. (Except on weekends. Or if I’ve had a busy week. OK, I haven’t kept up.)

Technique #2: Eat the right foods

According to Gary Small, MD, director of the UCLA Memory Clinic, memory superfoods include antioxidant-rich, colorful fruits and vegetables, which protect your brain from harmful free radicals. He’s also enthusiastic about low-glycemic carbs, like oatmeal, and anything with omega-3 fatty acids. In fact, a recent study published in Neurology found that people with low levels of omega-3s had brains that appeared to be a full two years older in MRI scans. That was incentive enough for me to follow the memory-enhancing diet from Dr. Small’s book The Memory Prescription, which claims it works in just two weeks. Much like the Mediterranean diet, it’s heavy on produce, legumes, nuts and fish. It’s low on meat, since meat’s omega-6 fatty acids may contribute to brain inflammation, a possible underlying mechanism for Alzheimer’s. Refined sugars produce a similar effect, so they were also out. (That was the toughest for me.) I ate a farmers market’s worth of blueberries, spinach, avocado and beets, and consumed enough fish to sprout gills. I also went beyond Dr. Small’s advice and took 2.4 micrograms of vitamin B12, the standard recommended daily amount—since studies show people with low levels perform poorly on memory tests—and 1,000 international units of vitamin D, discovered by Tufts University researchers to boost cognitive function. (My doctor signed off on the supplements.)

My grade: A It was difficult to eat meat only once a week, until I noticed how much less physically and mentally sluggish I felt. And my memory became markedly sharper over 14 days. (For instance, I quit using a bookmark because I could remember the page number I’d stopped on the night before.) Planning those meals took a lot of prep, but it paid off tremendously. I still try to use the diet as a guideline: I eat meat once a week, aim for five fruits and vegetables a day and pop omega-3 supplements (since I don’t get as much fish as I did on the diet).

            Next Page: Technique #3: Quit multitasking

[ pagebreak ]Technique #3: Quit multitasking

“One reason people can’t remember where their keys are is they’re not paying attention when they put them down,” says Mark McDaniel, PhD, a psychology professor and memory researcher at Washington University in St. Louis. (His suggestion for always finding them: “When you put them down, stop and say out loud, ‘I’m leaving my keys on my dresser,'” or wherever you’re placing them.) Studies show that it takes eight seconds to fully commit a piece of information to memory, so concentrating on the task at hand is crucial. I willed myself to stop giving everything “continuous partial attention,” a term coined by tech honcho Linda Stone. I put away my gadgets when they weren’t absolutely needed. I didn’t have 10 websites up all at once. I called a friend, sat on my bed, closed my eyes and actually listened to what she was saying.

My grade: B+ It’s amazing how difficult it is to do one thing at a time. Concentration takes work, but I found I could remember appointments better because I paid attention when I made them and repeated the day and time, rather than agreeing to commitments while doing the laundry and returning e-mail messages. My husband, usually my living iCal, was very impressed.

Technique #4: Master a new skill

A recent Swedish study found that adults who learned a new language showed improved memory for people’s names, among other things. Any activity that is practiced diligently, such as knitting or skiing, will likely have this effect, researchers say. I vowed to learn to play the keyboard. On YouTube I found PlayPianoKing, an affable guy who teaches everything from Pachelbel’s Canon to “Gangnam Style.”

My grade: C- While I did learn a mean “Gangnam” and felt my concentration improve, I soon gave up: With brain games and a diet overhaul crowding my schedule, the hour-long, every-other-day lesson was making me cranky, even before I saw any noticeable memory gains.

Technique #5: Get more sleep

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have discovered that losing half a night’s rest—three or four hours—on just one evening can erode memory. And the journal Nature Neuroscience recently reported that one way to slow decline in aging adults is to improve the length and quality of sleep. During a deep sleep of eight hours or more, it’s believed that the brain shifts memories from temporary to longer-term storage. Yet according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one third of us get less than seven hours a night—including me.

So, for more than a month, I implemented a stringent schedule: I would put my preschooler to bed and take a bath. Then I’d hit my own bed with a book, rather than watch TV or movies, which several studies reveal will make you feel too keyed up to wind down. Normally I fall asleep at 11:30 p.m. and wake at 5:45 a.m., but the new routine put me out by 10.

My grade: A+ Nothing had a better effect on my memory than that long stretch of sleep. I was able to semi-credibly measure the difference because I started my other interventions a few weeks before this one. I bounded out of bed fully recharged. My mind became as focused as a laser beam; I even remembered every mom’s name during the school run (no more “Hey, you!” or just “Hi!”).

Technique #6: Use mnemonic devices

These are basically memory tools that give meaning and organization to a random group of words or concepts. They could be an acronym (BOG for “Buy oranges and grapes”), an exaggerated visualization (imagining a massive stethoscope to remember a doctor’s appointment) or a rhyme (to recall a co-worker’s name, I’d remember, “Ted has a giant forehead”). Memory champions also love chunking, or breaking a large amount of information into more manageable nuggets. Say you have to memorize these numbers: 2214457819. It’s much easier to do as a phone number: 221-445-7819.

My grade: A+ I found these tactics enormously helpful. I usually forget my poor nephew’s birthday, but this year I actually sent a gift, thanks to the unpleasant but memorable NITS (“Nephew is 10 Sunday”).

Technique #7: Hit the gym

Researchers from the University of California at Irvine recently discovered that a little exercise might yield big mental benefits. They had one group of subjects ride stationary bikes for six minutes, while another group cooled their heels. Afterward, the active group performed significantly better on a memory test. Instant results! The researchers believe the boost may be tied to an exercise-induced brain chemical called norepinephrine, which has a strong influence on memory. And Dr. Small contends that exercise is the best memory aid of all. “It can increase your brain size,” he says—and the bigger your brain, the greater your capacity to remember. His recommendation: 20 minutes of brisk walking a day. I began doing an hour daily—more than Dr. Small recommends, but also more consistent than the gym workouts a few times a week I used to favor, and, according to many experts, more effective in juicing up memory.

My grade: A- This moderate, regular activity worked wonders on my stress levels, and it became much easier to concentrate afterward, so I could fix things (like a grocery list) into my memory. I grew addicted to my walks and still take them. In fact, I found that the memory-boosting healthy lifestyle habits—exercising more, stressing less, eating a better diet—were the most sustainable over time. And that’s a win-win.

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