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canirove · 1 year ago

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Broken Hearts Football Club | Chapter 9

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"And that's how you come back from a suspension! Two goals and two assists for June Maxwell!" Andrew said.

"And look at that smile on her face! She has definitely missed it” Jacob added.

"That's the face of someone who loves football" Ben said, trying very hard not to smile. She was back. The June Maxwell they all enjoyed watching, was back. "Though they should give her the fifth goal and make it a hat-trick."

"It was an own goal, Chilly."

"I know, but…"

"I barely recognise you, Chilwell. You are saying nice things about Maxwell. Again!" Andrew laughed. "Anything you would like to share with us?"

"It's just that after seeing what happened in her last game, I realized we should spread more positivity instead of negativity. I still think she is overrated and has a lot of work to do to be as good as you all say she is…"

"That's more you" Jacob chuckled.

"But there has been so much hate everywhere and especially online, that I felt I was adding fuel to the fire and that wasn't sitting well with me. Football players have to deal with a lot of pressure already, and sometimes we forget that they are human beings with real feelings just like anyone else."

"They all are, Chilly. They all are. Well said.”

"So yeah… I may start to go a bit softer on her. But just a teeny-tiny bit" he laughed.

━━━━━━❃━━━━━━

"That was the last interview, June. You can go shower."

"Thank you" she smiled, starting to walk towards the changing room.

"Maxwell! Wait!"

"Chilwell?" she said, turning aroud. "What are you doing down here?"

"I wanted to speak with you."

"Again?" she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Yes, again. I wanted to congratulate you for today's game, you played really well."

"April's Fools was last week, Chilwell."

"I'm not joking, June. I'm being honest."

"Sure" she chuckled.

"I am. I even got you something."

"Something like what? A present?"

"Kind of."

"Oh my God, another Kinder egg?" she laughed. "Is this your new way of bullying me? Giving me treats to make me feel as if I was a dog? Wait, is this your revenge because I called you dog?"

"It's just a nice gesture, June."

"You and being nice with me don't go together."

"They may start to" he shrugged. "Are you taking it or not?"

"Is it poisoned?"

"June…" Ben said, rolling his eyes.

"Ok, ok… I'm taking it. Thank you."

"You're welcome" he smiled.

"Wait, no. I know what your new plan is. You want to send my fitness to hell by feeding me chocolate."

"Dear God, Maxwell" he sighed.

"I was just teasing you, Chilwell" she laughed. "Thank you. For this and for what you said on tv. Someone from the team told me."

"You're welcome. And I meant it. I'm not going to stop stating my facts…" he smirked. "But I won't be as mean or ruthless. I promise."

"Ok, good. I... I should probably go shower, I don't want to get cold and risk getting sick now that I'm back."

"You also happen to stink."

"What?"

"Just stating a fact" Ben shrugged, trying very hard to hide a smile.

"You… whatever. See you around, Chilwell. And thank you for the present."

"You're welcome, Maxwell. Again. See you around."

━━━━━━❃━━━━━━

"What is that?"

"Uh?"

"That toy" Lauren said, pointing at the little lion June was playing with.

"Oh, it's from a Kinder egg."

"You have Kinder eggs? Where? I want one!"

"I don't have any. Someone gave me this one."

"Someone? Who?"

"A fan. They wanted to cheer me up."

"Well, they've been very successful at it, because you haven't stopped smiling since we got into the bus."

"What?" June chuckled.

"You've been smiling like an idiot."

"Yeah, sure."

"You have. Was he cute?" Lauren asked.

"Who?"

"The fan who gave you the Kinder egg. Because you have the smile of someone who is thinking about her crush" she smirked.

"It was a kid, Lauren" June said, feeling her cheeks get warm.

"Did the kid come with a dad? Brother? Uncle?"

"It was just a kid, ok?"

"Ok, ok. No need to get mad. But I thought we were friends."

"And we are."

"Friends tell each other when they fancy someone."

"I don't fancy anyone" June chuckled.

"You… ok, fine" Lauren sighed. "You don't fancy anyone."

"I don't."

"And I said ok. Will you wake me up when we are getting close home? I want to take a nap."

"I will, don't worry."

"Thank you. Night night, June."

"Night night, Lauren" she smiled.

"Friends tell each other when they fancy someone."

"I don't fancy anyone."

Because she didn't fancy anyone, did she? And especially not Ben Chilwell.

Yes, him showing up today and giving her the chocolate egg had made her feel all fuzzy inside. It had been a very cute gesture, but it was just because it brought really good memories from her childhood, of her dad always buying her one after her Sunday games.

And the other day when he had told her that he cared about her, her heart had skipped a beat, yes. But just because it had caught her by surprise.

Though while she had been suspended and bored as hell, she had kept thinking about Ben telling her he would never date her, his words coming back and making her feel… weird. Kind of disappointed.

And then, of course, was the fact that her mind would randomly go back to their make out session on New Year's. To when she had kissed him. Twice. Thoroughly enjoying it.

And then…

"Fuck."

"What?" Lauren asked, already half asleep while her head rested on June's shoulder.

"Nothing, nothing. Go back to sleep."

But it was definitely something, because June had just realized that she did fancy someone. She fancied Ben freaking Chilwell.

#ben chilwell #ben chilwell fanfic #ben chilwell imagine #football fanfic #football imagine

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look-at-the-soul · 2 years ago

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A new kind of love 🐾

Tommy Shelby x Reader one shot

🐾 I wrote this story as part of my 900 followers celebration 🥰 as you know by now, one of my dogs (and light of my life) got sick with pancreatitis back in December and my baby girl was hospitalized at the vets clinic for two nights, she had never been sick before and it felt horrible to not have her home, she’s doing so much better now, taking her meds so well and back to her usual self 💞 around those days I reached 900 followers which is crazy so I thought that making a celebration involving pups would be a good idea, and so far, I’m quite happy with the response! Thank you all for keeping her (us) in your thoughts!

Warnings: none just this got a bit longer than I expected 🐶👑

“Charlie?” You looked at him through the rear view mirror, he was so serious, so unlike the chatty little boy he usually was.

He flicked his green eyes at you, uninterested.

“Do you want to get something to eat? I could stop on the way back home for a hamburger or”

But he really wasn’t in the mood. “No, I like what Frances cooks.”

“Do you want to tell me how did school go?”

“Fine.”

Turning off the music from the car, you tried to find a way to get more information from Tommy’s son.

“Do you need to buy anything for your homework?”

“Nope.”

He was harder than his father, at least with Tommy you could bat your lashes, or make him talk during sex, but the same technique couldn’t be used with Charlie.

“How about you invite Daniel on Saturday, we can go to the country house and ride the horses?” You proposed.

But Charlie’s face showed you sadness instead of the excited reaction you were hoping for.

“Daniel is not my friend anymore.” Charlie stated looking down.

His tone worried you. Passing your arm to the seats behind, you offered your hand to him. Charlie doubted at first, but his little hand reached yours.

You cared about him deeply, after losing his mother and the long hours his father worked, you couldn’t help but get attached to him, he was a great child and it was a natural thing to love him.

“How about we go for a walk?” You proposed pulling over in an empty parking spot, changing your original plans to go back home. There was a small stream close, a spot you found by chance in one of your daily runs.

Charlie sighed, nevertheless he walked by your side in silence.

“I come here every time I need to clear my head, people don’t seem to stop by very often.” You pointed out gently after a few moments.

Leaning on the small bridge, you thought it had been a while since you visited this place.

“Don’t tell your Dad I do this or he will send one of his bodyguards with me.” You joked earning a surprised look from Charlie.

“My Dad doesn’t know about this place?”

“Nope, he’s too loud for this peace.” You winked. “Should we keep this as a secret for us?”

Charlie nodded throwing a rock to the water.

“Daniel told me his Dad got a girlfriend after his parents divorced and she’s mean to him and threatened to send him to school overseas.” Charlie confessed after sitting on the edge of the bridge next to you.

His confession took you by surprise, why was his serious attitude related?

“Y/N… would you send me overseas? If I piss you off?” You saw him rubbing his leg, the wind moving his blonde hair.

Suddenly it clicked in your mind.

Tommy and you got married a few months ago after dating for two years, Charlie had the time of his life at the wedding, since the beginning he was the most adorable bonus child you could ask for, he stole your heart from the very first time Tommy cooked for you in his country house and Charlie was so excited to show you the reading room his father made for him.

Touching his shoulders gently, you moved him to face you.

“Charlie has your Dad ever raised a hand on you?” You saw him shaking his head. “Has he ever lose his temper with you?” Again, the same answer. “He shouts at other people, yes, but he has never put a hand on you… just like him, I could never do anything to hurt you, because I love you.” It broke your heart to see the tears accumulating in his beautiful eyes. Gently you wiped them away from his cheeks. “I would never send you somewhere else. I can’t imagine my life without you in it.”

Bringing him close to your chest, you rocked his body from side to side.

“I want you to always trust me okay? And I need you to understand that I would never do anything to get in the middle between you and your Dad.”

“Daniel told me you would be just like his step mum and he laughed when I told him you were the coolest.”

“Daniel is fighting his own battle, and unfortunately we hurt people in the process, but you don’t have to worry abou-”

Your words were interrupted by something moving behind Charlie.

“What’s that?” He asked turning around to see better.

A little creature appeared sniffing around.

“It’s a doggie!” He shouted and tried to get close to the animal, but you pulled him apart.

He was small, but he could be dangerous or hurt Charlie.

Taking off your sweater, you wrapped it around the muddy pet, feeling it shake and wriggle under your arms.

“Where did it come from?” Charlie asked walking next to you, trying to keep up on your way back to your vehicle.

“I don’t know, looks like this little friend got lost.”

“Can we keep him?”

Reaching your car, you took one of the boxes you bought to use as storage for the Christmas decorations you just took down.

“Charlie, the owners will probably want their pet back, first we’re stopping at the vet.”

Taking the dog to the vet, they informed you it was a female Yorkshire Terrier, little over a year old probably and seemed to be in a good condition. But as you tried to look for a number you realized there was no necklace.

“What if they never look for her, Y/N?” Charlie asked looking over at the dog resting in the box curled on your sweater. You left your number at the vet’s clinic in case someone asked for a lost dog.

Stopping the car in front of the house you were more worried about Tommy’s reaction.

“We’ve to keep trying buddy.”

“But Y/N, we rescued her.” Charlie pouted again.

“I know sweetheart, first we need to give her a bath, so go to the kitchen and bring me a bowl, I’ll meet you in your room.”

“Mrs. Shelby would you like me t-” but the maid stopped mid sentence when she looked at something moving in your arms. “Prepare you something to eat?”

“Just a sandwich Frances, please.” As she kept her eyes locked in your arms, you explained. “Let me handle Mr. Shelby, you didn’t see anything.”

But your answer and wink worried her even more.

“I’m afraid of his reaction.” Frances stated.

“Relax Frances, is only a tiny pup, Tommy has worse problems than this.” You tried to hide your nerves. “He won’t even notice.”

But he did notice when you rushed out of your bedroom with the front of your blouse wet holding the hairdryer in your hands.

And now he was pacing from one side to another as you and Charlie were seating at the last step of the stairs. While he scolded you both.

“What was I supposed to do? Leave the poor dog there? Or at the vet?”

The dog sneezed, probably from the bath, but as you and Charlie told her Bless you, Tommy rolled his eyes.

Tommy looked down at you, hands on his hips, his cigarette hanging from his lips.

He knew that look in your eyes so well for your own good. It wasn’t only that his son wanted to keep the dog, you wanted as well.

“How many times do I have to tell you we can’t keep the dog?”

The small Yorkie yawned as Charlie tried to cover her ears.

“But Dad is small, she will be good.”

But Tommy was already shaking his head.

“We have to find a way to give it back to the owners.” Tommy stated as if he was planning his next move in a business.

“No! If they wanted her, they would’ve taken care of her.”

“Don’t raise your voice.” Tommy pointed his cigarette at his son. “We can’t -“

“You’re mean! You don’t want me to be happy!”

You were torn between comforting Charlie or calming Tommy as the kid went outside.

Sighting, you tried to reason with him.

“What damage could a small dog like that cause?” You touched his tie, deliberately playing with it. “I think it could benefit Charlie.”

“What if the owners want the dog back? Have you considered that Y/N?” He asked walking inside his office. You following his steps.

That seemed to take you by surprise, Charlie had been very adamant of the fact that the fluffy dog found you both.

“Unfortunately for the owner, there’s no phone and name…” You knew you had to choose your battles carefully, but you also knew you were on Charlie’s side in this one. “We can’t give it back without it.”

“We’re so busy all the time,” he tried to make you see his point, “dogs need time, patience, effort… who’s going to clean up the mess? And don’t think of Frances, she’s already busy.”

“I can help.”

“Food, daily walks, vet check ups, we can hardly keep up with everything we do, Y/N.” Groaning, he leaned back on his chair. “I’ve a zoom meeting with a vendor in China.”

Truth is his meeting got delayed, but Charlie’s words were on repeat inside of his head.

He didn’t want his son to look at him as a monster who didn’t care.

But having a dog wasn’t part of his plans either.

Pouring himself a drink, Tommy looked at the window, to the front garden. He could’ve gotten the penthouse, but you chose this one because you fell in love with the view to the fountain and garden.

Outside you joined Charlie and the dog as you allowed the small black creature to sniff on every flower. After a couple of seconds, Tommy saw his son posing with the dog in his arms, smiling for your phone camera as you clicked several times, trying to get the dog’s attention.

“Y/N, do you like dogs?”

“I do Charlie.” You answered while petting the adorable yorkie’s head, it had little parts of golden hair. “They’re one of the purest creatures out there. They give back all the love they get.”

“Why don’t you ask Dad to keep her?” Charlie asked as the dog licked the back of your hand, showing gratitude for the head scratches.

“Because your Dad doesn’t like dogs.”

“But he likes horses!” He folded his arms against his chest.

Motioning the boy to follow you back inside after spending the afternoon out, you told him; “Charlie is not nice what you said to your Dad, he wants you to be happy. You’ll need to apologize to him.”

“But is only a little dog.”

“Is not a toy, they’re a huge responsibility.” Running a hand gently over his head, you tried to ease the tension. “Maybe we can ask your Dad for a couple of days, while we find her family or someone who wants to adopt her. You can enjoy her as much as you want in the meantime.”

Charlie wasn’t convinced, but reluctantly he agreed. Over dinner, he kept asking endless questions about the dog, who wanted a bite of your food. And after helping him to pick up his things, you took the pup with you to the living room, in front of the fire, so Charlie could go to sleep. Tommy was still working locked in his office.

“Where did you come from ey?” You asked the cute pup, enjoying the soft hair against your palm. Using the brush you bought for her at the clinic, you brushed her hair, she seemed to enjoy the pampering session a lot, because once you stopped, she looked at you with pleading eyes and with her cold nose, tried to make your hand touch her again. “You’re so cute you know?”

It had been a long day, so you went to your room to change your clothes for something comfortable to sleep, taking your time to remove your make up as well, but as you went back, the little yorkie wasn’t sitting on the couch as you left her, no, she was curled in a ball next to Charlie, who brought his sleeping bag to the living room and the pair were sleeping together.

How could a small fluffy thing like that steal your heart in a blink?

It was a beautiful scene that melted your heart.

Tiptoeing into Tommy’s office, you pulled him by the hand without telling him anything.

“I didn’t have the heart to wake him up.” You turned then, to kiss Tommy on the cheek and left him to fight alone his own battle.

Several minutes passed by as Tommy stared at Charlie sleeping peacefully next to the dog, he couldn’t wake him up either. So instead, he took off his coat and placed it over the sleeping bag.

One brown eye spying on him, checking his every move, once she decided Tommy wouldn’t hurt them, she turned her back at him and with a loud sight, she got comfortable again against Charlie.

****

Saturday was the same, Charlie asking his father to let him keep the dog, Tommy ordering to let the dog locked in a room since he didn’t want any accidents on the carpets, if something was going to smell bad, it would be Charlie’s room.

The apartment was one more time, a battlefield. He got even more mad at you when he saw the dog wearing one of his socks as sweater, you took one with the pair missing and using some scissors, you opened three holes for the front paws and head, for the size it fitted her perfectly, but Tommy thought differently.

You though he was acting a little bit irrational and exaggerated, but by now, you knew him better than that, so you really tried to keep things as smooth as possible.

The following morning, Tommy woke up to an empty bed. It was something unusual that you were up before him, specially on a Sunday, but either way, he got ready but just as he was stepping out of your bedroom, he heard your voice.

“Look, we should be grateful that it will be us taking care of her at least for these days.”

Without making a noise, Tommy got closer to listen the conversation, staying outside of his son’s room.

“I just don’t understand, if she’s a good pet and alone in this world, why can’t she stay with us? I mean, I have you and Dad, and my aunts and uncles, and Frances! But she’s alone.” Charlie pouted showing his hand to the black and gold dog, as she stretched her neck, Charlie caressed her gold chest. “We should take her and go live somewhere else.”

You chuckled at his proposal, he simply didn’t care you were married to his father. Trying to keep the hair away from her face, you brushed it and did a little bun at the top of her head. She looked at you with those beautiful eyes.

“She has been a really good dog, to be honest, but Charlie, we can’t hold a daily fight with your father over it, he’s got his reasons and we need to do as he says.” The dog then walked over you and getting comfortable, she walked in circles three times only to then laying on your lap, she turned her belly at you.

“She likes you.” Charlie smiled as your fingers tickled her stomach.

“When they do this is because they feel secure.”

“When I grow up, I will buy my own house and have lots of doggies!”

Standing up, you asked him to keep an eye on the pup. Opening the bedroom door without a notice, and that’s when you found Tommy startled.

Playing with your necklace, you avoided his piercing blue eyes. “I hope you find someone soon, because it’s going to be harder…”

It was so hard for him to see you serious like that, he could tell you were getting attached.

Was he acting extremely strict? Selfish? Perhaps.

Frances announced he had a phone call waiting, so Tommy walked towards his office. Spending most of his time there, he could hear outside Charlie playing in the hall, other voices and laughs at times, focused on the email he was typing, he thanked Frances for the tea she brought at some point.

By the corner of his eyes, he saw the heavy door moving, but no one walked in, a little sound made him stop, looking suspicious at the door, if the windows were closed, why was the door moving?

Slowly, he took his gun from its holster, pointing it at the door, alert.

Then he heard a little cry, as he looked down, he found the small yorkie walking in, wriggling its tail and jumping excitedly towards him.

“Ah it’s only you, ey, was going to fucking shoot you.”

Standing up in her little back paws, the pup scratched his leg.

“What are ya doing here little rat? You don’t look like a real dog.”

As the dog looked at him with her bright brown eyes, he stared back, trying to scare her. But it didn’t work.

“Y/N really likes you, so does my son… they’re both a little off with me because of you.” He felt ridiculous talking to a dog, but she tilted her head to the side, as if she could understand what he was saying.

“Should I let you stay?”

Another head tilt.

“Your puppy eyes, do nothing to me, ey?”

A little whine came out from her, as she was trying to get comfortable on Tommy.

Walking out from his office, he found Polly chatting in the kitchen with you.

“I really don’t want to push anything Pol…”

Both of you stopped your conversation as Tommy appeared in the room, but it wasn’t because of him, you were surprised to see him holding the precious doggie against his chest.

“I found this little gatecrasher in my office.” Tommy cocked an eyebrow. “She asked me if she could stay with us permanently.”

“Y/N…” Charlie entered the kitchen looking pale, “I can’t find-” the kid gasped as his eyes found the puppy in his father’s arms.

Then, everything happened in slow motion; Tommy looked at the dog, and the dog looked back at him, then a pink little tongue could be seen and the pup licked Tommy’s cheek.

Polly’s hand dramatically came to rest over her mouth, while you held your breath.

But as you saw Tommy throwing his head back and letting out a loud laugh, your heart skipped a beat.

“I think that’s a yes,” he announced handing you the puppy. “But there will be some rules, though.”

Charlie started jumping around, he could barely hold his excitement.

“Listen to me carefully, you’ll take care of cleaning her mess, and she’ll need training…” Tommy warned, but Charlie wasn’t listening, his arms circled his father’s body.

“Thank you,thank you! I’m sorry I shouted.”

“I’m sorry too son.”

“Aunt Pol! Can we go and buy a bed? She needs a leash… oh! And a name too.”

As Charlie pulled Polly by the hand, you walked towards Tommy, smiling.

“Really? All I had to do to see you smile like that was getting a dog?”

“Thank you.” Your hands moved up and down his chest, kissing his cheek with a playful look.

“It doesn’t sound like you’re extra grateful you know?” He joked winking at you, pulling your hips towards him, kissing you with passion.

Until a little bark interrupted your kiss.

“You already know the love you feel for Charlie, and it’s different from the kind of love you feel for me.” You told Tommy. “But now you will learn about a different kind of love.”

“Really? You think a dog will love me?” You smiled at his doubts, he really didn’t know.

“Dogs have a way of finding the people who need them and filling an emptiness we didn’t know we had.”

****

Master list

A/N: if you made it this far, thank you!!!! ♥️ it means a lot, I hope you enjoyed this pup celebration as much as I did!

Tag list: @lyarr24 @runnning-outof-time @cillmequick @gypsy-girl-08 @datewithgianni @cloudofdisney @gretelshelby @lespendy @onlydeadcells @fastfan @stevie75 @prettylittlehoneyeyesxoxo @esposadomd @strayrockette @the-forest-witchh @elenavampire21 @forgottenpeakywriter @zablife @peakyscillian @evita-shelby @raincoffeeandfandoms @midnightmagpiemama @moral-terpitude @babaohhhriley @ange-thoughts @shelbydelrey @shaddixlife @sloanexx @cilliansangel @rangerelik

#that’s what Cill said #cillian murphy #tommy shelby #peaky blinders #modern tommy shelby imagine #tommy shelby x reader #tommy shelby x you #peaky blinders imagine #tommy shelby fanfiction

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fuj0wuj0 · 2 months ago

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Hiiiiii!!!!! Disaster Husbands facts?? Ramdog facts?? Random Oc fact?? 👉👂👈 I am. Perceiving Auditorily :) No pressure btw!!! Regardless I really hope you are feeling better and your sickness is letting you get some rest :D

OMG HI GALE HIIII!!!! 💕💕 Thanks for the concern!! The sickness has been. horrible. but I can BREATHE right now so maybe this week's the last?!?!?! I hope so...

Every time you ask me an OC related question an angel gets its wings btw thank you for letting me talk. this is enrichment to me

Reply under the cut as to not clutter the dash of those who care not 😌😌

Okay, so let's start with ramdog <33 My OGs

We all know that Sherman has like. Separation anxiety right. 😭�� It was not intended to be canon at first, but after the iconic Piano Piece, I just figured it'd be really funny... Not for him, though... At least he gets some good work done when he's broody, right…? Haha...

Their families love their respective partners so much... Sherman's mom and sister pretty much immediately adopted Obi because he matches their energy 100%. Obi's parents almost passed out from happiness when they met Sherman because HOLY SHIT THEIR SHITASS SON BROUGHT HOME A DECENT GUY. Ms. Katsura loves having him over for dinner. Real pleasant guy 🥰He gets so many jars of pickled food when he visits with Obi that they can barely carry them to the car. They also both hang out with Hana (Obi's sis) pretty regularly! :D

They have beef with their elderly neighbor. Not because she's homophobic, but because they're legit unpleasant neighbors (Obi smokes in the shared corridor + Sherman plays the piano very early in the morning) 😭

They get married post-canon (quite a while after all the gang shit is resolved) :DD [I'm sorry I know all my OCs are getting gay married all the time, no one's surprised. I have a bias 🙏🙏]

As I've stated some time before, Sherman doesn't usually let others see his ears. Yes, Obi has seen them multiple times. Yes, he teases him about it a lot. (all in good fun, though - and Sherman usually gets back at him immediately. Like ok dog, tough words from someone within Tail Grabbing distance)

Since Sherman is usually home more, he kind of assigned himself housekeeper (fair enough, Obi's a slob). They don't need to cook super often though, Katsura keeps giving them tupperware full of food so they usually live off of that for 5 days a week HAH

Sherman hates smoking, but he often has cigarette breath. Go figure 😏

At the beginning of their relationship (familiar, not romantic) Obi almost never uses Sherman's name. He just calls him Mozart, Chopin or Wolfgang 😭 It pisses Sherman off, so Obi just switches to Sher when he's trying to be less of a little shit. The actual name is reserved for y'know. Emotional vulnerability and all that. (Later on, 'Mozart' stops being an irritating nickname. It kinda grew on him...)

RAAARGH many thoughts about them but I'm not hitting the post limit 2nite. Okay Disaster Husbands go!!

Funny story, both Ulysses and Kallen were totally different in their first "drafts"!

OG Kallen was much more... Open? And a little sassy? Like, still very much straight-faced, but he didn't have that professional air 24/7. I'd even say he was pretty open with his emotions. Emotional outbursts weren't above him, dude really knew how to argue in a heated moment. I like to think that this is how Kallen would be if Orso didn't make him into a living weapon 😭 The current Kallen is also freakier (😏)

And OG Ulysses...Oh my god. God, ew. When I say "CEO in a wattpad fanfic", this is what I mean. Dude was insufferable. Aggressive, broody fellow with unresolved anger issues who thinks he can do and have and say whatever he wants. An now he's a tiger? Hell no. Match made in hell. Incompetent Dork Ulysses >>>> Angry Baddie Ulysses, any day.

Ok onto actual little trivias--

Ulysses loves buying his loved ones gifts. Kallen doesn't know how to accept a gift gracefully (didn't like getting stuff from Orso, neither).

Catpeople don't control when they purr. And Ulysses purrs LOUD. (imagine trying to be subtle and act like you're not bothered by that Pretty Guy On Your Couch but you sound like an industrial drill. yeah.)

Their glasses clank together when they kiss sometimes <3 #goals

I don't see them going out on dates much, BUT I think Ulysses would order some good tiramisu and they could cuddle on the couch maybe.....

Kallen kept his identity hidden from the press/tabloids for a while out of habit (not that good for a sniper to be out with their face plastered on celebrity gossip, afterall), but when the dust settled they eventually made their wedding public. Ulysses would probably stay a little anxious about it, always making sure that Kallen's okay with being out in public / on camera 100 times.

I think they could have another kid in the future..? I have this faint idea of them having a daughter by the name of Roma, but that feels a little on the nose with the...italian-greek parent combo 😐 We'll see, though! They're content with just Juno rn 😌

and as some extras, not related to the couples:

Kallen's afraid of making a kid feel like he did with Orso (unsure whether they're loved or not). I can totally see him being a little overprotective/overbearing.

Aaahhh, that was a lot...Honestly as I was writing this I realized that disaster husbands are kind of hard to write about in trivia form?? Maybe because they're _relatively_ new...

Still, it was fun to write it all out!! Thanks for the question as always, Gale <33

#fuj0 #beastmen #fuj0wuj0 #lore #beastmen lore #oc: Kallen #oc: Ulysses #Disaster Husbands #Ramdog #oc: Obi #oc: Sherman #ask #.txt

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self-indulgent-paw-patrol · 5 months ago

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You know how you always apologize in the tags when you go on a Paw Patrol rant? Well, I for one really enjoy your little essays, I love how unashamedly passionate you are about Paw Patrol, how you overanalyze and theorize about it just like I do, it's why I love this blog so much, I love nerding out with you over these cute cartoon dogs

How dare you do this to me when I'm sick and emotional (/j) 😭🫂💜 I'm gonna cry (edit: ok I actually did, a bit XD)

Seriously now, thank you so much too. Every time I see you popping up around in any of my askboxes I go like "OH MY GOD COTTON CANDY SENT ME AN ASK AGAIN AAAAAAAAAAA I LOVE THEM SO MUCH LET'S SEE WHAT IT'S ABOUT THIS TIME" - really, Blue and Eryx can confirm, I go nuts for a whole minute or two in our little Discord server XDD it's always a joy to see you around.

I guess I tend to apologize because it's a little like an automatic reaction... It wasn't THAT MUCH or that bad, but I've been told numerous times I shouldn't focus so much on things that are soooooo not for my age. I always have to remind relatives and their friends that it's people my age or older who get to work on producing these things in the first place. And I know people hear these things since early on too, it's annoying, like what the hell, let us live our little lives, we're not actively affecting yours XD

I still find it funny, how passionate I got about Paw Patrol, because when I started watching it, I wasn't expecting to get SO INTO IT.

When I stop to think, most my profile pics on social media/messaging apps are now of Paw Patrol. I've been watching it since January, right after my dog Dakota died. I got now two blogs (and a half bc I'm sorta "helping" Eryx with her askblog of Everest/Tracker/Rex so I was added as a mod there) only for Paw Patrol stuff instead of mixing it around in my personal blog like most my other interests/fandoms. My Telegram art channel has been 90% Paw Patrol arts this entire year so far, except for commissions. I met amazing people in this fandom and even got one hate comment LMAO there's this old Tumblr saying that states your blog hasn't truly started until you get a hate message 😂 Heck I even bought three toys so far! It's been AGES since I last bought anything fandom related for myself, on anything at all. The one thing that comes to mind is the Lightning McQueen origins storybook last year (still gotta remember to buy Jackson Storm's and Cruz Ramirez's too). I usually make/paint/craft my own stuff instead of buying (one of the several reasons I relate to Rocky!).

I just, wow? It's real. I got this whole thing going on and it makes me smile every day and I don't want it to stop any soon. I started watching the show as a way to soothe myself and relax my stressed brain after Dakota's passing. Didn't expect to get so far. I'm glad I did and that I'm here with you guys.

Thanks for being part of what makes it so special for me too, Cotton Candy. You're amazing and I love it whenever you show up bringing more stuff for me to talk about 💜 PAW PATROL IS ON A ROLL, MY FRIEND, LET'S GOOOOOOO

#cottoncandyswirl828 #YOU ARE AMAZING AND VALID TOO #I'll try to not apologize so much IT'S JUST THAT I FIND IT FUNNY I GET CARRIED LIKE THAT EVERYTIME #Thanks thanks THANKS #Thanks for the ask!!#Paw Patrol #Positivity #That's it I'm a reference in the fandom now omfg do I need a name to call my followers now??

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questionablemeap · 8 months ago

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so, little story time.

i’m really sick right now, it’s not covid but with the conglomeration of chronic illnesses i have, the illness is being a little bitch.

basically long story short, my stomach doesn’t want to work, like ever. have you ever had a package that said they’d deliver in 5-10 days? and you’re like oh five to ten days, that’s just a week or so, not bad. and then a week passes and you’re like, okay where’s my package? so you check the website, and you realize it said 5-10 business days? so now you’re waiting for a package that instead of taking a week to deliver, it’s going to take a month and a half?

yeah, that’s my stomach, but also add in that because of my stomach not working, if i’m not careful i will throw up everything i eat and not truly consume anything for months on end. anyways, because of this and a bunch of other things, my immune system is constantly in a state of that one meme with the dog sitting in the middle of a fire saying this is fine.

so i have some sort of cold, or something of the like. no big deal, i’ll just be sniffly and coughing for a few days. hey remember how my immune system is total shit?

my symptoms have been as follows. coughing fits, repeated dry heaving with no actual throwing up, just the painful feeling of retching with no relief, a sniffly nose so bad i can’t taste anything but mucus, extreme nausea, stomach pain, scratchy throat, headaches that turn into migraines, and fatigue.

y’know what you do when you’re fatigued? you rest, obviously. i don’t have the energy to walk down the stairs more than once a day, so i’m limited to my bed and two or three bathroom trips a day. i’ve been in bed all week. all. week.

now when you’re restricted to your bed for a week, feeling like utter shit with very little motivation to talk to anyone, you get bored very easily.

now what’s a good thing to do when you can’t move, but are really bored? read. i have been consuming fanfictions at a rate i haven’t done since i was in middle school. i’m in the middle of churning through dark matter on ao3 like it’s the last thing i’ll ever read.

hey. hey guess what happened. you’ll never guess. you’ll never guess what happened.

ao3 is down for maintenance. now that’s fine, i can be without fanfic for five minutes or so, so i go to scroll tiktok and get lost in a rabbit hole of frogs and mushrooms. thirty minutes go by. i think, oh well ao3 has got to be up by now!

it’s not. i check ao3’s tumblr. nothing. i get so desperate, i even check *shudder* twitter. and you know what i find? ao3’s been having trouble lately. too many 500 errors are randomly appearing. they have the site down to fix it. they have the site down for maintenance.

so i’m here, fuming in my bed, incredibly sick, and ready to throw hands. i’m so ready to throw down, i spend a good twenty minutes writing out this tumblr post.

long story short — im sick, and i’m feral, and i need my fanfiction

#ao3 #ao3 down #im feral #sickposting #disabled #lgbtqia #therian #about to throw down with electricity rn istg #give me back my fanfiction #im big mad #as well as super sniffly #so the picture i paint isn’t exactly threatening

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covid-safer-hotties · 2 months ago

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What Exactly Is Long Covid? — ITT Episode 37 - Audio Interview - Published September 11, 2024

Listen at the link!

The millions of people worldwide who are suffering from a vast array of disabling symptoms long after being infected with SARS-CoV-2 may eventually benefit from a new consensus definition of long Covid.

Rachel Gotbaum: This is “Intention to Treat” from the New England Journal of Medicine. I’m Rachel Gotbaum. Today, we are going to talk about the millions of people who have been struggling with baffling and often disabling symptoms since being infected with SARS-CoV-2. There has been no standard definition of what exactly long Covid is or how to diagnose it, until now. Recently, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine came out with a comprehensive definition of long Covid, calling it a chronic, systemic disease state with profound consequences. Long Covid can affect any organ in the body and can attack one or multiple systems, and includes some 200 symptoms and hundreds of conditions, such as lupus, cardiovascular disease, fibromyalgia, and cognitive impairment. The hope is that with this new definition, clinicians, researchers, and policymakers can finally help the patients with long Covid who continue to suffer.

Tiffany Brown: I’m Tiffany Brown. I’m 56 years old. I got Covid in August of 2020. By December, I started to feel ill again. I was having trouble concentrating and focusing. The headaches and the full body aches are sometimes so bad, you just don’t want to get out of bed. You just want to lay there because you hurt so bad.

Susan Miller: My name is Dr. Sue Miller. I am 51 years old, and I have had long Covid since my only Covid infection, which was in May of 2022. So I was sick for about 2 weeks. I had a lot of GI symptoms. I had a fever, a terrible sore throat, and I had hallucinations.

After that, my energy level never recovered. I was having headaches and terrible fatigue, and I would forget things. I was a practicing neonatologist at a community hospital, and the thing I noticed when I went back to work was that I couldn’t multitask. And my job is one big multitask.

Tiffany Brown: I started to feel so ill that I went back to the doctor, and I wasn’t getting any results. The doctor took blood work, would always tell me basically, “That’s a lot of symptoms, and it doesn’t sound like you actually have a specific illness.” I felt that they implied many a times a lot of it may be in your head, and they would tell me something like, “You could lose weight, you could eat better, you could start exercising.” And I walked daily for years, and after having Covid, I could not do that. I still can’t.

Susan Miller: I was an extremely high-functioning, athletic, smart, overachieving person. So I would take call for 24 hours, I’d go home and run six miles, cooked my family dinner, walked the dogs, read books, and all of a sudden, I couldn’t do any of that. And it was scary.

Tiffany Brown: I realized that I wasn’t getting any better, and I went to a bigger hospital out of state and had a full interview and many tests done, and I was told I had Covid long-haulers. I had never heard of the Covid long-haulers before, and it was very, very helpful and some relief to know there was a name to what I had and that it wasn’t just in my head.

Susan Miller: One night on call, I was called to see just kind of a routine check of a baby, and I left my call room, and I forgot my glasses, my ID badge — so I couldn’t get back into the call room — and my stethoscope, and I walked out and I got lost a little bit. And it was that moment that I knew I just, I couldn’t take that chance. I took an oath of do no harm. My whole life, I wanted to be a physician. I was at the peak of my career, and I lost all of that because of a virus.

Tiffany Brown: I no longer have my job. I worked for 27 years for the county that I live in, and when I was off work, I was told if I didn’t come back in a certain time, I would be relieved, and they did so. And I had been there so long and knew so many people that it just felt like I had lost friends and family that I would never get back.

Susan Miller: I saw my internist. She ordered a bunch of basic labs and an MRI of my brain, and all of that came back normal. She had no idea what was going on with me. She said that there’s nothing that she can do. All she could offer me was a hug. And now, 2 years later, I realize that that’s really common. Most doctors, they don’t know anything about long Covid.

Tiffany Brown: It was hard, very hard, because most people look at you and you look like you’re OK. They don’t see your pain. So it was very disheartening.

Susan Miller: I had been on a waiting list for a year and a half, and I saw a new neurologist. He was reading my MRI. I had asked him a pointed question about my hippocampus because they’re both small. One’s smaller than the other, and that’s abnormal. They shrunk. They have atrophy. And so I said to him, “Well, this is something that is seen with long Covid,” and he said to me, “Yeah, you probably know more about that than I do.” So me, the brain-injured neonatologist, knows more about how long Covid affects the brain than the neurologist, who is a specialist in the brain. So I called and reached out to every long Covid clinic. I basically just tried to get in anywhere I could.

Tiffany Brown: After I was diagnosed with Covid long-haulers, I applied for the state disability, and I got rejected. No long information, just that “We don’t feel you’re disabled at this time.” Susan Miller: So what I found at the long Covid clinic is that from a psychological standpoint, I have huge validation and a lot of support. What I did not find is that there were actual experts there on this postinfectious syndrome that I have. We can’t tell you why some days your fatigue is so bad that you just have to lay around all day. We can’t tell you why you get bruises in weird spots. We can’t tell you why your toes turn blue all of a sudden. And we don’t know what to do to make it better.

Tiffany Brown: I took out my retirement to have something to live off of, so I was very frightened, from one minute to the next, if I would not be able to pay my gas and light or keep my home. What are you going to do once your money runs out? And I went and got a disability attorney, and through the attorney, I was able to get disability. I didn’t, at one point, think I would be able to go through it. I just thought I would just give up. And it’s still hard day to day.

Susan Miller: I think the biggest problem is that medical providers are not engaged in long Covid. It’s not on their radar. The amount of money they have put into research for long Covid is like spitting in the ocean. Long Covid needs to be in the discussion, the everyday discussion for physicians, for medical professionals, for researchers, for our government. We need to understand that this is a public health crisis. And it’s not going away for some of us.

Rachel Gotbaum: This is “Intention to Treat” from the New England Journal of Medicine. We’re now joined by two people who helped shape the new National Academies of Science definition for long Covid. Karyn Bishof is president of the Longhauler Advocacy Project, and Dr. Wesley Ely is a professor of medicine and critical care at Vanderbilt University. So Dr. Ely, you’re an ICU doctor, you do research. And at first, you’ve written for NEJM and said that you didn’t really believe long Covid existed. Tell us about your experience with that and how it transformed.

E. Wesley Ely: For 25 years, we’ve been studying survivors after the ICU and diagnosing them with this disease state called postintensive care syndrome, which is an acquired disease of dementia and post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, and muscle and nerve disease. So as an ICU doctor, I’m taking care of all these Covid patients in an ICU setting, on ventilators, immobilized, on high-dose sedatives, and I’m thinking they’re getting out of the ICU, and they just have PICS, postintensive care syndrome, and all these people are talking about these prolonged symptoms. And then we started getting calls into our research center here at Vanderbilt University, and these are people who are telling us, “We have prolonged symptoms. We were never in the hospital. We got Covid and never even got admitted to a hospital.” So now we have a new set of people coming to us, saying, “We can’t think well. We have blood-pressure problems. We have heart rates that are through the roof. We have GI problems, all kinds of joint problems — I mean, this whole constellation that we now know of as long Covid over 200 symptoms — and we were never put in a hospital at all. What can you do for us? What is this?”

And so I had to start thinking to myself, “Wes, you need education. You need to learn. And most importantly, you need to listen to these people.” And as a medical insider, we are taught to not diagnose something unless we understand what it is, to not label something unless we understand what it is. And when we don’t understand something, we feel uncomfortable. And that’s the way I felt. I felt like, for example, part of the disease of long Covid has a lot to do with the symptoms of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, and that ME/CFS is a disease state that many people don’t believe of in Western medicine. There’s no diagnostic test, there’s no treatment, isn’t even real, and many doctors label such patients as psychosomatic or having psychological illness and suggest that they go get psychiatric help, and it’s all stress related. So that’s where I was coming from as a physician. Am I willing to lay down my diagnosis and call it a real thing and have other doctors in my circles say, “Wes, are you losing it? Do you actually believe this stuff?,” and in the end of the day, I fell heavily on the side of, “Yes, I believe in this. And call me a quack, but I think we’re going to prove that this is a real disease state, and we’ve got a lot to learn from the patients and about the science.”

Rachel Gotbaum: Karyn Bishof, you were a firefighter and a paramedic when you got Covid and then became disabled with long Covid. Tell us about your experience and how you found this community and started to do advocacy.

Karyn Bishof: It started to become evident to me that I wasn’t recovering as much as my coworkers and something wasn’t quite right. I ended up losing my dream career as a firefighter paramedic because of these health issues, and really early on there was no information. I literally went online and Googled “prolonged symptoms from Covid,” and that is how I found the article, talking about long Covid for the first time. That’s how I found an online community of other patients. Up until that point, I thought I was completely alone. There was nothing about this on the news, nothing about this in the media. This was the first time hearing about it, after 3 months of being completely isolated with all of these new symptoms and health conditions that nobody understood. And seeing all the stories from patients like myself, like people being unable to work, people experiencing symptoms that are not being talked about on the news. We now know that there’s 200 symptoms, as Wes already stated. And part of that picture is that umbrella picture of long Covid, which none of us really recognized and knew how large that umbrella was at the time.

I started doing these patient surveys, saying, “What symptoms are you developing? What conditions have you developed? What clinicians are you seeing that may be helping? Have you lost your job? What are your employers saying?” And seeing the responses from so many people across the globe, coming together, trying to figure out what is going on with us, and what can we do to raise the alarm bells for the public and for clinicians and researchers to start helping us and prevent others from becoming like us. And I started to form the Covid-19 Longhauler Advocacy Project. And to date, we’ve now grown to 60 chapters across the U.S., in every U.S. state and territory, and we have chapters for pregnancy and family planning, teens, BIPOC, LGBTQ, caregivers, labor force union, bereavement, and more, because we find that our role is really identifying the gaps and our needs and bringing that to the stakeholders who make the decisions and who can implement the changes that we need.

Rachel Gotbaum: Do we know how many people have long Covid?

E. Wesley Ely: There are fairly good data to say that at least 6% of people who get Covid end up with long Covid. That still translates, by the way, into globally over a hundred million people, and in the United States, 15 to 20 million people. I think that qualifies as a public health disaster right there.

Rachel Gotbaum: So let’s talk about what’s happening, because we’ve talked about 2020, but this is more than 4 years later, and we finally have a definition. What is happening for patients? Karyn Bishof: I think one of the biggest barriers that we still face all comes down to the foundation of education around long Covid. And many in the patient community are still facing these barriers and the stigma from providers who can’t imagine that a virus is causing all of these issues, or think that there has to be something wrong, or there’s comorbidities, or preexisting conditions in these patients, and that’s why they’re developing long Covid. But as the 2024 NASEM long Covid definition points out, anybody can get long Covid, regardless of demographics, regardless of you’re an adult, regardless if you’re a pediatric, regardless if you have prior health conditions. And I think that’s one of the things that has been overlooked during the pandemic as a whole. E. Wesley Ely: I think that what’s happening is that we’ve got millions of people suffering from a disease state, who have either never been acknowledged to have that disease state by a medical professional or have been acknowledged and are getting grave difficulties at finding any real help from the disability and income perspective. So most of these patients who have a severe, progressive form of this, or even a moderate form of this, have lost their livelihood, have lost their ability to make money, they’re disabled, and many of them in our support groups, for example, come to us and say, “OK, I’ve now lost my housing,” and that really puts people in a state of despair. So it’s a public health nightmare, quite frankly. And the public health nightmare is that we have not met these people where they are to help them find Social Security disability income, we have not helped them find the medical needs that they need because doctors haven’t yet, without a definition, felt comfortable making this diagnosis. But we hope that this 2024 NASEM definition will allow the doors to be opened for both medical professionals and the public at large to find a way forward.

Rachel Gotbaum: So Karyn Bishof, the lack of an understanding of this condition has created major barriers for patients to get help.

Karyn Bishof: In terms of the barriers that long Covid patients are facing, when many patients are seeking benefits like Social Security disability, or food assistance, or Medicaid, or housing assistance, they have to rely on a doctor’s documentation of how their illness impacts their activities of daily living, how it impacts their ability to work, how it impacts their ability to attend school. And many of these patients can’t even get that initial documentation from their providers to do that. So in education, I mean, educating not only the patient community, but the very clinicians who are responsible for identifying long Covid in the first place. And the same thing goes for payers and insurance. Many of the medications that we need are not approved for long Covid. Long Covid has no approved treatments, no cure, no anything. So patients are having to also get the diagnoses for, say, conditions like POTS in order to get beta-blockers, or conditions like MCAS in order to get needed medications, and access to many of those specialists are few and far between. So access to clinical care and the type of clinicians needed to get the documentation we have to address in order for the long Covid community to move forward and recover.

Rachel Gotbaum: So how do you think we got here with this lack of attention to this problem?

E. Wesley Ely: I think we are where we are in terms of the societal unacceptance of long Covid and the medical community’s essential unacceptance of long Covid — broad-sweeping brush strokes here — because this pandemic occurred, it threw us all for such a loop, it scared everybody dramatically, we had millions of deaths, and we all want it to be over. We want to forget about this and move on with our lives. And the last thing we want to hear, as a society, is that there is an infection-associated chronic condition resulting from this virus that doesn’t go away for people years later. But honestly, everybody I’ve asked, “Have you ever heard of long Covid?,” they all say, “Oh, yeah, my cousin has it,” “Oh, yeah, my best friend has it.” Everybody seems to know somebody who has long Covid, and yet the government and medical community is not talking about this very broadly. One of my patients applied four times to Social Security, got rejected every time. She has a medical diagnosis of long Covid. She has all the chart documentation that you could ask for. And yet she can’t get the help that she needs. We’re just way behind on acknowledging the realities of this public health disaster.

Rachel Gotbaum: So Karyn Bishof, what is it like for you today? How is your functioning now?

Karyn Bishof: Unfortunately, my health continues to worsen since developing Covid. I’ve been diagnosed with lupus, eosinophilic esophagitis, chronic migraine and new daily persistent headache, GI dysmotility, insomnia, and many other things. I mean, my daily medications are well over 15 to this point, and I’ve probably seen over 40 or 50 different clinicians over the last four and a half years. My typical day, unfortunately, starts with hours and hours of nausea and vomiting every single morning and GI upset. It doesn’t matter if I ate the day before or 3 days before. It happens every single day, and absolutely wipes me out. I mean, I spend my day in bed, sometimes make it down to my couch in my living room. But something like attending my son’s soccer game on a weekend means that I have to commit myself to doing absolutely nothing for 3 to 4 days before and 3 to 4 days after in order to just attend a 2-hour event. And at that 2-hour event, in order for me to go, I have a chair that has a leg lift on it, it has a canopy, I have to bring ice packs with me because I’m not able to regulate my temperature, but I also have to hide from the sun because I have lupus. So it is a cascading, vicious circle of trying to manage, and a lot of the times, unfortunately, we’re not able to prevent. We’re more so chasing, chasing, chasing, and we’re always behind the eight ball.

Rachel Gotbaum: So how will this new long Covid definition help improve the lives of people like Karyn Bishof and so many other people living with this disease? E. Wesley Ely: OK, I’ll say three ways that this definition really improves things — clinically, from a research perspective, and from a policy perspective. Doctors can now see a person in an office that they would have listened to their symptoms and said, “Gosh, I don’t know if I should be out on a limb, making this diagnosis, when I don’t even understand what the disease is, or even to call it a disease.” Now, the doctor can hear their patient and say, “Wow, you meet this 2024 NASEM long Covid definition very clearly. You meet the criteria. I’m putting in your chart that you have long Covid.”

Doctors before wouldn’t have done that because they didn’t want to be out on a fringe and be called a quack, OK? So that’s the first thing is clinically. Now the patient also has achieved a great accomplishment, now that they can be believed and be heard. Then second, from a research perspective, doctors like me, physician-scientists, can design randomized control trials with explicit inclusion/exclusion criteria based on this definition, and get the right people in, exclude the wrong people that won’t help to answer a specific research question, and get the public answers about the right therapies for this disease state. And then third, the policymakers can say, “Ah, finally, I get it. That’s what this is? Let’s change the way we determine disability income rights for patients to meet this definition.” So all three of those are huge things we think can be affected by the publishing of this definition.

Karyn Bishof: This definition helps to get everybody on the same page. Now, we have a standardized, consensus definition, that if adopted government-wide and implemented, will help start shaping these programs to benefit the long Covid community. But the most important thing to emphasize is that it’s actually adopted and implemented. Having this definition is a great starting point, but unless these people and these programs begin to implement that, the long Covid community sits and waits in the same position we’re in right now.

Rachel Gotbaum: Thank you both so very much.

Karyn Bishof: Thank you for having us and for raising awareness about long Covid.

E. Wesley Ely: It’s a privilege to be part of this process of discovery and, hopefully, to find patients who are suffering some answers. Rachel Gotbaum: We had help from Associate Editor Cliff Rosen and Producer Brigid McCarthy. Our managing editor is Debra Malina, and our engineer is Adam Straus. Next time, researchers say it may someday be possible to communicate with more patients in a coma or vegetative state than previously thought.

Speaker 6: I think that this indicates that there’s probably a substantial population of people who we see just no evidence of responsiveness at the bedside, and yet something’s going on in there. Rachel Gotbaum: That’s next time on “Intention to Treat” from the New England Journal of Medicine. I’m Rachel Gotbaum.

#long covid #covid is not over #mask up #covid #pandemic #covid 19 #wear a mask #public health #coronavirus #sars cov 2 #still coviding #covid conscious #wear a respirator #covid is airborne

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wicked-futures · 2 years ago

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Project Minx [Two]

Pairing: Simon "Ghost" Riley x Fem!Reader (no use of y/n)

Word-Count: 3.6k

Warnings: Swearing, mentions of anxiety

Summary: You arrive on base and meet the 141

Notes: I want to thank you for all the support I got on chapter one. I really appreciate it, and I'm sorry it has taken so long to write #2. Between finals coming up and getting incredibly sick this week, it's been hard getting it out! (But I did anyways) As always, Grammarly is my beta read so if something is off, please let me know!

The drugs had been flushed out of your system fully over a few hours, and you had gotten to take another small nap. You felt better than ever and you were antsy to start the next leg of your journey. Getting out of bed, you stretched for a moment. You thanked the medical ward for its hospitality, but the uncomfortable bed was something you could live without.

“Good morning, you’re looking a hell of a lot better,” Jessica entered your room with a big smile plastered across your face. She was excited that you were feeling good, and she also looked like she finally got some sleep. She handed you a plain manilla folder, with no identifying details other than “Task Force 141.”

“Got the rest of the info on the group you’re teaming up with,” She stated, nodding at you to open the folder. Inside was information on the group, the missions they had completed, and overall descriptions of the members. They were impressive, to say the least, and seemed way too good for the job that was Dmitri Volkov. You quirked your eyebrow in confusion, weren’t they a little too overqualified?

“There is reason to suspect Volkov’s operation is a lot bigger than we thought, so you got paired with the big dogs on the request of Kate Laswell,” Big alright, these men looked like they fought fires and saved kittens as a hobby. You were used to working with big army men during your years, but this task force was different and even more hardened than the others.

“Good luck with them girl, you’re gonna need it.” Jess giggled in your direction when she saw your eyes widen in surprise.

“Wait, you’re not coming with me?” You asked, snapping your eyes up from the page. Jessica had been with you this whole mission and was just as important as you were. The thought of continuing the mission without her made you feel odd, felt wrong.

“They’re having me stay here, do more research on Volkov himself. Since I’m not crazy about combat, I’m more of a stationary help over here. You always know where to find me though Minx, remember that.” And you did, you could list several ways to get a hold of the woman.

When you were ‘officially’ friends, she gave you just about every form of communication she had. It made it easy in case one of them got compromised or if there were any other complications. Giving the woman a quick hug, you waved to her as she left.

You read through the files for a moment longer, using the spare moments you had. A nervous feeling crept up at the thought of you being the only female on the team. Being a woman in the field, it had been pretty common to see a small number compared to men working. Especially after working on mostly solo missions for so long, having a team to work with 24/7 seemed weird. When they were as accredited and intimidating as they were, it made you feel as if you were going to be out of place.

Shutting the folder back up, you decided to get ready for departure and out of your feels. The 141 was a group of extreme professionals, and you wanted to get off on the right foot. Grabbing your spare items left in the med ward, you went to retrieve your items from the barracks.

It was almost bittersweet, leaving the place you had begrudgingly stayed at for the past few weeks. You had a small apartment back in your hometown, but you stayed wherever you needed to be during missions. At the moment, that just happened to be a military base in New York. It didn’t matter where you stayed since you were rarely there anyway. Most of the days were spent working, the base was just a place to sleep at night. Many took part in the nightlife around the base, but you were always too busy; too ingrained into your work.

When you first started training, you thought you were missing out on some social life. Nights spent learning how to down a man twice your size instead of getting blackout drunk at some club seemed boring in contrast. As you matured, it dawned that this was the choice you were meant to make all along. You gained more by helping people and felt proud of your decision to become a skilled agent. You hoped your family also felt the same, even though they never reached out to you.

As soon as you finished the jog over to the barracks, you grabbed your shower supplies to quickly bathe yourself before departure. The smell of the med building needed to be ridden from your body, not to mention you still felt a little clammy from the constant sweating. A hot shower was bound to fix that feeling, washing off the drug detox as a whole.

After the quick shower, you changed and packed your bags. You only ever kept mostly necessities at the bases, wanting to keep the load light. The only item you kept that had sentimental value was an old family photo, weathered by the years of you carrying it around. In the photo were you, your mother and your father.

It was way back in your childhood, showing the small family at a park. The memory was clear in your mind, even after all these years. Yet, it didn’t seem like it was your memory. It seemed as if it happened through someone else's eyes. That little girl on the swingset wasn’t the same woman who was trained to kill a man in just a few milliseconds. Those simpler days were missed, those filled with sunshine and laughter instead of grueling hard work.

Folding the image up, you set it in the bag gently. Zipping everything else up, you were ready for the flight to your newfound group.

After a few years of working in the US, you forgot how long the plane ride overseas was. Hours upon hours of you stuck in a metal box flying at ungodly speeds over a body of water. You weren’t afraid of flying, just extremely bored. It was not some luxury craft with TVs and sparkling water, you were left to try and sleep the whole ride.

Of course, nerves won your brain over instead of the sleep you so desperately craved. Your left leg bounced as you stared out the window into the vast empty plain that was the sky, thinking about the seventy-five different ways a bad introduction could fuck over yourself.

You read through the files of the 141 again out of habit, now having actual hours to spend studying your new teammates. The only one that stuck completely was that of the forces masked boogeyman, Ghost. His entire background was redacted, the black ink taking up most of the page. You decided to ask about it later, maybe he wasn’t as terrifying in person.

“So you’re telling me she’s been running this whole mission basically by herself, and Laswell has been letting her?” Soap questioned, his heavy Scottish accent coating each word. He crossed his arms in disbelief, confused by what the captain was explaining.

They had heard of the Volkov issue and you, getting the info only a few hours before you had heard of them. Price raised his shoulders in defeat, on the same wavelength as Soap. The rest of the men sat at the table, looking just as confused as Soap or just generally bored. The 141 had worked with strong women in the past, but none of them had ever worked a mission this heavy alone. They were incredibly impressed with your work, to say the least.

“Laswell says she knows her shit, you know we don’t question that woman.” Price responded, and boy did everyone know that. After many missions worked with Laswell, he didn’t know if he respected her, or was genuinely afraid of her. She was a hardworking woman, who took what she wanted. The rest of the boys at the table nodded their heads, reliving memories of her.

“She’s a jack of all trades and has been doing solo contracts for the past few years. Laswell had been keeping tabs on her and assigned the Volkov case to her,” Price held his hand out to the folder containing the info on the scientist.

“Sure she’s good, but she couldn’t have done it all on her own,” Gaz mentioned from across the table, keeping a respectful tone to his voice. He didn’t want to be offensive to his new teammate, especially since he had not yet been introduced.

“Jessica Salvatore has worked with her these past few jobs, mostly behind-the-screen activities. She is good with hacking and knows her way around a computer, so she has come in handy when infiltrating Volkov’s operations. She has also been the one reviewing the files on Volkov and keeping them up to date. Everything else has been done exclusively by Minx, any more questions?” Standing up from the meeting table, Price concluded the meeting with a pointed look. If his men had questions, they could do the smart thing and look through the files he handed out.

“No sir,” Ghost responded from his side of the table. He had no questions during the meeting and decided to flip through pages dedicated to you. It started with your background, documenting parts of your life since you graduated high school. He noted how you had training in multiple fields, and overall seemed well-rounded. He also noticed the redacted sections in your history, all too familiar with the black lines. Impressive, he could even admit, which was a lot to admit from the masked man.

Ghost saw no issues with you joining the team, as long as you had a good head on your shoulders and could pull your weight with the others. He needed a feel for how your personality was before he could say. Simon Riley didn’t just hand his trust out, it needed to be earned. Handing your file over to Soap, he grabbed the one about Volkov and the whole operation.

“Bloody Jesus, Price didn’t tell us she was hot!” Soap exclaimed when he opened the folder, causing his skull-faced companion to roll his eyes. Ghost was surprised they didn’t stay stuck to the back of his skull with how annoyed he was. He couldn’t have half the team busy drooling over you when they were supposed to be fighting to stop a drug worse than any seen before.

He just hoped that whatever hype surrounded your arrival would quickly fade out.

Ghost, of course, was incredibly wrong.

“Boys, I want to introduce you to Agent Minx,” The moment your plane landed, you concluded that Captain John Price was a decent man. He asked how the flight over was, and how your recovery the night before had been. Price was surprisingly kind, and made it seem as if he was happy with you joining the team.

Smiling at the group in front of you, you let your eyes assess your new teammates. They were all fighters, visibly bigger than the photos in their files. The men had been worn and shaped after years of demanding missions, their bodies just matching their atmosphere. Rugged muscles covered in military-grade clothing and armor, you doubted they owned regular civilian clothing.

“Pleasure to have you all assigned to this mission, god knows I need the help.” You spoke, hoping to alleviate the awkward introductions. It was a partial lie, you could’ve finished the mission by yourself you presumed. You wanted the team to feel comfortable with your presence, and accept you as one of their own. Being introduced to a team that had regularly worked with each other for years without having a new member was a feat in itself. You tried to keep a confident composure, even though you felt anything but.

Price motioned for you to sit down at the table, allowing you one last glance at the others before you did so. None of them looked visibly angry with your arrival, which was a plus. Ghost just stared in your direction, an indescribable look plastered in his dark gaze.

Other men you had worked with in the past were audibly uncomfortable with working with a female, even after seeing your skills on the field. You hoped the 141 was different, even accepting of your presence.

Volkov had been your case in the beginning anyways.

“As I spoke to you all last night, she knows the most about Dmitri and anything affiliated with his case. Any other questions that were not answered in the files I gave you all last night can be asked, only if Minx is willing of course.” All eyes were on you as you nodded approvingly. If they had questions about the report Jessica had slaved over while you recovered in a hospital bed, you were glad to answer them.

“There was no mention of his family, do you know anything of importance?” A voice asked from across the table. You matched the face to the name Kyle “Gaz” Garrick from your research.

“I haven’t been able to find anything other than mentions of a daughter. My guess is she’s holed up in some boarding school, living off of her daddy’s drug money,” Shrugging your shoulders, you replied truthfully. Gaz nodded, looking off in thought.

“In the report, it said you were forced to ingest one of the pills. What was it like?” You shifted your focus to John “Soap” Mactavish, and you had to stop yourself from laughing. He had childlike wonder etched onto his face, making his eyes almost sparkle with interest.

“I honestly couldn’t describe it if I tried. It was like heaven and hell all at once, I do not feel like reliving it.” The experience was overall terrifying, with your nerves already being so high it just made the high worse. Your body practically shut down the second Volkov’s potion set foot in it, making a treacherous path.

It felt like a blazing rod of lava placing itself in your chest, but an icicle not far behind. Visual hallucinations of the most horrifying visions known to you, showing the most gruesome memories of your life. Then moments later they would be replaced with the complete opposite, leaving your body in a state of shock. The constant state of fight or flight being replaced with deep comfort was a terrifying feeling, not knowing which one came next.

“I can see why someone would continue to do it though if you only focus on the good moments of the high.” You continued, maintaining eye contact with the mohawked man. The good moments of the high felt like the best euphoria you could ever achieve, leaving you craving more. Then that craving would return to the vile and terrifying bad moments, leaving you in a pit of fear.

“Intense euphoria paired with an even more intense down-fall. I’m just happy they got me out of that club and hooked up to an IV, any more questions?” You shivered slightly, not wanting to remember the high. It took a toll on you, mentally and physically. Thanking the med ward for the physical healing, you tried to ignore the mental portion. The things you saw couldn’t get to you, not during one of if not the most important missions you had been assigned.

You looked around the table, being met with mostly shrugs. As you passed over Ghost again, he just stared in your direction. He had not said a single word since you stepped foot into the meeting room, which made you nervous. Even sitting down, you could tell he was a massive figure of a man entrenched in a costume to hide his identity. You understood why he did it, ensuring his anonymity, but still thought it was a little goofy to do it at his home base where he was safe.

“Alright, everyone is dismissed. Soap, can you give Minx a tour?” Soap just about jumped up from his seat, a charming smile painted onto his face as he looked in your direction. He seemed as if he ran on an unlimited energy source, maybe he ran on some Scottish battery you didn’t know about.

“Let’s go, lass!” You got up from your seat, giving Ghost one last glance over before you left. That same glare was still cemented onto his dark eyes, bringing back that uneasy feeling. You decided to brush off the whole ordeal, quickly following Soap out the door. If that's how the man was, you would just have to get used to it.

Soap showed you around the small base, telling funny stories about each area. You could already tell the man had a big personality and was extremely kind. It made you wonder how he was out in the field when he was so cheerful and upbeat at the base. Even in its small size, the base was well furnished. It had a kitchen, living area, small gym, artillery storage, and shooting range. Soap commented on how each man got his room, fit with its bathroom and utilities.

“These babies have got thick walls, trust me.” Soap winked in your direction, causing you to roll your eyes playfully. Finally, you arrived at your room where you could put your items away and take a break from the welcome party. Opening the door for you, Soap told you everything else about the base you should know.

The room was plain looking, mostly a beige color. A simple bed paired with a bedside table and lamp, all the same color. It was all military grade but seemed cozy enough for your stay. Besides, after this mission, you planned on going back to your normal way of life of going from solo job to solo job.

“I saw that weird stare-off you had with Ghost earlier, he's a nice lad I promise. He’ll warm up to you, just give him some time. It took me almost dying in Mexico for him to admit he cared about me, so take that as you will,” Soap admitted, looking a little awkward as he stood in the doorway.

“His whole file was practically blacked out, it was hard to get any information on the man. Also, does he wear that mask all the time?” You asked, wanting to know more. Ghost’s file was a graveyard for black ink, with how much it used. Not much of his life or background was there, giving you a hard time getting to know him before you met the man. His real name was even redacted, not giving you much to work with.

“He does, I’ve seen him without it a few times though. The bastard made me question some things,” Soap scratched the back of his head as if he had been caught in something, causing you to cock an eyebrow. You had no issues with your teammate's identities, so you just brushed the whole remark off.

“Well that's all then, I’ll let you get all unpacked and everything else. We usually eat as a team around 1700 if you’re interested.” You smiled at Soap as he left, leaving you to yourself. The introductions made you feel a little more confident in your work with the 141, and you overall felt good. Other than being jetlagged from the trip over and not being able to rest much in the past 48 hours, you were fine. Unpacking your items, you went on your way to make the small room look like a real human being lived inside.

You assumed everyone else's room was also scarcely decorated, especially with the constant moving around. When Soap mentioned you were going to have an individual one in the first place, it was incredibly surprising. You were used to bunking with others when you worked with them, usually sharing one big bunk room. Having privacy was a newfound luxury, especially being the only girl on the team.

As you unpacked, the rest of the 141 went about their usual daytime routines. Most of them worked out or practiced on the shooting range if they weren’t sleeping or working. Ghost found himself back in his room, doing god knows what.

He was an enigma even his team couldn’t figure out at times, floating from each job to another. Between each mission, he just kind of existed. He didn’t take part in the bonding the other members did, but they didn’t resent him for it. Ghost needed his space, needed to be alone. His team respected that need, that deep solitude. They understood he had been through a lot, and in return gave him the resources he needed.

Ghost sat on his bed, holding onto your file from earlier. He had swiped it from the meeting, wanting to gain more information on you. You placed an uneasy feeling in his stomach the second you stepped foot into his life. Simon Riley never felt uneasy unless he was on the field, and he had to figure out why you made him feel that way.

There was no reason to distrust you, but he felt uneasy about working with you. It seemed odd how highly those around you spoke of you, but you had been working mostly solo missions so they didn’t know how you were on the field. You were extremely confident when you arrived, but it all seemed practiced. He wanted to figure you out, to see if you were trustworthy or not.

Earning Ghost's trust was a lot easier said than done.

#simon ghost riley #simon riley #simon riley x you #ghost x reader #cod mw22 #cod ghost

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firelightfoxes · 1 year ago

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Hey, I love your blog and Lichen is freaking adorable😭❤️

So, I’ll probably never have a Mudi bc 1. I live in the US, and they’re pretty much nonexistent here, and 2. I’m trying to do rescues only. But! I really love these little guys, and I’m super curious: how much do they actually shed? Also, I’ve read in a lot of places that they’re one of those breeds that always needs a job; has that been true in your experience with Lichen?

Thanks!

hi!!! first off thank you :)) she's very cute i agree!

so, i also live in the US. there are a few good breeders here in the states - off the top of my head, depending on where you're located, there is a breeder in Texas, 2 in North Carolina i think, one in the California area (not sure exactly where), there might be some more that i forgot but honestly they're not that hard to acquire, especially compared to other rare breeds.

but i totally understand going with a rescue, Ava is my first dog and she's a rescue too. she's been such an awesome learning experience to fine tune what i really wanted in a dog, and i ended up landing on mudi for my next breed (and i absolutely LOVE them.)

as far as shedding goes, she definitely sheds less than Ava (husky mix, so she sheds a LOT). but the areas around her crate and bed usually have quite a bit of hair around them and i vacuum weekly. so she does shed but it's not like an obnoxious amount for me personally

i don't really think she NEEDS a job... she just loves me and wants to do everything with me. mudis in general are super attached to their people and are great companions for whatever activities they enjoy together. Lichen has an excellent off-switch so for example, i was sick all last week and Lichen was bored but she just napped/hung out with me and was happy to entertain herself with her toys. she's actually never gotten destructive or chewed anything outside of toys, aside from when she was like 8wks and chewed the flooring in her xpen lol. i will say it depends a lot on the lines as some mudi are very high energy and high drive and will not be satisfied in a low energy household. they can also tend to get very vocal when they're bored or understimulated which doesn't sound like a fun time to me. thankfully Lichen is very quiet, i was very careful about her parents not being obnoxious barkers and i've worked with her since she was 8 wks to have a "quiet" cue.

sorry for rambling but i hope this helps answer your question!! if you'd like specific breeder recs feel free to dm me :)

#asks #evathrowsstones #lichen asks #mudi asks #mudi info

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persephassax · 1 year ago

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POST-CANON Due South ficlet(s)

I was on a plane and some images popped into my head and I wrote them down and I hurt my own feelings.

Title(s): without the ghost of a shadow (all it ever meant)

Pairing: Gen (RayV/Fraser implied, RayK/Fraser a speculative possibility)

Summary: It’s been many years, but Ray remembers.

Warnings: permanent absence of Fraser & RayK, Ray lives in Florida with Ma, current U.S. History canon compliant.

Mentions of Police Violence, real events, caring for aging relatives, sad feelings.

Author’s Notes: I think a lot about these characters and how they would feel abt current events and the world we live in now, i think abt the role of dS as a part of the copaganda/colonial-imperial image laundering machine, but also the fairy tale qualities of so much of this kind of story telling. If any of these themes bothers you, please skip, thanks :)

•••

without the ghost of a shadow

A man shoots another man three times on a beach without reason or explanation and Ray is grateful that Fraser isn’t here to see it. It’s been twenty years since Florida became Ray’s home (or the closest approximation thereof), seventeen since Stella picked back up and went to New York City to work for the Attorney General, and eight since Ma moved south to live with him, because she couldn’t stand the harsh midwestern winters, leaving Frannie and Maria and Tony and the kids back in Chicago.

He looks around these days and isn’t quite sure he recognizes the world anymore. Everything has seemed a little strange since Fraser appeared in his life and stranger still since he left, but Ray thinks that things have gotten worse in ways that have nothing to do with his personal experience of reality.

Benny isn’t here to see these United States become the worst version of themselves; the shame that Ray feels when he looks at the cruelty and chaos around him, the sick confirmation of his most cynical expectations, is hidden from the only eyes Ray ever believed could see the good in every one.

Benton Fraser was one-of-a-kind and when he left, the world seemed to forget what he’d been so eager to prove; that with kindness, courtesy, and respect (for each other, for the law, for the world) everyone could be better than the worst that was expected of them. Ray knows that he often forgets it himself, and forgot it even while Fraser was still there to guide him, no wonder that without him here, everyone else is having so much trouble.

When he’s standing in the kitchen in the morning, looking out at the bungalow across the street, it’s peach colored stucco walls, and wooden framed windows, its grassy lawn, the morning air still heavy and wet with the swamp of the Everglades, the whole neighborhood sinking into the muck beneath it, an inch a year, he thinks about his friend.

He can see him, Fraser, red cheeked and satisfied, standing by the dog sled, while the dogs take a break. His hair is still dark, his teeth just a little crooked, his eyes shining with the light reflecting off the endless snow of the Yukon. He looks exactly as he did when he left Chicago the last time, the last time Ray saw him. Kowalski is with him, hair still the same unkempt dishwater blond, his teeth chattering, his hands shoved into his armpits, he’s bitching at Fraser about something, but he’s smiling, even though you can only see it around his eyes. Diefenbaker is sitting next to them, giving them that head half-cocked look, the one which says “why are you humans so stupid?” his tongue lolling out, his breath, hot from the sled run, forming clouds in the air.

He smiles, even as he can feel the sharp cold of the Northwest Territories prick at his cheeks, despite the sunlight spilling into the room, because they’re together, the three of them. The grand adventure continues, in that other place where the good guys in red always get their man, and friendship can vanquish even the darkest of demons, and you have to trek a hundred miles on snow shoes and climb a telephone pole to hear the bad news about the place where Ray has realized he set down roots and can no longer be moved.

He sips his coffee, and setting the mug down he can see how the Florida sun has come to live in his skin, darkening it to something warm and brown, no longer subject to the bleaching, overcoated Chicago winters. He can hear Ma putting about in the hall, and lets himself worry for a moment about whether she’s going to slip in the bathroom. He took the tub out a few years ago and had a walk in shower put in instead, and they’ve long done away with bathmats, but he can’t help himself, not that he’d ever say anything where she can hear him.

In his mind’s eye, Fraser turns to Kowalski and says something to him that he can’t hear over the distance between them, and Kowalski grins for real this time and Dief gives his own doggy lupine grin. Kowalski goes to make sure everything is set on the dog sled, and Dief trots to the front of the pack to get strapped in, but Fraser lingers for a moment, his eyes seeking out the middle distance, like he’s trying to catch sight of something just beyond the horizon. He brings his hand up to the brim of his Stetson and dips his chin a fraction, and Ray knows that its for him.

They get back on the dogsled and keep heading north, and Ray blinks a few times in the Florida sun and turns away to start making breakfast.

•••

(all that it ever was)

When the news of Treyvon Martin’s murder hits the national news circuit, all Ray can see is Willie. The separations of families at the border remind him of Mrs. Gomes, mothers desperate to love and protect their children. Ray’s known too many cops in his life to believe in the good ones. He himself has been desperate for the collar, eager to wash his hands of a messy case, committed to throwing the book at whoever was at hand, and let God sort ‘em out. Ray has held a gun with the intent to kill a man just for the satisfaction of seeing him die, knowing full well that the men and women of his station-house would back his word.

And the part of his soul which still has Benny’s fingerprints all over it, the only part of himself that has ever felt clean, cries out at the injustices that litter the news every day.

The problem, Ray finds himself thinking, is that once you meet a good man, once you’ve lived next to the real deal, you can’t quite forget it. There’s no ghost of Benton Fraser stepping in to provide color commentary on Ray’s life (and may God have mercy on him, that he should not live to meet Benny’s ghost), just the pattern and the memory of a man who believed in the goodness of others, and who believed that Ray, too, could learn to look at the world and see it as he did.

It’s a terrible gift that Fraser gave him, he thinks, as the world turns, and someone passes a law which makes him think of Ms. Fraser, and the things he found he did like about a woman, after all. To see the gap between the world as it is and what it could be, the promise of a kindness which need not be out of reach, perpetually unfulfilled, was to have his heart broken anew every day.

•••

Titles come from The King of Terrors

thanks for reading

#due south #my fic #my work #fanfic #ray vecchio #ma vecchio #fraser/rayv #ray kowalski #diefenbaker #sad #i hurt my own feelings #benton fraser #fraser/vecchio

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brokenmusicboxwolfe · 1 year ago

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Good grief, what the hell was I thinking??

There I was shopping and this guy I’m friendly with at Walmart comes up and asks if I can tale a pot belly pig.

Now I DID tell him I have more than enough animals. But then he starts telling me how a woman he knows might be moving to another state, and can’t take her pet pig. She doesn’t know where to find a home for it, and he knows I have a pet pig and a ton of other beasties, so one more shouldn’t be a problem…

I actually felt guilty for saying no! Me, who sometimes skips on food for me to feed the menagerie I already have!

So I say, well, the pig would have to move in with Ryoga and that might not go at all well. I mean, sure, I’ve always wished he had company, but for a full grown hog with tusks to have a much smaller pot belly pig move in might be dangerous. Ryoga has NEVER had to share anything but my attention. He’s had his own house, his own food, and when I’ve been by his lot he gets 100% of the petting. Ryoga is happy with me sharing oranges or bananas or (currently) grapes with him, but I’m outside the lot and literally the hand that feeds him. For all I know sweet Ryoga might want to kill someone, ahem, “hogging” things!

So I explain I’d be very worried about it working out. And what does the guy say? “Oh, I’m sure he will adjust.” Yeah, YOU are sure! Easy to say when you don’t even have a pig!

But then it’s the sob story, the whole “nowhere to turn” thing, suggesting the very life of the pig is at stake if a home can’t be found, etc.

And I can’t stand it.

I am such a fucking sucker! Why do I have a pet hog? Why do I have five dogs? Why do have about twenty cats on the farm that I take care of? Why did my family have almost every single pet we ever had? Because we are suckers!!! A stray shows up or someone turns to us in desperation because they need to get rid of a pet, and we can’t just say “ Not our problem. Let ‘em die if the shelter can’t find them a home. Or let ‘em fend for themselves. Not our responsibility to save them”

Hell, we once ended up with a rabbit because the owner got sick of them and threatened to make them into stew if we wouldn’t. Seriously, all they had to do was threaten the furball’s life and we went “FINE! We’ll take them!”

But damn it, this time I do NOT have the money to feed another mouth, and I can NOT build another lot just for a new beastie, and NO the pig can NOT move into my house!

**sigh**

Like I said. I’m a sucker.

I let the guy have my phone number so the woman can call me about it if she does end up moving.

I just couldn’t stand the thought of the poor homeless pig in this area where people so casually joke about killing any animal that isn’t a dog (cats included). I mean, they might not threaten to cook him like they do ALL the time about my Ryoga, but I don’t trust people around here to actually love pet pig. Since I’ve had Ryoga I’ve had too many casual chats in stores with people that had a beloved pet pig when they were little that their parents had killed.

But DAMN, this is a BAD idea!

Oh, PLEASE let this woman not move!!!!! ‘Cause if she calls and starts telling me she can’t find anyone else I might find myself with major snouted problem!!

I hate being a sucker for anyone, regardless of number of legs, that seems to meed help….

#my day #pets #pig

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shawnmendesbuddy · 2 years ago

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Day 10–Cookie Monster (25 Days of Ficmas)

A/N: I know it’s late but I’m sick and my brother was in the hospital all las week. He’s good now but it was stressful

Y/N and Shawn hadn’t known each other until six months ago. Y/N used to live in the United States and attended university there for a few years, but she longed for a change. So,when she found a good study abroad program in Canada, she didn’t waste a second to book a flight.

So now, here she was in the beautiful city of Toronto and attend Seneca College. She found a coffee shop a few blocks away from her campus and got a job there. The boss was an old women named Dinah who had lived in Toronto her whole life. She adored Y/N and quickly took her under her wing.

Sunday dinners at Dinah’s house became a weekly ritual. Dinah was a widow and thought of Y/N as her grandchild. So, it was no wonder that Dinah wanted what was best for Y/N.

“You’re 23 and you haven’t had a boyfriend since you were 21!”

“Dinah,” Y/N’s cheeks flushed, “It’s not like that. I’ve dated people, but nothing serious has happened.”

“You know, I got married to Phil when I was 18. We were having kids by 19. I don’t know what is up with you kids these days, waiting forever to get married.”

“Well, I just haven’t found the right guy.”

A mischievous smile lit up Dinah’s face. “You know the baked goods we sell at the shop?” Y/N nodded her head. “There’s an adorable boy who owns a bakery that we get them from. He’s around your age. I think he’s 24. He’s quite an ambitious man and I think you would like him.”

“Dinah! Quit trying to set me up with people.”

“Pfft. Darling, if he ain’t the one for you, I don’t know who is. The boy is drop dead gorgeous if I do say so myself. Cause Phil was really something to look at.”

“I haven’t even met him. How could you know that he is the one for me?”

“Just a gut feeling. He always gives you this puppy dog look when he drops off our delivery.”

“Oh really?” She raised her eyebrows at Dinah. “Why have I never seen or met him then.”

“You’re not the manager, are you? He drops them off at my office usually during rush hour. If you were a good employee, which I know you are, you would be busy serving those costumers. But I’ll tell you what. When he comes by with his delivery tomorrow, I’ll have you take it from him.”

Y/N rolled her eyes but agreed to it anyways. Dinah always ended up being right so there was no point in arguing with her.

*****

The next morning, Y/N spent a little extra time doing her hair and makeup so she could impress this boy of Dinah’s. And when Dinah pushed her towards the back of the coffee shop when the boy had arrived, Y/N was not disappointed.

He had chocolate curly brown hair, beautiful eyes, and a shy smile. Not to mention he was ripped. His biceps strained underneath his white t-shirt. He pulled up in a motorcycle with a basket on the front carrying boxes for their delivery.

And when he saw Y/N a light blush tinted his cheeks. “Where’s Dinah? Not that I mind seeing you here,” he winked at her.

She felt her face heat up. “Umm, she wanted me to grab the packages today. It’s nice to put a face to all the sweets that get delivered around here.”

He laughed and held out his hand to her. “I’m Shawn by the way. You’re Y/N, right? Dinah talks about you a lot to me. Always saying things like ‘You should ask that girl out on a date,’ and ‘Isn’t my Y/N so beautiful?’”

Y/N blew air out her nose in a tiny laugh. “Yep. She’s mentioned you a few times before too. She’s trying to set us up or something.”

“Seems like it. Are you upset by that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going to be straight up: I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been ogling at you ever since you started working here. And if that didn’t completely freak you out, would you be willing to go on a date with me?” He stared at the ground and internally kicked himself for being so awkward.

“Sure. Why not? You’re cute by the way.” And she pressed a kiss to his flushed cheek.

*****

Y/N and Shawn hit it off immediately. But don’t get me wrong, they had their fair share of fights. Mostly because the other person was jealous of someone.

Their first fight happened when Shawn was dropping off their delivery and he noticed Y/N wasn’t there to greet him. So, he decided to use the employee entrance (something he had become accustomed to since he started dating Y/N) and saw Y/N leaning over the counter and chatting it up with a tall blonde. She laughed flirtatiously and played with her hair.

He felt his jaw clench and he saw red. He marched right over to Y/N and the boy and pulled her back to Dinah’s office. Dinah passed them on the way, a quizzical look on her face as she went to go take over for Y/N. “Don’t be too long.”

“What the hell was that back there?!”

“What? Why are you yelling at me?”

He could sense the hurt in her voice, so he quickly changed his tone. “I’m sorry dove, but why were you and that guy all over each other?”

“Oh. You mean Ian. The blonde dude?” Shawn nodded his head and Y/N laughed at him. “I guess I should’ve introduced you guys. He’s my roommate’s brother.”

“And how does that make it any better?”

“He’s gay. I thought you could maybe tell from the way he was dressed.”

“Oh,” Shawn’s eyebrows raised in surprise and then he chuckled and grabbed Y/N’s hand. “I’m sorry babe. I…that was an overreaction.”

“Yea. Definitely. But I forgive you.”

“You know, when you’re jealous you get all grouchy and mean like the cookie monster.”

“A cookie monster huh? I guess that fits me. I do bake a lot of cookies.”

*****

The second time Y/N got jealous. Her shift had ended early because Dinah was being generous and had hired another employee. So, Y/N decided to walk to Shawn’s bakery. As she entered the shop, she saw a beautiful brunette girl with brown eyes. She looked to be around 20.

“Shawn! What’s taking so long?” She heard the girl whine. Whoever she was, she knew Shawn well. It made a weird feeling tumble around in Y/N’s stomach.

“I’ll be right there doll.”

Doll! That name was only reserved for Y/N. Y/N went to stand behind the girl in line, letting the girl’s height hide her from Shawn’s view when he came out from the kitchen.

“Ok, here’s your pie you’ve been wanting all week. Don’t eat it all in one night.”

She leaned over the counter and kissed Shawn’s cheek and Shawn didn’t do anything about it. As the girl started to leave the shop, Shawn spotted Y/N who stared angrily at him.

Shawn noticed his mistake and his cheeks flushed. “Aaliyah, come back!” He called to the girl who was walking out the door.

She turned around confused. “There’s someone you should meet. This is Y/N, the girl I’ve been telling you about.”

“Oh my gosh! I’ve heard so much about you! You’re even more pretty in person. Wow! Mom’s going to be so jealous when I tell her I met you!” The girl pulled Y/N into a hug and took her by surprise. Aaliyah pulled away and smiled. “I’m Shawn’s sister by the way.”

Y/N nodded her head, pulled her lips into a thin line, and closed her eyes. “I got that after you said your mom was going to be jealous. It’s nice to meet you now that I know you’re not giving my boyfriend a kiss on the cheek because you’re dating him or something.”

Aaliyah chuckled. “Yeah. You must’ve been so confused.”

Shawn rubbed the back of his neck. “All of this is my bad. If I would’ve introduced you to my family sooner none of this would’ve happened. Sorry babe.”

“It’s alright. I know I’ve been busy with college and you with this place, so I get it. I do wish that I would’ve seen a picture though.”

“You guys should come over tonight. I got this pie because I’m in charge of dessert for our family dinner. It’s just me and our parents.”

“You up for that honey?” Shawn questioned. Y/N nodded her head.

“Yeah, tonight should work.”

“Perfect. See you guys there.” She left the shop for real this time and Shawn had a smirk on his face.

“Now who’s the cookie monster.”

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