#speaking as someone who heard that in droves 10 years ago when i literally was

[josiebelladonna]

good god.

do you ever see a photo of your favorite band after not seeing them for a while and feel that a.) they not only got old despite actually not being that old; and b.) …they’ve kind of become the villain after having lived long enough at this point.

[joviewinchester]

“You’re absolutely positive you can’t come with me?” Y/N asked Matt.

“I’m sorry, Y/N. I work that day. Maybe you can ask Ty or Stefan or something.”

“Yep. Been there done that. Stefan has plans to hang out with Caroline and Tyler has another wedding to go to by some stupid twisted chance of fate. I hate June.”

“You can…well, I’m not even going to suggest that torture.” Matt said cutting himself off.

“What? Anything is better than the torture of my family trying to set me up with someone.”

“You could ask Damon, but then again, he’s literally the worst. I guess pick your poison. Damon Salvatore or wedding set up. Personally I’d go with the latter.”

Y/N patted Matt on the shoulder and sighed. “You don’t know my family.” She exited The Grill and reluctantly drove to the Salvatore Boarding House.

She knocked, and Damon immediately opened the door. “You know, I was wondering when the tension would catch up to you.” He smirked.

“That is not why I’m here, Damon. I need a favor.”

“What kind of favor?”

Y/N sighed and took a deep breath before starting her rant. “I need a date to my relatives wedding, and i’ve already asked literally everyone else i know, so i know you probably hate me, but please say yes. Otherwise they’ll try to set me up with someone, and they have awful taste.”

“And what do I get out of agreeing to this?”

“Um…I don’t know? The wedding is literally tomorrow and I have no other option so…I have no clue. Whatever you want.”

“Whatever I want, huh? I’ll let you know when I figure out what that is. What time does this wedding start tomorrow?”

“Wedding’s from 5:00 to 6:00 and the reception’s from 6:30 to 10:00, unfortunately, I have to help with setup, so I have to be there three hours early, it was almost five luckily I got out of that, but I’m not going to make you deal with that, so I’ll leave from there early, come pick you up around 4:30. Dress nice…but not too nice. You’re already going to outshine the groom. My cousin does not know how to pick em.”

“That was a very trivial way of you saying you think I’m attractive. I’ll be ready, and don’t think I’ll forget that you owe me.”

“I wasn’t saying that! And I didn’t think you would forget. Not even for a second. And one more thing, please don’t eat any of my relatives.”

“Oh I’m not that bad. Why would I eat one of them when I could eat you?” He said eying her from head to toe.

“Stop making everything sexual! I’ll see you tomorrow!” She exclaimed as she brushed her hair to cover her red face.

He watched her as she walked back to her car, because let’s be honest with ourselves, he loved to see her walk away, then he shut the door and poured himself a glass of bourbon.

“Did Y/N just ask you to her cousin’s wedding?” Stefan asked walking downstairs.

“Why yes she did, brother.”

“Then you’re welcome. I don’t actually have plans with Caroline tomorrow. I told her that so she’d ask you. Don’t screw it up.”

“Really Stefan? I could’ve gotten the girl on my own. I’ve had plenty of practice.”

“See? That’s what I’m talking about. Y/N is different. She likes you, but she doesn’t like you just because she wants to sleep with you. She likes you because she wants to be in a relationship with you. If you don’t want that, then don’t lead her on. Promise me you won’t lead her on.”

“Do you really think that low of me, Stef?” Damon asked placing his palm over his chest.

“I won’t hurt her. Believe it or not, I actually like her, and tomorrow I’m going to be a perfect angel around her family, and she’ll have no choice but to invite me to another family event. I will be the best fake boyfriend. Mark my words.”

The next day was absolute torture for Y/N to say the least. “Y/N, Mark and Angela have to be seated near the back. They have not earned the status of front and center. Move the cards.” Her cousin, Allison, was normally really sweet, but she was an extreme bridezilla.

Y/N rolled her eyes but did as she was told. She expected for Allison to follow her every order when her wedding came around.

“So, Auntie Bethany has invited a really cool guy to set you up with. His name is Reggie and he’s so much nicer than the last one.” Allison said taking a minute to rest, which did not bother Y/N one bit.

“First of all, I’m eighteen which is freshly out of high school, I don’t know why she thinks it’s so urgent for me to settle down. Second of all, mom is going to be real disappointed because I actually have a boyfriend now and I invited him. I mentioned him a few weeks ago to you.”

“Now that you say that, I remember you mentioning it.” Yeah, she didn’t say a word, but Allison bought it and that’s all that mattered. She’d been pushing her to get a date since the wedding was announced.

“Speaking of which, it’s 4:00 and I told him I’d be there to pick him up at 4:30. You don’t mind me leaving a bit early do you?”

“No. Of course not. Chloe, Lilly, and Amy will help me finish my makeup then I should be all ready! Can’t wait to meet this mysterious boyfriend of yours.”

Y/N waved at the other bridesmaids, who all glared back at her for leaving them alone, and got in her car to get Damon. She knocked.

“Just a minute!” She heard him call. He opened the door a couple minutes later.

She smiled brightly. “You look great.” She said.

“Yeah, and you look…gorgeous. Your cousin was very generous with the bridesmaids dresses.” Damon commented.

https://shoplook.io/outfit-preview/2847398

“Come on. If we’re late I will not hear the end of it.”

Once they arrived, there were literally like five minutes till the start of the wedding. “Shit.” She muttered. “Just sit down and avoid eye contact at all costs. I really wish she hadn’t made me a bridesmaid.” Y/N muttered the last part and got to her place.

The ceremony lasted forever. The only thing that made it tolerable was watching Damon mess with the dude sitting next to him.

“Oh my god. That was literally the longest wedding ever. Why the hell did she force us to wear heels?”

“On the bright side, you were definitely the hottest bridesmaid up there.”

She elbowed his side playfully. “Oh shut up. Now come on, we need to get going. If we’re late to the reception, my mom will kill me. I haven’t even got to talk to her yet.” Y/N to practically dragged Damon to the car.

Of course the reception was about as cliche as the ceremony. It was held in a big old barn decorated with fairy lights.

“There’s my mom. Come on, act coupley or whatever, and be on your best behavior would you?”

“Oh, Y/N I’m hurt. When am I not?” He wrapped an arm around her waist.

Y/N rolled her eyes, smiling slightly at his antics.

“Hey, mom.”

Her mother looked kind of upset. “Come on, Y/N. You should’ve told me you were bringing a date. Reggie is going to be disappointed.” Her mother motioned backwards towards a guy who was already making out with another bridesmaid.

“Yeah…that him? He doesn’t seem too upset. I wouldn’t worry about it. Mom, this is Damon, my boyfriend.”

They shook hands. “Hi, Mrs. Y/L/N. It’s great to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much, and can I just say, you look lovely this evening. Speaking of which, where’s the lucky man?”

“Oh, he’s just over there talking to the groom. I’m glad that Y/N has finally gotten a boyfriend. I was starting to think she was going to be single forever.”

“Mom, cool it, will you? I’m eighteen years old. I just enrolled in college. I’m not getting married anytime soon. I know that’s how people in our family usually do it, but I don’t want to be married and have three kids running around by the time I’m twenty five. Okay?”

“You may feel that way now, dear, but wait until the baby fever catches up to you.” Y/N rolled her eyes.

“I need a drink.” She mumbled with hostility.

“Y/N Y/M/N! You are not drinking any alcohol!” Her mother scolded after her.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure she doesn’t get into too much trouble. You just have fun. Raising a girl with that attitude must have kept you away from fun quite a bit.” Bethany laughed.

“You have no idea.”

Damon followed Y/N to the open bar, and found her with a wine glass filled to the very top.

“Dude, first of all you aren’t even of age, and second of all, do you really want to get drunk at a relative’s wedding? Answer, no. No you don’t.”

“You don’t know what I want, Damon. Just go charm off the pants of another middle aged woman.”

“I’m trying to be a perfect fake boyfriend so your mom will get off your back. Did you already drink one of these?” He asked taking the glass from her hands and swirling it around.

“Yeah, duh. Did you meet my mom? She makes it her mission to control every aspect of her life. I love her, but some alchohol would really help me love her even more. Here gimme that.” She said grabbing the glass from his hand. She downed the whole thing in one go as if it was just a shot glass.

“Y/F/N! No! You are banned from this bar for the rest of the night. Come on.” He hoisted her over his shoulder.

“Damon...what are you doing? You’re supposed to be the least responsible one in this fake relationship.” She whined.

“No. I’m supposed to be like a real boyfriend which means I have to keep you out of trouble and do everything I can to make your parents like me which is what I’m doing.”

“Come on. Just let me walk. I won’t do anything stupid. I promise.”

“No.” Y/N huffed.

“Fine. If you want some douchebags looking up my dress then whatever.”

“Fine! Okay fine. I’ll put you down, but only because I’m your douchebag, and I don’t want anyone thinking otherwise.”

They ran back into Y/N’s parents.

“Did you get her away from the bar before she went psycho?” Mrs. Y/L/N asked.

“No. I took away the wine glass and she took it back and chugged it.” Damon said glaring at her.

“I’m fine. See?” She walked in a straight line.

“Oh come on Bethany. Lighten up. If you think she isn’t too young to get married then don’t you think in that mindset that she isn’t too young to drink alcohol.” Her father, Chris, said.

Y/N snapped and pointed at her dad. “Yeah. He’s totally right? Ready to admit that eighteen is too young for someone to get married?”

“Fine. It’s too young. Now no more drinks for the rest of the night, missy.”

She smiled triumphantly, but then she started sulking again. “Rest of the night? As in I have to stay here for the rest of the night and not drink anything?”

“Fine. You can leave like an hour early, but come talk to me before you leave. Have fun, but not too much fun.”

Y/N smirked. “I thought you wanted grandkids?” Her dad choked on his drink.

“Y/N!”

“Kidding. I’m obviously kidding…mostly. Bye!”

“You’re a lot of fun when you’re not avoiding being killed by some type of villain. I like you when you’re not in serious mode.”

“I’m so so sorry that I don’t have any witchy woo or an immortal life, but you do have to admit, I am amazing with a crossbow.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Sure you are. Even though you’ve almost hit me multiple times.”

“Exactly. I’m amazing with a crossbow. By the way, Allison wanted to meet you. We should get that over with.”

“Okay. That was uncalled for. You can’t just change the subject after admitting to trying to murder me multiple times.”

“You would have healed. What do you want me to do? Fall at your feet like Elena?” Y/N asked clearly passive aggressive.

“Woah. Woah. Woah. Stop walking for a second. Are you jealous of Elena?”

“What?! No. Why would I be? I don’t…I don’t even like you!”

“This wedding has proved that statement otherwise. Come on. Admit it. You. Are. Jealous. You want to get with all of this! You want to go for a ride on the Salvatore train!”

“No! No! No! I don’t! I don’t like you! I don’t want you! You... you infuriate me to no end!”

“But you like that don’t you? You like it when I get you all flustered. And don’t think I didn’t catch you blushing earlier when I called myself yours, given I said I was your douchebag, but you still blushed. Not to mention the fact that you put my hand back on your waist when we were walking back from the bar. You like me.”

“No I don’t! Everything that happened here was for show! It was for show.” She defended.

“The only reason you didn’t want to invite me to this wedding is because you knew that I would get your heart racing. Yeah. I can hear that.”

Y/N ran her hands over her face in frustration. “Oh. Don’t mess up your makeup. I can do that for you later.” Damon smirked. So what? His plan to be perfect didn’t last very long, but this plan seemed to be working just fine.

“Stop. Stop saying stuff like that.” She whisper shouted.

Damon leaned in. His mouth was only inches away from her ear. “Why? Does it…frustrate you?”

Y/N gave him a glare and crossed her arms, huffing. Damon smirked. She grabbed his wrist and took him outside.

Damon still had a smug look on his face. “You wanna know how you really make me feel? Yes, Damon! Yes you fucking frustrate me! You make me question my existence on a daily basis and sometimes I even wonder why me?! Why does he like me?! I’m no Elena. I’m not the perfect annoying ass girl next door, and I still don’t know the answer, but you know what?! Since you’re deciding to push me and push me until I explode, I love you, Damon Salvatore! I fucking love you!”

After seconds of tension filled silence and staring at each other, Damon smashed his lips against hers. She immediately kissed him back. She felt his hands gradually slide further down her back, until they were groping her ass. She pushed him away out of spite. “No.” She stated crossing her arms defiantly.

“Really? You’re going to be like this? Now?”

“Yes. Yes I am. Say it back and maybe I’ll be more lenient.” She sassed.

“I thought it was a given. I’ve literally been flirting with you and pining after you for months, Y/N. Of course I love you.”

“Was that so hard?” She joked. She leaned in to kiss him again, this time resting his hands on her butt. He squeezed her ass making her gasp, and slipped his tongue in her mouth.

“Woah. Woah. Woah. This isn’t your honeymoon Y/N.” Allison had walked out of her own reception looking for her.

“Oh, shit. Sorry Alli. So what’s up?” Y/N asked slightly out of breath.

“Well, I was promised that I could meet your mystery man, but you were nowhere to be found. I decided to look for you myself. Aunt Bethany was complaining about your grandkids joke earlier. I didn’t think you were serious.” She joked.

“So, this is Damon. Damon this is my cousin, Allison.”

“Nice to finally meet you. By the way Y/N, I connected the dots, and I realized after getting out of the point where I was completely freaking out, sorry about that by the way, that this is the same Damon that you literally used to call me just to complain about on the daily.”

“Hey, now. Let’s not bring that up, especially the things that I said…” Allison cut her off.

“She used to call me and talk about how annoying you were. I believe one time she called you a flaming douche nozzle? That sounds about right. Every single call always ended with her saying he is so infuriatingly attractive. It’s not even fair.” She knew she was embarrassing her cousin, and to be honest she loved it.

“Hey! He doesn’t need an ego boost! Trust me. I would know.”

“Okay. Okay. All jokes aside, if you are leaving, your mom and dad wanted to talk to you. Oh, and I won’t tell them about this little encounter. I know how they can be.” Allison winked and walked back in the building.

“Was it just me, or did we just get permission from the bride to leave? Come on we have got to hurry up and talk to my parents so we can get out of here.”

“What’s got you in such a rush to leave?” Damon winked.

“None of that. Stop. No. No. Bad.” She said pointing her finger at him.

“Relax. I won’t be myself, but only for you.” They walked back into the reception making a bee line to her parents.

“Hey mom, we’re about to head out.”

“Y/N, your lipstick is a little smudged.” Her mom said. Damon had to look away to stop himself from laughing.

“Huh. Is it? Must’ve been from where I got a drink. Anywho I love you guys and we will see you later.”

“Wait a second. Damon would you like to come over for dinner this Friday?”

“Of course. I’d love to Mrs. Y/L/N.”

“Great. We cannot wait to see you again. Alright. I won’t keep you. Have a nice night.” They both waved goodbye to her parents and headed back to the Salvatore house. They walked in, and Damon poured a couple of glasses of bourbon.

“I have been accepted by your family. I’d say this calls for celebration.”

“I thought I wasn’t allowed to drink, dad.”

“Oh shut up. You can do whatever the hell you want when your parents aren’t there to witness it.” Y/N rolled her eyes, and flopped on the couch.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m tired. I’m going to sleep no matter what you say.”

“Come on then.”

“Where?”

“If you’re going to sleep then you’re coming with me to a comfy bed, not the couch.” Instead of waiting for her to reapond or get up, he slug her over his shoulder and took her upstairs.

“Goodnight, Damon.” She said sleepily.

“Goodnight, sleeping beauty.”

[lillian-nator]

YBLN!Ranboo

His Ranboo is a year older than Tubbo, Tommy, and Purpled. 

Tommy meets Ranboo when he is a Junior and Ranboo is a Senior. 

Ranboo had moved to their town the year before and became the soccer team’s goalie. Due to the fact that Tommy plays offensive, he never interacts with Ranboo, however, he heard Fundy talking to Ranboo once and deemed the tall boy cool. 

They first talk in the senior English class, because Tommy is a year ahead in English, and Tommy tells Ranboo that he will be eating lunch with him and his friends. 

“You are going to sit at my table during Lunch today, and you are going to meet Tubbo and Purpled, and you are my friend now. No arguing."

Very much 2 extroverts adopting Ranboo, and Purpled just vibes on the side. 

But Ranboo turns out to be weird as fuck, and Tubbo vibes with that SO fucking hard. 

They T-pose at eachother in the hallways, its SO cringey that it’s almost okay. 

Most people in The Gang were shorter than Tommy, but since Ranboo is taller, sometimes Tommy likes to lean on him2

Niki gets a scholarship to a preforming arts school nearby, so, on weekends she volunteers at the school's library, and Niki and Ranboo become really good friends - Niki instantly takes the kid in 

ANYWAYS, so Ranboo gets the keys to the library from Niki one day, and the four of them play a game of Manhunt throughout the school - it’s chaotic as FUCK

Overwhelming Social Anxiety - what can I say

He has one sister, she is like 13 years older than him, he never really felt related to her, so then Niki shows up in the picture - OH BOY

Sibling Issues immediately resurface, and then were fixed by one Niki Nihachu. Thank you Niki Nihachu for being a good role model, and surrogate sibling. 

His sister pointed out how strangely deep his voice was when he was like 9, and he got really anxious over talking ever since. 

AND THEN, Ranboo meets Tommy, who some how describes the exact thing that Ranboo is always feeling. He meets Purpled who mutters “mood”, without looking up from his phone, when he explains he has an older sister who in his eyes wears devil horns. He meets Tubbo who cheers when he's willing to speak to him, who's willing to have t-pose battles in the hallways during school. 

Ranboo barely remembers his sister now, only a haunting memory. But he has Niki now, who smiles he rambles about anything, who helps him find books in the libraries, he has friends now, and he cheers internally. 

Ranboo has found his people. 

Ranboo was a MAJOR pushover before he became friends with Tubzo, Tommy, and Purpled. 

He doesn’t mean to be a pushover, he doesn’t. But he’s the kid who will do everything in a group project without telling the others they need to help. He becomes known for being the new kid that will give you homework answers. He doesn’t want to, he wants to help them before giving them straight answers, but he’s new and he’s quiet and his dad told him to make friends and apparently this is how you do it. Everyone asks him to give them things without a return, and he can’t tell them no because he doesn’t want to be the kid that everyone hates. He doesn’t want to be the butt of every joke.

Ranboo is the kid that nobody knows too much about but knows of. They know Ranboo as the one that does homework, the one that somewhat regulates things. They call him a suck-up. But when he is with The Gang and Tommy, he knows he can be demanding, sometimes. 

He can take the path of least resistance everywhere else, but when hes with his friends, he can let go for a second. He doesn’t have to "go with the flow" because the flow is always changing and moving forward and turning, and he will not turn with it. 

For once, he will fight against the tide, because where he is going, is a place that feels like home. He can joke about not doing things without being guilt-tripped into doing things anyway, and his choice is respected, and he doesn’t need to be stubborn for hours on end before breaking to get the people to listen, because they will listen regardless. 

But

But

Ranboo + Tubbo + Tommy + Purpled = Full Out Teen Indie Movie Vibes

Ranboo, Tommy, Tubbo, and purpled borrowing the keys from Niki and totally legally entering the school at like 4am on a Saturday the fifth week of summer break. They play tag along the whole campus with flashlights and ""walkie talkies"" and regroup just before the sun starts rising and sit outside on top of the car they drove here and share a bunch of capri suns before they give in and drive home to pass out for twelve hours and repeat the next day.

They go to Walmart and drive eachother in shopping carts, and eat Subway. 

Ranboo barging into tubbo's room like "i know you have this one specific ring you took it so long ago but i really wanna wear it" and Tubbo just. points at the box he keeps all of them in.

OH YEAH

Ranboo is just always dressed up. Sometimes he shows up in a literally full 3 piece suit. Most times he just wears Hawaiian shirts, and buttons up with black jeans, but - it’s so much better than how Tubbo and Tommy dress. 

He wears a lot of rings and necklaces. He also wears sunglasses inside. Let him have that. 

Tubbo still has a bunch of Ranboo’s rings (Tubbo steals Ranboo’s rings and necklaces, for those who didn’t know) when Ranboo goes to college. He keeps them in his bedside drawer, and puts them on when he feels lonely. Ranboo has to come back on a weekend to get one of his favorite rings back. Tubbo’s plan works out. He keeps stealing jewelry.

Tommy can finally borrow his friend’s clothes, because Ranboo is bigger than him

Tubbo and Purpled always borrowed Tommy’s sweatshirts and shit, but 

Tommy could never borrow any of theirs because it would be extremely awkward because Purpled is 3 inches shorter than him, so it would be just a small bit too small, and Tubbo’s would just straight up not fit him, I mean, the kid is literally 10 inches shorter than him

Tommy feels so fucking warm when he can finally borrow someone else’s hoodie. Of course it is all completely platonic, but all of his friends did it, and now he could finally participate.

Purpled flicking a lighter against his hoodie sleeve absently and tubbo whacking him on the head for it because "it makes the sleeves feel weird" - Purpled has a habit of playing with lighters. And Tubbo has a habit of wearing Purpled’s hoodies. 

Piercing their ears at home like IDIOTS. It doesn't go as bad as you think it would and now Ranboo, Tubbo, Tommy, and Purpled have matching earrings. 

The four of them lying next to each other on the floor with the lights off talking about college, talking about where they're going and where they've been accepted and what they'll do. 

Just very much teen movie shit.

Sitting on old creaky swings, sleeping on the roof, going nuts on Tubbo’s trampoline idk man

TAGS BELOW

@gxd-cxmplex @rmbz101 @introverted--pineapple @seilee @carry-on-my-wayward-why @iluvu3ooo @tubbanna @confusionnoises @yummygummysouls @wassupmygays

[hemmingslftv]

Not in the same way

Word count: 3k Warning: angst, mention of abortion. Requested: no but requests are open! A/N: hi! It's been almost a year since I last posted on here but I've had this idea on my mind for a while now and I just needed to write it down so here it is. I wrote it real quick so I don't think it's one of my best works. Enjoy! and, as always, any feedback is appreciated. Masterlist

- C'mon! We're gonna be late for your own party! - Ashton shouted while you ran down the stairs of the house you both shared as fast as you could with your high heels.

- I'm ready! - you said and you gave him a quick peck on his cheek while he grabbed the keys to your car.

It was your 25th birthday and Ashton had planned the perfect party. He had rented a house just outside of LA and you both wanted to get there before everyone arrived so you could welcome them. At first, you weren't so excited about the idea because you loved to spend time with your friends but you didn't really enjoy crowded places. But Ashton had convinced you that you only turn 25 once and you should celebrate it.

You arrived right after Calum, who was the first one to get there. One by one all your friends and family got there and you had to admit it was exciting to share the same space with everyone and to know that they were there for you. As the afternoon went by, you all had a few drinks and ate while chatting to each other, there was a chilled environment and you loved it.

When it was around 10PM, Ashton decided it was time for his speech. You knew it was coming sooner or later, he loved to speak in front of people and you loved to listen to him express his love for you so openly.

- Baby, can you come here for a bit? - he asked after everyone was silent. You blushed, the shyness that characterized you coming to the surface.

- Is it really necessary? - you asked making everyone laugh (even though it was a genuine question). Ashton smiled at you softly and you protested silently and started walking towards him.

- Thank you, love - he whispered once you were close enough so that only you would listen.

- So, as everyone already knows - he started his speech - it's y/n's 25th birthday today, which means she's getting old, but don't tell her or she'll freak out - you punched him jokingly on his arm and giggled - and it also means it's the 5th birthday I get to spend with the love of my life - he looked at you and you could see his eyes full of love, making you feel the luckiest girl on the planet. You stared at each other for apparently too long because Luke had to clear his throat to tell him to continue.

- Sorry, I got lost on her, it happens quite often - he said earning a few "aws" from the crowd - So, as I was saying, I couldn't have asked for a better person to spend my life with - he turned to face you and took your hands on his.

- y/n, I know you think I'm too cheesy or sentimental sometimes, but I need to tell you how I feel because I need you to feel loved. You've gone through so much and I've come to realize you must be the strongest person on earth because you have made it out of every possible situation, and always keeping a smile on your face. You've made me the man I am today, you helped me get out of my addiction and you stuck by my side when I didn't deserve you to, but I desperately needed you to. I think we both helped each other to love ourselves and we can put ourselves first in this relationship and I think that's what has kept us strong for a little bit over 5 years now. We went through the saddest event of our life together - you knew he was referring to the abortion you had almost a year ago that nobody knew about except for you two and you couldn't help but shed a few tears. You could tell his eyes were teary too and after a short pause, he continued - but we worked past it and we got out of it together, and stronger than we were before. y/n, you are the love of my life, you are the woman I want to wake up next to every day, my whole heart belongs to you and I couldn't imagine a future without you so - he said while kneeling down, making you cover your mouth with your hands as you realized what was going on.

- Ashton please don't - you tried to say, but you weren't sure if the words had actually come out of your mouth or if they were loud enough for him to listen. You were panicking more than you ever had before and you wished he was able to see it in your eyes. He was always so good at reading you, but this time he didn't, he was too excited himself to notice how your whole body tensed as he continued.

- So, y/f/n, do you wanna marry me? - he asked with hope and happiness written all over his face. You were frozen, this was the last thing you were expecting from this party and you felt suddenly trapped in your own body, unable to move. After a couple of seconds, Ashton tilted his head, waiting for your answer and you could tell he was starting to get nervous. - I... y/n? do you want to marry me? - he insisted and you snapped back to yourself but to everyone's surprise, you turned around and started running towards your car.

You ran as fast as you could. Halfway there you stopped to remove your heels and even though your heart was pumping louder than it ever had before you could listen to your best friend shouting for you to wait for her. But you didn't. You kept running until you got to your car and drove away.

As soon as you got home you started packing a bag. You didn't even know where you were going but you were more than sure you weren't welcome here anymore. You expected to cry at some point but you didn't, all you felt was numb. Not even 10 minutes after you had arrived you had your bag ready and you were about to leave your room when you heard the door open. "Shit" you muttered to yourself.

- Do you want me to stay? - you heard Calum ask from outside the door.

- No, it's fine. I can take it from here.

- Okay, call me if you need anything - he said before you heard the door closing. You took a deep breath, grabbed the bag, and started walking towards the door.

- Are you leaving? - Ashton asked as he saw you enter the living room. His tone wasn't an angry one, as you had expected, he sounded just sad. You were too ashamed to even look at him but you thought that was the least you could do and you built up the courage to look him in the eye.

- I guess, I didn't think you'd want me to stay here

- What? Why not? I wouldn't have asked you to marry me if I wanted you to leave

- No, I know, but I mean, after what just happened. Not only did I reject you but I also run away leaving you all alone to deal with the mess I made and I did it in front of all our friends

- Please stay, we need to talk - he said getting closer to you and you dropped the bag to the floor while he held your hand guiding you through your house. Both of you sat on the kitchen table, the place where you always had your serious talks - I need you, to be honest with me, do you not love me anymore? Have you fallen out of love with me? Is there... - he looked down for a second and you could see his jaw and hands clench - is there someone else you've been seeing? I know you always try to protect me but I need to know, I promise I can handle it

- No, no, no, no, why would you? Well, I mean, I can see why you would think that but no, since the day I met you, there's never been anyone else. And of course, I still love you, I love you more and more every day.

- You love me, just not in the same way I do, right?

- I don't know what you mean

- You say you love me, and I believe you, but you don't love me enough to marry me, is that it? Am I getting it right?

- No, I - you tried to reply

- 'Cause I would give my life for you, do you hear me? I would literally die if it meant you were safe. I'd do anything for you. And to be completely honest, I thought we were on the same page.

- We are, I promise, I would die for you too, Ash. But I don't know, I didn't expect you to ask me to be your wife just then and there, out of nowhere.

- Well, I guess that's the point, it's supposed to be a surprise, you know?

- Yeah, I know, but people talk about it first!

- C'mon! We've talked about it. I've told you a million times I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you and all those times you agreed, how was I supposed to know you didn't want to marry me?

- It's not that I don't want to. I do want to wake up next to you every morning and I definitely want to grow old with you.

- What's it then? Why did you run?

- I'm not sure. I panicked. I could perfectly picture us together in 10 years, 20 or 40, and with all our kids and grandkids but I don't know, being your wife? That's a responsibility I doubt I am good enough for. How do you know you won't get tired of me? I mean, I'm great, but we both know I'm not the best you could have. You could literally marry any girl, and you chose me. And I guess I hadn't realized that until tonight and it was just too much for my brain to process at the same time. I'm sorry I ruined everything. See? That's what I mean, I am not perfect.

- I don't want perfect babe, I want you. And I will always want you. You would be the best wife ever, I just know it. You've been the best girlfriend all these years, it's not gonna change because we change the label.

- So you don't hate me?

- Of course not, I could never hate you. I get it, maybe I should have talked to you first, not ruining the surprise but making sure you had in mind it could happen soon.

- Yeah, that would have been great - you smiled slightly and relaxed when he smiled back at you. You thought you had ruined your relationship and you could now see that nothing could ruin what you both had, it was too strong.

- By the way, I think your father hates me, I left him quite angry but I didn't really have time to deal with that.

- Oh god, I'm so sorry - you both laughed for a bit, and then you asked - Ash?

- Hmm? - he mumbled looking at you.

- I do want to marry you - you were sure about your decision, you knew there wasn't anyone better for you than him and if he was just as convinced, why not take it a step further?

- Yeah, you do? - he said while he got up from his seat and you did the same - then let me try this again - he reached for the velvet box in the pocket of his jeans.

- You know what? - you said taking the box from his hand - let me try this time - You knelt just as he had done almost an hour ago and took a deep breath - Ashton Irwin, you light up my days, you are the reason I wake up every morning, the first and the last thought I have every day. Every moment I spend with you becomes my favorite one so far and I haven't really had time to prepare this speech and you know I'm not as good as you with words but I love you. I've never known anyone with a busier schedule than yours and you have made time for me every single day I needed it, and I think that shows how much you care for me, and I want you to know I care just as much. Every single feeling you have for me, I have for you, and I couldn't picture my life without you. Ashton Fletcher Irwin, do you want to marry me? - you said as a few tears slipped down your cheeks.

- Yes, of course, I wanna marry you! - he cheered holding your arms and helping you get up so he could kiss you.

- I don't have a ring but you do so, do you mind doing the honors? - you said opening the velvet box. He took the silver ring at slid it down your finger. It fit perfectly and it was the most precious ring you had ever seen.

- Do you like it? - he asked while kissing your cheeks and nose, cleaning the tears that still run down your face.

- I love it boo, it's perfect - you kissed him and the kiss heated up quickly but you took a step back as soon as his grip on your waist got a bit loose.

- What are you doing? I want you - he pouted.

- I know, I want you too but I need to tell you something before - you ran to your purse to get a little present you had planned on giving to Ashton at your birthday party. When you got back to the kitchen, he was already shirtless. You groaned at the view and bit your lower lip - I told you to wait - you said shaking your head so you could focus.

- I can't, you're too hot! - he giggled.

- I love you. Open this - you said handing him the small package. He knitted his brows together.

- I have no idea what this is - he said starting to open it.

- I know - you pressed the record button on your phone without him realizing and put the phone on the countertop so it recorded his reaction. You were excited for him to finally know what you had kept to yourself for almost 4 months now.

- It's a box! - he joked while he ripped out the paper it was wrapped in. As soon as he opened it you could see the tears building upon his eyes and they started running eagerly down his face as he held the tiny converse shoes that were inside the box - Are you? Please tell me you're not kidding me - you shook your head 'no', not able to contain your tears either - Oh my god! Are you okay?

- Yes, we're perfectly fine and healthy - you said while he hugged you and spun you around - I'm 4 months in.

- You're what? And you haven't told me? Babe, you don't have to keep doing things on your own, I'm here for you now.

- I know, I just didn't want to get your hopes up just in case, you know, I failed again

- Don't, please. It wasn't your fault, those horrible things just happen and they shouldn't, but they do, there was nothing you could have done better - he put his hand on your belly softly making you shiver - So that's why you haven't been drinking lately - you nodded.

- And that's why I wasn't in the mood for morning sex either. To be honest, I thought that was gonna give it away.

- Well, I had no clue, I thought it was just a phase. I can't believe we're gonna be parents babe, and you planned on leaving me with our creation inside you? - he teased.

- I hadn't thought about that! okay? I have the perfect excuse, it was the hormones - you laughed and removed his hand off your belly so you could pull your dress up - if you look closely you can clearly see them growing, I think it's showing already.

- Oh my god! It totally is! How have I not noticed this?

- You're not the greatest observer I guess

- Yeah, I'm definitely not. Did you go to the doctor's appointments all by yourself?

- No, Calum always came with me, he's the only one who I knew would keep the secret.

- Calum? Oh, so that's why he was so sure you weren't cheating.

- Did you seriously thought I was seeing someone else? - you asked kind of hurt.

- No, not really. I guess I was just trying to go through every possible situation in my head so that it wouldn't take me by surprise.

- I'm sorry Ash - you said cupping his face with your hands - I shouldn't have run. It's the last thing you deserve. You've done nothing but be there for me all these years.

- So have you, it's okay. Are you ready to share the news with the world? - he asked with a sparkle in his eyes.

- I guess so, I was gonna tell you in front of everyone at the party, now that the first trimester is over the chances of it going

- Shh, don't even think about it. It's gonna be okay - he assured you while he hugged you from behind - let me capture this moment - he got his phone out of his pocket and took a picture of his hand holding yours, with the wedding ring on it, on your belly - perfect - he whispered once he was happy with the result.

He posted it on Instagram with the caption "I couldn't have asked for a better mum for my children, including the one that's on the way. Love you forever y/n, your future husband".

[myhauntedsalem]

10 Cops Share Their Scariest Paranormal Encounters

1. THE PHONE CALL

My uncle works for dispatch in my town and he recently told my family of the weirdest call he’s ever gotten. He says that he had received a call from a landline one night and when he answered it there was only static on the other end. This happened two more times. Finally, he calls a squad to go check out the address from the caller ID. When the cops got there and walked into the house they immediately saw that there was a dead body. The person had been dead for 5 months.

The craziest part about it was that there was no electricity or any other utility working. So there is no way they should have been able to get those calls into dispatch. But if they hadn’t, who knows how long that person’s body would have stayed there.

2. THE HANGING SOLDIER

I had a call to a residence for a mental evaluation or a “5150.” Anyways, I get there and speak to a 50-something-year-old woman, who states her 20-something-year-od son is under the influence of an unknown drug, and kept repeating that he can’t go in his bedroom because there was an old man hanging in his room. She stated she was too scared to go in his room and investigate it for herself, because he constantly brings over friends that are drug addicts, and is unsure if his claims were true or not.

I then go speak to the son, who is clearly under the influence of a stimulate. He goes on to tell me that he was told by a “spirit” to not enter the bedroom, because her father, dressed in his military “Class A” uniform was hanging in his bedroom.

I check the room out and of course there was no body hanging in the room. As I’m in the middle of explaining to the mother that there was no body in the bedroom, a veteran officer arrives on scene to assist me.

He pulls me aside and stated earlier in his career he responded to this residence, and that same bedroom, he had to investigate a suicide by hanging of an older male subject. He didn’t remember all the details, so I looked it up in our report management system in my patrol car and sure enough the officer was correct. The subject who died was a WWII veteran and had dressed in his military uniform and hung himself.

3. “SHE’S INSIDE THE HOUSE”

I’ve never been a believer in the paranormal, but that day I made an exception. I responded to a call made by an elderly lady. She reported that she kept seeing a young girl running through her yard and she was afraid of vandalism or maybe worse.

On my way over, it started to pour like there’s no tomorrow, lightning and thunder too. When I arrived at the residence, she pointed to where the yard was and I made my way over there. I tried to shine my flashlight along and asked, “Is anyone out here? C’mon out.” But nothing, all I heard was the sound of loud thunder in the back.

I made my way back inside the house and the lady (now trembling in a corner) told me, “She’s inside the house.”

I hear a thump in the background and I see a young girl (about 13) running from one side of the house to the other. I quickly moved towards her and asked her to stop, but then she disappears right in front of me. I thought it was my eyes playing a trick on me but then the lady yells out, “There, there she is, right outside.”

I turned towards a big window leading to the backyard and there she was running around, but how did she get passed me to exit to the back door?? I immediately went outside and she had vanished, again. After I wasn’t able to find anything and with no logical explanation, I told the lady the girl had run away and I wasn’t able to catch her due to the weather. I asked her to calm her down. Some months later passed and I found out the elderly woman had passed away and some new people had moved into her old home. Not long after that, dispatch picked up a call from the same house. Now the new tenants reported a young girl running around in their backyard and suddenly appearing inside their house. I let someone else pick the call.

4. THE ABANDONED HOUSE

I worked as a police officer in a small town in rural Nebraska. Back in the 90’s, I was patrolling through town in winter. We had several abandoned houses in town, but one seemed to have the attraction of copper thieves, so we were told to keep an eye on it. Drove by it around 7:00pm, since it sat on a corner lot, I had a clear view of all four sides of the house. As I drove around the corner. Nothing looks out of the ordinary. About two hours later I drive by again and the back door is wide open.

I know that the back door was not open when I drove by it earlier. Looking at the snow on the ground around the house, there were no footprints. So I think “What the hell?”. Call dispatch, tell them I’m investigating an open door at that address and ask for a county sheriff to start my way. I walk to the open door, pull out my flashlight and shine it inside. The house has obviously been gutted for the most part. The plaster walls have been torn down, debris piles everywhere. Since there were no footprints in the snow around the door other than mine, and with all the dust on the floor not showing any footprints, I chalk it up to the wind or maybe the door just opened on its own. I was about to secure the door when I heard a loud thump come from upstairs and what sounded like kids laughing. So I enter the house and yell out “Police department, come downstairs!” More of what sounds like kids playing. I tell dispatch that it sounds like there are kids in the house and start making my way through the kitchen into the living room where the stairs are. All the while cautiously checking the main floor.

Two more times I hear something upstairs, but since I’ve had no response, I start thinking maybe it’s an animal. Still, I hear what I’d swear was kids laughing. I head upstairs and it all gets quiet. The upstairs is relatively small with a hallway at the top of the stairs that has one bedroom on the right, one straight ahead at the end of the hall, and a bedroom on the left. As I get to the top of the stairs, I hear a thump in the bedroom to the left. I carefully peek around the door and it’s an empty room with a small pile of plaster and wood debris in the middle. No kidding, sitting on top of the pile of debris was a page torn out of a child’s book with a picture of a police officer on it. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, I got out of that room, quickly cleared the other rooms upstairs and got the fuck out of there.

Told dispatch nobody was in the house, locked the back door and never went back in there again.

5. THE DISAPPEARING PASSENGER

As a controller about 15 years ago, I took a call from a hysterical man who had picked up a motorcyclist on the slip road to the M6 who had been standing in pouring rain at the side of the road with a petrol can next to an old Norton style motorbike. He drove on the short distance down the motorway to the next service station and as he pulled off the carriageway he turned to talk to his passenger and he had disappeared.

Besides himself he contacted the police, it later transpired that at the very point the passenger disappeared there had been a fatal accident involving a motorcyclist about 20yrs previously.

It still sends shivers up my spine and I still have a copy of the incident print. I spoke with the officers who attended and they were confident the man was a genuine everyday fella!

6. THE FOOTPRINT

Back when I was working as a cop on a military base, I loved working night shift. Didn’t deal with 99% of the bullshit that day shift dealt with and what little stuff we did deal with was usually really interesting.

Well most every building on a base is alarmed and the alarms are tied right into the desk so we know the instant they go off. When we get an alarm activation, we close the base, and go check the building, pull on all the doors, see if we can get in. If we can, we go into the building and secure it, check all the doors and corners to see if someone set the alarm off.

Well, one night I was on patrol with my alpha (partner) and we get called to respond to an alarm activation at the elementary school. So we go, secure the building, and call in that the building is all secure. No problem, keep patrolling. So about 15-20 minutes go by and we get another alarm activation. We get back out there and check and now there is a maintenance door open that leads into a boiler roomish thing. Nothing in it, we close it, lock it and get out.

Another 20 minutes. and another alarm. We respond, all the doors are still locked and we can’t get in, maintenance door is locked. Call in the all clear. This time my buddy and I sit on opposite sides of the school and watch to see if someone is coming and yanking the doors real hard to set the alarm off. We sit there and watch, nothing happens and right as we’re about to leave, another alarm activation as we’re sitting there. We inform the desk that we’d like the building manager on site to help us secure the interior and to let us in. (This is like now 3 am.)

Building custodian shows up and we start doing a walk through, checking all the classrooms and checking all the maintenance rooms and that’s when we see one of the maintenance doors open with the lights on in the room. Now, this room is literally the size of a closet.

We walk down there and look in, no ones in it and that door is locked when it closes. We look in there and we find a single footprint of a bare foot made of water (Left foot as a recall) of a small child. Freaked the living hell out of us because no one reported a missing child and the entire building was clear and still locked up. No one left, no one entered and we checked every inch of that damn place (literally a 3 hour deep sweep including ceiling tiles.)

Freaked the ever loving shit out of us and to this day, my partner refuses to go into that school.

7. THE FLYING MAN

Whilst working in remote Australia, we were forced to ‘move on’ an elderly aboriginal man because the other locals had accused him of witchcraft, and other things. We drove him to his township approximately one and half hours drive away. The other locals were terrified of him as he was rumored to be a witch doctor. We dropped him off and warned him not to return to town for three days. We turned the vehicle around and drove back to town, flying, probably 100mph+. It took 45minutes to drive back, upon our return, we find the SAME elderly aboriginal sitting in the street. To this day neither of us can explain it, maybe the other locals had every right to be scared.

8. “I NEED YOUR HELP”

Not a police officer, but a 911 dispatcher.

There was an old couple who lived on a run-down ranch house about 20 miles east of town. When the husband passed away, the woman would call 911 at least three times a week, asking for assistance with very mundane tasks not normally dealt to first responders. “I need help turning the thermostat up”, “I need help boiling water for my tea”, etc.

The woman developed dementia, and eventually, it progressed to the point where she believed she was calling 911 to ask her deceased husband for help. All of the dispatchers would recognize the address immediately, even though all she could say was “(husband’s name), I need help. Please come home and help me”

One day she called, and again was only able to repeat her husband’s (I’ll call him “John”) name. “John, I need help. Please come home and help me John.” By the time the first responders arrived on scene, they found the woman lying dead in her bed. The first unit on scene called dispatch to confirm that it was the woman herself who had called 911, as rigor Morris had already set in. We wrote it off as the fact that the heater in her house wasn’t working, and the ambient temperature in the room was about 50 degrees.

We continued to receive 911 calls from that woman, at that address for just over a year after she passed away. Even after her home was vandalized, and burned to the ground, the phone calls did not stop. “John, I need your help. John, please come home and help me.” We were obligated to send a response each and every time, but not once did we find anyone on or near the property.

Multiple calls to the phone company confirmed that the phone line had been disconnected, and the call was not coming from another address.

9. POSSESSED

I was a 911 call taker 10 years ago when I received one of the creepiest calls ever. It was freezing that night, which usually equaled a calm, quiet shift due to even the criminals not wanting to go outside. Around 3am my call box popped up green and as usual I asked what was the emergency. A man starting frantically screaming that his still was possessed by a demon and tried to cut his heart while he slept. He had ran when the attack started and locked himself in his bathroom. I ask him a series of questions trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

I ask him a series of questions trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Everytime he tried to answer I heard what sounded like scratching and banging on the bathroom door. He whispered “There is a demon in my sister’s body, it has been battling me for days. It got free from the chains…” I swear what I heard next chilled me to the core. This unearthly voice began taunting my caller through the door. It didn’t sound like a 20-something woman. It was low and guttural, like she had gargled razor blades before speaking. She continued to growl and speak in a strange sounding language until police arrived. She let out a terrifying scream when the officers broke in, then dead end.

The call was over, I was shaking and had to know what happened? Even my supervisor (who had been listening to the call in real time) was pale and speechless when the line abruptly ended. Before my shift ended the commanding officer on my creepy call called in to tell me what they found. He told me he would have nightmares for the rest of his life.

Apparently, when my caller said his sister got out of her chains, he wasn’t joking around. She still had a chain tied to a bloody handcuff when the officers came in. Her whole body was covered in self-inflicted scratches, her one eye had popped a blood vessel and was bright red. Most of what she was wearing was also shredded and her skin looked like she had been drained of her blood. She was taken in for a psych consult and as you probably guessed, stayed there for a long time. The brother was okay except for deep gouges in his chest. His sister literally tried to dig out his heart.

There was some talk about arresting the brother but nothing ever came of it. I still can vividly remember that voice, it still makes my blood run cold.

10. BREAK IN AT THE MORGUE

A friend’s father is a police officer in one of the larger villages of Illinois. He and his partner were working night-shift when they were called to investigate a suspected break-in at the local morgue. They arrived to find the custodian waiting for them out front. The custodian said that he’d been mopping one of the corridors and had seen something move in his peripheral vision. He looked up and saw a person quickly cross from one side of the hallway to the other. He couldn’t tell much about the person as he’d been turning the lights off as he worked his way through the building. Just a dim outline, but enough to be sure of what he’d seen. He was unarmed, so called the police and stepped outside to wait.

My friend’s dad and his partner entered the morgue. They started off by calling out to anyone who might be inside (no answer), then began to do a sweep, walking down the central corridor with hands on their guns, checking each room to the side, occasionally calling out for any intruder to show themselves. My friend’s dad came upon a room with the light off, pitch black inside. He fumbled for the switch and flicked it. The room lit up, nothing but an empty waiting room for relatives of the dead.

He heard his partner call out “Hey, stop! Turn around!” Friend’s dad swung back out into the corridor and his partner had unholstered his gun, was pointing it at the end of the long corridor. He said: “She went around that corner.” The custodian said: “She’s trapped, no exits that way.”

They had the custodian lock himself in the waiting room for safety, then advanced down the corridor, calling out to the woman to show herself, that they wouldn’t hurt her. This time my friend’s dad reached the end first, and with his back to the wall, peered around the corner. The woman was standing by a big grey door. Lights were off here too, so it was hard to see her clearly. But he could see she wasn’t holding a gun, had long, fair hair. He stepped out from behind the corner to talk to her, but she opened the door, disappeared into the dark inside, and shut it firmly behind her.

He sprinted up to the door and pulled at the handle. Locked. Banged on it for a while and called out to her, but no answer. The door had a deadlock on it, so his partner brought over the custodian to unlock it. They turned on their flashlights to see better. The custodian rounded the corner and faltered a little. “This door? You sure? This door doesn’t lock from the inside.”

The custodian found the right key and carefully turned it in the lock. Click. “We’re coming in! Have your hands up!”

They entered the room, flashlights illuminating every corner. The custodian hit the light switch and the room lit up. It was empty except for some equipment against the wall, and two gurneys in the middle of the room. One was empty, and one was covered in a sheet with what appeared to be a body underneath it. Nice hiding spot.

My friend’s dad approached and it was the smell that first spooked him. It smelled like a corpse. He pulled the sheet down and there the woman lay, straggly light-brown hair all around her face. The tag on her toe said she’d died four days ago.

Friend’s father is a devout Christian, does not believe in ghosts or the supernatural (even now), doesn’t know what to make of this event.

[nakedmossy]

Depth Over Distance - Part One [Rudy x Reader]

[A/N: I haven’t found a hometown Rudy fic yet soooo I wrote one. I have no idea where this story is going to go and I’m honestly finding it hard to get out of writing JJ and get into writing Rudy, but here we go anyways. I wanted to write something where the reader and Rudy were hometown friends before he moved to LA, and to explore the idea of how that would change/what it would look like when he comes back. Get ready for a S L O W. B U R N. my dudes. Peace and love, Mossy x]

The sky was grey and the air was wet - it had been raining for 4 days straight. You sat in your car with the heat cranked, your window down slightly so that the humidity didn’t fog up your mirrors. Living on the Alaskan coast was beautiful most of the time but horrible some of the time, especially when you had to waste gas just keeping warm and dry at 6pm in the beginning of ‘Summer’. 

You had never lived anywhere else aside from the summer you spent in Vancouver with your cousin when you were 19. Now, at 23, you were working full time at the local bookshop that was an 8 minute drive from your house in the winter and a 20 minute walk/skate in the summer. Your car was parked street side, waiting for your friend Lizzy to finish her shift at the cafe. The smell of the rain and the Ben Howard song on the radio made you nostalgic about the times you and your friends from high school had spent hours skating down these streets, beers in your backpacks, no helmets, dirty shoes and clothes, no pressure, no responsibilities, no cell service...no worries. 

Since graduation a lot of your friends had moved out of town, either to Anchorage or down to Washington, or further south. Your best friend Lizzy had stayed close to home, helping run her families business and working part time at the cafe. You had stayed local too...your dad owned a fishing guide business and your mom was an admin assistant for the MD in town, but neither made enough to cover all the medical bills you had racked up over the last few years. You figured once the debt was paid off you might leave...but you had no idea where you would go. 

You missed all of your friends, but you missed the boys the most, aside from Lizzy you didn't have a lot of female friends, and your boys had been like brothers to you. You spoke to most of them every few weeks on FaceTime, except Rudy. He had gone to LA for awhile and had kept in touch loosely, but after the first few months he started to drift. 

You felt the loss the hardest for Rudy. He had been your closest friend the longest, you had spent nearly every day of every summer together since you were 9, and every school year you worked the same part time job at the seafood restaurant on the water. Now, the last you heard, he was coming back for the summer to ‘reconnect’. You had low expectations and tried not to let yourself get excited, but truthfully, you wanted him to spend some time at home and be around his own kind again - he had always been a homebody and you were worried that being gone for 4 years would go to his head or change him.

Lizzy tapped on the glass, causing you to blink out of your reverie and smile at her. You rolled the window down and let her reach in and open the door from the inside (the handle had been broken since high school). She threw her backpack and skateboard in the back seat, climbing in and closing her door.

“Ugh.” She grunted as her teeth chattered and she rubbed her bare legs. 

“You know its only May, you shouldn’t even be wearing shorts yet. The snow just melted.”

Lizzy glared at you playfully and put her hand out to do your handshake. You did it, then put the car in drive and started slowly down the street, windshield wipers moving rhythmically.

“How was the shift?” You asked as you checked your mirrors and wiped some humidity off the rear view. 

“Same old” Lizzy leaned back in her seat and pulled the visor mirror down to fix her hair. “That old man Collins from the cannery keeps coming in and harassing me.”

“Jack? The one with the eye patch?” 

Lizzy nodded dramatically as she held the bobby pins in her mouth and started to twist her straight black hair off her face. 

“That guy-“ She finished placing the final pin and slammed the visor closed “-Is an absolute creep.”

You snorted a sarcastic laugh and rolled your eyes.

“He’s like...70. And widowed. Don’t be rude.”

“I’m not being rude. Im just...asserting my boundaries.”

“You literally have a 3 foot counter between you at minimum, at all times.” You looked over at her and raised your eyebrows.

“Whatever. All I’m saying is we need hotter men in this town. Like...soon.”

You nodded in agreement and felt your eyes wander all over the road, remembering the time you and Rudy had taken your longboards down it after a torrential downpour and you had crashed and gotten such bad road burn that he had to call his dad to come pick you both up because you couldn’t walk.

“Hey, Y/N, are you listening?” Lizzy cut back in, staring at you.

“No, what?”

“I said, speaking of hot guys, I heard Rudy is coming back for a few months.”

You pinched your face and looked at her then at the road, then back at her.

“Rudy is not hot. Rudy is....Rudy. What are you talking about?”

Lizzy looked at you disbelieving and closed her mouth, trying not to smile.

“What!” You repeated, smacking her arm.

“Hey!” She laughed, then shook her head and looked out the window. “Whatever you say man, I just think....” She grabbed her water bottle and began to screw off the lid “I just think...he’s not gonna be the same Rudy that left 4 years ago. He’s like...a movie star now.”

You couldn’t even begin to touch that one. You knew what she was doing...she was always harping on you about going on dates or taking trips with her to the mainland to hook up with the pilots during their layovers. You never went, and always insisted that you were just fine and were not interested. She never listened. Part of that was true...you were fine, and usually not interested. But sometimes, when the water was calm and the sunset was colourful and the fish were jumping and your beer was cold...you wished you had someone to share it with.

“I’m going up to Skagway this weekend with my dad” You said, changing subjects. “He’s short a guide and needs someone to drive the boat.”

“Lucky you” She said sarcastically, screwing the lid back on her bottle. “Another weekend spent with men twice your age who have zero ability to catch a fish and even less ability to smell nice.” 

“It’s good money.” You said flatly, annoyed that everything seemed to revolve around men with her. “And in case you forgot I’m kinda in need of that at the moment.”

Lizzy licked her lips and put her hands up, dipping her head. 

“Alright...noted. Chill out Kemosabe.” She giggled under her breath and looked out her window, drawing a small penis in the moisture on the window.

“Babe, seriously. You need to get laid.” You said, shaking your head.

“I know” She replied, working on the veins. “Trust me. Im in a state of national emergency by this time of year.”

Lizzy was absolutely one of the girliest girls (and most beautiful girls) in the south of Alaska, which was ironic considering the house she grew up in. Her dad was an overweight German restaurant entrepreneur who had opened a world class seafood restaurant in Juneau back in the 90s and had shacked up with her mother who was this drop dead gorgeous Haida warrior woman who you had literally seen kill and skin a bear with her own hands. 

They had forged this chain of restaurants local to Alaska that people flew hundreds of miles to eat at, but still lived in an off-grid cabin that hadn’t been insulated since 1960 and used wood heating. Not really the type of family that screamed southern belle femininity - yet somehow Lizzy came out of that union with a pink bed set, refusing to ever wear camo or sweatpants, and still had never shot a gun - which her mother reminded her of weekly. 

Lizzy had hit puberty at 10 and had used her breast advantage over every girl in your class for the next 3 years like some sort of distinction of better genetics, as if she needed boobs to prove that. Unlike you, she was naturally thin and tall (6ft to be precise), had long, thick straight black hair and olive skin, and perfect hips. You felt like a prepubescent boy standing next to her, with your uneven complexion and your frizz and your awkward thigh fat distribution. You were envious of her genetics - her mother graced her with the body of an athlete and the thick black hair, and her father had given her height and cheekbones that could slice through glass. You looked down at your arms, covered in freckles, pasty white from lack of sun, and cringed, looking back at the road.

You turned the corner leaving the main road and starting on the dirt road that led to your favourite part of beach access. Lizzy pulled her hoodie out of her backpack and took off her seatbelt, leaning forward to pull it down over her head. You leaned forward and looked up, this was your favourite part of the drive. The dirt road which was lined with moss and ferns and other foliage wound along the base of the snow capped mountain that was at least 1000ft in elevation. The mist and fog from the coast was thick and creeped through the tall cedar trees, black ravens and falcons flying overhead stark against the white mist. This was the most idyllic picture of northwest coastal living you could find.

When you parked at the trail head Lizzy slipped off her work flats and into her Teva’s, you grabbed your yellow Vans out of your trunk and slipped them on. You usually drove bare foot, a habit you had started in high school after Rudy had thrown your shoes off the dock at the restaurant and you had to drive home without any. You grabbed your sweater and your backpack which had the beer in it. As you were both gathering the rest of your things...beach blanket, hats, and rain cover, you heard a car pull up behind you. You stood up out of the trunk and squinted to see the car through the fog. It was a black ford pickup you had never seen before. 

“Who’s that?” Lizzy chimed in from behind you.

“No clue” You said as you lifted your hand to wave once. 

The truck had tinted windows and looked brand new. When it pulled up beside you, the drivers side window began to unroll, revealing Junior - your high school (ex) sweetheart.

“Holy” You said, eyebrows up, nodding. “Nice truck - where’d you steal it from?” He rolled his eyes at you dramatically.

“Whatever kid - its a rental. Got it to drive to the airport in.” His chest puffed out and his expression read so proud. 

“Airport?” You said inquisitively. “Since when does Alan pay you to drive new trucks to the airport?” 

“Since Rudy hired him for the pick up service and apparently is incapable of driving his own ass around anymore” Junior snorted and waved at Lizzy.

“Or he doesn’t have a car here anymore” You noted, rolling your eyes at him.

“Either way, I get this bad boy for the next 24 hours and I intend to give her the royal grand tour of our humble town.” He ran his hand up and down the steering wheel, stroking the new leather. “Wanna go for a rip?” He said, winking. You shook your head and crossed your arms over your chest. 

“Well I do” Lizzy piped up from beside you, walking closer to the window. She smiled at Junior and began to put her hair in a pony tail. She nudged your arm as she began to walk to the passenger side door. “Come on, granny. Let’s go!”

She laughed as she climbed up into the truck, but you shook your head again.

“I’m good...you kids have fun. Say hi to Rudy for me” You said to Junior, who shrugged his head and muttered ‘definitely wont do that’ under his breath.

Lizzy blew a kiss at you and waved once before Junior put it in drive and started to go up the dirt road north of you. 

Junior and you had ended on okay terms, but he had concocted a theory that you had broken up with him because of another guy, and the unspoken suggestion was that that guy had been Rudy. Small town guys had a heck of a time with the idea of girls and guys just being friends. 

You sighed and watched as the truck disappeared around the corner, and turned back to your own car. You grabbed your backpack and slammed the trunk closed, walking down the path alone. You weren’t mad at Lizzy for going with him - she was flighty and bailed on you at the bar all the time - but you were mad the beer was going to go warm before you could drink it all. Not that you should even be drinking 6 beers alone by the water when you had to drive yourself home. Doubtful the 2 cops in this town would even be awake to see you though. Whatever.

You reached the end of the path and rounded the corner, revealing the coast line and the rocky beach. It was your favourite place to sit and think, sit and smoke, sit and be yourself. The beach curled in a U shape, giving you a private spot where the rest of the shoreline was blocked from view and all you could see was the ominous cedar forest that stretched up the mountain, the snow caps at the top, and the horizon over the cold pacific.

You had intended to share the joint you had in your pocket with Lizzie, but...well, her loss. You spread the blanket out on the softest patch of sand and rocks you could find (which still meant you were guaranteed to get at least 2 rocks in the ass) and placed your bag down, kicking off your sneakers. You took a deep breath for the first time in a few days and lit the joint, taking one long, deep inhale. You felt it tingle through your chest and your arms and legs almost immediately, relaxing you. Being here alone always sent you into a spiral of memories and thoughts that you worked hard during the day to suppress. Most insistent lately had been thoughts about your health problems. You called them ‘health problems’ but in reality it was just an eating disorder. You could go 2, sometimes 3 days without eating anything, and never felt hungry. It started after graduation.

You had lost weight, dramatically, going from a stable 120-125 to 95 at most and 90 at worst, in the span of a month. And for the next three years you had never gained it back, you had stayed at a relatively stable 95, which still left you looking sickly and too thin at 5’3”. Your frame wasn’t built for that kind of weight drop, you were Scottish and Cree, sprinkled with a little bit of German and Irish. A classic northwest cracker mix. You weren’t naturally small, you always had a bit of something to grab onto, but it was normal to your body, healthy. 

Some part of your brain knew that it had something to do with leaving school...and the pretence that came with that. The expectation...the responsibility. You were never that kind of person, and it never really bothered you, but suddenly it had. You never planned to go to University right away, but you had no back up plan. It wasn't something you and your friends really talked about. But suddenly Jacob had gotten into U of Washington, Dan had left to backpack Europe, and Rudy had not so graciously announced he was deferring his acceptance and scholarship to culinary school because he wanted to be an actor, and flew to LA the next month. You had been left behind, with Lizzy of all people, and it had hit you hard.

You looked around the beach, dragging on your joint quicker than normal, trying to knock the thoughts out of your head. An Eagle screeched above - scaring you - and you laid back on the blanket, closing your eyes. You needed to chill the hell out. This was the first time in a few weeks that you had gotten a night off from helping your dad with his guide business and you didn’t plan on wasting it riddling your brain with anxiety and worrying about your body.

You looked up at the sky and watched the mist and fog kiss the clouds, the sunset colours dancing across them. As it usually did, the rain had stopped just as the sun was going down, the clouds parting briefly and letting the smallest sliver of sunlight through, just enough to burn the grey light out of the sky and allow the pink and orange hues to fade along the horizon. You sat up and cracked a beer, enjoying the fresh smelling air and the rhythmic sound of the waves licking the shore line. 

Two beers in you had put on your jacket and placed your Bluetooth speaker next to you on the blanket, blasting a playlist that Rudy had made you for your graduation party.

Three beers in you took the jacket off, standing up and dancing by yourself on the beach to the music.

Four beers in you laid down on the blanket, balled your jacket up and used it as a pillow, and started looking for shapes in the stars.

Five beers in you fell sleep.

———

Many hours later, as the sun rose and was bright on the water and the early morning bird feed was in full swing overhead, you were drifting in and out of sleep to the squawking when a shadow came across your face, alerting you to groggily open your eyes.

“What’s up, Little Fern?” His voice had gotten deeper. Wait, what?

You opened your eyes and blinked, raising a hand to block the sun. There, in your very awake and very not dreaming state, was the unmistakable silhouette that you had spent the last 18 years dreaming about and 18 years being a friend to.

Rudy.

[babybottlepop96]

Home Again Chapter 1

Jean x Marco

Summary: Jeana and Marco have been friends since the tender ages of 5 and 7. They grow together and fall in love.... then Jean disappears.

Warnings: This story will contains mentions of past rape and abuse. The violence parts will probably be descriptive, but the rape will not be. There will be eventual smut further along into the story. 

~20 Years Ago~

"Jean, honey, this is mommy's new boss, Mr. Bott. He is the man who is going to help us, so I need you to be on your best behavior, okay?" The small five year old with ash blonde hair, dark brown undercut and honey golden eyes nodded his head as he stared at the tall dark haired man with dark chocolate eyes.

"Nice to meet you Master Jean." The man smiled down at the boy with a warm smile. "This is my son, Marco, he just turned seven a few months ago. Heard you enjoy dinosaurs and superheroes?" Jean nodded as he stared at the boy just two years older than himself with wide eyes, mapping out all the freckles along his tanned skin, milk chocolate eyes staring back into his own with a smile that could make the grumpiest of men relax. "Marco has a boatload of dinosaur and superhero toys, Marco, why don't you show Jean your room?" Marco smiled, grabbing Jean's hand and dragging him up the giant spiral staircase to the second floor.

Once inside the room, Jean's jaw dropped, the size of Marco's bedroom was bigger than his whole house combined. The ceiling was high with detailed trim along the edges, painted in a dark brown and a pale maroon shade of red. The bed was bigger than what any seven year old should have, a giant flat screen tv was mounted onto the wall across from the bed and games, movies and toys filled the rest of the room. "Do you want to play a video game? I have Spyro the dragon, Crash Bandicoot, Mario Kart?" The freckles kid asked, naming off games while setting up one of the many gaming consoles he owned.

"I… ummm.." Jean stood there nervously, rocking on his feet while twiddling his tiny thumbs. "I've never played a video game before." He looked up to see Marco smiling at him.

"That's okay! I'll teach you! We can start with Mario Kart, it's a multiplayer game, so I'll be able to teach you!" He smiled proudly as if he just won first place at the spelling bee.

"Oh, okay! Thank you!" Jean grabbed the controller Marco handed out to him with shaky hands. The two sat down on the squishy blue and purple bean bag chairs and started a game, Marco showing him how to pick his character, how to move and control the kart and how to throw the special abilities gained when hitting the boxes with the question marks.

"So, Jean, what's your favorite color?"

"Purple." Jean spoke as he tried to concentrate on what he was doing on the screen, still having a bit of trouble with the turns.

"Cool! Mines red!" Marco spoke as he gestures to the room around them. 

"Favorite food?" Jean asked, stealing a glance at the older kid next to him, he couldn't help but smile, Marco's smile was infectious.

"Spaghetti! Well, all kinds of pasta! Penne, ravioli, ricotta-"

"I thought ricotta was a cheese?" Jean questioned, he wasn't actually sure himself, he just knew that cheese was a luxury in his home, never having enough money most of the time for really fancy things like cheeses.

"Oh, yeah! It is!" Marco giggled, "I just really like ricotta cheese." Jean giggled too, this kid was alright. "You're my new best friend, Jean."

~8 Years Later~

"Will you just shut up, Yeager?" A thirteen year old Jean Kirstein, as calmly as he could, spoke with his fist balled up at his sides as he walked out of the middle school building.

"Come on, Kirstein, didn't your poor piss excuse for a mother teach you it isn't nice to tell people to shut up?" Eren, the school bully, asshole and dick, in Jean's opinion, insulted. That's when Jean's resolve faded into nothing and landed a swift punch to the tanned, unblemished skin, a crunch was heard throughout the whole parking lot. Eren fell to the ground but quickly regained his strength and landed a kick to Jean's guy. The wind was knocked from Jean's lungs, but his anger was dominant. He lunged for the bastard who insulted his mother, the only parent he ever knew who worked her ass off to make sure he survived, to give the douche-nozzle a good pounding, but warm, strong arms held him back before hos fist could collide with it's intended target.

"Jean." A warm voice whispered in his ear, Marco. He relaxed in the freckles arms but he was still livid. "Let's go." Then, he was dragged off to the black Chevy Impala.

"Is that your boyfriend Horse Face? Man, I knew you were fruity but seriously? You could do better!" Jean almost got out Marco's grip, but the taller, older teen had his grip firm and all but threw the teen into the back seat.

"Jean-" 

"No, don't start Marco! He taunted me about how I have to live my life, insulted my mother, then insulted you! He deserved to get his lights punched out!" Jean yelled, unshed tears forming in the corners of his Carmel eyes, threatening to spill any second. Marco just simply drew the younger into his arms and the driver drove towards Bott Manor. "He… he doesn't have to be so mean! I never did anything to him!" 

When they finally pulled into the Manor, Marco led Jean to his room, the same room they first became friends in eight years ago. The stuffed animals and small toys are now replaced with books, CDs and even more games and movies. Marco sat them down on the bed and neither spoke for a few minutes. "He was right, ya know." Marco finally spoke and Jean looked at him like he had four heads. "You could do better than me, if we were together."

"Marco Bott, you stop right there! No one could ever replace you! You are literally the best person alive! If I had the balls to kiss you I would!" Jean and Marco's eyes widened and Jean turned into a blushing, flustered mess. "Oh my god! I'm so sorry! I.. I don't know why I said tha-", but Jean couldn't finish, Marco's lips pressed firmly against his in a gentle yet passionate kiss that spoke thousands of words and so many feelings. 

"I love you Jean." Marco whispered as they pulled apart, foreheads still touching as both tried to regain their breath and slow their hearts. Jean cupped Marco's face in his hands and kissed him again.

"I love you too, Marco."

~2 Years Later~

Jean Kirstein, fifteen year old freshman at Trost High, walked through the park on his way home after work. He hates his job, hates working behind the counter at the local Taco Bell, hates that Eren works there too in the kitchen as a prep cook, hates dealing with annoying ass customers with snarky attitudes complaining that their crunch wrap supreme doesn't have enough sour cream. Well sorry, Karen, I don't make the fucking food nor do I determine how much sour cream goes on it. Today was a particularly bad day, Eren called off claiming he was sick when Jean really knew he was out with his "boyfriend" leaving him to prepare food and take orders. Then someone took a dump on the men's bathroom floor, didn't even try to aim for the fucking toilet! Just took a shot right there in the middle of the goddamn floor which he had to clean up himself while his manager bitched about him not doing his job at the counter. All Jean wanted to do was go home, talk to his boyfriend for a little before he eventually went to bed and got up early the next day for school.

It was a simple request that he wished for while the clock ticked by slowly. Jean was so into his own head, he never heard the footsteps coming up behind him until it was too late. A wet cloth covered his nose and mouth, his eyes widened for a second before the world faded to black.

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

"We have to find him!" Marco shouted at his father who was looking at him with a solemn expression. Marco paced back and forth in front of his father's desk, hands taking through his u kept hair. He has barely slept a wink since Jean vanished three days ago, his mind wondering about all the worst scenarios it could think of.

"We are trying, son, but we have no evidence of anything taking place. No struggle, no personal belongings, nothing to suggest anything has even happened."

"But Jean couldn't have just vanished into thin air! He wouldn't run away either! He loved his mom too much to just up and leave her and me…" Marco trailed off, thinking about his and Jean's time together over the last two years. Picnic and arcade dates, eating pizza and hot wings while they binge watched their favorite tv series at that moment, the soft and gentle kisses they shared between one another before they parted ways, always promising to text each other once they got home, letting the other one know they got there safe. That's the single most reason why Marco knew something was wrong. Neither of them forgot to send the 'im home safe and sound' text. Not once, in the ten years that they've known each other, did they miss sending that text. Even as children and Marco's father gave Mrs. Kirstein a cell phone as a gift to keep in contact, did they miss THAT text.

"Son, we are doing everything we can to find Jean. But we also need to think rationally, Jean might not ever be found." Marco froze at those words, Jean may be lost forever? He may never see those honey eyes, beautiful smile, perfect sketches and vibrant paintings painted by those slender pale hands and fingers? May never run his hands through those soft locks of ash and brown ever again? That's when Marco broke, he screamed and fell to the floor in a fetal position on the floor. His father looked at him with hurt in his own dark chocolate eyes, for him, his son and Jean's mother who was currently out looking for her only child as they speak. Don Bott rose from his leather chair and walked around the desk, kneeling in front of his son. He put his hand on his back and whispered a pained, "I'm sorry, Marco."

~10 Years Later (Present Day)~

Here he was, once again, at an underground auction. Mr. Bott hated these things, but he had no other choice, ever since Mrs. Kirstein passed away three years ago from a drunk driving accident, he hasn't been able to find someone who cleaned as well as she had. Every person he hired had an attitude or just didn't speak at all, always forgetting to dust the book shelves or take out the trash. So he relented and took up on Mr. Ackerman's suggestion to go to an auction. Getting there early to get a good seat, Mr. Bott, along with Mr. Ackerman, Mr. Braun and Mr. Hoover, the Dons of their respected parts of New York City, all sat down to converse while the auction for the…. Pleasure portion of the auction slowly came to a close. Mr. Bott cringed as the scum of New York bid money on these poor people just for the gratification of getting their dick in a hole.

"And now for our last and best prize of the night!" The auctioneer spoke as the Dons sighed in relief, none of them liked the idea of people being sold for pleasure as they themselves, tried for years to get it under control but never succeeding. "This one has been in the business for ten years, used and a bit rough looking, but this little beauty will be the best fuck you ever had. Clean and pliant, not a bad body either if I do say so myself. Number 54!" The announcer spoke as someone roughly shoved a young man out into the center of the room. The numbers flying from the crowd started pouring in left and right and it got the Dons wondering whom this "prize" was. "Three-thousand!" "Ten-thousand!" "Twenty Five-thousand!"

"Two hundred-thousand!" The crowd went quiet after hearing the deep booming voice coming from the front row.

"Two hundred-thousand! Going once! Going twice! Sold! To Do Bott!" The young man was then hauled out of the room to be prepped for leaving the facility.

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

"Dad! I'm home! Reiner, Bert, Mikasa, Eren and Armin are here too!" Marco called from the doorway as he and the others walked into the Manor. "Dad?!"

"In the living room son!" He heard his father call and the group walked towards the sound.

"What's up? We heard your voicemail and hauled ass here. What happened?" Marco asked as soon as he saw his father, eyes brimmed with tears and a small smile. The others in the room, specifically Dr. Yeager, looked at them, small sad but slightly happy smiles on their faces. "What's going on here?" The group looked at each other, confused and concern plastered on their faces. Once Mr. Bott moved to the side and gestured to the couch, it was then that the group realized what was happening. On the couch asleep, lay a thin pale man, dark circles under his eyes, bruises and scars and even some fresh wounds, now neatly stitched up thanks to Dr. Yeager, littering his almost naked form. Marco stared at the man laying on the pale green couch and tears flooded down his cheeks. "Jean?"

[lovesbitca8]

Reactions to the Final Chapter of The Auction (4/4)

Anonymous said: Hello! I just wanted to tell you how much I love “The Right Thing to Do” series so much. Normally I’m not a fan of FanFictions giving out sequels or entire series, but I drove right into this little trilogy and I’m still in love. I found it a few weeks ago and I’m listening to the audiobook even though I just read it. You’re an amazing writer 💛

Anonymous said: I’ve always read angsty fic where the characters are jaded and hard and tough, even with each other. But since reading your Right Thing To Do/Auction universe I’ve realized that soft babies who are in love are simple superior.

Anonymous said: I've reread TRTTD, and I've decided to hell with Draco POV for TA, I need more badass Ginny and resigned Harry in my Dramione. They are wonderful and I love them.

Anonymous said: Just want to say that I LOVE LOVE LOVE how you write Blaise and Pansy (like not only in The Rights and Wrong series) but in every fic they're in. God I love their friendship with Draco ugh love the Slytherin Trio

alicia178 said: So. I was waiting for you to finish The Auction before I read it, because I knew I would want to binge it. And I did. I have just finished it and my goodness! What a wonder you are! I adored it. A loved it, and I devoured it! Such excellence, well thought out and brilliant story telling. I can’t wait to see what you do next!! I love the idea of the Dramione You’ve got mail AU. Just wanted to say, well done. LOVED IT. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Anonymous said: Hello, would you ever consider writing a shot fic that focused on Pansy? I am sure you get asked to write new fics all the time, so I apologize! Pansy, both in The Right Thing To Do, but especially in The Auction, is such a strong, amazing character. You write female friendships, loyalty, jealousy, and competition so well. She is so incredible, and I would love to see more of her -- in either of those stories' universes! Thank you again for such stellar writing. <3

No plans for any Pansy fics now, but it’s crossed my mind!

norbertsnotes said: I finally finished The Auction and absolutely loved it! Began rereading TRTTD and came across this little bit when Hermione is recommending books for Draco and couldn’t help but wonder if this is a little nod to Manacled or just The Handmaids Tale in general? “There’s a new novel out, based loosely on a Muggle book from the 1980s.” She stopped at the shelf and tapped the spine. “Dystopian future, marriage law, regulations on bearing children.” She glanced up at him and he was watching her face. “In my opinion the Muggle book is better, but no one’s heard of it here, so…” If it is I’m screaming and just FYI my heart is clearly now forever marred by your insane writing.

Isn’t that crazy? That chapter was published before Manacled was even on Ao3, but you’re right about the reference to Handmaids Tale! That was actually me doing a “the book is better than the series” thing.

Anonymous said: Hate how you've conditioned me into automatically thinking Draco and Hermione are the components of an idiot sandwich. Fic doesn't even have a mutual pining, unrequited but I've been conditioned so... 🙃🤪🙃🤪

Anonymous said: As 2020 wraps up and as I am reflecting on how crazy this year was- I can truly say the Auction was a huge part of getting me through it. Working as a nurse through this pandemic has been rough but I could always count on late Sunday nights getting a taste of the spectacular art you created week after week. So thanks for helping my 2020 be a little more survivable! Can’t wait to read what you put out next!

Anonymous said: i loved the auction, i think i finished it in a day and it’s literally the ONLY dramione fic that I’ve read and didn’t want to finish because I didn’t know what to do after I’d read it it was that good😭I really liked the way you wrote Hermione when she was occluding and the part where Draco asks Hermione what she needs really stuck with me because when it’s set in a darker scenario, the setting gets so much more intense and the scarifices you make for the ones you love get tougher and more sincere like in a life or death situation who would really go there for you. Narcissa was speaking facts “Once they've underestimated you — strike.” You should be proud of the work you’ve produced no matter what people say, I am looking to forward to reading more of your writing 💜

livinginalandfill said: I just finished reading The Auction and I just wanted to say that what you created was a work of art. The prose, characters, and the plot were magnificent. The entire work kept me on my toes and was pulling on my heart strings at the end of each chapter. All the references to the prior fics in the series killed me everytime. Truly a masterpiece!

thebishopkate said: Hey, hi, I just read all the "Rights and Wrongs" series, and, first of all, your writing is so fucking amazing!!! I was so invested in the romance, this universe that you created, everything was fantastic. And "The Auction", holy shit. It's been a while that I had anything to read that pulled so many visceral reactions from me. Really, you're an amazing, fantastic, wonderful writer

thebishopkate said: Oh, and the Ron bit at the end? I was crying my eyes out! Throughout the canon, I've always thought that Hermione was too good for him. But that dialogue? So many feels, I can't' even fully express myself. Really, congrats, you're an amazing writer (I'm kinda hoping you write some more Draco POVs for The Auction). This series was everything, thank you!!

Anonymous said: i finally finished THE AUCTION today and i am freaking out!!!!! 😩😩😩 the way that it ended was PERFECT 😩😩😩😩😩 thank you for putting a close to the story, i binged the first 30 chapters before waiting for the updates. and then i couldnt make it last long enough so i waiiiiiiited until it finished and now it's finished and i'm so grateful for you 😭😭😭 thank you. this is coming from someone who, at age 10, had an unfinished dramione as her favourite fic. it was never completed so i developed a trauma for WIPs, but i'm so so glad i latched onto the auction nevertheless. my world is better for it. THANK YOUUUU SO MUUUUCH

[ayankun]

WandaVision episode 6

FIRST OFF

Whenever I go back to pause things for clues, and find exactly what I’m looking for, I don’t feel justified, I feel that much more insane:

It’s really hard to make out, but I had an alright look at it on my folks’ QLED, and it’s definitely a flying saucer doing an alien abduction on what looks to be a person inside an old CRT TV (with some kind of robot head/boombox on top???)  There are secret aliens in this show, you guys, the facts don’t lie.

HmmmMMMM I wonder if Agnes is as innocent as she looks:

Also, I didn’t see that she was wearing the brooch in this ep, and I was majorly disappointed in that.

Two things here:

No, that’s not a twins joke.

Another Moonmen Confirmed

I know green is his color or whatever, but that hat is literally 10 years ahead of its time

Also, I took the playing-DDR-at-home scenario at face value, and only on the first rewatch did I realize it was a very pointed turn-of-the-century reference.  I am an Old.

There’s a good, subtle Rule of Threes in this ep.  The Setup:

The Sokovian Halloween flashback works on so many levels.  It’s so funny:

The fact that they went trick-or-treating at all

The “speaking Sokovian”

The treat being a fish

They have to share the fish

The concept that this event gave them an infectious disease

“You probably suppressed a lot of the trauma” -- it’s a good sitcom joke but.  the trauma is the joke.  The joke IS THE TRAUMA!!!

Elizabeth Olson is a dream with all her wonderful faces she has this ep.

Vision’s unsettling passive-aggression-sitcom-cooperation whiplash is WOW, consider me unsettled!!!!!!  “Be. Good.”  UGH.

(Just noticed one here, but there are a number of continuity errors in this episode, enough to be distracting later on, and is this a deliberate choice?  Please let it be deliberate.  I didn’t watch a whole lot of Malcolm in the Middle, is it known for its continuity errors?

)

“It’s their first Halloween.” LOLOLOL they are TEN YEARS OLD and this is their FIRST halloween I LOVE IT

DOUBLE RED HERRING CONFIRRRRRRRRMED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Agent Jimmy Woo accidentally identifying himself as the sassy best friend added 20 years to my life.

Found.  FOUND.  Not “created,” “manifested,” “willed into being using my insane witch powers.”  Third Party Confirmed.

I like that it’s the 90s and we can swear on TV now.  “Hell” “kick-ass” “damn it” “fu---dge”

I think the most biting part of Vision finding the whacked out folks is that the soundtrack just kind of ... ignores that anything’s wrong.  Yeah, it’s kinda-spooky Halloween music, but it’s still 100% in-world kinda-spooky-sitcom-Halloween-episode music. 

OKAY LET’S TALK ABOUT THE AD:

As a 90s child, let me tell you, this is a blisteringly accurate representation of children’s marketing from the period.  The shark is wearing sunglasses AND he has a surfboard!!!  And he’s selling you yogurt of all things!!!!!  This is the supreme distillation of what being a child in the 90s was like.

How disappointed I am that they went with crab instead of lobster.

Heard it through the grapevine that this is a representative of Wanda’s imprisonment on the Raft.  That happened in Civil War, right?  So the next ad is The Snap?  We’re running out of iconic decades, too. so, hold on, new thought.

90s: Civil War

00s: Infinity War

10s?????: Endgame???? or?????????

??: Whatever happened between Endgame and WandaVision, given that the ads are stepping forward through Wanda’s IRL life events!!

I don’t want to know how many episodes are planned/announced, but I don’t know what to expect from the format after they run out of decades from which to draw.  Maybe there are only one or possibly two “sitcom” episodes left.  Maybe after that it just breaks down and they can pick and choose from the worlds/styles we’ve already established.  That’d be p neat.  A very unique kind of chaos.

god she’s so cute

Okay, somebody explain to me Pietro.  I honestly walked away from last week thinking he was just some townsperson chump, but then I was reminded that this is the Quicksilver actor from all those X-Mans movies I never watched, soooo people are saying Multiverse Confirmed?  But, if this is X-Mans’ Pietro, then why did he die the same as MCU Pietro?  Or is he literally MCU!Pietro’s corpse, given that he looked all dead same as when she saw Vision’s corpse?  If MCU!Pietro, then why different face???

????????????????

Also I found him highly suspicious, what with all the questions he was asking.  But the only sort of person who would truly want to know the answers to those questions would be someone who already had them ... so I think he was just asking on behalf of the audience, and the delivery was all wonked out.

Rule of Threes - The Reference:

Ok, real talk, whenever computers/networks/data/encryption/servers/mainframes et al come up in mainstream media, I just look away.  I don’t need the kind of psychic damage that comes with such egregious mishandling of the topic.

That being said, does Hayward having eyes through the barrier mean that he could possibly be involved in getting it set up?  Because look.  If Hayward-after-Hayward’s-Villianous-Ends is one antagonizing force, then is there really room for the Third Party (Confirmed) antagonizing force that’s lurking in the negative space silhouette of the Inciting Incident?  With Wanda as the Red Herring antagonizing force, that’s just.  There’s just too many villains, alright?  We gotta start merging these plotlines.

(then again, when I just said “eyes” I realize probably understanding the true nature of his new secret “CATARACT” project will clear a lot of things up.  I’ll wait for enlightenment)

Agnes’ license plate in this episode is 0A1-B2C, which I think is a reference to the way reality is getting pared down to bare bones at the edge of town.  Note that this is not the same license plate number as seen last ep.

ALSO, I drove home behind a NJ plate just an hour ago, and was staring at it for a long time, trying to fit it into the puzzle before A) realizing that this was Real Life and not part of the show and B) WTF is a NJ plate doing in front of me in California.  In any case, I can confirm that NJ plates do not appear to have this number-letter repeating format.

So let’s talk Agnes.

Demonstrated knowledge of the situation in ways others haven’t (”There’s the star of the show” “kids, you can’t control ‘em”)

Shows up when needed most (explained as being Wanda’s doing, but is it)

When Wanda was having her babies, though, who was trustworthy enough to be summoned?  Was it Agnes?

Wanted to babysit REAL BAD

Was in the opening credits framed possessively with the twins

Doesn’t appear to have an IRL identity according to Jimmy’s crime board

Keeps talking about her husband but we’ve never seen him.  Highly unlikely that he’s real

Was the one to find Sparky “dead” - internet thinks she was lying to Wanda about how or possibly if he was dead (I’m trying not to read the theories, so idk exactly what the angle is there)

In an episode where everyone is wearing their original comic outfits, Agnes is dressed as (and laughs like!) a witch

She name-drops Wanda as the one controlling everyone; Norm (or the guy playing Norm) only said “she” and “her” -- meaning Agnes?

Naughty

So we’re 99% sure Agnes is Agatha Harkness, right?  I never read no comics, so I’m taking the internet’s word for it, but from what I can tell, I think we must be right.  If that’s the case, then I’m thinking it’s not impossible for her to be pulling some strings around here (giving Wanda a justification for her “that wasn’t me” doorbell ring, for example, and pulling a double red herring on the fact that she shows up whenever the narrative Wanda her nefarious scheme calls for it).

To devil’s advocate myself, though, we also have Monica’s word that it was Wanda in her mind, lessening the impact of Agnes falsely confirming what Norm only implied.  Also she’d have to be acting for Vision’s sake (and ours) and, if so, then what did Vision’s brain-touch really do, and how did she know he’d find her there, and what did she intend as the result of that interaction etc etc.

If Wanda’s (or Wanda + Third Party Confirmed (Agnes??)’s) powers aren’t enough to sustain the simulation of life on the edges of town, how much worse is it going to be now that there is even more area to try to control???

I don’t know if this is strictly an intended read, but the idea of Halloween as a fun, scares-for-entertainment’s sake type holiday, the rounding off the edges of concepts like “skeletons and ghosts are what people are after they die, let’s decorate the town with them and have a good time” kind of is a haunting parallel to the nature of Wanda (et al) covering up the horrible truth of the situation with this happy-go-lucky sitcom glamour.

How much does one hate seeing Vision giving his life for the greater good (the greater good) for the second time?  In other news, I think I’m seeing some specifically Mind Stone type energy-colors coming off of him, and very little Wanda type energy-colors.  Third Party Confirmed.

Also, I was thinking from last week that perhaps Hayward’s Villainous Ends included capturing the reanimated Vision to be one of those Sentient Weapons his organization is all about, but I Do Not Think his reaction to seeing that sought-after prize disintegrate in front of his eyes really matches up with that theory.  Again, will be patiently waiting for Jimmy to check his email to see what CATARACT is all about!

Rule of Threes - The Payoff:

Also, anyone ID the movie playing in the background?

Ok, final thought.  I watched this about four times today, and on the big-ass TV at my parents’ house finally paused and got up close to see what that white shape is in the reflection.  Thought it might be a skull, but, it’s worse.

These caps do not contain enough data to verify my claim, but I PROMISE YOU it’s a TV

A square old thing with a round screen and antenna on top. 

I SWEAR to you, when I looked into the TV, into Wanda’s eyes, only to see the reflection of a TV, of her looking at me looking at her I had a visceral fear reaction.  Like.  LEGIT nauseous skin crawl.

(All the other episodes have ended with our POV as the fourth wall, from the general (or exact!!!) position their household TV is known to be.)

This is my favorite show Of All Time.

[es-ist-ein-rotes-licht]

“Be” Tracklist Rankings

I had fun doing this for Blackpink’s album, so I thought why not do it for BTS as well. I literally just finished listening to the album, so these are all initial thoughts.

1. Dis-ease

Someone give Jung Hoseok his motherfucking Grammy. Like as soon as it started, I was screaming. Initially, I was like “ooh rap line killing this shit, they own this song”. But then I heard the goddamn bridge. Y’all, I cried. Like actual tears. This is why I’m in this Bangtan shit for life. Side note: this kinda gave me of “Dark & Wild” vibes. So if you’re one of those folks who for whatever reason think BTS peaked with that album, you’ll enjoy this song.

2. Telepathy

So before this album came out, I was really worried how Dynamite would fit into this. Like I really enjoy cohesiveness in albums. Anyway, I heard the first part of this song and it eased all of my worries. This song is sooo fun to listen to. Like I really want to see this live immediately. The only downside of this song is that it feels so short. It’s not, but it feels that way. Someone tell BTS to release a 10 minute version of this song.

3. Blue & Grey

Do y’all hear Seokjin in this song? Do y’all hear Taehyung? My boys killed it! I keep thinking of that one meme “it’s about the yearning”. Like the line “I just want to be happier” hits way too close to home. I feel some type of way.

4. Fly to My Room

This song makes me feel like I’m on a road trip or something. Like peak “staring out the window while on a deserted highway heading home” vibes. Like a couple years ago, I went on a road trip to LA with my aunt and my cousins and we drove this one area full of windmills. It felt magical. That’s what this song feels like. I initially wondered why it was so close to the beginning of the album because I thought it would be better suited towards the end. But I get it now.

5. Life Goes On

100% understand why they chose this as the single. It represents the album perfectly. It gives me strong Adult Contemporary radio playing at a coffee shop vibes. And the video felt like a GCF video with singing. Super personal. Like I low key felt like I was intruding by watching it. I really liked the end where they were all in the empty arena, sitting on stage. I like this side of BTS. One criticism, and maybe this was my fault for having these expectations, it did not give me Spring Day vibes AT ALL. Which is technically fine because we don’t need another Spring Day. But I wanted that same emotional impact I got when I first heard Spring Day and I didn’t get it. It’ll probably grow on me though, especially after the live performances.

6. Dynamite

This song has been out for a while. Thankfully I didn’t play it out before this album came out, otherwise I would have been sick of it by now. Like I said earlier, this song fits the vibe of the album a lot better than I thought it would. Musically speaking. Lyrically, not really. Dynamite did what she came to do and I appreciate her.

7. Skit

I have no idea what they were saying because I couldn’t find an English translation yet. But the boys sounds happy and that’s all that matters 🥺

8. Stay

To be honest, the beginning was a bit meh. Like I didn’t hate it, but it’s like Jamais Vu, where I never seek it out and will probably skip it on shuffle 75% of the time. BUT as it progressed, I think an EDM remix of the song would be pretty fun. Like if they ever perform it live, they need to lean into that. If it gave me more So What/Best of Me vibes or even Make It Right vibes, I’d like it more. Now I know that’s a controversial statement because I know a lot of fans don’t like any of those songs. But I do, so sue me. Unfortunately , it’s my least favorite. I mean, obviously, I ranked it below a damn skit. Oh well

Overall, I love this album. It almost doesn’t feel like a BTS album though, but I think that’s a good thing. I appreciate this side of them. It’s almost like their version of Taylor Swift’s Folklore. Good album, not necessarily groundbreaking (except Dis-ease and Telepathy are cultural resets), but a nice change of pace. And since MOTS7 was kinda disappointing (don’t kill me), so I’m glad BTS released an amazing album this year.

[rametarin]

Little note hider. Or, alternative title: “Ante up for arguments.”

So a few days ago I made a post about the tactics I remember from my youth.

Actual disruption and propagandists that filled little girls’ heads with emotionally charged political shit and encouraged them to, “stawt convuhsayshuns uwu” to, “change society.” And we’re talking kids being emotionally blackmailed to accept many of these subjective things as truth.

Taught to argue with other children, the age where they weren’t even really clued in on how to read or argue with academic buffoonery or emotionally charged appeals to authority.

I remember quite well the interactions.

Babby Radfem: “Our society is racist.”

Me: “No it isn’t. Societies can’t be racist, only the people in them.”

Babby Radfem starts citing known examples of racism talking about slavery.

Me: “Yes I know you can talk about things that happened, that doesn’t mean society is racist, it means there are racists in it.”

Babby Radfem: “Proof? You have any proof? :^) Because I have proof of what I’m saying! So YOU have proof for what you’re saying?”

And you have to understand; these little socio-politically programmed children didn’t just waltz into a library and grab up some Feminist Book of Statistics. They were coached, they were groomed, they were armed with bogus academia huffandpuff and then set loose to go after kids who’d never even heard of these issues before.

In my case, I learned what the concept of rape was because a baby radical feminist informed me because I was a boy, and, “epidemic societal rape” was a thing, that she could never wholly trust me of be comfortable around me, because, “men in our society are so violent and rape women.” Not really an appropriate mindset for a girl under the age of 7. Or a boy, for that matter.

It’s at that point they’d put on this big performance with that smug, disgusting expression on their face, setting up a bunch of articles and examples of things that’d happened in the past and examples of singular racist assholes operating, conflating that deliberately with, “a racist society.” Because you know, if one member of the hivemind super colony acts bad, I guess to socialists that’s, “proof” that “society” didn’t do its job in programming them right, or something.

And it’s at this point that no matter what you say, they aren’t looking for a reasonable discussion where you respect one another’s positions and perspectives, they’re looking for a show trial, and they think they’re being clever by trying to make you defend the actions of actual racists, since in their minds, you’re denying their actions ever happened.

No matter what you say, like broken interfaces, they’ll just sit there smugly reminding you, “you aren’t proving society isn’t racist yet! Do you even have an argument? Do you have proof? Any actual PROOF, not emotionally charged denials? Still not seeing any proof of what you’re saying. Guess you don’t have an argument. I’m sorry, I don’t accept crybabying nuh-uhs, I’m a rational person with a scientific mind :^)”

I say again, this shit, these big blowhard guns, were brought out and used on me. I was fucking 5, at the time. It’s not like I was going to stand up, shout, “Foucult was a boy toucher and a monster!” and show the 10 page report with bibliographed citations. You can’t spur of the moment refute someone handed a book wwwwaay about their age range just to tell you bogus statistics like women only make 50-75% of what a white man makes, “for the same job,” that demands you also spur of the moment disprove what they’re saying in order to dispute or disregard it at all.

Then plays to the peers around you like your outrage over the things you’re being accused of by proxy of being a boy, is just because you don’t like, “hearing the truth.”

And you know what this behavior influenced? Yeah. Annoying Youtube Atheists of the 00s. I’m an atheist, but the difference between me and An Annoying Youtube Atheist, is I don’t make not participating in an organized religion or believing in supernatural creators. While the other considers themselves an intellectual for arguing with probably the easiest arguments to disprove and discredit you can possibly engage.

So when I talk about shit like this that I witnessed and observed happening in the fucking late 80s, early 90s, of course I’m not going to have “proof.” Who the hell happens to have examples of such a random a sporadic thing in the wild? The odds are literally a million times better now than they were when our communication and interactions were in person, without internet, with only access to the information resources in the books you had in your local library or in your house.

The, 1.) Inflammatory Statement 2.) Whipping out a book that may as well have been written by Jordan Peterson or Ben Shapiro for all the bias it has 3.) “Here’s my proof. You have proof? Any proof to source your beliefs, or do you just have feefees? :^)” approach, predates on people being both unfamiliar with the subject matter, as well as not having the resources to effectively dispute the claims.

It’s predatory, it’s deceptive, and it is used to socially browbeat women into their corners, whom them become like enablers and believers and supports in the pew after their cryfests, powwows and ‘come to socialist Jesus’ moment.

But no, I don’t currently possess any proof of this phenomenon or effect, and the mercurial social nature of young girls means catching this interaction in the wild is very unlikely. Which is exactly why that disingenuous request for, “Proof? :^)” is so disgusting.

Even when you HAD proof, the next step after isn’t to concede they’re wrong. It usually went in a number of ways.

1.) The person requesting proof goes dead inside and ignores what you’re saying, and if they respond at all, it’s simply to speak as if you hadn’t just shown them the proof, still arguing as if it wasn’t shown. I guess in a silly attempt to socially override the new information from the discussion and give the speaker the burden of proof to try and make it stick to their denial filled, teflon minds.

2.) They meet all the effort taken to argue with stupid shit that wastes your time and energy. Replying to a thorough rebuttal that rebukes and dismantles the things they are saying with, “KUNG POW PENIS, *GIGGLE*” or just going “DURRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!” and giggling to show they don’t actually care what you have to say and won’t take you seriously. This one is done alone or only when they have other supporters there that won’t accept opposition as legit or genuine, proof or not.

3.) They’ll simply retreat and then scream if you follow them. If they retreat, the conversation effectively ends, and they won’t hear any more of it since it threatens to challenge them, OR they simply wanted to convince people to take what they have to say as fact and it’s a waste of their time to sell lies to people that know they’re lies. But they will scream and make the priority that you’re apparently following or harassing them, when they see argument is futile.

4.) They’ll nod along and pretend you’ve corrected them when you demonstrate you aren’t going to believe what they say, because you have both proof and conviction that their argument is weak, they don’t have a leg to stand on, or you throw in their face you know what they are. But, they won’t retract their stance, they’ll simply go on to, “stawt that convuhsayshun” with someone else, to try and convince them of their politically charged talking point.

5.) They’ll start crying or looking like a kid with their hands caught in a cookie jar, and admit, “I was just twying to stawt a... convuhsayshun..” Which is code that means, “I was trying to propagandize and make you think this thing was true, and make you mad about it as if it was the truth.” This typically happened when I called them out in front of adults that also didn’t agree with the things she was saying, had been programmed to say, and was around adults that could cite proof that what they were saying was false.

It happened so often I realized that at some point it might be in my best interests, to at least THINK about how to prove arguments to random strangers.

In the past, being sidewound by baby radical feminists that, “just started conversations” around the water cooler, axes to grind disguised as random conversations, was a thing. They were like social guerillas or velociraptors. But they were always tangentially rooted in whatever thing they’d been handed to read in order to sound smart.

So, if you knew the contemporary radical feminist talking points, had the time, literacy and resources to research and understand the holes in their claims, where they substituted for integrity, you could unravel them. Or could critique things like sample size or the likelihood they arrived at their conclusion and worked backwards to meet the result they were looking for, or started with a faulty premise.

And when they tried to stretch and flex and get believers and followers, presenting these, “facts” (that were not facts, but lies, subjective talking points, or just feelings) trying to use the trust bonds of friendship to get people to accept them as true for risk of hurting the relationship and their friend’s feelings (an exploitation of people, by the way) you could dispute them.

But they really do not like that, and once you reveal yourself as someone capable of shooting holes in what they say, they’ll only bring out their talking points to your mutual friends when you, ye that has identified yourself as capable of disputing what they say, aren’t around to dispute them.

Pre-internet, pre-cell phone, this was the methodology by which radical feminist zealotry was reproduced among young girls and young women. And drove them absolutely fucking nuts for a few years, until they resolved it and came back to reality. For one reason or another.

But do I have proof of this? Not on hand.

[dlwritings]

Firecracker Soul | Dean Winchester

Chapter 18 - Holly Berkley

pairing - mob!Dean x teacher!ofc

word count - 4,083

warnings - vomit

additional notes at the end

(previous)

Alice woke up and rubbed her eyes. She turned her head to look at the clock and saw that it was almost 6:00, so she rolled from her back to her side, only to have her stomach turn uncomfortably. She covered her mouth with her hand and rushed off to the bathroom. She barely got to the toilet before she spilled the contents of her stomach. She retched so hard that tears came to her eyes, and when she finally caught her breath, she slumped against the counter. There was a soft knock at the door, and Dean poked his head in. "Hey," he said, his eyebrows furrowed. "Are you okay?" She started to nod, but felt another wave of nausea come, so she leaned back over the toilet.

Dean crouched beside her and held her hair while rubbing her back. Alice took a deep breath and grabbed some toilet paper to wipe her mouth, then flushed the toilet. "Yeah," she said. "I guess I must've eaten something weird yesterday. Or maybe I'm coming down with something. I don't know." Dean put the back of his hand against her forehead.

"You don't feel warm," he said.

She sighed. "I feel like crap."

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," he said. "What can I do for you?"

"Nothing," she said with a dismissive shake of her head. "I'll just take it easy today. I gotta text Christine and tell her I can't make it this morning."

"Okay," Dean said, pushing some hair away from her forehead. "I have a meeting with Crowley and my people, but I can just push it to-"

"No, no, it's fine," she said. "Go. I can take care of myself."

"You shouldn't have to be alone when you're sick," he said.

"Seriously," she laughed, "I'm really okay. If I need something, I'll text you. Or Christine or, like, literally anyone. It's not like I haven't been sick before."

Dean sighed. "Alright. Whatever you say, sweetheart."

Alice fell back asleep after that and stayed asleep even after Dean left for the day at 10:30. When Alice woke up again, she found a note on the bedside table. I'll be gone most of the day. It's okay if you're not up for dinner tonight. Just rest up and I'll give you endless cuddles when I get home

She smiled at the note and put it down, then picked up her phone to check her notifications. She had gotten a response from Christine, a message from her group chat with her dads, and a notification from one of her apps.

Hey. Eve needs to know if 🌊 has hit. Please update!

Just like that, Alice felt sick again, but for a whole new reason. Her period was supposed to have hit -she checked the app- on Wednesday. She had taken the right pills, she was sure of it. The whole point of her birth control -in the beginning- had been to regulate her menstruation cycle. She had done it for enough years that she had the whole routine down pact.

Oh god.

"Okay," she mumbled, pushing herself out of bed, "be a grown-up. Handle this like a grown-up. What would a grown-up do right now?" She paused. "Go to the store and get a test. Get three tests. You're probably fine. You're on birth control, for God's sake. That's literally the whole point. Control births."

She changed into some clothes and headed off to the pharmacy, shaking the whole way there. She tried to play music that would calm her down, but she couldn't concentrate on anything except the fact that she was going to the pharmacy to determine whether or not she had a life inside her belly.

Yeah. Totally nothing to freak out about.

Alice was looking all around her as she headed into the store. She felt like she was on a secret mission or something. The last thing she wanted was for someone she knew to see her buying a pregnancy test. Scratch that. Three pregnancy tests.

She got them rung up as quickly as she could, asked the cashier to double bag it, and headed back to her apartment. She didn't want to get the results at Dean's place just in case he walked in for whatever reason while she was waiting.

She had to give herself another pep talk in the bathroom. "Okay," she said, unboxing each package. "Just pee. You pee all the time. This time you're just peeing on some sticks. Totally normal. Totally chill. You're just aiming your pee a little bit differently than you usually do."

She sat on the toilet and held each pregnancy tests in her hands. She got enough pee on the sticks and set them on the bathroom counter. Each stick took three minutes, so she set a timer on her phone and left the bathroom. A watched pee stick never turns negative.

When her phone beeped, her whole body froze up. She managed to shut off the timer and take a deep breath, then walked into the bathroom. She closed her eyes, took another deep breath in through her nose and out through her mouth, and then opened her eyes.

She covered her mouth with her hand as tears welled up.

One test showed a set of double lines, another the word yes, and the last a simple plus sign.

"No," Alice muttered to herself. "No, no. That's not-" She cut herself off with a shake of her head. "Not possible."

That, of course, was the denial talking. One test could read a mistake, but three? Three were, well, she knew there was no use fighting the truth.

There was nothing remaining in her stomach, so she dry heaved into the toilet. Nerves rather than morning sickness, she was sure.

With shaking hands, Alice reached for her phone and called the first person she could think of. The line only rang a few times before she got sent to voicemail. "Hey, you've reached Christine, you know what to do-"

She didn't want to leave a message, so she just hung up. Only a few seconds later, her phone buzzed with a text from Christine: Sorry girl. Things are crazy over here today. Call you later?

Alice responded with a thumbs up, realizing that Christine must've picked up a shift at work since she couldn't make breakfast. If things were hectic there, of course she couldn't take a minute to receive this world-altering news. She turned her phone in her hands a few times, still trying to figure out what to do. She needed to talk to someone right then, and that someone couldn't be Dean. Or her dads.

Then, it hit her like a truck who she wanted to talk to.

Without even really thinking about it, Alice left her apartment and headed down to her Jeep. She drove through town for about ten minutes, stopped at a flower shop to pick up some yellow carnations, and a few minutes later, pulled up to the cemetery. She knew where the grave was like the back of her hand. She used to visit the site almost every week in high school, and even though she hadn't been there since she came back from college, she wasn't sure she'd ever forget exactly where it was: just under the largest oak tree.

She parked her car and walked over to the headstone.

Holly Berkley

1975-1998

Alice sat down and laid the flowers beside the headstone.

"Hi, Mom," she whispered. She crossed her legs and started picking at the grass. "I'm sorry I haven't come by in a while. When I got back from New York, I wasn't exactly in the right headspace, you know? And then I met Dean and-" She hesitated, shaking her head. "I guess I should fill you in, yeah?"

Alice wasn't sure why she felt so inclined to talk to her mom. It was like she said to Dean so long ago. She never felt like she was missing out on anything by not having a mom because she never met her in the first place. What she hadn't told him was that, for years, she had been making up for the lack of a mother by speaking to her this way. It wasn't much, but for her whole life, it was all she had. And she took it.

She talked to her mom for nearly a half hour and told her all about Greg and Lexi and Jess and Sam and Hannah and Castiel and Brent and filled her in on how Christine was doing and, finally, told her all about Dean. "I don't know what to do," she said, putting her hands on her stomach. "I don't know who to tell because I don't know how anyone's going to react. I-" Her voice cracked a bit as she hung her head. "I wish you were here. I wish you could tell me what it was like when you were pregnant with me and, and just tell me that everything's gonna be okay. Because I don't know if everything's gonna be okay, Mom."

Some tears escaped her eyes, and she pulled her cardigan sleeves over her hands. She heard some leaves crunching, so she wiped her tears and looked up, surprised to see Jess walking over to her. "I thought that was you," Jess said with a soft smile. Her smile dropped when she noticed Alice's tear stains. "I'm sorry," she said. "I can leave you-"

"No, no, it's fine," Alice said quickly. "I, actually, I don't know if I really want to be alone." Jess nodded in understanding and sat opposite Alice. She looked at the headstone and the flowers, deciding to wait and let Alice speak first.

"She died giving birth," Alice explained, picking at the grass again. "I guess it's weird that I come out here and talk to her because I never actually knew her."

"It's not weird," Jess said. She paused, then said, "I was just visiting my big brother. He died when he was seven. I was five. I don't even know what I'm supposed to say to him anymore, but I still talk to him sometimes." Alice nodded and pulled her legs up to her chest. When they were both quiet again, Alice let out a heavy sigh.

"I'm pregnant," she whispered. Jess looked up at her, trying to mask her shocked expression.

"Have you told Dean?" she asked. Alice shook her head no.

"I don't know how to," she told her. "It's not like we wanted a baby. We haven't even been together for two months. I feel like such an idiot."

"This stuff happens," Jess said. "And Dean's a good guy. He won't be upset."

"He'd have every right to be upset," she said. "I was the one who said he didn't have to wear a condom." She blurted the words out, but she didn't have it in her to be embarrassed. "I was so stupid. I thought the birth control would be enough, but I shouldn't have been so naive."

"It's just as much on him, Alice," Jess said. "He could've argued, but he didn't. This is not all on you."

"Jess," she said, hanging her head, "I'm so scared." Jess reached out and squeezed Alice's hand so she'd look up.

"Do you want to keep it?" she asked. Alice bit her upper lip and looked down at her stomach, putting her free hand on it.

"Yeah," she whispered. "I do." She looked up at Jess with wide eyes. "You can't tell him. Or Sam. Or Hannah or Cas or, or Lexi or anyone."

"I won't, I won't," Jess assured her. "It's okay. I won't."

Alice scoffed. "How long can I put this off?" Jess smiled softly.

"You obviously won't be able to hide it once you start to show," she said. "Depending on how far along you are, it could still be a while."

"I should probably go to the doctor, right?" she said.

"Yeah," Jess said. "I called my OB-GYN as soon as I got positive on my test." Alice chewed on her thumbnail, and Jess said her name softly so she'd look at her. "You know you have options, right?"

"Yeah," she whispered.

"You don't have to do this," she said. "If you're not ready or you just don't want to-"

"I know," she said. She scoffed a bit and shook her head. "I never, ever thought I'd have an accidental pregnancy," she said, "but if I did, I was sure I would get an abortion. I'm all pro-choice, but now-" She hadn't even realized her hand was still on her stomach, but Jess did. "-I don't want to. Like, that's a little bit of me in there that's going to grow into a person, and I want to see who that person becomes." She looked up at Jess with an embarrassed smile. "I sound crazy, don't I?"

"Not even a little bit," Jess said. "I get what you're saying."

"But, god," Alice continued, "I'm not ready to be a mother."

"Would you consider adoption?" she asked.

"Maybe," she said. "But I would still want to be part of the kid's life. Like, I wouldn't take away the fact that the adopted parents are its mom and dad, but I'd like to be there too from time to time."

Jess nodded. "I can be with you through all of this, if that makes you feel better." She chuckled. "Or I can walk away and pretend I don't know anything."

"No," Alice said. "I need help. I can't do this by myself. And Christine-" She sighed and shook her head. "I think I'd rather just wait until I've told Dean and everything makes sense before I tell her."

"If you're feeling hesitant," she said, "you can wait until the second trimester to tell family and friends. That's what a lot of people do, just because the first trimester is-" She cut herself off, but Alice knew what she was going to say.

"I know," she said. "Highest chance of miscarriage." Jess reached out and squeezed her hand again.

"It's gonna be okay, Alice," she said. "Whatever happens, it's gonna be okay."

Alice bit her upper lip and let out a sigh through her nose. "Do you think he's going to leave me?" she asked. Jess pressed her lips into a tight line, and Alice expected the worst, but Jess shook her head no.

"I don't think so," she said. "He's a good man, and he'll know that this is equally as much on him as it is on you. He'll be as involved or not involved as you want him to be."

"Okay," Alice said with another sigh.

They stayed in the middle of the cemetery while Alice called her doctor. She scheduled an appointment for the following Wednesday after school. Until then, Alice decided she would just have to put on a brave face and pretend like everything was okay. Hopefully her morning sickness wouldn't be too bad and she would be able to hide it all from Dean. "He's not the brightest bulb in the drawer," Jess teased. "He'll never notice."

-

Dean was not looking forward to his meeting with Crowley. He had gone through all possible options, and continuously came up empty. As much as he hated to admit it, Crowley was right. Their best option was to send in Jack.

With everyone -Dean's team and Crowley's- gathered in the bunker, Dean stood up. He was too tense to stay seated. He knew this would not go over well. Jack had already agreed to the idea, and it didn't matter what everyone else said, but they still all needed to know.

"Okay," Dean said, pacing around the table, "as you all -or most of you- know, Jack is Lucifer's son." A few people (mostly Crowley's people) looked in Jack's direction in shock, but everyone stayed silent. "We've been searching for a way to get Lucifer for a long time now, and none of our plans have worked. If I'm being honest, we're getting desperate. So-" He hesitated and let out a sigh. "-we have decided to send Jack in as a rat." Most everyone was silent, but a few others looked frustrated.

"You think that'll work?" one of Crowley's men asked. "You think Lucifer is that much of an idiot that he'd let him in?"

"Everyone has an achille's heel," Dean said. "Believe it or not, family is Lucifer's. If Jack says the right stuff when he meets up with him, I think he'll be desperate enough to believe him."

"How're you going to convince him to meet up?" Amara asked.

"Jack has contacted Lucifer personally," Dean said. "They're meeting up at his bar. Charlie is hoping to hack into the security system so we can see it all go down, because Jack can't wear a wire. It'll be one of the first things Lucifer checks for."

"And if Lucifer doesn't bite?" she continued.

"Or if he calls your bluff?" Bela added.

"If he doesn't bite," Dean said, "we're back to square one, but we'll handle it. If he calls our bluff-" He looked at Jack whose expression remained impassive. "-we'll handle that too."

When the meeting ended, Dean just wanted to go home. He didn't like leaving Alice alone when she was sick, and he knew she probably wanted cuddles.

Okay, maybe he wanted cuddles, but no way in hell would he admit that out loud.

He was stressed, and having Alice's arms around him, her fingers running through his hair, was like the world's best drug to him.

When he got home, he found Alice in the bedroom, practically in the exact same position he had left her, sound asleep. He tried to be quiet as he moved around the room, opening drawers so he could change out of his business clothes. He slid on some sweatpants and a t-shirt and crawled into bed beside Alice. He was able to reach the remote, so he flicked the TV on and kept it at a nearly silent volume, turning on the captions so he didn't wake Alice. She must've sensed his body beside her, because she rolled over and wrapped her arm around his stomach, tangling one of her legs with his. He thought for a moment that she had woken up, but the still steadiness of her breathing proved otherwise.

He picked out an episode of Scooby-Doo that was on Amazon Prime, knowing it was something he could watch without reacting too dramatically to it. He also knew Alice would make fun of him if she caught him watching it, but he didn't mind. Hell, she was the one who semi-regularly watched Disney movies.

Alice stirred about an hour later, and Dean looked down at her. "Mornin', sweetheart," he teased, kissing the top of her head. "How're you feeling?"

"Mm, better," she hummed. "What time is it?"

"Little after seven," he said. "Did you sleep all day?"

"Ha ha," she said back, snuggling closer to him. "No. I think I fell asleep around four or something. When did you get home?"

"About three episodes of Scooby-Doo ago."

Alice looked at the TV for the first time and laughed. "I haven't watched this in ages," she said. "I can't believe you watch this."

"Don't hate," Dean said.

"I'm not," she said. "I'm just saying." Her stomach grumbled then, and Dean chuckled.

"Hungry?" he asked.

"Apparently," she said. "Can we get pizza?"

"Sure," Dean said. "I'll order some right now." Dean grabbed his laptop and went to his favorite local pizza joint's website, ordering the pair of them a large pizza and some breadsticks. When he closed the laptop and put it back on the table, he looked at Alice with a soft smile. Her eyebrows furrowed, and she reached out and stroked his cheek.

"What's wrong?" she asked him.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Well," she said, "you told me I have a tell, and I realized you do too."

"Do I?" he said, somewhat amused.

"Mhm," she said. "When you smile -really smile- you get these little crinkles in the corner of your eyes. But when you're faking it-" She cut herself off and rubbed the corner of his eye with her thumb. "-they don't show. I don't see them now." Dean licked his lips and sighed.

"Just a stressful meeting," he said. "We're taking a risky move, and it's probably going to put one of my guys in danger."

"Who?" she asked.

"Jack?" Dean said, stating it as a question to see if she remembered the name.

"What's your plan?" she asked. Dean hesitated, not sure if he wanted to tell her the details of the job. When he looked down at her eyes again -soft, innocent, curious- he sighed.

"Jack's Lucifer's son," Dean said, "but they have no relationship at all. Jack lived with his mom until he was 16 and Lucifer killed her."

"Oh my god," Alice whispered. "That's horrible."

"Yeah," he said with a nod. "Lucifer was hoping by getting rid of Kelly -his mom- Jack would join his side. Instead, it completely backfired. He wanted revenge, and-" Dean scoffed. "-I'm in the business of helping people get revenge. Jack managed to track me down, and he asked if working for me would get him what he wanted."

"And what did he want?" Alice asked.

"To kill Lucifer," Dean said. She nodded, so Dean continued. "I told him it would take time, but that, yes, I could help him get some form of revenge. I didn't promise death, because I couldn't promise death. I didn't want to sign the kid up for something I couldn't guarantee. Still, he wanted in, so I let him. He didn't want Lucifer knowing he was working for me, so I promised him anonymity and safe residence at the bunker. The anonymity is important, because now, Jack's gonna go undercover in Lucifer's family. It never would've worked if Lucifer knew he worked for me. He'd ask too many questions that Jack wouldn't be able to lie his way through. So, we helped him come up with an entire fake life, and in a week, he's gonna meet with Lucifer and get on the inside."

"But you're worried," Alice deducted.

"I mean," Dean sighed, "yeah. Jack's a good kid, and if anything happened to him-" He shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. "He's like another little brother. I'd never be able to forgive myself. I just hope Lucifer takes the bait and that Jack can keep up his cover."

"You don't think he can?" she asked.

"I think this is a big job to ask a 23-year-old to do," Dean said, "and once he's in, there's only so much I'll be able to do to protect him."

Alice was quiet, the hum of Scooby-Doo still playing in the background. "I wish I knew what to say to make you feel better," she finally said, looking up at him through her eyelashes.

Dean chuckled. "Don't worry about me."

"I always worry about you," she said. "And now I'm gonna worry about Jack. You're gonna kill me with all my worrying."

"Why're you worried about Jack?" he asked.

"Because he was nice to me," she said simply. "Not a lot of people were nice to me when I met them that day, and I don't want to lose one of them."

Alice lifted her chin so she could place a kiss to Dean's lips. "You're too sweet for your own good, you know that?" he said.

"I know," she said with a smile.

When the pizza arrived, they stayed in bed and ate the entire box between the two of them. Alice hadn't realized how hungry she was until she took the first bite of pizza. She was just glad she could keep it all down. Maybe the baby was hungry too. Did babies get hungry this early?

Early. She didn't even know how far along she was. Her first appointment was on Friday of the following week, and that was when she'd find out all that she needed to know.

Dean noticed the zoned out look in her eyes. She was looking at the TV but not really watching the Mystery Gang's shenanigans. "Hey," he said, nudging her shoulder. She shook her head and looked at him. "You good?"

"Yeah," she whispered, smiling up at him. "Perfect."

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

A/N - they never explicitly say how “old” Jack is in the show (I think at one point Dean says he’s born in 2000 but obvi he made that shit up) so I just picked 23

(next)

series masterlist found here

general masterlist found here

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

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[myjourneytoux]

Eyeing that Finish Line

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I've actually been a designer for a while but even I didn't realize it until a few weeks ago.  The funny part is I consciously set out to learn more about design back in November of 2019, when trying to determine my next professional step.  As someone within HR, working as a recruiter and program manager, I have been drawn to individuals within the creative space for awhile now. Through my phone screens with candidates, I learned about the work they do and through those conversations, I got hooked. It was then, back in November of 2019, that I began investing time to learn more about the design world.  Through my findings, I realized I have been applying a lot of the design fundamentals in my work, whether I was a teacher, or higher education professional, or even now as a recruiter.  I have conducted research and empathy interviews, iterated designs of services and programs, created pilots and assessed them, re-worked designs and continued to evaluate, always striving for better user experiences.  I drove the project's vision and presented findings to stakeholders, many in the C-suite.  So yeah, I've been a designer and didn't know it! I've made career pivots before, so this isn't new to me. But what has been different is this time, I'm older. And I have insight now into what recruiting looks like for people in the UX space.  We set a high bar for people at my company who want to work in UX so that honestly slowed my roll for a bit this past summer.  I felt to be seen as credible, I'd need to get a formal certification. Naturally, I had to figure out if that was true.  I sought out answers by reaching out to people and just started asking questions. One endearing comment I continue to hear is that I don't need a formal certification.  Empathy is what matters most and that can't be taught.   As a recruiter, I actually have a LOT of empathy for those that I speak with; whether they get the job or not.  I put myself in their shoes as many are as vulnerable as I am right now, just trying to start something new. As I began investing time to learn more about this new world, I started listening to a podcast.  During one of my midday strolls, I tuned into the User Defenders podcast and heard the OG of UX designers, Jared Spool declare that everyone is a designer (which I later heard drew a lot of criticism from people).  But then Jared gave examples and mentioned that even recruiters are designers because essentially, the hires they bring into an organization can change the user's experience.  I mean, if Jared Spool thinks I'm a designer, then hell yes, I'm a designer! The balance of 2020 was filled with consuming information by reading books like General Assembly's The Practitioner's Guide to User Experience Design, UX Bites by Gabriel Kirkmeier, The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman and Susan Weinschenk's 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about People. I also read a lot of UX-related blogs and completed UX related courses via LinkedIn learning.  I obtained a mentor and started putting some ideas down on paper.  I was even asked to serve as the UX Director for a non-profit.  Things were in full swing but I hadn't yet figured out how to climb that mountain -- taking this information and leveraging it to a new job within UX. Fast forward to December 2020 and I get a random request from someone at my company to speak about my interest in design as it relates to HR.  During my exploration phase, I realized, as with any job, there are a lot of different things you can do within design.  In looking at the double diamond of design, I'm more confident in my skills on the early side of design.  I can research and analyze and synthesize information into recommendations for a future iteration and create the prototypes for those designs.  I began focusing on design strategy and service design as potential easy career pivots.  But I wasn't sure if a place for someone with my interests existed at my current company. I was ecstatic when I heard there was a place, albeit new, and they were focused on the experience individuals have within different touchpoints in HR.  It was crazy to know that my many random conversations led me to an individual that was curious to know more about me and my journey. That conversation sparked yet another with a hiring manager who informed me about an opportunity and asked me if I'd be interested in an HR UX Strategist role.  After a two week courtship of learning more about the team she was building in HR and setting the stage for some huge goals, not to mention meeting a few individuals on her greater team, I was hooked. I went from, "you want me?" to "you want ME!"  I was on cloud nine.  So that's the end of the story, right? We lived happily ever after? Not quite. Unfortunately, right before I was to interview for the role, I learned I was not able to move forward due to strong business needs and some big wins this new group needed to make in a short period of time.  Being a new group with an even smaller team of 3, the opportunity of having me join was not feasible at this time.  Even though the director was happy to mentor me and saw my abilities, it was a no go. Of course, it was a hard pill to swallow.  To be approached by a director who saw my unique perspective being in HR and relentless effort to transition into design - it was the perfect role. But this setback just gave me time to hone my abilities through side projects; demonstrating my knowledge of the design process.  In the two weeks since receiving that unfortunate news, I have been on a passion-fueled binge of all things UX. For one, I needed to establish some big goals. I'm a junkie when it comes to setting goals and challenges that seem insurmountable. For example: I went from not being able to swim 20 meters in a pool to swimming 350 meters 6 weeks later in my first sprint triathlon.  But I wasn't finished there. Four months later I finished a one mile open water swim in a lake for a triathlon that was 50 total miles.  And 7 months from there, I completed my first half Ironman. And finally, 18 months after my first half Ironman, I had my fastest swim to date by swimming 2.4 miles in an ocean to compete in and finish my first Ironman.  But that wasn't enough. I traded the water for trails and 2.5 months later completed a 50 mile trail run in difficult terrain.  So setting a few professional goals? No problem.  My friends and family know when I set a goal, there's nothing that can stop me. In reading 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about People, I learned that people are more motivated as they get closer to a goal.  I know I certainly became more motivated after coming so close to achieving a dream job.  Therefore, I kickstarted this journey into high gear by establishing the following goals:

1) Pivot into UX by the end of 2021.  The short-term goal is to pivot mid-year, but I'm giving myself grace.  Again, I know how hard it is to get into design at my company. Giving myself ample time to accumulate more knowledge and apply them to various projects, will be a huge win.

2) Work on a side project through the non-profit group, "Teaching: A Path to Learning & Development."  I'll document this work separately in a follow-up blog as a lot of work I'm doing here is opening my eyes as I put theory into practice. 3) Obtain skills through an internal mobility project.  Remember those conversations I had during my two week courtship by this director for the HR UX Strategy role? Well my passion about internal mobility shined through and one of the people I spoke to asked if I'd be interested in assisting. I finally got the go ahead from my current supervisor to spend time helping; now I just need to lean in! 4) Finish the UX Design Learning Path via LinkedIn Learning. A lot of my strong abilities thus far have been on the first diamond within the double diamond design. I want to be more knowledgeable about the second diamond so that I can be a utility player in this space. Now that I've set these goals, I can see, in my head, the finish line. I'm literally applying the same training mentality as I had with my endurance races to my new career by dedicating at least an hour a day and 2-3 hours on the weekend, just chipping away at the larger goal ahead of me. My journey to UX will have its ups and downs; it's ah-ha's and OMG moments. And I want to document them all. I've been journaling since I was 10 so this isn't new to me. But what is new is sharing my inner thoughts and being raw. Perhaps I'll find others who are trying to make their way to UX. But for now, I want to share how this process has been for me. When I write, it helps cement my findings and it also helps me remember just how far I've come. Welcome to My UX Journey.

[daggerzine]

Sohrab Habibion from SAVAK (and Obits, Edsel, etc.) fills in the gaps.

I first noticed the name Sohrab Habibion in the Sub Pop band Obits nearly a decade ago. He’d then gotten in touch with me a few years back when he sent me the last Savak record, Beg Your Pardon (the band’s 3rd). I did some backtracking and realized he was in the old DC post hardcore band Edsel, whose music I enjoyed. We got to talking and I realized this guy’s had a pretty interesting career and I needed to find out more. He was more than agreeable to an interview on the DAGGER site. Oh and dig this....he recently he began posting some videos that he took of shows in the DC area in the mid-80’s, which is discussed below. Let’s all thank our lucky stars that someone was there with a video camera at shows back then.

Back to SAVAK, they have recently released their fourth full-length, Rotting Teeth in the Horses Mouth (on the Ernest Jenning Record Co label, like the last few) and it’s a terrific record. The kind of post-punk that’s not afraid to pOp! and vice versa. So needless to say Sohrab had plenty to talk about. Let’s take a trip both down memory lane and back to the future as well.

Sohrab.... always pushin’ the hair products.

 Did you grow up in the DC area? If not how did you end up there?

I moved to the suburbs of DC in 1979. My mom and I drove through Hurricane David from my grandfather’s house in Leonia, New Jersey to Annandale, Virginia with all of our possessions in the back of a Chevy Chevette. We had just left Iran because of the Revolution and, after a short stay in Bergen County to gather ourselves and do some research, my parents decided that we would resettle in the DC area.

Do you remember what the first record you ever bought was? First concert?

First record: It was a cassette of Love for Sale by Boney M. Actually maybe that was a gift from a friend. Either way I think of it as my first-owned album. I quickly had the lyrics to “Ma Baker” memorized and never gave a second thought to just how weird the cassette cover art was. If you’re not familiar, perhaps imagine an S&M dungeon version of Ohio Players? As a 7-year-old I think it just didn’t register. More interesting is that the producer, Frank Farian, was also the guy behind Milli Vanilli. If you’re up for it, I recommend doing some Googling about Mr. Farian, who was born Franz Reuther just after the start of World War II in a German valley settlement once known as the “Town of Leather.” It’s good stuff, I promise.

First concert: A friend’s older sister drove us to the old 9:30 Club to see one of the club’s 3 Bands for 3 Bucks nights. I remember feeling pretty excited about being in a part of town I didn’t know and seeing all kinds of people I didn’t ordinarily see. This was probably 1983 or 1984 so it was heavy on the New Wave look. In the basement of 9:30, once you’d squeezed down the narrow flight of stairs, there were bathrooms as well as a small counter that sold records and tapes. I bought The Halloween Cassette—a WGNS comp with Gray Matter, United Mutation, Velvet Monkeys, Malefice, Bloody Mannequin Orchestra and others—and the Minor Threat record that compiles the first two 7”s. On our drive home the DJ on WHFS played the song “Minor Threat,” which we literally had in our hands, and the whole thing felt tremendously serendipitous.

During his tryout with the Washington Bullets (Elvin Hayes beat him out). 

At what age did you pick up the guitar?

One night my mom came home from a school fundraising auction with an acoustic guitar that she’d won in the raffle. I actually think it might be the only time anyone in my family has ever won a raffle. I was 13 or 14 and discovering that I was not as good of a baseball player as I’d hoped or wanted to be and the guitar felt more connected to my interests, so I started to teach myself chords and rudimentary scales. It wasn’t long before I was able to get an electric guitar and make a complete mess of sound in neighborhood basements with friends.

How old were you when the punk rock bug bit you?

Thirteen, I think. I’m pretty sure it was 7th grade. I didn’t know a lot about rock music. Having spent a chunk of my early life in Iran, I missed the boat on a lot of big, American rock’n’roll moments. I was 9 when I was first exposed to KISS by neighbors who were also in the Boy Scouts and so I kind of lumped all that costuming together and the whole thing seemed silly. Special badges and membership cards and various allegiances you were supposed to declare. I felt disengaged from a lot of things in the suburban culture around me, so punk made sense upon its arrival. It took some time to sort things out, like what made the Dead Kennedys good and The Exploited bad, but once that initial door opened, I never turned back. If anything it just opened additional doors to other subcultures and underground movements and marginalized artists and thinkers. Punk helped me recognize that my sympathies will always be with the disenfranchised, the unheralded, the amateur, the wandering tinkerer.

How and when did Edsel get together?

I met Nick Pelliocciotto and Geoff Sanoff (who wouldn’t be in Edsel for a few years) at a Government Issue show at the Hung Jury Pub. Nick and I briefly played in a band with Jim Spellman (Velocity Girl, High Back Chairs, Foxhall Stacks), but that fizzled out. So Nick and I were looking for a bass player when we saw Steve Ward play a cover of “White Rabbit” at a high school talent show. Nick and I agreed that Steve looked cool (he really did) and, when we ran into him in the parking lot, he passed our test by answering that his favorite DC band was Happy Go Licky. We started practicing in the basement of the house Nick, Jim Spellman and I lived in off Reno Road in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of DC. We didn’t know what we were doing. Nick played me a bunch of records I had never heard before and we would talk about various details in the music. He made me aware of the way certain things interacted, like the bass guitar and the kick drum. I’d never considered that. I was also unfamiliar with singing in a band, so was starting from scratch. A lot of it began as rhythmic sing-song-speak-howling that could be heard somewhat above the volume of the band. I’ll never forget recording our first demo at Inner Ear with Michael Hampton. When it came time for me to do the vocals we were all surprised by what they sounded like and Michael nicely said, “Why don’t we call it a day and you go home and work on some melodies that we can record tomorrow.” Ha! When Nick and I got back to the house we listened to a bunch of albums to get ideas for vocal melodies. The one that resonated with me was Midnight Oil’s 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and it helped me understand how you could take a simple line and move it around with chord changes. I didn’t figure out what phrasing was for some time to come, but that was the start. Thank you Michael, Nick and Peter Garrett.

How/when did you end up in NYC?

Well, it’s a circuitous story, but . . . Edsel toured a lot between 1993 and 1995. So much so that I moved back into my parents’ basement to avoid paying rent for a place I wasn’t going to be spending any time in. My folks are lovely and it was a fine arrangement, but I missed having an apartment of my own. On tour in Chicago I was presented with the opportunity of a cheap living situation in a city that I liked, so I moved there. I had this fantasy that the band could keep it together while being in 3 different cities—Geoff had moved to NYC and the two Steve’s were in DC. Not a chance. I had a good year in Chicago, working at the Empty Bottle and playing with different local musicians, but Edsel basically succumbed to inertia and I decided to move back to DC to make a solo record. My parents had a cabin in the Shenandoah Valley and I went there for a period of time with my 4-track and the hopes of discovering whatever my version of Leonard Cohen and Brian Eno might be. That didn’t happen, but I learned a lot about recording myself and making mistakes and stumbling on things I liked that I hadn’t intended. Around this point I got a call from Michael Hampton, who’d moved to New York City a few years earlier. He said his neighbor in the West Village had moved out and he wondered if I might want to take the apartment. I was feeling pretty untethered and the idea of giving Manhattan a shot was exciting, so in November 1997 I packed up my books and CDs and headed up here. I’ve since crossed the bridge over to Brooklyn, but have no plans of leaving. I love this city and all of its flaws.

How about Obits? I know Alexis was in Edsel….had you known Rick already?

Alexis played in Edsel for a few reunion shows we did in 2013, but he wasn’t in the original lineup of the group. I first met Alexis in 1985 when Lünch Meat, his band, played with Kids For Cash, my band, at my local community center. He and I also share a birthday and a similar sense of humor, so when he joined Obits after the departure of Scott Gursky, our original drummer, it was an effortless transition. I’d also played with Alexis in Girls Against Boys on a 2002 European tour that Eli couldn’t do. I was Fake Eli and got to play bass on some of my favorite GvsB tunes, which was a blast. Alexis has a humorous diary from that tour: http://www.gvsb.com/euro_diary/index.html

Here’s an excerpt just so you know it’s worth the clicks:

“scott has determined that we should get rid of all the equipment and excess drummers and bass players and just travel with a painted sheet (we in the biz call this a scrim). that way he could have a band painted on it and just cut out the head of the singer and stick his own head through. this would reduce overhead and be a whole lot less of a hassle than having squabbling bass players and drummers with no IQ whatsoever.”

Rick and I met at an art show of his in the summer of ‘99. In fact, in looking to clarify the year I came across this email I sent to a friend:

“Last night my friend Hiroshi took me to an opening of his friend Rick Froberg’s work in some unknown Lower East Side apartment/gallery. I was shocked at how incredible his stuff was. His etchings like Goya’s, his prints like a German expressionist and his paintings like a weird amalgam of Raymond Pettibon and Norman Rockwell. But everything was very original despite its familiarity. He gave me one of his prints and I actually ended up buying one of his paintings. I’m really excited about it.”

Funny thing is that on that European GvsB tour I was wearing a Hot Snakes shirt. Little could I have guessed that I’d be in a band with Alexis and Rick 10 years later. Or maybe I could’ve? Our behavior and patterns are probably more predictable than I’d like to admit.

Anyway, long and short of it is after meeting Rick we started hanging out and as Hot Snakes was winding down in the early aughts he proposed we get together and strum our guitars. We had a good time and kept at it until things started to take shape. Fast forward a bit and our friend Speck browbeat Rick into playing with her band, Orphan, at Cake Shop. That was early 2008 and the internet did us a favor by sharing a bootleg recording of our gig, which led us to signing with Sub Pop. Seems just as weird now as it did then, but so it goes! The band was a hoot to be in and we had a grand time, particularly touring. The trips we made to Europe, Australia, Japan and Brazil were fantastic. I never thought I’d be able to do that playing scrappy rock’n’roll music. All the people that we met, the local specialties that we ate and drank . . . and drank . . . and then ate some more. Unforgettable. Until I forget them. Then I’ll refer to the documentation.

Obits.....always ready to rumble (notice the switchblade comb in Froberg’s pocket). 

Tell me about the end of Obits and the beginning of Savak? Who came up with the name?

The end of Obits was a little unexpected. At least the timing of it. All bands end, so it wasn’t surprising in that regard, but we had a French tour planned and had been offered some East Coast dates with Mudhoney, so it was a bummer not to be able to do those. But it had been a cold and miserable winter and Rick had some family stuff to marshal, so it felt best to call it, which is what we did on April 1st, 2015. The April Fool’s part wasn’t intentional, but I liked that it happened that way, what with being in a band often feeling like a cosmic joke anyway. But we’re all still good friends and very much in touch with each other. Funny thing is we’d actually written a fourth record with two drummers, as Matt Schulz had started playing with us as well (we did one show with both Alexis and Matt, which was fun), so on my hard drive somewhere are the demos and jams for that, including covers of “The In-Crowd” (https://youtu.be/KYbwk26mYJA) and Beasts of Bourbon’s “I Don't Care About Nothing Anymore.” (https://youtu.be/IpWi4OxhJXY)

Towards the end of Obits I’d started getting together with other friends to make noise. I was playing with Greg Simpson and Matt Schulz, doing instrumental versions of Hooterville Trolley and Shadows tunes, and separately with Michael Jaworski and Benjamin Van Dyke, just bashing out riffs. I asked all involved if they would want to combine the two and everyone was into it. The nice thing was Michael and I got to write with two different drummers, which opened up new ideas, and for a band that was just getting the swing of our internal vocabulary, it helped jumpstart the mojo.

I can’t remember at what point we were talking about band names, but when Viet Cong couldn’t take the heat for their name and decided to change it I made a joke about calling our group SAVAK. Then the more I thought about it the more I liked it and the group was on board, so we ran with it. The Iranian side of my family was a bit perplexed and bemused, but they all understood that this was a rock’n’roll outfit and not some creepy tribute to the former secret police in Iran. I’ve come to appreciate how that type of band name is a good litmus test. With a moniker like SAVAK you can see who actually knows anything about global political history, but more importantly you immediately know that anyone who takes issue with it isn’t likely to be interested in or even be familiar with punk rock or underground culture. So that person’s opinion on the subject doesn’t hold weight for me and I’ll attempt to redirect to a different subject that could be entertaining to chat about, like food or wine or bicycle maintenance or John le Carré books or, I dunno, HTML/CSS?

Savak has been recording pretty consistently…how did the new record come together so quickly? Who came up with the title?

Michael Jaworski, the other guitarist, singer and co-songwriter, came up with the title of Rotting Teeth in the Horse’s Mouth. Apparently it appeared to him in a dream and, well, I just liked the way it sounded. Both in that it reminded me of the DK’s classic Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables and as a play on the idiom “hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth,” since the current mouth we hear more often than is good for anyone’s mental health has enough proverbial rotting teeth to fill the mouth of a giant armadillo.

We worked on the album over a period of months. Sometimes we would get together with Matt Schulz, our drummer, and hammer stuff out. Other times either Michael or I would start something at home and build it from there. The main thing was to keep it feeling like a band had cut it together live, regardless of how accurate that may be on any given song. We started with 16 tunes, ditched 2 of them that weren’t as developed, and recorded the remaining 14. Then we picked the 10 that sounded the most cohesive for the album and the others will come out as singles later in the year. We spent many intensely focused hours editing, overdubbing and trying to really hone in on what each tune needed. I like discreet events in music and subtle details that may not make themselves evident for a few listens. A keyboard that only appears in the second verse or a backing vocal that’s buried deep in the right channel of the outro or a flanged cymbal crash at the top of the chorus. Stuff that doesn’t have to happen in the live version but makes the recording a little richer without being overbearing.

SAVAK, just before diving in. 

In Savak, re; the songwriting process, is it both you and Michael together or do you write independently?

There’s always a collaborative element. We each add or edit the other’s songs to some degree. That’s one of the things I really like about our partnership. We actively try to keep our egos out of the way. And while we may not share the exact same taste about every little thing, we trust each other’s sensibility. I think that willingness to let go of our own ideas makes them more interesting and strengthens the working relationship.

Tell us about working with Arto Lindsay?

Rick Froberg was employed as an illustrator at a web-based, digital media shop in SoHo called Funny Garbage and he helped get me a gig making music for cartoons and video games they were producing for companies like Cartoon Network. I had access to a recording studio on a floor above our office which was run by an incredibly talented musician/producer named Andres Levin. One day ‘Dre asked if I could work on a session with a friend of his for a gallery installation. It seemed interesting, so I agreed. The guy showed up with two pillow cases that he wanted to put on his arms and flap wildly in front of a mic. His idea was to pitch the pillow case recording down a few octaves and add a lot of reverb so it would sound like a giant bird was flying. I don’t remember if he was pleased with the results, but we had a blast trying, and it turned out that fella was Arto Lindsay. He got in touch with me soon after about recording his next album. I was direct about the fact that while I was brisk with the ProTools and could run sessions efficiently, I was not a real engineer who knew about microphone placement and how to apply compression, etc. He said that was fine and arranged to rent a recording rig for his apartment and we got straight to work with Melvin Gibbs, who is Arto’s writing partner, co-producer, and bass player. We made Invoke in 2002 and two years later we made Salt, once again doing the whole thing in his Chelsea living room. Arto’s a wonderful guy, as is Melvin, and we had a terrific time together. I also learned a lot. He has such a deep knowledge of avante garde music and art and a whole world of Brazilian culture that he can tap into. And Melvin is an incredible musician, so getting to see how he approached assembling Arto’s ideas was fascinating. He was also forgiving with the fact that a punker like me was trying to edit Brazilian rhythms when I was having an impossible time even identifying the first beat of the groove. There was a lot of, “Please just tell me where the ONE is.” Arto knows a wide array of people and the process of making a record with him was very much about getting it done, but not at the expense of the vibe, so if someone dropped by you’d just have to roll with it. Sometimes that person would bring their instrument and overdub on a song or two, so I had to figure out how to be flexible about the recording process to make sure it was gonna be smooth for all involved, regardless of if it was a violin player or a guy doing a percussion track using a cardboard box. I ended up calling Geoff Sanoff for advice quite a bit—to the point where Arto would joke, “Is it time to call Geoff?” Ha! But he knew the deal going in, so all was fine. The experience of making those records was great and I got to meet some interesting folks. Also my appreciation of Brazilian music completely exploded. An unexpected and super cool project with Arto, Debbie Harry and Mikhail Baryshnikov also came from that. Another side note: when we were recording Invoke there was a song which Arto wanted to get Animal Collective involved in. This was 2001 and they were still more of a record store employee kind of band, but Arto had a couple of their CDs (Spirit They’re Gone Spirit They’ve Vanished and Danse Manatee, I think) and was really into them. We arranged to go into Stratosphere Sound, the studio that was owned by Adam Schlesinger, Andy Chase, and James Iha, where Geoff Sanoff worked, and do the session there. They had an interesting way of working—they would manipulate all of the instruments, including live drums, and have everything run through their PA and then have Geoff mic the PA speakers. So the final thing was this gauzy, mushy, blur that was like a sonic paste. They totally knew what they were doing and I was particularly impressed with Noah/Panda Bear as a musician.

Speaking of legends, how did you begin collaborating with Michael Hampton?

First we should be clear that we’re not discussing “Magic” Mike Hampton AKA Michael “Kidd Funkadelic” Hampton. According to Discogs, the Michael Hampton I know is “Michael Hampton (3)” of Brief Weeds fame. He’s a few years older than me so I missed his days in SOA and The Faith, but I was a fan and saw him in Embrace and One Last Wish. I attended American University in DC and ran into him on campus, told him I also played guitar and suggested that we “jam sometime.” Knowing him now this detail cracks me up because I’m positive I freaked him out and that he was horrified by the idea of “jamming” with an arbitrary, long-haired frosh. Some time after Edsel started we asked Michael to help produce our demo, as we were clueless about the studio. And when he was in Manifesto our bands played together and we got to be better friends. After he moved to New York, it was he and his wife, Monica, who encouraged me to move here. They also introduced me to my wife. And for the last 15 or so years we’ve worked together on soundtracks for indie films, documentaries and commercials. I can’t recall how that collaboration first started, but I love working with Michael. He’s got a quick wit, so there’s lots of yucks involved, but he also has a remarkable knack for music composition and knows how to layer ideas for perfect cinematic effect. As a guitar player he remains one of my favorites. Michael’s distilled Bob Andrews from Gen X and Captain Sensible and George Harrison and all these choice rock’n’roll and punk players into something distinctly his own.

Somewhere in Madrid, Spain (Spain Radio Nacional) 

Tell us your top 10 desert island discs?

That’s tough. I’d like to ensure a bunch of different moods are covered, so let’s see . . . how about:

Hamza El Din - Music Of Nubia

Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou - Éthiopiques 21: Piano Solo

Mark Hollis - s/t

Skip James - Today!

Charles Mingus - The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady

Mission Of Burma - Vs.

The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers

Television - Marquee Moon

The Velvet Underground - s/t

Wire - 154

Who are some of your favorite current bands?

Bed Wettin' Bad Boys, Cable Ties, Contractions, FACS, Gotobeds, Grey Hairs, Hammered Hulls, Hot Snakes, Light Beams, METZ, Mint Mile, Modern Nature, Patois Counselors, Pays P., Rattle, Skull Practitioners, Slum of Legs, Sunwatchers, Tanning Bats, TK Echo, The Unit Ama.

I know I’m forgetting stuff. There’s a ton of excellent music being made right now.

What’s next for Savak? Once the lockdown is over will you guys tour?

It’s hard to be certain about anything these days, but I do know we’re eager to play once the Javel water has cleared. My hope is that we reschedule our UK tour as well as the shows we had on deck with Archers of Loaf. We were also trying to coordinate a Japanese tour, which we’d love to do, so I’ll add that to the list.

In the meantime we have a couple of non-album singles coming out later in the year.

I love making music, so whatever form it needs to take to make it work given our circumstances I’m fine with. Wanna jam on our phones? Hit me up!

SAVAK’s new one- Rotting Teeth in The Horses Mouth

BONUS QUESTION:  Tell us about all of those shows you recorded in the 80’s and have been putting up on the Dischord page? Great stuff!

Thanks! My mom bought me a Sony Betacam in 1985. I honestly had no inclination towards videotaping anything prior to this, but I think she may have thought it was a positive thing for a teenager to get involved in instead of playing Atari or hanging out at the Orange Julius at the mall or whatever. So I had this camera and I started taping what I was doing, which was basically going to shows. I didn’t think much about it and I never watched the tapes afterwards, so just slowly built up a collection of recordings that sat in a box at my parents’ house for years. It wasn’t until James Schneider started working on what eventually became the Punk the Capital movie that the tapes were unearthed. Then Scott Crawford wanted to use them for Salad Days and had the genius idea of getting Dave Grohl’s production company to digitize them, as they wanted footage for that Sonic Highways show. So at Scott’s suggestion I sheepishly asked if it was something they could do and they immediately said yes. I was pretty stunned by their generosity. The tapes themselves are now part of the Punk Archive in the DC Public Library, which is both cool and hilarious. The idea of random stuff I videotaped when I was 15 being part of an institutional archive is pretty absurd. Now that I’ve got this extra pandemic time to spend in front of my computer, I’ve been editing down each set, adjusting the light balance so the footage is less murky and also remastering the audio so they sound better. The timing of the Dischord Records Fan Page on Facebook is fortuitous, as it provides a reasonably eager audience for what might have otherwise just been a few additional gigs of server space being cooled in a Google data center in Moncks Corner, South Carolina.

“Who you callin’ a low life?” 

www.savakband.com

www.savak.bandcamp.com

[jhope-seok]

I have a lot of things to say about Tinder.

This is a personal rant about idiot boys on tinder. So if you’d like to read my CRAZY FUCKING ESCAPADES IN THE DATING WORLD. PLEASE. GO AHEAD. CLICK READ MORE. IT’LL BE INTERESTING. And fun. To watch me implode then explode.

Warnings: mentions of sex/sexting, lots of cursing, men being disgusting--potentially triggering, and one angry ass woman.

Warning part 2: this is A LOOOONG ASS POST, probably with a lot of grammatical errors. It’s 2am. (just so we’re all aware, it’s about 2.3k worth of ranting plus pictorial evidence)

So here’s the thing about me and tinder. I’ve been on the thing since I was in college, probably around junior year when I really came into the realization of my sexuality/being a pansexual person. Keep in mind this was like.....5 or 6 years ago now. I was interested in exploring my options, exhausted from going to countless frat parties and having random makeout sessions with boys who never asked for my number, and/or went on to makeout with the next girl they found at the party. Over the years I have collected an INFLUX of over 1,000 matches. I am not saying this number to brag, I am saying this number to give you an idea of how much of a credible fucking source I am when I present my case. And my case is as such.

ALL MEN ON TINDER ARE THE FUCKING. ABSOLUTE. WORST.

For perspective I have also dabbled in the following dating apps:

OKCupid (absolutely horrid. don’t do it. the shit i went through on this app....just. don’t get me started. I could make a whole other post about the atrocities of this site)

HER (really sad option for lesbian/bi/pan/women looking for other women)

Bumble (pretty successful but forcing the woman to speak first is annoying as hell and then giving a STRAIGHT MALE ONLY 24 HOURS TO RESPOND. Utter hell.)

Hinge (just...downright annoying)

CrossPaths (for christians. Honestly a good idea. Poorly executed. Poorly advertised).

Badoo (honestly...what the fuck)

Coffee Meets Bagel (good idea; too complicated)

Skout (nope)

The Game by Hot or Not (i don’t remember using this but my phone says it’s in my cloud)

And probably some others I can’t remember

What you should take away from this list is that

I’m a needy bitch

I was VERY DESPERATE at times

And i’ve tried a LOT OF OPTIONS.

therefore: don’t comment on this saying: well this worked, well that worked, try this, try that. No. Tinder is still one of the only options that actually works consistently and will continue to work because it is one of the least complicated among the dating apps.

Now. To my point that all men on tinder are the absolute fucking worst.

Time for some examples.

I will not be using these people’s real names, because that’s just mean. So I will present them to you in cases.

Case #1:

Me and this man matched about a year and a half ago, end of 2016. We were unable to meet up because I had a bunch of plans going on--at the time I worked in a law firm and my commute was hell so i only had time to go on dates on the weekends. And being that it was december I was busy every...single...weekend. Which he was fine with! (Awww what a kind gentlemen). No.

He had made it pretty clear from the beginning that he was really only in it for the sex. which for me at the time was fine. I let him know that I didn’t just fuck around on the first date. I lived--and still do live--with my mother and so he couldn’t just come over whenever and i couldn’t just leave whenever i wanted to spend the night at his place in D.C. He said that was fine. However, apparently he was not fine with that.

We talked for a month, lots of sexting, lots of naked snaps, whatever, whatever, we were basically waiting to jump each others bones. But I had also told him that I did not fuck on the first date. I had a rule. I would not break that rule. Again, he said he was fine with that.

On our first date--in a CROWDED RESTAURANT--for brunch, he kept whispering to me about how he wanted to push all of our plates off the table and fuck me in front of all those people. I politely told him to shut up because there were people sitting less than two feet away from us and that was inappropriate for sunday brunch to be talking like that (how proper of me....). Anyways, I let him walk me to my car in a garage, and as we approached it he came up behind me and forcefully turned me around to kiss him. I was like “ooh how hot. I like this.” Anyways, I drove him to his car, we made out a little, then we went on our separate ways. We had a second date not much longer after that, where we had agreed to go out to dinner BUT that first we were gonna fuck in his car. So we met up in a garage and we waited for the cars around us to leave and then we made out, and i sucked his dick. I did N O T let him have sex with me because I was annoyed that he was trying to push me to it--he had a daddy kink--and kept saying “ooh how hard do you want daddy to fuck you”. I said “You can only fuck me when I say you can, and I say no.” thank god he respected my boundaries. So I sucked him dry, then he “MAGICALLY” got a call from his work calling him in. I barely heard from him after that. Because he told me I should come over and spend the night so we could fuck. I said no. He ghosted me.

Case #2--Who knows:

Soooo many fucking men. Have ghosted me. For no reason. Like we’ll have a good few opening lines. And then....nothing. Forever. Where in the FUCK DID YOU GO?! Did you find someone better? Did you grow uninterested with our conversation?! Did you forget how to speak the English language? Did you decide you regretted swiping on me? The worst is when they don’t unmatch you and then it’s just left there....hanging.

Case #whatever:

The fucking men who ask if it’s okay to text. And then don’t text.

I don’t even remember this dude’s NAME in the first place to omit it, but we got into an argument because he supports the store brand cheese puff that is America’s president, and I matched him only so I could yell at him (yeah I know...whatever...I like to prove my dominance and tell boys why they’re wrong. Also because half of the time I use dating apps just to have conversations with people because I’m bored). Anyways. we got in this heated debate and he was like “I like your fire, you should text me here’s my number ____” blah. So I texted him cause i was interested enough in our debate to continue it. THE BITCH NEVER ANSWERED ME. LITERALLY....FOR MONTHS. PROBABLY OVER A YEAR. And then out of fucking nOWHERE he responds like “hey who is this again?” Dude...... NO.

Case #The Never Ending Message Senders:

These men are the worst. So I should explain myself first. I don’t really ever unmatch someone unless it’s for a good reason. Like they’re being disgusting, racist, homophobic, gross, call me fat, ugly, whatever. For the most part I don’t unmatch with someone because in the old days of tinder, unmatching would just PUT THE PERSON BACK IN YOUR CIRCUIT (good job tinder). I’m assuming they did this in case you deleted your tinder, or your app crashed and you had to restart, or you accidentally unmatched someone, whatever. So I don’t unmatch for the sole reason that I don’t want these jerks, who never took the time to respond to my hello or witty opening statement, back in my playing field. I don’t revisit my old matches, I don’t try to restart conversations with them.

If only men could learn the same fucking thing. I have so many men who CONSTANTLY message me. I’m talking like once in every blue moon. It’s like they let the conversation lie for a while, and then BAM another message. The ones I do actually unmatch are the ones that don’t wait a while. They just constantly message, hour after hour after hour until I either respond or unmatch. I don’t know a woman who WOULD respond after having gotten 10 messages of the same “Hello? You there?” “Member me?” (yes one dude has actually said “member me” to me. Not “remember me”...”member me”) etc. etc. in the course of a few hours. Take the hint dude. Please. I don’t enjoy being ghosted, but I know when to take a hint.

A perfect example of such case is the following!

(Context: I just updated the pictures in my tinder account today! So through tinder’s cool new facebook timeline! you can see when your matches update their profiles. to scroll through and judge them even further to see if they’ve gotten cuter or uglier through time).

Please take note of the dates attached to the message. For clarification, “today” is August 27th, 2018!

I have since unmatched him. Buddy. Please. Take the hint. (Also, how fucking creepy of him to say that I’ve gotten closer since a while back....like are you tracking my distance every time you message me? Please dear lord, no).

Case #THE IDIOTS WHO WAIT YEARS TO RESPOND.

This. THIS. THIIIIIS RIGHT HERE. IS WHAT HAS GOT MY BLOOD BOILED SO MUCH I NEEDED TO MAKE THIS POST. THE FUCKING IDIOTS WHO MATCH WITH ME. AND THEN CLAIM THAT THEY DELETED THEIR TINDER. OR THAT THEY LOST THEIR PHONE. JUST REDOWNLOADED. DIDN’T SEE MY MESSAGE. FOR FUCKING. YEARS.

OOOOOOOH BOY. You’ve gotta have some damn nerve to pull that shit. If you lost the app, deleted it, got a new phone, WHATEVER. Your profile would not continue to show up on the matching feed. People would not be able to swipe on your face to find that they matched with you. You would not exist in the eyes of tinder. You would be GONE from the system.

So don’t pull that shit with me. So many dudes have had the audacity to pull this shit with me, and when I call them out on it, most of the time I get either one of three responses: they say “oof yeah I’m sorry, I’m a dick can we move on?”, “Hahaha sorry” and then they continue to ghost me, or people who pull the shit I listed above.

These next photos are from THE SAME DAY AS THE PREVIOUS PHOTOS. Please take note of the date of the first message. (“today” in this sense is technically August 28, 2018 because it’s past midnight.)

Although I deleted his name, I gotta say. My insult was pretty on point. Anyways.

Like how the fuck can you live with yourself with that fucking lie?! Own up to that shit. Be like “yep oops sorry, didn’t think you were cute the first time but this snapchat filter making u look damn good” like don’t be a DOUCHE DUDE. Men are just honestly so fucking frustrating. And yes you better fucking believe I sent that reason for unmatching to tinder. You best fucking BELIEVEEEEEEE I did that. I’m so fucking mad at men. Like how in the hell.

I’ve HONESTLY had better luck matching with MARRIED COUPLES on tinder than I have had with straight men. Married couples at least know how to respect people. God damn.

YOUR MOTHERS DID NOT RAISE YOU TO BE LIKE THIS, MEN. LEARN HOW TO BE DECENT HUMAN BEINGS. JESUS CHRIST.

All in all, if you’ve ever toyed with the idea of downloading tinder: Don’t. Stay out of the fucking awful shit that is Tinder and dating apps for as long as you can. I have my settings set up to men in their 30s, and honestly older men do not mean more mature men. Just absolutely frustrating.

Also, as an addendum: 

Case #Don’t put my height in my bio/or do and say “Cause I guess it’s important/matters”

To all males on the planet earth: PUT. YOUR. FUCKING. HEIGHT. IN. YOUR. BIO. It fucking matters. As a tall as woman, it is so fucking annoying to match with a cute dude and then have them say “Hey I’m 5′2″ is that okay?” um....no. I’m sorry buddy. That is not okay. I have strict height limits for this ride and 5′2″ does not pass the riding restrictions.

We’re gonna call in a CELEBRITY SHOT for this story, I matched with this dude on bumble who didn’t have his height in his profile. (Context: my bumble profile says “5′10″ cause it doesn’t matter” <--a nice jab at all the straight dudes out there) and we go about having this great conversation, we’re clicking, he knows one of my friends from college, we bond, we go on a date. THE FIRST THING OUT OF THIS ASSHOLE’S MOUTH ON OUR DATE WAS “WOW. You’re taller than I expected.” BITCH HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO CAN U READ. IT’S THE FIRST THING IN MY BIO.

Sub case: I once had a guy match with me, tell me he was shorter than me, then asked me if I would be okay owning him as my slave. I understand and respect everyone’s fetishes, considering I have a slight dominance fetish as well, but a hello would have been nice first.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

[myhauntedsalem]

10 Cops Share Their Scariest Paranormal Encounters

1. THE PHONE CALL

My uncle works for dispatch in my town and he recently told my family of the weirdest call he’s ever gotten. He says that he had received a call from a landline one night and when he answered it there was only static on the other end. This happened two more times. Finally, he calls a squad to go check out the address from the caller ID. When the cops got there and walked into the house they immediately saw that there was a dead body. The person had been dead for 5 months.

The craziest part about it was that there was no electricity or any other utility working. So there is no way they should have been able to get those calls into dispatch. But if they hadn’t, who knows how long that person’s body would have stayed there.

2. THE HANGING SOLDIER

I had a call to a residence for a mental evaluation or a “5150.” Anyways, I get there and speak to a 50-something-year-old woman, who states her 20-something-year-od son is under the influence of an unknown drug, and kept repeating that he can’t go in his bedroom because there was an old man hanging in his room. She stated she was too scared to go in his room and investigate it for herself, because he constantly brings over friends that are drug addicts, and is unsure if his claims were true or not.

I then go speak to the son, who is clearly under the influence of a stimulate. He goes on to tell me that he was told by a “spirit” to not enter the bedroom, because her father, dressed in his military “Class A” uniform was hanging in his bedroom.

I check the room out and of course there was no body hanging in the room. As I’m in the middle of explaining to the mother that there was no body in the bedroom, a veteran officer arrives on scene to assist me.

He pulls me aside and stated earlier in his career he responded to this residence, and that same bedroom, he had to investigate a suicide by hanging of an older male subject. He didn’t remember all the details, so I looked it up in our report management system in my patrol car and sure enough the officer was correct. The subject who died was a WWII veteran and had dressed in his military uniform and hung himself.

3. “SHE’S INSIDE THE HOUSE”

I’ve never been a believer in the paranormal, but that day I made an exception. I responded to a call made by an elderly lady. She reported that she kept seeing a young girl running through her yard and she was afraid of vandalism or maybe worse.

On my way over, it started to pour like there’s no tomorrow, lightning and thunder too. When I arrived at the residence, she pointed to where the yard was and I made my way over there. I tried to shine my flashlight along and asked, “Is anyone out here? C’mon out.” But nothing, all I heard was the sound of loud thunder in the back.

I made my way back inside the house and the lady (now trembling in a corner) told me, “She’s inside the house.”

I hear a thump in the background and I see a young girl (about 13) running from one side of the house to the other. I quickly moved towards her and asked her to stop, but then she disappears right in front of me. I thought it was my eyes playing a trick on me but then the lady yells out, “There, there she is, right outside.”

I turned towards a big window leading to the backyard and there she was running around, but how did she get passed me to exit to the back door?? I immediately went outside and she had vanished, again. After I wasn’t able to find anything and with no logical explanation, I told the lady the girl had run away and I wasn’t able to catch her due to the weather. I asked her to calm her down. Some months later passed and I found out the elderly woman had passed away and some new people had moved into her old home. Not long after that, dispatch picked up a call from the same house. Now the new tenants reported a young girl running around in their backyard and suddenly appearing inside their house. I let someone else pick the call.

4. THE ABANDONED HOUSE

I worked as a police officer in a small town in rural Nebraska. Back in the 90’s, I was patrolling through town in winter. We had several abandoned houses in town, but one seemed to have the attraction of copper thieves, so we were told to keep an eye on it. Drove by it around 7:00pm, since it sat on a corner lot, I had a clear view of all four sides of the house. As I drove around the corner. Nothing looks out of the ordinary. About two hours later I drive by again and the back door is wide open.

I know that the back door was not open when I drove by it earlier. Looking at the snow on the ground around the house, there were no footprints. So I think “What the hell?”. Call dispatch, tell them I’m investigating an open door at that address and ask for a county sheriff to start my way. I walk to the open door, pull out my flashlight and shine it inside. The house has obviously been gutted for the most part. The plaster walls have been torn down, debris piles everywhere. Since there were no footprints in the snow around the door other than mine, and with all the dust on the floor not showing any footprints, I chalk it up to the wind or maybe the door just opened on its own. I was about to secure the door when I heard a loud thump come from upstairs and what sounded like kids laughing. So I enter the house and yell out “Police department, come downstairs!” More of what sounds like kids playing. I tell dispatch that it sounds like there are kids in the house and start making my way through the kitchen into the living room where the stairs are. All the while cautiously checking the main floor.

Two more times I hear something upstairs, but since I’ve had no response, I start thinking maybe it’s an animal. Still, I hear what I’d swear was kids laughing. I head upstairs and it all gets quiet. The upstairs is relatively small with a hallway at the top of the stairs that has one bedroom on the right, one straight ahead at the end of the hall, and a bedroom on the left. As I get to the top of the stairs, I hear a thump in the bedroom to the left. I carefully peek around the door and it’s an empty room with a small pile of plaster and wood debris in the middle. No kidding, sitting on top of the pile of debris was a page torn out of a child’s book with a picture of a police officer on it. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, I got out of that room, quickly cleared the other rooms upstairs and got the fuck out of there.

Told dispatch nobody was in the house, locked the back door and never went back in there again.

5. THE DISAPPEARING PASSENGER

As a controller about 15 years ago, I took a call from a hysterical man who had picked up a motorcyclist on the slip road to the M6 who had been standing in pouring rain at the side of the road with a petrol can next to an old Norton style motorbike. He drove on the short distance down the motorway to the next service station and as he pulled off the carriageway he turned to talk to his passenger and he had disappeared.

Besides himself he contacted the police, it later transpired that at the very point the passenger disappeared there had been a fatal accident involving a motorcyclist about 20yrs previously.

It still sends shivers up my spine and I still have a copy of the incident print. I spoke with the officers who attended and they were confident the man was a genuine everyday fella!

6. THE FOOTPRINT

Back when I was working as a cop on a military base, I loved working night shift. Didn’t deal with 99% of the bullshit that day shift dealt with and what little stuff we did deal with was usually really interesting.

Well most every building on a base is alarmed and the alarms are tied right into the desk so we know the instant they go off. When we get an alarm activation, we close the base, and go check the building, pull on all the doors, see if we can get in. If we can, we go into the building and secure it, check all the doors and corners to see if someone set the alarm off.

Well, one night I was on patrol with my alpha (partner) and we get called to respond to an alarm activation at the elementary school. So we go, secure the building, and call in that the building is all secure. No problem, keep patrolling. So about 15-20 minutes go by and we get another alarm activation. We get back out there and check and now there is a maintenance door open that leads into a boiler roomish thing. Nothing in it, we close it, lock it and get out.

Another 20 minutes. and another alarm. We respond, all the doors are still locked and we can’t get in, maintenance door is locked. Call in the all clear. This time my buddy and I sit on opposite sides of the school and watch to see if someone is coming and yanking the doors real hard to set the alarm off. We sit there and watch, nothing happens and right as we’re about to leave, another alarm activation as we’re sitting there. We inform the desk that we’d like the building manager on site to help us secure the interior and to let us in. (This is like now 3 am.)

Building custodian shows up and we start doing a walk through, checking all the classrooms and checking all the maintenance rooms and that’s when we see one of the maintenance doors open with the lights on in the room. Now, this room is literally the size of a closet.

We walk down there and look in, no ones in it and that door is locked when it closes. We look in there and we find a single footprint of a bare foot made of water (Left foot as a recall) of a small child. Freaked the living hell out of us because no one reported a missing child and the entire building was clear and still locked up. No one left, no one entered and we checked every inch of that damn place (literally a 3 hour deep sweep including ceiling tiles.)

Freaked the ever loving shit out of us and to this day, my partner refuses to go into that school.

7. THE FLYING MAN

Whilst working in remote Australia, we were forced to ‘move on’ an elderly aboriginal man because the other locals had accused him of witchcraft, and other things. We drove him to his township approximately one and half hours drive away. The other locals were terrified of him as he was rumored to be a witch doctor. We dropped him off and warned him not to return to town for three days. We turned the vehicle around and drove back to town, flying, probably 100mph+. It took 45minutes to drive back, upon our return, we find the SAME elderly aboriginal sitting in the street. To this day neither of us can explain it, maybe the other locals had every right to be scared.

8. “I NEED YOUR HELP”

Not a police officer, but a 911 dispatcher.

There was an old couple who lived on a run-down ranch house about 20 miles east of town. When the husband passed away, the woman would call 911 at least three times a week, asking for assistance with very mundane tasks not normally dealt to first responders. “I need help turning the thermostat up”, “I need help boiling water for my tea”, etc.

The woman developed dementia, and eventually, it progressed to the point where she believed she was calling 911 to ask her deceased husband for help. All of the dispatchers would recognize the address immediately, even though all she could say was “(husband’s name), I need help. Please come home and help me”

One day she called, and again was only able to repeat her husband’s (I’ll call him “John”) name. “John, I need help. Please come home and help me John.” By the time the first responders arrived on scene, they found the woman lying dead in her bed. The first unit on scene called dispatch to confirm that it was the woman herself who had called 911, as rigor Morris had already set in. We wrote it off as the fact that the heater in her house wasn’t working, and the ambient temperature in the room was about 50 degrees.

We continued to receive 911 calls from that woman, at that address for just over a year after she passed away. Even after her home was vandalized, and burned to the ground, the phone calls did not stop. “John, I need your help. John, please come home and help me.” We were obligated to send a response each and every time, but not once did we find anyone on or near the property.

Multiple calls to the phone company confirmed that the phone line had been disconnected, and the call was not coming from another address.

9. POSSESSED

I was a 911 call taker 10 years ago when I received one of the creepiest calls ever. It was freezing that night, which usually equaled a calm, quiet shift due to even the criminals not wanting to go outside. Around 3am my call box popped up green and as usual I asked what was the emergency. A man starting frantically screaming that his still was possessed by a demon and tried to cut his heart while he slept. He had ran when the attack started and locked himself in his bathroom. I ask him a series of questions trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

I ask him a series of questions trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Everytime he tried to answer I heard what sounded like scratching and banging on the bathroom door. He whispered “There is a demon in my sister’s body, it has been battling me for days. It got free from the chains…” I swear what I heard next chilled me to the core. This unearthly voice began taunting my caller through the door. It didn’t sound like a 20-something woman. It was low and guttural, like she had gargled razor blades before speaking. She continued to growl and speak in a strange sounding language until police arrived. She let out a terrifying scream when the officers broke in, then dead end.

The call was over, I was shaking and had to know what happened? Even my supervisor (who had been listening to the call in real time) was pale and speechless when the line abruptly ended. Before my shift ended the commanding officer on my creepy call called in to tell me what they found. He told me he would have nightmares for the rest of his life.

Apparently, when my caller said his sister got out of her chains, he wasn’t joking around. She still had a chain tied to a bloody handcuff when the officers came in. Her whole body was covered in self-inflicted scratches, her one eye had popped a blood vessel and was bright red. Most of what she was wearing was also shredded and her skin looked like she had been drained of her blood. She was taken in for a psych consult and as you probably guessed, stayed there for a long time. The brother was okay except for deep gouges in his chest. His sister literally tried to dig out his heart.

There was some talk about arresting the brother but nothing ever came of it. I still can vividly remember that voice, it still makes my blood run cold.

10. BREAK IN AT THE MORGUE

A friend’s father is a police officer in one of the larger villages of Illinois. He and his partner were working night-shift when they were called to investigate a suspected break-in at the local morgue. They arrived to find the custodian waiting for them out front. The custodian said that he’d been mopping one of the corridors and had seen something move in his peripheral vision. He looked up and saw a person quickly cross from one side of the hallway to the other. He couldn’t tell much about the person as he’d been turning the lights off as he worked his way through the building. Just a dim outline, but enough to be sure of what he’d seen. He was unarmed, so called the police and stepped outside to wait.

My friend’s dad and his partner entered the morgue. They started off by calling out to anyone who might be inside (no answer), then began to do a sweep, walking down the central corridor with hands on their guns, checking each room to the side, occasionally calling out for any intruder to show themselves. My friend’s dad came upon a room with the light off, pitch black inside. He fumbled for the switch and flicked it. The room lit up, nothing but an empty waiting room for relatives of the dead.

He heard his partner call out “Hey, stop! Turn around!” Friend’s dad swung back out into the corridor and his partner had unholstered his gun, was pointing it at the end of the long corridor. He said: “She went around that corner.” The custodian said: “She’s trapped, no exits that way.”

They had the custodian lock himself in the waiting room for safety, then advanced down the corridor, calling out to the woman to show herself, that they wouldn’t hurt her. This time my friend’s dad reached the end first, and with his back to the wall, peered around the corner. The woman was standing by a big grey door. Lights were off here too, so it was hard to see her clearly. But he could see she wasn’t holding a gun, had long, fair hair. He stepped out from behind the corner to talk to her, but she opened the door, disappeared into the dark inside, and shut it firmly behind her.

He sprinted up to the door and pulled at the handle. Locked. Banged on it for a while and called out to her, but no answer. The door had a deadlock on it, so his partner brought over the custodian to unlock it. They turned on their flashlights to see better. The custodian rounded the corner and faltered a little. “This door? You sure? This door doesn’t lock from the inside.”

The custodian found the right key and carefully turned it in the lock. Click. “We’re coming in! Have your hands up!”

They entered the room, flashlights illuminating every corner. The custodian hit the light switch and the room lit up. It was empty except for some equipment against the wall, and two gurneys in the middle of the room. One was empty, and one was covered in a sheet with what appeared to be a body underneath it. Nice hiding spot.

My friend’s dad approached and it was the smell that first spooked him. It smelled like a corpse. He pulled the sheet down and there the woman lay, straggly light-brown hair all around her face. The tag on her toe said she’d died four days ago.

Friend’s father is a devout Christian, does not believe in ghosts or the supernatural (even now), doesn’t know what to make of this event.