#suspension tube

[denismilovanovworkshop]

Wallpaper in Paris Inspiration for a mid-sized contemporary master bedroom remodel with beige walls, a light wood floor, and wallpaper

[unfortunatelyilikebnha]

This has been haunting me since forever. How tf does Kourin’s hair work.

Like yes I know she’s not the only person in cfv with Anime Hair but at least Aichi’s lil swoopy bang thing and Kai’s hairstyle and even Chrono’s fucking spiral could happen with enough hairspray and patience but how does Kourin’s ponytail hold her hair up??? The ponytail only seems to be connected to the hair in the loop, by all logic it should fall off the top of her head but it doesn’t how does it work 😭

[dioptasesystem]

This is how me and my bitch wife decide what to watch

[weskie]

Forgiveness (Albert Wesker x gn!Reader)

2.9k words | giving wesker his first injection, minor hurt/comfort, pining, mutual pining, fluff, part of the lover, leader, liar series | Fic Directory

'With Love - Albert Wesker'

The side effects of his newfound abilities come in waves.

For a time, Wesker was… himself, really.  Something in him had changed after the mansion.  Your former Captain was certainly still the stoic man you’d worked for.  The same one that wriggled his way into your heart in all those special ways. He was just a little more angry now.  Some days were worse than others, but god help you if he dwelled too long on Chris’s disruption of his plans.  It seemed like a lifetime ago…

But now you get to watch him seemingly deteriorate.  “Unstable,” he’d told you.  Whatever it was that granted him superhuman abilities wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be.  It comes in waves.  First he’s simply irritable, lashing out at you and others for even the smallest of perceived slights.  Sweat would bead at his brow, trickling over the bump of a vein in his temple.  Those red, cat-like eyes you’d come to find less uncanny would grow brighter too, as if his fury were fueled by hot coals that lit them just as easily.

Next he’s sluggish– weak, even.  He reminds you of someone stricken with the flu with the way he sweats and tosses and turns uncomfortably in his bed.  Only once has he ever let it slip that his body aches terribly during such times.  You do what you can for him in those moments, patting cool cloths to his brow, fetching medicine to relieve his fevers, bringing him meals that he typically turns away, and even drawing blood samples to be analyzed later… It’s difficult to watch him suffer, even after everything he’d done to you and your comrades. 

Between such spells, he found a solution.  An injection synthesized from the very strain of virus that brought him back from death’s door.  A stabilizing agent to keep him right in the sweet spot.  On the night everything was finalized, he’d staggered down the hallways of the compound to your shared living quarters, knocking at your bedroom door with shaking hands.  

You can see the pain of his wounded pride as he rasps his request.  “I require your assistance…” he all but mumbles, feet dragging as he walks to plop gracelessly onto the edge of your bed.  He runs a trembling hand through his hair and the other extends to offer a syringe, an alcohol wipe, and a pad of gauze.  His head drops into his palm.  

Your heart tugs at the sight before you.  Despite everything, it’s still him.  Still Wesker, still the man you’d grown so fond of in your time as a S.T.A.R.S. officer.  You reach for the syringe, taking a seat on his right side, thighs just shy of flush to each other.  Wesker extends his forearm to you and you ready it with the wipe.

“In a vein?” You ask, nodding to acknowledge his weak hum of approval.  It isn’t at all difficult to find a good one and you slip the needle in with ease.  With a gentle draw of the plunger, a trickle of blood floods the suspension and you inject slowly.  You thumb gently at his skin, an act meant to soothe him in his fragile state.  He watches with hooded eyes as the black flecks pushing through the tube disappear into the needle, breaths a little heavier than his normal decorum would permit.  A glance to his face reveals deep-set exhaustion.

“Captain?”  You announce, peeking into his office.  You find him hunched over a case file, sunglasses tossed aside on the desk.  

Wesker acknowledges you with that signature hum of his, though it carries none of its usual firmness.  You’ve never seen him so tired before.  Even the icy blue of his eyes seems dimmed.  He motions for you to enter and you close the door behind you.  “Blinds,” he instructs.

Once they’re shut, you make your way to his side.  Your eyes fall to the document at his desk, recognizing it as the most recent missing child case that had cast a sorrowful shadow over the city. Your lips quirk into a smile when he yawns, unable to find the display anything less than precious.  You bring a hand to rest at his shoulder, rubbing softly.

“It never ends.” He sighs.  Such an act was rarer than rare from him.  Anything less than perfect composure from the great Captain Wesker was unheard of, but not for you.  Not anymore.

“Can I do anything?”  You ask softly, increasing the area of your ministrations to his upper back, further testing those boundaries that seemed to be falling away more and more with every private interaction.  You swear he pushes into your touch.  

Wesker’s gaze flickers to you briefly, almost as if he was considering even asking whatever was on his mind.  “Coffee would not be unappreciated.”  

You smile at him, turning to fetch a cup from the break room when he snags you by the wrist.

“Bring… two.  And some of your own work.”  He murmurs.  “I could use the company to keep me awake.”

His head rests against your shoulder as you press a tiny piece of gauze to the puncture wound.  For a time you simply stay there, thumb caressing the firmness of his forearm in your lap.  You’re unsure of whether or not he’s watching, but you imagine he’s probably got his eyes shut.  At least you hope he does, anyway.  

You signal to him to lift his head and kneel to the ground, untying the laces of his dress shoes.  You hear him hum above, whether in curiosity or complaint is unclear, but you continue anyway.  “Probably best if you get some sleep.”  You tell him as you tug his shoes free.  He relents without any grief, stopping his descent to the bed only to place his sunglasses atop your nightstand and free himself of his black dress shirt, leaving him in a black tank top.

He regards you with another hum as you stand, arms wrapping around your waist.  Your hand falls to his hair, gently pushing strands back in their perfectly styled place while he buries his face against your abdomen.

“You don’t have to do this, you know.”

Leaves crunch under Wesker’s determined footsteps.  You two must have been walking for an hour now with no sight of, well, anything really.  The Arklay Mountains are huge but not overly populated.  It would take a while before you found a home with a vehicle to ‘borrow.’ 

His arms beneath your knees only tighten, signaling to you that your piggyback ride was far from over.

“C’mon, lay down.” You murmur, fingers scritching at his nape, occasionally trailing down to dance over the curve of his back.

He’s never slept in your bed before.  It’s strange to have him here, but you wager it’s no different than that night you’d fallen asleep on the couch with him.  Still, you feel no apprehension about crawling in on the other side.

Wesker turns to face you and you scoot the littlest bit closer, just until your knees bump his.  You can’t help but smile at him.  After everything, he still has that effect on you.  “So,” you say, “do you feel any different?”

He answers you with a slight nod, looking away briefly as if to contemplate his answer.  He holds his hand in the air for a moment.  You lift yours to entwine your fingers with his.

“That was to show you that the shaking had settled.” He says, pulling your hand closer.  His lips press to your knuckles and you can feel the burn in your cheeks at such a gesture.  “But this is not unwelcome.”

He’s never done that before.  In fact, for all of the times you’ve both danced near the line of such acts, neither of you has ever crossed it.

Wesker holds a hand over your mouth, pressing you into the peeling wallpaper of whatever dark room he’d tugged you into.  He removes it only once he’s sure you won’t make a peep, hand falling to grip your shoulder.  Outside, the sound of snarling growls and the rattle of chains war with one another.  The shriek of a girl, nearly inhuman, follows every loud thud until whatever monstrous beast opposes her becomes little more than fleshy splats.

Your heart hammers in your chest as if it meant to break free.  You wish you’d never set foot in this cursed place.  Had you known such horrors existed in this mansion, you’d have never stayed in Raccoon City to begin with.  To know something like this was in the mountains…  

You want to cry.  The only thing keeping you from giving up entirely was your Captain.  He’s pressed so close to you, practically nose to nose.  His eyes are locked on the doorway, completely focused on the sound of whatever creature slaughtered her way through the hallway.  As petrified as you are, he somehow makes it all less frightening.  His presence has always made you feel protected, whether at scenes of heinous crimes or in a mansion from hell.

“We’re clear.” 

His whispered words ghost over your lips.  Despite all of the fear coursing through your veins, you still find it in yourself to imagine bridging the gap.  But now is neither the time or place

You wonder if you’ll live long enough to see such a moment…

You two stay like that for a while, shifting only to come closer.  He watches you with those inhuman eyes of his, though you can’t help but grin when you see how wide his pupils have gotten.  That was one thing in particular you’d found quite enjoyable about his ocular mutation.  Though perfectly composed in every way, he couldn’t stop his eyes from dilating and giving away how he truly felt.  Well, unless he had his glasses on.  But that was different.

As your mind wanders back to the most traumatic night of your life, you can’t help but settle on that one question that had never quite been answered.  It slips from your lips faster than you can stop it.

“Why did you save me?”

Wesker’s eyes shut and a small sigh escapes him. You briefly wonder if he’s frustrated with you having asked.  After all, the small handful of times you’ve brought it up had been brushed off or the subject changed entirely.  His hand leaves yours and for a split second you think he’s going to throw the covers off, grab his clothes, and leave.  But he doesn’t.  Instead, he takes your chin between his thumb and forefinger, eyes unfocused but still somehow locked on you.  

“I meant to fire you,” he murmurs, voice low as if the confession were a sin.  “Before the mansion.  Before any harm could befall you.”  His thumb catches your lower lip.  “I…  You weren’t meant to be there.”

But that only leaves you with more questions.

“Do you remember the first time you ever brought lunch to my office?”  

You nod, though you fear he must be changing the subject again.

Knocking makes you exceptionally nervous, though not for the same reasons the rest of the crew feel.  Normally knocking on Captain Wesker’s door means you’re in trouble, but you’re far from it.

He looks almost surprised when you enter with cups of coffee and a bag of sandwiches.  Rumor was that he enjoys the ones from a shop a few blocks over.  Gossip was all the S.T.A.R.S. teams had to occupy themselves sometimes, and seeing the elusive Captain in public was akin to seeing a shaved bear.  The grapevine quickly spread the word that Captain Wesker had stayed overnight at the precinct on two separate occasions this week alone, so you figured you’d do something kind.

He seems almost taken aback that you would do such a thing.

“I had to uh… guess what you might like.  I hope this is okay.” 

Your fingers brush against his as you hand off the wrapped food.  This, as usual, makes your cheeks burn.  For as often as such a thing happens, you’ve never really gotten better at keeping that particular reaction at bay.  In fact, you almost suspect he does it on purpose.  Ever since the first time it happened when you’d handed him a heavy stack of paper, it seemed like every time you gave him something resulted in the same graze of skin.

“I appreciate you.” He says, which sends a wave of warmth right to your chest.  Wesker’s always had such a unique way of thanking you.  Not once have you heard him utter those words to another.

“You seldom left my mind after that.”  That edge to his voice is nowhere to be found in the softness of his confession.  “Even when you should have.”

You chuckle through a wave of emotion that you can’t quite name.  Your hand grips gently at his forearm, thumb rubbing softly just beneath the band of his watch.

“I had planned to find you afterward, though I imagine you would not have been pleased to see me.”  He continues, eyes still locked on you despite how distant they seemed. “Earning your trust back would have been difficult, but I would have done anything.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” He confirms, grip growing a little more firm on your chin.  “You mean a great deal to me.  Far more than I ever imagined you would.”

How you wish you could’ve heard those very words back then.  Maybe instead of being hunkered down in some random facility owned by one of Umbrella’s rivals, you would be walking beside him in the park while he tells you all that you’ve longed to hear.  Or maybe you would have been out at some restaurant, or even having dinner at either your place or his.  But no.  Here he is coming down from one of his episodes, courtesy of whatever virus had brought him back from death’s door, confirming that he feels the same for you.

It’s not at all how you imagined it.  You used to lie awake at night picturing the moment one of you confessed and something more than longing gazes and tender touches could finally come to be.  Your heart doesn’t explode and fill your chest with confetti.  Your knees don’t wobble– not that they could, given that you were laying down.  It’s nothing like you imagined, but it’s so much more.

With bravery and joy in your heart, you finally lean forward and press your lips to his.  There’s none of the fanfare or romantic music you used to daydream of, just the occasional sighed breath from him and the gentle pecking of kiss after kiss.  It feels so natural.  It’s as if you’d done this a thousand times without having ever known it.  It’s slow and soft, precise in a way that could only make sense for him.  

The fingers gripping your chin leave.  Instead, Wesker moves his arm to wrap around your midsection and pulls you closer.  Between the intoxication of kisses and your hand smoothing up to his bicep, your mind becomes foggy.  It’s only when he breaks the act that you realize you’d foregone breathing in exchange for losing yourself in him.

You tangle a leg between his and nuzzle against his chest, pressing one more kiss to the exposed skin of his collarbone before letting your eyes flutter shut.  You feel his chin come down to rest against the top of your head and the arm around your waist tightens.

You thumb gently at the bent corners of the card.  On the night before Alpha Team deployed to the mountains, you decided it would be your good luck charm to get you through the mission.  You weren’t entirely sure if it had brought you any luck, but those words meant so very much to you.

‘With Love  - Albert Wesker’

He’s at the other side of the room, picking through a shelf of medical supplies while you sit on a makeshift bed.  You’re so lost in thought that you hardly notice when he’s in front of you again. He kneels before you, thumb slowly rubbing a sticky gel across the cut on your cheek.

“You’ll want to get that cleaned properly once we’re out of here,” he instructs.  “But this will be good enough for now.”

You huff a weak laugh.  “Think we’ll actually make it that long?”

“We will.”  Wesker says matter-of-factly.  He begins to rise, nearly turning from you once more before he halts.  In a rare act, he slowly removes his sunglasses.  It’s then that you see his line of sight.

The card.

“I– Call it dumb, but I brought it for luck.”  You stammer.  “Sorry…”

His hand falls to your shoulder, giving a gentle squeeze.  There’s a pained look in his eyes, one you’ve never seen before.  “You and I have got plenty of a future beyond these walls.”  

You pray he’s right.

[sm-baby]

Funny how people keep asking about the seventh close like

Bro

Suspense yk

Also stories where there’s seven kinds of things are amusing to me since I have six siblings so like… now even though I know all the clones are evil, I sorta try and characterize them as my siblings and I if we were at our worst and such, so I am patiently waiting for the seventh so I can see that

Sneak peak... Ehehe.. im cooking, chat :3

not quite the 7th clone yet, but... background stuff... Fun...

Nah these are the clones like a day after being made... Fresh out of the test tubes...

[absurdthirst]

Kinktober 2024: October 19th

Day 19: Suspension // Fisting // Mirror Sex

Frankie Morales x F!Reader

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 1k

Warnings: Fisting, fingering, lubrication, sexual exploration, sexual safety, use of color system

|| Kinktober List || MasterList ||

Click Keep Reading only if you have read the Rating and Warnings and understand the warnings may not be complete to avoid listing spoilers. As AO3 says 'creator chooses not to use warnings'. You also agree that you're the right age to be consuming anything here.

“You’re doing so good, baby.” He coos, licking his lips as he pushes his hand forward just a little more. Pushing until you whine and then he lets up, pulling back the four fingers that are currently buried as far as he can get them inside your cunt. “You can take it. You’re gonna take it.” 

It’s hot and annoying at the same time. That smug confidence in his tone, low and sexy as he growls out praise and encouragement. Making your hips roll down on their own even though you need a small break. Maybe some more lube. 

“Fuck, you have a big goddamn hand, Morales.” You grumble, throwing your head back against the soft pillow behind your head and try to slow down the rapid beating of your heart. The ache of your cunt isn’t nearly as bad as it can be when Frankie gets rough and fucks you within an inch of your life, but it’s close. 

He hums, tone amused and he crooks the edges of the two fingers still inside you and makes you whine again. “You’re the one that wanted to do this, baby.” He reminds you, like you didn’t have to completely talk him into this. 

“I know.” You huff, biting your lip and clenching down around his fingers before you feel him start to add more of the water based KY to his hand, especially around that damn thumb of his. “It sounded sexy in my book and your hands are always so good.” 

It had started with one of those BookTok books you had been obsessed with. Venturing over into your day dreams while you had watched Frankie under the kitchen sink while he replaced the garbage disposal. You had damn near made him knock himself out when you had blurted out that you wanted him to fist you. 

Now, here you are, wondering why the hell you had decided this man’s fist would feel good inside you. Although the small sting is worth the way your cunt gushes. Your core burns at the mere thought of having him completely inside you. 

He had trimmed his nails short, making sure that nothing could possibly hurt you. Making sure that he had every single tube of lube that you owned in the house right here, within reach. The towel underneath you will absorb most of the excess and your slick as it manages to pour out of you. 

“Do you want to stop?” Frankie pulls his fingers completely out and holds them up, pulling the fingers apart. Your juices web between them, stretching out like thing strings between the digits and the sight of it makes you moan. 

“Fuck,” you huff, shaking your head. “No, no baby, I need more.” You know that Frankie isn’t getting anything out of this physically right now, but he shoots you a proud grin, slipping two of his wet fingers into his mouth and groaning in approval. 

The process starts all over again. Two fingers, then three. Having to pull his fingers nearly out of you so he can press his thick pinkie into that same space as well. Watching you with dark, expressive eyes while he twists his wrist and pumps those fingers deep into your tight walls. 

He’s into it. You can tell that from the way his cock hangs heavy, precum dribbling off the head and smearing against your thigh when he shifts to change the angle and press just a little deeper. 

“FUCK!” You gasp out, feeling that sharp sting of pain when he twists his wrist, trying to ease it inside you so that his entire fist will push in. 

“Color.” The word comes out automatically, Frankie almost pausing, but he watches you closely. 

“Green, fuck- it’s almost there.” You whine, toes curling and despite the pain, it feels really good too. It’s a paradox and you now understand really what they mean by ‘hurts so good’. You don’t want him to stop, your fingers twist in the sheets and pull at them while your hips tilt down. Adding more pressure to the action. “So fucking green.” 

He grunts in approval, shuffling closer again. “Almost there, baby, fuck, your pretty pussy is squeezing my hand like a fucking vice.” He growls, biting his lip as he imagines how this would feel around a cock. “Maybe we should have the guys over.” 

It’s not like you haven’t talked about all kinds of crazy shit over the years, including letting his former Delta team all come and stuff you full like a Thanksgiving Turkey. It’s all been just talk, you would never do it, but your walls clench around him again and another hot gush of your juices coats his hand at the hot thought. 

He smirks, twisting his hand just slightly and with a tiny sucking sound, his hand pops past the resistance of your pelvic bones and slides inside you. 

“Oh my fucking godddddddd.” Your moan matches Frankie’s, although his own is completely wordless. His fucking fist is inside you. You can feel his wrist against your lips and it’s more erotic than you had fucking imagined. He pushes a little deeper and you whine breathlessly. 

You enjoy this. That alone makes Frankie smirk and he shifts close, leaning down and changing the angle of his hand inside you to see if you like that as well. “Well now you’re my personal little puppet.” He teases against your lips, making a laugh puff out of you that is followed up by another moan. “Let’s see how hard you cum like this.” 

“Fuck- fuck, I love you.” You pant, feeling him start to move ever so slightly inside you, not trying to do too much right now, just seeing what has you gasping and clenching around his fist. 

“I love you too.” He promises, kissing you again and leaning back to watch as he plays with your body. You had asked him to fist you, now both of you know that he can. It’s time to discover how much fun the two of you can have with this now. 

[wheelsgoroundincircles]

Custom 1953 Muntz Jet Convertible

This 1953 Muntz Jet convertible underwent a three-year custom build under previous ownership, and it was purchased by the seller in 2021. The car is powered by a fuel-injected 5.7-liter LT1 V8 engine paired with a four-speed automatic transmission and a Ford 9″ rear end, and it is finished in Apple Pearl with a white Carson-style removable top over gray snakeskin-style Naugahyde upholstery. Features include custom bodywork, an Art Morrison frame, power-assisted steering, four-wheel disc brakes, airbag suspension, Painless Performance wiring, and more modified and fabricated details. This custom-built Muntz is now offered with a copy of Rodder’s Journal magazine featuring a story on the build and a clean California title in the name of the seller’s business.

Custom 1953 Muntz Jet Convertible

The steel, aluminum, and fiberglass body is mounted on an Art Morrison ladder frame that was boxed and finished in semi-gloss black, and the floor was raised 3″. The exterior was repainted in a Sherwin Williams two-stage Apple Pearl mixed by the late Stan Betz. Features include a chopped Duvall-style windshield, 1950 Chevrolet headlights, dual Appleton spotlights, 1951 Ford Victoria side windows, and a white removable Carson-style top fabricated to match the height of the chopped windshield. Additional equipment includes color-matched rear fender skirts and chrome bumpers. Wear from fitting the top is noted on the rear deck.

Custom 1953 Muntz Jet Convertible

Steel wheels sourced from a 1976 Dodge measure 15″ and are mounted with Cadillac Sombrero-style covers and whitewall tires. A matching spare fitted with a BFGoodrich Silvertown tire is mounted within a rear-mounted Continental-style chrome carrier. A Mustang II front end accommodates power rack-and-pinion steering , and the car rides on an electronically-adjustable Air Ride Technologies airbag suspension system along with 2” lowered front spindles, Strange Engineering tube shocks, a rear Panhard bar, and front and rear sway bars. The seller reports that the front control arm bushings were recently replaced.

Custom 1953 Muntz Jet Convertible

Custom 1953 Muntz Jet Convertible

Braking is handled by GM G-body-sourced calipers matched with Ford Granada discs up front and Ford SVO-specification calipers and discs at the rear.

Custom 1953 Muntz Jet Convertible

The cabin was customized by Jim’s Auto Trim of San Diego, California, and features Glide bucket seats and a rear bench trimmed in gray snakeskin-style Naugahyde upholstery, along with matching treatments for the dash trim, headliner, and door panels. Additional equipment includes a 1952 Lincoln steering wheel mounted to a shortened Lincoln steering column, gray cut-pile carpet, and a Pioneer stereo housed within a custom center cubby.

The engine-turned “Hollywood” instrument cluster houses Stewart Warner gauges consisting of an 8k-rpm tachometer, a 160-mph speedometer, and auxiliary readings for fuel level, battery charge, oil pressure, and water temperature. The five-digit odometer displays 25k miles, though total chassis mileage is unknown. A Lokar pedal assembly was fitted during the build.

Custom 1953 Muntz Jet Convertible

The Corvette-sourced 5.7-liter LT1 V8 features a polished fuel intake manifold along with billet aluminum valve covers, and additional features include an Opti-Spark distributor, a Griffin aluminum radiator, and a wiring loom sourced from Painless Performance Wiring. A set of long-tube headers are connected to a 2.5″ exhaust system equipped with dual Dynaflow mufflers. The seller reports that the oil was recently changed.

Custom 1953 Muntz Jet Convertible

Power is routed to the rear wheels via a four-speed 4L60E automatic transmission and a Ford 9″ rear end with with 3.55:1 gears and Strange Engineering 31-spline axles. Additional photos of the underside, drivetrain, and suspension components are presented in the gallery below.

Custom 1953 Muntz Jet Convertible

The car was featured in issue #36 of Rodders Journal magazine

[courtofparrots]

A list of equipment in Luis Serra's lab and what he might use them for

My beloved mutual @geddy-leesbian put in a ton of effort and got these incredibly detailed screenshots of Luis's island lab, featured in this post, and I thought I would follow that up by comparing what he uses to what I use in my own lab. This was fun for me to do and I also thought it could be used as a resource for any writers that aren't as familiar with Luis's profession.

(for context if you don't know me, I am a microbiologist, bacterial geneticist if you want to be specific. I'll be earning my PhD hopefully this year, and I have been studying biology for 10 years, and actively working in various labs for 7)

Obviously this is a science fiction video game, so while I may be a scientist, I am still using some level of guesswork! This is just meant to be a fun little thing for my fellow resi nerds.

1. Liquid Nitrogen tank

These are used for flash-freezing biological samples for long-term storage. In the context of Luis’s research, he might flash-freeze plaga cells or dead plaga bodies in order to store them (typically at -80 Celsius) without them decaying or being damaged

2. Microcentrifuge

This is a veryyyyy common piece of equipment. You use them to spin samples so you can collect cells out of suspension. It’s like how they spin blood to separate it from plasma at blood donation centers

3. Light microscope

I’m sure everyone recognizes this one but still wanted to add the picture from my lab because I appreciate how detailed and accurate his equipment is

4. Shaking incubator

Used to grow tubes of cells! They are typically kept at 37C (body temperature) and they shake at like 200rpm to keep oxygen flowing through the culture so they stay healthy. You would do this to grow samples of whatever organism you desired so you could run experiments on it the next day (we call it making overnights or overnight cultures).

5. Maybe an anaerobic chamber?

These are slightly less common pieces of lab equipment so I was surprised to see it! We have one in our lab because we do some work on gut-dwelling bacteria that have to be grown without oxygen. As you can see, ours looks a little different so it might have some different uses, but generally the little cube on the right side is where you would place a sample (it’s an airlock) and then transfer it into the chamber. Seeing as Luis has it, I’m thinking maybe las plagas might need to be grown anaerobically at certain stages, I’d guess in early life when it’s really dependent on being in the human body.

I've got some other pictures to compare that I'll also be posting about in the coming days, about things like chemical management plus some other weird equipment things Luis has, but in the meantime if you have specific questions feel free to DM me! I hope this is helpful!

[universitypenguin]

Chapter 29

The Princess & the Lawyer

Summary: In the aftermath of the incident, Lloyd grapples with his emotions and begins to wonder about their future.

Word Count: 4,605  

Warnings: Mention of adult content such as sex and drug use. Non-explicit references to child abuse, which is made clear by a character’s reactions and implied by their internal reflection, but not discussed in specific or graphic terms.

Author’s Note: Thank you for coming back to read this, despite my long absence! Full Author’s Note can be found here.

Masterlist 

Lloyd wasn’t where he should be. 

He should be sitting at your bedside, like men did when the women they loved were injured. Instead, he stood by the window. His gaze was fixed on the leafless silhouettes of the tree branches outside, drawn there because if he was looking at them he wasn’t looking at you, swathed in bandages and draped in sheets that bore an unsettling resemblance to a shroud. 

Injured felt like too plain of a word to describe your condition. You’d rammed a car head-on into a concrete barrier at high speed and a moment later, Westin Tafferty had shot you in the head at close range. The doctors said the bullet had grazed your parietal bone and fractured your skull, triggering internal bleeding. Within minutes of arriving at the hospital you’d been rushed into the operating room for an emergent craniotomy.

Now, you were sedated in a coma and no one could say if the surgery had been successful or not. The carefully titrated medications flowing through your I.V. masked any sign of improvement or deterioration. As long as the sedatives infused, you remained trapped in a stasis where no one could tell if you were healing or slipping away. Until they dialed back the drugs the state of suspension would persist. He’d asked, but no one was willing to estimate when they’d begin tapering off the medication–or if that was even part of the plan. 

Behind him, the ventilator hissed. Lloyd twisted his neck, trying to ease the tension as his eyes drifted over the landscape. Your room overlooked the courtyard, which wasn’t much to see, especially after the weekend’s turn in the weather. Skeletal tree branches stretched toward the sky, stripped bare by last night’s windstorm, which had brought in an unexpected cold front that settled into a hard frost. Just yesterday, the leaves had been turning yellow. Today they were scattered in a thick carpet over the grass. Your day nurse had told him it was the earliest frost since 1979. Lloyd hadn’t offered a response. 

In fact, he’d barely registered her remark at all. Information hadn’t been sticking in his mind lately. Between the car accident, the shooting, and the discovery that Westin Tafferty had been stalking you all along, his brain had short-circuited. The machinery in his head was broken. Synapses fired sluggishly, like a circuit board trying to transmit a signal through frayed wires. His thoughts flickered, dimmed, then disappeared.

He twisted his neck and scanned to the left, his gaze colliding with a reflection in the glass. The image was distorted but he could make out your form lying in the hospital bed directly behind him. Monitors were packed around your bed. A screen displayed your vitals, another showed wavy lines related to breathing, and one monitored intracranial pressure. A drain connected to your skull through a thin tube—that was a left over from the operation. He’d been curious about it but hadn’t asked. After two days in the ICU, he’d learned it was sometimes better not to know. On the other side of the bed, an infusion pump was hooked to the I.V. in your forearm, along with a ventilator.

The machine noisily breathed for you. He’d grown so used to its rhythmic—whoosh, thump…pause… hiss—that the sounds faded into the background. Looking at your reflection in the glass was easier than actually looking at you. It softened the bruises that had deformed your features and hid the traction splint on your left lower leg. But the ventilator’s whir was a constant reminder that a machine was all that stood between you and death. Lloyd inhaled sharply, closing his eyes. He took a long breath, drawing the air in deep to ease the sudden wave of nausea. His phone buzzed.

Expecting it was your mother or Vivian, Lloyd fished the device out of his pocket. The message was from an unsaved number.

I’m at the nurse’s station. Which hallway should I take?

Lloyd frowned and scrolled through the messages. He’d exchanged about a dozen texts with this number over the weekend, the details of which were fuzzy in his memory. It took some scrolling to realize the number belonged to Jen Kyzansky. Right. He remembered now. Jen had promised she’d stop by after work and it was five o’clock. He’d asked her to visit after an exchange with your day nurse, who confirmed that coma patients could sometimes hear people. Not always—but in some cases. 

He could barely stand to look at you in this condition, let alone speak, so he’d called in reinforcements. For all his personal dislike of the woman he was supremely confident in her ability to carry on a one-sided conversation. She would keep it positive and upbeat and talk about things you’d enjoy. You needed Jen right now, not him. 

He sent instructions to guide her through the maze of hallways and stepped outside the glass booth the ICU considered a “room” to wait for her arrival. A moment later, someone carrying a giant vase of flowers rounded the corner. Though he couldn’t see the person’s upper half, he recognized the tailored oxblood trousers. Jen shifted the flowers to her hip to read the room placards. Before he could call out, she spotted him and picked up the pace. When she was an arm’s length away she stopped, her gaze sweeping up and down his form. 

“You look like hell.”

“Thanks.”

She didn’t smirk, as he’d expected. “When was the last time you slept?”

Lloyd shrugged. He tried to sneer–after all, it was the customary greeting between him and Jen–but his features wouldn’t cooperate. To his dismay, her expression softened into something that looked suspiciously like sympathy.

“Go home. Take a hot shower and a couple Benadryl. Once you’ve slept, you’ll feel better.”

“Will I?” He’d been aiming for sarcasm but a waver of apprehension snuck into his voice instead. 

Her chin lifted. “Yes, you will. Call someone to drive you home, or at least drink some coffee. Driving tired is as bad as driving drunk.” 

Lloyd obeyed. At the end of the hall, he glanced back to see Jen sitting beside your bed. Jealousy cut through him. It was irrational, given that he had all afternoon to do what Jen was doing now, but unfortunately he couldn’t look at you for more than thirty seconds without wanting to throw himself off the roof. 

At the elevator bank his gaze drifted to the window as he waited for the car. It offered a different perspective on the same barren trees he’d stared at from your room. In a few months they’d be reborn, sprouting new buds and leafing out. Nature healed itself, even after the most brutal storms. He had no such ability. His wounds didn’t heal; they stayed with him, out of sight, but always festering under the surface. Lloyd scrubbed a hand over his face. Wallowing in self-pity didn’t do you any good. It wasn’t good for him, either, as painful emotions tended to corrode his self-control. He could feel the chaos welling up and worried that he wouldn’t be able to contain it much longer. The stitches of his composure were straining, threatening to tear apart. 

How could he ever support you if he couldn’t control his own emotions? He’d sent Jen in as his substitute for a task as basic as sitting by your bed and talking. He was useless—he couldn’t even look at you! You needed him right now, and he couldn't even look at you. He was a coward, and not because of the fear, but because he was letting it dictate his actions.

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

The elevator took him down to the lobby. As Jen suggested, he stopped by the coffee shop and ordered a London Fog. It was late afternoon, and aside from him and the barista, the shop was empty. That made sense. At five o’clock on a Monday most people were still at work, stuck in traffic, or picking up their kids.

Nothing played over the speakers and the weight of the silence pressed down on him. Lloyd sat down at a table to wait. He listened to the hum of the espresso machine, the soft clatter of metal instruments as the barista stirred his tea. His thoughts drifted back upstairs, comparing the quiet sounds of the coffee shop to the symphony of whirling, hissing, and beeping that filled your room. If you were here, you’d have ordered something so sugary and caffeinated that it ought to come with a Surgeon General’s warning. 

“Lloyd, your London Fog,” the barista called.

He collected his drink and turned to face a jarring sight—a group of nurses gathered in a loose semi-circle on the other side of the glass partition separating the shop from the hallway. They all wore the same unmistakable shade of green. Over the past few days, he’d learned the color coding system of the hospital’s scrubs: navy blue for ICU nurses, burgundy for lab techs, pale blue for surgical staff, and a garish shade of sea-foam green that identified this group as trauma nurses. His grip tightened around the cup, the heat seeping through the paper doing nothing to thaw the sudden chill in his fingers. The sight of the trauma nurses triggered a flood of memories, sharp and uninvited. 

The drive into the city. Detective Roth’s hands tight on the steering wheel as he wove through traffic. The flashing dash lights in the silent car, no wail of sirens overhead because those were only for official emergencies…Walking past the destroyed trauma bay, its floor littered with the debris of plastic packaging and soiled gauze, as a gray scrubbed man mopped blood off linoleum tiles. Meeting your parents in the waiting room of the surgical suite. The doctor entering, asking if anyone was ready to see you. Your mother, crying, too distraught to accompany your father to the post-anesthesia unit… Vivian suggesting Lloyd go with him instead…

Dishes clattered in the sink, snapping him back to the present. Lloyd pulled his gaze from the nurses and moved to a table, deliberately facing away from them, but the image of those green scrubs lingered in his mind.

For the past seventy-two hours, he’d clung to the hope that you would wake up, that somehow you’d shake off a traumatic brain injury as if it were nothing more than a common cold. The sheer absurdity of such magical thinking grated on his nerves, but he couldn’t stop the optimistic thought from creeping in. Being irrational didn’t change the facts, though, and two days later your diagnosis remained unchanged: critical but stable.

The word “stable” circled in his mind. He rolled the word silently over his tongue, as if repeating it would make it easier to accept. Stable meant things weren’t getting worse, but it didn’t mean they were getting better either. It was a fragile reassurance, one that only made him more anxious the longer he sat with it. The fact that you were stable didn’t offer any hint of what came next, whether you’d recover or languish in this state forever. Instead of easing his fears, the thought of your impending recovery opened up an uncomfortable set of questions, chief among them: where did your relationship go from here? 

Recent events had solidified one fact—whatever this relationship was, it wasn’t casual. Not anymore. He couldn’t deny it, not when he’d spent days by your bedside, received updates from your family, and been added to your list of emergency contacts. The lack of questioning about his presence from either of your parents symbolized how entrenched your relationship had become. Vivian likely played a role in that, but it reinforced the same point: he was more than just your friend. What exactly he was remained unexamined as of yet, but it was only a matter of time.

There was an eighteen year age gap between you. While he’d packed for college, you’d turned two weeks old. Your future was filled with hope and potential, any path was open and ready to be explored whenever you craved something more. He’d wasted his future already, thrown it away on bad decisions, mental instability, and addiction. The gap between you wasn’t just measured in years but also by directions; your lives were moving along different paths. You had spent this spring considering your options for law school and Lloyd had mapped out a tax-efficient withdrawal plan for his retirement funds. 

He wasn’t blind to the fact that the age gap was part of what had drawn you to him. You’d wanted sexual experience, and he had plenty to offer. His sophistication and confidence were traits you appreciated in him, even as a friend. Sometimes he wondered if it was him you were drawn to, or the feeling of security he provided. You’d had too many responsibilities handed to you too early. He was good at taking charge. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where the attraction stemmed from. Doubt gnawed at him. Did you want him, or did you just want someone competent, who made you feel safe? He wasn’t the only man who could meet those needs. Lloyd wished he could pretend otherwise, but he couldn’t see how both your futures could coexist in the long term.

The chime of the door announced the admission of two new patrons to the coffee shop. A pair of nurses in pink scrubs entered, giggling at some private joke as they formed a queue at the counter. Labor and delivery nurses, Lloyd guessed, judging by their uniforms. Their conversation quickly confirmed his assumption and in the tight confines of the shop, he couldn’t help but overhear them. 

“I almost called him her dad,” the brunette said. “He’s like three times her age, it's the obvious way to go!”

“Melanie flagged the chart with a note.” 

“Yeah, but by the time I saw it the word ‘dad’ was already halfway out of my mouth.” 

“You really called him her Dad?!”

“I tried to change it to Dale. The transition was not smooth. Not at all. They stared at me like I was crazy. Then I made up some B.S. about how he looks like a Dale—”

Her friend snickered. “Girl…”

“Shut up! The man has white hair! He’s lucky I didn’t call him Grandpa.”

The other shook her head. “Can you imagine having a kid with a guy that old?”

“No thanks. You?”

“Pfft, absolutely not.” She wrinkled her nose. 

“Neither of them thought this through. The risk isn’t worth it.” 

“Hell no,” her friend agreed. “The odds of all that scary genetic crap is like six times as high with fathers over forty.”

“What about fathers over eighty?” the brunette giggled. 

“You know it’s harder for guys to get someone pregnant once they’re over forty?”

“It’s like nature’s way of cutting the old timers off.” 

“Not if they’re persistent!”

They both laughed. 

Lloyd pulled out his phone and pretended to be occupied. The nurses quickly exited the shop after their orders were filled, but they’d given his thoughts a new path to wander down. There was a good chance that you’d want a family someday, given how healthy and tight-knit yours was. You were good with children. The idea of you not being a mother was somehow unfathomable to him. A chill ran down his spine. He could easily imagine the same story he’d just overheard being told about him. 

It wasn’t wise to become a father after a certain age, Lloyd mused. He cringed and shook himself, disturbed by the seriousness of the thought. There was no reason to consider such things. He had decided long ago that he didn’t want children. The Hansen line would end with him, and there would be no heir to carry on the family curse.

His mind drifted to Zach’s comment about vasectomies and his insinuation that Lloyd was keeping his options open by not getting snipped. Suddenly, that accusation hit too close to home. Being in a relationship with a much younger woman opened the door to that possibility, and you’d both been complacent by relying on only one form of birth control for the past few months.

What if you asked him for a baby? Would he be able to deny you what you wanted, even knowing the risks? He winced. No. He couldn’t be a father. He didn’t have the temperament for it, nor the energy it demanded.

You deserved to be with someone who could give you the full experience of parenthood—someone younger, willing to endure sleepless nights, with the stamina to chase after a toddler. He couldn’t picture himself running after a child at his current age, let alone keeping up with a teenager. By the time your child graduated high school, he’d be at least sixty, if not older. You needed someone with more life ahead of them than he had to offer.

Maybe you didn’t want children. For a moment, the thought sparked a flood of relief. But guilt came fast on its heels, crushing the tiny flicker of hope. How could he even think that? It wasn’t his decision to make. He had no right to wish you’d give up something as fundamental as motherhood just to accommodate his shortcomings. You might be willing to accept the limitations brought on by his age and past, but he couldn’t ask that of you. Your future didn’t need to be burdened by his realities. 

He wished he didn’t have to think of these unpleasant things, that time could freeze everything as it was and your relationship could stay vague and undefined forever, but time marched on and there was no escaping the truth. Being with him came at a cost, and you’d already paid the price. If not for your friendship with him, Court Gentry never would have known your name. If Lloyd hadn’t turned down Court’s request for help—not once, but twice—you wouldn’t have been drawn into his reckless scheme to expose the spy at Bishop & Howard. 

Then there was Westin Tafferty. His grudge against Lloyd had made you a target. Without that connection, Tafferty wouldn’t have spent months harassing and stalking you. He wouldn’t have tried to kill you. The worst part was that Lloyd still couldn’t remember meeting him; whether Tafferty hadn’t made much of an impression or Lloyd had been too high to recall their introduction was up for debate. But Zach had confirmed the truth: Tafferty had spent twenty years working for the NSA and he’d crossed paths with Lloyd on more than one occasion. Detective Diskant had recovered the flash drive you’d hidden and spent the weekend piecing things together. There was plenty of evidence, enough for three life sentences, but Tafferty had vanished.

Even forgotten memories from his past haunted him—and by extension, you. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t untangle the past from the present. You’d had a brush with his past in Singapore, then again in Qatar. Apparently, those close calls hadn’t been warning enough, because this time the consequences had really caught up and now there was a machine breathing for you. 

Lloyd’s tea had gone cold, but he was still deep in thought when Zach entered the coffee shop. His leather jacket creaked, stiff from the cold, as he sat down in the opposite chair. 

“I thought I’d find you here,” Zach said, unzipping his jacket. He regarded Lloyd with a knowing gaze. “You look like you’re plotting something. Care to share?”

“I’m not plotting anything.” 

Zach’s eyebrow twitched, and Lloyd sighed, amending his statement. 

“Not now at least.” 

Zach leaned back in his seat, lacing his hands behind his head. “Alright.” 

Lloyd grunted, picked up his tea and sipped, wincing at the bitter taste. 

“Is that tea?”

“Yes.”

“Disgusting.”

“It’s one less addiction to manage,” Lloyd said. 

“Mmmhhh.” 

Silence fell. Zach didn’t speak. He maintained the same relaxed posture but his eyes watched Lloyd with the intensity of a hawk watching a mouse. It was a pressure tactic that worked wonders in the interrogation room. Lloyd disliked having it used on him and felt ridiculous for wanting to fill the lingering silence, yet the thoughts bouncing around in his head had to go somewhere. He weighed the risks and decided that Zach was the safest option.

“Do you ever think about…kids?”  

Zach braced his elbows on the table. “No. I settled that issue a long time ago.” 

Lloyd rubbed his jaw, scowling at the itchiness of the three-day stubble he hadn’t found time to shave off. 

“Nurses were just in here talking about congenital issues with older fathers, the odds of it and such, that’s all.” 

Zach waved his hand. “You’re borrowing trouble.” 

“I’m not saying I want kids,” Lloyd rushed to clarify. 

“Spare me the bullshit. Let’s talk about it. You’re twisting yourself up over statistics without considering the rest of the picture.”

“What do you mean?”

“How many Gulf War vets, who were exposed to God-knows-what in Kuwait, had kids? And most of them were fine, right?”

“I don’t know.”

“They’ve researched it for decades and still can’t find a strong link. Genetic problems depend on a lot of factors.” 

He must not have looked persuaded because Zach continued. 

“How many twenty-five-year olds vape? Eat a diet of pure junk food? You’re healthier right now than most younger men could dream of being. Hell, you’re drinking tea.” 

Lloyd scoffed. “I don’t drink coffee so I’m off the hook?”

“And you eat turkey bacon, which is pathetic and un-American, but to each their own. Seriously, if it’s bothering you, get your sperm tested.”

“Do what?”

“Get your sperm tested,” Zach said, as casually as if he were reminding Lloyd to check his tire pressure. 

“Sperm testing? They do that?”

“Yeah. I had mine tested before and after my vasectomy.”

“Checking it right now wouldn’t matter much. Princess and I are in different places in life. By the time she’s ready to have kids…” Lloyd trailed off. 

“Deposit it at a sperm bank, they’ll put it on ice for later. Of course that’d take all the fun out of things, but it heads off the worst-case scenario.” 

Lloyd let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding as Zach’s logic cut through his spiraling. 

“Get your head on straight and focus on what you can control,” Zach said. 

“Which would be?”

The blond man’s face turned serious. “I have news.” 

Lloyd arched his brow. 

“Westin is dead.” 

“Since when?” 

“His body was found this afternoon—a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.”

Disgust hit first, followed by a surge of regret that twisted into concern. The disgust came from the fact that he hadn’t brought about Westin’s death by his own hand. Regret came from knowing, intuitively, how Westin’s death had played out. His eyes locked with Zach’s who read the unspoken assumption in them.. 

“I didn’t do it.”

“The others?” 

“No.”

“What about…”

“Possible,” Zach said. “No one knows where Gentry disappeared to, but I have a source that thinks he’s still in the city.”

“I might have something on that.”

“Care to share?”

“No.” 

“I take it you’re going to try and talk to him one-on-one?”

“Maybe.”

Zach snorted. “Because that went so well last time around.”

“Has anyone claimed the body?”

“No. They asked Bishop to identify him. Diskant said the scene was clean. There were no fingerprints other than Westin’s on the gun.” 

“There are still loose threads,” Lloyd said. 

“If you mean Aiden, he’s been arrested. Bishop has a friend at the district attorneys’ who says he’s going to be charged with espionage tomorrow.”

“Not the loose thread I was thinking of, but that’s good to hear.” 

“Tell me where the other loose thread is and I’ll take care of it,” Zach offered. 

“No. He’s worth more to us alive than dead.”

”Are you up to talking to him? Because you look like shit.” 

Lloyd rolled his eyes. “Screw you.” 

He shoved back from the table, snagged his empty cup and headed for the trash can. At the counter, he was about to toss it when something in the gleaming back panel of the espresso machine caught his eye. His blood froze at the sight of a familiar face staring back at him.

Joe. 

Somehow, Joe Hansen had crawled out of the grave and back up to the land of the living. There was no mistaking that face. The deep purple circles under his eyes, the dry, reddened skin partially hidden by a heavy five o’clock shadow, and bloodshot eyes from too much whiskey left Lloyd paralyzed for a moment. When his mind kicked back into gear, his first thought was almost smug: I knew you were too mean to die. But when he looked over his shoulder, there was no one behind him. Zach had stepped out to take a phone call. The shop was empty. His gaze turned back to the reflection. The eyes weren’t brown. They were crystal blue. 

It wasn’t Joe. It was him. 

He hadn’t shaved since Friday and had the scruff to prove it. A sleepless weekend explained the bloodshot eyes and dark circles. The wind and cold, combined with neglect of his skincare routine, had stripped his skin raw, leaving it cracked and red like a drunk’s. He looked as if he’d gone on a three-day bender instead of spending the weekend in a hospital room. He looked like Joe Hansen—even more so than usual. 

Lloyd stared at the reflection until his eyes couldn’t focus anymore. It didn’t make a difference. The image was burned into his brain. It wasn’t just their physical resemblance, it went deeper. The need for control, the volcanic temper. The chaos he’d spent his whole life trying to keep at bay. He crumpled up his cup and tossed it into the canister with more force than he’d meant to. A heavy weight settled in his chest. No matter how hard he tried to outrun it, Joe’s blood still ran in his veins. He’d rather die than admit it, but the truth, that he and Joe were fruit of the same tree, was inescapable. 

He stepped out of the coffee shop into the cold. Its icy bite was nothing compared to the pain of the knowledge that was sinking into his bones. He couldn’t keep you in his life, not in good conscience, not knowing the evil that lurked inside of him. The leaves crunched under his feet and the sound was like a physical reminder: nothing lasts forever. Your relationship had already stretched long beyond its season. No matter how much he wished otherwise, soon the pieces of your lives would no longer fit together. You’d outgrow him. Once that happened, any attempt he made to patch up the seams would cause it to unravel further.

The revelation cleared his mind, though his heart felt ten degrees colder. His chest throbbed, but at least the mental storm that had raged for days finally broke, leaving a hollow stillness in its wake. There wasn’t a choice for him to make, only a truth for him to accept. Your relationship was temporary and it would soon draw to a close. He couldn’t risk holding you back or allowing his past to endanger you again. The facts were clear cut, black-and-white. There was a wrong decision and a right one.  If he wanted you to have the future that you deserved he had to do the right thing.

He had to break things off. Whether it broke his own heart didn’t matter.

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

Coming Soon - Chapter XXX

Masterlist 

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

Taglist: @denisemarieangelina @before-we-get-started @buckysteveloki-me @patzammit @badassbaker @meetmeatyourworst @whiskeytangofoxtrot555 @thiskindahotkindamusic @jesgisborne @charmingprincess

@amiets2 @seitmai @elle14-blog1 @chaoticsteverogers @kaleidoscopepov @fangirl-and-doctor-help @terry2227 @jesevans @mjey12 @openup-yourmind @kandierteveilchen @adoreyouusugar @awkwardgiraffe726 @pono-pura-vida

@mysweetlittledesire @maylaysia109 @liecastillo @unluckyevans @marantha @literaturelove @babyevansblog @lizzzaaaaaaaaaaa @thegirlnextdoorssister @ladygrey03 @cynic-spirit @rosedpetal @jeremyrennermakesmesmile @bambamwolf87 @michalkasimp

@calwitch @peachiestevie @texmexdarling @here4thefanfics @namelesssav @yiiiikesmish @andydrysdalerogers @mrsbarnes32557038 @lokislady82 @rogersbarber @spikeluv84 @dear-fifi @crayongirl-linz @bigcreatorwombatdreamer @thewritergremlin-rae @raven-blue3000 @samfreakingwinchester

[deltaromeo3]

ᴛʀᴜᴇ ᴏʀ ꜰᴀʟꜱᴇ? - Mason Mount

pairing: mason mount x footballer!reader

summary: what happens when the reader and mason are together for a youtube video- Truth Asylum?

✿ A/N: i love chunkz & i love footy asylum! pls give the series a watch if you have not😂 anyways, i hope you love this!! ps. if you don’t know what truth asylum is, it’s basically a lie detector test.

“…I’m gonna put their friendship to the test! Today we have the lovely Y/N L/N and Mason Mount!”

The both of you waved at the camera.

★ ★ ★

Finally they strapped you up- placing sensors on your chest and fingers, the blood pressure cuff on your arm and the goddamn rubber tube over your chest.

Chunkz was to your left and Mason was seated across you. You smiled at Mason and he laughs, finding the whole situation funny.

“I’m nervous,” You said as your heart beat quickens, shaking the jitters off.

“That’s true,” Chunkz points out, looking at the polygraph in front of him.

“Oh shut up Chunkz,” You rolled your eyes, the reaction earning a laugh from both Mason and Chunkz.

“Okay so Mason, she’s all strapped up and ready! Go ahead and ask her some questions.”

Mason rubs his hands together, a mischievous grin plastered on his face.

You laughed at his antics.

“So,” He pauses, building up suspense. “Do you think you’re a better footballer than me?”

“No.” You answered confidently.

“That’s true! Wow, you didn’t even think twice,” Chunkz points out.

“Yeah yeah, cause Mason has been at this football thing for much longer than I am. I have a lot to learn from him,”

Mason was in awe. “Aww Y/N, don’t say that!”

“I mean it!”

Next question…

“Y/N,” Mason calls out. “If if wasn’t for football,”

“Oh god,” You muttered, earning a chuckle from Chunkz and Mason.

“Do you think we would still be friends?”

You gulped, batting your eyelashes. “Yea?”

“That’s a lie!” Mason gasps, covering his mouth.

“Wait wait let me explain! Let me explain!!” You quickly interject. Mason and Chunkz chuckles at your quickness to get your word out.

“Alright then, go on,” Mason says, allowing you to explain yourself.

“You see, if you all didn’t already know,” You said as you waved to the camera, indicating ‘all’ as the audience.

“We met through football. Our team had a joint training and that’s how we became friends. Of course I knew of Mason before I even joined, who doesn’t? And prior to this I was quite a lowkey footballer. I don’t think anyone would’ve known me if I didn’t join the club or whatever. It’s just.. we were in very different social circles. He was winning awards left and right at the same age I was playing for a mediocre team back home.”

“So aren’t you glad you met me then?” He adds on, cheekily smiling.

“Is that allowed Chunkz? He’s asking me another question,” You try to sway away from the question, hoping Chunkz says no.

“Answer him,” Chunkz smirks.

“Yeah yeah… I’m glad I met you.”

“And that folks, is the TRUTH!” Chunkz shouts.

You saw Mason smile grow wider.

“Okay, last question before we hand it over to Y/N. Go on Mase,”

He pauses, thinking of a question.

“Y/N Y/M/N L/N…” He leans forward.

“Yes Mason Tony Mount? Go on,” You could feel your heart racing.

“You know the recent interview you did with Wired?”

Oh god. You already know what he’s about to ask. You just nodded in response.

“Remember when they asked about your football crush?”

You nodded again.

“You said it was Hector Bellerin, yeah? Now, can I ask, is that true?”

You gulped, covering your face with your hand. You side-eyed the camera before answering “Y-yes.”

“That’s a LIE! So, who is it Y/N? Is he in the room with us?” Chunkz says, adding fuel to the fire as he smirks at you.

“Ah- Eh! That’s- Okay, so Mason next huh?” You signalled to the producer and quickly avoided the question.

★ ★ ★

Mason’s turn

“Mason!” You called out.

“Y/N!” He returns your energy.

“Oh I’m nervous. I don’t like this!” He shuffles in his seat.

You laugh. “Nerve wrecking innit?”

He nods.

“So, Mason…. have you ever lied to me?” You stare at him intently.

“What?” The question catches him off guard. “Never. On God.” He turns to Chunkz to validate his answer.

“And it’s true. We love an honest guy,” Chunkz says.

“Yes we do,” You agreed with Chunkz.

You pondered a bit for the next question.

“Ah yes,” You paused. “Would you miss me if you never saw me again?”

You saw Mason laugh, like the question would be hard to answer.

“Do you want me to be honest?”

“Well yeah? Duh. Even if you lied I could tell.” You pointed to Chunkz.

“Then..yeah of course. You know when you had international duty?”

You nodded.

“I was going on to Dec about how much I missed you. You can ask him if you don’t believe me.”

You looked over to Chunkz for the answer.

“And….It’s true.”

You tried to hide your blush by giggling. “Didn’t know you’d miss me. That’s kinda funny.”

“How’s that funny!” He laughs, “Don’t tell me you don’t miss me when I’m away? Remember when I went to NYC you’d-“

“That’s enough Mase, zip it!” You quickly ran over to him, covering his mouth before he exposes more of what he was about to say.

“Right, last question before we end it.”

“Easy,” You said. “We all know you’ve got a type. Would you date someone that isn’t though?” You smirked.

“God Y/N, cmon now.”

“Well?”

“Yeah…yeah I would. But just this one person though. I don’t even have to think twice. I’d make an exception for her.”

“Oh? Who’s she? A footballer?”

Mason squeezes his nose bridge, hiding his face. “Chunkz save me,” He looks over to Chunkz, hoping he would help him.

“You did the same to her, m’sorry Mase. Go on, is she?” Chunkz looks over to you, smiling. The both of you giggled.

“Err, yeah, she is.” He hesitantly answers.

“Ooh, what team does she play for?” Chunkz asks, even he is growing curious.

“Nah nah nah, that’s too much! Let’s call it a day Chunkz!”

Chunkz and you laugh.

He then proceeds to do his outro.

You knew you shouldn’t have asked that question but you were curious. And also now you were a little disappointed he already has eyes on someone.

★ ★ ★

The video publishes a week later, of course you watched it. You went to look at the comments. It was flooded with things like:

“We need Mason and Y/N to come back!!!”

“There’s obviously something going on between the two of them”

“Oh they’re each other crushes. I know it.”

“Look at how Mason looks at her! He’s smitten.”

“OH CMON MASE SHES RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU”

Your phone suddenly dings.

And so, the two of you began chatting about the video.

However, little did you know that Mason was talking to Ben. He too, saw the video.

[mensfactory]

1964 Ferrari 275 GTB/C Speciale bearing chassis no. 6701,

Just three of the 275 GTB/C Speciales were built, between 1964 and early '65.

Chassis no. 6701 is the only example that competed, including running at the 1965 24 Hours of Le Mans where it finished first in the GT class and third overall. In a race where mid-engined cars became increasingly dominant, that finish remains the best by a front-engined car to this day.

Like the more famous 250 GTO, the 275 GTB/C Speciale is both a work of art and a feat of engineering. Its tube-frame chassis is clothed in aluminum panels shaped by Scaglietti. The aluminum panels were about half as thick as those of the road cars, making them prone to denting. The Speciales also used thinner chassis tubes to reduce weight. All told, they weighed as much as 300 pounds less than the road cars.

They also packed more power. Under the long hood sits a 3.3-liter V-12 with six Weber carburetors and a 315-hp output, 69 horses more than the road-going 275 GTB. The car also features double-wishbone independent suspension at all four corners, and four-wheel disc brakes.

Photo credit: Mecum

[dallasgallant]

Time period post: Schools

Honestly surprised I didn’t cover this topic sooner, considering the characters are in high school. I’ll stick mainly to that range but I’ll bring in some broader information just for some additional knowledge. Like all my posts like this please consider this a starting point! If you’re interested look more into it as I can’t cover all of it and I’m trying to go off what’s potentially ‘most relevant’ to people’s fic writing.

Two important bits of context for 1960s schools: Student rights and desegregation.

‘Old school’-

Real quick terminology was a little different to refer to schools like elementary school would sometimes be “primary school” (I know this is still the case in Europe/Canada but large parts of the us no longer say this) or “grammar school” as a sort of preschool- early elementary range.

Junior high was also more common for a middle school but still used today in some parts. The age layout used to be different, sometimes depending on where you were kids from 12-18 would all be in the same huge school.

There were no smart boards or whiteboards. Chalkboards, pull down maps — students turned in everything either in cursive or written on a type writer! (There were entire typing classes for this skill as well. Then again when computers were slowly implemented in the 1980s) there were projectors however — either overhead, slide projector(which goes through a bunch of small photos aka slides) or a movie projector for educational film!

Copies were different too, worksheets would likely be from a Ditto (which had a particular smelling ink students loved).

What students carried-

No backpacks! It’s not until the mid 80s this really becomes a thing for schools. Lockers were used and you’d just carry home what books or materials needed, sometimes there were books traps which were mainly used by younger students (it’s a belt that goes around your books basically) girls would sometimes bring larger purses so they’d be able to carry the books too.

This is why there’s the trope of “oh Billy carry my books for me?💕” or students walking home with everything in their arms like in Halloween (1978)

Textbooks were pricey and the students responsibility so there’d be textbook covers! Sometimes nice ones were made when there’s something you like on it but if you’re poor or want your own custom ability you’d use a paper grocery bag.

There are those who buy lunch but if you bring it you either have a tin lunchbox or a brown paper bag (sack lunch) no cloth ones.

As mentioned above there was a lot more “life skills” based classes than there are today, some may exist in more rural communities but a lot of these got cut. Typing classes, drivers ed (in school!!), shop (Auto, wood and Metal), home economics -> from cooking, laundry, balancing checkbook etc.

Being called on/corrected-

Students weren’t people until the late 60s. I’m not kidding there were Supreme Court cases as there was a tendency of treatment and rights being actually acquainted to prisoners.

Dress codes weren’t as strict as the 40s and 50s but you’re still not wearing a tube top and daisy dukes to school. However the 60s are the age of teen rebellion…

Corporal punishment! You were allowed to be hit by a teacher if deemed necessary. Sending to the office/punishment in general was also more common : detention, suspension, expulsion etc (I mean this as actual and not just irrational as lately there’s been almost too lax)

Truancy officers! Making sure kids are in school, not skipping, missing etc.

There also seems to be more academic demand and rigor on the outside looking in on the time period, however I’ll say it with a grain of salt as some of it may be a ‘back in my day’ style…

Locality-

In a small or rural town school events would mean far more, especially back then. Clubs, fundraisers, carnivals and sports all were a huge part of students and the communities social life! Going to watch the football game was a big thing. Same goes for school dances like prom and homecoming.

This also makes things like superlatives, awards, sports wins etc more impactful.

[bethanythebogwitch]

It's too bad Halloween was yesterday because I would have done a Wet Beast Wednesday on something creepy, like the tongue-biting isopod. It's not though, so so I'm dipping my toes into echinoderm science and talking about crinoids. While crinoids are the least famous echinoderms, being overshadowed by their relatives the starfish, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers, they are extremely well-represented in the fossil record. We know of far more extinct crinoid species than living ones.

(imag id: a crinoid attached to a rock. It is a long, slender stalk with multiple threadlike protrusions emerging from it. At the top is a crown that looks like a flower composed of feathery appendages. It is while all over)

As with all echinoderms, crinoids are bilaterally symmetrical as larvae for become radially symmetrical while adults. It is hypothesized that the ancestor of all echinoderms was a bilaterally symmetrical animal that evolved to become radially symmetrical as adults. This places echinoderms in the same clade as all other bilaterally symmetrical animals, including mollusks, arthropods, most worms, and all vertebrates. You are more closely related to a starfish than a starfish is to a jellyfish. Crinoids are one of those animals like anemones that look more like flowers than animals, which is why they're also called sea lilies. A typical juvenile crinoid consists of a stalk with a holdfast on one end and crown on the other. The stalk is segmented and made of porous calcified material called ossicles, which are attached to each other by discs. This is the part of a crinoid that fossilizes most easily and a great many crinoid fossils are only known from their stems. The holdfast is a root-like structure that attaches the crinoid to a substrate. Crinoids that attach to a hard surface have a branching holdfast to grip on while crinoids that attach to sediment have a thick, stalk-like holdfast that penetrates into the substrate like a tree's taproot. The crown is the part that looks like a flower and consists of two parts: the theca/calyx/arboral cup and the rays. The theca is shaped like a cup and has a mouth in the center. The mouth connects to a simple u-shaped gut that leads to an anus near the mouth. The rays are analogous to the arms of a starfish. All echinoderms have 5 symmetrical body segments and crinoids have five rays, though they usually branch after emerging from the theca, resulting in up to a few hundred total rays. The rays are segmented like the stalk and can curl up. Crinoids will curl up their arms and pull them in to protect them. The rays are used in feeding. Crinoids are passive suspension feeders that wait for plankton and organic particles to be carried into the rays by the current. Each ray is covered by flexible appendages called pinnules that give the rays a feathery appearance. Each pinnule is covered by tube feet that are coated in sticky mucus. When a food particle hits the tube feet, they grab on and transfer it to the center of the ray, which contains a canal called the ambulacral groove. The groove is filled with cilia that carry the food particle down to the mouth. All crinoids take this form during their juvenile phase, but only a few modern species retain it for their entire lives. Most modern species will shift into an adult form where the stalk falls off and the theca becomes free-swimming. These are often called feather stars. Both stalked crinoids and feather stars can use their rays to pull themselves along the substrate, but feather stars can also wave their rays around to swim. Swimming allows feather stars to more readily avoid danger and become more active in their attempts to catch food.

(image: a diagram of crinoid anatomy. source)

(gif id: a feather star swimming. It looks like a bunch of black-and-white striped feathers attached to a central disc. The arms are undulating, propelling the feather star through the water)

Crinoids are dioecious, meaning individuals are either male or female. In most species, the gonads are in the pinnules closest to the theca. The gonads actually swell up and cause the pinnules to burst and release the gametes. Different species have different strategies. In some, both sperm and eggs will be released into the water column. In others, only the males broadcast sperm which the females use to fertilize their eggs. The eggs are withheld by the mother, either by gluing them to her arms or incubated in sacs on the arms. The larvae, called vitellaria, are free-swimming and bilaterally symmetrical. They will swim for a few days before dropping to the substrate and attaching. They then metamorphose into juveniles.

(image: a diagram showing a crinoid progressing through multiple developmental stages from fertilized egg to larva. source)

The fossil history of crinoids dates back to the Ordovician period (485-444 million years ago), the period between the Cambrian and Silurian. While echinoderms and even stalked echinoderms existed during the Cambrian, the oldest definitive crinoid fossils are Ordovician and it's unclear which extinct group that crinoids evolved from. For over two hundred million years, crinoids were extremely diverse and were dominant sessile filter feeders, beating out anemones and corals. The mass extinction at the end of the Permian dealt a major blow to crinoids that they never recovered from, causing them to lose their dominance and become much less morphologically diverse. The Permian mass extinction is a fascinating period of history as it was the single greatest mass extinction in the history of Earth. The early Triassic saw a mass adaptation to more flexible and motile body plans in response to increased predation. It's not clear when feather stars entered the picture, though they may have come about due to predation in the Triassic. Some extinct crinoids had different survival strategies than modern ones. The genus Pentacrinites attached themselves to driftwood and floated through the open ocean. They would have been like floating islands of diversity moving through the oceans with lots of other animals following for food and shelter. A fact that gets passed around a lot is that the largest fossil crinoid ever found (Taxocrinus saratogensis) was 40 meters (130 ft) long. That isn't true and seems to stem from a misprint. It was actually 40 ft (12.2 m) long, which is still fucking enormous. Crinoids today don't get anywhere near as large as extinct ones could. Fossil crinoids measuring many meters in stem length are well documented while ones alive today never even reach a meter long. Crinoid fossils are extremely common and can be used to provide relative dates to nearby fossils. In some places, enough crinoid parts fossilized near each other that they became clustered together in sedimentary rocks called encrinites.

(image id: a fossil imprint of many crinoids attached to a piece of driftwood. The imprints ore in a flat, tan rock. The driftwood imprint looks like a long, dark blob. The crinoids have long, curved, and overlapping stems and fan-like crowns at the top. Fossil found at the Houston Museum of Natural Science)

[downthedraincomic]

Splatoon worldbuilding doesn't really piss me off as much as it should tbh. It doesn't really bother me that a lot of stuff is underexplained, and even in my writing I don't really care about going into that much detail about that kinda stuff.

For example, things like this: How does ink go from the tank into the weapon? Is there a tube? Telekinesis?? Huh?? Where tf do the weapons go when they're in squid form?? I don't fuckin know!!

But y'know what, things like that being unexplained doesn't ruin the immersion or break my suspension of disbelief. It's a cartoon world after all. That being said, I still rewrite and change shit and ignore canon so it fits what works for me or whatever works best for what I'm writing.

I dunno man, I'm just rambling, rewriting video game shit to work in a real(ish) world setting is haaard

[uncharismatic-fauna]

Another Day, Another Pacific Sand Dollar

The eccentric sand dollar, aka the sea-cake, biscuit-urchin, western sand dollar, or Pacific sand dollar (Dendraster excentricus), are found in the intertidal zone and near-shore sandy bottoms from Alaska, US to Baja California, Mexico.They are the only sand dollars endemic to the Pacific Northwest, though they share the rest of their range with other species. Live individuals are seen either partially buried upright or lying flat on the ocean floor, depending on the strength of the current. To prevent themselves from being swept away, juveniles will also ingest sand to weigh themselves down. Although they are not social, they can form large colonies with as many as 6 sand dollars in a square m (1 sq yd).

Pacific sand dollars are named for their resemblance to silver dollars, especially the bleached exoskeletons that commonly wash up on beaches. Most adults average about 8 cm (3 in) across, though individuals as big as 10 cm (4 in) have been found. The body is a flat disc coated in small, purple tube-like feet and sensory organelles called cilia. The feet are used both for moving across the ocean floor and for pulling oxygen from the water. The mouth and anus-- a single opening-- are located on the sand dollar’s underside. Inside the mouth are five teeth and jaw plates known as doves; together they form a structure known as Aristotle’s lantern, which is unique to echinoderms like sand dollars and sea stars.

D. excentricus is a suspension feeder, using its feet and cilia to pull food from the water or direct it along special groves on the body’s underside. Their main prey are microscopic larvae, copepods, diatoms, algae, plankton, and detritus. The sea-cake is predated upon by a number of sea stars and fish, as well as crabs and sea gulls. To avoid being eaten, adults bury themselves in the sand and larvae will duplicate themselves via a process known as budding and fission, which creates smaller individuals that can distract potential predators.

Although western sand dollars have seperate sexes, they are broadcast spawners. In late spring or early summer, males and females congregate and release gametes into the water where they become fertilized. Larvae, also known as prisms, hatch just a day later. This larvae floats freely through the water, growing arms and metamorphosing into a echinopluteus larva. Once they reach 8 arms, the larva begins to develop an exoskeleton or echinus, and resembles a small adult. The final stage of growth is triggered by chemical cues released by other adults; after this, individuals become sexually mature and settle on the ocean with other sand dollars. In the wild, adults can live up to 13 years.

Conservation status: Although the IUCN has not evaluated the Pacific sand dollar, they are regularly threatened by ocean acidification, warming, and bottom trawling.

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Photos

Chan Siuman

Brian Starzomski

Alison J. Gong