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umccall71 · 4 years

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The Dinner Party

Characters: King Liam & Queen Sexy, Drake,Maxwell,Bertrand,and Hana

Rating:Mature, NSFW,profanity

Word Count: 5177

Chapter One

Disclaimer:All characters are property of Pixelberry. The use of these characters are for entertainment only and I am only borrowing them.

Summary:A simple dinner party among friends is always a welcome distraction until the friends become the distraction. Friends always share everything, hugs, support,love,honesty… Can friendship weather true honesty and the fallout from said ....honesty?

Warning: This series contains sexuality,profanity, a bit of adult content.This story is far from fluff,this is a walk amongst open relationships. Please be advised If you're reading this series you are acknowledging you are 18+.

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King Liam was head over heals and in love with his bride of a year.He is in heaven reveling in his every heart’s desire waking up next to his Queen Sexy. Liam and Sexy were an ideal down to earth couple, they worked together, lived together, loved together, played together, and tackled life on a world’s stage. So much of their life is spent under the scrutiny of the public eye, the press, their adoring people of Cordonia.Liam & Sexy relished those quiet moments when they experienced a rare period of downtime. When this rare moment occurred they spent it with the people closest to them, their friends, the friends that quickly turned to family during their courtship that was by no means conventional.

Sexy for Liam was it… the oxygen that he breathes...the blood flowing to his heart...she gave him all of herself and taught him that he is worth every ounce of love that she had to give.Liam had never imagined meeting the love of life on a spur of the moment trip to New York for a “bachelor” party.The chance meeting was an awakening for this mild mannered prince turned king, the meeting that flipped his world upside down... in a good way. Liam was all in with his marriage, their relationship was ideal goals for navigating love and life in the monarchy.Sexy was a tether for Liam in the maddening times that he fought hard for his people, his kingdom. He fought hard, he loved hard , and Sexy showed hjim that it was okay to play hard occasionally… he deserved it...they deserved it.

Life by all means was perfect, so perfect it was scary to the couple. They were now given another slice of heaven on earth...a family...expecting a baby...expecting an heir. Life was good, hell it was great for them. Liam and Sexy ran Cordonia like a well oiled machine running smoothly. When Liam’s ocean blue eyes locked with Sexy’s hazel eyes everything made sense. Every obstacle was surmountable, every decision could and would be handled.They both knew together there was nothing they couldn’t handle. It took them for a bit of a loop when Sexy was instructed to step back from her duties somewhat due her pregnancy hitting a bit of a hiccup. The doctor wanted to take extra precautions with the royal heir. She had been on limited restriction for 2 weeks and finally was about to be released to travel with her king. They were slated to leave in 2 days for a two week mini tour in North America. Sexy had not been back to the States since she and Liam became engaged. She thought back to the walk down memory lane from the bar, the beach, the pier, the boat ride to the Statue of Liberty that was accented by the love of her life dropping to her knees and flourishing a beautiful diamond ring.

Sexy rubbed her belly smiling at Liam, “you know i love our baby...i need some outside adult conversation”, she sighed exasperated and giggled.

Liam sidled up behind Sexy wrapping his arms around her waist stroking her baby bump, “I will try not to take offense love”,he smirked as he softly kissed her neck from behind. “Are you not entertained by my sparkling wit and humorous banter?”, he closed his eyes breathing in the scent of Jasmine and Vanilla.

“You know what I mean Liam, these last few weeks have been non-stop talk about the baby. A laundry list of do’s and don'ts from the doctor and from you. Trust me when I say that I will never do anything to jeopardize the health or life of our baby”,she twisted in his arms and planted a kiss on his nose after coming up on her tiptoes to reach. “I say we invite the gang over for a harmless dinner, in our home, to socialize and catch up,”she leaned into his ear lobe and pulled the soft flesh between her teeth as she whispered, “come on dad, it will be worth it.”

Liam could never say no to Sexy. He meant it when he told her that he would do everything in his power to provide each and every one of her heart’s desires.Sexy asking to spend time with their friends that had long become family was a no brainer. He had to tease her by making her think that he was not pliable to the idea.Liam knew that he had started living the night he met this firecracker in New York.Now his life began and ended with Sexy. He never wanted to imagine life without her again. Even during those months that they were separated by a pesky “engagement”.

He playfully palmed Sexy’s ass and asked, “What did I ever do to deserve you”?

She squealed from the sudden gesture, “ I guess lady luck is shining on you.”

Sexy slowly wrapped her arms around his neck tugging at the hairs on the nape of his neck. She knew that she could be starting something that she had not been in a position to finish. She felt guilty that her Liam was going without due to her pregnancy scare,but soon things would be back on track.Sexy ran her slender fingers down his chiseled chest. “Liam, what do you think about happiness? Do you ever feel that there is only so much to go around?

Liam’s blue eyes locked on his Sexy thoughtfully. “Sometimes it feels surreal how much happiness is in our lives. I have you , we have our baby on the way, the kingdom is thriving, life is good. Hell I'll even say great”,he chuckled.

“ I sometimes think that when one person’s tears stop, another starts to cry. It feels like a balancing act to keep our happiness without sacrificing the happiness of the ones closest to us.It’s like when a couple falls in love, somewhere in the universe another couple is ending in heartbreak.”

Liam considered her words as he pulled her tightly into his embrace as he stroked her belly, he smiled. “We are not in any danger of having anything but an abundance of happiness. You are making all of my dreams come true day after day.”

Sexy and Liam shared a kiss , their lips melted together drawing each other deeper into the kiss as they got lost in the moment as lips turned to tongues battling and twisting in a long shared desire. Liam missed these moments that would lead to him having his way pleasuring his queen … his name rolling off her tongue as he enjoyed the symphony of mingled moans and groans and whispers of I love yous.Sexy pulled back giddy with the feels from tasting her Liam’s lips. “If we keep up this pace we will never get anything done.”she giggled.

“I suppose you are right, Sexy. I never tire of getting lost in your touch, your kisses”, he peppered soft open mouth kisses down the supple skin of her neck. He wrapped his arms around her waist pulling her closer to him as he playfully ground his hips against her hips.

“You call to make the invites and I will arrange the dinner menu with the kitchen staff to make sure everything is to your satisfaction my love.”

“ I am looking forward to this time catching up and enjoying friends that are like family, good food, good drinks, and I am sure a night that we won't forget.”

The following evening Liam and Sexy looked forward to welcoming all of their friends. They had been so busy with duties and Sexy’s pregnancy, things had gone quiet.The knock at the door startled the couple as Sexy slipped into her flats and Liam adjusted his collared shirt. “Ready love?” Sexy smiled and nodded as they jointly went to the door to find everyone one of their friends had arrived simultaneously.

“It is wonderful to see you all tonight, it's been too long. I'm glad Sexy suggested we get together to catch up, especially before we leave on our trip.”Liam clapped his dear friend Drake on the shoulder. He pulled each Drake, Betrand and Maxwell into a quick hug. He nodded in the direction of Hana, “good evening Hana, it's good to see you too.”

Sexy smiled as she ushered the group into the great room for appetizers and drinks. “What can I get everyone to drink? Just because I cannot drink doesn't mean the rest of you can't enjoy it.” Sexy giggled as she rubbed her baby bump. She didn't miss the alcohol especially to keep her baby growing big and strong.

“Hey Taylor , it feels strange not drinking together. We shared quite a few strong whiskeys over the social season.” Drake smirked, shaking his head at the brief memory. “I'll help you with drinks...we couldn't do any heavy lifting with this little one.” Sexy and Drake retreated to the bar cart in the corner of the great room.

“It really is good seeing you all again… felt like forever . I admit I was going a little stir crazy without any outside conversation.” Sexy subconsciously rubbed circles on her belly as she looked over her shoulder to Liam with a sparkling glimmer in her hazel eyes.

“That doesn't get old at all … seeing how happy you two are. “Drake reflected on the path traveled for Sexy and Liam.

“It's something that you can have some day. Once upon a time you were a fixture around the palace, lately it has been ...crickets.”Sexy playfully swatted Drake’s arm as she approached the subject of Drake’s whereabouts as of lately.

Drake poured himself a tumbler of whiskey as he got quiet as if he contemplated if he should broach the elephant in the room. He ran his hand across his face before taking a swig.

“A penny for your thoughts… earth to Drake. Hey where’d you just disappear to a moment ago?”Sexy’s tone was low and concerned.”Something on your mind?” Drake’s chocolate orbs thoughtfully scanned the room as he considered if he should go there in his thoughts. “You seem ...different, a little distracted. What gives Walker?

Drake sighed deeply before he turned his back to the group focusing on Sexy. “What I'm about to say isn't exactly... public knowledge.”

“Well color me intrigued”, she teased. `No seriously, I'm not exactly going to release a press statement broadcasting to all of Cordonia that Drake Walker. The Drake Walker has a secret.”

“The reason I haven't exactly been a permanent fixture is because… well i've been spending some time in the Northern part of Cordonia.”Drake glanced to the floor before taking another sip. Sexy was pouring Liam a scotch, Bertrand a bourbon, Maxwell a whiskey, and Hana a glass of Red wine.

Sexy paused momentarily and quickly turned to Drake, “ Now i really wish Olivia were here.. She would know all the dirt around those parts of Cordonia.”

Drake threw back the remains of his drink and sat the tumbler down a little louder than he would have cared to place it down.

“Hey Walker, I'm just teasing. Whatever you share with me goes in the vault. Now...please share with me some juicy tidbits of what's been going on.” Sexy bumped her shoulder to Drake’s in an effort to help him feel comfortable enough to open up. “You're not about to make a pregnant woman beg , are you?” Sexy quietly laughed.

“Sexy, I've been up there spending time with..with ah .. with Liv.” He lowered his voice to keep the conversation to a minimal audience.

Sexy’s eyes stretched to the size of saucers as she processed the news. “ So wait.. You.. and OLivia? You two are dating?”

“Don't make a big deal of it Taylor. We have been enjoying each other’s company..no labels… no expectations. Just having fun.” Drake’s eyes did not convey the sentiment of his words..his empty words.

“ Why am I not believing you when you say it's just fun? I call bullshit Drake.” Sexy noticed the slight aversion from making eye contact.

Drake scoffed, “I don't see what's wrong with two people just having fun without any expectations.”

“Whose idea was it to just have fun? Yours or hers?” Sexy sensed the hesitation in his glance as he failed to respond. “Well for what it's worth, i'm happy that you're having… fun. You deserve that and so much more. I wish you both the best.”Sexy grabbed Liam’s scotch and Hana’s wine as she nodded approvingly.

Drake refilled his drink and grabbed Maxwell and Bertrand’s drinks joining them in the great room. As Sexy was about to join the group she was caught off guard when she noticed Hana staring intently,almost hypnotized in the direction of the group.She smiled and her smile faltered when her line of vision came to rest on whom it was in Hana’s sights...her king. Sexy was not one to jump to conclusions so she gave it another moment. She spied Hana’s doe-like eyes transfixed on watching Liam in silence, no rhyme or reason behind her fixation on the king...her king.

Sexy slowly approached Hana, careful not to startle her or interrupt her train of thought . She had stood behind Hana for a couple more minutes before she gently cleared her throat to make her presence known. “Hana,how are you doing over here?

Hana tried to mask her discomfort from the thoughts that were in her mind moments ago. “Oh Sexy, i'm good. You caught me a little by surprise is all.” Hana quickly composed her facial expression not to betray her thoughts moments earlier.

Hana smiled before engaging in small talk, “it's still hard to believe that Liam would have met and married a woman he had met in New York.”she feigned a laugher that was dry and humorless.

Sexy laughed along with Hana playing her part as if the intended message was lost on her. Her hazel eyes cut across taking in the sight of her husband that was sharing a good time with friends. “I don't follow, you all knew that Liam would be getting married at the end of the social season.Whats so hard to believe?”, she asked as if she didn't already know the answer.

Hana eyes darted back and forth nervously, “no we knew that he would marry, i guess we figured that he would be getting engaged to a lady of court.” She sipped her wine to cover for the faux pas that had taken place.

“He did marry a lady of court.”Sexy chimed in without revealing her annoyance at the implications.I was here in Cordonia as a member of the royal court at the request of the Beaumont brothers.” She pushed her golden lock curls behind her ear as she considered her words.

“Thats … thats not what i meant. I mean I would have thought he would have chosen a woman that had a similar background growing up in the life of ...nobility.” Hana began fidgeting with the tiniest thread on her blouse to distract her.

“Well he did choose someone from Cordonian nobility… we call it the Madeline period”,she chuckled to break the awkwardness of this conversation.

“Oh I know... we all knew that Madeline was nothing like Liam when he chose her.I would have expected a woman with a similar temperament.”Hana stumbled to clear up the confusion in what she was trying to say.

Sexy bit the inner cheek before she took a deep breath, “ nobody expected that the beautiful man would fall for and marry a waitress from New York no less.” She glanced at the tumbler in her hand, “where is my head ? I need to get Liam his drink. Let's join the group...wouldn't want them to think we were starting a party without them.”

Both of the ladies turned and sauntered back over to join the men. Hana sat in one of the two leather wingback chairs as Sexy perched on the arm of the couch closest to her king . She extended her hand holding out the drink to Liam. He looked up at her instantly smiling as they locked eyes and accepted the drink. “You take such good care of me love.” Liam leaned forward planting a gentle kiss to her baby bump.

Drake reacted excitedly,”wow i still cannot believe in several months you two are going to be parents! Who would have thought a year after marriage you two would be waiting on the birth of a little Liam & Sexy?”, he laughed and raised his glass to propose a toast. “To King Liam and Queen Sexy…”, he was interrupted by Liam.

“We are all here tonight as friends...none of the king and queen titles.”Sexy reached down and gripped his shoulder massaging sensually.Liam’s eyes traveled the length of her body hungrily biting his lower lip.He playfully pulled her into his lap, grinding ever so subtly into her ass . Liam whispered, “careful...this little shindig could be over before it starts.” Sexy swatted his hand as he held her firmly, she could feel his member hardening at the touch. She knew that they were a very physical couple. They loved each other in every way. They both got a sense of satisfaction from pleasing the other.

There was another knock at the door, Bastien announced, “sir the kitchen has delivered your dinner. The staff is ready to serve if you both are.”

Liam nipped at Sexy’s shoulder, “saved by the dinner bell.” She stood and ushered their guest to the dining room as Liam adjusted himself to hide the gift that Sexy had left him within his lap. “Great, just what i need to explain to the peanut gallery.”

After waiting a couple of minutes he joined everyone in the dining room.He took his place at the head of the table with Sexy to his left. Drake sat next to Sexy, Maxwell to Liam’s right, Hana, and Bertrand.The staff began service of Caesar salad, lasagna, garlic bread, a continuous flow of libations, and followed by a dessert of Tiramisu and coffee.

The conversation between friends flowed as easily as the alcohol.Drink after drink opened the floodgates of I remember when and I missed the time when we…

Sexy observed the inebriated state of the table. Liam was extra touchy feely under the table prying her thighs apart try to touch her sex.She eyed Maxwell stealing glances at Hana and Hana imperceptibly gazing at Liam again.Betrand seemed a little deep in thought as he nursed another bourbon.

Sexy broke the ice when a lull in the talks slowed. “Bertrand, how is life with Savannah and Bartie? I could only imagine how it must be to learn that the woman you had feelings for has given birth to your child, your son.”

Betrand stared down into his glass reflectively. He felt honored to realize that the next generation Beaumont was born of his loin. “A father to a son, that is an amazing feeling. I am thrilled to have Savannah back in my life. We are settling into life as a couple nicely...since I finally removed my foot from my mouth and allowed her in...truly. She is a wonderful woman.” He flipped his cell phone to briefly look at his lock screen photo, his family.

Sexy continued, “ finding love amongst your opposite. I'm sure you did not anticipate that happening. You love who you love Bertrand. There are people that would not have seen Liam marrying me in a thousand years. A waitress from New York, i guess i would be considered marrying down.Hell you even had the thought that your brother lost his marbles when he arrived with me to the masquerade ball.”Sexy rubbed her belly under the table as she pondered what immense changes had taken in her life since meeting and marrying Liam.

Bertrand rebuttal, “well i realized that i was wrong to come off as such an ass. I should have never doubted Maxwell or especially you Sexy.You have truly come into your own as Queen and an honorary Beaumont. You are like a sister to us Sexy, and now you are about to become a mom yourself… to the heir to the throne.”

“Understood B, I myself never expected to fall in love that night in New York, but I did and I never regret a moment of our life together.”

Hana’s eyes danced between her glass and Liam.It wasn't lost on Sexy seeing the looks again.She turned to look at Liam and noted, “ you know Liam, apparently our marriage left quite a few people pondering why you chose me. Isn't that right Hana?”

Hana fell quiet not knowing how to respond. She didn't want to make an awkward situation worse. “Sexy you two are good together and everyone sees it.”

“Answer a question for me without a diplomatic answer, just be honest. Can we all do that tonight? A night of honesty among friends?” Everyone nodded in agreement, somewhat cautious of landmines.

“Do you feel that Liam made the right choice in choosing me? You know with the sea of women that were of like minds and social status?Honesty Hana, we are all adults and can handle it. Do you think you would have been better suited to rule beside Liam?

The room went silent ,not sure anyone was truly ready...for the honest answer.Hana looked down to her wine glass again before finishing off the contents of the glass. She blew out the air from her lungs as if she were bolstering her courage to respond...honestly. “Sexy, it doesn't matter, you two are married, there is no need playing devil’s advocate now.”

Sexy’s voice raised slightly becoming irritated at the tap dancing she was attempting to do. “Thats not what i fucking asked you? I asked ``did you feel you were a better choice for Liam?”

Hana blurted out , “YES!” She clasped her hand over her mouth not believing herself that she had admitted it.

Sexy let out a loud boisterous fit of laughter, “ Finally! You finally said it, I knew that you felt that way. Now admit it, you want to fuck my husband don't you? We might well stay on a roll with this honesty. I'm a big girl, I can take it. I've seen the way you've been eye fucking him all night.”

“Sexy that's enough, we have all had a little too much to drink.”Liam reached over and grasped her hand trying to draw her in.

“No Liam, we're all good to be honest. Tomorrow we leave for the States, but tonight we are just spending time with our nearest and dearest. Now ...where were we?, thats right...Hana do you want to fuck my husband ? Have you ever thought about it? Have you considered his hands on you?”Sexy rattled off question after question waiting for Ms. Lee to get it out.

She whispered ever so slightly, “yes i have thought about it.” One by one all eyes around the table landed on Hana. She grabbed for her cloth napkin to try and excuse herself from the table, when she heard, “Don't ...there is no need to leave the table ashamed. I cant say i blame you, he is gorgeous, sexy as fuck, and willing to go to the mat to make me satisfied.” Sexy stood up and positioned herself behind her husband, “Liam, do you remember the night you proposed to me in New York, the time at the beach when we reflected on our friends and how much they've been there for us. I recall something shared that night in light of Hana’s declaration. Do you remember when you were telling me about Hana?

“What did you think about our friend Hana?”

Liam smiled at the memory“Even then I could tell we were kindred spirits.”

Sexy questioned, “ What do you mean?”

“We have a lot in common.We were both bred for a certain life...both bound by familial expectations…”

“Did you think you might pick her? The first time you met I mean?”

“She would have been an excellent match, she's brilliant at a great many things...hiding her feelings isn't one of them. Her heart simply wasn't in it. How could I choose that life for her?”

“I guess her heart was more into it than either of us would have thought. Liam, I never asked you back then , was there any attraction there...with Hana?”

“Sexy none of that matters except you and I . I have my queen...this is the life I am intended to live. I realized that a life without love and passion is no life for me. What I knew was that there were several beautiful women in contention for my hand, but only one in contention for my heart.”

Sexy returned to her seat, “Thats beautiful, but it doesn't really answer my question.”

“Yes she was ...is an attractive woman ,but that means nothing to me.” Liam finished the last of his drink. He stood and reached out to Sexy. Are you ready to call it a night?”

“Nope..we are just getting started. Maxwell, is there anything you would like to share with the class?”Sexy giggled. Maxwell kept looking to Hana, “I think Hana is a pretty great woman, i wouldn't going out with her...on a date.”There was no biting back what he felt when he so clearly stated , “ I could see possibilities with her .No pressure though.I'm happy to be her friend.”

“Drake… what about you? Any confessions you'd like to share?

We all spent a great deal of time together during the social season, the engagement tour and then when you two became engaged.I'm a man Taylor, was there a time that i thought things could go further?, yes. Would I act on it? Hell no i was not blind, you were very much in love with Liam and we needed to focus on Uncovering the conspiracy. I made my peace with being just friends , never to try anything.”

“I'm glad that you didn't. I never wanted to make it awkward between us. Of course i could tell that you were wanting more than friendship. I chose to ignore the signs because I knew I would never allow it to go any further than friendship.” Sexy smiled yet she was focused on clearing the unspoken that was plaguing her thoughts. She needed to get this out once and for all.

“Liam you know I would never want an arrangement in our marriage, but I want you to have a one night time only offer. Get it out of your system...so to speak. I love you enough to make this your day to … indulge.”Sexy’s eyes surveyed the table but honed in on her husband and Hana Lee for reactions.” We all need honesty of nothing else, so I will ask you both…. would you like to fuck Hana tonight with her … permission of course?”

Liam pinched the bridge of his nose as his blue eyes fixated on his queen. “Sexy, I would never ask something like that of you.We don’t have that type of marriage….”

Sexy interrupted, “your not asking me anything, I offered and I stand by my offer… only for you my love. Relax, I have no intention on fucking Drake… not my style… not my type. No offense Drake”, she flippantly advised.

“None taken… I’m not stupid Sexy. “ Drake tolled his eyes and took a large gulp of the whiskey sat in the dining table.

Sexy stood and walked over behind Hana, leaned forward and whispered, “admit that you want Liam to fuck you Hana, don’t you?”

Hana squeezed her chocolate eyes closed and nodded ever so softly. She never thought that she would be admitting , let alone considering feeling the king’s hands and manhood on her, in her… making her scream with pleasure. “ I need to hear your answer Hana… we wouldn’t want anyone thinking anything that transpired was nothing but consensual .”

“Yes… I want to be with him … in that way. I consent to whatever he wants to do to me”, she sounded almost desperate and hungry with a need to have him.

Sexy placed her hand on Hana shoulder, “stand and follow me.” Hana pushed her chair back and stood silently, eyes darting around the table in a nervously worried about judgement. Hana carried herself in a particular manner in polite society. Her parents would cringe at the thought of her being the king’s concubine… even for one night.

Sexy addressed the rest of her friend, “your welcome to stay and drink or you can see yourselves out for the evening.Either way we thank you all for spending the evening with us.” Sexy and Hana slowly started walking toward the hall leading to the guest rooms. She loved Liam , but would never violate the sanctity of their marital bed with her king screwing another woman.

Sexy stopped at the path leading to the bedrooms,”Are you going to us my king?”Liam stood from the table adjusting his button down shirt , grabbed the bottle of scotch , “ good evening gentlemen… I must retire for the evening with my queen .” He followed the two beautiful women down the hall to the last guest room on the right. Sexy sat in the comfy chair in the corner putting her feet up. Hana stood unsure of what exactly would happen next or where this evening would turn. Liam quietly closed the bedroom door only leaving the echo of a click .

Maxwell, Bertrand, and Drake each looked at each other in stunned amazement, “ So do you really think Sexy will allow Liam to … be with Hana?”Maxwell asked Inquisitively. “Silly man, what the king wants… the king gets”Bertrand scoffed adjusting his collar as he took another drink. All three men sat at the table carrying on as if a proposition had not been made for three of his friends to change the direction of the relationship .

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thepropertylovers · 4 years

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Feature Friday with Matthew Chaffee

Happy Friday, friends. Though the weeks are running together and what day it is means almost nothing anymore, we’re so happy it’s finally the weekend. The last few weeks have been some of the busiest for us (feeling grateful for that) and we’re looking forward to relaxing just a bit this weekend. Do you have any fun plans?

This week’s Feature Friday is Matthew, who shares what it was like growing up in a conservative environment, the response he got from his senior high school class when he came out in front of them by reading an essay (!), and his advice for those struggling to come out. We enjoyed getting to know Matthew and we think you will, too. See what we mean below…

What is your favorite place you’ve ever traveled to and why? Unfortunately, my answer to this question isn’t very exciting. Growing up, my family never had a lot of extra money to spend on traveling, so most of our vacations consisted of road trips around the Midwest. Don’t get me wrong, I got to see some fascinating places and make great memories with my family, but I haven’t been anywhere particularly exotic. I have been to New York City twice, both times for a music department tour in high school, and I’d have to say that it’s probably my favorite place I’ve traveled to. It was so much bigger and so much more cosmopolitan than anything I had ever seen or was used to, so it was quite overwhelming. The sheer vibrancy of it all – the lights, the smells, the languages – was intoxicating. Attending a performance of Phantom of the Opera on Broadway would probably have to go on my list of top ten life experiences thus far. It’s definitely not somewhere I could live for any length of time, but for somewhere to visit, it was phenomenal. 

Where did you grow up? What was your environment like? I’ve spent the entirety of my life living in West Michigan, which, as you may or may not know, is pretty traditional and conservative. More specifically, I’m from Grandville, which is a city of about 16,000 located in the Greater Grand Rapids area. Dutch heritage and Reformed (Protestant) Christian values play a big role in shaping the culture of the circles I grew up in. I attended a Christian Reformed Church, and I was educated in a private Christian school where my graduating class consisted of approximately seventy students. My family consists of myself, my mother, my father, and my brother, who is five years younger than me. I am very close with my parents, and I’d say my relationship with my brother is typical of siblings with our age gap. Family and faith have always been central parts of my life, and I don’t foresee that changing. 

How did your environment growing up shape who you are as a person? Growing up in a pretty conservative area definitely had an impact on my younger years. I remember in elementary school, like many children, I would parrot my parents’ political views when “discussing” politics with my peers. However, with the growing revelation about my sexuality that came with puberty, my views slowly began to change. Another catalyst for my shifting views occurred in middle school, when a good friend of mine was deported to Guatemala due to an error in her parents’ paperwork. The injustice of it all really impacted me and opened my eyes to a world that before had been largely hidden. High school gave me my first opportunity to connect with international students. As I have always been interested in learning about different cultures, I quickly befriended them and even helped start my high school’s International Club, which provided opportunities for American and international students to interact and attend various cultural events. Finally, my Aunt Dawn and Uncle Tim have played a major role in exposing me to issues concerning social justice. Although both of them grew up in West Michigan – just like my parents – their life circumstances have provided them with opportunities not experienced by most of my other family members. Because of this, they have always stood out to me as being somehow “different”, more engaged and more vibrant and passionate than most people I know. As I grew older and began paying more attention to the things my Aunt and Uncle would talk about, I began to realize the value behind the causes they were advocating. When taken together, my friends, my family, my sexuality, and my desire to continuously learn and expand my horizons have shaped me into who I am today. 

What’s one interesting fact about you? Besides English, I’m speak conversational Spanish and basic French and Korean. I also can play piano and trumpet, and I love to sing (though I don’t know if I’m any good or not, since I’m too shy to sing in front of anyone). 

What is one thing you love about yourself? Learning to love myself hasn’t been easy; it’s a process, and definitely something I’m still working on. But one thing I’ve always been proud of is my imagination. I’m a dreamer, and my mind is a wild place. I keep a running note on my phone of all the random, crazy things I think up so that maybe someday I can make them happen. 

What brings you the most joy in life? Oh boy. There are so many things I could talk about here. I love being outdoors. In particular, I love to bike. Bike trails are plentiful where I live, and Grand Rapids has begun to install bike lanes, so getting around and finding new places to ride is a cinch. My favorite ride is from Grand Rapids out to Lake Michigan, which I do a few times every summer with my best friend. Other outdoor activities I enjoy are hiking and hammocking. I firmly believe that everyone should own a good hammock. In addition to outdoor activities, I love to cook and bake. My specialties are ice cream and gourmet mac & cheese. Someday I hope to write a mac & cheese cookbook and title it “MAC: The Complete Guy to Everyone’s Childhood Favorite” (M-A-C are my initials). I also make a mean hummus. I love to learn. I’ve spent countless hours on Wikipedia reading about the most arbitrary topics. Whether it’s German political parties or the Japanese folklore, I’ve probably read about it. Nothing is off limits. As a result, my mind is a veritable treasure trove of random and mostly useless facts. Finally, I find joy in spending quality time with friends and family. Whether it’s playing ultimate frisbee, exploring a new city, dumpster diving at Krispy Kreme (a tradition at my college), or having late-night campfire talks, I’m down for just about anything as long as I’m with the right people. 

How old were you when you came out? What was your experience like? My coming out experience was a rather long process. Pretty much as soon as I began to have romantic feelings toward people, I realized that I had them for both guys and girls. This was around fourth or fifth grade, and I told myself that it was normal, that I wasn’t actually attracted to guys, but that I just knew that some guys were really good-looking. Once I reached middle school, I started to come to terms with the fact that maybe I was attracted to guys. But I continued to tell myself that I was more attracted to girls. I did the whole “percentage” thing, where I was like, “okay, I’m eighty percent straight, twenty percent gay.” I first came out as bisexual to my friend Carly. Freshman year of high school I told a few more friends that I was bi, and it went over pretty well. Sophomore year I briefly dated a girl, then junior year I began dating another girl. That lasted for about a year until we broke up early spring of my senior year. The breakup gave me a lot to think about, but even while dating her I realized that something never really felt right; I could never really imagine myself with her – or with any girl for that matter – for the long term. After much soul searching, I finally accepted that I was gay. One of the last big projects senior year was the “Where I Stand” paper. This was an essay written by every senior for English class, and it was basically an opportunity to say whatever you wanted and to be really open and vulnerable and reflect on your life leading up to that point. I decided to incorporate my coming out into my paper. It wasn’t the central focus, rather more of a side note. Thankfully, my English teacher, Mrs. Hoeve (now Dr. Hoeve) was extremely supportive throughout the process. On the day when everyone shared their papers, I concluded mine to thunderous applause, which was especially remarkable considering the fact that most of my classmates came from the same conservative, Reformed Christian background as I did. On the whole, I couldn’t have asked for a better coming-out experience at school. 

How did your friends and family take it? Did you face any backlash? How did/do you deal with that? I waited to come out to my parents until after my graduation and open house in order to not burden them with the news. Finally, after the celebrations had ended, I let them read my paper. The fifteen minutes or so that I waited in my room while they read it downstairs were the most agonizing of my life, because I knew how earth-shattering the revelation would be to them. When they finally came up to my room, their expressions were pretty much what I’d expected – reassuring, yet somehow disheartening at the same time. They assured me that they still loved me, that they were proud of me, and that they were glad I had told them. Since that time, we have only discussed my sexuality on a few occasions. When I first told them that I was dating a guy, it was almost like coming out all over again; I think that revelation finally made my sexuality real to them. In the intervening time, I have seen my mom making definite strides in becoming more open-minded not just toward me but in general, which is great. My dad, though he accepts and loves me, is very set in his ways – though, to be fair, I have had fewer conversations with him regarding my sexuality. My dad’s parents disowned me when I came out to them, though that hasn’t had much of an impact on me due to the fact that I was never very close to them. My mom’s parents, on the other hand, have always been incredible grandparents to me, so coming out to them, especially knowing their stance on other issues, was pretty nerve- wracking. Incredibly, the news didn’t seem to affect them at all, and their treatment of me since that time hasn’t differed in the least; they are still the loving, generous grandparents I’ve always known, and for that I’m extremely thankful. My friends have all been very accepting as well, though this was to be expected considering I have always associated with my more relaxed, open-minded peers. 

What did you learn about yourself in the coming out process? One of the most meaningful lessons I’ve learned about myself in the coming-out process is truly understanding what I value and stand for. I was raised as a Christian, and my faith is still very important to me. If anything, it’s actually become stronger as I’ve navigated the ups and downs of my journey with my sexuality. I’ve talked with numerous gay men who, at one point or another, renounced religion for various reasons, but often those reasons involved the church’s negative treatment or exclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals. To me, this is heartbreaking. As someone who identifies both as gay and as a Christian, seeing the false dichotomy that has been constructed around these two identities is challenging and frustrating, because I personally don’t believe that such exclusivity has any place in either institution. At its core, Christianity is about love. Sure, there are endless theological arguments to be made, but I don’t believe that these are necessary in order for a Christian to be accepting of another’s sexuality. Indeed, many of my friends are Christians; these are the same friends who accept my sexuality and wholeheartedly support me. Furthermore, the professors at the private Christian university I attend vehemently assert that Christianity and social justice go hand- in-hand, and that this includes advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights. Seeing this kind of support coming from within circles that are often viewed as hostile toward the LGBTQ+ community has been so incredibly encouraging. Not only has this served to reinforce my identity as both a gay man and a Christian, but it has also provided me with confidence when speaking about these issues. 

What would you tell today’s LGBTQ youth who are struggling to come out in fear they won’t be accepted by family, friends, society? You just might be surprised. People you’d never expect to support you will rally around you and love you. It’s also possible that people who truly care about you, but who may not be supportive right now, will have a change of heart when they find out. Sometimes it takes time. Case in point: my own parents, who are still processing and learning about what it means to have a gay son. Know, too, that family can mean more than one thing. Friends are the family you choose, so seek out and surround yourself with people who will love and accept you for who you are, especially if your actual family doesn’t. As cliché as it sounds, it does get better. Sometimes you just have to put in the effort to make it better for yourself and accept the challenges along the way. 

What is a difficult or challenging obstacle you have overcame in your life, or hope to overcome? By far the most difficult obstacle I’ve had to overcome in my life has been my struggle with mental illness, namely anxiety and depression. I was extremely anxious as a young child, to the point where I would induce vomiting before any sort of performance or sporting event so that it wouldn’t happen while on stage or on the field. Looking back, I think my anxiety was to blame for a lot of missed opportunities. For example, I don’t view myself as a particularly athletic person. But is this actually true? Or did I just never really try for fear of failure? Anxiety also manifests itself in my relationships. Elementary school friendships were rocky at best, and college presented its own challenges with meeting people and putting myself out there. More recently, depression has been a major struggle in my life. As I mentioned, I struggled initially to make friends at college (though this has since changed), and as I result, I became very depressed. I saw all the people around me getting settled into their friend groups while I felt alone. There was a point where my loneliness led me to seriously contemplate suicide, and I believe that perhaps the only thing that stopped me was when a friend checked in on me and gave me a hug. Since that time, I’ve been working on slowly but surely moving my center of identity to within myself, rather than placing it in other people and their judgements of me. I am focusing on pursuing my hobbies and interests, taking time to care for myself, and accepting my emotions as valid while simultaneously analyzing them through an objective lens. By doing this, I have become less worried about maintaining relationships and instead have been able to be present and actually enjoy them while also feeling more comfortable in the times when I’m alone. 

Who is your biggest inspiration and why? My biggest inspiration is my mom’s sister Dawn. She is one of the wisest, most thoughtful, and most gracious people I know. I actually came out to her before I told my parents; due to her close relationship with my mom, I knew she would have some good suggestions for how to break the news to them, and that she would be able to help my mom process the news after the fact. To give an idea of the type of person Dawn is, here’s a little anecdote: When I worked as a Resident Assistant in college, I had a resident come out to me. I was thrilled and honored to have him entrust me with such a significant part of his identity, and I really valued the opportunity to walk alongside him in his journey. I mentioned to him the role Dawn had played in my own coming-out process, and he asked if she might be willing to offer some advice to his mom. I reached out to Dawn, and she willingly agreed. I came to find out later from this resident that his mother and my aunt had talked for over an hour on the phone. I don’t know very many people who would go so far out of their way to help and support a complete stranger. 

Where do you see yourself in five years? Oh boy. Honestly, I try not to plan too far ahead, because that can be dangerous for an overthinking dreamer like me. But if I had to say, five years from now I actually hope to be doing exactly what you guys (PJ & Thomas) are doing. I joke that my dream is to have my own HGTV show, and while the odds of that happening are slim to none, I’d be happy to flip houses and develop property even without a TV show. I also hope to meet the man of my dreams, get married, and start a family, though this might take a little longer than five years down the road to happen. My greatest fear is actually never finding love. I know it seems a little ridiculous for a twenty-one-year-old to be worrying about that sort of thing, but it’s hard when you have friends who have been in serious relationships for years or who are getting engaged. I have to keep reminding myself that people find love at different times and in different places, and that I shouldn’t compare my own journey with others’.

Any last words you want to leave people with? Feel free to share! Feel free to message me! I always love getting to meet new people and hear their stories.

Thank you so much, Matthew! You can follow him on Instagram here. Hope you have a great weekend, friends!! xx

P&T

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slapshot-to-the-heart · 6 years

Text

Step on It

Whoops! I didn’t at all mean to start this, but then I saw a post by @mendeshoney tossing around the idea of a Shawn Mendes Baby Driver AU, and absolutely fell in love with it. It’s probably going to have three or four more parts, and hopefully the next will be up in a few days! It’s genuinely one of my favorite movies and favorite things I’ve ever written, so please feel free to tell me what you think!

Word Count: 3.1k+

Baby was a good kid. He always tried to do the right thing, looked after his foster dad like he was his own flesh and blood, and never hurt anyone unless he absolutely, genuinely had to. Baby was a good kid, but sometimes he got mixed up with the wrong people. After his parents died, and before moved in with James— back when he was still bouncing around group homes— he made some bad moves, ending up with the sort of crowd he swore he’d never get involved with. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t mean anything bad by lifting the Audi at the corner of Queen and Boulton. All he was ever going to do was take it out for an hour or so, drive around, and return it, no harm done. Nobody was ever supposed to find out. What Baby didn’t count on was that somebody had been watching him.

His heart leapt up to his mouth as soon as he saw the man at the corner, clad in a grey suit, arms crossed and a wry smile on his face. Shit. He wasn’t supposed to get caught. He was tripping over his words as he got out of the car, a combination of apologies and excuses and pleas for forgiveness falling out of his mouth before the man held up a hand and Baby’s words trailed off.

“I saw you driving,” the man said. “Call me Flint.”

Baby briefly wondered if that was his real name. “I’m so sorry about the car, I don’t know what I was thinking—”

“How old are you, kid?”

“Fourteen,” Baby swallowed.

“Fourteen, Jesus. Where’d you learn to drive like that?”

He shrugged. “Don’t really know. Just around?”

Flint looked at him for a moment, weighing his options. “I’ve got an idea. You ever want to make some extra money, Baby?”

He nodded. “Sure, but my name’s—”

Flint cut him off. “Save it. Where we’re going kid, you won’t be needing it. Anyone asks, your name’s Baby. You hear me?”

Forcing down a nervous swallow, Baby followed Flint. What was he getting himself into?

Baby had always learned that if something seems too good to be true, it usually is. Flint’s deal was no exception. While he was undoubtedly dazzled by Baby’s skills behind the wheel, he was more interested in using them for his own, less-than-legal purposes. All to pay off the debt Baby owed him for stealing his car, he had said. Which is how Baby found himself sitting in the driver’s seat of a nondescript red sedan six years later, glancing over his sunglasses to see if the job was done. By job he meant bank robbery, naturally. It wasn’t like Baby felt good about what he was doing; he didn’t. He was doing it because he had to. He had no other choice. So he tried his best to push away his conscience, ignore the ringing in his ears, and skip songs on one of his many iPods until he found something suitable. Fast-paced, driving sound, with the right tempo and rhythm to keep him from thinking too much about the fact that he was definitely about to commit a felony. Bellbottoms- Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Keeping one eye on the bank door, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, singing along under his breath. Baby liked to drive, but music is what gave him life, what kept him going week after week when the guilt of what he did threatened to eat away at his soul. Lost in thought for a moment, he nearly missed the blaring sound of the bank’s panic alarm, the small crew sprinting out the side door and across the street to his car. They piled in, Baby turned the key in the ignition, and he floored it. Down side streets, between cars, and under overpasses, until they arrived at the switch point, trading in the red sedan for a demure-looking silver hatchback. Baby vaguely wondered if Flint was channelling his inner suburban soccer mom, before sliding into the front and retrieving the keys from the center console.

The ride back to the headquarters— “the office,” as Flint liked to call it— was much less eventful, and ten minutes later the group of five was walking back into a seemingly-abandoned warehouse.The same strange smile on Flint’s face, the one Baby had learned was his sign of restrained satisfaction, he spoke. “So, how’d it go?”

Working for Flint, Baby had become an expert in waiting around and biding his time. There was never a consistent schedule for his jobs; he could go two days or two months between. When Flint called, he went. He’d take his stack of bills home, tuck them underneath a loose floorboard in the living room, and try hopelessly to reassure James that he wasn’t up to anything illegal, that he wasn’t in danger. He hated lying, but knew that it would be putting them both in way more danger if he knew the truth.

That’s how he ended up in the tiny kitchen in the apartment he shared with James, two pieces of bread on the counter, a jar of peanut butter off to the side.

Banana? He signed to James.

Obviously, he said, eyes rolling.

A corner of Baby’s mouth twitched. Grabbing a banana from the counter, he put the peanut butter back in the cupboard, placing the plate in front of him.

Thank you, James said.

No problem, I’ll be in my room if you need anything.

James nodded, and Baby walked the short distance from the living room to his bedroom, closing the door most of the way but not shutting it. James’ arthritis had been acting up lately, and he didn’t want him to have to open the door if he needed help.

Sitting down on his slightly beat-up but well-loved office chair, Baby pulled out a fresh case of blank cassette tapes that he had bought from the music store earlier in the day. It was the one thing that seemed to be able to get him out of his head, that gave him some semblance of peace and security in the midst of everything he did as part of his day job. Opening up his Mac and powering on his old cassette recorder, he plugged in his earphones. He liked to record bits of conversations he overheard, or lines of a song, or even the ambient noise that made Toronto sound like home. Car horns, trains, birds chirping, the splashing on Lake Ontario, they all made him feel safe. Made him feel at home. The top shelf of his closet was mostly filled with shoeboxes filled to the brim with these tapes, another off to the side having a dozen or so iPods and MP3 players he had loaded with his favorite music. Each one had its own theme. Most people had all of their albums on just one or two, but Baby liked the structure of his system. He was able to have control over that, even if in every other respect his life seemed out of his hands.

Someday, Baby thought he might like to try writing his own music. There would be something powerful about feeling like a piece of music was really his own, not like he was merely toying around with someone else’s words, someone else’s melody. He even had a guitar in the corner of the room, a nice one, that he’d pull out on occasion, an old journal filled with half-written songs lying on top of it. The guitar was the only thing Baby had ever spent a lot of money on, and the very pretty girl at the music store downtown promised him it was worth every penny of the $800 he had spent. He wasn’t much of a spender aside from that, nearly all of the rest of the money went towards savings. Saving for what, Baby didn’t know. He thought he might like to go to college one day, but that obviously wasn’t going to work in his current situation. Travelling was out too. So it was left accumulating under the floorboard, waiting for something, anything, to happen.

As Baby popped the cassette out of the recorder and scrawling a title over the front, a glint of metal caught the corner of his eye. His mom’s iPod. He always found it something of a miracle that it hadn’t been irreparably damaged in the car crash that had killed both her and his father, but he always ended up figuring that she was watching over him now, that she knew he couldn’t survive, wouldn’t want to survive, in a world without music. Baby could care less about his father— he had never really been there for him, never played catch or taught him how to ride a bike ro read goodnight stories, all the things a dad was supposed to do— but his mother, he missed her every day, the pain her death caused left a hole in his heart that had never been repaired. Some days were easier than others, but no days were easy. His mom, Julia, was the one who showed him love and taught him that he was valued and wanted and important, especially when he didn’t feel so himself.

He was ten when his parents died, which unfortunately for him, is right about when you really start remembering stuff, and selective memory doesn’t work as well as it used to. Which meant that he remembered every excruciating detail about the car accident that had left him an orphan. His parents fighting, his dad’s eyed not being on the road, the truck drifting into their lane, the crunch of the metal, being pulled out of the car by some good Samaritan and carted off to the hospital. Some kind-faces, spectacled doctor trying to explain to him how they tried everything they could, but his parents hadn’t made it. His aunt buying him his first suit to wear to the funeral. Thc closed caskets.

His Aunt Lydia had taken him in for a few months, trying her best, but then her husband got transferred to a job in California and he wasn’t able to go with him. She still tried to keep up with letters though, her annual birthday cards sometimes the only thing that reminded him there was a world outside of the city limits. After that, he was put into foster care, bounced around from home to home, never staying more than a few months. Some of them were genuinely terrible places, but more often than not it was Baby who would run away, taking his backpack, iPod, and a change of clothes before his social worker tracked him down and had him sent to another house. James was different. There was something about him that made Baby want to try harder, want to be a better person, want to change. Maybe it was the fact that he didn’t pity him. James had lost people too. Maybe it was the fact that he hadn’t come from much either, but still managed to live a life of joy and gratefulness every day. Maybe it was just the fact that he was a single Deaf man, so unlike any of the other families that he had been with, that all he actually needed was a change of pace. And six months later, he met Flint. Whatever the case was, Baby was grateful. He didn’t know where he’d be without James. So he wasn’t proud of what he did for Flint. Not by a long shot. But he had no choice, not if he wanted to keep himself and the one other person he was certain he cared about safe.

He owed Flint a debt, and it wasn’t like he could ignore his calls even if he wanted to. And by God, did Baby want to. Every time he picked up his phone for another one of Flint’s ‘jobs,’ it chipped away at him. The best he could do, Baby mused, was simply try to ignore the guilt until they were square, until he was all paid up, until he could finally by a car of his own and go driving down the highway and never stop.

Baby stripped off his shirt, unbuttoned his pants, threw the covers over himself, and wanted for sleep to come.

Baby woke the next morning to the blaring of his phone alarm, the speakers playing Mr. Blue Sky until he reached over, absentmindedly thumbing the screen until the music stopped. Opening up his closet, he dressed himself before walking out to the kitchen, where James was already sat in his wheelchair by the living room couch, reading the previous day’s newspaper.

Eggs and toast okay? Baby asked.

James nodded. Bacon? He asked, raising an eyebrow.

Baby shook his head. All out, used the last yesterday. I’ll get more when I’m out today.

Will you have another job today? Baby had never really told James about what he did for Flint, figuring the more ignorance on his part the better, but he was more perceptive than most, and had found out that at the least, whatever Baby was going to be given stacks of hundreds couldn’t be legal.

I don’t know, he said, shrugging. They call, I go. That had long been his motto.

Baby didn’t usually have much to do so long as he kept his phone on him, so he walked until his feet ended up taking him to Grange Park, to the same bench his mom used to sit on while he played on the same playground he looked at now. School was still in session so there weren’t too many people around, the majority being toddler age or younger. He sat for a few minutes, trying his best to disallow any memories from the crash to taint his daydreams, eventually plugging his headphones in, scrolling to his favorite 80s playlist, and walking the twenty minutes to the diner.

His mom had worked at Fran’s since long before he was born, and Baby had spent countless hours staying out of the way in a corner booth, entertaining himself with coloring books and comic strips until his mom finished her shift. Everyone that worked there had always been good to him, Julia’s frequent shift partner Monica even checking in on him a few times after her death, bringing casseroles and condolences that meant well, but didn’t end up doing much more than reminding him that her kids still had a mom while he didn’t. He visited often enough that the manager waved at him as he walked through the door, telling him his usual booth was open and he was welcome to take it. He slid in, and not a moment later the door opened again, and in walked a woman who was inarguably the most beautiful person Baby had ever seen in his life.

He barely had time to register that she was singing, so he pulled out the little, pocket-sized cassette recorder he kept in his jacket, managing to catch the last ten seconds or so. He wasn’t even able to slip it back in and she had returned, her long brown hair now pulled up in a bun and the denim jacket cast away in some cramped employee locker.

“What can I get you this morning?” She asked, with the same kind of planned cheerfulness Baby was used to from any of the servers. He hadn’t recognized her, though. He would have remembered.

Baby swallowed. “Uh, not sure?”

She waved him off, leaning her head towards the near-empty diner. It was a bit of an odd hour for lunch. “Don’t worry about it. Not like I’ve got many other customers to entertain, you see?”

His jaw fell slack, and she cocked an eyebrow quizcally at the cassette. “Am I being recorded or something? For...quality assurance?” She added playfully. “What can I get you this morning, sir?” She added with emphasis.

Rubbing a hand on the back of his neck, he shook his head. “No, no. Nothing like that.” Continually flustered, he stared at the kid’s menu when she asked about his order again.

“You know that’s the kid’s menu, right?”

He grabbed the other sheet and placed it in front of himself, perhaps with a little more force than was necessary. “Uh, yeah. Yeah.”

“So did your day just end or is it starting?”

Baby shrugged a shoulder. “Can’t really say either way. They call, I go.” As if by some cruel twist of fate, his phone chose that moment to ring. Any other person would let it go— they were eating, they were busy, and they were with a very pretty girl. But there was only one number who ever called that phone. Flint. And while he may have had something of a soft spot for Baby, he’d be damn near on thin ice for letting it ring.

“So what do you do, then? Some kind of a driver, a chauffeur?” Her name tag said Joshua, and while Baby certainly wasn’t one to criticize someone for having a strange name, something told me it was likely the fault of some poorly-organized backroom shelves and not the girl’s parents.

“Yeah, I drive people.” Vagueness always seemed to be the best response whenever anyone asked him what he did. Too little detail and his story wouldn’t be believable, but too much and they’d get suspicious. He had learned long ago to tread the sweet middle ground.

“Anyone I’d know?”

He shook his head. “I hope not.”

She already found him interesting, but now he was flat-out mysterious. “You’re a little different, aren’t you?” She murmured.

“Maybe.” Baby didn’t want to leave. God, he didn’t want to leave. He had to, but there was one more question he needed to ask. “What was that song you were singing?”

The second he got out of the meeting with Flint, Baby headed straight to the nearest record store. He made a beeline for cassettes, praying it would be tucked away behind some long-forgotten stack of Elton John’s greatest hits or the Lion King soundtrack. After a few minutes of flipping, he finally found what he had been looking for. Tucked between Prince and Fleetwood Mac— he recalled with a grimace that this particular store didn’t always do a bang-up job at alphabetizing— Carla Thomas, B-A-B-Y. He had never listen to much music from the 50s or 60s aside from classic rock; jazz and folk never really struck him as ‘his kind’ of music, but he swore he’d never loved a song more than when he heard her singing it. Turning over the case in his hand, he remembered something that threatened to throw a wrench in his well thought-out plan. He didn’t know her name.

#shawn mendes #shawn mendes blurb #shawn imagine #shawn mendes fluff #shawn mendes imagines #Shawn Mendes Imagine #shawn mendes writing #shawn mendes smut #shawn mendes fanfiction #shawn mendes fanfic

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brettanomycroft · 7 years

Text

Swamped [Kidge Cryptid Hunt Oneshot, VLD]

“Why else do you think I would insist we come here before we started on our Swamp Ape hunt?” she asks.

“Because we needed cookies?”

She flings her hands up, and the bag of cookies nearly flies off her arm.

“Because we needed to harness Publix's mystical force to aid us in our quest!” she exclaims. Her voice deepens, heightening her drama. “Dark Publix, show me the Cryptids!”

Author’s Note: This was completely self-indulgent. I’m a 3rd or 4th generation Florida native and have spent all but a few years of my life in this lovely, strange state. All but one thing written here about Florida is fact, which is that I don’t think there are two Publix across the street from one another in Cape Canaveral, but there sure are in the town I live in now. Thank @stardusted for the inspiration and planning. She started this. Not me.

Fandom: Voltron Legendary Defender Paring: Keith x Pidge Words: 6101 Tags: Swamp Ape, gratuitous Florida, barely edited, bonding, sass, snark, more Florida, mosquitoes, kissing, cute shit, rednecks.

Read on AO3 "Flashlights?"

"Check."

"Water bottles?"

"Check."

“Camera?”

Keith turns in his seat towards Pidge and presses the button on a boxy, plastic camera. A flash goes off. She pouts, but for once keeps both hands on the steering wheel, rather than trying to retaliate.

“Digital and disposable, check,” he says with a grin.

“I can't believe they still sell those. At least if that picture is terrible, I can physically burn it.”

“It won't be,” Keith says.

Pidge’s brows raise. It takes her a moment to resume going through her mental checklist. “Bug spray?”

“Like a gallon of it. Are you sure this isn't overkill?”

"Look, Toto, we're not in the desert anymore, so unless you want the mosquitoes to turn you into a prune so you can start planning your early retirement to Boca, then we're going to need alllllll that bug spray. You've gotta trust me, I'm the expert here. Now, do we have the cookies?”

He looks down at the disposable camera. Suddenly, the process of winding it to the next picture is the most important task in the world.

“Uh…”

The clicking sound as he winds the camera bridges the silence.

"You forgot to grab the cookies?" she asks in a low voice.

"My arms were full carrying all the bug spray!" Which is how Keith finds himself in the middle of an aisle at a grocery story that is surprisingly nice considering he lost cell service thirty minutes ago and still isn't sure if Pidge sneezed in the middle of telling him the name of the "town" they were stopping in.

For an intergalactic pilot, his Earth-side travel had been limited to the desert outskirts beyond The Garrison and a few big cities he visited with his dad, cities that seem more haze than memory now. The maze of palm trees and identical ranch homes the Holts lived in mystified him, and the rural, ramshackle spots he and Pidge had stopped off at when they needed gas were downright eerie. And while he really doesn't get how peanut butter cookies are crucial to the cryptid-hunting process, he's more than willing to give Pidge credit for taking them to what seems the likeliest place for downhome folklore to become fact.

Assuming they ever get out to the site. By the time Pidge decides which brand of cookie to get, the team’s “Voltron Spring Break 2020” will be well over. He wonders how the locals would take to the sight of a massive, glowing UFO appearing over their neighborhood Publix.

“Why don't you just get the ones from the bakery?” he asks.

She looks over her shoulder and rolls her eyes as if he’s asked the most obvious question in the world. Keith gets the sense that she’d wave a dismissive hand in his direction, if both weren’t occupied with two different boxes of cookies.

“The bakery cookies come in those child-proofed plastic containers,” she says, “meaning they’ll make way too much noise to open and close any time we want to eat during the hunt.” The follow up *duh* is unspoken.

Crossing his arms over his chest, Keith leans against the shelves opposite her, careful not to disturb the rows of crackers. “You’re the expert,” he replies, voice going flat so that she could tell just *how impressed* he was.

Pidge puts one of the packages of cookies back on the shelf. She must hear his sigh of relief, though, because a moment later she locks eyes with him and makes a slow reach for another type of cookie.

“Come *on* Pidge.”

A wicked grin stretches slow across her face. “Why don't you go grab another bottle of bug spray while I finish picking out the cookies?”

Keith shakes his head and crosses to Pidge’s side of the aisle. Stretching past her, he picks the box of cookies Pidge just set down, and another box of the ones she still has in hand.

“It's a conspiracy,” he says gravely. “No one needs that much bug spray unless they've got a vested financial stake in it. I refuse to to help you serve the secret interests of Big DEET, Pidge.”

“While in most cases I'd be inclined to agree with you,” she says, “This time, your theory neglects to take into account one important variable: we're in Florida, a state that is more bug than land.”

“Sounds like something a Big DEET lackey would say to cover up their connections.” He pauses to stick out his tongue in response to hers. “Forget the extra bug spray, let’s roll.”

With a dramatic, long-suffering sigh, she sets down the cookies in her hand and follows him towards checkout. When he glances back, he can see the tell-tale tight lips of one trying their best to hold back a smile.

The two of them ignore the strange looks they get from the cashier as they unwind the secret plottings of Big DEET and the significance of OFF™. They pay, and Keith hands the plastic bag filled with cookies to Pidge. She immediately tries to push it back to him, but he sidesteps and comes in with a “You know, we're standing in the most intriguing Florida conspiracy I’ve ever witnessed, but I haven't heard anyone question it.”

Already curious, she doesn't try to hand the bag off to him again. Success.

“What are you talking about?”

The cashier stares hard at them, face still fixed in a smile, but ready for them to clear out so she can finish with the customers behind them. Keith ignores her in favor of making a wide, sweeping gesture towards the grocery store around them.

“Publix. Ever since we landed, it's all I ever hear your mom and dad and Matt talk about. Even you've started doing it. 'Keith, you haven't lived until you've had a Pub Sub,’ and 'I know we stopped at Publix earlier, but let’s go pick up this other thing.’ It goes on.” Pidge nods along, glee filling her face.

“I'm pretty sure everything in your house is Publix brand,” he continues, “and three days ago, when your dad was driving us around town, I saw two Publix across the street from one another…And both were packed. Everyone here has an unnatural obsession with this store.”

The cashier finally shoos them towards the exit. They stop once they reach the parking lot, where Pidge reaches up to cup his cheek. She shakes her head.

“Oh, poor, naive Keith,” she says, doing her best to keep a straight face. “The Publix Phenomenon isn't a conspiracy if everyone knows about it and is willingly accepting. Every Florida child grows up learning of the strange contract made between the Jenkins family and a powerful, interdimensional entity. No one cares because Publix is the best.”

Her words pick up momentum, excitement and investment in the ridiculous story growing. Her eyes crinkle at the corners and he's not entirely sure if it's her pulse or his that he feels at the point where their skin meets.

Her hand drops. Keith exhales, letting go a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding.

“Why else do you think I would insist we come here before we started on our Swamp Ape hunt?” she asks.

“Because we needed cookies?”

She flings her hands up, and the bag of cookies nearly flies off her arm.

“Because we needed to harness Publix's mystical force to aid us in our quest!” she exclaims. Her voice deepens, heightening her drama. “Dark Publix, show me the Cryptids!”

She holds her pose for a few long ticks before they both dissolve into laughter. Clutching at his stomach, Keith doubles over, gasping as he tries to speak.

“And here this whole time I thought you were weird. Turns out you're just Floridian,” he manages.

“Hey! I resemble that remark!”

Pidge chases him all the way back to the car, both cackling as she tries to nail him with the wildly swinging bag of cookies.

…

It's another 30 minute’s drive out to the location Pidge has found for their Swamp Ape stakeout. The sun is low in the sky and right in their faces, but the car’s A/C is cold and conversation engaging. Pidge once again shares how she found the spot: a combination of digging through forums and coding a program that took location and environmental data from the various sightings and calculated the best possible area for spotting the cryptid. Keith's heard the story three or four times by now, but doesn't begrudge her excitement. Once she’s done, he retells his story of how his attempts at tracking down the Thunderbird ended up with him trespassing on Garrison property before he was even a cadet. Pidge always laughs at the part where he evaded Iverson by making terrible bird calls, so it’s worth the embarrassment of recreating the scene.

Between laughing at themselves and the dense forest that crowds the single lane highway they’re cruising down, Pidge misses the turn off. They’re alone on the straight, narrow road, so Pidge lets out her choicest of expletives and pulls a U-turn right in the middle of it. Both of their phones are without signal, but Keith had gone the old school route and printed out the map as well, so after a few miles going under the speed limit and another U-turn, they find their road.

Loose gravel crunches under car tires. A plume of dust rises up behind them. Keith stares out the windows, transfixed by the way the trees flit by. His eyes catch on shadows and shapes further back in the woods: trees, no doubt, but in the growing twilight he swears he sees something dart away.

Being a paladin of Voltron came with no shortage of action and excitement. They were constantly on guard, always ready for the next fight. But this is a different prickling in his stomach. This is a pick up in his pulse that he hasn’t felt since he was fourteen and scrambling under a break in the fence at The Garrison. He glances over at Pidge. Her attention is glued to the path ahead, but there’s the hint of a grin at her lips. Her hands flex and tighten on the steering wheel.

The road dead ends at a small clearing of grass. Pidge parks the car. At the far end of the clearing, a few knobbly fence posts do their best to hold back the forest. Pidge turns to him, vibrating in anticipation. Her eyes are bright, a hint of gold lit in the setting sun.

“Ready?” she asks.

“Beyond ready.”

Keith opens the passenger door, slides out, and shoulders his backpack. From the side pocket, he withdraws his knife and returns it to its proper place on his hip. Pidge had assured him that open carry was a thing in Florida, but he hadn’t wanted to take chances. The weight of his blade at his side kickstarts the pounding of his heart, sending it to his ears. He can see Pidge getting geared up on the other side. She bounces from foot to foot, tests the weight of her backpack, and consults the compass clipped to her shorts.

“Let’s roll. We’ve got an hour or so until sundown.”

They cross the clearing. Long grasses and weeds tickle and stick at Keith’s ankles. He regrets not wearing jeans, but Pidge had insisted that he’d die of heat stroke before they found the Swamp Ape if he did.

Pidge stops between two of the fence posts. Barbed wire coils between the posts, the “NO TRESPASSING” sign attached to it faded but sturdy. She doesn’t hesitate or turn towards the car. He can’t hold back a grin as she pulls a pair of thick work gloves and her bayard from the side pocket of her backpack and goes, “Care to do the honors?”

“Nah, go for it. I broke the law last time.”

She chuckles, tugs on the gloves, and dispatches the barbed wire with little effort.

“Remind me to fix that on the way out,” she says.

“Fix that on the way out,” he replies.

“You’re *so* helpful.”

With her gloves, she holds the barbed wire back, allowing him to pass. He reaches up and ruffles her hair once he’s safely past the sharp metal.

“I try,” he says.

He walks two or three yards into the forest, then turns when he doesn’t hear Pidge’s footsteps behind him. Rather than the expected look of disgust, she stares at him with an expression that falls somewhere between impish and downright devious.

“You’re forgetting something, Keith,” she says in a singsong voice.

“And what’s that?”

From the bottle holder of her backpack, she yanks out not a bottle of water, but a massive can of bug spray.

“Spray down time.”

Groaning, Keith trudges back to her.

“Repellent?” he asks. “I thought that’s why I had you and your personality here.”

And, as he deserves, Pidge hits him in the pants with a long shot of the wet, citrus-smelling stuff.

…

Their little camp is little more than a blanket laid out on the ground and their backpacks leaned up against the wide trunk of an oak. They’d walked maybe a mile or two from the clearing until Pidge had dubbed them sufficiently far enough from civilization for a Swamp Ape to appear. Settling in, they’d gotten out their individual field notebooks, water, and one of the boxes of cookies. And then, the wait began.

There’s desert hot, and then there’s *this*, and *this* is misery. Oftentimes when Pidge had talked about home, she’d referred to it as “the swamp”, but in the cool expanse of space, it had been hard to imagine. Keith ought to have figured it out as they were flying in, when he’d seen from Red’s viewscreen the long tracts of murky green, but Pidge had been chattering away over their private channel about how great it was going to be to see her family and take him out on a proper cryptid hunt, so it hadn’t really hit him.

The heat doesn’t just swelter, it clings. Walking through a wall of food goo would have been easier and more pleasant than what they’re sitting in now. The lowering sun provides as little relief from the heat as do the pines that stretch above them. If anything, the trees trap the humidity in. Pidge runs a can of soda along her forehead and cheek. The hair from her ponytail that isn’t plastered to her neck curls and frizzes.

A buzzing at his ears tells him that despite all the bug spray, he’s about to become dinner; he swats at the mosquito near his neck and lands a hit. When he pulls his hand away to look, its a mess of sweat, dirt, and a smear of blood. Keith decides then and there that the only good thing to come from Florida is Pidge, and even right now, she’s not earning many points. He should have gone to Disney with Lance, Hunk, and Allura, or stayed in Cape Canaveral and gone bar-hopping with Shiro, Matt, and Coran.

“Why did we have to choose to hunt the Swamp Ape?” he grumbles. “Why couldn’t it have been the Beach Ape, or better yet, the Indoor Air Conditioning Ape?”

“Because those aren’t legendary monsters, those are tourists,” she says. “I know the heat’s shitty, but shut it. All your complaining will scare off the Swamp Ape.”

He’s not sure if he should feel relieved to know from the sting of her words proved the heat was getting to her too, or offended by her jab. Pidge could get downright nasty when the mood struck - her sense of tact and social etiquette were about as refined as his - but most of the time he had the privilege of being the observer, not the recipient.

And maybe she realizes her harshness: a few ticks later, she pulls a chilled soda from her bag and waves it in front of him.

“Cool off?” she asks, as close to an apology as he can expect.

“Yeah, sure.”

She slides the can up his arm, giggling when he jumps at the cold contact on his skin. A trail of goosebumps follows the condensation the can leaves as she rolls it over his shoulder and up his neck.

The next two hours pass easier with Pidge recling on her backpack next to him. They split a beer Keith nicked from Lance; not because either of them were too young to buy their own, but because watching the confused look dawn on Lance's face the next morning as he counted the drinks left and tried to compare it to what he was sure he’d drunk the night before was one of their new favorite things. In low whispers they exchange what they know about their quarry, from the accounts they’d each read about to their own pet theories. There’s an undertone of hope, as if talking about the Swamp Ape might make it appear, but instead the sun sinks below the horizon and the mosquitoes come out in full force.

Keith had the foresight to bring a deck of cards, so they flip on the lantern Pidge packed and run through their options. Egyptian Rat Screw is out of the question - too loud - but they play a few good rounds of Rummy, Crazy Eights, and a game Coran had taught them called Yarbling Yellmore. Pidge then cajoles him into a game of Go Fish, which is unfair when they both know she’s the reigning Go Fish champion back on the Castle.

“Got any… threes?” she asks.

“Go Fish,” he says, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible.

In the fuzzy blue light of the lantern, Keith sees Pidge give him a *look*. Her eyes narrow and she purses her lips.

“You’d better not be lying,” she mutters.

“I’m not. Go Fish.”

“Keith, this isn’t Bullshit, give me your goddamned three.”

She leans in. He resists the impulse to lean back, doing everything in his power to maintain his semblance of innocence.

“I already told you, I don’t have one. Go Fish.”

As if this weren’t the first time this has happened, Keith scrambles back on his butt the moment before Pidge launches herself at him. He keeps his card hand high in the air, out of her reach as she practically crawls over him on all fours.

“You’re such a shit,” Pidge swears, trying to swipe at his cards.

“What happened to being quiet?” he teases. He stretches his arm up even higher.

Of all of the paladins, he’s the shortest second to Pidge, but every bit of extra height counts in carrying on the game of keep-away. Her knee digs into his thigh and her hand is planted on his shoulder as she continues her futile attempts to snatch his cards from him. He tilts his head up to avoid getting a mouthful of green tee-shirt, only to come to close to getting a mouthful of something else. Pidge seems not to have noticed the precarious nature of their position or the red that floods his face. She leans in closer as she tries to leverage all the height she can to reach his cards.

“What happened to h-” Pidge starts, but her voice cuts off with a sharp squeak the moment after a loud rustle comes from the dark forest.

Their heads snap towards the sound. Beyond the circle of the lantern the forest is a patchwork of black and blacker. They both jump as a deafening crack of a tree branch snapped in half echoes around them. Without looking away from the verge of light and shadow, Keith plants his hands on Pidge’s hips to keep her from tumbling on top of him. His cards hit the ground with the faintest flutter. Pidge is too occupied to notice the pair of threes.

“Swamp Ape?” Pidge breathes.

“Dunno.”

The sound of scattering leaves and shaking foliage continues. A chorus of pops and cracks surround them. Pidge tenses under his hands.

“Flashlight?”

“Closest one is in my backpack. Front pocket,” he whispers.

Pidge slides off of him and inches towards his backpack. With aching slowness she undoes the zipper, trying to make as little noise as possible. The unseen source of the rustling nears; Keith can practically taste the tang of his heart in his mouth. Whatever it is, it's almost at the edge of their makeshift camp.

“Gotcha,” Pidge hisses. She stands, Keith's flashlight in hand, and swings the beam of light towards the noise.

Three small, bulbous shapes give off a dull shine in the light. They freeze in the middle of their rooting around in the dirt. Black beady eyes peer out at them. Pidge lets out a long string of expletives that ends in “Quiznaking armadillos.”

Tension drains from Keith's body, and he falls back on the blanket. He needs a minute to get the painful pounding of his heart back to a healthy tempo. He hears Pidge stomp around and kick up leaves and twigs to chase the small creatures away; the rustling they make as they scamper back into the forest isn’t even as close to as loud as it had seemed before.

Pidge collapses on the blanket next to him with a huff. They look at one another, and burst into laughter.

...

“We’re goinna give it thirty more minutes,” Keith insists, “and then call it quits. If the Swamp Ape doesn’t show up before then, it gets to keep its ‘Elusive’ status.”

The protest Pidge offers is garbled, drowsy.

“Beg pardon?” he says.

She shifts a little to look up at him, but her head remains planted on his shoulder. Her eyelashes flutter as she fights oncoming sleep.

“But I wanted you to have the coolest cryptid hunt ever,” Pidge whines. “Instead all we’ve had swampy weather and some stupid armadillos.”

Keith eyes the watch on his wrist. After having gotten used to the ticker he wore while in space, it takes him a moment to interpret. It’s already past midnight, and they’ve got a two hour drive back to Pidge’s house that Keith suspects he’ll be in charge of. He runs a hand over her hair, consoling.

“I’m having fun,” he says. “Swamp Ape or no Swamp Ape. What else do you think I’d want to be doing? Spending my Spring Break keeping Coran and Matt from starting bar fights? Spinning around in some silly bowls at an overpriced circus until I puked?”

Pidge chuckles, and scoots closer. She adjusts until it seems she’s found a more comfortable position leaning against him.

“One,” she starts, “don’t pretend like you wouldn’t be the first to start a bar fight.” Keith shrugs the best he can without disturbing her. “And two, don’t knock the teacups ‘til you’ve tried them. Outside of the mindlessly long lines the Disney Corporation uses to optimize harnessing of human soul energy, the parks are pretty great.”

“The only way any of that could be more entertaining than what we’re doing is if the bar fight was at Disney.”

They continue chatting, doing their best to keep the other awake for the final half hour of their quest. While not as oppressive as earlier, the air is still on the warm side, and between that and the lullaby-strains of frog song and insect hum, Keith knows he’s fighting a losing battle. He can see a pocket of stars through a break in the trees above, and decides he likes how pleasantly surreal it feels to be with Pidge looking up at the stars instead of down. His fingers absently toy with the end of her ponytail as they talk.

Ten minutes remain in their hunt when it happens.

It starts with the frogs. Pidge is the first to notice. She sits up.

“Hear that?” she whispers.

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

The forest is cloaked in odd silence. Keith feels very, very awake.

They sit in absolute stillness, and are rewarded a few seconds later by a long, deep howling sound. It’s too far off for Keith to figure out what direction it’s coming from, but it won’t be that way for long: it’s getting louder.

When he’d imagined the Swamp Ape, he hadn’t imagined the terrible crush of underbrush like thunder rising from the earth, hadn’t imagined the inhuman, reverberating roar, unlike anything he’s ever heard before. Blurry images of a tall, loping figure flash through his mind. All reports indicated it was fast, powerful. His paladin armor would be a blessing right about now.

Pidge grabs his hand and squeezes hard. She’s gone pale, and it’s clear the same thoughts are crossing her mind. Blindly, she fumbles for her backpack and feels around until she finds her bayard.

“Keith, if we die here,” she says, voice low and serious, “I want you to know that there’s no one else in the world I’d want to go cryptid hunting with and that I’d been hoping we could do that kind of stuff together for the rest of our lives, Voltron or no.”

Something pings in his brain at her words, something some part of him feels like he would be paying a lot more attention to if the angry bellowing of a charging creature weren’t headed straight for them. He stands, muscles tensing.

“We’re not going to die, Pidge,” he snaps. “We’re both trained warriors with space weapons going up against a big monkey.”

“Okay, well, yeah,” she says as she stands up, “but the adrenaline’s talking now and I don’t have a good brain-to-mouth filter under normal circumstances and monkeys and apes aren’t the same thing.”

Whatever beast is out there isn’t slowing down. Keith estimates they have maybe another twenty seconds before it reaches their camp.

Pidge and Keith turn to each other as one. And maybe the adrenaline has hit his bloodstream, or maybe her words catch up with him, or maybe this was going to happen the entire time and both of them were too wrapped up in the hunt to even notice, but it happens now: Keith slings his free arm around her waist and Pidge grabs his shoulder and their teeth click painfully as their lips collide once, twice, three times. He tastes peanut butter and mint gum when his tongue slides into her mouth. A soft whine rises from the back of her throat when they part for air, a sound he mimics when she sucks his bottom lip between her teeth a moment later. The roaring in his ears is either his heart or the Swamp Ape less than ten feet away, probably both.

Hand on his blade, he pulls away from her and turns to the source of the roar. Every muscle tenses, each nerve fires off with the command to defend: now that he's kissed Pidge, he's not about to let either of them get mauled by Redneck Sasquatch. Next to him, Pidge crouches low. Her bayard sparks to life, glow illuminating flushed cheeks and kiss-plush lips.

They’re hit with a bright blast of light. Keith throws up his arm but it’s too late, and he’s blinded. He holds his defensive stance and tries to blink his vision back.

“What the hell are ya’ll doin’ out here? This is my private property!”

As his eyes adjust to the light, it clarifies into two points - headlights. A loud motor revs and growls. Keith can just make out the darker outline of what looks like a 4-wheeler with a man atop it. He can’t see the expression on the man’s face, but the anger in his shout and the slender shadow of a shotgun make his facial features pretty unnecessary.

Pidge gets her words back first, but he swears he hears a slight twang to her voice that, should they make it out of this alive, he was definitely going to tease her for.

“Sir, we are so sorry, we did not mean any harm, you see, it’s just that we were out here lookin’ for, ah, uh…”

The man gives a contemptuous snort. “Lookin’ for what? Ain’t nothin’ but pine and cattle for a’hunnerd acres.” He turns his head towards Keith. “Nah, the only thing ya’ll’re lookin’ for was a real private place. Thinkin’ you could get some all the way out in the woods, huh boy?”

Keith tries to stammer out some sort of response, but he’s completely blindsided. He looks from the rancher, to the wrinkled blanket below his feet, to Pidge, wild hair mussed from a long night of humidity. It does look a lot like what the rancher was suggesting.

“No, that’s not-” Keith starts. “We weren’t doing anything!” He clenches his fists to keep himself from reaching for his knife. He’s been launched from one potential fight into another, and his body is still ready to go. Reason tells him that the last thing he needs to do is beat up some stranger in the deep woods of Florida, but instinct doesn’t like the way the man is staring the two of them down.

“We were looking for the Swamp Ape!” Pidge shouts.

Just like before, the entire forest goes quiet. Even the thrum of the 4-wheeler’s motor seems muted.

“The what?”

“The Swamp Ape,” Pidge repeats, sounding defensive.

A bark of laughter echoes around them. The rancher lowers his gun.

“Where you two from?” he asks.

“Cape Canaveral,” she says.

“You two came all the way out here from Canaveral lookin’ for that damn ape?” The man hoots and dissolves into great gasping bouts of laughter.

Keith takes a breath, stance relaxing. They were going to be all right. He sees Pidge deactivate her bayard.

“Yes Sir, we did.”

It takes three or four more staggering breaths before the man can speak again. “Girl, there ain’t been a sightin’ this far north in years. You gotta go down to the Everglades if you wanna catch a whiff a’ him.”

Pidge visibly deflates, shoulders sagging. The expression on her face as she turns to Keith is pure apology. He shrugs.

The rancher lets them pack up their things and escorts them back to the property line. He watches with an appreciative eye as Pidge uses her bayard to mend the cut barbed wire, then issues about as stern of a warning as he can muster.

“I figure ya’ll wastin’ your time out here for nothin’ is punishment enough.”

…

The drive back is quiet. Despite the chug of the A/C, the air feels thick. Keith stares out the window, but sneaks glances at Pidge when he thinks her attention is fixed on the road. He’d kissed her. She’d kissed him. Somehow, that discovery feels more monumental than 1,000 confirmed conspiracy theories.

He takes another chance at a glance, and finds her looking at him.

“I’d understand if you don’t want to go on anymore cryptid hunts,” she says in a quiet voice. “This was a total bust.”

He swallows hard and reaches out to fiddle with the air vent. It’s suddenly hotter than an afternoon in July. He shakes his head.

“I thought you said you wanted to do this kind of stuff together forever. I was starting to get pretty set on the idea.”

Pidge’s smile is soft. Keith assembles every last bit of courage that hasn’t been drained from the night’s events, and leans over to take the hand resting in her lap. Her fingers curl around his.

“You’re by far the best thing to come out of Florida,” he says.

If she thinks she can cover up how wide her eyes get, or the color that rushes to her cheeks with a sarcastic sounding, “Keith Kogane, that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,” well, she’s wrong.

She holds his hand the rest of the drive home, not even letting go when she has to swerve around a pack of armadillos crossing the middle of the road.

…

3 AM has come and gone by the time Pidge navigates the car into the driveway. The Holt family home is dark but for a single stove top light in the kitchen, which allows Matt, the only one still awake, to give them a once-over. He sets aside the jar of peanut butter and spoon in hand and lets out a low whistle.

“No luck, huh?” he says.

Keith feels the mirth radiating from Matt as he takes in their matching sweat-drenched clothes and mud-flaked faces. He circles the kitchen island and plucks a small twig out of Pidge's hair.

“Three armadillos, an annoyed rancher, and a flock of mosquitoes,” Pidge mumbles.

“Not exactly the monsters you were looking for, then,” Matt says. “You’da had better luck coming out to the bar with me and Shiro and Coran. We ran into something inhuman tonight - dunno what it was, but Coran swore up and down that it wasn't an alien.”

Matt launches into a descriptive but somewhat slurred story about, from what Keith could gather in between the large clumps of peanut butter Matt starts eating again, Coran’s close encounter of the Texan kind. Keith's too tired to protest or be offended at Matt's descriptions of the tourist.

Keith and Pidge yawn in unison. He can feel sleep creeping up on him, and if he doesn’t go upstairs and shower soon, he’s going to fall asleep in the middle of the kitchen, coated in a thick layer of sweat and bug spray.

“Eh, well, you’ll have better luck next time,” Matt says. He tries to twirl his peanut butter spoon between his fingers, but it drops with a loud clunk. His eyes narrow as he shoots the spoon an accusing glare, then shrugs and scoops out some peanut butter with his finger instead.

“But just think,” Matt continues. “Maybe the real cryptid was the friends you made along the way”

Pidge glances at Keith. She bites her bottom lip, then looks away. Keith feels warm again. He, too, suddenly finds it hard to look at her.

Matt laughs. He looks like he’s about to pat Keith on the back, but reconsiders a moment later. Keith is pretty sure the stench coming from him and Pidge is potent enough to put the Swamp Ape to shame.

“I call first dibs on the shower,” Pidge announces.

She wraps his hand in hers and gives it a quick squeeze, then hurries upstairs before he can protest her shower dibs. He watches her climb up until she’s out of sight.

When Keith turns back, he meets Matt’s piercing stare. For all that Matt had been acting like he’d had a bit too much at the bars that night, the look he gives Keith now is both sober and sobering.

“Any theories on why you guys didn’t manage to find the Swamp Ape?” he asks. “Maybe a little too occupied with something else?”

After everything Keith has faced that night - mosquitoes, wild armadillos, unpredictable property owners - nothing chills his blood so much as the very Big Brother expression on Matt’s face.

“Apparently we were too far north for a good sighting,” Keith says quickly, “and if we wanted to actually track it down we’d have to go to the Everglades.”

“Next time, then,” Matt says. Keith shivers.

“Yeah, hopefully.”

“Maybe I’ll come along.”

“Yeah, sure thing, definitely,” Keith hedges. “Well, I’m exhausted soooo I’m just going to go upstairs now.”

Matt wishes him a ‘good night’ that sounds a lot like ‘I’d better not catch you doing anything with my sister’. Keith does his best to walk upstairs in a calm, collected manner. He’s so focused on avoiding a premature death that he nearly jumps out of his skin when Pidge swings up the door to her room and steps into the hallway.

She’s bundled in a towel, pajamas in hand, and her hair cascades down across her bare shoulders. All thoughts of Matt and dying vacate.

“I’m going to hop in the shower,” she says quietly.

“Don’t take too long. The only cryptid rarer than a Clean Pidge is a Pidge Shower that’s less than 45 minutes.”

Rolling her eyes, Pidge leans in and presses a light kiss on his lips.

“You’re lucky that Blushing Keith is my favorite cryptid,” she shoots back.

Stunned, he doesn’t manage his reply until she’s almost shut the bathroom door behind her.

“Well, you’re mine!” he says.

Keith counts it as a success when he hears a soft yelp and a drawn out “Stoooooop,” from the other side of the door.

#kidge #kidgefic #keith x pidge #keith kogane #pidge gunderson #Katie Holt #florida #vld #my fic #vld fic #kidge fic #fluff #cryptids #swamp ape #real florida #kissing #bonding #my writing

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dbethelcomics · 7 years

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Sketch Fridays #39 - Shockwave

As mentioned last week, Shockwave rounds out the roster of the team Josh Tobey and I created together in high school––as early as 1994, it seems––and have been redesigning for the last month or so using my (our) modern aesthetic sensibilities and tastes. The last remaining character to redesign was one called "Shockwave," or "the character with electricity powers." And, as such a description indicates, he was a bit underdeveloped as a character, but they all kind of were. I think that the only character on the team to have a full name (outside of the code name) was Razorpoint (Shane Yashido) and, even then, Shockwave had the most hazy backstory/development of all the characters (with the exception of, perhaps, Backfire because girls are scary).

To that end, Shockwave––who started life as, apparently, a character named "Firespark" who then became "Firestorm" before settling on "Shockwave"––was mostly a tabula rasa character when approaching the redesign. Last week we saw the character's creator share his crack at the redesign and, this week, I round out this trip down memory lane with my interpretation.

Firestorm, the prototype for Shockwave, drawn in 1994.

Unlike Katana before him where I designed my interpretation before seeing Josh's reimagining, this time I had seen Josh's version beforehand and tried my best to not be influenced by what had already been done.

The original character's power set was basically electricity-based. For the redesigns, both Josh and I started from that foundation. In fact, both he and I had the same thought: as a character that generates electricity, think of him as a conductor––what kind of design could we come up with that could contain that amount of power?

Another (blurry) Firestorm from '94, based on a pose by Jim Lee.

For my redesign, I again went into the character and how he relates to the premise of this reboot. If all of the members of the team (except Katana, though he may be revealed as a possible source) are infected by this techno-biological virus, then how does it manifest differently for Shockwave against the rest of the team?

My first thought was to go full John Carpenter, body-horror with Shockwave, to make him a mass of banded steel and pipes that was a cross of the blob (from the classic horror movies) and Tetsuo's final form in Akira. After thinking about that for awhile, I came to a few conclusions: first, that's gross and hard to draw. Second, of the redesigned characters so far, what hasn't yet been done? To this point, all of the characters (Backfire and Razorpoint, specifically) have a visible manifestation of the virus and their bodies have become modified amalgams of biological growth and techno-organic infestation.

Which led me to a simple question: what if you couldn't see the infection? Which begged the follow-up: what if the reconstitution of flesh into bionics were completely internal?

So, the basic interpretation is that, of all the members of the team, Shockwave looks "uninfected" in that no real techno-organic material has surfaced. Instead, it's his internal systems and organs that have been affected, the consequence of which seems to allow him to generate massive amounts of electricity. However, as is the case with electricity, it is difficult to manage or control through basic willpower. So, he wears an insulated suit that has technology built into it that allows him not only a modicum of control over this energy, but also allows for a variety of uses.

Development sketches and notes for the Shockwave redesign.

I wanted him to fly, since that was integral to the character back in the '90s, so I tried to (with my limited knowledge about electricity) reason out a way to do that. So, the gauntlets he wears, with the bar across the palms, allow him to basically act as an electromagnet. He can pull things toward him and push them away and, after much practice, can allow him to levitate, at first, and ultimately fly. On his thighs and on his back are actually batteries that allow him to store excess energy generated as well as to tap into them to give his own systems a boost when he needs extra speed or to let out a huge blast of electricity.

Ultimately, it was fun adding accoutrements to the suit and not have it look too silly (to me) and I feel he has the most overlap, visually, with his old self's costume. That makes sense because, for both Josh and me, we both apparently had a lot of fun drawing this character in high school and he was basically just a costume.

Looking at these characters now yields a very unexpected response. I thought it would just be a throwaway exercise but, for all of them, I look and see four characters I would actually like to draw and write, to flesh them out (give them names, for one!) develop backstories and a team dynamic and, perhaps, tell their story. I don't know, but the surprising fallout of this experiment was how inspiring it ended up being. There are more characters in my sketchbooks from that time, but I'll wait on bringing them out and try doing some other stuff for Sketch Fridays for awhile.

I'll wrap up with one last really old, embarrassing drawing that has Josh and I drawing our respective Mary Sue characters on the same page. Those early drawing years were fascinating because I was drawing so much and, looking through these sketchbooks, I was improving so fast (the leaps I made in 1994 alone are staggering) that I kind of almost wish I could travel back in time and watch happen in real time. I kind of wish I still had that amount of gusto, but I also know that even though it's more incremental now, I'm still improving. One thing I know for sure is that if I went back in time and showed fourteen year old Dan the work I'm doing now, he'd hate it. Top to bottom. And then he'd go right back to drawing, getting better with every line.

My character, Venture, with the medieval version of Josh's character, Katana, in a collaborative drawing from 1994.

#Sketch Fridays #Long John Comic #nostalgia #art #drawing #comics #redesign

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postolo · 6 years

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WBNUJS students on winning the Aditya Birla Scholarship

In a proud moment for the university, for the second year in a row, four students from the Class of 2023- Shivani Choudhary, Pratyay Panigrahi, Sevanshi and Agniva Chakrabarti( from left to right in the photo), were awarded the prestigious Aditya Birla Scholarship for the year 2018 by the Aditya Birla Group. The awardees will be joining the list of eight other Aditya Birla Scholars currently studying in the university and taking the total count of the beneficiaries from the scholarship to twelve and carrying the legacy forward. The scholarship winners were being interviewed by EBC/SCC Online Student Ambassador Rohit Sharma.

Question 1: Hey, tell us something about yourself. What are your hobbies and interests?

Sevanshi : I am Sevanshi Kunal Kamdar. I am from Mumbai.

Academics is my passion. I believe that you do not necessarily have to be good at everything but you certainly have to be the best at something. I am hoping to do something remarkable in academics and thereby, leave footprints on the sands of time.

I am also a tennis player. Apart from helping me shed a few kilos, tennis has helped me to increase my concentration power. ‘You either manage to get to the ball or take 5 rounds of the court.’ This constant pressure from my coach to hit a ball far, far away from me has taught me to push myself and go that extra mile.

Pratyay: Hi! I’m Pratyay Panigrahi from the WBNUJS Batch of 2023. I hail from the state of Odisha. I was a student of commerce and passed the boards this year. I like writing and I am an avid listener of music. I am interested in travelling and learning new languages.

Shivani: I am Shivani Choudhary and I hail from Ghaziabad. My father is in UP Police and my mother is a homemaker. They have always motivated me and have every time guided me to go in the right direction. I had completed my plus two from Sun Valley International School and secured 96.2% in CBSE Boards. I love quizzing and was part of the school quizzing team. I also have special interest in gardening.

Agniva: I am regular 18-year-old who is an avid reader and loves to watch Football. I prefer Non Fiction over Fiction and owe everything I am today to my parents.

Question 2: Why did you choose to pursue Law as a career?

Sevanshi : Many people that I know of, associate a person having a high level of intellect with either engineering or medicine. Well, I was thought to be a perfect fit for one of the two. However, I had a hunch that I had an aptitude for the study of law.Manageable literary skills, good memory, reasonable analytical skills and decent speaking skills were skills that would help me in the field of law.

I also found the study of law interesting as well as challenging. The study of rules that govern a country. India, being a common law country, has judge made law as well. Therefore, the study of cases and seeing the word play in action were things that I believed were quite engrossing.

I had the penchant and aptitude for the study of law. Therefore, I chose to pursue Law as a career.

Pratyay: Initially, I was interested in pursuing law as my elder sister has also studied law. But as I went through my years in school, I realised that I was genuinely interested in the field and whatever limited knowledge I had due to this interest was empowering. That’s when it became something I wanted to pursue seriously.

Shivani: I had commerce with maths in my twelfth standard, but I always wanted to study law. From my 6th standard, I have grown up aspiring to become an officer in Indian Administrative Services. Therefore, I chose to do Law, because I believe that study of law would help me immensely in the preparation for the CSE exam. Also, I feel that the one of the biggest problem that our country faces today is laxity in the implementation of law. I believe the study of law would help me to better implement the law. It would help me to delve deep and get a better understanding of legal system of India and would facilitate better administration

Agniva: I was born into a family of Technocrats. But soon I realised that science wasn’t my forte so I began searching for alternate career options and came across a book “Law as a Career” by Tanuj Kalia. After reading this it was a done deal that I would opt for a career in Law. Also, the fact that being a lawyer I could in some way or the other aide the development of my state and also work for the people attracted me to pursue a career in Law.

Question 3: What was the experience-like while writing your essays and completing your application form for the preliminary stage of the Aditya Birla Scholarship?

Sevanshi : It was a little intimidating. I suppose only 30 – 35% of the applicants were going to get selected. The topic, literally, was about myself. My background and my present and my future. All in 250 words! I had to do a lot of soul searching to be able to put forth who I was and what my future plan of action was. I wanted to write everything but I realised (not very soon) that only relevant portions could be mentioned. It took me couple of drafts before I could finalize one and I wasn’t even confident about that! At a point, I had given up (I am glad I didn’t).

Preparing my Curriculum Vitae was just like walking down memory lane. All in all, it was memorable and worth it!

Pratyay: It was a very enriching experience. Contrary to what one may think, writing about yourself can be very tough. Since this is the first time I had to do it, it was also a time of introspection. Given that the essay had to be short and crisp, it definitely took me a few tries to finally come up with an essay that was an adequate representation of my thoughts and ideas. Apart from that, writing my CV in the designated heads provided in the form was a fun experience because it involved going through everything that I had done in school. Overall it was a very good learning experience.

Shivani: I still remember the day when we were informed of Aditya Birla Scholarship application. It was 20th July and we had 5 days to write two essays. I think that was the period which helped me know myself in a better way because both the questions made me to introspect myself. We were supposed to write about our background, interest, and reason for studying law. The main challenge was the word limit of 250 words in which I had to write about what makes me different from the rest of the students who all were very brilliant. I wrote the essays and got it reviewed by my seniors and friends. Preparing the curriculum vitae was not really difficult for me because for that I had a lot of things to write. I had always been very interested in extra-curricular activities which include mainly quizzing and debating. The whole application process was full of mixed feelings which was tiring some time and very interesting the next day. But I was determined from the first day and hopeful till the last day.

Agniva: The essay writing process was very hectic and tiresome. Also getting it reviewed by the seniors and working for hours on each word of the essay so that I could ace the process was worth the effort and time.

Question 4: Whether your seniors helped you in writing the essay? If yes, do you think it helped you?

Sevanshi : A big YES!!! My seniors were of immense help. They were the ones who helped me realise what was relevant. They patiently went through my drafts and helped me improve them through constructive criticism. If it wasn’t for them, my essays would not have turned out the way they had.

Pratyay: I could not have written my essay without the help of my seniors. They sat with me patiently for hours on the end, helping me decide what aspects of myself I should write about and how best to convey it. They also proof-read my essays several times and made sure that it was as refined as it could be. Through this entire period, they also encouraged me to stay true to my thoughts and ideas. Their help in the entire process was invaluable.

Agniva: The seniors who got the scholarship were the main driving force behind each one of us throughout the stages. They used to spend hours at a stretch with us grooming us for the interview, rechecking our essays and framing potential questions for us. I can assure that if it weren’t for them we couldn’t have had cracked the process. Their first-hand experience and the titbits helped us big time.

Question 5: Tell us how did you go about preparing for the interview stage, considering you were going to be questioned by 3 eminent jurists from the field of law?

Sevanshi : My seniors took mock interviews and thereby, acquainted me with the prospective questions. Since, I had mentioned pursuing Competition Law, I went through cases, basic readings and recent developments falling under the ambit of Competition Law. I also consulted with the members of the faculty. Given that the panellists were going to know the inside out of the field of law, I had to be aware and accurate. This formed a major part of my prep time.

I also knew that I had to keep an open mind and be receptive because there was no fixed set of questions. The panellists varied and so did the questions.

Pratyay: I have to admit that after my essays got selected, I was considerably nervous for the interview round. But a lot of my concerns were allayed in the mock interviews that were conducted by my seniors. There were several mock interviews in which they questioned me incessantly in an attempt to cover all lines of questioning. By the time I had taken my final interview, I was substantially more confident. Apart from the mock interviews, I made sure that I knew my essay inside out and also kept track of recent events related to the topics that I had talked about in my essay.

Shivani: I think it was one of the happiest day in my life when I got to know that I have been shortlisted for the interview. I was resolved to win this from the first day but due to the ongoing moot internals in our university, I didn’t get much time to prepare for the interview. I did most of my preparation in last five days during which I really had sleepless night. Since, my essay was based on implementation of law, I made myself acquainted to current event happening in our country, specially all the policies and schemes launched by the government and how they have failed to achieve the result. In all this process, our seniors were of great help. During preparation, we went through mock interview by the panel consisting of our seniors who were also Aditya Birla scholars. These mock interviews helped me to gauge my preparation and know my performance. They helped in pinpointing preparation and provided a direction to work upon. I also had similar discussion with my friends which really helped a lot because it gave my chance to discover my weak points and focus on it. My mool mantra for the interview was to be honest and to be what I am.

Agniva: Actually I was quite relaxed about the interview stage and decided to sleep for at least a good 8 hours so that I would wake up rejuvenated. The jurists were unknown to us before the interview process and me being the first candidate had no inkling about who the jurists were. So I decided to be calm and answer every question they would ask me.

Also knowing what you have written in you essay inside out helps greatly in arguing your side of the deal even when they keep on pushing to project how the opposite is a better option.

Question 6: Let’s talk about the moment, what was the feeling when you actually became Aditya Birla Scholar?

Sevanshi : I was not expecting it at all. There was a rush of positive emotions. I was glad that the hard work had paid off. It was a moment of validation. Validation that perhaps, not everything about me was wrong. The first thing I did was I messaged my mother, “I got it!”

Pratyay: Honestly, I did not know how to react. It took a while for the news to set in but when it did, needless to say I was ecstatic. I had put in considerable effort for this scholarship and finally getting it could not have made me happier. At the same time, I also felt immensely thankful to my parents, my sister and everyone in college who helped me get the scholarship.

Shivani: The 5-10 minutes of the prize distribution ceremony was the period in which I experienced both the happiest and one of the sad phase of my life. So, my interview went really well, and I was pretty confident in my heart about winning this scholarship. During the ceremony, the names of the scholars were being announced alphabetically. And when the names of people starting with letter S were being announced, I was almost ready to go on the stage because I was expecting my name to be there. But then I got the shock of my life, my name was not there in that list and they started with next letter! And when I was still in the shock, they suddenly announced my name, which I couldn’t believe. I can’t express that feeling. That was just amazing.

Agniva: It was a dream come true. Growing up I would see the photograph of the earlier scholars on the national daily every year and realising at that moment that the next photograph would involve me too filled me with joy.

Question 7: How does it feel like to win this scholarship? Did you think about winning it?

Sevanshi : It feels great! That experience is going to stay with me for ever. Being selected from this large pool of applicants and clearing the interview taken by eminent personalities from the field of law, explains everything. I am speechless.I did think about winning it but I did not expect it.

Pratyay: Winning this scholarship definitely gives you a sense of pride. It has made me more confident. Simultaneously, it has also been a very humbling experience As far as winning it was concerned, I tried not to think about it during the preparation stage. However, once I was shortlisted, it seemed like a possibility so I tried my best to prepare for the interview.

Shivani: After winning, I am in all the way more confident. I feel winning this scholarship will make my race to my dream easier and now I have committed myself to make the best use of opportunity that this scholarship has provided me.

Yes, I always had faith in what I can do, and I always knew that I have the capabilities to win this scholarship. I had the idea, passion and urge to win it. So, I worked hard and got the positive results. And I feel this is just starting, because this scholarship comes with its own needs that demands commitment from you to always be consistent. So, I feel that now I have to work all the way more to fare upon these commitments.

Agniva: Now that I have won the scholarship it is upon me to maintain it throughout my law school. The pressure is more than ever to live up to the tag and considering the fact that the mark the previous scholars have left on the college’s illustrious list of achievements it will be a daunting task ahead of me to live up to the expectation of the tag.

Question 8: Now coming to the reactions of those who matter the most, how did your parents and friends respond to such a big achievement?

Sevanshi : My grandparents and parents were extremely proud of me. Even as I give this interview, they are probably still spreading the word. They have also told me to stay humble or else this will, in all probability, be my last accolade.

“This is crazy”. That was the reaction of one of my friends. My friends were also proud of me. They recognised the fact that hard work does pay off. Everyone was speechless.

Pratyay: Once I got through to my parents on the phone and told them about it, they were overjoyed. My parents and my sister had been active participants in the preparation process and deserve substantial credit for helping me get this scholarship. As far as my friends go, all of them were very thrilled and after congratulating me, they now plan to make me pay for all their food!

Shivani: The first thing I did after getting the certificate was the message that I sent to my mother that I have won the scholarship. She was online at that time but didn’t say anything and that was evident of her happiness. I called her immediately after the ceremony got over and it seemed as if my parents were happiest persons and proudest among all. All my father said to me was “It’s not difficult to come on the top, but to remain at the top while facing all the adversities ofthe life is what the challenge comprises of.” This is what he has taught me since childhood and is the reason behind my success. Coming to my friends, they all were very happy. I still remember how I narrated the whole event to them over phone and that too so many times! I feel my family and friends were the ones who were with me during my high and low phases during this whole process and they motivated me in every way possible. The only thing I can do is to express my gratitude towards them and I can confidently say that they are reason behind my success.

Agniva: My parents were very happy about the feat. My father being a Fulbright scholar has always emphasised how a prestigious scholarship changes the perception people have towards you. So seeing my father I was always inspired and now when the time has come I would like to dedicate the scholarship to them without whom I would’ve been nowhere.

And coming to friends the warm reception I received at the NUJS Boys hostel was a great feeling but they keep pressing me for party which I casually try to avoid. They also played a great role in the process of me securing the scholarship.

Question 9: Do you suggest any do’s and do not’s while applying for this scholarship?

Sevanshi : I would suggest be honest to yourself and the judges. I realised that they were not looking for all correct answers. They were looking for honest and sincere answers.The essays don’t mean you have to write flowery prose. They should be well written, relevant and personal.

Give it your best shot. Don’t leave the essays for the last minute. You probably will not realise it when you are applying, but when you get selected, it just feels awesome. This is important for now as well as your future opportunities.

Pratyay: While it differs from person to person, as a general rule, the only thing you should focus on doing is being yourself. There is a natural tendency to present yourself as someone you are not but in both the rounds of the selection process, there is a very high level of scrutiny and what gets across is being genuine. Present yourself as you are, to the best of your abilities and ensure that you can support every stance you take. At the end of the day, it is about your views and your qualities. So the best thing you can do is be honest and be confident in what you write in your essays and answer in your interviews.

Agniva: I would suggest any potential aspirant for this scholarship that the essay is very important throughout the process so be careful what you write and restrict rhetoric to the minimum and be truthful. Be prepared to defend whatever you write and know everything about whatever you write.

Also in the application stage restrict scribbling to the minimum in the essay because it reflects negatively on the examiner.

Question 10: Finally, what is your final advice for the aspirants of the prestigious scholarship?

Sevanshi : It may sound cliché but enjoy the process. Writing the essay helps you to know yourself better. It helps you to accept and work while the daunting thought of ‘Is my essay good enough’ is fresh at the back of your mind 24/7 (at least for me, it was). The weekend during which the interviews take place is an experience you have not had before.

Hope for the best. If you work hard, you have a fair chance of winning. Stay True. Best of Luck!

Pratyay: It is a fun and enriching experience. So learn as much as you can!

Shivani: My advice for the aspirants of the Aditya Birla Scholarship is to remain devoted, dedicated and determined, because these 3 D’s have the capability of making you the scholar. Always have faith in your abilities and believe that if you can make this far, you also have the capabilities of winning it. Also, present yourself exactly as you are and be honest through the whole process because the panel consisting of esteemed judges can easily make out whether you are speaking true or not. So, it’s always better to not fake out what you don’t have.

Agniva: My final advice for the aspirants would be to remain honest throughout the process and have trust on yourself. Also keeping in mind the interview process be calm and composed and always be courteous to them. All the Best.

The post WBNUJS students on winning the Aditya Birla Scholarship appeared first on SCC Blog.

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dyernews · 7 years

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Downsizing Your Life: How to Do It and Why You Might Want To

After what may have seemed like an extremely long winter for some, spring is finally arriving. With the blooming flowers, warmer temperatures, and adjusted clocks, many are also gearing up for a tradition known as spring cleaning. While the habit of reorganizing yourself and decluttering your closets is great, what if you took things a step further? What I mean is, have you ever considered downsizing as a way to simplify your life?

First off, this post is going to be a bit different than my normal fare. While at its core this is still a personal finance concept, I’ve found the implications extend far further than that. In fact, I’ve come to believe that downsizing your life can actually help you emphasize the things that matter most to you.

Before you get scared, I’m not talking about going full minimalist and leaving everything behind — I just want to discuss a few changes you can make that can not only help your finances but also allow you to explore your passions and reach your goals. Moreover, my wife and I actually have some personal experience that relates to many of these topics. So without further ado, here’s how you can downsize and simplify your life as well as some of the reasons why you might want to.

Setting Your Simplifying Goals

Realizing your priorities is the first step in setting a downsizing and simplifying plan. Just as no two people are the same, there’s certainly no “one size fits all” plan when it comes to building yourself a better life. That said, to get you thinking, here are a few popular reasons people may elect to downsize their lives.

Saving Money

This being a personal finance site, you could probably anticipate that “saving money” would be among the top goals here. However, in this case, it’s not so much about saving money for the sole sake of growing your wealth but more about saving money so that you can achieve the things you want to achieve. Let me explain: by reducing your financial obligations, you’ll have more freedom to spend your income in whatever way you see fit (while still setting some aside for the future and for emergencies of course).

Now the question is, what do you want to do with your life and your money?

Travel

One of the things I learned about myself as I was navigating my 20s was that I really enjoyed traveling. After years of assuming that I didn’t enjoy flying, I ended up booking a flight to Tokyo in my mid-20s that would prove pretty pivotal in my life. Not only did I survive the 11-hour flight but also managed to find my way around a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language (and by myself, mind you) with relative ease. Four years later, I would return to Tokyo on my honeymoon and have since had the chance to visit Shanghai, Hong Kong, Paris, and other locales with my lovely wife.

Once we realized how much we enjoyed exploring new places together, my wife and I resolved to travel as much as we could and see more of the amazing cities around the world. As part of this, we’ve arranged our finances in such a way that allows us to take big trips without going into debt or wiping out our savings. This could not have been possible had we not made our goal clear and made changes to our financial situation in order to allow it. I’ll share more of our story and how we were able to pull this off in the coming sections.

Entrepreneurship

If you’ve ever watched ABC’s Shark Tank you’ve probably heard one of the show’s millionaire or billionaire panelists talk about the hustle required in order to succeed when launching your own business. But, on top of that hard work, they also often discuss the sacrifices it takes to make it. I remember one episode in particular where Mark Cuban grilled an entrepreneur who said he’d be willing to slum it and “live off of six figures” for a while until he made it. Naturally Mark laughed at that notion, insisting he should be willing to live off mac and cheese for the sake of his business.

No matter what type of business you want to start, you’ll need to invest your time, energy, and yes, your money into them. Therefore, by downsizing your life and limiting your expenses, you’ll have more funds to pour into your business. Moreover, since failure is fact of life, keeping your obligations to a minimum is essential. Doing your downsizing now instead of when the pressure is on could end up making it possible for you to bounce back and rebuild your business in the future.

Spending Time with Family

For some people, the ability to downsize means they can work less and spend more time with the people they care about. This is a completely noble goal and once again speaks to the power of downsizing. Additionally, if you and your kin enjoy traveling, you might even consider an arrangement that allows you to see the world as a family like these parents and many others have done.

Eliminating Your Excesses

Regardless of what your goals are, you’ll like want to start purging some of your unneeded items. In addition to this being helpful if and when it’s time to relocate (more on that in the next section), getting rid of old items can be oddly comforting. Of course this is a process and you have a few options for how to approach downsizing, but here are a few ideas for starting points.

What to Lose

Books, CDs, DVDs, etc.

I’ll be the first to admit that I still have a box of old compact discs sitting in my outside storage space — but it’s a lot better than it was! Though I couldn’t tell you the last time I used one of these CDs for anything except ripping them to my computer, those special editions and, in some cases, signed booklets remain. Alas, hopefully you are stronger than I am and can part with your aging collection once and for all. The same goes for DVDs now that many have moved to digital downloads and streaming services.

For the more literate among us, you may have also amassed a number of books over the years. While having a library of everything you read might make you feel good, are you really going to reread any of those books? Beyond being a pain in the butt to move, there’s also good reason to let your book collection go as part of the process since they can easily be donated to libraries, schools, retirement homes, etc. — in other words, they can be given to people who actually will read them.

Clothes

This is admittedly another area where I could stand to improve. In fact, my wife frequently makes fun of me for the number of t-shirts in my dresser. However I have found one solution to this problem: turning my old tees into quilts, allowing me to revisit all those rock concert memories while also staying warm in the winter.

Sporting Goods and Exercise Equipment

Being active is great but having your home cluttered with unused treadmills, skis, rackets, and whatever else you may have acquired over time certainly isn’t. Worse yet, these items are often oddly shaped, large, or bulky, making them extremely annoying to store. If you regularly participate in sports and honestly utilize this equipment on a somewhat regular basis, keep it. Otherwise heave-ho, my friend.

Mementos, Clippings, Etc.

Okay, this one could be a bit controversial but it’s important nonetheless. These days many of us have a number of sentimental items we hold on to, seemingly just to give us a walk down memory lane whenever we move or go to organize our homes. Some of these items may be worth keeping while others likely aren’t — especially if they can be digitized for safe keeping instead.

Collectables

Do you still have that limited edition G.I. Joe in a box that you’ve held onto since you were only yea high? If you can’t fetch a pretty penny on eBay for it now, chances are you never will.

Old Electronics

Until just a few months ago, I was holding onto a Mac laptop I bought in 2004 and which had the screen detached from the keyboard. I had already migrated the contents of said machine to another computer in 2010, yet it lived in a box along with about three different chargers for it. Thankfully it is now gone and I’m better for it. The moral of the story is, if you have old electronics you’re planning on fixing or are just holding onto for some other reason, just toss ‘em.

Anything Else You Haven’t Used in a Year

Finally, one of my big rules as I’ve worked to get rid of my, for lack of a better term, crap is to bid adieu to anything I haven’t needed (or, in most cases, even thought about) in a year. I came upon this rule after realizing I only saw a number of items whenever I went to dig through things to throw away. Obviously I realized how silly this was and my one year rule has been successful so far. However there are a few exceptions to the rule including important documents or emergency preparedness items but you can use your best, honest judgment to determine what warrants an override.

What to Do (and What Not to Do) With Your Stuff

Do: Sell It

There is a chance that some of the items you no longer need might still have some value to someone else. As a result it’s completely acceptable to explore ways to rid yourself of clutter while pocketing a little extra money. This can be accomplished on platforms like eBay, Craigslist, OfferUp, or Facebook Marketplace but there’s also the option to host a good old-fashioned garage sale/yard sale as well.

Don’t: Waste Time Trying to Sell Junk

Notice that I said some of your items will still have value — not all. Sure you probably have a record store in town that still buys used CDs but 1) unless your collection is truly killer, they might not be in the market for anything you’re looking to pawn and 2) the amount they’ll be giving you might not be worth the time it took you to pack everything up and haul it over to them. Similarly yard sales can take a lot of work to organize and, with most items selling for under a dollar, it’s okay if you elect not to go through the trouble and find another way to ease your junk burden.

Do: Donate

Somewhere between stuff you can sell and stuff you should throw away is the option of donating. Popular outlets for donations include Goodwill, Salvation Army, and other local charities. Of course, even if you’re donating, be realistic about what items people will need or use and don’t give them anything that’s broken, in bad shape, or otherwise useless.

Don’t: Get a Storage Unit

In some cases you may feel that, while you want to declutter your home, you also aren’t quite ready to part with certain items “just in case.” This thinking could lead to you renting a storage unit to keep your additional stuff. Not only is a storage unit an extra monthly fee you don’t need but the chances of you actually making use of those “standby” items are slim to none. Avoid this mistake at all costs!

Do: Throw Things Away

I’ll be the first to admit that throwing items you’ve paid good money for in the trash can be an upsetting experience. Look, no one wants to feel like they’ve wasted money but, the truth is, you already did — there’s no going back now. Holding onto items you don’t need in an attempt to save what little value they still have is a major fallacy and something you’ll need to get over if you truly want to downsize. It may be hard at first but I promise it will be worth it.

Rationalizing (Potential) Relocation

Before paring your belongings down you might not have thought it possible to fit into a smaller space. With that first task done, you may be realizing that’s not actually the case. Whether you choose to move to a different home in the same area, relocate to a more affordable area, or live life as a “digital nomad,” there are several benefits to moving as part of your downsizing mission.

Living Small

In recent years one of the big trends (pun intended) has been tiny homes. These microsized abodes are often less than 500 square feet but include a number of features via unique uses of space and clever engineering. Given their popularity, this is what many people likely picture when they consider downsizing but there’s no reason to be so extreme.

Downsizing can simply mean selling your unnecessarily-large four bedroom house and buying a two bedroom instead. It could mean ditching your pricey apartment with all the bells and whistles to move to a complex with fewer amenities. Really the way you downsize is up to you (which can include a tiny home if you really, really want).

In Search of Better Cost of Living

Until 2015 my wife and I were living in Glendale, California. For the few years prior to that, I had been an extra in television and movies and had enjoyed this unique occupation. I also harbored dreams of becoming a sitcom writer, but that’s a story for another day. Meanwhile my wife was working at a bakery, which wasn’t panning out quite the way she had hoped. Just before Christmas of 2014, we decided a change was in order — a change that would lead us out of Los Angeles and over to Springfield, Missouri.

By this time I had begun freelancing, meaning I could do my job from anywhere. Similarly, while she didn’t have any specific jobs lined up in the Midwest, my wife’s skills were easily transferable to other lines of work. This realization led us to realize that we were paying a hefty premium just for the opportunity to live in L.A. That may have made sense when my line of work and aspirations were tied to the entertainment capital but now it just felt like a big waste of money that got in the way of our other goals like traveling.

Moving to Springfield was a watershed moment for us and really opened my eyes to a number of things. First, contrary to popular belief, there are fun things to do beyond the coasts of our country. Secondly, rent doesn’t have to eat up your entire paycheck — who knew?

Needless to say, our decision to relocate as part of our downsizing initiative has paid off. Now we’re able to sock away money for our future and pursue our passions.

Reducing Your Commute

Another benefit that came with moving to Springfield actually happened by accident. As luck would have it, my wife ended up getting a job at a place that was literally next door to our apartment. Whereas back in L.A. she would have to drive one to two hours each way for work, she could now walk over in five minutes. This lack of commute had a hugely positive effect on her happiness and stress levels. So, as you’re looking for a small place in town or a new home in a new city, I’d highly recommend doing what you can to reduce your commute.

Digital Nomadism

Like I mentioned, as a freelancer, I’m able to work from pretty much anywhere with power and WiFi — and I’m not alone. These days there’s a growing number of both independent contractors and full-time employees that are able to work remotely. At the same time some adventurous folks have taken full advantage of this opportunity and become what they call “digital nomads.”

I was first introduced to the concept of digital nomadism by a podcast called Workationing. In 2017 these two ladies in their “mid to late 27s” elected to give up their homes and spend the year on the road, living in different cities and countries around the globe for one to two months at a time. This idea fascinated me and I’ve come to learn that the digital nomad community has been booming for some time.

While I personally wouldn’t want to go full digital nomad — including purging nearly everything I own and living out of a carry-on — my wife and I have been considering extended trips to places we love. Now that both of us can work from anywhere (she recently left her other job to join me in the world of freelancing), we could conceivably spend weeks if not months abroad, working during the day and touring at night.

If full-on digital nomadism or my scaled down “extended stay” notion sound good to you, having a limited home base is crucial. For the Workationing gals, this meant moving their stuff into storage units (yes, I know I said not to get one of those but this is different), although I believe they’ve since gotten rid of those. In our case, the cheap rent we enjoy in Springfield would enable us to keep our apartment so we have something to come home to but still be able to afford our temporary two home situation. This is just one of the many opportunities that may available to those who choose to downsize.

Readying for Reevaluation

Finally it’s important to note that downsizing might not be for everyone. For example, if you have a partner or family, you may find that not all of you are on the same page about some of the changes you’re making. Because of this you’ll want to leave the door open to reevaluating your plans and admitting when you’ve taken things too far.

Missing Friends and Family

As much as I preach the gospel of finding your happy hometown with affordable living, I understand that there are plenty of reasons other than money that affect why people live where they do. One big factor for many is that want to be near friends and family.

When I was preparing to write this article, I was reminded of a couple of scenes from the film Up in the Air. In an early scene, our protagonist (played by George Clooney) is giving a speech that’s more or less about downsizing, mentioning stuffing all of your belongings in a backpack, setting it on fire, and deciding what’s worth saving. While that analogy may be something to get on board with, a later scene exposes the character’s philosophy of detachment as he talks about the weight relationships add to our lives. He’s not wrong — but having relationships play such a big role isn’t always a bad thing.

Family and friends are an important part of life. As a result, they should be factored into your priorities as well. If you forgot or didn’t realize how much being literally close to the ones you love would affect your happiness, it’s not too late to make changes.

Going Too Small

On that same note, you may come to the realization that you’ve overdone things in your attempt to downsize. Perhaps life in a tiny home is fine for a few months but you find yourself going a bit stir crazy after that. Ditto living in a small town after being used to big city amenities.

There’s a difference between pushing yourself to try new things outside of your comfort zone and living uncomfortably. Remember: the goal of downsizing is to simplify your life and enjoy what you love. In other words, don’t sacrifice too much for the sake of adventure.

Adjusting Your Goals

Lastly, outside of the two examples I’ve already mentioned, there may be other factors that cause your priorities and/or goals to change. Maybe you’ve decided to start a family and need more space or aren’t ready to take kids on the road just yet. Or perhaps you’re taking interest in different activities and finding new passions you want to pursue. Whatever the case may be, don’t be afraid to make further adjustments. After all, if you were able to take the leap and downsize in the first place, how hard could it be to scale back up or go another direction?

As someone who’s taken an interest in the concept of downsizing and simplifying life over the past few years, I really do believe the benefits vastly outweigh the sacrifices. Although my wife and I may not make a ton of money, our downsized living allows us to meet all of our financial obligations, prepare for our futures, live debt free, and still enjoy passions of ours such as traveling. If that sounds good to you, maybe this spring is the perfect time to do some deep cleaning — and deep thinking — as you work towards a simpler, better, life.

The post Downsizing Your Life: How to Do It and Why You Might Want To appeared first on Dyer News.

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