#the counselor was named in my head but it didn’t make sense to fit it in here (her name was maddie) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

blackhcless · 3 years ago

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Summer is Here - Chapter 1

Here we go. A little something I'm cooking up for y'all, inspired by @unapprovedtrash who put this idea in my head. I ran with it.

Few notes: one, as I've mentioned, this idea was completely inspired by @unapprovedtrash. I really appreciate the inspiration to write again, and hope you enjoy this :)

Secondly, the fic is named after a great song called "Summer is Here" by Acid Ghost. I highly recommend you check it out, I think it fits the vibe of the beginnings of summer quite well.

Please do enjoy the fic! If you prefer to read this on AO3, do click the link below.

Read on AO3

The rest of the fic is under the cut :)

Dylan didn’t think he’d ever been so nervous in his whole life. This was probably the most uncomfortable he’s ever felt, too—crammed in a car with 6 other people all going to the very same place: Hackett’s Quarry Summer Camp. They were all going to be counselors for the next 2 months, sleeping in cabins with snotty children and supervising them for the course of the summer.

Was this a particularly ideal summer for Dylan? Absolutely not. He’d rather be playing video games and planning things out for school in the fall. But he needed some extra pocket money, and he despised his old job, so why not? His mom was always saying he needed to go out and socialize more. So here ya go, Mom, he thought.

He was brought away from his thoughts when the car sped through a pothole, sending his heart to his stomach and a yelp from his mouth in fright. Immediately afterward, he shrunk into himself, embarrassed from the noise he’d let out. It didn’t seem that anyone noticed or even cared, but still, he couldn’t help but let out a meek “Sorry!”

Now that he wasn’t aimlessly scrolling through his phone with his thoughts in another universe, he took a good look at the rest of the counselors in the car with him. They all looked around his age. Something that didn’t really make too much sense, because what was the probability of that happening? But, at least that’d make them easier to talk to, instead of talking to whole ass adults who didn’t care less about things he had to say. Then again, he wasn’t sure that anyone would care about what came out of his mouth here, either, which is why he hadn’t said much on the car ride so far.

His eyes first landed on the guy in the front passenger seat. Seated there was a built teen wearing a t-shirt that defined his sculpted body quite well. From the back of the car, he couldn’t see too much, but he knew that damn, that guy was jacked. Atop his head, he adorned a backwards baseball cap, as well, which indicated to Dylan that he was the sporty type.

Not exactly my type, he thought, but pretty nice to look at.

After that, he looked to the second row of people—a girl with brown hair who also coincidentally was giving a less-than-innocent glance over to the jock, too; a girl with black-to-pink ombre hair; and lastly, a curly-haired brunette wearing a baseball tee. The two girls seemed to be showing each other things on their phones, too, but it didn’t seem that they even acknowledged the guy beside them, who kept his eyes on the scenery outside.

Then, there was the back row—the row Dylan was also on. Next to him sat a girl with a yellow, cropped hoodie and a shirt beneath it. She was lazily scrolling through something on her phone, seemingly uncaring of the world around her, which drew Dylan to her. She seemed like someone cool, maybe. He wasn’t sure, and he didn’t want to bother her. Next to her sat a boy who was also glancing out of the window. He had headphones in, and Dylan was curious to know what he was listening to. With a clear view of the boy’s face, he could see he was good-looking—someone he definitely wouldn’t mind getting to know, if you could catch his drift. He probably spent too much time looking at the boy, but luckily he wasn’t caught staring. Dylan drifted his gaze away upon realization and went back to his phone.

He’d kept his headphones in, but he’d had his music paused for a small while now. Other than the two girls in the second row who were every once in a while giggling, the car was incredibly silent, with everyone minding their own business and all. Dylan decided it’d be best for him to turn on some music, since it didn’t seem they’d be making acquaintances anytime soon. He tapped on the Spotify app icon, which took a moment to load. Damn shitty service, he thought. Luckily for him, he had a shit ton of playlists saved. He looked around for a moment, then decided on a playlist—“dylan’s awesome tunes,” a playlist with a bunch of his favorites. Pressing play, he grinned to himself.

Fittingly, a song titled Summer Is Here started to play. The sound of electric guitar in his ears filled the silence between the counselors, and with that he was in his own world. It was his turn to shift his gaze out into the wilderness. The sun was in the middle of the sky at this point—it was around noon—which meant a rich green view rushing by. It really was a beautiful sight, just as his mom had been saying it would be. Being from the suburbs, it was kind of a relief to see the stunning greenery that upstate New York had to offer.

Maybe this won’t be so bad, Dylan thought. Maybe it’ll be… fun.

----

It had taken a couple of hours for the counselors to get to their destination, but finally, they had. Because Dylan was in the back seat, he had to wait for every other person to get out, but once he had escaped the uncomfortable leather seats of the car, he shook his arms and legs out. The feeling of pins and needles trickled through his legs. Silently, he shuddered. The two-hour long silence was finally broken by Mr. Hackett, who had generously driven them all there and was now organizing the 7 teens’ arrival.

“Alrighty, Hacketteers! I know we have got quite the summer ahead of us. I can’t thank you enough for being here this summer to watch over the kids. It is you counselors that make this camp an enjoyable place to be. Thank you.”

A couple cheers from the good-looking kid and the brunette girl erupted. It was sad, really, how little excitement came from the other counselors.

“With that being said… our first order of business before the campers get here tonight is your phones,” Mr. Hackett began, glancing around the group for just a moment, “Please turn your phones off and hand them to me. I’ll be keeping them safe this summer.”

Instead of cheers, the group now replied with groans. Dylan had to join in himself, too. No phones meant no music, for 2 months. One of the very things that he’d planned on keeping himself sane with. What was he to do, now? A spike of anxiety hit him, adding to the previous bouts he’d had as they’d approached the camp. He swallowed spit and kept quiet. There was likely nothing he could do, so he wouldn’t fight it.

Making sure to disconnect his headphones from his phone, he said a mental goodbye to his phone as Mr. Hackett came around the group to collect them all. As the camp leader stopped in front of him, he handed the phone over quite easily, then put the headphones in his pocket.

“Not so fast…” Mr. Hackett paused, waiting for Dylan to respond with his name.

“Dylan,” he responded coolly.

“… Dylan. If you don’t have your phone this summer, you’re not going to need your headphones. You can give those to me for safe keepings.”

Dylan let out a small groan involuntarily. Out of fear that he’d get in trouble for the disrespect, he quickly attempted to even it out with some sort of joke.

“Yeah, alright,” He said, trying to contain his nerves, “But if they aren’t in one piece by the time we’re outta here, I’ll be contacting my lawyers. They’re very powerful people, you know.”

A couple of laughs could be heard from the other counselors. A small surge of happiness came from within him at the sentiment of people liking his sarcasm. Hmm. He handed the headphones over with no additional trouble, a cheeky grin on his face while he did so.

“I’m sure they are,” Mr. H responded sarcastically, lifting a brow at Dylan disapprovingly. He soon moved onto the next counselor, all the way until he had collected all of their devices and placed them aside. Moments later, his voice was booming through the quiet forest once more.

“Secondly! Unfortunately, two of our counselors—Ms. Laura Kearny and Mr. Max Brinly—could not make it to camp this summer. It seems they may have gotten afraid of spending 2 months in the beautiful New York woods. What does this mean for you? It means more responsibilities than normal, which I assume you won’t have trouble with, because you’re all hard workers who are ready to take this summer by storm?” Mr. Hackett asked, glancing around at the teens. Dylan joined the chorus of 6 other unsynchronized, unenthusiastic yeses, and with that, they moved on.

It took around an hour for Mr. Hackett to show them around the camp, but after that, they had around an hour and a half to unpack their things before they had a small meeting just before the kids showed up at 8 PM. “Get to know each other!” Mr. Hackett had insisted, but Dylan wasn’t incredibly interested in that unless someone came up to him. They’d all walked up to the cabins with their things in relative silence. He couldn’t tell who would be the first to break the ice, but he knew one thing—it wouldn’t be him.

Luckily, he was right. There was a whole lot of silence as each counselor set up their bunks and put their toiletries in the shared bathrooms, but finally, the girl he’d been sitting beside in the car spoke up.

“Oookay, I’m sick of the silence, so why don’t we introduce ourselves? Names, reasons why we’re here, hobbies, anything. I’ll go first,” The girl said, sitting on her bed. A couple other teens also sat, including Dylan. He opted for top bunk, which gave him a pretty good sight of the rest of the room. Maybe they’d forget about him up there, and he could keep quiet the rest of the summer.

“My name’s Kaitlyn… I’m 19, now, and I’m here for a summer job. Used to dance, helped paint sets in high school, the whole fine arts deal. Not exactly sure what I’m gonna do with my life. Maybe camp counseling will be my calling, who knows?” She joked, grinning a little and smacking her hands against her thighs as if to transition to the next person.

“Nice to meet you, Kaitlyn!” Pink-Hair said excitedly, smiling widely.

“Yeah, good to meet you,” Good-Looking echoed.

It was Pink-Hair that decided to go next, so Dylan shifted his gaze to her.

“I’m Abigail! You all can call me Abi, though,” Abigail started, practically beaming, “I used to be a camper here and always loved the counselors that were here then, so I came back for the summer! I like to draw, and I love animals! I’m really excited to create memories for the kids.”

Some more “Nice to meet you”s followed, and it seemed it was Abi’s friend’s turn. Her name was Emma, she had also been a camper, and Abi and her were “besties,” supposedly. She used to play tennis back home and she described herself as “the proud owner of a video blog.” Dylan wasn’t sure why she said “video blog” like they were in 2009 again, but he said nothing on the matter.

After her, an ever-eager Jock-Dude introduced himself as Jacob—Jake for short. He said he used to play football in high school and was going to school on an athletic scholarship, and that he wanted something to do for summer to “keep him in shape.”

Next was the curly-haired boy, named Nick. He had a thick New Zealand accent, which Abi and Emma seemed to be whispering to each other about. Dylan couldn’t deny that the accent was quite charming, either, but he kept it to himself a lot better than the girls. He seemed cool—wasn’t too talkative, but Dylan had no problem with it. Nick explained that he liked to cook and bake, he played a few sports in high school, and that he was excited for camp, too.

It was after Nick that Good-Looking went. He couldn’t help but stay laser-focused on the teen’s words, listening closely to every word he said.

“Uh, so, I’m Ryan… I was a camper here, too. Decided to come back to help Mr. H out. Not really sure what I want to do for college stuff but… Yeah, I’m 19,” Ryan spoke. He didn’t share much, which meant Dylan’s sole goal for the next few days would be to find out as much as he could from the attractive teen. Just the thought made his heart race.

He was so focused on the prospect of talking to Ryan that he’d forgotten where he was for a moment. Jerking his eyes away from the other boy, he swallowed and glanced around the room, who were all looking at him for an introduction. Just… be cool, or whatever, he thought.

“Oh, yeah. I’m Dylan, Dyls, D… whatever you wanna call me,” He began, internally cringing at the nicknames he made for himself, “Uh, I’m going to school for…”

He trailed off. What he wanted to say was that he was going to school for physics, but what he wanted to say and what he needed to say to keep respect from the other teens were two different things. He had to make up something quick—something that was less… nerdy.

“Sorry. Zoned out. So, yeah. Going to school for, uh. Music. Yeah. Gonna become the next fuckin, like, Elton John or something.” Elton John? Dylan didn’t even listen to that much 70s. His freaking dad did. He really hoped no one delved more into that topic. As if the stars were listening, no one did. They all just nodded. Kaitlyn, though, spoke up.

“Pretty cool stuff. What kind of music do you make?” She questioned, leaning her head upward to look at Dylan.

“Oh, y’know. Indie stuff, I guess. Sooo wish I could show you, but… no phones. Bummer,” Dylan said, trying to coat the sarcasm in his voice. Even though he was straight up lying, someone had taken interest in this… this alternate kind of Dylan. The thought of that was interesting to consider. Maybe being cool wouldn’t be so hard.

“I’d love to hear it another time, though,” Kaitlyn grinned, nodding before looking around at the rest of the group. More silence, until Kaitlyn once more took charge and suggested they all go on a small walk around the camp to further get acquainted with the woods and each other. It was a pretty unanimous decision to go through with the idea, so within minutes they were all walking in loose groups, introducing themselves personally to each other as they walked to the firepit. Ryan sagged behind, so Dylan fell in step with him after half-assedly trying to keep small talk with the others.

Ryan noticed Dylan’s presence pretty quickly, silently looking over to acknowledge him.

“Sooo, Ryan, right?” Dylan asked, tilting his head in question.

“Yeah.”

“Well, heyyy, I’m Dylan, in case you don’t remember five minutes ago,” He quipped, chuckling nervously.

“I do, but I appreciate the concern,” Ryan said, not maintaining much eye contact. There was little to go off of to determine if he was joking or not, but Dylan tried his best to not let the conversation stall, wanting to make a positive first impression.

“Yeah, yeah. Anything for a friend,” He said confidently, plastering a smile on his face before holding out his hand to shake. Who was he? Some business major weirdo? Still, he didn’t put his hand down. He had to follow through with it, otherwise he’d make a fool of himself. Luckily, Ryan took the handshake, but rose a brow as he did.

“Are… we friends? We met like, 5 minutes go,” Ryan asked. Dylan stalled for a second, a bit surprised by the reply, before speaking again.

“Jeez,” He responded, putting a hand to his heart, “I’m kind of offended. How dare you not consider me a friend after one single interaction with me?” Sarcasm dripped in his voice, and it was apparent he was joking.

“Um…” Is all Ryan said, seemingly unsure of what to say.

With that, their interaction was over. Dylan was pretty bummed that it was so short, but he supposed he had 2 whole months to get to know the attractive male.

They arrived at the firepit within a few minutes. Their time there had mostly been spent getting to know each other more. Almost everyone was engaged in the conversation—even himself, occasionally—but there Ryan was, 5 or so feet away, in his own little world.

I will get to know you, Hot, Mysterious Ryan, Dylan thought.

----

Soon, the time had come to learn each of their roles at the camp for the summer. They’d walked from the Firepit back over the Lodge, where Mr. Hackett waited for them patiently. Because there were less counselors than planned, they’d all have to pick up slack, which meant, according to Mr. Hackett, that they all might need to “jump out of their comfort zones.” The thought made Dylan nervous. He tried not to show it.

At the pre-camp meeting, they all learned their occupations. Kaitlyn would be the Activities Coordinator; Abi would be an art teacher of sorts; Emma would head Theatre; Jacob would head Sports; Nick would be the Kitchen Supervisor, in charge of feeding the kids; Ryan would be a Sailing Coach; lastly, Dylan would be in charge of scheduling and announcements in the morning. For Dylan, that meant working in the Radio Hut, which was close to the cabins. It would also mean early mornings, which he wasn’t excited for.

After being informed of their roles and how to perform them, Mr. H confirmed the incoming arrival of the camp kids. They’d be arriving in just fifteen minutes. Most everyone showed their excitement, but Dylan was trying his best to remain grounded. Surrounded by new people, new experiences, and his own thoughts, he was beginning to get overwhelmed. Silently, he excused himself to use the bathroom, slipping away quickly after being granted permission.

In the bathroom, he stared at himself in the mirror, trying to give some sort of mental pep talk. He slowed his breathing and kept it rhythmic, keeping his eyes locked on the mirror. You can do this, Lenivy, he told himself.

He wasn’t sure if he believed it.

#dylan lenivy #ryan erzahler #emma mountebank #abigail blyg #jacob custos #nick furcillo #kaitlyn ka #the quarry #canon divergence #set before events of the game #dylan lenivy x ryan erzahler #dylan x ryan #emma x abi #a tiny bit of emma/abi in the bg #i do this for the girls and the gays that's it

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blueskrugs · 4 years ago

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Fallin' in Love (in the Middle of the Night) | Joel Farabee

or, as I said in a text to @nazdaddy a couple weeks ago: "hear me out. summer camp AU with beezer." I really miss summer camp and I feel like bee fits the vibes. I've been going to camp since I was 12 and a lot of this is based on that camp and the experiences I've had there. have fun reading!

tagging: @marcoscandellas @stlbluesbrat21 @dembenchboys @poltoncarayko @robthomissed @letmeplaytheblues @troubatrain @ayohockeycheck @blackwidowrising @aria253264 @antoineroussel @starswin @glassdanse @ch-ristiane @majdoline

length: 11k words

There was a new counselor at camp this year. His name was Joel, and no one knew much of anything about him. Most new counselors were freshly aged-out campers, or were dating a current counselor and got dragged along for the week. Joel was neither, and he’d been quiet and keeping to himself since he climbed out of his car and dumped his bags in Cabin 24 earlier that afternoon.

Avery found herself glancing over at Joel more than once while she caught up with some of her friends. He was hanging back from the clusters of other counselors, leaning against a tree and fucking around on his phone, though there was no way he was getting any reception all the way out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees. His baseball hat was on backwards, and his hair was sticking out in tufts from underneath it.

Avery’s co-counselor, Caroline, nudged her in the ribs and followed her gaze. “Think he’s cute?” she teased.

Avery scoffed, but she didn’t look away as some of the guy counselors pulled Joel into whatever dumb argument they were already having. “I’m not dealing with that shit this year,” she said. Every year without fail, there were camp crushes, and they never ended well.

“He’s in our age group,” Caroline told her, which Avery knew already. They’d all gotten the cabin assignments last week, and Avery had been wondering about the new guy since then. “You’ll get to know him, maybe change your mind,” Caroline said with a grin.

Avery rolled her eyes but didn’t get a chance to respond because the camp director was trying to get everyone’s attention so they could head up to the chapel for orientation. They went slowly, still chatting in groups and clusters, yelling out to each other as they made their way up the hill, past the dining hall and towards the chapel. Avery still found herself looking over at Joel as he ambled alongside the groups of counselors. He’s still quiet, though he’s obviously listening to the conversations around him, trying to catch up on years of history and inside jokes. He caught her eye as they duck through the double doors into the AC and sent her a grin.

Caroline might’ve been right about the cute thing.

The chapel on the campgrounds isn’t much of a chapel, and is more a big open room with some of the best wifi anywhere on the property. Somehow, Joel ended up sitting next to Avery in the circle of chairs set up in the middle of the room. He’d grabbed the orientation packet every counselor got and was flipping through it eagerly. Avery snorted softly, and she reached out with her foot to nudge Joel in the shin.

“Don’t worry, dude, it’s all common sense stuff,” she told him. Even the other new counselors, the ones who had just aged out of being campers, didn’t look concerned, though being at camp for a few years was definitely more than enough to know how to basically run the camp.

Joel looked up at her and grinned again. “Yeah, I’m getting that,” he said. “I don’t think I got your name earlier,” he added.

Avery was wearing a sticker with her name scrawled on it like everyone else, but she refrained from rolling her eyes. Barely. “It’s Avery,” she whispered as Austin, the camp director, stood in the middle of the circle.

“Who’s ready for some icebreakers?” he said, way too loud for the small space. Everyone groaned, and Caroline and Avery shared a look from across the circle. “Don’t be like that, we have some new faces, and it’s been a while since everyone’s seen each other,” Austin said.

By Avery’s count, Joel was the only counselor who was truly new, but there was no stopping Austin once he was in Camp Mode.

Two and a half hours later, after they’d painstakingly gone through every page of the counselor’s manual, they finally broke for dinner.

“Is it always like that?” Joel asked as they trooped back down the hill to the dining hall.

Caroline and Avery groaned again. Joel sent them an amused look.

“Every fucking year,” Avery told him.

“I think I have the manual memorized,” Caroline added.

Joel laughed. “Something to look forward to next year then,” he said.

Avery raised her eyebrows. “The kids haven’t even shown up yet. Don’t get ahead of yourself, you might change your mind before the week is over.”

He wouldn’t really, probably, but a week of yelling kids, walking several miles in the August heat, and shitty food definitely had the potential to drive the weak of heart away. It wouldn’t be the first time, and if they did scare Joel off, it wouldn’t be the last. Joel sat across from Caroline and Avery for dinner.

“Eat up, bud,” Avery told him, watching as Joel pushed food around on his plate. “This is the best food you’ll get all week.”

Camp food was notorious for being barely edible on a good day, but because the counselors got in for orientation on a day in-between camp sessions, the kitchen staff was able to make them an actual meal. It still wasn’t the greatest food, but at least it hadn’t been made in bulk and left to sit under heat lamps.

Joel sighed, but reached for the serving bowl next to him for seconds.

Campers arrived in two buses on Sunday afternoon, but first came breakfast and way too much downtime for the counselors. Austin always said it was good for “bonding,” even though most of the counselors had known each other since they were kids.

“How did you end up here anyway?” Avery asked Joel, who was sitting across the table from her again. He’d told her and Caroline at dinner the night before that he was from upstate New York, which was decidedly not anywhere near their little campground in the Midwest wilderness.

“Thought it would be fun,” Joel said around a mouthful of eggs.

Avery never did eat those powdered eggs they served that were a sorry excuse for fresh scrambled eggs. “Please don’t talk with your mouth full, gross,” she told him.

Joel just winked at her.

The counselors lounged around at the lakefront until it was time for the buses to start showing up. Avery caught Joel’s eye at one point in the chaos of unloading kids and their bags and directing them to the right cabins, and she laughed at the look of overwhelmed terror on his face.

The madness of the first day always made it pass quickly. Before Avery knew it, it was after dinner and everyone was trooping down to the fire ring for the opening night campfire. Avery watched as Joel’s campers clustered around him as they walked.

“Who is that?” one of her girls asked. Avery tore her eyes away.

“New counselor, Joel. He’s got our age group, I’m sure you’ll get to know him,” Avery told her. She just hoped they liked him once they got to know him.

Avery ended up sitting on a log with her campers, right behind Joel and the boys. She stared at the back of his hat while she zoned out, half-listening to the same welcome speech Austin gave every year. His backpack was unzipped.

Avery reached down and absently picked up one of the wood chips by her feet. She ran her thumb over it, still pretending to pay attention to whatever Austin was saying. One of her campers next to her caught on to her idea and snickered.

Avery tossed the wood chip in her hand into Joel’s backpack. It landed with a quiet clang as it hit a can of sunscreen, but Joel paid it no mind.

“How many before he notices, do you think?” she whispered.

“Only one way to find out,” Kate whispered back.

Avery picked up another wood chip. In the next five minutes before Austin called all the counselors down for introductions, she landed a little over a dozen more wood chips in his backpack, including one that bounced off of his back and in.

“Backpack’s unzipped,” she told him as she carefully stepped passed him, hitting the bottom of the backpack.

“Thanks, hey, what the f-“ Joel caught himself. He glared at Avery as he zipped up his backpack.

Avery laughed and went next to Caroline in the line of counselors.

It wasn’t a campfire without s’mores, and they broke out the marshmallows as the sun went down. The oldest campers were always in charge of the campfires and s’more assembly, so Avery was catching up with some of her former campers on the logs near the fire. Joel plopped down on the log next to her, one leg stretched out on either side, s’more in hand.

“Want one?” he asked, holding it in Avery’s face. His fingers were sticky with melted marshmallow.

Avery pushed his hand away. “Pass.”

Joel looked personally offended. “What kind of person doesn’t like s’mores?” he asked. Now he had melted chocolate on his upper lip. Avery was carefully not looking.

“This one,” she said. Joel reached out and tugged on her braid. “Ow, what the hell?”

“Just making sure you’re a person and not, like, a robot or something,” he said. Avery just rolled her eyes.

They found out the next morning that they were letting the boy cabins and girl cabins of the same age group sit together this year for meals. Somehow, it was actually less chaotic than if they were separated. Which is how, once again, Joel ended up across the table from Avery at breakfast. She had accepted her fate. He smiled at her, looking far too awake for so early in the morning.

“Hey! Beezer!” one of the boys yelled from the other end of the table. It sounded like Cameron, Avery thought.

“What?” Joel yelled back.

“Beezer?” Avery asked, because what the hell.

“Hang on.” Joel banged his knee on the table as he went to go talk to his boys.

“Beezer?” Avery repeated when he came back, still rubbing his knee.

“From my last name, Farabee,” he explained. “They said Joel is a weird name, so I said they could call me Bee or Beezer.”

“Yeah, because Beezer is so normal,” Avery muttered. Joel kicked her under the table.

It rained Monday afternoon. It was one of those late summer thunderstorms that blew up fast and didn’t really last very long, but it rained hard enough and long enough that all activities after lunch were cancelled. Which meant they were all trapped in their cabins with their campers.

Some of the girls were doing who-knows-what in their bunks, while most of the boys had elected to stay in their cabin with Sam. Joel had followed Avery and Caroline, though, and was now lounging in the common area with them and a handful of their campers.

“I’m bored,” Joel said. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Caroline threw a Goldfish at his head. “Ow,” he said, watching as it bounced to the floor. “Hey, I could’ve eaten that,” he whined. Caroline threw another Goldfish at him, but this time he caught it and popped it in his mouth triumphantly.

“Does anyone have a deck of cards?” Caroline asked.

“Spoons?” Avery asked, getting up to dig her cards out of her bag.

“I have markers!” one of their girls yelled, dashing off to her bunk.

Joel was sitting up again and looking more interested when Avery came back and sat back next to him. She tossed the deck to Caroline to shuffle.

His hat was crooked, and Avery absently straightened it as Joel asked, “How do you play spoons?"

Caroline gasped. “How have you never played spoons before?”

Joel shrugged as he watched the bag of markers get dumped over the table in front of him.

“It’s like musical chairs, but with cards and spoons,” Avery explained. “Alright, how many are playing?”

“That explains literally nothing,” Joel said. “I’m in.”

Avery carefully counted out six markers and laid them out on the table. Caroline started dealing cards to everyone. Joel poked Avery in the arm; she ignored him.

“You’re gonna get four cards,” Avery started explaining. “The goal is to get four of the same number, four queens, four sixes, whatever. Carol is dealer, she’ll keep sending cards around one at a time. If you see a card you want, keep it, and pick a different card from your hand and pass it on instead. First person to four of a kind grabs a marker, the person who can’t get a marker is out, and then there’s one less marker in the next round.”

Joel blinked at her a couple times. “I think I’m still confused.”

Avery laughed and patted him on the leg. “You’ll figure it out,” she told him, picking up her cards.

Joel did figure it out, but only after he was too slow in the scramble for a marker in the first round and got stuck watching for a while.

“I want back in,” he complained. He poked Avery in the back with his foot where she had moved to the floor in front of him. “You’re too fast.”

Avery reached behind her to smack his hand away. “Years of practice, bud. And you’ll get back in when this game’s over.”

Joel stuck his tongue out at Avery, but only Caroline saw it.

By the time the rain let up a little over an hour later, Avery had nearly elbowed a camper in the face fighting Joel for a marker (which she won), Joel threw a marker across the room so Caroline couldn’t get it (and was automatically disqualified), and no less than three fights had broken out.

Basically, they’d had a great time. They still kicked Joel out to go back and deal with his own campers for a while, though, on the grounds of infringing on their territory.

On Monday night, Avery was standing outside her cabin, trying to make sure her flashlight actually worked when Joel came over to her.

“What’re you up to?” he asked.

Avery clicked her flashlight off. “What’re you up to?” she countered.

“Stealing extra snacks from the staff cabin,” he said easily. “You didn’t answer me.”

Avery smiled at him. He was still wearing his baseball hat, turned around the right way now, even though it was well past dark. “I was gonna go for a walk around the campgrounds,” she told him. “Carol’s in with our kids, and I usually go out for a while before bed.”

“By yourself?”

Avery almost laughed at how worried Joel looked. “Bee, I know every inch of this campground, I’ve been coming here since I was a kid.” And then before she could think better of it: “You could come with me if you want.”

Joel’s face lit up. “For real?” Avery did laugh at his face this time.

“Yes, for real. Just let me get a hoodie.” It was still summer, but nights on the lake got chilly.

“Here, just take mine, I won’t need it,” Joel said quickly. He tossed her the hoodie he’d been wearing at dinner.

It was big on her, and warm, though it no longer carried any of his body heat. It smelled like bonfire smoke and whatever deodorant Joel wore. When he turned to head back to the main path, Avery tucked her nose into the collar and took a deep breath.

“Alright, where the fuck are we going,” Joel asked when Avery caught up to him.

Avery shrugged, though she wasn’t sure how well Joel could see it in the dark. She said, “I don’t know, we usually just wander around for a while.

“We?”

Avery usually went on night walks with one of the guy counselors she was friends with, Alex, but he wasn’t there this summer. “You don’t know him,” Avery said.

Joel huffed. “So what, am I just the other guy?” he asked.

Avery laughed. “Something like that. Ooh, there’s a paintball course on the back corner of the grounds, if I can remember how to get there,” she said, already turning so she could head in the right direction. Maybe.

“Oh, lit!”

Avery could not, in fact, remember how to get to the paintball course. They’d made it partially there before Joel got freaked out because he was convinced he’d heard something in the woods behind them. Avery telling him it was probably just a raccoon did not help.

So, they ended up turning around and heading towards the front end of the campgrounds. There was a vacation lodge on that side of the lake, which had never quite made sense to Avery. She could see some of their lights glistening on the black lake. It was a clear night, and there was no one else around, which meant stargazing. Well, after Avery convinced Joel they weren’t trespassing by laying on the tennis courts.

“Do you know anything about stars?” Joel asked. He didn’t look over at Avery, still gazing up at the sky.

Avery snorted softly. “Nah, I just think they’re pretty. You can’t see stars like this in the city.” There were still some lights scattered around the campgrounds, but it was nothing compared to the light pollution of a city. “Our old camp director used to tell us one of those myths about how the stars were created, but I don’t think I remember enough of it to repeat it.” He also used to scare the kids with ghost stories, but Joel didn’t really need to hear about how the campgrounds were haunted just yet.

“Great story,” he said. Avery smacked him on the stomach. “Ow! Hey, be nice to me, or I’ll leave you out here.”

He wouldn’t, and they both knew that.

“Hey,” Joel said suddenly, pointing straight upward. “Is that Orion?”

“Isn’t Orion a winter constellation?” Avery asked. She had no idea where Joel was pointing.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

They mostly laid in silence, just watching the stars and enjoying the closeness and the quiet. Avery always missed hearing the frogs at night when she wasn’t at camp. The black night sky stretched endlessly above them, dotted with stars. Avery would live under these stars if she could. It was getting late, though, and they still had to be up bright and early the next day, so when Avery caught Joel yawning for the third time in as many minutes, she sat up.

“Time for bed?” Joel pouted up at her. “I know the mattresses here aren’t comfortable, but I promise it’ll be better than sleeping on a tennis court,” she told him. It had only been one day of actual camp, and she could already feel some aches settling in. “C’mon, Beezer.”

Avery stood up and stretched before offering Joel a hand up. He groaned as she pulled him to his feet. They made their way back to the cabins together, still in comfortable silence, Avery still wearing Joel’s hoodie.

Joel was carefully peeling a banana when Avery and her campers made it into breakfast Tuesday morning. His hat was facing the right way for once. She dropped her backpack on the bench and groaned.

“What took you guys so long?” he asked. Almost all of the other cabins had made it to the dining hall already. He moved Avery’s bag onto the ground at his feet. “C’mon, sit, food’s coming out soon.”

“Ava lost one of her shoes, and we all had to look for it,” she told him. Joel snorted. Avery tapped the bill of his cap, shoved it down lower over his eyes. “No hats at meals,” she told him.

Joel rolled his eyes, but he took the hat off and ran his fingers through his hair. “Or what?”

“Or it goes on the moose,” Avery said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder at the taxidermied moose head that hung over the door.

Joel gave her a look, like he definitely didn’t believe her. He’d learn.

When Avery got back to the table from the bathroom before lunch later that day, there was a baseball hat hanging from the moose’s antlers. Joel was hatless and disgruntled-looking.

“Told you,” Avery said, swiping a potato chip from his plate.

She took pity on him later and fished his hat down with the broom handle.

Swim time down at the lakefront had always been Avery’s favorite parts of summer camp. In the middle of all of the craziness of the week, the lake was always peaceful and calm. Avery could take out a paddleboard or a kayak and just float, away from yelling kids, losing track of time in the glassy blue surface of the lake. She’d spend a whole day out there if they would let her.

She had snagged a paddleboard and had made it out to the middle of the lake. She was chatting with a couple of her campers when Joel approached on a kayak. “What’s up?” he asked.

“Hi, Beezer!” the girls in the canoe chorused. Avery grinned at him.

Sam came up on Avery’s other side on another paddleboard. He floated up until he bumped into Avery’s board. She wobbled, but didn’t fall over. “Oops,” Sam said.

Avery pushed Sam’s board away with her paddle. His balance wasn’t as good, and he toppled over. “Oops,” Avery echoed. Sam flipped her off where he thought the girls couldn’t see.

It was warm in the sun, and Avery leaned on her paddle, tilting her face up to the sun. Joel poked her leg with his kayak paddle. When Avery glanced back at him, his cheeks and nose were red from the sun.

“Are you wearing any sunscreen?” Avery asked him.

Joel shrugged. “Nah.”

Avery tsked at him. Sam had made it back up onto his paddleboard.

“Hey, Aves,” he said. “Water feels nice, you should try it.” He was holding his paddle a little like a spear.

They weren’t allowed to swim out in the open water of the lake where all the kayaks were, but they could get away with it if they “fell” in, which is how the counselors usually ended up spending most of their time on the lake trying to knock each other into the water. Avery knew where this was going.

Avery paddled backwards once, trying to get out of Sam’s reach, but she bumped into Joel’s kayak instead.

“Oh, no.”

Joel’s grin turned a little wicked. Avery didn’t have time to brace herself before Joel was shoving her paddleboard, and it went out from under her. She heard everyone laughing as she hit the water with a splash. She came back up, pushing her wet hair out of her face, and hooked her arms over her board. She glared at Joel.

“Rude,” she told him.

Joel shrugged. “Thought you looked hot,” he said.

The water did feel great, actually, though Avery was loath to admit it to either of the boys. Avery sighed and heaved herself back into her board, but she didn’t stand back up, instead sitting with her legs hanging in the water on either side. The girls in the canoe were still giggling, so Avery used her paddle to splash them.

“Hey, come on, they’re innocent!” Joel protested. Avery splashed him next.

Tuesday night meant all-camp kickball on the lower fields.

Avery had never been one for making a fool of herself in team sports, so she was lounging on a blanket in the grass with Caroline and a couple of the counselors for the older girls, safe from any stray flying kickballs. Avery was just debating digging through her backpack to reapply bug spray when Joel made his way over to them.

His hat was perched backwards on his head like always, and he was squinting into the setting sun as it dipped below the treeline. His forehead had gotten sunburnt from being out on the lake earlier. “We’re getting a counselors game goin’. You girls in?” he asked, but Avery had a feeling it was directed more at her than the other three.

She raised an eyebrow up at him and absently swatted at a mosquito on Caroline’s leg. “I don’t do sports,” she told him.

Joel’s face fell. Avery hadn’t even realized how earnest he’d looked. Someone on the other end of the field called his name, and he glanced over his shoulder. “You sure? It’ll be fun,” he tried.

Avery had grown up with most of the other counselors, knew firsthand just how competitive they all were. Fun, maybe, but also intense and way too serious for summer camp kickball.

“I’ll pass,” Avery said.

“Your loss,” Joel tossed back over his shoulder as he jogged away again.

Caroline was smirking. Avery half-heartedly smacked her on the arm. “He definitely has a crush on you,” she said.

“Does he think he’s being subtle?” Meg chimed in from the other side of the blanket, not looking up from the friendship bracelet she was making.

Avery flopped backwards onto the blanket with a groan.

Avery was still on her back, dozing off while listening to the sounds of yelling kids filling the humid air, when Caroline reached over and poked her in the ribs.

“Your boy is up to bat,” she said.

Meg snorted as Avery sat up and leaned back on her elbows to watch. “He’s not ‘my boy,’” Avery grumbled. Then, “Is it still called an at-bat in kickball?” She burst out laughing as Caroline rolled her eyes.

Joel was indeed up next, and Avery watched as Joel kicked the ball and sent it sailing over Drew and Sam’s heads. He easily headed to second base, but the grass was still wet from the rain on Monday, and he wiped out as he stepped on the rubber base. All four girls on the blanket burst out laughing. Joel was still sitting in the grass, looking somewhat disinclined to move.

“You really looked like you were having fun out there,” Avery said to him later, as they all walked back up to the cabins in the dark. “That wipeout was great entertainment for us, too.”

Joel took a step to the side so he could bump into Avery, but reached out to steady her when she lost her balance. “Whatever,” he said. “That really hurt, actually.”

Avery just laughed.

Joel showed up late to lunch on Wednesday with a giant bandage covering his knee and dried blood down his leg.

“What did you do to yourself?” Avery asked as he dropped into the empty spot next to her and reached for the nearest plate of food.

He still had ash streaked across his cheek from firebuilding that morning, when he’d bet Avery that he could build a fire faster than her. (He’d won, but only barely, and because he’d used a battery instead of flint, like they were supposed to.)

Joel didn’t pause in piling food on his plate. “Jackson left his water bottle down at archery, so I went back down to get it for him, and when I was running back up the hill, I slipped on some loose gravel and fell. I think there might be some gravel in my knee now,” he said. Some of the kids at the table laughed.

“You’re a mess,” Avery told him with a sigh.

They were back down the hill towards archery after lunch on Wednesday to hang out in the Nature Center for the afternoon.

“Alright, please fill me in on what we’re doing today,” Joel asked, falling into step next to Avery.

One of Joel’s campers turned around to walk backwards in front of them. “We get to play with snakes!” he said. His name was Jack, Avery was pretty sure, who was very different from Jackson. It all got a little confusing after a while.

“Cool!” Joel said.

Avery rolled her eyes. She poked Joel in the ribs. “You would get excited about that.” He flinched away and pouted at her. It wasn’t that Avery hated the Nature Center, but the animals were the same every year, and you can only get excited about them so many times.

“What? Snakes are cool,” Joel defended.

“Boys,” Avery sighed, walking faster so she could be next to Caroline instead.

Disdain in front of Joel aside, it was fun to get to chill in the AC and hang out with the animals for a while. There was a little milk snake that loved to chill out in people’s hands named Dudley that all the counselors were weirdly fond of. Plus, they got to play around with the ferret they had, which was always highly entertaining.

Joel was just as excited as the kids, which Avery had to admit was kind of cute. He bounced around and looked eagerly into various cages with the kids. Avery and Caroline watched from a couple of the chairs in the corner, content to just hang out until the snakes came out.

“D’you think I’d get in trouble if I put him in Joel’s hood?” Avery mused, idly watching Dudley calmly wind his way around her wrist. Joel’s back was to her, and he was wearing a hoodie despite it being nearly 100 degrees outside.

Caroline giggled. “That’s mean.”

Dudley was making his way back towards Avery’s hand now. “He did say he wanted to hold him,” she said. And with that, Avery took a step forward and carefully deposited Dudley in Joel’s hood, where he promptly curled back up to sleep.

“What are you doing?” Joel asked.

“Just fixing your hood,” Avery said innocently, patting him on the shoulder and taking another step forward and pretending to read the info card of the cage they were standing in front of.

“Avery.” Avery glanced over at Joel. His arms were crossed, but he looked like he was fighting back a smile. “Why is my hood moving.” It wasn’t phrased much like a question.

Avery bit back a smile of her own. “Is it?” Dudley’s head popped out of the hood just then, slithering up onto Joel’s shoulder a little bit. He startled, then shot Avery a dirty look. Avery couldn’t help but laugh.

“You’re actually the worst, why.” Dudley continued to make his way across Joel’s shoulder, happy to explore. “Help,” Joel whined, “I don’t think I can reach him, and I don’t wanna drop him.”

“Hold still,” she said, carefully reaching to grab Dudley back out. “Here, he likes to be held.”

Joel obediently held his hands out to take Dudley from Avery. “Hey, take my picture will you?”

Even if Avery never spoke to Joel again after this summer, she was definitely going to keep the picture she took of Joel grinning at the camera with a snake in his hands.

They were walking past the dam later when one of the boys stopped short. Joel, not paying any attention, bumped into him.

“Hey, Avery,” Jack said.

“Hey, Jack,” Avery said back.

“Can we go check out the cemetery?”

Avery shuddered. “Absolutely not.” She wondered who had told the boys about it.

Joel looked at Avery, wide-eyed. “There’s a cemetery here?”

“Yes, and we’re not going back there,” she told him. Several of the boys groaned, put-out. Joel still looked a little nervous, so Avery added, “These grounds used to be privately owned. The cemetery is hidden behind the dam, most people don’t even know about it.” That last part was directed more at their nosy campers.

They had started walking again. Up ahead, one of the campers yelled, “Wait, does that mean no one’s told Beezer that the campgrounds are haunted?”

“They’re what?”

Avery was not too proud to admit that she hated the barn dance a little bit. It was fun for a little while, but after about twenty minutes, it just became hot and dusty. Avery had never been good at following along with the steps they tried to teach, and it was a lot more fumbling and embarrassment than it was worth.

This year she made it through the Cha Cha Slide– which they normally didn’t play until the very end– before she dipped and left the barn to go sit back on the blanket with Meg and Caroline. They spent most of their time just laughing at their friends as they struggled to keep up with music. Avery had only been sitting out for ten minutes when Joel emerged from the crowd and made his way towards them.

“Scoot,” he said, carefully sitting next to Avery. Meg raised her eyebrows at Avery behind Joel’s back.

“Not one for dancing?” Avery asked him.

Joel stuck his tongue out at her. “You’re one to talk, you’ve been sitting over here forever.” Avery stuck her tongue out back.

“Real mature, you two,” Caroline muttered from next to them.

“Hey, wait, actually,” Joel said, reaching out to tug on Avery’s arm. He pulled her closer to him, until she was situated between his legs, leaning back against his chest. He draped his arms across her shoulders and rested his chin on the top of Avery’s head. “That’s better.”

“You’re so weird,” Avery said, but she relaxed into his hold. She rested her hands on his and settled back in to watch the semi-organized chaos of the barn dance going on in front of them.

Thursday morning found Joel hunched over a Styrofoam cup of coffee with his glasses on and hoodie pulled up over his head.

“I didn’t know you wore glasses,” Avery said, sitting across from him and swiping his coffee for a sip.

“Hey,” Joel whined, “I need that.”

Avery snorted and handed him his coffee back. “Why are you so tired, anyway?” Avery had gone back to the cabin after barn dance and passed out herself.

Joel made a noise in the back of his throat. “We couldn’t get the boys to shut up and settle down last night.” Said boys were at the other end of the table, looking about as tired as Joel, actually.

“Y’all better wake up down there,” Avery called. “We’ve got Alpine today.” “What the hell is the Alpine Tower, anyway?” Joel asked. “No one will tell me.”

The Alpine Tower was hard to describe, and it was better to experience for the first time if you didn’t know what you were getting into, so Avery just said, “You’ll see.”

Joel groaned and put his head down on the table.

After breakfast, Joel was by Avery’s side, as was becoming typical, as they started the trek towards Alpine Tower. He’d woken up considerably as his coffee hit. “How far is it anyway?” he asked.

“Far,” everyone else chorused. Joel looked taken aback.

“You should know by now that nothing here is ever a short walk,” Avery told him. The shortest walk on the grounds was probably from the cabins to the dining hall, and that was still almost half a mile. Ahead of them, a group of their campers were chattering excitedly about their climbs later.

Joel reached out and tugged on Avery’s braid where it was pulled over her shoulder. “You should give me a piggyback ride.” Avery raised an eyebrow at him. Joel easily had a head on her. “Or you could give me one,” she countered, not really expecting Joel to take her up on it.

Except. “Only if you carry my backpack,” Joel said, already shrugging off his backpack and handing it to Avery.

She laughed. “Bud, I was joking.”

Joel adjusted his hat and came to a stop next to Avery. He was eyeing her expectantly. “Last chance.”

Avery sighed and put Joel’s backpack on over hers. “Jesus Christ, what do you have in this thing?” she asked. It was heavier than hers by a lot. Joel crouched down so Avery could climb onto his back.

“Wood chips,” Joel deadpanned as he adjusted Avery on his back, hiking her up a little higher. Avery tightened her arms around Joel’s neck.

“You’re ridiculous,” she muttered, but Joel didn’t respond as he started walking again, jogging a little to catch up with Caroline and the kids.

Caroline gave them both a look as they reached the rest of their group, but didn’t comment. Joel carried Avery for most of the long walk towards Alpine, and it was mostly fine, except for the moment he stopped to hike her legs up higher around his waist again and nearly accidentally flipped Avery over his head.

He came to a stop as they reached the first big hill. “Nope, ride’s over. Sorry, sweetheart, I don’t do hills.” He let Avery slide off his back and back onto the ground.

“Sweetheart?”

Joel blushed a little and wouldn’t meet Avery’s eyes. Avery purposely bumped into him as they both started walking again. Joel was panting by the time they made it to the top of the second steep hill, but he stopped short once he saw the Alpine Tower for the first time.

“Oh, hell no,” he said.

Avery laughed and went to drop down in the wood chips on the ground next to Caroline.

“What took you two so long?” she asked.

“Joel’s slow,” Avery told her.

“I heard that!” Joel called. He was only a few feet away, sitting on the low bench next to one of his campers.

“You were meant to!” Avery called back.

The Alpine Tower had once been described to Avery as “a rock wall on steroids.” What it really was was a triangular platform fifty feet in the air, and it was up to the climber to figure out how to get to the top. Each of the three sides were varying degrees of difficulty, and it was always one of Avery’s favorite camp activities. When she glanced over her shoulder, Joel was still staring up at it.

“Scared, Beezer?” she asked.

Joel scoffed, but he didn’t quite look like he meant it.

They made it through the safety demonstration and got a couple kids going up the Tower, and Avery settled in to watch, cheer her kids on, and wait for her turn. Until someone started pelting her with wood chips from behind.

“Can I help you?” she asked, turning around to glare at Joel.

He was already in the middle of throwing another wood chip at her, and it hit her in the forehead this time. “Oops.” He didn’t look particularly sorry, actually. “You gonna climb?” he asked.

“Yeah, of course,” she said. “Are you?” Joel just shrugged. “Wouldn’t have pegged you to be scared of heights,” she added.

Joel stuck his tongue out at her. “I’m not. Just-” he trailed off.

“How ‘bout this,” Avery said, turning fully to face Joel. “I’ll race you to the top. I’ll even let you take the easy side,” she told him. She’d been planning on taking one of the harder sides, anyway, but Joel didn’t need to know that. Joel rolled his eyes, but Avery saw a familiar glint at the prospect of a competition. “Unless you’re too scared, Bee,” she added, just a taunt, really.

“Whatever, you’re on,” he said, half-heartedly throwing another wood chip at Avery’s leg. Avery grinned at him, and Joel grinned back. Caroline shook her head at both of them.

After all the kids had taken their turn at climbing, the counselors were allowed to strap themselves into harnesses and helmets. Avery and Joel stood next to each other in the shadow of the Tower, listening as they were attached to ropes and given final instructions by the climbing staff.

“Fuck, this thing is tight,” Joel muttered, shifting uncomfortably.

“Shh, language,” Avery scolded. Their campers were all in high school, and they’d probably all heard or said “fuck” themselves by now, but still. Joel flicked her in the helmet. “Hey, be nice to me, and I might let you win.”

Joel huffed. “Let me win, sure, alright.”

“Good luck, Bee,” Avery yelled to him, already heading over to start her climb.

She was on the “middle” side, which was harder than the side Joel was starting on, but Avery had the advantage of having climbed that side more than once before. It didn’t take long before she had caught back up to Joel, who had sort of gotten himself stuck.

“Help?” he called, trying to look for a way to keep moving forward.

“Sucks to suck, Beezer,” Avery called back, reaching up to pull the cargo net she was about to climb towards her. This is where it got harder, requiring more upper body strength than Avery actually had, but when she glanced back over her shoulder, Joel had gotten himself unstuck and was moving again.

She stopped paying attention to Joel mostly after that, though she did hear a thump and then an “Ow,” that she was assuming was Joel hitting his head on something, which would definitely not have been the first time someone had done it.

She was about to climb her last stretch of cargo net when she heard, “Shit, why are you so good at this?” from below her. “Quit checking out my ass, Joel,” she yelled without turning around. She cackled when she heard Joel make loud noises of protest. It didn’t really matter; she had a race to win.

In the end, Avery barely made it to the top of the Tower before Joel. She had just stood up on the platform when one of Joel’s hands appeared, grappling for the little rock climbing rocks they had for grip on the top of the platform.

“A little help?” he asked. She could just barely see his head.

“You made it this far, you can do it,” she told him, but she took a couple steps closer to him. It was entirely ungraceful, but Joel eventually scrambled onto the platform and then to his feet.

Avery took a moment to appreciate the view. They were high, above the treeline, and trees stretched out in all directions for as far as Avery could see.

“Fuck, we’re high up,” he said.

“Stop saying fuck,” Avery chided, but she offered him a high five. “Told ya you could do it.”

“Have I told you that I hate you?” Joel asked, shaking his head. He took the high five, though. “Wait, how do we get down again?”

Alpine Tower took up most of the morning, and by the time they all made it back to the dining hall, lunch was already in full swing. Joel stretched out on the bench with a sigh.

“How am I already sore?” he asked, to no one in particular.

Avery nudged his leg. “Move over, dude, the rest of us have to sit, too.”

Joel groaned, but sat up, though he was still sitting sideways on the bench. He leaned forward and rested his forehead on Avery’s shoulder. She patted him absently on the thigh. One of the campers was setting out lunch on their table, and she was trying to see what it was.

“I’m tired,” Joel said. He was quiet for once, and Avery barely heard him over the general din of lunch.

“You can take a nap instead of coming out to the mud cave, meet up with us again for swim time,” she said, knowing full well he wouldn’t do that. He’d been talking about the mud cave ever since Avery had told him about it on Sunday night.

Joel sat upright again. “No way, I wanna get dirty.”

Avery groaned. “Please never say that again.” Joel wiggled his eyebrows at her. She knocked his baseball hat off his head.

The two cabins met back in the circle drive outside the dining hall after lunch, dressed in their dingiest clothes and oldest shoes, ready to pile into the old van that took them out to the edge of the campgrounds. For once, Joel wasn’t wearing a baseball hat. He couldn’t stand still, bouncing around while he chattered with his boys while they waited.

The van pulled up, as rickety and rusty as ever, helmets were handed out, and everyone clambered into the van. There wasn’t a lot of space, and it was hot as the van made its slow way across camp.

“Why is everyone wearing their helmets already?” Joel asked, as the van hit a bump in the road and Joel bounced high enough in his seat to hit his head on the roof. “Ow, okay.”

Eventually the van came to a stop at the creek that cut across the overgrown field they were in. Everyone piled out of the van, blinking in the sunlight.

“So, where’s the cave?” Joel asked. A couple people laughed.

“Across the creek, through the field, and then about another mile into the woods,” Avery told him, patting him on the shoulder as she went past him towards the creek. The campers had already started wading across. When she glanced back over her shoulder at him, he looked a little dismayed.

The creek was clear and cold despite the late summer heat. It came up just past Avery’s waist as she splashed across. The field on the other side was just as overgrown as the one they started in, if not more, and everyone tried to get through it and away from all the bees as fast as possible.

“Is it really that far of a walk?” Joel asked as he caught back up to Avery. His nose had gotten sunburnt at some point, was peeling a little.

“Unfortunately,” Avery said. They were walking back into the shade of the woods now. Avery’s shoes were still squishing a little from the creek, and she could already feel a blister forming on her heel.

Joel groaned, but he was otherwise quiet as they kept walking. They walked in silence for a while, and Avery basked in the sunlight filtering through the trees and the sounds of the birds and cicadas.

“How much farther?” Joel whined after a while. Avery bumped sideways into him.

“We’re almost through the week, don’t tell me you can’t handle a little walking now,” she teased.

Joel bumped into Avery back. “Sorry, one of us walked all the way up to Alpine Tower today,” he said.

“Hey, I walked up the hills at the end!” Avery protested. It wasn’t like she had begged Joel for a piggyback ride, either. Joel rolled his eyes at her.

They had finally reached the cave, and everyone was clustered around the permanent member of the camp staff who would lead their group. The kids were listening eagerly, but Joel was paying attention to literally anything else.

Avery nudged him with her elbow. “Focus, Beezer,” she whispered.

Joel stuck his tongue out at Avery, but started paying attention to where their leader was warning them about bats. “Hang on, you never said anything about bats,” Joel hissed. In front of them, the kids were lining up to head into the cave. Avery just grinned at him and shoved him forward to walk in front of her.

It was immediately cooler when they stepped into the cave. With all the rain on Monday, the water was higher than some years, and it was quickly up over Avery’s shins. In front of her, Joel clicked his flashlight on, but it did little as they made their way deeper into the blackness of the cave.

“Shit, this water’s freezing,” Joel said, way too loudly.

Avery laughed quietly. She felt her shoe unstick from the mud as she took another step. “I don’t know what you expected,” she whispered. It was hard to navigate the uneven footing in the dark and the water, and she tripped a little bit as the ground sloped suddenly beneath her. She caught herself with a hand on Joel’s back. “Shit, sorry,” she said.

Joel didn’t say anything, but he slowed down a bit so Avery could stay closer to him and his little circle of light. He kept a hand outstretched behind him in case Avery tripped again. It was quiet in the cave, just the sounds of everyone making their way through the muddy water and the occasional quiet giggle or curse from the campers. Avery lost track of time a bit, and before she knew it they had reached the back of the cave. All flashlights were turned off, and they stood quietly in the pitch black for a few long moments. Joel was standing close enough to Avery that she could feel his body heat, chasing away some of the chill of the cave. When they finally turned to leave and headed back out of the cave, Joel’s hand found the small of her back, steadying her, just for a second.

At the mouth of the cave, their leader insisted on streaking mud across everyone’s face before they could leave. Joel wrinkled his nose and poked at his cheek as they stepped back out into the sunlight. “Feels weird,” he complained.

“The mud is what you have a problem with?” Avery asked. Yeah, it itched a little as it was drying, but they were also covered in muddy water, well past both of their knees.

Joel just shrugged.

The walk back to the creek always seemed longer. It was still hot and humid, even in the shade of the woods, but it felt worse after spending almost an hour in freezing water and the damp dark of the cave. Everyone walked slower, dragging their soggy feet.

Joel ended up in the creek ahead of Avery. The kids were splashing around, relishing in the clean water.

“Hey, Bee,” Avery called.

Joel turned towards her, but Avery missed a drop-off of the rocks that made up the creek bed, and stumbled. Joel caught her quickly before she face-planted into the water.

“Careful,” he said, grinning down at her. “No need to throw yourself at me,” he added.

Avery rolled her eyes. She had found her footing, but Joel was still clutching her arms. She pushed at his chest and laughed as his heel slipped and he fell backwards. He disappeared under the water for a moment.

“Oh, you’re gonna pay for that,” he said when he reappeared.

Avery tried to dash away, but the water came up over her waist, which made it hard to move quickly. She splashed as much as she could, but she felt Joel grab her around the waist and haul her backwards until they were both falling back underwater. Avery shrieked. Joel let go of her after they both went under, and Avery pushed herself away and stood back up. They were both soaked now. Joel was laughing, and Avery couldn’t help but to laugh, too.

“Alright, you two,” Caroline yelled from the shore. “Quit flirting and get out of the creek.”

They both grumbled about it, but they made it to the other side of the creek without further incident.

Back into the van everyone went. It felt less hot with everyone still chilled from the cave and playing in the creek. Joel slid in next to Avery, pressed up against her side. They were stopping off at the lakefront swim next instead of going back to their cabins, and Avery was looking forward to spending more time out in the sun on the lake. Joel nudged her in the ribs with his elbow, drawing her attention away from where she was staring out the window.

“You goin’ out on the lake?” he asked quietly. The van jolted, and he ended up nearly in Avery’s lap for a moment.

“Of course,” Avery said back.

“Wanna grab a canoe together and chill?”

Avery thought for a moment. “Not interested in trying to knock me off a paddle board some more?” she teased.

Joel shook his head, grinning at Avery. His helmet was off, and his hair was a mess from being underneath it. “Too tired,” he said.

“Lame,” Avery said. Then, “Dibs on the front of the canoe.”

It didn’t take long to change out of their drenched and muddy clothes into swimsuits and commandeer a canoe. Joel got stuck doing most of the steering, with Avery only paddling when necessary. They mostly just drifted, letting the breeze push them along the open water. The lake was steel grey, the sky above them dark with clouds that had rolled in while they were in the cave, threatening more rain. Avery sat back and let her fingers brush across the water.

“Hey,” Joel said. His voice echoed a little, carrying across the lake. “Look at me for a sec.”

Avery turned as much as she could without jostling the canoe. Joel had his phone out, and when she turned, Avery heard the artificial shutter sound as Joel snapped a picture of her. She flipped him off with a grin; he took a picture of that, too.

The dining hall seemed extra loud that night, campers running back and forth between tables, everyone desperate for a few extra minutes with their friends before everyone went their separate ways the next day.

“You’ve got a little-” Joel poked the dried mud Avery still had across her cheekbones, sitting next to her at their table.

She swatted his hand away. “Shut up, I didn’t have time to shower after swim.” Joel slid down the bench, away from Avery. “Okay, rude,” she said. Joel grinned at her. He didn’t move any closer.

After dinner was the closing campfire. They were at the big fire ring this time, down near the lakefront as the sun set. Joel found Avery sitting on one of the benches off to the side of the fire by herself and plopped down on the bench next to her. His backpack made a muffled thump when he dropped it in the wood chips at their feet.

Avery dropped her head to rest on Joel’s shoulder. “I’m tired, Bee,” she whined. As much as she loved camp, it usually kicked her ass by the end of the week.

Joel laughed softly and patted Avery on the thigh. “Last day tomorrow,” he reminded her.

Avery stared into the flickering flames until her eyes went unfocused. “But I don’t wanna go home.”

She didn’t want to leave camp, her happy place, didn’t want to leave Joel, who she was maybe falling in love with, didn’t want to leave her friends and the endless days of summer behind.

Joel laughed again, but it wasn’t mean. “I get that.” The kids were starting in on their s’mores. “I wasn’t sure how much I was gonna like it here, honestly. Especially when I got here and everyone else already knew each other, and I was just the new guy.”

Avery lifted her head and looked at Joel. The firelight was casting shadows across his face, but he was gazing out over the lake. His hand was still on Avery’s leg, just above her knee.

“Did you like it after all?” Avery asked. She thought about him talking about next year on the very first day, saying he thought camp would be fun.

Joel grinned then, and it was familiar and comforting. Avery hadn’t expected that to happen at the beginning of the week.

She found herself wanting to see Joel’s smile forever.

“Yeah, I did,” was all Joel said. Avery put her head back on his shoulder.

They were quiet for a few minutes as the sun sank fully below the treeline and the lake glowed red next to them. Avery shivered in spite of the warm air as a wind blew. Joel bumped her head with his shoulder so Avery sat back up, and then he was bending over to dig something out of his backpack. He dropped a hoodie in Avery’s lap. She hadn’t seen him wearing it ever during the evening, which meant he’d thrown it in his bag just for her. She pulled it on with a small smile.

“You might not get this back, bud,” she told him, tugging the sleeves over her hands. Guys’ hoodies always seemed more comfortable than any sweatshirt Avery had ever owned herself.

Joel just shook his head at her and tugged on her braid, but it was gentle, half-hearted.

“Oh, wait, I’ll be right back,” Joel said, jumping back up and disappearing towards the s’mores table. When he came back a few minutes later, he had a s’more in one hand.

“What, nothing for me?” Avery teased.

“No, because you don’t like chocolate, you freak,” Joel said, but he reached into his shorts pocket and triumphantly produced an unopened sleeve of graham crackers, tossing them to Avery. She squinted suspiciously at him as he sat back down. “Carol told me you’ll eat the graham crackers,” he said casually.

Avery opened the crackers carefully and stuck one in her mouth. “Thanks, Bee,” she said around it. It came out softer than she meant for it to.

Joel winked at her and stole a graham cracker.

Every year, there were rumours of campers planning to sneak out of their cabins on the last night of camp. Really, they were terrible at being discreet about it, but they thought they were being subtle. Regardless, the counselors still had to be careful and watch to make sure no one actually did manage to sneak out.

Which is how Avery and Joel ended up sitting out in front of the stars at the small fire ring in front of their cabins, perched on the cold stone wall with both of their cabins in view. Avery was still wearing Joel’s hoodie.

“Do you think they’ll actually do it?” Joel asked, breaking the comfortable silence.

Avery shook her head and tilted her chin to look up at the stars. “Probably not, but I’m not about to get in trouble with Austin if they do.” It had happened once while she was still a camper, and it hadn’t exactly been pretty the next day with an entire cabin in trouble.

It had been cloudy earlier in the day, but it had cleared up, and the stars were as bright as ever above them. The moon was low and yellow in the humid air. Avery wished for a second that she had a camera to capture this moment, a memory to last forever.

Joel mimicked Avery, looking up at the stars. “Bright tonight,” he said. Avery hummed in agreement. “Hey, you know what we should do after the kids fall asleep?” he asked suddenly.

Avery raised an eyebrow at him. “Sleep?”

Joel huffed out a quiet laugh. “I wanna check out that cemetery you guys were talking about,” Joel said.

“At night?” Avery said. “Hell no, it’s creepy enough during the daytime,” she told him.

She’d been back there once before, years ago. There were broken headstones scattered throughout the overgrown grass, and it was shaded by the dam and a dozen trees, making it cooler, even in the heat of summer. It felt like it was a world away from the rest of the camp, quiet and eerie, and Avery had zero plans of ever going back there.

Joel rolled his eyes. “You know what else we could do?” He turned so he was facing Avery.

She tilted her head to look at him. He was smiling softly at her. It was a little scary how quickly he’d become a part of Avery’s life, how she went from knowing nothing about him to trusting that he’d always be by her side.

“I don’t know, Joel, what could we do?” Avery whispered.

Joel’s smile grew, and then he was leaning in. Avery’s eyes closed as their lips met. Joel’s hand was wrapped around one of Avery’s wrists, thumb rubbing absently over the skin there. When he pulled away, he was still smiling. They were sitting closer together than they had been, though Avery wasn’t sure which one of them had moved.

“I’ve been wanting to do that all week,” Joel admitted.

“Well, why didn’t you?” Avery asked, and then she was wrapping a hand around the back of his neck to pull him in for another kiss. She could feel Joel smiling into the kiss, even as he tugged her closer.

Distantly, Avery heard a cabin door open. She pulled away to turn and look, and Joel dropped his head to her shoulder. Avery ran her fingers through his hair at the nape of his neck. Caroline was walking towards them.

“I was going to tell you that the kids are asleep and you two can come back inside, but you seem pretty busy,” she said once she got closer.

They both flipped her off, and she laughed at them as she turned and headed back into the girls’ cabin. Avery shivered in spite of herself then. Joel rubbed his free hand over Avery’s thigh, a little bit for warmth, and a little bit just to touch her, because he could do that now.

“Last day tomorrow,” Joel murmured. Avery leaned closer.

“Don’t wanna talk about that,” she said. She looked back up at the stars, hoping that they would have some answers, for how she was feeling, for how she was going to go back to a normal life after this.

Joel used a finger to pull Avery’s chin towards him again, to press one last kiss to her lips. He used the hand on her wrist to pull her to her feet.

“Better get to bed,” he said, and it sounded a little wistful.

As much as she didn’t want to leave Joel, Avery was cold, and her ass hurt from sitting on the concrete wall for so long. “Walk me to my door?” she asked. The cabin was only a couple hundred feet away, but she was going to hold onto every last moment. Joel held his arm out for her to loop hers through. “Don’t want to get attacked by a raccoon or something,” she added.

Joel ducked his head and stole one last kiss when he dropped her off, Avery’s hand already on the doorknob.

“See you tomorrow,” she whispered to his retreating back.

The last day of camp was always weird. The buses didn’t come to pick up the campers until after lunch, which left several weird hours of downtime to kill in between cabin cleanout and the time everyone actually left camp. Even with everyone still lingering and saying their goodbyes, with the cabins standing empty, camp had an eerie and melancholy feel.

Cleaning out the cabins was always a mad scramble of kids hunting down their belongings and cleaning up week-old messes. They only had half an hour after breakfast before they had to be out of the cabins, and there was never enough time.

“How does someone always lose a towel?” Avery asked Caroline. “How do you not realize you don’t have your swim towel?”

Joel had sat next to Avery at breakfast, like usual, but they hadn’t talked about the night before, or what was going to happen in the future. Avery was trying her best not to think about it. Which is to say, it was all she could think about.

Caroline waved her hand in front of Avery’s face, jarring her back to the present. “What’s going on in that head of yours?” she asked.

“Joel,” Avery admitted.

Caroline smirked. “I can’t believe it took you two that long to get your shit together. Thought for sure you’d be hooking up after the first night.”

Avery shoved at Caroline’s arm until she fell off the path and stepped into the grass, cackling. “Why am I friends with you.” Caroline stepped back on the sidewalk. “I don’t know what we’re gonna do. Summer camp is a whole different world from everything else.”

“I think you’re overthinking this,” Caroline told her. Ahead of them, Joel was helping one of the younger boys carry his heavy bag. Avery sighed.

“I don’t even think he lives around here,” Avery said, remembering when Joel had told them he was from New York. She had never thought to ask how exactly he’d come across their little camp, how he’d ended up in the Midwest.

Caroline shoved her back. “You know how you could find all that out?” she asked. “Talk to him.”

They had caught up to Joel. “Who are we talking to?” he asked, shooting Avery a knowing look.

They lost him in the chaos of trying to organize all the kids’ luggage into the proper bus piles, but he cornered Avery in the basement of the dining hall as she was about the head back upstairs.

“Hi,” she said. He was wearing his hat the right way around for once. Avery reached up and flipped it backwards, so she could pull him down for a quick kiss. Joel’s hand was warm on her waist.

“What was that for?” Joel asked, but he ducked down to steal another kiss. “Heard we needed to talk about something,” he went on, without waiting for Avery to respond. She poked him in the stomach, got him to back off from where he was caging her in against a wall.

“How does this work?” Avery asked. Joel had taken a step back, but he stayed close, close enough that Avery could see the way his eyebrows furrowed when she spoke.

“What do you mean?”

“Camp doesn’t last forever, Joel,” Avery said.

“So what, this has to end?” Joel asked.

Avery took another step away from Joel. “I don’t know, does it?” she snapped. “What even is ‘this,’ anyway?”

Joel stepped closer and took Avery’s hand. “I don’t know, but I know that I like you, and that I want to find out,” he said.

Avery looked up at Joel. The look in his eyes was earnest, genuine. She felt the fight drain out of her. “How do we do that?” she murmured.

“We’ll figure it out as we go, yeah?”

Avery smiled. “Yeah.”

When they made it back upstairs, Caroline was shuffling a deck of cards, and there was a pile of spoons stolen from the kitchen in the middle of the table. Joel was still holding tightly to Avery’s hand as they walked. A couple campers made room for them at the table, and his hand rested on her thigh instead. Avery leaned into his side.

“Deal us in,” she said.

#cait writes things #joel farabee #joel farabee fic #joel farabee imagine #joel farabee fanfiction #nhl fic #nhl imagine #nhl fanfiction #hockey fic #hockey imagine

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gleefrankenfic · 3 years ago

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Chapter 2 By @backslashdelta

“I still can’t believe how many marshmallows you fit in your mouth at the campfire,” Blaine says with a laugh, leaning back against the railing of the porch.

The evenings are so peaceful here; the two co-counselors are always sure to spend some time outside after roll call has finished to soak in the nature that surrounds them.

“Well I couldn’t let the kids show me up,” Sam says seriously.

“I mean, it wouldn’t have killed you to have gone just a little easier on them,” Blaine chuckles, tipping his head back to admire the stars twinkling above them.

“It might have,” Sam says wisely, “you don’t know. Besides, someone’s gotta prepare them for the real world. You can’t always win.”

“And how often do you think the real world will challenge them to a game of ‘Chubby Bunny’?” Blaine asks with a chuckle, giving Sam a sideways glance.

Sam’s serious expression falters, and the two boys break out into a fit of hearty laughter. Blaine clutches his stomach as he double over, and he feels Sam place a hand on his shoulder to steady himself as well.

He’s so glad he decided to take a chance and come here last summer. He’d been skeptical at first, not quite sure what to expect from the whole thing; but then he’d been paired with Sam, and they’d clicked instantly. Blaine’s had lots of friends in his life, but his friendship with Sam is something really precious to him. So when the summer had come around once again, he knew he had to come back to work at the camp and spend the summer with his friend.

And of course there was Kurt, too. Kurt Hummel, the boy who’d grabbed his attention the first moment he’d laid eyes on him and held it captive ever since. Kurt was – is – stunning, in every sense of the word, and the more Blaine got to know him the more he learned how true that really was; and, of course, the more his crush grew. Not that he’d said anything to Kurt about it. Instead, he’d let Kurt leave at the end of the summer without getting his number or his address or even his last name.

Now that he’s back at camp, he’s not going to make that same mistake again. He’s going to tell Kurt how he feels before the end of the summer. Exactly when and how he hasn’t figured out quite yet; but there’s no way he’s letting Kurt leave again without trying.

The boys’ laughter is interrupted by Kurt’s nervous voice crackling through the radio.

“Did you hear that? Did anyone hear that?”

Blaine glances over at Sam, who just gives him a confused look and a shrug.

He presses the button on the radio to answer, “No, we didn’t hear anything. What was it?”

Before Kurt can reply, Rachel’s voice is coming through the speaker.

“We heard it here,” she confirms, “it was awful. Oh my god, do you think a person made that sound? Do you think there’s someone in the woods?”

“No way that was a person,” comes Tina’s voice. “That sound was inhuman.”

“It was probably just the wind, guys,” says Mike. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“There is no way that was the wind,” Mercedes counters.

The other counselors continue to bicker while Blaine and Sam stand there on the porch of their cabin, listening for an unfamiliar sound.

AIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHH

Blaine jumps at the noise. It’s coming from the woods several cabins down; they must have been laughing too hard to hear it the first time, but it was definitely a sound and definitely not the wind, and unquestionably very, very creepy.

“Did you hear that? It just happened again!” Kurt’s voice says through the radio, pitching up a little in panic.

“We heard it that time,” Blaine responds, feels goosebumps rising on the back of his neck.

“I repeat, there is no way in hell that was the wind,” Mercedes says.

“I’m sure it’s nothing.” Mike tries again to reassure the group.

“Santana? Brittany? Are you there?” Tina asks nervously.

Her voice is met with radio silence.

“What if whatever it is got them? What if they need help?” Rachel asks, her voice getting louder.

Mike’s voice comes through the radio again, sounding a little tired. “I’m sure they’re fine, you know they don’t always answer the radio after roll call.”

“Someone should go investigate,” Rachel decides, ignoring Mike.

“I’m not going out there,” Tina says immediately. “My vote is Sam.”

Sam’s eyes widen, and he grabs the radio from Blaine to answer. “Why me? There is no way I’m going out there by myself.”

“Take Blaine with you,” Mercedes interjects.

Blaine and Sam gawk at each other for a moment, not sure what to say. But before they can respond, Sue’s voice is coming through the radio.

“I don’t care what you do, but whatever it is you need to stop using this line. Scary campfire story time is over.”

There’s silence for a few moments, and then Puck’s voice crackles out through the radio. “Everyone meet me out behind Finn and Kurt’s cabin.”

Blaine and Sam stand there in silence for a few long moments before Sam speaks. “We don’t have to go. We could just stay here. Not like Puck’s gonna come get us.”

Blaine ponders that for a moment. It’s true; they could very easily stay put and have nothing to do with it, but...

Sam must be able to read his face. “But you want to go for Kurt,” he says with a knowing grin.

“Shut up,” Blaine says lightly, feels the blush coloring his cheeks, but he can’t deny it. Sam knows him too well.

“You want to save your man from the monster in the woods, say no more,” Sam winks. “Let’s go.”

#frankenfic #gleefrankenfic 2021 #glee halloween

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cloudywriter · 4 years ago

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camp staghorn - 1

Okay here is the official first chapter of Camp Staghorn! I know it’s long and maybe not the most entertaining but gotta have that building up first. Now things will start to pick up just you wait. Thank you for all the love on the snippet too! Let me know if you would like to be tagged!

my masterlist

~~~

Aelin sighed as she finally got off the bright yellow bus, her three bags weighing heavily on her arms and shoulder. The sun was already high in the sky and beating down despite Terrasen’s usually mild temperatures. Lysandra hopped down on the gravel path the bus had stopped in front of with a huff, Dorian and Elide followed.

They were all about to spend the next week as camp counselors for a huge group of kids all in 1st-6th grade. She was just glad they had 6th graders. While Aelin loved kids but she wasn’t particularly looking forward to what she knew would be a long and tiring week. But, being a camp counselor would look great for her college applications. It was the summer right before their senior year, school had ended only a week prior.

A number of other people who looked around her age shuffled about the area already convening into their respective friend groups. A few sat around old wooden picnic tables that were set up outside of the camp’s entrance. A huge sign was erected overhead with the words Camp Staghorn painted in white block letters.

Chaol finally exited the bus and came to stand by Aelin.

“Really, Aelin? Three bags?” Chaol commented, shifting his singular black, duffel bag on his shoulder.

Aelin shrugged, “I didn’t know what all I would need.”

Chaol only half-heartedly shook his head. Although Aelin and Chaol had broken up in the middle of junior year their relationship was still relatively amicable.

Lys quickly shoved between Aelin and Chaol. “Aelin, look!” She whispered loudly into Aelin’s ear, pointing towards a group of boys occupying the grass near the entrance.

At that, Aelin perked up, especially when she laid eyes on the group. Seriously, four of some of the best-looking high school boys she had ever seen were huddled there.

A boy with tan, golden skin and blonde curly hair piled on his head seemed to be the focal point of the group, Aelin could hear his voice all the way where she was but couldn’t discern what he was saying. The boy immediately next to him looked to be his brother but with a brown mop of hair instead. Two other boys were there too, one with long, straight brown hair and a grumpy demeanor radiating off of him. The other boy was who Aelin really noticed though, his hair was a unique blonde, it appeared almost silver and was cut shorter, his skin had a healthy glow. He was in the circle with the other boys but she could tell his mind wasn’t. He was looking out at the expansive, blue lake that could be seen just through the trees with a thoughtful, pensive stare on his features.

Dorian stepped up behind Aelin, following Lys’s finger to the gathering of boys.

“Oh, they go to Mistward High. Chaol and I have had a few lacrosse games against them,” Dorian offered nonchalantly.

“They’re gorgeous,” Lys giggled.

Aelin shoved Lysandra’s shoulder playfully, “You’re dating my cousin!”

“I know, I know, but maybe you could have a summer camp fling. Oh, my gods! Like Camp Rock, you hear him singing your song, or whatever happened, and boom it’s love at first sight.” Aelin laughed and rolled her eyes.

At her laugh, the silver-haired boy turned his eyes in her direction and they made brief eye contact, Aelin gave him a small smile and the boy looked away immediately. Well, that was rude.

A man suddenly stepped up onto one of the empty picnic tables, a clipboard in hand. His hat was embroidered with Camp Staghorn and he wore a matching t-shirt in a deep green hue.

“Alright, everyone listen up please!” He clapped his hands a few times to grab everyone’s attention.

“My name is Gavriel, I’m the director of Camp Staghorn so if you have any questions, comments, or concerns I’m the guy to come to. Now, you all have signed off on behaving and being camp counselors who will set a good example but let’s just go over a few ground rules. First, no funny business between boys and girls camps especially at night, stay in your cabins after lights out. Second, remember to clean up after yourselves and your campers. Third, stay on top of your respective schedules. And really, just use common sense please, you’re all seniors you know the difference between right and wrong I don’t want to have to stand up here and list out a bunch of rules for a bunch of hypothetical scenarios, understood?”

A few head nods and murmurs of yes rippled through the crowd.

“Great, then I’ll skip over that, you all know what’s expected of you. I’m going to call up names and give you a packet and a t-shirt. In that packet will be a list of your campers, your camp number, your cabin number, a map, and your camp’s schedule for the next week. The schedules are very packed so remember to stay on top of things, okay?”

More nods and murmurs of acknowledgment.

Gavriel began to call names and people milled up to him to grab their new belongings.

“Fenrys Moonbeam.” A few snickers went through the group and the blonde boy from earlier proudly made his way up to Gavriel.

A few more names were called, Aelin remembered hearing the other two boys were named Lorcan and Connall but she was focused on learning the silver-haired boy’s name.

“Rowan Whitethorn.” At that, the boy - Rowan - approached the table. Aelin thought the name fit him.

“Elide Lochan.” Elide quickly made her way to Gavriel as Dorian, Chaol, and Lysandra got called too.

“Aelin Galathynius.” Aelin made her way up, her heavy bags hitting her legs as she walked. She acquired the packet and shirt from Gavriel.

A list of around twelfth names of girls looked back at Aelin. She skimmed them and saw written across the top was her camp number and cabin number with her schedule and map attached. Camp number 6 and cabin 3B. Lys peeked over Aelin’s shoulder.

“Oh, good you have 3B, Elide has 2B and I have 4B.”

Aelin smiled but the three girls were a little put out when they noticed their schedules didn’t really align besides the designated meal times. “What are Dorian and Chaol’s cabins?”

“I don’t know they were in the E ones, they put the boys and girls on opposite sides,” Elide answered. Aelin nodded her head.

“Okay, everyone should have everything now. The kids should arrive in about an hour, so make your way to your cabins and get dressed in your camp shirts. Then we will have a get-to-know-you activity and a little kick-off game when everyone arrives,” Gavriel spoke again.

Once they were dismissed everyone headed towards the cabins and mentally prepared themselves for an incoming army of children.

+++

The introductions had gone fairly well, Aelin could probably name at least seven of the girls’ names off the top of her head. They all appeared friendly and like they would be a solid group, Aelin found herself looking forward to the week surprisingly.

The girls and Aelin had all gotten settled in their cabin and were dressed in matching deep green shirts with the number 6 printed largely in white on the back. They made their way to the center of the camp which accommodated a large wooden stage and matching benches lined up around it in a semi-circle. It was clear at some point the stage and benches had been painted with bright colors and patterns but the paint had begun to peel off with time.

Aelin directed the girls to all sit on the middle bench in the third row as she surveyed the area, looking for any sign of Elide and Lysandra. Most groups were finishing up their introduction games and convening in the main area now as instructed.

Elide appeared from around a group of trees, her girls trailing closely behind. Aelin smiled when she saw her and waved her over. They all quickly settled in and waited for the second part of the day to start.

“I’m already sweating through this shirt,” Elide sighed, fanning herself with the packet given to them earlier.

“Do you know what the kick-off game is?” Aelin asked Elide curiously.

Elide only shook her head.

A few minutes passed and the benches started to get pretty packed with people all chatting noisily.

A cough into a mic alerted everyone, a dozen heads shifted towards the stage.

“Alright, I believe we have all the 6th-grade groups here so why don’t we get started,” Gavriel spoke with enthusiasm.

“So, get ready boys and girls for the great Staghorn mud race! Groups will be pinned against groups, boys vs. girls until there’s only one undefeated girl’s team and one undefeated boy’s team remaining and then we will have the final throw down!”

A few whoops went through the crowd. Fenrys was close to the stage pumping his arm in the air, hyping up his collection of young boys.

“Follow me to the track and we will announce the beginning brackets!” Gavriel hopped off of the stage, he and a few other officials of the camp led the way down a dirt path steering away from the stage.

They all stopped after a short trek, huddled around a middle strip of field complete with obstacles.

“Here you can see what you’ll have to face. First, you have to high knee through the tires, then climb up the wooden wall using the rope and slide down the net on the other side, next crawl through one of the tunnels, and hop from log stump to log stump and book it to the finish line! Of course, you have to do all of that in slippery mud, it will be messy. The first team to get their counselor and all their campers through wins and moves on to the next round,” Gavriel explained.

Aelin could feel the anticipation and eagerness radiating off of counselors and kids alike. Even Aelin was feeling excited, her overly competitive nature boiling to the surface.

Aelin swiftly turned to her small army of 12-year-olds. “Okay, girls, I want every single one of you to be booking it the whole way through, we will come out the winners at all costs, I don’t do losing.”

The girls looked up at Aelin with wide eyes, many nodding their agreement.

“Oh, I forgot to mention the overall winning camp gets ice cream after dinner tonight!” Gavriel interjected.

The stakes were high, not only was Aelin competitive to a fault but she also loved sweets. “Yup, that only confirms it, no losing!”

“We’ll give it our all, promise,” spoke one of her campers. A girl with long brown hair contained in two long braids named Borte, if Aelin remembered correctly.

Aelin smiled, “That’s the spirit,” and offered Borte a high-five.

Gavriel called out the first two camp numbers, both boy groups, that would be competing.

Aelin watched the match closely, noting areas she thought seemed best to avoid and strategizing in her mind. After the race concluded two other camps occupied the starting line, those being made up of girls.

A few more matches came to a close when Dorian and Chaol’s respective groups were called up. Aelin, Lys, and Elide all gave a little whoop, Aelin patted Dorian on the back as he passed her, he flashed back a dazzling smile.

Unfortunately, one of the boys on Dorian’s team fell in the mud and tripped a good number of his fellow campmates, wrecking Dorian’s chances of winning as Chaol and his boys slipped by.

“C’mon Dorian!” Aelin screamed, cupping her hands around her mouth. A few of her girls did the same, encouraging them to get a move on despite them not knowing Dorian; it made Aelin smile. Chaol’s team took the victory and Dorian trudged past Aelin in defeat, his body covered in mud.

At one point Fenrys’ camp and Rowan’s camp went against each other. Aelin subconsciously watched that match like a hawk. Rowan was fast despite the mud and the t-shirt he had changed into seemed to be a bit small, it clung to his upper body, highlighting his muscles. Not to mention, the green complimented his hair and skin tone beautifully.

Rowan was effective in herding his campers through the course, offering a helping hand and encouragement the whole way through unlike Fenrys who completed the obstacles first and resolved to yell at his campers to hurry. Unsurprisingly, Rowan and his camp crossed the finish line as a unit, Fenrys did not look happy but Aelin saw Rowan crack a smile, it was small but it was there.

As time went on both Lys and Elide had gone. Elide’s group had lost against a random camp while Lys had won.

“Alright, last up for the beginning bracket we have camp 6 and camp 9!”

Aelin cracked her knuckles, she had been waiting for camp 6 to be called impatiently.

“Okay, girls, now is our time to shine. Get out there and make me proud, remember stick to the sides, the middle seems to be the most slippery. If you slip it's okay just get right back up, don’t leave anyone behind.” All of them nodded in response.

“Hands in,” Aelin said, sticking her hand in the middle of the huddle, “On 3, 1, 2, 3!”

As Aelin yelled three she and all her campers screamed camp 6 and raised their hands in the air and then took their spot on the starting block.

The counselor of the opposing team seemed snooty, her nose was upturned as if she couldn’t believe she would have to get dirty in a few seconds. Her bright, almost white, blonde hair was braided down her back and she had her arms crossed.

Aelin didn’t have a chance to say anything before Gavriel blew his whistle signaling the start of the race.

Aelin exploded forward, focusing on her footing as she went. Luckily, she was athletic and had played a multitude of sports, including track, throughout the years. Aelin easily made her way through the rows of tires, turning back to check her girls’ progress. They all were keeping up and moving as a unit. Aelin didn’t waste the time to check the other group’s position.

Aelin made it to the wall and grabbed the thick, coarse rope now caked with mud. Her hands slipped but she gritted her teeth and made it to the top of the platform. Borte was right behind her climbing, Aelin reached and grabbed Borte’s hand pulling her up the rest of the way.

Aelin continued that cycle with the rest, offering support when the girls struggled with their grip on the rope then she slid down the net once they were all over the top.

“You got it, girls, keep going!” Aelin encouraged.

Aelin crawled through one of the large, black, plastic tunnels, getting covered with mud in the process. Then she jumped from log to log though they too were coated with mud. Aelin finished off strong, leading the last of her girls across the finish line. Aelin turned her attention back to the course and saw the other camp’s counselor still on the track.

She was truly taking the time to scrap some of the mud off her shoe on the edge of one of the log stumps.

“Remelle! It’s a race, you have to run!” Fenrys screamed from the side. Remelle, apparently, didn’t deign to respond, she only wrinkled her nose.

“Well, camp 6 will be moving on!” Gavriel declared.

Aelin and her girls cheered, jumping at each other forming one big mud hug.

The cycle continued, camps faced off until the brackets grew smaller and smaller. By the time Aelin and her girls went for a second time, the mud on her body was drying uncomfortably.

They succeeded in beating the other group once more using the same strategy.

Before Aelin knew it Gavriel was announcing the final match-up.

“Let’s get a drumroll please for our final throw down,” Gavriel stated, drumming his hands on his knees along with the crowd.

“Representing the boys we have camp 12 and representing the girls we have camp 6!”

The crowd yelled and clapped wildly, Aelin knew she was smiling uncontrollably and was ready to claim her sweet, cold prize.

“Aelin! Aelin! Aelin!” She heard Lys, Elide, and other girls screaming rhythmically.

The boys started up their own chant, which Dorian and Chaol joined, Aelin would punish them later. It was then Aelin fully realized who she was facing: Rowan. The adrenaline had blinded her the last few rounds and she had barely processed who was winning and losing. Now, Rowan Whitethorn was staring back at her from the opposite side of the start.

Even with mud covering much of his body and splattered across his face he was still insanely hot. Aelin hoped the same could be said about her.

Too soon Gavriel announced the beginning of the final race, a loud whistle filled the air and they were off.

Once again, Aelin and her girls stuck to the less muddy sides, navigating the course expertly but it seems Rowan and his boys were doing the same. Aelin didn’t spare much time analyzing their positions but she could tell it was much closer than the previous races. Once again, Aelin fought her way up the rope and dangled off the platform to pull up strugglers. She spared a glance at Rowan, he was doing the same. She huffed, “C’mon girls, it's the last time you have to climb this, you’ve got it!”

Aelin finally got the last one over and flopped down the net which was saturated with mud at this point. Aelin was really looking forward to washing this all off later while she ate her ice cream. She then dove into the tunnel, slithering through at a record speed. Next came the home stretch, all she had to do was jump across the logs. She hopped from one stump to another until she was almost at the end. But on the second to last log, the mud that gathered atop it faltered and she stumbled. Cursing, Aelin regained her footing and prayed it was still enough.

Little did she know Rowan had had his own little tumble. Now, they were neck and neck making a final dash to the finish line. Rowan was probably a bit faster than Aelin and she panicked, her instincts to win at all costs taking over. It just so happened that Rowan was just close enough for her to give him a little nudge, to maybe upset his balance just enough that she could pull ahead. Aelin did just that and Rowan went down, his foot slipped into a small ditch of mud water. In hindsight, Aelin felt dirty but not enough to feel particularly remorseful when she heard the roar of victory from the crowd and her camp.

Aelin turned back and saw Rowan was glaring at her, his foot still submerged in mud. She halted her victory dance and made her way over to him, offering him a hand.

Rowan took it, his large hand dwarfing hers but the feeling of mud squishing between them did ruin the moment for her a bit. Instead of using her hand as leverage, Rowan pulled Aelin towards him and she stumbled, slipping back until she was next to him in his mud pit.

Aelin saw red, although she realized she probably deserved it and was already covered in mud anyway her temper rose. Aelin was just naturally wired to explode at any moment like a nuclear bomb.

Rowan, however, kept his grip firm on Aelin’s hand and he drew her forward until his mouth aligned with Aelin’s ear.

“You’ll pay for that one, Aelin.” Rowan’s breath caressed her ear and a shiver traveled down her spine. Despite the fact he was literally threatening her, Aelin’s heart skipped a beat and her breath hitched.

She kept her bravado about her though and only smirked in response, “It’s on.”

~~~

Hope you’re as excited as I am! All comments, likes, and reblogs are greatly appreciated, thank you.

taglist: @live-the-fangirl-life

#rowan x aelin #rowaelin #rowan whitethorn #rowaelin fanfiction #rowaelin au #rowaelin fanfic #aelin #throne of glass #throne of glass fanfiction #aelin x rowan #lysandra #elide lochan #dorian havilliard #chaol westfall #fenrys moonbeam #camp staghorn #aelin ashryver galathynius

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sarahlynnirl · 4 years ago

Text

Losing my best friend - Sugar Daddy culture is not empowering

I finally feel strong enough to talk about this and hopefully get some love, support, and reassurance from other women who agree that this is fucked up. I’ve never been “terfy on main” before so here goes. (TW child abuse + SA but no graphic descriptions of SA)

My mother is a narcissist who financially and emotionally abused my father and myself, with some additional physical abuse of me, for as long as I can remember. My dad made plenty of money but my mom controlled it all and made sure it didn’t go towards anything for me beyond the bare minimum required not to look obviously guilty of child abuse and neglect. I met Kiara (not her real name) when I was a junior in highschool and she was a freshman. Her mom was a single Korean woman doing her best to support Kiara and her 2 sisters while also running a Korean restaurant. My first jobs were a summer camp counselor and fitting room attendant at Forever 21. I would spend the last scraps of my paycheck making sure Kiara was able to order a full meal when our friends went out to dinner, buying her little gifts, and generally trying to keep us both as happy and healthy as possible.

When Kiara graduated highschool her mom drove her into Koreatown New Jersey, got her a room in the apartment of an acquaintance, and basically left her to fend for herself. Kiara spoke barely any Korean. She began working at a Korean salon where she met Ariana (not her real name). She had a NY cosmetology license, not an NJ one, while Ariana was an illegal immigrant from Korea so they were both overworked, underpaid, forced to work overtime, paid under minimum wage, and deprived of their tips. They couldn’t report or complain about this since they were both working illegally.

Kiara had to pay rent for the one room she occupied despite her land lady yelling at her, walking into her room while she slept, banning her from having friends over, and reporting to her mom if she spoke to a guy on the phone or a guy dropped her off. I was working at a restaurant in my college town on top of my classes and doing my best to keep surprising her with little gifts, but neither of us had enough disposable income to afford to visit each other. This was really difficult for me as she was my favorite person in the world and I was used to spending every second with her when we both lived in upstate NY. Ariana got them both to start using SeekingArrangement for one time meet ups with Sugar Daddies where they were paid anywhere from $200-2000 for sex. “The first time I ever did it I walked out of the hotel and just screamed because I was so disgusted and I was thinking about his wrinkly skin touching mine and all I wanted to do was get in the shower and scrub it off but I had $1000 cash in my hand for a couple hours of work which was so crazy and kinda made it all worth it ya know?” - Ariana to me

I was immediately skeptical and a little grossed out but Kiara genuinely seemed happier. She was buying new clothes for herself, ordering food to the apartment when she was hungry, and taking trips into NYC to have fun with Ariana and her friends. By the beginning of the summer of 2019, Kiara had found the Sugar Daddy who she would establish a long term agreement with and who ultimately ended up completely supporting her. I’m not going to say his name here but if people want to know it just ask, I am willing to share. He moved her into a much nicer much bigger apartment with Ariana as her roommate. He paid for me to fly up and visit her, and all of our activities during this vacation. I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so sorry. I wish I shoved the money back in her hand before it was too late, I wish I worked harder and longer hours and got us an apartment in Florida and paid both of our rent. I’m so fucking sorry I didn’t listen to my instincts and allowed her to brush off my concerns. It was the most freedom we had ever had, I ran around NYC by myself while she was at work, and my ex took the bus to NJ from upstate NY and joined us for a few days. I feel so selfish but I also didn’t know how bad things would get.

One night Kiara and I went to NYC for dinner with her SD and she took the bus back to the apartment because she had to work early the next morning. It made sense for me to stay in the city because I was supposed to visit my friend at NYU the next morning. In the Uber to his apartment alone with him he was drunk and high and I very clearly looked scared shitless. At this point she was 19 (but she had looked that way since age 17 and I doubt he would have minded if she was lying about her age), I was 21 and he was 44. He seemed offended by my discomfort and was basically like “jeez relax I’m not gonna touch you, I really care about Kiara I think she’s so amazing, just go to the guest room and sleep, make a left to walk to NYU when you wake up.” I peaced the fuck out of there early the next morning.

After that summer Kiara and Ariana quit their jobs at the Korean salon and sugaring became their sole incomes. Ariana was still doing one time meet ups, not nearly as financially stable as Kiara, and got herself into a lot of credit card debt that to my knowledge she’s still in. At this point Kiara was flying down and staying with me in Florida so often that people at my college thought she went there too. I also wasn’t working at this point because college had gotten harder and my ex was fucking up my mental health real bad. He had given me a coke problem and Kiara sending me “grocery money” was enabling me to continue. I wasn’t honest with her about where all the money was going. During Halloween week we didn’t know that she couldn’t just snort molly (MDMA) with the frequency I was doing coke, she ODed, my guy best friend took us to the ER, it was so fucking scary, she got IV fluids for 2 hours and made a full recovery, she stopped doing molly, I kept doing coke. I’m so sorry :(

In November her SD paid for us to take a trip to Cancun Mexico. He was with us for the first part of the trip and this is where things started to get really bad. He tried to be my friend and act the way a boyfriend of my best friend who was my age would, but it was creepy and wrong and I was so uncomfortable. He asked about my drug use in a way that was gross and shamey and basically him seeing me as the “coke whore” stereotype...while continuing to buy me more coke. He also brought and gave us ecstasy pills. He asked really invasive questions about my relationship with my ex, why I stayed, my sex life, etc. It felt like an uncle asking me these questions, I did NOT wanna talk about any of this with him. But from what I did say it was very clear to someone with 44 years of life experience that I had an abusive mother, an addictive personality, and was in an unhealthy relationship. He offered to set me up with an SD friend of his looking for a sugar baby. I of course declined because I always knew this was a boundary I wasn’t willing to cross. No matter how bad my addictions got I would NOT give up that piece of myself in return for money.

In this part of Mexico, drugs that were only given with a prescription in the US were available over the counter. Kiara and I got a little box of 1mg Xanax with my money. My ex had given us Xanax a couple times in NY and we had fun with it, but at this point in time we did NOT have a problem with it. We had bought one bar, broken it in half, and each took half one night of Halloween week and called it “xanpires”, but this wasn’t something we were scripted or buying regularly from plugs. We went to dinner with her SD, we got up to go to the bathroom, and she immediately slipped and hit the ground. I was like woah did you take one of the xans and forget? Because we were supposed to tell each other if we were taking one so we could look out for each other. I was never mad at her! I never wanted money from her! I was just a little concerned, and once I determined that she was safe we thought it was kinda funny that she had taken a xan without realizing and started joking around about it. Her SD of course didn’t understand how a 19 year old and 21 year old girl joke with each other because he was a creepy old man, decided that we were “arguing”, and got up from the restaurant, walked across the street, bought a 90 count bottle of 2mg xans and gave it to me. This was honestly the most irresponsible way someone has ever treated me in my life, and this is coming from someone with an abusive and neglectful parent. Google “benzo withdrawal” if you’re not familiar with it.

We went to a different hotel, and Kiara and I both took xans and blacked out. I passed out on the guest bed, while Kiara was awake but in a conscious blackout. I woke up on the couch on the balcony (which was fine, it was comfy and I saw the sunrise over the beach. The gross part was that meant her SD had picked me up, put his hands on my body while I was unconscious and carried me out there). I remembered that at one point I had woken up, wanted to go to the bathroom or get something from inside, caught a glimpse of what I thought was them having sex, and went back outside. I mentioned it to Kiara and she had no memory of it whatsoever, she thought all she had done was gone to sleep. She was rightfully pissed the fuck off that her SD had taken advantage and done things with her while she was blacked, screamed at him, he gave us a half ass apology, and bought us more stuff (buying our silence). He finally flew home and we got to enjoy the trip with just each other, but I was careless with the dosage of a drug called tramadol, and I ODed with my head in her lap...I’m sorry. When I woke up I was hallucinating, hearing voices, crying hysterically and terrified. Kiara called my ex who asked how many mg I took, told us I was 100mg short of the amount that would require medical attention, made me laugh, and told me to go to sleep. I recognize how scary and unfair to her this was and I really do take responsibility for my actions. The day I was supposed to leave I did ecstasy, hooked up with a guy from Canada, and tried to skip my flight. She was mad because like yeah what the fuck. She got me on the flight, the ecstasy comedown hit, and there’s pictures of me crying in the airport because I hated when we fought.

I was supposed to stop in Miami, then fly back to my college town but while in Miami I texted my granny that I was “sad and really didn’t feel good and could she and my uncle visit me at the airport and bring my uncles dog?”. Her parenting instincts went off that something was very wrong, made me skip the flight, picked me up from the airport and took me to her house where I immediately threw up and ran an extremely high fever that night. She said it was one of the scariest nights of her life and she kept checking on me to see if I needed to go to the hospital. She drove me back to my college town where my guy best friend took me to the ER and it came out that Kiaras SD, in addition to giving me drugs, had also allowed me to drink Mexican tap water throughout the entire trip. I was treated for that + given chlamydia meds just in case since I’d had unprotected sex in a foreign country. I was fine, promised to do better, Kiara forgave me, things started to go back to normal. Except I had begun taking Xanax daily to deal with the anxiety of the illness...and she had a trip to Bali planned.

During that trip things managed to get even worse. She was there with her SD and another Korean friend and her SD was pressuring her and guilting her into sex, isolating her from her friend, going through her phone, and becoming extremely aggressive. She would call me crying and having panic attacks and I would walk out of class to try to comfort her over FaceTime. She did not have panic attacks before this trip. She begged to go home early because something was very wrong but he said it was a waste of money and kept her in Bali until the planned end of the trip. I think it was almost a month. She sent me a recording she secretly took of him screaming at her and her saying “don’t touch me, don’t grab me like that, leave me alone”. When she got back to the US I was begging her to stop. I was so worried for her safety. I said the money wasn’t worth it, we’ll get jobs, please just stop. I’m pretty sure he read those messages. We also had a suspicion that he had installed spyware on her phone but were never able to prove it. At this point I also reached out to my dad for help and his response was basically “I don’t care, not my problem, focus on school”. I reached out to my granny who absolutely cared, but her response was “I’m sorry but I can’t afford to support her, I have to focus on taking care of you, if she won’t stop this you’ll have to stop being friends with her”.

I went home to New York for winter break, suffered through my first round of Xanax withdrawal and was truly trying to get better but my ex manipulated his was back in my life and got me addicted again....but now this bottle of 90 had run out. I went back to my college town, got scripted, and was copping street bars when my script inevitably ran out early. What comes next is blurry for obvious reasons. We moved to the town in Florida my granny lived in and got an apartment together. The female friends she made in our town (my current home) she got most of them into sugaring and using SeekingArrangement. Things deteriorated super fast at this point. I was struggling hard, failing my online classes, and eventually got completely financially cut off by my parents. My granny was paying my half of the rent and my puppy’s vet bills but I was too embarrassed to admit I couldn’t afford groceries. Kiara was pressuring me hard to go on SeekingArrangement but I still refused. I would sit on the floor of the bathroom in a towel after I showered and just cry because the steam made me nauseous and dizzy since I wasn’t eating.

I met my current boyfriend and something just started to click: I didn’t wanna live like this anymore. The mom of a friend from this town who also refuses to sugar landed me an interview at the gym I currently work at, I fought for the job, and I got it. Now I knew I didn’t wanna be completely fucked up all the time anymore but I was still doing enough Xanax to keep me out of withdrawal. The 2mg that had blacked me out at the beginning were now just barely enough to keep me functional. Kiara and I were fighting frequently and bad by this time. She and her partner in sugaring, Mena (not her real name but pretty close to it, fuck this bitch fr) were expecting me to keep how they made their money a secret....from friends and guys that I saw every single day. They both very obviously did not work and were flexing new cars, designer clothes, and cash all over their social media. Kiara thought she could cover her ass by saying she dealt drugs but it was also obvious that she wasn’t putting the time into that to come up with the amount of money she had. The only one dealing drugs was me, and not enough to do anything flashy, just enough that in addition to my work money I was usually getting enough to eat. But there were still some times when the previous weeks paycheck had run out and I was having my first meal of the day at 3pm after someone had bought adderall from me. We had our serious serious fight where she threw my stuff in the lawn and I lived with my current boyfriend full time for about a couple weeks since my bedroom at my granny’s was getting refloored when this happened.

By January 20th he was concerned by my Xanax problem and wanted me to seriously try to stop. At the time I started tapering because I wanted the girlfriend title but I’m forever grateful for him giving me a reason, even if it was a shallow one, because I just needed to START. We tried to reconcile once, despite boyfriend and guy best friend begging me not to, and of course the same problems reappeared, we had another serious fight and haven’t spoken since.

Now the fog is clearing and today I’m 96 days clean of xanax, 16 days clean of all benzos, and 19 days clean of gabapentin (what was keeping me from having a seizure while quitting benzos). But it’s hard because being out of the fog means feeling all of my emotions, even the really bad ones. This past week I’ve been waking up and crying sitting in front of my mirror trying to put my makeup on for work and it just drips right off and I have to start over. She was my best friend for 8 years. My favorite person. My partner in life. I loved her more than anyone.

My boyfriend and guy best friend are pretty uncomfortable when they hear someone express an opinion of me that’s “Kiara’s side of the story” and I don’t correct it. Both of them saw exactly how bad it got near the very end and don’t get why I don’t defend myself more or tell people about her letting my dog eat dab (THC) wax while she was supposed to be watching her and having to be rushed to the animal hospital TWO separate times. (She’s a Pomeranian and the highly concentrated THC was super dangerous to her tiny little body). Yelling at me and giving me the silent treatment because less than 48 hours after my SA she expected me to drive her to a hair appointment in Miami and I woke up late and didn’t get her there on time with traffic. Me begging her to be there for me when it felt like everything was falling apart and I self harmed for the first time and her leaving me to go on a vacation to Orlando with a girl we didn’t even really like. Me not wanting to sleep in the apartment alone after my SA and her not letting me sleep in her bed anymore, her and Mena just dumping me at the neighbor’s so they could continue to sugar, party, and see guys our age at night (this sounds super awful but neighbors roommate —> current boyfriend. He kept me safe until I felt better, was really sweet and careful, and I was the one to make the first move). There’s more but I really don’t like talking about it, after the abuse she went through and I assume is still going through, I expect her to be pretty damaged and not have it in her to treat people right all the time. Not exposing every bad thing she’s ever done to all our mutual friends and acquaintances is kind of my last gift to her.

I also admit that sugaring wasn’t responsible for everything that went wrong. Loving an addict is difficult and exhausting and I went through it myself with my ex. I was also out bi and she was “probably straight, maybe a little bi-curious” in her words. But when she was drunk or on Xanax she’d kiss me first...we had done more than kiss but only during 3somes with a guy. I don’t know, I think I loved her more than I was supposed to and some of the stuff she’d say made me think she saw me in a way she really didn’t. When we first moved to this town I had a thing with a girl and expected it to be no big deal but things here were different than up north. I got called the d slur for the first time by someone who wasn’t joking. It was like getting slapped I was so shocked and hurt, I truly didn’t think that happened anymore. I think she saw what happened to me and kinda closed off that part of herself because she didn’t wanna experience that herself. She stopped making out with me at bars and parties after that and it made me sad and maybe a little jealous. But I really do blame her SD for basically “breaking her”, for handing me that first bottle of free Xanax, for a lot of other little things that I can’t possibly include because this is already way too long. This is my first time even saying this much. Feel free to add your own experiences or thoughts on this or anything you’d like. [I’m prepared to get death threats or called a SWERF or whatever but I don’t care, now that I started talking about this I’m not going to stop.]

#terf safe #terfs please touch #terfs please interact #radfem #radical feminists please touch #radical feminst #radical feminism #terf #swerfs please interact #swerf #anti prostitution #addiction #recovery #terfs do touch #sugardadddy

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sweetsubharry · 4 years ago

Note

do you have any friends to lovers au full of fluffy?

Yes I do!! It is a favourite of mine so be warned there’s 36 fics in this rec!! Isn’t friends to lovers fluff just the best?? 💖

Please stay safe and read the tags!!

It's A Start by Magiic_Shop

“This is dangerous, love,” Louis smirked, his lips pressed against Harry’s shoulder blade.

“Why’s that?” Harry asked.

“Because,” Louis’ smirk grew into a smile, “I might never want to let you go.”

Harry shifted against Louis, reaching up to cover Louis’ hand on his stomach with his own, “Then don’t.”

Or, the one where Harry can't sleep at night, and because of that, neither can Louis. Louis thinks it could be the start of something.

everything i can arrange, every part of me you change by orphan_account

“Don’t you try that shit with me,” Niall spits the second he reaches Louis, pulling off the hood with force. “What the hell is this?” He plops down next to Louis on the empty bleacher and unceremoniously pushes a sheet of crumpled paper in his face.

Netflix and Chill Buddy Application

It’s like no matter how hard Louis tries, he can’t seem to run away from this stupid fucking flyer. All the girls (and some of the boys) in every one of his classes have been talking about it all week. It’s on every wall of every building on campus. Louis went for a jog last night and he nearly tripped and died over a loose one on the football track.

[Harry needs a big spoon and Louis refuses to let anyone steal his position. Based on this post.]

One Plus One Is Also One (Sometimes) by justgotowisharder

“Dear Mrs. Sissy,” Anne read out loud and Harry only wanted the ground to swallow him up, “you asked me to write about my hero but I don’t have a hero, I have a superhero. Superheroes are better and have superpowers. My superhero is Louis Tomlinson.”

(Or the one where Louis Tomlinson isn’t really a superhero, but he’ll always do everything on his power to protect his baby Harry)

Love You But I Gotta Let Go by FallingLikeThis

Harry’s father is never going to be satisfied with anything that he does. But maybe that’s okay when his best friend is there, always cheering him on anyway.

Prompt 947: The despair of ever living up to his standards.

Pour Your Heart Out by hrrytomlinson

Louis is his soulmate. Or at least Harry thinks he is. Louis feels the same as Louis. But there are a lot of people named Louis in the world and this Louis might not be the Louis. It’s besides the point though, because Harry knows he can’t allow himself to get close to any boys. He just can’t and he’s told himself this multiple times. He has to simply stay away from Louis Tomlinson. But he can’t. Harry Styles can never stay away from Louis Tomlinson. It’s physically impossible for him to.

Take This Sinking Boat and Point It Home by goodgirlfaith (boomersoonerash)

Five times Louis Proposes to Harry and the one time he doesn't.

Just Ask Me To by TellMeThisIsNotLove

“You’re telling the truth,” Louis whispers.

“Of course I’m telling the truth!” Harry doesn’t even care that he sounds exasperated.

“Oh my god.” Louis grabs the wall behind him as if looking for support. His body slides down against it until he’s sitting crouched on the floor.

He mumbles something but Harry can’t really figure out what it is. He crouches down, and looks desperately at the breaking boy in front of him.

“You’re telling the truth,” Louis whispers. “You were not supposed to–”

“I was not supposed to do what? Tell me please,” Harry urges, taking Louis’ hands gently in his.

Or the X Factor era canon fic where they learn how to be a couple and that not everyone is going to be on their sides especially those with plain white t-shirts and saccharine smiles.

Burning Skies by emeraldharry

They both watched as ice and fire danced across their palms, hypnotized by the small things they could do with their powers. Snowflakes swirled around each other as the mist twisted about like a small tornado, while the fire in Louis' hands swayed and twirled gracefully—bright and warm and beautiful.Before, Harry couldn't even think of touching him with the fear of turning his skin to ice. Now, he knew that Louis wasn't some ordinary human to shy away from. Louis was bright, fiery flames, a body of powerful waves of heat. Louis was everything he was not, his polar opposite, but it was all the more reason that they fit together just right.or[Mutant au: Harry likes to think he's normal. Except, normal boys don't freeze everything they touch. Louis thinks he's perfect just the way he is and shows him just that. Zayn is a telekinetic, Liam is a rising YouTube star, and Niall is the best human best friend there is.]

I see the love light in your eyes by larrycaring

For as long as Harry can remember, Louis has always been his best friend.

There are a few constant things in Harry’s life: his family, this town he’s grown up in, and Louis.

He had his other friends, of course, but Louis had always been and still was the person that Harry was closest to. Maybe it was due to the fact that they live next to each other, and that, since the first night they’d talked, when he and Louis shared a conversation on their conjoining roofs, they instantly hit off, and a friendship developed. Or maybe it was that Louis was always so cheeky, almost the opposite of Harry, but it complimented Harry’s slow and thoughtful way of life perfectly. Either way, it just kind of happened.

or an AU where Louis and Harry are very much in love. Featuring football & late night rendezvous.

you fit me better than my favourite sweater by brightbluelou

Harry didn't mean to fall in love with his best friend, and he definitely didn't mean to get pregnant. Despite that, it’s probably still the best thing that’s ever happened to him. And after that, well. It just kept getting better.

or; the one where Harry and Louis are friends-with-benefits and Harry unexpectedly gets pregnant. Harry never wants to stop getting pregnant after that, but Louis thinks seven kids is probably enough.

put your head on my shoulder by wayfared

Niall gives Harry until the end of marching season to either a) make a move on Louis Tomlinson or b) get the fuck over him. Either is easier said than done. Basically, your High School AU with a drum beat.

My Only Sunshine by DontLetHimGo

Harry and Louis have known each other since the start of everything.

When Harry is only a few weeks old, and Louis is two, the older boy is immediately intrigued by the little person in the carry cot. Jay knows that it will be difficult to keep her son away from her best friend's little boy.

baby, hold on to my heart by icaarusfalls

Here was the dilemma: Louis and Harry were out with their mates window shopping because there was nothing else to do and Louis brought an antique ring, hoping to pawn it off to get some quick cash. It was a small, old thing, all rusted and gold, but it had its charm. The owner didn't take it because of the minuscule crack down the middle of the jewel, so Louis just shrugged and handed it to Harry without a thought.

—•—

Louis gives Harry a ring as a joke, but Harry starts wearing the ring everywhere he goes.

So Put Your Hands In (The Holes of My Sweater) by Kat_rawr

“Are you gonna kiss me then?” He asks so quiet he isn’t even sure Louis heard him.

“I think it’s bad luck if I don’t.“ Louis’ breath is hot on Harry’s skin in the cold air. They stand in the dark; Louis’ face only lit up by the yellow-ish light from the street light a few metres away. The light over the door of their building hasn’t worked in years.

“Okay,” Harry says, and of course his cheeks heat up. There are definitely butterflies in stomach and his mouth is definitely dry.

or,

Harry and Louis go on a lot of not-dates.

It's the Sun In Your Eyes by Bearandleonardwrite

Harry's not the best with relationships. Then he finds Louis.

(Basically; Harry's insecure and hurt, but Louis loves him anyways and knows how to help.)

Sun-Dappled by QuickedWeen

Louis and his best friend Harry are in their seventh year at Hogwarts, facing down their future together. Louis has been in love with his best friend for as long as he can remember, and he begins to feel a sense of urgency as the second semester begins. Finally he hatches a plan to tell Harry about his feelings on Harry's birthday.

Stop Making Tired Excuses by midnightskies

Louis hates many things; cold tea, countdown, tuesdays, and university, but most of all he absolutely, categorically despises Eric Davidson, current boyfriend of Harry Styles.

nonstop earthquake dreams of you by lumineres

And there's heat behind it, blazing, plasmatic, like stars crashing together, like an explosion in space, like a supernova, like a black hole--everything else sucked out of existence. There's no bed and there's no pillow and they're not lying down, just floating somewhere, somehow, and there's no room and there's no X Factor house and there's no Niall snuffling or Liam's deep, even breathing and there's no wind or traffic outside and there's no hum of the heating unit and it's all just Louis. All encompassingly Louis.

or, harry falls hard and finds louis already at the bottom

every december (your star lights the sky) by larrystomlinsons

Louis needs a date for the Christmas dance and Harry is the wingman that has feelings for him.

Counting The Steps Between Us by zarah5

AU. So, yeah. That year abroad helped Harry establish that he is in love with his best friend. Now, if Louis would stop treating him like a little brother, that would be awesome. (Additional ingredients: a collapsing tree house, a lot of pining, the other three boys as Louis' new best mates from university, and a camping trip. Serve hot.)

waiting on the sun by midnights

A third year counselor at Camp Weehawken, Louis just wants to get through the summer without accidentally professing his love to Harry during movie night.

ft. night swimming, lots of cuddles, and even more fluff.

Right From the Start (You Know I Got You) by FallingLikeThis

Louis grows up protecting Harry. Harry loves him for it.

Let Me Give You My Life by midnightskies

Gemma has one rule for Louis while he stays with her family at Christmas; not to hook up with her little brother, so of course that's the one thing Louis does.

deep in my heart i know there's only you by ballsdeepinjesus

"Will you do it?” Harry whispers. Louis has to lean closer just to hear him. He furrows his brows and shakes his head, not knowing what Harry means. “Would you donate for me?”

Louis is dumbfounded. “I’m sorry, I thought you just asked if I’d donate my sperm. Can you repeat yourself?”

[harry and louis are best friends who engage in some platonic baby-making. very platonic.]

You Are The View by larryftnoctrl

Louis is running out on time for his photography assignment and Harry looks lovely in red. It only made sense.

the most beautiful thing by sunflowergolden

“Well, I came prepared of course. I actually have a full on suit with me.”He had to be joking. “Lou, you have to be joking. There’s no way you took a full on suit with you all the way from the States.”“I was raised right, H. You never know when you’re going to need it, so you take it with you. In case a cute boy asks you out.”or, the one where louis and harry have been friends for a while, but they live 5.404 miles away from each other, and louis goes to stay with harry for a week

Take Me As I Am by lovelarry10

“Suppressant? But… why would I need a suppressant? Alphas don’t take suppressants.”

“You’re right, they don’t.”

****

Secrets. Lies. Deception. Betrayal. Self-discovery.

Alpha. Omega. How far will they go to hide the truth?

don't call me baby by 28sunflowers

A short and cliché roommates AU inspired by To Be So Lonely, where they’re both oblivious to each other’s feelings and Harry gets sad and jealous over nothing. It works out in the end.

Spin Me Like A Record by zarah5

Uni AU. Sometimes, Louis poses as Harry’s boyfriend. It doesn’t mean anything. Really.

Take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic by larrycaring

Call him hopelessly romantic, but Harry was convinced Louis was the one for him. He had never really believed in love at first sight until his special person had come along and stolen his heart. And really, as soon as he had first met Louis on the train, Harry had felt something. Their love, at first sight, had started when they had met, and it had never ended since they had found each other. Harry hadn’t known it back then, of course, but even during his first encounter with Louis, he had felt that fluttering feeling from deep down inside, when Louis had first smiled at him. It had been like gravity had moved, and nothing had mattered more than him.

or even in a magical world, Louis and Harry's love is the most magical and beautiful thing in the world, Zayn is the smart Ravenclaw who falls for his best friend, Liam's true feelings are revealed and Niall is Niall.

or my first Larry Hogwarts AU that I just had to write.

Close your eyes (and let the word paint a thousand pictures) by larrycaring

They were attached at the hip as soon as they met on the Hogwarts Express. They became good friends within the first week of school, and from that day on, Harry just kind of snuck his way right into Louis’ heart. It’s just his charming side, his genuine and caring personality, his stupid puns (and now pick-up lines) that make Louis laugh his ass off, and his bravery and determination. His endless support and loyalty, his friendship… Everything about him, Louis loves. Merlin’s beard, he’s truly gone for him. And he doesn’t know how to tell Harry.

or another Hogwarts AU where Harry thinks it’s a good idea to use cheesy pick-up lines to reveal his feelings to Louis.

Faking It by TheCellarDoor

A uni AU in which Louis has been Harry’s best friend since he offered him cubed fruit on the playground, and they spend more time cuddling in their dorm beds than they do apart, but it’s not like that. Or is it?

Aka Harry pretends to date his best friend to escape unwanted attention from a too insistent classmate and hopes it won’t blow up in his face. Featuring embarrassing dildo accidents, awkward boners, longing, first times, late night conversations, emotional discoveries and Niall as the exasperated friend with bad advice.

Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow by 1Diamondinthesun

Harry spends most of his time in an empty house or a lonely darkroom, dreaming of leaving his small town for art school. He's invisible to most people. And then Louis Tomlinson sees him. Life will never be the same.

Or, the American high school AU loosely inspired by She's All That.

A Real Work of Art by lululawrence

“I don’t understand,” Liam said for probably the fiftieth time in ten minutes. “You have to explain again how this is a bad thing.”

“Leeeeyummm,” Harry whined into the phone as he leaned his head onto his desk. “I felt like this year was my year for getting his attention, you know? That senior year I would finally get Logan Thompson to realize I exist! But he’s in almost every single one of my classes, Li. How am I supposed to survive that?”

“Easily,” Liam answered, with the same matter of fact tone his voice always took when Harry was in one of his fits. “He doesn’t know you exist, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Right?”

Or the one where Harry calls on an old friend, the super popular Louis Tomlinson, to help him change his look to capture the heart of Logan. Things only mostly go as planned.

wanna taste your heart, don't interfere by orphan_account

Harry still remembers how unsure he felt when he first told Louis, how self-conscious he was. Louis had been nothing but understanding and kind, though, reassuring him that nothing’s going to change between them, that they’re still best friends regardless of sex. Harry had been mostly relieved at that, because he really doesn’t want to lose Louis as a friend over this, but another part of him had been a bit sad because… well, because nothing changed between them. Or rather, there is change, but it’s completely one-sided as far as Harry can tell.

This change being him not getting enough of the way Louis smells. He just can’t help it, is the thing, unable to stop himself from trying to subtly press his nose against the fabric of Louis’ shirt by his shoulders. He still smells like faint cologne and sweat, which is enough to make Harry start feeling slightly dizzy.

(harry presents as an omega, louis is his alpha best friend, and there are hidden feelings that just get harder to control.)

Picture Perfect by LittleBubbleStyles

an AU where Louis Tomlinson is a misunderstood football player, and Harry Styles is a misunderstood photographer. Somehow, they're understood together.

this is a wip but it is updated regularly, almost finished, and I highly recommend it!!

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moogieandadhd · 3 years ago

Text

ADHD Awareness Month Day 3: My Identification/Discovery Story

October 3rd, 2021

** CONTENT WARNING: This post discusses heavy and potentially triggering topics such as mental illness, substance abuse, and suicide. Read at your own risk. **

i believe my diagnosis journey is one that many people - namely, other women - with adhd can relate to. in my elementary school and early middle school years, i was incredibly dedicated to school. i loved to learn. i was in gifted (advanced learning) classes. i was mainly an A-B student, but straight A’s were not a rare occasion. at home, i would do my homework and read for hours. i wasn’t very organized and i didn’t take the best care of myself in terms of hygiene. my teachers would write notes on progress reports and report cards: “so smart! a pleasure to have in class! however, her desk is always messy. needs to participate in discussion more!” and my parents would brag about my academic success to anyone who would listen. if you have adhd or are familiar with the different ways it can present itself in early childhood, can probably pinpoint everything that was a ‘sign’.

then, in middle school, i suddenly began losing interest in school. my grades and attendance began to slip. i didn’t read books anymore. i began to buck up against authority and befriend people who weren’t considered good influences. my disorganization and messiness turned into a whole new beast. to most people, this was just a typical teenage angst fueled by puberty and hormones. i would get over it eventually. i tried as hard as i could to fit in, all of my attempts were useless. i was rarely accepted - and when i was, it still wasn’t for the real me. my teachers didn’t give me the time of day and my parents always asked “what happened to you? you used to be so bright.”

the next that came was comorbidity. anxiety, depression, self-harm, substance abuse, self-isolation and s*icidal thoughts. i was placed into therapy in 8th grade after telling my mother that i did not want to live anymore. to my therapist, i was just a depressed and anxious teenager. she wasn’t wrong, but she wasn’t exactly right. the first time i attempted to take my own life was the summer before i entered high school as a 9th grader.

in high school, i thought my depression melted away. i was still anxious, and i would have frequent panic attacks, but i was fine. i did drugs, i skipped school to go have fun somewhere else, i lied about anything and everything so nobody knew really how bad it was - i don’t think i even knew how bad it really was. i stopped seeing my therapist at the end of my 9th grade year. i was fine. but i still couldn’t bring myself to focus on the work in front of me at school, i couldn’t even pretend to. i couldn’t keep my bedroom clean. i was detained by police officers for trespassing and truancy but, at some stroke of luck, no official arrest was made.

not long after, something clicked in my head and i knew i couldn’t live like this anymore. i still can’t pinpoint what exactly pushed me to try life again. i dropped out of high school my sophomore year and tried to do online high school in attempt to graduate. i ended up just getting my GED. i went to therapy again; this time, the therapist told me i was a lot like her other ADD/ADHD clients. this was the first time i ever heard anything like that. she recommended me to a psychologist who was shocked that i went this long - i’m now 18 years old at this point - without any kind of assessment or diagnosis that reflected ADD or ADHD.

after testing and ruling out other possible diagnoses, my psychologist gave me the official diagnosis of ADHD combined type. everything started to make sense - the times where i would try to do homework but couldn’t even get pass the first question, the times where i thought i was going to die because i was understimulated and bored, the executive dysfunction, the restlessness, the racing thoughts, and the more solid evidence that when taking adderall recreationally, that i felt the most clear-headed and calm in my entire life.

then i got angry. angry that, if i were a boy, i would have gotten a diagnosis a lot sooner and i could have had a better chance. i felt like my life was taken away from me. i was angry at my parents, at my teachers, at my old therapist, at my school counselor, at my friends... i sometimes still feel this way. it’s very hard to accept how different my life could have looked like had i just been listened to for a little longer. i was miserable.

now that i’m away from home; now that i’m in college, married, and slowly picking up the pieces from the teenager that i used to be that felt so betrayed, alone, failed; it’s a slow healing process. researching my diagnosis and staying in touch with my psychiatrist and finding help from other ADHDers is a weekly occurrence. i’m still so young, and i still have so much work to do - but i at least have the tools to get there. i’m sometimes still angry and my heart breaks for the me in the past. how i wish i could comfort her. it’s like mourning.

i’m slowly but surely climbing out of a dark place and getting to where i need to be. i have adhd and that’s okay. i’m not broken, i’m worthy of love and compassion and respect, i’m going to be okay. i just have to get to where i wanna be a little bit differently than most people.

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kabira · 4 years ago

Text

04 | solo

pairing — spider-man!vernon x ofc

featuring — joshua, yeji (itzy), felix (skz), yangyang (nct)

word count — 2.6k

genres — spider-man au, marvel au, fluff, action, angst, humor

warnings — one instance of profanity

go to fic masterlist | main masterlist

“You’re being a bitch.”

Vernon closed his locker’s door with a click before turning around, looking at the ceiling in exasperation when he heard the accusatory voice. There was a tube light directly above him, brilliant and blinding right in his sight. He turned away as quickly as he had looked up, blinking back the dark spots in his stinging eyes.

He didn’t bother acknowledging Lucy before making his way down the hallway, bag slung over one shoulder. His muscles ached from the previous night’s encounter—he’d ended up swinging around for longer than usual, long after the three had to go back to the Helicarrier for their bedtime. Knowing May wouldn’t be waiting up for him back home had made him a little careless, and the exertion during gym hadn’t helped.

“Don’t you walk away from me, mister!” Luce called behind him. When she saw that he wasn’t stopping, she blew air out of her mouth in irritation before jogging to catch up. “Vernon! What is up with you?”

The hallway was mostly empty, which wasn’t that surprising. He’d had to stay back in the lab to clean up his new partner’s chemical spill, which had, of course, been blamed on him instead. The old Parker luck. “I need to get home, Luce.”

“Do you?” she asked, and he looked at her out of the corner of his eye. A muscle in her jaw was working, tensing and relaxing at periodic intervals, her eyes fixed on some point in the distance. She was usually relaxed, but her current gait was constrained, like a coiled-up spring. “I saw how you nailed that new kid in gym today. You usually opt out of dodgeball, but—”

“He had it coming,” Vernon said dismissively, but his lips thinned. The new guy she was referring to was Yangyang, who did have it coming, because of his little incident in the cafeteria the day before. Maybe it was a little uncalled for, but Vernon still honestly believed he had deserved it at least a little bit. “And you’re not supposed to chew gum in the school.”

“Neither are you supposed to be mean to people for no reason, but we’re all sinners.” Luce shrugged, and he bit back a few choice words. She pushed through the door as they reached the exit, and he shielded his eyes against the hot midday sun that’s shone directly at them. “For real, though. You got him good—I’ve never seen you so hostile towards anyone save for Flash. Did Yangyang say something to you?”

For some reason, her knowing his name annoyed Vernon even further. “Did you get the answers to those questions yesterday?” he asked, switching the subject.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Very funny.” The laces of her converse were untied, a band pin on the lapel of her jacket wobbly, a few strands loose from her dark ponytail. He blinked, tearing his mind away from the little details of her appearance and tried to focus on walking. Left, right, left. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Yeah, well, I had a headache last night,” he said, grateful he didn’t have to hunt for excuses. His thoughts were already sluggish. “You can ask May.”

“I meant the one about Yangyang.” She paused, and he paused with her, taking a few steps before backtracking towards her. Her eyes were downcast, brow creased thoughtfully. Unconscious little gestures he knew like the back of his hand. Then she glanced up at him, right at him, so suddenly that when her eyes met his he swayed on his feet a little. “You don’t want to tell me, do you?”

I can’t, I’m sorry. But cryptic answers never helped. The last time he had tried withholding something from her that wasn’t his Spider-Man secret—the planned surprise party, for instance—she had persevered until he accidentally let it slip. Plus, she was sharp. A couple of new students, a few matching injuries, and she’d guess those three were superheroes right away. And where would he be then?

“It’s a guy thing,” he said instead, a little white lie he hoped would do the trick. Vernon raked a hand through his hair, pressing his lips into a smile as he squinted at her. “You’re going to embarrass me in front of all these pigeons.”

“The pigeons are half-dead because of New York’s air pollution, I’m pretty sure they have more important things to worry about than some guy’s adjustment problems,” she said, resuming her walk. He waited for her to pass him before following. “Look, I know the new kids are a sudden change after—” She bit the inside of her bottom lip. “Well. After…you know.”

All of a sudden, the atmosphere turned gloomier, as if a cloud had passed overhead. “Yeah,” Vernon said thickly, voice cracking. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, I know.”

Lucy glanced at him, and though he wasn’t looking directly at her, he could sense the regret in her eyes. “It must be difficult for them, too,” she said. “Joining a new school in the middle of a session, just a few weeks after…all that.” She shrugged, looking at him, and their eyes met. “There’s no harm in being decent.”

He looked away, feeling the lining of his stomach go hot-and-cold. Even a mention of the incident turned every sunny conversation into something dark and somber, even though it had been months already. The counselor/agent had tried making him open up about it as well, but he’d snapped at her, only to regret it right after. It was a difficult subject for him, especially since he felt at least partially responsible for what had happened—but he couldn’t tell Luce that without revealing more than he was supposed to.

“So you’re still trying to score an interview with Tony Stark?” he asked instead, trying to steer the conversation towards a different topic. “I still can’t believe the board’s letting you do that.”

“Honestly? I think the only reason they agreed to it is because then they won’t have to assign me to anything of real importance,” she said with a small laugh. “They think I can’t do it.”

“Can you?”

“I have my ways,” she said, a glint in her eye. “I’d tell you how, but it’s too dangerous to involve an innocent civilian in my plans.”

“Uh-huh.” He tried not to shake his head. Oh, the irony. “You don’t have to talk to Stark, you know. I’m sure there were other civilian witnesses to the Goblin incident.”

“Yeah, but their accounts have already been reported. I need a superhero for this job.” She blew a strand of her hair out of her eyes. “If not him, who else am I going to talk to? Spider-Man?”

He laughed awkwardly. “Maybe?”

“I think Stark might be easier than that.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s kind of the point of the mask.”

He looked at her in half-surprise, unsure what to feel. They had talked about Spider-Man before, of course, but only in passing. A masked vigilante wouldn’t really be central to their usual conversations. Still, he hadn’t expected her to say that. “Yeah,” he murmured, feeling oddly warm. “I guess it is.”

“Oh, look,” she said, stopping in her tracks again. Vernon raised his eyebrows, following her line of sight to a Daily Bugle billboard on the side of a tall building. “Jameson’s having a field day with those photos of the new guys.”

He took a long look at the screen, wrinkling his nose in distaste. “Why would you show me that?” he mumbled. On the top right corner of the screen was a blurry picture of him with Tiger, Nova, and Iceman, looking like a perfectly normal team of superheroes fighting crime—except for the leftover webbing clinging to Nova’s costume. Distractedly, Vernon wondered what Jameson made of that little detail.

“As a sighting in Queens last night reported, it seems that Spider-Man has now deemed it fit to invite even more of his delinquent partners into this city!” the man on the screen yelled. If Vernon tried hard enough, maybe he could even see little spit bubbles form in Jameson’s salt-and-pepper moustache during the passionate rant. “With crime rates already increasing steadily ever since the arrival of this masked menace, who knows what kind of mayhem the new additions to his team will spell for New York?”

Always the charmer.

“…anyway,” Luce muttered. She was frowning at the screen, but seemed unable to look away. “Who do you think those guys are?”

“Those guys?” Vernon echoed, awkwardly running his thumb along the strap of his bag. What could he say that would arouse the least suspicion? “They seem new.”

Nailed it.

“Right,” she mumbled, looking distracted, like her mind was far away—never a good sign with this one. “But, as I was saying, I know the past month’s been hard for you. It’s been hard for me, too, but you shouldn’t take it out on a few unsuspecting newbies when they don’t deserve it.”

Vernon kissed his teeth, choosing to stay silent. The last thing he wanted right now was more impromptu therapy, but he knew that trying to dissuade Lucy from speaking would only encourage her. The best he could do was shut up and let her have it.

“You know what’s helped me deal with it?” she asked, and he raised his eyebrows, wanting to get it over with. “Working. Ever since I joined the school newspaper, I’ve been able to keep myself busy. Distracted. I don’t want to sound like a mom, but maybe something like that could work out for you—like an after-school job or something.”

Oh, you have no idea. But he only shrugged, keeping his eyes on the billboard. He had been able to keep busy as Spider-Man, a well-needed distraction from the pain, but now with those three around, it wasn’t the good kind.

“Maybe,” he murmured, watching on as Jameson gesticulated violently onscreen. “We’ll see.”

Vernon swung the drone trapped at the end of his web in a full circle before letting go, letting it fly through the training room into a collapsed structure of another laser. The drone exploded, sparking as it crashed, crushing the circuit of the lasers in the structure beneath it.

Dusting off his hands, he turned, facing the rest of his ‘team’-mates, who stood to one side, having been watching him as he single-handedly took on the subjects of their training session. He had been going at it for about half an hour now, and it had been strangely satisfying to get to throw stuff around for the heck of it.

Nova stood leaning against the wall next to the control panel, his arms folded over his chest. “You done yet?” he asked in a bored voice.

The drone Vernon had just disabled sparked again, shooting an angry red beam across the room. Vernon clicked his modified web shooters into condensed impact mode and webbed the drone again without looking. The drone crackled once, then its light went dark.

“I am now,” he said, dropping his arm. Felix watched him with bleary eyes as he turned and headed towards the exit, which slid open with a pneumatic hiss. “And since I managed to complete the mission objective solo, I think I’m going to head home.”

“Except you didn’t.” White Tiger landed in his path, executing a perfect handspring that arched high over his head. Her reflexes were as good as his—maybe even better, but he would probably never tell her that.

She crossed her arms, shifting her weight to one leg. Despite the mask covering her features, he could sense how peeved she was through the sheer annoyance radiated by her posture. “The objective was to disable the bots without alerting the security system. You trashed the drones and crashed the system, and the power failure would have initiated a manual site-wide search. If this had been a real mission, we would have been discovered by now.”

“Except this isn’t a real mission,” he said, equally annoyed. “If it had been, I’m pretty sure I would have been able to do the job easily. Six armed drones against one spider? No competition.”

“And this was supposed to be a team effort,” she snapped. “If this had just been a solo training session, I would have had no problem with you doing what you just did. But in case you forgot, the whole point of this is to prepare us for team combat in real situations, to help us learn to work better, together. Your taking on everything alone wasn’t heroic, it was an obstruction of the purpose of this entire thing.”

She took a step back, suddenly, as if reeling from a blow, though he hadn’t even moved. The training room had gone silent—granted, it hadn’t been very noisy in the first, place, but her voice had been so loud and her words so rapid that Vernon had forgotten the silence. Now it pressed down on him, like another layer to his suit.

She dropped her arms to her sides, fingers curling in and out slightly, her claws retracting under the white gloves. “I know it’s difficult for you having to work with someone against your will,” she said, “and I know you don’t like us very much. But that’s not a good enough reason for you to throw away everything we’ve been training for. If you’re not going to be nice, at least try to be civil.”

She turned on his heel and stalked out the door. Vernon watched her go, right up until the doors slid back in place behind her.

He turned around, only to find the other two staring back at him. “Way to go,” Felix mumbled.

“You totally got schooled right there,” Yangyang said, though he didn’t sound very amused. “You know she takes this training stuff more seriously than any of us.” He shrugged; arms still folded. “Gotta be more sensitive than that.”

“Stop it,” Felix snapped at him, looking annoyed. “She only cares about this so much because it’s the only thing she’s got. You’ve got the Guardians, and I have—had—the X-Men, and probably a bunch of other mutant organizations, like the Frost Academy or something,” he added the last bit in an undertone, “but S.H.I.E.L.D.—after she lost her family, this is the only place she can turn to. That’s her one chance at making it, but this doofus is refusing to cooperate. If it were me, I’d be pretty pissed.”

Vernon narrowed his eyes at him, but couldn’t find the strength to argue. Too much about what Felix had said hit right where it hurt. Losing someone you cared about, suddenly having nobody to turn to…he understood how bad that was. But losing your entire family and being displaced from your home? He couldn’t even imagine it.

The earlier annoyance had drained from his body like an ebbing tide, leaving nothing but a hollowness and that damned guilt that seemed to follow him everywhere like an annoying ghost. Oh, well, my fault for having a conscience.

Suddenly tired, he sighed, tearing his eyes from the mutant’s and looking resignedly at a spot on the wall. As much as he would like to have a reason to properly hate his new team, he knew he couldn’t really blame them for any of this. “Where do you think she’ll go?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t—” Yangyang started.

“Up top,” Felix answered, cutting him off. His irises were rings of ice, but when Vernon looked at him then, they seemed almost warm. “Take the elevator to the left. Make sure you don’t fall off the side—New York’s a long way down.”

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prurientpuddlejumper · 4 years ago

Text

Out Tonight (Part 6)

K!nktober 2020 Kink Bingo!: Nipple Play

<- Part 5

Summary: Backstory, Spanish lessons, and finally some sober sex! 🥳 (This chapter is very NSFW/18+)

For @thatesqcrush’s Kink Bingo challenge! And with this, I finally finish a row!

5,420 words

The twenty-minute coffee date Rafael Barba had been dreading somehow turned into hours without him realizing it. The summer morning passed quickly until the sun was at its zenith above the turtle pond, and all of the work-related responsibilities he would have been grinding himself to death on had slipped his mind as he wandered through the park with your hand in his.

It turned out that you did have a few things in common. You both grew up in the Bronx. Though when you told him where, he snorted and joked, “What is an upstanding young lady from Spuyten Duyvil doing with a boy from the projects?”

Your jaw dropped when he told you what neighborhood he grew up in. It was an area you were familiar with mainly as a place to avoid, especially, god forbid, at night. The clean-cut lawyer in a sharp suit did not look anything like what you’d expect from the poverty he came from. You just assumed his family was wealthy.

“That’s incredible,” you said, a new surge of admiration for him stoking the fire of your attraction. You scooted closer on the shaded bench beneath a tall oak you’d stopped to sit on, your bare leg pressing against his slacks. You still hadn’t kissed, everything just barely skirting the romantic. The touch of his hand shot electricity through your skin, just from his fingers brushing yours. Neither of you wanted to push things too far, too fast, considering the guilt still lingering between you. “You must be a genius.”

Instead of boasting with the sly, cocky grin you had learned was among his favorite facial expressions, he grew serious, all but a trace of a smile leaving his lips. “I just worked hard,” he said.

“Really hard,” you said, knowingly, squeezing his hand. “Even people who work hard, who are smart… it’s almost impossible to escape that kind of poverty. The fact that you did it is…”

His inquisitive eyes, matching the foliage behind him, were strained as if deciding whether to share something or not. But he did, quietly. “I still work hard. Every day. It feels like if I make one false step, everything could fall apart. But, I have enough to support my mother.”

“And an impressive collection of ties,” you chimed.

He smirked, lifting your hand to casually press a kiss to the back of your knuckles. “And suspenders.”

Your pulse raced. Looking up and down this flawlessly stylish man, it all made sense. “Dressed to kill,” you muttered. “You wear it like a disguise.”

He frowned, the warmth leaving his eyes. You had touched a nerve. “Would it be a disguise if you wore it, or just because I’ll always be poor deep down?”

“I didn’t mean—OK, I get how that sounded. I just mean… you are exceptionally attractive. Like, really attractive. I mean, why am I telling you? You know that. Look at you.” You continued the obsequious flattery until a sarcastic smile appeared in the corner of his lips. “You know, actually,” you admitted, “I only grew up in a good neighborhood because my dad re-married rich. The weeks I was with my mom… she worked three jobs just to support me and a crummy apartment. I could never actually count on what the step-family would pay for, so sometimes I rode on boats with rich people, and sometimes I lived off canned pasta. It was weird.”

He looked at you appraisingly as he assimilated this new tidbit of information. “It isn’t easy, straddling two worlds.”

“Except you worked your ass off to break into one, and I ran away into the woods and got really into trees. Trees don’t judge you for not fitting in.”

“I’m sorry for judging you,” he whispered, his voice turning surprisingly tender. He lifted a hand and gently brought it to your cheek. You closed your eyes as it made contact, his palm warm against your skin, the pad of his thumb soft as it began stroking your cheek. You leaned forward, and he closed the remaining distance, his lips capturing yours, slow and sweet. It was chaste at first, and careful, but neither of you wanted to break it, and as it continued, his arms wrapped around the small of your back and your shoulder, drawing you in deeper as his heady scent enveloped you, the taste of coffee on his tongue as his lips parted.

“Barba?”

Rafael practically jumped out of your arms as an inquisitive voice called his name, leaving you kissing the air. The voice belonged to a tall brunette woman pushing a toddler along in a stroller.

“Liv!” he practically shrieked in alarm, straightening himself.

You looked between them and the kid, and felt like such an idiot. “Oh my god, you are cheating!”

Liv gave you a look, and burst out laughing. “Sorry, sorry, nothing like that. I’m Sergeant Benson, SVU,” she extended you a firm handshake and explained, “I work with Barba on a lot of cases.” She turned back to Barba with an amused smirk. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your date, I just couldn’t believe my eyes. Counselor, I didn’t realize you had a personal life.”

“It’s a new thing I’m trying. How’s Noah?”

“He’s perfect,” she smiled, cooing at the curly-haired child. “He loves the turtles, so we’re going down to the pond. Beautiful day for a nature walk.”

“She knows every tree,” Barba volunteered, puffing his chest out with the same cockiness he used to talk about himself, tipping his head at you. “Go ahead, test her.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Liv said, bemused. She gave a polite nod and a reminder that she still owed Barba a coffee for some legal thing he had come through on (which only gave you a slight pang of jealousy), and then waved goodbye, walking down the path toward the water.

You sat in silence, recovering. Barba was obviously scandalized to have been caught in a compromising position by a colleague, the tips of his ears turning red. You were glad she wasn’t his wife, but didn’t love having to suddenly confront the fact that he had an entire social life you knew absolutely nothing about. It sort of ruined the intimacy of the moment, tearing the cardboard moon out of your sky too soon.

Barba broke the silence first with a low, drawn-out groan. He turned to you, his eyes soft but flashing with passion, taking your hands in his again. “If we start seeing each other… there is a good chance you will get to know Liv in some capacity.” He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, and on the exhale beseeched, “You cannot tell her how we met.”

The earnestness with which he implored you, holding both your hands, made you burst out laughing. He did a poor job hiding his smile as he watched you double over. When you finally contained yourself, you pecked an innocent kiss to his lips. “We can say we met at a bar. We don’t have to mention all the, uh...” Karaoke. Drunken shenanigans. Dubious consent. Whatever you call we-didn’t-have-penis-in-vagina-sex-but-you-fingered-me-until-we-orgasmed. He grimaced with you as you both recalled all of the things you would not be telling anyone about your meet-cute. Then you started remembering his fingers gliding in and out of you, his hungry lips marking up your skin, and a warm shiver ran down your back. He swallowed, seeing the lustful heaviness creep into your eyes and responding with his own.

He nearly kissed you again, wrapping you in a passionate embrace that would have hastened you to a bedroom, but you pulled back. He said “seeing each other.” You thought this was a fun fling with no strings attached, and the idea that he was already thinking about more made your heart sink with guilt. “I should tell you...”

You never got to finish your thought. Liv had only gotten fifty feet when her phone rang. She was yelling into it frantically, demanding answers. Barba’s phone buzzed with an incoming message. Liv stormed back up the path, waving to him. “There’s been a… development,” she said, censoring the case details in your presence. “They need me at the precinct. You’re probably going to want to come, too.”

“I believe I am already being summoned,” he replied, checking his phone.

“Good. I need to call the sitter. Please let everyone know I’m on my way.” She hurried off, and any hint of flirtation was gone from Barba’s eyes as he stood, fully back in cold lawyer mode as he made a phone call, then another to order a Lyft.

He was already walking with quick, purposeful steps toward the nearest exit of the park when he hung up his last call and turned back to you apologetically. You had been trailing behind him, unsure if he wanted you to follow, and didn’t miss that you were an afterthought. But his regret was sincere. And the truth was, you didn’t mind this serious version of Barba at all—the sober Barba who poured his soul into getting justice and would forget a date he had been enjoying the instant duty called—because you’d seen the drunk version who fell apart, sobbing in your arms when he let down the victims. He had a hard side and a soft side, and so far, there was nothing about him that you didn’t like.

Oh god, you had a crush on him.

“I’m sorry, I have to go. It’s an emergency,” he explained, brow furrowed heavily over yearning green eyes.

Oh god, this was only supposed to be a one-night stand. Maybe a few nights, but a stand nonetheless. How dare he look at you like that?

“It’s alright. It sounds important,” you half smiled.

“Can I call you later?” he asked. His hands were shoved into his pockets, and he had none of the confident swagger usually in his voice. It was a small, hopeful sort of question that told you there were real emotional stakes to your answer.

Oh god, did he have a crush on you, too? Did you have a crush on each other? This was terrible!

Drawn in as if by a magnetic pull, you closed the short distance, threaded your hands between his arms and body, and clasped them together behind his back. His lips quirked as his confidence returned. His hands cupped the sides of your face, then his mouth crashed against yours, fired with all of the passion of desire realized and reciprocated, relief, and longing. It was the type of kiss that would have been drawn out and sensual if it hadn’t been condensed by necessity into a hurried goodbye. You were out of breath and overheated when he broke it, seconds later.

“I’ll be waiting,” you breathed. He gave a hungry growl and a sharp, promising stare that sent a jolt of pleasure straight to your core before running to catch his ride.

***

Barba hated intelligent psychopaths. Even after they’d been put away, there was always some new appeal to fight, a new witness to come forward, some clever misdirection to cast their crimes into doubt. He’d been running around since noon working out deals with witnesses, obtaining warrants, and warning Liv’s detectives that they were being played. Now the sun was hanging low in the sky, and he realized he had never heard Carmen’s futile warning for him to go home already because his secretary didn’t work on weekends when he was pulling overtime. It was just him and his headache.

The time. What time was it?

He sat bolt upright in his leather office chair and groped for his phone. There was a notification from you from an hour ago that he vaguely recalled hearing buzz.

“How’s the emergency?”

He cursed and checked the time. It was getting late. Too late to make a reservation at any of the swankier restaurants he could take you. But he called you anyway, and was delighted when you answered.

“Hey. It’s Barba,” he said.

“I know,” said your amused voice on the other end of the line. “Your contact is in my phone, Sexy Karaoke Lawyer.”

He groaned in a way that was secretly a laugh. “Alright, Lorax. Are you free tonight? I’d like to take you to dinner. Actually, I thought I could make dinner. At my place?”

You gasped with mock scandalization. “Is this a booty call, Mr. Barba?”

He choked. “No. I just—” He stopped stammering when you started cackling like a grinning idiot, and his voice dropped low. “What if it is?”

The sudden shift in confidence caught you off guard, and he heard you swallow. “Then I’ll be there.”

***

It had been ages since he’d had time to make his abuelita’s costillas de puerco recipe. Or rather, it had been ages since he’d made time, considering he hardly had the time to do it now. He rushed through the corner deli at lightning pace to pick up what he needed, and rushed through prep, knowing you’d be over in less than an hour.

He had no idea why he felt such a drive to impress you. Why he needed to see you again so soon when you’d spent hours by his side that morning. The entire short time he had known you had been strange, anxiety-inducing, and guilt-ridden, but instead of hating you, he found himself wanting more.

The truth he didn’t want to admit was, every interaction with you, no matter how awkward, had been underscored by a potent sexual chemistry, and at the moment, he was nothing but a horny teenage boy who wanted to get laid.

That was all. This was some mid-forties hormonal resurgence. Madre de dios, it was a midlife crisis.

Or maybe this was what happened when he stopped getting in his own way. He’d spent years nursing a broken heart, years that turned into decades guarding himself against anyone getting too close. He never thought he’d feel this way again for somebody new. It was too late in life to meet someone who would know him as well as his childhood friends from el barrio, and they were all married by now. But he’d opened himself up just an inch, just for a night, by mistake, and let someone see past the hard, cynical facade, and now he wanted you to know him. He wanted to know you. He wanted to see how this ended. Maybe this was a revelation.

His heart jumped in his chest at the buzz of the door intercom.

***

“Hola, Rafael,” you greeted, and he grinned at the way you pronounced his name with the correct accent. “Oh my gosh, what smells amazing?”

He stood aside and nodded you in. The apartment was tiny, as most city apartments are, but tidy and well decorated. You were immediately drawn to the sturdy dining room table made of solid burl, and admired the natural chaotic pattern of the grain.

“It needs fifteen more minutes,” he said, observing with amusement how you completely ignored the good silver he’d broken out and started stroking the wood.

“What ever shall we do to pass the time?” you pouted innocently. Barba growled low in his throat, cupping a hand around your hip to draw you close, and you responded by pressing your hips flush against his, smiling lustily. Well, you had more or less agreed that dinner was a pretense for a booty call—no reason not to get right to it.

You hadn’t changed, but he was wearing a more casual wine-colored cashmere sweater, and you ran your hand up it, relishing the velvet softness under your palm as well as the shape of his chest. His lips met yours hot and searching, but didn’t stop there. They trailed over the side of your mouth, kissing down your jaw. He pressed wet, hungry kisses along your neck, and you moaned as his tongue lapped over the soft underside of your throat, his hands gliding over your hips. He pulled back by an inch. “Are you sure… you want this?” he murmured.

“God yes,” you moaned with your lips in his perfect salt-and-pepper hair, arousal raising your temperature as your body responded to his touch. “You haven’t been drinking this time?”

“Not a drop,” he replied huskily, somehow making it sound lewd as he resumed kissing the crook of your neck, and over your shoulder. You curled your fingers through his hair, and backed you up until your legs hit the edge of the table, and rested your weight against it, enjoying the feeling of being pinned as you angled your pelvis to grind against his growing erection.

“Oh, Rafa...” you moaned. “Can I call you Rafa?” you asked, not sure if the nickname was too personal. With the emotional baggage of your first night together, you hadn’t been sure if being on a first-name basis was respectful enough.

“You can call me anything you want,” he purred, his teeth gently pinching your shoulder.

You made a deep, chesty noise, sinfully considering that. “Don’t give me such broad permission, or you might regret it… papi.”

He groaned, and you felt his cock kicking against your cunt. Bunching up your skirt over your hips, you rocked your hips against him, panting just from feeling the strength of his arousal through his clothes. “Yes,” he hissed softly, holding you firmly against him as he worked his clothed erection against your panties, growing more excited with every mewl and shudder it drew from your lips. “That night was… moronic… but I remember the way I felt… how much I wanted you.” He turned his head and sucked a light bruise into your neck. “Do you still feel that way?”

You dipped your head to coax him back to your mouth, his pink lips wet with saliva as your tongue tasted them. “I wanted you to fuck me so bad,” you groaned, jerking your hips for emphasis on the word fuck. “But your fingers are very skilled… and your mouth...” You kissed him again, and felt his hand reach between your legs to slide your panties off.

His fingers paused halfway down the elastic. “Is this moving too fast?” he panted, suddenly trying to be reasonable. The kind of thing you would worry about if you were building a long-term relationship.

“Shh,” you hushed him gently. “I don’t want to think about too fast or too slow, or how different our lives are, or what’s going to happen after tonight. We’re just two strangers having fun. Can’t it just be that?”

He kissed you so softly, then. So tenderly that he could only have been subliminally trying to convince you of something more. His heart drummed with possessive affection; he already knew he wanted more than just tonight. At least the primitive, reckless part of him that didn’t overthink and over-plan every decision did. The rational part of him and the part that would say anything to please you came to an accord as he nodded, lips moving against your skin, “It can be.”

You grabbed his wrist and helped him slip your underwear the rest of the way off, stepping out of them and kicking them aside. His fingers didn’t immediately plunge themselves into your drenched folds, and his hips didn’t immediately return to grind against your wetness. His intelligent, cocky green eyes gave you a probing stare.

“Y qué quieres hacer esta noche?” he purred, low and seductive, giving you a choice.

“Oh, papi, me encanta cuándo hablas español. I want you to do anything you want to me. Anything,” you moaned, fairly certain that, with one or two exceptions, you really meant it. This man turned you on in ways you’d never experienced. There was nothing you wouldn’t try if he wanted it, and you knew he’d stop the second you asked, which made you feel bolder.

He chuckled. “Don’t give me such broad permission, dulce naturalista.”

The promise of mischief in his voice made you shiver, your cunt dripping. “Anything, papi. I just… want to know that you want me.”

He hummed. “This dress, this flimsy thing,” he hooked his index fingers through the narrow shoulder straps and tugged. “Did you know I’ve been staring at it all day, thinking about doing this?” He pulled the front down, just by a few inches, and freed your nipples. He dipped his head, and you gasped as he took one in his mouth.

“Oh god, it feels so good,” you whined as he began to suck, rolling the other between his thumb and forefinger. It was like he had a direct connection to your clit. He wasn’t even touching you there, but a hot pressure began to build between your legs as he devoured your sensitive nipples.

Then he suddenly released, your hard peak popping out of his mouth with a wet sound, and you whined for him not to stop. “Tu no dominas el español, verdad?” he asked.

“Qué?” you blurted, confused, but answering his question by not understanding it.

“I didn’t think so,” he said, a devilish look in his eyes. “You need practice, so I’ve decided I’ll only give you what you want if you say it in Spanish.”

“Pero… Qué pasa si… yo no sé… how to say it in Spanish?” You did want to learn more dirty talk, but this game didn’t seem fair. You wanted him to keep sucking your tits.

“You said I could do anything I wanted...” he reminded you, bringing his hand back to one of your breasts and kneading it tormentingly slowly. “Si no lo sabes, intenta. Practica, practica, practica.”

You wondered if this was some sort of dominance thing, or if he just liked watching you struggle with his native language. It was a bit exciting, though, you had to admit. Your pulse was racing with a mixture of arousal and embarrassment, because you genuinely had no idea how to say what you wanted. “Mis… pechos? Tu lengua. Por favor.” you pointed from his mouth to your breasts.

“Por favor, chupa mis pezones,” he corrected. “Repite.” You repeated it, and before you’d finished the last syllable, he replied, “Con gusto,” and began stimulating your nipples to the point of torture with his nimble lawyer’s tongue.

“Oh god,” you whimpered, your voice high and pleading, “It feels so good.” You bucked your hips into his and curled your fingers around the back of his head trying to force him to keep going, but he pulled back.

“En español,” he chided.

“En serio?!” you complained, but he simply watched you with his eyebrows quirked, waiting. “Me siento bien?” you tried. He smiled approvingly and lowered his sultry mouth to your skin again, flicking your hardened peak while pinching it between his lips. This time he pushed his hips back against yours so you could feel the heat of his erection on your pussy, and it sent new waves of electricity coursing through your body, which was already heaving just with the attention to your breasts. “Por favor, más... Oh god, yes,” you whimpered.

“Qué sabor muy rica, tu piel,” he murmured, muffled in your skin. “You taste delicious.” The vibrations from his speech tore a choked whimper from your lips, and you bucked your hips against his cock.

You bit down on your lower lip, fighting your rising climax even as you lifted one leg, wrapping it over his hip, to hasten it. “I’m gonna—oh god, you’re going to make me come just from this!”

“Voy a venir,” he coached you in a firm, teacher-like voice that nearly made you double over with arousal. “O puedes decir, ‘Me vas a poner a venir.’”

“M-me pon… ah!” he lightly nipped at your sensitive peak, turning the rest of what you were trying to say into helpless babble. “Please, please fuck me�� oh god.” Before he could correct you, you remembered what he’d taught you in the bar right before begging you to leave with him so he could fuck your brains out. “Dámelo duro, papi.”

His whole body shuddered as he took in a shaking breath, but sober Barba never lost control until he decided to surrender it. As much as he wanted to fuck you, he was having too much fun teasing you. “You could also say, ‘Quiero que me coges,’” he explained academically, and you growled with frustration, writhing under him, your cunt seeking purchase against his cock. “If you’re going to speak a language, you’ve got to practice it,” he said, his voice far too calm and even for the circumstance, even with its wicked undertone.

“Dámelo! Por favor! Dáme tu pinga!” you begged frantically, rapid-firing off every way to ask for his cock that you could think of. You reached between your bodies and grasped his engorged sex through his tightened pants and stroked him hard from balls to tip. Your efforts were rewarded with an involuntary whine, Barba’s hips jerking forward.

“Me rindo,” he whimpered in surrender. His breath was ragged and he looked ready to fall apart. You purred with victory, but as you slowed the furious pace of your stroking, he recovered enough of his senses to smirk through his lust. “Pero primero, quiero saborearte.” His voice was thick, and his eyes dark as a tropical storm on a Caribbean island. He lifted the leg you’d wrapped around him up onto the table, and knelt beneath you. “Con tu permiso?”

You nodded, gasping sharply even before his tongue made contact with your soaked pussy just from the obscene expression on his face as he opened his mouth and extended the point of his tongue as he slowly leaned toward you. Your hands braced behind you on the table for support. Then you cried out loud when that tongue did hit you, slightly cold from the air, but quickly warming to match you as his mouth closed over your whole cunt. “Ah, que rica,” he sighed into your pussy, lapping at your slippery arousal with broad, languid strokes of his tongue, unhurried, as if he were aiming for no particular goal but to enjoy your flavor. “So wet for papi. Qué buena estudiante eres. Good students should be rewarded.”

He finally stood back up to his full height in front of you and removed his pants and underwear, letting them fall around his ankles, and his cock sprang free. You gaped down at it in awe. “Oh god, look at that cock,” you practically drooled. You automatically reached down and started stroking it, babbling on about what a thick, beautiful cock it was. He was too lost in the touch of your fingers wrapped around his shaft to even complain that it wasn’t Spanish.

“Ah, condoms!” he interjected before pushing himself inside you like every muscle in his body was screaming to do. “I’ve got some in the bedroom.”

You chewed your lip, not sure if this would come off the wrong way since he wanted to be responsible, but you slowly said, “We don’t need to use one if you don’t want. I’m on the pill, and I don’t have any STDs.”

His stormy eyes pierced into you, clearly tempted, but he couldn’t help remarking cynically, “If you give me a disease, I swear...”

“I’m afraid I don’t have my medical records on me, so I understand if you don’t want to take my word for it. I don’t know why I’m blindly trusting you.” That was a lie. Everything about Rafael Barba screamed precision, caution, and consent, and even after such a short time knowing him, you were absolutely certain he would never put you at risk. In fact, there was no way he’d ever have unprotected sex with a stranger.

Except his very next words were, “Fuck it,” and he hooked his arm under your elevated leg, and began rubbing his thick cock through your folds, coating it with your slick arousal. “You are absolutely sure you want this?” he looked at you with soft, understanding eyes, checking for any doubts.

You let out a needy whine, rolling your hips to rub your pussy against the tip of his fat cock. “Te quiero,” you whimpered, intending to say you wanted it, but his cheeks reddened and his heart flipped as you said something better translated as I love you.

You wouldn’t realize your mistake until much later, thinking back on it, or understand why his face was suddenly frozen between tenderness and panic, and then dawning realization, relief, and a small, barely noticeable wince of disappointment.

He entered you slowly, letting you feel every inch of stretch from his cock. Like the rest of his build, it was not the longest you had ever seen, but it was impressively girthy, and each blissful inch he worked you open brought the slightest fraying edge of pain. He knew his size could be a challenge, and was practiced at preparing, and patience. You were already so dripping wet, you didn’t need extra lube, though he had it on standby, and watched you carefully, pausing to let you rest every time he advanced. As he waited, feeling your walls relax to accept him, he ducked his head to your breasts, savoring the helpless squeals you made when he gave attention to what he learned was one of your most sensitive erogenous zones. Every time he flicked his tongue over your nipple or sucked its hardened peak into his mouth, your cunt twitched around him and your back arched to take more of him. It worked so well, he never stopped teasing your breasts, and your silent cries of, “Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god!” grew in intensity until you were screaming with pleasure, fist clenched in his hair as you held him to your chest, and his balls were pressed tight against your ass.

Panting hard and moaning into your breasts, he began to thrust, slowly at first, but you wrapped your legs around his back and used them as leverage to buck your hips into him, pushing back into each of his thrusts, deepening them and coaxing him to increase his pace. As you angled your hips, he began hitting a deep point inside that made your legs turn to jelly. “Dámelo bien duro,” you tried to say, but it mostly came out as unintelligible gasps and whimpers. His mouth never left your tits and you loved the angle it gave you, being able to watch his face, strained with concentration and clouded with lust, and his tongue working diligently to bring you to a climax that took you off guard with how suddenly it crashed over you. You couldn’t say there was no buildup to it, because you had been in throes since he first pulled down your dress, but he had barely begun to thrust when the heat coiling in your lower back suddenly tightened and snapped, shooting sparks behind your eyelids. “Ah—Rafa!” you wailed, squeezing your fingers in his hair.

He gasped, releasing the globe of your breast from his mouth at the wracking of your body in his arms. Your pussy convulsed, clenching tightly around his cock, coating it in your sweet release, almost too tight for him to thrust through. One more jerk of his hips through your rippling, fluttering muscles and he let out a string of swears, and you felt his abdominal muscles tense up against your belly. He pulled back and thrust into you once more, balls swinging against your ass, and his hot seed flooded you. He panted, trembling, still trying to hold onto you, though halfway sitting on a dining table without knocking off any of the plates was not the most ideal location for post-coital recovery cuddling. He grabbed a few paper napkins from behind you to catch the drippings as he pulled out.

It was over too fast, a testament to how long it had been for him. Both of you, really. But you weren’t disappointed. He made you come almost entirely with that silver tongue of his, and you were still shaking too much to take your weight off the table and put it on your legs.

The timer on the oven rang shrilly, announcing dinner was done.

“After dinner,” he promised, pulling his pants back on. “Quiero más de tu cuerpo.”

You were satisfied, but not yet sated, and looked forward to round two.

• ● • ━━━━━─ ••●•• ─━━━━━ • ● •

@beccabarba / @caked-crusader / @itsjustmyfantasyroom / @thatesqcrush / @dianilaws / @permanentlydizzy / @mrsrafaelbarba / @da-po / @madamsnape921 / @charlottegrice / @onerestein

#Rafael Barba x Reader #Rafael Barba #Raúl Esparza #rafael barba x female reader #my writing #thatesqcrush kink bingo #thatesqcrush

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aikrus · 4 years ago

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Pairing: T. Iida x Reader Rating: 15+ Words: 4k289 Warnings: Reference of Alcohol, and angst Requested by: No one, but requests are open! Summary: The story of Iida’s summer before UA, and how love isn’t always a good thing.

QUIRK: Soul Beam

The summer before high school was a fever dream that Y/n never wanted to wake up from. The sweat sticking to her skin was only ever washed away from the storms that passed through her life- note: even the pools she submerged herself in never removed the glistening water from her body because sometimes water needs a little force behind it in order to cleanse you.

The gold and purple sunsets are passing memories that she wants to desperately hold on to. No taste will be quiet like the pancakes she had eaten, and no smell will ever replace that of the sweater she stole (despite overheating every time she wore it).

Scars are a painful reminder of what she went through, and it takes a little to see them as a badge of honor, but the help she received only made it re-open in the long run.

Tire swings will never be the same, and that stupid song is still on the radio- as if it wasn’t playing enough in her head. Y/n used to think she was strong, but now that’s barely believable. Ice cream cones and train rides have a hidden meaning that will only ever be known by her and it hurts to know that no one can help her mourn a love that never happened.

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The first question was asked when the summer started. It was next to a moving van that was a beacon calling out to everyone on the street it was parked on. The well-off neighborhood was full of upstanding citizens who wanted nothing more than to welcome the newest member with open arms.

It was that beacon that called the Iida family over to the driveway. But as Tenya walked with his brother and parents, he wondered if the bright beacon that drew him in was the moving truck of the bright smile of the teen girl, happily grabbing boxes of things to bring inside.

“Hello! We’re the Iida family, this is my husband, and these are my two son’s, Tensei and Tenya. Welcome to the neighborhood!” The wife smiled kindly at the mother.

“Thank’s for coming out! This is my husband, Y/d/n, and my daughter Y/n. We’re really looking forward to joining the neighborhood,” to the untrained eye this looked like any normal greeting, but Y/n knew better. She could see the subtle glances her mom threw at her. She was trying to say how cute the younger boy was. It received a light chuckle and an eye-roll from her daughter.

“Tenya,” The Iida’s father said, clasping him on the shoulder, “Why don’t you go help Y/n with her boxes?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, walking over to the moving truck.

“You can just grab that one if it’s not too heavy,” she pointed at a medium side box labeled ‘Knickknacks’. He hummed in agreement and followed her up into her room, noting the aesthetic that she surrounded herself in.

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

A knock echoed through the newly-decorated house, alerting the present family members of a visitor.

“Not it,” Y/n’s dad said, pressing his finger to his noes; her mother follows suit.

“You guys are literal children,” Y/n groaned, forcing herself off the couch she had grown ever so attached to. Grumpily, she made her way to the door.

“Oh hey! Iida, right?” Y/n said, recognizing the boy that had already been in her room.

“Yes! That’s me. I uh,” he scratched the back of his neck nervously, “I was heading down to the boardwalk, and I wanted to know if you would like to come with me?”

Truth be told this wasn’t his idea. His mother had been pressuring him for days in hopes to grow closer to the new family. It wouldn’t be long until they realized the Iida’s are a line of hero’s, and she wanted to get close to them before they found out.

“Oh,” Y/n replied, suddenly thinking of the clothes she was currently wearing. While her tie-dye shorts and loose t-shirt weren't anything to be ashamed of, they were not ‘paint the town red’ clothes.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to!” Tenya said, suddenly embarrassed that he randomly invited a girl his age to hang out with him.

“No! I’ll gladly go, just give me a few minutes to get changed. Come inside,” Y/n had said, opening the door wider for him before racing upstairs.

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

Iida walked slightly behind the girl he was supposed to show around. It was a cliché, but she was mesmerizing. Her hair bounced with every step, and she walked like she had a purpose, and the end goal was in mind and she would stop at nothing to get there.

She looked like she was made of honey and sugar and a taste would give him a cavity. The beams of the sun projected from her eyes like the cosmos and it made him want to fall in- knowing full well that drifting through the endless space would never cease to amaze him.

“Do you think they sell corn-dogs here?”

“Huh? oh!” He blushed, before pointing ahead, “Yeah, there’s one right by the docks.”

“Well then what are we waiting for?” She smiled and leaned closer to Iida. “Let's hurry!” There was a burst of light laughter in her voice, as she grabbed his hand and ran off. What was he doing here?

When they reached the end of the docks- corn dogs in hand- they say on the bench which over-looked the sea. Night had fallen while they were out, Y/n becoming absorbed in learning as much as she can about where she moved to.

As she looked out to the wine-light sky, she wondered if she could swim to it. The horizon looked so close, like just reaching out a little further would put it in her grasp. It wasn’t until Tenya’s hand grabbed her shoulder that she realized she really was leaning forward.

“Hey, you okay?” He asked, eyebrows pulled together.

“Yeah!” She smiled, snapped out of her thoughts,. “Just day-dreaming,”

“We should get you back home,” He said, before looking back to the water.

She saw his glasses, they reflected the golden hue of the sunset, and the beautiful purple that fought underneath it. She saw all the beauty in the world in his eyes, all that was good and right- was all in front of her. He was the sunset, he was the horizon she so desperately wanted to get to.

“Hey, Iida?” Y/n asked, swinging her legs back and forth under the bench.

“What is it?” He said, looking over to her face- which didn’t turn to see him.

“Stupid question- but an icebreaker; if you could have anyone in the world- living or dead- over to yours for dinner, who would it be?” she blushed a little, but kept a calm face.

He knew the answer as soon as she finished the sentence, but there was no need to tell someone he just met the name of the girl he had been in love with for years- so all he said was, “Probably Catherin The Great, she had a few political opinions I’d like to hear about first hand,”

“Hmm, I can see you two bonding over tea,” She smirked, standing up from her seat, “Let’s get home.”

Tenya nodded, walking beside Y/n- thinking about her.

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

A month had passed, and the little interactions the two families had resulted in the Iida’s inviting them over for breakfast. Y/n had woken up early to get dressed. She pulled her hair into a ponytail, harshly shaking it so the baby hairs would fall out. She threw on a form-fitting sweater and yoga-pants. Despite wanting to look like it’s a casual mornings- she did apply some casual makeup to make herself look a little more awake.

It was stupid- she knows- but Y/n really just wanted to look a tiny bit better when he sees her again. Looking in the mirror, she wonders if he’s putting a little extra effort in his appearance as well. She could only hope.

Walking down the stairs, she saw her mother- also wearing casual makeup- and her father in a black polo and slacks. They were both standing by the door, waiting for their daughter to come out from her cave.

“Why are you guys already done?” She asked, turning on the phone and checking the time.

“Wanted to make a good impression,” Her dad smiled, putting his own phone away.

“Alright,” Her mom smiled, putting on her wedges, “Let’s get going. Y/n can you grab the scones and smoothie?”

“Yeah mah, I’ll be right back,”

“Thanks love,” she smiled, grabbing the house keys off the hook.

They were kinda heavy, but it was nothing she couldn’t carry. That didn’t stop her dad from taking it from her with a smile. She could have done it, but she’s not necessarily upset about it.

---

Sitting at the dining room table was only awkward in the beginning of the meal. The Iida’s seemed to be pretty profesional people, but the Y/l/n’s were introverts with an acquired sense of humor. Joking about everything from people at work, eachother, and random facts they had learned, the Iida’s quickly became much less tense during the meal.

The mother and father- whom’s names Y/n never seemed to learn, were last few to smile or laugh along side the rest, beaten by Tenya by only a second, but Tensai had been the first to crack a joke, almost beating Y/n herself to break the ice.

The loud laughter slowly split into multiple side conversations; Y/n- who sat across from Tenya- tried to strike up a conversation. “Do you want to be famous one day?”

“Hmm?” He asked, looking up from the lone strawberry cut on his plate, “Yes, I plan on being a Hero.”

A few seconds longer than a moment had passed, end Tensai asked Y/n in return, “What about you? You wanna live the life of fame, or are you more of a low-key kinda gal,” he smiled at her, and for a second Y/n though he had noticed the embarrassment worn on her face after being rejected and forced into silence.

“I dunno really, my quirk is pretty multipurpose. I originally wanted to be a counselor or therapist, but it’s changed from a vet to doctor, to a hundreds of other things. My parents think I should be a hero- I wouldn’t mind I don’t think, but the constant attention could get pretty annoying. A like being busy with people and events, but I do value my privacy,”

He smiled at her, nodding in acceptance at her answer. The Iida parents had been listening into her words while she spoke, but they still conversed with Y/n’s parents as well.

Y/n saw a smile on Iida’s face. That mirrored on her own, and suddenly her pancakes tasted a whole lot better. She missed the far off look in his eyes, if only she saw the worried look that was on Tensai’s face. If she had, maybe that small warning could have protected her heart.

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

Y/n had found an abandoned tire swing in their large backyard, three acres of cleared land and two of forest. The swing was in a small clearing- it looked like a party or two had been thrown while it was vacant- shown by the few nips thrown about the ground. She swung back and forth- listening to music playing in her head.

Because of how caught up in her head she was, she never heard the footsteps approaching her. “Hey, Y/L/N!” Tenya greated.

“Jesus Christ!” She shouted, falling from the swing. Thankfully, with the use of his quirk, Iida was able to catch her just in time.

“You should really be more careful,”

“I’ll be sure to remember that,” she rolled her eyes.

He smiled, helping her back up to the swing. He slowly began to push her back and forth, spinning her as fast as he could listening to her laughter. Getting more and more dizzy, she closed her eyes to stay level headed.

With a heavy sigh of contentment, Y/n lied on the grass with Iida, staring up at the beautiful blue sky. “Hey, Tenya?” She asked, still looking up.

“Yeah?” He turned on his side to see her better- only to notice her eyes were closed.

“What’s your perfect day?”

“Hmm...” he thought for a second, trying to think of a good answer. “Probably waking up early, and seeing the girl I love as soon as I open my eyes. Then I’d like to eat breakfast with my family- followed by patrol with my brother. Then I’d like to go home and make a cup of tea and sit down with a book I like. Yeah, that sounds pretty good,” he smiled himself, closing his eyes to really picture what he was saying.

“That sounds really nice Iida,” she whispered, wondering if she could be the one he loves.

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

Summer only had a month left, but Y/n wanted to make the most of the fleeting free-time she had left. Wanting to explore more of Japan before her freedom was stripped from her, she invited Iida to go on a roadtrip with her.

It wasn’t hard at all to convince her parents to let her go, with her quirk she really didn’t need to worry about being attacked. Even then, she’s physically strong if she can’t use her quirk to defend herself. With the rise of heroes to protect everyone, Japan quickly became one of the safest places. Y/n was also very closely trained with America’s top hero, Reflector. She taught Y/n everything she knew and fully plans on giving Y/n her hero agency as her predecessor.

Iida’s parents were a little harder to convince, but Y/n’s parents were very persuasive. They would be gone for a week, and they would check in every morning when they woke up and every night before they went to sleep. If they didn’t call during one of the time’s then they had until the next call to respond.

They had made a list of regions and cities in them to visit in them, with the days they would be arriving and leaving. If they skipped a stop of stayed longer, then they had to text their parents with the nex information. Solid rules, and both the teens agreed to them, as well as their parents.

The bus ride to the train station was relatively short, but it was in complete silence. It was a little awkward, but they just had to get through that one part.

The train ride itself was much more enjoyable. With their suitcases in hand, they sat close yet comfortably. “Hey, Tenya?”

“What’s up?” He asked, looking up from his phone to see her eyes staring back at him- a smile tugging at his lips.

“For what in your life do you feel most grateful?” She questioned, smiling into his eyes.

“Probably my family,” He responded as soon as she finished- having grown accustomed to Y/n’s random questioning, “They’ve done so much for me, and I only hope I can pay them back for all that they’ve supported me through.”

Y/n nodded at his answer, acknowledging how very much like him it is. The loud bustle of train and constant shaking led them to listening to music together, sharing earbuds and squeezing close together. It was a cheesy, new, pop song- one that will probably inspire a sub-culture of girls to bind together. It was weirdly comforting.

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

The last night they spent through their travel of Japan was by far the most enjoyable. There was a small frost in the air that traveled with the two, following them in their own little bubble.

The streets were lightly illuminated, and it seemed like they were the only two in the world. Y/n had grabbed him by the hand, dragging him to an ice cream vendor. Seeing her in front of him, Tenya was thrown back to the first time they spent time together- everything's so different now. Yet, her beautiful eyes stay constant. Her kindness in unwavering. She’s still a girl made of honey and sugar.

After traveling together for so long, the two stopped correcting people who referred to them as a couple- they simply accepted it as an inside joke. This was why they laughed when the man behind the counter said “And these two for the cute couple,” with a wink at the end of his sentence.

Walking linked by the elbows, the two passed through the park. Shivering from the wind and the chill of her ice cream, Iida stopped the pair. He took off his sweater, revealing the long-sleeve shirt he wore underneath, and he handed it to her.

“Ten! You’ll freeze to death,” she said, refusing the offering.

“C’mon Y/n/n, I can heat myself up through my engines, and I wasn’t asking. You’re gonna wear the sweater or you’ll get sick. Put it on,” he said, taking the ice-cream from her hand and raising her arms like she was a child.

Y/n was very pleased the cold hid the blush on her face- last thing she needed was for him to discover her feelings on the last day of this amazing trip. She slipped into his large sweater, and grabbed her ice cream back from him.

“Hey Iida, I’ve got another question,” she said, walking with him through the trees bordering the street.

“I’m ready,” he asked, looking forward to make sur they didn’t walk into anything in the dark.

“What’s a personal problem you could use some advise for?” She asked, actually curious as to what he could possibly need help with.

He sighed, not making eye-contact. “I guess since we’re close enough- even on nickname basis- I should be comfortable telling you this. I’m in love with this girl, I’ve never stopped thinking about her since the moment I met her,” a dopey smile came onto his face, “I have no idea how to tell her. And now we’re going into highschool, and she’s going to meet so many other people- people I’m sure are more fun than me. I want to confess to her before the summer ends, but I have no idea how to. So,” he sucked in a deep breath and looked at Y/n, “What do you think?”

Y/n smiled, she was so sure he was being cheesy and talking about her. She fully believes that he’s gonna confess tonight. It has to happen- that’s the only way what he just said makes sense.

“I think,” she closed her eyes, “You should look her in the eyes, and compliment them. Whether she accepts your compliment or refuses it, tell her you want her to know how perfect she is- and then tell her how you feel. Tell her how just seeing her makes your day, how you want her to be the first thing you see in the morning, and the last voice you hear at night. Tell her you want to spoil her, want to tell her everyday how perfect she is. Confess to her that she’s amazing, and that you love her. Let her know how you feel, and then respect her reply. But, there’s no way she’ll turn you down. Be confident, you’re amazing and I’m sure she feels the same,”

Tenya thanked her for her advise, and they fell back into a comfy silence. It was then she remembered the night they decided to go by first names, the night she realized how hard she fell for him.

----

Y/n was sitting on her rooftop, Iida beside her. They were looking up at the stars- sitting in silence. Like always, she started the conversation- “Hey, Iida, If you died this evening without being able to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? And Why haven’t you told them yet?”

“Huh,” he murmured, thinking hard. “I’d regret not thanking my brother more. He risks his life to save people, and he practically raised me. He’s why I want to be a hero, to live up to his expectations. I guess I haven’t told him yet because I want to prove that I’ve done something with myself. I want him to know he doesn’t have to raise me anymore- that I succeed,”

Y/n thought for a moment, before answering a question for the first and only time they have known eachother- but he didn’t ask it. She just felt a need to finally speak.

“I had an ex-boyfriend,” she sighed, clenching her eyes shut; “We’d been dating for five years- since we were children. We were so close as kids, but when our quirks manifested he broke up with me. He said my quirk was too dangerous for him, that he didn’t want to be part of the backstory of a villians history. It fucking ruined me. I was an idiot for actually thinking we could have lasted. About a month after we broke up, a villian attacked the agency I was working at. The only reason I was there was because I know the hero in charge, and he knew that. He had come to the building during my break- I don’t know why he was there, but I was the only person he knew there. The villain attacked, but his quirk wasn’t very strong. All he could do was change the color of an item for a few seconds. He was killed that day- slaughtered by the villain who’s only reason was boredom. I wish I could talk to him one last time, tell him I loved him one last time.”

Iida scooted closer to her, pulling her head onto his chest, letting her use him as a crutch. “It’s okay, Y/n. It’ll be okay,”

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When highschool started, and Tenya hadn’t confessed his love to him, Y/n came to the painful realization that she wasn’t the one he loved. However, it was the first day of school that hit the nail on the head.

She had entered the classroom of 1-A, after her family convinced her to at least try out the hero course, and was terrified that she would know no one. And then, she heard a voice that reminded her of someone very similar.

At the far end of the room, she saw the back of a blue-haired boy scolding a blond with his feet on the desk. A smile spread across her mouth when she realized who this up-tight teen was. Practically running to cover the distance of the class, Y/n launched herself onto Iida, latching onto her.

“Ten!” She smiled, shifting to wear he could comfortably hold her up.

“Y-Y/n?” He asked, momentarily stunned by her sudden appearance. He smiled and spun her around for a second before putting her down. “You’re here? You’re parents convinced you to pursue being a hero?” he was reasonably confused, but he wasn’t upset she was there- if anything he was glad to have a second familiar face around.

“Yeah, I’m just trying it out,” Y/n laughed, scratching the back of her neck.

“So heartwarming, now get outta my line of sight four-eyes,” the blond snapped, glaring at the pair.

“You’re annoying, you know that?” Y/n said, rolling her eyes at his comments.

Meanwhile, Iida laughed at Y/n being called his girlfriend. Y/n, who used to laugh with him, could only do her best to not cry.

“C/mon Ten, let’s go to your seat,” Y/n said, tugging his hand towards the spot with his name on it- stopping when her arm was tugged, caused by him not moving with her.

“Sorry Y/n/n,” he said, releasing her hand. “I would, but I promised Momo I’d meet her by the gate and guide her to the classroom. You know about Momo, right?” He looked into her eyes hoping she would put it together herself. After realizing she wouldn’t, he reminded her, “We talked about her on our last day of the tour.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling suddenly really cold.

“Yeah,” He smiled, “Wish me luck!” He gave her a thumbs up and walked out the room- leaving her stunned and so very cold.

A scoff echoed from behind her, causing her to look back and see the blond once again.

“That guy’s an idiot- glasses or not. It’s so obvious how you feel about him, and you’re way to attractive to pine after someone like him. You’re smart too, since you got into this school- he’s really missing out,” he rolled his eyes, but he also knew what just happened- even though no one else in the room picked up on it.

He assumed they were dating, but when Iida laughed, Bakugo had no clue if he was laughing at them dating or the girl’s reaction. He quickly figured out which of the two was the truth, and he also realized that he had no clue that she was in love with him.

Y/n didn’t react to his words, just stuck in the weird state she was in. She wasn’t sad, or angry. There was no tears or screams or breakdown, just a silent wave of shock. An ocean of doubt consumed her, filling her with a sense of... nothing.

She should have known. She should have realized. It’s entirely her fault. Who could love her. Who would want to love her. Who wants to date a freak. Who wants to date someone with a villainous quirk like hers. That’s why he was shocked when she showed up- he thought they’d reject a future villain like her.

No wonder everyone hates her; if she was someone else she’d hate herself too.

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cloudywriter · 4 years ago

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camp staghorn - snippet

Okay I randomly started a short Rowaelin story and now I’m very excited about it and want to share. So enjoy a very long snippet from the first chapter! At this point I believe it’ll have around 7 chapters. Get ready for some very light-hearted content ahead, don’t worry no crazy angst in this one.

my masterlist

~~~

Chaol finally exited the bus and came to stand by Aelin.

“Really, Aelin? Three bags?” Chaol commented, shifting his singular black, duffel bag on his shoulder.

Aelin shrugged, “I didn’t know what all I would need.”

Chaol only half-heartedly shook his head. Although Aelin and Chaol had broken up in the middle of junior year their relationship was still relatively amicable.

Lys quickly shoved between Aelin and Chaol. “Aelin, look!” She whispered loudly into Aelin’s ear, pointing towards a group of boys occupying the grass near the entrance.

At that, Aelin perked up, especially when she laid eyes on the group. Seriously, four of some of the best-looking high school boys she had ever seen were huddled there.

Dorian stepped up behind Aelin, following Lys’s finger to the gathering of boys.

“Oh, they go to Mistward High. Chaol and I have had a few lacrosse games against them,” Dorian offered nonchalantly.

“They’re gorgeous,” Lys giggled.

Aelin shoved Lysandra’s shoulder playfully, “You’re dating my cousin!”

At her laugh, the silver-haired boy turned his eyes in her direction and they made brief eye contact, Aelin gave him a small smile and the boy looked away immediately. Well, that was rude.

A man suddenly stepped up onto one of the empty picnic tables, a clipboard in hand. His hat was embroidered with Camp Staghorn and he wore a matching t-shirt in a deep green hue.

“Alright, everyone listen up please!” He clapped his hands a few times to grab everyone’s attention.

A few head nods and murmurs of yes rippled through the crowd.

More nods and murmurs of acknowledgment.

Gavriel began to call names and people milled up to him to grab their new belongings.

“Fenrys Moonbeam.” A few snickers went through the group and the blonde boy from earlier proudly made his way up to Gavriel.

A few more names were called, Aelin remembered hearing the other two boys were named Lorcan and Connall but she was focused on learning the silver-haired boy’s name.

“Rowan Whitethorn.” At that, the boy - Rowan - approached the table. Aelin thought the name fit him.

“Elide Lochan.” Elide quickly made her way to Gavriel as Dorian, Chaol, and Lysandra got called too.

“Aelin Galanthynius.” Aelin made her way up, her heavy bags hitting her legs as she walked. She acquired the packet and shirt from Gavriel.

“Oh, good you have 3B, Elide has 2B and I have 4B.”

Aelin smiled but the three girls were a little put out when they noticed their schedules didn’t really align besides the designated meal times. “What are Dorian and Chaol’s cabins?”

“I don’t know they were in the E ones, they put the boys and girls on opposite sides,” Elide answered. Aelin nodded her head.

Once they were dismissed everyone headed towards the cabins and mentally prepared themselves for an incoming army of children.

~~~ I know that was rather uneventful but I hope you see the direction I’m going in! Also, if you’re here from my other Feysand fics I am so sorry.

#rowan x aelin #rowan whitethorn #aelin ashryver galanthynius #rowaelin #rowaelin fanfiction #rowaelin fanfic #rowaelin au #aelin x rowan #lysandra #dorian havilliard #chaol westfall #elide lochan #fenrys moonbeam #lorcan lochan

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coeursetcolores · 4 years ago

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What I Would Add To/Change About: Psychonauts

Howdy! Today is April 19th, and if you don’t know what game came out today, then why don’t you try and read my mind to find out? Go ahead!

So what’s your answer?

...

Why yes, it was Psychonauts! Way to go, you just earned a merit badge, cadet!

...What do you mean you just read the title?!

Anyway, for those of you who know, Psychonauts is a beloved cult classic that unfortunately received not that much mainstream attention, which is such a shame because I loved playing this game! I’ll admit there’s some problems, but I had such a psi-blast playing it, I didn’t really mind! That being said...

I’m still gonna talk about the problems.

This is all just my own personal opinion and if you disagree with me, that’s perfectly okay! If you’d like to talk about a point I made, please let me know, but please try to respect my opinion as I respect yours.

Well, without further ado, let’s open that Psycho-portal!

SPOILERS AHEAD!

As usual, first let’s get out all the things I absolutely ADORED about this game!

The. Voice. Acting. I cannot say enough how much detail went into dialogue and performances, you just have to listen to it. I was talking to/inspecting as many people/things as I could and seeing what dialogues were available when I switched things out. I probably spent more time doing that than actually playing the game! Definitely Richard Horvitz’s best work in my opinion!

The environments. This game is a mixed-up feast for the eyes and the level design is the main course. Things can go from the nice and simple Whispering Pines to the breathtaking and colorful Black Velvetopia to the utter lunacy and ominousness of the Milkman Conspiracy. It’s a masterpiece in artistic expression.

The Milkman Conspiracy. My gosh, this level deserves all the hype it gets. I really wish it hadn’t been spoiled for me, but even then it’s just such a trip that I can’t mind it that much. Also, Steve Blum!

The character design may not be the most aesthetically pleasing, but it fits the messed up and wacky world of the game to a T.

JUMPING!!!!!!

The puzzles can get frustrating (especially at a certain final level whose name shall not be said in respect of those still recovering from it) but they’re really fun to experiment with and find ways to move ahead in.

I really enjoyed Raz as a protagonist. He wasn’t too moody or obnoxious and he was necessarily sassy when he needed to be. He was also really relatable, being a kid who felt ostracized at home and didn’t understand why his father wouldn’t let him do what he wanted. And he was just so nice in spite of how upset he was at his family situation while still being determined to accomplish his dreams and help people. And even when he reached the asylum, it never felt like he was going into anyone’s mind as a means to an end, he genuinely wanted to help these people along with the campers. Also, he’s a total fanboy geek and that’s awesome!

As fast as it happened, the romance between Raz and Lili was really sweet and cute and I’m glad it didn’t lessen their characters or take away too much from the story. It was definitely two kids going through their first puppy love.

I also really liked Raz being nice to Dogen. Their scenes together were just sweet!

All the different abilities were so cool to use and the different types of enemies encourages you to switch things up on the fly which keeps gameplay from getting stale as you progress.

Underneath all of the trippy sequences in the levels there’s a solid moral that not everyone can deal with their mental issues by themselves and sometimes you need someone else to step in and help, and I appreciate that kind of message. Even with all of their eccentricities, the mentally ill are people too and even if you can’t fix their problems like Raz can they still deserve basic compassion and understanding.

With all that being said, I feel like the game could have used a few more things.

ADD:

I really wish Raz got a new look for every mental world like he did in Black Velvetopia.

The game should have been stretched out over more than just one day. It would have given more time to expand upon certain plot elements and develop the characters more, as well as make Raz’s psychic growth a little more believable. I know that the plot kind of relied on Raz only having a day to do everything, but it just made him seem like of a Mary Sue learning all that in one day.

I feel like the game should have explained some things more. I get that video games shouldn’t hold your hand too much and they should be a challenge, but some things took FOREVER to learn the right button for.

A tracker for emotional baggage? I couldn’t find it all.

Maybe make the other counselors seem suspicious so it’s not so easy to single out Coach Oleander as the villain?

Add some side quests around camp to help the other campers: Stand up to Bobby, talk Crystal and Clem out of suicide, show Mikhail he’s being used and knock some sense into Maloof, get a show for Phoebe and Quentin’s band going, and help Dogen control his powers, etc. I feel like they really could have expanded Part 1 at camp more.

Maybe add some flashbacks of Raz’s family life before he ran away to help the audience see through his eyes and understand his thought process better.

More fights with the Nightmares would have been cool. The scrapped plot about them escaping from Milla’s mind and abducting kids while they didn’t have their brains would have been a cool subplot. Or they could have come from the kids themselves or Oleander. I just think they had more potential.

Dr. Loboto boss fight (I did not play Rhombus of Ruin, I don’t do VR!)!

I’d kind of want to see Raz’s dad arrive at camp and how he got to where all the action was. Maybe some scenes of him getting there too to really make the player feel just how little time they have.

A scene of Ford Cruller getting up to go help out and save everyone?

Alright, now it’s time to get to the ugly!

CHANGE:

Oh my gosh, ARREST COACH OLEANDER! I know he was genuinely remorseful and the Psitanium might have had a hand in it and he was unfairly rejected from every branch of the United States army for his height, but that doesn’t change the fact that he lobotomized an entire camp full of children, attempted to murder one, built psychic death tanks, mutated and brainwashed a peaceful fish, brainwashed an asylum patient into covering his tracks through arson without regards to the residents of the asylum, kidnapped and lobotomized two colleagues whom he then tried to kill, hired DR. LOBOTO and tried to take over the world. At least have the guy monitored and put under probation, geez!

Change the rules of the race in Milla’s Dance Party so you DON’T have to win! I don’t care if I lose, I just want to move on already! This is not a racing game!

LESS. FIGMENTS.

I honestly don’t know what to say about the **** ****** except HAVE OLLIE STAY PUT AT THE TOP SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT KEEPING HIS BUNNY-LOVING HIDE ALIVE!!!!!

Maybe the Two-Headed Dad Monster could have been more challenging at the end? As I’ve said, I am not a gameplay expert, but that final boss fight was really easy, and not in a satisfying way. Then again, you did just have to play through the **** ******...

And, that’s about it, I really don’t have much to complain about. Psychonauts is a super fun game and I highly recommend it. It’s colorful and explores heavy themes with respect and humor while going hand in hand with interesting gameplay and plenty of likable characters. There are no dull moments, I genuinely enjoyed this game greatly. I wish more people had given it a chance when it first came out and we could have gotten the sequel sooner, because I am honestly super nervous about it living up to the first. This is nothing on Tim Schafer and Double Fine, I just don’t have high expectations for a sequel made and released after ten years of radio silence as a rule. But, who knows?

Maybe they’ll go in and change my mind.

#What I Would Add to/Change About...#Psychonauts #Criticism #Praise #My Silly Personal Opinion

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missjanjie · 4 years ago

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As If We Never Said Goodbye | Jankie

Title: As If We Never Said Goodbye Summary: After their senior year of high school, a summer camp reunion is held when seven former campers return as counselors. While a lot has changed over the past six years, some haven't at all - especially for Jan and Jackie. Word Count: 1955 Relationship(s): Jankie (Jan Sport/Jackie Cox) Rating: G

read on ao3

The reunion among all the former campers was truly a heartwarming one. All of the girls were happy to see each other after six years, eager with curiosity to see how much had changed (and how much hadn’t). There was screaming and hugs all around as everyone was quick to get reacquainted, and they had a whole weekend to themselves before the campers showed up.

“Oh, well that’s just not fair,” Jan clicked her tongue and shook her head. “How did they all grow up to be models?” she asked, gesturing to Gigi, Nicky, and Jaida.

Rock nodded. “It seems like just yesterday I was fighting Nicky over pokémon cards while Jaida tried to stop her from convincing Crystal to eat glue again. Time flies.”

Jan nodded, but she’d stopped listening, instead, she was looking around, looking for something, someone.

As if she could read her mind, Rock tapped her shoulder. “Your girlfriend’s coming,” she said and cocked her head in that direction.

“Shut up,” Jan shoved her lightly. “Jackie was my summer camp bestie. I missed her,” she insisted.

Before Rock could call her bluff, Jackie ran over to them. “Jan! Rock! Hi!” She gave each of them a big hug - though Jan’s might’ve lasted a bit longer. “Oh wow, you guys look great,” she observed.

“You’re not even looking at me,” Rock retorted before she wandered off to get reacquainted with the rest of her old friends.

Not that Jackie noticed, as the world around her became nothing more than background noise when she laid eyes on Jan. It was hard to believe this was the same girl that picked her first every soccer game and sang the loudest every karaoke night. Her eyes sparkled with the same enthusiasm she seemed to get just from existing. In a way, Jackie felt like she was back home. “It’s so nice to see you again.”

Jan was grinning from ear to ear, practically bouncing on her feet. Memories of that summer never fully left her mind, it was some of the most formative months of her life, she had learned so much about herself, stuff she might have otherwise ignored for another couple years. And a lot of that was directly due to Jackie. “You too. It’s been way too long. And you, wow, you look amazing too.”

“God, we have so much to catch up on, I don’t even know where to begin,” Jackie mused.

Jan started to speak, then her eyes widened. “The time capsule!” She looked around, then began calling out for all the girls to gather back around her. “Guys! We need to dig up the time capsule,” she grinned.

The memory dawned on everyone around the same time, the group of them talking excitedly among themselves, trying to remember where it was buried, where they could get a shovel to dig it out. They settled on splitting out in two groups – Crystal, Gigi, Jackie, and Nicky would retrace their years-old steps to find the burial site while Jan, Jaida, and Rock went to find shovels.

“I know we’re close,” Crystal remarked. “I can feel it.”

“This must be it,” Gigi pointed to a spot where there was dirt piled up, standing out amidst the grass, with a border of rocks around it. “I remember Nicky and I spent ages looking for enough pretty rocks.”

Nicky chuckled softly. “We had very discerning tastes.”

Jackie was only vaguely paying attention, mostly waiting for the other group to return. “Do you guys remember what you put in?”

“I know Jaida and I both put our paper mache projects in there, so I hope they didn’t disintegrate,” Gigi mused. “What did you put in?”

“I remember what she put in,” Crystal announced, elbowing Jackie’s side and grinning far too broadly. She had watched Jackie work on her item for hours on end, she didn’t know it could take someone that long, and Jackie didn’t even let her see the final result.

Jackie blushed. “And you need to be quiet. I don’t want to ruin it,” she said pointedly.

Crystal just giggled. “Relax, she’s not even here.”

“Who’s not here?” Jan asked as her group returned with shovels.

“Nothing, don’t worry about it,” Gigi cut in, much to Jackie’s relief. “So, who’s doing the digging? Because I call ‘not it’.”

Jan chuckled and ushered her out of the way. “Rock and I got it, don’t worry,” she assured as the two of them started digging. “This shit is heavy though, no wonder Brooke and Kameron wouldn’t let us do it,” she recalled with a laugh.

“Aw, I miss them,” Rock hummed. “We should look them up on Instagram or something later.”

“I bet they’re still hot,” Nicky mused, causing some of the group to look at her oddly. “What? I couldn’t have been the only one thinking it,” she insisted, to which the girls reluctantly conceded to.

“Okay, we hit it!” Jan called out, she and Rock hoisting it out of the ground and setting it on the grass. “Oh, I’m so excited!” she said as if her whole body wasn’t nearly vibrating with enthusiasm.

Rock was the one to actually open the capsule (which was actually a toolbox they had all decorated), taking out the letter they had collectively written first, then squinted as she tried to read. “I’m gonna be honest, you guys, I can’t decipher any of this. We’ll have to go around and read our own entries later.”

Jan went to look through the capsule while Rock set the letter aside. “Let’s see… I recognize this little guy,” she cooed, holding up Nicky’s stuffed sheep.

“Meryl Sheep!” Nicky’s eyes lit up as she grabbed the toy. “Aw, my collection hasn’t been the same without you.” She looked back to Jan, gesturing for her to continue.

“We have Gigi and Jaida’s paper mache projects,” Jan continued, holding up the two crafts, one of a helmet that could fit the average baby doll, and the other of an apple with a comically angry face painted on. “And Rock’s Pokémon card,” she continued.

“Wait, gimme that!” Rock grabbed the sealed plastic pouch it was in. “D’you guys know how much this is worth?” She got blank stares in response, save for Nicky who shared her excitement.

“Smart move preserving it,” Jan hummed. “My mixtape!” she grinned, holding up a CD. “Miss Vanjie helped me burn a CD, and I put a song that made me think of everyone, like Burning Up for Crystal, Lady Marmalade for Nicky…” she continued looking down the list, her cheeks suddenly reddening. She didn't want to announce that she'd picked Alone by Heart for Jackie. “Well, you get the idea,” she summed up, reaching into the box and grabbing the next item, only to drop it. “Jesus Christ! Why is that there?”

Crystal picked the furby off the ground. The fur was partially singed on one side and had a bald spot on the other. “Oh yeah, I forgot I put Arson in there.”

Gigi pinched the bridge of her nose. “Tell me you didn’t actually name it ‘Arson’.”

“It survived being tossed into a campfire, Gigi,” she retorted as if the name choice should have obviously made sense. “There should still be another thing in there, right?”

Jan nodded, picking an envelope up from the bottom of the box. “Jackie, this must be yours, right?” she asked, holding it up and displaying the heart drawn in the center.

Even though it had been six years, Jackie’s heart started racing as soon as she saw that letter. Her throat tightened and her face flushed red. “I… Yeah… That’s mine,” she swallowed thickly, forcing herself to add, “read it.”

Jan looked at Jackie with a flash of concern in her expression, but obliged nonetheless, peeling off the Star Trek sticker the envelope had been sealed with and taking the note out.

“Dear Jan, I know we’re supposed to put something in the capsule that makes us think of our whole camp experience, but that’s actually why I’m doing this. My favorite part of the summer is you. I love how you pick me first every time we play soccer or kickball even though you know I can’t play. I love the way you spent your free hour helping clean all the paint and glitter off of me after Crystal’s project exploded (she’s watching me while I write this, I think she’s mad I told her she can’t copy my idea, and she’s probably watching you now, standing with Gigi anyway),” Jan looked up, noting that Crystal was standing with her arm around Gigi’s waist - all of them giggling at that before she continued.

“I love that you spent all week talking about how much you love horror movies, but wouldn’t go outside during Halloween night. I also love what happened that night, though I don’t know if it meant anything to you, or if you were just caught up in the moment. What I’m trying to say is, I don’t know where we’ll be when you read this, if we have girlfriends or pretend to have boyfriends, but right now, I love you. I love you a lot. Sincerely, Jackie.” Jan hadn’t realized tears were forming in her eyes until she finished reading and had to blink them away. The wave of emotion that hit her was hard to describe - twelve-year-old Jackie had poured her soul into this letter, and it made her heart swell.

It was clear that neither Jan nor Jackie were ready to say anything yet. “That was beautiful, Jackie,” Jaida offered, trying to ease the tension that had built up around them.

“Wow… I didn’t realize you felt that way,” Jan finally said.

“Really? Not even a little?” Nicky chimed in before Jaida elbowed her to get her to shut up.

Jackie let out a breath that vaguely resembled a laugh. “No, it’s okay,” she said to Nicky and Jaida before turning back to Jan. “It was one of those things that everyone else just knew.”

Jan chewed on her lip. “Everyone except me. I wish I’d known, though. Because I felt the same way - don’t say it, Nicky - the whole time.”

“I think you guys need some privacy,” Gigi said gently. “Why don’t you take a walk or something?”

Jackie nodded and already turned to start walking away. “Good idea,” she said, heading down the hiking trail with Jan doing a quick jog to catch up with her.

“So, um…” Jan cleared her throat. “Are you dating anyone?”

For the first time since the envelope came out, Jackie smiled and let herself look at Jan. “No, I’m not, are you?”

Jan shook her head. “I’m not either,” she said, then suddenly stopped walking. “Wait…”

Jackie stopped, turning back to look at her. “What?”

Wordlessly, Jan cupped Jackie’s face and kissed her deeply. It was nothing like the chaste peck they’d shared during the Halloween party six years ago. It was heated and fervent, both of them holding onto each other for dear life until their lungs begged for air. “Yeah,” she smiled as she stood upright, “the spark’s still there.”

“Did we just sign up for a summer romance, then?” Jackie asked with a light laugh.

“At least… Where are you going to college?”

“Columbia, finally moving out to the big city.”

“I’m not surprised in the slightest,” Jan chuckled. “I’m going to The American Academy of Dramatic Arts which…” her eyes went wide, “is also in Manhattan.”

Jackie’s face broke into a broad grin as she pulled Jan into a hug. “Isn’t that amazing?”

“Yeah,” Jan agreed as she melted into Jackie’s arms. “It’ll be nice to not have to say goodbye this time.”

#hi look what all that summer camp talk inspired lol #unbeta'd bcs i have no patience #jankie

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sciencespies · 3 years ago

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To Boost Black Men in Medicine, Advocates Turn to Sports

https://sciencespies.com/nature/to-boost-black-men-in-medicine-advocates-turn-to-sports/

To Boost Black Men in Medicine, Advocates Turn to Sports

Emily Laber-Warren, Undark

Aaron Bolds didn’t consider becoming a physician until he tore a ligament in his knee while playing in a basketball tournament when he was 15. His orthopedic surgeon was Black, and they hit it off. “He was asking me how my grades were, and I told him, ‘I’m a straight-A student,’ and he was, like, ‘Man, this is a great fallback plan if basketball doesn’t work out,’” recalls Bolds, who is African American.

“He looked like me,” Bolds says, “and that was even more encouraging.”

If not for that chance encounter, Bolds, 34, a doctor at Mount Sinai Health System in New York, might never have gone into medicine, he says. When he was growing up, there were no physicians in his family or extended social network to model that career path. And at the schools he attended, he says, his aptitude for science didn’t trigger the kind of guidance young people often receive in more privileged contexts.

What Bolds did get attention for was his athletic ability. He got a full basketball scholarship to Lenoir-Rhyne University in North Carolina, where his team won a conference championship. But when he transferred to Bowie State University in Maryland, where he also played basketball, an academic adviser discouraged his pre-med ambitions, Bolds recalls, saying his grades were low and he lacked research experience.

Bolds is not alone in finding in athletics a fraught lever of educational opportunity. Whereas Black players comprise more than half the football and basketball teams at the 65 universities in the top five athletic conferences, and bring in millions of dollars for their schools year after year, the graduation rates for Black male college athletes are significantly lower — 55 percent as compared to 69 percent for college athletes overall — according to a 2018 report from the USC Race and Equity Center. Many Black college athletes end up without either a professional sports contract or a clear career path.

Now some educators and advocates are looking to reverse this trend by connecting sports, an area in which African American men are overrepresented, and medicine, where the opposite is true. As of 2018, 13 percent of the U.S. population, but just 5 percent of doctors — according to the Association of American Medical Colleges — identified as Black or African American. (The AAMC data notes that an additional 1 percent of doctors identified as multiracial.) Decades of efforts to increase diversity at medical schools have made progress with other demographics, including Black women — but barely any with Black men. “No other demographic group is broken down with such a large split between men and women,” says Jo Wiederhorn, president and CEO of the Associated Medical Schools of New York. “And none of them have stayed stagnant, like that group has.”

According to data the AAMC provided to Undark, the proportion of Black men enrolling in medical school hasn’t changed much since 1978 — with only some headway being made in the past few years.

The absence of Black male medical professionals ripples across the health system, experts say, contributing to widespread health disparities. African Americans tend to be diagnosed later than White people with everything from cancer to kidney disease, leading to more advanced disease and earlier deaths. Meanwhile, a recent study suggests that Black men who see Black male doctors may be more likely to follow medical advice. Other research also suggests that racially concordant care, in which patients and doctors have a shared identity, is associated with better communication and a greater likelihood to use health services.

“We are in a crisis point, nationally,” says Reginald Miller, the dean for research operations and infrastructure at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that the health of communities of color are directly proportional to the number of practitioners available to see,” he says. “It’s just that straightforward.”

Last year, the National Medical Association, a professional organization representing African American physicians, embarked with the AAMC on a joint effort to address the structural barriers to advancement for Black men. “We need to look at this with a unique lens,” says Norma Poll-Hunter, senior director of workforce diversity at the AAMC.

There is no single solution to such an entrenched and multifaceted problem, Poll-Hunter says. According to her, some medical schools have adopted a holistic admissions process that evaluates many personal factors rather than relying on standardized test scores, which can exclude promising Black candidates. In addition, she says, students of color need better access to high-quality K-12 science education, particularly in under-resourced public schools. “There are a lot of barriers that exist early on,” she notes, “and that then creates this narrowing of the pathway to medicine.”

But the novel strategy of wooing athletes is slowly gaining traction. Advocates point out that high-performing athletes possess many of the skills and attributes that doctors, psychologists, physical therapists, and other medical professionals need — things like focus, a commitment to excellence, time management, and problem-solving skills, as well as the ability to take constructive criticism and perform under pressure.

“When you say, ‘What’s your ideal medical student?’ it’s not just a kid who’s academically gifted. It’s a kid who’s got resilience, attention to detail, knows how to work on the team,” Miller says. “Because science and medicine are team sports.” And by virtue of being athletes, these young men are already attuned to nutrition, fitness, and other aspects of human biology.

Two former NFL players, Nate Hughes and Myron Rolle, recently became physicians. And there is evidence that competitive sports experience contributes to medical success. A 2012 study of doctors training to become ear, nose, and throat specialists at Washington University, for example, found that having excelled in a team sport was more predictive of how faculty rated their quality as a clinician than strong letters of recommendation or having attended a highly-ranked medical school. Likewise, a 2011 study found that having an elite skill, such as high-achieving athletics, was more predictive of completing a general surgery residency than medical school grades.

Advocates of the athletics-to-medicine pipeline point out its practicality. Thousands of Black men are already in college, or headed there, on athletic scholarships. It would only take a small percentage of them choosing medical careers to boost the percentage of Black male doctors to better reflect the proportion of African American men in the general population, they say.

No one thinks it will be easy. One obstacle, advocates say, is a lack of role models. Black sports celebrities are household names, but some young athletes may never encounter a Black medical professional. “People don’t believe they can become what they don’t see,” says Mark R. Brown, the athletic director at Pace University.

And for the best chance of success, many say, these young men need to form and pursue medical aspirations as young as possible, along with their athletic training. “Those kids who are able to do both, the rewards at the end are enormous,” Miller says. But the adults in their lives may not believe the dual path is possible. “The second that a kid says to a science teacher or someone else that he’s an athlete,” Miller says, “they go into a different category. ‘They’re not really serious about science and medicine, they’re just here, and so I don’t expect this kid to really achieve.’”

Rigid course and practice schedules also make it challenging for busy athletes to undertake demanding and time-intensive science majors, observers say. What’s needed is “a cultural change, and not just a cultural change with the athletes. It’s a cultural change with the whole structure,” Miller says. “Everybody’s excited about the idea” of the physician athlete, he adds, “because it makes sense. But when the rubber hits the road, it is challenging.”

Donovan Roy, the assistant dean for diversity and inclusiveness at the Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, was one of the first people to envision the potential of directing Black athletes toward medical careers.

Roy, 48, who is Black and a former college football player, grew up in the working class, primarily Black and Latino community of Inglewood, California. Attending an elite private high school on a football scholarship was eye-opening. He vividly remembers the first time he ever saw a walk-in pantry, at a friend’s home. “It was stocked like a convenience store,” he recalls. “Five different types of Hostess, Ding-Dongs, sodas, every type of snack that you ever wanted.” Equally startling was speaking with another friend’s mother, who was a lawyer. “I’d never seen a road map to success in my community,” he says.

Roy’s athletic talent continued to open doors — at 18 he got a scholarship to the University of Southern California — but poorly prepared by the under-resourced public schools he had attended through ninth grade, he struggled academically, and left both USC and later another university that he also attended on an athletic scholarship.

Eventually Roy found his footing, and when he did, he became a learning specialist. After working through his own academic struggles, he wanted to help others with theirs. Roy took a job as a learning skills counselor at UCLA’s medical school. There he helped the students who were struggling with classes like anatomy and genetics. In early 2015, he returned to USC as the director of academic support services at Keck School of Medicine.

Something Roy noticed at both these medical schools stuck with him, though it would take a few years for the observation to crystallize. A certain kind of student sought help despite, by ordinary standards, not needing it. These were the athletes, and many of them were Black or Latino. “They always talked about, ‘How can I excel? How can I get better?’” he recalls. They “were getting 90s and they wanted to be 100.”

Roy began a doctoral program in education in 2015, the same year the AAMC published a damning report about the lack of Black men entering medical school. This was a crisis Roy understood both personally and professionally. For his dissertation, he decided to interview 16 Black male students at Keck School of Medicine. What was it about them, he wanted to understand, that had gotten them there against all odds?

The answer, he discovered, was what academics call social capital. For medical students from privileged backgrounds, social capital might take the form of a family friend who arranges a summer internship at a biotechnology lab, or a well-funded high school that offers advanced placement science classes. The young men Roy interviewed did not, for the most part, have access to those sorts of resources.

“Growing up, I didn’t see a Black male with a college degree until I got to college,” medical student Jai Kemp said in a separate interview Roy conducted for a documentary he’s making on the topic. The social capital these young men leveraged to get to medical school took the form of parental support, science enrichment programs and clubs, peer social networks, faculty mentors — and the perks that come with athletics. “For me it was just sports that got me through,” Kemp said.

The pieces started to fit together. Roy knew from his own experience all the benefits athletes get, not just entrée to educational institutions, but travel, enrichment, and academic advantages like tutoring and early class registration. Athletes also tend to possess social cachet on campus and, with more exposure to different types of people, may feel comfortable in environments that seem foreign and forbidding to other young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Roy also recalled the drive for academic excellence he had observed in the athletes who came to his tutoring programs. “I got this epiphany,” he says. “Why don’t we look at student athletes in order to increase Black males’ representation in medicine, because they have the most social capital and the most network on predominantly White campuses.”

Donovan Roy at the Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, where he is now the assistant dean for diversity and inclusiveness. While working on his doctoral degree, Roy interviewed Black men in medical school and discovered one key to their success: social capital.

Mark Bugnaski

But when Roy began talking to his medical school colleagues about recruiting athletes, who according to a report from the Center for American Progress — a liberal think tank — make up 16 percent of Black male college students receiving athletic aid in the Big 12 athletic conference, he says most weren’t receptive to the idea. The same thing happened when he got up the nerve to make the suggestion publicly at a 2018 conference in Orlando, Florida. The idea ran against type. “I think people tend to lump athletes into this box,” he says. “They just think that athletes are big meatheads.”

Roy knew this truth viscerally, because with his offensive lineman’s build of 6-feet-6-inches and 300-plus pounds, he sticks out in academic settings. “People stare,” he says. “They do not expect me to be in the role that I am in.”

What Roy didn’t know was that the idea was percolating elsewhere, including at the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Brian Hainline, the NCAA’s chief medical officer, says he and Poll-Hunter of the AAMC are in talks with several universities about launching a pilot program to support African American athletes interested in medical careers.

Meanwhile, in 2018 Miller founded the organization Scholar-Athletes with Academic Goals (a.k.a. SWAG, a name he hopes will resonate with young people). The initiative connects promising athletes with a range of available programs to help them pursue and succeed in science and medicine. Recently, Miller worked closely with leadership at Pace University to create a program, expected to launch next year, to support Black college athletes interested in attending medical school. Pace officials want the initiative to become a magnet for out-of-state athletes and a model for other schools. “My hope is that two years from now, colleges and universities will call” and ask, “Wow, how did you do this?” says athletic director Brown. “Once we have some success, and proof of concept, then I think it can really grow.”

Bolds graduated medical school in 2018 and is now doing his residency at Mount Sinai. His focus is rehabilitation medicine, and he plans to tend to injured athletes and serve as a team physician. He got a business degree while in medical school, and his long-term goal is to open his own interventional spine and sports medicine practice specializing in preventing and rehabilitating injuries in both athletes and non-athletes, as well as helping serious players enhance their performance.

But there were tough moments along the way, such as the encounter with that academic adviser, which Bolds says only served to motivate him. At the time, he thought, “Wow, this person doesn’t believe in me. So let me make them a believer,” he recalls. “That was, moving forward, really a turning point for me, honestly. Because I knew that people aren’t going to believe in you unless you give them a reason to.”

Bolds began to apply an athletic mindset to his pre-med classes. “That same grind of having to get up, 5 a.m., get to the gym, get shots up before anybody gets there, to put in that extra time — I was doing that with my studies,” he says. “I would get to the library before anybody.” Once Bolds turned his grades around, professors began to notice and help him, he says. Still, he says, his score on the MCAT, an entrance exam required by nearly all U.S. medical schools, was borderline. Instead of giving up, he attended multiple events at Howard University’s medical school, where he met people who advocated for him. It was the only medical school he got into.

Whereas Bolds had to bushwhack, he saw other Black students fall off the medical path — and his fellow Black teammates avoided it entirely. Many athletes find themselves enmeshed in a profit-making system that may not prioritize their education. The NCAA has been criticized in recent years for its long-standing policy which prohibits profit-sharing with college athletes — a policy that was only recently reversed under interim guidelines. Others have said that Black labor has been especially exploited.

In his residency, Bolds is focusing on rehabilitation medicine, and is pictured here working at Mount Sinai’s sports medicine clinic.

Jeenah Moon for Undark

As of 2014 reports, fewer than 2 percent of athletes in the NCAA will go on to play professionally. But for self-serving reasons, critics say, (Clemson University’s football team, for example, made $77 million in average annual revenue from 2015 through 2017) universities often direct athletes to “academic paths of least resistance.” Many schools practice “major clustering,” in which players are steered to the same relatively undemanding major, such as communications, so they can devote themselves almost entirely to their sport. Major clustering is more pronounced among athletes of color, according to a 2009 study of football teams at 11 universities. At six of those schools, the study found, over three-quarters of the non-White football players were enrolled in just two academic majors, although dozens of majors were offered.

Sheron Mark, an associate professor of science education at the University of Louisville, co-authored a 2019 case study of two young Black men who arrived at college on basketball scholarships, with the intent to pursue respective careers in computer science and engineering. But both found it difficult to balance academics with athletics because of pressure and blandishments from coaches and faculty advisers.

“For so long, they’ve been sold this message that you don’t have many choices, that banking on a professional sports career is one of very few options for you if you want to advance your station in life,” says Mark of many Black athletes. It’s important to have a plan B, she says, since “the odds just aren’t in their favor.” But coaches can discourage academically demanding majors because they may cut into practice time, and college athletes are not always capable of pushing back, she says, because their financial packages are tied to fulfillment of their team responsibilities.

Many Black college athletes are already strong candidates for medical school, advocates say, but others may need extra academic support to compensate for deficits acquired at under-resourced K-12 schools. They may also need post-graduation training to take science classes they did not have time for while working long hours as athletes — with some working 20-plus hours a week. “How are they being mentored and guided and protected in planning for their futures?” Mark asks. “They are high achieving in sports, they want to be high achieving in academics. Why don’t we support them?” When people wonder whether student-athletes can cut it in science and medicine, Mark’s response is: “It’s on us. It’s on us to help them do so. That’s how we can grow their representation.”

That’s what Pace University intends to do. The school already nurtures academic success in its athletes, who collectively had a B+ average last school year, but premedical studies have never been a great fit, in part because afternoon practices can conflict with long lab classes, says athletic director Brown. As part of the school’s new initiative, Pace science departments have pledged to offer flexibility in course section offerings in order to accommodate football commitments. Athletes of color from any sport will be welcome, but football was prioritized because it is the largest and one of the most diverse teams and has the most complicated schedule, Brown says.

The school also plans to adjust its advising, tutoring, and library services to ensure that pre-med athletes won’t falter when they struggle with personal issues or tough classes like organic chemistry. “Rather than saying, ‘Oh, chemistry, nobody likes chemistry, you’re right, you should just drop that,’ instead now it’s going to be, ‘Yeah, you’ve got to buckle down. And here’s how we’re going to do it,’” says Hillary Knepper, the university’s associate provost for student success.

Meanwhile, Brown will be directing his coaches to actively recruit Black and Latino high school athletes who are interested in medicine. In the past, Brown says, his coaches were less likely to select such students because of anticipated scheduling challenges. But now Pace is trying to establish a partnership through which a nearby medical school would give preferred consideration to pre-med athletes who have completed the Pace curriculum. “With our new approach, you’re not only going to have the ability to do it,” he says, “but you’re going to have a support system, to make sure that you follow the path.”

Some advocates for the athlete-to-doctor paradigm see this work as part of the larger movement for social justice. “Look what Jackie Robinson did, right? Look at Muhammad Ali, look at Colin Kaepernick,” Roy says. “Athletics has always been the vehicle for social change.”

Medical professionals can influence public policy, accumulate wealth, and help empower others in their orbit. “The impacts ramp up really quickly, from just that individual benefiting,” Mark says, to “your family, your neighborhood, your social network, and society — people you won’t even meet, and across generations.”

Studies suggest that African American doctors are more likely to choose to work in underserved communities. They also may be more attuned to, and motivated to combat, the disparities in health care. A study published last year, for example, suggests that Black newborns are half as likely to die when they are cared for by a Black physician.

Bolds is keenly aware of the health disparities for Black communities, and he jumps at opportunities to mentor other young Black men, to show them that they, too, can become doctors. “It seems like there’s so many steps that just are never-ending,” he says. But, he adds, to see someone “that you can connect with that’s at that finish line or has already passed that finish line — I think that’s very key to their success.”

One of the people Bolds has connected with is Darius Ervin, a talented Black basketball player from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, who is now a sophomore at Cornell University. The two met when Ervin attended a virtual event late last year, sponsored by SWAG, at which Bolds spoke. Afterwards, the two chatted, and Bolds now checks in periodically with Ervin, who says he appreciates the encouragement. “Those are people that have once laced up shoes and got on the court and played just like how I did, and now they’re in the hospital helping people,” he says. “Being able to speak to those people gives me the visual, allows me to see that it’s an opportunity and it’s definitely possible for me to do.”

UPDATE: A previous version of this article referred imprecisely to the institutional affiliation of Donovan Roy. He is at the Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, not the Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine at Western Michigan University.

Emily Laber-Warren directs the health and science reporting program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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