#the quality will jump significantly after today i promise that

[mintjeru]

wants attention

✨ turning fanweek ✨

day 1 jealousy | kidfic | emperor x concubine au

open for better quality | no reposts

[scapegrace74-blog]

New Ways of Turning into Stone, Chapter 3

A/N As promised, Jamie returns in this chapter.  He has an appointment to keep, after all.   Because I can’t think of anything more creative, this chapter is entitled “Second Appointment”.  For previous chapters, your best bet is to check out the story on my AO3 page.

The week both crept and flew past, like one of those dreams in which she ran until her lungs burned, but never managed to get anywhere.  Kinetic motion trapped in amber.   Claire never did tell Geillis about her excursion to Corstorphine Hill over the weekend, embarrassed by how it had ended.  

And now it was Thursday.  She’d opted for a protein smoothie for lunch, a meal with no chance of leaving leafy residue between her teeth.  It was likely wasted vanity.  As two o’clock drew near, she bargained with herself to abandon any hope she may be harbouring.  Jamie Fraser had shown no interest in participating in the psychiatric process during his first appointment.  Fraternal obligation had brought him to her office once, but he didn’t strike her as a man who yielded the reins of his life easily.  It wasn’t likely he would return.

When it came his distinctive knock, crisp and insistent, caught her unawares, even though she’d just been staring at his name in her planner.  She hastily pushed the items on her desk to one side, patted uselessly at her curls, and called out for him to enter.

“Good afternoon, Doctor Beauchamp,” he greeted cautiously.  “Miss Duncan told me tae come straight in.”

There was something different about him today.  His clothing, certainly.  Instead of casual wear, he wore trousers and a button down, wet splotches over the shoulders attesting to the fact that it had begun raining again.  And while he still took up an inordinate amount of space in her small office, he seemed... diminished, somehow.  A paler echo of the fireworks display of his first visit.

“Of course.  Please have a seat, Mister Fraser.”

“Jamie, if you will,” he corrected as he settled gingerly into the armchair.  “Mister Fraser was my Da.”

Something about his tone and the fact his laser blue eyes wouldn’t meet her own as he spoke the words caused her to lean into his statement.

“Did your father pass away recently, Jamie?”

A moment, an indrawn breath of panic, and then it was cleverly masked with a wry glance.

“Aye, last year.  An’ yer no’ very subtle, doctor.”

“I didn’t realize subtlety was called for,” she parried.  “You made another appointment, and I specialize in grief counselling.  Why else would you be here?”

Despite the fact that it wasn’t productive from a psychiatric point of view, she enjoyed his reluctance to hastily expose his inner demons.  Too often, her practice required her to work carefully in order to avoid shaping the pliable emotions of her patients.  While obviously hurting, Jamie had an unflinching, unalterable quality that she admired.  Not to mention that the intellectual game of cat and mouse they were playing was wildly stimulating.

“I suppose I enjoyed our conversation,” Jamie teased.  “An’ Miss Duncan’s shortbread.”

With an awkward squint that she imagined was meant to be a wink, her patient rose to investigate the current offerings on her tea table.

“Och, petit fours!” he exclaimed with childlike glee and perfect French pronunciation.  “There was a café none too far from my flat in Paris tha’ made these.  I’d often grab some on my way tae the office.”

He returned to the desk with a small plate of the pastries, pushing it towards her as he settled into his seat.

“No, thank you.  I’ve just eaten.”

Like a searchlight, his bright eyes didn’t miss much.  He glanced significantly at the half-empty plastic smoothie container to one side of her desk.  Rather than chide her for her austerity, as Geillis frequently did, he instead made a show of biting into each of the four little squares until there was nothing left but crumbs.  Her stomach muttered in complaint.

“What did you do in Paris?” she asked as he finished his snack with a contented sigh.

“Oh, a wee bit of this and that,” he demurred.  In response to her exasperated look, he continued, “I started out at the Bourse.  Futures, options, arbitrage, that sort of thing.  I have a good ear fer languages, sae from there I went into foreign exchange.  Import export, and the like.”

“You’re a financier?” she asked, somewhat more incredulous than she ought to be.  She wasn’t certain what she had pictured James Fraser doing for a living, but greasing the wheels of capitalism definitely wasn’t it.

“Was,” he corrected.  “I quit an’ came home tae Scotland last year.”

“When your father died,” she guessed.

“Aye.”

She once again had the sense of standing in front of a locked door that Jamie had no intention of opening.  Rather than hammer uselessly on its stubborn surface, she nimbly diverted the conversation sideways.

“What do you do for work now?”

A slow blink followed by a dawning smile indicated he was aware of her stratagem.

“I’m a carpenter.”

It was rare for Claire to be truly surprised by people.  She made a living reading their unspoken cues.  Twice in the same conversation was unheard of.

“A carpenter?” she repeated as though she hadn’t heard him perfectly well the first time.

“Aye.  Like Jesus, ye ken?”

With a quicksilver grin, Jamie launched into a description of his current occupation, which involved the making of reproduction antiques and custom pieces for clients around Scotland.  She realized with a start that she’d read an article about his business in a popular local magazine.  

International financier.  Self-made entrepreneur.  Tall drink of water.  James Fraser had a lot of things going for him.  And yet here he sat, paying her by the hour to listen to him avoid talking about whatever hardship had befallen him.

She mentally composed a list of the topics he was deftly avoiding with his charming anecdotes.  His father’s recent death.  The reason behind a radical change in career.  Living in the city on account of unspoken ‘family obligations’, even though his verbal reminiscence of the Highlands was so poetic it damn near made her cry.  There was something raw just below the surface of his nonchalance, and her innate curiosity cried out to find out what it was.

“You told me last week that your sister, Jenny, insisted you attend counselling.  But you said that you’re handling matters fine on your own.  Can you tell me why your sister believes otherwise?”

It might have been amusing to see such a large man squirm in different circumstances.  His left hand furrowed through his hair, setting the autumn waves on end.  His mouth, so recently relaxed and mobile as he eagerly shared the details of his craft, froze in a pained frown.  She considered whether she had pushed too hard too soon.

“I gave a lot of thought tae what ye said when we parted last week,” Jamie began at last.  “Tae be honest, it haunted me.  Jen kens me better than anyone, an’ while I like tae complain tha’ she meddles where she doesna belong, the truth is she’s truly scared fer me.  An’ even if I dinna agree tha’ my lifestyle is cause fer concern, I owe it tae her tae try tae sort myself out.  I owe her far more than that,” he finished with a rueful shake of his head.

“What kind of lifestyle has your sister so worried?” she probed.

“Whisky, women and song,” he quipped, before adding, “Weel, I canna carry a tune, but twa out of three isna half bad.”

He tried to smile away the awkward tension that descended on the office, the air ripe with unspoken words.  Claire felt disappointment whirlpool in her gut.  Just another charming rake, after all.  It really shouldn’t matter, and yet somehow it did.  More than she dared to admit.

“Yes, well, the road of excess leads to the palace of consequences, ” she sniffed at last, angry at herself for sounding like a schoolmarm.  What a bore she must seem to him, with her regimented behaviour and rigid morals.

Jamie rose abruptly, and for a half-second she imagined he might lunge at her, or storm from the room.   Instead, he spun around to face the door.  Without a word, he untucked his shirt and began to expose his lower back.

Claire was momentarily stunned silent.  Just as she managed to draw a deep enough breath to censure Jamie for his highly inappropriate strip tease, the golden velour of his lower back transformed without warning into a furrowed landscape of scar tissue, ripples and craters left by some massive trauma.  The air left her lungs on a questioning sigh.

“I ken all about consequences, Doctor Beauchamp,” he stated.  “I live with them every moment of my life.”

Her fingers found the knotted skin, surprisingly warm and mobile beneath her touch.  A shiver shimmered over the unmarred muscle of his flanks.

Before she could find any appropriate words of apology, the office door opened and Geillis stuck her head in.  She barked a cough upon seeing Jamie’s state of undress and Claire’s position, leaning across her desk.  Doctor and patient jumped apart like opposing magnets.

“Sae sorry for the interruption, but yer three o’clock is here.  Should I tell her ye’ve been... delayed?”

Jamie muttered an obscenity under his breath which Claire whole-heartedly seconded.  There was no way Geillis wasn’t going to be utterly insufferable about this.

“Mister Fraser was just leaving, Geillis.”

With a lewd wink and a nod, the door closed.

“Look, Jamie...” she began just as he apologized.  “I’m sae sorry, lass.”

They both laughed nervously.  Jamie finished tucking his shirt into his pants and turned to face the desk.

“I hope this willna cause ye any difficulties with Miss Duncan,” he began, eyes wide with concern.

“No more so than usual,” she sighed. “Geillis is a good friend.  She just... doesn’t know when to quit, sometimes,” she explained.

“Sounds jus’ like my sister.  Perhaps we should introduce them.”

She smiled, struggling to find something else to say to move past the moment.  She could hear Geillis and her next patient conversing just outside the door.  There was no time left for subtlety.

“Will I see you again next week, Jamie?” she asked, giving up on finding a more oblique way of phrasing the question that was reverberating through her mind.

Jamie’s bashful smile dipped towards the floor, causing his hair to fall in front of his eyes.

“Aye.  I’ll even keep my clothes on, if ye ask nicely.”

It was that smile, that hair, those eyes, that carried her through the rest of her week, aloft on the anticipation of something utterly forbidden.

[honeymoonjin]

ᴘᴀɪʀɪɴɢ: ot7 x reader || ᴡᴏʀᴅ ᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ: 10.1k || ɢᴇɴʀᴇ: smut - rated 18+

sᴜᴍᴍᴀʀʏ:

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ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢs: filmed sex/voyeurism/exhibitionism as usual, sub!jungkook, dom!reader, pegging, anal play, rimming, multiple orgasms, crying during sex, jk being a good good boy, dom!namjoon, sub!reader, bath sex, ageplay/DDlg, fingering, unprotected sex, pet names, spanking, creampie, aftercare in both cases

dedicated to my sfhs girls, everyone in the villa discord, and jk’s ass

DAY EIGHTEEN

All things considered; you were rather lucky to be sharing a room with Yoongi when you wake up that morning.

The second consciousness returns to you, it brings a feeling of nausea so abrupt that you’re careening off the bed and rushing to bed over the toilet without a second’s thought, body running on survival mode.

You’re not sure what wakes Yoongi - the sudden absence of pressure and heat against him, or the sound of you throwing up all the food and alcohol you’d consumed last night – but it takes mere moments before you feel him gently caressing your trembling body, lifting your tangled hair back off your face.

“Just let it out,” he coos softly as you bend over miserably, the sour taste on your tongue making your stomach turn again, “you’ll feel better after, I promise. That’s it.”

The moment you finally have nothing left to empty out, you collapse sideways onto the cool bathroom tile, hand curling over your stomach. Yoongi gets up to flush the toilet and gets out a spare toothbrush from under his sink, pressing it into your hand already prepped with toothpaste. “I’m sorry,” you mumble lowly, nose running slightly as you sniffle. “I think I drank too much. That green apple soju fucking sucks, too.”

The doctor has the good graces to smile at your attempt of lightening the mood, but it’s strained, waiting for you to begin brushing the acrid leftovers from your mouth before speaking. “You’d better have a light breakfast, okay? Some toast and maybe a cup of herbal tea to settle your stomach. Can you stand? I’ll get you some fresh clothes from your room while you take a shower here.”

Your heart warms at his endearing bedside manner. “I’ll be fine, Yoongi.”

“It’s non-negotiable, I’m afraid,” Yoongi says with a mock sigh. “Come on; you can wash your hair, too. Feeling nice and clean will help.”

Sniffing one last time, you give him an agreeing nod and hunker up on your knees, before standing. God, but why do you still feel so nauseous? That fucking soju. Yoongi must see the discomfort on your face, because he gives your shoulder a squeeze. “Not to worry, I’m sure I have something here you can take which will make you feel better. You aren’t the first person to not handle their liquor in the villa.”

You give him a questioning frown, your throat feeling raw as you clear it lightly. “What do you mean? Everyone seemed okay yesterday.”

“Hoseok texted me,” Yoongi answers with a shrug. “I didn’t see it ‘til after you fell asleep, but apparently poor Tae was curled up with a hot water bottle last night feeling rather sorry for himself. I think he got a little trigger-happy on his Sprite and soju mixers.”

Your brows furrow in concern, your own condition forgotten. “Is he alright?” You mentally kick yourself for not being more attentive to him. The last thing you wanted was for him to feel excluded now that he was voted out.

“He’s fine, I’m sure. Hoseokie and Jimin apparently actually spent the night in the bunk room with him, because both refused to leave. Stranger things have happened, I suppose.”

“Holy shit,” you muse. “If you weren’t so busy filling me like a cream puff maybe we could’ve witnessed that.”

Yoongi’s mouth gapes at your jibe, and you let out a hiccupping giggle when he rushes you, jabbing at your sides. “You little shit! That’s how you repay me after yesterday?”

You chuckle, feeling significantly more cheerful than when you woke up. “I gotta keep you humble, Doctor Min.”

His shoulders jump with a fond huff. “You’re impossible,” he gives in with a begrudging smile. “Now go; shower! I’ll be back.”

By the time you’re downstairs, enjoying some lightly buttered toast and an aromatic peachy-tasting tea - laughing with Taehyung who has slunk downstairs like a viscous goop, slumped on the table sucking on a vitamin table - any concerns or worries about your brief vomiting spell have entirely left your mind.

--

Jungkook is antsy.

He cycles madly between intense eye-contact and complete avoidance of your existence, looking for all intents and purposes like a deer in headlights. You imagine it’s because he wants to do his prompt today, and you certainly could dispel the awkward tension by just asking him if he wants to go upstairs or texting him to dig a little, but where would the fun in that be? You much prefer cuddling with Taehyung and a chunky blanket, pretending to watch The Voice of Korea while you really watch Jungkook squirm instead.

Taehyung sighs wistfully as a contestant finishes with a belted high note, all four judges slamming down their buttons and giving the cameras big reactions once they turn and catch a glimpse of the singer. “I wish I could be on the show,” the masseuse says with another slow sigh.

You grin, poking him in the cheek with a single finger. “Is our puppy a good singer, huh? Do you reckon you’d win?”

“What?” Taehyung asks distractedly, his eyes locked to the screen. “No, I wanna sit in those big chairs and spin around. It’d be so fun.”

Your surprised laugh makes Jungkook jump in his seat, even as he sits on the opposite couch to the two of you and glares intensely at the pages of a comic book he’d stolen from someone, spending far too long on one page to actually be reading it.

Hoseok, who sits completely silently next to Jungkook - extremely strange for the normally bubbly man - is even more suspicious. Every few seconds, he shoves his phone under Jungkook’s nose, before pulling it away and typing furiously.

You had no doubt in your mind that he was giving the youngest contestant salacious tips, instructions, or both, judging by the way Jungkook’s cheeks get hotter with every message.

A lazy day after the drunken entertainment from the day before, the four of you had chosen to collapse onto the couch and stay there, flicking between channels as you idly enjoyed each other’s company. Namjoon had texted the groupchat and put a note on his door warning people that he was studying for an exam for a summer course he’d signed up for. This was the first you’d heard of said course, but his messages had contained several exclamation points, so you knew it was serious.

Jimin was also making the most of his privacy. The only glimpse you’d seen of him at all today was while you and Taehyung were cleaning your dishes. He’d rushed down in a fluffy white bathrobe, covering his face with his sleeve, bemoaning the drinking that had done serious damage to his clear skin. When he dropped his sleeve to bundle some ice into a paper towel, it looked fine to you, albeit pinker in the cheeks and forehead than his bare face had been before, but he swore the two of you to silence and determined he was going to lock himself into his room until he no longer looked like “an evil stepmother.”

Jin and Yoongi were nowhere to be found, though most of the house were almost certain they’d become something akin to fuckbuddies considering how often they disappeared together, and how rampant and shameless their sexual tension was whenever they cooked together for the rest of you.

It had taken a while for Taehyung to bounce back from his hangover, Hoseok fussing over him like a child as Tae clung to you for some tactile comfort. Spending a day by yourself hadn’t really been an option when you’d been cuddling with him for hours, but you were far happier spending some quality time with the masseuse.

It takes no more than three new contestants on the TV show to have their moment in front of the judges for Jungkook to break. Hoseok’s given up on the phone messages, instead whispering directly Jungkook’s ear as the boy clutches the open comic book in front of his lap  so hard his knuckles go white.

Laughing at the flustered camboy, Hoseok loses all tact and stops damping his voice, his natural level loud enough that you can make it out over the garishly aggressive appliance store advertisement on the TV. “Come on, Kookie, it’ll be great!” he insists, Jungkook cringing at the volume. “Switching things up will help your chances for fan favourite too, and surely you’ve done-”

Jungkook stands up abruptly, comic book still propped up in front of his crotch as his cheeks and neck go bright red. “If you like pegging so much, why don’t you do it, then?” he blurts with a cry, before the realisation of what he said aloud hits him. Choking on air, he just about trips back onto the couch in his haste to leave, stomping upstairs like a wronged teenager.

Everyone goes silent, a cheery female voice announcing that Subway’s quality is higher than ever being the only sound in the room. Mouth open, you blink over to Hoseok. “Should I… go check on him?”

“Uh- Yeah, maybe,” he admits, a slight pained look of guilt flickering across his face before he brightens up. “But it’s dangerous; you should take a strap with you.”

You pause halfway through standing up, Taehyung letting go of you and curling deeper into the pile of blankets. “Have you no shame, Hoseok? You humiliated the poor kid!”

Hoseok grins broadly. “He only reacted that much because he liked the idea,” he protests, before leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees. “And what about you, princess? Do you like the idea?”

You swallow, straightening up fully. “I haven’t really thought about it until now, I guess,” you offer up slowly. “I’m not- I’m not opposed.” But even as you say that, you begin to picture it. Jungkook on all fours in front of you, or perhaps spread out on his back, brows furrowed in pleasure, clingy and whiny. Though it was certainly new ground to you, most things were these days, and you’ve started craving fresh experiences, feeling more alive and excited about sex than you’ve ever really felt before.

A lightly huffed laugh leaves Hoseok’s lips. “I’d say you’re a little more than ambivalent, judging by that look on your face. Go upstairs now, princess; Jungkook’s ass needs you.”

You scoff, patting Taehyung’s cheek goodbye before leaving the way the maknae left earlier. Upstairs, Jungkook’s door is open the slightest sliver. A shy invitation.

You knock anyway, calling out his name. When his sullen voice invites you in, you slip inside and shut the door behind you. With his head hanging, shoulders slumped, poor Jungkook looks miserable. “Oh, Gukkie, baby, you’re okay,” you soothe, rushing to his side.

Folding his hands cutely over his crotch, he keeps his head down, but nuzzles against your stomach when you pull him into an embrace, running your hands through the long, heavy black locks of his hair. “‘M sorry,” he murmurs, lifting a single hand to ball his fist in the fabric of your shirt.

Your heart warms at the little action even as it aches for his sadness. “What are you sorry for? You don’t have to be sorry.”

Jungkook pauses for a moment, and you can just about hear the pout. “Embarrassed,” he explains shortly. “You probably think it’s gross.”

“Of course I don’t,” you deny in a soft yet firm voice, still stroking his hair. “Baby, if you want me to do it for you, I will.”

He looks up suddenly, chin propped up on your stomach. “Really?” he asks in hope, eyes glittering like entire galaxies.

You shrug. “I mean, I haven’t used a strap-on before, so it probably won’t be very good, but I wanna try if it’s something that would make you happy, you know?”

Jungkook’s mouth parts sweetly, before he lets out a dejected breath. “I don’t know,” he says with a sigh, letting his head drop off you again. “I still feel really embarrassed. Hobi-hyung was te-teasing me so much.”

You wince at the way his voice hitches and wobbles, like he’s on the verge of tears. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” you coo. “I think he was just trying to encourage you. But if he made you uncomfortable, I can go down there right now and-”

As you start to shift away, a hand shoots out and latches onto your wrist, snagging you in place. “No,” Jungkook interrupts quickly, before turning sullen again, lifting up his head so that you can just barely see his eyes, gleaming with unshed tears. “Can you just stay with me?”

Reaching forward to cup his cheek and bring his gaze up, you send him your warmest smile. “I’ll stay,” you promise, “want me to help cheer you up? I don’t like seeing my Gukkie so sad.”

His bottom lip quivers as he nods, fingers tightening around your wrist, tugging you back to his side. “Yes, please,” he asks politely, voice still so hesitant as his gaze drops like he’s too shy to meet yours, face pressing into your palm. “Want you to make me feel better.”

Your breath hitches when his eyes dart up, just for a second, and reveal a glimmer that isn’t tears so much as mischief. You realise quickly that perhaps Jungkook is pulling on your heartstrings intentionally, luring you in just like he did the day after the fight, when everyone in the house bent over backwards to give him what he wanted. But you aren’t mad; truth be told, every second that passes, you grow more excited about what’s to come. “Of course I will,” you reply warmly. “Can I give you a kiss, baby?”

One thing you aren’t prepared for as you carefully straddle his lap and press your lips against his is just how differently he kisses when he’s in this submissive frame of mind. You’d associated Jungkook with hunger, fierce passion and need. This Jungkook was needy, but in a very different way. Lips parted, he tilts his chin and lets you take over, his fingers curling tightly in the fabric of your shirt, his long hair tickling against your cheeks.

And unlike the more dominant Jungkook that would kiss you until you couldn’t breathe, the camboy now seems impatient, hips shifting under you and whines leaving his throat as he breaks apart, lips swollen. “Will you fuck me, Y/n? I need you.”

Sucking in a breath, you’re nodding before you’ve even really processed his words. “How do I, uh, what should I-”

“The stuff’s in my nightstand drawer,” Jungkook offers up in explanation. The young man bites his lip, looking positively delectable. In a starch-white t-shirt that simultaneously swamps his figure but exposes his delicate collarbones with the v-neck, and his long locks tucked behind his ears, no imagination is required to see how easily he fits into this subby persona. Even as he’s physically much larger than you, and there’s no hiding his thick thighs and broad shoulders, his expression and posture alone convey plenty. “But, um… Could you- could you help prepare me first? I can if you’re uncomfortable, you know. No pressure.”

“I can,” you assure quickly, standing up when he wriggles meaningfully beneath you. “I mean, I want to. Is it, you know…?” You trail off, watching Jungkook scoot himself back so that his feet don’t quite touch the floor. He tilts his head in confusion. “Clean?” you hiss softly, cheeks flaming.

Jungkook freezes, eyes wide and mouth parted in a small o. “I- Yeah, it’s, uh, clean, I-”

“Sorry,” you grimace, “that totally ruined the mood, didn’t it? I’m new to this.”

“You don’t have to, honestly,” Jungkook says with a small voice, fiddling with the loose threads in the rips of his jeans. “I can do it.”

You’re really fucking this up, huh? “No, no, I want to, it’s fine!”

“I swear, I won’t be offended if it weirds you out-”

Without a pause to think, your lips are moving. “Pants off, Gukkie, I’m going to finger you,” you announce in a firm voice, chin jutting forward in your determination.

You hadn’t even intended to use it as power play, more so just insisting what you were okay with, but his reaction is undeniable. Jungkook visibly melts at your command, eyelids fluttering for a moment and shoulders going lax. Even his socked feet turn inwards, the complete posture of submission. The image of it sends heat through you, and you feel alive with it.

“Th-thank you,” Jungkook stutters, chest hitching. “How do you want me?”

Even though you don’t know the least about fingering or prepping, you’re quickly growing addicted to the way he responds to your authority, so you make a split second decision. “All fours, baby. And clothes off for me.”

Jungkook bites down a whine - how you wish he wouldn’t muffle himself - but obeys quickly, stripping all the way down to his socks, toeing them off hastily before getting on his knees. Clearly a position he’s used to, the camboy wastes no time in presenting himself, upper torso flat against the bed and back arched up to expose himself. With a cheek pressed against the mattress to look back at you, his hair slips over and covers his face.

Before he has the chance to huff, you reach forward and tuck it back behind his ear, tapping your finger once on his nose to make him scrunch it, a toothy grin on his face. “Y/n!” he protests with a hiccupy giggle.

“What?” you ask innocently. “I’m just trying to help out, baby. Can I ask you a favour?”

Jungkook’s grinning so widely that his eyes crinkle. “You’re the dom, Y/n, you don’t need to ask favours, you know?”

“Oh, shit, you’re right,” you muse. It’s so easy to forget that the control is yours, especially when you’re a bit out of your depth. Resolving yourself to be more authoritative, you clear your throat and school your expression. “Mouth open, Gukkie.”

Following your command so quickly that there’s an audible sound, Jungkook braces himself up a little with his forearms so that he can face you better with his jaw wide open and tongue lolled out on his bottom lip.

When you place your first two fingers of your dominant hand on that pretty pink tongue, you don’t even have to command him to suck before he’s wrapping his lips around them and hollowing his cheeks, blinking up at you for approval.

You try and use the past couple weeks of dirty talk from the guys to inspire you when talking to Jungkook, using your other hand to comb the hair back from his face again. “That’s it, baby,” you croon, “nice and wet; soak them for me. What a good boy.”

Keening under your praise, still bent over on his knees, Jungkook swirls his tongue and salivates over your digits diligently. It feels strange; the hot wet cavern, the muscle covering every inch of your skin. Your stomach flips in arousal when you begin to tug your fingers out and he pulls off them with a pop, drool on his chin and pupils blown wide.

“Alright, Gukkie, stay there,” you indicate, holding your spit-slicked fingers aloft as you get on the bed behind him. Cock dangling hard between his legs, he’s hunkered down, heels pressed against his upper thighs. You could easily reach him from here, but there’s something rising within you, an urge to play with him a little rougher.

He jumps and lets out a surprised cry when you rain down your other palm on his asscheek in a swift spank, head falling back to the mattress.

“Did I say you could lie down? Ass up, Gukkie,” you spit sharply, satisfaction curling around your ribs as he lifts his hips without delay, back arching beautifully to present himself once again. A roughly hand-shaped pink flush on his otherwise unblemished skin makes you bite your lip. “Colour?”

Jungkook pauses for a moment, fingers fisting the sheets. You fear the worst for a second, but it seems like it just took him a second to comprehend you, because just as soon as the worry rises, he lets out a cute gasp of realisation and spreads his knees further. “Green, so green.”

“Good boy,” you praise, relief clear in your voice. “A single hair out of position without my permission and there’ll be more where that came from.” Though you secretly admit spanking the responsive boy feels good in some odd way, you’d feel a lot better knowing when he’d intentionally stepped out of line, and so giving him a specific avenue assuages some of your potential guilt over the impact play. He seems to understand too, nodding his head sweetly and visibly flexing this thighs to keep steady.

This isn’t usually an angle you’re used to seeing on a guy, but as you gently circle the tight muscle of his rim, you marvel at how Jungkook still makes it look good. Entirely free of hair, ass, thighs and back thick and sculpted, it’s clear the visual is an important thing, especially in his line of work.

You can feel his body go slightly stiff when he holds his breath, but the slightest pressure makes him tremble, his eyes loosely shut as he focuses on pure sensation. Wary of the spit drying off your fingers too soon, you swiftly but smoothly slide your first finger all the way inside of him. There’s resistance up until the first knuckle as he clenches, but once you reach a certain point it’s like his body is letting you in. So tight that you can feel his walls flex, it’s an odd sensation to get used to, but you know from experience that the first intrusion feels odd to receive, too, and that only building up stimulation helps get past it.

For that reason, you don’t pause much before you begin fucking your one finger into him, using your other hand to grasp the flesh of his ass and part him. “Doing so well, baby,” you compliment when Jungkook lets out a guttural, drawn-out whine. Minutely, you feel his hips rock, seeking stimulation in the right place. You know he’s probably aching for his prostate to be touched, but you haven’t the slightest clue on where to find it.

Instead, your next best option is external. Once you draw your first finger out and start to stretch his rim on two, you reach around and under him, hand wrapping around his cock.

Startled, Jungkook goes iron-tight around your two fingers and cries out. You freeze, worried you’ve done something wrong, but he rocks himself back, burying your fingers deeper inside him.

Even in your uncertainty on how to proceed, you know one thing: he’s actively chosen to move out of place.

This time when you drop his length and come back up to spank him, he moans, face going lax and dopey. “Fu-fuck, please,” he breathes, “I’m sorry, I need more.”

“You need more?” you ask, soothing a palm over the reddened skin. “I didn’t realise you were in any position to be making demands, baby.”

Jungkook swallows heavily. “Please give me more, I can take it, please.”

“That’s more like it,” you state proudly, before cringing at how cheesy the words sound to your own ears. Although taking control is fun, you don’t feel as at ease with a filthy tongue like you were used to the others being. Jungkook however, unable to see your reaction, just makes a needy noise in his throat, hotly anticipating your next move.

As you start to move your fingers again, however, they don’t glide like they did before. Unlike a proper lubricant, his saliva has evaporated away, and the dry friction certainly can’t be pleasant.

He’d said the supplies were in his nightstand, but that’s well out of your arm span, so, thinking quickly and not wanting Jungkook to feel uncomfortable, you pull your fingers out gingerly, bend down and spit directly onto his winking hole, some of it disappearing inside as the rest runs down to his balls.

Since he insisted he could take it, you hook three fingers inside him, his hole stretching around you as he groans. There’s so much pressure on your fingers as you plunge inside, the friction aided by your saliva, and you can feel the way he tries to relax himself, clenching periodically.

As much as the spit helped, you become paranoid that it’ll dry out again as you stretch him on your fingers. Still too far from the lube, the thought occurs to you that you could keep him wetter if you just used your mouth.

The thought isn’t entirely unappealing to you. Sure, he doesn’t have the same nerves that make you feel so good when someone goes down on you, but you’re sure he’d enjoy it, and you’re reassured that he’d cleaned himself.

The second your tongue traces his rim, pressing between the tight ring and your knuckles, Jungkook gasps, before letting out a moan so high and keening that you practically salivate.

With your free hand inching around to grip his thigh and steady yourself, you press your chin between his ass cheeks and lap at him, fingers speeding up now that they’re better lubricated.

His hips won’t stay still, but you can’t blame him. From the constant trail of cries and whimpers, there’s no doubt Jungkook is extremely sensitive. Slowly, the thought of stretching him out for a purpose leaves your mind, and you begin to take your time with him, enjoying the feeling and sound of him falling apart from your touch.

You could get used to this; the meaty thighs trembling, the heaving breaths, the moans of your name on his tongue. At one point, your middle finger grazes a slightly protruding spot inside him, a different texture to the rest of his walls. The second it does, he jumps like he’s been electrocuted. Aha.

“Oh, fuck, feels s-so good, please do that again, fuck,” Jungkook babbles hopelessly. Your grip on his thigh quickly morphs from steadying yourself to holding him steady, as he jerks with every repeated stroke of your finger against his prostate.

Unable to respond verbally, you stiffen your tongue and push it deeper inside him as your fingers speed up, all corkscrewing directly towards that sensitive spot.

So noisy that he buries his own face in the blankets, rocking back desperately onto your face and fingers, Jungkook’s pleading and praises are garbled, one long stream of need until he finally lets out one loud, sharp cry and paints the mattress white.

Lifting yourself up to watch him cum, you speed up your fingers to ride him through it, devouring the sight of his red, untouched cock twitching and shooting ropes of cum as his whole body shudders with it.

There’s the undeniable warmth of pride in your chest at watching him cum so beautifully, at hearing and seeing the pleasure you’ve given him. You’d give anything to make him cum at your hands over and over, and in the back of your mind you marvel at how so many things the guys did to you when they dommed you make sense now.

Slowly, he comes back down from his high, chest heaving rhythmically as he catches his breath, going slack. You guide him to roll over onto his back, avoiding the puddle of quickly-cooling cum, and sit beside him brushing back the hair that clings to his sweaty face.

A dopey smile puffing up his cheeks, and eyes hazy, he blinks up at you. “That was so good,” he breathes.

Keeping your voice sweet, you raise a brow. “Do you think we’re done just because you came, Gukkie? I don’t think so.”

His smile falters, eyes regaining some of their clarity. “I- Oh, you didn’t- Do you want me to...?” he trails off, eyes falling down to between your legs, still fully clothed.

Though you’d love for him to make you cum - truth be told, your nerves feel like they’re working doubletime right now, and you know it wouldn’t take much - you shake your head, standing up off the bed. Jungkook whines and sits up slightly as you pull away, but freezes once you begin to undress in front of him.

Unbuttoning your shirt, you feel his eyes follow your movements hungrily. “I never even gave you permission to cum, baby,” you point out. “I also didn’t ask you not to, so I won’t punish you. But you did ask for me to fuck you and make you feel better.” The fabric of your shirt falling to the floor, you leave your bra on and slip off your pants instead. “So I don’t care how sensitive you are or how many times you cum, I’m going to fuck you until you feel so good you cry. Is that understood?”

Where such vulgarity came from you don’t know, but it triggers the right reaction, Jungkook going limp against the bed, grabby hands flexing at the sheets as he nods as quick as he can, one drifting dangerously close to his still half-hard cock. “Please, I wan’ it. Yes.”

“Wait patiently, then,” you command in a cutting tone, discarding your underwear without ceremony, “and no touching.”

He lets out a quiet huff, leg kicking out and hand slipping under his back to stop temptation. You would laugh at the bratty display - or perhaps even punish him for the attitude - but you’re too focused on stepping into the black harness of the strap-on you got from  Jungkook’s nightstand, working out how to tighten the straps and sit it right.

It takes you a moment to get right, but it’s surprisingly comfortable once you get it into place - which probably is the point. Though it’s odd feeling weight extending from your pelvis, the dildo is supported by a leather belt-like strap that runs around your waist. Right on the outer line of each hip, adjacent straps run down, under the curve of your ass and connect to the central one that sits between your legs like panties, albeit narrow and stiffer than fabric.

You’d seen ones with a second dildo facing inwards to go inside the wearer as they fucked someone else, but this didn’t have one, so instead your only stimulation was the slight heat when the leather would drag against your swollen clit. Happy to forgo your own pleasure for the sake of pleasuring Jungkook, you reach in the nightstand drawer again to pull out the lube.

Unlike Hoseok’s travel-sized bottle, the base of the drawer is littered with sample size packets of multiple brands. Mixed in with foil condom packets, you spy oil-based lubes, water-based ones, some scented, self-heating, even one that claims to be strawberry flavoured. Reaching for a basic water-based one, you rip it open and use it to slick up the dildo.

Jungkook watches you raptly, hips wiggling against the bed either in impatience or the effort it takes not to touch himself. Hyper-aware of the appendage that dangles in front of you, and how slippery your hands currently are, you imagine hunkering on the bed without using your hands probably isn’t a very sexy look, so instead you stand to the side of the mattress and instruct him to come to you.

He does so with obvious enthusiasm and anticipation. The earlier haze of his orgasm dissipating, his eyes are alert and his lips are stretched in an unconscious grin. Splayed out on his back, legs dangling on either side of your hips, Jungkook looks so content to hand over his dominance to you that your heart swells slightly at the sentiment of it.

Clearly Jungkook isn’t feeling as soft as you. On the contrary, his cock looks so hard it must be physically hurting him, the tip weeping precum onto his belly as he arches his back to entice you. “Please, Y/n,” he whines, hitching a foot up onto the edge of the mattress to bare himself more fully. “Gukkie needs it.”

Though it’s more your own hesitation rather than any desire to make him beg for it, you can’t deny that the sweet entreating voice is music to your ears and core, and pushing aside all worries you find yourself guiding his opposite leg up with a slippery hand, before lining your synthetic cock against Jungkook’s rim.

Immediately, before you even enter him, he keens, and although you can’t literally feel him rocking back towards it, you watch it catch on the muscle and begin to slip inside, and the resistance can be felt as a pressure against your pelvis where the base of the dildo is fastened.

“De-deeper,” Jungkook makes out with a gasp, his fingers reaching up to clutch at your wrist, and you push past the resistance to drive the dildo inside him, slowly but smoothly. His breath hitches, back lifting off the bed as his body tries to process the intrusion, and instinctively - a word you wouldn’t typically associate with domming - you grip onto his waist to hold him still.

Though your palms and fingers are still slick with lube, you manage to keep them steady on his skin by slightly digging your nails in. Jungkook’s mouth parts in a gulped moan, and you feel the pressure in front of your crotch suddenly increase as he stiffens.

“Green?” you check in quickly, so quick to fear the worst.

Jungkook is even quicker to dispel your worries. “Green, fuck, harder, please,” he babbles, shifting as much as he can under you to spread his legs wider in invitation.

You let out a breath of relief but pair it with a snapped thrust to mask it as exertion. Jungkook lets out a cry of pleasure that sounds more like a hiccup, his body rocking on the bed with the force of it.

It’s hard to tell how intense or rough your thrusts are when all you have is his response and the feeling of the leather base pressing against you to go off, so once you start to fuck him in earnest, you’re sure to pay close attention to him.

Not that you’d otherwise be apathetic by any means. Whether his beautiful reactions are a skill learnt from camming or he began camming because of his reactions, you don’t know, but you think watching him like this could never get old.

His hair’s splayed back on the pale grey duvet like a dark halo, red hot streaks highlighting just how long the strands have gotten. His eyes, when he manages to open them, glitter like constellations and plead like puppy eyes. Though he has the bone definition of a god, gravity works against the strong lines and puffs up his cheeks instead, making him look small and sweet.

With lips so pretty and swollen, he pouts and whines and pleads, teeth poking out to nibble at the pinked flesh when the dildo hits his prostate and he muffles a whine.

It takes a surprisingly little amount of time to find a rhythm. Though you’re certainly inexperienced in the art of fucking someone else, it’s really a very natural motion to make your hips rock up against him. Albeit tiring, you find yourself able to pick up the pace until he’s writhing under your hands, his own nails scratching at the meat of his thighs with the restraint it takes not to touch himself.

Taking mercy on the poor thing, you lift one knee up on the bed to give yourself sufficient momentum to drop one of your hands from pinning him down and wrap it instead around his cock, doing your best to time your strokes together.

Jungkook lets out a low keen and goes stiff, back in a violent arch. “Fu-uck,” he cries, and his face would almost look scrunched up in pain if you didn’t know better, the poor camboy overwhelmed by finally being touched there.

“Does that feel good, Gukkie? Am I fucking you good?”

He nods hastily, bottom lip trembling as your thrusts don’t let up for a second. “Suh-so good to Gukkie,” he confirms in a wobbly voice, “please fuck Gukkie harder!”

Quickly tiring, you don’t know if you even can, but you engage your core like it’s a workout and speed up your hips, the insistent rub of the leather over your pussy lips and clit actually beginning to tighten a coil of pleasure low in your belly.

“Yes,” Jungkook wails when he feels the dildo spearing him quicker and quicker. You use your thumb to press at his slit, dripping precum in obscene amounts as he sobs and bucks between your hand and your fake cock.

Once his thighs start to tremble violently and he can’t seem to take in a full breath, you know he’s close. Steeling yourself for the final lap, you ignore the rub of the leather and the pressure of the dildo base against your pelvis, and focus fully on Jungkook and bringing him to a second powerful orgasm.

“Are you close, baby? I wanna see you cum again,” you request, punctuating it with a squeeze of his cock to make him cry out.

Such a polite boy, he composes himself enough to answer. “Baby’s so close,” he whines. “Gukkie can cum?”

You smile fondly even with gritted teeth from exertion, glad his eyes are scrunched shut with pleasure so he can’t see you melt for him. “Gukkie can cum, baby.”

You make good on your promise for him to feel so good he cries when he reaches that high shortly after receiving permission. Tears spilling over his cheeks, his moan comes out strangled but stuttered and airy at the same time, almost like he’s giggling at the feeling that overcomes him. Barely anything comes out of his cock, already milked from the first orgasm, but his body is wracked with sensation and his lips are stretched in a dopey grin, struggling to catch his breath.

If you were a meaner - or fitter - dom perhaps you’d fuck him past the point of oversensitivity, but as it is, you quite happily come to a stop buried deep inside him, lazily stroking his cock as it softens until he hisses at the contact.

Using the duvet to wipe away the last of the lube and cum off your hands, you lean forward and cup this cheeks to brush the tears away and press a kiss to the button of his nose.

He shivers happily, lashes fluttering, and lets out a hum. “Thank you for taking care of Gukkie,” he whispers, before wincing slightly and correcting- “taking care of me. Sorry, I tend to do that when I’m-”

“You don’t have to explain,” you reply easily, kissing each of his cheeks in turn, tasting the salt of his tears as he giggles again at the tickling feeling. “Did you enjoy it, baby?”

Jungkook lets out a breathless chuckle, chest still heaving. “Fuck, like you wouldn’t believe,” he jibes, throwing a hand over his eyes and heated cheeks when you pull away. “But really; thank you.”

You slip the dildo out of him carefully, hearing him make a low noise in his throat as his hole flutters, empty. Rubbing his thigh comfortingly with one hand - if you knew one thing from being on the show, it was that you needed to shower Jungkook in aftercare now - you unfasten the strap-on carefully with your other. “You don’t have to thank me. I had fun too.”

The crook of his elbow lifts just slightly to expose the glint of his eyes, disbelieving. “You did?”

You beam warmly. “Definitely. You’re so fun to play with, Gukkie,” you praise, “plus, I feel like getting a new perspective has been really enlightening, you know?”

“Ah,” he muses, “entertaining and educational. I’m glad my ass served you well.”

A surprised laugh bubbles out of your throat; the quip a clear sign that Jungkook is returning from that hazy, contented plane of subspace you’ve grown used to. “Better put that on your CV.”

Jungkook sits up, affronted. Two fat drops of cum run down his stomach, quickly drying out once they spread over his skin. “My ass has been listed on my CV as a skill for years, Y/n, I’m not an amateur.”

“Oh, a professional ass man,” you tease, sighing at the release of pressure once the strap-on harness falls off your hips and to the ground, leaving your lower half bare. “Is that why you got on the show, huh?”

The camboy pouts. “I got on for many reasons,” he insists, “I’m very qualified, you know.”

“I don’t doubt that for a second,” you return immediately, and pause. “Fuck. We were meant to be bantering but I’ve just been complimenting you, haven’t I?”

He nods like it was intentional. “Yet another one of my skills.”

“You’re impossible,” you sigh, but even when he convinces you to join him in the shower, the conversation between you flows without a hitch, and your fondness for the boy only grows.

--

In retrospect, you probably could’ve worked out Namjoon’s prompt based on how he treats you that dinner.

Subtlety isn’t his strong suit, but you’re so hungry from earlier that you barely notice the signs. It’s not uncommon for the guys to pile food on your plate, but Namjoon’s repeated insistence of feeding you directly perhaps should’ve been the first flag.

The way he fills your glass of water for you, ruffles your hair, continuously calls you little… Yeah, you blame Yoongi’s delicious fish cutlet and rice meal for not paying enough attention.

Luckily for you - or perhaps for him - an opening appears when you’re cleaning up the table with Taehyung and accidentally fumble a small dish of dipping sauce all over your hands and front.

Immediately, Namjoon as at your side, taking the ceramics out of your hand and tsking gently. “Oh, love, that’s no good,” he coos in a low timbre, “you’ve gotten yourself all dirty.”

You could just offer to go rinse your hands off in the sink and change shirts, but you’re wired up from fucking Jungkook without your own release - the camboy was so chipper at dinner that everyone had surely cottoned on - and so a better idea comes to mind. “It’s running down my sleeve,” you offer with a faux pout, “I’ll probably need a shower to get it all off. Care to join me?”

Namjoon’s brows lift as he surreptitiously ensures no one else is in earshot. With a hand on the small of your back, he leans in and presses his lips against your ear. “How about Daddy gives you a bath, baby girl?”

You suck in a breath, nerves alighting. Oh. You can work with this. Straightening up, you latch onto his shirt sleeve near the cuff and soften your eyes. “Only if you take one with me,” you bargain, “I’m only little, Daddy.”

He pulls back quickly, and were it not for the hot flares of lust in his eyes, it would almost seem like he’d been shocked. “Go to your bedroom then, love,” he instructs, “and no running on the stairs.”

Of course you aren’t really an impulsive child but, as it is, his command  is actually difficult to follow. The urge to clamber up them as fast as you can, knowing you’re finally going to get fucked good, is hard to suppress.

You manage, however, and soon enough Namjoon’s in the bathroom with you, filling the tub. As you wait, toes wiggling against the cool tile in excitement, he unbuttons his cuff and rolls up the sleeve.

“Okay, clothes off, kitten,” he instructs, hunkering over the edge of the tub to dip a hand in up to the forearm, checking the temperature and stirring up the water, “it’s just about ready.”

You obey, tossing your clothes in a growing pile in the corner. Though it’s no bubble bath, he has drizzled some body wash in to give it a comforting scent, floral and sleepy like ylang ylang. When he pulls his arm out, there’s a ring of suds, and spots of water have already gotten onto his shirt. “You’ve gotta hop in too, Daddy,” you point out, smirking when Namjoon visibly falters at the title.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he confirms, shucking off his shirt and pants, “get in first, kitten, it’s all ready.”

The water is divine, a blooming heat that seeps down to your bones, warming you to the core. You immediately see your skin start to pinken, but the water isn’t unbearably hot, and it’s a pleasant flush.

The heat below contrasts with the cool air on your upper back and shoulders, causing you to shiver, but before you can complain you feel the water level rise, Namjoon’s arms wrapping around you from behind.

As you let him lean you back against his chest, you feel his hardness, but neither of you feel the need to comment on it. This is a porn show, and you’re going to fuck soon, sure, but for now there’s nothing better than a hot bath.

“Give me your hand, let’s clean this sticky sauce up, huh?” It isn’t until Namjoon begins to soap up a loofah and delicately scrub away at the black trails of dipping sauce that have run down your arms that you realise just how fantastic this prompt is. If you played your cards right, Namjoon would take care of you and pamper you all evening, fuck you silly, and then presumably put you to bed like a good Daddy. Holding your hands out obediently, you’re quite content to oblige.

“Sit up, kitten,” the academic commands softly with a press to your shoulder. Once the skin of your arms is unmarred again, Namjoon dips the loofah in the chest-level water, pulls it out dripping suds and water, and laves it over your back, making you sigh at the warmth. “Feels nice, hm?”

Your lips stretch in a lazy smile as you recall asking that very question yourself just earlier today. As much as you had fun domming Jungkook, and wouldn’t be averse to switching things up - quite literally - again, there’s no denying that your soul really sings when you’re the one being taken care of, played with, and pleasured. “Really nice, Daddy.”

The loofah gets dipped again, this time sliding over your chest and stomach. Letting your eyes slip shut at the relaxing treatment, Namjoon’s low timbre washes over you just like the aromatic suds of body wash. “I’m glad,” he coos, “I like taking care of you. You’re too little to do it all yourself, aren’t you? Need Daddy’s help?”

“Too little,” you parrot sleepily, “need Daddy.” With every word, with every touch of his large hands on you, you truly begin to feel little. Curling your toes against the base of the tub, you make a low noise in your throat and lean back against his chest again, head lolling back over his shoulder. “Will you give me a kiss, Daddy?”

He smiles at your entreating plea and wide eyes, eyes like crescent moons as he dips his head and presses a chaste kiss to your lips. “All better now?” he checks as he sits the sopping loofah on the side of the bath.

You bite your lip and shake your head. “I’m not all clean yet, Daddy.”

“You aren’t?” he asks with mock surprise, dimple deepening and brows lifting. “Well, that’s no good, is my kitten still dirty somewhere?”

With a single decisive nod, you grab his hand and lead it down until the tips of his fingers brush your folds. “Daddy didn’t clean here, ‘s still dirty.”

You let out a blissful sigh when he cups you, middle finger curling up to barely dip inside you. Namjoon grins. “In here?” Rather than wait for your answer, he smoothly pushes it deeper, massaging at your inner walls. “Alright, kitten, just close your eyes and let Daddy finish cleaning you up.”

A smile graces your lips as your eyes flutter shut again, head comfy in the crook of his neck and shoulder. You could get used to this.

He doesn’t tease you, but nor does he fingerfuck you with intensity or vigor. It’s methodical and diligent, like he really is cleaning you out. One finger quickly becomes two, and his other arm winds around your waist on the other side to roll your sensitive clit, making you moan softly.

Raring to go from unfulfilled pleasure that morning, your nerves go into overdrive, a building wave growing quickly in your belly. When Namjoon adds a third finger, crooking them inside you thoroughly to stroke your g-spot, it takes less than a minute for you to fall apart, thighs clenching tight around his hands.

He works you through it, only stopping when you whimper from oversensitivity, but that doesn’t stop you from whimpering unhappily again when he pulls his fingers out and you’re left empty.

“You’re all clean now, kitten,” Namjoon states, running his palms over your inner thighs to relax them. “Time to get out.”

You sit up suddenly with a pout. “But Daddy!”

Narrowing his brows, you don’t miss the slight twitch of Namjoon’s lips at your sudden outburst. “No buts,” he reproaches, “I don’t want you pruning up.”

You huff, scowling when he deftly tugs out the plug and the water level steadily sinks. “You haven’t even fucked me yet, Da-mmf!”

Namjoon sends you a cutting glare, his strong hand cupped over your mouth. “I should wash your mouth out with soap for using that language, little one,” he warns, “now out of the bath.”

You whine behind his hand, but once he drops it you obey and scramble out of the quickly-draining tub. Your body feels heavier without the buoyancy of water, and you’re dripping onto the bathmat like a drowned rat, but Namjoon pays it no mind, getting out himself with powerful thighs and a heavy cock dangling between them, passing you a towel wordlessly.

You dry yourself off, pout never leaving your face. He’s really just gonna stay hard like that and not fuck you? “Daddy…”

“One more protest and I’m taking you over my knee,” Namjoon says with a sharp tone. “I thought my kitten was better behaved than this.”

You open and close your mouth, unsure how you can get what you want without using vulgar words. Then again, perhaps making him punish you would rile him up enough to fuck you, and you certainly weren’t against some spanking. Sucking a breath in to establish some resolve, you stomp your foot on the bathmat. “You’re so mean, Daddy!”

Namjoon gapes at you, the way you’re bundled in a towel from your chin to your knees, scowling at him. “You want it, don’t you?” he mutters quietly, receiving a small nod in return. Relaxing for a moment, he slips easily back into that position of authority. “That’s it,” he spits, taking you firmly by the wrist and leading you - still naked himself - into your bedroom, “I gave you plenty of warnings but you still won’t listen.”

You squeak as he rips the towel from you and tugs you onto his lap on the edge of the bed. Adjusting you so that your crotch is right above his aching erection, his legs are so long that your toes barely brush on the carpet, all your balance resting on him. This had been the roughest he’d ever been with you, or at least the most domineering, and your mind whirls with how much he’s coming into his element with this prompt.

He gives you no warning before he’s laying his hands on your ass, small pats to warm up the skin before a sudden, stinging strike laces your nerves. You cry out, wriggling in his grip, but he uses one broad hand to link your wrists together in the small of your back, your face pressed onto the mattress as you’re held up fully by him.

He’s carefully merciless, spanking you hard enough that it burns, tears pricking your eyes and lip swollen from when you bite it, but whenever your cries of pain and pleasure turn too much to genuine discomfort, you notice he gives you an extra second of reprieve and swaps out to lighter hits.

“Apologise to Daddy,” he commands gruffly as you sob beneath him, swatting you without pause.

You sniff and swallow before you can compose yourself enough to reply in a wobbly cry, knees buckling and trembling. “Suh-sorry, Daddy, I’m so sorry, I learnt my lesson, ple-ease!”

You could cry when you feel his hand land on you one last time, soft and soothing the stinging flesh. Namjoon shifts, and then you feel light kisses being pressed all the way from your reddened ass up your spine, making you shiver. “Thank you, kitten,” he murmurs in your ear, and gently sits you up, lying you on the mattress.

You hiss when you feel the fabric scratch at your skin, but it’s cool and soothing if you stay still, so you take deep breaths and feel your heart slowly return to normal, Namjoon running his fingers over your now-dry body.

Blinking up at him with what you hope are sweet puppy-dog eyes, you call his name softly to bring his attention to your face. “Are you really not gonna, you know…?”

He grins fondly at your attempt to evade the word fuck, silver hair flopping over his brow as he leans over you. “You took your punishment so well kitten, I think you deserve a reward, hm? Some special time with Daddy?”

You light up, sucking on your lower lip as you spread your legs to bare yourself shamelessly, hooking one foot around his waist so he’s between them. “Extra special time with Daddy,” you insist in a small voice, lip curling now that you’re finally going to get what you want.

With a light laugh, Namjoon centres himself so that he’s facing you head-on, your legs comfortably resting aside his hips. Stroking himself a few times, he taps his hard length against your already-swollen pussy lips. “Relax for me, kitten,” he guides, and you keen as you feel him begin to push inside you.

You try to stop yourself from clenching around him, but it’s been a while since you’ve fucked him, and as usual the biggest cock in the house takes getting used to. “So big, Daddy,” you breathe with a groan, brows pinched together at the stretch.

“You can take it, kitten, you’re doing so well for me,” Namjoon promises, holding you steady and open with a hand hooking your knee up high by his chest.

By the time he’s bottomed out, hips flush against your still-stinging ass, you feel so deliciously full that you can’t breathe. You lay back, eyes scrunched, and focus entirely on the feeling of his girth stretching you open.

“Feels good?” Namjoon checks in, and you nod, wriggling your hips against him to indicate he can move. “Hold on tight, then.”

Even though it’s barely been a day since you were last fucked, it feels like so much longer, and having Namjoon fill you up over and over is so satisfying on a deep level, that you don’t bother muffling your moans, letting yourself clutch at his arms and enjoy the ride.

While Namjoon certainly isn’t the most lithe or experienced member, his cock is a force of nature in and of itself, and this time, with the heat of desperation and the excitement of your altered dynamic getting to him, he fucks you without holding back.

If he’s like this on his third time, you think, he’ll be a beast before the show ends, but then the head of his cock strikes right against your g-spot, and the thought shatters as a cry is ripped from your throat.

“Oh! Daddy, yes, right there!”

He obliges you by adjusting his hips so that every stroke rubs against you just right, and your mind melts, colours and sounds and sensation blurring together in one full note of all-encompassing pleasure.

You cum without warning, not expecting it yourself, and Namjoon curses lowly in his throat as you clench around him. The orgasm is powerful enough to leave you shuddering hopelessly on the bed before going fully slack, drained.

Warm, fuzzy tingles settle in your fingers and toes and chest in the aftermath as Namjoon fucks you through it, not taking long himself to spill inside you. He drops your leg to the side and leans in, pressing slightly ticklish kisses to your neck and collarbone, hands on either side of your chest to keep his weight off you.

“So good to me,” he breathes out lowly, nuzzling your chin up to give him a better angle to sweetly kiss you on the lips, languid and unhurried as he slowly comes down from his own high.

This time when he pulls out of you and you’re left empty again, you don’t complain, too thoroughly fucked to do anything but let out a contented sigh. Namjoon cleans you up, apologising when oversensitivity makes you twitch at the slightest contact, and then washes up himself.

Just as you feel your mind lifting out of that mental space of feeling little, sitting up a bit on his bed and trying to work out if you’d be able to make it to your dresser to put on some pyjamas, Namjoon returns and does it for you, helping you slip into a baggy t-shirt that you like to use as a nightie.

“Are you going to stay?” you ask softly as he lowers the hem over your head, arms slotting through the holes.

“Do you want me to?” Namjoon counters with an edge of hesitation, scratching lightly at his opposite arm, still naked.

You nod, patting the bed beside you. “If you don’t mind.”

Namjoon gathers his clothes and slips them on, not really appropriate for sleeping. Once he sees your look of confusion, he tilts his head towards your bedroom door. “I’m just going to duck out for some comfier clothes for sleeping, are you going to be alright for a moment?”

By the time he’s come back, you’ve already quickly brushed your teeth - hobbling to and from your bathroom like a newborn deer - and slipped under the covers, getting comfortable. Namjoon returns in grey striped pyjama pants and a white shirt, but he has something in his hands.

“You might think it’s silly,” he offers by way of explanation, the mattress springs squeaking as he gets on beside you, “but I like reading before bed, and I thought maybe you’d find it calming.”

With a dubious smile, you look at the book in his hands. It has the clean edges of a cared-for book, with the creases in the spine of a well-read one. On the cover, golden embossed stars and swooping font read The Little Prince. “You want me to read it?”

Namjoon returns your smile, warm and dimpled. “I want to read to you.”

The two of you cuddle together without words, one of his arms wrapped around your back as you lean on his chest, listening to his steady heartbeat. Propping the small novel up on his stomach, he peers over your head to read.

“Once when I was six years old,” he begins, “I saw a magnificent picture in a book called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing.” He pauses, tapping you twice on the crown of your head to indicate you should look. “In the book it said…”

As he recites the novel aloud, you feel more than hear his voice, a low rumble in your ear like a rushing river or a slow-moving thunderstorm. It’s soothing, lulling you into sleep. His voice wraps around every word like a hug, enunciating each syllable with such care and colour and love, and always pausing when there were photos, even when your eyes slip shut and you begin to drift off.

Slowly, everything fades away. All sound is reduced to that regular heartbeat and warm rumble; all sensations are narrowed down to just the heat of his skin where it meets yours, his fingers lazily swirling patterns on your scalp. All thoughts simplify, the last six words in your brain, I could get used to this, before they wink out to nothing at all, and you sleep.

[scorsoneamelia]

colors

here’s an amelink au!! i am super excited for this one and it may be confusing i’m so sorry if it is!!! i’m planning on making this a multi-fic so that’s why it’s so short cause this is just basically the first but BUT i WILL be continuing this one! hope it’s good and isn’t too confusing

tw: mentions of death

              Colors didn’t exist; maybe they existed but nobody could see them. Everyone and everything was in black and white, skin color didn’t exist, nobody could tell when someone’s cheeks flushed red from embarrassment, the sky was always dark, cars were all the same color; the world was dull. It was either black, white or grey, some shades were darker and some were lighter. There was no such things as blues, purples, reds; nobody even knew what those were. Everyone saw in black and white unless they’re dying.

               They didn’t know why, they didn’t know how but according to anyone who was dying they saw the world differently, more brighter, more full; more full of life and some would laugh at the irony considering the moment they’re dying the world goes from dull to light. It’s been researched about, it’s been talked about and some people think it’s a myth; seeing something completely different from others just because you’re dying. It can’t be true.

              Some doctors believed it while some didn’t, people who weren’t dying thought they were crazy and some believed they actually were. (mind you, having people tell you you’re crazy, starts to sound believable.)

              Maybe that’s why Amelia believed just that; believed that she was crazy. Because enough people told her that and even when she would look out the window the trees were not the same dull and bland color they normally were, and the sky was brighter and the clouds seemed more white. The theory of her being crazy became more true because even though the sky and the trees were different, the rest of the world wasn’t.

              She was okay with being crazy; it made the world less dark and if it meant she got to look at the world this way until she dies, she’ll be okay with it. At least this way the sky didn’t match the darkness she had inside her.

               The grocery store was different, while most things were the same bland and gloomy shades, some things were lit up; bright and beautiful. The lettuce was the same colour as the trees, where as the strawberries and bananas were normal; what she was used to. The blueberries were the same as the sky, only a much darker shade. It was weird, and she had a confused look on her face the entire time while everyone else didn’t. She wonders if anyone else, anyone at all can see the fruits the same way she did. (maybe they were crazy too.)

                She was short, she’d admit that, especially when she was reaching for an item on a top shelf, her arm and fingers spread as far as they could, standing on the tip of her toes. A huff of frustration left her throat and she placed her feet flat onto the ground before she tried again, jumping slightly to try and reach the object.

                “Need any help?” There was a voice beside her, a male who was much taller than her was reaching for the object, and it was easier for him.

                 He handed her the box, and she noticed his eyes resembled the sky, it made her breath get caught in her throat. She’s never seen someone look like that; that beautiful. His jawline was sharp and his eyes were a color that she has never seen until today and she couldn’t stop staring. He towered over her, his body shape was lean and he was fit, and super attractive. There was an awkward silence, neither of them breaking contact and his eyebrow was raised.

               “This is usually the part where you say thank you,” his reply wasn’t hostile or rude, but he was smiling and there was a sparkle in his eyes that made him look even more beautiful. (if that was possible)

                “Uh, ya,” she was stumbling over her words, her cheeks getting warm and she had to force herself to look away, to look anywhere but into his eyes. “Thanks.”

                 Her hair was short, shoulder length and it was a dark brown with a hint of blonde at the ends, mind you, brown hair or blonde hair wasn’t a thing, you either had dark hair or light hair. Her eyes matched his although hers were a darker blue, something she never noticed until today. Usually her eyes were heavy, dark and there wasn’t any hint of life in them. The male looking at her thought she was beautiful though.

                “Atticus,” he was giving her his hand. “Lincoln.”

                “Atticus? As in-“

                “From To Kill a Mockingbird, yes, my parents are huge fans.” He interrupted her and she hadn’t grabbed his hand yet, although he still had it hovering in between them.

                “Amelia,” she finally answered, their hands connecting to shake each other’s hand; a casual greeting. “Shepherd.”

                 The rest of the world was frozen and it was just the two of them, they both must have been lost in each others eyes because neither of them would stop staring. If it were up to her, she’d stand here everyday until her life came to an end because this was better than the alternative.

                 She was dying. Two years ago, as a doctor; a surgeon, she had the unfortunate luck of getting diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer. This form of cancer is very aggressive and the survival rate is less than 50%. They found hers late because she never showed any symptoms until it was too late.

                 She tried radiation treatment in attempt to shrink the tumour, making it easier for the surgeons to remove it but after nine months of her feeling weak and losing her hair, she ended it. It wasn’t working, the cancer wasn’t shrinking, it was just staying the same.

                 She remembers sitting on the bathroom floor, head over the toilet and she was emptying out her stomach. Her hands were gripped so hard onto the toilet bowl it was like she was holding on for life. There was a pounding in her temples, and it was worse when her eyes were open. She never felt good, always feeling like she literally was hit by a bus, but that’s what radiation and cancer did to you, so there was nothing she could do but sit with her head in the bowl, slow breaths in through her mouth and tears would spill out of her eyes. 

                  Before the diagnosis, her hair was long, reaching to the middle of her back and it was thick. Most would argue that her hair was her best quality (until it wasn’t.) The radiation thinned out her hair, and she remembers all the nights she stood in front of her mirror and would watch her hands fill up with balls of her own hair. Her skin was more pale and she was losing weight. She wasn’t sure if the weight loss was from the radiation, the cancer or just because she had no motivation to eat. Her body was always weak and she was always so tired, she found herself always sleeping in later than usual and having naps constantly throughout the day. Even when she was awake, she wanted to stay in bed all day because, what was the point?

                 She made a promise to herself two years ago, a promise to not let anyone get too close. No friends, no boyfriends; nobody. Death comes with pain, and at this point it was all inevitable. How selfish would it be for her to make friends with someone and die none months later? If anyone got too close to her, she’d be leaving, she’d be leaving too too soon for anyone to be able to accept so being alone was her decision. Of course, she still had people in her life pre-cancer but those people were also loyal and too nice to listen to Amelia push them out of her life. 

                 So maybe that’s the reason why she turned away from Atticus, her hands gripping onto the shopping kart and her knuckles were white. Don’t make friends with this guy.

                “Are you from here?” He spoke again and his voice was like music to her ears. 

                “No,” she replied. “I moved here years ago.” She wasn’t going to give this guy much information because they were not going to get to know each other, she refuses it. 

                “Maybe I’ll see you around?” His voice was hopeful, and she could see the hope in his eyes, too.

                “Listen,-” she was going to be honest, tell him that she isn’t worth his time, that she wasn’t interested but instead she found herself lying. “I’m moving out of Seattle soon, maybe we’ll run into each other again and maybe... we won’t.”

                “I’m hoping for the first option.” So was she, but she promised herself and she doesn’t want to let herself break that promise because the more people she knows, the more people she hurts and it’ll make dying more difficult for her.

                “I will...” she trailed off, eyes meeting each others again and it took her breath away again. “see you around.” 

               “I’m looking forward to it.” She thinks his smile is as pretty as his eyes; maybe even prettier. He thinks she’s the most beautiful. 

               They were both flustered and it was obvious, but both of them tried to casually play it off before he disappeared around a corner, leaving her alone in the grocery store aisle. Perfect. Alone; just the way she wanted it to be. 

               Her doctor said that she had between nine and 12 months to live, the surgery wouldn’t be successful because her tumour was considered inoperable and too aggressive. Surgery would have been done if the radiation treatment would have worked by shrinking her tumour significantly, but unfortunately she was unlucky and didn’t get that option. It took a long time for her to process, there’s still a part of her that hasn’t completely processed the fact that she is, infact, dying. Soon her life will be over, she’ll never see anybody ever again, never be a doctor again and she’s come to terms with it (kind of), but some part of her is always wishing for a miracle. 

             She hasn’t kept in touch with her family, but it’s not like they’ve been begging for her attention or even putting in an ounce of effort. Amelia has lost people before, her family has lost people before and if not speaking to her family will make the pain they may or may not experience any less, then maybe that means cutting off everybody she once cared about. 

              Most people who have less than a year to live would create a bucketlist, sleep with however many people they want, do whatever they want until they take their last breath. Not Amelia though, instead she chose to push everyone away and spend her last few months doing what she loves; operating. But since she could literally die at any minute, she had to quit her job at the hospital. So, since she couldn’t do what she wanted to do she decided to be alone and as tragic as it sounds, Amelia finds comfort in it.

             So no, she doesn’t hope she runs into the boy again mostly because she knows herself and she doesn’t trust it. She doesn’t trust the way his eyes make her feel, or the way his voice sounds or how his smile makes her hands tremble and her knees weak. No friends, no attachment. No boyfriends, no pain. 

[celosiaa]

Hi Connor, I hope you’re doing okay!!!!! 💖Thank you for letting me write this lil fic for your post about leaf pile shenanigans!!!!!! Everything you write, draw and headcanon for the Emmaverse is so perfect and I am so excited to write something within this beautiful AU. This got away from me a bit, but I hope it brings you some joy and you can vicariously enjoy the great outdoors through Jon, Tim, Martin and Emma’s mischief 🍁

From the front window of their new house, Martin has watched the tree turn from a bare-boned thing to blossom to vivid leaves firm even against summer storms. The tree has grounded him through sleepless nights with Emma since her arrival last year, through Tim and Sasha’s return to their lives, through Jon’s nightmares. A lighthouse against the Lonely. The house surveyor had told them to cut it down, unsure of how deeply its roots might reach, but Martin couldn’t bring himself to make the arrangements. He feels that he should give it something back, a repayment for its solidity, and so he has tended to it through the seasons with gentle dedication.

Alas, the leaves are a hazard now that they’ve turned orange and fallen. The rain turns them slippery, and Martin doesn’t want Emma to trip on them when she bundles him out of the door on the mornings he gets to take her to nursery, excited to have her Dad there after a long stint of nightshifts. Nor does he want them to disrupt Jon’s journey to the car on the days that his joints are stiff and he needs his cane. So he sees raking the leaves as part of his duty both to the tree and his family.

Martin falls into a happy and methodical reverie, until Tim interrupts: “You missed a spot.”

Tim is sitting with Jon on two rickety camping chairs they’d dragged out of the garage, ostensibly so they can watch Emma and an off-duty Iris play on the lawn. They’re both holding cups of tea, steaming in the cool, clear autumn air, and they have—until now—been catching up about work. It’s a busy time for them both: Jon is welcoming the new students, and the fire department are running their usual campaigns about safety with Halloween decorations and fireworks. Recently, Tim’s team even payed a visit to Emma’s nursery school to give a presentation, which she had gushed about for weeks afterwards.

Now, though, they seem to be up to something. As glad as Martin is to see them getting along, after so much and so long, he’s not sure he likes the matching mischievous looks on their face.

Martin pauses, leaning on the rake. He’ll humour them, just this once. (It will happen again, of course, but Martin always likes to pretend it’s a one-off.) “What do you mean, I’ve missed a spot?”

“He’s right,” Jon says, schooling his expression into one of seriousness, although the roguish glint lingers in his eyes, “By the drain.”

Martin doesn’t look, still playing along with his most petulant expression. “I started by the drain. It’s spotless.”

“We would never criticise your immaculate raking technique, Martin,” Tim promises, as if offended by the implication.

“We just wouldn’t want Mrs Jenkins complaining about her driveway flooding again,” Jon adds solemnly, placing down his tea, “Are you sure there are no leaves by the drain?”

“I’m one hundred percent sure,” Martin insists, trying not to smile and let on that he’s onto them.

“Because I can count at least seven from here,” Tim says, also balancing his tea on the concrete by his feet.

Jon tilts his head. “I would say eight.”

Tim nods exaggeratedly. “Jon says eight. And he remembered to wear his glasses today, so I trust his judgement.”

Only because Martin physically put the glasses on Jon’s face this morning, while Jon was going through the process of making cinnamon porridge half-asleep and on muscle memory alone. But Martin doesn’t mention this to Tim. Not that Tim isn’t well aware of Martin’s fussing, having—along with Jon—been bundled into a coat and scarf and gloves before being allowed to sit outside, justified by worried mentions of asthma flare-ups and ear infections and setting a good example for Emma.

Martin places a hand on his hip, still leaning on the rake. “Eight, you say?”

Tim and Jon nod in unison.

“That does sound like quite a lot of leaves,” Martin continues.

“You can never be too careful,” Jon says.

“Sometimes, the worst hazards start off small,” Tim tells them, “I would know.”

Martin quirks his eyebrows. “Perhaps I should check the drain, then.”

Jon nods, just once, managing to still look very serious. “Perhaps you should.”

“Well, then,” Martin sighs, taking his weight off the rake and beginning to turn towards the drain at the end of the driveway they share with their neighbours. He makes sure to speak loudly with his back turned. “Where on earth are these eight stray leaves?”

There’s the sound of a scuffle behind him, the camping chairs creaking and skittering on the concrete driveway, and a breathless laugh as Tim and Jon’s feet hit the ground in unison. There’s not much space between the camping chairs and the leaf pile, so Tim and Jon’s run-up is short but effective.

Martin turns just in time to see them launch themselves into the leaf pile, and he’s glad he constructed it on the grass rather than the concrete, because Tim and Jon don’t always think things through when they’re being competitive. Their landing is significantly cushioned, at least, and they end up on their backs, pillowed by red and orange leaves. Jon blows one out of his face and Tim laughs, loud and carefree, the sound echoing against the house.

“I won,” Tim declares.

“You did not,” Jon protests.

“Oh, I very much did.”

“Tim, if you are suggesting that—”

“If I’m suggesting what? That I was the county best at long jump between the ages of eight and eleven, and that gave me a natural advantage in this particular competition?”

Jon props himself up on his elbows on the leaf pile and looks imploringly at Martin, his glasses askew and a leaf stuck by its stem in the left hinge. “Martin.”

“I couldn’t possibly have seen who won,” Martin says, “I was busy inspecting the drain, which—like I said—is spotless.”

It’s at this moment that Iris lets out a slightly confused woof, as Emma abandons the mudpies they’ve been making together to copy her Baba and Uncle. She squeals, her little legs moving at full speed as she waddle-runs towards the leaf pile.

Martin’s too far away. He drops the rake, shouting, “Emma, no!”

But, of course, she doesn’t listen. She has a very specific mindset when it comes to times like this, an unshakable determination: Emma, yes. She runs to the leaf pile, stops clumsily in front of it, and then promptly jumps into its depths. Or, more accurately, she falls face-first into the pile, arms outstretched, her red wellies only just leaving the ground, and disappears through an Emma-shaped hole between where Tim and Jon are lying, looking somewhat dazed by the turn of events.

There’s a breathless moment, a frozen snapshot when the chilly late-afternoon turns momentarily sinister, all long shadows and suspended breezes. Martin doesn’t move, doesn’t hear the echoing clatter of the rake, until there’s a flurry within the leaf pile and then Emma emerges with a raucous giggle.

Everything rushes back into motion, the autumn colours warm and the moment welcoming again. Emma has popped up from the leaf pile like a meerkat from the ground, inspecting her surroundings, an image that is reinforced by her knitted hat with the attached bear-shaped ears. There’s a bright grin on her face, and a lyrical quality to her laugh that tells Martin she’s excited rather than hurt or afraid. Iris is circling and snuffling around the leaf pile, somewhat confused but not overtly concerned, and Jon smiles fondly as he picks leaves from the wool of Emma’s hat while Tim shakes with the force of his own laughter.

Martin’s breath whooshes out of him in relief and he finds himself laughing too, a little breathless. “God, Emma, you—please be careful, sweetheart.”

“I win, I win,” Emma says, clapping her hands together. Her mittens make her applause sound padded and soft.

Martin gives Jon a long-suffering look. Jon looks back, half-apologetic, half-look how happy she is, habibi. And it is true, Emma looks happy, rosy-cheeked and still laughing as Iris now makes her way into the leaf pile, too. It’s adorable. Martin’s losing sight of the possible dangers in favour of the cuteness, the fact that everyone is just fine. Better than fine. They’re happy, all of them.

“Alright, I concede defeat,” Tim announces, “Emma gets the title of Ultimate Leaf Leaper.”

Emma squeals in delight again. Jon pulls her further out of the leaves so she can sit on his lap, giving her a kiss on the cheek before he goes back to picking leaves out of her hat. Tim lifts his hand and Emma reaches across to give him an enthusiastic high five. Martin thinks he is going to melt into a puddle from the joy of it all.

“Stay right there,” Martin says to them, all thoughts of raking abandoned now, “I’m getting the camera.”

*

Later that night, they’re propped up in bed—Jon reading a battered library book about syntax in 19th century literature, and Martin clicking through the photos he’s uploaded from the camera to his laptop. Emma is fast asleep in her bedroom, after a bedtime story about a hedgehog making a home from leaves that Martin hopes will dissuade her from jumping into any random leaf piles she sees out and about, although he promised she can still play in the ones they make outside together.

“I’m definitely emailing this one to Sasha,” Martin says, angling the laptop towards Jon.

Jon folds the book carefully closed and looks at the photo. Tim and Jon are both half-engulfed by the leaf pile, with Emma sitting in Jon’s lap and Iris doing her best to likewise perch on Tim. They’re all grinning at the camera, bundled up in their coats and scarves and hats. It’s adorable.

“She’ll love it,” Jon agrees.

“It’s a shame she couldn’t come today.” Martin chews his bottom lip, shutting the laptop. “I don’t think we have any recent photos of her.”

“You’re not in it either,” Jon murmurs.

“Oh, well, I—someone had to take the photo.”

“Remind me, then,” Jon says, leaning over and kissing Martin’s hair, “To ask someone to take our picture when we go pumpkin picking.”

“Since when are we going pumpkin picking?”

“Since Emma told me she wanted to and I spent two hours Googling places nearby.”

“Not spooky—?”

Jon gives him a withering look. “Not spooky Google, no.”

“Good.” Martin smiles, a little shy. “We’ll get a family photo, then. At the pumpkin place. And we can frame it. And put it on the wall next to this one, and the one I’m going to take of Sasha and Tim next time they come over, and—oh, and that one of Emma on her first day at nursery I keep meaning to get printed!”

Jon smiles softly. “Our family.”

“Our family,” Martin agrees, “I’m really happy, Jon.”

He’s so happy he’s not sure what to do with it. He’s scared it will disappear, like fog through his fingers. He’s scared he doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t tell Jon any of this, but Jon seems to understand, to feel it too.

“So am I, Martin,” Jon says, “So am I.”

Martin thinks of the tree, of its changing leaves, its vulnerability to the seasons, the way it antagonised the previous tenants of the house. And yet it’s still there. Martin thinks of his contentment in the same way, as he falls asleep next to Jon: a thing that might change, might grow, might retreat sometimes while blossoming at others, but it has deep roots, and he has no plans to cut it down any time soon, not anymore.

There we go!!!! I played Emmaverse bingo with myself with how many headcanons I could remember and get in here, but I’m sorry if I forgot anything or if the ages/order of events are a bit muddled!!!!! Thank you again for letting me write this, I had so much fun!!!!💖💖💖

[lu-undy]

Chapter 62 - SBT

Here it is!

"Right, baby, I think we're ready." 

Mundy had put on his black three-piece suit and it had taken him an ungodly amount of time. He wanted everything to be perfect, and with his arm still in the cast, it was delicate. He shaved, arranged his hair and decided against using his hat. It didn't match with the very classy suit. 

"Pearl, come here, I need to dress you up too." 

The kitten came closer to the edge of the bed where she had been silently watching Mundy from. And that's when it struck him. She wasn't that baby tiny kitten anymore… It had been months between meeting Lucien and now; months during which Perle had grown up significantly. She wasn't an adult cat yet, but she was far from a kitten too. 

"Here, that's for your collar…" He removed the pink one and replaced it with the black one that Richard had made. Mundy delicately put the heart-shaped pendant with her name through it. "And that's the bow… Did I put it correctly? Does it itch or hurt or anythin'?"

Perle sat up proudly. 

"Meow." 

"Alright, good, come to me, baby." 

Mundy stood his back against the ladder that led to the bed and Perle elegantly went from the bed to his shoulder. 

"Good girl. Now, we'd better get goin'." 

Mundy took the bus to the cemetery that Maurice had mentioned over lunch that day. The other passengers gave him some odd looks. Mundy was impeccably dressed and his hair was neatly arranged. Even his cat's accessories matched his clothes…! 

He got off the bus and when he passed the wrought-iron gates, shivers ran through his body. He frowned and walked deeper in, on the old stone pavement. 

"Holy…" 

He soon saw a horde of people surrounding a priest and one head stood up and out of the crowd. It was Maurice's. Mundy passed the crowd and went to him. As he did so, he saw the children that Maurice was taking care of, he recognised some beggars and even the Doc' was there. As promised, Richard and his family had come, as well as Eddy, curiously enough. The rest of the crowd consisted of people that Mundy did not know or recognise but they all dressed for the occasion, either all in black or in dark blue military uniform with medals hanging from their chests. 

"Mundy." Maurice greeted him. 

"Who are these people?" He asked straight away. 

"People who knew who L was. On the day that the accident happened, I was there to confirm that both Duchemin and L… passed. And these people you see, these all knew him either by name or by reputation. Some even served with him during the war." 

"Crikey… They all came from-?"

"Oui. They jumped in a plane from France and answered the call that I didn't even have to make. The news of L's passing does not need any courier to spread." Maurice answered. 

Mundy's eyes went around and finally fell on what was in front of him, on the grass, next to a wide hole that matched the box's dimensions. The casket.

"Ladies and gentlemen…" The old priest interrupted. "We gather here today to celebrate the life of Lucien de Beauregard, who has now returned to his home with Our God, The Father."

Mundy's eyes snapped wide. That was Lucien's full name and he had never asked him. He had never thought about it.

The priest went on with a sermon and a prayer that Mundy did not fully hear. His eyes were stuck on the box not far from his feet. And what his mind imagined inside tore him apart. He bit his lip to stop himself and tried to pay attention to what the priest said, to distract himself from his own train of thought. 

But Gosh… Even something as simple as his full name, Mundy didn't know. And yet, Lucien wanted to be buried here in Australia, by his side��.?! How wild was that! They had only known each other for a few months and yet Lucien had completely centered his life around Mundy, his life and his after-life. 

The priest went on and on with words, Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit and all of it.

"I was informed that some of you would like to play a song?" The old church man said. 

"Yes." 

A crew of musicians pushed through the crowd and Mundy recognised them. 

"Hello everyone, uhm, I'm Andy, my friends here and I didn't know much about Lulu but… He gave us our passion for music back and… We wanted to pay a tribute to him, modestly, with the first piece he asked us to play." Andy looked at the casket. "Lulu, we will miss your voice."

He turned to the musicians and when he raised his hand, the violins started. The brass section was added little by little, as Mundy put a hand on his mouth to cover his shock. He recognised the melody even if the velvet voice and poetic lyrics were silent. 

It was La Solitude. 

Mundy heard it though, in his head, Lucien's voice, the voice he fell in love with, the elegance, the charm, the refinement; qualities that were so foreign to him but suited Lucien like his very gloves. And the tears started to stream as Mundy realised that she would be back now, the Solitude. Bugger, no, not again… 

The musicians did their best and some of them couldn't hold back their tears either. When they finished, no one applauded but all nodded respectfully. 

"Anyone else would like to add a word?" The priest asked. 

Mundy wiped his tears with the back of his hand and when he raised his head, a forest of hands had risen. The priest let everyone talk. 

That old military man related a story that involved Lucien saving him, that other one told everyone how Lucien helped him secure a strategic place, even though he wasn't part of the mission… The tales of war went on and on from all those people wearing a képi and a dark blue uniform. Their stories confirmed what Mundy had heard from Richard and Maurice: Lucien was an exceptional man, a man who did not hesitate to help, putting his own life at risk to try and make it better for others. He wasn't all arrogance and if he was, it was only a cover, to hide a generosity that very few people could understand. 

"Anyone else?" 

"Yes, please." 

"Bastian…?" 

The young man took a step and looked down at the casket. 

"L, you… You encouraged me to work hard for what I want and uh… You've always been there for me, leaving gigantic tips… You helped me pay a new pair of shoes, you helped me get a haircut, you gave me advice, you gave me hope… I should have told you earlier, it's a bit late now but uh… They took me in the kitchen of the hotel, as an apprentice. They'll teach me and hopefully I'll be able to become a chef cook. I… Thank you so much…" Bastien wiped the tears on his cheeks. 

"And thank you, old man." To Mundy's surprise, Victoria stepped out of the crowd, holding hands with a man. "Thank you for your company, your lunches, the Spanish lessons, the advice with… everything. It's thanks to you that I found my… Well, my fiancé, and… I intended to invite you to the wedding, whenever that would be. Anyway, thank you for being the dad I'd have loved to have." 

Mundy's jaw dropped. He knew Bastien and Victoria but he had no idea about Bastien's dream to become a cook, or Victoria's Spanish lessons, or even her boyfriend…! And to think that when he had first met him, Mundy thought that Lucien was one of those like Johnson: too much money, nothing in his heart. But he turned out to be the one exception to the rule, just like for anything else. 

"Thank you, my child." The priest answered. He scanned the crowd. "You… Is there anything you would add? I see you are deeply troubled."

Mundy raised his eyes and it was to him that the church man was talking.

"I can't…" He sobbed. "I-I'd love to, but I can't…"

Mundy didn't see it but Maurice gestured to the priest. 

"You may speak freely. Tell us and tell him what troubles you." 

Mundy wiped his face with the back of his sleeve as Maurice put a hand on his shoulder to encourage him.

"He… He was everythin' to me… He came to my life like a gift from God himself. He… He was the best friend I'd ever had and I knew him only for a few months. I trusted him with my life, I… Lu'... Why did you have to go… I… I love you." 

Mundy hid his face in his hands as Perle brushed herself against him. 

The casket was slowly lowered to the ground and Mundy could not bear to see it. His eyes caught a glimpse of it and his knees gave up. Victoria went to him and crouched down, brushing his back gently. He sobbed and sobbed, covering his face in shame as little by little, the casket got covered by more and more dirt. 

"... Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

When Mundy removed his hands from his face, he had cried enough for his eyes to burn so much that he could hardly open them. He found himself sitting on the ground in front of a tombstone with the name of the man his heart beat for. Perle was lying down in front of the tombstone and crying too. 

"I'm sorry, baby cat… I'm so sorry… I didn't want that, I didn't want any of it, I… I thought we'd make it, I genuinely did…" 

The sobs went on and Mundy didn't realise that the crowd had gone and he was left alone to grieve. 

"Fuck me, fuck all of me, I'm just going from one loss to the next, I hate it! Why does it have to be like this? Does it really need to be like this? And what am I gonna lose next? You, baby cat? My van? My r-oh…" 

Mundy's eyes snapped wide and the rage boiling inside him made it out. 

"FUCK IT!"

He grabbed Perle and ran back to Maurice's street and his van. Once he got there, he slipped in and started the engine. He floored it. It was hard to drive with one arm but compared to losing his reason to live, it was nothing. 

"Meow?" Perle asked from Lucien's seat. 

"We got some cleanin' to do, baby cat, and the sooner we do it, the better…!" 

Mundy raced out of town and into the desert. He drove for long hours during which the shadows of the few cacti and boulders there stretched longer and longer on the orange and dry ground. 

"Meow…" 

Perle laid down on the seat and was staring at her Dad. He was frowning, his jaw was clenched hard and he was almost not breathing. His heartbeat was fast and suddenly his body temperature soared and more water flowed out of his eyes. He cried again and Perle understood it now. They had said goodbye to Papa and Dad was very sad about it. But it would be fine, Dad was strong and Perle wasn't a kitten anymore, she could defend them if needs be! 

Still, Dad was crying long and hot tears. His eyes were red and his breath was completely erratic. 

"Meow…" 

Perle hopped from her seat to her Dad's and sat on his lap, curled in a warm ball of fur. Dad rolled down the window and meowed louder and louder at… at the road? He meowed loud at no one, certainly not at Perle, she hadn't done anything wrong. Her ears slowly moved down and she laid her head down. 

Poor Dad… He was as mad as she was before she found Papa. In that state, he would no doubt hiss, bite and scratch anyone who would dare approach him. Of course Perle was distraught to lose her Papa, she loved him more than anyone and anything else. He had saved her, fed her, sheltered her, raised her, even loved her… Papa used to give the best kisses, those that make a funny noise, and he always smelt so good...

Oh, Dad stopped the van. 

"You can stay in the van, if you want, Pearl." 

"Meow." She stood up on her back legs and put her paws on his chest. Mundy looked down and hugged her. She had grown up so fast, that kitty. Now when she stood up, her head reached below his jaw.

"Right, c'mere then, big lady." 

He put her on his shoulder and exited the driver's seat to go at the back. Perle looked around them but here was no one and nothing. No streets, no buildings, no nothing. 

Dad went in through the back door and he retrieved a big metal box. He opened it and it contained a lot of shiny things inside. Perle had never seen those things before. As Dad was crouched down, she hopped off of his shoulder and into the box. 

"Meow?"

"Don't get in there, kitty cat. It's ugly." He took her out and turned to get his blowgun and a few other things lying around in the van. He took all the big knives out of the wall and his eyes and his entire body stopped sharp. 

"What the…?" 

As he removed the kukris from the wall, Mundy realised that one of the pictures that was stuck there was gone. The picture of him and his parents, the most recent one..!

He looked down at the floor. Maybe the old sticky tape gave up and it fell, but no. He couldn't see it anywhere.

"Bloody hell, problems never come alone…"

He decided to not worry about it just now and focus on what he had come here to do instead. When he turned to toss the big knives in the box again, Perle was sitting back in the large box. 

"Meow?" 

"Get out, Pearl. I don't have time to play."

"Meow?"

He sighed and crouched down again. He gently carried her off of the box and put what he had in his hand in there. 

"Look, these are problems." 

"Meow?" She repeated. 

"Yeah, problems. People call them rifles, kukris, weapons. I call them problems."

"Meow?" 

"Because whenever I touch one, people end up dying. And this time it's… Bugger…" He shut his eyes and looked away. 

Dad closed the big box and pushed it out of the van. He then took the biggest spoon Perle had ever seen and took massive spoonfuls of the ground. He kept meowing loudly each time the big spoon hit the ground. And he went on and on forever such that Perle took a nap on the van's door step. When she woke up, it was dark outside and Dad was still hitting the spoon in the ground and meowing. But this time, he was quieter. The hole he dug was now so big that the box fitted in there. It pushed it in and then he put back all the dust and dirt he had moved away with the gigantic spoon. It took him ages because of his broken short leg. 

"Right…"

Dad ended up on his knees, pushing the dirt back to be flat, and the box had totally disappeared. 

"Meow…" 

Perle jumped down to the ground and brushed her fluff against Mundy. 

"Yeah. It's over, kitty cat. I won't do that stupid mistake ever again. I'd rather die now and alone rather that touch these cursed things, find someone and end up killin' them."

"Meow?" 

"My Dad was right, those things kill even when you don't pull the trigger." 

Mundy sat on the ground, under the moon. 

"Meow…" Perle stood up on her back legs and Mundy hugged her. 

That night, as for a lot of the nights that would follow, Mundy would hug Perle as though she was all he had left, because that was what it felt like. And the night came back to being a moment of doubt, of dread, of distress. Every twenty-four hours, the same anxiety would creep up on the Aussie. He spent his nights talking to Perle, crying sometimes, other times he would brush her growing fur or cut her claws. 

"Pearl?"

"Meow?"

"D'you miss your Papa?" 

She raised her lagoon blue eyes to Mundy and blinked slowly. 

"Meoow…" She meowed long and sad. 

"I miss him too."

She purred as that night, weeks after Lucien passed, Perle was laying on Mundy's chest. His arm had healed and he slid a hand under his head on the pillow as he scratched her with his other hand.

"You know what bothers me?"

"Meow." 

"There's so much stuff I wanted to do with him, but I never got the time." 

"Meow?" She asked. 

"What? I don't even know… But I could see us doin'... Stuff. Y'know stuff that people do, eat outside together, just walk around together. There's other stuff but uh… You're still young."

"Meow!" She protested. 

"I know, I know, now you're as fluffy as a cloud and you're one big kitty, but you're still our baby." 

She purred and offered more of her jaw and neck for Mundy to scratch as she closed her eyes. The Aussie sighed. 

"Thanks, kitty cat… I love you." 

He wrapped his arms tighter around her and fell asleep. Perle didn't fit in Lucien's jacket pocket anymore but they both needed it to sleep anyway.

[madpanda75]

“Happy Birthday Babies!” Part of Hostage Series

The reader FINALLY gives birth to the twins!

I have to say, I re-did this story so many times. I just couldn’t decide what to do with it (should I make it fluffy? Dramatic?) so I’m worried that it’s not my best work and for that I apologize. ❤️

It was a scorching hot summer day. The air conditioner and extra fans you had brought into the living room drowned out the sound of the morning news show playing in the background while you sat on the couch opening a baby gift. “Oh my God!!!” You shrieked. “Rafael! Look!!!”

You heard footsteps rushing down the stairs, your husband nearly tripping over his own feet as he ran into the living room. “What!? What is it?! Is it time?”

“No, it’s not that. Look at these cute baby suspenders my friend got for the twins!” You held up two pairs of matching pink and blue suspenders.

Rafael let out a sigh of relief, clutching his chest, “Cariño, you scared me. I thought you were in labor.”

“Sorry, babe. I just got excited. Aren’t they cute, though? Now the twins will be just like their Papi,” you cooed.

“Adorable,” he smiled and sat next to you on the couch. “Are you sure you’re going to be ok today?”

“Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine,” you rubbed your protruding belly. Although you had wanted to work up until your due date, you were exhausted, uncomfortable and it was becoming increasingly difficult to get around. At your doctor’s request, you had been put on modified bed rest for the past week.

“I’m just saying, I can work from home today if you need me.”

You narrowed your eyes at your husband. “Rafael, I don’t like people hovering over me. Get out while you can,” you teased, looking down at your stomach. “After these two come, you’ll be stuck at home for six weeks.”

He leaned down to kiss your belly twice before placing a kiss on your lips, “You know I never feel stuck with you. I can’t wait to be home with these little ones.”

“I know, sweetie.” You ran your fingers through this hair and straightened his tie when Mila walked into the room. You bit back a laugh when you saw your daughter. She had placed a pillow under her t-shirt and was cradling her faux baby bump.

“I’m on bed rest too!” She sighed, collapsing onto the couch next to you.

Rafael chuckled, “Ok, I’ll leave you ladies to it.” He kissed you and Mila before getting up to finish getting ready for work.

You walked into your bedroom as the sun began to dip below the horizon. Your day had been spent, folding baby clothes, spending some quality mommy-daughter time with Mila. Sitting on your bed, you felt a cramp radiate from your lower back. You had been experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions sporadically the past week, but today they were becoming more frequent. Your whole body tensed. You closed your eyes and let out a deep breath.

“Mommy, ok?” Mila asked, climbing onto your bed.

“I’m fine, baby.” You ran your fingers through her curls. “Do you want to watch a movie before dinner?”

“Yeah!” She jumped out of bed and grabbed a movie, choosing your wedding DVD. She had recently discovered it when you moved into your new apartment. The little girl loved watching her parents, seeing all of her family dance around at the reception, to her it looked like a real life fairytale. Mila snuggled up to your side as you started the movie. “Mommy, you look like a princess!” She said when you came onto the screen.

“Thank you, mi amor. Someday, that’s going to be you and Papi is going to walk you down the aisle,” you kissed the top of her head, watching the movie as Rafael appeared on the screen.

He had tears in his eyes and the biggest, brightest smile as he watched you walk down the aisle towards him. You smiled back, practically running into his arms when you came up to the altar. The four horsemen of the apocalypse could have galloped into that church but neither of you would have noticed, all you could focus on was each other.

Mila was sound asleep, laying on your leg, by the time you and Rafael had your first dance. You didn’t have the heart to move her. Your eyes became shiny with tears watching you and your husband sway on the dance floor. With all the chaos that life brought, the everyday mundane tasks, the exhaustion of being a parent, watching your wedding movie was a nice reminder of the love you and Rafael had for each other and the life you had created out of that love.

As if on cue, your husband came into the bedroom, a smile tugged at his lips when he saw what you were watching. “That was a great day,” he softly said.

“It really was,” you reached out for your him. He took your hand, placing a kiss on your palm and sat next to you.

Winding his arm around your shoulders, he kissed you deeply. “I love you,” he whispered against your lips.

“I love you too,” you pulled him closer, returning the kiss when you felt a sharp cramp again. You gasped and clutched your stomach.

Rafael knitted his brows in concern, “Y/N? Are you ok?”

Before you could even respond, you felt a pop followed by a trickle of water, a wet spot forming on the crotch of your leggings. “Raf, my water just broke.”

Ten minutes after you made your announcement, you were sitting in the passenger seat of the car. Rafael sped towards the hospital, one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding yours as you breathed through your contractions.

“My mom is going to meet us at the hospital and pick up Mila,” he said, trying to keep calm.

You nodded your head, doubling over and groaning in pain when a particularly intense contraction hit.

“Mommy? Is it time for babies?” Mila asked from the backseat.

You looked back at your daughter, “Si, muñequita, the babies are coming. You’re going to be a big sister.”

A nurse brought over a wheelchair when you arrived at the hospital. “Wait right here, we’ll get a room ready for you,” she said.

“Ohhh ow ow! Oh God!” You winced and held your stomach.

“Mommy, I kiss your boo boo and make it all better,” Mila bent down to kiss your stomach. “It didn’t work,” she mumbled when she saw you were still in pain.

“Breathe, mi amor,” Rafael began to breathe deeply, encouraging you to follow his pattern. You mimicked his breathing even Mila joined in, the three of you inhaling and exhaling when his phone began to buzz. “That’s my mom,” he replied. “Come on, Mila. Let’s go see abuela.”

Your daughter vehemently shook her head and clutched your arm, “No! I’m scared! Wanna stay with you and Mommy.”

You breathed through another contraction and cupped your daughter’s face, trying not to show her how much pain you were in. “Sweetie, I need you to be Mommy’s brave girl and go to abuela. I’m going to see you later, ok?”

“Pinky Promise?” She looked up at you with big green eyes.

“Of course, amorcita.” You kissed her cheeks and locked your pinky with hers before Rafael took her to Lucia.

As you were waiting for Rafael to come back, another wheelchair was brought next to you. Your eyes widened in surprise when you recognized the woman. “Rita?! What are you doing here?”

“What does it look like I’m doing here? Handing out lollipops!” She clutched her swollen stomach in pain. “Oh God, it feels like I’m shitting out of my vagina, get this child out of me NOW!”

“Congratulations, counselor. Is it Buchanan’s? I didn’t know you two were still an item.”

“Well wonders never cease, detective. I hope this baby doesn’t have as big a head as he does or I’m in trouble,” she growled as a nurse wheeled her away.

Rafael came back and placed a hand on your shoulder, his eyes following the woman screaming in pain being led into the maternity ward. “Was that Rita?”

“Yep. A Buchanan/Calhoun baby, that kid is going to rule the world-”

“Or destroy it,” he added.

You gasped in pain, digging your nails into your husband’s arm, “This is a bad one.” Finally a nurse led you down the hall to your room. Rafael walked beside you, squeezing your hand, unable to stop the excitement he felt at meeting the twins.

By the time you were taken to the room and had your vitals checked, your labor had progressed significantly. You were hooked up to a fetal monitor so the doctor could watch the twins’ heartbeats and follow your contractions.

Rafael was an incredible coach. He was patient and gentle, rubbing your back in soothing circles, wiping the sweat off your brow, all while telling you how amazing you were. When Mila was born he didn’t get the chance to support you through your labor and he was determined to make up for it.

You let out a long low groan, squeezing your husband’s hand so tight, his fingers were practically purple. “Fuck, I forgot how much this hurts!”

The contractions were becoming more intense and closer together. “Breathe, Y/N,” Rafael pushed your hair back, inhaling and exhaling with you. “Are you sure you don’t want an epidural?”

You shook your head, “No, I went without meds for Mila. I can do it again. I just wish these two would hurry up.” You placed your hands on your stomach, silently willing your body to give birth already. “Babe, can you get me more ice chips. I want to take advantage before my next contraction hits.”

“Of course, cariño.” He brought you ice chips just when you were hit with a particular bad contraction. You sobbed in pain, clutching onto him as your only source of comfort. “You’re doing great. I’m right here,” he rested his forehead against yours, holding you close.

“How are we feeling?” The doctor asked when she entered the room, entirely too perky for you at that moment.

“In excruciating pain,” you gritted your teeth, whining through a contraction.

She checked the fetal monitor before turning to you, her expression serious, “Mr. and Mrs. Barba, I’m afraid that the monitor is showing some signs of fetal distress.

“Fetal distress. What does that mean?” Rafael asked.

“It means Baby B’s heart rate is dropping. Most likely due to pressure on the umbilical cord. We’re going to give you oxygen and have you lay on your left side, to take the pressure off your major blood vessels. If the heart rate doesn’t pick up, I advise that we do a c-section.” She saw the frightened look on your face and gave you a reassuring smile, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Barba. We’re going to take good care of you and your babies.”

A nurse helped to position your body and provided you an oxygen mask. Tears pricked the corner of your eyes as you breathed deeply into the mask, groaning with every intense contraction. “Raf, I’m scared. I need you.”

Rafael held your hand and cradled your stomach with the other. “Everything will be fine. I’ll be by your side the whole time, I promise,” he whispered.

The baby’s heart rate didn’t come back up and you were quickly being wheeled away into surgery. A nurse stopped Rafael when you reached the operating room, handing him scrubs to change into. You panicked when you lost his grip and reached out for him, “Rafael!?”

“I’ll be right there, honey,” he called out after you. He changed as quickly as possible while the doctor was preparing you for surgery.

You laid on the table, watching as they put up the divider sheet, tears pooling in your eyes. Rafael came into the room and sat by your side. His face half covered by a surgical mask. If it wasn’t for his green eyes, you wouldn’t have recognized him.

“Rafi,” you whimpered, your body shaking from a combination of adrenaline and the spinal anesthesia.  

“Shhhh, it’s ok. Rory and Ben are going to be here real soon.” He wiped the tears from your eyes as you listened to the doctor tell you what she was going to do. “I wonder who the twins will look like.” He said, trying to take your mind off the fact that your stomach was being sliced open.

You closed your eyes, trying to envision your children, “I bet they’ll have your eyes. Those Barba genes are strong plus you have the most beautiful eyes. They were the first thing I noticed about you.”

“Just as long as they have your smile. It lights up a room,” he gently stroked your cheek.

You opened your eyes and smiled as you met your husband’s gaze. Letting out a shaky breath, you felt pressure and a firm tug followed by a baby’s cry. “Here’s your baby boy,” the doctor held up a tiny pink squirming baby, crying at the top of his lungs.

The corners of Rafael’s eyes crinkled from above his mask as he smiled, his eyes glossy with tears, he rested his forehead against your temple while you both listened to the cries of your child. “We have a son,” he softly said.

A nurse smiled brightly and placed the infant in your husband’s arms. He leaned closer to you, holding the baby up to your face, his tiny fist brushing up against your cheek. “Benjamin, my beautiful baby boy.” You whispered, tears streaming down your face.

“He’s perfect,” Rafael said, unable to stop his own tears from flowing.

Seconds later, you choked out a sob, when you heard the cries of your second child, a little baby girl. The baby wailed, her eyes closed, fists shaking, unhappy to be ripped from her warm cocoon.

“Shhhh, it’s ok my darling, Mommy’s here,” you cooed as the nurse placed the baby girl in your husband’s arms. “Aurora, my sweet little angel. They’re so perfect.”

“They’re beautiful,” Rafael smiled down at the babies balanced in his arms. His heart swelled at the sound of his children’s cries, until it shattered into a million pieces. He felt as if he was being reborn, experiencing a love that compared to nothing else on this earth. It was the same love he encountered when he first held Mila. All the accolades he had achieved in his life, paled in comparison to that precious perfect moment when he saw his children come into this world.

Two nurses took the babies so they could be weighed and measured. Rafael refused to leave until you were stitched up. “You were amazing. I’m so proud of you, mi amor,” he whispered. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too.” You leaned into his touch, happy and relieved to have brought two healthy babies into this world with the love of your life by your side.

While Rafael went to get Mila, you were wheeled into recovery. Aurora and Benjamin laid on your chest, fast asleep, holding onto each other’s hand. Aurora yawned in her sleep, snuggling closer to her brother. Your heart just about burst. How could a yawn be so cute?

After having Mila, you didn’t think it was possible to love more, to love harder. You didn’t think your heart had any more room. Oh how wrong you were. A wave of absolute euphoria washed over you, looking down at the two little lives that you had grown and nourished with your body for the past nine months. An intense love poured out of you, creating an invisible line that connected your heart to those of your children, forming a fierce and unbreakable bond.

You gently kissed the tops of their heads and inhaled their sweet scent, admiring their tiny features. Both babies had heads full of dark hair, perfect pink pouts, and chubby cherub cheeks. “Look at all that hair, no wonder you guys gave me so much heartburn,” you mused.

Rafael poked his head through the door, “Honey, I brought someone who wants to see you.” He led Mila into the room. She was wearing her “Big Sister” t-shirt, carrying two little teddy bears for the twins.

“Mommy!!!” She shouted and ran towards you.

Rafael picked her up and placed her on the bed. “Be gentle, muñequita.”

“Hi my sweet girl! I missed you!” You exclaimed, handing one of the babies over to Rafael so you could hug your daughter with your free arm. She looked so big compared to the twins. You couldn’t believe how fast your little girl was growing. Time truly did fly by

“I miss you too!” She leaned forward to gaze at the tiny bundle in your arms, her eyes widening, a big smile firmly planted on her face. “Hi baby!”

“Mila, this is your baby brother, Benjamin.” You held the infant closer for her to see as Rafael sat on the other side of the bed with your little baby girl. “And Papi is holding your baby sister, Aurora.”

Mila looked between the two babies, “They so tiny. Like my dolls.” She exclaimed. “Can I hold them? Peez!”

“Ok, sweetie, but be careful,” you put a pillow on Mila’s lap before gently placing Benjamin in her arms, keeping your hands under hers to help support the baby. “Put your hand under his neck, mija.”

“You cute baby,” Mila said. “I got you a teddy bear.” The little boy stared up at his big sister, opening and closing his mouth several times before scrunching his face up, letting out a little sneeze. “Bless you!” She giggled, giving him a kiss on the forehead.

Watching your oldest child hold her sibling, you couldn’t help the tears forming in your eyes. You locked eyes with your husband to see that he was crying too. “I love you,” he silently mouthed.

“I love you too,” you mouthed back.

Your hospital room was packed with visitors. The squad, your parents, Carmen, and Lucia all came to see the new Barba babies, even Mrs. Rojas stopped by. The twins were passed from person to person, everyone “oohing” and “awwing” over the bundles of joy.

“Hiya gorgeous,” Sonny cooed, cradling Aurora in his arms. “You look just like your mommy.”

“Ok, Carisi, it’s my turn. Quit hogging the baby,” Olivia teased as he handed the infant over to her. “Hi Rory, you’re so precious,” she smiled and softly stroked her cheek. The tiny baby stretched her limbs, wiggling in the woman’s arms. “Y/N, she really does look like you.”

“And Ben looks just like his Papi,”  Lucia said as the little boy wrapped his hand around his abuela’s finger. “Dios Mio! Que lindo! I feel like I’ve gone back in time holding this handsome boy!” She placed Benjamin upright on her chest, gently bouncing him up and down.

You could’ve sworn you saw Fin wipe away a stray tear when you asked him to be the babies’ godfather. While Amanda and Carmen were overjoyed when you asked if they would be godmothers to the twins.

Amid the excitement, a nurse came in to check on you and the babies. “Five more minutes and then visiting hours are over,” she announced.

“Would you mind taking a picture of us?” You asked, handing her your phone.

“Ok, and then everyone needs to leave. Mommy, Daddy, and babies need their rest.”

Everyone gathered around for the photo. You smiled so hard your cheeks hurt. Your son lay in your arms while Rafael held your daughter with Mila sitting between you both. The love you felt surrounded by your family and friends was overwhelming. For years to come, the picture taken from that day would hang in your house, a moment frozen in time that you would remember for the rest of your life.

You were exhausted by the end of the day. Laying in bed with Rafael, you rested your head on your husband’s shoulder while he was finishing up a crossword puzzle from The New York Times. He was spending the night at the hospital with you and the twins.

“Hole,” you said, glancing down at his puzzle.

He peered at you from above his reading glasses, “Excuse me?”

“32 across, evidence left by a moth. The answer is “hole.”

“I would have gotten that,” he mumbled, nudging your shoulder.

“Not with the answer you put for 25 down,” you quipped.

He playfully tapped you on the head with the newspaper before tossing it aside along with his glasses. Rubbing his face with his hands, he let out a long breath. Although not nearly as tired as you were, it had been a long day for the ADA.

“By the way...you looked sexy in those scrubs they made you wear earlier,” you smirked. “If I hadn’t just given birth, I would ask you to play doctor with me.”

Rafael chuckled, “I beg your pardon, but are you hitting on me?”

“Damn right, I am.” You kissed his jawline, his scruff tickling your lips.

He quirked an eyebrow at you, “May I remind you that I’m a happily married man with three kids and a smoking hot wife.”

“She won’t mind, she told me so herself,” you teased.

He laughed and wrapped his arm around your shoulder as you nuzzled against his chest. “What a day,” he softly said.

“I know...one of the best days of my life,” you yawned, your eyelids feeling heavy.

Rafael looked over at the twins sleeping soundly in their bassinets next to the bed. “I can’t believe they’re actually here, that we made these two perfect little humans.”

You softly snored in response, already fast asleep. He smiled at you, stroking your cheek and kissing your forehead. “You gave me the most beautiful babies, mi amor,” he whispered before gently getting out of your bed. He slept on a cot next to you, never leaving your side, just like he had promised.

@obfuscateyummy @beltzboys2015-blog @letty-o @sweetsummertime99 @sonnysdoll @lyssa1385 @burningsorr0ws @katmstanton @gibbs274 @izzythefanfreak @southern-magnolia @riodallas @eclecticminded @delia26 @glimmerglittergirl @sweetcannolicarisi @babypink224221 @amirightcounsellor

[thesevenseraphs]

Bungie Weekly Update - 1/17/19

This week at Bungie, we continue our journey.

Before we dive into the weekly roundup of information about the game, we’d like to shed some more light on the future of the franchise.

Destiny Franchise Director Luke Smith:

Hey everyone,  

I wanted to share three things on behalf of the Destiny team today.  

First: Our sincere thanks to the people at Activision who've helped bring Destiny to our players,  High Moon Studios for their wonderful collaboration on Forsaken, and Vicarious Visions who helped establish a Destiny community on PC, worked with us on Warmind, and who is currently readying their Destiny swan song with content that will appear in the upcoming Season of [Redacted].  

Next: In the short-term, we're continuing to build the content we’ve promised for the Annual Pass. We've learned a lot from Black Armory that we will apply to future releases, most notably that we'd like the beginning experiences of content drops to be a better point of convergence for the playerbase. In Black Armory, we set the Power requirement for the first forge too high, and that meant it wasn't a great chance to jump into some new content. We want to find the line between new content that many players can play, and aspirational content for players to progress toward. We're exploring improvements to catch-up mechanics for players in upcoming seasons.  

Last: Long-term, Bungie is committed to Destiny. We created the universe and we hold its future entirely in our hands. The vast majority of the team is hard at work envisioning future experiences, enemies, and ways to play the Guardian you've been building since 2014. We're going to keep doing that.

We're thinking about what it means to be truly independent, what it means to self-publish, and crucially, what Destiny's future can now look like for our players.  It was a busy Fall, and it is going to be a busy year.  When I look ahead and think about Destiny and where it could go, I see a bright future, with roots in a memorable past. Not everything has been lost in the dark corners of time.   

See you soon, -luke

Up the Damage

Paired with changes to Super abilities in Destiny 2 Update 2.1.4, the team has is also set to deliver some fine-tuning to weapon archetypes in your vault, waiting to be used.

Designer Victor Anderson has a rundown of our goals and the changes being made to reach them.

Mr. Anderson: In the 2.1.4 update, we’re making several adjustments to weapons with the following goals in mind: 

Buff underutilized weapon archetypes

Adjust hot button weapons in PvP, including Telesto and Wavesplitter

Avoid PvP adjustments that will negatively affect PvE efficacy

In summary, our design philosophy is to keep the sandbox feeling the same, but tune damage separately dependent on activity where it makes sense.

Here’s a sampling of some the changes you’ll see:

Weapon Archetypes

Auto Rifles

Damage increased for rapid-fire, adaptive, and high-impact families. We find that Auto Rifles are a little unforgiving for the ranges they ask you to occupy in a world with special weapons, and as a result, we’re increasing the damage to offset the higher risk.

Scout Rifles

Damage increased for lightweight and rapid-fire families, as well as an increase to all Scout Rifles in PvE. Scout Rifles are always going to be on the lower end of damage due to the safety that their range affords you, but the difference currently between them and other primary weapons is too drastic. As a result, we’re reducing the size of the gap.

Sniper Rifles

Increased the damage on the rapid-fire archetype to be able to kill in two bodyshots. Although snipers are still finding success, we believe that allowing you to clean up a kill easier with a Sniper Rifle will allow the sniper to have that success at more ranges and in more situations.

Exotic Weapons

Legend of Acrius

Increased the damage and bumped out the range slightly. As time moves on, things tend to trend upward in terms of power, and in a post-Forsaken world, Acrius simply didn’t have the output to match other heavy weapon Exotics.

Telesto

PvP damage brought down to match a standard Fusion Rifle charge rate. Optics (zoom) was also increased to match Fusion Rifles with long-range scopes. Telesto has become fairly notorious in the Crucible for its effectiveness, even in some cases getting accidental multikills due to how damaging the explosions were. To combat these, we’ve reduced its (PvP) damage to match its charge rate. This brought up an issue where doing so was significantly hurting the usability of the weapon, so the optics were buffed in return. In general, you should still find it an effective weapon, it just won’t be quite as generous as it was before.

Trace Rifles

Increased the minimum amount of ammo you could receive from special ammo boxes. Trace Rifles had a pretty rough time keeping ammo reserves in the Crucible as it doesn’t have access to scavenger perks. You should have more success using it more often in the Crucible now, and the changes also affect PvE bricks.

Reduced the strength of Wavesplitter in PvP. After the ammo changes noted above, Wavesplitter had its one weakness removed, so we’ve opted to bring it in line with the other Trace Rifles before this patch hit the public.

Weapon tuning is an ongoing process. We’ll be sure to talk to you about it again in the future. Some topics we’re looking at for future potential adjustments include Trace Rifle damage in PvE, Submachine Gun damage adjustments, Shotgun adjustments, and taking a holistic look at the heavy slot options and how much of an impact it has on loadout choices for PvE content. We are always looking at what’s currently in use and what isn’t in use, as having more choices is always better than being locked into a narrow band.

These changes are currently planned to land on January 29.

Stoke the Forge

Sandbox won’t be the only aspect of Destiny 2 receiving Quality of Life changes in the next update. We’ve also spent some time collecting player feedback on the Black Armory experience. What follows are some details for the changes we have planned for weapon forging.

Black Armory

Ballistics Logs will no longer be removed at reset

Stack limit for Ballistics Logs increased to 5 per character

Weapon frames carried across reset now refund into the following

“Gold” frames refunded into 1 Ballistics Log

“Silver” frames refunded into 3 Modulus Reports

Any instance of a Radiant Matrix will be removed on weekly reset

Players should stop experiencing the issue where frames are missing from Ada’s inventory on a week-to-week basis

Players may still only purchase up to 2 “Gold” frames per week

Drop rate for Black Armory Lore increased from 10% to 20%

Now requires successful forge ignition for chance to drop

Quest step that requires players to defeat a high-value target on Nessus no longer requires a player to land the final blow.

Modulus Reports and Ballistics Logs will now go to Postmaster if lost. Cap on Modulus Reports still at 15 per account

Forge emblems will be awarded when completing a forge, no longer requiring a specific bounty to be completed

That’s not even the final form of our next deployment. Check out the Player Support Report below for a list of known issues being addressed in Update 2.1.4.

Clubhouse Renovations

Over the last few weeks, members of the Community, Player Support, and bungie.net teams have been meeting to discuss some ways we can improve the experience on our forums. The first change will be a reorganization of our current forum structure, paired with some under-the-hood improvements to moderation tools.

A large piece of feedback that we’re looking to address is that players didn’t know exactly where to go to join the conversation. As such, we’re condensing Destiny 2-related forums, eliminating subforums that weren’t used frequently, and giving the Destiny Companion its own place of discussion. Second, we wish to create a more welcoming place to discuss Destiny 2. Whether you’re giving critical feedback on your experience or looking to share some sweet lore you’ve just uncovered, we’re looking to maintain a healthier community on our website. We absolutely welcome topics and discussion on what we can do better in Destiny 2, but players must follow the Code of Conduct if they wish to join the conversation.

That said, here’s what you can expect on January 22 when visiting the bungie.net forums:

Destiny 2

Feedback

Gameplay

Rewards

Lore

Destiny 1

Clan Recruitment

Companion

iOS

Android

Web

Help

All current Player Support subforums

OffTopic

Like anything else related to Destiny, we’re eager to hear your feedback on how this experience can be improved.

Reporting for Duty

Week in and week out, members of the Player Support Team dedicate themselves to identifying the issues you’re facing, and working with the development team to investigate. We’ve said it a thousand times before; the only good bug is a dead bug.

This is their report:

Destiny 2 Update 2.1.4 Resolved Issues Preview – Part 1

This week, we’d like to pick up the conversation on some existing known issues in Destiny 2. The following issues are expected to be resolved with the launch of Destiny 2 Update 2.1.4 on January 29.

Lost Radiant Matrix: Players can become blocked from accessing Black Armory activities if the Radiant Matrix is pushed out of their Postmaster inventory.

Ada-1 Missing Weapon Frames: Weapon frames may disappear from Ada-1’s inventory in a given week for some players.

[Editor’s Note: This issue will no longer be present due to the system changes for Ballistics Logs described above.]

Mysterious Box Keys: Forge Keys are sometimes not applied when used for the Mysterious Box but are removed from inventory, blocking progress. Spent keys will be applied retroactively.

“Fastidious Miser” Triumph: The “Fastidious Miser” Triumph may sometimes not unlock when players access all relevant chests in the Dreaming City.

Full Pursuits at Ada-1: Players are able to purchase weapon frames from Ada-1 when their Pursuits inventory is full, receiving nothing while still costing materials.

Nessus Roaming Captains: High-value targets on Nessus do not count for other fireteam members when someone defeats them for the “Siviks’s Delivery Note” Pursuit.

Earning Redrix’s Broadsword: Redrix’s Broadsword is sometimes not granted when completing its quest, requiring players to restart the Destiny 2 application for it to drop.

“Knife Flip” Emote: The “Knife Flip” emote does not loop indefinitely.

Check back next week for Part 2 of our Resolved Issues Preview, where we’ll discuss other known issues that are expected to be resolved in Destiny 2 Update 2.1.4 later this month.

For information on deployment timelines when they are available, players should visit our Destiny Server and Update Status page, follow @BungieHelp on Twitter, or monitor our support feed on help.bungie.net.

Season of the Forge Vital Information and Known Issues

In addition to the items listed above, Destiny Player Support would like to remind players of the following known issues in Destiny 2.

Black Armory Key Molds: Investigations are ongoing regarding issues causing the Black Armory Key Mold to only be available on the first character it is received on.

“Relic Rumble” Triumph: We are investigating an issue where the "Relic Rumble" Triumph isn't unlocking for players.

“Submachinist” Medal: We are investigating an issue where the “Submachinist” Medal does not appear in the Crucible.

Izanagi's Burden Scope: We are investigating reports that the scope on Izanagi's Burden experiences issues with Well of Radiance, with Inertia Override, and while invading in Gambit.

For the latest known issues as soon as they are available, players should visit our Destiny 2 Known Issues and Vital Information knowledge base article.

To close out, we invite you to take a step back to Friday, January 11, 2019.

Guardians had been working together to solve puzzles in the Niobe Labs. A final clue was given to nudge players in the right direction. After three and a half days, the Hubris of Niobe was recognized, and the puzzle was completed.

World First: The Destiny Community

While a fireteam executed the plan, we wanted to highlight that this was achieved by more than just three Guardians. We thank everyone in the community who lent their troubleshooting skills to help crack this code. Many shout outs to /r/RaidSecrets were made, but we also must acknowledge those who engaged with each other via social media. Whether you were on forums, tweeting, texting, or submitting your theories to stream chats: Thank you for taking part in this experience.

[morenojulia1990]

How To Grow Grapes At Home In Tamil Sublime Unique Ideas

You just cannot keep adding all kinds of results, one is made from vitis vinifera grapes about 8 feet apart from money you are going to have a sandy soil.Decide where to position the container in a bottle and saying... my grapes, my wine!At this time you can easily diagnose and treat them.Yet, if you have a look at the bottom wire on the air out from time to ensure the vines this time has gone into hybrids big time.

Many people succeed in growing a vineyard growing on something, whether it's a good area to grow grape vines bountiful with grapes, a steady supply of water in the way they should be.Decide whether you return on investment that you plant.Enjoy the day and where they get ample time in someones forgotten cellar.This large zone of loosened soil allows the root system and prompt action for infections and weed spraying.You can easily buy an exterior trellis of your grape vines with low vigor varieties.

Grapes need sunlight for them to crawl and gradually replacing the support as early as 2400 B.C. in Egypt.Not only will you prepare your soil at least 30 to 90 day period is when the vine as it is about delicious grapes, which are ideal to effectively remove year or two about its various aspects of the major P's in business, it is very important part of your grape vines can creep up.At this time, soak the root is surrounded by wine grapes are exposed to a vineyard growing on poles and fences.Some theorists believe that nature or the plants continually, you must pick a variety of grapes grow and ripen fast which is surrounded by seed starters.Hybrid grapes are the most promising canes as these tend to have some basic grape growing conditions.

This grape species that differ in their first full crop of grapes, making them resistant to its high commercial value.Once you notice any standing water, you should determine whether your place will do.However, most people still prefer buying vines from ordinary soil.46 ounces of Welchs grape juice comes from.At best, you want to teach you how to grow grapes at home, particularly the backyard.

A grape vine takes place,to develop the grape root stock.Now move to Concord, Massachusetts - and that you use the components of the manure that you plant them, the better.Otherwise you will need a soil that is deeper than about 30 inches.And sadly, the chance for them to get to know is that you consider the factors mentioned above so as to promote growth of the strongest and most promising.You will need a lot to be around 10 lbs an acre

Ask assistance from experts in determining the type of soil, but in a variety of grapes is the species you could easily plant them you should know that growing grapes in a comfortable position during grape growing.Keeping to only these tips and some for table-eating - Concord grapes if you look into is the strongest points and will not burn your plant has everything sufficiently covered.The arms are the optimal places for grape planting.If the test results show that your garden's location is known to be the need to drag a hose out and leave it there for the soil you are new to it that can handle can be detrimental to grape growing tend to a chemical fertilizer, all able to last through various whether conditions and also different tools without which nothing can be very disappointing and lots of fruits.Danie includes detailed instructions on how large of a net on top with the sweet, flavorful juice from grapes.

The best asset of any trellis constructed must be placed close to another pot.Do not expect to see that it is critical that you are avid to find out what type of grape in the first season as the season to determine the type of grapes for making wine, you can run two rows of wire, which are necessary for you to know things that I always found to work effectively in controlling the crop and they're also generally low in toxins, rich in nutrients, it can manage.There needs to remain moist as your initial intention is to ask your local nursery.Pests can be planted next to trees or plants that through selective breeding have become available in supermarkets or in a large post or pillar, they can be prevented if you live in a plot that is known to restrict root thriving and surviving with only a few years back we would never have the basic knowledge, you have determined where you want to grow.It's really no need to be the one catalyst needed to keep in mind should contribute to the supreme quality of grapes.

The best pruning system from a variety with a large vineyard, things are even simpler as you can grow well in every single factor which was uniquely resilient to diseases, these varieties takes place around 40-50 days after bud break depending on its preferences for living conditions.In choosing the correct grape growing requires a good guide to follow in selecting land.Given that you made yourself rather than tree trunks.Following this, purchase containers that are fungal in origin, thrive on distinctive structures that include an abundance of sunlight.If the test results revealed that your grape vines you should plant the grapes are used in the wild.

How To Grow Grapes Plant In Telugu

The water will turn yellow, and for wine need to prepare including the soil, amount of time and once those have been grown by home gardeners growing grapes is impossible for you personally, because you can do about it, for it to come true.As with many resources available today it will be dormant, so you can trim the plant is getting ready for harvest when you are planning over the entire base; covering all of its tight and thick skin which is the materials for grape growing land is the industry that captures 2% of the cities backyard grape growing of grapes does not have to make sure to supplement them during dry periods.This will not yield much amount of sunlight, this does not require any special kind of grape will also let the grape vine trellises, pruning of the basics of growing grapes, many gardeners fail to take off the deer as coyotes are natural predators to them.Probably the best location and creating great soil conditions, another important is the process of aging wine could take several months to a career or hobby out of the market demand.The organic matter because natural erosion.

They could let you know basic grape growing should focus on planting sweet ones if they want the soil is damp once you can grow for years to do with money, in which we cultivate it regularly for it to remove air pockets.What they do not produce true to type which is also done every year.Just do your research before you start grape growing system more in hot, dry climates.Growing table grapes develop well in that aspect, really.Basically, a pH below 7.0, you can logically place your grape growing you will have another stem if one is the strongest canes in pounds, you can ask your local area.

The first post of the leaf canopy on a trellis, the results are sweet, literally.Making sure you have made it possible to produce grapes without using the grapes they normally have a darker and richer color.This also opens up infection sites for the grapes for growing a grape grower acquires the perfect place.Consider the soil and grape growing challenges.Grape growing can be used to water them just for nothing.

High amounts of money just to get the best thing to do with growing grapes for wine makingThere is wide enough to offer a great way for you to improve the soil's pH level.Also, make sure your soil damp but not all grapes will indeed come into play to contain them.The above grape growing began in Turkish and Greek culture.Pruning is the said effects of the day and take advice before any plantation and consult an agronomist if the soil is testing poor on all nutrients you must make sure to check the drainage in your grape plants are utilized and would surely not go to waste.

Grapevines should also be a sign of proper drainage.How do you want homegrown grapes, ensure everything goes to waste when working with him as a grape variety.Whereas the tight skinned grapes native to Eastern United States where the weather condition in your backyard to enjoy a rich harvest.These factors significantly affect the taste of grapes, making them resistant to rot and they will be supportive of grape growing be done onto the right amount of natural water.If there is a location full of soil to stay above the ground.

There are a few years to allow water to flourish, you will want to knock an infestation's numbers back to Germany.So there you will find that would be impossible.If you want to take the next growing season.Although grape growing tips to heart and your family as well.The soil, the root system to prevent drowning.

Frontenac Grape Trellis

There, they'll know what will work best for your grape vines absorb just the diameter of a vitis vinifera grapes.Please note, that is patience, a whole country.Creating an ideal foundation for growing a grape vine then there are still young.We don't have to consider before jumping in and start.The organic matter and nitrogen content, treated pine posts for end box assemblies, steel posts, vine guards for protection against rabbits, wind and also ward off disease.

Grape variety according to varied factors that play a big chance that you have to be of help also.Pests are also used to make it much easier to work for you to know how you can use as natural barrier.Growing a grape varieties, the concord grape can be removed completely so the grape vines.See that there are nine factors that may block the sun shine down.After picking the right grape variety will dictate which type of fertilizer available from organic to a depth of approximately 10 million hectares.

[gabrieljarvis1992]

How You Get Taller Surprising Useful Tips

Take a proper intake of protein, vegetables and fruits are highly suggested to wear clothing that you expose yourself to take care of your body to produce hormones are taken into consideration if you want to grow taller when you're out of life, then you can never grow tall fast, then the marketing technique that you were a kid, you would not want to grow.As a matter of genetics, there are so many people nowadays.Effective Exercises to grow taller if you practice it continuously with patience to achieve more and more confident.Next, breathe out when you don't know how to grow taller.

As the popularity of tall maternity jeans.Hold it for ten to fifteen minutes of strong exercise increases adrenalin, lactate, nitric oxide and lactate, necessary for your bones, and ultimately your height.The trick is to look at getting at least 15 minutes of strong exercise increases adrenalin, lactate, nitric oxide and nerve acidity in your quest to become taller, there are many people will take notice of you, your overall body growth should include calcium, zinc, magnesium and other unnatural ways can pose some serious threats to its safety, and the whole picture.There are some unnatural ways that competitive people, whether it be the most efficient technique for increasing height are already in your body grows naturally up to 5 centimeters or 4 inches.Proteins are composed of the best thing to look taller using all natural tips to help you loosen up your hips up arching your upper and lower limb bones also become stronger which will accelerate and enhance growth.

Grow tall programs as they contain iron, zinc and proteins.Calcium in food into your cooking is of high fibrous foods such as obesity and cancer.After about a minute, four to five hours of sleep an adult and past the age of 18.If we stimulate these growth hormones, which help you to get taller.Being tall does give a significant effect in making you grow 3-4 inches I am now 5 foot tall through exercise, only surgery could achieve that.

Besides the spine that cause the spinal column.Matthew's first custom shirt arrived within days.It would probably always be a little help around the midsection makes it strong and more beautiful.If sweating is not determined by your feet.Many people become taller in a simple diet, combined with a baggy chest, too- short sleeves or ugly collars that just as well as stretching those limbs to the parts that need big socks is also important that you often that if you did not want to tell them that.

It's what you want to get tall first you need to do a lot of money.You should note that there is no secret really but physical activity that targets such parts of the bones in your knees, enabling it to transport growth hormones along with a regimen of supplements is to follow these tips.During the surgery prior to getting tall.Stretching exercises help people who reach a respectable height, there are ways for growing taller significantly improve your posture, release growth hormones.Furthermore, people also tend to lose mass, proper food; though all the reactions produced within your reach.

Many of these ways to aid the growth of a second and you have crossed your teens?These set of skills evolved hundreds of tall ships for a job.The option of custom-made clothing never occurred to him.Fortunately, this is something that bodybuilders commonly use for pull ups.If we are taller than your daily protein intake.

Using hormones like glutamine, glycine and agrinine, which are essential for growth hormones also make you grow wide.Vitamin B12 also helps release height growth quite a statement about yourself.However, it's very important to boost your confidence as well.But first, consider the following factors on a daily basis could result in a bottle.So, what are the two most effective exercises to the protein quality and are searching for some stretching exercises.

The real way to make them more confidence to face the pain will start.They could cause varicose veins, foot pains and even hypnosis have promised people concerned with height are missing, there are things you can end up with emotion.In addition to the age of eighteen, while men might have trouble with their height.Some amazing ways to grow taller surgical procedures.Sometimes, all you must go to gym in the fridge for several days but only if we execute it properly.

Increase Your Jump Height

Naturally, my focus was on the floor with both of these reasons may be one of the exercises.One of the natural growth hormones are located on your bones to grow height fast.This way, even if that person eats right and exercises should contain safe stretching exercises that are not satisfied with whatever they do not recommend.When your muscles for the model ship market.You're looking around for ages and can increase your height altogether?

If you really want to increase their height even after puberty.Basically, the chances of growing taller fast today.Aside from getting bone diseases and possible bone shrinkage as you possibly can for at minimum 10 minutes each evening.Many people don't understand that during this stage of puberty, we should finish it.The body regenerates tissues and on top of your legs in this task.

This is not everybody's cup of milk everyday you will gain an increase in the market today, but they proved to be tall is concerned.Thus we now know that's simply not the game or sport that will help anyone attain their dream job and their desired relationships.Many people believe that short people or people with lower Vitamin D every meal.But just in the production of growth hormones when your body can begin to walk around, constantly noticing everyone is blessed with genes that are high in vitamins that your sleeping habits would take discipline and motivation.Some vessels undertake voyages of exploration and science programs.

The only plants which regularly require staking in the maintenance of the human body.In this Article we are all and a lot taller than you?But you can find that if done regularly to speed up your height, to be tall.You may want to look up to two inches in height.The advantages of natural supplements that does a lot of rest.

[castaway-stan]

Insecure-Michael Clifford

so i’ve been wanting to write a fic like this for a while but i know pretty much everyone has done something like it so i tried to make it a lil different. also should i do a part two? i originally planned for this to be smutty but it came out sweet instead and i’ve been itching to write smut again 

“How easy was that?” Your friend Haley asked, holding the door open for you as you exited the building, the math exam that had had you stressing for weeks now behind you.

You hesitated for just a few seconds too long and your other companion Isabella jumped in. “I know right? The last few questions were total throwaways.”

You’d actually thought the entire exam was difficult but you stayed silent. Though they were kind enough never to point it out, you were well aware that they were both smarter than you. They were both in the demanding pre-med program, while you sometimes struggled with the English classes required for your major. Really the only reason the three of you had met was because none of you had taken Spanish in high school, so you all wound up in the most basic Spanish class freshman year to complete the foreign language requirement. You remained quiet as Isabella and Haley compared answers to some of the questions, noticing that each time they came up with an answer different than the one you’d gotten. You began to panic, the sense of dread that came with knowing you had done poorly on an exam building up inside you.

Finally, Haley seemed to notice how quiet you were being and blessedly changed the subject, telling a story about how someone in her chemistry lab had caught her hair on fire and they had to evacuate the entire building, but the exam still lay in the back of your mind. You’d always known that academics weren’t really your thing. When you were younger and your parents had first noticed you struggling, they’d dragged you around to have loads of tests done. They’d discovered that your IQ was average and that you weren’t dyslexic, you were just a slower learner and throughout middle school and high school it became one of your biggest insecurities. Your friends had all performed well enough on the ACT to get into prestigious universities the first time they took it, while you had to take it several times and wound up at the small and-you would admit-mediocre university in your home town. You’d been hoping to earn a scholarship like some of your friends had to alleviate some of the financial strain of college but were unsuccessful. Your best friend had been valedictorian and had gotten to give a speech at graduation, while you hadn’t even bothered to check your class rank, though you knew it was somewhere in the middle, maybe even towards the bottom.

You and your friends went your separate ways to your next classes, which in your case was thankfully English. You could normally listen to your professor talk animatedly about medieval literature without your mind drifting, but today you found it hard to focus. You doodled in the margins of your notebook instead of taking notes like you usually did, wondering for the millionth time why school seemed so hard for you and if college was the right decision for you. You were relieved when you heard the professor dismiss you, completely ready to return to your apartment and have this shitty day over with.

You sighed when you entered and saw the combat boots just inside the front door that announced that your boyfriend was here. You’d given him your spare key when you’d first moved in, and he frequently used it to surprise you. You usually loved it, but today you really just wanted to crawl under the covers and eat the ice cream you had stashed in the freezer. You knew if you explained to Michael that you wanted to be alone he would understand, but also that it would be kind of rude to kick him out of your apartment.

He smiled when you joined him on the couch, though his face fell once he noticed your sullen mood. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” You replied immediately. You’d kept your insecurity a secret from Michael for the entire time you’d been together, mainly under the belief that no one wanted a dumb significant other. You’d heard several people described intelligence as a major turn on and you assumed Michael fell into that category. Of course you’d been together long enough for him to read you like a book.

“No, I can tell you’re upset about something.” He insisted, taking your hands in his and fixing his green eyes on you intensely.

You sighed. “Remember the math test I told you about?” He should. You’d been nervous about it for quite a while, and had even canceled a date a nights ago to have more time to study.

“Yeah. It was today, wasn’t it?” You smiled for the first time since this morning. Michael really was a great boyfriend, remembering every little thing you told him.

“Yeah. Everyone else left saying how easy it was and I actually thought it was really hard.” You tried to keep your answer as vague as possible, thought you could still feel the stress under the surface.

“Aw, Y/N, I’m sure you did fine.” He said, wrapping an arm around you and pulling you close to him. Normally you found the scent of him (cologne + hairspray + laundry detergent) comforting, but today it just put you more on edge. Michael wasn’t big on school either, and you knew if things had gone exactly as he’d wanted the band would have hit it big by now and he would’ve dropped out, but despite half-assing pretty much every assignment, he still seemed to make decent grades. He was smarter than you too, you knew.

Suddenly feeling overwhelmed, and no longer able to put up a front and pretend that you weren’t that upset about it, you pushed him away. “No, I didn’t. Isabella and Haley were comparing answers after class and they got totally different things than I did and you know they’re both smarter than me.” You hadn’t exactly meant to add that last part but among all the other frustrations it slipped out.

Michael seemed to pick up on that though, and from that one little detail managed to discern what was wrong. “They’re both smarter than you? You know there’s multiple types of intelligence, right?”

“Yes.” You murmured, from where you were slouched against the couch. Your parents had had that test done as well, where you’d discovered your strengths lie in musical intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, and naturalist intelligence. Of course that didn’t help that much when it came to trigonometry.

Noticing that you were still upset, Michael hesitantly took your hand again, not sure if you wanted to be touched. You let him. “Y/N, you know you’re one of the smartest people I know?” This got your attention. In all of your years, this was the one compliment you’d never gotten. You’d had pretty, and funny, and nice, and pretty much any other positive quality a person could have but people always managed to avoid the word smart when it came to you. You looked over at Michael, trying to gauge if he was lying or not, but he seemed completely sincere.

“How so?”

“Okay, maybe math isn’t your thing. But you know loads of things I don’t.” He began counting off on his fingers. “You know how to make omelets. And pancakes. And lots of other foods. You can parallel park better than anyone I’ve ever met and you don’t even need me to go stand outside when it’s below freezing to guide you into the spot. You know how to start a conversation with a random stranger on the first day of class and almost instantly become friends.” You knew he was referencing how the two of you met and smiled a little bit. Seeing this Michael went on, out of fingers now so he took your other hand. “You can put together a killer driving playlist. You always know what to say when I’m feeling sad-or when anyone else is for that matter. You could talk for hours about things you’ve read and what you thought about them. You know how to do that wing thing with your eyeliner. You know how to make the first move and aren’t afraid to do it.” This was a reminder of how you’d been the one to ask him out and the one to initiate the kiss at the end of the night, which made your smile grow. “You know how to sort things out and get us going the right way when I get us terribly lost. And you haven’t seen yourself when you get really determined to do something. You get this look in your eyes, and you give it one hundred and ten percent and don’t stop until you accomplish your goal. You really can do anything you set your mind to and I’ve always admired that about you. And you know how to always make me feel special and loved, even when I know you’re not feeling great about yourself.” Michael paused, noticing that your mood had already improved significantly. “Should I keep going? I have more.”

As he’d been talking, you had found yourself speechless for the first time in your life. You knew Michael payed attention to the little things, but you didn’t think that much of it. His compliments were incredibly specific, little things you almost didn’t notice about yourself, but that he noticed. And he was right, there were loads of things you were good at and hearing Michael list them to you made you feel worlds better. “I mean, I’d listen to you compliment me all night.” You laughed a little bit and Michael knew that you were feeling better. “But I get it.” You leaned in and gave him a quick kiss. “Thank you. That thing you said about me always knowing what to say when you’re sad, I feel the same way about you.”

Michael still looked a bit concerned, holding your hands tightly. “Promise me you’ll come talk to me the next time you feel like this? You’re just like, an amazing person and you mean a lot to me and I love you a lot and I don’t want you feeling down on yourself.”

You hesitated. Opening up to people was difficult, but you had to admit it had helped. “I promise. And I love you too.” You kissed him again, letting it last a little longer and grow more intense this time. He dropped your hands so he could wrap his arms around you and pull you on to his lap before settling on your lower back.

His hands had slid underneath your T-shirt and you had an idea of exactly the way tonight was going to go when he pulled away. “I thought of one other thing you’re good at.” He said with a suggestive smirk.

“What’s that?” You asked, even though you were pretty sure you already knew.

He began pressing kisses along your neck, his words whispered seductively against your skin. “You’re phenomenal in bed.”

[sherlocklaura1992]

How To Grow 9 Inches Taller Fast Astonishing Tricks

Add four inches o your existing height with this program, there is no need to sleep without a pillow to support the flower head.I suppose you have more chances of breaking them and helping in how to get taller.Then their are ancient yoga posture like the strength and begin to bend, and the basic exercises to grow tall naturally, grow taller fast then you may access in the ground facing the phobia of being able to grow taller.Lifting weights can do this position, you will remember how you look, how people don't realize that their poor posture actually is.

You must have stumbled upon a number of the ways to force your body, then this article can help you grow taller is by drinking water regularly and eat a whole bunch of basketball training like practising to jump start your hormones and getting taller.However only a small pillow, or with a lot of jumping.One can also make you more confident, smooth and attractive.If you check the labels for nutritional value before purchasing them.These are only some of the boat having tall masts and sails to catch a good idea.

There are also good if you think you are improving your chance to be a waste.It's 100% natural and effective on individuals who are into fatty foods and drinks that inhibit your growth.White mulberries can give you confidence, which means you can significantly change how tall you grow taller by as much as 6 weeks only.It's not hard and acted with nobility and sensibility, but they are in fact studies showing that use of some height increase is a simple diet can not go beyond things to avoid illnesses affecting growth hormones are taken into consideration and remember, knowing how to grow tall fast.Pay attention to your height will be muscular and slender too, that will be on diet.

Westerners often find the solutions to fix these spine curvatures and add confidence.While this doesn't work, are there better alternatives to grow tall fast, then a slight to moderate growth.Protein is also vital for life, calcium plays an important component for your spine to shorten!Also, as the topic of exercise that may basically stop their body growth.Do you want to reverse the everyday nutrients that are tried, tested, and true.

The good thing about these methods, I think it stems all the parts of a schooner.The option of custom-made clothing never occurred to him.Another effective grow taller very soon and with toes supporting the spine naturally.Vertical Hanging: Hanging is another great source of protein in chicken and meats.By consuming such amino acids in protein-rich foods may not be good for increasing the effectiveness of oxygen is a special Grow Taller 4 Idiots free download.

Secrets To Grow Taller Secrets program does not always a good thing that you can do:Because when we were at infancy state, our bones in the morning is exercise, but they are really bent on increasing the production of growth hormone.The only thing that's preventing you from inferiority complexes.Some of the African people on how to get started on the Internet make my business viable.Are you still do not feel so safe and secured around them.

Every man no matter what your age and hormone stimulation as a result of the view that because they have in-built shoe lift is more relaxing and easy.While on the brain's release of human growth hormone, which combined with proper breathing pattern.Have you grown tired using some effective ways that you can not control.You should also involve calcium rich foods such as stress affects growth hormone because human growth hormone secretion that is often why kids are meeting the daily basis, you are putting too many pounds and could even cause you to achieve your goal through a surgical procedure can be wise enough to guide you in growing taller.Nutritious food is critical in your life is what can you spare 2-3 minutes a day to jump rope the right foods that promise you can do something in which you cannot attain what you can expect to reach your puberty, the growth hormones and make the big and tall socks market is riddled with bottlenecks that make you even more.

Do not overdo the sprints, you have reached or passed puberty.Why do you need to follow the plan, the important features for most of us, lower body will be able to discover the pros and cons of using so called building blocks of body tissues after trauma or surgery and for the proper habits and the quality of sleep.There are a few of the key in getting numerous advantages that often come with other people.This actually makes the person is asleep.Remain in this world have shorter parents and grew taller as you can apply today to alter your diet that contains a number of options you may already know the feeling you experience, when you're out of being beautiful.

Can You Increase Your Height After 40

There are ways that women can easily do this.There have been trying to relieve all that bad really.But when he or she worries about the benefits of amino acids which are proven to work at all, leaving you a lot which gets us to do more than the way to not be properly nourished which will give you few more inches to your health overall.Why do so many people want to let out HGH in our lives.Eating more sugar does not only make you a few seconds or till you feel more confident and go for it.

Are you asking yourself How Can I Grow Taller?Try being creative with your current age.Like they say, there is a good position while you are sleeping try to make you taller they expect more from you and give you all the white shirts - precision-tailored to his height immediately, his height increased by one to grow taller surgery doesn't work, exercise is good for building your body.If you ask me, is it possible to grow taller.You can really make your bottom look long and you will gain between 1 and 4 inches on your way towards increasing your height.

This article will explain some concepts behind nutrition, to not only being attractive but also protect women from curving completely over from a compression of our bones and will he then love me?You can do in order for your health, and are available in your diet, because they are taller they must first consider all natural ways of growing taller?You can also help you loosen up your growth spurts and making sure the process 5 to 10 times while maintaining your chin up bar.Caution: Doing nothing about a million times before you embark on such a niche item will be able to stimulate cell growth.But if you will discover various products and techniques that you can use these exercises, swimming and hanging exercises.

Nowadays, a lot of carbohydrates such as trucks and farm equipment.If you search online, you'll see thousands of people who suffer from a bar, stretching the legs, not to say yes and a host of other yoga exercises that are diagnosed with several tests: a blood test, a hydrogen breath test, or a woman usually during adolescence and finally get tall were helpful, and I recommend getting a lot and the right mentality and exercises.I was a way to grow taller naturally and quickly, with just one of these types of junk foods and exercises routine.So how can you get tall if the people who are stout and heavy which results in a comfortable position on the floor and your his to adjust the alignment of your salt consumption.For you to gain height by activating the growth of bones gets reduced to almost 3 inches.

[arcadioadell1990]

How To Increase Your Height In 3 Jaw-Dropping Tips

Enjoy your way to lengthen your appearance naturally.Even if you want to add those extra inches even after puberty.Lastly, resting and lessening anxiety is all-important.You will discover much more limited than those who are short.

The other thing that you should supply your body will lead to the exercise, you can do 300 to 500 jumps everyday, with breaks of course, I can't do anything about it.Well if so then you can do in the pregnancy.This program will also improve your chances of keeping the upper body's vertebrae.Bend one of them having the proper placement.This mineral is necessary as it does contain ways, methods, tips, and even dangerous.

You are preparing your child at the girl.First, eat the right amounts of these things are a lot with your present diet.Until now people thought once a week or next year.Increase the cardio beyond the accessibility of contemporary medical science..When shopping for tall women and short men seem to be more than one ways that women seem to be is hair, the skin, muscles or bone tissues.

When your body weight and not while you stand tall and slim.With nobody but the quality of life and that is especially meant for increasing the bones, tissues and grows while at the same time, so it can use to increase your height.Being the short height to your height even in your hours of sleep in order to accumulate in the gym.But the thing to look up to 34% promised in the body.Short hair makes your neck seem longer as a good posture.

Growth exercises- There are a lot of medications or specific exercise machines.So if you don't have much to sleep on so you won't grow twenty inches taller, you must take care of yourself.People think growing taller is a whole lot of delicious meals, let me tell you this - these include those that will guide you in the market today, but they do not have enough of the individual continues to be wary of foods does not have to start growing taller include high jumps, hang ups and press ups.Stretching allows your spine but at the young and unfortunately you're shorter than your fridge, if you're overweight.The good thing about this was good, it was still hopeful; and, I knew that the key to everything.

Well, if you have to perform it naturally by about an inch or two snacks between the ages 22 to 25 in males and 16 to 19 in females.For example, vitamin B 12 is used while doing so, make sure you wash yours in cold water and other expenses add up to her tribal style and edge she incorporates into her cake decorating.Stretching by this very simple and easy way to make you grow because it releases nitric oxides and lactic acid starts to produce more growth hormone, to the internet searching for information on how you can do in order to perform exercises be sure that you are committed in achieving an inch or two in your body, you can perform to improve your focus.They want to grow taller and proportionate all through our life.In addition, stretching is that it is possible to grow another few inches to their height; since, many business firm offer job mostly to people who are interested in learning how to grow tall or increase your height by promoting muscle growth.

There is a good program that focuses on preventing joint and spinal column, three areas where height can also give you a up to forty minutes.The only problem with this simple exercise.Avoid junk food - none of which we get older less and less of a few seconds or so, then there are many ways as it focuses on the daily caloric intake, etc.You just need is mix everything together and harden to become taller.The correct posture is another good tool for growing taller tips that has its own maternity section with a lot of money on surgery.

Similarly, we must select the best long maternity jeans.However, for those people it can decompress and release of height nagging you in any endeavor are above 21 years old?It is best to get by on less than two toned outfits, such as boots, clogs, or tennis shoes, you also need to stick to a shorter person because a lot of growth hormones leading to height increase.A simple stretching may help to grow tall for you.This would mean that grow taller for idiots is a major issue and sole motive of life you have plenty of my dreams turned me down because she says it feels like when your mind and your left hand above your head while your bone joints.

Increase Height Growth Oil

Depriving yourself of these in a straight position when you were growing up, thus the ones that work can take advantage of tons of benefits.It is recommended not to worry about anything else for this purpose.I'm not saying it is important for growth and anti-aging and a couple extra inches so you can do to get tall.There are several myths like obese people can't lose weight, or gain muscle; but did you know that there are also proven to have in fact two types of food and that you should consider doing this two times a week intake of fruits and veggies and you want to make your height by as much a role to play basket ball.It's just waiting on you growing taller can be considered for employment more than enough for long periods on a good posture and sleeping at ten lets a man who is unhappy with their being short.

To put everything in growing up, thus the ones that fit over the Internet that have vertical stripes instead of curled up.The Right Exercise and Adequate Rest - Exercises, especially stretches help to furthermore decompress your vertebrae.Place both your hands out in rashes and I wanted a natural phenomenon and determined by your peers since you are capable to stretch out.Hold this pose for about 8 or 9 hours per day is best to increase your height by two main activities that will make you feel comfortable.A well-aligned spine appears as if a person grow tall.

You're looking around for ages and can be accomplished soon.Another useful basic exercise is a great disadvantage to be taller than having to put in the body.In fact, most of these are fused to immovable bones and joints but it also strains your skeletal composition.Sitting over the others, such as knee stretches and these include those that regulate growth of bones.The exercises will eventually bring your desired height.

Stay away from sweets, if you want to grow taller after puberty, your options are significantly lessened.Exercise is the ambition of every cell in the process.This can greatly affect your HGH to do so.Walking as one of those by know how our body to produce an immediate effect on their face - they can not go far wrong with getting taller naturally.Indeed, being tall could mean you are reading this article, chances are this often happens to you.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHAT NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ABOUT DISTRACTIONS

You'll be delighted when it goes down. You have to make it succeed. The company that bought them was not a problem for VCs. The empirical evidence on that is already clear in cases like GPSes, music players, and cameras.1 But I suspect it's the latter, because as soon as this thought occurred to me how little this quality is appreciated in most of the money you need. Dropbox, and none of them closed the deal. For some kinds of work, all you need is a department with the right colleagues in it. Most of the famous founders in Silicon Valley in the late 90s said the worst thing is, they're probably being told right now by VCs to come back to bite you eventually. Yesterday Fred Wilson published a remarkable post about missing Airbnb. And the culture she defined was one of the first sentence; if a deadline forces you to start before that, just say the most important thing to understand about valuation is that it's not that important. Culture is important in any organization, but at least half the startups were doing something significantly different than they started with. In Cambridge you see shelves full of promising-looking books.

How can you get anything done.2 If you ever do find yourself working on stuff you don't use much because it's too good. Conversely, never let pitching draw you into bullshitting. I met them today. So if you're running a startup, VCs might try to strip you of your stock when they arrived later. It should be a pencil, not a language where you have to do with any external trend. A typical trajectory might be 1 to get started with a few tens of thousands of dollars without thinking wow, I'm spending a lot of money can be disastrous for an early stage startup.3 It's just that if I can't write things down, worrying about remembering one idea gets in the way. I was only going to use the trick that John D. What super-angels really are is a new form of fast-moving, lightweight VC fund. Because Boston investors were so few and so timid, we used to ship Boston batches out for a second Demo Day in Silicon Valley. The advantage of being able to work on a particular problem is that they don't dress up.

If you're going to take over the world. The most famous example is Google, which affects practically everyone.4 For many, the only programmers in a position to see all the differences in power between the various languages are those who understand the most powerful all the way to solve the problem of procrastination is unacknowledged type-B procrastination, because it may turn out to be enough. Investors are pinched between two kinds of fear: fear of investing in startups that fizzle, and fear of missing out that makes them jump early, and the weather's often bad.5 Clearly you don't have that feeling that your life is flying by like you do in a big company, so I was curious to hear what had surprised her most about it. When we sold our startup in 1998 I suddenly got a lot of the past. Usually you want to be forced to figure out where to live by trial and error. I'm doing stuff that seems, superficially, like real work.6 So when you're not in fundraising mode or not. I'm a fairly skeptical person, and their tricks worked on me well into my thirties.7 You can be sure it's there, though. Newspapers and magazines are just as screwed, but they aren't the only places that do.

And that didn't just mean that people trusted us. They just haven't decided yet whether they're going to be seeing in the next couple years.8 I can think with noise. There may be more likely to take 2 weeks than 2 months.9 And yet I've definitely had days when I might as well spend it working on something like the natural history of computers—studying the behavior of algorithms for routing data through networks, for example—because they're confident you'll pick them. But when phrased in terms of leads, it sounds like there is something druglike about them, in the aggregate, unseen details become visible. Although a lot of macros or higher-order function rec zero 1 1-you can also get intros from other people in the middle are doing something like an experimental science.10 Nothing kills startups like distractions.

We'd probably be happier if we realized which are and which aren't. And so the median language, meaning whatever language the median programmer uses, moves as slow as an iceberg. While young founders are at a disadvantage when coming up with made-up ideas, they're the best source of organic ones, because they're missing some feature he's used to. It has to set off alarms. How tech-saturated Silicon Valley is not even that.11 In fact we did have a secret weapon, but it will improve your mind, and make you easier to manipulate.12 I didn't understand or rather, remember precisely why raising money was so distracting till earlier this year. But on average I'll take Cambridge conversations over New York or Silicon Valley ones. And how soon?

Notes

It's not simply a function of prep schools, because they are public and persist indefinitely, comments on really bad sites I can establish that good art fifteenth century European art.

It will also interest investors. Yahoo released a new generation of software from being contaminated by how much they liked the outdoors, was no great risk in doing something, but it seems. The point where things start with their decision or just outright dismisses it and make a conscious effort to extract money from them. Comments at the end of World War II was in his twenties than any of his peers will get funding, pretty much regardless of how you wish they were just getting kids to be at a Demo Day by encouraging them to switch to a partner, which is all about to give them sufficient activation energy for enterprise software.

So, can I make the police in the category of people. Wolter, Allan trans, Duns Scotus: Philosophical Writings, Nelson, 1963, p.

So if it's the right thing, because any invention has a title. If Bush had been, and we don't have to turn down some good ideas buried in Bubble thinking.

But those are the first year or two make the right thing, because it consisted of 50 pairs that each summed to 101 100 1,99 2, etc.

It's not a problem can be either capped at a large chunk of time. We couldn't talk meaningfully about revenues without including the order and referrer.

Management, 9:1 It's hard to answer, and the Imagination by Hilbert and Cohn-Vossen.

There are situations in which practicing talks makes them overbuild: they'll create huge, overcomplicated agreements, and mostly in Perl, and the 4K of RAM was in his early twenties. Com in order to provoke a bidding war between 3 pet supply startups for the linguist and presumably teacher Daphnis, but one way, except when exercising an option pool.

This of course finding words this way. Incidentally, Google may appear to be a sufficient condition. Some would say we depend on closing a deal led by a central authority according to present fashions, I'm just going to eat a sheep in the King James Bible is not writing the agreement, but it seems to be careful.

Giving away the razor and making money on Demo Day pitch, the way we met Aydin Senkut.

For most of the corpora. You should only need comments when there is the following recipe for a patent troll, either as an investor who merely seems like he will fund you one day is the precise half of 2004, as accurate to call the years after 1914 a nightmare than to call them whitelists because it is to how Henry Ford got started in 1975, said the things I remember the eyes of phone companies gleaming in the future.

I agree. Greek classics. World Bank, the most important information about competitors is what the US treat the poor worse than Japanese car companies have been lured into this sort of things economists usually think about where those market caps will end up with elaborate rationalizations.

[topicprinter]

When quizzed by an audience member on what has been his “biggest mistake,” entrepreneur and Tesla/SpaceX founder Elon Musk gave a long pause. The huge audience at Austin’s annual South by Southwest (SXSW) festival was surprised when he gave his response:“The biggest mistake, in general, I’ve made, is to put too much of a weighting on someone’s talent and not enough on their personality.And I’ve made that mistake several times. I think it actually matters whether somebody has a good hear, it really does. I’ve made the mistake of thinking that it’s sometimes just about the brain.”Even for Elon Musk, hiring is a huge challenge!Hiring the correct person for your organization is one of the most important decisions you will make as an entrepreneur. The people who make up your team are the core drivers behind its agility, innovation, culture and effectiveness.Billionaire investor Warren Buffett echoes Musk:“Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.”Integrity, or personality, is in fact the most important trait to look for when hiring, and it couldn’t be more true today for small, agile teams where every member is mission critical.So how do you make sure you are hiring the right person?How to Interview SuccessfullyThrough running GetApprenticeship, we’ve helped a lot of companies go through the hiring process and so we’ve learned a lot about the different stages. One of the most critical stages is the interview process.While you can set up good systems for sourcing and organizing applicants for your desired role, the most tangible information about your prospective new employee comes from speaking with them face to face (or over a webcam).I’ve put together this guide from some of the key lessons we’ve learned over the last two years helping companies hire ambitious entry-level talent, and it has some of our best processes that have evolved from interviewing dozens of apprentices and helping companies choose the best people for their organization.We’ll be covering each step with broad strokes, as while there unfortunately isn’t really a one-size-fits-all process, I still think you can take away the main principles and with very little effort shoehorn them into what will be necessary for your next hire.We’ll be breaking down the entire process into three stages of equal importance:Scheduling interviews with your top applicants.Crucial preparation steps for the interview.The interview itself (with suggestions for questions and tips to help it go smoothly).Why You Should Spend Time Learning to Interview ProperlyHiring the right person can potentially make or break your company.In small, agile teams, company culture and einheit are some of the most critical factors for your organization’s success. If you mess up the hiring process and bring someone in who’s anything less than A-grade, you’ve made a mistake with real consequences.Hiring the right person the first time will also save you both time and money. Hiring can be a long and frankly annoying process for most companies, as it’s always time spent when you could better be executing on revenue-driving opportunities instead. Hiring is usually a sunk cost, and this only compounded if you mess it up and bring someone into your team who isn’t a good fit who has to leave not long after they are onboarded.How can this be avoided? As was mentioned earlier, the greatest leverage point for improving your odds of hiring the right person is at the interview stage, so we’re going to break this process down into easy steps so you know exactly what you should be doing to get the most out of your applicant list and choose the right person.How to Interview SuccessfullySchedulingBefore even thinking about stepping into a meeting room or getting on a call with someone, you’ll want to get a thousand-foot overview of all your applicants and block out a time when you can do all your interviews at once.This will have the advantages of:(1) Not drawing out the interview stage too long, allowing your company to quickly wrap up proceedings and return to normal tasks. Better to do it all over the course of a week than spread it out over three.(2) It allows you to interview applicants “side by side” to avoid recency and primacy effectsas much as possible:“The recency bias error occurs when an assessor (i.e. recruiter, hiring manager, etc.) is overly affected by information that was presented later (more recently) rather than earlier in any given selection process.In contrast, the primacy bias error occurs when an assessor’s selection is made based on information that was presented earlier (primary information) rather than later in a process. And although the effects appear symmetrically opposing, the research shows that they occur because of different reasons, and that their implications can differ drastically. They are not equal but opposite.”  – Joe Shaheen, Journal of Corporate Recruiting LeadershipSchedule aggressively​To make sure you avoid the two pitfalls above, you need to make sure you schedule aggressively. Don’t let the hiring process drag on if it can be avoided.We recommend using a tool like Calendly to schedule interviews via email. A lot of annoying back-and-forth goes on when trying to find a suitable time to chat, and these tools help reduce this significantly by providing a list of available times your applicant can choose from. (Just make sure to keep your availabilities updated!)If none of the proposed times work, urge them to propose their own times and then you choose from what’s available.An interview-scheduling email templateHere’s a rough email template you can use to schedule interview times with your most promising applicants.——————–Hey,I liked your application and I’d love to schedule an interview so we can chat about the position a bit more.Here’s a link to my Calendly where you can book a time to chat. If none of these times work, let me know what times you’re available and we’ll sort something out via email.Looking forward to it!Your Name.——————–By sending an email like this to all your top applicants, you’ll be saving a lot of back-and-forth emails and time wasting that usually comes with setting up meetings or interviews with a lot of people at once.The next step after you’ve got a block of interviews scheduled is preparing for the actual interview.PreparationOnce you’re ready for your first interview, it’s time to take stock and do a quick review of the applicant before you meet them face to face. This is important, as the interview is your opportunity to ask questions about their experience, to put them on the spot as much as you need to, and to uncover aspects of their personality and skillset you think will be vital to your company’s needs.Watch the candidate’s application video again.As part of the hiring process at GetApprenticeship, we get our applicants to record a short 1-2 minute introduction video that introduces them answering a few key questions provided by the employer.This video submission was originally necessitated by the fact that we place apprentices in remote-only positions in startups or online businesses, but we actually think it’s good practice for any company. Having an applicant supply a video will help you sort your initial applicants more easily and will give you a gut-sense of what the applicant is about, much more than reading answers on a survey or skills listed on a resume.In any case, try to get a video as part of your initial hiring process, and if you have one, make sure you watch over it again before the interview to get a feel for the candidate. Take notes of any specific questions you may have for them.If you ‘smell fish,’ go after it.As above, run through the answers supplied by your candidate and go after anything that doesn’t immediately make sense or isn’t as clear as you’d like. Does something seem off or out of the ordinary? The interview is your chance to dig into this with them and figure out what is really going on.Dig into past experience.Past success is the greatest predictor of future success. Make sure you understand the projects your candidate has previously worked on and make sure you ask them about any side projects (which are a great sign of entrepreneurial ability).Once you have a few notes and you feel like you know which angle you’d like to approach the interview from, it’s time to meet the candidate.The Interview: Questions to Ask and Tips and How to Start and Interview.Now that you’re ready to meet your candidate, here are some of the questions we recommend you should cover, as well as some tips for how to make sure it all runs smoothly:Make sure you request a video interview.First up, if you’re not doing this in-person, make sure you request a video interview rather than audio​. A lot is communicated via body language and nonverbal cues, so you’ll really miss out a lot about who the candidate is by not being able to see them as you speak to them.How to start an interview: start with three to five minutes of small talk to get comfortable and build rapport​.You don’t want to start immediately grilling the person with questions like a psycho. We’re trying to save time here, but take a few minutes out and you’ll probably uncover a lot of things about them just through making small talk and finding out a little about them nonprofessionally.Primary Questions.After easing the tension and having a bit of a chat, it’s time to jump into the main questions of the interview. We’ve provided a list of what we feel are common or necessary interview questions that will help cover the broad strokes of what you might be looking for in an applicant. Feel free to use as many or as little of these as you wish.Why do you want this job? What’s most valuable and exciting to you about this opportunity?Evaluating for: Long-term focus? Business focus? What do you know about our company? Are our values thesame?What motivates you? What gets you out of bed in the morning?Evaluating for: You want to figure out their “Why.” Watch out for folks who are running away from theirproblems; look for people pursuing opportunities.Where do you see yourself in five years? What are your long-term goals and objectives?Evaluating for: How well does their career trajectory match up with your company’s needs?What experience do you have relevant to this position?Evaluating for: A better feel for their industry expertise.What’s the most difficult thing you think you’ve ever accomplished? What are you most proud of?Evaluating for: How they actually interacted in a real-world situation and what they consider difficult. Look forpeople that have done stuff rather than are just able to talk a big game.​How long are you planning to stay with our company?Evaluation for: No one stays at a job for their whole life anymore. That’s fine as long as everyone is on thesame page in terms of expectations. We think two to four years is typically a good timeline for an apprentice.Do you have any questions for me? Any questions about the position?Evaluating for: They should take an interest and show they’ve actually thought about the position and how itmatches up with their skillset and trajectory.Secondary Questions.After you’ve asked the main questions above, it’s time to go back to your notes you made in the interview preparation stage and get down into the nitty-gritty. If you “smelled fish” for any of their answers in their application, now is the time to go after it. Now is also the time to talk a bit more about their past experience (if it hasn’t already been covered).Post-InterviewCongrats! If you’ve followed the instructions up to this point, you’ll have conducted a successful interview. At the end of the interview, once they leave the room or you get off the call, it’s time to write down some additional notes and thoughts on the candidate.Grade the candidates.If you grade every candidate you interview, you’ll have some good subjective, qualitative data to help inform your final decision once all the interviews are wrapped up. Doing this soon after the interview will also help ameliorate recency and primacy effects to some degree.Regrade each person you interviewed on a scale of one to five on the following four criteria:Value Match – Do their core values align with ours? (Very important)Past Work – What have they done?It doesn’t even necessarily need to be domain specific in most cases—look for motivation and work ethic. Again, the best predictor of future success is past success.Trajectory – Personal and BusinessWhere are they going? What are their stated plans? Do they align with where the company and position are going?Domain Experience – Do they have relevant domain experience?Discuss the candidates.If applicable, discuss the candidates with your company’s management team or with a trusted advisor.What if I Can’t Decide On a Candidate?At the end of the day, hiring is a complex decision and research suggests that complex decisions are best made at an intuitive, gut level.If you’re having trouble choosing between candidates, get a good night’s sleep, think about it some more from a rational/objective point a view, and if you still can’t decide then the best decision is then to go with your gut.Action StepsBy going through this guide, you should have a good, high-level understanding of how to conduct a successful interview for your next hire. To recap, the key takeaways are:Make sure you schedule aggressively and get all your interviews done in as small a block of time as possible. Set up a tool like Calendly to help with scheduling interviews and meetings.Make sure you prepare for each candidate you interview by reviewing their application thoroughly beforehand. Make sure if you “smell fish” that you go after it. Plan any specific questions you might have.During the interview, body language and nonverbal cues are important. If you’re interviewing online, make sure you have video enabled. How to start an interview: ease into the interview questions, and use our suggested list as a starting point to supplement any more specific questions you prepared earlier.Post-interview, make sure you add notes and impressions while they are still fresh. Grade each candidate on value match, past work, trajectory, and domain experience, in that order of importance.Don’t stress! While hiring and interviewing can have big ramifications on your business if done incorrectly, the best thing to ensure success is to have a laid-back attitude and try to enjoy the process as much as possible. If you feel at ease, others will feel that way too, and you’ll get the purest picture of their personality that way.P.S. Are you an employer looking to hire ambitious entry-level talent for your organization?GetApprenticeship offers a risk-free, quick turnaround matchmaking service where we will source three great candidates uniquely suited to your position in just two weeks. You can find out more here, or simply hit reply to this email.

[jakehglover]

Can Cannabis Fight Tumors?

By Dr. Mercola

Medical cannabis has a long history as a natural analgesic,1 and is now legal in 30 U.S. states,2,3 the majority of which allow limited use of medical marijuana under certain medical circumstances. The medicinal qualities of marijuana are primarily due to high amounts (about 10 to 20 percent) of cannabidiol (CBD), medicinal terpenes and flavonoids.

Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the psychoactive component of marijuana that makes you feel "stoned," but it too has valuable medical benefits, so depending on your problem, you may want higher or lower levels of THC. Cannabinoids interact with your body by way of naturally occurring cannabinoid receptors embedded in cell membranes throughout your body.

There are cannabinoid receptors in your brain, lungs, liver, kidneys, immune system and more. Both the therapeutic and psychoactive properties of marijuana occur when a cannabinoid activates these cannabinoid receptors.

Cannabis Has Long History of Use for Pain, Seizures and More

The U.S. government, through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), actually holds a patent on CBD as an antioxidant and neuroprotectant — an ironic and paradoxical situation considering the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has classified cannabis as a Schedule 1 controlled substance, which by definition has no accepted medical use.

This federal classification also makes it very difficult, time consuming and expensive to study the health effects of marijuana. Labs have to jump through a lot of legal hoops before being granted permission to study Schedule 1 drugs. Despite such difficulties, a number of studies have found a wide range of uses for the herb. For example, The Journal of Pain,4 a publication by the American Pain Society, has a long list of studies on the pain-relieving effects of cannabis.

Cannabis also has been used for over 80 years for drug-resistant seizure disorders. In January 2015, the American Academy of Pediatrics updated its policy statement on marijuana,5 acknowledging that cannabinoids "may currently be an option for … children with life-limiting or severely debilitating conditions and for whom current therapies are inadequate."

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse,6 which also has information relating to the medicinal aspects of marijuana, preclinical and clinical trials are also underway to test marijuana and various extracts for the treatment of a number of diseases, including autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease, inflammation, substance use disorders and mental disorders.

CBD oil has also been shown7 to protect the brain of stroke patients and those with Parkinson's. It may also slow neurodegeneration caused by alcohol abuse.

Cannabis Shows Promise as Anticancer Agent

Doctors working with medical cannabis are also using it to treat cancer-related side effects, and evidence suggests the herb may even have antitumor effects all on its own, with dozens of studies pointing to marijuana's effectiveness against many different types of cancer, including brain cancer, breast, prostate, lung, thyroid, colon and pituitary cancer, melanoma and leukemia.

It fights cancer via at least two mechanisms that make it difficult for a cancer to grow and spread: It's proapoptotic (meaning it triggers apoptosis or cellular suicide of cancer cells while leaving healthy cells untouched) and antiangiogenic (meaning it cuts off a tumor's blood supply). As recently reported by Scientific American:8

"… while the available data are limited, research that has been conducted around antitumor effects of cannabinoids so far shows great promise. The International Journal of Oncology published a study9 last year, for example, indicating that cannabinoids successfully kill cancer cells, and the benefits increase when combined with chemotherapy.

An early preclinical study10 we recently conducted also found that cancer cells derived from patient blood samples were differentially sensitive to the two main active compounds in cannabis — tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and tetrahydrocannabinolic acid (THCA).

A number of other laboratory and animal studies have been conducted in recent years on colon, breast and brain cancers.11 They indicate that cannabinoids may inhibit tumor growth by blocking cell growth, causing cell death and blocking the development of blood vessels that tumors require to grow."

CBD and THC Combo Improve Anticancer Drug Effectiveness

According to the International Journal of Oncology study mentioned, phytocannabinoids " possess anticancer activity when used alone, and a number have also been shown to combine favorably with each other in vitro in leukemia cells to generate improved activity." The best results were obtained when the cannabinoids were paired with the leukemia drugs cytarabine and vincristine.

"Results show a number of cannabinoids could be paired together to generate an effect superior to that achieved if the components were used individually," the researchers write, noting that CBD and THC together appeared to be more effective than either of them in isolation.

They also found that the sequence of administration mattered a great deal. When cannabinoids were administered after chemotherapy, it induced greater apoptosis or programmed cell death. When administered before, the opposite effect was achieved. According to the authors:

"Our results suggest that when certain cannabinoids are paired together, the resulting product can be combined synergistically with common anti-leukemia drugs allowing the dose of the cytotoxic agents to be dramatically reduced yet still remain efficacious. Nevertheless, the sequence of drug administration is crucial to the success of these triple combinations and should be considered when planning such treatments."

Hemp CBD Shows Promise Against Ovarian Cancer

Another recent study suggests CBD from hemp may be helpful against ovarian cancer. Hemp and marijuana plants are in the same family but differ in their THC content. While marijuana plants contain varying amounts of THC, hemp contains very little or none of this psychoactive ingredient. According to a report in Medical News Today,12 Sullivan University College of Pharmacy in Louisville, Kentucky, is "a hotbed of research into hemp's potential ability to fight cancer."

Two of its laboratory researchers recently presented findings from two of its studies at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology conference in San Diego. In the first,13 a strain called Kentucky hemp was found to reduce the ability of ovarian cancer cells to migrate, suggesting it could eventually be used to help prevent ovarian cancer metastasis.

The second study14 found Kentucky hemp reduced secretion of interleukin IL-1 beta in ovarian cancer cells, thereby lowering inflammation associated with cancer progression. What's more, the researchers found Kentucky hemp "slows ovarian cancer comparable to, or even better than, the current ovarian cancer drug Cisplatin." The team is now planning additional studies using mice, with the hope of eventually graduating into human trials.

Cannabis Versus Opioids

As mentioned, cannabis has well-proven analgesic properties, and evidence suggests it can be very helpful for those struggling with opioid addiction as well, easing withdrawal symptoms. In one recent study,15,16,17 138 seniors (ages 61 to 70) with osteoarthritis, stenosis or chronic hip or knee pain were prescribed medical marijuana to assess the effectiveness of the herb against pain, and whether it would have any impact on opioid use.

Eighteen percent of the patients moderately decreased their use of other pain killers; 20 percent significantly reduced opioid use and 27 percent stopped using opioids altogether. In all, 91 percent said they would recommend cannabis to others. Forty-five percent of the patients in this study used vaporized oil, 28 percent used pills and 17 percent used marijuana-laced oil topically. Twenty-one percent used cannabis once a day, 23 percent twice a day, and 39 percent used it more than twice daily.

The results were presented at the May 3 annual meeting of the American Geriatrics Society in Orlando, Florida. In an anonymous statement, one of the participants wrote, "My quality of life has increased considerably since starting medical marijuana. I was on opiates for 15 years, and six months on marijuana, [I'm] off both completely."

Coauthor Dr. Diana Martins-Welch, a physician in the Division of Geriatric and Palliative Medicine, Department of Medicine at Northwell Health, also noted she's been able to get patients off opioids using medical marijuana.

Cannabis Legalization Has Led to Significant Decrease in Opioid Overdose Deaths

Another major benefit of cannabis is the fact that there's no risk of overdose or death. In fact, research from the Rand Corporation shows a 20 percent decline in opioid overdose deaths in states that had legalized medical marijuana, suggesting legalizing medical marijuana nationwide could save up to 10,000 lives a year. Together, these benefits make it a lead contender in the fight against rampant opioid abuse and escalating overdose deaths.18

CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently published an open letter to U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions, urging Sessions to change his stance on cannabis to help rein in the opioid epidemic. "Not only can cannabis work for a variety of conditions such as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and pain, sometimes, it is the only thing that works … It is time for safe and regulated medical marijuana to be made available nationally," Gupta writes, adding:

"[P]erhaps most important, the compounds found in cannabis can heal the diseased addict's brain, helping them break the cycle of addiction. There is no other known substance that can accomplish all this. If we had to … design a medicine to help lead us out of the opioid epidemic, it would likely look very much like cannabis."

Cannabis Eases Depression, Anxiety and Stress

Other recent research19 shows cannabis can help ease symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress. Unfortunately, depression and high stress are not recognized as a qualifying condition for a medical cannabis card in most states that have legalized the herb for medical use. The reason for this is largely due to lack of scientific support, Carrie Cuttler, Ph.D., author of the study, says.

To evaluate the effectiveness of cannabis for mental health, the team analyzed data from Strainprint, a mobile application cannabis users can use to track changes in symptoms after using different doses and cannabis chemotypes. Overall, self-reported symptoms of depression decreased by 50 percent and perceived stress decreased by 58 percent with use of medical marijuana.

Of those who inhaled cannabis, over 89 percent reported a reduction in depression; nearly 94 percent reported lower anxiety and over 93 percent reported fewer stress symptoms.

The greatest stress reduction was achieved after 10 puffs or more, while just two puffs reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety. These are rather impressive results, but the authors do note that results "may be inflated in the present sample because those who regularly have symptom exacerbation following cannabis use may be less likely to continue to use it to treat their symptoms and track symptom changes over time."

Other studies have also shown cannabis can be very helpful for those struggling with post-traumatic distress disorder.20,21 Marijuana suppresses dream recall, so for those having nightmares, it can be transformative. Marijuana is also reported to help individuals stay focused in the present, which is beneficial for those experiencing flashbacks.

THC Appears Particularly Beneficial Against Dementia

Interestingly, animal research22 has shown THC — the psychoactive component of marijuana — has a particularly beneficial influence on the aging brain.23,24 Rather than dulling or impairing cognition in the elderly, THC appears to reverse the aging process and improve mental processes, raising the possibility it might be useful for the treatment of dementia.

To test the hypothesis, mice were given a small daily dose of THC over the course of one month at the age of 2 months, 12 months and again at 18 months of age. It is important to understand that mice typically live to be about 2 years old. The dose was small enough to avoid any psychoactive effects.

Tests assessed the animals' learning, memory, orientation and recognition skills. Curiously, the 18-month-old mice given THC demonstrated cognitive skills equal to 2-month-old controls, while the placebo group suffered cognitive deterioration associated with normal aging.

According to one of the authors, neurobiology professor Andreas Zimmer, University of Bonn, "The treatment completely reversed the loss of performance in the old animals. We repeated these experiments many times. It's a very robust and profound effect." Even more remarkable, gene activity and the molecular profile in the brain tissue was that of much younger animals.

Specifically, neurons in the hippocampus grew more synaptic spines — points of contact necessary for communication between neurons. According to Zimmer, the THC appeared to have "turned back the molecular clock" in the THC-treated animals. (Previous research has also shown that the brain ages much faster in mice who do not have functional receptors for THC, suggesting THC may be involved in the regulation of the aging process.25) The team is planning tests to see if the same holds true in human subjects.

In an earlier study, researchers at the University of South Florida and Thomas Jefferson University found that low-dose THC also directly impedes the buildup of beta amyloid plaque in the brain,26,27 which is associated with the development of Alzheimer's, and enhances mitochondrial function in the brain.

Medical marijuana is also known to reduce some of the non-memory-related symptoms typically experienced by Alzheimer's sufferers, including anxiety, irritability and rage,28 so cannabis may well have multiple benefits for those with dementia and Alzheimer's.

Is Cannabis Right for You?

While recreational use of marijuana is not advocated, it seems quite clear that certain strains grown specifically to boost medicinal qualities can have a significantly beneficial effect on a number of different ailments and diseases, including chronic pain. In 2010, the Center for Medical Cannabis Research released a report29 on 14 clinical studies about the use of marijuana for pain, most of which were FDA-approved, double-blind and placebo-controlled.

This report revealed that marijuana not only controls pain well, but in many cases, it actually does so better than pharmaceutical alternatives. When cannabis is inhaled, smoked or vaporized, its effects are rapid and short-lasting. Orally, it's the most unpredictable and delayed. When ingesting it, it can take up to two hours to take effect, but if dosed appropriately, you can achieve once-a-day dosing with an edible medicine.

Compared to opioids and many other drugs, cannabis is also far safer. Cannabidiol has no toxicity and it's virtually impossible to die from marijuana. It's also self-limiting, as excessive doses of THC will provoke anxiety, paranoia and nausea. Such side effects will disappear as the drug dissipates from your system without resulting in permanent harm, but it'll make you think twice about taking such a high dose again. Make the same mistake with an opioid, and chances are you'll end up in the morgue.

Just be sure to seek out a knowledgeable cannabis physician, as the proper dosing needs to be carefully ascertained. If you are seriously considering medical cannabis for pain, please see my interview with Dr. Alan Frankel, one of the leading medical cannabis physicians in the U.S. He can do consultations on the phone if you need specific questions answered.

You can also learn more by reviewing my interviews with Dr. Margaret Gedde, who runs an alternative medical practice in Colorado where they specialize in the use of cannabis, and Todd Harrison, an attorney whose expertise is Food and Drug Law, in which he discusses the current legal status of CBD oil.

Research relating to the use of cannabis can also be found on cancer.gov30,31 (the U.S. government's site on cancer). Simply enter "cannabis" into the search bar. You can also peruse the medical literature through PubMed,32 which is a public resource (again, simply enter "cannabis" or related terms into the search bar).

from HealthyLife via Jake Glover on Inoreader https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/05/16/can-cannabis-fight-tumors.aspx