#these new idiots to the internet are screaming about having to pay money for a checkmark on tumblr

[rumlnated]

posts where people are like “i’m too old for this, you kiddos are so new here and don’t know how anything works” should be directly sent to the trash after the person hits post

[icarusredwings]

This post may not be suitable for littles or people who get uncomfy with mentions of baby making stuff. IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK THO I SWEAR!!!!

Wade:

Thinking about how much Wade loves babies when he's small.

He's holding Logan's hand down the street as they're running errands, and he's being so good, like SUPER good. Not running away, litsening to instructions, using his words in a way Kitty can understand.

He doesn't even have Fluffy with him either, so he's doing all of this with minimal emotional support, just his chewy star necklace and one of Logans big hoodies. He's in some colorful leggings, though, and in his pocket is nothing but a snack. Not even his cup.

Bro is raw dogging the adult outdoors as his small self with practically nothing. He's still wearing his dog tags, though, just in case he gets lost, they're used as a source of identification.

Ealier, when Wade wanted to pet a stray cat instead of just running off, he gasped and pointed to it. "Kitty!" Which is obviously code for "Look! A cool thing!" So when Logan looked, he saw how polite Wade was behaving.

"Be gentle, okay? Sometimes, they don't like humans." He tells him, carefully walking him over in which Wade just squats down to pet the cat very nicely. You would think 'yeah no duh he wouldn't hurt it,' and you would be correct, though sometimes he pets them too rough or moves too quickly so they get scared and scratch him.

Right now, he's bored, leaning on his shoulder and starting to get fussy because paying bills is boring, and he wants to go home. Chewing on his star, he stops, and his eyes light up, seeing a stoller.

Wade loves strollers. Because where there is a pram- Theres a babe. And babies were great. (Unless they were screaming, and then they were not)

He tugs a bit on Logan, but he's ignored because he's trying to ask the internet service people why they charged them 15 extra this month when nothing changed. "Kitty!" He points, looking at him for consent to go see the baby. Frustrated, confused, and not looking, Logan assumes that he sees another cat and waves a hand. "Yeah, sure. Be gentle."

So, being given the okay, Wade practically skips over to the stroller and crouches down to see a chunky cheeked baby boy. His mum is busy on the phone, so she doesn't even notice a grown man cooing over the child.

Giggling to the baby, he lets him grab his finger and nibble on it. Tickling his cheeks and stuff, you know. Baby stuff. So when he takes off his hood to let the baby play with his necklace, the baby gets upset and starts to cry.

I think we would all cry if we saw a glowy yellow eyed man smiling at us like that with such unfarmiliar skin. You have to remember, babies only know what they're shown, and I doubt it's ever seen anything like this before.

Of course, it cries. And the crying alerts the mom. "Ooh shh, Steven, you're al- Ahh!! Who are you! Get away from my baby, you freak!"

Getting shooed away, he whines, unsure of what he did wrong. Was it bad to play with babies? His head said No.

"What is wrong with you!?"

"I-i... but.." he dosn't know what to say, tries to explain that he didn't do anything bad and that he was sorry but she dosn't seem to care about his words. This is New York afterall. Kids are stolen all the time here.

The yelling, of course, makes Logan think "Great some idiot made the baby cry," only to pause and wonder where Wade went. "OH SHIT that's MY idiot." He thinks and instantly becomes protective, growling as he gives in and throws the extra money at the tiller. Coming outside, he steps in front of Wade. Sure, Wade is a weirdo, but he wouldn't do anything to the baby. Right??

"What's your deal lady!?"

"He tried to take my son!!" She says, assuming the worst.

Logan gives a glance to Wade, who's already crying and shakes his head, unable to get any words out, but "I'm good!" Seeing as various times today, Logan has praised him for behaving. "You're being so good today, kid."

"No he didn't! Now take your ugly pup and get!"

A bit more of arguing, and she finally goes on her way, complaining about New York Weirdos.

After that, he starts asking Wade why he was touching a random baby and honestly just running his mouth that he knows better and shouldn't do that, etc.

Almost instantly, it stops, though, because he's already crying. He lets out this huge sigh. "Fine... Im sorry.. I know you like babies. How about I give you a baby. Would you like that?"

Logan doesn't mean it in the way Wade thinks, obviously, as his eyes widden, sniffling. "You're gonna give me a baby!?"

"Yeah, sure-"

"We're gonna have a baby!!!??"

"WAIT- No! Not like that!"

He squeals and excitedly flaps his hands, continuing to go on about how 'Mommy tried to give him a baby, but it didn't work'

Slapping his hand over his face, he's so embarrassed, blushing all the way down his neck and up his ears. He shakes his head and growls. "SHHH!!! That's not what I meant!! We can't even have a baby moron!" I mean, who wouldn't be embarrassed about their partner OPENLY talking about their past relations in public?

So- He does what every person does when their partner is obsessed with babies by can't have any.

He takes him to the thrift store to pick one out.

[yeoldemothmemes]

KrimsonRogue vs Bad Books Sentence Starters 1

Taken from one video in his series of reviews of terrible books

“This is my nightmare” “This is fascinating in how awful it is” “This might not look like it. but this is actually really comfortable” “This ____ was more difficult for me to get through than anything I did in college” “There are a lot of notes I didn’t bother taking” “I am sitting on a throne of books. Your opinion means nothing to me” “One should not judge a book by it’s cover, both literally and figuratively” “Blatant violation of uniform policy” “This looks like something I would have done for a school project when I was six” “Bonus points. I don’t pay artists in exposure. I pay them in money” “That was perhaps the most creative and idiotically dangerous thing I have ever seen” “Most people do that and they don’t even think about it” “You’re still on the first page?” “I ran out of ink in my highlighter” “I’ve seen better foreshadowing on the expiration date on my milk” “I actually read this whole book” “THE BEST BOOK EVER WRITTEN” “I am sober, I am far too sober” “Welcome to the internet. We’re all weird here” “It’s almost like they’ve been spying on you for months” “Little girl throws rock at can. News at 11” “To use an appropriate baseball expression. Wow, that came out of left field” “Who spent 50 million dollars on coffee filters?” “You sound like a very polite robot” “I expect them to get divorced in about a month” “So you’re admitting that you’re boring” “My cat comes to check up on me if I have a bad day at work” “I’m exhausted and my throat hurts from screaming” “I’m going to go sit down. I’m exhausted”

[farfromsugafanfic]

Sutures - Chapter Three: Anosognosia

Genre: Soulmates AU, Idiots to Lovers, slight Enemies to Lovers

Pairing: Yoongi/Named Reader

Warnings (chapter specific): drinking, drunkenness, light smut, sex dream, implications of oral sex, obsessive behavior from an ex, unhealthy relationship dynamic (not on part of Yoongi & OC)

Synopsis: “A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.” –Jean de la Fontaine

There was only one thing you and Min Yoongi had in common that night. You were both brokenhearted. You only intended to be together for one night, but when you both end up in the hospital the next day you discover that you are soulmates. It could kill you to be apart. As you and Yoongi attempt to sever the bond between you, will another be formed?

Notes: This was originally written and completed on Wattpad between 2018 and the beginning of 2020. I’ll be slowly posting the chapters here. I may make a tag list depending on if enough people want to follow along with updates. Leave me some feedback if you would like added to a tag list.

Previous | Series Masterlist | Next

Yoongi saw the look in your eyes shift from soft curiosity to sheer panic. He felt the pit of his stomach fill with guilt. He shouldn't have slept with you; sure, the two of you would still have this problem, but no one would've had reason to find your shoes. You wouldn't have had reason to leave them behind. 

He'd felt betrayed, he'd felt lonely, he'd felt unloved by those he wanted to love him most. But, that was no excuse to sleep with the first attractive girl he found. 

"Have you told Bang PD yet?" Namjoon asked, his demeanor calm, but Yoongi could see the slight shock cross over his features, causing his thick lips to pout and his chin to jut out. 

Yoongi shook his head.

"I'll call him," Namjoon said. The leader placed a reassuring hand on your shoulder. He blocked Yoongi's view of you. He worried in those few seconds you were blocked from his view that you would collapse into Namjoon's chest and cry the tears meant for him. The tears because of him. 

Namjoon left the room, leaving Yoongi alone with you. He tried his best not to focus on the way your tank top hugged your chest and exposed the hickeys he'd left the night before and that Namjoon probably noticed it too.

"You look tired," Yoongi said. "We can't do anything until tomorrow anyway. Try and get some sleep."

You nodded and Yoongi wasn't sure if you were just trying to reassure him or yourself. He remembered the way you'd fallen asleep long before he did. The way you'd fit against his body; how it felt like two puzzle pieces joining together for the first time. He blinked away the thoughts and tried to focus back down on your eyes. 

"We'll pay them off," Yoongi said. "We'll make sure nothing comes of this."

---

Jihee (9:00 am): Are you all right?

Jihee (9:05 am): I heard you're in the hospital

Jihee (10:01 am): None of your members are texting me back

Jihee (12:31 pm): Baby, the news is reporting something about your soulmate? What happened last night?

Jihee (2:43 pm): Yoongi! Please respond to me! I'm worried

Jihee (5:12 pm): Yoongi...what I did last night...what happened was all a mistake...

Jihee (5:12 pm): I still love you

Jihee (6:00 pm): The news said you were released hours ago! Respond to me!

Jihee (8:20 pm): Yoongi, I miss you

Jihee (9:30 pm): I know I don't deserve you. But, please just tell me you're okay

Jihee (11:50 pm): Goodnight. Love you.

---

"Baby," you moaned. Your hands slipping beneath Yoongi's shirt. They were cold, but he still loved the way they moved over his stomach and chest. Your fingertips grazing over his skin, a fingernail occasionally catching and causing him to squirm.

His hands were in your hair, messing it up and causing it to form mountain ranges as his fingers hiked the peaks and valleys. He loved the way it felt between his fingers, soft and light. 

Your lips moved from his and down to his neck where your lipstick stained his skin. He kept his grip on your hair, feeling it tug slightly as you move downward. He helped you slip his shirt off as your lips connected with his chest. 

"You don't have--"

You silenced him by tugging on the waistband of his jeans and rubbing your thumb over the button, teasing him slightly. 

"I want to," you responded, unbuttoning his jeans. 

Yoongi tightened his grip on your hair, trying not to focus on the way your lipstick was smeared above your lips. He could already imagine the way they'd look...

His head lulled back and his fingers loosened. 

---

Yoongi awoke. He was covered in sweat and ran his hand through his hair. He glanced down at his phone: 6:41 am. He sighed and headed to the bathroom. 

He slapped himself softly, trying to stop the thoughts that continued to cross his mind. He didn't have feelings for you, it was simply lingering from he slept with you. Nothing else. 

He wasn't going to deny he was attracted to you, he wouldn't have gone back to your apartment otherwise, but he felt nothing romantically for you. Yoongi knew the attraction would continue and probably only get worse, but he had to fight it. The last thing he wanted to do was break either of hearts more than they already were. 

Yoongi turned on the shower, the water colder than usual.

---

You stood in Yoongi's studio where he kept his computer. You'd suppressed your laughter at the ridiculous amount of hoops you'd had to jump through in order to enter. A doorbell, black curtain, and two doors. You respected the fact he took his work seriously though. The wall full of awards and trophies he'd won, a few even separate from BTS.

There was a couch in the corner, but you were too anxious to sit. You just wanted your shoes back and whoever took them to get their money and leave you alone. You were thankful your name hadn't been released and the only other person who knew the full truth was Eunji.

"There's many of us trying," Yoongi said. "Me, Namjoon, our managers, other people at the company. One of us will get them." 

You nodded and watched as the countdown on the auction neared two minutes to the end. There weren't many bids, but the shoes were somehow already over 300,000 won ($276 USD). You'd brought your knitting needles and some yarn and mindlessly knitted.

"What are you making?" Yoongi asked, a small smile breaking out across his lips. It was tiny and barely recognizable. You weren't sure if he pitied you or if simply trying to break the tension. 

"Nothing in particular," you said. "I just need something to keep me busy." 

Normally, when you went in without a plan, it turned out as a scarf. You bit you lip as the timer hit a minute. 

Yoongi saw your gaze shift to his screen and he readied to enter his bid as close to the end as he could. He entered one million won ($920.00 USD) and hovered his finger over the enter button. 

"That's too much!" you said. 

"No one will outbid it."

"I know," you said. "But I feel bad. I shouldn't have forgotten them in the first place." 

The timer hit twenty seconds. Ten seconds. Yoongi waited just a few more seconds wanting to time it just right. 

You heard a scream and a crash and almost simultaneously an error message appeared on Yoongi's computer. Please connect to Wi-Fi.

"Shit," Yoongi said. "Jimin!"

You followed Yoongi to the living room, leaving the partially started scarf behind. You saw Jimin and Jungkook crowded around the router working to connect the cord back into it. 

"Did you trip over it again?" Yoongi asked, his voice breathy and exasperated. 

"Sorry," he said. "I'm not used to it." 

Yoongi sighed and turned back to you. His dark eyes looked down at you apologetically and he sat down on the couch, pulling out his phone. 

"I'll try and see if I can see who won." 

---

"It looks like they're going to have to come out and fix it," Namjoon said, hanging up the phone. "We won't have internet until then." 

The members groaned. 

Jungkook walked into the kitchen and brought back a case of beer, a smirk plastered on his face. 

"Let's play a game," he said. "To welcome Sumi to the dorm."

"What game?" Namjoon asked. 

"Answer or drink," he said. "On your turn, someone asks you a question and if you don't want to answer it, you have to drink." 

Everyone agreed and sat in a circle. Yoongi sat on one side of you and Hoseok on the other side. Your knee brushed Yoongi's and you felt a small pang in your chest as you pulled away.

"All right, we'll go in order of age. Jin, you're up first." 

You didn't really pay attention to the questions. You'd fall somewhere towards the end. Between Jungkook and Taehyung. 

Jin answered the question. He didn't seem like the type to be embarrassed easily, a quality you admired in the eldest. 

---

"Yoongi," Jungkook said. "Your turn."

The room stayed silent. No one had a question for the boy and he couldn't help but smirk slightly. However, Taehyung meekly raised his hand. 

"What happened with Jihee?"

Yoongi cussed to himself. He knew she had been texting the other members about him. The other members would always consult him first before telling her anything when it was obvious he wasn't talking to her. 

"She cheated," Yoongi answered simply. 

The other boys' eyes widened and they nodded. However, it wasn't their gazes Yoongi felt boring into him. It was yours. He could feel your eyes staring at his profile. 

Yoongi had been careful the night he met you. He managed not even to tell you his name. He'd only mentioned he'd recently gotten out of a relationship. He figured you didn't need to hear his sob story. Besides, he planned on keeping Jihee's betrayal a secret. Just as she wanted. The only people he could trust with the truth were his members. 

But, you deserved to know the truth. It was unfair to keep you completely at a distance, especially when he'd overheard everything about your ex.

Yoongi noticed you drinking, you'd already cracked open another can by the time it got Namjoon. He felt a twinge in his chest. Yoongi quickly suppressed it, your drinking habits were none of his business. And based on the way Eunji talked the night at the bar, it didn't sound like you drank much. Only when your heart was broken.

"Sumi," Jungkook said. "Your turn." 

Again, the room fell silent. No one knew Sumi well enough to ask her such a personal question. But, then again, everyone was tipsy, or in a few cases, already drunk. 

"How's Yoongi in bed?" 

Everyone except for Yoongi and you laughed. 

"Seriously?" Yoongi asked. 

He knew it was the alcohol that asked the question, but it was still inappropriate. He didn't want you to have to drink. Your eyes were glazed and your cheeks rosy. 

Yoongi reached over and drank for you, crumpling the can when he finished. 

"Move on," he said. "It should be your turn, right, Jungkook?"

"Wait," you said. "I didn't answer." 

Everyone turned to look at you. It was obvious you were too drunk to notice that Yoongi had technically already drank for you. 

"He's good," you answered. "Better than my ex and I hate that cause..." 

You drifted off not noticing the seven stunned faces staring at you.Your words slurred, but they hung in the room. Your eyelids drooped and your head lulled forward into your chest. 

"I think it's time for bed," Namjoon said, standing up and helping you stand. He threw an arm around you and led you down the hall towards your bedroom. 

Despite the fact that the situation was perfectly appropriate, Yoongi still felt a small pang of jealousy. He knew he shouldn't and that it was all the soulmates thing, but that didn't stop his fists from clenching. 

"She probably won't remember this in the morning," Yoongi said. "Don't remind her."

Yoongi swallowed the rest of his drink and left the room on the pretenses of being sleepy--which he was--but he also didn't want anyone to see the blush come to his cheeks. 

---

You awoke the next morning with the worst headache you'd ever had. You clutched your forehead and glanced at the time: 10:30 am. You sighed. 

You spotted your knitting things from yesterday placed on top of the dresser. You didn't remember fetching them from Yoongi's studio, but then again, you barely remembered anything after Jimin knocked the Wi-fi out. 

"All I drank was beer," you muttered to yourself. 

You weren't known for being a lightweight causing you to wonder just how much you'd drank the night before.

As you squirmed you felt something soft move in the crook of your arm. You looked down and saw Kitty. You smiled at the stuffed cat and her droopy eye. 

[wordsfromthesol]

Summoning Ritual (1/3)

Author: @wordsfromthesol Taglist: @malfoys-demigod  @pricetagofficial​  @zphilophobiaz @queencommonsense Pairing: Tim Drake x Reader Summary: You try a summoning ritual, optimistically hoping to be reunited with your parents, but somehow end up in Gotham. At Wayne Manor. Doesn't this stuff only exist in comic books and television? Word Count: 1.0k

Part Two   Part Three

You had performed similar rituals countless times, what was the worst thing that could happen? The person you were attempting to summon could actually appear? Imagine being able to see your parents again. Tell them one more time that you loved them. You just wanted somewhere that felt like home. Was that too much to ask?

So here you were, scribing the various symbols into the room around you. From what you pieced together from various internet forums, the ritual was supposed to act as a homing beacon. If your parents were out there, surely they would get your message. You began the incantation:

Nwoym llacot ecalpa erised straehym emgnirb dnaraf dnaraen hcraes kcali tahwsi emoha.

Nwoym llacot ecalpa erised straehym emgnirb dnaraf dnaraen hcraes kcali tahwsi emoha.

Nwoym llacot ecalpa erised straehym emgnirb dnaraf dnaraen hcraes kcali tahwsi emoha.

An hour had passed and still you sat on the floor, waiting for something to happen. You knew it was a stretch, it always was, yet somehow you still had hope. Finally, you stood up and sighed. "Maybe it takes a few hours to work," you mumbled before stumbling off to bed.

**

You woke up in an unfamiliar room as a strange sense washed over you. Though you couldn't place the emotion, this strange place felt right. Like you were meant to be there. Your eyes trailed around the room, looking for anything familiar. Wandering through the hallway, you still couldn't shake the feeling…then you saw it. The infamous grandfather clock. Were you dreaming? There's no way…You heard the click of the lock as you pushed the hands to 10:48. Before you made it down the stairs, everything went black.

You woke up, yet again, in an unfamiliar place. This time, however, your hand were bound together behind a chair. Moments after you awoke, you heard a voice -- though its owner was not present.

"How did you get in here?" The masculine voice didn't give you time to respond. "Who are you? Where did you come from?"

"Uhh --" your voice meekly broke through his line of questioning. "I used the clock…10:48. Y/N  Y/L/N. Upstairs." A man clad in red and black stepped out from the shadows. Before you could stop yourself, you shouted "Red Robin?!" Your hand flew over your mouth.

"So you do know of me…" He stalked over to the computer, punching in your name.

"This is a joke, right?" Your brain had finally caught up with the situation. "Some cosplay enthusiast? Sorry. I don't think I can be your Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown, or Barbara Gordon. Can I go now?"

As you began mentioning the names, he quickly spun around. His eyes grew wide as he stuttered out in shock, "How do you know those names?" His timbre grew more erratic and angry, "Where did you hear them?!"

"Fr…from the comics! Just like yours!"

"Woah woah woah…" Nightwing rushed it, but stopped short as he noticed your presence. "Red Robin, what seems to be the problem?" He turned towards his brother.

"She just appeared. Walking down the damn stairs. And knows too many names. Cass, Steph, Babs…"

You noticed the fire grow behind Nightwing's gaze. Obviously Dick was with Barbara in this storyline…"Wait okay!" You screamed out. "I know all of your names. You're just characters! In a comic! In several comics!"

"You better keep explaining." Dick growled out.

"Richard John Grayson, aka Dick, aka Nightwing. You were the first Robin after your parents died at Haly's circus because Haly wouldn't pay protection money to Zucco. Timothy Jackson Drake, aka Red Robin. You were officially the third Robin. Though I suppose you did try to be the second…and Bruce adopted you after your parents died. Though I guess only your mom died and your dad was paralyzed. Anyways, you saved Bruce…sorry Batman…from going off the deep end after Jason died." The rambling had begun and you couldn't stop it. Surprisingly neither of the superheroes before you stopped it either. "So Jason Peter Todd was the second Robin. He tried to steal tires off the Batmobile…idiot. And the Joker killed him by luring him with tales of his mother. He came back in the Lazarus pit and became Red Hood. Then you have Damian Wayne, the current Robin. He's actually the son of Bruce and Talia al Ghul --"

"Enough! What right do you possess to speak my name?!" Damian was on top of you in the blink of an eye. You felt the cold metal of his katana against your neck.

"Damian…" Dick warned from the sidelines. He wasn't exactly sure who you were or how you knew this…but he couldn't let his little brother kill you. At least not yet.

"Uh guys…" Tim directed his brothers' attention to the computer monitor before leading them out of the room.

"So the new girl is Zatanna and Constantine's kid?" They all jumped at the sound of Jason's voice.

"Geez Jaybird. Warn a guy, will you." Dick shook his head as they all turned their attention to Tim.

"I don't think she knows. One of you needs to get in contact with them. How did none of us know she existed? And why does she know everything about us? We need answers and I don't think she has them." Tim ordered the directives and sauntered back towards you. "So, Y/N is it?"

Your wall finally broke, "Look I'm sorry. I'm not supposed to be here. I just wanted to see my parents again. I just…" your voice hitched, "I wanted to be home." Tim was not prepared for this sudden breakdown.

"We, uh, we'll figure it out. Let me --" He walked around and began untying you from the chair.

"Sorry." You mumbled while rubbing your newly freed wrists.

"Guess I should be the one apologizing. Knocking you out…tying you to a chair…" Tim attempted to occupy your mind with something else as his brothers searched for your birth parents.  

[buckthegrump]

Miscommunications

Summary: Bucky’s not an idiot. In fact, he’s very smart. However there is one person who makes him a little dumb, a himbo if you will.

Warnings: swearing, that’s it

Word Count:1269

A/n: this is for @heli0s-writes​ ‘s writing challenge my prompt is bolded this is the first of a collection of one-shots with our favorite himbo also the gif has nothing to do with this fic i just think it’s hot

Bucky wasn’t sure how romance worked in the 21st century. So he was slightly lost in where to start. Not that any of that mattered, he highly doubted he was able to find someone that he liked enough to try.

But then Y/n joined the team.

She was a hacker and got her place because she hacked into Tony’s system. For the first few months, she was quiet and resourceful. She also had taken over the team’s finances, claiming that she was more trustworthy than some shmuck who went to Harvard and had a bad hair cut. She also wasn’t about to turn down more money.

Bucky wasn’t sure when exactly he began to fall for her but one day he looked at her while she stared at the computer screen as she typed away. She was gnawing away at her bottom lip and drinking a steaming liquid from one of Tony’s mugs.

Her eyelids were heavy and no matter how much she moved around it seemed like she was three seconds away from giving in to sleep and falling off the chair. 

He didn’t know how to talk to her, at least not in the way he wanted to. He could hold a friendly conversation with her but damn was that getting frustrating. Sam wasn’t making it any better by teasing the poor man.

Natasha walked into the kitchen just as Bucky had opened his mouth to make a comment. They began talking about something trivial and Bucky decided to let them have to themselves and walked away.

Something that Y/n said something that caught Bucky off guard. “Yeah, I think I want some goats -”

Bucky didn’t really hear anything after.

* * *

It was a few weeks later when Bucky and Y/n were the only ones in the compound for a few days because everyone else was out on a mission.

Y/n was sitting on the couch playing a video game when Bucky walked into the family room. At first, she didn’t pay much attention to it but then she heard a sound that didn’t make sense. She knew logically what the noise was but it in her mind it didn’t belong in the compound.

She turned to look at Bucky who was holding a rope and at the end of the rope was a goat.

“I have so many questions I’m not even sure where to start,” she muttered, mostly to herself but she knew that Bucky heard her.

“It’s a goat,” he said as he lifted the rope.

“Yes, that I can see I’m just confused as to why. Also, how did you get a goat here? Do you have your driver’s license?”

“You mentioned to Nat a few weeks that you wanted some goats,” he said sheepishly.

Y/n bit back a smile. “Goat’s milk, babe.”

Bucky tried not to let himself get to excited by the nickname, she called everyone that. And then the rest of her sentence clicked in his head.

“Oh,” he said feeling his cheeks heat up. 

She got up from her place on the couch and walked over to him.

“It’s a very sweet gesture but I was talking about trying a recipe with goat’s milk. But since you have the goat here -”

* * *

“What the hell is that?” Sam’s scream could be heard throughout the compound. 

Everyone was seated in the dining room waiting for the pizza to be delivered when Sam had his outburst. Very quickly and subtlely Bucky and Y/n shared a look. 

About a minute later Sam came into the room with the goat in tow.

“Why the fuck was there a goat in my room? How did it even get there?” Sam yelled at the team.

An argument broke out over who put it there and why. Somehow, neither Bucky nor Y/n got blamed for it. Tony however did.

* * *

One would think that the goat incident would be the last time that Bucky brought a farm animal into the compound.

It was not.

Wanda was sitting with Y/n looking at a funny video on the internet when Bucky walked in with a llama or an alpaca Y/n wasn’t quite sure which.

The two women stared at the supersoldier and his new friend silently. No one said anything for a long time, while the poor farm animal made noises and looked like it was waiting for food. Steve walked in and was about to ask the girls what they were staring at until he looked over at Bucky.

“Whatcha got there, Buck?” Steve asked.

Bucky held up a cup that no one had noticed he was holding. “Coffee.”

He then looked to Y/n who was trying to read his expression, but it was completely blank. Bucky began petting the animal as he took a sip of his iced coffee.

“You wanna pet it?” He asked.

“Bucky, why do you -” Steve started but Y/n got up from her spot and brushed by Steve to take Bucky up on his offer. “How did you even get a llama?”

“It’s an alpaca,” Bucky deadpanned.

The alpaca was so soft Y/n wanted to shrink to the size of ant-man and camp out in the animal’s fur for a weekend. 

“I’ve always wanted a sweater made of wool from their fur,” Y/n said and Bucky started choking at the comment. “Who’d you rent it from?”

Bucky waved his hand vaguely. “Oh, ya know -”

Y/n’s hand froze. “Take it back.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he muttered and guided it out of the compound.

Steve and Wanda shared a look before turning back to Y/n, who only shrugged before getting back to her laptop.

* * *

Y/n, being in charge of finances, was used to seeing large sums of money being used. Mainly by Tony and Natasha. But every once in a while Steve or Sam would have something that cost a few thousand dollars, but they always warned her about it.

So when she came across one of Bucky’s bills that was massive she unironically did a spit take and chocked on the leftover water in her mouth.

“You ok?” Speak of the devil. Bucky walked over to where she was at the table and sat next to her.

“Umm yeah, I was just going over some things and I found something odd,” she pulled held out the piece of paper that sent her into her coughing fit, “According to this, you owe them eighty thousand dollars.”

Bucky nodded then looked up at her and continued nodding. She furrowed her brows in a questioning manner.

“Yeah,” was all he said.

“Ok but like, you spent eighty thousand dollars in one place,” she reiterated. “I didn’t even know you had that kind of money.”

“Well, turns out that if you spend more than seventy years as a prisoner of war and it’s your own government’s fault they feel pretty guilty about it and then give you a shit ton of money to try and make up for it,” he explained, “that and Tony may have threatened them or something.”

“That still doesn’t tell me what you bought,” she said.

Bucky smiled, stood up, then gave her a kiss on the forehead. If she hadn’t been so preoccupied with the fact that Bucky apparently had enough money to just blow eighty thousand on one thing, she might have actually reacted to the out of character affection.

“Don’t worry about it,” was all he said as he walked away.

“That makes me worry about it more!” She yelled out after him but she didn’t get a response.

[laguera25]

An Open Letter to Richard Z. Kruspe on the Occasion of His 54th Birthday

When I was born, ten weeks prematurely and weighing a scant two-and-a-half pounds, the doctors told my parents not to bother naming me, as I would likely die very quickly, and even if I were to survive, I would likely be blind and helpless and profoundly retarded, unaware of, and unable to engage with, the world around me. Best to leave me be and let nature take its course. A few days of benign neglect, and it would all be over. If they were fortunate, there would be other, better children.

Fortunately for me, my parents gave the double-fingered salute to that bit of medical advice and took me home to do the best they could with very little money and no one to guide them through the strange and terrible country of life with a disabled child. I survived because my very country grandmother chucked out the baby formula that I wasn't digesting and fed me the cow's milk the doctors so solemnly swore would kill me.

There was so many milestones I missed, and of which my parents were deprived. I didn't sit up by myself until I was two. I never walked, never ran, though there are a few faded photos of me gamely pulling myself upright on chairs and the edges of coffee tables, trying to do what my brain said I ought, but my body too weak and miswired too obey. No play with other children, who were stronger and more rambunctious and would have bowled me over in all innocence. And as I grew older, no first dates or driving tests or prom dresses. No thought of an independent life.

What there was was endless rounds of physical and occupational therapy. Hours and hours on a brown vinyl mat, trying to lift my leg or raise my ass off the ground or make my hand write the words in my head. Hours and hours putting change into a slot or trying to tie shoelaces or forcing my hands into uncomfortable plastic splints for a chance at a fraction of more bodily control. While my school friends were out playing in the sun, I was inside beneath fluorescent lights, learning to button my shirt and comb my hair and brush my teeth. To hold a pencil. No time for joy, for peace, for figuring out who I was beyond this collection of aches and pains and deficiencies, just the endless tedium of learning to "be normal" and less of an imposition on the world around me.

And I did go to school. Despite the doctors' dire predictions, I was neither blind nor idiot. I was perfectly aware of the world around me, and smart. So much so that when I was nine, the school ordered an intelligence test. The score was so high that they thought it an error and made me take it again in front of witnesses. When the same score came back the second time, they wanted to move me two years ahead, but my mother, afraid it would both isolate me further and give me airs, refused. So, I stayed, face in the mat and hands in splints, learning advanced history and English, yet forced to put blocks into holes and put colored rings on a stick.

And so I lived this strange paradox for my entire childhood, the genius child that my mother crowed about to all her friends and anyone who would listen, and terrible burden who still had the coordination of a toddler, and who had ruined her dreams of ribbons and curls. When I was nine, she was convinced I could be made "normal"--or closer to it--any road, with a surgery. And so, the surgeons detached the muscles and ligaments in my legs from the bones and stretched them in an effort to relieve the spasticity. The surgeons were doing a kindness to relieve pain; by then, the muscles were so tight that when I was stood on my feet and held up, my feet rolled onto the instep and my knees pointed at each other. It was a measure of dignity.

To my mother, it was supposed to be a miracle, the cure that gave her the daughter she deserved.

I woke up screaming. The muscles and ligaments were unhappy with their new positions and weren't afraid to register their protest about this new state of affairs. They tried to administer morphine, but the levels needed to control the pain were dangerously high for a child, and so I was left to ride it out. I screamed and screamed and screamed. For thirteen hours.

My mother. who was so sure she had found her miracle, was taken into another room by an exhausted surgeon who had done the best he could, and told that at most, I might be able to walk across the room on a walker and take myself to the toilet. She screamed, too, then, at this man who had been on his feet for nine hours, trying to undo the mistakes of the hands that had formed me from the dust of the ground, and who would try to make me laugh every day when he came to check my progress. She called him a liar and a bastard and a son of a bitch, and family lore has it that she would have hit him had my father not intervened.

They tried to tell her. Kindly and patiently and incessantly, but she would not listen. God had told her I would be cured, and dammit, I would be. The day they cut my casts off and sent me home, they told her not to push me too hard, that my muscles needed time to adjust and build endurance. She said she understood, but when we got home, she ordered me to walk uphill to the house. I tried, I truly did, but it wasn't long before I hit muscle fatigue and started to cry. I want to stop, wanted my wheelchair.

And my mother, this woman who had once told the doctors who would have let me die to go fuck themselves, picked up a stick and started to beat me. "Be normal! Be normal!" Screaming and sobbing and flailing with this stick, and me screaming and begging and trying to stay upright. I don't know how long she would've kept going, but eventually, my stepfather appeared, wrested the stick away and threatened to beat her with it, and carried me into the house.

Here I must give my mother a sliver of credit even if I will carry the memory of that beating for the rest of my days. She was right, after a fashion. I did do more than walk across the room with a walker and take myself to the toilet. For a while, I even graduated to forearm crutches and quad canes, which might not sound like much, but when you were expected to do nothing, that's like climbing Everest in your underpants. My wheelchair gathered dust for years, but soon I had to choose between the demands of my education and the demands of my body. The latter simply lacked the energy to fuel both my mind and my muscles to the best of my their abilities, and since school was the only area of life in which I had ever excelled, there was no choice at all. Back into the chair I went. By the time I graduated high school, I could no longer use crutches, and by my third year at uni, even the walker was too much. These days, I cannot move myself without help, and arthritis has set in. I made my choice, and now I pay its price.

I tell you all of this to illustrate that whatever the fool doctors might have said as they clucked and tutted over my incubator, I was keenly aware of the world. Of everything I was missing while my mother insisted I just bootstrap myself out of my disability and be normal. Of her seething resentment of all that I was not. Of her wish that I was someone else.

There were two bands that got me through, kept me sane and kept me moving when all I wanted to do was just lie down and not get up. The first was Metallica, whom I discovered at thirteen, and who told me it was all right to be angry about my circumstances, to kick and scream and argue with God and call him a rotten bastard--as long as I kept living, kept getting up in the morning and trying to inch down the road. I didn't have to swallow my anger for fear of upsetting God and hurting my mother's chances of getting into heaven(my mother believes that I am a test she must pass in order to get into heaven; therefore, my suffering is irrelevant and should never be questioned, lest it anger Him. Don't ask; I don't get it.)

If Metallica was the band that gave me permission to be angry as long as I kept trying, it was Rammstein that told me it was okay to want more from life than an endless regimen of therapy and prayer and gratitude to a God that had, or so it seemed to me, sent me into the world with a ramshackle body and precious little armor or defense against the assholery of my fellow human beings and yet still expected me to praise His holy name allelu. To want joy and friends and human contact. To have a libido and ogle whatever flipped my switches. To, in short, be human, and more than just a symbol of all my mother's broken hopes.

I discovered the band through a book, believe it not. I found a copy of Tom Reynolds' <i>Touch Me, I'm Sick</i> in a Barnes and Noble I had gone into to browse and hide from a cataclysmic thunderstorm, and in it, he began to talk about a band called Rammstein and a song called "Heirate Mich." The more I read, the more gloriously improbable it all seemed, and the harder I laughed. By the time I got to the line, "As the music pounds like a collapsing factory...", there were tears streaming down my face, and I was having trouble breathing. The saleslady must've worried I was having a stroke.

And so it was that I found the key to everything that would come after. From the book to my creaking dial-up Internet(don't laugh, it was what I could afford as a broke-ass cripple on the government dole) to the CD shop, where I blew my food budget on Rammstein CDs and lived on Hamburger Helper for weeks. This is a terrible dietary choice, by the way, but at least I had Rammstein music in my ears all day, every day. A few weeks later, I put another dent in my food budget buying all the DVDs. Ah, the vigor and stupidity of youth. If I tried that foolery now, I'd be semiconscious on the floor in a day and a half. Back then, I had a more stalwart constitution.

I knew by the second song I heard that Rammstein was going to be special to me. My German, which consisted of a year of study in high school and a disastrous two years in college, was pretty poor, but thanks to snooping around Internet forums and squinting at grainy videos, I knew much of your catalogue dealt with taboo subjects. I didn't care. For all its dark subject matter, the music made me want to dance. It made me feel something other than apathy and a persistent wish for this whole mess to be over and my soul to be recycled into a body that didn't make me want to scream until I was too tired to do anything but sleep.

And I did dance. Constantly. Seldom in public because dancing in a wheelchair often looks like the Devil is trying to stick his finger up your ass, but often at home, just shimmying away until the chair developed some alarming creaks and the bolts needed adjustment. Rammstein made me happy. It made me curious. It made me want to see just how much was out there.

And, if I am honest, it made me want to see those silver MC Hammer pants for myself. The combination of those pants and the diaper rash cream in your hair was a striking look for you, if I may say so, though perhaps not so grand as the black spikes and the lion pants you wore with such swaggering panache on the Reise, Reise tour. Alas, this was not to be, as I suppose you had wearied of slathering ass cream for infants in your hair. I can't blame you, though I suppose it must've been a sad day, indeed, for the ointment companies. Still, those Hammer pants and their Reynolds Wrap, space-age splendor will always hold a special place in my heart.

Stymied in my hope to witness for myself the wonders of those Hammer pants--and those lion pants as well, as it turned out, oh, unhappy hour, long may they reign in the storage closet--I nonetheless wanted to see a Rammstein show. Not much chance of that, the morose American fans assured me. The band hadn't come here since they foolishly took the American commitment to freedom of expression at face value and Till and Flake landed in the Puritan pokey for playing Loose the Dachshund into the Badger Burrow in front of delighted fans. Besides, the band's management had scant interest in repeating that little experiment.

Even so, I held out hope. I hung out on message boards and kept me ear to the ground. You can imagine my delight when the MSG show was announced. I wasn't so foolish as to think I could attend, mind you; New York might as well have been the moon for someone who cannot safely fly, but it was fun to indulge in a bit of wistful what-if? What if I could find a way to get there that wouldn't give me a lethal clot? What if I could score tickets? What if I could afford a hotel in Manhattan where the rats and roaches wouldn't kill me in my sleep or carry me off to be devoured in the sewer system? These were all very big ifs for someone who lived in the boonies and was only supposed to spend money on medical expenses and basic bills. Besides, MSG was going to sell out before I could gimp my way to the phone.

Knowing all of this, I took to my blog to whine and moan and feel sorry for myself. It wasn't fair, I whinged to the ether. I had wanted to see Rammstein for so long, but it just wasn't possible. It was too expensive and too far and too haaaaard. And woe is me.

And then...

And then...

And then a bossy German lady dropped a punk alarm in my inbox.

I don't remember now how or why she came to my blog. Maybe she was drawn by an unconventional perspective on life and fandom and moving through the world, or maybe she just wanted to snortle at my friend and I's discussions of your sartorial splendor and the ridiculous dramas going on in the Rammstein fandom at the time. Either way, she'd been been watching my sulking and stropping for a few days, until she'd reached her limit and this woman, who had never said an unkind word to me in years, called me a coward. Just straight up said that I could either find my spine, stop pissing and moaning, and try my hardest to see Rammstein in New York, or I could keep being a coward and making excuses. But make my choice and stop sniveling because she was tired of hearing about it.

At first, I was stunned. Of all the things I had ever been called, a coward was not one of them. Then I was mad. How DARE she call me a coward when she had no idea how much pain I was in most of the time or how difficult it was to move around a world that had never been designed for me and been but grudgingly retrofitted by handymen who thought that grab bars fixed everything!

So I stewed and pouted for a few hours, but the longer I thought about it, the more I realized she was right. I hadn't tried very hard to research my options. I hadn't checked hotels or called the venue or gotten my finances in order. I had claimed Rammstein was so important and meaningful to me, but I hadn't shown it. I had assumed defeat before I'd even started the charge up the the hill and wallowed in self-pity. Sure, maybe I was right and I wouldn't be able to go, but I'd never know if I didn't square up and try.

Before I proceed, a word about the tried-and-true deutscher Fuss zum Arsch(not another aside in a letter full of them, I hear you cry as your eyes begin to glaze. I know, Mr. Kruspe, believe me, but if you speak to the world through your guitar strings, I speak through my keystrokes, and so I beg your patience. We're almost there.). If a German you have gotten to know puts their foot up your ass and calls you on your bullshit, they are not doing it to be a prick, and it's not done with the intent to create hard feelings or demolish your self-esteem. It's harsh, man, is it harsh when you're used to American doublespeak and soft-pedaling, but they're doing it because they see something in you and are trying to stop you from making a dumbass or a jackwagon of yourself. They're doing it because they want to keep being your friend.

So.

Punk alarm duly dropped and head dislodged from ass, I started making phone calls. To the banks do get my money in order. To bean counters to make sure I would have access to it. To Amtrak to discuss their booking options. I went to disability websites and forums to discuss precautions to take in case my health or my equipment gave out on the road. The best hospital for the broke-ass should I get mown down by a taxi while trying to cross the road. Emergency numbers and insurance forms and blah blah blah. A raft of bureaucracy and safeguards and double-checking, all for a concert I might not get tickets for.

But I did, because for once, my disability worked in my favor. MSG sold out in twenty-five minutes, but that venue, bless its heart, doesn't put disabled seating up for general sale. You have to call the disabled patron assistance line, and they don't release unsold disabled seats for general sale until three days before a show. So I called the magic line, and a very amiable fellow talked me through the process. Two weeks later, the tickets were in my mailbox.

I am not ashamed to tell you that when I opened the envelope and held the tickets in my hand, I screamed like a debutante that sat on an upturned spoon. It was really happening.

And yes, my German friend gave me a giant "I told you so!" But she was right, and she'd earned it. Besides, she was happy for me, too.

So I did it. I got on a train(where I soon learned that accessible or not, I couldn't use the toilet because the train swayed too much for me to keep my balance), and I went without eating, drinking, or urinating for twenty-two hours(I do not recommend this to anyone, by the by. It hurt, and it was dangerous)to get to New York. And when I got there, I stood in Penn Station and simply stared because I was somewhere I never thought I'd be. It was simultaneously everything I thought it would be and nothing like I'd expected.

There were still obstacles, of course. There always are when you have two hands and four wheels and see the world through asses and elbows. Clutching my luggage while my trusty and ever-present companion pushed me over the cracked sidewalk with one hand and dragged the rest of the luggage behind him. Finding out that the "accessible" hotel room was, in fact, not all that accessible and wrenching my knee every time I used the toilet. Being accosted by my first sidewalk screamer within ten minutes of being in the city. Meeting my first hustler.

Freezing my ass off outside the venue for four hours before the show and called not fan enough by other fans because I didn't do it for fourteen, because hey, if you were really a fan, you'd risk pneumonia to see the show, even if it would kill you. Being shunted and shuffled to four different doors by event staff because no one could agree on where the disabled fans were supposed to enter. Being let into the building to warm up by an MSG employee, only to be booted out by event staff three minutes later. Whee! Aren't the logistics of being disabled fun?

But Mr. Kruspe, it was all worth it. I've never felt an energy like that before. Whatever snitty elitism some of the fans might have been nursing outside, inside MSG, we were all fans, all people who had waited and wished for this for a very long time. The primal roar from the crowd when the band began to break through the wall raised the hairs on my nape, and you'd better believe that I joined them with all of my energy.

From the first note, I forgot my pain. It was still there, mind, waiting for me, black-toothed and patient as the grave, but I was beyond it, in a state of suspended euphoria. No pain, just joy. I watched everything as best I could despite my near-sightedmess and my rather distant seat. I soaked it all in--the music and the unapologetic bombast, and the pageantry of the fire. It was all so starkly, darkly beautiful, and according to my companion, who has all the sentimentality of pavement, when he looked over at me during "Ich Will", I was "radiant." He, who had known me for thirteen years by then, said he'd never seen me like that before, and that he would never forget it.

It was not without price. These things never are. There was another train journey and another twenty-two hours without access to a toilet, and by the time I got home, I was so strung out from lack of food, water, and sleep(because trufax, it is hard to sleep when your bladder is trying to pop out of your skin from the pressure)that I cried like a toddler on the drive home. And then I went home, peed forever, drank, ate, and collapsed for seventeen hours.

But it was worth it. It was so worth it that on the band's next go-round, I took a cross-country roadtrip to Vegas, during which I peed much more often, thank God, but I also fought ants and roaches in a hotel room in Texas and stayed in a room so gross I slept in my clothes and threw them out when I got home. But it, too, was worth it, just as it was worth it to get in the car and drive to Florida and Atlanta on the next tour after that.

I told you ALL of these things, Mr. Kruspe, to tell you this. I saw your interview in that documentary about depression in 2010. I heard you say you felt worthless unless you were creating.

I don't know what you're worth to anyone else, but to me, you are priceless, and always will be. Without you, there would be no Rammstein, and for me, there would have been no reason to try, to spread my wings and take a run at that hill. Without you, I might have given up, might have let my mother win, and maybe now, I'd be sitting in some care home, stewing in my own yellowing stink and getting a bath once a week and a monthly outing and rotting from the inside out. Without you, I might never have taken the chance, never pushed myself.

But you were, and are, and because of that, I did. Because of that, I saw New York, and moved, however briefly, among that anonymous throng. Because of that, I met the sidewalk doomsayer and the exasperated hustler. Because of that, I tried New York Pizza(and yes, I saw a rat, but he minded his business, and I minded mine). Because of you, I heard a Cajun patois in Louisiana and watched out the window of the car as the Texas plains unwound around us. Because of you, I saw the night sky on the outskirts of Vegas and was escorted back to the Strip after the show by two Native dudes who walked far out of their way and called me little sister. These are gifts I got from you because you were, and are, and they have sustained me ever since. They sustain me now that my world has been reduced to the four walls of my house as I ride out the pandemic in a country that believes people like me are an acceptable sacrifice.

I know this won't change things for you, won't quiet that awful voice in your head. Depression doesn't work like that, and even if it did, I am just a stranger you will never meet. But maybe it will give you something to hang on to, something to think about on the bad days. Christ knows you kept my head above the water when all I wanted to do was let it go under.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Kruspe. May it bring you joy and all that you need.

Guera

[iselsis]

Unholy Matrimony 2

Jack had left early in the morning two days later for his meeting with Mr. Wayne, and Tim had been waiting in the grand foyer almost without a break ever since.

He knew, like, intellectually, the Mr. Wayne wouldn’t buy him, because, duh, Batman, but he was having a hard time convincing his body of that. His heart pounded wildly, his hands were clammy and gross, and his stomach roiled, both with heat pain and at the thick scent of distress and pheromones in the room. Janet had tried to order him to his room, but he kept sneaking back, and eventually, she just gave up and opened windows.

In the end, he decided that he was less worried about what would happen if Mr. Wayne bought him, and more worried about what would happen when he didn’t. His parents were going to be furious, and while he kind of hoped that they’d just spend a lot of time thinking about what to do next, go on another trip, and forget, like they usually did with commitments they made to him, he didn’t think that that was going to happen this time.

After a few hours, Janet wordlessly stepped into the room. Neither of his parents had spoken to him since the first morning except to snap order and make absolutely sure how much of a disappointment he was. Instead of acknowledging him or snapping at him to stop making her house smell like a crime scene, she leaned against the banister to watch the front door with him. He supposed that meant that his dad would be back soon, and his gut wrenched again. He wasn’t sure if that would be good or bad, but at least it would mean an end to the waiting.

It was only a few more minute before they heard the Drake’s rental (they were never in town long enough to need their own car) roar up the front drive with a worrying speed. His dad was either really excited, or really mad. Tim was leaning towards mad, given the whole “trying to sell my kid to the unholy terror of the night” thing, but that wasn’t assured, he realized. He might have drastically mistyped Batman, and the real Bruce Wayne was more of a “do as I say and not as I do” type person, or maybe he didn’t really mind child brides. Like, he’d stop a grab & go rape, but if they were, like, married, then maybe he wouldn’t really mind.

The door flew open and Jack stormed into the foyer, his whole body and scent screaming rage.

Tim breathed a quiet sigh of relief. He wasn’t getting married, then.

Janet frowned in confusion. “He refused.”

“Refused? Refusing is one thing, but that bastard,” Jack snarled, hurling his briefcase at the floor, where it landed on its spine with a resounding crack and an eruption of papers. “That absolute bastard had the nerve to lecture me about how we should ‘respect and treasure our son’ and ‘cherish the time we have with him.’”

Oh, that was… That was beautiful. Poetic. The small part of him that had been worried about Mr. Wayne actually wanting him that way curled up and died of laughter. The thought of his parents actually following through on Mr. Wayne’s suggestion and respecting him and cherishing their time with him, though, was just too much.

Jack turned and shot a glare at Tim, like it was his fault that Mr. Wayne didn’t want to buy him, and Tim struggled to keep his grin in check.

He must not have been able to keep his amusement from his scent, because his father’s expression darkened, and he stalked toward Tim.

“You think that this is funny, bitch?” Jack snatched Tim’s collar before Tim could make a run for it and shook him harshly.

Tim stumbled, throwing his head back in submission to bare his throat. Jack growled and slapped Tim hard across the face with enough force to send him crashing to the ground.

His head hit the tile hard, making his vision swim with disjointed shapes and blurred edges. He tried to get up, but his father’s shoe slammed into his ribs and he was down again with a cry of pain. The next kick landed in his stomach, then another to his ribs, then his mother’s voice was saying something quietly that Tim couldn’t hear over the pounding of his heart in his ears.

“He deserves it, pompous little omega brat!” Jack snapped venomously.

Tim chanced a glance up, but found only a furious glare from his father and a cool, calculating stare from his mother.

“True.” She lifted her chin so that she was looking down her nose at Tim even more than she had been before. “But we won’t get as good a price for him if he’s broken and ugly. His only asset is his pretty face, dear. Luthor or Queen might be interested if he looks decent.”

A small, ridiculous part of Tim was thrilled, because calling him pretty was the nicest thing his mom had said about him in years. A larger part of Tim cringed at the idea of having to marry Lex Luthor or Oliver Queen. Mr. Wayne was Batman, which meant that of course he would never agree to marry a kid. Tim was sure that the drunken playboy role was just an act.

Lex Luthor, from what he had overheard from his parents, was arrogant, cruel, manipulative, and completely amoral, and that was just with his business partners. Tim was sure that he wouldn’t object to being given a child bride, and Tim also knew that his parents had wanted a deal with Luthor almost as badly as they wanted a deal with Wayne.

Oliver Queen, he knew less about. He did know that he was the CEO of Queen Industries. His parents didn’t think much of him. He was apparently what Bruce Wayne pretended to be: a drunk playboy with too much money and low moral character. He was a useful idiot, though, and they might try to get the better of him with a stilted business deal and a young omega. For all those faults, though, Tim was pretty sure that he wasn’t a criminal.

Jack growled and kicked Tim once more before storming out of the room.

Janet’s lips curled into a frown of distaste. She didn’t have to say anything to communicate just how disappointed she was. After a few moments, she calmly followed her husband out of the room.

Tim tried to get up, but it hurt too much to move. He lay there, curled up in a fetal position on the tile floor, where at least the icy tiles numbed the pain of his bruises and heat, for a long time.

Finally, Tim dragged himself up off the floor, and up two flights of stairs to his bedroom. If he even had his own house, he was going to get a ground floor bedroom, like a sensible person. Or maybe he’d just take suppressants for the heat, and stay away from angry alphas.

Tim slipped into his room and shut the door behind him louder than he would have normally dared with his parents home, but he was hurt, and they were already mad, so he didn’t think it mattered if he slammed the door.

Tim wanted to just curl up into a ball and fall asleep for the next five years, but he had research to do first.

He dragged his laptop out from under his bed, where he’d hidden it in case his dad took it like he’d taken Tim’s phone. Jack had said that Tim didn’t need it anymore, but Tim had a feeling that it was really more out of a fear that Tim would go on social media and paint his parents and their company in a bad light in an attempt to get out of a marriage.

Tim was smart, though, or at the very least, smarter than that.

Options were limited for omegas. He could live on the streets, but he doubted he’d survive long without a pack. Jason Todd had done it, but Jason Todd was an alpha and he was strong enough that Batman had impulse-adopted him to be his Robin. If Tim wanted a prayer of survival, he’d probably have to find a pimp or an alpha. He didn’t want to, but if his other option was Luthor… He’d have to see.

Foster care, especially in Gotham, was basically just the prostitute option. He’d have a guaranteed roof, and probably food, but he wouldn’t get to keep his money and his parents would probably be able to get him back. Gotham’s omega group homes were also hotbeds for abuse without pay.

Tim’s main problem was that what his parents were doing wasn’t technically illegal. Even though omegas weren’t legally considered property anymore, they were second class citizens. If their parents wanted, they could marry them off to any alpha they wanted. Most didn’t anymore, but most also weren’t negotiating multimillion-dollar business deals. His new husband would be his guardian until he was eighteen, and he couldn’t even be divorced until then.

At the very least, Tim was the only one in the marriage who could request a divorce. Something about the alpha assuming responsibility since the omega had little real-world experience before the marriage. If he wanted, once he was eighteen, he could just be really really annoying until whatever alpha married him agreed to give him a severance check and alimony.

That plan probably wouldn’t work. There weren’t any rules about beating your omega for being a brat, or marital rape.

He needed to make a plan, and for that, he needed information.

A search on Lex Luthor turned up relatively innocuous results, until Tim started trying to get around any doctoring of the algorithm by adding keywords like crime and conspiracy. Most people turned their noses up as soon as the word conspiracy was uttered, but Tim had figured out that the richest man in Gotham ran around town dressed as a bat and beating people up with his underage accomplice all because of an acrobatic move. Small clues were important, and rich people are weird.

It turned out that the internet suspected Lex Luthor of a lot. Illegal weapons deals, links to supervillains, human testing, abuse, rape, murder. There wasn’t much that he wasn’t suspected of. Several of his more vocal accusers had turned up “suicided” as some had termed it. There was one, a CK, whose allegations of Luthor’s crimes was so extensive that Tim wasn’t sure if it could actually be true that one man had committed so many crimes.

Luthor was a hard no. Tim would rather chance the streets. Tim would rather die. Heck, if he wanted to die, marrying Luthor would probably take care of that pretty quickly.

Oliver Queen was a different story. Tim couldn’t find many accusations against him of anything, and the accusations he did find were mostly just being a drunkard and a whore. He didn’t seem so bad, or so smart. He seemed like he’d be nice enough, and Tim might even be able to manipulate Mr. Queen into letting him go to school. He’d probably be safer than the streets even if he couldn’t, and if he wasn’t, then at least the streets of Star City weren’t nearly as dangerous as the streets of Gotham.

It struck him while he was looking at a photo of Mr. Queen at a charity gala for polio or rickets or something. Mr. Queen’s beard seemed…familiar.

There was no way.

Tim quickly split the screen and pulled up every picture the public had of Star City’s Green Arrow on one side, comparing it to the picture of Oliver Queen from the newspaper.

How.

Had.

No one.

Noticed?

The facial hair was the exact same, the build, the hair color. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to wear a mask over his mouth and nose than over his eyes? It would take away the risk of the domino slipping over his eyes and actually cover extremely identifiable marks.

His heart sank. Mr. Wayne wouldn’t buy him, because he was a hero. Mr. Queen was a hero too.

He was being sold to Luthor.

[sambergscott]

i've been down here before and i know the way out

Summary: Leo Peralta is named after all the greats - the Ninja Turtle, da Vinci, DiCaprio and McGarry. 

(someone asked me to write about the name leo for jake and amy’s baby paying homage to leo mcgarry from the west wing and since i've officially joined Team Leo, i figured i'd do this)

(the title has nothing to do with the fic, it’s just my favourite leo/josh quote and i *had* to use it) 

It’s a weird feeling, leaving his son for the first time. Sure, he’s only going down the hall to get some much-needed coffee and snacks and he’s in Amy’s more-than-capable hands, but he already feels like he’s missing out on so much. What if he opens his eyes? What if he latches for the first time? What if he says his first word? No, that would be crazy. 5 hour old babies can’t talk, not even when they inherit super smart Santiago genes. 

The point is: Leo is the coolest person he’s ever met, named after Leonardo from the Ninja Turtles (or if you ask Amy, some painter from the olden days), and leaving him, even if only for a few minutes, sucks.

He didn’t understand how any of the other Peralta dads could walk out on their sons before and he certainly doesn’t understand it now.

He could never abandon Leo.

Speaking of Peralta dads who abandoned their sons, he instantly recognizes the white hair and crumpled pilot uniform of the man at the coffee machine as his own father and braces himself for the least fun conversation of the day (even worse than a laboring Amy threatening to kill him if he tells her how to breathe one more time).

“Hey, grandpa,” he says, patting Roger on the back.

“Jakey!” He exclaims. “Congratulations, son.”

He’s received a lot of congratulations in the last few hours. From his mom, Amy’s parents, Amy’s brothers, the Nine-Nine, their extended families. Every time he picks up his phone to take a picture of the baby or Amy and the baby or a selfie of all three of them, there’s another 5 comments on his Instagram post about their new recruit. It’s all kind of overwhelming and he hasn’t got back to everyone yet (he knows Amy will want to send handwritten thank you cards anyway), but he has read the comments out loud to Amy and told Leo how loved he already is.

(It’s something Jake didn’t really know as a kid and he vows to raise his son differently, to tell him everyday that his mom and dad love him so much).

Captain Holt’s congratulations in particular brought tears to Jake, Amy and Leo’s eyes. To be fair, Leo was crying because he needed a diaper change, but still. It’s like he knew.

Ray Holt (Received 22:07):

Dear Amy, Jake and Leo (who Gina informs me is named after the ‘smokeshow’ actor Leonardo DiCaprio? According to the Internet Movie Database, he was in something called The Wolf of Wall Street and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, although I have only seen the stage productions of the latter so cannot comment on his suitability as a name sake for your child),

Kevin, Cheddar and I would like to offer our congratulations on the birth of your first son. As newborns go, yours is very cute. We hope the labor went smoothly and that you are all enjoying this precious time as a family.

We understand it is customary to buy a stuffed animal for a newborn baby and since we could not agree on a lion (as his name is Leo) or a Corgi (as we have a Corgi called Cheddar), we decided to buy both. We hope you will have sufficient room to store both in your apartment. If not, we have kept the receipts on our person and will return your least favourite to the store.

We look forward to meeting the newest member of our Nine-Nine family and giving him his gifts. Please provide us with an appropriate time slot for visitation.  

I am very proud of you both. I know you will make excellent parents.

Sincerely,

Raymond Holt, Kevin Cozner PhD and Cheddar the Dog.

His dad’s two word congratulations pales in comparison to his Work Dad’s, but maybe that’s OK. They just have different styles. The more people who love Leo, the better, as far as Jake’s concerned.

He inserts his money into the vending machine and punches in the code for Sour Candies, then repeats the process for chocolate for Amy, while Roger makes them two coffees - strong. Parenthood is already exhausting; caffeine and sugar are the only thing stopping him from straight up passing out on the hospital floor and sleeping for an entire day. Well, that and the fact that he just had a baby who screams bloody murder when he’s not in his mom or dad’s arms.

“I’m going to need help carrying all this back to the room,” Jake says nonchalantly. “Want to come visit him?”

“Absolutely I do.”

“OK.” Nerves bubble inside of him as they get closer to Room 458 and he stops Roger just outside the door. “You have to promise me that if you go in there, you will be part of his life forever.” His eyes are dark, protective. He’s never been more serious about anything. “I will not let you treat him the way you treated me. He’s too good for that. If you’re in, you have to be all in. Are you all in?”

“I am,” he promises. “I know you’d probably find a way to throw me in jail if I let him down. And I won’t. I know I’ve been a selfish jerk but I really have changed - I want to be a good husband to your mom, a good father to you and your sisters and a good grandpa to your son.”

“His name is Leo,” Jake reveals, opening the door and smiling at the sight of Amy holding him. The tight feeling in his chest dissipates, replaced by a familiar warmth. He strides forward and kisses Amy, then Leo. “How were my two favourite people when I was gone? Missing me loads?”

“Of course,” she says without hesitation. “But other than that he just slept.”

“It’s tough being a baby, huh?” He whispers, stroking his son’s dark head of hair. “Maybe you can open your eyes for daddy now though?”

Nope. Nothing.

Damn it. He opened his eyes for Amy while he was in the bathroom earlier, which is totally not fair. She’s already turned him into a mommy’s boy before he had a chance.

(Not that he blames him. Leo does have a very awesome mom. The awesom-est).

“We brought you coffee,” Roger announces, stepping forward. “And congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Amy responds, gratefully accepting the to-go cup and taking a sip, despite it still being too hot. Not drinking coffee for 9 months was worse than all the worse bits of pregnancy combined. She complained about it constantly, but he’s pretty sure it was worth it all now.

“You look beautiful,” Roger says. “Considering you just had a baby.”

“Oh.” She grimaces at the back-handed, misogynistic comment and Jake hands his dad the precious cargo before he can dig himself an even deeper hole.

He hovers next to him, his super sharp detective instincts ready to catch Leo if anything happens.

Surprisingly - or maybe unsurprisingly, considering how he has at least 4 kids that Jake knows of (and maybe more that Roger himself doesn’t even know about, since he’s slept with so many women) - he holds Leo perfectly, supports his head, bounces him gently when he starts to shift like he knows he’s no longer with mom.

Jake takes a picture before he starts full on crying and then Amy takes a picture of 3 generations of Peralta men that, when framed, will make a perfect Christmas present for Karen.

“Leo’s a great name, by the way. I once knew a Leo. Leo McGarry. One of my teachers at flight school.” He pauses and Jake thinks he might start crying before the baby. “Great pilot, even better man. He was strict, but he believed in me, even when I screwed up my landings over and over. He had a heart attack and died a month before I graduated.”

“I’m sorry, dad,” he murmurs. He sounds like his version of Captain Holt and Jake would be similarly devastated if anything happened to him. Although losing his flight school mentor does explain a lot about why his landings are still bumpy as hell.

Roger smiles to himself. “He could’ve flown Air Force 1 if he wanted, the offer was there. But for some reason he decided to stick around and help idiots like me. He was the best of the best. Your Leo seems pretty great, too. You did good, kid. I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks.” He exchanges a meaningful look with Amy. “We did good.”

“Peralta and Santiago. Always been a great team,” she grins.

As if hearing their names reminds him that he’s not being held by a) mom or b) dad, Leo wakes up and suddenly screams for them.

“Here, dad, I’ll take him.”

Roger transfers him back to Jake and like some kind of magic spell from Harry Potter has been cast, he calms back down, content in Jake’s arms.

“So dramatic,” Amy teases, taking another sip of coffee. “Maybe we should’ve named him after DiCaprio.”

[ships-for-you]

Dl and free matchup, if possible? I’m a 5’4, ISFJ and leo/virgo cusp female. I have an hourglass figure, darkgreen eyes, long blonde hair and fair skin. I’m usually quiet, but can be loud. I’m stubborn, thoughtful, headstrong, straightforward, but also secretly emotional. I like being active, reading, cooking, new adventures, scary things, fashion, music, art, animals and sybaritic tastes. I dress according to mood. I’m very into dark humour. I’m both serious and relaxed. thx!😇

I'd like to note that for your DL matchup, it could be a bit triggering(?) Or violent, in that regard. It could also be a bit offensive but when it comes to the DL fandom, we can only expect this much.😅

For Free, I ship you with Sosuke Yamazaki!

I personally found you to be Sosuke’s type.

Being quite stubborn and headstrong, I feel as if someone as level-headed and composed such as Sosuke will be able to keep someone like you on the correct mindset.

Sosuke is the type of person that although doesn’t openly state his feelings a lot, he’ll be sure to express it through his actions to compensate since that’s just in his character to do so.

He may always seem like he doesn’t care,

 and usually he doesn’t, since he doesn’t like to sweat the small stuff,

but he does and it shows with people he’s close to like Rin, and his group mates.

Sosuke isn’t particularly interested in relationships, I feel like but if he does feel like it,

he’ll know.

You’d have to be a friend of Gou’s or the Iwatobi swim team since Samezuka is an all-boy’s school so…

Like you would have to have been a transfer student because you wanted to experience the luxury of Japan firsthand, or something like that.

You’d probably bond with Gou over more feminine things like the cutesier side of your fashion tastes and the like.

When you like stuff like skirts, dresses, blouses or whatever, you’re pretty self-indulgent with it and tend to burn cash on it since you know you’ll look good in it, so why not?

Gou would be your shopping buddy, whether you actually buy something or just window shopping and eating sweets and stuff, she knows you and likes you.

Even if sometimes you may come across as snobby.

Rei likes you for his interest in all things beautiful so your appreciation and understanding for art so you two also bond in that regard.

You would have met Sosuke when you were cheering for Iwatobi as they were against Samezuka while training.

You would be observing each person’s swimming style just because you saw how different and diverse they mostly were.

Sosuke would’ve noticed you when practice was nearly over as he saw you conversing with the Iwatobi members and complimenting them for the power and grace they exuded while swimming.

At first he noticed your pale hair that wasn’t so natural of a color for an asian.

Then he noticed you just weren’t of their continent entirely.

He is intrigued by your style and physique because he’s never seen anyone like you in real life and not from the internet or magazines.

He honestly thought you could be a model and he’d pay good money for magazines you’d feature in…

But then he remembers that ew, that sounds creepy and really perverted also, he’s been staring in your general direction so not only has he gained the attention of Haruka’s team,

He also gained yours.

So he’d immediately turn away and pretend like nothing happened.

He’d start seeing you more often when you’re at competitions or tournaments, rooting for your friends 

Or maybe even at times he comes to visit Rin in his house and you’d answer the door because you probably were hanging out with Gou.

He’d start to develop more substantial feelings for you later on but if you expect him to confess immediately after realizing it, he wouldn’t.

Because at times, you do genuinely annoy him but then he also thinks you’re pretty chill to hang out with.

The way that you kind of suppress your emotions or what you’re feeling helps him understand why he’s also like that in regards to keeping his feelings and how it must make other people feel.

He’ll tell you how he feels after he fully understood the extent of his feelings and confess with a grand gesture that he’s probably been saving and planning for months just because he think you’ll prefer it that way.

If it’s what the lady wants, he’ll deliver.

For Diabolik Lovers, I ship you with Reiji Sakamaki!

Again, like most of my character matchups, the characters seem like they don’t have much in common with the sender of the request.

Here, it’s sort of different.

In all honesty, I didn’t doubt for a second that Reiji would be your match.

From the moment you set foot in the manor to accompany Yui, you were screwed.

But honestly, if it weren’t for the no killing rule and you being included in it as well, you would not have survived you first 3 days.

You weren’t as devoted to your religion as Yui was, or religious in general, and so you had little to nothing limiting your perception of what may be real and what couldn’t.

So when you started to notice something suspicious about your whole predicament and the unsettling aura your friend’s “relatives” were embodying, you were certain there was something wrong.

“They’re vampires, I know it.” “I don't think my-” “I’m telling you Yui, I know they’re vampires. What else could they be?”

And guess what? You were right.

Time progresses and it’s obvious your little companion had been the target of majority of the siblings mainly because they got more of a kick out of her expressions.

It really doesn't do for most of them to have someone as strong-willed or headstrong as you since it’s too bothersome.

Except for one,

Well, let’s be honest, there are actually 2 but nobody really cares about the other one,

Reiji will absolutely not take your bullshit, your disobedience, your “Insubordination.” as he calls it.

At first he enjoyed the fact that you were relatively quiet and so no additional noise was heard within the walls of the mansion as he’s, apparently,” heard enough tongues flap in their idiotic mouths.” already.

But because you were silent, you showed your resilience through your actions such as wandering around places you weren't supposed to, 

Touching things you weren't supposed to just because they seemed expensive and therefore pretty,

And occasionally stopping the others from feeding off of Yui.

That bothered him immensely, who are you to tell creatures, far superior in comparison to you, what to do? To hinder them from what they want and need?

Also to note, the fact you look quite similar to his older brother and his late mother?

Girl,

Your very existence is a THREAT to his "polite" reputation.

He simply cannot wait to torture you, discipline you until you know your place.

He wants to hear you scream, you've got a mouth, might as well get it to work.

Your blood isn't the best but he just adores the expression on your face, the satisfaction and gratification he feels when he knows he's driving you near the edge...

He doesn't allow you the luxury of dying though, which is unfortunate.

He does cater to your desires at times.

Although, in the end, it mostly benefits him. For example,

Showcasing his prized fine china set. Preparing tea for you in one of the most beautiful cups you've ever seen,

Only for the tea to be poisoned, or drugged.

He'd strike you hard with his whip, should you show your subordination again.

Oh, but only with his best one, made with the finest of Italian leather. You'd like that, won't you?

Oh, you care for fashion, don't you? He'll be sure to dress you up according to your status in his eyes.

So a maid outfit will have to do.

Sometimes, he's punished you by keeping you bare and cold and so you'd occasionally get sick. Peasants don't usually have clothes unless they beg for rags.

But you know better than to beg, don't you?

He's training you to be the only woman worthy of his time. His ideal woman.

His ideal blood bag.

So what if you're not the Eve? You're his and his alone. He'll keep you with him until he becomes Adam either way.

It doesn't matter if he keeps you as his little spoiled pet or his high-maintenance servant.

You're his and his alone.

~~~~~|~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~|

[queenerdloser]

so i’m going to type this out so i can hopefully purge it out of my memory & because there’s no better audience than.a bunch of strangers on the internet. tw for some gross conservative opinions i guess.

so quick context; my step-dad is a hardline conservative and my mom has basically swallowed his bullshit hook line and sinker. they are, both of them, extremely inflexible when it comes to their opinions and very unwilling to listen to anyone who disagrees with them. i’m living temporarily in their apartment since i just moved back into the country.

so they came home tonight for the first time since i arrived back from japan and we were having dinner. i brought up that my sister wanted to take a trip since kids are doing online schooling here, which my step-dad immediately jumped on how it was not good and my mom started in on how it was so terrible for kids and how “they” want to bring down education and how the entire situation right now somehow reminded her of fahrenheit 451. when i asked who the hell the “they” was, it became an increasingly convoluted rant about the oppressive government that is somehow restricting american freedom bc they might require everyone to have a corona vaccine... which my step-dad, with all seriousness, thinks could contain a microchip to monitor the population. 

so i point out how insane this entire reasoning is (when asked why he thinks this, he basically just said “well BILL GATES backed a vaccine and he’s the ceo of microsoft!! so!!” and i was like ??? is that a logical argument or?? i mean i’m no bill gates fan but that’s a hell of a fucking leap to make) they turned around and started waxing on about how america was founded on FREEDOM (and i use all caps bc that’s literally how they talked about it). when i, again, pointed out that at america’s founding it was actually just freedom for white men, my step-dad was like “well that doesn’t matter!! are you telling me bc some people didnt have freedom it’s okay to take away my freedom now?” and my mom was in the background literally screaming at me about how i need to have loyalty to my country and how it’s written in the constitution that you have to be loyal or you can’t be a citizen (which is uh... very not true unless i’m misremembering the constitution) and i should just leave the country if i hated it so much. when i explained that being critical of my country is very different from being an actual traitor, she just kept repeating that i needed to be loyal and then couldn’t fucking explain at all what being “disloyal” meant. 

(also they brought up how the protestors were trying to change the country and they shouldn’t be allowed to do that and when i was like “uh actually we have changed the country many times over. the founding fathers changed their country!!” my step-dad and mom were both yelling about how, actually, the founding fathers created a country as if they didn’t do it in direct opposition to the british and a big old fuck you to their mother country. my parents are both die-hard founding fathers supporters so i didn’t bring up the whole “i mean they were wealthy white slave owners so can we stop idolizing them” argument either - wouldn’t have been worth it.)

meanwhile my literally insane step-father is going on and on about how people die everyday so the government shouldn’t require a corona vaccine - it’s people’s own lives they’re putting at risk (ignoring, of course, that by contracting the disease without a vaccine they risk further spread through vulnerable populations that can’t be vaccinated for health reasons a la the return of the measles). i told him it was beyond disrespectful to people suffering from corona and the thousands who’ve died from it to diminish it to some bullshit “well people die everyday” argument and he scoffed and told me it didn’t matter bc more people died from car accidents than corona. (which, when i checked later, is also very much not true lmao)

okay, i pointed out, but there are regulations in place to make cars safer and lesson accidents, right? he then somehow made the very insane leap that the government has no right to require people to wear their seatbelts because the choice to not wear a seatbelt and endanger your own life should be entirely up to you and that it’s somehow a restriction of freedom to make it illegal to not wear your seatbelt. i didn’t say this at the time but now i’m thinking that i probably should have brought up that people regularly choose to flout this law anyway, it’s not a jail-able offense, and most of the time cops do not run people down for not wearing a seatbelt - so it’s a fucking moot point, bc it’s a law we regard as cavalierly as jaywalking. and not wearing a seatbelt and getting into an accident can cause other people to die or make things worse for other people in your car. and.... like yeah, i really DON’T care if the govt decides to create regulations that are designed to decrease loss of life even should someone decide they want to lose their life. saying “oh well someone should have the right to choose to risk their lives without that damn government interference” is a very wild argument. like sorry the govt wants you to stay safe and alive in your car, i guess??? how dare they try to lessen the loss of life and set regulations for drivers and car companies to follow?????????

anyway, this then completely unravels into me bringing up again that i explicitly don’t trust trump’s government with how they handle the virus & our real concern should be big pharma jacking up vaccine costs just bc they can and my step-dad went on a long diatribe about how vaccine research costs money and it’s totally cool if they decide to make the vaccine itself 3x the production costs. when i brought up (stupidly) that i thought the vaccine should actually be free if the govt is really going to require everyone to take it, he basically exploded and went on a long gibbering rant about how could i expect anyone to do anything for free, we might as well let everyone do their job for free! who’s going to pay for it? was repeated over and over again. he brought up free education and was not happy when i explained that i was very fine with my taxes going to paying for free education instead of military expenses.

finally, the icing on this very shitty hour of my life was my mom trying to tell me with all seriousness that trump is not an idiot, that i should respect him for being a “financial wizard” (literally her words!!!) and that i can’t criticize or disrespect him bc he’s a president. when i pointed out that a) i didn’t vote for him so i don’t actually acknowledge him as “my” president and b) that’s fucking insane, she started in how she didn’t “raise me this way” and that, once again, I was being disloyal to my country, that i was clearly uneducated and didn’t know anything about american history, and that i was being brainwashed and overtaken by propaganda. (when i told her flatout that the only one being brainwashed and overtaken by propaganda was her, she was also not happy.)

i brought up how trump wants to try to delay the election - my step-dad scoffed and asked where i got my information. the news, i said, bc i read the article from the bbc. THE NEWS? he said with complete disbelief. YOU CAN’T BELIEVE ANYTHING YOU HEAR IN THE NEWS. okay, i said with increasing disbelief that this was my life. well then how do you get your information? my mom chimes in with a hysterical: FROM MY GUT. 

(i told my step-dad i read a variety of news articles and he told me he does too, but then he went on about how i apparently read the “wrong” news bc i happen to disagree with all of his insane arguments.)

i pointed out that i might like trump more if he was at all competent, compassionate, interested in doing his job, and not sexist, racist, and homophobic. my step-dad, completely unwilling to entertain the idea that he might be wrong, scoffed and said that trump wasn’t racist. okay, i said with the increasing desire to murder something. how is that something you can possibly say. my step-dad goes on to smugly assure me that someone who hires black people can’t be racist, actually. unsure of how to even begin dismantling this mind-numbingly bad logic, i countered with the assertion that trump has been openly racist on many platforms. my step-dad and my mom turned towards talking about how “noticing someone’s race isn’t racist!” and “isn’t your bias against white people actually racist?” and that’s when i fucking lost it, grabbed my keys and my phone and ran out of the apartment to go have a fucking panic attack in the fucking backyard. 

this was like an hour. my mom was screaming at me for like half of it and my step-dad was yelling and they constantly kept fucking talking over me and going round and fucking round in circles or making nonsensical general statements (”money doesn’t grow on trees!” “what about FREEDOM?” “loyalty is everything!” and so on). there was a literal comparison of being required to take a vaccine to nazi fucking germany. (my step-dad, clearly displaying how little he thinks of my intelligence, had the gall to try to “explain” to me that they killed jewish people during nazi germany. yeah dude. i learned that in fucking elementary school. i’m aware.) i was told that i was “too young” to understand what i was talking about, that i had no critical thinking skills, that my criticism of my country was treasonous and that i should just leave if i didn’t want to be here. 

i left for two hours. i’m still shaking bc i had a panic attack & then several smaller attacks while i was walking around my neighborhood trying to figure out if i should disappear until they went to sleep and how the hell i’m going to stay in their household until september, where i thankfully have alternate housing lined up. my mom just came into my room all remorseful, trying to get me to tell her where i was and apologizing in a way that didn’t actually apologize at all (”i’m sorry for what happened” she said, not all enunciating that she’s sorry for yelling at me, calling me names, undermining my critical thought, and basically being an all-out fanatical asshole for no imaginable reason. “and on our first night together, too!” she added, as if this happened somehow out of her control.)

i knew that living with them would be uncomfortable but i seriously had no idea that i would be standing there, making jokes and trying to calmly explain myself in the face of their loud vitriol. like. i wasn’t yelling! i think the only time i even snapped at them was when they tried to cut me off when i was talking. i tried to crack wise, to get them to see the utter ridiculousness they were spouting and yet!! they were both so violently, fanatically angry at me for just like... not thinking america is the greatest country in the world. not thinking trump is actually a good president. not agreeing that a corona vaccine is actually a secret ploy to microchip people for the oppressive government. 

i left panic behind an hour ago & have crossed steadily over into anger but the fact is that if i have to have another “conversation” like that with them i will lose it entirely and i don’t know how i can live in this house and somehow do the mental gymnastics to avoid all “taboo” subjects. my mom clearly wants to pretend it didn’t happen, which is honestly her m.o. whenever we fight, but how the fuck am i supposed to forget her calling me a traitor and ranting at me about how uneducated and dimwitted i am? 

god. i’ll probably delete this, but i needed to lay it all out. in case anyone was wondering YES people who think this utter bullshit do exist and apparently i’m so blessed i get to have one of them as my own fucking mother. 

[domesticsns]

More Izuna being a little shit please🙏🙏

Izuna being a little shit is becoming my bread and water (jk nobody pays me) 

Izuna was in the shower one evening while Sasuke and Naruto were doing grocery shopping so he was alone in the apartment. He heard the door of the bathroom and he figured it was Sasuke because the two knew each other pretty well when they were kids, i mean sure they hadn’t been this close anymore but he figured maybe Sasuke being a bit more open. So he didn’t think too much about it. That is when the curtains were pulled open and Izuna blinked a couple of times seeing Tobirama Senju. 

And he is looking him up and down and goes, “You’re not Sasuke.” 

“I am the upgraded version,” Izuna snaps back, folding his arms. 

“Yes, you’re so much more compact.” Tobirama says staring looking down at Izuna’s crotch zone. 

“How would you know?” 

“We have showers at the precinct.” Tobirama answered calmly, moving his eyes up to meet Izuna’s. 

“Sasuke doesn’t use those. He finds communal showers disgusting. He rather showers at home in a bathroom he cleans thoroughly twice a week.” 

“Fair enough. You got me, I have no idea how it looks like now” Tobirama admits. “So you’re not as dumb as you seem.” 

“I went to university....Before dropping out and touring with a band over europe. They were the opening band of this other band...I forgot the name it was years ago. Lots of groupies...I got an STD for the first time...Threatable of course. Made me a lot more cautious.” 

“Chlamydia?”

“No Gonorrhoea.” Izuna says. “Always better than aids.” 

“Congratulations you did not get aids during hoe-phase that is lasting till...How old are you 34? 35?” 

“At heart I am twenty-one.” Izuna says with a little smile on his face. 

“Right...” Tobirama says, “So where is Sasuke?” 

“Grocery shopping, probably banging in the car since he is too shy to have sex in the house with me around. But it was apparently okay to suck Naruto off just proof a point to me...Whatever sometimes I don’t even get him and I was basically his translator when he couldn’t talk.” 

“He couldn’t talk?” Tobirama asked. 

“Oh he didn’t tell you? I thought he told everyone. After my aunt shot herself through the head right in front of him he didn’t speak for years. At most he got a few words out and that was like the biggest progress he had until he went to middle school. Man he bugged the hell out of my uncle. He hated it. He spend so much money on these speeches coaches and therapist and counselors . He got so fed up. Man he locked him up in a closet for a whole day. My dad had to get him out and tell my uncle it was borderline abuse. Which was ironic because my dad had a short fuse himself and once threw me across the room as a child and I cracked my skull...You can still feel it, u wanna feel it?” 

“No thank you, but your behaviour is starting to more sense to me.” Tobirama says. 

“Hmmm, so what ya here for?” 

“I got a lead, I wanted to move on it but seems he’s not here.” 

“What’s the deal with you two anyway?” Izuna asks. 

“We’re having a whole conversation while you’re naked.” Tobirama notes. 

“I am comfortable in my body.” Izuna states. 

“I admire that.” 

“Tell me, what’s the deal? You into him? You wanna fuck him? You’re crushing?” Izuna gasped, “Are you in love?” 

“He is a co-worker. I despise slightly less because he carried my brother’s dead body to me instead of leaving it in a forest to be eaten by wolves and told me his words.” 

“How intense...What where they?” Izuna asked, a little overstepping.

Tobirama looked up from his thoughts and whispers, “That he loved me.” 

“Oh..That story sounds a little familiar...Oh my god...Oh I should not tell you this.” Izuna says, pulling the curtains back so he was hidden. 

Tobirama pulls the curtains away again. 

“What?” 

“No, I am not going to say that. This was told to me in confidence after i gave Sasuke like two pot brownies.” 

“Oh certainly don’t want to be tray that confidence. I admire that. However, he did tell you that your outfit today...Looked really bad. Like you were some cheap whore.” 

“Did he say that!?” Izuna looks angry. 

“Yeah, he said more awful things about not having your shit together and being a burden.” 

“What exact did he say about my outfit!?” Izuna insisted. 

“You looked like a cheap whore...that exactly.” Tobirama says. 

“Oh...Uhu...As if he is dressed nice with those suits and the ties and-” 

“To be fair it is mandatory clothing.” 

“Oh yea, are you in the right headspace to  receive the news that will probably make you feel like shit and want to punch Sasuke in the face?” 

“I always want to punch him in the face....Also kinda want to choke him. Go on.” 

“So he was high he told me about the first kid saw dying for the first time and how stomach was slashed open-” 

“That how my youngest brother died...” Tobirama said. 

“Yes he also told me he lied about his last words when his brother, I assume it is you,asked. He made it up. He told him..Oh well you...That his last words were that he loved you, but truly his last words were screams of agony and the disbelieve of seeing his bowels hanging out from his stomach. He just couldn’t bring himself to say the that.” 

Tobirama goes quiet. 

“I know, I know. He can be a bitch. What exactly about my outfit looked like a whore? Did he say something specific?” 

“Uh...No..No he did not.” Tobirama said. 

“Hey, you okay?” Izuna puts his hand on Tobirama’s shoulder. 

“You’re making me wet.” 

“I make a lot of people wet...” 

“Not me, my clothes, idiot.” Tobirama takes a step away. “Anyway if you see him tell him...You know what don’t tell him I was here at all. I’ll handle it myself.” 

“Or...Or..and hear me out...You join me in the shower, we fuck, and we can enjoy the sheer pleasure of the knowledge that we did it in his shower which will piss him off.” 

“Fucking in the shower? Or us fucking in his shower?” 

“Us fucking in the shower.” Izuna says.  “Come on, you won’t regret it I am pretty good. Most of Sasuke’s moves. I taught him.” 

“I doubt that.” Tobirama says, thinking of the time he accidently caught the show of Naruto and Sasuke doing.

“I did work in two porns, they’re on the internet. I still get money when somebody presses the add.” 

“You’re not afraid your family will find out?” Tobirama asks. 

“I am not stupid...I had a wig on. Short black...Spikes in the end. I even used an alias... I said my name was Sasuke. So y’know if my family sees it they think it is him and they won’t say a word because if he does it..It is because of his traumas, but when I do it..I am an attention seeking whore.” 

“you have issues, boy.” Tobirama says, “I am going to be honest with you. I don’t really care about sex, but...” He looks Izuna up and down, “I guess why not. If it pisses Sasuke off I am in.” 

“And y’know, you get me.” Izuna said, indicating to his body. 

“Sure, it is not bad.” Tobirama says as he takes off his jacket. 

Oxoxoxox

Sasuke and Naruto come home from grocery shopping and they put the bags in the kitchen. 

“Izuna?...Zuzu? Where are you?” He knocks on the bathroom door. 

“Just a minute!” He hears Izuna shout. 

“Zuzu, you’ve been in there since we left, this is beyond freeloading.” He says and he opens the door and he pulls the curtains away and took a deep, deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeppp, breath. And he looks at Tobirama and then he looks at Izuna. 

“When you’re done...I want you to clean this bathroom from top to bottom with bleach and I want you out of my house.” 

“Me?!” Izuna frowns.

“No, not you. You’re family we’re connected by blood. I have to deal with you.I am talking about number seven you slept with this week.”  He looks at Tobirama.

“We’re not sleeping we’re just fucking in the shower,” Izuna says, “So can we finish?” 

Sasuke walked out of the bathroom closing the door.

Naruto was in the kitchen and said, “Tobirama is in there with Izuna, isn’t he?” 

“How did you know?” Sasuke sighed. 

“The window to the fire escape is open.” 

“Clever.” Sasuke said. 

“You seem upset, for someone who is married...”  Naruto noted carefully. 

“I am not upset I am mad. That is my bathroom. I shower in there. He has his own bathroom, they should do it in his apartment.” 

“I feel like that...That’s not the reason why you’re upset.” 

“Yeah also...You expect someone to give you a heads up. That is my cousin and that my co-worker. It’s weird like if I would date his brother.” 

“I mean they already made out and Izuna did state he was interested in him. This should not be a surprise for a detective.” Naruto made a clear point. 

“It is just awkward.” Sasuke said. 

[luckyspike]

No neighborhood is free of sin - a good omens fanfiction

Link to AO3 if you prefer to read there. Kudos appreciated!

-

Nextdoor.com had been Crowley’s idea. Crowley had always liked neighborhoods - there were just so many opportunities for humans to enrage one another when they lived in such close proximity and had to pretend to be nice. In the early days, before the internet, Crowley had reveled in town hall meetings, neighborhood watch councils, and local book clubs. He’d embedded himself in his Mayfair neighborhood, sowing dissent and discord among the community. For years, he had been the quiet voice in someone’s ear - oh, you know you probably would have gotten that promotion at work if you hadn’t been so tired, eh? Shame about the neighbors playing the music so loudly the night before - the stolen package off someone’s doorstep - of course it was those dirty millenials next door that took little Billy’s Christmas present - or the upturned rubbish bin in someone’s front garden. He’d been stray cats and dropped hardware from a neighbor’s DIY project that just happened to puncture someone’s tire on the way to work. He was footballs breaking through windows, and screaming babies next door during a romantic night in. His Mayfair neighborhood was among the most contentious in London, and walking into the fog of evil at the end of a long day was like a balm to his burned and aching (and barely-existent) soul.

But nextdoor.com, oh, what a stroke of brilliance that had been. He took the idea from the humans, of course, with their clever Facebook idea and MySpace and social media. But the concept of a neighborhood media site followed so smoothly, that aside from a few whispered words into the ears of some young programmers in America*, he’d barely had to lift a finger. Nextdoor.com had burst to life, and since then, Crowley had fallen in love.

[*Or rather, carefully-typed “thought experiments” sent via email from one of his multitudinous email addresses that, typically, appeared to belong to very wealthy tech investorsI.]

His favorite thing was, of course, the people who always had to have the last word in an argument. Pride, after all, was a sin anyway, and online media really provided him with a shining chance to provide one-on-one temptation to multiple people at a time by way of arguing with them on the internet, one of his favorite activities. 

He was up late tonight doing just that. He’d had a lovely dinner with Aziraphale - an Ethiopian restaurant that Aziraphale had been wanting to explore, with food so spicy that even Crowley had a few bites - and come home, unwinding by logging into one of his several accounts and promptly starting to complain about the barking dog one building over.

‘listen its my bloody dog and hes allowed to bark in my flat if he wants to’ replied Crowley’s victim for tonight - based on his profile picture, he appeared to be a young solicitor with political aspirations in the future. Crowley figured he might as well start working on the young man now in the early days - no sense in putting his inevitable hellish corruption off when it would be so easy to do now.

‘i’ll have you know that i have a very important job,’ Crowley started his reply, considering where to go from that point. ‘i work 90 hours per week. i make more money in five minutes than you make in a year. shut your dog up or i’ll sue.’ And, send reply. And wait. He sat back in his chair, and savored a mouthful of wine.

Yes, this was proper demonic work. Fuck Hastur and Ligur, fuck craftsmanship, this was easy - he was in pajamas and drinking wine, for someone’s sake - and it was fun. His phone binged with a reply notification.

‘good luck suing, knobhead, i’m a solicitor and i’ve been in numerous trials - too numerous to count. feel free to try to take me up in court, i look forward to the day i get to let my dog bark straight in your smug face, whoever you are, Jacob.’ Ah yes, Jacob Coppersmith, one of Crowley’s favorite online aliases. The demon smiled and crafted his reply.

‘yeah I bet you are, law lad. shut your fucking dog up or i’ll come do it for you. i’ve tracked your IP address, i know where you live.’ Crowley did not elaborate further. In reality, he rather disliked the thought of harming dogs - they were true innocents, unless they were hellhounds or chihuahuas, and even he felt profane trying to hurt them - but his reply would hopefully get a rise out of the young solicitor. He waited.

And waited rather longer. He refilled his wine glass, and paced around his office, and still his phone did not alert to a new message. He refreshed the page, nothing. He had nearly given it up for the night - there would be another opportunity in the future, there always was - when his level of Amber’s Airline was interrupted by a push notification from the neighborhood app. He abandoned the level immediately to read it.

‘don’t call me law lad you fucking knob’

Crowley replied quickly. Quickly, quickly, it was late, the humans would be going to sleep soon ... hurry, hurry. He narrated the entire reply into his voice-to-text feature** and, forgoing a quick proof-read, sent it.

‘ok solicitor shithead’ 

[** Snake eyes were wonderful for menacing humans and striking the fear of the Devil into their hearts. They were not so wonderful for reading, typing, sewing, or anything else that required any significant level of visual acuity at all, really.]

The reply came quickly: ‘fucking delete this you fucking dick!!! what gives you the right!’ Crowley cackled out loud. Yes, yes this was the end goal. He could practically taste the low-grade evil, smooth like a finely-aged wine, sliding over his tongue. He raised his phone to his mouth and dictated: ‘no law lad’

There was not a reply immediately. But quickly - as soon as the app indicated he’d posted - he heard a frustrated scream, followed by alarmed barking. And then a door slammed open.

“I know you live around here, Jacob!” someone - the solicitor, oh, Crowley, could have hissed it was so wonderful - shouted into the late-night air. “I know you can hear me! You hear me? I won’t shut up! My dog has every right to bark in my home! I won’t tell him to stop! Log off you idiot! Log off and leave me alone!”

Crowley heard the door slam again a moment later, and he slid lower in his seat, taking a self-satisfied sip of his wine. Oh, yes, that was the stuff. He weighed the options, and then smiled gently, dictating his reply and then, after an aggressive two seconds of squinting to ensure the construction and grammar were to his liking, he sent: ‘who the fuck is scraeming “LOG OFF” at my house. show yourself, coward. i will never log off’. 

The enraged scream that followed gave him such a warm tingle of infernal rage that he very much doubted he’d be able to sleep that night. But it was alright, he reasoned, as the screaming continued from another flat nearby, and then was met with shouts of ‘shut up!’ and ‘people are trying to sleep here!’ Ah, yes, the beauty of the internet. The true stroke of genius of nextdoor.com. Three angry people, three weakened souls.

Crowley sighed, satisfied with a terrible job well-done, and waved the TV on, although he wasn’t paying attention. He was thinking, rather pleasantly, about fireworks. Yes ... perhaps tomorrow. Plenty of fireworks. At two AM, yes. He would time a complaint post for the neighborhood too, just to get the ball rolling. He finished his drink, and refilled the glass, and settled back as the sound of a cricket match washed over him, entertaining thoughts of fireworks and burnt garbage and very angry neighbors.

[acuppellarp]

Welcome (again) to A Cup-pella, Kai! We’re excited to have you and Lara James in the game! Please go through the checklist to make sure you’re ready to go and send in your account within the next 24 hours. 

OOC INFO

Name + pronouns: Kai + she/her Age: 25 Timezone: EST Ships: LJ + an NSA-less world Anti-Ships: LJ + unhappiness

IC INFO

Full Name: Lara “LJ” Rae James Face Claim: Hayley Kiyoko Age/Birthday: January 28 / 25 Occupation: Member of Geek Squad at Best Buy + Full time student at NYU Personality: adaptable, charismatic, impulsive, extroverted, creative, clumsy Hometown: New York City, New York Bio: To say that Lara James’ childhood was a mess and a half would be speaking politely. From the moment that Lara was born, her parents struggled. Her mother was a waitress for a small diner located in the heart of Manhattan and her father was a handyman for an apartment building that liked to pay him under the table. While it was nice to not have to deal with the taxes taking money from his paychecks, it meant that sometimes, the main provider of the house was not bringing home enough money for the family to live comfortably. There were many times throughout Lara’s childhood that she remembered the lights flickering before going out for days on end. This was something that typically brought on hours of screaming and bickering between her parents about all issues surrounding money and the unhappiness that it brought to them. While Calvin and Melissa James always strived to bring the best for their daughter, sometimes their money situation could not even provide a well balanced dinner for their daughter for weeks on end. It was something that Lara always thought to be normal and casual amongst the children of her neighborhood, but after being labeled a few horrific names from her classmates, she knew that wasn’t the case.

As she grew, things never really got better. Her father kept losing job after job, stress taking over his life, and turning him into a man that was filled with anger instead of the happy, bubbly man that she always loved and adored. Her mother had lingering eyes for every male that came into the diner, always wondering what life would be like if she wasn’t strapped down by the suffocating lack of funds in her family. In fact, when Lara was just seven years old, her mother’s lingering eye is what took her away from her family. One night, Lara heard shuffling outside of her bedroom door and before she was able to investigate what was going on, her mother was gone. She had packed her few belongings and left Lara and her father to their own devices. Later on, Lara would find out that she had met a wealthy man who was capable of giving her more monetary happiness than her own flesh and blood ever could. It was something that made Lara see that the world was not always as kind and forgiving as she thought it was.

It took her mother’s departure from their lives for things to turn around for Calvin and Lara, however. Once there was no other means of money and income coming into the apartment, Calvin started working harder to get jobs that were well paying and reliable for work. He started looking in construction, quickly becoming employed with a company that actually made him fill out a W-2 and do things by the book. The money started coming in more readily, and Lara was seeing things that she never had before: birthday presents, dinner on the table every single night, random gifts of appreciation from her father, etc. While they didn’t have much, there wasn’t a single day in which the lights went out in their home.

It wasn’t until her fourteenth birthday that Lara received a gift from her father that opened a door in her life that she had never been prepared for: a personal laptop. There was not a lot of extra money lying around, but the hefty priced gift was something that was met with a beaming Lara and a very smitten Calvin that he had done so well by her. For that next coming years, Lara spent her life on her laptop. She researched everything she could find, downloaded all the free video games that she could come across, and taught herself everything the Internet could teach her about coding (which was a lot). Her research and fooling around online quickly came to a staggering halt the moment she turned sixteen whenever she thrusted herself into a job. While she was just working at Best Buy as a cashier, it was something that helped her father out in little ways whenever it came to bills and purchasing groceries. He was constantly protesting her from working as much as she did, but Lara liked that she was finally pulling her own around the house.

Once Lara graduated from high school (fourth in a class of a few hundred), she focused on working and nothing more. She had always dreamed of attending college, but dreams did not pay the bills at home and Lara was terrified of racking up a bill with student loan programs. She was happy though. She climbed the ranks at her local Best Buy and soon enough, she was partaking in the program of Geek Squad. She got to spend time doing what she loved most, handling technology, and was getting paid in the meantime. It only took a couple of years and soon enough, Lara had padded her savings account enough to fly from her nest of a home. It was something that Calvin struggled with, but she was only living a subway trip away from his clutches.

Living on her own was something that Lara quickly found to be a lot more complicated than she had thought. She wanted to be the independent individual she always knew she was, but rent was hard to make every single month. Because of such a thing, Lara was quick to look for roommates. After a few duds came into her life, she came across Evie Miller. She was everything that Lara found annoying in a person, but for the sole purpose of wanting entertainment around her apartment, she decided to sign the lease with allowing her to move in. While it may have taken a couple of months, Lara and Evie soon became inseparable. Not to mention, Evie was the person who inspired and encouraged Lara to start following her dreams and enroll in college. Lara isn’t shy to tell anyone that her roommate is the reason behind her college success, but she keeps it under wraps that while she is attending school for a Computer Science degree, she’s also enrolled in a full time honor’s program. Pets: N/A Relationships:

Evie Miller: At first meeting, Evie was the opposite of the kind of person that LJ wanted to associate herself with. She was the happy-go-lucky type that was constantly barging into her room with her wide smile and multitude of stories, which always made Lara question her decisions about agreeing to be her roommate. However, as time has passed, Lara has considered Evie to be one of her closest friends in life. She’s the epitome of a ‘ride or die’ for Lara.

Matt Solis: For a person that runs the other way from love and actively states that it does not exist, she fell rather hard for Matt. They got along from the very beginning of meeting, and from the moment they kissed, Lara knew that she was screwed. She was wrapped around Matt’s pinky finger up until the moment that things weren’t what fairytales were made of. Somedays, Lara blames herself for being too flaky whenever things got closer and closer to true love. Other days, she blames Matt. While she isn’t entirely sure why she blames her, it’s sometimes easier doing such.

ACup baristas: Since Lara was heavily involved with one of the baristas, Lara spent a lot of time at the establishment. She even made sure to keep her menu hacking skills to a minimum whenever it came to being part of the customer sea.

EXTRA INFO

MON$TA LJ / @laranotcroft/description: sometimes i legitimately believe i might be the love child of a trash can and steve buscemi

Five latest tweets:

@laranotcroft: my top 5 best life moments is still when Smash Mouth RT’d me thats when i truly became an all star @laranotcroft: anyone gotta dollar ??? my bank account would be at $69 then and lemme tell you that would be delish @laranotcroft: ariana grande releasing new music every 6 months is why i’m gay as fuck @laranotcroft: im only a heaux whenever melted cheese is in the pic <3 @laranotcroft: FUCK U @NSA FIRST YOU LET ME INTO CANADA AND THEN YOU LET ME RUN AMUCK IN SINGAPORE ???? IDIOTS shoutout to cousin jay tho ur new wife is hot and its a hella good thing i’m back in america bitch <3

[kenjis9965]

So seriously how long until one of these flights explodes catastrophically killing some people and we haul Elon before a senate subcommittee for selling his garbage to us? Like fucking seriously. And then Tesla fanboys will line up to scream how it's "unfair" and "the mainstream news is just angry of his innovation"

What innovation pray tell has he done in space flight? NASA could have easily done what SpaceX did if we gave them a reasonable budget to operate and didn't mandate fucking stupid design decisions that do waste money. This stupid fucking dick measuring contest between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos needs to stop. Take their fucking money and give it to NASA. They want to fund space flight they can pay fucking taxes like they are supposed to do.

And don't get me started on starlink. Starlink should not even be a fucking thing. How bout instead of this idiotic wasteful destructive idea we just fund building fiber out to people without internet access. Starlink isn't a fucking good idea.

Why is Elon repeatedly allowed to break the rules with no reprocussions. Yes I know the reason but just now is the NHTSA getting its shit together and cracking down on tesla running average users like fucking Guinea pigs on the highways and roads and is demanding any "unflattering" self driving footage be pulled down. Christ I'm more concerned about driving near a tesla than any other vehicle because the owners tend to give precisely zero shits about driving but don't want to call an Uber or pay for a person to drive them like they should be doing

i’m going to fucking explode

the spacex all-private inspiration4 mission (which is being run as a reality tv show) is using apple watches for its biometrics. they’re flying in a space capsule with all the equipment and controls stripped out to make it look smooth and pretty, in spacesuits designed by a marvel costume designer instead of engineers, wearing fucking apple watches for biometrics

the ship’s built like a fucking tesla and it uses a fucking touchscreen for controls

[maggieisalarrie]

18 by aclosetlarryshipper

Harry hates Golden Boy Louis and he's pretty sure the feeling's mutual. It's too bad they're forced into parenthood together during the home ec baby project.

Featuring accidental fathers, an improv performance gone wrong, and an altruistic game of spin the bottle.

(15k) 

Ain't That A Kick In The Head! by lesbianharrie & wreckingtomlinson 

“Well.” Niall unlocks his phone. “It wasn’t getting the traction I wanted on Snapchat. So…I tweeted it.”

What.

“You tweeted it,” Harry states, nearing a state of brain dead. “To your ten thousand followers.”

Niall nods, handing Harry the phone. “You’re a meme, Harry.”

“I’m a what?”

“A meme. It’s like an internet—”

“I know what a fucking meme is, Niall! Why did you make me into one?”

Niall has the fucking balls to cackle at that while Harry looks at the mess his former friend created. Videos of him screaming at Tomlinson about Tide Pods and his ass are being quoted and combined with memes to a create a level of memeception Harry has never seen before. That isn’t even including the thousands of tweets of him falling up the stairs remixed with random Top 40 songs.

~

In which Harry’s a disaster gay who doesn’t know shit about soccer, Liam drinks too many blue raspberry Coolattas, Niall knows everyone, Zayn looks dead, and Louis is Not Happy about sharing his breakout moment with “Drunk Hawaiian Guy.”

(22k)

More under the cut! 

All My Friends Are Here by abrighteryellow 

He is about to decline, though. If he has to sit through forced merriment, the least he can do is avoid participation at all costs. He is about to, but then the guy with the microphone is looking out into the crowd. He’s saying things, too — about rules and prizes and team names. At least, Louis assumes so. He can’t really hear him over the ringing in his ears.

“Alright, mate. I’ll play.”

A pub quiz has invaded Louis’s favorite dive. Fortunately, it comes with a charming host.

(3k)

all we are is a bittersweet sundown by loupancake 

Sequel to chances under the purple sunrise by loupancake

After the death of Harry's father, the merman king of the Atlantic Ocean, Harry has to step up and prove his strength to be the next true king. With the company of Louis, who he's been writing letters to for three long months, they embark on a quest throughout all the oceans before the last of the late king's magic runs out.

(101k) 

Caught My Attention by kassio

Reason #27 - Your one chance with a celebrity.

When he managed to stop ogling Harry's body and look up, the first thing Louis noticed was that Harry’s face was probably the most perfect face he’d ever seen. He’d seen him in that film, but he was even better in person. Maybe it was the smile.

The second thing he noticed was that that smile was directed at him. He’d been caught staring. Harry’s smile only widened when Louis locked horrified eyes with him. He tilted his head curiously, and his eyes flicked down Louis’ body. “Who’s this?”

Louis had been around long enough to know when someone was checking him out. He hadn’t expected to see that look from Harry fucking Styles.

(13k) 

chances under the purple sunrise by loupancake 

Inspired by & Based on Neon--Diamonds' Fanart “You’ve been taking my shoes?” Louis asked, scoffing. “I paid a lot for them!”

“How unfortunate for you.” Harry smiled bitterly. He peeked over Louis, eyeing the hook that still had the worm.

The red box was open right next to him. Harry saw that inside, it had a couple of transparent containers that were filled with worms, too. He eyed Louis skeptically before nodding. “Right. I’ll give you your, er…. little boats back if you let me have the tub of worms.”

A groan crawled out from Louis, his head falling back and his eyes landing up at the clear sky. “I need those.”

“They’re food for myself and others, not to be used as bait.”

*

Or the one where Harry is a merman, prince of the Atlantic Ocean, whose curiosity and healthy envy takes over him and he steals Louis' shoes every time he fishes.

(29k) 

Enjoy The Ride by 2tiedships2 

“Stop sulking and get up. I have a proposition to make.”

“Niall?” Louis questioned. “Do you think I should put glow in the dark stars on my ceiling?”

He looked over and found Niall giving him an unimpressed look.

“So, no?” Louis asked. “No stars?”

“We’re going on a road trip,” Niall stated.

Louis looked back at his starless ceiling and waved farewell to Niall. “Cool. Have fun!”

“No, you idiot.” Niall let out a frustrated sigh. “You, me, Liam, and Harry.”

Louis glanced over to Niall and back to the ceiling. “Who’s Harry?”

Or the one where Louis, an omega more than tired of being treated as lesser than alphas, is forced on a road trip by his beta besties only to meet Harry who might just be the alpha he never knew he wanted.

(11k) 

Every Piece of You (It Just Fits Perfectly) by allwaswell16 

Louis has settled into his job as the reigning monarch’s charity representative as well as his life as a reluctant member of the royal family, but what he wants most is for his relationship with Harry to become something more.

Harry finds himself as consumed as ever by his career as a high fashion stylist, but he vows to make more room in his life for Louis. He’s decided he’s going to start the New Year off with a ring.

A remix of ‘Why Can’t It Be Like That’ by taggiecb that takes place one year later.

(8k) 

I Didn't Fall For You (You Fucking Tripped Me) by allwaswell16 

These days Louis tends to steer clear of dating alphas. He’s dated too many knotheads in his time, and he’s ready to just focus on school and his friends and his pet monitor lizard, of course.

Too bad the alpha next door won’t take a hint and stop using the worst pick up lines of all time on him. He’s really got to stop laughing with him--and talking to him and walking to class with him and letting him bring him coffee and tea and gifts for his lizard and watching Netflix together and...

(15k) 

In All Its Imperfections by BriaMaria 

From: Louis Tomlinson To: Undisclosed Recipients

Hello!

I’ve asked the front desk and you lovely folks are the ones who are on the same level as me in the car park. I found a to-do list today that looked somewhat important because it has lines of poetry scribbled at the bottom that seemed like they might be for a card project. The stationary has a moose in a canoe at the top of it (and he is quite adorable). Let me know if it’s yours!

Cheers!

“Oh. My. Fucking. God,” Harry whispered, his eyes darting over the sentences again willing them not to make sense. They did, they did make sense. “Oh. My. Bloody. Fucking. God.”

The next thing he knew he was on the floor, staring at the ceiling, with a very concerned Liam hovering over his head.

"What happened, mate?" Liam asked.

Harry just pointed to his computer.

Liam bent over Harry’s desk to read the email. “What? This isn’t bad. Is that your to-do list? Did you finally come up with the inside text for those cards?”

“Leeyum" he groaned. “It’s what’s on the list.”

“Oh,” Liam paused for a beat. “Is it dirty stuff?”

Harry nodded.

There was more silence. And then, “Dirty stuff with Louis?”

(15k) 

Inconceivable by alivingfire 

Sometimes, Harry thinks, there's something there. The spark in his belly isn't just happening to him, surely. Surely Louis feels that rush too, that blossoming heat in his blood when their fingers brush.

But no. No, Louis treats Harry like a best friend—and it's an amazing thing, so wonderful, Harry wouldn't trade his friendship with Louis for anything—and there's no room for anything else. Not between them.

But Louis adores Niall. It’s clear, obvious in their comfort together. Harry and Louis still have something that keeps them from that, something making things more loaded with possibility, more intense. Like magnets with the same pole, an invisible force pushing them back—maybe that’s Harry’s crush, a barrier keeping them apart. Louis and Niall’s friendship is easy, whatever is between Louis and Harry is something else. Weighted.

Which is fine. It's good. Niall clearly loves Louis back, so it's great.

And Harry can just keep lying to himself for the rest of eternity.

Louis and Barbara Tomlinson are twin brother and sister. Harry's in love with Louis, Niall's in love with Barbara, and they both go by Tommo. It gets a little confusing.

(23k) 

Just To See That Smile by homosociallyyours 

It's Coming Out Week at university, and Harry's taken on a lot of responsibilities to make everything run smoothly. Finding his roommate's boyfriend attractive is making that a bit difficult, unfortunately. It might help if he realized that said boyfriend (Louis) is really just there to help said roommate (Liam) figure out if Liam's crush (Zayn) likes him back.

But that would make things too easy.

A fic where a hastily faked relationship and a lot of miscommunication almost ruins a perfectly good dance.

(7k) 

Love's On The Line, Is That Your Final Answer? by PearlyDewdrops 

Harry can’t believe it when Louis, the boy he’s always had a tempestuous rivalry with, asks him to be his boyfriend. Well, pose as his boyfriend, that is��for a new television game show in which young couples are quizzed on how well they know each other for a jackpot of thirty grand.

Reluctantly, Harry agrees—because he's got student loans to pay off, hasn't he? What's the harm? And he can totally deal with keeping his secret thing for Louis under wraps too. This is all just to win some money. It's fine. No big deal. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, everything. Obviously.

(53k) 

Maybe, Baby by thoughtsickles 

It all feels too easy, too good to be true. It all feels like a scene from Louis' daydreams, the kind of life he'd always imagined he'd have when he was younger and bored at his momma's work, sneaking around the hallways of the maternity ward until the nurses let him in to hold the babies. He'd felt so important being allowed to touch them. He'd told them stories of the lives they were going to have, houses with nice wallpaper that wasn't peeling, yards filled with sunshine and flowers and grass that never went yellow. A hammock to nap in, cuddled up with his husband.

You can't stay here, he tells himself, but Baby doesn't want to listen.

****

Louis runs away. Harry finds him.

(16k) 

Once Upon a Dream by objectlesson 

“M’not gonna half-ass our fake relationship,” Louis almost snaps, voice sharp with a defensive edge, like Harry wandered too close to a bruise with needy fingers. “Now kiss me again. We’re gonna make every shitty tourist here wish they had stayed in the Midwest. We’re gonna burn Disneyland down with our gay. ”

Harry shuts his eyes and opens his mouth, because he can’t fucking say no to Louis.

--

Or, a fake dating AU where everyone is lying and they happen to be at the Happiest Place on Earth.

(27k) 

Own the Scars by crinkle-eyed-boo (KimmieRocks)

“But I don’t belong here,” Louis insists. “Why do you say that?” James asks. “These people are all drug addicts and alcoholics,” Louis shrugs. Something sparks in James’ eyes. “And you’re not?”

Louis has never felt like he was good enough: for his stepdad, for his life-long best friend, for the life he's supposed to want. After an accident that nearly costs him his life, Louis' parents send him to rehab where he’s forced to face his demons. On the long and difficult road to recovery, Louis must confront the truths he’s been avoiding about his future, his relationships, and his sense of self-worth. Because before he can love anyone else, he’s got to learn how to love himself first.

(145k) 

signs and wonders by scrunchyharry 

On the surface, it looks like Louis Tomlinson has the perfect life; after all, he has the whole package: a white picket fence house (well, his doesn’t technically have a white picket fence, but work with him), a wife, a daughter and a dog. He has it all and he’s not even 30, yet.

On the surface, he could be the happiest man in the world.

The thing is, he never wanted this life. There was this boy, see, this Harry Styles, whose arrival made Louis question everything he thought he knew about himself. Before Louis could pursue it, though, before he could be brave and ask the boy out, one moment of bad luck on prom night, one single lapse of judgment, shaped his life in a way he never would have chosen. Between doing the right thing or turning into his own absent father, he knew what he had to do, even if it meant burying his dreams under the weight of a premature adulthood.

That is, until he receives an invitation for his school’s ten year reunion and sees that Harry will attend.

Could it be his second chance at happiness? At what cost?

(29k) 

Staring Across the Room by allwaswell16 

Harry Styles has a great life. He’s a children’s librarian at the New York Public Library, he’s got wonderful friends, and he loves cooking, green tea, yoga, and his collection of bow ties. He doesn’t mind that his life seems a little structured, maybe even a little boring. But when Louis Tomlinson joins the library staff as the new Installation Coordinator, things become a lot less predictable. Louis gets under his skin right from the start, bossing Harry around, making noise during story time, and eating the last cupcake in the staff lounge. Louis may be almost offensively attractive, but Harry will not be succumbing to Louis Tomlinson’s charms, even if the rest of the library staff have.

(27k) 

Stars Will Align For Us by 2tiedships2 

"The serial monogamist is single," Niall said by way of introduction when he sat down across from Harry in the canteen.

Harry sipped his chocolate milk. "What are you going on about?"

"Your alpha dream boat," Niall said. "That tiny little footie player? I heard from Hannah that he's broken it off with his boyfriend so he’s single and ready to flamingle. Now's the time to make your move."

Harry sipped his chocolate milk harder to keep himself from replying.

Or the one where Harry is an omega at a loss of how to get past his pining and gain the attention of Louis...especially considering the alpha is always in a relationship.

(16k) 

The End Should Be A Good One by bananasandboots 

It doesn't feel like falling in love, the way it had felt the first time around, easy, simple, almost like floating, wrapped up in a whirlwind of touches and kisses, late nights spent laughing breathlessly into each other's skin. This feels broken, complicated, like every move carries the weight of their past. Like the floorboards beneath them could collapse at any moment. This doesn't feel good.

Or, the one where Harry loses the love of his life on New Years Eve and finds him again, six months later, ready to open some poorly-stitched wounds.

(43k) 

through the jungle through the dark by YesIsAWorld 

Louis and Harry were best friends, until they weren’t. Five years after they last spoke they’re forced to drive cross-country to visit an injured friend. If they can’t get over the past, it will be a very long week together.

(13k) 

Wild Love by purpledaisy 

“Good,” Julia says, clearly pleased to have them both uncomfortable and unable to look at each other. “Now, I only have one more question before you can go. What are you planning to do when this experiment ruins your friendship?”

“We said we’d stay friends no matter what,” Harry says smoothly, his chin lifting in defense.

“That was our one thing going into it,” Louis agrees. “Stay friends no matter what.”

Julia raises a perfectly manicured brow, “That’s all fine and good. But I hope you realize your emotions aren’t going to realize this is an experiment in the end. If one of you falls for the other and finds out those feelings are not reciprocated, you’re not going to be able to laugh it off as a social experiment. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do this, I’m just hoping you’ve considered all of the possible outcomes.”

- AU: Two best friends try to date each other for forty days. It's supposed to be fun until emotions make it complicated.

(131k) 

Worth a Thousand Words by TheIfInLife 

“Look, I’m learning some new stuff!”

My name is Louis. My favorite color is green. I like movies. Do you know sign language?

Harry huffed grumpily. Why are you learning sign language?

“Because, I want to be able to talk to you.” Louis looked small, gripping tightly at the steering wheel.

Why?

You’re my friend. Louis signed shakily, having to try it a few times before getting it right. And well, Harry just snapped.

We’re not friends. I don’t know what makes you think that we’re okay but we’re not. You stopped being my friend once you found out that I went deaf. I don’t know if this is your way of ‘making up for it’ or if you think that hanging out with the deaf guy and learning a bit of sign language is your ‘kind deed’ to the world but I don’t want to be your charity case and I don’t want to be your friend. or Harry went deaf at 5 years old and Louis just wants the chance be heard.

(8k)