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nekoabi · 6 years

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On the Verge of a Heartbreak - Epilogue

Here it is, the monster of an epilogue... that took two days to write... because I have no self control... *falls flat on her face* Well, yeah. I hope you guys enjoy this! Gonna do a last promo for my writing blog that I’ll officially start posting to with the next fic: @nekoabiwrites

AU: Human, (post) School Pairing: Moxiety, OC/OC Words: 9621 (ye it’s long) Warnings: Mention of alcohol and drunkenness, descriptive panic attack, Roman gets mad a few times, yelling, bad life habits. Anything else, please let me know!

Summary: Roman Ashworth is loving his life, or at least... he thinks he is.

Roman Ashworth was happy with his life. He was perfectly content with his job and his lifestyle. Everyone at his job was too stuffy and uptight, completely not his type of people. He preferred to leave them to their own devices, having always turned down their invitations to spend time together after work until they finally got the message. Instead, Roman would go back to his empty apartment, take a few hours to wash off the boring 9 to 5 desk job costume and replace it with a perfect party look, go out to one of the many clubs, and then just dance and drink the night away.

He had friends, though. While at work, he’d talk with his co-workers and they were always so pleased to be around him. At the many clubs, Roman was close to all of the security and bar staff, so clearly they were friends. He even spoke to his old school friend, Remy, on occasion. Yes, Roman Ashworth’s life was going just the way he wanted it to.

That was until one day, when all the things he’d been running from and pushing to the back of his mind came crashing down around him.

It all started when he got a message from Remy, asking to meet at their usual spot that evening. Roman was utterly delighted that his friend wanted to spend some time together, would be a nice change from the usual day-to-day life. So, that night he cut his partying short and headed to their usual meeting point – a small local diner. Upon entering, Roman was easily able to pick out his friend due to the signature leather jacket and the fact there were only three others in the diner at the time.

Roman slid into the seat opposite of Remy with an exaggerated sigh, “Man, I don’t know about you, but I am exhausted!”

In front of him, Remy simply sipped loudly through the straw between his teeth. He kept the sound going for a few seconds for effect, but eventually let it pop out of his mouth, “You’re half an hour late.”

Roman scoffed, “I’m sorry, I’m just such a busy guy. I’m sure you know how it is.”

Remy seemed to consider fighting the point for a moment, but then clearly thought better. He shook his head and took another long drink before speaking again, “I have something for you, Ro. Something from your brother.”

At the mention of his family member, Roman immediately went on the defensive. Originally, he’d looked excited at the mention of receiving something, but that quickly went out the window. Roman crossed his arms and pouted, “I don’t remember having a brother.”

Remy sighed, already tired of Roman’s game, “Look, do you want to know what it is or not, because I can throw it away.”

“No, I wanna see it so I can throw it away if I want to.”

Remy rolled his eyes and reached into his pocket. He pulled out the plain envelope and placed it in the centre of the table, within reach of them both and stared at Roman. Slowly, the man leant back in his chair and seemed to relax entirely, as if a weight he was carrying was dropped off of his shoulders. He casually sipped at his drink once more, watching Roman carefully as he grabbed the envelope.

Roman purposefully took his time opening the envelope. He could feel Remy watching him, even after the man had flicked his sunglasses down, and Roman really didn’t feel like playing up to his friend’s expectations. It was hard, but he managed to accomplish his goal and slowly took the piece of thick paper out of its holder, flipping it open fairly quickly.

His heart stopped as he saw what was, unmistakably, a wedding invitation.

“Is this some kind of joke?” Roman turned the paper towards Remy, pointing to it accusingly, “Because it’s not very funny.”

Remy pulled his sunglasses down a little to make eye contact with Roman, giving the man an opportunity to show his exasperation. “No, Roman, it’s not a joke. It’s a real wedding invitation from your real brother.”

“I already told you, I don’t have a brother.” Roman huffed. He opted to ignore the continued disdainful look from his friend and focus on the invite itself. It was proudly proclaiming the wedding of his former brother and his fiancé, who just happened to be the same person from years back. The silver detailing was intricate, yet also very simple as it stuck mostly to the border of the letter. Roman read the words again and again, trying to come up with anything else to say.

He didn’t want to go to this wedding. He didn’t want to see the man who was supposed to be his brother and the kid who he’d lost years ago. He didn’t want to see who he was marrying and see them both looking happy once more. He didn’t want to go because he’d likely have to see the other’s family and deal with all of them, which meant seeing… him.

“Ugh.” Roman threw the paper down onto the table and pushed it towards Remy, “I’ve thought about it and I’m totally not going. I’d have to see Logan again. I am not about to give him the satisfaction of seeing me and gloating in my face about how great he is and how much better his life is with his two brothers.” Roman pretended to puke, sticking a finger into his opened mouth.

Across the table, Remy had had enough. He roughly slammed the recyclable cup he was sipping out of against the table, not making a loud sound but getting his point across and managing to get Roman’s full attention.

“See? This-” Remy flicked his finger up and down Roman’s body, “-is the problem here. You.”

Roman spluttered, clearly offended. He went to speak but Remy took the sunglasses off of his face and snapped the arms shut, “I wasn’t finished.” Remy said, his voice somehow both calm and threatening at the same time.

“You are still holding onto the past, Roman. You tell me every time we meet up that you’re over it, that you’re done with all that, but look at you. You’re throwing away an invite to a wedding because you don’t wanna see one person. One person you’ve put characteristics onto that are not even a part of them.” Remy sat up straight for the first time, locking eyes with Roman, “How do I know that? Because I’ve met with them. I’ve met with them all, and guess what? They’re not dicks. They never were dicks.”

Roman was slowly getting angry. How could his friend turn on him like that?! “That’s not fair, Rem! I thought you were on my side!”

“OH. MY. GOD.” Remy threw his hands into the air, silencing Roman. The few people still around in the diner turned to see what was going on, “There are no sides, Roman. There have never been sides to choose. You made your own problems by focusing all your attention on ruining one guy’s life, and you are still so blind to all the shit you’ve caused.”

“Luckily, they’ve all been able to move on without you and they’re probably better for it. Do you wonder why you’re always alone, going out to clubs to dance with strangers, drinking the night away?” Remy asked rhetorically, “It’s because you’re unable to make friends. You never learned how.”

“That’s a lie! I-” Roman started to respond but Remy cut him off again, standing up out of his chair which caused it to make a horrible screech as it slid back.

“No, it’s not, Ro. You have no friends at work, which you happily gloat about because ‘they’re no fun’. You have no friends outside of work because all you do is go out and party with strangers who forget your name the next day because all of them are so drunk. You have half a friend, Roman Ashworth, and that is me.”

“Half a friend…?” Roman asked meekly, a little scared at Remy’s behaviour.

“Yeah, half a friend. Because I am getting sick and tired of all your high and mighty behaviour. You’re not better than anyone else, sweetheart. You’re actually worse off than most. And, if you keep this up, you’re going to lose that half as well, because I am gradually losing hope for you. I used to sometimes be able to see that kid I used to be friends with, the kid that was fun and wasn’t obsessed with himself, wasn’t obsessed with some other kid that had literally no interest in fighting him, and I’m really starting to lose sight of him.” Remy plucked his cup back up and made to head towards the door but stopped just as he turned his back to Roman, “If you ever start to wake up and see the destruction you’ve caused, call me. Or-” He reached back into his jacket again and pulled out a second envelope, this one noticeably thicker than the one he’d handed to Roman. He held it between two fingers, showing the other man that his name was written on the outside, “-I might see you at the reception.”

With that, Remy walked out the door of the diner.

Roman was left alone with the invitation still staring him in the face, along with the few other customers who were watching him with interest. Quickly, he grabbed the invite and walked back to his apartment.

He was absolutely furious that Remy would even say such things to him. How dare he insinuate that Roman was one of the worst people he knew! How dare he say that he was only ‘half a friend’ to Roman now! How dare he even try and compare Roman to those who’d dropped him so easily all those years back.

Roman stormed around his apartment for a while, thinking about what to do. “C’mon, Roman. Think. You just have to prove that he’s wrong about you.” He muttered to himself as he paced frantically.

Then he had the most brilliant idea he’d ever had. Roman dove for his laptop that rested on the small coffee table and switched it on as he took a seat on the couch. He drummed his fingers on the edge, a giddy sense of glee filling him. If Remy was so sure that everyone else was having a great time with their ‘friends’ and whatever, then Roman was just going to have to find evidence that he was wrong.

Roman searched through his social media in order to find either Patton or his fiancé. He first found the fiancé’s but then realised that he was blocked by the profile holder. Roman took offense and quickly moved to Patton’s, more determined than ever to find proof that their lives were not as perfect as Remy made them out to be.

“Oh, you were always too trusting, Patton…” Roman spoke low, as if he were taunting the statue of the man that resided in the profile picture. He wasn’t blocked here, he was even still a friend, which gave him access to all he could possibly want to find. “Let’s see what you have on here, shall we?” Roman spoke to himself as he began to scroll through the pictures Patton had posted over the years.

This trawling through the other man’s pictures and memories did not have the desired effect on Roman, however. Instead of finding pictures where they seemed to be faking their amazing life and great friends, Roman was being greeted by images that just proved Remy’s point. He searched desperately, trying so hard to find evidence to his theory, but ultimately came up short. He could reason out all the smiles with negative ideas as much as he liked, but there was no water to any of it.

Slowly, Roman started to give up hope and just began to click through the pictures. He’d not seen his little brother in well over 7 years, and the absence was suddenly hitting him hard. He’d gone all the way back to pictures that had been taken a little after the day they moved away from the old neighbourhood and was watching the young man grow into the adult he was today.

Roman clicked through picture after picture showing his daily college life; his dorm room, all the friends he was making, his relationship with his now fiancé. Everything looked idyllic and perfect.

Now, he wasn’t an idiot. Roman knew deep down that this was still an idealised version of Patton’s life, but there just had to be some truth behind it, especially as every photo was within a few days of each other.

He slapped the lid of the laptop shut in frustration. Roman decided to get some rest, he’d be able to focus better tomorrow anyway, and he would definitely be able to find something that proved his point.

The next couple of weeks went by in a blur of usual mundanity for the most part, though Roman was now hyper aware of how his co-workers acted around him. They seemed to grow quiet as he approached, either beginning to talk in hushed whispers or just entirely going silent. Before he'd had that talk with Remy, Roman saw these behaviours as invitations for him to start his own conversations with the groups he was passing by, but now he wasn’t so sure. Roman attempted to brush this off as a random coincidence and go about his day as normal, but the idea kept nagging at the back of his mind.

At the end of each day, he was more than ready to go about his usual evening routine and just go have some fun. Roman forgot about the social media scrolling and just did what he always did. He went out, got drunk and had a great time with some strangers, but one day, he left before the club closed because he still couldn’t get the odd nagging from his mind.

Roman huffed as he walked through the door to his apartment, kicking off his shoes roughly. He went to the bathroom to remove his makeup and his eyes caught the laptop still sitting on the coffee table where he’d left it weeks prior. He paused, considering it for a second before ignoring it and reaching for the makeup remover. It was only once he had fully cleansed his face that he looked at the piece of technology again.

Realising he’d never be able to sleep if he didn’t at least have a look, Roman threw himself onto the couch and flipped open the laptop. As he waited for it to load, he pulled out his phone and looked at his own profile.

He felt like he needed to compare himself, really visualise the difference that Remy had been talking about in order to understand it because he really wasn’t seeing it right now. His heart sank, and his stomach ached as he realised that every picture he had was usually of him alone; selfies of him in dark clubs or his own apartment. The ones that had other people in them were of people he didn’t know the names of or were of him and Remy. It wasn’t until he went back to his high school pictures that he was able to see photos of himself with people he could easily recognise and name.

Roman started to feel queasy so he threw his phone to the side and focused on getting back to Patton’s profile on his laptop. More pictures went by as he spent the next hour looking at them. Photos from holidays and vacations with his fiancé and their family, photos from date nights and anniversaries, photos of people Roman could vaguely recognise from their high school days. But then came the pictures from the last Christmas that had gone by.

The first was like most Christmas pictures he’d already seen on his travels through Patton’s life, showing him wearing a large festive jumper and his fiancé begrudgingly wearing one of their own. The next ones were what hit Roman the hardest.

He saw his parents. With his little brother. And without him.

Roman hadn’t realised that he’d not only dropped his little brother all those years ago but had also lost contact with his parents. He hadn’t spoken to them since he’d decided to move away to the city, figuring that he didn’t need to. Each and every time they’d invited him home, he’d been busy – or so he’d fooled himself into thinking. And they’d stopped trying after all these years. Patton had done the same back then, having moved away so suddenly and not really wanting anything to do with their parents, but he’d clearly patched up the relationship somewhat. It hurt to see this, see himself excluded from what could be seen as any normal family picture. The next one hurt even more. It was both of the families, sitting together for a posed picture. He finally got to see Logan’s face for the first time in years. He could seem him happy, alongside not only his parents, but also Roman’s own parents.

Roman once again slammed the laptop shut and left it to fall into sleep mode. He moved into his bedroom and attempted to fall asleep, trying to rid his mind of the image he’d just seen. The next day, he didn’t even feel like going out. He instead decided to sit on his couch and binge some TV. He tucked the laptop away in a place he couldn’t see it, trying to remove the temptation to torture himself some more.

This went on for another week, just Roman working all day and then sitting in front of his TV until he eventually passed out from exhaustion. All the while, he was cursing everyone he used to know, especially Remy. The man was supposed to be his friend and yet he’d cursed him like this, forced him somehow to look at all of those pictures and make him feel the worst he’d ever felt in his entire life.

It wasn’t until one of his co-workers approached him that Friday did Roman finally realise something was terribly wrong with his life.

Roman had almost fallen asleep as his desk due to his entire week involving him passing out at around 1am after laying on the couch for hours. So, when the meek young employee had approached and checked if he was okay, Roman was definitely startled.

No one at work had spoken to him so kindly in a long time. “I was just a little worried.” The young worker said, “You’re usually full of energy and life, but recently you’ve looked a little worse for wear and I just wanted to make sure you were okay…”

Roman awkwardly assured his co-worker that he was okay, or was at least going to be soon, still a little thrown off by the nice gesture. It felt good to be thought about by someone. Later, during his lunch break, he managed to catch up to the other co-worker and ask if they were sitting with anyone, before taking up a seat at the same table in the café.

That lunch had been the most enjoyable in a long time. Roman wasn’t sat at his desk alone or out somewhere by himself, he was laughing and learning about someone else. Later that day, he was still hung up on it and decided to pull out the laptop again.

He didn’t want to look at pictures any more, Roman decided as he unlocked the laptop once more. He moved back to the main page of Patton’s profile and scrolled a little through his other posts, reading the most recent ones that all seemed to be related to his upcoming wedding.

Roman paused for a second when he saw one that had a couple of names he recognised. Patton had made a post a few weeks back, talking about how his fiancé’s brother and his fiancé’s best friend had argued over who would be the best man, and both of them were tagged. Roman hesitantly clicked on the best friend’s name, just curious to see how he was doing.

There was some zing of joy that managed to sneak through the ever-present gloom that was filling Roman’s body as he saw that the old friend of his was doing well. He scrolled through the pictures for a moment, trying to figure out why he recognised the girl that was in a lot of the photos before giving up and heading back to Patton’s own page.

Roman paused as a thought entered his head. Remy had said he’d spoken to the couple, right? Did that mean…?

Without even really giving a single thought to the consequences of his actions, Roman looked at Remy’s profile. It was then that his world really shattered around him. Remy had other friends, Remy looked happy. Roman had very few memories where Remy was as happy as he looked in these pictures. He scrolled through a few, noting that the old friend he was previously looking at featured in some of the pictures along with the girl.

The laptop was quietly shut and placed back on the table. Roman was left in the dark of his apartment. It was now nearly midnight. This would usually be when he’d be in his element in the clubs, and here he was, sat alone. He reflected on everything he’d seen over the past weeks, slowly letting everything add up in his head.

He really did have no friends. He did nothing but work and party. He went to the clubs to fulfil that sense of companionship with drunken strangers who he forgot the names of before they’d even parted ways. He brushed off the invites to hang out with his co-workers and his family, which had made them start to ignore him. He’d deluded himself into thinking this was the best way to live his life, that he was free from all restraints and was doing exactly what he wanted. But those pictures told a different story.

Roman knew he wanted what those pictures had all shown him. He wanted friends, he wanted to have relationships that meant something. He wanted to get his family back, he wanted to laugh and cry with them and see them happy. He was starting to get that back from the singular lunch experience he’d just had, but that was only a taste – and Roman realised he’d been craving it for years now.

He groaned and buried his face in his hands, “What have I done…?” Roman once again spoke to the empty air, as if maybe some voice would respond to him. As his hands fell away and he stood to get a drink, the white of the wedding invite caught his eye. He’d dropped it onto the small table just outside of the kitchen area, thinking he’d throw it away eventually, but something was stopping him.

Just then, Remy’s voice rang through his head, “If you ever start to wake up and see the destruction you’ve caused, call me.”

Without thinking through the consequences, Roman reached for his phone and called Remy’s number. It rang for what felt like forever before Remy finally picked up.

“What?” came the sleepy voice. Roman laughed to himself; he’d forgotten that Remy was always cranky when someone interrupted his sleep. “Look, if you called to just laugh at me, coul-”

“I think we need to talk, Rem.” Roman quickly responded, before Remy could finish his thought, “I think… I need your help.”

There was a moment of silence, only broken by the slight rustling on the other end of the phone line. Roman fiddled with the ripped flap of the invitation’s envelope that was still sat underneath it on the table as he waited for Remy’s response.

“Okay. But we’re meeting late, I need my beauty sleep. Perfection like this doesn’t happen without good rest.”

Roman was able to hold back his laughter as his nervous energy poured out from him, “Sure thing. How about 5pm?”

“Uh, no, my terms. 8 or later.”

“Demanding as usual. Fine, 8.”

“You can’t talk shit.”

“Uh huh, sure. See you tomorrow, Rem.”

With that, they both hung up. Roman sighed and decided to head to bed, finding that rest came easier that night than any before.

----

Roman nervously tapped his foot as he checked the time on his phone for the umpteenth time since he’d sat down in their usual seats at the diner. It was now getting close to 8:45 and Remy had still not turned up or messaged him. Roman had already made his way through several drinks as his throat kept drying up.

As Roman was beginning to type out a message to Remy in order to check if he was actually coming, the man in question strolled through the door casually and slipped into a seat opposite.

“Sorry, I’m late. I’m just so busy… I’m sure you’d understand.” Remy flippantly stated, exaggeratedly gesturing and throwing his legs up onto the empty chair beside him.

Roman breathed out a self-conscious laugh at having his own words thrown back at him, “Okay, I deserved that…”

“Oh no, that’s just the beginning, darling. I have plenty more where that came from.” Remy pulled out his phone and opened one of the notes pages, “Should I list them for you?”

“Nah, surprise me next time.” Roman pushed the phone down. A moment of silence passed as Remy stared at Roman through his sunglasses, it took that whole time for Roman to realise his friend was waiting for him to say his piece.

He took a deep breath and began to speak, “I wanted to meet you to say I’m sorry for how shitty I’ve been. This whole month has been fucking torture because what you said has been playing on my mind, which made me see the truth. It made me realise I’ve just been pretending, pushing away the negative thoughts and making everything positive. I’ve been so focused on me, and I haven’t looked at anyone else around.” Roman thought back to the co-worker he’d spent lunch with the day before and smiled, “But now I realise that I need to be better. I need to listen to people, not just brush them off all the time… because that’s how I end up with no one in the long run. I figured the best person to start with in order to make myself better was you, Rem. You’ve been my friend for years, you’re the only one I’m still in contact with from back then and you never actually gave up on me, no matter how much I ignored you or frustrated you. I feel like I need to thank you and apologise a hundred times over before I’ve truly made up for all the shit I put you through, but I hope this is, at least, a good place to start…”

Remy was silently sipping at the drink in his hand. He said nothing, even after it was clear Roman was done. He let a minute go by, looking as though he was considering everything Roman had just poured out to him. “You’re right.”

“Huh?” Roman almost jumped as the man opposite suddenly spoke.

“You really do have to apologise a hundred times.”

Roman flicked his eyes around the diner. He was unsure if Remy had accepted his initial apology or not. He waited in yet more silence as Remy took another extended drink through the straw that was perpetually between his lips.

“…but I guess this is a good enough start.”

Finally, the cup was placed on the table and Remy smiled his half smile at him. Roman felt his entire body relax. He’d been so god damn tense this whole time without even really noticing it. He felt like laughing maniacally out of relief, but managed to reign himself in before talking, “Thanks, Remy.”

“That’s two.”

“Fuck... you’re actually going to keep count aren’t you?” Roman rested his forehead against the table, groaning.

“You know it, hon.”

“Great.”

“So, who’s next on your list?” Remy asked, changing the subject.

Roman raised his head and sighed, “See, I’m not sure exactly who I need to apologise to. Like, I know I should say it to my family and Patton’s fiancé’s family and everything, but who else?”

“Wow, you really do need my help. Alright,” Remy finally moved his sunglasses off of his face. He rested them up on top of his head, so he could look Roman dead in the eyes, “Let’s get started with this list.”

For the next two hours, the two friends sat and figured out a ranked list of people who Roman needed to apologise to. It started with the easier and geographically closest ones for Roman to handle, so he’d get the hang of what he needed to say and how to say it in a way that wasn’t awful. Remy listed off everyone he could think of on the top of his head before grabbing Roman’s phone and scrolling through his contacts and his social media. They left the obvious ones until last.

“So, when do you think you’ll speak to them?” Remy casually asked, as they’d now reached his family members.

Roman shrugged, “I dunno… Depends how quickly I get through the rest of these?” He said, clearly unsure of himself.

Remy raised an eyebrow, “Really? You can’t think of any time at all when you’d be able to see them all?”

“But… wouldn’t that be… kinda gross to do? Bring it all back up on their wedding day?” Roman was trying his hardest to think of a better time, but nothing was coming. After the wedding would be awful and he really only had two options before that: skipping out on their invite to the wedding and then showing his face after that when they would have already probably made a decision about him due to his absence, or turn up at the wedding, actively avoid interacting with anyone that might possibly recognise him but then that would also make it seem like he’d not cared to show up at all even though he had.

He began to search for even the smallest reason not to turn up, “Like, I don’t wanna start a fight on their wedding day, Rem. It would be bad.”

“Start a fight? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Well, y’know… me and Logan haven’t gotten along and-”

“Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” Remy groaned loudly, rolling his eyes back. “Roman, come on. Are you still stuck on him? Just let it go, bitch. Oh my god. I don’t even know what he did to make you hate him so much, but it better be something fucking traumatic as hell or else I’m walking out of here.”

Roman shut his mouth. If he was completely honest with himself, he didn’t even remember what Logan had done all those years ago. He’d just ended up telling himself and everyone who asked that he was ‘just an uptight, controlling asshole’, but that still didn’t mean that Logan was in the clear. Also, yeah, he was kinda a huge dick to Logan and stuff, but that didn’t really matter anymore. He hadn’t seen the guy in years, so really it didn’t have anything to do with what he was currently trying to figure out.

“Wait.” Remy was currently reading his mind, if his facial expression was anything to go by when Roman looked back up, “You don’t even realise what you really did, do you?”

“Rem, please, just tell me stuff. Don’t ask questions like that… I can’t.” Roman whined, almost pleading with his friend.

Remy silently pulled out his own phone again. He scrolled through something that Roman couldn’t see from the angle he was currently sat. It was only once the phone was slid across to him that he was able to see that it was a social media chat. What he read caused his stomach to churn.

Message after message sent between Patton and Remy went by. He read all their discussions, from their first correspondence where they’d lamented the loss of their friend and brother, up until their recent talk about asking him to come to the wedding.

“Oh, that’s not all.” Remy plainly said as Roman attempted to push the phone back to its owner. Another chat was opened, this time with Reggie. He scrolled back up to a specific message before letting Roman read again.

This time all the messages described what had happened once Roman had left the school and the effect he’d been having on his little brother and their friends. He was only able to get to the messages that described what he’d done on that fateful day in the park before Roman had to stop himself before he puked.

“Okay. Okay. I get it. Just. Stop showing it to me.” Roman cried out, leaning against the back of the chair in an attempt to get as far away as he could from the phone screen.

“Do you really get it, Roman?” Remy asked, his voice measured and serious. “Do you get what you did? What your actions caused? Because you better understand before you even think about seeing any of them again.”

Roman swallowed hard and tried to calm himself down. It hadn’t occurred to him that he’d been such a dominant source of anxiety and stress for his little brother and his friends. He’d never stopped and thought about how his obsession with proving Logan was somehow worse than him and taking him down a peg would even remotely cause such changes. He’d absolutely never thought that he would actually have been the source of arguments and disagreements. Something inside of him was thrashing about, yelling at him and punishing him. Maybe it was his morality that had finally been released from its cage after all these years.

He didn’t even realise he was losing himself to it all until a hand rested on his shoulder and Remy’s voice reached him, though it did sound like he was far away down a tunnel, “Hey, Roman. Can you breathe for me?”

Roman tried, but he found his lungs weren’t listening. They seemed to just want to breathe sharply. It was almost like he was drowning, he was shivering like mad, but he felt like he was in boiling hot water. His muscles were tensing to the point of being painful, causing him to start to curl up into a ball, which didn’t help his breathing.

“C’mon Ro. You can do it. Just follow this pattern as best you can.” Remy started to gently stroke a rhythm out on his back, keeping it perfectly in time. Roman could just about make out Remy vocally breathing through it at the same pace.

He managed one shaky breath, but then fell back into a couple quick ones. “Good, that was good, Ro. Keep trying.”

It took a few minutes, but eventually Roman was able to breathe deeply again. He was now able to notice Remy crouched at his side. They were still in the diner, it was still dark outside. Everything was getting back to normal. Aftershocks still racked Roman’s body from time to time, but he felt better, “What… what was that?” He asked, still a little dazed.

Remy stood up and took his seat across from Roman once more, “A panic attack, Ro. I guess that was my fault, shouldn’t have thrown that all at you in one go. Sorry.”

Roman shook his head softly, “Don’t. It’s okay. I just… I never realised. I didn’t know that-” His throat seemed to close as he went to admit it out loud. He cleared it purposefully and powered on, “-that I did all that. That it was all my fault.”

Remy nodded, “Well, do you get it now?”

“I think so…” Roman bowed his head and paused as another aftershock of shudders flew through his body, “I have so much more to apologise to them for, huh?” He smiled ruefully at his friend that was back to sipping at his new drink.

“Understatement of the century, sugar.” Remy responded with his own smile as he also flicked his sunglasses back down over his eyes.

From that night onwards, Remy would spend at least one evening a week leading up to the wedding with Roman. He was the one who critiqued the apologies Roman came up with and got him to change them for the better, while also being the support Roman needed in order to even go through with some of them. As the weeks went by, the pair found themselves just enjoying their nights together as they relaxed a lot more. Roman was still trying to get out of some of his old habits, but Remy wasn’t too pushy on it. He was finally seeing the kid that he became friends with back in middle school; the sassy confident asshole that complimented him so well. Remy had to remind Roman of his old self from time to time, especially when he started apologising for something that wasn’t a big deal.

One night, Roman and Remy were simply lounging on Roman’s couch, watching a show and chatting. Roman grabbed the wedding invitation off the coffee table and turned to Remy, “Hey, so I was re-reading this earlier today and it’s an invite to the reception, right?”

Remy looked between the invite and Roman, eyebrows raised, “Did you think they’d invite you to the ceremony? I thought we’d already worked through your delusions, but alright.”

“No, you dick.” Roman shoved Remy’s shoulder with an exasperated smile, “I just wanted to make sure.”

“Ohhhh, sure.” Remy held his hand still as he was shoved lightly again, making sure to not spill the drink he was holding.

“So, what about you?”

“I’m going to both.”

“Oh.”

Remy glanced to the side and saw Roman’s slightly downcast expression. Clearly the man had not been expecting that revelation to come out so easily, but he quickly managed to shake it off and smile unconvincingly once he noticed Remy looking at him.

“Okay, Ro, do I need to explain again how much I’ve been in their lives?” Remy sighed and tilted his head back to rest against the back of the plush sofa.

“Nah, I kinda knew it. I guess I just needed to hear it to really believe it. Y’know?”

The corner of Remy’s lip twitched into a smile, “Yeah, I get it.”

Then the week of the wedding came. Remy had to cancel their usual get together as he needed to travel, but he did threaten Roman gently in order to make him promise to show up. This threat was what made Roman turn up on time, finding himself swamped in a landscape of unfamiliar faces. Some of the more friendly and chatty guests tried to start small talk with him and Roman obliged them, being as polite as he could while also dodging around the question of how he knew the couple.

Roman eventually found himself lingering in the bathroom of the reception venue, checking himself in the mirror over and over. He kept finding small things that needed to be fixed, but a small part of his brain – that sounded strangely like his friend - told him that he was stalling so he didn’t have to go through with what was going to undoubtably be the hardest apology he was ever going to have to do.

He wasn’t deluded anymore. He was aware of what his actions had caused, at least as far as Remy could tell him. There was no way for him to truly know what effect he’d had on Patton and his parents after all these years, but he knew it wasn’t a positive one. Roman was highly aware of the fact that they might not accept his apology outright and – while he knew it would hurt – he wasn’t going to be surprised if that happened. The amount of pain and suffering he’d caused over the years was a hell of a lot, almost to the point of being unquantifiable, so he was prepared to take their decision with dignity. He knew it wasn’t about him - well, okay it was a little about him, but it wasn’t about him – so if he was left hurting at the end of it all, that was just how this was going to go.

His phone buzzed as he was bracing himself to leave the bathroom. Roman checked it to see a message from Remy.

Rem: Boy. You better be late or something, because I will ruin you if you’re not coming.

Ro: I’ve been here for almost 30 mins, just been in the bathroom for... For most of it.

All of a sudden, the door to the bathroom slammed open and crashed into the wall.

“You better get your cute little ass out of this bathroom right now or else, lord help you.” Remy shouted. Roman realised that the door hadn’t even shut as Remy finished his sentence.

“Rem!” He whispered harshly, “Shut up! The last thing I need is-”

“…It’s not a wedding without a fight, right honey?” Laughter followed the voice that floated through the small crack in the door as it finally shut.

Roman hung his head and turned away from his friend, “Great. Wonderful. Just perfect! Now people actually think I’m getting into a fight! Y’know, the whole thing I wanted to avoid!” Roman glared into the mirror, trying to catch Remy’s gaze.

The other man was leaning against the wall between two of the stalls and simply shrugged, “Wouldn’t have been an issue if you didn’t hole yourself away in here, honey.”

Roman scoffed and rolled his eyes before turning back to face his friend, “Don’t you ‘honey’ me. Ugh, I don’t know if I can do this, Rem…”

“You can and you will, unless you want-”

“Unless I want you to tell them that I’m a coward who turned up and wanted to apologise but skipped out because it was too difficult for me. Yes, I know, Rem. You’ve told me a hundred times.” Roman cut across the other, sounding exhausted.

“Alright, good, you listen. Now, you’re gonna stand up straight, walk out of here, go find your table, sit and listen quietly like a good little boy, wait until the moment you can move and then go say your thing, right?” Remy casually rattled off the plan they’d gone over and over in Roman’s apartment a few weeks ago.

Roman sighed heavily, “There’s no getting out of this, is there?”

“Nope.” Remy crossed his arms, “Either you do it yourself, or I drag you out of here to do it, and that wouldn’t look good, sweetie.”

“Ugh, I know! I know!” Roman almost cried to the ceiling, as if he were cursing some kind of omniscient being for putting him in this situation.

Remy blinked a few times before speaking again, “Are you done?”

Roman pouted but nodded. He followed his friend out of the bathroom, taking a deep steadying breath before stepping out into the large reception room. He stood just outside of the door for a moment, unsure of where to go. From what he could see, there was something like a photo booth on the far end of the room, which was decorated with pictures and memories of the couple as well as several things that bore the couple’s last names. Currently over there were some people he thought he vaguely recognised, there was a tug at his memory that told him they could be aunts or uncles or cousins that he’d only met a few times. Seeing them reminded Roman that family were going to be involved and he suddenly felt the need to hide back in the safety of the bathroom once again.

Remy made sure he couldn’t do that, however. Almost as if he had a sixth sense for Roman’s panic, the other man grabbed his wrist just before he was about to turn and run before dragging him over to the table that sat just next to the entrance.

“So, you’re back here. What are you going to do?” Remy prompted, pointing at the table plan for the dining area.

Roman found his name at the table furthest away from the head table. He’d expected something like that and so it didn’t come as much of a shock, but he realised that – in order to get to the head table – he’d have to walk through the dance floor, which would be completely clear and in full view of everyone attending. Roman could feel his heart starting to pound as he visualised the worst; being watched by all those pairs of eyes, being rejected immediately without even having the chance to speak and apologise, physically being dragged back across that empty floor and thrown outside.

Remy comforted him by gently stroking the pulse point on his wrist, “Hey, chill out. You’ll be fine. Patton will hear you out, he’s a good guy. Everyone else will follow his lead. Just chill.”

Before he could even respond, Roman was interrupted by the call for everyone to take their seats in the dining area. He shakily drew a breath and looked at Remy, who nodded to him. Both of them walked through the double doors, but Remy was being sat at a table near the front, so he left Roman to sit at his assigned table.

Roman tried to control his pounding heart and his shaking hands as the rest of seats filled up. He quickly realised that he was at the “Random People We Invited But Really Didn’t Expect Them To Turn Up” table, as three of the seats around him remained empty and the rest recalled stories of one time encounters or impersonal tales of how they knew the newly married couple. When it came to his turn, Roman made up a story of how he’d known the couple back in high school – it wasn’t a full lie, but it made it easier than possibly having to explain why he, the brother of one of the grooms, was sat here at the back of the room.

It felt like an eternity before the wedding party finally arrived, giving Roman a reason to stop talking to these people he didn’t know. He clapped politely along with the rest of the room as everyone entered and took their seats at the head table, though he was unable to take his eyes off of his parents and Patton once they’d come through.

They all looked so happy, like actually really happy. Roman had no memories of any of them looking like that, at least as far as he could recall. His stomach started to sink even more as the toasts began, the realisation that his awful behaviour years ago really affected his family in such a horrible way. He barely paid any attention to the toasts and speeches, especially when they came from people he didn’t know or were about events he’d never even heard about. It was yet another reminder that Roman had missed so much of their lives. He reacted in kind with the people at his table, smiling and offering a weak chuckle whenever they laughed, but none of it was real. The only time Roman really found he focused was when people he did know spoke, mostly his father and Logan.

Patton and his new husband – who Roman realised he should now refer to by his name, Virgil – took to the dance floor for their first dance. The moment was pure and adorable, yet Roman felt ill watching the two of them. All he could see as he watched the couple slowly sway were the young kids he’d thrown around and yelled at in the rain all those years ago. Guilt was dripping through his body, making him want to curl up and hide away from everyone. It also gave him the drive he needed to stick through it and make him want to apologise, he wanted to get his family back and see them happy. He wanted to replace that awful memory with ones full of smiles.

Roman almost missed the call for the buffet to start. They were going up table by table and, of course, because he was at the reject table, his was going to be last. He was not upset by this arrangement at all, however. It gave him more time to psych himself up.

The buffet was right across the room from his seat, which meant that if anyone looked just to their side, they would have a full view of him. Roman made sure to keep his face covered by his hand as the head table gathered their food, using the guise of propping his head up as the ruse. He watched and mentally counted down the numbers as each table was called up to get food. As Remy’s table went up, the two made eye contact and Remy jerked his head towards the long main table, a silent message that reminded Roman of his ultimate goal. He nodded in response, which seemed to placate Remy for now. Finally, his table was called.

Roman stood with the rest of them but lagged behind a little as they all passed in front of him. He wasn’t hungry at all. Throughout the process of all the guests gathering their food, Roman had seen many of them take a detour to the head table in order to congratulate the couple on their marriage, so him crossing the empty dance floor wasn’t going to be too out of place. The last member of his table passed in front of him and Roman took the plunge, walking directly towards the head table.

At first, no one seemed to respond in any negative way. They must have thought he was another well-wisher or something, not surprising as they hadn’t seen him in years. It was only once one person clocked that it was Roman that everyone else seemed to fall silent as they realised it themselves.

The rest of the room quietened in response, as other tables seemed interested in what was going on. Roman clenched his fist quickly to try and stop him shaking before he opened his mouth.

“I am here to apologise. To all of you. To my parents, for ruining your lives for years and destroying relationships you may have otherwise spent time enjoying. To all the people here who knew me in high school or college, specifically those who were there to witness… that day. I apologise for causing so much stress, for almost ripping your friendships and relationships apart. I am so sorry for being an ever-present thought in all of your minds and being such a problem for you all. To anyone I used,” Roman glanced to Remy for a second and then to Reggie, who sat at the head table, “I am sorry for being a blockade and a dick to you all. I wish I could have understood how to be a better friend and how much I had to lose back then. I am sorry I only saw you as a tool to further my stupid, self-imposed revenge that really made no real sense. To Mr and Mrs Mortenson, I am so sorry I targeted your son and almost ruined your other’s relationships. I’m sorry I stopped you from seeing my parents back then and I am so sorry for being the reason you moved out of a neighbourhood that appreciated you both so much.”

Roman paused for breath, knowing the hardest part was just about to come out.

“To Virgil,” He turned and looked the man in the eyes, trying to ignore the hatred that was blazing in them, “I am sorry for everything I did to you. I had no idea what impact my actions and words had on you, especially back then. Now, I am aware that I likely did lasting damage and for that I am deeply sorry. I am sorry for trying to stop you being friends with Patton. I am sorry for causing your brother so much trouble and hurt that he was worried I would turn on you. He was probably correct about me back then, and that is unforgivable.”

“To Logan,” Roman turned and looked at his self-proclaimed school rival, finding the knot in his stomach untying as his gaze wasn’t as rage filled as his younger brothers, “I am immensely sorry for everything I ever did, for all the awful things I put you through. I know my actions and my words were disgusting and I fully own that fact now that I have been able to see the consequences. I am sorry for treating you unfairly and making assumptions that pushed me to find new and creative ways to be a pain in your ass. I am sorry that I ruined so much of your life and practically forced you to worry even more about your younger brother, purely because you were worried my attention would turn to include him in that stupid vendetta I had. I’m sorry for every word I said against you, I am sorry for every action I took against you.”

“And… to Patton,” Roman could feel his eyes beginning to tear up a little as he looked at his younger brother, seeing the small vulnerable young kid he’d almost destroyed. He refused to let himself cry in this moment, it wouldn’t look good and would make him feel like he was trying to gain sympathy, “I am sorry to you, Patton, my little brother, for everything I did. I had no idea that the boy you came home excited to talk about from preschool would turn out to be the man you loved, and it is awful that I tried to stop that. I am sorry for trying to push you to be like me, I’m sorry for even considering and implying that you were even remotely like I was back then. I’m sorry for all the teachers that compared us, for all the stuff I spouted about how close we were, for all the times I caused you to panic and worry about me or anyone I was involved with. I’m sorry that I almost ruined everything for you. I am truly sorry for it all.”

“I understand that some of you may not accept this apology and I want to say that I understand and will respect your decision, no matter what. Everything I did was unacceptable, and I am disgusted with myself. I wouldn’t be here without your kindness and willingness to at least give me a chance, and I definitely wouldn’t be here without you, Patton, reaching out to someone who could get me to realise the problems and hurt I’ve caused all of you. Thank you for being so gracious in listening to me today and for even considering inviting me to the happiest day of your lives.” Roman bowed to them out of pure instinct. He blinked back the tears that were still pricking at his eyes. His throat had caught several times and he needed to now swallow hard in order to stop him from bursting into tears.

Roman stood up straight and looked along the head table. He smiled and thanked them once more before going to turn and leave.

“Roman, wait.”

A voice stopped him from moving. Roman turned back to see Patton standing up, along with Virgil and a couple of Patton’s side of the wedding party. They seemed to be having a quiet argument, so Roman stood still and waited patiently to see what was happening.

On the other side, Logan was watching the man stood in front of him with a soft smile. He was fully aware everything Roman had just said was sincere. So many times in high school did Logan have to sit and watch as Roman faked his way through apology after apology, empty promises that he’d never do anything like that again to any student. This time, the emotion was plain for all to see and his eyes didn’t hold the rage and promise of more hurt. Logan physically found himself relaxing. He even helped in coaxing Virgil off of his new husband.

Everyone was silent as Patton smiled warmly to Virgil, “I know what I’m doing. Don’t worry.” He whispered before pressing a kiss to the other man’s cheek. Patton turned and walked around the table, coming to stand in front of Roman. He could see his older brother was tense, was clearly trying to hold himself together and so Patton smiled a comforting smile before wrapping his arms around Roman in a gentle hug.

Roman’s eyes flew wide. He hadn’t expected this. He stared between the table and the man hugging him carefully. When he heard the next words from Patton, everything came falling down.

“I forgive you, Ro.”

Roman wrapped his arms around his younger brother, silent tears falling from his eyes. He knew he still had a lot to do to make up for everything he’d done, he knew he hadn’t won all of their trust back, but he was more than willing to put in the work to do it. Roman was determined to prove he’d changed. But now, all that mattered was that he had his little brother back.

Last Chapter

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mysticsparklewings · 5 years

Photo

Bug Girl

My WIP Wednesday! piece is all finished! (Warning: LOOOOOOONG description about the art process ahead! ) I don't think it's terribly obvious for a number of reasons (at least not at first), but this piece is actually a bit of fan art/inspired by How to make Friends with the Dark by Kathleen Glasgow, which I finished reading Monday night--Though I actually started this piece a couple of days before There's a concept that gets brought up a few different times in the book of the main character Tiger imagining a "bug-girl" in a jar, usually to help visualize her emotions to us, the audience. This concept really resonates and stuck with me even before I finished the book, and thus I was compelled to draw it. Technically the way I see that concept in my head looks different from what I've done here, so sometime in the future I may take another stab at it, but for this time I wanted to strengthen the connection between the bug-girl concept and the book, so visually I modeled the overall aesthetic largely off of the book's cover; white lines and white dots on a dark blue background that has a slight gradient at the bottom. The gradient on the cover is more subtle and is more on the lines than the background itself, but I took artistic liberty on that to make my life a little easier. My original plan was to do the background with watercolor, do the lines digitally and print them out (since I had some kinks in the sketch I wanted to experiment with digitally instead of doing a lot of additional drawing and erasing) and then use my lightbox and a white gel pen to trace directly on top of the watercolor, then splatter away with some white ink. But of course, things can never be that simple. The way I see it in my head, the bug-girl has, well, bug eyes, but for this piece, I didn't want to lean too heavily into the "creepy" factor, given it doesn't really fit with the content of the book (which is a great read if you like realistically heavy YA novels, by the way) so I angled her head down and her hair covering her face to keep from having to make the decision on whether or not I wanted to go with that look. And additionally to do proper bug eyes (at least the kind I was imagining) would've involved a lot of tiny circle/cell shapes, and I imagine that would've made things feel too crowded or would have blended into the splatters/background in an uncomfortable way. Additionally, I was going to have her wings raised behind her, but after playing around with a few different references and positions in Photoshop (knowing full well I was not happy with the original wings from the sketch that I completely free-handed), I felt like this more asymmetrical, lowered position and dragonfly-type structure just looked better and fits better with some of the movements of the wings described in the book (using them to cover her eyes, etc.) which in most cases aren't technically plausible with normal bug wings. My first real problem was with the jar. Realistically, it needed to be tall enough for the girl to stand at full height at least. And in theory, probably a little bit higher so it would be more comfortable overall and so that in theory she wouldn't just stand up and be able to push the lid off. But I was having issues with the sizing because the jar could only be so big so that A. it would fit comfortably on my paper and B. if it was too tall, the empty space between the top of the jar and the girl would noticeably awkward. So I fiddled with that for way too long and ultimately, it's probably too short, but the size balanced is more comfortable to the eyes, I think. (I also added the cross-hatching to the lid to make it more obvious there was a lid since originally it just kind of looked like the jar had a very wide lip.) I also gave her a set of antennae, and after trying the concept of segmenting her whole body to be more bug-like (which was way too many lines everywhere) I decided to add some plates on the front of her forearms and calves. It's not much at all, but I didn't want to stick solely to traditionally "fairy" imagery since she's a bug-girl, not a fairy, but in this lines-only format, there was only so much I could do and still get the proper impact I was looking for. Speaking of which... I did a lot of swatching and testing of my various watercolors that I have on hand to A. get the colors I wanted right, B. practice my blending of two colors with more paint than water since I wanted very dark, opaque colors, and C. test if my lightbox would even work under the thick watercolor paper and the actual watercolor. However, I made two errors in judgment during the testing: 1. The areas I swatched to test were considerably smaller than the actual size of the area I wanted to cover and even with my biggest brush when I went to do a practice go I very quickly realized that was going to take an absurd amount of paint, time, effort, and I was very likely to run into some blending problems with the gradient. (So, in summary, half-pan-sized watercolors and mostly small brushes are not great for very large areas) 2. Once I realized the above, (and I had already done two very quick tests with alcohol markers and that idea almost immediately went out the window for the same issue) I had to switch course and ended up using some water-soluble pencils (one Arteza Woodless Watercolor Pencil for the dark blue and one Derwent Inktense pencil for the dark teal at the bottom) to lay down the color for the background and then wet them down to smooth out the color. Which turned out pretty nicely, especially once they dried. (I was a little worried at first since while still wet it was looking kind of patchy and weird ) The problem with number 2 is that after it had fully dried (aside from the paper curling pretty badly since it was in a sketchbook and I didn't think to tape the edges of the page down before taking water to it, which was mostly fixed pretty easily by wetting down the back of the page and sitting a very heavy box on it while it dried overnight) when I went to use the lightbox, the pigment from the water-soluble pencils was noticeably more opaque than the straight watercolor tests/swatched I had looked at previously. It wasn't so opaque that I couldn't see my lines underneath at all but it was opaque enough that a lot of the smaller details wear really hard to see. And thus I had a pretty big problem on my hands. What I should have done was trace the lines in black on the blank paper first so they would be more likely to show through the pigment in the first place and there's a good chance that would've fixed the problem, even if I still needed the lightbox to see those lines perfectly. But hindsight is always 20/20 so that knowledge didn't really fix the matter at hand. I knew pretty instantly that I didn't want to try tracing the lines onto another piece of watercolor paper and trying to color matter since I seem to always have majorly noticeable issues with that, especially when there's a gradient involved, and also because I knew when I scanned it in it would be fairly obviously there were two layers of paper instead of one because of how thick watercolor paper is. I also knew alcohol markers were out because, again, color matching issues with the selection available to me, and also from some of my much earlier testing with trying to get the specific gradient that I wanted. That left me with colored pencils. And thus I went through the five different sets I use enough to keep where I can easily access them (I have others I don't like as much that would've just been a waste of time) and started swatching colors on a piece of the same paper I had the lines on and then held them up to the background to color match as closely as possible. I ended up picking one dark blue and one dark teal each from both my Prismacolor and Polychromos sets since the blue from the Prismacolor was closer but the teal from the Polychromos was closer but they were both slightly off, so to keep the texture consistent I mixed both together for both colors. This ended up being a very good idea in hindsight because I finished off with a final layer of the Polychromos and that kept my white gel pen from having the problems it would normally have over straight-Prismacolor pigment. (Since Prismacolors are wax-based the wax usually clogs the pen tip very easily; the Polychromos are oil-based, so the oil created a slicker layer between the wax and the pen). And all I did was use my lightbox to see the black printed lines through the colored pencil as easily as possible and went back over them with my white Sakura Gelly Roll, then I went back and outlined the jar and the lid specifically with my white Uni-Ball Signo, since the ink is slightly brighter and the nib is larger. Once that was all done to my satisfaction, I cut out the girl in her jar and placed it on the watercolor background with some double-sided tape I picked up the day before from DollarTree, clipping a few edges so they'd be as flush with the edges of the paper as possible. And I figured that would be a better idea than glue because the glue had a very good potential of being very messy and leaving notable marks. The tape was just a safer bet. And fortunately, the paper laid pretty flat, save for a couple of spots I either missed because I applied the tape by lifting up the edges so I wouldn't totally lose my placement or up by some of the nooks and crannies that make up the ridges at the top of the jar that were just too small to do individually. And there is one spot where that tape wrinkled on me, but it's fortunately not terribly noticeable in the final product. Then I made a paper mask for the girl inside the jar and got to move on to the slightly more fun part; I dipped a paintbrush in some white ink (white ink as opposed to white watercolor because I was concerned the water part might cause some reaction to the existing watercolor background that I didn't want and I was a little concerned it would make the non-watercolor paper that the girl and the jar were drawn on warp) and started tapped it against another paint brush to get splatters everywhere. I masked the girl since I was pretty sure she'd blend in too much if she got splattered too. After the ink was dry, I removed the mask and went in with the white Gelly Roll again to make some stars here and there; mostly just because I wanted to since the original book cover only has dots. I left it at that for the night since it was almost 3 and I was tired, but I came back to it the next day and racked my brain for a bit since it felt like it was missing something. I ultimately ended up putting the mask back on the girl and used my pastel blue PanPastel to create a glow effect around her. After that, I scanned it and did make some minor adjustments in Photoshop (mostly color correction, but there were a couple of black lines of shadow around the edge of the jar since it was still a separate piece of paper on top of the other one at the end of the day. And here we are. It's still not perfection, but I am ultimately happy with it since I think I got the look I was after in the end. Plus, I think I capture the spirit of the original book cover's style pretty well ____ Artwork (c) me, MysticSparkleWings I do not own How to make Friends with the Dark or the cover art ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

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calebswitching · 5 years

Text

easter eggs - Frankie/Caleb

Easter eggs scene - Frankie’s eggs

eggs: dance studio, 4am, crop

Thursday, April 11

@frankiexxwilde

Caleb blinked blearily as he walked from the switch dorm to the Dom dorm in the darkness. He had considered coffee to wake himself up enough for the scene, but then he might not go back to sleep after, and he was hoping to get another hour at least before he had to get up for classes. Besides, he told himself, once the scene started, Frankie would keep him awake with the crop. So he’d be fine. He knelt when he got to her door and knocked, checking his watch again. Almost 3:45. Good, plenty of time to get to the dance studio.

The ungodly hour was quickly beginning to annoy Frankie as she got herself up in time to shower, do her hair and dress in a very seductive tank top and matching skirt. She was pulling on her no-heeled black boots when she heard the knock. She opened the door with a smile as she saw Caleb kneeling there beautifully. “Hello darling boy,” she hummed, rubbing her hand against the hair on the back of his head. She walked over to her counter where she had tea in to-go containers, “You may stand, darling,” she said, offering him one of the cups, “I made some tea, iit is not caffeinated, but it is warm.”

Despite his sleepiness, seeing Frankie made him smile. Especially because she’d clearly dressed nicely for the occasion, which surprised him. He wouldn’t have thought it odd at all if she just came in a pair of pajamas. He stood, and accepted the cup with a grateful look. “Thank you so much, Miss.” Caffeine or not, something hot to drink was very nice right now. “Is there anything I can carry for you?”

“No, I do not think so, darling,” she said, picking up the crop and swinging a back of random objects over her shoulder, “I think we will have everything we will need. Come along, darling,” she smiled, walking them out of her suite. They made fairly quick time towards the dance studio, the slight chill of the morning air being combated by the hot tea in her cup. They made it to the dance studio, abandoned at this hour and Frankie turned on some lights. “Alright, so here is what I am thinking,” she started, turning to face Caleb, “I am going to give you orders or tasks to do. They may or may not get more difficult. If you do not do what I am asking correctly or in a standard amount of time, I will pick a spot on your body to hit with the crop. Any questions?”

Caleb followed obediently, sipping his tea as they walked. He was kind of looking forward to this, despite having to do it at such a ridiculous time in the morning. There was even something nice about that, actually. With everyone else asleep, it felt like he and Frankie were alone in the world. When they arrived at the studio, Caleb put his half-drunk tea on the floor by the door before turning his attention to Frankie. “No, Miss,” he said, shaking his head. “No questions.” It sounded simple, but he had a feeling Frankie would come up with ways to make it difficult. The point was to use the crop, after all.

“Good boy,” she smirked, walking towards the center of the room, crop in hand. “Come here, face the mirror,” she ordered, waiting for him to comply. “Strip off your clothes for me, toss them aside. Spread your legs shoulder width apart and do 10 toe touches.”

Caleb did as he was told, stripping and then doing the toe touches. It was really rather strange to do exercise like that naked, especially in the mirror. Almost a little humiliating. But far from something to fuss over. He kept an eye on Frankie as he went, alert for any new orders.

Frankie watched him, enjoying the way his body moved and the way his muscles tensed and relaxed. It was almost intoxicating. “Very good, darling,” she hummed, grabbing her bag and walking over towards him. She pulled the blindfold out of the bag and wrapped it around his eyes. “Stay here, do not move,” she ordered, placing a set of nipple clamps a little ways away from him, then a plug a few feet in the other direction, and finally even a few feet further, a collar and leash. Once she was all set up, she went back to Caleb, placing her hands on his shoulders so he’d know where she was. “Alright, there are three items along the floor. Get on your hands and knees and crawl to find them. If you get too far off course, I’ll use the crop to guide you.”

Caleb dropped his head down to make it easier for Frankie to reach to put the blindfold on him, but otherwise stayed entirely still. He listened to her moving around, of course, and wonder what she was setting on the floor, but he was sure he’d find out in due course. And despite the fact that he wasn’t nervous or worried at all, he found himself relaxing when she touched him. He could hear her, of course, but it was nice to also feel that she was still there. He nodded and dropped to the floor. An interesting task, at least. He felt around himself cautiously, and then tried to aim for the direction of one of the objects he’d heard Frankie place. He went slow, and didn’t find anything, and after a minute he wondered if he had passed it.

Frankie watched as Caleb moved to the floor, keeping just a step or so behind him as he started his crawling. When he was going slightly off course, she gave a tap to his left thigh to direct him towards the right. He seemed to get it, moving his body and crawling towards the right until he came across the nipple clamps. “Good boy,” she hummed, “Sit up on your knees now,” she ordered. Once he complied, she played slightly with his nipples so they were erect enough to squeeze the clamps around his nubs. “There we go. Now back to your knees and find the next one.”

The hit from the crop was just a small tap, light enough that it wasn’t even painful. He hadn’t expected that. Wasn’t the purpose of a crop to inflict pain? But he supposed the tap worked just as well, because he changed his course, and quickly found something on the floor, which upon investigation turned out to be nipple clamps. He sat back on his heels, kneeling properly for Frankie as she played with his nipples, which felt very nice, and attached the clamps, which were immediately painful and aching. He grimaced at the pain, but it wasn’t bad, certainly something he could handle wearing for some time. “Thank you, Miss,” he murmured when she was done, because he’d been taught that it was polite to thank a Dominant whenever they gave you something. He got back down on all fours, but then realized he had lost track of where the other objects were. He turned and started back the way he’d come, hoping that was the right direction.

“Good boy,” she hummed as he got back on all fours, making his way along the floor again. He was certainly in the right direction, though, slight to the right of where he needed to end up. “A little faster, Darling,” she prodded, another tap to give him better direction towards the plug that was a few feet away from him.

Caleb sped up, but that made the nipple clamps swing as he crawled, making them ache more sharply. He bit his lip to keep from making noise. He found the plug in short order, though, and knelt up again to offer it to Miss Frankie. It didn’t seem huge, just from feeling it, so he wasn’t worried about her putting it in him.

“Good boy,” she hummed as Caleb assumed the position and Frankie used a decent amount of lube to get the toy worked into him. She took her time, making sure she was careful along with pleasurable until Caleb’s body accepted the toy. “Beautiful,” she hummed, rubbing over his cheeks before giving a firm slap. “Alright there is one more item to find.”

Caleb held still as Miss Frankie worked the toy into him, but he couldn’t stop himself from groaning softly. By the time she was done, his cock was fully hard and he wanted more, so badly. It occurred to him to wonder if Miss Frankie would ever be interested in pegging him. But now wasn’t the time to ask. “Thank you, Miss,” he murmured when she was done. The single spank made him want to push his bottom up into the air and beg for more, but he told himself to focus. He had a task to get on with. So he ignored his desires and the way crawling made the nipple clamps sway and the plug shift inside him, and he started to look for the third toy. By this point he had no idea where it could be, so he was feeling around both literally and figuratively blind.

She enjoyed the groans coming from him, and was hoping to get more as the early morning grew on. “You are welcome, darling boy,” she answered as she watched the new way he was moving along the floor. When he clearly seemed lost, Frankie began tapping his sides to get him on the right track towards the last object. Each tap became a little harder as he got closer, small pink marks appearing on his skin. Once he reached it, she picked up the collar and secured it around his neck. “Well that is a beautiful look on you,” she moaned quietly, taking the end of the leash in her hand. “Come, darling boy,” she ordered, pulling him along until she was back in front of the mirror. “Kneel,” she ordered and took the blind fold off. She stood next to him, leash in one hand, the other placed in the back of his head. “Well now, she said, looking him over through the reflection, “that is a very good look on you.”

The taps from the crop were finally getting hard enough to actually hurt and occasionally make Caleb flinch. He loved the way that the sharp sting would blossom into a sort of heat and sometimes throb as he kept moving. He wanted more, honestly. But he knelt up again when he found the collar, another thing he was happy to have put on him. He loved having a collar on during a scene. It made him feel important. He didn’t realize there was a leash attached until Miss Frankie tugged on it, but he followed her willingly and knelt where she told him. He blinked at the light as the blindfold came off, and then found himself staring at himself in the mirror. He could see little pink marks in places from the crop, and he smiled softly, meeting Frankie’s eyes in the mirror. “Thank you, Miss. It feels really nice to get to have all these toys on me, and the crop marks, too.”

She smiled back at him in the mirror, enjoying the look of her body standing next to a beatuiful kneeling boy, a sleek collar around his neck, hardening cock and pink marks against his skin. She let herself enjoy it for a bit, scratching the pads of her fingers against the back of his head. “I am glad you like them, dear. They look great on you as well, darling,” she sighed delightfully befoe turning towards him. She reached up her skirt to pull her panties down to the floor, then hiked the skirt up as she walked towards the mirror, leaning back against it. “Come here,” she said, beckoning him with a finger, “I want to feel your mouth on me.”

Caleb smiled up at her, then just closed his eyes for a moment and enjoyed the feeling of Miss Frankie’s nails on his scalp. He looked up again when she moved, in time to see her rid herself of her panties, and he smiled again. That was a sign of more fun to come. Caleb crawled after her, enjoying the feeling of the clamps still tugging on his nipples and the plug moving in him as he crawled, then knelt right in front of her. He looked up at her and sent her a sweet smile before leaning in to kiss her inner thigh. He trailed soft kisses up towards her pussy, then nuzzled it for a second before licking slow stripes over the outer lips. He took his time and delved deeper, licking between her folds, relishing the opportunity to taste her. It felt like such a privilege to use his mouth on her.

Her moans were immediate as Caleb settled between her legs, his hot breath pushing against her arousal. She leaned her head back against the mirror as she spread her legs a little farther apart. “Mmm just like that darling. Make me nice and wet.”

Caleb hummed softly in response and pushed his tongue firmly between her folds. It was a matter of moments to find her clit by feel, and then he focused solely on that for a while. He dragged his tongue over it in slow motions, flicked the tip of his tongue against it, swirled his tongue around it in circles, closed his lips over it and sucked. He was getting Miss Frankie’s wetness all around his cheeks and chin and nose, but he didn’t care. He just loved listening to her reactions which told him he was doing well and being a good, attentive sub.

She reveled in the feeling of Caleb’s mouth working her body, rutting against his face as her back rolled against the mirror. She moaned louder as the arousal grew hotter, her excitement dripping against his face. When she felt she was turned on enough, she pulled Caleb away by his hair and looked down at him, “That is a good boy,” she hummed, guiding him up to his feet. She turned around, placing her hands on the bar and pushing her ass back towards him. “Now, use that hard cock in me, darling boy.”

Caleb looked up at her when she pulled him away, surprised, because he had hoped he’d be allowed to give her an orgasm just with his mouth. But she wanted his cock, which he would never, ever be sad about. He grinned at her, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he stood and positioned himself behind her. He put his hands on her hips, just gently holding her, and slid his cock slowly into her wetness. He groaned as it went in easily. She felt amazing. It was still new enough to him that being allowed to do this felt like some incredible privilege. He looked up to watch her face in the mirror as he started to rock his hips in and out.

She hissed softly as his length worked its way between her walls, moaning after he completely entered inside her. Her fingers gripped against the bar as Caleb pushed into her and Frankie pushed back against him. “Good boy,” she moaned loudly, her eyes meeting his in the reflection, “fuck me nice and hard.”

“Yes, Miss,” he gasped as he pushed in harder. The motion made the nipple clamps move, sending a spike of pain along his nerves, causing him to clench down on the plug in his ass and jerk his hips even harder into Miss Frankie. When he’d been allowed to fuck her in the past, it had been incredible, but now with these added sensations Caleb felt like he was floating on endorphins and couldn’t get enough. He gripped Frankie’s hips harder as he found a rhythm. “Oh, oh god, Miss,” he moaned.

Frankie could feel the leather strap start to smack against her, so she grabbed it, tugging slightly in order to keep him closer to her. “OH god yes!” she cried out as Caleb found his rhythm, banging her body against the rail and the mirror over and over, her breath steaming the mirror in front of her.

Caleb loved the way Miss Frankie tugged on his leash. It made it feel like she owned him, like he couldn’t move without her permission. “Oh, oh please, Miss, I’m getting so close,” he moaned as he rammed into her. He squeezed on the plug every time he pushed his cock in, and the pair of sensations was intoxicating. “Please, please, may I come, Miss?”

Feeling him pulse and twitch inside her brought harder erotic feelings to her core. She kept the leash pulled in rhythm as he continued to fuck the blonde hard against the surface she was pushed against. Her own orgasm was too close when she heard his words, the mere idea pushing her over the edge. “Yes! Yes, cum for me!” She screamed as her body let go, shaking and writhing as she came so hard, she leaned further against the bar to stay upright.

Caleb groaned in relief when he was given permission to stop holding back. He thrust into her, pushing her against the mirror, and watching as she orgasmed. It only took him another two thrusts before he climaxed as well, whimpering with the intensity of it. It left him panting as it faded. “Thank you, thank you, Miss…” He pulled out gingerly, his cock already starting to soften.

If felt like ages before her body finally calmed, being spurred on by Caleb’s own thrusts and orgasm deep inside her used core. She panted and moaned against the mirror again until Caleb was able to slip out himself. With a moan she turned, leaning against the mirror again with a content smile. She pulled the leash again, slowly to bring him closer to press their bodies together. “Always such a good boy for me,” she hummed softly against his chest. “Alright, shall we make our way back? Get ready for the day and all.”

Caleb smiled back at Miss Frankie as she pulled him close by the leash. He found himself really liking the leash by now, how it gave Miss Frankie such an easy way to control him, and the way it tugged on the collar. He leaned against her and wrapped his arms around her waist as they rested together for a moment. “It’s easy to be good for you, Miss,” he said honestly. But then he pulled back and nodded, though he bit his lip when he looked down at himself. “May I take the clamps off, please, Miss?” He didn’t mind the plug at all, and he’d be willing to walk back to her dorm naked if she asked, but he was hoping the clamps would come off at least. They hurt worse the longer he wore them.

She looked down with a content sigh as Caleb asked about the clamps. “Yes you may,” she said, only slightly sadly because it was such a nice look for him. “You will feel what resembles pressure for a moment,” she warned as she slowly unclamped one at a time. “Have you considered a nipple piercing? I think it would be a lovely look on you.”

Caleb was anticipating the pain when the clamps were removed and blood started to circulate again, but he grimaced anyway. “Thank you, Miss,” he murmured gratefully. He went to gather his clothes, but didn’t put them on. “I, um… I haven’t given it much serious thought, Miss. I’m not sure how they’d feel… And I wouldn’t want to do something like that before I claim, probably, because I wouldn’t want to have a piercing that my Dominant didn’t like.”

She hummed quietly at his reaction, enjoying the pain on his face quite a bit. Frankie was resituating herself as Caleb answered, nodding at his answer, “That is a very smart answer, darling. I would agree that a future claim would be something to consider in any permanent body modifications. Go a head and get your clothes back on. It is still chilly out this early in the morning.”

#frankie #gleedsmeaster

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friendshipcampaign · 6 years

Text

Session Recap 5/20/18

As the party traveled through the tunnels, Kriv seemed to be making an okay recovery -- still incredibly weakened by the Morkoth’s attacks, but no longer suffering the effects of the cold quite so much. Erwyn, however, was a different story. The elf was still suffering the effects of hypothermia, shivering violently and only sluggishly responsive. Kriv had to wrap an arm around him tightly just to keep him from pitching forwards as they rode on top of Volfred.

This was clear to everyone, prompting Amaranth to ask Erwyn how he was doing. He gave a very weak response, so she directed her inquiry to Kriv, sho suggested maybe stopping for a bit to see if Amaranth (who, as a tiefling and someone who had not been in the water, had a much higher body temperature) would be able to warm the elf up a little.

Amaranth switched places with Kriv, hopping up on top of Volfred, and gently asked Erwyn if he would be alright with removing his cloak (which was still soaking wet). After a very long pause, he reluctantly agreed, and she took off her own coat to wrap him up in as they traveled. She also pulled out the hat that Aidther had given her to place on his head, and Kriv handed over the winter blanket to wrap around both of them. With Erwyn hopefully able to start warming up, the party started moving once again.

Voski asked Kriv how he and Erwyn had navigated through the underwater tunnels, hoping perhaps it would lend a clue about how to get close to the heart. He explained that they’d really just stumbled through it and gotten sort of lucky. Ditto suggested that to get to the heart they might want to try focusing on it while tunneling. But the time being, they just continued going forward.

Out of the corner of her eye, Voski spotted the shadowy figure of something roundish, with two visible appendages, keeping pace with the party. She tapped Amaranth on the shoulder, to warn her subtly, but the rogue’s reaction was less than subtle. As soon as the rogue responded this way, Voski got a message in her head in the unmistakable voice of the Ring of Mindshielding, asking “Would you like to receive a message from,” followed by a series of odd clicking noises.

Voski accepted the message, and in her head started to hear more clicking noises. Slowly, they morphed into Common, and she heard them say “Hello, have I gotten this right?” She replied that she could understand the creature, who then asked “Who art thou, and thy companions?”

When Voski explained that they had been sent by Auntie Eyren, the creature telepathically replied “She keeps this place. The false god was not overthrown.” Cautiously, Voski told the creature -- which had revealed itself a little more, showing the two visible appendages to be little antennae -- that she’d been under the impression that the Caftner were all dead. Sadly, the creature explained they were fairly certain that they actually were dead themself, and Voski’s comment made them want to know the fate of the island and their people.

The bard then told the creature, who introduced themself as Zikt, they should talk to Ditto. They messaged here, and got excited for a bit when she mentioned seeing other Caftner -- only to deflate when it was explained that they were in what appeared to be a graveyard. Zikt inquired about the Morkoth, then, and Ditto replied she was “pretty sure it was killed at least once.”

She turned to Kriv and Erwyn to ask them exactly what had happened with the Morkoth, and Kriv gave an explanation of what it had done to them and how they fought and, at the very least, exploded it. Erwyn added that he was fairly certain the awful creature was still around.

Ditto then told Zikt they should speak to Kriv (noting that Erwyn was also an option, but still looked far too exhausted), since he had actually fought the thing. Zikt told him that they were “grateful for [his] valiance” -- to which Krive said “I guess you could call it that.” They discussed the fact that the Morkoth might have to be fought again, and Kriv pointed out that if that happened, it would probably go for him and Erwyn first. Zikt was not comforted.

Zikt told the party about a dark power that had awakened all of them, including the Morkoth, likely, and explained they could still feel its force and might be able to lead the party to it. Voski started making bug noises to get their attention (they has still been talking to Kriv, he was just relaying the information), and asked her what kind of creature was behind this force, and Zikt told her that it might not even be one -- it just felt like a strong energy.

Meanwhile, Ditto started writing in the Tome of Mynskay about undead and what could cause them. It replied that this didn’t look like the work of a necromancer, since no one was controlling them all, but that they could also sometimes appear in areas that had seen horrific battles or cataclysms, or also places where there was a breach leading to the Negative Energy Plane.

She shared this information with everyone else and Erwyn admitted that, largely due to the events they’d been seeing on the Material Plane, he’d actually had some suspicions about the latter idea. Ditto asked him if it could at least be a small breach, but he said he didn’t think so.

Voski asked Zikt if they knew how the Morkoth had died, and they explained that they as a former rebellion leader, had been killed by it before it was destroyed. They did know, however, that the Caftner had used their mental abilities to overwhelm its capability to shape the plane.

The party began to follow Zikt, who intended to lead them to the mysterious dark power. Though they occasionally suggested making their own tunnels, the ones they began passing through seemed like they were older, and more sophisticated, and perhaps hadn’t shifted along with the rest of the island in quite a long time. There was now water around their feet, that deepened as they traveled. Ditto hopped in Voski’s backpack. Deciding that stealth might be their friend now, Voski used the glamour on her armor to shift it from forest-like greens to dark black, with a bit of grey, making it somewhat mimic the kind they had seen on the wraiths in the Material Plane.

Eventually they reached a point where Zikt informed Ditto that the dark force was in the chamber just ahead. They offered to scout a bit for the party, saying “the false god’s lair is just beyond” -- a room where an island rose up from shallow water in the very center, where the dark force seemed to be located.

Some of the party made moves that seemed to imply they were ready to head into the chamber, until Erwyn broke down completely, tearfully saying that he couldn’t risk facing the Morkoth again that same day. Voski pointed out that getting in there quickly, while it was maybe still recovering from what he and Kriv had done to it, might be the best way to keep it from coming back, but Erwyn continued to cry and sadly stated that “Nothing’s ever that simple.”

The others discussed their options and decided to head backwards a little to carve out a chamber where Voski could make them all a shelter by casting Leomund’s Tiny Hut. They retreated, using the morphic property of the plane to create a zig-zag tunnel that would hopefully deter intruders, making a room at the very end. Voski seemed excited about giving it nice, high ceilings, but when Amaranth asked if she would make a chandelier to go along with them, the bard shut the idea down. The room ultimately ended up having an odd mis-match of tastefully patterned walls (Voski’s work) and excited, erratic swirls (from Ditto helping).

Zikt offered to guard the entrance while they rested, and headed towards the entrance of their tunnel. The party started to settle down, Kriv helping Erwyn off of Volfred and Ditto casting Major Image to give them, for a little while, a warm but smokeless fire. Since the flames didn’t have any more heat to them that the nice warmth radiating from it, she kept sticking her hand in it.

Kriv took off his still-wet hoodie to dry and leaned against Volfred, causing Amaranth to physically drag Erwyn over to join them. She made sure the blanket, and her arms, were draped across Kriv, herself, and Erwyn, then offered both boys some rum from her flask, saying it would really warm them up. They declined, and when Kriv told her that alcohol doesn’t actually warm you at all, she brushed it off.

Once everyone was secured in a small enough radius, Voski put up the Hut, giving them all a little light for the first time since they’d rested previously. Voski took the opportunity to add some tasteful navy and silver highlights to her armor, while Kriv finally took off the blindfold he’d been using to see, wringing it out and hoping to let it dry.

With everyone settled in, Voski started strumming her lute, to sooth everyone as they rested. Kriv fell asleep fairly quickly, still weak and tired from the Morkoth encounter. Erwyn, though just as drained, seemed to be having trouble trying to trance though. Every time it seemed like he might be drifting off, he would begin crying again, huddling further and further into Amaranth’s side. None of the others slept, since it was really only hours after they’d awoken.

The Hut disappeared after eight hours, signaling that it was probably time to move on again. Kriv cast Aid on Amaranth, Ditto, and Erwyn again in preparation for their expedition. Both the boys, when asked how they were doing, seemed unenthusiastic. Kriv shrugged, putting his hoodie and blindfold back on. Erwyn was silent. Amaranth encouraged them by saying “We’ve faced hard things together, and we’ll face this together too” -- prompting Erwyn to quietly say that he was actually worried about them being together. When Ditto asked why, he explained how the Morkoth had tried to manipulate him and Kriv against each other. He was afraid of something similar happening again.

Ditto wrote in the Tome again before they set off, asking it if the disturbance in the demiplane was a breach to the Negative Energy Plane, what would be the way to close it. The book told her that was more planar knowledge than necromancy, and that was out of its wheelhouse. She then asked Erwyn what he knew about this sort of thing, remembering he was the party member with the greatest knowledge of portals. He admitted to not knowing much about how to close them, only that if allowed to grow, minor breaches could turn into full-fledged portals. They couldn’t know how large this particular one was. He also listed off some ways people might attempt to shut such a thing, but with no guarantee they might be successful -- consolidating things that might worsen it, or banding a group of powerful magic users together to seal it off after a while.

What he didn’t mention to the others was that these were all things he knew had been tried in Lyrium.

Kriv suggested that once they were closer to the room with the portal, Erwyn might want to try using his portal-sensing ability to try to figure out how large a breach -- or portal -- they might be dealing with. He agreed. Ditto then asked if he thought he might be able to close it using the morphic properties of the demiplane, but Erwyn replied (again speaking of his knowledge of Lyrium) that they only time he knew of it being accomplished, it had been with the power of some powerful mages -- and that he might actually have know who some of those people were, and they were incredibly powerful.

They headed back towards the chamber with the powerful force in it, Erwyn lagging behind a little with exhaustion, but once they reached the entry and Kriv shrugged at him, the elf attempted to reach out and examine the presence in the next room.

It was a sensation more like what he’d felt in the glowing farm fields outside Dayshowe, and clearly not a fully-fledged portal, but it was still stronger than the sensation at the halflings’ farm, and much less stable. And instead of that warm presence, this one was disturbing and empty, filling him with nothingness and the sensation of the blackest black imaginable. He staggered backwards, distressed by the feeling, and was only prevented from falling to the floor by Kriv, who caught him in his arms.

After this ominous display, Voski tried contacting Auntie Eyren again to ask what exactly they should try. The reply was incredibly distorted, barely even audible, but the had told her that there would be a vein of pearly rock in the center, and if it was broken they would need to collect the pieces. No more useful information was gleaned.

Water spread across the floor of the chamber they entered but massive pillars shaped after tentacles rose from its surface to the vaulted ceiling. This was clearly also the Morkoth’s lair. Kriv suggested that to get across the water, they could shape a bridge with their minds, carrying them from the entrance to the center on stone from the floor. He asked Zikt to go off by themself for a little bit so that he could look over the area with his Divine Sense (since the ghostly Caftner would register as undead). Kriv discovered that the whole area registered as incredibly unholy, with undead somewhere below and in front of them. He turned to the others and announced “This place is desecrated as shit!”

Ditto nervously cast Mage Armor on herself as Voski began to create an elegantly arched bridge in front of them, guardrails included. The wizard and paladin began to assist her, and soon they were all traveling along it. Erwyn suggested that to keep anything dangerous from following them, they could also remove the back as they went, making it more of a moving platform than a bridge as they walked along it. He also telepathically contacted Zikt, telling them they could return.

They were just able to spot the island in the middle when everything around them went black, in a way that darkvision couldn’t pierce. Only Kriv, with his blinsense scarf, was able to see anything at all. Amaranth blindly searched for someone, accidentally putting her hand over Ditto’s face until the gnome instead moved it to the top of her head. Kriv activated his Divine Sense again and sensed the same undead below them -- and the Morkoth above, smirking at him.

He warned the others and Amaranth instantly drew her weapons. Voski tried to bring supports down from the ceiling to connect with the bridge and stabilize them, but felt a suppression of her control as they slammed back up into the ceiling. Shortly after that, Amaranth and Ditto were knocked prone as the bridge began to fall apart, guardrails completely gone. Voski tried to cast her Dancing Lights into the darkness, but it was too strong and they disappeared.

Ditto sent a Message to Kriv, saying she couldn’t see where to aim, but if Kriv would point her hand in the direction of the Morkoth, she could fire at it. As soon as she said “This is gonna make it real mad,” he protested “I don’t want to start a fight yet” and succeeded in getting her to hold off. Amaranth started searching for Erwyn, resting a hand on his shoulder when she found him.

Voski was still struggling to move and repair their bridge and Ditto joined her in working on it. They felt significant resistance, and their progress became twisting and slower, but they pushed forward. Kriv noted the Morkoth floating lower, to around their level, and tried to use his Divine Sense once more -- revealing that the undead below them were only about 5 feet away, following, but waiting. He hesitated, then cast Turn the Unholy at all of them. There were shrieking noises and splashes in that brief moment of like, causing even the Morkoth to spin away -- and unfortunately scaring off Zikt, too.

Amaranth felt Erwyn disappear from her grip as the remaining undead all ganged up on him, a hand closing around his ankle and yanking him into the water. When she shouted his name, Voski stopped moving forward and Kriv dashed to the back of the platform. Both he and Amaranth failed to grab their friend, and she dove in after him, prompting Kriv to yell “You can’t fucking see, you shit!”

Ditto asked Kriv to toss her too, and he begrudgingly obliged. But once she was in the water, she realized that she was out of the reach of the magical darkness -- she could see! She started moving towards Erwyn and Amaranth.

Amaranth attempted to hit the skeleton dragging Erwyn under and shattered it with her swords -- though its hand remained around his ankle. Somewhat panicked, he clung to Amaranth’s shoulder.

Now alone with Kriv, Voski started to move the platform downwards and towards the water. This also brought them out of the magical darkness, which meant everyone was once again able to see. It also meant that she spotted Amaranth, who she waved to and inspired by saying “Thought you died,” but sounded legitimately pleased to see. Kriv tossed a rope down and cast Shield of Faith on Erwyn, sending a feeling running through him not unlike whenever the paladin pressed his scale relic into the elf’s hands.

Amaranth and Erwyn felt more things trying to grab them from below, prompting the rogue to try to drag him over to the rope now dangling up off the side. They reached it, and she tried to help him up, but Erwyn was still too weak and exhausted to climb it and simply hung onto the bottom. Voski tried pulling him up, but with no success, and even Kriv was only able to get him about halfway. While waiting, Amaranth felt another skeleton trying to drag her down and promptly kicked it off, only to dive under the water immediately and shatter it with her blades.

Erwyn was struggling to hold on and nearly fell back into the water, getting rope burn on his fingers as he clambered to cling to it. Seeing this, Voski shaped the wall a bit to give it some hand or footholds, and Erwyn was able to rest a boot on one of them, taking some of the stress off his arms. Before too long, Kriv was able to get him back on the platform. Amaranth also made use of the footholds, shooting up the wall and back on top. Seeing her friends were safe, Ditto flew back up to join them.

Still collapsed on the ground when another skeleton that had gotten on top of the platform began to head towards him, Erwyn pulled himself up just enough to fire two arrows at it, destroying it instantly. The others all teamed up to push the bridge as close to the island as they could before Kriv’s turning of the undead ran out, but while Erwyn at least pulled himself upright, he quietly did not assist -- he hadn’t tried any terrain-shaping yet, on account of feeling like he probably wouldn’t be able to. Curved walls around the island became visible, as well as glimmering inside and a rough rock formation with a pearly vein inside of it.

When they reached it, Kriv used his Divine Sense again, only for the desecration to be almost overpowering, the source of it located directly below them. Ditto rushed over to examine the vein of pearl while Amaranth spent a side-eyed glance on the treasure around them. Erwyn, once over with Ditto, was able to confirm that the pearly vein was not the source of the nothingness he’d felt earlier. It had to be something else. Kriv and Ditto tried shaping the ground near the vein, punching a hole through the rock on the sides and causing a horrible wail as a specter appeared from underneath it, flying straight at Ditto. She was instantly, horrifically dazed as it drained a massive amount of her life energy, leaving her feeling incredibly weak. Amaranth and Erwyn were able to destroy it (though the latter first called out to ask if it was some kind of guardian, only to hear a horrific screech in reply), but the damage had already been done.

Voski peered down into the hole, noting that there was water only about five feet below that seemed to fill a large chamber. Kriv was able to make it grow a bit more, so that there was enough room for someone to head in.

Ditto was swaying and had to sit down, offering only a weak response when Amaranth asked if she was okay. The tiefling gestured to Kriv, indicating he should help their friend, then charged into the open hole.

In the water below, Amaranth felt a coldness that extended far beyond actual chill. Looking up, she could see she was on the underside of the vein of pearl, and could now see a large crack in it, which was shifting and almost hard to look at and had a point of blackness at its apex. As soon as she laid eyes on it, it drained some of ther life from her, causing her to shout out “Uh, yeah guys, I think I found it. It bit me!”

Erwyn followed her down only to experience the exact same sensations. He was able to tell that the broken part of the pearly vein was trying to form its own demiplane, with microportals similar to the ones they’d seen in Soreth swirling in and out of existence. The breach was the only one large enough to now have a permanent effect.

Above, Voski glanced around for something to cover one of her hands, finding a decorative gauntlet with opals set into the knuckles. She looked at Kriv, resigned, then jumped down into the hole as well. He followed her.

Soon after, there was a crackle from below, and a swirling pattern appeared. Kriv and Erwyn recognized it immediately, looking on with horror. Quickly, everyone in the water but Kriv was hypnotized, starting to swim downwards. They at least had the mind left to put in their water-breathing lozenges, but they had tentacles wrapped around them in no time. Their owner looked up at Kriv.

“Hello again,” the Morkoth said. “I don’t suppose you’ve reconsidered.”

#session recap

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itsnipkii · 4 years

Text

Hacking isn’t about finding vulnerabilities in software. That’s what the movies get wrong. Hacking is about finding vulnerabilities in people.

Why bother letting your computer run for weeks or months just to break through one of, like, a million firewalls when you can simply call the unaware receptionist and basically ask for the password to the system. Or you can email one of the IT guys and phish him. Better yet, find out one of their secrets and blackmail them.

Computers are good. They do exactly what they're told to do, exactly how they’re told to do it. Humans, on the other hand, they’re much more corruptible. Oh, John from IT is cheating on his wife? Well there’s your leverage. You can let him choose to destroy his marriage before you move on to the next person, or he can take the much easier route and allow you to have access.

People are dumb in that way, always choosing the easier path. Very rarely will you ever have someone that goes against the grain.

I popped another pill in my mouth, realizing I was beginning to come down from my high. That wouldn’t do. I had to be high, I had to be. I can’t work if I’m not.

My fingers flew over the keyboard as I typed. This was important to me.

I was focused entirely on the task at hand as the pills kicked in, writing lines of code as quickly as possible, trying to finish it before I got locked out. I knew I only had minutes left before I would be noticed, and I had to get in. There was no room for failure here.

Only the light from my monitor illuminated the room as I typed, my head bobbing to the music I was listening to, helping distract me from my tinnitus.

I looked at my watch. Shit, only two minutes left. I was almost done, I was so close. I could do this.

Finally, I finished my program and hit the save button. I stopped the timer on my watch, thirty seconds were remaining.

I leaned back in my chair and let out a sigh of relief. I did it.

I downloaded the file, zipped it and sent it off. A few minutes later I received my reward, an email with the subject “Good job.”

I opened it, and read the email.

“Congratulations, Orion! You have beat the record for the Slater Hackathon by thirty seconds! You will be receiving $150 in your paypal shortly. Thanks for playing!”

I smiled. I just beat my own record for some shitty local hackathon three times in a row. Not that I had to try too hard, but it was fun.

I stretched, and got out of my chair, looking for some food to eat.

I opened my fridge. “Hmm, let’s see. Leftover pizza, leftover chinese food, and more leftover pizza. Wow.” I mumbled to myself. Damn, I really needed to go shopping soon.

Then, my door opened and someone entered the apartment, scaring me. I jumped before realizing it was just Mikey, my friend.

“Hey dude, what’s up?” She said, flicking on a light switch.

“I see you’ve changed your style.” I said, noticing her bright yellow sundress and similarly bright shoes. “You know it’s like, midnight right? Why are you in a dress?”

She flicked her hair behind her shoulder before striking a pose. “It’s never too late to look good. You should try dresses sometime. It would be a nice change compared to your 2006 scene girl thing you’ve got going on right now.”

I looked down at my clothes, a faded My Chemical Romance shirt I had gotten from a concert and a pair of ripped black skinny jeans.

“What? I like it.”

“I’m just saying, maybe if you wore a dress and actually acted like a girl, some guys would pay attention.”

“Shut up.” I laughed. “When’s the last time you went on a date? You look like a second grader who was finally allowed to dress herself.”

She flopped down on my couch, and I looked over at my monitors, realizing they were still turned on. I tried to walk as quickly as I could over to my computer without being suspicious, before turning all three of them off. I didn’t want to have the whole “Oh, yeah I’m kind of an illegal cyber criminal.” talk with her just yet. That could wait.

I stepped over to the couch, lifting her legs up so I could properly sit down, before laying them back across my lap.

“So, what’s the plan for tonight. Are you staying here overnight again, or what?” I asked, putting on Netflix for some background noise.

“Oh, I dunno. Depends what we’re watching.”

I handed her the controller, figuring it would be easier that way. Whenever I chose something she would just argue about it, and I couldn’t be hassled right now. I was way too high for that. Speaking of which. I thought to myself as I tried to discreetly open my bottle of pills.

Clearly I wasn’t discreet enough as I had the bottle snatched out of my hand.

“Cynthia! Come on, dude! I thought you said you were going to stop. Is this even morphine?” She said, pouting.

“I was going to! And then I didn’t. Also, yeah it’s... probably morphine. If you’re going to lecture me, can I at least be high for it? Pass me a pill? Pretty please?” I asked, batting my lashes at her in the most over the top way I could.

“You’re a dork, you know that?” She said, before tossing the bottle back towards me.

I caught it, and immediately threw another pill in my mouth. “I love you too.”

“Shut up.” Was all she said, before playing the second Shrek movie.

We both fell asleep that night about halfway through the movie, and I woke up a few hours later. Mikey was still asleep, so I slipped out from under her legs and walked over to the kitchen, grabbing myself a few cold slices of pizza. Say what you want, but cold pizza is better than hot pizza and you can’t change my mind.

I sat down in front of my computer and turned my monitors on, figuring I wasn’t likely to get back to sleep anytime soon, so I may as well be productive with it. And by productive I mean basically just hack peoples social media accounts for fun.

Who to hack though? Mikey let out a loud snore, and that was all I needed. Snooping on Mikey sounded like fun anyways. Besides, she was my friend, I wouldn’t do anything bad to her.

I already knew her email so that part wasn’t hard. Getting her password would be even easier. I opened the program I had just finished coding for the contest, a brute force password cracker, and set it to work.

I was partial to brute force attacks. They were so simple yet so effective. They simply tried every word in the dictionary, plus a few things that the victim was known to like, such as family members, pets and such.

I leaned back in my chair and watched as the program did it’s job, getting me into her profile in just a few short minutes.

I took a look around, sifting through messages, most of which were just to her boring work friends. I found a couple conversations with guys, and more than a few classy nudes she had sent to them. Boring.

I kept digging through her messages, looking for anything remotely interesting when I stumbled across a thread with some guy named Chevy.

The message that had caught my eye was him saying “Good. Send them to my bitcoin wallet. Once I get everything, nothing will happen to you.” before he sent his wallet address.

Scrolling through the conversation, it seemed that he was blackmailing her for something she had done, but it wasn’t clear what. I wanted to find out what else this guy had been doing to people.

I logged out of Mikey’s profile, and began to work on getting into this ‘Chevy’ guys account.

I traced the IP that his messages had been sent from, and narrowed it down to a house in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, only a few hours away from my city.

I phoned the 24/7 social media support line and asked for an email reset for the account, but was caught off guard when they asked for the answers to a couple security questions. I used my best ‘sad, dumb girl’ voice, and said that I had forgotten my security questions.

“Please, isn’t there anything you can do for me? I can give you my address if that helps at all. Please sir?” I made sure to add a bit of a pout to my voice, hoping that I could win him over that way.

“Technically ma’am, I’m not allowed to do that, but I’ll make an exception for you. How does that sound?”

I gave him my best excited squeal, hoping I didn’t wake Mikey up. “Yes, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, thank you soooo much! You’re like, my hero!” I hated how well I could do this voice. I sounded like a college girl that had just gotten drunk for the first time.

I gave him the email I wanted to change it to, before hanging up and requesting a password reset on the account from the website.

The reset link was emailed to my account, and I changed it to “FuckYouPussy69”. I knew that he wouldn’t ever know what the password had been changed to, but it felt good to say that anyways.

I logged in with no problems, and started to look around. It was fairly blank, with no personal information or photos of any kind. His messages however were filled with various people that he had been blackmailing.

There was one girl where he threatened to expose the fact that she had been sleeping with family members and break her legs if she didn’t pay him $1500 in bitcoin.

Another one was a guy where Chevy said he was going to kill family members of the guy and frame him for it if $2000 dollars wasn’t sent within three days.

Hey, you found the secret message! Make sure to let me know :)

It made me sick to my stomach to see this. Did I threaten people? Yes, but it was always the people at the top of evil corporations that deserved to pay. The people who profited off of death and suffering. I would never physically threaten them either, instead just threatening to expose infidelity or embarrassing personal secrets.

I decided right then that this guy had to be taken down.

I heard Mikey groan behind me, and turned around to see her awake and stretching. “Hey dude, what’s up? Didn’t sleep?”

“Who the fuck is Chevy?”

Her eyes widened for a split second before she caught herself and continued stretching. “I have no clue what you are talking about. I do not know anyone named Chevy.”

“Dude, you’re the worst liar. You never use contractions when you lie. Now, who’s Chevy?”

She stopped stretching and looked down at her feet. In a quiet voice, she whispered “No one. He’s no one. Don’t worry about it.”

I got out of my chair and sat down beside her on the couch. I placed one hand on her leg and said in my most calming and soothing voice “Come on. You don’t have to worry, I can help fix this. Who’s Chevy?”

She hesitated for a moment before saying in a small voice “I made a mistake a couple years ago. I was at a work party and ended up getting a little too tipsy. I slept with my boss that night, and we ended up making it an almost daily thing. This was when I was dating Jesse. So, this Chevy guy somehow managed to find out about it and learned about the fact that I had a boyfriend, so he blackmailed me. He threatened to do awful, awful things to me. He knew things about my personal life that I had never told anyone. I was scared, so I paid him.”

She began to cry and hugged me, burying her face into my shoulder. I comforted her until she had calmed down enough to start talking again.

I looked her in the eyes and said “Hey. I’m going to find this guy and kick his ass. I promise.”

“There’s no way you could beat anyone up.”

I scoffed, acting offended. “Um, I’ll have you know I took Tae Kwon Do.”

“That was 8 years ago!

“Yeah, but I still know how to make a fist and that’s really all you need.”

She laughed lightly, and I was glad she was starting to feel better.

After a long, comforting hug, I began to do research. I googled for anyone named Chevy within a hundred mile radius and no one popped up. I looked through obituaries, wondering if he might have died somehow. I mean, his last message had been sent a year and a half ago. But, nothing.

So that led me to believe it was a fake name. Combining that with the fact that he managed to get personal information on Mikey that she hadn’t told anyone made me think he might be another hacker of some kind. So, I reached out to some… unsavoury contacts of mine, asking if they had ever heard of anyone going by the pseudonym Chevy.

Everyone began telling me they hadn’t heard of anyone, and I started to lose hope. Until, just before I was about to give up one of them messaged me saying that they had managed to find him on a forum, linking me to his account.

Clicking on the link led me to his page, and I actually laughed out loud. Wow, for a dude that knew so much about the internet and cybersecurity, he wasn’t concerned about his privacy at all!

It didn’t take me long to find out that his name was Rylan Palahickey, and that he was 23. He apparently had an extensive history in penetration testing, which is essentially when businesses hire you with the express purpose of trying to hack them so that you can point out security flaws.

I guess he had been using his talents for blackmail as well.

I sat back for a second, thinking about what I should do to this kid. Looking through his posting history, apparently he kept all of his bitcoins on a USB drive. I figured that losing all of his hard earned money, and maybe a computer or two along the way should teach him a lesson.

I grabbed my laptop and drove Mikey home, before starting the long drive out to Rylan’s house.

After being stuck behind the slowest driver in the world for 5 hours, I finally pulled up to his driveway. Like come on, it’s 6:30 AM, surely you have somewhere to be, right?

I parked my car off the side of the road where it would be hidden by some bushes so that no one could see it from the house.

I was shocked at how high security everything was at his house. I had been expecting some sort of a run down cabin, but instead I was greeted with a beautiful and massive home. There was a massive wall surrounding the property, with some sort of an electronic gate guarding the entrance. That must be why he wasn’t too concerned with privacy online, it would be a hell of a time for anyone to try and get in. Anyone who wasn’t me of course.

I sat down and pulled out my laptop, using my phone's hotspot for an internet connection. It wasn’t the fastest, but it would get the job done.

I turned on my laptop and began looking for very specific radio waves using a program I had specifically designed for this purpose. Well, not quite this purpose, I made it in case I ever got locked out of my apartment's garage and I needed to hack my way in, but it would work just fine for this as well.

After a couple minutes of looking, I found the frequency I was looking for, and managed to intercept it. Now that I could control what information the gate was receiving, I sent it a very simple command, telling it to open up.

With my path inside now cleared, I shut my laptop and snuck my way in, trying to avoid line of sight from any windows. I rounded a corner leading towards the garage, when I spotted a security camera on the house, forcing me to quickly duck behind the wall surrounding the house.

I sat down and pulled out my laptop once more. I began scanning nearby wifi networks, hoping that this guy was cocky enough to be using wifi based cameras. I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized he actually was.

It was a simple enough job to set up a DDoS attack, taking the wifi for the cameras offline so that I could move around without fear of anyone watching me.

I walked to the garage door, and did my previous trick of intercepting the garage door receivers traffic and forcing the doors to open.

And just like that, I had access to his house.

I took off my shoes, leaving me in just my socks, so that I wouldn’t make any noise as I snuck around.

I entered, and was surprised at how nice it was inside. I mean, it was a nice house from the outside, but the inside was beautiful. It was clear this guy was rich. He had beautiful decorations lying around everywhere, with an insane TV setup in the living room.

I figured if he was going to keep money lying around anywhere, it would likely be in the room where his computer setup was.

I looked around the entire bottom floor, not seeing it anywhere. So I slowly made my way up the stairs, praying to god none of them would squeak. Luck was on my side that day as I managed to stay completely silent.

I looked around upstairs, and didn’t see anything. I was confused, thinking I had somehow gotten the wrong house, until I noticed a door I had missed before.

Slowly, I opened it and had to put my hand over my mouth so I didn’t scream. It led straight into his bedroom, and I could see him snoring in his bed, with a ridiculously high tech computer setup on the other end of the room.

I backed out of the room, closing the door silently behind me while I thought of a plan to get into his room and take his USB drive without him seeing me.

I racked my brain for a couple minutes, before an idea came to me. If his security cameras were wifi based, how much do you want to bet the rest of his security systems were too?

I sat in his massive bathroom while I began to work so that if he walked out of his bedroom he wouldn’t see me sitting down right in front of his door.

With my laptop open, I began to scan wifi networks again. There weren’t any that jumped out to me as sounding like the name for a security system, so I ruled out the one’s that definitely weren’t and began to systematically hack the rest.

I worked top to bottom, hacking into each wifi, and none of them really did anything until I got near the bottom. I was just about to start the process when I heard his bedroom door open, and footsteps start to come down the hall.

I froze. No. There’s no fucking way. I panicked, looking around me for a place to hide. The bathtub behind me!

I hopped inside, and pulled the shower curtain forwards just a little bit so that it hid my body. I was so glad it was opaque, and not one of those half clear ones where you could just see the outline of the person inside. Those ones were creepy.

I heard him enter the bathroom and walk over to the toilet before beginning to pee. It was the most uncomfortable two minutes of my life. Listening to a stranger pee while he groaned every few seconds. Like, come on guy. Peeing can’t feel that good.

A minute of awkwardness and pure adrenaline later, he walked out of the bathroom and went back into his bedroom.

I put my plan into motion. I hacked the last wifi network, and was relieved to see that his security system was also wifi based.

I set off an alarm in the far corner of his backyard. Suddenly, throughout the house I could hear a robotic voice saying “ALERT! INTRUDER IN THE BACKYARD! ALERT! INTRUDER IN THE BACKYARD!”

Rylan scrambled out of his room and began to run down the stairs, cursing the whole time.

This was my chance.

I climbed out of the bathtub, and silently stalked my way towards his bedroom.

I opened the door and made my way to his setup, looking for his bitcoin drive. It wasn’t on top of the desk, so I started opening drawers, the sound of which was masked by the alarm system still screaming “ALERT!”

I opened one of the drawers on the bottom of his desk, and had to hold myself back from giggling when I saw the USB drive, courteously labeled “BITCOIN”. God, this guy really was an idiot huh?

I pocketed the drive and was ready to leave, when I saw his insanely high end computer sitting on the desk.

I thought to myself Hmm… I guess he can’t threaten people if he doesn’t have a computer to threaten them with. I’m sure he doesn’t need a motherboard. I’ll just take that off of him.

I should have just left. As soon as I began to unscrew the panel on the side of his computer, the alarm shut off and I could hear him walking up the stairs, cursing out the “Stupid, shitty alarm system.”

I had no time to think, I dove under his bed and pulled my legs underneath in the nick of time, just as he walked through his bedroom door and jumped on the bed.

He received a call, and started talking to one of his friends. He declined an offer to hang out later that day, saying he was sick and was just going to lie in bed all day.

Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit.

No, he can’t do that! I’m trapped!

Okay, what can I do to get out of this? I thought to myself, my brain going a million miles a minute, trying to come up with some sort of a plan.

I tried to do the alarm thing again, but my laptop died as soon as I was about to push the button to start.

I frantically texted Mikey my location, telling her my situation and that I desperately needed her help.

She simply responded “KK. B there soon :)”

All I could do now was wait, and pray to god he didn’t find me. I wasn’t sure if he did kill anyone, but I wasn’t about to find out today.

Two hours of pure fear later, the doorbell rang, and Rylan got out of bed, grumbling something about “Stupid fucking kids.”

He answered the door and I could hear the voice of Mikey, acting like a lost roadtripper. “Heyyyyy, I’m on my way to Kansas state university and I’m lost. Can you give me directionsssss?” God, she sounded like every girl I hated in college. It was perfect.

I squirmed out from under the bed, and looked for a way to escape from the top floor, finding nothing. I mean, there was a balcony but that was a two story drop.

My only chance was to sneak down the stairs behind Rylan as he was distracted with Mikey.

I slowly walked down the stairs, hearing Rylan say “How did you even get in here?”

“Oh, your gate was just like, open so I just came innnnn.” She really was too good at that voice.

I turned the corner, and flashed Mikey a thumbs up and a smile as I walked towards the back door.

“Hey, listen, I don’t know who the hell you are, but you have to go.” He said, getting ready to close the door on her.

No, I wasn’t out the back yet.

“Oh my god, I reaaaally need these directions though. Is there anything I can do to get you to help me?” She said, giving him her most flirtatious giggle at the end of the sentence.

Come on, Mikey. You can do it girl, just keep him distracted for a few more seconds, I thought as I reached for the doorknob.

I exited the house, and gave Mikey another thumbs up, silently telling her that she could stop talking to this creep.

“Oh, never mind. I have the directions right here on my phone! Oh my god, I’m like, such a blonde! Sorry, mister! Byyyyyeee.” And then she promptly spun around and started to walk back to her car.

I walked around the house, and managed to escape the property safely without getting caught.

I walked to my car to see Mikey standing there. We both giggled and hugged each other.

“Dude, you fucking saved me!”

“Yeah, well. I do what I can. I didn’t expect you to actually go to this guys house though.”

“Hey, I’m not letting somebody blackmail my best friend. Besides,” I said, pulling out the USB drive. “We’re rich now. If I did the math correctly, there’s a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of bitcoin on here.”

She squealed and hugged me again.

“Come on, let’s go celebrate!”

I was about to step into my car when I realized “Oh, shit! I left my shoes in his house.”

Mikey laughed and said “Who cares? You can buy new ones now!”

I laughed with her, before popping another pill in my mouth and getting ready to enjoy the good life for a little while.

Look, I’m not saying that everything I did throughout this story was strictly legal, but I did it for what I believe to be a good cause.

I may threaten people, but only the ones who deserve it. The bankers, the businessmen, the CEO’s. Never am I ever going to extort some random person online.

Was what I did legal? Absolutely not.

Was what I did right? Yeah. Yeah I think it is.

And honestly, that’s all the matters.

#short story #writing #my writing #story

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michellelewis7162 · 4 years

Text

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When getting LED flood lights must be actually the basic features as well as residential properties that would certainly specify the performance of the product, the primary facets to take into factor. LED technology has been actually utilized for a variety of lighting products, consisting of air travel and vehicle illumination as well as, lately, flood lightings, which are mainly made use of outsides or even for illuminating big spots including arenas.

The main reason why a LED flooding lightweight supplier will take into consideration making use of innovation is, firstly, because it delivers far better perks when reviewed to incandescent illuminations or various other types of typical light sources.

LEDs (light-emitting diodes) are actually semiconductor source of lights as well as they are actually based upon electroluminescence. This is actually an incredibly crucial information to think about when it comes to opting for a sort of floodlighting for your very own demands. When you match up LED ones to the majority of the other kinds of light emitters, you are going to discover that they consume significantly less power, last much longer, are even more trustworthy as well as are actually also a lot smaller than other forms of illumination Shenzhen.

All these advantages should be taken into account as well as they surely seem to be to prefer opting for an LED Lights Manufacturer. There is actually still a whole lot more to keep an eye out for. As recognized, providers are constantly battling to produce a much larger variety of more economical products regularly, in order that their incomes might increase. The refined competition between manufacturers can in some cases possess a damaging effect on the quality of the items. As a result, in an ever-increasing market particular niche like flood lightweight manufacturing, it is actually of utmost value to maintain your own self updated on the different possibilities you may possess when it pertains to buying products online.

There are actually, certainly, lots of superb products online, developed by brilliant and enterprising LED light producers that (if they have not performed it but) is going to probably obtain quite much with their company. Still, along with all the brand new methods of making use of innovation and also lowering prices, you might would like to watch out for several of them if you do not desire to find yourself obtaining a flooding light item that could not last long Shenzhen.

An excellent place to begin seeking info on numerous producers as well as items is the evaluation part of a variety of internet shops that sell these items. There certainly, folks who acquire a certain LED illuminations product typically upload their viewpoint on it and also price it to assist future purchasers discover the best options available. If you discover a light that would certainly appear to satisfy your requirements, read up as long as you can easily on it before you purchase it: technological data, reviews, posts, and just about anything else you can find.

A Few Things About LED Lights

Lighting innovation has come a very long way over the last couple of years, along with LED illumination blazing a trail on power effective, long-lasting illumination. The reasons are actually numerous to shift to LED lights due to the fact that it can easily be used for anything coming from garden lights to interior lighting. As the demand has actually expanded, the type factor of LED lightings has modified to appear even more like the sunlight bulbs that we are currently acquainted along with. Because of this, you must seriously consider substituting your more mature, much less effective light bulbs with more effective, resilient LED bulbs. This is an incredibly easy procedure if you are actually simply changing the bulbs out on your own. If you require to change fixtures, meanwhile, it may pay to have a professional electrician come offer you a palm Shenzhen.

LED Light Benefits

Given that of their long life-span and incredibly low power utilization, led lightings are coming to be very well-known. When compared to various other lighting fixtures technologies, this advantage is extremely quickly evident. An incandescent bulb, for example, will deliver light for all around 1,000 hours, a neon light bulb will offer light for around 8,000 as well as an LED bulb will definitely supply sunlight for around 30,000 hours. This is an incredible increase over these much older light innovations. As a further advantage, LEDs are mercury cost-free, unlike their small fluorescent versions.

LEDs additionally lead the cram in regards to electricity efficiency. This results not just in less electricity usage, yet likewise in reduced warm generation. Due to this, LED lights are actually trendy to the touch, creating them safer in a lot of scenarios. Typically the different forms of lightweight bulbs contrast in the observing way. A 40-watt incandescent light bulb can easily get rid of as brilliant as an 8-12 watt CFL or even a 4-5 watt LED light bulb. You end up utilizing only regarding 10% of the energy that you were making use of previously when you switch over to LED. This can suggest a big difference in your power bills, specifically taking into consideration the truth that lighting may compose regarding 25% of the average home's energy budget Shenzhen.

Choosing LED Bulbs

When selecting an LED, there are actually a variety of factors to take in to point to consider. If you possess a reasonably huge illumination task, you need to look at functioning directly with a local area electrical expert. Nonetheless, if you simply require to replace a couple of light bulbs around your property, this is one thing that you can perform in a rather quick period of time. A Lot Of LED Lights Manufacturer clearly measure their lightweight bulbs along with both the true power level rating and also a comparison to the incandescent light bulbs that many of our team grew up along with. This implies that the LED packing will certainly state that the 3W LED that you are actually taking into consideration is equivalent to the light outcome of a 45-watt incandescent. Lots of package deals likewise include a lumen score. You can then utilize this lumen score to match up the total outcome with light bulbs that you are actually a lot more accustomed to. Be sure that you compare the LED along with a similarly made CFL or incandescent light bulb, LED light bulbs are now accessible in a lot of the very same designs as well as type variables that you are familiar with and also will work in a similar way Guangdong.

Just How To Select One Of The Best LED Flood Light Manufacturer

LED Lights were initial discovered in the mid 1960's as well as at that phase were actually extremely pricey, therefore not all could possibly manage to get all of them. After a handful of years from its creation, these lightings were rather cost effective by most portion of the populace, but by this time there were actually more recent technical technologies in relations to LED Lights with additional components that were offered out there. LED Flood lightings are one such type of LED lighting which provides greater productivity as well as efficiency in relations to use Guangdong.

In today day, there is actually a large market for LED Lights, yet discovering the greatest suitable LED Flood Light Manufacturer for pleasing the needs and also criteria of your residence as well as office could be a difficult activity. Discovering the best reliable and depended on one among numerous producers, can certainly be a tough activity, yet could be achieved merely through observing a couple of actions:

Net has actually been used as being one of the highly relied on channel to get relevant information on a large number of subjects. Therefore with help from a handful of internet search engine, try to research study about discovering a couple of LED Flood Light Manufacturers in your region and explore their formal sites if, any type of. Authorities sites give a ton of details concerning the company/manufacturer, their products, fees, plans, terms and conditions for investment and so on. Attempt to locate a handful of on the internet product assessments of a picked few LED Flood Light makers, to receive a much better understanding concerning the top quality of their items. There are several internet portals that can easily assist you with discovering 518000.

Browse Newspapers, or even Yellow Pages Listings of LED Flood Light Manufacturers. In the event that you are actually considering to give majority purchases, make certain to give it to a maker who has resided in business enough time to provide you full professionalism and trust and also remarkable quality in an economical price Guangdong.

Eventually, the greatest as well as the most depended on source to finding the most effective LED Flood Light Manufacturer is to individually obtain the customer reviews of a few people that have actually made use of the services of one. If you explore a higher profile page office complicated along with LED Lightings that excite you, promptly try to acquire the customer review as well as endorsement coming from the anxious authorities. Getting very first palm opinion concerning a product from a source who has been actually using its own services will be actually the most ideal assurance for finding truly high quality.

Choosing The Right LED Lights Manufacturer Is Your Best Bet!

Along with every person transforming their emphasis to the new illumination service - LED illuminations, focus has likewise been given the LED Lights Manufacturer. There are many reasons LED lights has been actually favored and many people are actually producing the change to use it. This form of lights is actually ecological as it possesses reduced greenhouse emissions, it also performs not have damaging material like mercury and also releases less warmth while lighting. Incorporate these to the truth that it uses up quite little electricity for lights matched up to the standard type of lighting fixtures consequently conserving atop the electric power expenses, and then you recognize why many individuals are actually joining the train 518000.

To profit from these several financial conveniences, it is crucial that you locate the appropriate LED supplier that will serve for your lighting needs to have. The field like lots of others has actually been penetrated by fakes and also bogus items, which along with their allure of low-cost costs can possess you miscalculating of obtaining all of them only to have all of them underperform as well as not supply on the vowed efficiency. There are many aspects that need to have to be considered when deciding on the most ideal such lights producer. The primary thing looked at would certainly be the price of the light bulbs. This will definitely depend on your illumination demands and the light specs you desire. You ought to certainly not opt for economical possibilities yet try to acquire a good deal that gives you your moneys worth China.

The solution offered by the LED Lights Manufacturer is also a crystal clear indicator of whether you should pick them this is actually specifically important for those who get in bulk to sell or other commercial functions. This consists of exactly how long is their ordering and also delivery method, shipment if you acquiring all of them from abroad and various other investment techniques. Opt for a quicker service that levels at all phases allowing your point of view and problems. A great manufacturer is going to likewise direct in you in creating the right choice to fit your requirements. They may also advice you depending upon your location whether you stand to take advantage of any kind of government incentives aimed to urge individuals to make the shift 518000.

The various other necessary point to check is actually the quality of the lamps. Whereas each maker will package his/her products as the most ideal out there, you may examine whether they satisfy all the specification as well as requirements in the market. You can easily additionally examine the amount of lumens per watt to find out how much illumination you will definitely acquire for every watt of energy. With the appropriate producer, you will definitely obtain the best out of LED illumination bulbs!

A New Procurement Approach of the LED Light Suppliers

The Procurement is a necessary service task of an association, despite it is a maker, trader, dealer, or even retailer. This is actually additionally correct in the LED light field. An association typically acquires its own needed components, materials and also solutions coming from its suppliers to support its own regular business tasks. It counts intensely on its procurement.

Back to several many years back, the method to obtain basic materials and also companies for a firm was considered a concern. Its own relevance was certainly not noticed by the managing crew. At least, they considered it lesser than various other tasks within the business. The procurement was actually considered a low-level activity, and was actually generally approved to the non-managerial staff to process as well as carry out. Therefore, the investing in orders were commonly generated in worthless departments, with handful of tracking task on them.

The present day procurement is actually quite different from the outdated technique, specifically in the modern industries, like the LED pipe field. In the outdated way, the target of investing in was to locate the provider who could provide the required resource at the most affordable cost. This out-of-date company philosophy on the purchase changed substantially in the final two decades, particularly in the LED bulb industry. For an LED Lights Manufacturer, the procurement is no more a simple business task to get the desired source. The buying is actually to start with taken into consideration an essential aspect of the source establishment monitoring, the present day concentration of which is actually to stress the relationships between suppliers as well as buyers. From the perspective of an LED cylinder maker, the purchase is actually a significant service activity at a key level. The appeal of the condition purchase is a significant symbol in the advancement of the obtaining. The tactical role is separated coming from the outdated tip of the getting, despite the fact that in the daily company folks use these 2 phrases mutually China.

For an LED bulb manufacturer, the boosting importance of the purchase results from some variables. The basic of these elements was actually constructed slowly based on the awareness. One is the significant dollar volume of the procurement of an LED sunny supplier; the various other is the potential buck financial savings contributed through a service task at the key degree to manage the obtaining task. The reality is that the obtained services and materials have turned into one of the bulks of the expense for an LED pipe supplier. Take the LED illumination industry. The bought products and also companies cover about 55% of the purchases quantity. By contrast, the straight effort expense in the production of the LED cylinder only accounts for 10% of the purchases quantity. On the study of these amounts, it is actually obvious that the calculated administration of the purchase is really notable to the results of the agency, as it can add possible financial savings.

For the past two decades, the concept of the outsourcing has actually controlled many sectors, especially for an LED light bulb provider. The outsourcing is actually the emphasis on the cost of the acquired goods as well as companies. An intriguing result of the outsourcing is actually that nowadays firms spend additional cash on the procurement, as well as the amount improved substantially. Essentially for an LED Lights Manufacturer, the objective of the procurement at a critical level is actually to search possible financial savings. It appears inconsistent that the expense on outsourcing is raising. Because that an LED pipe maker acquires certainly not simply the fresh products and also simple services for manufacturing, this is actually. In the LED light bulb business, the firms spend massive volume on the purchase of the incredibly high value-added content. They introduced the teaming up idea along with the providers, to center information on their core proficiencies China.

Presently, the practice of the outsourcing already brought the purchase activity from a sole duty to a collaborating amount. An LED light bulb manufacturer settles even more interest on the supply bottom management. This control deals with the activities on reliable teamwork along with the providers. An LED lightweight distributor utilizes the first-tier distributors to accomplish sub-assemblies, as well as relies on the logistic provider to accomplish on-time shipping of the ended up elements for the upcoming amount setting up line. These activities used to be processed as well as completed by the supplier on its own. Currently it ends up being the essential components of the reliable as well as successful purchase method, to build and also coordinate the relationships in the supply base.

Shine have many different kinds of lighting fixtures accessible with LED Panel Lights for offices as well as also LED down lights and cylinder lights to replace fluorescent illumination. They possess recently investigation as well as established their very own LED high bay lights for the industrial business and they additionally possess exclusive LED tube lightings for fridge freezer treatments. As the requirement has expanded, the form aspect of LED lightings has altered to look more like the sunlight bulbs that we are actually currently familiar with. An incandescent light bulb, for example, will certainly give sunlight for all around 1,000 hours, a neon light bulb will give light for around 8,000 and also an LED bulb will certainly provide sunlight for around 30,000 hrs. LED Flood illuminations are one such form of LED light which delivers better efficiency and also efficiency in conditions of use Guangdong.

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tammiehuxley2-blog · 7 years

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abby winters intimate moments - How To Gain Abby Winters Download

When I was a freshman years ago, I met Him. He had an strong Type-A personality back then, so I could only tolerate him in small amounts. I was webcamming over AIM with my girlfriend at the time, when my message "you’re so fucking hot/take your pants off and turn around for me" was directed to his address instead of hers.

That’s because I sexted him by accident. We’d met in his residence hall (arts floor) through our mutual friend. From that point on, there was an understood trust between us. He replied to me "you need to warm me up a little more, sexy" minutes later, after I realized what I had done.

For whatever reason, we were able to find a common ground. Over the course of a year or more, we’d gotten to know each other pretty well. I was flattered, but I was also excited. It was a leap of faith for him, since he hadn’t told anyone on campus. At that time I was still in denial of my bisexuality, so his admission stirred something deep in me. I apologized profusely in response, and he just laughed it off.

I started jerking off to the thought of him when I showered. It was clear from his looks abby winters abbie winters limo at me that he was interested. I told him I wanted to see him naked. Later that year, our bonds were forged. Not a abby winters clips minute later, I get abby winters porn winters girl an email with "nsfw. I wanted nothing more at that moment than to kneel in front of him with his firm dick in my mouth.

In the summer about another year later, we were gchatting when I finally had the nerve to make a pass at him. I learned about his family, his hobbies, and eventually, his sexuality. He was standing in the shower with water dripping off his erect cock.

"You should fly up here so we can play. He transferred out of state a few months later, before anything else was said. Still, I couldn’t decide what I was more bothered about: the mistake that I made, or the fact that his reply turned my cock rock hard. I immediately stripped, set my camera up on a tripod, and posed on my bed, stiff cock in hand.

I purchased it, quickly, and forwarded him my itinerary. There was a flight in three weeks I could afford. " My body was so tense I had no choice but to close my laptop and jerk off right onto my chest. He sent me another message once he received my photo. Three weeks later… I arrived in his city, waiting for a lift at the airport.

As cliche as it sounds, I found it very sexy. He picked me up in his dad’s BMW. It had plenty of bedrooms, a home theatre, and a tiled jacuzzi right outside. The air was electric and I found it difficult to breathe. His parents’ house was particularly nice. Everyone in his family was out of town for the week. I told him I forgot to pack a bathing suit (on purpose).

After a quick dinner out and unpacking in my room, it was already nightfall. I told him we could just go in naked, in a shaky voice. He asked me if I’d like to take a dip in the jacuzzi. He said "fair enough," and we went upstairs to get ready.

He said I could borrow a pair from him. I stripped down in my room and put on a towel, though I had to calm myself down for a few minutes on account of the tent I was pitching. We chitchatted on the way to his parents’ house, awkwardly. The only source of light was the kitchen window, so it was fairly dark and well-secluded. I looked at my calendar, and then my bank account.

When I got downstairs, he had just finished setting up the jacuzzi. He went first, removing his towel and sliding into the jacuzzi water smoothly. I followed him next, taking just a bit longer to see if I could get him to look. We both put our beers down and walked around to the steps. When I got home that night, my boxer briefs were moist from the damp spot my precum had made.

It was too dark for me to know. He must have been paying attention, because it was the perfect temperature. I took a couple of big gulps right away. The beer made me feel even more willing. He was wrapped in a towel too, and handed me a beer as I approached.

I’m not usually a fan of jacuzzis; they’re too hot, and told him just as much. I could feel my muscles relaxing under the weight of the water, and I could feel my dick floating freely. Most of the time we kept our distance, but sometimes we would drift toward one another. In between sips of beer we bobbed up and down, shooting the shit and laughing.

I was so loose and relaxed from everything that my heartbeat startled me, once I realized he was stepping out of the jacuzzi to sit on the edge and dip his feet in. The water felt amazing. I must have looked ridiculous staring at him. We are both fairly short people, so the water came up just past our nipples.

I stole a glance, but immediately turned away and made my way up the steps as well. We’d get close, but one of us would float back a bit, and the chase would repeat. He was dripping as he came to the edge of the jacuzzi. I think he was pointing out gemini, which I didn’t recognize. We’d run out of things to talk about, and it became increasingly obvious what was about to happen.

He scooted next to me, so that our legs were touching, and pointed up. He pointed up at the sky, calling out various constellations. " He lowered his arm, turned my head, pulled me in with his hands and put abby winters clips his wet, soft lips against mine. There was a foot of space between us, and he took the lead.

It was my first kiss with a guy, and it was electrifying. Breathlessly, I asked, "So what do you want to do? Our beers were empty and we were still treading back and forth. In a moment, we were both completely naked, in the open air, on the edge. It was heavenly, exploring his body and tasting his mouth.

In a flash, I was compelled, driven, to break our kiss. He took the hint and found my cock as well. I was surprised by how large he felt in my mouth, considering he was average sized. It did not take long for me to find his stiff cock, touching it lightly before wrapping my fingers around it. He felt warm and smooth as I slowly drew my lips from as far as I could take him in.

His head was so slippery, and it was fun to flick my tongue against it. Our hands searched one another’s body as I could now feel my tongue swirling with his. Without a moment to spare I jumped down into the water, swam up between his legs, and took his wet, hard cock into my mouth.

I felt myself become instantly rock hard as I came to my senses and kissed right back. Just as I was getting into it he guided my head off his dick, and told me that we should go inside. He was starting to get a bit nervous, too. His parents’ bedroom had a nice marble shower with plenty of room for two.

I quickly rinsed off while the reality of the situation was coming into focus. I grabbed my towel, not bothering to wrap it around me, and followed him dripping through the house to the bathroom. We hopped in, and he turned on the water for us. We turned the water off, stepped out, and dried in silence. I leaned over, my face hovering near his, feeling his heat, and followed his finger up.

" I continued to dry my hair, now comfortable with our nudity, as he followed me into my room. He had his arms crossed, looking at me. This got me excited too as I stood up and approached him, locking lips and letting my hand drift down to his cock. " He grinned back at me and I could see his dick visibly engorge with blood and get hard, no hands required.

I sat down, pressing my legs together, making him say the words. Confidently this time, I grinned and asked "so what do you want to do? "Spread your legs," and I quickly complied. There was no need to close the door. He dropped down to his knees in front of me, pulled my cock toward him, and gently licked my cock from base to tip. Pretty soon we were gently jacking each other off while we made out, until he told me to sit back down.

I tossed my towel on the floor and sat in a leather chair next to the bed. And then he put my cock in his mouth. My question was simple: "my room? I could feel him moan with delight as he wet my dick with his tongue, slowly sucking back to the head before going down further.

He gave me instructions this time, so that I could suck him better, and I was pleased with the results. After a few minutes I wanted him in my mouth again, so we switched spots. I gave him some pointers as well, and I was taken my surprise when he managed to deepthroat me for just a second. This time I got to spend more time worshiping his cock, lubing it up with spit and jacking it off when my mouth got tired.

I put my hands on his head, feeling his short boyish haircut prickle my fingers. I wanted him to cum instead. We switched one more time so he could try his hand (and mouth) at it again. He jumped up off the floor and laid on the bed, legs spread eagle.

I crawled toward him from the end of the bed and took ahold of his stiff cock with my hand and lowered my mouth onto him. This time, I asked him to lay on the bed. This same boy was eagerly sucking my cock. He wanted it fast, and I was happy to provide. I jerked his cock vigorously with my hand, letting my spit drip down to lubricate further. As I bobbed up and down on his cock, feeling his hardness slide back forth against my tongue, I started to feel a little dizzy, but he was loving every second.

As tired as I was getting, I knew he was getting close, so I kept sucking, kept jerking, as strongly as I could. He looked down at me, pleasure painted on his face, as he put his hands on my head to guide my rhythm. I could feel his hips begin to shift, and his legs stiffen slightly.

I didn’t want that yet. He must have jerked off earlier that day, because he only had two ropes for me to swallow. It was clear to me that if I let him continue to suck my dick, he get me to cum right there in the chair.

I licked the tip of his head and could taste a salty-sweetness. I pulled him out and licked the tip to get any remaining drops of cum. He moaned as I could feel his whole groin shiver. His cock quivered as he exploded with cum in my mouth. Before I could say anything he was sitting up, telling me to lay down now. I swallowed his cum with his cock still in my mouth.

Sucking his cock had been so arousing for me that I stayed hard the entire time. From the way he squeezed my dick and licked the head, I could tell he was milking me for precum. It was much saltier than his precum, but I enjoyed it.

His cock turned to stone, and for a brief moment, I enjoyed the feeling of my lips slide up the length of his immeasurably hard shaft. But, I didn’t have much time to think before he had his mouth on my cock again, paying extra attention to the head.

I felt my balls retract further against my shaft as he once again took my cock into his mouth. I was relieved he was still interested in blowing, after just cumming. But it was all too exciting, and I started to feel myself tense up. He pulled me out briefly and gently sucked one of my balls into his mouth, rolling it around with his tongue. I’d never felt that before it was so intense.

I breather heavier, harder, as the orgasm slowly built up in my prostate. I tried to hold out for a while, I really did. He followed the same technique that I had used on him, jerking me off while bobbing up and down on my cock shaft. I whimpered as I shot rope after rope of cum into his mouth.

The image of him desperately blowing me will always be burned in my memory. I forced my head down to look at him, because I did not want to miss this moment. Once I was no longer cross-eyed, I focused on him again, pulling my dick out of his mouth and kissing it. I could see him struggle to keep it all in while he slowed down and jerked me off the rest of the way into his mouth.

I hadn’t jerked off that day. Panting, I told him I was going to cum. He had drained everything from me, and all I could do was hold my head and breathe. " "Okay, goodnight," I responded. I arched my back and shift my hips in as he sucked harder on me. "I think I’m gonna go to bed. My cock stiffened and swelled as I held it in as long as I could, until he forced a moan out of me and I exploded.

I wish hadn’t been less awkward, but in that moment I could not focus. He left me in the room sprawled naked on the bed, staring up while I felt oxytocin flood my body. I smiled and let my head fall onto the bed, looking up at the ceiling, looking at stars once more.

He smiled down at me, and I smiled back. I turned off the light before I passed out.

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officialydonefanfiction · 7 years

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Split Across the Continents Chapter 10

“My name is Sophie Hayes. I am ten years old and my birthday is on the 23rd May. I attended Chestomere Prep School for two years before I was expelled for persistent disobedience. My parents are Tony and Ziva Hayes. My father is a professor of film and my mother is a languages teacher.” Sophie recited to Sam as she settled on the small twin bed. The room was the only brightly lit one in the house, painted a sunny yellow and sporting a faded picture of a ballerina. It looked like it had once been a child’s room but that nobody had stayed in it for quite some time. The large window opened to show a picture of the back yard with an ancient old swing still hanging from a dilapidated old tree. “What accent are you using?” Sam asked her. “My normal British one.” Sophie replied. “Why?” “Because it’s hard to keep an accent going for a long period of time especially if you’re stressed.” Sam smiled at Sophie’s response. “No, you misunderstood. Why do you have an accent that is different to your parents?” He pressed again.

“Because, before we moved to Washington DC, we all lived in Britain together. Because I was so young, I picked up the accent but my parents didn’t. My father was doing some research into some classical movies that were done by British film makers." Sophie added as an afterthought. “I also speak Hebrew, which I actually do, because my mother is Israeli.” She continued as she saw Tony and Ziva open the door into her room. Remembering the awkwardness from earlier she turned away from them. She wasn't usually so uncomfortable with new people but these guys set her on edge. “I am sorry about earlier. You look the exact picture of somebody who I used to know.” Sophie could hear the Israeli undertones to her voice that she had spent the past few months listening to. “It’s okay. Have you read the mission briefing yet?” Sophie asked indicating the leaflet of information on the bed. “Yes. You are going to be infiltrating AHG through the use of the school network, yes?” Ziva asked. “Uh huh. They like using kids for the same reason that Unit J does. Nobody suspects us. I know that I start school in two weeks time and I will be attending James Pike Middle School aka JPMS which shares a campus with James Pike High School, or JPHS, which has already been identified as the hotbed of drug activity. According to Sara King’s testimony, she was offered the chance to make money through the mentoring program they have there. Since Sara won’t be at JPMS anymore, I have been paired with her old mentor: Kendra Ottomere. She has been suspended for drug possession once in her Sophomore year but hasn’t since. Why do you call your Year 11 students sophomores? It’s such a stupid name.” Sophie muttered. “I will be going into Grade 6 which is apparently the prime age for picking up couriers.” She added as she watched Ziva staring at her. It really was unnerving how much she was staring at her. Sophie felt like she was staring right into her soul and resisted the urge to shift away from them. “Good job, Sophie. I will leave you guys to get to know each other a bit.” Sam said as he stood up, stretched, and left the room. Sophie almost called out for him to stop before mentally berating herself for doing so. She was ten years old, a fully fledged agent and didn’t need someone to hold her hand just because somebody’s stare was unnerving. That was talk of a tiny junior agent who hadn’t passed training. She had put up with far worse than a stare before no matter how unnerving this stare was. Tony was the first to break the silence that had fallen on the room by asking her a few more questions about her undercover identity. Sophie answered them as best she could before she was caught off guard. “How much of this is made up and how much of this is really you? Is your name really Sophie?” Tony suddenly asked her. Sophie was torn in her answer; on the one hand, undercover agents are supposed to keep of much of their identities secret so as to prevent confusion later on but at the same time, minor details are kept the same so as to make it more believable. “My name really is Sophie.” Sophie decided to answer the easy question first. “They try to keep details like that the same because it prevents confusion. What about you?” “My name really is Tony and but Ziva’s name really is Terminator but she doesn’t want anyone to know that.” Tony added as Sophie laughed. “My name really is Ziva no matter what Tony will try to tell you.” Ziva added smiling for the first time that Sophie had seen. Sophie decided then that Ziva wasn’t as unnerving as she seemed. “In my mission briefing, it says that you speak Hebrew?” Sophie asked Ziva addressing her directly for the first time since she introduced herself. “Yes. Do you?” Ziva asked her in Hebrew which made Sophie flash back a few months to her previous mission where she had barely spoken English at all. It was a nice reminder. Sophie remembered something Elaine had told her a few years ago about her grandfather being Israeli and wondered if she really had spoken Hebrew when she was a little girl. “Yes. I was on a mission in Israel a few months ago and I barely spoke any English at all.” Sophie replied in Hebrew. Tony just stared between the two of them obviously completely lost. “I guess that Tony doesn’t speak any Hebrew at all.” She nodded towards Tony’s confused expression. “He knows a few phrases but his understanding is next to nothing.” Ziva replied relishing in using her native language for the first time in a few years. “Can we go back to English now?” Tony interrupted their little conversation. “Kind of irritating not being able to understand a word you are saying. Anyways, I think I can smell steak cooking downstairs.” Sophie automatically sniffed at this and was fairly sure that he was right. Tony led the way downstairs to where Gibbs was cooking his famous steak on the open fire whilst an old western movie played on the TV. McGee, who had picked them up from the airport was on the phone talking quickly to someone.

“Who’s he talking to?” Sophie asked Ziva whilst Tony rolled his eyes as the Hebrew came out again. “Delilah, his fiancé to be if he ever gets round to buying a ring.” Ziva replied opting to switch back to English for Tony’s benefit. Sophie picked that moment to look at Ziva’s hands. No wedding band or ring. Tony wasn’t wearing one either and the thought of that made Sophie feel inexplicably sad for a moment. It was stupid, but just for a moment, she had thought that she might be coming into a normal family with married parents and just for a moment, she might be able to live the white picket fence dream. Once again she mentally shook herself, she had a great life at Unit J and this whole thing was pretend anyway so why should her fake parents be really married? It wouldn’t really change anything. “Are you and Tony married in real life too?” Sophie couldn’t stop herself from asking as she settled on the couch next to Ziva. “It’s a bit complicated.” Ziva said quietly as she accepted the steak that Gibbs offered her. “Are you divorced then?” She questioned again. McGee heard this and chuckled. “Feels like it sometimes, Sophie.” McGee interjected into their conversation. “No. We are a married couple for the purposes of this mission but real life is a heck of a lot more complicated than that. Are we a couple though? I would say so yes.” Ziva answered Sophie’s question. “You don’t sound sure.” Sophie commented as she tucked into her steak. It really was very good, cooked just to perfection. She looked around and saw that the other agents were frozen, listening hard in on their conversation. “We are a couple Sophie.” Tony said in such a way that Sophie realized that he had closed that topic. She chewed down a couple more bites wondering about their weird reaction to her question. Surely it was simple: you either were a couple or you were not. She looked between them again. Tony had his arm round the back of Ziva as they sat close together on the couch. She, herself, was sitting next to Ziva, squished in-between her and the edge of the couch. Gibbs was in an armchair opposite them with McGee standing up near the door still on the phone to his girlfriend. Sam had dragged a chair from the kitchen into the living room and was sitting with his laptop balanced on his knees. The conversation soon resumed to questions pertaining to the mission which Sophie allowed to wash over her head. She knew the document back to front and was exhausted. She checked her watch which told her it was almost three in the morning back home. She wondered whether anyone would mind if she had a shower and went to bed. She wasn’t normally one to ditch out on the conversation but the jet lag combined with Gibbs’s steak was enough for her to want to fall into bed.

Gibbs, noticing Sophie’s quite prominent yawn, quietly informed her of where the bathroom was and allowed her to excuse herself to go to bed. Sam stayed up for a further half an hour going over mission documents when he decided to call it a day and go to bed. McGee left soon after claiming that he needed to go and see Delilah if he stood any chance of being in a relationship the next morning. Tony, Ziva, and Gibbs were soon the only ones left awake in the otherwise silent house. “Well, she is quite something, boss.” Tony said to Gibbs. “Smart and understood my movie references so I think we will get along just fine.” “And you, Ziva?” Gibbs asked looking at Ziva’s thoughtful face. “She doesn’t exactly hold back on the questions.” Ziva responded quietly looking at the floor. “Yeah Ziva, what exactly was that all about earlier about us not being a couple in real life? I was pretty sure we had made that leap by now.” Tony asked trying to keep the indignation out of his voice. “We are but not in the way that Sophie was asking about. She wanted to know if we were married and the answer to that is no. I wasn’t going to tell a ten year old who I have just met the reason why so I picked the least complicated but honest way out.” Ziva defended herself. “I don’t think that was what she was really asking Ziva. She wanted to know if we were together which we are, aren’t we?” Tony asked her, the indigence showing on his face. “Yes we are and I told Sophie that.” Ziva reminded him, feeling pleased with herself for not yelling. “If you too are planning on staying the night then bedrooms are upstairs, I will be in the basement.” Gibbs said as he left them to it. “We should probably go to bed.” Ziva said to Tony. He nodded and they both went upstairs stepping lightly so as not to disturb the sleeping houseguests. As Tony headed into their shared room in Gibb’s house, Ziva peeped into where Sophie was sleeping. Her body was tucked in under the sheets keeping her warm in winter, but her sleeping face on the pillow was what stood out the most. She looked so peaceful with her hair splayed outwards with her eyes closed and mouth open slightly. Ziva stayed for a minute just watching. Maybe this was what her own daughter would have been like if only she could have been around to see it.

#ncis #tiva #family #fanfic #casefic

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