#this is better than getting into harvard by a long shot

[lixxieslatte]

@itsahotminuteinbetween @itsahotsecondafter

i’ve made it… I HAVE ACTUALLY MADE IT

(i’m sobbing rn what your so cute pookie T-T)

(none of the art is mine btw)

[writemekpop]

Bad Girl | Jung Jaehyun

Summary: Jung Jaehyun is the first guy you’ve ever met who isn’t attracted to you. You’re determined to seduce him. 

Genre: Enemies to lovers AU

Word Count: 1.5k

As you walked into the first play rehearsal, you felt your heart stutter. 

A painfully hot guy was standing by the cast-only coffee table. He was tall, statuesque, in a long black coat and glasses. His chest strained at the fabric of his white shirt, as if his stiff body couldn’t be contained.   

"Hey, you must be Jung Jaehyun," you said, looking up at him through your lashes. Now, you just had to wait for him to start drooling - guys couldn't resist you. 

"Afternoon," Jaehyun said. He barely glanced at you. Was he gay or something? "Thank goodness you're here, we're out of tea." 

You blinked. "Sorry…I’m your co-lead? I play Margot Warner, your character's wife?" 

He stretched out his hand to shake yours, stiffly. "Apologies - I thought you were the coffee girl." 

Damn it, even his cold stare of indifference was sexy.  

"Let’s start with the argument scene," the director said. 

You and Jaehyun took centre stage. "Does my gaze make you feel nothing?" you breathed, looking into his eyes. "My touch?" You twined your fingers in his heavenly soft hair. "My kiss?" 

Standing on your tiptoes, you squeezed a kiss to his lips. They were cool as marble. 

Jaehyun stared into your eyes. Now, overcome with desire, his character was meant to tear the buttons off your shirt and pull you close, just as the lights dimmed. 

But Jaehyun stepped away from you. "Time out!" He sighed. "I just cannot understand what my character sees in hers. Why does he suddenly give in?" 

The director nodded. "He’s right. We need some chemistry here, guys! This is… PG-13 at best.” 

Jaehyun looked at you. "Listen, you may have never seduced a man, but you are going to have to pretend. That is of course, what actors do." 

You could just strangle him. Never seduced a man?  Jaehyun thought he was so much better than you, with his stupid little theatre degree from Harvard. 

You didn’t need a fancy degree to be a good actor. Plus, you could eat Harvard boys for breakfast - and you had. You’d tasted half the football team, in fact. 

Four hours later, you still hadn’t got the scene. 

The director looked like he'd had enough. "Sort out the chemistry by tomorrow, or I’m firing one of you. Which one do you think I should fire?" 

"Him!" you said, at the same time as Jaehyun snapped, 'Her!" 

You stormed up the stairs of the auditorium to get your bag from one the seats. Chemistry problem. Bullshit. That was like saying Albert Einstein had an intelligence problem. 

"Where do you think you're going?" Jaehyun said. 

A tiny shiver ran down your spine. 

"Are you really going to give up on the scene that easily?" Jaehyun taunted. "I've seen chihuahas with longer attention spans." 

"It’s tough acting against a brick wall," you shot back. 

Jaehyun shuddered. "If I have to teach you how to act, I will. Come here."

You walked over to him. 

"Margot is trying to seduce her husband. Your acting is too unidimensional!" 

"Uni-what?" you said. 

"Obvious! You're playing it too obvious," Jaehyun said. "I can see why that would be a problem for you. The whole Barbie thing usually does the trick with men, doesn't it? With your tight dresses and your… long legs. " He glanced at your body, and quickly looked away. But you’d noticed.   

You smirked. "So you think I'm hot." 

Jaehyun scoffed. "What I'm saying is, you need to play the role with your whole body. Subtle - yet hair-raising." He grabbed your script. "I'll try Margot. Watch and learn." 

Jaehyun stepped towards you. 

On the surface, nothing had changed. But Jaehyun was a different man. His face was flushed, his breaths shaky. His eyes kept flashing to your lips, like it took everything in him not to kiss you. 

"Does my gaze make you feel nothing?" he said quietly, his black eyes searching yours. "My touch?" He twined his fingers in your hair, and you couldn't hide the sound of your breath catching.

Every inch of your skin was alive.

"My kiss?" 

Jaehyun kissed you. His lips were so much gentler than you'd expected. You knew it was just acting, but Jaehyun seemed so into you it made him nervous. His whole body trembled with desire. 

You pulled back, struggling to catch your breath. That kiss was hair-raising.  

Something told you Jaehyun wasn't that good an actor. 

Jaehyun pulled back, his face flushed, a pink cloud of lipstick rimming his mouth. He was biting his plump lips, almost as if he was fighting a smile. "Clear?" 

You smiled. "You've forgotten the end of the scene."

An unreadable expression flashed over Jaehyun’s face. 

“How did it end again?” he murmured, his eyes fixed on yours. 

Your eyes fell to Jaehyun’s lips. “Margot and Lewis find the time to… reconnect.” Your fingers found the opening of Jaehyun’s shirt. “To get to know each other again.” 

Jaehyun gulped. “I thought they hated each other.” You started unbuttoning Jaehyun’s shirt, one button at a time. He shivered under your touch. “Hate and love aren’t as different as you think,” you said. 

You abandoned Jaehyun’s shirt on the seats. His body belonged in an art gallery, a sculptor’s impression of the perfect man. Only, Jaehyun was not still and cold anymore. His chest was rising and falling, his flesh hot. 

“This doesn’t mean I’m giving in,” Jaehyun said. “I still abhor you.” 

“And I still don’t give a damn what abhor means,” you said, smirking. Jaehyun hoisted your leg up against his hip. His lips met yours now, hungrily, no script to lead the way. 

On the couch in Jaehyun's big New York apartment, you smirked down at him, stroking his chest. "How was that for seducing a man?" 

"Excellent work," Jaehyun said in mock-seriousness, trying not to look ridiculous despite still panting. "Highly commendable." 

“You know…” you said, nuzzling into his chest, “if you were so into me, why did you act like a jerk?” “I’m married,” he said.

 You felt a pang of disappointment.   

“Divorced, to be precise,” Jaehyun continued. “Eight years. She was my… my first.” He spoke into your hair now. “I didn’t know what to do with the way I felt about you. I know I’m just a fling to you, but-��� “You’re not,” you said, moving to meet his eyes. He was gnawing at his plump lip, and you smoothed your finger over it, stopping him. “The way I felt last night… let’s just say I don’t get that a lot.” Your voice dropped. “Or ever.” “Are you saying I’m the best you’ve ever had?” Jaehyun said, turning you around so he was hovering over you, wearing a smug smirk.

“You’re gonna have to work a lot harder to earn that title…” you said, fixing your fingers in his hair. 

-- 

The next day, when you returned to rehearsal, something had changed. “You- um, you first,” Jaehyun said, gesturing to the coffee pot. 

“No, really, you,” you said, rubbing the back of your neck. You had no idea how to act professionally now. Should you touch Jaehyun? Smile at him? Ignore him completely?  

You both broke out into laughter.  

When it came to that scene, however, you and Jaehyun fought the urge to rush to the end.  

"Does my gaze make you feel nothing - my touch - my kiss, blah blah blah..." you mumbled, then pulled Jaehyun towards you in a kiss that made you weak in the knees. 

A lot of the director’s throat-clearing later, Jaehyun finally prised you off him, and you stood next to each other. The spotlights were a little blurry – or was that your eyes?  

The director started a slow clap, his mouth ajar. 

"Will these two set the house on fire? I think so!" He walked towards you, lowering his voice. "But really, how did you do it? What's the secret?"

You grinned at Jaehyun. "We were just acting. That is, of course, what actors do." 

—     

MAIN MASTERLIST

Let us know what you thought in the comments or on anon! 💋

[roosterforme]

roosterforme's Bradley Bradshaw one-shots masterlist (Rooster x Reader)

roosterforme masterlist

Rooster x Reader one-shot fics:

A Nice, Big Rooster Rooster is surprised to run into you on North Island. He's not, however, surprised to find that he still wants you as much as always.

I Still Want You Bradley had been an idiot when it came to you. He still wanted you, but did you still want him?

I Like Your Voice You and Bradley recognize each other by your voices.

Benefits Bradley spends a long weekend in Mexico, enjoying the beach and your body.

I'll Take You There Bradley's best friend is moving to San Diego, and she asks him for a little help.

Why Do They Call You Rooster? When another girl asks Rooster how he got his call sign, you make sure she knows how big he is and who he's with.

Go Slow When you tell Bradley why you're nervous, he makes sure to go slow.

Couches, Floors and Beds You had reached your boiling point with your roommate, Bradley Bradshaw. 

Frustrated Rooster is kind enough to help Hangman's ex-girlfriend when she's feeling frustrated. 

Stay on Your Knees When Bradley messes up again, he’s more than willing to beg.

Hot For Teacher  You knew it was against policy. You wouldn’t bend the rules for anyone else. But when it came to Rooster Bradshaw, you threw all caution to the wind.

Red Flags, Green Flags Hangman complains about his date’s red flags, but Bradley thinks this girl sounds amazing. 

Can I Have My Shirt Back? You didn't usually invite guys home with you after a night out, but this one was always going to be an exception. 

You Deserve an Overachiever Bradley is forced to come to terms with the fact that he wants to replace your boyfriend with himself and give you proper orgasms. 

Want You Bad When Bradley realizes his girlfriend isn’t as innocent as he thought, at first he’s surprised, then he’s on board.

All I Want For Christmas Is You Bradley returns from deployment just before Christmas and immediately falls for the new bartender at the Hard Deck. 

Good Boy Bradley is more than happy to give up his dominant ways whenever you demand it from him. 

Take Two When Bradley got you pregnant, he blew his chance at a relationship with you. He loves his daughter, but he never stopped loving you too.

Champagne Lips You and Bradley both try to claim the last bottle of champagne on New Year's Eve.

I Would Never Hurt You Bradley saw the bruises and knew what was going on, but he also knew you didn't need him the way he needed you.

Hello, I Love You When Phoenix signs Bradley up for speed dating on Valentine's Day, he is skeptical. But after he meets the woman of his dreams, he's not afraid to admit his best friend was right.

Do You Wish It Was Me? When Bradley returns from deployment and finds you engaged to Harvard, he knows he needs to get you back. 

The Purrfect Storm Bradley inadvertently becomes a pet owner after he hits a stray with his Bronco. When he meets a lovely vet tech who is willing to help, both Bradley and the cat fall for her instantly.

Make It Messy, Baby Anytime Bradley has a rough day, his perfect wife is there to make it all better. Sometimes that means getting a little messy.

Daddy Would Say Yes After you manage to embarrass yourself in front of Rooster, he still makes it clear he wants you to ask him out.

Cockpit Love When you jokingly told Bradley that you would be jealous of him spending so much time with his Super Hornet, he decided it was time to let you stake your claim on him in the cockpit.

Something to Talk About Bradley knew the rumors were circulating. He knew his friends were talking. But he had known you for such a long time, and you were just friends. Because if something was going to happen between the two of you, it would have happened by now. Right?

When Tomorrow Comes Four months is a long time to go without Bradley. When you tease him a little bit the night before his deployment starts, he reminds you that he's always worth the wait.

You Want Me Anyway Bradley wasn't your boyfriend. He didn't owe you anything. But after months of hooking up, you expected more from him than what you were getting. It was time for you to move on. But Bradley has other ideas.

Earning His Rank Bradley knew you wanted to make his promotion night special for him as he got his new pin. He could tell by the teasing way you asked "What are you going to do to me when we get home, Lieutenant Commander?" He had something in mind.

Midnight Confessions It's getting harder and harder for Bradley to hide his feelings for you, especially when you offer to drive him home on his birthday. Before he knows it, he's drunk in your passenger seat, confessing everything he's kept to himself. He may not remember all of it in the morning, but you certainly do. 

How Could I Forget? When Bradley met you in a dive bar in Virginia, he just knew he wasn't going to be able to stop thinking about you. Even a year later, he still remembers your laugh and the way you kissed him.

So Fresh, So Clean At first, Bradley is mortified when the guys force him to stop at a carwash featuring bikini clad women from a college softball team. But when he meets you there, he starts to think he should thank his friends instead.

Feelings Involved After months of dancing around your feelings, you're about to leave San Diego and Bradley behind. But on your last night in California, you realize you're not the only one with your heart on the line.

Sufficiently Surprised Bradley loves dirty quickies with his wife. Between his work schedule and yours, that's often all there's time for. But when he rushes home from work on his birthday, ready and raring to go, he's in for a bit of a surprise.

Don't You Want Me, Baby It was like a fairytale, the way you stole Bradley's heart with your gorgeous face, retro denim jacket, and karaoke skills. But when you disappear into the night, leaving only one small trinket behind, he's left wondering if he didn't just dream you up.

Do You Wanna Touch Me? You had been working at the bar for six months. And you'd been crushing on Rooster since the first night he handed you his credit card, called you Babydoll, and asked you to start a tab for him. And it only got worse from there, until one night you asked him about more than just his drink order.

On My Terms Bradley didn't seem to notice how broken you were inside. When he looked at you, there was never any hesitation in his eyes. He was the first man in a long time that you wanted to trust with every part of you. If only your body and mind would start working together. If only you could get the words out.

Wrong Number Bradley was planning on a quiet night at home with a beer and a basketball game on TV. When he receives a text from a wrong number, he's left looking at a beautiful photo of you. Now he just needs to persuade you to ditch the guy you meant to text and focus on him instead.

Don't Waste Another Minute When you finally recognize that you have been hanging onto your relationship for all the wrong reasons, you end things. You knew there would be someone better for you, and it was a welcome realization to see that he had been right there in front of you the whole time. 

Stateside Bradley made a mistake last summer when he left for his deployment without ever asking you out, and then he thought about you a lot when he was gone. He was stateside again for less than a day when the other guys coerced him to help with a fundraiser at the Hard Deck. A friendly wager with the squad might not be the only thing he wins by the end of the night.

Deployment Sucks but I Swallow Bradley was used to having your undivided attention when he was about to leave for a long deployment, because you'd been spoiling him that way for years. When you spent the day with your friends and got home late instead, he wanted to be annoyed, but everything you do is just too sweet. 

Whole Lotta Love You and Bradley were just friends, and perhaps that was why you trusted him so much. It wasn't his fault that you were secretly harboring a crush a mile wide. When your noisy neighbor becomes too much and you decide you need to move, Bradley helps you brainstorm a solution. But when you set your plans into action, you're surprised to find that he seems almost jealous.

Vintage You love teasing your husband about his deep and unwavering devotion to his Bronco, but he's insistent that it would come in second place to you every time, and he intends to prove it. While you're away on deployment, he concocts a plan to get you behind the wheel of your very own vintage beauty.

Wild Rooster Chase Bradley thinks about you more than he should, and his feelings for you run deeper than they ought to. You've never given him an indication that you want to take the teasing touches and playful flirtation to the next level, so he never pressed his luck. When you surprise him by sending a text message that could change everything, he's ready to chase you all over San Diego for some answers.

California Autumn Bradley was drawn to you the minute you moved onto his street. You seemed to bump into one another everywhere, and each time he saw your smile or heard your laugh, he knew he had to ask you out. He wasn't expecting the answer you gave him, just as you weren't expecting to wish he could be the man for you.

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

Today, Israel is voting in its local elections (for mayors and city councils). ALMOST all of Israel. The original date was at the end of October 2023, for obvious reasons, the elections were postponed. There were also a lot of mayor nominees, who were summoned for reserves service due to the war, and one of the reasons why the elections were postponed more than once, was to give as many of them as possible a chance to finish their service, and participate in their own election campaign. But even so, there are still hundreds of thousands of people from evacuated communities (displaced people, internal refugees, however you wanna call them), and therefore not everyone will be voting today. For the evacuated cities and towns, the elections were postponed until November. Looking at things, it's not sure they'll be back in their homes by then either, so IDK what their elections will look like. And then of course there are the hostages. Save for two, 4 years old Ariel Bibas and his 1 years old baby brother Kfir, they all had the right to vote, and none will get to. We remember them and hurt over their absence and everything being continuously being stolen from them on this day, too. On a side note, the national supervisor of these local electional is Rayan Ghanem. And if you know Jewish last names, you know Ghanem is not one of them. I'm trying to remember a time in apartheid South Africa when a non-white was a national supervisor of elections.

Despite still pointing out that the International Court of Justice has no right to judge the case brought to it by South Africa (becaue of SA's false claims to bring this case to court), Israel has filed a report in accordance with one of the ICJ's provisional measures, showing that its actions are in compliance with all of them (like providing humanitarian aid to Gaza, and doing all it can to protect civilians).

Meanwhile, at Harvard, just 6 weeks after she was appointed to lead the task force meant to combat Jew hatred, the university's antisemitism tsar has quit her position, with reports saying that she's frustrated over her inability to implement practical measures.

Remember when I wrote about Idan Amedi, the Israeli singer and actor that most people outside our country know from his role on Fauda? He gave a really moving speech when he was released from the hospital. I've wanted to share it for a while, but couldn't find it translated well. I found this bit:

But it really doesn't cover how moving the whole speech is (it's 9 minutes long). Among other things, he also thanked medical teams, assured Israelis we have the best ones, and apologized to his soldiers who died in the same incident in which he was injured. He also mentioned that he was unrecognizable when he was rushed into the hospital, and that doctors only identified him by the note that was attacked to his hand. It turns out, he really wanted people to see what he was talking about, and to understand that by the time he gave this public speech, he was already looking much better than on the day of he was wounded. So here is the image he shared himself on his IG (just scroll quickly past it, if you feel like it is too much for you, which is an understandbale reaction):

This is 68 years old David Edri.

On October 7, he was held hostage with his wife by Hamas for hours. At a certain point, he even covered his wife Rachel with his own body, in order to protect her from the terrorists' shots. They both survived. Yesterday, we got the news that he has passed away. His family said the trauma and stress from the massacre, and the news of its scale, had aggravated his medical problems for the last couple of months, until he could no longer go on.

This is 23 years old Raz Mizrachi.

In May 2021, she was injured in a vehicular terrorist attack in Jerusalem, but survived. On Oct 7, she was attending the Nova music festival. Her last phone call was to the police, to help instruct them on where she and dozens of others were hiding from Hamas terrorists, inside a public bomb shelter. Raz was murdered shortly after that. When her mom got a copy of the call's recording, she said it was a great source of comfort to the family, to know that Raz was a fighter till the last moment.

May their memory be a blessing.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[drghostwrite]

Holding onto you

Pairing: Callie Torres x reader

Summary: not sure lol… there aren’t enough Callie fics and throughout the show she had some pretty rough relationships, so here’s some fluff for the Dr. Torres. It’s kinda nothing then smut then fluff, this will be a multi part story!

Warning: Smut!

******************************************************** you pulled your car into the long drive way climbing out and fumbling to find your house keys.

you opened the door and looked around the house that was eerily quiet all the lights were still out. You went around flicking on the lights, “Callie?” You called but no answer.

“Callie, baby are you here?” No answer so you walked back out and saw her car sitting in your shared driveway.

“that’s weird, where is she?” You whispered to yourself and crept your way up the stairs. You peaked in your bedroom and then saw the note taped to the door, big trauma I was called in, welcome home my love.

You had been away for a conference but decided that you were ready to go back to work so you changed your clothes and made your way to Grey Sloan. The storms were raging as you drove to the hospital, rain beat down on your windshield, you parked and ran in through the front doors. The receptionist at the desk perked up, “how can I help you?”

“Hey…” before you could finish she recognized you and directed you to the OR where Callie was currently operating. You quickly thanked her and ran to change into a clean and dry pair of scrubs.

as the elevator doors slid open you stepped through straightening out your clothing with your hands, you made your way to the gallery only to be greeted by a curious group of interns watching your wife operate. You sat down next to the group, “so any updates?” you asked and started talking to the small group. Part way through the conversation one of the girls recognized you, “Oh my God… your Y/N Devine like doctor Y/N Devine!”

“well yes and no” you chuckled with a small smirk.

“What do you mean yes and no?… I’ve watched your techniques, I tried to get into Harvards program just to study under you.”

“way to suck up there Jo…” some of the other girls scoffed.

“well I mean yes as in I am her same person same skills but no as in I’m married now so I technically hyphenated my last name but I don’t ever go by that or Devine anymore… Also I would like to clarify that I no longer teach at Harvard I accepted an attending position here.”

“Are you the new head of trauma?” A red haired woman spun around.

“Yes ma’am.” You gave a small grimace and smile.

“No that’s a good thing, April Kepner I’m actually one of your residents.” She reached her hand out and you shook it.

“Good to know.” Just then Miranda Bailey stepped into the room and all the interns shot back forward.

“Ahh Miranda Bailey, she’s still got it.” You laughed.

“Y/N Devine-Torres, does your wife know you’re up here?”

“I don’t believe so, looks like she’s tapping out though so better go find her before someone else does…”

“go getcha girl, good to have you back.” She laughed as you left. All the interns shocked at the fact that your “wife” was none other than Dr. Calliope Torres.

you ran down to the locker room where you figured she would be changing. You knocked on the heavy wooden door, “knock knock anyone home?” You asked playfully slipping in. You found her pulling her shirt over her head next to her locker, which held a couple pictures of you and her, Sofia, the three of you along with her stethoscope and a few other necessities. She turned to you and made a sad face letting out a whine and letting her shoulders drop.

“I’m so so sorry that I couldn’t be home…”

“I know baby I know.” You said pulling her into an embrace placing kisses on her lips.

“rough night?” You whispered in between kisses.

“you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Mmm so don’t tell me just let me take you home, relieve some of that stress… that tension.” You said running expert hands over her strong arms and shoulders.

She bit her lip, her eyes darkening by watching yours, “whatever you say… Y/N Devine” she said all airy and mocking the girls earlier.

“that is Dr. Torres to you.” You said placing a bruising kiss on her lips.

the car ride home was quiet, you could feel the gentle anticipation coming in waves. You parked and walked up to your shared house gently leading her through the door. Setting all your bags down keeping an eye as she went into the kitchen, you walked up behind her hands massaging the muscles ghosting kisses on the back of her neck as she leaned her head back into you. You grabbed her hand and guided her upstairs to your bedroom, grabbing her shirt and pulling her close, starting to strip her clothes pulling her closer and closer until she was completely bare, letting your hands grasp at her curves and muscles quick breathes and smirks shared in between heated kisses, you ran skilled fingers all over her body before pushing her back her knees meeting the bed.

“looks like someone couldn’t wait for me to get home.” You said slyly.

“your my wife of course I can’t wait for you to get home… she said suggestively, as she scooted back the bed, you were on all fours over her heated kisses being trailed across her body. For awhile you made out letting your hands roam the heat intensifying as you kissed every part of her body.

“Y/N, mi amor.” She whined as you nipped at her neck then replacing the bite with a kiss.

“yes my love?” You asked moving down to her chest nipping the soft skin and then placing kisses, leaving a kiss right in between her breast while looking up to make eye contact.

“I need you…” you worked your way back up to her mouth, your hand sneakily going between her legs, fingers ghosting her inner thigh.

“mm, what do you need love?”

“Uh…” she inhaled sharply with a whine, “you I need you.” She exhaled into your kiss, your fingers sliding through as you felt how wet she was.

“what she wants she gets…” you left one more bruising kiss before sliding down in between her legs, you didn’t waste much time and it wasn’t long before her moans filled the room. Your hand pumping as your mouth worked wonders, before you knew it she had hit her high. As you placed kisses up and down her legs she sat up pulling you into her lap, you wrapped your bare legs around her and she could feel how wet you were, how much you ached.

“You know I always knew you had that last name for a reason… Dr.Devine.”

“mmhm, too bad I changed it.”

“must’ve been a special one.”

“yeah, more than special, she’s pretty amazing, the ONE, the only one.”

She chuckled, “well then… my turn, show you how amazing I am…” she said teasing you her hand sliding in to give you more teasing action. She turned and laid you on the bed your legs still wrapped around her waist, you unhooked them, still holding with your knees as she got up.

she walked over to the closet and was digging until she pulled out the strap, you but your lip as she walked back over to you, she sat next to you pulling you back into her lap, one hand was on her face as you kissed her while the other held onto the top of the headboard.

at first she moved slowly grinding into each other but before long she had you on your back legs over her shoulders as she railed you, loud moans filling the room, good thing your neighbors weren’t to close by.

“mi amor, absolutely beautiful, if only I could put a baby in you, see you glow as you carried our baby.” That sent you over the edge.

A little while later you found yourselves wrapped in each others arms legs tangled, the bed in disarray, you laid your head on her chest as she held you.

You were being quiet, Callie reached over brushing some curls out of your face, “Y/N what’s on your mind?”

“Hmm..” you pulled out of your daze.

“where did you go?”

“no where.”

“you’re being quiet… what’s wrong?”

“nothings wrong, just thinking.”

“About what baby?”

“Well,” you said sitting up next to her, she looked up at you until she saw how nervous you were, scooting up to prop on the headboard next to you.

“baby what’s wrong?” She said getting more concerned, she ran a gentle hand over your leg as you faced her.

“were you serious?”

“about?”

“the baby, me being pregnant?… with our baby.” You looked into her deep eyes.

“I…uh… to far? I’m sorry if…”

“no, no, I want a baby.”

“really?”

“I mean yea, I know with Sofia and all and Arizona and the whole situation that it’s not easy, but I want a baby I want little mini us’s running around.”

“Y/N is that what you were so nervous about?”

“yea i thought maybe you were just saying it but then i got thinking and…”

“baby,” she said cutting you off, “I would love to have a baby with you, I was serious. You would look gorgeous carrying our baby and I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else, you’re more than just my wife, my best friend, love of my life… and besides Sofia would love having a sibling.” She said leaning up to kiss you.

“so you wanna have a baby?” You chuckled into her kiss.

“yes love I wanna have a baby.” She said placing rapid kisses on your lips and pulling you into an embrace as you both giggled.

[wadesprincessboy]

“--How are your migraines?”

A Rafael Barba / Rita Calhoun one shot

"--How are your migraines?" She'd asked him, and he almost thought he could hear love peaking through the dripping sarcasm in her voice.

Or:

Rafael has a migraine, Rita is there

Tags:

Rating:

General Audiences

Category:

F/M

Fandom:

Law & Order: SVU

Relationship:

Rafael Barba/Rita Calhoun

Characters:

Rafael BarbaRita Calhoun

Additional Tags:

Hurt/ComfortSick Rafael BarbaHeadaches & MigrainesAlternate Universe - Canon DivergencePost-DivorceHarvard UniversityRita and Rafael's Harvard daysand they were ROOMMATESThere Was Only One Beds17 e2 Criminal Pathology

Warnings: vomiting/nausea, abortion (both only briefly mentioned)

Fic:

"--How are your migraines?" She'd asked him, and he almost thought he could hear love peaking through the dripping sarcasm in her voice. God he hated her. That's what made her so perfect. Rita and Rafael. Enemies from heaven. Soulmates from hell. They had met at opening day at Harvard many years ago now, and it was love/hate at first sight. Rita was the only one in any of his classes to give him a real run for his money, and soon enough the two were sharing a tiny one bedroom apartment 15 minutes away from campus. The arrangement was for them to take turns, with one in the bedroom and the other on the couch, just until they could afford a bigger place. That was never going to last though, with both of them complaining so much when it was their week on the couch that they finally gave in a shared the double bed that took up almost the entire bedroom. It wasn't long before other friends caught on, nagging them about whether they were really just friends, or if something more was going on, because well, they did share a bed after all. Rita was there for him when they first got bad. He'd had migraines since his early teens, but they were always manageable with a few painkillers and a good day's rest. It wasn't until his third year of college that they really got bad. When they began knocking him out for three days straight and he'd have no memory of anything leading up to it. The first time it happened he thought that was it. He was dying. But no, just a bad migraine the ER nurse had told him, after Rita had taken him to the hospital, also thinking he was on death's door. He spent the rest of that night sobbing in between bouts of nausea and vomiting, and begging to sink into the floor and make it all stop. Rita held him that night, rubbing circles on his back and whispering soothing words while she ran her hand through his soft brown hair. Rafael often thought back to that night and how lucky he was to be loved by her, to see that soft, loving side to a woman who is usually so cold and borderline cruel. They spent many more days and nights like that over the course of their friendship, and eventual marriage. Rafael, a heap of tears and pain on the floor and Rita holding him and muttering sweet nothings to him in an attempt to make it all easier. He missed that, especially on days like this. While Rita had clearly been joking, trying to get a rise out of him as she often did, Rafael had a feeling she could see the signs. The aura he had felt that morning should have been a sign to take the day off, but of course, Rafael never took a day off work, ever, and especially not during a case like this. As he looked over the headlines on the papers his ex wife had dumped on his desk he felt the throbbing behind his left eye get worse. Despite taking medication for it before he left for work, the migraine kept getting stronger the longer the day went on. Rafael checked his watch. It hadn't been long enough yet for another dose of codeine, and really, he shouldn't even be taking this much, it probably made the migraines worse rather than better. Without thinking, he raised a hand to his forehead, a vain attempt at soothing the now almost unbearable pain. Rita of course noticed this.

“Hm” she acknowledged "the case really is worsening them, huh? What a shame it would be if someone were to use that to their advantage in court.”

The sarcastic comment earned her a glare from the prosecutor, and she backed off slightly.

“Really that bad?” She asked, sounding almost sympathetic.

“Mm” Rafael managed to get out, the pain now at a level that would have once had him out for days, luckily though, after decades of pain like this, he had learnt to push through. He knew Rita wouldn't drop it though. Her once snarky expression now replaced with genuine concern. No matter how hard either of them tried, despite their work killing their once happy marriage, they could not for the life of them manage to suppress the undying love they had for one another.

Now, Rafael noticed, Rita was making her way around to Rafael's side of the desk, gently dragging a chair along with her. She placed the chair next to him, and before sitting down, she strode purposefully across the room to close the blinds, knowing from years of dealing with Rafael's migraines that letting in unnecessary light was possibly the worst thing one could do at this moment. On her way back to her seat, Rita also shut off the overhead lights, and watched as Rafael noticeably sighed with relief. She knew it wasn't much, and his pain was still clearly bad, but the darkness would help. Rita sat in the chair next to her ex husband, and gently placed a hand on his back, and subconsciously, she began rubbing circles, just as she used to back in their college days. She hated to admit it, but she did truly love the man, and she knew he felt the same. If only their ambitions hadn't taken priority, and if only they hadn't let work destroy their relationship. Perhaps if Rita hadn't had the abortion those years ago they would be a happy family of three, or even more, right now. Instead of bickering over cases and plea deals they could be bickering over who would do the dishes that night, and ultimately settle on making the kid (or kids) do it instead. Thinking of this imaginary argument and family that she would likely never have, Rita placed her free hand under Rafael's chin, lifting his face to meet hers. The two met eyes, and against both of their better judgments, they leant forward, locking into a tired, but gentle, kiss. As the kiss depended, for just a moment Rafael's pain felt as though it lifted.l, and Rita felt as though that distant dream of being an old married couple with the man she had loved since day one of college, wasn't so distant after all.

[slootpoot]

Longhorn - Chapter One

01 | Since the Beginning Longhorn Masterlist

You’ve been with the boys for… a while. 

You were with Dean when he tracked down Sam in Harvard; mainly because you couldn’t say no when he appeared on your doorstep, face drunkenly red, blubbering about how his father is gone. 

You were there when Sam lost Jessica, comforting him when Dean didn’t know how to. 

You were there every time they thought they were getting closer to finding John, only to be hundreds of miles farther. You were there when they felt abandoned. 

You’ve been there since the beginning. Since Dean was in high school, jumping from cheerleader to geek. He even tried with you one time, only to be shot down with a loud, thundering laugh to his face. 

So, yeah, you’ve been stuck with these two lumberjacks for a long, long time. 

You’re sat in the backseat of the Impala, back against the door and your legs stretched out in front of you (shoes off, of course. Dean would lose his shit otherwise). With a book comfortably on your lap, you’re sipping on your milkshake Sam bought for you while the boys chat about the case up front. 

You’re all stopped at a gas station to fill up while they talk. 

“Alright,” Dean starts, staring at the unfolded map in his hands. “I figure we’d hit Tucumcari by lunch, then head south, hit Bisbee by midnight.” He looks over to see Sam staring at his PalmPilot, brows furrowed. Dean throws a playful glance at you through the rearview mirror. “Sam wears women’s underwear.” 

A smile curls your lip as Sam responds. “I’ve been listenin’, I’m just busy.” 

“Busy doin’ what?” Dean scoffs, peering at the screen before he steps out of the Impala and begins filling up the tank. 

You adjust, placing your bookmark and closing the book. Your chin rests on the back of the front bench sit as you listen. 

“Reading emails.” 

“Emails?” you echo. “From who?” 

“Friends at Harvard,” he mumbles back. 

Dean scoffs. “You’re kidding. You still keep in touch with your college buddies.” 

You shrug. “I still keep in touch with some people from high school.” 

“Johnny still want to get in them pants of yours?” 

“Yes, Dean, Johnny is still the same asshole.” 

“See?” Sam says, thumb jutting out in your direction. “Why wouldn’t I keep in touch with my friends from college?” 

“Well…” Dean slides back into the drivers’ seat, closing the door with a grunt. “What exactly do you tell ‘em, Sammy? You know, where you’ve been, what you’ve been doin’?”

Sam shrugs. “I tell them I’m on a roadtrip with my big brother and family friend. Say that I needed some time after Jess.” 

The atmosphere in the car dips, but Dean keeps going. “Oh, so you lie to ‘em.”

“No. I just don’t tell them everything.” 

“That’s lyin’, Sammy,” you chirp, leaning back into your seat. Your milkshake lays empty in your hand, but you don’t dare rest it on the ground or, god forbid, the seat. “I get it, though. Lying is better than telling the truth. I can’t tell you the last time I told a normie anything close to the truth.” 

That’s what you’ve always called them - normies. The people that don’t know the truth that lays lurking in the shadows. The people that have a peace of mind, can go to bed at night without nightmares of waking up with a blade to your throat or a gun to your head. 

The car goes silent for a second. You tap Dean’s shoulder with the cup to motion him to throw it away for you. He’s back in the car when Sam starts muttering. 

“What?” Dean queries, leaning closer to the passenger side despite Sam leaning farther and farther away. 

“There’s an email from a girl, Rebecca Warren, from college.” 

“Is she hot?” 

You smack Dean upside the head with your hardcover book. He yelps, ducking, when you ask, “What did she say?” 

“Her brother, Zack, who went to school with us, was charged with murder. He was arrested for killing his girlfriend. Rebecca says he didn’t do it, but it sounds like the cops have a pretty good case.” 

“Dude,” Dean chortles. “What kind of people are you hangin’ out with?” 

“No, man,” Sam sighs, shaking his head. “I know Zach. He’s no killer.” 

“Sammy,” you start. “Maybe you don’t know Zach that well. It has been a while since you’ve seen him.” 

He ignores you. “They’re in St. Louis. We’re goin’.” 

Dean chuckles. “Look, man, I’m sorry about your friend and all, but this doesn’t sound like our kind of problem.” 

“No, Dean, it is. They’re my friends.” Sam gets that look on his face, the one that says the stubborn bastard isn’t going to back down. 

“Sam, St. Louis is four hundred miles behind us.” 

They exchange a look before Dean sighs and starts the ignition, rolling out of the gas station. 

“If we’re going to St. Louis,” you start. “I’m going in the arch. Sam is going with me, because I am not getting fondled in that elevator alone.” 

“Why the hell would I get fondled?” 

“Old ladies like tall men. Tall, young men, Sammy. Just imagine it; their wrinkly old lady hands, sliding up your shirt -”

“Just go back to reading your book, Y/N, please.” 

Chapter Two

[gummybear1178]

F-14: Family of 14: You Don’t Know But...

Chapter 1:

Chapter 2:

Chapter 3:

Chapter 4:

Chapter 5:

Chapter 6:

Chapter 7:

Chapter 8:

Chapter 9:

Chapter 10:

Chapter 11:

Also on AO3:  

Hope you guys enjoy! If you want on the taglist let me know! (See guys I am learning Tumblr)

Not fully sure where this story is going other than it will be IceMav and their 12 adopted dagger squadron kids!

The dagger squad is determined to find out who Maverick is married to, leading to some shenanigans and eventually the reveal! Followed by one shots featuring MavDad Icemav and Dadmiral with the Daggers!

Feel free to leave requests and ideas

The Daggers sat on the deck of the Hard Deck. Penny had been kind enough to allow the Daggers to make it their unofficial hangout. However, they hadn't taken her up on the offer much until Mav and Ice's house kind of became off limits for a few weeks.

Well, not so much off limits, more so they had semi banned themselves temporarily. Electing to one, let Mav rest and feel better, and two, not get in the middle of whatever was going on between Ice and Maverick.

"I wonder what happened?" Phoenix finally asked the looming question in the group.

"I don't know," Bradley admitted, knowing the rest knew he was most likely to know. "All I know is that the Flyboys told me the house is probably a no-fly zone for a bit."

A few Daggers snorted at his attempt of humor to lighten the mood.

"No, but really, all they've told me is it's something to be left between Dad and Pops. They claim they will be fine once they talk."

"And when will they talk?" Fanboy asks quietly.

Several of the Daggers heads went down.

"Usually, they don't take long. It's just a matter of them getting it out." Bradley watched the waves. "I barely remember a fight between them growing up, at least not one that wasn't over within a few hours."

Jake looked down at his water bottle.

He just had this family start to form. He couldn't lose it now.

"Kids, look, Maverick and Ice, they fight on occasion. They are also stubborn, which means sometimes it takes a minute for them to work it out. But they always do." Penny said, stepping out onto the deck.

"Hey, Penny." Several of the Daggers greeted. Others just nodded in her direction.

"While their stubborness may make it take an extra second to solve their issues, it also means that they are stubborn about loving each other. Those two have been through a lot together. They will get through this." Penny assured.

"How do you know?" Jake asked. A few glancing his way surprised by the raw tone to his voice.

"Becuase they always do." Penny stated as though it was a fact, and after the way she said it, the Daggers didn't think that it could be anything else.

"You know you are our unofficial aunt, right?" Fanboy asked, breaking some of the tension.

"Oh, trust me, I know." Penny rolled her eyes, "And I wouldn't change it for anything." She winked before heading back into the building.

Phoenix smiled, and with a renewed hope amongst the Daggers, she decided to suggest a change of topic.

"Alright, how about we play a game?"

"What kind of game we talkin'?" Javy asks.

"A get to know each other more game. We each know each other on varying levels." Phoenix explained.

Each Dagger chimed in a version of agreement, and so the game began.

"It's called 'You don't know, but...' and basically you tell everyone something that they don't know. It can be about yourself, a random fact, or really just about anything. Some of us know other better than others, so just not something everyone knows. Like your call sign. The point is to get to know each other better."

"Alright, Phe, you suggest the game you have to start us off." Bradley pointed out, leaning back in his chair.

And so the game was on.

"Alright, you don't know, but... I played softball in high school."

"I guess I'll go next, you don't know, but I am a huge Swiftie to the point my call sign was almost Swift." Harvard said.

"You don't know, but I got my first black eye in college from lightsaber dueling in the courtyard." Fanboy admitted/bragged.

"Only you." Bradley laughed.

"Hey, we had a many a people come try and join us. Also, I would like to point out it wasn't becuase I couldn't duel it was because my roommate was supposed to just go left then right and just keep repeating but then got confused and went the same way twice."

"If we ever doubted your call sign, that's all the proof we needed." Bradley laughed.

"You don't know, but I hate being called Bagman." Jake said, glancing down at the deck.

"Good to know Hangman." Phoenix said, but the look on her face made him know she took the statement seriously.

"You don't know, but I want you guys to call me Jake..." Jake added, having already taken a huge step out of his comfort zone. Why not take one more.

"Good to know, Jake." Phoenix amended, a small smile on her face.

Meanwhile, Javy watched his best friend with a smile on his face. Proud of him for opening up.

Javy knew that was a huge step for Jake.

Now, if only he could take another huge step when it comes to another pilot. Javy internally rolled his eye,  knowing that was going to be a much more complicated process.

"You don't know this, but I went to LSU, GEAUX TIGERS!" Javy said, allowing the mood to lighten and take the pressure off of Jake.

And so the game went on.

---

The tension in the house was palpable. Even the ever light hearted Fanboy would be able to feel it.

Maverick had finally started to feel better.

Which, on one hand, Ice was very happy his husband was feeling better. However, on the other hand, that meant the looming conversation was soon to occur.

Ice walked into the living room with a cup of tea in each hand.

Maverick sat wrapped in a blanket on the couch. He reached out a hand to take a cup from Ice as Ice sat down.

"Ice..." Maverick started.

Ice sighed, he knew that tone. He had been anxiously awaiting that tone.

"Conversation time?" Ice asked softly.

"Look -"

"I'm not objecting, I know the conversation needs to be had. So, let's have it. Where do you want to start?"

"What did you tell Cyclone?" Maverick finally settled on after a moment of pause. He had run this conversation through his head hundreds of times and he still wasn't sure how he wanted to start it.

"I told him that if someone tells you that you can't do something, you have to p

rove them wrong. That you will do everything to prove them wrong."

"Did you really think that I wouldn't do everything possible to make this mission go well. To make it succeed. To bring Bradley back alive?" Maverick's voice strained during the last sentence.

"Mav..."

"No, Ice, you are the one who has believed in me. You pushed me to be better, but never by making me believe that you didn't believe in me. Rather because I knew you believed in me. So, why, why would this time be different? Why would you tell Cyclone to not believe in me, why not have him believe in me and not have me fighting him every step of the way?"

"I needed to make sure you came back, you and Bradley and everyone else. I panicked, and I know you do well when you do something out of spite." Ice admitted.

"So, the encouragement of keeping my kid, our kid, alive wasn't enough?"

"It should have been. Deep down I know you would do everything to come back and make sure he came back, but my fears took over. My biggest fear was losing you; losing Bradley. I let my fear control me."

"And you've never done this any other time? Never?"

"This is the first, only, and last time I have ever done that."

"I'm going to ask again Ice, do you regret it?" Maverick asked, his eyes as serious as ever, he had already asked this, and Ice evaded. He would not evade this time.

"I-"

"Ice."

"I regret my methods. I regret that I told someone to esentially hurt you. I regret hurting you. I regret letting me fears take control of me. However, if that is the reason you survived, I don't know if I can fully regret it."

"Ice, we established, I would do everything no matter what. That spite it not the reason I survived and so did the Daggers. So, one final time, do you regret it?"

"Yes, I regret it."

"And you will never, and I mean never pull that again?"

"Never."

Maverick simply nodded taking the information in.

"Maverick, I always believe in you. I know not everyone has, and I never should have contributed to the doubt others have had. I never doubted you. I was scared. I acted irrationally. I am so sorry Mav... I love you."

"I love you too Ice."

"I know you went through years of superiors telling you that you couldn't do something and judging you just from your last name all because of a government cover up. I know all of that. I never should have told someone to act like that. I truly am sorry."

"I believe you Ice. This hurt, I am not going to lie. I do however, understand why you did, I may not agree with it, but I see where your thoughts went and why. I forgive you, but don't ever do that again."

"Never."

"So, we can tell the kids the parents have made up so they can come over again without fear of feeling like they are in an igloo with the cold tension?"

"According to Viper, they have been referring to our house as a 'no fly zone' so I think we can change that status. I missed our Daggers."

"They missed you too." Maverick smiled as he leaned against Ice's side. "I'm not telling them why we were fighting. Just we had a disagreement, we talked about it, and it's over with. They don't need the details."

Ice nodded silently as he tucked Maverick's head under his chin.

The world was back on it's axis.

---

"Alright Grand-Daggers, I've been told today will be my last day as your instructor, however, I am in town for longer so this will not be that last you see of me. The impending last day though, does mean it's time for some good stories." Viper said with a growing smirk. "For this, I have brought in a guest instructor, Grand-Daggers, meet your other Grandfather, Jester."

"Greetings, grand-daggers, I do believe it is story time." Jester dramatically walked in, swinging the door open.

"Now, how about I tell time Maverick made a excel sheet detailing who he thought reminded him most of from pop culture characters. However, in trying to send it to the flyboys, he accidentally sent it to the whole base. Cain, a 1 star admiral at the time, was not happy to be matched with Skeletor, however, Stevens, a 2 star admiral at the time, was very happy to be matched with Luke Skywalker, and well, he took care of Cain."

"I mean it's Luke Skywalker, ofcourse he was very happy." Fanboy agreed.

"Leave it to him to somehow send an email like that to the whole base." Yale laughed.

"Though, Bradley over there did convince Ice to go as Batman for Halloween one year becausae he was going as Robin." Jesters began the next story.

"Yea, then convinced every other flyboy who was stateside to join in. By the end we had most of the Justice League and a few villains." Viper added.

"Who was Mav?" Halo asked.

"Green Lantern, more specifically Hal Jordan because he was also a military pilot. Air Force though, so Maverick made sure to wear his bomber which of course has his Navy patches. Claimed he was improving the character. Which techinically he was."

---

Short, but it's something. Hope you guys enjoyed. Sorry it took sthe o long, hopefully another chapter or 2 in August. July is questionable. However, it's been months so I wanted to get yall something.

As usual, let me know what yall thought and what yall want to see!

Thanks for reading and continuing to comment!

[mint-moon25]

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[motownfiction]

ultimatum

As a family attorney, Will hears the word ultimatum probably once a day.

People are always giving each other ultimatums, and Will – ever the excellent lawyer – takes copious notes about them.

I told him if he didn’t break it off with his dental hygienist, I’d leave him.

She either got rid of the cat or else!

If he continued to stay at his karate lessons all night, and never came home, then I told him there wouldn’t be a home for him to go back to.

Will writes it all down. He remembers it all. He carries the words with him like songs he doesn’t like. In between Harry Nilsson singing “Without You” and that secret song from the High School Musical soundtrack that Emma used to think was brilliant, he hears spouses saying terrible things about each other. Sometimes he agrees with the client. Sometimes he just thinks about how the money will help his girls.

Everything is all about his girls, even after all this time.

Everything is about Elenore. Seeing her smile after so many years of crying. Talking to her about the latest bullshit Disney’s cooked up for Star Wars. Swapping memories about law school and taking it on the chin when she reminds him she’s better because she went to Columbia. Will doesn’t dare remind her that he’s the reason she was able to get there. His time. His love. That’s all free, and she never needs to feel obligated to him.

Everything is about Emma. Listening to her talk about her theories for her dissertation. Holding her when the prospect of the job market and moving away from New York makes her cry. Ordering her dinner and leaving little Love, Dad notes in the bags. Emma is one of the most fascinating women he’s ever known, and everyday, she finds more ways to impress the hell out of him. Will can hardly believe he’s allowed anywhere near her.

Everything is about Veronica. Saving up money to help her go to college. Listening to her gush about the different colleges she wants to go to. Dreaming with her about Harvard and Yale even though they know it’s all a long shot, a crap shoot. Veronica is beautiful and wonderful, and Will makes sure to tell her she’s a miracle of a granddaughter. If her father can’t remind her that she’s special, her grandfather sure as hell can.

And everything is about Lucy, the woman who requires no ultimatums, the woman Will is lucky enough to have known since she was a girl. Not the other half of him, but the whole that makes life worth living. She’s it.

“Do you think that’s why we’re still together?” Lucy asks one Saturday morning over croissants and orange juice. “Because of all the horror stories you hear at your job? You figure, like, ‘At least it’s not as bad as that?’”

Will shakes his head.

“More than that,” he says. “More than I can say.”

Lucy conceals her smile behind a long sip of orange juice, and Will thinks about all the words in his head.

(part of @nosebleedclub september challenge -- day xxiv!)

[alj4890]

So I'm bored 😁 Let's have some fun. (Only if you want, no pressure!)

Did Chris go to her HS prom? What about Tobias?

What did they wear?

If you want, share any of the other character's prom wardrobes too.

A/N I've been struggling with writer's block and thankfully this finally shook some words out of me. This story takes place on their third date.

Rating: G for fluff

@hopelessromantic1352 @jerzwriter @openheartfanfics @krsnlove @choicesficwriterscreations @twinkleallnight @tessa-liam

Masterlist

A Couple of Drinks

Tobias's townhouse, dining room...

"All right," Tobias set a bottle of whiskey between him and Chris, "Let's play a game."

Chris relaxed back in her chair with a smug smile gracing her lips. "I'll have you know I come from a long line of Highlanders. Whiskey is a part of my DNA."

Her eyes drifted down his body. "I've drank men twice your size under the table."

Tobias couldn't help but smile at her. "It's not that type of game."

He poured them each a shot, then held his glass up.

"To getting to know each other better."

Chris chuckled as she clinked her glass against his then quickly downed the shot.

Tobias stared wide eyed at her when she didn't even wince over the burn.

She reached for the bottle and poured herself another shot.

Her eyebrow lifted when she noticed he still hadn't touched his.

He knocked his glass back, unable to keep from grimacing over the burn.

Chris laughed while nursing her third shot.

"Geez." He grumbled playfully. "At least give me a chance to catch up and actually begin the game."

She sat her empty glass down with a wink.

He refilled her glass while hurrying to down his second.

"Now," he rasped. "Time for some truths, Dr. Valentine."

She propped her chin on her hand. "About?"

"About you." He relaxed back in his chair. "I'll ask you a question and you can either answer or drink." He waved between them. "Then you can do the same to me."

"Couldn't I answer and enjoy a drink?" She teased.

"You're taking all the challenge out of this." He laughed. "But yes, feel free to drink all you want."

Tobias leaned close to her. His eyes rested upon her lips.

"It'll make you more likely to tell me everything I want to know."

Chris snorted in her laughter. "You are tryin' to get me blootered!"

"I notice your accent becomes more pronounced after a few drinks." His smile grew when she tried to deny it. "Very interesting."

Chris rolled her eyes. "What did you want to ask me?"

"How long did you live in Scotland?" He asked.

"I was born here, though both my parents are from Scotland." Chris began, taking another shot. "My mother was giving a series of guest lectures at Harvard when she discovered she was pregnant." She pushed her glass towards him to refill. "When I was a year old, my parents took me back to Inverness."

She rested her chin back on her hand, her eyes steadily holding his gaze.

"I remained there, went to University of Edinburgh, then came back to the States for med school and my residency."

"That explains a lot." He laughed out loud when she playfully nudged him with her foot.

"Mah turn tae ask a question." Her brogue grew thicker until she cleared her throat. "Have you always lived in Boston?"

"No." He rested his arms on the table. "I'm originally from Connecticut."

Tobias shot back his drink, pleased that he barely felt it.

Her smile grew over how smug he appeared over his attempt at keeping up with her.

"Your turn." She reminded him when he simply stared at her.

He leaned even closer than before. "Have you ever been in love?"

She laughed. "Of course! Hasn't everyone?"

He shrugged, enjoying the slight flush to her cheeks that appeared each time she laughed.

"Are you currently in love with anyone now?" Tobias asked.

He shocked himself by asking such a question. He glanced down at his empty shot glass and wondered if he'd made a mistake suggesting this game.

Chris wagged a finger in warning.

"Uh uh. It's not your turn." She closed the distance between them, pausing at the moment their lips barely touched. "It's my turn to ask you something."

She felt a thrill go down her spine at the sharp intake of his breath. His eyes burned into hers as he waited on her to kiss him.

Instead, she flashed a flirty smile and settled back into her chair.

His eyebrows drew together in confusion before he grumbled something under his breath.

"Now then," she looked up at the ceiling while contemplating what to ask him. "Let's see..."

Her eyes twinkled with mischief. "When was the first time you fell in love?"

Tobias refilled his glass. "I'm not certain I've ever been in love."

"Surely there was a time you felt strongly for someone." Chris countered. "Perhaps not true love, but more of a crush."

He chuckled. "I had plenty of those."

"Then tell me one about the first strong crush you had. One where you did something outrageous to get their attention."

Tobias smirked at her. "Are you implying the ladies don't notice me?"

She lifted her glass to hide her smile. "I believe there are a few of us females who take a second glance at you."

He bowed his head in thanks. "I knew you couldn't resist me."

She gave up the battle, snorting into her drink. "Back to my question, please."

"Probably high school." He replied. "There was this cheerleader--"

Chris rolled her eyes.

"What?" He asked.

"Typical." She mumbled.

"What?" He asked again. "What's typical?"

"Falling for a cheerleader." She huffed. "As if those of us who refused to don short skirts and cheer a team of bloody ballers onto victory were unworthy of attention."

Tobias slowly smiled. "Why, Chris, are you jealous of high school me being attracted to a cheerleader?"

"No!" Color flared in her cheeks. "I'm merely making an observation of men in general."

He took her hand in his. "If I'd had someone like you at my school, believe me, I would have ignored those cheerleaders."

She shook her head with a reluctant smile. "Stop being charming and go back to your story, Dr. Carrick."

"As you wish." He winked at her. "I'm sure you've noticed I don't have any inhibitions."

"I might have." Chris teased.

"Well, something about Cindy Kaminiski had me tongue tied." He took a sip as he thought back over his past. "It didn't matter what I did or said, she never gave me the time of day."

"Clearly she was a fandan!" Chris exclaimed.

She put her hand over her mouth when she realized how loud she said that.

"What's that?" Tobias asked once he quit laughing over her startled expression.

"An idiot." Chris cleared her throat. "A pretentious one."

"I see." Tobias's smile turned tender the longer he thought of her outburst being a compliment towards himself.

"I hope you ignored her and found someone even hotter to date." Chris added.

"I did. But I still wanted her to notice me." He swallowed the last of the whiskey in his glass. "So, at prom I made sure she'd be voted queen and that I would be voted king."

"You rigged the election?"

"I did." He responded. "Though once I went through all the actual votes, there was no need of my replacing the votes with the fake ones. We would have won anyway."

"We had to sit next to each other on the stage and share a slow dance." His eyes swam with mirth. "There was no way she could ignore me then."

"So?" Chris propped her head between her hands. "What happened?"

"Nothing." He smiled at her. "She complimented me for wearing a nehru tuxedo jacket. I said thanks and that was the end of our conversation."

"Wait! That's it?" Chris began to laugh. "You went through all that to only be complimented on your jacket?"

"Yep." Tobias refilled their glasses. "Once I saw how little she could think of to talk about, I realized that her beauty wasn't enough."

His gaze landed on Chris. "I need more than just undeniable beauty to keep me interested."

Chris humphed in approval.

"My turn." Tobias pointed at her. "Did you go to your prom with the love of your life?"

"I went, but not like you think." She replied.

"Story time." He demanded.

"I used the prom to make money." Chris explained. "And a way for me to have more fun."

"Did you need the money?"

"No." She giggled. "But I loved making my ex find a way to pay me for my, um services. He was the class president, so it was up to him to make all the arrangements."

Tobias's eyes widened. "What exactly did he pay for?"

"For me to sing at our prom." Chris laughed. "Did you think I was his paid escort?"

"Noooo." Tobias snickered when she playfully swatted him. "So, you must have some voice for him to pay."

Chris colored some, lowering her eyes. "I've been told that if this doctor thing doesn't work out, I should accept some of those recording deals I was offered in college."

"Recording deals?!" Tobias got to his feet. "Come on."

"Where are we going?" Chris plopped down on his couch once he let her go.

"Sit tight."

He went to a closet where he kept a random group of past Christmas presents in.

"Aha!" He carried a box back into his living room.

"What's that?" Chris asked.

"This is for me." He winked at her as he pulled out a karaoke machine.

Tobias handed her a microphone.

"I'll let you choose a song."

Chris laughed while doing as he asked.

"If you don't like my singing," she warned, "Remember you brought this on yourself."

She hummed to herself while trying to think of a song she sang often that year of her prom.

"Here we go." She hit play on Set Fire to the Rain.

Tobias sat transfixed as she sang without the need to look at the lyrics. Her rich, husky voice added even more emotion to the song.

He also thought she couldn't possibly get any sexier as she ran her hand through her hair, keeping her eyes on his as she got into the music.

Her voice was one that could have made her famous. With her beauty and personality, she would have been a huge star. He couldn't help but be glad she decided to become a doctor.

That gave him a chance to keep her all to himself.

Chris set the microphone down, blushing even more when he stood and clapped.

"How," Tobias tugged her into his arms, "do you keep making me fall for you?"

Chris scoffed, secretly thrilled he liked her voice.

She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him, sighing when he cuddled her close.

His mantle clock chimed, letting them know it was two in the morning.

"I should probably go." She wound her arms around his waist, not quite ready to leave his embrace.

"You could stay here." He kissed her again. "I would love it if you did."

"Is this that three dates equals sex invitation or are you worried I've had too much to drink?" She teased, moving her hands slowly up his chest.

"Neither, though I wouldn't say no to the first part." He laughed when she pushed him away. "I have guest bedrooms with a locks on the doors if that makes my invitation better."

Chris snuggled back in his arms. "I don't think I'll be using them." Her eyes settled on his lips. "In fact, I'm quite certain I won't need any room but yours."

[crushpdf]

rules: Pick any 10 of your fics, scroll to the midpoint, pick a line (or a few), and share it!

Sophiieeeee merci 😌 I am lowkey reentering my fic era after my year hiatus 👀

Including TRC one-shots! Ordering these shortest > longest! One day I’ll write a character that isn’t Ronan 😂

Cliff’s Edge (Get a Little Closer) | Gansey turned back and grinned. “C’mon, cowboy, let’s go see the stars.”

Kiss Me Again |  It wasn’t that Ronan was good looking, exactly. It was more that he looked like home. Adam had seen every expression his face could make.

Better Than the Drugs | “I’ll be good this time,” Gansey mumbled, and then Ronan’s mouth was on his mouth, Ronan’s lips were parting his lips, Ronan’s breath became Gansey’s breath.

i still see your face in the white cars | But hadn’t he had enough excitement for a lifetime, hadn’t he bled his black excitement onto his best friend’s twice-dead body? Hadn’t he lost his forest because of an excess of excitement?

a sort of messy, too-red mouth | Ronan looks up as he catches his breath, and the doorman is contemplating him. “Tough guy’s good at this,” he says, and then Ronan’s head is pulled forward again, his throat stuffed again, his senses overwhelmed again.

hey wolf, there’s lions in here | Lynch stood, slowly unfurling himself to his full height, his full stature, and when he did, suddenly this house looked a lot less kitschy and lot more like a fucking horror movie setting. “You can’t kill me, Colin, because then you’d have no one to play with.”

I Want to Hold You Like You’re Mine | He cupped Ronan behind the neck, pulling his head forward into the stream until water ran down his face, Ronan’s eyes closing like a prayer. Ronan kept his eyes closed even as Gansey turned the water off, his head hovering there in the middle of the shower, halfway into Gansey’s personal space like an offering.

no other witnesses, just us two | And so while Adam Parrish was flipping through a math textbook, and Declan Lynch was blowing off steam with a girl, and Richard Gansey turned to Noah Czerny, who just found himself standing in the middle of Monmouth Manufacturing, and Joseph Kavinsky was sweating under the careful work of Ilya Prokopenko’s mouth, Ronan Lynch stepped deeper into the forest, and that’s when he heard the scream.

Anatomy of a Punch | He led the group like a tour guide, but he only watched Gansey’s face. And if you look to your left, you’ll see the place where we crashed Declan’s Volvo into the shed, long before either of us had driver’s licenses. Up ahead, that’s the spot where we’d sit in the summer, the only patch of shade that wasn’t attached to the house and the prying eyes within. Oh, and up these stairs? In this bedroom? Ronan watched Gansey’s expression closely.

Filling In the Blanks and Gaps | He sighed. “From the very start, Ronan. Your fault. All your fault.” He heard a foot creak across the floor. Then stop. Then another. Pause. “Your fault I came to Aglionby. Your fault I got away from him, and your fault for St. Agnes.” Ronan was moving steadily toward him and Adam kept looking at the door. “Your fault for fucking dreaming Cabeswater, and it’s your fault for being so goddamn cruel and beautiful and dangerous and safe that I fell in love with you.” Ronan’s hand was on the back of his neck. “It’s your fault for letting me go to Harvard and it’s your fault for staying behind. And when I let you go, it’s your fault I never came back.”

tagging @hklnvgl @rodansey @dameferre @nialltlynch @creativefiend19

[ashbrat488]

One Shots List

Sliding Into Home - Calahan Skogman AU

– McKenzie Sharpe is fresh out of college and accepts (or forced into) a job from her father, Scott Sharpe, who happens to be the manager of the Milwaukee Brewers. She grew up around sports, being the only child of a mother that died when she was young and a father that wanted a boy to live vicariously through. She comes from a prominent name in the MLB and loves baseball and all sports, but is constantly being underestimated based on her sex and her looks in the industry. Now she runs the social media for the Brewers even though she has her dreams set on something much higher that no one thinks she can do…

Calahan Skogman grew up in Wisconsin, always dreaming of playing for the Brewers and now, fresh out of college, he turned down other offers to pitch for his dream team. He is quiet and keeps mostly to himself, having his own reasons for pursuing professional baseball. When he meets McKenzie, he sees her as everyone sees her; a spoiled brat who was only around because of her father and nothing else. He hates entitled, privileged people that think they are better than everyone else and he pegs her as what he hates most right away. When they start a winning streak however, they start to find themselves spending more time together and they both realize they don’t know the other one as well as they think they do…

Hope In Love - Sebastian Stan AU

-- Esperanza "Hope" Garcia doesn't have time for a proper relationship. Every time she has made time for a man, they've disappointed her. Her last proper boyfriend was 5 years ago in Law School. He worked as an electrician and hated her long hours in the library. She came home to find him in bed with a "friend". She all but swore off men after that.

Sebastian was married for 6 years to his high school sweetheart, Violet. She was killed in a mugging gone wrong. Sebastian hasn't dated anyone since her death almost 10 years ago. He's had random hookups, but always leaves before the next morning and never goes back to a woman more than a few times. That is until he met Hope.

Sebastian and Hope met through mutual friends almost a year ago and sparks flew almost immediately. Neither of them wanted anything serious, so they both decided to remain friends with certain "benefits". Over the last few months, Sebastian has been growing feelings for Hope but never dared admit it to her as her stance is firmly set for no relationship between them or for her and any guy.

Codename: Turtledove - Cole Turner

--Cole Turner is just a farmer trying to live his simple life while also trying to find the right woman to settle down with. He’s a little eccentric and a little high strung, becoming too much for most women pretty quickly. When he meets a woman at the farmer’s market, he thinks she could be the one until he finds out she has been lying since they met including about her name.  Eleanor just wants to meet a nice guy, but being the daughter of the president makes it hard to find people to trust. When she meets the hapless farmer Cole, she thinks she might have found someone she could really love... that is until he finds out just how dangerous it can be to be the potential boyfriend of the president’s daughter and he has to decide if the trouble is worth the pain...

Torn Pages - Bucky Barnes 

Bucky Barnes has survived breaking his Winter Soldier conditioning and Thanos and even managed to keep his best friend through it all. Now he is living in Brooklyn near Steve Rogers and meets an attractive bookshop owner, Serena... Everything is perfect between them until one of their enemies takes her to lure Bucky and the Avengers to them...

Lloyd Hansen - August Walker with OFC

**What if... August Walker and Lloyd Hansen both went to Harvard together. They were rivals, constantly getting into fights, and all around hating each other. Until... Until Jackie came into the picture. She was a freshman when they were seniors and the only thing they could both agree on was her... And only when they shared time together in the bedroom... I heard Paris is nice all year long...**

Happy Birthday, Captain - Steve Rogers

Steve has been away on a mission for weeks, finally returning on his birthday with a present for his girlfriend...

Sherlock and his cane…

Purely smut with Henry Cavill as Sherlock Holmes…

Ari/Steve ... Birthday Cake

Ari and Nomad Steve are twins and their neighbor Rosie brings them a birthday cake...

Speak Now - Ransom Drysdale

Brittan and Ransom were inseparable most of their lives. Until he was forced to break up with her to marry someone else. Can she convince him to leave his wedding to be with her instead...

Better Than Revenge

Zoey is a singer and comes home for a short break from tour to hang out with her boyfriend, only to find him in bed with her best friend. So she makes it her mission to enact revenge...

Dessert

Just Jake Jensen smut, nothing else...

[absensia-archived]

TWO MEN FIND THEMSELVES AT A POTENTIAL STALEMATE. NEITHER WANTS IT TO END THIS WAY. FOR ONE, IT WOULD MEAN FAILURE AND ANOTHER LONG NIGHT SPENT IN AN EVEN DEEPER PIT OF POLITICAL - CRIMINAL EXCREMENT AND VISCERA. FOR THE OTHER, IT MEANT A DEATH HE'D NEVER SEEN COMING, WHICH WAS UNDOUBTEDLY WORSE THAN ONE COULD SEE COMING.

The little bits of static that sparked and shot through the live audio feed did not begin until after the syndicate's current ranking top interrogator had kicked Charlotte out of the room for quote - unquote: disturbing the mark in a decidedly counterproductive manner. You're not helping, he'd said. Quit bothering my friend here, he'd said. You're making him cry, he'd said. With evidence of the man's imminent - and not to mention, irreversible - dissolution into sobs and waterworks right before her eyes, there hadn't been much Charlotte could do except acquiesce and make her exit.

" God. How come we never get to have any of fun around here, " she'd remarked as she joined Ghost in the monitoring room four flights of stars, three left turns, two - and - a - half right turns, and several doors away from Dobermann's so - called interrogation room much more than six feet below them. Conscious, she was,( though hardly self - conscious ), of her effect on electronics, Charlotte had seated herself as far from the equipment the room would allow her, which is to say, not far enough. Still in Ghost's peripherals, likely, the blonde had made herself comfortable. With her booted feet kicked up on the tabletop and her arms crossed her chest, she'd manage to balance herself perfectly on a single back leg of her chair.

In the right corner of the multiple screens that lit the small room, a digital clock ticked up the milliseconds, seconds, minutes, and hours. As the numbers fluxed, so did the occurrences of static pops and visual glitches in the live image. The time, however, never skipped. Much to Charlotte's annoyance, the man had managed to hold his tears back with her gone, but it wasn't going to be much longer before he broke under the pressure Dobermann's was relentlessly laying on. Top of his class at Harvard Law all those years ago, top of the tax bracket in his city for many years now, and the nigh - revered consigliere of a massive backing mafia in the recent years, and he was about to give it all up in exchange for nothing but a shovel. A shitty, rusty, chipped - up shovel to unbury himself once all the bloody dirt settled on top of him.

But even that was still better than nothing. Wasn't that how that one saying goes? Better the devil seen than one unseen? Better the devils you know than the ones you don't. Like mysterious women who seemed to form out of shadow and nothing else. Like a disembodied laugh and a sound so sharp, so loud, that you can't even be sure you've even died until a reaper's skeletal hand reaches for you. " That's a long fucking way to fall, " Charlotte said as they watched the man on screen crumple, his face as white as paper, the sheen of sweat on his face doing him very little favours in the single dim light of the cell room. " But at least he'll live. Sort of. "

@azraelreckoning / " THE PRICE'A FREEDOM IS HIGH. "

" That, it is. " In the odd psuedo - dark of the monitoring room, something changed in Charlotte's gaze as she watched the proceedings of the man's downfall. It might've been a trick of the light. That might be simply something one has to tell oneself. But something darker than the mere dilation of the vessel's pupils shifted then, as behind it, something uncoiled past the null of the pupil, past where science tells us light enters only to vanish into little more than electrical impulses and mirror - tricks. From comfortable to calm, the woman smiled in the dark as the names, numbers, and assignations began to pour out of their friend, the fallen man. Dobermann did not have pen nor paper with him because he assumed these videos would suffice as a record. As for Ghost. . . Well, Charlotte wasn't sure just how much she trusted his memory ( or just him in general ) when it came to these things. Maybe it was good enough, maybe it wasn't, maybe he just didn't care enough about the details. " S'good thing we're in charge of the price this time around, then, huh? " she said, shooting Ghost a quick grin as she drew a small notepad and pen from somewhere inside her blazer jacket. The pen clicked loudly, but then there was not a single sound to follow even as she clearly began to jot down everything the man was giving up in her own shorthand. Not the idle scratch of the paper or the quiet stick of the ink as she pressed and lifted the ballpoint tip from the page.

With one ordeal ( barely ) done, the agent was already looking for another curiosity case to pick apart, and even as her hand moved in an odd spiral pattern over her pages, her gaze slid back over to the phantom. " Hey. Be honest. Are you getting a little bit bored? With this job, I mean. " Without looking away from the eerie glow of the screens' blue light on the corner of his jawbone, Charlotte dotted an I, crossed a 7, and flipped to a fresh page. " I mean, we've only had one dead body and one assassination attempt so far. This guy wasn't even particularly difficult to find and break. I'm asking because you seemed bored. If you want, we could always find a way to fuck up the rendezvous tomorrow. Hm? "

[sa7abnews]

My Week at the Buzzy Meditation Retreat That Promises Bliss on Demand

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/16/my-week-at-the-buzzy-meditation-retreat-that-promises-bliss-on-demand/

My Week at the Buzzy Meditation Retreat That Promises Bliss on Demand

Nick Cammarata has always been unusually happy. The 31-year-old AI safety researcher had a good childhood, but it wasn’t just that; situations that made others depressed seemed to roll off him. “I think I was probably happier than 99% of people. It’s just kind of unfair luck,” he says. “I figured maybe what I had was as good as it gets.”

Then, in 2021, as part of an effort to investigate whether life could get even better, Cammarata discovered the jhanas. These eight advanced meditative states, characterized by deep concentration and blissful absorption, have been practiced for thousands of years but were long considered the domain of mystics and monks with decades of training. Cammarata, however, taught himself to enter these states after around 1,000 hours of solo meditation practice. “I was shocked that it was possible to get this thing you turn on in 10 seconds and just get joy for five hours straight,” he says. “Nobody talks about it.”

So he started to. In the past few decades, a handful of American Buddhist teachers had published books and led retreats on the jhanas, but knowledge hadn’t spread much beyond meditation circles. Cammarata’s enthusiastic tweets about the jhanas got the attention of many in the Bay Area, fueling a growing interest in the ancient practices. Now neuroscientists are researching these altered states of consciousness, more meditation teachers are guiding people into them, and a much hyped startup called Jhourney—where Cammarata is a minor investor—claims most of its participants can reach them in under 40 hours of meditation.

The mainstreaming of the jhanas may represent the next frontier of the mindfulness movement, which has taken hold in American schools, hospitals, and workplaces and, propelled by apps like Calm and Headspace, become a billion-dollar industry. Mindfulness has been shown to minimize stress, improve focus, and help with pain management. It’s perhaps no coincidence that this surge in interest comes as mental-health issues are soaring globally, and as the U.S.—the richest country in the world—has dropped out of the top 20 nations for happiness, largely because of a decline among under 30s. Dr. Matthew Sacchet, director of the Meditation Research Program at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, believes the destabilization of the pandemic, as well as other global challenges, has contributed to a “crisis of meaning” that makes advanced meditation increasingly appealing.

Read More: The Mindful Revolution

Stephen Zerfas, the 32-year-old CEO and co-founder of Jhourney, describes the startup as a well-being moon shot. “There’s hundreds of millions of people that have experienced meditation, and for them, it’s largely incremental,” he tells me at the Alembic, a meditation center in Berkeley, Calif., in early May. “Far less than 1% of them talk about it as absolutely transformative.”

Many in Silicon Valley see the jhanas as offering a tantalizing promise: a way to reprogram one’s internal software to access bliss on demand. It’s an idea in keeping with the Bay Area’s history as a playground for those chasing both peak performance and peak experience. If done responsibly, the upside could be enormous. Most of us tend to outsource our happiness to external sources—imagining that if we could just get rid of one thing bothering us or obtain another thing we want, we’d finally be happy. Jonas Mago, a cognitive neuroscientist studying the jhanas at McGill University, argues that this mindset overlooks our innate capabilities: “We don’t recognize that we have the profound power of shifting our own states by doing introspective work.”

Now, a new industry around the jhanas is taking shape—one that must navigate thorny tensions between spirituality and market forces. Jhourney’s approach isn’t without controversy. Some critics question whether the company has the expertise to guide retreats safely; others worry about repackaging rich practices as self-help techniques. “Jhourney is saying they’re not Buddhists and yet they’re using a Buddhist term,” says Tina Rasmussen, an American meditation teacher. “And that’s because it sells. If they’re really trying to help people, why are they charging so much?”

On a cool evening in May, I join 42 others in a conference room at the Applegate Jesuit Retreat Center in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. As the room falls silent, five members of the Jhourney team—all young white guys—begin recounting how they went from viewing meditation as a chore to discovering real joy through the practice. As with others here, my own history with meditation is inconsistent at best. As a child with bad eczema, I sometimes used a jaap mala (a loop of prayer beads) to distract myself from the urge to scratch, inspired by my Hindu grandfather who meditated for an hour before dawn each day. But as an adult, my attempts to meditate usually devolved into rumination, leaving me feeling worse. I’ve come here with the same goal as everyone else: to learn how to tap into mind-blowing states of joy—in under a week.

In 2018, reeling from simultaneous breakups with a co-founder and a girlfriend, Zerfas signed up for a 10-day silent meditation retreat. “I quickly learned things could get worse,” he tells the room at Applegate with a grim laugh. After eight days of migraines, he changed techniques and stumbled into the most euphoric experience he’d had in a year. “If this was replicable,” he recalls thinking, “this changes everything.”

For the next year, he meditated daily and tried to hack his way back into that state. It wasn’t until 2021 that he came across Right Concentration, a jhana instruction book by American meditation teacher Leigh Brasington, and found a framework that seemed to explain his experiences.

Though they are most comprehensively delineated in the Theravada Buddhism school of Southeast Asia, the jhanas predate the Buddha and find parallels across contemplative traditions, from Carmelite nuns to Sufi mystics. According to the suttas (core Buddhist scriptures), the Buddha spontaneously entered the first jhana as a child some 2,500 years ago and later gave precise instructions on how to cultivate these progressively more profound states as part of the path to enlightenment. But over time, the jhanas largely fell out of common practice. And even as Western Buddhist teachers have worked to make them more accessible, mastering jhana still took significant time and dedication. “When I first heard about jhana, the assumption I had was that 30 people in the world could do this and maybe I’d be able to do it in my 80s if I practiced really hard,” says Kathryn Devaney, a neuroscientist, founder of the Alembic, and an adviser to Jhourney.

The goal of dramatically reducing the effort needed to access these states motivated Zerfas to quit his software-engineering job at Lyft in 2021 and co-found Jhourney the following year with Alex Gruver, then a management consultant. “It was an insane thing to do,” Zerfas says, “to try to replicate this thing that’s supposedly been around for a few millennia that nobody has heard of and then try to teach other people.”

The company initially focused on developing neurotech, like a consumer headset, to guide people into jhanas, raising $750,000 in pre-seed funding. Last fall, however, Zerfas and Gruver pivoted to retreats, soliciting feedback from around a dozen Buddhist teachers as they developed their approach. They see themselves not as spiritual leaders teaching the Buddhist dharma, but as “engineers” focused on sharing practical guidance as efficiently as possible. Since October, Jhourney has guided over 400 people through 16 retreats, and claims that more than two-thirds of participants enter jhana regardless of meditation experience. The online retreats cost $1,100 and in-person ones start at $1,800, though a higher-end offering in June cost upward of $5,000. (Scholarships are available.) The hope is that within a few years, Jhourney could be teaching tens of thousands of people the jhanas each year. “To reach millions, tech intervention will be necessary,” Zerfas says.

Read More: How Meditation Went Mainstream

For inspiration, he looks to the mindfulness movement, which has effectively secularized and scaled meditation techniques through apps and corporate programs. Traditional jhana instruction, which involves intimate teacher-student relationships and intensive retreats, may be harder to mainstream, but Jhourney wants to promote a bold idea: that interventions can do more than bring those suffering up to a healthy baseline—they can also catapult the ostensibly well-adjusted into unprecedented levels of thriving. Zerfas compares jhana to an inverted panic attack: instead of anxiety spiraling, positive emotions accentuate one another, leading to intense states of bliss and peace. “If you taught people how to navigate these positive-feedback loops in their own system, it would be almost as valuable as reading and writing,” he argues. “We teach those skills in second grade, so why wouldn’t we teach this?”

At my retreat, Burning Man stickers decorate water bottles and conversations touch on Wim Hof ice baths and psychedelic therapy. Most of the 43 people here—I’m one of only six women—are young, affluent tech workers from the founders’ networks or who hang out on “meditation Twitter,” which skews heavily male. We’re told that Jhourney has taken as many lessons from coding boot camps as it has from meditation retreats. Key messages include work smart, not hard; run your own experiments; keep iterating. At first glance, this crowd seems more focused on Silicon Valley-style optimization than traditional spiritual pursuits. 

But during a welcome ceremony in the chapel on our first morning, people open up about what brought them here: redefining their relationship to pleasure; showing up for loved ones; navigating a breakup or career transition. Some confess they were hesitant to tell others about their plans, aware that the idea of seeking altered states might seem esoteric or self-indulgent.

I’ve been telling people I’m here “on assignment,” but I quickly realize if I want to access the jhanas, trying to stay detached and analytical isn’t going to work. As I sip a cup of cacao, a giant white Jesus Christ on a crucifix looming above, another word comes to mind: healing.

I’m reluctant to admit this, even to myself. While I’m not typically prone to anxiety or depression, the period before the retreat was among the hardest of my life. In the span of 10 months, I’d been diagnosed with severe endometriosis as well as a rare genetic form of diabetes; then, the simple act of tying my shoe led to agony and emergency spinal surgery for a rare condition that could have caused permanent paralysis if not treated quickly enough. For months afterward, I couldn’t exercise, or sit or stand for longer than 30 minutes without discomfort; I’d lost sensation on my left side from the hip down, and no one could tell me if, let alone when, it might fully return. My relationship with my body had become defined almost entirely by pain and frustration.

Motion is lotion is what I was told repeatedly during rehab, as movement helps nerves regenerate and signals your body to heal. I took that advice to heart, keeping busy with travel, working long hours, and socializing. People kept congratulating me on how well I was doing. Inside, I felt nothing like my old self.

Advised by my physiotherapist to meditate, I started doing app-guided breathing exercises and reading about meditation online. Critics warn that Jhourney risks reducing a profound contemplative path to a quick fix. Truthfully, that’s what appealed when I first emailed Gruver and Zerfas asking if I could attend a retreat and write about it. I’d already lost countless hours to medical appointments, hospital stays, and simply being in pain. I wanted to feel better, and soon.

At the start of the retreat, I hand in my phone, unplugging from email and the news cycle for the first time in a decade. My days begin with lakeside walks in the morning mist, followed by ecstatic dance at 6:45 a.m. and yoga at 11 a.m. Group meditation sessions bookend each day. Most days I meditate for six to eight hours, lying on a sofa or under the trees listening to birdsong.

But meditation, I discover, isn’t inherently relaxing. Humans aren’t designed to be still; meditation involves rewiring evolutionary instincts to seek pleasure and avoid pain. A retreat forces you to confront your psychology, Devaney says: “It’s really gnarly work—not a day at the spa.”

The first morning, we’re tasked with recalling positive memories as a way to spark the joy that might eventually lead to jhana. Instead, virtually every time I shut my eyes, I’m met with intense flashbacks from my year of medical crises. That evening, when someone mentions falling asleep during meditation, I’m shocked.

But the meditation works more quickly than I expected. Within a day, the flashbacks have faded and I find myself regularly drifting off. Over time, I stop policing my mind, no longer berating myself if I get distracted; if my inner critic pops up, I visualize putting her in a hammock to lie down. I become more alert to what I enjoy: one morning, during dance, I realize I am no longer having fun, and rather than forcing myself to stay out of some misplaced sense of obligation, I simply leave.

Still, cultivating positive emotions is harder than I anticipated. I find my typical British stoicism, while useful in a crisis, has inadvertently muted my capacity for joy. When I recite mantras like May I be happy, an internal voice questions my right to happiness in a world full of suffering. The idea of unearned joy feels almost transgressive, undermining everything I’ve learned about needing to work hard and accomplish things in order to be happy.

A turning point comes halfway through the retreat, during a forgiveness meditation. Tears flow as I realize how much anger I’ve been harboring—toward doctors who’d dismissed my symptoms, myself for not seeking help sooner, people in my life who couldn’t see my suffering. As I walk by the lake afterward, listening to birds chirping and frogs croaking, I feel the anger flow through me, white and hot and cleansing.

Soon, I find myself more attuned to my body, able to examine whether an emotion feels open (like joy) or closed (like frustration). We are advised to take cold showers and taste hot sauce, to notice when we are bracing against experience rather than surrendering to it. Gradually, I feel the tingles that apparently signal the start of the jhanas, the kind of thing I once might have dismissed as pins and needles. (Piti is the term Buddhists use; I think of it as a bubbly golden liquid, like champagne.) But I keep running into unexpected resistance, and the doorway to the jhanas shuts.

Of course, I’m not alone in my struggles. “There was an aspect of the Jhourney retreat that felt like you were a Pokémon and they were trying to get you to evolve jhana levels as quickly as possible in a week,” one participant tells me. That strikes a chord: as the days pass, I increasingly feel the pressure of being surrounded by goal-oriented people who are succeeding where I am not.

Succeeding at what, exactly? One of the challenges with the jhanas is that as with falling in love, ordinary speech doesn’t seem to do them justice. Analogies abound: getting goose bumps while listening to music; cuddling with a partner after sex; the satisfaction of completing a major project. The initial jhanas, characterized by high-energy experiences, seem to vary dramatically. One Jhourney participant likens the first jhana to the jolt of putting your tongue onto a battery, while another describes a floating sensation so intense that she wondered if her water had been laced with MDMA. There’s more consensus about the fourth jhana, however, which seems to be characterized by a deep peace and equanimity, a stark contrast to the internal dissonance most of us are used to in everyday life—thinking about emails while talking to a loved one or worrying about a past conversation while trying to enjoy a party. The fourth jhana, Devaney says, “feels like every atom in your body has had a nice meal, a good glass of water, and is sitting back in its armchair after dinner. It’s very profoundly like your whole system is on the same page.”

Read More: How to Be Mindful if You Hate Meditating

This unified state of mind can be a powerful tool for introspection and insight. Many Buddhists see the jhanas as preparation for deeper meditation leading to awakening, not as ends in themselves. “Jhanas offer a systematic training in letting go,” says Shaila Catherine, author of Focused and Fearless (recently republished as The Jhanas). “A mark of genuine mastery of jhana is dispassion toward pleasure, not seeking it on demand.” But some believe that even for those without loftier spiritual goals, the jhanas can be valuable—helping people “move their emotional set point a little more towards the happy scale,” as Brasington puts it.

There are also intense debates about what “counts.” Some teachers, like Catherine, say that jhana requires you to remain completely absorbed for long stretches without a single thought arising. Rasmussen, who co-authored Practicing the Jhanas, believes Jhourney is teaching pleasurable states that fall short of true jhana, which she compares to steam powerful enough to drive a locomotive. “If people think it’s steam when it’s water,” she says, “that is false advertising.”

This is hardly new: for almost as long as people have been practicing the jhanas, they’ve been arguing over how to define them. Brasington says the disagreement stems partly from varying interpretations of ancient texts and partly from the fact people are inclined to believe their way is the right way. “Spiritual teachers, unless they’re really advanced, are just plain old human beings,” he says.

While some teachers see “lighter” versions of the jhanas as more practical for modern lives, concerns persist about diluting the term. Jhourney stands by its use of jhana, emphasizing that it’s transparent about traditional definitions and helps connect participants with resources and teachers if they want to pursue further practice. “We’re just helping people experience more joy when they meditate,” Gruver says. “That seems like such an unambiguously good thing to me.”

Read More:  Can Meditation Improve Your Health? Here’s What to Know

Rui Bao, who works in public education, compares her experience during a February retreat to six to eight months of therapy progress, saying it felt as though she were “sitting in a circle holding hands and singing kumbaya with all the different parts of myself.” Jake Eaton, a magazine editor, describes a cathartic experience in which he grieved for the turbulence of his childhood while feeling gratitude for the progress he’s made since. Even people who don’t reach jhana can find therapeutic effects, like one man who cried for the first time in 30 years during his Jhourney retreat. 

And for some, the benefits can be lasting. Startup founder Ruby Yu says since her retreat last fall, her self-critical voice has quietened, she can’t remember the last time she got angry, and she’s much more familiar with joy. “That baseline of unpleasantness is much, much lighter,” says Yu, who is now working with Rasmussen to deepen her practice. “Whether or not it’s what the Buddha was truly talking about in the suttas, I don’t care. All I care is that it made meditation a lot easier for me.”

While it’s tempting to think that science will be able to resolve these centuries-old debates, neuroscientists say it’s difficult to define exactly at what point something is or isn’t a jhana. “What we know is that the mind has the capacity to get deeply absorbed by certain experiences,” says Mago, the McGill neuroscientist. “What’s right or wrong in the end is defined by what helps people.”

Richard J. Davidson, founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, notes that even modest amounts of meditation—under 10 hours of practice in beginners—can change brain plasticity. But he cautions against commercializing the jhanas prematurely. “People saying this benefits them is all well and good, but without real scientific evidence, we have no idea,” he says. “Anyone trying to monetize this should raise red flags.”

Read More: How 5 Minutes of Daily Meditation Enhanced My Life

Neuroscientists are increasingly trying to understand how the jhanas might affect the brain. A January study out of Harvard and Mass General found that the jhanas are related to distinct patterns of neural activity across various parts of the brain that correspond with experiential aspects including attention, joy, and equanimity. Preliminary research by Mago and Michael Lifshitz, an assistant professor of psychiatry at McGill, showed that during deep jhana meditation, patterns of communication in the brain became more flexible and unpredictable and practitioners showed increased cognitive diversity and creativity afterward. These early findings align with theories that deep concentration can short-circuit the brain’s predictive mechanisms—leading to vivid, direct experience as mental chatter falls away. “Our perception of the world is much more malleable and adaptable than we think,” says Lifshitz, “and we can deliberately train our experience to function differently.”

By my final full day on retreat, I’m noticing a subtle internal shift, as if the mental creases that had gathered inside me were smoothing out. Still, I haven’t experienced a jhana, and I find it hard to shake the idea that I’m letting down not just my instructors but also my future readers. Experts say that paradox seems to lie at the heart of jhana. “You need to want it, but also be OK with not getting it,” says philosopher and meditation researcher Terje Sparby. Over lunch, I share my dismay with instructor Grant Belsterling, who encourages me to reframe my experience—to think of happiness less as a state and more as an ongoing process. “You can have a goal without devaluing where you’re currently standing,” he tells me.

That afternoon, during a final 45-minute guided session with curriculum director Judah Newman, I lie on a sofa with my eyes shut and describe a warm yellow feeling of friendliness spreading through my body. Soon I run into a familiar obstacle: the lower left half of my body—still suffering nerve damage—is unable to fully experience that. For months, I’ve been in something of a holding pattern, with no way of knowing if I might regain the sensation I’d lost. Newman asks what the frustration is trying to tell me. “To accept that things won’t ever be the same again,” I reply. Another thought immediately follows: But they can still be good.

This realization unlocks something powerful. Suddenly, a luminous yellow substance washes over me, as if hope is saturating every cell of my body. My mind is filled with a montage of positive images of the future. I can’t stop smiling. After Newman leaves the room, the energy ebbs and flows, alternating between deep contentment and intense glee. At one point, I laugh uncontrollably for a minute or two. It feels like being on a drug.

When he returns, I tell him about my experience. He smiles: “That’s usually what I think of as the first jhana.”

Whether it’s real or “diluted” seems beside the point. For the rest of the afternoon, I experience a kind of surreal afterglow: flowers and leaves seem brighter, ordinary things are funnier, and I feel a newfound lightness toward people around me. For months, my body had felt alien and disconnected. Now I’m finally embracing it as a whole, capable of both pain and profound joy. For the first time in a long time, I feel compassion rather than frustration toward myself.

Jhourney’s motto, “Come for the bliss, stay for the personal growth,” acknowledges that while confronting internal conflicts can be unpleasant, it’s often transformative. But as meditation has gone mainstream, the marketing has often glossed over its primary purpose: radically transforming one’s sense of self and reality. That reshaping of perception can be seriously destabilizing. “People didn’t know what they were signing up for when they were just paying attention to their breath,” says Ruben Laukkonen, a meditation researcher at Australia’s Southern Cross University.

There’s an increasing awareness of the potential risks of meditation, especially in high doses, as reports of depression, anxiety, and psychosis, though rare, have surfaced. “The journey to the cliff edge can be incredibly short,” warns Daniel Ingram, a retired emergency-medicine physician and author of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha.

One woman’s Jhourney experience illustrates these concerns. The woman, who requested anonymity to protect her privacy, says she had informed the company of her history with depression but quickly began to feel highly agitated during an online retreat. “For about a month after, I lived in a state of very intense alarm,” says the woman, who left early, in part because of a family matter. While she thinks the experience may have ultimately been beneficial, it felt unpredictable. And though she praised the facilitators’ compassionate response, she didn’t seek further help from them, feeling that they were too young and inexperienced to guide her. More troublingly, fellow meditators discouraged her from speaking out, fearing she might “tank” a cool new company. “In this splash of enthusiasm, people who have a bad experience might be tempted not to talk about it,” she says, “because they’re afraid that they’ll seem like buzzkills.”

Jhourney declines to comment on specific individuals but acknowledges the risks, estimating that 1% of participants have experienced difficult emotions from some sort of internal conflict or trauma—but claiming they almost all later find the experience positive. Establishing the dangers of meditation is tricky: no one tracks base rates; meditation may attract those with pre-existing psychological challenges; some believe discussing negative experiences can become self-fulfilling prophecies; factors like participant selection criteria, dosage, and meditation technique all play a role. (Jhourney uses Imperial College London’s exclusion criteria for psychedelic research to screen participants.)

Critics like meditation teacher Vince Horn have accused Jhourney of “arrogantly endangering people’s mental health” in pursuit of capital gain. But Zerfas and Gruver believe their approach is safer than that of other retreats, highlighting innovative measures they’ve implemented in consultation with top experts. David Treleaven, author of Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness, says Jhourney’s plan sets a new industry standard, “the kind of thorough and thoughtful approach I’ve long hoped to see in the field of meditation.”

Much of the backlash against Jhourney stems from a deeper skepticism among many Buddhists toward commercializing spiritual practices. They warn that fast-tracking the jhanas outside of the structure of ancient lineages risks overlooking crucial insights and that meditation stripped of its ethical core could be weaponized for ego-boosting or other destructive tendencies. 

And yet millions could potentially benefit from deep meditative practices without subscribing to Buddhist norms. Secular teachings may also offer people more agency than traditional hierarchical models. “We want a plurality of ethics,” says Lifshitz. “We don’t want to assume that just because someone is a skilled meditator and a good teacher they have the right ideas about what’s good in the world.” 

Zerfas doesn’t believe any religion can claim IP on the jhanas, calling them “discoveries, not inventions.” He says it’s almost a “moral imperative” to share them widely, and companies can scale access more effectively than nonprofits. “For-profit models live or die by their impact,” he says.

And while Gruver recognizes that Jhourney’s current staff may be positioned to teach a certain audience, he remains optimistic that over time, many organizations could work together to discover how different demographics best learn these techniques. “There are going to be hundreds of approaches to this problem. We just want that work to get done.”

In the final season of the TV show The Good Place, the characters arrive in the afterlife only to discover that even eternal bliss can lose its luster. With every desire met, the residents of the actual Good Place, or heaven, have become apathetic, their lives stripped of purpose. “Everyone is a happiness zombie!” one character exclaims.

The scene captures a key concern some Buddhists have about Jhourney’s approach. They fear it might create “jhana junkies” who get overly attached to pleasurable states, missing out on deeper spiritual insights that reduce self-interest and increase wisdom and compassion. Critics argue that without proper follow-up, practitioners might just sit around getting high on self-generated pleasure.

Yet to my surprise, it seems that for most people, finding the bliss button doesn’t make you want to press it all the time. Sasha Chapin, a writer who has been meditating for over a decade, describes the jhanas as “cool toys that you tend to put away after an initial period of obsession.” Pure pleasure, it turns out, isn’t really what humans want.

Modern meditation culture draws in a wide array of people, from the deeply suffering to the casually curious, from spiritual New Age seekers to productivity hackers. “Aren’t we all here to become a more effective person?” one man candidly remarked during my retreat. While it’s easy to dismiss the interest in the jhanas as another Silicon Valley fad, Devaney argues that even the much derided Bay Area “optimizer” mindset can be a starting point for real transformation. “If you’re going to try to do something to make yourself feel better than other people, it’s better to meditate than to buy a helicopter,” she says. “Eventually, the meditation is going to show you yourself in a way that buying all the helicopters is not.”

For all the debates, Jhourney does seem to be offering a taste of profound states to many who might otherwise never encounter them. Some participants, myself included, discover a new appreciation for meditation that may ultimately lead to deeper self-exploration. “Jhana is like pouring water onto the leaves of a plant,” Cammarata argues. “It also goes very deeply into the roots, whether you know it or not.”

My curiosity about Jhourney had been sparked by a desire for a quick fix. On my retreat, I realized how impossible that was. Two months and many hours of meditation later, my emotional range has widened. I feel love and joy more strongly, and while self-compassion may not come naturally, I’m less inclined to fight my body’s limitations—instead tapping back into that feeling of wholeness. In trying to make myself “better,” I stumbled upon an age-old lesson: true peace comes from accepting things just as they are.

[douxlen]

My Week at the Buzzy Meditation Retreat That Promises Bliss on Demand

New Post has been published on https://douxle.com/2024/08/14/my-week-at-the-buzzy-meditation-retreat-that-promises-bliss-on-demand/

My Week at the Buzzy Meditation Retreat That Promises Bliss on Demand

Nick Cammarata has always been unusually happy. The 31-year-old AI safety researcher had a good childhood, but it wasn’t just that; situations that made others depressed seemed to roll off him. “I think I was probably happier than 99% of people. It’s just kind of unfair luck,” he says. “I figured maybe what I had was as good as it gets.”

Then, in 2021, as part of an effort to investigate whether life could get even better, Cammarata discovered the jhanas. These eight advanced meditative states, characterized by deep concentration and blissful absorption, have been practiced for thousands of years but were long considered the domain of mystics and monks with decades of training. Cammarata, however, taught himself to enter these states after around 1,000 hours of solo meditation practice. “I was shocked that it was possible to get this thing you turn on in 10 seconds and just get joy for five hours straight,” he says. “Nobody talks about it.”

So he started to. In the past few decades, a handful of American Buddhist teachers had published books and led retreats on the jhanas, but knowledge hadn’t spread much beyond meditation circles. Cammarata’s enthusiastic tweets about the jhanas got the attention of many in the Bay Area, fueling a growing interest in the ancient practices. Now neuroscientists are researching these altered states of consciousness, more meditation teachers are guiding people into them, and a much hyped startup called Jhourney—where Cammarata is a minor investor—claims most of its participants can reach them in under 40 hours of meditation.

The mainstreaming of the jhanas may represent the next frontier of the mindfulness movement, which has taken hold in American schools, hospitals, and workplaces and, propelled by apps like Calm and Headspace, become a billion-dollar industry. Mindfulness has been shown to minimize stress, improve focus, and help with pain management. It’s perhaps no coincidence that this surge in interest comes as mental-health issues are soaring globally, and as the U.S.—the richest country in the world—has dropped out of the top 20 nations for happiness, largely because of a decline among under 30s. Dr. Matthew Sacchet, director of the Meditation Research Program at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, believes the destabilization of the pandemic, as well as other global challenges, has contributed to a “crisis of meaning” that makes advanced meditation increasingly appealing.

Read More: The Mindful Revolution

Stephen Zerfas, the 32-year-old CEO and co-founder of Jhourney, describes the startup as a well-being moon shot. “There’s hundreds of millions of people that have experienced meditation, and for them, it’s largely incremental,” he tells me at the Alembic, a meditation center in Berkeley, Calif., in early May. “Far less than 1% of them talk about it as absolutely transformative.”

Many in Silicon Valley see the jhanas as offering a tantalizing promise: a way to reprogram one’s internal software to access bliss on demand. It’s an idea in keeping with the Bay Area’s history as a playground for those chasing both peak performance and peak experience. If done responsibly, the upside could be enormous. Most of us tend to outsource our happiness to external sources—imagining that if we could just get rid of one thing bothering us or obtain another thing we want, we’d finally be happy. Jonas Mago, a cognitive neuroscientist studying the jhanas at McGill University, argues that this mindset overlooks our innate capabilities: “We don’t recognize that we have the profound power of shifting our own states by doing introspective work.”

Now, a new industry around the jhanas is taking shape—one that must navigate thorny tensions between spirituality and market forces. Jhourney’s approach isn’t without controversy. Some critics question whether the company has the expertise to guide retreats safely; others worry about repackaging rich practices as self-help techniques. “Jhourney is saying they’re not Buddhists and yet they’re using a Buddhist term,” says Tina Rasmussen, an American meditation teacher. “And that’s because it sells. If they’re really trying to help people, why are they charging so much?”

On a cool evening in May, I join 42 others in a conference room at the Applegate Jesuit Retreat Center in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. As the room falls silent, five members of the Jhourney team—all young white guys—begin recounting how they went from viewing meditation as a chore to discovering real joy through the practice. As with others here, my own history with meditation is inconsistent at best. As a child with bad eczema, I sometimes used a jaap mala (a loop of prayer beads) to distract myself from the urge to scratch, inspired by my Hindu grandfather who meditated for an hour before dawn each day. But as an adult, my attempts to meditate usually devolved into rumination, leaving me feeling worse. I’ve come here with the same goal as everyone else: to learn how to tap into mind-blowing states of joy—in under a week.

In 2018, reeling from simultaneous breakups with a co-founder and a girlfriend, Zerfas signed up for a 10-day silent meditation retreat. “I quickly learned things could get worse,” he tells the room at Applegate with a grim laugh. After eight days of migraines, he changed techniques and stumbled into the most euphoric experience he’d had in a year. “If this was replicable,” he recalls thinking, “this changes everything.”

For the next year, he meditated daily and tried to hack his way back into that state. It wasn’t until 2021 that he came across Right Concentration, a jhana instruction book by American meditation teacher Leigh Brasington, and found a framework that seemed to explain his experiences.

Though they are most comprehensively delineated in the Theravada Buddhism school of Southeast Asia, the jhanas predate the Buddha and find parallels across contemplative traditions, from Carmelite nuns to Sufi mystics. According to the suttas (core Buddhist scriptures), the Buddha spontaneously entered the first jhana as a child some 2,500 years ago and later gave precise instructions on how to cultivate these progressively more profound states as part of the path to enlightenment. But over time, the jhanas largely fell out of common practice. And even as Western Buddhist teachers have worked to make them more accessible, mastering jhana still took significant time and dedication. “When I first heard about jhana, the assumption I had was that 30 people in the world could do this and maybe I’d be able to do it in my 80s if I practiced really hard,” says Kathryn Devaney, a neuroscientist, founder of the Alembic, and an adviser to Jhourney.

The goal of dramatically reducing the effort needed to access these states motivated Zerfas to quit his software-engineering job at Lyft in 2021 and co-found Jhourney the following year with Alex Gruver, then a management consultant. “It was an insane thing to do,” Zerfas says, “to try to replicate this thing that’s supposedly been around for a few millennia that nobody has heard of and then try to teach other people.”

The company initially focused on developing neurotech, like a consumer headset, to guide people into jhanas, raising $750,000 in pre-seed funding. Last fall, however, Zerfas and Gruver pivoted to retreats, soliciting feedback from around a dozen Buddhist teachers as they developed their approach. They see themselves not as spiritual leaders teaching the Buddhist dharma, but as “engineers” focused on sharing practical guidance as efficiently as possible. Since October, Jhourney has guided over 400 people through 16 retreats, and claims that more than two-thirds of participants enter jhana regardless of meditation experience. The online retreats cost $1,100 and in-person ones start at $1,800, though a higher-end offering in June cost upward of $5,000. (Scholarships are available.) The hope is that within a few years, Jhourney could be teaching tens of thousands of people the jhanas each year. “To reach millions, tech intervention will be necessary,” Zerfas says.

Read More: How Meditation Went Mainstream

For inspiration, he looks to the mindfulness movement, which has effectively secularized and scaled meditation techniques through apps and corporate programs. Traditional jhana instruction, which involves intimate teacher-student relationships and intensive retreats, may be harder to mainstream, but Jhourney wants to promote a bold idea: that interventions can do more than bring those suffering up to a healthy baseline—they can also catapult the ostensibly well-adjusted into unprecedented levels of thriving. Zerfas compares jhana to an inverted panic attack: instead of anxiety spiraling, positive emotions accentuate one another, leading to intense states of bliss and peace. “If you taught people how to navigate these positive-feedback loops in their own system, it would be almost as valuable as reading and writing,” he argues. “We teach those skills in second grade, so why wouldn’t we teach this?”

At my retreat, Burning Man stickers decorate water bottles and conversations touch on Wim Hof ice baths and psychedelic therapy. Most of the 43 people here—I’m one of only six women—are young, affluent tech workers from the founders’ networks or who hang out on “meditation Twitter,” which skews heavily male. We’re told that Jhourney has taken as many lessons from coding boot camps as it has from meditation retreats. Key messages include work smart, not hard; run your own experiments; keep iterating. At first glance, this crowd seems more focused on Silicon Valley-style optimization than traditional spiritual pursuits. 

But during a welcome ceremony in the chapel on our first morning, people open up about what brought them here: redefining their relationship to pleasure; showing up for loved ones; navigating a breakup or career transition. Some confess they were hesitant to tell others about their plans, aware that the idea of seeking altered states might seem esoteric or self-indulgent.

I’ve been telling people I’m here “on assignment,” but I quickly realize if I want to access the jhanas, trying to stay detached and analytical isn’t going to work. As I sip a cup of cacao, a giant white Jesus Christ on a crucifix looming above, another word comes to mind: healing.

I’m reluctant to admit this, even to myself. While I’m not typically prone to anxiety or depression, the period before the retreat was among the hardest of my life. In the span of 10 months, I’d been diagnosed with severe endometriosis as well as a rare genetic form of diabetes; then, the simple act of tying my shoe led to agony and emergency spinal surgery for a rare condition that could have caused permanent paralysis if not treated quickly enough. For months afterward, I couldn’t exercise, or sit or stand for longer than 30 minutes without discomfort; I’d lost sensation on my left side from the hip down, and no one could tell me if, let alone when, it might fully return. My relationship with my body had become defined almost entirely by pain and frustration.

Motion is lotion is what I was told repeatedly during rehab, as movement helps nerves regenerate and signals your body to heal. I took that advice to heart, keeping busy with travel, working long hours, and socializing. People kept congratulating me on how well I was doing. Inside, I felt nothing like my old self.

Advised by my physiotherapist to meditate, I started doing app-guided breathing exercises and reading about meditation online. Critics warn that Jhourney risks reducing a profound contemplative path to a quick fix. Truthfully, that’s what appealed when I first emailed Gruver and Zerfas asking if I could attend a retreat and write about it. I’d already lost countless hours to medical appointments, hospital stays, and simply being in pain. I wanted to feel better, and soon.

At the start of the retreat, I hand in my phone, unplugging from email and the news cycle for the first time in a decade. My days begin with lakeside walks in the morning mist, followed by ecstatic dance at 6:45 a.m. and yoga at 11 a.m. Group meditation sessions bookend each day. Most days I meditate for six to eight hours, lying on a sofa or under the trees listening to birdsong.

But meditation, I discover, isn’t inherently relaxing. Humans aren’t designed to be still; meditation involves rewiring evolutionary instincts to seek pleasure and avoid pain. A retreat forces you to confront your psychology, Devaney says: “It’s really gnarly work—not a day at the spa.”

The first morning, we’re tasked with recalling positive memories as a way to spark the joy that might eventually lead to jhana. Instead, virtually every time I shut my eyes, I’m met with intense flashbacks from my year of medical crises. That evening, when someone mentions falling asleep during meditation, I’m shocked.

But the meditation works more quickly than I expected. Within a day, the flashbacks have faded and I find myself regularly drifting off. Over time, I stop policing my mind, no longer berating myself if I get distracted; if my inner critic pops up, I visualize putting her in a hammock to lie down. I become more alert to what I enjoy: one morning, during dance, I realize I am no longer having fun, and rather than forcing myself to stay out of some misplaced sense of obligation, I simply leave.

Still, cultivating positive emotions is harder than I anticipated. I find my typical British stoicism, while useful in a crisis, has inadvertently muted my capacity for joy. When I recite mantras like May I be happy, an internal voice questions my right to happiness in a world full of suffering. The idea of unearned joy feels almost transgressive, undermining everything I’ve learned about needing to work hard and accomplish things in order to be happy.

A turning point comes halfway through the retreat, during a forgiveness meditation. Tears flow as I realize how much anger I’ve been harboring—toward doctors who’d dismissed my symptoms, myself for not seeking help sooner, people in my life who couldn’t see my suffering. As I walk by the lake afterward, listening to birds chirping and frogs croaking, I feel the anger flow through me, white and hot and cleansing.

Soon, I find myself more attuned to my body, able to examine whether an emotion feels open (like joy) or closed (like frustration). We are advised to take cold showers and taste hot sauce, to notice when we are bracing against experience rather than surrendering to it. Gradually, I feel the tingles that apparently signal the start of the jhanas, the kind of thing I once might have dismissed as pins and needles. (Piti is the term Buddhists use; I think of it as a bubbly golden liquid, like champagne.) But I keep running into unexpected resistance, and the doorway to the jhanas shuts.

Of course, I’m not alone in my struggles. “There was an aspect of the Jhourney retreat that felt like you were a Pokémon and they were trying to get you to evolve jhana levels as quickly as possible in a week,” one participant tells me. That strikes a chord: as the days pass, I increasingly feel the pressure of being surrounded by goal-oriented people who are succeeding where I am not.

Succeeding at what, exactly? One of the challenges with the jhanas is that as with falling in love, ordinary speech doesn’t seem to do them justice. Analogies abound: getting goose bumps while listening to music; cuddling with a partner after sex; the satisfaction of completing a major project. The initial jhanas, characterized by high-energy experiences, seem to vary dramatically. One Jhourney participant likens the first jhana to the jolt of putting your tongue onto a battery, while another describes a floating sensation so intense that she wondered if her water had been laced with MDMA. There’s more consensus about the fourth jhana, however, which seems to be characterized by a deep peace and equanimity, a stark contrast to the internal dissonance most of us are used to in everyday life—thinking about emails while talking to a loved one or worrying about a past conversation while trying to enjoy a party. The fourth jhana, Devaney says, “feels like every atom in your body has had a nice meal, a good glass of water, and is sitting back in its armchair after dinner. It’s very profoundly like your whole system is on the same page.”

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This unified state of mind can be a powerful tool for introspection and insight. Many Buddhists see the jhanas as preparation for deeper meditation leading to awakening, not as ends in themselves. “Jhanas offer a systematic training in letting go,” says Shaila Catherine, author of Focused and Fearless (recently republished as The Jhanas). “A mark of genuine mastery of jhana is dispassion toward pleasure, not seeking it on demand.” But some believe that even for those without loftier spiritual goals, the jhanas can be valuable—helping people “move their emotional set point a little more towards the happy scale,” as Brasington puts it.

There are also intense debates about what “counts.” Some teachers, like Catherine, say that jhana requires you to remain completely absorbed for long stretches without a single thought arising. Rasmussen, who co-authored Practicing the Jhanas, believes Jhourney is teaching pleasurable states that fall short of true jhana, which she compares to steam powerful enough to drive a locomotive. “If people think it’s steam when it’s water,” she says, “that is false advertising.”

This is hardly new: for almost as long as people have been practicing the jhanas, they’ve been arguing over how to define them. Brasington says the disagreement stems partly from varying interpretations of ancient texts and partly from the fact people are inclined to believe their way is the right way. “Spiritual teachers, unless they’re really advanced, are just plain old human beings,” he says.

While some teachers see “lighter” versions of the jhanas as more practical for modern lives, concerns persist about diluting the term. Jhourney stands by its use of jhana, emphasizing that it’s transparent about traditional definitions and helps connect participants with resources and teachers if they want to pursue further practice. “We’re just helping people experience more joy when they meditate,” Gruver says. “That seems like such an unambiguously good thing to me.”

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Rui Bao, who works in public education, compares her experience during a February retreat to six to eight months of therapy progress, saying it felt as though she were “sitting in a circle holding hands and singing kumbaya with all the different parts of myself.” Jake Eaton, a magazine editor, describes a cathartic experience in which he grieved for the turbulence of his childhood while feeling gratitude for the progress he’s made since. Even people who don’t reach jhana can find therapeutic effects, like one man who cried for the first time in 30 years during his Jhourney retreat. 

And for some, the benefits can be lasting. Startup founder Ruby Yu says since her retreat last fall, her self-critical voice has quietened, she can’t remember the last time she got angry, and she’s much more familiar with joy. “That baseline of unpleasantness is much, much lighter,” says Yu, who is now working with Rasmussen to deepen her practice. “Whether or not it’s what the Buddha was truly talking about in the suttas, I don’t care. All I care is that it made meditation a lot easier for me.”

While it’s tempting to think that science will be able to resolve these centuries-old debates, neuroscientists say it’s difficult to define exactly at what point something is or isn’t a jhana. “What we know is that the mind has the capacity to get deeply absorbed by certain experiences,” says Mago, the McGill neuroscientist. “What’s right or wrong in the end is defined by what helps people.”

Richard J. Davidson, founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, notes that even modest amounts of meditation—under 10 hours of practice in beginners—can change brain plasticity. But he cautions against commercializing the jhanas prematurely. “People saying this benefits them is all well and good, but without real scientific evidence, we have no idea,” he says. “Anyone trying to monetize this should raise red flags.”

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Neuroscientists are increasingly trying to understand how the jhanas might affect the brain. A January study out of Harvard and Mass General found that the jhanas are related to distinct patterns of neural activity across various parts of the brain that correspond with experiential aspects including attention, joy, and equanimity. Preliminary research by Mago and Michael Lifshitz, an assistant professor of psychiatry at McGill, showed that during deep jhana meditation, patterns of communication in the brain became more flexible and unpredictable and practitioners showed increased cognitive diversity and creativity afterward. These early findings align with theories that deep concentration can short-circuit the brain’s predictive mechanisms—leading to vivid, direct experience as mental chatter falls away. “Our perception of the world is much more malleable and adaptable than we think,” says Lifshitz, “and we can deliberately train our experience to function differently.”

By my final full day on retreat, I’m noticing a subtle internal shift, as if the mental creases that had gathered inside me were smoothing out. Still, I haven’t experienced a jhana, and I find it hard to shake the idea that I’m letting down not just my instructors but also my future readers. Experts say that paradox seems to lie at the heart of jhana. “You need to want it, but also be OK with not getting it,” says philosopher and meditation researcher Terje Sparby. Over lunch, I share my dismay with instructor Grant Belsterling, who encourages me to reframe my experience—to think of happiness less as a state and more as an ongoing process. “You can have a goal without devaluing where you’re currently standing,” he tells me.

That afternoon, during a final 45-minute guided session with curriculum director Judah Newman, I lie on a sofa with my eyes shut and describe a warm yellow feeling of friendliness spreading through my body. Soon I run into a familiar obstacle: the lower left half of my body—still suffering nerve damage—is unable to fully experience that. For months, I’ve been in something of a holding pattern, with no way of knowing if I might regain the sensation I’d lost. Newman asks what the frustration is trying to tell me. “To accept that things won’t ever be the same again,” I reply. Another thought immediately follows: But they can still be good.

This realization unlocks something powerful. Suddenly, a luminous yellow substance washes over me, as if hope is saturating every cell of my body. My mind is filled with a montage of positive images of the future. I can’t stop smiling. After Newman leaves the room, the energy ebbs and flows, alternating between deep contentment and intense glee. At one point, I laugh uncontrollably for a minute or two. It feels like being on a drug.

When he returns, I tell him about my experience. He smiles: “That’s usually what I think of as the first jhana.”

Whether it’s real or “diluted” seems beside the point. For the rest of the afternoon, I experience a kind of surreal afterglow: flowers and leaves seem brighter, ordinary things are funnier, and I feel a newfound lightness toward people around me. For months, my body had felt alien and disconnected. Now I’m finally embracing it as a whole, capable of both pain and profound joy. For the first time in a long time, I feel compassion rather than frustration toward myself.

Jhourney’s motto, “Come for the bliss, stay for the personal growth,” acknowledges that while confronting internal conflicts can be unpleasant, it’s often transformative. But as meditation has gone mainstream, the marketing has often glossed over its primary purpose: radically transforming one’s sense of self and reality. That reshaping of perception can be seriously destabilizing. “People didn’t know what they were signing up for when they were just paying attention to their breath,” says Ruben Laukkonen, a meditation researcher at Australia’s Southern Cross University.

There’s an increasing awareness of the potential risks of meditation, especially in high doses, as reports of depression, anxiety, and psychosis, though rare, have surfaced. “The journey to the cliff edge can be incredibly short,” warns Daniel Ingram, a retired emergency-medicine physician and author of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha.

One woman’s Jhourney experience illustrates these concerns. The woman, who requested anonymity to protect her privacy, says she had informed the company of her history with depression but quickly began to feel highly agitated during an online retreat. “For about a month after, I lived in a state of very intense alarm,” says the woman, who left early, in part because of a family matter. While she thinks the experience may have ultimately been beneficial, it felt unpredictable. And though she praised the facilitators’ compassionate response, she didn’t seek further help from them, feeling that they were too young and inexperienced to guide her. More troublingly, fellow meditators discouraged her from speaking out, fearing she might “tank” a cool new company. “In this splash of enthusiasm, people who have a bad experience might be tempted not to talk about it,” she says, “because they’re afraid that they’ll seem like buzzkills.”

Jhourney declines to comment on specific individuals but acknowledges the risks, estimating that 1% of participants have experienced difficult emotions from some sort of internal conflict or trauma—but claiming they almost all later find the experience positive. Establishing the dangers of meditation is tricky: no one tracks base rates; meditation may attract those with pre-existing psychological challenges; some believe discussing negative experiences can become self-fulfilling prophecies; factors like participant selection criteria, dosage, and meditation technique all play a role. (Jhourney uses Imperial College London’s exclusion criteria for psychedelic research to screen participants.)

Critics like meditation teacher Vince Horn have accused Jhourney of “arrogantly endangering people’s mental health” in pursuit of capital gain. But Zerfas and Gruver believe their approach is safer than that of other retreats, highlighting innovative measures they’ve implemented in consultation with top experts. David Treleaven, author of Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness, says Jhourney’s plan sets a new industry standard, “the kind of thorough and thoughtful approach I’ve long hoped to see in the field of meditation.”

Much of the backlash against Jhourney stems from a deeper skepticism among many Buddhists toward commercializing spiritual practices. They warn that fast-tracking the jhanas outside of the structure of ancient lineages risks overlooking crucial insights and that meditation stripped of its ethical core could be weaponized for ego-boosting or other destructive tendencies. 

And yet millions could potentially benefit from deep meditative practices without subscribing to Buddhist norms. Secular teachings may also offer people more agency than traditional hierarchical models. “We want a plurality of ethics,” says Lifshitz. “We don’t want to assume that just because someone is a skilled meditator and a good teacher they have the right ideas about what’s good in the world.” 

Zerfas doesn’t believe any religion can claim IP on the jhanas, calling them “discoveries, not inventions.” He says it’s almost a “moral imperative” to share them widely, and companies can scale access more effectively than nonprofits. “For-profit models live or die by their impact,” he says.

And while Gruver recognizes that Jhourney’s current staff may be positioned to teach a certain audience, he remains optimistic that over time, many organizations could work together to discover how different demographics best learn these techniques. “There are going to be hundreds of approaches to this problem. We just want that work to get done.”

In the final season of the TV show The Good Place, the characters arrive in the afterlife only to discover that even eternal bliss can lose its luster. With every desire met, the residents of the actual Good Place, or heaven, have become apathetic, their lives stripped of purpose. “Everyone is a happiness zombie!” one character exclaims.

The scene captures a key concern some Buddhists have about Jhourney’s approach. They fear it might create “jhana junkies” who get overly attached to pleasurable states, missing out on deeper spiritual insights that reduce self-interest and increase wisdom and compassion. Critics argue that without proper follow-up, practitioners might just sit around getting high on self-generated pleasure.

Yet to my surprise, it seems that for most people, finding the bliss button doesn’t make you want to press it all the time. Sasha Chapin, a writer who has been meditating for over a decade, describes the jhanas as “cool toys that you tend to put away after an initial period of obsession.” Pure pleasure, it turns out, isn’t really what humans want.

Modern meditation culture draws in a wide array of people, from the deeply suffering to the casually curious, from spiritual New Age seekers to productivity hackers. “Aren’t we all here to become a more effective person?” one man candidly remarked during my retreat. While it’s easy to dismiss the interest in the jhanas as another Silicon Valley fad, Devaney argues that even the much derided Bay Area “optimizer” mindset can be a starting point for real transformation. “If you’re going to try to do something to make yourself feel better than other people, it’s better to meditate than to buy a helicopter,” she says. “Eventually, the meditation is going to show you yourself in a way that buying all the helicopters is not.”

For all the debates, Jhourney does seem to be offering a taste of profound states to many who might otherwise never encounter them. Some participants, myself included, discover a new appreciation for meditation that may ultimately lead to deeper self-exploration. “Jhana is like pouring water onto the leaves of a plant,” Cammarata argues. “It also goes very deeply into the roots, whether you know it or not.”

My curiosity about Jhourney had been sparked by a desire for a quick fix. On my retreat, I realized how impossible that was. Two months and many hours of meditation later, my emotional range has widened. I feel love and joy more strongly, and while self-compassion may not come naturally, I’m less inclined to fight my body’s limitations—instead tapping back into that feeling of wholeness. In trying to make myself “better,” I stumbled upon an age-old lesson: true peace comes from accepting things just as they are.