#we had bought some lego thing for my brother but later found out that he doesn't really care about legos

[newtness532]

this doesnt count as buying a book because the packaging was cool

[michellebyee]

My First Taste of the Dream

All characters and corporations or establishments appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

his content is intended for mature audiences only (18+). By choosing to proceed, you acknowledge and understand that you may encounter explicit adult material.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Let Us Play Family

Dressing Up for Tim

Heading Out as a Couple

Going To Bed Together

Something I Have Never Felt Before

More and More Times

Introduction

This is a story that happened to me when I was about 12 or 13 years old. There is no way that this person will ever find this blog but I am going to change the names here for their own security. If the real person reads this, I really hope that they get in touch with me because we haven’t talked in over 30+ years.

While growing up in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in the 70’s and 80’s, I had my best friends that lived on the same street, Darren, Craig and Tim. Tim used to live down the street but his parents sold that home and bought the house across the street from my house. I thought it was great. We would hang out all of the Time, playing boy stuff like street hockey, football, basketball. Everyone loved to come over to our house. We had a big finished basement that we could hang out and play.

So we would play in the basement and make up all of these games. Games with play money (we would use Monopoly or another board game money), Lots of stuff building with Lego. Basic kid stuff.

Let Us Play Family

Well we were just playing just the both of the two of us and he wanted to play a game called "family". He said that we would be a couple. We would figure out later who would be who but he said he would like to be the father and asked if I could be the mother. I guess I was a little submissive back then or I really didn't think about it and said that can be the mother.

Instead of calling me by my real first name, Tim thought it was weird, as did I, and said that he would like to call me Michelle. 

BTW, I have stuck with the name of Michelle since those days. I have always liked the name and I especially like it when I hear other people call me by that name.

So he would pretend to go away (just like he was gone for work) while I stayed home. He would come back into the basement after only a few minutes. That would signal that would be the end of the day. 

A couple of times he would come downstairs and say, “Hello Michelle. I am home. How are you?” Other times he would call me “Honey” and/or “Sweetie”. I really liked it when he called me by new name.

After he would “get home”, we would sit down, relax, have some pretend dinner (chips, pop, etc.) and then maybe play some pool. It was nice that we had a pool table in our basement. I think that’s also why lots of people liked to come over to our house. LOL Other times we would play a board game.

When I think about it now, Tim did grow up in a broken family. His parents were divorced (one of the few divorced parents that anyone really knew). Tim lived with his 2 other siblings. He has an older brother and a younger sister so, if it is true, things are different for the “middle child”. Some people think that is true and others brush it off. I can only assume he was doing this so that he could be part of a family.

We would keep on playing this game often when it was just the two of us only. 

He said to me once, “I think it would be weird to play this game with more people. So why don’t we just keep this as a game between the two of us.” Without any hesitation, I definitely agreed with him.

Dressing up for Tim

Personally, I grew up with two older sisters. I remember when I was younger, they used to practice putting make-up on me and dressing me up in some of their clothes. I’ll be honest, it did feel weird to start but it didn’t bother me. To me, it was something to do with my sisters when my parents went out for the evening. I don’t even know if my parents found out. Even if they did, I don’t think they would think much about it.

So one afternoon, when I had the house to myself, I quickly ran upstairs to my closest sister’s closet to see if I could find something to wear because I knew that Tim was coming over. I remember my sister putting on this cute dress on me a couple of days ago and she saying, “Hey. That looks pretty good on you. Too bad it is my dress.” We all laughed but I remembered that comment and that’s what I wanted to wear for Tim.

So, I've never been one to turn down a dare, especially when it came from one of my best friends, Tim. We've been inseparable since we were kids, always getting into mischief and pushing each other's limits. But this dare was different. It wasn't about jumping off cliffs or sneaking into abandoned buildings; it was about stepping into someone else's shoes, quite literally.

It all started one lazy summer afternoon, just last year, when Tim and I were flipping through old magazines in my basement. We stumbled upon an article about gender-bending fashion, showcasing models sporting outfits traditionally meant for the opposite sex. Tim chuckled and nudged me.

"Hey, wouldn't it be hilarious if you dressed up as a girl for a day?"

I laughed, thinking he was joking. But the mischievous glint in his eyes told me otherwise. Tim was dead serious.

"I don't know, man. That's kinda... out there," I stuttered, unsure of how to respond.

"Come on, it'll be fun! We can pretend you're my wife for a day. You know, play house or something," Tim grinned, his enthusiasm infectious.

I hesitated, but the thought of spending a day goofing around with Tim was too tempting to resist. So, against my better judgement, I agreed. “I promise one of these days, I will do it.” He said, “OK” and we really didn’t think much more about it. I was waiting for him to bring it up again but I guess he had forgotten about it.

Well now it was time to keep up about that promise/dare.

My parents and sisters were going to be out for the whole day and no one would be home until later in the evening. My parents even left me some money for me to pick up some dinner later. They left me enough to feed at least a couple of people and told me to go and pick up a pizza and, if I wanted to, I could invite one of my friends over for dinner. They just said, “Try not to get in too much trouble.” They trusted me and I have been very responsible when I have been left alone before.

I searched through my sister’s closet, looking for that dress and also not to disturb much. I didn’t want her to find out about me borrowing that dress. Finally, I found it. “There you are!” I put it on and looked at myself in the mirror and said to myself, “I look good but I need some boobs.” I looked around her room and found her bra drawer and picked out the nicest bra. I put it on and then grabbed some socks and tissue paper and proceeded to stuff the bra. When I thought I had enough, I put the dress back on and looked at myself in the mirror again and I was really shocked at what I was looking at. I really looked good. 

I grabbed a pair of her shoes. I was lucky that at that time in my life, I was in the same size shoes as she was. I really didn’t “sprout” until I was close to 17/18 years old so I was very short at that age.

I headed downstairs, picked up the phone and called Tim. I told him, “Come on over at any time and I have a surprise for you when you get here.” It felt like hours but I think it was only 15-20 minutes when I heard the back door open. 

As I anxiously awaited Tim's arrival, my heart raced with a mixture of excitement and nervousness. It had been Tim's idea for us to go shopping together today, something we hadn't done in ages. I couldn't help but feel a flutter of anticipation in my chest, knowing that today was going to be different.

When I heard the back door open, I practically jumped out of my seat. I was so eager to greet my best friend. I yelled out, “Come on up. I am in the Family room. No one else is here. My parents and sisters are out all day.”

And there he stood, with his signature grin plastered across his face, his eyes lighting up at the sight of me.

"Hey, Michelle!" Tim exclaimed, giving me a quick once-over before pulling me into a tight hug. "You look great!"

I couldn't help but blush at his compliment, feeling a surge of happiness at his reaction. Little did he know that the outfit I wore was carefully chosen from my sister’s closet, something I had never dared to wear outside the confines of my bedroom.

But today was different. Today, Tim was going to help me step out of my comfort zone.

As we settled into the family room, I couldn't contain my nerves. Would Tim think I was crazy for wanting to dress up as Michelle, even just for fun? But as I tentatively broached the subject, his eyes sparkled with excitement.

"Are you serious? That sounds like so much fun!" Tim exclaimed, his enthusiasm contagious.

“OK! Let’s do it. I need your help! My sisters always did my makeup and I want to put some on.” Tim looked at me shocked. “Yes, I have allowed my sisters to put makeup on me. Where do you think I found this dress?”

Tim looked at me, “Michelle, I learn new things about you every day.”

“And that is a good or bad thing?”

“Definitely a good thing. Now let me see if I can help you with your makeup.” We both got up, laughed a little and headed up to my sister’s room to see what makeup we could find.

With Tim's encouragement, I carefully applied makeup, transforming my face into Michelle's. It felt surreal seeing myself in the mirror, a different version of me staring back. But with Tim's guidance and support, I began to feel more confident, more comfortable in my own skin.

Once we were both ready, we exchanged glances, a silent agreement passing between us. Today, we weren't just two teenage boys going out for a shopping spree. Today, we were going out as a couple, albeit a slightly unconventional one.

Heading Out as a Couple

As we walked hand in hand down the street, I couldn't help but feel a sense of freedom, a sense of joy bubbling up inside me. With Tim by my side, I felt invincible, unafraid to be who I truly was.

And as we passed by curious onlookers, I held my head high, a smile playing at my lips. Because today, I wasn't afraid to show the world the real me, thanks to the unwavering support of my best friend, Tim.

As we stepped into the first store, filled with trendy clothes for young men, I couldn't help but feel a surge of excitement. Tim and I sifted through racks of colourful shirts and stylish jeans, laughing and joking as I watched Tim try on different outfits. I would give my open and honest opinion. It felt liberating to be able to browse without any self-imposed restrictions, to simply enjoy the experience with my best friend by my side. Tim picked up a couple of shirts and a pair of really cool jeans.

Next, we ventured into the young women's clothing boutique, a haven of lace and sequins that seemed to sparkle under the fluorescent lights. With Tim's guidance, I explored aisles of flowing dresses and delicate accessories. Tim and I picked out a couple of outfits and I went into the dressing room to try them on. Trying on all of these outfits made me feel like a whole new person. As I would come out of the change room, Tim would look at me differently. Sometimes a huge smile and then just a frown because he didn’t like how it looked on me.

As we left the boutique, our arms laden with shopping bags, our stomachs rumbled with hunger. We decided to grab a quick bite to eat, choosing a cosy café where we could unwind and recharge.

Over plates of steaming pasta and glasses of ice-cold lemonade, we chatted and laughed, relishing in the simple pleasure of each other's company. It felt like we were in our own little bubble, away from the judgmental stares and expectations of the outside world.

After lunch, we made our way to the final store on our list: an electronics store. Here, we lost ourselves in a sea of gadgets and gizmos, marveling at the latest stereos and “boomboxes”. I really wanted to pick up this amazing JVC boombox but Tim was smart enough to help persuade me to change my mind.

With our shopping adventure complete and our bags bulging with purchases, we headed back home. On our way home, we stopped off at our local pizza joint and picked up a pizza and some pop. With the warm aroma of pizza guiding us back to my place. As we settled in for the night, munching on slices of cheesy goodness, I couldn't help but feel grateful for the day we had shared.

Thanks to Tim, I had stepped out of my comfort zone and embraced a side of myself I had kept hidden for far too long and something that really felt natural to me. I knew, at this point in time of my life, as I looked at him, smiling across the table, I knew that with him by my side, there was nothing we couldn't conquer together and I could explore more of being Michelle.

Going To Bed Together

Over the next couple of weeks and months, Tim and I would venture out as a couple and over some time, I accumulated myself a small wardrobe of women’s clothing. Some blouses and skirts, some dresses and even some lingerie. I found a very good hiding place for all of it in the basement so none of my family would find it. Ever since that day that we went out, if I knew it was just Tim and I, I would dress up as Michelle. 

Well one afternoon, while we were playing, usually when we thought it was late in the day, we would just pick up the game as if we just woke up in the morning and it was a brand new day. But this time Tim said, “Instead of ending the day like we usually do, why don't we go to bed together?”

Submissive? Naïve? or just curious? I think, back then, maybe I was a little of all of them. So, I agreed. 

In the basement of my house, it was broken up into a couple of different small and big rooms. You had the furnace room but that was always too warm and loud. Laundry room was too small with all of the appliances. Beside that room was a very nice sized room. Not much inside of it and it was mostly for storage along one wall. Tim and I agreed that this would be the bedroom. 

I was thinking that if we were going to be going to bed together, I should probably wear something appropriate so I slipped into our room, went over to my secret stash of clothes and found this very silky nightie with the matching panty.

So we went into the “bedroom”, pulled out a couple of sleeping bags and opened them up. We made pillows out of other sleeping bags. We even found an old mattress that we could put on the very hard concrete floor. We promised each other that we would bring it out and put it back such that no one would ask why it was there.

With the bedroom all set up, I told Tim that I will be right back. I was thinking that if we were going to be going to bed together, I should probably wear something appropriate so I stepped out of our “bedroom” and went into another room, went over to my secret stash of clothes and found this very silky nightie with the matching panty. As I was changing into these very sexy clothing, I remember thinking to myself, “Is this really what you want to do?” Then, promptly answering, “Yes. I don’t know why but Yes.”

All changed, I headed back into the bedroom and Tim looked at me and smiled. 

“I remember buying that for you about a week ago. That was really fun in that store, watching you try on different pieces. I remember that this is the one that stood out and now I know why because you look amazing.”

With those very kind words, I think I started to blush a little and I sat down on the bed and we lay down together. Immediately, Tim put his arm around me and pulled me a little closer. 

I could feel my heart pounding against my chest, and I stole some glances at Tim, as I noticed the slight tremble in his hands.

"Hey," Tim said softly, breaking the silence that had settled between us. "Are you okay?"

I slowly turned to him, my eyes wide with apprehension. "I'm just... nervous, I guess. Don’t you think this is a little weird?"

Tim nodded, his expression soft with empathy. "There's nothing to be nervous about. We're just lying here together. It's not a big deal."

I felt a wave of gratitude wash over me at his words, the tension in my body beginning to loosen. "Yeah, you're right. I'm just overthinking things, as usual."

We fell into a comfortable silence, the weight of our shared apprehension gradually lifting. I felt myself relaxing, the rhythmic rise and fall of Tim's breath soothing my frazzled nerves. And then, in a moment of bravery, he turned to me, his eyes searching mine with a newfound intensity.

"Michelle," he whispered, his voice barely audible in the quiet room.

I held my breath, my heart hammering against my ribcage as I met his gaze. And then, without hesitation, he leaned in, his lips brushing against mine in a tender, hesitant kiss.

It was like a sigh of relief, the nervousness melting away as we melted into each other. In that fleeting moment, there was only the warmth of Tim's touch, the softness of his lips against mine. We kissed with a tenderness that spoke volumes, our fears and uncertainties fading into the background.

"Wow," I breathed when we finally pulled away, my cheeks flushed with colour.

Tim's grin mirrored my own, his eyes sparkling with newfound confidence. "Yeah, wow."

Something I Have Never Felt Before

We were nestled under the warmth of the covers, our bodies close but not touching. The air was filled with a quiet intimacy, a feeling I had never experienced before with anyone else.

As I lay there, my heart fluttered with anticipation. Tim shifted slightly, his hand brushing against mine. It was a simple gesture, yet it sent a jolt of electricity through me, igniting sensations I had never known. His touch was different, tender yet electrifying, like a spark dancing across my skin.

I turned to look at him, our eyes meeting in the dim light. His gaze was soft, filled with an unspoken understanding. Without a word, he reached out and traced a feather-light path along my arm, sending shivers down my spine. It was as if his touch awakened something deep within me, stirring feelings I had kept hidden away for so long.

I closed my eyes, losing myself in the sensation of his fingers against my skin. Each caress felt like a revelation, unlocking a newfound desire that I never knew existed. In that moment, lying there with Tim, I felt truly alive, as if I had finally found the missing piece of myself.

Time seemed to stand still as we lay there, lost in the intimacy of the moment. And as his touch lingered, I knew that this was just the beginning of something beautiful. With Tim by my side, I was ready to explore this newfound connection and the inevitable passion that awaited us.

Tim’s hand slides under my nightie as I feel his soft hands on my skin. As I lie there, he gives me small kisses as his hand explores my chest. Playing a little with my erect nipples his hand slides down my chest towards my stomach. 

His hand slides down a little more to the edge of my panty. His fingers slide under as hind hand moves down. Then I feel his hand on my very erect cock. Hi whispers, “Oh my! Someone is enjoying themselves.” I whisper back, “Very much so!”

Tim’s kisses are much more passionate now as his hand slides up and down and around my cock. He whispers again, “Oh, you are so hard. I want to play with your pussy!” 

“Before that, I want to do something for you! Lie down on your back for me!”

“For sure!”

Tim lays down on the bed on his back. He isn’t wearing a shirt and I can see his beautiful chest. Below his chest, hiding under some underwear, is a quite large and beautiful mound. I give him a kiss on the lips and then start to kiss down his body. As I am kissing him, my body and hands rub against his wonderful mound. As I move down his chest to his stomach, I pull his underwear down to reveal quite a large cock. 

As a reference, I think his cock is significantly larger than my own. I guess he started early in his development in that area of his body. 

You can feel my breath against your now very hard cock. I open my mouth a little until you feel the tip against my lips. My mouth opens a little as the tip slides inside. I flick the tip a little as I open my mouth a little wider such that Tim’s hard cock can slide in. Sliding in deeper and deeper, my mouth consumes his throbbing cock all the way. I can’t believe how amazing and filling his cock feels in my mouth.

I slowly start to pull up as I start to suck a little harder. I suck on the tip and then slide his throbbing hard cock back inside your mouth. I can’t believe but I can feel his cock getting even harder. I can hear him moaning very loudly as I know that what I am doing is pleasing him very much. This turns me on even more as my sucking of his cock slowly becomes a little faster, a little harder sucking and then the occasional full thrust deep in my mouth. It gags me a little as I pull it out quickly but then I slide it back inside my mouth as fast as it came out. 

I continue as his moaning becomes deeper and heavier. Tim starts to lift his hips as he tries to thrust his cock deeper into my mouth.

As I am sucking your cock, your hand has found my “pussy” as you slide your finger around in circles. You pull back to drip saliva on your fingers and then your hand heads back to my “pussy”. You slide your fingers around and then you gently push your finger inside of me. I moan gently; I yelp,  “Oh my fucking god that feels good!”

This triggers my mouth to suck a little harder. You reach down more and then start to really finger fuck my “pussy”. “Your pussy feels so good! I want to fuck you so badly.”

“Oh I want you to do that too but first I want you to cum deep down my throat!” As you are about to cum, you push your finger as deep as you can inside of me. The words I gave you trigger your explosion of your cum as it shoots deep inside my mouth. I suck on your cock deeply trying to drink every drop of your juice.

I take your cock out of my mouth, wipe it clean off your hot, tasty cum, slide up your chest, give you a kiss on the cheek.

“OMG. That was incredible. You have to have done that to another guy. Right?”

“Nope!” as I chuckle. “You were my first and, after that experience, I hope not my last with you or with someone else.”

“Oh you can do that any time you want” Tim exclaims. 

“Do you want anything to eat or drink? We have to get your energy back up because your finger in my “ass”... Tim quickly interrupts me. “Don’t call it that. Please call it your pussy, cunt, anything but ass.” 

“Sorry. As I was saying, your finger in my pussy felt “soooooo” good. Never felt that before and that was amazing. After feeling that, I want to feel your cock inside of me.”

“Why don’t you lie down on your stomach. Let me pamper you a little.”

I roll over and lie on my stomach. “I’ll be right back. I need to go to the washroom.” Tim gets up from the bed and heads out of the bedroom. 

Tim climbs onto the bed, and I hear a bottle open. Then I feel a warm oil dripping on my back. I feel hands start to rub the oil all over my back as he goes ahead and starts to give me a wonderful massage. As he massages my back, his hands move lower towards my mid-section and towards my bum. I feel some more drops of oil drip onto my upper thighs and ass. Both of his hands slowly massage my legs and creep up and start to massage my butt. I can feel your fingers teasing my asshole. 

A couple more drops of oil but this time directly between the crack of my ass. I can feel your fingers making circles around my wanting hole and then I feel a finger push and slide in. This sends amazing, euphoric shivers throughout my body as I naturally lift my butt a little into the air and spread my legs a little to give you better access.

As you slide your finger in and out of my ass, you pull it out and then I feel the tip of what feels like a cock. I ask you, “Is that your cock? Because when you fuck me, I want to be on my back because I want to see your eyes as you slide your cock inside of me?”

“No, sweetie. It is just a small dildo.” 

“Where did you get that from?” 

“No worries about that. I stole it from my house. I found it and wanted to bring it over. Your ass looked so tight, I didn’t want to hurt you with my cock so I thought a little fun with a small toy will open you up a little.”

“Oh, thank you! But please, just a little because I want to feel your cock inside of me more than anything now.”

As Tim pushes the small dildo inside of me, I try to relax as much as I can to let my hole open up. As I relax, the toy slides in quite easily and he gasps, “Oh my that went in quite easily. I am surprised at the great control over your muscles.”

“All I have to do is just relax and think of your cock either deep inside of me or in my mouth.”

Tim pulled out the toy and then asked me to flip over onto my back. I quickly oblige as I grab a pillow to put under my ass. I spread my legs as wide as I can and pull them back. Even though I am completely exposed to you, I feel very comfortable. 

He kneels on the floor as his face comes up to my wide open legs. Then I feel the most incredible feeling as he starts to rim my ass with his tongue and start to lick it. I moan loudly as he picks up that I am enjoying this very much. He licks my balls a little and then moves back down to my lovely hole.

He starts to kiss up my legs as your body starts to come closer to mine. The anticipation is just killing me. And then I feel your cock against my ass. He gets out the oil and gives a couple of drops around my asshole and also on his lovely cock. I can’t see it, but I can feel that it is already very hard.

You stroke your cock a little to spread the oil and then press the tip against my hole. Just at that time, Tim looks up and can see me staring into his eyes. I really hope they are saying, “FUCK ME Tim! FUCK ME NOW!”

You take your hand and start to guide your cock as you start to push the tip inside of me. I look into your eyes and do a very slow exhale to relax my muscles and the tip slides in smoothly. 

I yelp out, “Oh my GOD! Does that ever feel good!”

You push in a little more as I feel your very hard cock fill me. You go very slowly but I can feel your cock slide deeper and deeper inside of me. I can feel his cock filling my pussy with every inch. I am in complete Euphoria right at this moment. I let out a loud moan as you push your cock deeper and deeper inside of me. How much more is there? I want to feel every inch of his cock deep inside of me.

Finally, I feel your stomach slap against my body as Tim slides his hard cock in and out of my “pussy”. I look into your eyes and tell him, “That feels absolutely amazing! Please fuck me, sweetie!”

“I can’t believe how nice it feels. I thought you were going to be very tight, but you have opened up nicely.”

With those words, I squeeze my muscles as he feels my pussy start to squeeze his cock. “Holy crap you really do have some amazing muscle control down there.” For the next couple of thrusts, I squeeze and relax my muscles to give Tim’s cock a lovely feeling. 

Your thrusts are now getting longer and stronger as I can see in his eyes that he really wants to pound my “pussy” and I am not stopping you. With everything thrust, both of us moan loudly. Tim even yells out, “Take all of my cock!” and I quickly respond, “Oh yes, all of it.”

After what felt like an eternity, Tim looks into my eyes and tells me, “I am getting close to cumming.” With those words, I concentrate on squeezing my muscles as tight as I can. With the thrusts and the squeezing, an incredible sensation comes over me. It feels like my ass could explode. 

I beg and yell out, “PLEASE cum deep inside of me!”

It is like the words had some type of an effect on the both of us but at that moment, I could feel your cum filling my ass. Once I felt that inside of me, I had this amazing feeling rush through my body. After further looking into it, there is a very good chance that I had an amazing anal orgasm. Using all of my muscles, I squeezed Tim’s cock even tighter as I yelled out. Tim yelled out at the same time as we had an incredible unanimous orgasm together. As we were having this amazing orgasm, the incredible thing was that our eyes were locked on each other. Also, as we came, I will never forget the very warm feeling of his cum filling my ass. 

Right after, Tim falls forward gently into my arms as I hold him tightly and whisper in his ear, “Thank you! That was absolutely incredible.” 

“Oh, thank you!” 

Time starts to get up a little and then he starts to pull his cock slowly out of my ass. As he pulls it out, he can see drops of cum seep out of my hole. I am trying to control my muscles because I want to feel the warmth of your cum deep inside of me, but it is very hard, and I can even feel your cum dripping out. 

“Oh my god! You really filled me up! It feels amazing!”

“I don’t think I have cummed that much! Ever!”

You lie down on the bed beside me as I snuggle up against you. 

More and More Times

Whenever Tim would come over and it was just the both of us, I would be all dressed up for him. I would gladly give him a lovely Blow Job. We would be watching some TV and I would be snuggled up against his chest and my hands would wander. I would know when he was excited because he would be very fidgety and then I would see that wonderful mound grow. I would tease him as much as I could. He loved being teased because it seemed to make his cock get bigger and bigger. 

He would absolutely hate me when I teased him when his cock was in my mouth and I knew he was about to “blow his load” deep down my throat. I could taste his pre-cum and then I would start to tease him by not sucking so hard or pulling it out of my mouth and start to lick his hard shaft. I had him in my control and I loved it. The incredible thing is that he loved it too. 

He would beg me to help him cum. He would try to grab his shaft to stroke it but I would not allow him. 

When it was time, I would let him know and then I would go to town on his cock with my mouth and lips until he shot his full load down my throat.

I would try to resist him fucking me but I couldn’t give put up much resistance. His cock felt so good inside of me. I wanted to see if I waited a day or two, if it would feel any different. Instead, it felt amazing every time! 

It felt so good, I wanted more of it. So, one day, when I knew that I was going to be alone all day and Tim wasn’t coming over, I searched my sisters’ and parent’s bedrooms for any sex toys. I’ll be honest, we lived in an old house with very thin walls and I could hear what was going on in both of my sisters’ bedrooms. Both of them were over 18 so I knew that they could go to a sex shop. 

I found a very nice 8” realistic dildo in one of my sisters’ rooms. It looked so realistic. It tasted a little weird when I tried to lick it but I tried to think that it was Tim’s cock and not a dildo. I would practice different techniques and try to remember them to see if that worked with Tim. And yes, I fucked myself with it too and that felt so amazing but not as amazing as feeling Tim deep inside of me.

Ever since then, I have always owned some dildos and I would dress up as Michelle and fuck myself.

But I will never forget those times with Tim.

[ctrl-alt-tahu]

December 2nd

I really enjoyed last year's Bionicle Advent Calendar, when I wrote at least a snippet of fanfic every day, but I just don't have the time this year. Most of last year's was written in the slow times at work, and this year there just aren't any slow times. But I wanted to do something again, so you're going to get pictures and probably some descriptive/explanatory text. (Talking endlessly isn't "work" like writing fiction can be. Though, if we're lucky, maybe we'll get SOME ficlets later on.)

Today we're going back to the beginning! Onewa was my first Bionicle, the one who started it all. He wasn't even mine--not fully. My brother and I split him.

We were LEGO fans, solidly entrenched in it ag that point, but we had minimal Technic or interest in it and had passed on Throwbots and Roboriders completely and though we would do the same with Bionicles. The comics were kind of cool, but we were System fans, minifig fans. It just wasn't for us.

But our Mom knew we loved all kinds of LEGO and that we weren't very discriminating about it, so when she was Christmas shopping (this was October 2001), she found a marked-down Onewa in the clearance section and figured two or three dollars was worth a flier.

Onewa had been marked down because he'd been opened and one of his 5-module axles was missing. We stole a 4-module axle somewhere in our System sets and he was good to go. Our entire perspective on Bionicle flipped with him in our hands. What had looked (in our narrow, childhood judgement) as "weird" in the magazines and catalogues now looked really cool and fun in person.

A couple weeks later, we were sold on Bionicle enough that I "bought out" my brother's half and he put the money into buying a Turaga Matau. We also split a mask pack: a brown Pakari (mine) and a medium blue Ruru (my brother's). We were hooked, and we'd remain that way until about 2004: the colour change and the shift to Metru Nui matched a belated growing up, but it would still be a long, slow slide to my true Dark Ages, starting around 2009ish.

Because Onewa was the first and because we didn't really absorb all the media pre-movies, and because the Turaga had less real development as characters before 2004, I never pictured Onewa as the abrasive a-hole we got in LoMN. He was more of a Gandalf mentor type, and he's still kind of there for me. Reconciling him to LoMN has been a fertile ground for fiction for me.

Another big thing that LoMN contrasted with in our games was that Onewa had been the leader of our Turaga! If it was supposed to be clear, before 2004, that Vakama was the team leader, it was lost on us. I don't think we thought the Turaga HAD a leader, and Onewa, wise and strong (and the first one we had), got to be the team leader.

[kujakumai]

cleaned up old WIP, 2800 words, AU where Yami Bakura succeeds in switching hosts in DK and Mokuba makes friends with an evil ghost. Not going to be continued but it literally would not leave my brain alone until I finished it.

Things were not going according to plan.

The plan was to take control of a soulless puppet, an easy vessel incapable of interfering with his ends. He had the vessel, had accomplished that much, but he was not expecting the pharaoh and his little friends to succeed and convince Pegasus to give everyone their souls back. So now not only was there a second person in this body he had to keep suppressed, but now he was stuck impersonating a child, smiling through an awkward reunion and then placed onto a helicopter next to a gangly high school student who was watching him like a hawk.

The spirit-that-was-no-longer-Yami-Bakura knew that he was supposed to be Mokuba, but he did not remember the tall one's name. K-something. He had a stupid jacket and hardly took his eyes off him the entire ride, as if he thought his little brother was going to disappear in a puff of smoke when he wasn't looking. Annoying. Infuriating. Luckily it did not seem he wanted to talk, or at least accepted silence. No one expects recent kidnapping victims to say much, which was a boon. A little dazed, a little quiet, a little off, and no one really found it unusual.

They dropped off the pharaoh and his friends, and finally landed at a gaudy and ostentatious house so large it took him a second to realize it was a home at all, an absurd monument to decadence with grounds full of ugly topiaries. Wealth, then. Perhaps this wouldn't be so bad. He could work with this. The rich kid in the stupid coat quietly held his hand the entire walk up the driveway, until they entered a foyer just as gilded and obscene as the outside had been.

No, things were not going to plan, and playing grade-schooler was awkward and an insult to his dignity, and he was farther away from the other millennium items as he ever had been. He would have to grit his teeth through it until he could figure out the next step. In the meantime, perhaps, enjoy some amenities.

Richie rich sighed, relaxed his shoulders the moment they got inside. He looked at who he thought was his little brother and gave him a small, exhausted but genuine smile. He struggled with what to say next.

"Mokuba," he said, "I have to check on a few things in my office. See what kind of damage they did. Do you want to come with me?"

"No." Finally, a chance to be out of this idiot's sight.

This answer seemed to surprise him, a twitch of skepticism. "Will you be okay by yourself?"

He nodded. Keep answers short, when you're impersonating.

His face betrayed more skepticism, concern, and the tiniest hint of disappointment. As if rich kid himself was the one who was scared to be alone in his own house. He accepted the answer, though, to the spirit's relief.

Rich kid bent down and pulled him into a tight hug and ruffled his hair. "We'll get something special for dinner, okay? And ice cream."

"I do like ice cream." This was true. Ryou Bakura almost never bought ice cream, and when he did it was the stupid healthy kind that everyone knew shouldn't even really qualify as ice cream, which was another reason he was a terrible host. That and the fact that he was startlingly pale and had the upper body strength of a limp noodle and the personality of skim milk. This would be better, even if he had to deal with the abrupt drop in height.

Rich kid headed off towards the staircase with another tired but trying-to-be-reassuring smile, and it was then that the spirit of the ring felt an annoyance in the back of his brain. A presence. A scratching, biting, flailing presence, screeching mad, which he had been suppressing for a while now but finally broke through.

get out get out get out get out give it back its MINE get out

The host, awake. What a bother. More rambunctious than Bakura, then? No matter. He could handle a child.

that was MY hug and MY headpat and MY big brother and you can't have them he's been gone for ages and they're mine not yours get out get out get out

The spirit pushed back, ignored him. Shush. He had planned to hold this body alone, and he did not intend to go back to sharing. If you're good, I might let you have it back for a little while later.

shut up go away go away go away go AWAY

And then Mokuba Kaiba did something, something the spirit was not accustomed to or expecting at all, something which Ryou Bakura had never been willing or able to do. He shoved, violently, and the spirit of the ring was ripped out of control with some amount of panic.

"SETOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

Why you insolent little--

Seto Kaiba was not aware of the mental turf war happening over his little brothers body. What he did see was his brother scream his name and fall down, and the whole room echoed with a metal clatter as his briefcase fell on the floor and he ran towards him.

--

The ring had been discarded unceremoniously to a side table, and not-Bakura-and-not-Mokuba-either had no choice but to wait and observe, as a pediatrician on a sudden housecall shined lights in the boy's eyes and rich kid, who the spirit had since gleaned was named Seto Kaiba, looked on in worry.

"You said you heard a voice?" The doctor asked.

"Uh-huh. I think it lives in the necklace."

"You got that thing at Pegasus's house?" Kaiba asked, in disbelief.

"I don't remember. I was just wearing it when I woke up."

"What did the voice say?" the doctor continued, professionally ignoring any talk about magic necklaces.

"Not a lot. It was kind of mean."

"I see." She turned to Kaiba. "He's fine, physically. You might want a psychologist." and Seto Kaiba made what could politely be referred to as A Face. This was not what he wanted to hear, this was news that worried and annoyed him in equal measure, and to some degree was news he had half-expected.

"He's had a rough few months. I'll look into it." and she was dismissed, and Mokuba hopped down from the counter.

"Can we order pizza?" he asked, with big pleading eyes.

Kaiba watched him with dry amusement. "Mokuba, you can have anything you want from any restaurant in a forty mile radius."

"And I want pizza. Real pizza, from somewhere that doesn't also serve caviar."

"Cheap pizza?"

He nodded very seriously. "The grossest greasiest cheapest."

"I can do that. Anything else you want?"

Mokuba's eyes lit up, and soon he was dragging Kaiba by the hand towards somewhere else in the house. "I got to this really hard level in my game I can't get past and I wanted to see if you could beat it, and I found this really cool video I wanted to show you, and I got a really good report card you never saw, and--" and months worth of pent up requests were tumbling out rapid fire, and Kaiba was smiling with affection and some amount of relief.

Loud and clingy, then, was the normal and expected behavior. The spirit of the ring made note of this, as he lie abandoned.

--

The ring was still sitting on a side table, in Mokuba's bedroom, apparently because no one knew what to with it or thought it mattered much. This was a problem. The spirit couldn't do anything without a host, and now everyone was suspicious, these stupid rich people worried too much and paid too much attention.

He was forced to sit there all night, pondering about how he was going to get out of this mess, when at one or two in the morning he observed Mokuba wake up, and rub his eyes, and hop out of bed. He did not turn the light on, but he did check the time, and reach under his bed to retrieve what appeared to be a small backpack. He took it with him as he moved quietly towards the door, and the spirit saw his chance.

Hey, kid. He was near enough to speak into his head. Maybe this wasn't a dead end.

"You!" Mokuba stopped in his tracks and looked right at the ring.

Yes, me. This could be salvaged, he thought, concocting a plan. This was a child. Play friendly ghost and imaginary friend. Surely it would not be hard to weasel himself into the good graces of a sixth grader.

Mokuba glared at the ring with suspicion. "I don't think Seto believed me when I said you could talk, but I knew it." He picked it up delicately by the string to examine.

Where on earth are you going at this time of night?

Mokuba was the current host, technically, so there was a connection, and 11 year olds are not particularly used to or adept at hiding their own thoughts, especially inside their own heads. The answer, if not in words but in abstract concept, was provided instantly as it bubbled to mind. He was going to the kitchen, as he did once or twice a week, not their personal kitchen but the house staff kitchen, where he would move a chair to stand on the counter to reach the very back of the highest shelf of the third cupboard to the left, which was where one of the cleaning staff kept a pile of chocolate so he could cheat on his diet without his wife knowing, a fact Mokuba knew through surreptitious eavesdropping. Mokuba's end was to steal just enough of it that he wouldn't be noticed, and add it to a stash of snacks and other shiny trinkets currently hidden in the bottom of a pile of legos in his closet.

...You steal food to hide in your closet? Why would a child who lived in a three-story mansion need to steal?

Mokuba was only mildly perturbed by the fact that someone had just read his mind. He was mainly curious, now. "Our dad didn't like junk food, so I always took stuff to keep around." he explained, "I guess I don't really have to anymore, 'cuz Seto will let me have whatever I want, but--" he faltered, unable to finish or give a reason.

There wasn't a reason, and Mokuba knew that. There was no need to sneak or stash or steal anymore, but he kept doing it, irrationally, for reasons that confused him, a complicated swirl of things a child could not name or understand but were very easy for the spirit to read. Fear; compulsion; habit; the illusion of safety; the sense that your life was precarious, unstable; a need to exert control over your surroundings. It was not the food or the stealing that mattered, but of the hiding, of having something they could not take away from him.

Mokuba didn't understand any of that, because he was 11 and 11 year olds don't understand why they do anything. He just knew he liked sweets and hated people telling him what to do and that having bags of chips and other people’s lost jewelry at the bottom of an old toybox made him feel better.

Can I come with you?

"No! You tried to take control of me!"

Yes, but you kicked me out, and you'd probably be able to do it again, so I would be stupid to try. I also like chocolate, you see, and it's very boring to be stuck here on your desk.

"Can you even eat? You're a necklace."

I can when I borrow a body.

"You tried to take over me so you could eat chocolate? I'm not stupid enough to believe that."

That and other things. I can't do very much at all, while stuck in the ring. No food, no sunshine, no running around. It's no fun to be without a body, which is why I am occasionally driven to steal one. Terribly sorry about that. he added, in his most pathetic-sounding tone, Please? I don't have anyone else to talk to.

Mokuba was hesitant, but clearly found the fact of his existence too interesting to ignore. "Fine." He picked up the ring and dropped it unceremoniously into his backpack, which had a dragon on it.

Not trust yet, but tolerance and curiosity. One step at a time.

You shouldn't go barefoot, you know. Socks will be quieter if you're trying not to get caught.

"I didn't ask you."

So Mokuba descended down the stairwell, in the dead quiet and dark of the Kaiba Mansion, with no flashlight because he knew it well enough to navigate blindfolded. The place was decadent in the ugly way rich people's houses were, luxury but without taste, soft carpets and gilded banisters.

Mokuba had not quite realized yet how to think at the ring, so he spoke in a low whisper. "What are you, anyway?"

A ghost. So much more complicated than that, but simple words were suitable for children.

"How'd you end up a ghost in a necklace?"

I died, and then someone put me in a necklace.

"That's not an answer." he followed up, "Do all dead people become ghosts?"

No. Just sometimes, maybe, if the way they died was especially violent or gruesome or terrible.

Mokuba frowned. He had caught on remarkably quickly to guarding his own head, but the spirit could tell he didn't like this answer.

This was delicate, but he risked a push. Was there someone you had in mind?

Mokuba said nothing. He reached the staff kitchen on the lowest floor, and opened the door, slow and careful. He was deciding whether to say anything, as he climbed up as quietly as he could and reached far into the back of the cupboard, scrabbling.

"Our dad killed himself last year. Jumped out a window." He finally said, hopping down with his spoils. He said this the same way one might dolefully report the milk had gone bad. Unfortunate but boring.

You don't sound very sad.

"Nah, he sucked. And he never liked me." he said, "Seto was really really upset though. He was pretending not to be, but I could tell." Now there were feelings there, big and weird and sad and clinging ones. For reasons the spirit could not discern, the simple phrase ‘Seto was upset’ carried with it more weight, a thousand million times more weight, than news of a father's tragic death by defenestration. "I hope he's not a ghost. I don't wanna see him again."

Probably not.

Mokuba sat down cross-legged on the kitchen floor, unwrapped candy in silver foil. "You really can't do anything from in the necklace? Like, ghost stuff? Make things float or anything?"

No. It is a bit like being trapped in a very small box.

Mokuba mulled this over for a little while. "If you wanted to borrow a body to do fun stuff, you could have just asked."

Really?

He nodded. "Not being able to eat chocolate sounds lame. It'd be mean to just leave you like that." He put one chocolate into his mouth and dumped the rest in the backpack, where they covered the ring unceremoniously. More indignities. "Not in front of my brother, though. And you have to give it back whenever I say so."

...I could agree to such a compromise. Your candy haul is impressive, by the way.

"Thanks!" He grinned, emanating genuine pride. No one had ever complimented him for stealing before.

Tragic, the work of great thieves. How the very best of it can never be bragged about, the most impressive of skills gone unnoticed by nature, how the very success of a perfect crime relies on keeping your mouth shut about it. An unappreciated art, where even mastery gains you no respect.

You don't care that this poor man has to go out and buy twice as much food to make up for what you steal?

"No, he's a jerk. One time when I was six they confiscated my gameboy, so I went to steal it back and he caught me and told my dad and I got in huge trouble. So every day for a week I snuck down here and moved his keys to a different place so he couldn't find them. They were all so mad at him for losing them all the time, and he thought he was crazy."

Why was your gameboy confiscated?

"Don't remember. I think I bit someone at school." he shrugged, "They probably deserved it, though."

Mokuba Kaiba. he said, I think you and I are going to be excellent friends.

"Okay. Do ghosts watch cartoons?"

[riddleblack246]

For @scoobydean and @destielsecretsanta2020

“This could be nice for Jack.”

“’My First Christmas’. Cas, this is meant for babies.”

“It’s still his first Christmas with us.”

“That mean we should get one for you too?”

“If you’d like.”

Read below for some Team Free Will 3.0 holiday head canons~!

After everything goes down with Jack makes use of his new abilities, Sam and Dean are much more willing to fight to keep him with them. He initially wonders if it is because he’s “useful” to them now. The brothers promptly inform him that no, it’s because this is the first time where they can all feel safe enough to take a breath. Sure, they’re still hunters. But after everything they’ve been through, they all deserve a chance to enjoy life without constantly looking over their shoulders. And so Jack stays.

As promised, he brought back those that were loved and lost. Obviously everyone is relieved and thankful, but that is most clearly seen in the return of Eileen and Castiel. Sam and Eileen are quick to pick up where they left off. Castiel, however, is a bit more hesitant. He didn’t expect to ever see Dean again. He truly thought he wouldn’t have to know Dean’s feelings and when he confessed, he felt he could live with that. But now he’s suddenly back in this world, aware of his existence and the knowledge that he told the man he’d been in love with for over a decade how he felt. But Dean doesn’t allow him to panic for long. Enveloping Cas in his arms, he’s squeezing the angel’s vessel so tightly that he can barely get out the words. Nonetheless, he does and finally returns the sentiment that Castiel never expected to hear.

“I love you too, Cas.”

And now to dig into holiday centric joys!

By the time Christmas rolls around, the bunker’s primary couples have developed a sense of routine. Eileen has finally moved in and Dean and Castiel have eased into a comfortable romantic domesticity. And for the first time in a while, there are no hunts to investigate or major threats to take on, and the Winchesters found themselves able to celebrate the holidays in a way that they hadn’t had a chance to in some time (save for the Mrs. Butters stint).

On the first of December, Dean sits down in the library and begins to make a list, trying to figure out exactly what was expected of a traditional Christmas. When Sam catches him, he expects scoffs of disagreement or just bored indifference. Instead, he supplies the idea of inviting some people to the bunker.

“What, Sammy? You want to throw a Christmas rager?” (The statement does earn him an eye roll)

“No. I just thought it might be nice. See everyone together.”

Neither of them explicitly say why it would be nice, but they know the relief that would come with seeing each person they never expected to see again. Dean tasks his brother with making a guest list and sending out an e-mail to those on it (because Dean draws the line at trying to make actual invitations).

The response is overwhelmingly positive and soon enough, they’re fielding constant texts from Garth, asking if it would be okay to bring his kids, and e-mails from Donna, offering to bake a multitude of requested holiday treats. 

Amidst holiday planning, the group allows themselves to give into expectations of the season. Jack and Castiel are largely in the dark of what is or isn’t part of the holidays and while Dean, Sam, and Eileen aren’t the most immersed, they do have an idea of what is to be done and are admittedly eager to dive in.

One of the first things on Dean’s list is to decorate a tree. He even insists on cutting one down himself, as aside from various times he had to cut and sharpen his own stakes, it’s something he’s never had a chance to do. Sam, reluctant to join him, tells his brother to have fun. In the spirit of “giving”, Dean bring Cas and Jack along, assuring Sam and Eileen that they’ll “be a while ;)”. They return some hours later with a tree that rivals the Rockefeller Center and relief in the fact that they have two celestial beings to transport something of that size. Decorating it is another story.

After digging through the bunker and finding that, no, the Men of Letters did not hoard Christmas ornaments or wreaths or any such things among their piles of artifacts and cursed objects, the groups decides to get a little shopping done. They initially hit a big box store for a bunch of basics - lights, tinsel, various colored balls (Dean makes several jokes about this), but as the month goes on, all of them are guilty of picking up random items to decorate with while out.

Eileen delightedly shows her boys a Christmas pyramid she bought and is quick to tell Jack that he can’t light it whenever he wants, as forgetting about it could result in burning down the bunker.

Sam buys all of them advent calendars, each dedicated specifically to every member of the bunker. Dean doesn’t comment on Sam’s shift toward the holiday spirit, not only because he’s happy that his brother has allowed himself to be more joyfully invested in things, but also because every day for the month he gets to appreciate a new and weird specialty bottle of hot sauce. Sam’s own contains different types of tea, Eileen’s has jam, Jack’s has little LEGO figures, and Castiel’s has coffee.

Jack nearly gives Dean a heart attack one morning when the man wakes up to find a nutcracker as tall as he is in the crow’s nest. Jack tells him all about finding it in a shop he and Castiel passed when getting supplies and insisting that it was a perfect thing to have for the bunker. Dean looks to Castiel and knows the angel would have been too soft to say no. Then again, he knows he would have been just as guilty.

Castiel begins buying ornaments for people in the bunker. Even with Dean teasing him about it, he does buy a “my first Christmas” ornament and puts a photo of Jack inside that Eileen helped him print out. He finds that he is particularly fond of ornaments that contain photos and begins to buy ones for that explicit purpose.

Dean doesn’t necessarily have a type of decoration that he finds himself buying outside of what they have, but he is fond of the lights. He usually insists they stay on as long as allotted, urging whoever is the last to go to bed to turn them off (though it’s usually himself).

When it does snow, Dean is eventually irritable about it with Sam and Eileen in a similar boat, though to a lesser degree. Shoveling snow out of the way of the bunker’s entrance is a pain in the ass and none of them love the chore of getting treads on their respective tires. But seeing Jack’s fascination with it - and realizing that it’s his first time encountering snow, they find themselves softening.

After getting help in clearing access to the bunker, the group spends much of the day outside. There is an unspoken agreement that they want Jack to experience all the great enjoyments of snow and it honestly brings out the kid in them too. They build a mediocre snowman (Sam takes the heat for his poor artistic skills), make snow angels (the jokes about Castiel doing so get old within five minutes), have a snowball fight (Eileen is fucking ruthless and not above putting snow down jackets), and creating makeshift sleds to race. The sledding is what ultimately makes them go back inside. Garbage can lids are hard to steer and after Dean eats it by running into a tree and loosing a tooth, even Cas fixing it doesn’t resolve the choice to go in. Nonetheless, the accident doesn’t stall the mood, as Dean insists on introducing Jack to one more awesome component of the Traditional Snow Day - the hot chocolate at the end. Said hot cocoa almost results in a fight when, after Dean makes enough for all of them, Castiel reluctantly admits that he doesn’t care for it, and Dean and Jack nearly come to childish blows over who gets his mug. Later that evening, Castiel makes sure to thank Dean privately for allowing Jack to have it. ;)

Now, when it comes to cooking, Dean likes to consider himself pretty well-versed. Baking is another story. The preciseness that’s required is what gets him. Sure, he can be meticulous, but he’s always been more of a “little of this, a bunch of that” kind of guy over exact measurements, which leaves a lot more room for error when it comes to baking. But after going on a “Gilmore Girls” binge with Castiel (the couple constantly debates the superior show of the former and “Dr. Sexy, M.D.”), he can’t help imagining a scene of tenderly showing Cas how to roll out dough and mussing some flour in his hair and watching the angel lick the spoon in a way that borders on pornographic. The day after watching, he’s searching for cookie recipes and telling Castiel to dig out some aprons.

As is the Winchester way, this expectation does not come to fruition. Cas, as he thought, didn’t know a thing about cooking or baking. But Dean pictured being able to guide him, to do all the romantic shit you see in Hallmark movies. Instead, the angel is complaining about not being able to just will the baked goods into existence, standing in the way when Dean needs to get any kind of ingredient, and getting flour on every fucking surface in the kitchen. Things reach a boiling point when Cas pulls the cookies out of the oven, sans oven mitts, and for a brief moment, Dean’s brain operates on a panic reflex and snatches the tray from his hands. The result is their hours of baking scattered all over the floor, a dented baking sheet, and second-degree burns on the hunter’s hands. He’s huffing and cursing and he fully expects Cas to scold him and point out the obvious fact that he’s an angel and such temperatures have no effect on him. But instead, he watched Castiel pulled his hands from the faucet (having immediately shoved them under there after he burned himself) and tenderly brushes his finger tips over the wounds. Dean feels the familiar sensation of healing flesh, something he hasn’t felt in a bit and he’s silent as Cas brings the newly healed skin to his lips and presses a kiss to his palms. The irritability baking had brought them is gone. Dean lets Cas wave the kitchen clean and they decide to just go out and buy Christmas cookies instead. Later that evening, Cas’ lips taste like ginger and Dean finds that the reality is way better than the fantasy.

They ultimately end up hosting the party that started their shift into the Christmas spirit a few days before the actual holiday. After all, they know most of their friends prefer flying over driving and it might be a lot to ask them to come out on the actual holiday. But their concerns of traffic and irritated guests soon fly out the window in the face of so many familiar… well, faces. Hugs never stop coming and despite everyone’s claim that gifts would not be necessary, everyone knows that’s bullshit and a pile beneath their ridiculous tree grows with every teasing comment and expression of happy holidays.

Speaking of the tree, Castiel is quite pleased with his holiday crafting and the other members of the bunker share that sentiment. Since the angel discovered the photo-insert ornaments, he had taken it upon himself to spend random periods during the month finding photographs of each important person in their lives that he could and putting them into such items. Everyone takes joy in searching for their own picture. Claire comments that he picked a terrible one of her, but Cas hears her quietly asking Dean if she could take it home with her, as it features her and Kaia pressed close in a hug. Charlie adores her’s and insists that she wants to make the same craft, but only if they do it together. Everyone quietly appreciates the ones made for those that aren’t present to appreciate them. Jack ensures that Mary’s ornament has prime placement. Eileen hugs Sam when she catches him looking at Kevin’s for a while. Dean makes a point to kiss Castiel privately after finding Bobby’s nestled among some tinsel. Everyone agrees that their the best decorations in the place.

Hunters and those that know them have never been known to operate on a normal schedule, so it is nearly three in the morning before the bunker clears out. Some have elected to drive home if the trip was relatively easy. Others have settled into the many spare rooms that the bunker holds. Once all the gifts have been opened, the eggnog’s been drunk, and everyone has eaten their weight in treats, only Dean and Cas remain in the quiet bunker. They sit together in the library, positioned on one of the many extended seats they’d brought out to fit their guests. The lights of the enormous tree are still on at Dean’s request and Castiel can’t help staring at the way the different colors still look so beautiful on him. He glances up at the other decorations strewn about. The bows, the poinsettias (Garth had brought something like ten of them), the holly, the- He spots a familiar item of decor. He’d seen Sam and Eileen equally position themselves under it in wait of their partner, always stopping them with the insistence that a kiss must be administered before they continue on their way about the bunker. Lazily, he nudges Dean and points to the archways between the crow’s nest and the hall that leads to the bedrooms.

“Is standing beneath that a requirement for kissing?”

Dean follows his finger and huff out a laugh. Even though they hadn’t been dating long, they’d been together for so many years that he knows the angel is teasing. He turns to meet his eyes, smiling at the way the lights almost change them from blue to a rainbow of color.

“What, you want to kiss under the mistletoe? Now?”

For a moment, it seems as if he’s considering the offer. But instead, he shakes his head and reaches a hand up to cup Dean’s cheek. He knows that he could have kiss Dean under there the same way Eileen and Sam do. But he knows they’re different. Dean is a lot of thing and as much as he would deny it, one of those things is private. Their relationship is simultaneously new and so so ingrained into their life. Affection was always something there, just beneath the surface. And while he had the thing he desired for so long, that doesn’t mean he feels the need to push Dean into a realm of affection that just isn’t fitting of who they are together. Leaning forward, he captures Dean’s lips in a kiss. He tastes like eggnog and candy cane.

Castiel understands all the more that happiness is in the being. And he no longer fears his joy. Because he can’t imagine being happier than holding Dean beneath these lights and knowing that they still have tomorrow and so many days to come. There is no better present than that.

[itspufflehuff]

Cookies - Peter Parker Imagine

Summary: Y/N, Peter, and Ned have all been best friends since the second grade. When Y/N experiences her first heartbreak will they be able to help her? Most importantly will Peter?

MATERLIST // TAGLIST

I know I normally post Sebastian Stan/ Bucky but I want to also get into the other MCU characters/ actors so here is Peter Parker! I have some more Sebastian/ Bucky imagines in the making but for now enjoy.

Let me know what you think! You can read part two here.

Word Count: 2,558

~~~~

You and Peter first became friends in the second grade. He fell off of the monkey bars and lay on the floor holding his arm in pain. His friend, Ned, stood to the side smiling and clapping, "Do it again!" You grabbed the last cookie from your lunch box then walked over to Peter. When he got to him you stood there holding the cookie out, " I fell off the monkey bars one time. I cried but my mom said cookies will always make me feel better." He giggled and reached out taking the cookie from you.

From that day on Peter and Ned would join you for lunch and ask you to play with them during breaks. The three of you soon became inseparable.

You loved your best friends and always saw them as just that, friends.

That was until sometime in middle school. You don't know exactly what happened to flip your emotions the way they did, but when you looked at Peter your whole day got better. You always found yourself wanting to sit next to him whether it be in class, during movie nights, on the bus, or in the cafeteria.

Once you noticed how your feelings towards your best friend had changed you did your best to suppress them. You knew he didn't think about you that way. It was obvious, the way he and Ned would drool over girls in front of you. So you pushed your feelings to the side and tried to move on.

You did for a bit. As middle school went on you developed crushes on other boys. Of course, nothing ever happened with them you were too young and boys at that age were too dumb.

When high school came along your feelings for Peter grew stronger. He was so smart, kind, and nerdy. You loved his pop culture references even though they were lame. He always made you laugh and it didn't help that he was cute.  But he would never feel the same about you.

Or so you thought.

Little did you know he too started to develop feelings for you. He loved watching you read. It fascinated him the way you would react to what's happening in the book as if you were there. Whenever you would furrow your eyebrows or raise them in shock made him smile. And when you laughed he laughed too. He had no idea what about but he thought it was so adorable the way you would get lost in your book. He also loved the way you understood all of his references. Not only did you understand them but you went along with them. Like that one time, the three of you so badly wanted to go to the premiere of Star Wars Rogue One but your mom said no.

~~~~

You all sat there in disappointment when Peter jumped up from his chair excitedly, "Ok I got it! Remember that one episode of Law and Order when the three girls sneak out of their house? They pretend to be their mom and text the other mom saying they're gonna have a sleepover."

You looked at him impressed then shook your head, "No that wouldn't work, my parents love you guys but they would never let me sleepover."

The boys nodded understandingly when you got an idea, "What if I just sneak out the fire escape? Kinda like how the girls from Sleepover snuck out, except they left the window from a two-story house, and ill be on the fifth floor of an apartment."

"Good idea. I live down the street so I could pick you up. But what if your parents want to check on you?" Peter questioned.

"Well in the movie Julies older brother put on a wig and had his back to the door so their dad would think she is home. The only problem is none of us have siblings who can do that for me."

Then from the left of you, Ned looked up excitedly, "I have a cousin our age with your hair color who owes me a favor."

Just like that, you all escaped for the night.

~~~

Before that night you'd never made a pop culture reference, of course, you quoted movies and shows from time to time but you never referenced them the way he did, you only ever understood them. That night his crush on you grew bigger.

Peter never showed interest in you though, which lead you to believe he could never like you in that way. In another attempt to move on you started dating Flash freshman year. Yes, Flash.

I know what was wrong with you?

But in your defense, he was different back then. He was a really sweet guy, and he made you feel cared for. Of course, everyone knew his family was filthy rich but that's not why you dated him. You two were friends and although he didn't have the same interest as you, he appreciated them and asked you about them. He made you happy.

At the beginning of your relationship, everything was great. He was never threatened by your two best friends so when you told him you wanted to sit with them during lunch he had no problem. After school, you two would study and talk about how your day went. He would always ask you about the latest book you read. Seeing how happy books made you he bought you more, but they were always special edition covers. When you weren't with Peter and Ned you were with Flash. He held your hand so sweetly and he was your first kiss but he never rushed it. The first time he tried to kiss you, you pulled away. You weren't ready yet, you wished it were Peter kissing you. Then a month later you had gotten over your Peter crush, so you kissed Flash. You were both so happy.

That is until he realized what being rich meant. People started coming up to him and inviting him to parties. He slowly became more and more popular. He started buying you jewelry instead of books. He asked you to wear the jewelry when you were with him, and when you didn't, he would distance himself from you. Instead of dates, you went to parties, none of them were ever fun. Study time became the Flash show where he would go on and on about himself never letting you speak. He started showing up to school in a limousine. Then he started flirting with the popular girls. At first, he had the decency to hide it from you then he started doing it in front of you. One day he broke up with you and moved on to a prettier girl.

Even though your relationship was already falling apart it still hurt you bad. You cried for days. Peter and Ned did everything they could to make you feel better. They would walk you home and stay with you until your parents kicked them out. Peter was so angry.

How could anyone hurt Y/N? I would never treat her the way Flash did.

The day Flash dumped you, you ran home straight after the bell rang. Peter and Ned were so confused they went to your home to check on you. Your mom let them in and pointed to your bedroom, "I don't know what happened but she seemed sad when she got home. She won't talk to me, would you let me know if she's alright?" The boys nodded, their faces full of concern.

Hesitantly they knocked on your day, "Go away!"

"It's Peter and Ned." They heard sniffles behind the door. Peter got closer to the door and in a low voice said, "Please let us in we want to know you're ok."

"Fine, come in."

Your eyes were puffy and your face stained with tears. You were sitting on your window seal with a blanket draped over your body. The boys slowly dropped their bags beside your door. They didn't know what to do.

"What happened?"

You looked to the window not wanting to see their faces, "Flash dumped me for some popular girl. I guess I wasn't good enough for him anymore." Tears fell silently as you sniffled and held back sobs.

Peter and Ned looked at each other.  They were thinking the same thing. In the past few weeks, they noticed a change in Flash's behavior. They saw how miserable he was making you. Although they didn't say anything they knew it wasn't too long until he broke up with you.

The boys were silent so you looked over to them seeing that they still stood in the doorway, "You guys can sit down."

So they did, Ned walked over to your desk sitting on the chair, and Peter on your bed.

"Is there anything we can do to help?" Peter asked cautiously. They'd never seen you like this before so they didn't know what to do.

"Do you want to eat chocolate while we watch chick flicks?" Ned offered

"What? No. Ned, I don't think girls actually do that in real life."

"I don't know what I'm doing! I've only comforted you after a girl rejected you, even then all I said was, 'that sucks wanna go build some Legos?' and everything was better."

"Yeah but-"

"Wait." You spoke from where you were. You were silently watching them amused. The tears stopped coming as a soft smile arose on your lips.

The boys looked over to you as you spoke, "I like Ned's idea can we do that?"

He proudly let out a chuckle and smiled, "See I knew she would like that."

Peter rolled his eyes, "We will handle the snacks if you handle the movies?"

You nodded excitedly. Everyone got up from their spots, Peter and Ned headed for the door and you headed for your laptop.

Ned walked out first and happily called out, "We'll be right back Mrs. Y/L/N."

Your mom came out of the kitchen confused. She stopped Peter and asked about you. "Flash broke up with her today and she's taking it pretty bad. If you don't mind we're gonna head to the store and grab some snacks for a movie night? I really think it will make her feel better.

Seeing as it was Friday night your mom agreed and smiled at Peter.

Two blocks away from your apartment there was a convenience store where the boys went to pick up the necessities. They grabbed handfuls of chocolates, chips, ice cream, and drinks. As they were getting ready to pay Peter saw a stack of cookies. He remembered that day in second grade, 'Cookies will always make me feel better.' He smiled at the memory and quickly grabbed them.

When the boys got back to your room everything was set up. Your computer was hooked up to the TV, you made room on the floor where Ned usually lays (you even made it comfortable for him with pillows and layers of blankets), and the bed was made usually you and Peter lay there.

"Let the festivities begin!" Ned shouted as he dropped the snacks onto your bed. You all laughed as everyone took their spot.

Before you laid down you started the first of many movies, The Hot Chick.

When you made it to the bed Peter was sitting there waiting for you, "I got you a special snack."

You scrunched your eyebrows as you looked at him. He pulled out your favorite bag of cookies. Excitedly you grabbed them from him with a smile on your face.

He never failed to make you smile.

"Just like your mom said, cookies will always make you feel better." He looked into your eyes with a soft grin.

You said that to him many years ago you almost forgotten, "Thank you."

He took his shoes off and laid on your bed. He was on his stomach facing the foot of your bed. You sat up on the headboard with pillows behind your back and a blanket over your legs.

Two movies later half the snacks were gone along with Ned. His mom wanted him home for a family dinner, which left you and Peter alone. You two took a break from the movies to have dinner with your parents.

When you two got back to your room you took Peter's old spot at the foot of the bed and he took yours sitting at the top, "What movie next?" He asked.

You pondered for a second, "Hmm, how about Princess and the Frog?" You tried holding back a smile. Noticing this he couldn't hold back his own, "Start it."

As the movie played he could hear you softly reciting the lines along with the characters, "I would kiss a frog. I would kiss a hundred frogs if I could marry a prince and be a princess."

You didn't even realize you were doing it, you just loved this movie so much you knew practically every line. Peter watched you and smiled.

How could anyone not love her?

He noticed you shiver ever so lightly and quickly covered you with a blanket, but you were too into the movie to notice.

When the movie ended your mom walked into the room, "Ok Peter time to go home."

You groaned, "Moooom, just one more movie. Please, please, please please, please!" You begged just as Lottie did when wishing on the star. Peter chuckled at your antics.

Your mom gave in knowing you needed it more than ever right now.

"Ok, it's the last movie gotta make it count!" Peter said bouncing on the bed.

You typed the movie in as Peter read it out, " Love, Rosie. What's that?"

"One of the best romance movies ever!"

You got back onto the bed this time sitting up next to Peter. He laughed beside you, "Ok we'll see about that."

The movie played as you two watched the stories of two best friends fall in love at the wrong times. Peter couldn't help but think maybe you two would fall in love one day. He looked over to you surprised to see tears falling down your face.

Instead of asking if you were ok or if something was wrong, he grabbed your hand and squeezed. Just a small gesture to remind you he was there for you.

Grabbing the blanket you wiped your tears. He started to let go of your hand when you reached out for it again, this time interlocking your fingers.

Without looking at each other you both smiled to yourselves.

At some point, you rested your head on Peter's shoulder and fell asleep still holding onto his hand.

When the movie ended he was surprised to see you had fallen asleep. He let the credits play in the back as he rested his head on top of yours just enjoying the moment.

"I love you, Y/N. Someday I will have the courage to tell you and we will have a love story even better than what we see in the movies because ours will be real. I promise." He kissed the top of your head, slowly let go of you, and with one last look, he left.

He did keep his promise, but that's a story for another day.

[alarawriting]

Writeober #4: Loud

The children were playing. It was toy hour, so they had out Legos, and dolls, and wooden trains, all that sort of thing. Quiet, by the standards of an orphanage. A couple of Eights were reading, an activity they preferred to playing with toys. Children’s babble filled the air, but not the shrieks they made when they played outside.

And then Jayden started screaming, almost painfully loudly. “I want my mommy! I want my mommy!”

Laurie ran to him and gathered him into her arms. “Oh, Jayden, I know,” she said, rocking him. “I know, honey, I know. But she’s not here.”

Jayden was a Four who had just been surrendered a few weeks ago. “Where is she? I want to see her! I want my mommy!” He thrashed in Laurie’s arms, but the limiter prevented him from exerting any more strength than a normal four-year-old child.

“Sweetie, I’m so sorry. But this is your home now, and any day now, a new mommy or daddy might come through that door and see you and say ‘What a beautiful, wonderful little boy! We want him for our own little boy!’ and take you to a new home with them, and they’ll be your mommy or daddy.”

“I don’t want a new mommy! I’ll kick the new mommy!” Jayden howled. “I want my mommy!”

“I know, sweetie,” Laurie said, sadly. It was all she could say. It was all she could say to any of them.

Several others started crying for their own mommies and daddies. Basil, who’d been in the back working on the finances, came out to help, and the other childcare workers moved around the playroom, soothing children. In her mind, Laurie damned to hell the men and women who’d abandoned these children. How could they do that? How could anyone do that to a child?

But humans weren’t designed to have children who never aged, who lived 40-50 years and grew more knowledgeable but never substantially more mature. Laurie loved the Calvin children desperately, and wanted to save all of them, and if she had been queen of the world she would have made their continued manufacture illegal and had everyone involved in creating and marketing them arrested. There shouldn’t be any more Calvin children coming into the world; it was far too terrible a place for them.

At that, it was better than it had been when Laurie was younger. In her freshman year at college, her roommate Kathy had recruited her in a panic to help her save her little brother, an Eight. Like most families who bought them, Kathy’s had gotten a Calvin child when they’d had no children of their own, but then Kathy’s dad had undergone an experimental fertility treatment, and for him, it had worked. Turned out down the road to cause prostate and testicular cancer, but he’d managed to get his wife pregnant with a healthy baby.

Kathy’s brother had fallen in love with the new baby, playing with her and cooing at her and taking care of her, even learning to change diapers and feed her a bottle. So her parents had kept him, for the help he gave them with her. By the time Kathy was old enough that they didn’t need him to watch her anymore, she’d been so attached to him they hadn’t been able to get rid of him. He’d been Kathy’s older brother that she looked up to, and then her peer that she played with, and then the little brother she protected.

In those days the Calvin Corporation had only leased Calvin Children; you couldn’t buy them. It was intended as a measure to protect the children from abuse, but it almost guaranteed that if parents had their own child, or grew tired of a child who never aged, or were tight on money and needed to cut costs, they would stop leasing, returning the Calvin child to the corporation… where their memories would be wiped, and they’d either be sent on to a new home, or destroyed if they couldn’t be leased. So Kathy’s parents had waited until she was out of the house, at college, and then returned her brother to the corporation. If her brother hadn’t been a model with an internal cell phone antenna, and been able to call Kathy for help, she’d have lost him forever.

As it was, Kathy and Laurie and Basil had had to drive five hundred miles and jump through flaming hoops to get little David back before the mindwipe. As college students without money, they didn’t have the funds to lease him; Kathy pretended to be her mom, got the contract re-activated, and then Basil jailbroke David, replacing his internal antenna with a new one that wouldn’t report his whereabouts to the Calvin Corporation, allowing them to effectively “steal” him. And even then, he’d had to dye his hair, alter his skin tone, and wear glasses he didn’t need and put a thick sole insert in one of his shoes to throw off his gait so recognition software couldn’t find him.

It hadn’t been until ten years later that Kathy, Laurie, Basil and their friends had won the court case that made it possible to purchase Calvin children outright, and with depreciation, and Kathy working at a law firm, and Basil’s IT job, they’d had the funds to buy him, so he’d be safe. He lived with Kathy and Kathy’s girlfriend Imani, and took care of his niece and nephew when Kathy and Imani were at work. They were currently three and five. David was an Eight. Eventually they’d catch up to him and go past him, again, but Kathy owned him outright and loved him tremendously. He was a happy Eight.

The world was full of Calvin children who were not happy.

Parents leased-to-own their children because that was the model Calvin Corporation was currently pushing, with the court order that required them to make full ownership not only available but affordable to their customers. And then, either they had a biological child – most men in the developed world weren’t fertile, but there were plenty of men from all around the world who still had sperm and were selling it, and many men would eventually give in and agree to let their wives buy some so she could have a bio-child at least – or they simply grew tired of a child that never aged. Calvin Children ranged in age from Threes to Tens, but whatever they were, they would be that forever… or at least until their internal battery ran down and their bodies wore out.

(Once, Laurie had gone to visit a brand new care home, for Calvin Children dying of old age. She had never been back. As heartbreaking as it was to deal with children who’d been abandoned by their parents, it was so, so much worse to see those children dealing with their own growing exhaustion and slow decline into death.)

And now, there was a new model of Calvin Child, who could grow older. Their brains were modular, and could be removed from their bodies and put into a new body a year older, every year, updating their firmware in the process to grow more mature – which was costly, but many people were willing to pay. Even if they needed to skip some years, they wanted a child who could grow to adulthood, to take over the family business or help work on a farm or go to college and make something of themselves. No one knew what would happen to the legal framework that allowed people to own Calvin Children once they were “adults”; the fact that Calvin children were chattel didn’t usually conflict with people’s understanding of what adults were allowed to do to their own children. You weren’t allowed to abuse a Calvin child any more than a “real” child, and in general parents of “real” children were allowed to do anything to them that wasn’t abusive.

The only thing you were allowed to do with a Calvin child that you couldn’t do with an organic child was abandon them. People who couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of their Calvin child anymore could return them to the corporation, who would still mind-wipe them and resell them, or, if the thought of their child forgetting everything about them didn’t sit well and they didn’t want to take the risk that the corporation would decide their child was too worn out to resell as used and destroy it, they surrendered them at homes like the one Laurie and Basil ran, where Calvin children would be cared for until an adoptive parent could be found.

Before the new models came out, it wasn’t hard to find adoptive parents. Laurie and Basil charged a pittance for an adoptee, not even enough to cover their costs, mostly because people took better care of things they’d paid for than things that were free. Plenty of people who wanted a Calvin child were happy to give a home to a used one for far less than they’d have paid for a new child, or a used one from Calvin Corp directly. But now that the new models were out… everyone who wanted a Calvin child wanted the kind who could grow up. Laurie had, in desperation, waived the fee, to get someone, anyone in the door to love these children, but no one who could pass the background check had done so in a month.

It burned that she felt like she was lying to Jayden, that maybe there wouldn’t be a new parent for him, that there almost certainly wouldn’t be one in a little while like she was saying. But Jayden was a Four. He wouldn’t understand or appreciate brutal honesty; he needed hope to keep him going. Laurie wasn’t going to lie to him and pretend the mother he remembered, the one he’d spent six years with since his original purchase, would ever come back. But she would try to make him happy, or at least content, to bide his time here until a parent came for him… even if one never did.

Jayden’s sobs wound down. Older children, Eights and Nines and Tens, programmed with an incredibly powerful drive to care for and protect younger children, had reached out to the little ones that Jayden’s outburst had set off, and soothed them, despite their own hearts breaking because their own parents had abandoned them, and they were old enough to know their own parents were never coming back.

“How come she left me here?” Jayden asked, no longer crying, but the streaks of tears still all over his face. They cried, they ate, they pooped, they slept; in all regards but one, Calvin children were virtually indistinguishable from organic children. But it was that one regard – the fact that they’d never grow up – that caused all the problems. “Was I bad?”

“Oh, no, Jayden. You’re a wonderful little boy. It was nothing you did, okay? Nothing you did or could ever do. Your mommy just ran out of money and she couldn’t take care of you anymore.” This was a lie. Jayden’s mother had just been sick of having a four-year-old child for six years. Laurie would never tell any of the children something like that, though.

“I miss her.”

“I know you do. And I know that even if you get a new mommy or daddy to love you and take care of you, you’ll never forget your first mommy, and you’ll always miss her. But there will be a new mommy or daddy someday, and they will love you even more than your first mommy did.” Laurie made prospective parents watch videos of children having meltdowns like Jayden just did, sobbing and begging for their parents to come back, and then impressed on them that this was a lifelong commitment. You were signing on to take care of a Calvin child until you died or they did. Parents who expressed horror or pity or empathic pain for the abandoned children were much more likely to go home with a new member of the family than parents who seemed to shrug it off. Laurie wanted these children to find new homes, but she wanted them to be forever homes, with parents who would never abandon them again.

Laurie stood up. “Now, I think it’s snacktime, kids. Who wants a snack?”

“Me! Me! I want a snack!” children who’d been crying five minutes earlier chorused.  

“All right! Everyone take your seats!”

Children were resilient. Even Calvin children. If she couldn’t give them their own mothers, Laurie would be the best mother figure to them she could be. She’d adopt them herself, but there were so many children who needed help, and a mother with too many children was no different from a child care worker in the attention and love she could give each one. Better to be the mother figure of the orphanage and take care of all of them as best she could.

[sherlollydramoine]

Santa’s Cumming

Warnings: Dad!Rami fluff followed by sexy times...  What did y’all expect given the title of this fic?!  Mild language, alcohol consumption and unprotected sex (be smart use a condom)

This was written for @itsme690, I hope this is what you had in mind hun.

Word Count: 3,694

You couldn’t help the giggle that escaped you as you watch your skinny ass husband as he awkwardly makes his way down your stairs dressed as Santa Claus. He was holding a large red bag over his right shoulder. 

“Hey babe, do you need a little help there? That bag looks heavy.”you inquire,as he almost stumbled off the last step, the weight of the bag throwing off his balance and he nearly toppled over.

“No, I think I’ve got it, but damn this bag is heavy. What the hell did you put in here?”

“Rocks, a mountain troll, some more rocks, a horse, maybe a car or two, the entirety of The Shire, maybe some Mordorian goblins, and baby Yoda.” you chuckle as he rolls his eyes. “Naw babe, just the stuff that was on the list that you gave me. I think it was the stuff you said that the kids wanted but their parents hadn’t bought them for Christmas.”

He laughs out, and sighs,”You had me worried. Poor Baby Yoda shouldn’t be in there with all those evil things. Though if I had to put my money on it I’m sure he could beat the goblins all to hell though.” 

You suddenly were overwhelmed with the urge to give him a kiss. He looked so adorable wearing a light sheen of sweat from the stuffy Santa suit and his exertions from carrying the heavy bag down the stairs, you step forward and reach out for him.

“Come here, Mommy wants to give Santa a kiss, even though I thought Santa was supposed to be-” Rami cuts you off mid sentence to capture your lips for a soft kiss, his hands letting go of the bag that just falls to the floor with a thunk. Threading his fingers through your hair deepening the kiss, your bodies starting to melt into each other when you hear someone shuffle their feet and someone clearing their throat. Reluctantly separating you both look towards the source of the noise which was just his brother Sami standing there with a brow raised.

“Sorry to interrupt but, well I’m not sorry, noone wants to walk in here to find you guys having some fun on the stairs. Ram mom wanted me to tell you that it’s starting to get a little late and some of the family is going to have to leave soon.” 

“Be right there.” Rami tells him before bending down to pick up the sack of gifts that he had casually dropped during your impromptu make out session.

“Hey babe, you might want to adjust the front of your pants a little, they are um, yeah.”you mention with a smirk before heading into the living room.

Rami takes a few moments to collect himself before heading into the living room himself, walking in with a bellowed,”Ho! Ho! Ho!”

The kids all begin shrieking with excitement, eyeing the big red bag that Rami had in his hands as the adults are trying and failing miserably to contain their laughter at the sight of Rami’s skinny ass dressed in a Santa suit that is too big for his lithe frame. 

Chaos ensued as the kids were excitedly crowding Rami, trying eagerly to get at his red bag that held what they assumed were all the goodies that they wanted. Watching Rami verses several children was hilarious, as he struggled to bring order to the excited shrieks and shouts from the kids. Fortunately one of Rami’s cousins steps in to keep him from being trampled by the kids as she instructs them all to take a seat in front of the tree, and to sit quietly to which they all quickly complied, even though they were all still squirming.

The moment was so pure that you couldn’t help it, you find your phone and load the camera before snapping a few pictures. Several other family members were doing the same thing all wearing goofy, happy smiles.

“Well kiddos, I’ve heard that you’ve all been good this year, so Rami-Claus is here to deliver some presents early on behalf of the big guy!” 

Several of the adults snorted at his use of the ‘Rami-Claus’ and you leaned into Sami’s shoulder, “Did he seriously just call himself Rami-Claus?”

Sami just smiled as he nudged your shoulder trying to hold back the laughter himself. You couldn’t help but beam at your husband as he somehow managed the gift giving portion of the night. It seemed as if the kids were never going to calm down after this, as things temporarily became a flurry of activity, with kids shrieking and shouting, running around to show their parents their new gifts. 

You spot Rami sitting on the floor next to your three year old daughter Layla helping her to unpackage whatever new toy she had received. When Rami gave you the list he didn’t specify what was for who so you had no idea. He insisted on wrapping and tagging everything himself.

“Momma look!” your seven year old son Said shouted as he made his way over to you clutching a bright yellow looking box to his chest. 

“Hey Bubba, what did you get from Daddy?” 

“I got more Legos! I think La got a new doll or something boring. She was really excited about it though she doesn’t really need any new dolls she already has a million of them.”

 You chuckled and ruffled his wild hair as you responded,”You don’t need more Legos either kiddo, don’t you already have a million of them?”

He just laughed at you as he flounced away towards one of his cousins, probably trying to coax them into building with the Legos.

Rami eventually made his way back to you holding your three year old, as she tightly clutched onto her new doll. Leaning over you gave him a quick kiss before taking her out of his arms as he turned to talk to his brother about something.

“Hey La, what have you got there?”

“I got a new baby just like the one you told Auntie Lindsey on the phone that you were gonna have” she said matter of factly, as you set her on the ground.

Rami stopped mid-conversation with his brother, obviously having heard your three year old’s statement. He looked shocked and confused. 

“What is she talking about YN?”

Your cheeks flush with embarrassment of having been put on the spot as you let out a little nervous laugh. 

“I guess our La pays more attention to my phone conversations than I thought she did. She was playing and I didn’t think she heard me. But,ummm..Damn.. Well it was supposed to be a surprise for tomorrow but umm.. Yeah, we’re pregnant again. Merry Christmas my love.”

His face broke out into a bright smile as he wrapped you in his arms and planted a loud kiss on your mouth.

“Ewwwwwwwwwww” you heard Said whine from wherever he was playing.

Since your daughter had decided to ruin your big surprise for tomorrow, and in front of Rami’s entire family no less. About an hour later, most of the family had left and those that were still around helped to tidy up. The kids that were still here, were sitting with yours on the couch watching The Grinch on tv. 

His brother decided to take off, but before he left he off-handedly made the comment about how he bets that this time you two will have twins, before giving you both a smile and shutting the front door behind him.

“I swear to God Rami, if your brother just jinxed us I’m going to kick his ass!” 

Your husband sure does love to laugh because that’s what he did, he laughed. You just shake your head and walked away trying to round up your children for a quick late night bath before bed. What you found instead though was both of them snuggled on the couch, covered in Layla’s favorite queen sized blanket, fast asleep. Rami was right behind you, and you heard a little camera click. 

“Who do you want to take?” you asked him.

“I’ll grab Said, you grab Layla.” and then meet me in the garage so that we can get all of the gifts out of there and under the tree.

“Deal. I’ll meet you down here in five.” 

You both gently unwrapped the kids, as he lifted Said into his arms with a soft grunt. Your son was growing like a weed, and he was definitely getting heavy. Grabbing Layla, and gently lifting her into your arms and wrapping her up in her blanket you get them settled in bed fairly quickly. 

Meeting Rami in the garage as agreed upon, you both set to work laying out all the gifts and the stockings. After all was situated you started turning off the lights downstairs. Rami was right behind you and just when you were about to take your first step onto the stairs you felt his arms snake around your waist. 

“Wait.” he said, as he pulled your body close to his. “We haven’t done our Christmas thing yet. I know you are tired and we both should probably get to sleep, but I just can’t yet. It’s tradition, our tradition and I don’t want to miss it this year.”

You had completely forgotten about you Christmas tradition, you really were tired. Prepping and hosting the Malek clan was always an event that left you exhausted. His family was always helpful though, and whenever they showed up everyone was always willing to roll up their sleeves to help assist in whatever was left that needed to be done.

He pulled you into the living room, and you stood together for a few moments before he spoke.

“I know that talking about being thankful and grateful is something that is done around Thanksgiving traditionally, but we’ve always done this. Do you remember our first Christmas living together?”

You laugh into his chest as you nod your head. 

You had reluctantly agreed to host some of his family at your place, which at the time was still quite small, and in your attempts to go all out you ended up having a full on mental breakdown in the middle of your kitchen. 

You had burned a couple of pies, because your timing had been just a little off, and you accidentally dropped the bowl of mashed potatoes onto the floor which shattered the bowl and sent potatoes everywhere. 

Standing in the middle of the mashed potatoes mess, your were sobbing and trying to clean up the mess while Rami attempted to soothe you. His mom stepped in and gave you a big hug. She told you that it was going to be okay. That sometimes one just has to roll with the punches, especially around the holidays, and that no one would care if all there was to eat was some Chinese takeout. 

You kept repeating that you could still pull off some part of the holiday meal in between sobs, but Rami just took you into his arms and guided you out of the kitchen into the living room, while his mom cleaned up the potatoes. He made you talk about the things that you are grateful for  and in an attempt to be funny your first response was, “Your mom.” 

He laughed hysterically for a solid fifteen minutes before he responded with,”Me too. I’m also grateful for you. You tried your hardest to do this for my family, to make a good impression, and trust me you still will. Noone will care about the food I promise. You should have my mom tell you about the small fire that happened one year that ruined a huge majority of dinner. I love you and am so grateful that you are apart of my life. I honestly can’t envision my life without you in it. I want to make you my wife so that we can have moments like these forever. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Forever. Just you and me and maybe eventually a few kids.”

You stopped crying from where your head had been buried in his chest as you looked up at him and questioned,”Did you just ask me to marry you?”

“I did. You don’t have to give me an answer right away, I wanted to do it in a way that was far more special that this, but if you’ll have me, will you Y/F/N Y/L/N marry me?”

“Yes!!!” you screamed as you wrapped your arms around him, pulling his body close to yours as your lips found his, you were aware that his mother very present, so you did keep the kiss semi-chaste. 

“So my love, what are you grateful for?”

“The same thing that I always am,”Your mom. And you and the kids.” 

“Me too. I’m also grateful for all of the opportunities that we’ve had this year. Yes, my workload has been crazy and I’m grateful for the fact that you have been by my side through all of it. Your hard work and dedication to our family sometimes is underappreciated. I just want you to know how much I love and appreciate the things that you do for all of us. The sacrifices you’ve made for all of us, and I know I don’t say it often enough, but I truly love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. You are the best wife, partner, mother, and the best friend that any man could ever ask for.”

The tears welled up in your eyes, and before you knew you were full on crying. He just pulls you close to him before he gently runs his fingers through your hair. 

“Shhhh.. It’s alright love. Please don’t cry. I love you. I know that you gave up a lot for me, to be there for me. You worked hard for us, especially in the beginning when I was auditioning a lot and getting nothing. You were there. You worked as many hours as it took to pay the bills just so that I could focus more on trying to land a decent paying job. My love, you never blinked when I left for Argentina, you just understood my reasoning for needing to go. You just,you took it all in stride and you never wavered in your faith of me. I am so proud of all you’ve done, and because of your support and look at us now. I finally got us somewhere. My dream became a reality but it was only that way because of you! You! The one that has given her everything to make sure that I had what I needed.” he whispers as his hands gently rub your back.

“You really believe that Rami? I think you got to where you are because you have the talent to back yourself up. Anyone that says otherwise obviously doesn’t recognize talent when they see it and that makes them stupid.”

You could feel his chest vibrate with his laughter. For a minute you couldn’t figure out why he was laughing until you thought back, what you had just said was very reminiscent of some of the things that you used to tell him after he didn’t get a role. 

“I love you Rami, and I’d always do anything for you. Whatever you need or want me to be, that’s who I’ll be.”

“Baby, I don’t need you to be anything but who you are. The beautiful woman I met all those years ago, that I married, that gave me my children. You. That’s all I’ll ever need. Except right now, I do need something from you?”

“What is it?”

“I need a kiss. I’m still wearing this ridiculous costume, and we never got to finish what we started earlier, so I’d like a kiss, if you have one or two to spare.”

You didn’t have to think twice, you just shake your head and then launched yourself at him. It took him by surprise but you held you both in place as you wrapped your legs around his waist. Your lips crashing into his as your hands settle on the back of his neck. 

The kiss deepened as you both let out little hums of pleasure, your hips involuntarily grinding against his body. You barely registered that he had begun walking with your lips still locked, as you ended up on the couch. 

His body weight on top of yours a comforting feeling, as his hands slide their way up your legs and under your dress. He pulled your thighs apart and began to thumb your clit over your panties, which elicited a low moan from you. 

“You’re soaked.”

“Always are for your my love.”

Your fingers found their way to the waistband of his pants, where after some interesting fumbling, you managed to find the belt that was holding his ridiculously too large pants in place. You got his belt loose and that pants just slide their way down his hips, and thighs before pooling at his knees.

You lift your hips for him as he slides your panties down before he takes himself in hand and guides himself to your entrance. With a whine you buck your hips into his as he slides himself into you. 

“God baby. Always so tight for me.” he moans out, ocean colored eyes locked with yours. 

He begins to move slowly at first but after some encouragement from you he begins to move his hips at a much more rapid pace. Neither of you really wanting to take your time. 

Your breathing ragged now, as the sweat is pouring from both of your bodies, a bead of sweat dripping off the tip of his nose. The sound of skin on skin and your moans filling the air. 

“I’m-oh baby-yes-please-please-don’t stop-feels so good” you stutter out as you claw at his still clothed back 

“Rami-God-yes-yes-yes-so close already-Rami I’m gonna-”

His mouth found yours at the right moment, because just as his lips collided with yours your walls clenched around him and you let a scream that may have sounded something like his name. 

This time it was his turn as he simply starts mumbling out,”I'm gonna-I’m cumming!”His abs clenching and his whole body tightened, and he came hard, cock twitching inside of you as he painted your walls with his seed. 

His body falling on top of yours, with your chests still heaving, as he lazily planted kisses on your face, jaw, and neck. Both of you were content to lay there like this all night until you hear a small voice.

“Santa? Why are you kissing my mommy?”

Both of you startled looked up to see your seven year old son standing at the entrance to the living room looking sleepy and confused.

Rami muttered a quiet,”Fuck,” as you let out a small laugh.

“Said baby, it’s just your daddy giving mommy some kisses is all. We came downstairs to see if Santa had come yet, and he did, so we just decided to have a cuddle on the couch. Can you go back to bed and I’ll be up in a minute to tuck you back in okay?”

“Okay.” he said as he headed back to bed.

“Shit how much of that do you think he saw?” Rami questioned. 

“I don’t think he saw anything, but I should probably go upstairs and tuck him back in before he comes back down here.” you laugh, as you pull your panties back up and smooth your dress down over your hips.

“I’ll meet you in the bedroom in a few? If you’ve got anything else left we might be able to get another round in before we have to knock out for the night. You know those two will be up at five and there is no going back back from there.” you state as you lean in to give him another kiss.

“I swear those two aren’t really ours because neither of us are morning people so  how did we end up with two kids that are always up so damn early?”

You just laughed again, you were always laughing with him, and shrugged,”Maybe they are secretly your brothers.”

He just gasped in mock horror, since he knew you were only teasing, and chased after you holding his pants up with one hand just so he could playfully smack your ass.

“That was a naughty thing to say YN, do you secretly have a thing for my brother?” he asks, eyes crinkled with the smile he was wearing. He knows you jest but he can’t help it. Maybe a part of him was actually jealous even though he knew he never needed to be.

“Maybeeeee, I mean it’s hard not too, you both look sooooo much alike. Maybe I got a little confused once or twice.” you tease.

He gasped again before following you up the stairs trying not to trip over his pants.

“Your ass is gonna pay for that. Maybe I need to remind you just who you belong to?”

Keeping the teasing going you quietly say,”Sami.”

He smacks your ass again, and say with a smirk,”Nope. Try again.”

Reaching the top of the stairs he pulls you close to him again, his face buried in your neck as he breathes you in. “I love you but you’re in some trouble YN, and you need to be punished. Daddy is waiting. I’m going to give you a very good reminder of who exactly you belong to so you won’t  ever forget it.”

You brows shot nearly into your hairline as you giggled, wiggled your ass against his crotch and pulled away sprinting towards your son’s room. Just before you opened his bedroom door you turned around to look at Rami and said,”Can’t wait, because you need to prove it, Daddy.”

The look on his face was priceless, he was going into dominant lover mode, and you just issued a challenge to that primal part of him. His eyes darkened and his face set, and it took everything he had to not claim you right then and there. You shot him a wide smile and then opened the door and entered your son’s room to tuck him back in as promised.

Part Two of Santa’s Cumming

@r-ahh-mi​ @xmxisxforxmaybe​ @ramimedley​ @txmel​ @hissom1933​ @mister-owls-cupcake​ @free-rami​ @mezzomercury​ @safinsscar​ @spacedustmazzello​ @itslula1991​ @youthea​ @ladyr0b0t​ @sassystrawberryk​ @itsme690​ @mrhoemazzello​

[fanfic-inator795]

RotTMNT/Baron Jitsu fanfiction: Dating… With Children - Chapter Ten

(Also on AO3 if you want to leave a comment or kudos)

Plot:  Benjamin Draxum hardly considered himself a man of high social standing. Not because he was uncouth or unworthy of it, mind you, but simply because he didn’t have much of a social life. Hard to have one when he usually spent his days at work, cooped up in a lab for so long that he often had his lunches in there, and his nights at home reading or doing research for more personal projects. But perhaps meeting handsome semi-retired movie star - as well as his four young sons - could change all that…

((Last of the updates for probably a while, unless I get hit with another bolt of inspiration. Again, hope you all enjoyed! ^v^))

As reluctant as he was to do so, Draxum was man enough to admit that as he stared down the multiple aisles of toys that he was completely and utterly at a loss.

He had meant to buy a present in the days leading up to the actual event, he really had. But online research in-between doing the research he was actually getting paid to do proved fruitless. There were plenty of suggestions and advertisements, but most of the toys and products brought to his attention either didn’t fit at all or just didn’t seem like a good enough gift.

And so, here he was. In the middle of Gilbert’s toy section, mere hours before the actual event, still trying to answer the question of what a seven-going-on-eight year old boy would want for his birthday.

“When I was a kid, I was always the most satisfied when I just got cash,” he mumbled to himself. But cash for a child’s birthday gift would just be tacky, as would a gift card. He tried to think back on what he liked as a kid, and briefly remembered a few science-related toys he had enjoyed fiddling with, but that seemed more like a Donatello gift than a Raphael one. There really wasn’t anything worse than getting a gift that you didn’t just dislike, but was clearly meant for someone else. Draxum had learned that at a young age during an elementary school gift exchange where he had gotten a jewelry making kit that had been meant for the friend of the student who had bought it, not knowing the exchange was supposed to be random.

At the very least, Draxum was confident enough that he wouldn’t make a mistake like that. He had a pretty good grasp on what Raph liked… and that was the problem.

Most of the wrestling and superhero and ninja figures that lined the action figure aisle were the same toys that he had seen in Raph’s room. Stuffed bears had a similar problem, and even if he was sure Raph wouldn’t mind another bear friend, he also knew that at that age gifts were only really exciting if they were something you DIDN’T already have, and something that was instead truly surprising.  

Moving past the dolls and the pool toys that had been put on clearance, as well as a huge display of new Mrs. Cuddles plushies (definitely a bad idea, if Raph’s reactions to her commercials were anything to go by), Draxum then entered the board game and activities aisle. He had been lucky when Trivial Pursuit Family ended up being a good purchase, but wasn’t sure if there was a board game that would appeal specifically to Raph. There were also more interesting things like ‘Make Your Own Fossil’ kits, bead art, Shrinky Dinks and other similar crafts.

“Too bad he isn’t as into arts and crafts as his brother,” Draxum mumbled. Though, Raph DID like to knit… But a bundle of yarn wasn’t exactly an exciting gift either. It was a bonus “just thought I’d pick this up for you too” gift, at best. With a sigh, he decided to give the Lego aisle a try - and that’s when he saw it almost hidden away as it sat on the top shelf.

Funnily enough, he remembered seeing the game in stores when he was a child, though he was sure it wasn’t the original toy even if it was incredibly similar. Just by looking at it, Draxum could tell that it would at the very least peak Raph’s interest. It was inexpensive but not cheap, a surprise definitely yet not a total shot in the dark pertaining to whether or not Raph would like it. “It’s probably as close to a ‘perfect’ gift as I can get,” he admitted. So he picked up the box and headed towards the gift bags…

He ended up being the second guest to arrive to the small party, just a few minutes after April and her family. “You must be Ben,” April’s mother said as she and her husband shook his hand, immediately recognizing the man from both her neighbor’s and her daughter’s description of him, “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Draxum nodded, a bit stiff and professional though thankfully not standoffish. He did loosen up a bit however when Raph nearly knocked him over with a hug.

“You came!” Raph grinned, just as happy as he had been several days ago when his father first offered his boyfriend the invite. Truth be told, even Raph could tell that Draxum wasn’t much of a party guy - not like his pop, who always insisted on celebrating things whether it be in a big or small way. But the doctor had become such a big part of his life lately that it would’ve been weird and kind of sad to not have him there to celebrate with them.

Draxum seemed to share the sentiment, placing a gentle hand on the boy’s head and patting his long and curly hair. “I did. Happy birthday, Raphael.” Raph smiled, thanking him before excusing himself, wanting to get back to his brothers and friend. Having seen the whole scene, April’s parents shared a look before nodding in approval. Really, it was no surprise that their neighbor who had been single for as long as he had lived on their street had ended up choosing someone like Draxum.

The final guest arrived just a few minutes later, her parents unable to stay and instead just dropping her off. Draxum couldn’t help but stare at the pair as they stood in Lou’s doorway, the two men nearly complete opposites. One of them was huge, practically towering over Lou and his own family, with a firm brow and wearing a casual, light purple tank top and shorts. The other man was much smaller and thinner in stature, his sharp eyes framed with crows feet and dressed in a very nice sweater-vest and khakis combo.

Their daughter stood out just as much, looking about as old as April, wearing a black and purple jumper with hair so short that it had nearly been shaved off and face as serious as a nine year old could be. Though, as her fathers brought her into a hug, giving her plenty of quiet “We love you”s and “Have fun”s, her expression did soften just a little. And, once April took her hand and the boys gladly welcomed her, she even managed to smile.

“That’s Yuu. She’s a new friend from school,” Lou explained as he handed Draxum a cup of juice, “and a new student in general, having been homeschooled until this year. From what I have heard, she’s a bit of a loner. ...And apparently VERY intense when it comes to games in gym.”

“Well, it looks like she’s found her group now,” Draxum commented as he watched a grinning Yuu, who had teamed up with Mikey and was currently chasing after a laughing Leo and April with toy swords.

Lou smiled, nodding. “Yep, I think she has.” This was her first time over, but Lou was already certain that it wouldn’t be her last.

After about an hour of free play for the kids and socializing for the adults, Lou gathered all the guests up for party games. It was typical kids’ party stuff with musical chairs, duck-duck-goose and limbo. It was mostly for the kids, though each adult guest got dragged into at least one round, leading to plenty of laughs for everyone. (The O’Neils turned out to be very skilled limbo players, and Lou practically falling into Draxum’s lap as they both tried for the same musical chair had definitely been one of the most memorable moments.)

But the best game had definitely been saved for last, and all it took was Lou saying that it was time to go outside for the kids to all run to the backyard, where a big and round piñata with pictures of the various New York League wrestlers was already hung.

“You guys can go first,” Raph said, passing the bat to his youngest brother while the adults stood back to watch. He knew very well how strong he could be, and as much as he wanted to bash open the thing, he also wanted everyone else to get a turn.

Mikey tried to hit it as hard as he could, but to no avail. He pouted and passed the bat to Leo, who also couldn't manage to damage the piñata despite his efforts. Neither could Donnie, surprisingly. Not even April could manage to dent the thing, and by this point all the kids were starting to get more than a little frustrated.

“Geez, did you make it with super glue?” Draxum asked.

“Hey, I just bought it at a normal party store!” Lou insisted. Who would've thought a ten dollar piñata would be so tough. “Hmph, if they can't get open soon, I may just have to go over there and Hot Soup it open myself just so they can get the candy.”

“...That's not a verb, Lou.”

“It is the way I use it.”

Yuu took the bat now, screaming the mightiest battle cry she could muster as hit her ‘foe’. And, much to everyone’s delight, it actually cracked some, a huge dent now in it’s side. Yuu grinned at her victory, and passed the bat onto an awaiting Raph.

“Come on, big brother,” he heard Donnie say, “Finish it off!”

The other kids, as well as his father, joined in. “Yeah!” “Do it, Raphie, do it!” “You got this, Raph!” “Just one good hit, son, come on!”

Gripping the handle tightly, Raph prepared to swing. “Hot SOUP!” He yelled as he whacked the stubborn thing, resulting in a candy explosion that was so spectacular that even Draxum had to clap at it.

“Ha, that’s my boy!” Lou cheered over the candy free-for-all. He nudged Draxum slightly. “See, told you it was a verb.”

“Well, it is in this family, at least,” Draxum chuckled.

Once the candy and piñata bits (which everyone gladly let Mikey have for whatever future art project he had in mind) were cleaned up, it was back inside for presents and then cake. As was tradition in their household, everyone sat in a circle with Raph taking the spot next to the small pile of presents, all of which were wrapped or in a bag with the exception of one that instead had Chinese shipping labels on it.

“I know what this is!” Raph grinned, opening the box. He held up the various Chinese candies within for everyone to see. “Thanks, Auntie Shen!” He shouted, not caring if his aunt could actually hear him or not.

The next few presents were just as well received. A basketball from April to replace the one they had lost, some Teddy Bear Town accessories for his bears from Leo (courtesy of the small allowance his father had given him for the occasion), a VERY sparkly and colorful card from Mikey, a small homemade music box from Donnie, and a couple small ninja action figures from Yuu. Of course, Raph gave everyone plenty of thanks and hugs for their gifts.

Finally, Raph grabbed Draxum’s bag, and the scientist held his breath as he took the box out of it. “...Rock em’ sock em’ robots?” Raph read, looking curiously at the stylized pictures on the box before glancing up at Draxum.

“It's a game,” Draxum explained, not too surprised that Raph had never seen it before, “Each player takes control of a robot, and they fight to try and knock the other’s head off.”

“Whoaaa, really?” And now what he knew what it was, the birthday boy didn't hesitate to open it up. Sure enough, there was a small plastic boxing ring and two different colored plastic robots that were ready to knock each other's block off. “Awesome!” Raph smiled as he pressed a button, getting the red robot to throw a punch.

“Hey, I wanna try!” Leo said, already grabbing the controls for the blue robot.

“Me too!” Mikey shouted at the same time that Yuu insisted, “I also wanna challenge you!”

Within a few rounds, it ended up becoming somewhat of a robot rumble tournament, with several fights happening back-to-back with each new challenger going up against the winner of the previous round. Some of the kids even started putting up bets on who would win using some of their piñata candy, though it was still exciting no matter who won. It ended up taking the announcement of cake to finally drag them all away from the plastic ring.

By that time, Draxum was starting to feel a strong headache coming on thanks to all the shouting and excitement from his gift. “Maybe it was too perfect of a gift,” he mumbled to himself.

Still, he didn't want his oncoming bad mood to spoil Raph’s day, so Draxu, simply excused himself and went outside for some fresh air and quiet. Of course, it didn't take long for his boyfriend to join him, two pieces of red velvet cake in his hands.

“Hey, handsome,” he said, handing him a slice, “Everything alright?”

Draxum nodded, silently thanking him for the dessert with a soft kiss on his temple. “I'm fine, just a headache.”

“Ah, yeah,” Lou nodded, slouching a little himself as he reveled in the near silent backyard. “Kids parties can be fun, but they can be pretty rough too. If you need to leave, you can.”

“I’ll be fine,” Draxum told him, “I just needed a break is all, but thank you.” He glanced back towards the old house, and through the window saw Raph and the others race back to the living room, their sugar-spiked energy returned and their thumbs ready for more robot action. A small smile returned to Draxum’s lips.

Lou took a couple bites of his cake before speaking again. “Looks like your gift is the fan favorite.”

“Honestly I wasn't even sure if he would like whatever I got him,” Draxum admitted, picking up his own fork, “I didn't know what to get, and I ended up finding it by chance.”

Lou hummed. “You could've just texted me for gift suggestions.”

“I know,” Draxum said simply, letting the silent subtext behind his words speak for themselves. Lou smiled, shaking his head slightly. Of course Draxum would want to do it on his own, but while a bit unnecessary, it was also still sweet.

“Though, I didn't see any gifts from you,” Draxum continued, “Let me guess, you already gave him one of those big closet-reveal surprise presents?” Leave it to Lou to turn giving a present into a bit of a show.

“Oh, no no, I just took him to the toy store in Times Square after his birthday breakfast to pick out his own present.”

Draxum stood there for several seconds before finally uttering a perfectly flat, “What.”

Lou shrugged, taking another sweet bite before continuing. “I still try to surprise them with their Santa presents, keep the ‘holiday magic’ alive and all that, but birthday presents? I just let them pick it out for themselves. From what I can tell, they seem to like doing it that way. Makes them feel more grown up that they actually get to choose, and it certainly makes things easier for me.” When he noticed Draxum still giving him a flat look, Lou just gave him a “What?”

“Oh nothing, nothing,” Draxum all but sighed as he went to finally take a bite of his cake, “Just don’t be surprised if I use that strategy the next time I don’t know what to get your kids.”

((I love Recruit and her foot clan dads so much, I just HAD to put them in this universe. Anyway *points at Lt. and Brute* When I say underrated, you say ship! UNDERRATED! Lol. And yes, until we get her official name reveal, I am pretty much basing Recruit's name off that one "Hello, you" line from Brute in Hot Soup: The Game. It's silly but it's still better than calling her Karai imo....Also, Andy Suriano actually posted a sketch of Foot Lt. in a sweater vest on his instagram and I just... I need that to be canon. I need it. But for now, I'll settle for him wearing it in this universe, lol.))

[eloquenceassassinated]

I’m Leaving Tumblr: A Farewell to my Followers

I haven't been very active on this blog lately. If you're observant, you've probably noticed it. If I really wanted to, I could probably just leave it that way; everyone would eventually take me off their followed list as an inactive blog and absently wonder where I went. But I don't really want to do that.

In his poem “The Hollow Men,” T. S. Elliot wrote, “This is how the world ends: not with a bang, but with a whimper.” In my case, though I'm not a popular blog by any stretch, and though this arguably isn't a website that deserves the fanfare, I don't want to leave with a bang, but at least with a whisper: “Thanks for the memories. I'll be on my way now.”

To do that properly, I have to take you on a little ride. 

In my time on this website, I:

Joined tumblr in June of 2017 for the purposes of posting art.

Proceeded to not post a lot of art.

Found the Captain America, Voltron, and Ninjago fandoms on here and got swept up in those instead.

Got my first 100 notes on a post about Dr. Julien. Dabbed in celebration.

Made a post about Shiro and Bucky maybe being friends.

Bought a mug from mintmintdoodles—and liked it!

Went on a missions trip. Came back.

Reblogged a LOT of fandom stuff.

Saw Wonder Woman, which was good.

Celebrated my first Steve's Birthday—I mean Fourth of July on the site.

Made lots of Clone!Shiro theory posts. 

Made a dumb “who in Voltron likes anime?” post. 

Fell in love with Matt Holt.

Started posting “Grass Whistle”, my first multi-chapter fanfic. 

Got a job, which kinda put the kabosh on the fanfic for a bit.

Bought a print from mechinaries.

Found a bunch of my other fandoms on this site including Lord of the Rings, How to Train Your Dragon, and Hamilton.

Celebrated my first Christmas on the site. 

Participated in the Ninjago Secret Santa, where I actually got my friend Candaru's prompt and it was hilarious.

Kinda ghosted through the first winter months of 2018 as my job occupied more and more of my time. 

Resumed posting Grass Whistle in the spring of 2018 and finally finished it, to a wonderful reception.

Saw Black Panther and loved it!

Started posting “The Run and Go”, to a better reception on FF.net than this site.

Saw Thor: Ragnarok and wished we got to see that hug.

Witnessed the best season of Voltron (S6) before everything went downhill.

Went on vacation. Came back.

Wrote and posted “Brother”.

Posted art celebrating Candaru's story “Several Dead LEGOs Play Cards”.

Went on the missions trip again. Came back.

Saw Infinity War and was in DENIAL.

Reconnected with a friend with whom I'd been through a really rough patch over the past couple of years, and began to mend our friendship.

Posted a really long queue of LotR stuff for no particular reason.

Watched Voltron end; it was terrible.

Started a new year and continued to keep the blog busy with lots of queues.

Watched Alita: Battle Angel and it was AMAZING.

Posted a really long How to Train Your Dragon queue for no particular reason.

Continued to dread Endgame.

Watched Endgame. Stayed in denial.

Fell behind on Ninjago seasons.

Watched the Voltron and Ninjago blogs I follow fade into inactivity until I was left with nothing but gifs of Endgame and my own sadness.

Kept the charade going until the summer of 2019 hit and I realized that I'm doing out of obligation what should be for fun.

I don't really know how to state this in a kind way, but neither the circumstances that brought me here nor the conditions that kept me here exist any longer. This is a fandom blog, and it's a tough break when you've fallen either out of step or out of love with your fandoms. Keeping up the queue is the only way that my blog stays active on my work days, but it isn't fun. This blog stays inactive because upkeeping it is a chore—a chore that I keep putting off, and a chore that no one asked me to do.

2 Timothy 2:20-21 says, “In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for special purposes and some for common use. Those who cleanse themselves from the latter will be instruments for special purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.”

I never really understood that. What does Paul have against common things? Does he have beef with clay? But I think I get it now—it's a simple matter of removing clutter. Cleaning out what's unnecessary so that the only things that remain are the best ones.

I'm not leaving tumblr because I have any anger against the site or any one person or fandom or whatever. I'm not leaving because something cataclysmic happened, or because I was abducted by aliens and their planet has bad wifi. I'm leaving because I've had some time to think, and I've decided that it's for my best mental health that I leave this chapter behind. Plain and simple.

Those who know me personally probably know that my prayer for 2019 has been centered around a single word: Restoration. The past few years have been hard ones for me, and it's time to rebuild and restore what's been broken. Sometimes repairing a house means tearing out the moldy walls first. Sometimes being your best self means eliminating distractions.

Because that's what these are—distractions, layered on distractions. Marvel distracted me from the real world, and Voltron distracted me between Marvel movies, and Ninjago distracted me when Voltron turned sour. When those fell through, I turned to old fandoms to distract myself. And when I finally extricated myself from that mess, made amends with some people, looked up, and faced my situation for what it is, I realized that it's not something I can maintain.

I'll still keep the blog up. I won't deactivate it, because deactivated blogs make me sad and wonder if there's some tragedy here that I don't know about. Especially since the platonic prompts post continues to make rounds, I want people to be able to come back to this blog if they wish and see what the original poster was like—someone who loves friendship in fandoms, celebrates it, and spent two years creating a safe haven of nothing but positive, pro-bromance content. If this blog was ever a safe haven for anybody, I want them to still have it available in its entirety. Even if it should never have been work, I did work hard on this. I don't want that to go to waste.

As for those I follow, there will still be some blogs that I check on from time to time—particularly the ones that my personal friends run—but I likely won't be interacting with the posts. If you know me in real life, you can still contact me through email or my fanfiction account. I'll be there.

But starting today, I'm taking the tumblr app off of my phone. I might come back sometime, but I don't see it happening. No offense or hard feelings to anybody—I'm just done for now.

If I ever made anyone smile, I think this would all be worth it. If I made someone laugh, or think, or cry, or if I inspired them to write something or draw something or create something that had never existed before, I think it would all be worth it. If I can truly say that I was a positive Christian influence in my short time here—that I touched somebody—I think it would be worth it.

After all, life isn't about followers. It's about friends. It isn't about notes. It's about whose lives you touched, whose day you made just a little bit better. And I know that all of you (except for the pornbots) are real people, and I want you to know that, to the best of my ability, I care about every single one of you. I want all of you to live happy lives, and I hope that God makes Himself very, very real to you and fills you with a love that words can't explain and a joy that our hearts can't contain and a hope that our minds can't imagine in our wildest dreams.

I wish all 119 of you well. I wish everyone who has ever crossed my path through this blog well. I hope I could make you smile. It's been fun, and I've met some great people and made some wonderful friends, and I'm glad to have been here.

Thank you to my friends. Thank you to anyone who ever liked or reblogged my art. Thank you to everyone who reblogs the platonic prompts post—it's just over 3,000 notes as I write this, which is about the size of my church, and while that isn't terribly a lot I guess it's still wild to think about.

I especially want to thank the Ninjago community for always being so enthusiastic, warm, and wholesome my whole time on this website, from giving me my first 100 notes on the Dr. Julien headcanon post just a few days into my time here to your staggering and sincere support of Grass Whistle a year later. Never stop being your wonderful selves—it was wonderful to interact with all of you.

Thanks for the memories. I mean that.

Here's a picture of one of my hermit crabs, Clover, on a tiny boat I got in Michigan. Peace out!

—Sincerely, EA

[mischiefandspirits]

Iron Legion (29/?)

Never let it be said that Tony Stark ever does things by half. He might have grown up with little family, but he wasn’t about to keep it that way.

Tony Stark was seventeen when his first child was born, and that was just the beginning.

For Masterpost, Casting, Timeline, AO3, and Fanfiction

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Infinity Child, Part 3

“Uh, what?” Dr. Banner muttered once the shock brought on by the display of strength from the preteen faded enough for him to speak.

“Who’s the tiny super soldier?” Tony asked, turning to Pepper.

“Your granddaughter,” Rhodey said before she could answer. “Courtesy of the Princess of Wakanda.”

Tony shot him a wide-eyed look and Nebula shoved him.

“Peter and Harley created her, alongside Princess Shuri and Helen’s son,” Pepper explained. She nodded at Vivian. “Show him.”

She glanced at Dr. Banner as J.A.R.V.I.S. turned on the privacy function on the glass walls then shifted into her base appearance.

Both Tony and Dr. Banner made astonished noises.

“The kids made her?” Tony asked, sounding strangled.

“Amazing,” Dr. Banner gasped. “How?”

“The boys stole the readings from the cradle that was used to make Vision and Dr. Cho’s notes from her time under V.I.R.G.I.L.’s control,” Nebula said.

“They recreated Vision? Incredible. And they brought in Princess Shuri?”

“They needed vibranium and her experience with it,” Vivian explained.

“How did they even get into contact with her?” Tony asked, rubbing a hand over his face.

“They programmed a mini spider bot to locate her and give her Peter’s number then had me drop it on a car heading into Wakanda. Apparently, it managed to slip through their detections because of its size and the fact it didn’t give off any wireless signals,” J.O.C.A.S.T.A. said. “For the record, I didn’t actually know what the bot was for.”

“Not a good excuse,” Nebula said.

“They could have gotten in so much trouble,” Tony sighed.

“Shuri thought it was funny. She loved Ana,” Karen said.

Tony frowned. “Is she…”

The amusement from her treatment of Captain America fled.

Rhodey nodded. “Her brother as well. Their mother is ruling for now.”

Tony looked her over and held out the hand Pepper wasn’t holding, with a smile. “Com’ere, kiddo.”

When she got close enough, he weakly pulled her into a one-armed hug. She carefully returned it, mindful of his injuries. “I’m Tony, but you can call me whatever. Nice to meet you, kid. ”

“You too. I’m Karen or Project Vivian,” she whispered into his shoulder.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tony looked around the penthouse as Happy helped him out of the elevator. “Good to be home,” he muttered bleakly before forcing a smile on as Karen came rushing in to hug him. “You my welcome home party? I know Rhodey, Nebula, and Bruce left this morning, but where’s everyone else.”

“Mom’s helping Aunt Pepper,” Val said, shuffling in with U still in drone form perched on her head. “She’s not feeling good.”

“Just a stomach bug,” Happy said before Tony could start to panic. “She’s just been a little bit nauseous the past couple days. She hasn’t thrown up though.”

“She has now,” Val said. “That’s why mom’s helping her. She’s holding her hair.”

Tony went pale. “A doctor. What’s the status on doctors? We need one.”

“Calm down, Stark,” Tori huffed and Tony turned to see her standing in the doorway. “She’s fine.”

“But -”

“Tony.” Pepper walked up behind Tori and the woman stepped aside to let her through.

“Pep, are you okay? What’s wrong? Do we need to -”

“I’m fine,” she said and Karen pulled away so she could hug him.

“Val said you threw up.”

“I did, but Tori and I talked and,” she glanced over her shoulder then met Tony’s eyes, “I think I’m pregnant.”

…

“Tony?”

“I think you broke him,” Val chuckled.

“Wait, are you serious?” Happy asked in a choked voice.

“Tony?” Pepper said, ignoring him.

“You… I was right?”

Pepper frowned. “Right?”

“I said I had a dream that we had a kid!”

Pepper’s eyes widened. “Oh my god.”

“I was right!”

“We don’t know that for sure, right?” Happy said, looking to Tori with pleading eyes.

“I’m late, and it would explain the nausea and I’ve been getting some body pains,” Pepper said.

Tony kissed her.

“I’m going to go grab a test for her,” Tori told Happy as the two continued at it. “Why don’t you girls go play.”

“I’m too old for this,” Happy groaned.

When Tony pulled away, they were alone. “We’re having a baby?”

“Maybe? Probably?” she breathed, setting her forehead against his.

His smile slowly faded as something occurred to him.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, cupping his face between her hands as he tried to look away.

Tony pressed a kiss to her wrist then stepped back. His eyes landed on the crate Pepper had bought that was theoretically decorative, but secretly held a few tubs of legos and a potato gun hidden underneath Nebula’s favorite blanket. “They’ll never get to know him.”

Pepper followed his gaze then took his hand.

He stared for a moment before turning back to her. “Maybe… maybe we should move.”

She gave him a confused frown.

“Its… Peter and F.R.I.D.A.Y. are everywhere. It was the same at the mansion. I just -”

Pepper nodded. “I know. I think the same thing’s been happening to Nebula. She’s been staying with Happy and hasn’t been back to their apartment since. I don’t think I’d be around much either if it wasn’t for Tori, Karen, and Val.”

“Maybe a fresh start is what we need. Get out of the city. You, me, Karen, and little Morgan. Get a place away from everything and everyone. The Keeners, Nebula, Happy, and Rhodey can come too if we can talk them into it.”

“That actually sounds really good,” she sighed. She leaned her head against her shoulder. “We need to talk about the name though.”

“Nope. Morgan. It’s perfect.”

“We don’t even know if it's a boy.”

“Even better!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hey U,” Rhodey said when they flew up in their new blue orchard bee-inspired drone.

They gave a few beeps and buzzes, landing on his car door as he carefully maneuvered his legs out.

Once they were clear, he engaged the braces and stood up. “Everyone inside?”

U chirped and did a spin around his head before flying away.

Rhodey closed the door and headed into Tony and Pepper’s cabin.

“Hey Rhodey,” Happy called when he stepped through the door.

“RHODEY!” Karen cheered and suddenly he had a little girl hanging from his front.

He blinked and wrapped his arms around her. “Where did you come from?”

“Karen Vivian Rhodes, what have we said about flying in the house?” Pepper huffed from out of sight.

“Sorry. But Rhodey’s here!” she called back, nuzzling his chest.

“Go put your book in your room and get cleaned up,” Pepper tisked, coming out of the dining room. “Dinner’s almost done.”

The girl gave him one last squeeze then fled the room.

“She’s like a duckling,” Tony chuckled as he peeked out of the kitchen. “She saw you first now she’s attached, Platypus.”

“Shouldn’t you be keeping an eye on the vegetables?”

“Yes, dear.” Tony gave Rhodey a wink then fled from Pepper’s glare. “Soon she’ll be calling you mama,” he called out.

“I don’t think I’m the mama you should be worried about,” Rhodey called back before focusing on Pepper. “How are you doing? You three settled in alright?”

“We’re doing… better. Getting out of the city has helped. Tori’s given me a recipe for a homemade ginger shake that’s really helped with the nausea and it’s relaxing not having work right under my feet. The workshop is finally all unpacked so Tony is only hovering nervously over us eighty percent of the time and Karen has just discovered a fascination with painting so J.A.R.V.I.S. has been helping her research. There are still moments, but it’s getting better.” She gestured out the window. “Even U has calmed down some. Instead of hovering over us every second of the day, they’ve taken to patrolling the grounds. I think Tony’s been considering making them an entire swarm so they can run security.”

“Would U even be able to handle processing that many bodies?” Rhodey asked in a low voice so Tony wouldn’t hear.

“I don’t know and I don’t care. Just as long as it means he’ll stop hovering and grabbing boxes out of my hands every five minutes while I’m trying to unpack because I might hurt the baby! I’m barely two months along, the baby’s fine!” Pepper responded, not bothering to lower her voice. In fact, the last part she practically shouted in the direction of the kitchen.

“Of course, dear,” Tony shot back happily.

“He’s really been getting on your nerves then,” Rhodey chuckled.

Pepper sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I know he doesn’t mean anything by it and he knows I’m not really angry. It’s just everything that happened and my hormones and his PTSD all piling up and spilling over.”

“Hey, if you guys need some you-time, just let me know. I’ll be happy to watch Karen for you.”

“Mama bear,” Tony chimed and stepped into the doorway. “Also, dinner is ready.”

“Did you take the bread out of the oven?”

“I thought you said you did that already.”

“No, I said I got the chicken out of the oven.”

Tony cursed and ducked away.

“No cursing in the house!”

“That’ll never stick,” Happy muttered.

Pepper shot a glare at him then called up the stairs, “Karen, are you almost done?”

“Yes!”

“Speaking of which,” Rhodey said. “Since when can she fly?”

“We found out a few days ago,” Pepper said, leading him and Happy into the dining room. “Tony gave her a check-up.”

“She doesn’t seem to have all of Vision’s abilities, but alongside the flight and strength, she can also shift her density for short periods and create energy pulses. I’m guessing that last one was Shuri’s work because they work similar to King Cat’s suit, just using the arc energy from the reactor in her forehead instead of kinetic energy,” Tony explained, setting a bowl of garlic bread onto the table.

They all sat down, Karen slipping in a moment later to sit next to Rhodey.

“Duckling,” Tony hummed.

She frowned and Rhodey ruffled her hair with an eye roll.

“Speaking of baby birds and nests, what were you guys thinking for school?” he asked as they all started to dig in.

“Does she even need to go to school?” Happy asked. “I mean, can’t she just download anything she needs to know?”

“No, she can’t interact with computers like Vision could. Violet, salad too,” Tony interrupted himself before continuing, “As soon as the cradle disconnected from her brain, she was locked into a closed system. She’s got an eidetic memory, but she’d still have to learn things the hard way first.”

“The others couldn’t figure out how to make any wireless connection devices work with my synthetic brain given the guidelines they were working with from Vision,” Karen added, looking up from where she was cutting her chicken into pieces to grab the salad bowl. “They ended up deciding the Mind Stone was what allowed for the compatibility.”

“So school?” Rhodey asked, amused.

Tony shrugged and turned to Pepper, who shook her head.

“We haven’t talked about it. I suppose we’ll have to see what online schools are still running.” Pepper gave her an apologetic look. “I know you can disguise yourself as a human, but people will begin to notice that you don’t age.”

“She ages.”

Pepper, Rhodey, and Happy turned to Tony, who shrugged again.

“Shuri figured it out,” Karen said. “She didn’t explain it well -- I think she enjoyed teasing the boys on their lack of knowledge about Vibranium -- but it has something to do with it being a living metal.”

“Living metal?” Happy asked, slowly, and she nodded.

“Wherever the asteroid carrying the Vibranium came from must have developed life of a more metallic variety.”

“Explains why it’s so adaptable,” Tony hummed. “Too bad Dad mixed his batch up with other metals to make Cap’s frisbee. What I wouldn’t give to get my hands on some of the raw stuff.”

“The boys felt the same, but Peter kept track of everything that Shuri sent them to be sure that any that wasn’t used on me was sent back untouched out of respect for her culture.”

“Of course he did,” Pepper said proudly before getting back on topic. “Well, I suppose it’s your choice then, Karen. Would you rather go to school or take online courses?”

Karen blinked up at them, surprised. “Me?”

“Yeah, Violet. We’re not going to force you into anything,” Tony said gently.

Karen looked between them then ducked her head. As she started to make little swirls in her sauce, she said, “I don’t know. Peter always seemed to like school and his friends there, but Harley always complained about it and Shuri and Amadeus thought it was useless.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Harley was a brat and would have complained no matter what, Shuri probably had an army of tutors ready to teach her whatever she wanted at her own pace and probably never set foot in an actual school in her life, and Cho thought everything was beneath him. You’re a lot more like Peter.”

Karen looked up at Rhodey and he squeezed her shoulder with a smile. “It’s your choice, but socialization is important.”

When she still looked uncertain, Pepper offered, “How about this: You try going to school for a semester and if you don’t like it, then we can look into online options for next semester. There’s nothing wrong with keeping your options open.”

Karen glanced up at Rhodey again and nodded. “Okay.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hey, you.”

Vivian looked up from her book on the Lascaux cave paintings to see a pair of boys standing in front of her.

“What are you doing out here?”

“Reading,” she said with bemusement, holding up her book. “It’s about -”

“Why’re you outside?” one of the boys asked, with a snort.

“Why not?”

The boys frowned. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

She shrugged. She had been so excited about her new book, she had decided to sit out in the courtyard instead of eating lunch. “I’m not hungry.”

“What’s wrong with your face?” the other boy asked, pointing at her forehead.

“Birthmark.”

“What’s your deal?” the first boy asked, frustrated.

“What do you mean?”

Before either boy could say something, a voice yelled, “Would you two just get lost before you end up looking even more like idiots? She’s not buying your bait.”

The three turned to a girl who was lying on the grass nearby, her head held up to glare at them and a bag of chips on her stomach.

The boys grumbled, giving both girls scowls, but walked off.

“Bait?” Vivian asked as the other girl laid her head back on her folded up jacket.

“They wanted to upset you,” she said like it was obvious.

“Why?”

“Because their boys and you’re a pretty girl,” she scoffed, looking back up at her. “You haven’t spent a lot of time around boys have you?”

“Not exactly.” Vivian frowned down at her book. “Why would they want to upset me if they think I’m pretty?”

“Because they’re idiots who don’t know what emotions are.” She sat up fully, chips falling into her lap. “I don’t remember you from Elementary school.”

“My family just moved here from the city this summer. I’m Karen.”

“America.”

“Pardon?”

“My name,” the other girl chuckled. “It’s America. I know, weird.”

Vivian closed her book. “My aunt’s name was F.R.I.D.A.Y. I’ve heard weirder.”

The girl smiled and held out the bag. “So are you on a diet or did you forget your lunch money?”

Vivian shook her head and pulled out the box of food Pepper prepared for her. “I really was just not hungry.”

America shrugged and grabbed a chip.

[alexisrosemullens]

you are the one (designed for me)

Summary: Everyone has a timer that countdowns until you meet your soulmate. When you meet them, it turns into an infinity sign. The Gallaghers have bad luck with their soulmates, especially Ian whose soulmate left when he needed him the most.

Chapter One: time is moving slow

Chapter Two:  My mind runs away to you   

The next few weeks, Ian isn’t sure what they are doing. Ian continues going to the Alibi and hanging out with Mickey during his shift but instead of going home, he goes home with Mickey. In the morning, he sneaks out and heads back to his place before Fiona or the kids notice he’s gone. 

They become closer and Ian really thinks something could happen between them. He hasn’t had a connection like this in so long, everything just feels right. But he’s afraid. Mickey doesn’t like talking about his soulmate and is closed off when Ian tries to bring it up. He’s worried that he’s jumping into this too fast.

One morning while Ian is getting ready to leave and head back home, Mickey tries to pull him back.

“I have to leave,” Ian hums, leaning into him. “Fiona will be up soon and notice I’m gone.”

“Come on, man, just a little longer.”

Ian grins, kissing him. He slowly pulls away and climbs back out of bed. He hears Mickey make a small noise almost like a hum and a sigh. Ian grins, buttoning up his shirt. “Do you have to work this weekend?”

“Nah, V let me off so I can spend all of it with Yevgeny,” Mickey says. 

“That’s good.”

Ian sits back down on the bed and grabs his shoes to pull them on. He feels Mickey’s eyes on him as he ties his shoes.

Mickey clears his throat. “You uh want to come over and hang out with me and the kid?”

Ian stops and turns around, looking at him. “Wait, really?”

Mickey nods. “Yeah, you were really good with him.”

Ian grins and nods. “Yeah, okay. I just have to figure out what to tell Fiona. I think she has to work most of the weekend.”

“Are you still pretending to go to that dumb single’s group?”

“Nah, Fiona knows I quit. Lip doesn’t know yet but I think he figured it out.”

Mickey rolls his eyes. “Doubtful.”

“Hey! He’s my brother.”

“Still a dick.”

Ian shrugs in agreement. Mickey’s not wrong. He looks down at his watch and jumps up. He kisses Mickey on the cheek. “I really have to go. Text you later!”

Ian easily sneaks into the Gallagher house. No one is awake yet so Ian starts breakfast. He hears movement upstairs when he's almost done so he starts another pot of coffee. 

“Morning,” Fiona greets, stumbling into the kitchen.

“Morning,” Ian hands her a mug full of the new brewed pot.

Fiona mumbles a thank you and takes a large sip. “Hmm, that hits the spot.”

Ian chuckles, taking a small sip of his mug.

“You’re up early again,” Fiona says, looking around the kitchen. “And you made breakfast.” She stops and looks at him, narrowing his eyes. “What’s going on?”

“What are you talking about? I’ve been waking up early. Thought you guys would like some breakfast”

Fiona shakes her head. “Who is he?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about."

Fiona snorts. “Cut the bullshit, Ian. I’m your sister. I know you. I partially raised you. You’re seeing someone and I want to know who. Is it someone from single’s group? Is that why you stopped going?”

Ian shakes his head. He starts plating breakfast, trying to ignore Fiona’s stare and prying. 

“Did you go back to support group and find someone there? Ooh, is it Mickey?”

Ian turns around to face her in shock, his eyes wide. “How? H-how did you?”

Fiona squeals. “It is Mickey! I was just taking a chance with that one!”

More movement starts upstairs. Ian looks up at the ceiling then back at Fiona. He lowers his voice in case one of the kids could hear them. “How did you figure it out?”

Fiona rolls her eyes. “Carl mentioned he came by a few weeks ago, after you helped him out with Yevgeny.” She grins, bouncing slightly on her toes. “I didn’t know Mickey was gay. But I thought he was married to that Russian whore?”

Ian shrugs. “We haven’t talked about that. This is new, Fiona, so stop freaking out. I don’t know what we are yet.”

“Ooh,” Fiona grins.

“Stop,” Ian glares at her and turns back to fixing breakfast.

Fiona giggles. “I’m just messing with you, monkey.”

Ian turns back around to glare at her use of his nickname. “Really? Monkey? Come on, Fi.”

Fiona just continues laughing, ignoring Ian’s glare. She starts getting lunches ready while Ian finishes plating breakfast and setting it on the table.

“So, um,” Ian says after a few minutes of silence. “Mickey invited me over this weekend to hang out with him and Yevgeny.”

Fiona stops what she’s doing and looks at him, her arms crossing. “That sounds serious.”

“I know and so I was wondering what your schedule was this weekend?” Ian asks, his eyes hopeful as he gives his sister a smile. “Do you need me or can you handle it?”

Fiona grins, slapping his arm. “Go! Have fun! Don’t worry about me.”

“But, Fi,”

“Ian, go. Go try and live your life without your soulmate. I’m okay, really,” Fiona promises.

“Are you though?” Ian asks, moving to sit down on the barstool. “You went to support group and went out with that one guy. I never saw you go out anymore. You’ve barely gone out in seven years, Fi. I thought we were going to move on.”

Fiona sighs, leaning against the counter. “Look, you weren’t with your soulmate long. I mean, yeah, three years is a lot but that was when you were getting sick and I know you don’t remember much. I was with Jimmy/Steve for eight years. He helped me raise you kiddos. We lived together for almost five years, here in this house. Him leaving almost broke me. It’s going to take me a lot longer than a few dates to get over him.”

Ian reaches over and grabs his sister’s hands, rubbing her palms. “I know, Fi, but throwing yourself into work and this house isn’t going to help. We said we would try to be happy for Liam. Remember?”

Fiona nods, her eyes shining. 

“Ow! Carl!”

Debbie’s loud scream ruins the moment and Fiona pulls her hands away, wiping the tears from her eyes. She gives Ian a look but Ian shakes his head. Fiona grins wickedly and holds her hand out for a game of rock, paper, scissors. Two games later, Ian is upstairs, breaking up a fight between Debbie and Carl.

After Ian’s shift, he heads over to Mickey’s. His hands are sweating and he doesn’t know whether to go in or knock on the door. He decides to knock, figuring that is the safest option. Mickey opens the door and grins.

“Hey.”

“Hey, yourself,” Ian grins back, nodding at the towel thrown over Mickey’s shoulder.

“Kid wanted some Russian dish Svetlana makes. I have no idea what I’m doing. I ordered pizza as a backup,” Mickey says. He looks over his shoulder then kisses Ian quickly on the cheek before letting him in.

Yevgeny is sitting on the living room surrounded by Legos with the TV on. He looks up when Ian walks in and gives him a funny look.

“Yev, you remember Ian, right?” Mickey asks. “He watched you while I was working and helped you when you were sick.”

Yevgeny’s face lights up. “Yeah! Do you want to play Legos with me? I’m building a castle.”

Ian shrugs off his coat, placing it on the hook by the door. “As long as there are dragons.”

“Duh,” Yevgeny answers in a serious matter. He pats the floor with the least amount of Legos and Ian takes a seat next to him.

The rest of the night goes great. Yevgeny talks Ian’s ears off and forces him to watch a kid show after dinner. Ian doesn’t mind and sits through the weird show quietly. Yevgeny falls asleep during the next episode of the show and Mickey carries him to bed. When he gets back, Ian is putting on his jacket and hat.

“Where are you going?” Mickey asks.

“Home. You have Yevgeny tonight. Didn’t think you would want me to stay the night,” Ian says, zipping his jacket up.

“That’s stupid. He’s four. He doesn’t really understand what’s going on.”

“What about your ex?”

Mickey rolls his eyes. “Really? You’re bringing up my ex?”

Ian shuffles his feet, looking down.

“Take your jacket off, man. Stay awhile.”

“Your family’s fucking ridiculous,” Mickey laughs, handing Ian the cigarette they’re sharing. Mickey decided not to chance Yevgeny hearing anything so they ended up watching a movie and talking in Mickey’s bed. “How can you put up with two teenagers and an eight year old under one roof.”

Ian chuckles, leaning his head against the wall. “The bad thing is, that wasn’t the most Debbie thing she’s ever done.”

“She’s done something worse than faking a pregnancy to get a guy to date her?”

“Yep, she stole a baby once.”

Mickey stops laughing and turns to Ian, his eyes wide. “You’re fucking with me.”

“Nope. She was 10 and bored so she lured a toddler out of a birthday party with a candy bar,” Ian told him, handing the cigarette back over to Mickey. “Lip came up with this grand plan and we were able to return the kid, making it look like Debbie found him. Debs got enough money from it that she bought a water heater for the house.” 

“Jesus Christ.” 

Ian laughs at Mickey’s reaction, bumping his shoulder against his. “Hey, Mandy told me stories about you and your brothers so I know you have crazier ones.”

Mickey groans. “I do not want to talk about those days or my idiot brothers.”

“Come on, Mick,” Ian whines. “I told you several stories from my childhood. You haven’t told me anything.” 

“That’s bullshit. You refuse to talk about your teenage and recent years.” 

Ian glares at him. “So do you.”

They both stare at each other for a long time before Ian averts his eyes. His mind is racing and wants to ask Mickey what they are but he’s afraid that he’s going to scare Mickey off. Fuck it, he thinks. It’s time to bite the bullet. 

“Okay, how about we talk about what we are instead? Cause I for one want to know if we’re dating,” Ian finally says.

“Wow, you don’t hold anything back, do you?”

“Come on, Mick.” 

Mickey takes a long drag of his cigarette before answering. “Fuck, I don’t know. I’ve only been with one other guy before my father ruined my life. Then after he died, Yevgeny was here and I didn’t have time to sleep much less go out.” 

Ian reaches over and grabs his hand, squeezing it. “Okay, so let’s go out and figure this out.”

“Yeah?” Mickey looks over, trying to hide the smile that forming on his face. 

“Yeah.”

They figure out pretty quickly they both enjoy going out. By the third date, Ian asks the question again and Mickey agrees that they are dating. They don’t tell anyone at first. It’s Fiona that figures out they’re dating first. Ian waits for her to say something but she just smiles and pats him on the cheek. Debbie figures it out next and she doesn’t stop squealing and hugging them. Ian has to physically pull her off Mickey. Carl and Liam just kind of accept it when Mickey starts coming around more and more, neither one of them caring too much. Lip surprises Ian the most when he finds out. He just crosses his arms and nods at Mickey, not saying anything about it. 

Mickey slowly becomes a constant presence in the Gallagher house. The only time he isn’t over is when he has Yevgeny for the weekend but even then he sometimes shows up. A few months into their relationship, Fiona decides she wants to have a big family dinner and invites Mickey and Ella. When Ian tells Mickey, he laughs and refuses but after some convincing from Ian, he reluctantly agrees.

The night of the dinner, Ian picks Mickey up. He grumbles the whole way to the Gallagher house. Ian just laughs at him and squeezes his hand when they make their way up to the house.

“Hey, hey!” Ian says when they walk in the door. 

Liam looks up from the TV and smiles. “Hey, Ian! Hey, Mickey! Fiona said dinner will be ready soon.”

Ian leans on the couch, looking at the TV. “What are you even watching?”

Liam shrugs. “I was just flipping through. It’s about a dead guy.”

Ian hums. “Fiona in the kitchen?”

Liam nods, focusing back on the TV. Ian ruffles his hair then motions Mickey to follow him in the kitchen. Fiona turns around when she hears them, her face lighting up with a smile. 

“Hey, Mickey! You made it!” she grins, tossing her towel over her shoulder then walking over to them, pulling Mickey in for a hug.

Mickey tenses and slowly pats her back until she lets go. Ian chuckles, bumping his shoulder against Mickey’s.

“Need any help, Fi?” Ian asks. 

“Nope, everything’s ready. We’re just waiting for Lip and Ella to get here,” Fiona answers. “But thanks, sweetface.”

Ian groans at the nickname. Mickey smirks at him, mouthing the nickname with raised eyebrows. “Really, Fi? Can’t you drop the nicknames?”

Fiona furrows her eyebrows then her eyes widen when she realizes her slip. “Shit, I’m sorry sweet-, I mean, fuck. I can’t help it.”

Ian just rolls his eyes. “I know.” He walks out the kitchen with Mickey following. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“Nope,” Mickey smirks, making sure to pop the p. “Sweetface.”

Lip and Ella arrive shortly after and the house gets loud. Fiona has Lip and Ian move the dining room table to the living room and finds two extra seats for Ella and Mickey. As soon as the food is on the table, the Gallaghers dig in, leaving Ella and Mickey in the dust. Ella doesn’t seem to mind and just takes whatever is passed to her. Mickey on the other hand just watches until Ian notices. Ian grabs the mashed potato bowl out of Carl’s hand with a loud “Hey!” in protest and hands it to Mickey. 

“If you don’t fight, you won’t get anything,” Ian whispers. 

Once food is on their plates, everyone starts talking over each other, trying to catch each other up. Ian places his hand on Mickey’s thigh and squeezes it in reassurance. 

“So, Mickey, how’s Yevgeny? Did I say that right?” Fiona finally turns to him after Lip’s finishes his boring story about college.

Mickey nods. “Yeah, that’s right. You can call him Yev. Everyone does.”

“That’s so much easier to say,” Fiona says. “He’s four, right?”

“Yeah,” Mickey answers, scratching his eyebrow. “He turns five in May. Starts kindergarten in the fall.”

“It’s so much easier when they start school. You don’t have to find someone to watch them for eight hours a day and by the time they get home, they are tired and ready for bed,” Fiona says in a dream like state as she imagines the first day of school. “I was there when all these kiddos started kindergarten. Remember just like it was yesterday.” 

Debbie and Carl groan as Lip rolls his eyes. 

“Great, here she goes,” Debbie cringes. “Now she’s going to cry. I recommend you run now, Mickey.”

“Well, I’m sorry for getting emotional!” Fiona says. “Liam was the easiest and the hardest. Ran straight to the teacher and didn’t look back. I cried all the way to work then got sent home because I cried when a customer ordered a burger.” She grins at Liam. “Debbie cried everyday for a week until she finally found a friend. That was a nightmare.”

“Fiona,” Debbie whines. “Do you have tell Ella and Mickey all of our stories? Just tell them what Lip and Ian did.” 

Fiona sucks in air between her teeth and closes one eye as she tries to remember. “Let’s see. I was about 11 when Lip went to kindergarten. No, 10. I was 11 when Ian started school. Monica was still pregnant with Debs and I think she was actually at home for once. I remember because I had to drop Ian off at daycare then Lip, so I woke up extra early. Both of them were so cranky.” She winks at Lip and Ian and both of them groan. “After I dropped Ian off, I walked Lip to the elementary school. The teacher was so confused when I showed up until another teacher whispered in her ear. So she motioned Lip in. Lip just walked in but a week later refused to go back. I had to bribe him with pancakes until he caved. I found out later it’s because he was bored and his teacher recommended he skip a grade but I never got the letter.”

“I could have been done with college by now,” Lip teases her with a glare. Fiona flips him off causing Lip to laugh and throw his hands up. “Okay, okay, I blame Frank.” 

Fiona grins. “With Ian, Debbie was maybe six months old?  Monica was pregnant with Carl and would come and go.” She turns to Lip and furrows her eyebrows. 

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Lip agrees. 

“So the morning Ian started school, Debbie kept me up all night screaming. I remember Frank was passed out on the couch and didn’t move the whole night. I was exhausted and didn’t want to drop him off. I asked Lip if he could watch Ian and make sure he got into his classroom safely.” She stops her story and nods at Ian. “But you cried when I said that. You wrapped your little arms around me and refused to let go until I said I would go. So I strapped Debbie in a stroller and we took off. As soon as the teacher smiled at you, you ran into the classroom.”

Ian groans, burying his head in hands. “Jesus, Fiona.”

“Carl just shrugged and walked in. Then he got sent home a few hours later for stealing a kid’s lunch,” Fiona finishes her story. She just had to include them all.

“Nice,” Carl says, throwing his hand up for either Debbie or Liam to high five him. Debbie slaps the back of his head instead. 

“Debbie!” Fiona, Lip, and Ian all scold at the same time. Debbie just rolls her eyes. 

“Let’s hope Yev has an easy transition like Liam,” Fiona turns back to Mickey. 

“Uh, yeah. I hope so,” Mickey answers, shifting in his seat.

Ian gives Fiona a pleading look. She gets his sign and turns to Ella, asking about school.

After dinner, the boys move the table back and everyone starts cleaning up. Fiona refuses to let Ella and Mickey help and sends them into the living room. Mickey just sends Ian a “help me” look but Ian quickly kisses his cheek and pushes him into the living room.

A few minutes later, Ian appears with a piece of pie. He sits in between Ella and Mickey and pops a bite into his mouth. Mickey eyes the pie. 

“Yes, Ian, I would love some pie. Thanks for the offer,” Mickey says sarcastically, trying to reach of Ian’s pie.

Ian moves it out of his reach, hitting Ella. “Oops, Sorry, El.”

“Not the worst thing that’s happened to me in this house,” Ella responds, rubbing her head. “Carl gave me lice, remember?”

“Right.”

“You seriously aren’t going to offer pie?” Mickey asks, watching Ian take another bite. 

“Fiona likes to cut it and bring it,” Ella tells him, nodding at the doorway.

And she’s right, Fiona is standing in the doorway with two plates. “Ian, I told you that we were eating dessert in the kitchen. Debbie wants to tell us something.”

“Sorry, Fi,” Ian answers, his mouth full of pie.

Fiona rolls her eyes and motions for Ella and Mickey. Mickey stands up and gladly takes a plate of pie out of her hand. He stands awkwardly in the kitchen next to Ella and watches Fiona, Lip, and Ian move seamlessly around each other and everyone else in the kitchen.

“This is weird,” he mumbles. 

Ella shrugs. “You get use it. The three are a unit.” 

“I think I might have met my soulmate,” Debbie announces to the room. She’s standing in the middle of kitchen, her eyes falling to her older siblings.

Fiona, Lip, and Ian stop what they’re doing and turn to look at her. Mickey puts his bite of pie down and turns to Ella, both their eyes wide.

“What?” Fiona asks. “You met your soulmate?”

Debbie shrugs. “I mean, I’m not sure because I haven’t taken off the cover but I can feel it, you know?” 

“I didn’t think you felt anything when you met your soulmate,” Carl mumbles, his mouth full of pie. “Of course most people don’t cover up their countdowns.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Fiona, Lip, and Ian tell Carl at the same time. Carl rolls his eyes at them.

Ella raises her eyebrows at Mickey as if to say “I told you so.” 

Debbie glares at Carl and turns back to her older siblings. “Do you feel anything? When you meet them?”

Fiona leans against the sink, running her hands through her hair. She looks at the tattoo on her wrist and sighs. “Like a spark or anything? No. More like butterflies in your stomach. I was so nervous over Jimmy/Steve.”

“Really?” Debbie perks up at the mention of butterflies. “You never told me that.”

Fiona shrugs. “You were young when I met him. You probably don’t remember. I didn’t want him over here for the longest. I was ashamed back then.”

“But you did bring him over and he lived here for a while,” Debbie says. “He was fun.”

“Yeah, he gave me an X-Box,” Carl adds.

Fiona nods. “He was but he was also dangerous and not good for me. For us.”

“Did you feel something when he left?” Debbie asks.

“Debs,” Lip interrupts. He’s leaning against the counter by the fridge, a towel in his hands, watching his sister with worried eyes. He crosses his arms and turns to give Debbie a look. 

“No, Lip,” Fiona stops him. “They’re old enough now. They’ve seen it all. They should know. God knows I wish I knew. And Ian knew.” She takes a deep breath and continues. “I felt a deep ache when he left. The pain was almost too much to bare but I did. I got up every day because of you and Carl and Liam. And Lip and Ian.” She nods at them. “I loved Jimmy/Steve but my love for you guys overcame the pain. And it took me a long time to realize I didn’t need him. I just needed my family.”

“Wow,” Debbie whispers. “I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t want you to,” Fiona mumbles, looking down. “I’m always going to protect you.”

Debbie turns to Lip and Ian. “What about you two? Did you feel anything?”

“I uh-don’t really remember a lot. Those weren’t really good years for me, Debs,” Ian says, looking down at his feet. He shifts his weight from one foot to the next. He can feel Mickey get closer to him.

“Oh, Ian, I didn’t.”

“No, Debs, I know,” Ian looks back up and smiles at her. “The past is in the past. I’m good now.” He looks over at Mickey and smiles at him. Mickey smiles back, nodding at him.

“I was scared,” Lip speaks up, steering the conversation to him. Ian gives him a grateful smile. “I didn’t know how it was going to work with Ella. I watched Monica leave Frank at such a young age and I saw what it did to him. I watched Jimmy/Steve leave Fiona and how it almost destroyed her. I had just watched Ian lose his soulmate and I was scared. I didn’t think I could handle it happen to myself but then Ella talked and all my fears just vanished.” He walks over to Ella and she grins, wrapping her arms around his waist.

“Aww,” Debbie grins. “Now that’s like the stories Fiona use to tell us when we were little.”

“Debs, I’m the rare one in the family that is still with their soulmate,” Lip continues. “Gallaghers don’t have good luck so you need to be careful.”

“You know, you could take off your covering and see if they are your soulmate,” Carl speaks up.

“Yeah but then that just the whole universe thing and my destiny. I want to take control of my destiny,” Debbie says. “I don’t need some dumb tattoo telling me that someone is my soulmate. What about what my heart says?”

Carl raises his eyebrows. “I think you've been reading too many feminist articles and books.”

Ian snorts, covering it up by burrowing his head in Mickey’s shoulder. Mickey tries to hide his smile. Debbie turns to Mickey, raising her eyebrows.

“What about you, Mickey? You found your soulmate, right? Did you feel anything?”

Ian feels Mickey stiffen and he lifts his head, looking at him. Mickey pulls away from Ian, biting his thumb nervously. “Uh, no. I didn’t feel anything.”

“What happened to your soulmate?” Debbie asks, leaning against the counter and placing her chin in her hands.

Mickey’s eyes widen. He glances at Ian before heading out the back door. Ian sighs, debating whether he should follow him. He gives Debbie a stern look as he walks to the back door.

“Don’t push him, Debs. If he wants to talk about it, he will,” he says before going outside.

He finds Mickey sitting on the steps, smoking a cigarette. Ian sits by him, grabbing the cigarette from him and takes a hit. Mickey glares at him and takes the cigarette back.

“Your sister is fucking nosy,” he mumbles, taking another hit.

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. Debbie doesn’t think before she speaks,” Ian says. 

Mickey shrugs. “Your fucking family, man. They’re intense.” 

“Yeah, they can be,” Ian agrees, throwing his arm around Mickey and rubbing his shoulder. “You don’t have to talk about your soulmate until you’re ready. Okay?”

Mickey sighs. “There’s not much to talk about. I don’t even know the guy’s name. Took off before I found out.”

Ian hisses. “Fucker.”

Mickey bows his head, twisting the cigarette between his hands. “What about you? You don’t like to talk about yours and sounds like your whole fucking family knows everything about you two, including his name..”

“Trevor,” Ian says. “His name was Trevor and I was with him for three years before he left me. That’s all you need to know.” 

Mickey nods. “Okay.”

They sit in silence, sharing another cigarette. Mickey finally looks up.

“Are we good to put this soulmate shit behind us?”

“Yeah, Mick, I think that’s a great idea.”

Mickey grabs Ian’s hand and squeezes it. “Your fucking family, man,” he repeats. “Fiona is a badass though. Raising all you.”

Ian laughs then nods. “She’s the strongest person I know.” 

“They’re going to take some time to get used to. I guess I need to get used to them, huh?” Mickey asks, turning to look at Ian. 

Ian processes his words then his face breaks into a grin. “Yeah?” 

“Yeah,” Mickey grins, leaning into Ian.

The guy Debbie meets end up not being her soulmate. The guy shows her his countdown about an hour into their first date. She’s disappointed but they end up going out for a few dates. When he dumps her, Fiona and Ian are there with pizza and ice cream. 

Ian starts spending more weekends at Mickey’s. Yevgeny loves Ian and is so happy whenever he comes over. He still has no idea that Ian and Mickey are together. He tells Svetlana one day that Ian is always over but neither Ian and Mickey know until one morning Ian walks in Mickey’s kitchen to find Svetlana holding a knife.

“Uh, hi?” Ian greets, confused.

“You Ian?” Svetlana asks, twirling the knife in between her fingers.

“Yes.”

“Mikhailo and Evgeni asleep?”

“Yeah?” Ian raises his eyebrows and move past her to grab a piece of bread. He pops it in the toaster and turns back to her. “I have an early shift and I thought you were picking Yev up later?”

“We need to talk,” Svetlana says, sitting down and sitting the knife in the table.

Ian takes the bread out of the toaster and puts it on a plate. He sits down across from her with his toast and a jar of peanut butter. “Sorry, I have to eat something.”

“I do not care,” she glares at him. “Milkhailo has been through a lot. I will not have you break his heart.”

“I wasn’t planning on it?”

Svetlana nods to his right wrist. “And your soulmate?”

Ian moves his hand to hide it under the table. “You don’t have to worry about him.”

Svetlana narrows her eyes. “My Evgeni is involved now. If he comes back and you leave, I kill you.”

Ian is speechless, staring at her. She gives him a small evil like grin and is gone as quickly as she left. Ian stays at the table confused until Mickey walks in.

“Morning. I thought you had an early shift,” Mickey says, kissing his cheek before starting on breakfast.

“Yeah. Um, your ex was just here?”

Mickey turns around, raising his eyebrows. “What are you talking about?”

“Svetlana was here in the kitchen when I woke up and I think she threatened me?” 

Mickey scoffs and turns back around. “Yeah, that’s normal. She’s always doing that.”

“She stuck the knife in the table.”

“Fuck! Again? Damn it, Svet!” Mickey looks at the table, running his hand over it, looking for the mark.

“I’m so confused right now.”

Mickey rolls his eyes. “Don’t worry about her, man. She’s like that. She doesn’t mean anything.”

Ian gulps. “She sounded pretty serious, Mick.”

“I’ll deal with her. You better start getting ready or you’ll be late.”

Ian barely makes it into work on time. Sue raises her eyebrows at him when he rushes by to his locker but doesn’t say anything until he is changed and sitting on the bed of the ambulance. 

“Cutting it close, Gallagher,” Sue says, handing him a coffee.

“Yeah, sorry. Mickey’s ex appeared this morning and threatened me.”

Sue whistles. “Jesus.”

“Yeah, it was weird. Mick said not to worry about her but she sounded pretty serious.”

Sue slaps his shoulder. “Living without your soulmate is super dramatic.”

“Nah, being a Gallagher dating a Milkovich is,” Ian says, taking a sip of his coffee. His eyes widen at a thought. “Fuck! Mandy! We haven’t told Mandy.”

“Jesus, Gallagher, take you dramatics elsewhere.” Sue pushes him off the bed of the ambulance, rolling her eyes.

When Ian gets off, he calls Mandy and she screams in his ear for five minutes. She tells him that she is coming home as soon as she can. She arrives at Mickey’s apartment one week later. Yevgeny squeals when he sees her and jumps into her arms. 

The first night, Ian and Mandy stay up most of the night. Mandy tells Ian all about her adventures around the United States and trying to find her soulmate. She shows Ian her countdown and how little time she has left. Mandy left almost four years ago to try to find her soulmate faster. She has yet to find him any faster but has enjoyed exploring the country. 

Mandy stays for the rest of the summer. She watches Yevgeny on the weekends so Ian and Mickey can go out. She joins them for family dinners at the Gallaghers. Fiona welcomes her back with open arms and Debbie drags her away for boy advice. She connects with Ella almost immediately and the two tease Lip constantly. She catches up with Mickey and they talk for hours. When it’s time for her to live, Yevgeny sobs, Ian hugs her tight, and even Mickey hugs her. She cries and promises to come back as soon as she has found her soulmate.

Summer turns into fall. Ian spends more time at Mickey’s than his house. The only time he goes to the Gallaghers is when he has a night shift. When Mickey is at the Gallaghers, he forms this weird bond with Fiona. The two seem to get each other. Ian has caught Mickey texting with her on several occasions. 

Yevgeny starts school and Mickey hates that the kid walks straight into the classroom and doesn’t look back. Svetlana refuses to let Ian join them on his first day so Mickey shows him all the pictures on his phone later. Svetlana still hates Ian no matter what he does. Mickey tries to have a dinner in hopes they will get along but Svetlana ends up slamming a knife into the table and Mickey yells at her for ruining the table. Ian and Svetlana come to a mutual hatred after that.

Ian has been managing his bipolar disorder for almost six years. Mickey has yet to see Ian in a depressive or manic state since they started dating almost eight months ago. Ian knows it won’t last and only time will tell but he’s enjoying it will he can.

The depressive episode creeps on him as it turns colder. He can feel himself getting more tired and cranky. When Fiona asks him about it, he snaps then storms out of the house. At Mickey’s, he tries to hide it. He can sense that Mickey doubts him but he doesn’t say anything about it. He has heard Ian snap at Fiona and Lip too many times to even try to ask.

One afternoon during his shift, Sue sends him home. When he protests angrily, she calls Fiona. Fiona huffs when she picks him up. She tries to convince him to go to the clinic but he refuses. He storms up the stairs as soon as they get home and refuses to come down for dinner. 

The next morning, he doesn’t get up. He doesn’t feel anything except anger. Anger at himself. He should have seen this coming. He should know the signs now after six years.

“Ian?” He hears Debbie’s voice but he can’t speak. He feels his bed sink and a hand on his shoulder. “Fiona said to check on you. Do you need anything?”

He can’t respond. He hates that he’s doing this to his family. That he can’t force himself up. He hears Debbie sigh and feels his shoulder being squeezed.

“I’ll call Sue.” The bed creaks and the extra weight is gone. He hears Debbie quietly close the door.

Ian doesn’t know how much time passes. Debbie, Carl, and Liam come and go. They talk to him, squeeze his shoulder then leave. When Fiona appears next, Ian figures it’s the end of the day.

“Hey, sweetface,” she whispers. “I called Lip. He’s on his way. Do you want me to call Mickey?”

Ian hates himself even more. He’s not just hurting his family anymore. He’s hurting his boyfriend. He wants to tell her yes but he can’t. Instead, he sinks deeper into his pillow. He feels the bed sink again and hair tickle his neck.

Fiona doesn’t say anything. She just lays there beside him. Time passes again and the door creaks open.

“Hey,” Ian hears Lip whisper.

Ian feels Fiona shift and the hair is gone. “Hey.”

“I got supper for the kids. Liam’s scared. He keeps asking what’s going on. Debbie isn’t helping with her statistics.”

Ian’s anger at himself grows. His little brother is scared of him. He needs to get up. He needs show Liam that he’s okay. 

“I shouldn’t have left him here with Debbie.”

“I can take him to my place tonight. Unless you need me here.”

“No, I think it’s better if Liam goes with you. You can talk to him and try to explain it.”

“What about tomorrow? Debbie and Carl have school.”

“I’m taking off. I’m the manager now so they can go fuck themselves if they say anything.”

Ian hears Lip chuckle. There’s silence for a long time and Ian figures Lip left but then Lip speaks back up. “Did you call Mickey?”

“No. I don’t know how he’s going to react to this. What if he runs off like Trevor?”

“Mandy stayed. It can’t hurt to call.”

“Okay. Do you want to call him or me?”

Ian hears Lip snort. “You two have this weird friendship. I think you should.”

The extra weight leaves the bed. “Stay in here until I get back?”

“Fiona, Debbie said he didn’t move all day. He’s not going to try anything.” There’s silence again and weight back on the bed. “Go call Mickey. I’ll be right here.”

The door slowly closes. Ian feels his legs being pushed and he wants to kick Lip but he can’t. He hears Lip sigh and feels weight on his legs.

“You’re a stubborn fuck, you know that,” he hears Lip say. “I don’t want to make you feel worse but I told you so. Fiona did too. You have to start listening to us. If not us, you need to talk to Mickey and he can tell you when something is up.”

Ian still doesn’t say anything. Lip is right. He usually is. He hears the door slowly up and the weight is off his legs. 

“Mickey’s on his way. He has to drop Yev off with Svetlana. He wanted to bring him but I didn’t think that was a good idea.” He hear Fiona say. 

“Probably for the best. Don’t want to scare the kid.” There’s a pause. “I’ll stay here until he gets here.”

“Can you go downstairs and stop Debbie and Carl? Liam’s freaking out again and those two are not helping.”

“Yeah, I’ll bring Mickey up when he gets here.”

The door closes again and the bed sinks again. He feels Fiona’s hand on his shoulder and she starts rubbing. “Hey, sweetface, you can get past this. You always do.” He feels something on his shoulder. “We love you.” The extra weight is gone and she continues rubbing his shoulder. 

Ian doesn’t know how much time passes when the door opens back up. The bed shifts and he feels Fiona get up.

“What’s going on?” Mickey. He’s here. He showed up. He didn’t leave him.

“He’s having a depressive episode,” he hears Fiona explain. “Did Ian tell you about it?”

“Yeah, he explained it and Mandy told me how he was when he was diagnosed. Does he need to go to the doctor?”

He hears Lip snort. “Good luck getting him to leave the bed.”

“Lip!” Ian hears a slap and a ‘Fuck’ from Lip. “It’s not that easy, Mickey. He can still have an episode when his meds are working but we don’t know until we can get him to his doctor. And even if he has to get new meds, it could take a while.”

“How long are we talking?”

“Few weeks. A month or two,” Ian hears Lip add.

He hears Mickey cuss and the bed sinks. “What can I do?”

“Talk to him. Help him stay hydrated and go to the bathroom.”

There is silence and Ian wishes he could speak and tell Mickey that he’s okay. He feels a cold hand on his face. 

“I’m going to head out, Fi. Call me if anything happens.”

“I’ll walk you out. I need to tell Liam goodbye.”

The door closes again and the hand starts stroking his face . “I’m here, Ian. I’m not going anywhere.”

Ian squeezes his eyes shut, trying to block the tears.

Weeks pass or at least Ian assumes it’s been weeks and Mickey stays with him as much as he can. He only leaves when he has to work or go get Yevgeny. Ian feels awful for making him do this but can’t bring himself to get up. One afternoon, Fiona is with sitting him while Mickey goes to get Yevgeny. Ian is facing her today and listening to her read a ridiculous romance novel out loud.

Fiona scoffs when she gets to the love scene and slams the book shut. “I don’t know why I still read these things. It’s the same story line with different character names.”

“Because you need to get laid,” he mumbles.

Fiona gasps, poking him with her foot. “I liked it when you didn’t talk.”

Ian gives her a small grin. 

Fiona frowns, looking sorry immediately. “I know you hate when I ask but how are you feeling, sweetface?”

Ian tucks the blanket closer. “Okay. When’s Mickey coming back?”

“He should be back now.”

They sit in silence and Ian must have fallen asleep again because the next thing he knows, the bed is sinking and there is a body on top of his.

“Yev! I told you not to do that.”

The weight is gone and Ian shifts, opening his eyes. Yevgeny is right in front of his face, his eyes wide.

“Daddy says you’re sick,” he says.

Ian groans and looks up at Mickey. Mickey pulls Yevgeny back. “Sorry, he wanted to see you. Fiona and I didn’t think it was a good idea but he cried.”

“It’s okay. Yeah, Yev, I’m sick.”

“Why don’t you take some medicine?” Yevgeny asks, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

“It’s not that simple, Yev,” Ian sighs. “But I’m getting better.”

“Do you need a hug? Hugs always make me feel better.”

“A hug sounds great, Yevy.”

Yevgeny grins and climbs up into the bed, snuggling closer to Ian. Ian hears Mickey make a small noise in protest but Ian just smiles at him, letting him know it’s okay. He closes his eyes and quickly falls back to sleep. When he wakes back up, Yevgeny is gone and Mickey is in his place. Ian sighs in contentment and snuggles closer to Mickey, burying his face in Mickey’s neck. 

It takes Ian another week before he starts feeling better. He gets up one morning and Mickey and Fiona take him to his doctor. After a long talk and few adjustments, Ian feels a little better. It takes him another week to get back on his feet. Mickey is there with him the whole time. He finally goes back to work and slowly starts feeling like himself.

"I'm sorry."

Mickey puts his phone down and looks down at Ian. It's been almost a month since Ian has gotten over his depressive episode. Fiona continues to keep a close eye on him and because of it, Mickey starts staying with him at the Gallagher house more and more. He only goes to his place when he has Yevgeny. Even though Mickey hates Ian's mattress, he doesn't complain. They are currently squished in Ian's awful, too small mattress. "For what?"

"That was my first episode since we started seeing each other," Ian continues. "I'm sorry I did that to you. I'm sorry you had to see me like that. And I know it's a lot to handle so I get it if you don't want to do this anymore."

Mickey rubs his eyes, silent for a moment. Ian watches him, his eyes wide. Mickey sighs and picks his phone back up, turning it to show Ian what's on the screen. Ian grabs the phone, sitting up to read. "'Soulmates and Bipolar Disorder'? Mick, why are you reading this?"

"Most articles about helping someone with bipolar has to do with soulmates," Mickey grumbles. "Figured it couldn't hurt."

"No, I-" Ian stops and looks at him. "I don't understand."

Mickey rolls his eyes and sits up to look in the eye. He grabs his face and kisses him. "Ian, I'm here in your loud childhood house with your nosy older sister, annoying teenage siblings, and your younger brother. I'm laying on your stupid, lumpy mattress that barely fits your tall ass. Your episode hit during the worst possible time with my son starting school yet I still fucking showed up. I'm not going anywhere. And don't fucking apologize for who you are."

Ian grins, pushing him down on the mattress that he hates so much and kisses him slowly.

Christmas and the New Year comes and goes. Ian changes shifts and starts studying for his paramedic exam. Mickey picks up more shifts at the bar to help with Yevgeny getting into private school. After a long, heated discussion with Svetlana, they realized public wasn't working for the kid. Ian and Mickey barely get to see other lately and when they did, they enjoyed the time together.

One cold morning, Ian and Mickey are in the kitchen eating breakfast. The house is empty and they are enjoying not only the rare silence but the rare time they have together now with their busy schedules. Mickey is teasing Ian over his small breakfast when the front door opens.

“Where’s my loving family?” Frank’s voice carries into the kitchen.

Ian rolls his eyes, mumbling under his breath about money and stupid Frank.

“Kids?”

Ian pales when he hears the other voice. He stands up slowly, watching Frank and Monica come into view.

“Ian!” Monica squeals, running into the kitchen and pulling him into her arms.

Ian slowly wraps his arms around her and whispers. “Hi, Mom.”

Frank ignores them, and pushes past them to start looking in the kitchen cabinets and draws. “Can you spare some cash?”

“Fuck off, Frank,” Mickey pipes up. No one has seen him in weeks and they really thought he might have died this time. Unfortunately, they weren’t that lucky.

Monica pulls away from Ian and looks at Mickey. She glances down at Ian’s right wrist and her mouth widens. “Oh.”

“Just a five would work. But $150 would be better,” Frank continues, opening up the fridge.

Ian rolls his eyes. “We don’t have any money, Frank.”

“That’s bullshit,” Frank turns to him, getting in his face.

“Frank!” Monica cries.

“Hey!” Mickey yells, standing up and yanking Frank back. “Get the fuck away from him.”

Frank immediately reacts, trying to punch Mickey. Mickey ducks and grabs Frank by the arms, pulling them behind his back. Monica screams, trying to pull Mickey off. Mickey gives Ian a look and Ian gives him a short nod. Mickey drags Frank out, ignoring Frank’s constant screaming.

“What the hell? Frank!” Monica cries. She turns to Ian and starts hitting his chest, yelling at him. Ian grabs her hands, forcing her to stop.

“We don’t have any money, Mom. You and Frank can’t have our money,” Ian yells, forcing her to look in his eyes. “You aren’t using it on drugs.”

“Ian, no.”

“Why are you here, Mom? Why are you here?”

“Can’t a mother just come see here children?”

Ian raises his eyebrows. “Really, Mom? You’ve been gone for five years this time.”

Monica sighs, sitting down at the table. She pats the seat next to her and Ian hesitantly sits down. Monica grabs his right hand and turns it around, looking at the zero tattoo. “That man, he isn’t your soulmate.”

Ian shakes his hand, pulling his wrist back. “You’ve met my soulmate, Mom. You know that time you tried to kill yourself in front of the sink? He was here.”

“What happened?”

Ian sighs, running his hand through his hair. “You really don’t remember?” Monica shakes her head. “He left because of my bipolar disorder. He didn’t like how it affected our relationship so he left.”

“Oh, baby,” Monica grabs Ian’s hand and squeezes it. “He’ll come back though. He’s your soulmate.”

Ian pulls his hand away. “I don’t want him back. I have Mickey.”

Monica sighs. “I’ve had other men and women besides Frank but they aren’t the same. They don’t give you the same feeling as your soulmate.”

Ian stands up, pushing his chair out from under him, causing it to fall. He clenches his fists, his face twisting in anger. “Then why the fuck do you leave him? If Frank is your soulmate, why do you keep leaving?”

“Cause Frank drives me crazy!”

Ian scoffs. “That doesn’t mean anything, Mom. If you love Frank like you say, you wouldn’t leave. You wouldn’t leave us .”

“Ian,” Monica reaches out, grabbing his hands. “You need to listen to me. Mickey will not give you the same joy as your soulmate. He will never make you feel whole. That’s why I keep coming back. I always think I can find someone that won’t drive me crazy like Frank but none of them make me feel the same.”

“Jesus Christ, Frank’s like a fucking cockroach,” Mickey mumbles, coming back inside. He looks around the kitchen, raising his eyebrows at Ian when he sees the chair knocked over and Ian standing over his mother.

Ian pulls away from Monica. “I have to get work. You should probably leave before Fiona or the kids get back,” he tells Monica. He turns away before Monica can say anything else. He can hear Mickey follow him and he turns around when he gets to the front door. “I have to go. Can you make sure she leaves?”

“Uh, yeah,” Mickey answers, crossing his arms. “You coming over tonight?”

Ian shrugs. “I’ll let you know before I get off, okay.”

Mickey nods, watching him leave.

After work, Ian heads straight home, calling Mickey and telling him that he’s tired. Mickey accepts it and lets it go. He lays in bed that night and thinks about everything Monica says. He knows he shouldn’t but his brain doesn’t listen and continues to play Monica’s words over and over.

Ian starts picking up even more shifts after that. He tells himself he isn’t avoiding Mickey but he knows he is. Mickey hunts him down and corners him one afternoon in the station, demanding to know what’s going on.

“We need the money so I picked up some extra shifts. It’s nothing,” Ian assures him, quickly pecking him on the cheek.

“Fine,” Mickey huffs. “Come over tonight?”

“Yeah, that sounds good.”

When Mickey leaves, Sue lets out a low whistles. Ian glares at her but she doesn’t say anything.

Ian has every intention of talking to Mickey that night but as soon as Ian opens Mickey’s door, Mickey is on him. After two rounds of sex and two plates of pizza bagels each, they sit up in Mickey’s bed, sharing a cigarette.

“Fuck, man, maybe you should work more often. Makes the reunions pretty fucking awesome,” Mickey grins, handing him the cigarette.

Ian hums, not saying anything. His mind his racing, going back to Monica’s words.

“Kid’s been wondering where you’ve been. He misses you,” Mickey says, taking the cigarette back. “Won’t stop bugging me about you.”

Ian laughs at the image of Yevgeny bugging Mickey about him. The five year old was known for his constant questions, driving Mickey insane. “Driving you insane?”

“The kid won’t shut up. He kept following me around.”

Ian laughs, leaning against Mickey. Mickey places his hand on Ian’s thigh, squeezing it. They sit in silence for a while. Ian stretches after a while and sits up. Mickey groans at the loss of contact, sitting up and watching Ian get dressed.

“Why don’t you stay?” he asks. 

Ian shakes his head. “Can’t. I have a double tomorrow.”

“I have the kid this weekend.”

“Mick, you have Yev every weekend,” Ian turns to him, grinning.

“Are you going to come over? Or am I stuck with him following me around all weekend?”

Ian hesitates, pulling on his shirt. Monica’s words start running through his head but then he sees Mickey’s face and can’t help but tell him that he’ll be there. He kisses Mickey quickly and heads out the door.

That weekend, Ian heads to Mickey’s apartment. He is greeted by Yevgeny jumping into his arms.

“Ian!” the boy squeals, hugging him around the neck. “We’re making pancakes!”

“Breakfast for supper?” Ian asks, setting him down. “That sounds like an amazing idea.”

“Come on!” Yevgeny takes Ian’s hand and tries to drag him into the kitchen.

Ian chuckles at the boy and lets him lead him into the kitchen. Mickey’s standing in front of the stove with a kitchen towel over his shoulder, flipping pancakes. He turns around and grins when he sees Ian.

“Hey, hope you like breakfast for supper. Kid here was begging for pancakes,” Mickey says.

Ian smiles, looking over. “Looks good.”

“Ian! Look what I drew!” Yevgeny tugs on Ian’s hand, trying to lead him to the table.

Mickey gives him a quick kiss and watches him go over to the kitchen table.

Later that night, after eating, Mickey goes to put Yevgeny to bed and Ian stands at the kitchen sink, washing the dishes. Mickey comes in a few minutes later and leans against the counter, watching him. Ian turns, giving him a weird look.

“What?” he asks.

Mickey shrugs, crossing his arms. “Nothing. Just like watching you.”

Ian rolls his eyes but grins. “Weirdo.”

Mickey chuckles, pushing off the counter. He goes up to stand by Ian, pushing him to the side so he can take over rinsing the dishes. They wash the dishes in silence and then dry and put the dishes away. After Ian puts the last dish away, he leans against the counter and places the towel over his shoulder. Mickey washes down the countertops, feeling Ian watching him.

“Now who’s the weirdo,” Mickey mumbles. He finishes his chore, throwing the washcloth in the sink. He walks over and stands in front of Ian. “Thanks for coming over. Meant a lot to the kid.” 

Ian tilts his head, giving him a look. “Just Yev?” 

“Come on, man,” Mickey bows his head, hitting his shoe against Ian’s. “I- uh like this thing between us. I like you being here and I- uh like going over to your place. I really like you, Gallagher.” 

Ian bows his head. This is Mickey’s way of telling him how much he likes him, possibly love, and Ian’s terrified. Monica’s voice grows louder and louder in his head. He can’t breathe. “Yeah, well I hope so. This thing has been going on for what? Nine months?” 

Mickey chuckles. “A long fucking time, man. Almost a year. Should we celebrate or something?” 

Ian doesn’t look up. His mind is racing. Celebrate. He wants to celebrate their anniversary. Monica’s voice continues to get louder. He grips the countertop and looks at his shoes. He sees Mickey’s right hand move towards him. He notices the tattoo. He pushes past Mickey, trying to put some distance between them. “What about your soulmate?” 

“What’s going on? I thought we put this soulmate shit behind us,” Mickey asks, reaching to grab Ian’s hand but Ian flinches. Mickey sighs. “There’s nothing to talk about. He left. Just like yours.” 

“Don’t you want him to come back?” Ian asks. 

“Why are you bringing this up? We talked about it."

"No, we didn't," Ian says. "We pushed it away, buried it."

Mickey groans. "Seriously, Gallagher? What the fuck is this? You really want a fucking answer? No, I don't want him back. Why would I? Just so he can leave again?” Ian hears Mickey move towards him so he moves further away. “What’s this about?” Ian doesn’t say anything. “Ian? Look at me, man.” 

Ian slowly turns around to face him. Mickey’s eyes are wide and he looks panic. “I-uh need to think about us.” 

“Ian-” 

“I just need to think about this,” Ian grabs his jacket off the chair and puts it on. He gives Mickey one last look before grabbing his keys. Mickey is looking down at the kitchen floor when Ian closes the door. 

He doesn’t get out of bed the next day. Fiona tries to talk to him but he ignores her and rolls over. Lip comes by late afternoon and drags him out of bed. Ian tries to fight him but Lip overpowers him. He forces him into his fancy car and drives him to Patsy’s. Ian glares at him but follows him inside, letting Lip order for him. 

“Okay, what the fuck is going on with you?” Lip demands after the waitress takes their orders. “You just recovered from a depressive episode a few months ago so I know it’s not that.” 

Ian shrugs, looking down. 

Lip sighs at his lack of answer. “Fiona tells me that Mickey has stopped coming over. And you’ve only been over to his place twice in the last few weeks. Something’s going on with you and you need to tell me what.” 

The waitress comes back with their drink order. Ian thanks her and takes his tea. He absentmindedly stirs it, avoiding Lip. 

“Ian, come on,” Lip tries again. 

“Monica came back a few weeks ago,” Ian starts. 

“Yeah, I remember Debbie said something about it. She stayed maybe a week this time,” Lip says bitterly. 

“Mickey and I were home alone when she walked in. Frank was with her and was being Frank. Mickey got him out of the house,” Ian tells him, still stirring his tea. “Monica sat down with me and told me that Mickey wouldn’t give me the same feeling as Trevor. She told me that Trevor would be back. I know she’s wrong. She fucking left us so much that her words mean nothing but my mind just kept playing her words back.” 

Lip sighs, running his hand through his hair. He is silent for a long time, thinking. Ian knows he is trying to think of something to say that won’t make him mad. Lip finally sighs, gripping his mug. “Look, you know I’m not a fan of Mickey but he is a whole lot better than fucking Trevor. He cares for you and is there for you more in this last year than Trevor ever was those three years. Monica is a fucking idiot for saying that.” 

“I know. And I know I shouldn’t have listened to her but I did,” Ian bows his head, looking into his coffee. “I told Mickey I needed to think about our relationship.” 

Lip hisses. “Those words really fucking got to you.” 

“I just kept thinking about Mickey’s soulmate and if he comes back.”

“Fuck Monica, okay? Fuck those words. Fuck your soulmate and fuck Mickey’s soulmate.” Ian looks up at his brother, shocked at his words. Lip holds eye contact him. “You love Mickey. You are good for Mickey and he’s good for you.” 

“I do love him,” Ian nods. 

“Then go tell him that.” 

“But what if he leaves?” 

Lip sighs. “I know you don’t want to be hurt again and I can’t tell you that you never will again. And if it does happen, you move on and you beat it.” 

Ian stares at him, his mind racing. He stands up, almost knocking over his mug. “I have to go.” He runs out of the diner, almost hitting the waitress bringing their food but he keeps running. He doesn’t stop until he’s in front of Mickey’s door and almost beats it down when he knocks on it. 

“Holy fucking. Calm your fucking tits. I’m coming!” Mickey yells inside. Ian hears him stomping to the door and he can’t stand still. “What?” The door yanks open and Mickey stands there fuming. When he sees it’s Ian, his face falls but only slightly. He opens his mouth to speak but Ian doesn’t give him time. He grabs Mickey’s shirts and kisses him. Mickey reacts immediately, pulling him inside. Mickey kicks the door closes with his foot and they stumble into the apartment, falling onto the couch. The sex is quick and over before it even really started. Ian leads him into the bedroom and this time they take their time. 

“Holy fuck,” Mickey groans as they lay next to each after the second round. 

“Yeah,” Ian says. He rolls over, facing Mickey. He runs his hand through Mickey’s hair, reeling in the softness of it. “I’m sorry I ran out the other day. My mom said these things about soulmates and I couldn’t stop thinking about it even though it was bullshit. I mean, she has left Frank so fucking much yet she claims no one else makes her feel like Frank. But she’s wrong. Mick,” Ian stops talking and looks at him, his fingers twisting around Mickey’s hair. “Mick, I love you. I don’t need time to think about us.” 

Mickey looks down, not saying anything for a long time. Ian moves his hand and runs his finger across Mickey’s cheek, nervously, waiting for a response. Mickey looks up after what feels like a lifetime and pulls Ian in for a kiss that takes Ian’s breath away. He pulls away and stares into Ian’s eyes. “What you and I have- makes me feel free.” 

Ian’s face hurts he’s grinning so much. He goes to pull Mickey in for another kiss but Mickey stops him. 

“Are you sure about this?”

“I'm in. I'm all in.”

[lentaska]

Height Difference - Part 3

Have been busy with job and class, another crazy week passed soon :)

Note: Featuring Madman Fulton. First person POV, OFC from non-wrestling background. New oc is out and he is a good-looking asshole :) This is a work of fan fiction using characters from wrestling, I do not claim any ownership over them.

oc: Birdie (some doodles)

Tagging: @thecristsandcallihanmadness @monstersmaid @morie-leigh

Part Three “what if he loses you”

Trying new things would help people to know more about themselves, for example, this morning - the first morning of our “cohabiting experiment” - I just learned that I actually hit Fulton in sleep.

“And it’s not only the hit, you also kicked me. I woke up once around 5 am.” Fulton added more information. “The good thing is, you behaved after tucking yourself into my arms.”

Now I had the answer for why I woke up in Fulton’s arms and he looked like just had a battle.

“Sorry, I didn’t know that before. Did I hurt you?” I asked, rubbing his hand.

He chuckled, “with your strength? Of course. You will definitely defeat me in the ring.”

An odd idea popped up - it’s probably because I had watched one wrestling match and was motivated - I might be able to fight him for real.

This was also a naive idea, Fulton tried hard not to laugh at it and discourage me, although I still could see the grin he hid. He announced in joking tone, “if you lift me up for even half inch, you win.”

“I’m taking it seriously.”

“I know.” He opened his arms to me, grinning, “c’mon Birdie.”

The rule was simple. I took a deep breath, grabbed his waist and lifted him up - or tried to lift him up because he was not moving AT ALL, so I did another attempt but still failed. Wondering how this was possible, I heard Fulton’s voice, “wanna take a break?” based on the cheerfulness in the tone, he was holding back laughter.

“It’s warm-up.” I explained indignantly, making myself sound tough.

“Alright, alright.” Fulton snickered, “take your time.”

In a match or challenge related to strength, longer it took, less chance to win because the strength would come to exhaustion eventually, hence my third attempt was much worse and I couldn’t help gasping. I knew Fulton was built and strong, but I didn’t expect him to be this... heavy. This man was a brick wall, if I ever accidentally knocked against him, I would be dizzy for a while.

“Are you ok?” asked Fulton.

Managed to catch breath, I found myself the worst excuse, “I’m... hungry. You know, I have no strength when I’m hungry.”

Fulton nodded, pretending to believe my words.

I gave up, “I can’t do this. I was being silly to think that I can fight you.”

“Let me see...” he check the clock, “Five minutes, good job.”

“Take that smirk back.” I elbowed him gently.

Fulton grimaced and acted like he got hurt from my “attack”.

Rolled my eyes at him, I asked, “are you still taking me to your match tonight?”

“Of course, but this time you don’t need to make script about what to say to my friends.”

I guess he would not let go of any silly thing I did. He thought those things were “cute”. Like the time I freaked out on his Jason costume on Halloween and screamed “don’t kill me”, he still brought it up. It didn’t annoy me though, probably because of the affectionate way he used.

 When I arrived locker room with Fulton, the ambience was uneasy, the Crist brothers and Sami looked anxious, I had never seen them behave in such way, something serious happened.

I looked up at Fulton, who responded with the same confused expression. Noticed our appearance, Jake waved at us first, then Dave and Sami came to us.

“Do you know that your opponent is replaced?” asked Sami.

Clearly Fulton was not informed in advance, “whom I’ll be facing then?”

“The new guy just joined 3 weeks ago, we don’t know much about him.” Dave shrugged, “I don’t remember his name.”

Jake let out a sigh, “How can you forget one simple name... his name is Vasiliy. ”

The name brought Fulton on the alert. Subconsciously, I grasped Fulton’s hand more tightly. I did this when I was on nerve and I found myself doing this more often since dating Fulton, mainly because I had panic every time he had match. “Is he difficult to deal with?” I asked, praying that Vasiliy guy was just a regular wrestler.

Sami snapped in detestation, “he is plague.”

If the Death Machine himself commented a person so negatively, then this person was a real trouble.

“Sami is right.” Jake frowned and turned to me, “although it’s highly unlikely, if you ever run into that guy, leave immediately.”

Another Crist nodded, “something is wrong with him.”

I froze at their words. There was one moment that I wanted to ask Fulton not to go, but I couldn’t, it’s his match and I needed be supportive. I took a deep breath, said - more like to comfort myself, “Fulton will win easily, I have faith in him.”

 I was very wrong.

When Vasiliy showed up, I had goosebumps. He wore a plain mask with antlers, both hands were covered by bandage, and he was holding barbed wires. The audience had two contrasting reactions on his entrance, some cheered him while the others hooted in disapproval, but one thing was for sure, the world was almost when he took off the mask. It’s not exaggerated to say, Vasiliy had the most angelic face I had ever seen.

However, his moves were far from “angelic”. He hit Fulton right on belly several time with barbed wires twined around his hand, and then his face. I almost screamed in shock. Since I was close to the ring, the excitement on Vasiliy’s face was clear enough to make me sick.

“We shouldn’t let the fun end too soon, shall we?” the man chuckled, dumping one of the boxes which were set in the ring for their match. It’s a box of Lego blocks.

Fulton struggled to get up, but one foot stomped on his back maliciously. Grabbed a full hand of blocks, Vasiliy gave a harmless smile, then he forced Fulton to open his mouth, stuffed the blocks in and smashed his face to the ground.

My stomach twitched in agony. I knew wrestling match could be violent and wrestlers were trained to limit the hurt to opponents, but I could tell that Vasiliy’s doing was on purpose. He wanted hurt his opponent in the most painful way.

Although Fulton gained the upper hand later on and won the match, the prince was high, he almost collapsed due to multiple wounds and exhaustion. It hurt me to see him in such terrible shape, so I left auditorium and found my way to the backstage, all I wanted was to return to the locker room and hug my dreadlock bear.

But I ran into someone I shouldn’t. The black-haired man whom Sami referred as “plague” blocked my way, smiling innocently. The aura of him was like poisonous mist, whirling and tangling

“Vasiliy...”

I took one step back. The Crist brothers cautioned me against getting involved with him, plus what he did in the ring, he was the last person I wanna see now.

“My honor to be remembered by you.”

“It’s a... nice match” I said, against my will.

“I can imagine how much you loved to witness Fulton’s victory.” he giggled. “But I did have fun in making him bleed.”

The memory of him stuffing Lego blocks in Fulton’s mouth and smashing his face disgusted me. I wasn’t sure how this match went into such way, but that scene made my stomach twitched in agony. And now he said making Fulton bleed was “fun” with no regret? Was the personality and behavior he showed in the ring actually a reflection of himself in life?

I forced myself to be polite, “it’s late, I have to go...”

“To find your boyfriend?” he tipped his head a little, in the most harmless way I could imagine, but somehow I was alarmed. “Although joining this brand happened only weeks ago, I consider myself to be informed. I know Fulton loves you dearly. I’m quite curious: what if he loses you?”

I saw the excitement on his face, his smile twisted. He was serious.

Vasiliy’s eyes locked on me, “when I was seven, mother bought me a parakeet. She was beautiful and docile, I cherished her with my heart, but a stray cat killed it. Beautiful things never last long, do they?”

In the next moment, his hands were on my neck, I heard his sweet but malicious voice, “how adorable you are, I wonder what your scream sounds like.”

The strength pressed on was squeezing air out of me, I struggled, the suffering from suffocation and instinct for survival made me fight back for the slenderest hope, even though what I could do was nothing comparing his power.

“Scream, lil’ bird,” Vasiliy sneered, “or you prefer to suffer?”

Tears welled up from fear, it might be easier if I just screamed - he might let me go - but I could not let him win.

I attempted to get out of him by kicking and smacking, although I got him couple times, those attacks didn’t help me but instead stimulated his desire for destruction.

When I was about to give up, I heard Fulton’s furious roar, “you fucking leave her alone!”

The pressure on my neck was released, I was pulled into a firm embrace. Fulton had one arm locked me tightly, another arm was in defence posture. Based on how messed up Vasiliy looked, he already got punch on face from the mad dreadlock bear.

Stroking where Fulton hit, Vasiliy chuckled, “you’re almost late to save her. I was about to make her scream but she’s a tough one.”

Fulton gnashed, almost rushed out to give him another good punch, “you touch her again and I will break your fucking face, you hear me?!”

“‘Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn’t misuse it’, you never know how naive you are, but it’s fine. We will meet again and have better game to play.” the angelic-looking man waved goodbye at me.

“Don’t worry, I’m here for you.” Fulton checked on me, “what else did he do?”

“Nothing besides strangling me.”

Unbuttoned my collar, Fulton’s face clouded over with anger. I was nervous, “what’s wrong?”

“You should see it by yourself.”

In the phone camera, I saw faint hand print on my neck.

“I’m gonna kill that scum...”

“He was serious about hurting me, but why? I didn’t even know him.”

“Vasiliy was new in the brand but he had feud with Sami in another brand, and it’s not only in rings. We act like crazy and bad dudes in the ring, but he is different. His personality in real life is what he shows in the ring.” Fulton wiped away my tears and patted my back, I saw how scared he was. He thought he would lose me.

“So he attacked me because I hang out with oVe?”

He nodded, whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“You did nothing wrong. And don’t think I’m gonna keep distance from you guys, because I like your friends and I will learn to protect myself. If Vasiliy ever does stupid thing again, I’ll kick him between legs hard.”

Chuckled, the dreadlock bear stroked my cheek. “That’s my girl.”

Yet I didn’t realize Vasiliy would become the most horrifying nightmare.

[dropsiaczek-the-smartest-avenger]

Christmas in the Avengers Tower

Word count: 1798

Warnings: none

(source: antyradio.pl)

It was Christmas and I woke up early on that day. I knew there were still many preparations for the evening’s Christmas Dinner, that’s why I pulled myself together quickly and headed to the kitchen to do what was needed to be done. Wanda and Vision were already there doing some things and Bruce was sitting at the table drinking coffee.

“Morning,” I greeted them.

“Oh, hey (y/n),” Bruce replied. “We made bets who will show up next. Vision won.”

“What a surprise,” I said ironically. “He’s a super high-tech computer so he probably developed an algorithm based on who wakes up and when.”

“Hey! Don’t talk about me like I wasn’t there! Instead of babbling you could better get to work, there is a lot to do.”

I nodded and got on with polishing the tableware. The morning went on painfully slowly and the omnipresent smell of Christmas dishes made the wait for the feast even more difficult.

“The most annoying thing about Christmas Dinner is that everybody wants to eat but nobody wants to prepare it. And you Bruce, since you’re here, you could at least pretend you’re doing something useful,” Wanda broke the silence.

“You guys are doing great, I’d only disturb.”

“Right,” I murmured and approached Bruce with a handful of plates. “Lay them out on the table and when you’re done come back for plates for soup and cutlery. Oh, and try not to break anything.”

Bruce murmured something under his breath and exited the kitchen. When I was done polishing, I went on to preparing sweet potatoes for the mash. We were working in silence until Peter Parker entered the kitchen.

“Well hello there! Why so silent? Let’s turn on some music to add ourselves the spirit!” He exclaimed happily.

I looked at him amused. “Hi spider-boy! I assume you came here to help?”

“Yes, of course! I’ll turn on the radio.”

“I have no idea what we would do without you,” Vision growled slightly annoyed.

Peter turned on the music and came up to me asking if there was anything for him to do. I ordered him to peel and drill apples for the pie and later prepare the mulled wine. So, the work went on, but this time with Christmas tunes coming out of the speakers. When the Italian song Acapulcoby Ricchi&Poveri started to play, Wanda stopped in her tracks.

“Why would they play a summer hit at this time of year?” she asked.

“Actually, the song is not a summer hit. It says that in Italy, when Christmas come, people go to Acapulco to use some sun,” I explained.

“Oh.”

We finished the work around noon, and everyone headed to their rooms to get ready for the evening. The first thing I did was checking if all presents are ready and prepared as they should be – packed and signed. For Thor I got a plaid flannel shirt and hammer-patterned boxers, for Bruce the Jurassic Park trilogy on Blu-ray and a Rubik’s Cube, for Bucky sleeves with fake tattoos and an iPod, for Peter a backpack and a Death Star Lego set, for Nat super-stylish velvet Ray-Ban sunglasses, for Tony a Gameboy and games, for Captain an electric shaver and Metallica’s Black Album, for Sam new running shoes, for Vision a sonic toothbrush, for Wanda a pillow with Vision’s face and a digital photo frame with some pictures of her and Vision I’ve secretly taken, for Clint a GPS locator, for T’Challa new Hawaiian-patterned swimming trunks and for Rhodey a voucher to spa. I even got a gift for the newest Avengers Tower resident, who was Loki, Thor’s brother. I got him an ugly Christmas sweater and the whole series of The Saxon Stories by Bernard Cornwell. Loki was still and outcast among Avengers, they all still remembered how he tried to take over the world. But even so I didn’t want him to be alienated on a day like this.

After checking the presents I moved on to making myself beautiful for the Dinner. I took a shower, washed my hair and applied some stunning make-up. For the occasion I chose a black skirt, an ugly Christmas sweater, similar to the one I bought for Loki and a Santa Claus hat. When I was all set, I took the gifts and headed to the dining room. Almost everyone was already there except for Thor and his brother. I put all presents under the tree and took a place at the table. Soon came Thor and announced that his brother won’t be joining us for the Christmas Dinner. A sigh of relief could be heard, and the atmosphere relaxed a little. I was wondering if I’m the only one who’s not happy about this. Okay, I knew Loki was evil and tricky, but it’s Christmas! Supposedly even animals speak in a human voice on this one special evening.

“Since everyone is finally here, I’d like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and let’s get down to eating!” Tony announced.

“Merry Christmas!” Everyone replied and the sound of chattering cutlery filled the room. There were so many dishes, all so delicious, and I wanted to try them all, but at some point my stomach was so full that I had to take a break.

“Hey, Clint, would you mind pouring me some mulled wine?”

“Sure thing, (y/n),” Clint replied, smiling as he handed me the mug full hot liquid. “Are you done earing?”

“Yes, for now. I’m sooo full,” I said, patting my belly. “I look as if I was pregnant.”

My words made Clint laugh. “I’ve had enough too, shall we get down to presents?”

“No, that would be rude!” I reproached. “We have to wait until everyone finishes eating.”

I liked Clint, he was one of my favourites at the Avengers Tower. Behind a seemingly inaccessible façade he was an incredibly nice and warm guy, a big child really. My second favourite was Peter Parker a.k.a. Spider-boy and he was the one to speak up next. “Can we already move to the presents?” He asked loudly.

“I’m still eating, would you, please, let me finish?” Thor protested.

“You’re always eating, Thor,” Natasha teased. “I’m also voting for the presents.”

Everybody nodded and got up from their places, leaving almighty Thor, the God of Thunder, alone at the table. Unpacking presents gave everyone a lot of joy. Some of them were funny and some really useful. Among many voices I heard Vision saying quietly why would someone get him a toothbrush. I got many books, a set of beanie and gloves a, a t-shirt saying I <3 NYand earrings. After some time the only present under the tree was the one I prepared for Loki.

“Who on Earth would buy a present for this freak?” Sam asked turning the package around in his hands.

“Me.”

“You’re too good, (y/n).”

“Perhaps,” I agreed.

From that moment the atmosphere tensed a little, but everyone went on to their own business. Natasha and Bruce were kissing in the corner, Tony, Clint, Sam and Rhodey got engaged in a drinking contest, Vision and Wanda left, T’Challa and Cap were playing table football and Peter and Bucky started to put the Death Star together. I moved away from the group and sat in front of the glass wall, looking at the city and drinking tea. It was dark and Christmas lights were perfectly visible. The view calmed me down. The glass wall showed the reflection of Thor approaching me.

“Thank you,” He said sitting beside me.

“For what?” I asked.

“That you don’t see my brother as a monster,” The man explained. “He did many things wrong but he’s trying to be good. I wish everyone could see it.”

“Maybe he’s just lost?” I suggested. “You were brothers and best friends when you were young and then he found out he’s not your real brother, that your father took him away from his home planet. Maybe he’s lost his identity and feels he doesn’t belong anywhere? Maybe he did all these dreadful things because he was trying to find his place in the universe?”

“You know, (y/n), you might be right. But everyone’s aversion won’t help him.”

“So talk to him. He needs to understand that fixing his relations with everyone here will take some time, but if he sticks to his decision it will eventually pay off.”

“Thank you,” Thor said and got up to leave. “And thank you for the boxers, they’re wonderful.”

“It wasn’t me, it was the Santa Claus.”

It got really late and I was the only one left in the dining room. I didn’t even realize when everyone left, I was so drowned in my thoughts. I decided to go to sleep too, but first…I took a glance at the lonely package under the Christmas tree. I knew I had to be the one to make the first move, and to get to my room I had to go past Loki’s anyway, so I decided to give him the gift in person. I took the package and headed in the right direction, vigorously at first but as I was getting close I slowed down my pace, losing my initial confidence. What if, in fact, Loki was so evil? I shook of all negative thoughts. He came to the Avengers Tower on his own accord, he must’ve had good intentions.

When I stood at his door I had to fight another battle with myself. And what if he’s asleep and I’ll wake him up and make him angry?And then: No, I have to try!I knocked on the door slightly and held my breath for a few seconds. There was no response. And just when I was about to leave the door opened slightly.

“What do you want?” I heard Loki’s smooth voice.

I turned around to face the door again. “You didn’t join us for the Christmas Dinner and Santa Claus left something for you too,” I said walking back to the door. Loki opened the door some more and I saw he was dressed in black sweatpants only.

“Some kind-hearted creature cared to get me a present. This can’t be. Where’s the trick?” Loki asked suspiciously.

“There is none, I swear,” I promised in a voice just above a whisper.

“Why do you even care?”

“Because I believe you’re not evil, just lost. I bought you a series of books by my favourite author, let me know if you like them.” With these words I turned to leave but stopped after few steps and turned around. “Oh, and Loki, Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, (y/n).” Loki whispered and quickly closed the door behind him not to let me see tears forming in his eyes.

@kuroshikine

[dancinggrimm]

My Day in London: A Review

I just thought I’d share a few points of my day down in London earlier this week.

1. Missed my fucking train. I’d forgotten that there were some major road works going on and didn’t allow enough time to get to the station. The taxi driver very helpfully spent the last ten minutes of the journey telling me that I should have allowed more time until I wanted to knock his block off. However, he made up for it earlier by telling me a story about how he knew all about the history of my home town, Kidderminster, and how in the second World War the British Sikh regiment captured all of the Italian military (no they didn’t), brought them back to England as POWs (no they didn’t) and didn’t have enough prison camps so they closed down all of Kiddermister’s carpet factories (nope) and made people live there and that’s why Kidderminster doesn’t have any carpet factories any more (it has several) and why most of the townsfolk have Italian names (seriously? It’s full of chavs!).

2. Got another train and ended up sitting next to a man who was talking in his sleep in, I think, Korean. I wish I’d known what he was saying, because his two travelling companions sitting across the aisle from us seemed really embarrassed for him.

3. Went to the V&A museum. The guard on the way in to the tunnel entrance gave me the glad eye and told me I didn’t have to have my bag searched because I was too pretty to be a terrorist. This made me feel neither complimented nor particularly safe, but at least I got to take my bottle of Oasis into the museum unhindered. Mmm, delicious Oasis. Even tastier when it’s contraband.

4. I searched for but failed to find @atlinmerrick‘s favourite statue that looks like Martin Freeman in the nip with a peach bum. I did however see some wonderful statues, some nicely gothic ironworks, a lot of beautiful kimonos, and some truly fuck ugly high fashion clothes in the Balenciaga exhibit.

5. Took the tube to Camden and managed to find exactly the same pub that my friend @bagelofdeath and I went to for lunch last time we met up. They do really good pizzas and cider, and have a little upstairs room overlooking a busy junction. So I sat at a table right in the window, looking out at the rain and the traffic, listening to indie rock music and cramming my face with carbs and rocket. Which is a very London thing to do.

6. Wandered up to the lock market for a bit of Christmas present shopping and did my best to avoid the storekeepers trying to ingratiate me. Saw many stalls selling the exact same products, the stall keepers of which all hurried to assure me were handmade by themselves that very morning. You wove all these printed scarves by hand in a morning? Why are you not in the Avengers?

7. There were way more shops selling bongs, marajuana sweets, and similar stuff than last time I was there. Sign of the times, man.

8. As I walked past one shop front the guy at the counter cat called me, which I hate, but he yelled “Hey darlin, where you from?” and when I ignored him he bitterly added “Oh yeah, that’s a really pretty name”, like he couldn’t remember what he’d even asked me, and it was funny enough that I didn’t really care.

9. He did exactly the same thing when I went back down the road an hour later. What a bell end.

10. So. Back on the tube and up to Leicester Square. I had a wander around the Lego store without buying anything, as you do (honestly, it’s more of a museum than anything else), and then popped into the M&M store which smells fucking awful. How do you manage to have a shop full of chocolate products and make it smell like the back of a printer? And who loves M&Ms that much that they want their whole wardrobe to feature them? They’re just Smarties’ inbred cousins! They were having a German Christmas market there too, but it wasn’t anywhere near as good as ours. Fuck yeah Birmingham!

11. Found a tiny second hand bookshop staffed by a woman who was the most perfect fit of a librarian stereotype I have ever seen and it’s genuinely tragic that she doesn’t work in a library. Tiny build, twinset and bead necklace, decorative chain on her wing glasses, nervous demeanor and a itsy bitsy high pitched voice. She was so cute. I bought a book just so she’d talk to me a bit more (and the book turned out to be quite good) and managed to put the Evangelist who had been badgering her into enough of a snit by interrupting him that he left.

12. It was 7pm by now, and time for the actual reason I’d gone down to London in the first place, the stage musical of Young Frankenstein at the Garrick Theatre! It was fantastic. Ross Noble, one of my favourite stand up comedians, was playing Igor and he was great, really enjoying the hell out of his costume and his occasional use of a French Horn. The songs were hilarious and, though they didn’t include my favourite moment of the Affectionate Elbow Nudge, the song that replaced it, ‘Don’t Touch Me’ (Tits! Tits! Tits!) was a real highlight. As was the extended performance of ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’, and Lesley Joseph’s (72 and still a fox) Frau Blucher who was getting really annoyed with those damn horses. I loved it! If you can get to London before the end of February, give it a go.

13. Back on the train to come home, and spent much of the journey listening to the conversation of a young couple at the table seats opposite who were really not at all on the same wavelength. He would tell her about how often his brother threw up on trains and she would reply that yeah, the special effects on the music video she was watching on her phone would make anyone hurl, and he replied that he didn’t like Spotify either and it made everything look weird, and it was like that game where you’ve got to come up with names that start with the last letter of the name that came before it, except with entire concepts. Also, I played quite a lot of Kitty Powers’ Matchmaker, which was good fun, highly recommended.

14. Birmingham New Street Station is really, really creepy when you arrive there at 12.30 am and nobody is around and you can fool yourself into thinking that you’ll never find the exit and you’ll be wondering around in a tasteful but poorly signposted interior for the rest of your life like a brushed chrome pergatory until you’re suddenly outside and almost falling into a flowerbed and you don’t know what happened.

15. You know that thing where you and a stranger going in opposite directions nearly walk into each other, and you stop, and you move to your right and they move to their left, and you’re still in the same place, so you apologise and both move the other way, and oh no, ha ha, what a to-do, until one of you makes a break for it? While walking home through a pedestrian underpass I got trapped in that idiot dance for a good thirty seconds with the biggest fucking rat I have ever seen. She was the one that made a break for it, and I was honestly surprised not to see a small cowboy riding on her back as the ran past me.

And then I got home and went to bed, the end :)

[hangonimevolving]

Camp NOLA

In accordance with a family tradition that appears to have formed over the last 3-4 years, I took the kids on our annual weeklong trip to my beloved hometown of New Orleans last week.  The last few years, I’ve found myself running there every 2nd week of August, in that summertime Black Hole period between the end of the kids’ school-based summer camp, and the start of the new school year.  A week at Ajima and Thatha’s house has become its own little summer camp to our crew: Camp NOLA :)  

This year, I’d be flying there on my own with the two kids, while Dr. Spouse stayed back to complete an on-call week before flying out for the second weekend.  My first experience flying solo with the crazies was on our first official Camp NOLA week in 2015, which I blogged about here - that time we traveled earlier in the summer, between the school year’s end and the start of summer camp.  But same basic idea.  Anyway, since that first brave voyage, I’ve traveled a shitload of times with both kids on my own, and I like to think I’m kind of an old pro at it by now.  It’s gotten significantly easier, in many ways, now that both kids are independently mobile and fairly reliable walking and holding hands in crowded airports, managing security checks expertly, and all that - just earlier this year, we started traveling without a stroller, and it was like the heavens parted and rays of light streamed down around me from the heavens.  Oh, to have the freedom to breeze through security without having to disassemble a stroller and manage all the stuff, only to put it all back together on the other side of the metal detector!  To skip, hop, and sashay directly into the aircraft from the jet bridge, without having to unstrap the kids, bark at them to stand aside so other people can pass while I sweat and heave and disassemble the thing for the cargo hold!  Life has changed.  

The kids are pretty good fliers, but certain people (ahem, DEY) are still a little bit rambunctious and animated in the airplane.... sigh.

Time spent at my parents’ house is always fun for the kids.  Vev frequently, and in great descriptive detail, talks about all the reasons why he likes my parents’ house better than our own.  I am simultaneously touched and miffed by his honesty.  But I know why it is they love the place.  Aside from the obvious, awesome thing that my parents’ house has going for it - MY PARENTS - the kids also just love to sort through all the random crap that they have, most of which dates back to my own childhood.  My pack rat parents have thrown very little away when it comes to my old toys, books, and childhood accoutrement, and this delights the kids to no end.

Take, for example, Vev’s infatuation with my Lego cargo airplane set, which I probably acquired when I was around 8 years old, and managed to preserve in its box still fully assembled (thank god - b/c I likely wouldn’t be able to put it together now!)

Dey had a great time building and demolishing and rebuilding a hospital from one of my sister’s Lego sets:

Another relic of my childhood, which Vev enjoyed creeping me out with on the daily: my childhood rocking chair, which still lives in my bedroom (this is despite the fact that I didn’t not actually grow up in the house where my parents currently live; clearly, they never got rid of the chair, despite them having moved 2 times since I was a kid, the last time when I was in my 20′s).  The chair is the perfect size for Vev, and every morning, early in the wee hours, I’d open my bleary eyes, and immediately see this:

Such a creeper, that kid.

 My dad, in his perpetual hyperness, did a generous (and kind of crazy) thing, and sprung for two expensive mountain bikes for the kids.  I was kind of bewildered that he’d done that, when they’re going to outgrow these bike sizes so fast, and there’s also no easy way for us to transport the bikes back here to Florida... but, he’s an excited grandfather, so I guess he exercised his prerogative to spoil his grandkids rotten.  The kids honestly LOVED their bikes, and went on twice-daily bike rides in the neighborhood park.

Dey had actually never ridden a bike prior to this, and he rapidly gained skill in it over the week - although he picked up the skill of speed far quicker and more easily than he has the skill of steering.  It’s a nerve-wracking situation.  Oh, and he refused to wear a helmet.  So, yeah - he’s all over the place.

One of the kids’ favorite things about stays at Ajima’s house are the relaxed sleeping arrangements and bedtime routine... which is to say, there really wasn’t one.  They were staying up waaaaay past their normal bedtimes at home, and sleeping either with each other or with me in my bed.  Sleep deprivation and bad sleep hygiene are hallmarks of our summer NOLA getaways.  They didn’t really seem to be affected by this, but I was fucking exhausted the entire stay.

NOLA means beignets!!!!!  Hurray for fried carbs and mountains of sugar!!!

This NOLA trip was even more special than usual, because my uncle A and aunt N (father’s youngest brother and his wife) were visiting my parents from India, so we got to catch up with them and spend lots of quality time.  It was also wonderful to have not one, but TWO Ajimas and Thathas around the house for child entertainment, conversation, and feeding.  Glorious!  We spent a few evenings of their stay going through some old home videos that my mom recently had converted to DVD.  The stills below are from a 1994 trip to India that my family took to spend time with relatives.  The weird looking preteen in the awkward head scarf and navy striped get-up is yours truly :)  And the lady in the green sari is my paternal grandmother, Rajalakshmi (nickname Mani).  We lost her very suddenly and heartbreakingly in May 2002, and none of us have quite gotten over how she was yanked out of our lives... it was poignant but wonderful to see her again on film, looking so animated and full of life.  My dad and uncle sat in silence, watching these videos for hours.....

After about six days of being relative homebodys, playing with tons of old but dear toys, hanging out wth Ajima, Thatha, Thatha A and Ajima N, Thursday rolled around and Dr. Spouse arrived.  The kids were happy to see Daddy, and his arrival signaled the chance for us to go out, do some excursions and sightseeing, and visit with friends.

Annual trip to the Riverwalk - a shopping and entertainment plaza along the Mississippi River, affording lots of chances to watch boats and freighters go by...

Dinner out at a Creole restaurant, where clearly our eyes were waaaay bigger than our stomachs!

Something I’ve wanted to do for a super long time - maybe 2-3 years - is to take the kids to a local small, organic farm near my folks’ house called Sugar Roots Farm.  They have open community days on Saturdays, and somehow on our annual trips, we’ve managed to not spend full Saturdays in town, and thus haven’t been able to visit.  But this time, we did - and we got some hands-on learning about sustainable farming, farm-to-table food production, and of course, animals!

This place is literally behind my parents’ house - its so weird!

Excited to see a tractor.... our main frame of reference with tractors are the ones that get cow-tipped in the Disney Pixar movie “Cars.”

Horses were intimidating.

Ponies were more up the alley of certain people.

We bought feed cups for a dollar so we could make friends with the goats, sheep, alpacas, and chickens.... but in the end, apparently my lionhearted sons were terrified of the teeth on most of these animals, so I got to feed them myself, haha :)

Feeding chickens was manageable, I guess.

Dey’s reaction to the rabbits was hilarious.  He ran over to this enclosure, spotted a large white rabbit hopping around, immediately turned around making this face and exclaimed “Look, a bunny!  It’s a bunny!  It’s a GIRL!!!!” then just ran off again.  Uh, what?  Why do you assume its a girl?!!!  It was so weird!!!

A GIANT pig.  A very sleepy giant pig.

Quack quack quack.

Daddice with the boys.

This was an enjoyable way to spend an hour and change one morning!

Later that same day, we took a VERY special day trip to Baton Rouge, to the home of my cousin and bestie, Neets.  She and her hubby B have two daughters, S and M, and they just put a new swimming pool in the yard of the home they’ve lived in for the last 2 years.  We were excited to have a swimming playdate together, so I picked up a special gift for the girls which was immediately put to use: a giant inflatable rainbow cloud.  Cousin bonding time!

I absolutely love this woman <3

Our final evening in New Orleans was spent playing tourist in my hometown.  Ajima and Thatha accompanied us on a mule carriage tour of the French Quarter, where Bonnie the Mule and her driver/guide regaled us on the super-interesting history of the city.  It was a throwback to my elementary and middle school History classes and field trips, where we’d tour historic sites and antebellum homes, write essays and field trip reports and special projects about Louisiana history and the mixed Creole, French, Spanish, and American culture of New Orleans.

Our attempt to recreate one of our iconic wedding pictures.... unfortunately the, er, large gentleman in the background decided to join us for the fun.

Updated family version.... how far we’ve come.

All too soon, it was time to bid goodbye to Ajima and Thatha, and to our delightful Camp NOLA.  And now we’re back to Camp Memmy in our Miami home.... which is significantly less exciting for everyone involved!!!