#what business does into the wild even have in the curriculum

[jbaileyfansite]

Interview with Vanity Fair (2024)

If you looked up the phrase “booked and busy,” you’d probably find a picture of Jonathan Bailey. The British actor broke out as Lord Anthony Bridgerton, whose love story took center stage in the second season of Netflix’s eponymous hit romance. He captured even more hearts as Tim Laughlin, a McCarthy-era conservative turned radical queer leftist in Showtime’s epic limited series Fellow Travelers, and will soon star as another eligible bachelor, Fiyero, in Jon M. Chu’s two-part Wicked adaptation—a part Bailey scored after Chu found clips of the actor singing online. “The fact that it was a YouTube video that got me the job is kind of wild and incredible,” Bailey says on this week’s episode of Little Gold Men.

On top of all that, Bailey managed to return to the Ton for season three part two of Bridgerton, which begins streaming Thursday, June 13 and filmed concurrently with Fellow Travelers—which bled directly into Wicked. He remembers practicing Ozdust Ballroom choreography during lunch breaks on Travelers, wearing his buttoned-up G-man glasses and sharp haircut from the waist up—“and then it was Fame from the waist down. I’ve got terrible videos that may or may not surface in about a hundred years time—hopefully once I’ve died, because they’re so embarrassing.” But then again, there’s a poignancy to them: “Tim, if he’d been born 60 years later, may have played Fiyero in the school production of Wicked. And he would have loved the shiny boots.”

Vanity Fair: As Tim on Fellow Travelers, you evolve from a conservative, religious congressional staffer in the ’50s to a radical queer man living in the ’80s. What was it like filming that character arc? I have to imagine it would be tough to do.

Jonathan Bailey: It was an incredible challenge. For Tim, he’s talking about the idea of religion and faith and what that gives you at the beginning. And I think it seems to have equipped Tim to endure a love against all odds. He never gives up on Hawk (Matt Bomer). And Hawk becomes his sort of living religion, and something that he believes in.

I was like, I want to see a gay ingenue who’s a fish out of water—who’s itchy in his skin. It’s not like he’s doe-eyed and just sort of hapless; he’s fighting from the get-go. He does not understand why the world is the way it is. His emotions are the thing he leads with. And he’s all about truth and transparency and honesty. And I think that comes from this Catholic sort of conservative upbringing. So it’s just the most beautiful quest that he has in his life, to find absolution but also acceptance. But he never stops fighting. That’s why, to me, he’s an absolute icon.

Tim is prickly and struggling internally with his sexuality while also dealing externally with important moments in American history, from McCarthyism to the AIDS crisis. As a Brit, how familiar were you with the American history?

Not enough [laughs]. It was not included on the curriculum. But then I’m not sure it really was in America, either. This is why we’re shining a light on areas of history that conveniently haven’t been included. It’s an experience to explore a character throughout that time, but also the history of queer experience—to offer me, as Johnny, catharsis. And to be in a predominantly queer environment to tell that story. I relished it, because there’s so much that I need to understand about the privilege that I have now and the people that came before me. The fact that there’s five out gay actors leading the show is because of all the people that came before. And I’m telling you, people have been loving gay actors for years. They just haven’t been able to say that they’re gay.

We’re getting more and more queer stories and queer representation on screen, but these characters are not always portrayed by actual queer people. I think Fellow Travelers proves that it makes a big difference when you cast queer, out, gay, LGBTQ+ actors in roles that are queer.

This is so specifically exploring the queer experience over 40 years. I think there was a GLAAD report last week that was kind of disheartening, about how there’s been a decrease in queer or LGBTQ+ characters being represented…. Tim and Hawk and all the characters in this are born into a world where they have to fight. And if you’re ever having to monitor or adapt or to survive, if your first instinct is it might not work because of who I am, then that’s the difference between being a gay actor and not being a gay actor. It’s the fight.

The show wouldn’t work without your chemistry with Matt Bomer. How did you find that dynamic? Tim and Hawk’s relationship has a sub-dom dynamic, and at times it switches. There’s a power struggle. It’s complicated and nuanced and always believable.

[laughs] Well, I mean, Matt Bomer is a supreme being, and incredibly lovely and great. He’s got such a wealth of experience. We met on Zoom to do a chemistry read, and then we met in a coffee shop about a week, or even actually less than that—like, six days before we started filming. For about an hour we said, you know, this is such an opportunity. This is what we’re really excited about. It’s a great amount of trust and a free fall. But that’s the point of gay relationships: There is so much nuance, and the dynamic is so balanced because there’s no gender, There’s no—uh, what was it? Women are from Venus, men are from Mars.

The fact that the intimacy is so richly explored is so important to the gay experience. It’s something that I found really incredibly vital as well—to allow people to understand the way that men come together sexually is also directly linked to how the world communicates to them. You know, their relationship with their self-worth and their shame. Also, literally, where are the safe spaces that they can meet. Even in their own homes, in [Fellow Travelers], they had a window of how many hours until the sun came up and Hawk had to get out. Even there it’s unsafe. I loved that the intimacy had its own evolution.

I’m glad that you brought up the intimacy. It’s such an important part and of the show’s DNA, and, frankly, rare to see intimate scenes between two queer men on television. What was it like filming those scenes?

Personally, I just think, What an opportunity. It’s really exciting to be able to know that you’ve got the space to be able to show what you haven’t seen before. I remember Queer as Folk, Blue Is the Warmest Color. There’s been beautiful same-sex intimacy explored. But I think in this instance, it was how the two characters came together, but also directly reflective of what’s going on inside and the distance between what they really felt towards each other—what they felt like they could say, and also what they felt that they had to do in order to survive. That’s where the intimacy is incredibly hot.

It didn’t seem to me to be an overwhelming ask for the intimacy scenes. It felt to me that that was exactly what it should be. If you’re going to tell this incredibly bruising, tender, detailed love story that’s going to explore four moments in history, of course, you should explore the intimate dynamics. And I do think you can show so much about what’s happening with a human in those silent moments of intimacy. That’s why it’s brilliant. You know, I can see where sex scenes don’t further the plot and they don’t explore character development and they’re cynically included. With this, that was never going to happen because it was all on the page. And it’s important.

Source

[justineps]

“To the most quiet but biggest hearted teacher assistant any teacher could ask for,

Justin Santos, write.

If there is any farewell advice I could give to you, please write, write, write. I have graded your essays for two years, and I have been observant in your ability to speak your thoughts through debates or even presentations and they just do not correlate whatsoever. But did you know? Some of the best writers and also my favorite authors are unable to speak what is on their mind. When I asked the class to write which book they enjoyed the most out of all our assigned readings, many chose The Great Gatsby, East of Eden, but you were the only one to choose, Into the Wild. This book was not part of the school’s academic curriculum and actually a personal recommendation I chose to insert to entertain the spirits who wish to wander and feel like they have no direct path in life. Your major for CSUF is Business Administration but I believe this is just a choice based on your academic gradings. There may be some daunted trauma that lies within you that prevents your nerves from flowing free into the air allowing your mind to be in synchronization with your verbal thoughts, but on paper, I felt as if there were so many to you that you wanted to let out but you were always one to do the minimum in order to get through the next stage. You may have not noticed but I observed how quickly you graded my students’ papers, used the red pen to correct any grammatical errors and fixate them without any doubt that I would reprimand you for doing so. One day, I wish to hopefully see some article, book, paper, written by Justin Santos so that I would be able to gleefully be proud of myself that my intuition about your mind was rightfully so. Thank you for being modest and shy and always smiling if you made a mistake, I could not have asked for a better student assistant to have observed over the past two years. Please keep in touch, and remember the memories our AP English homeroom has shared.

P.S. I know you did not read East of Eden, but have no clue how you managed to receive a passing grade, let alone for the written test questions, which is why I hope to see a book by Justin Santos before our time together passes.

Always with a “plethora” of love,

Ms. Linda Bush.”

My mother had kept this and after years gave it back to me. What did Ms. Bush see in me? Should I reach out to her? Or should I let her know I actually have been writing in a journal everyday. I’ve died two years ago, figuratively, and semi-literally. I say semi-literally because I believe I had a heart failure for about 3 hours, I went outside to get air and I woke up on the floor 3 hours later, thinking I was on my bed. If that was the closest thing to what death feels like, its a bit surreal. There’s no last few seconds, no “wait, I want to say..” it just.. kind of happens. You lose consciousness. And the reason I woke up 3 hours later? I still dont know why. I’m too stubborn to get it checked up. I’m too .. myself to feel like a bother to anyone and think that no one would really care because in the end, no one really does. And I’ve learned to grow completely fine with this over the two years. It has been the loneliest two two years of my life, but I needed it. i dont have any animosity in my heart towards anyone, I dont think i am nearly the same person I was two years ago and as cliche as that sounds, only those that wish to find out and meet me once again will be the judge of that. Theres so many hatred and malicious intentions that humans bear out there in the world, that I really aim to spread the opposite.

I turn 32 in a week, and although my name is still the same, I would gladly like to meet anyone in my past and reintroduce myself.

My name is Justin Santos, and for some reason through the thick of it all, and lonely countless crying nights, am still here.

I am someone who dreams with his eyes open.

[maharghaideovate]

Curriculum Overview: System Management Specialization at Madras University

Hello, IT wizard of tomorrow! Craving to take your tech game up a notch? Let's chat a bit about the System Management program in Madras University. This is actually one of the hip and happening programs offered by them under their flagship MBA distance learning courses. So, strap up because we're going to dissect what goes into making this program tick.

What's on the menu?

The distance education MBA distance education Madras University is not some run-of-the-mill drag. Here is what you will get into:

Tech Basics: How systems tick, minus the mystery blanket. You will know different operating systems—right from Windows to Linux. You will be facile in multiple tech languages.

Network Ninja Skills: Learn to configure and secure computer networks. Ever wondered how your office network runs? You'll be the one working on that magic.

Data Wrangling: Tame those wild databases. You will learn how to wrangle data like a pro so as to make sense of gigabytes of information and turn it into something useful.

Cloud Hopping: Explore the fluffy world of cloud computing. Get ready to understand why everyone's head is in the clouds these days. Spoiler: it's not just hot air.

Project Juggling: Keep all those IT balls up in the air. You will learn how to manage projects without dropping the ball—from planning to execution.

Business Sense: Working out what companies need, and how tech can help. It's not about the tech; it's about making that tech work for business.

Real Skills for Real Jobs

This isn't just about hitting the books. The MBA distance education at Madras University is all about getting your hands dirty:

You'll tinker with actual tech tools: Don't sweat, they'll teach you how. Imagine if you were learning to drive but just mainly read books on cars. You'll learn how to fix tricky IT puzzles. You'll be the IT Sherlock Holmes, out of the homicides to solve mysteries like "The Case of the Disappearing Data".

Stay a step ahead of the hackers: Your cyber-bouncer skills at work. With this course, live in a world where cyber threats are just as common as caffeine in the veins of a coder.

Keeping It Real with Industry Needs

These guys running this show know what's up in the real world. They update the program constantly to keep things relevant and current. You know, when floppy disks were still a thing? Yep, this program does not teach that. Big tech companies chip in with insider knowledge. You can call it like having a backstage pass to the concert of technology. You can land an internship and see how things work on the ground. Nothing beats real-world experience, even if it entails occasionally fetching coffee. Tech bigwigs drop by and share their war stories-battle-scarred veterans sharing this way. It's the stuff you learn that really lines you up for those fancy certifications employers love. It's pretty much like killing two birds with one stone: you're studying to get your degree and you're prepping for the certification.

Real Talk: Is it for You?

This program is for you if you:

You are  presently working in IT and feeling the desire to climb up the ladder. Think of this as your career elevator pass.

You're a tech newbie with big dreams, and you are ready to put in the work. Everyone starts somewhere, right?

You dig solving problems and making things run smoothly. If you get a kick out of fixing things, this is your playground.

You're into becoming that tech guru everyone runs to when stuff hits the fan in any future job.

You want to be familiar with both the tech and business sides of IT. It's like being bilingual in the corporate world.

Wrapping It Up

The System Management specialization in the MBA distance education at Madras University can be termed as a banging career line. It's not just another degree to frame on the wall; it is considered a toolkit for any future in tech. You learn the nuts and bolts of keeping those IT systems purring and gain real skills that employers are looking for. So, if you're ready to really get a move on with your tech career without putting your life on pause, then this might just be your ticket. It has the flexibility of distance learning but packs a real-world skills punch. Not such a terrible mix, eh?

Remember, when it comes to technology, if you're not constantly on the up and up, you're going backward. This program is all about propelling you forward. If you think of it as a sort of gym membership for your brain—put in the work, see the results—then you can understand the concept better.

[thatwasntlikeridingabikeuasshole]

i hate it when i have to pretend i take a book seriously for english class when i actually could not possibly care less about it. im talking abt into the wild we have to write an essay abt it and ive got my claim and im like "hey guys give me reasons why my claim is true" into the groupchat and everyones like "well we dont think it is" ok girl im glad u have an actual opinion abt this i do not i just need to crank out a thousand words of good english work and submit it. i dont actually care if i agree with what im saying at all, this could not be farther from my interest, i have so much more to worry about in the world. i could actually give a shit whether or not the main character is a transcendentalist or not, literally dont care, just give me 2-3 body paragraphs and some quotes babey as long as my fingers keep moving i could be thinking about literally anything else and it wouldnt matter. god i wish we were doing good books in english this year

[thetravelerwrites]

Dr. Mael Halvorg (Part 2)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Relationship: Male Part Fae/Female Part Fae Additional Tags: Exophilia, Monster Boyfriend, Fae, Naga, Reader Insert, Anthropology, Genetics Content Warnings: Children, Pregnancy, Incubation, Infertility, Birth, Oviposition, Egg-Laying Words:

Commissioned by @ivymemnoch​! The reader and Dr. Halvorg discuss his lingering infertility problem. Amai lays her final clutch of eggs. Please reblog and leave feedback!

The Traveler's Masterlist

“Good morning, class!” You said on the first day.

“Good morning!” Fourteen bright voices responded.

All of the children except for baby Yenu were sitting on their tails behind desks in a room that had been set up as a classroom by the staff.

“So, every day each week we’re going to work on a different subject,” You began. “Mondays are reading and language comprehension, Tuesdays are maths and sciences, Wednesdays are social studies and economics, Thursdays are geography and history, Fridays are fun days with arts, crafting, music, and educational games. Today is Monday, so we’re going to start with reading. You should each have a workbook appropriate to your developmental level in your desks, so please take out your reading workbooks.”

As the children shuffled and searched for the right book, Dr. Halvorg stepped inside the classroom with a clipboard. You raised an eyebrow.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

“I’m observing the children in a school setting to see how they adapt,” He replied.

You narrowed your eyes at him. “And I’m also assuming how I teach, correct?”

He dipped his head sheepishly. “I was curious. And it’s for my research.”

You raised an eyebrow at him. “Mm.” You turned back to your students and fell into your teacher’s voice. “Keenai, if you would begin reading the first sentence, please?”

Keenai picked up his workbook and started reading. “The small dog lives in a red house.”

“Can you tell me which of these words are verbs?”

“Um…” He looked at the sentence, frowning.

“To remind you, a verb is an action word, something someone does.”

“Uh… lived?” He replied slowly.

“Very good.” You said, and he smiled in relief. “Tani, you’re next. Read the next sentence in your book.”

“The red house was built on a wed… wedeness…”

“Wednesday,” You said. “That’s a hard word, I know. Can you tell me what the noun is in that sentence?”

“House?”

“Good! A noun is a person, a place, or a thing. I’m a noun, you’re a noun, the room we’re in is a noun.”

“Is Nenish a noun?” Jinsa asked.

“Yes.”

“Ha ha, you’re a noun!” Jinsa said, pointing at Nenish.

“So are you!” Nenish interjected.

“Hey, hey! Settle down, please!” You called over them, sitting on the edge of your desk. “Fuma, you next.”

Fuma read from his book, and then Amaia. Next, you went down the line of the four-year-olds, having them read a sentence and find colors, shapes, numbers, or sounds in the sentences. The three-year-olds were next, and they simply read small sentences. You then had the one-year-olds spell and say three-letter words.

Their quick development was normal for nagas, as they tended to age quickly until they hit puberty, when their aging progress slowed to accommodate for yearly hibernation, but it was also startling in conjunction with the developmental levels of similar creatures. You had never studied the advancements of a species’ young so closely before, and you had to admit, it was fascinating. You could see why Dr. Halvorg found it so interesting.

You set the children writing tasks appropriate to their learning level and took a moment to talk to Dr. Halvorg, who was scribbling quickly in a notebook.

“They have computers now that you can write on, you know,” You told him, amused.

He looked up over his glasses at you and quirked an eyebrow. “I am aware of that, thank you. I’m not quite so old-fashioned as I seem, regardless of what Amai might tell you.” He looked back down and continued scribbling. “I’m a chronic note-taker. A bad habit I can’t seem to break, though with my profession, it’s often a strength rather than a weakness.”

“Hmm,” You hummed. “And what do your notes say about my teaching?”

“Adequate,” He replied, still scribbling. “Don’t misunderstand, that’s not a criticism. I hold everyone to an extremely high standard. If you hadn’t met expectations, I would have dismissed you.”

“So I meet your expectations?” You asked sardonically.

“At the moment,” He said, snapping his book closed and standing up. “I still want to observe your other classes before I’m completely satisfied.”

“Hmm,” You said again.

True to his word, Halvorg attended every class that week, observing you interacting with the children. Other than a question or two about your future curriculum, he stayed quiet. At the end of the week, he asked that you submit a weekly progress report until you either found a replacement or were dismissed.

It seemed excessive to you, and you were beginning to wonder if he still saw the children as an experiment. He seemed to care about them, but how much of that was genuine and how much of it was his own self-interest? You were starting to feel leery of and disconcerted by him.

Perhaps he picked up on this, because he seemed to go out of his way to avoid you. He had you direct all of your questions and reports to his assistant and rarely picked up his phone. Any conversations were brief and succinct. He did send you notes on your curriculum, making suggestions for each child. If you weren’t already suspicious of his motives, you might almost have though it sweet.

“I think Halvorg is avoiding me,” You told Amai when the two of you went to lunch together. Now that the two of you could hang out after all the years, you made it a point to set time aside for each other and had lunch at least once a week.

“What makes you say that?” Amai asked, drizzling dressing over her starter salad.

“Ever since he watched me teach classes, he’s barely spoken to me. He seemed excited to exchange research notes when I first arrived, but now he seems to have no interest in speaking to me since he finished observing class.”

“He could just be busy,” Amai suggested. “The four year old’s birthdays are coming up. He always does something special for the kids on their birthdays.”

“Are you concerned that he only sees your children as test subjects?” You asked her. “He seems obsessed with them.”

Amai laughed. “I thought that way in the early days, but he genuinely loves kids. If anything ever happened to me or Yenuno, I’m confident Halvorg would take care of them.” She took a sip of her mineral water. “Are you coming to the kids party? You’re invited, obviously.”

“Will there be clowns? I hate clowns.”

She snorted. “Nothing so gauche. I think Halvorg set up a treasure hunt. The kids always love whatever he plans. Honestly, I know I complain about him, but he does make it easy for me sometimes. I haven’t had to plan any major events since the kids hatched.”

“Hmm… I don’t know. It’s strange to me how involved he is.”

Amai sat back in her seat and eyed you shrewdly. “Did he ever tell you about his son?”

You looked up in surprise. “Son? I thought you said he had no children.”

“He doesn’t… technically.” Amai set her fork down. “You didn’t hear this from me so don’t repeat it, but he had a wife nearly a hundred years ago who cheated on him. He raised a boy, thinking he was his son, but the child was actually fathered by the other man. His wife left him and took the boy with her and he never saw him again. I don’t think he ever got over that.”

“Oh, god,” You replied, horrified. “I can’t imagine what that’s like.”

“He’s spend the last several decades saving dying races from the brink of extinction. In a way, he thinks of those children he helped bring into the world as his children, too. And every time he has to let them go, it’s like losing his son all over again. I think the fact that he gets to help raise our babies is something of a gift for him. Trust me, it’s not something he takes for granted.”

“I guess I hadn’t thought of it like that,” You said in dismay.

“Halvorg is stuffy, strict, and a stickler for protocols, so he can be difficult to read, but I assure you, he loves my children as if they were his own. It may have started as research, but he has a family now and I think that’s what he wanted all along. Try not to judge him to harshly.”

You conceded with a nod. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

The following Saturday, you attended the kids birthday party as requested. The kids were excited and zooming around the receiving area, shrieking and laughing, all of them wearing party hats and nothing else. Amaia was piggy-backing on Dr. Halvorg, her tail wrapped around his waist for stability and her arms hugged around his neck. Dr. Halvorg walked around completely normally, as if this was a typical action and he was used to it. He watched the children playing with a wide, fond grin on his face.

You walked over to Amai and Yenuno, who were watching from the refreshments table with Yenu, feeding her crackers.

“Nothing like a little bit of chaos in the morning,” You said.

They laughed.

“You’ve never seen them after a group kill,” Yenuno said. “They’re uncontrollable after they’ve taken down an elk together. It’s pretty incredible to watch for me, personally. Nagas in the wild typically don’t work together and they especially don’t hunt together, not even siblings.”

“They are very close and friendly, for nagas,” You remarked. “Markedly different to most snake-related species I’ve met.”

“It’s Amai’s blood and influence that’s doing it, I’m sure,” Yenuno said, kissing his wife’s cheek. “She’s the most friendly and cheerful person I’ve ever met.”

“To be fair, sweetie, you haven’t met all that many people,” Amai said, laughing.

“That is fair,” Yenuno conceded. “My point stands, though.”

“Alright children, gather ‘round!” Halvorg called, and they flocked to him, swirling around him like a whirlpool. “Now, you guys are going to split up into teams to help Nenish, Tahara, and Sadji find their gifts. Nenish will have Tani, Jinsa, and Keenai on his team. Tahara will have Amaia, Osan, Ishni, and Dashu on his team. And Khuzho, Chidil, Fuma, and Itheti will be on Sadji’s team.” He handed a small leaflet to each team. “Follow the clues to find the treasures! Go!”

The kids scattered, giggling madly.

“Come get something to drink and rest for a minute, Halvorg!” Yenuno called. “I think you’ve earned it.”

Halvorg grinned boyishly, an expression that brightened his face and made him look… well… rather handsome. He jogged over to the table and had a ginger ale. Elves have hypermobile ears, and his ears were high and wiggling slightly, a normal indication in elvish peoples of happiness and excitement.

“I think they’ll really enjoy their gifts this year,” Halvorg said, taking sips of his soda. “And the treasure hunt is half the fun. It’s challenging, but not too difficult. If they work together, it should be no trouble at all.”

“You didn’t get them history books like last year, did you?” Amai asked with her eyes narrowed. “You might as well have burned the money you spent on those for all the use they got out of them.”

“No, I learned my lesson,” He said defensively. “I bought toys.”

“Educational toys?” Amaia asked shrewdly.

He stopped mid-sip and looked at Amaia with an eyebrow raised. “…maybe,” He said into his cup.

Amaia rolled her eyes. “At least Yenuno and I ordered some stuff the kids will like.”

“You don’t know that they won’t like them,” I said. “I loved educational toys.”

“Yeah, but you’re a nerd,” Amaia said, poking you playfully.

“So what? Your kids could be nerds, too. I’m pretty sure Osan is going to be a Star Wars fan. He’s been talking my ear off about the Mandalorian.”

“It’s so strange,” Amaia said, ignoring your response and looking off in the distance. “I thought that because the kids were hatched in clutches, they would be like twins or triples or the like and have similar interests and personalities, but they’re all so different. Different likes, different traits, different styles. It’s amazing.”

“It amazes me, too,” Yenuno said, staring into his drink with a wistful expression. “My siblings and I separated when we were young, so I don’t know what they were like or if we had similar interests. Honestly, until recently, I never gave them a thought. Watching my children work together… it makes me wonder what my own siblings were like, and if they’d still be alive today if we had helped each other.”

There was a contemplative silence for a few minutes, broken by excited voices reentering the receiving area.

“We found it!” Tahara said, holding up a wrapped gift. The other four were carrying smaller treat bags that had their names written on them. “Uncle Maël, look!”

“Excellent! Well done!” Halvorg said, bending to give Tahara a hug. “Now, let’s wait until your brothers return with their gifts before we open them, okay? How about you five play tag until then?”

“Okay!” Tahara said.

“I’ll play with you,” Yenuno said. “I’m starting to get fat, preparing for the incubation period.” He patted Amai’s belly, which carried his three eggs, likely to be the last clutch they’d have together.

“How soon?” You asked Amai as Yenuno took off to chase with his children.

“Any day,” Amai said with a weary sigh. “And I’m ready for it. These little guys are heavy.”

“Boys or girls?”

“We won’t know until they hatch. It’s too hard to get a clear picture with the ultrasound, and besides, even if it could, both the male and female genitalia are internal, so it’s nearly impossible to tell.” She took a sip of ginger ale. “We’re really hoping for at least one girl. Don’t get me wrong, we love the boys more than anything, but we’d like Amaia and Yenu to have some sisters.”

“I’d like to be present for the laying, if that’s okay,” You said.

“For your research?” She asked.

Your head rocked back. “No, because you’re my friend and I want to be there for you.”

Amai smiled fondly. “Oh. Of course, thank you.”

Dr. Halvorg had not added anything to the conversation with you and Amai, and instead went to the table and made a plate of snacks. You gave Amai a look and a cocked eyebrow, and she nodded understanding, slipping away from her spot to watch her husband and children play.

“Dr. Halvorg?”

He flinched and looked up, glancing around furtively and noticing that the two of you were alone. “Yes?”

“Why are you avoiding me?”

He opened his mouth and closed it again before responding, “I’m doing no such thing.”

“I’ve requested at least three meetings with you this past month, and you’re always too busy,” You said dryly.

“Well, I am,” He said, turning. “If you’ll excuse me…”

“Are you avoiding me because I asked you out?” You asked bluntly.

He missed a step in his stride and stopped.

“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I should have realized from your professional demeanor that you wouldn’t be open to interoffice dating. I apologize.”

Halvorg sighed and turned to face you. “It’s not that. Not exactly, I mean.” He set his plate on the table and looked you full in the face for the first time in weeks. “I haven’t given a thought to dating in…” He rubbed his forehead. “Gods… decades. The question took me off guard, of course, and I actually had to sit down and give it some thought. I’ve been wrapped up in my work, of course, but I think I was just distracting myself.”

“From what?”

He sat on the edge of the table and crossed his arms. “It’s hard to talk about. I don’t even really talk about it with Yenuno, and I would consider him my closest friend.” He sighed heavily and avoided your eye. “I’ve ignored my personal life in favor of spending my career and fortune in this century helping races achieve something I want for myself.”

“Children?” You guessed.

He nodded a little morosely. “Not just that, but that is a significant part of it. I’ve been following the reproduction rates of Celtic fae since the fae were originally integrated and it’s decreasing year by year. I live in constant fear that my own race will be extinct in my lifetime.” He quirked his head at you. “Your race still seems to be fairly prolific, is that correct?”

“Oh yeah, I have a bunch of brothers and a truckload of cousins. No problems there.”

He sighed. “I don’t know what the problem with my race is. I’ve studied genetic traits, magical impediments, marriage and divorce rates, and ratio of coupling to conceptions.The numbers are terrible and I don’t know why. That’s what drives me crazy. I hate not having an answer.”

“Have there been miscarriages?”

“No, that’s the crazy thing, the rate of conception is extraordinarily low. I think there have only been three live births of Celtic fae blood in the last year.”

“Oh, jeez,” You said, sitting against the table next to him. “I didn’t realize the problem was that severe. Have you considered whether it might be a physical problem?”

“How do you mean?”

“Have you ever done a sperm count? Or had an MRI of the area to see if there’s a blockage? That kind of thing can be genetic and men tend to be shy about stuff like that.”

He tilted his head and frowned. “No, I haven’t. It actually hadn’t occurred to me. Honestly, I’ve been so focused on my work to distract myself, it may have worked too well and I ignored such things.” He looked at you and smiled. “You’ve given me something to think about.”

You smiled back. “Good. I wonder if the females of the race have a similar issue. It may have been something bred into the people over time, over centuries.”

“That’s possible,” He said. “There’s certainly a precedent; some creatures have been bred to extinction. Remember the pug?”

“That tiny dog breed with the squashed face?” You said. “Yeah, they died out a while ago, didn’t they?”

He nodded. “That was human interference, though. Yenuno’s people were dying out due to antisocialism; too reclusive to even propagate their own species. Yenuno was the only one of his kind to take up this project, and even he was reluctant.”

“He seems happy now,” You remarked.

“Yeah,” Halvorg said softly, watching Yenuno laughing and chasing his kids with a sad kind of jealousy. “He does.”

You watched his face, the deep, deep sadness creasing his face and making him look older than he was.

“Follow up, Halvorg, see a specialist. This may have a fix that didn’t exist the last time you tried.”

He nodded, smiling at you, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “I will.”

As you stood up, you bumped his shoulder lightly. “Thank you for talking to me. I appreciate that you trusted me enough to discuss such a sensitive subject. I get the feeling that you don’t share yourself with many people.”

He laughed. “No, not really.” He looked up with a smile that seemed more sincere. “Thank you for listening.”

Amai went into labor three days later. She was taken to the laying room, where both Yenuno and Dr. Halvorg were present in addition to the interspecies OBGYN. You were suited up in scrubs and the paper gowns that surgeons wear, as was everyone else in the room besides Amai, who was completely naked, and Yenuno, who never wore clothing. There were natal heart monitors on her belly and an EKG hooked up to her chest.

Amai was sitting on a specially designed chair that would allow her to pass the eggs through her birth canal and into the waiting arms of the doctor. She was already sweating and panting by the time you arrived. The OBGYN and Dr. Halvorg were having a quiet conversation. You went to the other side of Amai and took her hand, trying not to wince when she nearly crushed your fingers.

“Is she okay?” You asked in alarm.

“She’s not fully dilated yet,” Halvorg said, pulling his braid into a surgical cap. “The eggs are getting impatient, it seems.”

“Yeah, well, so am I, so they can settle the fuck down!” Amai shrieked at him.

He bore the abuse with no reaction other than a wry smile. Yenuno wisely said nothing and simply wiped Amai’s forehead with a cloth.

“It won’t be long,” the OBGYN said. “She’s almost there.”

“Just saw me open and get them out,” Amai moaned. “It would hurt less.”

Yenuno tried to kiss her cheek, but she swatted him away weakly.

“No,” She said peevishly. “No touching ever again.”

“You said that last time,” He said, smiling fondly.

“Yeah, but I mean it this time,” She said sulkily.

“Of course you do, darling.” He patted her head. She scrunched her face up at him in annoyance. She was always adorable when she was miffed.

“I’ll make you into shoes,” She said sourly. “And a matching purse.”

It took a while for Amai to dilate fully, and by then she was very tired. Yenuno was looking worried; she’d laid several eggs over the years and never struggled this much before. Perhaps this being their last clutch was a good idea.

“Okay, I think we can start pushing now,” The doctor said, getting ready to catch the eggs. “Amai, when you feel the next contract, hold your breath, bear down, and push.”

“Okay,” She breathed. “One’s coming.”

We all braced for the push. Amai took several quick deep breaths and held it, her face pulled tight in pain and effort, doubling over in the chair as she did. You and Yenuno held her hands and patted her back and murmured encouragement. Halvorg was waiting with a soft cloth to take the eggs for cleaning, after which they would be laid in a specialized incubating carrier to be taken to Yenuno’s cottage.

The first egg came slowly and with much screaming. The doctor caught it and handed it off to Halvorg. The shell of the egg was soft and needed extremely delicate care, but Halvorg was well practiced by now and got the egg washed and into the carrier under ninety seconds and returned for the next.

The second egg came more quickly, but Amai screamed the whole time. By the time the third and final egg was laid, her voice was raw and she was too exhausted to scream.

But it was over. She fell back into the recline of the chair as if boneless and breathed in shallowly, her eyes barely open.

“You were amazing, darling,” Yenuno said gently, kissing Amai’s face. “Rest. I’m taking the eggs to the cottage. The children will visit you when you’ve slept.”

She turned her head slowly to look at him and touched her fingertips to his face, tracing down his cheek, chin, neck and chest before letting her hand fall back to her side, and her eyes closed. Nurses came to whisk her away to a recovery room, the OBGYN following behind. Yenuno and Halvorg left to take the eggs to the cottage for the incubation, and you were left alone in the laying room.

As you were shedding the paper gown and surgical cap, you noticed a small book lying on the ground. It looked to be one of Halvorg’s research journals, though it was smaller than his usual ones. He must have dropped it out of his back pocket when he was disrobing. You picked it up and took it with you with the intent on returning it to him in the morning.

And of course, you’d completely forgotten by the time you woke up.

Amai recovered enough in a few days to be up and walking around. She and the children took turns keeping Yenuno company, as he grew morose if he was left alone too long. You had declared half days until the new babies hatched so that they could have more time with their dad.

One afternoon, after the children had left class for the day, Dr. Halvorg came in and sat on the edge of your desk.

“Hello,” You said pleasantly, closing the folder with their latest work for grading. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

“I wanted to let you know I took you up on your advice,” He said, looking a little bashful. “I went and saw a specialist. They’re going to be doing some tests soon. Sperm count, blood tests, an MRI. Any test that can be done will be done.”

“Good!” You said, swinging your chair around. “I’m glad. Maybe you’ll finally get an answer.”

He sighed, looking pensive and anxious. “I’m trying not to get my hopes up, but I still wanted to thank you for pushing me to do it.”

“I didn’t push you to do it, Maël,” You said. His eyes narrowed at your use of his first name, but he didn’t say anything. “I just brought the subject up. It was your decision to do it.”

“Well, thank you all the same,” He replied. “I admit, I’m nervous about it. I could either get wonderful news or have my worst fears confirmed. I don’t know how I’ll react to either option.”

“Would you like me to come with you?” You asked him.

He looked at you in surprise. “You… you don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t,” You replied. “But this is the kind of thing you need friends for. And since Yenuno is tied up with the eggs, I could be a good substitute. You don’t even have to think of me as a friend, if you don’t want to, just an emotional support associate.”

He was quiet for a moment. “I think of you as a friend.”

“Well, thank you. I was hoping we’d get there eventually. So? What do you think? Want some support for this?”

“Not for the tests, I can do those by myself perfectly well,” He said, adjusting his tie nervously. “But… for the results… perhaps… a friend would be nice.”

“I’ll be there for you, then,” You said, standing and patting his arm. “Does Yenuno know about this? Have you talked to him about it?”

“No,” He replied. “I didn’t want to tell him while he’s dealing with his own new babies. Besides, if the news is not good, I don’t want people feeling sorry for me. If the news comes back positive… I don’t know… I think this is one thing I’d rather keep to myself.”

“Except for me, you mean,” You said.

He nodded concedingly. “Besides you.”

“Let me know when the results come back and I’ll go with you. We’ll make a day of it, go to a spa, get a bikini wax together, eat some overpriced salads, buy something ridiculous we want but don’t need. It’ll be a blast.”

He actually laughed a little. “Sounds like a plan.”

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My Masterlist

The Exophilia Creator’s Masterlist

[evelhak]

Dear Big Countries,

I'm writing to you from sleep-deprivation. For some reason my brain thought of you, and how the things some of you do, or have, baffle and amaze me greatly.

1. Remakes of other people's movies/TV shows. I mean, I get it, when you have a lot of people and you look at it from a marketing perspective it makes sense to turn a thing into something that is easier to market to more people than just the ones who are interested in other cultures but man, that's wild. (I'm a huge SKAM fan so that show is definitely on my mind, like how many countries have made their version by now??) I don't think I even had that as a concept in my head for most of life. Like, that's a thing people can do? Wild. Trust me, it seems wild when the vast majority of the media you consume is from countries and cultures other than your own.

2. Dubs for adults/live action. Like what, that's not just for kids' shows?? Genuinely blew my mind when I realized that everyone doesn't just watch subtitled stuff. I guess not every non-English speaking 90's kid's experience of their first Harry Potter movie was disrupted by the fact they couldn't yet read fast enough to keep up with the subtitles.

3. Being a voice actor can be a career. Like it can be your main thing? It's COOL to be a voice actor? Like voice actors have fans specifically for the voice acting they do? (Looking at Japan more than anyone.) O_o You can live by primarily voice acting? It's not just a side-hustle starving singers and actors do? Wow. Oh and I guess 3.1: How all the voices in cartoons are not acted by the same five people. Like Uncle Iroh's voice actor doesn't also do the voice for every other male character who is over 30?

4. Artists, writers and musicians can live if they're moderately successful. I know, simple math, right? Still blows your mind when you've been told since you were a kid that you shouldn't dream of being a comic artist because there are literally ten comic artists in your country who live by drawing and it's basically all humour strips.

5. The language barrier. Many bigger countries don't apparently have English as an important part of their curriculum even though it's the lingua franca. I guess it's because if your country is big enough there's no pressing need to do anything to be a part of global discussion. Still suprising that some people seem to survive travelling around the world without knowing how to ask where the bathroom is, while I couldn't have graduated university without at least B2 level English. I'm lucky I like English.

6. The variety of food you can order to your door. Food delivery business has recently taken a growth spurt in my country, like, in the last couple of years, but for most of my life pizza has been the only thing you can order to your door. Having any kind of variety is still a huge novelty to me and my town is still missing a chinese place that does deliveries, so I'm eagerly waiting.

Sometimes I envy you, dear big countries. Except obviously not right now because our sparse population makes Covid spread way slower.

Morning musings of an insomniac Finn. Lol why am I writing this on the anniversary of our independence?

I'm being 98% serious.

[purplesurveys]

1137

created by: allwrongx - Bzoink

Do you have a bookshelf? If so, just one or how many? I don’t, actually. I have the most books out of everyone in the family, but they’re all either lined up or stacked in random points in my room because of said lack of shelves. Currently, I have three groups of books strategically placed around my room.

If you answered yes to the above, are your books ordered in a special way? Just by height since I have a lot of tall books like encyclopedias as well as smaller-sized novels and pocketbooks.

Have you ever owned action figures? I have a couple of wrestling action figures and I want to keep collecting more if my financial situation ever permits it in the future.

Why did you last smile? Andrew Ilnyckyj finally has a new cooking videoooooooo, which is the main BuzzFeed content I watch these days. I think his last one had been posted in January, so I’ve been feeling pretty starved for some new Andrew content.

Do you have a close relationship with your immediate family? I’m not close with them in that I don’t feel shy about kissing/hugging them or confiding in them; my family are not those people for me. But like we don’t fight (anymore) and we’re able to have pleasant talks over dinner, which is as close as I’d possibly ever get with them. 

Idk, we were ultimately never able to cultivate an emotionally strong relationship with one another, which I’ll always feel bittersweet about; but at least I now have a blueprint of how I’d want to build my relationships within my family, should I ever have one of my own.

If I gave you twenty bucks what would you do with it? Use it to pay my sister for the drawing commission I asked her to make. My total bill comes up to around that amount, anyway.

If dinosaurs could be tamed, would you want one as a pet? Nope, they can stay in the wild.

Do you crack your knuckles, neck or toes constantly? I crack my knuckles the most and my ankles as well. Never my neck and toes.

Are you constantly catching colds or other sicknesses? No, I rarely get sick.

Is there a movie from your childhood that you still watch today? I do an annual Toy Story rewatch because it’s my absoluete favorite kid’s movie. I will also always be in the mood to watch The Game Plan, which I watched every single weekday after coming home from school in like the 3rd grade.

Have you ever seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show? Nope but this has been on my list for years. Just never gotten around to downloading it and finally seeing it for myself.

Where do you do most of your shopping? I usually go to small, independent businesses that sell trendy pieces for a lot less, but I also drop by H&M from time to time. Once I feel secure enough with my savings I also wanna be able to start shopping from Zalora because they have really nice brands over there as well, haha.

Are you afraid of mice? I don’t imagine I would be since they’re tiny and cute. I’m afraid of house rats, though, especially considering how big they can get D:

What type of souvenir do you usually purchase when on vacation? I typically don’t get souvenirs for myself, but this is also because I’ve never traveled solo. My family collects magnets from all the different places we’ve been to though (and also from my dad’s work travels), so our fridge doors are filled with them. 

Do you vacation often? Yeah, my family would usually take 3-5 trips a year, usually around the country and sometimes out of; but of course we’ve had to put a stop to it since the pandemic blew up.

Are you comfortable wearing your pajamas in public places? The only place I’d be comfortable doing so is at the nearby McDonald’s, since I’ve seen residents from my village come in there wearing their PJs or housewear. Otherwise no, I’d rather dress up.

What's your favorite candy bar? Twix!!!!!!!! And while they’re not technically bar-shaped, I love Reese’s Cups too.

Do you own more than one copy or edition of a book? Hahaha yeah. I have two copies of Twilight (one is from my boxed set, another was given to me by a childhood friend, Maryrose) and Breaking Dawn (one is also from my boxed set, while the other one is the special white cover edition given to me by Angela).

If you could see any musical on Broadway right now, what would it be? Miss Saigon. That’s the only musical I’m into.

If you could put any person or characters face on money, whose would it be? I definitely want to see a woman’s face on a dollar bill or coin sometime in the future. < Oh man, this is a pretty good answer. We do already have women in our P500 and P1000 bills, but they’re accompanied by men :/ It’d be neat to see a woman take over a bill/coin all on her own, like Gabriela Silang.

The place that you'd most like to be right now is where? God I really wish I were out in a coffee shop right now but I have to saveeeeee. I’ve been meaning to check out this nearby cafe that also doubles as a co-working space (which means I can do work there without feeling guilty or anxious that I’m taking too much time there, yay), and I might visit next week.

Do large crowds make you anxious? Depends on what the context is. If I find myself in the middle of a stampede that’s quickly going ugly then I will definitely start to panic; but if I’m at, say, a concert, then personally a bigger crowd means a better experience for me.

Do you own a helmet of any sorts? None of my own, but we do have a helmet for our bike.

Will you willingly sing in front of other people besides your family? No unless a huge sum of money is up for grabs, lmao. I’ve only sang in public once, when my mom made me do a solo number on my 7th birthday.

What's in the box? Yeah, I’m not feeling creative enough for this question...

Does your family generally decorate for most holidays? No, only for Christmas.

Would you take the chance to be Nancy Drew or The Hardy Boys for a day? Eh, I’d pass up on the offer. Mystery isn’t my thing.

Do you eat soup when you're sick? No. I prefer to drink lots of water as I usually lose my appetite when I’m sick anyway.

Is there a specific mug or coffee cup that you have to use all of the time? I don’t have to use it, but I’m in love with the mug Angela gave me just this past Christmas. I use it all the time now.

Have you ever watched Doctor Who? No, but I don’t think it’s my kind of genre or show.

If so, what do you think is the scariest creature yet?

Do you prefer to do your shopping online or in person? If I already have an idea of what I want to get, I prefer to get it in person. But if I need something oddly specific and have no idea where to start, that’s when I start to look for online shops or go to Shopee or Lazada altogether.

If you read, which book or series did you enjoy most as a child? Angie Sage, with her Septimus Heap series.

Do you read tour guide type books before you visit places? It’s been a while since I’ve traveled extensively, and when I was younger I didn’t really read into tourist guides. Now that I’m older, I do want to start reading up before visiting a different country – not necessarily about the best places to visit, but more about the culture and practices I have to observe. I remember being reprimanded by a Korean when I tried to snap a photo of something I saw while out in public in Jeju, and I don’t want to do something like that again.

Would you please belt out a few song lyrics here? AND IF YOU TRY TO FIND ME NOOOOW I’M IN ALL THE ECHOES THAT HAVE FAAAADED OUT soooo!!! I’M MOVING ON CAUSE I JUST WANT TO FEEL FOR ONCE THAT I BELONG, THAT’S WHAT GOING ON

How do you get rid of your hiccups? I hold my breath, which is a trick taught to me by my mom. Not always effective, but it does work sometimes.

Is there one saying that you've adopted from someone/somewhere else? I’ve picked up “Awesome!” which was Gabie’s catchphrase. My former director also liked saying “Anywhoooooo” when she wants to digress, and I’ve since adopted that into my vocabulary and mannerisms as well.

Can you lie effectively and smoothly? Yes, but I feel like shit every time I have to.

Do you buy Halloween candy when it's on sale after the holiday? No, I don’t enjoy candy anyway.

Why is your favorite teacher your favorite? She taught beyond her curriculum - music, which isn’t even part of my top 30 favorite subjects - and always made sure to inject a little bit of useful life advice in all her lessons.

Who can never fail to make you laugh? Hans.

Do you agree with the "they're just being kids" excuse? No, especially if the kids in question are already 16/17 year olds.

How many pets have you had in your lifetime? Countless goldfish, one chick, one rabbit, one cat, two birds, and two dogs.

Were you ever afraid of monsters under your bed? Sure. Still am occasionally, heh.

Would you kindly recommend your favorite movie to me? Two for the Road shows a realistic take on love told through cars and a non-linear tour around Southern Europe. If you’re into that and Audrey Hepburn’s pretty outfits in each scene, definitely check it out.

[misscampbellclarington]

In Character Task

Full name? Campbell Renea (Renee-uh) Clarington

Nicknames? Cam, Cammie, Bell, Bells, Bella

Date of birth? Age? Zodiac sign? October 8, 1993. Libra.

Height? Build? 5′8″, Thin

Hair color? Hair style? Dark Auburn. It varies, generally, depending on my mood and how much effort I feel like putting in. Never messy, however.

Eye color? Eye Shape? Glasses or contact lenses? Blue, Round, and Neither for the time being.

Which facial feature is most prominent? Which bodily feature is most prominent? My eyes are my most prominent feature, I believe. As far as my body goes, I often get comments on my legs.

Other distinguishing features? Posture, mother all but beat it into me.

Skin? Hands? What are your feet like? (type of shoes, state of shoes, socks, gloves, pristine, dirty, worn, soft with lotion, calloused, long nails, fake nails, bitten nails, etc) My skin is pale, and my hands are small, I suppose. I enjoy regular manicures, and my nails are rarely without fresh and meticulously applied polish. This goes for my feet as well. Dirty or unkempt feet draw a physical, visceral reaction from me. I am almost always wearing heels, outside of the gym and the studio. Though, I do enjoy sliding into my slippers once I’m able to settle for the night.

Make up? One will rarely see me without.

Scars? Birthmarks? Tattoos? I have a tattoo of a serpent on the top of my left foot. 

Type of clothes? How do you wear your clothes? Generally I am in dresses or skirts and sweaters. Occasionally jeans or shorts, if the occasion calls for it. My school uniform as well, of course. 

Race/Ethnicity? Does that affect you or how you were raised? How? 

Mannerisms? That is a tough question, and one really best answered by someone who isn’t me. Though, I will give it a go. I tend to be quiet, though I do not shy away from my own opinions and beliefs, nor will I refrain from voicing them. I almost always sit with my legs crossed. I do tend to clench and grind my jaw when I am upset, stressed, or nervous.

Where were you born? Where were your parents born? Where were your grandparents’ born? How many times have you moved in your life? I was born at Fort Campbell on the border of Kentucky and Tennessee. My mother was born in Las Vegas, Nevada, my father on the military base at Quantico. My paternal grandmother was from Paris, France, and my grandfather was born on the same base as my father. On my mother’s side, both were from Colorado. How many times have I moved? Perhaps it would be easier to ask how long I’ve stayed put. I would have to guess the number is somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 times. 

What are your family’s values? Do you agree? How does this affect you? (This question is gold! If you don’t answer any other questions, answer this one! You can talk about how your character and their family feels about the Master/slave monster dystopian world politics and I can use this for the group revolution plot!) The Clarington family upholds a slew of values: Driven work ethics, determination, power, class, prestige, respect, wealth, Dominance...While I can see the worth and reason for most, I cannot say I agree with them all. And, I cannot say I agree that the list should stop there. I feel my family is lacking in many values that are necessary to create and foster a ‘happy home’. Love, kindness, compassion, and humility are all sorely lacking. It doesn’t- rather, I do my best to act as if it doesn’t. Setting aside my personal feelings something I learned to perfect as a child. I do wish my parents were not so...Cold. I wish I’d been raised in an environment that taught me what to do with the emotions I feel, but force myself to hide. I wish that I knew how to find the balance between myself and what is expected of me. Naturally, the Clarington family fully embraces the world in which we live. The moment Riley and I turned 13, we began our training for the rest of our lives. We had and have plenty of time for that, though, and sometimes I wish things hadn’t been so rigorous and staunch. 

Are you in good health? Do you have any medical problems? I am, yes. I do not, that I am aware of.

Do you have any disabilities? Physical disabilities? I do not.

What past act are you most ashamed of? What past act are you most proud of? My inability to protect someone who trusted me to do so. I will have to get back to you on that.

What sort of sex do you have? The good kind? Passionate. Hot. Wild. Romantic. This also depends on the situation and mood.

Did you attend any kind of trade school before you got here? (So as a minor or in between the ages of 18-21, since it is law that all people go to a BDSM Academy at 21.) Prior to attending Dalton, I was in school, and was able to successfully obtain my Journalism and Writing degree. I attended a fast-tracked program, which allowed me to work through the curriculum at a quite rapid pace.

Have you had any jobs? What are your career goals? (The laws on this are the same as the real world so minors generally need a work permit BUT you can also work with the family business without anyone questioning at just about any age. And just like the real world, a lot of families put a lot of pressure on their children to follow in their footsteps.) To date, I have not, outside of the countless hours of volunteer work I have done. Ultimately, I would like to write for a noteworthy newspaper, such as The Post. 

What places have you visited on vacation? Oh, uhm...Nearly all 50 States, Canada, France, England, Japan, Germany, Russia.

Who is your favorite actor? Who is an actor you can’t stand? Morgan Freeman. Tom Cruise.

What is your favorite movie? Which movies do you absolutely hate? Dirty Dancing is my favorite movie. I do not typically go for the raunchier comedies. Anything Seth Rogan is generally a ‘no’ for me.

What is your favorite color? What is your favorite book? What is your favorite food? Sea Foam Green for color. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner is my favorite book. My favorite food is breakfast food. 

How often do you exercise? What are your exercise goals? Frequently and regularly. I’d like to focus even more on my flexibility. 

Do you enjoy hot weather, or do you prefer colder temperatures? I prefer things on the colder side. 

What do you think is the meaning of life? The meaning of life is to find life’s meaning.

If you could describe yourself in one sentence, what would you say? 

[prcdigiums]

⌠ JESSICA HENWICK, 25, FEMALE, SHE/HER⌡ welcome back to gallagher academy, SOFIA MORETTI! according to their records, they’re a SECOND year, specializing in RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT +  KNIFE FIGHTING SKILLS, SWORD TRAINING, PRECISION SHOOTING, FIREARMS & SWAT TRAINING ; and they DID NOT go to a spy prep high school. when i see them walking around in the halls, i usually see a flash of (long nights stuck in labs, fingers hurriedly working on her laptop, dark eyes staring you down). when it’s the (scorpio)’s birthday on 11/10/1994, they always request their DRUNKEN NOODLES from the school’s chefs. looks like they’re well on their way to graduation.

                sofia maria-chen moretti zhōu was born to giacomo moretti and li zhou , a true new yorker but manhattan ( she rich y’all ).  giacomo more lovingly refered to as leo by the public is quite possibly one of the most well known engineer / ceos based out of new york. her grandfather founded moretti enterprise during the war time mainly focusing on weapons manufacturing. only recently has it shifted into a more technology based. they are like apple on steroids, they have managed to perfect holograms , a more transparent plastic that does not overheat and its hard drives are so tiny they are practically invisible and have moved on to develop bio-technology. so if you’re even remotely knowledgeable about technology you will know about her family’s company.  her mother’s family owns a multi-million dollar banking company but she doesn’t talk about it much. 

                she was raised in a very high stakes family , she is the only child that the two ever had and they loved her very much. they never pressured her to do anything having to do with technology but she was just natually gifted. her mother’s family was also insanely rich back in china but she was never really connected with her mother’s family since they wanted her to marry in the country. which works for sofia because she’s not interested in someone who speaks poorly about her father.  she loved her parents growing up but felt like she could speak more about technology than she could about business since her mother was co-ceo with her father. she respected both regardless. 

                   sofia was a bit of an overachiever --- which is a small understatement. she graudated high school at the ripe age of twelve (yes... like spencer reid) and she immediately enrolled at mit double majored in engineering with an emphasis in mechanical and physics. she graduated high school with tons of ap credit and her crazy work schedule allowed her to graduate in three year’s time. at the ripe age of 15 she enrolled in a ph.d in mechanical engineering, her schedule was not as hectic so it allowed for her to spend equal times at home and school since her home basically had labs installed. 

                  at the age of twenty her mother mysteriously passed away, autopsy said heart attack, but sofia had always been suspicious of the fact. sofia didn’t think much of , but she did obsess over it for about a year and it wasn’t always the healthiest since she did manage to acquire legal documents, of course no one found out but she always found it suspicious.  her mother’s side of the family did not find it amusing and they haven’t spoken to her since. she put her second ph.d off for a couple of years so she worked for her father for about three years before laura sutton snatched her up.

personality:

her father’s company is pretty well known therefore so is she, she’s pretty much an engineer/ceo in her own right and acts like it.  she likes to be in charge mainly because she knows what she’s doing. she’s an actual member of mensa (ironic if you speak spanish). while her resting bitch face can be very intimidating she loves to play around. all her life she was surrounded by adults so she went a little wild at mit (as much as she could given her age), hung out a lot with the harvard kids.  she’s a cool girl that vapes. she likes to mess around and not catch feelings ( make her feel guys ). she avoids talking about feeling and works her ass off. the labs are basically her room at this point, she thinks gallagher’s curriculum is boring as well but she doesn’t want to be on some hit list so she stayed but she will let you know that she’s bored all the time. she also likes cooking because who doesn’t love an italian and asian fusion kitchen? she also loves to brag but doesn’t do it often, she can’t brag at people who could kill her with a toothpick. 

update:

so to explain her absence ---- since i changed up her story a bit because she needed to be more like how i originally envisioned her.  her mother gave the illusion that she had quit the spy game but she was deeply undercover of course. she learned some pretty sketchy information but she didn’t trust her organization with the information so she encrypted it deep into moretti industry’s security system only for her to find.  no one knows about this by her organization found out ---years later and found that the only way to the information is through the inside so they staged this big elaborate scheme that if they eliminated the big man that could cause enough chaos for them to get in. however, the second her father was shot (not deadly, they fucked up the shot) she left gallagher and immediately went to her father, she stayed for a bit while he recovered and asked to rejoin gallagher because she knew something was sketch.

wanted connections:

someone from her childhood

 someone who interned at her father’s company?

a fucking crush

something messy af

someone she gets close to

idk yall i suck at this pls help me

[chasholidays]

BOOTY DOCTOR

Wells is the one who actually wants to join a gym. His pitch to Clarke is that he needs a buddy to keep him accountable, so they should sign up together, and she about half-believes him, in that she thinks it’s about half true. He really does like having company, but he’s also Wells. In general, he is motivated and responsible and definitely would go to the gym on his own. He doesn’t actually need Clarke to go with him.

But Clarke was lagging on finding a gym for herself, making excuses about how she’d do it later, and Wells probably figured he should just find a gym and come up with a schedule for both of them. They were gym buddies in high school and then she didn’t go to the gym much in college; maybe he’s the missing piece of her fitness routine.

The place he picks is only a few blocks from their apartment, on her way home from work, which is another point in favor of the whole plan, and enough to tip her into actually agreeing. They meet up at the train station, go over to the gym together, and Wells does whatever magic he does to be secretly super ripped while Clarke watches trashy TV on the stair master.

It’s a good system, one that Clarke likes and feels no need to disrupt with anything drastic like group classes or making eye contact with anyone else in the gym for a good three months, right up until she first notices The Guy.

The Guy is showing someone in street clothes how a rowing machine works in front of Clarke’s machine, and she notices him slowly, his features coming into focus as she realizes he’s worth looking at.

He’s got nice arms, that’s the first thing that grabs her attention. Then she sees the curly hair, the freckles, the warm brown of his eyes and the curve of his smile. He’s hot, but also an employee, and as far as Clarke is concerned, that means he’s for looking only. No one wants to get hit on at work.

But when she leaves the stair master to go work on her arms, she sees The Guy behind the front desk, alone and looking a little bored, and she goes over before she can remind herself it’s a bad idea. It’s not like she’s going to be inappropriate. It’s fine.

He straightens and gives her a smile, which is even more to deal with full on. He’s wearing the standard A-to-Z Gym tank top with his name stitched onto the left breast–Bellamy–and his whole upper body looks even better up close and personal.

“Hi, can I help you?”

“I wanted to see a schedule?” she says, the words coming out as a question largely because she’s still coming up with them herself. “For classes?”

“Sure. Weekly or monthly?”

“What’s the difference?”

“We have a lot of weekly and bi-weekly programs, but there are also ones that happen every other week or just once a month. So–how regularly you’re coming and how often you want the class to be, pretty much.”

“I’ll look at the weekly.”

He pulls a laminated sheet out from under the counter and slides it over to her. Clarke’s only just met him, but she can tell he’s watching her, interested, like he’s waiting for something.

It doesn’t take her long to find it, but she makes herself keep going, gives it a few seconds before she flicks her eyes up to his. His face is straight, giving nothing away. “You guys have a lot of zumba.”

“Yeah, it’s really popular. We keep having to add new sessions.”

She scans the rest of the schedule, sees the same listing again on Saturday, just like Sunday: 9 am, BOOTY DOCTOR.

“Okay, fine,” she says, eyes flicking back up to Bellamy. “Booty doctor?”

His mouth twitches. “It’s a class.”

“Clearly.”

He cracks with a small huff of laughter. “Yeah, uh–that’s Roan, he’s the owner and founder. I’m pretty sure he decided to open a gym just so he could come up with his own curriculum. He does most of the zumba too, and the kickboxing.”

“So is it a clinic or what? Does he give you feedback on your booty? Honestly, it sounds kind of creepy.”

“It’s, uh–” He opens and shuts his mouth. “Honestly, it’s indescribable. If you can make it in on a weekend, it’s worth it just to see it.”

On the one hand, Clarke’s not sure about doing additional gym stuff just because there’s a cute guy who’s smiling at her and she wants to see more of him. On the other, if she’s going to do something to see more of a cute guy, there are so many worse things she could be doing. At least this is good for her. And Bellamy is telling her to come, which makes it minimally weird. It’s not like she’s stalking him.

“Are the sessions both the same?”

“Yeah. But I work Tuesday to Saturday,” he adds. “So if Saturday works for you, you can report back to me on how it went.”

It’s probably something he’s supposed to say, a way to get people to actually show up. The personal connection people have with trainers, or whatever. If she’s supposed to tell him how it went, she’s more motivated to come in the first place. It’s not personal, and she’s not reading into it.

Still, she smiles. “I could probably swing it. But be honest: is it worth being at the gym at 9 am on a Saturday?”

“Maybe not every week. But at least once, just to say you did it.”

“Can’t argue with that,” she says. “Sign me up.”

*

“I can’t believe you’re making me do this,” Wells grumbles.

“You don’t want to find out what Booty Doctor is? It was in all caps on the schedule. That’s got to mean something.”

“It’s nine am.”

“You always wake up at eight. You say getting up early on Saturday makes you feel productive.”

“Yeah, but I don’t work out this early.” He makes a face. “Booty Doctor? Really?”

“Apparently.”

“This guy from the gym better be really cute,” he grumbles, and Clarke pats him on the shoulder.

“We’ll get coffee after.”

Bellamy’s behind the desk again when they get there, chatting with a cute girl with long brown hair in a tight ponytail. He turns at the sound of the door and smiles, causing a rush of self-consciousness in Clarke’s chest. She’s been thinking about the encounter off and on for the last few days, ever since it happened, but it was probably routine for him. For all she knows, he doesn’t even remember. She might not have made an impression at all.

But he smiles at her as he scans her ID card. ���Hey, welcome back. Ready for Booty Doctor?”

“I don’t know, you won’t tell me what it is.”

“I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise.”

“So you’re actually kind of preventing me from getting ready for it.”

He smirks. “You’ll thank me later.”

“I’d say this is a bad sales pitch, but I guess you did actually convince me to do it, so–which room?”

She very pointedly doesn’t look at Wells as they go in and set up their mats. It’s decently busy, to her surprise, the space already full of people, mostly women in the twenty to seventy age range, which makes her wonder if “check out Booty Doctor” is a standard sales tactic for Bellamy.

Then again, all of these people can’t possibly be new, so whatever the class is, it’s good enough that they keep coming back. So even if Bellamy is the one bringing people in, whatever Booty Doctor is has to have some continuing appeal.

Possibly sex appeal. Maybe Roan is hot and–

“Okay, yeah, I’d probably wake up at eight on a Saturday to flirt with that guy,” Wells says, sly, and Clarke rolls her eyes.

“You didn’t even talk to him.”

“I didn’t want to interrupt you flirting with him. You seemed to have it under control. Well, as under control as you ever have it.”

Clarke’s about to protest, but the lights in the room dim suddenly, lasers streaming out of a fixture in the ceiling she hadn’t noticed, and some bass-heavy music starts to thump. She and Wells turn their attention to the front of the room, watching as a shirtless man in a white lab coat makes his entrance, waving his arms to encourage the already cheering audience.

“What is happening,” Wells murmurs, and Clarke shrugs, eyes still locked on the makeshift stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” the man booms. He’s wearing aviator sunglasses. “Greetings and salutations, happy Saturday. It’s been a long week without you.”

The music cuts out and the lights come up, and in regular lighting with the regular context of an exercise room, the man–the booty doctor, presumably–looks even weirder. Like he’s a character in a fighting video game, wearing a special outfit you have to beat the whole game to unlock.

“For our newcomers, welcome, I’m delighted to see you. I am Roan Iceman, PhD.” He deliberately drops his gaze, looking out at them over the top of his sunglasses with a smirk. If this was a TV show, his teeth would sparkle. With a sound effect. “The booty doctor.”

There’s another huge cheer from the crowd, like they’re at a concert, and Clarke doesn’t even know how Bellamy could have spoiled this for her. Even if he’d told her that there was a shirtless guy in a lab coat coming out to a light show, she wouldn’t have really been prepared. She probably would have thought he was fucking with her.

But in a way, the weirdest part is that after the introduction, the whole thing is pretty normal. Clarke hasn’t done a lot of workout classes, but it’s basically what she would have expected from TV, Roan leading them through a variety of exercise designed to give them better asses. The music selection is good and Roan is energetic and charismatic, and it’s even fun. He’s still wearing his sunglasses and lab coat, but she can live with that. In fact, by the time they’re winding down, she barely even notices them anymore.

Roan guides them through cool-down stretches and then asks, “So, how do we think we’re doing?”

“Not sure!” the crowd calls back, as one. It seems like a weird answer for a call-and-response, but Roan grins.

“Do you think we need to check?”

“Yes!”

He whips off his coat, throws it into the crowd for someone to catch, and turns around, bending over and presenting them with his own (admittedly flawless) ass. His shorts say BOOTY DOCTOR in glittery letters, one word on each cheek, and Clarke’s brain is still trying to catch up with that as the crowd goes wild.

“I hope to see some of you tomorrow!” Roan says, putting his sunglasses back on and waving. “Until next time, may the booty be with you!”

Clarke and Wells file out in silence, too stunned by what they’ve seen to offer commentary. Everyone else is apparently used to it, and they’re surrounded by happy chatter as they leave. No one else realizes Booty Doctor is bizarre and surreal. Maybe there are subliminal messages in the lasers that slowly convince people this is okay.

To her surprise, the first thing Wells says is, “Okay, so I’ll see you at home?”

“What?”

“I’m going to go grab Starbucks and go home.” He rolls his eyes significantly, and Clarke sees Bellamy wiping down some of the weight machines. “See you later.”

She does want to do a postmortem on the whole thing with him later too, but privacy for checking in with Bellamy is appreciated. And, honestly, she wouldn’t want to be Wells, awkwardly hovering, either. He’s too good a wing man to participate in the conversation, so he would have just been awkward.

“I don’t think you could have prepared me for that if you tried,” she tells Bellamy, and he jumps, looks up at her with a surprised grin.

“Yeah, it needs to be seen to be believed.”

“I was wondering why he was wearing the lab coat if the butt was such a focus, so it was nice that he had the big reveal at the end.”

“He said that if he showed his ass right away, there wouldn’t be any reason for people to stay. You have to make them wait for it.”

“Obviously. Does he get the lab coats back, or is that a souvenir for whoever catches it?”

“If you catch it, it’s yours to keep. He has one of those Amazon buttons to buy more of them whenever he needs to.”

“Wow.” She considers, trying to remember her other objections, not wanting the conversation to end yet. There was so much to process, it’s hard to bring it back. Especially when she’s actually pretty worn out. “I also would have expected the booty doctor to be an MD, not a PhD, but I guess I don’t actually know what degree you get to become a booty doctor.”

“Women’s and Gender Studies,” Bellamy supplies, straightfaced. “From Rutgers.”

Her jaw actually drops. “He’s a real doctor?”

“Rich people,” he says, with a shrug. “He got his degree and then decided he wanted to start a gym. I know Dr. Roan Iceman, PhD sounds like a porn name, but he is a real doctor somehow.”

“And a good one,” says a voice, and Clarke turns to see the man himself, still shirtless, still in the same pair of shorts. “If I do say so myself. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Clarke,” she says, offering her hand. Once they’ve shaken, she offers it to Bellamy too. “We haven’t actually introduced ourselves either.”

“Yeah, but my name is on my shirt and your name is on your ID.” He shakes, and then points to his breast. “Bellamy.”

“I thought it might be creepy if I knew that.”

“I sent you into Booty Doctor unprepared, so–”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” says Roan. “What did you think?”

Bellamy looks relaxed and easy, so Clarke figures she can be honest. Assuming she figures out what honesty is; she’s still not actually sure what she witnessed in there. A normal gym class sandwiched between surreal stage shows, maybe.

“It was something,” she says, and Bellamy snorts softly.

“And will you be back tomorrow?”

Bellamy works Tuesday to Saturday, and even leaving that aside, Clarke’s not really sure she could handle two sessions with the booty doctor in a single week. Even one was pushing it.

“Not tomorrow,” she says, smiling. “But next week for sure.”

*

The Saturday Booty Doctor class is easy to slot into her schedule, even if waking up that early is something of a challenge. It’s a decent workout on top of being genuinely fun, and after it’s over Clarke gets to go and report back to Bellamy, who continues to be cute and charming and generally appealing, but also continues to be a paid employee of the gym she attends, which is one of those things that can be hard to navigate. Bellamy is the assistant manager, a kind of jack-of-all-trades who works with clients both individually and in groups, so Clarke has seen him interacting with basically everyone. He’s unfailingly friendly and charming, patient and happy to talk to anyone, and while Clarke can tell herself he smiles at her wider, looks happier to see her, seeks her out more, she second-guesses it every time.

Wells tells her that too, of course, but he’s biased too.

“I’ve definitely seen him checking you out,” he says, as they’re walking home on Thursday.

“Well, I do wear low-cut tank tops to the gym,” she says. “Just because he’s looking, it doesn’t mean he’s interested. I check you out at the gym too.”

He flexes for her, and she whistles appreciatively. But he sobers quickly. “Look, I’m just trying to help. I know you like him.”

“I barely know him,” she protests. “I think he’s hot and I like talking to him. It’s not that deep.”

“It doesn’t have to be that deep,” Wells shoots back. “I’m not telling you to marry the guy, but the requirements to ask someone out are pretty low. I know you haven’t really been into the dating thing since Lexa,” he adds, before she can protest. “I get it. But if you just ask if he wants to get a drink sometime? That’s so safe. He can just say no and it’s done. You can still talk.”

“Isn’t don’t hit on service professionals at work a pretty standard guideline?”

“Asking him if he wants to get a drink and backing off if he says no is probably fine. You don’t have to, but I think he wouldn’t mind. And I think it would be good for you.”

“I’ll think about it,” she says. “But I think he’s just being professional.”

“Well, I think he wants to make out with you. And not just because of how much cleavage your workout shirts show off. And I know that if you didn’t have the he’s working excuse to fall back on, you would have come up with another reason you couldn’t possibly make a move, so I’m not buying it.”

That one hits home. He wasn’t wrong about her lack of interest in dating since Lexa, and part of her is aware that if Bellamy did express overt interest, she’d panic a little. And, okay, she’d probably get over it and go out with him. But she’d panic first.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

He claps her on the shoulder. “And that’s why I’m not going to the Booty Doctor classes with you anymore.”

“Wait, what?”

“If you want to go hang out with the guy, you’re going solo. You can flirt with him without me having to make excuses to take off. And I can have my Saturday mornings back.”

It’s completely reasonable even leaving aside the Bellamy part; Wells doesn’t have to come to her weird fitness class, and he deserves to do whatever he wants during the period from nine to ten on Saturday mornings. She can go to Booty Doctor alone.

Still, on Saturday, when she opens the door to the gym by herself for the first time, she can’t help a surge of nervousness, against all logic and reason. She’s never been here alone before. She’s always had backup.

Bellamy’s not at the desk, to her surprise, but Octavia is, looking half-awake and mildly surly. But when she sees Clarke, she straightens and smiles, just like her brother would.

“Where’s Bellamy?” Clarke asks. She hasn’t gotten close to Octavia like she has Bellamy, but they’re friendly enough.

“Assistant manager duties. I’m sure you’ll see him later.” She gives Clarke an odd smile. “Have fun in class!”

Since it’s Saturday, she just changed at home and can go straight in without hitting the locker room first. With a couple months of classes under her belt, she’s gotten familiar with some of the other participants, even has a group of older women she usually sets up with. As usual, they’re already there, stretching, and Clarke joins them with a round of greetings.

“Where’s Wells?” asks Ingrid, frowning.

“He decided nine is too early for him. I guess the booty isn’t a big enough draw.”

“Now that’s a shame. But the two of you don’t have to do everything together. Once you’ve been together a bit longer–”

Clarke holds up her hand. “We’re still not dating. Best friends.”

“The best relationships start with friendship,” says Diane. “It makes for a solid foundation.”

There’s no real point in fighting them on this, so Clarke just smiles, tries not to think about Wells saying the same stuff about Bellamy. It’s so easy for people on the outside to be sure they know exactly what they’re seeing, to put together their own narratives based on bias.

Clarke herself is, of course, biased toward thinking she doesn’t have a chance. But at least she recognizes it’s a bias.

The lights dim and the show starts up, still bizarre even after a couple months of attendance. She’ll get used to it eventually, but there’s a part of her that can’t help hoping she never will, that the Booty Doctor experience will always be this fucking weird.

She notices the difference right from the start, from the first flash of the white lab coat. Roan is fluid and confident in his movements, and the person taking the stage now is lagging, hesitant. The hair is different, the build, the whole–

She figures it out a split second before the voice booms, “Ladies and gentlemen!” and it’s Bellamy.

Bellamy’s assistant manager duties are being the booty doctor.

The rest of the crowd has noticed something is up by now, although Clarke doesn’t have a good sense of how many know it’s Bellamy versus just not being Roan. Murmurs race through the class, and she whispers, “Sounds like Bellamy,” before anyone else in her vicinity can speak up.

“I’m not Roan,” he confirms, smile crooked, a much less bombastic opening than usual. He recovers with a smooth, “But I am very happy to be here!” that Clarke is sure is a complete and total lie.

The lights come up as usual, and there he is. He’s clean shaven, face free of the usual dusting of stubble, and wearing, well, the traditional garb of the booty doctor: white lab coat, no shirt, tiny shorts that cling and, presumably, say BOOTY DOCTOR in glitter on the ass.

It’s not hot, exactly. Obviously, the all the component parts are hot: Bellamy looks great, the lab coat somehow works on him, his chest is amazing, and the bulge at the front of the shorts is distractingly there. But the full image is mostly just–too much. Which is maybe good; she’s just as glad Bellamy’s booty medicine isn’t a kink for her.

“So, as always welcome to our newcomers,” he says. “And to our regulars, sorry for the change in plans. As you know, I am not the booty doctor.”

He seems to be going for a kind of aww shucks persona that draws on his understandable self-consciousness about the whole situation, and it seems to be working. The crowd cheers, and someone calls, “We still love you!”

He laughs. “Thanks. I’m, uh–Bellamy Blake, I guess I’ll be your booty nurse for the day. Roan came down with something, so he’s going to be out for a few days, but hopefully you’ll be back on schedule next week.”

“Where are your sunglasses?” Clarke calls, and he spares her a glare. She gives him a thumbs up.

“You need a PhD for the sunglasses. Okay, are we ready to work our butts off?”

It hadn’t really occurred to Clarke that she’d never seen Bellamy actually instructing anyone before. Or, well, she’d seen it, but from a distance, watching him help someone figure out how to use weight machines or demonstrating a yoga position. She’s never been in one of his classes or been close enough to really know what he was like, as a fitness instructor. And of course she wouldn’t have expected him to be bad at it, but she wasn’t entirely prepared for how good he is. Not that Roan is bad either, of course–he’s probably the best booty doctor there is–but Bellamy has a completely different energy, less suited to this particular medium, but easy to imagine in other contexts. He must be great one-on-one and with kids, and it almost feels like he’s wasted here in the gym.

Here, especially. He was never meant to be a booty doctor. He’s got his own skill set.

He leads the group through the cool-down exercises and then straightens, smile nervous. He’s been hiding his discomfort pretty well during the actual exercises, but now it’s back, in every inch of his frame as he watches the crowd. “Okay, so, that’s it for me this week–”

Clarke doesn’t protest, but everyone else does, an immediate wave of discontent rolling through the crowd. Someone calls, “Show us the booty!” and Bellamy ducks his head on a laugh.

“Okay, but let’s all keep in mind that I’m not a professional booty doctor, okay? Be nice.”

He makes eye contact with Clarke before he shrugs off the coat and tosses it towards her, and she moves forward as if in slow motion, snatching the coat out of the air like no one else is even there.

As soon as that’s done, the inherent ridiculousness of the situation sinks in and she remembers that she’s holding a cheap, sweaty lab coat that Roan bought in bulk off of Amazon, but whatever. She’s being supportive.

She folds the coat as Bellamy spins to display his own perfect ass to the cheering crowd. When he comes back up, he’s bright red, adorably sheepish. “Thanks again for having me. Let’s all hope Roan is back next week.”

As always, a handful of people want to talk to the instructor, and this time it’s a much larger handful, people presumably wanting to tell Bellamy he did well and thank him for filling in. Clarke doesn’t feel any need to join them, just slips out and heads back to the front desk.

Octavia grins. “How did he do?”

“Surprisingly well. He hated it, but he did fine.”

“And he took the coat off,” she says, jerking her chin to the lab coat in Clarke’s arms. “I thought he was trying to get out of that.”

“You’ve seen the Booty Doctor crowd, they weren’t going to let him get away with not showing off his ass.”

Octavia sighs. “We’ve got Lincoln doing it tomorrow, I’m going to see if I can sneak in to watch at least some. If I say it’s for moral support, he probably won’t notice I just want to check him out.”

“Is Roan okay?” Clarke asks. “How long is he going to be out?”

“Not for as long as he should be,” Octavia says, with a roll of her eyes. “He’s not, like, dying or anything, just a stomach bug. He still tried to come in, but Bell pointed out that the booty doctor projectile vomiting all over his class would really jeopardize his reputation as a medical professional.”

“And if the booty doctor doesn’t have his integrity, he’s got nothing.”

Octavia grins. “You get it. Where’s your boyfriend, by the way?”

“My boyfriend?”

“The guy you always come in with.”

“That’s my best friend,” she says, frowning. “Does everyone here think I’m dating Wells?”

Octavia shrugs. “You guys always come in together, you usually leave together, you seem close. I figured it could go either way, so I was definitely fishing.”

“Single and bisexual,” says Clarke, going for casual. Given Octavia was just talking about going to check out Lincoln, it seems unlikely she’s fishing for herself, but Clarke wouldn’t mind checking Lincoln out either, so they could both be single and bisexual. And there’s always the possibility that she was hoping Wells was single, not Clarke.

Or she could be fishing for her brother. That’s a possibility.

“Wells is too,” she adds, just in case.

Octavia smirks. “Bell too. Big bisexual party.”

“Title of your sex tape,” Bellamy says, absent. He’s pulled on his usual tank top and workout pants, looking more like himself, and Clarke’s stomach flops with fondness. “What are we talking about?”

“How Clarke doesn’t actually have a boyfriend.”

He frowns. “What about Wells?”

“We’ve been best friends since birth,” says Clarke. “And not in that secretly-in-love way. Just regular friends.”

“Oh,” he says. “Good to know. Is he okay? I saw he wasn’t in class.”

“He decided to quit Booty Doctor and get his Saturdays back. He’s going to be so sad he missed this.”

“I just hope no one filmed it.”

“You did a great job,” she says, and his expression softens into relief.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think booty doctor is the right gimmick for you,” she admits. “But you’re a great instructor and everyone had fun.” She holds up the coat. “Did you want this? To remember your big debut?”

“You can just throw it away,” he says, but there’s some lingering tension in his voice that Clarke doesn’t like.

“If you don’t want it, I’m keeping it. I’ve never caught it before.”

He ducks his head. “It’s all yours.”

It’s a moment where Clarke gets to make up her mind, where she can either let this go or try, put some minimal amount of effort in. She likes this guy, likes him as more than just a pretty face and a nice smile, and this won’t be her only chance to make a move, but this is natural, easy. And she can still pull back, if it seems to be going wrong.

But it might go right.

“Did you really think Wells was my boyfriend?”

“I thought he might be.”

“He’s not.”

“And you’re single.”

“Yup. Your sister said you are too.”

“Yeah.” He bites the corner of his mouth. “You know, I get that a lot of people who come to the Booty Doctor class want to check Roan out, but I never got it. Is it actually hot?”

“It’s probably exciting. Why?”

“I don’t know if being the booty doctor is actually something I can use as a pick-up line.”

“You’re not the booty doctor, you’re the booty nurse.”

He cocks his head. “Does that make a difference?”

“In what?”

“Picking people up. Picking you up,” he adds, before she can even start to worry. “Specifically.”

“It’s not a deal breaker,” she says, smile growing on her face. “But it’s not a turn-on or anything.”

“That’s probably good, honestly.” He rubs the back of his neck. “So, uh–are you doing anything tonight? I get off at three, which is kind of early for dates, but–”

She leans up, gives him a quick peck on the lips. “I’ll be back at three.”

A pleased little smile plays on his mouth. “Cool,” he says. “See you then.”

*

“Wasn’t the whole point of going to Booty Doctor to flirt with Bellamy?” Wells asks the next week. He’s awake, but still in his pajamas, and Clarke can admit she’s a little jealous of him for not having to get dressed and leave the house yet.

On the other hand, she’s going to leave the house and see her boyfriend. That’s pretty great.

“And?” she asks, filling up her water bottle.

“And now that you’re dating him, you don’t need excuses to see him anymore. You could just stop going to Booty Doctor and sleep in on Saturdays.”

“But then if Bellamy ever subs in again, I’ll miss it. Wasn’t going to the gym your idea? Shouldn’t you be proud of me for going more? I’m setting a good example.”

Wells snorts. “Shouldn’t you be buying me expensive presents to thank me for getting you to sign up for a gym and helping you get a boyfriend?”

“I probably should.” She kisses him on the forehead as she passes behind the couch. “Thanks, you’re the best. You sure you don’t want to come?”

“Definitely not. But have fun.”

“Always do,” she says, and somehow it’s actually true. She gets to kiss her boyfriend, attend a ridiculous gym class, and she still has time to go home, shower, and get some adult shit done before she picks Bellamy up after work to hang out.

She’s really got this physical fitness thing worked out, if she does say so herself. Dr. Roan Iceman, PhD, might be onto something.

[marionetteblues]

dungeons dark and deep

literally forgot to post this one. happy christmas. thank you, as always, to the amazing people who read my work for me - @gryffindormischief​, @araniaexumae​, @ginnyweeaslxy​ and @linabelina, i don’t even remember when you guys read this for me but here it is. I love you all. 

In the dead of night, it wasn’t hard to be heard, but the two boys took no extreme measures to be quiet. They had spent too many nights roaming the emptied halls of Hogwarts to fear discovery. The Invisibility Cloak that they were huddled under was not much more than tradition by now, though even they knew that it was a necessary precaution for their journey back. They couldn’t risk someone finding them. Not this time.

Once they were clear of the Entrance Hall and standing in the dark, narrow stone passage that led deep down into the dungeons, Sirius Black shrugged the Cloak off of himself and shook out his shaggy black hair.

James Potter folded the Cloak carefully over his arm. “Lumos,” he muttered, and held his wand far out in front of him, the staircase flooding with light until it took a sharp turn to the left. The light illuminated their faces and the glint in Sirius’ eye.

“I still say we’d have a better shot if we went to the greenhouses,” he said lightly. Sirius walked with his hands in his pockets. No one would have believed that these boys had any goal other than traipsing downstairs for another potions lesson.

“Are you mad?” replied James, one eyebrow quirked. His chin turned in the direction of his best friend, but he kept his eyes forward and listened intently. It wouldn’t have been the first time they’d been ambushed by a group of Slytherins doing their best to get as close as possible to being real Death Eaters. “Risking your life and your Quaffle-catching fingers is only worthwhile when there’s someone else around to impress. Trust me.”

“Well, I told you, there may not be any left at this stage,” Sirius said. “Mandrake leaves are popular ingredients, we use them at least once a week.”

“Which is why Slughorn is bound to always keep enough of them around,” James countered with an easy shrug. “They’ll be there.”

“Alright, alright,” grumbled Sirius, rolling his eyes with one hand thrown up in surrender. “Not that we took a vote or anything. Remus definitely would have agreed with me,” he added on a grumble.

“We don’t need to tell him every detail,” said James sharply. “And he’d just tell us we weren’t allowed to steal mandrake leaves from anyone. That wouldn’t help us much.” The corner of his mouth tugged up in a satisfied smile. “Besides, I’m not even sure Sprout has Mandrakes this year.”

“Of course she does, the second years take care of them every year,” Sirius said. “Seems like caretaking of Mandrakes is absolutely essential knowledge for a bunch of twelve year olds.”

“Well, I don’t think anyone anticipated that two fourth years would steal a bunch of mandrake leaves when they were contemplating their inclusion in the curriculum. Besides,” James went on, just as they stopped at one of the doors that led to the different chambers of the labyrinthine dungeons, “I don’t fancy trying to chop off Mandrake leaves from the real thing.”

“Why not?” Sirius barked a laugh. “It sounds like fun.”

“Because I don’t look good in earmuffs,” James said simply. “And apart from that, you remember what Sprout said? If you’re not trained, they’ll cry for hours and hours. And as amusing as it was to see Colin Dinsmore pass out when we were in second year –” Sirius snorted at that again at that, much louder and much more obnoxiously, “We’re not murderers.”

“But who knows how long these leaves have just been lying there?” Sirius pointed out. “I’m not looking forward to walking around with that in my mouth for a month. Remus had better appreciate this.”

“He will,” James said confidently. “It’ll be wicked if we can finally manage it.”

“Yeah. How many other fourth years can turn into animals?”

Sirius moved to unlock the door of the classroom, muttering, “Alohamora,” before throwing James a grin. They waited for a click, but none came. Their brows furrowed, an exact mirror of the other, before Sirius shrugged, and wrenched the door open with ease.

“Well, we can’t tell anyone,” James muttered.

Sirius threw him a glance, a mixture of doubt and amusement. “I know that,” he said slowly, his tone defensive. “I wasn’t going to.”

“You know we could actually be expelled for this, right?” James said cheerfully.

Sirius didn’t get a chance to answer - there came a smash from the middle of the room, and the two boys stopped dead, raised their wands in identical movements, shoulders squared.

“Oh, bollocks.”

Two separate crashes came next, a heartbeat apart, and tiny shards of smashed glass rained down on the boys’ feet. James raised his wand a little higher, letting its light reach every corner of the room.

“Evans?” Sirius eyed her suspiciously.

Lily Evans was not a girl that they’d had much to do with, apart from when she was with the other girls in her dorm. She was mates with Snape, and she never really joined in when a fight got started, but she seemed to be there, hovering in the background, drifting in and out of the scene like a ghost.

She was a Gryffindor, and fiercely proud of it - she screamed louder than anyone at their Quidditch matches and was always eager to win them a few house points. James supposed that was why she never bothered with him or his friends about Snape. Things were bad enough without making enemies in your own house, especially for a Muggleborn.

And that was really all James knew about her.

“Oh, it’s just you,” she muttered when her eyes finally focused on them, adjusting to the beam of light from James’ wand.

Her expression was just a flash of surprise and indignation before settling on a scowl, but there was no real heat behind it. She seemed content to assume - accurately - there wasn’t much chance of these boys turning her in for sneaking around, after all.

James took her in, strands of her dark red hair falling loosely from the bun tied at the back of her head and curling on her neck, making her features softer. He realized belatedly that she was in her dressing gown - not exactly proper attire for skulking around the castle in the wee hours of the mid-morning, but not everyone could have perfected it the way they had.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, jutting her chin out with a challenge in her tone. Looking like she belonged there, in a nightgown and slippers, and they had no right to interrupt.

“We could ask you the same thing,” James retorted, his hand jumping to ruffle his hair a little, skin at the back of his neck prickling with heat. He didn’t like the suspicious glint in her eyes; she may have been a Gryffindor at heart, but her best friend was a nasty piece of slime, and if he heard anything about what James and his friends were up to … He needed to look normal.

“I asked you first,” she said coolly, her eyebrows raised and a delicate flush rising up her neck. In her hands, she balanced a few vials and jars against her chest. James thought he saw something move in one of them. He squinted in an effort to identify the ingredients she held - you didn’t grow up in the house of a famous potions mogul without getting something out of it.

But it was too dark, and she kept moving, shifting her arm to balance everything without dropping anything else, and he couldn’t get a good look.

“Yeah, but there’s more of us than you,” Sirius countered. The three were silent for a moment as that sunk in, Lily and James both staring at Sirius with a look of bewilderment, James with a hint of embarrassment.

“Well, it’s none of your business, so I’ll stay out of yours if you stay out of mine,” she told them with a coy smile, her movements exaggerated as she gathered up her things like she was telling them, just let me be on my way.

James scrunched his nose up, eyeing her suspiciously. Sirius snorted. “You’re up to something, Evans.”

A smile played about Lily’s mouth as she surveyed them, blinking rapidly. They just stood, sizing each other up.

“Well, I’m not doing anything that will get me expelled,” she remarked. Her eyes glinted with triumph and intelligence, and when they landed on James, it made his face burn. He darted his gaze elsewhere, clearing his throat and shifting his weight between his feet. “You’re not going to hurt anyone, are you?”

“Of course not,” Sirius snapped, which made James frown. When his patience was wearing thin, there was no hiding it, and usually there was nothing James could do but watch, the way he would watch a rope fraying more and more before it snapped. “What are you talking about?” Sirius added.

Lily quirked one eyebrow, distinctly unimpressed. “You said you might get expelled when you walked in, genius.”

There was a pregnant pause of utter silence before Sirius broke it, his shoulders hunched and voice clipped, but striving to sound normal. “That was a joke. If McGonagall didn’t do it for the thing with the frogs, she’s never going to kick us out of here.”

James bit back a laugh, shaking his head.  

He wasn’t quite sure what he’d expected from Lily, maybe an insult or a threat, but she almost looked amused, perhaps intrigued, and oceans away from looking like any kind of threat.  He turned the matter over in his mind, and found it really wasn’t that different from his previous experience with Lily, however minimal it was. In fact, it was sort of the way James had seen her look when he’d dramatically weave wild tales between classes and dare the gathered crowd to guess the truthfulness.  None of them had much success - even Maddie, who had spent enough time with him on the Quidditch pitch for James to consider her a friend.

Or the times Lily would congratulate him after a particularly hard won match and thank him for winning her a few galleons.  He’d even noticed it in class, when they fell into competition and fought to hide their smiles but not the desperation in their eyes to beat the other. There were no identified stakes and no enumerated rules - it was a rare occurrence, and neither of them had an understanding of what losing meant, or even who they were up against beyond just another of their classmates, just the knowledge that one had to win.

Always a plain smile, but with something so strong in her gaze it seemed like sparks should have been flying off her, something that warned of an electric shock if his skin touched hers. It seemed to brighten up even the darkest corners of the room, but even as James watched it dimmed.

He didn’t know if that look always slipped away, but this time, it didn’t last. Before long, Lily’s face turned to a scowl, and in a moment, the boys had schooled theirs from cautious expressions to that carefully practiced aloofness that they carried with them so often it was like a mask to be slipped on at a moment’s notice.

“Unless she caught wind that we apparently tried to jam a broom up Bryan Macmillan’s arse,” James said lightly, punctuating his words with a roll of his eyes, hands jammed in his pockets.

“Threatened to,” Sirius corrected him immediately. “We didn’t actually do it.” His face turned dark when he spoke - it was easier to be accused of things when you actually did them. “Not that anyone could tell the difference,” Sirius went on, waving a hand dismissively. His smirk was back in an instant. “Someone stuck a massive stick up there.”

James just smiled, indulging his best friend - but Lily coughed out a surprised laugh before she dissolved into peals of delighted giggles.

“She agrees,” James remarked flatly.

Sirius grinned appreciatively, nodding before taking a step forward. “Evans! Shh! You’re going to wake up the entire dungeon!” James was quite sure that no one in the room considered most of the people in the dungeons to be spectacular life-forms, but the dungeons were still inhabited, technically.  

“Sorry,” she hissed, sobering up to the best of her ability, though she still smiled.

“Some people,” Sirius remarked, shaking his head.

“Amateurs,” James chimed in, not even a heartbeat later, his mouth quirking up at the corner.

Lily folded her arms, watching them with an eyebrow raised and the tiniest wisp of a smile playing about her mouth.  

“I know what you’re doing, you know.”

She took a step towards them so they were no more than a foot away - her voice lowered when she did, and she started to place her supplies on the nearest table one by one. One of the vials slipped out of her hands, and James caught it on instinct, fingers curling around the jar carefully.

“Oh, you do?” Sirius was saying cheerfully, carrying on like nothing had changed. “Maybe you could fill us in.”

“You think if you keep talking enough shit that I’ll just get annoyed and drop it,” Lily said, her mouth quirking up at the corners.

James blinked as he turned the tiny container over in his hand, staring at the words scrawled on the label. Something felt heavy on his chest and his breath came shallower and shallower as his eyes traced the spiky scrawl.

“Well, you’ve certainly been paying attention,” Sirius remarked, making Lily scoff. “What?” Sirius laughed. “You know all our moves, and you don’t seem to be fed up quite yet, no matter how much we do it.”

“That’s because I go straight past fed up to blind rage.”

Sirius just clicked his tongue. James wasn’t looking at him, he couldn’t see his expression, but he did register when Sirius leaned in and delightfully replied, “At least we provoke a strong reaction.”

They continued to snipe, even though it was very clear there was no real heat behind the words. Just a little irritation, maybe at being inconvenienced on a night time errand on Lily’s part. Maybe at not being adored on Sirius’.

“It’s not my fault that the rest of the school is stupid enough to think you’re both so terribly amusing. But I’d hate for you to think that I was that dense as well.”

“Well, I did. But I didn’t realize you were one for letting people put words in your mouth. Sounds like you’ve been listening to your Slytherin pal a little too much.”

Lily clicked her tongue, clearly put out. Her smile had turned sour, clearly rattled by the turn in conversation. “You think I need him to tell me what to think of you?”

“No, but you let him do it anyway.”

“Did you follow me down here to interrogate me on my friendships? Is this the part where you tell me none of it’s true, and you’re just innocent victims in his campaign to smear your good names?”

“What do you need mandrake leaves for?” James demanded suddenly, finally tearing his gaze away from the jar in his hand and cutting short the straying conversation.

The more that they dwelled on Snape, the more the warmth in the air would seep out of the room. He had that effect; James could see her freeze them out when Snape was around. She stepped away from the easy-going, friendly atmosphere they all enjoyed when she was with the girls in her dorm, from the warmth of it. She ignored that it was good a lot of the time. And James would wonder what it was Snivellus had told her about them. It was probably true in technicality, but he wished she didn’t know so much. Not the way Snivellus told it, at least.

Sirius had started to say something else, but he went quiet when James spoke, snapping his head in the direction of his friend. “What?” he hissed.

Lily’s cheeks flamed, noticeable even in the dim light, which gave James a fierce sense of triumph that he really couldn’t trace.

“What’s it to you?” she said, with a tiny little smile and a dangerous gleam in her eyes. She had only pointed her wand in his direction once or twice in four years, but it wasn’t exactly a secret that Lily Evans was so good with her wand it was downright dangerous to be on the other end of it.

She reached for the jar, and without thinking, James jerked back, holding it out of her reach. She was just about as tall at him, her narrowed eyes level with his. He could hear his heartbeat starting to hammer in his ears, and his grip tightened on the mandrake leaves.

He threw her a smile, tempted to take a step back as her expression grew stormy. But he stood his ground. His nonchalance was starting to fray at the edges, and that simply would not do.

“Is there any left?” he asked her casually.

She paused, long enough so that James knew the answer before she even opened her mouth.

“Why?” she asked instead of answering his question.

“Because we need it,” said Sirius with a little huff of impatience. They needed it badly. They were running out of time, and with each full moon, Remus came back a little paler, with a little less fight in him.

Lily said nothing, her gaze falling on the tiny glass vial that James still held in his hand, his arm stretched out behind him to hold it away from her. “That’s the last of it. And I had it first,” she said, lunging forward to grab it.

James jerked backwards like she’d clawed him, her shoulders squared opposite his as she tried to get around him, his reflexes too quick for her. He wrestled with her arms for a few seconds, batting her away and laughing in surprise. “Calm down, Evans!!”

“Don’t make me hex you, James.”

“You wouldn’t,” he muttered, a small smirk pulling at the corner of his lips. The hair stood up on the back of his neck. It was easy to smile if it kept Evans from growing suspicious, but inside, he felt panic rising up his chest and to his throat.

Sirius was looking at them grapple with his eyebrows raised - he was a little taller than the other two, so he held out his hand for the jar, which James willingly gave up and took a step away from her.

“Come on, Evans,” Sirius said then, in his best tone for negotiation. “We’re not Slytherins, we don’t go around hexing people who don’t deserve it.”

Lily snorted derisively. “I’m not sure you can say that about yours-”

“I said people who don’t deserve it,” he repeated with emphasis, but her expression still rankled.

“Anything we’ve done, they’ve done ten times worse,” James said with a firm nod.  

“At least we haven’t attempted to string someone by their ankles in one of these dungeons,” Sirius continued, his tone purely conversational. “But that’s not even important. I’m sure whatever it is you’re cooking up is important, but not more important than this.”

Lily folded her arms, leaning back on her heels with her hip popped to the side and her head tilted the other way, watching them. “Tell me what it is, and I’ll decide.”

The two boys shared a nervous glance and said nothing.

Lily shifted her weight. “It must be really wrong if you’re not even going to brag.” She grinned a triumphant grin at the silence that met her words, and she held out her hand. “I will hex you, Black.”

She drew her wand, and Sirius drew his, and in the light from the tip of James’ they stood, forming a triangle with their wands held in front of them.

James huffed after a second, his lips pursed forwards with annoyance. “Right. I have a better idea. There’s a fair way to do this.”

She raised her eyebrows, but tilted her chin and relented, holding up her hands in surrender. “By all means.”  

Slughorn’s store was disorganized and unruly, his handwriting barely legible, but eventually James’ hand closed around what he was looking for. Leeches.

Sirius placed the vial of mandrake leaves on the highest shelf of the bookcase beside the door, and casually stood between Lily and the exit.

Leeches were kept in a separate vial each - James had three in his hands, juggling them as he turned back to look at her. “Right.”

She blinked at him for a second and then rolled her eyes, failing to fight an amused smile. “Come on, Potter. I want to get to bed.”

He caught them all with ease, carefully extracting the first leech from its prison and placing it on the desk. “Just across the desk.”

Lily caught on quick, and she laughed, so suddenly and loudly, like it was drawn from her without her knowing it. “Alright, Potter. You’re on.”

She walked over to where he stood, leaned in close - James went very still, watching her as she surveyed the two leeches in his hands, skin tingling a little, from the attention he supposed - and eventually she selected one of the leeches, before she paused, pointing to the other.

“What’s that for?”

“For Sirius.”

She scowled at him, but there were bright red patches of excitement on her cheeks and a gleam in her eyes that was unfamiliar. “No. It’s you two against me. I’m not going two on one. You said this was fair.”

She stared back at him resolutely and the two of them squared off in a silent argument for several seconds before James relented, ducking his head and dragging his fingers through his hair. “Fine.”

It would have been a first, if a teacher had walked into the potions classroom at that moment. Two boys fully dressed and a girl in her nightclothes, all yelling at the top of their lungs as they watched two leeches slowly crawl across the desk, meandering and zig-zagging as they want.

“Stay on target!” Lily yelled at her own leech, before she swore and turned away, hitting James’ chest as a result.

“Ow! Watch it, Evans!” he yelped, rubbing the spot she’d punched him.

She tried to scowl, but she was smiling. “I’ll watch it when you control your leech,” she replied, flaming red patches on her cheeks. “He’s playing dirty.”

James blinked between her and the leeches, a strange, unfamiliar warmth seeping through him from his chest as he shot back, “It’s not like I can control him. What makes you think he’s a ‘he’?”

“I have ways,” she told him with an air of mystery.

He blinked at her silently for a moment with his lips curving into a smile that he found strangely forceful, and she just stared right back, her own mouth in a wry smile of her own, her chin jutting out defiantly.

And then Sirius cleared his throat. “Your leeches are shagging.”

The moment broke, and Lily and James tore their eyes away from each other sharply, attention darting back to the desk.

James cleared his throat. “Little Fleamont wouldn’t dare -”

“Fleamont?” Lily repeated, spluttering as she pulled out her wand, poking at her own leech with the end. “Get a move on, Mildred!” Mildred didn’t move. Sirius may have still had his wand in his pocket, but James had heard him whisper a stunning spell aimed at the poor leech.

It may have wounded James’ sense of honour, but this was one game he couldn’t fight fair. They couldn’t wait any longer, which meant they couldn’t afford to lose.

James started to laugh, a gentle but uncontrollable bubbling from deep inside him. “Yes, Fleamont. Named after my father.”

“I wish you’d stop trying to make everyone believe that’s actually your father’s name,” said Lily with a snort.

James’ eyes just flickered to Sirius’ for just a moment and they both smiled, but they said nothing.

“And Fleamont takes the day! He takes after his father, we never lose a match,” James roared with triumph, holding out his hand for Lily to shake.

“Fair play, Evans, good game.”

She pouted dramatically, but he could see the mirth in her eyes. He liked it. It made him go quiet for a moment longer, until she was poking her finger into his chest.

“You -” she said pointedly, “are responsible for finding me some more. Deal?”

James blinked, swallowed hard against a sudden tightness in his throat, and extended his hand further. She took it and shook.

“Deal,” he told her, winking, and was rewarded with a tiny pink glow in Lily’s face.

Relief washed over him as the three of them made their way back up to the dormitory, walking in companionable silence. Lily wasn’t bad at sneaking around, and James and Sirius were more than happy to keep quiet.

With the mandrake leaves safely tucked away in James’ trunk from the time they got back to the dorm, the three of them arrived at breakfast the next morning with crinkled eyes and dark circles under them that betrayed a lack of sleep. But they were smiling, all of three of them, the boys from triumph, especially when they caught another’s eye.

News travelled fast in Hogwarts, and all anyone could talk about was the leeches - curled up and spitting all over Slughorn’s desk - and what that meant. Sirius and James shared a glance at breakfast and raised an eyebrow each in one identical motion, before James looked over at Lily, looking utterly innocent as they walked down to the dungeons.

He frowned a little to himself as he fell into step beside her - he meant to speak, but he was quiet for a few seconds, surprising even himself. How did he ask someone if he could expect to be in trouble for the leeches - what Slughorn had dubbed “a deep personal attack” - without it just sounding petty?

Lily seemed to be one step ahead of him. “Don’t worry. My lips are sealed.”

He nodded quietly, a little awkward as he shoved his hands in the pockets of his robes. Her friends were walking directly in front of him, so he kept his voice low. “What were you trying to do, anyway?”

“You first,” she said teasingly, looking at him expectantly.

He felt his face flush and kept his gaze away from hers. “Something for a friend,” he told her, cryptic and mysterious, but with none of the usual bravado that would have accompanied such a line.

To her credit, she seemed to accept that with a small sigh. “I was trying to make my own Sleekeazy’s,” she told him with a reluctant expression. “I ran out, and I can’t get more until I get to Hogsmeade.”

They came to a stop outside the potions classroom, waiting to be called in, and James started laughing, a gentle and warm laugh, but one he couldn’t control, bursting out of him and filling up the entire corridor.

“What’s so funny?” she demanded, with a nervous little laugh of her own, like she didn’t know if she should be laughing too, or if his amusement was at her expense.

He just shrugged his shoulders. From the end of the corridor, he could see her best friend enter through a door that came from the dungeons, so he took a step back to his own friends but he threw her a small smile.

“There’s no mandrake leaves in Sleekeazy’s, Evans.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You know that, do you?” she grinned, though her eyes went a little rounder when he nodded. “How would you know?”

He just blinked at her, his lips barely curved into a smile.

“What’s in it, then, Potter?” she said.

“Maybe one day I’ll tell you,” he said lightly, taking a step back towards his friends. She spluttered wordlessly in indignation, making him laugh again. He returned to his friends, his own side, even if he hated to think of it like that, and she only shook her head, letting out a breath like she couldn’t believe what had just happened, her lips pulled into a smile.

He met her eyes once more, just before they entered the classroom. She shot him a playful scowl, shaking her head as she passed him. She held his gaze for just a moment, a heartbeat longer than normal, making him grin.

And then Sirius had his attention again as they sat down, grumbling, “What did they even have these dungeons for when they built the place? The students?”

[alexwinfield-blog1]

Digital Footprints: Put YOUR stamp on it.

It’s Monday morning. A new day. Another week of school. You turn off your alarm and head straight over to Twitter. “Monday already !!!!!!! (Crying emoji X10) Can’t w8 to get back into bed”. Your phone pings. It’s Lizzie. Your BFF. She never lets you down. Except not today it seems. “Soz bbe. Sooooo ill. Grab any hw sheets for me plzzzz (blowing kiss emoji) xxxx”. Mum shouts up the stairs “Are you getting up at any point today? The dog needs walking and you need to take your brother to school!” You slam your phone into the duvet, roll your eyes and take a deep breath. You’re annoyed and the day has only just begun. Toast in one hand and dragging your brother out the door by the other, you smile at the postman. “Morning”, you say. Knowing full well he loses your packages ALL THE TIME.  Be nice mum always tells you. Manners cost nothing.

You get to school. The mean girls stare you down as you walk to your English lesson. You try to look cool. You tell yourself that one day they’ll take you in as one of their own, but maybe today just isn’t that day. You find your seat, unpack your books, your pencil case, tucking your phone under your hideous plaid skirt. Silly really. Illuminating skirts aren’t exactly the school uniform market’s latest innovation. You’re top of your class. You know you shouldn’t be scrolling through Instagram in a lesson, but everyone else does, and you for sure don’t want to stick out any more than what you already do. You get A’s in nearly every assignment and you compete in nearly every extra-curriculum sport in the school, but you can’t help but fantasise about that Instagram #gymbod. Your parents are immensely proud, and your teachers? You can’t do enough to please them. You love school. Never too shy to raise your hand in class, never too eager to stand in front of the WHOLE of year 11 to deliver a speech about the school’s litter policy, and never too embarrassed to admit to your friends that you’ve not even kissed a boy.

It’s lunchtime. You and your best friends of 12 years gather around the canteen table.They tell you about their exciting weekends. How their heart throb boyfriends distracted them from getting any work done. How they got ridiculously drunk at a family party and how their mum grounded them for coming home at 10:33 – 3 minutes later than expected. And you? You just listen. For the most part, you spend your break and lunch times talking in the hockey team WhatsApp group chat. They’re a laugh. Sometimes you tell the girls about your boring weekend, or even fluff it up slightly by telling them you actually got out of your pyjamas. They would never believe you. You’re well and truly the plain Jane out of the bunch. The new boy in your year asks if the seat next to you is taken. The girls think he’s a nerd but you think he’s quite cute. You say no. The girls sigh as if to say “you’re such a loser”, but you don’t care. You have to pretend you don’t know his name, that you don’t have an unhealthy obsession with checking his Facebook. You know his cat goes by the name of Clive, but you pretend you don’t know that. You know he plays for the local rugby team, but you’re not supposed to know that either. You don’t know that his birthday is the 6th of June, and most importantly, you must NOT show any bitterness towards his girlfriend of 3 years.

Home time at last. You’re loosening your tie as you get closer to the front door, eager to jump straight back into bed. PING. It’s the girls group chat. “House (girl dancing emoji) Sat nite. 8.30. B there or b (square emoji)”. NOOO. You promised mum you’d have a film night with her. Saturday night rolls around. You’ve been plotting all week how you could get away with this one, but she’s a mum. They find out everything. Not this time. You divert from the party situation. It’s now a revision sleepover situation with the girls. You ask to go and of course you’re allowed. School first, partying second. It’s 10pm. You’re having the best time but you assured mum updates on the revision sesh. So, as promised, you load up Instagram stories. On your second Instagram account, obviously. By second, you mean the only Instagram account your mum thinks exists, right? You locate the photo album named “revision”. You browse this until you find the most colourful, most mind-map-ful, most hard working-esque photo you can find. And voila! A little later, in comes a text from mum. “Wonderful stuff. Looks like you’re really working hard. See you in the morning :)” . Little does she know, over on what might as well scream @yourerliar101, several stories and photos were posted of your amazing night with your besties. In the morning it seems the party was a huge success. Tweets and Instagrams raving about the night – “Can’t believe Josh taught every1 to do the (worm emoji) (cry laughing emoji)”. “Had the best nite EVAAAAAA (tongue out emoji)”. “Me and the gals last night!!!!!!! (cocktail emoji) (heart eye emoji) #lovethem”.

Sound familiar? Well, this may not be too dissimilar to a day in the life of your late teenage years. (Millennials, this one is for you!) Through this artificial account, we learn that in just 24 hours, you are likely to perform a variety of different roles. You’re a reliable friend and a caring sibling. You’re also studious, a potential lover and occasionally a liar. But sometimes it’s for the best, right? So, quite literally, how can these personalities become transparent online?

Just like this teenager, the average social media user, whatever you may define this to be, can be traced online. Social media can speak volumes about a person. Not just what they get up to on the weekend, but the finer details. For example, they’re obsession with their house rabbits, how much they can’t stand their boss, and more recently, how they’ve jumped on-board Facebook’s latest bandwagon, “rate my meal”. 

Social media, such as Instagram and Twitter allow me to present the most favourable, or sometimes least favourable, versions of myself.  If you were to rewind to old school Alex on Twitter, you would definitely find tweets containing homophones, such as “u”, with my favourite acronym, still to this day, being “lol” – only used sarcastically of course. As well as this, I was a sucker for, and admittedly still am, a cluster of exaggerated punctuation, but mostly “!!!!!!!”.  Although Crystal (2008) claims that young users of social media, especially in SMS, will use abbreviations such as “GTGMIW” (Got to go, mum is watching), this wasn’t necessarily the case when I was growing up with social media. Nowadays, it’s all about filtering what you put online. This screening allows you to hide your online activity, for example by disguising your wild Friday night shenanigans by deselecting your mum from viewing your Snapchat story. Or, creating a separate Instagram just for your friends’ entertainment. You can be as embarrassing as you like and you won’t have 800 followers judging you.

Goffman (1974) refers to this online social interaction as “audience segregation”. We ultimately filter aspects of our lives from certain people in order to curate and maintain a multitude of personalities depending on the context we are in. So, for me, this means presenting a sensible, family-friendly Alex on Facebook, an interesting and good-humoured Alex on Twitter, and an exciting, adventurous Alex on Instagram. Let’s take a look…

So, 2017 A-Level Results day. Here, we’ve got a definite exaggerated use of punctuation and excitable capitalisation. Not only this, I clearly thought the use of the extreme smiley emoji X2 wasn’t enough, resulting in going the extra mile with a #. What am I doing here? Looking back on this, this for sure could have been Facebook worthy. This could have bagged me a gushing army of comments from overjoyed family members bursting with pride. But why Twitter? My friends would see this. People I know, but don’t really know, would see this. Those 23 likes - those 23 people thought this was worthy of a tweet and that’s all that mattered. In this moment, I. Was. Clever.

Evidently, over the years, I desired to either be desperately funny or desperately embarrassing. You decide this one.

Would I have found any of these tweets to be bland if I weren’t to use homophones? Or exaggerated punctuation? Or hashtags? Were these attempts for me to moan about how busy my life was? Did I want sympathy or just someone to relate to?

Here’s Instagram Alex. Holidaying in the Dominican Republic, Lanzarote and Greece. Eating Wagamamas at least once a week. Being overly obsessed with a French Bulldog, attending fancy-dress parties and the occasional festival. This is what I choose to share online. Not very exciting, but a fairly accurate representation of me. You can guarantee nearly every other caption incorporates an excessive use of emoticons, sarcasm and most definitely a little too much of this “!!!!!”.

What do these linguistic features allow me to achieve?

If I asked a complete stranger to read my Twitter, browse my Facebook and scroll through my Instagram, they would probably argue that my presence across these social media platforms doesn’t really differ that greatly. You could say that for the most part, I present the most authentic version of myself online. I’m not one to shy away from no-make up selfies, or tell the world about how groggy I feel after waking up from that 3- hour nap, or in fact how much I moan about going to my 20 hours a week part-time kitchen job.

However, for some people, this is not the case. Without audience segregation there would be a context collapse. Employees would start saying “lmao” when their boss asks for a coffee. Students would use inappropriate emoticons to sign of their “sorry I can’t make it to the lecture today, I’m ill” email. Parents would text, or even worse, tag you in their FB status announcing “#DINNERISREADY” instead of actually calling you down for dinner, and we definitely don’t want to live in a world full of parents who hashtag EVERYTHING.

So, what can we learn from this?

For both professional and personal matters, it’s important to present yourself online in a way that is consistent. You don’t want people to think you have 25 different personalities. Keep this for the real-life stuff. No one likes a catfish. After all, if 70% of employers screen candidates’ social media before they consider hiring, it’s important to avoid branding yourself as a fool online. Keep those drunken night out videos OFFLINE and maybe consider deleting those 2012 “Like for a rate <3” cringey Facebook statuses. However, don’t go erasing yourself offline completely in fear that you’ll never get a decent job. After all, 47% of employers argue that having an online presence allows them to learn a bit about who they’re hiring. So, be open, but not TOO open. Be YOU. However, if “you” means writing Facebook statuses about how much you love playing Angry Birds at work, or how you’re easily persuaded to go clubbing on a Monday night, maybe it’s best you don’t share the real you online. Be mindful about the digital footprint trail you’re leaving behind. 

References:

Driver, S. (2018, October, 7). Keep It Clean: Social Media Screenings Gain In Popularity. Retrieved from: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2377-social-media-hiring.html

Jones, R. H., & Hafner. C. A. (2012). Undersatnding Digital Literacies. London: Routledge.

[keishid]

17. the one where your soulmate’s name is on one wrist and your enemy’s name is on the other and you have no clue which is which. (Yasukat, because I am a BASTARD and I wanna see Kat have a minor crisis about there being even the vaguest possibility that her soulmate is Jericho fucking Swain)

(AO3 mirror)

extensive headcanons used sry

feel free to interrogate about them XD

Katarina can’t read the markings on her left wrist. They’re sharp and angular, squared off in places, so much more complicated than the simple Common script on her off-hand; she used to think, when she was still figuring letters out in the first place, that it was just particularly complex or maybe a specialized alphabet and she’d get it later but—

But it’s just not in Common in the first place.

It’s easy to assume which is which, then. There’s a name in Common—not noticeably Noxian or Demacian or anything in particular, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t be Noxian. It seems a little short for a Noxian name—an actual family name, not the Nox indicative of a guttersnipe, but only one middle name attached. There’s no reason for her not to have her share of enemies in her homeland as well as outside it, but when she knows for a fact that one of the souls linked to hers is from somewhere else… the odds feel pretty decent that the foreigner is probably her enemy.

死蓮.

Apart from that single section, Hiroto can’t read either one of his linked names. They aren’t any alphabet that he learns, isn’t from any one of the isles; he’s never personally met a mainlander before, so he can’t exactly ask them what his wrists say. (They probably wouldn’t even bother learning Ionian, even if it is the island closest to the mainland.)

Yone says he’s heard that most of the mainland speaks one language most of the time, which frankly feels like bullshit considering the size of the place, but it’s not like Yone can read it either. He can speak some Common—they both can, just in case, especially since it looks like the isles can’t just avoid contact with the mainland for much longer—but reading it isn’t a priority. And just running around showing everybody the names in the hope that someday, someone will be able to tell him what they say—

It would be pretty weird. It’s private, anyway.

He’d at least like to know why this person, whoever they are, has a single Ionian name in amongst this… frankly ridiculous mix of other ones. Or why it’s so godsdamned… pretentiously grim. It sounds like one of the Kindred’s priests, but they only have the one name in the first place. Not six , assuming he’s understanding the spacing right. And it can’t be that all mainlanders have names that unwieldy; his other wrist only has four sets of characters, and all of them are much shorter.

(What the hell kind of mainlander names their child death lotus? Or, worse still, what the hell kind of mainlander gets weirdly obsessed enough with Ionia to name themselves like that?)

Half the reason Katarina leaps into her Ionian studies as hard as she does, when her father finally tells her about the overseas part of her curriculum, is in the hopes that she’ll finally at least have a name to put to the lines on her skin. She has a person to put to the other name now, at least: a soldier who shouldn’t reasonably be alive, put in a minor command just by dint of outliving everyone else who could have qualified. A cripple (although Katarina knows better than to assume that means much of anything, or he would have died before making it into the army at all), a strategist, with a six-eyed raven as a familiar. Some sort of witch, and almost as old as her father.

(No one ever said that a soulmate had to be romantic. Many of them aren’t. It’s childish of Katarina to be disappointed, but she is.)

Reading the language is far more difficult than speaking it, and even if keeping one’s full name a secret is a habit that only Noxians needed to cultivate, it feels wrong to unwrap her wrist and show her teacher the marks. Or even to copy them down somewhere else and ask that way. (Her handwriting is terrible, anyway, even with the simplest characters.) She learns it in bits and pieces, months apart; and she doesn’t get the full context until she’s already on Ionian soil, living with the Kinkou.

Yasuo. No middle name, she’s expecting at this point (Ionia, as it turns out, does have its own problems with local spirits and elementals; they just don’t seem overly bothered with using a name for power—not so much less malicious as just following a different set of rules). No surname… is odd, but enough of the Kinkou forego them that it’s not out of place here. It gets under her skin, rubs her the wrong way. It can’t be safe, your entire identity stripped down to three syllables that anyone can know. Katarina— Shiren, she still has to remind herself; she’s Shiren as long as she’s here—still doesn’t like the idea that her full name is seared into a birthmark on someone else’s body. (Possibly even more than one, depending on how many enemies she makes in her life, how much reason she gives them to hate her.) She can’t imagine…

She can’t imagine having no such protection at all.

He goes to the sword school at ten; he gets renamed at twelve, the moment that his skills start to surpass where the masters think his ego ought to be. (He can deal with their censure; the fact that Yone agrees, the fact that his very identity gets rewritten, that he has to relearn how to respond to something that isn’t even his real name—)

It’s fine. It will be fine, eventually.

He meets her at seventeen.

If Shiren comes with a warning, it’s not one that he hears. The masters don’t seem surprised to see her, but Yasuo isn’t convinced they’d even show it if they were, so for all he knows she just… shows up to be taught. More, because can’t be that much younger than him, and he’s never seen a brand new student show up that old.

They don’t actually meet for the first couple of days; the masters are keeping them both busy, and if she shares the same curiosity about him that he has about her (she’s a mainlander and she’s here, so maybe—), she doesn’t seem interested in going out of her way to pursue it. She does show up for dinner, but getting near her without being obvious about it is… a challenge.

She doesn’t look like much when he finally manages to get close enough to look. She’s smaller than him both in height and in build—a swimmer’s build, or a dancer’s (or a ninja’s, but he hopes not). Her accent is off, but she’s still understandable, and she’s at least doing a hell of a lot better than he was expecting from a mainlander. She has an angular face, like a fox given human form. Her eyes are shockingly green; her hair is black, but her eyebrows are a deep red, her eyelashes amber. It’s not a color that feels like it should exist on a human being, but…

“If you dyed your hair to trick people into thinking you’re Ionian,” Yasuo says, food halfway to his mouth, “I have some bad news for you.”

Shiren looks up at him, startled. For a (tense) second, she doesn’t react; but whatever she was waiting on or looking for, she must find it, because then she just looks back down and snickers. “I don’t want to stand out from a distance,” she says. “That’s all.” She pauses. It’s not clear whether she almost says more and then thinks better of it, or whether she’s just having difficulty figuring out what else to say in the first place. “I’m Shiren,” she offers finally.

He knows. He knows, but his heart still twitches in something that might be terror when she says it. His skin itches under the hem of his sleeve. “Yasuo,” he says.

She looks up again, sharper this time. Her eyes—her eyes are so green, but also narrowed just slightly, as if…

As if she’s asking herself the same questions he is. Gods, he wishes he could see the insides of her wrists, but they’re wrapped in interlaced fabric from the heels of her hands to somewhere inside her sleeves. (Maybe it’s a mainland thing. Yasuo’s never met anyone who particularly put the names on display, but maybe they’re stricter about it where she’s from.)

“Yeah?” she says, in a voice that’s trying just a little too hard to sound neutral. His heart strongly reconsiders having a predictable beat. “Just Yasuo?”

He swallows. “Just Yasuo,” he says.

Her eyes flicker to his hands. “I might have to ask you about that,” she says, so quietly he barely hears her over the general conversation. “Later.”

Later. Right.

Later is harder to figure out than she expects. The swordsmen push her… well, about as much as the Kinkou did when she first came to them. This school is smaller than the Temple, but she somehow still manages not to be alone with Yasuo for a couple of solid days, despite her best efforts.

She eventually at least gets the opportunity to spar with him—which is frankly terrifying, since she still doesn’t know what he is to her. The sun is high, the wind smells slightly of flowers (she’s still not used to those; the wild plants that can survive in Noxian soil don’t tend to produce flowers worth looking at, let alone safe to put to one’s face), and Yasuo—

He’s beautiful. That’s safe to admit, no matter how this ends up going, what he ends up being. There’s a tension that leaves his shoulders the moment he steps outside, as if there’s something inside him that unfurls and blooms only when he can see the sky. He turns to her, mouth pulling into a challenging smile even as he bows from the other side of the makeshift arena. If she’d spent any less time here than she had, she might have forgotten to return the gesture.

He draws his practice blade and strikes in a single movement, dashing forward faster than seems possible for a normal human—but there’s no magic in the air, only excitement, the leap in her chest as she just barely ducks out of the way. He deflects her return blow, twists back out of reach; faces her again, now that they’ve tested each other a little.

“You’re quick,” he says. His voice feels like a caress, settling between her lungs and warming her blood.

Focus. “I hope so,” she answers, circling, mirroring him. “I’ve been staying with the Kinkou for the last few years.”

Yasuo pulls a face. “Should have known,” he says, but he’s smiling before he finishes speaking. “I’m surprised you haven’t started throwing things yet.”

Throwing things, shunpo-ing behind him, is almost impossible to resist—it’s what she’s been doing, it’s what the ninjas taught her. But that’s also exactly why she’s ended up here.

“I have to learn how to fight fair eventually,” Shiren says. She grins, lashing out at his sword arm. “Besides, I’ll probably be disqualified if I try, right?”

She expects him to leap back or just block her strike, but he dashes forward instead, closing the distance before she can react. His hand closes around the wrist of her off-hand, pulls her in too close for their weapons to be of any use.

“I have a few things I’m not allowed to do either,” Yasuo says. He’s not so close that she can feel his breath on her neck, but her skin prickles anyway. “I might show you later so we can have a real fight.”

Shiren stays tensed, fully prepared for them to get right back to sparring, but she does lean ever so slightly into him. Her eyes flick down to his wrist, the curves of letters she can’t quite see at this angle. Yasuo’s fingers dip underneath her sleeve, catching on the cover over her wrist.

Oh. Right.

“If you’re looking for your name, you’re holding the wrong one,” Shiren says quietly.

She can just barely hear Yasuo take a breath. Behind them, a teacher clears his throat, and they jerk back apart as if burned.

Her footsteps on the tatami don’t make a sound. Yasuo doesn’t even realize someone else has come into the room until she wakes him up with a hand on his shoulder.

He blinks up at her, bleary and confused, but she puts a finger to his mouth before he can say anything. She points to the cracked-open door leading outside, gets up to her feet, and offers him a hand up.

He’s at least half certain he’s dreaming, or that she’s an apparition, but her hand feels solid when he takes it. She’s still silent as a cat as she makes her way to the door and through it, but she takes a slow and audible breath when they’re safely out in the open air. She looks real enough, stretching briefly in the pre-dawn light.

“So,” Yasuo says, biting back a yawn. Either Shiren’s been up for a while or she just wakes up more quickly than any reasonable human would. He’s trying not to resent her for it.

(Maybe she is his nemesis after all.)

Shiren shakes herself, glancing back at him. “So,” she agrees. For a moment, she looks like she’s going to actually say something, but then she closes her mouth and starts fidgeting with her sleeve.

Or not her sleeve. She undoes some sort of knot he can’t see and starts unwinding her not-quite-glove from her wrist.

Yasuo takes a step closer, remembering to breathe. “You keep those on when you sleep?” he asks.

Shiren glances up at him, twisting the strip of fabric around her fingers. “It's—” She scrunches her nose in thought. “It’s for safety,” she settles on, finally. “We have—I don’t know your word for it. They’re not human.”

“Vastaya?” Yasuo guesses.

“No,” Shiren says, shaking her head. “Some vastaya don’t want to kill you. These are just…” She shrugs helplessly. “And even outside of the fae—” and that’s definitely not an Ionian word but he’s not sure how to ask— “names have power where I’m from, more than they do here. We can’t risk people knowing the whole thing like this.”

Yasuo thinks, abruptly, of how much space her name takes up on his skin. “That why yours is so long?”

Shiren bites back a smile. “No one knows the whole thing but my father and I,” she says. “And you.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he says, looking out towards the woods just to diffuse the inevitable awkwardness of the next few seconds. “I can’t read most of it.” Yasuo clears his throat. “But I can’t read any of the other one, so if you wouldn’t mind helping me with it…”

She snorts a laugh. “Maybe,” she says, balling up the last of the wrist-wrap in her hand. “Come here.”

It’s… maybe it’s akin to anxiety, the tension buzzing underneath her skin. Maybe Yasuo can understand some of it, because he’s meeting her in the same way she’s meeting him, but there’s no way he can grasp exactly how—how intimate this is for her. For any Noxian.

(He can’t read her name. She doesn’t have to tell it to him.

But she wants to.)

Yasuo takes a few steps closer, just brushing the edge of her personal space. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands at first, whether she should look at her name or show him his, but he finally just reaches out himself. She can feel every callus on his fingers catching on the skin of her forearm as he raises it.

They both know what he’ll see when she turns her uncovered wrist over. She can hear his breath catch anyway, just slightly. Shiren can tell just from the length of the script that her name isn’t on his left wrist, but when she pulls his right closer—

She’s never actually seen her name written down, not in its entirety. It feels wrong, inherently alien; she almost wants to hide it since he doesn’t seem to have any interest in it, but—

“Katarina,” she says, brushing her fingertip over the first segment; and then she continues, each name in turn, while he watches her trace the letters on his skin.

“I’m never going to remember all of that,” he says. She doesn’t have to look up to tell that he’s smiling.

Shiren—Katarina—laughs under her breath. “I’m not leaving for a while,” she says, meeting his eyes. “We have time.”

Yasuo’s mouth twitches up a little. “Katarina,” he says, like even her given name is a secret. His fingers trail down to hers. It’s impossible to tell if he tangles them or if she does. “I don’t… think we’re enemies.”

She doesn’t want to be. He’s—he’s too godsdamned nice to look at for him to be her nemesis. “I don’t think so either,” she says.

She can feel her heartbeat in her throat when he kisses her.

[shanastoryteller]

mmmmmmmkay okay so, you know, what if sion had been just a little smarter about how he handled the nezumi situation when he was twelve? like i get his naïve innocence is part of his charm and all, but this kid is also supposedly a genius, so, you know, i don’t think i’m going too far out of left field here.

so his mom tells him there’s a security alert about an escaped criminal and to acknowledge it when he goes back to his room, except this time shion puts two and two together and doesn’t bother, he knows who the security alert is about. so he goes back with dinner and gives it to nezumi, is just as kind and flaily and awkward and endearing as before. he still gives nezumi his sweater and holds his hand and curls in bed with him. nezumi turns into shion’s warmth, and that’s how they sleep, tangled up in each other. nezumi’s fever breaks in the middle of the night, and they get up just before dawn, when it’s still dark out. before nezumi goes, shion asks a favor – he has nezumi tie him up. and nezumi’s eyes widen, and he smiles again, because hey, that’s not a bad idea.

so when the security bureau shows up, karan shows them to her son’s room, and screams at what she find – her son bound and gagged, tear tracks down his face. he says the escaped prisoner came in and restrained him, and left a few hours ago, all of which is technically true, and he never opened the security alert, so they don’t question it – why would they? he’s part of the elite, and going to the advanced track, he’s going to be the best of them. so a criminal got the drop on him, he’s twelve after all. and the incident gets marked in his file, but he’s not found guilty of anything, they don’t suspect him of being a dissenter. because he’s not, not yet, he’s just a boy who saw someone in need of help and gave it, that’s all.

shion follows his path, going into the special curriculum with sefu, majoring in ecology. but he’s – well, he’s looking, not sure for what, but he is looking. and he sees it, eventually, and he sees what happens to people who know too much, and he says nothing. shion graduates early, and is given a prestigious position in the upper management of the parks maintenance center. and he’s only junior level, but it doesn’t take him long to figure out that something’s amiss.

the earth is dying.

not the whole earth, not the planet, but their corner of it is slowly fading, is unsustainable even though it shouldn’t be, even though the science says they should be fine. and, look, he’s karan’s son, right? he’s the son of one of the people who helped found no. 6. it’s why they’re elites in the first place. so when he warily starts poking around, all concern for their city and not even a whiff of disapproval over the things he knows, the stuff he’s figured out – well, they welcome him right into the inner circle, he’s eighteen and the youngest among them by thirty years, but he’s a genius and he’s loyal and his mother did so much for them, for this city, it seems only right that he give back too.

so, nezumi.

he tries to keep tabs on shion, but it’s hard. maybe if he’d gotten caught and lost some status he could have managed it, but information about elites is locked up tight, it’s a lot harder to get access to it. he knows he’s alive, that he got into that advanced school, but that’s it, that’s all he’s managed to figure out. but he’s still him, still closed off and angry, still so desperate for love and absolutely terrified at the prospect of caring about anyone and being cared about in return.

but he’s still an actor, is the leading lady in every shakespeare play that is performed, and a few others because he’s just that popular, is famous through his stage name eve, and he makes a tidy sum from his job and he’s still a fighter, of course, because he remembers what happened to him when he couldn’t fight, when he couldn’t defend himself.

anyway, he gets himself in a tough spot somehow, i don’t know. inukashi saves his ass, or bails him out of something, and he owes her big. and he hates owing inukashi anything, the girl who saw what was coming for them, coming for the forest folk, and ran. he can never decide if he’s jealous, or if he just hates her. it’s not fair. she got burned too, and in more ways than one. she survived, and didn’t suffer like he did, wasn’t traumatized like he was, because the dogs took her in. while he was captured for experiments in no. 6, she lived among the dogs, and learned to survive the only way she knew how – by turning her back on their life, and maybe that’s why he hates her so much, actually, even though it’s not fair. she was only a baby when it happened, when their forest was destroyed, their land taken from them, their people murdered. but he offered to teach her, once, when he found her and saw her burns, but she refused. she feels the clawing need for his songs, but doesn’t understand them, refuses to understand them. there was a time when the whole forest sang for them, and he wants so desperately to tell someone about it, wants so desperately to connect to this person who was like him, who was born of the forest folk even if she wasn’t raised among them, wants so desperately to help someone like shion helped him. but inukashi rejects all of it, rejects their whole heritage, and fair or not, he hates her for it.

so he owes inukashi. owing her makes his stomach flip, it makes him so uncomfortable he’d rather peel away his skin than deal with it. so, he did what he swore he would never do, and he goes to rikiga.

rikiga, who sells girls to high ranking no. 6 officials who like a taste of the wild side, who get off on pitying the girl they’re fucking. rikiga who once told him he’d make a lot more money working for him than he did as an actor.

“one night,” he says, and he hates this, but he hates it less than owing inukashi anything. “one night, and that’s it.”

he’d thought rikiga would be thrilled, but he actually looks conflicted. “if you need money, i can lend it to you,” he says.

nezumi blinks, taken aback, “why?”

“my girls make good money. they do it because they want to, because they’d rather work for me than do something else,” he says bluntly, “i don’t like taking people on who are too desperate for it. this is a business, not a slave trade.”

and, against his will and expectations, nezumi thinks for a moment that rikiga isn’t the worst person. “i don’t want to trade one debt for another. i’m the top paid actor in this place, i don’t need money that badly. it’s not you or death. it’s you or something deeply unpleasant, and i’d rather take you.”

rikiga signs and nods, and then that smarmy grin comes across his face, and nezumi’s more familiar with that, at least. “lucky for you, i have the perfect customer in mind, and his standing appointment is two days away.”

so, that’s that. nezumi shows up at rikiga’s business house in the place between their home and no. 6, and he’s given some clothes and make up, and he does his best not to scowl. he doesn’t mind the dress, he wears dresses all the time for his job, but he minds the point of the dress. it’s short and black, and too tight, and he does his makeup like he’s actually a girl, doesn’t put on stage make up because that looks horrendous face to face, and he doesn’t want to scare this guy off. or well, he wants to punch him in the face repeatedly, but if he does that not only will he not get paid, but he’ll owe rikiga too, which he doesn’t want.

the thought of letting a no. 6 official touch him makes him want to vomit and maybe kill someone, but it’s still not as bad as being in inukashi’s debt. he’s done worse for less.

he’s sitting on the bed, waiting, his hair loose around his face. he hears two sets of footsteps, and covetous whispering. then a light male voice he doesn’t recognize, “rikaga, who is this? i’m not going to talk in front of a stranger, i have you tell the girls to wait in your office for a reason.”

“i thought you might like this one,” rikaga says smugly, “you’re always paying premium price for my best girls, and you just send them away so we can talk. you should get your money’s worth for once.”

what is rikaga saying? why would someone pay that much money to not have sex?

“i come here to talk, not for sex, and you know it,” the man snaps, and nezumi thinks that voice almost sounds familiar. is it once of the people who had captured him when he was a kid, maybe? “you know coming to see you is the only way my coming here doesn’t raise suspicion. i’m here too often as it is. they think i’m a deviant.”

“and it makes them like you even more,” rikaga says dryly. “are you sure you won’t even take a look? i picked this one out special, just for you.”

“pay her and get her out of here,” the man says. “i’m paying for her time, and i’m not interested in having sex with her, so she can do whatever the hell she wants for the next couple of hours. my business is with you.”

they finally round the corner, and rikaga opens the cell door and they step inside. nezumi doesn’t look up, tense, because he knows what he looks like, he knows how attractive he is, and if this stranger is going to let him off the hook he doesn’t want to give him a reason to change his mind, and his face is a very good reason for this guy to change his mind. he makes his living off this face, he knows he’s beautiful.

“i’m sorry about this, there’s been a misunderstanding,” the man says kindly, and nezumi flinches. since when do no. 6 official actually sound kind? “you’re free to go. you will, of course, be compensated for your time.”

he finally risks a glance up, and his eyes meet soft brown eyes, and his mouth falls open. then he snarls and gets to his feet, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and slamming him against the wall. “you became one of them? you – you know, you must know, you’re an upper level official, and you still – i thought you were different.”

wide brown eyes stare at him uncomprehendingly for a moment, and this is somehow worse than inukaisha, to find out the soft, kind boy who helped him so long ago became – this.

shion’s eyes finally light up with recognition. “nezumi! you’re okay! i never knew - i hoped, and,” he twists his head to glare at rikaga, “i asked about nezumi and you said you’d never heard of him!”

“nezumi?” he asks, confused. “that’s eve.”

“eve is my stage name, you idiot,” he snarls. “what are you doing with him?”

rikiga goes cold. “none of your business. if you’re not wanted, then get out of here. we have important things to discuss.”

“he can stay, if he wants,” shion says, beaming. he covers nezumi’s hands with his own, and he’s not afraid, he should be afraid. nezumi wants to murder him, and then maybe find a hole to cry in, since apparently there’s not a single decent person left in the world, and if that’s the case then what is he living for, anyway. “we’re planning a revolution. want to help?”

“shion!” rikaga shouts, “you can’t just say things like that!”

nezumi’s grip slackens in surprise, and shion doesn’t hesitate. he throws himself at nezumi, wrapping his arms around him, unconcerned when nezumi stands stiff and still in his arms. he pulls back, but he keeps his warm hands curled around nezumi’s upper arms. his smile is warm too. “we’re going to destroy no. 6 from the inside out. i’ve put a lot effort in getting where i am today – a place where i have access to almost everything, where i know enough to actually do something about all of this. and i will do something. no. 6 has ran unchecked for too long, and it’s time for it to end.”

“i,” he licks his lips, “i don’t understand.”

shion goes harder then, something like steel in his eyes. “i don’t want what happened to you to happen to anyone else. you – you opened my eyes, nezumi, to everying i didn’t know, you were the one that led me down the path to discovering what was really going on in no. 6, to be becoming the person i am today.” he slides his hands down to nezumi’s arms to squeeze his hands. “help me again. help me destroy no. 6, and build something better in it’s place.”

“okay,” he says, a harsh whisper, because is this a dream, it feels like a dream, “okay.”

and that’s exactly what they did. and fell in love along the way while they were at it, of course.

[careerplus7]

Top Harvard interview tips that you need to know!

Top Harvard interview tips that you need to know!

Getting an Invite from the most prestigious B-school in the world is a dream come true for every aspiring candidate! Yes, you heard that right! Today we are going to discuss - ***how to create a lasting impression in your final round of Harvard Business school Interviews***! You deserve a pat on the back! ***An invite interview from HBS is rare & prestigious***! Congratulations! You have cracked the toughest B-school application process; it’s your day; enjoy it!  **The HBS interview is one of a kind!** It stands apart from other b-school interviews in terms of uniqueness and rigor, being one of the high-stress components of the application process! Furthermore, the half-hour interview comprises fast-paced 30-40 questions in a rapid-fire format! **Nature of the interview** To its core, ***the HBS interview is quite similar to the case study method they famously use in their MBA curriculum.*** This means that even if you prepared for a bunch of standard questions, adding a twist in the whole case scenario could throw you off your play! These kinds of wild shifts in paradigm are meant to cut out applicants who are too comfortable giving conventional answers that they have practiced for hours.   This is intentional, of course, and the main goal behind such case-based questions is to keep the candidates on their toes and help them try to figure out solutions in a high-pressure environment while handling impromptu questions! However, rest assured that the major portion of your interview will only be tailored to your HBS application. So the first step of preparation should be too - Make sure you know everything on your application &resume.  **HBS Interview Questions: Theme** Prepare to answer **any questions ranging across any element of your profile!** It could be from your hobbies and interests to major industry headlines and circling back to your experience and skill-set! This **interview will cover several of your life choices**. We recommend candidates give valid reasons while changing industry/role/geography/background/background and for any significant career/life-altering decisions! While answering these questions, you show character and deep introspection. Become well-versed with your professional and personal experiences, and share the context and situation. The interviewer has quite a grasp of what you can say. Hence, it’s your job to make it interesting for them to get them excited about you—something you could only master with a mock interview with an experienced or well-versed person! ## SAMPLE HBS QUESTIONS BASED ON EXPERT ANALYSIS  Before we get to the tips, below are some of the ***most recent questions*** drafted by our team of expert consultants while working with successful Candidates.  **1) General trivia: Background-related Questions**    * How is your family? * How was your experience growing up in a country like [your country] and now moving to the US for your post-graduation? * Where did you attend your college, and why? (specificity and values), and why choose your [major]? **2) All about Job and Career Path**  * Where are you currently working (Country/Industry/Company)? * What does it mean to you to be the head of such a big project? * What does a regular day look like in your work? Follow up on specific examples. * Name some of the companies you like. (can be industry specific/general view) * Why this role (the role you are currently in) - Like, why product management/impact investing? **3) Leadership At Its Best!** * What’s unique about your style of leadership? What would those whom you manage say about you? * Describe a time you had issues with staff that reported to you. How did you work around that? * At what point in life did you think of having a life of impact? * Who have you had an impact on? * Tell me about a situation/task/project that was difficult for you. * Walk me through this (decision/project experience/ leadership example/case study )deal on your resume. * How do you convince potential clients/customers of your vision? **4) MBA: A Journey Worth Describing!**  * Why MBA * Why an MBA from here?  * Describe a specific topic/core subject/class that you think would help you gain relevant knowledge and empower you to achieve your Post-MBA goals. * Which topic/core subject/class would be hard for you at HBS? * Is there something else you wish to talk about?

Learn More Register Here

[tinkerlyblog]

STEM Skills Gap Can Be Filled By Teaching Children How to Code

"Importance of technology is increasing every day. We must not deprive our children of technology; if we do, then it's a social crime."

 This quote by our hon'ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi explains the need of the hour for the children who are the country's future.

Children's imaginations are as wild as flying automobiles, auto-tying shoes, and robot assistants. While flying automobiles is still a dream, technology has significantly influenced how we operate and play. We had no idea how much smartphones would influence our conduct and shape our lifestyles ten years ago. The future is approaching quicker than we can imagine. Even kids, who are in art school, are also learning to code today. The development of robotics courses is changing the way children learn, and as a matter of fact, they willingly enroll in Online STEM classes for kids.

 How STEM Education Courses For Kids Is the Need Of The Hour?

 Technological innovations such as AI and automation are transforming every sector, and there is concern that many human jobs may be lost. However, with new technological advancements come new work opportunities. By the time our children are ready to work, jobs such as developing and managing robots and their subsystems will be highly demanded.

 The issue is that most schools fail to educate our students on the skills they will need to fill future occupations. Industries are already having difficulty finding employees qualified to fill these high-skilled positions. It will be impossible to stay up without the necessary technological skills.

 The National Association of Manufacturing and Deloitte estimate that the United States would need to fill nearly 3.5 million manufacturing positions by 2025; however, as many as 2 million of those jobs may go unfulfilled owing to a lack of qualified candidates.

 Computer science is taught in less than a quarter of schools throughout the country, and even fewer middle and primary schools provide academically demanding computer science experiences, according to CSforAll. Because there are no coding programs for primary and middle school children, they will be unprepared for high school and college. More STEM professionals with greater skill levels and the potential to fill positions in expanding areas would result from the earlier development of STEM talents.

 What Are The Ways Getting Started In STEM Education For Kids?

 One method to develop the abilities required for these future vocations is to learn to program. Technology, specifically coding, has aided in the advancement of the internet and robotics and businesses such as healthcare and fine dining. Coding abilities may be used in practically every profession. Coding provides children with essential life skills and confidence, and the ability to develop applications and games.

 There are alternative methods to learn to code if your kid's school is one of the 75% that does not offer coding and computer science. Because coding is so adaptable, you can incorporate it with anything your child is interested in.

 Minecraft may assist in teaching coding concepts to your children if they enjoy gaming. While Minecraft mods and Redstone weren't designed explicitly to teach coding, they help youngsters learn Java (one of the major coding languages) and fundamentals like binary numbers and terminal commands. Minecraft isn't capable of teaching children to code independently, but it may be an essential component of a coding curriculum.

 In a classroom with children or a professional educator, kids can learn to make video games, web pages, and applications. Depending on what's available in your region, you may select between in-person and virtual coding lessons for kids. It may help kids utilize their artistic and innovative abilities while learning coding essentials in web and game creation classes. They'll be able to create customized applications and sites as per their preferences.

 While programming games are ideal for younger children who aren't yet ready to study text, complex toys are also available for older children and teenagers. For some students who want to see how things function in the real world, taking coding principles offline might be more fascinating.

 Start with programming books for children if they're keen readers. Books on individual languages and more advanced areas such as smartphone and robotics design are available. Your youngster may learn how to make computer games, create animations, design smartphone applications, and start websites by reading these books.

 Summing Up!

 Coding and STEM talents are in high demand. Unfortunately, schools have yet to catch up. It does not imply that your child must lag. Children are welcoming changes and advancements in technology. It is our responsibility to motivate and help them to be well equipped for the future.

  For More Info:- Best Online Coding Classes for kids