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fabulivonline · 2 years ago

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How To Choose The Perfect Wood Study Table For Your Home - A Comprehensive Guide

Wood study tables have always been a popular choice of study table. The beauty of wood study tables lies in the natural appeal they have and the versatility they offer. They can be of any shape or size, depending on your requirements. You would have come across people who express their desire to have a functional wooden study table that helps them achieve academic growth, although not everyone has such a need.

Types of wood study tables

Wood study tables come in a variety of shapes and sizes. There are wood study tables that can be used for displaying books, magazines, and other items on the tabletop. There are also wood study tables that can be used as coffee tables or side tables.

The main consideration when choosing the best wood study table is what you plan to use it for. If you plan to use your wood study table primarily as a side table, then you will want a small, compact design that won’t take up too much space in your living room or kitchen. On the other hand, if you plan to use your wood study table primarily as an area where you can place books and magazines, then you will want something bigger and more versatile than a typical side table would be able to provide.

There are also many different types of wood available for making wooden study tables. Some of them come with stained finishes while others have natural timber look and feel that gives them a warm and rustic feel which makes them perfect for displaying photos or artwork on them.

Here are included some different kinds of Wood study tables, such as:

Wooden:

It is made with solid wood and is available in many shapes and sizes. Wooden table tops are often stained or painted with multiple coats of varnish to protect them from moisture and damage.

MDF (medium-density fiberboard)

MDF is made from pressed wood fibers that are glued together with glue-based adhesives to form a solid piece of furniture without requiring any additional finishing steps. It is lightweight and inexpensive but has some drawbacks like being susceptible to damage when dropped or sat upon directly or when knocked over or bumped too hard against something else.

Wall-Mounted Study Table:

This is a great option for those who don't have much space to dedicate to a study table. You can easily attach it to the wall and it will take up very little space. It's also great if you have kids or pets that want to sit at the table.

Corner Study Table:

The corner study table is a smart way to maximise your space, as it allows you to place a smaller table against the wall, which makes it easier to reach.

It also comes with a handy drawer that can be used for storing documents and other items. This table is a great option if you have limited space but still want some extra functionality.

Curved study table:

A curved study table is one of the most popular types of furniture. They are perfect for anyone who needs a place to work in their home or office. These tables come in all shapes and sizes, but they all share one thing in common: they're designed to allow you to sit at them comfortably.

The curved study table is one of the most popular types of furniture. They are perfect for anyone who needs a place to work in their home or office. These tables come in all shapes and sizes, but they all share one thing in common: they're designed to allow you to sit at them comfortably.

A curve is a distinctive feature of these tables, as well as the fact that they are made out of wood rather than plastic or metal. The curved shape also makes it easier for you to use this type of table as an inspiration board when you are working on your projects at home or school.

L-shaped study table:

One of the most common shapes for a study table is the L shape. It boasts a wide, solid top that has enough for a laptop, printer, and other office supplies. For individuals who prefer to keep their desks neat and organized when working at their computers or in bed, this design is perfect.

The L-shaped desk is also great for those who have limited space at home. This design works well in small apartments and dorm rooms, allowing you to reduce clutter on your desk and make the most of your space.

Design and style options

You can choose from a wide range of wood study tables, but they all have one thing in common—they're designed to serve as a centre point for your home.

The first thing you need to know is that wood study tables come in different shapes and sizes. You can choose between classic, modern and transitional styles, depending on what you want your room to look like.

Next, consider the design and style options available. Some are more formal while others are more casual, so it's important to choose one that fits your home's décor perfectly.

Budget considerations

This is an important consideration when choosing a wood study table is the budget. While many studies are expensive, there are a few that are very affordable.

Another factor to consider is whether you want something that will last or if you want something that will be easy to move around. A lot of people like the idea of having bookshelves in their rooms but don't want them to take up too much space. In this case, a wooden study table may be more practical for your needs.

If you have limited space and need to fit several bookshelves in your room, then you would have better luck with one of these types of tables. They are also easier to move around because they tend to be lighter than traditional bookcases.

Tips for maintaining a wood study table

Wood study tables are beautiful, durable, and versatile. They can be used for both practical and decorative purposes in your home or office. However, these tables have some drawbacks that you should know about before you buy one.

Here are some tips for maintaining a wood study table:

Do not sand the surface of the tabletop. This may cause the wood to fracture over time. It is best to use a piece of paper as a guide when sanding the surface of your wooden tabletop.

Do not make any cuts into the surface of the tabletop with tools or sharp objects because this might cause damage to the wood fibers in the tabletop.

It is also important to keep an eye on how much moisture is absorbed by your wooden study table at different points throughout each day. If you see that it has absorbed too much moisture, wipe down its surface with a dry cloth so that it rehydrates itself properly.

Conclusion

Whether looking for the perfect wood study table for your home, there are several factors that you should consider. First and foremost, is the size of your desk. You should make sure that the table will fit on your desk without any issues. You may have to have an extension on the legs if necessary.

Secondly, you must decide what material you want to use for your desk. There are many different types of woods out there and each one has its unique characteristics.

Thirdly, when choosing a wooden study table for your home, it is also important that you consider its cost. Some tables are more expensive than others because they have more intricate designs or they are made from better quality materials like mahogany or maple.

#wooden study table #study table

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dineszdd · 2 years ago

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Top 5 Benefits of Choosing the Right Coworking Space for Your Professional Goals

When it comes to setting and achieving professional goals, choosing the right coworking space in bangalore can make a huge difference. A coworking space is a shared workspace where individuals, freelancers, and entrepreneurs can work together in a shared environment.

There are many benefits to choosing the right coworking space, including the following:

Increased productivity:

One of the main reasons people decide to work from a coworking space is because of the increased productivity it offers. When you work from home, you tend to get distracted by the TV or your phone. However, when you work from a coworking space, you are surrounded by people who are working hard. It’s up to you to set your own timetable and keep to it. Because of the social aspect of coworking, you tend to make connections that you wouldn’t in a traditional office setting.

Working in a shared workspace allows you to focus on your work without the distractions of a traditional office environment. The buzz of activity around you can actually increase your productivity, as it provides a sense of community and motivation to get things done.

Cost savings:

Renting a coworking space is often more affordable than setting up a traditional office.

A shared office is a great way to get the space you need at a fraction of the cost of a private office.

You can save on overhead costs such as utilities, office equipment, and furniture, as these are typically included in the coworking space rental fee.

Networking opportunities:

There are a number of factors to consider when choosing a new office space, including the layout and the price. But these are only the beginning. You also need to consider the networking opportunities that the new space can bring. There are plenty of professional benefits to working in a coworking space. Here are a few of the best reasons for choosing a coworking space for your business.

Coworking spaces are filled with other professionals who are working towards similar goals. This provides a great opportunity to network and connect with others in your industry, which can lead to new business opportunities and partnerships.

Flexibility:

Coworking spaces allow you to be flexible in your work environment. You will be able to choose a place that will help you be productive. Whether you need to meet up with clients, or you want to be around other entrepreneurs, you can do it all in a coworking space.

You will be able to stay focused on the task at hand. Coworking spaces are great when you need to get away from your home or office. If you are in a rut, you can always choose to work in a different environment.

Many coworking spaces in bangalore offer flexible rental options, such as daily, weekly, or monthly rentals. This allows you to easily scale up or down depending on your professional needs and goals.

Amenities:

Coworking spaces in Bangalore often come equipped with a variety of amenities, such as fast Wi-Fi, printing and copying facilities, kitchen and break areas, and even access to conference rooms and event spaces. This allows you to focus on your work without worrying about the logistics of setting up an office.

Conclusion

Choosing the right coworking space can provide numerous benefits to help you achieve your professional goals. If you’re looking for a high-quality coworking space in Bangalore, be sure to check out Clayworks.Space. Their modern and collaborative workspace is perfect for freelancers, entrepreneurs, and small business owners who want to grow their businesses and achieve their professional goals.

#coworking space #shared space

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sisterspooky1013 · 3 years ago

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Only One Choice, Part 2, Chapter 3

Read it here on AO3 / Tagging @today-in-fic

Winter soldiers on, the cold and occasional snow giving way to the promise of spring. Her birthday comes and goes, celebrated at her mother’s with her family as it had been before there was someone else to lay claim to her time on special days. The vacant spaces in her apartment that had been occupied by Ethan’s books and clothes, his toiletries, and VHS collection, begin to be filled by evidence of her new, single life. Her solitary toothbrush in the cup by the sink starts to look normal, the indent on her finger where his ring lived begins to fade, and the silence she arrives home to at the end of her workday becomes mundane instead of painful. Though this change was initiated and welcomed by her, change is always hard. She goes through the motions of being okay until one day in early April, she realizes that she is. The budding crocuses bring with them the optimism of a new life, another chance. A third chance, as it were, to get it right. Now she only has to figure out what right is.

Though they’ve always been close, she and Missy become even closer, taking up the space in each other’s lives that would otherwise be consumed by boyfriends or lovers. They are each other’s better half, sharing the minutiae of their workdays and staying available for unexpected illness or the need to move heavy furniture. While every human needs other humans to thrive, the Scully sisters fill that need with each other, shunning the idea of casual dating simply for the sake of companionship. There is no companion more perfect than the one who has known you since before you could understand the need for such a partner in life, and who is by your side not out of obligation, but because their soul is stitched so firmly to your own. They have always pledged their dedication to each other through thick and thin, and the new year of 1997 proves that to be a sincere promise on both their parts.

As such, they sit at their favorite local coffee shop on Sunday afternoon when Missy finally dares to ask her sister the question she’s avoided for the past four months. Not because she was afraid of her reaction, but because she knew Dana wasn’t ready to talk about it.

“Have you heard from Mulder at all?” she asks so casually that Dana flicks her eyes up and stares in disbelief, not sure that she heard her right.

“What?” Dana asks, her heart having lept for one single beat at the mention of his name.

“Mulder. Have you had any contact with him, or seen him?” Missy is misleadingly casual, acting as though this is not a question she’s been waiting months to ask.

“No,” Dana says flatly, her eyes dropping down to her coffee cup. “I wouldn’t expect to.”

“Does he know that you and Ethan split?” Missy asks next, her feet folded underneath her in the oversized armchair.

“I don’t see how he would,” Dana posits.

“Have you considered reaching out to him?” Missy tries, watching her sister for signs that she is going to shut the conversation down.

Dana shakes her head glumly. “After what I put him through, I’m sure I’m the last person he wants to hear from. That was nearly nine months ago, he’s probably long since moved on.”

“Have you? Moved on?”

Dana pulls in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I don’t know how to answer that. What does it mean, to move on?”

“Do you still think about him?” No assertions, just gentle questions, leading her sister to the conclusion she knows she needs to come to.

Dana nods softly. “All the time. Every day.”

“Then I think your answer would be no. You should contact him, Dana. It feels like unfinished business.” Missy has a thing about unfinished business. She believes it prevents you from achieving your full potential in life.

“Missy...what would I even say? ‘Sorry I broke your heart, good news is it didn’t even work out so it was all for nothing’? I don’t want to cause him more pain than I already have.” Her tone is resigned and defeated. Another regret she will come to live with, pinned to her lapel with a collection of other mistakes that she can never quite atone for.

Missy shrugs. “You know what I think. The rest is up to you.”

Missy is right. The trouble is, she doesn't trust herself to make these decisions anymore. She’s proven to herself that she doesn’t know how to make the right one.

———

“Excuse me,” a rough, nasally voice calls from behind her. She turns to see a red nosed young man in the doorway of the pathologist’s office, slumped against the doorframe with watery eyes. “I’m here to pick up an autopsy report, for, um...I think it’s Richards or something.”

Scully has worked with this courier before, and compared to his typical demeanor it’s easy to tell that he’s unwell.

“Are you alright?” she asks as she uses her feet to push her rolling chair over to the file cabinet, retrieving the report in question.

“Uh, not really, no. But if I call out sick one more time I’m gonna get canned.” He leans his head against the cool metal of the doorframe. She suspects he’s feverish.

“You don’t look well enough to work. Where is this headed?” she asks, still holding the file in her hand.

The young man blows out a stream of air and she holds her breath for a moment, not wanting to inhale whatever he’s infected with. He pulls a slip of paper from his pocket. “Hoover Building, Behavioral Science Unit. Agent Kissop.” He stuffs the paper back in his pocket and looks around, taking refuge in the extra chair near the end of her desk.

She feels a little flutter in her belly; what are the odds?

“I’ll tell you what,” she begins, “I was just about to head out for the day and I live in Georgetown, so I’m going that way anyway. Can I drop this off for you? You don’t look well enough to drive and I’d hate to see you on the news in the morning if you cause an accident.”

He sighs deeply, the biggest display of excitement he can muster. “Are you sure? I’d really appreciate it,” he says, his eyelids barely maintaining half-mast.

“No problem at all,” she replies, gathering her coat and purse. “You get home and take some Tylenol, okay? And get some rest.”

He nods weakly and she leaves him there, climbing into her car with the file and a pounding heart. She can’t help but feel like this is a sign. She’s been thinking about signs a lot lately, and she’s recently resolved to start paying attention to them.

———

Mulder stands beside the copy machine, doing his Wednesday afternoon ritual of fighting with the toner cartridge and cursing profusely. From around the corner, he can hear AD Kirkbride drumming up his own song of profanity, which is more of a daily ritual than a weekly one.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Kirkbride is shouting. “Now that dipshit is conning goddamn doctors into doing his pathetic job?”

Another much softer voice answers him, but Mulder can’t quite make out the words. He moves closer to the open door, bored enough to bother eavesdropping and seeing which of his colleagues is going to get their ass handed to them today.

“Yeah, I’m sure he is sick, that fucking lowlife. He’s sick every fucking week, it’s always something with him!”

“Sir, I don’t know what the history is between you and the courier,” answers the other voice, and it’s familiar in a way that makes him stop in his tracks, his stomach clutching in a mix of nervousness and excitement. “Can you direct me to Agent Kissop, please? Then I’ll be on my way and you can work it out with the courier service.”

It’s Scully. It’s her, he’s sure. He’s been dreaming of that voice for months, the soft sibilant S’s and the way her plush lips rest against her adorable overbite. Without thinking, he enters Kirkbride’s office and sees her standing in front of his desk with a file in her hand and an exasperated look on her face.

“Scully?” he asks, and she turns to him. Her hair is a bit longer, now just past her shoulders, and she’s wearing black slacks and a white blouse. She’s as beautiful as ever, maybe even more than he remembered. She doesn’t look all that surprised to see him. If anything, she looks relieved. Emotion boils up in his chest immediately and he feels his throat constrict.

“You know her?” Kirkbride asks, gesturing to Scully, and Mulder nods. “Great, then show her where Kissop sits so I can call the fucking courier service and tell them to fire that lazy asshat before I strangle him.”

Scully walks towards him and he turns wordlessly to show her out of Kirkbride’s office and down the hall to where Kissop sits. His heart is beating slowly but firmly, his pulse resounding in his ears. What is she doing here? Did she come here to see him? And if so, why? When they arrive at Kissop’s desk, Scully hands her the file and they exchange words that Mulder doesn’t bother to listen to. Then Scully looks at him hesitantly and slowly turns to walk away, towards the exit. He feels suspended, unsure if he can believe his own eyes that she is really here, and entirely conflicted over what to do about it if she is. He’s spent nine months trying to forget her, but she’s as real and alive as ever, standing before him. His self-protective instinct says to let her go, but his heart says to run after her.

“Quit standing here like a dumbass and go talk to her,” Kissop orders him, clearly picking up on some tension though she doesn’t have the faintest idea what’s causing it.

Shaken from his daze, Mulder follows Scully into the hallway.

“Scully,” he calls out, and she stops walking but doesn’t turn around. When he catches up to her, he touches her shoulder and she turns to face him with wet eyes.

They stand there for a moment, looking at one another, an expectant feeling hanging over them. He wants to touch her, to feel the press of her body against his again, but he doesn’t dare. That would seem like a relapse, of sorts.

“Would you have coffee with me?” she finally speaks, her voice small and unsure. It’s an invitation she is not at all confident he will accept.

“Okay,” he answers, and they walk out of the building side by side, silently.

They seem to understand without saying so that Mulder will lead them to where they ought to go, which is a little cafe called Burial Grounds just a block from the front doors of the Hoover Building. They stand in line stoically, tension crackling between them like static as they order something that will occupy their hands and give them a safe place to avert their eyes while they talk. They sit at a small table near the door and wait, glimpsing at each other’s faces and then away, summoning courage. Because this was at Scully’s invitation, it seems like she should have the floor.

“Ethan and I aren’t together anymore,” she finally blurts out, and his first instinct is to look at her hand, which is indeed bare of any jewelry. Next he looks at her face, considering her expression and whether she takes this to be good news or bad. She looks pained, but not about what she’s just said. She’s had this look on her face since he first spotted her in Kirkbride’s office. He’s unsure if he should be offering congratulations or condolences, and irritated that he’s being put in the position to figure it out, so he says nothing.

“I’m sure that I’m just about the last person you want to see,” she continues, her ocean irises tracing the logo printed on her cup. It wasn’t a question, but if it were he’d tell her that she’s the only person he wants to see, the only one he ever thinks about. The reason he can’t sleep and, when he does, the only thing he dreams about. “If it’s okay, there are some things I’d like to say to you. I understand if you don’t want to hear them.”

She flicks her eyes up to meet his for a moment and he nods softly, keeping his expression neutral. She returns her gaze to the skull and crossbones bearing the name of the coffee shop.

“I have always believed that life is about making the right choices. That we are presented with an ongoing series of options, opportunities and situations, and that we are tasked with determining the right choice that will put us on the path towards the best possible life. But as of late,” she pauses to take a sip of her coffee, stealing a glance at him before she continues, “I’ve come to believe that there is actually only one choice. One path we’re supposed to be on, and there are signs along the way to pay attention to. The choices might not always make sense at the time, but in the grand scheme of things, they are the ones you need to make in order to have the best possible life. Or the right life, the one you’re supposed to have.”

She pauses and slides her hand across the table, covering his with her own. The soft warmth of her skin electrifies him a little, sending a flush to his belly. She brings her eyes up to meet his, her brows knit with emotion as her chin gently puckers. She’s so beautiful it physically hurts.

“I ignored the signs,” she says tightly. “I made the wrong choice, Mulder. I thought I was doing the right thing, the best thing, but I was wrong. I’m so sorry that I hurt you.”

He feels his chest tighten, a telltale precursor to tears, and he looks away from her. Why is she doing this? To make herself feel better? She pulls her hand back and sniffs, then stands and slings her purse over her shoulder.

“Thank you for having coffee with me,” she says, and then he watches her leave. He sits there, staring at the pink lipstick that stains the rim of her cup, wishing she’d given him some more time to absorb it all. Wishing she’d never made the wrong choice.

#the x files #txf #dana scully #fox mulder #gillovny #msr #sculder #x files #x files fanfic #alternate universe

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human-do-a-worm · 4 years ago

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Ramblings of an Old Soldier Part 2/?

Part 1 can be found HERE

The next day, the Unkall boy came back to the old soldier, sitting on the bench where he normally does, reading his data tablet. The boy had a rather happy look on him today.

“Ah, you’re back. I take it that my story wasn’t quite enough on its own then?”

“Not quite mister. It turned out to be more than enough for my first paper. After I turned it in, my teacher said I could go ahead and write the rest of my papers for the course since I had found a primary source willing to share their experience.”

“I see. How kind of your teacher. Back when I was in school, they would have told us to stuff it.”

“So, what other stories do you have to tell?”

“How about my time in the cycle after the Martian campaign?”

“That sounds wonderful. Let me start my recorder.”

The Unkall child pushes a glowing button on his data tablet, and a blue dot appearing on the screen indicated that the recording had started

“It was less than a month after the battle on Mars; that’s one twenty-fourth of a cycle in standard units. Reconstruction had begun on mars, and the war fleets which were now all massed around Terra had been split into five groups. Group Solar and Group Lunar were the two largest of the fleets, and as such were classed together. Group Pangea, Group Gondwana, and Group Oceana were the three smaller groups, and were classed together as well. The fleets were organized in this way by Grand Admiral Demetrius, to ensure that no one fleet would have to stand against the enemy for too long a time.”

“Since I’ve brought him up, I should probably tell you a bit about the Grand Admiral. Remember what I was saying about the preparations for the battle on Mars. All the meticulous planning done to move the civilians back to Terra, and keep morale up while being an effective fighting force? Well, that came from Demetrius, and was only slightly modified by individual units as the orders were passed down the chain. His odd decision making turned out to be one of the most valuable things that humanity had, because nobody could anticipate his plans; especially the Vrumoids. He was only a rear admiral, but after his commendation, and the first victory in the war, He was immediately promoted.”

“Back to the war now. The battle plan was simple. Keep a constant pressure on the enemy, working in a single spot, pushing the enemy back system by system, and planet by planet. Where to stop would be figured out as the fleets went along. This seemed to work very well. In most systems, Groups Solar and Lunar rarely had fire a single shot. The Vrumoids would either flee or be destroyed by one of the smaller groups before the heavy guns of the heavy class ships could be brought to bear.”

“The reconquest continued almost flawlessly until there was a single human world left to reclaim. Rexorb VI was nothing more than a rock when humanity last saw it, but after looking upon it, the armada called for the command group; Group Regal; to come and take a look. At first sight of the data scans, Demetrius broke down with laughter. Failing to find the humor in this situation, his second in command asked him what was so funny.” “These poor bastards. They’ve made this planet up to be just like Mars, hoping we’ll make the same mistakes they did. Have they never been told that it’s a bad idea to try using the tactics someone created against them? They’ve made themselves the easiest targets possible for us, and what’s even better is that they did it on a mining world. There were only a few housing units on that planet, and its riches lie deep inside. This is the perfect opportunity to try a new idea.”

“With that, preparations were made swiftly, and with much laughter all around. On the back side of Rexorb VI’s moon, groups Solar, Gondwana, and Oceana moved into position, mounting themselves with their primary propulsion systems poised to drop the moon from its orbit.”

The boy spoke up

“Didn’t the Vrumoid forces on the planet notice what was happening?”

Laughing, the old man responded

“Nope. That was a benefit of only showing the enemy one small and one large battle group at a time. According to Vrumoid intelligence recovered after the war, The defenders on Rexorb VI simply thought we were just deciding how to invade properly. They had no idea Demetrius was crazy enough to consider crashing the moon into the planet, and they would have to have been crazy to even guess that the rest of the fleet would just go along with it. I know Demetrius was expecting to do some explaining to the others.”

“The High Admiral may have been absolutely insane, but he wasn’t heartless. He ordered a shuttle to take one squad and an emissary to give them one final chance to surrender. They of course, believing a ground war lay ahead, refused. That was the last mistake that the Vrumoids ever made when dealing with humanity. Exactly one planetary axis revolution after the shuttle returned to the fleet, all the pushing ships’ engines fired up. Each of the ships had worked out their individual point of no return for propelling the moon towards the planet, and had an order to pull off at what their captain deemed a safe time before reaching their point of no return. By the time the last ship pulled off, The moon was going faster than its own terminal velocity.”

“When that moon hit the surface of the planet, the entire thing cracked like a geode. After observing this from one of their comm stations, the Vrumoid Empire rushed to set up peace treaty negotiations. Of course, who was the Terran representative by unanimous vote from the United Terran Council? None other than High Admiral Demetrius. They figured that if nothing else, he could get the Vrumoids to leave humanity alone. But what he got us was something so much greater.”

“As you might have learned in class, our home system and colonies were entirely located within an isolated part of Vrumoid space. We had no knowledge of the Galactic Council Alliance, at least until one of the Vrumoid delegates at the negotiations made a mistake and asked one of his compatriots what the council would think of their actions if they ever found out. After learning that there were other intelligent species in the galaxy, Demetrius demanded that humanity be granted a swath of planets and territory directly to the territory of another GCA member.”

“This single achievement is what brought humanity forward. Demetrius did what no other Terran could do; he found sentient life that wasn’t actively trying to kill us, and he made sure we could get to them with ease. If it weren’t for him, we would have never known the GCA existed, and likely would have been either wiped out or enslaved by the Vrumoids after they rebuilt their forces.”

“Of course, after we made contact with the council, and they saw what we were able to do to a far more technologically advanced species, they demanded to see our battle reports and to speak with all the commanding officers. I remember standing there by High Admiral Demetrius’ side.”

The young Unkall spoke up ecstatically

“You were a commanding officer?”

“Sure was kiddo. Leading the charge of those bikers on mars was one hell of a brave thing, and Demetrius took note. When he got the chance to promote one of his soldiers to an admiral under his command for Group Solar, he spoke loud and clear to us and said “Where’s that crazy bastard that volunteered to charge a platoon of enemy tanks using nothing but motorcycles and bombs on sticks? I have a job for you!” That was the day I was no longer a simple marksman, I was an Admiral, and a damn good one too. My group didn’t lose a single vessel to the enemy.”

“I still remember the day I went down on that rock the day before we cracked it. The Vrumoid commander must have been watching the video recordings from when I charged the tanks, because the moment I walked into the room and she looked up at me, she looked all sorts of shaken up. When I told her that this was her last chance to accept a mercy never offered by her empire, a chance to surrender; she simply said that surrender would never come until she and her warriors no longer stood upon the planet. If only she knew the irony in those words.”

“I remember being at the peace conference, and although Demetrius had only been seen rarely by the Vrumoids, mostly in transmissions intercepted from Mars to Earth, they had seen me plenty. I think I scared them more than Demetrius did, because when I talked about how my motorcycle wasn’t out of fuel yet, they started agreeing to our demands.”

Curiously, the boy tapped something into his data tablet

“Wait a minute, are you saying that you’re Admiral Sturm?”

“Indeed I am. Admiral Jakob Sturm, service number 6556-0293-422-41, former commander of the Terran expeditionary fleet codename Solar. I proudly led my sailors, soldiers, and marines through some of the harshest battles that humanity has faced, and kept my fleet intact. I wasn’t lying when I said that I didn’t lose a ship in my group to the enemy. And after serving 10 cycles in service of my species, I left honorably.”

“So what did you do after you left? I’d imagine being an admiral is a hard job to top.”

“You’re right, admiral is a hard job to beat. I served as an ambassador of Terra for a cycle before I returned to the stars. I found some of the others from back on Mars that charged with me on that day. We were a mercenary group. We mostly took escort contracts or welfare and security for anyone we deemed especially needy. We did good work for a few cycles, but then I had to give it a rest.”

“That’s around the time your name stopped appearing in records of both the GCA and Terran reports. What happened?”

“I’ve been talking for too long. I think you might be able to get a few pages out of what I’ve said today. Better to not burn up all your content at once, right? I’ll be here again tomorrow, like I always am. I’ll tell you more then.”

“If you insist sir. I’ll be here.”

“Until then, take care. I may be old, but I still expect people to stick to a schedule.”

With that, the boy stopped his recording and went home. To meet someone as important as Admiral Sturm, who seemed to have vanished from most records 8 cycles ago, was entirely unexpected. Unexpected, but it will certainly make a wonderful paper for his teacher.

#humans are space orcs #humans are space oddities #humans are space australians

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primergon · 3 years ago

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Hello! I’m Vic and I was wondering about a possible matchup!

I’m 24, afab non-binary, ENFP, 5’11, and straight (I think lmao)

Personality wise, I’d definitely describe myself as very chaotic and all over the place-don’t give me any logistic-heavy jobs, or we’ll both have a bad time. I’m an artist and I take great pleasure in telling stories and creating, especially if what I make can brighten someone’s day.

I value kindness very highly and I’m fiercely protective of the people I love, sometimes at the cost of my well being (but I’m working on that) I’ve been told that I have a very strong moral compass, but that can turn into black and white thinking at times. I’m definitely a work in progress as a person, but that’s okay! I’m definitely a very emotional person, and sometimes my feelings control me more than I control them.

Other than art, I love many topics, such as zoology, natural history, science communication, and translation with a dash of linguistics sprinkled in. I love spending time with both animals and the humans I love, but I’m not opposed to a quiet evening in. I’d generally describe myself as an ambivert. I really value active listeners and people who return the energy I give to them. I love when the person I’m talking to and I can bounce ideas off of each other. Also, I’m very physically affectionate, give me a chance and I WILL smother you with hugs. I hope this is enough to go off of!! Thank you!

Hello Vic! I hope you're well :) Thanks for asking and sorry for the wait ! Sadly I didn't finish cyberverse and so I'm not well acquainted with their characters. So I hope you don't mind if I give you two IDW matchups to make up for it <3 I think I'll match you up with Prowl and Rung from IDW / MTMTE!

PROWL IDW

01| Opposites attract is a questionable phrase. That was until Prowl met you. There was this natural curiosity that drew him to you, no matter how much he tries to deny it. Finally, Prowl gave in and realised that you both complete one another. All this time Prowl's been looking for a sense of balance, and he found it in the way you smiled at him.

02| Prowl is rational to the point of what most would call cruel. He's overly critical of everything and this thinking pattern can sometimes frustrate him. You were like a way out of a very dark room, and even if he doesn't say it often, he appreciates your creative and empathic way of thinking. While his focus is singular: intense and deep, yours is broad: extending to numerous possibilities that allow him to better achieve his goals. He thinks highly of you, knowing that even if he won't say it out loud, he has a lot to learn from you.

03| One of the things that he loves about you is your kindness. The idea that your generosity extends to someone like him, warms his spark. He knows he's difficult. In the early stages of your relationship, Prowl struggled to understand what’s going on and how to behave. Yet you made him want to try, and Primus knows he did. Prowl may be subtle about his affections, but you know he cares. From the way, you'd always wake up from your accidental nap by your desk with a blanket around you to the way Prowl always insists on taking you everywhere in his cab.

04| While you help Prowl be kinder to those around him, he helps you learn how to be kinder to yourself. He knows your generosity can sometimes drain you, especially when you're still learning how to put yourself first. If you don't have the strength to say no, Prowl is always more than happy and ready to say it for you. One time you were overwhelmed by the crowd trying to talk with you at Maccadams. It's late and your social battery was running low. You desperately needed a way out of Blurr's ecstatic chatter. Prowl had immediately whisked you away and drove you home, not before scolding the others for bothering his partner. It was endearing, even if everyone showed up at your bar the next day to apologize.

05| Arguments would sometimes arise between you and Prowl and whenever it does, it's usually because you don't agree to his methods. Your heart knows it's not right, yet nearly everything Prowl does is morally questionable. It takes time to find a common ground, especially between two people who are respectively sentimental and detached. Yet you always do. Always. It's because as arrogant and hard-headed Prowl is, he's also versatile and persevering. He doesn't care if it'll take you days or even weeks to find a win-win solution. For the first time in a long time, Prowl is making room for another person in his life. These days it's never about what he wants, it's rather about what you both want. As difficult as it can get, he has never felt happier.

06| Prowl is very dense when it comes to physical affection. One time you hold your hand out to him and he placed a data pad on top of it. He's not big on public displays of affection, Primus knows the moment Prowl hugs you at work is the day Unicron decides to wake up from his millennia-old nap. Yet in private, your affection is infectious enough to make him almost clingy. He would spoon you while you sleep or even hold your hand when he's having his morning Energon. You never question him about it knowing he'll deny even liking it, but it's nice to see someone who flips tables for a living be this gentle with you.

IDW RUNG

01| The first person to truly welcome you aboard the Lost Light was Rung. In the beginning, he was hesitant to let your relationship blossom into anything other than professional. Yet he can't deny his attraction. Lately, he loves watching you throw your head back to laugh at one of Swerve's jokes, and he finds himself wondering how your hands would feel against his. For the first time in a while, Rung wants to be a little selfish. Surely, it won't hurt to ask you out for dinner in his quarters. Looking back, he thinks it's one of the best decisions he's ever made.

02| He was moved by the fierce love you had for your friends. Rung fell in love with your courage in defending those you care about( you were ready to fight Sunder head-on for him.) While your kindness was admirable, he reminds you to take care of yourself better. He helps you put yourself first. " You won't be any good to anyone hurt my dear."

03| Rung is sensitive, thoughtful, and idealistic, and prefers relationships that help him grow and develop. He seeks deep and meaningful connections and strives to understand what drives the people he cares about and help them be their best selves. Even if it takes a little longer for Rung to warm up and let someone in, he is very focused on building that emotional connection with you. While he helps you keep your emotions in check you gave him an outlet to express his.

04| Your relationship has great potential for a close and caring connection. You and Rung share many commonalities in how you think and approach life. You both have a compassionate and idealistic nature, and even if you disagree on some things, you'll likely feel that when it comes to the important stuff, you're on the same page. It makes conversations interesting and never boring, and it keeps arguments to a minimum. When it comes to Rung as a partner, there's always a solution to everything.

05 | Rung respects your personal space and understands that you need time for yourself. Often he'll let you into his office so you can lounge on his couch while he assembles his latest model of ships, the silence was more than comforting for the two of you. He'd listen fondly to your work and engage in conversations, taking genuine in your story. Rung finds it endearing when you ramble on about science and communication, jumping from one topic to one another, your excitement is enough to make him fall for you all over again.

06 | Affection is something Rung desperately needs. Often people only come to him because they need something. He was a giver who never asks for anything in return, and sometimes, it gets lonely. Therefore he appreciates how expressive you are with your love. He gets flustered from all the kisses and hugs you give him, and he feels giddy like a young mech whenever you go to hold his hand in public. ( Whirl would always joke about " no pre-marital hand-holding " which would fluster him even more. ) Rung's faceplates would always heat up, his bashful expression enough to make you want to smother him even more. He retaliates by opening his glasses to reveal his optics, it's safe to say that you were always stunned silent at their beauty.

I hope you enjoyed this Vic ! xx

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hypnomicimagines · 4 years ago

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That fluff alphabet really is super cute, wow. If you're feeling up to it, could I request G, K, M, R and Z for Gentaro or Samatoki? (Whoever has the least requests the moment you decide to take this one on, please. I simp hard for both and cant make up my mind)

Aohitsugi Samatoki:

G = Gentle (Are they gentle? If so, how?):

Samatoki is gentle in his own way but overall, you don’t think the word really suits him. He’s more rough around the edges when it comes to love and he can be very direct when he wants to be, even if he also skates around certain topics as he fears what the outcome might be (he’s no pushover but he’s not rushing to lose you either). He handles you and your heart with far more care than you ever suspected though, knowing his gentle side mostly comes out when he’s putting the effort into being romantic.

K = Kiss (How do they kiss? Who initiated the first kiss?):

The emotional weight and intensity that are in each one of Samatoki’s kisses leave you always feeling satisfied if not a bit exhausted, putting forth all your effort into the more passionate ones as you don’t want to disappoint. It also almost always leads to more if you want it to and Samatoki is always raring to go even if you’re in his office or out in public together. He at least has the tact to kiss you chastly when you’re around others and in crowded public spaces but you can always tell by how he lingers that he hungers for more.

Samatoki did without a hint of hesitation. He knew he wanted this more than anything and you’d be showing the same signs, staring at his lips all night and flirting so hard he wondered how he hadn’t realized you had feelings for him before. It’s so incredibly surreal to finally be kissing someone he loved, someone he had been pining over for months, and he’s almost afraid to blink in case it all dissolves away before his very eyes.

M = Memory (What’s their favourite memory together?):

The time you spent an entire day inside a thrift store slowly carding through each and every item to find a totally new wardrobe. You seemed more excited than him when you found the store that was practically a warehouse, excitedly jabbering on about all the hidden gems that might be there. He couldn’t say he was extremely interested in finding some of these ‘hidden gems’ and thus started the journey of finding interesting new articles of clothing, finding stuff for Rio and Jyuto too (which you wanted to get for them more than him). You even walked out with matching hawaiian style shirts and you were so happy Samatoki knew he’d wear the ugly thing out in public just to see you smile.

R = Rainy Day (What do they like to do on a rainy day?):

Samatoki always gets bored and restless on rainy days, finding them to be tedious to deal with as it’s not as though he still doesn’t have to work in the rain. On days he doesn’t feel like going in and just stays at home he tends to cook just due to pure boredom, enlisting you in these activities and making you taste test new things he wants to try out for dinner. You always have a good time when Samatoki throws on the old cooking apron and you admire him from kitchen table as he cooks, trying to hold back all the househusband jokes brewing in your head.

Z = Zebra (If they wanted a pet, what would they get?):

Samatoki isn’t really a pet person and he thinks his ideal pet would be something like a snake or a lizard of some sort. The only thing stopping him from getting one is his hatred of bugs but if he found a way around having to handle the squishy bundles of protein for his pet he’d buy one in a heartbeat. Dogs are too high maintenance but cats are lowkey enough that he’d consider them, too. He thinks owning a bird would be funny considering how much Jyuto detests them and would threaten to have it in the front entrance of his office for days he doesn’t want to be bothered by the cop.

Yumeno Gentaro:

G = Gentle (Are they gentle? If so, how?):

Gentaro exudes gentleness and you’ll find that when romantically involved with him, things generally remain light-hearted. He doesn’t like to force situations and he’s the ‘sit back and see what happens’ type of person, approaching romance in a rather relaxed way that said there’d be no hard feelings if things didn’t work out. It can be to the point you don’t know how seriously he takes the relationship but heavy emotions wear Gentaro out, it’s why he lies so much because honesty is more exhausting but if you’re worth his time, you’ll get to see this side of him.

K = Kiss (How do they kiss? Who initiated the first kiss?):

Gentaro’s kisses are gentle in nature, starting off with him pressing his nose against yours and asking in a soft tone if you’d like him to kiss you. When you agree he briefly gives you exactly what you want but pulls away to tease, saying if you want more from him than you’d have to come get it. He’s almost always playful when he kisses you and he always manages to lift your spirits with his kisses; he seems surprised and flustered to hear you admit that but happy kissing you isn’t just self-serving (as his mood is always improved by you giving him a smooch too).

It was a real 50/50 decision, the two of you having to work together to achieve it in the long run. Gentaro liked to sit back, watch, and wait to see what you’d do, never acting even when you got so close to him you could feel his breath on your skin. It was almost annoying how he managed to hold out and keep it together while you were stumbling over yourself but when you finally tell him to kiss you he does so without complaint. He ends up stuttering afterwards which shows he’s not quite as together as he’d like you to think and you’re pleased that he’s now embarrassed after an entire night of leaving you guessing.

M = Memory (What’s their favourite memory together?):

Gentaro’s favorite memory was when the two of you were sitting on a bench in the park, holding hands as the sun set while chattering about this or that. There had been a few storytelling sessions where he’d seen how quick you were on the draw when he asked you about random passerby, a lot of laughs shared at the absolutely nonsensical stories of vampires and monsters that you came up with. He said you had a mind that rivaled his and that he’d gladly collaborate with you on a novel some day.

R = Rainy Day (What do they like to do on a rainy day?):

Rainy days are never boring with Gentaro as he can come up with a story for just about anything, though he’s sad he can’t people watch as he normally does. He’ll bury his nose in a book while sitting curled up on the couch under a thick warm blanket (you want to joke he looks like a very comfortable grandma but you don’t know if he’ll take it well) and if he’s not reading, he’s likely trying to write something using the rain as a type of white noise to help him concentrate.

Z = Zebra (If they wanted a pet, what would they get?):

Gentaro would love an elderly cat who just wants to live out its final years in peace, having it sit on his lap and tending to its needs. He loves cooing at the fluff ball and only gives it the best care, brushing its hair and humming happily to himself as he realizes, without caring, that he’s become a crazy cat man. He just enjoys the calmness an older cat brings with it and the lack of destruction to his house, amused that Dice doesn’t seem to trust it (nor does his cat trust Dice until he brings a can of tuna as an offering).

#Samatoki Aohitsugi #Aohitsugi Samatoki #Yumeno Gentaro #Gentaro Yumeno #Hypnosis Microphone #Hypnosis Mic #Hypnomic #Hypmic #Hypnosis Microphone Imagines #Hypnosis Mic Imagines #Hypmic Imagines #Hypnosis Microphone x Reader #Hypnosis Mic x Reader #Hypmic x Reader #aohitsugi samatoki x reader #samatoki aohitsugi x reader #gentaro yumeno x reader #yumeno gentaro x reader #Cute Alphabet

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innocent-chris-evans-slut · 4 years ago

Text

The Assistant - Part Six

My Masterlist ✨

Requests are open.

Word Count: 3,7k

Type: angst, fluff, fluff smut

Summary: Y/N is Ransom Dysdale’s assistant. She’s the closest person to him and spends everyday with him at his house. Usually she gets in at nine o’clock and makes sure everything is perfect. One day he doesn’t want to get up and Y/N goes in his room. She finds a surprise.

Warning(s): swearing, squirting, dirty talking

Two Months Later

Two months after having left Ransom’s house, a lot of things changed. You were no more a student; you successfully graduated at University and were now experiencing your first days in an elementary school -as a teacher. You went back to Belmont a couple of days after your graduation but found out your parents and brothers moved out, so you didn’t see them.

When you came back you found none waiting for you, welcoming you back home. The balloons your friends had brought to your house the day you graduated were deflating and gradually falling to the floor. You could no more distinguish the letters and it made you sad; they were nothing else but a bunch of rubbish of which you should have got rid soon.

You weren’t used to spend the day in your flat -which you found extremely silent- so you didn’t know what to do. You looked for something to read in your bookcase but grumbled when you couldn’t find anything you liked -or that you haven’t read before. Going to a bookstore was out of question since your university rent had been just payed and you had no job, so you just couldn’t fritter your money away. You kept them for essential goods.

Though spending almost fifty bucks in a restaurant wasn’t planned.

Your friends had been trying to convince you to join them all-day long and when you finally gave up, you didn’t know they had previously booked at the most expensive restaurant in your area. You didn’t want to explain them why you couldn’t afford such a fancy expense, so at seven o’clock you found yourself in the only luxurious dress you got. Long, pink and strapless, with an entire-length zip on the front. Just like the last time you’d wore it, you matched it with a pair of black heels.

You looked at yourself through the mirror in your bathroom as you applied some mascara on your eyelashes. You had just finished when your phone buzzed next to the sink and you got Lana, one of your friends, was waiting for you outside.

“Let’s end this quickly”, you grabbed your purse and head out of your apartment.

Three hours later you were laughing with your friends, recalling to your memory all the good times you had back in the University. You all got graduated the same day, so they shared the precious moment, though with different endings. Your friends went celebrating their great achievement with their families and you went back to your flat, alone, and ordered a cake from the bakery at the corner and ate it at dinner.

Alone.

On the table, your phone lighted up and began buzzing -not stopping for more than a couple of seconds. When you handed it, you found three missed calls from Sam, five messages from Harlan and even two missed calls from Linda.

One in-coming.

You excused from your friends and got up, once outside, you answered the phone, “Hello?”

“Oh, finally! Y/N, is that you, right?” as she heard your positive answer, she went on: “Where the hell are you? I’ve been trying to talk to you for the last two weeks. Know what? I don’t care. I need you to reach Ransom’s place. He has been unmanageable for the last weeks and now he’s acting like an asshole. He closed me out!”

You thought that she seemed much more concerned that she had to be, since Ransom had always been an asshole and you had to cope with that ‘joke’ a lot of times when you were his assistant.

“Tell him that you are about to cut his money off. He’ll open the door immediately”, you were about to hang up when you heard her voice once more.

“Listen, I don’t know where you are, but you have to come here. It’s hard to admit it, damn! You’re the only person he listens”, she snorted and seemed to be trying to get in the house, without any good result, “I can send a car to pick you up. You have to help me”, then she lowered his voice and you heard what she said later, only because you were in a silent space, “You’re the only one”.

You hissed and had a look inside the restaurant: your friends were laughing, and it seemed they didn’t care you weren’t there with them. You glanced down at your body and once again raised your eyes at them; you realized you had nothing to with them. You weren’t like them and, though you liked being spoiled, you didn’t like spending your money over fancy things.

You had been running away from your problems since you were eighteen and you were done with it. At that moment you made the decision to stop being as people wanted you, and you started modelling your future as you wanted it to be.

When you saw them get up and pay the check, you made your decision about how to end that night.

That was the reason why, thirty minutes later you found yourself jumping out of a Jeep and walking down the walkway of Ransom’s house. From far away, you saw a pink-dressed woman waving at you, you figured out she was none other than Linda Thrombey. Next to her stood her husband, Richard Drysdale. The more you approached the porch, the more you felt their eyes on your skin.

You acknowledged Harlan’s presence after seeing Marta’s car parked no far away from Ransom’s Beemer.

Lovely family reunion, you thought approaching them.

“Ms. Y/L/N, finally you’re here!” Linda ran to you, “Let him leave this damn house!” the pleading Linda Thrombey was gone.

In front of you stood the most selfish bitch you had ever known.

“Have you tried with the spare key?” you saw them shake their heads and look at you with wide open eyes, “Of course you didn’t”, you whispered to yourself, though not low enough to prevent Marta from hearing it. She chuckled and sent an amused glance at you, never leaving Harlan’s side.

None made you space while you got the spare key from under the plant on your right, neither did they moved when you tried, but failed, in getting into the house.

“Why aren’t you in there? We didn’t call you for nothing!”

“I am trying to get in!” you raised your voice, addressing to Richard and Linda -who weren’t properly helping you, “What have you done since getting here? I don’t think much, granted that you didn’t even know Ransom keeps a spare ke-“, you eyes lightened up and a smile crossed your face.

You knew exactly what to do.

You searched in your purse and, when your fingers touched what you were looking for, you grew more satisfied with yourself. Without saying a word to anybody, you walked around the house and stopped in front of the back door -which Ransom didn’t know existed so, it would have been easier for you to get in. In fact, when you forced the keyhole, it opened in less than a second.

Thank God he despises the kitchen, you chuckled and entered the house. Once you got rid of your jacket and your purse, you wandered in the living room -intentionally ignoring the noises coming from outside.

Empty bottles of whiskey stood on the floor. You could scent the strong-smelling of alcohol filling your nose. Usually you would smell Ransom’s scent from the entrance, yet not this time: the alcohol’s smell was too strong. Though the living room was nothing compared to Ransom’s office. It was completely destroyed; the lamp and the computer monitor on his desk had been thrown off and paper covered the floor, the chairs had been hurled against the wall, wrecking it.

You were about to explore the upper floor, when you heard a sob coming from behind your former desk. You quietly moved around the desk and what you found on the floor made your stomach twist in knots.

Sat, with his back leaned against the leg of the wooden-made desk, there was Ransom Drysdale -like you hadn’t seen him before.

He was a tearing and sobbing mess. His eyes swollen and red, just like his nose and his lips. There were tears running down from his cheeks and the upper border of his shirt was wet. You kneeled in front of him and balanced yourself by putting a hand on his thigh.

“What happened?” you asked him, glimpsing a hint of vulnerability in eyes which you had never seen before, “Ransom, talk to me. What happened?”

“You-“, he looked at you with watery eyes, tears spilling from them and running down on his cheeks. A hiccup shocked his whole body and the wall, he was desperately trying to build around him, fell. “Every time I grow fond of someone, every time I do actually care about someone, they run away. I keep asking myself if I will ever have people caring about me on this Earth”.

The look he gave to you broke your heart. You could feel tears already forming at the corners of your eyes and a burning sensation in your throat.

It broke you to see him like that. His eyes weren’t shining blue as always, a dark shade was covering them. Your fingers found their way to his cheeks and you rubbed your thumbs over then, swiping away his tears, “Please, don’t talk like this. I care about you. Why would I be here, otherwise?” you talked to him as a mother would have done to his child, “Tell me what happened”.

“You. You fucking happened.”

You kept quiet for a moment, trying to process his words, yet you couldn’t understand them. You wouldn’t understand them, “Ransom, I-“

“Yeah. You. You ruined my life. I wonder where I would be now if that fucking day, I didn’t hire you. Damn, you turned my life upside down. Fun fact is that you don’t even know what you did to me”, he grabbed both your wrists and brought your hands touching his chest. You lost your balance and fell forward. You would have hit him, if he didn’t hold you firmly, “You…” he breathed through his teeth, “-you had ruined me. I can’t even think about another woman who isn’t you. I dream of you at night and when I wake up I had this urge of kissing you. And that’s strange before I do never kiss anybody. Kisses are off-limits for me, but- sometimes I just want to sit down and kiss you. Not even fuck you, which is basically impossible for me with a hot girl in front of me, and…” Ransom groaned and leaned forward. His lips crushed against yours and when you thought of it, Ransom was licking your bottom lip, slightly parting your lips and inserting his tongue inside your mouth. His hands grabbed your ass and dragged you closer, to the point that you were sitting on his lap, the bottom part of your dress had raised, leaving your underside almost completely exposed.

You cupped his face as you felt him tightening his grip around your waist. Then you ran your fingers through his golden locks, and he moaned in your mouth. That kiss was blowing your mind, heavily messing up with your mental capacity. As no one before, Ransom had you moaning and shivering only with his lips on yours. You relaxed yourself against his strong, built body and he gladly held you up.

Once the breathtaking kiss had ended, you rested your head in the crock of his neck, finally you had the chance to inhale his scent. Then he grabbed you by your wrists -again- and made you face him, “Teach me”, Ransom took a deep breath and kept speaking: “I want to love you, to respect you, to worship you. I want to treat you as my girlfriend, as the only girl that has me twisted around her fingers. Fuck, I want to spoil you, to give you the entire world if you let me do it. But, please, teach me how to love you”, his speech made you cry. Now you had switched places; he was the one swiping away your tears, and you were shaking under his touch, “I don’t know how to properly love you. Teach me how to”.

You could have been a bit stronger, maybe have resisted a little more to his words, instead you nodded repeatedly and firmly and rushed into his arms. You felt his biceps tightening around your thin body, and your hands went under his armpits and then on his shoulders. You loved the sensation and looked him in his eyes, “You have to promise me only one thing”, at his signal to go on, you spoke again: “You have to promise me that you’ll never give up on us. When you feel stressed, if something doesn’t suit you, every little things that bothers you, you come to me and we talk. If you want me to teach you how to love a girl, y-“

“Not a girl. I want you to teach me how to love you. You’re the only girl that I’m interested in now and forever”, he lifted you chin with two of his fingers as you looked down at your shoes, “I’ve told you. I want to love you. And only you”.

You smiled at him and slowly got near to his face, your lips twitching at the idea of kissing him again, though you warned him before anything else could happen: “I’m going to kiss you. Nice and slow. If you’re not ready, stop me”.

He didn’t move a single hair, and, in that moment, you understood how willing Ransom was to walk down a new, completely undiscovered path. But he wouldn’t be alone, you would have been right next to him, holding his hand and encouraging him.

•••

Six Months Later

A soft knock on the door of Ransom’ office had him raise him eyes from the papers on the desk.

“Come in!” he called and put down the pen he was holding.

As the door opened, Caity came in and she was bringing with her good news, “Netflix just sent in the trailer of the movie”, she showed a sequence of it on the iPad in her left hand, “It will be released at midnight. Congratulations, Mr. Drysdale”.

He ran out of words for a moment, unbelieving that all what he had worked on for the past few months, finally was going to be recognized, “Thank you, Caity. Can you, please, let my girlfriend in? And then you can go home”, he watched as his new assistant thanked him and exited the room.

Ransom knew his girlfriend would have showed up at any moment, so he got up and cleaned the mess on his desk. He put the paper in the first drawer, got rid of all pens and pencils, place the lamp on the floor and his iMac in its black bag. By the time you crossed the door, his desk was clean…and empty.

“I’m not going to ask you about that”, you approached him and sat on his lap, “I’m really proud of you. Your first movie is going to be released in less than two months!” you were over the moon, and really proud of him and how hard he had worked for the past six months.

Your relationship wasn’t the only thing that changed in his life. Ransom had decided to quit the family company and, instead, publish his first book. Hands down, it’d become a bestseller in less than a week and the critics loved it. How come everybody loved the redemption of a former playboy, you could easily understand that.

“I know! And that’s all thanks to you, incredible girlfriend”, he leaned over and pressed a kiss on your forehead, “Now…I really would like to open my present”, he gave your ass a firm squeeze and, in the meantime, kissed your cheek.

“Is it so?” you chuckled as you wrapped your arms around his neck, “I mean, what’s on the plate for me?”

“Hours and hours of pleasure. I have enough of blowjobs and licking your pussy, not that I don’t like it. Let me be clear, you’re the sweet-“

You placed your index finger on his lips, shutting him up, as you leaned your ass against the desk, “Were you planning on open your present on your desk?”

“Nope”, he picked you up and seated you down on the desk. He placed his hands on both your shoulders and shoved you down. His hands travelled from your ankles to your knees, spreading them out, and then to the elastic bend of your slips, taking them off and throwing them at his shoulders, “I’ve already opened my present”.

You laughed, tilting your head back. When you looked back at Ransom, you found him looking at you with a wide smile on his face and his blue eyes sparking, “What?”

He kept smiling, then became serious, “I love you”, and he kissed you. It was a soft, yet a kiss full of lust. He grabbed the border of the dress you were wearing and within a couple of seconds it was gone, just like your bra.

You cupped his face and dragged him closer, “I love you, too”, and kissed him again. You didn’t process that, but Ransom had taken off all his clothes and was standing in front of you completely naked.

With one only step, he avoided you from going away and placed his hands back on your mid-thighs, pinning you down on the desk.

“And now?”

Ransom would have never thought that a sweet, innocent girl like you could have him wrapped around her fingers. Every time Ransom was in the same room as yours, his chest would hurt, his throat would literally burn, and his legs would tremble. He refused to think that he had transformed weak because Ransom Drysdale wasn’t weak. Though he believed, and he was right, that you had changed his whole world, making you his world.

Your smile made him smile and he leaned closer to your ear, “Listen carefully”, he instructed you, as you did as he said, “I’m going to fuck you here”, he cupped your pussy with his callous hands, “And here”, he let the slip on your back, “And then, all over again. Until we will be so worn out that we will end up sleeping on the floor”.

Once he had asked you if you were ready, Ransom gave a few strokes to his cock and looked at you one more time, before sliding into you slowly, yet firmly. You recalled to your memory the first time he had ever touched you, denying you an orgasm with his fingers; then the next time, in which he made you cum a lot of times with a vibrator and his fingers; and the last time, when you gave him your head.

You tilted your head back as you felt his tip hitting your cervix and he said: “Oh, God…you’re so tight and you’ve fucking took all of me”, Ransom brought his hands on your breasts and gave both of them a steady squeeze, before staring moving inside you.

He had been with thousands of girls before you came into his life -or better, before he realized that the girl he had been waiting for was right in front of his eyes-, and right there, in that moment, he understood that he would have spent his entire life with you, if you only allowed him to.

“God, Ransom, move!”

“Gladly”, firstly he adopted a painfully slow pace, taking too many seconds to pull in and out from you. He groaned, “I promise we will make love, with candles and all the rest. But for now”, he pulled almost completely out, “I just need to fuck you”, he pulled back in with a fast movement and hit your sweet spot.

You cried out his name each time Ransom hit the right spots inside your channel. Your lips shaped in a ‘o’ as warm spread into your whole body, “Please, let me cum”.

“As you wish, babe”, his hands left your breasts and went down to your stomach, stopping just up your core. He looked at you, trying to imprint into his mind this moment -as the first of a lot of others. You were there, stretched out -and spread out- on his desk, making his dirty fantasy real. “What are you doing to me?”

“Right now? I’m letting you fuck me stupid”, you saw him smirking and increase his pace.

“Tell me how it feels”, it was an order and you never disobeyed to an order.

“God, you’re so deep”, you moaned as Ransom thrusted harder into you, “I can feel you hitting my cervix every. Fucking. Time”, you sensed the familiar warm was spreading in the pelvic region of your body, “Oh, God, I’m cumming, babe”, you let out a long, throat-scathing scream as you reached your high. You could barely breathe, at once you were worn out and extra sweaty. You let your hands fall and they hit the wooden-surface really hard.

“Babe”, Ransom managed to say while his orgasm washed over him, “Babe, you cum”.

You shifted all your weight on your elbows and lifted the upper half of your body, “I know I cum, I’ve told you so”, you raised an eyebrow at him, “Where’s the big deal?”

“Babe, you literally came. You squirted”, he ran his hand over his chest and showed you his wet palm. You looked at him in disbelief, and a little bit embarrassed -just enough to make you brush. When Ransom locked his eyes back on your face, he couldn’t help but smile, “Damn, Y/N, this is the sexiest thing ever”, he came closer to you and covered your face in wet kisses, “I want to make you squirt again. Until you’re not able to cum anymore. I’m going to fuck you for hours, for days, and I want you to cum like this every single time”, he punctuated well the last three words as he squeezed your breasts, “God, the things I’m going to do to you. The ways I’m gonna fuck you”, he picked you up and walked out of the room, holding you in his arms. “Babe, we’ve just started”.

-THE END-

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lovelylogans · 3 years ago

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honey, you’re familiar (like my mirror)

see other chapters, notes, and warnings here!

chapter four: symbiosis

symbiosis: interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association, typically to the advantage of both.

VIRGIL

“Uh,” Virgil says, scrambling in the face of his mother—hair wrapped for the night, blinking the sleep out of her eyes, her arms crossed, “My—myself?”

Technically true, he guesses, according to some of the sensate’s personal beliefs about the connections they share with their clusters, according to Logan according to Dot. Like having other selves scattered across the world.

Andisiwe frowns. “At this time of night?”

Virgil shrugs weakly.

She frowns deeper. Then:

“You know,” she says, looking at him very intently, “your grandmother used to talk to herself at all times of day, too.”

Virgil stays silent. His mother crouches to sit with him on the floor, settling with a long sigh.

“About anything at all,” she continues. “She’d talk about the snow when this country hadn’t seen snow for ten years. She’d laugh when no one told a joke, cried when nothing sad had happened. She’d make recipes I’d never heard of before. You remember her pitha?”

Virgil nods, confused. Of course he remembers her pitha. They’d have it at every large family gathering.

“That’s an Indian dessert. She’d never left South Africa in all her life, but she knew how to make pitha and speak Tamil like she was born in Bangalore. Just like you were speaking a language other than Xhosa or English just now.”

Oh, Virgil thinks, then, oh.

“So unless you started taking language lessons while studying for your doctorate,” she says, staring at him.

Virgil chews at the inside of his cheek.

“No,” he says hoarsely. “No, I didn’t.”

She nods, accepting this. “How long…?”

“I don’t know,” Virgil admits. “A week and a half? Two weeks?”

“Not long at all,” she murmurs. “ I suppose it might skip a generation. She told me once it started when she was a child. A horrible headache struck her, and once it let up she had seven new friends all around the world. When they were all ten, maybe.”

Ten, Virgil thinks, mind whirling. God, to deal with all this at the age of ten?

“Sensates,” Virgil croaks. “We’re called sensates.”

His mother offers him a smile.

“I know,” she says. “Tell me about them.”

“One’s here,” Virgil says, and he looks at the big, tall, tattooed man. “I don’t think I got your name last time.”

The man walks from his plush apartment rug to sit on the hardwood floor.

“Patton Taumata,” he says with Virgil’s mouth, offering a bright smile to Virgil’s mother, sitting beside him. “Māori, New Zealander.”

And then Virgil feels what Patton does next—pull seems too strong a word, but it’s the closest he has.

Sitting across from him, looking vaguely disgruntled to find himself on the ground, yet still sitting at his desk in his home office.

“Janus Slange,” he says. “London.”

He slides out of Virgil’s body to find a spot to sit that’s a bit more refined.

Patton turns his head, and Virgil turns his gaze to follow.

“Roman Regio,” the actor says, looking up from his script to gesture beside him. “And my brother, Remus. Who is currently on his way to Mexico City, which he should have done as soon as he got accused.”

“This is such a dumb plan,” Remus groans, resting his head simultaneously against the bus window and Virgil’s bed. “I want all of you batshit hallucinations to know that I don’t come up with plans this stupid. My plans are refined in the way they cause utter chaos.”

Sitting in his bed in the barracks and beside Virgil, so close their thighs almost touch, giving Virgil a thrill that shoots all the way to his fingertips—

“Logan Zieliński,” he says to Virgil’s mother, careful to sound respectful. “I was just here. I’m Polish, but I’m currently studying in Antarctica. Space research.”

They’re here. All of them here. But Virgil sees Patton reach again—

EMILE

—and Emile beams at the sight before him. Patton turns to grin at him.

“Well done!” Emile says, filled to bursting with pride.

Patton! Reliably being able to pull them all in to visit together! That kind of skill—coupled with the fact that Patton, back in his apartment in Auckland, is peaceably planning lessons with a sitcom in the background—can take other sensates months of practice to truly achieve.

“Is this your mother?” He asks Virgil.

Virgil says, “Um, Mom, my—cluster parent?”

Emile makes an eh handwavey gesture followed by a thumbs-up. “Whatever you’re comfortable with, I’m comfortable with!”

“—is here right now. His name’s—”

He speaks at the same time as Emile does.

“Dr. Emile Picani, hi there—!”

“—and he’s American.”

Virgil’s mother’s brow wrinkles in distaste, but she does a good show of trying to hide it.

“That’s fair,” Emile says. “Americans are—well, y’know. You’ve seen the news.”

“This is my mother, Dr. Andisiwe Nkosi. My grandmother was a sensate too, apparently.”

“Oh, that’s lovely!” Emile exclaims. “There are sensates within biological families, of course—” he gestures to Roman and Remus, “—but things are still up in the air about if and how being homo sensorium passes down.”

“Dot said the number of sensates is rising due to epigenetic factors,” Logan says.

“Oh, you’ve met Dot!” Emile says delightedly.

“She answered many of the questions I have,” Logan says, and for a blip, they’re all sitting in the barracks in Antarctica as Logan reaches for a notebook and pen. “But I still have many questions.”

“Entirely understandable,” Emile says.

“Wait, you got your questions answered?” Roman demands, and they’re all sitting on Roman’s apartment’s massive balcony overlooking Mexico City. “I just got this one—” he points accusingly at Janus, “telling me hey, surprise, you’re not actually losing your shit!”

Janus shrugs, and they’re all surrounded by monitors, blinking with so many different points of data it makes Emile a little dizzy. “He just showed up in the mirror while I was shaving.”

“Well,” Emile says, and they’re all in Emile’s apartment at home. Emile puts a kettle on the stove. “I’m here now. So what questions can I help you answer? Or, at least, activate the Archipelago to get some kind of answer for you. If you can think of some kind of subject, there’s probably a sensate that knows something about it, but I suppose we should probably start with the sensate-specific questions.”

Remus puts up a hand and asks, loudly, “Can I use the psychic connection with other sensates to have some kind of insane worldwide orgy?”

ROMAN

Sasha is out for a key art photoshoot, so Roman has the whole apartment to himself. Which is good, because he got a bit busy last night with the whole explanation of what exactly it is that’s been happening to him, and then yelling in disgust when Remus asked gross questions about it.

Roman’s considering if he wants to paint his nails—it’s not like he can keep it, if solely for movie continuity—just to have something to do with his hands when the door cracks open.

And in steps Remus—absolutely filthy, staring at Roman incredulously, a fake mustache plastered above his real mustache that he immediately rips off.

“It worked,” Roman says gleefully. “It worked!”

“First of all, cops ain’t shit, I probably should have expected literally every police officer to sleep on the job when seeing someone suspicious board a bus, but Jesus fuckin’ Christ, your security munches ass,” Remus declares, “They let a murderer get into your apartment.”

Roman bursts out laughing.

“It’s not funny!” Remus says, pulling off the fake beard he’d donned. “It took five pesos of stolen fake beard and mustache to fool everyone, are you fucking kidding me—?!”

Roman slides off the couch, gripping his stomach, he’s laughing so hard.

“What?!” Remus demands, throwing off the overly large trench coat he’d been huddling under.

“You,” Roman wheezes, then, “you said the plan was stupid and it wouldn’t work—!”

“It is stupid! I come up with way better plans than this, you’re telling me that you came up with the stupid kid movie plan and I didn’t?! And it shouldn’t have worked—Roman, stop laughing, your fangirls are fucking batshit crazy, could you imagine what kind of weird Wattpad shit they’d get up to if they knew how easy it was to break in here?!”

Roman is screaming with laughter, because literally all they needed was a fake mustache and beard, and ooh Roman can tell that Remus is pissed that Roman came up with this plan first because it’s such a perfectly Remus plan. He isn’t sure how much of it is a sensate thing versus a twin brother thing, but all the same, Roman knows that Remus is absolutely fuming, which makes it even funnier.

Remus storms off, shouting, “Just for this, I’m going to use up all your fancy shampoo! I’m going to take the biggest, nastiest shit in your bathroom! I’m—I’m going to eat all your soap! I will! I’ll do it! I’m eating all your soap!”

LOGAN

It’s still a little startling to look over at his notebook and suddenly find himself in South Africa, but he’s gotten a little more accustomed to it since the night before. He’s been feeling a pull to South Africa all day, like an ache deep in his chest. He isn’t entirely sure why.

Virgil glances over at him and smiles, just a little. Logan smiles back. Virgil clears his throat and returns his attention to the textbook before him.

“Roman’s plan worked,” he says.

Logan huffs, shaking his head. Honestly. It’s like those American movies when three children stack on top of each other and wear a large trenchcoat and a fake beard to gain access to the movies, but it actually worked.

In retrospect, Logan’s sure that Remus would have foregone his escape into the wilderness if he’d known that donning a disguise and having his rich brother pay away the arrest troubles and their psychically connected lawyer argue before the court would have worked so neatly.

However, considering that nearly every aspect of that plan is absolutely off the rails ridiculous, the escape into the wilderness must have seemed like a prudent measure to take at the time.

“How’s your research?” Logan asks, sitting down on Virgil’s bed.

“Pretty good,” Virgil says, his tone very casual. “I think the fact that abrus precatorius—”

“The scientific name for rosary peas,” Logan assumes. He is rewarded by a nod from Virgil.

“—isn’t native to Mexico and the fact that Remus hasn’t traveled for years on end is a pretty good basis for Janus to go on. Plus, abrin—”

“The toxin?” Logan clarifies and receives a nod.

“—is incredibly toxic, to the point where anyone ordering rosary peas would probably get pinged under some kind of monitoring system. So there wouldn’t really be a way for Remus himself to get them. Miguel Contreras, on the other hand—”

“The murder victim?” Logan says, startled.

“Yes—on the other hand, he went to Florida very recently. He got back three days before his death, in fact.”

“I thought they were native to Asia and Australia?”

“Yeah, they are, but rosary peas are an invasive species, and they’ve been clocked in the pine rocklands there,” Virgil says. “Symptoms usually occur pretty quick, but it can take up to five days to show up, depending on the method of ingestion. And considering the seed of just one pea could be fatal…”

“Then the cause of death could very well be found in Florida!” Logan says. “And the only thing they have on Remus—”

“—Are threats, exactly,” Virgil says enthusiastically. “And considering the way Remus is as a person, Janus could probably get those hand-waved away as being under jest, rather than an actual threat to kill him.”

They smile at each other again, Virgil’s lips twisting wryly.

“I’ve been wanting to visit you all day,” he says abruptly, and Logan feels that flutter in his stomach again, the one he’s been feeling since they first met; he’s willing to admit to himself that it most certainly isn’t unease, now. It is a near antonym of unease.

“I have too,” Logan admits, trying his very best to keep his voice informal.

Virgil’s smile softens, a little. “Yeah?”

“Yes,” Logan affirms, and the flutter in his stomach intensifies.

They stare at each other. Virgil’s eyes, Logan notices abruptly, are objectively beautiful. Framed by long lashes, his eyes are so dark a shade of brown they’re practically black, so easy to stare at, admiring the way a sudden shift in the lighting would illuminate the subtle honeyed depths of them.

For a moment, Logan gets a flicker; he’s looking at his own eyes, blue and framed by his glasses, but the emotion in him doesn’t change, the fleeting thought of look how gorgeous, and suddenly he is back to looking at Virgil, and, as one, they look away.

Virgil coughs awkwardly. “This sensate thing—weird, huh?”

For the first time, Logan wonders if the feeling in his stomach is not entirely his own. If it is something shared.

But, Logan thinks, sneaking a look at Virgil taking notes, twirling his pen idly over the backs of his long fingers, he supposes that neither of them would be able to tell that, anyways.

REMUS

Remus is bouncing his leg so much that the cop near him is giving him a disdainful look.

Or maybe the look is because the cop thinks he’s a murderer. Whatever.

“Are you sure this is gonna work,” Remus mutters out of the corner of his mouth because he hasn’t gotten the hang of visiting someone in his cluster and going about day-to-day life like a normal person, the way more experienced sensates can.

“Positive,” Janus says. He’s sitting crossed-legged beside Remus in his holding cell, where they’re waiting to be transported to the courtroom. Remus is pretty sure most lawyers shouldn’t turn up to court in pajamas, but considering that to the rest of the courtroom Remus is going to play at being his own lawyer, it’s all fine.

“All they have on you is proximity and threats,” Janus continues. “And considering the voice in your novels, along with the parts in your dust jackets’ where you literally threaten your readers, I can get that set aside no problem.”

Remus inhales heavily and exhales just as noisily.

“Right,” he says. “Right.”

Roman flickers into sight just long enough to shoot Remus a thumbs up, and as Janus resumes spitting legal jargon, Remus feels his shoulders relax.

PATTON

“Be careful with our bezzie Buzzy Bee!” Patton says brightly. He’s crouched before Sophie, having helped untangle the string. “Let’s make sure we don’t tangle him up again, eh?”

“I will, Mr. T!” Sophie shouts, already on the run with the toy, and Patton huffs ruefully. It’ll probably be tangled up again by the end of the day.

A brief chill across his skin, and Patton shivers before he refocuses on the sunny afternoon, here, in Auckland.

By the time he’s stood upright, Logan’s beside him, in a white lab coat.

“Do you really need that much air conditioning down there?” Patton says. “Seems a bit overkill, mate.”

Logan shrugs, closing a door, hiding away some kind of equipment that looks very finicky and complex. “I’m not the one in charge of the facility.”

“Fair enough,” Patton says. “I’m pretty sure I’ll be asked to join in on some kind of game, soon. You like rugby?”

“It’s not exactly popular in Poland.”

“Hm. Guess not,” Patton says. “Probably should’ve known that already.”

“The whole sharing knowledge aspect of this does seem to be rather dependent on a variety of factors,” Logan says thoughtfully. “I don’t think I automatically know the minutiae of New Zealand history and culture just because you might; I think we have to be doing something to trigger that sharing of knowledge.”

Patton huhs thoughtfully.

“If you didn’t know how to drive a car, for instance,” Logan theorizes, “and I did, and you sat behind a wheel and needed to drive somewhere, I would probably be able to impart that knowledge to you.”

“I can ask Emile,” Patton says, ready to turn and look in on Florida, but he’s stopped by Logan’s frustrated, “how do you do that?”

“Hm?” Patton says, turning to look at him.

“This seems to come so effortlessly to you,” Logan says. “You drop in and seem totally at ease, you could control if we all came to see Virgil a couple nights ago, and by the reactions of those around you, you don’t seem to be talking to thin air—”

“Well, we’re mostly, surrounded by five-year-olds, they wouldn’t be too phased by the concept of me having an imaginary friend,” Patton points out. Logan doesn’t seem particularly amused by this.

“I don’t know,” Patton admits. “Emile thought I was just very communicative, for a sensate. That might be it; I’ve always been pretty chatty. It also might be because Māori have beliefs about how we are all connected—people, nature, all living things—so maybe I was a little more prepared to accept that I was literally connected to other people because I grew up with that as a sacred ideal.”

They watch children run and play for a few minutes; Manaia, diving to catch a football in the game of rugby that had assembled; Sophie, racing between everyone with her Buzzy Bee clack-clack-clacking behind her; Oliver, shyly joining in on a game of hopscotch.

The grass sways in the light breeze, the sun had peeked out from behind its clouds, leaving the entire playground awash in light and warmth. The laughter of children carries on the wind. Patton’s coworkers occasionally look up from their tiny charges to smile and wish him a good day.

“It’s really rather nice here,” Logan says quietly. “I’ve never been remotely near this continent. Coming to research in Antarctica is the most travel I’ve ever really done.”

“Do you miss home?” Patton asks.

Logan considers this.

“Some things,” he says. “Kluski, makowiec, honey mead. Newspapers written in my native language. The coffee shop I studied in throughout all of university. Proper herbata góralska. My mentors. The ability to go to a grocery store. My mother.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“But I love the research I do here,” Logan says firmly. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be able to study down here.”

“It sure seems like it,” Patton says, his admiration clear in his voice.

“This whole situation threw a bit of a wrench in the works,” he says.

“I think it did for all of us,” Patton says. “Not all bad, though. Remus would probably still be on the run if he hadn’t connected with Janus.”

“No,” Logan muses, a soft flush touching his cheeks. “Certainly not all bad.”

Unbidden, images flash in his mind; black coffee, an expanse of wide sunny road, the sensation of dirt under his fingernails, purple jacaranda blossoms.

Patton tries his hardest not to grin. But—

“What,” Logan says defensively.

“Nothing,” Patton says, not hiding his smile, and Logan huffs irritably.

“You know,” Patton says, “Emile’s been dating someone in-cluster for, like, nine years? They were the first people that they saw, of the people in-cluster. In-cluster relationships are apparently pretty common, which I guess makes sense. Sharing feelings, knowledge, everything—it sure can bond two people together.”

Logan’s flush deepens.

“Just sayin’,” Patton offers cheerfully, and he goes off to join a game of hopscotch, leaving Logan with his thoughts.

JANUS

The language is different. The procedure is different. The situation is, most definitely, different.

He’s used to English, English law, English crimes. He’s been a barrister for years, jumping from one firm to another because the latter had seen partner potential in him; it paid much better, too, which certainly hadn’t been a negative. Janus had become a well-polished lawyer, a viper in the courtroom, a boomslang to his rivals.

He’s good at it, is his point. He’s always been good at it.

He stands, surveying the judge. A different uniform, but a similar dime-a-dozen judge. He’s seen this type dozens of times. He could debate them in his sleep.

But as he looks to the side—Remus sitting, Roman beside him, the rest of the cluster in a line past them, just peeks of their profiles past the twins—he remembers why he started to study law, too.

Because he wanted to be able to get himself and his brother out of any and every sticky situation they could ever stumble into.

Janus stands when he is bid to. He takes the oath, Remus’s mother language tripping off his tongue like it’s his own. It is now, Janus supposes.

Roman reaches over and grips Remus’s hand. Remus pinches Roman as hard as he possibly can, but Roman doesn’t flinch.

Janus begins smoothly, “Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the court...”

#my fic #my fanfic

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dragonheart-swtor · 4 years ago

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Imperial Agent Storyline: Drunk History Version

Since people really seemed to like the last one! Y’all’s collective wish is my command. Spoilers for the Imperial Agent storyline, obviously. Enjoy!

- so you start out with your agent on Hutta, a little polluted slimeball of a world that literally everyone but the Hutts canonically hates. there's lore but we're going to ignore it. the important thing is that you're here to con a Hutt, always a dangerous gambit, into working with/for the Empire.

- you sneak into a corner to space facetime your boss, a guy we only ever know as Keeper because Intelligence is weird about names. sneaking into corners to facetime people is a repeating theme throughout the story.

- you are informed that you've already got a cover story set up, and you'll be posing as an infamous pirate called the Red Blade who'll be able to get in close to the Hutt in question, whose name I've forgotten. Nethro or Nefro or something.

- "wait, what about the actual Red Blade," you ask your boss, probably

- "he's halfway across the galaxy, you don't need to worry about him," your boss replies, in a textbook example of what we in the writing business call “foreshadowing”

- (spoiler alert: you need to worry about him)

- but we won't worry about that for now. bada bing bada boom, you stroll on into the Hutt's place. you are immediately confronted by a guy who, shock and horror, actually knows the real Red Blade and knows you ain't him. (one would think that all-seeing Intelligence would have known about him, but nuance.) this is a problem for a number of obvious reasons.

- your options are as follows: bribe him, kill him, or sleep with him. (this is also something of a recurring theme throughout the story.) whatever option you take, he's dealt with. (yes, this is the man eris fucked five minutes into her storyline.)

- (I didn’t want to pay him money, leave me alone.)

- anyway, the mission progresses smoothly. meet the Hutt, do some jobs for the Hutt, betray the Hutt's right hand and stab him in the back right after convincing him you were friends, invade the Hutt's rival's palace, McMurder the Hutt's rival, you know. your average day at the office

- most of the way through, the Hutt's other right hand starts to be suspicious about you. this is Kaliyo Djannis, and she will be Plot Relevant™.

- by which I mean she shortly thereafter walks in on you facetiming your boss and gets hired by Intelligence to help out for gods know what reason. welcome to your first companion

- (or possibly you walk in on her facetiming your boss in your room, I.. don't remember, honestly. something like that.)

- anyway one Hutt is dead the other is working with us bada bing bada boom this is going great and hey remember when I said you needed to worry about that guy you're impersonating this whole time? yeah, about that,

- so the real actual Red Blade comes sailing in to Hutta and Intelligence immediately calls you up like "hey, hate to bother you, but your cover's about to get blown in a big way and we need you to murder the guy whose identity you've stolen before he can expose you.”

- "so, just like that training mission last week. gotcha, boss, no problem."

- murder time™

- congration you done it! go home to Dromund Kaas.

- "You're on Imperial soil now, agent. Welcome home." [nonhuman Agent immediately experiences 27492738957 microaggressions] (this joke isn’t mine, for the record)

- first off, Intelligence HQ has a bomb aesthetic, as does the entire Empire in general

- second off, you do walk in on your boss talking to - by which I mean "being given a speech by" - a Dark Lord, which is less than optimal for a number of reasons, first and foremost that speeches by Dark Lords of the Sith quite often immediately precede someone getting killed

- said Dark Lord is one Darth Jadus, who will proceed to be a thorn in your side for approximately the next three hours of gameplay

- (don't worry, after that three hours you'll get a worse thorn)

- Darth Jadus decides he likes you and declares you "his" agent, which you immediately get the gist is about the worst thing that can happen to an Intelligence agent from the way everyone around you treats you like you've just had a ticking bomb strapped to your back for the rest of this meeting

- you're sent on a handful of missions, including one to the Dark Temple which, you know, Force-deaf people aren't supposed to be in, but Jadus Does Not Care

- Jadus calls you into his office at one point and tells you he's going to do some ritual to bind you to his service or something, it's not really clear, but it's clearly Not Optional and also terrifying in concept

- now, quick sidebar. there are basically two paths to take here: one where you suck up to the Sith and treat them with the utmost care and respect and fear like you're kind of supposed to, and one where you mouth off at every opportunity. Eris is mortally terrified of Sith, so she just kind of.. submitted knowing she was going to die if she didn't.

- my second run, however, was just a "hey how bad can I fuck this up" character because I already knew the story.

- I decided to mouth off to Jadus at every opportunity, including adamantly refusing this ritual.

- "What can he do to me?" I asked the person I was playing with. "I'm the protagonist! It's not like he can kill me!"

- Jadus: *kills me*

- me:

- (mechanically, anyway; story-wise I'm sure he just. put her on the brink of death. but mechanically speaking he literally actually did kill my toon)

- (this should be a warning for exactly how much this storyline is willing to put its usually-heavily-plot-armored protagonist through.)

- anyway.

- do some missions, blah blah blah, Sith possession in the Dark Temple, blah blah blah, you know the drill

- well, turns out Jadus is going on tour with several hundred Imperial civilians, military, and Sith, allegedly all hand chosen, to share his ~vision for the Empire~. that's all well and good, whatever I gue-

- sorry what do you mean his ship exploded

- what do you mean a member of the Dark Council just blew up in orbit

- cue Kill Bill sirens

- Panic! At The Intelligence HQ

- this throws everything into chaos; not only was Jadus more directly involved in Intelligence, but he was a Dark Councilor so now there's a massive power vacuum

- the Sith who ends up filling this power vacuum? Jadus's daughter, Darth Zhorrid.

- remember when I said you'd have a bigger thorn in your side after Jadus?

- so yeah. so Zhorrid is, for lack of a better word, fucking terrifying

- she's sadistic and completely careless of others' lives or wellbeing and oh yeah she also instantly latches onto you even harder than her father did and demands you find his killer

- a lot of your meetings with her aren't really plot-relevant so I'll sum them all up here:

- Zhorrid was horribly abused by Jadus, completely broken. She tells you a story about how she used to sing, and her father hired a tutor, then had her sing at a Kaas City performance until her throat was so damaged she could never sing again. He tore every scrap of joy out of her life, completely failed to teach her what she needed to know to survive the rigors of the Dark Council, and instilled every ounce of hatred, sadism, and complete lack of pity he could in her.

- She kills people for no reason other than a whim, because she was listening to a Sith opera and the aria was "very moving" (an actual literal thing that happens).

- She acts like a complete spoiled brat child. At one point the other Dark Councilors literally beat and torture her, presumably for this reason because she's insufferable and arrogant and way out of her depth, and she cries to you about it

- If you’re like me, your response to all this is basically “cool motive, still murder”

- I have sidetracked very hard. where was I

- so you spend a while trying to hunt down the people who blew up Jadus's ship. There's a bunch of rebels, you hunt them down, they've got biotech weapons called Eradicators set up to destroy cities on multiple planets, skippity skip to the big reveal

- Jadus is alive, and he organized the whole thing so he'd be able to remake the Empire into the image he wanted. He tortured and enslaved the survivors of the Dominator's destruction

- Jadus gives you a whole speech about how fear is a gift to be shared and "Through victory my chains are broken" but there must be chains to break and blah blah blah holy shit this man is genocidal

- you have three choices: join him for real, pretend to join him so you can sabotage his ship and then kill him (at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Imperial lives), or refuse outright and save those hundreds of thousands of lives but Jadus escapes (and you know he's allegedly likely to return and do even worse damage later).

- (Quick sidebar again, for those who haven’t played it: Eris chose the second option and has nightmares about it for the rest of her life. It's actually extremely haunting in-game - as you're running through Jadus's ship to sabotage it as fast as possible, you can hear the distress calls from various colonies and planets being attacked, the screams of the dying that you doomed. It's horrifying.)

- so yeah there’s really no winning that situation but hey! at least Chapter One’s over. surely in Chapter Two things can’t get worse.

- Chapter Two: Things Get Worse

- there's this guy, Ardun Kothe, an SIS agent. he's a huge threat for some reason I don't remember. you're supposed to infiltrate the SIS to get close to and eventually kill him. not an easy job, but okay, we can do this.

- Intelligence sets up the meeting; months ago they sent the first word to Kothe that there was an Intelligence agent ready to turn and they've been building up from there, sending him a steady stream of information

- enter Hunter, aka the worst bastard in this entire storyline and that is an achievement. He's the one you meet first on Nar Shaddaa.

- you do some missions for the SIS, whatever, it's not important. You finally get to meet the rest of the team - and Ardun Kothe.

- Kothe wants to speak alone, which is p typical tbh. He expresses some doubts, which you assuage as best you can; he gives you your code name: Legate. It's from a form of sabbac, he explains, you'll have to play with him sometime.

- (It is difficult for me to make what happens next funny instead of horrifying, so forgive me if the tone changes a bit here.)

- Everything is going fine.

- "I'm sorry about this, Legate."

- What?

- "Keyword: onomatophobia. Engage Thesh protocols, phase one."

- Everything is not fine.

- You black out and have an extremely rude awakening.

- So it turns out whatever happened with Jadus, the Dark Council decided you were too dangerous (usually for doing your job too fuckin well) and that you needed to be leashed. So not you have mind control programming in your brain, and anyone who has your keyword can take complete and unequivocal control of your body. this is, in a word, not great.

- (This is, as I mentioned, actually extremely horrifying. You have dialogue options and they don’t change what you actually say. You have an opportunity to shoot Kothe and even if you try to select it nothing happens. But we’re not here for the horror take (not today, anyway) so let’s just This Is Fine that and move on)

- Tl;dr you can’t harm Kothe or any members of his team, you’re forced to obey anyone who has your keyword, and this wouldn’t be that much of a problem because we’ll just tell Watcher Two what’s happened and oh wait you can’t tell anyone about your programming either. well, shit.

- You go on to work double agent, like it was planned, with this new, uh. twist

- about a third of the way through the chapter, your mind kind of cracks and you start having hallucinations - seeing things you know can't be real during a holocall, passing out in the middle of your ship and waking up in medbay.

- After that, a new voice lives in your head! Watcher X, someone you either killed or let flee on Nar Shaddaa, has sort of joined the party. Is he an AI in the spinal implant the real Watcher X gave you? is he a figment of your broken mind trying to process its situation? Who knows! Not you! either way, this is not optimal but at least he seems to be being helpful this time

- so anyway we should probably try and figure out how to undo this programming bc Intelligence is being Wholly Unhelpful

- (ASAP, please, especially with how horrible Hunter acts toward you - let’s go with “uncomfortably leery,” which I promise is generous.)

- by the way, your companions still have no idea what’s going on during all this, although they try to be varying levels of supportive (thank you vector I love you bug husband)

- Good news! The Intelligence Archive almost definitely has information on what they did to you and how to fix it. Bad news! You’re definitely not authorized to look that up and crashing the power mainframe to make sure they don’t see you do it sends the security droids after you. whoops.

- Good news! There’s a way to fix you. Bad news! You have to make and inject yourself with a still-kinda-experimental cocktail of chemicals and it may or may not give you permanent brain damage. it’s fine. this is fine.

- also it takes a while to kick in which is Less Than Optimal and by the time it finally does you’ve just been left with a binding order to stay and guard the door on what is, for you, a suicide mission. there’s some incentive to “break your chains” for ya.

- You fight and kill Kothe. Who, shock and awe! is an ex-Jedi! this was in no way painfully obvious by how he kept talking about “sensing” things, I’m sure. definitely not.

- Hunter escapes, because of fuckin course he does. Hunter, who suddenly seems far more in control of everything than he had before. Hunter, who knows far more than he should. Hunter, who ends up leading you to a much, much larger conspiracy.

- End Chapter 2.

- Hate to disappoint, but Chapter 3 is honestly the least interesting to me personally, so this’ll be brief compared to the previous chapters

- You spend a lot of time hunting down this much larger conspiracy, including Hunter specifically. There's a lot of betrayal and secret reveals. (It's not tedious by any stretch of the imagination, but the story beats definitely don't stick in my head as well as the first two chapters, even after two playthroughs.)

- you go to Voss and, in order to get into a Voss-only archive, get married to a person you just met before almost immediately leaving the planet (and your new spouse) behind. this is never mentioned again.

- you get hold of a holorecording from the Star Cabal, the big conspiracy. problem: the holorecording contains a trap for the brain-enhanced Watchers, and now half of Intelligence is in a vegetative state. this is not optimal.

- partially as a result of this, Intelligence basically gets dissolved, which is Not Great because it puts you right under the thumb of yet another asshole Sith lord

- the Watchers are recovering, though, so that’s something. Watcher Two, now Keeper (the old Keeper got promoted), contacts you so you can keep working on this Star Cabal thing.

- you get intentionally captured so the Star Cabal can torture you and you can “break” and give them false information to lead them into a trap. you are immediately afterward expected to get back to work like nothing happened. this is never mentioned again.

- You track the Star Cabal to their base, way out in the Unknown Regions iirc, and infiltrate it during a meeting of the top agents.

- murder time 2: electric boogaloo (well, more like murder time 45, to be honest, but shh it’s fine)

- You fight the Star Cabal guys, chase Hunter through the whole place, and finally corner him.

- (Salt warning ahead on my part for the next story beat, if you can call it that.)

- Hunter, when beaten, reveals what I personally think is the most bullshit stupid reveal in the entire game: he is actually a she, and has been using a stealth field generator (or something similar) to change his/her appearance the entire time. There are multiple interpretations of this - "he's trans" is my least favorite, sorry-not-sorry, because a) it's pretty clear she still considers herself a woman and Hunter is just a convenient persona, and also b) a clearly predatory man is absolutely horrid representation as far as playing into harmful stereotypes about trans people, thanks. Personally, my rather cynical interpretation is that they wanted one more shock value reveal at the end of the storyline and I guess couldn't come up with anything better. It's my least favorite thing in the whole IA storyline.

- anyway, that's not really important. I just needed to be mad about it for a minute. ignore me. moving on

- The important part is this: what you gain from the Star Cabal's base is an item called the Black Codex, an ancient piece of technology with the power to erase all records of a person's existence.

- Unless you are very stubborn about it the Agent’s reaction to this is basically “oh thank fuck I’m freeeeeeeeee” and you fly off into the hyperspace sunset with your crew, giving middle fingers to the Sith whose grip you’re escaping all the way. which, really, who can blame you.

And that’s the Imperial Agent storyline, folks. Roll credits. I’ll probably do the Bounty Hunter storyline next while it’s still fresh in my mind, but I could also do the Sith Warrior storyline probably if y’all’re more interested, vote now on your phones.

#unfortunately I don’t remember jack shit from the Jedi Knight storyline #so until i finish replaying it y'all're just gonna have to hold your horses on that one #swtor #imperial agent #drunk history swtor #i have the original much more serious version of me summarizing that first scene with kothe in drafts btw #should anyone want to see it #it's the version where i actually tried to get across to someone who'd never played the game the absolute horror of that scene #and was; i think; fairly successful #the notes on the sith inquisitor post have finally slowed down so i think it's time to post this one

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aurora-daily · 3 years ago

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"Inspired By The Light And The Dark" Clash Meets AURORA

Norway's striking alt-pop aesthete in conversation...

Interview by Jessica Fynn for clashmusic (July 8th, 2021).

In a high-rise office block somewhere in England, AURORA found her first moth. It was tucked in the space between two glass panes of a double window, the waning winter sunlight warming the underside of its belly, just so. The scene in the way that I picture it: the room was vibrating with chatter, keyboards clattering with a certain nonchalance, the bitter taste of the new French Blend just starting to kick in. Without so much as a warning, label managers and production assistants were politely asked to pause their music industry-related discussion. From across the room, pens were placed down unanimously. Eyebrows were raised – was this a Norwegian thing? – and confused glances were exchanged from above desks littered with paperwork. The intern left to fetch another round of extra-shot lattes, the door slamming shut.

As far as AURORA was concerned, all talk of her debut studio album 'All My Demons Greeting Me As A Friend' could wait. “I had to ask the record company people to lift me up so I could reach my hand down into the window and reach the moth.” At this, she grins the kind of grin you might see on a child caught stealing the last cookie from the cookie jar. With its wings folded back, her windowsill moth was a delicate creature; a body without a soul, which in her mind, meant that it was up for grabs. It would travel back home with her in a tiny glass bottle, the first in her collection of tiny, dead creatures. An “eternal treasure hunt” is how AURORA describes this game of finders-keepers. Five years later, fans would continue to gift her dead bugs. As with her moths, she would vow to protect them from the sunlight, knowing that one day, they too, will return to dust.

It is another small miracle that we are chatting from across our shared European continent: AURORA in her hometown of Bergen, Norway and me from my childhood bedroom in St Albans, Hertfordshire. (‘Just outside of the M25’ I tell people when confronted. I’ll defend it till my dying day). It is somewhat unnerving to find that – turning her head to glance out of the window – her grey day looks just the same as my grey day. I’d pictured a scene out of Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. “I like the dry days. They are filled with a nothingness. It’s soothing,” she explains. AURORA likes to be on land, to feel the grass beneath her toes, to feel a bit bored.

Us Londoners (oh, allow me) have an extreme aversion to interruptions and boredom: slow-moving traffic; train delays; calls gone to voicemail; events that seem to induce within a person a state of creeping unrest. Nights become restless, days pass in slow motion. Movements feel strangely off-balance, as if something in the cosmos has shifted, and not in a good, divine way. And so there is something strangely endearing about the thought of AURORA being coolly disruptive mid-meeting. This was back in 2016, mind you, but she continues to wear this attitude. I can feel it pulsing through my laptop screen.

“I find it hard to connect with the achievements of music, of my music” she self-corrects, cupping her face in her palms, staring at the screen intently. “The minute I release something out into the world, it is out of my hands and out of my control. I am very comfortable with letting it out of my mind. I’m busy working on my next step, my next album or single.”

It was on the trail of her next step that AURORA was pulled backwards in time by a rough and heady Northern wind. Age 12, she wrote the lyrics to ‘Runaway’ and released the track on her studio debut, All My Demons Greeting Me As a Friend in 2016. Like a butterfly, the beauty of this melody was caught only in glimpses before it silently drifted away into the ether. In 2021, ‘Runaway’ returned to the charts as if in some strange act of defiance. Amassing 40+ million views on TikTok in the #runawayaurora trend – big numbers as far as the Gen Z are concerned - the song seems to have taken on a life of its own, rooting itself in hearts and minds worldwide.

It does make sense that ‘Runaway’ could be a trend to people right now, AURORA nods at this suggestion, a small smile creeping across her lips. These are the absurd, mysterious ways of the internet, after all. Who knows how anything goes viral? An algorithm, perhaps. “I’m very aware that people may love something one day and forget about it the next. It’s interesting how the world just agrees. ‘This is what we love today, do you agree?’” she chides. “We all just nod back, ‘yes, yes, yes’. It’s funny. It’s like an experiment.”

Listening to her speak, her voice so melodic and charming (“I could listen to her speak all day” her PR wrote to me in an email, later that afternoon), a glimpse of AURORA’s sharp tongue is like a snake bite, piercing yet seductive. I’d watched the interview that she gave in 2019 with the Australian lads at triple J many times, revisiting it over breakfast as I scrambled around the house like a madwoman. I still adore the way that she runs rings around them, playfully subverting the interview context. It was my father who pointed this out to me, calmly stirring his coffee. “That’s something you would do.”

AURORA lives with no expectations of herself. She is fluid, constantly evolving and re-defining elements of herself, her personality, her music. To me, that sounds like the closest thing to freedom. “I like to keep the core of myself very strong in everything I do and make. That’s why it’s easy to explore all the fingertips of me.” These fingertips might as well belong to different hands. AURORA is very much drawn to the extremes. To her, the sound of heavy-metal (the force, the loudness, the intensity) has much the same sonic impact as the blended folksy-synth of Enya’s ‘Orinoco Flow’. Both feel like “a wall of force, a nature force”.

“As women, we are so diverse. We can be so much. People are constantly trying to put us in a box. You’re either this or that…” she muses, turning her head, blonde choppy layers facing forward. “Are you feminine or like a tom-boy? Are you sexual, or pure and innocent? Are you stupid and hot? Smart and geeky? They want to divide us and put us into those categories.”

“I love that I know for sure that I’m all of those things. I don’t know for sure that every woman I mean is all of them. But we can be everything. It’s fun to play around, exploring new things, but always keeping the core.” She places her hands on her heart. “That’s the most fun thing about being an artist. You have this extra freedom to evolve and change.”

‘Cure For Me’ is the start of AURORA’s next chapter. It is introspective and inquisitive, a more cerebral take on her “moody, diverse self”. It is also an exploration of sorts, a Tiresian venture into the carnivalesque. “There’s a big focus on history, and what the world has done in our history. The good and the bad. It is very inspired by religion, and the questions I have about religion. It is very inspired by the light and the dark. It is very dramatic, and sensual.”

“My next album is a lot about allowing yourself to be…” she pauses, her brow furrowing as she searches for the right words, “…to be everything! And to live a beautiful, sinful life.” At this, she grins a feral grin. I picture a moth swirling around a cigarette lighter. I still can’t shake that image from my mind.

#aurora #aurora aksnes #cure for me #new album #interviews

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weeklyfangirl · 5 years ago

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Frat Boy Pt. 22

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7 (1), part 7 (2), part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13 , part 14, part 15, part 16, part 17, part 18, part 19 , part 20, part 21

Hope everyone is keeping themselves mentally/physically well... here’s the next update in your adventure. Please safely read from home ;)

The sun moved slowly up my window, illuminating the dancing dust in the air. Even though I knew dust didn’t have feelings, it all still looked very peaceful, suspended there in space.

I wanted to be suspended, floating, with no obligations or pressures.

Instead, I watched time slip by, slowly, as the shadows stretched along my floor and I lay still, wrapped in a giant Winnie-the-Pooh sheets burrito.

I called in sick the past three days to work and to all my classes, my lack of attendance probably dropping me a letter grade in a few classes. Instead of checking on my academic scholarship, I begged Renny to drop off Dr. Rhinecuff’s papers for me. She did, lamenting about how his office smelled like roast beef and how she probably needed a nose job from it shrivelling up from the stench. Tired, I sent her three hearts, ignoring all of her calls and voicemails.

In a random bout of restless energy, I looked up the University of Oxford in England. No one would know me there. And maybe that wasn’t a bad thing when you didn’t even know yourself. I stayed on their site for an hour, avoiding my take-home assignments, and speculating which classes I could take in the spring semester. My eyes grew tired though, and even if I were accepted as a transfer student, it wasn’t like I could ever afford it without scholarships.

I closed the computer.

It’d been cloudy, rainy. The random storm that’d come in from Mexico lasted longer than the usual morning fog that’d roll in and out by the time it was 9 AM. This storm lingered, heavy, full clouds looking to burst and unleash a steady rain for three to four hours before the clouds rested, storing up all they could until the next downpour.

My parents didn’t question me when I came in, used to my random visits. But when I went straight to my room without saying hello, rain-plastered hair covering puffy eyes, my mom basically collapsed at the sight.

She followed me to the bed, trying to see my face, but I buried it in the pillow, ignoring the way the purple fringe tickled my nose.

“What’s wrong sweetheart?”

I just groaned. Her voice was too gentle, too well-intending for the dark thoughts sitting in my mind. She’d be heartbroken if she heard them.

She huffed, not out of annoyance, but distress. “What’s bothering you?? Is it Renny? Did you breakup with Harry?” All those reasons were too simple. She ran her hands lightly along my legs, but I cringed away from her touch. It was something I rarely did. She paused. “You can tell me anything...”

I shook my head against the pillow, my last attempt to tell her to leave without speaking. She waited a moment longer.

“Okay,” she said. And that was it.

Father didn’t ask questions, not even when I was here for the third consecutive day. Mom had probably come to her own conclusions, and shared them with him.

“Mom said you aren’t feeling too well,” he said over cereal one morning, confirming my suspicions. It was the first time he’d broken our three-day spree of comfortable silence.

“What else did she tell you?”

He shrugged his shoulders, his usual buoyant self replaced with a quiet voice. He looked at me, and all I saw was pity. If I were him, I’d probably look at me the same way. I hadn’t showered in a while. “Well don’t let anything get you down. You’re too smart for that.”

He’d tried. He’d put in an effort. I just nodded, scooping up another spoonful of cereal. He followed suit.

And that was that.

A week passed like this.

But overnight, the clouds had blown away, and the sun came back full-force this morning just in time for the weekend, renewing my guilt. That traitor.

I’d cried all of Monday and Tuesday, but when the last tear was shed in the middle of a New Girl episode, I was empty. My tears didn’t leave anything to replace them with.

On Wednesday, a phone alarm reminded me I had a therapy appointment. I hit snooze multiple times. It was only when I got up to pee, and I hated what I saw in the mirror that I threw on an oversized sweater to go over my pajamas and headed out the door.

“Is it good?” I asked.

Her hands reviewed my wants list.

“That’s just a coffee stain on the corner..just...ignore that bit,” I added.

She surveyed it briefly, not really focusing on it. “Were you honest?”

I nodded.

“Then there isn’t good or bad. It’s just your truth.”

“But I still feel… I don’t know. I don’t think I know what that is. I don’t feel like I’m… progressing. Doing anything towards that,” I said.

She looked at me with a level gaze. “Then that’s your truth. And that’s okay for right now.”

I shot her a glance.

“I see a common struggle with people your age. They feel this….” -She adjusted, quirking her head- “immense pressure to be perfect, to figure it all out, to achieve success so early.”

“Everyone’s doing it,” I began. “They’re getting internships, keeping up their grades, involved in ten clubs, doing community service…” I could’ve droned on, but didn’t.

“You have an internship, your grades are good, you’ve joined a sorority, and up until recently you’ve been involved in tutoring. Those are extracurriculars.”

I couldn’t argue with her.

“Is it too much?” she asked.

Too much. It was everything I’d been feeling until I’d felt nothing. But hearing her list off what was waiting for me just beyond her doors made me feel the weight of it all over again.

“I’ve just been overwhelmed.”

“Who have you been thinking about?”

She noticed I started picking my hangnail.

She started gently, knowingly. “Has it been Harry?”

“Ow,” I cursed. A bit of blood prickled up where the hangnail used to be.

“He seems to be a major stressor in your life. Would you agree?” The clock ticked behind her, filling the silence. Her hands rested in her lap, while mine swiped away the bit of blood. I could never remember my therapist’s name, but somehow it wasn’t important.

“Yeah, but … I mean …. there’s a lot of stressors.”

“Like his friends?”

His friends, in the abbreviated story I’d told her, stood in place for the gang. I’d used terms like … intimidating, mean, basically painting them as bullies who didn’t like us together. I wasn’t expecting to get much therapy from a lie. “Out of curiosity, if I were to tell you something… would you be obligated to report it to the police?”

“Not necessarily.” Her legs crossed, creased brows zeroing in with a laser focus. “Has something happened to you, Y/N?”

I swallowed hard, the truth lodged in my throat. But I had gotten too used to the weight of the secret. “I was just curious…” My mind raced to change the subject, and I blurted about Zayn’s art show.

“Do you think this panic attack was induced by this heightened sense of scrutiny from Harry’s friends?”

“Probably.”

“You said there were others. What are your main stressors?’

I settled in, more comfortable with this question. “There’s financial stressors, for one. And it’s exasperated here.”

“You’ve been dealing with financial difficulties for a while, now. Have you been feeling this anxious the entire time, or has it been recent?”

My foot tapped impatiently. We both knew the answer.

“Your panic attack was a first,” she explained, gently. “Some new factor in your life pushed you there.”

I picked at the hangnail, wincing. It was gone. My skin was raw.

“Maybe it all links back to Harry.” She waited a moment to see if I’d speak. When I didn’t, she leant back, and pulled out a new sheet of paper, scribbling something down. “I want you to write a pros and cons list about your relationship with him, for next time. When your feelings are overwhelming, it helps to get everything on paper. In a list. Puts things in perspective.”

I drove home, her words had pushed themselves into my empty shell and now they clinked around, jostling up my insides like a pinball machine and giving me a headache.

Just because I hadn’t left the house all week didn’t mean I didn’t feel guilty for ditching work. God, I did. It killed me. I knew I was lucky to get that internship. Harry had mentioned how people killed just to get on the waitlist, and I didn’t doubt it. An OC internship with, if not the top, at least the most publicized private practice? I mean, I was typing in appointments next to a Southern Stanford grad if that speaks to the competition here.

And here I was, retreating back to my house, too drained to face the world.

As for Harry, after what I’d said to him, I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t want to talk to me ever again.

I’d been so cruel.

I was weak.

I felt guilty for feeling this way at all.

And then I would watch the dust again.

It was a cycle.

About three blocks from my house on my way back from the therapist session, a familiar car passed me. It happened suddenly, unexpectedly, like most things do. We made eye contact before he passed, and my foot instantly lifted off the gas when my eyes connected with my brain. I whipped my head around but the matte black maserati sped up, disappearing from sight.

What was Harry doing this far from campus?

My heart beat erratically as I pulled into the driveway, and it was only seconds before I made it into the house. Father held up a hand in Grandpa’s old room. Phone call. Trudging silently to my own, I wrapped myself in a blanket burrito.

I’d been avoiding my phone, but I caved this time, checking J’s social media to see if he’d posted anything about being in the area to prove I WASN’T crazy and DIDN’T just hallucinate. Nothing. I tossed my phone on the other side of the room before I spiralled.

It didn’t matter. I was in my room. Alone. Safe. I focused on the dust.

Two little knocks disrupted my exciting mind game - which dust particle would fall further than the other.

“You’re turning ripe,” Father noted. His briefcase was still in his hand and he was coming startlingly close to my depression burrito.

“What are you doing-!?” I protested. But it was too late. He ripped the sheets off, exposing me in the t-shirt I’d been in since Monday. “Your mood won’t change if you don’t make an effort.

Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“You’re coming to the water with me.” He hesitated at the door. “Shower first.”

In the car, a sense of comfort washed over me. He’d been right. Clean wet hair smelled nice and felt good slicked around my head. Even if Mom would complain I’d “catch cold,” it felt good to feel something. Dad’s speakers switched between classic rock and reggaeton as I sipped on the chocolate shake we picked up from the Shake Shack. It was a short drive away to the harbor, and once parked, a shorter walk to the public docks.

Our feet dangled above the water. It was too cold to go swimming this time of year, but my body buzzed with yearning despite the goosebumps on my skin. I wanted to feel encompassed by salty water. I wanted to be submerged, where everything was muted, a barrier between me and the world. Between my wet hair and the icy shake, I could pretend my body was as cool as the water below me. I could just…. dissolve.

“So what’s going on?” he opened up the conversation. “You having a hard time at school?”

“I don’t like the sorority.”

His brows raised, not expecting me to be so honest so soon. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, don’t you hate that shit?”

I looked at him, almost shocked he’d agreed with me.

The boats squeaked as they rocked with the rolling tides coming in from the ocean. I watched as a duffy boat wandered to the end of the jetty - where the harbor opened to the ocean. I took another big gulp of my shake, feeling the cold run down, freezing my esophagus.

“I liked frats, but sororities are different,” he mumbled, spooning his shake into his mouth. He’d gotten his usual Neapolitan, and it’d somehow stayed solid on the drive over. We hadn’t been to the Shake Shack in years, but I guess seeing his daughter waste away beneath her comforter was enough to break the dry spell.

“Why? Because its girls?” My lips were breaking into a smile without my consent. He didn’t make sense.

“They’re more catty.” He shrugged his shoulders.

“Dad! That’s verging on sexist.”

“Eh, I don’t know. I’m just saying things. Did you tell Mom you want to quit?”

I shook my head.

“Yeah…” he looked out at the boats, a quiet understanding passing between us. “She was really excited for you to join.”

“It’s not all bad…”

“Well if it’s not making you happy, don’t do it. Your mom doesn’t want you doing anything you don’t want to do. I was in a frat to shoot the shit with friends and it was something fun to do instead of study. If it’s not something fun for you, drop it.”

I could hear the words he was telling me, but it was like they were rolling off my shoulders, not really penetrating. He made it sound so easy, but it seemed like it was a million times harder than that. Everything was entangled, just as Harry had said. Not to mention Renny. If I quit, I felt like I’d lose her forever, too. I knew I could use a better friend, but that couldn’t erase the years of memories we had together. Losing Renny would feel like losing a part of myself. Not that I knew who that was anymore.

“Dad?” I asked. The question that'd weighed on my mind ever since I got home rested on the tip of my tongue.

“Yeah?”

“This is going to sound weird, but did you see Harry today?”

“Yeah. He stopped by,” he said, casually, spooning another mouthful.

I practically choked. “What? Why?! Weren’t you going to tell me?”

“Y/N, I’m working. I have a thousand things bouncing around in my head all the time.”

“And?!!?”

Harry couldn’t reach out to me beforehand? He drove by but- what? Didn’t even want to see me?

He sighed, not understanding the urgency. “He just stopped by, said hi. That’s all.”

My brows stitched. “Why would he say hi to you? What’d he say, exactly?”

“Oh, come on, I don’t know. I can’t remember-”

“Dad!”

“All right, all right. Hi, how are you…” -his brain tried to remember- “he asked if you were doing okay. Then he left. He was nearby for a family brunch or something.”

“He asked about me?”

“Yeah. I mean, he didn’t go on and on, he just asked a question. He was in a rush.”

The shake froze me from the inside, and the breeze froze me from the out. But while I shriveled into myself, my guilt grew. “Dad?”

He hummed.

“Why are people so fake?”

He looked out at the harbor, peaceful for a winter’s morning. Only one small fishing boat headed towards the harbor’s edge, the sole fisherman at the helm facing the wind with the grace of a husband dealing with a temperamental spouse.

Father looked to our shoes as a random swell came, the water rising perilously close to our soles. Then, with all the untapped wisdom I seldom remembered parents had, “People are fake because they don’t know who they are,” he said.

He got a call from the restaurant and drove us home.

In bed the next day, I ignored the pros/cons assignment, watching New Girl and making collages of Oxford in a word document until my eyes were burning from blue light exposure. I knew I was pushing it staying this long away from school, away from my problems. I was pushing myself, seeing how far my apathy could go. I woke up Thursday night at 2 AM from the rain pouring against my shutter and anger pricking my insides.

Harry was the reason I was in this position. As well as Viv, who fucked Harry. And Kiki, who gave me a DG Pretty Please, that just so happened to involve Harry.

I wanted him, but I wanted him to fuck off. Nothing was changing. Nothing was getting better.

It was all Harry, Harry, Harry, and no matter what, I ended up feeling insane.

At one point, I was going to have to choose myself.

I rolled over, blindly reaching for a pen, and scribbled in the dark.

If my therapist wanted a list, she’d get one helluva list.

-----------

“I’m glad you’re going, honey.” Mom released me from the lung-crushing hug.

I’d created enough Oxford collages and daydreamed about a new life until I couldn’t think of any other imaginary scenarios (or postpone collegiate life any longer).

The Friday sun had set. The game had already started. I thought about the crowd, all the people I’d see…

“Can I just stay the weekend?”

“Oh.” Her arms dropped from my sides. “Didn’t you promise your friends that you’d go?”

Renny. I’d promised Renny. Singular friend. My hand was in a fist, thumb rubbing anxiously over my fingers. I didn’t listen to her voicemails, there were seven of them. But she’d texted me fifty times in the past twenty minutes, declaring that she’d Venmo me gas money if I’d come to the game.

I’d been in my hole long enough.

“Yeah, I did.”

“Well, you COULD stay-”

I broke away, shaking my head. If I let her coddle me another minute, I think I’d crumble all over again.

“I love you,” she reminded me. “You’re my precious angel.”

From the living room, the muffled applause from the game show Father had fallen asleep to faded further as I left.

Momma’s robe-bundled frame waved on the driveway, her sad smile burning in my mind long after she disappeared from view.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Come on, come on, come ON.

The path to the stadium took forever. No shame, I was full-on running, braless, fresh pit-stains on display as I booked it to the gate.

It was completely dark now, and the usual fleet of cop cars seemed to have all but disappeared the week I’d been gone. Only one passed me by, and the rest of the student body probably all congregated around the stadium.

When I saw the art studio, I slowed. It was completely dark, except for one entry light. The paintings would still be displayed... My pounding heart told me to keep running, and I hesitated, listening to it for a moment before walking to the door. I tugged on its metal handles, parts of me seizing up as it opened, giving way to my touch.

I crept into the space, feeling like an intruder as I walked through the exhibit.

For some reason, I expected it to look differently, to see it blurred together as I’d seen it before in a panic.

I was still hanging amidst the vines, but this time the paintings looked less threatening. Maybe it was the fact that I was alone, maybe it was because I’d already felt the worst of it.

Each piece was sold.

I looked over my shoulder a couple times before letting out a small shout. A tester.

It echoed in the space.

I did it again, louder, at my full about-to-be-murdered capacity.

I must’ve looked absolutely mental, but as I heard my shout reverberate around me, at least I felt something.

Five charcoal sketches in particular ran horizontally together.

Lust / Longing / Love / Lost / Loss

Had he seen all of this in me? He’d certainly seen other bits I hadn’t shown him.

My phone buzzed, and I pulled it out. Renny. Without thought, I started her stream of voicemails.

Y/N where the FUCK are you!? Zayn’s concerned and I’m concerned and you’re not in the room-

Next.

Are you really sick? Or is this just some BS excuse. Or is this real and Harry gave you tonsilitis or something. I want to hear your voice. Ilyyyyy.

Next.

It’s meeeeee. Niall’s busy and you’re sick and I don’t know what to dooooo. Housewives isn’t as fun without-

Next.

BABE WHY AREN’T YOU ANSWERING ME CALLS DO YOU HATE ME, AND YES I MEANT TO SAY ME INSTEAD OF MY I HOPE YOU’RE LAUGHING-

Next.

DUDE. You will not believe what just happened- Harry just stopped by.

My thumb paused, letting it stay.

I was avoiding his texts because I think he’s a dick. Well, he IS a dick, even if Niall said he was going through a lot. It’s still not an excuse. But Harry LEGIT found me on campus, like not even when I was with Niall at the house, but at our APARTMENT...I-hold on. Ew, pastrami professor just passed me. What are the odds? OKAY BUT SERIOUSLY, I almost punched him when I opened the door because remember last time he basically told me off. But… I don’t know. It was different this time. He seemed… so concerned. Frazzled. I don’t even know the word to describe it. Ugh, if you were here you would be able to TELL ME what the word is. I miss you. Come back.

The voicemail rolled into the next.

I’m just pretending to talk on the phone right now because the boy I hooked up with last year is staring me THE FUCK down right now-

A creak in the pipes startled me, and the voicemail was all but forgotten.

My heart beat fast.

It was very, very quiet.

With one noise in the dark, the art pieces turned menacing. An oil painting in the corner of the room morphed into the Styles’ portrait. It wasn’t here. It couldn’t be here. I squinted, blinking through the dark. The portrait I thought I’d seen was just a painting of two silhouetted men facing each other. My heart still beat like I’d just ran a marathon though. I wasn’t about to be a part of the next horror movie “art comes alive.”

I booked it out faster than I came, answering Renny’s call on the way.

---------

“Thank fucking finally,” Renny huffed, leaning over Lynn to draw me in a hug.

“You didn’t miss much,” Lynn said, looking past me towards the game. I sat on Renny’s other side so she was in the middle, but when I looked at the scoreboard - Home, zero. Guest, two - I knew it was a done deal. Some people had already left, but half the stadium was still here, either hoping for a miraculous recovery or refusing to put their tails between their legs for pride’s sake. I noticed a group of parents in Chapman gear huddled together, waving their flags. No Mary or Lionel Styles in sight.

“How’s he been?” I asked. It’s like my head already knew where to turn, because as soon as I looked to the field, I found him. On the bench, elbows on his knees, head bent over.

“How’ve YOU been?” Renny asked. “I was seriously about to drive over to your house and check on you.”

Someone beat you to it. The thought was sour. For as much as Renny could claim her undying love for me, I was struggling to see the actions to support it. Everyone was disappointing.

“He’s been playing like shit,” Lynn answered.

“Brought back some...” His sentence died. Of all people, Zayn stood there, stopped, popcorn in hand. “Hey, Y/N.”

Felix stood behind Zayn, giving me a small wave. Zayn was clearly waiting for me to make the first move, but I turned away to the field. I didn’t know what to say.

From my peripheral, I saw them sit down by Lynn.

As soon as he did, it hit me like a flashfood. I knew what I was feeling. Anger. Discomfort. Shame. That he could expose me so easily, that he’d looked through my clothes in a way I never permitted. That he could sit down so comfortably without apologizing, as if nothing had happened.

Renny leaned in. “Are you okay?”

“No.”

She flinched at the abrupt answer. “Do you want to leave?”

I stopped myself from saying yes. I didn’t want to have to climb over Zayn to get out of here. That would be more than uncomfortable.

“No, I’ll tell you later.”

I didn’t speak the rest of the game, pretending not to hear him cheer or laugh or make a snide remark to Felix every other second. Like the annoying click of a fan when you’re trying to fall asleep, Zayn’s every move made anger shake my bones. Lynn gave me sympathy looks every once in a while. It wasn’t like me to be this quiet, and even with our friendship being as new as it was, she knew that much.

The crowd didn’t roar this time. They were silent as the clock hit zero, staring blatantly at its twin beneath Home. The Guest team’s few Minnesota supporters jumped like little beans on the other side of the field, but their cries were faint.

We’d lost.

Everyone stood, and Renny linked her arm with mine. A familiar habit. “We’re going to Viv’s for some post-game depression drinks now.”

But I stopped her.

“I think I want to go back to the room,” I winced.

“Come on, PLEASE? It’ll be fun, you were barely here for the game.”

“I don’t know, depression and Viv in the same sentence… You really know how to sell a party.”

“Aren’t you coming, Y/N?” Lynn made moves to follow the rest of the crowd that was funneling out of the stands.

I shook my head at the same time Renny nodded hers.

She huffed. “Why not? It’s going to be chill. We lost. It’s not going to be like the usual ragers.” She popped her hip, completely deadpanned. “You haven’t seen another college-aged person in a week.”

“Yeah and there’s a reason for that.”

Concern washed over her, voice lowering. “Tell me.”

As if on cue, Zayn and Felix stopped their descent down the bleachers and looked up at the girls, waiting for them to join. It was all I could do to not scream at them.

“Later,” I said. “You’re leaving now.”

“I don’t have to leave right now, it’s not starting yet...” Renny began, but Lynn gave her a look that said yes, they were leaving now.

“She wants us to help set-up,” Lynn explained.

“But it’s a small thing, right?” I teased Renny.

My bestie rolled her eyes, lips pinching. “Are you SURE?”

I nodded, sitting down on the cool metal bleacher again. Renny took a step towards me, a sad look on her face, but I held up my hand.

“I’m fine,” I said, when I felt anything but. “I just want to wait until the crowd leaves.” I picked up the popcorn bag she’d left behind and threw a handful in my mouth with a cheesy, hopefully convincing grin.

She grimaced, briefly looking back to Lynn who was anxiously waiting. “Fine. But we’re still talking about this later. I friggin miss you.”

She left with the others, funneling out towards a party she’d probably stay at until the early morning.

I didn’t want to go back to the room. I didn’t want to go anywhere.

The lights were so bright on soccer fields. Bugs flew in and around, racing each other faster than the dust in my room. It wasn’t until the janitors walked past me that I realized I’d been sitting there for too long. I reached in the popcorn bag, but my hand came up empty. They’d gone overboard on the salty butter, but somehow, I’d still managed to eat all of it.

Even with everyone off the field though, I didn’t feel alone. An older Hispanic woman taking out the trash saw me walking down and opened up the bag.

“Thank you,” I said, smiling.

She just smiled in return, nodding her head as she continued down the aisle.

Leaving the field’s gates, I was prepping for another mini run-for-my-life-and-back-to-the-dorm anxiety episode, when I heard someone shuffling. There were faint groaning noises, and I sped up my pace.

For a flash second, I thought someone was winning the “sleep in the locker room” bet, but when I tossed my head-back mid-run, I stopped so quickly, I almost tripped.

“Harry?”

There, in the dark, barely concealed by the shadows, he stumbled out. His abdomen looked… glossy? But then the light reflected crimson.

I ran to him as he fell, his white jersey stained with blood. “Oh my God, oh my God…” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. “What happened?! Are you okay!?”

He pushed me back. “M’fine.” But his voice was strained. He stumbled again, and I reached out before he fell.

I thought the blood from his shirt had fallen from a bloody nose, but his hand moved to my arm in a vice-like grip, revealing a gash in his jersey, I saw more liquid pool out from his gut and I almost gagged.

“You are BEYOND fine. You aren’t fucking fine!!”

“We have to leave. Have to… get out of here.” He grimaced. His face, his beautifully chiselled face was swollen on one side, his lip cut from impact.

“Okay. OKAY. I need to call the cops. The cops. I’m going to call them.” Shaky hands took out the cellphone, but he threw it down. “HARRY!”

“Take me to the physical therapy room?”

I looked at his chest. “You’re bleeding. A LOT.” My free arm reached for the tossed phone, but he tugged me back.

“No. They’ll write a report. I can’t have a-” he winced, sucking in a breath, and I reached for the phone again. “DON’T. Fucking hell. Don’t call anyone.”

My eyes racked his frame again, and I immediately applied pressure to his ab area, right where the gash was. He sucked in a breath, unleashing a string of curses I couldn’t hear right now. “Oh my God,” I breathed.

“Answer me,” he growled.

My mind scrambled for his question… he wanted me to take him to the physical therapy room. “YES! Yes. I have the- fuck, yes, I know where the keys are.” I looked at him again. What the FUCK.

“Stop freaking out,” he grunted, but he weakened the next second, his eyes fluttering before coming back to me.

“Okay, hold on. Hold onto me. Keep applying pressure.”

The physical therapy room wasn’t too far, bits of blood that’d fallen to his shoes marking our path.

“Why aren’t all the cops here?”

“They’re on rotation. The parties... they’llbestationedthere-JESUS.” We paused, letting him catch his breath. But it was shallow. Too shallow.

“Can you wait here for a second?” I asked.

He nodded, resting against a lamp post.

I hurried to the lockbox located behind the planter, punching in the code and unlocking it at lightning’s speed.

I didn’t know if there were cameras. I didn’t know if this was illegal.

I didn’t care.

We made it through the doors, and he was just about to sit on the table when-

“WAIT!” I ran to grab several rags and laid it beneath him before heaving him up. The soft cry he made when sitting down was like a knife through my own chest.

I grabbed scissors, cutting his t-shirt. I didn’t have time to linger, I didn’t have time to notice the way his tattoos were completely concealed by a red current. There were two wounds. One, deeper, the other, more shallow. Both in the lower left abdomen, just above a prominent v-line.

I wiped around the area, pausing above the gashes. “This is going to sting,” I warned.

There wasn’t fear in his eyes. He watched me, and I, him, as I pressed it against the open skin. He trembled, wincing, mouth opening in silent exclamation.

“You’re doing good,” I whispered.

“So are you,” he gritted out.

I swallowed, reaching for the butterfly bandages. But as soon as I did, more blood rushed out. I held a rag to him. “Save your breath. You need it.”

The thin white bandages seemed too little in the wake of his wound, and just as one bandage was placed, he cringed away, regretting his decision to move almost immediately.

“Fucking hurts,” he groaned.

“Stop moving! I need to close the wound up. You’re bleeding too much.”

“Y/N, just take me home. Call Lionel,” he panted.

“I’m calling 911 if you don’t let me at least attempt to close this wound because if we leave now you’ll bleed out.”

“You’ve done enough, please-”

“STOP. TALKING. I’ll call him after.” He saw a flame behind my eyes, and quieted, too weak to protest much more anyway. I came closer, and this time he didn’t flinch. The butterfly bandages at least minimally shrunk the open gouges.

With no other choice, I left him there alone, running across campus to my car and driving back in less than five minutes. It was illegal to drive through student walkways, let alone drive 60 mph, but there wasn’t a choice. I kept picturing Harry passing out, his limp God-like body, turned mortal, weak, bleeding out all over the training room floor. My foot hit the gas pedal harder. I could’ve been a damn marathon winner/race car driver. Let the cops add “speeding” to the file they already had on me.

Once we were both in the car, I looked over at him every two seconds. An entire roll of tight gauze around his abdomen kept the wound from bleeding out, but it was still turning pink. It was the second time blood would have been on my car.

Of all the revenge daydreams I’d had, I would’ve settled for Harry seeing me make out with Andre on the dancefloor over THIS. Would he die in my car? Would I be responsible?? I looked at the cheesy Angel pin my mom had given me for my car mirror. Never Fly Faster Than Your Guardian Angel Can Fly. Where was my angel now??

“Where are we going?” He asked, between fading in and out.

“To your house.”

His hand grabbed mine on the wheel and I practically swerved into the center divider from shock.

“HARRY!”

“We need to go to my house,” he said suddenly, panicked, as if I’d told him the opposite.

I placed our interlocked hands above the console. A safe distance away from the wheel in case he lurched again.

“Don’t worry, we’re going there. We’re going to your house. You’re just in shock, it’s okay,” I cooed, but it was desperate. And it was definitely not okay.

“They’ll ask… less..less questions...”

His grip was unbearably tight for three long seconds before it relaxed.

“Stay with me. Stay awake,” I urged. Harry’s lids kept drooping and I was desperate, blasting the Air Conditioning to an uncomfortable temperature.

Lionel picked up on the second ring.

“It’s Y/N. I think Harry’s been stabbed-”

“What?!”

“- I told him we should call the cops, but he was adamant we call you instead.”

“Seal the wound with whatever you can-”

“I did that. Not well, we didn’t have wound sealant- Okay, I’m rambling. I don’t know what to do, but he needs to see a doctor. Immediately.”

There was a long pause.

“Hello?” my voice wavered.

“Bring him to the practice.” The voice over the other line was that of a doctor, matter-of-fact, somber.

Hoag Hospital passed me, a nagging thought telling me that’s where we should be going - where there was paperwork, evidence, some legitimate accountability. But I wasn’t his father. I wasn’t responsible.

“On my way. I’m getting off the freeway now.”

The call ended, and as I looked at Harry, fading dangerously out of consciousness, my hands trembled more from fear than cold. Out of all the reactions, I hadn’t expected this one. The voice on the other line hadn’t seemed surprised at all.

come talk to me about the chappie or just about how you’re doing! now’s the time to stay connected :)

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jaskiersvalley · 4 years ago

Note

your writing is so addictive, i absolutely adore your beautiful portrayal of jaskier and his witchers! genuinely can't get enough, and you inspire me to continue my witcher WIPs so thank you for that !! hope you have a great day xox

This has to be one of the loveliest, most heartwarming messages I’ve had. Catch me out here with my pompoms and cheering you on to keep going with you WIPs! You’ve got this! Those WIPs will turn into finished, wonderful pieces soon. To cheer you on, have a little modern au ficlet <3

How Geralt ended up in banking of all things was beyond him. He had been on the fast track to becoming a wash-up, a gang member that was either killed in a turf war or sent to prison for dealing drugs. Then he’d been plucked from the system and put into a home with two other boys in a similar predicament. And, somehow, Vesemir had achieved the impossible and turned out three very respectable members of society. Well, respectable on the surface of it. Geralt, much like Lambert and Eskel had been given options when they came of age. Until then it was all about making sure they caught up with their education and had enough knowledge to make choices. Then they could go their way with the knowledge of having a loving, supportive family behind them. Or join the family business. Needless to say, they all joined.

On the surface of it, they worked in a bank that took on exclusively rich customers, grunt work for the most part, helping the clientele open up accounts. While Eskel tended to have the cases sent his way that needed a more gentle touch, Lambert had the money grabbers and greedy idiots. Which left Geralt with the hedge-fund babies and those with more money than sense. His general demeanour tended to help make those interaction go quicker and without confrontation than with the other two. That was what the world at large believed they did and, technically, they did do exactly that. It was the extra on the side that only the family knew about. Embezzlement took a gentle touch and careful planning between several people. There was a reason all three of them worked together. They were a team. A very very rich team and the bank they worked at was where they hid all their funds and guarded the family accounts.

Geralt’s next appointment was with a Mr. Julian Pankratz (Viscount). Charming. He did so hate people who insisted on using their titles at all possible turns. The person entering his office was not at all what Geralt had been expecting. This was a young man of indeterminate age, wide eyed and yet full of mischief. It wouldn’t have surprised Geralt if there was an edge of malice to it.

“Viscount Pankratz.” Geralt rose from his seat and extended a hand. It was grasped in a warm, calloused hand which was unexpected. Usually, his clients had soft hands that never saw a day of hard work outside of shaking other hands.

“Jaskier, please, only my parents call me by my name.”

Never one to insult a client, Geralt nodded and launched into his usual spiel about what he’d understood from the notes requesting the appointment. It was all rather standard stuff, Jaskier wanting to open a savings account.

“Did I understand correctly that the bank also has a vault for other valuables?” Jaskier asked, eyes sparkling. It was perhaps one of the oddest questions Geralt had been asked because it wasn’t common knowledge. Before he could ask, Jaskier was pulling a small velvet bag from a pocket and pouring out what looked like a handful of diamonds. “You see, not all of my assets are in currency.”

“We can store your assets in the vault,” Geralt said easily. Something about the whole thing felt off but he couldn’t put a finger on it just yet.

“Wonderful. Is it safe there?”

If Geralt were cynical, he would have guessed that Jaskier was casing the back to rob it. Fuck it, who was he kidding? Geralt was definitely that cynical to assume the worst.

“Very safe.” He stared Jaskier down, not willing to offer any kind of information on the vault type or the protection in place.

What was surprising was Jsakier’s smile as if he had twigged on to Geralt’s reluctance to share. “I was in a vault once, while it was getting robbed.” The grin turned knowing and Geralt had a sinking feeling that the reason Jaskier was there was because he was the one robbing the vault.

“Must have been stressful.”

“Quite,” Jaskier agreed, fingers running over the diamonds. “Some might have called it a...greasy situation.”

“Hairy,” Geralt corrected automatically. “A hairy situation.”

“Oh I assure you, I was all grease,” came the delighted reply. Almost casually, Jaskier reached behind himself to scratch his back and demonstrated an alarming level of flexibility.

That was when it all clicked, Geralt didn’t even have to think back to the nimble way Jaskier moved. He was definitely casing the bank. Several thoughts crossed Geralt’s mind then. Firstly, Jaskier could be a problem. Secondly, Vesemir had been talking about finding a new grease man. Thirdly, Jaskier was alarmingly good looking and charming.

Before Geralt could second guess himself, he nodded. “I’m afraid I may not be able to help you with everything today, I will have to refer you up our chain of command. But I’m sure Vesemir will see you and be able to help. He’s very good at welcoming people into the family.”

It was almost comical to watch Jaskier’s face fall for a brief second. He obviously hadn’t expected to be caught. Time for the killer. “Though I would advise being more careful with your diamonds. Vesemir is very much more on the fence about such vagrant displays of wealth. You don’t want to find them undervalued by the wrong expert.” Standing up, Geralt smiled and tidied his papers. “Allow me to show you to Vesemir.”

He steered Jaskier out of his office, past Lambert and Eskel and to Vesemir. There was a quiet confidence to Geralt’s steps, knowing that, if all went well, he’ll have kept the family vault and accounts safe. Plus the family will have filled a space in their ranks. And maybe, just maybe, Geralt would have some eye candy at least on heists, if not something more.

#geralt of rivia #jaskier #the witcher #modern au #tldr: jaskier wants to rob a bank

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thekidultlife · 4 years ago

Text

{ The And } | by The Skin Deep | SVT Version

Author's Note: Happy Birthday, Hyeri! With all that's happening in the world and in our world as sister Carats, I sooo hope that you enjoy your day today! Leave the worries and the cares behind today, and make each moment amazing! I wrote this short fic (which is no surprise to you anymore since I always spoil my own surprises) as a birthday gift for you and I hope that you come to love it!!! Cheers to more memories and more laughter and tears together! Love ya, @wooziologist / @milkteafairy-hyeri! 🤣🙆‍♀️❤

Genre: Fluff

Word Count: 2,700

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SETTING: The backdrop is a white brick wall. Two wooden chairs face each other, and a table with two stacks of cards on top is in between the chairs. The filming crew waits patiently for the guests to appear.

[There are small whispers of warm greetings as the guests of the day enter the set. The man wears a striking, black button-up shirt that had short sleeves and is tucked into fitting pants. His jet-black hair closely matches the obsidian color of his clothes, and even though he looks really quiet and serious, his eyes, small and thoughtful, are dancing. He looks really happy. Beside him, is you: smoothing the back of your lace dress that had a skirt which flowed just below your knees, you look up at him and you smile. His one hand, with its long, white fingers, is planted on your back and he guides you to your seat. A warm feeling descends over the set as he makes sure that you are comfortable where you are. He takes his place in front of you, and he smiles.]

YOU: [Picks up the top card from the pile; looks up at Jihoon, and speaks with a soft voice.] When did you first know that you loved me?

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JIHOON: [Thinks for a long time.] Do you remember that November night when you found me at your doorstep in the middle of the night and I just walked up to you and hugged you?

YOU: Hmm. [Lips curl into a smile at the memory.] Kind of...? Yes. I think I do. Awards Night?

JIHOON: [Nods and smiles back.]--Yes. That was it. [Face turns thoughtful.] I think people mostly realize that they love someone when they went through a dark phase and...and that person they loved was there to help them up. But for me, that realization came when I was surrounded by so many people, when I was at the peak of my career, and all I could think about was you. More specifically...[struggles to get the words out]...of getting through my commitments that night and coming home to you. It was then that I knew. That I loved you. Because no matter how happy I was with my life during that time, I realized that I can't be completely happy until I tell you about everything that happened, everything that I have achieved. I realized then and there that I wanted every happy memory of mine to be shared with you.

YOU: [Hand unconsciously reaches out to Jihoon, and Jihoon takes it tenderly.]

JIHOON: I knew I loved you when the happy moments suddenly seemed duller when not celebrated with you. [Holds your hand tighter.] Let's make happy memories together.

YOU: [Nods and doesn't look away from his gaze.] As many as we can make. [Releases Jihoon's hand.]

JIHOON: [Studies the cards.] That was a good question. [Lips form a sweet smile directed at you. Takes one card from his pile.] Ooh. This one is good, too. [Flips the card so you could see.] How much have I grown as a person in our relationship?

YOU: I mean it when I say, "A lot." [Purses lips.] We have to admit that, at the beginning of our relationship, we were both still young and immature and a lot of that youth and immaturity sort of showed in our actions and decisions. But as time passed by, we really turned into better individuals, and I am so happy, really, really happy, about that growth. [Gazes into Jihoon's eyes.] You were once so afraid of telling me your thoughts. You were once so afraid of messing things up and you end up keeping your thoughts to yourself. But now--

JIHOON: --we're best friends.

YOU: Yes. We have become best friends. And that's growth to me. Because couples could sometimes date and love but choose not to try growing together, which puts a strain on what they have. But with us...[Beams at Jihoon.] You see that, and you know things will be headed in the right direction. So thank you, for growing with me.

JIHOON: [Locks eyes with you for a long time and his face looks like the sun as he returns your radiant smile.] You're right. I was once so much like a stuck-up person, never being able to fully communicate my thoughts with you. But I knew that in order to be with you, I would have to grow a lot, to open up this...shell I have enclosed myself upon. I have to 'man up' to you because I know that without growth there was no way, no way at all, that I would be able to deserve you.

[Camera cuts to Jihoon picking up another card.]

JIHOON: What do you want to tell me that you haven't told me before?

YOU: [Eyes widen.] Wow. Ha. [Leans back on chair and thinks.] Something I haven't told you before. Hmm. [Plays with diamond ring on your left ring finger. Gazes at Jihoon and then smiles brightly.] I think I've told you everything already. But there is one thought, though, that I have always kept to myself. [Wobbly smile.] Because I know that it's only in my head.

JIHOON: I'm listening. [Leans over, attentive.]

YOU: [Laughs and covers face.] I have this funny feeling saying this thought aloud.

JIHOON: Please tell me? [Makes his favorite straight-faced pleading expression that he always gives you when he wants to know something.]

YOU: [Chuckles and purses lips.] I don't think I've ever told you that my greatest fear is to wake up one day and find that all this...[gestures at the both of you]...this beautiful relationship that we have, was...was just a dream. [Laughs as a tear escapes your eye. You dab it away quickly.] I feel so silly saying it aloud, but that is one thing that I have never told you. Because it really, really sounds silly when I voice it aloud. Like right now.

JIHOON: [Has a serious expression on his face.]

YOU: But this thought doesn't last, because I would constantly remind myself of all the times...[searches for the right words]...that we've had lots of talks about our relationship before. That what we have--

JIHOON: [Nods.]--isn't something like a dream.

YOU: [Nods along with him as another tear escapes your eye.] Yes. Not a dream.

JIHOON: Because what we have now, we worked hard for.

YOU: [Laughs and nods as you dab away at the tears.] Yes. Not 'based on sheer luck', like you would always point out.

JIHOON: [In a gentle voice.] Could you please look at me right now?

[An intense eye contact ensues.]

JIHOON: I know that sometimes good things that happen to us take a lot of time to accept, but...what we have here, right now, is real. I am real. We are real. I am here. With you. [Reaches out for your hand and holds it tightly before releasing it.] Real. I'm with you. And I won't get tired of reminding you this because you always remind me in your own ways as well of how much you love me and I am so thankful that I have you in my life. We are real. We happened. And we are still happening. Right this very moment.

YOU: 'Like an unfinished song that still holds a lot of promise in the blank spaces.' [Blinks back turbulent emotions as you are spellbound by the tenderness of Lee Jihoon's eyes, looking at you.]

JIHOON: Exactly. [Releases your hand. Mouths:] I love you.

YOU: [Whispers back:] I love you, too.

[You pick up another card and you read.]

YOU: Tell me one thing that you are most proud of about me. [Leans back and waits for his answer.] This will be interesting.

JIHOON: [Stares at you.] There was this one time that I was in your room and I was looking at--

YOU: --I remember that. [Scratches head shyly.] You were so fascinated about--

JIHOON: --your huge corkboard map where you pin down which places you've gone to. [Thinks.] 46 countries, I think...? And those drafts of--what do you call them? Demar-

YOU: Demarchès.

JIHOON: Yes. And...and the stacks of books, the notes, the letters. [Pauses for a while.] Seeing the fruit of all your hard work around your room, in your office--I just feel...so proud of all that you have accomplished and, and of who you have become. I still feel dumbstruck sometimes because you don't know how amazing you are. [Looks at you with memories in his eyes.] I remember our first year together and how we both thought we were going to break up because we haven't been seeing each other for months. We were both so busy. I was caught up in this frenzy of promotions with SEVENTEEN, and you were--

YOU: --taking up my officership exam. Yes. [Bites lip.] We mutually thought that breakup was going to happen because it felt like everything wasn't going in our favor. [Closes eyes briefly.] But we didn't. We tried even harder to make our schedules and our lives meet. And we succeeded.

JIHOON: And I never regretted making the decision to still choose to make our relationship work, because I got to witness how you made your dreams come true. You made your dreams come true and that is what I am most proud of about you.

YOU: [In a light, joking tone that still didn't work because your voice is breaking] Proud that I always catch red-eye flights and talk with difficult people and write tons of letters?

JIHOON: [Laughs with you and nods, amused.] Those, too! But what I meant is...[grows serious.]...I am so proud of you for never giving up on what you wanted for your future. And how you always fight for what you want to protect. Like our relationship. And there was this one time when I thought you would stop working that line of job because it was taking its toll on you during one particular season, but instead you said--

YOU: --what did I say?

JIHOON: "It took me years to get this job, and I'm doing it and experiencing it all the way. No regrets." [Pauses.] The strength in you really resonated within me, and it made me even prouder of you. I am so proud of you.

YOU: [Whispers as you peer at Jihoon with emotion-filled eyes.] And I am proud of you, too. [In a louder voice.] For all that you have done. And for all that you have yet to accomplish.

JIHOON: Do you ever regret choosing to love me, even at the hard times?

YOU: [Without hesitation.] Never.

JIHOON: Even when I am at my most unlovable?

YOU: Even at your most unlovable.

JIHOON: Why?

YOU: Because...being with you has taught me, in so many ways, that there will always be a reason to stay and I will hold onto that reason. And if you were in my shoes, and I was asked that, I'd want you to hold onto me, too. To us.

JIHOON: And I will. We both will.

YOU: Always. [Picks up another card.] Lighter topic, this one! Name a time with my family that you were the most nervous about. [Laughs at Jihoon's expression.]

[You say the answer together.]

YOU & JIHOON: December family dinner.

[You both hold your stomachs as you double over with laughter at the memory.]

YOU: You couldn't answer properly!!! [Covers mouth as you let out another giggle.]

JIHOON: I was so nervous meeting your dad for the first time! [Looks at shaking hands.] I still get chills. I forgot how to speak for a while as I sat there. It was...an unforgettable experience.

YOU: You were quieter than your quietest behavior and I couldn't stand the awkward silences.

JIHOON: But Mom was the savior during that time. [Turns to the camera and bows gratefully.] Thank you for saving me, Mom. I'll do better the next time around.

[You both finish laughing and Jihoon takes another card.]

JIHOON: What do you look forward to the most in our relationship?

YOU: [Face softens into a reflective glow.] Hmmm...

JIHOON: "Hmmm"? [Laughs as he mimicks you.]

YOU: [Grins at him.] Yes. Hmmm. Aside from looking forward to loving you and spending every moment I could with you for the rest of my life, I look forward the most to...the long nights. The nights when we would just talk, about anything and everything. I look forward to listening to you create your beautiful songs. [Takes a deep breath and smiles at Jihoon.] I look forward to sleeping in your arms as you sing me the [giggles] funny lullabies you make. [Takes a deep breath and smiles at Jihoon.] I look forward to more buckets of chicken and music at midnights and lazy days together...and, of course, raising a family with you. [Barely hides the smile.] Raising children with you as an awesome dad...

JIHOON: [Smiles back.] I look forward to all of those things, too. And...and waiting for you at the airport so I could drive you home and let you catch some sleep. Letting you mess with my hair and makeup backstage during concerts. More family dinners. [More giggles.] Driving our children to school...Oh. [Lips break out into a mischievous smile.]...and dissing the horrible memes you make.

YOU: Ha! Admit it. I'm better at making memes and jokes than you.

JIHOON: [Laughs with you. Watches you fondly as you pick up another card.] You don't have to remind me how horrible my jokes are, love.

YOU: [Mouths: I always will.] What am I always carrying that I should let go of?

JIHOON: [Answers slowly.] The doubts about what kind of future is in the making for your life. The validation of other people. Pressure from 'friends'. Second-guessing the plot of that novel you are writing. All of these negative thoughts that cloud out how much you could shine. And...the fear that I would just...disappear...from your eyes like a dream. Just like you said earlier.

[Your eyes lock for what felt like an eternity.]

JIHOON: Because that would never happen.

YOU: [Smiles and looks up to stop the flood of emotions.] You know, I think it's really good that we get to talk about these things here--

JIHOON: --we've definitely had practice from Leanne's incessant interviews. [Straight-faced for a second before laughing along with you at the memory of midnight conversations over conversation starters with me Leanne.]

YOU: Yeah. [Nods as you dab at your eyes again.] But I think it's really cool that we get to talk about this. Because it's true. I live with that fear. The fear that this could end in just [snaps fingers] that quick of a second. I always knew what I was getting into when we started dating, but that doesn't make it any less terrifying at times. [Pauses.] I was always afraid of people's thoughts about what we had at first, but now, that fear is starting to melt because you would always reassure me of security. And you don't know how grateful I am because of that.

[Silence reigns as emotions finally overtake you. Jihoon just watches, waiting for you to finish. He hands you a tissue.]

YOU: So, really...thank you. For always reassuring me.

JIHOON: Do you know how much I love you?

YOU: Yes...? Um. Is this still part of the questions? [Grins.]

JIHOON: [Grins back.] Reminding you, each and everyday, just how good of a person you are, how amazing and talented you are, encouraging you in all your endeavors and being with you through the ups and downs you will face...I want to be always there for you and to make you feel warm, secure and always confident. I want to be that kind of person, and as you can see, that is how much I love you. I'd do anything to make all those thoughts of yours go away, but the most...effective way I could think of to quell your fears? [Smiles.] Is to simply be here. For you. All the way.

YOU: All the way to forever.

JIHOON: [Nods, never letting go of your eyes, thinking of the wedding day not too far ahead.] All the way to forever.

- Leanne.

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