#why wouldn’t he say over 300 or 400? AT LEAST?

[goatsghost]

“yeah… i’m gonna need that.”

[suskz]

Heyyyy

so if you’re not busy I was just thinking about a fic or Drabble abt Chans teeth. Okay that sounds weird, but like biting. He has such sharp lookin canines. OML and He’d be so proud the next morning too! And I feel like he’d def manhandle you. Bud probably had a size kink too. Like am I mental. Probably. Am I giggling kicking my feet like a middle schooler. Also yes.

Kinda just had to talk abt it!!! Have a good day/night

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

pairing: Bang Chan x fem!Reader

w/c: 1,2k

tw: jealousy and possessiveness ; smut ; dirty talk ; Chan leaves marks even tho reader told him not to, but she likes it too ; painful but also pleasant bites leaving ; (subtle) size kink.

a/n: my first ask!! ^^ Initially I was thinking about writing a shorter thing, about like 300/400 words, but it turned out longer. Hope you like it anon!!

I think Chan would love to leave marks on you, yk, "marking his territory". He’d be so proud to see you covered in marks that he himself left. If your or his friends saw them and pointed at them, his ears would turn red, but deep down —not so much deep— this thing turns you both on and just pushes him to leave more of them.

୨♡୧

Overall, the evening went well.

You had fun, you had a nice time with your friends and that new dress you bought last week looks so good on you.

Maybe a little too good. But that won’t be the reason why your friend, sitting next to you, placed a hand on your thigh while laughing. Must have been a mistake.

But Chan didn't see it the same way. His steady gaze on that filthy hand that grabbed your naked skin that way, and the way he firmly grabbed your thigh when, a few seconds later, your friend’s hand moved, indicate that he was trying his best to restrain himself.

And that sent thrills of excitement through your body.

The way he held you for the rest of the night, putting his arm around your shoulders, grabbing your hips so tightly, the way he looked at your friend and the way he ate you with his eyes, they made you wet so much that for a moment you even thought of leaving with him in the middle of the evening to do better things.

Chan isn’t usually possessive, or at least not that possessive, but who wouldn’t be in front of a scene like that?

And that’s why, back home, his lips are on yours, and his hands are all over your body, from your thighs to your breasts, soon naked.

He takes his time with you, worshipping every part of your body he can reach, from head to toe. He licks every flap of your skin and leaves hickeys first on your breasts, then on your thighs, and bites on your asscheeks, making breathy moans escape from your lips.

"Don’t leave visible marks." you quickly warn him. You have to go to work tomorrow, and it would be very awkward to walk around with your neck covered in marks that clearly speak of the night you had.

He leaves only wet kisses on your neck, but once his cock gets inside of you, you both lose every crumb of thought you have.

It’s the first time he fucks you so hard. His movements have a little faster pace than usual, but they are deep and aimed as much as possible at your most sensitive spot.

All the things you might want to say come out in moans as your legs shake.

"You’re mine," he groans, "fucking mine".

And your mind is too fuzzy to understand that his teeth are sinking into the skin of your shoulder.

And he feels like he can cum just from this, from knowing that he’s marking you as his and you can’t do anything right now to stop him, because you like that too, and he can tell by the way your pussy clences around his cock.

In the heat of the moment his mind can think of nothing but how fucking beautiful you are, spread like this under him, leaving him in control of everything, of your body; how you have totally submitted to him and his touch. How small you are under him and how your little cunt swallows his dick.

His hips falter for a moment and a higher moan leaves his parted lips.

His teeth bite your neck and he moans at the arousing feeling that this causes him.

His hands now grip your hips tighter, "You will show that friend of yours these marks tomorrow, yeah?". His tongue licks the flap of skin that his teeth have just bitten, "He will finally understand who you belong to; today it seemed like he still hasn't got it." his jealousy finally shows, but you’ll rethink his words tomorrow, now the only thing you can think about is reaching your imminent orgasm.

"C-close." you warn him, and at your words he brings two of his fingers to your mouth, which you suck, wetting them with saliva, and brings them to your clit, pressing hard —but not enough to hurt— and moving them in fast circles.

"I should register you— send him the video, so he can s-see what he’ll never have," he moans, "You'd like this, yeah?".

And you’re so close, so fucking close. All you need is…

His teeth graze your neck once again, giving you a bite that's both intense and pleasurable, despite the pain, and you both moan loudly, finally coming. His fingers stop moving and his hips give the final thrusts to ride out your highs.

It’s only the next morning, when you stand in front of the mirror of your bedroom’s bathroom ready to brush your teeth, wearing your underwear and the first tank top you’ve found lying between all your clothes on the floor to cover yourself at least a little, that you really realize what he did last night.

Your eyes widen, "Chan!" you call him and he can clearly hear you, being awake and the bathroom door being open.

"Mhh?" his voice is muffled by the pillows.

You sigh, looking yourself in the mirror and touching the various marks on your neck and shoulders, hissing at the painful feeling that runs through your body.

He reaches you silently and wraps his arms around your waist, hugging you from behind and burying his face in the crook of your neck, breathing in your scent.

You sigh again, "I told you not to leave visible marks; I have to be at work in an hour, how do I hide these?".

He leaves a sweet kiss on one of the marks he left on your right shoulder, and you hold back a slight sound of pain. "I wouldn’t mind if that dear friend of yours who was with us yesterday sees them," he says, raising his head to lock eyes with you in the mirror, "there are a couple of things that he seems not to have understood." his grip tightens just a little around your waist.

"Are you jealous?" you smirk turning your head in his direction. He looks at you for a few seconds in the eyes, then tilts his head slightly back to give you a playful bite on the nape. You moan in pain and pull away from him, putting a hand on the slightly painful bite and looking at your boyfriend, who wears an offended expression.

“Good luck hiding them." he teases you and is about to leave, but your words stop him.

"You little…" you stop in mid-sentence, looking at yourself in the mirror and starting to think about how to hide the bites, but he turns in your direction.

"You little… what?" he urges you to finish the sentence.

"It doesn’t matter." you answer without paying attention.

You don’t notice, in fact, that he’s getting closer to you until he scoops you up in his arms like a princess. You instinctively cling to him as he carries both of you back into the bedroom, spinning around first, nearly making you scream from fright and surprise, and then throwing you on the bed.

He then goes to the closet as if nothing had happened, "That’s what you get". At his words you stick your tongue out.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Attendance Issues

I have now discovered the one significant drawback of working from home, at least for me: when absolutely slammed, the temptation is there to just keep working.

Logged in this morning - first thing I see is that Scruffman is taking half-days. Okay, fine. I get logged into the remote desktop where the transcription software is and note that from the high double-digits on Friday, we’re at over 300 reports in the queue. So I’m sitting here going, “What the actual fuck?!?” So I check around other people’s queues. Temp is apparently not in. Goblin’s either not in or not typing (it could be either; she does have some other duties, hates the typing, and will tend to slack off when Scruffman’s away). Milady is doing the odd one or two bits of typing but with Scruffman away, she’s generally the one who takes on his tasks. And Violet (as in ‘shy’; best I can come up with for the quiet, elderly, somewhat fragile lady who also works in the department) ... again, either not in or not typing. So, whether people are away or just significantly slacking off ... it’s just me. By myself. The words “Oh FUCK” come to mind, because I have a horrible sinking feeling that Temp’s on annual leave or something...

Wait. Hang on. I can actually check in on other’s booked leave on our system.

Okay. Goblin was apparently in, so probably avoiding the typing like the plague as per usual, and getting away with it because no Scruffman. Temp should have been in (she was off on Monday). Violet should have been in, but again, she does have some other duties. But where was Temp? And this other person, the one who’s apparently been on maternity leave for, like, ever and is still listed as coming in four days a week - where is she? What the fuck, basically? Was Temp off sick? If so, why didn’t anyone tell me? Are we ever getting Mama Bear in working at all? Why was it only me typing today, for the most part? Should I be asking questions about this?

Point is that we’re going to be looking at a 400-odd typing queue tomorrow at this rate. I did my best, but there were a lot of exceptionally long complicated ones, one of which ... well, this individual jumps around a lot in terms of the dictation. See, it’s supposed to be information from the request form, then macroscopic report, then block key with number of samples per block. What he does is dictates a bit of the macro, then does the bit of the block key regarding that specific bit, then goes back to the macro and does the next bit, then the block key about that specific bit, for as many separate bits as there are ... and then, after all that, he only tacks on the number of samples per block at the very end. So I’m having to back and forth through the bit of dictation multiple times and it’s a mess. An absolute fucking mess. It also causes mess-ups like saying that it’s the end of the report and then pausing before going, “Oops, here’s the number of samples per block!” so that I end up missing it. Or like rushing through and accidentally forgetting a bit of block key. So you can see how that took up a lot of my time. Also I was having to focus the urgent cases because I have no idea when anyone is coming back to help me.

So yes, I am looking at my laptop, quietly panicking, and trying to tell myself not to put in another hour or two. No one asked me to. I did my best. It is not my fault that no one was available or willing to help me. All that would be doing is setting a bad precedent.

...But tomorrow’s going to be mental and Temp is still going to leave me all the long bullshit and she might not even be in tomorrow if she’s off sick so AAAAAAAAGH!

Right. I have to go out to the local pharmacy. Maybe the fact that I am of the ow will help reinforce that no, no, I really do not want to do overtime. Particularly since I wouldn’t be sure how to actually claim it to get paid. Overtime is bad; free overtime is worse.

[jodilin65]

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2009 Upping my exercise time and working at the MT is going great so far! I’m down another pound, and Tom can easily see, after a few days of working at this site, that he could make at least $5 a day. And that’s a conservative guess, too. In another week or two, if it continues going well for him, we’ll open up my own account there. To bring in an extra $300 a month between the two of us would be awesome! In fact, it almost seems too good to be true as long as this site’s been around and as much praise as it’s gotten, so I’m not even going to get my hopes up just yet. Besides, I wouldn’t be living up to my pessimistic nature if I did, would I?

I was going to burn 400 calories on the bike each day, but if 350 is making a difference, then why go for 400 and aggravate my knees even more? My goal is to lose 13 more pounds which would put me at 110 pounds. Then, since it wouldn’t just stay there on its own at nearly 44 years of age, I’ll slack off on the diet/exercise till I float on up to 115. Once I hit 115, I’ll diet and ride on back down to 110 and just kind of bounce between that 5-pound range.

Once my schedule moves forward a little more we’re going to go apply for Medicaid since no one’s gonna give us shit. I tried to tell Tom that all this talk about insurance was bullshit. That’s how politics usually works; all talk and no action. If they really wanted to give us insurance, they would have. Seriously, why couldn’t they just have done it? I always believed that whether it’s a group or an individual, the more they talk about something without actually doing anything, the less serious they are about whatever it is they “say” they’re gonna do.

It’s getting down to 47º tonight so I’ve got the portable going in the bedroom. We agreed to sic the heating on Jesse. He’s the one with money. But we don’t want it to be too noticeable on the electric bill either, so we’re just going to stall firing up the trailer’s heater, which runs on propane, till it gets cold enough that we can’t open windows in the daytime. If it’s like it was last year, it shouldn’t get too bad till December.

Later…

I can already tell the barking is going to be an issue again soon. We’re having another cool day in what’s been over a week, and sure enough, I heard a few scattered barks throughout the wee hours of the night and into the early morning. Thank God construction workers get a lot of time off! However, he does go out every single day, working or not. It’s when he’s out that I have to deal with it. Brandy and Whiskey may know me, but the puppy doesn’t. So when it becomes a problem, yelling up to be quiet may not do me any good. I just hope this guy doesn’t go adding any more dogs to his collection for me to have to deal with while we’re still here! Why does everyone out here have to have at least 3 dogs and leave them outside 24/7???

At least we have the MT to look forward to, plus a few other neat sites that’ll pay a little here and a little there. We’re thinking we may use money from the MT to start his horse program at some point, but I can’t discuss that much here. The more people that know about it, the less we could make. He’s been fine-tuning/testing it since being laid off, but it’s needed about $50 to jump-start it and we haven’t wanted to spend the money till we were doing better. If the program could generate a lot of money fast, then we would have, but since we expect it to gradually build up, we didn’t see the need to rush into it.

For a while there, I didn’t want to kill myself, but I stopped feeling like I had anything worth living for. But now, for the first time in months, I actually feel like I have a reason to get up for each day (or night in some cases). Just maybe we won’t always be so damn broke, and just maybe we will have something above and beyond this quiet, cozy, but old and dumpy little trailer in a few years, and we too, can have our own share of that so-called American dream.

Or maybe God’s just waiting for the right moment to yank the carpet out from under our feet yet again, laugh and say, “And you thought you were going to get ahead and get into the driver’s seat of your life – ha!”

I sure hope not, though, and would like to think He could never hate us that much, but only time will tell. I don’t want to be negative, but I don’t want to get my hopes up either despite the more positive feeling and outlook I’m coming to have on things.

A fellow kiwier sent me a link to what seems to be a great site. It’s not for paid emails or surveys or anything. You just play their daily game, answer the daily question, refer friends, and you can choose from a huge variety of prizes with your points. The cool part is that it shouldn’t take forever to be able to get something. I’ve been working for months just to get a lousy $10 Walmart card from Memolink! Just as soon as I get it, I’m done with them.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2009 How frustrating! I finally got some names from Gregg yet ended up with the very problem I was afraid I’d end up with. Unfortunately, he only had names from ’77 and ’78 and nothing from ’76, which I think is the most likely year that I was at Camp Naomi. I ran some of the names, but the problem is that you have to pay to send messages on most sites except for Facebook and MySpace. So I sent several messages to people with the names he gave me, then FB decided I must be spamming and disabled my account. rolls eyes Oh well, it’s only Facebook. I almost never use FB or MS, and when I do it’s usually cuz of some contest. I have been messaging Jessie on FB, though, so I told her to go back to emails until I get the account squared away and reactivated, and I think I will. Still, they need to come up with a better way to send multiple messages to those who aren’t “friends.”

I’m grateful to Gregg for taking the time to come up with the names for me, but if any of them are the person I’m looking for, I don’t know where to begin as far as making contact goes. None of the names jumped out at me. I still say it’s someone from ’76. I already know who the unit head of ’74 was and we don’t remember each other, so it’s almost certainly someone from ’76. I wish it were the same people every year! But it’s just a summer temp job, so the unit heads and nurses change every year. I’m also almost certain it was a unit head. I doubt she could’ve been a nurse because we spent the whole morning together. It’s hard to believe we could’ve hung out together and played with her dog in the woods all morning long without her having to see anyone had she been a nurse.

Damn! I wish I still had that Polaroid she gave me! It should have a year on it. If it said something like 1971, that wouldn’t mean much if it were taken years before the earliest I could’ve possibly been there, but if it said 1975 or 1976, that’d confirm that no, I wasn’t there in 1974. And somehow I doubt she’d have taken a Polaroid of the dog to camp that had been taken years ago.

sighs Guess there’s nothing else either of us can do at this point. I’m just not meant to know who she was. All I can do is hope she gets curious enough to check for anything online like I did and happens to stumble upon my posts and remembers me. She should remember more than me. She was an adult. At least we tried! Maybe in another 14 years, I’ll come even closer.

I’m having doubts about doing the AdSense thing.

Tom’s still working at that site I mentioned yesterday. I got a comment on KB from someone saying they’d been working there for two years, but they have dial-up, so they can’t do much. Tom said he thinks he can do even more once he gets his Mac back, though that’s not looking likely till November. Meanwhile, he’s only doing small jobs to make sure he really is going to get paid for at least most of them. If so, then he’ll move on to bigger jobs that pay more.

At the end of my day yesterday I had become convinced that upping my daily calorie burn wasn’t going to help and that I should cut my calories some more (not that I want to lose more weight bad enough to actually do so), but now I’m not so sure. I awoke down half a pound, even though I should be up. I had around 2000 cals yesterday and only burned 300. Today’s goal is 400. Every hour I ride off 30. Gotta go do that now!

Later…

I thought I’d stop in and do a little update, even though it’s not much of one. I’ve got a total of 330 calories burned on my hourly bike rides, but now my knees are starting to get to me, so I might not make my goal of 400 today. When I’m able to do 400 a day, that should amount to just under an hour of riding.

It’s cloudy and cool today. We have the windows shut and the fans turned off. We’ll need to open windows later, but probably not until the afternoon. I’m just glad it’s not going down to 28º tonight like it will in K-Falls!

Let’s see, what else. I haven’t started the French course yet, but I reviewed a little Italian and Portuguese, I worked on my story, I proofread/edited old journals, plus I did my usual online work and hobbies. Listened to music for a while, too.

Later…

OK, I brought my total burn to 350 calories and now my knees are saying, “No more today!” So 400 will just have to wait.

I feel like writing, but have nothing to say. I hate coming to the end of my day and not being ready to sleep, but not awake enough to do anything productive. Guess I’ll just go play some Yahoo games.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 Working at Mechanical Turk is going well, Tom said after his first day on the job. This thing’s been around for 4 years now. How it would’ve helped to have known about this back in the motel! Even when he was first laid off. He doesn’t expect it to pay what a regular job pays, but it’s looking like it will generate a hell of a lot more extra money than the paid emails/surveys ever could.

As for me, I just might get paid for journaling after all, LOL! I always did say I wanted to get paid for my work too, though it wouldn’t be the journals themselves I’d be paid for. LiveJournal has this thing where if you upgrade for $20, AdSense will insert ads into your journal and you make money every time someone clicks on them. I’m not sure I want to do this. I’m going to take my time and think about it. I don’t like paying to get paid, but if I’m going to get paid more than I paid, it might be worth it.

I’ve tweaked my diet routine again. Actually, I tweaked the exercise part of it. Rather than lower my daily calorie intake, I decided to up the daily calories I burn. I’m burning 30 each hour that I’m awake on the bike. So if I do at least 14 of these hours that’s 420 burned! About one of my two main meals. If this fails to get me out of the rut I’ve been stuck in – fine. I’m not lowering my cals anymore than I have. So if it doesn’t work, then I’ll stay in the low-mid 120s.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2009 I have what may be some good news, but first, I was reading about how Susan Atkins died a few days ago. I was always fascinated with the Manson case. Disgusted as with any other heinous crime, but fascinated nonetheless. Andy was once in the house Sharon Tate and the others were killed in which they were renting at the time. He thought it strange to be standing in the exact spot on the lawn in which Abigail Folger was stabbed to death and looking up at the rafters inside the house that they slung the ropes over.

It makes me wonder yet again what kind of afterlife may or may not await us. Is Susan in hell? Is there even a hell? Is she having this grand confrontation with Sharon? Has Sharon forgiven her (I hope not)? Or could it be that God’s saying to Susan, “It’s a good thing you killed Sharon’s unborn child? He only would’ve grown up to rape and murder dozens of women.”

Guess we’ll never know till our own time comes.

We’re still getting our mail delivered to the UPS Store for free. This is because when they switched locations they messed up their records.

Tom went to check for messages on the cell phone and was surprised to find there weren’t any minutes left. Knowing that that couldn’t be, he called them from the landline and found he was being charged a dime every time someone would call. And with all the things we do online, that’s like every other minute. So they said that was an error on their part and they gave him more minutes than he lost, but they’re still charging him, so he’s gotta call back on Monday.

Passed Portuguese 202 with a 90%. Next, it’s on to French, then maybe German, then Romanian.

Ok, the good news that I HOPE really is good news. First, I awoke in the early evening and told Tom I had a dream where we were once again in a two-story house. I don’t get the two stories since we both agree we want to stick to small places from now on. Not microscopic like this 500-square-foot trailer, but 1000 square feet would suit us just fine. 1200-1500 would be most comfy, but we could get by just fine with 1000, and believe me, 1000 would be a luxury to us! I no longer collect dolls, and once we get a place of our own, I’m going to take what dolls I don’t end up selling and enclose them in a case of some kind so that they’re not scattered all over the place. This way I also won’t have to dust the damn things.

So anyway, I not only have this dream about the house, but about receiving insurance come Christmastime, and something about a job. Only I couldn’t recall what the job was about for the life of me.

Interestingly enough, though, Tom may have a pretty decent home job that’s actually legit and that doesn’t ask you to pay to work for anyone or waste your time seeing if you qualify for something. It’s recommended for college kids or people who are between jobs. I don’t think you could make enough to live on, but it might be a damn good way to supplement your income. Way better than any of the survey or paid-email sites. He learned about making money on Amazon through an article he read. I guess there’s a huge database with a network of companies that want everything from comments to reviews, pictures, opinions, general information, etc. It’s a bunch of companies looking to gather info that would rather pay tons of people pennies apiece to give them that info, rather than hire someone. Most of the things only pay a few cents, but there are millions of different things that could really add up. We’re hoping it will anyway. Some expire in hours, some days, some up to a year. One company was willing to pay 35¢ for posting a picture of a birthday cake that you made. Another paid 3¢ just to be told what gender you were. Some of the funnier ones asked how long it took for rigor mortis to set into a guinea pig and if you had experience talking with ghosts.

The biggest thing is being honest, taking your time, and not doing it when you’re tired. He’s going to be checking it out on his own for a while and if it amounts to anything significant I’ll create my own account. We’ve wanted a home job for ages now, especially for me who doesn’t drive and can’t keep a damn schedule. As long as I had a few free hours each day to hang with him, clean, work out, and do some writing, I’d work from the minute I got up till the minute I crashed if they were willing to PAY ME FOR MY DAMN TIME AND EFFORT!

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2009 We thought Bendejo was dying, but then he got better. Now he’s acting like he’s on his way out again. Something’s wrong with his back leg. It’s like it’s either injured or he has arthritis. Well, he and his brother are getting old for rats. I’m gonna turn them loose to explore, run around and exercise soon. For how long? I guess until they abuse their freedom. I don’t know what it is with these guys. Other rats we could leave out for hours and they wouldn’t usually be too destructive. They’re trained to a degree, but male rats aren’t nearly as smart as females. In the daytime, it doesn’t matter as much as they’re just gonna look for a place to crash all day. Puerco usually sleeps in the closet while Bendejo sleeps under the couch or on the bed.

Although I’m sticking to paid email sites, I’ve given up on surveys again. Too much time just to be told I don’t qualify. They should at least give you something for taking the time to answer the pre-qualifying questions!

Tom and I did a worst-case-scenario budget for the rest of the year, and since we’ve smartened up with money, we should not only be ok but we should also be able to get his Mac back in November. And this is without any extras. No jobs, no birthday/holiday money, no online job payments, no wins, no eBay sales, no nothing. All we have to do is hope no curve balls that we can’t see are thrown at us.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2009 Hey, I made Journal of the Day two entries ago on KB! Cool.

Our check was mailed yesterday, so it should arrive today since it’s only coming from Sacramento.

Sadly, but not surprisingly, there are all kinds of editorials on how reviled Mary is and why, and a slew of opinions expressed for what the future may hold for her. I only hope most of what they’re counting on is wrong! They’re basically painting a picture of a woman who is still young, dumb and naïve and bound to end up barefoot and pregnant all over again. These are people who obviously have never been brainwashed and controlled by fear and intimidation. Yes, she failed to protect her kid by not getting her away from the monster she was with. She herself has never denied that. She regrets letting the fear and threats stop her. But I also don’t think she should be held accountable for HIS actions.

And as for how much she’s learned. Mary may still be too trusting in some ways, but I think she’s learned a lot and matured over the years. Her writing skills alone show that she’s not dumb. She may not be a genius, but the potential is there. Unfortunately, however, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if she did go back to having babies. It’s all she ever knew. It’s just what Mary does just like learning languages is what I do. I don’t know how the hell she’ll afford it, and I hate to see the kid suffer and be teased in school on account of its mother’s past, but who knows? Maybe she’ll surprise everyone in that department and not have any more children. Either way, it’s her life. She has to make these decisions herself. I will support her either way as a friend, but I will also be as honest as I can be, too. I’m not going to encourage her to return to smoking, for example, just because she may want to. Those things kill. They nearly killed me.

I was a little surprised to learn her lawyer’s been representing her for free. For some reason, I thought her family was paying him. I was also surprised to read she’d be let out with no financial or family support. But what about her brother? Also, I thought her family had money. I think they’ve been sending her $200 a month but can’t say for sure.

Later…

I love the cool colors the KB journals have that are so easy to access/use, but I am SICK TO DEATH of the tech issues! Millions of other sites don’t have all these problems, so why must KB? I got annoyed enough to make entries at the other journal sites, not sure if I’d get fed up with KB for the millionth time and take off for a while.

It’s been in the 90s all week. Wish it could stay this way forever!

It was payday today which means I’m eating like a pig, not working out, and just taking the day off to do whatever. I chatted on FB with Jessie and I’m not even doing any cleaning. I’ve probably had more calories today than I usually have in 3 days! I am going to get in some writing, though. I’m working on two stories at once. Hey, the ideas come faster than I can turn them into stories, even short ones. I know some people say their best writing moments take place in the daytime and that the beginning of a story is the hardest for them, but for me, it’s just the opposite. I’m a nighttime writer who’s really on a roll during the first few chapters. So when I’m on nights I let that creativity come out. It’s almost 10pm here, so my creative side will probably be flowing till around 5am, though I’ll take breaks to eat and listen to music here and there.

Uh-oh. clutches tummy Maybe I’ll be paying for all that candy I ate instead. :(

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2009 I knew it, I just fucking knew it! I always did say that when it comes to anyone in law enforcement or the media you can’t believe a word they say, and it’s so true. It started with me wondering why it’s been 3 weeks since Mary’s been released yet hasn’t contacted me. Would she have decided, either before or after the release, that she didn’t want to bother with me on the outside? I asked myself. Anything’s possible, but it just doesn’t seem like something she would do.

So then I jumped online to see what I could find and what I did find had me bursting into tears of both anger and sadness. The fucking lying, scumbag of a judge overrode her plea agreement and she’s now on her way to prison till June of 2011! What the fuck’s the point of having a plea agreement if the judge isn’t going to stick to it? And how much more must she be punished? She’s not the one who killed her kid. Isn’t the guilt of knowing she failed to protect the kid punishment enough? Nothing’s ever going to bring her kid back, and nothing’s ever going to ease her guilt about it. She’s already been punished for life and then some. And after she gets out she’ll have two years of probation.

The shit of a judge fucked up even more by giving the Monster life instead of the death he deserves which the jury had recommended. It’s life with no parole, but it’s LIFE nonetheless.

I think I know why the fucking cock overrode the agreement, too. Well, obviously most pigs, lawyers and judges love the power and feeling of control that comes with playing with people’s heads and lives and getting them all psyched up for nothing, but I think they only “agreed” to the agreement just to get her testimony, not that she wouldn’t have testified anyway. Believe me, she was more than looking forward to being Gretchen’s voice. I also think the judge wanted to keep her locked up for as many more of her childbearing years as possible. Either way, it happens all the time. They promise you this and they promise you that. Then when they get what they want from you they turn around and stab you in the back. This is EXACTLY what I feared would happen. It wasn’t a vibe either, just plain logic and knowing how twisted the system is. They always tell you things will be “fine” or make deals they know they’re not going to keep.

Just read some more where it says the State Attorney’s Office was involved in reneging on the deal, not the judge, although one report did say it was up to the judge. But it doesn’t matter as a legal deal is a deal and it should remain as is. This is why I don’t trust or believe anything they promise about medical insurance and why I’m ready to just go and apply for Medicaid, even if it means waiting all day with a million screaming kids whose mothers don’t even try to shut them up.

2011 – damn! That’s nearly two more years. I’m just as furious as I am sad for her. She’s gotta be really hurting. If I didn’t know any better I’d tell her to file an appeal, but appeals don’t work so what’s the point? And being white and female doesn’t help either. But she’s a very strong person. I don’t think I could’ve survived all she has and come as far as she has. Even if she has to pretend God cares about her as a means of coping, she’ll make it through. If she can make it through 10 years of jail, she can do a couple in prison. Prison is much easier, though it can also be more dangerous from what I’ve heard. If someone with a life sentence with no chance of parole feels like killing someone because they have a nasty old headache that just won’t quit, what have they got to lose? Strong or not, I can just imagine how scared and devastated she must be right now, the poor thing!

Meanwhile, I emailed her shit lawyer (yeah, I wonder just how much he may’ve known beforehand, although he did seem shocked in the video clip I saw) and asked that he hang onto the things we sent and give them to her when she finally is released. And of course, who knows if they’ll even let her out in 2011? It wouldn’t surprise me if they pulled another fast one on her at that time, though more than likely that would be to extend her probation afterward, not her sentence.

If Tom and I had known what was to happen in my case 10 years ago we’d have run for damn sure, and it’s not like there weren’t red flags all over the place. There were. They called me in for a little pre-sentencing interview and some of the questions asked were: Are you going to try to fight your case? And: What is your property worth?

Now what in the world does my property value have to do with the issue at hand? I thought at the time. It was like they were trying to get a sense of what they could take me for and how easily they could do it. But like a fool, I believed my lawyer when he said everything would be ok and that it was just “routine,” especially since I knew that of all the times I’d done something wrong, this wasn’t one of them. We weren’t shown any of the falsified evidence until just minutes before sentencing and we didn’t yet know that the pig on the case was friends with the people trying to screw me. It’s one scary, twisted world we live in, huh? And if what happened to me could happen to me, it could happen to anybody! So no matter what they try to threaten or bluff you with, never talk to a pig that may drag you in for interrogation. Never! If they threaten to lock you up if you insist on a lawyer being present – let them!

Still nothing from Gregg. I hope he doesn’t blow me off, but I think in the end he’ll either acknowledge that he couldn’t find out anything or will be able to provide me with a name. I think getting a name should be the easy part if they keep records. It’s making contact that may be hard.

Later…

Tom and I were discussing Mary’s case. He agrees that while she got screwed over – no doubt about that – some good could come of this. The prison may be able to line up a job for her afterward that she couldn’t normally just go out and get wherever. It may also help make the transition back into the real world easier.

He’s got a point, but it still sucks to see the courts, who are supposed to uphold laws, agreements, deals, etc., make and break the rules at will. The courts could tell me that I must either testify or go to prison for life and I STILL wouldn’t buy it! If I testified it would be because I wanted to and that’s what I alone chose to do. And no, the truth will not always set you free. You shouldn’t lie in court, but you shouldn’t admit to anything either. She gave them 10 years of her life, she gave them the testimony needed to put the Monster away that killed her baby, and she was a model inmate. And this is how the fucking judge pays her back? Way to go, Judge! May you one day soon enough be on your way to fuck up someone else’s life and drop dead of a heart attack before you get the chance to do it!

Really, how do these people play God with so many people’s lives and not be at least somewhat fearful of retaliation from either the people they’re playing with or their families? I’d never have the guts to be a judge. And have to watch my back everywhere I went? No thanks! I would think that sooner or later, whether the person deserved what I gave them or not, someone just may decide to play God with my own life in return.

I swear that poor girl is way more cursed than I’ve ever been and I’m 12 years older. I can totally relate to the frustration, depression and anguish she’s got to be feeling right now. Her trust in the system is no doubt shot to hell. I gave the state of Arizona everything. Everything. And that includes taking it upon myself to seek a therapist before I was even sentenced, even if it was mostly to deal with the stress they themselves were putting on me. But enough was never enough for that state and nothing was ever good enough for the vindictive control freaks that we’re supposed to be able to trust to do the right thing. I was white. The “opponent” was black. And I was in a city growing so fast that getting as many people as possible in jail or on probation was a major profit for it. So it wasn’t just about power and control. It was a money and race issue as well.

Tom says this is a common thing going on lately in Florida and that a lot of people are getting screwed there. This is part of why the population is dropping there for the first time ever. People GO to Florida, they don’t LEAVE it. But this is exactly what’s been happening lately. The birthrate and immigration rates are dropping, too – yay! I hope it doesn’t pick up along with the economy, but the dropping birthrate (with the exception of 2007) has more to do with the Women & Work movement than anything else. Women are getting more and more pressured to skip kids and work hard, and a lot more of them want to do so anyway, regardless of what may be hip and trendy at the time. That’s ok, though, with all the damn people in this country, there’ll still be too many people!

Some people have wondered why I’m so angry so much of the time. Well, this is just one of many reasons, and no, I don’t feel bad or wrong about my feelings/emotions. I’d have to wonder about myself if I DIDN’T feel some anger at times.

In better news, after switching to the alcohol-based mouthwash, gargling in saltwater and returning to yogurts, my mouth is much better. Yay, I can move on to a new problem now! Hey, variety is the spice of life, right? rolls eyes

Damn this entry’s long! What else? Nothing. I’d rather have nothing going on than bad things going on, but I still wish the economy and whatever’s up there would kindly let us move on and quit holding us back as it has for nearly a year now. sighs Most people would love to get paid to sit on their asses, but still, it’s time to move on!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009 Why oh why must I always have something going on with me? Everything else is fine, but a few days ago I noticed what felt like a burning sensation under my tongue. Then it got worse over the next couple of days and my mouth felt totally gross. My entire tongue and insides of my cheeks were aflame with irritation, even though I was brushing my teeth and rinsing with mouthwash like crazy. I knew at this point that it couldn’t be gingivitis and was worried I had some infection that would need antibiotics. Remember, I’m one of God’s oh-so-lucky ones to be chosen to be poor, on unemployment, and without insurance. You know, the one that just can’t get ahead due to circumstances totally out of her control?

So anyway, I was inspecting my tongue in the mirror and was horrified to find the entire top of my tongue was all discolored. Then Tom did some research and found it could be what’s called thrush and it could be caused by running out of yogurt like I did. It turns out that it’s nothing that isn’t supposed to be there, as we always have bacteria and yeast in our mouths. It’s just overkill with me right now. The yogurt supposedly balances these things out, especially if you’re eating it every day like I was. Then when you suddenly stop, it can cause things to get out of balance. There are things a doctor can give you to ease the symptoms faster, but it can make you more prone to having it come back because antibiotics can cause yeast infections. I used to get them all the time in my crotch when I was young. So we’re treating it by having me gargle with salt water and switching to an alcohol-based mouthwash. I’ll also go back to the yogurts.

It’s not as bad as when my ear and teeth act up, but it’s annoying enough. I also don’t understand why I just HAVE to have something. If it isn’t one thing it’s another. Why can’t I go a whole week with nothing going on??? Even the chest pains and pains in my left arm are back again, though I still seriously doubt anything’s wrong with my heart. I run or ride 5 miles nearly every day, I don’t smoke, I eat right, I got my weight under control, so I should have a healthy heart.

Last night I heard the strangest sound at 2am when I went into the bathroom. At first I wasn’t sure what it was until I stuck my ear in the open window. It was 2-3 dogs barking so hysterically as if something were trying to kill them. Then they just suddenly stopped. As suddenly as if a switch were flicked. Since when do dogs suddenly just stop barking? Especially that kind of wild, frantic barking? I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Either far away or someplace close that was enclosed. I’d love to say it was Jesse or the renters’ dogs, but I know I couldn’t get that lucky, as quiet as they’ve been. I can’t imagine what could be out here that could kill two or more dogs in an instant if that’s what really happened. To my knowledge, there are no bears or wolves here. Just coyotes and deer and deer aren’t usually active at night. I didn’t hear any gunshots either.

Anyway, the paid emails and survey sites are really picking up. I’ve got nearly $100 racked up at about half a dozen sites. I’d gladly settle for making just $100 a month! The paid emails are better. You make more with surveys, but you usually don’t qualify for surveys, so that’s why I like the paid emails. You’re guaranteed to get paid that way.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2009 Back down 1½ pounds which usually happens after a couple of days of having just 1000 calories and burning 200 of them working out.

I sure have a lousy bone structure when it comes to the face. The area where the cheek and jaw meet is so wide that my face looks huge and round no matter what I weigh.

Jesse came down in his truck to get something from his shit pile. I wish all his 10,000 vehicles were that quiet. I never would’ve known he came down if Tom hadn’t seen him.

It’s strange having a husband who’s 150 pounds heavier than me. I hope he can find the willpower, for once and for all, to lose some weight for the sake of his health before it causes him any problems, even though I still think the connection between obesity and health problems is hyped up. Being underweight causes more problems. I know. I’ve been there.

Got a really nice letter from Rosa. I’m not only impressed with how much English she’s learned, but how well she spells and writes it. For some reason, most people’s English in the US is terrible. They can’t spell and their grammar sucks. But she does really well for someone whose native language isn’t English.

She said that’s neat that I’ve kept a journal for so long (I might send her excerpts from County) and that I can always go back and see what has changed. Well, like most people, I’m not the same person I was 10 years ago. My attitude, beliefs, tastes and goals have changed in many ways, and I’m sure they will be different from what they are today in another 10 years, but that’s not my main reason for keeping a journal. I find it a fun way to record the good times and a good way to vent the bad times, not that I can’t vent to Tom and my friends, but writing and talking are just different. I also find it handy to refer back to certain details I may’ve forgotten, like what town in Maine Camp Naomi was in.

Then again, there is another cool thing about journaling and that’s not only to laugh at the funny times but to be glad that the bad times are just a memory. Like the noise and lack of privacy we had at the duplex, being sandwiched in like we were there by the duplex to one side, and the nut attached to us on the other. Paula laughed, not that she didn’t also sympathize with me when I said that I wished I could open the bathroom window there to let the steam out since there was no fan to suck it out, but that they were always hanging out back there and I could practically pop the screen out and shake hands with them! Well, they ended up hearing from me in return when I finally decided to stop being considerate of those who weren’t considerate of us and started blasting my music. And running around and stomping and banging on moving day was loads of fun, too!

She said I can write her in Portuguese when I finish learning it. Well, I’m not finished yet, but I can throw in a few phrases in my next letter.

Rosa’s not with her husband anymore. He’s remarried with kids. I also misunderstood when she said she gets visits from her son and mom. She actually hasn’t seen her son in 7 years or her mom in 10, though she does call them in Mexico periodically. Her only visits are a couple from a church that sees her a few times a year. Yeah, the church can be as caring and compassionate as they are hateful and bigoted. I’m sorry I can’t visit her, though I’m also not at all sorry to be out of that damn state, even if I miss a few aspects of it.

She said she can’t believe I’m down to 122 pounds and I should probably stop right there or else I’ll blow away. laughs I don’t think she remembers how short I am. I’d actually look ok as low as 100 (Tom disagrees) but will settle for 115. So, 7 more pounds to go!

She also made me a card that she wrote in Spanish which is cool so I get to read at least some Spanish. Other than that, she says not much happens there. They’re just a bunch of women in orange doing time. Hey, orange sure beats those hideous black and white stripes at Estrella!

It was a good day for samples. Dove shampoo and conditioner, shampoo and conditioner from some other company, blueberry cornflakes cereal – can’t complain there! Probably won’t be back to the mail place till check day next Thursday.

Tom said he read this article listing the worst singers around. He was shocked to find that Madonna was one of the ones listed. We agree she’s not great, but she’s adequate enough. Then Miley shows up, and again, quite like myself, she’s not great, but she’s certainly good. Between a 7-8. The biggest shocker of all was Celine Dion. She may be a little bit ugly, at least in my opinion, but I would think most people would agree she’s a fantastic singer. Her accent just sounds goofy at times. Guess it’s just a matter of opinion, though I think Paris Hilton should definitely have made that list along with Kelly Osbourne. They’re almost as bad as I used to be!

He also read that while Spanish is easier than Italian, and French is the hardest romance language, which I already knew, German is said to be the easiest language to learn if your native language is English. I guess it has some similarities to English. Maybe someday I’ll check it out and find out if it’s true.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2009 They live inside my head. Those things called memories. And I know there’s got to be more memories of my days at Camp Naomi, as brief as they were, and as long ago as they were. I just wish I could dig them up!

Getting really sick of hearing about celebs adopting kids from other countries. Not only do I not understand why you’d want kids just so a nanny can raise them, but what’s wrong with adopting a kid who lives here? Why does it always have to be foreigners with them? It’s like the kids in their own damn country aren’t good enough for them or something.

I guess all I had to do was bitch about it in yesterday’s entry cuz now my weight’s dropping again. I’d say I was just getting too carried away with the junk and drinking too much soda. Drinking water instead of soda, even if it’s calorie-free, makes a huge difference for some reason. My goal: To bust under the 120-marker, though it may take a while to do it.

Did a variety of things throughout the day, as usual. Took the next Portuguese lesson, reviewed Italian, worked on my story, cleaned the oven and bathroom, worked out, etc.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2009 I was going to call my folks today at 5 PT, but then I decided it was too close to my last letter to them, so I’ll wait a week or two.

If they told Charlotte I’m working on my 5th language and expanding up my 4th, she’ll think they’re joking or I’m crazy, LOL!

I hated to bring up my problems with Tammy and her brood to them. I always thought low of those who couldn’t simply go to the source of their troubles and face them directly. I used to hate it when Andy would drag others into our disputes. But it was the only way to bring up the issue of anything they may want to leave to us, not that they have to leave us a dime, and the issue of their funerals and why I wouldn’t be present. If it weren’t for those things I’d never have burdened them with petty shit like Tammy since they have enough of their own problems. Meanwhile, I’ve made it as inconvenient as I can (until she emails me) for her and her kids to contact me. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before the cyberbullying begins again, and it really sucks to know that there’s nothing I can do about it that I know of. You can send threatening emails every day and unless you’ve sent it to someone like the president, there’s not much protection and punishment against cyberstalking. The courts often throw out anything computer-related knowing how often computers get hijacked and how easy it is to manipulate something to look a certain way. The Megan Meier case is a great example of how easy it is to get away with harassing someone on the internet. But the more ports I close, the less I have to deal with their shit.

And all because I dumped them a decade ago and wouldn’t take them back into my life when they tried to get back in it this year! My sister should’ve thought of that before she knowingly and intentionally, as she finally admitted, sought to get me jailed for letting her ABUSIVE EX know just what I wanted to do to him at the time for supposedly abusing her and Lisa. Things are different now, though. Now they can all beat the shit out of each other. I wouldn’t care. They can even kill each other. Put up with one abusive man that you break free of, you’re a victim. Seek out one abusive man after another and stay with them for years, you’re a wimp who deserves it. Especially when you spite those who were just sticking up for you.

So much for resolving to discuss negative things like them less and positive things more!

Ok, so on with the positive now. Oops, two more negative things first! My back’s been fucked up and I’m up a few pounds. I don’t know what’s going on with my back. I still do tons of ab crunches yet I have lower back pain as well as this pain that’s sort of toward the middle.

As for the weight, I guess I’m either eating more than I realize or my body just wants to “reset” itself more or less. It’s common to gain lost weight back even if you keep dieting and exercising. It could also be muscle weight gain, but I doubt it. My legs are firmer than they’ve ever been in their lives, though! It’s even starting to affect their flexibility, so it’s still possible that the more I ride the bike, the more I gain muscle. They sure feel like they’ve been worked out, especially the quads. If my flexibility is affected anymore I may let the muscles atrophy a bit.

I want to start sculpting my arms more. My shoulders and biceps are built up nicely, but I want to work more on my triceps.

I’ve fallen into a routine on the bike. I burn the first 100 cals at once, then 4 times throughout the rest of the day I burn 25 cals, bringing the daily total to 200. It usually takes about 3 minutes to burn 25 cals.

Got a quick message from Gregg today telling me to be patient, I’ve waited 35 years, in a few weeks I should have my answers. So he’s still on the case.

There are no guarantees in life, but to be able to contact this woman, be it by phone, email or postal mail would be totally awesome. I’ve always wanted to thank her and have always been curious as to why she cared that much. What made me special to her? If I wasn’t special, then she sure did a good job of making me feel that way, and as I said before, that means a lot to a kid who went through the hell I went through. My mother may not be the worst person in the world and she may not have woken up one day and decided she was going to deliberately make her kids’ lives suck, but life with her even on her best of days was quite stressful. She was just no fun at all. Even when she wasn’t being negative and controlling, she so rarely laughed or had much of a sense of humor.

The whole thing spawned a cool story idea. Tom liked it too, and agreed it’s something that I, as a suspense writer, would come up with. I was thinking I could have a person who, like myself, is looking for someone they once knew in their past. And they too, keep an online journal. Then they finally find the person they’re looking for, who knows a lot about their life already from reading their journal. Only catch is that it’s not really who the person is supposed to be! I’ve already got a title for it, too: The Reunion. Maybe I’ll work on that along with Espressioni, which now has 25 pages.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2009 I handed my brother a card I’d written for him. He took it, started to read it, then stopped. “Por que tu no leyendo mí tarjeta?” I asked him (Why aren’t you reading my card?). Well, I don’t know why I’d write a card for my brother of all people, much less see him in person, but I like it when I dream in other languages. Those dreams are fun to have.

It was freezing in here when I got up at just 66º. So I took advantage of the cold and jumped on the bike. By the time I’d burned 50 cals I was toasty warm. Not long afterward, the sun rose over the mountain and now it’s 75º in here. In a few hours, we’ll need to open the windows and kick the cooler on. It’ll be back in the 90s in a few days – yay!

Can’t think of much else to say other than that the investigation is getting more discouraging by the minute.

Later…

It’s still kind of strange to walk up to a mirror, turn sideways, and not see a belly. Tom put strips of scotch tape inside my wedding band since I almost lost it earlier. Despite losing nearly 30 pounds, I’ve jumped up a few pounds. Today I started eating less and riding more. Burned 200 cals on the bike.

The dogs have continued to be quiet, and fortunately, it was just that one day that something – I don’t know what – set them off. This doesn’t mean I still don’t worry that the winter will be as bad as last, but we’ll see soon enough.

I posted the journals on Blogger from when we were in motels in Oregon. What a picnic that turned out to be compared to our motel time down here, yet it was plenty stressful enough!

I’m starting to give up hope, once again, of ever finding that woman who was so kind to me during my final hours at camp so many years ago. I prayed several times, but as is usually the case, the prayers have gone unanswered. No one has responded to my post at the reunion site, and I haven’t heard anything from Gregg all day. My guess is he’s either onto something good or he’s hit a dead-end. If he’s getting nowhere, though, I’m kind of surprised he hasn’t said so. Maybe I should hope not hearing from him is a good thing and that it only means he’s checking yearbooks and asking questions. After all, I would think this isn’t info that’s always readily at his fingertips that he could just look up in minutes and have all the answers to. I just don’t know what would be more frustrating; not getting a name at all, or getting a name and not being able to find the person to contact them. I’d almost hate to come that close for nothing at all if I couldn’t make contact, but if I end up with just a name, then that was more than I got 14 years ago when I first tried to find her.

Come on, God, help me! I just want to say “thank you.” It’s that important to me and would mean that much to me. So please, please, lead the way. Have Gregg point me in the right direction. And yes, a great start would certainly be with a name. I mean, we do have to know who to look for in the first place, don’t we?

I’m a little surprised I haven’t heard from Mary yet. I hope it’s just a case of her not being able to contact me yet and not that they pulled a fast one on her in the end and that she’s still in jail. I know how deceptive and manipulative the system can be.

Sure enough, OLS is still playing their upgrade promise game. Are they going to do this every two weeks? All the members they’ve lost by now must really be catching up to them in order for Brent to feel he has to pull shit like this.

When I get around to it I might pull some of Lisa’s stuff out of my journal. Her notes, our discussions, etc. This doesn’t mean I want anything to do with her or the rest of her family, but I think it may be a good way for me to once again move on if I weed out at least some of it. Not all of it, since they were once a part of my life, like it or not, and I can’t deny or erase their existence simply by writing them out of my journal. Sure would be nice if I could, though, along with a few other things!

As for forgiveness, it doesn’t matter whether or not I could ever forgive them (not that I think I could, for whatever it’s worth) because I simply want nothing to do with them. Period. Not now, not in the future. So, since they’re a closed chapter in my life, it doesn’t matter who lied about what, who fucked over who, and whether or not I could forgive them.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2009 Apartments, condos, townhouses – I hate any place that’s attached to someone else’s place. I’m a modern freak, yet I’d take this dumpy old trailer any day to remain in such a beautiful area before I took a nice, new spacious place attached to someone else. It is just so gorgeous and so peaceful here!

The only negative to my otherwise busy and productive day was the allergies I awoke with. They drove me crazy all morning long. We had our first rain in a few months. Is there a connection? Hmmm… I wonder.

Tom and I went to put $50 on the card to cover our net/phone bill, then we browsed through Goodwill looking for any flippables. There was nothing good to flip, but I grabbed a few bags of incense – Peach, Obsession, Opium and Coconut.

My allergies were too crazy to do anything else and we didn’t want to spend much money anyway, so we came home and I popped a Benadryl. I didn’t want to take one before leaving, knowing it’d knock me on my ass for a few hours, and it did. After I got up I made some coffee to try to clear the cobwebs from my head and then I changed the rats’ cage, cleaned the kitchen and did a few other household chores.

I’m starting to lose hope of finding the mystery woman of Camp Naomi, but get this – I’m no longer so sure it was 1974 that I was there. I remembered me and some of the other kids were trying to convince the staffers that we were bionic. You know, like Jamie Sommers from The Bionic Woman? So then I decided to check when The Bionic Woman first aired and found that the show ran from 1976-1978. I knew this memory wasn’t from the second camp I was in because I know I was 13 or 14 when I attended the second camp and by then we pretty much had the bionic stuff out of our system. It’s definitely something 11-year-olds would do, though. So I zapped Gregg, the guy who’s helping me with this little investigation, a message letting him know that since there was no bionic woman in ’74, he may want to check ’76, ’77 and ’78, with ’76 being the most likely. He said this would make it easier to find out who the unit heads and nurses were back then as he’s a few years older than me.

I don’t usually send friend requests and instead, I let them come to me but I sent him one for helping me and he accepted.

I also got accepted into that group but didn’t bother going through the photos. This is because I can’t remember what she looks like. She could walk into this room looking exactly like she did back then and I still wouldn’t recognize her. I just think she might’ve had dark hair and eyes and that she was a unit head who would now be in her 50s.

I wish I could’ve written journals all my life! Or at least since I was old enough to write. I swear I remember my mom asking me if I remember when the last time was that I was in camp while we were packing me to go to the second camp when I was older and living in the older house. Then I said, “No, how old was I?” and she said I was 9.

So either her memory was messed up or I’m remembering a conversation we never had. Tom said that from what he’s learned about how the brain works, we tend to fill in the gaps with false memories when we’re kids. That makes sense too, as I remember asking my mom if there was ever a door in the kitchen of the first house. In the doorway that led to the living room area, that is, and she said no. That’s when I figured that the “memories” of a door being there was probably a dream I’d had.

So there are probably more factual memories of this camp and this woman, but as Tom said, I couldn’t trust anything else I may remember to be real. I’m pretty sure the buses were real, though. That’s another memory that just popped into my head for the first time in decades today. Something like 5 or 6 buses picked us up at the JCC and took us to the camp. And of course, while most of the kids saw it as one big party, I just wanted to go home, LOL.

Tom suggested I “do inventory” to try to remember things.

When did I first learn I was going to camp?

I don’t know.

Who sat next to me on the bus?

I don’t know.

Off to a good start, huh?

Why is it so important that I identify/contact this woman to thank her? That one I can easily answer. Without being an abused child, it’s something that I suppose would be hard for one to understand. Let’s just say that with all the shitty people I’d known, I just didn’t take the few good ones for granted. I still don’t.

I can’t ask my parents anything because they tend to be paranoid and they may be suspicious of why I’m asking and assume I have some sort of ill intentions in mind. Plus, they’re getting a little old for their own memories to be that reliable as I mentioned the other day when a certain young and naïve individual went a little coo-coo on me.

Anyway, I joined the group and left my own post, but haven’t gotten any replies yet. Haven’t heard from Gregg yet either, though I suppose it may take him a while to do what research he needs to do.

If I don’t get to thank this woman in this life, and it’s looking like once again I’m not going to, I hope there’s some kind of afterlife I can thank her in. I know that many believe we meet up with those we knew on earth, something I have mixed emotions about. Of course I’d want to reunite with those I love and care for. But I don’t want the assholes in the mix either. Well, not unless I get to kick their asses! And kick ‘em good.

Random pet peeve of the day – men and abortion. I don’t think anyone should have the right to make other people’s private, personal decisions, be it who they marry or what they do with their lives/bodies, but men having the right to vote on abortion really pisses me off even more. Why should they? They don’t carry/have babies! Most of the time they say they don’t want the responsibility of kids anyway, so why should they have any say in the matter? Especially since the kid’s not literally half theirs. They may’ve had a hand in influencing its existence, but it’s more a part of the woman. It’s like giving someone a black eye. You can give it to them, but THEY’RE the ones that carry and live with that black eye, not you.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2009 Yesterday turned out to be a case of the dream premonition that came true… but didn’t. Yeah, this is the first dream premonition with an interesting twist, and if you look at it the way Tom sees it, I guess it could be interpreted as a good thing. Things got a little scary, though, at first, but only for an hour, and it wasn’t nearly as scary as back in the motel.

When Tom got up I told him about the dream and how he came home to a second-story house that seemed to be ours, saying that the check hadn’t come but holding a couple of bags filled with Chinese food. I told him I was worried it was a premonition and that our money wouldn’t be there. “You know I have these things,” I told him. “I may not have them that often, and I may’ve lost my influencing ability when it comes to winning sweeps, but you know I’m rarely wrong.”

At noon he left for the mail place and I prayed to God that in this case, I would be wrong, but when he returned just a half-hour later, I saw that I wasn’t wrong at all. I started to get mad at God and started to write the following “thank you” rant, but watch out, it’s pretty harsh!

Thank you, God, for ignoring my prayers for our check.

Thank you for our measly food supply and the fact that we’re virtually out of money.

Thank you for continuing to beat us over the head with poverty.

Thank you for putting this additional stress on us.

Thank you for ignoring my prayers for employment.

Thank you for all the cavities I have with which I have no money to deal with.

Thank you for my rapidly worsening vision I have no money to get better glasses.

Thank you for kicking us down every time we start to get ahead.

Thank you for making sure that no matter how hard we work, we have no security in life whatsoever.

Thank you for giving a damn about my husband and me so much that you would bless us with this same old poverty bullshit year after year while murderers strike it rich.

Thank you for choosing us to be one of the chosen ones to have to play poor-ass bums no matter how hard we try to get ahead.

So then Tom called and learned that the check was printed on the 10th. He waited till 2:00, called the dumb cock at UPS (yeah, typical dumb-ass males!), and was told that he accidentally missed the check, but it was there!

So now I’m going back and forth between thanking God and saying I was sorry for letting him have it, although there’s certainly more than just a grain of truth to those rants. The relief I felt was wonderful, like a natural high, though I would still prefer to stop having these money scares, big or small!

The thing about it is that he got me to see something I didn’t see about the dream before he called and learned the check was really there. When he was trying to reassure me that things would be ok no matter what the case was with the check, he pointed out the Chinese food and the house, saying that if the first part turned out to be true, then why couldn’t the second? Why couldn’t we eventually have money again for Chinese, and why can’t we own a house in a little over 1000 days when he’s 55?

Well, the pessimist in me won’t go getting her hopes up, but he has a point. Thinking back to other dream premonitions – everything happened that I dreamed. There were no parts of the dream that didn’t come true. There were some slight differences, but it all happened just as I dreamt it.

So now it’s nice to have my worst problem if only for today, be wondering if it was wise to put our guinea pig-sized rats back in the smaller cage.

Anyway, they were way off on the weather for today! It was supposed to be 95º. Instead, it’s 88º and cloudy. There was even some thunder and wind. It hasn’t rained in a few months, so it will soon.

I wish I could pick just one journal site. It’d be easier. But I just love the different features the different ones have.

I was counting on 4-5 more hours of alone time since I work better alone, but Tom got up earlier than expected because he fell asleep earlier than usual. For now, I’m gonna scout out as many of those paid email programs as I can find. They’re totally worth the effort and extra money, unlike paid surveys that almost always tell you that you don’t qualify AFTER you’ve wasted 5-10 minutes, and you don’t get credit for it either.

I want a couple of tattoos and not temp tats. I want a snake wrapped around my right wrist/forearm, and a pink floral armband on my left arm.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2009 I had a very scary dream for someone who’s known to have dream premonitions. I dreamt the check still hadn’t arrived, and Tom said, in a dubious tone of voice, that he’d call Monday and see what we had to do. The only thing off about the dream was that he had just returned with tons of Chinese food and we appeared to be in a second-story house that was ours.

I really hope to hell that was just a dream! I swear I WILL kill myself before I let God beat me over the head with money for another 30-40 years! Man, I’m tired of this shit! I’m tired of being held back from living. I just don’t get it. You got tons of people out there sitting on welfare who will do anything to get out of having to work 5 minutes. Yet here we are, perfectly willing to work to get ahead, yet circumstances totally out of our control won’t let us!

Our lives weren’t bad for the last two years in Oregon. I couldn’t get insurance up there and I hated the cold and snow, but it wasn’t bad. Nonetheless, we came down here in hopes of making our lives even better, yet it’s like we’re being punished for trying! Except for that one ear doctor that we had to pay for ourselves, I haven’t seen the inside of a doctor’s office since 2004. My last female exam was in 1999. I don’t care to get a female exam even though I know I should every year, but when am I ever going to have the luxury of just getting to a dentist???

And when are there going to be jobs in this area???

Later…

I still can’t believe the childish, immature outburst she sent me and all over a timeframe I never mentioned. She’s upset that I called her insane, but what else am I to think when someone pitches that kind of fit over when we were supposed to have first gotten in touch? Like I said before, all she had to do was just ask me about it in a civilized manner and I could’ve told her that I didn’t mention a timeframe at all, just that we’d been in touch.

Her going from “I can’t believe you lied! Stay out of my life!” to wanting to kiss and make up and move on if I’d apologize for something she either imagined or misunderstood is classic manic/depressant behavior. I’ve seen enough emotional instability in this world to know the signs. Troubled people like this often go back and forth from sweet and kind to raving lunatics, screaming all kinds of paranoid accusations at whomever after they just told them how much they love them and all that sweet shit. They also tend to be contradicting. She’s married with kids on FB, so it seems, but single and childless on MS. Whatever. The point is I don’t know this person. Maybe she’s crazy or maybe she’s just acting that way thinking she’ll get what she wants from me that way, but I DON’T WANT to know her in any way. Why are some people so obsessed with trying to “win over” those who don’t want a damn thing to do with them? Is she that bored or miserable in life that she feels she needs such a challenge? She got along just fine without me in her life this long, so why now? Why is it that all of a sudden she and the others feel they just have to send all these messages? What is she going to do next? Join Kiwibox so she can harass me there, too?

I shake my head sadly and I can’t help but wonder who the hell she thinks she is. Who does she think I am? A punching bag she can just beat on whenever she gets pissed? Someone who will then be quick to apologize for fictitious lies after she’s done pitching her little shit fit, smile, move on and forgive her as if nothing ever happened? Get real! Just keep on dreaming cuz you blew it, honey. You will never have my love or forgiveness. I will never again be an aunt to you. Not now, not in 5 years, not in 10 years, not ever. So sending me notes saying that you’re now all lovey-dovey with your mom and trying to impress me with your income is just a waste of time on your part. If your life was so peachy keen you wouldn’t be drinking or doing drugs (though you may’ve curbed that much) and you certainly wouldn’t be throwing temper tantrums in messages to me as you have been over a lousy date. If you’re really with it in the head, then why act like I told my father something like you came here, ran into our living room with your car, punched out our windows, threatened to kill us, then burnt the place down? My father’s 78 years old for God’s sake! Do you really expect the man to be that sharp-minded in what’s going on with whom and when? Every time we talk they seem to have forgotten something we’ve discussed, or can’t remember if I said I already did a certain thing or was going to do it and stuff like that. They’re fucking old, for crying out loud! Of course they’re going to be confused at times. And of course, I also didn’t hear whatever was said, so I don’t know that my dad really told anyone that we first talked in April. There are a few mental cases in the family, after all. And they like to make up things along the way. Anything to start trouble.

What it all comes down to is that this is the reason I dumped my entire family a decade ago. Because I was sick of the he said/she said bullshit and all the instability around me. I respect myself enough not to allow myself to be subjected to such mean, stupid and abusive people whenever possible. I know some people don’t mind being around mean, negative people, but I do. I know I deserve better than that and that I have enough other shit to deal with. I can throw a toxic person away the same as I can throw an old candy bar wrapper away. And this is just what I’ve done with my siblings, nieces, aunts, uncles, some cousins and old “friends.” I’ve crumpled them up like old pieces of paper and have tossed them into the wastebasket where they belong.

And I don’t recycle old trash!

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2009 OMG, Lisa’s gone mad! Just totally insane! Either that or she wrote these incredibly manic, paranoid and untrue words while flying on drugs. Whatever the case, I’m not the least bit surprised and now I’m beyond even feeling sorry for the girl like I used to. She’s left me totally numb. Well, then again, maybe I am just a touch embarrassed for her and ashamed of her. She’s really making a fool of herself. Just when I thought I wasn’t going to be bothered by anyone anymore, I receive this beautiful message:

"Well I have to say that I am shocked that you would lie about me! I have all the dates and the first time we talked was august 10th not April like you said in your letter to my grandfather! Dont even lie! I cant believe you! I was the only one in this family that wanted to remain civil and not be judgmental about you and this is how you pay be back! Leave me alone dont ever contact me again! I never said anything bad about my mother either,whatever relationship I have with her is between me and her..not you. You are causing me stress and I dont need and fucking drama or immature liars in my life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! leave me alone! I cant believe you did this to me! the onloy one that was trying to be there for you! no hard feelings cause I dont hold grudges and I try to live a good postive life so goodbye!"

I went and checked my last letter to my folks and the word “April” isn’t even mentioned at all. Not even “August.” I didn’t give any timeframe at all. Had she sent me a civilized message asking about the dates, I’d have gladly cleared this up for her and let her know that if anyone told her April, then it was done in error if it wasn’t a misunderstanding on the drama queen’s part. So I don’t understand how I’m “causing her stress.” She is correct, though, in saying that August 10th was the first time she contacted me. She also contacted me on August 12th and 13th, and in this next message sent to me on the 13th, you can see she’s rather contradicting as far as not saying anything bad about her mother.

"Hey just got your message and thank you very much. The only isssue I has was with you and Sarah. I love my sisters very much they are pretty much the only family that I do talk to. I have decided it would be best that I dont talk to my mom because we do not see eye to eye on anything. Not saying anything bad cause I know how she will react if a, she finds out im talking to you and b, if she hears im talking shit on her and I will not give her the satisfaction and act immature and say bad things about her even though she is a very negative mean person, who I want nothing to do with. I am the type of person who gives everyone a chance and tries to help people even though my childhood and young adult life have been nothing but hell! I have dealt with severe depression, eating disorders, drug and alchol issues and many others. (cant spell today lol). I am trying to get my life back in order. Getting rid of all the horrible memories of my past that I have hidden with drugs and alchol. Im also trying to get rid of any type of drama or negativity as well. I live on my own and I can talk to any one I want. But family is family so from time to time please check in with me, between us so that I know you are ok. Mom has no influence on me and never will be be able to control me again. As long as you dont contact them I give you my word I am ok. But also on that note I would hope nothing bad will be done or said to my sisters cause I love them dearly. I have spent years trying to locate you, and regardless on what you have done in your past I would never judge cuz I know what its like to be judged and put down by your own family. Hope to hear from you soon in response to this letter thanks hun! Lisa"

Now that there’s no need to “protect” Lisa and keep anything she sends me a secret, I can speak freely now. What’s next? A nastyogram from Becky? She’s the only one in the drama queen’s family I have yet to be harassed by.

I not only sent my folks copies of Lisa’s last two messages, but I also offered my passwords to my diary, MS and FB accounts if they’d like to see just who’s really being victimized here. If they can use someone else’s PC that they trust that has internet access, they’re welcome to see the dozens of goodies sitting in my inboxes. I warned them, though, that the messages are really sick! Just disgusting and downright cold. If it wasn’t for my general lack of trust in law enforcement maybe I’d have already done something about them, though they are still nothing but a bunch of words and not actions. A bunch of sick and nasty words, but words nonetheless.

Poverty is a rough life that really sucks the life out of you. Not that I want to kill myself or anything, but the point is that I have enough crap to deal with and so I’m hoping I won’t be forced to take legal action against any of them as I continue to save up the nasty messages, in which even my husband has been attacked in. I don’t want to get them in trouble; I just want them out of my life! And for people who love to tell me I’m crazy, should’ve jumped from a higher window, should be killed, I ought to get hit by a bus, etc., you would think that they too, wouldn’t want anything to do with me, yet it’s like I’ve become a twisted obsession of theirs. I racked my brain trying to figure out what could be motivating them to attack me like this, and unless it’s drugs, alcohol or just plain craziness, I’m clueless. To drive a wedge between my folks so they boot me from inheriting anything? Well, like I said before, we’d never see anything they left to them or Larry to give to us, and I told them so.

I never wanted contact with these sick assholes in the first place. THEY came to ME. I keep dumping them, they keep coming to me. All I ever did was reply to the first few messages from Lisa and I am sorry I did so, and I’m sorry I bothered with Sarah. Larry’s the only one leaving me alone that I don’t want contact with. I have gone and utilized the “block user” function on both MySpace and Facebook so that none of them can contact me at least through there. I can’t close every possible port out there, but I can close some. I have absolutely no problem with never again having anything to do with Tammy or her kids, and again, I’m sorry my folks can’t check out this horribly threatening and scandalous journal I’m supposed to have that goes magically undetected and is allowed to remain online.

Anyway, the thought of possibly having to live another 30-40 years scraping pennies to the tune of barking dogs since most people out here don’t believe dogs belong indoors, is rather depressing, especially if Tom’s wrong about our future. Tammy might be right when she said I’ll always be poor trailer trash, and so this is why we don’t need any more trouble in our lives. We have to stress enough just at being poor and now that the weather’s cooling down again the dogs will probably put additional stress on me. I’m still pretty sure it’s a weather thing for them and that the cooler weather will stir them up when Jesse’s not around to keep them in line. And who knows how much longer the job market will be so bad?

I just want to forget about these sick fucks who I wish would drop dead until the next time they feel the need to remind me of their sorry existence through yet even more unwanted contact. Even if they were to apologize like crazy and offer money to try to make up for the things they’ve said and done – I don’t want it. I just want to not have to know they exist other than as a bad memory!

Just Tammy’s admitting that her goal was indeed to get me in jail for letting her “abusive” ex have it is totally unforgivable. She may not have known our address, knowing that the cops could find us themselves, but what else could “I did it once I will do it again” possibly mean?

The drama queen isn’t behind the mysterious FB buddies, though. I ran the emails, so unless she’s here in Sunnyvale, she’s not connected to that much. Or the person asking me about all the drugs they doped me up with when they made a walking pharmacy out of me as a kid. That person is up in Washington.

Jesse’s been home and the weather hot, so no shit from the dogs other than the one cool day we’ve had so far where he at least seemed to be out during the morning. Just a single bark at 4:15 this morning and a few at 4:30 yesterday morning. Next week will be the real test. The temp’s gonna drop like a mother-fucker over the weekend, and even if Jesse doesn’t work, he still goes out every day if only for a few minutes.

The only other thing I’ve heard is that mysterious hammering and saw from up at the summit. Someone’s obviously got a huge project going on up there.

I have quite an update about a certain person from 1974, but after Lisa’s shit, I’m not in the mood for any more writing right now. I have other things I have to tend to.

Later…

Who the hell were you? I asked myself this several times on and off since an angel gave me my very first taste of love, respect, acceptance and kindness back in 1974 at Camp Naomi in Raymond, Maine. I don’t think I lasted much more than a week there being the little terrorist that I was who rebelled against the camp’s strictly structured routine. The freedom freak in me longed to be set free and I missed having any kind of space and privacy, something you definitely can’t get in a bunk filled with about 20 other campers. As was the case with Brattleboro, Valleyhead and jail, if you didn’t want to do what they wanted you to do, when they wanted you to do it, you had it rough. I remember feeling totally lost, like a puppet on a string who could never be her own puppeteer. I also felt smothered by all the constant people and activity, and so as much as I didn’t get along with my family, I missed my home, my own room, and my own things. I wanted to hang out in the woods in our backyard by myself or listen to my music in my room. I did not want to swim in a scummy lake with a bunch of strangers, nor did I wish to paint cows and chickens with them on some imaginary farmland. Yet we did everything together as one giant body. We swam together, we ate together, we painted together, we showered together, we played ball together, we slept together, we SHIT together!

My memories of “the angel,” whoever she was, are few and quick. On my last night there, they had trouble getting us kids to sleep. I don’t remember if we were just on a sugar high from all the junk food we were pigging out on or if something else was going on. This woman was in the bunk that night, playfully threatening to tickle me to death if I didn’t go to sleep. Then at one point, I ended up with her in a tiny cabin that had only two beds in it, a little kitchenette in front, plus a bathroom. She had a small dog that might’ve been a terrier. She gave me a Polaroid of the dog that I wish to hell I still had, not that I expect it would yield many clues as to her identity. She fell asleep to me trying to “read her mind.” You know, trying to guess what color she was thinking of and silly stuff like that that kids do.

The next morning she made us breakfast. Afterward, we were outside and I remember asking what I was going to do until my dad picked me up. She playfully swung me, a rather undersized 9-year-old, up in the air and said I was going to hang out with her. And so off we went to play in the woods with her dog. She showed me how it would find her when she’d go and hide behind a tree and stuff like that.

Then Dad arrived, who she said was very handsome. Then, as we were pulling away, she was actually in tears! I didn’t think much of it as a 9-year-old, but later I found it quite touching that she could come to care about me so fast as to be in tears upon my leaving. She was just so kind to me and I would love to try to find this woman and thank her for caring about me!

My mental image of her is quite blurry. Remember, this was not only 35 years ago, but we see adults differently as kids. I think she had dark hair that wasn’t short or overly long. Couldn’t begin to say what eye color she had. Maybe dark?

As I documented in 1995, I tried to find this woman to no avail. I simply learned a few things about the camp itself, that it became co-ed, was renamed Camp Nashoba North, etc. Then the other night she just popped into my head again and I wondered the same damn thing I’ve been wondering forever now – who in the world was she? How can I find her?

Realizing that the internet now had a hell of a lot more than it had 14 years ago, I searched the camp and found a reunion site both on and off Facebook. For some reason, the name Robin stood out in my mind, so I searched the pictures for a Robin and there were a few, one seeming like a possibility. But when I contacted this guy on FB that possibility got shot down when he informed me that we’re the same age.

He said it might’ve been Barbara, the assistant director’s wife, and that the dog, which could’ve only belonged to so many people, might’ve belonged to a caretaker named Gene. I searched for the name he gave me in the state of Maine. Ironically enough, though, I got a hit in my hometown of all places on a woman who is now 67. I got the impression the woman was single and in her late teens/early 20s, but what would I have known at 9 years old? All I can do is hope to identify and locate her so I can finally deliver that well-deserved “thank you” to her. I don’t know why she became so attached to me. Maybe I was the little girl she thought she could never have. Maybe I reminded her of someone else. All I know is that she showed me something I never got from my own family, and I never forgot it.

Hey, cool! I just got another email from Gregg, the guy helping me hunt down this woman. He agrees Barbara is probably too old and says it was either a unit head or a nurse. They lived in those small 2-bed cabins. He also says he’ll ask who the unit heads and nurses were in 1974 which would narrow it down to 4 women and this shouldn’t be hard to find out.

I’m so excited at the possibility of being closer than ever to finding out who she is! I’d go with a unit head as my guess.

Why couldn’t the drama queen have been born infertile?! She not only never could handle kids worth a damn, but now I have to deal with not only her shit but her kid’s shit, too.

Here’s the latest message from my newest cyberstalker, Lisa. At first I was like, how the hell did this get through to me (on MySpace) after I blocked her? I guess I didn’t do it right, so hopefully I got it right this time around. If not, I’ll report her. These people obviously still don’t get that I DON’T WANT ANY FUCKING CONTACT FROM THEM! Jesus, what do they not get about those words?! Anyway, here’s what she said:

"I just wanted to thank you for writing about me in your journal about how im insane and a drug addict! Its really sad that you have to make me look bad and talk shit about me. I have a great job that I have been employed at for more than 8 years making a lot of money. I have a wonderful man who I have been withfor 8 years as well and I live in a great condo, so life for me is well. And even in my past I have learned to forgive people and be a nice positive women. So you can think all you want and say all you want but I have a great life without drugs and drama and my sisters and mom have a great relationship, we may not always see eye to eye but I have firgiven them and move on. So go ahead say what you want about me, I willo pray for you and I hope your life can change around and you can change and become a better person and not put other people down or talk about them,its not good karma. Well take care I wont hold any grudges not the type of person I am. I hope you get better and if you decide to apoligize for what you said about me and the lies that you told I am willing to move on! take care"

OMG. Just wow.

“I just wanted to thank you for writing about me in your journal about how im insane and a drug addict!”

You’re welcome.

“Its really sad that you have to make me look bad and talk shit about me.”

The only one making you look bad is YOU. If you don’t want people writing or saying things about you that you don’t like, then quit contacting people who don’t want to be contacted by you and who you yourself told to “leave you alone.” At least give them the blessing of being able to honor that request and quit reading journals that obviously upset you and that you cannot handle.

“I have a great job that I have been employed at for more than 8 years making a lot of money. I have a wonderful man who I have been withfor 8 years as well and I live in a great condo, so life for me is well”

Then why are you so miserable that you turned to drugs and alcohol? See, she keeps contradicting herself. She has nothing to do with her mother, but now she does. Her life was hell, but now it’s great.

“And even in my past I have learned to forgive people and be a nice positive women”

That’s how you get fucked over by the same people over and over again; by being too nice and too forgiving, and that’s why I’m the least forgiving person on earth. Bad karma or not, I will never forgive or forget what she or her mother has done to me. It’s simply too late. Why they keep trying to win me over and get me back into their lives is beyond me. Why do some people want to bother with those who don’t want to bother with them??? These people mean nothing to me, and once again, funny how it’s only THEM doing the contacting, isn’t it? I don’t care if they’re rich, poor, happy or miserable, but only that they STAY THE FUCK OUTA MY LIFE! I don’t want to be friends, I don’t want to be enemies, I just want to be absolutely nothing to each other. I want someone to be able to bring me up and for them to be like, Jodi? Jodi who? I want to be a stranger to them. A distant memory that’s long since faded into nothing.

“I willo pray for you”

Me too. That you disappear and leave me alone.

“if you decide to apoligize for what you said about me and the lies that you told I am willing to move on”

laughs I’m not in the habit of apologizing for lies I didn’t tell, and what I said about you was what you yourself told me.

Finally got my period so that’ll help get some of this water off.

Decided to hold off on ordering any incense for now. Yeah, we could spare $30 - $40 or so right now, but I’d rather not. Besides, I’ve still got some left from the last order. Ah, Loganberry is beautiful!

Meanwhile, I found an interesting link about Valleyhead and some of its other victims/survivors. I posted my own two cents in their forum which is basically just what the rest of this entry says.

I can’t believe it took 40 years for the FBI and DYS to finally shut these sickos down! I personally never saw any sexual abuse, but I don’t doubt it existed at all. T from NH couldn’t have said it any better as to a lot of the shit that went on there. It was the worst experience of my childhood and who knows how much different I might’ve been for the better had I not been there the two years I was there? The suicide obviously occurred after I was there. The few good staff that were there were totally overridden and overpowered by the dozens of bad ones that made the kids feel like murderers and prisoners instead of victims of abuse in a place that was supposed to be a school filled with an extra dose of caring.

Just like T got punished for loaning her dryer to the girl who hung herself with it, I was punished for trying to kill myself by jumping out a second-story window to escape the verbal and emotional abuse I was getting there, as well as some physical threats. After I jumped, instead of being offered the support I needed, I was only made to feel sorry I didn’t succeed in killing myself, although I did not jump with any set goal intended. I simply panicked, I wanted out, and well, I went out, alright! They sure decided, however, that I only threw myself out the window for attention, failing to keep in mind that throwing yourself out a second-story window is a rather risky way to get attention.

I too, was turned into a walking pharmacy. I became very addicted to one of the drugs they used to control me with Navane and ended up with permanent side effects as well like tardive dyskinesia.

I went into Valleyhead at 85 pounds, starved by one of my former foster mothers. I was picked on by Margaret, one of the meanest staffers there, for being so skinny. Part of the side effects of all the drugs they had me on was weight gain. I climbed over 130 pounds, a lot for a 5-footer. Did Barbara, who was even meaner, think that by telling me I “had all that fat to keep me warm” really think she was helping me in any way?

I also believe the owners were stealing the girls’ money. Whenever my folks would leave me money it either disappeared or I was told it was much less than what they said they left me.

Most of the mean, cold-hearted control freaks that ran the place had worse emotional issues than the “students” had! It has been 25 years since I was there yet I still have nightmares about being stuck back there, dominated and ridiculed by Donna, her sister Margaret, and Barbara. I don’t think to this day they have any conscience or remorse for the things they said and did to what were mostly very fragile and abused children. May God somehow see to it that they are punished for the hell they inflicted upon some of us!

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2009 Silence may sometimes be golden, but it can also speak a thousand words, too. I never got a reply to my message to those questionable FB buddies, so yeah, it probably was connected to someone I know that I don’t wanna know.

Speaking of silence, that’s just what I got yesterday and it was definitely golden! I thought the dogs would go off early and be at it for hours, but Jesse obviously didn’t work yesterday. Tom said he thought he heard the motorcycle at one point which would explain why it was quiet, along with the temperature rising again. We’re gonna hit 100º today, but Monday we’re on for showers and mid-80 temps, so that oughta make for quite a circus around here. Especially if he either works that day or goes out wherever.

My period is late and so I’m still all watery, bloated and with the backache from hell. If it gets any worse I suppose I could take something for it.

I should go get working out, but I just don’t feel like it.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2009 The good news is that I passed Portuguese 102 with a 90%. The bad is that the cooler weather is ALREADY inviting more barking. I was hoping the peace would last another month or two, but nope. And as always, we’re the ones to have to deal with it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that rural is just as bad as the city when it comes to barking. Especially if you live in the West where most people don’t believe dogs belong indoors.

I’m wondering if Jesse left town late Sunday night. There were scattered barks every couple of hours beginning around 10pm which I would think would be unusual for when he’s home, then it got rather consistent at 4am on out until I crashed in the late morning. So if he didn’t leave Sunday night, then he left for work at 4:00. I can’t believe there’d be that much barking if he were there. Also, Brandy and the puppy were loose and came down here. This seemed to be part of what was stirring up Whiskey, who did most of the barking, as usual. We know he lets them loose when he’s home, but why he’s letting them loose when he’s not, beats me, unless it’s really a family member that let them loose. But either way, why complain that the renters let their dogs loose if you’re just going to do the same thing yourself? Our guess is that he trusts them more than he should and doesn’t realize they come down here. Whether they’re loose or not, though, they’re going to be a problem till next spring when the weather warms back up again, so I’m keeping the air cleaner turned up in the living room, the stove’s fan on in the kitchen, and music or the sound machine on in the bedroom. And of course I’ll also have to go back to being limited as to when I can do things that require a quiet background like studying languages. It really sucks to have to live this way since others won’t take responsibility for their own fucking dogs, but if we can’t get any peace in a stand-alone trailer that’s at least a couple hundred feet from the nearest neighbor, where CAN we get it? Do we really have to go to a place like Florida to escape this shit?

So the plan was to call Jesse and let him know the dogs were loose, just in case he either didn’t know or didn’t know just how far they travel. But when Tom went to leave for the store, planning to call when he came back, he heard voices up there. On his way back, he saw all 3 dogs tied up. The puppy barked at him, but the others didn’t. So someone was up there at some point, but we don’t know who. Tom didn’t see his truck at all, so I’m guessing he’s out of town and probably doesn’t know that whoever’s coming to check on things is turning Brandy and the puppy loose. We don’t mind them being loose because they move about quietly, but their taking off stirs Whiskey up because he doesn’t like being left alone. If we see them again down here we’ll call Jesse and try to see what’s going on.

Again I just don’t get why he doesn’t throw up a fence around his place. He certainly can afford it. That way he’d never have to tie the dogs up, but they’d never be loose either, which is against the law. Yes, there are leash laws even out in the country. Whatever the hell the case may be, though, I don’t need to be a dog expert to know that yesterday was no isolated incident. I know the dogs are going to be a regular problem again, not for days, nor for weeks, but for months. They obviously have cycles. Between whoever complained about them before we got here and the barking sprees they went on over the winter makes that obvious enough to see. I think it’s a combination of cooler temps and being left alone so much that stirs them up. We’ve warmed back up into the 90s and will be there for a few days, so maybe that’ll back it off a bit. As soon as it got cold enough at night to have to turn the fan off, shut the window and throw on something with sleeves, it got bad. But right now it’s nearly 2am and I’m sitting here in a g-string with the window open, the fan on, and it’s a dry, comfy 80º in here. I swear anything under 80º is too cold! Especially where the summers are so dry. But it’ll be cold, rainy and miserably noisy soon enough.

I know I should be glad we escaped the car stereos, the wild kids, and the constant coming and going of vehicles just a few feet away, but the thought of possibly having to scrape pennies to the tune of barking for another 30-40 years really makes me want to scream. I don’t get depressed easily. I get pissed. I get energyless. I get bored. But I can see where too many more years of this shit could certainly get me there.

Tom keeps saying I’m wrong. We will have money, we will own a home again, and barking won’t be an issue.

Is he naïve? Blind? Or just obsessed with disagreeing? I wish I COULD be wrong! But I think we’ll be poor all our lives, always renting old dumps to the tune of barking, and I don’t think his program will regularly generate money whether it’s a few bucks or a few hundred bucks. I think he’s just always been overly optimistic.

Looks like the drama queen is playing with me on FB. I suddenly get 2 friend requests from 2 newbies with strange Asian names, BOTH males, BOTH born in April, BOTH born in the 60s, BOTH have just one other friend, BOTH with Gmail accounts! Is that what Tammy meant when she said, “If only you knew what will be in your future?” There’s no other info on these people at all. I can’t even tell where they are. No state or country is listed for them, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s not connected to her. Or a certain black, Jew-hating psycho that once tormented me and ruled my life. If it is, though, then what’s the point? I have a public profile, so you don’t have to be “a friend” to see my shit.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2009 Someone asked what Tammy the drama queen meant by threatening me with not getting the last word.

I don’t know. Psych cases are hard to figure out at times. It’s like she’s in this competition with me that only she’s competing in.

And “the good one” and “the good niece?”

I don’t have a clue about that one either. If there’s a “good” niece, does that mean there’s a “bad” one, too? I know who really wrote that message, but I can see where one would wonder, if she���s the good one, then who’s the bad one? Like I said, who can figure such a head case out, and is it really worth the bother?

Anyway, my life seems so empty now, but I just don’t know what to fill it with as we sit here and wait and wait and wait for the damn job market to loosen up. I found another little online job at another paid email site, but at this rate, Tom will be out of work for another year! I would still rather be stuck in this rut for the rest of our lives than go through the kind of hell we went through when we first moved here.

I’m still having a scattering of chest and left arm pains, but I still don’t think anything’s wrong with my heart due to the types of pains I’m getting in comparison to those described by people who’ve had heart problems.

Not much else to say other than that the nights are getting cooler than I’d like, and the cooler weather’s already bringing about more barking. I heard a couple of fits before and after midnight, but it wasn’t close enough to be annoying. I couldn’t tell which direction it was in either. It almost sounded like Brandy going off on something in back of her house, but I can’t believe she would go off without Whiskey going off along with her.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2009 My lowest low was 121 pounds, but lately I’ve been bouncing between 123-125. As much as I love to eat I doubt I’ll lose anymore.

Did the cyberbullying stop because Tammy the drama queen got sick of me and my journal, or because she came to realize that it doesn’t do her any good? Don’t know for sure. I only know that my words can never hurt anyone. Only their own sensitivity and paranoia can hurt them!

The freeloader’s dogs were hanging out here barking right before midnight. Then we heard one crying in the ditch like it got hurt or something, but they’ll be back, I’m sure. My guess is they’re turning them loose at night. If they’d been out and about in the daytime we’d have seen and heard them. These things don’t wander around quietly. Ah, Mexican neighbors. They’re the best!

Jesse left a message – yes, he really used the phone, believe it or not – to say he did switch over to the ditch, so we should use bottled water. He probably came down while Tom was either in the shower or out running errands (I slept all day), and so that’s probably the only reason he left the message. So he tells us to use bottled water a whole day AFTER switching to the ditch. That’s smart. Bottled water is all we do use now since it became obvious enough that there’s going to be regular problems be it because of Jesse’s own stupidity, his damn dogs, or something else.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2009 We had to play well games again yesterday for a few hours. Yeah, I knew we were due any time. It had been a month. We had low pressure because the stupid cock up the hill, who I appreciate as much as I’d sometimes like to strangle, was dumb enough to take off while watering his shit for the millionth time. Maybe someday Mr. Shit for Brains will get that that’s not a very good idea.

Tom heard him leave on the motorcycle around 5pm. It was around 7pm that I discovered the low pressure when I went to do the dishes, then at 10:30, he zoomed in. We left a message around 7:00, then spoke to Maryann around 9:00 to make sure he hadn’t gone out of town for the long weekend. Shortly after he returned, though, he shut off whatever was running and our pressure returned to normal.

I was tempted to scrap the remaining $100 we owe him, but as Tom pointed out, he’s doing us a huge favor by not charging us late fees for breaking up the payments. We’d have racked up hundreds of dollars in late fees from a management company. That’s why we wanted to rent from an individual as they are more likely to work with you when times get tough. Yet as dumb as he can be, Jesse doesn’t care when we pay the rent as long as we pay it. It also helps a lot to have no electric bill to have to pay.

Got a card from Mary two days before her release saying she wasn’t sure if she’d sent me a number to call her, but that it fell through, so don’t bother. She’ll contact me when she gets to where she’s going.

She didn’t give me any number, though, so that’s good.

I had the drama queen send someone else’s diary feedback, LOL, so we’ll see if they reply to her with a thanks! (I used her email addy as the sender). All I said was that I loved their diary, could we be friends? Could they reply?

At around 11 pm, I was surprised to hear a guy’s voice in back. My guess is it came from the freeloader’s place. There are two things freeloaders never do. They never sleep and they never work, though it doesn’t look like Tom will be working for a long time to come either. His benefits have been extended to next May and they’re already talking more extensions! Sure, it’s better than being faced with homelessness like we were when we first came here, but even so, when are we ever finally going to be able to get ahead??? The longer we have to just sit around and wait, the longer it is till we have extra money.

Heard a couple of cats fighting outside yesterday after midnight. It woke Tom up.

Moved the rats back into the smaller cage. It’s easier to clean, takes up less space, and of course, a bag of bedding lasts longer. We got the multi-colored confetti bedding from Amazon with our Swagbucks. It’s definitely the prettiest bedding I’ve ever used.

Since it had been a while since I’d last seen it, I saw The Rats last night and as a rat lover, I can say that it was great! First it starts off by saying that they were the first to re-inhabit Hiroshima and that there’s 1 rat per every 9 people in New York. That’s about as many gays!

I loved the BS they mixed in with the facts. Yes they chew up a storm because their teeth keep growing, and yes they’re smart, tough, and can adapt to just about anything, and yes they have the incognizance problem from hell, but they would rather run than bite. Rats typically warm up to people easily, but they don’t bare their teeth and hiss when they get mad and their eyes don’t glow red. But that was the point of the movie; to have these genetically altered little monsters.

The part where they joined everybody in the pool was great.

I loved the part where this subway train suddenly stops and they hear these slapping sounds on the roof of the train which is really rats falling on it, then it shows millions of rats swarming all over the thing.

The ending was the best as millions of rats erupted like a fountain through the bottom of an empty pool, which is impossible, of course. Then when the Olympic-size pool was full of rats, they lit these explosives underneath them and millions of rats blew up all over the room! The effects were awesome. I then got a kick out of how they thought it was over yet the very last scene showed a bunch of little ratties climbing out of a trash can in a park IN THE DAYTIME when they wouldn’t be out and about. It was a fantastic movie! I’m sure most, though, would see it as I saw Arachnophobia – yuck!

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2009 Do people choose not to cum? That was an interesting question someone asked in their own journal entry, saying their man rarely cums. I can relate. Tom rarely does either, and while he insists it’s out of his control, I wondered if that were really the case because he never wanted to get help. It deeply troubled me during the first few years of our marriage. I felt like he was having sex FOR me and not WITH me, and that I wasn’t good enough. I also wanted a kid. I at least thought I did anyway.

He insisted he was indeed A-okay with having a kid, and for a while, I wasn’t sure if this was really true or not. After all, it’s common for a lot of guys to be anti-kid. If he wanted a kid, though, I asked myself, wouldn’t he have wanted to overcome his shyness and seek help, knowing that contrary to popular belief, your chances of conceiving from precum are next to nil? After all, there’s a reason there are millions of sperm in the first place; because a few are so unlikely to make anything. But then again, he DID cum at times, once resulting in a pregnancy. I just lost it practically as fast as I obtained it.

I also didn’t realize that our appetites tend to decline with age. Of course I’d heard this, but sometimes seeing is believing, and until we experience things for ourselves or simply mature with age, we just don’t always get it. 35 may not exactly have been over the hill, but it’s not like being 20 either. I noticed a sudden decline in my own drive in my late 30s. So no, I don’t think we’re as choosy as a lot of people like to think we are. I don’t think people choose to have sexual problems or dysfunctions anymore than they choose what gender, flavors, colors or music they like. I think he was comfortable with the problem, however, and didn’t exactly see it as a problem, though he was fully aware of it. Why? Oh, just because it’s easier for some guys to ignore things than to deal with them. He probably also didn’t want a kid as much as he said he did. I’m not saying he wouldn’t have been a great dad had we had a kid, I’m just saying he was ok without having one before I became ok with it as well. And with keeping the sheets dry, too!

I think a lot of people find it easier to insist one chooses certain things than to just accept the fact that we are how we are. Yes, some women choose to be with abusive men. It’s sick, it’s sad, but some really do get off on abuse. Especially one who has gone from abusive man to abusive man many times and well into their middle-age years. So yeah, they obviously choose to do this. But did they choose the illness in the first place that attracts them to their abusers? I think not! Alcoholics don’t choose to be alcoholics, do they? So while I don’t know how some women can get off on having pain inflicted upon them, particularly if it’s all they ever knew, some just do, and I don’t think they chose it.

I also believe that if a person admits they have a problem, but chooses to ignore it, then they must be content to keep the problem. We may not be able to help who we are to a degree, but we can choose whether or not to accept ourselves and others, or we can go through life kicking and screaming in protest, which is pretty much what I’m doing right now myself in some ways. My husband believes we’ll own a home again in a senior community in a few years when he’s 55 and that money won’t be an issue. I, however, believe he’s naïvely optimistic and that something will come up – probably something he can’t see right now – to fuck it all up for us. Thus leaving us to continue to struggle in someone else’s dump. Well, this is a very hard pill to simply swallow and just “accept.” Looking at the “bright side” of things isn’t always much consolation. All I can do is hope that he’s right and I’m wrong.

Another interesting subject I stumbled across - can God hate a group of people or just certain individuals? Well, if He hates gays, then He’s also hated Indians, Jews, blacks, you name it, as every group seems to have been picked on at one time or another. However, I do strongly believe that yes, He can favor certain individuals over others. Why else would some people’s lives be so much better than others? It’s just hard to believe He sees someone like Paris Hilton the same way he sees a baby whose parents decided one day that he or she is simply too noisy or too costly to deserve to live anymore.

They have these really cool language podcasts on iTunes that are free and they make for a great way to really help ground in what you’ve learned. It’s so way cool to be able to listen to Italian dialogs and to understand most, if not all, of what they’re saying BEFORE they translate it! But I did work hard to get myself where I’m at today. I did my Portuguese lesson, so now I’ll go review some Italian.

Decided to give up dieting, but this doesn’t mean I’ll let myself fall out of shape no matter how much weight I put back on. I’ll still be riding and running almost every day.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2009 Last night my left arm cramped up big time. I was just sitting there when all of a sudden it cramped up – I guess “cramp” is the best way to describe it – sort of in back of my upper arm. A few minutes later it stopped as suddenly as it started. Then a while later I had an on-and-off dull ache in the area of my bicep. Tom was worried I was having a heart attack, checking my pulse, and asking if my fingertips were tingly. I assured him I couldn’t get that lucky to have anything kill me now. We’re too poor. See, not only do the good die young, but the cursed die old! It sure seems that way anyway. So, as one of God’s chosen ones to have to play poor-ass bums, like it or not, I don’t think He’d want me timing out anytime soon. It really bothers me to think that God feels we’re unworthy of having even medical insurance despite how hard we’re willing to work, but sometimes you really just can’t change fate. What’s meant to be is gonna be. Oh, well. In the end, He may’ve cursed me with a lot of things that take a lot of hate on His part, but He also had to have some love in His heart too, for I have Tom and many talents and abilities that I know I shouldn’t take for granted. My singing improved tenfold after quitting smoking even though by then I’d lost the desire to make a living at it. To be able to communicate just about anything I could need to in Italian in just 6 months, even if I already knew Spanish and even if I rarely use it, is quite a blessing. It’s amazing to go from pointing at various objects and naming them in Italian, to speaking whole sentences.

However, I’m back to losing faith in the power of prayer and thinking that if it does appear to work, it’s only a coincidence. Why else can’t Tom have the job I prayed for nearly a year ago? And why else is my weight stuck where it’s at despite how “normal” Tom and WebMD say it is? Well, I say I’m not done yet and that I want to lose at least 10 more pounds. And I say Tom could definitely use a job since my sleep disorder prevents me from getting one. But that was obviously part of the plan, designed to hold us back financially.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2009 The freeloader’s dog barked at me a few times at 2:30 last night when I went into the kitchen to make a pig of myself yet again. Unless it was really Brandy. Neither of us has seen any dogs, but I still think it’s a matter of time.

I hate this time of year when September rolls around. Not as much as I did as a kid since September meant the start of school, and I hated school. I still hate it, though, as it means cooler temps, more noise, and holidays galore. I hate holidays that disrupt our lives, especially the mail. Our check is going to be a day or two late cuz of Labor Day, but we have plenty of food. That is if I can stop making such a pig of myself. I just don’t get it. I’m not only insanely hungry, but I am also able to take in HUGE quantities of food like when I got carried away after quitting smoking. It’s either hard to fill up at all or I’m only satisfied for 5 minutes. Keep this shit up and I’ll be looking at not only not losing any more weight, but putting what I’ve lost back on and then some!

I wish I knew what was causing such hunger and bloating. My metabolism is acting like old times - jumping 2-3 pounds after eating, sustaining its weight after not eating.

[erenoir]

driver’s education

the one where the aot boys teach you how to drive…

genre: hot husbands telling you what to do

warnings: none just wear your seatbelts friends! safety first <3, chaotic driving, eren’s road rage, cursing

featuring: s4!connie, eren, armin, jean, levi + erwin

a/n: i’m practicing for my road test and… the thought of eren in a car with me made me want to dig a hole <3 which led me to this… so here we are with more aot husbands doing things headcanons! also a 200 follower celebration!

connie helps you change lanes.

doesn’t like to teach you things that are too difficult.

decided changing lanes was good for you.

but for you changing lanes is um... very difficult.

“it’s easy mama, you just gotta… move over.”

okay thank you very helpful connie.

“okay now! go go go go!”

“CONNIE stop yelling at me! you’re freaking me out!”

“GO BABY this guy is gonna cut you- he cut you off.. okay! next try!”

connie moves to the back seat behind you so he can see what you see out of your side mirror.

connie doesn’t fully pay attention when you’re driving. he’s mostly taking videos of you with snapchat filters on your face.

“look mama, you’re a potato ha! shit’s golden!”

which is why he takes you driving on the highway because it’s just… straight. he doesn’t need to pay full attention. what could go wrong?

everything goes wrong.

“you’re clear mama go… you-you’re clear you can- hello?”

“i don’t wanna.”

if you didn’t want to change lanes connie wouldn’t make you.

but now you missed your exit because you’re too afraid to pull over.

you’re now in a different city.

“we should get dinner out here babe!”

“connie!” you rub your temples, “we don’t know where we are and you want to have a night out!?”

you two go out to eat.

says he’s taking you to a nice restaurant in the area.

he takes you to applebee’s…

“half price apps baby!” were his exact words.

you build up the confidence to change lanes on the way home. connie hyped you up over your second round of boneless wings.

“put your blinker on babes…”

“put it on…”

“connie it is on!”

“no it’s— oh that’s just your gas light.”

“okay do we need to stop for gas?”

“no we have enough to get home.”

you two are now stalled in the middle of the highway.

“i told you we needed gas.”

“it’s fine i have snacks in the trunk and we can make out.”

he has one of those bulk packs of assorted bags of chips.

“i-in in the middle of the highway? very romantic connie.”

you two are making out and on your third bag of doritos while waiting for a tow truck.

eren helps you drive on the highway.

eren likes to go fast.

like really fast.

and he’ll get pissed when you aren’t going fast.

“why are you only going 45?!”

“because it’s the uh… it’s the speed limit eren…”

“no one goes the speed limit anymore babe! you can do at least 60 so…”

“no one goes the speed limit anymore? or you don’t go the speed limit anymore?”

“5 over isn’t bad it’s not a big deal-

“eren you just told me to go 15 over.”

“oh did i say 15? i meant 5…”

“so you want me to go 50?”

“what? no! go 60 and don’t be cheap with it i have money for gas…”

so you go 60.

but you you haven’t learned how to regulate your speed yet so your foot gets comfortable on the gas.

so you’re actually going 70 in a 45 (a/n: plz don’t do this, exaggerated for headcanon purposes x.)

but eren thinks you’re doing absolutely amazing! his sweet little speed racer.

“you’re doing amazing ba-

*sirens*

“eren…”

“mm hm?”

“there’s a cop behind us…”

“yep.”

“eren! hello! what the fuck do i- is it here for us?!”

“the fuck do you mean is it here for us does it look like a fucking uber?!”

“stop screaming eren! you’re fucking making me nervous!”

“you’re screaming too!”

“okay but i’m the student driver here! you have to tell me what to do!”

“okay fucking pull over!”

the ticket was 300 dollars.

eren actually sweet talked the officer down 100 dollars, it was supposed to be 400.

he gave the officer his number and told her that you were his little sister.

“yeah i mean… she’s learning… i’ve been telling her that she’s got to slow down!

eren ruffles your hair.

“ha! yeah… my… big brother… he’s just looking out for me!” you say with gritted teeth.

you didn’t talk to him for the next two days.

armin helps you stop.

stopping is the most crucial part of driving.

you tend to stop at the very last second.

you’re also very unsure about breaking so you kinda just… bunny hop your way to the stop sign.

so armin offers to work you through your stops.

armin gives you a calm, cool and collected pep talk before you even leave the driveway of your house.

“okay honey, look at me…”

“you’re gonna do great, just take deep breaths, and remember to stay calm. a frazzled driver is a dangerous driver…”

“phew… okay, i’m ready.”

“yeah? okay now start the car…”

you start the car and push the gas to ease out of your driveway.

the car isn’t moving.

“a-armin the car isn’t-

“it’s in park darling.”

“oh! haha! okay then…”

armin faces away from you so you couldn’t see him and draws a cross over his body silently.

he believes in you though! and he wanted you to know that he has full confidence in you.

but armin takes you to a low traffic residential area so you can practice your stops.

because god knows he wouldn’t take you somewhere where you could well… die.

“okay honey, now we’re gonna come to this stop sign here… riiight… here… right here… honey ri-oh! okay you ran the stop sign! that’s okay! um… actually no it’s not but we’ll try again!”

“start breaking when you see the stop sign, don’t wait hun… start breaking now… are you breaking? i don’t feel you- ow!”

you came to a hard stop and armin hit his head on the roof of the car.

“well… look honey, you stopped!”

armin wipes the sweat on his hands off onto his pants.

you make him very nervous but he gulps all of his overreactive commentary down.

his main goal is to keep you calm.

“okay hun we’re coming up on another one, see it?”

“yes! i’m ready,” your hands tighten around the wheel.

armin makes you switch seats with him so you can watch him break.

he’s the type to say, “let me just show you once!” but now he’s been driving for an hour while you watch.

armin likes to record you driving so you can watch your mistakes later.

so he’s leaned up against his window recording you make your stops.

he holds his phone like a dad and hits the screen with his pointer finger.

when you go to watch the videos back it’s just armin hyping you up behind the camera and him accidentally recording the street instead of you driving.

jean helps you turn.

going driving with jean is a hot mess.

he’s more nervous than you are.

i mean… he doesn’t want you to mess up his car.

whenever you practice turning with jean he makes you start by turning into the driveway of your house.

he backs the car out and you turn it in.

and you’ll be doing that for about a week before he lets you take his car on the road.

you’ve knocked over the trash cans on multiple occasions.

he makes fun of you.

“wow! perfect! great! the raccoons are gonna love ya baby!

the day jean lets you drive his car on the road is a big day for the both of you.

“okay baby now ease out of the driveway nice and slow.”

“woah woah woah woah! too fast!”

you were going 5 miles per hour.

jean takes you to an empty parking lot to practice your turns.

he is such a dad.

just pure dad vibes through and through.

he stands outside the car with his hands on his hips as he watches you turn.

“okay start turning the wheel now! perfect perfect perfect… oh oh oh! hold on… okay… now straighten it back up!”

jean loves to talk to you while you’re in concentration mode.

about literally anything.

“me and the boys went to watch the game at buffalo wild wings and they were out of the parmesan garlic sauce, could you believe that baby?! it’s the best sauce!”

“yeah so babe i went to j. crew and they didn’t have that sweater in my size… you know the one with the tan side pocket? babe?”

meanwhile you’ve turned completely into the grass island.

now when jean takes you to practice your turns on busy streets well… good luck charlie.

“jean am i turning here?”

“jean?”

“jean am i turning here?!”

“y-yes babe! god please you’re making me nervous…”

“i’m-i’m making you nervous? i just-what?!”

jean will literally turn the wheel for you.

just completely smother your hands with his while he finishes the turn.

“just hit the gas and i’ll do it babe we’ve gotta get home…”

“jean! we’ve been out for only twenty minutes! how am i supposed to learn?!”

“baby you will learn!”

“after we practice a few more times in the driveway…”

levi helps you merge into traffic.

it’s something so chaotic and dangerous but...

in another life this man is a can opener to a giant talking gorilla so…

levi, as calm and stoic as he is, absolutely fucking hates taking you driving.

“levi! can you take me driving toda-

“no.”

“lev-

“no.”

you sit next to him on the couch while he’s drinking his tea and watching the morning news.

he looks straight ahead and ignores you completely.

except your lips are right in his ear as you say, “take me driving, take me driving, take me driving, take me driving,” over and over again.

levi’s hand is now shaking as he grasps his teacup.

“okay! shut up and go get my keys from my jacket pocket…”

you two are now driving, congrats baby you broke the cold man >:).

“can we go on the highwa-

“no.”

“levi! i seriously need to practice merging and you know that! do you want me to die?!”

no response.

you gasp, “levi?!”

he’s looking out his window while stifling a laugh.

he takes you to the highway.

truthfully he doesn’t want his baby to die because of his poor teaching.

“okay, you know we’re pulling up to the highway so slow down.”

“okay,” you hit the brakes.

“what are you doing…”

“i’m slowing down!”

“no, you’re stopping completely in the middle of a fucking merging lane.”

you look at him.

“what are you doing?! go!”

“you told me to slow down!”

*honk!*

levi flips that guy off.

so you speed up, you’re on a merging lane of course!

“okay, okay… okay slow down now…”

“jesus, levi which is it?!”

“no don’t slow down completely, just wait for an opening…”

“go after this red car…”

you hit the gas after the red car passes you, jerking both of you forward.

“tch, that was fucking terrible.”

“that was so scary!”

you’re now heavy breathing at your steering wheel and you’re so embarrassed at how bad you were.

levi feels bad for saying you were fucking terrible.

“it wasn’t that bad,” he mumbled into his hand.

“huh?!” you respond exasperated and not really paying attention.

“tch, god! i said you weren’t that bad… you just need to be a little more confident. just pull over into the next side road and i’ll drive us home, okay?”

erwin helps you parallel park.

erwin is so excited to teach you how to parallel park.

truthfully erwin just loves doing things with you.

he will literally go to home goods with you just so he can walk around with you and smell candles.

but when you ask him to help you parallel park well…

there are nearly tears in his eyes.

erwin wakes you up bright and early to practice when the roads are relatively empty.

he sees you’re nervous because your hands are tight around the wheel.

so he rubs your thigh softly to calm you down.

erwin loves giving a good spiel.

he might as well be a driving instructor on the side.

“so darling, when you pull up beside the car… you have to check all of your blind spots, can’t have you backing over a small child…”

he chuckles. it’s a dad joke!

but your eyes just widened in fear.

“i was just kidding darling, it would be very hard for you to run over a child at the speed you’re going okay?”

yeah okay.

so erwin stands on the curb with his hands on his hips as he guided you through your parallel park.

“okay… you got it, you got it… ah! ah! ah! ah! too close… fix yourself.”

“how do i fix myself?”

“cut your wheels to the left darling…”

you can see erwin growing a little frustrated as he rubs his temples with his middle finger and thumb.

“honey maybe we should just go home… clearly i’m not getting this-

“no! you’re gonna get it okay? let’s keep going.”

erwin is a very supportive husband.

like you told him you wanted to pick up knitting once and he bought you ten spools of yarn and three sets of knitting needles type supportive.

erwin will tell you that you suck in the nicest way possible.

“listen darling, you got it right? you’re technically parallel! you just have to cut into the curb just a little bit more… okay bunny?”

his heart is warm as you look up at him with sparkling eyes.

but you really only picked up on the words “you got it!” and “you’re parallel!”

he gives an ecstatic thumbs up as you hit the curb.

“it’s okay! doing great darling!”

a/n: alexa play vroom vroom by charli xcx. thank you for 200!

[introvert-celeste]

TOH Theory Dump

Okay, Hunter clone theory has been on my mind, and the "bone on ORTET" ingredient in the making of a grimwalker is intriguing.

An ortet is the origin entity (usually seen in plants) from which clones are created, as many people have already pointed out. But who is the ortet in this situation: Philip Wittebane or Emperor Belos? Are they the same person? If that's the case, how has he lived this long? Clearly, the cloning process involves some degree of self-mutilation, seeing as it involves a piece of bone from the ortet, so is that why Belos is in the condition he's in currently? Why?

This is what we know for certain:

Hunter looks very similar to Belos, with the same hair and skin color, hair type, arched nose, and ear notch (in the same ear, no less)

Hunter's burgundy eye color--the one feature they don't share--matches the eyes of the grimwalker detailed in the book

In extension, Belos has blue eyes, and therefore doesn't match the description of the grimwalker

Belos does have pointed ears, but they are far smaller than the average witch's and are closer in appearance to a human's

Additionally, the bridge of his nose is different from the silhouette of Wittebane's, however his hair is similar. Their accents are also similar, however Wittebane and Belos are voiced by different people

According to Gwen, it's rumored that the first human to live in Bonesborough vanished mysteriously

We know next to nothing about Belos and Hunter's "family" except that they were all apparently destroyed by wild magic, and this is what Belos blames for his current ailment

With all that in mind, these are my theories:

I think it's very likely that Hunter is a grimwalker regardless of whether the ortet is Belos or Philip, assuming that they are two different people...

...however, I don't believe that Belos is a grimwalker, nor do I believe that he's Philip. At this point, I think either option would be too obvious, and at the same time I don't think either of them make much sense. He doesn't have the same eyes detailed in the book, taking some credibility from the grimwalker theory. Likewise, his pointed ears and differing nose shape suggest that he is neither Philip nor fully human.

There could be some explanation for the latter discrepancies--perhaps his dealings with magic and prolonged life could have altered his appearance--but my theory is that Belos is Philip's son, or at least a descendant.

I think that there could be some credibility to the "wild magic destroyed our family" story, but not in the way that Belos implies to Hunter. I suspect that Philip died from an incident involving wild magic, or at least came to a bad end due to his involvement with wild magic. Likewise, it appears that Belos is also suffering from an affliction caused by magic.

Alternatively: Luz is from Connecticut and that's likely where Philip initially came through the portal. Connecticut was one of the 13 original colonies of the United States. This may be a little grim, but imagine how colonists in the 1600s would react to a man who has been presumed missing or dead for years suddenly reappearing, claiming that he'd been transported to a world full of witches and demons and essentially used witchcraft to return home...yeah, that wouldn't blow over well.

So, Belos could be planning to take revenge on humanity to avenge his father's death? Just assuming based on this long string of other assumptions.

It would explain how Belos has seen the human realm without claiming to have lived there or come from there. If Philip had really settled down in Bonesborough and started a family in the time that it took him to finish the portal, I doubt he would have gone through without sharing it with them.

It would also explain why he has pointed ears that still look distinctly human: his mother was a witch and his father was a human.

And to loop it back to the original topic: I think there are two possible situations for who the "ortet" could be: either Belos is using the bones of Philip Wittebane or, I think more likely, Belos is using his own bones. I say this is more likely because Hunter looks so much like Belos, but if Philip is Belos' father then it's possible that they also look very much alike.

I also have to wonder if Hunter is not actually the first grimwalker Belos has made. Given how old Belos would have to be for any of this to make sense (about 300-400 years), what if grimwalkers act kind of like horcruxes? They give the ortet special power, including a prolonged life, but there are physical consequences. It alters their appearance over time and makes them less stable, both mentally and physically. The more grimwalkers the ortet makes, the faster or more intense the affliction becomes. In his outburst in Hunting Palisman, his body literally appears to turn to mud, and his silhouette became a horrific creature with horns.

The way he eats palismen to keep his affliction under control, plus the woodlike appearance of his skin, PLUS the fact that palistrom wood is used to create a grimwalker makes me think that his connection to the grimwalker is turning him into a tree. Which has the even more disturbing implication that palistrom trees used to be people and that's where palismen get their souls from, but this post is long enough as it is, so I'll stop here.

This is just a lot of speculation, but basically my theory is that Hunter is a grimwalker made by--and from--Belos, who is also Philip Wittebane's son, and his end goal is to take revenge on both the human and demon realms. I think going the "cruelty of mankind" route would be fairly poignant for a story like this, since Luz was a social outcast before she came to the Boiling Isles. Honestly, though, I'm still on the fence about all of this. I don't want to commit to any of it because the show can still throw a big curveball at us.

[yeahimaloser]

Oh To Be In Love

Part 6

Summary: You and your best friend, Hawks, learn to be in love.

Reader has no pronouns mentioned (story is gender inclusive)

Hello everyone! sorry if this took a while, I hope enjoy though!!

Also HOLY HELL THANK YOU ALL FOR 400!!It’s kinda funny because I hit 300 a week ago! Anyways, requests are still open and I’ll leave em open longer because of me getting to 400!!Also, I will not get to everyone, please keep that in mind (I linked the info for requesting right here :))

Part 1 -> Part 2 -> Part 3 -> Part 4-> Part 5

Word count: 3.5k

. . .

After you had visited Hawks in the hospital, it felt like things had calmed down between you two.

Maybe things hadn’t gone back to completely normal, but you were getting there. The tension between you and him was less thick, the air felt more breathable now. After what Hawks had said to you in the hospital, you both continued to talk it out, trying to make sure you both were ok with the situation. But things weren’t completely the same.

You felt as though there was a different type of tension between you two now. Like, Hawks knew something you didn’t. You never brought it up, even though maybe you should, you really wanted the thickness of the unspoken, mysterious string of tension to just evaporate. But it still seemed that something about the day you had visited him in the hospital had done something, but you weren’t sure what. 

Hawks had been acting a bit different towards you. Talking to you more, hanging out with you more, and even paying you back for the chicken you had bought him. He told you that he just, “wanted to be a good friend.” 

You weren’t sure what was going on with him.

----

It was a nice Friday evening, you weren’t even up to anything. Just watching some random show sitting on your couch, eating whatever was left in your fridge when your phone started to ring.

You looked at the caller I.D to see it was Hawks. 

Why is he calling so late? And for no reason?

Sure, you and Hawks would call each other pretty often, but this late? It seemed a bit strange for him. He always told you how important his sleep schedule was. He had a habit of working so late and being so exhausted when he had gotten home to his penthouse.  

You picked it up, “Hey, what’s up?”

“Meh, nothing really, not right now,” his voice sounded a bit tired, most likely from him working so hard during the day, “But I was wondering, what are you doin’ tomorrow?”

You were a bit confused by the question but answered nevertheless, “Nothing, I was just gonna hang around my house for a bit. Why,” you asked.

“Well,” Hawks started, “I wanted to ask you on a date.”

“Wha-,” before you could stop yourself, you had already yelled the question into your phone, shooting up from your place on the couch.

But you heard Hawks just bark with laughter, “I meant like a friend date. I heard of this really amazing restaurant, we can get all dolled up to go out. It’ll be fun.”

Your heartbeat still hadn’t calmed down from Hawks’ question, but it left you a bit confused, “Isn’t that what we always do though? That just sounds like a normal evening for the two of us. And besides, what about your wings?”

Hawks just chuckled, “Don’t you worry about that part, dove, my wings are practically nubs, remember?” Hawks had gotten back from a mission a while ago, making his feathers dissipate down to just the base, which was funny considering he was only gone for a few days on his trip (he refused to tell you about missions, saying he didn’t like talking his trips), “So don’t you worry. And also, yeah you are right we do go out a lot, but this place is supposed to be really fancy and nice. So, I’ll drive us over and make us a reservation, we’ll have a lot of fun I promise. Sound good?”

You bit your lip, this all sounded a bit much, even for Hawks. He had a strange habit of spoiling you at times. No matter what you told him, he would insist on it. Taking you to fancy dinners, buying you expensive gifts. You couldn’t understand why he felt the need to, you told him repeatedly that you didn’t want to be his friend for his money. Although, it seemed whenever you two were at a KFC that generosity would disappear.

“I mean, if you think it’s a good idea,” you said in a hesitant tone.

“Great! So tomorrow at five I’ll pick you up. Make sure you look nice, alright?”

“Ok birdbrain.”

You heard him groan, “Now I’m re-thinking asking you, stop calling me that.”

“Na, it’s too fun.”

“Whatever.”

You giggled a bit, “So tomorrow at five?”

“See you tomorrow Chickie.”

-----

You had to admit, you were nervous.

Ok, more than nervous.

Going on any type of date with Hawks (even if he instituted it was just a friend-date) would make anyone nervous. He was Hawks, the second-best pro hero, any normal person would be freaking out. But you’ve been infatuated with him for years, hiding it was nerve-racking, so going on a date made it one-hundred times worse. 

You were terrified of messing something up, of looking terrible, and having Hawks think of you as a slob. Or if you embarrassed him at this nice restaurant, if you were to say something rude or out of hand. You really just didn’t want to mess this up.

Even if you two were as close as you were, sometimes your anxiety couldn’t help but crawl in. Making you feel jittery and nervous, you knew that Hawks honestly wouldn’t care all that much really, he wasn’t that kind of guy. He wasn’t shallow, at least as far as you knew, he was a good person. You knew he was the kind of person to find someone based on character, not on someone's outward appearance. At the end of the day, he just had a chill type of demeanor, not caring all that much for how good a person looked, he was way more perceptive than that.

But still, you wanted to outdo his expectations, at least a bit.

You had picked out one of your nicer outfits, taken a shower, did your hair all nice, and made yourself look presentable for Hawks. But you were still nervous. What if your hair looked hideous? Did this outfit even look good? Hawks would probably look so much better, you didn’t want to look horrid next to him. 

Hawks is an extremely handsome man, someone would have to be blind not to see it, so walking into a nice restaurant with someone like him was extremely daunting. You really did want to look your best, you wanted to actually impress Hawks. He’d seen you in your sweats before, he’d seen you right when you’ve woken up, so you wanted to show him that you could clean up well. 

So here you were, looking at yourself in the mirror to give yourself a quick once over, making sure it looked perfect when you heard a knock at your door.

You rushed over to open it, hoping to God Hawks would think you looked alright.

Opening the door to see Hawks standing there, looking so… well, hot.

He had a nice tan suit, which seemed to match his hero custom. His hair, while still a mess, was done up a bit nicer, gelled back a bit. Of course, his stubble on his face was still unkempt but still gave a nice rougher look to him. A white shirt under his suit jacket had a few buttons undone, adding more to his look of natural handsomeness. 

You noticed the big coat he wore over his suit, seemingly to hide the rest of his wings.

But you didn’t notice him eyeing you, looking you up and down.

“You look,” he started, a light up-take to his voice, “really good.”

You chuckled, “So do you, that tan suit looks really good on you.”

“Oh yeah, I kinda thought so. I figured the black one might  be a bit much, so I opted for the tan.”

“The black one would probably make you stand out too much huh.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. But you look good, I like the outfit, makes your figure look really...nice,” the comment made you feel a bit giddy, but you hid it with an eye roll.

“Well, that's good to hear seeing as I spent so much time picking it out. I didn’t want to look like a total bum at this nice restaurant.”

He just chuckled,  “Well, you look amazing. I would say better than me. Anyways,” he extended a hand to you, “shall we?”

You smirked raising a brow, “Wow, so romantic.”

Hawks just laughed, “Romantic, huh? I was just going for a more friendly route, just trying to be polite.”

You wrapped your arm around his, “Alright, birdboy, let’s go.”

“I thought I told you not to call me that!”

-----

To say the restaurant was extravagant would be putting it lightly.

The walls were glistening with some sort of marble, the ceiling was so far up, you were sure Hawks could probably fly all the way to the top and he wouldn’t smack into anything, the lights looming the dining place made the place a well-lit area, the music was even played by a live orchestra. The floors were covered in red carpeting, with some sort of intricate pattern placed on it. The attendance all wore a black tux, the serves carried food that made your mouth water a bit, the smell overpowering. 

The servers and the customers alike didn’t seem to notice Hawks and you entered the building. You didn’t know if it was because most of these people were so rich that they were used to seeing big shot hero's, or if it was because Hawks’ wings were shrunk and couldn’t be easily seen. Either way, it felt nice. There were very few times where you and Hawks could be in public together, you both really didn’t want the public to get information on your friendship, you both liked the fact that you two had your privacy in each other. But it was also due to security reasons. Hawks had told you that, “Hero’s having non-hero friends can be difficult, villains can play dirty with loved ones, it happens a lot more than you’d think.” So, going out into the public was risky, a few restaurants and shops were hero friendly, making sure the paparazzi couldn’t get into their facility, making it easy for heroes to have fun with their family’s. You and Hawks had gone to those a few times, but with his busy schedule, it made more sense to just stay home with each other's company. 

As you two walked down the restaurant, Hawks told you that he really didn’t want to have just a table, he preferred privacy. He told you that at this restaurant you could just easily rent out a room to eat, he really likes his own little space. You were sure it was because he didn’t really like being in the public eye all that much, as much as he loved his fans, you knew it was draining to him. Although Hawks would never admit it, he was a bit paranoid. You figured that, as a hero, he had to be. But it did make it difficult for him to relax, you found yourself having to remind him that you and he were safe, nothing bad was going to happen in the safety and privacy of your home whenever you two hung out there. 

You didn’t expect the rooms to be all that big, expecting maybe both with some nice candles. Yet, you were very mistaken, the rooms were so sizable they were large enough to be some people's houses. 

In the middle, there was a nice table, with a bread basket and candles already lit. The floors were the same red carpeting that you had seen earlier, only they seemed to be cleaner and the pattern more vibrant, the color gave a nice contrast to the gray marble of the walls. You even realized a nice fireplace and a couch was in the corner, yet the area was big enough where the space wasn’t minimized just to accommodate the table and the fireplace, there seemed to be more than enough spacing in the room. Music played from the speakers in the room, still being played by an orchestra, but more relaxing.

“Hawks,” you were at a loss for words, “this is-”

“Yeah, I figured you would like it, it has a kinda homie feel to it don’t ya think,” he asked.

“I mean yeah,” you both sat down at the table, “homie for super-rich people.”

Hawks let out a hearty laugh, “So you like it?”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

You noticed how the staff seemed very familiar with this kind of thing, you wondered to yourself if heroes came here with family and friends as well. Maybe the staff was just used to seeing pro hero’s on their workdays. 

As your appetizers came out, you finally asked, “So why all this? Why’d you feel the need to take me here of all places?”

“You’re acting like I can't do anything nice for you Y/N, come on, cut me some slack here.”

You shook your head, “I know you, Hawks, you're nice, but I can tell you’re doing this for a reason.”

He just sighed, “Alright, you got me. I feel bad, after what happened, after me being rude to you, I kinda wanted to do something nice for the two of us. To remind us of our friendship I guess,” Hawks chuckled, “I guess that’s kinda cheesy though.”

You giggled, “A bit, but still,” you reached for his hand, “I think it’s really nice. But we don’t need to do some fancy outings, I’m totally fine with laying around and eating KFC with you.”

Hawks smiled, “Noted. But still, I felt like going somewhere nice,” he shrugged, “Just wanted to be the nice guy. Show you I wanted to do something cool.”

You smirked, “Alright Mr. Money Bags, we get it, you’re loaded.”

He threw his hands in the air, “Hey! I didn’t mean it like that!”

You and Hawks continued to talk and chat while eating your food. Talking about anything really, hero business, your life, gossip, anything that you two found interesting the other seemed to enjoy listening. Hawks told you about how his hero work would be boring, or how it was exhilarating (you could never tell if he loved his job or loathed it). He told you about some other pros too; Miriko, Endeavor, Edgeshot, you were surprised how many pro heroes he’d gotten to know over the years. You, in turn, told him about your life, about the things stressing you out, about the people you meet, about your own stories. In truth, you knew that your stories probably sound like minuscule problems next to him trying to save Japan and keep everyone safe. But the way he listened made you feel as though you really were as important as a numu ravaging the city. 

That was the thing about Hawks, he was charming sure, but he was also someone whose presence made anyone let their guard down. He was charismatic, but his charisma stretched to his overall being, he really just made it so he’s demeanor put people at ease with him.

As the dinner continued, you felt the lingering tension dissolve, maybe a few stranded stayed, but overall, you felt the comfortable friendliness that you loved. You felt the openness you had grown accustomed to around Hawks, and in turn, you felt Hawks relax more in your company, feeling his smile become more genuine, his words become more like himself.

You two joked and laughed the whole night away, you honestly felt like only a few minutes had passed, you just felt so at ease with Hawks.

You were scraping up the last crumbs of your desert, Hawks already done with his. You listen to him ramble about Endeavor, listen to how his wings were ‘killing him lately.’

When he slowly stoped talking, the room heavy with silence for a moment.

He looked up at you, “Hey Y/N.”

“Hm,” you said, food still in your mouth.

He took a deep inhale, “Are- are you mad at me? For the hospital I mean.”

The question was out of nowhere, you two had barely even talked about what had happened at the hospital. You just kind of assumed he wanted to forget about the whole thing as much as you had. 

You paused for a moment, “...No, no I’m not. You were just worried, like me. We both did something stupid that day because we were concerned about each other. I can’t blame you for that.”

Hawks let out a breath, visibly relaxing. 

He went quiet again. Before you could ask him what was wrong on, he smiled at you.

“Do you wanna dance?”

The question shocked you, a dance? With Hawks? The man you’ve been in love with for years? Someone should pinch you to make sure you weren’t dreaming.

You did notice the shift in music, from the more lively sound to a gentler, more slow songs. You could tell the music was supposed to be romantic, supposed to be a dance for couples. 

“I-,” you could barely get your words out, still stuttering like a foul in front of him.

But Hawks just smirked, “Come on, the nice music, the fancy fireplace, the warm atmosphere,” he stood from his seat, extending a hand to you, “it’s all perfect for a dance. And besides, you look too good not to have a nice dance with. So, what do you say, chickadee? Sound fun,” his mischievous smirk turned into a real, genuine smile.

Some part of you had the sense to nod, taking a hold of his hand. He pulled you up to him, steading you lightly.

You placed your hands on his shoulder while he gripped your waist lightly. His hands gave you a light squeeze, you, in turn, gave his shoulders a small squeeze as well. He rocked you back and forth, setting a nice pace.

The carpeting against your feet felt soft and easy to dance on, the space of the room felt big enough to occupy you and Hawks as you dance together, holding each other as the rhythm of the music played on. 

You rested your head against him, slowly moving your body with his. Both of you were so close now, so together at this moment. 

Maybe the moment was too tender to be just between friends, you knew that. Maybe you should step away, save yourself the pain of heartbreak, but you couldn’t. Whatever spell Hawks had you under, you were in it for the long haul. 

This was one of Hawks’ many charms, his ability to pull you in, even if you knew you should step back. He just kept tugging at you, making you come closer and closer till you didn’t want to pull away.

But a part of you knew how this ends, it ends with you two still friends. Even if this moment felt like something more. 

So you allowed yourself to have it, you allowed your mind to let go and just enjoy it completely. Maybe you couldn’t have Hawks, maybe you were just wounding yourself more as you danced with him. You would deal with it later, right now, all you wanted was to be close to him.

It was a few more moments before Hawks spoke.

“Y/N,” you looked back at Hawks, “does it… does it bother you that you don’t know my real name?”

Man, today was his day for random questions, huh. This one also came out of nowhere as well; His real name? You two never really talked about it all that much, in reality, you never really gave his name much thought. 

You paused for a second, weighing your answer, “Well, first, you seem to have a knack at asking random questions today,” Hawks chuckled a bit, nodding his head, “Secondly, no, not really. You would still be you, a name wouldn’t change that,” you purse your lips, trying to make sure your words came out right, making sure your intent was correct and well-meaning, “at the end of the day, you’re you. A name won’t change that, you’ll still be my best friend at the end of the day, a name won’t change our relationship. I’ll still care about you, all the same, I’ll still value the time we spend together. I know you probably can't tell me your name because you’re...well you’re Hawks. But I don’t mind waiting, and I don’t mind if you never tell me, I like who you are, and I promise a name will never change that, it’ll only change what I call you, not how I view you.”

You didn’t realize Hawks had tensed up till he relaxed after your short speech. His body seemed to be a lot less stiff, his eyes looked relieved, his whole body seemed to melt a bit. 

“Thank you. I know I’ve asked two very random questions today, I’ve just been kinda thinking about em’. The name one has been especially bothersome. It’s just...I know so much about you, but you know so little about me. It seems kinda unfair,” he rocked you gently, giving your waist a light squeeze.

You just shrugged, “Well, I signed up for this. I knew what it meant to be friends with you, but I don’t regret a thing. No matter what, I whole-heartily believe it’s worth it.”

Hawks gave you a smile, and to your surprise, he gently pressed his lips to your forehead, “Thank you. I really appreciate you...so much.”

. . . 

Let me know if you wanna be tagged!!

Tag list:

@under-the-clouds @roko-ppk @shylesbiannerd @blue-peach14 @m-ray20 @assassinslittlesister @starrygoblin @1small-frogs

[magicrowiswritingstuff]

“Not so good News” - Gabriel x pregnant!reader (3/3)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 (you’re here)

Summary: Part 3 of “Not so good News”! Read the first part HERE. After you had received the news of your pregnancy you feel rather conflicted. On one hand you want this child to live but on the other hand this also means you will die giving birth. Your only option is to enjoy the time you have left with the people you love, forcing your dark thoughts to the back of your head. (F/N) means friend’s name.

Warning: dark thoughts/themes, suggestive themes, heavy angst, swear words, death, child birth (not a warning but maybe someone is squeamish)

Category: angst and fluff, even more angst

Words: about 9.000

Note 1: So, the mini-series is finished. I hope you will enjoy/enjoyed the last part. This series was a pain in the ass to write... so much research and asking relatives if it’s accurate. Though, it probably isn’t because it is fanfiction after all. Note 2: I have another Gabriel story linked in my masterlist, that one is more fluffy (And another short series in the works but pst). And I will definitely write more about/with him because I love him, all right?! I love hand hate him at the same time.

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"Not so good News" - Gabriel x pregnant!reader

Pregnancy week 20: The pregnancy was now at its halfway point which also meant that you probably had only twenty more weeks to live. What it also meant was twenty more weeks of pregnancy symptoms and to be honest you were sick of it. Sometimes even literally. You had been so dizzy lately you even blacked out during research. Sam and Dean weren't happy, thinking that you had over worked yourself and Gabriel immediately teleported you to your room after you had woken up again. So now you were on bed rest, or rather jail time. You laid on your back with your arms crossed before you and a pouty look on your face. "This sucks." You wanted to do more than laying around all day however there wasn't really much to do in the bunker especially on your own. You stood up from your bed and walked towards a shelve on the right side. Somewhere underneath all the stuff you had there had to be the thing you were looking for. "Aha!" you grabbed it and left the room, searching for the boys. You found them still sitting in the library, looking for their next hunt but the moment you stepped in all eyes were on you. "(Y/N), what are you doing up?" Gabriel asked with one eyebrow raised in question. You let the box you were holding fall onto the table. "No longer wasting my time" you declared and sat down, opening the box and arranging its content. "I want to spend time with you all and by that I'm not thinking about researching with you." You looked up at the four guys who slowly turned to you and the game you were setting up.

"So, we are playing monopoly now!"

"Only if I get to be the car" Dean said and immediately snatched it for himself. Sam rolled his eyes at him and took the dog. "How do you play?" Castiel asked confused, grabbing the shoe because it was closest to him. You threw him a small smile. "I'll show you." You then turned to Gabriel, offering him to choose his playing piece but he shook his head. "I always play with my own token" he said and snapped his fingers. In front of him appeared a small figurine of himself. You glanced at him with your lips pressed into a thin line to hold back a giggle. "Really?" you questioned as a short breath of laughter escaped your mouth. The archangel shrugged his shoulders. "Want one, too?" he asked, his fingers ready. You shook your head. "No, it's alright. I'll just take the cat." After you had set everything up and explained the rules to Castiel the game began. However, unsurprisingly Cas was still the first person to go bankrupt. Sam soon followed, selling his last green street to Dean. He mumbled something under his breath before throwing the dog back into the box. So now it was only you, Dean and Gabe. "You owe me 600, Dean" you said, pointing on the last light blue street where Dean had his car parked in front of the hotel you had recently built there. "What? How?! You only have shit streets" he complained and gave you the money reluctantly. You chuckled. "Yes, but I got a lot of shit streets." Dean only huffed which made you laugh. You had to throw dice next and landed on the police man. With a theatrical sigh you put your cat in jail, throwing the dice to Gabe. He grinned at you before rolling them. He landed on the middle orange street. Now you were the one grinning at him: "That makes 550." "You have one good street, only one hotel and maybe two to three houses on a street. How are you making so much money?" Gabriel asked after giving you the game money. You shrugged your shoulders. "I have three complete streets: brown and light blue at the beginning on which always someone ends up on. And in the beginning it doesn't feel like much money but it stacks up. And the orange one is often overlooked because the red one has higher prices but people always end up somewhere in that corner, too. Dean rolled his eyes, taking the dice. "Also, you two only have one complete street which lowers the change of getting much money because I bought one dark blue and one yellow one to stop you" you added and leaned back against your chair. "How about a little trade then" Gabriel suggested. "I want the dark blue street you stole from me and I can give you 350 and a get out of jail free-card." "Why would I want that?" you questioned with one raised eyebrow. "I still get money in jail but I don't lose anything for three turns. It's a win-win for me, I'm staying here." The archangel huffed. "Alright, 400 bucks and a train station. Last offer." You shook your head, staying stoic. Turning towards Dean you nodded at him, signaling that you were finished and that he could roll the dice. He got a nine, landing on the same orange street like Gabe did before him. You grinned evilly at him. "550, Dean." "I don't have enough money in cash I need to sell houses first" he explained, giving you six of his green houses from his pink street (you were playing as the bank too). You exchanged them for 300 which you kept and waited for the remaining 250. "Dean, I noticed you are short with money" you said after you had rolled the dice, still stuck in jail. "How about a little trait?" Gabriel shock his head at Dean, whispering "She's too powerful already, don't" which only made you grin. "I want the yellow street you have" you pointed at the card before offering your hand to Dean. "And in exchange I will give you your 550 bucks back." Gabriel continued to shake his head but Dean grabbed your hand, agreeing to the deal. You then turned to the archangel. "Gabe, you want your blue street, right? And I want the last yellow one you have" you said, your eyes sparkling mischievously. "I will give you the blue one if I get the yellow one and 350 bucks." He reluctantly agreed. And so the game went on. Cas and Sam stayed, watching it all go down quietly as Dean lost his last street to you after having to sell his pink one to Gabe completely as well as his train stations. It was a pretty equal distribution of streets, however after about a half hour later you ended up winning. Grinning you put the cards back into their box. "Your strategy really just is to buy all the shit streets at the very beginning and slowly watching as we lose all our money to them?" Dean questioned. You nodded. "Yep, and a few other moves helped me win, too but I won't tell you more than that." All things considered you had a lot of fun and the others did too. "Now you will finally get rid of me again" you said while standing up, smiling at them playfully. "I'll go back to bed. I'm exhausted and my legs are killing me." With that you turned around and walked back to your room in silence. Or at least you had planned to do that, however you heard footsteps following you. Looking over your shoulder you saw Gabriel running after you. You stopped with a grin, waiting for him. When he caught up he didn't say anything so you continued your way back with him by your side. "Thanks for letting me win" you said and shoved his side. "I did not do such a thing" he declared swollen, grinning down at you which made you laugh. "I know but you could have tricked us all anyway for you to win but you didn't do it." "I retired from my trickster days, sugar" the archangel reminded you. "Yes, but we both know that you would never stop messing with us" you said. Throwing him a side glance you smiled at him. "I'm amazed that you didn't play a prank at Dean for a while now." Gabriel chuckled and wrapped one arm around you. "Don't let yourself be fooled, (Y/N)." You grinned and then wrapped your arm around him too, pressing your head against his shoulder. "Thank you" you whispered so faintly you worried he wouldn't catch it. "For what?" he asked with a chuckle. You only shrugged. "I don’t know. I guess for everything." ____________________ Pregnancy week 22: In the last two weeks nothing much changed or happened. Your belly continued to grow and pregnancy symptoms were still haunting you. Your legs cramped so much now you didn't really want to move out of bed. So, you didn't. You stayed in bed all day. "At first you desperately wanted to do something you even overworked yourself into blacking out and now you are lying in bed all day" Gabriel chuckled beside you, nuzzling his nose against your neck. You huffed and turned your head so you could look at him. "Firstly, you're not pregnant so shut up" you sassed back at him but stayed silent after that, turning on your side again so your back faced the archangel. You felt Gabriel squirm behind you. "Secondly?" "Nothing, that is all there was" you said which earned you a hearty laugh from him. "You're adorable" he said and wrapped his arms around you. Now you were the one to squirm, trying to get out of his grip. "Am not!" you proclaimed. "I'm an angry pregnant lady, fear me." You succeeded in freeing yourself and were now sitting on your knees before Gabriel. "I'm trembling underneath your gaze, spear me" he managed to get out between his laughter. With a pouty look you threw a pillow in his face. "You're making fun of me!" you pointed out accusingly. "I would never" he declared with one hand pressed against his chest in shock as he sat up as well. "I don't believe you" you said and crossed your arms before your chest while desperately trying to suppressed your grin. "Oh, furious pregnant lady, how can I prove myself?" Gabriel asked and slowly crawled closer to you. You had to let yourself fall back against the cushions with the archangel now leaning over you. "Hmm" you hummed and pretended to think about it while Gabriel's face slowly got closer to your neck. You shuddered, feeling his breath dance over the sensitive skin. "Helping me with my crampy legs would be a start" you whispered. Without hesitation the archangel set up and shifted his focus to your cramped legs and feet. He slowly massaged from your feet upwards. By now your eyes were already closed and soft hums left your lips now and then. You just enjoyed the feeling of the pain slowly washing away. Or at least you did until Gabe's hands wandered up to the inner side of your thighs. One of your eyes snapped open, glaring at the archangel. "What are you doing?" you questioned with a low voice. "Shh" he breathed and crawled back over you. Instinctively you wrapped your arms around his neck but continued to eye him suspiciously. "Let me spoil you." "You don't need to" you said while Gabriel had already started to pepper your face with kisses. "Oh, but I want to" he kissed the top of your nose which made you giggle. He continued to place kisses on your face before slowly wandering down towards your neck. Occasionally a hum or sigh left your lips as you let yourself relax under his caresses. "What do you want to do?" he suddenly asked. You opened your eyes that had been closed until now and saw him hovering over you again. "What?" you questioned. "What's on your bucket list?" Now you understood. You let your arms fall from his shoulders as you thought about it, letting your eyes wander around the ceiling. "I-" you looked at the archangel. "I don't know." "Really? There is nothing you can think of" Gabriel asked with one raised eyebrow. You shook your head. "I just never thought about it before... And I guess you had finished yours long before you even met me" you said, suddenly feeling very embarrassed. But to your surprise the archangel shook his head. "I achieved my last one only a few years ago." "And what would that have been?" you asked. Gabe's gaze flickered from your eyes to your lips before moving back up. A small smile adorned his face as he spoke up again: "Falling in love." Immediately you felt your face heat up. "You're just saying that to make me feel better" you said, trying to cover your face with your hands but Gabriel pushed them down and shrugged his shoulders. "What about when you were a kid?" he continued to ask. "What did you wish for then?" "Expect a real pink unicorn and ice-cream for every meal?" you laughed before losing yourself in your thoughts again. "I guess ... getting married someday." You felt Gabriel stiffen up above you, making you tense up, too. Shaking your hands in front of your chest as far as possible you backtracked immediately. "Not that we have to. It's just a silly kids thing, you know. Back then we had plenty of games about our future or talked about family and marriage. It was just normal, expected. Ahh! Not that I expect it from you. I don't want you to propose or anything. I-" you noticed that you were rambling so you forced yourself to stop and took a deep breath." I shouldn't have said that." Now you really did cover your face with your hands, wishing to disappear. Though you never talked with Gabe about marriage or anything like that you always knew it would be a tricky subject. With him being practically immortal and marriage always or often associated with religion. You just guessed he didn't want to since he had always tried to distance himself from God and heaven and all that. And since he was an angel, an archangel ... you could promise him to spend your remaining life with him. He couldn't. And now was definitely not the time to marry since you would die in less than twenty weeks anyway. "I'm sorry" you said without really knowing why. Maybe you just wanted to break the silence that seemed to lay heavily in the air. "Don't be" the archangel said, caressing your check with one hand. "But I knew it would be a tricky subject to you." "How so?" "Well" you dragged on and slowly uncovered your face. "I just guessed and by your reaction..." You didn't continue speaking as Gabriel sat up on his knees. Lifting yourself up on your elbows you eyed him confused. Was the subject so repulsing to him? "You mean because I stiffened up?" You nodded. Gabriel let out one breathy laugh. "I was just surprised and shocked because I-" he snapped his fingers and opened his hand revealing a ring. "-actually wanted to give you this." You straightened up completely shocked. Your eyes darting from his face to his outstretched palm. "Wha-" "They aren't wedding rings. More like a promise ring, really" he explained as you slowly reached out to take the ring from him. He was right, it didn't look like the typical engagement or wedding ring. It was a silver ring, shaped into a feather that would curl around your finger. "For what?" you asked and looked up, the ring still uselessly lying in your palm. Gabriel raised his right hand, revealing a silver ring on his finger that hadn’t been there before. This one had the typical form of a ring, however the feather was engraved into it. "To promise that I will always love you." You felt tears in your eyes as you jumped forward, tackling the archangel in a hug. "You always make me cry" you complained but honestly it probably was because of the hormones. You stifled your sobs in his shirt as you pressed yourself flat against him, so you even felt his laughter vibrate through his chest as he wrapped his arms around you, too. "Can I?" he asked after a while and pushed you from him. He took the ring back from you and offered his other hand for yours to put inside. You didn't hesitate to do so but felt your face heat up again as he looked at you with love filled eyes. He slipped the ring onto your finger, gave you one last, long look before letting go of your hand. You looked at the delicate feather wrapped around your ring finger. "Thank you" you said with tears still clinging to your face but a big smile on your lips. You wrapped your arms around him again, burying your face into his chest ____________________ Pregnancy week 23: You had thought hard about what to put on your bucket list ever since Gabriel brought it up. However, it was pretty hard to find things you were able to do because of your condition (pregnant) and your situation (kind of trapped in the bunker). One thing you couldn't get out of your mind though was to see the northern lights far away from any other light source, no cities or other people. You couldn't shake it off even if it meant leaving the bunker. Your second idea was maybe rather cliché and not so impossible: having a family dinner without anything to worry about and no arguments to destroy the mood. "Hey, Gabe?" you asked while entering the library. The archangel immediately looked up from whatever he was doing, beaming at you. "What's the matter?" You sat down on the chair opposite to him. "I was thinking about what you said" you started. "What exactly? I talk a lot" he questioned, resting his head on one palm. You snorted in agreement. "About what I wanted to do, about my bucket list" you reminded him. "And I came up with two things." "Only two? If I knew you were so easy to please I-" you cut him off by throwing a crumpled up piece of paper at his face. "I wanted to ask if you had any ideas or further inspirations for things to achieve in the bunker" you paused. "Okay, I have only one thing for my list because for the first one I would have to leave." "What would that be?" Gabriel asked, putting his head in his other palm while closing the book he was looking at. "I always wanted to see the northern lights far away from civilization" you confessed and looked to the side, pushing one stray strand of hair back. "And my second point was having a family dinner." "With your parents?" Gabriel asked which made you flinch. Maybe you should have expected that since you had never talked with him about your life before becoming a hunter. Still, hearing the word stung a lot. "I never told you why I became a hunter, right?" Gabriel nodded confused and you took a deep breath. "My parents died when I was maybe 14" you explained, not meeting his eyes. "They were killed by a werewolf and I only survived because a hunter rushed in. He shot the werewolf and took me in. He taught me everything he knew but I was still traumatized, refused to leave the house after sunset. Still ... he was like a father to me. And then when I just turned 19 he was possessed by a demon after his tattoo was burned from his skin. The demon inside him stabbed him in the heart before I was able to exorcize him" you finished and wiped away the tears that had found their way over your cheeks. Suddenly you felt a hand on your shoulder, making you flinch again. Looking up you saw Gabriel standing beside you. You hadn't noticed that he had stood up. "I'm fine" you said, not believing even yourself. The archangel didn't say anything, just let his hand rest on your shoulder, sending you comfort through his touch. "Anyway, why did I tell you that again?" you shook your head, trying to rid yourself from the sad memories. "Ah, right. So, when I say family who I mean by that are Dean, Sam, Cas and you, Gabe." You looked up at him with the tiniest smiles on your lips as the archangel wiped away the last tear from your check. "The only problem with a family dinner is that I think it will escalate like always. Especially since I know that Dean is still looking for another way, a way to safe me in secret. Even though I forbid it" you only mumbled the last part. Gabriel grinned and bopped your nose. "Don't you worry your pretty little head, sugar" Gabriel said. "It's late, you should go to bed." You stood up, nodding and wrapping your arms around the archangel still craving his touch. He returned the hug. "I will be with you shortly I need to finish this first." You nodded once more, hugged him for a few moments more before letting go. "Good night" you said and stretched yourself on your tiptoes to give him a quick kiss on the lips before vanishing into your room. You had fallen asleep immediately. "(Y/N)!" you squirmed under your blanket, not ready to wake up just yet. You felt something, or someone next to you and a hand on your shoulder slowly shaking you awake but still you didn't really budge. "Let me sleep" you complained and covered your head with the warm blanket. "Next time, sugar. Now you need to wake up." You opened your eyes, pulling the blanket down and let them wander from Gabe's in shadow casted form to your clock standing on your bedside table. "It's not even three in the morning, what the hell" you grumbled. "A pregnant lady needs her sleep." Suddenly you were pulled out of the comfort of your bed and instead stood on wobbly legs in your room. "What are you doing?" you questioned, holding onto Gabriel's hands. "You wanted to see something, sugar." Confused you freed one of your hands and rubbed your eyes. "My brain's too tired to function, Gabe. Can't it wait till, I don't know, when the sun is shining?" you begged and suppressed a yawn. You could vaguely see the archangel shake his head in the darkness of your room. "Believe me, it will be worth it" he promised. You closed your eyes and rubbed the bridge of your nose. "I really hope you're right." And suddenly when you opened your eyes again you weren't in your room anymore. Confused you looked around. You were standing in the middle of a snowy landscape. Immediately you thought you would be cold but when you looked down at you, you saw that you were wearing a big coat, dark ski pants and a fluffy hat instead of your pajama. "What the hell" you whispered and turned around to look at Gabriel who -even though he didn't really needed it- matched his outfit to yours. He stood behind you with a huge grin. "Look up, sugar" he said and so you did. You hold your breath as you looked at the clear night sky with thousands of twinkling stars. But they weren't catching your attention, no. What had captured your imagination were the northern lights shining above your head. Magnificent colors danced above you, fading from green to blue to purplish pink. And even though your neck already started to hurt from constantly looking up you didn't care, too fascinated by the alluring dance. It looked like you had dipped your head into another world, another universe full of beautiful, vivid colors that were swaying and changing, illuminating the world around you. "It's amazing" you breathed when you felt the archangel take a step closer to you and turned around to meet Gabe's gaze again. "Thank you." Out of instinct you twirled the ring he had gave you before you looked up at the sky again, losing yourself in the endless colors swirling through the carpet of stars on this cold September night in who knows which country you were right now. "Dean and Sam will kill you if they figure out you let me leave the bunker" you stated with your eyes still glued to the aurora lights. "Not if you don't tell them" Gabriel noted. You turned around, wanted to say something but when you opened your mouth to speak only a shallow breath escaped out of it as you wrapped your arms around your stomach. Twisting your face into a frown you leaned forward. "(Y/N)?!" Gabriel asked panicked and walked in front of you. He put his hands on your shoulders to straighten you up again. "Are you alright? Are you in pain? What's going on?" For a few more seconds you didn't answer, stared at the ground with your arms still tightly wrapped around yourself. You felt it again and it was then you realized what this was. You let out a pained laugh. "Yes, everything's fine" you reassured the worried archangel with a small smile. Grabbing one of his hands which were still resting on your shoulder you directed it to your still growing bump. You had to wait a few moments with your hand on top of his before you felt it again. Gabriel flinched and you still saw worry in his eyes but when he looked up from your stomach and searched for your gaze, he slowly relaxed when he saw the softness in your eyes. "Are these...?" "Her first kicks? Yes." In the next couple of seconds you saw every emotion washing over his face. Happiness, relief, love, peace, joy but also worry, fear and panic. But it wasn't the type of panic that shook to your core, making your tense up and freeze. No, it was that type of panic a soon to be Dad had when realizing he would have to care for a small helpless baby soon. It was the first time you saw this fatherly panic on his face ever since the beginning, ever since the big news of you being pregnant. "She's quite strong. Knocked the air right out of me" you huffed while intervening your free hand with his other hand. "Archangel genes" Gabriel laughed. "Yes" you breathed, leaning into his touch with a smile. You two stayed like that for many moments more, enjoying each other's presence underneath the fantastical sky. You twirled the ring on your finger again. You felt the happiest ever since all this had started. This was probably the happiest day you had in a long time. ____________________ Pregnancy week 30: You felt like you had eaten a bowling ball or something like that. Your belly was extremely round and weighted a total of proud 25 pounds more of which the baby accounted for about 3 pounds. It was late October so you had about 2 and a half more months to life. You calculated with the help of your friend (F/N) that the baby would be due around the second week of January. Having these thoughts were scary. Normally the dated day of birth was something the parents craved, finally being able to hold their baby in their hands. But you, you were resenting it, you feared it. You thought you had left these thoughts behind but they haunted you even more now that the day got closer and closer. The last few months were hard, being pregnant in summer were hard but luckily the bunker could be regulated so you never really felt to hot. But now you were freezing even though the heater operates at full stretch so you just wrapped yourself into blankets all the time just like now. You were sitting on the sofa in the library again, the cup of tea you had been drinking was already empty. You sighed, feeling lonely. The guys had left a few days ago for a hunt which had required all of them so you were left behind for possible research again. You wanted nothing more than to cuddle with your favorite archangel right now and it seemed like he had heard your silent wish. You heard the unmistakably flutter of wings behind you and turned your head to look at him. "Gabe? What are you doing here? Is the hunt already finished?" you asked, looking around in search for the others but nobody was there. "No, it's just me" he declared. "And what are you doing here then?" "I just wanted to spend some time with my two beautiful girls" Gabriel said and sat down beside you. You snorted because of his cheesy comment but put your head on his shoulder anyway, nuzzling into his side still wrapped in your blanket as he laid one hand on your stomach waiting for a kick. Your little, heavy light bulb grew very active ever since you saw the northern lights but she seemed to like to kick around at night and sleep during the day. "I don't want to ruin the mood" you said after a long time of silence in which your thoughts continued to suffocated you. "...but I'm afraid, Gabe." You didn't move or look up just pressed yourself flat against him. "I just... wish I could hold her before I.." you didn't finish but you knew Gabriel understood what you meant. "I'm sorry, sugar" he said nuzzling his face in your hair and kissing the very top of your head. "You don't have to be, Gabriel, it's not your fault. And I wanted to have the baby so I just have to come to terms with the consequences of that decision" you explained. "Give me some of the credit, too, sweetcheeks" he cupped your face with one hand, directing your gaze at him as his face hovered inches above yours. "I worked very hard on that baby." You tried to bite back the laugh bubbling in your throat as you pushed his face away from you. "Gabe!" you screeched embarrassed even though he was the only one in the bunker. Giggling you shook your head. "Nice to see you didn't change since the pregnancy started." "I'll never change, you know that, sugar." You shook your head in disapproval. "That's not true, you did change" you noted. "You stopped your playboy days and stayed by my side." "Ah, well. You're just so interesting. How could I not stay a little longer to figure all the ways out to make you come undone" he said and wiggled his eyebrows as you slapped his shoulder with a gloomy look in your eyes. "I take that back, still one hundred percent the same archangel that I met years ago." Crossing your arms before your chest you held your head high as you ignored his laughter. "Oh, come on, honeybun" Gabriel laughed. "Don't ignore me." You huffed, giving him the cold shoulder while desperately trying to suppress your own laughter. "Stop ignoring me, (Y/N) or I will have to take drastic measures" he playfully growled and if you had turned around to look at him you probably would have seen the desire bubbling in his eyes. "You now I can't resist when you play hard to get." Finally, you turned around to meet his fiery gaze. "Oh, really?" you asked innocently. "I never noticed." Your faces were now only inches away from each other, his breath hot on your lips as he tried to hold back. It was nice seeing you still had this effect on him. You loved to watch him try to suppress it, to not give in and still losing to it every time: his desire for you. "You know, we are alone right now" you said with a grin as your eyes darted between Gabe's and his lips. "Oh, I know" Gabriel growled as his gaze fixated on your mouth. "And I intend to relish every second of it." ____________________ Pregnancy week 34: Only about six more weeks to live. It felt like a countdown. You tried to enjoy and appreciate every day and every second you had left, spent a lot of time with Gabriel, Dean, Sam or Cas. However, you couldn't prevent or deny that you were getting more distant. You didn't do it intentionally, or at least you thought so. Okay, maybe you tried to make everything easier for you and the guys. You would leave them, there was no going around that even though you knew Dean hadn't abandoned the plan of finding another solution, a way of saving you. It was just written in his genes apparently. But he hadn't brought anything up and you knew it was hopeless. The only thing you could think of was making a deal with a demon. Your life for someone else's but you wouldn't allow anyone to sacrifice themselves for you. And you weren't even sure if a demon could grant this wish, if they had more power than a half angel child. The last few weeks you had mayor back pains because your stomach had grown so much. Every sleeping position was uncomfortable, sitting was unbearable. Your bump was so big now you couldn't even put on shoes on your own. You felt more useless and moody, too but you weren't sure if it was because of the hormones or because you knew it would happen soon, it would end soon. You put one hand on your stomach, feeling the little light bulb (it became an agreed nickname for the baby between you and Gabe) move around. You noticed that she liked to lie on the right side more than on the left, leaving a little elevation there. Smiling you caressed your unborn baby. You just wished you had more time. ____________________ Pregnancy week 38: It was the fore last week but on a brighter spirit it was also Christmas. You haven't really celebrated Christmas ever since you were a child, ever since your parents were still alive. Of course, when you teamed up with Sam and Dean you exchanged gifts you had bought the day before but it was never a huge deal. You never really cared about the presents anyway. So, you expected that wouldn't change even if it was your last ever Christmas. You had stayed in bed all day, trying to find some rest after your baby girl had kept you awake almost all night. Was that why every mom awaited the birth so desperately? To finally sleep again and be free from all those pregnancy symptoms? A heavy sigh left your lips as you opened your eyes to look at the clock. It was about four pm and if you didn't stand up soon you wouldn't find sleep this night, too. With a groan you rolled out of bed and rubbed your eyes. Maybe hanging out with the guys would lift your spirit. Thinking about them ... you haven't seen them all day. Furrowing your eyebrows, you wondered what they were possibly doing. Had they found another hunt? Were they researching something? Stretching your back you slowly began your way to the library in search for anyone. "Guys?" you asked as you turned around the corner, still rubbing your sleepy eyes. "What were you doing all da-" you froze as you laid eyes on the library. The room was fully decorated with Christmas lights and even a small Christmas tree was standing in one corner, decked out with balls and lights. "What the hell" you mumbled and stepped into the room, your eyes glued to Sam and Dean who were putting the last decorations on the tables. "Oh, fuck" Dean said after noticing you. "Ehm, surprise?" You chuckled. "Well, yeah. I am surprised. Why are you decorating the library." "We thought we should celebrate Christmas this time" Sam explained, leaving out the obvious reason why. You nodded. "I appreciate it but I hope you didn't get me any presents because I was unable to buy anything for you." The two brothers shook their heads. "Nope, no gifts. Only decorations and something festive to eat" Dean declared. "It's gonna be burgers, right?" you questioned and crossed your arms before your chest. The slight blush on Dean's cheeks told you enough. "Good, because I'm starving and would kill for a burger right now." "Did I hear someone say burger?" You looked at the big entrance, seeing Gabe with bags in his hands. "Because I just so happen to have some." Laughing you sat down on one of the chairs, awaiting the festive meal. The three guys sat down too and Cas joined you soon after even though he didn't eat anything. At first you just looked around the room, eyes filled with childish wonder. You had missed the warm lights, the smell of Christmas that came just because of the atmosphere around you. You quickly lost yourself in conversation. Chatting about anything and everything. After a long time, you didn't worry, didn't fear the next day, the next week. You lived and just enjoyed the moment. The warmth that surrounded you, the smiles on their faces and the sound of laughter. This is what you always wanted. And you realized that your bucket list was finished, your last wish: having a peaceful family dinner. ____________________ Pregnancy week 39: Only about one week left. However, you weren't thinking about that just yet because today was New Year's Eve. Sam and Dean had bought some fireworks they wanted to set of which was why you were sitting outside of the bunker, wrapped in a blanket in Gabriel's arms. The Winchesters had oh so nicely agreed to let you come outside too. "How much time do we have left?" Dean asked, already hurrying with setting up all the fireworks in bottles on the street. You freed one arm from Gabriel's hug and looked at your phone. "Two minutes." "Shit, gotta hurry" Dean cursed. You laughed at him as he tried to work faster, ordering Cas to help him. "One thirty... One fifteen... One minute" you continued to count down. "Shut up." Giggling you put your phone away again after seeing Sam grabbing his to start the thirty second countdown in a few. Nuzzling back into Gabriel's side you glanced up at him only to see that his gaze had already been on you. "Hey" you mumbled with a smile. "Hey to you, too" he quietly laughed as he pushed back a strand of hair from your face. Immediately you lost yourself in his warm eyes, the cold night air long forgotten. His face was already so close to yours that you felt his breath on your lips. "Thirty" you heard Sam said. You had to wait thirty seconds until you could finally kiss him? You huffed a breath in annoyance as your hands found their place on Gabe's chest. "Impatient?" Gabriel grinned. You glared at him. "As if you weren't." "Twenty." "Oh, I can live without a kiss" the archangel stated with a smirk. You raised one eyebrow at him before grinning evilly. "Oh, is that so?" You put your hands away from his chest and turned your head forward again, looking at Dean who was armed with one windproof lighter in each hand. You couldn't suppress your laughter when you saw his silly stance. He seemed ready to tackle the fireworks to the ground. You hadn't seen him act this childish in a long time. You felt Gabriel squirm beside you which only made you grin even more. "Ten." "(Y/N)" the archangel growled lowly. "Nine." You glanced at him from the corner of your eyes. "Eight." "I thought you said-" you turned around to meet his eyes completely. "Seven." "-you could live without a kiss from me?" you challenged him. "Six." He huffed. "Five." Stretching up you were the one to tease him with your hot breath on his mouth. "Four." "Well" Gabriel started and placed his arms to either of your sides, caging you in. "Three." You felt his body heat springing over to you as his eyes darted to your lips still stretched into a smile. "Two." "Not now" he finally said. "One!" He grabbed your face in his hands and closed the gap between you two just as Sam shouted "Zero!". Melting into the kiss you pressed your hands against his chest again and closed your eyes. However, the grin on your lips stayed as you responded the kiss. Silently moaning as Gabriel's hand wandered down your sides, leaving a tingling sensation behind, you stretched upward, pressing into him. This kiss was the sweetest you had ever shared with the archangel. Soft, gentle, slow. There was no intention behind it, no raw desire but love. So, you let yourself relax in his arms as the fireworks took of behind you, buzzing through the night sky. "Who was impatient now?" you asked after breaking the kiss, your lips still only barely apart. "Not my fault, I just can't resist you." "You're so cheesy when you want" you laughed and closed the gap between you again in another soft kiss that quickly grew more passionate and daring. You wrapped your arms around his neck, stroking through his hair and slightly tugging at their ends. He groaned against your lips and let his hands wander too. They quickly found their place only barely above your bum as he pressed you against him as far as possible with your baby bump. You felt warm and safe, like being encased in fluffy clouds and soft blankets, like if he had wrapped his wings around that you were unable to see. You parted with a gasp, sucking in breaths of air with a laugh as you looked up the archangel. "I love when you laugh and your eyes crinkle up" Gabriel whispered which only made laugh again and then smiling like a fool. "Are you growing soft on me" you teased. "I am always soft for you" he said without missing a beat. You felt your face heat up but forced yourself to not break the eye contact. "I love you" you mumbled with half lidded eyes. Gabriel chuckled, hugging you close. "I love you, too, sugar." You stayed outside for a while longer, talking with each other while looking up at the stars. But at about 1 am it was too cold to stay outside any longer so everyone slowly packed their drinks and the empty bottles for the fireworks and began their way back into the bunker. You let out a sigh as you heaved yourself up with Gabriel's help, smiling appreciatingly up at him and tried to find your balance. Just as you were standing safely on your legs and took one step forward you felt it. Bending forward you pressed one hand against your stomach and blindly searched for Gabriel to steady yourself with the other one. "(Y/N), is everything alright?" he asked, grabbing your outstretched arm. You growled in response, biting your lip, almost drawing blood. "Ju-just a contraction. Probably just Braxton Hicks contractions" you muttered under your breath and straightened up again after you were sure it was done. "Are you sure?" You nodded, letting go of Gabriel and taking one step forward only for your knees to give in. You yelped in shock but luckily Gabriel caught you before you could hit the ground. Another groan of pain left your lips as you let yourself be kept upright by the archangel just as another wave of pain hit you. Your lips parted, sharply sucking in the cold winter air, as you tried to get the words out. "Or ma-maybe they're real contractions" you stammered. You slumped back down, only kept up by Gabriel's arms while your vision got fuzzy and pain shot through you up from your stomach. You heard him yell for Sam, Dean and Cas who had already gone inside but you didn't really register it. It was absurd. Everything seemed so unreal to you and in the same time frighteningly real, too. Was this ... it? "Gabe" you said not even really knowing why as a nauseous feeling washed over you. Clinging onto him you blinked a few times, trying to make out his face. "I-I need your help." He heaved you into his arms without another word, hurrying inside as fast as possible. "What's the matter?" Sam asked, looking up from his seat in the library. You only cried out in pain, curling into Gabe's chest. "She's having contractions" Gabriel said and walked past the three men in the direction of your room. They hastily stood up and ran after him, frantically shouting all the time. "Real ones? The real deal?" Dean asked worried. "Yes!" you yelled with tears in your eyes as a wave of heat crashed over your body. Gabriel kicked your door open and then laid you down on your bed. Panicking you looked up at the ceiling. This wasn't how it was supposed to go, it was too early and your friend wasn't even in town yet. They had promised to come by to help with the birth giving process. You had no clue what to do and the guys had non either. They were panicking too, asking and shouting about what was supposed to happen. "Gabe... Gabriel" you forced over your lips, looking to your side, searching for his eyes. He immediately had his attention on you with his eyebrows furrowed and teary eyes. "Call (F/N)." He nodded, not hesitating and grabbed your phone. "(Y/N)? What's up?" their voice rang through the speaker only seconds later but you were unable to answer as another painful contraction hit you. This was happening way to fast. Was this the angel side of your baby? Wasn’t there supposed to be a pause between the contractions? How were you supposed to breath through all this pain? "Here's Gabriel" the archangel managed to get out. "(Y/N) just got into labor." "What?! (Y/N)!" your friend yelled as a wave of shock also washed over them. "Hey" Gabriel said to get their attention. "We... she needs your help now. You have to tell us what to do." If you hadn't been in labor you would have been amazed by Gabe's calm voice. But one look at his face told you that it was only a facade, that he was more panicked than any of the other guys inside the room. "Okay, okay. At first ... tell me how far apart the contractions are" your friend requested after a few deep breaths to calm themselves down. Gabriel looked back at you and when your eyes met you felt the next one hit you. "There is no time between them or at least … there’s always pain. They are coming very fast. I-" you were able to groan when the pain washed away for a few seconds. "I think it's because of the angel genes. They're very strong and painful." "Alright, no time to lose then" your friend mumbled probably more to themselves. "You have to lay on your back, put a pillow behind your neck so it's more comfortable for you and you have to get rid of the pants." You looked at Gabe again, signaling him that you needed help with that. He nodded, putting the phone on your bedside table and helped you out of your pants. It was weird being exposed like that but to be fair you didn't really have much time to think about that as another wave of pain crushed over you, pressing your lungs down. "Someone has to check on the status of the baby" (F/N) said and maybe not very surprisingly Cas volunteered to do so. He seemed to have calmed down a bit while Sam and Dean were still pacing around. "Hoist your legs up so you can build up more strength and when the next contraction hits you have to press. And don’t forget to breathe!" You followed their instructions without question. "(Y/N)?" they asked after a few seconds. You answered with a half yelp that somewhat resembled a "Yes?". "I wish I was here to help you, I'm sorry." "No, don't be. I wanted you to enjoy New Year's Eve, too. Life is just unpredictable" you managed to say but after that everything became fuzzy again. This wasn't normal right? No, it wasn't. You were dying. This was the end. The realization hit you suddenly and almost knocked the air out of your lungs. You would die today. You whimpered, unable to form any words as you once again blindly reached out for Gabriel. A hand found yours and you immediately felt that it was his palm squeezing yours reassuringly. Your vision cleared only slightly and when you made out the archangel's face you saw the tears he had forced back all those weeks, the tears he had never let himself cry. "Can you see something already?" Was that Dean speaking? You couldn’t really tell but you knew that the one to answer should be Cas. "Yes, I can see some of the head." "Is she still breathing." "Yes! Now stop worrying her even more!" That had to be Gabe as his hand began to squeeze you harder. "You're doing great" the words echoed in your mind again and again and again. Was that Gabriel? You felt the tears wet your cheeks. You loved him so much. You didn't want this. You wanted more time. Why weren't you given more time? Why did this happen to you? Were you doomed from the very beginning? You couldn’t breath, the pain was too much, your whole body just stiffened up. "(Y/N)." Was this some sort of punishment? The contractions seemed to get even more frequent and even though you were supposed to press you felt your strength leave your body quickly. But this baby had to live, you wanted your baby girl to live. Squeezing the hand in yours tightly you focused every last drip of strength into pushing your baby out. "Out." "She's out." Your baby was out. You were still breathing. Was that screaming? "Gabe" you gasped as the room began to spin. You were so exhausted. All your energy seemed to have been sucked out of you. And that was when you noticed your vision getting out of focus once more but this time it seemed different ... final. A wave of panic crashed over you. No, no, no, no! You didn't want to go. You wanted to reach out to Gabe, opened your mouth. Say something! Another wave of pain tore through you, left you breathless. What was happening? Tears were streaming out of your eyes but you were able to detect one face looking down at you. Worried, honey colored eyes. Gabe! No, you- just say something! Say you love him! Your thoughts screamed at you to say anything... but you were unable to. You had no energy left. Everything turned to darkness.

____________________

"(Y/N)!" you squirmed under your blanket, not ready to wake up just yet. You felt something, or someone next to you and a hand on your shoulder slowly shaking you away but still you didn't really budge.

"Let me sleep" you complained and covered your head with the warm blanket. "Next time, sugar. Now you need to wake up."

You opened your eyes, pulling the blanket down and let them wander to Gabe's in shadow casted Form. Frowning you slowly sat up. This felt strangely familiar, like you were just experiencing a déjà-vu.

You sighed and followed Gabriel's instructions as he hoisted you up.

"Believe me, it will be worth it" he promised. You closed your eyes and rubbed the bridge of your nose. "I really hope you're right."

The next time you opened your eyes you stood in a snow covered landscape. "What-"

"Look up, sugar" he said and so you did. The sight left you breathless. Vivid colors were moving above you in a strange, hypnotic dance. Greens and blues and bright pinks. You were speechless. These were the northern lights.

"It's amazing" you whispered and pushed done strand of hair back. "Thank you."

This was all so familiar. Did you live through this before? You frowned, about to ask Gabriel when you felt a dull pain rush through your stomach. Gasping you leaned forward, wrapping your arms around yourself. This was strange.

"(Y/N)?!" Gabriel asked panicked and walked in front of you. He put his hands on your shoulders to straighten you up again. "Are you alright? Are you in pain? What's going on?" Yes, indeed. What was going on? What was this pain? The thoughts of a possible déjà-vu vanished in an instance as your mind just accepted everything.

For a few more seconds you didn't answer him and instead stared at the ground with your arms still tightly wrapped around yourself. You felt it again and it was then you realized what this was. You let out a pained laugh.

"Yes, everything's fine" you reassured the worried archangel with a small smile. Grabbing one of his hands which were still resting on your shoulder you directed it to your still growing bump. You had to wait a few moments with your hand on top of his before you felt it again. Gabriel flinched and you still saw worry in his eyes but when he looked up from your stomach and searched for your gaze, he slowly relaxed when he saw the softness in your eyes.

"Are these...?"

"Her first kicks? Yes."

In the next couple of seconds you saw every emotion washing over his face. Happiness, relief, love, peace, joy but also worry, fear and panic. But it wasn't the type of panic that shook to your core, making your tense up and freeze. No, it was that type of panic a soon to be Dad had when realizing he would have to care for a small helpless baby soon. It was the first time you saw this fatherly panic on his face every since the beginning, ever since the big news of you being pregnant.

"She's quite strong. Knocked the air right out of me" you huffed while intervening your free hand with his other hand.

"Archangel genes" Gabriel laughed.

"Yes" you breathed, leaning into his touch with a smile. You two stayed like that for many moments more, enjoying each other's presence underneath the fantastical sky.

It indeed was your happiest day.

            The End. ____________________

[rapperkookz]

charity date auction | f2l!jk | fluff, smut if you SQUINT

A/N day ___ of quarantine and i’m going insane

genre: fluff, crack, slight smut if you SQUINT

summary: Beta Tau Sigma was hosting their annual charity date auction for their philanthropy. In previous years, you just attended for fun and to see how many university girls were actually willing to spend their money just to go out on one date with one of the fraternity members. This year’s something different, especially when Jungkook’s on the lineup to get auctioned off.

word count: 4.3k ______________________________________________________________

Your POV

Ah the spring semester. The time when most events and end-of-the-year festivities happen. It was your favorite time. And this was no exception.

“Hey y/n, don’t just stand there laughing, this is a serious meeting we’re having right now.” Hoseok complained pointing his finger at you accusingly as you tried to hide your chuckles in. You leaned against Jungkook’s side, crossing your arms as you responded, “First of all, oppa, I’m sitting. And I’m sorry! This is my favorite event of yours, watching the girls - and guys! - fight over you idiots and actually pay money just to spend time with you all! It’s a great time, ah if only my Sisters and I could do something as dumb as this.”

“Call us dumb all you want kiddo, it gets us over $2000 in philanthropy,” Namjoon shrugged giving you a lighthearted mocking face. You shut your mouth, a little pout remaining on your lips as you turned your attention back to the show that you and Jungkook were watching. He grinned and poked your head with one hand, his opposite arm easily going around and framing your shoulders. “what?”

“Nothing, you’re just funny. Hopefully you won’t make fun of me when I’m getting auctioned.”

“Wait, what?”

“I’m part of the lineup this year,” He said simply, scanning your face for a reaction. “That’s...okay right?”

You tried to hide your shock with a little smile, “N-no yeah that’s fine, I mean we’re not dating, Kook. You can do whatever you want,” Even as the words left your mouth, you felt your chest tightening in discomfort, finding it harder to smile genuinely at him. Jungkook mumbled a quiet ‘yeah’ and watched the show again, but the air surrounding you both suddenly turned awkward.

“Hey, with Kookie in the lineup this year, we might double profits!” Jimin said excitedly from the table where he sat with the rest of the boys. Taehyung nodded in agreement, “Even with Yoongi hyung out, Jungkook will probably get us at least $700,”

“You’re not doing the auction, Yoongi oppa?” You asked the older boy timidly. He looked at you with a soft smile, eyes reading your expression as if you were an open book. He shook his head, “No need to out of respect for my guy. We don’t do the auction if we’re in relationships.”

You nodded in acknowledgement, that made sense. Yoongi just started dating this guy a couple months ago and you’ve never see him happier ever since. You lingered on the last part of his comment, so...if you and Jungkook were dating, he wouldn’t be in the auction?

Ah but that was the thing though, you and him weren’t dating. It’s...complicated. You like Jungkook and he likes you back. That you both have established, hence the ease and touchiness that you and him already share. But after a drunk hookup with him and both of you struggling with the actual concept of settling down and commitment - even though that is basically what you both were doing already as of recent - it was just a friendship with a mutual romantic attraction that has no defined labels. Yet, neither of you seek anyone else and you both spend every waking day together when not in class or preoccupied with other activities.

“I uh, I need to go back to the house. I’ll see you guys tomorrow at the auction.” You said standing up rather abruptly, “I’m gonna get my bag from your room, Kook.” 

He nodded and stood up soon after, heading towards the table where the rest of his brothers sat. Seokjin patted his back,  “When are you and y/n going to make it official, huh?”

“It literally kills me watching you both,” Yoongi deadpanned in agreement. Jungkook sighed, running his hands through his hair as he leaned against the kitchen island. “I want to be with y/n, believe me. We’ve both talked about it too, I don’t know...just, commitment? We both got out of messy breakups and I don’t know if we’re ready for it yet.”

“Not ready? You two literally act like you’ve been dating for the past two months.” Jimin scoffed. Namjoon nodded, “Besides, she looked upset about the auction thing. You weren’t too keen on doing it either when we brought the event up at chapter.”

“I know,” Jungkook muttered, “give me a sec, hyungs. I’m gonna go talk to her before she leaves.” 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You pursed your lips as you packed up your books from Jungkook’s room. Why was this bothering you so much? Dumb question, you knew why this was bugging you, someone else is literally going to go on a date with your boyfriend - not...boyfriend. Fuck!

“Ugh!”

“y/n?” Jungkook said softly, knocking on the door as he opened it. You whipped around surprised, hitting your backpack which fell off his bed. “h-hey, Kook.”

He grinned at your clumsiness, his eyes turning into crescent moons as he closed the door behind him. “You alright?”

“I’m fine, I just have to, you know, go back to the house and do some stuff.” You said, your voice getting quieter as you went on. Picking up your bag, you put your laptop inside and zipped it up before sitting down at the side of the bed. Jungkook sat next to you as if on instinct. “y/n, I don’t have to do the auction, you know? Not if you’re uncomfortable with it.”

“Kook, who am I to stop you from that, though? And I mean, it’ll give your fraternity some good money too, I don’t have any right to keep you from participating.” You said, focus completely on your hands which were placed tightly in your lap. He sighed and grabbed one of your hands, lightly playing with your fingers which were hiding in the sleeve of his sweater. “You have every right, you’re...y/n.” 

“I am y/n,” You said with a small smile, but you knew what he meant. “Go through with it, Kook. I’m not that selfish especially when you know...we’re not even together.”

“Yeah,” He said interlocking your fingers, “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

You nodded, rubbing the back of his hand with your thumb. He smiled and pressed a kiss to your cheek, that’s how you always said goodbye. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“-sold! To that lovely lady for $500!” Yoongi said excitedly, watching Namjoon walk to the girl who won him with a rose in his hand, giving it to the girl who was fully charmed by him already. You stood with Taehyung and his date, who - conveniently - was one of your sisters that has had a crush on him for what seemed like ages.

“Look at Namjoon hyung’s smile,” Taehyung snickered hitting you on the arm in amusement. You turned around to face him and your sister, covering your mouth with one hand, afraid your laugh was going to be heard by the rest of the people in the venue, “You guys are such dorks, stop making me laugh!” 

Your sister placed her hands on your shoulders and spun you around, “it’s Jungkook’s turn.” All of a sudden, your insides ran cold and you couldn’t find it in you to breathe, whether it be because you’re dreading this or because of how amazing Jungkook looked, you didn’t know. He was wearing his usual monochromatic look, a large white tee tucked into black jeans which emphasized his thighs and made you salivate and his hair was its usual fluffy brown mess parted down the middle. 

“Next up we have Jungkook! He’s a comp-sci major with a photography minor. This year, he’s our fraternity’s social media chair and vice president of records. Probably our most talented brother, he can do literally anything, and he can serenade you to sleep.” Yoongi said with a wink at the end, “Do we have $20?”

A swarm of hands shot up from the crowd making Yoongi chuckle, “Ah I crack myself up, $30...$50-”

“I bid $100.” 

Your eyes shot to the girl who just stood up, and to your horror it was none other than Lee Yuna. She was in another sorority on campus, and she was annoyingly pretty. You and her were good friends, you know, until she homewrecked your last relationship.

“Isn’t that-”

“$150.”

The words left your mouth before you could process anything, the attention of the room now on you as you let the price slip. You heard Taehyung try to hide his laughter from behind you, as Yoongi started ushering you up to the stage.

“$150 going once, going twice-”

“$300,” Yuna said her eyes narrowing at your form. You bit your lip in annoyance, walking up the stairs. You huffed out a breath, taking a glance at Yoongi as you answered, “$400.”

“$600.”

“$750.” You said with finality. There was no way that she would say anything higher than that. I mean, you guys are college students, this auction could easily apply to your student loans. “$800.”

“That’s Lee Yuna with $800, you gonna raise it y/n?” You crossed your arms, having an inner battle between yourself as you rested your weight on your leg, “$1000.”

“$1000!” Yoongi shouted, “Going once, going twice.”

“Fuck whatever, my parents will never give me $1000 without an explanation.” Yuna said leaving the stage agitated.

“And that’s $1000 sold to l/n y/n!” Yoongi said excitedly as the venue started clapping. You let out a sound of embarrassment, messing with your braids, as you started descending the stairs. You refused to look anyone in the eye, especially not the boys, and God forbid, Jungkook.

“Ah!” You shrieked in surprise as you felt arms circle around your waist, pulling you along to the side of the room. Thankfully the attention of the crowd was back to the front as Seokjin took the stage for his turn in the bidding. “Kook, don’t say it.”

“Hey, c’mon. Look at me y/n.” Jungkook said chuckling. He lifted the rose and put it at your eye level, which was trained to the floor. You couldn’t help the smile that graced your face as you took the rose in your hand, lifting your head up a little to get a better look at it, but still refusing to meet his eye. Jungkook mumbled something under his breath that you couldn’t quite catch besides ‘so stubborn’ before cupping your cheeks in between his hands and forcing you to look at him.

Damn his sparkling brown eyes. God his eyes that literally look like they hold the entire solar system in them. You felt your resolve melting, your cheeks tinging pink at how adoringly he looked at you. “What Kook?” 

“Nothing,” he smiled. His focus moved from your eyes down to your lips, darting back up as if to ask for your permission. You grinned and puckered your lips in the slightest, your eyes fluttering closed as he finally closed the distance and kissed you.

It was short, but it still conveyed a mirage of emotions that somehow managed to overwhelm you. Neither of you were huge on public displays of affection, especially when your relationship had no defined labels. You pulled away first after the brief intimate moment, offering him a smile as you grabbed his hand and began leading him towards the back where you previously stood with Taehyung and your sister.

You could literally see the cockiness radiating from Taehyung as he held out his hand for Jungkook to complete their brother shake. The older boy nudged your side, “Didn’t know you were ballin with money, y/n. You should participate in the bidding more often.” Rolling your eyes, you were about to roast the living life out of Taehyung before Jungkook squeezed your hand.

“Cut it out, hyung.” The boy said lightheartedly, a small chuckled radiating from his chest. You and Jungkook met eyes once more, his expression softening even more - if that was possible - as he framed his arms around your body. You snuggled your back against his warmth upon instinct, feeling content in his embrace as the group of you watched the rest of the auction.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You said goodbye to your sister as the boys were cleaning up the venue. It was a bit of a given that you were going back to the fraternity house, especially in these circumstances. You were cleaning up the tables with Hoseok as you watched Taehyung and your sister say their goodbyes. She looked as giddy as you’ve ever seen her, and from the way Taehyung was shyly rubbing the back of his neck, there was a potential new romance brewing in the air.

“We’re gonna move the platform back to Student Activities, we’ll see you guys at the house?” Jungkook asked standing with Jimin and Seokjin, his eyes, though, were trained on you at his question. You nodded in response, the other boys mumbling on in agreement as they hurried their cleaning tasks.

The remaining five of you leisurely hung around the common area of the fraternity house after changing into something more comfortable, waiting for the three to come back. You were minding your own business in the kitchen, drinking some juice as you scrolled through your tiktok feed on your phone.

“So,” Yoongi said hopping on the counter, “$1000 for Kook, huh?”

You sighed and put your phone down, sipping on your glass as you faced the older boy. Yoongi was like an older brother to you, more than the other guys. He gave you all your talks about Jungkook and this was no different. “I know what you’re going to say, oppa.”

“No, I’m not helping you pay for the money you promised our chapter.” He rolled his eyes. You laughed and threw your scrunchie at him, “No! You’re so annoying. You were gonna talk to me about Jungkook.”

“My question never changes, kiddo.” He said simply, giving you your hair tie back. “Why aren’t you official?”

“Yeah, why aren’t you official?” Hoseok said curious from the other room. You and Yoongi turned your heads to see the others listening intently in your conversation. Yoongi hopped off the counter and patted your shoulder, leading the both of you into the common area. You sat down on the arm of the single seat, facing the boys as you rested your elbows on your lap, your face being propped up by your hands. “I don’t know guys, I wanna be with Jungkook more than anything, I don’t know if he’s ready yet though or if I’m ready-”

“My God, all I know is that I’m ready to smack both of you upside your heads,” Namjoon shook his head. “y/n, it literally pains me and all of us watching you both pine for each other.”

“We-we don’t pine for each other...” You mumbled your voice trailing off as you tried to deny his statement.

Hoseok laughed, “Oh please, it’s all in the eyes y/n.”

“Besides, you’re literally wearing his shirt. He doesn’t even let us borrow his clothes,” Taehyung added making you curl your body in closer to itself.

Your lips formed a pout, trying to come up with a smart reply to the boys, but to no surprise you couldn’t figure one out. “I’ll...I don’t know, I’ll talk to Kook. We’re gonna have to I mean, I literally paid $1000 for a date with him.”

The others burst out laughing as if they forgot the highlight of the night. Your cheeks warmed up in embarrassment as Yoongi started hitting your leg, fully amused. 

“Where are you even gonna get $1000?” Taehyung laughed, “I’ve seen your bank account y/n,”

“Stop! Oppa, I have a...savings...account somewhere.” You whined crossing your arms. The guys lived to tease you, they say it’s all love, but personally you think it’s because you’re an easy target. Either way, you let it slide, their jokes were pretty funny anyway. 

Namjoon cleared his throat after the room calmed down from their outburst. “You know, y/n, you must have been aware of this, but you could have just gotten Jungkook for free.”

“Matter of fact, you already have his heart for free,” Yoongi agreed, his sharp hearing picking up the click of the knob as the front door opened. In an instant, the remaining three boys walked inside the fraternity house, looking relieved to finally be back in their home. Chatter started to spark up once more as the boys were now complete. Your attention was focused on Jungkook as he lagged into the common room from the kitchen, drinking from a bottle of water that he retrieved from the fridge. He gravitated to your side while listening to the conversation of his brothers, his hand easily taking its place on your waist. 

He squeezed your skin as if saying hello, making you wiggle against his body as you let out a laugh. Jungkook looked at you fondly, noticing that you were wearing one of his shirts and wow did you manage to pull it off, even if you were only wearing his white tee and a pair of your athletic shorts. After a couple minutes, the group of you dispersed into doing your own separate things, you and Jungkook already making yourselves comfortable in his room.

He grabbed a towel and informed you that he was going to take a quick shower. You nodded and leaned against his headboard, passing the time efficiently by scrolling through tiktoks. Soon enough, Jungkook was strolling back inside his room, rubbing his hair dry as he hummed a little song. You narrowed your eyes at him as he innocently looked at you with a smile, “What?”

“You’re trying to seduce me, aren’t you?” You said shamelessly checking out his half-naked form. He only wore his grey sweatpants with you when he wanted something. He smirked mischievously, “It’s working, isn’t it?”

“Shut up,” You said throwing one of his pillows at him. He laughed, swiftly dodging your attack as he focused on drying his hair. You put your phone down on his bedside table, trying to figure out the right moment to start speaking. “You know, Kook-”

“Wait, I just wanna say first that I’m not gonna make you pay $1000 or force you to go out on a date with me. I can help you pay the money if my hyungs are really pressing for it because it does go towards our chapter.” He said sitting on the side of his bed adjacent to you. “What did you wanna say?”

You suddenly started to feel shy, your thoughts all clumping together as you fumbled with what to say first. “Uh...about tonight,” God your palms were sweaty. You and Jungkook have had this talk numerous times, yet it still made you nervous every time it was brought up. It was probably your fear of rejection, even though all signs pointed to the complete opposite of that. “I, um, I know that even yesterday, I was laughing about this auction and about the girls and guys bidding and honestly you probably think I’m stupid by what happened tonight-”

“Not at all,” Jungkook said putting his hand on your thigh for comfort. Your body temperature started to rise upon the contact of his warm hand on your bare thigh. You know he meant nothing sexual by it, but the way he looked delicious in his sweats betrayed you and the fact that you haven’t been laid in a month wasn’t helping either. Shaking your head to remove the dirty thoughts, you sighed and bit your lip, “I really wasn’t gonna bid tonight, like I was going to let them fight over you because I know where our feelings stand, but when I saw Yuna stand up I just...God I don’t know.”

The corners of his lips started to curl up in a little smirk, scooching on closer to you as he put his arm around your figure, his other hand still on your thigh. “You felt a little jealous?” 

You could hear the smugness in his tone, but you couldn’t even deny it at this point. “I wanted to push her off the fucking platform.”

“I’m not gonna lie,” he said ghosting his lips against your neck. You shivered, the warm feeling of his breath making your body react almost immediately. Craning your neck so that he could get better access, you bit back a moan as he kissed at your sensitive spot, “you looked pretty sexy when you were fighting her.”

You scoffed, but let out a gasp as he pulled your hair to the side, biting your neck to make sure to leave a mark. “Jungkook, wait.”

In an instant, all his administrations stopped, respecting your words. You turned around in his hold, moving your legs to either side of his thighs, straddling the boy’s lap. His hands instantly found your waist, moving underneath his shirt to find access to your skin. You met his eyes, which held curiosity and concern. You gave a soft smile, moving one of your hands to play with his lightly damp hair. “Jungkook, I don’t want to be confused about our relationship anymore.” 

“Me neither.”

“I don’t want to feel jealous over girls that throw themselves at you. I don’t want to have to think twice about hugging you in public or holding your hand or kissing you. Kook, I want to be yours and have everyone else know it too. I wanna be able to call you my boyfriend.” You said letting it all go. “I know we both got out of traumatic breakups and like honestly thinking about being in a relationship and the possibility of getting broken like that again is scaring me even right now, like I don’t know what I’m saying I might talk myself out of this, fuck I don’t know-”

Jungkook leaned in and pressed your lips together, shutting you up effectively. You relaxed in the kiss, all feelings of anxiety that you brought up disappearing in an instant. Wrapping your arms around his neck, he made a sound of approval and pulled you flush against his chest. You whimpered at the feeling of his hardening bulge against your ass, moving your bottom back and forth to feel some friction. He groaned into your mouth and ground his hips up into yours, his bulge making contact with your core making you whine in pleasure.

Unwillingly, Jungkook pulled away before you both were too far gone, the grip he had on your waist tightening in sexual frustration. “Sorry, you were just really cute rambling, I couldn’t help myself.”

You were already breathing hard from the kiss, your hormones were starting to go haywire at all these interruptions, “Kook, I know we’re both hesitant about starting a new relationship, but I know that if it’s with you, I know that I wanna try.”

“Me too,” he agreed his expression switching from lustful to soft. His duality amazed you. “Can I finally call you my girlfriend now, y/n?”

You giggled and kissed his nose, the smile radiant on your face, “yes please.”

He laughed and flipped you both over so that he was topping you. He tickled your sides affectionately, his laughs raising in pitch as you squealed at his attack. “Now, my dick is hard and you’ve been turning me on since the auction, can I please fuck you? it’s been so long.”

You could already feel his hands grope the side of your breast. Instead of responding with words, you snuck your hand between the two of you and squeezed at his bulge, the man above you groaning in pleasure. Bless his grey sweatpants. It always had to do with his grey sweats.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The next morning, Jungkook never seemed to leave your side. Even as you were making coffee for the whole house, you found it rather endearing than clingy. You don’t know if the boys caught on yet, they probably should have by now.

“God you two are insatiable rabbits,” Yoongi groaned seeing you and Jungkook in the kitchen. He shot a pointed look at your boyfriend, “What the fuck did you take for you to go at it all night? Viagra? Ecstasy? Poppers?”

“Shut up hyung,” Jungkook said trying to hide the blush from his face by burying it in your neck. You patted his arm, “it’s okay, Kook.”

“Babe, he’s being mean to me.”

“Hold on. Babe?” Yoongi asked before slowly clapping his hands. “Thank fucking God finally!”

“Are they finally together?” Jimin yawned from the common area, the boys starting to fill the space in. You and Jungkook shared a look before he spoke to all his brothers.

“Not that we were really obligated to tell you guys, but yeah y/n and I are dating now.” Jungkook grinned hugging you tightly from behind. 

“Damn, it really took $1000 for you both to define the relationship,” Seokjin cackled as you glared at him. “It wasn’t just because of that, oppa please!”

“Well, guess that explains why they were fucking all night.” Namjoon said as Taehyung and Hoseok nodded in agreement.

“You still have to pay, y/n sorry.” Hoseok shrugged making you whine.

“I can’t believe you paid $1000 to go on a date with your boyfriend,” Taehyung snorted, the rest of the boys bursting out in laughter at the seemingly stupid fact, even your dumbass boyfriend was laughing too. You elbowed Jungkook’s stomach, groaning at the sad reality your wallet was about to face.

“I can’t believe I have to pay to go out with you,” You rolled your eyes. Jungkook smiled cheekily and wrapped his arms around you in a tight hug. He kissed your lips briefly, as if that would fix everything. Jungkook met your eyes with a flirty wink, “I’ll make sure it’s the best fucking date ever, babe. Don’t worry.” ______________________________________________________________

A/N Wow I finally finished this. Fun fact, I was inspired by an episode of Full House for this, but wow I’ve been craving on posting something for literally the longest time. I also have an exam in 5 hours and it’s 4:30 am right now ah ha ha but ~quAranTiNe VibEZ~ I hope you’re all staying safe and healthy everyone <3

[oftenderweapons]

Everyday

Pairing: member x reader 

Wordcount: 300-400 words each piece

Genre: fluff, smut, slightest angst

Rating: suggested 18+

Small announcement

Unfortunately, I couldn't complete Jin's Love Talk scenario in time, since his conversation with Angel is a lot more difficult to handle and I still have some research to do (a lot of educational BDSM talk Yay! And I want it to be accurate and as precise as possible).

To earn your forgiveness, I will publish a double update next week, with Jin's part published on Thursday 1 am GMT, and Yoongi on Saturday at 3 am GMT. (Please don't judge my night owl lifestyle)

Here are some mixed drabbles (watch out for the text mentioned in Joon’s Love Talk) 😉 Also this is unedited, I’ll grammar check it in the morning. Each drabble is about 300-400 words.

Here is my Masterlist!

TRIGGER WARNINGS: dirty talking, spankings, oral male and female receiving, cum play (pearl necklace), male masturbation, breast worship, mentions of role play, mentions of sex tapes, mentions of subbing and pain kink, mentions of nipple piercing.

Namjoon

--  the morning after Love talk --

Sunday morning felt like a nightmare. He asked himself why, why for fuck’s sake he had left. 

You had kissed him, rubbed all over him, pressing your ass on him as you watched the film on the sofa, spooning. WHY!

He grabbed his phone. You were probably still asleep. Unless…? He texted you.

How’s your head? Mine is a mess. 

You don’t know how bad it feels to wake up alone. I felt like eating some tiramisu for breakfast and ruin your underwear. Did you touch yourself last night, after I left?

I thought about you, you know. That perfect ass of yours. How much I want to bite it. God, I want to spank you so bad, Vixen. I swear, if I put my hands on you I’m gonna ruin you. You won’t sit for a week. For all that fucking teasing last night. You don’t know how many times I thought about putting my hand under your skirt. Were you even wearing panties, naughty girl? You bent over at dinner and I noticed that there were no lines on that incredible peach of yours… Wanted to push you down against the table, drag your skirt up and just ram into you from behind. But I wanna take my time. Toy around this mind-blowing chemistry with you, until you’re on your knees begging for me to be your daddy and teach you how to do it right for me. At that point I would finger you nice and slow, the way impatient, hungry girls like you can’t handle. I would make you cum so intensely your legs would twitch merely at the thought of me doing it again. And then I would lie down and have you sit on my face. Cute right? I would help you ride my face with my hands cupping your butt, until you’re dripping all over my face. I want you to look down at me like a queen on a motherfucking throne, Vixen. And right after your second orgasm I would make you roll down so I can fuck you missionary, looking at the face you make the first time I slide into you, those pretty doll lips wrapped around the hand I used to make you cum. 

I know you must be so tight, little one. I can’t wait to leave angry, purple lovebites on your sexy hipbones and thighs, baby. 

Tell me you want that too, little vixen. 

After ten minutes of you not answering, he just headed to the shower, in the hope of blowing off some steam. 

When he returned he noticed the notification. 

My head? No complaints 😉😏

Thank you for the orgasm, daddy. Maybe I could help you with yours now?

Yeah. he was hard again anyway…

Seokjin

-- shortly after the Conversation with Jimin -- 

Water fell heavily on his back. You were laying in bed, your cute pjs making you look like a princess from a fairy tale. 

That princess had your cum all over her chest precisely five days ago.

He pressed his forehead to the tiles. No, a part of him said, but his hand was already there, lingering on his shaft. 

She licked it clean. Scooping it up with her fingers. Grinning at you. 

He hit his head against the tiles in the hope it would help him stop. 

You had your mouth on her panties, you coward? She was so lost she would have told you yes. He thought of your taste. He allowed himself that only once, maybe twice a month. Not because he didn’t like that, but rather because he had probably never done it before. Which seems ridiculous, but apparently his exes weren’t interested in cunnilingus? Was it absurd that he wanted to try with you? 

He dragged his hand up and down, angry at himself. 

He should just get in the bed and make you scream until even the florist at the end of the street knew who’s fucking you so good.

He thought about your hands tied up, about you cumming just with him ramming into you. He wanted to give it to you so hard you even forgot you had a body. He wanted your pleasure to be one with his. Just like last time. 

Not like your previous life was unsatisfactory. But he saw the superior look of bliss, how radiant you had looked the morning after. How easily you had fallen asleep in his arms as he caressed your hair. 

“Jinnie, love.” You called from the bedroom. 

He didn’t understand what came next, he was lost in bliss, your voice and his imagination making him fall in the deepest pits of pleasure. 

Yoongi 

-- after date five, art gallery --

Fuuuuck. He fixed his trousers in the elevator headed to his apartment. 

Rushing through his door, he almost tripped on his shoes as he took them off hastily. He had promised himself he wouldn’t. Yet again, here he was, sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows propped on his knees. He took off his turtleneck lightning fast, his naked pale chest emerging from the dark cotton that protected him from the chilly spring air. He didn’t actually have enough patience to get rid of his trousers. He let them bunch up at his ankles.

“Kitten.” He whispered shyly, reaching for his hard on. He was so sensitive his hips thrusted up as he gave himself the first stroke. 

Those tits. Fuck. Pressed against his back as you explained a picture to him, the tip of your nose running against the curve of his ear. 

He had wanted to pin you against the white walls of the gallery, like a work of art, get his head under your cute skirt and nuzzle his face against your mound.

And the ice cream. 

He thought he would cum in his pants, with you licking up your ice cream cone, your kittenish licks deviously appropriate to your nickname. And the ice cream dribbling down your hand in thick droplets a couple times. The way you had sucked it clean. 

Fuck, fuck!

He laid down on his back and kicked off his pants, hand still busy on his cock. Half delirious, he turned to his belly, thrusting his hips up into his hand, one arm propping him up. “Fuck, kitten, so good.” He nuzzled his face against the sheets, lost in his imagination. “Love, please. ____.” And with your name on his lips he let himself crumble and dissolve. Crashing, exhausted on the bed he took only a couple seconds before emitting an exasperated cry. He had stained the sheets like a teenager. 

Three times this week. And it was only Tuesday. 

Hoseok 

-- a couple days after his Conversation with Taehyung --

“Are you sure you want to keep it? We don’t have to, sweetie.” He reassured you. 

“You’ll have to leave soon. I know you get frustrated with phonesex. This could help you.” You combed his hair back and booped his nose. 

He hid his face into your neck. “Tell me you’ll see me in Los Angeles. Promise me you’ll come.”

“I promise, puppet.” You held him tighter. 

“The guys hate me when you’re not around. They say I get duller.” He whined with a sad voice. 

“My poor little puppet.” You fondled him. “And that’s not true Hobi. You’re always lovely.” You started waddling, bringing him from the kitchen to the sofa. Waddling always gets him to laugh. 

Indeed, a few seconds later he giggled as you both plopped down on the cushions. He shifted around until he was perfectly curled against you, his head laying on your chest.

“You sure you’re okay with me keeping it?”

“Guard it like your own life, Hobi. You know the risks.” You reminded him. 

“Yes, of course. It’s in my personal luggage. Safe. Don’t worry, seriously. Taehyung instructed me. And I’m pretty sure he travels with a whole library of this stuff.”

You cringed and laughed. “At least he can help you, eventually.”

“Your copy is in the pendrive in the bedside table.” He murmured. “It’s only three weeks until LA. It’s not awful. We can do this.” He tried to convince himself. 

“Just three weeks. You’ve got enough stuff to last you a month.” You kissed his forehead. 

“I love you.” He said, stretching to reach for your lips. 

“I love you too, puppet.”

Jimin 

-- The morning after your sixth date --

He woke up with an awfully painful erection. Probably because the night before you had teased him endlessly and when he’d come back home he’d been too tired to jerk off. 

Pushing up his hips tentatively, he felt the softness of the cotton on his naked body. Turning around he found his spare pillow between his thighs. 

Yes, he huffed out, thrusting his hips harshly. He moaned. He started with a punishing rhythm straight away, pushing so hard his whole back arched over and over.

His hand grabbed his own thigh, using his knees and free arm for leverage. 

The hand on his leg climbed up to his ass, cupping it, slapping it carefully, gently. He wanted you to do that. Grab his ass as he rammed into you. Manhandle him a little. His hand climbed further up, toying wit his chest. 

Shit. He tweaked his nipple, wetting his fingers with his mouth and bringing them back to his pect. His hips stuttered. 

He thought of your mouth. Of your sinful red lips, Of the way you always seemed to have the situation under control. Of the way you make him always feel desired.

Were you touching yourself at the thought of him?

Were you as eager as he was? Having wet dreams about him?

He was tired of this frustration. He fucked harder in the pillow, one hand around his neck, the other gripping his ass, his short nails diggin in the flesh. 

He could only think that your nails would look prettier. Sink deeper. Hurt more. Make it all sweeter.

Taehyung

— around date three or four —

“That lipstick looks lovely on you, Doll.” He murmured, holding your hand as you strolled down the gallery, a big bucket hat over his eyes. “I think I’ll call you poppy. That’s perfect poppy red. How fitting that opium comes from poppies.” 

You looked at him surprised. “Are you saying I’m a drug?”

“I’ve been high on you for the last four days. Since I saw you at the shop. Do you usually strut around in full pin up attire?“ He asked, intertwining your fingers. 

“No, not usually. I was just on my way to a theme party. I figured I could just get ready at the shop. I wasn’t expecting you to come around.”

“Theme party... Were you supposed to be the naughty housewife who can’t just get enough of her husband and has an affair with the poolboy?“ He asked, getting close to you enough to bite your earlobe. Oh, the teasing. He was reckless with it. 

“Tae.” You reprimanded him. You looked around. The gallery was empty since he knew the owner and he had allowed him to come visit behind closed doors. 

“It’s just us, Doll. No worry.“ His arm wrapped around your waist. “I can be your obedient poolboy.“

“Why be the poolboy when you could be my husband, spanking me because I ruined one of his expensive white shirts?” You looked at him mischievously as he cleared his throat. You both stopped in front of a painting. The still nature had a variety of vases with different flowers. Of course poppies were included. 

“There they are.” He pointed to the flowers. “And here she is.” His arm wrapped you up, dragging you closer to him, his mouth dipping to yours.

You thought his spell would wear off, but time after time, his kisses taste wilder. Would it ever become too much?

Jungkook

— shortly after Where, when and how —

Jungkook was laying on top of you on the sofa, and god, didn’t it feel nice...

Nuzzling his face against your chest, he let his hand climb under your T-shirt, meeting the elastic band of your sports bra and slipping his fingers underneath, tracing the outline of your pierced nipple.

“Again, baby?” You asked him, who had already reached his destination.

“I love it. I’m sorry.” His face felt ten times hotter on your neck, his blush apparent.

He made to remove his hand, but you locked it there.

“It’s sweet, it’s just that it turns me on a little.” It was your turn to blush.

“If you want I can just let it be. Really. I mean... Unless you want me to... help you out with... that.” He questioned, doubtful.

“Are you asking me if I need to be fucked?” You asked, unceremoniously, with a grin on your face.

“I mean. I wouldn’t oppose if you asked me to.” He kissed your neck sweetly.

You combed his hair with your fingers. He emitted a low whine, especially when you massaged his nape.

“Would you like to try something, Koo?” You were getting an idea.

He seemed to raise his head like a curious bunny. “Mhmh.”

“Remembered when we tried cockwarming?” You asked, ready for mischief.

“Of course.” He replied. Duh.

“What if we did the same here. I mean, if you kept your mouth there, did your thing until I can’t keep my cool?” You suggested.

“Take off this damn shirt right now.” He replied immediately, lifting himself off to allow you to move.

There we go.

[the-drakeboys]

Come Back to Me - Pt. 1

Summary: For the first time in years, Sam and Nate Drake will be going on a perilous, high-risk adventure without you by their side - a three-day stint in a Panamanian prison. They’re not just the guys you’ve partnered with and been a medic for on dozens of insane jobs over the last few years - Nate has become one of your closest friends, and Sam… well, Samuel Drake is the love of your life. 

Sam just wants to reassure you - everything is going to be perfectly fine. 

It’s a simple job, after all. 

Pairing: Sam Drake x Reader

Word Count: 3,475

Warnings: Just… all of the fluff. So much fluff.

A/N: My first fic in a long time! I sincerely hope you enjoy. This’ll be a 3- or 4-part series… Just can’t get enough of Sam. He’s such a complex character, and I absolutely love him. Thanks so much for reading!

---

"I just don't see why we can't come up with something." Pacing the floor with your hands on your hips, you had both Drake brothers watching you with uncertain eyes. The crimson shag carpeting beneath your feet squished between your toes, and your eyes caught the cryptic motel art hanging on the far wall. "There must be... I don't know. Something." 

"We've been over this three hundred times, y/n. It's not gonna work," Nate sighed, rubbing his hands down over his face. You slowed to a stop behind Sam's chair and set your hand on the back of it. You idly thought about how badly you needed to do a load of laundry - his t-shirt felt utterly grimy against the side of your thumb. "But the boat is an important piece of the puzzle. Immensely important. In fact, I would say it's the most important-" 

"Okay, alright, she gets it," Sam waved off his brother's muttering, glancing up at you over his shoulder. "Darlin', we'll be fine. I promise you. It's a simple plan, in and out. That's it." You stared down at him, taken by the earnest look in his eyes. He meant it; he was confident everything would be completely fine. 

And that's what scared you. 

"Sam..." you started, your mouth opening and closing uselessly. He never left your gaze, managing a small, reassuring smile in the corner of his lips. You sighed, setting your hand softly onto his cheek. He turned his head and kissed your palm, hoping that your jittery nerves would be soothed by it. You felt yourself sink, knowing they were right. "Just... just go over the plan for me one more time. Okay?" 

"Jesus, y/n..." Nate's patience was wearing thin. You sat yourself down in the chair between them, trying to settle yourself. 

"Please. Just humor me,” you pressed. The younger Drake softened at the sound of your voice and gave, clearing his throat and starting up on the plan for the millionth time. 

"Uh... Yeah. Yeah, alright." You sunk back into the chair, feeling the weight of all your worry and stress press down into your shoulders. "So, obviously, we know that Avery and Burnes had a run-in at some point in the late 1690's, and Burnes eventually wound up on his crew, and was definitely present for the Gunsway heist. Then in 1696, he was captured and imprisoned for his crimes as a pirate..." Your eyes carefully followed as he gestured across maps, notes, and letters, recounting all the details for you from start to finish, feeling your heart crumple up as he returned to the part of the plan that had remained a sticking point for you for four solid months.

The jail. 

"...so once we get whatever Burnes left behind, and assuming there aren't any hiccups or anything, we just follow Rafe's lead and head to the boat." 

"And that's where you come in," Sam murmured. "Rafe's guy will drive the boat, and you'll be there to patch us up. Y'know, if... we need it." 

Dazed and quiet, you just nodded, staring at the blueprints of the jail in front of you. Eyeing the lines - all the cells, the maze-like array of boxes and hallways and tunnels. It'd be hell to get out of there on short notice. Sam raised a brow at you, taking in your slumped form and feeling the defeat that came off of you in waves. He reached over and rested a firm hand on your knee, forcing you to lock onto his eyes. "Baby," he started. "It's nothing. We do a job like this in our sleep. You know that. I promise this time next week, it'll be like it never happened. Just me and you, on the beach somewhere, drinkin' mojitos and dancin' in the sunset." 

You cleared your throat and sat up, sighing out a slow breath of air. "That's sweet," you spoke, leaning over and pressing a gentle kiss to his lips. "But that's not what's bothering me." 

"...oh?" he mumbled as you leaned back from the kiss, sitting back in his chair and getting ready to listen. 

Nate took a swig of the luke warm beer that'd been sitting in front of him for over an hour; you hid a smile, pretending you didn't notice the grimace that crossed his face as he sat it back down. "Well... I mean, truthfully, besides the impossible exit strategy - or lack thereof, or the fact that I can’t be there - and yes, I get it, all male prison, yadda, yadda; or even the fact that the person your entire plan is dependent on is Rafe, with whom I wouldn't trust a pet rock, much less my life..." you trailed off, not noticing the look Nathan shot to his brother across the table and the narrowed eyes the elder sent right back, "it's mostly... Burnes. I mean, I hear you, Nate, I really do, a lead is a lead. But just… why Burnes?”

Nate cocked his head at you. “Whatta you mean?” 

You cleared your throat and carefully lifted the 300 year old letter from the table. “I mean… why Burnes? Theoretically, the Gunsway heist took place in ‘95, right? Avery dies four years later - and based on this one letter, we’re supposed to believe that Avery left his monumental treasure of gold and jewels, the culmination of his entire fantastic career as a pirate… to some inconsequential member of his crew who’d barely come aboard just before the heist?” 

A wave of depressed concern flooded both young men. "Well..." Sam started, sitting forward. "Look, it's..." 

You cut him off, “-and not to mention, why would he have wanted his son to ‘find his way in’ to a Panamanian jail? Is there no chance that it was forged by someone trying to lure the son in, maybe one of the captains in charge of capturing and hanging as many of the pirates from Avery’s crew as possible?” 

Nate grumbled under his breath and stood, going over to the mini fridge in the corner. He pulled a few cold beers from the tiny shelf and cracked them open.

You glanced over at Sam, immediately feeling guilt flood your veins at the disheartened expression on his face. “I’m… I’m sorry. I just… I don’t want you two risking so much on such a thin lead.” The brothers shared a look. 

Nate carefully sat down, sliding the two beers to both you and Sam across the cheap wooden table. He gently took the letter back from you and ran his eyes over it. 

“The thing is… you’re not wrong. Okay? It’s thin. It’s definitely thin. But… listen to this. ‘Though my regrets are many, know that I am at peace with my fate.’ He’s… He’s a father, giving peace of mind to his wife and son. Letting them know he’s ready for death. If it was one of the Viceroys, they wouldn’t want to imagine him having any sort of peace, and they certainly wouldn’t want the son to feel peaceful about it, either. They’d want him to feel urgency. To hurry to the jail. They’d give him some sort of date or timeline.” Nate’s passion was evident as he let the words roll off his tongue, and you couldn’t help how it made you smile, how much he reminded you of his brother. 

They both got that look in their eye when they talked about history; when they told the stories of people who’d lived and died so long ago. 

“And,” Sam chimed in, a glint in his eye as he spoke, “he doesn’t just say ‘treasure’. He describes it as ‘the riches of paradise’... That’s a pretty specific line, and given how religious Avery seems to have been... I mean, there are references to paradise all over Avery’s history, and the Spaniards wouldn’t have known that.” 

Okay. you thought. There’s no talking them out of this.

“C’mon… You know it’ll be fine… over before you know it. What’s the worst that could happen?” Sam nudged at your foot with his own, trying his hardest to make you smile.

Your eyes found their way to your overstuffed med pack, sitting fully stocked at the edge of your bed. You’d been there for them through more close calls and near-death experiences than you’d care to admit over the last three years, playing medic to their wild, reckless adventurers since the beginning. And now, without you being able to get into the prison with them, the mere thought of them having to make it in and out of that place without you by their side turned your stomach inside out. 

But they were right. This was the only lead you’d had for months… It was this, or back to square one. And with everything they’d been through, with how long they’d been after this treasure… That just wasn’t an option. 

Biting the inside of your cheek, you mumbled, “Can I at least stock you guys up with some gear, just in case?” 

A wide grin broke out over Sam’s face. “That’s my girl,” he laughed, reaching over and cupping your cheeks in his hands. “We’re gonna be fine,” he pressed a kiss to your lips, “More than fine, actually. We’ll be great.” He turned to his brother then, holding his beer out for a cheers. “We’re gettin’ close to this treasure, I can feel it.” 

You let out a soft giggle, rolling your eyes and lifting your own beer to theirs. Just before your bottle touched Sam’s, you pulled it back. “...Although…”

“...oh my god. What?” Nate huffed with a frustrated laugh.

“...What do I get out of bein’ so cool about this?” you grinned, lifting your feet up to rest on Sam’s lap. 

“What you get? You mean other than your share of a 400 million dollar treasure?” Nathan was beside himself at this point, finally relaxed but still in disbelief at your stubbornness. 

Sam was lost to the conversation, in an awe-filled haze as he watched you start haggling with his younger brother. He softly rested his free hand on your ankle, rubbing the skin there and listening to you throw out ideas - everything from them doing your laundry for a month to a three-day excursion to the Bahamas - and all he could think was just how goddamn lucky he’d gotten; he still couldn’t believe you were his.

“...okay, okay, no, I’ve got it,” you spoke, sure of yourself as a sly grin crossed your face. Nate raised a brow at you, playfully terrified of whatever was to come next.

“Oh god, what is it?” 

You sat forward, smirking at them both. “When you get back, you two finally tell me your last name.” 

“...y/n, the hell’re you talkin’ about?” the younger Drake seemed confused, but you saw right through both of them. 

“Yeah, c’mon. You know, your real last name.” They both immediately began stuttering their way through objections, but you weren’t having any of it. “C’mon, boys, how long did you think I was gonna buy that you just happened to be descendants of Sir Francis Drake? Really? You’re treasure hunters, for Christ’s sakes.” 

Your laughter carried through the thin motel walls, but Sam stayed on target, pressing his fingers lovingly into your ankle as he did, “No, no, Drake is a very proud, very meaningful family name. You’ll see, we’ll uhh… shit, I’ll show you my birth certificate if that makes you feel better.” 

Nate shot him a look that screamed ‘are you fuckin’ kidding?’, but it went unnoticed. There was a darkness in Sam’s eyes and a pang in your gut that told you to let this one go; there was much more to this story than he was ready to tell.

“...mhmm,” you grinned, playing it off and raising your beer once more. “So, uhh… my laundry for a month, then?” 

Nate let out a relieved laugh, glad the discussion was finally over. “Guess I can live with that. I figure it’s worth it for 400 million.”

 Over the clinking of bottles and excited murmurs of cheers, an atmosphere of adventure loomed. 

Sam was right. Everything would be… great. 

“Y’know, I was thinking about the guard that Rafe is paying to get us in, I mean, maybe we can buy him a fruit basket or somethin’ once it’s all done…” Nate began, “Could be a nice way to keep him from asking about what we’re doin’, I mean it could be pretty funny, here’s thirty grand and, y’know, some bananas and pomegranates…” You and Sam listened in amusement, nodding your heads as if any of what he was saying made sense. 

As the youngest Drake rambled on and on about fruit baskets and prison guards and how much of an asshole he knows Rafe to be, Sam found your eyes with his and held them there. A weight lived there between you both, a magnet pulling you to him. He took a swig of his beer, occasionally ‘mhm’ing for his little brother’s benefit; but you were all he was thinking about. A soft smile tugged at your lips, the coy look in your eye driving him crazy, making him struggle not to reach out and touch you. 

“Ahem,” Nate coughed, a brow raised at both of you. You mumbled a ‘hmm?’ at him, turning to face him. Sam didn’t move, gaze still set on you as if he was etching every curve of your face into his memory. 

“I’m uh… I’m gonna go see what’s goin’ on down at Tankhouse. I think it’s ladies night, or… somethin’.” You felt a warm blush come over your cheeks as he stood from the table.

“...you have fun with that, little brother.” Sam’s soft voice and sly, cheeky smile caused a flutter in your stomach, your foot gently kicking his side as you willed him to behave long enough for Nate to get out the door. 

“Sounds good, Nate,” you muttered through your smile, “We’ll see you tomorrow.” 

“Night, guys,” he said with a playful roll of his eyes, shutting the door behind him. 

Sam set his beer down and reached over, turning the knobs on the old motel radio that sat against the wall. Old 60’s tunes began to play through the speakers, and he set it to a low volume before turning back to you. “C’mere,” he mumbled, his tone both husky and sweet as you obliged him. You moved to sit yourself across his lap, sighing happily as he brought you into his arms and tugged you close. He captured your lips with his in a slow, heated kiss, one that set you on fire and made your fingers curl around the fabric of his t-shirt. You sunk into him, wrapping your arms around his neck and smiling against his lips. “...what?” he chuckled, his eyes slowly peeling open. 

“Nothin’. Just… you taste… you taste like beer and..tacos.”

“M’not hearin’ a complaint…” 

“Shuddup,” you giggled, still tasting him on your tongue as you leaned back in his hold. There was a long quiet as he stared up at you, eyes lidded and hazy. You dragged your lips in a whisper against his, humming your words into them. “Mmmm, you are gonna miss meeeee…” 

He let out a pained laugh and buried his face in the crook of your neck, peppering soft kisses there. “Ooh, babygirl, you have no idea.” 

“Can you imagine me in prison, though?” you wondered aloud, lovingly threading your fingers through his long, auburn hair and smiling at the happy, peaceful hum it brought out of him.

“...ooooh, I sure can,” he teased, his fingers coming up to give your side a playful squeeze. 

“Oh, stop it,” you laughed, smacking his arm. 

“What? I’m serious. You all dressed up in the orange jumpsuit? Runnin’ the joint, callin’ the shots.” 

He leaned his head back, glancing up at you as you thought aloud, trying to hide your grin, “Y’know, you’re not wrong, I’d probably be some big shot… Get a bunch of tattoos, maybe start collecting teardrops…”

“Now that, that I would love to see,” he laughed, his hand sweetly resting on your thigh and his thumb swiping back and forth. “What about your right-hand man? Do I get a few teardrops, too?”

You cocked your head to the side in thought, twirling some of his hair around your fingers, “Hmm… No, I don’t think you’d be the teardrops type… Too obvious. You’d uhh… I could see you with some birds. Maybe down the side here…” You traced a finger down the side of his neck, feeling goosebumps rise in the wake of your touch. He closed his eyes then, drinking in the moment, loving every second of how it felt to have you in his arms. 

“Mmm… Mhm, I’ll have to do that… Maybe I’ll just get them on this trip. I’ll come back to you all tatted up, lookin’ large and in charge,” he chuckled, still distracted by your fingers running through his hair. 

A heavy quiet fell over both of you, the only sound in the room coming from the radio as oldies classics continued to play. You slowly pulled your fingers from his hair, cupping his face in your palms and meeting his eyes as he peeled them open. “You do that, Samuel Drake,” you whispered. “You come back to me.” 

The fear and stress that played over your face rocked something in him, and every bone in his body ached, knowing just how worried you’d be until he came back to you. 

And in that moment, something in him clicked; staring up at you, his heart racing, his entire body overflowing, he mumbled a single word. 

“Morgan.” 

Your brows furrowed with questions, your mouth opening to ask them, but stopping as realization overtook your face. He repeated it quietly, a shy, scared smile tugging at his lips. “Our name… it’s Morgan.” 

You couldn’t help the joy that poured onto your face, love stretching through you to your fingertips as you closed the small distance between you and met his lips with a full, passionate kiss. He wrapped himself around you, moving his lips with yours, falling harder with each passing moment and knowing in his gut that of all the people in the world to tell about who he really was, the only one that mattered was you. 

As you pulled back from the kiss, you could feel his heart thumping heavily away in his chest. He cleared his throat. This was hard for him; but for you, he would do anything. “When we were kids, I uhm…. There was this one night...” He looked shaken, and your chest ached at the sight. You could see him reliving whatever hell he and Nathan had gone through - you saw it right there in his eyes. “See, Nathan was just a little guy, and I... I almost-”

“-I love you,” you whispered, resting your forehead against his. An emotional smile came over him, grateful for the rescue. 

“Maybe I’ll uhh… maybe I’ll save that one for another time,” he mumbled, relief washing over him. 

“Sounds like a plan, handsome,” you promised. “Your secret’s safe with me.” 

There wasn’t an ounce of uncertainty in his eyes, his hand coming up to gently tuck some of your hair behind your ear. “Never doubted it, sweetheart,” he spoke. “In fact-” He cut himself off then, brows raising happily as the radio began to play his favorite - Sinatra. “Ooh… Oh, this is a good one.” He reached over, fingers nimbly turning the radio up as I’ve Got You Under My Skin floated out through the room. “...I have got you,” he started to sing, your heart instantly fluttering at the sound, “Under my skin… I’ve got you, deep in the heart of me…” 

Sam’s smile was infectious as he sang, shifting you in his lap so he carried you bridal style against his chest. “...I would sacrifice anything, come what might, for the sake, of holdin’ you near…” He stood then, eyes glued to yours, loving how you listened to him with that adoring gaze, your arms around his neck, swaying from side to side as he held you.

His face was so close to you, his lips hovering above yours, warm breath unfolding over your skin with every word of the song. “But each time I do, just the thought of you, makes me stop, before I begin…. ‘Cuz I’ve got you…” Before he could finish, you took those beautiful few words from his lips with a kiss; one that made you both forget the impending trip to Panama, the jail he’d be stuck in for three days without you, and his partnership with the ever questionable Rafe Adler. It was a kiss full of all the weight of knowing deep down in your gut that you were utterly, hopelessly.. helplessly in love. 

---

Next Chapter

Tags: [tagging the lovely folks who responded to my post re: who’d be interested in a Sam fic. :)]

@lucacangettathisass @ammaliatrici @cassieseraphim @slooshen @wings-0806 @talktothemoon2 @nachochitz @supernaturally-avenging-hannibal @aritipoupi @landoverthemountains @qwertybubbler @raeswrittenrecords @coolnerdreader @s4mdrake @go-youngtrash-things

GIF credit to @bizexualvampire, couldn’t get tumblr to link the gif from the post. thank you!

[random-mha-thoughts]

Stranger (Todoroki x Reader)

Pairing: Todoroki x Reader

Genre: Fluff, College!AU

Summary: While at a party you were forced to attend, you meet a mysterious stranger having fun by himself in the corner.

Inspo: A Tiktok by Designer_eyebags that has suddenly disappeared, it was too cute for me not to write honestly.

Word count: 2,476

Tags:  @yuki-osaki​ @liviitehe​ @iamsoftsodonttoucheume-blog​ @bunnythepipsqueak​

a/n:  When I tell you I'm a sucker for casual Todo esp Todo in a beanie?? Ded 

College!AU for Todoroki finally!  It was honestly about time!  Though, I feel like I could’ve done better with it, I wasn’t really sure where I wanted to take it so I just let it take me I guess?  But I think it's still pretty cute, so that's gotta count for something, right?

I've got another Baku scenario planned, and then a Midoriya one right after that (or I might reverse the order since I have the beginning of the Midoriya one written already).  Also thanks again for 300 followers!  Yall might be getting a surprise at 400, depends on when I finish these next few scenarios.

Buy me a coffee?

I don't want to be here at this party, but Ochaco told me I need to loosen up.  And she's tired of me whining about how single I am.  "Then do something about it!" she exclaimed, "Get out there and find someone!  You won't meet anyone if you stay in the same rut!"  She's lucky, she already has a boyfriend.  At first glance, he's a complete pushover, but he seems to be a social person.  At least, social enough to have friends who host dorm parties, apparently.  So here I am, in a stranger's dorm with colored lights and obnoxiously loud music.

The funniest thing about this entire party, though, is this random person I've been watching.   The music in the room is bumping to some EDM tracks, but this guy's having a blast in the corner of the room.  He's off in his own world, headphones on, swaying and mouthing the lyrics to whatever's playing, which might be more melodious judging by how much slower his head nods are.

Honestly, relatable.

I would've thought he was just drunk or on some really good drugs, but his movements are structured enough to show he still has coordination.  I'll admit, the way he's dancing around like no one's watching is pretty endearing.  He seems like a pretty fun guy to be around, I should go talk to him.   Ochaco abandoned me for her boyfriend, and this is my way of finding someone else, I guess.

I approach him slowly.  It would be a stupid idea to tap on his shoulder and interrupt him, I don't really want to break his flow.  I settle for standing by quietly, close enough for him to notice I'm staring right at him, but far enough so I don't break up his single-man party.

It takes him a while to notice me.  The music bleeding from his white headphones even in this loud environment tells me he's really trying to drown everyone else out.  His eyes are closed as his had bobs around, silently mouthing the lyrics to a familiar Top 40's song I've heard on the radio.  His casual outfit consists of black jeans, a half-white-half-black hoodie over a black T-shirt, gray Converse, and a matching beanie.  His hair on the side facing me is scarlet red, but from his movements, I can see the other side is snow white.

My lips quirk into a small smile as I continue to watch him entertain himself.  I probably look like a creep, just watching some other weirdo doing their thing in the corner.  I can't help it, he looks absolutely adorable, not to mention just a smidge familiar.

His eyes open for a brief moment just so he can blink and he double takes at me, freezing up and jolting backward.  He slides the headphones down around his neck and looks around before scratching his head.  "Hi... " he offers a slight wave.  "Was I bothering you?"

Now that he fully faces me, I notice he has two different colored eyes, and his features are sharply handsome, contrasting the staple casual soft-boy aesthetic of his outfit and his awkward speech.  "Not at all," I shrug, collecting my thoughts, "You seem like you're having the time of your life, so I thought I'd join you."

A slight blush coats his cheeks as he buries his hands in his jeans pockets.  "I apologize.  Perhaps what I was doing was distracting and inappropriate."

He's so prim and proper, it's adorable.  "No worries, no one was staring other than me," I assure him, leaning against the wall.  "So, why are you jamming all alone over here instead of being with your friends?"

"Ah, my roommate is spending time with his girlfriend right now, I don't really want to pry into their business."  He scratches the back of his neck nervously.

I sigh.  "Yeah, same here.  Your roommate wouldn't happen to be a Midoriya, would it?"

He blinks.  "As a matter of fact, he is."

"Wow, small world."  That really is a coincidence.  Can't say I was expecting to meet the roommate of my best friend's boyfriend, let alone find him alluring in some way.

The boy is silent for a moment.  "Honestly, I'm sleepy, but I lost the key to my room, so I have to wait for Midoriya.  I don't even have my wallet, unfortunately."  He fingers one side of the headphones.  "This is the only way to keep myself awake and occupied until he's ready to leave."

"I'd say you have guts to be listening to your own music at a party.  You must have a pretty great playlist."

He tilts his head to the side.  "I'm just not fond of this sort of music, it nauseates me."

"I feel that.  This, in general," I motion to all the happenings around us, "Isn't really my scene.  I'd rather be in my dorm alone."

He nods in agreement.  "Me too.  If it wasn't for me losing my dorm key, I would have already gone back."

Now that I've called attention to it, we really have drowned out the world around us, as if there was a bubble and I just popped it to return us to the present.  There's this magnetism between us to keep to ourselves, despite the awkwardness of this being our first encounter.

I kick off from the wall and face him.  "If you wanna hurry out of here, we can go somewhere else to talk.   Or if you wanna go eat, I can pay for you, it's no big deal."

For the first time in our conversation, he turned to look at me head-on.  "Really?" he cocks an eyebrow, "We've only just met, do trust me that much?"

I offer an amiable smile.  "You seem like someone I'd like to get to know."

We walk into the darkness of campus at night, talking about nothing in particular.  Whatever random question that popped into my mind was whatever I asked him.  He's a quiet one, very hesitant about opening up and answering my questions more than what I've asked.  I guess I like how mysteriously awkward he is, it's cute.  Normally, I'm not one to talk either, but when it comes to someone who's even less of a talker than me, I take the lead just to make them comfortable.

His name is Shouto Todoroki, he's in the same year as me, a business major because his father wants him to take over the family company.  He's the youngest of his siblings, his parents are separated, and he's a cat person.

Finally reaching a diner just a block off campus, I instinctively stroll up to the counter.  At first he stands behind me, unsure what to do as he stares at the seat next to me.  I eye him with another smile.  "I guess you've never sat at the counter before?"  At the shake of his head, I pat the stool to my right.  "Come on up, it's not that different from sitting in a booth."

Slowly, he hoists himself up onto the seat and rotates over to face me.  "Do you come here often?"

"Sort of, I'm alone most of the time.  I don't usually come this late though.  After my classes, I would come here because I love their burgers.  I like sitting here to just do some homework."

The waitress gives us the menu and takes our drink orders.  The diner is empty this time of night, save for a group of probably drunk students from our college and a truck driver at the other end of the counter across the room.

"What do you feel like eating?" I ask.

Todoroki's staring at the menu in great thought, holding his chin with one hand.  "Maybe a sandwich.  Or a pasta dish, I'm not sure yet."

"I think..."  I scan over the menu.  I'm not that hungry per se, I just wanted to get out of that party with this adorable stranger.  "I'm gonna have a bowl of soup.  It'll warm me up after being in the cold outside."  I rub my cold hands together and tuck them inside the sleeves of my sweater.

The boy glances down at my hands before his cheeks blush slightly.  He tries to hide it by rubbing the back of his neck.  "Would you like me to...hold them for you?  I've been told I have pretty warm hands..."

It's my turn to blush now.  "Sure, thanks."

He stretches out his left hand onto the table, tentatively covering my clasped hands.  Surprisingly, I find his hand is large, able to surround both of mine entirely.  And they're pretty muscular, I'd say.  "Your hands are pretty warm," I comment, almost dumbly.

He nods wordlessly in response.

Our shoulders almost brush because of how close I'm leaning to him.  I'm close enough to smell his fresh scent coming off his jacket.

The waitress returns with our drinks and startles us into ripping our hands away from each other, bumping shoulders in the process.  She takes our orders on her pad before smiling at us.  "Aw, you two look so cute together," she coos and walks away before we can correct her.

Suddenly I don't know what I should say now.

"What made you come here one day?" Todoroki asks, his cheeks brushed pink.  I appreciate his attempt at making things less awkward.

"I like having comfort food, I guess."  I stir the straw in my water.  "I get easily overwhelmed and homesick, so I like eating my feelings in a way."

His hands cup his warm mug of tea.  "I can't say I agree with that.  I wanted to get away from home.  It was suffocating there."

"That must be difficult."  Out of reflex, I raise my hand to pat his shoulder, stopping myself right before I can touch him.  "I'm sorry-"

"I don't mind it," he blurts out quickly.  "But only if you're comfortable."

I chuckle at his eagerness and rest my hand there.  "We've become somewhat awkward again, huh?"

"Should I ask some questions, then?  Since you were doing that earlier."

"Sure, go ahead."

Todoroki's questions were difficult to get out.  He didn't ask as many as me since he thought very carefully before asking them.  They weren't typical small talk questions you would ask someone you just met; they were thought-provoking, which I admit is something I appreciate way more.  His last question was to discuss what would be the most important items to have you were stranded on a space mission with a group of people.

"Why wouldn't you want a flare gun?  It could help the home base locate you from the light."

"Yes, normally, but it wouldn't work the same in anti-gravity space," Todoroki explains monotonously.  "Though, the force of the shot would at least allow you to propel you in a certain direction if you're floating around aimlessly."

"You have a point.  But we agree that rope, oxygen tank, and water are definitely essential for survival."

The waitress sets our food in front of us.  Todoroki ended up getting a vegetarian panini just because he didn't really want any meat tonight.

"Will you be satisfied with just that soup?" he eyes my bowl carefully.

I start ripping at the toasted bread on the side and dip one into my tomato soup.  "Yeah, I'm not terribly hungry, and I haven't had this soup in a long time."

We eat in a somewhat comfortable silence.  I feel like we've gotten to know each other pretty well, but there's still the awkwardness surrounding us.  Nothing really told me why he was so familiar to me at the party either.  I don't really remember him at any of the previous outings I was forced to attend.

Todoroki puts down his mostly eaten sandwich.  "I must...confess something.  I-"

"Are you a creepy stalker?" I casually joke, dipping my spoon into the soup.

His face turns blank and the life drains from his eyes.  "N-No!  Not at-!"

I shove him lightly.  "I'm just joking!  You look like you've seen a ghost.  What is it?"

Color returns to his face as he looks down at his unfinished burger and fries.  "I've...been to a couple parties with Midoriya before, and I admit I've seen you already.  To say you never caught my attention is a lie.  Actually, I...hoped to see you every time he offered me to join him."

I'm frozen in place, my cheeks heating up at the implication.  "Does that mean you've taken an interest in me?"

He inhales carefully.  "Yes, I have."

"So...you'd like to see me outside of parties then?"

"Yes."  He rubs his hands together.  "We could even come back here, if you'd like."

"I wouldn't mind that."  I avert my eyes away from him, ashamed to be shy like this.  "But next time, you're trying a burger here."

His chuckle reminds me of the tinkle of wind chimes, except deeper.  "It's a date."

I can't stop myself from smiling, my heart skipping a beat at the word.  Wow, I actually found someone decent at a stupid college party.

We finish the rest of our meal in silence again, and I paid as I promised.  It felt like we were holding back a secret from everyone else in the diner.  We just started dating in the middle of our first meal together, how cute is that?

We leave and start heading back to the dorms, keeping a distance between us.  Neither of us really know what to say after a sudden change in relationship status like that.

Todoroki coughs awkwardly.  "If you don't mind, I'd like to warm your hands up again.  Only if you're okay with it."

That's such a cute way of asking to hold hands, I gush inwardly.  I close the distance between us, allowing him to gently grip one of my hands in his.  He tucks our joined hands inside his hoodie pocket, pulling me closer to him.  It feels like I'm walking on clouds.

He walks me to the front of my building.  He'd gotten a text from Midoriya that he's back at their room and will open the door for him when he returns.  "Thank you for the meal."  His eyes express his gratitude clearly as he stands in front of me.  "It was more enjoyable with your company."

"Don't mention it.  It was great having someone to talk to."  I realize I've unnaturally used my left hand to brush my hair behind my ear because my right hand is still in his pocket.  Standing so close to him makes me nervous.

Todoroki lifts our joined hands to place a feather-light kiss on my knuckles.  "I look forward to next time," his low voice resonates smooth as butter, eyes boring into mine.

I can't meet them for very long after, breaking eye contact with him sheepishly.  "M-Me too."

[silver-spider-art]

ToA: Trollhunters vs Wizards

First I don’t want to come off like I don’t think people should enjoy Wizards. Its a fun story and as a stand-alone or an AU its funny with so many call backs to favorite characters, and many emotional moments. Lots to enjoy on its own. However, it is AU. It doesn’t fit in the same timeline of events as what was hinted at and implied in ToA:Trollhunters. I believe the biggest reason beyond the tight time frame the crew had to work under is just that the main writers that were responsible for the majority of the original script for ToA:Trollhunters didn’t return to Wizards for whatever reason (they are back for the movie so fingers crossed). The people who wrote Wizards mostly had teleplay credits on ToA:Trollhunters (edited the screen play but didn’t write it) so while they’d been deeply involved in the original... well clearly a lot of ideas were lost in the swap.

So, why do I say the timeline was screwed up by Wizards version of events?

The opening of Wizards tells us that it’s the late 12th century and then says the present is 900 years later. We know that the current year is 2016 because Enrique’s crib in the Darklands lists him as born in 2016 (so while this doesn’t directly set the shows date it can’t be much past that and assuming Enrique is less than a year old, we can say it is 2016). Now 2016 - 900 is actually 1116 which is early 12th century, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

This drastically changes how we understand the history of this world. If Deya is the first Trollhunter, then all other Trollhunters existed between 1116 and 2016. We see at least 14 troll statues in the Hero’s Forge and we also see several others in storage when Claire retrieves Angor Rot’s head for Morgana, so we can assume a minimum of ~20 Trollhunters. This gives us an average of 45 years as the life span of a Trollhunter. And yes that might seem long to a human but we are told the oldest troll was 5,352 years old and since Vendel, Blinky, Arrrgh, and Draal are all there to see the first Trollhunter chosen and thus well over 900 years old (Draal is straight up said to be 1200 years old during ToA:Trollhunters), then to be chosen by the amulet would be a quick death sentence. Now, while Blinky does only say that the Trollhunters date back to the age of Merlin, this is implied to be further back than the lifetimes of the trolls of Heartstone Trollmarket. Draal talks about spending his entire life training to be worthy of it. Kanjigar pushed his son away to protect him from the dangers of the Trollhunter’s duty implying Draal was young and not an adult during this time, and the absolute faith the trolls have in the amulet and their reliance on the protection of the Trollhunter implies that they’d grown up seeing this as normal. Yet as shown in Wizards, Draal was an adult when the amulet was made. If this was the case he would've seen the amulet pick literally anyone other than him for 900 years and have no reason to think it’d pick him now. Also while showing Jim the box of stones to try in his amulet Vendel talks about Maddrux the Many from legends of old. So old they’d all forgotten what the stone’s actual power was, thinking it was the power of great strength and not the ability to make copies of yourself. 900 years, as we’ve established, isn’t long for a troll. Would you call something a legend of old if it was an event you were alive for? Even if Maddrux didn’t hang out in Heartstone Trollmarket, Maddrux wouldn’t have been an ancient legend. Vendel would've been alive for every Trollhunter to have ever been, so would’ve Blinky, yet they talk about the Trollhunter and the amulet in a revered way that doesn’t befit something which happened within a single lifetime, a single troll generation. 900 years is long for humans, but not for trolls. They would all have to have such bad memories if this is to be believed. 

Another point of contention is Angor Rot. It is shown in a flashback that Angor Rot gets power from Morgana in 1297 with the location stated as Bulgaria, Black Sea... which Wizards shows us Angor Rot taking Morgana here after she drowns... but Camelot is in England/UK (in the normal legends)... that seems quite the journey for a dead girl he randomly found but  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. He calls her forth by 4 names Argante (queen of Avalon or another name for Morgan Le Fey), Pale Lady, Baba Yaga, Eldrith Queen. So one, Angor Rot knows who he’s calling to, he’s not addressing the other spirits that Wizards showed using this place. Also it implies that Morgana has gained quite the legacy of power and influence. Now, when he gets her attention he says “Gunmar’s war for the surface lands has ravaged my village. I need the power to protect my people.” This very heavily implies that the war is ongoing. Based on Wizards, Gunmar was sealed away 181 years ago. It’s also strongly implied that all the Gumm-Gumms except Bular are gone now. So... who’s destroying Angor Rots village? Also we see Morgana’s hand in this scene, so either she’s really good at manifesting or she hasn’t been sealed yet. And if it was a manifestation, why would she make a physical ring? Regardless, she tells him he’s to seek Merlin’s Champions and kill his Trollhunters. Angor Rot was later sealed away in an ancient ruin of Aysa-Thoon in Ranthambore, India (which is in the middle of a tiger reserve btw). It’s old and overgrown implying he’s been there a while. Otto also says he found the location in old tomes so at the very least Angor Rot has been sealed away for centuries. So he runs around killing Trollhunters for ~300-400 years. If this is after the Killahead Bridge battle as Wizards would have us believe, then the only trolls on the evil side killing Trollhunters are just Angor Rot and Bular... which just seems off to me for how everything else is talked about in ToA:Trollhunters. 

The Janus Order and the changelings are another confusing point that Wizards makes worse. When asked about changelings Blinky says that in the Old World Gumm-Gumms stole their young and did something unnatural to them and that their main purpose was to spy on the surface lands. Blinky also says that the Janus Order is an ancient guild of changeling spies, as old as they are mysterious. The phrasing of both these points imply that changelings have existed for a very long time by troll standards, not something that happened well within the lifespan of every troll seen in the show. In Wizards we see all of one changeling who’s already an adult and implies his power is new. Gunmar uses plural when he talks about Morgana’s changelings but they are also very clearly a brand new thing. From ToA:Trollhunter we know that human babies and changelings are exchanged through fetches into and out of the Darklands but if Wizards is to be believed and all the Gumm-Gumms except Bular were sealed away after the Killahead Bridge battle in 1116... who was stealing the babies? Bular? Considering how much Bular hates changelings I have a hard time picturing him setting up the exchanges to get the Janus Order established entirely on his own. If we assume there were a few changelings left loose after Morgana was sealed away... maybe... but Morgana and Gunmar just met and have worked together for like 3 days max... why are they so reliant on each other. And if most of the changelings were made after Morgana was sealed away then why are changelings like Otto so beholden and worshipful towards her? In his Janus Order orientation speech Strickler calls her their Lady Creator and that seems undisputed by any of the changelings. It is implied that Morgana is the only reason their are changelings. NotEnrique says he’s centuries old which means he’d been waiting in the Darklands as a baby until he was needed which I always took to mean that all the captured troll babies had been changed by Morgana before she was sealed away. If Morgana isn’t actually needed to make changelings, then why do they worship her and answer to her over Gunmar? Also Morgana only whispered to the changelings like Otto, never to Gunmar in the Darklands, so she couldn’t have helped set up the changeling magic from that side. 

Then there is Morgana and Gunmar’s relationship. What we see in Wizards, Morgana becomes the champion of the 3 new elemental villains, she makes a changeling (off screen) and sends him to kill her brother, only then does she go see Gunmar. When Morgana talks to Gunmar she immediately brings up the Eternal Night, which... if she’s the champions of the 3 elemental beings who want the humans dead to bring balance to the world... how does the eternal night help them? It certainly wouldn’t help Nari of the Eternal Forest and I can’t think of any reason the other two would want that either. It only helps trolls (trolls who don’t realize that all their food sources need sunlight to exist). After we see her add the mind control power to Gunmar’s Decimaar Blade we don’t learn anything else she does for the Gumm-Gumms. To be honest, if I were Gunmar at this point I’d assume she set me up. Some sorceress shows up, is the king’s sister, she frees your son with a new troll hybrid thing you think is impure in order to get you to trust her and gives you a weapon upgrade to make you think you should go all in on the next battle and then you and your whole army gets locked away for 900 years... kinda no reason to think she ever had your back, especially not to the point that you trust people who say they’ve gotten visions from her in a worshipful way. She very clearly did Gunmar no favors in Wizards. 

Merlin, oh Merlin... one, he’s entirely useless in the entirety of Wizards and always doing something wrong or just not having any power to do anything which is just baffling compared to the power he was throwing around in ToA:Trollhunters. As we see Morgana get sealed away in Wizards, it’s Douxie doing the sealing and Merlin has already fallen down and is asleep for some reason. This despite the fact that in ToA:Trollhunters he claimed he needed to use nearly all his power to seal her away and that was why he was asleep. That her being free meant he could get his power back which just... isn’t how anything happened in Wizards. Also Merlin very pointedly claimed that Jim couldn’t defeat Gunmar as a human, that he would die. But, in Wizards Merlin had originally been building the amulet for Arthur, a human. It was only afterwards that he decided to make it for trolls. So was the only reason Jim had to be a troll because the Jim he met was a troll? Because that is just really fucked up. The speech he gave Jim about needing to sacrifice his humanity, it implied that Merlin had planned this all out, seen this moment... but Wizards Merlin was just constantly in reaction mode and was completely backing Arthur and ignoring literally anything anyone else said until right before they went to the trolls for help. Merlin didn’t give a shit about trolls and they also hated him... but afterwards they love him to the point that they’ll talk worshiply about him? And why did they have to go back to the past? Merlin was so insistent they go back to the past at the start of Wizards... implied like they needed to flee the enemy but a moment after the kids are lost in time he just defeats the skull ship and no one that’s left on Camelot is in danger  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. 

Also when Merlin and King Arthur go to the trolls to ask for help, at this point in Wizards it’s mostly been shown to be a battle between Gunmar and King Arthur for territory. It’s implied that the other trolls have until recently been more hurt by Arthur than Gunmar and Gunmar is only now trying to force them to join because he needs more recruits. Yet in ToA:Trollhunter the war was stated to be mostly a disagreement between Gumm-Gumms and all the “good” trolls and the humans just the victims. Everything in ToA:Trollhunters implied that humans didn’t stand a chance against trolls, Gunmar was endlessly dismissive but in Wizards King Arthur and company were a real danger to trolls, Cal/Deya was nearly taken out by an arrow. In fact the trolls of Dwoza were so useless that they needed humans to train them how to fight. They had no warriors? Where were Draal and Kanjigar during the fight with Arrrgh? So all of the trolls who would become the Heartstone Trollmarket trolls (including Bagdwella) had to be trained to fight by humans before Killahead but then were so disgusted by human Trollhunter Jim that they fainted? That they thought the very idea that a human could fight a troll was laughable? Yeah, that doesn’t make sense. 

And Killahead Bridge, let us not forget. It is the portal to the Darklands but as Cal/Deya walks over it she dismissively says its nothing but a bridge over a dried up river so clearly Wizards is saying that Gunmar isn’t actively using the bridge as a portal, in fact we see no portals or any sort of magic used by trolls in Wizards, not even the door like in Heartstone Trollmarket, Dwoza just has a physical door. The only person who seems to have known that the bridge was a portal was Merlin as he is making battle plans. This also implies that the whole point of the amulet was just to seal Gunmar away in the Darklands. Which is just... why? The amulet hadn’t even been tested against Gunmar yet at this point. This brings up so many questions about the Darklands that are more confusing like how anyone figured out the fetches if travel back and forth from the Darklands wasn’t a thing until after the bridge became a sealed door. 

As for the Trollhunters themselves, what were they all doing if every other Trollhunter existed between Deya and Kanjigar? Deya defeated Gunmar and sealed him away leaving only Bular and Angor Rot and the changelings. We know they weren’t fighting the Janus Order because Blinky had to look them up in a book and Blinky has actively been involved in several instances of Trollhunters (at least Kanjigar and Unkar) so he should know. Jim killed both Bular and Angor Rot, to whom everyone else just died. So what were they doing? Just cleaning up Gnome messes and Goblin battles? If there were no other Gumm-Gumms to fight, why was it a revered position that anyone wanted. The way Wizards sets up the timeline its more a curse that just means you have a countdown timer until Bular kills you. Also every single Trollhunter in the void tells Jim its suicide to fight Gunmar, even after he killed Bular. But by Wizards logic the first time the amulet was used against Gunmar it was able to seal him away forever with hardly a fight. If anything they should think Bular was more powerful than his father by that logic. It all just makes no sense. 

There is more, like character backstory elements that upset me. For example how Arrrgh’s trauma over his treatment as a pet by Gunmar was ignored by Wizards and how his fear of violence was intrinsically linked to that trauma which fueled his insistence on pacifism and how Wizards showed him just casually hitting people after swapping sides with out any issues and that is just very upsetting to me, but that’s a very different rant. 

In conclusion, Wizards has a lot of fun elements to it and can be a very fun watch, but it comes off like fan fiction to me, an alternate universe unconnected to the rest of canon. It doesn’t understand the world building that was established in ToA:Trollhunter and absolutely breaks its own timeline. 

I’ve always pictured the line of Trollhunters stretching back to the Broze Age and the beginning of humanity, a war that has lasted several millennia, long enough that every troll in Trollmarket grew up in war, their lives shaped by it. A war that stretched out into their parents and grandparents generations. Which is completely doable from what we know of troll ages. Gunmar could easily be 4,000 years old (he looks it with all his cracks) and still not beat the oldest troll on record. Merlin always felt inhuman and ancient (centuries long nap and he just has to crack his spine), so he could be far far older than the Arthurian legends and have gone by many names. Also I clearly wasn’t the only one with this idea as if you read the Trollhunters novels or comics based after ToA:Trollhunters those authors assumed as I did. One novel has Jim and the gang go back to 501 AD to see Gunmar lose his eye to Orlagk. The Comics show an early Trollhunter interacting with humans from the stone age. To me this makes so much more sense. Trolls are old and long lived, it only makes sense that their perception of what constituted ancient be very different to what we humans see as ancient. They are also shown to be very slow to change, which is why it makes sense that the Trollhunter mantel is something that has been around longer than the current living trolls.

So anyway, I just really hope the movie doesn’t rely on too much of the nonsense that was shown in Wizards and is a fun romp. I loved full troll Jim and I miss half-troll Jim already. It just feels like his whole sacrifice was meaningless, that by undoing it and showing that humans can fight trolls just fine that it had been for nothing. Its just very disappointing. But that’s just my opinion (but then I’ve always voted for a Jim who can change back and forth and really have one foot in each world). 

[movieguy50]

Hey everyone,

I just want to give everyone a quick update as to what's going on with the scams or what's called operation drain and run out of the 200 that were arrested the other day most have been released must have been very forthcoming and giving information some of them have been detained further pending for their interview and or their charges are going to be dropped or reduced law enforcement agencies have confirmed that there are some more smaller cell operations of this type going on here in the United States and in Canada they are now getting in with the Canadian authorities to help with the investigation up there I can't tell you that 75 of the 200 people arrested the other day were members of Tumblr so basically yes they were right under our nose and we did not know it but I knew it.

I can also tell you that information from this point forward is going to be very slim because they are wanting to Big Cheese the people that are actually masterminding all this and they're going to have to start being careful what information they let out and that's totally acceptable to me I totally understand that and they did say the other thing about passing the info. on to you guys as much as they can. They said that I have been a big help in this there's been a few other people that have come forward they've also been assisting and helping out but I still need some more help so anything y'all got if it if it means you got scammed don't worry about being embarrassed you're not going to be judged or you're not going to be treated like shit just because you fell for it.

So now if you've noticed that I changed the format of my blog it makes it look like it's in a daily or weekly episodic TV show it's still called a slice of my world but it's also episode 1-18 this is starting to become a daily or actually it should say it bi-weekly thing of me posting and I have enjoyed it don't get me wrong but the title of this is called oh how things have changed and it's basically going to be a lot of difficult reading from this point forward but stuff that once you read it you'll understand why it has been so difficult I I'm going to Chronicle the night of January 20th of last year through the morning hours of January 21st which is what I considered the moment my life changed forever.

So we begin on January 20th 2020 I had to go to work I walked 4 miles to go to work because I didn't have a vehicle anymore and we were living in a motel so I had to you know make sure one of us is working until a lot of times where I was staying even hard for me to get a ride. So I work the 3:30 to close shift which basically meant I left between anywhere from between 12:30 and 1:00 in the morning I worked at a movie theater which by the way was probably the best job I had ever had in my life I I love that place I would love to go back to another one like it. So basically I got off work about 12:30 that night and normally I would have a ride to work on Monday nights this week it wasn't possible because of something that happened at the theater the manager got behind on his paperwork on and couldn't get out on time like he normally does I had to go to the store that night because we didn't have very much food so I went to store I got about 2 or 3 nights worth of food with enough till I get to my day off from work to go to the store and get more. That was a common occurrence so by the time I got done with the store and got home about 2:30 in the morning my wife was asleep she had been sick for about a month before this which now I have directly linked into being one of the first cases of COVID-19 in the united states'.

I came home and like I said she was asleep and I gave her a kiss like I usually do sometimes it wakes her up sometimes it doesn't this time it woke her up we start talking for a little bit I went outside and I did my usual ritual I go outside and smoke a little weed you know kind of relaxed a little bit for about 20-30 minutes yeah I went inside and cooked dinner now for a little background my wife had been sick for a while she had a heart attack November 8th in 2018 and then she had a stroke Easter Sunday of 2019 a stroke that she refused to go get taken care of even though I begged her and had other people beg her to go to the hospital she would not do it when she had the heart attack the doctor was not able to fix all the blockages to her heart because some of the arteries were too small so he told me privately that if she had another heart attack she wouldn't survive it I knew that I told her that about 3 months later so she knew but on this night I never had any dream or knowing that 2 hours after I got home from work she would be dead she had a massive heart attack I was just getting ready to start cooking dinner when she started really screaming about chest pain and I've never heard her go off like she did and even though I called 911 it still took the damn people 20 minutes to get out there otherwise I still think she'd be alive but then again maybe not so to try to make a long story short they would not let me ride in the ambulance with her to the hospital she was still coherent but when they did the ekg in the room where we were staying at I could tell the guy's eyes that she wasn't going to be much longer and I think the reason why they told me I couldn't ride with them was because for the same Theory I think that they didn't want my last memory of her to be of her fighting for her life and dying and I am thankful for that because I've had horrible nightmares about this whole thing and so after I made all the notifications and everything that day I went back to work two days later and I was told I could stay out as long as I needed to they were really really super awesome and amazing to me hell they were even responsible for giving me the money to get my wife buried because they donated money they put a pool in together to help me. The thing about it was is I don't know what upset me more the fact that I wish there was something more I could have done or the fact that I had to have a fucking cop show up to my door to tell me that she was gone even though I had already known it. So when I went back to work two days later it was very very hard because she used to work there too and she used to work at the podium on the weekends where she took the tickets and everything and told people where the theaters were and everything else and I wasn't there for 2 hours and I just doubled over it was just like a big flood of emotion but I made it that night but the hard part was with the weekends because those were the nights that she worked the most everybody loved my wife it worked up there and so I mean I didn't feel like I was so alone then the pandemic came I lost my job I lost my place where I was staying I had to go to my sister-in-law's house which was the biggest mistake of my life cuz I really found out what kind of people they were plus that's when I developed a curiosity for methamphetamine and then I met the bitch from hell not even 2 months later and keep in mind she was just supposed to be a companion we weren't like going to be boyfriend girlfriend cuz I still way too broke up about my wife's death that's all I wanted cuz I couldn't stand being lonely anymore just like I can't stand it now but she got me hooked on meth and I say she got me hooked because she kept bringing it around me knowing that I found something new that I really liked and I didn't ask her to bring it around I could have said no but this has to do with that 28 day period from June to July where she was drugging me putting the dope in my food in my drinks that's why I blame her.

Then after my ex got murdered at a house party I lost my sister-in-law and nephew and then my step daughter called me one day two weeks before Christmas to tell me that she lost her fiance her baby's daddy after he had a heart attack from A congenital heart defect that he had for 6 years the only bright spot of 2020 was my step daughter had a daughter of her own and that to this day that baby is my love bug

As where I'm at right now I'm going to be homeless by next weekend again unless I can come up with $250-300 dollars by Friday night it doesn't look like it's going to happen folks unless I can get some donations and get them quick I am taking donations right now if you can help I don't care if it's 5 10 15 20 $25 whatever it is it will help I don't expect nobody to give me the money all at once cuz I know a lot of people don't have that kind of money right now so just little donations will help right now I had to actually go to Walmart today and steal food God I hate myself for doing it I didn't get caught but still my conscience was getting the best of me for much of the evening I got enough food here to last me for 2 or 3 days if I end up getting to stay here but like I said it's not looking very good at this point I've tried local resources I've tried all kinds of Charities help and all they want you to do is hurry up and wait and I ain't got that kind of time and I told him that so I I'm asking for any help that anyone could give if I don't get if I can get at least $250 out of 400 I can go get me a motel room for the week and I'll get me by until I can come back here when my roommate comes back cuz then he'll have the money for the rent and everything else so I can come back here so I just need to really get by for a week I have not had any dope in nine days I'm going crazy but I need a place to live first before I can be doing that shit so I'll just have to deal with it if you want to help I'll give you my cash app I will put it at the end of this post for everybody so the last 18 months has not been fun I went to six suicide of Temps and I just been existing when before I had it all anyway so that's basically going to end this episode of a slice of my world I'm sorry if this was such a downer for a lot of people but you know I the more and more I feel like I tell my story easier everyday gets for me cuz I don't feel like I'm burying myself with all the emotion and having to keep it bottled up anyway I will talk to you y'all whenever I talk to you I may be on Hiatus for a little bit because I won't have a phone here after tomorrow unless I go someplace that has Wi-Fi and depending on my living situation I mean like I said I'm I'm hoping and praying somebody will be able to help out by donating a little bit of money to me so I can keep a place over my head somehow someway anyway y'all. I love you take care of yourself and I'll see you on the other side

Cashtag $jojo091069

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Love,. Sean

[hergrim]

Estimates of troop strengths in the Wot5K - A Game of Thrones

Introduction

One of several projects I’m working on at the moment is an analysis of the War of the Five Kings from a purely medieval military history point of view, taking a somewhat more critical view of the various commanders and their actions than is usual. Part of the ongoing process has been estimating the troop strengths and, where possible, the composition of armies. Since these calculations would derail any essay, I’ve decided to edit my notes into something resembling coherent thought and post them here, so I can just refer to them when I publish the essays.

Originally the essay series I’m working on was focused entirely on Robb, but it has now expanded to encompass the war more generally. As such, this first post will just be about the troop counts and army compositions featured in A Game of Thrones. As I do more on Renly, Stannis and Balon, I’ll post some estimates for A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords.

Robb Stark and the Northern host

The numbers given for Robb’s army in the ASOIAF wiki are actually what started me on the process of providing my own estimates for the various armies, as I think it makes a few significant methodological errors in the process, which has a knock on effect for how Robb’s decisions need to be interpreted. Primarily, I disagree with the numbers given for Robb at Moat Cailin and the breakdown of infantry vs cavalry.

Robb's initial Northern force consists of 19,500 men (AGOT, Catelyn VII), with slightly more than 1/4 being heavy cavalry (AGOT, Bran VI gives the figures of 3,300-3,400 heavy cavalry out of an initial muster of 12,000). This would suggest ~14,500 infantry and ~5,000 heavy cavalry in his Northern host.

Starting with with Bran VI, I have a slightly different interpretation of Maester Luwin’s breakdown of the heavy cavalry. His explanation of the numbers to Bran is that there are “Three hundred, perhaps four [hundred]” knights “among three thousand armored lances who are not knights.” The original calculator has taken this to mean that there are 300-400 knights in addition to the other 3000 heavy cavalry, and this is a perfectly valid interpretation of the sentence. However, I believe that Luwin’s use of “among” signals that the knights should be taken as part of the 3000, not as an addition to them for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, GRRM uses “among” in an inclusive sense elsewhere in AGOT. When Tyrion thinks on the Field of Fire, for instance, King Mern is “among” the 4000 men burned, not the 4001st man to be burnt, and Ned Stark thinks on the fact that he’d never spoken to Gregor during Greyjoy’s Rebellion because he was just “one knight among thousands”. So, while Luwin’s phrasing can be interpreted as meaning that the knights are there in addition to the other heavy horse, I think GRRM’s general use of “among” as an inclusive term means that they are intended to be included among the 3000 heavy horse, not separated from them.

Secondly, while the proportion of heavy horse gathered at Winterfell would be quite large even with the knights as part of the 3000, the general trend of what individual contingents we see is of very low proportions of heavy horse; just 13% of the Karstark forces is heavy horse (300 out of 2300), Roose has 500 mounted men (14%) out of 3500 men just before the Red Wedding (ASOS, Catelyn VI) and, in spite of having the highest number of landed knights, the Manderlys only send 240 horse (16% of 1500 men) to join Robb at Moat Cailin (AGOT, Catelyn VII). This general trend of low numbers of cavalry suggests to me that, when the numbers of cavalry can be taken in two ways, the smallest option should be taken.

This leads to the second major disagreement I have with the wiki’s army size estimates: the assumption that the 1500 Manderly men in Catelyn VII are in addition to the 18 000 men that Robb already has, not the contingent that brings Robb’s forces up to 18 000. This is a number that I’m more confident of; Robb’s statement that his "whole army” is 18 000 men strong comes well after the Manderlys have arrived, and the use of ravens for communications likely means that Robb knew how large the Manderly force was going to be shortly after they left White Harbour.

The reduction of Robb’s army to 18 000 total men and the reassessment of typical contingents from slightly over 25% cavalry to 13-16% cavalry also requires a lowering of the total cavalry from ~5000 at Moat Cailin to a maximum of 4000 cavalry. The number of foot, however, doesn’t need to be significantly reduced.

There are some references to Robb having 20 000 men (AGOT, Catelyn IX; ACOK, Catelyn II), which would better fit the wiki’s figure of 19 500 men. The problem is that we also hear of there being six thousand men with Robb at the Whispering Woods (AGOT, Catelyn X), which is far too few if we go with the wiki’s number of 5000 Northern cavalry for Robb. Between the Freys, the Mallisters (see below) and the other scattered Riverland remnants who join Robb, he’d have near enough to 7000 cavalry by the time of the Whispering Woods, and he wouldn’t be outnumbered by Jaime by 3:1, but by 2:1 (AGOT, Catelyn X).

My way of resolving this conflict is to suggest that both instances of people saying Robb having 20 000 men were exaggerations, not accurate accountings of size. In the first instance, Catelyn is angry with Lord Frey and is threatening him with the size of Robb’s army. In this scenario, claiming that there are “twenty thousand men” outside of Lord Walder’s walls is easier to say than “eighteen thousand men”, being a rounder number, and is also more threatening because it increases the size of Robb’s army. In the second instance, Renly is summarizing reports he has received of Robb’s strength, and there is plenty of room for errors to creep into these reports and for Renly to be generous in his estimates of Robb’s strength, as it only emphasizes the disparity in strength between Robb and Renly if Robb has fewer troops than Renly allows for (which he does).

On the other hand, Robb’s statement that he has 18 000 men occurs long enough after the Manderlys have arrived for him to have factored their force into his calculations and Catelyn is present with Robb at the Whispering Woods and should have a good idea of his strength. This is supported by Galbart Glover’s estimate of Jaime’s 14-15 000 men outnumbering Robb’s force by three to one. If Lord Glover is assuming that Jaime has 15 000 men, and Robb 6000 men, then Jaime outnumbers Robb by 2.5:1 which, rounded up, would be three to one. Additionally, Catelyn may have been overstating Robb’s numbers in her mind for exaggeration and contrast between his bodyguard of 30 and his army of 6000, neither of which she is certain can protect him from harm. Robb may well have had 5500-5750 men rather than 6000, which pushes the degree to which his is outnumbered by closer to three to one.

I think this proposal reconciles the contradictions in the text and offers support for my “low count” of 18 000 men. After all, if Galbart Glover is rounding up to 3 for effect, then why can’t Catelyn or Renly do the same?

Tywin’s army at the Green Fork

The size of Tywin’s army at the battle on the Green Fork is one of the few armies that we have a mostly reliable estimate for. Chella estimates it at twenty thousand men, “by their fires” and, based on the area the camp occupies, Tyrion thinks that she can’t be far wrong (AGOT, Tyrion VII). This is further reinforced in the next of Tyrion’s chapters where, after having settled in, he calls it a ”vast host twenty thousand strong”.

The one minor caveat here is that we don’t know how many men were with Addam Marbrand scouting Robb’s approach. The Neck is something in the order of 370 miles away from the Ruby Ford and the crossroads, which is 15 days of hard riding and 21-22 days of fast, horse preserving, riding. Marbrand is definitely operating quite near the Neck, as a number of his outriders are killed immediately after Robb debouches into the Riverlands, so there was an expectation that he would be facing down Robb’s army at some point and that means a sizeable force for protection during the retreat downriver to Tywin. There’s also evidence of skirmishing between Marbrand and Walder Frey’s forces, which relates to another point: the scouting force needed to be large enough to give Walder reason to pause and not immediately attack if he saw an opportunity.

Given the speed of communications between Marbrand and Tywin and the distance between the two forces, it’s likely that at least one castle with a resident Maester had been taken by Marbrand near Frey lands in order to reduce the delay in communication. While we haven’t heard of a such a castle being taken, it’s the only way that the message for Marbrand to return to Tywin, burning and harassing the Northern army, so soon after it entered the Riverlands.

Medieval scouting parties could range between dozens of men all the way up to several hundred men, largely depending on how far they were operating from their own army and how much opposition they expected to face. One of the largest forces was William Felton’s scouting/deeds of derring-do party prior to the Battle of Nájera, which had somewhere between four and five hundred men, approximately 200 of whom were men-at-arms and the remainder were mounted archers. This is probably the minimum size of Marbrand’s scouting force, although it would be mostly cavalry as mounted archers barely exist in ASOIAF, and I suspect that six or seven hundred men would be more likely based on the need to capture a castle for communications and then skirmish during the retreat.

Combined with Tyrion’s force, Marbrand’s scouting party might well raise Tywin’s army to 21 000 men rather than 20 000, especially if Tyrion and Chella were being conservative in their estimates of the army size and it was more than 20 000 strong.

This caveat aside, the important thing about Tywin’s army is that, unlike most armies in ASOIAF, we can create a fairly accurate breakdown of the army’s composition thanks to the detail GRRM goes into in describing the Battle on the Green Fork. He lists a total of 6800 cavalry (4000 on the right wing, 300 in the center and 2500 in reserve) and 2500 infantry (in reserve). From these figures, the mention of what the other troop types are and the overall size of the army, we can reconstruct the rest of the army.

Starting with the conventional 20 000 number to be conservative, we can remove 9300 men straight away, leaving us with 10 700 men. Of these, perhaps a thousand form the “swarming mass” that makes up the vanguard, as it’s likely that the “thousand other voices” screaming back at Gregor excludes Tyrion’s clansmen - any fewer and it’s hard to describe it as a “swarming mass” of low quality cavalry. This leaves us with 9 700 men to account for.

The center of Twyin’s army is made up of “squares” of pikemen flanked on either side by “three long lines” of archers, with “rank on rank” of men-at-arms behind the archers and a reserve of 300 knights. This is where we fully enter the realms of speculation.

To begin with, we don’t know what exactly is meant by “squares” of pikemen. Medieval pike columns could contain as many as 6000 men, while early modern squares might have as few as 100, so any size estimate is going to involve a lot of guesswork. I’ve gone back and forward about how to interpret this phrase and have finally decided to treat the “squares” as distinct units for the purposes of command, but tactically in a similar manner to 15th century dismounted men-at-arms. As a result, I’m estimating their strength as 250 men - to be deployed 10 deep - and their total number to be 3000 men (12 pike squares). This allows for a reasonable width of line in the center (300 yards), but also adequate depth to resist cavalry charges.

Estimates for the archers and men-at-arms follow directly on from this. The archers need to be in thousands because, as Philippe de Commynes points out, they’re only useful when employed in such numbers. Given that fully half of Jaime’s infantry are archers, I’m inclined to assign 4000 archers and 2700 men-at-arms to Tywin so that his overall archer to footsoldier ratio is about 1:2. The archers, each occupying a space of three feet, would occupy 667 yards on either side of the pikes and the men-at-arms, each occupying four and a half foot, would have the same frontage, but double the depth (6 ranks).

In all, I believe a conservative estimate of Tywin’s numbers, not counting Tyrion’s Clansmen, to be 7800 cavalry, 3000 pikemen, 2700 men-at-arms, 4000 archers and 2500 other infantry of an indeterminate type.

The Mallister forces

The number of men Jason Mallister can field, in spite of his importance during Robb’s initial campaign and later at the Battle of the Fords, has yet to be mentioned. While I’ve seen a number of estimates, with numbers as low as 1500-2000 men, the best estimate I’ve seen to date has been @racefortheironthrone‘s estimate in his Chapter-by-Chapter analysis of A Game of Thrones. 

However, some interesting information in Fire and Blood has caused me to rethink the relative military power of House Mallister, and I believe I’ve also found a semi-reliable method of estimating their forces. The particular passage can be found in the chapter titled “Aftermath - The Hour of the Wolf” and runs thus:

House Tully was unique amongst the great houses of Westeros. Aegon the Conqueror had made them the Lords Paramount of the Trident, yet in many ways they continued to be overshadowed by many of their own bannermen. The Brackens, the Blackwoods, and the Vances all ruled wider domains and could field much larger armies, as could the upstart Freys of the Twins. The Mallisters of Seagard had a prouder lineage, the Mootons of Maidenpool were far wealthier, and Harrenhal, even cursed and blasted and in ruins, remained a more formidable castle than Riverrun, and ten times the size besides.

The main point of interest is that the four military powerhouses of the Riverlands are the Brackens, the Blackwoods, the Vances and the Freys, while the Mallisters are excluded from this list. Instead, they are singled out as having a better pedigree than the Tullys which, although not excluding them from having marginally larger armies than their overlords, does quite firmly give them fewer men than House Frey.

In re-examining the question of Mallister manpower, I was inspired by @racefortheironthrone‘s comment that Jason Mallister must have had substantial forces, as his men covered four fords by themselves. Since we know roughly how many infantry Edmure was working with (8000, ACOK Catelyn V) and the minimum number of fords (12, ACOK Catelyn VI), we can get a reasonable maximum number of Mallister strength by assuming that all fords had an equal number of defenders and that there were only twelve being defended. This provides a maximum number of 2664 infantry and, based on typical Riverland horse to foot ratios, about 890 horse, for a total of 3554 men.

These are, however, maximum numbers. While the ford nearest to Riverrun is very broad and at least 50 yards wide (ACOK, Catelyn VI), it’s likely that the other fords were much narrower and more easily defended. It’s also probable that there were more than a dozen fords, and that Tywin was simply trying to break through a broad stretch of the river rather than overwhelm every ford. 

Based on the number of men stationed at the Blanchetaque by the French during the Crecy campaign (3500) and probable English numbers by that point (12-13 000), I would say that medieval commanders expected that someone attacking a ford needed an advantage of at least four to one to succeed. As Tywin can’t have had above 16 000 men at this point in the campaign and, being a cautious man who preferred to significantly outnumber his enemies, likely aimed to have an advantage of 5:1 over the defenders, the minimum number of men for House Mallister can be calculated as 1070 infantry and 357 cavalry, or 1427 men total.

This means there’s a difference of 2100 men between the maximum and minimum estimates, but I think we can discard anything close to the minimum number. 

Firstly, the Mallisters are clearly a powerful house, even if they aren’t one of the four military powers of the Riverlands. There’s no reason to suspect that they are significantly less powerful than House Tully, which must be capable of raising at least a couple of thousand men, and they may still even exceed the Tullys in military might given House Tully’s typical weakness compared to their lords.

Secondly, the Mallisters saw off what, if not an attack by the main Ironborn fleet, was at least a major assault by the Ironborn during Greyjoy’s Rebellion and were placed in charge of what was probably one of the largest fords across the Red Fork. You don’t fend off even part of the Iron Fleet or get selected to defend a ford at least fifty yards across unless you can bring a lot of men to bear in the defense of these fords.

Ultimately, I don’t see the Mallisters having much fewer than 2000 foot and 668 heavy horse. As I like round numbers and don’t believe the Mallisters have as many men as the maximum calculation provides, I’m going to give them a total of 3000 men as an optimistic estimate, divided between 2250 foot and 750 heavy horse. This makes them quite a powerful house militarily, but keeps them sufficiently under the minimum army size for a Riverlands powerhouse (4000) that they noticeably fall short of this status. 

[prorevenge]

My wannabe fashionista coworker always threw shade at me for being frumpy. She looked frumpier, unemployed!

TL;DR at the bottom

*******

I worked at a popular, high end clothing store while I was in graduate school (I'm an engineer). I won't name the brand, but it's the sort that charged $50 for a pair of male boxer briefs, $200 for a lady's fancy bra, or $400 or more for a pair of jeans, $1,000 or more for those skinny suits that hip guys wear to their job, where the hems of their pants reveal that they're wearing loafers without socks.

The clothes there weren't really my style but the starting pay was two dollars higher than minimum wage, and higher than most of the other, surrounding stores. This was at a rich people shopping center, where lots of people who shop there are wannabe celebrities and constant selfie-takers.

I was surprised to get hired there, but was relieved that I wouldn't have to really do customer service, as I worked only in the stock room. I'd put out clothes on the shelves and racks before and after closing, and also arrange everything in the back to make it organized. I was also trained so that in emergency situations I could cover register if we were short handed, so that the regular associates could go on break.

I was hardly seen by customers, but I still had to wear the clothes the store sold, to promote the image of the company. I didn't, thankfully, have to wear the dainty little suits, but I did sport the jeans and other casual things we sold.

It was a job. I didn't love it and I didn't hate it. I just worked, took my pay, went to school, and went home.

At least that's the way it was for two months.

After those two months, "Jessica" began to work during the same hours as me. She was about my age (I was 22), maybe twenty five, tops. She didn't work in the stock room (it was just me back there, with one or two other college guys), but worked the front. She wasn't the manager, or even a supervisor, but she SWORE she was in charge of me.

She made it known to everyone, even customers, that she graduated with an associates degree in fashion marketing from FIDM. I suppose it's a big deal but I was thinking girl if you're a college graduate why are you bragging about it as if it has something to do with you folding jeans and ringing people up at the register? She talked like she was fashion expert and in the "fashion industry," and would talk about the New York or Paris fashion weeks in a familiar way that implied that she just got of the plane after attending these events personally. You know the type, the kind that talks about famous fashion designers by their first name, as if they knew them.

Well she always criticized the way I wore the jeans because I didn't tuck in my T-shirt like the mannequin, or that I work Chuck Taylors on my feet instead of the little leather Sperry Topsiders knockoffs we sold for $300.

We were given a clothing allowance as employees. As a stockperson, I was allowed three complete outfits for free, everything from tops, to underear, to socks, and pants (but not shoes). If I wanted more and it was specifically for wearing at the store, I could mark it as a "uniform purchase" and have the price deducted from my check a little at a time. This was advantageous because they wouldn't charge you tax for them, and charge you only a third of the retail price.

Uniform Purchase was distinctly separate from "Store Discount," for which we also received a percentage off, but it wasn't the incredible 66% discount we got for uniform purchases.

Jessica would snicker at me when I took over register for someone, shake her head or roll her eyes at me as if I looked really ugly. I'm always thinking, whatever girl, you wannabe model you aren't even hot and you're not the boss, who are you? But I held my tongue.

She'd also complain if I was supposedly not fast enough in grabbing a size medium from the back because a customer is requesting the dress and all we have on the floor are smalls and larges. She'd trash me to the customer and when I showed up would sarcastically say "finally!" and turn to the customer with a "see what I have to put up with?" expression.

She was especially mean if any customers got chatty with me and treated me with respect. And if those customers were female and were getting flirty with me, Jessica would be a total cockblock.

The real manager, Paula, had their own issues to deal with beyond petty bickering between a stockboy and an entry level sales associate with delusions of "Project Runway" grandeur. The assistant manager, another fashion industry wannabe named "Heather," was just like Jessica, but thankfully I hardly interacted with her. According to my coworkers, Heather was just as bad as Jessica.

Even though I didn't plan on making this store my career, and even though Jessica didn't bother me THAT much, I thought it won't hurt to get this bitch fired.

To her face, I'd just smile and act like I was following her orders happily, or didn't mind when she would point at me rudely, or snap her fingers at me like she was calling a dog.

Jessica would always hear a directive from one of the managers, and then go around telling the other employees what to do, as if they didn't have ears. She'd try to act as if it was HER directive. LOL.

Her coworkers who were the same "rank" as her would sometimes vent to me about how Jessica acted like she was in charge, when in some cases she had even less time in the company than other employees on the floor.

I noticed that when I arranged clothes in back, especially big ticket, desirable clothes that were seen in magazines in our company's advertisement campaigns, she'd "order" me to set aside things in her size.

I'd do it, because it's my job to set aside things if employees want to buy them outright at a discount or put it as a uniform purchase.

Whenever an employee was on register (really, a big Ipad with a cash drawer beneath), you could tap in a code and the register would show a rundown of every non-customer transaction that employees performed that day, and with a few more keystrokes, their transactions over MANY days. The managers knew this code, of course, and I'll assume Jessica knew the code too because Heather shared the code with her.

I WASN'T supposed to know the code, but I did, because there's a mirror in the wall behind the register, and I was re-stocking paper handbags behind Heather when I saw her tap in her four digit code. She assumed I was stupid and didn't understand the incredibly complex wizardry that is a two year old, low-end spec Ipad.

I knew Jessica was getting rung up for "uniform purchases" when she should have been getting rung up for regular employee discount.

She assumed that when I set aside all those expensive items for her, that I was too dumb to know what she was doing, just because I might have something of a mouth breather countenance.

Even if I look on the surface like a fugitive from the trailer park, something told me Jessica wasn't going to be using $800 heels, a $500 dress, and $1200 motorcycle jacket while working at the store.

And anyway, I asked around. No one saw Jessica wearing any of the truly fancy clothes she bought at our store at what the other employees assumed was simply a regular employee discount.

I thought maybe she was being honest, too. It WAS possible, after all, because I didn't always work with her. Maybe she wore evening dresses to work on her other shifts? Whatever, I decided to make sure.

One time when everyone was busy doing other stuff and the store had to resort to putting me on the register, I typed in Heather's code and pulled up Jessica's purchases. As I suspected, she had bought thousands of dollars worth of our store's best items, but put them all as "uniform purchases" and not at her regular discount.

So I swiped "print" and the register switches from the regular tape to the 8.5"x11" printer beneath the counter, and a complete rundown of all of Jessica's purchases come out.

I highlight all the most expensive items that she was charged for "uniform purchase" (such as, her $1200 jacket would only be $300, and even that was tax free and she got to pay it little by little).

I knew that my manager, Paula, wasn't exactly a nuclear physicist and she was more interested in moving up the chain of command to be working at a job higher than store manager in the company, so as long as her store's sales numbers looked good she didn't care what her assistant Heather did.

Except, if it was a violation of company policy that might reflect badly on her.

I knew Heather was in on Jessica's scam because you're not allowed to ring yourself up at the store, you have to have someone else do it, and none of the other associates would want to conspire with her for fear of getting fired or worse.

To make sure, I printed HEATHER's purchase history too. I didn't see Heather as often as I saw Jessica, but I could also see really glaring red flags on her purchase report. Like, she bought a $900 nightclub dress as a uniform purchase, which I'm quite sure she never wore to work. I did the same highlighting on suspicious items as I did with Jessica's.

Then, because none of this was REALLY my business, I was just a part time asshole who worked in the stockroom, I waited for the most fun opportunity to lower the boom.

Jessica got on her little bluetooth earpiece that she wears on he sales floor that she thinks makes her look like a VIP, and says, "OP, I'm going to need XXX in a size small, customer waiting, get the lead out." So I bring the item, and Jessica says I'm "not passing muster." I thought wow Jessica you sounded really 1940s there, you wannabe pinup girl LOL.

After the customer leaves, Jessica says, "I'm going to need you to go on a trash run and sweep out the receiving bay. And I need you to cover Annie's lunch."

I laugh and tell her, "who died and made you supervisor, you fucking headass burnout?"

She looks like she was the fucking Crypt Keeper for a second and that she wanted to punch me, before she remembered that I'm 6'2" and outweigh her by a hundred pounds.

She hisses, "You are SO fired, you fucking geek. Heather's going to hear about this."

I tell her, "Fuck you, I'm going to lunch."

And I clock out and leave.

When I come back, I see Jessica immediately get on her little earpiece.

Before I even reach the stock room, Heather is there, and the manager Paula intercept me.

"Annie, can you cover register? We have an urgent matter to deal with."

I know I'm supposed to be fired.

Which is why, during my lunch, I went to the copy place and made PDF scans of the printouts I made for Jessica and Heather. I had all the corporate bigshots' emails. They were in the new hire handbook all of us get when we start working. I saved a draft to each but didn't hit SEND yet. I had the printouts as attachements. In the BODY of my email, I described exactly what had been going on. I did send ONE email. And that was to Paula the manager, herself.

But I didn't press SEND until we were on our way to the employee break room.

Paula tells me, "OP, Heather sent me a text that says you were verbally abusive to Jessica. Heather herself says that Jessica has complained to her on numerous occasions that you are a substandard employee, and only her own, personal kindness has presented her from firing you. I came in myself to see if you have anything to say in order to save your job."

It's been a couple of years so of course that can't be exactly what she said, but it was something typical and rehearsed and faux-professional that any low-level boss would say when trying to sound important.

I said I didn't have anything to say in my defense, and that in fact I quit.

Jessica and Heather looked surprised, but then Jessica started smiling.

Paula looked disappointed, and said, "I'm very sorry to hear you say that. You may collect your last..."

"Oh, but before I go, I think you should look at these printouts. I know you don't spend a lot of time studying this stuff, but I thought you might find it interesting. It's the last three months of Jessica's and Heather's employee purchases. Notice how they always ring each other up, and notice all that stuff they're claiming to use as uniforms. If you're having trouble understanding it, I explained it in an email I sent to your cellphone. You should have it already, if you check.

I have the same email ready to go to Dan and Pam and Kimberly and Victor and Kevin but I haven't sent it in yet. I was hoping you could look it over and email me back when you're ready, I mean if you want me to edit anything."

Then I got up and left.

Later that afternoon, my phone was ringing.

It was Paula.

She was practically crying, telling me, please don't send those emails, "I've fired Heather and Jessica. They're GONE. And please don't quit. Please don't tell anyone about--"

I tell her to relax.

I already quit. And I'm keeping my mouth shut.

A few days later, I showed up for my final check. I learned from one of the sales associates that corporate Loss Prevention was called in (our corporate office is only a few miles from the retail location) to interview both Heather and Jessica about their fraud.

In lieu of arrest and heavy fines for what amounted to outright theft and fraud, they were simply fired and unable to use the company as a reference, and due to being fired for cause, could not file for unemployment.

Paula was actually in the store that day, and practically ran to me to thank me for "keeping this scandal at a store level. It's been handled."

I told her no problem. What I didn't tell her was that I never did delete those drafts.

She offered me a reward of free merchandise.

No thanks.

I'm going to look awfully silly in those dainty little suits at my super cool new job of working at Sizzler.

It all ended okay.

A year later I finished my degree, and now I'm doing what I really want to do. Except now at my job, guess what we have to wear. Yeah. Dainty little suits.

I wear socks, though.

I would have never torpedoed Heather and Jessica if they just left me alone to do my job in peace, and didn't try to feel big and important at my expense.

I would have left them to live in their self-medicating lies, live and let live.

Other than some difficult customers, people like Heather and Jessica are what make working retail such a nightmare for so many.

And that's why I feel no guilt about destroying them.

I'm sure Jessica had lots to talk about at that year's Milan Fashion Week.

Hold this L, bitch.

****************

TL;DR: I was stockboy at a fancy clothes store. A low level associate would always boss me around and call me stupid even though she wasn't in charge. I found out she was stealing from the store. I was mean to her on purpose so that I'd be called in to a manager meeting to be fired. I quit, and presented proof to the manager that the associate and the assistant manager were both thieves. They both got fired. I began work at Sizzler.

(source) story by (/u/SaggingSkinnyJeans)