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chloecherrysip · 2 years ago

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As you might have gathered from my frenzied posts yesterday, ya girl saw the Mario Movie for the second time on Thursday, and I have some additional thoughts! I already rambled on about the brothers' reunion AT LENGTH but let's actually talk about some other things (but also still a LITTLE BIT about that here too because I literally cannot be stopped).

Most importantly, I feel like I have had a big change of heart about the movie - in a good way! :)

So I had bought this Thursday ticket first before I made the really impulsive decision to go to a midnight showing on Tuesday, and I kept the ticket because I wanted to see what I would think a second time (and there were obviously some favorite moments that I really wanted to watch again). But I came out of the first showing so conflicted that I was like: "Am I even going to have that much fun at a second showing? Will I be a little bored sometimes?" (Plus, I was having the worst headache yesterday and just not in the best mood in general lolol)

And it was so, so MAGICAL

I think my first viewing experience was weird because 1) I was anxious and way overhyped 2) It was late at night and I was TIRED and 3) I found myself SO distracted throughout the movie because my brain was busy trying to redefine expectations as things went on, to the point that the whole end battle was extremely fuzzy to me because it was just SO DIFFERENT from what I'd been thinking it would be and my sleepy brain didn't know how to reconcile it. This time, I went in knowing exactly what the movie was going to be and what I could expect, and I just??? had the best time imaginable??? I was SO happy the whole way through?????? Literally enthralled and delighted and smiling to the point that my face hurt all over again???

Like, just to be clear, the problems I've already gone on about are still problems at the end of the day -- but truthfully, I care about them a lot less now. At the end of the day, this movie is beautiful, has heart, and keeps you interested, and just having gotten that out of a mario movie after all this time is really special to me. I do genuinely think that if you felt conflicted and disappointed after your first viewing, you should watch the movie again and see how you feel a second time around, because shedding all those expectations and going in without all that hanging over me just made for an absolutely wonderful experience that I'll remember for a long time!

Part of that too is the crowd I saw it with! At my midnight screening, there were obviously no kids and everyone was a little subdued. This time, there was a good number of kids, and man, they were having such a good time. The dad/daughter duo sitting beside me laughed SO many times and it was delightful (she was SO excited at the Mario Kart stuff).

And there was APPLAUSE at the end! That by itself is always a magical experience to me at the movies when people clap at the end because it's just such a pure expression of happiness (since there's no live performance and the clapping is to no one's benefit, lol). And then as I was walking out, there were these little boys excitedly talking about how the movie was a "5/5!!!" for them and....man, I don't know. The universe likes to give gentle reminders that sometimes things are just Not That Deep and it's okay to be a little less cynical and a little more generous. (But I will still complain a LITTLE below, haha.)

ANYWAY, THAT'S ENOUGH MUSING, HERE ARE SPECIFIC THOUGHTS:

The significance of the Nintendo logo sequence being retro Mario and Luigi together at the very beginning :) :) :)

Didn't even realize the first time that Mario doesn't just instinctively stick his arm out in front of Luigi protectively during the dog scene, he ALSO does it when Spike stands up from the table, even though Spike's only focused on Mario at that point!!!! Something I really wanted from the Brooklyn scenes was to see that protectiveness and care in Mario's body language for Luigi right from the start, and they do SUCH a good job at that, like more than I could have hoped for. It's a reflex for him! When there's even the slightest whiff of danger, you can see Mario's thought process go straight to "keep Luigi behind me, make sure he stays safe" and I loveeee

Luigi is such a mama's boy! ❤️❤️❤️ Bragging about her liking their commercial so genuinely! They also have a cute, subtle moment when he's trying to get some food at the dinner table and everyone's talking over him/not listening but his mom brings him a bowl and gives him a little, soft pat on the shoulder, it is adorable.

(Also Luigi getting swept up in the moment and dropping the "mic" but it's his phone and he breaks it continues to be just...such a good character moment. He is so wonderful throughout the beginning of the movie and I just want so much more of him in the sequel, please ;; )

JUST THE FAMILY STUFF IN GENERAL IS GOOD AND SURPRISINGLY SUBTLE AND REALISTIC????

Like, they could have gone REALLY broad with it and just made their parents horrible people if they wanted to do a "Mario has Dad Issues" plot but like, it's very clear that there's a LOT of love and care in that household! Along with a healthy dose of dysfunction, of course, but that's every family, haha. And honestly, their dad reminds me of my dad, who is a wonderful person BUT can also make really insensitive comments without realizing or just simply be really judgmental if one of his kids makes a choice he wouldn't personally make. It's still weird that they actually have a big family in this version of canon (if they live in the Mushroom Kingdom at the end of the movie, do they still go back and visit home all the time? Is it tough to be literally a world away from your parents??? I AM INTRIGUED BY THAT) but I can get behind it, haha.

In one of my other posts, I wrote that it looked like Mario and Luigi were the babies of the family, but there actually is a much younger kid at the dinner table, I realized - i think it's a little girl in a baseball cap who's maybe 7 or 8? Probably their cousin? She seemed very, VERY bored with everything going on. Also, for a split-second at the end, you can see her recording what's happening with her phone/taking a selfie XD I want to know more about this mystery kid and Mario and Luigi's relationship with them, haha.

Also, to go back a little, that construction site parkour scene had a lot more to it than I remembered! Mario doesn't just open the gates for Luigi - he also knocks down a ladder for him, throws down a piece of material for him to be able to run over a gap, and I think some other things too. Back to my original point about how no matter what's going on or how caught up he is, what his brother needs is always such a critical part of his thought process ❤️

I LOVED THE MARIO AND PEACH STUFF SO MUCH MORE THIS TIME???? There still isn't enough by far, but I was just so much fonder of their little moments. The "you're just trying to make me feel better" "is it working?" "a little, yeah" exchange was CUTE. Also, I kind of adore that Mario improves but doesn't ACTUALLY finish the training course (which feels realistic in such a short timeframe) but Peach sees that he's really trying and that's all she needed to know, that he was serious and had the determination to give it his all. :)

ALSO I love when Mario looks very nervous right before his fight with DK but he and Peach lock eyes and she gives him a determined smile and nod and that helps him.

(ALSO x 2, when Bowser breaks out of the ice at the wedding, Mario and Peach are holding hands very sweetly!!! I want to know what they were saying to each other at that point! She was probably SO relieved to see that he was alive and all right, ahhhh)

PEACH'S WEDDING DRESS IS ABSOLUTELY STUNNING, MAYBE A CONTROVERSIAL OPINION BUT THE ODYSSEY DRESS COULD NEVER!!!

I have ALWAYS loved the idea of Peach's eventual wedding dress having pink elements throughout (even in the veil!!) because it's her signature and this dress DID and I was so endlessly delighted, can't WAIT to see all the details more in super high quality screenshots

ALSO THE WEDDING SCENE IS GENERAL IS SO GOOD??? I TRULY THINK THE WAY THEY STRUCTURED THIS SCENE AND PEACH'S CAPTURE WAS INCREDIBLY SMART???

I knew it was basically a foregone conclusion that Peach would be taken captive at some point because that is SO iconic, but I truly thought they would play it out more traditionally where Mario comes to her rescue. And the fact that they don't even go NEAR that idea, Mario doesn't even KNOW anything about what's going on her and she's on her own with Toad, and she just!!! handles the situation!!! she takes Bowser out (temporarily) and does everything she can to save the prisoners and I just loved that they were able to have it both ways while still letting her be TRULY badass instead of just paying lip service to the idea without ever following through

THE FINAL BATTLE IN BROOKLYN...HIT SO MUCH HARDER FOR ME THIS TIME...AND NOW I LOVE IT

I was just so bewildered the first time I saw the movie by the twist but this time, i was 100% IN THE MOMENT and let me tell you, Mario being all bruised and scared and then seeing himself and Luigi on the cracked television...my goodness, I genuinely teared up. I'm tearing up now thinking about it!!

IN GENERAL: THE WAY THEY BALANCE BOWSER'S HUMOR WITH SOME EXTREMELY MENACING, SCARY STUFF IS SO GOOD

I love that you're laughing at him and then suddenly, he just does something CRUEL and TERRIFYING and ESSENTIALLY PSYCHOPATHIC (even the little things like intentionally crushing Kamek's hands in the piano and making him keep them there!!) and you're scared of all him all over again

I know, I know, I already spoke about Mario and Luigi's reunion AT LENGTH, but I got one more thing -> it is genuinely SUCH a relief that Illumination did not go for the cheap "wow how embarrassing when men show emotion!" joke. in fact, not only did they avoid any joke like that, they went as far in the other direction as I think you could possibly go????? Like, seriously, I wanted FEELINGS here and the fact that it even blew ME away how tender and loving their whole exchange is really says something!!! I WILL LITERALLY TALK ABOUT THE FACE HOLDING AND THE FOREHEAD TOUCHING FOREVER, THEY ARE THE SWEETEST BROTHERS OF ALL TIIIME

Finally, I am STUPID because I genuinely walked away from the movie the first time with the impression that the worlds were permanently merged together at the end??? But after reading other people's summations of the ending, that's clearly not the case and Mario and Luigi just live in the Mushroom Kingdom now, whoops, haha. (I would be interested to know how far in the future that scene is!! I assume it would take some time to make that decision and that they weren't like "yeah, let's just immediately leave behind everything we've ever known and our whole family for a place we've spent a couple of days in" lol)

And also a quick list of some things that I'm still annoyed about because, well, it can't ALL be good:

The 80's music didn't bother me originally BUT it's starting to come to light now that the soundtrack is out that there are full, finished, AMAZING tracks that just aren't in the movie and it's pretty clear they sync up really well with those scenes???? SO IT DEFINITELY SEEMS LIKE THE ORIGINAL INTENTION WAS TO NOT HAVE ANY OUTSIDE MUSIC BUT SOMEONE HIGHER UP DID SOME MEDDLING AND GOT THEM ADDED AND THAT IS INFURIATING. And you can totally tell!!! WE NEED A VERSION OF THE MOVIE WITH ALL THE ORIGINAL TRACKS PUT BACK IN FOR SURE

It continues to feel like there are whole scenes/parts of scenes just missing from the movie! FOR INSTANCE: it seems like a MAJOR plothole that Toad was captured alongside Peach but then he's just...walking around freely? Able to get her a bouquet with the ice flower??? I feel like something was missed there. I really do wonder if there's like 10-20 minutes of footage/potential footage that was mercilessly cut for time. Will we ever see some of it (maybe on the blu-ray)? Will it be lost to time/Nintendo's vault forever? SOMEONE LEAK THE FORBIDDEN SCENES :(

Speaking of, RIP "I'm not afraid! I'll do anything for my brother!" I WILL ALWAYS MOURN YOU AND LOVE YOU AND WONDER WHEN YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN SAID IN THE MOVIE

Guys. The slow motion. WE GET IT. It's funny the first couple of times, but by the fifth time, it's SO OLD.

Also, I continue to desperately wish that the Luigi rescue at the end felt more earned. It's SO good but it needs one more beat! One more realization! One more character moment! SOMETHING! :( :( :( :(

I had ANOTHER idea about how they could have sold this more and even tied it back to an earlier moment in the movie. When the scene cuts to Luigi in the dumpster watching Mario fight, frame what he's seeing so that it reminds him of being babies on the playground again, but now Mario's where Luigi was!!! And Bowser's the bully!!! And his brother needs him just as much as Luigi needed Mario back then!!!! You wouldn't even need any dialogue - just let the shot LINGER on Luigi and give us a tiny bit of that flashback intercut one more time alongside his changing expressions! It would be SO simple but I think it'd be effective AND give that earlier flashback more reason to be there in the first place (as adorable as it is).

OK I'VE TALKED ENOUGH

#mario movie #mario movie spoilers #super mario bros movie #super mario bros movie spoilers #i'm seeing the movie again on saturday night :)#but this time with other people so i gotta be way more normal about it lolol #GOODNESS WHY IS THIS POST SO LONG I'M SORRY I CAN'T SHUT UP #cherrysip hc's & rambling

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bergens-adventure-tours · 2 years ago

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Week 10: April 17th – 23rd, 2023 // Change of Directions

It’s crazy to think how quickly things can change in such short period of time, and how many wonderful opportunities are waiting for you when you least expect them. This week was one of embracing going with the flow, and really listening to what my heart n soul need right now. Being on my own has brought about a lot of time to sit with myself and reflect on a lot of things. One of the key things I’ve come to acknowledge is the realization that I’m heading into a period where I’m craving more community and solid connection. I realize this comes at a funny time, as I’ve just begun my solo trip, but I’ve also come to acknowledge that I had been spending so much of the previous year on my own. Don’t get me wrong – 2022 was an amazing year, filled with some of my absolute favourite memories, incredible first experiences, many lessons and brought me a lot of lifelong friends; but I never found any roots in community. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, nor do I think that was what I was needing this past year. But, as I move into this next chapter of my life, and after experiencing a handful of strong, connected communities here in Australia, it’s reminded me of some things I’ve been missing since graduating from BCIT.

And this week may have brought me the opportunities and connections for exactly what I’m looking for, in ways I was not expecting.

Some of you may remember I mentioned getting new runners back in week 8 to finally get back into running again, but you’ll probably notice I have yet to mention going on a run… well guys, be proud because I finally did it! I woke up Monday morning feeling oddly energetic and with a lot of bounce in my step, and I knew, if I didn’t take advantage of this right away it was going to be a while before I got it back again… so I laced up my runners and hit the road! At this point, I don’t think I’d run in at least 4, maybe even 5 years, but it felt SO good. I came back to my camp spot at the beach and immediately jumped into the ocean to cool off.

I spent the rest of the day getting through a fair bit of driving until the last bit of energy wore off and found a nice spot next to a Salt Lake in the Coorong National Park. I took my time reading in the sun, cooking some dinner, listening to podcasts, answering messages, and working on last weeks blog.

Tuesday was a very productive and relaxing day! I decided to stay put and spend my day reading lots, finishing up last week’s blog post, some yoga, and applying to a bunch of guiding jobs in the Northern Territory.

As a little aside – the past week I’ve been looking a lot into visa work and trying to sort out what I want to do, and when I should do it. With having spent a decent amount of money in my first couple months in just getting to Australia, getting the van sorted, and honestly just on other experiences, I’ve been feeling the pressure of the bank account dwindling. Initially my game plan was to spent the next few months exploring the interior then wrapping down the west coast and finding some farm work mid-winter (July for Australia). While I could’ve probably made this work pretty easily with my current savings, the more I looked into options for my visa, the more I started to lean towards guiding jobs in the Northern Territory. After a lot more reflecting on the types of experiences I’m wanting right now, the more it was making sense to look for work during my time in the interior.

The next morning, I started with a quick back workout and went for a 4.5km run along part of the salt lake + trails. At this point, it’s been a while since I’d had a shower, so I found a sweet free one at a gas station on route towards Adelaide. I ended up staying the night in Port Elliot and spent the evening looking into more stuff for my trip through the interior, applied to more jobs, and read.

Thursday was a really fun day for me! I woke up wanting to do some touristy things, so I got myself dressed up for the first time in a while, made the last 2-hour drive to Adelaide, and wandered around the city! I checked out the Art Gallery of South Australia and the South Australian Museum; Both were really cool and free to enter for anyone. They were also right next to the Adelaide University, which is a beautiful little campus right in the heart of the city… it had me thinking about how I’ve been wanting to go back to school again, and wondering what it might be like to study here in Australia in the future…

I spent the afternoon on a little video sharing my partnership with Last Object! They’re a really cool brand creating alternatives to replace single-use products like cotton swabs, menstrual pads, face wipes, and tissues! Check out their website https://lastobject.com and use the code LastPlanet for 10% off any order.

Today was also the theatre release date of Bob Brown’s documentary ‘The Giants.’ It was such a beautiful and inspirational film covering the political and environmental history of conservation in Australia’s old growth forests, and direction it’s heading today. I unfortunately don’t think it’s available outside of Australia at the moment, but I highly recommend checking out Bob Brown’s foundation. https://bobbrown.org.au There are a lot of parallels between what is happening in Australia and Canada’s logging industry, the governments [in]actions, and the lack of conservation for these important biomes.

I also got an exciting email today to schedule an interview the next morning for a Trainee Guiding Job in Alice Springs!

Friday ultimately decided the next phase of my trip… The interview in the morning went so well that they contacted me later that same day saying they were going to skip second interviews for narrowing down candidates and offered me the job! So in 11 days I will be starting my training as a tour guide in Alice Springs! It’s going to be a pretty interesting and exciting experience in a lot of ways, and I’m really looking forward to it. I spent the whole day camped outside of a park in Adelaide, sorting out the plans for the next phase, finding a climbing group in Alice to join, answering messages, looking into living options, etc.

Saturday was the epitome of “going with the flow” and I could NOT be more stoked for the plans that got presented to me! Part of the reason I’d been taking so much time to get to Adelaide the past week was largely because I was waiting for my aussie driver’s licence to arrive at Clae’s (Sam’s cousins) place for me to pick up. Coincidentally the licence arrived the night before, and today was the last day for me to pick it up from Clae (if I wanted to meet him), before he was leaving on a week-long trip with a group of friends+his family. Turns out it was a climbing trip in the Grampians they were leaving for that night, and they invited me to join them! Because I had spent the whole day prior mostly being anxious about the interview, and whether or not I was making the right decision, I had a full day of chores to work through but knew this was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. I went into overdrive mode and checked everything off the list from groceries, to laundry, to cleaning out fridge, to buying a new camera lens off marketplace, to going into town to pick up a few items (including my own climbing harness + helmet), to finding a free shower at the beach! It was a jam packed day with lots of running around, but I managed to time everything PERFECTLY and met up with Clae, his partner Harriet, and one of their friends to begin the 5-hour drive to the Grampians. It was a long day, as we didn’t leave until 6pm, but I couldn’t be more stoked about the week to come!!

It felt kind of funny knowing that I basically backtracked the distance I just took over a week to travel, in a single night…

But boy was it so worth it. Our first day in the Grampians was so good! We’re a group of 8, and everyone is so incredibly sweet, supportive and just immediately so welcoming. We started the day with a quick drive and 30min hike into our first sport climb location: the Ravines. It was a beautiful spot in between two cliff faces, and we had the whole place to ourselves for the majority of the time. It had been a while since I did any sport climbing, so my arms felt pretty dead pretty quickly (not helping that I started on a hard 19 lol), but it felt so good to get out with a group and watch everyone else. We went back to the camp for lunch and for Clae + Harriet to put their 1.5-year-old down for a nap, before heading out to a different spot for some evening bouldering. I had been feeling pretty low energy after that morning, but found a second wind after a quick hike and some really fun boulder projects. We had the most beautiful sunset and I got to use my new lens for the first time up at the boulders – earning me the nickname ‘JC,’ inspired by famous photographer and videographer “Jimmy Chin” (have got a long way to go before reaching his level, but a nickname I’m happily welcoming lol). Ended the week with dinner around a camp fire and some really amazing new friends. <3

This week started with me wondering how I was going to access community while on the road, and ended with me landing a job guiding in some beautiful and historically important locations, 7 new friends, and my first big climbing trip finally under my belt! Learn to say ‘yes’ more to life, and the adventures will never fail to amaze you.

Stay passionate and curious, Hunter��

04/24/2023

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fahrni · 2 years ago

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Saturday Morning Coffee

Time to sip some coffee and write. It’s that quiet time of the morning I love. Let’s get to it.

This week has been a split in my various timelines; Mastodon, Twitter, and RSS Feeds between the war in Ukraine, Elon Musk bungling management of Twitter, and the mid term elections in the United States. It’s been quite a week.

The Guardian

“In extraordinary scenes, crowds of jubilant residents greeted Ukraine’s armed forces as they reached the centre of Kherson, as Russia’s retreat from the key strategic city appeared to have descended into chaos.”

Let’s go Ukraine! 🇺🇦

Vox

“Democrats outperformed history and expectations with a surprisingly strong midterm elections performance Tuesday, with the promised red wave nowhere to be found.”

This is a real relief. Democrats may lose the house but it looks like the Senate may remain in control of the Democrats and leaves me hopeful we can still save Democracy.

One more term for Biden should keep TFG away from running again.

Platformer

”Everything went from bad to worse at Twitter on Thursday. Today let’s talk about a truly chaotic 24 hours at the company, and the mounting fears over what it means for the service that still serves as the heartbeat of the global news cycle.”

There are so many wonderful hot takes I could post so I’ll probably do another Elon/Twitter hot takes post.

What a complete mess. Either Twitter will go down in a great ball of flames or it will be the most masterful recovery in tech industry history.

Possible outcomes, ranked by likelihood (high to low) 1) Twitter is sold for pennies on the dollar. 2) Bankers foreclose and Twitter goes bust. 3) Servers fail and Twitter goes dark. 4) Divine intervention saves Twitter. 5)Musk's plans somehow work.

— David Frum (@davidfrum) November 11, 2022

Anna Nicholson

“In a complete departure from my usual meanderings, I’m going to present an in-depth comparative review of eight iOS Mastodon/Fediverse apps.”

So, right, Mastodon. The growth on Mastodon has been huge since Musk took over Twitter.

I’m following folks like crazy! I’m up to 465 and I now have 307 folks following me. That is absolutely insane and I never thought I’d see if happen. It’s been so refreshing. The mood on Mastodon has been extremely hopeful and folks are getting along rather well. It’s fun to be there!

If you decide to join take your time finding an instance that’s right for you. There are so many to choose from.

If you’re adventurous consider starting your own! There are hosts out there who make it easy to maintain your instance. Just pay them a few bucks a month.

Alex Suzuki

“My mind is not a sponge anymore. I still love learning, but it does not come as easily as it used to. Take programming languages, for instance. I’ve come to accept that after almost two decades of writing code, I am not really an expert in any single one.”

I have never been as bright as Mr. Suzuki but I worked really hard at my craft and got decent at Windows programming in C and C++. I’ve worked in other environments like C#/.Net, Linux, and finally landing at home on iOS with Objective-C and Swift.

I’m still capable of learning new stuff but I’ve always been extremely slow to do it. I eventually get there it just takes time.

I relate so much to ”my brain is no longer a sponge.” Mine is not. I used to keep a lot of stuff in my head as I was coding. It was easy for me to keep code flow and logic all stuffed in my brain as I was adding new features. Not anymore. It hasn’t been that way for a very long time. Now I have to refresh my findings often and when I step away from code I’ve written it can take a while to get back in the swing of things. Why do you think Stream development takes so long? 😁

I can still do the work it’s just not as easy, or quick, as before.

Becoming an Engineering Director has been really good for me. I get to build up wonderful people and client relationships. I still get to solve technical problems and make recommendations but I no longer have to code them. It’s been a wonderful challenge in ways I never imagined.

Rolling Stone

“Donald Trump ended his pre-midterm rally blitz in disgusting fashion, calling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “an animal,” championing the death penalty, and giddily imagining the prison rape of the journalist who reported on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn [Roe v. Wade.”

This guy cannot get near any government office ever again. He’ll destroy democracy.

Horror Hound

“One such monster maker is Mexican director, producer and author Guillermo Del Toro.”

This piece is about Cabinet of Curiosities. Kim and I just completed it. I really enjoyed it, each episode was around an hour in length, and ended without the possibility of each episode having a part two. It was refreshing and I hope we get another season of new stories. Yes, think Twilight Zone, or Stephen King’s Creep Show.

My favorite episodes were:

Episode 1: Lot 36 Episode 3: The Autopsy Episode 5: Pickman’s Model Episode 6: Dreams in the Witch House Episode 8: The Murmuring

Don’t get me wrong, they’re all good, but those stand out in my mind. Pickman’s Model and Dreams in the Witch House really stood out.

Check it out.

Facebook

“Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history. I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go. We are also taking a number of additional steps to become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through Q1.”

Who’d of thunk Mark Zuckerberg would handle massive layoffs so well. Yeah, it terrible to see 11,000 folks out of work but at least he didn’t do it by sending them an email signed by Twitter. He put his name to everything.

Scripting News

“But as a writer, I can’t use a system that doesn’t do inbound RSS. It’s the inverse of the silo problem.”

At first I didn’t understand what Dave was after. I thought he wanted RSS to be used to thread a conversation like Twitter.

Dave just wants to populate his Twitter, Mastodon, and other social sites with an RSS feed. That’s a nifty idea especially if he could work with some of the smaller players to agree to a standard way to connect it. Basically the sites need a way to point to the feed, read the feed, parse, and display it. Done and done.

I like it.

The Grug Brained Developer

“big brain type system shaman often say type correctness main point type system, but grug note some big brain type system shaman not often ship code. grug suppose code never shipped is correct, in some sense, but not really what grug mean when say correct”

I love the Grug, whatever that is. If you’re a developer and need some levity this is the place to go.

Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months. We will keep what works & change what doesn’t.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 9, 2022

Ya think?

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tamatomo-rainbow · 5 years ago

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It’s that time again! Let’s see how the generation 17 tamas turned out.

But first, Rookitchi and Kingtchi from the Fairytale and the Magical as teens, because I didn’t show that last time.

Where’d the green come from on Kingtchi? I have no idea, honestly. Maybe green’s the midpoint between yellow and purple...?

They’re not technically twins, but other than color, Rookitchi looks just like his brother.

These two evolved right after coming home from their parents’ house (because work), and turned intooooo...!

...boy versions of Pompomtchi? That’s not what I was expecting. The most confusing aspect is the eyes, honestly. I learned that that’s the face they get when they’re the opposite gender of their parent, but otherwise similar. I was under the impression that it’d only happen if they were 100% the same. But apparently accessories don’t count, just top/head/body/face? Hmm.

Meanwhile, how did the other two kids turn out?

Cupcaketchi is pretty close to a pure puppy in appearance...but when his ears flip up, he’s fluffy, and you can just see the Lovelitchi fur “poof” next to his hat. (not sure what else to call the head bits when you get this body but not its ears) It’s a surprisingly endearing combination!

Cinnarorutchi is very similar to his brother as well. The main difference? He inherited the Lovelitchi bow (including the brown color), where Cupcaketchi didn’t. Which...makes me wonder what the accessory for Cinnamoroll is, since it doesn’t seem to have one.

So, what’s waiting in generation 18? Let’s see how much I can fit in here...

Rookitchi had a boy with a cute tama from the On app! I decided to name him Princitchi, inspired by his mom’s look. (Which, due to image limits, I’ll have to share in a later post :p )

Meanwhile, Cinnarorutchi paired up with another tama from the Sweets and had a boy as well. He’s definitely taking after his mom, but I don’t mind. I had initially hoped for flippy ears here, but the hat grew on me.

Kingtchi had a daughter this time, who I decided to name Hinamitchi. She has frosting hair like her mom (from the Meets app, this time) and carries forward the Coffretchi scarf. I’m not sure at this point if it seems persistent because it is, or because I passed it down to two different tamagotchis via Narintchi...

Last but not least, Frostitchi here is the second girl of generation 18. Why the child stage picture? It took a little longer to pair Cupcaketchi off, simply because he was cute and I like sharing genes that others want. (definitely noooot because I forgot what gen it was on, nope...)

Whew! That was a lot to cram into a post, but there’s even more waiting next time! Adults from gen 18, their kids, and maybe some new additions? I’ll see how much ground I can cover without losing this pace.

Happy mixing, everyone!

#tamagotchi #tamagotchi meets #tamagotchi on #fairytale meets #sanrio meets #sweets meets #tamagotchi on magic #myphotos #projgen17 #projgen18 #wondering if i should start posting tuesday-thursday when i have lots of stuff to post and tuesdays only when there's not much new? maybe...

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sdvharveybby · 4 years ago

Note

*ahem* PLEASE DO A FIC BASED OFF YOUR HARVEY AND PREGNANT WIFE HEADCANNONS PLEASE

ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE DEAR BBY ANON. I was honestly so excited to write this that I wrote it in a few hours. Just woo!

The headcannons were my inspiration for this, but I hope I captured everything :0

**edit** Headcannons post where this all came from -- Here!

I had a lot of emotions, myself, when writing this. Mostly do to personal reasons, but I enjoy writing about Harvey in this way. I think it truly captures his nervous, but caring personality. That he would do all that he could to provide the best care for his pregnant wife.

In any case, I hate to say it, but I feel like this jumped around a bit- heh. Honestly there was so much I enjoyed from the headcannons that it was genuinely hard to pick just a few! I hope you enjoyed this though! I did my best and loved every minute of it! Thank you so much for the ask! (Also, the small ‘ahem’ in the beginning legit killed me. It’s so funny)

Word Count: 1918

The farmer cracked open her eyes one sunny morning. She could tell she slept in past 6am, but she was too groggy to be mad; her body felt stiff and her mind heavy, as if a headache was coming on. She pulled the covers over her head and shifted her body to try and get more sleep- she would have fallen asleep if she didn’t start to feel nauseated. It came on quickly and was growing more, the farmer shot up from her bed throwing the blanket behind her. She covered her mouth and bounded towards the bathroom, “H-Honey?” she could faintly hear as she ran past Harvey holding a plate of breakfast for her. The farmer barely made it to the toilet when she threw up any contents in her stomach. With heavy footsteps, Harvey ran into the bathroom after her, “Honey, are you-. Oh, I see.” He remarked as he crouched beside her and pulled her hair back. “I have some water here,” he mentioned as he switched hands to stroke her back as she threw up again.

There was a momentary pause as the farmer tried to gather her breath, “Oh, wow,” she whispered to Harvey. “I know, it’s okay. I’ve got you.” He reassured to her, giving her a soft kiss on her forehead. She would have appreciated it more if she didn’t immediately throw up again, “I promise that’s not because you kissed me,” she chuckled to herself. Harvey laughed and continued stroking her back until she felt like it was over. He handed her some water and walked back to the kitchen to grab medicine and a lemon slice. When he came back, she was standing and holding her head, “Maybe you should lay back down. I asked Marnie to help me with your farm work today so there’s nothing for you too worry about.” He smiled and the farmer nodded her head in agreement. She took the medicine that Harvey offered and grasped the lemon slice in her hand, walking away and smelling it. “Oh, we have a long way to go, but I’ll be here for every minute of it.” He whispered to himself with a soft smile.

After a few weeks of helping her with her morning sickness, it had quickly become about 30ish weeks since they found out that she was pregnant. Every day it was a surreal moment for Harvey, he almost couldn’t believe that it was true. The closer it was to her due date, the more he got emotional- many years he spent pent up in his apartment above the clinic. Many sleepless nights and many lonely ones- it was an eye-opening moment for him when he realized he would be a father. It scared him, no doubt. He feared he wouldn’t be good enough or if he provide enough for his family. What if his child didn’t like him? What if they rejected him or liked his wife more? He knew he was overthinking it and that he would do his best to provide his wife and child with anything they wanted, but he couldn’t help to think of his worst-case scenarios sometimes.

He still worked at the clinic, Tuesdays, and Thursdays to do annual check-ups on everyone in town. He compiled a list of questions to ask when he knew one of the mothers in town would be coming in. It was Summer, day 18, and he knew Robin would be coming in. He decided to ask her because she took things seriously but kept things light enough that he would be most comfortable asking her.

He stood and approached the front door when he saw Robin already inside and waiting, “Hey, Doc,” she smiled as she stood. “Hello, Robin! Follow me.” They made there way into the back as Robin complained of her right arm hurting again, “I’ll take a look, but it’s probably because you work too much. You need to give your arm a break now and again from swinging your ax,” She laughed a bit, “Yeah, but you know how I feel about that.” He sighed but carried on with her check-up. “Looks like you’re good Robin, but please give your arm a break!” He scolded her but she just held up a hand dismissing it. She began to walk out when Harvey stopped her, “Actually, could I ask you a few questions?” Perplexed, Robin sat on one of the stools in the room, “I’m all ears!” He smiled and pulled out a long list of questions he had- Robin peeked at some of them, her eyes wide with amusement. “Ha, you’re worried about being a dad, aren’t you?” Harvey blushed and broke her eye contact, “Well, yes, but also, I want to make sure I’m taking care of my wife well and wanted to ask your experience with pregnancy.” Perhaps… Robin wasn’t the best person to ask because she named off every single thing she could think of for providing the best care for the farmer. Robin made it her mission to prop up the farmer in every way to get her everything she wanted. It took about an hour of talking, but once Harvey understood it all-, she began walking to the door, “Oh, and when your wife suddenly breaks down into tears, just hold her. Sometimes it’s best not to ask questions!” She laughed, leaving Harvey a bit confused.

He made his way home from work, reviewing everything he and Robin talked about. She was so quick to answer every question he had, but she reassured him in all the ways possible. His biggest stress relief is when she looked at him with honest eyes and said, “Harvey, you’re thinking about this too much. You’re going to be a great dad. Just take every day as it comes.”

It calmed his thoughts greatly as he walked through the door. He was greeted with his wife sitting at the table, she turned and looked at him, “Welcome home, love.” He dropped his stuff to the ground and walked to his wife. She was a bit confused, but she smiled, “Everything okay?” Harvey bent down on his knees and hugged her and the baby. He was careful not to disturb the baby bump in any way, but he wanted to drink in his wife’s love after his day at work. She began combing her hands through his hair, “Everything is just fine.” He reassured her as he used his thumb to stroke her belly. It was peaceful to feel her love and feel accepted by her. He was floored that he was going to be a father, and he was humbled to know that he had the best wife in the entire world at his side.

He sprung up from their tender hug when he felt a kick against his hand. “O-oh! The baby! It kicked me, did you see it, honey?!” His eyes were wide with excitement, a rosy color growing in his cheeks. His wife giggled a bit as she watched her husband. His heart rate sprang up and he gently placed his hands on either side of her belly, he watched it carefully and said, “H-Hey! You can hear me! I’m your daddy! Yeah! I’m your father, and I promise to protect you for the rest of my life.” He gave her belly a soft kiss when he felt another kick. His eyes sparkled, brimming with tears, as he watched their child move within her. He helped women give birth for some time now- it never fazed him or affected him like this. This was something totally new that he was experiencing for the first time. This time it was different. This time it was their child- he married the woman he loved more than anything in this world and now he would get to watch his child grow before his very eyes. A few tears fell as he watched this unfold. It was a magical moment that brought tears to his wife’s eyes too. He hugged her belly, shedding a few more tears as he did so.

Through the rest of the night- things went on as they normally did. He would check her ankles to see if she had any swelling and he was relieved when she didn’t. He would rub lotion on her stomach to prevent any stretchmarks and routinely made healthy balanced dinners for his wife. Everyday he would brush his wife’s hair and style it like she normally does- course he messed up a few times, but eventually got the hang of it. She was internally grateful for Harvey. He provided her with as much comfort as he could, and whenever she had any cravings (no matter how weird) he would do his best to get them for her. He eventually started coming home with tomatoes though, considering that seemed to be what she requested the most. When Pierre would question him on all the tomatoes, he’d explain it for his wife. Pierre laughed and would send him on his way, “My wife requested tea leaves once! Not even the drink! Just the leaves!” Pierre would share through his laughter.

Everything had been going smoothly until he came home one night to find his wife in a fit of tears. He dropped anything he was holding and immediately ran by her side. She sat on the couch, holding a blanket to her chin, constantly wiping her eyes and blowing her nose. “What happened? Are you all right?” She didn’t respond, just continued to cry as she clutched the blanket. Retrieving her some water, he sat beside her and held her tightly. “It’s all right, I got you.” He whispered to her, which seemed to make her cry even harder. It overwhelmed him to say the least! He figured he would take this as any regular day, but she seemed to have other plans. He collected his own thoughts and wondered if this were the hormones talking, She should have primarily experienced this in the first trimester. They level off after a few months… He thought to himself as he continued to hold her. She finally broke through with a few hiccups of tears, “I was cleaning today- and- and,” He had no idea what she was trying to say! She half mumbled them, but she continued, “and I saw the books on your table, and those love letters!” She cried again, clutching onto Harvey, Heh, well suppose I can’t surprise her with that now, he sighed with relief when she said this, “I planned to give you a love letter after you had had our child.” He explained and she sat up to blow her nose, “Th-that’s just so sweet,” she managed to say. Harvey grew a big smile when he saw her- any fears he had had melted away, and he had begun to shed a few tears himself. “You know I love you, right?” He spoke as he reached up and wiped away a few of her tears. She leaned against his hand, “I-I know.” “Mm,” He started and pulled her into another embrace, “No,” he whispered, “I mean really love you. You’ve given me everything I’ve ever wanted in my life. I love you with all my heart.”

The rest of their experience together went by smoothly for the remaining time. The time was approaching that they would both meet their child for the very first time, both elated and nervous, they had each other for support.

#sdv #sdv harvey #sdv story #sdv fic #harvey stardew valley #stardew valley harvey #stardew farmer #stardew valley #stardew harvey #stardew valley farmer #sdv ask #sdv farmer

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five-rivers · 5 years ago

Text

Reflection

Tucker passed in front of a mirror and stopped, did a double take. He'd been doing that a lot, lately, ever since what he and his friends referred to as the 'Egypt incident.' He raised one hand and traced a line under his eye, his lower eyelashes ruffling.

"You checking your eyeliner, Fol-ey?" asked Dash, bumping into him, rudely.

Tucker avoided stabbing himself in the eye and caught himself on the sink. He frowned at the reflection of the jocks in the mirror and scanned the locker room for Danny. Alas, his best friend must still be running punishment laps in the gym.

"Looking for Wimp-ton to save you? That's pretty pathetic," said Dash, jabbing Tucker again.

Tucker spun to face them and started to back away. He wondered if it would be okay to fight back under these circumstances, or if he would get in trouble. Because Tucker could fight. Maybe not as well as Sam and Danny, he was more the tech guy of their group, but all of them could throw a punch. Heck, Tucker could pull back a bow and put an arrow into the center of a target a hundred feet away. That took arm strength.

If he fought Dash, he'd probably win.

But fighting was generally frowned upon at school and with the other jocks as witnesses... Yeah, that wouldn't pan out well. His parents would take his side, but he didn't want to get a bad reputation with the teachers. One of the trio had to stay on their good side. Obviously it couldn't be Danny, and Sam was too argumentative, so it fell to him.

He sighed. Well, he could take a punch, too, if it came to that. He took off his glasses and put them on the back of the sink.

"What're you doing that for?" asked Dash.

"Good glasses are expensive, Dash," said Tucker, flatly, glaring up at the taller boy. "They're also made of glass. I don't want to be wearing them if you decide to hit me in the face."

Dash stared down at him, as though seeing him for the first time. He humphed. "You take all the fun out of it," he complained. "Come on, guys," he said to the other jocks, leading a parade out of the locker room. Tucker sighed and looked back at the mirror.

Eyeliner, huh? Dash probably would have been surprised to find out that Tucker had thought that he'd seen eye makeup on his face. Kohl. No. Not kohl. That was a recent word, and not completely accurate. Mesdemet for the black. Udju for the green. He blinked, unsure where the words had come from.

No, he knew where the words had come from. He just didn't want to think about it.

Danny stumbled into the room, banging the door behind him. "Hi," he said, waving at Tucker. He paused. "Are you okay? You look kind of..." Danny trailed off and shrugged.

"I'm fine," said Tucker. "Just talked my way out of getting beaten up by Dash."

"What, really?" asked Danny, his eyes flickering over Tucker. "Are you sure you're fine? He didn't hit you?"

"Nope. I'm really fine."

He hoped.

The archery club met right after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, regularly, contrasting with the computer club, which met 'whenever' and 'online.' Usually, meetings coincided with Danny getting detention and Sam's activist stuff. Tucker thought of these afternoons as their 'alone time.' Otherwise, they were, well, not quite joined at the hip, but...

It was a near thing.

Tucker wouldn't have minded if Sam and Danny did join the archery club (or the computer club, for that matter), but it could be nice to have some time away, so that he could sort through certain thoughts. Thoughts such as: What was happening to him?

Because he really had thought that he had thrown off the influence of Duulaman's ghost, or that weird staff, or Hotep-Ra, or whatever had been going on that week, and yet, here he was, over a week later, hallucinating himself wearing Egyptian makeup, of all things.

He squared himself on the edge of the archer range and checked that it was clear. The other members of the club were working with the closer targets. Tucker thought that he would challenge himself today. He pulled back.

The thing was, at the end, when Hotep-Ra was gone, and Tucker was back to himself, he had been able to use that staff, the Scarab Scepter, to return everything to normal. He wasn't sure he should have been. He had no idea how that staff worked. Yet, in that moment he had.

And he did look an awful lot like Duulaman.

"You're doing great today, Foley!" called the club advisor from across the range. "Are you sure you don't want to shoot competitively?"

Tucker rolled his eyes. "I'm sure!" Then he caught sight of his arrows. They were all clustered neatly in the bullseye.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Tucker was good. He wasn't, quite, that good. Not at this range. But, in the moment, as he was shooting, he hadn't registered anything as being unusual. He remembered looking at them as he was aiming, so he wasn't just spacing out.

Archery was practiced in Ancient Egypt, wasn't it? He remembered seeing murals. He remembered the sun shining down on his shoulders as his entourage...

... What?

Tucker frowned. This wasn't going to go away, was it?

The computer screen cast Tucker's dark bedroom in a blue light. The only sound was him typing away at the keyboard.

Tucker didn't want to worry Danny and Sam. Mostly Danny. He had enough to deal with without worrying that his best friends was going to go crazy and try to kill him. Again.

He cringed. He did not have the best track record when it came to that particular thing. Then again, neither did anyone else close to Danny.

Hence not wanting to worry Danny.

Maybe he should talk to Sam, though. Out of everyone he knew, she was the only one who'd been mind controlled in a similar way. She hadn't said anything about having hallucinations post-Undergrowth, but, then, she wouldn't, would she? Sam had the same reasons Tucker did for keeping quiet.

Tucker made a face at himself. It was probably a sign that their relationship wasn't as healthy as it looked, keeping secrets from each other like this. But... he knew Danny kept secrets. They all did, and they were fine with it. So, Tucker or Sam keeping secrets was fine, too.

As long as it didn't turn into murder attempts. That was not fine.

Tucker slipped his fingers under his glasses to rub his eyes and returned his attention to the screen. He was researching Duulaman, and had dived deep into the academic side of the internet. He'd come up against a dozen paywalls and dismissed them all with a few keystrokes.

Duulaman. Pharaoh of Kemet. A descendant of Hatshepsut and an ancestor of Tutankhamen. He had been a fairly progressive member of his family, restoring several of Hatshepsut's monuments after other of his ancestors had done their best to destroy them, making laws concerning the treatment of slaves and foreigners, and forging peace with neighboring countries. He had been well-liked, his popularity having been attested to even years after his death by inscriptions in other graves, praying that their inhabitants would find themselves under Duulaman's rule in the afterlife. He'd been famed for his athletic and magical abilities.

Sadly, academic publications were as skeptical about magic as they were about ghosts.

Tucker rubbed his eyes again.

Duulaman had been murdered. According to his brother, the pharaoh who had succeeded him, the deed had been done by an advisor whose name and image had been systematically removed from everything.

Probably Hotep-Ra. That fit with the ghost's whole thing, and the fact that Tucker couldn't find any information on him.

After another relatively fruitless hour, Tucker pried himself from the chair and went to bed.

He turned the fine silver mirror over in his hands, contemplating its polished surface. It had been a 'gift' from a Mitanni noble, and had carried a brutal curse into the heart of Kemet, but the curse was loose, now, wound around his very soul, and the mirror itself was merely a harmless, empty vessel.

One that Duulaman could learn from. He ran his fingers along the strange symbols scored on the outer edge of the mirror.

If his advisors would stop arguing for just a moment.

"We must attack at once!" said Hotep-Ra. "This insult against the person of god cannot be borne!"

"But it is harvest season," objected another. "We cannot afford to take the men from the fields. There would be famine!"

"Hotep-Ra," said Duulaman, softly, "brother of my heart, it was not even their king that sent this. Would you raze their whole kingdom and force a tragedy on their own for the sake of one man?"

"One who attacked you and our kingdom through dread magics?" asked Hotep-Ra. "Yes, my pharaoh."

"Then perhaps it is good that I am pharaoh. I know that you love me, but I have no desire for war. Even so," he said, raising his voice, "I have sent certain persons to correct the problem, and my brother has borne a letter to the Mitanni king, explaining the situation. It is true that this assault on our kingdom cannot be suffered quietly."

The advisors took that in. Duulaman turned to the Priestess of Mut and tried not to squint. She was just far enough away that he had trouble seeing her. Sadly, none of his magic had yet succeeded in giving him the eyes of a hawk, but he yet had hope.

"What say you about the curse?" he asked.

Duulaman was a powerful priest in his own right, favored by the gods and his ancestors, but he valued other opinions. Being the focus of the curse might have blinded him to certain aspects of its function.

The priestess bowed. "It is as we first feared," she said. "It binds your great soul, so that you may not pass into the green fields of the Duat when it is your time to do so. Instead, it decrees that, when you die, you must suffer to be born into a common line, far from your rightfully exalted place."

"And for Kemet? For my line?"

The priestess, an experienced woman who had served Duulaman's father, actually trembled. "That, whence your second life reaches the age of reason, you shall understand, and you shall see the last of the Pharaohs come to ruin, all our temples abandoned save for nonbelievers, your descendants crushed or cast into obscurity, your name stricken from history, and your tomb robbed by foreigners. She dooms you to watch the slow decay."

This was about what Duulaman had expected. He closed his eyes, pained. If only he had been more careful opening the box... but he had assumed it to be from Hotep-Ra, or his brother, or one of his sisters, for it had been among other, like gifts.

"I see. Fear not. I will take care of it. Kemet shall not fall within our lifetimes."

The relief in the room was palpable. They had faith in Duulaman's power.

Alas, that it might come to naught.

Tucker woke with a jolt, hand on his heart. He looked around wildly, relaxing when he saw the acid green numbers on his bedside clock. He was here. He was now. He was Tucker.

And it wasn't even time to wake up for school.

Wait. It was Saturday. He wouldn't have to wake up for school anyway.

Alright. So he might have, thousands of years ago, been Duulaman. Fine. He laid back down, breathing through his nose. He dealt with ghosts on a daily basis. He could deal with reincarnation. This was cool. This was fine.

He was definitely having a crisis.

Crap.

He fumbled for his phone, and hit the speed dial for Danny. Danny never slept anyway, it was fine. Besides, stuff like this was why Sam had bought him a phone (a Nokia brick, because ghost fights) in the first place. Dead people were Danny's specialty.

"What's wrong?" asked Danny, far too alert for the small hours of the morning.

"I think I might be Duulaman," said Tucker.

There was a beat of silence. "Yeah?" said Danny, confused.

"Like, I'm a reincarnation of him or something."

"Yeah?" repeated Danny. "I thought that was the whole reason you could use that staff and stuff?"

"Wait," said Tucker. "You mean, you knew all along, and you didn't say anything?"

"I thought you knew and didn't want to talk about it," said Danny. "I'm sorry. Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I'm just having weird Kem- Egypt flashbacks. I'm fine."

"Do you want me to fly over?"

"No," said Tucker. "I just- Am I still me?"

"I mean, you're you to begin with. You are yourself. That's like, definitional."

"Yeah, but..." Tucker gestured at his ceiling with his hand, even though Danny couldn't see it.

Danny chuckled. "You're still you, Tucker. I know Sam and I aren't always super sensitive, but... We do pay attention, you know? We'd know if you were being taken over. Maybe not right away, but..."

"Thanks," said Tucker, with only a little bit of sarcasm.

"Hey, I like to think we've all come a long way since the thing with Poindexter."

"True," said Tucker. "Hey, thanks, man. I'm sorry about waking you up."

"Don't worry," said Danny. "You didn't. I'd just caught Boxy when you called."

"Oh. That's good. Get some sleep, Danny."

"You, too. Tell me what Egypt was like tomorrow, okay?"

"Kemet," corrected Tucker. "And, yeah. Bye."

"What are you doing?" demanded Hotep-Ra.

Duulaman turned away from his ritual tools and fixed an un-amused eye on Hotep-Ra. "I may have made it your place to question me," said Duulaman, "but I thought I had made my decision on this matter clear. The method your faction proposed is too uncertain, too risky."

"I have made a mirror," said Hotep-Ra, "one that will recognize your soul in whatever body it should take. With it, we could search all of Kemet for you when you are reborn and then lay you properly to rest, as you deserve, before the curse comes to fruition."

"And if I should be born in lands beyond?"

"Then we should look there, too!"

"Starting all sorts of wars on the way, no doubt. Tell me, brother of my heart, what is the difference between the young man who falls in war, whose body is left for the crows, and the old man who is buried peacefully, and who will find joy in the Duat?"

"The devotion of his family!" responded Hotep-Ra instantly.

Duulaman shook his head sadly and looked back to his tools, touching them softly. He had already completed the ritual that would force the curse to carry his soul thousands of years into the future. By the time his next life reached the age of reason, there would be no pharaohs for the curse to affect. And if there were? Well, it would have been a good long time, and the curse would have weakened significantly. Perhaps even to the point of unraveling.

"No, Hotep-Ra. The difference between a tragedy and a happy ending is time. All kingdoms fall. All civilizations fade."

"Not this one."

"Even this one. The only questions are when and how."

"No," said Hotep-Ra. "No. Never!"

Duulaman felt, rather than heard, the scrape of metal against oiled leather and reached for his staff, which lay across from him, on the other side of his ritual. He was too late. He had trusted Hotep-Ra too much, let him get too close, and he felt the bronze knife slide between his ribs. His eyelids fluttered as his hands groped up his chest.

He was dying.

"I will see you, in the next life," he whispered, blood bubbling in his throat.

And then he was gone.

It was bright when Tucker woke again.

He felt... oddly calm. It was nice to know that he had succeeded in out-waiting the fall of Pharaonic Egypt, even though the fact that it was gone made his heart shiver.

Well. He pulled his phone over, and texted Danny. I know what it feels like to die, now, he said. Maybe they'd be able to bond over it. Or Danny would give him some coping pointers, since Tucker was pretty sure he'd have at least one breakdown over this. Either one would be good.

He stood up and walked to the bathroom. His reflection stared back, completely normal. No weird eye shadow, no Egyptian clothes, just Tucker and his pajamas.

Behind it stretched miles and miles of sand.

#danny phantom #dannymay #dannymay 2020 #tucker centric #day 3

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scribbleb-red · 5 years ago

Text

Neil is a lying liar who lies AU

A Morning AU - with a fab prompt from @djhedy

There’s a new boy in Andrew’s class and there’s something not quite right about him. He’s mouthy and sharp, the kinda kid that should end up in detention three times a week but never does.

They are seven years old, though the new kid looks five, with eyes like a wide open sky.

He is very pretty - that’s why Andrew notices him first - he looks like a fairy prince.

And it’s because Andrew is watching that he notices though: the kid is a big bad lying liar who lies.

The day he joined, the kid said his name was ‘Stefan’ to Mrs Stewart and ‘Chris’ to Mr Brasenose. The next day he was just ‘Neil’ and was given a fond, exasperated warning to keep his make believe in the playground.

But the kid didn’t stop lying.

Some lies were big and others were small.

On a Tuesday, Neil announced that he’d had a huge feast for breakfast - listing all the foods and making everyone’s mouth water with the descriptions. (But Andrew saw how he winced nd held his stomach like it was empty.)

On a Thursday, Neil said he grew up in England and proceeded to spend the next week speaking in a post English accent. (But he later admits at lunch it was just a couple months).

On a Friday, Neil whispers that his house is haunted and he’s scared to go home for the weekend. (There’s a little too much truth shining through those eyes as he talks about the ghost in his house. Andrew doesn’t doubt that he’s scared of something).

The following Monday, Neil explains his bruises by saying he spent the week learning to skateboard.

“My cousin visited and let me use her skate board. It was pretty rad.”

(Andrew eyes the split lip, it could be true. But then he sees the hand shape around Neil’s thin wrist and knows the truth: it’s a lie.)

Through it all, Andrew is very quiet and very alone. He knows how this goes - he’s seven years old with more cracks in his heart than a fifty year romantic - but he kinda enjoys Neil’s lies and how he gets away with them.

He particularly likes the outrageous ones:

My father parachuted into Paris because he’s a spy. He died landing on the Eiffel Tower. I once wrestled a monster. I won but it stole all my mom’s apples. I’m telling the truth. My tongue goes green when I lie. I met Kevin Day.

Andrew won’t pretend he’s not intrigued. He thinks Neil is interesting and his lies are ones he can often hold in the dark, imagining over and over when he’s hurt and wishing to be anyone, anywhere but here.

Plus Neil is funny - he always snarks at the teachers and gets away with the most ridiculous things. Other kids always want to play with him because his games are brilliant - epic journeys, castles and wizards, magical tigers, patchwork villains made from the skin of children.

Some of Neil’s tall tales are part fairytales, part nightmares. And Andrew isn’t sure which part Neil actually belongs to. There are times where he’s the brightest, prettiest boy on the playground. And times where his eyes are haunted, mouth wicked cruel. And then there are times like today, where Neil is quiet and blank - a little too familiar to what Andrew sees in the mirror these days, looking like someone has scooped out his insides and left nothing but darkness behind in its wake.

Andrew almost talks to him then.

Almost.

But he doesn't. Not for another few weeks. Not until Neil's facing down Greg Doyle - the fight has the vibe of a hissing kitten against a rottweiler.

There's no way Neil can win. Greg is a third grader and big beside.

But Neil doesn't look scared. He looks ferocious.

Not that appearances are going to help. Neil could have the sharpest claws of them all and he'd still weigh nothing against Greg. Neil dodges and ducks the first few blows. He snipes and snarks, that liar's mouth rattling off stories of how he took down a SWAT team once.

But dumb luck can’t do everything and finally Greg gets a thump in, straight across Neil’s jaw - hard enough to make him stagger.

"So much for a SWAT team, fucking liar."

There are gasps at the bad word from the growing first and second grade audience.

"Tongue turns green," Neil says. He spits out blood.

Andrew's had enough when he sees the blood.

Neil might be an idiot but Andrew knows that there's no way to win this one on alone He steps forward and puts himself between Neil and Greg.

"Oooo who's this, your boyfriend?"

Andrew would roll his eyes, but can't be bothered. He is the tallest kid in their year at nearly 4'5. He can look the nine year old Greg in the eye without trouble and he can see the bigger kid calculating his chances of taking Andrew on instead of the skinny little creature that was Neil "motor mouth" Josten.

"Back off," he says. He doesn't inflect. He watched a cartoon where a character spoke completely flat and it was really scary so he figures this might make Greg cower too. "Leave him alone."

Greg nearly steps into Andrew's space but someone has started a whisper:

Andrew Doe is the kid who killed his parents. Andrew Doe is the kid that burned a house down. Andrew Doe is the kid who took on Bertie Becker from fifth grade and flushed his head down the loo.

It's the last one that gives away the source of these rumours - Neil has started a chain of Chinese whispers. And Greg hears them swirling from mouth to mouth, ear to ear, each more terrifying than the last. It makes Andrew want to grin, so he does. Greg actually whimpers.

The crowd laughs when Greg runs away - he can’t save face when he’s fleeing from a first grader.

Andrew feels triumphant.

Especially when Neil steps up beside him, shy smile and summer sky eyes. “Thanks Andrew.”

Neil Josten knows his name, Andrew thinks. Wow wow wow.

Neil’s mouth is swollen but he’s still the prettiest boy in the playground so Andrew doesn’t say anything.

“Want to play a game?” Neil says.

Andrew shrugs.

“Yes or no?” Neil says again. “I won’t force you but I’d like to play with you to if you’d like to play with me.”

Andrew thinks about it before saying yes.

It’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

They start with games - make believe quests and imaginary journeys. They visit magical worlds in their heads and fall about laughing when one of them (mostly Andrew) doesn’t break character even for class.

They become inseparable - two boys with home lives full of ghosts but dreams that can take them anywhere. The lying liar is the better story teller but the stoic hero a better actor. And sometimes in games they hide their truths - violent families and horrifying pasts.

Neil shows Andrew his scars, “I sometimes say they’re from a shark or ninjas and stuff but...”

“That’s from an iron.”

“Yeah.”

In turn, Andrew tells Neil about his foster family.

“We could poison him,” Neil says. “I heard we can make poison from apple cores. Applesenic or something.”

If only it were that simple.

It happens just before the end of the year - summer is nearly there and Andrew can only imagine how fun it'll be having a friend to adventure with for the first time. And then he finds out that his foster family is getting rid of him. He'll be packed off at the end of term.

"I think mom and I will move too," Neil admits. "We never hang around anywhere long."

"Because of your dad?"

"Yeah..." Neil plays with the hem of his t-shirt. "He's in prison but mom is still terrified. She moves us a lot."

"Maybe you can move to the same place as me."

They pretend that the world isn't going to split them apart.

They pretend that they're going to have the summer together.

And the year after.

That they'll start middle school together.

And be best friends all the way to the end of high school.

And go to the same college.

"We could play exy together all the way through," Neil says. It's his new obsession.

"I'm not going to play stickball. I prefer playing games with you."

"We can play games on the court. You can be the fierce dragon and I'll be the knight that looks after you."

"You'd steal all my dragon gold."

"Would not."

Andrew raises one eyebrow.

"Okay, yes I would. I'd be the knight trying to take your gold. But I'd be sneaky about it." Neil's laughter is high and bright. "Does that mean you'll play with me?"

"Yeah okay," Andrew says.

But it doesn't work out that way.

Neil vanishes like sun behind a mountain the day after term ends.

Andrew's bags are packed. He's dumped in a new home near the beach. He hates the beach. He misses Neil the way his lungs miss oxygen when he's stuck in the swell of a wave.

He does play exy though.

He does it because he figures one day he'll find Neil on a court too.

He'll either face him down or by some miracle they'll be on the same team.

He'll find Neil again. He will.

He tells himself this every day.

Even when it feels like a lie.

Something like an epilogue

Years pass before Andrew hears anything about the little boy who - for two semesters when he was seven - was his best friend. So many years that if it weren't for one polaroid from a cheeky arcade photo-booth, he might have let the idea of Neil go.

But he keeps the photo with him - through home after home, through Cass and Drake and juvie and Aaron and Nicky. He hides it in books, folds it into pockets. Makes sure to hold onto Neil and the memories of those few happy months.

He plays exy. Keeps track of other teams and their players. The sport does nothing for him - but sometimes he closes his eyes and imagines Neil with his flashing blue eyes mischievous smile and that long ago conversation. He remembers why he's doing this.

At 13, he asks Pig Higgins to do a search on Neil's name but the policeman refuses.

At 14, he goes through the entire directory for California and when that's exhausted, he starts searching every state from West to East.

He calls 362 Jostens across the USA. None are Neil.

When he turns 16, he uses a fake and has two small dragons outlined on the top of his left shoulder.

When he's 17 he meets Riko and Kevin Day. He remembers Neil once saying he'd met Kevin and wonders if that was true or just one of Neil's many many lies. He turns the Ravens down.

He signs two weeks later with the Palmetto State Foxes - taking his brother and cousin with him.

He watches as the lists of drafted players on other teams go up. There's no Chris or Stefan or Abram - not with the matching face Andrew wants. There's no sign of a Neil Josten.

Andrew smooths out the photo at night, slipping it between the pages of Whitman's Leaves of Grass every morning.

Maybe it's time to put the memory of Neil to rest, but he can't.

Neil is one of those beautiful ghosts that he can't help but hold onto. The one unspoilt thing in his memory.

Unspoilt, that is, until a Monday when Kevin Day announces he's recruiting a nobody from a nothing town in the middle of nowhere Arizona and the nobody's name is Neil.

"Neil what?"

"Josten. Want to see his tape?"

"Nope," Andrew says. But his heart is a thunderdrum, hope cutting through the medicated hyper mania easy as a knife through butter. "Actually yes, gimme the tapes little birdie."

Kevin grimaces at his nickname but says nothing until they’re watching the tape. And then he can’t shut up about the player’s potential, his speed and natural flare on the Court.

It's not Andrew’s Neil.

But it is too.

The striker on the court is a brunette with dark eyes but he runs like Neil. He's ferocious and plays like it's the last thing keeping him afloat. He has that little flick of his racquet before he goes to score, a telltale that would never get passed Andrew but no one else seemed to have noticed.

Andrew says as much to Kevin.

"Exactly," Kevin says. "That's why we have to have him."

So they go to Millport.

And Andrew knows Neil well enough to anticipate that he'll run.

Knows him well enough to trip him with a racquet and catch him as he falls.

Neil hasn't grown much either - he's still small and sharp and far too pretty to be real.

"Stupid little liar, you should watch where you put your feet." Andrew wishes he were sober. Wishes he didn't have to greet Neil with this grin splitting his face.

Wishes wishes wishes.

But his one wish has already come true, Neil is here with him. Warm and lithe and alive.

"Drew?" Neil says, but the word is choked and breathless. Neil’s voice does something to Andrew’s insides and Andrew feels the muscles beneath his hands warring between flight and relief.

"Neil," he replies.

"Oh my god, Drew."

And then Neil's arms are around Andrew's shoulders, and his face is turning into his neck and Andrew realises they're hugging and he shouldn't want to hug back but he does. He does because it's Neil. His friend. His pipe dream. The little boy with the pathological need to lie and an imagination that could create whole worlds from a handful of dust.

He hugs Neil tight.

Never wants to let go.

Kevin of course ruins the moment.

But Neil isn't going to say no to the Foxes. Not now.

And even though Andrew can recognise the lies slipping passed Neil's lips, he doesn't tell Wymack. Doesn't call out his idiot's new ouchies. Doesn't answer any questions when Kevin demands answers.

"Sign," he speaks only to Neil. He means, Stay with me. "We can play a game. Yes or no?"

"Yes," Neil says and his smile is a little wild, a lot wonderful. "Let's play a game."

The End.

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piracytheorist · 4 years ago

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A Kiss for Good Luck (13/16)

Summary: So this is the story of one born lucky, and one born unlucky. Fate will keep making them cross paths, but is it to bring them together, or to test them? Captain Swan AU.

A/N: With this chapter, two more and the epilogue left, I decided to post them day by day! You can expect the next and final updates on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday :D

Rating: T (make sure you’re okay with the warnings on AO3)

Word count for this chapter: 3.6k (51k in total) AO3

Read from the beginning: Tumblr | AO3

Chapter 13: Emma Swan, May 25th – June 22nd 2016

Emma smiles wide as she watches Killian go to the end of the now huge line to the airport checkpoint. He went back just to give her a kiss, and a part of her is delighted to realize she adores this hopelessly romantic side of him.

He doesn't turn to look at her, but the place is too crowded anyway, and she decides to go back, grab a coffee and wait to watch his plane leave. Instead, Killian's flight is delayed for a few hours. She texts him about it, whether he wants to cross back and join her, but he simply tells her to not worry and go back home.

It sours her mood a little; it may be a bit late in the day, but there's no reason for him to spend all this time alone, and if she judges by the plain tone of his message he doesn't even want to chat until he leaves.

Odd. First he gives up being first in a long line just to kiss her, then he doesn't even want to talk to her.

Perhaps he just wants to rest or sleep until his flight leaves. Emma tries to ignore the insistent little voice in her head that has never truly disappeared since Neal left her.

She turns the radio on while in her car and catches a blues station. The slow music and the complete lack of traffic back to her place calm her thoughts.

She stays up, checking on Killian's flight until it departs, hoping it doesn't mean a thing that Killian himself didn't tell her that his plane was finally leaving.

The next day is easy, checking off a few good cases, and in the evening she meets Ruby for a few drinks.

“So,” Ruby says with a meaningful look, “how was your week?”

Emma sighs happily, and it's with Ruby's smile turning warmer that she remembers she actually had a fantastic time. She's worrying too much.

“It was great. It felt... right, you know? I was a bit scared, but the moment we met at the airport made everything else not matter. He was here, and we could really enjoy our time together...”

Ruby's nodding enthusiastically. “And? How was it?”

“It was... warm and fuzzy...” Emma gives a good look at Ruby, suddenly realizing what she's asking about. “I told you we weren't ready for that.”

“Even after the whole week?”

“I mean, I spent most of my nights looking at my bedroom door and wondering whether I should go and ask him... but it wasn't just me.”

“I admire your patience. And his. And how about him? What do you think it was like for him?”

“I'm not sure, honestly.” Her face falls.

“What happened?”

“Up until the last day, I could swear it was as good for him as it was for me. I mean, he came, right? He chose to. And he looked happy to be here, with me. But a few hours before he had to leave, he seemed restless and anxious.”

“Because he was leaving?”

“I don't know. I...” She sighs. “He hasn't contacted me to let me know he's arrived safely. But I checked Messenger a few hours ago and it said he's been active today.”

“Did you send him a text about it? It would be weird for him to just forget but sometimes it just happens.”

“Should I send one, you think?”

“Yeah. Maybe he was really busy today. What did you say his job is?”

“His father has a boat rental, and sometimes he takes passengers on cruises.”

“Well, tourist season is kinda starting. Send him a message. But, you know, try to not sound desperate.”

“Ugh. I feel as if I'm in a teenage rom-com.”

She sends her message. Early the next morning, she sees his reply; a plain “Aye, I was busy, sorry for not letting you know,�� and compared to his message from before his flight right above that, she can't help wondering.

She didn't have a cell phone as a teenager, and she hadn't allowed herself anything longer than one-night stands after Neal, so it's the first time in her life she has to look at her phone and keep telling herself to not call first.

She takes walks by the sea, seeing the yachts and boats and thinking of Killian. He mentioned how it had been his choice to work on his father's boats, how he loved that job where there's always a view of the sea.

Having practically grown up in Boston, Emma knows well the feelings that endless blue can bring. For Killian, they must be even stronger. The feeling of freedom and calmness and strength at the same time...

She knows he's facing his own issues, he's been open to her about them. His lonely adolescence, his grief, his drinking problem.

She decides to take a walk there every day, to remind herself to give Killian the same space that the sea gives him. Maybe he's out there at the same time, looking at the sea the same way she does.

He manages to call her within a week, though due to his bad connection, they don't share video this time. Or the next. Or the next.

“Remember how I told you I felt I was in a rom-com?” she tells Ruby when they meet one day for coffee. “I hope that at least I'm the protagonist and not the third wheel.”

“What's going on?”

“I worry too much about his calls. We used to talk every day, from five minutes to whole hours on end. And now he's just too busy, or his connection is bad, or his camera isn't working and I'm not seeing his face. But he keeps calling me back, not as often, and not as much, and he doesn't even say as much as he used to, but he's initiating calls on his part. Sometimes he doesn't reply when I call him...” She covers her face with her hands.

Ruby is patiently waiting for more, and Emma isn't sure which more to choose. Killian had trusted her with his history about getting involved with a married woman and she's not ready to betray that just to provide a possible proof that he may be cheating on her.

“We decided to take things slow,” Emma said. “We weren't shy on kisses while he was here, but it didn't go further than that. Do you think he may not consider it cheating, if...”

“If he didn't consider it cheating – if he even is cheating on you – he wouldn't be hiding like that. And taking things slow is different than having an open relationship.”

“I don't know.”

“Emma, if he didn't see it so seriously, would he have come all this way just to spend a week with you? While respecting your wish to not get intimate?”

“He said that's what he wanted as well.”

“So what, is his masculinity so fragile that instead of respecting your wishes, he would fake not being ready for sex? Is he that kind of person?”

Emma is silent.

“You do realize it would take a deep kind of crazy to only want to get laid, then come all this way and agree to not get laid.”

Fair point. “I just wish I knew what it was that tipped him that way. It's... you know, on his last day here, we were talking about our first kisses, and we realized we actually were each other's first kiss.”

“What? You're serious?”

“I know, of all people, right? And I have an inkling he might have been freaked out by that.”

“How did it happen?”

“It was a game of spin the bottle. It was as innocent as it could get at eleven.”

“Did you ask him about it?”

“Yeah. When he was still here, though. I mean, at first he laughed, just as I did, then his face fell, and I asked him if he felt weird about it, and he said no, just that he didn't want to leave. Ugh.” She hangs her head. “That's not a rom-com. That's a soap opera.”

“Maybe he's going through something? Problems with work, family?”

“He hasn't mentioned anything. He said he hasn't talked to his fathers in a while. But, he's shared more serious stuff with me. If something was upsetting him so much... I can't imagine how serious something must be for him to not want to share it with me. And I don't know how much time to give him. Will I sound desperate? Like a stalker? If I take too long, will I seem insensitive?”

“I'm sorry, honey.”

“He's calling me, Ruby. He's not trying to cut off, and he's not trying to appease me either. I'm sure he knows I can hear that he's hiding something. What am I meant to make out from that?”

“Maybe confront him with the fact that you know something is up. Just put it on the table. Say that he doesn't have to explain it to you if it doesn't involve or concern you, just to stop pretending there's no elephant in the room.”

“Sounds simple enough, I guess.” She sighs. “Perhaps it was too early? We've only known each other for seven months.”

“Too early for what? You're not engaged or something. You can work things out.”

Emma nods. “Thank you. Sorry for unloading all that on you.”

“That's what friends are for.” She takes her hands in hers. “I've got lots to talk about, if you want a distraction.”

Emma has had a wonky fortune in her life; she's glad she happened to meet Ruby during one of the good times.

The next day, while she's still growing the courage to confront Killian about acknowledging at least that there's something going on, Ingrid calls her. She's joined by Elsa, who excitedly tells Emma she wants to join Ingrid in her next trip to Boston that summer – they will, of course, stay in a hotel close by so she won't be a bother.

“Maybe we'll go somewhere nice all three of us,” Emma says. “I actually bought a lottery ticket and I have a good feeling about it.”

“Oh, if you have a good feeling about it,” Ingrid says, then turns to Elsa. “You cannot imagine how lucky she was as a teenager.” She then bursts into chatter in Norwegian, and even if Emma could understand more than a few words here and there, she would still be lost in thought.

She was indeed quite lucky as a teen. In fact, the luckiest day of her life, as she'd described it to Killian, had been just the beginning of five great years.

Until her first trip to England, where she met the pirate boy.

Wait...

“Emma?”

She starts, looking back at her camera.

“Sorry, dear, I got carried away,” Ingrid says.

“We will try to use more English when we're there,” Elsa says with an apologetic smile.

“No, it's alright. Ingrid, can you remind me when you actually got your first visa? I mean, in the recent years.”

“Uh, a few days before I contacted you. The first time.”

“Do you remember how many days?”

Ingrid huffs in thought, but turns to her with a smile. “Such sudden curiosity. I'm not sure exactly, three? Four? Less than a week, for sure.”

Too close to the day she kissed that stranger at the club... the only one she didn't see around when the police was asking for witnesses, if they saw who shot that man at the hand and killed his lover.

“Emma?”

Emma takes a deep breath and does her hardest to fake a smile. “Nothing. It's... something about work.”

“Everything alright?”

“Yeah, yeah. Nothing to worry about. When do you think about visiting?”

After a short chat, Ingrid gets the message and leaves Emma with her thoughts. Emma's hands are shaking; the lottery results will be out in two days and they can't come fast enough.

She runs out, resorting to buying a scratch ticket from a nearby kiosk. She scratches it and stares at it, nearly frozen.

Five dollars.

Emma looks around, looks at the sky, then at her phone. Her weather app clearly shows rain, but there's not a single cloud in the sky.

She is lucky. Things have been going quite well for her. Suddenly so, in fact. Just a month or so ago, she would be getting splashed by cars and losing spare change and...

And then Killian visited her.

She walks slowly back to her apartment, and somehow it doesn't come as a surprise that thunder rumbles outside right as she closes her door.

She sits on her couch, watching the rain pour outside her window.

She had a serving of quite a bad luck the first eleven years of her life. Then she met Killian at that birthday party, they shared an innocent kiss, and that very same evening Ingrid told her she would be adopting her.

Shortly after that Killian's mother died, his father left them, and his brother passed too a few years later.

She stands up, pacing around her living room.

He lived in London at the time. At the exact time she visited for Halloween, that fateful year, that she was left alone and Killian... was adopted? He had mentioned being almost too old to be adopted.

He said it hadn't been him at that party, but he didn't sound convincing, and at the time Emma brushed it off, but... if it really had been him...

Then the night of the shooting at the club. She doesn't remember that stranger's face, but their kiss was too close to him getting shot and Ingrid's visa getting accepted.

A shiver runs down her spine as she remembers the screams of that night. The screams of a man who got shot in the hand... a hand that Killian doesn't have.

Emma's nearly gasping for breath, her hands shaking again as she forces herself to sit back down at the couch.

After that, it was some good years for her, and Killian was lost in his grief, alcohol, and a bad relationship later on.

Then they met at the concert, where right after their kiss, she dropped her phone, cracking its screen.

She looks at it now. The crack is still there, but something tells her getting a new phone screen – or a whole new phone – won't be a problem a few days from now.

She feels a weight set on her shoulders as she goes back to Killian trying to convince her it wasn't him at the Halloween party.

He knows. Somehow, he does, though she doubts he found out much earlier than the moment they realized they were each other's first kiss.

And second.

The weight becomes a sudden void; the pirate boy's look nearly haunted her for years; fifteen years later, she felt a similar sensation at the way Killian looked at her in the concert.

It was the same look, by the same person.

She shakes her head. It's silly. Can it truly be, that they brought good and bad luck to each other, just by kissing?

Then she remembers how he left, when there was no-one in front of him at the queue, to get back to her and give her a last kiss, and didn't come back to join her when his flight was being delayed, because he knew there would be kissing involved if he did.

Tears fill her eyes. He left his luck with her.

And things have been going well for her. How has he been... when both times he got unlucky, people he loved died?

She keeps looking at her phone, wondering if she should call Killian about it, ask him if everything's okay.

Instead, she picks it up and starts looking for the cheapest flight to England she can afford, as soon as possible.

She can't tell Killian; he'll try to stop her, pretend that he's not in Brighton, that he'll be busy...

She finds the envelope with which he'd sent her her Christmas present; she'd kept it in case she'd want to surprise him with a gift back. The return address doesn't include the apartment number, but surprising him in the building entrance will have to do.

She books a flight for three days from now, and of course is not surprised to earn two thousand dollars at the lottery, nor to be promoted to a business class seat thanks to travel miles.

She's grown used to really enjoying flights, but this time she's too nervous to sit back and relax.

He figured out everything before she did. All he had to do was time their kisses right, then leave with his luck on his side. Forever.

But he didn't. He wouldn't. Emma may not know him that long, but she doesn't think he's capable of that. And that's why she's in this plane now.

There's a small part of her that wonders what she's going to do when she comes back. Will Killian actually let her leave without his luck? Will he follow her back? Will they just spend all their money in the effort to be the most selfless one?

She sighs in frustration. That's not something she took into consideration when she agreed to start such a long-distance relationship.

As her luck would have it, everything goes better than smoothly, and courtesy of having slept on her comfortable seat, she doesn't even feel tired from the trip.

It's just starting to get dark when she arrives in Brighton, and she contemplates going straight for her hotel and 'confronting' Killian the next day. But her note with Killian's address on it is right inside her jacket pocket when she gets in the cab, and she can't help herself. The moment she approaches his apartment block, someone happens to exit and smiles to her as he holds the door open for her.

Of course he would. She settles herself and her holdall on the stairs, sends one 'Hey, call me when you see this' to Killian, and waits.

After a couple of hours she starts wondering whether she really is all that lucky, or if it was all in her imagination. The stairs aren't too comfortable and she's slowly getting bored. There's only so much Candy Crush she can handle.

Her eyes look up every single time she sees someone even approach the entrance from outside, and again, everyone who enters or exits simply smiles at her and goes on their way.

She's about ready to give up and head for her hotel when he finally appears. He's looking down, his visibly longer hair falling in front of his face as he takes a bit too long to open the door. She contemplates going to open it herself, but he makes it and starts for the stairs, stopping at the first step and looking up slowly.

His slow reflexes, his slightly staggering step, his tired, sad face...

He was out drinking.

Coming like this was a horrible idea.

“Killian...” she says, making sure her voice sounds worried and not judgmental.

He just stares at her, looking confused and very tired.

“I know this looks weird,” she says. “I've had some time to think and... I'm not stalking you.”

“Wha-” he starts. “How...”

“I'm sorry.” She toys with her hands nervously. “I should have let you know earlier. It was...” Not just impulsive. “Very impulsive. But I would've come soon anyway.”

“How did you know where...” His voice trails off, but she gets the point.

“The gift you sent me for Christmas. The package had your address on it.”

He blinks slowly, and she's not sure he's registering everything she's saying. “Come upstairs,” he says eventually, starting to walk up the steps.

“Wait, really?” She stands up and grabs her bag. “I've booked a hotel-”

“You can take the bed,” he interrupts her. “It's got clean sheets.”

“Killian-”

He gives her a stern look that shuts her up. He's clearly not in the mood for more than just getting to a bed. “Just come.”

She smells the alcohol off of him when he steps closer to her and she wonders whether she should comment on it. Maybe she can ask, somehow, there must have been something that pushed him over.

His apartment looks tidy and smells clean. He sets himself down on the couch, taking off his brace and shoes.

“Is something wrong?” Emma says. “You're...” She pauses. How can she say it?

“Relapsing,” he says plainly. “Why is everyone avoiding that word?”

“Are you okay?”

He shrugs. “Not much to say. I'm tired.��

So hopefully, nothing horrible happened to him or his family.

“I'm sorry,” Emma says again. “I should have let you know I'm coming. I... I'd thought I could surprise you...” What else can she say to excuse such a sudden visit?

Killian lets out a cold, soulless laugh. “Lucky me,” he says, then lies down, eyes closing and breath quickly getting deeper.

His words pull at her heart, confirming that he knows of their mingled fates. She approaches him, kneeling down next to him and touching his hair. It's only been a month and she's already missed feeling how soft his hair is. How she'd love to keep brushing her fingers through it, and not just tonight.

A soft snore comes from him, and she leans forward to leave a kiss on his forehead.

#Emma Swan #Captain Swan #captain swan ff #cs ff #ouat ff #akfgl #captain swan movie marathon #piracytheorist writes

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steppedoffaflight · 4 years ago

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Summer’s a Knife - Chapter 15

Catch up on Chapter 14 here

You’re kicking yourself for taking these last months for granted, for thinking that that was what it meant to miss a busy Van. Pining and pouting over a Van that you basically saw once a week? That wasn’t so exhausted from back-to-back shows that he made time to call, or at least respond to your texts? Who spent enough time in one place that you could actually go visit him on tour?

You’re missing your best friend like crazy.

Word count: ~3.3k

A/N: I can’t believe there’s only two chapters left after this! Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who’s taken the time to read this, and endless thank you’s to everyone who has reached out with feedback ❤️

Chapter Fifteen September 2019

Fall in California doesn’t look the same as it does in Michigan, but you wish it did. Although you’re glad winters here only involve mild weeks in the fifties and sixties, you do miss the atmosphere of gray, rainy September days, leaves shriveling up and falling off of the trees, and changing out your wardrobe into something cozier. Sure, the pumpkin spice trend is still active, but pumpkin spice lattes don’t taste the same with eighty degree temperatures and the shining sun.

Maybe you’re homesick because you’re desperate for your surroundings to match your insides.

Van wasn’t kidding about the band’s workload this month. You’re kicking yourself for taking these last months for granted, for thinking that that was what it meant to miss a busy Van. Pining and pouting over a Van that you basically saw once a week? That wasn’t so exhausted from back-to-back shows that he made time to call, or at least respond to your texts? Who spent enough time in one place that you could actually go visit him on tour?

You had been so naive. So, so, fucking naive. And September was absolute torture to prove it. And it would feel much, much better to slog through this month on rainy sidewalks crusted with damp leaves, a crisp breeze trying to sneak through the seams of your coat.

But instead the world just spins on, leaving you behind. September is a new beginning for many people, who gladly chatter about it everywhere they go. UCLA students are starting to return to the area, bouncing around in their backpacks with iced coffees, and at work your co-workers are returning from their eventful summers refreshed and ready to end the year with a bang. There are back-to-school sales on everything, from spin classes to puppies in a petstore window, and the happier everyone is about the new season the more alone you feel.

Because that’s a great way to sum up how you feel, really: alone. It was the fucking worst. You’d never been someone who had a problem being alone! You’d purposely decided to live alone; you had practically skipped for joy down the sidewalks when you’d broken up with your last boyfriend. You had a nice friend group with the other girls at work, and of course you had Mary, so what else could an independent woman like you need? Certainly not a boyfriend or a girlfriend to make you feel fulfilled. Things wouldn’t even be different if Van was your boyfriend, you try to convince yourself. He’d still be busy. You’d still be rooted in L.A.. You’d still be just as depressed as you are right now.

You don’t believe that one bit.

Got that reservation, Van texts you one night after a rare phone call. You’d asked him to try and get Mary and Theo a table for their anniversary, and apparently he’d pulled through. You beam to yourself as he sends another text with the reservation information, and then decide to give Mary a call.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Is Mary’s greeting. “Has Van kidnapped you?”

You don’t have the heart to tell her it’s the opposite, actually. You’re so trapped in your lonely self-pity you don’t really have the energy or desire to socialize with others right now. In your heart right now, it’s Van or bust.

“Maybe,” You joke, although you feel like you don’t sound very convincing. “Speaking of Van, he might happen to have a reservation next week that he can’t make…” You grin as your voice trails off, “And maybe he accidentally made the reservation under your name?”

Mary audibly gasps down the line. “He got us a table?” She squeals, but you can hear she’s trying to hold back her excitement until she knows for sure.

“I might have called in a favor from him,” You laugh as you listen to Mary’s excitement at your confirmation.

“He is an absolute angel,” She gushes. “You need to marry him, like, now.”

You’re sure that this time your laugh definitely sounds hollow. You’ve never admitted your love for Van, even though Mary questions you about it regularly and never seems convinced with your denials. While you usually tell her everything, your feelings for Van have always felt like a giant bruise, something best not exposed. You don’t think you could stand the teasing, or Mary’s typical meddling. And right now, considering your heart is one oozing wound, you’re thankful for your own secret-keeping.

“I just wanted to let you know,” You start to wind down the conversation. Your phone has pinged with another text from Van, and you don’t want to waste this opportunity to catch up with him. “I’ll screenshot the reservation stuff and text you.”

“Tell Van I said thank you! We said thank you. Like, seriously. He’s amazing.”

You two say goodbye and you relay the message to Van over text, before responding to the message he’d just sent. Sam Fender’s album was out tomorrow, and there would be a huge bash at his Hollywood house the following weekend, which the band wouldn’t be in the States to attend. Van was clearly bummed about the whole thing, and you were too. You wonder if Sam and his friends remembered you from the party, or if you’ve faded from everyone’s memory. You wish there was a way for you to reach out to him and congratulate him.

Get your cheque yet? Van asks when the conversation about Sam has run its course.

Right. The insurance check. Yup, you respond, frowning to yourself in dismay. A whole $5,000. Yippee.

You couldn’t believe that’s all you’d received from the insurance debacle. You’d purchased the car for $12,000 from a dealer, worked your ass to pay it off over the years, and now the insurance company had awarded you less than half of the cost of the car to somehow give you the means to buy a new one. And it’d be almost impossible to find something in good shape for that price that was also an automatic, because you grew up in Michigan, where people were not obsessed with driving stick shifts.

Least you’ve got the rover.

Right. The Range Rover. The one scrap of Van you could cling to during this awful time.

The next time you have to pass that stupid petshop with their stupidly cute puppies in the window on your walk back to the office after lunch, you decide to send a pic to Van: Yes or no to me getting a puppy.

Which one?

Holy fuck, he responded in less than twelve hours. It’s your lucky day.

I’m thinking that little fuzzy gray one.

I’d be supremely jealous. He’s cute and I love dogs.

Van is a terrible influence. You’re ashamed to admit you stall in front of the window for longer than necessary, looking at the little gray puppy with the pointed ears bounce around in the playpen before forcing yourself to move along. A puppy would probably be good for you, honestly, but that’s not a decision you should make on impulse.

Miss you, says another text from Van. Then another: Might be in town on Tuesday? Fingers crossed the flights work out.

Unfortunately, they do not.

The flights do, however, work out for Thursday. That’s a fact you only discover after coming home from work and heading into your bedroom to change, only to trip over two rolling suitcases and realize there’s a Van-sized lump sleeping in your bed.

“What’re you doing?” Van mumbles, peeking his head out from under the blankets as you swear up a storm.

“What are you doing?” You shout, your toes throbbing. You’d accidentally kicked one of his rolling suitcases across the bedroom hardwood, and your toes were aching from the impact. On its way across the bedroom that suitcase had bumped the other, causing it to fall like a domino. “Why didn’t you tell me you were here?”

A slow grin spreads over Van’s face. “I wanted to surprise you!”

“By making my room an obstacle course?” You huff, lifting the fallen suitcase upright and rolling both of them out of the way into a corner.

Van’s sleepy state inhibits him from arguing, and he tucks his head back under the comforter.

“God, you scared the shit out of me,” You continue, your adrenaline still pumping from the fright and the pain. “I regret making you a key. I want it back.”

“Shut up,” Comes Van’s muffled voice.

“You shut up,” You bite back, but as the throbbing in your toes die down your irritation is replaced with the realization that this is reality, that Van is actually in your fucking bed at this moment. “I missed you,” You announce suddenly, your voice a lot softer.

Van peeks his head out again. His hair is a ruffled, oily mess as he beams at you. “I missed you more.”

“Bet you didn’t. Bet you forgot about me while you were doing cool band stuff.”

“Oh, did I? Wonder who I was texting Sam about, then.”

At this your jaw drops. “You did what?”

“I told him I was sorry I was leaving town tomorrow, and you said congratulations. And he asked how you were. Bond and him wanna do a celebratory pub night down in Newcastle.”

“No fair!” You pout, stomping your foot like a child. “You’re gonna celebrate without me?”

“Get your passport!” Van cries, throwing one of his arms up in exasperation before flopping back down on the bed. “Come with us!”

Getting your passport is a pain you’re reluctant to go through. You sigh. Maybe you’d try during the holidays back in Michigan, where the lines at the post office weren’t practically out the door everyday. Even if things with Van are over by then, Mary’s been trying to talk you into an overseas vacation for a while.

“You’re leaving tomorrow?” You decide to narrow in on that fact, pushing passport thoughts aside.

“Tomorrow night,” Van confirms. “Drop me off after work?”

“Of course.” If you only had him for these twenty-four hours, you were gonna milk every second you had.

Van is completely wiped from touring, and spends his entire time at your place in the same sweats. He gets out of bed the next morning to shower and have a cup of coffee with you, but other than that he’s glued to the mattress, getting some much-needed rest.

But even when he’s tired, Van is fun to be around. When you’re exhausted from work it means that your job has sapped every last bit of joy from you, leaving you without any desire to be creative, go out with friends, or try to be in a good mood. With Van, it’s like he would keep going if his body allowed him. He talks about tour fondly, still expresses excitement about starting on the new album, and still manages to pluck at your guitar from his nesting spot in bed. He’s the same Van; the only difference is the constant yawning and the way the lines around his eyes are more defined. Oh, and the lack of energy for any fooling around.

That last part doesn’t even cross your mind until you’re on your way home from the airport. You were so content just to have him around that you totally forgot how much you’d been using your vibrator lately.

But even with how content you were for that blissful twenty-four hours, as soon as you’ve stepped in the door to your empty house the aching in your heart returns. In your time apart all the little details about Van had gone fuzzy in your mind; his scent on your pillow, how it takes a cup of coffee in the morning for his voice to stop cracking. But remembering them makes everything sting with a vengeance, and you’re left feeling shittier than you have all month.

There’s been a nagging feeling creeping around the edges of your brain like a fog, and as much as you’ve been trying to deny it, it’s hard tonight. It’s just that everything with Van has started to hurt, and you’re not sure it’s ever going to go away. His schedule over the summer was flexible, but even after this intense bout of touring he’d be busy with recording. And then the band would be vigorously promoting and touring that album, and so on, forever, because Van would never stop making music, you were sure of that.

The tears well up in your eyes even thinking about not having him around. Despite your crushing adoration for him, he really is your best friend, and the idea of losing his friendship makes your heart clench in agony, the tears spilling over. But it’s not really a fair friendship when only one of you is crying about it, is it? Van doesn’t have to hurt like this, because his heart isn’t invested in you like yours is in him.

You allow yourself an indulgent self-pity cry as you make your bed, rumpled from Van’s napping, and climb in. You figure if you’re going to have a pity party for yourself you might as well do it right, and switch your pillow out for his so you can smell the smoke he leaves everywhere he goes. You know that as happy as you are when he’s around, there’s no way you can keep crying over someone when leaving is as much of their job as sending emails is to yours.

That’s why when Van pops in for another impromptu visit the following Tuesday, you’re not as happy to see him as you usually would be. It’s the same way that the idea of next morning’s hangover can ruin a night out, except with Van there’s no magical way to handicap your brain from thinking about the future.

The sex comes close, though. As soon as you two get to your place after picking him up he tosses his backpack aside before cornering you against the front door.

“I fucking missed you,” He practically growls in your ear, and holy fuck it’s been so long. You two rush for the bedroom, peeling off clothes as you go. Van is too impatient to worry about unbuttoning his shirt and simply peels it over his head, while you unclasp your own bra to avoid the delay. Before you know it you’re on your back, the blankets falling away from Van’s shoulders as he thrusts into you with all he’s got, your headboard banging against the wall so loudly you almost worry about damaging it. When you come it’s intensely satisfying, and you pull Van’s hair ridiculously hard to prove it. In retaliation he bites down on your shoulder as he comes, the same as he did the first time you ever slept with him.

The whole world feels right for that magical half hour, and then as you both lay on your backs trying to process what’s happened it all starts to shift again.

“When are you leaving, again?” You ask the ceiling, your voice stiff.

“Thursday morning,” He croaks. “Gotta get to Salt Lake City.”

You start to roll yourself up, heading for the bathroom. “Right.”

You feel Van’s body tense under the sheets next to you. “You alright?”

“Yup,” You tell him, emerging from the bed. You’re not convincing in the slightest, and Van can clearly tell. You don’t give him time to question you before leaving the bedroom.

“What’d I do?” You startle when you hear Van’s footsteps following behind you to the bathroom.

“Nothing.” You almost laugh at how ridiculous you sound.

Van hasn’t even bothered to throw boxers on, leaning in the bathroom doorway with his softening dick on display. He sighs. “Wanna step out for a smoke?”

You’re actually craving the fuck out of a cigarette, but you’d rather just go to bed and have this night be over with. Maybe tomorrow you’d be more able to enjoy Van’s presence, rather than pouting over how it’s rapidly coming to an end as soon as it began. “I’m fine,” You tell him. Your voice sounds less sharp and more resigned. It wasn’t his fault, after all.

Van shakes his head. He uses the toilet when you’re done, tosses on the sweatpants he had rolled in his backpack, and heads out onto the porch alone.

In his absence you scold yourself for acting like this. What the fuck were you doing? Ruining the two nights you had him, because of something that wasn’t anybody’s fault? You remake the bed, mentally giving yourself a stern talking to.

“You wanna talk about what’s wrong now?” Van’s voice makes you jump out of your skin.

“Nothing’s wrong,” You insist again, but your voice betrays you.

“Something is,” Van argues. “I’ve been watching you fluff that pillow for ages.”

At his words you realize your hands are still gripping the corner of your pillowcase, and you unclench your fists.

Van steps into the room, and to your mortification you feel your eyes heat up with warm tears.

“It’s been a long day,” You lie. It’s been a long fucking summer. “And I’m PMSing.”

Van frowns in sympathy, starting to climb back into bed. “Need a cuddle?”

A cuddle sounds like the equivalent of doing an entire round of shots by yourself when you’re already dreading the hangover.

“Yeah,” You sniff. “I do.”

On Thursday morning Van gets you up even earlier than your alarm clock, one of his hands nudging your thighs apart. You expect him to get on top of you once you’re more fully awake, yawning and wiggling around to get more comfortable, but instead you feel his calloused fingertip press against your entrance.

“Oh,” You sigh in surprise as he slips into you, searching out your good spots by touch alone. When he slips a second finger in, angling himself right, you clench down on instinct. “Yeah,” You breathe, blinking up at him sleepily. He’s watching your face intently, and if you were even slightly more awake you’d be horrifically self conscious. “You got it right.”

You can’t remember the last time you were fingered as the entree of the sex, rather than the appetizer. It’s appallingly intimate to have Van’s face so close to yours, breathing in any noises you make and watching every slight expression change in the darkness of your room. You’re also appalled at how you’ve been completely robbed of his talents; he can sense exactly where you’re throbbing for him, your clit twitching against the pad of his thumb when he applies pressure right where your body has been screaming for it. It barely takes any time with his thumb working in tiny circles and his fingers pressing into you hard before you’re gasping for air, drowning under the waves of your orgasm that feels like it’s radiating from both areas, whimpering Van’s name helplessly.

As soon as you’re flinching from his touch he pulls his hand away, his fingers slipping into his mouth so he can clean them off.

“Holy shit.” Your lungs are still desperate for air, but you haul him in for a sloppy kiss, paying no attention to the taste of yourself on his tongue. “I’m gonna miss you.”

Van lets out a deep, throaty laugh at that, but you’re already pushing him backwards so that he’s laying flat. You’re way too sensitive for sex, but you jerk him off and let him come on the soft skin on the inside of your thighs, as a treat.

After you drop him off at the airport, both of you looking slightly disheveled due to having to rush to get ready, you sigh to yourself in the empty car. You hated how weak you were when it came to him. One minute you’re convincing yourself you need to stop hanging around him, and the next you’re telling yourself there is absolutely no way you can give up the best sex you’ve ever had.

It was quite the conundrum.

#summer's a knife #catfish and the bottlemen fanfiction #van mccann #catb #catb fic #vanfic #van mccann fic #van mccann fanfiction #Catfish and the Bottlemen

27 notes · View notes

maljic · 5 years ago

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i have been working in the grocery industry practically my entire life. for many companies, and in many many positions. i’ve seen hurricane panic buys, i have seen post hurricane apocalypses, i have closed stores, and i have opened stores. i have been to backroom recoveries, i have worked small stores and big stores. i have seen h1n1, and i have now seen covid19. and even tho this is something unprecedented, all together it’s really not. the difference here is that it’s been going on for three weeks now and there is no end in sight. the duration is what’s so new.

so i’ve started making notes every day after i got home. just the overall experience, but also customer comments and new things being implemented. it’s a fascination change, and i wanted to write it down to maybe sometime in the future come back to this time and remember anew.

i plan on keeping notes for the foreseeable future, to keep writing a diary of sorts, to see if this ever levels out or escalates even more, if things change drastically or not at all. and if the fucking toilet paper situation ever goes away.

things started to change the first week of march. it was super subtle, i didn’t even notice it at first. it was just a steady increase in business. a solid 20% ahead in sales all across the board. and even tho the virus was already in the news it didn’t cotton on right from the start. or it did, maybe, but i wasn’t expecting it to escalate to such heights.

tuesday, 03.10.2020 9am - 5pm

people are making their own hand sanitizer by mixing rubbing alcohol and aloe vera. we’re out of both. lady is asking me by the sun tan section about the state of deliveries of aloe vera gel. we get to talking. i admit that i don’t understand the people’s need for hand sanitizer since the cdc and every doctor ever recommends hand washing first and foremost. Susan comes out and says, ‘well the only thing that really can safe us from all this is...” and i retort with, “washing your hands, right?” but Susan claps back with, “the lord jesus christ.” and i had to excuse myself real quick and leave her ass on the aisle, because why are you fucking here then trying to potion together your own hand sanitizer, Severus, if all you need is god?

a grown woman that’s working at the register is. coughing. non. stop. co workers comment on it to each other and to me, and i wonder if anyone has taken her aside to explain the current state of world events to her, and maybe asking her to cover her damn mouth. we’re all gonna die.

thursday, 03.12.2020 2pm - 10pm 11pm

parking is an absolute nightmare. i’m 10 mins late cause i can’t find a spot. welcome to hell. i ask my boss what the sales were yesterday and she says we’re 40% ahead of the forecast. which is ridiculous. at this point it’s pretty much a blanket permission for over time. we do not have the capacity to continue to run at this pace. people get worn out, we’re bound to get sick, and the customers are fucking relentless. truck is big. Karen and her brother Chad look at the soap section and wanna know when we get more hand sanitizer in.

this lady is looking at things in the cold and flu section and we get to talking about shit and she mentions something she’s read on facebook and whoops my filter went poofgone and i tell her that i hope facebook dies along with all this corona virus flu and have a good evening.

at the end of my shift after we’ve finished stocking and cleaning up, i stay longer because there’s still a fuck ton of people in the store but we only have two registers open. i check people out until 11 and then peace out. one dude dropped $650 on groceries.

friday, 03.13.2020 11am - 7pm

“where is the hand sanitizer?” Karen asks. i refrain from shouting at her to get outta my face. the store is absolutely packed. lines of lengths i haven’t ever witnessed. lines and lines of people with full bascarts of stuff. the end is nigh and we are here with a front row view of it. we have a small parking lot, and i have no idea where these people’s cars are? i didnt know we could fit that many people in the store. whats the fire marshall’s max capacity guidelines? someone should review those. meanwhile i’m trying to navigate around everybody and put things on shelves that don’t last very long.

the grocery truck arrives around 3 ish and paper products get thrown out first. usually, when the truck arrives it stays locked until the night crew shows up. we’re set up to always have a trailer at the store, so when the guy shows up he unhitches his trailer, and hitches up under another trailer which was the previous day’s grocery truck, which got emptied off groceries when the night crew stocks, and then got filled with stacks of empty pallets, paper bales, and other reusable thinks like plastic trays the meat comes in, or the eggs come in, or produce plastic trays, things like that. so now that we’re in the apocalypse of paper products, the day crew gets those pallets out on the sales floor asap. at this point we have reduced the quantities of things you’re allowed to take to 3. 3 packs of toilet paper, 3 packs of paper towels... also 3 of lysol wipes and 3 of hand sanitizers even tho we dont have any, calm down, Karen. paper products are gone within an hour.

my company makes an absolute killing that day.

saturday, 03.14.2020 10ish to whenever.

my boss said she was coming in (on her off day) so i said yo, mind if i sleep in a bit? i was scheduled 7am and if i don’t have to i don’t want to. she said ok. i rock up at 10:08. things stop showing up on deliveries. the diaper area is sad looking. people have started to buy us out of baby wipes. there’s a problem coming at us in about 2 months. you cant flush baby wipes but since the toilet paper situation is what it is, people will wipe their butts with wet wipes. have fun with that, dallas county utility department (or whoever messes with the water wastes).

displays are dwindling. we are not getting product, so we are filling the shelves in the aisles with the stuff that’s on displays. it’s a bit wonky looking. there’s half an endcap with shampoo and then the rest of it is filled with hersheys. its upside down world. but we have to keep things full. with whatever. empty shelves are bad bad bad, but empty endcaps are a cardinal sin.

people waste so much food when they’re shopping. now that the shelves are getting and staying empty, people will just put things everywhere when they decide against buying the items. bags of chips, six packs of beer, gatorade whatever. that’s not really waste. but we also see bags of salad, frozen items, meats. we are currently not in the position to walk the store every half hour and collect these things. these things are all now wasted and will get thrown out. not the chips, i’m talking about the temp controlled things. being cold to the touch is not enough. shit aint safe.

monday, 03.16.2020 8am - 4 pm 6pm

truck is gigantic. never ever have i seen a truck that big. so everything that my boss was fantasizing about me doing gets thrown out the window when the truck hits the backdoor at 11 am. everybody who is scheduled for truck is given the option to come in early. and stay until it’s all stocked. or until you’re exhausted. i help with the pharmacy stuff because that’s the biggest part. i stay until 6pm. then i’m out.

people would like to know where the hand sanitizer is, well, sugar, so. do. i. it’s the one item that has been out since the end of february, and people are absolutely gob smacked when you tell them it’s currently unavailable. i try to appease them with some hand soap, but, stupidly, people dont want to hear that. i’m thinking to myself that in about a week soap will also be unavailable, but to each their own. customers believe that we, the workers, know the exact day and time when lysol wipes will be stocked. but when you tell them that soap is getting scarce they look at you like you’re speaking a different language.

company wide, we are not allowed to order anything right now. which is huge. how it usually works is: our system knows at all times how many items we have in the store, as per bar code, and knows how much will fit on the shelves, how much we’re selling every day/hour, and then there’s the forecasting factor. so the system will order stuff based on sold quantities, automatically. all the time. if we need extra stuff for sales and/or displays and whatnot, we order extra.

the computer system wouldnt know, for instance, that there was a tornado in oct that wiped out our electricity and that of most of our customers, so we changed orders to reflect that. no frozen things, lots more batteries, ice, coolers.

a lot of things ride on added orders, which are now out

from here on in, everything is up to the system, and to the powers that be. if there’s soap in the warehouse, we will get allocated with every store in the area so that everyone gets equal amounts or close to. hoarding is, apparently, frowned upon at this level too.

tuesday, 03.17.2020 2pm - 10pm

i have come to hate the soap aisle. used to always be my favorite. so long, soap aisle, we’ve had a good run. tonight i’m stocking the pharmacy area (cold and flu, pain meds, tummy stuff, those sort of things). truck is small. super small. i try helping customers as much as i can, but most of my end of the conversation is no, sorry, we dont have any. backstocks are dwindling. the backroom is emptying out. we rely on truck deliveries for things to do and products to be put out. “do you have any [insert product here] in the back?” is the most asked questions. “there’s nothing in the back.” is the most uttered sentence all day.

people obviously do to not get what social distance means. every aisle is packed with shoppers. i’m wasting a lot of time trying to stay out of people’s paths, but people lingeeeerrrrr what the fuck. the mayor of dallas shut everything down to flatten the curve yet here all these fuckers are doing their god damn grocery shopping like it’s 3 months ago. get in, get stuff, get out. i try conjuring up some gas to clear the aisle, but the farts won’t come

go home, people. i wish i could.

somehow our store has become the hub in our area. we get trucks in the afternoon with produce and meat, and people from other stores around us show up in trucks and suvs to transport product between stores. i’ve seen so many people that i hadn’t seen in years because they’re coming by getting shit in the afternoon.

we lost one of our baristas. she’s retired but works with us the maximal allotted hours per week the government allows you before they yank your money. she’s living in senior housing (cause its cheap) and they’ve completely locked down and she is unable to come to work. her boss funnels her groceries. and they face time a lot. she’s doing ok.

wednesday, 03.18.2020 10am - 6pm

parking lot semi full, too full for a wednesday. toilet paper situation is unchanged. but alas there’s no grocery truck scheduled tonight so this is not changing until tomorrow. i’m talking to three separate people desperate for some toilet roll (lol, i love how this pandemic makes me learn new terms, hi, united kingdom, i see you - toilet roll, i love it). anyways, i explain to all three the truck schedule and how to best strategize to get some butt wipes: truck is 6 days a week, wednesday being the no truck day. when the truck arrives, usually what happens is that the paper products get stocked immediately, to make room in the back room and to alleviate the situations. be in the store at around 3ish? 3:30ish, and hang out. i explain that i don’t want to encourage anybody to spend their afternoon in the store for obvi reasons, but when you gotta go you gotta go. alternately, hang out in your car, and when you see a truck pull behind the store around mid day, chances are in about 30 mins you shall have paper. people appreciate the info.

i’m in the candy aisle trying to stock a case of twizzlers. we’re using shopping carts to stock, it’s way more flexible than lugging around huge stocking carts, especially now with the store being so crowded. this dude rocks up and asks me if i’m panic hoarding with all those boxes in my cart. he looks at me with a straight face and thinks he’s making a point. meanwhile i’m in full uniform and people around are starting to roll their eyes. i drop the box of twizzlers into my cart (its super heavy and dude is creating a scene). my box cutter comes out and i make a show of clicking the blade out while explaining to douche canoodle that i’m working here, excuse me, and cut into the tape of the box. moron.

there’s a few people that i’ve seen every day this week. and they’re all advanced in their age. i get that the store is your second home cause you’re lonely, but right now is really not the time. go home.

the question i hate the most is: when are you gonna get more soap in. the honest answer? no fucking clue, Karen. if i could predict the future i wouldn’t be working here.

thursday, 03.19.2020 10am - 6pm

there was no grocery truck last night so shelves are still as empty as they were when i left last night. still, parking lot is semi full. we’ve seem to have gotten a decent produce truck, bananas everywhere. great. my boss’s plan for me is to: whatever truck is back there, and then easter. which means i walk the back room, collect anything and everything that belongs to our department, and get it on the shelves. there’s nothing back there except a chocolate delivery which arrived on the dairy truck. a huge amount, by normal standards. at least people are still enjoying some candy.

by 3pm it’s made the rounds that one of the guys for our dept isn’t coming in: allergies. okay then. truck is not too big, i help out with that until it’s time to hit the time clock.

times are tough, and i’m a good-natured person that can dish out jokes and emphasize with you and cumbaja we’re all in this together and all the other bullshit we’re telling ourselves to make us feel better. but when dudebro comes down the soap aisle and bemoans the state of the shelves (empty) and then goes into a rant about his two parents, immunocompromised, at home, out of soap, almost getting loud and making it seem like its my fault that we don’t have what you want, then no. i’m all out of fucks to give. meanwhile, people of the free world, have you forgotten that hand washing soap does not only come in little pump bottles that you can cutsify your sink with but also LOOK AT ALL THE BARSOAP, back in the days we used that to wash our hands. calm down and take some irish spring to your parents.

grocery truck arrives. big time. in the good ole days of yester year we would get one trailer daily, most of the time not even full. we’ve been ramping it up to 2 most of the last two weeks. (and by we i mean we as a society, buying everything on the shelves and not being satisfied and always wanting more). today it was three. one of which with nothing but water. the others with lots of toilet roll and paper towels. and the usual stuff of canned goods and the likes. nothing will last tho, nothing is forever.

we have this one guy who works here who has, i believe, severe arthritis and is hygiene wise very challenged. he isn’t very mobile and does super light duty but he’s worked here a long time. i haven’t seen him in a few days. i wonder if he is just off, or if he said fuck it and stayed home.

the grown ass woman at the register is still coughing. and not covering her mouth. asswipe.

saturday 03.21.2020 7am - 3pm 6pm

“when do you expect more hand sanitizer in?”

i have no idea what you’re talking about, hand sanitizer was never a thing. lemme ask you this: is it berenstein bears where you come from?

people still want to shop brand loyal. i die inside a little bit every time someone turns their nose up at an alternative to their regular, “oh but we don’t use that brand.” dude didn’t you just say you needed vitamin c? was that a lie? here’s the damn vitamin c. it’s vitamin c, not, i don’t know, fucking coca cola. go home.

corporate finally came down and said we’re allowed to wear ppe now. like some of us haven’t since three weeks ago. i finally turned and went all ‘two by two hands of blue’ as well, and it’s really not as bothersome as i thought it would be.

weekends are now slower than weekdays. i have no idea why that is. and i’m not really sure if these past weekends have been slow, or just normal, and the weekdays are just crazy. i have lost all points of reference. it’s still busy. but is it the same busy it’s always been on a saturday and now we just have more checkers?

the company is desperately trying to hire more people. i don’t know if the new vigorous ad campaign is working yet? it’s a job, sure, especially in these times, but the starting pay is still barely above minimum wage so in any case people will collect unemployment which could still be more than they’d make working here i’m just saying.

the only real perk right now is that whoever works for a grocery store has first dibs on stuff. and if you believe we don’t have a “family and friends stash” in the back of all the items that are scarce then you don’t know how the world works. a friend of mine with health problems came to shop at our store today because we do have more stuff than what i’ve been hearing is going on in surrounding areas. and i was able to give her two cans of disinfectant wipes. another friend asked me if we had any loo roll, and they just came by my place to pick it up, cash on arrival.

we also extend (or well, i do extend) the stash to customers who always have been courteous. and believe me, after working in one location for a few years you know exactly who’s an asshole and who isn’t. we are essential, we are important, and we’ve been known that forever. we just never got treated like that. people are thankful that we’re working, that we’re doing our best (like if we could afford to just take two weeks off to self isolate, yeah right), and it’s good to finally walk the store with your head held high, to finally feel the appreciation. we are the kings of the toilet paper and it’s fucking fantastic.

the store manager (or the company, i’m not sure) bought lunch today for everybody. and there might be a texas rule of no gatherings of more than 10 people, but y’all should’ve seen the break room today at noon. we they feasted (i took two slices and went out back to enjoy) thanks for lunch, boss.

we still haven’t implemented “senior hours,” and i hate that.

hygiene challenged dude is back at work. so he just had his two days off.

monday 03.23.2020 12pm - 9pm

people keep insisting on shopping “normally” and it’s mind boggling. if you go to the store for 5 things or 50 things, it’s fine either way. but please make a list at home and roll with it. do not linger in aisles, do not pick up 3 different items and stand there to study the, i don’t know what the fuck, ingredients? country of origin? manufacturer? i have no earthly idea why you gotta look at a bottle of suave shampoo so intently and just. stay. there. reading it like its a new product on the market. go home.

people just waste so much freakin time in the store. they run into acquaintances and have to have a conversation right there when other customers have to walk around you. please stop, please please stop that. please. get in, get your stuff, and get out. if we dont have your fave available right now come back next week, it’s bound to be back unless it’s something like hand sanitizer or over the counter meds. please. go home.

the shopping pattern has changed. there’s all the action in the mornings now. tons of people, full parking lots, all in the morning. i understand it’s because people are under the impression everything gets restocked over night. which is half true. but whatever. i mean people shop all throughout the day and it’s still busy but the bulk is in the morning.

speaking of: senior hours finally!!! i’m stoked.

i feel like i’m getting fed up with customer questions so it’s usually short retorts and no eyes contact. one guy asked me where the aloe vera is and he asked very friendly and from a few feet away and i was sort of a dick to him. i felt bad immediately and rephrased my answer. yikes.

on the upside also, my work buddy was throwing water all day long. poor guy. he said something like 9 pallets of 24 packs. at one point they were replenishing a display and people grabbed water from the display instead of the pallet, and he was like, “you guys are killing me, man, please take it from the pallet and not the display. every pack you take from the pallet is a pack less i have to move.” a couple of dudes then took over stocking duty from him and threw the rest of the pallet to fill the display. how fucking nice. good eggs all around.

backroom looks like we got a crap ton of paper products. a crap ton. something like, i’m estimating, 12 pallets. so they’ve been staggering it throughout the afternoon but also kept lots in the back for senior hours tomorrow morning. it really looks like that part is getting almost back to normal. lmao fingers crossed.

no eggs tho, today. all gone.

hot shot trucks still show up in the afternoon with produce and meat. and other stores still come by to transfer stuff to their location.

company lunch today was from torchy’s taco. i abstained cause i had just eaten at home. but gatherings of 10 or more people had been had in the break room again. no idea if it was paid for by our company or if torchy’s was just getting rid of a bulk of their perishables.

some dude threw a fit about the limits on certain items. i think his beef was with water and how he’s seen someone take more than three. calm down, asshole.

tuesday 03.24.2020 10am - 5pm

it’s slow in the store. dallas county has a shelter in place ordinance right now and it’s just a slow and steady trickle of customers. the weather also has turned from grey and misty, to sunshine and 80ies. i hate it. i want my grey and misty back. and because it’s nice outside there’s a lot of people on walks and bike rides. there’s a trail behind the store and when i step out back i see people all the times. still keeping their social distance but people non the less.

we’ve finally got our hands on one of the people from the agency that has provided us with help. our girl is super nice and friendly and she works hard. i hope we’ll get to keep her in our department for however long theyre working with us. altogether there’s about 15-20 people in the store from the agency. they’re tasked with sacking groceries, cleaning shopping carts, cleaning shelves and helping to stock. it’s wonderful. they get paid $13, which is more than what you make starting out in the store.

it almost felt like it wasn’t a covid day. after what the covidiot in the wh said on monday, i was a bit unsure if non essentials would reopen (especially since the mayor just shut dallas down). it was weird. it seemed like customers stayed away because a) they went back to work or b) it’s too nice to grocery shop. but that’s prob only my stupid brain making things up.

there were two incidents, both of which weren’t covid related but needed security: a dude tried to walk out with two cases of beer (theft is a thing that happens in our store a lot) but somehow he had half the store chasing after him. i was outside taking my break when all the sudden this guy comes towards me with beer in each hand. where i was, there was no exit away from the store unless you wanted to jump the fence. and he sure did. launched himself and the beer over it. they chased him off (no one touched him, i wanna add, and no one would touch him too, even if we weren’t in the current time), but got their beer back. that was an adrenaline shock i didn’t need. the second one was a lady at the pharmacy not happy with the speed of the pharmacist and she got upset that her meds weren’t ready to be picked up. she made quite a scene with cursings and such so security was called. they are doing their best at the pharmacy but just like every other department they are swamped with prescriptions.

it was super slow and i left an hour early. went home and ate and passed out for 12 hours.

wednesday 03.25.2020 7am - 3pm

it’s probs the first time i’m on the road this early on a weekday during the self isolation period. it’s quite busy on the highway. but still no real traffic.

store is still slow but steady. i see a few customers with big bascarts and shopping lists going about their business urgent like. on the inside i was applauding their readiness and their commitment for getting it done. thank you dear customers. buy a whole cart and get the heck outta dodge. *chefs kiss*

help girl from the agency is with me today. i like her more and more. she gets it all done. baby wipes are still off and on, some days we have them, sometimes we’re out. we found 3 small cases of hand soap in the back (6 bottles each) and they are gone quickly. i’m working through shippers/displays (we’ve finally got a smattering in) but most of it goes straight to the shelves. i’m able to make some sense to one of the half shampoo/half hersheys end caps, and my eye finally stops twitching from the weirdness.

grocery truck schedule has changed and now we’re getting them also on wednesdays (for the time being). one trailer of toilet roll and paper towels, and one of canned goods and boxes and pantry stuffs. and maybe some lysol but who knows.

it’s still sunny and 80ies out, so more runners and bikers on the trail behind the store. still social distancing tho.

the news said someone from a grocery store of another chain was diagnosed. and then through the grapevine i heard that someone from our chain (not our store) also got diagnosed and is in the hospital. wash your hands. get in, get your stuff, and get out. stay safe out there.

friday 03.27.2020 9am - 5pm

there’s this lady in the store, little old lady, just wandering and shopping and whatnot for, i kid you not, 2 hours. what in the world? she’s wearing a mask, kinda like a “let me put this mask on cause i’m sanding something in the garage” you know that kind of mask. but it’s only covering her mouth? what is she doing. where is your family? do they know where you are and what you’re up to. seriously someone come get their auntie.

there’s stickers all over the floor by the registers “PLEASE WAIT HERE” reminding people to stay the heck away from each other. it’s working sometimes. people are patient.

this one lady asks me if we have this, and shows me her phone with a pic of the item like she is seriously standing 6 feet away stretching her arm as far as it’ll go. i appreciate it. she insists that the app tells her it’s in stock here. i ran out of ways to explain that the app doesnt keep up with inventory, only states that we carry it, not whether we actually have it in stock. it’s a surface disinfectant. we dont have it in stock.

rando people say their thanks that we’re working, that they appreciate it, thank you thank you. i have yet to learn how to respond to that. “youre welcome?” “oh sure!” “no problem” nothing feels right. me and my co workers all wish we could work from home, or take a few weeks off, without losing our jobs and benefits. it’s weird. how do you respond to that?

we’ve managed to stay in stock on toilet tissue all day long. one brand, one size, mind you. but! all day long! yes, toilet paper, on aisle 18!!!!

sales have leveled. business is returning to normal.

saturday 03.28.2020 7am - 3 pm

some lady lost her cool today and in her frustration she dead ass kicked over a display of gum. lmao, yikes.

every morning we have a little meeting in the store for all the department heads, or if they’re off, for whoever plays department head for that day. on saturdays that’s me. we call them huddles, although now we can’t call them that anymore because huddle doesn’t really scream social distancing. so now they’ll call it morning communication.

while walking the store today i found, get this, a bottle of purell. it was hidden behind other product. i immediately checked my surroundings (no one there) and then went and hid it in the back room. my immuno challenged friend had asked me for some for a while.

really nothing else going on. it was quiet in the morning and then a storm blew through, and then it was just gorgeous out. so the store got busier and busier. our truck was scheduled to be quite big, but it was late and i wasn’t gonna just hang around until who knows when.

monday 03.30.2020 2pm - 10pm

the break room is completely empty of chairs and tables. that’s new. just last week everyone crowded in, employees and management alike, whenever there was free lunch. and even tho one tells them, or points out that, hey, this is a bit more than technically should be in a closed space like this? all one gets back is, oh hahaha, yeah you’re probably right, but nothing changed. so now the break room is empty. only, i dont know, everyone here works on their feet, either standing (poor checkers) or standing and walking. for up to eight hours. there’s gonna be some people who will just have to sit down for 30 mins during their breaks. this was a company wide, or district wide decision, this wasn’t something our management came up with. and here’s the thing. admittedly, some higher ups in our company are seriously not the sharpest tacks in the box. and i’m not saying that you have to have a degree to make certain decisions, but it helps if you have some sort of, i don’t know, compassion, deductive reasoning, two brain cells to rub together. i, personally, will hardly be found in the break room, i don’t use it. but it’s absolutely clear to me that taking away the opportunity to let people rest is a recipe for disaster.

tuesday, 03.31.2020 2pm - 10pm

so, the owner of the dallas mavericks (basket ball) donated hand sanitizers to our company, for use of company employees. which, thanks, Mark, that was super sweet of you. no really. IF I SEE ONE CO WORKER USE THIS INSTEAD OF WASHING THEIR HANDS I WILL NOT BE MADE RESPONSIBLE FOR MY ACTIONS. wash your god damned hands people. hand sanitizer will never be able to do what soap and water can do. why is that such a big problem to understand.

the break room has a couple of chairs and tables in it now, and a sign on the door that reads “6 people limit, 6 feet apart.” yikes.

its the end of the month and people got paid so the store is getting busier. tomorrow is the first and i’m sure we’ll be packed. please take the following to heart: SHOP ALONE. don’t bring your wifey or hubby or roommate or kids. ok bring your kids if you have no one to watch them. do not use the grocery store as your family outing cause its the only spot you think youre allowed to go. it’s not. youre allowed to go for walks, in front of your house, in your neighborhood, heck, walk a circle around the store if you want, but don’t bring everybody into the store. social distancing is easier achieved if there’s less people to stay away from. be smart, think ahead. and if you think that shopping with two people makes it go faster? it’s not. cause you’re gonna argue over the choices made, you’re gonna veto your shopping buddies choice of beans and your gonna walk every aisle twice instead of once. and there will be more people touching more things and i could really do with less of that.

wednesday 04.01.2020 11am - 7pm

there’s a distillery in kansas who has converted their production to make hand sanitizer (or sanitizer in general) and we have received a shipment of, i think, two pallets. the fun part? they are the size and shape of vodka bottles.

they’re selling for $8 and we put a limit of 1 per family. they look super neat. it’s a plastic bottle, too. i don’t use hand sanitizer and i dont need it and there are people who need these i guess but i want one so badly. just as a, you know, reminder, a token, of these crazy times. i’m not gonna get one (but i kinda want one).

they have finally installed screens at the registers. and new rules came down from corporate: social distancing is the highest priority, hygiene is the highest priority. we are only going to operate 3 (out of 6) registers so that we can ensure that there’s enough space for everyone to feel safe. i have also spent 2 hours today thinning out displays that are cluttering up the sales floor so that we can encourage everyone to keep apart.

starting tomorrow, every employee will get their temp taken when they arrive to work. if the temp is too high you will be sent home (but paid for that day) and only be let back in to work if your temp stays normal for 72 hours without the help of meds.

pay has been increased by $2/h.

friday 04.03.2020 9am - 5pm

face masks everywhere.

like 80% of everybody started donning masks, scarves and homemade things to cover their lower face. face masks are a stark reminder that everyone should keep apart. it’s like an extra “hey, remember how we’re all potentially sick with something deadly? stay away.” i appreciate the effect it has.

there are about 5 different announcements over the PA, one about washing your hands and sneezing/coughing into your elbows, one about senior hours (which have changed now to tue, thu and sat morning), one about social distancing (about the length of two shopping carts!), one about “we’re all in this together” and one about us employees and how we’re doing so much more than our job right now.

ive stopped greeting customers. i smile maybe, since it’s something so ingrained into our brain, but i won’t speak unnecessarily.

the store is absolutely packed. the suggestion of staying away until the 3rd or the 4th that ive seen all over the internets seems to have cottoned on and now we’re slammed. with only 3 registers open now (to keep room between registers) the lines are down the aisles. one of the guys on the registers told me he loved it. it’s waaay less crowding around the registers, safer for the workers).

we have two entrances (the main one and a smaller one) and they closed the smaller one because it’s very tight there and doesn’t really work with trying to stay away from each other. it’s not locked, it’s just closed. no idea about the fire marshall code, but i have worked in bigger stores with only one main entrance so maybe it’s not part of any code.

i saw a woman with a vegas golden knights shirt and i miss hockey.

saturday 04.04.2020 7am - 5:30pm

my first day during senior hours, and admittedly we’ve only recently changed that but there are tons of people in the store and not a lot of seniors. but what do i know they all could be immunocompromised.

in our morning huddle communications meeting the store manager is spitting out a lot of numbers and percentiles and such, basically sales are still through the roof, even with the slower week we’ve had. it’s funny how there’s really no reference point anymore. forecasts and budgets have all been altered due to the situation but even those are still behind. the agency people aren’t with us anymore (since sunday) and i can see maybe 2 new people - but i’m not a reliable source for that because i don’t inter-mingle with other departments that much so i dont even know the regulars so i have no clue who is new. but we’re still running on basically the same people we’ve always had with this increased business.

aceotone is the new toilet paper. cant find it on the shelves, the warehouse is out and people are constantly asking for it. this one guy had me in stitches. he was shopping for the fam and had a list from his wife and you know, acetone, cuticle cream all the stuff you need to take care of your nails after you rip off the fake ones. i used to get my nails done so i gave him advice as best i could and pointed to some products, but no acetone. about five minutes later she finds me on the same aisle again and shows me a can of paint stripper with the word acetone in huge letters on it. i died. i told him that if his wife used that they are about to have a whole other set of problems. we both laughed. he had a great sense of humor. now go home, dude.

the side door that was closed on friday is open again. not surprised.

we are getting absolutely slammed with business. it’s a mad house. you can always tell when people start to park their cars on the fire lanes around the store. there’s just no more parking.

i do see a lot of single shoppers tho, which is so great. and then you got the families just sticking out like sore thumbs. and young college kids usually shop in threes or fours. but everybody is still taking way too much time. there was an article i read on local grocers and how some already reduced the people inside the stores and how every business is going to follow suit so we will see.

we ran out of eggs. and biscuits. and no significant numbers of paper products all week.

monday 04.06.2020 2pm - 10pm

fuck these customers, man

wednesday 04.08.2020 7am - 3pm

my company will not limit the customer count in the store. at least not in this state. when the whole thing started there was an email about store hours and they listed basically every division of our company and their changed hours - except, you guessed it, ours. i have a feeling they are going off of what other companies are doing around here, so unless theyre limiting people, we won’t. that’s my opinion. after work i realized i forgot butter and swung by a store (from a different company) close to home and they havent limited entrance either. they did have markings on the floor to encourage one way traffic down aisles, and i guess we’re gonna do that too. but nothing else. i did see smaller chains have started to limit people but not companies we’re competing with. so much for that. i guess first we need to have a few positive cases in order for them to change anything. the dollar speaks volumes, eh?

i saw this article a few days ago and i keep thinking about it. it basically sums up everything that’s going through all our minds every day. (i have no idea who this website is, i saw it and i read it and it spoke to me so dont come at me if it’s something weird - i just wanted to provide a source)

I manage a grocery store.

Here’s some things everyone should know

1. I don’t have toilet paper 2. I don’t have sanitizer 3. I run out of milk, eggs and meat daily 4. I promise if it’s out on the shelf … it’s not in a hidden corner of our backroom.

Those are the predictable ones, now for the real stuff

5. I have been doing this for 25 years I did not forget how to order product. 6. I did not cause the warehouse to be out of product/ 7. I schedule as much help as I have, including many workers working TONS of overtime to help YOU. 8. I am sorry there are lines at the check out lanes.

Now for the really important stuff:

9. My team puts themselves in harm’s way every day so you can buy groceries. 10. My team works tirelessly to get product on the floor for you to buy. 11. My team is exhausted. 12. My team is scared of getting sick. 13. My team is human and does not possess an antivirus… they are in just as much danger as you are. (Arguably more) but they show up to work every day just so you can buy groceries 14. My team is tired. 15. My team is very under-appreciated. 16. My team is exposed to more people who are potentially infected in one hour than most of you will in a week (medical community excluded, thank you for all that you do!). 17. My team is abused all day by customers who have no idea how ignorant they are. 18. My team disinfects every surface possible, everyday, just so you can come in grab a wipe from the dispenser, wipe the handle and throw the used wipe in the cart or on the ground and leave it there… so my team can throw it in the trash for you later. 19. My team wonders if you wash your re-usable bags, that you force us to touch, that are clearly dirty and have more germs on them than our shopping carts do. 20. My team more than earns their breaks, lunches and days off. And if that means you wait longer I am sorry.

The last thing I will say is this:

The next time you are in a grocery store, please pause and think about what you are saying and how you are treating the people you encounter. They are the reason you are able to buy toilet paper, sanitizer, milk, eggs, and meat.

If the store you go to is out of an item.. maybe find the neighbor or friend that bought enough for a year … there are hundreds of them… and ask them to spare 1 or 2. They caused the problem to begin with…

And lastly, please THANK the people who helped you. They don’t have to come to work!

#i dont know how to tag it i hate to tag it covid #i think it's gonna be #life in these pandemic times #thanks stumblingoverchaos

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robinskey · 5 years ago

Text

Firsts (Steve x Reader)

Request: hi! could you write steve x fem! reader where they dated before nancy and stuff but she got pregnant and she just disappeared? (like stopping going to school because she started being homeschooled and stuff like that) and then one day reader (doesn’t know steve works at family video) goes there and robin tells steve something like “don’t be scared but there’s a toddler thats looks like you and has your stupid hair” and then sees the reader and decides to be a father!! fluff and angst !! thank u!

A/N: Okay, so I’m usually not a big fan of stories where the reader gets pregnant (because the idea of kids at this stage of my life majorly freaks me out-sorry if that’s TMI), but this prompt!! A toddler with Steve’s hair!! The angst! The fluff! I loved it. I changed a few minor things (ex: the reader moves away instead of simply being homeschooled) but stayed pretty true to the prompt overall, I think? Thanks for requesting, anon!

Warnings: Swearing, underage drinking, teenage pregnancy, angst (probably the most angsty fic I’ve posted on here). Story under the cut.

Long before Steve Harrington was the school heartthrob, he was your next-door neighbor, best friend, and first crush. In fact, you shared your first everything with Steve. He gave you your first kiss for a dare in third grade. In sixth grade, Steve asked you to your first-ever junior high dance, the infamous Snow Ball. You and Steve went on your first date the summer after freshman year of high school; he became your first boyfriend shortly thereafter. Steve was your first love-and your first heartbreak.

Because as much as you cared for Steve, he could also be such an asshole. As he climbed up the social ladder of Hawkins High, his newfound popularity inflated his ego. He started receiving invitations to parties that you had no interest in attending. You usually tagged along to the weekend bashes, but on school nights, you told Steve to either skip it or go alone. Your resistance to embrace his new lifestyle sparked a lot of disagreements, which eventually culminated in your first ever full-blown fight.

The two of you were hanging out at his house after school one Thursday afternoon. His parents were gone, as always, so the two of you were in his room. You lay face-down on his bed, pressing your throbbing forehead into one of his pillows, while Steve rifled through his closet. Over the last few days, you’d been exhausted, excessively irritable, and achy all over your body. You felt like you were getting sick, but Steve didn’t seem to care. He was too busy planning his outfit for that evening’s party and trying to convince you to come to it.

“I can’t just show up without my girl, Y/N. What will people think?” Steve asked you. “Besides, it’ll be fun.”

“Maybe for you,” you mumbled into the pillow. “I don’t feel like partying tonight.”

“Maybe you don’t right now. But as soon as you get there, have a few drinks-”

You groaned. The idea of alcohol sounded horrific right then.

“Come on, babe. Don’t be like that,” Steve said, harsher in tone than before.

“Like what?” you asked, turning your head to look at your boyfriend. He still faced the closet and held a jacket up to the light, inspecting it for any spots or wrinkles. His body language showed no signs of acknowledging that you’d even spoken. “Like what, Steve?” you said, a little louder.

That’s when Steve spun around with a scowl on his face. He answered your inquiry with another question: “What’s the deal with you lately?”

You blinked at him incredulously.

“What’s the deal with me? What’s the deal with you, Steve?”

“Me?” Steve threw his arms up in the air. “This isn’t even about me, Y/N!”

This comment made you jolt into an upright position. “Are you serious?”

Steve’s hands moved to his hips, and his face contorted into a grimace. “Do I look like I’m freaking kidding?”

“God, you’re an idiot,” you said, shaking your head.

Steve’s complexion turned redder by the minute. “I’m an idiot because I want my girlfriend to come to a party with me?”

“Do you even hear yourself?” You rose from the bed, and your voice rose in volume with every word. “Every other word out of your mouth is ‘I, me, my.’ Of course this is about you. You make everything about you, Steve.”

He scoffed. “That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is! I’ve felt like shit all week, and you’ve barely noticed, and now you’re trying to get me to go to this stupid party, despite the fact that I told you-”

Steve’s anger finally bubbled to the surface and exploded. He took several frantic steps forward; for a moment, you thought his palm was about to connect with your cheek.

“If you don’t want to go, then don’t!” he yelled in your face. “There are plenty of other bitches who want to party with me!”

You closed your eyes. When they reopened, your vision blurred with tears.

“Fine,” you spat. The anger had been replaced with hurt. “Go get yourself another bitch, then, because I’m done being yours,” you said before storming out of the house.

Apparently, Steve followed your instructions. In third period on Friday morning, you overheard Becky Thomas brag to her friends about how she went home with Steve Harrington after last night’s party. At that moment, a sudden wave of nausea washed over you, and you ran to the bathroom without asking for permission.

After emptying the contents of your stomach into the toilet, you sat on the bathroom tile. You leaned your back against the cool stall door and wept into your hands. It wasn’t Becky Thomas making you cry, nor your failed relationship; no, it was the sudden, sinking suspicion that something else entirely was making you sick.

The pregnancy test you picked up from the drugstore after school confirmed your hypothesis. In your confused, tumultuous world, you now knew two things.

One: You were having your now-ex-boyfriend’s baby.

Two: You could never set foot in that school again.

***

It wasn’t until that weekend that the full magnitude of what he had done hit Steve.

Despite what he’d said to you at the house, he didn’t initially go to the party to find a new fling. After your fight, he just wanted to get wasted and forget about his sorrows. But by the time Steve ran into Becky at the party, alcohol was already pulsing through his veins. When he squinted, Becky’s face sort of resembled yours. She was pretty and interested, and he was drunk and lonely. It was the perfect recipe for disaster.

When he woke up the next morning with a pounding headache and the wrong girl laying in bed beside him, he knew he’d screwed up. However, with such a massive hangover, he couldn’t even imagine driving to school, let alone dream up a heartfelt apology. So he simply shooed Becky out of his house, called in sick, and fell back asleep.

He laid in bed for the rest of the day, drifting in and out of consciousness.

It wasn’t until mid-afternoon that Steve finally wandered into the kitchen to grab some H2O and a snack. He stared out the window as he filled a glass with tap water. A small figure walked down the sidewalk, gaze cast downward and a plastic bag on her arm. Steve considered running outside then, sweeping you into his arms, and begging for forgiveness. But he didn’t. He just watched your silhouette march across the lawn, unlock the front door, and slip into the house.

After that day, you fell off the face of the earth. You weren’t at school Monday, nor Tuesday; by Wednesday, Steve was drilling your friends on your whereabouts. They all claimed their lips were sealed. On Friday, Steve dropped by your house with a bouquet of flowers. He rung the doorbell, waited patiently, and tried to hide his disappointment when your mother answered the door. Your mother, on the other hand, made no attempt to conceal her disenchantment with the visitor.

“Hi, Mrs. Y/L/N. Is Y/N home? I’d like to talk to her.”

“She’s not here right now.”

Before Steve could ask why, the door slammed in his face.

Eventually, word got out that you’d moved in with family upstate. Nobody knew why for certain. There were rumors, of course-everything from you getting a scholarship to a private school to joining the circus. After a few weeks, though, the vanished classmate disappeared from the minds of her former peers (kind of like Barb). Steve, however, held onto the hope that you would return to Hawkins. He never thought he would fall in love again after you. When he did, she didn’t even love him back. Steve spent three-and-a-half years searching for what he’d had with you, but he couldn’t replace it. He couldn’t replace you.

***

Nearly four years later, Steve’s taking inventory in the back of Family Video. He hums a soft melody mindlessly as he counts VHS tapes. He’s lost in his little world when Robin suddenly appears in the doorway. Her loud, throat-clearing cough startles Steve, and he nearly knocks over a stack of boxes.

“You scared me, you little shit!” Steve hisses. He avoids Robin’s eyes by pretending to study his clipboard while he waits for his heart rate to return to normal.

Robin snickers, knowing full well that Steve’s sharp tone is just an attempt to conceal his embarrassment.

“Hello to you, too, dingus.”

Robin pauses, then clears her throat again. She doesn’t know how to phrase her question, but she knows she needs to ask it. Well, she doesn’t need to, per say-Steve could just figure it out himself. But, as his friend, she should probably give him a heads-up.

“Did you need something?” Steve asks.

“Not really. I was just wondering if you had family visiting or something?”

Steve scribbles something on the spreadsheet in his hand, then looks up. “I mean, if you count my parents being home for once as ‘family visiting’, then sure. But extended family, no. Why?”

“Well…” Robin smacks nervously on the gum in her mouth. “Don’t freak out or anything, but there’s this toddler waddling around the store, and he looks just like you. He’s got your stupid hair and everything.”

Steve hesitates for a moment before dismissing her comment. “All kids look the same.”

Robin blows air out of her cheeks.

“You don’t understand, Steve. Remember the time we were cleaning your garage and stumbled upon your baby album? This kid looks like he walked right out of it.”

“So? Like I said, babies all have the same face. If someone put pictures of infant-you and infant-me side-by-side, I doubt they’d be able to tell the difference.”

“Oh, please, Harrington. I was a much cuter baby than you,” Robin says. She tugs the clipboard out of his grip, places a comforting hand on his shoulder, and gives him a gentle shove toward the door. “I’ll finish this up. Just go investigate out how toddler-you figured out time travel.”

As Steve takes a step out of the storage room, a small body collides with his legs. They both lose their balance. Steve grabs onto a nearby countertop to steady himself, but the kid doesn’t have that luxury. He topples to the floor and lays there for a moment.

Steve bends down, gently helping the little one to his feet. His eyes flick over the boy’s features, from his bushy brown eyebrows and slightly-too-big-for-his-face nose to his bright pink lips and pleasantly chubby cheeks. And, of course, he can’t help noticing the kid’s hair-even without an ounce of product in it, his mane defies gravity. This toddler has more hair on his head than most children twice his age do. Robin’s right-facing this little kid is like staring into a fun-house mirror that makes you look fifteen years younger.

“Benjamin, get back here! I’m sorry, sir, he’s just excited.”

Steve shifts his gaze above the top of the kid’s hair tower. When his eyes meet those of the young woman hurrying up the aisle, she freezes in place. The flustered apologies cease falling from her lips-which part slightly and curl into an “o.”

There’s a long period of silence, during which the toddler’s doe eyes flicker from you to Steve, Steve to you.

“Hi,” Steve finally manages. His voice trembles, just with the one word. He wants to ask how you are, where you’ve been-but he doesn’t trust his voice. And besides, it seems as though he’s forgotten how to construct sentences.

“Steve?” you whisper, despite the fact that you’re currently Family Video’s only customer.

“Yeah, uh...hi.”

You already said that. Get it together, dipshit.

“So, Y/N...long time no see, huh?”

You tightly cross your arms over your chest. Steve can’t tell if you do it to prevent yourself from feeling exposed or to prevent yourself from walking up to him and punching him in the face. Either one would make sense-he has no contact with a girl for four years, and then she shows up with a kid who looks exactly like him, and all he can manage is “long time no see?”

“You could say that,” you murmur, tapping your fingers on your forearm.

Another awkward pause, ended only when Ben wonders aloud, “What’s in here?” and starts wobbling toward the storage room. You break the apparent spell that binds your feet to the tile and lunge after your son. He’s too fast, though, and disappears through the doorway before you can stop him. A few seconds later, he reappears-this time on the hip of a thin, freckled brunette who smiles at you warmly. Her name tag reads “Robin.”

“Got him,” she says, pulling the door shut behind her before setting Ben down. He’s on the move again as soon as his feet touch the floor. You watch his chunky little legs run take him away until he vanishes behind a corner. “Hey, uh, I can watch him for a minute, if you guys want to catch up.”

“Oh, you don’t have to-”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind. Kids love me-mostly because I keep a stash of candy behind the counter at all times,” Robin says with a wink. Before you can object, she’s chasing your little boy around the store, and Steve’s staring at you with those pleading puppy-dog eyes you’ve never been able to say “no” to. You still can’t, even after all these years; when he asks if you can talk in private, you agree. Your hand shakes as you twist the doorknob to the storage room, and you immediately make your way to the opposite side of the room. The click of the door as it swings shut behind Steve echoes in your mind.

Steve collapses onto a stack of boxes. He buries his face in his hands. Then, he folds them into the prayer position, pressing the edge of his fingers against his lips. Thirty seconds pass where the only sounds are your breathing, the thud of your footsteps as you pace the room, and the muffled shrieks of your son as a stranger chases him around the store.

Steve finally breaks the silence with what sounds like a joke without a hint of laughter: “I don’t suppose that’s your little brother?”

“No.”

“Are you his babysitter?”

“No.”

“Random kid you picked up on the street?”

You roll your eyes. “Definitely not.”

“How old is he?” Steve asks.

“He’ll be four this summer.”

Another pause, followed by a hesitant question:

“Is that why you left to go live with your aunt? So nobody would know you were pregnant?”

You swallow the lump in your throat and choke out a “yes.”

Steve nods, taking it all in. He inhales before speaking his next piece. “Just so we’re clear,” he says, “I’m the father, right?”

You stop pacing to glower at Steve. The fire in your glare is about the closest a human’s ever gotten to shooting lasers from their eyes.

“Really, dickwad?”

“I just want to make sure we don’t have any misunderstandings here.”

“Yes,” you say. “One of us was faithful in that relationship.” Your voice drips with venom, and you expect Steve to fire toxicity back.

However, to your astonishment, Steve simply runs his hands through his hair, and admits, “I deserved that.”

“You bet your ass you did,” you hiss, though you struggle to maintain the same level of ferocity as before. The moment you spotted Steve, your body started preparing for a screaming match. You didn’t expect submission.

“Benjamin, huh?”

“If you’re about to criticize how I named the child I carried in my womb for nine long months, I’m about to kick your ass, Harrington.”

“No, no,” Steve says. He gives the faintest hint of a chuckle. “Benjamin. I like it. You know that’s my middle name, right?”

You can’t help rolling your eyes again.

“Of course I do, moron,” you say. Your gaze falls to the floor, and your voice grows smaller as you add, “Why do you think I picked it?”

“You named him after me? Why? I didn’t even know he existed.”

You detect the bitterness as he speaks, and all the walls around you that had started to sink slightly rose again to their full height. If anyone got to be bitter, it was you. It wasn’t all your fault that a piece of shit got you pregnant. But Steve had always been the sort of guy to convince you that everything would be fine, and it would never happen to you.

But it did. It happened. And while you wouldn’t trade your son for anything, things certainly would have been easier if you’d been able to have him a little later down the line.

“Why?” you repeat, starting to walk in circles around the room again. “Well, for one thing, I never thought I would have to explain it to you.”

“That’s not a reason.”

“It’s a reason. It’s not the reason, but it’s still a reason.”

“Okay, so what’s the reason?”

You raise a finger to your lips and gnaw on the nail.

“I thought that’s the closest he would ever get to knowing his father,” you admit. Steve frowns at his hands.

“You should have called me,” he says quietly. “I could’ve at least sent money or something. You shouldn’t have had to take care of the kid all by yourself.”

“No, I shouldn’t have,” you say, voice starting to tremble. You stop pacing but keep your back to Steve. “But I had to. I couldn’t call you. I couldn’t hear your voice. Not when I was still... ”

“When you were still...?” he prompts. “You were still what, Y/N?”

“I was still in love with you.”

For a second, you’re that scared sixteen-year-old again, the one who could never bear to look at her ultrasounds, cried at every doctor’s appointment, and had to leave her own baby shower early because it was all too much. The welled-up tears finally seep out from under your eyelids and slip down your cheeks.

“In spite of everything, I still loved you.” You swipe at your damp face with the back at your hand before turning to face Steve. He stares at you with glossy eyes but an otherwise-undeterminable expression. “And I knew you wouldn’t want me-not when I came with so much baggage.”

On the other side of the door, footsteps pitter-patter on the tile. Benjamin’s tiny voice calls, “Ready or not, here I come!” Then, he shouts, “I see you, silly!” and breaks into a fit of giggles.

“I don’t know how anyone could see that little dude as ‘baggage’, even if it wasn’t their kid,” Steve says.

“You would have, four years ago.”

“Yeah, well. A lot’s changed since then.” Steve sighs, then offers you a small, tired smile. He pats the spot beside him. “C’mere. These boxes are sturdy enough to hold us both.”

You reluctantly plop down next to him, and you both lean back against the wall.

“Look,” he starts, “I’m really sorry-for everything. I was a self-absorbed piece of shit in high school, and you deserved so much better. But I really did love you,” Steve says, reaching out to tuck a stray strand of hair behind your ear. “In fact, I never stopped.”

Steve leans towards you but stops a few inches from your face. You only hesitate for a millisecond before closing the rest of the gap. As your mouth makes contact with his, fireworks explode in your chest. His lips are even softer than you remember.

You only take a short break for air before your lips collide once more. The kiss deepens, and you’re transported back to a much simpler time, when it was just you and Steve against the world.

However, the fantasy doesn’t last long. After a few seconds of connection, Steve pulls away. His eyes glimmer with desire, but his lips speak the words, “Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Why not?” you utter. Then, your mind jumps to the worst possible conclusion. “Shit-that girl out there-she’s your girlfriend, isn’t she?”

Steve recoils from you slightly.

“Oh, god, no. We’re just friends. I’m not exactly her...type,” he says with a shrug of his shoulders. “It’s just...I don’t want to complicate things. You know, for Ben.”

You scrunch up your face in confusion. “I’m not following.”

“Well...” Steve lets a long breath of air out of his mouth. “Now that I know about Ben, I’d like to be more involved in his life-if that’s okay with you, of course. Even if it’s just sending child support checks or whatever. And maybe, until we figure out what we are-if we’re anything-which, obviously, we don’t have to be…”

Steve trails off as your hand brushes against his, leaving a trail of electricity anywhere you touch. His palms are slightly clammy, but he lets you intertwine your fingers with his. You can feel his heartbeat rapidly pulsing through his wrist.

“I love you, too, Steve,” you say, pressing a gentle kiss to his knuckles, “and I want to be with you. But I understand if you’re not ready for the responsibility of being a father.”

“I don’t know if I’m completely ready,” Steve says softly, “but I want to try. I just don’t want to screw up Ben’s life any more than I already have.”

“You won’t,” you say. “Ben needs you in his life...almost as much as I do.”

Steve kisses you once more before the two of you head back out into the main part of the store. Robin and Ben are both sitting on the floor in front of the counter. A huge bag of gummy worms is situated between them.

“Hey! You’re back,” Robin chirps, though her words are somewhat strained. She scratches her head awkwardly and not-so-subtly slides the half-empty bag of gummies behind her back. “Listen, uh-Ben started to get a little antsy, so I distracted him with candy. Hope you don’t mind.”

“That’s okay. Thanks for watching him,” you say.

“No problem. I’m going to go finish taking inventory,” she says, getting to her feet.

As soon as Robin’s gone, your son runs up to you. He holds out a half-eaten worm as an offering. You ruffle his hair with one hand-and that’s when Ben notices the strange man is holding your other hand.

“Why you touch my mommy?” he asks, glaring up at Steve’s face, which quickly turns a bright shade of fuschia. Steve frantically untangles his fingers from yours with a desperate glance toward you for guidance.

“Don’t worry, Benny. He’s a friend of Mama’s.”

You sit cross-legged on the floor in front of Ben. Steve follows suit, but he stays in the background, careful to give you plenty of space. Ben immediately climbs in your lap, and you wrap your arms around his chubby little body.

“He’s a very special friend of mine, actually. We’ve been friends for a really long time. We knew each other when I was your age,” you tell him.

Ben’s eyes widen to the size of saucers. “Forever ago?”

You laugh and press a kiss to the top of his head. “Sure feels like it sometimes.” You bite your lip, unsure of what to say next. “Benny, you know a lot of the other kids at preschool have both a mommy, like me, and a daddy?”

Hearing that question drives a stake through Steve’s heart, but Ben isn’t fazed. He simply nods.

“Well, you have a daddy, too.” You speak slowly, waiting for it to click in your son’s brain. He’s either too stunned or too incompetent to put the pieces together-which, needless to say, is fair, considering he’s only three. You point to Steve but keep your gaze focused on your son. “That’s your daddy, Ben.”

You and Steve wait in silence for your son’s reaction. Ben doesn’t usually launch into hysterics; though he may have inherited his father’s looks, he managed to evade the “dramatic as heck” gene. Still, you expect some sort of response to this life-changing news. You eventually receive one, but it’s not at all what you anticipated.

“Do you play baseball?” Ben asks Steve. His words are completely devoid of the slightly-aggressive undertone he’d used only minutes before.

Steve blinks-once, twice, three times. Then, you elbow him, and his head moves up and down in confirmation.

“Can you teach me? Like my friends’ daddies teach them?”

A sigh of relief escapes Steve’s lips, which then curl into a cheesy grin.

“I would love to, Ben.”

Your son then turns to you, puppy-dog eyes at the ready. “Can we go to park, Mommy? Pwease?”

“Baby, Daddy’s working-”

“I’ll cover his shift!” a voice calls behind you. Robin sticks her head out the door of the storage room, smirking. “Go have fun, my new favorite little family.”

“What do you say, Stevie?” you ask over your shoulder.

“Let’s do it. Let’s play some baseball.”

Steve disappears into the back room to get his wallet. When he returns, Ben holds out his hand. Steve, beaming with joy, takes it, and the three of you walk out of the store together.

***

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revisionaryhistory · 4 years ago

Text

Three Days ~ 55

~*~Sebastian~*~

I stared at her. Stunned. I'm not sure if it's how the conversation went or she wants me and whatever comes with me. Emma is so intentional. Her words carry meaning. She wants to be clear and asks for clarity. This is heaven for my overthinking brain. I’m not stuck wondering what she means nor am I afraid to ask. Because I know she'll answer. Really answer.

"I've got eight years on you, how are you the more mature one?"

"Stabilizing influence and frighteningly direct communication of my second dad."

The expression on her face and deadpanned delivery had me laughing. "I can see that. I'll be the emotionally reactive one and you can be the calming one." Then I remembered. "Although, Eli did tell a story about you laying into some guy in Hawaii at a volleyball game. Ed dumped you in the ocean. I wish there was video."

"There is. You'll have to get dad to send it to you."

Tuesday was a good day. Workout was hard and my abs were already sore, but we'd laughed a lot. Good phone call with mom. The house had come together, she was enjoying some time in the pool, and she'd picked up some piano students. My afternoon was spent in my manager, Emily's, office. Mostly she and I, but a few conference calls. I was about to be busy. The next six weeks I was more gone than home. I was excited about the work. Excited to see friends.

Admittedly, the timing wasn't the greatest, new relationship and all, but I was confident we'd figure it out. This is different. I'd like to say it was because my previous experience is whining and bitching about me being gone so long, knowing I was going to pay for the distance, and trying to front-load my leaving to make it more palatable. While all of those all true, the actual difference is I care. The emotionally unavailable hot and cold thing comes into play here. I put up a wall to block the whining and bitching, not really listening, because it's my job. Bitching at me isn’t going to change anything and I’m not going to feel guilty for doing my job. Well, I do, but it just pisses me off because I shouldn’t. The expectation of gifts, dinners, or a vacation to make up for being gone made those a lot less fun. And I was never successful at cramming a bunch of stuff in before I left, because my work didn't start when I left. It starts weeks before. I don’t leave for filming for a month, but I’m already prepping: gym reading, watching things, research, and studying the script. I get pretty singularly focused. I don't know any other way. And when pushed I shut down. I don't respond. I brood. And I appear cold. None of this is right. Some just is. Some is my fault. Getting to where I didn't care about her (any of the previous hers) feelings and concerns with me gone was a side effect of shutting down and I regret doing that. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about her feelings. It was feeling ineffectual to do anything about it and my self-protection kicking in. Looking back, saying effectively “deal with it” was incredibly insensitive. Not proud of it.

But now, sitting here looking at my schedule I’m finding places I can find some time for us. We’ll figure it out. I can tell you what won’t happen. Emma won't whine where I block her out. She's not going to emotionally blackmail me for things, which will make me want to give. And she’ll leave me alone to prep, let me bounce things off her, or cook something to remind me to eat. I need all of those. I care how Emma's going to feel about me being gone. I care about what we’ve begun and how we'll keep in touch. I also know that while I'm away she will carry on living the life she had before she had me and be just fine.

Emma had practice tonight and a game tomorrow. It was after eight when she called. She was in a tank top and her hair was wet from her shower. I caught up on her day before leading into mine. "I have good news and bad news."

"OK." Emma drug out the word, wary of my response.

"When I get back from Canada, I've got some time to spend with you. Then I’m gone for the month of July. Fashion show, audition and meetings, comic con, then filming in Rome." Playing off last night’s conversation, I added. "I'm not expecting a bad reaction."

"Well, that's good." Her hand moved toward the screen and I chose to believe she was touching my face. "I'II miss you, but I’m excited for you. And me getting to hear about what you're doing. Living vicariously."

I'd had some time to think. I had a lot of thoughts on plans. This was the soonest. "You get back Tuesday, doubleheader Wednesday, and I get back late Thursday. What's your weekend look like?"

"Empty. I'll come to you. You'll barely be home if you come here. I can come anytime Friday. I'll be done with work except maybe packing up my room. I can do that whenever."

"Early Friday. Thursday night." I wanted to maximize our time. "I have to do some work."

"I can amuse myself."

"Maybe the shop you liked so much will be having a sale?" I laughed at the way her eyes lit up. "July fourth weekend I'm at a fashion show. Wanna go to Paris?"

"What?" Her face moved closer to the screen. I’d surprised her.

"Not necessarily Paris, but near. The third is the show. Have you been to Paris?"

"Family spent the summer in Europe when we were thirteen. Then Pearl Jam tours. Love Paris."

"Not much more than a long weekend, but museums and I'm sure we can find some romantic Paris shit to do."

"I would love to go to Paris with you."

That was good because I'd already made reservations. "California for about two weeks then straight to Italy for at least that. Depends on how long shooting takes. Hopefully back in time to join you in Chicago. Then nothing until the end of August. Will and I had been talking about a group of us going away. We were waiting for my schedule. What do you think about a group trip and we stay a little longer or go off alone? It would be a beach somewhere."

"You going to rub sunscreen on me?"

"Um yay, part of my volleyball job. Beer bitch and sunscreen applier."

“I’m in."

"End of August is a Disney thing. Labor Day weekend is the Toronto Film Fest. Little stuff in there, nothing big. No idea past then."

She laughed, eyes wide, and moving her head in all directions "It's crazy like a tour schedule. I'm jealous. I love touring."

"I thought about Rome, but the schedule's tight. You wouldn't see me."

"I wasn't trying for an invite. I'll get some of my summer PD hours done so I won't have to worry about them. Make sure I've got time for us."

I leaned back on the couch, "That was easy."

She glared at me. "I thought you weren't expecting a bad reaction?"

I shook my head, "No, no, I wasn't. Just an observation. Thought I might have to talk you into the beach." I held it a second before smiling, "Not really. I do know it’s a lot."

"I will always go to a beach."

"You’re not allowed to play volleyball."

"Did you get the video from dad?"

"About an hour ago." I'd enjoyed it several times. "You're a feisty little thing."

Wednesday was a day of pictures and texts. After the gym, I settled in my extra room to prep. I had my laptop on the table, a stack of books on top of my script, and a huge bottle of water. I took a picture and posted it to Instagram along with one of me with a pencil between my teeth and pulling my hair.

Emma ~ How'd you get a picture of your expression during your last blow job?

Sebastian ~ Hidden camera in bedroom. You should see the other things I have. Coupling Season 1. "The Cupboard of Patrick's Love."

Emma ~ “You really don't have enough blood for both ends of your body, do you?"

Sebastian ~ Very good, Sally.

Love that she can quote one of my favorite shows.

After lunch, Emma posted a picture of her in the middle of a group hug with her students. "I'll miss my munchkins.” I sent a sad face emoji.

Then I fell into a hole. I got pulled into my research and reading and the next time I picked up my phone it was one a.m. I need time like this and put my phone on do not disturb. The only thing that comes through is two calls from the same number within a few minutes. Anyone important knows how to reach me. Emma knew, but she didn't. Not even when the Demonic Crickets won their game. She posted several pictures, but I got a much better one in a text. Emma with her back to the camera in her team tank, arm up flexing her bicep, and her looking over her shoulder smiling at me. The gold flecks in her eyes were sparkling and the darker ring made the green more intense.

Emma ~ Hope you're getting a lot done. Internally anyway. XOXO

Sebastian ~ * 12 hours later * Yeah, I did. I'm hungry. Congrats on the win. Picture is beautiful.

Sebastian ~ You're beautiful

Her thank you came while I was working out. After a shower, I fell back into my hole until it was time for therapy.

I'd been seeing Celie for a long time. Frequency varied. She had a dark brown bob, glasses, and a round face. At this point, I could read her as well as she could me. If she was looking at me over her glasses, she thought I was full of shit. No words needed. She was about ten years older than me and her style worked for me. It was a great one-sided friendship.

I took my regular spot on the blue couch, "How are you today, Celie?"

Celie smiled. She had the unconditional positive regard thing down. I say that, but she does genuinely like me. Most of the time. I can be a pain in the ass. "I've had a good day and after you I get to go home. You seem to be in a good mood. Tell what's going on with you, Seb."

I was always her last client of the day. Sometimes I needed more than an hour. "I am in a good mood. I met somebody. Last time I saw you I was going to help my parents move. I met Emma there. In a grocery store, if you can believe that."

"Sounds like you can't."

"I asked her to dinner in under fifteen minutes."

She widened her eyes in disbelief. Exactly my point. "Did you? Good for you, Seb. A complete stranger. What led you to ask her out?"

"I was all covered up and she tells me I looked like a rehab patient checking into the clinic up the road. But she was kind to me. A sketchy stranger. She didn’t know who I was until we were outside and I introduced myself. She helped me find the things on my list and we chatted." I put my hands in front of my chest, fingers splayed. "She felt good. I didn't know why, just enough that I knew I wanted to know more.”

“And what do you know now?”

I spent the next several minutes telling Celie the salient points. We’ve been doing this long enough that explaining isn’t necessary. She’ll recognize why things are important. My face hurt from smiling after I was finished talking about Emma. I stopped short of the whole conversation on Sunday.

“Besides the obvious early relationship high, how are you feeling about all this?”

“Good. Happy. Hopeful. The only concerning thing was Saturday I woke up from a night terror, panic attack. I got myself calmed down pretty quick, wrote for a while, and once Emma got up I went for a run.”

“Even with being happy, there’s been quite a bit of emotional activity. I’m pleased that you’ve only woken up once. Much better. What do you suspect triggered you?”

I took a deep breath, “Emma and I wound up in this conversation Sunday afternoon. A couple of my friends at the party had told her I wasn’t acting like I normally do with women, but more like I am with friends. This led to a conversation about my relationship issues. I’m not the same with her. She really doesn’t know that version of me. I think that’s why I had the anxiety. It was the night after the party but before the conversation. First time we’d been around my friends. I think it was not because I’m scared, but because I’m not. Like you said, there’s been a lot of emotional shit going on and I’m good. Remarkably good.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Emma is different. She’s incredibly kind and is . . . gentle. Not weak though. She’s strong.”

Celie shook her head, “When I think of gentle people it’s a combination. They can be painfully truthful, but their manner makes others able to listen. They have a compassion for others.”

“Exactly! I noticed she knew everyone. She talked to everyone and used their name. I asked and she said she looked at their nametags and you never know what someone’s day has been. That might be the first nice thing that’s happened all day. I know it’s a little thing, but it’s her. She’s like that with me. She doesn’t try to talk me out of being anxious or overthinking. She doesn’t think my insecurities are stupid. They’re all just part of me.”

“She accepts you.”

“Right. The more we got to know each other, the more we talked, I felt safe. She doesn’t do those things I usually shut down over. I don’t feel the need to protect myself. She’s very different.” Celie was looking at me over her glasses. Uh oh. “You’re giving me the look.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Why? I thought I was doing good. I asked out a stranger and got this amazing woman.”

“Sebastian, as quick as you are to fault yourself, you’re slow to take credit.”

“Take credit?” I didn’t know what she was talking about.

She leaned forward, putting her elbows on her knees. “You think this relationship is different because of Emma. You lucked out and met an accepting, kind, gentle person.”

“Yes. No. Both. Emma is different and she makes me different.”

Celie made a loud, jarring beeping noise. This was new.

“Ok, I guess I’m wrong.”

“You are. Not completely. You’re not giving yourself enough credit. Any credit. You’ve worked very hard. You’ve read. You’ve journaled. You’ve talked. You’ve done things I’ve asked you to even if you didn’t understand or want to. I’ve seen you grow. To give responsibility for this relationship being different all to Emma is dangerous. What’s going to happen when she falls off this pedestal you’ve put her on? Is that going to be an excuse to shut down and protect yourself? Fall back on old habits.”

I could feel my eyebrows pulled down and the scowl on my face. “So you’re saying this isn’t as good as I think it is.”

“Not at all. I’m saying it’s got as much to do with you as it does her. Previously you would have never asked out a woman you met in a grocery. But that seems to be the furthest you’re going with how you’re different. I do not believe for one second that no other woman you’ve gone out with has been kind and accepting. Or would have been if you would have been able to show them you. You used to do things to test them. You’d say or do things to see how they’d react. As we’ve talked, you weren’t being real, so you don’t know that their reactions were.”

I nodded then looked down, “I know. Pretty manipulative.” I felt Celie’s hand on my arm and looked back up. Her face was very soft with a smile.

“Stop, Seb. You need to be proud of yourself. You are doing things differently. You have learned from your past, grown, and come a long way in accepting yourself. Warts and all. You have shown Emma who you are, even the parts you don’t like so much. She can have credit for how she’s responded to you, but you deserve the credit for being brave enough to show her in an honest and authentic way. That allowed her to respond in an equally honest and authentic way.”

I grabbed a tissue from the ever-present box on the table and wiped the wet from my face. Neither the first nor the last time I’d cry in this room.

"If you had met her even a year ago, with her exactly as she is now, this relationship would be very different."

"The wedding."

"Excuse me?"

Yeah, non sequitur. "I was supposed to go to a friend’s wedding last summer but didn't because there was a change in my shooting schedule. Emma was at the wedding. You're right. Had I met her then," I shook my head. “I wouldn't have been ready for her and now could have never happened."

Celie shrugged, "Probably not."

I sniffed and wiped my eyes, "How do I get her off this pedestal I’ve put her on?"

"You seem pretty smitten. Maybe not take her off, just lower it a little." I laughed and she went on. "What you do is own your part. You have been making choices to improve yourself. You have been making choices to go out of your comfort zone. And you have been making choices to let her know you. Emma's been making similar choices to be with you. I'm sure you know what she's come through to be where she is. It seems like you complement each other. Recognize this is both of you waking up and choosing to be with each other. Talk and negotiate what that means. Tell her what you want. And when you're not talking you listen. Listen to what she needs from you. The most important for you is to keep processing the feelings with her. She's the only one who can help those make a picture. And you need to give her the same gift. She has things she’s not so proud of and afraid for you to know about her. We all do. You will need to accept her and treat her with gentle kindness she gives you.”

I was crying again. "She told me. I told her she was different than the others. She asked if maybe I was different."

Celie snickered, "I like her."

"You would. She speaks therapy."

"I want to be very clear, Seb. She sounds wonderful and she may make you better. You sound wonderful and I bet you make her better too. That’s how it should work in a relationship. You help each other along. It takes two people with self-awareness making choices to do what it takes. You both have to choose growth, honestly, humility, vulnerability, and sacrifice. I hear you holding up your end. I’ve not heard you do this before. And while she may be the right woman, you've become the right man. Please, please, do not underestimate how much work you've put in to become the right man for another person.”

"I want to go home and cry for an hour or so."

"I wish Emma was here for you."

I shook my head with a grimace, "It's going to be ugly until I get it out."

"Yes. I think Emma would want to be there to hold you and you'd find more acceptance and comfort in that than you can imagine."

At home, I grabbed a beer, sank down in my favorite chair, and cried. I felt everything all at once but fought to untangle the threads. Sad was remnants of the past and dissipated quickly. Its friends regret and shame fought a little harder to stick around, but they were toxic and needed to go. Pride and relief were together too. Celie was right. I had worked hard. An infinite number of hours had gone into figuring myself out. There have been so many times I thought I'd be stuck forever. Sometime in the last two years that I've been without a girlfriend, all the work must have come together. In the last two years I've been filming almost nonstop. Five movies have come out. Two of which were Marvel circuses. It's like all the therapy (and the work that goes with it) knitted me back together while I was busy filming and living my life. Celie had told me to trust the process. I couldn't rush it or make changes happen before it was time. Patience. I am inherently impatient. Pride was for the work. Relief was for seeing results. Finally.

Next was happy. I’m in a good place. I'm excited about the movie I’m making. I have supportive, fun friends, and a loving family. I don't need a girlfriend to be happy, but one does bring everything together. I like having a person who is mine. Mine in the sense of us experiencing life together. The good and bad. I like that. I want that. And now I have it. The beginnings of it, anyway.

After I pulled my shit together, I wanted to talk to Emma. I wanted support. Maybe not support, but I felt raw. I wanted someone to soothe the raw nerves, to sit with me while all this new stuff integrated. I wish she was here. What I needed was a hug.

Sebastian ~ Can you talk?

I don't like that I asked. It feels insecure and I have zero reasons to feel insecure. I quickly decided to cut myself some slack.

My phone rang and I connected to FaceTime. "Hey." Her bright smile and obvious happiness to see me did wonders to soothe those raw nerves.

Emma's face went from a smile to wide-eyed concern. "Sebastian, what’s wrong? You look like you've been crying. What happened?" Before I could answer, she jumped to a correct conclusion. "You had therapy. Good, bad, or cathartic tears?"

"Mostly the last one."

Her hand went to her chest, "Ok." She picked up what I assumed was her iPad and crossed to the chair in her bedroom. I could see her pull her knees up when she put her feet on the ottoman. She rested the iPad on her knees.

"Mostly a repeat of what we talked about Sunday. Celie said I wasn't giving myself enough credit for the work I've done. My growth."

As Emma had alluded to the same thing, I expected a smile or some acknowledgment of her asking if I was different. Instead, I got, "What do you think?"

"I think I still need to work on not being so hard on myself." I smiled because that statement was me still being hard on myself. "When Celie pointed out how I've changed I could see it and was proud of myself. I can’t see it on my own yet, but I'll get there. I never thought anyone would get past my walls. It wasn't someone getting in, it was me getting out." More goddamned tears.

Emma reached out and touched the screen. "I‘m so happy for you. Proud of you too."

Her words felt like a hug. Close enough for now. "Thank you."

"I know you're a grown man, but I wish I was there. Crying alone sucks."

"Oh," I laughed a little, "the chances of us having a messy reunion are high."

"Why?"

"A lot of you and I talk today. I know me, it's gonna hit me when I see you."

"I should warn you. I have a strict policy that nobody cries alone in my presence."

I smiled at her exaggerated southern accent with the "Steel Magnolias" quote. "See ... gonna be messy."

#Sebastian Stan #sebastian stan fanfiction #fanfiction

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spidey-babe-parker · 5 years ago

Text

From Afar

Chapter 4: are we caught between the covers\

Featuring: Sam Winchester x Plus Size Reader

Summary: Going to Stanford to see Sam changes things forever.

Warnings: angst, fluff, and smut

AN: next chapter will be posted on Thursday Jan 2nd.

Links are broken and all past and future chapters can be found in my masterlist

NOW

Somehow Jack convinces you and Sam to stay in on a Saturday night. You have never been the type of person who likes to go out and party, but sometimes you like to go into town and get a drink with the boys. A board game was on the table in front of you. Jack was sitting next to you eating a slice of pizza. Sam was across from you sipping on a beer.

Lifting the bottle of beer to your lips to take a sip and smile at Sam who is rolling the dice.

It’s just the three of you in the bunker tonight. Somehow Dean convinced Cas to go out to the bar with him. You know this means that Dean was probably going to go home with some random girl.

“Any bets Dean isn’t coming home tonight?” You ask joking.

Jack holds back a smile as he rolls the dice.

“Knowing Dean, Cas is probably going to come home alone,” Sam says before taking another drink of his beer.

“You didn’t want to go out with Dean?” you ask Sam who’s hazel eyes are locked on yours.

He stares at you for a long moment, biting his lip. It’s almost as if he doesn’t know what he should say.

“I don’t have a desire to sleep with random women,” he says simply.

Jack looks at you with his eyebrows knit together.

Sam’s simple words suddenly cause a tension between the two of you. It’s the tension that you both were all too familiar with.

THEN

Spring break of your sophomore year of college you decide to fly out to Stanford to see your best friend.

Your flight lands on warm Tuesday afternoon. You only have two days to spend with Sam but you’re beyond excited. With your suitcase hand you walk through the airport looking for your best friend.

You find him holding a sign with your name on it. He’s smiling as you walk towards him. The moment you are close enough he lunges forward pulling your soft body against his tone one. He holds you as if he’s hasn’t seen you in a decade. In all reality he hasn’t seen you in about a year. Since coming to school he stays in California for every break. According to him the only thing for him in Kansas is you, and he doesn’t want to see his dad.

All the money you have been saving up has gone to you buying this plane ticket. You would go completely broke if it means you get to see your best friend.

He hasn’t let go of you as he hugs you gently swaying side to side.

“I missed you so much,” he says with his lips resting on top of your head.

“I missed you too,” you hold on to him almost clinging to him. You can’t imagine ever letting go of him.

You stay there just hugging for a long moment. Slowly he pulls away from you looks down at you smiling.

“How’s school going?” he asks.

“Good I’m finishing up my general classes.”

He pulls away and reaches down to grab the handle of your suitcase. He hands you the sign with your name on it before he reaches for your free hand. Hand in hand he leads you out of the airport. He leads you over to the car he’s recently been driving.

The drive from the airport to Sam’s school isn’t too long. He takes your bag and leads you off to his dorm. He leads you off to his single dorm he has. It’s small but he says it works for him. The last time you spoke he mentioned getting an apartment in the summer and living off campus.

You sit down on the edge of Sam’s bed and smile. He seems so happy to finally have that normal life he’s always wanted.

“You can have my bed, and I’ll take the couch,” he says sitting down on the futon that sits opposite of his bed.

“What’s the plan for the night Sam?” you ask standing up. “Are you going to show me what life is like in California?”

He nods his head and smiles as he stands up.

He takes you on a tour of his campus and then you walk around town together. His arms is thrown over your shoulder holding you close to his strong body. Everything between you seems so perfect.

Walking into Sam’s favorite bookstore he watches you smiling as you search through the shelves of books. According to him you’re never happier than when you nose is buried in a book. He can’t say he’s wrong. You love reading more than anything.

You leave the bookstore and you can’t help but be in love with the beautiful California weather. For lunch Sam decides to take you to a local deli so you both can get sandwiches and you can have a picnic in the park together.

Sitting in the middle of the park you lay on you back staring up at the clouds. He lays down next to you and looks over at you smiling. You suddenly feel like a little kid again, laying in your backyard.

“So much in our lives have changed since we were little,” you say as you run your fingers through the grass.

“Some stuff has changed for the better and others not so much,” he says.

Glancing over at him you know he’s right, a lot of good has happened in your life, but there’s a lot of stuff you both wish you could change.

“So have you dated anyone since I left?” he asks. You can’t lie you had been waiting for him to ask about your dating life since you stepped off the plane.

Glancing back at him you say, “well I went on a few dates with this guy Jonas, but things didn’t play out as planned.”

He gives you a confused look as he knits his eyebrows together, “what does that mean?”

You suddenly feel embarrassed as you say, “so things were going good and we almost did it, and my dad walked in.”

Your cheeks burn bright red thinking about your father walking in on you making out with Jonas in nothing but your underwear.

Sam sits up quickly and looks at you with wide eyes, “excuse me what? Why would you even risk that if you knew your dad was home?”

You cover your eyes wishing you never said anything, “my dad was on a hunt, and he came home early.”

“Did your dad kill this Jonas guy?” Sam asks trying his hardest not to laugh at your completely embarrassing moment.

“No but he stopped seeing me because he was afraid of my dad,” you sigh uncovering your eyes.

“If I ask you something can you promise to not get mad at me?” he asks.

You narrow your eyes at him suddenly nervous for whatever he was going to ask you, “I guess.”

He bites his bottom lip as if he’s still wondering if he should ask whatever he wants to ask you. You grow more nervous by every single second.

“Are you still a virgin?” he asks hesitantly.

Slowly you nod feeling really embarrassed for some reason. There is absolutely no reason why you should feel embarrassed. You know that Sam would never judge you for never having sex.

“Why are you looking at me like you want to crawl in hole?”

“Because it feels so weird that you know this,” you groan as you sit up.

“You don’t need to feel embarrassed about this,” he reaches over and pushes a piece of hair behind your ear.

“Are you still a virgin?” you ask wanting to know.

You aren’t sure how you’ll feel if he tells you someone has touched Sam the way you have only dreamed of touching him.

He shakes his head silently and your stomach drops.

“Oh,” you say softly.

“Did you still want to be?” he asks sounding so unsure.

Silently you stare at him. You biting your bottom lip as you process what he just said to you. You’re fine with being a virgin. You could wait until marriage and it won’t bother you, but if your first time could be with Sam that’s a dream.

“No,” you say barely above a whisper.

“Would it be weird if I offered to help?” he asks with his cheeks flushing a shade of pink.

You shake your head as smile tugs on your lips.

“Did you want it to be me?” he reaches forward and rest his hand on your knee.

“Yes,” you say as you rest your hand on top of his. You want nothing more in the world for your first time to be with Sam.

“I don’t want you to feel like I’m putting you on the spot, you can say no,” he starting to ramble like he’s worried he said something wrong.

“I don’t think you’re putting me on the spot. I would really like for you to be my first,” you smile.

He stares at you for a long moment and butterflies start fluttering in your stomach.

“I’ll make sure it’s enjoyable for you, and I’ll take care of you,” he leans forward and presses his lips to your temple. Closing your eyes you take in the feeling of his gentle lips. You feel so safe with him, and you trust him with your life.

“Okay, I trust you,” you say and he automatically smile.

You spend the rest of the afternoon walking around the city together. He holds your hand keeping you close to him. The day is literally perfect with Sam. You can’t believe you haven’t seen him in so long.

As he takes you back to his dorm you start feeling nervous. You know he’s going to take care of you, and your first time is going to be special. He leans you into his dorm, and you can tell he seems more nervous than normal.

He releases your hand and moves so he’s standing in front of you. You reach up and rest your hand on his cheek you need to let him know that he means the world to you.

“I trust you so much, and I want you to know that I love you.”

“I love you too, and it means so much to me that you trust me,” he reaches up and removed your hand from his face.

You stare at each other for a long moment, and you know that things are going to be different from here on out.

Leaning forward he presses his lips to yours for your first kiss. His touch is electric as his hands gently hold your round face. Your hands are gripping his white t-shirt holding him close to you. You have kissed plenty of boys in the past, but none of them made you feel the way Sam was. Butterflies fluttered around your stomach as he pulls his lips away from yours slowly. A smile tugs at the corners of your mouth as you look up at your best friend.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a while,” he says softly.

Silently you nod your head unsure of what to say. He manages to leave you speechless with a simple kiss.

“I have missed you so much,” he says leaning down and presses his forehead to yours.

“I’ve missed you too.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks.

You nod and say, “yeah I trust you.”

“That means the world to me,” his thumb gently glides across your bottom lip.

Sam’s your everything, and you trust him with your life. It only seems right that he’ll be your first.

“Come here,” he reaches down and takes your hand leading your towards his bed.

When you made the choice to come to Stanford to see him you never expected for you to lose your virginity to Sam. You love him with all your heart and you would give him anything.

You sit down on the edge of his bed and he stands in front of you. He pulls off his shirt and your eyes automatically travel up and down his tone body. Standing up you reach up and trace his tattoo that is inked on his chest.

His eyes close as he lowers his head. You whisper his name and his hazel eyes open.

“I have one too,” you say stepping away from him.

You got it six months ago when your father requested you did to keep you safe. You reach for the bottom of your shirt and pull it off. You stand in front of him in your bra and feeling very exposed. If anyone else was standing in front of you, you wouldn’t feel comfortable with your round stomach being on display. The thing is that it’s not just anyone standing in front of you, it’s Sam. Your best friend and your everything.

He must sense yours nerves because he reaches forward and touches the ink that’s on your skin below your collarbone. His hazel eyes are on yours as he says, “you’re beautiful.”

Slowly you reach for his belt. Your hands shake slightly as your unbuckle his belt. You feel his eyes on yours as you unbutton his jeans. Pulling your hands away from him you look up at him feeling nervous.

He pushes his pants down his thighs leaving himself only in his boxers. He discards his pants and looks at you and asks, “may I?”

Slowly you nod. You need to be brave, and he’s going to take care of you.

His hands reach for the button on your jeans. As he unbuttons them he drops to your knees in front of you and pushes your jeans down you thick thighs. You’re left on in your bra and panties. You curse yourself for not wearing something a little sexier than your polka dot panties and yellow bra.

He looks up at you and his eyes seem to be filled with wonder. He you feel so safe with him, you weren’t sure why you waited this long for this to happen.

His fingers hooking into your panties and he pulls them gently down your thick thighs. Your eyes are locked on him as you hold your breath. Stepping out of your panties you stand there bare from the waist down only wearing your bra.

“Can I?” he asks looking up at you.

“You don’t have to ask for anything.”

Leaning forward he presses his lips to your mound. Closing your eyes you take in feeling of his lips on your skin. His fingers gently slide through your folds, and it’s not long before you’re putty in his hand. Soon you’re moaning his name and he pushes you over the edge for the first time.

He’s leave you a panting mess. He stands in front of you smiling.

Standing behind you he unclasp your bra and gently pushed the straps down. Standing there completely naked in front of him you want nothing more in the moment then to see his beautiful body on display. He steps in front of you and leans down to press his lips to yours for another soft kiss.

“May I?” you ask with a little smile

He nods and you reach for the band on his boxers. You push them down his thighs and his excitement is on full display for you.

“Are you ready?” he asks.

“Yes,” you step away from him and crawl onto his bed.

He reaches down and grabs his wallet from his jeans pocket. Opening his wallet he pulls out a foil packet he must of been storing in there. He tears the foil packet open and you watch with wide eyes as he slides the rubber down his length.

Slowly he crawls onto the bed so he hovering over you. You know what’s about to happen might be uncomfortable at first.

“Are you sure about this?” he asks.

You nod and say, “I want this.”

“Okay,” he says before slowly sliding into you.

The first sensation you feel is a stinging. You body isn’t used to having something down there. Especially something as big as him. He moved extremely slowly giving you a chance to adjust to his size. He bottoms out and stills completely. He’s hovering over you looking down at you with a worried expression. You know that he’s worried he’s hurting you.

“I’m okay,” you say reaching up and taking his face in your hands.

“You sure,” he says.

Nodding you smile at him. It might be slightly uncomfortable but it isn’t super painful. You knew there was no way Sam could or would ever hurt you. Pulling his face closer to yours you press your lips to his.

Your lips move together. You kiss him as if you’re trying to remind him that you need him. That you don’t actually exist without him. He is the sun and you’re moon, he’s your everything. Everything you’re feeling you’re too afraid to tell him.

“You can move,” you say with your lips ghosting his.

His thrust are slow and gentle. With each slow thrust the discomfort slowly starts disappearing. As you grow closer to the edge you never fully get there, before he comes moaning your name with his lips brushing yours. You’re not even upset you didn’t find your high. What just happened between you was so special. It’s perfect to you.

“I’m sorry you didn’t come,” he says as he holds you close to him.

“It’s my first time I didn’t expect to come.”

You can tell right away he’s worried you didn’t enjoy the whole time.

“Hey,” you reach up and rest your hand on his chest.

He looks up at you with sad eyes.

“That was perfect, you made me come before. I wouldn’t change anything about this.”

NOW

You tell the boys you need another beer. Walking off to the kitchen to get a beer you’re surprised when your phone vibrates. Pulling your phone from your jeans pocket you’re surprised to see a text from your mother. You haven’t talked to her in a couple months. It’s pretty unexpected for her to text you in the first place.

Opening the text you see it reads, “Hey honey I just wanted to let you know Kalen proposed. I’m getting married.”

Her text suddenly brought back a lot of your mixed emotions when it comes to your mother. You haven’t really ever forgiven her from walking away from you and your dad.

After she left you barely ever saw her. As a kid you used to spend one weekend a summer in Minnesota. As a teenager you stopped taking those trips when you turned fifteen.

She’s had little involvement in your life.

The fact that she was going to get remarried left you feeling strange. You weren’t even sure what to say to her. So you just slide your phone back in your pocket and try to act like you didn’t see her message.

Walking back into the library you had Sam a beer and try to act like hadn’t just received a text from your mother.

Sitting down next to him Sam can tell automatically something is up, he’s always been able to read you like an open book.

He reaches over and rest his hand on her knee and gently squeezes it. “Are you okay?” he ask.

You nod lying to him and yourself.

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