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honey-dewey · 3 years

Text

Buckle Bunny

Pairing: Jack ‘Whiskey’ Daniels/Reader

Word Count: 2,582

Warnings: None

Permanent Taglist: @phoenixhalliwell

You were bribed (AKA you lost a bet) into going to a local rodeo and being a Buckle Bunny. Unbeknownst to you, a mildly bored Jack Daniels is waiting in the crowd. Unbeknownst to Jack, the buckle bunny he’s smooth talking is a whole lot more than meets the eye.

“I am not wearing this!” You shouted, flinging the hat at your laughing best friend. “I am wearing my own hat.”

Elle, still doubled over with laughter, took the shitty hat from you, gesturing to Harmony to pass over your actual cowboy hat. You settled the brown hat on your head, sighing.

About a month ago, Elle had made a stupid bet with you, who could stomach one of Harmony’s ridiculously frilly pink drinks the longest. You’d puked first, and therefore lost the bet. Elle’s reward? She demanded you attend your next rodeo as a buckle bunny.

“I hate you,” you growled, wiggling in your tiny shorts. “This is embarrassing! I am competing today.”

“I told you that you can absolutely put on real clothes when you compete,” Elle said, handing you your boots. “But until then, I want you to get some numbers! Find you a nice sugar daddy or something.”

You reached behind you to smack a squealing Elle, Harmony almost falling off the bed with how much she was laughing.

“We’re gonna be late,” Harmony said finally, standing and saving Elle from your wrath. “Come on.”

The drive to the rodeo was quiet, with you sulking in the backseat. Buckle bunnies were often the bane of your existence, and now you had to pretend to be one.

The rodeo was, as expected, crowded. The fair was also in town, and between the rides and the rodeo, there were hundreds of people gathered in what was once an empty field.

“Just find a hot cowboy and go flirt relentlessly!” Elle said as she walked off to find the funnel cake. “Have fun!”

You gave her a middle finger, tried to pull your shorts down yet again, and headed off.

Wandering was easy. The fair and rodeo were your playground, and you knew every corner of the space, from the rigged games to the mildly unstable Ferris wheel.

“Well hey there little lady,” a voice drawled beside you as you finally decided to grab something to eat. “What’s a pretty thing like you doin’ all the way out here?”

Resisting the urge to gag, you turned, seeing an unfairly attractive man raising his eyebrows at you. He was stupidly good looking and dressed like a southerner, but not a full blooded cowboy. The hat looked authentic enough though.

“Oh,” you said, trying to act ditzy. “Just wanted to see what the commotion was. It’s so hot!”

The man grinned, taking off his sunglasses and revealing blazingly amazing brown eyes. In the sun, they looked whiskey gold. “Well, I’m Jack.”

You gave him your name, looking wistfully at the food truck. “I’m gonna grab a drink. You want somethin’?”

Jack shrugged. “Might as well.”

You two stood beside each other as the line moved up, until you were ordering your good luck charm, a shamrock green cup of shaved ice. It was margarita and spearmint flavored, aptly nicknamed the Mojito, despite not having a drop of alcohol.

Jack took a minute, but finally ordered a plain cherry cup of shaved ice. He beat you to the register, winking as he paid.

“I could’ve paid,” you pouted, taking a bite of your shaved ice and immediately feeling a reprieve from the blistering heat.

“You could’ve,” Jack agreed. “But you didn’t.”

Snorting in a likely unflattering way, you led Jack towards the rodeo portion of the field. “So. What’re you here for, cowboy?”

Jack smiled. “The rodeo, of course. Got the day off of work. Figured I’d relax the way my dad used to.”

You smiled. Jack was surprisingly more likable than you’d expected. You and him found a spot in the mostly empty bleachers around the rodeo ring and just talked. The metal of the bleachers burned your thighs, but you ignored it in favor of staring at Jack.

He was gentle with you, happily explaining rodeo terms you’d known since before you could walk. You pretended to be entirely clueless, keeping up the buckle bunny act. You’d almost told him about the dare, but then the thought of him seeing the supposedly dumb bunny getting a nearly perfect saddle bronc score was too good to pass up.

When an announcer called all the competitors to the tent, you jumped up, checking your watch. “Oh goodness, is that the time? My daddy’s gonna kill me!”

Jack chuckled, standing as well. “Sure you can’t stay? The show’s about to start.”

You shook your head. “Sorry cowboy, daddy’s super strict. See you!” You planted a kiss on his cheek and winked as you walked away.

Jogging to the competitor’s tent, you immediately checked in and detoured to the bathroom. Putting on proper pants, a button down shirt, a shamrock green vest, your belt and leg covers, and your spurs, you rushed out to join the other competitors, nodding to men you’d competed with all your life. This wasn’t a real competition, it was mostly just for fun and entertainment, so you weren’t worried about the competitors being nasty. In fact, some of them grinned and clapped your back in greeting, as if you’d been the best of friends for years.

Turning your attention to the blathering announcer, you tuned in just as he announced the saddle bronc. You were second to last, with only five people before you.

Those five people went and were judged loosely, and then they were leading you to the horse you’d be riding. It wasn’t your horse, no, your horse was waiting for the timed events. Saddle bronc was the only roughstock event you rode, and boy was it worth the risk.

Situating your spurs above the chestnut horse’s shoulders, you gripped the bronc rein tied to the horse’s bridle with one hand and secured your hat one last time with the other.

Just like that, a buzzer was sounding, and you were off, jolting around wildly as the chestnut tried to throw you off. But between your hand and your thighs, you weren’t going anywhere. The chestnut kept kicking, and you moved with him, back and forth and back and forth like a wave, your free hand occasionally touching your hat to keep it on your head, but it mostly stayed free, helping keep the balance. Your spurs dug into the chestnut’s shoulders and neck, just enough pressure to piss him off and keep him kicking, but not too much, lest you actually hurt the horse.

The chestnut whirled around, trying to throw you. You’d never ridden this horse before, but he was definitely a bucking horse, and knew as much about the job as you did.

Eventually, you were thrown from the chestnut’s back, hitting the dirt and rolling away from the horse so he didn’t hurt you.

You stood once it was safe, hearing cheers as you swept your hat from your head and bowed deeply, a triumphant grin on your face.

“And for competitor 6, a score of 90!”

It wasn’t your best, but you were extremely happy, bowing to the judges and walking off to go wait for the final competitor. As you waited, you looked over the events list. For the timed events, steer wrestling would be first, after the roughstock events finished. You didn’t compete in steer wrestling. Not because you couldn’t, but because, like the remaining two roughstock events, they were too rough on your body. You’d stick to the other events, thank you very much.

When the final competitor finished, they called everyone out to assess scores. A 90 was damn close to perfect, and if you were paying attention correctly, you’d won.

The small podium was painted with the traditional one, two, and three, and the announcer, a cowboy with a real buckle bunny by his side, began to announce scores.

Third place was a valiant 75. The buckle bunny placed the medal around his neck, grinning widely.

Second place was a damn good 85. He clapped your back as he jogged off to take his prize.

“In first place, competitor 6, with a score of 90!”

You walked to the podium, stepping up above the number one, bowing slightly so the buckle bunny could slip the medal around your neck. As you waved to the crowd, you put on your most natural smile and scanned the crowd for Jack, but it was too late. You were leaving to go wait out the rest of the events you weren’t in, unable to spot your mystery man.

Alone in the stables, you stroked down Lilac’s nose, humming to yourself. Lilac was your rodeo girl, speedy as hell and perfect when paired with you. She nudged into your shoulder, and you didn’t know it was a warning until you heard a voice behind you.

“And so it seems I was fooled.”

You turned, seeing Jack leaning against a wall.

“Shouldn’t you be watching the rodeo?” You asked. “I mean, that’s got to be more interesting than talking to a fake bunny.”

Jack shrugged. “Yeah, but I ain’t here to talk to a fake bunny. I’m here for the real rodeo rider. That was impressive. How long have you been competing?”

“Since I was able to ride,” you admitted. “My dad used to put on fake competitions for me to practice in when I was six. Been doing rodeo events ever since.”

“Huh.” Jack drew closer. “Are you the bettin’ kind?”

Smirking, you took a step closer to him, so you were basically chest to chest. “That depends. What’re the stakes?”

“My phone number.”

You were definitely interested. “What must I do to obtain said number?”

Flicking the brim of your hat, Jack began to walk away, calling out over his shoulder, “Win the rest of your events.”

You snorted. Even without something as interesting as Jack’s prize on the line, you’d still probably win your events.

That didn’t stop you from being nervous. By the time they were calling the barrel racers out, you were a ball of anxiety. Lilac nudged into you, snorting as you stroked her nose.

You were set to go second out of the five competing, watching the competitor before you grab a decent score. Swinging up into Lilac’s saddle, you took a deep breath. Decent was good. Perfect was better.

The buzzer went off, and so did Lilac. Swinging immediately to the right barrel, you kept control, turning her in a hairpin turn, your knee just barely grazing the barrel. It remained upright, and you moved on. Lilac was going top speed, tightly turning the next barrel, you atop her, sure this time would break your personal best.

The third barrel was the final one, and it was perfection. You cued perfectly, Lilac turned perfectly, and then it was over.

“Competitor 2 with a time of 15.7 seconds!”

You laughed, adrenaline and joy coursing through you. Your personal best had been stubbornly stuck at 16.1 for months, but this had just shattered it.

In the end, you won the event, immediately moving on to the tie down. The last event.

You were first, Lilac nervously prancing behind the barrier as they brought out a calf. You’d been told all your life tie down events were cruel, and you agreed to a certain degree. But the way this rodeo did it, you were secure in the knowledge that the calf wasn’t getting hurt today. Not without severe consequences.

The countdown began, and you fiddled with your lasso. It was a familiar feeling, and you adjusted it just right, hearing the countdown reach zero. The calf took off, and two seconds after it, so did you.

Your first throw of the lasso was successful, grabbing the calf as you sprung off Lilac and felt her back up, giving you a tighter rope. You moved forward, grabbing the calf and flanking it in one swift movement. You took the end of the lasso and tied an expertly precise and incredibly fast three bone cross, securing the calf and hopefully, your win.

Your time was called. A 9.3. Not a personal best, but pretty damn close considering your best was an even 9 seconds.

The next few riders averaged around a 10, with someone nabbing a neat 9.5 that made your heart pound. And then, the final competitor.

Your blood chilled. Jack, atop a beautiful black horse, sat behind the barrier, adjusting his lasso. Leaning against the fence, you didn’t even blink as his calf raced out, and right behind the calf, him.

Suddenly, your original speculation of him being southern but not a cowboy was gone. He was picture perfect in that saddle, the lasso in his hands moving as if it were alive. He was good. Too good.

As he walked away from the calf, the announcer called his time, and your heart almost stopped.

He’d scored a 9.2.

He’d bested you by a tenth of a second.

Accepting your second place medal was hard. Standing next to Jack, you felt a bit bad for feeling so jealous. Jealousy wasn’t your color, so maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe you were just disappointed.

After the show, you packed up your three medals, two golds and a silver, and gave Lilac a pat as you handed her off to the stable hands. Leaving the stable, you looked around for Elle and Harmony, eager to get some funnel cake and play around with the horribly rigged games before the fireworks.

“Hello darlin’.”

The drawl made you turn. Jack grinned at you from the barn, and you walked over to him.

“Congrats,” you said, nodding to his gold medal. “That was impressive riding.”

“All part of the job,” Jack said, shrugging it off. “Anyway, I believe you earned your prize.”

You were shocked. “I didn’t, actually. I got silver. You won the last event.”

Jack smiled. “Ah, but two golds beats one, doesn’t it?”

He pulled out a pen, and you let him scrawl his number onto your hand. As he pocketed the pen, he tipped his hat to you and turned in the direction of a woman with short hair and a neat white button up who was apparently waiting for him. “By the way, green looks good on you!”

Jack walked away, making a ‘call me’ gesture as he disappeared into the crowd.

“What was that?” Elle yelled as he jumped on you from behind. “He was cute!”

Harmony was a bit nicer, squealing and grabbing your hand. “Jack Daniels,” she read. “Oh hell no, that is not his actual name!”

You yanked you hand back, smiling and taking a picture of the number, just in case. “I want funnel cake.”

Promptly ignoring all the questions for the rest of the night, you tried not to think about the number until you fell onto your bed, hat securely tossed onto your lamp.

Finally, you called the number.

“Jack Daniels, what can I do for you?”

“Jack?”

“Bunny!”

You sighed. “Do not call me that.”

Jack chuckled. “Struck a nerve?”

“Just a small one.” You rolled over, trying to think of what to say. “So, I’ve got another rodeo soon.”

“Oh?”

You nodded, despite it being pointless. “Yeah. I’m a judge, and I’m allowed to bring a date.”

Jack paused. “Bunny, are you asking me on a date?”

“Maybe.”

Another pause, and then Jack laughed. “Consider it done bunny. On one condition.”

You smiled. “You never call me bunny ever again?”

“Nah,” Jack said. “Wear somethin’ green.”

Feeling giddy, you eagerly nodded. “Consider it done Mr. Daniels.”

#kingsman the golden circle #kingsman #agent whiskey #jack 'whiskey' daniels #agent whiskey x reader #agent whiskey x you #Pedro Pascal #My writing

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jetsandbennie · 5 years

Text

as both becomes all

summary: you’re pregnant and not with ben. it all feels like quite a lot to handle.

warnings: angst, fluff, smut (18+). female masturbation, female receiving oral, pregnancy

pairing: bodyguard!ben hardy x reader

word count: 13.1k

thank you so much for the positive feedback this little trilogy has gotten - i never expected that it would have gotten as popular as it did, and i’m so excited to be posting the final part of it!!

( gif creds to @ michaelscofieldx )

The tour ends abruptly.

Fans who were meant to be attending the last few shows are sent emails from your tour company, apologizing profusely, claiming that you had a health emergency that required you to not perform. And it’s true, of course, but you feel horrible. For nearly a week after you cancel the shows you’re getting angry tweets and DMs, people claiming it’s unprofessional.

News of you getting shot goes unnoticed. The first source came from DailyMail, and it was enough to make people assume it untrue. You don’t bother to correct it, because, after all, it is a rather private matter. And you need time to heal yourself.

So you make a few apology posts. A second email goes out with a $75 voucher for your merch, which is more than some of the tickets even were, but it seems reasonable. Sweatshirts and baseball caps and bracelets go out of stock within hours, and in a few days angry tweets change to ones of fans showing off what they’ve got.

You enjoy looking at them. Lying on the couch, head throbbing, your brightness so dim you have to squint to see what you’re scrolling through. You like a few, maybe type a comment, but eventually looking at your screen hurts your eyes even more. So you drop your phone onto your stomach, grumbling at your cousin to turn the lights down, and with a roll of her eyes she complies.

It’s been a painful week, and boring, as well. Your cousin comes over, the one who’d been watching your dog, and she talks to you for hours at a time. It’s easy to talk to her. It always has been, really.

“You know - this bodyguard, Ben -” and saying his name is just about painful. You swallow before continuing, pushing yourself up against the couch and swinging your legs over the edge. “We were a thing.”

She raises her eyebrows, looking up from her phone on the other side of the couch. Her eyes meet yours, narrowed in confusion, before nodding. “Well, I figured.”

“You -?”

“You talked to me about him a lot. And then not at all.” She leans over and rests her phone on the coffee table, hand stroking your dog in her lap. “Is it over?”

You haven’t told anyone. Intended to keep it a complete secret, hush hush, until you decided what to do. But you - you can’t - so you nod slowly, swallowing the lump in your throat, and mutter, “It’s over. He ended it. But there’s - I mean -”

“Mhm …”

“I’m pregnant.”

Saying it makes it so much real, and you draw your knees up to your chest. Rest your chin against them, shake your head slowly. And then you continue, “I’m pregnant, with his fucking baby, of course. And I don’t know what to do. I don’t -”

“Hey,” your cousin mutters, reaching over to grab your hands. There’s an instant flashback to the two of you as children, mere months apart, running through the park with your hands firmly clasped, and it’s some sort of comfort in this strange situation you’re forced in. “It’s okay. You know that. You’re gonna be fine.”

You roll your eyes without meaning to, and then you feel bad. “I just - it really doesn’t feel like I’m gonna be fine. This is a fucking problem.”

It’s something you can both agree with, at least. Your cousin raises her eyebrows, and then says, “Did you tell him?”

“Nope,” you respond, popping the p.

“You know you have to do that.”

“I don’t even know if I’m going to keep this thing. I don’t know.”

“He still has to know. Even if you decide not to keep it. He has to know.”

She’s fucking right. God, the asshole.

—————————

It takes a lot of Instagram stalking to figure out where Ben lives, and truthfully you’re a bit embarrassed by it. But you’d rather the internal embarrassment than the external type, by asking Ben where he lives, so you suffer in silence.

He doesn’t have an Instagram - statues generally don’t - but his best friend, Joe, does, and he posts religiously. At least three posts a week, and Ben takes up a lot of them. It makes your heart hurt, a bit, seeing Ben so beautifully carefree in some of these pictures -

A blurry shot of him and Joe on a boat -

A photo of him stuffing the largest cupcake you’ve ever seen into his mouth -

A video of the two of them doing the macarena at a party -

Because suddenly it feels like this is a whole new part of Ben, one you’ve never seen but Joe does. And the best friend is supposed to know more, you suppose, but you wish you could have stayed with Ben long enough to take silly videos and pictures with him.

It was all so secret.

When you scroll back down to 2016, there’s a group shot of four men - Ben and Joe among them and then two you don’t recognize - but their handles are tagged, and you click on the shorter stranger’s profile first (his name is just ramim, which, depending on what his name is, seems pretty straightforward.) It’s bare, two pictures and private, anyway, so you go back and click on the taller man’s profile. HIs username is gwilymlee, which is quite the name, and he has quite a few pictures.

Ben is in a few of them. Not enough, in your opinion, but you scroll down, eyes finding every picture with your blonde (ex?)bodyguard in them.

But then.

In 2016. A bright shot of Ben and Joe in front of an apartment building, the blonde holding a keyring with a positively overjoyed look on his face. It’s a building you know - one you’ve passed before - and you sit up just a bit straighter as you read the caption gwilymlee added.

New apartment for benny! Finally moved out of his parents’ basement!

Bingo!

You push your half eaten bowl of strawberries away from you, resting your elbows on the kitchen island and examining the picture more. You know where this fucking building is and you know how to get there and what if he is there? What if this is it?

Of course, there’s the chance that he doesn’t live there anymore. That he moved, perhaps. But there’s a feeling in your gut, the kind that feels like a handwritten letter from the universe herself, and you think it is his. His apartment, still. Think it might be fate. And you know you have to try to see if you’re right, at least.

Really, you try not to doll yourself up too much. You don’t want it to look like you put in effort to see him, but if you go looking like a total bum then perhaps he’ll think that the breakup destroyed you, and you can’t have that. So you settle - a pair of jeans and a hoodie - and a touch of makeup. Just enough, really. Then you punch the apartment building’s address into your maps and set off, positively determined and entirely too nervous.

In 23 minutes you’re there. Parked on the street outside, gazing up at the red brick building, with moss artistically climbing across the exterior walls - it’s positively beautiful and you’ve thought that since the first time you passed it. Always said it would be a dream to live here.

You press a hand to your stomach, over the soft cotton of your Billabong pullover. There’s nothing there. No movement. Not that you really expected there to be, but - well, maybe you thought the baby would be reacting to this life altering decision you’re going to discuss with Ben.

You’re stupid.

You climb out of your car, locking the doors before shoving the keys into your pocket, and slowly you walk up to the front doors, keeping your head down, gazing at the beige sidewalk beneath your feet. Your hands grasp the handle for the door - cold beneath your touch - and you pull it open, walking into the warm lobby of the apartment building.

There’s a mere receptionist at the desk, three couches, and an elevator, and you feel strangely claustrophobic in this space - but no, not claustrophobic, you don’t think. Maybe just uncomfortable. Ben has been here, once upon a time. Maybe today. Perhaps he has a friendship with this nice receptionist named Lola, or maybe he’s less partial to her.

You give her a smile and then a moment for her to recognize you, as always happens. And normally the moment of surprise bothers you, to an extent, but you appreciate it coming from Lola. Like watching her eyes widen, her lips part, and then she clears her throat and says, “Oh! Hi! What can I do for you?”

Freshly painted fingernails drum against her desk as you lean in, giving her a small smile before questioning in an ultra soft, sweet voice, “I was just wondering if you could tell me - I have a friend who I believe lives here. I thought, maybe, you could confirm the name for me?”

You’re not sure if this is against the rules for her to do, but Lola nods eagerly, dragging her fingers across her keyboard. “Of course! What’s her name?”

“Ben Jones,” you reply, watching her fingers fly across her keyboard. “He never really told me where he lived. And I really miss him.” It’s the truth but you don’t fucking know why you said it. To build a story, perhaps. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen him. Anyway, does he still live here?”

“Yes, he does,” Lola tells you, and your dumb heart skips a beat. “Unfortunately I can’t tell you what apartment he’s in, but -”

Whatever else she says goes unheard as the door opens again, and you turn around to look at who walked in -

“Oh!” your eyes widen and your cheeks heat up. “Joe. Hi.”

Joe is holding a bag filled with groceries - one of the fancy reusable ones from Wegmans that your mother always bugs you to use - and he looks only the smallest bit confused at you being there, in his best friend’s apartment building, but then he clears his throat and says, “Oh. Hi.”

Lola is forgotten as you take a deep breath before giving a smile to Joe. “Are you bringing those to Ben?” you question, nodding down at the groceries he’s holding.

“Yeah,” Joe nods, holding up the bag. “What are you doing here?”

“I was hoping to - um - visit Ben, actually.”

There’s a beat of silence. And then Joe clears his throat, turns to the receptionist and says, “Hi, Lola!”

“Hi, Joe,” Lola replies, and the absolutely uncomfortable situation is the tiniest bit rectified. “Going up to see Ben, I gather.”

“Yep.” Joe spares you a glance, walking to the elevator. “And I’m bringing her up with me.”

—————————

Ben’s apartment contains every ounce of personality that the man himself ever lacked - pictures on the walls, colorful furniture, a small dog jumping up on your thighs as Joe holds open the door for you to duck into. It’s small, you suppose, though nice - a small hall leads to the kitchen and living room, and it’s all open and nice, and you feel strangely choked up looking at it.

“What are you doing here?” Ben questions, drumming his fingers against his kitchen counter. You know the question, of course, is directed at you, and you can’t exactly explain it yet. Not with Joe here - unpacking the groceries he brought and setting them in their cabinets. It looks like he knows his way around the place, but considering he knew the receptionist by name - it isn’t shocking.

You brace your hands on the kitchen island and pull yourself up onto it, feet dangling as your eyes follow Joe’s path. “I’d love to tell you, really,” you begin, crossing your arms over your chest. Joe pauses in the middle of stuffing a second box of macaroni into a cabinet and meets your eyes, brows furrowed. You understand why Ben and Joe are friends, you think - they seem to balance each other out, in some sort of way. Joe is goofy where Ben seems to be serious. Opposites attract, you muse to yourself, in more ways than one. Ben just seems to be a magnet for the opposites. “Joe, would you be an absolute angel and mind giving us a few minutes alone?”

You’ll need more than a few minutes, but Joe doesn’t need to know that. Not right off the bat. You give him a smile and he sets the pasta down on the counter, giving Ben one final glance before making his way off down the hall. The front door opens and shuts and then your gaze snaps back to Ben, his hair messy with his sweatpants low on his hips, and you focus your eyes directly into his.

“Why are you here?” Ben asks again.

“You’re so blunt, Ben. Aren’t I allowed to visit you?” your voice is sweet and Ben sighs, rubbing his hand over his face. “Kidding. But, really, is it that much of a burden that I’m here?”

“It’s just -” he sighs slowly. “I don’t know.”

Your feet thumb against the island with every swing of your legs, cut short by the rhythmic bangs. “Alright, Benny. Something kind of bad is happening.” You pause. Gauge his reaction, and you can tell he’s trying to appear calmer than he is but his eyes give him away. “I wasn’t going to tell you, truthfully. And maybe that’s kind of fucked up, but I was planning on just handling it myself. But my cousin - I told you about her, I think - she told me I have to tell you, because otherwise that kind of makes me a bad person. Not in those words, of course, but the implication -”

Ben holds up a finger to silence you. “What is it, Y/N?”

Your heart beats hard against your chest, and your throat feels oddly dry, but you don’t want to give your nerves away. Not to him. And the worst he could do is - is reject you, not support you in your decision, whatever it is. But that wouldn’t be too different from not telling him at all, right? Which was the original plan. So you take a deep breath, and your feet thump thump thump against the island. “So, you remember when I was at the hospital.”

You’re only starting from that point to fuck with him. But he nods, crosses his arms, and you continue. “Well, the nurse had a - um - rather pressing health update to tell me about.”

In an instant, it seems, Ben is by your side, and you fight the urge to shift closer to him, so your thigh is touching his torso, but your eyes are slightly leveled when you turn and look at him.

“Are you okay?” he asks, voice rich with concern. “Are you sick, or -”

“Pregnant, actually.”

Watching his expression morph into a thousand different ones would be amusing if you weren’t slightly terrified of his response. But Ben goes from concerned to surprised, and then confused, and then he rolls his eyes and takes a step away from you.

“Oh, shut up,” he says, back to you, and your brows furrow in confusion. Ben turns back around, and his lips are spread into a humorless grin. “You’re not pregnant, Y/N.”

You press your palms against your thighs, exhaling a deep breath, and then you retort, “I promise, I am. Took three drugstore tests and made the hospital take another more official one. I was in denial, too, but I thought you should know. You know, being the dad and all.”

The last sentence - a metaphorical bomb dropped - sends Ben’s head flopping forward into his hands, and for a few minutes he doesn’t move. Just stands still, his face in his palms, and you sit atop of his kitchen island and wait.

Wait for him to get it together, you suppose. You need him to get it together, to talk to you about it, to maybe go outside and tell Joe that you guys are going to need a lot more time than a few minutes, because this conversation can’t be jammed into a time slot. It’s positively indefinite. And getting started on it - on decisions, decisions, decisions - can only occur when Ben fucking stands up and looks at you.

“I’m not too thrilled either, Benny.” it’s the only comforting words you can think of, and your feet still hit the island. It’s a nervous tick, you think. “I promise. But you’re - the dad - and this conversation has to happen. With you.”

“Oh, god,” is all Ben mutters in response, and then he moves his face up so that he’s looking at you - eyes peeking through his fingers, wide and bright. His face is oddly pale. “Please tell me you’re not kidding. Please. If you’re joking …”

“I’m not,” you promise, and then you hold your hand out to him. Stick your middle finger out. “Oops,” you mutter, replacing the middle finger with your pinky. “I swear. I swear I’m not kidding.”

Murmurs of oh god reach your ears, and you let your hand drop back down to the island. Your other hand presses over your stomach, just a comfort thing, and then you swallow. Watch him, still. Make out the way he reacts to this, because he seems just as shocked as you were.

At least he’s not hearing it from a nurse he’s never met five minutes after being broken up with and after being shot, you think, but that hardly seems fair.

Slowly you push yourself off of the island and take a step closer to Ben, reaching out to wrap an arm around his shoulder. He doesn’t push you away and then you envelope him in a warm embrace, and he doesn’t necessarily reciprocate - too busy covering his face - but perhaps he feels comforted.

You do, at least.

“Hey.” you pull away and press your hands to his cheeks, pulling his head up. “Can we talk about this, Ben? Seriously?” He nods slowly, and his eyes look the tiniest bit watery. You hate to focus on it. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Okay,” Ben says, and you furrow your eyebrows at the complete non-response. Then he drops his hands to his side, sighing, and then he grabs your wrist. It isn’t your hand but it’s close, and you hate the way your heart rolls in your chest at the feeling. The thump thump thump you still hear is no longer your feet but your heart, beat beat beating inside your body. “You know I’ll support you no matter what.”

And because you did know this - did know he’s a decent man - you smile slightly and reply, “I know.” You’d thank him but it hardly seems like an extraordinary sentiment. More like something he’s supposed to do. But men were unpredictable, really, because when your best friend had a pregnancy scare in high school, her boyfriend said that he’d never talk to her again if she didn’t get rid of it.

She wasn’t even pregnant. So you push down your pride and cough dryly. “Uh - thank you.”

Ben takes his bottom lip in between his teeth, gnawing on the soft pink skin, and you open your mouth to speak again when the apartment door opens again - you jump, turning to look at who walked in, and Joe pops his head into the kitchen.

“Are we done talking?” Joe asks, as if the incredibly intense conversation you’re having with Ben involves him at all. But he’s nice. You appreciate him, even if you hardly know him.

“It’s gonna be a while, Joey.” Ben motions for Joe to leave, and the ginger sighs, then gives the pair of you a smile. Perhaps he’s noticed your close proximity to each other. Maybe he thinks you’re getting back together - maybe he wants you to. Or maybe he’s just a friendly person.

Joe leaves, and you turn back to Ben.

“Look, sweetheart,” Ben begins, and the nickname forces your eyes to the floor. You don’t want him to see what that name still does to you. He can’t see the heat in your cheeks - the softness in your eyes. “Do you know what you want to do?”

There’s a pause. Then Ben adds, “Because - I mean - I’ll pay for any procedures. If that’s what you want to do.”

The language makes you cringe a little, and you take a few steps back so you’re leaning against the counter. Procedures. It’s certainly a possibility, and outweighing the other option at the present moment, but you hate - well - thinking about it. You nod slowly. “I’m not sure. I’m not sure what I want to do. I mean, it’s a fucking - a fucking baby, Ben. And I’m doing pretty well now, career-wise. I can hardly take a break to care for a baby. And you’re -”

But you don’t want to finish that last sentence. Don’t want to tell Ben what you’re thinking.

“What? What am I?” His voice isn’t rude, really, as if he suspects you were going to say something completely horrible, and you appreciate him for it.

“Not with me, I guess. I mean, doesn’t having split up parents constitute as a broken household? I don’t want to raise a baby in a broken household.”

Ben shakes his head. “You know I wouldn’t make you raise our kid on your own.”

“I know that, but -”

“I don’t think it’s a broken household, then.” he shakes his head, blonde hair swaying from side to side. “They’d be loved by both their parents, if you decide to keep them.”

You drum your nails against the marble island. “It doesn’t have to be broken at all, though.” And this is where you need to shut the hell up, but you can’t stop. “If I - we - whatever - decide to keep the baby, why couldn’t we raise it together? Together?”

Ben brings his thumb into his mouth, nibbling at his nail, and it takes him a moment to reply. Perhaps he’s wary of this subject. Has to choose his words carefully. “You don’t understand.”

“Explain it to me.”

“This isn’t the time.”

“It’s as good a time as any. Let’s get all the painful conversations out of the way now.”

You think you should’ve kept your mouth shut, actually. But you’re going and going, and you can’t stop now. You need to hear what he has to say - hear it for yourself. Why have you been agonizing over this? The baby, the break up? You deserve some sort of closure, and he’s in the place to give it to you.

“I couldn’t protect you,” Ben speaks slowly, tongue darting out to run along his bottom lip. “And that scares the shit out of me, you know? Because I’m supposed to protect you. That’s my job.”

“Ben,” you interrupt. “That had nothing to do with being involved with me.” You hesitate. “Do you want to be with me?”

He opens his mouth immediately and then shuts it. Finally he clears his throat and says, “Yeah. I do. I really, really do. But I want to keep you safe more. And it’s hard when I’m - I’m distracted.”

It all sounds so fucking stupid. “You know, there were, like, a thousand guys who sent in applications to be my bodyguard.”

Ben raises his eyebrows. “Really? A thousand guys who wouldn’t have let you get shot in a fucking 7/11?”

“You didn’t let me, you know.” But that hardly seems the point of bringing the other applicants up. “You don’t have to be my bodyguard, Benny. If that’s really what’s stopping this from happening.”

There’s a heavy pause. The air feels thick around you, warm and constricting, and you shift slightly. You are entirely too hot, and you aren’t really sure why. It was so cold outside. Too cold, really. And you want to strip down to the bare dressing essentials right now.

Ben shakes his head, and a small, humorless smile tugs at his lips. “Let’s focus on the baby for now, yeah?”

—————————

Tomato sauce. Gnocchi. Sourdough bread.

It’s only three things, so you rolled your eyes when your cousin tried to write it down for you. I’m not an idiot, you know, you told her, and you’re still holding that sentiment strong in your mind.

You hate cooking, really. Your cousin, though, is a chef so she both loves and excels at it, and whenever she visits, she’s in charge of cooking duty. But you, though - you have to get the groceries and clean up and do the dishes. It’s an even price to pay for a good meal.

You have the pasta and the bread - perfectly firm, as your cousin told you - but the tomato sauces are a bit more tricky. Your cousin gets a specific brand, and she told you it so many times before you left the house but you can’t remember. God. You probably should’ve written it down. Your brain can’t handle all three things, apparently, and if that isn’t embarrassing.

u can’t already have pregnancy brain, your cousin replies when you text her asking for the brand confirmation. like ur barely pregnant. get it tf together.

look it isn’t my fault.

should i blame ben?

You shut off your phone and throw it into your basket. Well, fuck her. Pregnancy brain. Is that even a real thing? You feel just as smart - or not - as you were before you got pregnant.

You’ll just grab a random brand. If she gets mad at you for it then you’ll just throw it back at her for making fun of your pregnancy brain. But looking at all of the plastic containers full of bright red sauce, you can’t determine which is even the best to buy. And you could look at all of the brands but that’s so much work.

So you grab Prego. Just to give your cousin a little laugh.

Even looking at the word, though, makes you a bit nervous. Because you - haven’t really thought about what to do with the pregnancy. And you’ve talked to Ben since then but they’ve done little to make your mind up. Dropping the Prego sauce into your basket, you turn and make your way to the checkout, mind returning to the overdriven state it hardly seems to leave.

Sometimes you wish you could just get a break. Go back to before you knew about this. To when you still had Ben and not a care in the world, unaware of the baby, unaware of the impending bullet and breakup.

Time travel doesn’t exist. You can’t go back. Only forward. And that’s fine. You like to think everything will work out in the end, anyway.

Aisle number 5 has the least people while still being open. Giant never has open aisles so it’s between 5 and 9, and there’s a line at 9. Only one woman at 5, pushing a cart full of snacks, and in the cart is -

“Well, hi, cutie.”

Your voice has morphed into an ultra sweet, soft voice that’s reserved for your baby nieces and nephews and little cousins, and the small, pale baby sitting in the cart seems to enjoy it. She looks up at you with a smile, mouth containing one growing-in baby tooth, and her baby blue eyes are wide.

“Her name is Ella,” her mom says to you from where she’s standing, placing her groceries into the same reusable bag that Joe used for Ben. (Kind of makes you feel like shit for not using that bag, but whatever.) Her hair is dark, tied into a ponytail, but her eyes have the same bright blue hue of her daughter. “Ella Grace, legally, but we all call her Ella.” Then the woman’s eyes meet yours, and a slow smile spreads across her face. “I know you, I think. Are you famous?”

Heat spreads through your cheeks, and you smile a little. Poke Ella Grace’s cheeks. “Um, kind of. I don’t know.”

“You’re modest,” Ella Grace’s mom says, pausing in the middle of stuffing a third bag of Lays potato chips into her bag. “My stepdaughter has a poster of yours in her room.”

“Oh,” you murmur, moving your hands in front of your eyes and then waiting a few seconds before pulling away. “Peek-a-boo!” You watch as Ella’s face lights up, and then she giggles loudly. “You’re such a sweetie, aren’t you, Miss Ella?”

Her mom grins at you, setting her bag in her cart. “She’s a sweetie now, but when no one else is around she’s a demon.” She maneuvers her way to the front of her cart and leans down to kiss the top of Ella’s head, and the baby gurgles in response. “You’re such a natural. Has anyone told you that before?”

Your stomach flips dramatically, and you swallow slowly. Begin setting your groceries onto the conveyor, and they move towards the entirely-unbothered cashier slowly. “No, haven’t really heard that before.”

“Well, you definitely are.” She begins pushing her cart away, and small pale fists reach out to grab the air near you. “See? Ella loves you.” The woman pauses and turns back to look at you. “My stepdaughter will never believe it. Really, she won’t.”

“Tell her I love her,” you hear yourself saying, but you’re not focused on it. Feel clammy and cold, all of a sudden. The woman bids farewell and leaves, and you shakily pull out $30 from your wallet and hand it to the cashier. Your total is less than $20 but the guy looks like he could use the extra cash, and you can’t stand to watch him pick out your change. You just grab your plastic bag, give him a smile, and walk as fast as you can out to the parking lot.

A car passes you - a black Toyota. The woman, Ella’s mom, waves at you from the driver’s seat, and you grin at her. As soon as she passes the smile melts off your face, and you grab your keys from the pocket of your windbreaker and unlock your car door as fast as you can.

When you’re in your car, heat turned up as high as it can go - for wind and for white noise - you let your head fall against the seat, a tear trickling its way down your cheek. You sniffle pathetically, bringing your wrist up to wipe away the evidence of your stress and sadness and anger - and all you can think about is Ella.

You’re a natural.

You reach into your pocket, where you’d stuffed your phone before ditching your basket, and unlock it with shaky fingers. Hot air surrounds you and it’s just about suffocating, but you’re unbothered. Just open up your text messages, look at your eighth most recent - simply named benny - and type out a text as fast as you can manage.

i’m keeping the baby. i have to.

And the response is lightning fast, as if Ben had been waiting for your text.

You know I’ll support you no matter what.

I love you more than anything.

And your fingers fly across the screen as you type your reply.

you know i do too.

Then, can i come over? really quick.

You’re always welcome here.

—————————

When Ben answers the door you get barely a moment to look at him before you’re being smushed into his chest, his arms tight around you, and it feels like home.

Your eyes are watery and the tears stain his light grey t-shirt, and you throw your arms around his torso. Squeezing him so tight it feels like he could burst and being in his arms is so great. God, you never want to leave. Never mind your cousin waiting for you or the things you have to do in life. You want to stay forever.

“You’re okay,” Ben mumbles, resting his chin on top of your head. His hand rubs circles into your back, slow and smooth. “It’s all going to be fine, alright? We’re gonna be parents.”

“I know,” you choke out, hiccuping. “I can’t - I have to keep it, Benny.”

His lips press against your head and then he pulls away, placing his hands on your arms to steady you, and you bring your wrist up to wipe at your eyes. “Alright.” And you can tell he’s struggling with what to say - you are, too - so he moves his hands down your arms. Grabs your hands, and his palms are warm and soft. “I’ll support you until the end of time, sweetheart.”

Another tear slips down your cheek but you refuse to move your hands first - squeeze his tighter, really. Then you clear your throat, mumble, “Sorry for showing up.” Because - really - it’s getting later, now, nearly 7. And you don’t consider that late by anyone’s standards, but what if he was getting ready for bed? Or preparing to go out with Joe and those other two guys on Instagram? “Didn’t mean to ruin your night.”

Ben smiles humorlessly. “I wasn’t doing anything. Just watching a movie, probably.” His eyes fall down to your joined hands, as if he’s just realized the physical connection between the two of you. You prepare for him to drop your hands, fast and sharp as if they burned him, but he doesn’t. Just squeezes tighter. “Is your cousin waiting for you?”

“How did you know I’m going home to my cousin?”

“You’re always going home to your cousin.” His face is a shade too red and his eyes look watery, and you feel slightly bad. “You talked about her a lot.”

On tour is the forgotten next part of that sentence. You don’t, surprisingly, want to think about your time with him now. Just want to focus on this.

Stay in the present, you think. The future, maybe. But not the past. It’s all you can do to move on from there, with this fucking baby and - and Ben.

—————————

i’m giving you a hypothetical situation here.

After sending the text to Ben, you rest your phone on the couch in front of you. Your house feels too empty, the lack of people you live full-time with suddenly overwhelming - your cousin is over a lot and so are some friends but, really, you just have your dog besides that. And he’s lazy, constantly wanting to lie on top of you and nap.

You’d been fine with that before, but at 15 weeks pregnant you’ve started pushing him off of you when he tries to rest in your lap. Your stomach is beginning to show, a small bump that goes unnoticed when you wear baggy clothes. You’re always hyper-aware of it, though. Worried that your dog will hurt the baby.

So your dog is ignoring you, now. Offended that you won’t let him stretch out over your body for hours at a time.

It just makes the loneliness worse. Even if you have a person attached to you at all times.

Alright. Hypothetical situation. Go.

if i was extremely desperate for nutella, and i was all out of nutella, would you get me some and bring it to my house?

A text bubble appears right away, indicating that he’s typing, and then it goes away.

Haha.

I can bring you nutella.

Wait, this is hypothetical, isn’t it?

it doesn’t have to be!! my address is 2275 sawyer street.

You throw your phone onto the couch with a grin, settling back against it with your eyes on the TV. Pretty Woman plays, a favorite movie of yours, and you hate not paying attention to it.

Even if you can recite every line by heart.

What if, by chance, you notice something new about the movie you’ve watched a hundred times? You can never be so sure.

After 10 minutes your phone rings, and it’s Ben - you let it play out for a few seconds and then answer it, pressing the phone to your ear.

“Hello?” Ben says, and you can hear rain softly pattering, both through the phone and from the outside. “Hey, I’m driving around your neighborhood, and I have no fucking idea how to get to your house.”

You smile slightly. “There’s a pretty long driveway.”

“Yeah, but where does it start?”

You sit up, put the phone on speaker, and lean over to rest it on the coffee table. “Look, I know exactly where you are, because everyone gets caught up in the same area.”

He pauses. “Seems like a confusing house to have.”

“Well, it’s more private, you know?”

“Private, secret, whatever. Just tell me how to get there.”

“Alright, so …”

After a minute of explaining exactly how to find your house - an explanation you’ve given more times than you can count - Ben hangs up with the promise of arriving in less than 2 minutes, and you push yourself up off the couch. Reach for the remote and pause your movie, and then you head down the hall towards the front door.

There’s a knock after a couple of seconds and you lean your head close to the door, calling out in a mocking, sing-song voice, “Who is it?”

There’s laughter from the other side. “I have your Nutella.”

You unlock the door and swing it open, coming face to face with Ben. In his hands is a plastic grocery bag, and through the sheer material you can see the Nutella label, staring you right in the face.

“God, Benny, you’re an angel.” you grab the bag and peek inside - three fucking containers of it, and you can nearly moan at the sight. “You know, I’d hate to be doing this with anyone else. I can’t think of a single person who would go out and get me Nutella at 9 at night, but here you are.”

“You can count on me, sweetheart,” Ben tells you, and you take a step backwards into the foyer. He lingers outside, a hand braced on the doorframe. “You know, your house is pretty big.”

You shrug. “I’d call it average size.”

“Always so modest.”

You look up, eyes meeting his, and then a smile spreads across your face. “You can come in, you know. I wasn’t planning on having this be a drop-off situation, but if you wanna go, then …”

Ben is inside before you finish the offer, shutting the door behind him and blowing warm air into his palms. You pad off back down the hall and into the living room, Pretty Woman paused right on the scene where Vivian is going shopping for clothes and gets kicked out of a store. Your favourite in the movie, really - though it does tend to make you quite sad, and even more when you watch it now.

“Hey, turn around real quick.”

At Ben’s voice you pause and then turn, brows furrowed. “What -”

“I didn’t realize you were starting to show.”

You look down at your stomach, the tiny swell of the baby clear in your tight tank top. “Oh. Guess I am.” Pause. “Barely, though. Soon I’ll grow more, probably too much, really.”

“Yeah, probably,” Ben replies as you turn back again to the living room. You throw the bag onto the couch and then flop onto the cushions, sinking into it. “When did that start?”

“A week or two ago.” You pause as Ben leans against the wall, watching as you dig through the bag to grab one of the containers of Nutella. “Believe me here, Benny. You weren’t purposely left out of the loop. My cousin said I have pregnancy brain already, but I don’t think that even exists. Can you grab a spoon from the kitchen? I swear, I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass here.”

Ben dutifully turns towards the kitchen and returns a minute later. He sits next to you and then hands over the metal spoon, and you untwist the top of one of the Nutella containers and dig the spoon into the sweet snack.

There’s a moment of silence - broken only by the movie - and then Ben says, “I wanna know about these kind of things, Y/N.”

You look at him, lapping the Nutella off the spoon. Your brows furrow - truthfully you hadn’t thought it was a very big deal, starting to show. It just seemed like something that was bound to happen. Nothing special. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Ben tells you. He stretches his arm over the back of the couch, eyes on the television screen. “I just want to hear about the pregnancy. Developments and everything.”

“Alright.” you hesitate, digging your spoon back into the Nutella jar. “I mean - I am sorry. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal, that’s all.”

“I mean, it isn’t, really. It’s just important to me.”

There’s an easy fix for this, you want to say. What if we move in together? What if we get together? You’d probably notice the bump before I do, Benny.

Ben looks at you and then moves his arm so it’s around your shoulders, and you practically melt into his touch. “I didn’t mean to make you feel shitty about it, you know,” he tells you.

You shake your head, curls brushing his nose as your head moves. “I don’t feel shitty. I’ll tell you about everything. Promise. Even when I wake up in the middle of the night and vomit my guts out into the toilet.”

He nods slowly, fingertips tickling the side of your arm. You take another spoonful of Nutella, pressing your head against his shoulder and trying to pay attention to the movie, but it’s hard, now. Because this feels quite a lot like cuddling, and it messes with your emotions quite a bit for Ben to be instigating cuddling with you. But after a moment Ben urns to look at you with a small grin tugging at his lips. “Now, how often does that happen? Should I be concerned?”

—————————

“How much money are you putting into the betting pool?”

Ben rolls his eyes, shutting the pamphlet he’d been reading and shoving it into his pocket. He has a stack of them shoved into the pocket of his sweatshirt - the waiting room had a variety of them and Ben took one of each.

He leans close, mouth right by your ear. He’s standing beside the table you’re seated on, his hand braced beside you. There’s no one else in the room with you but he still keeps his voice down, as if he’s wary of the doctor coming in and hearing your conversation. “I’m not putting money into guessing the baby’s gender, Y/N.” The last syllable of your name breaks off into a laugh, and you throw your head back with a giggle.

“Alright, alright. I’m just saying, Benny, I know it’s a girl.” you lower your voice, reaching into his sweatshirt pocket to grab one of the pamphlets. You unfold it and hold it in front of your face, and Ben bursts into laughter. “Shut up! Nothing’s funny!”

Ben rests his head against your shoulder, and you lean towards him, pressing your bodies impossibly closer despite the barrier between your seats. “And I know it’s a boy. I can feel it.” As a point he reaches in and presses his hand against your 20 week stomach. “See? That’s a boy.”

“That’s a girl.”

“This is why I want to make a bet.”

“And I refuse to bet on what sex my baby is gonna be.”

You cross your arms and huff pointedly. Ben picks his pamphlet back up and traces his finger along the page. You reach behind you and pull your phone out of your pocket, opening up Instagram. You have notifications - the result of a selfie posted earlier that’s already reached 700,000 likes - and you scroll through your homepage absentmindedly. Angry tweets and Instagram callouts have subsided dramatically in the past few months and you’ve been on your merch team to get all of the products out in record-breaking time - makes it so that people can’t get mad at you for it anymore.

Or, they can, but most people consider it unreasonable.

The door opens abruptly, and you shove your phone back into your back pocket, sending the doctor a wide grin. “Hello, Dr. Green!” you chirp, voice unnaturally high, and you pray that’s the correct name.

“Hello, Y/N. Ben.” Dr. Green is a sweet lady, short with dark hair, and she always seems happy. You appreciate it - appreciate the enthusiasm at your pregnancy. Her excitement at every new development marks the difference between a good doctor and a great one, you think. “It’s just a routine checkup - you know the drill by now, right?”

You and Ben nod in unison, and you reach for his hand on the table. He takes it, intertwining your fingers, and Dr. Green smiles at the pair of you.

You lie back onto the table, pulling your shirt up over your stomach as Dr. Green spreads some of the gel over your bump - it’s always cold, no matter how prepared you pretend to be for it. It’s always a surprise. Your eyes turn to the screen, your thumb rubbing the back of Ben’s hand, and you squint at the screen until you can make out the vague shape of your baby. And it’s -

Overwhelming.

Previously it had been hard to really make out the baby but now you can see it, make out its features. And it seems real.

LIke it’s really happening.

Dr. Green points at different parts of the screen, a manicured nail tapping against the hard surface. “You can see the eyes, here - look, this is the head. You see?”

Your eyes go glassy as you gaze at the screen, squeezing Ben’s hand. “Yeah. There he is, Benny,” you grin, looking up at Ben, and he rolls his eyes.

“She. There she is.”

Dr. Green’s eyes dart between you two, and then she asks, “Would you two like to know the baby’s sex? We’re far enough along that we can tell, and the baby appears to be in the right position.”

Ben says, “Oh, we definitely do,” at the same time as you nod furiously, hair swaying with every movement of your head. “Please,” you tell the doctor, pushing yourself onto your elbows to look at the screen. “We’ve kind of been fighting about it.”

The doctor smiles, raising her eyebrows. “I heard,” she murmurs. “Are you putting money on it?”

You turn and mockingly glare at Ben. “I wanted to, but Benny here thought it was immoral, or something.”

“Because it is,” Ben argues, “I don’t want to win money because of what sex my baby is.”

Then Dr. Green asks, “So, Ben, you think it’s a girl, correct?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, then, if this were a bet, I’d have to say that you -” Dr. Green moves the probe around your stomach, and then points again at the screen. You squint to see what you’re meant to be looking at. “You, Ben, would be winning money.”

It takes you a moment to process what she said, and your eyes widen.

Rewind. What?

You glance up at Ben, and you find that your vision is blurry as you look at him - from what?

Are those tears?

“Oh, my god,” Ben breathes, eyes fixed on the screen, and then he collapses into the chair beside your bed. “Oh my god.”

“Are you serious?” your mouth falls as you stare at Dr. Green, a smile spread across her face. “It’s a girl? You’re serious?”

“I’m 100% serious. You two are going to have a baby girl.”

Ben pulls your intertwined hands up to his face, pressing his lips to the back of your hand before losing it - his face drops and you can make out tears falling down his cheeks. You laugh a bit, leaning over and trying to wrap your arm around him, but it’s a bit difficult.

After a moment Ben looks up at you, and his face is red, eyes watery. “Oh my god, Y/N. We’re going to have a daughter.”

You look back up at the screen, hiccuping and giggling at the same time. “I know. A baby girl. I mean, you’re positive, right?” The last part is directed at the doctor, and she grins as she nods. “Holy shit. Holy shit.” You reach up and press your hand against the screen, as if it’s the equivalent of touching your daughter in real time. “Can we have copies of this?”

You’re positive you’ll never be able to capture the emotions you’re feeling now ever again, but having copies of it - well, it’ll be the perfect way to remember it. And when Dr. Green prints you two copies of the sonogram (and then a third and a fourth, for Joe and your cousin, you tell her, because Ben has been rendered incapable of speaking) you clutch it in your hands, eyes unable to leave the blurry picture of your daughter inside of you.

—————————

You gave Ben a key to your house the week you found out the baby’s sex.

And it really did seem like a great idea. You gave it to him and then marked it with a small, pink, heart shaped sticker, and Ben made a show of hooking it onto the same keyring he has his apartment key on.

In turn he gave you the key to his apartment. You put it in your pocket and have since lost it, but he doesn’t know that.

Now, though - giving him a key has started to seem like a really horrible idea.

Your fingers tweak at your nipples, peaked in the cool air of your bedroom - the window is open, sending the early morning breeze straight into your room. Your other hand works at your cunt, pumping one finger in and out of yourself, palm of your head rubbing against your sensitive clit.

Soft moans are like a mantra off your lips, and you squeeze your eyes shut. If you think hard enough, work your mind enough, you can trick yourself into imagining that your fingers aren’t your own.

Ben’s are larger, you decide. You add another finger to the one that’s fucking into your pussy, and you let out a louder cry at the feeling. When you curl your fingers just right - the way Ben knows how to, better than anyone you’ve ever been with - it brushes against your G-spot.

Ben was a master at finding it. You’re even better.

Your back arches up, and you bring your hand from your tits down to your pussy. Your two fingers rub desperate circles into your clit, and you swallow a mouthful of air.

“Fuck,” you hiss, tilting your head back into your entirely-too-soft pillow. And your mind goes back to the man you wish were here with you - the one you want, the one whose fingers you’re desperate for - and you cry out, “Fuck, Ben -”

“Fuck.”

The voice isn’t yours, and you sit up, panic flashing through your mind - bright red sirens, blaring around your mind, and you pull your sheets up over your body, naked except for your panties.

And - Ben is there. His cock is straining against his sweatpants, and in between his two fingers is the pink heart decorated key you gave him.

“Oh my god.” your voice is soft and you swallow thickly. “Ben. Hi.”

“I didn’t know you -”

“I’m fucking sorry -”

“Don’t be, I walked in -”

You squeeze your eyes shut and lean your head back, feeling a prickling behind your eyes - you’re needy and embarrassed and you have an unbelievable urge to rip Ben’s clothes off, because he’s so fucking hard and you were almost there.

You almost came from the thought of him.

“Ben,” you interrupt him, and he leans against the door, pushing his keys into the pocket of his sweatpants. “Ben, I’m really fucking - horny.”

He hesitates. “I see.”

“And I really, really miss you. And your - appendages.” You push yourself up so you’re kneeling, sheets falling down over your chest, stopping just above your stomach. “Please. Benny, please.”

“Sweetheart -”

“Please. Oh my god, Ben, I fucking need you.” you clasp your hands together as if you’re begging, and in a way you certainly are.

You can see Ben’s mind whirring - your eyes pointedly trail down to the bulge in his sweatpants, and then back up to his eyes, and then Ben lunges at you.

His lips meet yours and it’s frantic - desperate - everything you’ve been missing for the past six months, nearly. Your hands tangle in his hair and pull him down to you, and eventually the two of you lie on your sides, mouths not moving from each other’s.

It’s different, completely different, from how it was. His hand goes to your stomach, resting on top of the bump as his lips move against yours. You whimper into his mouth, and Ben groans as your hand trails down to the bulge in his sweatpants.

“Oh, fuck, sweetheart,” Ben grunts as your nails drag across his boner. “Six fucking months I’ve been wanting this, you know that?”

You pull away, attaching your lips to the underside of his jaw. “You know you could have had me. I was fucking desperate for you, Benny.”

“Mmm, well … I figured.”

You move your head away from him, furrowing your brows. “Awfully conceited.”

“What to Expect When You’re Expecting said that a lot of women have spiked sexual libidos during pregnancy.” You push Ben onto his back and throw a leg over his thigh, straddling his waist, your panty clad cunt pressed against his dick. “And - oh, fuck. I’ve missed this, sweetheart.”

You try not to wear your emotions on your sleeve but it’s hard - your heart swells and your cheeks heat up, and then you rock your hips against his once.

Try not to let him know how much you’ve missed this.

The pair of you have all the time in the world, really, but you can’t move fast enough. You grind your cunt against his rock hard erection, desperate for him to be inside of you, to be full of him again and he hisses, hand trailing behind you to land one firm smack on your ass. He grins as you yelp at the sensation.

Ben reaches down and tugs your underwear away, and your hands go to the ties of his sweatpants, undoing the small knot with deft, shaking fingers. You tug his pants down over his cock and it’s - it’s so much bigger than you remember.

He’s achingly hard, his cock swollen and purple at the tip, and when you wrap your hand around the base he lets out a soul-wrenching moan. His hands go to your hips, massaging your sides as you adjust yourself so you��re sitting just above his cock, positioning yourself above him before sinking down.

“Oh, fuck!”

He is bigger than you remembered, and it just about fucking hurts, having him inside of you. You throw your head back and cry out, feeling breathtakingly full after months of only your fingers. Ben moans loudly, fingernails digging into your sides, and you’re sure it’s just as surprising for him as it is for you.

“You’re so fucking tight. Oh my - god.” Ben’s face is coated in sweat and you bring your hands down to his cheeks, wiping some of it away before leaning down to kiss him sloppily. “Feel so good around me. I fucking missed this, sweetheart.”

“I missed it - I missed you,” you breathe. And you’ve seen him so much, still, in these past months, but it’s different. You know it is. Being around him and being with him are two separate planes of existence and you’ve been stuck on the former for six fucking months. 24 weeks. “I needed you so bad.”

Ben’s hands on your hips help you work your way up and down, and you just want to lie down and let him fuck you but that’s - not necessarily a possibility, now. Not with your girl inside of you, restricting your movement in that way.

(You wouldn’t give her up for the world.)

His thumb presses into your clit, rubbing circles into it with an achingly slow pace as you try to maintain steady rhythm, bouncing up and down, rock n’ rolling your hips against his. You brace your hands on his chest for leverage, lifting yourself up off of him and then back down, and with every movement, mixed with his hips bucking up into yours, that perfect spot inside of you is hit.

Again and again.

You were so close when he started and you topple over the edge within minutes, cumming desperately, seeing the night sky behind your eyes. Stars align your vision and it’s so beautiful, so great, all you want to see. That ball of pressure builds up in your core and explodes, again and again.

“Fuck,” you moan out, voice strangled and throaty, and you finally have to stop moving - admit defeat - because your legs are exhausted and you’re completely emotionally and physically overwhelmed, and really, you’re not sure that this isn’t some crazy dream you’ve made up in your mind, anyway. “Wait -”

And you detach yourself from him. Ben cries out and you resist the urge to grin at the noise, how needy he is for you, how much he’s wanted this. You roll onto your side and Ben follows, his chest pressed against your back, and with this new position he re enters you.

It’s different - you’ve never tried this before, even in your hypersexual relationship in the pre-gunshot, pre-break up, pre-baby days. He wraps his arm around your body, fingers rubbing at your clit again and you know you’ll be reaching your second orgasm at the hands of the man you’re so fucking in love with it physically hurts.

Every time your lungs fill with oxygen Ben tears it away - short moans escape your body as he fucks you, mixed with the firm circles on your sensitive nub, and you lean your head back into your shoulder. Ben tilts his head so he can press his lips to yours in the messiest kiss you’ve had, but it’s perfect. It’s all you wanted - no, needed - and your eyes water just at the feeling.

“Want me to cum inside of you?” The question is fucking stupid, because you’re already pregnant - there’s nowhere else you’d rather him cum except for inside of you, filling you up again. His other hand works at your sensitive breasts, tweaking your nipples so they’re peaked in the cold air. Even with the sweat that drips down your body you’re fucking freezing, and it reminds you of that first night you spent together.

(And you swear this is the most passionate sex you’ve ever had.)

You nod, thick mane of curls tickling his nose, and Ben buries his face into your locks. He presses his body close to yours and finally lets himself fucking erupt, releasing a strangled moan. Thick spurts of hot cum coat your inner walls and you sob out, squeezing your eyes shut, and the feeling of his cum inside of you after so long sends you over for the second time. Your chest rises and falls with desperate, heaving breaths, and you suck in air until you’re coughing.

Ben buries his head into your shoulder, his breathing just as desperate as yours. And the pair of you don’t speak - can’t, at least in your case - and you try not to think about any of it. The break up, the future, the past. Just let yourself live in the moment, in Ben’s arms, until exhaustion chases you into a dream filled sleep.

—————————

When you wake up Ben is gone.

You’re not sure what you expected, but he hasn’t answered your texts in three weeks. You told him that you have to talk, and that you should be getting started on the nursery as you approach 7 months, and the read receipts mocks you.

You hate being the one to double text. It only seems necessary.

you can’t fucking ignore me benjamin.

Read.

we’re adults. we’re having a fucking kid. this isn’t right.

Read.

what did i do?

Read. Read. Read. Read.

You find the key to his apartment in your car and you debate going to pay him a visit but you decide - foolishly, perhaps, and for the sake of your pride alone - that you want him to find you first. To seek you out.

You’re not really sure if you’re being the adult or the child here. Maybe both. Maybe neither. You’re just being you, and as you get further along you find that it’s the easiest thing to be.

—————————

At 7 months you find yourself getting a bit panicked about the Ben situation. He hasn’t texted you nor sought you out yet, and you can’t help but think that this is it. Unconditional support has found its end. You and Ben are done, and he’s gone.

Wouldn’t be the first man in your life to do that, but with a child on the way?

(Still not the first man.)

It’s a heavy cloud weighing down on you, raining on your parade wherever you go. LIke sitting at a restaurant with your cousin, picking at your lo mein with a permanent lump in your throat.

And she looks at you, brows furrowed, bringing her hand in front of your face to snap twice. Regain your attention. “Are you alright?”

No, you want to say. I think I fucked everything up. And you didn’t, you have to remind yourself. You haven’t done anything wrong. You don’t know what the fuck is happening with Ben but - but what did you do? To deserve what he’s doing?

So you smile at your cousin. “I’m fine.” The baby moves inside of you. “She’s crazy, I swear. Wanted Japanese and now she’s freaking the fuck out at the thought of it.” And that’s a lie. You’re so hungry for the noodles you could fucking scream, but you also think you drank your lemonade too fast.

You shove your phone into the pocket of your jacket and stand, giving your cousin a smile before turning and walking towards the bathrooms. It’s a small corner of the restaurant - two doors, marked with a small man and a small woman, and you lean against the wall by the women’s restroom.

Breaaaaathe.

It’s hard. You open your phone and look at your texts, as if expecting to see a response from Ben that you’d somehow missed but it isn’t there. Of course it isn’t. You’d know. You’ve only been checking it obsessively for weeks, desperate for him to reach out and apologize for the shit he’s been pulling.

And there’s nothing.

He doesn’t fucking care.

It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t.

You put your phone away and look up, shock flowing through your veins. “Joe -?”

The ginger looks up from his own phone, and your eyes meet.

“Oh!” And he looks genuinely happy to see you. It’s - it’s so good. So nice, that he looks as if running in to you is some miraculous experience. When have you last felt that from someone? “Y/N! Hi!”

“Hi, Joe,” you smile, and then your mind connects the dots - Joe - Ben’s best friend - Ben who won’t talk to you -

And then you take a step forward, hugging your jacket closer around your body, and ask, “Have you spoken to Ben lately? By chance?”

Joe furrows his eyebrows and takes his bottom lip in between his teeth - the way Ben does. You wonder if one of them picked it up from each other, or if it’s just a coincidence. “I … I have. And I heard about your, uh, situation with him.”

“You have?” You tilt your head, smiling. “Can you explain it to me?”

“What?”

“Ben hasn’t texted me in nearly a month,” you tell Joe, and you don’t want to be getting angry but you can feel the heat flowing through your veins. It isn’t Joe’s fault, you tell yourself. “I don’t know what I did. I mean - well, if he told you, then don’t you know why I’m being fucking shunned?”

Oops. You hadn’t meant to slip the f-word in there. Sometimes it just wiggles its way into your thoughts.

Joe hesitates, and then says, “I think he’s scared.”

“Scared?”

“I don’t know. That’s what he told me. He said he was scared.”

I’m scared too, you want to say. You want to yell it. Your phone feels like a fire lit in your pocket, all of a sudden, and you want to throw it on the ground until it fucking smashes. You want to shake Joe - no, Ben - until he understands, understands that everything he’s feeling is amplified for you. And you’re fucking furious about it. But you can’t take this out on Joe. It isn’t his fault.

You swallow. Take a deep breath. “Okay.” You need to think about what to say. Because now there’s - a prickling behind your eyes, and you can feel the tears on their way, and if you cry in front of Joe you’ll never forgive yourself. “Can you tell him to call me?” And, fuck, your voice cracks on the very last syllable. “Please. That’s - I just really, really need him to call me, okay?”

Your eyes are watery and you sniffle pathetically. Joe nods - you see that - and then he steps forward, wrapping his arms around you, and you let yourself fall into his embrace.

It doesn’t matter that he’s practically a stranger.

It doesn’t matter that you’re waiting for the bathrooms at a random Japanese restaurant.

All that matters is this. The comfort. The silent promise of some sort of remedy for whatever’s been going on with Ben. Joe can help.

You trust him on that.

—————————

The doorbell rings as soon as your cousin drops you off at home - you’ve kicked off your sneakers and ripped off your jacket and then there it is.

Ring.

You grip the doorknob with a sweaty hand, swallowing thickly before calling to the other side of the door, “Who is it?”

There’s a pause. And then, “It’s me.”

So you open the door. Come face to face with Ben, his hair messy, and every bit of your anger evaporates at the sight of him.

Ben takes a step inside and shuts the door behind him, and then you throw your arms around his shoulders. He presses his hands against your back, and even if your stomach is in the way it’s fine - feels good. Good to have him back.

“I’m so sorry,” Ben mumbles into your hair. His voice is muffled by your locks and you tighten your grip on him. A silent it’s okay, even if it isn’t. It will be. “I should’ve never - fuck. I’m so fucking sorry, sweetheart. I love you so much.” He pauses. “I’m not your bodyguard anymore. I quit. I had to. You know - you know I had to.”

You pause. Pull away, brace your palms on his cheeks. It’s what you’ve needed to hear - all you’ve ever wanted to. It all feels so fucking right - the relationship you’ve needed, the baby you’re going to have, the future you can foresee.

“Fuck, Benny. I love you,” you tell him. “I love you so much.”

And then you lean up, press your lips to his, and you work your way further into the house. There’s no better place to start making up for lost time like the present, you moan into the cool air, and he throws his head back and laughs, the small distraction breaking his focus away from suckling a hickey into your inner thigh. Just like how he used to.

—————————

“You know, we should do one of those things where we put her name up on the wall above her crib in - like - block letters, or something.”

You push yourself on the rocking chair in the corner of the future-nursery, watching as Ben works at the crib on the ground. You haven’t bothered yourself with helping too much - at least, not with the heavy-duty, manual labour type of shit - but the decorations have been perfected because of you.

It’s a beautiful room. You and Ben spent weeks agonizing over how to do it and you finally think you’ve nailed it - white walls and a grey crib, carpet so soft that your feet sink right into it. You picked out the rocking chair, too. Same shade of grey as the crib, and adorned with a pink pillow and a dozen of stuffed animals that have been evicted to the ground so you could sit.

“That’s a good idea,” Ben tells you, squinting his eyes to read the instructions for setting up the crib. “We don’t have a name, though.”

You hum. Not officially, you don’t - haven’t gotten around to that conversation - but you certainly have ideas. “Well, let’s get on it, then. Wanna hear my ideas?”

Ben grins. “Sure, sweetheart.”

“Alright!” you clap your hands together and then fish your phone from your pocket. You turn it on and flick to your notes app, scrolling until you find the list of names you’d put together. “Starting from my favourites and going down. Evangelina, Charlotte, Madeline -”

“They’re long.”

“Well, long names can get cute nicknames, you know? Anyway … Madeline, Caroline, Genevieve, Adaline …”

Ben holds up a finger, and you stop reciting your list. “I like Genevieve a lot.”

“Really?” you tilt your head to the side. “Because that’s closer to the bottom of my list, really.”

He laughs, turning so that he’s looking at you. “Well, I like it more than the others. I don’t know a lot of girls named Genevieve, either.”

You lean your head back, pushing your foot off of the ground to rock yourself a bit more. You shut your eyes, rest a hand on your stomach and think - Genevieve. You certainly like it or else it wouldn’t have been there in the first place - and it presents the nickname Evie, which you dubbed as the ideal nickname for Evangelina, your first choice.

“Hypothetically,” you begin, and Ben mockingly rolls his eyes. “If we named her Genevieve, what would her middle name be?”

“Does she need one?”

“It seems right.”

Ben pauses, looking away from the instructions he’d been trying to comprehend. “I don’t know. Marie?”

You groan. “Something less basic, would you?”

“Then what about Charlotte? That’s cute, isn’t it? And I know you like it.”

The name flies around your head - Genevieve Charlotte Jones - and then a tiny grin tugs at your mouth. You nibble on your bottom lip and then bring your thumbnail up to your mouth.

Ben glances up at you, gauging your reaction to the suggestion. “What do you think?”

You push yourself off of the chair and kneel down beside your boyfriend, leaning in to press a firm kiss to his lips. “I love it. I love it so much, and I love you so much.”

—————————

Hitting the nine month mark is surprising and unsettling and it certainly shouldn’t be. Almost every mother gets to this point - where, as Dr. Green says, it’s any day now. But you feel special for it - feel an amount of pride, especially when you walk into the nursery and look at the nine letters spelling out your daughter’s name, right above her crib.

Hitting the nine-month-and-one-week mark is normal and it doesn’t bother you, really, that your girl has gone past when she’s supposed to come out. Pregnancies are nine months, aren’t they? But she wants to stay, you suppose. And that’s fine. You accept that. Lord knows how difficult it’ll be when she comes so you’re fine with it, fine with her staying.

Hitting the nine-and-a-half-month mark makes you desperate.

You decide you want her out. You’re done with being pregnant, having her kicking you at all hours of the day, craving everything, constantly feeling exhausted. And you try your best to keep it from the public, reducing it to rumours coming from unreliable news sites, so social media has been a burden.

Selfies. Selfies and shots of just your face, and absolutely nothing from your stomach down. No photoshoots, and you don’t let your friends post anything that’ll give it away.

Genevieve and Ben can be your surprise until she comes. Then you’ll decide what to do, whether to tell everyone, whether to keep her a secret for a bit longer.

Until she comes. And it seems like she never will.

You and Ben decide to make Joe and your cousin her godparents, in case of any emergency, and they take the role with (in your cousin’s case) a squeal and a hug, or (in Joe’s case) tears. There hardly seems anyone more fit for the job than the people who, in their own way, brought you to this point.

At nine and a half months you’re lying in bed with Ben, your hair wet from a shower, and your body is riddled with tiredness - it’s all you’ve been feeling. Tired and sore, all the fucking time, and Genevieve is still in no rush to make her appearance into the world.

“Ben,” you mumble, feeling his arms around your waist, hand against your stomach. “I can’t wait until she’s here.”

You can feel him smile against your neck. “Me, too.”

“No.” you turn your head so you can look at him. “I’m really sick of being pregnant, if you want to hear the truth. It’s a real pain in the ass sometimes.”

Ben untangles his body from yours and sits up on his knees, looking down at you. The moonlight streams in through the window, illuminating his body to you and yours to him, and he leans down to kiss your neck. “What can I do to help?”

It’s such an innocent request. You’re already prepared to taint it as you push yourself onto your elbows, sighing and telling him, “Well, there’s this rumor I heard.”

“Alright …”

“That having an orgasm can induce labor.”

You raise your eyebrows at him, and Ben grins. His hand trails from your stomach to your pajama shorts, undoing the tie before starting to pull them down your thighs until they’re dangling from one ankle, and he can push your legs apart with warm hands. His hair is floppy and the light lets you see it better, every individual strand highlighted by the glow.

“I’ll give you all the orgasms you want, sweetheart,” Ben tells you, voice soft yet loud in the silent room. In what feels like a heartbeat he’s lying on his stomach in between your legs, bracing his palms on your smooth inner thighs. He traces your skin, drawing pictures and telling stories that only he can understand until a chill runs right up your spine, and your fingers run through his hair before squeezing the locks.

Ben takes the hint, leaning in to press a soft kiss to your clit. Your hips buck up instinctively - the small jolt of pleasure makes you feel so fucking good already, so desperate for him. Ben looks up at you with a wicked grin, teeth shining, and then he leans in to nip at your clit.

“Fuck!” you gasp, sucking in a sharp breath. “God. God.”

One of his fingers, as thick as two of yours, traces along your folds, collecting wetness on his fingertips. Slowly he slides his digits into your cunt and your body accepts them eagerly, walls clenching around him - Ben leans in to kiss your inner thighs again, sucking another dark hickey into the skin.

He fucks you nice and slow with his fingers, moving his mouth from your thighs to wrap his lips around your clit. He sucks the small bud desperately, cheeks hollowing, and you’re sure he’s rock hard but all he wants is for you to cum. You can tell when he gets like this, when all he’s chasing is your pleasure and not his own. His hips, though, give him away. Rocking against the mattress, needy for any bit of friction, and it’s so unbelievably erotic to watch.

You reach down and search for his free hand, the one not pumping in and out of your pussy, and you intertwine your fingers. Ben’s eyes flicker up to you and he raises his eyebrows, waggling them until you’re giggling and then choking on the air you’re sucking in.

Your bodies are luminescent under the moon, and you press your other hand overtop of your stomach, crying out as your hips buck into your boyfriend’s mouth. Ben’s teeth graze your clit at the same time as his fingers curl to brush your g-spot and the pressure building in your abdomen finally releases, legs quivering and throat raw and skin clammy.

Ben milks it out for every last drop he can, and then he laps the juices up off his fingers that are beginning to trail down his wrist. You can feel stickiness on the inside of your thigh but you don’t mind, really. Usually that would bother you, and maybe you’d ask Ben to go get a washcloth, but you don’t want him to move as he cuddles into your side.

“Do you want me to help you?” you question, soft voice giving away the exhaustion you’d been hoping to hide. “You looked … needy, Ben.”

He snorts, kissing your shoulder. “I fixed it myself. Don’t make fun of me.”

A grin tugs at your lips. “I wasn’t planning on it. Jesus. Go to sleep.”

Ben kisses your puckered lips and then tugs the sheets up over you. They stick to your sweat covered body and it feels good. Cools you off, almost, even as your human furnace of a lover attaches himself to you.

Fingers run absentmindedly through his hair, and your eyelids are brutally heavy but you can’t fall asleep. Even as Ben begins to snore.

This is how it’s supposed to be, you think. How you wanted it to be. You and the love of your life and your unborn daughter, stirring inside of you.

(By tomorrow night, she won’t be stirring inside of you - she’ll be very much outside, sobbing with her fists in her eyes that match her dad’s.)

(But you don’t know that yet.)

#ben hardy x reader #ben hardy smut #ben hardy fluff #borhap imagines #borhap smut #pls follow the maker of that absolutely beautiful gif #and thank you all o much for reading these bodyguard fics

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hayesrolando-blog · 4 years

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Turns out it was a blue dress

Court for denying he had painted the desert. If it was a Doig landscape, after all, it would be worth a significant sum according to one valuation, before Doig's public denial, around $10 million. In the lawsuit, Bartlow and Fletcher sought some $7 million in damages..

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lovemesomesurveys · 4 years

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What Rhymes With “AIR”?

1. Are the walls of your room bare or do you have things hanging up there? I have some stuff on my walls.

2. When’s the last time you went outside to enjoy the fresh air? I briefly went outside at night on the 4th of July to see the fireworks from my driveway with my family. Prior to that I hadn’t been out of the house since May and before that it had been since March.

3. Do you watch the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? Sometimes.

4. When’s the last time it felt like you were walking on air? I had one bad floating feeling experience from a bad edibles trip. I literally felt like I had to hold onto something to “stay grounded.” I also ended up getting sick. It wasn’t a fun time. I found out the hard way after that time that it didn’t take much of an edible for me to get high lol. It tricks you cause it can take a bit to kick in, so you think you need more, but nope.

5. Have you ever been on air, on a radio station? Yeah. I used to call to request a song sometimes back in the day and my call was on air a few times.

6. Have you ever felt like all of the air was coming out of your lungs? Yes.

7. Has it seemed as though anything has ever disappeared into thin air? Have you ever pulled an idea out of thin air? Yes! So frustrating. I’ll be using something and then put it down for a sec, only to not be able to find it where I thought I put it. Like for instance, it happens a lot when I’m wrapping presents. The pen or scissors I’m using always seem to “disappear.” RIP to all the pens that seemed to just vanish, too, throughout my school years. And yes, I’ve also pulled ideas “out of thin air.”

8. Have you ever wanted to be on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”? I enjoyed playing along while watching and I even had a computer game version, but nah. I wouldn’t get far at all and it’d be embarrassing. I don’t do well with being put on the spot either.

9. Do you know a billionaire in real life? No.

10. Would you like to be an heir or heiress to a fortune? I mean, I wouldn’t have been opposed to it if I was haha.

11. Would you be able to successfully get away if you ever came across a bear? I mean, there’s no way of knowing for sure, but I hope so?? Well, I hope to never be in the situation in the first place, obviously, but you know. There are people who have certainly been quite lucky in that situation and others not so much, so. I know you’re supposed to remain calm and not run, which I could probably do cause I’d likely freeze up in fear. I’ve seen videos of people, some of them have been children, who successfully got away.

12. Where’s your favorite place to go? How long does it take to get there? The beach. The closest one is like 2 hours away.

13. How often do you err on the side of caution? I’m a cautious person. And also just a big scardy cat.

14. How often do people say they’re angry with you? People don’t say that, but I know people have been upset, frustrated, disappointed, and irritated with me.

15. Do you own any long underwear? Long underwear? No...

16. How much Tupperware do you own? *shrug* A lot.

17. What color is your underwear right now? Blue and gray.

18. Do you still sleep with a teddy bear? No. I have a few stuffed animals that always sit on my bed, though.

19. What pair of your shoes has the most wear and tear? My Adidas Superstars. They’re not too bad, but you can definitely tell I wore them quite often.

20. Do you like to play Solitaire? Ha, I haven’t played since I played the computer version as a kid on like Windows 98. I played that and messed around in Paint quite a bit, ha.

21. Do you or your family own a full set of silverware? Yeah.

22. What do you have to take everywhere with you? My bag with my medicine, hand sanitizer, phone, wallet, and straws. I’d also have to take a mask with me everywhere.

23. Would you like to visit Delaware? I hadn’t really thought about it.

24. Last time you received dental care? It’s been awhile.

25. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be? I’d want to really think about that if I could only choose one destination. There’s a lot of places I’d like to travel to one day.

26. Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? Did we ever find her? I don’t remember, ha. I used to watch the cartoon as a kid and I think I had a computer game, too.

27. Are you satisfied sitting here, taking this survey, or would you rather be elsewhere? Right here in bed is the best place for me to be right now.

28. Last time you sat in a barber’s chair? I last got my hair done back in early February.

29. Do you own any cans of compressed air? No.

30. Do you have a swivel chair at your desk? I don’t have a swivel chair or a desk.

31. Do you prefer an armchair or a rocking chair? A reclining armchair.

32. Would you rather have a beanbag chair or a hanging swing chair in your room? Hanging swing chair.

33. What’s the last non-survey related questionnaire that you had to fill out? This like 4 page questionnaire that one of my doctors hands out every visit. It’s the same exact questionnaire, too.

34. Are there any crimes that you feel make someone deserving of the electric chair? Yes, like serial killers.

35. Do you know anyone who uses a wheelchair? Yeah, me.

36. Do you know anyone who is on welfare? Yes.

37. Do you play Modern Warfare? Nope. Never had an interest in playing that.

38. Do you ever feel like life is unfair? Of course.

39. Have you ever visited Times Square? No. I’ve never been to New York, but I’d love to one day. I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to go before everything this year, but now I really don’t know.

40. Do you tell people to “take care” at the end of a conversation with them? It’s not something I regularly say, but yeah sometimes.

41. Where is somewhere that you would like to move to? I’m not sure.

42. What is something in your home that needs to be repaired? A couple things.

43. What kind of sleepwear do you own? I wear leggings and oversized graphic tees for pjs and my normal attire.

44. What skin care products do you use? I haven’t been using any.

45. Do you have any spyware on your computer? Apple computers come with all that stuff.

46. Do you own any sportswear? What sports? Nope. Not a sports fan.

47. Do you like Fred Astaire? I know who he is and I’ve seen clips of his dance scenes, but I haven’t actually watched any of his films. Well, I’ve heard his voice work in the Santa Clause is Comin’ to Town movie/cartoon, but that’s all.

48. How long does it take you to prepare a meal? The only thing I cook is ramen, which takes like 10 minutes or so (I’m including the time to boil the water).

49. Do you know anyone named Pierre? No.

50. Are you going nowhere fast? It has and does feel that way. :/

51. How often do you have a nightmare? Not often, thankfully.

52. How often are you able to catch something in mid-air? *shrug*

53. What do your lawn chairs look like? We don’t have any lawn chairs.

54. How many chairs are at your dining/kitchen table? We don’t have a dining/kitchen table either.

55. Favorite type of footwear? Adidas sneakers.

56. When’s the last time one of your senses were impaired? From what? I wear glasses if that counts?

57. Have you ever been in a hot air balloon before? Noooo.

58. Do you have a good health care plan? Yes.

59. Last time you went to the hardware store? I don’t go to the hardware store.

60. Have you ever played foursquare before? Yeah, I liked playing that in elementary school.

61. Do you own any types of eyewear? Yep, my glasses.

62. What brand of cookware do you have a lot of? Cuisine Art, probably.

63. Nothing can compare to: You. 🎶 Ha.

64. Have you ever worked in a childcare center? No.

65. Do you have a “beware of dog” sign on your gate? No.

66. Have you ever attended daycare as a child? No.

67. Are you very aware of your surroundings? Yes.

68. Have you ever had an au pair or a nanny before? No. My aunts, grandparents, or older brother babysat me.

69. Do you know anyone who has had an affair? Yes.

70. How much are you willing to spend on airfare? I don’t know, it would depend on certain factors regarding the trip.

71. Who do you care about the most? My loved ones.

72. Are you more likely to choose truth or dare? Truth, never dare. Or just not play at all, ha.

73. Have you ever seen the Blair Witch Project before? Yeah. Major cringe.

74. Do you like the name Claire? Would you spell it with or without the I? Sure. I like the spelling with the “I.”

75. Last time you went to a fair? When I was a kid.

76. What can be done to make life more fair? Gah.

77. How much are you willing to spend on cab fare? I don’t know. Again, it would depend on certain factors.

78. Do you have a lot of flair? No.

79. Do you own flare jeans? No.

80. Is there a glare on your computer screen right now? Yes.

81. When’s the last time someone glared at you? I say my doggo gives me attitude and “the eye” sometimes, ha. Like when I tell my parents or brother that I gave her treats, so don’t let her trick you into getting more. She gives me a look like, “gee, thanks a lot for ratting me out!”

82. What type of hair do you have? (color, length, texture, etc) How often do you wash it? Red, long, wavy hair. I wash it every 2-3 days.

83. Do you know the difference between a rabbit and a hare? Yeah.

84. Do you like to eat eclairs? I haven’t had one in a long time, but they are delicious.

85. What do you consider to be your lair? My room.

86. A female horse is called a mare. What is a male horse called? A baby horse? A male horse is a stallion and a baby is called a foal

87. Have you ever used Nair before? Did it work? Blech, yeah I tried it when I was like 13/14. It worked, but it smelled SO bad.

88. Has anyone ever told you to “grow a pair”? No.

89. What is something that you own a pair of? Shoes.

90. What is a rare quality that you have? I can’t think of one.

91. Last food you pared? I don’t peel or chop anything.

92. Do you know someone who is a debonair? No.

93. Do you like to scare others for fun? No.

94. What is something that scares you? The present and the future.

95. Do you like Sonny and Cher? “I don’t know if all that’s true, but you got me and baby I got you. Babe. I got you, babe.”

96. Do you know how to share? Do you like to share? Yeah.

97. Have you ever played a snare drum before? No.

98. What do you do with your spare change? Put it in one of my purses/bags.

99. Do you know how to put on a spare tire? No. I’ve never tried to.

100. Have you ever gotten a spare while bowling before? I think so.

101. When’s the last time you wished someone would spare you the details? Recently, when someone shared something that was TMI.

102. Do you win games fair and square? Yes. I like to just have fun and friendly competition, there’s no need to cheat or get upset about it.

103. Do you know how to find the square root of something? Yeah.

104. What are the characteristics of a square shape? 4 equal sides.

105. Have you ever been called a square before? Haha, yeah, jokingly. Well, the times I know of, ha. An “L-7 wienie.”

106. Do you prefer the elevator or the stairs? Well, I have to take the elevator.

107. Do you ever stare at other people? No. I’ve had to deal with that (people staring at me) all my life, though.

108. How often do you swear? Not that often.

109. Do you ever “swear on your life”? I don’t say that.

110. What do you like to “tear up”? An order of boneless wings from Wingstop, ha.

111. What type of wares would you sell? I don’t have anything to sell.

112. What kinds of clothing do you like to wear? Comfy clothing--leggings and oversized tees.

113. Have you ever had a pregnancy scare before? Nope.

[a-zebra-is-a-striped-horse]

#personal #text #survey #surveys #long survey

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minhoinator · 6 years

Text

By My Side, A Hogwarts AU (21/75)

promises kept - “Nervous?”

Minho stopped fidgeting for a second, his hands folding in his lap as he looked over at Mom. He was about to answer her, but then a voice called out over the intercom: “Stockport, arriving in five minutes. Stockport, arriving in five minutes.”

“Is that his train?”

master list // AO3 // AFF // first year - muggle-born, sorted, first day, homesick, hallowe’en, deck the halls, possibilities, belonging, exceedingly acceptable, return to king’s cross - second year - diagonally, taking flight, ten points, all that glitters, holly jolly, push and pull, shooting stars, special treat, sleepover, promises made

@lockandminkey @minhosbowties @sapphicshawol @artfulkey @shinyexo @posygal @bumkeyko @usuallydreamin @taespoon-of-sugar (if anyone else wants to be tagged in this, just let me know!)

* - * - *

“Nervous?”

“Is that his train?” he asked as he bounded off the bench and weaved through the crowd to the screen displaying the train numbers and their arrival times.

The click of Mom’s heels followed him, her arm draping over his shoulders. “0525, that’s his train, right?” Minho nodded, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. Kibum would be arriving at Platform 10, should they go there and wait for him to get off the train? “Let’s go back and wait for him on the bench, all right?”

“But…” He turned to watch as she started to walk away. Did Kibum know his way around Muggle train stations? Would he even know where to look for them? While her back was still turned, Minho darted up the steps and ran down the crowded corridor toward Platform 10.

Once he found it, he bounced on the balls of his feet, freezing on his tiptoes when the train pulled up to the platform, the brakes screeching as it came to a stop. Minho grinned when he spotted Kibum peering through the window, returning his wave happily. The other passengers poured out of the doors and on to the platform. It took a while for Kibum to make an appearance in the doorway. He bolted to him once he did, smiling up at him as he stepped down onto the platform.

Minho hugged him as soon as both of his feet were on the ground. “Hey, buddy,” Kibum said, patting his back until Minho let him go. “Where’re your parents?”

“Dad and Minseok are at practice and Mom is waiting on one of the benches.” He gestured to the patched-up satchel hanging at Kibum’s side. “Do we need to go get your luggage?”

“Nope. This is it.”

“Huh.” Kibum laughed as he started following the rest of the passengers off the platform, Minho following him immediately. “Yeah, let’s go find Mom.”

* - * - *

The drive home from the train station was...oddly tense. Kibum tugged on the seatbelt, pulling it away from his neck and slipping it over his head. Minho glanced back at him from his spot in the front seat, offering him a small smile, and looked like he was about to say something. But, a strange jingle started to play, and his attention snapped back over to his mom.

He held his hand out, taking the thin pink device she handed him and flipped it open before he held it up to his ear. “Hey, Dad!” He paused, laughing after a second. “You’re using dad’s phone, stupid, of course I’m gonna think you’re Dad!”

Mrs. Choi smacked Minho’s arm lightly. “Be nice to your brother.”

“You didn’t hear h -- hmm? Okay...okay...yeah...okay, bye.” Minho closed the thin pink thing and slipped it back into his mom’s purse. “Practice is running a little late so you don’t have to have dinner ready until 8.”

She let out a long sigh and Kibum leaned over a little to see the time on the car radio. Damn it, it was only 4:30, but he was already hungry -- he and Grandma usually ate early. As if on cue, his stomach growled and Minho glanced back at him. He glanced between Kibum and his mom, his expression a little weird. Kibum’s brow furrowed when Minho looked back at his mom with a smile.

“What if we got pizza and they got something on the way home?”

“I don’t know.”

“You like pizza, right, Kibum?”

“Uh...” Minho looked back at him and Mrs. Choi met his eyes in the rearview mirror. “I’ve never had it, I don’t think.”

Both of their eyes widened, and Mrs. Choi changed lanes quickly. “Get my phone and text your father.” Minho nodded and grabbed the pink thing from her purse, flipping it open again. “Tell him that they can either have leftover pizza or they can pick something up on the way home.” She met Kibum’s eyes through the mirror again. “I’m sure you’ll love it.”

Kibum smiled at her before she looked back at the road. Soon, they pulled into a parking lot for a place called Croma. They followed Mrs. Choi inside, both peering over her shoulder as she ordered them two pizzas -- a margarita and an Americana, he thought she said -- as well as some garlic bread sticks and salads.

“Grandma grows garlic around the house,” Kibum said as they headed over to the semi-populated waiting area. “Like, all around the house. We use it, of course, for cooking and, like, potions and stuff, but it’s mostly there to keep vampires away.”

Minho’s eyes widened and he started to say something, but they were both quickly shushed by Mrs. Choi. Kibum frowned, glancing around at the curious Muggles in the waiting area. Something dinged inside her purse, and she pulled out the pink thing, ignoring them for a moment.

Minho cleared his throat, leaning toward Kibum to whisper, “When we’re around...other people...we probably shouldn’t talk about...that stuff.”

Kibum glanced past him to his mother, who was still focused on the pink thing. “Even around your family?”

“Uhh...”

“Really?”

“It’s okay sometimes, and Minseok is usually okay with it, but...sorry, I should have mentioned it earlier.”

“It’s okay.” An awkward sort of silence stretched between them, broken when one of the people in the waiting area was called up to get their pizza. “Am I gonna be in trouble?”

Minho laughed. “No, I don’t think so.” He chuckled again before he sobered. “Just be sure not to say anything in front of my dad, because then you might be.”

“Choi!”

They hurried after Mrs. Choi as she made her way back up to the counter. She handed the two pizza boxes to Minho and the foil bag of breadsticks and the salads to Kibum. “Go ahead and sit in the back seat, honey,” she said when they reached the car. Minho slid the pizza into the middle of back seat before he hopped inside. “We’ll be home in ten minutes.”

Kibum thought he had been hungry before, but the smell wafting up from the pizza and the garlic bread was nearly torturous. When his stomach growled loudly again, Minho looked over at him, his eyes alit with silent laughter. He continued to talk to his mom about whatever they were talking about while he slowly unrolled the top of the breadsticks bag. With a finger on his lips, he passed one to Kibum, who ate it quietly and quickly, savoring it as much as he could on the way home.

Prism Lane was quite similar in appearances to Juliette Boulevard, with the small, matching houses and the cobblestone lanes leading to the brightly colored doors. One of the differences, Kibum noticed, were the gardens.

Here, they were pristine, with prim little rose bushes or orchids or carnations lining the homes. Back in Nottingham, however, Kibum knew that at least seven of the other residents were witches and wizards, since some of the kids were also at Hogwarts. The gardens back home were teaming with different plants, to make potions and poultices and salves, or to cook with, since they did not often go to Muggle grocery stores.

They pulled into the driveway and followed her into the house. It was nice and homey, in its own way, but not cozy like Grandma’s house. The walls were painted a cool gray with touches of blue and green accented in the art and the plants. Even though he had only seen the entrance, it seemed oddly clean, compared to Grandma’s house.

“Put the pizza on the counter before you show Kibum to your room, all right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Minho said, kicking off his shoes and holding the pizza boxes in his arms out to Kibum. “Put those here. I’ll go set them down. Just wait here?” Kibum set the bag of breadsticks and salads on top of the pizza boxes and watched as Minho glided across the hardwood floor to the swinging kitchen door. He reappeared a second later and hurried to put his shoes on top of the cubby by the door. “You can put yours next to mine.”

He set his shoes beside Minho’s and followed him upstairs to his room. “What...”

“Hmm?” Kibum pointed to the bed floating on the floor. “Oh, that’s our air mattress. We had it from when Jinki or Taemin or any of Minseok’s friends would sleep over.”

“Oh.” Tentatively, Kibum sat down on the end.

“I think there’s a hole in it, so we’ll have to blow it up every night.”

“Blow...it up?”

Minho snorted. “Like, with air?” He propped his feet up on the air mattress, jostling Kibum where he sat. Kibum rolled his eyes and started to glare at Minho when they heard a cupboard slam shut downstairs. “Oh, we should hurry,” Minho said, already hopping over the air mattress and reaching for his bedroom door. “We don’t want the pizza to get cold.”

Thankfully, they made it in time. The pizza was...deliciously hot and cheesy and Kibum wondered why the hell he had been deprived of it for so long.

They needed this at Hogwarts.

He was about to ask Minho to suggest it to Sookey when they got back to school, but Mr. Choi and Minseok walked through the door. Mrs. Choi got up to greet them and Kibum glanced at Minho, who set his fork down with a sigh as he looked to the dining room doorway. Kibum sucked the red sauce off his thumb and followed his gaze.

“Hey, Min...” Minseok said as soon as he stepped into the kitchen, grabbing a plate and a couple slices of pizza before he looked up and locked eyes with Kibum. “Hi, I’m -- “

“Minseok, I know. I’m -- “

“Kibum. I know, too.” He slid into the seat across from Minho, glancing between the two of them. “Do you talk about me at school, Min?”

“Occasionally,” he said before he stuffed another bite of pizza into his mouth.

“Only good things.”

Kibum struggled to keep his amusement from showing and Minho kept eating to keep his mouth full. Minseok squinted. “I don’t believe you.” Minho started to laugh, but all three of them quieted with Mr. and Mrs. Choi walked back into the kitchen.

“So,” Mr. Choi said, taking his seat at the head of the table while Mrs. Choi fixed him a plate. “You’re the famous Kibum.”

He spared a quick glance at Minho. The tips of his ears, as well as his cheeks, were a bright red as he stared pointedly at the table. “I don’t know about famous, sir, but yes.”

Minseok snickered, stopping when Mr. Choi cleared his throat. They all started eating after a second of awkward silence. Mr. and Mrs. Choi filled each other in about their days while the boys ate. Once Kibum was full, Minho stopped eating and cleared their plates from the table. Kibum followed him into the kitchen, rinsing the plates when Minho washed them and set them on a towel to dry. They washed the other plates too after Minseok brought them in.

Once the water was drained, Minho led him upstairs, away from the sounds from the other room downstairs. “What was that?” he whispered as they climbed the stairs.

“Dad is probably just watching football on TV. Do you wanna shower before bed?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, grab your stuff and I’ll show you how it works”

It didn’t take Kibum long to shower, and soon he was tucked between his blankets. Minho flicked off the light, accidentally bumping into the air mattress on his way to bed. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Beside him, there came a creak and a sigh, and Kibum glanced over to see that Minho had settled into bed. He stared at his silhouette for a second before he looked up at the stars on the ceiling. "Are...”

“Hmm?”

“Are those in constellations?”

Minho hummed his assent. “I tried, at least.”

“You did a good job.” There came a delayed thanks from the shadows to his right, a hint of a smile coloring Minho’s voice. “So,” Minho’s head turned on his pillow. “What have you told your family about me?” He glanced up when Minho turned on his side to face him.

“Everything, I guess.”

Kibum pulled his blankets up over his shoulder as looked at Minho. The moonlight softly lit the top of his head, the bridge of his nose, and the tips of his fingers peeking out from under his blanket. His face was still cloaked in shadow, but Kibum could feel his eyes on him. Kibum blinked, and the moonlight seemed to fade, if only slightly. “What -- “ he cleared his throat when his voice cracked. “What do you mean by ‘I guess’?”

Minho sighed, his fingers twitching around his blanket. “Everything I could remember, I guess. Like, how you helped me learn English in first year, and then again after my concussion.” He stretched a little as he yawned. “About that one time you almost fell through the lake. When you got sick but wouldn’t admit it...”

“I wasn’t sick. it was allergies.”

“Listen, Bummie, Pomfrey agreed with me so shush.”

“Whatever.” Kibum smiled, warmth blooming in his chest. He wrapped his arms around his pillow, hugging it. “What else?”

Minho yawned again. “I don’t know. Can’t remember. Mom does like you though, I think.”

Kibum’s brow furrowed. “Really?” It didn't necessarily seem like it.

He nodded against his pillow. “Something about...about liking that she knows that...there’s someone at school who cares about me...I think...” His voice grew quieter and quieter until it dropped off completely. Kibum listened to his steady breathing for a moment before he rolled onto his back.

It took him a little while to start to drift off -- being in a strange bed and all. Once he did, however, his throat became increasingly dry. Soon, he was wide awake because of it. With a quiet groan, he sat up, wrapping his blanket around him as he slowly got out of bed and shuffled to the door.

There was a light still on downstairs, stopping Kibum in his tracks. Was it just a nightlight or was someone still up? No, someone was still up, he could hear their voice. He started to descend the stairs, freezing when one of the steps creaked under his foot.

The voices quieted for a second, and a shadow passed over the open kitchen door before they spoke again. “It’s not like he’ll be here much longer,” Mrs. Choi said, her voice sounding like a tired sigh. “It’s just until the end of the week. And it’s not like you’ll be here often.”

Kibum slowly sat down on the step, wrapping his arms around himself. “I don’t want Minseok here either, then, you know, just in case. I’ll take him with me to work.”

“Of course.” Silence stretched between them for a moment. “He is Minho’s friend...I don’t think he’d do anything to harm us.”

“I guess.”

Kibum jumped when a hand grabbed his shoulder. He turned, expecting to see Minho behind him, but found Minseok instead. He gestured behind him, and crept back to his room, Kibum quietly following. He closed the door and flipped on the light once Kibum was inside.

“How much did you hear?” Minseok asked as he walked past him on his way to his bed.

Did he know? Kibum stared at him for a moment, searching his expression for any sort of clues. “Not much, but enough.”

“Yeah.” Minseok rubbed his hands over his face, sighing heavily.

“Is that why he always takes you with him to practice? Because of Minho?” When Minseok didn’t respond right away, Kibum went on. “Like, I know they were talking about me, but it sounds like what happened here last summer.”

Minseok looked up at him, his brow furrowing. “Minho told you about that?” More or less...Kibum nodded. “I think it is, even if Dad won’t admit it.”

Kibum let out a disdained huff before he sank to the floor, crossing his legs beneath him. “What the hell for?”

“I think, well, I think Dad is just, like, struggling with the idea that one of his sons is a wizard. It doesn’t help that Minho refuses to do magic to prove that he actually is a wizard -- “

“That’s against the law for us, though.”

“Right, that’s what he said.” Minseok sighed again. “I think just the fact -- that he’s magical -- really freaked Dad out...He doesn’t talk to me about it, but I’ve heard him say stuff to Mom when they think I can’t hear them.”

Kibum couldn’t help but ask, “What sort of stuff?”

Minseok started to speak, but quickly closed his mouth and averted his gaze, shaking his head. “I don’t remember.”

His hands fisted in his blankets, tugging it a little tighter around himself. “What do you think?” Kibum’s jaw clenched when Minseok met his eyes again. “About Minho? What do you think?”

“I don’t think he’s a freak, if that’s what you’re asking. Like not at all.” Kibum started to relax a little bit. “I wish I could go with him and see all the cool stuff he tells me about, but...yeah.”

Kibum nodded. He seemed nice enough and supportive of Minho, which was good. If Minho’s stories about Minseok were to be believed, he basically hung the sun in the sky. “I...I’m glad he has you to come home to.”

“And I’m glad you’re there for him at school.”

Kibum gave him a small smile before he stood and headed for the door. “Going to practice with your dad tomorrow?”

“Probably. Maybe.” Minseok smiled back. “I might try to stay home.”

“Okay.” Kibum closed the door behind him, tiptoeing down the hall to Minho’s room, his previous thirst forgotten. Carefully and quietly, he crept back into his bed and rolled on his side to face Minho. His hand laid limply off the bed, his thumb twitching occasionally.

It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair that someone as sweet and kind and giving as Minho would have to come home to...to parents who can’t seem to accept a major part of who he was. He already knew this visit was going to be different when they started to plan it last year, but he wasn’t expecting this. He glanced past the tips of Minho’s fingers to where his face was hidden by the night.

“I know you’re asleep, buddy,” Kibum whispered. “But I want you to know that I’ll always be there for you. No matter what. I’ve got your back like you’ve got mine.” He glanced back at his hand, and after a second of thought, he hooked their pinkies together. “I promise.”

* - * - *

In the haze of early morning, Minho’s only warning was a slight clink. By the time his eyes had barely started to open, it was too late.

Ice cold water, followed by the ice cubes themselves, poured onto his neck and back. Minho’s eyes squeezed shut before he launched himself out of bed, tripping over the empty air mattress and falling onto the floor.

Looking up, he saw Minseok standing over his bed, drinking the rest of the water from the glass.

“Breakfast is ready.” He cackled and ran out the door when Minho threw his cleat at him. “Hurry up!” he called from the hall, his heavy footsteps thundering down the stairs.

Grumbling to himself, Minho took off his soaked shirt and tossed it into his hamper. He was about to go downstairs in just his shorts, but then he looked back at the empty air mattress. He could feel his face heat up as he looked around for a shirt of some kind, finding and pulling on one of his many hoodies and heading out the door. Before he went downstairs, however, he hurried to the bathroom, combing his hair into place with his fingers.

“Good morning!” he said as he walked through the doorway and into the kitchen.

Kibum looked up from the table, smiling brightly at him. “Morning!”

The TV was on in the living room, but Minho couldn’t tell what was playing. He scooped some slightly burnt scrambled eggs and a couple slices of bacon from the discarded pans around the kitchen and grabbed two of the frozen waffles from the toaster. “Where’s Mom?”

Kibum shrugged, and Minseok answered from the other room. “Dad took her out for breakfast!”

“Ahh.” Kibum was pouring him a glass of orange juice, and he slid it in front of the seat beside him as Minho came into the dining room. “Sleep okay?”

“Mmhm.” He took a sip of his own juice, his brow furrowing. “So I know that this isn’t pumpkin juice but it kinda looks like it and I’m each time I take a drink I’m surprised.” Minho almost snorted scrambled eggs out of his nose and Kibum patted his back as he coughed. “It wasn’t that funny.”

“It’s not you,” Minseok said as he went through the dining room to the kitchen. “He’s super giggly in the morning.”

“Oh really?”

Both of them turned to him, and Minho’s face felt like it was trying to spontaneously combust. “Leave me alone,” he muttered, trying not to laugh, as he gathered his plate and glass and tried to go hide in the living room. Oh great, Minseok had been watching Shrek...that never made him laugh. Minho situated himself in Dad’s armchair and continued eating his breakfast as Donkey tried to get out of Dragon’s clutches.

Kibum followed him into the room, stopping dead in his tracks as he stared at the TV. “What’s that?”

“You’ve never seen Shrek?” When Kibum shook his head, Minho scrambled for the remote, starting it all the way over. He hummed along to All-Star, and glanced over at Kibum. “This is the song the team listens to before a game.”

“Oh...”

Kibum sat in rapt attention of the movie, not even looking away from the screen when Mom and Dad got home. Minho started to get out of Dad’s chair when he walked into the living room, but he gestured for him to stay put. “Ready to go?” he asked Minseok.

“Can I stay home today?” Minho’s eyes widened as his gaze flicked from Dad to Minseok. “It’s not like I do much of anything when I’m there.”

“But you’re learning the entire time. How are you going to make it as a football player if you don’t learn from the professionals?”

Minho glanced back at Kibum, to check if his attention had shifted from Shrek to the conversation, but it hadn’t.

“It’s just one day. Is one day really gonna make that much of a difference?”

Dad’s jaw tightened and he met Minho’s eyes, seemingly surprised to find him watching. Minho quickly turned back to the TV, lounging as casually as possible in the armchair. “I’ll be late,” he said, kissing Mom’s cheek before he left the room.

In his peripheral vision, Minho saw Minseok visibly relax. When Dad’s car puttered away outside, Minho glanced over at his brother, smiling when he looked back.

Minho -- and Minseok, when he didn’t go with dad to work -- spent the next several days showing Kibum as many Muggle things as possible. It took him a couple of hours to get the hang of how to play video games, but he seemed to prefer to sit back and watch while Minho played.

Unsurprisingly, football, much like Quidditch, was not one of his interests, but he still joined them when he and Minseok went outside to pass the ball around the yard. He sat on the ground, picking at the grass while he chatted with Minho and Minseok. Sometimes, Minho got too involved in their discussion that he forgot to pass the ball back.

One afternoon, when Kibum went inside for a minute to make himself some tea, Minseok called him over. “What’s up with you?”

Minho frowned, confused. “What do you mean?”

“You’re acting like the guys do at school when the girls come to watch us play.” Minho blinked, averting his eyes when his face started to heat up. “It’s only Kibum.”

“I know.”

Minseok lightly kicked the ball back and forth before he kicked it up with his toe. He caught it and tossed it against Minho’s chest, who then caught it. “Pass it back,” he said, gesturing for him to return to his spot across the yard.

Minho started walking back, looking up when the sliding glass door opened and Kibum stepped out, a mug in hand.

One Muggle activity that Kibum really did seem to enjoy was watching TV, specifically movies. The Chois had never really had that big of a movie collection, but Mom had a soft spot for Studio Ghibli movies, so they had a bunch of those. After they had watched Howl’s Moving Castle, Kibum wanted to watch them all, and Minho was more than happy to oblige him.

One night, as they were trying to fall asleep, Kibum whispered, “You know what? I think Miyasaki is a wizard.”

Minho smiled as he glanced over at Kibum’s silhouette. “I think you’re right.”

Most nights, after Mom and Dad thought they had all gone to bed, Minseok would come into Minho’s room and he would ask them questions about Hogwarts and they would regale him with stories about their experience so far. It was nice for him to be able to talk freely about school at home, but it was also fun to watch Kibum get to talk about it, too.

His eyes would light up with each new question that Minseok had for them, and his voice got really fast as he tried to pack as much information -- relative to the question or not -- into each of his answers.

Had Kibum always had dimples? They seemed to be showing up more and more as his visit continued and he felt more comfortable with Minseok...maybe Minho just didn’t notice before.

“Minho, is something wrong?”

“Hm, what?” He blinked, meeting Kibum’s eye as the dimple on his cheek disappeared.

Kibum snorted and Minseok laughed. “You’ve just been staring at me.”

“Sorry, I, uh, I was trying to remember the, uh, wand motions for the spell you were referring to.”

“Petrificus Totalus?”

Sure. Whatever.

Kibum grabbed a licorice wand from the pile of candy he got out of his satchel and did the motion, and Minho nodded, taking the licorice from him and eating it with a grin when Kibum rolled his eyes.

On Kibum’s last night in the Choi household, Minho and Kibum decided to share some Bertie Bott’s beans with Minseok, but not tell him the secret. Kibum poured the entire box into his hand, dividing them evenly between the three of them. He passed Minho’s his with a quick wink.

“Oh, these are just jelly beans,” Minseok said, popping one into his mouth.

When he did not react right away, Minho let out a pent-up breath. “Yeah,” Kibum said as he nonchalantly picked through his. “I didn’t know you guys had them, too.”

Minseok scoffed. “Where’d you think you guys got the idea from?” he asked as he popped a mottled brown bean in his mouth. Dirt...Minho bit his lip to keep from laughing. Minseok grimaced as he chewed and shivered as he swallowed before he grabbed a bright green one. Vomit. Minho saw Kibum start to look toward him and he made himself turn away. “What the fuck?” he sputtered, spitting out the remnants for the bean.

All three were laughing so hard that Dad had to come upstairs to tell them to quiet down and go to bed. After Minseok left the room, they could hear him brushing his teeth for five straight minutes. Both Minho and Kibum couldn’t stop giggling, especially after Minho tried to sober himself enough to say, “It’s not that funny.”

Morning came all too soon, unfortunately.

It wasn’t even nine in the morning by the time Mom had he and Kibum out the door and on the way to the train station. It was stupid to be sad that he wouldn’t be around the house anymore. It had only been a week, but Minho had grown rather accustomed to being with Kibum night and day.

His room would feel so empty, now.

“Got all your stuff?” Mom asked Kibum, who nodded.

All three of them piled out of the car and headed inside, Minho and Kibum hanging back while Mom paid for his ticket with the money Grandma sent.

“I’m gonna miss you,” Minho wanted to say, but he held his tongue. Instead, he clasped his hands behind his back, knocking shoulders with Kibum and grinning when he acted affronted. “I’m coming over in two weeks, right?”

“That’s the plan, so I certainly hope so.” Kibum’s smiled dimmed slightly when Mom started back toward them, handing Kibum his ticket. “Thank you for letting me stay with you, Mrs. Choi.”

“You’re welcome, Kibum. It was no trouble at all.”

He nodded, glancing between the two of them before he waved goodbye to Minho with a dimpled smile. As Kibum started to walk away, Mom’s arm rested across Minho’s shoulder, and she guided him toward the exit. He looked back for one last glimpse of Kibum, but he was already gone.

* - * - *

“Do you think we’ll make it in time?”

Kibum’s grip tightened on the handle as the Knight Bus made a rapid turn around a corner. He and Grandma had set out for Nottingham Station about five minutes ago, which was about twenty minutes later than they were expecting. Mrs. Prue, one of their neighbors, came over to get a couple pinches of powdered unicorn horn from Grandma’s store and the two ended up talking for much longer than Kibum would have liked.

Minho’s train was supposed to be in at noon, and it was ten till that when Grandma hailed the Knight Bus.

“I’m sure we will, sweetheart. And if not, it’s not the end of the world.”

He pouted a little as he peeked outside at the blur of the passing scenery. The bus stopped three more times -- either to let passengers off or on -- before they reached Nottingham Station. Once it came to a stop, Grandma grabbed Kibum’s sleeve before he could bolt for the exit. “Why don’t you go get him and come right back? That way we don’t have to wait for the bus again.”

“Yes, ma’am.” She stood, following him to the door so she could speak to the driver and the shrunken head and ask them to wait for a moment.

Once his feet hit the pavement, Kibum took off toward the entrance, scanning the crowd once he was inside. He was about to call out for Minho, but then he saw him coming out of the restroom. He waved with he spotted Kibum, jogging around people to meet him by the door.

“Hey,” Minho said once he reached him, his voice a little breathless.

“Hi.” He grinned and Kibum couldn’t help but follow suit, but before he got too distracted -- “We gotta go, the bus is waiting.”

“Oh, shit, okay.” He followed Kibum out the door, running across the sidewalk to where the Knight Bus sat idling.

“Took ya long enough!” the shrunken head said when they hurried up the steps.

Minho gasped, grabbing the back of Kibum’s shirt as he stared open-mouthed at the shrunken head. Kibum pulled him along before the head could say anything sarcastic, leading him to where Grandma sat on one of the only bolted down seats on the entire bus. He set his backpack down on the ground before he greeted her with a hug.

“How have you been, darling?” she asked as he sat beside her -- on a non-bolted down seat. Kibum suppressed a smile as he held onto the strap before them.

“Good. What about you, Grandma?”

Any possible conversation from Minho died when the bus jolted forward, swerving madly around in the Muggle traffic on its way out of the Nottingham Station parking lot. By the time they reached home, Minho was clinging to the closest bar for dear life. “Come on, buddy,” Kibum said with a laugh, patting his arm to remind Minho to let go.

They helped Grandma inside and Minho dropped his backpack at the door as he slipped off his shoes, staring at the inside of Kibum’s home with bright-eyed amazement.

The walls were painted a rich mustard, but ivy from the potted plants in the living room crept along the walls and the ceiling, twisting around the banister leading upstairs. Handwoven rugs lined the hall, and Kibum followed him down to the kitchen, both sitting at the counter as Grandma put a kettle on.

“Your house feels like the common room!”

She smiled at Minho as she started making three teabags. “That’s what Kibum said.”

Kibum’s eyes widened when Minho stiffened beside him. He cleared his throat. “When did Jjong’s mom say he’d be done with his guitar lessons?”

“Not sure. I think she said 1 o’clock. Need something, dear?” Kibum glanced over at Minho, who was staring at the icebox.

“I’m really thirsty.” She nodded and moved to get him a glass and fill it from the sink next to the icebox. He drank it in one drink, swallowing thickly. “Would you like more?” she asked as the kettle started to sing.

“I can get it.” He hopped off the chair and went around the counter to pour himself another glass. “Oh, hey, that’s us!” Minho gestured to the polaroids posted on the icebox. He sipped the water and inspected the pictures as Grandma poured their tea behind him. His hand froze in front of one -- at this distance, Kibum couldn’t tell which on it was -- and when Grandma had set their tea on the counter, it was gone and Minho was back in his seat.

Minho started at the sound of the phone ringing, which was rather loud compared to the sound of his mom’s cell phone. Grandma was quick to answer it. “Oh, Sandra, hello!”

Really? Mrs. Prue again? Sighing, Kibum looked over at Minho. “This’ll take a while.”

“Can we take the tea to your room?”

“Oh, yeah! Grab your stuff and I’ll show you where it is.”

Minho followed Kibum to his room, closing the door behind him as soon as he stepped inside. “So, this is it,” Kibum said, gesturing to the small room.

It was a little smaller than Minho’s bedroom, or maybe it just felt that way with how much more stuff Kibum had stuffed in his room. Grandma had charmed the bed to stretch to a queen size, so they could share it instead of making Minho sleep on the very uncomfortable couch downstairs. All along the walls hung the many polaroids from their first two years at school, as well as prints from around the world that Mom took for work. He glanced back at Minho to see his reaction, but found him staring at the polaroid in his hands.

Kibum’s heart sank. If it was the one he took from off the icebox... “I can explain.”

Minho met his eyes, his mouth twisted in a sort of frown. He moved past him to the bed, dropping his backpack at the foot before he sat down. When he tossed the polaroid to the side, Kibum joined him on the bed, picking up the picture. Yup, it was his favorite from his stay in the Hufflepuff dorm, when he was bugging Minho in the common room while he was reading.

“I thought you said you weren’t gonna show her any of these,” he said, his voice quiet.

“I...wasn’t planning on it, but...”

“But, what? You couldn’t help it?”

Kibum’s brow furrowed. “Don’t take that tone with me, you don’t understand.”

“Really? I don’t?”

“You’re family aren’t...” He stopped, shutting his mouth quickly. The door downstairs opened and closed, both of them distracted by the noise. Kibum went to his closet door, opening it and nodding for Minho to get inside. His brow furrowed in utter confusion but he stepped inside and Kibum followed him in, mostly closing the door behind him. “I just don’t want us to be overheard.”

“Mm.” For a moment, the only sound in the closet was their quiet breathing, but Minho soon broke the silence. “I know I’m just a Muggle-born -- “

Kibum squeezed his eyes shut. “Minho, I didn’t mean -- “

“ -- so I don’t understand what it means to be a legacy or whatever at Hogwarts, but I do know you.” Kibum opened his eyes, meeting Minho’s gaze. “It’s gotta be eating you up inside, not being truthful with her. How much longer are you gonna put yourself through this...this stress?”

"I...don't know." Sighing, Kibum shook his head. “You...you won’t tell her this week, will you?”

“Of course not.” Kibum slumped back, his head knocking back against the wall. “It’s not my secret to tell. I won’t mention it again once we step outside the closet.”

“Thank you. And Min?” He glanced at him, his eyebrows raising in question. “I’m sorry for even implying that...because you’re Muggle-born...you...”

Minho’s expression softened. “It’s okay, Bummie, I know you didn’t mean it like that.” He opened his arms and pulled Kibum into a hug. “Are we good?” he mumbled into Kibum’s shoulder.

“Yea -- “

Both froze when Kibum’s bedroom door opened. “Ki?” Oh, it was only Jonghyun. “Grandma said you guys would be up...here...” He opened the ajar closet door, looking up at both of them in bewilderment. “What the hell are you guys doing?”

Slowly, Minho dropped his arms from around Kibum and Kibum took a step back. Minho shrugged and shook his head while Kibum said, “You mean you don’t often hug your friends in closets?”

Jonghyun snorted. “Well, I mean, yeah,” he said as he stepped inside the closet to give Kibum and then Minho a quick hug. “So, what's up, guys?”

* - * - *

Minho felt sort of stupid, now.

He had been quite nervous -- and he kept it from Kibum -- about seeing Jonghyun again. They had only seen each other for maybe ten whole minutes last summer, and, yeah they had gotten along for those ten minutes, but he was here for a full week.

Being greeted with a warm smile and hug? Almost totally eradicated his nervousness, which was a relief. After about a minute of him talking about his music lesson, his eyes widened. “Oh my god, I forgot! Follow me!”

Minho glanced at Kibum, who looked equally confused, and they both followed him downstairs and out the door. Jonghyun had the backyard gate open and closed it behind them. “What are we doing, Jj -- “

“Wait, wait!” He called out behind him, and ran through the back door.

“What do you think it is?” Minho whispered.

“Could be either really good or really stupid. Last time it was a kazoo he found in the street.” Minho couldn’t help but laugh. It wasn’t long before Jonghyun rejoin them outside, a gray and black speckled puppy writhing in his arms in an effort to lick his chin. Kibum gasped, hurrying to meet him and pet the puppy’s head with the tips of her fingers. “I love him.”

“Her.”

“Her. What’s her name?”

“Byulroo.“

Kibum frowned. “Why call her that? It seems rude.”

"We found her in a box on the side of the read on the way home from my lesson. Mom said something like: ‘Oh, that’s really not good,’ and she sorta yipped after that so that’s what I decided to name her.”

Minho held his hand still as she licked his fingers. “She’s so cute.”

“Isn’t she?” Jonghyun grinned up at him before looking back at Byulroo. “You’re so precious. I love you so much.” He cleared his throat, his voice switching from baby-talk to back to normal. “What are we doing today?”

Both Minho and Jonghyun looked at Kibum. “Not sure, but Mom will be home soon and we’re planning on going to Diagon Alley because I need new robes.” He glanced between them. “Other than that, I don’t know.”

“Mind if I come with?”

Kibum looked over at Minho, who gave him the slightest nod. “Sure, if you want, I don’t mind.”

It didn’t take long before Kibum’s mom came home. She found them rather easily, as all three were...loudly giddy at Byulroo’s -- or Roo, as Jonghyun had nicknamed her -- presence. The tiny puppy was soon safely inside with Jonghyun’s mom and sister and the boys were all tucked into the back seat of Kibum’s mom’s car.

On the way to The Leaky Cauldron, Minho and Kibum silently agreed to torment Jonghyun, who had the misfortune of sitting in the middle of the back seat. Kibum kept poking his side, nodding for Minho to do the same after a moment. By the time they reached the pub, Jonghyun had trapped both of their hands in his, tightening his grip when either of them tried to make a move against him.

The lanes between the shops of Diagon Alley were bustling with the back to school crowd, so the boys huddled behind Mrs. Kim as she led them to Madam Malkin’s. When she stepped inside, Kibum turned to them. “Hey, if you want to wait with me, that’s fine, but if you want to look around that’s fine, too.”

Jonghyun patted Minho’s back. “We’ll look around.”

“Meet us at Fortescue’s, I think.”

“Will do.” Kibum nodded, turning around and heading inside. “Do you have all of your school shopping done?” Jonghyun asked once the door swung shut.

“Yeah, Mom and I came once we got the list.”

“Ah.” Both were quiet for a moment. For Minho’s part, he was feeling slightly awkward at being alone with Jonghyun for the first time. It was probably the same for Jonghyun. He stepped back from the stairs as Jonghyun descended them.

“Do...do you miss Hogwarts?” Minho asked as they started walking down the lane.

“Well,” Jonghyun said, drawing out the word. “Yes and no. I wish I could be there with you two because I feel like that’d be so much fun. And I really got along well with Flitwick -- my head of house.”

“Oh, right! Kibum mentioned that you were in Ravenclaw.”

Jonghyun smiled fondly. “Yeah. But I really like Beauxbatons, too. And since I’ve been there longer, it feels more like home than Hogwarts does.”

“Have you learned any French?”

“Oui,” he said with a quick wink, and Minho grinned, turning to hide his slight blush. “My new house is Merprin, which is basically the equivilent of Ravenclaw over there.”

Jonghyun answered any questions Minho had about the differences between the schools as they walked in and out of shops, not paying much mind to which shops they walked into. Much to both their surprise, they were soon assaulted by an overwhelming concoction of perfumes and incense.

“Oh god,” Jonghyun muttered and Minho sneezed twice before the left the shop. “So, that reminds me...one time PJ -- PIerre, one of the roommates I mentioned -- decided to douse Vincent’s pillow in his sister’s perfume.”

“Oh no...”

“Yeah, our room stunk for days, it was bad.”

“I can imagine. One time,” he held back a laugh at the memory. “One time Taemin, one of my friends back in Korea, came to school with a mustache drawn on his face in permanent marker. His older brother did it when he was sleeping.”

“Did he know?”

“Not until second period.”

“Oh my god. Wait...” he stopped, grabbing the sleeve of Minho’s shirt to make him stop, too. “That gives me an idea.” He explained on his way to the ice cream parlor, but it sounded like all they would need to prank Kibum one of these nights was some of Sodam’s new lipstick. “You like chocolate?” Minho nodded, and Jonghyun stepped inside as he gestured for him to wait outside.

Minho settled into one of the chairs, letting out a sigh as he watched the crowd. He spotted Travis and Tanner going into the broomstick shop, but they didn’t see him.

It was nice getting to know Jonghyun. Based on all of Kibum’s stories, he almost sure that he would like him a lot, but he was happy and even relieved that that was turning out to be the case. He searched the lane and soon found Madam Malkin’s shop. As much fun as he was having with Jonghyun, he was looking forward to Kibum’s return.

“Here you go!” Minho looked up at the sound of Jonghyun’s sing-song voice, smiling when he saw the proffered chocolate milkshake.

“Thanks.” Jonghyun sat across from him, sipping happily at his own strawberry milkshake while Minho pulled his straw out and licked the whipped cream off of it before sticking it back in. He glanced over at Jonghyun when he felt his eyes on him, his expression surprisingly sober. “What is it?”

“There’s, uh, something I want to say...and...now that I know you a little better, I think I can.” Minho gulped, dread settling in his chest. Jonghyun continued. “I don’t know how much Kibum has told you about his...well, I don’t want to call it ‘his past’ because that sounds a little weird but that’s what it is. Anyways, I don’t know how much he’s said, but it hasn’t exactly been easy for him.”

“Right.”

“Like,” he paused to drink more of his shake, “He’s moved around a lot and because of that it’s hard for him to keep whatever friendships had. You won’t tell him I told you this -- “ Minho shook his head. “ -- but when he found out that I would be in France during the school year because of my parents' divorce, he cried. Several times, I think.”

“Oh, no...”

“He tried to keep it from me, but the day before I left, he was helping me pack and he started to tear up when he asked me to remember to write to him. Grandma says he has problems with feeling abandoned.”

Minho looked down at his straw before he took a long sip. Maybe that was part of why he kept lying to Grandma about being in Slytherin...because he thought she’d abandon him. It would make sense.

“I’m saying all that to, well, thank you, I guess.”

“Thank me?”

“For being such a great friend to him. God, I can’t tell you how many goddamn letters I’ve gotten where he’s telling me about all the stupid stuff you two do together.” Both of them chuckled, and Minho kept sipping his shake. “He deserves only the best, so I’m glad he has you.”

“And you.”

“Yes, well, that goes without saying.” Minho almost spit his milkshake out and Jonghyun laughed loudly, turning the heads of the people walking into the ice cream parlor.

“What’s so funny?” Kibum asked, Minho jumping at his seemingly sudden reappearance. When neither Minho nor Jonghyun answered immediately, he gestured for Minho to pass him his shake. “Did you guys have fun?” he asked in between sips.

Jonghyun met Minho’s eyes with a smile. “Yeah, we did.”

When they got home, Jonghyun left them to go back to his house. Grandma had dinner practically ready by the time they stepped inside, and Kibum joined her in the kitchen to get the dishes to set the table. Minho straightened his and Kibum’s shoes by the door before he hurried to help him.

Each meal Grandma made during Minho’s visit either reminded him of being back in Korea or being back at Hogwarts.

In the days that followed, Minho and Kibum -- and sometimes Jonghyun -- helped Grandma tend to her backyard garden. The first time Minho saw it, he stood on the porch in awe for a second before Kibum pulled him along with a laugh. It almost looked as though one of the greenhouses at school had been transplanted here in Nottingham.

Apparently, Grandma supplied ingredients to the apothecary in Diagon Alley, which is why Mrs. Prue was over as often as she was since she was one of the healers on staff there.

There were plants there that Minho didn’t recognize, but luckily Grandma sat out on the porch, very much willing to answer any questions he or Kibum may have had while she knitted. Somedays, she let them be, leaving at the appearance of Mrs. Kim.

One day, when Jonghyun was over to help them, Grandma and Mrs. Kim were about to leave. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” she told them with a wink.

All three of them nodded, but Kibum waited until the door was closed behind her to say, “Sprout told me a lot of stories. We have more leeway than you might think.”

After dinner most nights, Minho and Kibum took turns showering before they went to bed. Once the lights were out and they were tucked in, they discussed the coming year and how excited they were about the prospect of having different choices for electives.

“I’m thinking about taking Muggle Studies,” Kibum said one night, and Minho hummed in response. “What, don’t you think it’ll be interesting?”

“I mean, probably, but what would I learn from that?”

“True.” He glanced over to where Kibum laid but saw only darkness. “I mean, I guess we don’t have to take the same electives. At least one, I think, if you want.”

“Divination?”

Kibum snorted. “That works. Which other one do you want to take?”

“My dad said I had to take Arithmancy, since that’s the closest one to math which makes it practical.”

“Hm. Good luck with that.”

Minho chuckled. “Thanks.”

One of the nights, closer to the end of Minho’s visit, Jonghyun invited them over to have a camp out in his backyard, complete with the Muggle treats s’mores -- “That’s what they’re called, right?” Minho nodded, amused. Jonghyun’s mom, the other Mrs. Kim, trapped a flame in a jar for them to roast their marshmallows with before she left them to their own devices.

Once the s'mores were eaten and the flame was extinguished, they laid huddled together, reading their fortunes in the stars through the clear ceiling of Jonghyun’s tent. They started out sort of serious, but it soon turned into them concocting the wildest stories for each other just to make the others laugh.

Kibum was the first to fall asleep, his head lolling over to rest on Minho’s shoulder. Minho froze, glancing up at Jonghyun when he pulled a tube of lipstick out of his shorts pocket. He continued to hold still for several minutes, to make sure that Kibum really was asleep, before he nodded. Jonghyun drew all over Kibum’s face as gently as he could, so as to not wake him up, before he passed it over to Minho.

“Your turn.”

Red was streaked all over Kibum’s face, his lips smeared into a terrifying smile. To be quite honest, there really wasn’t anywhere else to draw. Except...Minho carefully uncapped the lipstick with one hand and drew a small circle on the tip of Kibum’s nose.

“Perfect.”

When morning came, Minho was woken to a pillow hitting him in the face. Kibum stood over him, his face and hands stained red in an attempted to clean off the lipstick. The pillow in his hands poised to hit him again. And hit him again it did when Minho burst out laughing.

“It was...Jonghyun’s idea!” he yelled between smacks.

“You swear?”

“I promise.”

Kibum started to turn away, but paused. “Did you draw any of it?”

Minho’s eyes widened and he pointed to the tip of his nose. He half-yelled, half-laughed when Kibum hit him with the pillow again before he ran back inside. Minho quickly wrapped himself up in his blanket, shuffling after him into the house to help him.

Or Jonghyun.

He hadn’t decided yet.

* - * - *

Heat, as well as the smells of pumpkin and warm spices, radiated from the kitchen. Kibum wiped away the sweat on his brow, internally reminding himself that his current discomfort would be worth it, in the end.

It was Minho’s last full day there, so Grandma was giving him a first-hand lesson on how she makes pumpkin pasties.

Kibum turned the page of his book, humming to himself. Really, he wasn’t all that focused on the book -- the page was nothing but a blur of black and white -- he was just trying to distract himself. Looking away from the book and into the kitchen, he saw a very concentrated Minho rolling out the dough, flour dusted across his chin and cheeks and hair.

He smiled to himself as he tried to refocus on his book, only to be distracted again by the front door opening and closing.

Jonghyun dropped into the armchair across from him, the discarded copies of a week’s worth of Daily Prophet’s crinkling beneath him. “Wanna do something?”

“Nah, I’m reading.”

Jonghyun glanced down at the book, smirking. “It’s upside down, genius.”

Kibum blushed to the tips of his ears as he flipped the book right side up. “Don’t you have Roo to play with?”

“Mom took her to get shots or something.”

There came a clatter from the kitchen, and Kibum looked over to find just Grandma standing there. Minho popped up a second later, rolling pin in hand. “Maybe you should just roll it out,” he said.

“No, honey, you’ve got to learn this for yourself.”

Kibum glanced back at Jonghyun before focusing on his book again, only to do a double take and stare at him. His chin was resting on his hands, and he let out a long sigh with a dreamy sort of smile as he fluttered his eyelashes at Kibum.

He blinked once, twice, before he lowered his voice to a whisper. “What the...fuck are you doing?”

“What? Is this not how friends look at each other? With soft adoration?”

Kibum’s face was ablaze, he knew it and he knew Jonghyun could see it, judging by his growing smile. “Soft adoration? Did you learn that in your creative writing class?”

“Maybe so. Doesn’t make it not true for you, though.” Kibum rolled his eyes and went back to re-reading the same sentence for the fifth time.

He made it through a full two pages by the time the pumpkin pasties were ready to eat. Minho brought one in for them both and waited anxiously for them to eat theirs. Kibum ate his quickly, despite it being too warm, savoring it as much as he could.

“This turned out really good. Good job, Min,” Jonghyun said before he directed a pointed stare at Kibum.

“Yeah,” Kibum said, clearing his throat. “Really good.”

Minho beamed at them both, and Kibum looked back down at his book with a sigh.

The next day dawned too soon, taking Minho away on the early morning train. Kibum stared out the window of the Knight Bus. “See you soon!” Minho had said when he let him go before he started to walk away.

“Yeah, in five weeks.”

Minho turned back around, his smile reaching his eyes. “That’s still soon.”

Kibum imagined the blur of the scenery was the train that Minho was on, and he couldn’t help but wish that they lived a little closer. Regardless, school would be here before he knew it, so he might as well enjoy the rest of summer while it lasted.

* - * - *

A/N: Guess what today is?? It's a year since I posted the very first chapter of this fic! Which is crazy to think about. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the chapter ^^

#minkey #shinee fic #shineefics #shinee au #shinee #hogwarts!minkey au #ff: by my side #my writing #mine #and so begins Kibum and Minseok's 'you love Minho too so you're acceptable in my eyes' friendship #Minseok pouring ice water on Minho? a legit way i woke up my little brother #(he snapped my eyelids until i woke up the day before so....payback's a bitch mf'er)#ye that's right they're watching Shrek sue me (pls don't)#it's comedy gold and an international treasure #the Choi family dynamics are fascinating to me #this will be fun #also Minseok has done nothing wrong ever in his life ever i love him #Miyasaki is absolutely and inspiration to me and I love him and his work #which is why i mention Ghibli films so often in fics lol #but straight up.....ye he was a wizard he absolutely went to the Japanese wizarding school #me: i'm not looking forward to writing this argument (about Kibum lying about Slytherin)#also me: yeah so it's more of a mild and brief disagreement because even in fiction you can't handle confrontation #lmao #btw @ Megan: whenever they call each other 'buddy' they're calling each other 'chingu' in Korean...i might write it in at some point but ye #I hope I did Jonghyun justice #okay so not perfect as always and it's so fucking long #so sorry but i'm tired and tired of looking at it so here you go lol #idk it just feels slightly rushed to me but hopefully y'all enjoyed it

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nervouswreck-96 · 5 years

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Supernova (Sonic fanfic): Chapter 5: What's He Building In There?

Well…shoot. I can't really say anything here, other than I'm sorry. This is where you'd usually find me giving an excuse for slacking off (busy schedule, hectic family life, kidnapped by Bowser, etc.), but I honestly don't have one. There is no explanation for the delay other than a combination of writer's block, a horrific lack of inspiration, and flat-out laziness on my part.

In fact, the chapter you're reading here is somewhat unfinished, making up about 75-80% of the chapter I wanted to write. I'm only posting it for the sake of posting something, and just to see if anyone is still interested.

Don't be surprised if it takes another year for the next chapter to come out, although reviews may shorten the wait ever so slightly.

...too late.

He exhaled, forgetting his place for a moment, and slumped in defeat. Disconnected chunks of black plastic sliced through the lining of his gloves, cutting into his hands. This was all that was left of Tails' communicator. The damned thing had burst open from the casing, revealing a veritable Escher painting of disconnected wiring and snapped capacitors. Through the wreckage of what used to be a working radio, Sonic swore he could hear voices reaching out to him…the same ones he knew might be calling his name this very second, seeking a connection which had been rudely cut.

For a moment, time froze in the fierce stare between Sonic and his metallic duplicate, which isolated the two from the carnage formed in their struggle. A curtain of smoke enveloped the two combatants, as hardly a square inch of the once-pristine area remained untouched by Metal Sonic's explosive arsenal. But at last, there was a moment to breathe, free of the steady stream of fire, shrapnel, and near-death. The orchestra of battle went into intermission, its echoes still ringing in Sonic's eardrum. Still, it was nice to be able to hear his own thoughts for a change. Then again, that didn't mean very much when those thoughts mostly consisted of the words "too late" playing on a continuous loop.

Which quickly shifted to "get him".

Still very much compromised by the high-speed collision with solid ground, Sonic's mind continued to send mixed signals, playing a sick game with his sense of direction. He was twisting, spiraling, traveling at a million miles a minute, yet at the same time, going nowhere, for he knew his hands and feet were tethered to the floor. Even the slightest impulse to his eyes sliced and stabbed at his cranium, which with each passing second felt more and more like an overripe cantaloupe which had some things done to it by a sledgehammer, but by now he'd kept them closed for so long he didn't realize the multi-colored morass of noise in front of him was only an illusion. Regardless – once he worked out which way was up - he contracted his left leg and used it along with his right arm to push himself off the ground.

No sooner had he raised his body off the canvas than it slammed back down again, weighed down by a heavy, steel boot.

Urghhh…feels like someone dropped an anvil on me!

Second by second, keeping his body above the floor became more of a struggle. The weight on his back only seemed to grow heavier the more he fought against it. One forearm could only quiver at the sheer effort it took, so he moved his other down for extra support. But it did no good. The shaky foundation looked ready to crumble at any moment.

No…no, come on, you're better than that! Fight through it, Sonic! Fight through it!

But his puny arms could not take the strain, and his tenuous grip gave way. As he collapsed chest-first to the floor, repressed physical torment was unleashed in a firestorm that exploded from his aching calf muscle and raced up his backside, forcing a bone-chilling wail out of his mouth before he even realized the noise had come from him. That did it. No longer could he bottle everything up. He had been sent over the threshold where the deepest of primal urges finally surpassed overcame his will to fight them off.

There was something weighing him down. Metal Sonic stood over the pathetic sight…staring at him…judging him...his titanium foot firmly nailing the hedgehog to the floor.

"So…this is what the self-proclaimed hero of the universe, slayer of gods, savior of time and space, has been reduced to? Hmmph," he said, afterwards doing his best to synthesize the sound of a disapproving sigh. "I must say, I can't help but feel disappointed."

"Urgh...I've gotten out of bigger jams than this!" The words choked, sputtered out of his mouth as he fought and clawed to escape Metal's hold. He had to keep to short, stilted sentences, a sensible balance for getting his burning thoughts out.

Suddenly, a breakthrough. Sonic's glove managed to catch on a random spot on the floor, and saw his chance to propel to it and break free. He gradually swung his one free arm out, too gradually, and that's as far as he got. Metal Sonic swooped on the maneuver and crushed it with the other foot. With the hedgehog back under control, Metal leaned over to face Sonic's ear, in the process driving just a few more pounds worth of pressure into his back.

"You are nothing more than a horsefly who thinks himself capable of slaying a lion," said Metal. "As I see it, you have two choices; surrender to the Eggman Empire or face the inevitable."

Sonic's teeth clenched, as he channeled his own physical torment into seething rage, glaring with such fury that he could almost feel his eyes changing to match Metal Sonic's blazing red. 'Surrender'. 'Inevitable'. Those words tended to have that effect on him...now, of all times.

A subconscious impulse glued him to the floor, sending him on a mental journey to the other side of the ESS-1, and a picture emerged in front of him where there was none before, a picture of Tails and Knuckles' battered and broken forms lying before him, bearing the scars and bruises forced upon him by some unknown attacker.

But that's all it was. A picture. An apparition. They may have been on a distant planet for all he knew. The radio transmission was the only link the three had left to share, and it was gone.

Guys…I don't know if I'm gonna make it out of this one…

He scooped the cluster of metal and wiring from the floor and balled it tight into a trembling fist. As if to block out the voices, he thrust that same trembling fist into the floor, creating a shockwave that tremendous enough to resonate across the ESS-1 and command Metal Sonic's attention.

…but so help me, we're gonna finish this thing no matter what!

The next words passed from brain to mouth like a whisper, but with the ferocity and impact of a knife in the dark:

"You really don't know me at all, do ya?"

If he had a fighting chance, he had to make something happen now. Just as Metal Sonic put his entire stock of energy into this finishing blow, Sonic shoved himself in a roll toward his left, holding in a scream as Metal - in a last-ditch effort to hold him back - dug his claw-like toes into Sonic's chest, tearing into exposed flesh.

The gamble paid off. He'd forced the mecha-deity into an undignified pratfall.

With momentum on his side, Sonic rolled into a somersault and bounded back onto his feet. Every step he took widened the ever-growing cracks in the foundation that was his body, but he either didn't know or simply didn't care. The weight was now off his back, and it almost felt like he could leap into the air, swing his arms out, and fly. Sweet, sweet mobility, how he missed it so.

A plasma shot flew across his radar, forcing him into a slide that saved his face from extinction...yet plunged his lower body back into a maelstrom of grinding pain. If that was the price he had to pay for mobility, then so be it.

The world flew by in a blur, or at least this cold, gray prison of a world - man, Eggman really needed to vary the color pallette a bit here - and out of the corner of his eye he managed to catch the doppelganger in his moment of weakness. In the nick of time, he transitioned into a twirling handstand, his legs unfolding and spinning like the blades of a ceiling fan, aiming straight for Metal's head.

"Hey...what the-!"

He struck Metal's left hand instead, which did not flinch, but grabbed hold of Sonic's ankle. A flick of the robot's wrist, and Sonic was cast across the room like dirty laundry.

Hmph...not playing games anymore, Metal? Well, neither am I!

With one flick of his leg, Sonic went from tumbling uncontrollably to tumbling with perfect control, recovering with a short, impromptu breakdance routine and finishing with a devastating kick to Metal Sonic's head.

Too devastating. It actually seemed to connect.

At first, Sonic wondered if he'd missed Metal altogether and actually hit a nearby pipe. But after he got to his feet and noticed the fresh, new shoe scuff he'd added to Metal Sonic's shiny gold paint scheme, it all seemed to come together. The aura surrounding Metal Sonic had dimmed, fading out whenever he did anything more energy-intensive.

Just then, the room was set alight in a red glow so intense it forced Sonic to shield his eyes to look up.

When Sonic finally gathered the strength to gaze into the blinding gleam, he noticed Metal just…standing there, bent over, letting the energy channel into his body. A pair of miniature turbines spun in opposite directions, generating light from pure nothingness and storing it as pure energy, until the mechanism burst into life, ready to unleash it all on the hedgehog. When he noticed that the source was the engine contained in Metal Sonic's chest cavity, he engaged his defenses, expecting another pounding.

But something was off.

He stood perfectly still, both feet planted...never leaving the ground, not floating. That couldn't be right, unless...unless he simply couldn't.

Yes! I knew if I ran him ragged, he'd lose his strength!

"What's the matter, pal?" asked Sonic. "Gettin' tired?"

As if jolted with a cattle prod, Metal jerked his head toward Sonic, who realized that was probably the only answer he would receive. The glow intensified, and along with it came a high-pitched hum.

A very familiar hum.

One engine sputtered, throwing Metal Sonic off balance for just a moment. An auto-gyroscopic correction system boosted power to the other to compensate, and order was restored…until the other engine blew fumes. The problem spread across his body, as his internal processes couldn't figure out whether to stay on or not. Finally, all four rockets expired completely, forcing Metal Sonic to drop.

That laser. Sonic could recognize that whining hum anywhere.

I guess he's tryin' to go out with a bang!

A single sentence played on a continuous loop in Tails' mind – This wasn't supposed to happen.

The halogen spotlights practically seared into his fur. This was a play he'd never rehearsed for, and yet he'd practically been thrust onto the stage to perform to a packed house. And everyone in the packed house was itching to mow him down if he slipped up. They'd left him nothing. An entire battalion of Egg Gunners closed in on all sides – some forming an orderly division on the ground, others lining the catwalks above, a few even scaling the walls to get a good shot at the hapless fox.

The companionship of his radio earpiece was cold and dispassionate, providing no comfort or answers, only non-stop static. Static bombarded his left eardrum for so long that the sensations of dizziness he felt when taking a step were the only reminder he was wearing the stupid thing at all.

It all seemed so simple before. A race against time, and nothing more. Just find the nerve center of the ship, get inside, and raise hell. No questions, just do it. He knew he might run into some resistance along the way, but he hadn't counted on the possibility of this much resistance. There was no telling how much time he'd have to make up…how much time he'd already lost…how much time Sonic had to spare…

His head tilted toward the sky…more specifically, toward the impossibly-high ceiling that covered it. It was the only place that looked to be bot-free…at least he assumed it was. After all, the logic was airtight. Even if a Gunner was somehow stationed up there, how could it see him from so far away, much less keep a steady enough aim to shoot him down?

It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. With one massive burst of energy to his tails, he took off, with the resulting wake force knocking a few Egg Gunners to the ground.

He curled his body into a corkscrew loop, rolling himself over to get a better look at his position. A veritable city of lights took shape behind him, hundreds of little specks of light forming one by one, like fireflies dancing in the autumn breeze. Well, except for that one little speck of light rising toward him. Rather quickly, in fact. Uncomfortably so. Enough for him to see the bolts of electricity jutting from it.

Crud. Make that a dozen big specks of light.

Suddenly, Tails knew how his mono-tailed, ground-bound brethren felt during the hunting season. He was all alone, and that made him the perfect target. There was, quite literally nowhere to go but up.

His lungs were fit to blow at any moment, each twist of his tails seeming like it could be the last his system could take, but damn it, he'd just have to outdo his usual best today. If these baddies were packing anything like what Metal Sonic had, he couldn't be a millisecond off. He sliced through the air like a knife through butter, pushing straight upward against gravity with every ounce of energy he had, because if his calculations were accurate—

A balcony railing passed by his field of vision.

Now!

In one massive effort, he flung his tails into reverse and brought them to a gradual stop, curtailing his ascent. With nothing propelling him, he curled into a sudden dive, and not a second too soon. His face scrunched into itself – he couldn't dare look. He could only pray he made the right call. The world around him flashed once…twice.

Then a thunderous smack. Then another, heralding an ear-splitting chorus of metallic clanging above. Tails' heart went up his throat. Was he hit? Was he hit? No…he wasn't.

The sight of the searing, magma-like red stain dripping from the ceiling, still sizzling from the heat of the combined laser blasts, was a stark reminder of what would have become of him had he not been so fortunate. It eventually dawned on him that this was all that remained of a steel beam that once suspended from above.

At the last moment, he revved up his tails again, seamlessly transferring the momentum from his dive into a near-vertical climb, toward the only open space . Great, he thought. You survived that. Now what?

As if in answer, from a shot rang out.

He couldn't see it, couldn't track it, until it was too late. He suddenly fell into a sharp, uncontrollable dive...and as the laser's searing kiss finally started to settle in his tail, he realized why. He'd taken a hit.

He managed to keep his convalescence to a brief yelp before the adrenaline of the moment kicked in. Powered by little more than panic, he reached into his draining reserves for one massive boost from his one remaining tail. Unfortunately, he'd generated more problems than lift. In his compromised state, all he managed to do was send himself careening upside-down, sideways, every direction other than the correct one. If anyone were to ask him how it felt to be trapped inside a juice mixer…yeah, this was probably it.

If this was the Tornado, the alarm would have been blaring already. PULL UP! PULL UP! But by then, it was too late. He'd fallen too far, too fast. He couldn't put in any more power, but maybe if—

Then the floor came out of nowhere and knocked the wind out of him.

Guess not.

Knuckles' face dripped with sweat, flushed by equal parts exertion and rage.

One door. One lousy, infernal steel door stood between him and the closest thing he'd ever have to a child. It sapped his strength, it took his breath, it took every pounding he could give it and practically mocked him.

He practically threw himself back onto his feet, throwing aside some flotsam from the pile of deceased Egg Pawns gathered around his feet. That situation went to hell in a handbasket real fast. At least he learned two things from the experience. 1: Entering the wrong password on the keypad will trigger a sneak attack by specially-placed Egg Pawns and gun emplacements. 2: The password is not "password".

Still, that was all he had in the idea bag until Tails got him through the door.

Where was he, anyway? He really should have called in by now.

Knuckles pulled out his earpiece just to check whether he hadn't accidentally deactivated it. Nope…the light was green. Still on.

He scoffed. "Typical. Of all the times to go radio silent…"

Deep down, he was thankful no one could hear him. He knew that they could've heard straight through the mask he tried to project. The irony was as unavoidable as it was painful. He found himself truly alone for the first time since he boarded the ship. In a way, he'd gotten what he'd wanted.

But at what cost?

Screw it. Being a guardian meant having to make difficult…even borderline illogical choices. It said in the old mantra that Chaos is power…power enriched by the heart. He could recite that mantra from memory, but now was the time to act on it. What the Master Emerald truly needed was an act of selflessness.

It felt wrong to turn away from the Master Emerald's glow when it was so close…separated from him by no more than a thick steel door and a line of encrypted code. But eventually, he wrenched himself away and headed down the corridor.

Hold on, guys, I'm coming!

Then it happened again.

Argh!

Knuckles stumbled, barely regaining himself. Everything went dark in a hurry, and the room spun out of control, becoming little more than a featureless vortex. The faint echoes of machinery and radio static faded out, giving way to the sound of the rustling wind – a vague, nothing sound which signaled that his mind knew to process something, but not exactly what. Both sides of his head throbbed in almost rhythmic fashion, seemingly ready to explode any second.

These pulses…they were worse than ever. The Master Emerald was in pain, and he could feel it. Not only feel it…see it. His eyes were drawn back toward the other side, where a blazing green light shone through the gloom, in tune with the pounding inside Knuckles' skull. Even from behind the thick steel door, the Master Emerald beckoned to its guardian. He tried to take a step, but when took his next one with his leading foot hanging over thin air, he nearly tripped.

This wasn't real. This was only in his head, he'd told himself. He'd been through this very situation time and time again. And yet, he had to ask. What the hell was real anymore?

Ugh…now he could hardly hear himself think.

Real or not…if the concept of pain could be distilled into a single sound, this was it. This…he didn't even know what to call it, this…throbbing in his head that wouldn't go away. It was there one moment, gone the next, then back again, and like clockwork the pattern repeated. Each step was a furious struggle, his better judgement knowing where to turn, but his senses pulling him in different directions. As he edged closer to the gleam, the flux between "searing pain" and "just fine" faded to nothing, and the pounding only intensified, latching onto him, chipping away at his senses like a mad gremlin crawling inside his cranium.

Nope. Not real. Only in his head. Keep moving.

The more he told himself that, the more he was convinced otherwise.

He pulled closer to the noise – if nothing else, to confirm his skepticism. But with each second, it came into focus, and he noted its location on his right. Some kind of impact…could those be gunshots? Punches landing on someone? No…more like metal clanking against metal. Best guess…someone's footsteps. Knuckles got as close as he reasonably could, and tracked the location of the sound. It didn't stay in one place, it was slithering like a snake…tunneling beneath his feet. It had to be on the next floor down.

There it was again. Tap. Tap. Tap.

…Tap.

Yep…those definitely were footsteps. Slow, consistent footsteps. Whoever this was, it didn't sound like they were in any hurry.

That makes one of us…

Sensing Eggman's presence, every light fixture in the room burst into life, bringing into focus the sheer scale of what he had created. The walls were covered in an intricate series of pipes and cables, every single one of them vital to the operation of the ship. They gave off a faint, green glow, normally too faint to have been visible to the naked eye were it not for the ever-present smog giving it something to bounce off. Soon, the majesty of the cosmos would come streaming through the panoramic viewscreen...though for now, he'd have to settle for a view of the sea and the occasional shipping vessel that passed by.

Strange. Somehow this space seemed almost too expansive to fit on a ship this size...and yet still too cramped. Perhaps the tubes were the culprit. They had arrived just last week, after all, and this was the only safe place on the ship where he could store row upon row of cryogenic-stasis tubes.

Speaking of which...

Dr. Eggman paused and turned toward the lines of tubes. There was one more thing he needed to check on.

"Hello? Sonny boy?" he said. "Daddy's home!"

He walked over the capsule marked with the Roman numeral 'I', the only one in operation. Yet more tubes jutted out the sides of each, meant to hyper-accelerate growth by supplying oxygen and water at high enough doses at the proper times. For all his studies and labors, this was his reward.

A shriveled mass of a lifeform grew inside, flaccid tentacles jutting out of the bulbous mass of a body trying desperately to form limbs, its color as pale as cigarette ashes. Eggman's head slumped to his chin, unimpressed with the results. It was just as he'd left it that morning...and the morning before that, and the night after that. He'd hoped he would see some positive growth after a hectic day apart from its master. But one look dashed those hopes.

He tapped on the tube vigorously, waiting for something, anything. Nothing changed...not even so much as a ripple in the standing water.

From a nearby table, he picked up a pen and clipboard and set about marking off all of the project targets that he hadn't come within a country mile of reaching. As he made his way through the list, marking off failure after failure, his nerves frayed.

Grandfather never had it this rough...

"Sir?" asked a muffled voice from afar. Dr. Eggman turned to find his trusty Egg Flapper occupying the space where he'd directed him to go, the glass tube at the very heart of the room. "Shall we begin the experiment?"

Oh! Of course! The...um..."experiment".

In one smooth motion, he tore the sheet off the clipboard, crumpled it, and threw it toward the closest trash can. Turning away, not even taking care to note that his impromptu sky-hook had undershot the basket by twenty feet, he entered the radiation-proof observation chamber. By the time he settled into his seat, he had already lapsed into another episode of "Dr. Eggman's Thinking Out Loud".

"Bah! No matter! After I'm through with the hedgehog and his friend, I'll have all the time in the world to perfect the procedure!"

"Sir, may I politely remind you that Project Beacon is still in an untested state?" asked Flapper.

"Hmm? Oh…yes," muttered Eggman, as he tapped on a touchscreen, cycling through a rather rudimentary menu. Sprawling bulleted lists of flora and fauna from all over the planet were, for the moment, rendered in little more than a white background and the default system font. He was planning to mold it into a sleek and shiny interface worthy of the Eggman name, but Sonic and his annoying friends just had to butt in and ruin his schedule.

If there was going to be a guinea pig for this test, Flapper was the ideal candidate. One of the few remaining holdovers from the Legacy Series, which all drew power from an "organic battery", it was effectively rendered obsolete for battle duty once Dr. Eggman had found a self-sustaining power source. In one stroke, this opened the possibilities for larger and more destructive Badniks...although Sonic and Tails' little jaunt through the middle decks of his ship should have indicated how successful he was on that front.

But Dr. Eggman kept many of the Legacy Series mechs around – or at least the few that hadn't been felled by the hedgehog's foot. Perhaps it was out of a perverse sense of loyalty. Maybe it was his sick version of 'survival of the fittest'. Either way, he bided his time, waiting for the right moment to use them in the field once again. That time had finally come.

"Ah!" He'd finally reached the right selection in the menu.

Theoretically, there was a checklist with scores of other safety procedures both before and after this part, but they'd all become unreadable by this point, obscured by months worth of coffee stains. Throwing caution to the wind, he flipped open a glass box and pressed the silver button encased inside.

The moment his finger pushed down, all electric light in the room dimmed, sprang back into life for a nanosecond, then went out altogether.

Flapper turned upward to watch the spectacle of light above it. Tiny, green bolts of lightning crackled from an orb at the center of the tube, intermittently at first, but becoming more and more frequent...even persistent. As more energy fired through the tube, the bolts connected with each other, forming a consistent pattern which settled in the miniature vaccuum-chamber at the top. The energy only intensified, and chaos collided with chaos to create more chaos. With nowhere else to go, it grew into an unstable vortex looking for an outlet.

This was an inconvenient time for Flapper to notice that the outlet was pointed directly at it.

"Sir?" Flapper asked. "Requesting information on the nature of this experimen-"

Eggman didn't even wait for his loyal servant to finish before pressing the button a second time. The time for questions had long since passed. Had Eggman given Flapper X-ray vision, perhaps it would have been able to see what Eggman saw on his touchscreen.

The target species he'd selected: FLICKY - Flapper's container animal.

Then again, there wasn't anything Flapper could have done about it.

One blast of Chaos Energy from the top of the tube phased through its skin, tearing through every atom of its being. One second passed. There was no movement, no signs of resistance. Two seconds.

The weapon depowered, and one by one, lights returned to the room to revealing Flapper unmoving at the bottom of the tube, reduced to little more than a non-functioning shell - a shell which the Chaos energy had left almost as pristine and new as the moment it left the factory.

But only a shell, with no power. And no power source.

The word, stuck to the tip of the doctor's tongue, fell out with a soft, almost awed whisper.

"Success."

"AAARGH!"

Knuckles fell to his knees. Never before, not during any of the crises he'd dealt with before, had Chaos cried out to him like this.

#Supernova #guess i kinda missed that six month target from last year #sonic fanfic #sonic fanfiction #sonic the hedgehog

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elfiesink · 5 years

Text

I’m 1/3 of the way through the next chapter but in the meantime I got this.

I think I need to review for pacing and tense issues.

There’s something about the desert, isn’t there.

Something magical.Something mysterious. Something horrific. There is a beauty in the endless spans of shrub covered landscape, in the dry sand and spiny joshua tree. Something about the hours you can spend seeing nothing but yourself in the reflection of your car mirror promises a forbidden sort of freedom. The world becomes vast, nothing between you and the horizon, no landmarks, no features. But the world also shrinks and for a brief moment, you are only concerned with yourself.

There is no one here. No one here but you. Just you. Just the road. Just the horizon.

You are breathless.

You don’t know when you started holding your breath. You are only aware when the strain starts to make you dizzy and your chest starts to ache. You pull over, your exhale slow and heavy. The air drops out of you in stones, a clatter to fall onto your driver side floor, one that wouldn't get itself caught under your brake pedal so you left it alone. You just breathed, staring at the dirt on the toe of your shoes. It’s soft and light. You could brush it off, it wouldn’t resist, it would be gone with the barest brush of your hand. You could brush it off, you could but you don’t. You stare at it. And breathe.

It’s quiet. You don't even hear the comfort of a breeze past your car window. It's silent. If you sit here for too long the sun will trickle downwards and you will too quickly learn the horrors of the desert at night. The darkness. The sharp edge as your car lights cut through the void. The new discovery of the sound of footsteps just outside the driver's side window, loud and clear, approaching but not quite reaching the handle, as you speed 75 miles per hour down this empty lonely road. You lift your head and begin to drive again.

The desert promises magic. And mystery. And horror. Beauty in endless spans of shrub covered landscape. But it is a place you only wish to pass through. A few hours, a few scant hours of that forbidden sort of freedom, and then back back back into the arms of civilization.

We often wish for things we can’t have, don’t we.

You see a sign in the desert. It is green, and old, with dirt caking the edges but the white reflective letters are still easy to read. Yrnyx- 1 mile. You have no idea what that means. Is it a town. A road. A rest stop that's just a little space of gravel carved out on the side of the road so you can let impatient drivers past. It’s 1 mile away. Five minutes maybe. Four minutes. Three minutes. Your blinker is on and you don’t know why. You didn’t even notice it, the flick of your finger, the turn signal clicking on. You go with the motions down the exit onto this crusted, dying road.

Does anyone ever godown this road? There’s nothing. There’s not even street lights. That doesn’t deter you and you decide that you need a restroom. That’s a good reason to stop, isn’t it? You were always so good at that, at finding a good reason to do something that you really shouldn't. It was to keep someone company, it was to keep an eye on things, it was to keep things from getting too crazy, it was to warn when the cops were coming. Right? That precious little skill of yours is active in full swing as you pull down the road until you see a cluster of buildings rising in the distance, draped in a twinkling robe of heat shimmer. They are whole until they’re not, normal until they’re not, a town until they’re not, the closer you get the more you see. They are broken. Windows smashed or missing. Paint chipped and peeling. Chunks of wall gone from impacts long gone. Noone goes down this road.

Just you.

There’s a sign. It’s old, rusted, bleached out by the sun. But you get close enough that you can still see the outline of rust stains around the letters. Yrnyx Miracle Springs: Medical Center. The gates are gone, if there were ever gates, the road ahead lined with equal parts pothole and palm tree. Some of which were actually still alive, if not a little brown at the edges of their leaves. Dried and dying. Like everything else around here.

The car stops, the engine off, you’re responsible for both, it’s your choice to step out of the car and onto the concrete that was once painted pink. Or perhaps red. There are a few large patches of paint covered in dust and sunlight and really it could have been any shade once upon a time. There’s a fountain, in the middle of this roundabout driveway. There’s no water in it, if there was ever water in it, nothing in it now but the sad remains of a threadbare spiderweb.

You sit on the edge and listen to the nothing. Your phone is in your hand but there’sno signal. Why would there be a signal. There’s nothing out here to warrant a cell tower, nothing out here to warrant someone with a phone. It was just you. Just you, alone, with your dirt covered car that you haven’t washed in a couple of weeks. There’s no funny half teasing wash me scribbled onto your back window because there’sno one to do that. Your screen is empty, blank, the stock background behind rows of apps that won’t function. The most you could do is open your calculator and count all the mistakes you’ve made. All the things that lead you to where you are right now.

Your mind kept wandering to the desert’s heat. It was the heat that let you in, folded back like curtains before the stage. A shifting haze that covered Yrnyx as you approached from a distance. People died in the desert. Your car was stocked with several water bottles that you had piled onto the passenger side seat at the last gas station in a bit of paranoid panic a few hours ago. What if your car broke down? What if you were stuck in traffic? What if you pulled over down a lonely abandoned road and sat at the edge of a dried up water fountain staring again at the dust on your shoes.

You told yourself you were thirsty. You weren’t, but if you weren’t then you would just keep sitting there alone in the middle of this empty place. So you stood up and got a bottle, tracing patterns in the condensation as you walked deeper into the health spa. The front doors still held their glass. Yrnyx miracle spa was etched into the glass, disturbed only by the soft puff of your breath as you tried to see past the dirt and into the lobby.

The building was abandoned. You had no idea how old this place was, no idea how long it had been abandoned, no idea when the last person came in. It could be dangerous. But you pushed and it opened and you. You walked in.

The lobby was covered in dirt and dust. Husks of dead insects and hanging drapes of spiderwebs. The discarded husk of a scorpion. A few bones of small animals shiny white and picked clean. Rats maybe. Silent save for a distant, inconsistent tap. Most of the light in here comes from a massive domed skylight, a wedge of which is now lying in pieces on the floor in the center of the room. You can see a gift shop. It’s empty, shelves wiped clean, but the shelves are still there. Pristine white shelves set against pink walls. There’s a poster on the wall, promising a full gallon of miracle mineral hot spring water for just a dollar. The edges are decayed and flaking and the color’s almost gone but, but it’s still there. Cold when you press your fingertips against it. A little damp. Condensation decaying it away as you watched.

You wrapped your arms around yourself, walked down the halls, the empty rooms with missing doors. Why were the doors always missing in abandoned places? Who went around stealing the doors and what were they doing with them? Was there some home, out in the world somewhere, that had no idea that its door once hung in another place, a place that didn’t really exist anymore? Do people really take a look at where their home came from? The pieces, the parts, the furniture. What was soaked in all that material?

You find all sorts of treasures that you can’t bring yourself to touch. Medicinal bottles that still have liquid or pills inside. A hat. A pile of clothes casually tossed onto a chair in a room that must have once been a place to change before someone headed out to the hot springs.No one ever came back for them. They were abandoned here and no one had come to claim them. Just the doors. These places, they were always missing the doors.

Except those two.

Those two large, double doors. They are glass, but the glass is frosted. Large brass handles, diagonal, across each door. They’re hot to the touch, but you push open the door anyway, and step out onto broken concrete. There’s pools out here. Two empty, one filled with dirty green water, stagnant, dark. The springs. Spring. They didn’t look very hot, certainly didn’t look very medicinal. But it’s still such a pretty shade of green, don’t you think? You approached it without fear, gazing into the viscous waters at your reflection. Why were you there? What were you doing, out in the middle of nowhere, no cellphone service, no one knew where you were, you had nothing with you but a bottle of icy water.

And you were alone.

Until you weren’t.

Did you know monsters aren’t real? They are, and they aren’t. It depends on your reference, your definition, your point of view. People can be monsters you know. You really do know, don’t you. It’s cute.

It was pleasant out there. The sun was starting to lower and the breeze was brisk but comforting. Finally some sounds; the wind against the building, a call of a bird somewhere, the clicking of chitin against concrete. And you remembered a text you got, just before you set off on your road trip. A friendly little message, from someone you know and don’t know. Real and not real. Nothing but imagined whispers.

People claim you have all kinds of skills. They claim you’re special. That you mean something. But really, truly, your best skill is denial. It wasn’t real, after all. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t happening. You were alone at a little abandoned place in the middle of nowhere. Where no one knew where you were. And no one would know where to look.

It’s fine, really.

The sound of chitin on concrete. Heavy. Not a tap but a thud. Thud. Thud.

It’s fine, really.

A shadow, the cold against your back sharp and painful. The shake in your bones and the ground beneath your feet. The sound of your own heart thundering in your ears in time with the thuds.

It’s fine. Really.

Really?

Are you so sure?

You know, I went through a lot of effort to make that thing for you. For our game? There were a lot of options. I won’t lie, I was tempted to go the whole giant spider route. It’s a classic! Sure, it’s all Tolkien's fault. Or that one tarantula I don’t know. But I actually spent a long time working on it! And then I thought, that’snot right. You’re worth more than a spider. You need something with pizzazz, uniqueness, flair. I wanted to make this little match something memorable. But also, it is our first scuffle. Can’t go too hard too fast.

So when you, with a trembling hand, uncapped your bottle of water, poured it past your lips, felt the sharp shards of ice scratch their way down your throat, I hope you did so gratefully. Like savoring wine before a ballet. The curtain rises, lush smokey velvet trimmed with silver. The dancers arrive with a spin to face one another. A step, a twist, a leap. The music rises into a delicate melody. Nothing so fast that the dancers miss their steps, nothing so slow that the dancers collide.

It’s not the best stage, and I’m sorry. It’s plain, and so far from anything else, but you have to admit. It’s the perfect backdrop for your foe. Where else would you find scorpions but the desert?

You did so well you know, I’m so proud of you. The dodges! That stinger came so close to smashing through your head and you got away each and every time. It was lovely. And that attempt with the large hunk of concrete was adorable. You didn’t expect your salvation to come from the sickly green ichor, did you? But it was all you had. Solid enough for you to run across but not for the giant beast scuttling after you. When you sealed it back over, what were you thinking?

Were you watching the air bubbles float up? Were you watching the many legs thrash as it struggled to breathe? Were you watching the temperature drop lower, and lower, and lower. Watching the ice close in. Watching the ice wrap itself around limbs and hold them still. Were you watching the air bubbles float up?

Were you still watching when they stopped?

Drowning something to death. That’s cold.

And now you’re in the car. Driving away. Moving forward. Trying desperately to ignore the sounds of casual footsteps just outside your driver’s side window. And me? I’m posting pictures of your triumph up on my fridge. Do you prefer dinosaur magnets or zoo magnets?

Do you not like being watched?

You’ll get over it. There are much worse things than being drowned to death. Like spending your entire life in an abandoned faux medical hot spring, growing bigger and bigger, until you can’t get enough food and you're always hungry but you never die. You just keep growing. And finally, finally, there’s food. It’s the first food you’ve seen in years and you want it so much. It looks small. But that’s a lie. It’s so much bigger than you and you don’t know until you’rewatching your last breath float away as you finally fade.

Chilling.

Enjoy your vacation sunbeam. Go to your hotel, wash off the splash back of sun aged algae from your skin, the residue from your shoes. Take a nap, get something to eat, maybe have some wine. Relax. The road trip's just beginning and our next game should be much more fun.

#Mine #19th #March #2019 #March 19th 2019

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lavenderprose · 6 years

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Here’s a bit of an untitled short story that might end up being a titled long story, who knows. It’s based on my need to make things as Gay and as Sad as Michigan as possible.

From Detroit, it’s a three-hundred mile drive the tip of the mitten. It’s a straight shot up I-75 and it could theoretically take less than five hours, but with stops and traffic it’s closer to six. Almost exactly halfway up, give or take ten miles, there is a tiny town next to Lake Huron that seems to be made up of an abandoned gas station, a McDonald’s, and a cheese and charcuterie shop all surrounded by an endless expanse of tall and yellow grass. The shop sells a type of cheese that is named after the town, and venison sausages, and T-shirts that say LOVE where the O has been replaced with the lower peninsula.

Topher buys a small clamshell package of cheese cubes and venison sticks and sits outside at a stone picnic table. In the summer—and Topher has been here in summer—the beating sun makes the heat off the pavement almost unbearable, and sitting at the tables an impossibility. But it’s April. A lonely tree that started breaking through the pavement of the parking lot when Topher was a teenager is now more than ten feet tall, and the buds are emerging after a long and harsh winter.

“It’s been a long time since I was this far up,” says Caleb. He has his glasses on the tip of his nose and his arms folded on the table, cool as you please. Next to him, Parker is tapping a McDonald’s cup with the last of a chocolate milkshake rhythmically on the table. Caleb, who’s prone to car sickness, has forgone food.

“I always forget how it smells,” says Parker. Topher’s eyes, caught somewhere in the middle distance, don’t catch where he’s looking—but he thinks it must be towards the lake. From this distance, it’s only really visible as a line of shimmer on the horizon, but Parker is a water baby. Sometimes, when Topher thinks of Parker as he was when they first met, he can only picture him as a pair of shoulders and a head floating above some given body of water. “Cleaner somehow. I guess.”

“You guys grew up here, huh?” says Caleb.

Parker gestures expansively with the hand that isn’t holding the milkshake. “Yes. Right here in this parking lot.”

Caleb recrosses his arms on the table and mutters something under his breath, maybe something like why do I put up with you. Topher takes a chilled and over-salted fry from the almost empty box next to Parker’s elbow and says, “Not here. About fifty miles west, like here.” He raises his right hand, flat and facing Caleb, then points to a spot below the join of his middle and index fingers.

“Middle of damn nowhere,” says Parker.

“Then, after my mom died,” says Topher, tracing his finger up along his middle finger to the very tip, “I moved here.”

“When your uncle took you in,” Caleb ventures, after a moment in which he’s obviously carefully choosing his words.

Topher feels his throat try to close and pushes back against it, but the pain stays there. He flattens his hand against the table and breathes until he has enough air to respond, but even then it’s only to say, “Yeah,” in a low, breaking voice that he can barley recognize himself in. The instant regret shows on Caleb’s face in a wobbling of lips and a shimmering of eyes, like he himself might start to cry.

“Topher,” Caleb says, in one of those low and gentle tones that Topher can hardly stand under normal circumstances, let alone right now. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” Topher whispers. “Please.” He rises and pulls the keys out of his pocket, steps into the glare of the sun over the crest of the roof. The car has been sitting in a patch of sunlight that has made the upholstery hot and the air stuffy. Topher turns the ignition and opens the sunroof, and watches Caleb and Parker make their way slowly towards Caleb’s truck.

The rest of the way up, Topher pushes the Malibu to 85 and arrives twenty minutes before Caleb and Parker. The house is set back about an acre back from the road, up a long gravel drive lined by trees and trespassing signs. The old Corvette sits in the driveway, and Topher pulls up behind it. The front of the house looks exactly as he remembered it from five or twenty years ago—mint green paint, low porch, rusty windchime. There is an old and fading wooden sign nailed next to the door with the address number and Williams in an attractive font. It’s been there for longer than Topher can remember, and he thinks it must have been painted by Peter’s mother or grandmother.

The screen door, which has always had a problem with latching, is swinging in the wind. Topher watches it sway for a moment as he gathers the willpower to rise from the deep seat of the Malibu. When he does, he approaches the house slowly, and stoops to retrieve the spare key after staring at the front door for several long moments.

The kitchen still smells the same. It’s there, underneath the odor of something in a pan on the stove going bad, and the fruity smell of a bottle of orange juice open on the counter. Topher turns his eyes away and the lump rises again, and he stumbles back to the dining room to lower himself onto a chair.

He puts his head in his hands, and the tears fall hot. The waves wash up from the lake and crash against the rocky beach, and it almost covers the sound of Topher’s sobs. The doors to the living room from the screened in back porch are swaying in the breeze, the plants are dying. Peter Williams was sixty-two years old when he died three days ago, and Topher had not seen him in five years.

Behind him, the screen door swings open. Topher startles violently and sends the cloth placemat on the table spinning to the floor. Through the kitchen, someone calls, “Hello?” and Topher furiously wipes the tears from his cheeks.

“Hi!” he calls back, and leans back around the kitchen archway. “Hi, yeah, hello.”

The man standing in the kitchen is taller than Topher by several inches, blonde and stocky. He’s got a thick trunk and limbs, muscle with a softening layer of fat. Attractive. His hat and shirt both say Lawson Orchards.

“Hi, I’m sorry,” he says, and takes off the hat in a small-town sensibility that Topher had almost forgotten existed. “I’m—I live down the road, and I’ve been watching the place for the last couple of days because I heard, y’know, that—well, I was—I know that, uh, Mister Williams had…has passed.”

Topher clears his throat and nods. “Yeah. Thanks. Um…thanks. I’m Christopher. I’m his—”

“His kid,” says the blond. “I—yeah, I know. I recognize you. I’m Sam. Sam Lawson. Do you remember me?”

It takes a moment, but the plump and red face of a boy several years younger than himself floats back into Topher’s memory. Sammy Lawson was a pitiful creature at age fourteen, the last time Topher thinks he laid eyes on the kid. The summer before Topher went off to State, Sammy was short for his age, overweight with pimples on every sunburned inch of his body and all of that thick straw-yellow hair cut into an uneven mop. Fourteen years later, he’s still got the generous belly of someone whose mother still makes a cherry pie every Saturday afternoon, but it suits him now.

Topher licks away the salt of a tear clinging to the curve of his top lip. “Yeah,” he mumbles, throat still thick. “I recognize you. I remember you.”

“I was a couple of years younger than you. When you moved here, I was ten—”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I think you babysat me, maybe once or twice.” Sam clears his throat and then, seemingly out of some compulsive need to end his thought, finishes with, “Our dads knew each other.”

“I never knew my dad,” says Topher, fully aware of how strange it is to say in the moment. His brows furrow even as it’s coming out of his mouth.

“Right. Sorry. Your uncle. Peter. Old Pete and my dad. My dad’s Leigh. You know.”

“I know.”

“Right.”

Sam Lawson swipes his misty forehead with his wrist and then sets his red baseball cap back on his sweat-damp hair. Obviously feeling the melancholically awkward weight of the air, he sets his broad hands on his hips and glances around the kitchen, at the spoiled pot on the stove and the open bottle of orange juice—anywhere that is not directly at Topher.

“I was the one,” says Sam, after a moment.

“Excuse me?”

Sam wiggles his hand oddly toward the open door. “I was doing some work for him out in the garden. Just moving some stuff around, getting it all neat for spring. He couldn’t do so much anymore, y’know, ‘cause of his knees and stuff.”

“Right,” Topher says.

“Anyway, I get here about six in the morning, since I gotta go work in the orchard at nine, and Pete knew I was coming and everything, so I start to work. And around seven-thirty, I hear him get up, and then around eight, I hear—well, I hear him yell, and then a big bang. And I come in and he’s on the floor. And—” Sam stops, either because of Topher’s face or the small and pitiful noise that airs through the room from the depths of Topher’s throat. Sam’s jaw visibly tightens. “Sorry. Me and my big mouth.”

One of Topher’s hands grips onto the edge of the wooden counter, and the other curls into a tight fist next to his hip. In twenty minutes, he’ll realize that his own nails have dug deep enough into his palm to create four bleeding half-moon marks. For a very long and thick moment, there is almost complete silence.

“Do you think it was painful?” Topher asks after this, and even he doesn’t know why.

Sam Lawson blinks at him like a deer in headlights.

“I think heart attacks usually are,” he says then, and the lump returns to Topher’s throat. Then, as a second and much more gentle thought, Sam adds, “But I also think that where he went—I think you don’t remember things like that, after.”

Topher snorts.

“I’m sorry,” he says, warbly and accidentally shrill, “But I just don’t—"

Caleb’s truck grinds gravel in the parking lot and saves Topher from himself. He parks behind Topher’s car at a distance that Topher will probably yell at him about later, but in the moment, he just crowds to the door with Sam and watches Caleb and Parker dismount from the F-150.

“You sure hauled ass to get here,” says Caleb, everything about him a little shadowy standing as he is on the other side of the screen door. “You must’ve been going something like twenty miles over the speed limit.” He says it with a kind of Here-There-Be-Dragons tone that says he hasn’t forgotten the exchange at the rest stop, over two hours ago now. Topher had, in fact, forgotten, but he doesn’t feel in a charitable mood, so he lets Caleb stew.

“Only ten,” says Topher, opening the screen door because it seems that neither Parker or Caleb is going to take the initiative, and it’s getting kind of strange to be pressed elbow-to-elbow with Sam Lawson. The kitchen wasn’t made to contain four grown men, considering that it’s really only a row of counters and the fridge set about eight feet opposite from the sink and the stove, but they manage with Topher and Sam standing on opposite corners and Caleb and Parker both leaning against the counters, unconcerned with sharing space for obvious reasons. “The speed limit goes up to 75 somewhere past Bay City. That new law.”

“Hmm,” noises Caleb. “Forgot about that.” His eyes settle on Sam, with obvious inquiry. “Hi.”

“Oop, hi,” says Sam, holding out his hand. There are calluses in all the places you’d expect, or so Topher supposes. “I’m Sam Lawson. Live down the street. Chris and I…” Sam obviously looks for a way to describe their non-relationship, and fails. “We knew each other. When he lived here.”

“Caleb Shaw-McGuire,” Caleb says, smirking because he knows how much Topher dislikes being called Chris. “Topher and I work together down in Detroit. This is Parker, my partner.”

Sam swiftly moves his hand from Caleb’s to Parker’s to shake. “Partners as in…?”

“The married kind,” says Parker, and Sam nods easily.

“Right, yeah. That’s what I—yeah.” Sam takes steps towards the door, looking like he isn’t quite sure how to arrange his face. “Well, I’m…I just wanted to let you know how sorry I am, Chris, and if you need anything, me and my family would be more than happy to help out. I’ll, uh—I’ll see you around. Nice to meet you two.” He nods to Caleb and Parker, and exits to the tune of screen door banging once-twice-thrice against the doorjamb before finally latching on the fourth try.

Caleb’s hands go to his pockets and his lips purse. They while away a moment, because it’s one of those moments where nothing you could say feels right. Parker is still pressed together with Caleb with no real need now, but it’s more about comfort than anything else, at this point. The smell of the pot on the stove is making Topher’s stomach churn.

“What now?” asks Caleb finally.

“It’s a lot of hurry up and wait,” says Topher. “I’m still waiting for his sister to call me back and tell me which goddamn funeral home he’s at. I told her to make the decisions until I could get up here and now she’s being withholding as all hell. She’s always been like this.” His teeth grind.

“Do you want to go lay down?” asks Parker, meaning well.

“No, Parker, I fucking don’t.”

“Alright,” says Caleb, before the situation can escalate. “Let’s clean up then. The fewer people who see the house like this, the better.” Without waiting for a response, he picks up the pan from the stove and crosses to the sink with it. Parker sniffs the orange juice. Topher exits to the dining room to close the porch doors and return the fallen placemat to its tabletop home.

#Maggie's Fic #I guess that's the appropriate term??#even though it's not fic??#wtv

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themelaninmamifiles · 6 years

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Planning for Baby: The Nursery

Earlier last month I started a “planning for baby” series which focused on things like feeding (via formula) and diaper stockpiling. Today, let’s talk the nursery. With the exception of the first few months, your little one is probably going to be spending a lot of time in the nursery. And although it’s not a requirement for you to create this space for them, for many of us it’s a lot of fun to create a cozy yet functional room for baby. Not only will baby be catching some much needed z’s in their nursery, but it can also be a great playroom, a space for nursing/feeding when they’re exclusively on the breast or bottle and will also double as their room for changing diapers and so forth. And as baby gets older, this will eventually become their official bedroom. If you don’t have the space for baby to fully have their own room, there’s no reason you can’t still carve out a little space for them in your bedroom, home office (assuming you don’t use it as a full time office) or even living room or family room depending on how your home is configured.

When it comes time to plan your nursery, it can literally be an overwhelming experience. Instagram and Pinterest may have you feeling like you have to literally do the most to prove your worthiness to be a new parent. But this just isn’t true. If you want to go overboard, by all means do so. At the same time, whether your budget doesn’t allow for it, or your aesthetic is more minimalistic, you can still create an awesome space for baby. Read on for some tips (based on my own experiences) to create the perfect space for your little one.

1. Pick a Theme and/or Color Palette

This is going to be crucial in terms of decor and color selection. For my husband and I, we’re both minimalists. We don’t like a lot of traditional overly carved furniture. And to top it off, I don’t like the “traditional” pink for girls/blue for boys. I knew from the minute I found out I was pregnant that I wasn’t going to adhere to that old school style of thinking. In a previous post, I mentioned how I opted to go with a unicorn & clouds theme plus picked a color palette of light gray, lilac/lavender, and seafoam green. Now, part of the reason I went this way is because we opted to convert my home office into Baby G’s room. And when it was my office, I had an awesome chevron gray theme going - including my chevron gray couch above which I chose to keep in the baby’s room. So, the couch became an anchor piece in terms of color & decor, and much of what I selected in terms of other furnishings and accents were done to compliment that chevron gray.

Note that my couch is currently housing some extra items that we haven’t quite decided where to put or that Baby G might not need for a few months yet.

2. Decide on Furniture

Although it’s nice to have a complete nursery furniture set, it’s not particularly necessary. And you may also not have the space to accommodate a full furniture set. In our case, it was most definitely a space issue - especially since we were keeping the couch in there. Even though Baby G had her own room, I didn’t want it to feel cluttered with furniture so maximizing space was a priority. Now, you will need a place for baby to sleep, somewhere to change them, and somewhere to house clothes, etc. In our case, the room comes with a closet, so we could put clothes (and our diaper surplus) in the closet. For us, we opted for an all in one convertible crib + changer from Graco that can go from crib to toddler bed to a full size bed (I’m a big fan of buying things that have longevity).

It came with built in storage, a set of three drawers in the changing table (where I house whatever current size of diapers + wipes/lotions/etc + any medicines) and a low drawer under the crib where I keep her receiving blankets, crib sheets, SwaddleMe wraps and zip up blanket sacks. And because I love minimalism, our crib features sleek lines and continues with the gray theme. However, we did also buy a few cubby storage systems and bins from Target to house things like books, Baby G’s short sleeve onesies, toys and other functional items.

Just keep in mind that you should absolutely NOT put the crib by a window. If your place is like ours, there are no child guards on the window. And even if you do, babies can get caught up in curtains and blinds. Just don’t do it. Also, don’t get freaked out, there’s a lot of extra stuff in the crib right now which won’t be there once Baby G arrives and I have yet to safety proof the room.

3. Decide Whether You Want to Paint or Not

I picked a color palette using paint chips, and for that reason alone I’m convinced everyone thought I wanted to paint the walls. I did not want to paint the walls. It’s a lot of work, and especially if you’re renting (which we currently are), it’s a massive pain in the ass to convert a room back to the original white/off white color. However, if you do want to paint, make sure you give yourself enough time to allow the room to properly air out. Paint stinks, and baby is going to have enough hurdles in their early days without also trying to endure paint fumes.

Now if you don’t want to paint (like me), there are fab alternatives. As someone who’s used to apartment life but hates bare walls, I am a huge fan of wall decals and wall art. Wall decals are usually made of vinyl and are as easy to remove as they are to apply. Likewise, I love wall art and use the 3M Command strips (make sure you get the ones designated to hold weight) because they’re as easy to come down as they were to put up. So, I have the “Taylor” + unicorn over the crib and the two posters on opposite short walls near the window. I still have one more wall to decorate (not shown) where I’ll put up seafoam cloud shaped decals.

4. DIY Decor

If you have the energy and are up for it, there’s a lot of cute DIY style decor options you can incorporate. I haven’t done it to date, but I know plenty of people who own Cricket productivity machines who create cute closet divider, card stock backed mobiles and other cute knickknacks to give their baby’s nursery some personality. Just make sure you give yourself enough time to complete any DIY projects as you can easily underestimate how fatigued you can get with your pregnancy.

5. Don’t Forget Functional Storage

We’ve been blessed in that our family and friends went crazy and bought us a ton of diapers and clothes. So, for the most part, I’ve bought the occasional outfit because I want to and haven’t had to even think about buying a diaper or baby wipe because people really showed up and showed out at our baby shower. Since we ended up getting a lot of clothes, my father in law installed a second clothes rack in the closet. So, I was able to place the first year’s clothes on the top rack and the toddler clothes on the 2nd rack. Likewise, I’ve put the older sizes of diapers on the top shelf - along with a few items that I just don’t have homes for right now - and NB, Sz 1 & Sz 2 diapers on the floor for easy access (along with baby wipes).

6. Remember the Baby Monitor & Carbon Monoxide Detector!

There are tons of modern options out on the market today, but whether you go old school or hi-tech wearables - this is an essential. I’m type A, and as someone who survived 2 deadly asthma attacks under the age of 5, I know how essential getting oxygen is! No matter how much I read up on the actual low statistical risk of SIDS or similar sleep concerns, I’m not comfortable with just a simple video monitor. So for me, I wanted something ultra high tech, that genuinely monitors breathing. Thankfully, I was gifted a Cocoon Cam from the brand, via my sister’s awesome connects. But originally I had the Owlet on my registry. And we do still also have a standard video monitor that a friend bought for us off our registry.

7. Acquiring Your Core Nursery Items

Hands down, the best way to acquire these items is through a baby registry. It might sound mercenary but babies are expensive and no one will begrudge you for being pragmatic about it. But also be realistic about prices and how you distribute price points in your registry. Just like with a wedding registry, the sweet spot is to keep the majority of your items under $100 and ideally between the $25 - 75 price point. Obviously things like cribs, changing tables, bouncers, swings, bassinets, gliding chairs or any other kind of furniture or electronic baby focused gadget will typically be very close to or more than $100. Be a realist, those are things that close family will most likely offer to buy you (or very good friends). I’ll do a registry post at a later date...but yeah...a registry will be your bestie for literally and figuratively outfitting baby.

Don’t forget gently used items. Often times it can be a family heirloom. We have a few frocks in Baby G’s closet that her tias & daddy wore when they were babies - including a fab christening gown. I know a lot of people put their noses up at second hand. But whether your budget requires it or someone just nicely offers it to you, don’t be so quick to turn it down. Now, the caveat to this is, if you’re receiving 2nd hand toys or furniture you absolutely must cross reference the item against the official Recall List on the Consumer Product Safety Commission website. Also, the majority of children’s product sites keep an active list of items they’ve recalled from their own portfolio. So, always double check before deciding to make it your own. Things can get recalled at any time. Specifically, you should NOT use a 2nd hand car seat. And if a crib is older than the early 2000s there’s a really good chance you can’t use it as drop side cribs are basically universally banned as being unsafe.

So, those are just some quick tips to get you started with building out your own nursery. Mine is still about 90% done as there are a few straggler items I need to re-home from the home office phase and decor that still needs to be situated. As I mentioned earlier, I’ll most definitely follow up with a registry specific post to help get people on the right track (as registries are very overwhelming)!

#pregnancy #baby nursery #nursery decor #nursery inspo #parenting #parenthood #planning for baby #baby room #nursery #nursery ideas #NurseryDecor #tales of a mommy 2 be #waiting4babyg

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booguesswho · 7 years

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Tagged by: @desertfragments

Tagging: (if you’re wondering why you’re getting tagged here, we’re mutuals on my hub blog, sunseraph.)

@xcapiisms @earthensxnctuary @asxftwhisper @maelcholuim @avoidantphysicist @velvetinflower @disgcsting @peaceey @witchboyclover @joyfound @smirkingrevenge

1. what does your muse smell like?

Kuma smells strongly of herbs and smoke. Usually, it’s a combination of sage and marijuana, with sage being the stronger one (it being the scent that hangs around longer). They burn incense fairly frequently as well, and their latest favorite tends to stick to their wardrobe.

Jude, being incorporeal, doesn’t usually have a scent, but sometimes, those near them, especially when they’re trying to interact with the physical plane, swear they can smell a hint of sulfur.

2. how often does your muse bath/shower? any habits?

Kuma used to often go over a week without showering; they would forget, and the strongly scented substances they spent so much time around often covered up a lot of the body odor they accumulated. When they do shower, they like the water as hot as they can stand with a lot of water pressure. They use washcloths to clean themself, and they like cheap, really fruity smelling soaps. If they can focus, their showers are quick, but they often space out, which makes the process take longer. They hate baths, finding them boring and hard to do.

Jude, on the other hand, loves baths. They love pampering themself (and, by extension, Kuma) and the luxury of it all. They like bath bombs, and they’ll take easily an hour lounging and doing more in-depth beauty care routines. In the shower, they’re less thorough but still take plenty of time and care. They prefer lukewarm water and more natural, somewhat unusual scent combos (cedar/lemon, poppy seed/pomegranate, etc). They love to sing in both the shower and bath. Since coming into Kuma’s life, they ensure Kuma bathes at least a couple times a week.

3. does your muse have any tattoos or piercing?

Both Kuma and Jude have gauges and several other ear piercings. Kuma has other piercings in their nostril and a couple of dermals on their collarbone. They prefer straight tapers for their gauge piercings and jewelry in bright colors or with sparkly stones. They’ve been contemplating getting a tattoo for ages, but they keep changing their mind about the design and placement they want, so it hasn’t happened yet.

Jude shares their taste in jewelry, but is far more varied about what sort of gauge jewelry they like. They have a septum piercing, and both nipples are pierced. They have a large tattoo across their entire back.

4. any body movement quirks ( ex.knee shakes )?

Kuma is a 75% person; any motion they make that’s about 75% to what they want is close enough. So they stumble over words a lot, putting in just enough effort to be understandable, and throw their body around, collapsing onto chairs or beds or people. They tend to swing their limbs around, making big motions, and often bump into things when their rough approximation of where their body is in space turns out to be inaccurate. When they stand still, they often rock and shift their weight, but when they sit or lay, they’re not too fidgety.

Jude is much more controlled about their body. Their motions are still fluid, but also neater, sharper; they’re prone to grand gesture, but with far more self-awareness than Kuma. Sometimes they bounce their knee if they’re bored, but not terribly often. Both Kuma and Jude tend to take up a lot of space, but Jude’s more self-aware about it.

5. what do they sleep in?

Kuma tends to either sleep in whatever they’re wearing (which is often enough clothes intended to be pjs) or they strip and sleep in underclothes, boxers and a tank top, if not entirely nude. They also like sweat pants and other big fluffy soft things or things with cute prints. Jude doesn’t necessarily sleep, but in terms of sleepwear, they prefer more satins and silks, not lingerie necessarily, but shorts and tops and nightgowns, often edged with simple lace.

6. what’s their favorite piece of clothing?

Kuma has this really soft, cute set of fleece bear-themed pjs a friend sent them from Ireland, but they never wear them for fear of wearing them out.

7. what do they do when they wake up?

Kuma typically spends about 20 minutes trying to determine if they’re actually awake. On top of being an insomniac, they don’t typically like sleeping because they already have a tough enough time feeling like anything’s real as is, and sleep muddles their weak grasp on reality. They sort of stumble from bed into their clothes; sometimes they remember to eat, but sometimes no. Usually, they get ready entirely in the dark. Again, Jude doesn’t sleep, and thus doesn’t have a wake up routine. Sometimes, they help Kuma do stuff in the morning.

8. how do they sleep? position?

Kuma, when alone, sleeps on their stomach, limbs askew. When they share their bed with literally anyone else, they cling. They’re a big spoon. They can chase their bedmate back and forth across the bed for snuggles without ever waking up.

9. what do their hands feel like?

Kuma’s hands are big and blocky, with thick fingers and squared off nails bitten short. Jude paints their nails fairly often to lessen the temptation of biting. The skin of their hands is somewhat rough naturally; they don’t have any callouses or anything. Jude’s hands are small and rounded, and their skin is very soft. Their fingers are short and thick, and their nails are always painted a plethora of colors.

10. if you kissed them, what would they usually taste like?

Kuma tastes mostly of what they smell, herbs of varying sorts with a hint of almost fruity sweetness. Jude, being a spirit and all, is not easy to kiss, but it’s still possible. They taste strange, of cold and ice and almost like dust with a hint of something adjacent to ozone.

#maelcholuim #desertfragments #avoidantphysicist #peaceey #joyfound #shadow tag { tag memes }#about the medium { headcanon }#about the hound { headcanon }

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ninjasheep12 · 7 years

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Darry x male

The screen door slams shut behind me as I enter my boyfriends house. I stop long enough to take my backpack off and set it to the side, momentarily scanning over the room. Dallas and Johnny were talking quietly about something on the couch, Soda and Steve were doing their usual arm wrestling, Two-bit was drinking a beer on the floor watching Mickey Mouse, and Ponyboy was leaned against the couch with a book in hand. "Hey guys." I mutter out, running a hand through my hair and heading towards the kitchen. Everyone gives a small "hey" as I walk past without another word. "Hey you okay, y/n?" Soda pipes up right before I get to the kitchen. "Just dandy." I roll my eyes, tugging at my hair as I spin to face him. "Just a long day." I didn't feel like explaining further so I turn around again. "Yeah, Darry's had a long day, too." Pony remarks, not taking his eyes off of his book. "Oh boy." I whisper to myself. Regardless I walk into the kitchen. "Hey, Dar." I walk up behind my tall boyfriend and wrap my arms around him. He had his back to me and was cooking something. I was only 5'5, so Darry was quite taller than me. "Yeah, hey." His tired voice mutters. He didn't turn to look at me but instead kept his eyes on the pan in front of him. With a sigh I groan and let go of him. "What's the matter, hun?" "Nothing's the matter." He blows my question off with a shrug. "Darry, seriously? I know something's up. Look at me." I try to peer at his face but he turns away from me. "Don't you have someone else to bother? How about that Bill guy, huh?" He snaps, turning to face me. I suck in a deep breath, my heart falling into my stomach. Bill was my workout partner. Today we had been stuck together for a new presentation we are required to do this week. I didn't know where any of this was coming from. "Bill?" I scoff. "Where's this coming from?" I reach out to take Darry's hand only for him to jerk away. "You know damn well where this is coming from y/n! You've been with him all day! What am I getting too boring for you?!" He looked me dead in the eyes with a cold look. I backed up a few steps as if he'd pushed me back. "You know it ain't like that, Darry!" I couldn't help but yell the words. I couldn't believe he was saying this. "Oh, save it! Go mess with your new boyfriend!" I could tell he was hurt and I desperately wanted to know what he was thinking. Darry often said things he didn't mean- but this hurt. It felt too real to be fake words. "It isn't like that at all! You know damn good and well I had to be partners with him for a freaking WORK presentation!" "Yeah, yeah, maybe that's true. But what do you guys do when you go to 'work out' huh?!" By this point I couldn't stand it. The living room was dead silent and I was positive Soda and Steve quit arm wrestling. "You know what, Dar? Think what you want but know that I actually love you. So you can take that to your grave Curtis!" My voice cracked and I shook my head, turning to run out of the house. "This is what I get for actually caring for your ass." I growl, slamming the screen door behind me. I needed to cool off. I let my legs sprint in the direction they automatically wanted to go. I couldn't help the few painful tears that escaped my eyes. Darry was the only person I've ever loved. He was always there. Now he was second guessing it all. He thought I liked Bill. No. Bill was that stupid co-worker who was a buddy back in high-school. Bill was that one annoying guy I could chill out with. The only real thing we did was go on workouts together. I had no clue Darry could turn that into something different. Within minutes I was in the park. I took a breather for a few seconds, taking time to pace around the area. The sun was starting to set perfectly around the scenery and a mixture of colors painted the sky. The last words he said before I ran out of the house suddenly came back. "Yeah, yeah, maybe that's true. But what do you guys do when you go to 'work out' huh?!" Letting out a grunt of frustration, I jump onto the monkey bars. Using my arms, I turn myself upside down long enough to hook my legs on one of the bars. Letting go, my body swings downward so I was upside down. I was in the middle of the monkey bars, so I made sure to be careful enough not to swing my arms. I once fractured my hand hitting one of these. "He think I'm with stupid Bill." I growl, starting to hoist myself up once I hook my hands behind my head. "He thinks I don't just go for a workout with an old pal." I hoist myself up again and again. "He thinks I don't care. Well guess what? I did. I do." 17. 18. 19. 20... "Why can't he see that I love him?!" I let out a large growl in frustration and quicken my speed. 56. 57. 58. 59..60 I open my mouth to say something as I bring myself up. I catch myself on the monkey bars to take a break, briefly staring at the sky. "You know what? He's the idiot. I didn't do anything. I love him and this is what happens. Such a freaking miracle." I sarcastically note, finally lowering myself to hang upside down for another round. I nearly have a heart attack seeing a pair of blue eyes almost directly in my face. "What the hell Darry?! You're going to get one of us killed doing that!" I yell and push him back a bit. He didn't move a muscle but the glare I give him sends him the nerve he needed to back up. Darry wasn't easily intimidated. Especially by a smaller guy at 5'5. He just had common sense enough to not get on my bad side. "Have you been crying?" It was something I wish he hadn't noticed. I ignore him and look away to hoist my body upwards again. "Y/n...please." I ignore him again and continue to work out, silently grunting out the numbers as I go. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75...76. "Y/n." "What?" I grunt out, refusing to look at my boyfriend. "Look at me." "Hell no. Y'know I said the same thing back in the kitchen. What did you do? The exact opposite. Then you- Exactly how long have you been there?" Darry lets out a heavy sigh and watches me. His eyes left trails as they flickered up and down to follow my body. I knew he was feeling regret now. "Long enough to hear that I'm an idiot." "You needed to hear that?" I couldn't help but bite back a smirk. "Y/n..." "No. Darry, I've loved you from the first day that we met. I know you've probably had a long day and I know you've got stress.. Then you go and bring up Bill-" Once I come down again I gasp when Darry is in front of me once more. Our faces were inches apart and his strong hands were gripping my shoulders. "Don't say his name..." "Dar.." "Please. Don't say it... it'll drive me mad if I hear it again..." "Darrell Curtis. Are you jealous?" I could faintly feel the small smirk wanting to appear on my lips but instead my face remained straight. I watched the faint shades of reddish pink come to his cheeks. His eyes scanned over mine and just seeing them made my heart skip a beat. I waited for an answer but all I got was silence. "Dar?" I barely got the word out before his lips were on mine for a needed kiss. I was shocked for a moment, being unprepared for his sudden move but I quickly adjusted, closing my eyes and moving my hands down to the sides of his waist, pulling him closer to me. His hands tightened around the sides of my face, quickly deepening the kiss in response to my action. "Darry." I move away from him for a minute, seeing a flash of emotion clash in his eyes. My hands slowly travel to the sides of his face. "You're an idiot." A smile came to his face for a minute. "As long as I'm your idiot." I couldn't help but chuckle. "I wouldn't have it any other way baby."

#darry #Darry Curtis

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seven-pm · 7 years

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Reasons to Stay

1. People with laugh lines. 2. Craisins. 3. Classical Disney movies. 4. Fuzzy / toe socks. 5. Friendly cashiers. 6. A clean public bathroom. 7. Making someone who looks sad smile. 8. Opening a brand-new book. 9. A simple compliment from a stranger. 10. Finally understanding something. 11. Someone telling you a secret. Just you. 12. Old couples. 13. Making a perfect signature. 14. Finding out that a person feels the same way as you do. 15. Holding doors for strangers, who say thanks. 16. Long roadtrips at night. 17. Sleeping at midnight, waking up at noon. 18. Having a blank to-do list. 19. Looking at old photographs. 20. Coming up with a url that’s not taken. 21. A hot shower after a long day. 22. Positive feedback on an essay you worked hard on. 23. Your favorite song on replay. 24. People who love you despite your flawed physical appearance. 25. Cute sneezes. 26. People who smile despite their circumstances. 27. When someone remembers the things you say. 28. The originality of people’s handwriting. 29. Using a clean, crisp towel. 30. The minutes after you first crawl into bed. 31. Just you and me. No time. 32. The first swim of the summer. 33. Sleeping on clean sheets. 34. Fresh-baked bread. 35. Looking through school work from when you were young. 36. The smell after it rains. 37. Laughing until your stomach hurts. 38. Seeing someone’s face light up when you give them a gift. 39. Holding hands. 40. Waking up with perfect hair. 41. Putting in the last piece of a puzzle. 42. Driving on an empty road. 43. The sound of little kids’ uncontrollable laughter. 44. Songs that remind you of a special person / event. 45. People who accept your extreme weirdness. 46. Footed pajamas. 47. When a baby holds your finger. 48. Recalling good memories with friends. 49. Hugs from behind. 50. When the first text you see is from the person you love. 51. People who remember you after meeting you only once. 52. Getting an A on a test you didn’t study for. 53. Looking at the water droplets travel across your car window. 54. Playground swings. 55. The smell of breakfast in the morning. 56. When your plans didn’t work out, but your day turned out great anyway. 57. Seeing your favorite band live & singing your heart out to their lyrics. 58. Singing along to the car radio. 59. Kisses on the forehead. 60. Seeing a baby laugh. 61. Watching shows from your childhood. 62. Being surrounded with a mountain of blankets on a cold, rainy day. 63. Knowing that you’re loved. 64. When your bangs actually cooperate with you. 65. That one person who knows you better than you know yourself. 66. Tight, meaningful hugs. 67. Star-gazing. 68. When his family loves you. 69. Kept pinky-promises. 70. Getting mail. 71. When your music player is on shuffle and our favorite song comes up. 72. Clothes that came right out of the dryer. 73. Getting new clothes. 74. Driving in the car with the windows down, music up, without a care in the world. 75. When a friendly stranger smiles at you. 76. Nutella. 77. Inside jokes. 78. Wearing his clothes. 79. Finishing a good book. 80. When your parents talk about you with pride. 81. The smell of freshly-cut grass. 82. The cold side of the pillow. 83. Being missed. 84. Hot chocolate on rainy days. 85. Being awake while everyone else is sleeping. 86. Knowing you have no homework for the weekend. 87. Candid photos. 88. Having breakfast for dinner. 89. Popping bubble wrap. 90. Dimples. 91. Being healthy after being horribly ill. 92. Silence that isn’t awkward. 93. Cuddling. 94. Getting gifts for no reason at all. 95. Building forts. 96. Finding money in the laundry. 97. Peeing after holding it in for a long time. 98. Hearing your favorite song on the radio. 99. When you finally remember what you came into the room for. 100. Getting backed-up in an argument. 101. A rejuvenating deep breath. 102. Lazy Saturday afternoons. 103. The sound of popcorn popping. 104. Marathons of your favorite shows. 105. Seeing your loved one smile and knowing you put it there. 106. The smell of a new book. 107. Continuous green lights when driving. 108. The sound of a cat’s purr. 109. Stumbling across really old songs, but still being able to remember all the lyrics. 110. Good morning texts. 111. Getting a tan and not a burn. 112. A pen that works really well. 113. Finding something you lost a long time ago. 114. Catchy / amusing commercials. 115. Never-ending conversations. 116. Singing in the shower. 117. Long naps. 118. Jeans that fit perfectly. 119. Being home alone, blasting music, singing loudly, & dancing crazily. 120. Catching up with an old friend. 121. Riding a shopping cart. 122. A child’s unlimited imagination. 123. Getting new school supplies. 124. Christmas lights at night. 125. Deep conversations with your best friend. 126. Finally getting the food you’ve been craving. 127. Songs that always make you want to dance. 128. When your favorite team wins. 129. The first snowfall of the winter. 130. Writing / drawing on foggy windows. 131. Waking up and realizing you have more time to sleep. 132. Being in a fantastic mood, just because. 133. Hearing that you were in someone’s dream. 134. The smell of your mom’s home-made cooking. 135. Magazine perfume samples. 136. When a little kid draws you a picture. 137. The moment you realize your period is over. 138. Knowing all the lines to your favorite movie. 139. Taking off your bra at the end of the day. 140. Finishing a final exam. 141. Correct grammar. 142. People who treat their parents lovingly. 143. The soft feeling of a brand-new eraser. 144. Getting the perfect parking spot. 145. Hellos. 146. The first bite into a crisp apple. 147. Giving random acts of kindness. 148. Drinking cold water when you’re really thirsty. 149. When you finally remember the name of the song that’s been stuck in your head. 150. Seedless grapes. 151. Waking up and actually remembering your dream. 152. Being dismissed on the last day of school. 153. When you and your best friend say the same thing at the same time. 154. Proving a smart person wrong. 155. The sound of a perfect high-five. 156. The smell of just-shampoo’d hair. 157. Nicknames. 158. A family-sized bag of your favorite chips all for yourself. 159. A perfect cup of coffee. 160. Gummy worms. 161. Parking your car at the same time the song ends. 162. Watching old home videos. 163. Fresh air. 164. When somebody actually says “bless you” when you sneeze in class. 165. The new car smell. 166. When your parents say “yes” instead of the expected “no.” 167. Looking at old yearbook photos and autographs. 168. Free stuff. 169. Running through sprinklers in the summer. 170. When the butter melts on your toast. 171. Cheesy pick-up lines. 172. Long-lasting nail polish. 173. Eating ice cream straight from the tub. 174. Guitar solos. 175. Young children with good manners. 176. The feeling you get after finishing all your homework. 177. When someone tells you that you smell nice. 178. A new toothbrush. 179. Reading picture books from your childhood. 180. Eating with chopsticks. 181. Late-night phone conversations. 182. Sunshine after a rainy day. 183. Accents. 184. When the week goes by really fast. 185. The first hug from someone you haven’t seen in a long time. 186. Instant friendships. 187. Picking / peeling off dried glue. 188. When he smiles at you. 189. When she smiles at you. 190. When your friends love your new hairstyle. 191. Spontaneous adventures. 192. Just-shaved legs. 193. The first chews on a new piece of gum. 194. Guys who smell good. 195. When the food you enjoy eating is healthy. 196. Actually finding food in the fridge. 197. Dresses with pockets. 198. Not being able to finish a sentence because you’re laughing so hard about the ending. 199. Taking off high-heels at the end of the day. 200. Snow days. 201. A clean room. 202. Scratch-and-sniff stickers. 203. Forgetting to set up your alarm, but waking up just on time. 204. Scented candles. 205. Perfectly painted nails. 206. The satisfying feeling of making someone laugh really hard. 207. The fresh, clean feeling after a shower. 208. Spotless, bruise-free bananas. 209. Perfect shower temperature. 210. Cookies straight out of the oven. 211. A nice cup of tea. 212. Wearing your pajamas all day. 213. Driving on a newly paved road. 214. Waking up just before your alarm goes off. 215. Ice cream in waffle cones. 216. Intentionally mismatched socks. 217. Finding money in your pocket. 218. Eating cookie dough. 219. Bubble baths. 220. Handwritten letters. 221. Teachers you can joke with. 222. Falling asleep to the sound of rain. 223. Licking the yogurt lid. 224. Seeing a baby yawn. 225. When you finish writing right at the end of the page. 226. Getting an A on a ridiculously hard test. 227. Midnight snacks. 228. Learning a new language and using it in real life. 229. Contagious laughter. 230. A full tank of gas. 231. When someone plays with your hair. 232. The feeling of a good stretch after sleeping. 233. Breakfast in bed. 234. Crossing things off your to-do list. 235. Piggy-back rides. 236. Waking up with clear skin. 237. Overhearing someone say nice things about you. 238. When somebody loves your art work. 239. When you fortune cookie knows what’s up. 240. Remembering stories about how you met someone. 241. Achieving the perfect milk to cereal ratio. 242. The sound a soda can makes when you open it. 243. When a person’s laugh is funnier than the joke. 244. Writing on the first page of a notebook. 245. When someone holds the door open for you. 246. Bendy straws. 247. When someone understands your humor. 248. Smiling in the middle of a kiss. 249. Clever puns. 250. Doodling. 251. Pre-sharpened pencils. 252. The feeling after a good workout. 253. Collapsing into your bed after a long, tiring day. 254. When the weather feels just right. 255. Hearing someone whistle. 256. Flipping to the right page of a book on the first try. 257. Hitting the high note. 258. Solving a really long math problem correctly. 259. Sleeping in your own bed after being away. 260. Waking up and not being tired. 261. A fresh pair of contacts. 262. Being lifted off the ground during a hug. 263. Songs that match your mood. 264. When the lights start to dim before a movie. 265. Easy-to-peel citrus fruits. 266. Friendship bracelets. 267. Knowing all the words to a song. 268. Walking barefoot on grass. 269. Stapling a finished essay together. 270. The moment you find a comfortable sleeping position. 271. The excitement of your pet when you come home. 272. The first day of wearing shorts after winter. 273. Untouched snow. 274. Your favorite part of a song. 275. A warm towel after a shower. 276. When people enjoy the food you make. 277. The first drop of a rollercoaster ride. 278. Actually finishing the whole tube of ChapStick. 279. The first bite of a slice of pizza. 280. Surprising people with a talent they never knew you had. 281. The smell of old books. 282. Taking a perfect picture. 283. Twisting the lid of a jar when no one else was able to. 284. The fresh feeling after brushing your teeth. 285. Saturday morning cartoons. 286. Perfectly peeling off a price sticker. 287. The first signs of spring. 288. The first shower after a haircut. 289. The first time a person says your name. 290. When you catch someone cute staring at you. 291. Compliments even when you look like a mess. 292. Letting chocolate melt in your mouth. 293. When people take care of you when you’re sick. 294. Girl Scout cookies. 295. Walking into class and seeing a substitute teacher. 296. The feeling after finishing an oral presentation. 297. Watching a new episode of your favorite TV show. 298. When you catch something that was thrown to you from far away. 299. Perfectly separating an Oreo. 300. Arriving at the bus stop right on time. 301. When someone is excited to see you. 302. Realizing it’s Friday. 303. When your turn signal goes along with the beat of the music you’re listening to. 304. When other families treat you like a member. 305. Questions on a test that give away answers to other questions. 306. Freckles. 307. Waking up and realizing your bad dream wasn’t real. 308. Getting your hair washed at the salon. 309. When the last item in a store is your size. 310. The first bite of food when you’re really hungry. 311. Being told that you’ve made someone’s day. 312. Wearing new clothes for the first time. 313. The brief moment of silence when you drive under a bridge on a rainy day. 314. Not wearing makeup and being able to rub your eyes. 315. Finally laughing after trying to hold it in. 316. When the vending machine gives your more than you paid for. 317. When someone texts back instantly. 318. The moment you realize your hiccups are gone. 319. Feeling the warmth of the sun on your skin. 320. Flipping to a new month on your calendar. 321. Accomplishing something before the microwave beeps. 322. Being called beautiful. 323. Walking through puddles in rain boots. 324. The smell of fresh laundry. 325. Re-reading old conversations. 326. Catching something before it hits the ground. 327. When one of your favorite movies is on television. 328. Finding out that someone does the same weird things as you do. 329. The smell of a campfire. 330. Watching someone you love sleep. 331. Using exactly 160 characters in a text. 332. When you see your food coming in a restaurant. 333. Logging onto Facebook on your birthday. 334. Finding out that something is cheaper than you thought it was. 335. Hearing people cheer for you. 336. Finding out that someone likes you. 337. Feeling accomplished at the end of the day. 338. Turning on the TV just in time. 339. Finding out there isn’t a back side to a worksheet. 340. Seeing bus drivers wave at each other. 341. Hearing someone refer to you as their friend for the first time. 342. Being complimented on an insecurity. 343. Rapping an entire part of a song perfectly. 344. The tininess of baby clothes and shoes. 345. Falling asleep on the couch and waking up with a blanket on you. 346. A scent that reminds you of a good memory. 347. The feeling you get after you sneeze. 348. When someone saves you a seat. 349. When the stoplight turns green before you begin to brake. 350. When the deadline for a project is extended. 351. When the elevator door opens right away. 352. Being the first to applaud in the audience. 353. The sound of crickets at night. 354. Peeling an orange in one piece. 355. When your favorite artist comes out with a new album. 356. Using new markers. 357. Changing into sweatpants. 358. The feeling of relief after finding something you lost. 359. Tearing out a piece of perforated paper perfectly. 360. Finally remembering the word you had on the tip of your tongue. 361. Discovering a new song and instantly loving it. 362. The smell of a barbecue. 363. Feeling confident when turning in an exam. 364. Being able to fall asleep right away. 365. Being in the carpool lane when there’s heavy traffic. 366. The warmth of printed paper. 367. Being ahead of schedule. 368. Answering a question correctly in class. 369. When a person genuinely asks you how your day was. 370. Waking up next to the one you love. 371. Having exact change. 372. Summer nights. 373. The smell of popcorn in the movie theater. 374. Receiving an invitation. 375. When the lights go off at a concert. 376. Hearing crumbs getting sucked up by the vacuum cleaner. 377. Hearing interesting stories about yourself when you were little. 378. People who love their job. 379. Cleaning your ears after a shower. 380. Letting your hair down after it’s been tied up all day. 381. City lights at night. 382. When the airplane takes off / lands. 383. Watching bloopers. 384. Seeing the street lights turn on/off. 385. Waking up on your birthday. 386. Taking a shower after camping. 387. The color of people’s eyes. 388. The look on the groom’s face as he watches his bride walk down the aisle on their big day. 389. When your online order finally arrives. 390. Removing masking tape after painting. 391. Walking into an air-conditioned building after being outside in the heat. 392. The sound of the ocean. 393. When you actually like the assigned reading. 394. When you finally see the car that’s coming to pick you up. 395. Listening to your grandparents tell stories. 396. Pretty skies.

#good things #suicide prevention #reasons to stay #mk #for mk

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