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ceilidho · 9 months

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prompt: ghost and you are the only survivors of a military plane crash. you spend weeks alone in the wild together. (ns/fw)

In the years you’ve worked as a flight attendant, you’ve never experienced a plane crash before. It’s exactly like what you would’ve expected.

Clear skies rapidly turn grey outside the tiny windows to your left and right; you notice it almost instantly because it casts a pall over the interior of the aircraft. It makes the small group of men that you’ve been travelling with sit up a bit straighter in their seats, only a few of them looking genuinely concerned. Military men often do; it’s in their nature to worry and fret. You feel it like a twinge in your gut, like something telling you that you don’t usually fly through dark clouds.

The soft ding of the seatbelt sign comes on a handful of seconds later. The turbulence only a few moments after that.

Pilots are trained to avoid cumulonimbus clouds like they’re a harbinger of death (and they are). Even large airliners avoid crossing the path of a cumulonimbus. Your pilot should’ve known to divert and fly around the cloud, avoiding the possibility of flying through a thunderstorm altogether. The pilot’s voice crackles over the intercom for everyone to fasten their seatbelts and you notice distantly that his voice seems frazzled.

Your hands grip the seat as you strap in. This is exactly the kind of scenario you’ve prepared extensively for, but in the face of it, your stomach tosses and turns. Practice can only hope to ape reality; it often falls short.

From across the aisle, you lock eyes with the lieutenant in the skull mask that politely refused a beverage ten minutes ago. The plane jostles you violently in your seat as it passes through a rough patch of turbulence. Even the lieutenant, twice your size and rooted into his seat, his hands clamped around the arm rests, grunts when he’s rocked side to side.

There’s a loud pop outside the aircraft and the plane teeters dangerously to one side. The bags in the overheads bash against the doors, the plastic squeaking under their weight.

Someone screams. The other attendant sitting across from you is already shouting, “Brace! Brace! Brace!” The mantra bursts from his chest along with spittle and the singular, quivering note of fear. There’s not much more you can do but follow his lead, dropping your head to your knees and wrapping your arms around your legs.

Your stomach drops when the plane descends far too suddenly. You would’ve been pulled back against the wall if your arms weren’t wrapped around your legs. You have enough time to peek up briefly to see all of the other men assuming the same position, some with their heads pressed against the seat in front of them before the aircraft nosedives and there’s a sharp whistle in your ear and the lights flicker ominously in the cabin and something tears and tears and tears and—

Then it’s dark.

Your grip must have loosened because the world disintegrates after you hit your head. There’s only a faint buzz and something ice cold, something that grips you from the inside and slithers over your skin. The aftermath of a crash is so quiet for the devastation it brings.

The big one in the scary mask is the one who drags you from the wreckage, lifting you into his arms when you’re still too dazed to do more than whimper pathetically. Fear and pain and adrenaline have crumpled you up into a little ball.

“Keep your eyes open,” he says, and maybe it’s a shout. His voice is so loud. When you open them, you nearly close your eyes instinctively when you see the gaping hole in the plane where it’s been torn apart.

“Where are—” it hurts to speak, but you have no choice, “—the others…”

He doesn’t respond. That makes it worse. You slip your arms around his neck so he can hike you closer up his chest. Slung over his shoulder is a black duffle bag that he must have pulled from the overhead, or what’s left of them. When your head turns on a swivel, you startle at the sight of the other attendant still strapped in his seat, his neck snapped back at an odd angle.

You turn your head away.

“My leg hurts really bad,” you sob, fingers clutched in the sweat-matted fabric of your saviour’s shirt.

He palms the back of your head and tips you just enough for you to meet his eyes. Something dark shutters over his face for a split second. If your eyes weren’t filled with tears, you might’ve noticed it. It passes fast though, too quick for you to register it in these conditions.

“‘Gonna be okay, sweetheart,” he says, gentler this time, rough-sounding like he’s not used to using that tone. “Gonna get us out of here and then I’ll check your leg. Just hang on to me.”

It’s hard to catalogue every moment because you drift in and out of consciousness. You feel the man shift you in his arms whenever he clambers down the side of the mountain your plane must have flown into. There’s debris from the wreckage scattered around the rocks, the other half of the plane not too far away. When your eyes blink open briefly, you see how decimated the other half is.

There aren’t any other survivors. Only bodies. He doesn’t stop for them.

Far off from the wreckage, he sets you down onto the soft earth and rifles around in the bag he took. There’s a first aid kit with supplies that he uses to wrap your ankle, which is swollen and tender. The adrenaline crash is nearly more violent than the plane crash you just survived. It wracks through your body as the lieutenant strips your shoes and socks, gently manipulating your foot in his big hands. You notice he’s also lost the mask.

Ochre yellow and green plains spread outward from the mountains. You remember from the flight maps on board that you were somewhere over Mongolia, but the exact mountain range eludes you. This could be the Khangai or the Sayan or the Altai, but you have no way of knowing.

“Is there a…a phone in the bag? How’s anyone gonna know we’re out here?” You sound helpless, smaller than you’ve ever sounded.

He shakes his head. The tight ball of tension in the middle of your chest grows tighter. The thought that you’re stranded in the mountains in Mongolia, thousands of miles away from home and no way to get help is almost enough to send you into a panic attack.

A hand cups under your chin to tilt your head up. His face up close is exquisite and haunting—weathered in the way that career military men often are, burn marks and old scars littered across the delicate skin, lips perpetually chapped, and a nose that looks like it’s been broken way more than once. You can’t look away.

“Someone’ll be looking for us,” he says. It’s reassuring only because he says it like it’s a certain thing. “Don’t know if you saw who was on that flight roster. A lot of important men were supposed to arrive in Germany at twenty-one-hundred hours.”

You nod, tears still dribbling down your cheeks even when he swipes his thumb across to rub them away. He’s not wrong. There was a colonel on your flight after all. Dead now, hot corpse still steaming in the wreckage half a kilometre away, but he would’ve been important enough to warrant an immediate rescue.

You go still under his touch. “You weren’t on the flight list.”

He shakes his head. “Never am.”

“But you were with them?” You remember someone on the flight addressing him by his rank. It was early on in the service, when you were still strapping down bags and doing cross-check, making sure everything was in place. But you remember, even then, seeing that there were more bodies on the plane than names on the list; you’d brought it up to the captain, but he’d brushed off your concerns. Maybe he knew the reason behind the lieutenant’s name being held off the passenger list.

It’s all moot now anyway.

“Can’t bring a ghost on a flight,” he says darkly, like it’s a joke. Like you’re in on it together. “Can’t put it on the roster at least. S’bad luck after all.”

It’s a monstrous joke at a time like this. Your life feels cracked in half and the scarred brute of a man that pulled you from the wreckage makes jokes like it happens to him every other day. When the sky splits later that night and pours out a lake’s worth of rain, it feels appropriate. You huddle with the lieutenant at the base of a densely branched tree and shake.

Five weeks in the mountains go by slowly.

The shelter he builds is haphazard but meticulous, composed of various materials that Ghost scavenges from the plane wreck. A door becomes a makeshift roof. He makes you sit and wait as he collects dozens and dozens of branches, chopped down from the surrounding trees and fashioned into a lean-to. Padded with moss and leaves.

“I can help with getting the leaves,” you protest when he catches you hobbling around and carries you back to the nest of blankets and tarps that he’d pulled from the plane. He goes back every so often to see what remains and what can be used. It’s the only time other than when he hunts that Ghost leaves you alone for even a second, preferring to be within arm’s length of you the rest of the time.

“You can help by sitting your ass down,” Ghost grunts without even looking up at you.

You frown, fingers digging in the dirt by your feet. It’s a silly complaint but there’s never anything to do but wait.

In the early morning hours, Ghost goes off and hunts for you, when the world is still quiet and the animals are still asleep. They’re sluggish when dawn still hasn’t peeled its pink belly off the surface of the world. Ghost comes back with a deer slung over his shoulders one week, his knife still protruding from its neck, and your stomach only twists a little bit. Not used to seeing where your meat comes from.

There’s not much choice when you’re on your own in the elements. Every day, you expect to see a helo appear over the horizon, and you end each night crestfallen when it doesn’t.

It’s not like you haven’t completed basic training, a prerequisite to applying as a military flight attendant, but admittedly it’s been several years and basic never taught you to hunt for your food. You did other things that seemed, at the time, inconsequential to your career path, like learning to rappel and how to wait an hour for your NCO to show up for PT in the morning.

Even if your ankle hadn’t been badly sprained, you wouldn’t be much help. Ghost’s remarkably self-sufficient. It makes you question whether he’s done this before—whether he’s gotten stranded in the woods for weeks on end and had to learn to live hand-to-mouth.

“Have you…where’d you learn all of this?” you ask him in the dead of night, when the wind is a shrill hiss through the trees and you cower close to him in your sleeping bag (also salvaged from the wreck, though his has a tear down the side of it).

Ghost is quiet for a moment. “All over the place. Been doing this for years, love; had to learn.”

“Anything ever like this?”

Even with the absence of his mask, it gets so dark at night that you can’t see his face. You can hear the wry smile that plays on his lips in his voice though. “I’ve had worse days.”

There’s a story there that you see like a fish darting under the water. Too quick for you to catch with your bare hands.

You wake up with your cheek pressed against his pillowy chest most days. It’s embarrassing at first, but you learn to let it melt off you when you meet Ghost’s eyes and there’s nothing there but piercing blue. They root you in place most of the time but they never tell you to move.

It takes a while before your ankle starts noticeably healing. In the intervening weeks, Ghost almost dotes on you, in a rough, untested sort of way. Like he doesn’t have much experiencing tending to another person besides himself for weeks on end. As the weeks drag on, it morphs into something unrecognizable, like a wounded animal healing wrong.

It starts when Ghost insists on sharing sleeping bags. It’ll be easier for him to pull you close if something tries to drag you off in the night (and doesn’t that thought put you on the brink of a panic attack until he shushes and soothes you). It escalates when you make the mistake of tending to the meat hanging over the fire while he fiddles with the little radio he’d dragged back from the plane, and the look he gives you when you tell him that supper is ready borders on reverent.

It gets even worse when he has you both strip your clothes off on a particularly cold and rainy night, wrapped around each other for warmth.

“Sweetheart, you’re shaking,” you hear him rumble, big hand drawing a line down your back. You do tremble at that. “C’mon, get closer. Gonna warm you up.”

You wake up in the middle of the night when your ankle is starting to feel solid enough that you think you can manage to go off on your own to relieve yourself instead of waking Ghost up again. That’s the plan anyway. Before you’ve even managed to crawl all of six feet away from your sleeping bag, a rough hand pins you by your shoulder to the ground and the heavy, over two-hundred pound body of your companion drapes itself over you.

“Where the fuck do you think yer going?” Ghost snarls.

For the first time in a week, there’s a moment of genuine fear. It’s like realizing for a split second that the animal you’ve let creep up behind you is a lot more dangerous than you thought it was.

“I have to pee,” you whisper-hiss, heart still skittering in your chest.

He’s silent behind you while he mulls that thought over; you think maybe he’s still half-asleep, his body acting on instinct before his brain’s ready to take over. The tension only releases you when he finally picks himself up off you, but it’s immediately made worse when he insists on accompanying you into the woods.

He doesn’t even turn around while you pull your underwear down and squat. Ghost’s eyes are bright in the dark, trained on you like it’s the thing that gives him purpose.

Things change in the woods. There are people who are only one bad thing away from reverting to their neolithic mind; as the weeks go on, you see the way his eyes change when they fall on you, no longer detached but gluttonous.

There’s a brown bear that slouches past your camp one day, sniffing around only because it’s curious, and Ghost all but completely obstructs your vision with how he shoves you behind him. He puffs up big when the bear gets too close, keeping you hidden until it snorts and ambles off, not interested in the pair of you.

Do animals act like this? He curls you around him in sleep, legs tangled together. When you soak in the lake under the glare of the sun, he slips into the water and comes up behind you until his hands close around your waist and he tugs you closer to the edge, away from the deeper parts. It’s testament to how long you’ve been out on your own that you’re no longer unaccustomed to the feel of his hands on your bare flesh.

His lips on your bare shoulder are a little less commonplace, but you only shiver and stare out at the mountains.

Then one day, you look up into the sky away from the sun and there it is, a black dot on the horizon at first. You scream for Ghost, who’s skinning a fish on a damp log near you and start waving your arms wildly in the air, unbridled joy streaming out of you. He’s quick to pull his mask on when the chopper lands a few hundred yards away and two similarly dressed soldiers spill out.

You ignore the stiffness in his body as he sits beside you in the chopper, pinning you against the side. Ignore the way he answers for you when the men start asking questions.

What does it mean to come back worse?

“Wha’s that, love?”

“Trauma bonding,” you repeat, swallowing nervously. It’s months later, but the weeks on the mountain and the forest still haunt you. The real world seems flimsier now that you’re back in it, less real somehow. Here, no one hunts for their food. “The therapist said that we trauma bonded. And—and that’s why you won’t—”

Here’s where the words can’t seem to come out on their own.

He sleeps in your bed these days—can’t stand to be more than a room away from you at any given time. Follows you into the bathroom when you need to clean up at the end of the day, crowding you into your too-small shower. The you from a month ago wouldn’t have been able to imagine inviting a six-foot-four soldier into your apartment, but—and here’s where your brain scrambles a bit to catch up—you didn’t invite him in.

He lifts a brow. The mask comes off in your apartment, so you’re able to see the way his lips slip into something unimpressed. “Why I won’t what?”

You swallow. “You know. Leave.”

“Do you want me to leave, love?”

That’s the crux of it. The heart of it. You really don’t. In the dark sometimes, if the wind rustles outside your window just right, shrill like those weeks in the forest and out on the open plains, your heart pounds in your chest until it grows so tight that you think it’ll just stop.

“No,” you whisper in response to his question.

Most nights, you wake up drenched in sweat, still half in a dream where you turn your head and the other flight attendant is staring back at you with wide, empty eyes. Blood dribbling down from his head. Where a plane is ripped in half, grey metal strewn across a mountain and the valley below is a dark pit where you go to die.

Then you roll over in your bed and Ghost is there, already awake and cupping a wide hand over your cheek, laying kiss after kiss across your face. Murmuring that it’ll be alright, that you’re safe. That he’s got you.

His breath is hot on your skin.

You let him roll you over and spread your legs when he says those things. Let him be a bit filthy after being so kind to you in the woods.

He spits on your pussy and rubs it in with a coarse thumb, chuckling when you yelp all breathlessly and squirm away. Sometimes when you fuck, he gets rough with you and slaps it, but he’s always tender with you after a nightmare, content to sooth you with his mouth on your pussy until you’re close to hyperventilating.

“S’alright, sweetheart,” Ghost breathes, spearing you on his turgid length, barrel chest heaving when he finally crams it all in. Always a bit too big for you to take without crying. “I got you, I’ve got you. Not gonna let anything happen to you.”

It’s a new development, but it feels older than time. You could’ve let it happen in the woods and you might have, if no one had ever come.

“Look at me, sweet girl,” he tuts when you turn your head to the side, holding your face in one hand until you have no choice but to stare at the bulk of him straining over you. He has shoulders like mountains that roll when he pushes into you. “Didn’t I say I’d take care of you?”

You don’t want to acknowledge what this is: that you found something in the woods and it followed you home.

#cod mw2 #ceil writing #cod x reader #simon ghost riley #ghost x reader #cod simon riley #simon riley x you #ghost/reader #simon ghost riley x reader #ghost cod

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octuscle · 9 months

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I need to take a work trip to Germany, Leipzig to be precise. Should be a nice change from my NYC life.

I guess, your suitcase won't make it to Frankfurt... Then I guess I have to organize a replacement. Damn Airlines!

The only thing I can offer you so spontaneously is an old army backpack from GDR stocks, covered with graffiti tags, stickers and patches. Pretty heavy... And maybe not necessarily suitable for your classic suit… So, take your rucksckand head to the airport train station. Your train to Leipzig will depart in 20 minutes.

Shit, Frankfurt airport is bigger then expected. When you arrive, you thaught, that you missed your train. But luckily, the train is delayed by 15 minutes. Enough time, to relaxe. And for a smoke. You search the side pockets of the backpack. No cigarettes. But tobacco, cigarette paper. And weed. Shit, that could have ended badly at customs...

Ahh, smoking this feels great. I really needed to decompress a bit after this whole travel shitshow. Don't take offense, but a middelaged man in a conservative suit and a classic haircut smoking weed with an army backpack on the platform of the airport station looks a bit special... You have to admit that, too, when you see your reflection in the window panes of the high-speed train rushing in.

No one had told you that you had better have made a seat reservation. The train is packed. Getting a seat is out of the question. With a little luck, you will still get a seat in the dining car. You order a beer (what else in Germany) and check the contents of your backpack. On top of it lies a hat. It looks funny, you put it on. Otherwise, the backpack is not necessarily neatly packed. Everything is stuffed in more like this. There's a MacBook... You open it. And of course you know the password. Feels perfectly normal to open it. As normal as your pierced earlobes feel.

It is a low-coding platform open to any Big Data AI application. You scroll through the application. Sure, the prototype of an app for digitizing queues in doctors' offices. You open the library of useer stories and start developing the app further. A few hours ago, you had no idea about software development.

It's 9:00 p.m. when you look out the window. Gotha train station. Wherever that may be. You are looking at your reflection. Let's see what the others think of the fact that you have let the beard grow out...

The train is half empty by now. You have not even noticed how it has emptied. It's still a good hour to Leipzig. You close the computer. That's it for today. You order another beer and the vegan curry. Actually, you're also in desperate need of a joint. But of course you can't smoke anywhere on this train.

But you take tobacco, weed, cigarette paper and your cigarette case, which you inherited from your grandfather. And while you're waiting for the food, you roll a few joints on reserve. It will be after 11:00 p.m. by the time you arrive at your shared apartment. But you assume that you will sit together until 01:00 or 02:00. Your roommates are all rather night owls....

You don't notice that you're wearing high-laced DocMarten's boots instead of welted penny loafers as you step off the train. You also don't notice that your hair has grown considerably longer and falls tousled under your hat into your forehead... You pause for a moment as you see the tattoos on the back of your hand as you light up a joint to tide you over until the bus leaves. And after asking the bus driver for a ticket to Connewitz, you wonder if you actually just spoke German with quite an American accent.

The elevator in your house is of course defective again. Old building from 1873, last renovated in 1980 or so. That was long before the fall of the Wall in the GDR. But the rent is cheap. And the atmosphere is energetic and creative. When you met Kevin, Lukas and Emma at university five years ago, you were immediately on the same wavelength. Even though you didn't speak a word of German back then. You would never have thought that a semester as an exchange student would turn into a lasting collaboration. The fact that you found an apartment together where you could work on your startup at the same time was a real stroke of luck.

Upstairs in the apartment, Kevin already opens the door for you. As if he had been waiting for you.

„Sieht heute gut aus”, you say with your strange American accent.

Kevin hugs you and answers „Dude, it's good to have you back! We have missed you! Tell me, do you have new tattoos? Looks hot! And did you bring weed from Amsterdam? Our dealer is on vacation... Shitty situation!“

“Of course, i’d never leave you without”, I say, opening up the cigarette case and offering you one of the hand-rolled contents.

Kevin grins. „What do you say we smoke the first one not at the kitchen table but on your bed? I missed you, stud!“

“I’m so tired after this trip, so the bed sounds just right.”

There is nothing left of your suit right now. Yes, you are still from NYC. But you weren't a lawyer then. You studied computer science. And that was a long time ago. Now you are a Leipziger by heart

You both lie on the bed. You take a deep drag. And blow the smoke into Kevin’s mouth with a deep French kiss. The bulge in your skinny jeans looks painful. “Oh man, Kevin, I need some relief!” you growl.

It doesn't take long and we both have the tank tops off. You discover Kevins new nipple piercings. And can't stop playing with them. And Kevins bulge starts to hurt too.

“Man, let me provide some relief”, he says. And open your jeans. Your boner jumps out of your boxers like a jack-in-the-box.

Those new piercings… You just can’t help yourself… You’ve gotta feel them in my mouth! “Are they sensitive? Does it still hurt?” Kevin starts breathing more heavily. “What are you waiting for you prude Yank! They've been waiting for you for two weeks now!” You take a deep drag and blow the smoke over Kevins chest, which you caress with your tongue. Kevin moans “Fuck! You're doing so well! Sure it hurts. It's supposed to. You make me so fucking horny with your tongue! I love your tunnels on the earlobes!. I can not stop playing with them with my tongue.”

Dude, your dick is producing precum like a broken faucet. Kevin starts to massage it into your dick! You take one last drag from the joint, push the butt into the ashtray and blow the smoke over Kevins boner.

While Kevin rubs your hard dick, You begin licking his uncut cock. Damn man, these uncut European cocks will never not surprise you! Oh man, you love how it feels on your tongue.

Kevin doesn't stop breathing heavily, but still has to grin. “Fuck, admit it, you certainly didn't just talk about user interfaces with Milan and Sem in Amsterdam. You did practice your tongue game. Fuck, you know how to bring someone to ecstasy with the tip of your tongue!”

Oh man, Kevins precum just takes so good. You can’t get enough of it. Kevin reads your thoughts. “I want to lick your precum too. Let's make a 69! I need to suck your powerful circumcised cock.”

Yes, please!, you think in ecstasy. You just love how his balls feel in my mouth. And Kevin has fun to. You must have been sweating like a dog on the trip. Your balls are salty, your cock is deliciously cheesy. “Fuck, I can not tell you how I missed you.” Kevin moans.

He always feels so good, just keep going please, you think. His cock is so hard. His precum is spectacular. It’s like you’re in sync — in and out, in and out, in and out. “Fuck, your balls are so huge”, Kevin grunts. “I didn't jerk off all the time you ve been away. My balls are bursting”.

You both are perfectly synchron. Like one organism. “Please cum at the exact moment that I also cum. I want to make this old house shake.”, you think.You can’t wait to make you explode. Kevins moans “I can't take it much longer. Fuck, you are a master with your tongue. Fuck... Oh yeah... Yes! Fuuuuuuuck!”

Oh god! That was heavy. You both really try. But that was too much. Boy, what a load you both shot! Kevins cum is so thick! So potent! You ’ve got my whole mouth full, not able to swallow everything at once. You both exchange a deep French kiss. The cum runs from the corners of your mouths down our cheeks and necks. Kevin licks the cum traces from your skin. And you his. One last kiss, you pull up our pants again. And go to the kitchen with a joint. Lukas and Emma grin. The whole house could listen to you having sex.

“Incredible, as always, Kevin” You tell him, as you pass him the joint. And as if nothing had happened, you ask Emma if she has any new user stories for your app.

#male tf #reality change #inked man #tank top #male transformation

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jurisffiction · 5 months

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what i personally associate with every u.s. state

alabama: that 'home' song my flatmate had on her driving playlist for years

alaska: airline

arizona: twilight

arkansas: see alabama

california: james blunt song where he sings "californ-i-ay" but not the james blunt song titled "california"

colorado: 'wide lands of the navajo' painting

connecticut: my friend jess

delaware: biden

florida: florida man

georgia: the country

hawai'i: my friend devin

idaho: potato

illinois: illinoise

indiana: west wing episode where they get confused about time zone changes

iowa: caucus

kansas: wizard of oz

kentucky: how to pronounce louisville

louisiana: murder capital

maine: second portland

maryland: cafe i went to in dc that claimed their food was fresh from maryland and served me french toast in some kind of log. may have been founding farmers? Uncertain

massachusetts: social network

michigan: lake

minnesota: canada

mississippi: matilda rhyme

missouri: supernatural character

montana: big sky country hgtv

nebraska: unicameralism

nevada: bad times at the el royale

new hampshire: first in the nation!

new jersey: amanda

new mexico: weird al song albuquerque

new york: they might be giants new york city

north carolina: that bookclub book by that murderer woman

north dakota: fanning

ohio: time i slipped on an icy patch in youngstown

oklahoma: musical

oregon: other portland

pennsylvania: rocky horror picture show. because i learnt "transylvania" before i knew "pennsylvania" existed and always got them confused as a kid

rhode island: taylor swift mansion

south carolina: south carolina on my mind. state song

south dakota: north dakota

tennessee: weird state shape

texas: they killed jfk

utah: mormons

vermont: cheers season 2 episode 18 "snow job"

virginia: jefferson

washington: twilight

washington dc: emissary cafe

west virginia: mcelroy brothers

wisconsin: 70s show

wyoming: demetri martin bit about it being suspiciously easy to draw

#i've only been to ummmmmmmm. 9?

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mydarllinglover · 9 months

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Alone || Haunted

They had left the top of the hill, walking away back the field Natalia and Daisy patched up in.

"Why are there always so many people bothering us?" Daisy asked. "Why are there so many wars?"

"'Cause, honey, before all this, men could argue over sports, and before sports, they fought in wars. No more sports, they had to resort back to war." Natalia explained.

"Hey, this was a woman." Negan reminded. "This time."

"Yeah and it was you and the jolly green giant backing her up." She raised a brow.

Daryl had sent Daisy over to the patch of flowers, after showing her how to make a daisy chain, giving her something to do.

The two men sat on opposites sides of the log, whilst Natalia laid on the grass, staring at the sky.

It was silent between the three of them, before she started to chuckle, then that turned into a giggle, until eventually she was hysterically laughing.

"Dude, she's lost it." Negan muttered to Daryl, leaning over the log, watching Natalia.

"Shut up, man." He nudged him back over.

"Oh, god, it hurts so bad so laugh, but it's so funny." Natalia continued to giggle, holding her sides.

"Nat, what's going on?" Daryl asked her, shuffling off the log to sit beside her, holding her gently. "What's so funny?"

"My life, Daryl, my whole existence is a joke." She covered her mouth, trying to stop the laughs. "It's, the whole thing is just disaster after disaster!" She cracked.

"And that's funny because?" Negan continued to be nosy.

"Well, for starters I was born in 1985, y'know, the year of the 9000 victim earthquake in Mexico, and the spread of aids, and don't forget the Japan airline crash. Then, at the age of four, my father dies from a peanut, Hello, a peanut, one! Singular peanut! I mean, how the hell does someone just die from that, something so small!" She cracked up. "Oh, and spoiler alert, I found out I was also allergic, cause my mom's drug addict boyfriend, who was supposed to be babysitting me, fed them to me! Cause he was too doped up to tell the difference between them and pretzels! And then my Mom married my step-dad, who was a really great guy, I mean, he got me out of going to Juvie, he was kind, he never grassed me up, he's the one who supported me when my Mother found out I was pregnant in college and cut me off, then drove me to the hospital, when I went into labour during graduation! Which I finished top of my class, by the way, because my boyfriend at the time was too hungover to even bother to show up! But because I was a twenty-two year old mother, no one would take me on! Because they didn't trust it, and they called me unreliable, and a free monthly check ready to happen. At the age of twenty-five, guess what happened?" She didn't let them answer. "Dead people started walking and eating the alive people! Then my boyfriend kills himself, eats my daughter, I have to put down the both of them, which were my first ever walker kills, by the way, and then, I had a miscarriage, with no one around but my dog, who was also murdered!" She cackled at this. "Then I begin a feud with a man who had taunted me with rats! I hate rats! And then more people come along, and these are bad, bad people, they did terrible things, and I was left with no over choice but to kill them, because If I didn't, those bad things would either continue to happen, or they would just slaughter me. But then, then I met you." She smiled at Daryl. "And Rick, and Glenn, and Carl, and Maggie, and Beth and they are all gone! They're dead, the first good people, who made me feel like a person, are all dead or gone, and you're always too busy with other stuff then being around me, you might as well be gone! Anyway, and then, we spend months on the road, I had to spend months on the road with people who hated me, who didn't trust me because of the way I was forced to survive, all with a pregnant woman, who acted as though sleeping with her husbands best friend was such an heinous thing to happen to her, because nothing bad happens to angels like her, and she's just soo innocent, and this baby is such a curse! But she dies, too, because everyone dies, and I get shot! I got shot whilst I was playing ball with my dog, and you weren't there, because you left us! You left us for your brother who kidnapped Glenn and Maggie and beat them, did terrible, terrible things to them, but oh no, that's not the worst thing to ever happen to them, was it! I've been through three wars, I've been shot, I've been held at gunpoint, I survived by myself, and with a group of men who looked at me like I was the freshest cattle at the market, then I had to survive a herd, from inside a car, Oh, my twenty-seventh birthday? We met Evie, and thank god we met Evie, cause she's just amazing, but then a few days later, red poncho guy had to show up then disappear, and then Evie's dad dies, rip, Rick made us move that herd, and then I accidentally kissed you, and get this, if it wasn't for Michonne, I woulda never made a move on you, cause I thought I'd be cheating on my dead boyfriend." She wheezed.

"And then two months after that, our friends are brutally killed in front of us, and we get kidnapped, and some guy touched me, and I didn't even get justice, because that was taken from me, from the guy who kidnapped me! And then we escape, I get married, yay! We fight the war, and we win, once again, go us! But then I find out I'm pregnant, whilst hanging above walkers, literally hanging above them! Rick goes missing, my daughter gets kidnapped, I go into labour in the woods, whilst fighting a group of walkers, that I could barely do, because I was so large! We had a couple of good years, really, really good years, and then we move into the woods, and I get pregnant again, but that's fine, because I delivered him by myself, and then Carol shows up, she wants us to take care of her son, you said no, but god damn it, I'm so weak, I just had to cave, we go to Hilltop, and instantly get sent on a mission, Jesus dies, so sad. The kids escape from under our nose. We have to sneak into unknown territory to lure them back, and then we have to fight whisperers in an abandoned building, but then Henry gets hurt, because of course he does, and then the fair, oh, the fair. I spoke to Alpha, I was going to put Archie down for a nap, and she came and spoke to us, and I replied, I had a conversation with her, then walked away, I knew something was off, and I chose to ignore it, because Archie needed a nap, and then she brutally murdered my friends... my daughter had to see her best friend's head on a spike, and I wasn't even there to comfort her. I was in a freaking mine explosion, I was dead-"

"Nat, you didn't die." Daryl held her face, trying to make her stop talking, stop reliving all these memories, but she was on a train that had no other stations. "You didn't die."

"No, no, I did, for a little bit, I was dead, there's no over way to explain it, I died." She grinned at him, like a crazy person. "And I was stuck in this house, it was my old house, with Harry, and Winnie, and everything I did, or wherever I went, he would kill her, and I would wake up in the shower, and he would do it again, over and over, and over again, and I didn't know how to make it stop, I killed him, or I would kill her, or I'd avoid them, no matter what I did, she died, because I can't protect her, I'm not a good mother, and she died because I'm not, and the only reason I am here right now, is because my other daughter had to bring me back and help me get her out of there, and then she- she killed people, Daryl she killed those two whisperers on the hill, I don't think she knew they were alive, and not walkers, because I called them walkers, because I couldn't do it myself, so I turned killing real life, human people, into a game... a game! And she cut her arm. My baby cut her arm, and my other kids, I don't even know where they are!"

"They're okay, Nat, they're fine, they're with everyone, and they're okay." Daryl told her.

"Oh my god, I forgot about the cannibals!" She wiped tears from her eyes, because she was laughing so much.

"Natty, I really think you need to stop laughing, and sleep, instead."

"I've been asleep!" She snapped, looking up at him. "I was asleep for a whole day."

"No, you were unconscious for a whole day, and you lost so much blood, that I had ta donate mine." Daryl turned harsh. "That ain't resting. Daisy, get over here!" He called the girl over, who instantly came running at her fathers instructions.

"Yes, Daddy?" She asked, her Daisy necklace looped in her hands.

"You and yer Mama need some sleep, you ain't slept in over twenty four hours, so yer gonna both lay down, under this blanket." He pulled the blanket out from Daisy's backpack. "And yer gonna count sheep, till I wake you up, got it."

"Daryl..."

"Lay down, till you stop with the crazy talk." He demanded, gently pushing her back down, and instructing Daisy to come lay beside her, but of course Natalia opened up her arms for Daisy to snuggle in. "Ain't nothin' gonna get ya, no one's gonna hurt ya, sleep."

Natalia let out a grumble, but she got comfortable, snuggling with her daughter, whilst Daryl "tucked them in" before sliding back up the log.

"Shit, man, I- I knew she had issues, but... she never told me all that." Negan sighed, looking at the pair on the grass, when sometime had passed, that they both had to have fallen asleep.

"'Cause she ain't want no one to know, 'Specially not you, of all people, you only know what you forced out of her. An' she missed out a buncha shit, too..." He rubbed his hands together nervously.

They were quiet for a bit, listening to the silence around them, until Negan took a sip from his canteen, before offering it to Daryl, who took it.

"Not to spin a broken record, but I don't think she's comin' back." Negan started. "You know, I'm... I'm not bullshitting you."

"I know." Daryl replied, sounding defeated.

"When I said that I liked it.... that wasn't part of the act."

"Yeah, I know."

"You know, when your people locked me up, I lost everything. You know, seven years spent staring out that little window... man, it sucked. It got so bad, that even my memories had bars painted on 'em. So when Alpha took me in... I admit it, I... I liked it. It was... it was nice feeling like I mattered again, like I was respected. But she took it too far. You don't kill people that don't deserve it. And you never kill kids."

"Is that supposed to make me like you?" Daryl asked him.

"No."

"Good."

"But what about my winning personality?" Negan tried.

"You tried to steal my wife, and ruin my marriage, shit load of times." Daryl answered, getting off the log, and stirring Natalia awake. "Let's go." He muttered to her, grabbing the blanket, throwing it into Daisy's bag and swinging it over his shoulder, picking up his crossbow, then his still sleeping daughter.

"What about Carol?" Negan asked, at his retreating back, but no one answered him, and so he followed instead.

They had returned home, back to Alexandria, where Natalia was reunited with her two other children, Archie, who was still a baby, didn't understand anything else but to be happy that his mother was awake to hold him, whilst Bambi caught her up on everything she had missed, even the parts that Daisy had already filled her in, on.

Judith, Gracie and RJ, were also just ecstatic to see the woman, and so was the rest of her friends and family.

But of course the nicicites hadn't lasted forever, because as soon as Carol had returned home, all four communities set off to an safehouse, of sorts, an abandoned hospital.

Lydia and Evie had also joined them, and Natalia hugged the two girls when they had sobbed their apologies to her, for failing her, which she had to push that they did not, they were children, children who should never have such burdens to carry.

"You should sit down." Negan told Natalia, when she wobbled around the halls, staring out of every visible window.

"I'm fine, and I don't need to be taking advice from you." She told him, leaning on the window sill of the one she had been currently watching out of.

"Hey, it's what everyone's thinking, they're just too scared to tell you." He gently grabbed her elbow, but slightly tightened his grip when she flinched away. "Natalia, you've gone through a shit load, physically, you need to let your body heal."

"I am healed, okay, look at me, cast's and stitches, what else do I need?" She raised the arm he was holding.

"That don't explain why you can barely walk, now."

"I've been walking all day." She furrowed her brows at him. "And my ribs, I was hidden up in rubble."

"No, no, it's-" He reached for her shirt, going to lift it but she whacked him away.

"What the hell are you doing!?" She accused.

"Your stomach-"

"Daryl!" She called.

"Does he know?" Negan asked her.

"What's going on?" Daryl asked, flying around the corner.

"He tried to touch me!" She pointed at the man.

"Yeah, that's cause your wife is hobbling around until she eventually kills herself, Daisy weren't the only one who was cut up, was she?"

"You back the hell down, man." Daryl stared him down, joining Natalia's side.

"Whatever, I'm tired of helping you people." He threw his hands in the air, walking away, in defeat.

"Nat-"

"It's not a big deal, but he grabbed me-

"Show me." Daryl told her.

"What?"

"Show me what happened."

"I- but- nothing happened."

"Nat, I could see it all over, I can tell the difference between walker blood and your blood, this..." He gestured to the blood at the bottom of her clean shirt, clearly it had bled through, without her realising. "Is yours. I noticed it from the start, but you didn't tell me about it, so I didn't mention it, but now you're lying and hiding it? Show me."

"It's not that bad, that's why I didn't-"

"Natalia, show me." He pushed, standing opposite to her, seriousness all over his face.

Natalia sighed deeply, admitting defeat, before lifting her shirt, showing him her bruised, bloody and battered torso.

"I patched it up, its why I didn't say anything, and I didn't need stitches, so it's not even bad." She tried to soften the blow.

"Nat..." Daryl sighed, ghosting his fingers along her side, then checked that no one was around. "Baby, you shoulda told me."

"But I'm okay." She nodded, holding his cheek. "I'm okay, Daryl, so it's okay."

"It's not." He shook his head, looking down.

"It is, our children are all alive, you're alive and I'm alive, Dog is even alive." She chuckled. "That seems pretty okay to me."

"No... no, no it's not." He continued to shake his head, not meeting her eyes.

"It is, baby, it is, it's okay." She lifted his face, kissing him gently. "It's okay, Daryl, it's okay." She kissed him again.

He dropped his head onto her shoulder, his arms went around her, but he refused to properly hug her.

"Why don't we lay down, for a bit, find a quiet room-"

"I ain't gonna have sex with yer." He interrupted, through a sniff.

"That wasn't what I was implying." She laughed. "We can just lay down, for a bit, you need the rest, Luke's still working on his part, there's so many people here, and you need rest. You haven't stopped in days."

"M'fine." He lifted his head from her shoulder, looking down at her, his eyes were red and puffy, he looked so sad, it was breaking her heart just looking at him.

"You can't lie to me, I'm your wife and I'm injured, also, you're a bad liar, too. C'mon." She grabbed his hand, heading down the hallway, to find that empty room she spotted earlier, it had a bed in there, it would do.

"Alright, baby, you lay down, I'm just gonna go talk to Diane, okay? You stay here." Natalia pushed Daryl on the bed.

"But you shouldn't-"

"Stay, I'll be a minute." She narrowed her brows, glaring at him with a pointed finger, backing out the room.

Natalia used the wall as support to help her get to the crowded reception area of the hospital.

"Hey, uhm, Nat." Carol approached Natalia's side.

"Nat!" Rosita swooped by, easing Natalia away.

"Thanks." She smiled.

"Hey, I'm pissed at her too, she tried to kill my best friend, Daryl might have forgiven her, but I sure as hell haven't."

"Speaking of which. We need some time to ourselves, he's, he's been through a lot, too, he needs a lil break, we're just gonna lay down for a lil bit, you'll come let us know when it's time?"

"Yeah, sure, just make sure you're not moaning too loud-"

"Ro! Good intentions only! He'll barely touch me cause he's too scared he'll break something." She scoffed.

"Go cuddle, you deserve it." Rosita nudged her. "Kid's are preoccupied, we're working on shit, I'll come get you."

"Love you."

"Love you, too." She smiled, and Natalia walked away, passing a book shelf, picking up one of the books on her way back to the room.

"Yer back." Daryl greeted her, laying on his back, his head supported by his arm.

"Told you, I would be. So you forgave Carol, after she put me in a coma?" She asked, closing the door and slipping her shoes off, sliding on the bed, next to him.

"Naw, just tryna make sure she doesn't do anything stupid, again. she said sorry." Daryl replied, sliding further down, resting his head on her shoulder, throwing an arm just under her ribs, above the cut on her abdomen, his left leg covered both of hers.

"I don't wanna hear it, don't care. I was being nice to her, and she almost got me blown up." She grumbled, running her fingers through his hair.

"I know, you tried hard, proud of yer." He mumbled, rubbing his head along her chest as he eased into sleep.

She continued to run her fingers through his hair, as he slept, it didn't matter that she was in an unbearable amount of pain, they're gonna make him risk his life in a few hours, and he was too caught up about her, she needed him to believe she was okay, so she'd do what she could to make him believe that.

She didn't realise she'd started humming that song, the song she used to sing to the twins when they were in the womb, Eyes Without A Face, fuck, she loved Billy Idol.

Rosita burst through the door, eventually, looking alarmed.

"You guys gotta get up, they found us, we're surrounded." She told them, when Daryl jumped awake.

People were running around like crazy, when they left the room, throwing things, grabbing things, fixing things, and then some breaking things, it was hectic and chaos.

"Girls, get away from the window- oh... shit..." Natalia muttered, when she pulled the twins from the sills, but then spotted the mass amount of walkers just outside. "Alright, duck and quietly walk back to your area." She told them. "Go play with the cat."

"Archies playing with the cat, with Evie and Lydia." Bambi told her.

"Then go play with Archie, Evie and Lydia, playing with the cat." Daryl told them, resting his hands on both their heads, steering them in that direction.

"I'm scared." RJ grabbed Natalia's hand, his other was holding Gracie.

"But we're safe up here, y'know that." She told the both of them, crouching down.

"You've seen how many are coming." Gracie pushed. "Lot's more than we have."

"That? Pfft, I've seen more, this is lightwork." She kept her cool. "Come on, let's go play with this cat, huh? We don't have to worry about this."

"But you always fight, Aunt Nat, you're the best at it, my daddy said." Gracie said.

"Aunt Nat's on rest, she ain't fighting nothing." Daryl pressed, not only speaking to the kids.

"Yeah, Aunt Nat's gonna sit this one out." She scrunched up her nose at them.

"Our plan is the same." Gabriel started, when everyone stood in the reception area, as he went over the logistics of what would happen.

Natalia stood beside Daryl, even though she wasn't allowed to participate, she wanted to know what her husband was going to be doing. She held his hand, resting her head against his shoulder as they listened.

"We lead the horde away, just not from oceanside as we had planned. Once the walkers are clear, we evacuate to Rendezvous Point B. Luke. We ready?" Gabriel asked the man.

"Yeah, yeah. Uh, technically." He stuttered, standing up.

"That doesn't fill me with a lot of hope." Natalia commented.

"Shut up, he's nervous." Daryl muttered, lowly, kissing her head as he spoke, with out people hearing.

"So, these are the final pieces that we need to connect to the wagon. But in order for it to do the pied piper thing that we need it to do over the cliff, we gotta get from A to B, and I gotta plug and plug, and then we should be good to go." He explained.

"That wagon is on the other side of the horde." Magna, who had returned from the inside of the cave, traumatised, stated.

"So... someone's gotta go through it?" Jerry questioned. "With skins in there?"

"Four groups. Two in each. One carries the cargo, one protects. It's crucial that all the equipment makes it to the wagon." Gabriel continued.

"We can make it through. I'll help." Lydia offered.

"We're willing." Bea, from Oceanside, spoke up. "But not if she goes."

"And why's that?" Natalia asked.

"Stand down." Daryl told her.

"Well, we know she's earned trust with you, but... Oceanside isn't ready. Not with this."

"Says the girl who was shooting to kill at the age of ten."

"Stop." Daryl pushed.

"That's fine." Gabriel said loudly, trying to drown out the commotion of the other two. "As it happens, Lydia's role is in here."

"Look, we're not all gonna make it through." Daryl spoke to the group now. "But this is the only way."

"If Daryl's going, then so am I." Kelly declared.

Natalia made Daryl say goodbye to the kids, before he was required to gut up, she thought it would be best if they didn't see their father dressed up in walker shit, and smelling of it, too."

"You're not gonna die, are you, Daddy?" Bambi asked, hugging him tightly.

"Naw, sweetheart, I ain't." He promised. "I don't die, remember."

"That's cause you can beat anything, Daddy."

"Hell yeah." He grinned at Daisy, hugging her too. "Alright, lemme say goodbye, to my lil man." He took Archie out of Natalia's arms, giving him a dramatic kiss on the cheek, making the baby giggle. "He's getting heavy." Daryl bounced Archie in his arms, weighing the boy.

"He's getting old, soon, we're gonna have no babies left." Natalia pouted.

"That's not an excuse to have another one." Evie piped up.

"We ain't having another baby." Daryl told her. "Five is definitely enough."

"Five, but Daddy, you only have four kids, me, Daisy, Evie, and Archie." Bambi pointed at herself and her siblings.

"Yeah, but Lydia's also under our care, which technically makes her our kid, in a way." Natalia reminded the girl.

"Oh."

"Daryl, time's ticking." Gabriel walked past them.

"That man, he offs one person and thinks he's God, himself." Natalia grumbled.

"Hey, help me gut up." Daryl spoke quietly to her, passing Archie to Evie, kissing both their heads, then giving the twins another goodbye hug, kissing them, too, before reminding them all to stay safe and be good, and that he loves them.

"Alright, stay still for five minutes, Mommy'll be back." Natalia told the kids, following Daryl to the gutting station.

Daryl put the hoodie and the jeans over his clothes, and Natalia put on the large gloves, digging her hands in the matter and spreading it over him.

"I hate that I can't go with you, I hate feeling useless." Natalia told him, as she applied it on thickly, making sure no walker will sense him.

"Better to be useless in here, then dying out there." He told her, "You've done enough, already, you deserve to sit this one out."

"I know, but I still hate it." She pouted.

"Get your back for you, dear?" Luke asked Jules, as he helped her gut up, across from them. "You know I got your back out there, too, right?"

"Oh, and the rest of me?" She asked.

"Yeah, I'm good to get that, too."

"Hey, you okay?" Jerry asked Magna, who was also going. "I mean, going back into the herd after everything..."

"I'm fine, you?" Magna smiled, meekly.

"Not at all." He replied truthfully.

"She gets to go..." Natalia rolled her eyes, as she finished up.

"She ain't end up in a coma." Daryl patted down her hair. "Hey!" He turned to Negan, who was stepping from foot to foot, looking rather uncomfortable. "Why you clean?"

"I ain't going." Negan admitted.

"You've done this more'n any of us."

"I am on the tip-top of every skins' kill list. Especially fee fi fo asshole. So if the idea is to get through without drawing a shitload of attention, then I am the last person these people want standing next to them."

"Please, Negan." Natalia stepped towards them, acting all innocent like. "Please, y'know, I'd feel a lot better if you went with them. I mean, no offense to these guys, but, no one will do a better job then you will, I mean, you're skilled, you know what's up, and... you got a winning personality." She played his own words against him. "You'd do it for me, wouldn't you? I'd go out there, but, I'm pretty weak, at the moment. But-- I'd feel so much better if you went with them." She went as far to stand on her tip toes, gently kissing his cheek, sealing the deal. "At least think about it." Then she led Daryl away.

"You're sick." He grumbled to her.

"Need to help somehow, don't worry, I'll bleach my lips, if it makes you feel better."

And it had worked, because Negan had gutted up.

"I love you, don't die on me." Natalia told Daryl, when Gabriel had called time.

"I ain't never gonna." He promised, he kissed Natalia, with tongue, and she knew exactly why, when he pulled away, staring down the tall, gutted up, man, wearing his whisperer mask.

"Daryl, you finished?" Gabriel asked him.

"Yup." He squeezed Natalia's hip, walking with the others, out of the door.

Natalia stood next to Judith, when they closed it again.

"He's gonna be alright." She told the girl.

"I know." She sighed. "Doesn't mean I'm not any less scared."

"That's a good thing, reminds yourself that you care, you're still alive and human."

He waved goodbye to the pair, smiling at them through the window, and they waved bye, back, and then Natalia took her and Lydia back upstairs, they didn't need to see the downstairs part fill up with walkers.

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simmillercc · 20 days

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SIMS 4 - AIRLINE EMPLOYEE CAREER - BASE GAME

UPDATE 05APRIL24: I've had to rebuild the entire career (only took 5 hours 😶), this time using Zerbu's Mod Constructor, as there were missing text bits due to the recent patch and the Create-a-Career website is currently down. I also had to change a couple of the Mechanic objectives, nothing major, just using SkillUp on some Rocket Science objectives instead of a specific skill level. There are also new career rewards for levels and completing a branch 😁

!!! - I also added uniforms 👩‍💼👨‍💼

PLEASE RE-DOWNLOAD using one of the links below.

➡️ Current languages available in package: English, French, German, Polish, Chinese (traditional and simplified)

PATREON

CURSEFORGE

#ts4 career #sims 4 career #s4 career #ts4 pilot #sims 4 pilot #s4 pilot #ts4 flight attendant #sims 4 flight attendant #s4 flight attendant #ts4 airline #sims 4 airline #s4 airline #simblr

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majordemonblockparty · 1 month

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sometimes watching supernatural feels like the summer I was nineteen and my best friend from high school called me up to tell me that there was construction happening at the convenience store we used to frequent after school and that when they'd ripped up the parking lot to lay a new diesel line, they'd found human bones.

same old story, you've heard it before; sometime in the 80s, two guys beefin' over a girl who neither one ended up marrying, one stabs the other sixteen times in the head, neck, and groin and tucks him away under the rebar and dirt where they're pouring concrete later that week. and then for thirty-plus years after that, people parked their cars over him and sat on the egg-yolk yellow parking blocks to smoke their first (dozen) cigarettes over him and poured tiny airline bottles of vodka bought by soccer moms who wagged their fingers and laughed at underage kids day-drinking, "don't do anything i wouldn't do" into their styrofoam cups of coke over him and nobody knew.

sometimes it feels like that.

like there's something about where and how I grew up that I -- not necessarily forget, but between active suppression when I first left and the relentless passing of time, it gets buried. and then this fucking network tv show comes and rips it right back open.

watching supernatural as somebody who grew up in and around the midwest feels insane. feels all sorts'a unhinged. never have I ever seen popular media treat my childhood playground states like this. the midwest isn't sexy; the midwest isn't cool; and it's not in supernatural, either, but it's... something.

far be it from me to romanticize americana and its role in supernatural (I am not the first and sure as hell won't be the last) but what the fuck. it's so strange to look at these characters and go, "oh. he gets it."

he knows what the liminal space of a car interior feels like on a january day when the roads are covered in dried salt and the fields are blanketed with snow and everything -- everything; the sky, the ground, the road stretched out forever in front of you -- is the exact same shade of pale gray. there's no topography, so there's no horizon; just this endless gray void only broken up by the double-solid yellow line in the road.

he knows how it feels to stand in a gravel turnout and watch the six-day-bruise green of a three-mile-long wall cloud bear down on you. how the air gets heavy and thick-wet enough to drink and you can see lighting way off in the distance, no sound from this far. how if you turn around, the sky over there will still be the most perfect, palest blue,"it's a boy!" birth announcement blue. that it's animal fear that makes your heart pound under your ribs, and birthright that makes you lean back against your car to take in the view. storm's coming and nothing you do is gonna stop it. this is your privilege; soak it in.

he knows what it's like to be cold and stiff and traipsing through woods, following the blood trail of something maybe-still-alive you've tagged in the lung. how lung blood in dead leaves will show up frothy, and so red it almost verges over into pink.

he knows that there's no better place come that inevitable stretch of hundred-degree days in july than in the driver's seat of your own car, windows down and radio cranked so high the frame vibrates under you and a cold drink wedged between your thighs, leaving condensation-wet patches on your jeans, keychain brushing against the (ticklish, but you'd never admit it) skin of your knee where the denim's torn.

he knows to avoid the interstate during migratory bird season; that people are flocking (wahn-wahn) from both coasts and multiple countries to see snow geese, cormorants, cranes, whatever. he knows that the back roads are where you'll see these birds, anyways; scavenging cut-down cornfields that'll be white with gulls and pelicans and terns; sea birds of all sorts, about as fucking far from the sea as you can get, swarming and screaming overhead.

anyways. not an essay, not a love letter, just. some thoughts.

#supernatural meta #she speaks #anyways: if you harbor secret fondness for the midwest spn just taps that wellspring it's absolutely nuts guys #some of this I've said in the tags of other posts before so forgive me if i repeat myself

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allylikethecat · 4 months

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i would love if you did either 22, 24, or 30 for george and matty! (i love the ones you write all medical and angsty but i love all of them tbh)

Hello Kind Anon who sent in these fantastic and lovely Kiss Prompt Request my way in August!

I apologize profusely that it took me literal months to fulfill this request. I originally wrote a fill for this in Septemberish, then worried it was too rushed and also too dark / dealt with some stuff that was going to be *too much* for a prompt fill, then, started rewriting the dark and too much theme as a longer form fic, got nervous that I was going to get cancelled for it and abandoned the idea, AND THEN every time I came BACK to this to fill it, I kept circling back to where I had started (and maybe one day I'll finish that idea because wow it hurt so good). BUT I finally wrote something and it is not the medical angst that you requested or I intended but hopefully you're still here and will see this fill and enjoy it!! If you absolutely hate it though please let me know and I will rewrite you something new and better because I feel bad that it took so long. And on that note... I wrote about 95% of this a few days ago, then went to a NYE party last night and met an actual pilot and found out most of this is very inaccurate... I tried to change it some but alas how it would go down in real life was not dramatic enough for me so we have the TV version of oxygen masks dropping on a plane.

Thank you so much again for sending this in, and I am so sorry again for taking months to fill your request. I hope you enjoy it, and I also want to thank you so much for reading and your support! I hope you have a very happy New Year! (If anyone else wants to send prompts the Kiss Prompts list can be found here, and the ones I have already filled can be found here)

❤️Ally

WARNING: Matty and George are on a plane that experiences rapid depressurization

22. Kiss … in a rush of adrenaline & 24. Kiss … in danger & 30. Kiss ... as comfort

George woke up to a kink in his neck and Matty’s blunt nails digging painfully into his wrist, his eyes wild as the plane rocked, his empty can of coke tumbling off of his tray and rolling down the aisle. George opened his mouth to assure Matty that they had just hit a patch of turbulence, and that everything was fine, there was no need to panic when a loud bang echoed throughout the plane and the oxygen masks dropped down from the ceiling.

George reached up, feeling eerily calm despite the roaring in his ears, the airline safety spiel he had heard hundreds of times in his life replaying in his mind as he fitted the mask over his face. Should an emergency situation occur, you need to put your own oxygen mask on first, before attempting to help those around you. He wrinkled his nose at the burning smell as he inhaled, wondering if it was from the chemical reaction creating the oxygen, or if it was from the plane itself. He looked over, and found Matty frozen in place, staring at the oxygen mask dangling in front of him like it was going to bite him, or suffocate him instead of sustaining life.

Ladies and gentlemen please sit down and fasten your seat belts immediately. Came the flight attendant’s voice, ringing clear, yet urgently over the plane’s announcement system. George reached over and tugged Matty’s oxygen mask down towards his head, starting the chemical reaction to begin the flow of oxygen before pulling it down over his face and tightening the elastic strings. Matty was limp, letting George maneuver him like a rag doll, his eyes wide and terrified. George knew now wasn’t the time to think about it, but he couldn’t help but hysterically wonder how they would ever get Matty back on another plane after this.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the aircraft has just suffered a decompression and the emergency oxygen system is being activated. Please remain seated, and fit your oxygen mask and breathe normally. Secure the mask by placing the elastic over the back of your head. You must fit your own mask before assisting others. Any smell of burning is normal following the activation of the chemical oxygen generators. Do not remove the mask until advised by a crewmember.

He glanced back at Ross and Adam sitting a few rows back, oxygen masks fitted over their own faces, holding onto their armrests as they looked around frantically. George uncurled Matty’s fingers from his wrist, so he could hold his hand properly, giving it a squeeze, trying to show Matty that he was here, that it was going to be okay even as the plane dipped and George’s stomach swooped, his ears popping painfully as they descended rapidly.

“Breathe babe,” said George, hoping Matty could hear him over the roaring in his ears, “you need to breathe,” he repeated, Matty’s chest rising and falling erratically as he silently panicked, tears pooling in the corners of his wide unseeing eyes.

The plane lurched again and Matty’s grip tightened on George’s hand, his knuckles turning white from the force of his grip, causing George’s fingers to start to go numb.

“It’s going to be alright,” George said, he was unsure if he was trying to reassure Matty or himself. The plane rocked again, and he looked up, craning his neck to try and get a peek at the flight attendants, trying desperately to get a read on the situation, trying to get more information. Matty let out a strangled gasp, his nails biting into the delicate skin of George’s hand, tears falling, pooling around the orange plastic of the mask as he looked over at George, silently pleading for salvation.

“It’s going to be alright,” George said again. He stupidly and impulsively, aided by the adrenaline coursing through his veins, pulled his mask down to press a quick kiss to the side of Matty’s head, his lips brushing against his temple despite the apparent danger they were in before quickly refitting his own mask.

Matty made a soft hiccuping sound, and turned his head, burying his face in the junction of George’s arm and shoulder, his own shoulders shaking as he tried and failed to steady his breathing. His oxygen bag wasn’t inflated the same way George’s was due to Matty’s frantic breaths. Matty didn’t like flying on a good day, sitting bolt upright on the plane, clinging to either the armrest or George’s hand during take off and landing, and during even the most minor patches of choppy air. Matty was clean now, healthy, and George hated to admit it, but it had been easier to fly with Matty when he was using. He’d take enough Xanax to kill a horse and sleep the entire flight, moving like a zombie through the terminal when now he moved like a prey animal ready to bolt for the exit at a moment’s notice.

“We have reached our new cruising altitude of 8,000 feet, it is now safe to remove your oxygen mask,” came the voice of the flight attendant that had spoken before, cutting off the mechanically instructed spiel that had continued to repeat as they made their rapid descent. George looked around, as the plane shuddered again, but everyone began removing their masks. George hesitated for a moment before removing his as well, remembering suddenly that he had read once that the chemical reaction that created the oxygen in the masks only lasted for a few minutes.

“We apologize for the inconvenience,” the flight attendant said, explaining how they would be rerouting to land in Charlotte, North Carolina instead of Atlanta, Georgia as planned. George didn’t even care about the logistical nightmare that was going to cause during festival season, he didn’t care about much of anything except helping Matty take off his oxygen mask and crushing their lips together, a chaste, comforting press as Matty trembled beneath George’s fingers.

“We’re okay,” George soothed, “we’re okay, it’s okay.”

“I’m never flying again,” Matty rasped, his voice shaking his eyes still wide. George just chuckled nervously, the excess adrenaline still beating through his chest as he pressed another kiss to Matty’s lips, before tugging him as close as he could while wearing their seatbelts, pressing his head against his chest.

“We’re okay.”

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astrovagrant · 8 months

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this is the hammer i carry. theres a ball-peen version available, but i went with the claw bc it doubles as carrying a miniature crowbar

also, you would not BELIEVE the look of dumbfounded awe i got last year when i was sitting on a rail fence waiting in line for the haunted house at the pumpkin patch and got annoyed by a bit poking into my side, so i simply opened my purse, pulled out a pair of garden shears, and clipped it off

she's so small and cute......... i don't normally carry the tools around with me but they are usually in my car, esp since i've been picking up furniture for my apt recently. i should get one for my car kit though!!!

i used to carry a multitool on my keys (took it off for travel for work bc . airlines don't like pocket knives actually) and my favorite "aha" memory was at my it job in college where my coworker dropped a very important key in an ancient radiator and i spent 10 minutes taking the radiator apart with my multitool, fetching the key, and putting it back together. both she and the middle-aged it dispatcher were Very Impressed with me

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innytoes · 1 year

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If you don't mind me sending another one, JatP flight crew AU?

-Alex and Luke are the pilots. Luke has been banned from going on comms several times because he keeps singing. "I told them 'this is your captain singing', so it's fine!" It is not, stop that Luke.

-Willie and Reggie work as stewards. Willie is the one who does the safety brief and makes jokes like 'if you try to make a phone call while we're in the air, we're going to ask you to step outside'.

-Reggie is the one who looks after any unaccompanied minors, because he's great with kids.

-Willie is the one who keeps an eye out for people freaking out and tells them all about his boyfriend who is also scared of planes but got over it with statistics about how you're more likely to die by cow or toaster.

-Not everyone appreciates Willie's Death Statistics, that's usually when Reggie swoops in.

-Alex: Stop telling people I'm scared of flying.

(He is still a liiiittle scared of flying unless he's the one flying the plane.)

-Luke is the only person on the crew who actually likes airplane food.

-There has been at least one time, possibly while Alex and Willie weren't working but both on a flight back home, that they uhhh, joined the mile high club. The flight was nearly empty okay and it wasn't like they used the cockpit.

-Julie is an up and coming celebrity who refuses to go the whole Private Jet route because it would make Carlos judge her and she's seen how ruthless his memes can be. (Also he has like 25 years of backlogged blackmail material.) She still feels a little over the top just flying first class, but the label is paying, soooo...

-The big fashionable sunglasses Flynn bought her, and the fact that she usually just throws her hair in a bun and wears Un-Celebrity Clothes keep her incognito most of the time.

-Reggie compliments her on her smiley sweatshirt the first time she flies with their airline, and they kind of flirt back and forth a little.

-Willie totally knows who Julie is and thinks Reggie does too.

-When the plane hits some turbulence, Willie's You're More Likely To Die Crossing The Street speech is not working for Julie so she tries humming instead, and Reggie shoos Willie to terrorise the Karens in the back who think now is the best time to walk around.

-He sits with Julie and is like: Hey I know that song! And quietly sings to her.

-He has no idea that it's Julie's own song, and she kind of loves him, and they duet until the turbulence has subsided.

-Reggie still has no clue until Alex sends him a YOU'RE VIRAL ON TIKTOK!!!1!!! video. Because 'hot flight attendant duets with pop star' is apparently excellent clickbait.

-Reggie asks if he can have his name tag changed to Hot Flight Attendant. Their boss says no. Willie goes out and gets two patches made anyway to wear off the job.

-"Yes of course I've got one for me too, have you seen me, Reginald?"

-Luke has never been more jealous. Especially because he KNOWS who Julie is an loves her lyrics and stuff.

-The next time Julie flies with them Reggie is all shy like: sorry, I didn't know who you were, but our pilot basically threw a jealous fit, I'm sorry if I've been bothering you, it's not because you're famous it's just that you're really cute and oh god I'll stop talking now.

-Julie is of course delighted and suggests that they all go to karaoke together some time. And maybe beforehand, she and Reggie can go grab a bite to eat somewhere.

-Willie after the plane is empty, over the intercom: attention all flight crew, Reggie somehow managed to get us a karaoke night with Grammy award winning star Julie Molina.

-Reggie's in the back of the plane cleaning the toilets but he still hears Luke's screams of joy.

#reggiexjulie #julie and the phantoms #not!fic #I wrote a thing #julie brings Flynn to karaoke #Flynn and Willie meet and there is... so much chaos the rest of the night

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achuffingtiger · 4 months

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As I'm sitting in the plane right now, I wanted to quickly jot down an account that just occurred during my transit from the boarding gate to my seat.

The airline I always subscribe to was able to match my expectation yet again when they timely announced the starting of the boarding process. Unlucky chaps like me who had been assigned zone 3 were pushed to the side by the gate manager as they made way for priority passengers - those whose mobility were compromised either due to physical limitations, senility or my worst nightmare, howling infants. There were three old handicapped women who sat on their wheelchairs, with their aides right behind them. Then came forward a couple with their two kids - the only people with kids who chose to exercise their privilege of priority check-in, probably due to their ability to pervade the linguistic barrier, built so carefully, by the young gate manager, blurting out instructions in the colonial tongue, through a semi-crackling loudspeaker.

After passing through the boarding gate and getting on the bus destined to take us to the plane, I found myself a comfortable seat beside an old gentleman holding a crutch. It was only then that I could catch a longer glimpse at the couple. They were standing straight ahead of me about half a metre away. Their kids were seated in the row prior to mine.

On first glance, a lot could be observed about the couple. The man was visibly fat and dark skinned, with tidy hair but a shabby beard with patches of grey in them. His eyes were bulging out of their sockets, perhaps due to sleep deprivation. He was responsible for carrying most of the luggage that had wheels attached to them. He stood with his back to the gate, letting his paunch eat away significantly from the space allocated to his wife.

She, on the other hand, was quite the opposite. Her hoodie was of a lighter shade of green than her husband's jacket, perfectly complementing the slight natural brown streaks of her conditioned hair. Immediately, one would be drawn to her long and subtly styled eyes. Even at 5:30 in the morning, this woman had her smoky eye shadow and discrete eye liner elevate the strength of her gaze. The sharp bridge of her nose just made her visible face all the more enigmatic leading to a nose protruding through the mask that she was wearing. Her nails were polished with a blend of light green and blue and filed to have round edges, perhaps for the safety of her children. Both she and her husband had Apple watches on, which kept reminding them of just how long the bus had been stationary. The man got frustrated and asked the driver to get going. The woman was talking to the kids, asking them to recite "The wheels on the bus go..."

Their frustration was my pleasure. The longer the bus waited, the more I enjoyed the vivid scene of a family unfold in front of my eyes. With every interaction they had among themselves, they revealed a little more about their world to me. The more they revealed, the more familiar it seemed to me. Here was a run-of-the-mill couple who have created a world of privilege for themselves through their hard work. Their zone of comfort extends to their little cubs that they are raising together. I get to hear them call their kids out...

Meher and Kabir. Such lovely names. Such a lovely family. I noticed them with an absurd keenness till they got to their seat.

Now I am sitting in mine with an android phone in my unmoisturised hand and all I can think about is...

I want that life with you.

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desert-bluffs-and-me · 5 months

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WTNV quick rundown - Live Show - Ghost Stories

For other live shows and episode rundowns please check here!

Featurings the voices of Meg Bashwiner as Deb, Symphony Sanders as Tamika Flynn, Joseph Fink as Teddy Williams, Hal Lublin as Steve Carlsberg, Desiree Burch as Pamela Winchell, Dylan Marron as Carlos The Scientist, Jasika Nicole as Dana Cardinal, Wil Wheaton as Earl Harlan, Jeffery Cranor as himself (in intern form), Jason Webley as Louie Blasko, Molly Quinn as Melony Pennington, Kate Jones as Michelle Nyugen and Emma Frankland as Sheriff Sam.

We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Also many other things, several of which can be found in your home. Welcome to Night Vale!

The Ghost Stories in question are submissions by citizens for NV 'annual' ghost story competition. We also got a few regular segments.

Horoscopes reveal that Steve Carlsberg is a Scorpio. Cecil says this is not why they're usually mean. He also mentions that Janice is soon having her first 'ballet fight' which Abby said he wouldn't be invited to if he weren't nice in his horoscopes.

Deb returns with an ad for American Airlines. She tells a story about a family of sentient patches of haze moving into a house that is inhabited by humans. It is pointed out that humans often own houses, a fact which gets Deb in a huff.

In the Children's Fun Fact Science Corner, Cecil suggests that it's been confirmed that time travel will be invented in 30 years and proposes a (failed) experiment to test this out.

NVHS prom will be locking the kids in and allowing them to gamble. The schools tests kids using an electrified maze.

The NV fire department is sure it's kids that start fires, their mascot is a vulture with a camera for a head and their fire chief is Ramona Encarnacion.

Weather: "Where Did I Go" Erin McKeown

Tamika says she learnt English by reading it not listening to it and has a very unusual way of saying potato. Her story is about her best friend Jessice Littleton defeating a librarian.

Teddy Williams is having a haunted house kind of event at the Desert Flower. His story is about the ghost of Marcus Vanston's cat haunting the NV skating rink which was built over the pet cemetary. He says it speaks French, and he only has a Russian dictionary, which he assumes is similar enough to French. He believes that the cat is called Peanut and died of lonliness, waiting for Marcus to return. Unable to reunite even in death it is now a ghost.

Steve tells us about a bus of school children and their driver Mab, stalled on train tracks. They didn't actually get hit by a train but died of natural causes years later. Even so, Steve insists your car will roll and you'll see ghostly handprints if you go to the train station at the right time. He doesn't believe in Cecil's plausible explanations for this and waxes momentarily poetic about the nature of existence which actually scares Cecil. They hug.

Pamela appears to tell a story, seemingly accompanied by one of the mute hollow-eyes children. She insists he was probably there since the last press conference a month ago and Cecil forgot to send him home. She also says he grandfather was a bird. Her story is about a cool rock she found that has a latin inscription on it she is assuming is the book 'Gone Girl'. But since she thinks the movie 'Furious 7' is 'Gone Girl' and Cecil thinks the book 'Ms Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children' is 'Gone Girl' and nobody in NV speaks Latin there is no way it actually is a Latin translation of that book and if it were neither would recognise it. Pamela ate the rock. She also arrived and left on a horse.

Carlos' story actually involves him meeting a ghost in his lab and being more scientifically interested (and embarassing himself by phrasing things strangely to the ghost) than scared. He keeps forgetting he's on radio and not describing things. He also has an assistent called Winchell who lives in the crawl space and the ghost was his relative. He says that many scientists who died from not having OSHA approved eye washes are buried in the cemetary next to his lab. He also believes that Benjamin Franklin tied his kite to a tombstone and that Canada is in Boston.

Dana's story is about her uncle Herbert's mansion. He had apparently cut all contact with their family years prior to his death, only keeping the company of his manservant Sherfwood. The mansion is apparently hideously decorated and none of them wanted it, not even her ghost cousin Denise. This story may also be told by Sheriff Sam, making it dubiously canon for either.

Earl is retelling a story his old scout master Ron Veal used to tell. Its about a group of scouts getting lost at night and developing their own civilisation, eventually drawing straws to see who got killed and eaten. It turns out they were in somebodies back garden and are soon invited back inside, with the mother being upset that her son Richie is not there. His ghost did rejoin the trope eventually and get his apparition badge as did they all some time later. Earl insists it was centuries since he and Cecil were scouts, which causes Cecil to quickly change the subject. Also, Cecil has no idea what a fridge is and thought his fridge was a humming closet full of cold air. It's unclear what he's been using as a fridge as he changes the subject when asked. Earl mentions cooking shows such as 'America's next top self-surgeon' and 'Who's in the slow cooker?' and mentions that cooking masterclasses are in high demand. He also lights a bonfire right there in the studio in order to tell his story. Earl smiles by using his fingers to pull up the sides of his mouth.

Intern Jeffery Cranor tells us a story about Intern Felix's death and how souls work.

Louie Blasko tells us a story about a kid called Harold being murdered by spiders and haunting the NVHS locker room - in song.

Melony tells us of discovering the trapped soul of a person killed by an evil programmer inside of a computer, but fixed the computer as hired so its gone. She also says earthquakes are controlled by a red glowing gem, which you can connect to via wi-fi and use to do most anything. She uses one to get birds to attack her enemies. She says LOL is short for Loss of Lungs.

Michelle is having an open mic night where people who think of themselves as performers are invited to come and stare at the mic in silence. She tells of trying to record something only for a blank hiss to be on both sides of the tape, which she thinks makes her cursed. Cecil says the recording probably just fails and Michelle sighs that nothing fun ever happens to her.

Sheriff Sam tells us of their many, many fears which they apparently really needed to get off their chest.

The longest story is told by Cecil, who keeps taking breaks to allow others to tell their stories or do his regular show. He tries to make it into a story about a woman who died in a mill fire ten years ago and is picked up by a man who she gets to guide her back to said tragic place. In reality, he was retelling the story of his own childhood with supernatural elements and eventually tells us the actual truth.

He tells us that his mother left home when he was 14 and never came back as much as he tried to believe that she would. Because of this, Abby had leave school (assumedly collage or university, as she'd likely have had to be at least 18 to be legally allowed to raise him) to take care of him. He admits that he was petulent and subversive because he was upset their mom was gone and that Abby was not their mother. Abby was reserved and controlling in her grief and also blaming him for her having to drop out. This greatly strained their relationship for years afterwards.

Eventually their mother does come back when the two are already adults, aged beyond her years, worn down by the stresses of debt, alcohol and undiagnosed or even recognised mental illness.

Their mother died and only Abby was there, because Cecil was busy working. On the ten year anniversary of said death he did indeed pick her up and take her home, both of them still full of the grief of their childhood and of their mothers passing and not really healed but on their way to healing. Cecil testifies that most actual ghost stories are like this.

Cecil has, by his own recollection, been working in the station for at least thirty years as he remembers tripping on a specific wire there thirty years ago.

Stay tuned next for that uncertain moment of silence between the last word spoken and the first applause. And from a night that is so much like tonight, as to almost be – indistinguishable. Good night, Night Vale, Good night.

#wtnv #wtnv quick rundown #wtnv ghost stories #welcome to night vale #wtnv live shows

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