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tohellandbackanthology · 3 years

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WE FINISHED SHIPPING OUT ALL PHYSICAL ORDERS (and other important info about your package)!

Hi guys! That’s right! On June 19th, we officially wrapped up packing more than 800 orders of To Hell + Back: A Destiel Anthology and immediately got drunk and partied actually we just talked about the impossible housing market in Vancouver. Barring three orders which were still missing phone numbers, by now everybody else should’ve received a tracking number with their book on the way!

While we’re relieved that one of the hardest parts of the job is now done and over with, we know that our project is still far from over. With that in mind, we’d like to outline some important info via this handy FAQ about what to look out for as you wait for your package to arrive.

**When are digital books shipping out?**

Right now! As promised, now that we’ve finished shipping all physical books, we’re now switching our focus to digital copies. Please do note that we’ll be shipping digital books in batches, so not everybody is going to get their book at the same time. Why are we doing this? Because sometimes emails bounce and we want to make sure we catch those when they happen. By sending the books out in batches, we can better keep track of these issues.

We will be sending out digital books in the following order: Indiegogo/Big Cartel digital-only backers first, and then everybody else. We feel this order is fair because those of you who didn’t order a physical book have now been waiting a long time and we want to be sure you receive your books at the same time as people begin receiving their physical copies in the mail.

We aim to complete shipping all digital books no later than July 11, but we are working fast in the hopes of finishing by July 5th.

**I didn’t receive my tracking number!**

We had multiple checks in place to ensure that we covered every order*** so if you didn’t get an email from Canada Post, please check your junk/spam folder and see if your email might have landed there. If it’s not there either, please message us at [email protected] and we’ll resend you your tracking number. It’s always possible that there might’ve been a typo in the email address that we had on file for you, and if that was the case, then the email containing your tracking number wouldn’t have reached you. That said, even if Canada Post’s email didn’t reach you, you should have received an email from Indiegogo or Big Cartel also indicating your tracking number as we inputted tracking info into these sites too!

*** A select few packages don’t have tracking numbers. If you purchased a tier that was a merch + E-book combo on Indiegogo (“I’d Rather Have You”; “Cursed or Not”; “I Always Come When You Call”) and live outside Canada and the United States, it was unfortunately not possible for us to generate a mailing label with a tracking number because your parcel was too small. Instead, please keep an eye on your mailbox. Your envelope parcel should reach you within 4-6 weeks.

**The only thing my tracking number says is ELECTRONIC INFORMATION SUBMITTED BY SHIPPER :( When will Canada Post pick up my package?**

All orders were picked up by Canada Post on June 21, 2021. If your tracking still doesn’t show ITEM PICKED UP BY CANADA POST, contact us immediately so we can figure out what’s going on.

**My package didn’t arrive! It says ITEM BEING RETURNED TO SENDER! Help!**

Please contact us IMMEDIATELY if this happens so that we can reroute your package before it’s too late. If the package is returned to us, we get charged for its shipping. Then subsequently shipping has to be paid again to resend it to you! That’s 3x shipping and it’s not good, for either us or you! Please don’t delay a second if this happens. Tell us right away because we are determined to get it back to you! In the words of @justholdingstill, “Over my dead body are they sending it back to us.”

**When will I receive my package?**

From the point that your tracking displays the message Item picked up by Canada Post, you can expect that:

Canadians will generally receive their packages within 2-4 days, but it can be up to 7 days for remote regions.

Americans will generally receive their packages within 10-14 days. This includes Guam and Puerto Rico.

All other countries will receive their packages within 4-12 weeks, but we have noticed that these packages are coming WAY faster than that, usually within 2 weeks. Down below is a breakdown of how quickly certain countries have received their fastest package:

Argentina: 15 days

Finland: 8 days

Germany: 10 days

Italy: 16 days

Mexico: 10 days

Norway: 18 days

Russia: 15 days

United Kingdom: 21 days but so far, this seems to be an exception—only one package has arrived as of today.

All other countries: No package has reached its destination yet that we know of

**I have my tracking number but it’s not showing any movement! Is my package lost?**

Canadians and Americans should have regular updates to their tracking information every couple of days, but please be patient—things happen, packages get rerouted, or sometimes have to sit for a little bit in customs or a sorting facility before moving on to their final destination.

Likewise for our international backers, you will most likely get regular updates to your tracking information until your package leaves Canada. At this point, you will receive the following notification: International item being forwarded to destination country. From this point onward, you won’t receive any updates to your tracking information for a long time. This is completely normal and it just means that your book is on a boat making its way to your country. After it arrives on shore, you may or may not get more tracking notifications—it will depend on how the next carrier processes your order. In general, for all the international countries that have received packages so far, they have had full tracking upon reaching shore.

**When is my package considered lost? What should I do then? How much time do I have to contact you?**

Canadians should wait 14 days from the day that their package is picked up by Canada Post before contacting us (unless your tracking says that it’s returning to sender, in which case contact us IMMEDIATELY so that we can reroute your package!).

Americans (including Guam and Puerto Rico) should wait 21 days from the day that their package is picked up by Canada Post before contacting us (unless your tracking says that it’s returning to sender, in which case contact us IMMEDIATELY so that we can reroute your package!).

All other nationalities should wait 12 weeks from the day that their package is picked up by Canada Post before contacting us (unless your tracking says that it’s returning to sender, in which case contact us IMMEDIATELY so that we can reroute your package!).

Please don’t contact us before that. We won’t be able to help you earlier than this. We have to talk to Canada Post about your parcel and they won’t take further steps until the waiting period is over.

When you contact us, please give us the following information via email at [email protected]:

Your full name

Your shipping address

Your shipping phone number

Your shipping email

Let us know where you’re an Indiegogo or Big Cartel backer

You have four weeks to contact us after the ‘package-is-officially-lost’ date. For example, if your book was picked up by Canada Post on June 1 and your home address is in a country other than the United States or Canada, you will wait 12 weeks to see if your package arrives. In this example, your package is officially considered lost on September 1. You have four weeks to let us know. In this example, you have until October 1 to tell us that your package is lost. If you tell us after October 1, unfortunately we can’t help you! We have a timeline in place for the official end date of our project and this deadline helps keep us on track to donate our remaining funds to our charity of choice, Wish Vancouver, in a timely manner. Not to mention we’ll be selling off our extra books and if you take too long to contact us, there might not be any remaining books for you to have a replacement!

**My tracking says that my package was delivered but I can’t find it!**

We encourage you first and foremost to ask your neighbours and anybody else who lives with you or around you to see if they might have received it for you. Please also contact your postal service to see if they might have held it for you at the post office. Finally, please keep an eye on your tracking and please try your absolute best to be there to receive it so that there is no chance of your package being stolen. If your tracking information declares that it was delivered, we consider it delivered on our end too and as much as we would like to help you, we’re not a business and as such, our funds are limited and we can’t be responsible for stolen packages. If your package does get stolen though, please let us know and we’ll talk to Canada Post regardless. All our books are insured and if Canada Post agrees to pay the insurance amount, we’ll put aside a book for you from our extras sale. You will still be responsible for paying the full amount of shipping. If Canada Post denies the insurance amount, we can still put a book aside for you but you will have to pay the full amount of the book and shipping.

**Have any other questions that come to mind?**

As always, please don’t hesitate to shoot us a message! We always strive to get back to you within 48 hours or less, but please note that justholdingstill, casthewise, and pray4jensen/60r3d0m are heading out on a mini vacation to Vancouver Island from June 30 to July 4 so you might not hear from us as promptly at that time! Unfortunately we won’t have cell service or WiFi.

Aside from this, thank you again for your patience and support. We can’t wait to see photos of your books (and shelves and pets and plants!). Be sure to tag us when you do post!

With love,

Your TH+B mods

#admin: 60r3d0m #admin: pray4jensen #announcement #tohellandbackanthology

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twinrowcitizennews · 3 years

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snapshot

Note from the editor:

This is the first letter of this nature that I’ve received from someone who wanted their question published. Other than editing for formatting and grammar, it’s in their own words and their own words alone. Please send an email or ask if you know how to solve their problem-- and quickly.

I have to warn you, this letter isn’t for those who are put on edge easily. Reader discretion is advised.

I don’t know if I’ll still be around by the time this is posted, but that doesn’t matter. So long as this reaches whoever might need it.

I first saw it last October. The 27th, I think. Kind of cliché for this sort of thing to be happening right around Halloween, but truth is stranger than fiction. It was late in the evening, almost nighttime, when I saw this stray dog roaming around in my front yard. I grabbed my dog’s leash and went to get it, thinking I could keep it in my backyard until I could find the owners, but the second I left the front step, it started off towards the bike trail. I sped up to a jog and followed it, hoping not to scare it off any further.

The bike trail veers away from the neighborhood and through this piece of undeveloped land that separates the suburbs from a nearby farm. The dog was mostly sticking to the path, moving along at a trot, stopping every once in a while to look over its shoulder and wag its tail, like it was waiting for me to catch up before starting off again. After a few minutes of this, I called for it-- tried to whistle, asked it to heel, etc. It came over when I pretended to have a treat in my hand, holding my fist out like there was something inside. When it leaned over to sniff, I clipped a leash on its collar, a simple fabric band without any tags or ID. I’d never seen the dog before, so I got out my phone and took a picture of it to post to the neighborhood Facebook page, asking if anyone knew its owner, before walking it back to my place and letting it out in the fenced back yard. After feeding my own dog, I sat down to check Facebook to see if there was any response.

No one recognized the dog from the photo. One comment asked me who was standing in the background.

There hadn’t been anyone else in the woods, as far as I remembered, but I double-checked the photo anyway. In the background, about 20 feet away, it looked like there was a figure-- vague, kind of person-shaped if you squinted-- standing just to the side of the bike path. It was all indistinct and fuzzy. Probably just a smudge on the lens. I responded to the comment before trying to clean off the lens on my shirt, then taking another photo down the hallway to see if the smudge was gone. There didn’t seem to be anything. The rest of the night was relatively normal.

The next morning, I ended up trying to clear out my camera roll, to save some room for any pictures I might take of my baby cousins in their costumes. I deleted a bunch of screenshots, old photos, and the image of the dog, before going to delete the hallway picture.

The smudge was still there. Like before, it was around 20 or so feet from where I’d been standing when I took the photo, around the size and height of a person. Unlike before, it was peering around the corner from the door to the bathroom.

I was freaked out some, to be honest. I scrubbed the lens down with a Lysol wipe and took another photo down the hallway, trying to prove to myself it was just some sort of shadow. Nothing that would show up in the daylight. And it didn’t-- nothing strange, no smudge, just a block of sunlight from the windows. I didn’t delete the picture from the night before, though. Just in case.

It was a few more weeks before I took another nighttime photo. My cousins are too young to stay up late, so they’d been out trick-or-treating around 5:00 in the evening, back before it was even dark, so I didn’t really take anything on Halloween. The dog was returned to its owner a few days after, so nothing there, either.

It was around the middle of November when I ended up catching it again. I was on a nighttime walk and passed the home of this older couple down the road who always put up their outdoor Christmas decorations about a month too early. I wanted to get a picture of the setup-- they had this new animatronic Santa, sitting on a throne and waving to the road. I can promise that no one else was in the yard. I used the flash (on accident, but still), and if someone was there, I would have seen them. When I got home, I sent the picture to a friend of mine for her to make fun of. She messaged back with a few laughing emojis before asking who took the photo.

(ID: Two texts from my friend reading “lol” and “really who took it”. My response says “wdym?”. She responded with two texts saying “I see you in the background, genius” and “just vibing by the garage”. End ID.)

I checked the photo again. By the house’s garage, a little under 20 feet from where I’d been, was a clearer, more distinct figure. For once, I could make out its face.

I don’t know who or what it is, or how it got there, but it definitely looked like me. It was even wearing my clothing, had its hair done the same way, everything. Just standing there and smiling for the photo, like someone just out of frame was telling it to say cheese, looking right into the camera.

I immediately turned all the lights on that I could reach. I almost deleted the photo, staring at it for too long, before closing out of Photos and reopening my camera. I figured this had to be some weird hallucination or something I was making up, but that didn’t make it any less terrifying. I aimed the camera down the hall and took a video. Nothing. I checked it, sliding the scrub bar back and forth to inspect each individual frame. All of them were just empty, illuminated hallway. That didn’t shake the feeling, though, so I turned the hall light off and tried again. Nothing showed up on this video, either. I took a photo.

It was there. Again. It wasn’t peeking out from around anything, just standing in the middle of the hallway, the same distance it had been from the camera in the yard.

I didn’t sleep that night. Or the next few.

I ended up searching the internet as much as I could for anyone with similar experiences. I saw things about ghosts, things about illusions, things about solid doppelgangers that people saw with their own eyes and not through pictures, but nothing like this. Over the weeks and months that followed, I took investigating into my own hands.

My fears were quieted some-- some-- when, after the first few nights, I realized that it wasn’t hurting me. It never even moved, staying in the same poses each night. The only change was, no matter where I was, inside or outside, it was always the same distance away.

I started taking pictures almost obsessively. Every day, every night, I tried something new. I tried every condition I could think of to see when and where this thing would show up. It became a part of my routine-- almost a companion. I’d even jokingly wish it goodnight.

I could put walls between myself and it. At one point, I stood inside my closet and took a picture, only showing racks of coats and clothes. It could be seen through windows, if there was no room for it to appear indoors. I could take pictures out my bedroom window to show it standing right there outside the window on the front walk. It always looked exactly like me, down to the smallest detail, except for the face. It never had any expression other than a smile. No matter where I was, inside or outside, it could be there. I got pictures of it at home, at work, out of town. It never showed up in well-lit photos. Things in the dark with flash were okay, but it would just be a little indistinct. Dimmer lighting, pictures taken at night, all of that was free game. I never got a picture of it in daylight.

Around February, I sat down and tried to sort all the successful photos into one album to clear up my camera roll. At this point, it was mostly just pictures of the thing, since I was sometimes taking up to dozens a night. I deleted all the failures, saving all the pictures of it into one album. That’s when I noticed.

It was getting closer.

I guess I had ignored it over the first months. It had been too gradual for me to notice, only an inch or two each night, but looking at all the photos in order, it was obvious. Instead of being around 20 feet away, the thing was closer to 15, still just standing and smiling.

I had to tell myself it was coincidence, or something I was imagining, or I think I would’ve done something I’d regret later just then. Now that I knew it could move, I didn’t really think of it as a friend anymore.

I kept taking pictures throughout the following months. Only at night. It stopped showing up outside my bedroom window-- in retrospect, probably because the ground wasn’t close enough for it anymore. It stopped lurking at the end of the hallway, drawing nearer until it was standing right there in the living room. It started putting its hands against the glass of the kitchen windows. Then it started showing up at the kitchen table.

I got desperate, some. I tried everything. I burned incense, I tried to talk to it, I bought fucking crystals. I’m an atheist, but I even considered calling a priest or something. All spring, I was constantly scrambling to find some way to get that thing to leave, or at least stop moving. Every night I took more pictures, too many, before scrolling through my photo album with a looming sense of dread. Nothing worked. It kept coming, slowly, always dressed like me and always doing that smile. It got close enough that I could see the whites of its eyes. I almost wish I could say that there was something messed up about it, something that made it obviously inhuman or dead or anything, but there wasn’t. It was just me, just exactly like me, and somehow that was worse.

I’m sending this in now because it’s really close and I don’t know how to make it go away or if that’s even an option anymore. These past few nights, it’s been right in front of me-- I could reach out and touch it, if it was solid. Hell, I could probably feel its breath, if it had that. I’ve been taking pictures every hour or so, sometimes every couple of minutes.

Last night, around the fifth or sixth picture I took, it wasn’t there. Just gone. I took a few more pictures, and it didn’t matter where I was, it just wasn’t there. I don’t know why I did it, but I turned the camera around to selfie mode and took a shot.

That thing was standing right behind me.

One of its hands was hovering right over my shoulder, like it was about to touch me. I freaked out and took another picture. It hadn’t moved more than a hair. I turned all the lights on and haven’t slept.

I’m not sleeping tonight. I’m not turning any of the lights off. It can’t get to me if the lights are on, or I hope so. If anyone knows what to do or what this thing is, please respond. It might already be too late, but I don’t know what this thing will do or who it’ll go for when it’s done with me. I don’t have much advice to give, other than to sleep with the fucking lights on.

#tw unreality #tw paranoia inducing #||OOC: This was written by the mod! Based on a dream I had #tagging all future content of this sort as #twinrow tales #hopefully there will be more soon||

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maryellencarter · 3 years

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Okay kids, buckle up. I need money again (for the last time, pray god), but at least this time I have a fucking story to go with it.

Short version: My landlord is illegally trying to evict me and I just had to drop $60 on court costs to fight it. That's $60 that was going to pay for either my meds or the electric bill, take your pick. So I really need donations to get by for the next two weeks, after which I should be settling in at a much more mentally healthy job and in good shape. My Paypal is [email protected] and my Ko-fi is here. Thank you so much for anything you can contribute!

Long version:

So the last three months I've been off work due to a mental health breakdown. July and August, I haven't been able to pay my rent. I applied for rent assistance right away in late June, and emailed my landlord's office all the paperwork for both the rent assistance and the CDC Declaration of eligibility for the Eviction Moratorium -- the thing where if you're poor enough you can't get evicted during the pandemic because you would have to go to a shelter or a crowded living situation and be at risk for the Covid.

Middle of July, I received a *backdated* notice that if I didn't provide proof of rent assistance application, I was going to be filed against for eviction. Okay, there's a new property manager, maybe the filing got mixed up, so I go down and re-email all the paperwork and make sure the property manager sees it arrive in the email.

Beginning of August, I get a notice from the rent assistance people that the CDC has extended the moratorium for places in a high surge status, which I am in one, so I fill out and forward the newest eviction protection form which should cover me till October 3, and go down to speak to the property manager about it, when again I am assured that everything is on file.

Middle of August, two months after filing my request for rent assistance, I finally hear from a caseworker who says "send me your paperwork". I jubilantly send all the paperwork, go down to give my property manager the good news, and also -- see, I don't have a lease for September yet. I was offered one back in July, but I didn't want to sign anything until I knew what my situation was going to be with regard to rent assistance and paydays. So I brought down the paper that said "yes I am signing here to officially agree to the new lease you offered, please print the new lease so I can sign it officially", and handed it to the property manager as well.

Now, I have about $700 of late fees for July and August. This is legal under the eviction moratorium and I have understood from the beginning that I would have to pay them. My first paycheck back to work comes in this Friday, and when I went to request the new lease I had planned to discuss a payment arrangement as well, figuring I could pay about $600 on Friday and the rest in two weeks, based on my projected paycheck.

("Taught myself payroll tax law in order to predict my paychecks" should definitely be on my resume somewhere. I just haven't figured out where.)

But, dear readers, when I went down to drop off the form, there was some other client or resident in the office, so I didn't get to discuss a payment arrangement. No big deal, I figured. I'd discuss it when I heard that my lease was ready to sign.

Instead, last Tuesday, I was woken up at nine sharp by a process server with an eviction summons for me. Thank fuck, I've spent the last two weeks having a technical issue at work that's kept me getting paid but off the phones, because I was in no state to talk to people that day. Eventually I pulled myself together, broke out the legalese close-reading skills, and discovered that the summons includes one particular line item which (I hope and pray) indicates They Done Fucked Up.

This summons, ladies and gentlethem, includes the line item "The Plaintiff has not received an executed copy of the Declaration form as of the date of this filing pursuant to the CDC Order dated September 1, 2020."

Well, gentle readers, I was and am *pissed off*. I keep providing documentation to these fuckers and they keep misplacing it, and now they're getting me involved with The Legal System. I *hate* being anywhere near the legal system. I have massive PTSD triggers from being raised by an evil ADA. But by god, I speak legalese as my first language, and I am not going down without a fight.

So, not being able to get in touch with anyone to provide legal aid or assistance, I spent last Thursday trundling around downtown in decaying shoes and 105° heat, getting court paperwork printed and duplicated and filed and mailed. I dropped about $60 I hadn't planned to spend on court filing fees and certified mail costs and the actual baseline printing costs of all the documentation I needed to provide.

I did get two pieces of good luck that day. One, I finally heard back from my case manager saying that the rent assistance money for my landlord only has to go through one more person who will double-check the numbers. It's supposed to get final approval sometime early this week.

Two, I got a job promotion I've been working toward for years. Well, side-motion, it doesn't come with a raise, but I already make $16+ an hour, over twice our federal minimum wage. What it does come with is, except in rare cases I never talk to callers, I just answer them in written messages. This should hopefully be a perfect job for me, and allow me to work a solid 40 hours a week and earn plenty of money.

The catch is... it's work-at-home only. If I get evicted and can't make it to training on Monday week, I'm fucked.

So. My eviction hearing is tomorrow. If and when the judge is like "okay if we let you sign a new 12-month lease and stay in your apartment, what is your repayment plan on your late fees", I plan to be like "Your Honor, I have a payday on Friday and I am prepared to provide the court a money order for the full $700 of late fees on that date which will bring me fully up to date".

I'll do it, too. The catch is, that'll leave me with something like $200 in the bank for the next two weeks, and I calculate I need about $100 for groceries, $80 for meds, $50 for electric, and $80 for the cell phone bill over that time period. These numbers don't add up. :P

Soooo, yeah. I'm having to spend about $160 I can't afford because my damn property manager is an idiot and can't fucking print and file my fucking legal declaration. I really hope the court throws the book at the corporation and nails them with those "up to $200,000 fines" for breaking the CDC moratorium, although I am dubious because courts like corporations much more than they like stout genderqueer individuals without legal representation, however white and erudite.

But mostly, I really hope I can stay in my apartment and also afford my meds for the next two weeks. My Paypal is [email protected] and my Ko-fi is here. If you can spare *anything*, even a dollar or three, it would help so much.

God, I'm so sick of having to beg for help every few weeks. I just really hope nothing else blows up in my face... :-(

#i am really struggling today (sunday) because i can't do anything but wait #begging post #help me o internets

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slippinmickeys · 3 years

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Five Seconds (5/8)

If you’d like to read on AO3, you may do so here.

October 15, 2018

The leaves were beginning to change outside the window; the maples turning russet, the birch yellow. Scully felt pendulous and gravid, the child in her belly more active than her previous two combined. Sleep was becoming difficult, but by day they’d fallen into a comfortable routine, safe and unmolested from the dangers that were beginning to feel as though they had never existed at all.

She stretched and left Mulder, half his face obscured by his pillow, his lips soft and pliant in sleep. A fresh pot of decaf awaited her in the kitchen, its automatic timer set by Mulder late last night.

The kids were still asleep, as far as she could tell -- she'd heard Lily come home well after midnight. She'd been up reading anyway when her daughter had popped her head into their bedroom door and whispered "I'm home." The girl had been wearing a small smile and Scully recognized the look. Lily was falling in love.

Will shuffled into the kitchen sleepily, a palm rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He approached Scully where she stood at the counter and put an arm around her shoulder, leaning on her. He still smelled like the sleepy little boy who liked to cuddle into her side to watch nature shows when he was six.

"Morning Mom," he said, taking a snuffly breath. He leaned down and rested his cheek against her head (he was almost as tall as Mulder, though still as skinny as a maypole). Scully wrapped her arm around his waist and pulled him in closer. Affection from her kids was getting fewer and farther between now that they were active teenagers. She was determined to enjoy whatever she got.

"Morning," she said, giving his back a little rub, "you're up early."

"Yeah," he said on a yawn. "There's an open rink this morning and a couple of buddies are going. Is it okay if I join them?"

Scully nodded. "Just make sure you tell your dad, too. Know the exits before you go and keep an eye on the crowd."

Will squeezed her once and then let go, grabbing a banana from the fruit bowl on the counter and holding up like James Bond. "Call me Double O Billy," he said and sidled back to his room off of Scully's bemused chuckle.

She spent an hour catching up on email that had been routed through the Gunmen and Darlene -- coded messages that they interpreted and sent to her mother, sister and brothers. Melissa was giving her a hard time about not letting her fly to Europe (where she thought they were) to be her doula when the time came to give birth. She was tempted to send Byers to her sister's house to explain exactly what was happening, but rejected the impulse. Their mother -- the only person other than the Gunmen and the X-Files triumvirate at the FBI who knew their situation (though not their location for her own protection) -- would talk her down eventually.

Mulder came padding up behind her as she closed the laptop and she felt a soft, drawn-out kiss on the side of her neck.

"Morning," he mumbled into her skin.

She reached up and threaded her fingers through his hair, then turned to receive his kiss.

"Morning," she said.

"I’ll be back shortly. I'm going to drop Billy off at the ice complex and then take Lil to campus -- she suddenly started liking football."

"I think it's the company rather than the sport," Scully said, turning in her chair to face him.

"...I'm going to choose to believe my version," he said.

Scully reached out and linked their fingers briefly. "Tell her to be careful," she said, "she's spending a lot of time out of the house."

Mulder nodded and squeezed her fingers. "I will," he said, "and when I get back, I have a few ideas for how we can spend our child-free afternoon." He waggled his eyebrows at her and let go, backing out of the room like the charmer he was.

XxXxXxXxXxX

“So why UVA?” Travis asked her. He had his head propped up on an elbow and his other hand was wrapped loosely around her foot, his thumb rubbing circles into her arch. She was on the couch in his dorm room and he was on the floor -- she’d been helping him study for mid-terms. They had been officially dating for five weeks and had seen each other at least every other day in that time. He’d introduced her to a couple of friends as his girlfriend.

“What?” she asked. It was hard enough to concentrate while getting a foot massage, and she’d been staring at the index cards in front of her, trying to find a question that would stump him.

“Why are you going to UVA? Brain like yours, you could have gone anywhere. I don’t think I’ve ever asked you why there.”

“Other than the in-state tuition?” She had told him that they’d moved from Virginia, but hadn’t elaborated.

“Other than that,” he smiled.

“I’ve always wanted to. When I was a kid, my dad would occasionally get called in to consult there and he would take me with him. I kinda fell in love with it.”

“What did your dad consult on?” he asked, “You don’t talk about your parents much.”

Travis tapped her other leg, and she switched feet, silencing a groan when his knuckle hit a particularly sensitive spot.

She had purposely avoided mentioning her family much and debated how much was safe to share.

“UVA has a Department of Perceptual Studies,” she said, and she saw him tilt his head in question.

“A department of what?”

“Perceptual studies,” she said, smiling, “it’s a research group devoted to the investigation of phenomena that challenge mainstream scientific paradigms regarding the nature of the mind/brain relationship.” Travis stopped rubbing her foot and looked at her. She went on, further quoting her dad’s friend Dr. Stevenson: “Their mission is the scientific empirical investigation of phenomena that suggest that currently accepted scientific assumptions and theories about the nature of mind or consciousness, and its relation to matter, may be incomplete.”

“You’re shitting me,” he said.

“I shit you not.”

“What kind of phenomena?” He narrowed his eyes at her.

She tried not to smile, “ESP, poltergeists, near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, claimed memories of past lives.”

“And what did they want with your father?” he asked, sitting up.

She shrugged. “He’s a shrink,” she said, being deliberately vague.

“This is an accredited university?” He teased her. She kicked at him, and he ducked out of the way and laughed, then looked at her thoughtfully. “You know, I myself had an out-of-body experience with Trudy Carmichael under the bleachers when I was sixteen. Pretty sure I saw through time.”

Lily chuckled, then playfully challenged: “Do I need to worry about this Trudy Carmichael?”

“I doubt it,” he said, hanging his head, “I lost my virginity, and she lost my number. Not my finest hour.”

“A whole hour?,” Lily said wryly.

“One way to find out.”

He looked at her then and she looked back. The moment was charged and sat in between them. The truth was, Lily was still a virgin. She and Travis had messed around, but fairly innocently, and she’d demurred on action below the waist/under the clothes. “I’m not waiting for marriage,” she’d told him a few weeks back, but she did want to wait for love. If only she knew what that felt like.

“Hey, Frisbee,” Travis said when she didn’t say anything, “please don’t take this as a negotiation tactic -- you’ve been clear on your limits and I totally respect that -- and with the full understanding that you don’t need a reason, and you do you and all that -- but… do you want to talk about it?”

“Talk about what exactly?” she asked, clarifying.

“When I say ‘no pressure,’ I mean it,” he said, reaching out to squeeze her foot.

Lily looked around his sloppy dorm room. There were clothes strewn about, though mostly out of the way— socks balled up near the laundry hamper, a sweatshirt hanging on the back of a chair. The wooden loft that held his bed was posted around the couch, made of flimsy-looking two-by-fours, and did not look like it could hold his weight, much less hers in addition, and remained untried (though Travis swore it had passed inspection). His desk was more fastidiously kept, a reflection of his mind, a structured order in the midst of chaos. He was kind and smart. His smile could make her insides go liquid.

“Honestly?” she finally said, “it’s my parents.”

“Super religious?” he asked.

She had to stop herself from laughing. “No, it’s… My parents love each other. More than anyone I’ve ever known. Their love is like… romance film love. It’s practically written in the stars.”

He looked at her contemplatively. “That’s a lot to live up to,” he said. “Is that what it is?”

“Yes,” she said, then, “no.” It was and it wasn’t. She didn’t know if there was a love out there that could compare, she suspected there wasn’t. Her real hang-up, and she hadn’t been able to get it out of her head since she found her father’s first wedding picture in their attic -- was that her father had obviously made a mistake. What if she did too?

She laughed, annoyed at herself. This wasn’t Regency England. Sex didn’t mean marriage. It didn’t even necessarily mean love. Still...

“Come on,” she said, sitting up and grabbing for his class notes, “this bio exam isn’t going to take itself.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

A sound woke her. Her hips were in agony and sleeping was difficult, so initially she was more annoyed than anything; she could rarely line up more than 90 minutes straight of deep slumber. And then she heard it again.

She reached over, squeezed Mulder's bicep until she heard him sniff sharply awake and silently, pulled out the sidearm she kept inside her bedside table. Mulder, slipping out of bed without a word, pulled out his own gun and went to the door. He held up a hand, trying to tell Scully to stay back, but she shook her head angrily -- she would have his back whether he liked it or not.

When he moved into the hallway, she stepped on the back of his heel and he ended up ramming his shoulder into the doorframe. He swore low under his breath. They were out of sync.

She watched as he put his head into the kids rooms as he made his way down the hallway, nodding at her that they were both accounted for. One more thunk from the living room.

He sidled up to the wall that led to the room and backed up against it. He mouthed one-two-three and they went in, but where she usually went low and he went high, this time they rammed shoulders and stumbled into the room. Mulder flicked on the light when she finally had her weapon aimed true.

There, sitting on a high bookshelf sat Apgar, her black tail swishing merrily. Maintaining eye contact, she swiped one more of the professor's knick-knacks off the shelf and onto the floor.

Mulder dropped his weapon and heaved a sigh, tipping his head back in frustration. "Fucking cat," he hissed.

Mission completed, Apgar jumped down with a thump and weaved a figure eight between Mulder's legs.

"She must be hungry," Scully said.

"Hangry was invented by cats," Mulder mumbled, reaching down to pet the cat with his free hand.

"Our tactical coordination was atrocious," Scully said, flicking the light back off and holding her gun at her hip.

"Yes," Mulder agreed.

"When was the last time you went to the range?" she asked.

"It's been months," he said tiredly.

"We're going tomorrow," Scully said. Mulder knew better than to argue.

XxX

There were more than a few Molon Labe bumper stickers in the parking lot. Scully had to remind herself that they were in Michigan Militia territory. "Michitucky," she'd heard it called by a few guys at the Bureau. Nevertheless, she pulled up to the firing range with fire in her blood. She might not share their politics, but she would share their space, and show most of them up to boot.

They signed in and bought ammunition. She got a few extra looks for being a visibly pregnant woman, but most of the men (and they were all men) who were at the range gave her begrudging looks of approval. Mulder stood, standing straighter and closer than normal, practically growling at anyone who got too close. She had to admit that his fierce protective nature was more than a turn-on.

The range was outdoors -- different than what they were used to at Quantico. And where there were metal tables and dividers and state of the art equipment at the government facility, here it was all beat-to-shit plywood tables and sunburnt grass littered with shell casings and old ear plugs. They took the lane at the end.

They both loaded and checked their weapons, snugged earmuffs over their heads.

"You want to go first?" Mulder asked, double checking the safety on his pistol and setting it on the table behind their station.

"I can do that," Scully said, looking down at her Sig.

"Care for a little wager?" her husband asked.

"You can't afford me, Dr. Mulder," she said, admiring the still-lanky line of his physique.

He raised his eyebrows, and leaned back against the tall wobbly table. "Oh-ho," he said, "I suppose that depends on the currency." He had a smug look about him that she wanted to wipe off his face. She was a better marksman and more competitive than anyone gave her credit for.

"What are you offering?" she asked.

"Dishes?" he offered, "Laundry?"

"We had children for the menial labor," she challenged, "I can win this with one hand tied behind my back. Make it interesting for me."

He licked his lips. She had him.

"I liked the part about 'hands behind the back,'" he said, "Winner decides who wears the handcuffs."

"You're not exactly incentivizing this, Mulder."

He had a flushed look about him; his nostrils flared.

"Prove it," he said, and she felt a flush. Second trimester hormones could be a beautiful thing, she mused.

It took her several rounds before she got back into the groove. It actually had been too long since she'd practiced and she was rusty. Considering their current situation, she ought not to let it happen again. Her last few rounds were dead center. Once her clip was empty, she cleared her weapon and stepped back.

Mulder's turn.

He wasn't quite as out of practice as she was initially, which irritated her to no end. However, his fourth and fifth shots were a bit wide, and he ended around the edges.

When he was clear, she stepped back up and took a bracing breath. She raised her weapon and fired rapidly; all her shots were center mass except the last two, which she swung up and finished with perfect shots to the head of the paper dummy.

When Mulder stepped forward for his turn, she nudged him.

"How big would you say the back of the Yukon is?'" she asked casually.

His first three shots went wide.

XxXxXxXxXxX

October 17, 2018

“Mom?” Lily asked. There was a hesitancy in her voice that made Scully look up from where she was chopping vegetables for dinner. “How did you know you loved Dad?”

Scully set the knife down and turned toward her daughter. “That’s a big question, Lil.”

“What’s a big question?” Mulder came breezing into the kitchen, shooting Scully an intrigued look.

Scully suspected something was up, but didn’t want to embarrass their daughter. Lily had always had an inquisitive streak and would occasionally come to Scully with problems or questions, but she was apt to clam up when pressed.

“Lily was asking me about how I fell in love with you,” Scully said, trying to catch Mulder’s eye.

“It was the day she met me, no doubt,” Mulder said. He grabbed an apple out of the bowl on the counter and shined it on his sleeve before taking a snappy bite. “I’m catnip to the ladies,” he said around the mouthful. Lily smiled. Scully rolled her eyes.

“Suddenly, I’m struggling to remember,” Scully said with mock derision. Mulder gave her a cheeky grin.

“Did you know right away?” Lily asked.

Scully paused. “Not… Not right away,” she said thoughtfully.

Lily looked back and forth between her parents. “I guess it was a long time ago, huh.”

“Love in a time of sarsaparilla,” Mulder said dreamily. Scully shook her head and he caught her eye. “It wasn’t that long ago, Lil,“ he went on, and Scully felt the low bloom of feeling that always accompanied a look from her husband. For as long as she lived, she would always remember the first time she felt it; on the Tooms case, when he’d hooked his finger in her necklace and pulled.

“No, what I mean is… it was complicated,” Scully clarified.

Lily nodded and turned to her father. “You were married. Before Mom.”

“Yes,” Mulder said.

“Did you love her? Your ex wife?”

“I thought I did.”

“When did you figure out that you didn’t?” Lily asked.

“When I met your Mom,” Mulder said.

“So what you felt with Mom…”

“... was so much bigger than I was, that I couldn’t contain it.”

Scully felt her eyes well up. Mulder still sometimes had the ability to make her feel things all the way down to her toes.

Lily smiled, but looked pensive.

"But you thought you loved this other woman? I mean, enough to marry her?" she asked.

Mulder narrowed his eyes at his daughter. "What are you asking, Lil?"

Lily shook her head, her cheeks pink. She grabbed a soda from the fridge and walked out of the room.

“Oh boy,” said Scully.

“What?” Mulder asked.

“Travis,” said Scully. “She’s trying to figure it all out.”

“Jesus, he didn’t propose, did he?” Mulder asked. The look on his face was enough to make her laugh, but she held it in.

Scully turned fully to Mulder and leaned back against the countertop, crossing her arms in front of her.

“You want to know what I think?” she asked. Mulder nodded. “She’s trying to decide whether or when to...” She made a vague gesture with her hands.

Mulder looked at her, still not understanding. Scully gave him the stare of the dotard husband.

“Mulder…” she said, glaring hard.

Realization dawned and Mulder swallowed. “I should have had that boy killed,” he said.

Scully turned back to the vegetables she’d been chopping. “Let’s refrain from wetwork while we’re on the lam.”

“I make no promises,” he said, and slid up behind her, stepping in close and putting his hands on her waist.

“I had the guys check him out by way of Darlene,” Scully said. “He is who he says he is. And he seems like a decent kid. Let’s let her navigate this on her own, huh?” She felt his fingers squeeze and then they drifted down to rest on her hips.

“I don’t like it,” he mumbled, and leaned down to rest his chin on her shoulder.

“You’re not supposed to,” she said. “But you do have to accept it, and trust that we raised her to make these decisions for herself.” She remembered being nineteen and in college and in love for the first time. “You want to hear about Kevin McAvoy, my freshman year boyfriend?”

Mulder squeezed his fingers again and then started to turn her slowly toward him. She set down the knife on the counter and let him. His head was bent toward her and she felt his breath fan her face.

“No,” he said, leaning even more into her personal space.

“I was his Little Red Corvette,” she said playfully, tipping her head back in challenge. He smiled, but she saw something rough pass through his eyes. “He’d put on Prince and --”

Mulder leaned down and silenced her with a kiss.

XxXxXxXxXxX

In her room, Lily sat on the bed, the can of soda from the fridge sitting unopened on her bedside table. Condensation beaded on the side of it, sliding down silently to pool at the base, unnoticed.

Crusher liked to sleep on her pillow, and had left a black felted indent in the feathers, which Lily brushed away and fluffed. She looked about the room. Not much about it spoke of the young woman who slept there and had for months; no posters on the walls, no pennants hanging or pictures of friends. It was a sterile guest room decorated with the mute tones of an unmarried 60-something and lately it had been making her feel like she wasn't even herself.

She stood and walked to the desk, the one place she deposited her things. Her wallet, the phone Darlene had given her that she rarely used and usually kept switched off. Her purse was half hanging off -- likely knocked into such a position by a passing cat -- and when she righted it, she noticed the picture that sat under it. The photo of her father and an unfamiliar brunette, who's face conveyed confidence -- almost a smugness -- and a certain charm.

She stared at the picture. And she wondered.

XxX

October 20, 2018

Lily glanced over her shoulder when she sat, feeling as though she were doing something illegal, something fraught.

No one really used the computer labs anymore -- if you needed to, you could write an entire paper on your phone, though Lily found the practice ridiculous and immature. Nevertheless, there were one or two students sitting at the various desktops around the small library lab, and she checked to make sure no one was paying attention to what she was doing.

She tried to be careful. She had told Travis that she was hoping to log into the university's network to prep for some of the classes she’d be taking at UVA next semester and so she was using his password and login information. She'd checked to make sure there were no cameras on the area where she sat, and that her back was to the one aimed at the larger area.

With a bracing breath, she logged on.

It was surprising what you could find with a simple Google search, and the commonwealth of Virginia's vital records office would send you a copy of any marriage certificate for a fee of $45. Knowing better than to use a credit card, she'd opted for a more in depth search, and found what she was looking for in the Daily Press -- the local newspaper of record in Newport News, Virginia.

It was a wedding announcement, complete with two pictures -- one, the same picture she'd found in her parent's attic and the other of a similar style -- of Fox William Mulder and Lauren Edith Williams, married on August 17th, 1988. According to the article, Lauren had been a recent graduate of Georgetown University and had been employed at Schuster and McClure, a PR firm in the District of Columbia.

Lily looked at the new photograph on the screen before her. Her father looked so young. Only a few years older than herself. Lauren was pretty, had perfect posture, and was staring into the camera like a dare; her dress was all frills and white froth, the material of the dress ruched in large poofs at the shoulders, a crown of satin flowers around the lush brunette curls on her head. She looked like someone Lily wouldn't have dared talk to back in high school. She looked nothing like Lily's mother.

Lauren Edith Williams, she wrote down, and stared at the paper in front of her.

XxXxXxXxXxX

October 21, 2018

Lily was on the bus when she noticed him. It was his age that first drew her attention. Most everyone that rode this route (it went right into campus) was either a student or a professor, and something about him seemed the antithesis of scholarly. He had a sharp face, was dressed in loose clothing, a plain, black ball cap pulled low over his head. His knee bounced where he sat. She thought she could make out a tattoo curling onto the skin under the sleeve of his jacket. He could have been custodial staff for all she knew, but her parents had raised her to trust her instincts, and something inside of her pinged.

He hadn’t so much as looked in her direction, but she reached up and pulled the cord that requested a stop anyway, keeping him in her periphery when the bus rolled to the next stop. She was five blocks further away than she would have liked -- she was supposed to meet Travis just off campus for lunch. The man didn't move or rise from his seat. Nevertheless, she ducked out of the back door and onto the sidewalk, shouldering her purse and pretending to look at her phone. Only when the bus left with the man still on it would she exhale. The bus had just started to roll forward when it chirped to a stop and the front doors opened. The man in the cap trotted down the steps and onto the sidewalk, glancing briefly at her before turning and walking slowly west. Adrenaline awash in her bloodstream, she turned east.

The man had had a nondescript face. He was of average height and build, not someone you'd notice. She wracked her brain trying to remember when or if she'd seen him before, and had a hazy recollection of someone who might have been him: waiting outside of Travis's dorm when she'd come to visit him a couple days prior, or maybe even standing behind her in line at a coffee shop the day before. She should have been paying closer attention. Her parents had taught her to pay closer attention. Up until she'd done a search on her father and his ex-wife, she had. Lily silently cursed at herself.

She looked at her reflection in the shop windows along Grand River Avenue, trying to catch a glimpse behind her. She caught movement, but there were plenty of other people walking up and down the sidewalk. She needed a better look.

She swung up the stairs of the Student Union when she came to it a moment later, remembering walking in with her brother and dad only the month before, and felt the sharp pang of guilt.

When she reached the top of the staircase, she stopped to retie her shoe, glancing back behind her as she did so. The man in the cap was there, and had paused a ways away, looking down at his phone. Lily finished fiddling with her shoe and casually walked to the door, holding it open for a girl who was coming out, her heart hammering in her chest as she did so. Through the large doorway was a wide set of stairs going both up and down. When the door closed behind her, she bolted down the stairs to her right. There were a number of study spaces and she could pass through each one fairly quickly -- the day was busy and there were students everywhere; if she was lucky she could get lost in the crowd.

She ducked through the main lounge and past the small coffee shop on the lower level, looking behind her. She saw nothing, but that didn't mean he still wasn't coming. Seeing the full racks of clothing in the Spirit Shop across the hallway, she went inside, bending down to pretend to look at a few items on the bottom shelf.

Peering through underneath the hanging shirts, she watched as the man in the black cap came down the hallway outside of the shop and paused, turning toward it. Her heart leapt to her throat. He did a slow turn and then turned to keep walking. She kept her head down.

From the corner of her eye she caught her own reflection in the mirror outside the tiny dressing room -- she was wearing a bright blue shirt and her hair -- as bright and reflective as a stop sign, and always a part of herself she was fond of -- would give her away.

She stood, scanning the hallway outside the shop, and then she hastily pulled a green knit cap off a nearby shelf and pulled the tag off, shoving it over her head and tucking her hair up under it as quickly as she could. She grabbed a large tee shirt off the rack nearest her and took it plus the hat's tag to the counter, pulling some cash that her parents always had her carry out and plunking it on the counter.

"I don't need a receipt, thanks," she told the young woman helping her, and turned away.

"But what about your change?" the girl called after her.

"Tip jar," she said, turning back and keeping her voice low.

Once outside the store, she pulled the tee shirt over her head and made her way for the lower level exit that emptied onto campus. Seeing no one behind her, she took the steps out as fast as they would carry her and ran.

XxX

Darlene narrowed her eyes at Lily, and opened the door. “Quickly,” she said.

“Thanks,” Lily said, as Darlene let her into the house, peering around the block. “I didn’t want to use the phone.”

“I get it,” Darlene replied as she ushered Lily into her kitchen, where Lily sank onto one of the stools that sat before the peninsula of the counter.

"You want a lemonade or something, kiddo?" Darlene asked, leaning forward against the counter herself and giving Lily an expectant look -- there was more to it than just polite hospitality.

"No, thanks," Lily said, feeling the weight of Darlene's gaze and her own guilt in equal measure.

"Did you do something stupid?" Darlene asked outright and Lily, taken aback, sat up straighter, but didn't answer, thus confirming Darlene's clear suspicion. "How bad?"

"I think they found us."

Darlene huffed a breath. "Elaborate," she said.

"I... I ran a search. A couple days ago, in the university library. I was careful, but maybe not careful enough."

"What did you search?"

"My dad's ex-wife."

Darlene gave a low whistle. "Kiddo," she said, a statement.

"I know."

"Have you considered just asking him about her?"

Lily hugged herself.

"I have. I did. But… I wanted to know. For me. I don't want his version of this woman. I wanted to see for myself who she was. Is."

Darlene moved to the window and peered out, lowering the blinds as she did so. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

Lily once again felt a pang of guilt. She looked down. "Not really."

Darlene moved around the counter to a sideboard table on the dining room side of the counter and began shuffling through a drawer.

"What makes you think they found you?" she asked.

"I think there's someone following me," Lily said, "I think maybe I’ve seen him a couple of times on campus, but I don’t know. I lost him and came here."

"Just one someone?"

Lily began to second guess herself.

"I think so?"

When Darlene straightened from the sideboard she was holding a pistol.

"Call your father right now, and tell him to get over here. Armed." Darlene's words were cold and calm. Lily's stomach dropped in her gut.

She reached for Darlene's phone, a relic from another time which hung on the wall, its cord coiled like a snake.

Darlene walked to the sliding glass door as she dialed the numbers, each tone sounding long and drawn out, Darlene pulled the long curtains closed with a snap.

"Dad?" Lily said, when Mulder answered.

"Hey Lil!" he sounded so relaxed, excited just to talk to her though he'd seen her that morning.

"Dad, I'm at Darlene's. She says to get over here. She said to bring your gun."

She heard his sharp inhale. “I’m coming,” he said, and then she heard a dial tone.

"Lily," said Darlene, walking over to her computer, which was booted up and sitting on her dining room table, cords snaking out of it and across the floor. She quickly typed hunt-and-peck with her right hand, the gun still clutched in her left. "I want you to go into the top right drawer in my dresser. In a small lockbox, code 9-10-9-3, you'll find an old Nokia phone. It should be fully charged. It’s untraceable. Do not turn it on. Take it. Put it somewhere safe -- your bra or your sock or underwear. Then get under my bed."

Lily walked to the hallway, her body on autopilot, her heart hammering and her blood roaring in her veins.

Darlene finished typing, clicked a few things with her mouse and then peeked an eye out the closed curtain toward the backyard, tapping the gun against the side of her thigh.

Pausing in the hallway, Lily turned back to Darlene.

"Is someone coming?" Lily asked.

"Kid," Darlene said, shooting her a look, "they're already here."

#MSR #AU #Sequel #Of the Eight Winds #shits getting real for the mulder family #fanfic #XF #my fic

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calicorn · 4 years

Text

My experience with WeLoveFine/ForFansByFans as an artist.

This in regards to the Act 6/7 Tarot Project, which occurred from 2017 to 2018. I also want to thank @aryll for the chance to participate in such a project, and thank you for doing what you could with the group and what occurred. I realize this is a few years late, however, but it’s been bothering me ever since it occurred, and I only chose to speak my mind about it. But to summarize, the project started out as unofficial, however we were approached by FFBF in February of 2018. They were willing to sell the deck as official merchandise on their store. I have my own opinions on the company, as it’s known they underpay artists severely for their work despite selling most items for extremely high prices. A similar payment issue occurred with the Official Homestuck Zine, and one of the artists of the Tarot Project posted this in the comments: “Can relate OP. I did work for the new tarot deck (using my throwaway account for that reason lol) but we aren’t being paid at all. No money. The only compensation we are getting is a free deck and an exclusive enamel pin which is pennies compared to what they’ll be making off us. One might argue that the project wasn’t supposed to be printed so I should be grateful it’s even happening but I expected a big company like WLF to y’know, pay artists... The only reason I agreed to letting them use my art was to get a free deck. I also honestly dislike WLF’s artist compensation policy. My art has been selected from the Fan Forge before and the idea of being able to sell my HS art was so appealing, but the execution is so poor. They don’t pay us until we sell $100 worth of shirts, but that is so difficult in a market that is so oversaturated. I wish they like, cycled designs in and out. Instead, they just keep adding more and more designs, drowning out old ones and just flooding the entire market. Plus, they get to withhold money from artists until every hundred-dollar mark. I can’t imagine how much they’ve made off of small time artists that get their design accepted and sell maybe 3 shirts since it happens so often.” So. What exactly happened? I’ll explain under the cut given there’s a decent amount to go through. Though to summarize; WeLoveFine/ForFansByFans is an extremely egregious company that does not value their artists whatsoever and will do what they can to pay them as little as possible. Please support said artists on sites that actually do give them fair pay, or support them via commissions.

There were a few bumps during the tarot project, though overall it went extremely smoothly and we released our art to the Tumblr blog. FFBF approached us during this time, and we were all given the option to agree to continue working or the project or decline. However, this is what was an important piece to the initial email sent out by the Tarot Project team; • Each participating artist will get a full finalized copy of the deck, COMPLETELY free. This includes packaging and free shipping of the deck. • Each participating artist will get an enamel pin commemorating the project, EXCLUSIVE to the artists of this project only, with a custom design as chosen/designed by us. What will most likely occur is that everyone who wishes to submit a design for the pin can do so, and as a group, we will vote on which one we would like to submit as our final design choice! • Each participating artist will receive FULL COMMISSION on any further usage of their artwork by What Pumpkin or For Fans By Fans. For example, if they release a mini-print, wallet, etc. with your design on it, you will be paid in commission for the usage of your work. (If you have ANY questions about how this would work, please don’t hesitate to ask and I will hook you up ASAP with a For fans By Fans representative who can go over the details with you further.) • Each participating artist will have a window in which they will be able to make updates or revisions to their illustration(s) before the project is released. This means that if something is bugging you about your work, or you feel that it does not reflect your current level of skill, you will be allowed to resubmit a new version before the project officially goes up as merchandise! So, the majority of us agreed to continue forward with the project and retouch our cards. From there, things continued, and we were emailed by a FFBF representative on occasion to discuss how the process went, as well as various other things that required discussion, plus asked to assist in the promotion of the 4/13/18 celebration on their website. This is where the issues began and would continue through the entire project, with it still being seen post-release of the cards. We were sent an email in April of 2018 requiring information to be provided in the accompanying booklet of the deck, as well as being asked to answer various interview questions that would be posted to FFBF’s Tumblr, and most importantly; the Commission Agreement form. So what did it entail? This was the form I was sent. My interview was never posted. I have looked multiple times and never seen evidence it ever was, either. And this was also included in the email; • We are going to be hosting a pre-order bonus promotion surrounding the new tarot set, starting 413. Anyone who pre-orders the set will be entered into a drawing to win a commissioned art piece from a random artist who worked on the tarot. You will be paid by us, FFBF, for this commission work in the amount of $50. So we had to draw more art with a very close deadline date to obtain a payment for art we had already created, both of which should have easily been worth more than $50 total. I signed without thinking, which looking back on, was incredibly idiotic, despite my own worries over the fact that even at the time, $50 did not seem like a lot. Progress continued. An exclusive pin was designed and created for the artists, though the production and delivery dates would be delayed to September of 2018. During this time, we were also invited to join FFBF’s Discord server as well, which I am still in, though am not active in. And eventually, we were provided a Commission Schedule. I do not know if I’m missing an email between the enamel pin shipment and this schedule post, however I cannot find any trace of it. This is the Commission Schedule email, and what it consists of. Of course I found it strange, because looking at the schedule, I could never find any sign of myself having been added. Obviously I should have replied then and there due to that, but I didn’t, and that is my own fault. But that rolled into October of 2018, when I did finally email back and asked about why I hadn’t been added. I was sent back this; “Hi Calicorn! I’m sorry I misinterpreted your response as not wanting to proceed:“3) I am completely willing to sign up for being one of the artists for the commission raffle event, though I must say $50 would be underpaying considering most artists’ base prices for commissions tend to be $50 or more.” Then I sent “If you do not want to be part of the give-away, that’s totally ok. We are offering $50 for these commissions but if that price is not within your comfort, there’s no pressure!” You never came back with anything so I didn’t want to proceed since it seemed like you were uncomfortable with the amount we were offering – I’m really sorry if I misunderstood! The giveaway is actually over I’m sorry to say but I appreciate you following up about this. I wonder why the message went into spam.. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do for you Thanks!” And one of the most glaring issues popped up in October as well. When we finally received our decks in the mail, our project’s Discord group began to discuss the fact that our emails had been printed in the pamphlet without our permission. Mind you, this was also a project that included minors in it, and our emails had now been given away without our knowledge. Another issue with the pamphlets is the fact that FFBF had reused the same text from the Homestuck Kickstarter Tarot Deck, as seen on the New Booklet/Old Booklet, and here/here. FFBF then decided to remove the booklet from every outgoing tarot that gets ordered, with customers receiving a corrected digital PDF that was coordinated in its creation by Aryll. And apparently previous customers would receive this PDF via emails, as well as a link to download it on the product page. Thankfully FFBF seemed to have at least posted the PDF on the product page, however this seems extremely lazy compared to simply including the newly reprinted booklet. Though this may not be the last of issues, as I stumbled across the Amazon product page for our tarot deck earlier before typing this all up. To say the least, it is extremely infuriating, especially given the quality of the cards and how many people of complained about them on both Amazon and FFBF’s websites. Of course we, the artists, were never alerted to this development, nor were we paid for such.

But overall, we were hardly paid for our time and effort during this project, which is a massive disappointment, but perhaps that much should have been expected from WeloveFine/ForFansByFans, who are notorious for underpaying artists and overpricing products. Their actions are inexcusable, and I am still both disappointed and furious with this company as a whole. But thank you for reading, and please spread the word, as I do not want FFBF’s actions to go unnoticed.

#homestuck #welovefine #forfansbyfans #act6tarotproject

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mrsannventures · 3 years

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This is one of those days again that I am thankful for the job that I currently have.

I am a bookkeeper/accountant for a chain of Montessori in Australia. I started working for my current employer in Nov 2017. Prior to this, I worked for a holiday home rental/real estate company based in the US (but they also had the same line of businesses in Canada, Europe, UAE, and Australia) as a Purchasing/Accounting Officer turned Assistant of the CEO/Owner.

Let’s have a story time first about my previous job because I think its one of the strenuous and stressful job I have ever worked in the course of my ‘career’. Its slightly understandable since I worked closely with the CEO, but not from the start. During my first few months at that company, I was just their Purchasing Officer. My main responsibility was to make sure that all items that we need for the holiday homes, from toilet papers to furnitures, are bought, paid for, and delivered. I do internal bookkeeping and other accounting related tasks for them too.

Then one day, one of our manager told us that the owner/CEO was in need of an assistant and they asked me if I would take on the job. Its not necessarily a promotion because I didn’t get any monetary appraisal out of it, but young me being the people pleaser that I am, agreed to do it.

To summarize my experience working with old boss, its was kind of a nightmare. It made me so stressed that I would even dream about my job. Its so bad that even on my days off, my boss would still call me. Imagine you’re in Boracay with the love of your life, then suddenly you’re bombarded with calls from your boss. He would make me order flowers for his wife, make me find where the nearest pharmacy in LA is, and work on legal papers for his businesses in UAE. On top of being his P.A., I still had to do purchasing jobs, and keep some of his staff in line, and talk to all the suppliers, and make sure his credit cards are paid for, checked, and reconciled!

And then, after working for them for a year and a half, I started asking for a raise, because I clearly deserved it.

I didn’t received anything, except for an email saying that I did not bring any money into the company. So the only way you could get a raise in that company is only if your sales are good. But news flash I am not on sales so how TF can I even?

After receiving that email, I resigned so fast that I didn’t even render 30 days, or two weeks, or even a day to turn over work. I felt betrayed. I was a freelancer so I didn’t have any contract that would compel me to turn over work. My boss, tried to talk to me and make a counter offer. But y’know, I never tried to entertain them again because it was clear to me how little they think about their employees, and I know I deserved better.

After I quit that, I didn’t have a plan or anything. I had savings but I guess that was enough for me to go on for a few months. Thankfully, my boyfriend now husband was there for me. He was actually the one who made me realize that I really need to quit because of how shitty I’ve been treated. He was also more anxious than me that I lost my job. But I was positive that I can get a new job sooner than he think.

I resigned from that job on the last week of October 2017. I applied for my current job on the 1st week of November 2017, got hired after 2 weeks, and I started working a week after I got hired.

So far I am very happy with the current job that I have. The salary is competitive. Monetary appraisal almost every year. ✨Flexi Time✨, I can start working early or late, as long as all your tasks for the day are done. I have work-life balance. I also don’t have to work if its holidays in Australia like today, but I still get paid and they dont deduct it from my leaves. Same with Philippine holidays, we can opt not to work and still get paid, or go to work and get paid double. Lol.

And one of the bestest thing about my job is my boss. She is so kind and understanding, that I can have leaves if I just want to take care of my child (like today because she’s got a fever). They also approved my 4-month Maternity Leave when I got pregnant in 2018, the expanded maternity leaves were not yet in effect back then. She also understands if we wanted to take a day off just because we feel like it and make us not feel guilty about it.

The company is very appreciative of everyone in the team especially this pandemic, and I feel thankful to be in this kind of working environment where one treats you like family.

#me2day #napahaba #😅

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thekillerssluts · 3 years

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We’ve Got A File On You: Win Butler

In a year when a lot of our plans have been on hold, Win Butler has been busy. In April, the Arcade Fire ringleader let us know that the band had been working on music shortly before lockdown, and then he let us hear some of it. Last week, on the night of the election, the band debuted a new song called “Generation A.” Apparently, Butler was one of the people who found quarantine more inspiring than suffocating. Just a couple weeks ago, he amended his previous hints with the update that he’s written “two or three” Arcade Fire albums thanks to having to stay still all year long.

It seems like there’ll be a whole lot of new Arcade Fire goings-on to parse sometime on the horizon, but that isn’t the reason Butler and I got on the phone one recent October afternoon. Butler’s not quite ready to talk about forthcoming music yet, aside from saying this era of writing gives him flashbacks to that which preceded The Suburbs and promising “The new shit is about some of the best shit we’ve ever done” as we say goodbye.

In the meantime, there have been some milestones this year: The Suburbs turned 10; Butler turned 40. There is, of course, a whole lot of rich Arcade Fire history between their early ’00s origins and now. There are too many high-profile collabs to dig through, too many pop culture crossovers to cover, in just one conversation. But before Arcade Fire’s next chapter begins, while we both had a moment of quiet at home in the year 2020, Butler and I took some time to dig back through highlights and surprises from across his career.

Appearing In Bill & Ted Face The Music (2020)

How did this happen?

WIN BUTLER: They were filming in New Orleans. I’m kind of the exact age where Bill & Ted really has a soft spot in my worldview. [Laughs] That was just like, yeah, of course I want to be in the Future Council. That’s the part I was born to play. No, it’s funny, it was just one of these random things that come through the email. Usually, it’s, “Nope, nope, nope, nope.” But this was, “Tell me when, tell me where, I’ll be there.” It was on soundstages. When we were filming it, Tommy Lee from Mötley Crüe was back there, and he sort of disappeared at some point. I got to bring my son, who’s six. He was hanging out and we were talking to Keanu about Canada and punk bands back in the day. It was a pretty sweet hang. It was a bright spot in 2020, let me put it that way.

You say you get these emails — is that random stuff they want Arcade Fire to do, or there’ve been other cameos you turned down?

BUTLER: Oh, no, it’s mostly random licensing or stuff that goes to the junk box. But every once in a while, it’s like, “Hey, that sounds like a nice way to spend the day.” I started out in film. I went to Sarah Lawrence College in New York around 2000. I had really wanted to go to film school, and I could never get in. [Laughs] Initially, the song “The Suburbs” was an idea I had for a film and it seemed easier to make a song than a film.

The Suburbs (2010)

That was a convenient segue. The Suburbs just turned 10. I was wondering if you have gone back and revisited it much amidst that anniversary.

BUTLER: The whole experience of Funeral was such a rollercoaster. We were on the road so long. We didn’t have much of a break going into the second record. For The Suburbs, Régine and I — I don’t think we saw anyone for a year straight before we even started demoing or anything for that record.

It was a time in my life… I don’t know, I was in my late twenties, and there were all these details of my childhood in Houston. You know, I moved to Canada when I was 19. [Houston] almost felt like this other life I had. I would close my eyes and imagine riding my bike through town and trying to find the edges of my memory. There was kind of all this emotion that came up through that, and I wanted to capture it. It’s funny, as a songwriter, most of the time I feel like my mind is living in the near future. You’re listening for these little signals in the air. This was almost inhabiting the emotional space of these memories but thinking about it as the future.

When you say it like that, I’m curious if the album feels different to you now that you’re a father yourself and another 10 years down the line. Like another layer to that refracted youth, sort of?

BUTLER: Totally. In a way, I feel like the last year has been a parallel to that year before The Suburbs. Then I was kind of a hermit by choice, and this has more been the world conspiring to make me a hermit, but it has been a really introspective. In a sense, the material that we’ve been working on feels the same way, this hybrid of your emotional landscape and the future.

It’s almost seasonal, like a trade wind that blows in once in a while. I remember we played with Neil Young when he was still doing the Bridge School Benefit and hearing him sing “Old Man” as an old man, almost like he wrote the song when he was 22 to sing when he was 80. I think there’s an element on that Suburbs record that’s like that as well.

Winning The Grammy For Album Of The Year (2011)

Obviously that was a huge turning point for Arcade Fire because you won the Grammy the following year. As a suburban indie fan at the time, I had no real grasp on how big certain bands were. From where I was, it was pretty trippy that you guys won that.

BUTLER: I mean, tell me about it. It was definitely pretty trippy.

There are very, very early moments of you guys getting linked up with some iconic artists. Arcade Fire got plenty of respect from the beginning. But at the same time, the Grammys is something different. That’s a moment of mainstream insurgency. Ten years on, you’re one of the big indie bands of your generation, but also one of the only rock bands to get to that level in recent times.

BUTLER: I don’t know it was the best record that year, but it was definitely the best record nominated that year. I mean, we were up against a Lady Gaga remix record and like, Katy Perry. We weren’t up against a great Eminem record, we were up against a not-that-great Eminem record. In a certain sense, I was like, “Well, I think we should win.” [Laughs] I think we had the best record.

I remember in high school Radiohead and Björk were the two [new artists I loved]. I bought The Bends the day it came out, I bought Homogenic the day it came out. And then everything else I listened to was artists that had broken up 20 years earlier. I remember watching the Grammys the year OK Computer was nominated and it didn’t win, and I was just like, “Oh, that thing must not mean anything then.” I remember Dylan won, and it’s a really great Dylan record, but objectively OK Computer was the best record. So if that didn’t win, then what the hell does that thing mean? After that, I didn’t think about the Grammys that much. It wasn’t on my list of my dreams of my career and what I could accomplish and what I wanted to do.

For me, I was looking more at a band like the Cure or New Order, these bands that were really just artistic entities but you would hear them at a pharmacy once in a while. Like, I’d hear “Bizarre Love Triangle” come on in the pharmacy in Houston and just be like, “Is this from outer space? What the fuck is this?” My dreams for our band was to do for other people what those bands did for me, which was just throw me a fucking lifeline. Because I was just like, “What is this world, and where are my people, and how can I feel OK existing?” My grandfather played in big bands and played with Louis Armstrong, and he bought me a guitar when I was 15. I held on to that thing — if I didn’t have that I don’t think I would’ve made it out of high school. It literally saved my life. I don’t think I could exist without that.

For me, the Grammy thing was strangely moving. Even up until the moment we won, I just felt like an interloper. Even when we won, people looked at us like aliens. Like, “Who? What?” You know, I’m a competitive person. It was really exciting. Cool, awesome, the universe makes sense for one second. It’s interesting, I didn’t expect it to mean anything until we won, and then it meant something.

David Bowie (2005, 2013, Throughout)

I alluded to this earlier but: The Grammys were like an industry stamp of approval. From the beginning, however, you guys were embraced by a lot of elder artists — particularly artists who were influences on the band. One I wanted to talk about was David Bowie. He was a very early supporter; you performed together in 2005, which turned into a live EP. Then he shows up on “Reflektor” in 2013. Somewhere around 2015, you talked about how you’d come to regard him as this professor-type character in your life. He came to your first New York show, right?

BUTLER: Our first headlining show, when we played at the Bowery, Bowie and David Byrne came to that show.

Wow, no pressure huh.

BUTLER: It sort of set the table. Like, “Well, I guess this is how it’s going to be right out of the gate.” [Laughs] It’s funny, I have a photo of David in my studio that I look at when I’m working sometimes. It’s just him in a dressing room with one of those kind of Hollywood mirrors behind him. He really… I don’t know, he felt some sort of spiritual connection with us. It wasn’t like he wanted anything from us. I just think he wanted to say, “Hey guys, you’re going on the right path, keep going.”

I was emailing him over all those years. I don’t know if you have anyone close to you that’s died and you go back and read those emails, it’s really these strange digital fragments of someone you care about. After he sang on “Reflektor,” Régine and I bought him a painting in Haiti as a thank you gift. We were supposed to mail it to him and we got busy and forgot about it, and in the interim he passed. I knew he wasn’t well, but I didn’t know he was dying. Maybe a couple months later I remembered the painting and I dug it out and it was a painting of a black star. A voodoo painting of a black star with rays coming out of it.

I didn’t know anything about his record being Blackstar or anything like that. Now it’s on the wall of my bedroom. Shit like that sometimes happens in my life. I take it for what it is. I don’t know exactly what that means and I just feel grateful… I don’t know man. Even just how inspiring, what he put into his art even in death. He’s someone I think about at least on a weekly basis.

Backing Up Mick Jagger On SNL (2012), Playing With The Rolling Stones (2013)

Obviously that was an ongoing relationship, and you’ve worked with David Byrne too, and you referenced playing with Neil Young. Still: Being onstage with the Rolling Stones seems particularly daunting.

BUTLER: We were Mick’s backing band on SNL. SNL is maybe one of my favorite American institutions. I don’t know if it’s the Canadian thing since Lorne [Michaels] is Canadian. The first time we did it, it was just like, “This dude is my friend.” I don’t know if Lorne’s kids like Arcade Fire or something. But I was in New York randomly and he was like, “Mick’s doing a thing,” and I said, “We do a pretty amazing cover of ‘The Last Time,’” and he said “Come on down, let’s do it.” Then we’re Mick’s backing band. I don’t know, pretty fucking cool.

What is Mick Jagger like to work with?

BUTLER: Mick is like: As soon as the light goes on, he’s a different person. When he turns it on, it’s like this muscle memory — like if you were with the greatest ballet dancer ever, and you say go and this energy comes out of him that is so practiced. It’s someone who’s an absolute master, after practicing something for decades and decades and decades. That was pretty amazing to see. You’re chatting with someone, we’re at the piano and we’re talking about an arrangement, “OK, let’s do a run,” and then, “Boom! Shit!” There he is.

It’s this other level. I feel like people at that level, music’s not something they’re fucking around with. [Laughs] Music is a spirit. You hear something, and if it strikes a chord with you, it connects something at your deepest core. People like that, when you see them do their thing, it really is this other plane. It’s not this show thing. It’s more of a possession. You can hear it in the music.

I feel like I’ve listened to more music during COVID than any time since I was like, 18. I had this moment when I was listening to these amazing records from the 1950s. You can hear the room. It’s almost like audio VR — you can hear the drummer here and the bass player over here. There’s a sense of space, particularly to that older music. It’s a snapshot. If you hear “La Bamba,” right now, that is what it is. It’s a spirit captured on vinyl, on a piece of tape. It’s alive within that.

With people like Mick, they’re a little bit closer to the spirit of rock ’n’ roll — a literal spirit, not a figurative spirit. Bowie was the same. When he played with us in Central Park, the second he hit the stage he’s illuminated. You’re like, “Oh, shit, that’s what it is.” He’s a human when you’re talking to him and as soon as he’s in it, he’s touched by another thing.

SNL (2007-Present)

I’m glad you brought SNL up, because you’ve been on it a bunch of times, but you’re also one of the musical acts they’ve brought into skits. Like, they actually wrote a game show around you. How does that work? Did they write that sketch with you guys, or you walked in and they’re like, “Hey, by the way…”

BUTLER: I can’t remember, I think we’ve been six or seven times. We’ve been there for a couple different casts at this point. The Lonely Island dudes, those are so my dudes. In another life, I would’ve been in Lonely Island, that would’ve been my dream to just fuck around with my friends; when we were first writing music we were kinda joking around because you’re too insecure to try. A lot of times [at SNL], we’ve played for the staff when we’re there, because you get so fired up to play one or two songs and you’re playing live so your endorphins are running so we just sort of keep playing afterwards. I feel like they appreciate that, it kinda feels like you’re on the same team or something.

I was backstage at SNL once last year, and it is pretty crazy to see it all from the inside like that.

BUTLER: It’s so crazy. They write it all that fucking week, and then to see the differences between the dress rehearsal and the live show. They do a little meeting in Lorne’s office. They’ve done the dress rehearsal and it’s still this tiny office and every cameraman and every cast member is crammed in this little office and Lorne’s like, “Make it a blue light instead of a green light at minute 23, and change this word to this word, I don’t think that’s funny, change that, OK, go,” and everyone’s got pencils writing this down. It’s still fucking that. And you know, it hits and misses sometimes, but they’re doing it.

How long did you have to work on your De Niro impression for that skit?

BUTLER: It’s actually more of a Billy Baldwin impersonation, but it seemed to work for De Niro as well. [Laughs] My only real impression is I can look exactly like Billy Baldwin if I want to. If there’s any casting directors reading this and you need a Billy Baldwin impersonator, I’m your man.

LCD Soundsystem’s Goodbye Show (2011)

You’re the one who ended up serendipitously coining the title of the live album.

BUTLER: [Laughs] That is true. That was genuine. He was being a little talky.

I moved to New York before I moved to Montreal, and I would go to the city and go to shows and I didn’t see one fucking thing that was good in the whole year. I was like, “Wait, I thought New York was the shit, where is it?” All I saw was bad, very industry bands. I couldn’t find anything, I wasn’t cool enough to figure out what was going on. There’s very few bands that I really think of, like bands of my generation where I heard them and thought “These are my people.” For me it was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD, and Wolf Parade. When I heard those bands, I thought, “These are my fellow pilgrims.” It was art, DIY, no bullshit, just trying to make something great that communicates to people. It’s real and emotional.

James is really just one of us. He’s just such a great engineer and really into the way things sound and really passionate about details. It’s rare to meet people like that. James was working with us when Bowie came in, when we were in Electric Lady. James had never met Bowie before. The first 7” he ever bought was “Fame.” We’re in this studio, and the last time Bowie was there he had cut “Fame” with John Lennon, in the same studio. We were all like, “This is the right place to be.”

James is just a man after my own heart. We did a tour with them on Neon Bible. We were playing to a thousand people in Salt Like City and I was like, “Man, in a couple years a lot more people are going to wish they were at this show.” What a fucking great live band.

Scoring Her (2013)

What kind of headspace did you have to get into for this vs. making an album?

BUTLER: Spike [Jonze] came to a bunch of our early shows on Funeral. The second I met him he was just immediately one of my best friends. He thinks about the world the same way. Even though we work in different mediums he was someone I knew I’d be working with in some capacity. I was visiting LA and I was staying with Spike just randomly one time, in the early days of him working on the script for Her. I was reading the script and immediately thinking about how it could sound, and I was like, “Well, we should fucking do the score to this movie.”

When you’re working on a record, it’s so rigid, what works on a song and what doesn’t work on a song. It can be so limiting in a way. Within the band, there’s so many different talents and color palettes and things people bring to the table, so it was cool to do something where the boss is the picture. It doesn’t matter how anyone feels about a piece, if it’s working for Spike, if it’s working in harmony with the picture, that’s what the boss is — the emotionality of the picture. It’s not about you, it’s in service to this bigger thing. It was a cool opportunity for all of us to use different aspects of things we do, and to work with Owen [Pallett], who had done a lot of strings on our records. It uses a totally different part of your brain.

Do you want to do more of that kind of work, or was it this specific story from Spike that spoke to you?

BUTLER: I can say pretty confidently that I’ll work with Spike in the future. It definitely takes a lot of energy. It’s definitely something I’m interested in, but I feel like while I’ve got the juice it’s good to spend as much energy writing songs as we can. It’s pretty fucking hard to make a record, believe it or not.

Future’s “Might As Well” Sampling “Owl” From Her(2017)

Are you a big Future fan?

BUTLER: I love Future. There’s something in the rhythm of the thing he does that actually reminds me of some music from Haiti, in this really deep, subtle way I can’t put my finger on. There’s something almost mystical in the way he sounds, and I thought that was really cool that they sampled that soundtrack. His shit does sound like the future still. I think it’s pretty special.

The Reach Of ”Wake Up” (2004-Present)

This song has had this big pop-culture reach over the years. U2 used it as their walk-on music in the ‘00s. It was used in the trailer for another Spike movie, Where The Wild Things Are. Macy Gray and John Legend both covered it. Microsoft ripped it off for a commercial. It was used in a commercial for LA’s bid for the Olympics.

BUTLER: That Microsoft money went to Haiti, by the way. They did rip it off. [Laughs] Thank you Microsoft.

As far as I know that’s far from an exhaustive list, too. It’s just one of those songs that’s gone out and become a part of the atmosphere. Even a lot of big bands don’t necessarily have a song like that. What do you think it is about “Wake Up” that’s registered in so many different contexts?

BUTLER: From the time we wrote that song to now, the biggest difference in my life is I’ve traveled the world and I’ve been able to play music in all these different cultures and feel the ways different countries feel music. Not only listening to the music in other countries but seeing how they feel the music I play.

I remember around The Suburbs we played in rural Haiti. It was our first time playing in a place where nobody in the audience had any of the reference points of the music we played. We were playing in the mountains, there were people walking in barefoot to the concert. We were playing these songs we had been touring the world with, and the energy from the crowd was so different. The things they responded to, the things they felt, it actually fundamentally changed the way I heard my own music. It made me start to think about music not just from my own perspective but culturally how people hear it and feel it.

I think the one thing that kind of transcends everything across all cultures is melody. Régine was playing that melody on piano in our rehearsal room. I hear it like it was yesterday. It was like, “That’s the shit.” [Laughs] Being present and being in the room, hearing something and really giving yourself to it, just singing that shit like it really meant it and feeling the power of that melody and trying to push it until it breaks. That’s something I think about, just how great it is to have people to play music with. To say it like you mean it.

I remember singing that song in Montreal, in these lofts. Most of our early fans, the first time we played that song, they were like “Fuck this shit, I want the acoustic shit.” People were so negative. I remember a lot of early fans didn’t come to our shows after that because we were suddenly screaming at the top of our lungs and playing electric guitars. It was like, “Everyone here hates this, that means we must be going in the right direction.” [Laughs] But yeah, don’t be discouraged if people hate something. It doesn’t mean shit.

https://www.stereogum.com/2105395/win-butler-interview-spike-jonze-arcade-fire-snl-mick-jagger-david-bowie/interviews/weve-got-a-file-on-you/

#Arcade Fire #Win Butler #interview

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flowerfan2 · 3 years

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David x Patrick, 37k so far, A03. Read from the beginning here. Updates weekly. Angst, h/c, with a happy ending (honestly the happy happens way before the ending...)

Summary: Being stuck in the Milwaukee airport is bad enough. Then David realizes that the man who broke his heart is sitting right next to him. After a rom-com worthy reunion, David decides he won't walk away again.

Chapter 12

Patrick wakes up the next morning to David smiling at him, already dressed in his running clothes. He stretches up and David leans down, giving him a chaste kiss that shouldn’t make either of them blush the way it does.

“Have a good run,” Patrick says, and David purses his lips to hide his smile.

“Thanks.”

After David leaves the room Patrick turns and flops over, looking for a cool place on the pillow to hide his face.

He knows why he feels so exposed this morning. He and David have finally confronted the elephant in the room (not an elephant - “elephants are not sexy,” he can hear the David-in-his-mind chiding him) about their lack of intimacy, and although things almost went absolutely to shit, it all worked out okay. More than okay.

And to be fair, saying that they haven’t been “intimate” isn’t quite right. David said something last night that lights Patrick up inside when he remembers it.

“I kind of liked just being close to you.”

David said it like a confession, like a beautiful secret he was holding close. And Patrick loves him for it, because even while Patrick was feeling guilty about not going further physically, he was soaking up the joy of being close to David.

Patrick wants to kick himself for trying to rush them past this, this opportunity to give each other the comfort they both so desperately need. Because Patrick was so busy worrying, he almost missed it.

They’ve gone about things differently this time around, for sure. Back in Schitt’s Creek, the beginning of their relationship was full of firsts, and it was as heated and horny as Patrick always wished he felt as a teenager. This time, although they were drawn together from the beginning, it has been for warmth and tenderness, rather than sex. And David doesn’t mind – more than that, he likes it.

It makes Patrick nearly cheer with glee, here under the blankets that are still warm with David’s body heat, that still smell of his cedar cologne. He knows they have a lot to talk about, and a lot to process, but he can feel the bond between them growing stronger with every difficult conversation. Every time they confront something that has the potential to drive them apart, and instead use it to heal and make new connections, Patrick thinks they are that much closer to something that will last.

He can hardly believe all that has happened over the past few days. Stevie appearing on their doorstep was a real change-up that could have ended in disaster. Instead, Patrick discovered that the rift between Stevie and David was caused by David being concerned for Patrick, even while believing that Patrick had cheated on him. Patrick can’t help but find this endearing, even though David was wrong about him, and wrong in assuming that he should cut ties with Stevie the way he did.

Frankly, Patrick has felt pretty bad over the past few years, knowing that Stevie and David weren’t talking. Their friendship had seemed to be rock solid, and he knew it must have hurt for David to lose her, and vice versa. But he had never imagined that David had arranged the whole mess himself. He feels a pang of guilt for not pressing Stevie harder about what happened, but then again, it sounds like Stevie didn’t really know at the time, either.

And regardless of what David did and why, he and Stevie seem to mended things. Last night David’s face lit up when Stevie texted him silly photos of her and Ruth at Disney World, posing with princesses at a character dinner. Although he might deny how much it matters to him, David is clearly thrilled to have his friend back.

Patrick finally forces himself to get out of bed and into the shower. He stands under the hot water for a while, pleased to find that his various aches and pains are really much improved. Even the nasty bruises on his ribs are better, most of the area now yellow or a faint green, instead of the dark purple from ten days ago.

David’s still out of the house when he finishes, so Patrick takes his time shaving. He finds it easier to look at himself in the mirror these days, and it’s not just because his hair is starting to grow in over the healing gash on his head.

David’s toiletries are spread out all over the countertop. Patrick recognizes most of them, although there are some face creams that seem to be new. Not everything is RA branded, probably because they stopped carrying some of the products when the brand cut down to just items needed for the motels.

Patrick picks up David’s cologne and sprays a little bit on himself, knowing it will make David smile. There’s a moisturizer that looks familiar, and of course the body milk, still a Rose Apothecary favorite. He pauses when he sees a little round pot of lip balm. Raising it to his face, Patrick twists the top off and breathes it in.

It’s a citrus blend with a fresh scent, a pale yellow balm that Patrick can’t help but sample. He purses his lips and smooths it on, and suddenly feels a wave of déjà vu.

This is the lip balm David had been sourcing just before everything fell apart. Patrick liked the scent, and thought it would be popular; David found the vendor difficult and didn’t want to agree to the terms she was requesting. And both of them were annoyed that the vendor insisted on using a hard to find base for the product which might delay production. They had almost agreed to go for it anyway (“it’s not La Mer, but it is remarkably moisturizing”) when their relationship imploded and new products were the last thing on Patrick’s mind.

He’s lost in thought, holding the little tub in the palm of his hand, when David leans against the open door of the bathroom and dances his fingers along Patrick’s bare shoulders. “Find something you like?”

Patrick holds out the lip balm. “I didn’t know you made this one.”

David stills, then takes it from Patrick and plays with it in his hand, tightening the lid and then showing it to Patrick. Limited Edition appears under the Rose Apothecary logo.

“You said it smelled like sunshine,” David says, looking anywhere but at Patrick. “I ordered a box. I was going to give them to you, one of the million or so times I imagined finding a way to see you again.” David squirms, rolls his eyes and then holds it out to Patrick. “Here. Better late than never.”

Patrick smiles and leans over to kiss David, so David can taste his lips, already coated in citrusy goodness. After they broke up, David had the lip balm Patrick liked made. He wore it on his lips, thinking of him. His heart swells. “Thank you. I love it.” Patrick sets the lip balm back down on the countertop, tapping it with a finger. “Do you have any more?”

David gives him a wry smile. “I think there were 144 in the carton, so, yeah. I have a few left.”

*****

“Tell me again why we can’t go out?” David is pouting, looking outside at the bright blue sky.

“You are welcome to go anywhere you want,” Patrick says. “But the window company is coming to install new hurricane screens, and I told my mom I’d be home to supervise.”

David turns towards Patrick, who is idly channel surfing, looking for something interesting to watch on television. “Wait, what did you say?”

“The window guys are coming, and I told my mom I’d be here.”

“I believe you also said hurricane.”

“Well, yeah. There are these special covering screens that you can pull over the windows in case of hurricanes, and some of them got dented or something and don’t extend right, so we’re having them fixed and some new ones installed.”

“Patrick.” David backs away from the large patio door and into the center of the room, eyes wide. “You did not tell me about hurricanes.”

“It’s Florida, sometimes there are hurricanes. This isn’t exactly news.”

“I agreed to alligators, and bugs, and apparently I am also risking my toes to fire ants. But hurricanes were never mentioned.”

“You didn’t ask for a disclosure form.” Patrick stands up and approaches David, who is looking around the room as if the wind was going to pick up any minute and blow the house away like Dorothy’s farmhouse. “And there’s really nothing to worry about. It isn’t even hurricane season.”

“There’s a season?”

“Yup. And it ends in November.”

“It was November just a few days ago.”

“Even if it was still November, there are hardly ever any hurricanes that late – maybe a tropical storm or two. Most of the hurricanes are between August and October.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel safe?”

“Yes, it is.” Patrick runs his hands down David’s shoulders, grasping lightly at his elbows. “Would it make you feel better to hear more about how the hurricane screens protect us from the scary storms?”

David frowns, and then gives his shoulders a shake. “Yes.”

Patrick pulls David down to sit on the couch with him and takes out his laptop. “Look, the nice people from the hurricane screen company emailed us all kinds of information. I bet they’d even let you watch them work.”

David glares at Patrick. “I don’t appreciate you making jokes at my expense.”

Patrick grins back. “We can watch a movie later, continue your education. Maybe Twister.”

“You think you’re funny. That’s not about a hurricane, anyway.”

Patrick thinks for a minute. “There’s the one with the boat, in New England. A Perfect Storm. George Clooney’s in it.”

David smirks at Patrick. “George Clooney, huh? How old were you when that movie came out, maybe ten? Eleven?”

“My dad likes movies about boats,” Patrick protests, his face feeling warm.

“If you’re in the mood for George Clooney, we should watch Ocean’s Eleven,” David says. “At least that’s got Julia Roberts.”

“Leave it to you to know that.”

“I’ll have you know that Clooney’s been in other movies with Julia too, and one with Sandra Bullock.”

“Sounds like someone has a bit of a fixation.”

“I know everything there is to know about Julia and Sandra. This cannot come as a surprise to you. This body of knowledge just happens to include some information about George Clooney.”

Patrick catches David’s gaze, and then rakes his eyes up and down his body, as obviously as possible. “Maybe I have a type.”

David looks like he’s about to jump out of his seat. “Are you telling me I look like George Clooney?”

Patrick does think there’s a certain something about both of them, around the eyes, and the way they smirk. And David will look fantastic if he goes salt and pepper the way Clooney has. But they’re not really that similar.

“No.”

“Oh.” Disappointment flashes across David’s face.

Patrick leans in and traces David’s cheekbone. “You are much, much prettier than he is,” he says, his voice low.

Sadly, it is at this precise moment that the doorbell rings, depriving Patrick of the chance to bathe David’s blushing cheeks in kisses. He gives David a quick peck and goes to answer the door.

*****

David excuses himself to do some work in the office while Patrick talks to the window installers, and reappears only after the workers have left. They settle on the couch, bickering for a while about what movie to watch, and finally agree on Ocean’s Eleven (although David won’t commit to the entire trilogy, as Julia Roberts isn’t in Ocean’s Thirteen).

David seems jumpy all through the movie, and it makes Patrick worried. He thinks about their conversation last night, both of them noting – correctly – that they should have just said something about what was going on, and David practically begging Patrick to tell him if he thought there was something David should do differently.

He pushes away the small pang of hurt at the memory that David rejected his advances, reminding himself that David is scared about this, too. Not to mention that he doesn’t ever want to fall into the category of people who David regrets having sex with.

A shudder runs through him as he remembers David implying rather strongly that he’s been in sexual situations he didn’t consent to. Of course it’s at this moment that David interrupts his train of thought, doing exactly what Patrick had been working up to.

“Patrick? Everything okay?”

Patrick focuses on David, looking gorgeous in a leopard print sweater that fits snugly around his chest and shoulders. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

David fiddles with the remote and mutes the television. After a long moment goes by, he gives Patrick a look. “What? I asked first.”

Patrick snorts a little bit and slides closer to David on the couch. “I was thinking about last night.”

David nods. “Mmm. Me too.” He glances quickly at Patrick’s hand, resting on his knee, and lets go of the remote to grab it. His palm is sweaty, which is very unlike David, and that’s when Patrick is certain that he’s nervous. “I hope you know that I do want you,” David says, a slight blush tinting his cheeks. “Very much.”

Patrick can’t help the shiver of arousal that goes through him just at these simple words. He realizes with relief that he hasn’t felt this way in a long time, that last night was really the first time in ages that he was attracted to someone and comfortable about it, excited and happy and pleased and – safe.

“I’m glad to hear that,” Patrick says, pressing his knee against David’s. “I want you too. I mean, you probably figured that out, but in case there was any doubt, I do.”

David gives some sort of disbelieving head toss and purses his lips. “I’m not naïve enough to think that just because someone comes on to me they actually want me.”

Patrick feels his stomach swoop. “David?” He shuffles closer and lays a hand gently on David’s shoulder. “You know that’s not me, right?”

David rolls his eyes, but Patrick can tell he’s not convinced. And oh, there it is, that’s why David hesitated last night. Beneath all of his new athletic accomplishment, his designer sweaters and his continually impressive pompadour, David is still unsure of himself when it comes to his worth. David took a leap, coming with Patrick to Florida at a time when Patrick himself was wobbly with self-doubt (he’s still wobbly, he knows it), but inside, he’s still David. And whatever harm was done when the two of them broke up won’t be fixed in a week.

Patrick lays his head on David’s shoulder and puts his arm around him, pulling him close. He can feel David relax against his body, and he waits to make sure his breathing calms before he speaks.

“You’re going to trust me again, David,” Patrick says, and it’s not a command. It’s a promise. “We’re going to be okay. We’re going to get through this, and when we come together again, it’s going to last. We’ll be solid.”

David nods against his head. “I’d like that.”

“Just give it a little time. It’s okay to be nervous.”

David stills. “Does being nervous mean I don’t have enough… faith in us?”

“No,” Patrick says, trying to pour every inch of sincerity he has into his words. “Absolutely not. Being nervous is natural. It’s expected. Given what happened between us, I’d be surprised if you weren’t a little nervous.”

“I don’t want to hurt like that again,” David whispers, and Patrick’s heart clenches.

“I don’t want you to ever hurt like that again,” Patrick says.

“How do we do it differently this time?”

“Maybe just like this. We talk more, if something’s wrong.”

“I didn’t say anything was wrong.”

Patrick smirks. David can’t help himself, even in the middle of this heartfelt conversation. “You’re right – nothing’s wrong. We’re doing it right.”

David sighs and leans into him. “Doing it right is hard, and kind of terrifying.”

“Don’t worry, the hurricane screens will protect us.”

#schitt's creek #David x Patrick #Schitt's Creek fic #David Rose #Patrick Brewer #SC fic #Schitt's Creek fanfic

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nightingiall · 4 years

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things i love about you: you make lovin’ fun

a post-little do you know drabble series // story page

Niall was, in a word, exhausted.

For some reason, despite the many cups of coffee he’d consumed, he still felt himself nodding away at his desk, unable to keep his eyes open. The words on his screen were so blurry that he kept rubbing at his eyelids, as though attempting to scrub the drowsiness away would help.

He felt like he’d been behind at everything lately. He was always writing an article down to the last minute, barely making a deadline before he was assigned a new story. Eventually, he’d had no choice but to take his job home, often working on a story well into midnight, only making it to bed after his girlfriend basically had to drag him there. Even then, he couldn’t sleep, mind constantly buzzing with words and synonyms and phrases he could use to replace something in an article. It was like he was buried under a pile of work all the time.

“Here,” someone was saying to him, and he pulled his hands away from his eyes—apparently, he’d been rubbing at them again—to find his co-worker Duncan sliding a cuppa onto his desk. “You look like you need this. And if you have more coffee I’m afraid your heart’ll give out.” After tossing some sugar packets and a wooden stirrer onto the desk, he smiled, flashing that famous gap-toothed grin that Niall had seen woo many ladies at various evenings spent in multiple Manhattan bars. “And how will I explain that to your girlfriend.”

Niall rolled his eyes, laughing along nonetheless as he ripped open a sugar packet and dumped it into the hot beverage. “Thanks, mate.” Working with Duncan, a fellow Irishman, was something Niall didn’t expect to enjoy as much as he did. Always laughing and joking, he could be counted on to lighten the mood. He was also whip smart and was basically like Niall’s human thesaurus, something Niall never forgot to thank him for. Besides, the rest of his friends loved him, which he took as a good sign for keeping him around.

Duncan settled into his chair at the neighboring cubicle. “Need help with anything?”

A scoff pushed through Niall’s lips as he mindlessly stirred at his cuppa. “A fuckin’ break would be nice.”

This made Duncan laugh. “Tell me about it.” They had been absolutely swamped for the past few weeks, and if the darkness beneath their eyes were any indication, work had clearly taken a toll on them. “Why don’t you take a vacation, mate? You didn’t go anywhere this summer.” Duncan stretched back into his chair, his spine giving a rather satisfying crack. “Take the missus out to a beach somewhere or something. Might do you some good.”

Niall smiled softly at this, reclining back in his chair as well. It was not lost on him that this topic had come up several times over the past few weeks. “Yeah, we were talking about going somewhere but never finalized any plans.” The tea slinked down his throat as he took a sip, filling him with warmth and a newfound focus. Perhaps they should just take off and go somewhere for a week. He needed some sun and some quality time with his Mona. Preferably soon too. He felt himself slowly starting to go crazy, just sitting there at his desk. “Any suggestions?”

Duncan hummed, pressing the tip of his eraser to the corner of his lip. “Anywhere in the Caribbean is always nice. My mam’s from Barbados and it’s always quiet down there around this time.” He took a sip of his own drink before lighting up with another idea. “Oh, Hawaii in the off-season is great too. No big crowds, good prices, fantastic food.”

Pristine beaches, warm saltwater air, and a room that overlooked it all sounded like a phenomenal idea to Niall. Most of all, he wouldn’t have to share his time with anyone else except for Mona. Not with work, not with clients, not with friends or colleagues, even though he very much enjoyed every one of them. For now, though, he just wanted uninterrupted relaxation time with the person he loved most.

He and Duncan talked about Hawaii for the rest of their shift. While sorting through emails and drafting up an article, he quizzed Duncan on the most ideal resorts and sights for a quiet and peaceful but still fun trip. By the time the day was over, he had a rough draft, which he sent over to his editor, and some semblance of a vacation idea he can talk to Mona about when he got home.

It was all he thought about on his commute. New York may have been teeming with gorgeous fall colors, but somewhere warm sounded so nice. And he’d like to not have to worry about waking up early to take the subway or meeting deadlines at work. He needed a break from it all. They both did.

He was just twisting his key into the lock when he remembered that it was Thursday. Mona’s Mimi day, as she liked to say. Her therapy sessions often left her in unpredictable moods. Lately, she’d been having more rough sessions than good ones, and he often came home to find her curled up either on the couch or in bed—whichever she could drag herself to first—her head buried into a pillow and eyes clenched shut.

He usually tried to pick up some flowers or her favorite sweets from the Indian grocery store on her Mimi days, just to cheer her up, but he’d totally forgotten today. A frustrated huff worked out of him as the realization dawned, and he scrubbed a hand over his eyes at how terrible a boyfriend he’d been lately.

After all, the only reason they hadn’t actually gone on a trip yet was because he was too busy at work. Most days, he’d get home late, and even then he’d work until late into the night, unable to find it in himself to unwind and leave his job where it belonged, at the office. By the time he was ready to crawl into bed, it would be midnight and Mona would be fast asleep. He was honestly just lucky that she’d still indulge him with a cuddle, despite being deep into her dreamland.

To his surprise, and relief, when he swung the front door open, he was met with the soft twinkle of Mona’s laughter, his most favorite sound in the universe. She was perched on the couch, cross-legged with a bowl of pistachios on a pillow on her lap, the shells tossed into a smaller bowl beside her. Something on the telly was making her laugh so hard that she reached up to swipe a stray tear from her lashline with her sleeve. The mere sight of her, dressed in his jumper, her hair freshly washed and draping over her shoulders in soft, slightly damp waves, filled him with such a surge of affection that all he wanted was to curl right into her, on the couch, and not have to move for the rest of the night.

“What’re you laughing so hard about?” he asked as he kicked his shoes off and rounded the corner of the couch, stopping behind her to press his lips to the top of her head. She looked up at him, mid-giggle, and he pressed another kiss to her nose too because he couldn’t help it. He loved her like this, big, fluffy hair and flushed cheeks and a huge, wonderful smile that never failed to have his knees go impossibly weak.

“Worst Cooks.” She gestured to the TV, which Niall noticed was, of course, turned to the Food Network. “How have we never watched this show before? I never thought anyone except for Harlow could burn water but there’s a whole world of terrible cooks out there!” Sure enough, just as he looked up, a woman had somehow managed to flip her burger while simultaneously getting it to catch on fire. Mona cackled gleefully at the sight. He couldn’t help but laugh along with her, completely enamored.

After putting away his bag, hopping in the shower, and changing into clean clothes—he didn’t like staying in his dirty work clothes, especially after his subway commute—he felt much more relaxed and ready to curl into the warmth of his wonderful girl, who was still lounging about on the couch, laughing at the kitchen mishaps on the TV.

Taking the bowls of pistachios and shells from her lap and placing it on the coffee table, he stretched out on the couch beside her, head resting comfortably on the pillow on her lap. Her hair was fully dried now, and as she brushed the strands behind her ear, he caught a whiff of peppermint. It was only the beginning of October but she’d whipped out her favorite holiday shampoo anyway. It was his favorite too.

She smiled so sweetly down at him that he had to close his eyes, otherwise he was sure his heart might burst. “How do you feel about pizza for dinner?” she asked, trailing a finger down the bridge of his nose. She was so soft and so warm, her arms wrapped around him, consuming him with that peppermint scent, and Niall wanted her to just hold him like this forever.

“Whatever you want.” He breathed out a laugh when she let out a soft cheer, reaching for her phone to order. It was the second time this week that she’d asked but he didn’t care. She could ask for the stars and he’d find a way to give it to her.

When she was done, she tossed her phone to the other end of the couch, returning her attention to him. The TV was a quiet soundtrack to their evening but Niall felt like he couldn’t even hear it. He was too lost in the way she smiled at him, the way those big brown eyes glittered. It didn’t matter that he was dead tired and worn out; whenever he was all wrapped up in her, everything always fell into place.

Mona skimmed her knuckles over his cheeks, her fingers cool on his warm skin. “Everything okay?” she asked, voice a hushed whisper. When he opened his eyes, her smile was softer now, more subdued. He hummed in answer, nuzzling into the hand caressing his jawline. She simply sighed at him, fingers now gently trailing against the skin below his eyes. “You work too much. You look so tired.”

Her lips pressed kisses to his closed eyelids, the tip of his nose, the hinge of his jaw. Soft and feather light. It filled him with immeasurable joy. “’M fine,” he murmured, even though he knew she could see right through him. It was as though he could feel her eye roll when she scoffed, and he couldn’t help but huff out a laugh. She pressed her cheek to his forehead when she was done with her little butterfly kisses and he sighed contentedly, so comfortable that he could just fall asleep right there. “How was your Mimi day?”

Her fingers were twirling into the hairs at the nape of his neck now. “Fine. We talked about love languages, which I hadn’t heard of before.” She started to shift away from him but he stopped her with a quick tug on her wrists. It was too comfortable; he didn’t want her to move. “I was trying to figure out what yours might be but I couldn’t. Do you know what it is?”

Niall smiled because he did know. He had always known. It was her, spending time with her, lounging around like this or going out on dates or cooking a meal or curling into one another in bed. Anything with her. Everything with her. They could be doing absolutely nothing, just sitting there listening to each other breathe, and it was just enough for him. Simply being by her side made him happy. Nothing else could compare. “I think if would satisfy you more if you figured it out yourself.”

Mona sighed, pursing her lips against his forehead. “I think you’re right.”

They sat in silence for a few moments. He relished in the warmth of her as she continued to run her fingers through his hair. He could have fallen asleep like that, just lying in her lap, taking her in. Then he remembered. “Hey, Mo?”

“Hmm?”

“Let’s go to Hawaii.”

She sat up then, brows raised at him. “Hawaii?”

He grinned up at her. Just talking about it made him excited. Beaches and beers and tropical sights and Mona. It sounded like a damn great time to him. “We need a vacation. We keep talking about it but never actually go anywhere. What are we waiting for?”

She was grinning too, a laugh bubbling out of her. “Well, when do you want to go?”

He shrugged. “Soon, please.”

And so, the rest of the night was spent with pizza, some wine, and their laptops, sending in their vacation requests to their jobs as well as booking everything they needed, like flights and a hotel.

All Niall could think of was one thing: Hawaii, here we come.

~ “I told you to wear sunscreen.”

Niall huffed at this. He was currently slumped against the pillows of the biggest bed he’d ever seen in his life, watching as Mona got ready for their dinner plans tonight. She was fussing with her hair while simultaneously scolding him about his bad skincare habits. It wasn’t his fault, really. After all, he wasn’t used to applying sunscreen when it wasn’t the summer months, and how was he to know that their afternoon hike would cause a bad sunburn on his nose? “You’re being mean.”

It took a great deal of effort to hold back a laugh at the way she glared at him. “It’s not my fault you don’t listen.”

This time, a chuckle inadvertently escaped him. She wasn’t wrong after all. “Darlin’.” He crawled off the bed, hands finding her hips and smiling at her reflection in the vanity mirror. She was still trying to decide whether to leave her hair down or pin it up. “You look stunning as always and your hair looks fine. Now can we go get dinner? I’m starving.” This earned him one of her signature eye rolls and a flick to his sunburnt nose. “Ow!”

Mona simply grinned at him, turning around to pull him close and press a light peck to the stinging area. “You’re so annoying.”

“I can’t help it,” he breathed into her skin, all thoughts of dinner suddenly evaporating from his mind as he skimmed his hands down her spine. “You’re so cute.”

“Ugh,” she huffed out, but laughed nonetheless, lightly shoving him away. “Let’s go.”

Niall laced their fingers together as they walked over to the restaurant. He didn’t know why they had never done this before, splurged on an actual vacation, because this was quite possibly the best idea ever. Their flight into the Big Island had been long so they hadn’t done anything on the first night, but yesterday they had gotten a couple’s massage before lazing about in the hot tub, and today they rented a car to drive around before taking an impromptu hike to indulge in picturesque views of the island.

Now, with Mona’s hand in his, the night air warm and inviting around them, palm trees and flower bushes lining the walkway, he felt a bit like he’d fallen in love with her all over again. It was like he was twenty-one again, holed up in a winter cabin with his friends, completely entranced by this girl with dark hair and soulful eyes and a killer sense of humor. Except this time, she actually loved him back.

There was a moment today, when they had hiked up the mountain and were greeted with the mesmerizing views of the entire coastline, she had turned around and laughed, big brown eyes glittering in the sunlight, skin shining with the slight sweat she’d worked up on the climb, and he almost did it. He almost dropped to one knee right there, fingers already reaching for the ring in his pocket. Somehow, the words got a bit lost in his throat though, and it never happened. It was a perfect moment; she pulled him in and pressed the most reverent kiss to his lips, murmured that she loved him before smiling that sweet smile at him.

It was a perfect moment, yes, but something told him it wasn’t the right one.

“It’s so warm here,” Mona mused as they settled at their reserved table. They’d chosen a spot outdoors so they could eat with a view of the ocean. The sky was swirling with the colors of dusk, the sun already nestled beneath the horizon. Mona was smiling at him, pinks and oranges painting the sky behind her, waves crashing into the sand in the distance, and all he wanted was the ability to freeze this moment so he could hold onto it forever. “What if we just packed up and moved to an island? Left everything behind and lived the rest of our lives in…” It took her a moment to find the word she wanted, eyes glazed over as she mulled it over. Niall simply admired her, cheek resting in his hand as he leaned against the table. Her eyes absolutely lit up when it came to her. “Paradise,” she proclaimed dreamily.

Niall grinned, imagining them as island dwellers with their own little home in a tropical oasis. “What about all our friends?”

She shrugged, reaching for some chips on the platter between them. He hadn’t even realized when the waiter had placed it there. “We could write them letters.”

At this, he laughed, leaning back into his chair again. “You’d really just leave everyone behind?”

She tutted like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Yeah, why not. I’d have you.” She was popping another chip into her mouth when her eyes were lighting up again. “Ooh, you know what we can do? We can get a puppy.”

“A puppy?”

“Yeah!” At this point, the chips were halfway finished. She seemed to notice this and offered him some, and he opened his mouth so she’d feed it to him. “We’re not having kids any time soon so in the meantime we can at least get a puppy.”

Niall was about to respond when the waiter arrived, asking if they were ready to order. Once they’d decided on what they wanted, the waiter left and Mona excused herself to the bathroom. As he watched her go, his fingers trailed absentmindedly against his pocket, tracing the outline of the ring inside.

He reached in for it, rolling it in his hands for a moment. For months, he’d been carrying it everywhere. At first, he figured he’d plan something nice; a date night, perhaps, and he’d surprise her with the ring. But the longer he thought about it, the more he realized he had no idea where to pop the question. The ideas were endless: at a picnic in Central Park, at the top of Empire State, at the botanical gardens, or maybe even in their damn living room. So he figured that if he just carried the ring with him everywhere, once the perfect moment arose, he’d be ready.

But every time he thought it was the right time, something happened. They were either being interrupted or there were too many tourists around or the words simply got trapped in his throat. It felt a bit like he was trying to tell her he loved her for the first time all over again.

The ring glinted in the candlelight. Mona’s mom, Raina, had given it to him last year when they visited her in San Francisco. She had waited until Mona had left the room before she pressed the box into his hands. “I was going to give this to Nick,” she had said, “but it feels more right giving it to you. It’s the same one their dad gave to me.” Niall had simply looked down at the box in utter shock. Raina closed his fingers around it and smiled. “Think of it as my blessing to you both. And I know Mona will really love having something of her dad’s.”

Niall thought of that moment every day. He sometimes just sat back with this ring, rolling it between his fingers, and wondered how Raina even considered him worthy enough for this. Perhaps it was why he was having a hard time figuring out the perfect moment. It was too important. This ring meant so much.

He was just sliding it back into his pocket when Mona returned. She smiled, asking how he wanted to spend the day tomorrow, but all Niall could think about now was whether Hawaii was the place to finally ask her to be his wife.

As their food arrived, she mentioned something about snorkeling or deep-sea diving. Niall wasn’t sure. He was too engrossed in how she glowed. The sun had splashed a bit more color onto her skin, and she shined as bright as the moon that was now visible in the darkened sky. She threw out another idea of swimming with dolphins and Niall told her they could do whatever she wanted. He’d follow her anywhere, no questions asked.

She settled on the dolphin idea, happily chattering away about making reservations in the morning and that they could even go to the luau on the beach on their last night. They’d have to do some shopping for their loved ones, of course, but they’d find time to do that somewhere in between.

When they were sufficiently stuffed with great food and even greater desserts, they took the long way back to their villa, hands interlaced as they strolled down the beach, the waves splashing up against their ankles. The ocean was surprisingly warm. With the salt and humidity swirling in the air, Mona’s hair had gone even bigger and fluffier than usual. She was laughing at something he’d said, head tossed back, strands of hair fluttering in the slight breeze, and his fingers instinctively found the outline of the ring in his pocket again.

Her eyes twinkled at him and he stopped himself. Not here, something in him said. It was dark and he had a sudden vision of accidentally dropping the ring into the water. The thought wedged a quick twist of anxiety in his chest and he inadvertently squeezed Mona’s hand.

“You okay?” she asked, brows quirked in amusement. She stopped walking to pull him into her, arms wrapped loosely around his waist. The stars seemingly reflected in her eyes as she smiled softly up at him. He briefly wondered if it was ever possible for this to get old, because they were nearing four years together and every time she looked at him like that he still melted inside. “You’re kinda quiet tonight.”

He dropped his shoes to drape his arms over her shoulders, holding her close. Sand in his toes, salt in his hair, and a whole lot of love in his heart. He was on cloud nine. “Just taking it all in, I suppose.”

She huffed out a laugh that gusted over his skin and he pressed his forehead to hers. They stayed like that for a few moments, taking each other in, swaying gently to the sound of the waves lightly lapping up against the shore. When she spoke again, her voice was a delicate murmur against his lips. “Thank you.”

Niall’s arms tightened around her as he pulled her closer, nose nuzzling against hers. “For what?”

He felt her smile against his skin. It sent a surge of warmth rushing down his spine. “You choose me every day. Even when you don’t have to. Even when you probably shouldn’t.” She held him so tightly it was as though she was attempting to keep him from floating away with the waves. “So, thank you.”

To any other person, this would have sounded nonsensical. But he immediately thought back to their conversation on the couch all those days ago, when she talked about Mimi telling her about love languages. He smiled. “You figured it out, didn’t you?”

A breathy giggle fell from her lips. “Yeah.”

He pulled back to press his hands to her face, the curve of her jaw nestling perfectly into his palms. The tiniest bit of moisture had collected over her lashes and he swiped it away with his thumbs. “Of course I choose you.” Sometimes he held her like this and she looked at him like she couldn’t believe it, like this was all just a dream, and he had to gently remind her that he did indeed love her. More than anything in the world. “You’re the other half of me.”

This seemed to work for now. She smiled softly at him, pressing her lips to his in a tender kiss before grabbing their shoes in the sand and tugging him back to their villa. They’d barely gotten there and he could hardly keep his hands off her, trailing fingers against her sunkissed skin, lips finding her sweet spots, the pulse on her neck, the space between her collarbones.

She’d only just gotten the door closed behind them when his lips finally met hers, kissing her slowly, languidly. They had all night and the rest of the week for themselves. “’M gonna take my time with you tonight,” he murmured into her mouth. She hummed, breath hitching when his fingers gripped her thighs beneath her dress, hoisting her onto the bed.

“Yes, please,” she breathed, blindly undoing the buttons of his shirt as he peppered kisses over the soft skin of her shoulders, making quick work of the zipper at the back of her dress and pushing her straps away.

After all, he didn’t need to be told twice.

Mona missed a few strands when she’d pulled her hair up into a messy bun. Niall busied himself with brushing them away to make room for his lips, grinning to himself as her skin rippled with goosebumps at the feather light touch of his fingers, shoulders giving a slight shudder. She sighed quietly as he pressed slow, lazy rows of kisses from the nape of her neck to the edge of her shoulders, his arms wrapped loosely around her middle, holding her close.

She was reclining back against him as they relaxed in the lounger on their private lanai, both of them dressed in nothing but the soft sheets from the bed. The lanai overlooked the ocean and was a perfect spot to watch the sunrise, which Mona had dragged him out of bed for, insistent upon watching the sky transition from dark blue to swashes of reds and yellows. He didn’t mind, really. Not when he could snuggle her close like this.

She gasped softly, gripping his wrist as she jutted her chin towards the horizon. “It’s happening,” she breathed, eyes lighting up brighter than any sunrise. Still, he followed her gaze, the sun just barely peeking over the sea in an arc of deep orange. Mona shifted so she could rest her head on his chest, wrapping both her arms around him, and they silently enjoyed the sight of the sun slowly slinking up the sky, bathing them in a warm golden glow.

When it had gotten too bright to look at anymore, Niall shifted his gaze to his wonderful Mona darling only to find a serene expression on her face, lips quirked up into a soft smile. He ran his fingers down her spine just to feel that sharp intake of breath again. “You thinkin’ about moving to a remote island again?” he teased.

A giggle bubbled through her lips. “No.” She looked up, head resting on his shoulder, and he held her close. “I was thinking about that time we went to Vegas. After Deepa’s wedding. And,” she started to laugh, “Harlow schemed her way into getting us that honeymoon suite.”

Niall laughed at this too, remembering. It seemed like yesterday, even though it was a few years ago. “That was a fun weekend. Even if we weren’t really together yet.”

She hummed, fingers tracing abstract shapes into his side. “I already knew how I felt about you though.”

This surprised him. “Really?”

Her smile grew. “Mhmm.”

“Huh.” He quirked a brow, looking off into the horizon for a moment, processing this. He had always thought she didn’t see herself with him romantically back then. “So, when did you actually realize?”

She shrugged, a hand finding his, pressing them together. They both had long, nimble fingers, but her hands were smaller. Niall liked how they slotted together with ease. “The cabin. You kissed me under the mistletoe and then you dragged me up that stupid hill in the cold.” They shared a laugh. Mona’s eyes had glazed over in memory, voice soft and reverent. “You made hot chocolate with whiskey in it. It was a full moon and the stars were out and you said we don’t get that kind of view in the city. And you smiled. And it hit me that I’d been in love with you that whole time and I never even realized it until then.”

Niall laughed in a bit of disbelief, mostly because he remembered the moment well. She was laughing at something he said until a sort of struck expression came over her and she swore under her breath. If he had known then what it all meant then he’d have told her how he felt right there. It didn’t matter much now considering she was currently in his arms, but perhaps they could have been together sooner.

“When did you know?” she asked.

Niall smiled wryly at her. “The cabin.” She tutted and he realized she didn’t know what he meant. “The first time at the cabin.”

She stilled for a moment, seemingly turning his words over in her head. It was as though he could feel the gears working. Then, she sat up abruptly, looking at him in shock. “Shut up. There’s no way.”

He grinned, highly amused by this. He loved her the whole time and she never even knew. “It’s true, darlin’.”

This earned him a scoff and a frown. “Nuh uh. You’re lying.”

“I’m not!” he got out through a laugh.

A deep breath worked through her as she thought this over, deflating slightly. “I never knew,” she mused, clearly still in shock.

“Yeah,” he said, shaking his head, “you were always kind of oblivious.” Then he thought of the fact that he’d been carrying around a damn engagement ring for a whole year and she was none the wiser. “You still are, to be honest.”

She swatted a hand against his chest, a stunned sort of giggle escaping her. “Shut up.” Still, it wasn’t long until she was curling into him again, pressing her cheek to his shoulder with a sigh. “All that time…you never said anything.”

The breeze was beginning to pick up. It swirled around them, their little sanctuary of love, and flicked her stray hairs into her face. He brushed the strands back into the knot on her head, pressing a gentle touch of his lips to her nose. “Darlin’. You would have freaked out if I told you before you were ready.”

She pursed her lips, rolling her eyes at this assessment of her. “I hate that you’re right.” Their laughter trickled into the air, echoing slightly around them. Mona shifted until she was straddling his lap, her arms draped over his shoulders as her lips turned up into that beautiful smile. Niall leaned back to catch the full view of it. “Doesn’t matter,” she murmured, tracing a finger over his eyebrows before delicately smoothing back his hair. “I think we turned out alright.”

He felt a surge in his chest then. This was it, a perfect moment. She was all wrapped up in him, soft and warm, messy hair and no makeup. Her cheeks were flushed slightly, from the sun and the fact that she couldn’t stop laughing. He was so enraptured by his love for her, laying back and taking her in. He could ask her right now.

But, for once, he didn’t have the ring on him. It was still in the pocket of his jeans, folded over the top of his suitcase, and to go get it he’d have to let go of her; he’d have to break the moment.

So he didn’t ask. Not now. Not yet. He wanted to hold onto her for the rest of the morning, wanted to savor that smile and the soft kisses she was currently pressing to every inch of skin she could find.

It didn’t matter. They had all the time in the world. And besides, she’d given him an idea. Another perfect moment. He’d just have to wait for it to come around.

For now, he pulled her face towards his and kissed her with his whole heart. She was here. She was his. The beach beyond was calling their names.

He was happy and nothing else mattered.

thanks for reading! here’s some bonus instagram content:

#the way i have probably updated this story more in a year than i ever updated ldyk in a year is hilarious to me #i can't help it i just can't get them out of my head :/#anyway #here's another slightly long drabble #enjoy!!#things i love about you #1dff #writings #niall horan fanfiction

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blazehedgehog · 3 years

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So rather than attach it to the last (rather large) post thread, I’ll start a new one. If you didn’t catch it on Twitter, friends managed to raise some money through nothing but sheer good will and I ended up booking a stay at the same hotel we should have gotten for free.

I’m starting a new thread because I want to ask a question, but first I want to clarify and provide a better timeline of everything that’s happened. This isn’t exact, but it’s as close as my memory can remember right now:

Late 2019/Early 2020: Whoever owns my apartment complex sells it to a new company in California. The complex is in Nevada. It’s a big apartment complex; it used to be two separate ones that were right next to each other and they merged to create a “project” that houses something like 150-200 units. If you consider families, somewhere in the realm of 300-700 people live here.

April/May 2020: We get a notice on our door announcing that our new owners want to renovate the complex. Every single unit. It’s such a big ordeal that they have to put in to get funding from the State of Nevada to do it. The initial claim is that they will move us out of our apartment unit in to a new unit for up to a month or two (at no cost to us) while they renovate. More information will come in summer 2020 during a town hall meeting we will attend in person. I expect that with the pandemic starting and “shelter in place” orders going out that there’s no way they’d be dumb enough to go through with any of this. The notice ends with them pleading with people not to take this as a cue to move out. In the months to follow, we spied at least four people who were smart enough to get out before the renovation hit. We considered it, but the housing authority we have to rent through went dead silent the moment the pandemic ramped up and have yet to say even a single word to us (even now).

Late October/Early November 2020: The town hall meeting finally happens, online, in a Zoom meeting. Three people in California dictate to the 40 or 50 tenants (maybe more) that attend the meeting how this is going to go. Plans have changed: the renovation will take place across ten days. Very tight schedule. In and out as fast as possible. In batches of 4-5 units at a time, going alphabetically across the complex, units will be renovated. New paint, new carpet, new cabinets, new sinks, new toilet, new shower, new appliances, redone balcony. Renovation teams will come in at 8am and work until 5pm. After 5pm, we will be allowed to return to our unit and sleep there. We will be allowed to keep one bed (per person) and one TV, which the renovation team will move out of the way during the day and return to our unit when they leave. We are also told we will be getting a sealable plastic tub to store personal items (toiletries and such) that the renovation team will also handle. We are assured they will be adhering to rigorous sanitization standards, with multiple temperature checks daily, masks, and gloves. During the day, we are free to go wherever, but the complex will be setting up what they call a “hospitality trailer” -- a communal space for everyone currently effected by the renovation to hang out inside, together. There will be port-a-potties and wifi. We’re told meals will also be provided, possibly in the trailer, but details are unspecific. We’re also told some landscaping will be done. All told, between renovating units and landscaping, they say the whole process from beginning to end will take 18 months or more. Tenants in the Zoom call ask questions -- if we don’t want to stay at the hospitality trailer, we’re told we should consider staying with family during the day. They ignore multiple questions from people asking if this will cause the rent to go up.

December 2020: Renovation begins, starting with apartments in the A block. We’re somewhere near the middle of the alphabet, and going by the ten-days-per-unit estimate, we’re expecting the renovation to hit us around March-ish, maybe even as late as April. I develop an ugly toothache; my face swells up. I do a phone visit with a dentist and he prescribes me antibiotics and schedules me for an appointment on January 18th to pull the tooth.

Early January 2021: Going to check the mail one day, I notice it feels like they’re spending a long time on the first few sets of units. Then, all of a sudden, renovations surge ahead, and units worryingly close to our letter start putting tarps up over their balconies, signalling they’re either mid-reno, or at least packing.

January 18th, 2021: Tooth is “fine” (big cavity, no pain) but we discuss options for pulling multiple bad teeth with this problem tooth, since a lot of my upper teeth aren’t in great shape. Will require multiple rounds of surgery to remove them all and set up replacements. First round of surgery is on February 24th. I immediately wonder if we’re going to get called early for renovation and it’ll land simultaneously with the surgery. I try not to think about it.

January 30th, 2021: We receive a notice that our apartment’s number is due. It’s post-dated, which means the notice is late. We’re supposed to have 45 days notice, and the move-out date listed in the notice is February 23rd. By the 45 day rule, this notice should’ve arrived January 9th. There’s also a degree of confusion: the notice was delivered to our apartment, but the notice is addressed to the apartment below us. Parts of the notice still mention our apartment number. We call the front office for clarification, and they tell us that the notice was indeed meant for the people below us. According to them, we’re in the clear for now. “You’re close...” tells us the person on the phone, “But it’s not your time yet.” We consider preparing early, but it sounds like we have to use the provided packing materials for organizational reasons when the movers come.

February 5th: I record my Patreon Podcast. I mention the renovation. If you consider 10 days per renovation, based on when the notice was actually delivered, I’m expecting we’re going to get our notice in the next few days.

February 8th: We get a knock on the door. A man from the front office is checking in with us to see how packing is going. Packing because the notice was actually for us. It was for all four units in this block. We tell him: we called. They said it wasn’t our time yet. He just kind of shrugs and asks if we need boxes. Of course we do. Our 45 day notice has been cut down to less than 14 days. On top of that, we’ve got doctors appointments and things coming up that’s going to eat in to this time. He says everything has to be in the office-provided UHaul boxes. Even if we have items already in cardboard boxes, they have to be specifically repacked in UHaul boxes.

February 13th: After days of trying to contact my dentist office via email, I finally get a hold of them via text. I try to reschedule my appointment, but the receptionist tells me it’s just another consultation, not surgery. I hope she’s right. The stress of all of this is making it hard to get packing as fast as we need to.

February 15th: My Mom tells me she’s managed to book an appointment for her first round of covid-19 vaccinations. Unfortunately, it’s on February 23rd, the day we’re being moved out.

February 16th: We talk to the people below us, an elderly couple. They’re panicking about packing because they have so much stuff. They mention that the front office booked them a hotel for the duration of their renovation. All they needed was a doctor’s note proving they needed it. Given that my 75 year old mother has a doc appointment literally the next day, this seems like extremely good timing. After doing curbside pickup for a grocery order that day, we pass the movers on our way back in as they are loading a unit in to their Ryder truck. None of them that I see are wearing masks or gloves.

February 17th: Doc visit happens, she implies that he kind of blew her off. She’s had chronic pain in her hands and knees for years, and in particular, the pain in her hands has been getting bad, fast. She wraps her thumb in sports tape because bending it hurts. She used to be a waitress, she used to be a cake decorator, she did data entry for a couple years, and now she’s dabbling with painting. Her carpal tunnel is severe and its accentuated with arthritis. Doctor just kind of shrugs it off, tells her if it gets worse to come back in a few months, even though arthritis can kill people if not treated properly. Still, he writes her a cursory note for the apartment front office. She talks to them and they’re very glad she contacted them about this; it sounds like the kind of thing that’s only available to people who ask, since presumably the owners don’t want to shell out $900,000+ rooming the entire complex in a hotel. Either way, we’re excited; maybe this renovation won’t be so bad. They tell us the name of the hotel and where its located.

February 18th: While doing laundry in anticipation of packing things up for the hotel/renovation, we happen to catch someone in the laundry room who just got back in to her apartment after her reno finished. She tells us a horror story: everything they told us in the Zoom meeting was a lie. They are renovating way more than 4 units at a time, they aren’t going alphabetically anymore, and she theorizes they’re going with a cheaper renovation team because half of her apartment straight up wasn’t done. The new tile was cheap plastic, which was already gouged by the time she got there. No new fridge, no new shower or tub, no new toilet. “Those will be happening this summer,” she tells us. Sinks got replaced, but the new sinks are apparently bigger than the old ones, leaving less counter space (a particular problem in the bathroom). Carpets were new, but already a dirty mess because of the movers. She had to go around and pick up nails stuck in the carpet that were left behind by the renovators. Since they didn’t take the fridge, she got to keep her food in there, which was important for her because she had special dietary food that needed to be refrigerated. The bad news? Some of that food was stolen. She had a broom and a dust pan stolen, too. She mentions how poor communication has been. We mention the hotel, and she lights up. She didn’t stay in her apartment either, they put her up in the hotel, too. So at least there’s that silver lining. Though she regrets it, because they damaged her TV while she was away. She finally helps clarify the food situation for us, too: we’ll be receiving a “food voucher” to pay for our meals, whatever that means.

February 19th: My Mom was supposed to call the front office to confirm we got the hotel, but in all the confusion, she didn’t get around to it. We’ll have to wait the entire weekend to get confirmation. But if the elderly couple below us got a room, and the lady we spoke to at laundry got a room, it sounds like we’re a lock.

February 22nd: The front office checks in on us again, shrugs their shoulders at how behind we are on packing, and offers us more boxes. They only give us large boxes; we need small, medium and especially rolls of packing tape. They mention they’ll have more later once they open the storage unit, but we never get any. Across this entire ordeal, we’ve only gotten a single roll of packing tape. We bought several rolls of our own after being tired of waiting. Front office guy says our fridge is being replaced, but we can still keep food in our old one and we’ll just “come in and change it out.” Whatever that means. Later, after getting off the phone, we learn we were rejected for the hotel. The doctor’s note wasn’t good enough and the head office in California denied our request. My Mom tries to contact her doctor again to get a more detailed note, but he doesn’t return her call. We’re going to be living out of the car for the next ten days. We talk about protesting this; by stopping packing right now and refusing to leave, but eventually decide that would be a bad idea. We don’t want to risk the movers breaking any of our things. A couple friends start spreading around my paypal.me link in the hopes of raising money for us to stay at a hotel. They raise a little over $200, but it’s hard to justify spending that on a hotel.

February 23rd, Morning: By this point, we’re running on empty. No sleep, physically exhausted, stressed out of our minds. Both of us on the verge of tears several times. With everything going on, we’re a little over halfway done packing and there’s no time left. We quickly move from “pack everything” to “pack what’s important so the movers don’t have to touch it.” Whatever we can’t finish, the movers will pack for us. At 7:30am the movers arrive, and they knock on the door at 8am. They are very polite. They are all wearing masks and gloves. We tell them they are nowhere near ready, and they offer to do our unit last. We do the best we can and leave the rest to them. On our way out, we talk to the elderly couple that lives below us, who claim the moving truck won’t be enough to hold everything in their apartment. It’s a big truck and a small apartment. I find that hard to believe. We go park somewhere and doze in the car until my Mom’s vaccination appointment at 10am. More friends, some of them with very large followings, start spreading the paypal.me link around. Momentum begins to build.

February 23rd, Midday: We get to the vaccination place only to realize we forgot some things at the apartment. We quickly jog back across town and plan to ask them if it’s okay if we can go in to the apartment and retrieve it. When we get there, they’re still unloading the couple below us, and I notice they aren’t just taking UHaul boxes, but regular cardboard boxes, too. Given it’s been almost two hours, this might be second truckful, maybe even the third. I grab the stuff we’re missing and we head back to the vaccination park. Afterwards, we hang out at my brother’s just in case my mom has an allergic reaction to the vaccine and she needs help. She’s fine, and by the time we’re through there, it’s getting to be time to head back to our apartment for the night at 5pm. Before we leave my brother’s, I use their wifi to check my Paypal account. I joke, “I’m worried that I’ll open my account and it’ll say $2000.” Combined with the little bit of money I already had in my Paypal, the donations have pushed my account close to $2200. I burst out laughing. “YOU WANNA GO GET A HOTEL?!” I shout. We agree we’ll spend the night in the unit tonight and decide what we’ll take with us to the hotel in the morning.

February 23rd, Evening: It’s close to 6pm and the movers are still there. They were supposed to clock out almost an hour ago. I browse Tripadvisor and Expedia in the parking lot and decide to just book the same hotel they dangled in front of our faces, since reviews specifically point out it’s clean and has extremely good quarantine practices. Expedia lets me pay with Paypal directly, but there’s a problem where it won’t connect to my Paypal account. As I go to transfer the money out of my Paypal and finish booking the hotel, the wifi dies. The movers just unplugged our modem and packed it up. They probably weren’t supposed to do that, and they picked the worst time, too. We spend the next 45 minutes driving around town trying to find free wifi so I can book this hotel. We end up parking at my brother’s place and leeching his wifi from the driveway. Hotel booked, check-in is at 3pm on the 24th. For now, it’s back to the apartment to decide what to take with us.

February 23rd, Night: Upon getting back to the apartment around 7pm, we find it’s... a disaster area. They spent so long unloading all the other units, they did not have time to finish packing and unloading what was left in our unit. There’s garbage everywhere, it’s mixed in with the stuff we want to keep, some of it’s broken, it’s horrible. It looks like they just swept everything off the tables on to the floor. TV remotes and mail are spread out all over the place. They didn’t leave us any lamps, so the only lights in the apartment are the front door light, the kitchen light, and the bathroom light. They might have left us our mattresses, but they didn’t leave us any pillows or blankets. Still, we spent the better part of the night sorting through the “trash” and separating it out in to the stuff we wanted to keep. We pack up most of the apartment with whatever materials the movers left behind, but we eventually run out of boxes and tape. We still managed to pack 99.9% of what was left. From 7pm to 2:30am.

February 24th, Morning: At 7:30am I'm woken up by the movers pulling up. I can hear them joking in the parking lot about who gets the honor of being called "papi" and cracking rude jokes about "assuming gender." They probably think nobody's around to hear them. We ask them for more time so we can wake up and get dressed. As we're loading up the car with stuff to take to the hotel, we overhear the movers complaining about how they are being made to wait because we were supposed to be out of here by 8, and it's close to 9. My Mom gives them an earful about how little time we had to pack compared to how long we should've had. "That's been happening to a lot of people here." one of them tells her. My whole body hurts after days of little sleep and packing extremely heavy boxes. I’ve had a throbbing headache for almost 48 hours. With the dentist appointment at 3pm that afternoon, we go to a park and I doze in the car for another five hours.

February 24th, Afternoon: Dentist appointment goes smoothly; they offer to start surgery, but I explain to them what happened with the renovation and they are perfectly fine postponing until a later date. By now, my feet hurt where the soles of my shoes have been rubbing. My ankles and knees are hurting from being crunched up inside a car for two days. My back hurts from all the lifting. I’m beyond miserable and realize there’s no way I could bare to spend 10 days living in this car. Thankfully, with the dentist appointment out of the way, it’s check in time. The hotel room is nice, but given I’ve never stayed in a hotel before, I don’t have much of a comparison. But when I fall asleep that night, I sleep harder and longer than I have in years.

February 25th: The elderly couple that lived below us at the apartment are here at the same hotel we are, and we talk to them. Turns out, the lady has the same doctor as my Mom, and they were rejected from his note, too. The approval they got for the hotel came from her husband’s doctor, who wrote an extremely detailed note about his oxygen needs. They mention that people living in our complex with disabilities weren’t housed here and they don’t know where they are or what happened to them. They also claim that the food provision stuff from the apartment front office is apparently some kind of a $45/day meal credit we get at the end of the renovation. But again, it’s still not clear, and the apartment itself has never clarified. That night, we return to the apartment again to raid our fridge for stuff to bring to the hotel. Now, if you remember, we were supposed to be able to sleep at the apartment every night. The apartment we returned to was in such a state that it would have been impossible to sleep in. No sinks, no toilets, no stove, no running water of any kind, and all of the outlets stripped down. Literally the only thing we could have done was sleep there; nothing else was possible. And even then, remember: no bedding. No pillows, no blankets, and it’s still winter out there.

Update on things I forgot: Also on the 25th, elderly couple in the unit below us also told of how the movers had thrown their $950 couch outside and left it in the dirt for multiple days, asking if it was “trash” because one of the washable seat covers had a single pet stain on it. (When we visited the apartment that night to raid the fridge, we even saw it) Not only that, but last year, our bathroom tub had been leaking in to one of their closets. They had to shut our water off for several days and fix the pipes. Apparently this caused black mold in their apartment that wasn’t discovered until they started hauling boxes out. Upon bringing it up with the renovation team, they got told “there’s black mold everywhere! it’s in the grass! it’s fine!” The husband went in to take pictures of the black mold, but by the time he got over there with the camera, the renovation team had already painted over it. Apparently another tenant on the other side of the complex had mold problems so bad that she’s been paid to stay at this hotel for more than a month already while they deal with it.

Which brings us, roughly, to today.

Now, the question I mentioned way back at the top: what are my options here, legally? A lot of friends have told me up and down that this is either illegal, or should be illegal, but I have no idea where to start with any of this stuff and frankly I’m a little gun shy. I don’t know what Nevada housing law is like, what renters rights are, and I don’t want to risk being evicted. But I also know that the threat of being evicted is also what keeps people complacent.

All I really know is that basically everything they originally told us was a lie, and they never informed us of most of these changes. As for the rest, well... just read for yourself.

Whatever you know, I’d like to know.

#renovation #timeline

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shadedrose01 · 4 years

Text

Maybe There's a Reason (To Believe You'll Be Okay)

Relationships: Harley Keener & Tony Stark (platonic), Harley Keener/Peter Parker (at the end)

Summary: Harley has a crisis, and Tony helps him through it (with a hint of parkner at the end).

Tags: Remix, Parkner Remix Event, Even though its barely parkner whoops, Emails, Letters, Phone Calls & Telephones, Tony Stark Acting as Harley Keener's Parental Figure, Sexual Identity, Identity Issues, Coming Out, Kinda?, Sexuality, Gay Harley Keener, Crushes, Harley Keener Needs a Hug, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Acceptance, Self-Acceptance, Love, Parental Love, Tony Stark is Good With Kids, tony stark is a dad, why is that not a tag, Parkner is only at the end, for like a paragraph, Just so yall know :)

For the Parkner Discord Remix Event!!

A remix of @official-impravidus ' fic "Sincerely, Me" (which you can read here!)

This is longer, so ao3 link is here!

Hope you all enjoy! Love you lexie!!

Wednesday, May 8, 2013, 1:24PM

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Relationships and Mark V

I don't understand dating. Like, my friend Bryan started dating Rachel today, and that's fine, whatever, but I just don't get it. All they did was hold hands and kiss each other all day. Is that all a relationship is? What even is the point of it? I mean, I know humans are animals and our instincts give us our need to reproduce so we need to find a viable mate and all that stuff, but why do you need to always be together, and hold hands, and do all of that gross stuff too?

Either way, I finally got around to building a mark V for my potato gun! It's just a few upgrades up from the mark IV, for faster shots and farther range, but I think it'll be cool once it's done.

I hope your day is going okay.

-Harley

~~~

Wednesday, May 8, 2013, 10:43PM

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Relationships and Mark V

Relationships are complex, and complicated. Humans are born to reproduce, yes, but dating, and finding a partner is more than that. It's finding someone you're compatible with, who can be there at your best and at your worst, and a bunch of other deep seeded emotions that are hard to explain.

You don't need to worry about that now, though. You'll understand more when you're older, anyways, so I wouldn't worry about it.

My day has been good. More of a lazy day today, Pepper and I ordered some take out and watched movies in our pjs. I didn't have my phone on me per Peppers request, or I would have answered sooner.

As for the Mark V, the updates sound good. Keep me posted, kid.

-The Mechanic

~~~

Monday, September 8, 2014, 4:57PM

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Middle School!!

I started middle school today!! And honestly? It wasn't as exciting as I thought it was gonna be. I knew that movies and tv shows oversell the wow factor of middle school and high school but I didn't think it'd be this dull. I'm still in the same class, with all the same classmates, and my classes are still crazy easy. I had hoped that the increase in grade would make it even a little bit harder, but I knew everything on the outline they gave out before the teachers even started teaching!! It's bonkers!

Apparently this middle school also has a STEM, or "gifted" kid program for kids like me though, so hopefully that'll be harder. I'm still gonna be so bored in my normal classes though. Ugh.

I have the STEM classes tomorrow, so I'll tell you how it goes. I know you've been stuck in those awful meetings lately, but I hope your day is going better than mine.

-Harley

~~~

Tuesday, September 9, 2014, 5:04PM

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: STEM Program

I had my STEM class day today, and it went a lot better than yesterday did! My teachers are all super nice, especially my math teacher, Mr. Trevor. He immediately starting teaching today, which was awesome, because all of my other normal teachers had a Ice Breaker class first (which I hate, we all already know each other, why do we have to say our names and something about ourselves??), but he just went right into it, and started teaching us trigonometry. I haven't learned any of it before, and I'm super excited to dig into it and find out how it works. It's seeming pretty simple so far, just formulas and using calculators right.

The only bummer is the class I got put with. They all seemed to click and get along well together, but none of them really talked to me much. I don't mind though. I'm more focused on my education anyways.

Also! I saw that Captain America and Black Widow took down SHIELD's headquarters on the news. What was that about? Do you know?? Apparently they leaked files too or something???

I hope everything is okay.

-Harley

~~~

Friday, September 12, 2014, 10:27AM

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: STEM Program

Hey kid. Sorry for the late response, things have been hectic here, as you probably know. It's been a PR nightmare, with the whole "Cap took SHIELD down" fiasco. I can't say more than that though. Legal things, NDAs, you know how it is.

I'm glad the STEM classes are testing your abilities more. I know the regular classes can be boring for someone of your intellect, but try to enjoy them while they last, okay? Soon you'll be an adult, and doing adult things, and trust me, it isn't as fun as they make it out to be in the movies either.

Don't worry about those kids too. Give it time, they'll come around.

-The Mechanic

~~~

Friday, September 26, 2014, 9:02PM

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Update?

Hi. Just emailed to give an update on me. Everything's been pretty normal, I guess. Abbie's loving elementary school, her teacher, Mrs. Millar, is really nice. I did my trig test today, and I think I did well. Mama's working late again tonight, but that's just normal at this point too.

Have you ever, I dunno. Felt like you were weird? Or strange, or broken? Like, all of your friends are one way, and doing some things, but you aren't, and everyone looks at you weird, and treats you differently?

I don't know. I don't know where I'm going with this. I just feel off tonight. Think I'm going to go to bed early.

I'm sorry.

-Harley

~~~

Friday, September 26, 2014, 9:48PM

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Update?

You don't need to apologize, kid. You did nothing wrong.

I used to feel like that, quite frequently if I'm being honest. When I first went to MIT, I felt weird. I stuck out like a sore thumb, and had people talk about me behind my back because of how young I was. But then I met Rhodey, and things got better.

And then Afghanistan happened. And the invasion. Let me tell you kid, I've never felt more broken and alone after that. I had panic attacks, as you know, but I also struggled with a lot of paranoia. Lack of sleeping or eating properly, mixed with trauma does that to you. I was a wreck, and I was so certain I couldn't be fixed. That I'd be like that forever.

And to an extent, I will be. I'll always struggle with it, but it's much, much better now than it used to be. I went to therapy, talking about my feelings, which sucked ass (don't tell your mom I said that), and learned mechanisms to help myself. Learned breathing techniques, practiced meditation, focused more on self care, and now I'm doing so much better.

So, moral of this long, way too personal story. You aren't broken, kid. Whatever is going on, whether it's similar to me or not (I hope not), it'll be okay. You will be okay. Things will work out. And don't worry about what other people think. Focus on yourself, and do what makes you happy, no matter what.

I'm always here if you need to talk, Harley. I might not be much help, or be very good at this whole hormonal preteen emotions thing yet, but I can try.

I'm glad things are going okay outside of that though. I'm glad your sister's settling in well, and I'm sure you aced your test. You're a smart kid.

Goodnight.

-Tony

~~~

Tuesday, October 7th, 2014, 3:38PM

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Call

Hey, can we call? I know you're probably busy, and we don't normally do that but I'm kinda freaking out about something and I don't know who else to talk to. My number is (___) ___-____

-Harley

Tuesday, October 7th, 2014, 3:41PM

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Call

Nevermind, ignore that last email. I was being overdramatic, and stupid. I'm fine, everything is okay.

Sorry for bothering you.

-Harley

---

He didn't expect anything from the emails. He assumed the older man would've read his last email, and shrugged it off, pretending the previous didn't exist like Harley longed for him too. As he said, he was being dumb. It didn't matter that his heart was pounding, that his brain was screaming at him that he was a freak, and dirty, and so so so wrong , that he was shaking like a leaf and on the verge of tears. It didn't matter. It was stupid. It didn't matter.

He didn't expect that Tony would actually still call him.

He stares at his vibrating cell phone through teary eyes, blurry vision, the number unknown but he knows who it is, knows it because nobody else calls, because when his friends call, they call the home phone, not his phone, so who else could it be?

He blinks the tears out of his eyes, rubbing them away quickly when a few escape, swallowing down his fear and panic and self hatred as he scrambles to pick it up before the call ends (he doesn't think Tony would appreciate it very much if he let it ring to voicemail), stuttering out a shaky, higher pitched "H-Hello?"

"Hey, kid." Tony's voice, much lower and rougher than his, rings through the phone, and Harley braces for the questions, the interrogation he knows is coming, knows Tony's gonna ask him about it, about what's bothering him. Why, why did he email him? Now he's gonna have to tell him what's wrong, now he's gonna have to admit it, admit how wrong and messed up and broken he is- "How was your day?"

Harley jerks back slightly, mouth gaping and eyes wide, caught off guard by the unexpected tame question. "Huh?"

"How was your day?" The man repeats calmly, tone smooth, even, relaxed, like it's a normal conversation on a normal, boring day. Nothing like how Harley is feeling, nothing like the swarming thoughts in his mind, like the flood of emotions in his chest, like the churning in his stomach, the burning ache in his lungs.

"U-uhm," Damn his stutter, he had grown out of it years ago, why was it suddenly coming back now? "I-it was good." He lies, trying to keep his voice from wavering, trying to keep it steady, trying to stay composed as the tsunami of emotions tries to pull him under. "Yeah."

"Yeah?" Tony prods lightly, voice softening slightly, and Harley shakes his head in a nod, firm, even though Tony can't see it, even as tears start to burn at his eyes again, even his chest winds tighter and tighter and tighter .

"Mhm." He forces out, not trusting himself to speak anymore, his throat closing as his feelings start rising up his esophagus, a sob clawing its way up his throat, trying to escape.

There's a pause, then, a moment when everything freezes. A moment right before the iceberg tips, right before everything crashing and burning down around him, right before the beginning of the end. And then, time starts again, as the mechanic asks, quiet, hushed "What's going on, Harley?"

And Harley crumbles .

The sob rips from his throat, echoing loudly in the large emptiness of his garage, a trembling hand covering his mouth as soon as he does. But the floodgates have already opened, tears are streaming full force down his face, his body shuttering through shaky gasps and shattered sobs. "I-I-Im sorry ," He chokes out as he sits down heavily in his old, pachy wheely chair, curling into himself as his body shutters again. He rubs his eye with the hand on his face, sniffling and coughing through a whimpered, "I-I know you're- you're probably b-busy, you- you don't h-have to-"

"I have nowhere else to be." Tony murmurs simply, cutting off Harley's poor attempt at waving him off, at delaying the inevitable for any longer. Harley lets out a small whine as the older man speaks up again, soft, soothing, repeating gently, "What's going on, kid?"

"I-I dont-" He hiccups, running a hand through his shaggy, too long blond curls, tugging slightly as his knee bounces rapidly. "M-My friends, or my classmates, they- lately, they've been, I don't know, they've been talking- talking more about crushes and girls and stuff." Harley sniffles, tugging his hair harder as his vision starts to blur again, the words tumbling out of his mouth now. "And- and I never really c-cared about it, you know? I never really- really unders-stood it, didn't see the appeal, s-so I didnt m-mind it. But they- they just keep talking about it, and getting g-girlfriends, and-and talking about their bodies and I didnt get the- the i-interest, so I thought maybe something was wrong with me-"

"There isn't." Tony chips in, but Harley just runs right over him, keeps blabbering. He knows it's rude, knows his mama taught him better, but he can't seem to stop talking now that he started, his words getting more and more wobbly, panicked the longer he goes.

"But there is , there is something wrong with me, I- I know there is now, be-because when I-I went to school today, the- the past few days really, I started- started noticing that I started f-feeling weird, and- and it sounds- sounds similar to how the- the others say they feel, but it doesn't make sense , it can't be that, I dont- I cant-" Harley's breath catches, and he grinds his teeth together, refuses to speak another word, refuses to accept it, refuses to admit the god awful truth, refuses to utter the words. Because it can't be right, it can't be true, it can't be-

They sit in silence for a few moments, when he assumes Tony thought he would continue speaking but he wont, he refuses , until the softer, calmer voice returns, slightly staticky through the speaker, but barely more than a whisper, as if he spoke any louder, Harley would shatter. He probably would. "So, if I'm understanding correctly, you think you have a crush, and you're... scared?"

He doesn't sound patronizing, just honest, if a bit curious, but it doesn't help calm Harley any, a higher pitched, frustrated noise escaping the back of his throat, his free hand going out of his hair going back to rubbing at his face, rubbing off the tracks of tears, trying to rub away any sign of upset, until his skin is red and raw. "No, I-I mean, kinda- its not- I can't- god , this is so stupid."

"Its not stupid. I get it." The man responds, and Harley wants to laugh, feels the bitter feeling bubbling in his chest, because does he? How can he get this? Harley doesn't even get this, it doesn't- he shouldn't- "What's her name?"

The sound erupts out of him at that, but instead of laughter like he thought it would be, it's just another pitiful whine, another loud, agonizing sob. Because that's the thing, the thing that's been haunting him ever since he figured it out earlier that day, the issue that's been plaguing his mind and freaking him out, winding him up more and more and more as the day went on until he got home and sent those messages.

Because- because when he thinks back to earlier that day, he thinks of lunchtime, of sitting at his lunch table with his "friends", of them talking and laughing, of Harley feeling those weird feelings again, especially when he looked across from him, and saw big, forest green eyes, saw a big, toothy grin, saw two small dimples and scattered freckles, saw short, short black hair, saw a sharper, thinner jaw, saw male male male, felt butterflies flutter, and realized he was wrong, wrong, wrong .

Because- "It's not a girl." His voice is small, defeated, barely a whisper, his whole body tensed up in fear, waiting, waiting for his reaction.

There's a pause, before a faint, quiet, sympathetic, "Oh, kid." That Harley immediately the wrong way, because he hates him, oh god he hates him-

"I'm sorry!" He gasps, jerking upright, sitting ramrod straight and the apologies spilling from his mouth. "I'm so sorry, I didnt- I dont mean to, and I-I know its wrong, and I shouldn't, and I-I know I'm weird and- and a freak , and-"

"Hey, hey, woah!" Tony's voice is louder now, stronger, and Harley hushes up immediately, his mouth slamming shut, even as his body trembles with a silent sob. "It's okay, kid. You aren't any of that."

"But- but I am!" Harley whimpers. "I'm w-weird, and everyone else isn't like this , and-"

"Am I a freak?" Again, the random question sends Harley for a loop, trying to grasp onto any of his quickly scattering thoughts.

"W-what?"

He can hear a faint smile, faint amusement in Tony's tone as he asks again, still so so calm, so reassured, "Am I a freak?"

Harley narrows his shining eyes, still full of tears, staring down at the wooden table in front of him, at the chips and nicks covering the side of it, wondering if this is a trick question. "N-No? Of- of course not, you're Iron Man."

He can hear some noise in the background of the call now, squeaking as if someone's leaning back in a chair, before Tony speaks up again, voice full of warm amusement now. "Well, Iron Man has had a few rendezvous with men in the past, and still likes them to this day. Does that make him, and therefore, me, a freak?" When Harley doesn't answer, mostly out of pure shock than anything else, Tony keeps going, tone going serious again. "Kid, I'm gonna get this out there right away. There is nothing wrong with you for liking boys, you hear me?"

He swallows, and wants to agree, longs to agree, but- "But- but my friends, they all like- like girls , and mama, she- she said that traditional marriage was what God wanted and-"

Harley cuts himself off this time, and Tony only waits a few beats before murmuring softly, "Is that what you think?"

He just shrugs, picking at the table, sniffling, whispering quietly, "I don't know what to think anymore."

There's a soft hum and another pause. "You're different, Harley. I'm not going to beat around the bush, you are different." Harley stomach drops. "But," Tony continues, "Kid, you've always been different. You're so smart, way too smart for your own good, if I'm being honest. And there's nothing wrong with that. People may try to bring you down, or kick you while you are down, but you've gotta remember that, okay? There is nothing wrong with you."

Harley waits a few moments, let's the words wash over him and wrap him in a blanket of warmth, of security and comfort, but there's still one little thing that keeps rearing its ugly head, that's still making him antsy. "But, what if I'm just- overreacting? And I don't actually... y-you know." He finishes lamely, still not ready to completely admit to everything yet.

Tony doesn't seem to mind. "Then that's okay too." He says simply, a bit of shuffling coming through the line. "Kid, how old are you again, like twelve?"

He can hear the teasing in his tone, and rolls his eyes as he huffs out, "Thirteen."

The older man chuckles for a second, before his voice goes back to calm, quiet. "Seriously though, you're thirteen , Kid. You don't need to have everything figured out right away." He snorts, then. "I sure didn't. I think I was a mess at your age, wasn't even thinking about relationships. At least, not long term." There's a pause. "Point is, you don't need to know right now. This might be a fluke, and you might end up liking only girls from here on out. You might end up just liking boys, liking both, or neither, who knows? But you've got time, kid, and that's the key. Give it time . And whatever it ends up being, whatever ends up happening..." His voice softens at the end, a smile prominent in his tone. "It'll be okay. You will be okay."

For the first time all day, Harley finally takes a deep breath. His shoulders finally relax, his body practically melting back into his chair, and a smile grows on his face, warmth blooming in his chest. "...thanks, Tony." He whispers, hoping that the amount of pure, unfiltered gratitude he's feeling can be heard in his tone.

He thinks it can, as there's a hint of embarrassment and awkwardness in Tony's voice as he responds with a simple, "Don't mention it, squirt."

Harley just chuckles at the sudden discomfort of the older man, before his eyes widen. "Oh! While you're here, did I tell you I passed my trig test?"

"Hey! I knew you would, kid, I had no doubt." Harley's grin widens, before he throws himself into another story, feeling warmer, safer, and happier than he has in a while.

A few years later, Tony was getting off of the elevator to his penthouse with a huff, having just gotten back from a rough meeting, when he freezes. His heart warma and a smile grows on his face when he notices Harley, now 17 years old (almost an adult, god he was so old ), curled up into Peter's chest, his face pushed into his neck, seemingly fast asleep. Peter's head rests on top of Harley's, eyes open but hooded, as if keeping them open was getting difficult. They glance over to Tony immediately, though (damn his spider sense and increased hearing), and a faint blush forms on his cheeks even as he smiles lightly, his eyes softening as he glances back down at his boyfriend and presses a firm kiss onto his head. Tony watches the interaction with a soft grin, before quietly stepping away, his chest full of mostly warm, sappy feelings, but also full of pride and joy, knowing his pseudo son is accepted, happy and loved.

#parkner #parkner remix event #harley keener/peter parker #remix #fanfiction remix #harley keener #peter parker #tony stark #tony stark is a good dad #tony stark is a dad to harley keener #fanfiction #marvel #mcu #marvel fanfiction #parknerpalsremix

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daybreak-academy-fanfic · 4 years

Text

Daybreak Academy: Chapter 74

Safely Mundane

Summary: In which picture day arrives at Daybreak Academy. Word Count: 1,506 First | Previous | Next ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆

“Picture day won't be so bad.” Strelitzia tried to tell Anora as the older smoothed out the younger's hair with a flat iron. “They tend to do us by house, then by year. So if we need to, you, me, and Affie can afford to be a little late, since we're in the middle Years.”

Anora hummed a little in response. Her head gently rocked as Strelitzia worked the flat iron against her hair. The warmth from the iron was nice, and the older girl was doing her best to be gentle.

“Vulpes will have their pictures taken in the auditorium.” she went on to ramble. “Leopardus is in the gym. Unicornis is in the cafeteria (which means we may have to eat off campus later). I'm not sure where Ursus and Anguis are having their pictures done. It should still be on campus, I think. I haven't been able to talk to Lauriam in awhile to be sure.”

Deciding she was finished with Anora's hair, Strelitzia gently placed the flat iron on her table before going to unplug it from the wall. The older girl then decided to go over to her dresser, humming a small tune to herself. Anora remained where she was at the table. For the first time, she was starting to realize just how long Strelitzia's hair was when it wasn't tied back. It reached well past her torso and, while thin, was soft enough that large pieces easily glided over her shoulder when she bent over.

“Should I use my red ribbon, or the black?” Strelitzia asked as she fished through her dresser drawer. “It won't matter for the year book- since it'll all be in black and white. But Lauriam likes to order the professional photos in color for safe keeping.”

“Why not keep it down?”

Strelitzia paused for a moment, then turned to face Anora. There was a small, pleasant smile on the younger girl's lips. The older blushed in the faintest shade of pink. “O-oh, I can't.” Stelitzia stammered. “I'd look too much like my-” She stopped herself to quickly shake her head. She turned back around to dig through her drawer again, pulling out the ribbon, then almost caught her hand as she closed the drawer. Now holding the ribbon up for Anora to see, Strelitzia once more asked; “Red or black?”

The younger one of the two made a funny little face as she thought it over.

“Red.” she officially decided.

It took the girls a few more minutes to decide they were ready before heading on out. Affie was waiting for them not far from the girls' dorms. His characteristic afro was a bit poofier than normal, and the suit he wore looked like it had been neatly ironed out some time before. When he saw Anora and Strelitzia come up, he immediately waved to them.

“It's picture day, ladies!” he cheerfully declared. “And both of you look absolutely picture perfect!”

The humble blushes on the girls' faces were equal. Affie laughed at them for a moment before turning his attention to Anora.

“Wow Anora,” he remarked, “After everything you've been through this past week -going into a coma, getting lost on the field trip-, getting school pictures done must seem so mundane.”

Anora quickly shook her head- indicating that the mundane was exactly what she needed right now. It earned another laugh from Affie. He trailed off when he noticed the sports tape wrapped around Anora's ankle- the rest hidden by a low cut sock.

“How's your foot?”

“Still sore...” she replied, even lifting her foot up a little to rotate it at the ankle. Her point was proven when she'd flex her foot, and the small shot of pain made her wince. Both Strelitzia and Affie flinched back in sympathy.

“I thought so.” the Vulpes boy told her. “You're still walking with a limp. Be careful, though; it's not like we can carry you across campus or anything.”

Anora gave Affie a bright smile. She was lucky that she had so many people that cared about her.

With the trio together, they started to head toward the auditorium. They did not have a hard time getting there. It didn't even take them long to find a spot near the middle rows to sit and wait in. Anora tried to relax as she looked around the auditorium. At this point, it seemed that a lot of the younger students had already gotten their pictures done. Everyone else that remained looked to be about her age or older.

Ava was sitting with crossed legs near the edge of the auditorium stage. The curtains were drawn- possibly because the camera was setup behind them. Every so often someone Anora didn't recognize would peek their head through the curtain and tell Ava something. The Vulpes headmaster would then nod her head before calling out the next student. In between those moments, she gently swayed from side to side, as if she were remembering a soothing song.

Beside her was Shelby. The turtle didn't do much other than hide in its shell- occasionally coming out whenever Ava called a new student, giving her a dark glare as if she had woken it from a nap. Some times he came out to just stare at the students crowded in the auditorium. Anora could have sworn that he looked right at her at some point. Suffice to say, a distinct chill ran up her spine.

When Ava called out Anora's name, the young woman slowly got up and started to walk to the stage. Sure enough, behind the curtain was the photographer and all of their expensive looking equipment. The area set up for the photos was the standard picture day setup; two softboxes were placed on opposite sides of the camera on its tripod. The backdrop was a generic soft gray and blue gradient, with a small stool placed not far from it. Anora awkwardly made her way to the stool and carefully took a seat. Whoever had been here before her must have been taller; her feet barely touched the ground. Or maybe the photographer had it that way for a reason? It's not like they were telling her that she could adjust it.

“How you doin' today, hun?”

Anora looked at the photographer and offered a nervous half smile. Seeing it made the photographer laugh.

“Well I hope that's not the smile you're going to give for your picture!” they noted with a chuckle. “Now, if you can, could you sit up a bit straighter for me? Yes, just like that. Turn your head a little to the left… Yes! Great! Stay just like that for me...”

The young woman tried to sit as still as she could while the photographer took their photos. She waited for the flash from the softboxes, but it never came. The photographer snapped away at their camera without a single light flash. After a minute or so, the photographer got up from their camera and gave Anora a smile.

“All done, honey. You did great!”

For a moment, Anora wondered if the photographer was just messing with her. There was no way they were finished already. But was she going took a gift horse in the mouth? Of course not! She got up from the stool, giving the photographer a small smile of thanks, before quickly making her way back over to Strelitzia and Affie.

Affie was the first to look up and notice her. “Are you all done?” he asked- a small hint of surprise was laced in his voice.

Anora nodded her head before taking a seat. It wasn't until she sat down that she felt a sudden wave of exhaustion pass over her. She quickly blamed it on picture day. When was the last time she had a professional photo of her done, anyway? Back when she was three?

“It's awful being put on the spot like that, isn't it?” Strelitzia wondered, giving Anora a small smile of assurance. “I'm sure your pictures will turn out beautiful.”

Anora lulled her head from side to side for a moment. Would they turn out nice? She wouldn't really know until they came in. A part of her realized that she'd have to ask her cousin if he wanted any prints. She'd have to ask him in an email- maybe closer to the time the preorders came in. And then, a smile started to appear on Anora's lips, which soon became a bubbly laughter.

Strelitzia and Affie looked at each other before turning back to Anora. With a small raise of his eyebrow, Affie asked, “You alright there, Anora?”

But all the young woman could do was laugh. Strelitzia had been right- so many eventful things had happened to her in the last month, even the most mundane of activities were like a breath of fresh air. Hopefully, the rest of October was going to be just as boring, and predictable, and just so normal as today. She deserved it.

#daybreak academy #chapter 74 #kingdom hearts fanfiction #Anora #Strelitzia #Affie #Season 2

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dating-did · 4 years

Text

UPDATE/RANT

This will be long, so be prepared. I hopefully tagged everything correctly. Feel free to let me know if I missed anything. This will mostly be babbling, so it will jump around a lot.

I met my love in December of 2018. My best friend (I will continue calling them that until the end of this post. It makes it more clear who I am speaking about) introduced us. Me and my love became an item in late May of 2019.

I met my best friend in October of 2018, but didn't really bond until November/December of 2018. We decided to room together (with a different friend) for the 2019/2020 school year.

We had another friend who in late October of 2019 went haywire and we ended up having to cut ties for all of our mental health. It wasn't pretty.

In September (ish.) Me, my love, and a few other friends were pushing for my best friend and an alter to become an item (in theory, they were good for each other). I thought I would be fine with it, because I had had a semi-serious conversation about dating someone outside the system a few months prior. HOWEVER. I WAS SO SO WRONG.

My best friend dating that alter was really difficult on me (to the point where I am not sure if I would be able to handle trying that again with a different person). I had massive breakdowns because I was trying to be supportive and not let on how much it really really bugged me. Plus my best friend was constantly whining about not being able go are their S.O. as much as they needed/wanted, it was all too much. I couldn't be in the same room if they were spending time together. But I didn't want to break them up. So I resolved to eventually getting into counseling to deal with that (plus my BPD was getting in the way, my mind was and still is chaos).

Time went on. Me and my best friend got into a fight (in about december of 2019) because I finally had enough of their comment and belittling and all of that jazz. I stood up for myself (not in the best way, I realize that) by attacking back. It was never really talked about or dealt with. We just sort of, moved on as if it never happened.

The start of the next semester after winter break was not good. My best friend had turned off all of their emotions and was becoming impossible to deal with. The friend we had been rooming with left within a few weeks of the first semester due to personal problems, and was returning for the spring of 2020 semester. While I got the most of all of the bitterness and hatred and seething and all of the nasty stuff, it wasn't going unnoticed by the system (who was also getting their share of the rancid behavior) and also the friend who moved back in.

Time goes by and it gets bad. So bad that my best friends S.O. (who is a protector of sorts) could not handle the damage my best friend was causing to everyone around them. So the S.O. broke up with my best friend.

And it got worse from there.

My best friend because even more unstable and down right vicious. Refused to accept any sort of help or comfort or support from me or most of the system.

So eventually my love and I put our feet down. We sat down my best friend and said basically "we understand you are hurting. But this has been going on for months, you are hurting everyone around you. You need to get help." And to say that was not received well is an understatement. We had a circular conversation for over two hours (we started the talk at almost midnight on a night where me and my love had 8am classes). My best friend refused to fix themself and got even worse. To the point of leaving campus to get intoxicated (they are legal). And me and my other roommate decided to talk to the school staff about the incident. (This was about mid to late February of 2020). Me and my roommate moved out of the room we were sharing with my best friend because we feared for not only our mental health, but our own physical safety.

This stayed mostly calm for a couple of weeks. Then out of the blue my best friend emails (not text or discord or anything. Actual email. To my school account). About getting something back of hers that I sti had with me. I made a deal to give it back when I got my things. Thought that was that.

My best friend sent an email to my love the same night, asking if my love could meet them that night. They wanted to talk or something. My love did not want to go into a room alone with my best friend, so I went along. My best friend was less than pleased that I came along, and was very rude. Then immediately started apologizing (not sincerely.) That went on for about 45 mins with my love being kind. When me and my love were walking back, we were talking, and they still didn't want to have contact with my best friend besides things they had to be in contact for due to school.

So I decided to send an email.

Oh boy.

So, I send an email basically saying "hey. My love and my roommate (and another friend who did not want to be involved at all) don't want you to contact them unless it is strictly for school-business. Also, your behavior tonight was not cool and you need to get actual help." So. I have my love and the main protector (and probably a few others) look over the email to make sure it was okay. They agreed it was, so I sent it.

Not even five minutes after I sent it, my best friend came up to me (I was in a cafe in the dorms, not somewhere I normally am) and yelled at me, while physically attacking me.

After a good 45 ish seconds, some third party pulled me off of my best friend (the third party didn't know what was going on, I dont blame them) and my best friend sauntered off. I had my love call our campus security who then called the police.

Everyone was kind to me, got all of the information and everything.

I decided I wanted to press charges.

Because of that, my best friend was arrested the next day and held in jail over night.

I decided to file for a restraining order, because my best friend sent an 8 minute long voice memo to my love blaming me for everything going wrong in my best friend's life, and that they believed they were perfectly right to have attacked me.

As of right now, I have two court dates. One to see if I will get the restraining order. And the other for my best friend's charges.

It is an extremely stressful time on me and the system and my roommate. I am failing all three of my classes as of right now, I have no money in the bank because I wasn't able to work for a couple weeks due to stress over this situation, and trying to deal with all of these legal issues.

I have been meaning to, and I will soon, update my description on here to erase my best friend from the description, and try to clear up what this blog is really all about.

I will keep posting mainly DID things, for obvious reasons, but I felt the need to get this off my chest because everyone in my life is completely overwhelmed too.

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