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wulfies-kpop-fanfics · 3 years

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One Photo → Mark Lee [8]

↳ Pairing: Mark Lee/Reader

↳ AU: Soulmate!AU - The first touch of two soulmates permanently scars their bodies.

↳ Warning: angst if you squint, I guess

↳ Word count: 2,294

↳ Chapters: Prelude | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | You Are Here! | 9

⁙ Summary: For an end of the year photography project, you’re tasked with taking a photograph for your favourite group, NCT127, and coincidentally, discover your soulmate.

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WEDNESDAY - 8 TWO YEARS LATER

The heart of Toronto would never compare to the magnificence of Times Square in New York, but the mass amount of billboards by the Eaton Center always managed to send you into awe during your nightly trek home from work.

You looked up toward the billboards with a sigh as you waited for your streetcar, barely managing to squeeze out a smile as you saw Mark’s visage splayed along one of the electronic spaces. The night sky was too polluted with the city’s light to display any real stars, but Mark’s face was more than enough for you. For the past week, you had seen NCT127’s faces sprawled across that billboard, part of promotions for their latest global comeback. It was a brief respite as you waited for your streetcar home every night, to finally know that the day was over and that you could relax.

It had been such a long time since you’ve seen Mark in person. Even though you texted him every day when the two of you were awake at the same time and video chatted whenever he had five minutes to himself, it always felt depressing to be without him. To not kiss or touch or hug at all was torture.

Everyone knew that it was deadly for soulmates to be apart for so long, that depression would set in and even worse physical illnesses were a real risk. It was hard to be so far away and over the past year you had been let go from multiple jobs because you were constantly sick, and therein lies the problem. You simply couldn’t afford the solution to your problem. So, depression and illness it was. It took everything you had to keep your head above water, to keep your dream alive and know that one day your heart wouldn’t ache as much as it does at the present moment.

After a 20 minute ride on the streetcar, you entered your building and took the stairs up to your little hole-in-the-wall apartment, the bare minimum that you could afford after Rhiannon paid her last half of the old place’s rent. A single bed, bath and a tiny kitchen that housed a little chair and round table. Thankfully, there was enough counter space that you could place a tiny TV to watch Netflix on while you ate. You were lucky that the house had a large living room, which doubled as your studio.

The coffee table was one of the only things left from your old apartment, along with the tote of Marvel films you kept hidden below it. Atop the table now rested all of your cameras, a drawing tablet and cards that you got in the mail from Mark from time-to-time, instead of notes, binders and textbooks. Sitting against the wall across from the table was a small bookshelf and an easel with a large frame sitting on it, housing the last portrait you finished the night before, ready to be shipped to the buyer.

After… somewhat enjoying a quick pot of white cheddar mac & cheese and watching a rerun of Supernatural on your little TV, you head into your room and sit at the desk next to your bed. After starting your computer, you opened up discord and sat back in your wheely chair, waiting for Rhiannon’s status to change to green. Wednesday was the day that she had to be up early for her job, so that meant time for a 10-minute call before you went to bed and she went to work.

Next to your computer was a copy of the photo you took two years ago, of your soulmate and all his friends beneath the shedding cherry trees in High Park. You smiled at it, the memory was fond but now faint in your mind. You reached forward to pick it up, but you stopped yourself. You knew that if you inspected the photo more, you’d only miss Mark and all your friends more.

There were times where your apartment became so quiet that it reminded you how alone you really were. You had lived with Rhiannon most of your life, and that meant there was at least some noise going on at all times. Whether she had her headset unplugged when she was listening to music or watching youtube videos, she was clattering about when helping you wash and dry the dishes, or if she was walking around and tripped on nothing. She was always talking, laughing, or doing something that always let you know that she was there. Now, you had nothing.

The silence is broken and you’re startled by the calling sound from discord, Rhiannon’s icon popping up on the top of your screen. You place your hand on your mouse and click the join call button, adjusting the webcam perched on the top of your desktop monitor.

"Hey," Rhiannon was the first to speak, yawning and reaching back to pull her hair into a perfect, tight ponytail.

"Hey," you respond, watching her closely and leaning your chin on your right palm. "How are you holding up?"

"I should be asking you that, Jesus, you look like the Hulk if he got the swine flu," she retorts, and even through the grainy quality you can tell she has sympathy written all over her face. "I'm doing great, we've got two cleanings today and a wisdom teeth removal, so that'll be fun."

You scoff and attempt to smile, "I'm fiiiiine, other than the fact that I'm here and you're there, 13 hours in the future and at least one ocean in between us and an entire continent and a half. I'd say that constitutes abandonment."

"I got the getting while it was good and you know that," she stuck her tongue out at you. "You need to keep saving so that you can fly your ass out here." She squinted at the screen. "You really need to drink like… an entire bottle of nyquil, dude."

"If only it were that easy," you groan. "I don't even have a photographer's position yet. All I get is sitting at a desk and responding to emails… even with my head start, I can't find a good job and I barely make enough to keep living in Toronto." You stick out your tongue back at her for the nyquil comment. "As if I haven't been hiding a bottle of dayquil in my desk for the past week."

Rhiannon stopped what she was doing and leaned toward her camera. "You know why you can't get the jobs you want," her voice is soft, empathetic. "Mark is having trouble, too. He's been doing a lot of half days, so I don't know how they plan to do their tour with him being constantly sick."

You looked away. "I can't afford to take any more time off… I don't want to lose this job. If I do, I'm not sure that I'll be able to make my rent."

"You're going to need to take time eventually,” Rhiannon stated firmly. "If you don't get at least some of your strength back you're going to end up in the hospital like I did. Remember?"

You glanced back at your screen, watching Donghyuck wander around in the backdrop. You were beyond jealous that they got to live together.

"Maybe. I just miss you. More than I miss having a clear passageway in my nose."

Rhiannon smiled sadly at you. "I miss you too, everyone does. You'll be here soon, I promise. I gotta go, sleep well and drink plenty of water, okay?"

"Okay."

Rhiannon waved at you before her screen went dark, ending the call. The call was shorter than usual, so you presumed that she had woken up late. You zoned out a little, acutely aware that the apartment had gone silent again. You didn't want to cry, to give up after surviving for so long. You had made it this far without letting everything get to you.

You knew that your deteriorating health was because of your separation from Mark and companies saw that as a liability, even though laws had come into place last year to protect separated soulmates from workplace discrimination. You felt a tiny ping of hope when Rhiannon said you would be able to move soon, but you knew she was lying to make you feel better.

Feeling lethargic, you stand and make your way to the dresser in the corner of your room, stripping and throwing your clothes about the room. You open up a drawer and pull out a pair of sweatpants and the softest t-shirt you could find and slipped them on, wandering to your bed and slowly climbing in. You slipped off your glasses, placing them on your desk and reached forward to turn off your lamp.

You hugged your polar bear and tried to get comfortable, hoping to fall asleep quickly. You supposed you could call into work when you woke up; at least your manager was nice enough to understand when you needed a day off. You rolled over, tossed and turned, but sleep wouldn't come. Not while your phone was constantly buzzing.

"What the hell," you mumble to yourself, untangling yourself from the knot of blankets you had tied yourself in to reach for your phone. Your lock screen lit up with a photo of Mark, one you had taken two years ago of him standing in Union Station.

[Rhiannon (5)]

She sure knew how to type quickly.

Rhiannon: I'm on my way to work, I'll let you know when I'm there

Rhiannon: sorry our call was so short, I was running a little late

Rhiannon: I talked to Mark last night, did he say anything?

Rhiannon: are you asleep already? It's been like 5 minutes

Rhiannon: ok you're basically just ignoring me at this point

You: calm down bro I was getting in my pyjamas

Rhiannon: I forgot how slow you get when you're sick, I could die of boredom waiting for you to respond

You: hardy har

Rhiannon: so have you talked to mark today?

You: around lunchtime he woke up from a nightmare but I assume hes busy right now

Rhiannon: Things have been pretty bad around now, I think you might have guessed that

You: Yeah, things aren’t really that great here either, but I’m more worried about Mark… have they given him time off?

Rhiannon: Not much besides half days. He’s really been missing you. Maybe you should message him and see if he’s not busy

You: Yeah, maybe. I feel really guilty

Rhiannon: I know. I still could help you buy your plane ticket, you know. You: You know I can’t do that, I can’t take more from you than I have already. I owe you too much.

No response.

You: Rhiannon I’m sorry

You: Come on, you can’t have scrubbed in that fast!

You sighed, staring at your screen and still seeing no response from your best friend. You took a deep breath in and immediately regretted it when you began coughing up a lung, but at least you weren't upchucking your dinner. Instead, you decided to send a text to Mark.

You: mark, you there?

You close your mind for a moment, thinking that maybe going to bed even later than usual would just make you more sick in the end, but you really needed to know what was going on.

Mark: yeah I'm here babe, what's wrong, can't sleep?

You: no not really… do you have time to talk for a bit?

Mark: yeah, my legs gave out during our first practice so I'm taking a break

You: I'm sorry

Mark: it's not your fault (Y/N)

You: it kind of is, we're both dying because I can't afford to move

Mark: (Y/N), we're not dying, and it's okay, you'll be able to move soon

You: face it you know that we are… I haven't felt this horrible in a long time and I've thrown up three times today

Mark didn't respond right away.

Mark: why are you putting yourself down so much

You: I just… have a lot of regrets right now

Mark: what do you mean

You licked your lips and rolled over in bed, wondering if you should tell him.

Mark: are you okay?

You: no, I feel like this would make you hate me

Mark: I could never hate you and you know that. Tell me what's been bothering you.

You: For the past while… Rhiannon’s been offering me money. It’s honestly not much because everyone’s struggling nowadays, but it would be enough for me to fly to Korea, and I’ve felt so guilty about it that I kept saying no and she stopped offering

Mark: You mean that you could have been here faster? You: and now I feel that saying no was a really bad idea… and I.. I can’t afford anything, barely even food and now I hear that you’re even more sick than I am and I feel terrible

You: I don’t know what to do

Mark: It’s okay, (Y/N), really. I know how hard it is to take money from someone else, I’m not mad at you

You: Really?

Mark: I’m just disappointed that I have to keep waiting. You’ll be able to move soon, I promise, I promise, I promise

You: Are you going to be okay

Mark: As long as you are. Take care of yourself, okay? I’ll be there for you the second you land. Okay?

You: Okay. I… I should probably get some sleep now. Mark: Rest well, I love you

You: I love you too

You sighed, placing your phone on your desk and turning over in your bed. It was time.

#mark lee #mark lee x reader #mark x reader #nct127 #nct #nctu #nct scenarios #nct imagines #reader insert #fanfiction #kpop fanfictions #kpop scenarios #kpop imagines

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insomniac-dot-ink · 4 years

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The Long Bus Ride

Genre: supernatural horror

Words: 5.6k

Summary: When her late night bus stops in the middle of a rolling fog cloud Frieda starts to worry. Then she starts seeing words being written in the condensation on her window and she truly gets unnerved.

A group of strangers must now try to get through the night as something seems to be outside.

content warning: body horror

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The bus was mostly empty that evening. That was typical with rising fares and the fact most people would have tried to be home hours ago. It was too early for the late night party crowd and too late for the normal working crowd.

The bus driver was a big guy named Ted, I knew him by his portly size and baby-smooth clean shaven face. He had youthful thick brown hair grown a little long probably for vanity’s sake and a large pot belly that sagged over the shiny tight black belt around his waist.

He always nodded at me when I got on and always stopped for people when they were running to catch the 431. He wasn’t always on time like the other bus driver-- Nory, but he also honked his horn a little less than him too.

I flashed my bus pass at Ted that evening with our usual nod and a lingering achy bitterness settling in my core. Deirdre’s daughter had come to visit again that afternoon and there was always too much nasty energy in the house on those days. I liked to keep things neat, both personally and professionally. I kept my purse organized into tiny pockets and my clothes sorted in bins by season and I never mentioned anything personal at my job.

Everything had its place, but it was harder to be politely indifferent to the household when they were throwing barbed words at each and asking my opinion. It bothered me to have to be anything other than “day nurse Frieda” to them. It blurred our relationship when they turned to me and said “tell my mother she needs to finalize her will” and so on.

Of course, Deirdre should and did need to finalize her will, but expressing that broke far too many boundaries in a messy way.

I was ready to be home an hour ago by the time I walked to the bus stop with the sun already carefully nestled behind the city skyline. The purple of a gloomy summer night was heavy across the horizon and I didn’t even both to check my phone watch. I knew my Friday night was almost already over.

My feet ached as I turned to walk down the aisle of the 431 bus headed to Oakland. My chin was sinking toward my chest like a balloon tug insistently downward by a toddler. An older man sat near the front.

He was a skinny, wiry man with a thick mustache and clothes with spots of what I hoped was motor oil on his patterned button-up and workman pants. He wore heavy boots and watched me with small eyes under enormous eyebrows that could have probably watched me as well for the sheer size of them. He had no bags or anything with him and he sat like there was a drill sergeant ready to bark at him if he so much as slouched a little.

No one else sat in the seats near the front designated for the elderly and pregnant. The seats themselves were blue and yellow with party designs on them like you might see at a tacky bowling alley. It was an older bus that hadn’t even been upgraded to “green” standards yet and rumbled like a thunder storm wherever it went.

In the middle seats was a mother and child. She was a middle-aged black woman with long beaded braids tied back in a ponytail and wore a bright pink shirt and a slouchy pair of comfortable looking jeans. Her daughter looked around 9 or 10 and had her hair pulled back in a tight bun at the top of her head. She wore a hoodie over what looked like leggings and carried a sports bag with her.

The mother was probably picking her up from something like ballet practice. The daughter was leaning on the mom while she absently stroked her head and looked out the window. Something about the easy intimacy of it made me look away quickly.

One seat up and across from the mother and daughter was a gently snoring man. He had a wild beard, knit cap, and fingerless gloves. I could tell by the smell alone that he was homeless and had probably been sleeping on the bus for hours now. However, I had smelled worse and his jacket and jeans weren’t as grungy or disheveled as they could have been.

Two other people sat in the back, but luckily neither of them had claimed the final spot in the corner of the bus near the window. A young woman was one chair ahead of my seat, a short white girl who looked around college age. I wrinkled my nose at her because she was holding a paper cup with what I assumed was coffee and her hands were shaking.

She had on a long skirt with mud splotches at the bottom and a pale blue shirt with a mustard stain on the front. Her long auburn hair was tied back into a ratty knot at the back of her neck. She had on huge glasses dangerously close to the edge of her nose and she was staring out the window with the look of someone trying to count the yellow street lines and failing.

Across from her in the other corner of the bus was a high-school aged looking young man with a huge bag blocking the seat next to him. He was Asian with ink-black hair that he had spiked, and wore all black with dark ripped jeans and a band t-shirt. His ears were covered by silver earrings draped over the lobes like angry criss-crossing Christmas decorations.

He had a tattoo of what appeared to be a wing on his neck and smeared eyeliner around his indifferent gaze. He was wearing small earbuds and listening to something with an audible thrumming base.

I ignored both the messy girl and the punk boy as I took my seat and got out my book for the forty minute ride home. It was another pirate romance story-- which my sister recommended because she assumed she knew my taste. The action scenes were fine, but the actual tension between the main couple was blase at best.

I had to make sure no one sat behind me during my bus rides home though because I didn’t need anyone looking over my shoulder and finding the words “he touched my wet throbbing womanhood.” To say the least, the erotic parts of the novels were not that good either.

It was better than scrolling my phone right then though. I hated work emails more than I hated mud trailed onto the carpet in my house or slow-walkers on the sidewalk.

I peeked out the windows sometimes to get a look at the city as the street lights and building lights and headlights erupted one by one in a pale cascade. We were getting closer to the Oakland Bay bridge and the lights threaded along the beams like spiderwebs of frantic energy all captured and blooming at once. I had an affection for the city despite being trapped there.

I hadn’t actually come to California to be a geriatric nurse again. I already spent ten years working as one in Louisiana when an old college friend had called me up and asked if I wanted to join his startup. It sounded like a fairy tale: join an up and coming tech company and watch as you get boosted past “middle class” into something glamorous and decadent. Kitt knew me and knew I was good with people and offered to let me run the PR department.

Of course, I hadn’t joined for the money or the fact I was that interested in PR. I had been working in a nursing home for almost a decade by then and it had started to wear on me. I liked listening to people, especially people who were made of stories, and the job had originally suited me fine. But there was this… shadow over it all that started to eat at me.

A shadow of loss, of empty words, empty places where a sharp mind used to be, empty reassurances that meant nothing, brief glimpses of grief so intense that it split people in two. That shadow loomed larger and larger the longer I stayed. It chased me as my favorite grandma’s hands started to shake and my favorite patient stopped being able to play piano. I saw it in how some of them stopped meeting my eyes when the months dragged on and their time was coming. I saw in the way they stopped remembering my name or their own.

No. I didn’t want to work as an elderly care nurse any longer.

Of course, I was also 33 and single, and a change sounded good. So I moved all the way across the country, got the smallest apartment I had ever lived in, and dared to be a little bold. I wore brighter colors, spoke out more in meetings, cooked spicier foods, I went on dates with women for the first time.

But all good things come to an end. Most startups don’t make it, no matter how many twitter algorithms you try to “hack.”

I looked out the window and ignored my phone as it buzzed. There were other reasons I didn’t check my phone on the bus as well. Cynthia still wanted to meet now and then-- to see if we could make it work after all. I ignored the buzz.

I was lost to the erotic adventures of a very loud and very incompetent heroine when I heard a soft gasp come from in front of me. I usually had a rule of ignoring everyone else on public transport, but there was something about the sharp surprised sound that made me look up.

We were on the bridge now and it was damp and dark out. I blinked a couple times as I noticed a thick cloud seeming to descend. Fog was all but normal in San Francisco so I decided to go back to reading my book.

A small murmur passed between the daughter and mother in the middle of the bus, “it’s alright…”

I looked up again and the cloud was quickly eating up the view and making the road ahead look shrouded and strange. Cars around us had already turned on their headlights and I could almost feel the bus slowing down as visibility ahead quickly disappeared.

I wrinkled my brow. I didn’t know much about weather, but we usually only saw fog like this in the mornings. I looked to the other side of the road and noticed that I didn’t see any cars coming toward us.

“Look mom,” I heard a small voice say and the little girl was pointing out toward the ocean. I tried to look out the window and make out the sea too, but only saw that same thick white. It was dense and shapeless around us and the bus was slowing down further.

“Where are the lights?” I snapped my head around and the punk kid had taken his earbuds out. His face was even more stony than before and his eyes were narrowed toward where the bridge would be.

I set my jaw as I realized I didn’t see any of the glowing yellow lights that should be at least breaking through parts of the fog. Even worse, I checked ahead of us and behind, I had never known the Oakland bridge to ever be empty.

There were no more cars on either side of us.

I gulped. The bus was almost at a standstill.

“Hey!” The messy college girl holding the coffee called up from the back. “What’s going on?”

“Yeah, what’s the meaning of this? We’ve all got places to be.” The working class man stood up at the front.

Ted the driver didn’t turn around and there was something about his figure that sat wrong.

“Where the fuck are the lights?” The punk kid was standing up now and craning his neck to look outside.

“Excuse me, sir, is there a problem?” The mother had dragged her daughter into her lap and the little girl was looking directly out the window at something with the utmost focus.

I shifted uncomfortably in place and watched the scene unfold. Something cold was trailing down my spine. I liked to keep things neat, and this felt like it was about to pick up my wardrobe and dump it outside onto my muddy lawn.

A couple voices kept demanding to know why we had stopped, and the homeless man somehow kept dozing. “Ooh,” the little girl touched the window and suddenly my eyes were drawn back to my own window.

The fog was dense to the point of nothingness, and beyond the fog seemed to be an even thicker night. I furrowed my brow and drew back into myself. Condensation was gathering on the other side of the window-- the type you might see when your warm breath touches glass.

A thin layer of white was spreading across the window and then I saw what the young girl was “oohing” at.

“Everyone, step back from the windows.” I heard myself saying, reasonably, in as a controlled manner as I could.

Little droplets had now formed on the other side of the glass and the white haze was thick and tangible. That’s not why I jumped back though. A perfectly formed fingerprint was pressed into the condensation there. A clear oval that was dragging down, down, down the window and creating one long, straight line.

There was nothing behind that finger. There was no body or hand or anything attached at all. Only the imprint that was meticulously drawing downward.

“What the fuck?!” The punk kid scrambled back from his window as well.

“What’s going on?” The college student said in a panic as more little finger tips pressed against the glass. Hands, but not hands. My heart squeezed in my chest and a flurry of possibilities went through my head: I was in a coma, I was asleep, I was asleep in a coma. I was dead.

I was dead and hell is a bus ride.

“Ah!” I jerked my head around again and saw the old man in heavy work pants standing by the front with his mouth wide and eyes as round as silver dollars. He was staring at the bus driver in the way one stares at their parents declaring a divorce.

“Ted…” I muttered and forced myself forward. I wrapped my hands around the bus poles with each step and the metal was almost freezing at each touch. I stumbled across the long space.

“Mommy, what is it?” The window next to the little ballerina was absolutely covered in those floating strokes carefully applied by invisible fingers. They were drawing spirals and zig-zags and something that I dearly hoped wasn’t a letter of the alphabet.

I made my way past the sleeping homeless man who still managed not to wake and all the way to the front of the bus where the old man was staring at Ted.

“He’s-He’s--” He stuttered at me and fell back against a metal pole next to the door.

“It’s alright, I’m a nurse.” I took a deep steadying breath. I had seen corpses plenty of times in my life and I knew how to keep myself focused on the tasks in front of me. Ted was slumped over and unmoving.

I reached for his arm first and picked up his limp wrist. I exhaled the second I reached his pulse and felt a faint thrum there. His skin was clammy and far too cold, but he was breathing. “Don’t look at the eyes.” The old man grabbed my shoulder. “Don’t look!”

I was never very good at averting my eyes when facing car crashes or jump scares in horror movies. He had a pulse. I needed to check for head injuries. I glanced at his face. Something was dripping down his cheeks in a steady flow.

I reached and tipped his chin up. I swallowed my scream before it could escape. His eyes were gummed shut with something black and bubbling. It was like tar that held both of his eyelids clamped closed and water was leaking out of the seams.

Droplets beaded down his cheeks and when I let his head fall again it leaked like rain down upon his lap. I stopped myself from heaving at the sight and looked downward. His foot was still on the gas, but we weren’t moving forward.

“Let’s go.” I ushered the old man away from Ted’s body. Something told me we shouldn’t touch it or be too close to it. We retreated back toward the other seats.

“E,” the little girl was tracing a letter in the condensation. Something outside was writing the letter E and then another letter next to it. “N.”

I walked down the center of the bus in a daze and the others looked at me. The disheveled college student stumbled toward us. “Is the driver alright?” I just shook my head and couldn’t find the words to explain that one of us was surely dreaming up a nightmare.

The punk kid was sitting in the center of the back seats clutching his bag to his chest and his earbuds were back in.

“Little girl.” A voice barked. I turned and suddenly I noticed that the homeless man had sat up and his clear blue eyes were darting around the space frantically. “Don’t touch the windows.” His voice was deep and smoke-beaten. “Again, again, again.” He repeated, “Don’t touch. Again.”

I looked back to the shapes being drawn in the window panes.

They were impossibly strange, but no sounds came from the drag of their fingers. In fact, I didn’t pick up any noises from the city at all: no honking, no sirens, no hums of life. I groped for the right words to try to make sense of this.

“Little girl!” The homeless man said sharply and he looked toward the closest window. “Don’t.” “Sheryl…” Her mother warned, but the little girl, Sheryl, kept tracing the letters the Things were drawing.

I watched in a trance, “T.” She said softly. “E.” I was watching the tip of her finger move when I caught the first glimpse.

My whole body froze like a jolt of ice pouring down my spine. Just beyond the invisible hand was a face submerged in the fog-- faint and shifting. It was hard to make out, but two black eyes drooped like runny eggs down it’s sunken cheeks and a mouth grotesquely frozen in a scream took shape for just a moment.

I grabbed for the mother, “everyone!” I found the energy to fill my words with urgency, “get away from the windows!” They all looked to me and I mustered every bit of my authority, “NOW!”

Reluctant shuffling followed. “Wait!” Sheryl protested as her mom picked her up and carried her to the center of the bus. “Wait!” She repeated, “it wasn’t finished.”

The fingers outside became more frantic as we retreated into the center of the bus as far away from the windows as we could get. They clawed and dragged and I could make out more and more faces, some with three fingers and some with seven. Faint outlines of the hands and faces morphed and danced just out in the darkness.

They never stood still or seemed to stop shifting and twisting as if unnaturally alive.

A shudder went through the small group as we huddled together like penguins being accosted by the arctic breeze. The punk boy was the last to reach us as he clung to his huge bag and entered the loose circle we created.

The old man was shifty-eyed and looked the most on edge. I kept an eye on him, as well as the homeless man who was hunched over into himself. “Again,” he muttered to himself. “Again.” The moments after we gathered were long and strained before anyone dared to speak and break the ghastly immense silence. “Something was wrong with the driver,” the old man finally announced as he looked to the fingers, “something is wrong here.” “Very wrong.” The college student echoed.

“Duh,” The pink kid said back with his teeth clenched.

“Perhaps it will be over soon.” I added softly, mostly speaking to myself.

“What’s everyone’s names?” I looked up as the homeless man finally broke himself upright again.

“What? Why?” The old man practically growled.

“Everyone here has got to have a name.” The homeless man’s blue eyes were still frantic and traveling faster than I thought they should back and forth across the space. “Got to have a name.”

“How do we know that will--” “Angela.” The mother spoke up. “And this is Sheryl. Have you seen this before?” She looked to him as if he must often see buses descend into hell before.

“I’m Rick.” He said without hesitating, “Angela, Sheryl,” he pointed to the college student as if to pose a question.

“Laura.” She said softly. Her hands were still shaking, but probably for different reasons now.

“Angela, Sheryl, Laura,” Rick almost sang and then prompted the old man to speak.

“I’m Drew.” The old man said hesitantly after a moment.

“And I’m Frieda.” I added as the punk kid spoke as well.

“I’m Jinu.”

A silence spread and I didnt know what I expected to happen from swapping names with a group of strangers. Sheryl was frowning deeply. She whispered, “We shouldn’t have left where they can see us.”

That made me look back to the people I was stuck with and I opened my mouth to ask Sheryl if she was alright.

Bring

We jumped as one when a sudden and angry sound crackled and shook the space.

Bring, bring

It was like the sound of an old phone back from the 90s. A classic, angry noise that ate up the whole area with its loud buzzing undertone.

Bring!

I felt my pocket and felt something vibrating there.

“It’s our phones…” Jinu said in a hush.

My phone was ringing. And I knew we were being hailed.

Bring, bring, bring

I felt sick.

Laura was the first to dig out her phone from her bright yellow purse and hold it in her hands.

Bring, bring

The iphone vibrated and almost shook its way out of her hands. It’s screen was completely black and something, something was making it ring. “What’s,” I couldn’t contain the question any longer. “What’s causing this?” No one answered me. Drew took out his phone next, a first generation android it looked like with a cracked screen that was just as black as the last one. Slowly, everyone except for Rick, extracted our phones and watched as they made the same cry together over and over again: bring, bring, bring, bring, bring.

I stared into the shiny black surface of mine. It was perfectly smooth and almost… too dark. A dark I had never seen before and reflected nothing back. It felt like it was eating the light up.

“Maybe,” Laura spoke up. “Maybe we could call the police.”

“It’s a little late for that honey.” Angela said with a forlorn sigh.

“Why are they ringing?” I asked dumbly.

“We shouldn’t answer.” Jinu growled and tossed his phone all the way to the other side of the bus.

Rick nodded, “Do. Not. Answer.” “But…” I frowned deeply. “We can’t stay here.” “We can’t answer either.” Rick said in his same husky, withered tone. Drew nodded and threw his phone away, I followed suit mostly to stop looking at the shiny blackness of the screen. Angela seemed to almost break hers as she chucked it away as well, and Laura was the last one. She gripped it tightly and looked up.

“What do you think those are?” She finally voiced our fears and looked back to the fingers and morphed faces. “Are they… are they what’s calling us?” I shrugged, “does it matter?” I glared, “we can’t risk it. Throw it away.” “What happened to the driver?” Laura whispered and I just shook my head. She threw her phone away.

We all looked at each other carefully, and then we waited.

--------

Time ticked by with an anonymous meaningless face. On some level I think most of us expected to wake up soon, or for the sun to rise or to have God yelled “pranked!” from somewhere up in the sky. At least, that’s what I was waiting for.

The bus was still, just as cold and faceless as before, immobile as it had ever been. Alone in the middle of the bridge and alone in no place at all. I had a switch knife I carried around that I now held in my clenched fists and the world stood still.

Empty, except for the constant, unending sound of the phones: bring, bring, bring. They chorused and buzzed on the other side of the bus as we huddled in the center. It was endless. People did what they could to distract themselves from their impossible voices.

Jinu put his headphones back in and turned them all the way up. Laura covered her ears with both hands and rocked back and forth in a ball. Rick gazed unseeingly up at the ceiling with a deep frown on his face. Drew was drawing something on his palm as if doing math equations on his skin.

I distracted myself by talking to the mother and daughter. “You want to be a prima ballerina when you grow up?” I asked softly as I watched Sheryl’s small face. Angela was still stroking her daughter’s head and holding her close as the minutes ticked by.

Bring, bring

“I want to dance in The Swan Lake,” she said factually. “I’m not good enough yet, but I will be.” I beamed. “I believe you.”

Bring, bring

“What do you do?” Angela asked and there was something forced about it.

“Nurse.” I said simply. “Though I came here for an app startup of all things.”

“Oh?”

Bring, bring, bring I wasn’t usually one for idle-chit-chat, but a damp coldness was working its way through my chest. I had already noticed that Laura was shivering fiercely.

“Yeah, we were going to change the world or something he said,” I rolled my eyes, “but it didn’t turn out that way of course.”

“What kind of app was it?” Sheryl was still looking to her window, but she seemed present enough.

“Oh, a ride sharing one. It was supposed to be a public minded service called ‘Democracy Bus.’ It was meant to help people get to the polls on voting days for free or get to civil rally's or debate parties,” I shook my head. “It never got off the ground.” Angela opened her mouth to respond, but seemed to be drained of some force within her.

Bring, bring

“That settles it.” Drew stood up with a hardened look on his face. “If I run I might make it to the other side of the bridge in a few minutes.” He nodded, “we were more than halfway to the other side by the time we stopped.”

We openly stared at the old man. Jinu took his headphones out, and Laura uncurled herself. Rick kept looking at the ceiling.

Bring, bring, bring

My mouth became a hard line, “We don’t want to let any of those things in here…” I whispered.

Drew dusted himself off, “I only need someone to pull the door open for a second. And beside,” his lips curled up, “we can’t exactly stay here and starve.” My skin prickled and I didn’t mention the fact I hadn’t felt hungry since the moment we stopped. I hadn’t felt thirsty either, or anything at all. Just cold. And damp.

“We’re not going out there.” Angela hissed first. “It’s too much of a risk.” She held her daughter tighter to her.

“Does anyone else have any ideas then?” Drew seethed. We were quiet.

Bring, bring

“Maybe we should answer one.” Laura said again, “just to see what happens.” She cocked her head to the side, “maybe they’ll let us go.”

“That sounds like an even worse idea than his.” Jinu said flatly.

“Don’t. Answer. The. Phones.” Rick finally joined the conversation and haltingly declared.

“Why not?” Drew narrowed his eyes icily, “What do you know?” Rick looked back up to the ceiling and set his jaw. Drew took a menacing step toward him, “What does he know?!”

“Oh,” Sheryl pointed, “Look. They’re trying again... E.” I looked up just in time to see the fingers all in one motion write the letter “E” over and over again on each window. I swallowed thickly. “We should all cover our eyes.” I announced, “We need to wait this out.”

Bring, bring, bring! Drew shook his head. “We just gotta open the door for a moment. I’ll go get help.” Angela looked like she was ready to pounce on him. “I told you! It’s too risky, there’s children aboard.”

“A child who keeps trying to communicate with them!”

The fingers were now writing “N” over and over again on every surface of the windows that there were. “N” She read softly.

“Guys,” I repeated and my voice rose, “I think we should cover our eyes.” “T,” Sheryl muttered and I dove for her first.

“Cover your eyes!” I screeched and slapped a hand over her gaze so that she couldn’t read it anymore.

Bring, bring!

“This is crazy!” Jinu started stumbling backward away from the group.

“Don’t leave us!” I reached for him as well.

“No!” Rick shouted, “I told you not to!”

I turned just on time to see Laura crawling toward her phone. She pressed on the screen with one finger and brought it to her face, “hello?” “E.” Sheryl said as my fingers slipped and the whole world came crashing down around us.

“Get back! Get away from her!” Rick pushed the three of us he could reach toward the back of the bus. Jinu let out a wordless scream and Drew reached for Laura.

“Young lady?” Laura’s face was completely contorted as she stood up. Her mouth opened in a grotesque snarl as her jaw jutted out awkwardly to the side. Her eyes were lifeless and started to leak drips of water down her cheeks.

She moved all at once-- like strings were unevenly tied to her knees. She took one jerky, tin step forward and then another.

“Drew,” I hissed and reached for him. “Get back.” “She’s so young,” he muttered. “She’s so young. Can you hear me?” The water was running down Laura’s cheeks like a faucet now and I couldn’t look away as her eyes sunk into their sockets. The white disappeared first into some unseen blackness. I pulled Drew back with all my physical strength and Laura took another step forward.

Could we fight her? Could we fight these things?

I took my knife out and slashed the air in front of us as she took her unpleasant, rigid steps forward. Her eyes had all but sunken into her head and her hanging mouth was now dripping water that smelled of something like mold and damp earth.

“Stay back,” I hissed and slashed the air again. “I’ll kill you.” To my surprise she turned. She faced one of the windows, the one that Sheryl has been sitting at only hours before back in the sunlight world. She touched the glass tentatively and the fingers repeated their last letter over and over again. Sheryl said a final ringing letter, “R.” ENTER.

I hugged myself and held my breath, bracing for the worst.

The windows did not break open though and the distorted faces did not slither inward. Laura got up onto the seat and started pressing into the window. Her eyes were completely gone and her ears and mouth and eyes were all steadily running over with streams of water.

It was wrong. It was hard to watch as she hands pressed gradually through the glass in an impossible manner.

It was a slow and painful process as she joined the mist. Hands grabbed her and pulled at her, her hair came loose and fell down her shoulders, and one of the people beside me started sobbing.

“It’s taking her…”

Someone started humming, Jinu I think. It was a sad and reluctant song that carried soberingly through the space. He hummed a funeral march just as she was tugged through the window and off into the white expanse with no name.

Our phones stopped ringing all at once and the fog began to lift as if in a dream. The next procession was mechanical and done in complete silence. We picked up our cracked phones and returned to our seats.

I didn’t know what compelled us, but I knew it had to be done. I knew we had to return to our exact same spots.

I took my seat at the back of the bus with my head bowed downward and Jinu sat across from me with his eyes focused on the skyline. Angela and Sheryl sat close and fixed in place. Rick went back to sleep. Drew sat closest to the driver and watched Ted sit up again.

Lights appeared beside us. Sounds of cars and bikers and voices reappeared. Headlights blinked on the other side of the road. Ted started the engine again. And we drove.

The bus rumbled onward through the beautiful dark night and city.

The only sign that we had ever been trapped in some place beyond here was the fact that my face was wet with tears and that there was an empty seat in front of me. I couldn’t remember her name though.

I looked down at my phone and I had 127 missed calls from “UNKNOWN” and a very brief text message from the same number. All it read was “again” and “enter.”

I closed my eyes and figured maybe it was time to move back home.

#writeblr #horror #writers on tumblr #supernatural #short story #original story #my work #creepy story #cw: body horror

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illuxions-x · 3 years

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A Little Death

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I’m not sure just a little story concept I came up with at 3 am and ran with. enjoy.

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Nothing this bad was supposed to happen here. Ever.

It wasn’t me who came up with the idea of writing everything down. I can’t remember who did, but as soon as it was mentioned everyone else seemed to like the idea too.

I'm not sure what they expect me to write exactly, but I was voted the most capable to do so out of everyone, which of course I disagree with but I don’t really hate the idea of documenting this. So if no one else will I guess it can’t hurt to give it a crack.

Eva had to dig around her room for a couple minutes to find a journal, which she must have forgotten she had because there were no more than four small sketches we had to rip out for the book to be completely empty.

I tried sitting in the living room to write, I thought maybe being around everyone would give me more inspiration to write but all that happened was everyone decided to crowd around me, all staring at the blank paper in anticipation as though whatever I wrote would impact the universe forever. I couldn’t stand it, how do they expect me to write with them hovering over me like that.

There is a reason why I was the one chosen though, because even though I have the messiest handwriting that absolutely no one can read, I'm good with getting down the small things, like the feelings.

But I want anyone reading this to know that this is me writing about my feelings and my feelings only, not Eva’s and not Noah’s. My feelings, my experiences. That's the only way this is going to work.

The only one out of all 9 of us that lived out of town was Eva, a sweet farm girl that likes to bake. We’re all lucky to be friends with her, I’m not sure if we would even be alive if we didn’t have a place out of town to stay.

I’ll be forever grateful to Eva for that.

I found a spot on the balcony, kind of huddled up in the corner. I even brought a blanket to make sure I didn’t get cold.

It's a nice spot, the balcony is where I usually have a smoke in the morning, usually with warm tea and a book every now and then. The deck squeaks wherever you step and the railings are slowly rotting away, someone will probably have to fix them soon before one of us ends up falling over the edge.

There isn’t much to do here though, everyone kind of just sits around when they’re not on watch. A few people have just finished building a garden on the roof but we need to make a small trip to a house to get seeds because I don’t think anyone thought we would even get this far ahead.

The view is nice here, the property has a bunch of gum trees surrounding it which gives us just a little bit more cover, but god do the kookaburras get loud in the morning, I honestly don’t think I’ve slept in past 7 or 8 am in months.

There’s a creek a couple hundred meters from ‘the shack’. That’s what we’ve nicknamed Eva’s, it fits pretty well too. The house is pretty run down, been here a couple decades but I think it’s the perfect place to hideout.

I know I should be writing about other things, but I feel like I have to set the scene or maybe if you’re reading this you’ve already skipping my monologue and gotten to the actual beginning, which hasn’t been written yet but it’s probably there for you.

Hopefully.

It’s been pretty boring here the last few weeks, and this has been the best idea anyone's had in a while. I feel a little guilty I have to admit, Noah seemed to really like the idea of writing everything down and I could tell he secretly wanted to be the one writing. He is a good writer too, he hasn’t said anything yet and I doubt he will.

He’s too nice to say anything, so it will probably eat away at him until he either decides to write his own version, or forget about it and do something else.

Noah is a sweetheart really, but he wasn't with us from the very beginning, he came a little bit later, so I guess it made sense that he wasn't the one chosen.

There's not much more to now than to get into the ‘story’, I’m not really sure how to do it so I’m going to start in the beginning and work my way from there to now, which should be fine if my memory is working fine.

I’m going to start in Psychology class, double period on a Friday, God it feels like a lifetime since I’ve been in a classroom and it's not like I ever hated school, it's just a bit of you don't know what you have until it's gone.

By the start of the second session an announcement was made over the loudspeaker, the principle calling a lockdown. This was odd for more than one reason.

The first being this is Australia, everyone doesn’t walk around with guns freely. The second is I haven’t had a real lockdown since grade 3 when some crackhead walked into school with a cricket bat trying to hit tiny fairies.

So we all just assumed it was a drill, even the teacher did. That was at least until Mrs Reece got an email.

I remember her asking the class who had gotten the COVID vaccine, at least half the class put their hands up, a couple of them being my friends, Ellie Newton, Emily Jackson, Jake Cross and Lucas Walker.

They were taken out of the class by some other teacher, I can't remember his name but he taught P.E which I didn’t do, obviously. He had a whole group of kids with him, saying anyone that was vaccinated had to go to the gym immediately, so when everyone left there weren't many people in the room-no more than 15 year 11’s.

But I never saw that group of people again.

It only took a couple minutes and the remaining people were moved to the second gym, the old one that we only used when the new one was being used for something else. I just remember it being full of students who were all crowded in small groups all as clueless as we were.

The remaining 500 or so people of all year levels were told to sit, they set up the projector and started playing the news. I remember saying something to Sarah next to me along the lines of, ‘wow all this for the queen finally dying’. It was funny at the time I promise.

But instead of showing the royal family the screen showed people running around the city in what I can only describe as anarchy, cars were on fire and there were just bodies laying there on the road like roadkill.

It didn’t take long for someone to say it though, we were waiting for someone to shout it.

‘Zombie Apocalypse!’

I still get shivers even now, thinking about how quickly everything changed.

The news broadcast explained that the only people that were infected currently were people who got the vaccine, and it only took a few moments for things to click in my brain.

Everyone else in my family got the vaccine except me, Mum and Mad got theirs so they could go back to work, and my younger sister had to get hers done to be accepted back at kindergarten.

Not to mention the vaccine wasn’t cheap, $40 per dose. So I decided I could live without it for an extra week to two to make sure we had enough money for bills and food.

Maybe my parents being broke was what saved my life.

Then the police came and told us we couldn’t leave, which only made me want to leave even more. I felt trapped while my family was at home turning into mindless brain eaters.

I guess that was where our plan began, none of us wanted to stay there in the old gym that smelled too much like sweaty socks. The plan wasn’t even that good, we only got out by dumb luck that 10 police officers couldn’t keep tabs on everyone.

So we all went to the toilets a couple minutes apart from each other, climbing out of the small window. It was a miracle we all even fit.

I don’t know what happened to the kids that stayed in that gym, but I haven’t seen another kid from school since that day, well not alive at least.

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kasdeyathebitterwoman · 4 years

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A Ninja Warrior Love Story - Part 1

Welcome back to the world of Lily and Henry! Honestly, I have no idea how I ended up deleting my old account, but I’m genuinely more upset that I had no backups of my original work. That aside, I am beginning the slow process of rewriting my original series, A Ninja Warrior Love Story. I hope you enjoy it!

Let me know of any other imagines or one-shots you’d like to see! Also, if you’d like to be added to the tag list, just send me a message!

CW: none

Word Count: 2,230

The Story: Lily is a single woman working at a parkour gym when she meets Henry Cavill. Are they meant to fall in love or is it just a one-time thing?

At 4:30 in the morning, Lily’s alarm went off. She rolled over in her small bed and smacked her alarm to turn it off. Groaning, Lily pushed herself out of bed. With two steps, she cleared the small apartment bedroom and entered the even smaller bathroom. With the efficiency of a well-known routine, Lily got dressed in simple workout clothes. She glanced in the mirror to see a tired face looking back. For the past six months, she had been working hard to earn extra income so she could afford time off and a plane ticket to see her best friend at college. So far, it wasn’t really working out, but she had been able to save some money.

Once dressed, Lily dashed out to her beat-up old truck right outside her apartment. At 4:45 am, no one was out on the roads, so she wasn’t concerned about being late for one of her three jobs. Lily worked at a gym - not just any gym though. This was a Ninja Warrior gym. About four years ago, Lily met the gym owner, Donovan, who offered her a chance to work out at his gym. He remembered her from her track days and wanted someone to open his gym in the mornings since he was, in his words, allergic to any time before nine am. Lily quickly and easily agreed and almost immediately found herself in a world of her wildest dreams. She loved working out and training on the courses there and even considered applying to be on the show one day.

Five minutes to 5 am, Lily pulled up to the Hustler Ninja gym in Taylor, Texas. Taylor was about 45 minutes outside of the DFW area. It was basically the middle of nowhere with one good Walmart, a ghosted - albeit historic - downtown square, and surprisingly a very fancy looking Hilton resort. The keys jangling in the lock, Lily opened the gym and began turning on the lights. Donovan rented the building which was incredible in size. Large enough to house two ninja warrior obstacle courses, a half rock wall in the back, a decent-sized free-weight section, and even an outdoor mini-course. The whole place was huge and everything Lily wanted in a gym. Within two months of working there, she’d been promoted to assistant manager. She was here every Monday through Friday from 5-9, then Monday through Thursday, she went to work at her uncle's barbershop. Finally, on Fridays and Saturdays, she worked at one of the three bars in town to earn as much extra income as possible.

After dropping her gym bag in the locker room, Lily stepped out into the gym and looked around. Donovan and Daniel, or The Dude, did a good job cleaning up last night. It was actually a little surprising considering they rarely did any cleaning. Lily usually spent most of her time cleaning up after everyone. Weird. Regardless, she enjoyed the reprieve and made her way to the free-weights to start a warm-up. After 15 minutes, she was ready to begin her real training. It started with the salmon ladder followed by a few balance obstacles and finally ending with a grip training on the waving board. She was enjoying herself and almost didn’t hear the front door open again. Glancing over, she saw a tall, long-haired figure striding past her towards the locker rooms.

“Morning, Dude,” she called out. The Dude smiled and waved at her and continued on to the locker rooms. A few minutes later, The Dude appeared ready to go in long shorts, a fitted t-shirt and his long hair pulled back in a low ponytail. The Dude was the only guy Lily could think that could pull off the man-tail well. He saddled up to her and watched her jump down from the wave board.

“Morning Luck,” The Dude said to her. Lily groaned and rolled her eyes.

“Can’t anyone forget about that?!” she asked, jumping down off the raised platform and stood next to him. In comparison, Lily looked relatively tiny. Where she was about 5’5” of lean muscle, The Dude was 6’4” of muscle and weight. He got his nickname from his long hair and easy-going attitude. The Dude laughed, throwing his head back a little.

“Nope, it was too adorable,” he replied, making Lily roll her eyes even harder. “So you excited about tomorrow?” he asked when he finally stopped laughing. Lily looked at him confused.

“What’s happening tomorrow?” she asked in response to his question. The Dude looked down at her stunned.

“Tomorrow? The big celebrities are coming by the gym to check it out?” he said as if she should know already. Lily continued to look surprised by his information. “It was in the email that Donovan sent like, two weeks ago.” Lily scoffed.

“You are aware I haven’t actually checked my email since probably about 2016, right?” This time The Dude rolled his eyes at her.

“Aren’t you a manager here or something?” he asked. Lily laughed.

“Or something,” she replied. The Dude laughed with her.

“Girl, get it together,” he said, gently pushing her shoulder. “Tom Cruise and that guy that played Super Man are coming by to check out the gym. They need parkour training and Donovan is going to teach them.” Lily’s eyebrows shot up.

“Are you serious?” she asked. Tom Cruise was major. She remembered watching some of his old movies with her dad. Suddenly a pain gripped her chest and she forced herself back into the present.

“100% serious,” he replied. Lily was shocked. She definitely needed to check her email more often. They stood there talking about their favorite Tom Cruise movies for a few minutes when the opening of the front door caught their attention. Much to Lily’s surprise, her old “friend” Celeste walked in the door. Celeste was a tall beauty with olive skin, long brown hair, and stunning green eyes. She had on a matching navy blue sports bra and leggings which showcased her olive skin perfectly. Her brown hair was pulled back into a tight, clean ponytail and even from the distance she was at, Lily could tell the woman was wearing makeup.

“Well I’ll be damned,” The Dude said under his breath. Lily watched incredulously as Celeste found them and made her way across the room to them.

“Hey guys!” she said awkwardly breathlessly as she stopped just short of the two of them. The Dude and Lily exchanged a look before turning back to Celeste.

“Hey Celeste,” The Dude said cautiously. Celeste gave him a wide, fake smile that made Lily’s intestines turn. “What brings you back to the gym? We figured you didn’t have a membership anymore.” He didn’t have to look at Lily to know what she was thinking. Celeste waved her hand dismissively.

“No, silly,” she started. “I just took a few months off; went back to Cali for a few weeks; saw my brother in New York,” she made a point to look directly at Lily. Lily immediately dropped her gaze and felt her ears grow warm with embarrassment. The Dude cleared his throat.

“Sounds fun,” he said, disdain evident in his voice. Celeste picked up on it and smiled warmly.

“I just wanted to come back and get back into my routines,” she said. A thought occurred to Lily and her eyes shot up.

“You were hoping to see one of those celebrities,” Lily said, more accusation in her tone than she meant. It didn’t matter because she was right. It was evident on Celeste’s face. Celeste shifted in her spot.

“No, of course not, why would I be excited to meet a celebrity? I’ve met dozens of them already,” Celeste replied. Lily smirked realizing she’d made her uncomfortable.

“They’re not here,” Lily said, causing Celeste to look her in the eyes. “They won’t be here until later.” Lily glanced over at The Dude to see if he would correct her. He didn’t.

“Oh, okay,” Celeste said, glancing around the empty gym. “Well, I guess I’ll go get ready to work out then. It’s been great catching up with you two,” and with a small smile and shoulder shrug, Celeste bounced off to the women’s locker rooms. The Dude and Lily watched her leave and once she was safely away in the locker rooms, Lily looked directly at The Dude who shared a similar look.

“Fuck,” she sighed.

—

At around 8:30, Lily dashed from the gym floor to the locker rooms. She quickly showered and dressed in her usual barbershop attire: dark jeans, a blue or gray t-shirt, and her black and white Converse. Her general wardrobe consisted of these same pieces, with a few variations in the mix. She walked out of the gym to find The Dude helping another regular, Megan, on the rock wall. Though he was tall, The Dude was nimble and able to understand situations that required a certain skill. She walked over to them.

“Watch your heels, Rapunzel,” Lily called out to Megan. Her nickname came from the fact that Megan had insanely long blonde hair. It was beautiful and well-kept, but extremely long. Lily loved it. Megan grunted in response and did her best to heed Lily’s advice, but unfortunately couldn’t quite get it. She stumbled backward and landing on her feet on the mat. Groaning, she turned around to Lily and The Dude.

“I’m never going to get it,” she said with pained certainty. Lily smiled at her.

“You’ll get it,” she said. “You just have to stop pushing it and start feeling it,” she looked over at The Dude who was rolling his eyes at her.

“Haha, very funny,” he said, making Lily and Megan laugh. Lily smiled at The Dude.

“Well, I’m out y’all,” she said waving at both of them. Megan and The Dude waved back and Lily headed out to her truck. It was a very old, very beaten blue Chevy Silverado. It was actually her dad’s, but he had no need for it any more, so Lily got it. One of the few good things her dad did for her. She climbed in, started the loud engine, and puttered off into town.

The barbershop where she worked was in the historic downtown square of Taylor. Her uncle Ray owned the shop and had for several decades. Ray was an older, stout man of 60. He had a decent sized beer belly, a handlebar mustache, and piercing blue eyes. Ray wasn’t actually Lily’s uncle, but he was as close to one as she could get. He took care of her during her senior year of high school and later on when she returned from college to find nothing and no one waiting for her.

Parking her car just outside the shop, Lily got out and darted across the empty street to the diner. Inside, she ordered four cups of coffee to go and a few donuts for everyone. When she got her order, she once again crossed the empty street and walked into Ray’s shop. A few regulars were sitting in their respective stylists' chairs. Lily’s station was towards the front. She pulled a cup of coffee out for herself placing on her station, then went around the room handing the other cups of coffee out. Everyone greeted her with kindness and respect. They knew what she had been through with her parents.

Once everyone had their coffee, Lily settled in at her station and waited for her first customer, Mr. Ortiz. At 9:15, Mr. Ortiz hobbled into the shop and straight to Lily’s station. She jumped up and vacated her chair for him. He sat down and told her he wanted the usual, which for him meant a general trim of his hair and beard. Lily immediately got to work and 45 minutes later she was done and checking Mr. Ortiz out at the register. She sat back in her chair after cleaning up the area and decided to check her email. It was overflowing with spam and other junk, so she specifically searched for the email from Donovan. It was there postmarked two weeks ago. She opened it.

Hello team,

I hope this email finds you well. I want you to be the first to know that I have accepted the chance to teach and train two actors for an upcoming movie. They’ll be filming the majority of it in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, but we are one of the best-rated ninja warrior/parkour gyms in the country (go figure!). That means they will be here for a while getting the hang of certain moves and choreography.

The two actors in question are Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill. They are going to be here on Wednesday, the 17th at 7 am. We all know Lucky doesn’t read any of these, so someone please tell her. Other than that, you are all amazing!

Best,

Donovan Troy

Lily rolled her eyes at the line that she wouldn’t read the email. Though it was true, she hated how easy it was for him to read her. Anyway, she easily recognized Tom Cruise and could think of several movies she had seen him in. But, who the hell was Henry Cavill?

----

@taglist:

@maeleeme

#henry cavill #henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill fan fic #henrycavillfanfic #henry cavill fan fiction #henry cavill fanfiction #fanfiction #fan fic #writing #writer #stories #daydream #fantasy #a ninja warrior love story #henryxlily #henryxreader

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hedwigstalons · 4 years

Text

The Tracy Prize - part 12

A slightly longer section this time. Big thanks to @willow-salix for helping with the ideas of how to fix things between Claire and our favourite spaceman.

Here are the earlier parts for those that want to go back to the beginning: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11

xoxoxox

It was decided that Virgil would accompany Claire for her trip back to Denver. He had local knowledge of both the city and university campus. He was also a one-man removal team and when it came to brute strength for moving boxes Virgil was was your man. He was the obvious choice. Not that she had too much to move, her apartment was rented furnished so there was nothing bulky deal with.

It was with some trepidation that she unlocked her apartment and led Virgil inside.

The wages of a university lecturer were modest and her apartment was small. It was a far cry from the luxury of Tracy Island. Part of her worried that Virgil would look down on her for her humble living arrangements. It just showed how much she still had to learn about the Tracy brothers. They might live on a tropical island now but life hadn’t always been that way. Jeff Tracy had made sure that his sons never forgot their roots. They had been taught never to take their fortune for granted and never to look down on those who had less than they did.

Her original departure to the island had happened in such a hurry that she couldn’t remember what state she had left her apartment in. A quick scan of the living area revealed she hadn’t left anything embarrassing lying around. Any mess was behind closed doors.

She breathed a sigh of relief.

The air inside was thick and heavy, warmed by the Colorado summer. She left Virgil perched on a compact sofa while she went around opening all the windows. Kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and the tiny work space that the agent had optimistically billed as a second bedroom but was really no more than a cupboard.

A quick scan of the kitchen revealed that anything fresh had long since gone off. She might not have been gone for long but the summer heat had had an effect. She grabbed a bin bag and started throwing out spoiled food. The remaining dried goods did not make an appealing prospect for dinner.

A shadow in the doorway showed that Virgil had already got bored of sitting down. He took an appraising look around the tiny kitchen and offered to head out for supplies. Claire gratefully accepted.

She used the time he was gone to hurry around, throwing items into bags and boxes. Scott wanted Virgil back and on duty as soon as possible so they planned to spend barely 24 hours in the city. One evening and morning to pack down the apartment then a quick visit to campus tomorrow afternoon to empty her office before flying home again.

The remaining foodstuff in her kitchen were checked and anything still sealed was packed up for donation to a food bank. She made sure to keep hold of the coffee. She had lived with the Tracys long enough to know that Virgil needed coffee to survive almost as much as he needed oxygen.

The living room, bathroom and bedroom were also simple to pack up.

The cupboard work space was not so easy. She had always kept the small desk that had housed her computer tidy and uncluttered. The rest of the room was crammed with anything that didn’t have a proper home in the rest of the apartment.

When Virgil returned he found her sat on the floor trying to organise the accumulated mountains of life detritus. Old text books were stacked precariously. Boxes of childhood memories, carted from house to house but never unpacked, had been opened as though she needed to reassure herself that the contents were still safe. The task of sorting piles for keeping, throwing and donating had ground to a halt.

“Come on, time for a break. I got pizza” he grinned at her while holding aloft a couple of pizza boxes.

Claire gratefully got to her feet, dusted herself down and shut the door on the mess.

One thing she had quickly come the learn about life on the island was that food was unpredictable. Each member of the family had different levels of culinary skill and preferences. Each took a turn at cooking depending on who was available. The only thing you could be certain of was that if Grandma Tracy was responsible the food would be virtually inedible. Claire had come to the conclusion that the boys’ stomachs must be as strong as the rest of their muscles.

“I wasn’t expecting it to be so hard” she sighed between mouthfuls of pizza.

Virgil just looked at her, puzzled.

“All of that”. She gestured vaguely in the direction of the cupboard where he had found her. “Trying to sort out what I need to bring. It feels stupid not being able to let go of things.”

“So don’t”. He said it as though it was the simplest thing in the world. “You’re moving to the island. We aren’t asking you to completely give up your past.”

“But there is so much of it.”

“It’s not like we are pushed for space. Everything here will fit in Tracy Two and we can always make some space available in the store rooms.”

“It just seems stupid to cart it all around. There are things in there I haven’t used for years.”

“Any yet still you keep them. Memories are important, they make us who we are. Sometimes we need to keep a physical reminder of our past.”

“Virgil Tracy, I didn’t have you down as the sentimental sort.”

He grinned. “Hidden talents, me. If it makes you feel any better you won’t be the only one on the island with a teddy bear. Just ask Gordon to introduce you to Fishy some time.”

They finished off the pizzas, disposed of the boxes and carried on with the task in hand.

Virgil gave her the space she needed to pack, limiting his main contributions to stacking up the finished boxes ready for loading up in the morning and carting out the inevitable bags of rubbish.

The apartment soon resembled a cross between a warehouse and an airport departure lounge. A motley assortment of boxes, bags and cases were arranged around the walls.

“Time to call it a night I think” said Claire. “The rest of this can be dealt with in the morning.”

“Suits me fine” said Virgil, stretching out his back muscles after all the repeated bending and lifting.

“Um”, she shifted about with embarrassment. “As you can see I’m not really set up for visitors.”

“It’s fine. I’ll take the couch.”

The absurdity of this struck Claire. The couch was small. Even sat on it Virgil had looked out of scale. The idea of his attempting to sleep on it was ridiculous.

“Stop being such a gentleman. Unless you are going to attempt some sort of human origami you’ll never fit. You’ll be much more comfortable in my bed.”

As soon as the words left her mouth she realised how bad that sounded. She flushed scarlet.

“Um, I mean, I’ll take the couch. I’m shorter than you. And you need to be fit to fly tomorrow.” Talk about state the obvious. She wanted the ground to open up and swallow her.

“Thanks. Offer accepted.” He flashed a trademark smile over his shoulder at her as he disappeared into the bedroom.

Claire flopped heavily down on the sofa and put her head in her hands. How could she have said that? The embarrassment burned into her soul. If Gordon or Alan ever got to hear that she had invited Virgil into her bed, even by accident, she would never hear the end of it.

xoxoxox

The morning bought a fresh flurry of packing fuelled by copious amounts of coffee.

The had hired a van to transport Claire’s belongings to the airfield and this was nearly loaded and ready to go. As Virgil carried the last box down the stairs Claire looked around the small space that she had called home. It looked empty and forlorn, stripped of all her personal possessions.

Claire breathed a silent goodbye and shut the door on one chapter of her life.

The other tie that needed severing was her association with the university.

Claire didn’t keep many possessions on campus so their visit should just be a brief one on their way to the airfield. All she needed to do was empty a few drawers, check she hadn’t left anything on her work PC and hand back her security pass.

She left Virgil enjoying the sunshine in the quad outside so she could say goodbye to her colleagues without having to make awkward introductions. Not that there were many people around over the summer. She hoped she would be in and out within half an hour.

As she headed down the corridor to her office her Head of Department appeared, almost as though he had been looking out for her.

“Hi Claire. I was beginning to worry I’d missed you.”

“Oh, hey Mitch. No, I’ve only just got here. Are there many in today?”

“Only me and Clive and he is locked away in one of the haz-mat labs.”

“Ah well. It would have been nice to say goodbye to the team but I know what it’s like. As soon as classes finish everyone takes the chance to grab a vacation.”

“Hopefully the rest of them will come back though. You know, I was surprised when you said you were leaving. One minute you are booking up every lab slot available, the next you’re sending an email to say you’re off.”

“I was pretty surprised myself. You just never can tell where life will take you.”

“So where are you off to?”

Claire avoided the question by rummaging through her bag for the key to her office. She unlocked the door and Mitch followed her inside. He leant against her desk, watching her while she opened and closed drawers, retrieving forgotten belongings.

She booted up her work computer. She had been pretty disciplined about keeping her research on her own computer but she wanted to make sure there was nothing sensitive left behind on the university network. She systematically deleted files and transferred a few interesting articles onto her tablet.

The book shelf was next on the list. She packed the weighty tomes into the holdall she had kept spare for the purpose.

Mitch never left the office. It felt a little unnerving to have him watching her all the time.

Feeling the effects of all the coffee from the morning she made her excuses and headed down the corridor to the bathrooms.

When she returned Mitch was still perched on the edge of her desk. She had always got on well with him but she was starting to find his presence annoying. As she went to gather up the last of her belongings she realised something was wrong. Her tablet, which she had left on the far side of the desk, was now on the side closest to Mitch. Her suspicions were roused.

Making up a spurious excuse about checking whether she had left her lab coat in one of the supply cupboards she swiftly exited the office again.

Once she was a safe distance away she activated her wrist comm. Much as it pained her she knew she needed the help of one particular Tracy brother.

She opened a link to Thunderbird Five.

“John, I…I need your help.”

“Go ahead, Claire.” John managed to keep the puzzlement out of his voice, Claire still tended to shy away from contact with him. He could tell she was worried about something though.

“I’m on campus and something doesn’t feel right. My Head of Department won’t leave me alone and I think he might be after my work. Can you check if any access attempts have been made on my tablet in the last ten minutes.”

“Sure.” Claire’s tablet had been connected to the International Rescue secure networks and it only took him a moment to call up the information he needed. “I can see four failed log in attempts. He didn’t get anywhere though, our systems are not easily breached.”

“Not this time but what if he has in the past. I always thought he was just being friendly before but now he just seems, well…creepy. I’ve always been so careful but what if he already has some of my research. I never kept a digital copy at work but what if he took photos of my notebooks. We were often in the labs together. If I wanted to work late he would usually volunteer stay on with me so that campus security wouldn’t chuck me out.”

The worry in her voice was now plain to hear. John did what he did best – calming people down.

“It’s ok. I can run a check of his university network files. If I find anything I’ll wipe them. I guess his network username follows the same convention yours did?”

“Yeah. It’s all standardised. His would be Mhayworthy.”

“Give me a minute and I’ll see what I can find.”

John quickly accessed Mitch’s university profile. He rolled his eyes slightly at the simplicity of the university’s security systems. Breaking through the defences wasn’t even a challenge.

Going off Claire’s suggestion that Mitch could have taken photos of her notebooks he started his search in the image files.

What he saw made his blood run cold.

There were hundreds of photos. The notebooks appeared in some of them but only incidental to the main subject of the images. Claire.

Claire at work.

Claire having lunch.

Claire walking through a park.

Claire leaving her apartment.

John didn’t want to alarm her but the man evidently had a full blown obsession. The date stamps on the images showed he had been stalking her for some time.

“Claire, where is he at the moment?”

“In my office. Did you find anything.”

“You were right, he had some photos.” He decided not to enlighten her on the exact nature of the pictures. He didn’t want the truth to send her into a panic. “I’ve sent a virus that will target all the image files on his computer. It will also access his other devices via his cloud account so anything he has at home or on his phone will be wiped too.”

“Thanks John” and she genuinely meant it. She made herself a promise to make it up to the spaceman for all the ill thoughts she had harboured against him.

For good measure John tasked Eos with monitoring the man, an easy task for her that would barely trouble her processing power and not impact on her other duties. Life for International Rescue could get complicated this was reported to the police and Claire got caught up in a court case but he also wasn’t prepared to let the man off scot free. It Mitch tried anything even remotely illicit in future Eos would alert the police through an anonymous tip-off and ensure that the full force of the law came down on him.

“Now Claire, I don’t want you to go back in there with him alone. Give me your location and I’ll send Virgil up to you.”

Once he was assured that Claire was safe John got in contact with Virgil. His older brother was surprised to receive a call from his space bound sibling.

John quickly appraised Virgil of the situation, giving his brother rather more information that he had given Claire. His intrusion into Mitch’s files had unearthed more than just the photos. After Claire had informed the man of her impending departure his chemical research had extended beyond his academic interests and into the world of illicit sedatives. Evidently the impending departure of the object of his obsessions had led him to darker thoughts than just watching her.

Less than three minutes later Virgil came pounding along the corridor and was by Claire’s side.

Mitch looked up when he heard the door open. The smile he greeted Claire’s return with soon vanished when Virgil entered the room.

Virgil was making full use of his height and weight advantage and positively loomed over the other man. He stayed polite for Claire’s sake but his attitude screamed alpha-male.

“Unauthorised personnel aren’t permitted in this corridor.” Mitch was not pleased about the unexpected intrusion.

“It’s ok Mitch. He’s with me. He’s a…a friend come to help me move my stuff.” The Tracy name was well known on campus, especially so soon after Denver hosting the latest round of the Tracy Prize. Claire felt it better to keep things vague, especially since Mitch seemed unaware of the identity of her companion.

Virgil flashed his visitor pass to show he was there legitimately.

Mitch instantly dismissed Virgil as a being of no consequence. Someone picked for their brawn rather than their brain.

“So Claire, I was hoping I could take you for a farewell drink. It’s a shame the department couldn’t give you a proper send off but there is no reason why we can’t mark the occasion.”

“Sorry Mitch but I’m on a tight schedule.”

“Maybe this weekend then?” He came across as hopeful, verging on desperate.

Virgil decided it was time to shut him down.

“Claire, we really need to get going. Have you packed everything you need? We can’t risk losing our runway slot.”

This was a lie. Tracy Two was currently in a hanger on the closest GDF base in case Virgil was urgently needed at a rescue zone. They couldn’t risk being stuck for want of a take-off slot at a congested commercial airfield. Virgil wanted to impress upon Claire that it was better they left quickly, thankfully she got the hint.

“Runway slot?” Mitch asked.

“Um, yeah, this new job isn’t local. I’m leaving town completely” Claire explained sheepishly. She made an obvious show of checking her watch then turned to Virgil. “You’re right, we really need to be getting out of here.”

Claire swept the last few items into her bag while Virgil claimed the holdall of books.

They left the building and made their way to the waiting van unaware that Mitch was watching their every step. Unaware as he raised his phone to take some final pictures for his collection. Unaware of the curses that followed when the Head of Department found not only all the photos on his camera reel gone but the camera itself fully disabled.

John had done his job well.

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds fanfiction #scott tracy #virgil tracy #john tracy #gordon tracy #alan tracy #kayo #brains

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ledenews · 4 years

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Sam Amico - Finally on Top, Writing What He Loves

Sam Amico is a self-professed basketball junkie whose lengthy career in sports journalism now finds the Akron, Ohio native covering the NBA for Sports Illustrated. Yes, that Sports Illustrated. The one most young men and woman growing up in the 1980s and 1990s waited patiently by the mailbox for, only to quickly tear threw the pages and digest the stories within. While magazines and subscriptions aren’t what they used to be, SI is still one of the biggest players in the sports media game, especially for those gifted with the ability to tell a tale via the written word and not relying solely on hot takes and video footage. It’s fitting, as Amico grew up near an NBA city during a time when the Showtime Lakers and the Boston Celtics dominated the scene. There was Larry and Magic, Kareem and Robert. The Bad Boys in Detroit came into their own and a man named Michael took the league, and the world, by storm. The young Amico didn’t have a chance.

Played the Game

He grew into a 5-foot-9 sweet-shooting guard at nearby Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy in nearby Cuyahoga Falls. He parlayed that success into a two-year stint playing for Northeastern Christian Academy across the street from Villanova in Pennsylvania. While there, he set the school record for most 3-pointers in a game, a mark he’s quick to point out lasted all of there seasons. The school later combined with Ohio Valley College in Parkersburg, W.Va. to become Ohio Valley University. Amico’s old coach, Bill McGee, stayed on board to coach. Amico, meanwhile, turned his attention to his own career. Originally wanting to get into coaching, he quickly realized that he could utilize his best assets, a great sense of humor and even better gift of written gab and combine that with his love of basketball. He quickly said hello to the world of journalism which initially took him out west to Wyoming and a one-man show at a paper in Rawlins, Utah.

The Report

He still feels his proudest moment came two years later, when he wrote a 14-part series on the history of the Wyoming state basketball tournament while working at a paper in Casper. Additional stops including the Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Observer-Reporter in Washington, among others, eventually landed Amico at the Sports Editor at The Intelligencer in Wheeling. Amico experienced success with both the readers and staff. It’s here he began his well-circulated Amico Report, a free newsletter at the time dealing with all things NBA. It was that digital newsletter that eventually catapulted Amico to his current path. He's also a published author, with his first book, "A Basketball Summer" hitting the shelves in 2002, later followed by three more: "Dribbles of Champions," "The Ultimate Basketball Trivia Book," and 'Three-Ball: The History of Basketball's Three Point Shot." He later lost his job in Wheeling due to an incident he takes full responsibility for and worked his way back north to the Cleveland Area, eventually catching on with Fox Sports and Fox Sports Ohio. It was there Amico experienced a renewal not only in his professional life, but also his personal one. Lessons were learned, but Amico found happiness again with a second marriage, as and his new wife brought together their blended family and eventually added a third son to the mix soon after. The Amicos now live in Medina, Ohio. Naturally, basketball is still a big part of their lives.

What got you into sports journalism in the first place? You did seem to gravitate to basketball more so than other sports. Was that just an extension of your playing days and your love for basketball as a whole?

It was indeed my love of basketball that led to my career choice. I never set out to become a writer. At first, I wanted to be a coach. I envisioned myself coaching high school basketball while teaching health or typing or some other fairly mundane course. But I also loved to write. I did it in my free time, just as a hobby. My best friend is several years older and became a sports television anchor, and I'd sometimes tag along with him to work. I was fascinated that you could make a career out of this. I loved basketball and writing always came easiest for me in terms of schoolwork. My roommate in college would stay up all night sweating over his essay for English class and bring back a C-minus. I'd crank something out in an hour, maybe less, and always aced it. (As an aside, he got considerably better grades in every other subject.) So, about my junior year of college, it finally dawned on me—why not put together my passion for basketball with the one thing I seemed to do moderately well? When I figured it out, writing about basketball as a career became my mission.

A billboard advertising the Amico Report for Fox Sports, a report that started as a free newsletter Sam Amico sent out during his days at The Intelligencer in Wheeling.

You eventually became an editor at multiple places. But neither was in a basketball-heavy community in terms of the pro game. Did you have a sense deep down that you’d need to get closer to home, or to a major market, to get to where you wanted to be? Was leaving the Wheeling paper a blessing in disguise in that respect?

To be honest, when I took my first newspaper job in a tiny little Wyoming town, I had no clue what I was doing. I showed up for the first day of work and was immediately told to interview the high school swimming coach. I didn't know anything about swimming, had no idea what to ask. I could barely swim myself. That was the start of a long journey of covering things I had very little knowledge of. In Rawlins, I was a one-man staff. I shot my own photos, wrote 3-5 stories a day, designed my own pages, came up with all the headlines and at times, even helped deliver the paper. Little did I know, it would be great practice for running my own website close to 20 years later. But all the while, yes, I dreamed of getting to an NBA market to cover the NBA. I wasn't obsessed with it, but it was always in the back of my mind, pushing me to work harder and get better. I never had a sense that it would actually happen. My goal once I started writing a lot was to just to do the best job I could and let the chips fall where they may. Eventually, when I landed in Wheeling, I decided to start an NBA email newsletter as a hobby on the side. Writing an email cost nothing and receiving it cost nothing. So, I made nothing. But if I remember correctly, we eventually started running it in the sports section, too. That little newsletter is the very reason I am where I am today, in my 12th year covering the NBA on a full-time basis. I will always be grateful for my time in Wheeling and I look back fondly on it today. Ownership, management, the editors and my co-workers allowed me the freedom to write what I wanted and tackle some interesting topics. It was there that I developed a strong work ethic, and it is one I still try to carry into my assignments today. I learned in Wheeling that there was no place for excuses—just do the job. When I lost my job there, deservedly so, it reminded me about the value of integrity. It was an important reminder and lesson I have not forgotten.

You’d previously written “Basketball Summer” and also kept people up to date with League knowledge via the Amico Report. But once covering the NBA was your full-time job, what was it like being that involved, especially given the Cavaliers were your hometown team? As a journalist, you remain impartial, but growing up a fan, was it difficult to keep the two sides of you separate at first?

Actually, while I grew up outside of Akron, I liked the Cavaliers but never considered myself a huge fan by any stretch. Sadly, I lived and died with the Browns, a lost cause of a franchise that remains near and dear to my heart today. I just happened to like the NBA as a total product, growing up in what I still consider the golden era of Magic, Michael and Larry. By the time I finally became a full-time NBA writer covering my "hometown" team, I had learned how to be impartial. That's one of about 200 reasons why it was a good thing I didn't get the job straight out of college. I had so much to learn about journalism. I had to spend time in the minors before getting to the big leagues. But I also realize that I am sort of an extension of the fans. I didn't celebrate in print when the Cavs won the title in 2016, for instance, but I did write with more enthusiasm and the stories were just more positive by nature. It's always easier to write about a winner. Quite honestly, though, it makes no difference to me. I try to cover the Cavs and NBA with as much fairness and passion as I did when I first got the job. The success and failures of the local team honestly have no bearing on how I approach the job, or even my enjoyment of the job. Sometimes, it's even better when they're bad. When LeBron James is in town, so are about 100 other reporters. When he's not, I'm generally one of about five or six full-time people covering the team.

Sami Amico sits courtside in Cleveland, offering analysis during a Cavaliers game. While still doing some on-air work, his TV time has lessened some since makine the move from FSN to Sports Illustrated.

You wrote for both Fox Sports and Fox Sports Ohio, and on occasion got to do some on-air analysis and interviews. How did that differ from what you were used to and did your public profile blow up further from that? What was the experience like for your sons and wife to see dad on television, talking basketball? Could you foresee a career path that leads to commentary either courtside or in-studio on a full-time basis?

I've been doing television since 2010, less now than most years, but still some. It's quite a bit different because unlike writing, you don't have time to sit down and assemble a thought. The lights come on and you just ... GO. You also don't have a delete key, so whatever you say is out there for forever, especially now in the day of social media. The first time I did it, I was terrified. The second time, I was also terrified. The third time, I didn't even think about it. It just felt natural. My best buddy in TV gave me some good advice: "Look two places, either at the person you're talking to or at the camera. Sit up. Smile. And for the love of Pete, put your hands on the desk and not below it." That was a start. I have also done some stand-up reporting for TV, in which I look at nothing but the camera, hold the mic with one hand and still have no idea what to do with the other. As for my public profile, yes, it did go up a notch locally. The biggest differences I noticed were that total strangers occasionally began asking me for selfies at Cavs games (as opposed to just yelling that I'm a hack), and mostly, the players and coaches and front-office types began calling me by my first name before I had even introduced myself. Earned or not, there's a level respect that you're granted with simply being on TV. That said, it's always been my least favorite part of the job. You have to worry about your hair, about your tie, about how you dress and about not doing natural things like sneezing or yawning. But they ask me to do it and promise a check, so I shut up and make the best of it. It's never been what I set out to do, though. My family thought it was cool at first, but those days are long gone. Unless I take them to the studio, they don't watch. Sometimes even then I'll look over at them during a commercial break and they're staring at their phones. The good news is I have a toddler who is fairly animated when I come on the screen. I figure I have another three or four years before he too finds that part of my job to be old news.

The Amico family, prior to the birth of the third son, is an image of a blended family that can find success in coming together.

Finally, like most kids into sports, you probably grew up reading Sports Illustrated. It was the go-to for sports reporting and feature stories. Working for them now, does the image you might have had in your head match the reality and how has the Amico Report morphed into Amico News in terms of content and readership?

Well, let's put it this way -- when I call a potential source for a story and say I'm from Sports Illustrated, they almost always give me a lot of time, say more interesting things, and are overall just more polite. Between the time I worked for FOX and SI, I launched my own NBA website. Fortunately, my time at FOX provided an audience, and enough of those readers followed me to AmicoHoops to turn it into a full-time job. I actually started to earn more on the website than I did at FOX. Problem was, when you factor in TV work, I was putting in 12-14 hours a day on the website during the season, and that included weekends. It's always nice to run your own thing and be your own boss. I did it for four years with a surprising degree of success. But Sports Illustrated made the decision easy for me. They basically wanted me to move what I had been doing on my site and put their brand behind it. I can also say I have never had more readers. That's not because of anything I'm doing or because I've suddenly reinvented the wheel. It's because everyone knows the name "Sports Illustrated." Overall, I really like their modern direction. They have moved away from the longform pieces (though plenty still remain in the magazine), and have assigned or are in the process off assigning a writer to every team in the country -- NFL, NBA, MLB, the NCAA power conference programs, and even NHL I believe. Readership has increased significantly for SI across all platforms. Not long ago, I started to suspect the brand was dying, but it feels like it's become a player again. My role is actually to cover the entire NBA, while also focusing on the Cavs, much like I did for FOX before they pivoted to video-only in 2015. It's a great role and one I've been comfortable in for at least a decade now. Mostly, I feel very blessed to be where I am in my career and am extremely grateful for each step along the way -- from Wyoming to West Virginia to back where I grew up. Read the full article

#Basketball #NBA #SportsIllustrated #UpperOhioValley #wheeling

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missnmikaelson-main · 5 years

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Who Are You? - Chapter 9

Catch up?

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8

She couldn't remember the last time she had been truly frustrated, but attempting to locate an Original vampire in a sea of thousands was proving frustrating to say the least.

"You'd think a thousand year old vampire would be easier to find," Lexa flopped down on the couch.

"Kol has a tendency to disappear when he wants to," Elijah glanced at the map. She had been trying different locator spells of increasing strength over the last few days when it became clear their calls and emails were not going through.

"Why would he?" Elena sipped a mug of hot blood. "It's not like he's got anyone to hide from… does he?"

"Maybe he got a witch to shield him," Lexa hummed. She tilted her head and looked up at the ceiling.

"Still begs the question of why?" Elena frowned.

"He has no reason to hide, and he lacks Niklaus' paranoia," he sighed. His finger circled around the burnt out area of the map that was the city.

Lexa rubbed her temples and closed her eyes to concentrate. They snapped open a few minutes later.

"You said the Hollow reacted to its other parts?"

"Killed some plants," Elena nodded, "but that was when you," her eyes turned to Elijah, "and Rebekah were close to each other."

"What if it can sense what happens from a distance too?" Lexa cocked an eyebrow. "What if it knows we wiped out a quarter of its being?"

She saw the moment they caught on.

"Davina isn't hiding him," Elijah looked at the map.

"The hollow is," Lexa nodded.

"So what do we do?" Elena tucked her hair behind her ears. "The full moon rises in fourteen hours."

"We look for him," Elijah reached for a new map, "the old fashioned way.”

++++

They had spent nearly an hour examining the different maps before narrowing the search down to three districts of San Francisco where Kol might have taken up residence. Part of Elena hoped she wasn't the one to locate him simply because he was the kill first ask questions later type, and since they had never gotten through to him he wouldn't see her as someone there to help him; he'd see her as the woman responsible for his first death.

She made a mental note to apologize for that when she did cross his path. She owed him that and more.

She tipped her head back and counted the strings of lanterns that hung between buildings. They would be lit soon and illuminate the streets.

She recognized a few of the characters printed on the awnings and signs but most of it was complete gibberish to her. She added Mandarin to the list of languages she wanted to learn; it wasn't like she didn't have the time.

Her heels clicked out an even rhythm over the pavement as she moved from the street full of tourists towards the heart of Chinatown. According to the internet research she had done during the commute it was the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the most historic neighborhoods in the city. Both facts made the area ideal for someone like Kol.

What the internet hadn't mentioned was the magical presence in the area. Elijah had been the one to bring that to her attention. He told her his brother had a habit of running with witches and that made Chinatown a likely spot for him to settle.

He had known of a bar that catered to the supernatural, having visited the city nearly thirty years prior. That was where she was headed. It took a little searching and the help of an older Chinese woman who spoke in broken English but eventually she located the hole in the wall.

Thankfully the bartender spoke English. When she got closer she caught the unmistakable scent of werewolf.

"Hi," she hopped on a stool, flashing a bright smile.

"Sure you wanna go there," his eyes darted to her daylight ring, "that could be dangerous for you."

Elena flushed and cleared her throat, dampening her smile to something less likely to be misinterpreted.

"Only on a full moon," she leaned back, "and I'm actually involved. I just thought you might be able to help me."

"Oh," he went back to wiping down the counter.

"I'm looking for somebody," she reached for her cell phone, "and in your position you seem like the most likely person to help."

He glanced at the screen. She knew what he saw: a picture of Kol. It was actually a photo of the entire family taken several months ago but she had zoomed in until only he was in the picture.

"He the boyfriend?" He looked up to her eyes.

"Boyfriend's brother," Elena tilted the phone closer. "Have you seen him anywhere?"

"Sorry," he shook his head, "I can't help you."

Her shoulders sagged and she sighed.

"Don't suppose there's another spot around here that caters to the supernatural?"

"Nope."

++++

"Hello?" He took the bag of herbs from the clerk, balancing his phone between his ear and shoulder.

"Someone's looking for you?"

"Who?" He stepped out into the light and turned down the street with a sense of urgency lingering at the back of his neck. It had been there for a few weeks, urging him to hide. He had never felt the need to conceal himself from anyone. He had never been paranoid of anything but his brother and a wooden box, so he didn't quite understand where his emotions were coming from, but he did know what they were telling him.

"Some chick… didn't get her name: average height, curly hair."

"I'll be on the lookout."

++++

Nob Hill had proven to be a bust. He thought that was the word Elena or Lexa might have used, but he wasn't sure since he was a little behind on slang.

It didn't matter though because there was no sign of Kol anywhere in the district.

++++

Lexa adjusted her sunglasses and slipped between two large groups that blocked the sidewalk, pausing to take in a mural on the city wall.

If she had the time she would have gladly spent hours combing through the district that was San Francisco's oldest neighborhood. It was the perfect mix of old and new.

That was the thing that had made it a contender for Kol. Elijah had said his brother preferred older areas, but his girlfriend had slightly different tastes. He told her Davina was roughly her age and that she loved art and music.

Mission District just happened to be teeming with galleries and the largest concentration of murals in San Francisco. There was also an amazing music scene.

Lexa thought it paled in comparison to the culture of New Orleans, but it was close; like a home away from home. It definitely wasn't home though, and she thought Davina must be much weaker here than she was in Louisiana without the flow of ancestral magic that had fueled her for so long. Perhaps she was learning how to draw on nature instead, but that would still take her years to master.

That was the reason she figured Davina wasn't the one hiding Kol from them; because she didn't have the power anymore.

She spotted what she was looking for a few seconds later and smiled. The symbol hung over a small herb shop; it was the same one on her necklace. It was the one that connected all witch covens and known only to those who were members. Tiny shops like the herbalist across the street existed all over the world and she had been watching for one since entering the city. If she was lucky someone inside would know of Kol or Davina.

She must have been really lucky though because before she could cross the street a man stepped out with a phone to his ear; a man who bore a striking resemblance to Elijah.

Somebody was following him. He could feel the eyes on the back of his neck causing a bead of sweat to roll down his spine in what he labeled irrational fear. There were only two things in the world that could kill him, so his fear was irrational because he could handle whoever was tailing him through the streets.

The wind shifted and he ducked into a narrow side street with every intention of dispatching the woman that followed him. He assumed it was a woman because very few men bathed in lavender.

She paused at the entrance where he had disappeared and looked around, confusion written in the tension of her shoulders. The wind blew her blond curls and sent a fresh wave of lavender to his nose.

There was a sharp sting as his canines descended and the hunger set in. A small voice whispered in the back of his head.

She gasped when he grabbed her arm and spun her into the cool brick wall behind a downed awning. Her eyes traced his face and her heart skipped a beat. She swallowed around the hand holding her throat.

He frowned when she showed no other signs of fear and closed his eyes for a second, attempting to drown out his instinct. He was trying to be better, and though she would never know if he killed this woman he would. His fingers tightened as he fought a losing battle but the second he shifted from a light hold to one that would potentially bruise pain bloomed behind his eyes.

He dropped to his knees, clutching his head. It stopped as soon as it started and he looked up to see her watching him with a quirked eyebrow. Instinct was telling him to slaughter her before she opened her mouth but he couldn't move.

"Tell me if I'm right, okay?" She bent her knees until she was on the ground in front of him.

"You've been following me for three blocks," his eyes narrowed, "and you've paralyzed me, so why would I tell you anything?"

"I didn't want to cause a scene in the streets, and I only paralyzed you because you were starting to hurt me." She ran a fingertip over her throat as evidence. There was a misshapen red line and darker spots where his fingers had left bruises.

Kill her.

"You're gonna listen, and tell me how much I get right," she crossed her arms. She leaned a little closer.

Tear out her throat.

He nodded, not quite sure which voice he was listening to.

"You don't trust me." She tilted her head. "That is really stupid because you don't even know me. Am I right? Why would you distrust someone you just met?"

He gave a pointed look to his immobile arms.

"Something is telling you not to trust me," she went on, "maybe even to kill me. Am I right?"

A line appeared between his brows. The voice in his head was practically shrieking now.

"I have a strong urge to rip out your throat," he admitted with narrow eyes.

"That is the reason you shouldn't," she smirked.

Her eyes twinkled with amusement and his heart skipped a beat.

"And why is that?" He looked her over. There was something about the shape of her mouth that he found enticing.

"You hesitated." She leaned closer; close enough that he could have moved his head to sink his teeth into her carotid artery, killing her in seconds.

He didn't move.

"That itty bitty little voice," she backed up with a small grin, "is not yours. I saw that struggle, you might think I didn't because it happened so fast but I did. You were not the one pinning me to the wall, and you were not the one that wanted to kill me."

Kill her!

"Then who was?" He smirked. Over the centuries he had perfected the look of mania and it reflected in the look he gave her: the grin of a mad man.

"The Hollow," she cocked an eyebrow when he clenched his jaw, "yes I know about that. There is a quarter of the Hollow inside of you and it's screaming at you telling you to tear me apart. Are you curious why?"

"How do you know about that?" He leaned back, noticing for the first time that he had been released from her spell. He didn't take advantage of it to act on the shrieks in his head.

"I've met some of your family."

"You're hoping to save your neck by bringing up my family?" He scoffed. "I couldn't care less about my family, darling."

"You're lying," she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "You're lying because it's easier to tell yourself that than to accept the truth."

"What is the truth?" He ignored the cell phone in his pocket when it began to vibrate.

"You love your family, you would do anything for your family, and you miss your family." She knew she had hit a nerve when his jaw ticked. "It's easier for you to say you don't care when you know you can't be near any of them again. Wouldn't you rather have a choice? Wouldn't you prefer to avoid your family because you want to, and not because you have to?"

"You've got a sharp tongue," he looked her up and down. Her words had cut through him. "Who the bloody hell are you?"

She smirked, something akin to triumph flashed in her green eyes as she got to her feet. She bent slightly and tipped up his chin with the tip of her finger; a jolt raced up her arm at the contact.

Electricity traveled from her finger straight to his heart.

"I'm the witch that excised the Hollow from your brother," her breath caught in her throat when he met her eyes. "And I'm the witch that's going to do it again."

He didn't realize he was going to do it until his fingers were around her wrist. His hold was delicate despite the voice screamed in his ear and the instinct to rip her to shreds.

"I was hoping more for your name."

"I'll make you a deal," she tipped her head up when he stood, "you can have my name later tonight. All you have to do is meet me at the Japanese Tea Garden ten minutes before the full moon reaches its apex this evening."

"Why should I meet you?" His thumb ran over the delicate veins in her wrist.

"For your exorcism silly," she smiled. "It's gotta be done under the full moon because when the Hollow was put in you it was sealed by the full moon. I'm going to take it out, lock it up and banish it to another realm. Easy peasy, and if you want you can start planning the family reunion."

"If it's so easy then why didn't the witches in New Orleans do it?"

"It was the obvious choice," she took a small step closer, her chest brushed his when she took a deep breath, "and they did think of it, but someone decided to take advantage of your misfortune and force Klaus away from his child."

"Who would do that?" He frowned at the look she gave him and knew. "Hayley?" He shook his head and met her eyes. "How did you find out about all of this?"

"If you want to know meet me tonight?" She slipped from his grasp and felt his eyes tracking her progress through the alley. "Japanese Tea Garden… moonrise."

++++

Tags: @rissyrapp20 @elejah-wonderland @elejahforever @eternityunicorn @morsmornte @fandomrulesall @xanderling

Okay... so the plan is this: one part for each Mikaelson. We've read part one already: the Elijah chapters. Now we're in part 2: Kol. I'm thinking it'll be 1-2 chapters for the Originals from now on plus any extra chapters that I put in. Maybe one in between each section. So between Kol and Elijah was the Elejah smut chapter.

All in all this story should have anywhere from 7-8 chapters longer.

There is a month between each exorcism because the Originals can't be near each other while the hollow is in them. That means the story itself takes place over a period of five months. It took two months from meeting Elena for them to get the hollow out and a month between each Original.

I'm debating what to do with Hayley. Eventually Klaus is going to find out the truth, but I'm torn. He'd kill someone for messing with his family, but she's his daughter's mother, so I think he'd be torn about it. Everything is going to tell him to kill Hayley for what she did. I don't know if I want Hope to find out yet or not.

Kol: 1

Extra chapter: maybe at the boarding school between Hope and Landon. I'm thinking there's gonna be some complications with Social Services and Landon that Elena goes to sort out on the way to Rebekah. This will also be where the fallout from Hayley's actions start to come into play.

Rebekah: 1-2

Extra: Not sure what this one will be yet, maybe a review will inspire me as I get closer.

Klaus: 1-2

At the boarding school: This chapter will be the epilogue of sorts and takes place after the Hollow has been dealt with.

#kol mikaelson #elijah mikaelson #elena gilbert #tvd #who are you fic

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onewhoturns · 5 years

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fictober.23.: the first appointment

#Fictober19 Prompt: 23. You can’t give more than yourself. Fandom: Oxenfree Characters: Jonas, Duke (OC) Rating: T (no warnings apply) Tags: Angst-ish, emo Jonas, mental health & therapy Word Count: 2802

So... I'm posting this in order to maintain Fictober, but in all honesty this is actually a side scene/side story to a previously mentioned project that is still in the works and has yet to be posted. There may be some spoilers for the beginning of that fic. This is more an exploration of who this AU's version of Jonas is, how he's been affected by the things in his life- I'm calling it 'emo Jonas' but it may not be the type of emo you're expecting, I don't know.

If you want to read it when it comes up in the fic, it's looking like that would be anywhere from chapter 6 to chapter 9 (we're still in the midst of writing at the moment), and I'll update the summary and add it in as a related work when that becomes applicable.

For now, if you still want to read now (and it's cool if you don't), enjoy Jonas's first meeting with Duke, with no context to the rest of the story.

An appointment. ‘Like a doctor’s visit.’ Yeah. Well, maybe.

“Hey. You want to come on in?”

Jonas holds his breath for a second, standing from the waiting room to follow the man inside. The guy is in his early 30s, brown hair with a bit of gray starting in, just barely this side of messy, with glasses that look like he should be drinking craft brews at some gastropub in Portland. Duke. That’s a name, alright.

“Nice to finally meet in person.”

Jonas just nods. He’s not great at speaking to new people. Took him a couple weeks to start talking in intake. But he has kinda met Duke before. A pretty long phone interview, not to mention emails. They wanted to find a good therapist, and Camena had options. He’d settled on Duke.

“It’s nice to have all the paperwork out of the way already. Kind of a waste of session time, really.”

Jonas’s brows raise as he tips his head in acknowledgment and agreement.

Duke has a leg crossed over the other, and Jonas realizes, in retrospect, that the guy is actually his height. Maybe an inch shorter, but pretty damn close.

“How tall are you?” They’re the first words out of Jonas’s mouth, but they do their part.

“Six three. On a good day, anyway.”

“Nice.”

“Shoe size?”

“13.”

Duke winces audibly. “Damn, you beat me. 12 and a half.”

Jonas smirks a bit. And the ice is broken.

“You came from school?”

Jonas’s eyes wander to the side table between his chair and the unoccupied couch. He reaches for some kind of adjustable wire toy, turning it inside out and flipping it into different shapes. “Yup.”

“What’s your electives?” It’s a better question than ‘how was your day,’ at least. Duke’s foot is bouncing idly, as well.

“Gym and weight training; shop.”

“At CHS, right? Wilkinson still teaching wood shop?”

Wilkinson? “Yeah, I think that’s his name. Old guy, wears a lanyard with a whistle on it even though I don’t think he does any sports stuff?”

“Yep. He’s not too bad. Get him talking about baseball, that’s a thing. Does he still have that slugger in the workshop?”

“I… don’t know?”

“He’s got two, actually, I think. Louisville Slugger wooden bats, one official and one he made. If he still has it. I heard one year some kids stole it for a prank.”

“Kinda a dick move, the guy’s gotta be at least 70.”

“Yeah. Kids can be idiots. Present company excluded, of course.”

“Technically an adult, and I’d agree regardless.”

“When we talked before, you sounded kinda meh on the Individual Studies thing. How’s that looking?”

“It’s…” Jonas pulls a face. “Still meh on it. Some of the other kids are… ehh. Remind me of guys from North Valley, thinking they’re the shit. And the teachers - or whatever they’re called, aides? They’re a mixed bag. This one girl - woman, I guess - she seems pretty cool. Darcy. Good attitude, even if she seemed kinda fake at first.”

“I’m not sure I totally get what the course is, to be honest.”

“I mean, I’ve got three periods of it, it gets old fast. Though— I mean I guess they’re not all the same. First period for me seems more like… learning skills?” Jonas winces. “I dunno, it’s kinda cringey sometimes. And then third is gonna be assessment stuff— kinda miserable, just packets of standardized test questions and shit like that. Last period is chill though. Basically like a study hall for me, working on the stuff from the tests. And I’ve been getting out a little early, so I can-” He stops.

Duke waits a second for him to continue, and when he doesn’t, he lifts his chin from looking at the pad of paper in his lap (where Jonas can see little geometrical doodles as well as his illegible scrawl of whatever he’s noting). “A reminder; mandatory reporting doesn’t include stuff like truancy, just plans to harm yourself or others. And I consider ‘plans’ to actually mean plans.”

“So… there’s this girl, right?”

“A friend?”

Jonas hesitates. “Yyeahhh…”

“Or… sounds like maybe not just a friend?”

He shakes his head, “No, definitely just a friend, just… kinda insane.”

“Fun fact; ‘insane’ is really a legal term.”

Jonas rolls his eyes. “Kinda wild, then. Her and this other guy, too. They kinda like… adopted me?”

“Is that a positive or a negative?”

“I think it’s a positive? But— right, my point was, it gives me time to dip out the back and then meet them in the other parking lot.”

“Why the other parking lot?”

Jonas shoots Duke a flatly skeptical look. “Well they’re not gonna come meet me over in the ‘special’ wing.”

Duke huffs out a short laugh. “Wow, okay, strong feelings about IS are still there I see.” Even as Jonas is rolling his eyes again, he goes on. “So the wild duo. What kind of wild? You think they’ll get in the way of treatment?”

That makes him think for a second. “Um… no? I dunno. The guy is kinda stupid rich and somehow has a line to a shit ton of weed, apparently. Which could be a problem.”

Duke’s brows have risen high. “Could be, yeah. Does your JPPO do random testing? Think being around them could mess with your results?”

Jonas shakes his head. “Nah, they’re scheduled. Every other two weeks. And that should be done by the end of June, and the testing might be ditched entirely when we go down to only meeting once a month. Plus apparently he’s more of an edibles guy, so I’m not super worried about anything accidental. I can always just keep away for a few days before testing, shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Even though you’ve been adopted?”

He snorts a bit at that. “Guess I can’t know for sure. Not too worried, though.”

“That’s good. How exactly did you manage to get adopted?”

“The girl was my tour guide first day. I guess she thought I was cool, ‘cause she introduced me to her friend and… I dunno. We exchanged numbers and stuff. Texted. They’re kinda high energy for me, but also-” Jonas hesitates, rolling his eyes before continuing. “It’s weird, ‘cause Alex is kinda… popular? She’s a total dork, constantly jokes about being a witch, but it feels like everyone knows her? And likes her? It’s weird.”

“Huh. Are you saying you think they shouldn’t?”

“I’m saying…” Jonas shrugs. “Eh. She’s nice enough, I get that. But like… I feel like at North Valley she would’ve been… I mean, not disliked. Considered annoying, maybe, in large doses. Not exactly a class clown, but that same idea. More of a subject of entertainment than friendship.”

“That’s an interesting way of seeing things.”

“What do you mean?”

“Analytical.”

Jonas considers that for a second. “…Maybe? It’s just kinda how the world is, I’m not complaining about it or anything.”

“Are you unhappy about it?”

He shrugs. “No? Like I said; it’s just how it is. People offer certain benefits, right? Sometimes that’s, like… like someone who always knows the homework. If we’re thinking concretely here. And then there’s the one who always has a pencil you can borrow. —It’s like a study group sorta analogy. There’s someone who’s able to get everyone together at once, and someone who can talk to the teacher and argue on your behalf, but who you might not want to spend time with outside of class ‘cause they argue with everyone. And there’s a class clown type, who’s really entertaining but can sorta get in the way if you’re trying to be serious.” Jonas pauses again. “I mean, there’s a lot. But everyone kinda has their strengths and weaknesses, right? It’s like a teamwork thing.”

“So where do you fit in this?”

He thinks for a moment, still playing with the wire cage. “I dunno. I have a car.” That’s part of it at least, even if other things come to mind as well.

“You think that’s what people see you for? Your car?”

Jonas’s lips pull. “I’m not saying that’s my only redeeming quality, I know I’m not just some dude with a car. That’s just, like, the prime benefit.”

“What else?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your other ‘redeeming qualities.’”

He rolls his eyes. “I’m— I know I have them, okay? I’m- I have skills. But they aren’t- y’know, like, my function in a social group.”

“What if you didn’t have your car? You can’t give more than yourself— what qualities do you think you’re bringing.”

“…Alex seems to think my height is a benefit.”

“She obviously has not been 6’3 and attempted to sit in a compact sedan.”

Jonas cracks a smile. “Yeah it’s cute, she’s not tiny but both her and Ren are like… she said it before, I don’t remember what it was 5’5 or 6 or something. Joked about needing me to retrieve pickle jars or whatever.”

“So you’re the guy with the car and the pickle-getter.”

“Sure.”

“That all?”

“Well- I mean, the tall thing is also like—” he waves a hand, “-y’know, the other tall stuff.”

“Can’t say I know what you mean, apart from reaching things and being asked about the weather.”

“You know.” Jonas fidgets slightly. Duke has to know that part of things. “The kinda… intimidation thing.”

“How do you mean?”

Jonas’s lips pull again in that vague passing annoyance. “You know. Being tall and looking— not scary exactly, but like… imposing, I guess. Basically looking like someone you don’t want to mess with.”

“And that’s what you think you bring to a friendship?”

“Yeah. Like… like a bodyguard or something.”

“You think your friends are in danger you have to protect them from?”

“No- well.” He lets out a short sigh, a rueful smirk hooking his lips. “Not yet, anyway. And once they are, I’m betting they’ll have put themselves into it.”

“What does the whole ‘bodyguard’ thing mean, then?”

“Um.” A few images pass through Jonas’s mind, and he hesitates, face impassive for a second before he shrugs again. “Trying to keep her from getting hurt. I guess.”

“…That doesn’t really sound like something based solely on height.”

His fingers twitch, and Jonas’s ears feel warm. “Look, I spent a year in juvie for physical assault. It might not just be the height.”

“You think she wants you to fight for her? Is this like… an American Gladiators kinda thing, or…?”

The laugh is just a huff of breath, but the corners of Jonas’s mouth are lifting. “I don’t think she wants me to fight. I’m just— And I don’t want to fight!” he assures Duke. “But like… there’s probably some element of ‘this guy makes a good meat shield’ or whatever.”

“You ever think they might just… like you? Like just, as you?”

He snorts. “I— I’m not saying they don’t! I mean, at the very least they tolerate me, and I assume they must like me, otherwise we wouldn’t text all the time. It’s really easy to ignore someone’s texts and make excuses.” Jonas isn’t even mad about the question, it’s so far removed from how he feels. “I’m just saying that there’s this fringe benefit for them.”

“And is that how you see them, as well?”

He shrugs a shoulder. “Honestly, they’re my allies right now. Not in a bad way - I like them, they’re fun - but at the moment their function in my social circle is connecting me to my new community, right? They’re transitional aids, like a kinda PREP thing. Or IS. I mean, she was a tour guide.”

“Sounds kinda dehumanizing.”

“It’s not meant to be. I’m— Look, we talked all the time about support systems and community engagement, and buying in, right? So, I’m building a support system of peers.”

Duke cocks his head, looking mildly bemused.

“What?”

“It sounds like you know the words pretty well.”

“Yeah, well. I didn’t talk much. Mostly listened.”

“Is that really how you think about the people around you? As… I don’t know, bricks in your support structure?”

“I mean, it’s not the only thing I’m thinking. I like the company, I like the distraction, they’re fun. But…” Another one-shouldered shrug. “I dunno, man, call it a justification if you want.”

“What do you mean?”

Jonas sighs. “Gives me a reason to keep trying.” Again, it’s not said in anger, or even in sadness. Just a straightforward factual statement.

“What would you do if you didn’t think of things that way?”

“Can’t know for sure, obviously. But— I dunno. Call it distress tolerance. Giving them a function gives me a reason to tough it out. Like—” He pauses. “…Yeah, no, I can’t figure out an analogy for the brick thing. Sticking with people instead of being— transient.”

“Transient.”

“Kinda drifting around. Moving through things.”

“You think you’re transient?”

“I think I’d survive without friends. Until shit started to go wrong, I guess.”

Duke is quiet, eyes narrowed like he’s trying to parse the statement, considering. “…I’m not sure I get it.”

“I like people, but all the— politics, I guess. It stresses me out. I’d rather just… not. At least, in group things. School, juvie— the social dynamic is this constant thing where you’re maintaining. Don’t shit where you eat and all that. Don’t fuck it up, you’re stuck there. All this work to not make things worse for yourself. Honestly, I’d rather just see people when I see them. All day every day is… a lot.”

“…Can I ask you a question?” He’s leaning forward, and his tone is a different kind of curious than he has been.

“I mean… that’s literally all you’ve been doing.”

“Your residential center, your stepdown stuff— they had GED programs. Why come back to high school?”

Jonas is spinning the little wire toy around one finger steadily, keeping an eye on it to avoid having it fly off, even as he picks up speed. “Dad wanted me to.” His stomach dips, and his voice is a little quieter. “Mom would, too.” He’s silent for a second, still spinning. “And it’s supposed to be good for me. Community engagement, support structures, all that.”

“Why do you think they wanted you to do school?”

“I mean, my mom was a teacher. My dad… just wants me to be well-adjusted. I think he wants me to feel normal again.”

“What do you think?”

Jonas’s gut has been steadily, gradually, slowly but surely filling with lead. He breathes evenly. Too evenly. Actively making the attempt. When he speaks, it’s a low mutter. “Not sure that’s possible, if we’re being honest.”

“Why not?”

He shakes his head. “I dunno. Things just— changed. Can’t really undo that.”

“…I mean, I agree that you can’t live in the past. Things happened, you can’t undo them, but you also can’t spend every minute thinking about them. I know mindfulness tends to get a bad rap ‘cause it’s sort of trendy in the mental health field right now, but there’s definitely a ton of upsides to it.”

“I’m… vaguely familiar.” Jonas’s voice is a bit wry.

“So you know the whole idea of where you’re living. The goal is being present. So not living in the past, or in the future, but in the here and now, without judgment.”

“…Okay…”

Duke is still bouncing his foot a bit. “What do you think? Like— really consider it for a second. What that means.”

“What, living in the present?” Duke shrugs in a casual kind of confirmation. Jonas sighs, fixes his eyes on the therapist, and tries to do as asked. “…I guess I just feel like that’s asking for trouble.”

“How so?”

“I mean… thinking about the future is kinda important. Otherwise you fuck things up and can’t undo them.”

“Who says you can’t?”

Jonas snorts. “You? Like… a minute ago?”

“I guess— maybe it’s just the use of ‘undo.’ You can’t rewind and make something not have happened, but you can control how you handle the consequences, how you potentially repair the situation, your reactions to things, all of that. But if you’re constantly fearing every possible outcome of anything you do… you do nothing.”

“So you’re saying not to think of consequences. You want me to just go party and violate parole and not care what might happen?”

“Well, no.” Duke actually rolls his eyes. “Hell— it’s a delicate balance, right? But some part of that has to be just allowing yourself to exist without judgment.”

“O…kay?”

“Or analysis.”

“…Ah.”

“I mean, it’s not like I’m advocating underage drinking or drugs or truancy or anything, but… You’re out, y’know? You’re in this do-or-die headspace, but your situation has changed dramatically. Now’s your chance to go back to being a kid. Live a little.”

[source for AO3]

#fictober19 #oxenfree #jonas oxenfree #oxenfree fic #my writing #mach3 #cjgj #prompt fill #kinda

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unlimitedskyeproductions · 5 years

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101 Random Things About Aveian Kobayashi

1: full name is Aveian Hime Kobayashi (his middle name is literally Princess and honestly it fits) 2: he's the demonic personification of the Sin of Lust 3: unsurprisingly he's also a complete slut 4: those are literally the only three things you ever need to know about him but for the sake of this list I'll try to continue 5: approximately 1,200 years old 6: physically 16 7: generally always horny like 80% of the time 8: it's ridiculously easy to turn him on and like ;;;;; as soon as he gets excited he'll just drag you off to bed 9: used to be a demon but he was "purified" and now he's turning into an angel but he doesn't actually KNOW he's turning into an angel and it is just SUCH a long fucking story 10: when he was a demon he had badass fire powers 11: loves seducing people 12: ALWAYS AN UKE 13: THIS KID COULDN'T TOP A FUCKING LEAF IF HE TRIED 14: then again he also never actually WANTS to be dominant so this is a good thing for him 15: either super bi or super pan I'm not really sure anymore 16: predominantly sleeps with men but will go for a chick if dudes sre unavailable 17: sadomasochist 18: flirty and sassy in personality 19: also very classy usually 20: and also he's bit of a whiner and a crybaby 21: kind of flamboyant-ish 22: used to be a prince before he turned into a demon 23: proud of his promiscuity 24: I'm seriously running out of things to put on this list because his character is incredibly straightforward and not hard to process at all 25: will flirt with literally anyone 26: if he doesn't like you and you're trying to get with him he won't hesitate to throw you down and stomp on your head 27: has no idea what personal space means 28: VERY VERY AFFECTIONATE 29: loves being cuddled 30: always the little spoon 31: only ever eats candies nd fruits and desserts, and occasionally meat stuffs 32: really kinky and not afraid to try new positions in bed 33: has had sex more times in his life than probably any human alive 34: his bf has a really large dick so he is Always Satisfied 35: not sure what to put beyond this point 36: struggling to write this 37: loves shopping 38: he used to have blonde hair but it turned white when he became demon 39: and now it's blonde again because he turned back 40: suffering from frequent back pain because his angel wings are growing in 41: he's unaware of this happening 42: very very very fragile physically, mentally and emotionally 43: he'll cry if you bully him 44: once he starts crying you should start running becAUSE HIS BF IS THE PERSONIFICATION OF WRATH AND HE WILL NOT STAND FOR PEOPLE HURTING HIS LITTLE ANGEL AND HE WILL FUCKING DESTROY YOU 45: so please don't bully Aveian okay 46: spends about 45 minutes a day just staring at himself in the mirror 47: usually without clothes on 48: refuses to wear any kind of socks that stop before his mid-knee 49: not entirely sure how technology works because he was born in the year 803 and he's just so confused by modern things 50: once tried humping a vacuum cleaner because be didn't know what it was for (it looked hilarious by the way) 51: can't believe I got more than halfway done with this oh my god 52: if he didn't live with 6 other people (2 of which being minors) he'd literally just walk around naked all day because he can (except he can't) 53: always sleeps without clothes on (if it's cold outside he'll sometimes wear very slinky silk pajamas) 54: loves dressing up in all kinds of cute and sexy lingerie to both feel pretty and also to show off for his bf 55: will not hesitate to smack a bitch if need be 56: this is gonna sound a bit weird outta context but I seem to have attributed the Touhou song Septette for a Dead Princess to this guy and it actually really fits despite it being kinda weird to do that 57: once tried to get a friend to kill him because he was So Fucking Done with life as a demon and he was miserable 58: unfortunately he survived 59: aaaaaaand then his bf found out 60: and called him selfish for being miserable 61: I could honestly go on but if I did I'd be relaying 3 weeks worth of emailed roleplays with a friend and I'm just not fucking doing that 62: can't handle being yelled at 63: his bf used to be very physically abusive but he's doing better now 64: he always said his bf hit him because he didn't know any other way to show love (this is half right, considering his bf is literally Wrath incarnate) 65: loves cute fluffy things like tiny animals and stuff 66: one time when he was still a demon he brought home a bunch of tiny floofy kittens and spent the entire day playing with them 67: unfortunately his bf burned and ate them 68: can't swim at all 69: really really really loves giving blowjobs 70: always swallows 71: did you know that if you rearrange the letters in Lust, it spells Slut? 72: pretty ironic, huh? 73: random fact while I struggle to write more shit 74: recently figured out how the internet works and now he's addicted to instagram 75: he takes selfies daily and he already has 164 followers 76: his account has been up for a week 77: y e a h 78: let that sink in 79: fucking ridiculous 80: will not eat vegetables ever 81: all of his shoes have heels 82: he dresses like a girl really fucking often 83: he's not a trap and nor is he trans - he just really really loves feeling pretty 84: favorite color is purple 85: HE FUCKING HATES COFFEE 86: occasionally he gets really hyper for no reason and it's suepr cute how excited he gets when you notice that haircut he got a month ago 87: occasionally his bf will flirt with him nd get him all excited and then tease him by denying any sexual advances 88: this drives him insane and he really hates being forced to go rub one out on his own 89: really chill during the day but gets super excited as soon as it's nighttime and he immediately runs outside to the garden and dances under the moonlight 90: loves when it's a full moon because it's super pretty 91: when he turned into a demon he burned down the castle he lived in during a fit of rage which ended up killing his father (aka the fucking king of that country) 92: he doesn't regret his choices 93: deeply misses his mother 94: had two younger siblings at the time but he can't remember if they survived or not 95: they're sure as sHIT not alive now 96: it was in 819 and it's 2019 now so like-- 97: basic math is important 98: I dunno what to put here anymore 99: I'VE COME THIS FAR AND I CAN'T THINK OF A 100TH THING 100: why did I write all of this at 2 am 101: don't fuck with demons

#unlimitedskyeproductions #aveian kobayashi #oc info #100 random things

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unpackingmyself · 5 years

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Today was a day

My wife and I are doing couples therapy and my therapist asked me to start journaling, so here I am.

One thing that’s come up frequently in therapy is trying to connect emotional moments to my childhood experiences, so I can better understand where those emotions come from. I had one of those moments tonight and I wanted to make note of it.

Today I had to go out to get cosequin and a set of dog stairs because my 9-year-old whippet mix is showing clear signs of arthritis. This shopping errand turned into an ordeal that’s not relevant, aside from the fact that it took a lot of time and effort on a very challenging and emotional day. I got it done, though. I even started teaching him how to use the stairs.

Later this evening, after yet more emotional challenges unrelated to this anecdote, I saw the stairs next to my bed out of the corner of my eye, and immediately thought of all the handicapped equipment my dad has. It made me feel like I was taking care of my dog because he needed it, like my dad does, instead of just because I love my dog. I’m not saying that’s bad, but it was kind of a surprise to find that motivation in there.

I’m scared. I’m losing my grip on a lot of things. I don’t know what’s about to happen in my life in so many ways. But my dog is now a little more comfortable because of me, and that’s made me feel a tiny bit better. Like I found one thing I could do right and get done, something that would help another, and then I could see a way it affected me deeper than just what it was on the surface.

I was bad today. Not like I did evil things; it was a bad, bad day to be me, to be in my head. My wife and I had therapy this morning and I took everything personally. Sure, I have some valid reasons, but that’s the approach I fell into. After pouting and moping and being upset over that and other major issues, I decided it was time to get the dog errands done--he needed it and I could do it.

Next, I went to the pet store, but I also had a cigarette along the way because I clearly need chemicals to help me stay stable at this point. I even drove a lap around the shopping complex just so I could finish my cigarette. I got the stairs and supplements, popped into the next store to pick up something random I needed, and then went home.

When I got home, I immediately opened the box of stairs and found there were pieces missing. After 10 minutes on the phone with customer service, I had to go back to the store to swap the one I bought for a new one. So, back to the store, swap made, back home.

I sat on the floor to put it together. One of the pieces didn’t want to fit exactly right, I put another piece in the wrong spot, and the tools they gave were really cheap and crappy and hard to use. While I was working on it, I got an email from my recent ex.

That right there is a whole other thing that I don’t want to get into right now. Suffice it to say, we broke up this past weekend after 2 years together and have been having intermittent communication over email since then. The tone this morning was snippy at best, then I said I was taking a break from that conversation before it turned nasty. Well, while I’m putting the stairs together, I got a new email from that ex. It was a long, thoughtful, caring email that I wish had been written two weeks earlier. I read it, crying, and then put my phone down and finished my battle with the stairs (successfully).

I immediately took a few minutes to start teaching him how to use them, then sat on the floor and read the email again. I cried through it once more, talked about it with my wife and girlfriend, and then just sort of shut down. After a bit of that, I announced I was going to my room to watch a stupid movie, because I just couldn’t deal anymore.

I talked to my girlfriend a bit more during the movie (she came in to check on me) and then fell asleep soon after she had to head out. When I woke up, I went out to have dinner, sitting at the table with my wife. That’s the moment when I felt I needed to gripe about our sex life. When she didn’t respond in a way that made me feel better, I finished my dinner, did the dishes, and headed off to my room for the night. She came in a little later to try to offer understanding, support, and compromises, and I was completely shut down and unreceptive. She didn’t stay long, and I don’t blame her. I only came out once later that evening, just to say good night before I went to hide in my room for the rest of the night. She still came in to say good night before she went to bed, because my wife is too good to me sometimes.

I ate an edible (remember chemicals?) and then spent the evening watching Netflix and doing mindless things on the internet, right up until I noticed those stairs out of the corner of my eye and had that big realization from 80,000 words ago. After taking a moment to absorb it, then sitting with my dog for a bit, I got a post-it to leave my wife a note she’d find in the morning: “I’m sorry I’ve been so difficult lately. I’m going to keep trying. I love you.” Then I sat back down at my computer and started writing this. So, I guess maybe I’m doing better than I was earlier. It’s after 2, so I should try to sleep.

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roonil-wazlib-at-221b · 6 years

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Hacked: Part 9

Pom, Dennis, and Juna, who is holding Crookshanks, are waiting for you at the cabin. The sun is just starting to rise over the buildings and you stop for a moment to admire the view, knowing it’s the last you’ll be seeing of it for two long years.

The small cat, looking healthier after just two days of being under Juna’s care, meows when he sees you. You grin at him, scratching his head with one finger. He’s still so tiny.

“You’re coming back, right?” Juna asks, her chin trembling as she tries not to cry.

“I will,” you vow, crouching down to be at her level.

“I’m going to miss having you keep this terror busy,” Dennis says, jerking a thumb at his sister, before holding out a new armband for you. You take it with a watery smile and snap it over your right wrist, as the left is occupied by his watch. You press the single button on it and it melts into a new hoverboard. “For when you can’t carry around that one,” he says, nodding to your trusty old board. “The modes are activated by your voice. Bulletproof. Everything that has and more.” You pull him into a tight hug, gripping his neck as tightly as you can, standing on your tiptoes as he’s a bit taller than you. Maybe he’ll grow even more while you’re gone.

“And this is technically from Pom, but I made it and so I can explain it better,” he adds, holding a gun out to you. “The bullets reject blood and dirt and anything else, so they’re always pristine, and they always leave no trace, and they’re magnetic and will return to the gun no matter what. Once one has been fired, this—” he taps the cylinder—“opens up and it’s ready for another shot. Doesn’t fire until you say that you’re shooting something, so you won’t accidentally shoot yourself while it’s in your pocket or anything.”

You hug your newfound friend too, thanking her for her thoughtful gift, even though you probably won’t be shooting many things while you’re in Canada. Maybe you’ll go to a shooting range, if they even have those there.

Then Stick exits the house in an immaculate black suit, carrying a backpack. “Hey there,” he says, friendly, smiling. It looks and sound wrong. “I’m Samuel Gates.” He sticks out his hand.

You stare at him for a long moment, your mind working furiously to find out where you’ve heard that name, before you put it together. You can’t hold back the laughter. You bend over, nearly hysterical, but that might also be knowing that your life is ending. The burner laptop is in the school’s Dumpster, but it’ll only take them a few hours to trace the device that’d posted the article. When you straighten, you finally grasp the hand he’d been extending and pump it, your grin threatening to split your face open.

“Your article has already got more than a million people,” your fake father tells you and you feel dizzy. “Wow,” you breathe.

Pom slugs you in the shoulder. “You did it.”

You nod as if in a daze. “I really did it.”

“Your ride’s nearly here,” Dennis says sullenly.

“When will you guys tell me about the results of the case?” you ask quickly.

Stick shrugs. “It doesn’t matter what happens. I just filed the complaint because I want some eyes off of you, at least for the time being. People will be so busy watching the case they won’t notice you, sneaking across the border to Canada.”

“You did that… for me?” You smile broadly and look down, touching your cheeks with your hands. “Thank you,” you whisper.

You hate to ask Stick for more than what he’s given you—he’s given you everything—but you need to take care of one more thing before you leave. “I hate to ask for more, but I have one more thing…” You pause, and Pom nods at you, her eyes glistening. At least you’ll always have a friend in her. “When my mom dies, can you make sure she’s not alone?”

You kind of expect Pom to ask you why, especially because you had been complaining about her to her a week ago, but you forgot that she’s also lost her mom. She understands.

“I have to leave,” Stick says regretfully when two cars pull up to the clearing, one sleek and black and the other a beat-up Jeep. “And so do you.” He hands you the backpack. “For your troubles,” he says, then winks. You giggle.

“Come visit me, all right?” you order playfully, putting your hands on your hips as you glare at your three friends. “I’m going to miss you guys.” You turn away before remembering something and turning back around. You give them the address of the house that’d thrown out Crookshanks. “That’s where I found Crooksie,” you explain. “The dude there’d just thrown him out.”

Juna’s face had clouded with anger.

You hug them each one more time before jogging over to the Jeep. The driver is an older dude that’s been on missions with Pom before, but you’ve never spoken with him directly. You smile politely at each other before shoving the backpacks under your feet and hopping in. “Sweet car,” you say. He grins. It is a sweet car—it’s really tall and compact and the windows have to be cranked up manually.

“Thanks. Music or no music?” he asks, carefully following behind the car Stick is in.

“No,” you say shortly, fiddling with your hands in your lap. Your heart is in your throat, the butterflies having a migration in your stomach, and your eyes won’t stop scanning the skies for your dad in his suit to come swooping in, ready to arrest you. You’re afraid the music would muffle the sounds of approaching police or Avengers. “Thanks for driving me,” you add.

“No problem,” he smiles. “It was practically a fight between the older kids. You’re basically a legend—hacking into Tony Stark’s personal accounts and releasing the stuff to the public? You’ve got guts, kid.”

More like you’re too stubborn to not go through with a reckless idea you’d mentioned once without thinking about the consequences.

“Still,” you mutter. “It’s quite a drive.”

“I’ve got nowhere else to be,” he assures you and you lean back in your seat, nerves tangled, fraying, and as tense as they’ve ever been. It starts to hit you, then, exactly what you just did: you pretty much ruined your dad’s reputation and maybe even life, your life is completely thrown off whack, and you’re leaving your friends behind without an explanation.

You nearly feel sick to your stomach when you remember that you’re never going to see Peter again, and even if you do, you won’t be able to tell him that you’re you. You’re going to say that you’re Ava Blake, Canadian orphan. You start to rummage through the backpack Stick had given you to take your mind off that. It has multiple credit cards, a few mini-bombs, and some cash, both American and Canadian.

“I’m Oakley,” he adds.

“Y/N,” you respond.

At one point or another you must fall asleep because you jerk awake to Oakley jostling your shoulder. Your heart pounds and you instinctively scan your surroundings for someone chasing you. You’re parked in the lot of a 7/11.

“We’re in Lenox Township, Pennsylvania,” Oakley tells you. “I thought you might need to take a bathroom break or get some food.”

You nod, rubbing your eyes. “Yeah.”

Six hours later, you get to the border. Oakley pulls into a line and gives a card to the guard at the gate. “She really did it?” the guard asks, impressed.

You smile shyly at him. “Yeah.”

He lets out a low whistle. “Damn. Keep it up, missy.” It would seem Stick’s got people everywhere.

Toronto reminds you a little too much of New York and you can feel your throat close up at the sight of it. Finally he pulls up in front of an old apartment building. You stare up at it, feeling suddenly very small and very scared. You wish anyone was here with you. You wish you had Crookshanks. You wish you’d never posted the article, you wish you’d never had the idea for the article, you wish you’d never been born from Tony Stark.

The apartment is large. Jacob and Bella both congratulate you on your accomplishment and that, at least, fills you with a bit of warmth, knowing that at least with Stick’s people you’re basically a hero. He’s probably—no, definitely—impressed. And this is only for two years. You can live with these two people, fresh out of college and practically teens themselves and insisting that you think of them as your older siblings and not parents. This is better than living with your mother for sure. You have the whole summer to get to know this city and your foster family. Your friends can come visit you during it.

You’re going to be fine.

If Peter had known what was going on, he would’ve chased after you.

It sounds like a weak excuse and he knows that, but it’s the truth. He hadn’t questioned your ‘job’ excuse, because you always seem to be working, and he had thought he could ask you what in the hell you meant by that kiss at lunch or during another class he shares with you. When he gets the call from Tony saying that the case had fallen through even before it had started, and that Peter needs to read an article before he can explain anything else, Peter had been ecstatic. It was just that he wasn’t a big fan of the article. He’d never even heard of a kid that was kidnapped from Tony Stark, and he immediately started to wonder how the author had gotten hold of those articles and Tony’s credit card records. The women would have been pretty easy to track down, but still. The article has a few really convincing and true points, and that makes Peter hate it even more.

Tony promises he’ll talk to Peter as soon as he can, after he smoothes out the whole article issue, and Peter has to brace himself before entering his apartment every day, preparing himself for Tony to be on the couch with Aunt May.

And you’re gone.

Ned and Michelle haven’t heard from you for the last two weeks. Your email and Google Voice are disconnected, and when Michelle had gone to the trailer where you used to live, your mother had confessed you hadn’t been home since the day you’d kissed Peter. She’d said it carelessly, MJ had reported, and Peter had had to restrain himself from going down there himself to shake sense into her. How could she not care that you’re missing?

He still doesn’t know why you kissed him. He’d told Ned and MJ that you said you loved them but he hadn’t mentioned the kiss. When he’d said that to them, MJ’s face had settled into a scowl. “That sounds like a sort of good-bye,” she’d drawled. “You didn’t think to mention this before? She might have been planning to run away, or even…” She lets her voice trail away before saying the dreaded possibility everyone has thought about.

Tony discounts the article easily, saying that the alcohol was because Thor had been over at that point and since he’s a god, he’s got a good alcohol tolerance. Everyone knows that Tony had slept around but he hasn’t had a one-night stand in years, especially because he’s got Pepper at home. He’d also mentioned that he had been told that the city would pay for the construction and he’d gotten all the local officials to agree with that, probably by paying them off.

When you hear about that, you’d nearly shot someone—your whole life, thrown out the window, and he just got to sit there, throwing money at the right people and wriggling out of yet another tight spot. You nearly cruise all the way back to New York just to put a bullet between his eyes, but Bella and Jacob had managed to convince you not to. Sure, your life’s definitely not the one you planned for, but at this rate, you’ll still be free. If you kill Stark, there’s no way you wouldn’t be hunted down.

It took three long weeks of Peter anxiously searching the streets of New York for you before Tony shows up to explain.

“This is a pretty complicated story,” the billionaire says heavily, slouching in his chair. The bags under his eyes are dark.

“Do you—do you want anything to eat?” Peter stutters, crossing his arms before uncrossing them because it probably looks rude but having them at his sides limply is weird, so he crosses his arms again, turning red.

Tony waves him off. “You deserve an explanation, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t exactly say that,” Peter chuckles, but he’d definitely like one.

“The article was written by Y/N Y/L/N,” Tony says abruptly.

Peter’s arms fall to his sides and he stares at Tony, slack-jaws. “P-pardon?”

“Y/N Y/L/N. She went to your school. She’s one of my—mine,” Tony stutters. It takes Peter a second to figure out what he’s saying before his eyes widen with recognition. Now he sees it—you two have the same eyebrows, the same chin, the same nose. He can’t believe he didn’t see it earlier. “It’s sort of complicated.”

“Y-you said that,” Peter laughs, tapping his thigh with his hand. You… you’re one of Tony Stark’s children, the elite group no one really wants to be in. He’d kissed Tony Stark’s daughter. Tony Stark’s daughter is now missing. He half expects Tony to shoot him right here in his apartment for doing so.

“Did you know her?” Tony says quietly.

Peter shrugs before admitting, “Yeah,” and resigning himself to his death.

“Can you tell me about her?”

#peter parker #Peter Benjamin Parker #peter parker x reader #peter parker fluff #peter parker write #marvel #marvel fanfic #marvel fanfiction #marvel fluff #marvel fic #marvel write #mcu #reader x peter parker #peter parker fanfic #peter parker fanfiction #peter parker fic #reader insert #peter parker x you #you x peter parker

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catboysuigetsu · 6 years

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Robogirl, Monkey Boy and Their Fantastic Kids

In which Trunks and Marron care for Pan, Bulla and Uub on a movie night that ends with introspection (because I wrote it, it can’t be all fluffy, curse my writing)

a late entry for @dbnextgenweek

The only ship is Truten and Goten isn’t even here ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And rated T I guess? mostly G except one line at the end and some alcohol drinking. Mostly no one gets hurt, it’s just domestic shenanigans. Enjoy, ya’ll.

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“Trunks, can I have a margarita?” Bulla asked, leaning way over on the counter, eyes wide. What he was making himself was a cocktail, but to Bulla it was all the same. She was five years old.

“What’s the magic word?” Marron nearly choked.

“Please?” she whined, flopping on the bar.

“Alright, go sit down.” She hopped off the stool and Trunks met Marron’s eyes. The girl was glaring daggers at him.

“Are you going to give your five year old sister alcohol?” she demanded.

He smirked, so much like his father. “Of course not. Check it out.” He motioned for her to look under the bar and opened a wine chiller. Lined up was every brightly colored fruity soda she could name off the top of her head. “Mix it together and it looks just like the real thing, and the smell’s so strong they won’t be able to tell that it’s different than mine. It was Goten’s idea. He’s so smart,” he added wistfully, which made Marron laugh because no, he’s really not. Trunks’s boyfriend was away visiting colleges this weekend, even though he would likely go to online college and work at Capsule Corp like Trunks did. Or at least he hoped so.

“Well, that sure is deception.”

“It’s great! Gotta stay one step ahead of these kids.”

“Bad attitude, man.” She wouldn’t admit that she had felt the same way since she was nine, or even before then. She was so below the Saiyan children’s power that she had to accept that getting close to their level would be no easy task. She had strategy, though, taught by her dad and figured out by trial and error. Catching her boys off guard was her specialty.

“Do you want one?” Trunks asked, cracking open four bottles of soda and pouring the first in a glass of ice.

“The real kind or the sugar monstrosity?” She was 16, not legally allowed to drink alcohol yet, not like Trunks knew that, or cared. “Neither. I think I’m good.”

“Alright. Could you go ask Pan and Uub what they want?”

“Whatever.” She went.

The home theater was cut off from the bar by only glass. It was dark, only illuminated by the blue screen of the TV, but all three children were good at seeing in low light. Bulla crouched in the corner, adjusting the movie settings on the laptop there, and Pan leaned over her shoulder observantly. Uub sat on the edge of the couch with his arms around his knees, the blue of the frozen screen reflecting in his large brown eyes.

“Who wants what, kids?”

“Can I have a margarita too?” Pan asked. Marron sighed.

“Do you have milk?” Uub asked quietly.

“Probably upstairs. I’ll get you a glass.” She didn’t move for a moment, then sat down next to the boy. He looked skittish and kept pushing his chin into his knees. “You doing okay?”

“It’s not usually this dark, I-I’m not used to not seeing the sky.” The theater room had no windows and gave the best of them claustrophobia. The sterile air and the enclosed space were understandably frightening the little boy who was never as far from the outside as he was in the Briefs’ compound.

“You want to go for a walk?”

“Yes.” After a beat he unfolded himself and walked with the teen to the door.

“Pan wants a cocktail too,” Marron informed Trunks as they walked by, “and we’re going upstairs to get milk.” He waved a hand to acknowledge them, but didn’t even turn his head. He was on the phone and judging by the spacey, blissed out look on his face she could guess with whom.

The whole compound was dark, save the occasional emergency light, and the air whirred with the sounds of machinery, but at least topside light from the streetlamps and stars streamed in the windows. Uub looked at the sky in wonder, and smiled like it was his best friend. They stopped a moment to stare through the window. Marron wondered if a part of the child remembered that he came from there, somewhere farther out in the cosmos than she could imagine from her little shoebox house on Earth. He played with the lock on the window and before Marron could stop him he was leaning into the warm breeze, giggling at the spring peepers that filled the air with noise.

“Go fly around, I’ll let you back in,” and he was out, hitting the ground and bolting after the peeping frogs. Marron hardly saw someone so happy.

She continued to the kitchen and poured milk for Uub and herself. She spend a minute tapping on the counter, checking her email, enjoying the quiet, before her companion touched down on the patio and knocked on the glass with his elbow. His hands were clamped tightly together and something squeaked inside. Uub smiled like a mad man.

“You shouldn’t bring the frog inside,” Marron warned, but that’s all it was, a warning. She didn’t say he couldn’t.

“I want to show Pan, then I’ll let it back out.”

“Alright.” and after a moment she added with a smirk, “We’re gonna freak Trunks out though, okay?”

He didn’t get it. He didn’t have to.

They headed back downstairs, Uub looking giddily down at the frog in the empty cereal box they placed it in. Trunks was wrapping his call with Goten up when they returned and Marron transferred the frog into her hand.

“How is Goten doing?” she asked, hands clasped behind her back.

“Great. He’s coming home earlier than he thought he was.” Trunks smelled of alcohol but he was drunk on his own love. It might have been cute.

“How much did you drink? You haven’t touched your cocktail,” she commented, moving closer.

“I had some vodka, just from the bottle. The drink’s for the movie.”

“Ah-huh.” She moved so they were almost touching and wrapped her arms around the tall teen. He hugged back, of course. And her hand sneaked up to his shoulder and placed the frog there. He didn’t notice— until it croaked. The half Saiyan jumped backwards into the wine rack. Marron cackled.

Uub stepped in frantically to rescue the peeper and the girls raced in as Trunks yelled groggily, “How dare you weaponize hugs! Friendship ended robogirl!”

“Talk’s cheap monkey boy!”

“Hey!” Bulla shouted, tiny hands on tiny hips. “Don’t be racist.” Both teens doubled over laughing. Pan agreed loudly over her shoulder.

Marron reached to help Trunks stand up, and he took her hand with one of his and pointed in her face with the other. “Don’t put! Slimy creatures on me please, young lady.”

“Alright, old man, but I promise nothing about slimy plants.”

Trunks groaned.

Pan jumped on Marron, flying up to be face to face with her. “Can we go watch Frozen now?”

“We’re watching Frozen? Oy, I had no idea.” This was the third time they were watching Frozen for movie night, she could have guessed. She stepped toward the theater room and the kids headed that way. “Don’t forget your movie drink, Trunks.” She took her milk with her. Trunks followed.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Marron was the outcast at her school from 1st grade (she skipped preschool and Kindergarten) to about age 9, and truly she never stopped being one. She had cried for her mom the first couple months of school, and she solved her problems with ki blasts from her fingers, put together with her appearance and need to question everything and not having a filter between curiosity and prying and talking back, did not make her popular.

Chiaotzu had something to say about that, after all he had watched her (along with Tien and/or Yamcha) when she was little the few times 18 had somewhere to be or she and Krillin had a night or a weekend out. She called him her best friend, other than her mom, and didn’t see any problem with it until she had to go to school and he didn’t, seeing as he was a 30 year old. Chiaotzu was the first one to recognize that she really needed some friends her own age.

The only people in the world who could understand Marron, daughter of an android and the most powerful human on Earth, who could bend the energy in and around her to her will, were deemed to be Goten and Trunks. They didn’t like that all that much. Goten wanted to help her but didn’t want his friendship with Trunks to change, and Trunks flat out refused, “Goten is my friend and I don’t wanna share.”

They started meeting only once a week, an Saturday afternoons, after which Bulma would let them stay up as long as they liked playing video games (not like they didn’t do that already, but now it was permitted so they wouldn’t have to try and hide it.) They played hide-and-seek in the sprawling gardens until they introduced her to video games, where she took a vicious liking to whooping their virtual backsides. Hangouts at the Capsule Compound became trips to the mall and the zoo and aquarium, camping trips and occasional sleepovers. They liked each other and reveled in their secret powers, exchanging glances and smiles at school. They confided in each other. She was their friend, and they were her boys.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Trunks sat with his arm spread out on top of the couch like always, and Marron sat on the cushion in front of it and leaned her head back. Her shaved hair irritated his skin and he readjusted himself so the short girl leaned on his shoulder instead. When she first shaved her hair he accused her of copying him. She said neither flattery nor mockery was involved in her decision. Her hair was just too long for her own good, she didn’t like it on the back of her neck or behind her ears. It made her a better fighter too, which was always a plus. Grabbing Goten’s hair over and over was what made him finally cut his. Trunks kept his short for convenience probably, since he has no patience to deal with tangles.

“I’m going to start the movie!” Bulla declared, pressing the play button then running and catapulting herself into her brother’s lap.

“OOF! Ow, Bulla!” She giggled. “What is this, mess with Trunks night?”

“Here I come,” Pan warned and jumped onto Marron’s lap. The teen tackled the littler girl to the couch into a laughing heap.

Uub had gone somewhere, but returned not too far into the movie. “The frog’s back outside.”

Pan pouted. “Can you catch another one later?”

“I’ll teach you how to catch one.” He sat down and Pan clambered off Marron’s lap and onto his. He hardly let anybody touch him, let alone sit in his lap. Pan was a special case. She was his training buddy, and fellow frog lover.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

By the time everyone lived happily ever after it was past 11 o’clock but none of the kids wanted to go to sleep. Trunks and Marron were ready but the young ones still had energy. Trunks wasn’t about to deal with that.

He tucked Bulla and Pan into their little shared bed against their protests and made them promise that if they played games they had to be talking games, not get up and run around ones. Uub slept in a cot in the same room and he was the one of the three closest to falling asleep. He was curled up with his eyes closed when the teens left.

Marron climbed into Trunks’s bed as he exhaustedly set up the air mattress.

“Goten will be back this time tomorrow. You think you two’ll be screwing in this room then?” Marron asked lazily.

“I haven’t the foggiest idea why you would want to know that given where you are currently laying,” he responded, smirking and flopping on his mattress.

“You’re right. I don’t wanna know.”

The Saiyan boy pulled his quilt up to his chin. “Lights off,” he commanded, and they clicked off.

“You think either of you’ll ever have kids?” she asked, quieter this time. “You’re a good… you’re such a good big brother to all three of them.”

She almost thought Trunks hadn’t heard her, and listened for his snores. He finally said, “We haven’t talked about it, I mean I’m only 19 and he’s 18. I can’t say I want kids but I do... like caring for the kids we have now.” Pause. “I don’t know, you don’t think putting me in permanent charge of a kid is a good idea, right? I’m not that responsible.” She knew. He had given his five year old sister what she thought was a margarita.

“I dunno. Put you and Goten together and you make a great team. I mean, what else are you gonna do?”

“How about run Capsule Corp? I’ve got my job set for me, I don’t know about him.”

“Bulma runs this place and still raised two kids. You could do it.”

“A lot of faith, Marron, a lot of faith.” It was quiet again.

“You could go pro at fighting, I think that’s what I’m gonna do.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Fruit and vodka. Mechanical whirring, light through the windows from streetlamps and stars. Spring peepers. “Goodnight, Mar.”

“Goodnight.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Please tell me other people know what peepers are? Those frogs where you can open your window in the springtime and hear them screaming at each other. We have them in the suburbs but I’m pretending they have them in the city too.

Also I have not watched any of GT, although I guess this takes place some time in between the end of Z and the start of GT in some au where Uub stays in Satan City to train along with Bulla and Pan instead of going back to his island. All characterizations are kind of pulled out of my head along with things I’ve gotten from fandom osmosis.

Hope you liked!

edit: HAHAH i forgot to mention that i have zero concept of anybody’s ages in canon so if something’s really wrong, it’s probably just my ignorance. Whoops.

#roadrunner speaks #roadrunner writes #dbnextgenweek2018 #dragon ball #trunks #marron #pan #bulla #uub #goten #kinda #alcohol

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lifeinliminality · 4 years

Text

BC/AD

I want to tell this story. I think it is important to tell, especially in this moment—when collectively we are straining against the changes wrought by a global pandemic.

Maybe I should start by saying that sometimes stories are something you’ve been working on in your life for years. You’ve crafted and cultivated it. Nurtured and pruned it to your liking. But this story was thrust upon me. This story began in an instant and I could do nothing but see it play out, catch up to its lightning speed pace, and hold on for dear life.

This story began on January 13, 2018 at approximately 11:30pm. It began with a sleeping child on a gurney in a hospital emergency room with his worried parents and a hesitant ER doctor.

While holding my sleeping child, I was given the worst news you could imagine: “He has blasts in his blood. When a child has these blasts it points to leukemia or lymphoma. We’ll be admitting your son tonight.” Cancer. Six letters that spell something life changing.

I remember a teacher once describing the difference between B.C. and A.D. when referring to dates in a history book. When I was a child, I used to think about it as “Before Christ” and “After Death” (meaning Christ’s death). I always thought it was such a strange and monumental way to mark time. Now, it doesn’t seem so strange. Our lives are literally divided into B.C., “Before Cancer” and A.D. “After Diagnosis.” But I’m getting ahead of myself.

For all we knew, our son was a healthy and happy almost three year old. He was a younger brother and would soon become a big brother—just two months prior to this night we had discovered we were pregnant with our third child. He liked Paw Patrol and playing soccer and other sports. An old soul from birth, our middle child both impressed and challenged my husband and I with his iron-strong will.

He had gotten a cold shortly before Christmas. But unlike before, he didn’t bounce back to his normal effervescent self. He got pale, was emotional, lost his appetite and after we spent the night of January 12th up every hour with him moaning, my husband decided to take him to the pediatric urgent care. I had to go to work that afternoon. I run a community wide children’s program in Montclair, New Jersey. My husband said he’d take both boys to the urgent care if he still wasn’t better after his afternoon nap. I met them there that evening after the event, in time to hold my son down while they fished around for a vein from which to draw blood. I hate getting blood drawn. When I was a child, I’d had to be held down because my younger brother was sick and they wanted to make sure I was okay. It traumatized me. But more than having my blood drawn, I hated having to be the one holding my child down for this. Little did I know that this would become a routine part of our existence.

While I waited with our middle son for the blood results, the other two hit up Smashburger in the strip mall next door. It was dinner time now and we were anticipating a rush once we left the urgent care to get our kids fed and ready for bed. Instead, the doctor came in and asked if there was someone local who could take care of our older son while we went to the pediatric emergency room. She was very specific: take him to [redacted for privacy]; no, you cannot go home and eat dinner with your children first. And don’t Google anything. I remember how strange that comment was—mostly because I didn’t even know what I would Google. She hadn’t told us anything about the blood results, only that we needed to go immediately to the Pediatric ER and that she’d called ahead.

We called our pastor, and his wife came over to stay with my oldest until my sister could get out to us from Long Island City.

My husband and I spent the 20-minute car ride to the emergency room trying to distract our two year old with his favorite song at the time: I’m Still Standing from the movie SING! An Elton John classic. It instantly became our mantra in the days ahead.

So there we were, the ER doctor just left the room after dropping the cancer bombshell us. I instantly started weeping, as did my husband. It was completely surreal. An orderly came in to wheel us up to the fifth floor of the hospital. We gathered our things. I was on the gurney with our still sleeping boy. It was after midnight now. January 14th. I don’t think I fully processed that leukemia was cancer until I saw the sign “Pediatric Hematology/Oncology” painted over the door we entered on the fifth floor. It was a waking nightmare.

We were 23 days in the hospital after his initial diagnosis. The first few days were a whirl of tests, surgeries and a steady rotation of doctors, nurses, and specialists. There was paperwork to sign: releasing the doctors and hospital of liability if something happened to our child when he was under sedation for a port placement, spinal tap, and chemo infusions. There was a social worker, a nutritionist, and a flurry of texts from family members and friends as we slowly put the word out.

Around day seven we got another bombshell—type 1 diabetes. Yep. We got a “two-fer.” So not only were we learning all we could about acute lymphoblastic leukemia and fielding calls, texts, and emails from family, friends, and friends of friends who knew someone with leukemia, but we were learning how to take blood glucose readings through “finger sticks,” calculate insulin to carbohydrate ratios, and give manual insulin injections to our son. Our son lost 9 pounds—which on a tiny toddler body renders a child gaunt. He started to associate finger sticks and shots with eating, so naturally, he stopped wanting to eat. They had to put an NG tube in—a tube that goes up the nose, down the back of the throat and esophagus directly into the stomach, so that we could give him Pediasure if he didn’t eat. He caught a cold somewhere around week two, which meant isolating him to his hospital room. He rarely smiled, he mostly slept and cried about taking the few oral medications he had to take daily. By the time of discharge, he could barely walk. His muscles had atrophied from being in bed for so long. Our once very active child couldn’t even climb the stairs at home or get up from a sitting position without assistance.

The day after we were discharged we were right back in the outpatient clinic at the hospital wrapping up the first of five cycles of what is called Frontline Treatment. Each cycle, outside of that first month is 60 days. But it isn’t necessarily a straight 60 days through. Continuing treatment is tied to how a child’s blood counts (red and white blood cells, platelets, and immune cells) are doing. If they are too low, they won’t continue treatment. If they are dangerously low, you’ll be spending a full day in the clinic getting a blood or platelet transfusion. Some cycles require weekly visits to clinic, some daily. Some cycles had four day hospital admittances. It was a tsunami of information and so many appointments to keep track of, along with his diabetic appointments and my OB appointments. And when we weren’t at clinic we were at home. Our son could no longer be in his daycare. We had to forego his friends’ birthday parties and play dates. It took our boy 11 months to finish Frontline Treatment.

The isolation felt overpowering at times. The parts of life we had to give up, the ways we had to change our routines to protect his fragile immune system. We were in survival mode and mostly just trying to get through each day. He hit remission in May 2018. But while he had no detectable cancer cells in his blood, it didn’t mean there weren’t any—and we would have to complete three more years of treatment.

Fast forward to March 2020. Our son has been in what is called “long-term maintenance” for a little over two years (meaning 14 months more until we are off of treatment). He’s been thriving: back at school, managing his meds well, his endocrinology team has been very happy with how we’ve managed his diabetes amidst chemotherapy and steroid treatments . . .

We’d been increasingly worried about what we were hearing in the news about a novel virus: COVID-19. We pulled our middle child out of school a couple of days before the state stepped in and mandated stay in place orders. Suddenly, the whole world was navigating a BC/AD moment: Before Coronavirus/After Disease. Everyone’s lives were instantly changed; families were having to adjust their routines for a huge unknown. Gloves and masks and disinfectant: a norm in our lives for two years now, were becoming household staples.

During our son’s frontline treatment we did not have to follow recent practices to the extreme, but since the stay in place orders, so many of our friends and family have been reaching out. “So this is what this was like.” Yes. Yes, this is a lot like what we have navigated since our son was diagnosed with leukemia. It’s hard, right?

It is hard. And the collective grief that we are all processing as a result of losing jobs, daily routines, a sense of control, and even loved ones can be overwhelming at times. But always, always amidst the darkness, there is light. There is joy and gratitude that can be cultivated and expressed. There are acts of selflessness and generosity to be witnessed and to perform. This is the “brutiful” gift of a situation like this. And really, this is an opportunity to pause and take stock of what is essential to our human existence and to a life well lived.

Nobody asked for this. Nobody wants it. But we find ourselves in the midst of it anyway. What we do and how we hold space in this time is what will matter moving forward. It will be part of our story. That is all I can offer you. In these BC/AD moments, there isn’t a simple solution or even a lot of answers. But I do know this, we will make it through. Life moving forward will not be the same. It can’t be. But we will find our new normal. My hope? That the new normal will mean that we seek and cultivate community more. That we realize we have all been helped by others and that we NEED others to make it through this life. That we have more generosity and compassion for one another because we are more aware that we’ve all been through some shit. Selah.

#covid19 #isolation #wearamask

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