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taylors-fourth-cat-meow · 2 years

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Acowar Chp: 44 - The High Lords Meeting.

Okay this is from the chp tamlin enters because tbh I am not interested in anything before that lol

If u don't like Tamlin and love ic and feyre kindly leave now you have been forewarned.

Absolute silence. Absolute stillness.

Yeah baby that’s how you honour my king

I tried to school mine into the cold caution with which Nesta regarded him, or the vague distaste on Mor’s. I tried—and failed utterly.

Is there anything this loser doesn’t fail?

I knew his moods, his temper

What moods??!?!?! What FUCKING TEMPER BITCH??!!! See, this how tamlin is being viewed for having ugly trauma. Feyre brings up his trauma constantly. She throws tantrums and spits out rubbish without thinking how it might affect him. And when it ultimately does?? hE HaS mOoDS.

Here was the High Lord who had shredded those naga into bloody ribbons; here was the High Lord who had impaled Amarantha on Lucien’s sword and ripped out her throat with his teeth.

KING 🤌🏼🤌🏼🥵🧎🏽‍♀️

I didn’t know what to say. What to do with my body, my breathing.

Don’t worry babe you’re feminist king mate will tell you soon enough. 🙄

No more masks, no more lies and deceptions. The truth, now sprawled bare and open before him. What I’d done in my rage, the lies I’d fed him. The people and land I’d laid vulnerable to Hybern. And now that I’d returned to my family, my mate …

What in the? See? See? THIS BITCH FUCKING KNEW WHAT SHE WAS DOING??? PEOPLE I LAID VULNERABLE TO HYBERN. I. SEE THAT BITCHES?? Feyre herself is taking accountability for it? Maas herself is admitting Feyrug comitted a war crime only Feyrug is a Girlboss™️ for it. Djdjdjnsksla

Not as Tamlin surveyed the hand Rhys had resting on my sparkling knee.

How does your knee sparkle bitch? Like- are u Barbie? No what body wash are u using? Tell me don't be shy.

No, Amarantha hadn’t really known me—her loathing had been superficial, driven from a personal history that poisoned everything. Tamlin … Tamlin knew me. And now hated every inch of what I was.

SO WHY TF IS HE STILL NOT OVER THIS VANILLA COAT RACK IN THE NOVELLA?!?

“I’m not in the business of discussing our plans with enemies.”

Helion, across the reflection pool, grinned like a lion.

“No,” Tamlin said with equal ease, “you’re just in the business of fucking them.”

HOW- LIKE HOW CAN U NOT STAN THIS SAVAGE KING?!?

But whether Tamlin noticed or cared that three of the deadliest people in this room were currently contemplating his demise, he didn’t let on.

Deadliest? Bitch u kidding right? Tamlin is a high lord he cud kill your pet bats in a sec if he wanted too? And miss ma'am is sitting in a room full all the high lords and two bats who wear colourful stones and a lie dectector are the most deadliest? Like damn sjm how do u even fit all that bat dick in your throat?

Rhys shrugged, smiling faintly. “Seems a far less destructive alternative to war.”

So he can apologise to Kallias for not doing anything while children in his court were killed but can't apologise to tamlin for standing by and actually helping to put his ppl in concentration camps and torture them?!

I said quietly, “The sun was shining when I left you.”

Those green eyes slid to me, glazed and foreign. He let out a low snort, then looked away again.

Dismissal.

HOW IS HE SOOOO HAWT?!?!???????!!!!

Like idk feyre is trying to make it seem Girlboss that miss ma'am left tamlin with the guy who assualted her, who slaughtered Tamlins family and can control minds and hates tamlin, and thought to say goodbye via a letter? A letter written by an illiterate? Miss girl trying to be poetic and badass. Uk what is actually badass? "DISMISSAL" 🤌🏼🤌🏼🥵🥵🧎🏽‍♀️🤰

“I bartered access to my lands to get back the woman I love from a sadist who plays with minds as if they are toys. I meant to fight Hybern—to find a way around the bargain I made with the king once she was back. Only Rhysand and his cabal had turned her into one of them. And she delighted in ripping open my territory for Hybern to invade. All for a petty grudge—either her own or her … master’s.”

OOFFF POP OFF MY LOVE!! YASSS "all for a petty grudge" YESS CALL OUT THAT BITCH!!

“You don’t get to rewrite the narrative,” I breathed. “You don’t get to spin this to your advantage.”

Okay this is so fcking ironic cause this statement is basically acomaf in a nutshell. I feel like one her editors told sjm this and she just used it as a 'fck u to them' lol.

“They peddle tales of defending our land and peace. And yet she came to my lands and laid them bare for Hybern. She took my High Priestess and warped her mind—after she shattered her bones for spite. And if you are asking yourself what happened to that human girl who went Under the Mountain to save us … Look to the male sitting beside her. Ask what he stands to gain—what they stand to gain from this war, or lack of it. Would we fight Hybern, only to find ourselves with a Queen and King of Prythian? She’s proved her ambition—and you saw how he was more than happy to serve Amarantha to remain unscathed.”

YES BABY!! He is legit the only character that calls these ppl out on their bs? Istg Tamlin is the most sensible person in this series. Like my man's talking business. He is literally the only one smart enough to notice Rhysie Gaslighting? He's is literally pointing out on a silver platter that RHYSAND IS FCKING MANIPULATING FEYRE and yet she doesn't understand lmao

Rhys let out a dark laugh. “Well played, Tamlin. You’re learning.”

See? This what they do? The second tamlin brings out valid points and starts calling them out they start condescending him? Exactly how women have faced this all these years. The second they take a stand they are labelled crazy.

Kallias’s eyes flared like blue flame. “You stood beside her throne while the order was given.”

I watched, stomach twisting, as Rhys’s golden skin paled. “I tried to stop it.”

So we are just going to go ahead and forget that fact in Acotar it was Rhysie the who killed the kids? Really?

Rhys’s mouth tightened. “There is not one day that passes when I don’t remember it,” he said to Kallias, to Viviane. To their companions. “Not one day.”

Says the guy who wanted to fck his mate in safe place of SA survivors.

Not … what he might have been forced to witness, too. Forced to endure, bound and trapped.

And standing by, leashed to Amarantha, while she ordered the murder of those children—

Okay u have no fcking idea how MAD this makes me!! Two dozen children died? Their parents lost their children?! And somehow the man who stood by and did nothing is the victim? What like what?!?!??!

“I believe you.”

“Says the woman,” Beron countered, “who gave an innocent girl’s name in her stead—for Amarantha to butcher as well.”

Yes old creepy guy call her out! See the ppl who actually do call her out and just deemed irredeemable villians who just talk shit about Feyrug just cause they are evil.

I blocked out the words, the memory of Clare.

I- what that's it? That's it?!?? Beron just rightfully called her out on causing Clare's death and she just "blocks out the memory" wtf?!

“Who knew,” Beron mused, “that a cock could be so persuasive?”

Pls 💀

“Stories and words,” Tamlin said, lounging in his chair. “Is there any proof?”

YES ANSWER HIM U LITTLE BITCH

“No,” Rhys cut in as Mor blocked Cassian with an arm, forcing him to sit. Rhys added to Kallias, “But I swear it—upon my mate’s life.” His hand at last rested atop mine.

Not good enough for me bitch

Tamlin rolled his eyes

I literally loosing my shit like how is this "your hair is...clean" man literally roasting these bitches. My man really said break up = glow up 🤌🏼🤌🏼🥵

“I once told you I would fight against tyranny, against that sort of evil. Did you think you were enough to turn me from that?” His teeth shone white as bone. “It was so easy for you to call me a monster, despite all I did for you, for your family.” A sneer toward Nesta, who was frowning with distaste.

YES YES YES DRAG HER BABE!! Like he is do right!!! Tamlin did do A LOT for those two ungrateful idiots. They were starving and poor even when feyre was hunting. What tamlin did WAS NOT THE BARE FUCKING MINIMUM. Uk what wud be bare minimum? Giving them a piece of meat and bread every two weeks because that was literally what feyre was providing them. Idk I kinda hate Nesta here. Distaste? Girl u shud thanking him on your knees.

“Yet you witnessed all that he did Under the Mountain, and still spread your legs for him. Fitting, I suppose. He whored for Amarantha for decades. Why shouldn’t you be his whore in return?”

Yes. I said this before too? Tamlin is LITERALLY the only one to point out that their relationship is based on SA!??! And uk... Like idk what I said before. But this isn't slut shaming to me. Nope it isn't. Srry. He is harsh and he gets to be that after what Feyrug did to him but he's rightfully pointing out the truth.

“Watch your mouth,” Mor snapped. I was having difficulty swallowing—breathing.

Tamlin ignored her wholly and waved a hand toward Rhysand’s wings. “I sometimes forget—what you are. Have the masks come off now, or is this another ploy?”

How- how do u hate a person like this? Like can I just say if tamlin was a female in this relationship and Feyrug the male let's see how many not call feyrug abusive and cheer tamlin on.

“You’d be all too happy for war, considering how well you made out in the last one.”

(Tamlin to Helion)

Wait a damn minute. Which war is this? Is he talking about the humans war? DOES HE KNOW ABOUT THE AFFAIR???! like what is the fcking context?! Djdjdjsksksm

Okayyy this is all for now. There's more about Tamlin nd hybern but I made a seperate post altogether about it so no point in discussing. The rest of the chp is boring and too much...even for me. Hope u liked it!!

#anti sjm #anti acotar #tamlin #anti feyre #anti feysand #anti rhysand #anti acowar #tamlin supremacy #pro tamlin

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mirukupuddin · 3 years

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A Full Physical with Fushiguro Megumi

Hey y’all, as expected this is my contribution to the Jujutsu Hub collab event with @suna-reversed ! I had so much fun writing for Megumi and hope I can do some more JJK stuff in the future kekek please go and check out the amazing works and give them lots of love!

Warning! this content includes sexual intercourse and violence, please do not read if you are a minor. All persons portrayed in this fic are 18+.

Warning(s): Injuries, Blood mention, Violence, Nudity, Oral sex (female receiving), Unprotected sex, aphrodisiac use, Dub-con, medical terms that are defo not correct lmao

“Fushiguro!” Kugisaki yelled out to the raven-haired man as the curse came bounding towards him at an immeasurable speed. It sunk its fangs into his arm, before dropping to the floor as Nobara nailed into the straw doll. Megumi groaned collapsing to the floor gripping onto his arm. The pain was subsiding within moments, but something pulsated within him, it felt his skin was on fire.

“Come on, let’s get you back to the estate, maybe Doctor Ieiri can patch you up” Nobara swung her arm under Megumi’s to support him. He grunted in response, feeling the eerie sensation pass around his body.

Meanwhile at the clinic you work struck, looking incredulously at your mentor, “Eh? You really want me to take over the clinic for today? Is that really alright?”

“Goodness me, you should have some more faith in yourself, (Y/n)-chan, you did qualify after all” Shoko chuckled. “Besides, it’s looking like a pretty quiet day, isn’t it? I’m sure you will be fine. In any case, you have my number if you need further assistance” And with that, your rather exhausted mentor exited the clinic, bags in tow.

You let out a sigh looking towards the clock, it was coming up to 6pm, so there were only 3 more hours before the night team take over. You pulled out your phone, flicking past the home screen of Megumi and his dogs. These long shifts really did make you yearn a lot more for time with him. Little did you know that time was mere moments away.

The doors of the clinic slam open unceremoniously as Nobara dragged Megumi in. You ran into the front room, eyes widening at the sight of your boyfriend with his arm slung around Nobara.

“Oh, hey (Y/n)!” Nobara grinned, shifting Megumi’s weight so that she could grab your hand, cutely. “Fushiguro and I were a little careless and ran into some trouble with the curse down by the docks.”

Megumi refused to make eye contact with you, a light blush dusting over his pale cheeks. You smiled, kindly grabbing onto his other side and letting Nobara ease up on her hold. The three of you stumbled into the examination room, Megumi eventually finding purchase on the bed. You looked towards Nobara “I think I’ve got it from here, I’ll keep you updated with everything. Thank you for bringing this dummy back safely.” You smiled at her kindly, a smile she returned before nodding at both of you and taking her leave.

The lull of florescent lights hummed and was the only thing heard in the room. You smiled, grabbing a sterile tray, emptying some dressing pads and some saline to clean the superficial wounds that were at the top of his arm. His uniform was covering nearly all of it despite being in tatters at the wound sight.

“Take your shirt off” you continued your ministrations, gathering sample containers to make sure whatever had attacked him hadn’t poisoned him.

“Huh?” The man in questioned looked at you as if you had pulled him out of a dreamlike state, causing you to chuckle.

“I need you to take your shirt off so I can see your wounds, Fushiguro-san” You prepped the needle to perform a blood test. You ran your hands up his non-afflicted arm, goosebumps rising to the skin as you wiped the area with an antiseptic wipe.

“Fushiguro-san?” He repeated, the name sounding foreign on his ears. He winced feeling the needle penetrate his skin but it wasn’t enough to quell the faint rumbling in his chest.

“I’m at work Megumi, so it’s strictly professional.” You grinned at him before going to grab sterile pads to dress his arm. Megumi’s eyes followed your movements, dark orbs landing on the dip of your back as you bent over to retrieve the tools. Your dress rode up exposing the tops of your thighs. A growl emitted from Megumi’s chest as his cardex of lewd memories of you flash in his mind. He tried to shake the thoughts away but even shutting his eyes made him envision you bent over, with your uniform so askew and-

“Megumi? Did you hear what I said”

“Shit” Megumi thought “ Urm, no I didn’t catch that?”

“I asked you how you were feeling”

“Warm” he fidgeted in his position on the bed “Just warm”

You walked up to the man sat on the bed, placing a hand on his forehead. He averted his eyes away from your concentrated ones. Eyes linger on the way your lips parted in concentration, he could hear his heartbeat thrumming in his ears and his face blossoming a blush. As if by themselves, his hands stopped fiddling with the bottom sheet of the bed, opting to grab you by the hips. You looked at him incredulously, as he pulled you to slot against his body, resting his face in the crook of your neck.

“M-megumi, what are you doing” You flushed, pushing against his chest.

“I’m sorry doctor, this curse has made me do such impure things and think such lewd thoughts about you” He grumbled into your neck, starting to caress your jugular with pecks. You could feel his rapidly hardening cock against your stomach, letting out a whine in protest.

His breath was coming out in laboured puffs against the crook of your neck “I can’t wait, I need to feel you, (Y/n)” he growled rutting his hips into yours.

“N-not here, what if someone comes in…” You moaned trying to resist the urge to give in. All those rational thoughts being submerged with the feeling of Megumi kissing and marking up the column of you neck. “Fuck” you sighed in resignation.

That was all Megumi needed to grab you by the hips and slam your body onto the examination bed. Your gasp allowed him to push his tongue roughly into your mouth tangling it with your own in a deep, passionate kiss. “I missed you so much” He growled pulling your hips to rut against his hard cock. His lips campaigning on bruising your neck and clavicle as his fingers reached to pull at your uniform, the buttons straining against the force of Megumi’s tugging. You grabbed his hands to stop him from ripping apart your dress, opting to take it off yourself, leaving you in just your underwear.

Megumi’s already lust filled eyes darkened at your exposed body, if he wasn’t already fixated on destroying you there was nothing stopping him now. You took off your bra exposing your breasts to him, nipples pebbling at the cold air. You ran your hands through his silky locks, his face planted in between your breasts licking and suckling at the skin and yet again marking your untarnished skin.

He bought his face up to yours kissing you deeply and grabbing at your thighs to wrap around his waist. His onyx eyes looked at yours clouded over with pure lust, an unfamiliar expression you’d never seen in the man.

“I love you so much (y/n), God, you’re going to be the end of me” He groaned into your neck making you giggle. His hips were bucking into yours uncontrollable, as if it were acting on its own accord.

“What has gotten into you, baby?” You chuckle running your fingers down the muscular expanse of his back. He had always been built more on the leaner side but since his 20s he had grown a lot, in all the right places. Your eyes darted back to the bite that had previously been situated in the area between his shoulder and elbow, it seemingly disappeared leaving an angry red mark. The only time you had seen this was a reaction to a very potent aphrodisiac by a curse. The only cure being…release.

Your mind was ripped from your daydream as Megumi was tracing his lips along your thighs, before licking over your underwear.

“What are you thinking, Doctor (Y/n)?” Megumi hummed.

“Well- I hypothesised something…hmm.. the only treatment I can recommend is pretty lewd I don’t know if you can handle it” You remarked, pushing up onto her elbows eyeing up the man in front of you.

“Oh, is that so? What might that be then?” He smirked back playfully

“All you have to do, is cum” You rubbed your knee in between Megumi’s legs making him jolt.

“Well then-“ he huffed out, breathlessly “I better get to it then”

His tongue lolled out and he groaned tasting your essence on his tongue through your underwear. He yanked them off, tossing them with all the other discarded clothes before pulling your thighs over his shoulders and plunging his tongue into your core. You bit the back of your hand as to stop you from squealing in pleasure. Megumi moaned as he swirled his tongue around your clit, vibrating against it. You had your fingers threaded through his charcoal locks, as he licked and kissed at your pussy.

“Megumi~” You rutted your hips against his face chasing your high, his thumbs rubbing soothing circles at your hips. He sealed his lips around your clit, sucking and licking at it with gusto; he looked up through thick lashes, eyes pitch black and hazed with arousal. He pushed his finger inside you experimentally, nudging around to find the spot that makes you see stars. His tongue already lapping at your core was enough to send shivers and jolts down your spine. You moaned out his name like a prayer as he rubbed and massaged at your sweet spot. Your pussy was pulsing around his long digits, feeling like your peak was approaching with a vengeance. You threaded your fingers through his silken tresses your thighs trembling around his head. Megumi had decided he would die happy like this. Besides the point, he continued fucking you with his fingers through your climax as your gripped onto whatever purchase you were able to find. You whined as Megumi’s smooth tongue continued running over your clit, feeling overstimulated, but he didn’t seem like he was going to stop.

“Baby,” you hummed, making him perk up, leaning his head on your thigh as he licked you one last time. He crawled up your body, planting his lips against you and rubbing his clothed cock against your core. Your hands trailed down his torso, smoothing over his abs making him shiver and groan in delight. You undid his trousers letting him kick them off, before delving your hand into his boxers. Megumi bit his lip, almost hard enough to draw blood as you palmed him. Precum was oozing out of his cock unabashedly as he whined and rutted into your hand.

“Does that feel good, Gumi~” you giggled seeing how dishevelled your poor boyfriend looked. It felt borderline sadistic seeing him gyrate into your hand so shamelessly, his eyebrows knitted in frustration.

“(Y/n), please” He grovelled burying his face in the crook of your neck, “let me fuck you, I can’t hold on anymore”

You nodded and let out a gasp as Megumi’s grasp on your hips tightened. He cock was red, leaking and throbbing as he lined it up with your slick cunt. You both heaved out a sigh as he sunk into you. You could tell he was trying to hold back, his forearms quivering and fingertips dancing along the dips of your body.

“Let go, baby, it’s okay~” Your words like treacle against Megumi’s ears. “I want you to fuck me”

Before long, his cock was ploughing into you, the lewd noises of skin on skin echoing in the humid room. You were gripping onto his shoulders, crescent shapes etching into his flushed pale skin.

“Fuck, you’re so good, your pussy feels too good” he huffed into your ear, he was so painfully hard and your warm insides were making him feel things he couldn’t imagine. Your knuckles were paling as you clawed into his shoulders. You wrapped your legs around his slender waist pulling him into you as he rocked his hips deeper into yours. He licked up the column of your neck where he had previously marked. He bought his hands up to your face, tracing your lips with his thumb.

You leaned up to capture his lips in a passionate kiss, fingers tangling into his dark mess of hair. He grunted as your pussy tightened around him. The veins along the underside of his cock were so sensitive, they were grazing your insides so blissfully. You felt him pulsing inside you making you call out his name.

“I’m so close, baby” He growled

You smoothed a hand over his back before finding purchase on his shoulders again “me too,”

“Can I cum inside you please, oh god, (y/n)” He whined, holding back from drooling all over your steaming body. You nodded and he let out a borderline pornographic groan, spilling his seed and painting your insides. He continued fucking you through his orgasm, whining at how overstimulated and sensitive his cock was but wanting to feel your cunt gush around him.

“Ah- Meg-Megumi I can’t- I’m going to cum” You moaned wantonly, feeling his thrusts become sloppier and erratic. He was huffing into the juncture of your neck and shoulder set on making you feel the pleasure and high he was riding. He pulled your legs over his shoulders groaning at the change of angle but railing you deeper; You had to bite into the back of your hand to withhold the screams daring to slip out as your body shook in pleasure. The tight knot that had situated in your stomach unravelled as your orgasm rushed over your body in a thick fog. Megumi was practically salivating at the way your pussy was clenching and pulsing around his cock, his eyes shutting tightly being lost in the pleasure.

He collapsed on top of you, nuzzling his face into the crook of your neck

“You wanna do it again?” He grumbled out; his cock somehow seemingly hard.

God, this was only the beginning of the night and it was almost certain you’d be walking funny the following morning.

#jujutsuhub collab #jjk #jjk smut #jujutsu kaisen smut #jujutsu kaisen x reader #megumi fushiguro #Megumi fushiguro x reader #fushiguro imagines #fushiguro megumi x reader #Fushiguro megumi smut #Fushiguro x reader #fushiguro megumi #megumi x you #megumi smut #fushiguro smut #jujutsu kaisen drabbles

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differenceonlyyoucanmake · 3 years

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Do you have any headcanons about a more YA Pearl Princess rewrite?

DO I

This movie is full of potential!

YA Pearl Princess Headcanons

Kuda isn't a talking seahorse. Lumina pretended she could speak to feel less lonely.

Lumina's sheltered upbringing left her with social inadequacies she was old enough to be aware of, but not experienced enough to fix.

Lumina spent a large portion of her waking hours overcome by the desire for something more: the desire for friends, the desire to belong.

At night, she dreams of flurries of pearls. She jolts awake to her dreams manifesting themselves into reality. The pull to use her powers has become so great, the pearls she tries to suppress on her aunt's instructions during the day overtake her room at night.

She is confused and frightened by this change. When she was younger, her pearls came very rarely. She tries asking Scylla about it, but her aunt shuts the subject down immediately.

Previously an obedient niece, Lumina becomes agitated by the lack of answers. She snaps at her aunt. Her pearls glow an angry shade of red.

Ashamed by emotions she was never taught how to handle, Lumina recedes into fantasies she is aware are childish. She dreams of being a princess: always serene and in control of her emotions and powers.

Little does she know, the king and queen are locked away in their castle mourning their own lost princess. Scylla's homeschooling program conveniently omitted most information about the royal family.

The outside world knows the truth. After the disappearance of the baby princess, the king and queen took on a reclusive lifestyle. The Commanding General, Caligo, adopted royal responsibilities in their stead. At first, the general public was willing to believe he was doing this for the good of the kingdom.

After the first few years, it became apparent Caligo was encouraging the royals' seclusion to secure the throne for his son, Fergis. The capital was in a constant state of mourning from missing their leaders, the young princess, and fear for the future of the kingdom.

The light of the capital was visibly dimmer too. One of the heirs to the royal pearl magic ability was too far away to help power the city. This heir was presumably the dead princess.

Scylla is contacted by one of Caligo's lackeys. A ball is to take place to find Fergis a wife before his inevitable coronation. Caligo wants the poison expert nearby in case the king and queen are tempted to ruin his plans. If Scylla doesn’t comply, Caligo will reveal that she was the one responsible for the princess’s death.

Scylla is summoned to the capital about a month in advance. Lumina is left on her own for significant amount of time for the first time she can remember. She tries to follow Scylla’s instructions at first, but she gives in and follows the pull of her pearl magic far away from her home.

After journeying through dangerous locations, Lumina makes it to the capital of Seagundia.

Spirits are high. The city is full of energy not felt for several years. No one knows why, but many suspect the king and queen’s decision to re-enter the public eye means they must be in better moods, boosting the magical energy of the city.

Lumina is overwhelmed by all the new aspects of the city. She soon learns how much Scylla forgot to teach her: you need money to survive, for one thing.

She finds employment at a salon. Though she can’t use her pearl magic outright (she trusts Scylla’s assertion that others would harm her if they knew about it), Lumina uses the faintest traces of her magic to add a pearly sheen to her clients’ hair. This makes her popular enough to earn enough to sustain her for the time being.

Her coworkers are bewildered but intrigued by this seemingly clueless girl. She’s awkward yet outgoing; smart yet uninformed; creative yet rigid in her understanding (or lack thereof) of things like social cues. They befriend her, and when they find out Lumina has been sleeping behind the salon, they take turns letting her stay in their homes.

Lumina learns of the ball. Things are busy at work in preparation of the event. When Lumina gets a chance to get ready herself alongside those she works with, she is reminded of her princess fantasies. Reality hits her when she realizes Scylla didn’t tell her why she left. She could be home right now, unaware of Lumina’s whereabouts and safety. These past weeks had flown by so quickly, Lumina almost forgot about her previous, lonely life. She promises herself she’ll return home after the ball, at least long enough to explain herself.

She is struck with a bittersweet emotion as she watched Cora and Sandrine adjust her jewelry in the mirror. Here were the friends she always wanted, but she might have to leave them forever.

They arrive at the ball. Cora and Fergis get along right away. He takes her aside to show her his collection of rare and exotic plants.

Sandrine mingles with numerous strangers. Lumina gets overwhelmed by all the new people and looks for her in the crowd.

In the process, she encounters Scylla. Too surprised to keep up any sort of pretense, they both start asking the other her purpose of being there. Caligo notices this. Believing Lumina has joined Scylla to double cross him, he orders his personal guards to quietly put Lumina away. She is placed in the dungeon. Caligo tells Scylla she will be released if Scylla poisons the king during a toast later in the night.

Thinking she would not actually have to do any poisoning tonight, Scylla excuses herself. Caligo made her brew some poisons in front of him weeks ago, and she ventures into his quarters to gather some concentrated stonefish venom she had concocted there.

Caligo remembered his henchman mentioning Scylla hiding her teenage “niece” during his visit. Something was wrong here.

It came time for the toast. Sensing a slight odor from his own cup of thick nectar, Caligo switched his cup with the king’s. He did this several times, unable to read Scylla’s reaction.

Lumina escaped from the dungeon using her pearl magic. She swam down the corridors in a panic until she bumped into Cora in the middle of a romantic moment with Fergis. Lumina hurriedly explained that she wasn’t safe. Fergis saw the trail of magical pearls coming from her hands. This was the true heir. She could take the throne, and he could pursue the quiet life he longed for. He begged her to come to the ballroom with him. Lumina obliged, sensing his urgency. Cora held onto Fergis’s hand as he swam as fast as he could to where the toast was taking place.

The force of the young mers’ rushed swimming was so great, it caused a rippple that knocked over the king’s cup. Caligo tried to offer his own. As he tipped it towards his brother-in-law, he noticed faint bubbles in the nectar: a telltale sign of stonefish venom. Scylla rushed forward to stop him just as Fergis, Cora, and Lumina entered the ballroom.

Caligo was prepared for such a situation. He made a subtle motion to one of his guards. The guard stabbed Scylla in the back with a venom-tipped spear. There was a reason Caligo asked for the poison to be made in his own quarters.

Overcome by emotion, Lumina made a giant pearl shield. She sat in shock inside it along with Cora, Fergis, and the dying Scylla.

Lumina recognized the appearance of the poison: stonefish venom. Her aunt had taught her about all sorts of poisons.

She yelled out this realization. Fergis looked up with a glint in his eye. He had just the thing they needed: a lily he had included in a bouquet he’d given Cora earlier in the night. Cora quickly removed the flower from a bundle in her satchel. Lumina administered the flower to Scylla, and she was revived. Lumina joyfully embraced her. The pearl shield now enveloped just the two of them.

Then Scylla shared her true history. Lumina was the princess she was asked to dispose of all those years ago. As more of the story was unveiled, Lumina shed fluorescent pearl tears. The pearl shield bubbled away.

When Lumina became aware of her surroundings, she was shocked to find Fergis and Cora were holding Caligo in place. Fergis was telling the king and queen of his father’s schemes. Caligo was too shocked to argue. He didn’t know his son knew of half his plans. It turned out his son wasn’t half as dull as he thought. Maybe he would have made a decent king after all. It didn’t matter. Caligo and his treacherous guards were taken to the dungeon to be dealt with later. A cauldron of incriminating venom was found in Caligo’s room.

For now, the king and queen rejoiced in the discovery of their daughter. They placed the Pearl of the Sea on her neck. It was originally placed on a pedestal in the center of the room for Fergis to wear after the toast, but now it glowed brilliantly, revealing the true heir of the kingdom. The entire city was intensely illuminated, and a surge of energy flowed through all its inhabitants.

Lumina transformed. Pearls spun themselves in her hair, and her tail shifted colors like none had ever seen. When she came down from her transformation, she felt the calmest she ever had. Things would be different, but she knew she belonged. She knew she would never be lonely again.

#barbie pearl princess #rewrite #barbie movies #barbie movie headcanons

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boop-le-snoot · 3 years

Text

masterpost ☀️ main masterlist ☀️ taglist

previously on...

Two chapters over the weekend because I was ✨ inspired ✨ and my neighbors can't stop fucking (noisily!) and I'm,,, envious.

Strange adventures in Hell. There are descriptions of desperation and doom, lots of magic and - hear me out - forced/reluctant hand holding 😌 Oh my God, they held hands!!!

"What. Were. You. Thinking?!" Strange was seething, his enormous figure and broader height towered over me, the blood-red of his cape vibrating, the only spleck of colour in the grey and dusty dark world.

"I had no choice in the matter," I replied as calmly as I managed, gritting my teeth, memories of our past stand-off fresh in my mind. We could have bickered until the end, until one of the beasts flying overhead spotted us and decorated the bleary grounds of this forsaken planet with the crimsons of our life blood. "I think it's best if we get to safety first, argue later. I have no desire to become somebody's lunch."

That much was true: I had taken a good look at our surroundings as soon as I recovered from the vacuum-like sensation of being pulled into a magical gateway; the visibility was terrible, the planet's natural light very scarce. Several suns were hardly visible in the sky, their rays barely penetrating the mists and the ashes freely floating in the air.

There was oxygen even if breathing in a full lungful seemed impossible; I tried not to think about the contents of the air, or the possibility of radiation poisoning, as the multiple amulets and charms seared into my skin where they rested under my clothes. I had four bottles of water, some bandages and salves and a sacrifice for a single ritual to my name and absolutely no conviction that Mother Earth would be able to hear the call of an earthling gone so astray.

But it was hope, so I held on.

"Fine," Stephen sighed, suddenly looking tired and weary, glancing around with furrowed brows. "Let's see if I can open a portal," his hands did that complicated set of gestures that I'd grown to associate with a golden circle and sparks on the ground. The thing flickered, once, twice, before disappearing, as if the Sorcerer's magic had run out of batteries. "Yeah, I thought so," he whispered to himself, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

"The bad news first, please," I interpreted his hesitation with a realistic outlook on our predicament.

"I can't open a portal just anywhere on this planet. We need to find a... Rift, of sorts," the man was anxiously looking around. "And those things, they'll smell us... Right about now," his eyes shot up at a winged, rapidly approaching shadow. "No good news, I'm afraid."

I allowed myself a small sigh of disappointment, keeping a tight leash on the panic slowly creeping up my body. The feeling of determination, the power of Gaia within me was still present, laying in a cozy dormant ball slightly south of my solar plexus. "Give me your hand, please," I reached out to Stephen only for him to promptly recoil.

"You should've thought about the consequences of your actions, I'm not going to hold your hand because you're scared shitless," his words were sharp but they lacked the venom. He wouldn't, or couldn't, meet my eyes.

"I know you have scarred hands. I'm a healer and you don't have to feel embarrassed or ashamed I, I've seen worse," I stated in my best 'mutant nurse' voice as Stephen's eyebrows shot up and his eyes widened. "Those things can't sense me. And I know they won't be able to sense you too if we have skin-to-skin contact. So unless you want me to get under your... Robes," I gestured to the layers upon layers of clothing he had wrapped himself in. I considered the possibility of his whole body being covered in scars, too, and couldn't help the pang of sympathy. "Take one glove off and give me your damn hand before this trip to Jurassic Park goes full pterodactyl massacre!"

I saw the thing in the sky open it's mouth - but no sound came out, the clouds reducing it's outline to a vaguely triangular shadow. There was something very unusual about this planet's atmosphere.

With a couple of jerky movements, Stephen slid off the glove from his left hand, looking away as his large, dry, warm palm encompassed mine in a gentle, trembling grip. It made no sense to interlace our fingers, so I help onto him like a child holds onto their parent; the size difference of our hands and his imposing aura surely made me feel like one.

We stood a foot apart, watching the shadow in the sky begin to circle the place we stood in, it's gaping maw opening again and again, before it zigzagged across the sky with a strong dash of confusion, it's graceful glide becoming a series of rapid turns and twists. With a final inaudible shriek, it flew off into the dusty greys of the horizon, becoming a dark spot far away in mere seconds.

The silence was so loud in this world. Like the eerie stillness of my, undoubtedly haunted, apartment, I was eager to dissipate it with something beyond our combined heavy breathing. "Please don't tell Tony," I timidly gave our touching hands a sway. "He'll never leave it alone."

A chuffing noise coming from above had me whip my head up to see Stephen holding in a puff of nervous laughter; his shoulders dropped slightly as he eyed me in turn. "What makes you think I won't tease you about it?"

"You wouldn't dare," I took mock offense, rising my leaking nose to the skies.

The grumble and the eyeroll I expected, the smirk that faded into a ghost of a smile I did not. "We should go. Usually there is a rift within a few miles of every location everywhere," he tried to keep the content expression as he spoke but the storm in his eyes betrayed his concern. They were so blue, I felt like I was drowning.

I let myself to be tugged in a direction - everything seemed exactly the same, a never-ending ashen wasteland with the occasional dark grey rock that crumbled to dust as soon as the heel of my shoe touched it. My light blue sweater quickly became the colour of rotten wood, a sickly, dull monotone between brown and gray.

The complete lack of any kind of natural noise brought out the desolation of this wretched place; if we gripped each other's hands tighter, neither of us chose to acknowledge it. It was too easy to get lost in your own mind when the surroundings were dead set on rebuking anything that was in any shape or form alive.

I caught myself thinking that this must be what people think Hell should look like.

Strange walked briskly for the most part, periodically clearing his throat and eyeing me when I struggled to keep up with his long strides. It could have been an hour, or maybe two, of aimless wandering and rapidly imploding portals accompanied by Stephen's increasingly overcast face before I made the man stop and offered him a water bottle, which he insisted we split between us two.

It didn't take me a tarot reading to figure out our chances were grim. Needless, I gave him the same look I give to injured, scared mutant children when they come to the bodega for the first time; a look of quiet temperance.

And then we walked, and walked again, as Stephen grew moodier and moodier, marching on with the force of a seasoned soldier, only taking breaks when I forced him to stand still and breathe with me. As cautious and closed-off as he was, I pressed onto the fact of me being a healer of sorts, and he relented if briefly, always reluctant, always seasoned by a great dose of bewilderment.

"Do you feel that?" Stephen's stride halted, both feet firmly planted on the ground.

The ground had tremors had coming from deep within, small shocks that could have been easily missed if not for the complete lack of sound on this world. My nod was mute, I didn't trust my voice not to break when I clearly knew there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, endless fields of nothing all around us.

"Hold onto me," promptly, I was grabbed and pushed into his chest, his long arms easily picking me up, encouraging me to wrap my legs around his waist. "Hold tight, I might need my hands," my face grew hot as I wound my arms around Stephen's neck, clinging to him like a monkey, a palm resting on the soft fine hairs if his nape. It felt too intimate somehow, in the wake of imminent danger.

The Cape that previously swayed behind him in rhythm with his steps billowed, the red fabric of it tough as it levitated us a few feet above the ground. I felt Stephen tense with each tremor; within moments, the surface shook and stuttered more and more, cracks appearing in between the dust, turning the plains into a marble-patterned patch of darkness.

We rose above it, high enough that I could see the veins resulting from the quake stretch far out into the wasteland, jagged, abrupt lines of even more concentrated darkness. And as quickly as the quake started, it was over, leaving little evidence as the ground settled.

Stephen floated us to a larger patch of the ground, criss-crossed with thinner, less prominent lines, poking the ground with his foot before allowing it to fully bear our weight. He was shaken, there was no doubt. "That was... Something," he stated lowly.

"Mhm," I hummed, fighting the urge to frantically look around, forcing my hand from clutching at his palm like a lifeline. I had decided on a plan while I was busy playing baby koala - not that there were many other options except to wander these god forsaken bare badlands until our painful demise. "Listen, Strange, I'm aware you don't hold my people in particularly high regard but you're going to have to trust me on this," my words came out derisive as I placed his palm on the back of my neck and kneeled, forcing him to do the same behind me.

The contents of my bag greeted me grimly with out last bottle of water and the couple knick-knacks that gathered the black dust on them. I hastily poured the water into a bowl, dipping my fingers in it, and added the crushed bones to the mixture.

The time that was required to make a paste-like mixture, I used to address a bewildered Stephen. "This is a last resort. I don't know if it will work, we're not on Earth," I briefly breathed my distress. "I don't even know how far we are from home. But I refuse to die here, in this grotesque Hell, without putting up a fight and Gaia has always looked out for her flock. I might get very, very sick if this is successful."

The warning had him attempt to object before he cast a long look around us, shoulders sagging, as motioned for me to continue, those piercing blue eyes boring into my face. "Tell me what do I need to do," his voice quietly attempted to soothe my very obvious fear.

I was terrified, both of dying, nameless, faceles in this world full of Nothing; the prospect of withering away after depleting all my resources was, perhaps, equally unappealing, but dying on my home planet sounded better than dying here. "Have faith," I replied curtly, beginning to chant softly under my breath as soon as Stephen's expression hardened.

My eyelids grew heavy, limbs filling with lead and molten lava as I summoned the forces of Mother itself; my body was aching, exhausted by answering her call as it was. The warm ball in my chest that previously comforted me grew, spreading its smelten power through every vein, every vessel. No part of my body was left cold. A sense of purpose filled me, pushing me forward, driving me to move, to run, to leap.

"This way," even to my own ears, my voice sounded pained. It felt as if I was walking through swamp waters, full of clay and debris, each step taking my barely coherent form through an individual bog full of pins and needles. The force of Mother Nature burned inside of me, enraged at the state of her surroundings.

Stephen spoke to me but all I could hear was mumbling, thousands of voices, low and shrill, unintelligible to the human mind. I could feel the sorcerer's pain; the itch and burn in his throat, the constant, dull throb in his scarred, broken hands. His hand in mine only intensified the situation and I fought with his injuries like I fought with the black dots in my eyes, I forced down the unpleasant sensations, setting fire to them, letting the reigns of control on the raging inferno within me slip just the smallest, tiniest bit.

The steps of his long feet stuttered as I felt the discomfort lessen yet I simply towed him along. Time leaked through the cracks in my eyes, which were mostly unseeing anyways. The useless things grew blind at some point, not that I noticed it on the greys and blacks of the surrounding scenery. It was harder to walk, my breathing grew laboured with the extertion as we finally reached the place that felt right.

"Here," I rasped, voice so quiet it could have been mistaken for a breeze. I craved to feel it; the soft puffs of wind, the sound of running water. I had called for Earth and she demanded its child back.

The portal appeared without a stutter even though Stephen's hands shook; I saw the uneven channels, the energies traveling through them at an uneven pace. As soon as I pushed through the wormhole, coming to my senses in an unfamiliar, light room, I fell to my knees.

Stephen's pained moaning told me he was probably experiencing the same stinging, burning sensation on his skin; my eyes, they were the worst - my eyeballs felt like they were melting, leaking out of my sockets into thick, gelatinous tears streaming down my face. I blindly groped for the sorcerer's hand, directing the forces within me to soothe his hurts much like I had done in the wastelands.

"Strange?!" A masculine, shocked voice exclaimed before footsteps crashed into my sensitive ears with the force of an elephant herd. "Oh my God, they're here! Tony, come!"

"Stop fucking screaming," Stephen gasped out as I felt him curl into himself.

"Friday, scan them," I recognised Tony's voice, the tiredness and desperation standing out in it more than it did in the rest of the whispers in the room.

"They appear to be experiencing a sensory overload. I would recommend to engage Peter's Cooldown mode," the mechanical voice replied, barely audible. The noise still grated on my ears after spending... How long were we gone?

"Do it, Fri," Tony's soft footsteps reached us; I smelled the spices of his cologne next to my and Stephen's prone forms. "You gave us a scare there," the tone was admonishing but gentle.

"We were scared shitless ourselves," I attempted to speak, only now noticing how grating my voice sounded. "We were in Hell," I mumbled to myself, slowly removing my hand from Stephen.

"That," he coughed up the word, breathing through his nose before speaking again, his voice sounding much better than mine. "That place was as close as possible to biblical pits I have ever seen," there was shuffling and gentle murmurs as the two men ensured each other of their presence and well-being.

The burning sensations receded back to my core, the embers of the fires dying out, leaving me feeling like deflated beach ball, all shell and no filling. With a groan, I rolled over onto my back right in the middle of the pristine carpet on the floor, forcing my eyes open and breathing through the pain until I could somewhat see the champagne coloured ceiling without black dots obstructing my vision.

Shuffling noises reached my ears as a familiar round face with light red hair came into my line of sight, Wanda's gentle features concerned. "Star, do you need to go to medical?" She eyed me almost suspiciously but the question was earnest.

The idea of a doctor fixing a magical burnout was bizarre to me, as if it ever was that easy; I chortled sardonically. "No, Wanda, there's nothing wrong with me that a doctor would be able to fix," I replied honestly. "I should call Odette."

"I've called, she said to notify her when you return," Sam's voice was gentle as he approached. I could feel him glaring daggers at a rapidly reddening Wanda. "She was the one who said you'll definitely come back," he offered me his hand.

I had to choke down a moan of relief as I grabbed it. The warmth, the life of another human being, the precious gift of a beating pulse under my fingertips was divine. "You should listen to her. She knows her stuff." It was easy, talking to Sam as if he was an old friend. He had one of the most pleasant auras I've seen on a human being.

"I'm a doctor," Stephen suddenly perched up, sounding almost bashful. "And I can aid the healing process," he stated over Tony's disgruntled mumbling. "If you can explain to me how the hell you managed to hold a... an entire sun's worth of energy!" The more he spoke the more bewildered he became, tone growing in pitch, ending the sentence with an exclamation.

"I don't know," I replied with a sigh. The whole indignation in this man, I was not prepared to face. "When I took this up," I gestured vaguely to the burned, bent metal adornments I began to remove off my body. "I thought I was going to get an increase in tips and a better outlook on life. Help my friend with her asthma as much so she wouldn't have to use her inhaler every time she gets suprised or scared," my jewelry hit the floor with a dull clank, piling up into bent silver I wouldn't even be able to cleanse and repurpose.

Sam whistled lowly, poking at a necklace that had twisted on itself, a grotesque spiral of dull ashen grey.

"I certainly didn't think that a bleeding mutant accepting his fate as cannon fodder will call for the Earth itself," my tone grew vicious. Exhaustion was nesting in my bones. "And that Mother Nature would take over my body, pour lava into my veins and bleed recklessness into my thoughts. But here I am, freshly out of Hell and alive and kicking."

A stunned silence was interrupted by Tony's frantic whispering. "You are not leaving my penthouse for the foreseeable future," as the weight of the incident set on him. The knuckles of his hand clutching Stephen's dirty tunic turned white.

"I am," Stephen eyed me with a strange look in his eye, as if he was seeing me for the first time. His eyes then turned to Tony, who'd began rambling, arguing with Stephen. The sorcerer stopped the word vomit with a grim confession. "I'd be dead if not for Starlight. I'd be meat and bone, splattered across a barren, radioactive land in the deepest, darkest pits of the universe."

I felt my face droop in slow-motion. My throat flexed, swallowing a thick lump of filthy mucus, I coughed up, "Ra-radioctive?" As soon as I could work my voice without it squeaking.

Taglist: @couldntbedamned @mikariell95 @letsby @sleep-i-ness @toomanyrobins2 @mostly-marvel-musings @persephonehemingway @schemefrenzy @lillsxd @bluecrazedandbeautiful @slothspaghettiwrites @xoxabs88xox

#practical alchemy #bun writes #stephen strange x reader #tony stark x reader #stephen strange x reader x tony stark #tony stark x reader x stephen strange #im zoomin with a bag full of creepy

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lochrannn · 3 years

Link

Warnings: Sexual Content (M Rating)

Characters: Lila Pitts; Diego Hargreeves; Allison Hargreeves; Klaus Hargreeves; Hargreeves Siblings (background)

Relationship: Lila Pitts/Diego Hargreeves

Roommates AU; Fake Marriage; Slow Burn; Mutual Pining; Emotional H/C

Chapter 7/9

Leaving his apartment actually helps.

Diego’s not sure how long he’s been out but he thinks he spent at least thirty minutes at an all out run and he’s out of breath and his muscles are burning pleasingly, but he feels a lot more settled and about ready for sleep as he jogs back towards his bed.

He’s just passing a children’s playground when he spots a figure through the chain link fence sitting on one of the swings, gently swaying back and forth.

“Fuck!” he says out loud and then makes his way over.

“Oh hey!” says Lila with mild enthusiasm when she finally looks up at him as he’s just arriving right in front of her.

Diego’s heart is beating in his throat at the realization that she didn’t even notice him approaching and he could have been anybody. This may not be an incredibly dangerous neighborhood, but it is three in the morning, she’s a woman sitting all on her own in a dark and secluded playground, and he doesn’t actually need to be a detective to work out that she’s completely shitfaced.

Diego tries to reign in the anger that is usually his initial response to intense worry and fear. She’s a grown woman and she’s entitled to make her own bad decisions, and he’s overstepped on this sort of thing with her before, but when she just slowly blinks at him and then looks back down at the bottle of champagne that she’s loosely holding in the hand that’s not gripping on to the swing’s chain, barely keeping herself upright, Diego asks, in a tone that’s meant to be even but comes out pretty tetchy even to his own ears, “What are you doing out here?”

“Oh, you know, I got married today… just celebrating on my own, I guess,” Lila answers, lifting her bottle a little in explanation, but not looking up at him again. She’s doing a remarkable job of not slurring her words, he’ll give her that, but they do come out a little too slowly, far too deliberate, which confirms his suspicion that she is definitely pretty drunk.

“Uh huh…” Diego responds. He’s completely uncertain of what to make of the mood she’s in. The fact that her response to getting married to him is to completely numb herself with champagne certainly gives him pause, but he swallows down the lump in his throat, now’s not the time to wallow, and instead he asks, “D’you think you might wanna do that back home instead of out here in a fucking playground?”

Lila looks up at him with an odd clarity to her for a second before she takes a swig from her mostly empty bottle and says, “Nah, I’m good!”

Diego can’t suppress the noise of frustration that escapes him. “Lila! I’m not leaving you here all on your own in the middle of the god forsaken night! You’re gonna get robbed or murdered and then they’re gonna suspect me of marrying and then killing you for your money, and I really can’t afford to go to jail right now, so come the fuck back home with me!”

“Pfff, stop being so overdramatic, Diego, I’m not going to get murdered. And I’m not going anywhere in these heels, I tell you, I’ll just sleep here on this swing!” She closes her eyes and then wobbles precariously as she presses her face against the chain holding one side of the swing up.

Diego is very rapidly losing what is left of his patience.

“Also, may I point out,” Lila mumbles in her drowsy state, “that you did in fact marry me for my money— eeeeeeh!” she squeals, as Diego lifts her up – one arm behind her shoulders, the other behind her knees. Her bottle clatters to the ground and starts spilling the remaining champagne, and somewhere at the back of his brain Diego thinks he probably shouldn’t leave it lying around on a playground, but at the same time he’s also dealing with an armful of slightly flailing, very indignant fake wife (he knows intellectually that she’s not his fake wife, but his actual wife, but Diego can’t think too hard about that, because it causes all sorts of tumultuous feelings to twist in his gut).

Though Lila immediately wrapps her arms around his neck, she’s clearly not particularly pleased because she begins to argue as Diego starts making his way out of the playground, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m taking you home,” Diego growls, trudging along the sidewalk, a little amazed at how easy Lila is to carry. She’s almost larger than life so much of the time and even when they’d slept together, she gave as good as she got, Diego has up until this moment forgotten just how tiny she is, and his heart almost stops again at how vulnerable she was, what could have happened to her if he hadn’t come across her completely by accident. Diego sucks in a breath to try and calm the sudden wash of useless fear.

“That’s quite presumptuous!” Lila retorts, and Diego doesn’t need to look at her to know there’s an annoyed line between her eyebrows. In fact, he doesn’t think he can even look at her right now, not with the way her face is currently only inches away from his.

“We’re literally fucking married, Lila!” he scoffs. He’s not sure why he says it, but Diego thinks he might be going slightly insane with the whole situation.

“And you think that entitles you to something, now?” Lila asks in genuine disbelief and Diego suddenly feels way too exhausted for this conversation. “Yeah, I think it entitles me to making sure you don’t die of hypothermia, alcohol poisoning, or murder!”

There’s a long pause and then Lila grumbles, “Whatever,” and leans against his shoulder, apparently also overcome by tiredness.

And Diego is overwhelmed at how quickly his anger at her reckless and bratty behavior dissipates and is replaced with a much sharper feeling that digs its way almost painfully into his chest, when Lila tucks her face into the crook of his neck and promptly falls asleep.

Lila is almost completely still as he carries her back home and it gives his overwrought and exhausted brain time to contemplate how unhappy she seems to be with the situation and how that makes him feel in turn, and on top of that he even manages to feel a little guilty about the fact that the feeling of her warmth and weight against him does significantly settle his nerves, despite himself.

Diego’s always known that he’s not great with feelings. He usually feels too much of them and is never quite able to tell the people around him what that means and so he’s gotten quite used to not doing so. And even though earlier he contemplated telling Lilla, he realizes he can’t add another burden to the pile of shit she’s dealing with, especially not while she’s struggling to stay in the country of her choice and has to rely on him for her only solution.

Carrying Lila becomes a little bit difficult when Diego tries to unlock the front door. He ends up jostling her, attempting to wiggle the key into the lock with the hand that’s also holding on to her knees and Lila stirs but doesn’t wake fully, just snuffles adorably and cuddles closer to him, arms tightening in some kind of reflex to stop herself from falling.

Diego tries to concentrate on anything else, getting the door open, not slamming it, when closing it, because his neighbors would probably not appreciate the noise in the early hours of the morning, and then he makes his way straight towards her room so he can put her down on her bed.

He sets her down gently and then struggles to find the will to pull her arms away from his neck so for only a moment he allows himself to sit down on the bed with her and very gently put his arms around her in a hug. He’s not sure whether it’s to comfort Lila or himself.

“See, had no trouble getting home!” Lila mumbles into his neck and Diego scoffs at that, but it’s more out of genuine amusement than derision and he gives her one last squeeze before letting go and laying her against the bed gently. This time around Lila does let go and immediately buries her face into the pillow, and though her face scrunches up and he knows it’s only a matter of minutes before she’ll start drooling onto the covers with the way her mouth is half open, he can’t help thinking that she does look absolutely breathtaking.

Diego makes sure that her short red dress hasn’t ridden up her thigh indecently high and then gets to work on her sandals. Once he’s got them off, he finds a blanket on a small armchair in the corner of the room and covers Lila with it as she’s lying on top of her sheets and is fast asleep again, so he doesn’t want to wake her.

When he leaves her to it and closes the door behind him with a soft click, hoping to at least get a couple of hours of sleep himself before he has to get up for work later in the morning again, Diego lets out a long breath. He tries to convince himself that maybe it will take a few weeks, but he can get over this, get over Lila, but a niggling voice at the back of his mind points out that he’s never felt a sense of devotion for anyone quite like this before and that he is quite certainly in much bigger trouble than he’s letting himself believe.

Lila gets the hangover she deserves after drinking a bottle and a half of champagne, but is, unfortunately, not granted the luxury of forgetting what she got up to.

She remembers her evening and her night in vivid detail but from a perspective of a powerless operator, sitting somewhere in her skull, able to look out of her eyes and watch herself make an absolute nuisance of herself, but unable at the time to do anything about it.

She remembers feeling sorry for herself because she was in this situation in the first place, a thirty year old trust fund baby with no perspective in life, no family to speak of and while other women her age nave their lives together and are getting married and having babies, she just paid her roommate who she also happens to have a pretty bad crush on – no point in trying to kid herself about that anymore – to marry her for a green card. What a fuck up she truly is.

And then, wallowing in her misery as a selfish part of her even felt angry with Diego for just abandoning her on their wedding day – what a silly notion, seeing as this is a business arrangement between the two of them – she went out to buy some dinner for herself and instead brought home two bottles of champagne “to celebrate”, started dancing around to sad music the more intoxicated she got, and in the end feeling like she had to leave the flat or she would go absolutely stir crazy.

She obviously didn’t get very far, and she has no sense of how much time she spent sitting on that swing before Diego came to get her.

Lila feels desperately embarrassed. He must be so annoyed with her and thanking his lucky stars that he’s only married to her for the money and not actually stuck with the a fuck up like her. She could tell he tried to remain civil with her last night, mostly even indulging her, but he was clearly angry and she’d only goaded him further, out of some sense of righteous annoyance of her own. But in hindsight, she can’t blame him, he’s honestly been trying his best with her, gone above and beyond to support her efforts for a visa, and she can’t even keep it together for a single day.

Well, at least he’ll get a break from her, Lila muses as she pulls her cover over her head, trying to block out the little bit of light that’s filtering in through her curtains, because there’s no way she’s going to face him in this state. But once she’s recovered, feels a bit more like a human again, she’ll apologise and make sure he understands just how grateful she is for his help. It’s not his fault she’s developed some distracting feelings for him and he certainly doesn’t deserve her anger and frustration for not reciprocating feelings he knows absolutely nothing about.

And so Lila spends her day in bed, drifting in and out of sleep, half imagining and half dreaming about strong arms holding her close to a solid, warm body, and soft lips pressing gentle kisses to the spot just behind her ear.

A day and a half later they meet in the kitchen and it’s predictably awkward.

Lila tries to apologise for her behaviour but Diego just waves it away, says he understands that she’s having a hard time, and though that’s not quite what she wanted to say and part of her thinks he deserves a real apology, she also doesn’t particularly enjoy reflecting on her own behaviour and jumps at the opportunity to move on when Diego promptly changes the subject.

“I talked to a friend at my gym, Rodriguez. His wife isn’t a citizen either and he gave me some tips for the visa process,” Diego explains.

“Oh yeah?” Lila’s interest is piqued, because she still hasn’t quite worked out what that whole interview thing entails and she’s finally getting an inkling that Diego didn’t actually know much more beyond the fact that there is an interview.

“Yeah! So, he said it’s different for everybody but that he’d talk to his wife and they’d put a list together of the questions they remembered being asked. He said some of them were…” Diego looks down at the counter and starts scraping off an imaginary bit of dirt with his finger nail, “a bit personal… So, uhm, we’re gonna have to prepare for those.”

“I think we already did...” Lila mumbles under her breath.

“What was that?” Diego asks.

“Eh, nothing!” she rushes out, she didn’t actually mean to say that out loud even if he couldn’t hear her. “So, interview, okay, what else?”

“Yeah, uh, Rodriguez said this doesn’t happen too often and it didn’t happen to them, but there is a chance of an agent coming to inspect our apartment unannounced, so I thought maybe we should move some things around. You know, bring some of your things into my room, put some clothes of mine into your closet, just make sure it doesn’t look like we live in separate rooms. We can always say we’re keeping yours for guests,” Diego explains with a shrug.

“Okay, yeah, that sounds sensible,” Lila muses and starts worrying the nail on her thumb between her teeth because despite the fact that Diego seems to have a pretty decent handle on the situation, the whole idea of the interview process is making her nervous.

“You’re not really into this, are you?” Diego asks tentatively, and when Lila looks up at him his expression is one of concern, eyebrows drawn together, he’s lowered his head to try and get closer to level with her, and for a moment the tenderness in his eyes leaves her speechless.

“Yeah, I get it!” he goes on and then smiles slightly, “Hey, what are you doing the day after tomorrow? Are you working?” he asks.

“Uh, no?” Lila answers, hesitating a bit because the sudden change of the subject has her somewhat confused.

“I thought maybe we could take a drive to the shore, bring Ben’s camera and fill the film with some honeymoon photos. It’ll be too cold to go swimming, but the forecast seems like it should be pretty mild and sunny.” Diego suggests and, it seems without thinking, he reaches out and just very gently pulls on her wrist, so she stops biting her nail and instead lets her hand drop uselessly to her side.

“Yeah, okay…” Lila answers. She’s not sure why she’s not that enthusiastic about the idea. It’s not that she thinks she wouldn’t have a great time, in fact she thinks it could be kind of wonderful, spending a day driving to the seaside with Diego and taking a walk along the beach, maybe getting some ice cream. She wonders to herself whether the pang in her belly comes from the fact that actually she’d love a beach date with Diego, only she desperately wishes it wasn’t fake.

#otp: just be gentle #lila pitts #diego hargreeves #dielila #diego x lila #diego/lila #tua #the umbrella academy #fanfic #ongoing fic

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tahitinuifan · 3 years

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Arctic Diet Gone Toxic

Pitching a makeshift tent on sea ice, where the Arctic Ocean meets the North Atlantic, brothers Mamarut and Gedion Kristiansen are ready to savor their favorite meal. Mamarut slices off a piece of raw pink whale blubber as a snack. Mamarut’s wife, Tukummeq Peary, a descendant of famed North Pole explorer Admiral Robert E. Peary, is boiling the main entrée on a camp stove. The family dips hunting knives into the kettle, pulling out steaming ribs of freshly killed ringed seal and devouring the hearty meat with some hot black tea.

Living closer to the North Pole than to any city, factory, or farm, the Kristiansens appear unscathed by the industrial-age ills. They live much as their ancestors did, relying on foods harvested from the sea and skills honed by generations of Inuit. But as northbound winds carry toxic remnants of faraway lands to their hunting ground in extraordinary amounts, their close connection to the environment and their ancestral diet of marine mammals have left the Arctic’s indigenous people vulnerable to the pollutants of modern society. About 200 hazardous compounds, which migrate from industrialized regions and accumulate in ocean-dwelling animals, have been detected in the inhabitants of the far north.

The bodies of Arctic people, particularly Greenland’s Inuit, contain the highest human concentrations of industrial chemicals and pesticides found anywhere on Earth-levels so extreme that the breast milk and tissues of some Greenlanders could be classified as hazardous waste. Nearly all Inuit tested in Greenland and more than half in Canada have levels of PCBs and mercury exceeding international health guidelines. Perched atop a contaminated food chain, the inhabitants of the Arctic have become the world’s lab rats, the involuntary subjects of an accidental human experiment demonstrating what can happen when a heaping brew of chemicals builds up in human bodies.

Studies of infants in Greenland and Arctic Canada suggest that the chemicals are harming children. Babies suffer greater rates of infections because their immune systems seem to be impaired and their brain development is altered, slightly reducing intelligence and memory skills. Scientists say the immune suppression could be responsible, at least in part, for the Arctic’s inordinate number of sick babies. They believe the neurological damage to newborns is similar in scope to the harm done if the mothers drank moderate amounts of alcohol while pregnant. The tragedy for the Inuit is that they have few, if any, ways to protect themselves.

Many Arctic natives say that abandoning their traditional foods would destroy a 4,000 year-old society rooted in hunting. No factory-engineered fleece compares with the warmth of a sealskin parka, mittens, and boots. No motorboat sneaks up on a whale like a handmade kayak latched together with rope. No snowmobile flexes with ice like a dog-pulled sled made of driftwood. And no imported food nourished their bodies, warms their spirit and strengthens their hearts like the flesh they slice from the flanks of a whale or seal.

“Our foods do more than nourish our bodies. They feed our souls.” said the late Ingmar Egede, a Greenlandic educator who promoted the rights of indigenous people. “When many things in our lives are changing, our foods remain the same. They make us feel the same as they have for generations. When I eat Inuit foods, I know who I am.”

Unexpected Poisons

In 1987, Dr. Eric Dewailly, an epidemiologist at Laval University in Quebec, was surveying contaminants in breast milk of mothers near the industrialized, heavily polluted Gulf of St. Lawrence when he met a midwife from Nunavik, the Arctic portion of the Quebec province. She asked whether he wanted to gather milk samples from women there. Dewailly reluctantly agreed, thinking it might be useful as “blanks”, samples with nondetectable pollution levels. A few months later, the first batch of samples (glass vials holding a half-cup of milk from 24 women from Nunavik) arrived by air mail at the lab in Quebec.

Dewailly soon got a phone call from the lab director. Something was wrong with the Arctic milk. The chemical concentrations were off the charts. The technician thought the samples must have been tainted in transit. Upon checking more breast milk, the scientists soon realized that the chemical concentration numbers were accurate. The Arctic mothers had seven times more PCBs in their milk than mothers in Canada’s biggest cities.

Dwailly contacted the World Health Organization in Geneva, where an expert in chemical safety told him that the PCB levels were the highest that he had ever seen. Those women, the expert said, should stop breast-feeding their babies. Dwailly knew that Nunavik (located on the Hudson Bay) is so remote that mothers had nothing else to feed their infants. As a doctor, he couldn’t in good conscience tell them to quit breast- feeding, but he knew he couldn’t hide the problem either.

“Breast milk is supposed to be a gift,” said Dewailly, who today is among the world’s leading experts on the human health effects of contaminants. “It isn’t supposed to be poison”. Nearly a generation has passed since those first vials of breast milk arrived in the Quebec laboratory. The babies Dewailly agonized over are all grown up and will pass to their own children the chemical load amassing in their bodies.

Top of the World

From ice-clinging algae to polar bears, the Arctic has a long and intricate ladder of life. An estimated 650,000 indigenous people inhabit the top rung, and their population is steadily growing. About 90,000 are the Inuit of Eastern Canada and Greenland-a territory of Denmark under its own home-rule government. Others, spread across eight nations and speak dozens of languages.

Environmental scientists suspect that industrial chemicals first hitched a ride to the Artic in the 1940s. The chemicals originate in cities in North America, Europe, and Asia. They travel thousands of miles via north winds, ocean currents, and rivers. In the Arctic, the sea is a deep-freeze archive storing contaminants that are slow to break down in cold temperatures and low sunlight. Ingested first by zooplankton, the chemicals spread through the food web as one species consumes another.

Scientists say that the Arctic’s water and air are much cleaner than in urban environments. PCBS and DDT in the fish and mammals of such areas as the Great Lakes, the Baltic, and North Sea are 10 to 100 times higher in concentration than in the Arctic Ocean. But most urban dwellers consume food from a host of sources, eating comparatively limited amounts of seafood and no marine mammals or other top predators high on the food web. Instead, they consume mostly land-raised food with low contaminant levels.

Inuit, by contrast, eat much like a polar bear does; consuming the blubber and meat of fish-eating whales, seals, walruses, and seabirds four or five links up the marine food chain. Contaminants, which accumulate in animals’ fat, magnify in concentration with each step up, from plankton to people. In newborns’ umbilical cord blood and mother’s breast milk, average PCB and mercury levels are 20 to 50 times higher in remote villages in Greenland than in urban areas of the United States and Europe.

In far northern villages such as Qaanaaq (where the Kristiansens live) one of every six adults tested exceeds 200 parts per billion of mercury in the blood, a dose known to cause acute symptoms of mercury poisoning. “That’s a huge amount of mercury,” said John Risher, a mercury specialist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control toxic substances agency. “At that level, I would really except to see effects, such as paresthsia, an abnormal tingling or numbness in the hands.”

Few details are known about Russia’s Siberia, but scientists are expected to soon release data showing that residents of the region are more contaminated than Greenlanders. In contrast, Alaska’s Inuit carry low concentrations because they eat bowhead whales that are low on the food web. PCBs and DDT, the so-called legacy chemicals banned three decades ago in most developed countries, peaked in the 1990s and since then have declined, although they remain at substantially higher levels in Arctic people than people elsewhere.

Other compounds are increasing, including mercury and brominated flame retardants called PBDEs. Much of the mercury comes from coal-burning power plants, largely in Asia, while the United States is the major source of flame retardants, used in plastics and polyurethane foam. Subtle health effects are occurring in certain areas of the Arctic due to contaminants in traditional food, particularly for mercury and PCBs.

Building up over a lifetime, chemicals stored in a mother’s body cross into the womb, contaminating a fetus before birth. Then the newborn gets an added dose from breast milk. A study in Arctic Canada has shown for the first time that the risks of traditional foods seem to outweigh their benefits. 11-month-old Nunavik babies were repeatedly shown a picture while researchers recorded how readily the children recognized images they already had seen. The infants with high amounts of PCBs in their bodies were 10% less likely to recognize the images than infants with low PCB levels.

A separate, smaller study also linked PCBs with slight neurological effects in older children in Qaanaaq. The studies confirm similar neurological effects detected in children elsewhere including the Great Lakes region. Also in Nunavik, infants exposed in the womb to high levels of DDT and PCBs suffered more ear and respiratory infections, particularly in the first six months of life. An increased infection rate is the most serious of the known threats because Arctic children suffer extremely elevated rates of ear infections, which often lead to hearing loss and respiratory infections.” Nunavik has a cluster of sick babies,” Dewaily said, “They fill the waiting rooms of the clinics.”

No Cows, Pigs, Chickens

A year-round icy shield-thicker than a mile in some places-covers 85% of Greenland. The island has no trees, no grass, no fertile soil, which means no cows, no pigs, no chickens, no grains, no vegetables, and no fruit orchards. Instead, the ocean is Greenland’s food basket. Sandwiched between Canada and Scandinavia, Greenland gets the brunt of the world’s contaminants because it is in the path of winds from both European and North American cities.

In remote parts of Greenland, such as the Kristiansen’s village of Qaanaaq, people eat marine mammals and seabirds 36 times a month on average, consuming a pound of whale and seal each week. About one-third of their calories come from traditional foods. “We eat seal meat as you eat cow in your country,” said Greenland’s premier, “it is important to have meat on the table.”

The Inuit say their native food strengthens their bodies, warming them from within like a fire glowing inside a lantern. When they eat anything else, instead of fire, they feel ice. “We are living in a place that is very cold and it’s not by accident what we eat. We are not able to survive on other food,” says a Greenland native, “hunting is so important to us, so fundamental, that we will not be able to survive without it.”

Everything else, from tea to bread, must be imported. In remote villages, stores stock processed and canned food that is expensive, frequently stale and not very tasty or nutritious. In Nunavut, across Baffin Bay from Greenland, store-bought food for a family of four would cost $240 a week, more than one-third of the average family income there. “We can buy lame lettuce, really old oranges, and dried up apples or eat fresh and nutritious beluga, walrus, and fish,” says a local, “there is really no alternative.”

In some respects, the marine diet has made the Inuit among the world’s healthiest people. Beluga whale meat has 10 times the iron of beef, twice the protein, and five times the Vitamin A. Omega 3 fatty acids in seafood protect the Inuit from heart disease and diabetes. Seventy-year-old Inuit men have coronary arteries as elastic as those of twenty-year-old men from European countries. Although heart disease has increased with the introduction of processed foods, especially among Greenlandic young people, it remains more or less unknown.

Public officials are torn whether to encourage the Inuit to continue eating their traditional diet or to reduce their consumption. Government officials and doctors fear that Inuit will switch to imported processed foods loaded with carbohydrates and sugar, risking malnourishment, vitamin deficiencies, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. “The level of contamination is very high in Greenland, but there is a lot of Western food that is worse.” says a doctor.

Greenland’s home-rule government and doctors have issued no advisories. Many Greenlanders are aware of the contamination, although they know few details. In Canada, however, there has been extensive outreach to indigenous people, including trips by Dewailly and other scientists to explain their findings in detail. But public health officials there still struggle, after 16 years, with what dietary advice to give.

Last year, Nunavik leaders initiated an experiment in three communities that gives women free Arctic char, a fish high in fatty acids, but low in PCBs, to encourage them to eat less beluga blubber, the main source of contaminants there. Most Inuit have not altered their diet in response to contamination. In Arctic cultures, people rely on the traditional knowledge of hunters and elders, and with no visible sign of pollution, many are skeptical that the chemicals exist. Some even suspect talk about the chemicals is a ploy to strip them of their traditions.

Moreover, health officials point out that the risks of contamination are greatly outweighed by other societal problems, including smoking, suicide, domestic violence, and binge drinking, which have severe and immediate impact on life and death in the Arctic. For example, more than half the pregnant women in Greenland smoke cigarettes. Those who are aware of the dangers of toxic chemicals say that their meats are too nutritious and important to give up.

Anthropologists warn that efforts to alter Inuit diets can unwittingly cause irreversible cultural change. If hunting is discouraged, people quickly would lose their traditional knowledge about the environment and their hunting skills. Their art, their spirituality, their celebrations, their storytelling, even their language would suffer. Inuit dialects are steeped in the nuances of nature that their national languages (English, French, and Danish) ignore.

The most important damage would be to Inuit values and attitudes. In the Arctic’s subsistence economy, people share prey among neighbors and relatives. The best hunters are leaders in the village and they are generous with their wealth. If the Inuit switch to a cash society, the communal generosity would disappear. It is more than the food you are changing. It’s the actual catching and hunting of it that really generates the cultural characteristics. Even skipping one generation would impair hunting skills and once they are lost they may never come back.

Survival of the Fittest

Like everyone else in Qaanaaq, the Kristiansens remain mostly oblivious to the scientists and political leaders fretting about how many parts per billion of toxic chemicals are in their bodies. They simply don’t have the luxury to worry about dangers so imperceptible, so intangible. Instead, hunters worry about things they can see and hear: thinning ice conditions and where their next meal will come from. Anxiety about chemicals is left to those who live in distant lands, those who generated the compounds, those whose bodies contain far less.

About 850 miles from the North Pole, Qaanaaq, an isolated village of about 600, is the closest on Earth to the archetype of traditional polar life. Every Spring, when the midnight sun returns, the Arctic’s treasures, long locked in the ice, are within reach again. On a freezing-cold June afternoon, Gedion and Mamarut head out on their sleds, their dogs racing 35 miles across the glacier, toward the Kristiansen’s ancestral hunting grounds.

A little over a century ago, the people of Qaanaaq had little contact with the outside world. Today they can buy salami, dental floss, and Danish porn magazines in their local small market. They watch “A Nightmare on Elm Street” in their living rooms on the one TV station that beams into Qaanaaq. The people have learned about the contaminants from listening to the radio, but they will not change their diet.

Discussion Questions

1. How did the article make you feel?

2. How does geography play into their high levels of contamination (discuss multiple reasons)?

3. How do the Inuit’s culture, food customs, and environment play a role in the pollution levels in their bodies?

4. What can be done or recommended, if anything, to protect the Inuit culture?

#sociology #geography #arctic diet #greenland

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latte-fairytaekwoon · 3 years

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~Tag Game~

Tagged by: @galaxteez ♡♡

Rules: Answer the questions below and tag fellow Atinys that you wish to know better

1: When did you become an Atiny and how?

Sometime during Answer promotions. At the time, SF9 was promoting as well, I of course as a Fantasy was busy supporting them, streaming the fuck out of their mv and crying my eyes out cause after 3 years, they had gotten their first place win on 3 different shows and I was emotional cause I've loved them since predebut :'(

I saw some clips of their song, and my little sister, who is an Atiny, showed me their mv. I loved the mv and liked the song. I looked up the lyrics and was so moved by the words that it prompted me to do more research about them, all the work they did to get to where they were, watching their variety show appearances and before I knew it.... I had become Ateez trash.

Also worth mentioning, I did knew of their existence beforehand, I even had Say My Name on my phone, but I was never really moved yet to stan them.

2: First song you heard of Ateez and first mv you watched?

First song was Say My Name. MV? I'm not too sure. I think it was Pirate King.

3: Who was your first bias in Ateez? Are they still your bias?

Yeosang and yes he is. My little prince is still reigning high and mighty ♡♡♡

4: Your favorite favorite favorite song?

It's tough. But I think it's Precious.

5: A song you have a special "bond" with?

Promise. It just helps lift my mood and keeps me going whenever my mind goes into a dark, deep clouded abyss and I feel depressed.

6: Favorite title track?

Inception. I live for the dark angsty theme of it. I love how I can listen to it before bed or cry in the shower with it playing.

7: Do you have a favorite choreography?

Yes I do. Wonderland is my favorite choreography.

8: Which ateez member would you bring to a deserted island?

Honestly? None of them. Have you seen them? Heck no. I'll explain why. Hongjoong has no strength and would be useless in survival skills. Seonghwa has OCD that'll make him incapable of touching anything. Yunho is the bravest one, but that's exactly what scares me, he has no fear and might accidentally swallow something poisonous or get himself killed. Yeosang? Will not lift a finger to help at all. WooSan? Too chaotic and extreme that I'll have to watch them every second, plus they're loud and would complain all the time, not let me concentrate. Mingi? I don't think I need to explain. He's a baby and a scaredy cat, I'd be calming him down every minute while ensuring survival. Survival skills are slim to none. Jongho would be the best option cause he's really strong...but he's scared of bugs. Island has a lot of bugs. I have better chances of surviving alone.

9: Bias wreckers?

Yunho and Jongho are my main ones, but honestly they all take turns.

10: Favorite album?

Fever album is superior.

Tagging: @seacottons , @ateez-little-star , @ateezstanlove , @jongpleasure , @little-precious-baby

#tag game

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bookandcover · 3 years

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The September/October book for our family Anti-Racism Book Club, A Terrible Thing to Waste is a poignant and urgent examination of environmental racism in America. Environmental racism refers to all the ways that environmental circumstances—from climate change to environmental toxins to pollution and air quality—disproportionately negatively impact BIPOC in America. I didn’t know anything about this topic before reading this book, yet this concept seems so obvious, so essential, that I was shocked and horrified that this wasn’t something I’d read or thought about before.

The book begins with an examination of the “IQ gap” in America, a scientifically-proven difference between the average IQ of white and Black Americans (somewhere between 10 and 15 IQ points, depending on the study). Studies showing this gap have long been used to justify racism in many forms, supported by an understanding of intelligence (measured by IQ) as something inherently innate, and not something dramatically impacted by our environments. Washington explains that IQ is, of course, an imperfect measurement and a strange over-simplification of what intelligence actually is. But it is not a meaningless measurement. IQ has been shown to correlate strongly to academic success, employment and career development, and long-term income and financial stability. The environments in which these kinds of successes occur are, of course, charged with systemic racism, classism, sexism, and ableism—some of the same -isms that make IQ a strange way to measure intelligence. But, Washington argues, that given the correlation between IQ and these measurements of success, IQ seems a worthwhile thing to discuss, especially when there is such a large gap in average IQ between white and Black Americans. The focus should be on closing this gap, while simultaneously understanding that IQ is not reflective of innate intelligence, but something shaped by environmental factors. The notable racial point difference is due to these different environmental factors for different races. And this is a difference we ought to care about, not only from a moral standpoint, but also from a practical one, as this difference lowers America’s overall IQ, while high overall IQs have allowed countries to compete in the global market.

Washington provides a variety of evidence to show two key things: 1) that environmental factors (focusing on measurable and quantifiable toxins and pollutants as environmental factors) directly impact IQ, and 2) that the most significant variable indicating likelihood of exposure to environmental toxins is race not class. This first area of focus provides the parameters for Washington’s book. There are, of course, numerous aspects of our environments that shape us, and that shape our IQ more narrowly. The impact of exposure to toxins is well-studied and it’s a cut-and-dry correlation, as the presence of lead, asbestosis, and other toxins have dramatic impacts on humans and human development. The physical impacts—cancer, sickness, death—might be the first impacts that jump to mind when we think of the impact of toxins in living environments. But their impacts on intelligence, IQ, memory, learning and retention, speech, and other types of mental facilities are also well-documented. The second point is an equally important premise of this book, and the one that probably requires the most work on the part of the author to debunk many Americans’ current thinking about the relationship between race and class. I think that many Americans would assume exposure to environmental toxins correlates to poverty—if you live in an impoverished area, you’re more likely to be exposed to toxins. We assume that houses that are new, that are clean, that are pricey, are safe. We assume neighborhoods that we classify according to similar marks of economic prosperity are safe.

I believe that many Americans would assume that, if there’s a racial aspect to environmental justice, it’s due to the fact that a higher percentage of Black Americans, and other BIPOC in America, live in poverty. Washington, however, demonstrates that Black Americans and white Americans, with the same income and an income that places them in the middle class and NOT in poverty, have notably different rates of exposure to environmental toxins. Black Americans with household incomes around 50K a year are exposed to toxins at the same rate as white Americans of the poorest demographic (households with incomes less than 10K a year). Waste dumping sites, power plants, chemical treatment facilities, manufacturing plants that emit airborne pollutants—these are all far more likely to be built and placed within communities of color. The communities that border any type of plant or facility likely to release environmental toxins—called fence-line communities—are overwhelmingly communities of color, and not the communities inhabited by even the poorest white Americans.

The data and studies that support these facts revealed something to me that intuitively made sense. I assume that, when cases of acute environmental toxicity impact white communities, even the poorest ones, there is likely a higher level—with a distinctly alarmed tone—of media coverage, than when BIPOC communities are impacted. It also makes sense that, while acute cases like those in Flint, Michigan spark widespread media coverage, it’s the quiet and more pervasive impacts of environmental toxicity that are systematically hurting Black Americans. For example, lead poisoning often occurs at low levels of lead intake that don’t reveal immediate, physical affects. But lead poisoning has a dramatic impact on IQ. Washington demonstrates how the continued presence of lead paint in living environments—when it has been shown that exposure to lead AT ANY CONCENTRATION LEVEL is harmful—is the responsibility, and failure, of business that put profitability above human lives. The use of lead paint in houses has only been entirely restricted since 1978 (Congress banned its use in residential structures constructed by/with the federal government in 1971), and therefore it still exists in houses built before this date. While landlords are asked to bear responsibility for lead paint testing, they far too often do not, knowing they’ll still be able to rent untested apartments at low prices. And testing and repainting costs do drive up rents, making the cheapest and least safe options the ones that some renters need to select.

Washington puts the onus for this terrible situation onto the companies that used lead paint, even before it was thoroughly tested and long after it was shown to be harmful. She points out how even the idea of a toxicity gradient and “safe levels” of toxins prioritizes the unethical practices of businesses over the lives of humans, when no level of these toxins is safe in most cases. All toxic exposure impacts us. Washington shows that the US government has historically held, and continues to hold, an “innocent until proven guilty” mindset when it comes to artificial products and chemicals—in food, in living spaces, in household cleaners, in everyday products. Companies can use what they want until something is proven to be harmful, and the bar for proof is high. The gradual reduction of lead paint usage until it was entirely stopped supports this argument. Even after lead paint was banned, the companies who had used it held no responsibility, letting the shock waves of this poisoning continue for decades through BIPOC communities while well-meaning landlords and individual families struggled to remove lead from their environments.

This book has a comprehensive approach, which I very much appreciated. Washington covers a variety of types of environmental factors that disproportionately impact BIPOC communities in America. She shows how deep these problems run. These are problems that are linked to class, but not accounted for solely by class. These are problems that are connected to the relationship between businesses and ethics, but are not explained solely by the lack of accountability for businesses that are placing environmental toxins directly into living environments. Washington covers the significantly higher risk to babies and toddlers from environmental toxins that shape developing bodies and brains in lifelong ways. She covers air pollution, water pollution and how it impacts communities that rely on subsistence fishing, she covers toxins in living spaces and in baby foods, she covers the impact of locations of toxic waste dumping sites. She ends the book with a call to arms: a list of ways that readers can help work toward reducing these impacts in their own communities and holding businesses accountable.

I was familiar with the expression “a mind is a terrible thing to waste,” but I didn’t know the origin of this phrase until my dad directed me to the series of PSAs run by the United Negro College Fund in the 1970s. These PSAs popularized this phrase. Therefore, this phrase, although in widespread use, has in its origins a clear link to race and to the value of the minds of Black Americans: minds which are wasted without equitable access to educational opportunities, but also wasted from the very beginning of some lives through repeated exposure to a variety of environmental toxins. This book’s examination of environmental racism shows how pervasive these issues are and how deeply these issues are tied to the chemical and product development systems that are given priority over human lives, as well as the deep racism apparent in the lesser value placed on the minds and bodies of Black Americans.

[Note: I write these posts for myself as a way to process what I’ve read, but I put them on the internet and, therefore, into the world. If you read something here that you would like to discuss or correct, I would love it if you would feel comfortable reaching out to me. I cannot promise I’m not ignorant and short-sighted...I can promise that I want to listen.]

#a terrible thing to waste #harriet a. washington #important reading #environmental racism #environmental justice #anti-racism #awareness

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nat-roman0ff · 5 years

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don’t cry about it, baby

don’t cry about it, baby.

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life changing news before a family picnic makes you reevaluate what “the next step” really means. wc: 2,905 warnings: 10 cents to the swear jar, crying babies, & psychic moms.

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This was probably your worst nightmare.

You stare down at the third pregnancy test you’ve taken this morning and it’s positive. Fingertips shake as you throw it into the bin and curl into a ball. Your body quivers as you sob and sob and sob. It’s only a matter of time before Shawn starts banging on the door. He knew something was up for a few weeks; when you realized your period was late, when you woke up every morning throwing up, when you would fall asleep early on the couch after dinner. All signs led up to the worst possible outcome:

You were pregnant.

“Hey baby, we have to leave for my parent’s house in a few. Are you okay in there?” Shawn asks from the other side of the bathroom door.

“Yeah,” you sniff, “I’m fine. Must be food poisoning or something.”

“Again?” Shawn sees through the lie, “that’s the third time in the last two weeks. Are you sure you’re not sick?”

“I said I’m fine, Shawn!” You reply with poison in your voice.

He doesn’t say anything, and you hear his footsteps echo away. Panic runs through your veins. How will you tell your family? His? The media? You’re both barely 21, and he’s gone most of the time. Shawn barely had time for you let alone you and a baby. There’s so much running through your head all at once that you don’t notice Shawn picking the lock for the bathroom door.

“Baby! What’s wrong?” He rushes over to you and sits beside you on the floor.

You can’t help but cry more as he holds you close to him. His hand rubs your back and he shushes you to try and calm down. It doesn’t work, though, and your sobs choke you as they come out. You’re left gasping for breath while Shawn holds your tear soaked face between his palms.

There’s a ringing in your ears so loud you feel like you might pass out. The thumping of your heart is so hard it leaves you breathless. You try your damnedest to break out of it but it keeps pulling you back under, leaving your body a shaking mess.

“Baby - BABY!” He’s literally shouting, “You need to breathe, calm down. You’re going to give yourself a panic attack. Look at me. Take a deep breath.”

You close your eyes and take in a shaky breath, “I’m pregnant.”

Shawn immediately lets you go, his hands dropping to the floor, “...what?”

He looks down at the ground, his eyes round, fingers tangling through his curls and tugging at the root.

You swallow hard as the tears threaten to come down again, “I’m sorry.”

He turns his head to look at you, “what - why are you apologizing?”

You wipe your wet cheeks with the back of your hand, your eyes stinging and your throat dry, “I didn’t mean for this to happen. I don’t want this to fuck up your life or your career, or -”

“Baby,” he lifts your face by your chin, “that’s not going to happen. It takes two to tango. It’s...it’s a lot, but we’ll figure it out. Have to.”

“So you’re not worried?” You ask.

He shakes his head, “no, I’m fucking terrified. Me? A parent? I can’t even cook myself breakfast, how am I supposed to take care of another human being?”

You let out a breathy laugh and drop your head on his shoulder, “I love you.”

He rests his cheek on the top of your head, “I love you too.”

---

“What about Amadeus?”

You snort, “as in like, Mozart?”

“It’s classy!” Shawn defends.

“It’s stupid!” You laugh.

He intertwines his fingers in yours, keeping a free hand on the steering wheel, “I don’t see you coming up with anything better.”

You ponder for a few a second, “what about Dexter?”

Now it’s Shawn’s turn to snort, “that’s stupid.”

The two of you are driving to his parent’s house. The road is lined neatly with pretty little houses and rows of trees. It’s a beautiful day, the sun is high in the sky and it’s the perfect temperature of not too hot, and not too cold. You drive with the windows down, your hand snaking through the air out the passenger’s side window. There are six left turns to get to Shawn’s neighborhood in Pickering. You close your eyes and count each one and try to concentrate on the feeling of the wind through your fingers instead of the twisting knot in your stomach.

“Hey -” Shawn pulls you out of your trance, “everything is going to be fine.”

You hum, but aren’t so sure. Yeah, he’s got the money, and you know the baby will be loved and taken care of - but are you two ready? Can anyone really be ready for their first child? You weren’t even engaged, or even brought up the next step. The relationship wasn’t exactly new, you’d been dating for about two years now but besides moving in with him after Christmas, there was no talk of what your next step was.

Well, I guess this is the next five steps, you think.

“I know,” you reply, “I just don’t want your parents to hate me.”

You play with his fingers in your lap, not looking at him, “my parents could never hate you.”

You side eye him, “you’re a twenty year old international rock star. You don’t have time for a baby.”

Shawn slams on the breaks, leaving the cars behind you honking and swerving around you, “excuse me?” He pulls his hand from yours.

You sigh, you didn’t mean for it to come out the way it did, “I’m just saying I know you have more important things to focus on and I don’t want to be the reason that you can’t focus on those things.”

“Are you breaking up with me?” He scoffs.

It takes you a second too long to respond.

“You can’t just break up with me because you’re pregnant, Baby,” he’s softer now and holds both of your hands in yours, “fuck - we’ll get married tomorrow and tell everyone it was a Honeymoon child.”

You pull your hands away and cover your face, “that’s not the point, Shawn. You don’t have time for this - or the energy. I don’t want to be sitting at home all alone with a baby while you’re traveling the world. A child needs a father around.”

“So I’ll take time off -”

“I can’t ask you to do that, Shawn.”

He scoffs, “so what the fuck are you asking me to do then?”

“I don’t know,” you mumble.

He drops your hands and puts the Jeep back into drive, peeling off down the street. Shawn’s grip on the wheel is so tight you can see the skin around his knuckles turning white. He chews the inside of his cheek, fighting back all the venomous words he wants to say to you. You give him credit for keeping his mouth shut.

The two of you drive in silence the rest of the way to the Mendes’ household. The party is already in full swing when you arrive. Shawn’s quick to exit the car, not bothering to open the passenger door for you like he always does. You follow behind him to the front door and inside.

“Ah, the prodigal son returns,” Aaliyah greets with arms crossed.

“Hello sister,” Shawn pulls her into a big hug.

She groans and wiggles out of his grip to give you a big hug, “missed you!” She squeaks, “him not so much.”

Shawn shrugs, “I’ll remember that when your sweet sixteen rolls around and mom and dad won’t buy you a new car.”

You watch him walk away into the kitchen to greet the rest of his family. The tears are threatening to spill over again, so you excuse yourself from Aaliyah and practically run for the bathroom. You shut and lock the door, stepping in front of the vanity to give yourself a good once over. Needless to say, you look a mess; eyes are rimmed red from crying, there’s a flush in your face and blotches of red muck up your cheeks.

“Just breathe, get through today, you can deal with the rest later,” you say to yourself, clutching the countertop.

Turning on the faucet, you splash some cold water on your face to try and calm down. It somewhat works, or at the very least gives you enough courage to step back out to the party. Shawn’s in the kitchen talking to his parents, his dad cooking something over the stove and his mom putting together drinks in the blender. You approach slowly and wrap your arms around Shawn from behind.

He’s rigid, and doesn’t immediately respond to your touch. You kiss his shoulder through the cotton of his teeshirt and he relaxes a little under you.

“Shawn here was just telling us about how you’ve been looking at engagement rings,” Karen winks, “pick something shiny!” She whispers.

You laugh it off and Shawn pulls you from behind him and places your body in front of his. His parents go back to busying themselves as hosts and Shawn continues to hold you in his arms and not say anything.

He kisses the top of your head, “we still have a lot to talk about, but I don’t want to be pissed off at my parent’s party. I also really want to eat a cheeseburger and you know being pissed off gives me indigestion.”

You let out a breathy laugh and turn to bury your face in his neck, kissing his collarbone, “I love you, I’m sorry, I want this to work.”

Shawn hugs you tighter swaying you back and forth to the music that floats in from the speakers outside, “yeah, I do too.”

---

Two hours later you’re sitting at the edge of the pool in the Mendes’ backyard. Music is booming, friends and family are laughing and drinking and swimming. You lean back and welcome the hot sun against your skin. It’s a warm burn, and a welcomed distraction from this morning. You and Shawn decided to keep it a secret, for now. To wait until you two had decided what your next step is going to be.

“You know, I’m still not against putting a ring on it,” Shawn sits next to you and dips his bare legs into the pool.

You roll your eyes at him, “while I’m not against it in the future, I’d like to be able to drink at my own wedding.”

He kisses your forehead, “fair enough,” Shawn kicks your foot underwater, his lips still pressed to your forehead, “stop thinking so much about it. Just relax and try to have fun today, please?”

You nod, “yeah, yeah I will.”

A ball hits the back of Shawn’s head and you hear the chorus of giggles coming from his little cousins behind you. They can’t be older than maybe two or three.

“Come pway, Shawnie!” The little girl demands, she already has a juice stain on the front of her dress and she runs away when Shawn gets up to run after her.

You watch as he chases her around the backyard and scoops her up, swinging her around. She laughs and laughs and laughs until tears are running down her face. When Shawn puts her back down again she runs off to the next adult to get attention from. He looks at you and shrugs, your heart feeling so giant it may burst.

“Want a drink, love?” Karen hands you one of her famous Daiquiris.

The reason it’s famous is for the massive amounts of rum she puts into it.

“Oh no thank you,” you decline, “my stomach isn’t feeling the greatest today.”

She hums and places her palm on your forehead to check your temperature, “hmm, alright. I’ll make you a virgin one then.”

“You’re seriously the best,” you say, and she pats your head once before walking away.

You watch Shawn as he plays with one of his cousin’s babies. He can’t be more than a year old, just learning how to walk. Shawn props him up, offering him a finger to hang onto and they walk slowly across the lawn, the baby waddling beside him, babbling. They have a pretend conversation and you bite your lip to hold back a laugh as Shawn talks to the baby about vintage Fender guitars.

Shawn lets go to let him walk by himself and he manages for a few steps before falling backwards onto his bum. Immediately, the baby is in tears, screaming. Shawn scoops him up and holds him close, cooing and rubbing his back until he stops.

“See? You’re fine!” He says wiping away the baby’s tears, and plops him back down on the ground. He watches him crawl back over to his parents.

Shawn catches your eye from across the yard and starts walking back to you, “you ready to swim yet, Baby?”

“Not today,” you respond.

“Suit yourself.”

Shawn pulls his shirt off and drops it on your lap before diving into the pool, splashing you. He swims up to the edge where you sit and kisses your knees, pulling himself between your legs. Honestly, he looks like a fucking God all wet in front of you.

“The water is perfect,” he groans, leaning back into the water, “you should really come in.”

“I’m not feeling it today, Shawn, really.”

“Well - too bad!”

Before you can protest he’s pulling you in, fully clothed.

“You fucking asshole!” You complain through gritted teeth.

Shawn wraps an arm around you, using his other to keep the two of you afloat, “rule number one of parenting: don’t swear with the kids around,” he says before pecking your cheek.

He lets you go and swims away, you chase after him, splashing and pushing him under when you get to him. It’s playful and fun, the glimmer in his eyes and the creases in his cheeks when he smiles stops your breath for a moment. He kisses your temple and you almost forget about the pregnancy and the argument on the drive over. For now, it’s just this moment.

“Everyone out of the pool, it’s time to eat!” Manny yells from the grill.

You and Shawn are the last ones out, too caught up in each other and below the surface touches, and sneaked kisses. He’s happily nibbling on your neck when his dad speaks up again, “Shawn, you eat cheeseburgers, not your girlfriend!”

Shawn opens his mouth to speak and you slap a palm over it, “I swear to God if you make a pussy eating joke in front of your whole family I’m going to drown you in this pool.”

He just grins and helps you out of the pool. Karen is already waiting with warm towels to wrap yourselves in, “here, come with me darling, we’ll find you something dry to change into.”

She pulls you into the house and upstairs to Shawn’s old bedroom. It’s the same as it was the day he moved out. You remember it the same as when you were younger but things seemed so much smaller now, and the world is so much bigger. You change into the warm clothes that Karen brought for you. There really is no better feeling than putting on dry clothes after swimming. You revel in that little moment for a second, laying on Shawn’s old bed.

“Knock knock!”

It’s Karen.

“Just checking to see how you’re doing.”

You scrunch your face, “I’m fine.”

She tilts her head and does that total mom look, “oh honey,” she places her hand on yours, “I know you’re pregnant.”

“I cannot believe he told -”

“He didn’t have to, sweetie. I can see that stressed look on your face, you were crying in the bathroom when you got here, you didn’t have a drink,” she taps her temple, “pretty easy to put together.”

“Fuck,” you sigh, “I’m so sorry.”

Karen rubs your back, “why are you saying sorry?”

“Because I’m going to fuck everything up that he’s worked so hard for,” you sniff, fighing the tears, “it’s not fair to him.”

She sighs, “I know my son, I know he loves you. I also know he loves what he does, but I know he’ll be responsible for this baby with whatever path you decide to take.”

You rest your head on her shoulder, “thanks, Mama K.”

“What’d you do to make her cry?!” Shawn squawks from the doorway.

He comes and sits on the other side of you.

“I think this is my cue,” Karen says, giving you a pat on the leg and leaving you and Shawn alone in his bedroom.

“She knows,” you mutter.

“You told my mom?!”

You shake your head, “no, she just knew.”

“Well cats out of the bag then. Karen can’t keep a secret to save her life. Half the town will know by the time we get back downstairs.”

You laugh and press your face into his shoulder, “are we making the right decision?”

Shawn puts his arm around you and holds you close, “as long as we’re in it together, it’s the right decision.”

#this is a repost lmao #shawn mendes #shawn mendes blurb #shawn mendes fanfiction #shawn mendes fanfic #shawn mendes fluff #shawn mendes angst #shawn mendes fic #shawn mendes oneshot

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fcukyeahbettyenny · 4 years

Text

Wednesdays with You

AU: Armando/Betty

Author’s note: I have been toying with this AU idea for a few days. It goes: What if Ricardo never made that damning video? What if the Valencia-Mendoza wedding had pushed through? What if Betty had not realized she was being toyed with and her relationship with Armando had continued along its projected tangent?

JFK AIRPORT, A YEAR AGO

Ricardo fished his phone out of his pocket and fired up his selfie camera to make a video wherein he would taunt his best friend about having to sleep with a gargoyle so they can keep her under control and take V&M back. But as he was about to hit the record button, he thought better of it. Videos were evidence, and in a game that was as dangerous as the one he and his best friend were playing, evidence was the last thing anyone needed. Ricardo pocketed his phone and got himself a big box of condoms from the airport duty-free instead. He had big plans for his best friend's girl, after all.

---

BETTY'S APARTMENT, UPPER MANHATTAN

“I’ll be right there! Just a moment!” Betty called out as she rushed to her little apartment’s door. She lives by herself in East Harlem now. She hasn’t lived in Jackson Heights with her parents for over a year. She couldn’t and carry on with Armando, now a married man with a baby on the way. Betty took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and put a smile on her face. It was a Wednesday. Armando always “worked late” on Wednesdays, only going home to -- she shook her head -- only going home Thursday afternoons.

Surely enough, it was Armando at the door when she opened it, in his arms a big bouquet of twelve red Ecuadorian roses, her favorite. She kissed his cheek as she took them with one arm while her free hand joined his. Like he always did, he lifted the hand that was in his and kissed it before saying, “I’m home.” The words always made Betty’s eyes a little teary. She doubted that was ever going to change.

It has been a year since Armando and Marcela’s wedding. It had been the biggest one that Betty had ever attended -- over 500 guests from both the fashion and showbiz industries. Señorita Catalina had been very kind and made her over for that one day, looking strangely sad as she helped Betty tame her wild hair into a bun. Betty had wondered if Catalina knew about them, but decided that it wasn’t important. Betty had made her choice, and her choice was him.

As Betty took down a vase from the shelf above her little kitchen sink, she smiled at him and cheerfully said, “Well, mi amor, I hope you’re hungry. I talked to my mother on the phone earlier today and she gave me a new recipe for tamales. My cooking will never be as good as hers but the recipe is good. You like chicken, don’t you?”

Armando smiled and nodded at her from where he sat on her sofa. “I like everything you make. You could make me poison and I would eat it happily from your hands.”

Betty felt blood rushing to her cheeks and fat tears traitorously rolled down her cheeks. Armando visibly looked alarmed as he rushed to hold her in his arms. He kissed her forehead and whispered into her ear. “I’ve made you cry. I’m sorry I always make you cry.”

Betty buried her face where his neck met his strong shoulder. “I just missed you these past few weeks. Marcela’s pregnancy is a delicate one, isn’t it?” He nodded, his bearded face rubbing against the delicate skin of her temple. She looked up at him and searched his eyes. “I still stand by what I said that night on your office couch. I choose you. But if you feel that you need to leave me now and concentrate on building your life with Marcela -- with your family -- I will let you go.” She forced herself to smile but the tears wouldn’t stop falling. She felt like she would never, ever stop crying and yet her hands found their way to his shoulders, kneading them comfortingly as if her heart wasn’t breaking inside her.

Armando’s response was to take her face into his hands and kiss her deeply. She found he always did that whenever he wanted to distract her -- primarily because his kisses always did. She was so in love with him the thought of being without him makes it hard for her to breathe. She had even ended her friendship with Nicolas, as much as that had hurt. She vastly preferred the breathlessness brought by his lips trying to devour hers. She always would.

He was hard against her hip now, and his hands had found their way to her bottom. Their kisses turned deep and desperate. Wednesdays always did that to them. As she mouthed along his chiseled jaw, Betty thought briefly of Marcela who was at the Hamptons being cooed over by the Mendozas, probably just a little miffed about Armando regularly choosing to work through the night on Wednesdays but still none the wiser. Why would Manhattan’s most beautiful executive and fashion’s most influential mother-to-be have anything to worry about when his assistant was such an ugly woman? Betty thanked God and whoever might be listening for small mercies. Nobody suspected a thing.

Armando made quick work of their clothes and carried Betty upstairs to her bedroom, kicking the bedroom door shut and locking it. It was a nervous habit he had developed after Nicolas had walked in on them on the Wednesday after his wedding last year and gotten an eyeful. Armando and Nicolas had duked it out right there in Betty’s bedroom while Betty yelled at both of them to stop fighting, wearing nothing but a sheet. In the end, Nicolas had asked her to choose between their friendship and her relationship with Armando. Betty had sunk onto her bed and told Nicolas to go, her voice choked up with tears. That was the last time she and Nicolas ever spoke. He resigned from BAR the next day and, according to her parents, moved to Florida to be with his grandmother.

As Armando laid Betty on her bed, one of her hands reached behind her pillow and pulled out a condom packet that she kept under there. She was on the pill but she also knew that pills weren’t fool-proof. She handed the little packet to Armando who smiled at her before taking one and putting it on himself. Betty touched his face briefly before finally resting her hand on a strong arm. She let her hand travel down his arm and took his hand in hers.

In an instant, Armando’s mouth was on hers again and his weight pressed her down into her sheets, his body aligning with hers, preparing for entry. She wrapped her legs around his waist and opened her mouth to his as he rained kisses on her neck and face while slowly entering her in one long stroke. Her first moan died in his throat, as did her second and third. When she was sure she wouldn’t scream, she finally allowed herself to break the kiss, whispering into his ear. “I love you,” she breathed over and over as she met him at every crest, his teeth biting at her shoulder and collarbone where no one would see the marks the next day. Betty forced her eyes to open and kissed his cheek, observing him as he made love to her. His eyes were closed and the muscles on his shoulders and chest contracted and relaxed with the effort. She could barely remember her name at that point but she forced herself to focus on him, adjusting her movements to match his and finding pleasure in giving him pleasure. Her eyes closed again as she and Armando engaged in this most ancient of dances for what felt to her like hours. Eventually she gave over to her climax, him following shortly after.

She stroked his hair as she came down from her high and while he covered her neck and collarbone with kisses, staying inside her all the while. When he appeared to have had his fill, she felt him touch his forehead to hers and kiss her nose as he slowly pulled out of her. She tried to follow but it would seem he had other plans as he slid further down the bed to get between her legs. She smiled down at him and he, up at her. When he was face-to-face with the apex of her thighs, Armando delicately ran his hands over her inner thighs, looking like he was marveling at her skin as he sucked at and kissed every inch of her before him. He then grinned up at her as he started licking and kissing at her entrance, his practiced tongue causing Betty’s eyes to roll up into her head and her completely forget who she was as she came.

She woke up to Armando gently touching her cheek with a finger. He was grinning down at her this time because he had apparently slid up to the headboard and gathered her into his arms, her head resting on his chest. Betty closed her eyes and listened contentedly to Armando's chuckles and the thumping of his heart. Betty gave him a small, unsure smile. He grinned at her in return.

“You fell asleep. Rude, but I take it as a compliment,” he joked.

Betty blushed in spite of herself and all they had done. “You should. You’re always amazing,”

Armando’s expression fell at that. “Only you seem to think so nowadays.” He sighed then. “Betty, I don’t think I could live without you.”

She shook her head and kissed his chest. “You could if you needed to. I hope that you won’t choose to, though.” She worried her lip as she studied his face. “I know I can’t live without you.” Betty closed her eyes as she felt his lips on the top of her head.

Armando sounded so sad as he confessed, “I saw Marcela kissing Ricardo today so I confronted them. I asked them if the baby was mine and she said she didn’t know. Can you imagine?” He kissed her head again before asking, “Is it weird that I love that baby but I wish so hard for it not to be mine?”

Betty took Armando’s free hand and kissed his forefinger for no real reason other than being allowed to do so.

“Betty,”

She looked up at him, settling upon his eyes. “Hmm?”

“Did you know?”

She nodded hesitantly, not meeting his eyes.

She felt him tense. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

She held his gaze with hers. “Because it was her secret to tell. Besides, I would have felt like a hypocrite, telling you about her and Ricardo when we are doing the same thing.”

She felt him relax underneath her. “It’s not the same thing.”

Betty rolled away from him and clutched a nearby pillow to herself. “It is and your know it.”

Armando followed her and wrapped an arm around her waist, drawing her close. He whispered into her ear. “I want a baby with you.”

Betty tensed. There were too many complications. Too many people who would be hurt. Too many things -- but her mouth worked faster than her brain this time. “Me, too. I want us to be a family more than anything.” As soon as she said the words, she broke down. She turned back to him and buried his face in his chest, sobbing hard. It seemed that all she ever did lately was cry whenever she thought of the two of them -- she and Armando -- so desperately in love but having to hide that love in the shadows. It was like trying to keep a candle under a bushel. If they were not careful, they might end up burning the house down.

Armando looked radiant. “Then why don’t we be a family?” His grin turned naughty. “You know we’re good at the babymaking part,”

She wetly giggled as she mildly tapped his chest. “I swear, Armando. You’re twelve years old and I don’t know why I love you. But I do love you. I kind of almost wish I didn’t.”

Armando held her tighter, his face worried. She hadn’t seen him that worried since before they were able to get V&M back into the black several months ago. “You don’t mean that.”

Betty relaxed. “No. I don’t. I let go of the most important people in my life to be in this with you -- my parents, Nico -- but I can’t bring myself to regret it.”

Armando sounded like he was about to cry. “I’m sorry, Betty. For everything,”

She kissed him and immediately got on her knees on the bed, straddling his torso. He helped her sit on his pelvis, where she could feel his interest building again. She lowered her body onto his and gently pressed her forehead against his. “I’m not. I am, however, sorry that you are in so much pain. I wish I could take your pain from you, but I can’t. All I can do is love you and try to make you forget for a while.” Her hand reached between them, slowly stroking him to full arousal and watching as he slowly lost himself in her touch. She ran her thumb over the slit of his cock, enjoying the shiver she got from him with that small action.

“Betty, please...” he begged.

He really need not have, because as soon as he’d said her name, Betty had gotten off the bed, put her glasses on the bedside console, and knelt between his legs, slowly taking him into her mouth and carefully tucking her teeth away, making sure they didn't scrape him. She kept swallowing down on him until she could feel the head of his cock in her throat. She gulped around him and grinned a little when he all but rammed himself in. This was something she was excellent at, he’d told her time and time again. She had long ago trained her gag reflex into nonexistence during sex, and Armando had also told her that Marcela had always found blow jobs to be demeaning and low-class. Betty begged to differ. She had Armando where she wanted him and she would not let go until he was satisfied. She started her head up and down, applying suction, all the while oblivious to the growing discomfort in her neck. The look of utter ecstasy that must be on his face (she can’t see that far without glasses) was worth any amount of pain. There was absolutely nothing she wouldn’t do for him. A few moments or a few hours later -- she wasn’t sure, she felt his cum paint her throat. She pumped him for every drop, even licking his shaft to take in any runaways. When she was done, she dropped herself into his arms, her face against his neck.

“My GOD you’re incredible,” Armando breathed.

Betty shrugged. “I have to keep you with me somehow,” Betty joked. Armando had told her long ago in Miami never to call herself ugly and she never did after that. How could she when he always made her feel so desired and loved?

Betty let herself get pulled into his arms again and closed her eyes when she felt his lips on her forehead. She couldn’t remember closing her eyes but she was drifting off again, it seemed.

“You want my baby,” Armando stated, his thumb stroking her shoulder back and forth where his hand was on it.

Betty lowered her eyes. “But we can’t. We only have this. We only have Wednesdays and we can’t always get what we want. If we did...”

“...we’d be married. Marcela would be in Europe somewhere, maybe with her sister. And then you and I would have a baby -- maybe a daughter who looks like you. That would be our life,”

Betty kissed his cheek and turned his face so that his gaze met hers. “This is what we have and I am thankful for it. For you. As long as I have you, nothing else really matters.”

She felt him tense again underneath her. He always did whenever she said things like that last sentence to him. Someday she would ask him why, but they were together and they were happy right now. She would wait for him to tell her. He would have to someday, wouldn’t he? She closed her eyes and laid her head on his chest. Whatever it was could wait.

#betty en ny #betty in ny #AU #betty and armando #betty en ny fan fiction #betty in ny fan fiction #betty en ny fanfiction #betty in ny fanfiction

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miicrobiology-blog · 4 years

Text

introductory biology properties

I’m madly in love with our biological surroundings and everything in it, from the massive trees to the tiniest of microbes. The sheer diversity of living things boggles my mind but it makes me appreciate everything ten-fold. This post generally introduces the key biological concepts that define life.

Some learning objectives to keep in mind when reading this post: a) List and describe the eight properties of living things. b) Define homeostasis and discuss its importance to living organisms. c) Differentiate reproduction, growth & development, adaptation, and evolution. d) Interpret whether viruses could be classified as a living organism or not.

1. Order

The organization of living things tends to direct what that thing will do and how it lives. Down to the atomic level, the subatomic particles make up elements and compounds that dictate the organism’s structure, its reactive chemistry, and its intrinsic ability to obey the laws of physics. Organisms can be simple unicellular organisms more complex as a multicellular being. The different order of atoms, elements, compounds, cellular organelles, and cells set the scene for the prescribed structure and function of the organism.

2. Response to Stimuli

This is another property of living organisms that classifies them as “living.” They need some way to respond to their immediate environment to let them continue surviving, which can be carried out a plethora of ways. Humans have sense organs like the eyes, ears, nose, skin (embedded with many types of receptors), and the tongue to send sensory information from these organs to the brain for processing, then sending the appropriate signals to the body according to the brain’s interpretation. For example, a bad taste can alert you that the food you just ate is rotten or poisonous, or a hot pan shouldn’t be touched; these situations help promote your survivability in your environment. Probably more exemplary of stimuli response mechanisms are the taxis concepts: aerotaxis (oxygen), gravitaxis (gravity), hydrotaxis (water/moisture), magnetotaxis (magnetism), phototaxis (light), and so on.

3. Reproduction

As we might be well aware of, reproduction continues an organism’s lineage and passes on genetic information either sexually or asexually (and very rarely through parthenogenesis - read this neat article about these “virgin births” in lizard [Harmon, 2010]). These processes should trigger your memory about mitosis and meiosis, along with DNA replication and the principles of genetics, which I will gladly cover in another post!

4. Adaptation

Another concept intertwined with reproduction and evolution is adaptation. The simplest way to explain this is that each organism fits into its environment as it suits their ability to survive and reproduce. Arctic hares thrive in the cold climate of the tundra and are active all year round, while some extremophile archaea are adapted to the extremely high- or low-temperature environments. As a microbiologist, please read over this article “Living at the Extremes: Extremophiles and the Limits in a Planetary Context” to gain an appreciation of living organisms being able to adapt to literally all types of environments, like temperatures, pressures, pH, and salinity (Merino et al., 2019). An important thing to keep in mind is that adaptation is ongoing as environments tend to change.

5. Growth & Development

Because cells undergo cell division, you might expect that multicellular organisms will grow as more cells are produced. This, of course, depends on the instructions contained within the genetic material of each cell, but generally organisms will grow and develop over time. You can see this in humans, obviously, as we develop from the fertilized egg, into a fetus, into a baby, toddler, child, adolescent, adult, and older adult. Plants continue through various stages, starting from a seed to grow into a young seedling and onwards to a mature, reproducing plant (of course there are many variations depends on the type of plant). The general idea here is that living organisms progress through various stages where they advance through cellular growth and development.

6. Homeostasis

From the Greek homoisos/homeo (like/similar) and stasis (stoppage), homeostasis is the carefully maintained normal range of functioning that is critical for the survival of living things, as seen in temperature, pH, chemical and ionic concentrations, etc. I like to think of this concept as a “steady state” where the internal mechanisms of a living thing are kept relatively constant. There is small degree of leeway, as seen in the normal range of body temperature between 97-99 degrees F (36-37.2 degrees C; though there is also the consideration of varying normal levels for each individual where one person’s normal temperature is 97 so their homeostatic range might be between 96 and 98 degrees). Anyway, this maintenance of a normal range is critical for survival as cells contain proteins (i.e., enzymes) that are able to function optimally at a specific temperature, pH, and ion concentrations. Any deviance from the normal range can throw off homeostatic balance and cause the body to go into crisis mode.

7. Energy Processing

All living things require energy to carry out cellular metabolic activities. Plants use the sun’s energy and convert it into chemical energy to integrate it into photosynthesis that ultimately makes useable sugars and other important metabolic intermediates. Humans need to harvest energy from secondary sources (food) because we unfortunately cannot use the sun’s energy for our inner metabolism, except for vitamin D synthesis but that’s a different story. The point here is that all organisms rely on some sort of energy source to power the cellular activities that govern pretty much cellular survival and organismal survival.

8. Evolution

Tying many of these concepts together results in evolution, the theory that all species are related at one point and have deviated through natural selection and adaptation. Random mutations in the genetic material might lead to positive changes that confer a benefit to the organism in its survivability over others, and if it successfully breeds and passes on this beneficial information to its offspring, this new characteristic can contribute to a change in the population of the organism (hence, natural selection). This is such an interesting topic and I will definitely make a few posts about this theory and the arguments for and against it to be completely objective.

Notice how a bunch of these concepts end up relating back to reproduction? This is an interesting and open-ended question to consider, but it mainly refers to the biologically-ingrained need to reproduce and pass on genetic material. Why??? It promotes diversity with the chance that the replication mechanisms make a mistake (mutations) and create new, interesting features of an organism (or, on the flip side, completely devastate the organism to the point of unviability), and still leads to more questions about why life exists and why we have such a desire to answer deep questions. Another question to ponder, as it relates to both this post and in our current world situation: do you think viruses should be classified as living organisms or non-living things?

References:

Harmon, K. (2010). No sex needed: All-female lizard species cross their chromosomes to make babies. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/asexual-lizards/

Merino, N., Aronson, H. S., Bojanova, D. P., Feyhl-Buska, J., Wong, M. L., Zhang, S., & Giovannelli, D. (2019). Living at the extremes: Extremophiles and the limits of life in a planetary context. Front. Microbiol., 10(780). https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2019.00780

#biology #ap biology #college biology #life #science #learning #general biology

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artificialqueens · 5 years

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nobody knows where we might end up, chapter four (branjie) - holtzmanns

(read on ao3) | (tumblr)

“Dr. Cain told Dr. Miller who told Dr. Edwards who told me that she saw you two practically ready to bite each other’s heads off in the hallway a few days ago.” Dr. O’Hara ends her statement with a bite of her salad, eyes expectant.

“Jesus, what is this, the hospital from Grey’s Anatomy? Do y’all ever actually work or just gossip here?” So maybe she’s feeling a little grumpy about it. Also because she’s not sure which time it is that Dr. O’Hara is talking about.

AN: Thank you so much for the sweet responses to this story! I love it so, so much. In this chapter, we have soft baby gays in the past, and a bit of hospital gossip in the present. Writ is the most wonderful friend and beta ever.

(then)

“Has anyone told you that you’re nuts? ‘Cause you’re nuts.”

Vanessa’s staring at Brooke’s review for the midterm, and holy shit. The colour coordination. The diagrams. It’s as if she’s going to be graded on artistic ability.

Brooke snorts at her dumbstruck face. “Honestly, it helps me to consolidate all the information, making it all pretty and organized. It’s helpful. My notes aren’t as extensive as yours, though.”

Brooke reaches out to grab Vanessa’s midterm review, a haphazard collection of handwritten notes that she’s meticulously copied again and again. Vanessa’s found a strategy that works for her, especially when it comes to information heavy subjects - rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.

Though it does make her notes look a bit chaotic. And unreadable to anyone who isn’t familiar with her handwriting.

But hey, it works for her.

“Organized chaos, is what mine is.” Her wrist aches with a phantom pain as she thumbs through the pages, remembering the strain as she wrote line after line.

Vanessa leans over the table, looks over at the diagram that Brooke is drawing of the renal system. Her coloured pencils are spread out beside her, because of course Brooke has coloured pencils to make her diagrams even more pretty.

Vanessa picks up the yellow coloured pencil, a smile playing on her lips. “Don’t forget this one when you have to colour in the pee.”

Brooke wrinkles her nose. “Ugh, when you say it like that-”

Vanessa snickers. “Nephrology is wack. I’m glad we’re both in agreement about that.”

“It is cool, though.” Vanessa can see the gears in Brooke’s brain start to turn as she traces a finger over the diagrams that she’s drawn on the page. “Like the fact that sodium is so involved? And the amount that our body retains water is totally dependent on balancing concentration levels in a substance, which is something we learned in what, grade ten? I love it.”

“You’re cute when you’re all excited over pee.” Vanessa can’t help but cackle when Brooke groans at her statement.

“I’m not excited over pee- ”

“Yes you are. Pee lover.”

“Hush.” Brooke lifts up her notes to lightly smack Vanessa’s shoulder with them, making her squeal and lean back in her chair. The action nearly makes Vanessa fall off, and when she catches herself on the edge of the table, the two of them are laughing hard enough that Vanessa’s sure that a librarian is going to come to shush them at any second.

They get back to work after Brooke goes to the bathroom (‘don’t get too excited about going pee in there’), finishing up their respective midterm reviews and quizzing each other. Vanessa checks her watch, sighs as the time for her 6 pm lecture ticks closer and closer.

“I gotta go.” Vanessa doesn’t want to. Switching to a different lecture so that she can spend more time with Brooke would be silly, right?

She tells herself that for now.

“Have fun in class. I’ll study nephrology all by my lonesome.” Brooke fake pouts up at her, and Vanessa rolls her eyes good naturedly.

“You say that as if you’re not going to have the time of your life.”

Brooke sticks her tongue out, a gesture that Vanessa returns right back at her. She pauses when she’s packed up all of her things, letting the words rush out before she loses the nerve to say them.

“Hey, if you’re still studying in the evening and don’t have dinner plans, wanna come over later? I was planning on making something in our suite kitchen. We can keep quizzing each other while making food, if you want.”

Because, yep, that’s the only reason she’s asking Brooke to hang out even more today. To study while they cook.

She’s so transparent that she can see through herself sometimes.

Brooke blinks up at her before grinning, and she’s back to her shyness from when they first started talking. “Yeah. Sure, that would be fun. We’ll be even more prepared for the midterm then.

Yep. Prepared for the midterm.

Vanessa will take it, though. Because really, school is the priority, right?

She grins at Brooke. “Perfect. I’ll text you when class is done?”

“Sounds good.” Brooke waves her phone around in her hand. “I’ll be waiting.”

“I bet you will. Now go back to learning about pee so you can quiz me about it later.”

Vanessa skips down the hallway as Brooke groans, smiling to herself. The two hours of lecture she has to get through before their dinner better fly by.

“Silky. Silky. What have I done?”

“You’ve inv-“

“I’ve invited her over to make dinner together, Silky!” Vanessa practically yelps it, vibrating with nervous energy as she dances around their suite’s kitchen, pulling ingredients that she had bought earlier in the day from the communal fridge and cupboards.

“Do you think she even likes stir fry? I just bought the stuff in the morning ‘cause it’s easy. I didn’t think I was gonna invite her for dinner. ” Vanessa punctuates the last four words with raps on the counter.

Silky munches away on her own dinner at the table, watching her as if she’s a nature documentary. “Who doesn’t like stir fry? It’s easy as shit and always tastes good.”

“What if she has some sort of weird stir fry trauma? Had food poisoning with it and now hates it more than anything in the world?“

There’s a rap on their door, then, and Vanessa looks at Silky in panic.

“Well, now you get to find out. I’m taking my dinner to our room.” With that, Silky takes her plate, shutting the door behind her.

She can do this. It’s only another studying session, this time with food involved. She opens the door to the suite, finds a wide eyed Brooke behind it.

“Hey, I brought two bite brownies for dessert? I wasn’t sure if you liked chocolate or not, but two bite brownies are always good, and they were in the campus store, and-”

Vanessa can’t help but melt as Brooke cuts herself off, drawing in a breath. Did she really have anything to worry about?

“Sorry.” Brooke looks at her sheepishly, taking a step into the suite when Vanessa holds the door open more to let her in.

“For what?” Vanessa grins at her. “You like stir fry?”

They work together as a team, chopping the vegetables and making the noodles like a well oiled machine while tossing questions from the nephrology unit back and forth at one another.

“True or false,” Brooke starts as she drains the noodles, “Renin secretion is influenced by potassium.”

“False.” Vanessa points the spatula at Brooke. “Sodium influences it. Low sodium means that more is released. ”

“Perfect.” Brooke grins at her, bringing the noodles over so that Vanessa can pour the stir fry mix on top. “You’ve been killing all these questions.”

“So have you. I feel pretty good about this unit.” Vanessa sticks her hand out for a high five, one that Brooke returns. “What do you say we take a studying break and eat?”

They curl up on the couch, and Vanessa barely has a chance to bring a bite to her lips before Brooke exclaims loud enough to be heard by the rest of the floor. “Vanessa, this is so good!”

“Yeah?” Her answer is muffled by her bite but she’s thrilled nonetheless, feeling like she wants to get up and dance around. It’s a feeling that only increases when Brooke nods.

“Yeah. I’m definitely gonna need seconds. Maybe thirds? Kind of want to sneak all this back to my room with me. Who knows?”

Vanessa grins. “No need for that, B. You can always come back and we can make it again.”

Brooke points her fork at her. “I’m going to take you up on it.”

“Why else do you think I offered?” She knows that her grin in Brooke’s direction is stupidly happy, solely for the fact that Brooke is reflecting the same facial expression back at her.

Vanessa likes her. A lot. More than just in class, more than when they just study together.

Not that it’s a big deal.

Brooke nudges her side with her elbow. “We spend so much time talking about school and class-”

“-and currently pee, thanks to the nephrology unit-”

Brooke snorts. “-and currently pee. As I was saying, we barely have the chance to talk about anything else, it’s so rare. So, I want to know you more. Tell me something.”

“Like what? That’s an open ended question.” What does Brooke even want to know?

Brooke shrugs. “I don’t know. Tell me more about your family, maybe?”

Vanessa leans forward in her spot, taking a sip of her drink before she speaks. “Okay. Well, it’s me and my mom and my older brother. And my abuela. We make a nice little unit.” She loves her family, really does. Misses them like crazy while she’s at school, especially her mom's cooking, which she appreciates now more than ever after having being made to cook for herself.

“That sounds nice. Are you all close?” Brooke leans her cheek on her hand, listening intently, and her focus makes Vanessa flush under her gaze a bit.

“Yeah. Real close. My mom’s always been supportive, y’know? Through everything. Gotten a couple of ass whoopings along the way, but they’ve always been deserved. I was a demon child.” Vanessa thinks back to herself as a kid, giving her mom more stress than she deserved at the time, acting out.

“But we’re closer now. Which is nice.” Vanessa shrugs, smiling a little. She needs to call her mom soon, catch up with her. “Being away at school makes us appreciate each other more.”

Brooke smiles back. “She sounds like a lovely mom.”

“She is.” Vanessa nudges her. “What about you, what’s your family like?”

Brooke shrugs. “They’re okay. I like being away at school, if that tells you anything.”

Vanessa raises an eyebrow. “That bad, huh?”

Brooke shifts in her chair, trying to explain. “No, not bad, per se. Just…stressful? Wound up?”

“That’s not easy, though.” Vanessa’s glad that her mom isn’t like that. She wants to do the best she can, make her happy, but her mom never acts as if she’s anything but proud of her.

“No. It isn’t.” Brooke fiddles with the couch cushion beside her. “They’re just always expecting perfection on my end, y’know? And I’m trying to give it to them. I want to. I should be able to.”

Now that makes a lot of sense. It explains Brooke’s need to do the absolute best, her panic that sets in when she feels like she hasn’t studied enough. The way Brooke calms down during their study sessions when she starts to understand things better.

“You can’t, though. No one can. No one’s perfect.” Vanessa has to resist an urge to grab Brooke’s hand, rub her thumb in little circles over her palm. “You can only do the best you can.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Brooke doesn’t look too convinced.

“If everyone was perfect, we’d all be boring as shit. Nothing fun to make us all different. We wouldn’t have anything to still work towards, either.” Vanessa pulls her feet up on the couch, scooching closer to Brooke. “You work your ass off and it already shows. I’m sure they can see that.”

Brooke bites her lip. “I hope so.”

“If not, I see it. Everyone else here sees it. You’re amazing.” The words tumble from Vanessa’s mouth before she can stop them, making her want to clap a hand over her mouth.

Way to make her feelings known. She’s probably gonna scare Brooke off.

She wants to take the words back, apologize for overstepping, but Brooke’s smile is soft on her face. “You’re the amazing one, helping me study and feeding me and being more than amazing company.”

“I’m glad I sat beside you during our first class. Not that I had a choice.” Vanessa thinks back to their first lecture, where she had come in late and it had been plenty embarrassing.

“All I remember from that class is how much your leg was shaking for most of it.” Brooke looks at her with a grin. “Thank goodness you don’t do that all the time.”

“I was nervous! It was the first class! Plus, I was sitting beside you and you looked really intimidating.” It’s true. Brooke looked mean at first glance.

Brooke looks at her in surprise. “Really?”

Vanessa scoffs. “Please. As if you didn’t know that already. You were glaring at me the whole time.”

“Oh god. I’m so sorry.” Brooke’s cheeks are pink. “In my defense…I was nervous too?”

Vanessa snorts. “Sure, whatever. It’s all good. Your tune changed real fast as soon as I opened my mouth to talk to you, anyway.”

“How so?”

“You got all shy on me.”

Now Brooke is the one to look indignant, eyebrows raised to contradict her statement. “I did not.”

Vanessa snickers. “Yes you did. All stuttering on your words and shit.” As if Brooke doesn’t make her stumble on her own words, too.

“That is completely false and you know it.”

Vanessa is about to retort, words on her tongue about how she’s nothing but truthful, but then Brooke is tickling her sides, making her squirm on the couch.

“Playing dirty!” Vanessa sticks her hands out to tickle Brooke back, give her a taste of her own medicine, but Brooke doesn’t even flinch under her touch.

“Wait.” Vanessa pauses, narrowing her eyes. “You’re not ticklish?”

“Nope.” Brooke pops the ‘p’ at the end of the word, with a grin at Vanessa that is way too smug.

“Unfair!”

Brooke giggles at her dramatics and it spurs Vanessa on further, flopping herself lower onto the couch.

“Unbelievable. Not even ticklish.”

“But you are. And it’s a fact that I will absolutely use to my advantage.” Brooke looks too happy, too thrilled about the turn of events.

Vanessa fixes her with a look. She wouldn’t. “Don’t you dare.”

“Don’t I dare what?”

“You know exactly what-” Vanessa shrieks because Brooke tickles her again, climbing on top of her as they’re both giggling.

“Mercy, mercy.” Vanessa holds a hand up and Brooke acquiesces, stopping. It’s then that Vanessa notices that Brooke is still on top of her, close enough that she can smell her shampoo, feel her hair that’s falling in front of her face and brushing against her arms.

Woah.

Brooke evidently notices at the same time, her eyes widening. She’s about to say something, maneuvering her arm so that she doesn’t fall off of Vanessa when-

“Sup, bitches?”

Vanessa groans, dropping her head against the back of the couch. Typical.

“Hi?” Brooke climbs off of Vanessa at lightning speed, straightening herself out in the couch beside her.

Silky fixes them both with a knowing grin. “Don’t mind me, grabbing a snack.”

Vanessa sighs as Brooke is back on her side of the couch, introducing herself to Silky as she fixes herself a sandwich.

Moment gone.

(now)

Vanessa pulls off her gloves, gown, and mask, tossing them into the waste disposal before washing her hands. She grins as Dr. Michaels comes up behind her, smile of approval clear on the woman’s face.

“Nice job, Dr. Mateo. Off to a great start.”

Her first surgery at her new job? Successfully completed. Sure, it had been a simple ablation procedure, but Vanessa feels great.

She’s been hired here as the cardiothoracic head for a reason. She’s gonna show everyone that the chief made the right decision.

“Thanks. You were great to work with in there. That ablation was smooth.”

“You’re damn right about that.” Dr. Michaels holds out a fist, and Vanessa bumps it right back.

Dr. Michaels pulls off her scrub cap, holding the door open for Vanessa to go through. “Lunch?”

“Absolutely.”

They grab a table in the cafeteria, joined by Dr. O’Hara and another doctor that she’s never met who looks like she should still be doing her undergrad degree. Vanessa sticks out a hand to introduce herself.

The woman shakes it. “Dr. St. Clair. Cardiothoracic resident.”

Vanessa’s eyebrows raise in surprise. “You’re a resident? I swear I thought you were-”

“An intern?” Dr. St. Clair laughs, shaking her head. “Yeah. I get that a lot. Looking young as a doctor isn’t the most helpful in getting patients to respect you.”

“So,” Dr. O’Hara’s voice is conspiratorial as she takes out her lunch, “what’s the gossip on you and Dr. Hytes?”

Vanessa nearly chokes on her sandwich. “What do you mean?” It’s interspersed with coughs, prompting Dr. Michaels to pat her on the back.

She and Dr. Hytes have fallen into a routine of sorts for their joint consult on the upcoming surgery. Vanessa feels like she’s defending her fucking thesis from the way that Dr. Hytes continues to question her abilities concerning the procedure. It’s absolutely infuriating, and lead to many shouting matches in the conference rooms.

The Brooke she remembers from undergrad would never have been like this. Disrespecting her at every turn, acting like a fucking bitch. Acting like she’s better than everyone else. But Vanessa knows her, and Dr. Hytes is not. Vanessa has never wanted to put her in her place more.

But she’s also just started. She doesn’t want to look unprofessional and get fired before she can make any leeway as an attending surgeon.

Besides, if she gets fired, it means that Dr. Hytes wins.

“You didn’t answer the question.” Dr. Michaels and Dr. O’Hara look like a buddy cop duo, resting their elbows on the table, while Dr. St. Clair watches attentively.

“She just rubs me the wrong way, that’s all.” No way is Vanessa going to bring their history - ancient history, at that - up to her coworkers. No one else’s business.

Dr. Michaels shoots a conspiratorial look at Dr. O’Hara. “Seems like a lot of emotion for just rubbing someone the wrong way.”

Vanessa shrugs. “Maybe I’m just an emotional person.” It’s not a lie, not really.

“Not only from you,” Dr. O’Hara lowers her voice, “From her, too.”

“Yeah?” Vanessa raises an eyebrow.

“Mhm.” Dr. O’Hara nods at her. “I’ve seen that woman have maybe five emotions max while working here. She’s usually unflappable. Since you’ve gotten here, though? The woman is pissed.”

Vanessa can’t help the satisfied smile that settles on her face. “Good.”

Let Dr. Hytes be pissed. Especially since she’s been causing Vanessa so much grief. It’s what she deserves to feel.

“See!” Dr. O’Hara points at her. “There’s something you’re not telling us, and I know it. We’re gonna find out.”

Vanessa snorts, taking another bite of her sandwich. “Good luck with that.”

“Dr. West, you wanted to see me?”

“Come in.” Dr. West’s voice is warm when Vanessa knocks on her office door, though it does little to assuage the way her heart feels like it’s sinking in her chest.

She doesn’t know why the chief of surgery has called her in for a meeting, though has a sneaking suspicion it’s about a certain neurosurgeon attending. Maybe Dr. West has had it and wants to get rid of her - Vanessa wouldn’t be surprised if Dr. Hytes has complained about her. The bitch.

“I wanted to touch base with you about your first few weeks here, see that everything is going away.” Dr. West is smiling at her, and doesn’t look too mad - perhaps a good sign?

“It’s been great so far. Everyone is incredibly welcoming.” Not a lie, for the most part - not that she’s going to bring up Dr. Hytes, not when her and Dr. West seem like they’re friendly with each other.

“That’s good to hear.” Dr. West is looking at Vanessa with an expression she can’t quite decipher, and it makes her want to squirm in her seat. She can’t tell how much the chief actually knows.

Vanessa’s pretty sure that Dr. West hadn’t been in the attending locker room in the morning. when Dr. Hytes had interrupted her conversation with Dr. Miller about ICU stay lengths at her previous hospital, muttering that it seemed to be counterproductive for patient health. So maybe Vanessa had to give Dr. Hytes a piece of her mind - so what if such arguments are becoming a daily occurrence? As long as they’re not disrupting patient care, Vanessa’s going to fight back every time.

Vanessa’s not one to take things lying down. She doesn’t care if the other doctors in this hospital are. Dr. Hytes doesn’t scare her. Sure, the way her eyes narrow in her direction and the way she stares down at her make her heart feel like it’s beating a little faster sometimes - but it’s just adrenaline.

“So.” Dr. West leans forward in her seat, opening up her clipboard. “A change I implemented here a few years back when I became chief was more opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration. More work with doctors outside our immediate disciplines - to build more connections between everyone despite all of our differences and interests.”

“Okay.” Vanessa nods, not sure where Dr. West is going.

“I understand that you already have a joint surgery coming up with Dr. Hytes soon.” Dr. West looks up from her clipboard, holding Vanessa’s gaze for a little too long.

She tries her best to keep her face neutral. “That’s right.”

“How has the preparation for the case been going so far?”

Vanessa channels her best poker face. “It’s been alright, thank you. Dr. Hytes is incredibly smart.” Not a lie.

“I’m glad you think so.” Dr. West goes back to her notes, pushing her glasses up on her nose with her index finger. “One initiative I’ve started with new surgery hires is having them shadow surgeries in a few other disciplines. Have the opportunity to see how others do things, ask questions about unfamiliar procedures, participate in interdisciplinary information sharing.”

“I see.”

“I know you’ve been here for a few weeks and seem to be settling in well. Would this still be something that you’d be interested in?”

From the way that Dr. West is looking at her, she’s not sure if she has a choice in her answer. “It would be pretty educational to shadow in some other disciplines. Haven’t done that since I was a resident.”

Vanessa isn’t lying, per se. It would be pretty cool. It’s just that she already as an idea of who Dr. West wants her to shadow for neuro already-

“I think it would be a great idea for you to shadow Dr. Hytes for one of her procedures, especially before your joint one in a few weeks. You can get to know her a bit more. We can start with that.”

Fuck.

“The surgery is to remove an arteriovenous malformation. Do you happen to know what that is, or do you need a refresher?” Dr. Hytes sneers it at her as she braids her hair back (still as blonde, still as long as it used to be) and Vanessa wants to smack the smug look off of her face.

“I’ve taken neuro, Dr. Hytes, my memory isn’t that shit.” Vanessa scoffs. Of course Dr. Hytes is on her high horse already.

Vanessa is not looking forward to shadowing her in the least. She doesn’t care how she operates, she doesn’t give a shit over how people fawn over her. Hell, if it weren’t for their joint surgery coming up, she probably would have found a way to decline Dr. West.

But at the same time…she needs intel. Needs to know what to expect before they have to step into an operating room as colleagues, so that it doesn’t blow up in their faces.

Doesn’t mean she has to be happy about it.

“If you say so. Keep out of my way in there. This is my surgery, and I’d like to keep it running as smooth as the rest of the ones I do.” Vanessa rolls her eyes at Dr. Hytes’ words. So damn cocky.

“I want to be here as little as you do. As if I’d want to be up in your face during this. Chill.” She pulls on her scrub cap, one with little dogs all over it that she couldn’t resist buying as a resident. It remains her favourite.

“Whatever. Just don’t get in my way.” The words are cold as Dr. Hytes pulls on her own scrub cap, and Vanessa has to suppress a groan because of course .

Dr. Hytes’ scrub cap has little cats all over it. Typical.

“Fine.” So what if Vanessa’s a bit haughty when she says it? “As long as you don’t get in mine.”

The growl that emanates from Dr. Hytes in response is enough to make her smirk more than she should.

#rpdr fanfiction #brooke lynn hytes #vanessa vanjie mateo #branjie #lesbian au #hospital au #holtzmanns #nobody knows where we might end up

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jay-and-dean · 5 years

Text

Je ne te mérite pas (I don’t deserve you) Chapter 2.

DeanxReader

I don’t deserve you MASTERLIST

Masterlist

Future warnings : Smut, Fluff, Angst, Violence. Many smutty times in the next parts, I don’t know how I will deal with it given the recent event on tumblr, I’ll let you know

Words : 2843

Chapter summary : Dean is trying to fight his attraction for Y/n but having her living in the bunker doesn’t help...

Serie Summary : Dean and her can’t be together.If you ask Dean, he would list so many reasons : Her age, first. Not like she was a kid anymore, but he remerbers picking her from highschool not so long ago. Then Jody, damn, the girl is like a daughter to her, what kind of friend would he be ? He’d talk about her boyfriend and how he’s the opposite of himself. Of course he would expose how poisonous he is, how dangerous it is to be around him. He’d say he want to keep her away from nightmares… And he would conclude with certainly that she just won’t ever love him, why would she ?

If you ask her, she just might whisper with a heartbreack in her voice : “I don’t deserve Dean Winchester”.What if they where wrong ?

Note : It is my first time writting in english, so, forgive the errors.

Dean's Pov

She's texting, Sasha maybe. Her hair falls around her shoulders, along her arms covered in scars, those fucking scars she has everywhere. It hurts thinking of her getting them. She’s touching her lips again, that serious look on her pretty face...

It's been almost two months, seven hunts, one of them pretty bad. Y/n is a really good hunter, she knows what she's doing and having her with us is more of a backup than a burden, like I thought it would be to have the kid with us on hunts.

She really likes to hunt, but she’s not reckless. She is clever and inventive, besides, having a woman hunter on the team opens possibilities for the plans, and people seem to have a very different behavior according to what gender is talking to them.

I look at her and she looks so serious, like she tried to control every inch of her body at once, all the time ; upright, her face still, but she can't stifle that fire in her eyes . I guess she got that habit from years of repressing herself in captivity, trying to silence who she is.

In our everyday life together, she's indeed discreet and independent, like Jody always described her, but she's also sweet and funny. And becoming her friend is as natural as it was with Charlie, even if they have quite opposite personalities; with Charlie, it was always teasing and giggles, Y/n is more of a passionate discussions and shy kindly smiles person.

Having her in the bunker is becoming addictive. She just fits here so well. We all got into the habit of doing things together : She always washes Baby with me after hunts, makes fun of my taste in food and finishes my coffees when I look away ; she's always showing Jack movies and TV shows in his room, explaining him history and politics as well as pop culture ; and she always falls asleep on my brother's shoulder when they're reading after discussing God knows what erudite subject of theirs.

Jody calls now and then, but Y/n never gives her to much details. Cas likes her and Sam once told me she was like a little sister to him. A little sister...

Everything is in order. Well, almost everything... Something is wrong with me, seriously wrong. Something I won't ever tell any of them, because I'm ashamed of it...

I am starting to feel something I shouldn't for Y/n: Desire.

I take a sip of whiskey and lock my eyes on her mouth, I know I'm staring but she's not looking at me. This is the game I have played for a month : watching her when I can, looking away when her eyes meet mines, but she rarely look at me...

At first I thought having a pretty girl living in the bunker was just messing with my head and that it would fade away eventually. I tried to look at her like she was a little sister, but she is not. I think that obsessional wish to see pass that harshness made me think about her a lot. I am always wondering what she’s thinking, what she wants, fear... I found myself thinking about what a girl like her could desire, what Sasha gets to see, what she would like in bed... And I started dreaming of her... Dreams that had me sweating, dreams that make me burn up under the cold shower I inflict on myself those mornings.

And now I notice things I shouldn't notice, like the subtle transparency of her t-shirt, the way she touches her lips with her fingers when she is thinking hard, the delicious curve of her ass when she wears those sweatpants she sleeps in...

What is wrong with me ? She's like Jody's daughter, she's almost twenty fucking years younger than me. Dean !

YourPov

You send your message to Sasha and put you phone on the table. Then your eyes meet Dean's and your heart starts hurting your chest, trying to escape. Was he looking at you this all time ? Damn you must look ridiculous. You take a deep breath and bite your lips, trying not to smile.

He finishes his drink and serve himself another, drinks it in one swallow and put the glass down.

"Who are you talking to ?" He asks, opening the bottle again.

You try to hide you're shaking, you always are when THE Dean Winchester is talking to you alone.

"Sasha" you say taking the bottle to pour some whiskey in your mug where the coffee you have left is getting cold.

"He misses you I guess, and you miss him." says Dean with an odd tone.

"He's too sentimental, he doesn't need to see me that bad."

"Wow, poor guy..." he says staring at you like he's trying to see inside your brain, and you look away, unable to win against those intense green eyes.

You open your mouth, but you have really no idea what to say, you're not even sure you understood why he said that.

"You never talked about him... we're friends now"

You concentrate on his watch while his speaks, but this heads your gaze toward his strong arms and you feel your ears burning under your hair.

"What do you want to know ? " you ask as simply as possible.

He murmurs "Everything" and you drown you gaze on your mug.

"He... he is beautiful, like, black hair and eyes with thick lashes, great body too. I met him in high school and his father is a cop, his mother died of cancer when he was 8. He is going to be a cop too, he plays guitar and I don't know... That's it."

Dean is silent, he still looks at you with this intensity that makes you want to cry. He breaks the silence with a question you receive like an arrow in the chest :

"Are you in love ?"

"With him ?" you ask spontaneously, immediately regretting it.

He nods vaguely and gets up, you suddenly feel so small. He puts the bottle away and you can see he's a bit drunk.

"No." You whisper, surprising yourself with the regret in your voice.

__________________

You’re entirely wrapped in Sam's smell, your hand on his shoulder, eyes closed. Sam Winchester is the person that makes you feel good, he is the safe place. Maybe it is because he is so similar to his brother in some ways but different enough you don't have the weight that's on your chest when it comes to Dean.

It all started because you two read a lot, like to talk about it, and it's become a habit. He was always that comforting hero to you. The first nights at Jody's, after the hospital, he was there, sleeping on the floor beside the bed that would become yours. Everybody was talking about you, but Sam, he was talking to you. It would have been more reasonable or logical to fall in love with him, but love is not about those things.

And your heart ripped himself of your chest to throw itself at Dean's feet not long after that. You don't really remember the exact moment you fell in love with him, maybe it was insidious or natural. The only think you recall, is when you knew : Sam was gone, taken by Gadreel and Kevin was dead, you were bringing coffee to Jody and him in the kitchen, because they looked so worried you needed to do something, and you saw him cry. He was like a God to you, like a mythological creature, an unreachable legend, and those tears in his eyes, made you realize you could give your life to heal his pain.

You adjust and concentrate on Sam's breathing. Falling asleep beside Sam is the easiest part of the day, even when your heart is the heaviest shit you've ever carried, even when Dean is out.

Dean's Pov

She fell asleep on Sammy's bedroom again. I know because she's not in her room and her helmet is there.

Damn, Y/n... You ruined me.

I stumble toward Sam's bedroom, trying not to think about Tracy. Tracy was fine, Tracy was nice and pretty, and she wanted me so bad ! So why was I thinking about you, Y/n. Thinking about a girl I should consider as family while an easy beauty rides me… Fuck ! I feel dirty and unworthy, and a little too drunk.

I stop on the bathroom and wash my hand two or three times, then I rinse my mouth, my face and put water on my neck. I feel crappy and unclean, but the worst part is I don’t know why. Is it because I have obscene thoughts about little sweet Y/n ? Because I’m becoming the kind of guy who thinks about a woman when inside another ? Or because I strangely feel like I’ve been unfaithful to Y/n ? That is fucking crazy and I’m just fucking drunk.

I knock gently and open the door, I don’t usually come to my brother’s room, I just need to see her. Sam is still reading, and there she is. Her body curled up to Sammy's side gripping his shirt like she was holding for her life. So sweet, so cute.

"Hey Dean", Sammy whispers, "I'm falling asleep, would you take her to her room ?"

I nod and come closer to her, putting an arm around her back, the other under her knees. She frowns and lets go of Sam’s shirt, gripping mine instantly.

She whispers my name and I have to bite my lower lip not to whisper hers. When I close the door behind me she rubs her face on my neck and mumble “please”, she looks almost afraid.

Note to myself : You can’t just touch her. Just feeling her breast on my chest is making me crazy, those sweatpants are so thin I feel one of her scars on her thigh under my thumb, why does she smell like that, is that her sweat ? Having her so close... Wow, I have to think of anything else, like Garth. Yeah, Garth is a nice guy.

Her bedroom is full of books and notebooks, I have to watch my steps. I put her on the bed but she clings to me.

“Dean… Please”

“I’m here, I’m just here Babygirl”, fuck, my own words arouse me.

“Please…” she almost cries and I give up.

I climb next to her, letting her hold on me likes she needs to, and I start to stroke her hair.

“It’s a nightmare, Y/n, you’re safe, I’m staying with you. Nobody’s gonna hurt you”.

She calms and cuddles up to me, putting a knee on my thigh and an arm around me, fist still clenched around my shirt. As hers come up, revealing her belly, I close my eyes and think about Garth, how is he doing ? I really should call him…

Your Pov

WHAT THE FUCK ! You inhale painfully and let go of dean’s shirt, your sweaty hand coming to your face. How did that happen ? Your heart beats like it’s going to explode and you start to shake. “Hush Babygirl, it’s a nightmare, I’m here…” Dean mumbles in his sleep and you just can’t breathe anymore.

You look at him, your eyes blurry at first. He’s perfect, when he’s sleeping too. Lying on his back, face toward you, his chest raising steadily, his belly showing, his mouth slightly open. He’s never been so close and you could count his freckles. “Deaaan” your brain simply hums like he was trying to make your mouth wake him up.

You just want to kiss him, anywhere, everywhere. You want it so much it hurts, it was always your obsession : daydreaming about kissing his hands when they're bruised, his back when is standing in before you, his head when he's driving in the seat in front of you, his lips when you dare...

Finally you give up. Just one kiss, the only one you’ll ever give to the love of your life, no one could blame you. So you lay your lips on his shoulder where the t-shirt went up and stays like this for a moment, your avid mouth on his delicious skin. “I love you” hums your brain.

Sick at heart you get up gently to run before he wakes up, and watch him again for a moment, goosebumps roaming his body, a frown on his childish yet manly face.

That’s in the shower that you notice it. Something is different, your body is different, hypersensitive and… Oh you’re soaked, sweat and… something else; your skin is on fire and it’s like every inch of your body is erogenous. You‘ve just never been this aroused by anything. Not by porn, not by men, not even by Sasha. Sex with Sasha is okay, but, what could you say ? He is in love and you are not so… Is Dean that sexy or is it your love for him that makes your body react like that ?Both ?

You can’t just touch yourself, last time you did that thinking of Dean, you spend almost a year blushing at the simple evocation of his name.

Dean’s Pov

I wake up in her bed, crinkled and cold, sore and frustrated, alone and… hard.

I rub my eyes and sigh. No hangover, that’s good news. When I look at my watch I realize that I slept for 8 hours for first time in a really long time. I stay here a few minutes, just waiting for my body to relax, for my eyes to open completely.

My clothes smell like her and I don’t really want to change but I’m not a horny teenage girl so… I grab stuffs in my room and head toward the bathroom unintentionally playing the night again in my head, her voice, her body, her mouth...

When I open the door without caution, my blood falls on my legs. She is looking at me like a deer in the headlights, half naked, just a short towel covering her breasts and ass, a leg up, foot on the sink, my razor in her hand, a little bit of shaving foam on her calf.

“Dean I… I’m sorry, I meant to buy you…”

“No, no, it’s okay” I can speak, but I just can’t move.

I know my eyes are lingering on her thighs and her back, I know the glimpse of her ass cheek is supposed to make me go, closing the door behind me. But I just can’t move. Fuck, I think I want her bad, I have a strange stomachache, I'm craving.

“Dean ?” she looks at me with something in her eyes I’ve never seen, I could swear her armor is cracking, but that is just my fantasies. My head travels from her face to the white towel she has to hold, and south.

“Dean…” fuck she almost moaned.

Why isn’t she throwing things at me ? She shakes her head and put the razor down, then she take another towel to dry her legs. Her every moves make me weaker.

“I’m sorry” she says “You need the bathroom… girl things can wait. I’m out.”

I take a step into the bathroom and close the door behind me, I don’t know why. She looks at me with an understanding frown and walk toward the door, toward me…

“Y/n…”

I take her wrist when she passes by me, not even knowing what to do next. I’m on autopilot, I place her in front of me.

Please, Y/n, break the spell, scream at me, hit me, tell me I’m a creep… But she lifts her chin, looking right inside my eyes, the sudden proximity of her gaze like a thunderclap, and put her free hand on my shoulder.

I should think, I should have her age and Jody and Sasha and everything in mind, but there is only one thing : Her.

I lean forward and place my lips on hers, not moving and she clearly moans.

Time stop and my heart race, then kisses me once, she fucking kisses me, sensually, her mouth damp and blazing, her body shaking. This is the sexiest kiss I ever had, it's like her lips are all over my body. Yet she justshyly kissed me once, leaving her lips on mine.

I break the kiss and look at her with a terrified look. Reality finally hit me.

“I’m so-sorry” I stammer, and race out of the room.

Your Pov

He slams the door behind him, living you there, shocked and extremely confused. You can’t move, the towel falls and you can’t pick it up, you look at the door waiting for him to come back, hoping with all your being that he would come back.

He doesn’t.

It’s been an eternity, and you’re getting cold.

***FEEDBACK IS EVERYTHING***

#dean winchester #dean x reader #fluff #dean winchester fic #smut #supernatural

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violetsmoak · 5 years

Text

Appetence [7/?]

AO3 Link:https://archiveofourown.org/works/20251420/chapters/47997634

Blanket Disclaimer

Summary: Red Robin is investigating the disappearance of a friend and stumbles into a spot of supernatural trouble. He doesn’t expect to be saved by Jason Todd, miraculously alive five years after his death and now with the inexplicable ability to commune with the dead. Meanwhile, when Jason returned to Gotham he meant to maintain a low profile and not get involved with Bat business. That was before he found out how hot his Replacement is.

Rating: PG-13 (rating may change later)

JayTimBingo Prompts This Chapter: N/A

First Chapter

Author’s Note(s): Apologies for the wait. As you may know I had an adventure with my dropbox wherein I backed up all my files because I had to restore my laptop, and all of the files ended up mixed up in the wrong folders and I've been tracking down files one by one for the past week. I hate technology. I mean, I guess I should be happy the files didn't get deleted, but it's still a pain in the ass to re-organize manually.

Beta Reader: I’ll get back to you on that.

________________________________________________________________

Tim stares at the business card in his hand long after Jason disappears, thumbing over the false name and phone number with a reverence once reserved for clandestinely captured photographs.

Victor Shelley, Paranormal Investigator.

He wonders if Jason was trying to be funny choosing that name. Given what Tim’s heard about him in the few instances where Dick or Alfred talk about him, and what he saw for himself in the past, he thinks it’s entirely likely.

God, Dick and Alfred.

He knows they’re going to be just as blindsided about this as Bruce when they find out.

If they find out.

Guilt flickers through him now at the promise he made to Jason.

Why the hell would he promise a man he doesn’t really know—a man he’s spent a grand total of an hour and twenty-three minutes in conversation with—that he won’t let his adopted father knows he’s not dead.

That he hasn’t been dead for years.

That he’s in Gotham right now.

Tim wishes he could say it was one hundred percent his shock at Jason being alive, but that would be lying to himself. His mind flashes back to Jason’s face, his slow smirk and the smooth, deep voice, and he swears, letting his head fall against the counter.

Apparently, I promised him because he’s pretty.

It’s a new feeling for Tim. He’s never been easily swayed by looks, but something about Jason is attractive enough to put him off-guard, or at least loosen his lips more than normal.

I thought I was over this…

“I know that face.”

Tim startles and glances up at the bartender—Trista—who he had forgotten was there. He’d forgotten he was sitting in a bar, to be honest.

“Judging by the ass on that man, I can guess what it’s about,” she continues in a wry tone. Then she’s sliding a shot of amber liquid toward him. “Here. To steady your nerves.”

Tim stares at the alcohol in numb confusion.

“That’s on the house, but only because he talked more with you tonight than I’ve seen him do with anyone since he got here,” she goes on. “We’ll both pretend I don’t know you’re underage.”

Tim is too flustered by everything she’s just said to do anything other than accept the shot under her knowing gaze. Then, he beats a hasty retreat from the bar as fast as humanly possible without it looking like he’s running away.

Distracted, he returns to his apartment in the Theater District, trying to parse the events of the night from an objective viewpoint. He’s not entirely sure he didn’t dream it all up, considering whatever that incubus did to him, and so he runs tox-screens on his blood and gives himself a full physical just to make sure.

Other than spikes in several hormone levels—adrenaline, dopamine, and serotonin—his results are normal. Nothing that would really alter his perceptions of reality, the way Scarecrow or Poison Ivy’s concoctions tend to do.

That confirmed, he should be able to leave the matter alone for now. There are more pressing matters to deal with—Dante’s continued disappearance being one of them.

But thoughts of Jason continue to assault Tim’s thoughts.

Something has been bothering him since his conversation with Jason, something he wondered before but couldn’t ask because Jason got skittish and made a run for it

How the hell did Constantine cross paths with Jason anyway?

Aside from his inexplicable presence in Gotham at some point in the past five years without attracting the attention of Batman, what would interest him in a teenaged John Doe with no identity or memory?

Sliding into the chair in front of the computer in the Nest, Tim calls up the autopsy report, even though he doesn’t really need to see it. He memorized it years ago. Still, if he’s going to investigate this, he needs concrete facts, not just his memory.

It’s not difficult to create a timeline of events, between Jason’s official death and now. Or to search a list of John Does at various hospitals in Gotham within the last five to ten years, whose condition upon admittance matches the description of Jason’s injuries at death.

He finds the information he’s looking for within twenty minutes.

As it turns out, things didn’t happen quite as neatly or quickly as Jason’s story suggested. His stay at Gotham General was a lot longer than he let on, and Tim’s stomach twists as he reads the medical reports.

Various physicians left their comments on the patient, a young man of about fifteen or sixteen, severely beaten and malnourished, picked up several miles from the hospital.

The file includes a mugshot of a heavily bandaged youth, head shaved from what records indicate were several procedures to repair brain bleeds, skull, and facial fractures. Bruises and swelling make his features almost unrecognizable, except to someone who has memorized pictures of that face since he was ten years old. Someone who knows the cut of that jaw and the color of those eyes, however bleary and vacant they are as they stare into the camera.

“God, Jason…”

Tim reads over the doctors’ notes that span the course of a year, cataloging how well the boy is healing considering the heavy damage he sustained, and how he would be considered a miracle patient but for the fact whatever happened to him caused significant brain damage.

Clear psychological damage, hearing voices, incapable of speech, easily upset.

On several occasions, the boy became unaccountably terrified, screaming and yelling and trying to claw out his own eyes. Sometimes it even became violent, and in his struggles, he put three doctors, a nurse and two orderlies in the emergency room.

I’m surprised it was only that many people. Considering his training, he could have done a lot more damage.

Eventually, he always had to be drugged and restrained.

Demonic possession, maybe?

It’s not the first thing Tim would think of, but if Constantine’s involved in all this, it would make sense. And coming back from the dead like Jason says he did, it had to have side effects.

Except, there’s no mention of anything superhuman or beyond the realm of possibility regarding Jason’s strength. Surely the doctors would have made note of anything beyond the abilities of a normal, scared teenager—especially in Gotham, where strange behavior was a sad norm.

No mention of anything resembling supernatural or metahuman abilities anywhere here.

Jason was eventually placed permanently in the psych ward and likely would have stayed there for the rest of his days, except the hospital’s budget was cut in his eighth month there. Space issues required moving patients to other hospitals, and—

“Oh, no. No-no-no, tell me they didn’t,” Tim murmurs, heart sinking as he scrolls down the page of the report, knowing exactly what he’s going to find.

They sent him to Arkham.

If Tim was horrified before by the notion of Jason’s resurrection and his condition afterward, it’s nothing to how sick he feels to learn that his predecessor was sent to the cesspool that is Arkham Asylum.

He needs to turn away from his computer for a few seconds and breathe, close his eyes and concentrate on not hearing the lilting, singsong voice and tinny voice in his head.

Hush, little baby, don’t say a word, Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.

Ever since his kidnapping, it’s the one place in Gotham Tim won’t venture—he’s not sure what would happen if he did. Whether he’d suffer a crippling attack of flashbacks, or march into the high security ward and slit the Joker’s throat with one of his birdarangs.

If Bruce realized Tim honestly can’t decide which would be the worse outcome, he knows he’d be benched for the rest of his life. He might not be Robin anymore, but the Family would find a way.

It’s fear of that more than anything else that helps him get a handle on his panic, tethers him back to reality better than anything else. Tim takes another series of deep, grounding breaths, before he feels confident enough to be able to get back to his research into Jason.

At least they didn’t put him anywhere near the Joker, it seems, he notices as he goes through the room assignments and Arkham floorplans. That’s about the only good thing about it, though.

Jason’s ward was for the non-communitive patients, the ones the experts considered untreatable. The ones that get forgotten about in the mayhem of the monthly outbreaks and pandemonium.

Tim’s stomach clenches tight again as he remembers incidents and dates over the years where Batman visited inmates at Arkham to interrogate them on the latest escapes or crimes happening in the city, or just to test the security there. Based on the location of Jason’s cell and Batman’s usual route, there are times when the two were only a floor apart

Tim’s heart aches for them both.

They were so close to each other! If only they’d known—!

And just as suddenly as Jason was transferred to Arkham, all records of him vanish. There’s no information about patient transfers or deaths or releases; instead, like many a nameless patient to be lost to the asylum over the years, he just vanishes.

People don’t just vanish. And in this case, I know he didn’t.

Tim goes on to cross-reference the potential dates of Jason’s disappearance with any visitors to the asylum. It doesn’t take much to identify the only visitor to the asylum for a span of weeks as a certain Chandler Ravenscar—names which another quick search link to aliases used by John Constantine in the past.

That brings Tim to a whole other avenue of research, refocusing him investigation on Constantine himself and his movements over the past years. He tends to keep to the UK, but every now and again travels to various mystical hotspots around the world.

There’s a backlog of security footage to weed through, occultist forums discussing the man and his exploits. Half of what’s written about him online is clearly conspiracy theories, a quarter of it related to some punk rock band called Mucous Membrane and something to do with the Reagan assassination. Those who have actually worked with him either seem too terrified or pissed off to say much about him.

Even harder is finding a video of the man; cameras and other surveillance devices appear to stop working around him. It’s even more of a challenge to catch a glimpse of the teenaged assistant that starts being mentioned several months after Jason’s disappearance from Arkham.

A chance freeze-frame from an airport in Beijing, however, is all Tim needs to confirm it’s Jason.

It’s hours later when Tim sits back, exhausted but now having at least a general timeline of what happened.

One thing is for damn sure—I can’t take this to Bruce.

The story is too painful, too unbelievable. If it doesn’t break him all over, it will have him lashing out at Tim for making up stories about a touchy subject. There’s enough tension between them both right now that he’s likely to question anything suspect Tim brings to him.

Or he would insist it was a trick, that someone had faked all of this. He wouldn’t take Tim’s word for it, would investigate himself, prepare himself for an interrogation when what Jason needs is to have a face to face with his adopted father and mentor.

And Jason’s story still has too many holes in it for Tim to tell it, begging more questions than answers.

Like why Constantine took you from Arkham in the first place. And also…there’s one other thing that doesn’t make sense.

Well, a lot of things don’t make sense, but this stands out.

Tim goes back to the hospital records, scanning for the section where he remembers reading the information.

John Doe’s injuries in the medical files are all consistent with those in Jason’s autopsy, with every scar and broken bone accounted for and described.

Except for an autopsy scar.

That would have been the first thing medical professionals remarked upon when Jason was admitted, but it’s not mentioned anywhere. Which must mean that somehow, Jason no longer has it.

So why did that heal and nothing else did? Could it have something to do with what brought him back?

There’s a sudden dull, clunk in the background and the slide of elevator doors, and Tim glances up to watch Stephanie Brown stride into his base of operations.

“I was on the way out and Babs sent me to check on you,” she tells him. “Apparently someone missed work today without calling in and isn’t answering their phone.”

Tim startles at that, glances at the clock in the corner of his screen and swears when he realizes she’s right. He was supposed to be at Wayne Enterprises an hour ago. When he glances at his cellphone, he sees twelve text messages and three missed calls from Lucius, Dick and Bruce.

“I didn’t even notice,” he groans. He was so caught up in finding out more about Jason that he lost track of time. He quickly taps out a group message reassuring them he’s fine and will be in soon.

“At least being flaky is characteristic of billionaire teenagers,” Steph says as she wanders over.

Tim quickly minimizes his search and swivels around in his seat to face her. “Why are you even awake this early?”

Given the way she spends her nights, Steph made a point of having all of her classes in the afternoon. She’s possibly less of a morning person than Tim is, to the point where even coffee doesn’t make her a little more human.

“Blame my new roommate,” she grumbles, and that earns a surprised look because it’s the first time he’s heard of this. “Right, I didn’t tell you, did I? So, a couple of weeks ago this cat shows up on the fire-escape outside my window. And I didn’t mean to feed it, but it looked so sad and pathetic and I had to, so now it won’t leave me alone. What am I supposed to do? I don’t have time to be a pet owner.”

“Cat’s don’t actually take that much care.”

“That’s what they want you to think. And then one cat becomes two, and two becomes three and the next thing I know, I’m going to be the crazy cat lady on the block,” Steph complains. “And not to cool, sexy, Selina kind of cat lady but the sad, single shut-in.”

“You could never be a shut-in. No four walls can keep your raw joie de vivre inside,” Tim says in a flat tone.

“You’re just saying that because you’re my boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend.” She frowns in confusion. “Are we in an on-again or an off-again right now? I forget.”

Tim remembers Jason’s cocky grin and muscular thighs and his mouth goes dry. “Off. Definitely off.”

Steph’s eyebrows disappear into her hairline. “That was weirdly assertive. Am I sensing a pretty girl behind that sentiment? Do I need to give a shovel talk?” Something occurs to her and she scowls. “It’s not that Lynx chick, is it? Trust me when I say that would be a bad idea.”

“There’s no girl,” Tim mumbles. “Trust me.”

“Okay,” she allows, slow and still somewhat dubious. “But you’d tell me, right? If you were seeing someone? Only so I don’t go crossing lines or causing jealous rage or something.”

“There’s nothing going on, yes I would tell you, can we please move on?” Tim huffs. “Tell me about your cat.”

“He’s not my cat.”

“You fed him, he’s your cat.”

“Stop changing the subject. You’re being evasive—there so is a girl.”

“There’s no girl!” Tim groans, half tempted to tug at his hair. “Who could look at another woman after being with you?”

“I don’t know whether to take that as a compliment or as an insinuation I was so horrible that I turned you off women for good,” Steph says, eyes narrowed in suspicion. A beat later, she tilts her head to one side as if something has occurred to her. “Wait. That’s it, isn’t it? It’s a guy. This someone’s a guy. You know you can tell me, right? That would totally be okay—would actually explain a lot, actually—you know, you liking guys—”

“One guy does not equate guys.”

“Oh my god! There is! There’s a guy!” Steph squeals. “Who is it? It’s that friend of yours, that went missing, isn’t it? Dante something? That’s why you’ve been so obsessed with finding him!”

“I’m determined to find him because he’s my friend,” Tim counters, a bit irritated. “The same way I’d be determined to find Ives or Bernard or anyone I cared about. And I’d be doing that right now if someone wasn’t distracting me.”

Two someones, but she doesn’t need to know about Jason’s role in it.

“And I’d believe that if you weren’t looking at me like you wanted to jump out of your skin. There’s something going on here, Ex-Boy Wonder.”

“There’s nothing going on.”

“Lies!”

“For something to be going on, you have to actually spend more than an hour with someone. You have to have known them for more than an hour.”

“Not if you have chemistry,” Steph points out. “Sometimes, it’s just like. Bang.” She grins. “And then you have to bang.”

Tim rolls his eyes.

“Do I need to give you the safe sex talk?” Steph asks with concern that’s only half teasing. “The gay-sex safe sex talk? Because to be honest, I don’t think I’d be able to do it with a straight face.”

“Steph, that was awful. As a former Robin, you should be ashamed.”

“And as a former Robin, you should be better at lying. So, spill. What’s going on?”

Tim studies her, chewing on his tongue; he knows she won’t let it go unless he gives her something. “Okay. Fine.”

“Hah! I knew it!”

“Not that. This is…something else,” he says. “Sort of.”

“Okay?”

“What would you do if…say you found out something really important to a person you care about. But you promised someone else you wouldn’t tell anyone about that something because of…reasons. Personal reasons.”

Steph crosses her arms. “Is this about me?”

“Not everything is about you.”

“Then it’s about Mystery Boy.”

“It’s not about—” Tim gives up, and then sighs, because it’s just easier to give her that one. “Fine. It’s Mystery Boy. He asked me not to say something that’s really important. I figure it’s because he wants to say himself in his own time. Except. Except it’s a huge thing.”

“Starbucks discontinuing pumpkin spice lattes’ huge, or ��Hush trying to destroy B’ huge?”

“Closer to the second. Not dangerous like that,” he adds quickly when he sees her face. “It’s just…serious stuff that could hurt if it’s not handled the right way. Or if certain parties found out later and thought they were having stuff kept from them.”

“Well, now I’m curious…”

“I’m not telling you.”

“I know that. I’m just saying.” Steph sticks out her tongue at him, but then becomes contemplative. “I guess I’d keep my mouth shut. Or try to, at least. Stuff like that always tends to come out eventually. But if you’re worried it could hurt someone, maybe you can convince Mystery Boy it’s in his best interest to tell someone.”

“Yeah, that didn’t go over too well.”

“Well, whatever you do, don’t get into your micromanaging, control-freak headspace,” she tells him. “That’s one of the things that torpedoed you and me, and if you want things to work out with this guy, you should respect his wishes.”

“I never said anything about wanting anything to work out with anyone,” Tim protests. “I just met the guy.”

“And somehow he got you to promise not to tell something that’s apparently really important. Which means you already value him somehow, and that only happens to you when you really like someone. Also, you might be able to straight-up bluff Batman or Ra’s al Ghul, but I know how you look when you like someone and don’t want anyone to know it.” There’s a beeping noise and Steph digs out her cellphone. “And with those pearls of wisdom, I have to get going. My mom found the cat and she’s having a conniption.”

She turns to leave, pauses once she enters the elevator and turns back around, jabbing a finger at him.

“Shower, eat, go to work, stop obsessing about stuff you can’t control—and don’t try to control stuff that’s not your business.”

Tim bristles. “Yes, Mother.”

“Oh, you did not just go there,” she growls as the elevator doors close and Tim grins until she’s gone.

He knows that Steph’s right, to a certain extent. This whole Jason thing isn’t his business—he was only ever an outside observer, a legacy after the fact. And even if it was his business, it’s not his predecessor’s sensibilities he should be protecting.

Ill-advised crush aside, he doesn’t have any connection loyalty to Jason Todd. He does owe Bruce—he should be going straight to him about this.

Except…

Except, Tim really doesn’t want to be added to the list of people who betrayed Jason’s trust. Especially given how fragile it is given their short acquaintance.

Tim groans and leans back against his chair, wishing for an easy solution. He’s usually able to figure out what to do, even when it comes down to the hard choices.

“Stop obsessing about stuff you can’t control—and don’t try to control stuff that’s not your business.”

Steph’s right.

He’ll do as Jason asked.

Or, at least he’ll give it a week.

If he hasn't figured out any other way to deal with the situation, he'll go to Bruce.

In the meantime—he has an investigation to get back to.

⁂⁂⁂

Next Chapter

#jaytimweek2019 #jaytimweek #jaytim #fanfic #prompt: supernatural #jaytim fic #tim drake #drama #mystery #angst #romance #instant attraction #steph being awesome #tim being nosy

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xofanfics · 6 years

Text

Duality

Genre: fluff, SMUT

Pairing: Doyoung x Reader

Word Count: 2.1k

Summary: *REQUESTED* You met Doyoung through your friend Taeyong at his birthday party. You’re immediately attracted to each other and you decide to bring him home with you.

You honestly didn’t want to get out of bed. You would’ve much rather stay home but your friend Taeyong would never forgive you; not when it was his birthday party you’d be missing.

You groaned and looked at the clock. It was seven thirteen. You had forty seven minutes until the party would start. But Taeyong wouldn’t kill you for being a little late as long as you showed your face. So you got up out of bed, feeling fully charged after a late nap.

You showered, letting the water run over you. You thought about Taeyong and how long you’d been friends. You thought about the time he told you that you had two faces. He assured you that he didn’t mean it in a bad way.

He’d said, “Sometimes you can be so quiet and then other times you’re the loudest person in the room. It surprises me.”

It wasn’t that you were shy or anything like that. You could strike up a conversation with just about anyone but sometimes you preferred your alone time. You sometimes considered yourself half extrovert, half introvert. You supposed that these were the two faces that Taeyong mentioned.

So you put together a cute outfit, a little black peplum shirt, a pair of high waisted jeans paired with some heeled boots. You did a bit of makeup and soon enough you were ready.

You weren’t exactly a party girl but you definitely enjoyed having a drink and having fun with some friends. It provided a quick escape from reality, something everyone needs here and there.

You walked to Taeyong’s apartment alone, passing by groups of people with their friends. It made you feel lonely, for a moment, until you ran into someone you knew.

Johnny saw you before you saw him. He saw that you were busy, concentrating on whatever song you were listening to and whatever app you were tapping away at.

Johnny said, “Hey Y/N.”

You looked up and smiled. “Hey. Where are you headed? Isn’t the party that way?”

“Yeah. But we need more ice so I was gonna head to the convenience store,” he explained. “Come with me?”

You said, “Sure.”

By the time you arrived at the party with Johnny and the fresh bag of ice, Taeyong was drunk and red in the face. At his side was a man you didn’t recognize.

“Y/N, you’re so late! How could you come late to my party?”

You pointed your finger at Johnny. “Hey! It’s Johnny’s fault. He asked me to come with him to get ice! And the first store we went to didn’t have any so we had to go to another one and then walk all the way back here.”

Johnny said, “You agreed!”

“Well I didn’t know we’d have to hop from store to store just to get some ice!”

Taeyong said, “Yeah yeah. I’m happy you’re here.” He turned to the dark haired man. “This is my friend, Doyoung. He just got back from Shanghai.”

“Oh,” you said. “Nice to meet you. I’m Y/N.”

He smiled. “Taeyong told me a lot about you. He was whining that you weren’t here for the past hour…”

Taeyong nudged him. “Hey! I just wanted my best friend to be here.” He took your hand and led you to the kitchen. “Get a drink before all the alcohol is gone.”

“I’m not trying to get fucked up tonight, Tae…”

“Come on,” he said. “Just get a little bit fucked up. Doyoung makes pretty strong drinks.”

You followed the two boys in the kitchen while Johnny parted from the group to go socialize in the other room.

Doyoung smirked. “Vodka? Tequila? Whiskey? Pick your poison.”

“Vodka is fine.”

“Good. Because the tequila and whiskey were finished about an hour ago.”

The three of you burst out into laughter. You said, “You’re funny…”

Doyoung grabbed a cup and said, “I try. I like making people laugh...especially when they have a pretty smile like you.”

Taeyong quietly left the kitchen, leaving the two of you alone. He could see where this was going. He’d showed Doyoung a picture of you and he had commented saying that you were cute. Taeyong wanted to see if Doyoung would make a move and, most importantly, if you’d respond to him. He never took you to be flirty or to even entertain bullshit from guys for as long as he knew you. He didn’t know if it was that you were shy or that you just didn’t want to get close to a guy. Either way, Taeyong left you two to talk.

You’d hardly noticed that Taeyong was gone, if you were speaking honestly. All you could see and hear was Doyoung. You were attracted to him; that was for certain. His smile lit up your world.

He handed you a cup filled with the concoction he threw together. He said, “Tell me how you like it.”

You raised the cup to your lips slowly, taking in the scent of the vodka and the juice he’d put in. He even threw in some pineapples you noticed. You took a small sip before taking another, a gulp this time.

You looked up from the rim of the cup and said, “Not bad…”

“Not bad?” he said, a flirty tone laced between his words. “I think it’s a little better than that…”

You shrugged and drank the rest quickly. “Can you make me another?”

Doyoung smiled and you walked over him, handing him the cup. Though it had only been a few minutes, you were starting to feel it. You brushed against him, on purpose. Doyoung knew that but he played along, smiling while he poured you a drink.

Taeyong had warned him that you might entertain him and that you might not. He’d said that you had two sides to you and that one or the other could be present. Doyoung could tell that you were interested in him, in some capacity. Whether you were just flirting or if you’d want more remained a mystery to him.

You were feeling flirty and suggestive tonight. And it didn’t help that Doyoung made your second drink stronger, per your request.

“Dance with me,” you suggested with a wink.

Doyoung smirked. “How could I say no to such a pretty face?”

You grabbed his hand, drink and phone in the other. You led him into the living room, filled with a bunch of your drunk and tipsy friends. You saw Johnny DJing and he winked at you from across the room.

You started dancing and Doyoung joined you. You turned around, brushing your ass against him.

He felt his face get hot. He leaned down to whisper in your ear. “I’m not the best dancer.”

“Me either,” you whispered back.

You pushed Doyoung against the door. As his lips connected with yours, you dug in your bag with your free hand to find your keys. You pulled away when you grabbed them and opened your door.

Doyoung closed the door behind him. The two of you stumbled out of your shoes and across the room to your bed. You crashed onto it with a bounce. And before you knew it, he pinned you down onto the bed and kissed you with his tongue. His mouth tasted like fruit and alcohol.

He pulled away first, breathless. “Are we really going to do this?”

You nodded. “I want to feel you inside me…”

Doyoung smiled and started kissing your neck, causing your lips to part. His sucked and nibbles at your sensitive spot, careful not to leave any marks. But it felt good and you wanted more, so you said so. So, Doyoung obliged, giving you what you wanted. He licked and sucked, his tongue gliding slowly around your neck.

You pushed him away and got on top of him, straddling him. Your lips crashed into his, the kisses turning more sloppy. You could feel his hard cock from underneath you.

“You’re so sexy,” he whispered against your lips.

This earned a smile from you. “You’re so hard…”

“Are you gonna help me out of these clothes or what?”

Doyoung reached behind you and unzipped your top. Then you unbuttoned his shirt before you both slid out of your pants. You were left in your bra and panties, with him shirtless. He was looking at you with hungry eyes, as if you were a five course meal.

“God,” he said, running his fingers up your thighs and to the lace material of your panties. “Someone’s a little wet…”

“My body wants you…”

He lifted your panties, pushing them to the side before inserting a finger inside of you. He was impressed with how wet you’d gotten and how quickly it happened.

“Tell me what you like,” he whispered in your ear. “Tell me how you like to be fucked.”

“Fuck me rough,” you whispered back.

Doyoung smirked. “You like it rough, huh?”

“Yeah...Fuck me…”

Doyoung didn’t have to think twice to do what you said. He took off his boxers and ripped open the condom you handed him before he put it on and pushed your legs back, putting both legs over your shoulder. You were tight, he noted, as he pushed deep inside of you. He pulled you back and forth, pounding your sweet, tight pussy. He grunted and groaned as he went in and out of you, earning some soft moans from your lips.

“Yes,” you whispered, turning him on even more.

Doyoung was enjoying this far more than he’d ever imagined. This sex was beyond his wildest dreams. His dick throbbed inside you.

He looked down to find your eyes screwed shut and biting your lips, trying to hold in your moans. He loved seeing you like that.

You wrapped your legs around him tightly, moaning as you pulled him into you deeper. Doyoung knew that if he kept this up much longer that he’d come and he wanted to get you off first. He slowed his pace, putting his arms flat down on the bed near your shoulders. Your skin was touching, your naked bodies pressed against each other.

Doyoung limited your movement and started rocking back and forth, taking care to rub against your clit. Your moans got louder, full of excitement. He leaned down to kiss you and you hummed into his mouth as he rocked his body into yours over and over.

Your breaths became more ragged as he thrusted. “Don’t stop,” you whispered. So, he didn’t. He kept going until you started scratching at his back and your legs started shaking.

Your body stilled, all the energy you had diminished.

Doyoung whispered in your ear, “I’m not done with you just yet, baby…” He pulled out of you and you sat up, curious with where he was going with this. You looked at him with low-lidded, fucked out eyes. He leaned down to plant a kiss on your lips. “Bend over for me.”

You bent over, grabbing a pillow and positioning yourself over it. Doyoung ran his fingers across your ass, feeling the smooth skin there. Then he placed his hand on your ass as you helped him inside of you.

He let out a low groan as he filled you up. He planted light, barely-there kisses on your shoulders and back, sending shivers up your spine. Then, unexpectedly, he began pounding you. He pulled your hips back and forth. All that could be heard was the slapping of your skin against his and the sounds coming from his mouth. You’d taken to the pillow, suppressing your moans with it.

All he could see was the back of your head and your ass smacking against him with each thrust. He wanted to hear you moaning. If he heard you, he’d come immediately. He pulled you up toward him, tilting your head into a kiss.

He thrusted into you, hard, and you let out a strangled cry. He did it again and again, until you were loud enough for him to hear. Then he pulled you closer, so that your back was on his chest. He put a finger near your mouth. You opened up, taking his finger in your mouth as he pounded you.

Doyoung groaned as he started coming. He cursed under his breath as his cum filled the condom. He pulled out of you and kissed you before tossing the condom.

He came back to bed with you, where you already made yourself comfortable. You said, “Stay here tonight. I’ll make you breakfast in the morning.”

Doyoung joined you under the blanket, taking you in his arms. “Under one condition…”

You looked up at him. “What’s that?”

“Tomorrow, before or after breakfast, I want you riding me.”

You winked. “I guess you did do all the work tonight.”

#kim doyoung #doyoung #nct #nct u #nct 127 #nct smut #nct fluff #nct imagines #nct reactions #nct scenarios #nct fanfic #doyoung fluff #doyoung smut #kpop imagines #kpop smut #kpop fluff #kpop scenarios

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