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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years

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Misread Details: Robert

CW: Dehumanizing language, BBU blanket warning, serial killer/death talk, descriptions of death/abduction/murder, blood, whumper death, some real vague implied noncon references, creepy whumper, sadistic whumper

Part One: Nanda | Part Two: Brute | Part Three: Robert

The Dark Discovery in Robert Weber’s Basement: Box Boy Killer, Part 3

r/LetsTalkTrueCrime

•Posted by u/oshaycanyousee

3 days ago

After Part One, where we learned about the mysterious, but possibly entirely natural, death of Nathaniel “Nanda” Benson, and Part Two, where we saw Henry “Brute” Hanlon’s double life lead to his untimely gruesome murder, you see the single thread that connects these two men who otherwise never met, interacted, or even shared a single person in common… a nameless Box Boy, present at the death of Nanda even if he isn’t responsible for it, and the proven killer of Brute.

It’s my theory that this Box Boy may have accidentally killed his legal owner, Nanda, and then picked up a taste for the act and moved on to taking shelter with those he turns into his victims.

With Brute, he simply didn’t know the man had a wife and children and entire other life, and may have assumed no one would come looking for him or recognize his death. With our third individual, Robert Weber, it seems like our Box Boy Serial Killer got in over his head.

I give you… the Accidental Vigilante death of Robert Weber.

You decide if our unknown killer is simply the unluckiest guy in the world or a killer who even now may be somewhere living with - and earning the trust of - his next victim.

One bright and sunny day in the quaint, old-fashioned California town of Rancher’s Rest, Robert Weber was late for work.

Weber worked in a vehicle repair business owned by lifelong “RR” resident Randy Niles, who had known Weber since his childhood and had been his boss since Weber was eighteen years old and fresh out of high school.

Niles, who is now nearly seventy-five and still spends his days in the shop with an Australian Shepherd named Cody and a blind pit bull named Sue keeping him company everywhere he goes, stated that Weber had no living family he knew of beyond his sister in Vermont, and he was just about the closest thing Weber had to a relative just from having known him so long.

“He didn’t have too much to do with his sister,” Randy said in an interview with Unsolved Mysteries. (You can see the interview on the new Netflix reboot of the show! It’s a really good episode, definitely recommend. It’s how I got into this case in the first place.) “Or nobody, really. Just us at work, the guys at the bar, that kinda thing. He was quiet, kept to himself really. You’d never just strike up a chat around town or anything. But he got on just fine with the boys here in the shop. He was a bit of an egghead, too, always going on about this thing or that he’d seen on the news. Little… odd. Little bit off, you might say. But really, who isn’t? In any case, you know, I’d known him since he was a little boy, so he was just Bobby Weber to me.”

Then, of course, one day Robert Weber didn’t show up to work. Randy Niles immediately felt that something was very wrong.

“When nine, nine-thirty came and went and he wasn’t there,” Niles said, “I knew someone needed to go check on him. Bobby showed up for work right on time or ten minutes early, rain or shine, for twenty years. My first thought was maybe he’d had an accident at home, or some kind of, you know, health thing. Almost never called in sick, took one vacation a year, that kinda thing. So I drove right on over there. This would’ve been, oh, probably ten or ten-fifteen when I got to the house. Had my dogs with me, and they never did like Bobby much, but as soon as I opened my door and got out of my truck they just lost their damn minds. Barking, growling, Cody’s hackles were up like you wouldn’t believe. I know it sounds damn crazy, but I’m sure those dogs could smell that evil had been done in that house.”

On camera, Niles goes quiet, here, his gaze slipping away from the interviewer as he scratches at the side of his nose. When he looks back, the hint of good humor that seems to be an eternal part of his expression is gone.

“I didn’t know what Bobby had been up to all this time. None of us knew. I’ve known Bobby Weber his whole life, and I… I had no idea.”

Randy Niles was unable to convince his two dogs to exit the truck, and eventually rolled down the windows to give them some air and a way out if they chose (he is insistent on this point in the Unsolved Mysteries episode - “don’t you dare say I left my dogs locked up in a truck on a sunny day, I sure didn’t - Cody even knows how to pull a door handle if it’s the right kind”) and got out to knock on Robert Weber’s front door.

No one answered.

Niles knocked again. Still no response.

The front door was locked, but Niles was able to locate an unlocked back door into the garage, where he found Weber’s car neatly parked and nothing out of place. However, once he used an interior door in the garage to enter Weber’s home, what he found was so shocking he still struggles to describe it today.

“The, uh. The first thing I saw,” Niles says in the Unsolved Mysteries episode, wiping at his mouth with a handkerchief, “was a cage. Big old cage in the living room. Like a kennel for a big dog, Great Dane or something, except… except, you know, kennels’re usually mostly wire, not that heavy. You can fold ‘em up, put ‘em away. This was… geez. This was pure metal. Bunch of blankets all piled at the bottom, too. Here’s the-... you know, my mind just didn’t want to even make the thought, but I just, I looked at it and-”

In the episode, Niles has to take another moment, here. His eyes grow wet, and his voice is hoarse when he speaks again. “People cage. Bobby had a damn man-sized cage in his living room. That’s when my stomach just fell out. Even then, though, I couldn’t-... I just thought, oh, well, what people get up to in their own homes is their business. But still, I just. I just decided, find Bobby, figure the rest out later. So I kept walking around looking for him.”

Randy Niles continued to call out, hoping to hear Weber’s response, but received none… at first. The radio in the kitchen was playing a local public radio station (“Bobby always hated the country western and classic rock we played at work, he was a big news man, big into classical, jazz, you know.”)

Niles noticed, he says, that the cage next to the couch had a wooden top, as though it were meant to act as a side table, and on that table was a small woven basket. Inside the basket appeared to be several State IDs and Driver’s licenses. Niles took note of this but his first assumption was maybe that Robert Weber had stolen some IDs or something.

Which was technically true, just… not quite the way he thought.

The kitchen, hallway, and all three bedrooms were equally empty of life. Every room was clean, everything neatly in place. Empty bottles of Jameson whiskey, Weber’s favorite brand, were lined up like décor along the mantel, and one half-full bottle was next to two clean, empty glasses on the kitchen table.

Even the beds were perfectly made.

The only thing missing was any sign of Robert Weber himself.

The question of Weber’s whereabouts was answered when Randy Niles heard a sound coming from the open door to Weber’s unfinished dirt basement.

“Like a ghost,” Niles said in his interview. “Just this low moaning sound. Hardly even thought of it as human, you know. But I just-... I called out, ‘Bobby? That you?’ and the moaning got a little louder, like whoever it was was tryin’ to answer. I could still hear my girls in the truck just going nuts, probably worried about me knowing what they maybe could smell even out there. I figured… I figured I’d best call the cops and get them out here. Seemed like a plan. So I picked up my phone and dialed, and then I headed down those basement steps.”

What Randy Niles discovered in Robert Weber’s basement was a dying man, battered and stabbed eight times, lying in a half-dug grave.

Robert Weber had been beaten with the very shovel that had done the digging. The shovel lay off to the side, caked in dirt and blood. Police would find some of Robert Weber’s hair on it, too. Then, the individual who had beaten him had gone back upstairs - blood smears were found on the railing to the stairs - and taken a kitchen knife out of the knife block on the countertop. A bloody fingerprint was found on the side of the knife block. They had then returned to the basement where Weber was stabbed, almost entirely through the stomach and chest, twenty-six times, until the cheap knife simply broke from the force.

Randy Niles admitted in his interview that he became very ill at this time. “From the shock,” He elaborated. “I haven’t been able to smell much since I was in a car wreck when I was young, so I didn’t smell what-... what my girls prob’ly smelled from outside, and what the cops smelled. To me, it was just… just a little off, is all. It was the sight of it that got to me, not the smell. The sight of the-... the hand.”

Behind Robert Weber’s body, the hand of another person was sticking up out of the loose dirt, as though someone was trying to dig their way out.

“I remember… I remember her nail polish was pink. That’s when I got sick, actually, was when I saw that hand with the painted nails. That’s when it just hit me all at once what Bobby had done.”

Randy Niles went back up the stairs and waited for the cops to arrive. Rancher’s Rest is a small town where everybody knows just about everybody else, and Niles was on a first-name basis with every single police officer he spoke to that day and in the days after. He would learn alongside the investigation that Robert Weber was not simply the quiet, intellectual car mechanic he had always seemed.

Instead, Robert Weber was a serial killer whose potential final victim had managed a miraculous, deadly escape.

Robert Weber never answered a single question about his own murder - he never fully regained consciousness and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. His injuries were simply too severe. His autopsy showed that the cause of death was a stab wound that went deep into his chest and that he was first stabbed only after the beating with the shovel had taken place. Like Brute, most of his stab wounds were applied post-mortem in a rage rather than as part of the killing itself.

Medical examiners also found scratches on Weber’s face and arms, indicating that he had attempted to defend himself - or someone else had attempted to defend themself from him.

So why was Robert Weber killed, and why was there already a body in his basement? Investigators would piece together the story over the following days and weeks from a crime scene that only seemed to become darker and more baffling as time went on.

Excavating the basement was originally thought to be something that would be brief, but after the first body was removed, another one was found beneath it. Then another off to the side of that. And another, although this was simply bones.

Every time the forensics team thought they’d found the last human bone, they dug a little deeper or in a new spot and found more.

Eventually, the remains of twenty-two individuals would be removed from the basement of Robert Weber’s home, not including Weber himself. The oldest located victim was identified as Melinda Traxson, an Iowa woman reported missing by her family after she ran away in March of 1996… more than two decades before Robert Weber didn’t come to work one day.

Investigators are still working to match up every body with a missing persons’ case. For nearly all of them, the cause of death could not be easily ascertained due to the deterioration of the remains, but some showed signs of skull fractures. Identified individuals so far include:

Melinda Traxson, 19, from Iowa, ran away from home in 1996.

Billie Mortimer, 21, disappeared from a day out with friends at Lake Tahoe one year later in the summer of 1997. Her friends went to get lunch from the car after a swim and when they returned, she was gone.

Matthew Ranger, 22, went missing during a road trip to Yellowstone National Park in 1997 (only five months after Billie). His car was found abandoned by the side of the road with a flat tire.

Karl Janssen, 24, a tourist from the Netherlands who was also visiting Yellowstone, disappeared a month after Matthew. Last seen by an employee of the park who witnessed him speaking with another young man and getting into the man’s car. The employee said that the two seemed to be friendly with one another and did not seem like strangers.

Hannah Pointer, 26. She was reported missing in 1999 by her mother after failing to return home from work in Reno, Nevada. This disappearance occurred more than a year after Karl Janssen’s. Investigators would later discover that during this time period, Robert Weber dated a young woman from his hometown and he may not have wanted to risk her finding out what he was doing.

Isaac Jackson, 26, a Rancher’s Rest resident who disappeared after going out to a local bar to see his friend’s band play in 2000. His car was found submerged in a small pond two years later. This is the first time Weber apparently killed anyone close to home. He was actually briefly suspected in Jackson’s death, as he was the last person noted to see Jackson alive, but was cleared of suspicion at the time.

Dustin Swill, 21, who was driving from Colorado to California to visit his sister who had moved to Berras to work for WRU in 2001. He was last seen in a gas station near Yellowstone, where employees noted he spoke to a man who was smoking outside, who gave him a cigarette. When Swill left, employees saw the man put out his cigarette and leave shortly after. They did not find this unusual or noteworthy at the time.

Maria Vargas, 25, a Rancher’s Rest resident who was reported missing in 2002. Her family is intensely private and have shared few details about her, but it is known that her boyfriend at the time suspected Weber, who had attempted to convince her to leave the boyfriend for him and had apparently threatened her. He remained a suspect but there was never enough evidence to charge him.

Jennifer Striker, 28, from who never arrived for an appointment with a realtor in 2011. The long pause between Maria Vargas’s murder and Jennifer’s appeared to be due to Weber keeping a man named Finn Schneider within his home for more than a year after abducting him, as well as Weber serving five years in prison for a violent assault on a man he believed had sold him a defective vehicle. (Schneider was no longer in the home before the assault and prison time.)

Riley Nievelt, 25, was staying at the Big Meadow Campground with six friends during a weeklong vacation in 2012. She vanished while on a trip to purchase supplies. Her cell phone was found on the ground in the parking lot of the Food Lion in Rancher’s Rest, a short and easy drive away. At this time, with multiple individuals vanishing after being seen in Rancher’s Rest or being residents of the town, police begin to suspect and start hunting for a possible serial killer.

Alexander Peterson, 29, was a long-haul driver who vanished while working. He was last seen at a rest stop in 2014 on the California/Nevada state line, and would likely have passed right through Rancher’s Rest on his journey. He was reported missing by his ex-wife in South Dakota when he did not return as scheduled for a custodial visit.

The most recent victim, and owner of the hand that Randy Niles saw sticking up out of the dirt, was Yolanda Pierce, 26. She was a Rancher’s Rest resident with a troubled relationship with her husband, who had stormed out after an argument and was never seen again. She is believed to have died the same day as Robert Weber.

More remains exist but have not yet been identified. If you or anyone you know has a friend or family member who went missing during this time period in or near Rancher’s Rest, Yellowstone National Park, or Death Valley, it may be worth looking into, as those appear to be Robert Weber’s “hunting grounds”.

Disappearances in Yellowstone and Death Valley almost always matched up with Robert taking one of his rare weeklong vacations from work.

When investigators located three large diaries hidden inside a locked box in Weber’s closet, the first two fully filled up and the third nearly two-thirds finished, they found an exhaustively detailed record of Robert Weber’s crimes.

In these records, they discovered Weber’s first three victims were killed within 24 hours of abduction, with the rest being kept alive for longer and longer time periods. It is believed all of them met their end in Robert Weber’s basement.

Diary entries included records of two victims who were not a part of the bodies buried in Weber’s basement, both of whom may still be alive:

Finn Schneider, 19, a German tourist who disappeared in 2003 during a visit to Death Valley. Until Weber’s journals were found, it was believed he had perished in the park and had simply never been found. Robert Weber also visited Death Valley during this time. No one linked the two together. Evidence found in Weber’s home after his death, including the aforementioned diary entries and photographs, shows that Schneider was alive in Weber’s home for nearly sixteen months. It is believed Weber purchased the “human cage” that Randy Niles noticed around this time. The last diary entry that mentions Schneider states that he was “traded” on June 16th, 2005, to an individual only referred to as “Mouse.” What Weber received in exchange is unclear, but he was seen driving a new, custom-painted truck around this time, which he said he bought “from a personal ad” when asked by Niles about it. Schneider has never been found. However, his mother did receive a phone call in 2013 from an individual she believes to be her son, telling her that “Finn” was okay and to stop looking for him.

Our Box Boy, 334235, purchased by Nathaniel Benson years prior, whose whereabouts had been unknown since he murdered Brute Hanlon. Weber believed the Box Boy to be in his early twenties, according to his diary entries, and mentioned that he had picked the Boxie up hitchhiking and had intended to kill him before seeing the barcode on the inside of his left wrist and changing his mind. His diary suggests the Box Boy remained in his possession for roughly a fourteen months prior to Weber’s murder. Police have not released the details of what the Boxie was subjected to during this time, stating only that it is not the public’s interest for this information to be known, and they would like to locate the missing Boxie and interview him about certain details.

Four murders occurred during the time the Boxie was kept by Robert Weber. Weber noted that “the dog helped” with either murder or burial, suggesting that he may have worked as Weber’s accomplice in his terrible crimes.

Is it possible that they bonded over a shared urge to kill? Did the Boxie start a captive and become a companion?

Weber’s diary contained other disturbing facts, as well:

Weber also noted three failed abduction attempts in detail, in 1998, 2004, and 2017. In each he described with incredible precision of memory the appearances and descriptions of each person he failed to capture. He also appeared to do intensive research using their license plates and other information to find out where they lived and who they were. The names of these individuals have been kept quiet for privacy reasons.

Other failed abductions were noted, about one per year, without much detail. Or at least not enough for police officers to know who they were. Nearly all these failures were in one of three locations: Yellowstone National Park, Stanislaus National Forest and nearby campgrounds, and in or near Death Valley.

The last entry in Robert Weber’s diary was penned the day of his death.

NOTE: Weber referred to the Boxie as “the dog” in nearly all his journal entries. His last entry went:

May 6th, 20XX: The dog is pissed about something again. He’s always pissed about something. I think the thing in the basement probably kept him up all night with her caterwauling. He never gets used to the noises they make. God knows I can’t sleep either, at least not well. I’ll handle her tonight, have a drink with the dog after, see if that shuts up his nonsense for a while. Note: missed NPR interview with Senator Carlotta Grant on new leg. about the bb prohibition act. Find that on website later.

Found in Weber’s home, in boxes under his bed, were a series of restraints made of leather, high-quality items that appear to be custom-ordered to specific measurements. These included “gloves” intended to keep someone from being able to claw or scratch in their own defense, five sets of cuffs, a body harness, a leather half-face-mask that police referred to as a “muzzle”, several gags, some of which were deemed to be “designed to cause injury to the inside of the mouth”, and “other assorted items for use in torture and torment”.

You can find some leaked police docs online that go into more detail, but suffice to say they pretty much match the kinds of “toys” found in Nathaniel Benson and Brute Hanlon’s homes, too. And apparently, if you really know where to look, you can find some blurry low-quality photos Weber took, too.

While the items are a bit salacious, they aren’t entirely uncommon in consensual relationships, too, so it’s really not clear if they’re evidence of the Boxie being held against his will or not.

The investigation of the crime scene suggests that at some point after writing his final diary entry, Robert Weber made himself a pizza, which he ate half of and put the rest away in the fridge. His shaving cream and razor were found out on his sink, and Weber’s body was clean-shaven, suggesting he shaved shortly before his death.

He then watched three episodes of Law & Order: SVU. We know this because he texted during this time with his only living relative, the sister in Vermont. Little is known about Weber’s family and childhood, beyond his sister’s recounting of a quiet, strained home life with an overbearing mother and her mention that Robert endured several head injuries as a child and adolescent, including one that hospitalized him for days.

After he finished watching TV, Weber entered the basement and murdered Yolanda Pierce. It is believed he took the Box Boy downstairs with him, either as accomplice or witness. At some point while he was disposing of Yolanda Pierce’s remains, the Boxie became enraged for one reason or another, beat him with a shovel, got the kitchen knife from upstairs and stabbed him to death, and then left the house.

A neighbor remembers hearing odd noises around 3:30 AM and looking out their window to see a shadowy figure walking quickly down the road, but they weren’t able to see well enough to say whether or not the individual matches the description and WRU-provided photos of the Boxie. It does seem reasonable, though, to assume that the neighbor witnessed the Boxie fleeing the scene of the crime.

The Box Boy has never been seen again.

Police are pretty mum about the active investigation into the Box Boy’s whereabouts. I was able to get ahold of one source closely related to a member of the investigative team who said that there’s just not a lot of urgency. “Weber killed nearly two dozen people, just that we know of,” The source said. “The cops are a little bit ‘good riddance to bad rubbish’ about the situation. Unless the Boxie comes back to RR, they’re just inclined to let sleeping dogs lie.”

The sense of “let it be someone else’s problem” would be understandable… if this Box Boy weren’t responsible for one other direct murder, possibly two.

Police believe the Boxie has not left California, and is likely to be continuing to survive by engaging in prostitution or perhaps panhandling or some other hidden way of making money. Unconfirmed sightings have been located in three cities in central California, but all of these are unverified and should be taken with a grain of salt.

It’s also possible he hooked up with a pet liberation movement group, in which case he may be hiding out in a safehouse, protected from the consequences of his actions by the pet lib movement’s understandable insistence on total secrecy and anonymity for the Boxies they take in.

If he’s an innocent victim of circumstance, that’s fair.

If he’s a burgeoning serial killer with three victims under his belt and a taste for inflicting terrible violence on those who take him in… well… anyone who gives him shelter may be next.

Is our Boxie a purposeful killer or just supremely, almost incomprehensibly unlucky? Will he kill again? Was he Robert Weber’s accomplice or his victim?

Will he strike again?

Should there be an audit of WRU’s psychological testing on potential sign-ups to see if, perhaps, a Box Boy-wannabe with an urge to kill slipped through the cracks?

What do you think?

@astrobly @finder-of-rings @burtlederp @whump-tr0pes @raigash @eatyourdamnpears @orchidscript @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @boxboysandotherwhump @outofangband @whumptywhumpdump @whumpfigure @thehopelessopus @downriver914 @justabitofwhump @butwhatifyouwrite @newandfiguringitout @yet-another-heathen @nonsensical-whump @oops-its-whump @endless-whump @cubeswhump @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @whumpiary

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detectivedamian · 3 years

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Following Damian getting friendzoned by Jon, Jon realizing he’s in love with Damian, Jon trying to court Damian, and Jon figuring out Damian’s in love with him, too; Jon becomes emboldened by the knowledge that it’s him, that Damian loves him.

He writes him a note in class and passes it to him. It’s all rather simple: Will you go out with me? -Jon

Damian is confused at the note, because that sounds like a date? Oh, Jon must want him to pass the note to somebody. Ouch, but he’ll do it to keep his cover. And then he looks up and sees a pretty girl with long eyelashes, and of course he thinks yeah, that’s Jon’s type and passes the note to her. The girl takes the note, and is very confused, looking back at Jon. And now Jon is miming “no” to her, shaking his head, body combusting with pure red. Damian watches Jon bury his head in his hands and wonders what he missed. Damian has to go to lunch ahead of him because Jon spends the first five minutes explaining that the note was not meant for her, please, oh god, don’t misunderstand.

---------------------------------

They’re flying home in one of the patented Bat-Planes with their fathers after a long, arduous mission that Damian didn’t want to call for help to close, but the mystery led Batman and Superman to them anyway. They’re in the back, snarking at each other, the way they always do, and Damian smiles. It’s everything in Jon not to kiss him, then. They’re silent for a moment, Damian drawing up a report on his pad, Jon watching the way the lights reflect on that perfect skin, on his long eyelashes, the emerald green of his eyes. Jon reaches over, slowly, to take Damian’s resting hand at the armrest, and he squeezes it. The words are on his lips: Damian, can I kiss you? Damian... I love you. Damian blinks at him and takes the hand away, instead patting his back. “You’re flushed,” Damian notes, “Is it possible for a Kryptonian to get motion sick?”

“Well sure,” Clark says from the front two seats with Bruce, before Jon can scream, “...usually it takes more than a smooth plane ride like this, though!” Bruce offers some antacids and ondansetron, because bats are always prepared for anything, and Damian is already standing and lifting one of the plane’s many compartments up to retrieve medication Jon does not need to sooth an infliction Jon does not suffer from. Damian returns a moment later, hiding concern under inconvenienced irritation. Jon’s eye twitches as he takes the bottle and mumbles a very insincere “thanks”.

---------------------------------

They have to go undercover for a mission, infiltrate this fancy little gala where their target will be attending with some blueprints to a world-ending machine-- Jon isn’t paying super close attention to the overly-complicated details but it sounds like a death ray of some sort. Very James Bond. Damian draws up a backstory and passes Jon the papers and a costume, some patchy plaid suit and glasses that are wider and thicker than what he usually wears, blond wig, too. He looks like a total dork. By the time Jon has figured out how to get this wig to look like normal human hair, he steps into the main room at their Fortress of Attitude and finds his heart is stopping.

Damian stands at the center in a dress, bright lime green with ruffles, small black mary-janes with white pantihoes, and it doesn’t even stop there. He’s got a blond wig on, too, and it’s big and wavy, and those curls frame his face and oh god he’s wearing this ruby red lipgloss. His eyelashes are coated in mascara and there’s green eyeshadow on his lids and Jon can feel his knees wobbling as Damian bats his eyelashes at him. Jon coughs and crosses the way as Damian slips on elbow-length white gloves, then gingerly sets a hand at his upper arm and squeezes. “So,” he says with a blush, “I guess we’re a couple of betrothed lovebirds for the night?”

Damian scowls and slaps the hand away. “No! Didn’t you read the mission biops? We’re brother and sister, genius! Nobody would buy an engagement at our age. This is Europe, Jon, not the Persian Gulf.”

Because of course. Of course that’s how Damian set them up. Damian is manufacturing their fake IDs and passports as he’s crossing his arms. The night is going to be long, and awkward, because he knows very well that the interest between himself and Damian is not that of a familial bond, and people are going to notice them staring lovingly at each other, right? “You really think people are going to buy that you and I are brother and sister?”

“Of course,” Damian glares at him. “Why wouldn’t they?”

“No reason,” Jon rolls his eyes.

---------------------------------

On another mission, the’re headed to Hawaii. They can go as themselves this time, of course, because the Wayne Foundation has a headquarters there, and it wouldn’t be suspicious if Damian Wayne just brought his friend along to a tourist hotspot. Damian assures him: “We’ll be right on the beach, a prime stakeout location if we’re going to spot Miss Spumoni in the open.” Jon nods along, but he’s staring at Damian again, thinking about having a romantic walk on the beach with him, sharing a coconut together, kissing him in front of the sunset...

“Our hotel is roughly a quarter of a mile away from the Wayne Foundation HQ stationed in Honolulu.” Jon’s face goes red-- a hotel.

“Are we sharing a room?”

Damian scoffs at him. “Of course. We never know when we could get ambushed. Separating while we sleep is one surefire way to find ourselves at a disadvantage.” A hotel room! Together! Sharing breakfast alone together! One bed! Cuddling! A soft first kiss in the glow of the sunrise! If Damian notices Jon melting on the spot, he doesn’t acknowledge it.

When they get to the hotel room, there are two beds. Because that’s what they’ve done every time before. Jon wants to die. Damian is puzzled by the way Jon buries his face in his hands and stews to himself silently.

---------------------------------

It’s later on this trip, after the mission is over and Spumoni is behind bars. Damian relents and tells Jon they have the hotel for a few more days-- may as well enjoy the rest of Hawaii.

They go surfing together. Jon falls off his board and Damian laughs at him.

They do actually share a coconut together, having lunch at a shack on the beach in the summer heat.

Damian falls asleep in the sun and wakes up buried in sand. He screams at Jon who is at this point at the other end of the beach, grabbing a popsicle. He hears Damian’s angry screeching. The vendor is confused about why this kid suddenly just starts breaking into side-splitting laughter.

Damian refuses to go into the water, and Jon, renewed in all of this sun he’s soaking up, lifts Damian easily over his shoulder and drags him to the water as Damian is screaming and hitting at his back.

There’s one night where there’s a luau, and Jon convinces Damian to hula dance with him. There’s even a slow song, and as Damian pauses in his loose dancing with Jon, he looks around to find couples holding each other close and dancing together. He’s a little jealous, not that he’ll show it. Jon’s probably jealous, too, he figures, for different reasons. Jon would probably love to be holding a pretty dainty girl in his arms, slow dancing (while he stands at the sidelines and watches his best friend fall in love). Jon is just a friend, after all, and it still hurts. He grows tense, and straightens his back as he brings his walls back up. But then Jon’s hand is on his shoulder, and as he turns his head to look up, Jon is pulling him into his chest, smiling at him, just like he did at the engagement party that one time. “There are cameras here,” Damian mutters.

“Your dad’s a playboy, I think his son could handle a scandal or two.”

And to his surprise, Jon rests their foreheads together and closes his eyes, wrapping both hands together at his lower back. It’s so romantic, and god help him, Jon is playing with his heart now, and he’s mad about it. He closes his eyes, too, and he wraps his arms around Jon’s neck, rubbing his nose against Jon’s and hoping he doesn’t notice. (Jon does). They’re like this for what feels like an eternity before Jon opens his eyes just a sliver. He’s leaning down, closer, and Damian stays still, eyes still shut. This is it, Jon knows. His lips brush against Damian’s--

-- but it’s not even a kiss because there’s an explosion in the distance that startles the luau, and both Jon and Damian are pulling away from each other, eyes wide, before they jump into battle mode.

They don’t talk about it at all afterwards. Damian has no idea there’s anything to talk about, he’s just soaking up what he thinks was an accidental brush on Jon’s part. Jon is fuming at the universe. In an almost hilarious shift, Damian is the one all sunshine and smiles on the ride back, while Jon is quietly stone-faced and twitching.

#damijon #jondami #supersons #damian wayne #jonathan samuel kent #super sons #jon kent

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thebeautifullydamnedone · 3 years

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Better Than Me

I roll over to the sound of my phone buzzing loudly on the nightstand behind me. I blink against the harsh white light of my phone screen. I rub my eyes and sit up quietly, trying not to wake up the sleeping child beside me. I yank the phone off the charger and answer without checking the caller ID, just assuming it to be work if it’s this late. “Hello?” I let out in a raspy, sleepy voice.

“Hayley….” My heart skips a beat when I hear his voice. I immediately start to slide out of bed as quietly as I can.

“Spencer, what’s going on? Are you okay?” I blink against the moonlight coming in through the white curtains. I’m whispering and I’m sure he can tell there’s a reason. I grab my robe and start to loop my arms through it as I quietly slip my house shoes on and tiptoe to the bedroom door that leads into the hallway.

“Yeah, sorry, is it late? Oh God, it’s three. I’m sorry. I just…...I can’t sleep.” I let out a small sigh that I hope he doesn’t hear. It had been a while since I’d gotten a late-night call from him. Months, but I knew with Ava’s birthday coming up it might trigger him.

On the way down the hall, I peeked into Mackenzie’s room to see her sleeping comfortably, her unicorn night light in the corner brightly lit. I tiptoed further down the hallways to the living room pulling my robe tightly around me. “It’s fine. Are you okay?”

I could hear his husky voice threatening to spill the tears over. “Y-Yeah, yeah I’m okay. I’m just…. I guess I just missed you if I’m being honest.” I closed my eyes tightly as I sat on the edge of the chair. I hated this. I hated this separation, even if it was needed. We’d been down this road before. I hated the separation more than anything, and it had hurt both of us. But after all the late-night arguments and the girls slowly realizing something was wrong, we had to do something.

“I know.” I said through half-gritted teeth. “But we’re doing this for a reason right? I mean, Kenzie is six, and Ava is only turning three and they could see how unhappy we were. Spencer, we can’t just keep ignoring our problems. The constant fighting, I just…I couldn’t do it anymore, you know?”

I heard him take a heavy breath against the receiver and knew he was probably just as close to tears as I was. “I know. I know. It’s just, I miss my family.” I blinked away the tears that overflowed from my eyes and nodded even though he couldn’t see me doing it. I’d told myself I wouldn’t miss him this much, but it was like the first few months of dating. Every second away seemed like an eternity. And he’d only been gone two weeks. But the girls asking where dad was every day was slowly wearing me down.

We’d been telling them that daddy was on a work assignment, but I knew that Mackenzie at least saw right through it. “We just need to figure things out, Spence. I can’t keep doing this back and forth. We either figure our shit out and raise our girls together, or we separate for good, and we co-parent the best we can….”

“I don’t want to just co-parent. I want my girls. I want you. I want our family back!” I heard a slam of his fist against something as he said the last part and I could tell he’d been drinking a little. I took a deep breath to keep my cool, I didn’t want this to be another one of our fights.

“Spence, I know you’re upset right now. Do you want to meet for coffee in the morning? My mom is coming over to see the girls while I run some errands.” I heard rustling down the hallway and could tell one of the girls was awake. I tapped my toe against the floor as I glanced down the hallway and heard a quiet “mama?”

“Um, yeah. Want to meet at our spot around 9?” I heard the feet in the hallway now, the slow shuffle of a small child coming my way.

“Yeah, I’ll see you then, okay? Spence, get some rest?” I heard him make a positive sound as I quickly hung up and resisted the intense urge to say “I love you” before I hung up. Something Spencer and I had been doing for over nine years now.

I glanced up just in time to see Mackenzie round the corner to the living room, rubbing her eyes against sleep. “Mama? What are you doing?” I smiled at her and walked over to her, ruffling her hair under my nails.

“Sorry baby, Aunt Penelope just needed my help with a work question. Let’s get you back to bed, Grandma will be here bright and early to play with you girls.” I put my hand around her shoulder and led her back to bed after ensuring her little sister was still fast asleep.

After barely sleeping the rest of the night I finally got up around 7:30 and made myself a cup of coffee and waited for the girls to wake up. When they did, I made the waffles with strawberries and patiently waited for my mother to make her appearance. Within ten minutes of being dressed I heard the doorbell and the girls running to answer it. The usual excited squeals to see their grandma died down as I walked into the living room with my cup of coffee and smiled at my mom.

She shooed the girls to clean up their breakfast and looked me up and down. “Since when do you wear make-up to run errands…...” She gave me a sly smile as I sighed and sat on the edge of the couch.

“Since Spence and I are having coffee this morning to talk some things over. He called last night, late, and was a mess. I’m worried about him with this split.” My mother came over and smoothed a wrinkle on my shoulder and tucked my hair behind my ear.

“Honey, he’s not the only one who’s a mess about this split. You just have two little girls to worry about full-time. If you think it’s time to work things out, then do it, sugar. Because you two deserve all the happiness. And you guys are good for each other, trust me, I’ve only been a marriage counselor for the past fifty-some years.” She smiled slightly at me again and I rolled my eyes.

Mother would never let it drop that when Spencer and I started having issues we didn’t come see her. I felt it was a major conflict of interest, and she loved Spence so much I had a sneaking suspicion that she’d choose his side in most arguments. “I know, Mom, it’s just hard, okay? There are young children involved and I don’t want them growing up the way I did. Watching you and dad fight all the time was brutal.”

Her face fell a little, because I knew talking about her and dad was a hot topic. Yet, it truly was the reason that I wanted my girls to either witness a happy marriage between their parents or grow up in two households where the main focus was them. I stood up and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Make sure Mackenzie does some of her reading while I’m gone. And no matter how many times Ava asks she is not allowed to have sweets before lunch, got it, pushover?”

She gave me a sly grin and nodded. “Yeah, yeah. Get going, fun-killer.” I smiled at her before grabbing my purse off the rack and heading for the car. The entire drive there was nerve wracking and when I pulled up and he wasn’t there I began to worry he wouldn’t show.

I grabbed my purse and headed inside, only to find it was dead in our usual coffee shop. Our usual booth by the window in the corner was open so I ordered my drink and went to sit down with it to wait. Spencer pulled up a few minutes after nine and rushed inside apologetically. “I’m so sorry! Garcia called with a case last minute but I’m meeting everyone else later, I’ll drive there instead of flying. It’s only a few hours away.”

He pulled the chair opposite me back and sat down quickly. “You could have rescheduled, Spence. I would have understood.” He was shaking his head before I had even finished my sentence.

“No. Part of the reason we’re split in the first place is because I’m always at work. I’m not about to put work before this.” I nodded quietly and took a long sip of my coffee as we settled into the awkward silence that we were often so used to. I clicked my teeth together as I waited for him to say something. Unsure of what we were really doing here.

He was tapping his fingers against the table and then he blurted it out. “Do you remember when I got shot? A-And you came to the hospital after that big fight we had?” I blinked because I wasn’t sure where he was going with this. I bit on the inside of my cheek and nodded slowly.

He reached across the table swiftly and took both of my hands within his. He squeezed tightly, as if his life depended on the next few things to come out of his mouth. “You came into my room, and you took my hands and you said you couldn’t imagine your life without me. And you told me that I could never leave. That you’d never leave, and you didn’t want me to leave either.”

The tears began to well up in my eyes as I remembered all too well the day he was speaking of. I was terrified he was going to die. He’d been shot by an unsub, and it had been very touch and go for hours. It was days after finding out I was pregnant with Mackenzie, and I couldn’t imagine how I was going to make it through everything without him. And then he’d woken up and asked me to marry him.

I nodded and pulled one of my hands away to wipe a tear that had escaped down my cheek. “Yeah, Spence, I do remember saying that stuff. A-And I meant it. I meant every word.” He nodded quickly and grabbed my hand back after wiping a stray tear away himself.

“I can do better. I can. We can both do better. I’ll go to counseling if that’s what you want me to do. I’ll take a leave of absence from work and spend more time with you and the girls. These past few weeks have been brutal, and I can’t do it anymore. You and those girls are my entire world. And I can’t imagine my life without all of you in it. I don’t want to separate. I don’t want to split up and only get to see you when we exchange the girls. I just can’t live life like that. Just give me one more chance. Just one. And I’ll prove to you there’s absolutely nothing more in this entire world I want than you and those girls. If I ruin it, I’ll leave. And I’ll let you move on with your life.”

I stared at him for a few minutes. Unsure of what to say. Because my mind wanted me to take time to think about this. But my heart? My heart already knew exactly what to say. But my heart was the one who was constantly getting me into trouble. Because I always listened to it and rushed into things and then got myself hurt. “Spencer, if you come home, it’s got to be better. Okay? I’m serious. No more fighting. I won’t have the girls grow up around this anymore. I grew up around constant fighting and I can’t have them grow up the way I did.” He was nodding before I’d even finished my sentence.

“I swear. I absolutely swear on everything I have to offer you that things will be different. These past weeks have shown me what’s at stake and I won’t risk our family for anything. Not anymore. I mean it.” He was squeezing my hands so hard I was losing circulation, but I didn’t mind at all, because I was squeezing just as hard.

He stood up, pulling me up with him, and hugged me so tight I thought I’d lost consciousness from lack of oxygen. “We’re going to be okay; I promise. I’ll make this better.” Something about the way he said it, my head was finally understanding that he meant it. It wasn’t just my heart that believed him anymore, they both did. I squeezed him back and inhaled his scent that I’d missed so much in the past few weeks. “I know you deserve better than me, but I’ll be better for you. I swear on my entire life.”

I shook my head because he was exactly what I deserved. But I knew he meant it. Somehow, I felt it. This was a new beginning for us. Our entire relationship had almost crumbled into destruction because we’d lost sight of what truly mattered and forgotten how much we loved each other. We wouldn’t let that happen again.

We were still a mess, nothing about that had changed. But this mess was ours. And we were going to keep it forever and always.

#spencer reid #spencer x you #criminal minds #sequel #newwork #love story

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toorunawaybouquet · 3 years

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PEACE ON EARTH THROUGH LOVE Turning the World Right-Side In By Tod Howard Hawks PREAMBLE: All we have is our little planet, Earth. For the vast majority of my life, I have thought, “What would it be like to have Peace on Earth?” But for only two, maybe three, weeks every year, usually around Christmas, I would see the phrase “Peace on Earth," usually on Christmas cards. But after Christmas, I would not hear or see that sanguine notion for 11 more months. The longer I lived, the more this annual ritual bothered me. At Andover, I had studied European history. At Columbia, I had majored in American history. Over time, I increasingly came to the realization that in both prep school and college, I had essentially been studying about wars on top of wars and their aftermaths: millions and millions and millions of human beings being killed. Then, when I got curious, I used my computer to find out that, according to many scholars, only a little over 200, out of roughly 3,400 years of recorded history, were deemed “peaceful.” Humanity, I concluded, had a horrible track record when it came to effectuating “Peace on Earth.” And during my lifetime things have not gotten any better. SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY: There is one land, one sky, one sea, one people. The boundaries that divide us are not on maps, but in our minds and hearts. John Donne was prescient. Earth is as impoverished as its poorest Citizen, as healthy as her sickest, as educated as her most ignorant. If we pollute the upper waters of the Mississippi, then ineluctably we shall pollute the Indian Ocean. If we continue to pollute our air, the current 7,500,000,000 Citizens on Earth will die. All species will be accorded the same concern and care as Citizens. The imminent threats of nuclear holocaust and catastrophic climate change we need urgently to prevent. This is the truth of Spiritual Ecology. CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH: If we can wage war, why should we not wage peace? Nations are anachronistic; therefore, there will be none. There will only be Earth and Citizens of Earth. Each Citizen will devote a sizable number of years of her/his life to the betterment of humankind and Earth. All military weapons--from handguns to hydrogen bombs--will be destroyed, and any future weapons will be prohibited. All jails and prisons will be closed, replaced by Love Centers (see below). Automation and other technological advances will enhance the opportunity for all Citizens exponentially to realize their potential, personally and spiritually. There will be no money. All precious resources and assets of Earth will be distributed equally among all Citizens. The only things Citizens will own are the right to be treated well and the responsibility to treat Earth and all its Citizens well. All Citizens will be free to travel anywhere, at any time, on Earth. All Citizens will be free to choose their own personal and professional goals, but will do no harm to Earth or other Citizens. All Citizens will be afforded the same resources to live a full, safe, and satisfying life, including the best education, health care, housing, food, and other necessities throughout Earth. LOVE: The only way to change anything for the good, for good, is through love. Love is what every living creation on Earth needs. Love Centers are for those Citizens who were not loved enough, or at all, especially at their earliest of ages. Concomitantly, they act out their pain hurtfully, sometimes lethally, often against other Citizens. Citizens who are emotionally ill will be separated from those who are not. Jails and prisons only abet this deleterious situation. Some Citizens in pain may need to be constrained in Love Centers humanely while they recover, through being loved, so they do not hurt themselves or others. In some extreme cases, Citizens may be in so much pain that they remain violent for a long time. Thus, they may need to be constrained for the rest of their lives, but always loved, never punished. In time, Citizens, when loved enough, will only have love to give, and the need for Love Centers will commensurately decline. EARTH: In 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the commission that wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. UDHR, with some updates and revisions, will serve as the moral and legal guidepost for Earth. GENERAL ASSEMBLY: To honor and remember the former nations on Earth, one member will be elected by Citizens from each of these former nations to serve a one five-year term as a member of the General Assembly. In succeeding elections, Citizens currently residing at that time in areas that were formerly nations, will again, in perpetuity, vote for one Citizen also residing in that area, for a one five-year term as a member of the General Assembly. FIRST VOTE: The first vote of all Citizens will be to establish CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH. Majority rules. All Citizens will have access to Internet voting, as well as access to cell phones and other types of computers. Citizens will have her/his own secured ID codes. Citizens will have to be 18 or older to vote. Citizens will be encouraged to bring before the General Assembly all ideas and recommendations, as well as any concerns or complaints, which will be considered and responded to promptly. Citizens’ ideas and recommendations will be formed into proposals drafted by members of the General Assembly. Citizens will vote on these proposals of each month during the days of the following month. Citizens of Earth will be Earth’s government. Members of the General Assembly will be facilitators who will work with millions of volunteers. There will be no president of Earth. ALLCOTT MOVEMENT: If the multinational corporations that now rule Earth do not abide by the outcome of a majority vote in favor of CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH, Citizens of Earth will instigate the Allcott Movement, a one-at-a-time mancott, womancott, girlcott, boycott--hence, Allcott--against each multinational corporation unwilling to relinquish control of its global business and give it, and all its assets, to Citizens of Earth. Citizens will continue the Allcott Movement until all multinational corporations have done the same. All personal and smaller-business wealth will be converted into resources to be distributed equally to all Citizens. All proceeds in excess of what’s needed reasonably by each Citizen will be saved for future generations. No violence of any kind will occur during the transfer of these resources. Citizens will take these steps because they are the moral, the right, steps to take to save all living creations on Earth, and Earth itself. CELEBRATE AND SHARE: If you were to take a photograph of humanity and gaze at it, you would see a beautiful mosaic of mankind of different, beautiful colors. If you could step into the photograph, you would hear a melody of languages and dialects. You could have a worldwide picnic with all your sisters and brothers and experience different customs and taste different, delicious foods. And in moments of silence, all of you could pray in your different religions, separate but together at the same time. You would also share the same human laughter and joys and feel the same sorrows and cry the same tears, all in Peace on Earth eternal. All of you would come to delight in these differences, not dread them. You would look forward to celebrating and sharing with your family, not killing them. The spiritual whole would be larger than the sum of its sacred parts. A QUANTUM LEAP: The world, over millennia, keeps evolving. Over 3,400 years of recorded history, powers, nations keep shifting, sometimes seismically. Now is the time for not only the grandest seismic shift ever, but also the one that will save Earth and all living creations upon it. It is time for Earth to become Earth--not a scattering of over 200 nations with artificial borders. Technology, with its innumerable advances, has made us into a world when all can become one. We are free to be our real selves, to spend our variegated lives not aggrandizing, but sharing and giving. Rather than dreading our superficial differences--our different skin colors, our different cultures, our different religions, our different languages--we can explore and enjoy them. Let us finally be what we truly have been forever, one big, worldwide family of humanity. No more wars, no more weapons, no more killing. No more hunger, no more homelessness, no more hopelessness. No more ignorance, no more illnesses, no more social classes. This is the quantum leap of which I speak. PEACE ON EARTH: Wealth is not worth. The mansuetude of loving, and being loved, are. When love is your currency, all else is counterfeit. Citizens will be able to go about creating their own happiness that is built on love-based personal relationships and professional activities. No longer will human beings be able to profit from another’s pain. With love at the center of being and living, there will be no more wars, no more dictators, no more corruption. Finally, there will only be Peace on Earth forever. Copyright 2021 Tod Howard Hawks A graduate of Phillips Andover Academy and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet and a human-rights advocate his entire adult life. [email protected] (Please share this commentary with others and email me if you wish to join all the other Citizens of Earth around the world in helping to save Earth through LOVE.)

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bianca-warriorwriter · 6 years

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Scared

A/N- @gentlemanmendes I saw something about this on your dash and I thought I'd make a shitty version of it

The hard thing about being in a relationship is understanding how others do things, how they interpret things different, how they love you different… it’s hard. And as I roll over into bed I wrap my arm around my boyfriend who’s snuggled himself against a pillow, I kiss his shoulder and push my head into his back closing my eyes again. I hear as he groans when he tries to roll over but can’t.

“move” he says sleepily. And I groan in response but shuffle back.

“you’re so warm” I say moving into his side as he wraps his arm over me and rest his head-on top of mine.

“go to sleep” he says into my hair.

“it’s already 10, Shawn” I say putting my cold hands against his chest and I giggle when he flinches at them, but he pulls his arm away from me and holds my cold hands in his warm ones.

“I’m supposed to meet my parents soon” he groans.

“I’m supposed to meet Ben, later” I say and I feel as he stiff’s a little.

“why don’t you come to my parents with me” he says finally opening his eyes.

“I have plans already, I can’t cancel them now” I say moving my cold feet to his legs and he flinches.

“Why are you so dam cold?” he asks wrapping his entire body around me to try and warm me up.

“but come hang out with me not Ben” he says pulling me closer to his body.

“jealous are we?” I ask. kissing his lips quickly.

“no, I just don’t want to share you right now” he says squeezing me. “I love you, and I haven’t seen you in a few months.” He says kissing my forehead softly.

“I love you too, and no one is going to take me from you I promise” I say sliding out of bed and heading to the shower.

“good because that ass is all mine” he says smacking it on his way to beat me to the shower.

The cold bench bites against my thighs as I sit on the bench eating my toast.

“I’m leaving in ten, do you want me to drop you off anywhere?” he asks drinking his coffee.

“Ben’s picking me up in 5” I say. And I feel as he brushes against me that he’s worried, scared about something. “what do you plan on doing with your parents today?” I wrapping my legs around Shawn and pulling him to body.

“just lunch and they have a surprise thing for me too” he says biting my toast. “what are you guys gonna do?” he says trying to bite my toast again

“um, some shopping, we’re going to go pick up his new cat” I say biting my toast, I can see the flicker of jealously that goes past his face. “I’ll only been gone 2,3 hours and I’ll meet you at your parents. Okay?” I ask looping my arms around his neck and pulling him close to my lips.

“okay” he breathes out. “just promise me, we will spend some quality us time this week.” He says stepping back.

“you will have me all tomorrow” I say smiling.

“I better.” He says stepping back when the doorbell rings.

“ah Ben” I say jumping off and grabbing my jacket off of the bench.

“don’t be gone too long” Shawn calls out.

“Hey” I smile at Ben when I open the door. Ben leans in and waves at Shawn. Shawn ignores and leaves.

“he doesn’t like me?” Ben says as soon as we get in the car.

“he does” I say lying straight through my teeth. “ready for some kitten shopping” I say grabbing the AUX cord knowing full well that I’m going to burst my boyfriends music.

The shopping got carried away and so did playing with the new kitten. My phone starts ringing and I realise I’ve been gone 5 hours basically just playing with this kitten.

“Hey, I know I said id only be a few hours but I got carried away, I’m on my way to your parents now” I say dragging Ben out the door.

“don’t bother” he says and hangs up.

“Shit” I say.

His car is in the drive way when I get home 10 minutes later and when I open the door, the house is quiet. He’s not in our room, he’s not in our room, but rather oddly in the kitchen.

“hey” I say softly. He doesn’t respond. “I’m sorry about today” I say sitting on the bench.

“it’s not just about today” he says looking up from the pot. “it’s every time. You lose yourself with him and it just makes me think am I not good enough? Am I going to be away one day and you’re not going to be here when I get back? I don’t want to lose you” he says.

“Shawn you aren’t going to lose me. I love you too much for that to happen” I say hoping off of the bench and wrapping my arms around his body.

“you just scare me” he says going to rest his head on my shoulder, but when I lean back he stops.

“how?” I ask looking at him.

“you terrify me. I’m terrified that you might find someone while I’m gone. I’m not scared of the thousands of people I sing for, hell I’m not scared of my mum when I do something wrong. But the one thing I am scared of is that you love him more than me” he sniffles then, he wipes his face and steps away from me.

“Shawn” I say softly.

“No, Belle. You mean so much to me and I don’t want to see you go ever. You’re always there for me, but your also never here. And it makes me stress that you love him more then me and that scares me. god I feel like a broken record.” He says covering his face and leaning against the bench.

“Shawn, I love you with all my heart, and that wont change. Even when you go away to tour I’ll sit in this house… our house and I will facetime you, I will call you and I will love you whilst you play half-way across the world as long as you know that I love you and that intend to be with you for eternity. Always and forever” I say walking to him.

“do you 100% mean it?” he asks.

“yes I do, now get over here and kiss me with all the love you can gather” I say biting my lip.

#S.M #Shawn #Mendes #Shawn Mendes #shawn mendes imagines #shawn mendes fanfics #shawn mendes smut #shawn mendes fanfic

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thexsisters · 5 years

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Because @grxnadxs deserves all things good and euphoric~

BoA & Haneul

“Red, I’m home. You’re officially off babysitting duty.”

“Good blazes. It’s about time you showed up. Small Fry is ten times the handful now that he’s walking and talking.”

BoA laughed softly while being handed the twin girls as the pirate had made them corny paper pirate hats for them to wear. She had no doubt that once all her little ones were old enough, the pirate lord would take them all a ride on her ‘special’ ship.

After setting the girls down in their cribs for their afternoon nap, she decided to try and find her son. It was normal for Red to lose the little boy who was becoming more and more like his mother every day. Energetic and mischievous. Wondering if maybe he wanted some cuddle time with his mama, the tiny queen ventured into her and her husband’s bedroom only to find something very interesting.

“Hi, mommy!”

“Taekwoonie----What are you wearing?”

BoA had walked in on her son rummaging around her husband’s dresser drawer that held all of his ties. Having picked out a flashy red one, the little boy had tried to wear it like a lady’s scarf. He was wearing his Iron Man t-shirt and dark dress jeans to go along with the tie.

“I’m gonna go to work with daddy tomorrow, mommy!”

“You are? Does daddy know about this?”

“Nope! I’m gonna surprise him!”

The tiny mother was now crouched down in front of her son smiling in amusement. She had no idea what caused her son to come up with such a plan but it was hilarious all the same. If it wasn’t for possibly embarrassing her son, she’d take a picture right here and now to show her husband. Deciding to figure out what was going on here, she asked casually,

“So why do you want to go to work with daddy tomorrow? Is Auntie Red no fun anymore?”

“Nope. Auntie Red is funny. I like her. But I heard daddy talking and I think he’s sad. And when daddy is sad, mommy is sad. And I don’t want mommy to be sad.”

Even though her son’s logic was a little winded, she had a pretty good idea what he was trying to say. The other night, her husband had confided in her once more how he feared he would have no heirs to his company. She had done her best to comfort him and reassure him but of course in the end, they would allow their children to do whatever they wish with their futures.

“Okay. Then let’s both surprise daddy in the morning, okay?”

“Okay! Roger that, mommy!”

The next morning, the two had cooked up a plan and when it was time for the businessman to come down and join his family for a quick breakfast, he nearly fell backwards out of the doorway to the kitchen when he saw the sight in front of him.

Standing side by side with each a lunch box in hand, were his son and his wife. His son donning that same red tie as yesterday which Haneul had briefly noticed went missing this morning. That same Iron Man t-shirt, but instead of the dressy jeans he had on yesterday, BoA opted for him to wear a pair of black dress pants she often had him wear for red carpet events. Oh, and the tie was tied correctly this time by BoA herself. He really did look like quite the proud son as he stood there with his matching Iron Man lunch box.

Meanwhile, the queen had resisted the urge to dress more.....risque and settled for a long pencil skirt and tucked in, conservative blouse. She was holding a Wonder Woman lunch box that their son had got her for Christmas last year. He had told her that he and his father both thought she was the real Wonder Woman and it nearly had her in tears that Christmas morning.

While the little boy was racing towards the car his dad would have normally been taking by himself, said father leaned over to his wife and asked in an utterly confused tone,

“Is he feeling okay?”

“Yep. As far as I know.”

Taekwoonie’s first day at ‘work’ was an amazing one. For everyone involved. The staff loved him. Some commenting about how they hadn’t seen him since he was a baby while the female staff cooed and swooned over him. Telling him that his Iron Man t-shirt was super handsome. Of course they were all old enough to be his mother but in his young mind, he was the real ladies man.

Back in his office, Haneul was trying to focus but his wife had other ideas. “Bo---I need to get this document filled out and you’re distracting me.”

“Babe I can’t help it. You’re so sexy when you’re concentrating.”

“Yah stop touching-----”

“Mommy! Daddy! Christine showed me how to use the copier!”

Haneul was thanking his lucky stars. One more move from his wife and he was going to lose all self restraint and that only spelled trouble. Smiling warmly at his son, he said happily, “That’s great, Tae! You’ll make a great business man someday!”

“Like you, daddy?”

It had him stopping in his thoughts. The words were lost on him as he sat there in his seat; staring in awe at his son. Did he really think of his father that way? A great business man? Clearing his throat and composing himself, he nodded and said happily,

“Here. Sit in the big seat. Check out the view from here.”

“Whoa! I can see everything! I can see our house!”

“Yep. I see the city every day. It’s really cool.”

“Can I come to work with you tomorrow too, daddy?”

And that was the queen’s cue to get another playfully naughty jab in there as she leaned on her husband’s shoulder and asked sweetly,

“Yes, daddy, can we come back again tomorrow?”

Good lord. These two were going to be the death of him.

Tiffany & Jin

“Babe, I’m home.”

“I’m in the kitchen.”

Jin slipped his shoes off as well as his coat and yes----It was now very plain to see, or rather smell, that the fairest doe was definitely in the kitchen. Curiosity getting the better of him, the male padded into the kitchen to see what was up.

This house. It was abandoned. Had been for years, perhaps even decades. So naturally it needed a lot of work. Tiffany took what money she had saved up and used it to buy supplies. It was then that the two of them went to work on fixing up the inside of the house but left the outside a mess. Why? So that no one would know they were squatters. Yes. They were squatters. But they were living the best lives of their lifetime.

“How’s my blogger babe?”

“Good. How’s my handsome private investigator? Crack that case you’ve been working on?”

It was perfect, really. Tiffany had taken the advice of her boyfriend and started up a blog where she shared her baking recipes and makeup tips. Of course she couldn’t give video tutorials for fear of being recognized but people still flocked to her blog. If only they knew they were fangirling over a girl they normally knew to hate and despise. It was bittersweet and yet felt like sweet revenge all at the same time.

Meanwhile, Jin wasn’t exactly on the police force anymore, but he was still getting to somewhat live the dream. After convincing his girlfriend that he could physically handle a gun again, he went and got a concealed carry and got his license to carry under his fake ID. The great thing about being in the police force, he knew all the tricks and knew how to avoid getting caught.

It wasn’t the white picket fence type of dream, but for them it felt just as fulfilling. They had jobs they loved, a roof over their head that had long paid for itself and its repairs, decent cars that they parked in the rundown attached garage. But now that things were falling into place, Jin had more.......domestic things on his mind lately.

“Dinner smells great but.......I want dessert first.”

“Jin. I have to watch the over. You don’t want the chicken to burn, do you?”

“No. But I’m more interested in this oven.”

She had been typing up an article for her blog when suddenly her fingers slipped on the keys and she nearly lost the whole page worth of work. Blushing heavily to where she could feel it on her neck and tips of her ears, she swallowed dryly and felt her boyfriend’s hands lovingly caressing her stomach.

“J---Jin---What are you talking about?”

“Oh come on, Tiff. You know what I’m saying. Let’s make a baby. I think it’s time.”

“But----”

She wiggled around in his hold so that he was no loner giving her a back hug. Instead they were now facing each other with the fairest doe’s eyes wide and full of worry and concern.

“But this is no life for a child. We’re still hiding from the world.”

“True. But we’re making it work. Think about it. People would have even lesser of a chance recognizing us if we had a child with us. And I’ve already thought about schooling. We can home school them. And we wouldn’t even need a babysitter because you already work from home. Think about it, babe. You know this can work. All you have to do is say yes. You’d look so adorable waddling around the house with our baby growing inside you.”

She had to admit, she wanted a family with him. But they weren’t even married yet. Sure she wasn’t a stickler for tradition but still. If she couldn’t have her original dream life, then she could at least have some of it. And being married was part of that. So like any couple would, she decided to compromise.

“Fine. I’ll give you a child if you give me a wedding ring.”

“Deal. I’ll fly us out tomorrow and BoA noona and Haneul can officiate our wedding.”

“You’ve been thinking about this.........I can tell.”

“Yep.”

Ivory & Taeyong

“I can’t believe we’re really here. In Paris. On our honeymoon.”

“I am just as surprised as you are, my love. Twas very generous of BoA to lend us her whole chateau for our honeymoon.”

The two pale immortals were sitting at the patio out on the balcony while sipping on some blood wine. Of course it paled in comparison to each other’s blood but it was nice for a change as well. Ivory would never forget that fateful night where her lover asked her to marry him right before she sunk her fangs and venom along with them into her lover’s bloodstream; successfully turning him into what she was. A vampire. A child of the night.

Of course she would marry him. She wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of her eternal life with him. And now she could. The wedding had been beautiful and perfect despite it being such a secret. Neither one of them had blood family so the only family that attended was the rest of the sisterhood along with their lovers. It was still a beautiful day all the same. Well......beautiful night.

“I had no idea Paris was so beautiful at night. I mean I had seen pictures in magazines that customers brought in but they aren’t anything like the real thing.”

“Indeed. BoA spoke of how breathtaking the sights are at night time.”

“I can’t wait to live the night life with you every night, Ivory. I really don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it.”

The pale royal smiled over at her husband and felt herself glow with happiness. Something told her she wouldn’t get tired of it either. This eternal adventure with her husband. Her soulmate. Her everything.

BoA & Sungmin

“Yah. Stop laughing, noona! It wasn’t that funny.”

“Aigoo. I can’t help it! I told you to be careful when getting out of the gondola.”

Soaked. They were absolutely soaked and smelled like fish but the tiny queen couldn’t help but laugh her royal butt off. Especially when a small fish had flapped and flopped his way out of the male’s hoodie. Well the hood of his hoodie. Giggling, she said in great amusement,

“Your hood makes a great fishing net.”

“Noonaaaaaa. Shush it!”

It had been her first ever gondola ride. Ever. And it was one she would never forget. And there was no one she would have rather spent it with. This boy----This young man......he......he had changed her life forever. But did he even realize it? Probably not. But still, she was grateful. So very grateful. There he stood in all his embarrassed glory trying to ring out the water from his precious hoodie that he refused to toss for a new one.

They had taken the ride and it was perfect. They got to see all kinds of cool things about Venice since she had stated that Paris was getting boring again. Not to mention she wanted to lend her sisterhood sister Ivory and her new husband Taeyong her vacation home for their honeymoon. It all worked out great.

Until it was time to get out of the boat to let a new customer take a ride. Of course she was pretty sure the young male was the only one who saw it as a bad thing but she had a blast splashing around in the water. She had told him to be careful but the male had lost his footing when the boat rocked a bit and down they went. Or rather over they went. Even the gondolier had a good attitude about it; offering them help to get out of the water despite the fact that he too had fallen in.

“Come on, fish boy, let’s get back to the hotel and get dried off.”

“Yah. I like stupid face better. Go back to that one. It’s less embarrassing.”

“How about fish face?”

“Noona!!”

“Okay okay.” She laughed so hard she had to wipe a tear from her eyes while she lead the way back to their hotel. They had the perfect view. But of course the queen had insisted only the best for them and she wasn’t going to settle for anything less.

Life was getting better. Easier. Progress was slow but progress was progress no matter how small. She was slowly but surely gaining proper weight and getting good reports from her doctor in Paris. It felt like it was getting easier to breathe with every nod of approval her doctor gave her.

Not to mention she felt herself getting closer and closer with the male walking next to her. She wasn’t sure if he was doing better himself but if his change in attitude was anything to go by, she could only hope he too was improving. Since when had he become ten times more handsome than when they first met? She had no idea but it made her heart flutter.

Hatshepsut & Aedon

“Look. Are you sure this is a good idea? What if those god guys find out you’re doing this?”

“Those fools are stuck acting like musical nerds traveling from city to city. There’s no way they can weasel their way out of performing their musical duties and tracking us down.”

In other words, the Egyptian gods masquerading around as VIXX were currently stuck on tour in Japan. Little did they know that their punishment for the spoiled brat of a pharaoh may soon be coming to an end.

Egypt. She was going back home. Or at least what was a modern version of her home. And boy did it look different. This was definitely not what she was expecting. Buildings that were similar to ones back in Seoul only not as grand as Korea’s. But she wasn’t interested in that part of Egypt. No. She was after a different building.

A pyramid.

Her pyramid.

Her tomb.

After her private jet landed at the airport, she rented a car for them to take before having to make the rest of the travel by camel. Of course this didn’t bother her any, but it was quite amusing to see the male struggle a bit. She had to admit, when Aedon insisted on coming with her, she couldn’t quite understand why and he wasn’t up for sharing. Just shrugging and claiming he was bored and needed something to do.

It had taken a lot of sleepless nights but she had finally managed to track down what she believed to be her tomb. Her final resting place. It was odd thinking of it that way. Being alive and all and planning on visiting what was essentially her grave. But she had to do this. She had to know who she was. She was tired of living under another pharaoh’s name. She wanted her real name back.

There it stood. The structure she knew to possibly be her tomb. It wasn’t as large as she had hoped it to be but beggars couldn’t be choosers, right? Stepping closer to the huge stone doors, she felt the male walking close behind her. He had remained oddly silent during this time. But soon enough, they were traveling deep into the tomb.

“Shi-----”

The male never got to finish his curse as torches suddenly came to life; lighting the latest room they walked into. There it stood.

Her sarcophagus.

During their adventure through the tomb, she had yet to find anything that might indicate what her name truly was. As part of their plan to try and make sure the queen couldn’t track down her origins, they had wiped any knowledge of her reading hieroglyphics. So in the quiet hours of the night, the woman had secretly been re-teaching herself her own alphabet. Now it was time to put it to use. Finally.

Rushing up to the casket, she started to shove at the lid when the male came rushing up behind her shouting in nervousness, “Hey! Wait wait! What are you doing?!”

“What does it look like??? I’m finding out who I am!”

“But----What if-----What if you’re in there?”

“That’s ridiculous. I can’t be in there because I’m standing right here in front of you. But there might be clues in here that tell me who I am.”

“Listen......Hatshepsut......I know you want to believe this is your tomb, but what if it’s not? And besides, who cares what your real name is? You’re a great amazing woman just the way you are. It doesn’t matter who you were back then. What matters is who you are now.”

Well dang. When he put it that way.

#grxnadxs #drabbles #b;drabbles #i;drabbles #h;drabbles

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sleemo · 6 years

Text

Edge of Darkness

From the Marines to the Emmys to the most powerful cultural force in the galaxy, for ADAM DRIVER, finding his path has been a long, hard battle. Now, for STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI, in a role he never imagined could be so complex, the brooding face of millennial angst faces his toughest fight yet. Spoiler alert!

—British GQ, December 2017

His face shrouded beneath a hood, Adam Driver strides toward me. Shoulders hunched, fists jammed into jean pockets, he lets out a low whisper, “Hi. I’m Adam.”

The mixed messages – simultaneously worrying he’ll be recognised and that he won’t – hang in the air awkwardly as Driver surveys our spot, a near-empty New York City café. Neither fear is well-founded; there is no flock of fans to notice him and yet there is no mistaking the actor, his grey hoodie notwithstanding.

“I try to disguise things, but it just doesn’t really work for me,” Driver says, shedding the sweatshirt. “I honestly just look the way I look and it’s difficult to blend in because I’m tall and I look strange. I shouldn’t put a judgment on it.”

Others have judged his appearance more favourably. Driver has been dubbed a “cure for the cookie-cutter leading man” and “a millennial sex symbol”. Which may or may not be a compliment. Although few phrases are as loaded as “unconventionally attractive”, it’s as if those two words were combined expressly to describe Driver. Exaggerated ears; hooded, slanted eyes; long nose with a boxer’s bridge; broad mouth and lips – his disparate features coalesce into a surprisingly appealing whole.

“I guess I never think about it like ‘I am a leading man’ or ‘I am a sex symbol.’ It’s strange to hear that stuff. I don’t think I could have imagined it,” says Driver. Yet, there was his visage on Gap billboard ads; in American Vogue with a black-horned ram slung across his shoulders; in a close-up at the Emmy Awards, where he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor three years in a row for his part in HBO’s Girls; and cast eternally in plastic as a Kylo Ren action figure for Star Wars: The Force Awakens – masked and unmasked versions available. (“Not bad,” he says of the likeness, “but my head and face are a lot bigger.”) Passers-by who once stopped him to ask, “How could you do that to Hannah?” in reference to the bad-boy behaviour of Driver’s character in Lena Dunham’s runaway-success television series, now ask, “How could you do that to Han Solo?”

“It’s a lot,” Driver says, “every part of my life. If we rewound to ten years ago, I would not have said that this is what my life would be.

“And now this music,” he waves his hands at the piano composition streaming through the café like pretentious Musack, “is making that sound so emotional. It isn’t helping, you know?”

Far from angry, the brooding face of millennial angst is smirking. At 33, Adam Driver’s signature intensity hasn’t wavered, but interest in being a tortured artist has. He’s aware of his tendencies – toward anxiety, analysis and absolutism – and is taking steps to temper them. Still, it’s a struggle, seeing good fortune as anything but a cause for self-flagellation.

If we did rewind ten years, we’d see why. Driver was a Gordian knot of clenched intensity. Enrolled at New York’s Juilliard performing arts school, he was so aggressive that his comments made fellow students cry. Every morning he would have six eggs for breakfast, then run five miles to the school from his home in Queens. He would eat a whole chicken for lunch and, during his day at the prestigious drama school, perform random feats, such as 1,000 push-ups.

“That must’ve been an obnoxious thing to be around,” he says, shaking his head. “I was trying to make it as extreme for myself as possible. Now it just makes me so tired and annoyed.”

I’ve met Driver in a peaceful, leafy corner of the Brooklyn Heights neighbourhood that he and his wife, Joanne Tucker, call home. It’s a square precinct full of baby strollers that belies the borough’s hipster cred. “I like sleepy, quiet places,” Driver explains, “because my job is very loud.” Right now he’s savouring a respite from work, the first in a five-year sprint to stardom and even letting himself idle a little. Driver, who has made a career of ill-at-ease eccentricity, is starting to feel comfortable in his own skin.

He genuinely enjoyed himself on the set of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which will be released in cinemas this December. “The first one was all ‘You can’t fuck it up,’ you know? There was a lot more hanging out this time,” Driver says. “Then there are just practical things, like I have a lightsaber. That’s fun.”

Whatever the outcome of the larger battle between good and evil, the Resistance and the First Order, never underestimate the power of Driver’s light side. ”I had heard about Adam’s intensity before I worked with him, but he’s also really fun and funny,” says Rian Johnson, The Last Jedi’s director.

There was one emotionally charged scene that they shot over and over. “Every time the guy holding the clapper marked each take, Adam just starts trying to steal his shoe,” Johnson recalls. “It was hilarious. And then Adam goes straight into it with all the intensity of Kylo Ren. He just added a sense of play that made the process really click.”

Neither Johnson nor Driver can say what the scene was about or who else was in it. They are acutely aware of the cone of silence that surrounds the Star Wars films, suitably enough, like a force field. “There’s probably something in my contract, I don’t know – but it’s kind of unbelievable that no one has told me, ‘Don’t say anything,’” Driver explains. “It’s just implicitly understood.”

With plot points guarded like state secrets, even the tiniest perceived leak sets off an online feeding frenzy. Internet scribes grab at every quote, often misreading them. “You have to clarify truthful things you’ve said that people read these false things into,” Driver says. “It can be frustrating.”

After several years of sidestepping spoilers, Driver is practised at the art of obfuscation. His evasive manoeuvres are near perfect.

On whether he enjoyed acting opposite Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey: “That’s hard to answer. I mean, people assume that we’d spend time with each other. Maybe our characters see each other in the movie?”

On whether he had scenes with Carrie Fisher: “It’s hard to answer without being vague.”

On whether the lightsaber scar on his face, which came courtesy of Rey in The Force Awakens, was moved for the new film: “I noticed a lot of things.”

On whether Kylo Ren’s story has a happy ending: “Not saying yes or no. But continue.”

On whether Han Solo might have known Kylo Ren would kill him: “That’s interesting.”

On whether he appears with his mask off: “Yes, I can answer that. You’ll see it off in the new trailer, so I’m not giving anything away!”

Other times, Driver playfully embraces the absurdity of it all. “I can’t say anything, but what if I signal you,” he jokes. “If I just start sneezing uncontrollably…” He fakes a loud achoo and exclaims, “Bingo! Harrison Ford’s ghost returns!”

When I ask him about Kylo Ren’s mysterious order of Dark Side disciples, the Knights of Ren, he waxes whimsical. “We can talk about them. Peter, Paul, John… No, I was thinking of The Beatles. Except wait – there’s Peter. He was too ambitious on the tambourine. Now you know: the last Knight of Ren is Ringo Starr!”

On this particular mid-September day, the internet is abuzz with new speculation that Ridley’s character, Rey, is the daughter of Princess Leia (also Kylo Ren’s mother). This theory would take any romantic tension between her and Driver’s Kylo Ren into the realm of incest – territory that the first Star Wars trilogy explored with a kiss between Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker and Carrie Fisher’s Leia.

“Yeah, my uncle and my mum made out,” Driver says, with a laugh. “Which Mark still talks about. He’s like, ‘Luke kissed his sister. How could he do that?’ I guess he hasn’t seen Game Of Thrones, you know?”

The Last Jedi marks the final film in Fisher’s storied career. Like the rest of the cast, Driver was shaken by the actress’ death last December at age 60. “It’s hard to talk about it without saying generic things,” he says. “Like, ‘It’s shocking,’ but it was. Or ‘It’s incredibly sad,’ which it is. I mean, it is all of those things.”

Driver brightens as he recalls Fisher’s wit on display at Comic-Con before the release of The Force Awakens. “The whole cast was downstairs in a conference room, talking through what’s supposed to happen at this big event. She was like, ‘Just pretend you’re down to earth. People love that shit.’” Driver pauses for a moment then laughs. “So now I pretend I’m down to earth and you know what? People really do love that shit. They eat it up.”

The image of Driver that people have consumed is not so much down to earth as intense and uncompromising, the all-or-nothing avatar of millennial manhood named Adam Sackler, Driver’s character in Girls. Ever since Driver landed the part, originally a cameo called simply “Handsome Carpenter”, the notion he really was that id-driven artist has, like the life of another charismatic carpenter, been taken as gospel.

In the public consciousness, Driver’s backstory is as extreme as his alter ego’s: a Midwestern misfit enlists in the Marines after 9/11, then studies acting at Juilliard – and finds he’s an outlier in both worlds. The truth is both less and more dramatic.

Born in San Diego, California, Driver is the son of a preacher. When his parents divorced, Driver moved with his mother back to her native Mishawaka, Indiana, where she was soon remarried to a Baptist minister. As a teenager, Driver was a poor student who dabbled in pyromania, trainspotting and climbing radio towers. A fan of the film Fight Club, Driver started one with some friends. “Just seeing the angst, I thought it would be a good idea to emulate it.“

Acting offered Driver a way out of the tiny town he called a shithole. “I applied to Juilliard when I was graduating high school and didn’t get in, so I was like ‘Well, fuck it. I won’t go to college, then.’” Instead, he set off for Hollywood and what he thought would be overnight stardom. “I’d always heard the stories of people striking out and finding success,” he says. “Why not me?” The dream lasted as long as his hand-me-down 1990 Lincoln Town Car did. After it broke down outside Amarillo, Texas, the repairs cost Driver nearly all the money he’d saved. When he finally limped into Los Angeles, Driver spent two nights in youth hostels. The only agent he signed with was a real estate agency, which took him for the rest of his savings. Having landed neither an apartment nor an acting gig, Driver arrived back in Indiana a week after leaving.

Following the 11 September attacks, Driver did not, as some retellings suggest, march down to the recruiting station. Instead, he enlisted in the Marines several months later. “My stepfather pushed me into it a little bit, which was good – I was grateful for it,” Driver says. “It followed an argument where he was like, ‘You’re not doing anything!’ I’d gotten this brochure in the mail. He was like, ‘Why don’t you just join?’ I was like, ‘No, I’m not going to join the Marines.’ Then I thought about it more. I had this sense of patriotism and wanted to get involved. I also had no prospects. I was living in the back of my parents’ house, working as a telemarketer.”

From the start, Driver’s time in uniform had a profound effect on him and his worldview. “The patriotism, the idea of country, doesn’t go away necessarily, it just turns into something else,” he says, reverently. “Not a big, sweeping idea, but this group of people you’re serving with, and that becomes your world, and it becomes sacred.”

Going into the Marines, Driver had a seemingly straightforward goal: “I’m going to be a man.” But rather than reinforce clichéd concepts of masculinity, military service put the lie to them. “You have to put implicit trust in the people to your left and right, and when they demonstrate that they’re looking out for you, that their own safety is secondary to yours, then all that kind of guy shit goes away and there is no ego,” Driver says. “There is no posturing, no need to say how much of a man you are, whatever that even means. You prove it with your actions.”

When Driver was not allowed to deploy to the Middle East with his unit, after suffering a broken sternum in a mountain biking accident, he was despondent. Although he fought to stay on active duty, Driver ultimately received a medical discharge.

He decided to apply to Juilliard again and this time got in. The transition from the Marine Corps to a New York City drama programme was jarring. During Driver’s second year, in an effort to bridge his past and present vocations, he launched a non-profit called Arts In The Armed Forces with his then-girlfriend, now wife, Tucker. Driver was able to carry a discipline and teamwork into his studies, but it didn’t stop him from feeling he’d gone soft. “I was like, ‘What am I doing? I’m wearing pyjamas doing acting exercises where I’m giving birth to myself or being a plant or moving around in jelly,’” he says. “Then again, even now, I’m like, ‘What am I doing?’”

After a brief fallow period after graduating from Juilliard, Driver says he learned to hate everyone in the audition room. He didn’t like TV and almost skipped his audition for Girls entirely. Instead, he dazzled the show’s creator, Lena Dunham, and the one-episode part Driver had read for was expanded into a central one. In audition after audition, Driver made a similar impression on a series of noted directors. Even before Girls aired, Steven Spielberg cast him in Lincoln, in which he played a telegraph operator opposite Daniel Day-Lewis. “He was very nice to me,” Driver says of the legendary method actor. “He would still talk in character, but very nice.”

In particular, Driver’s unusual, instinctive style made him a favourite of indie filmmakers. He landed meaty roles in the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis and a series of films by writer-director Noah Baumbach: Frances Ha, While We’re Young and The Meyerowitz Stories (New And Selected). He played the lead in Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson and shared top billing in Steven Soderbergh’s heist comedy Logan Lucky. When Martin Scorsese was finally able to make his passion project, Silence, after two decades, he sought out Driver. Similarly, Driver recently wrapped shooting on The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which Terry Gilliam had been trying to make for 17 years.

And yet nothing Driver had done remotely prepared him for Star Wars. He had grown up a fan of the original trilogy, but had little faith in outsized film franchises. “I’m leery of big movies – a lot of them sacrifice character for spectacle,” he says. “When they’re bad, it pisses me off – you can just tell it’s made by a bunch of executives somewhere.”

Despite his initial trepidation, the complicated nature of Kylo Ren put Driver’s concerns to rest. “It was all about story and character and playing someone who doesn’t have it all together. Making him as human as possible seemed dangerous and exciting to me.”

Driver was drawn to an idea that JJ Abrams, who wrote and directed The Force Awakens, had. The man behind the mask was not a man at all, but rather a young person struggling to come of age. “I remember the initial conversations about having things ‘skinned’,” Driver recalls, “peeling away layers to evolve into other people, and the person Kylo’s pretending to be on the outside is not who he is. He’s a vulnerable kid who doesn’t know where to put his energy, but when he puts his mask on, suddenly, he’s playing a role. JJ had that idea initially and I think Rian took it to the next level.”

Driver is on a roll now, discussing what excites him: character and narrative and cinematic influences. The original Star Wars was an homage to Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 film The Hidden Fortress, he says, and the link lives on in the new trilogy, in which concealed identities drive the narrative. Then he lets it slip. “You have, also, the hidden identity of this princess who’s hiding who she really is so she can survive and Kylo Ren and her hiding behind these artifices,” Driver says, apparently dropping a massive revelation about Rey’s royal origins.

Perhaps he’s unconcerned and Rey’s parentage is less dramatic than imagined by fans, who posited that her father is Luke then trumpeted that her mother is Leia. Or it could be that, in passionately holding forth, Driver is simply unaware he’s revealed anything, much less a major spoiler. In any case, he doesn’t skip a beat. “The things that made it personal to me,” Driver continues, “I’ll keep to myself, but I think everybody can relate to the idea of almost being betrayed.

“Wow, this music is killing me.”

As the café’s latest piano piece reaches its crescendo, I ask Driver if he tapped into his own experiences with his dad and stepfather and he reverts to evasive manoeuvres.

“I may leave that one. I have strong convictions about not talking about family, for many reasons,” Driver says. “It’s not as if the answers for Kylo are found in my relationships with my parents.”

In The Last Jedi, director Rian Johnson saw Driver go light years beyond his own experience. “Adam was always pushing the context of the character,” Johnson says. “He’s put in this unhealthy environment and goes through the worst of youth, the selfishness and volatility, he’s representing that side of adolescence.”

Of course, these days immaturity and insecurity are no strangers to power. “It makes complete sense how juvenile he can be,” Driver says of Ren, who prefers lightsabers over Twitter for his tantrums. “You can see that with our leadership and politics. You have world leaders who you imagine – or hope or pray – are living by kind of a higher code of ethics. But it really all comes down to them feeling wronged or unloved or wanting validation.”

Even more topical and even more touchy was the decision to play Kylo Ren like a radicalised extremist. “We talked about terrorism a lot,” Driver says of his early conversations with Abrams and Johnson about his character. “You have young and deeply committed people with one-sided education who think in absolutes. That is more dangerous than being evil. Kylo thinks what he is doing is entirely right, and that, in my mind, is the scariest part.”

The demagoguery drives him to the most famous film patricide in galactic history, as Kylo Ren kills Han Solo in the shocking denouement of The Force Awakens. “When I watched the premiere, I felt sick to my stomach,” Driver recalls. “The people behind me, when the scroll started, were like ‘Oh my god. Oh my god. It’s happening.’ Immediately, I thought I was going to puke. I was holding my wife’s hand, and she’s like, ‘You’re really cold. Are you OK?’ Because I just knew what was coming – I kill Harrison – and I didn’t know how this audience of 2,000 people was going to respond to it, you know?”

One person in the crowd who appreciated that scene was Han Solo himself. “We were sitting on this catwalk in between takes,” Driver recalls, “and Harrison was like, ‘Look what we get to do. Just look what we get to do.’ Meaning, look at how lucky we are that this is our job, you know? To see someone at that point in his career still get excited like that hit me. It’s like, ‘Oh, right. I need to take this in more.’”

As if on cue, a couple stop and introduce themselves. “I love everything you’ve ever done,” the wife says. “Everything.”

“Thanks a million. Yeah. Hi, I’m Adam.”

As fan encounters go, it is respectful and pleasant, but not even a whimper of what will soon follow come the release of The Last Jedi.

For all the ways in which he’s made peace with his success, Driver, who is almost pathologically private by nature, remains uncomfortable with notoriety. “I’m not in the world the same way I was before,” Driver says. “It’s completely changed my life. My anonymity is gone. But who I am as a person is the exact same. I think. Or, I hope.”

Soon after, we exit the café, as Driver is heading home for some quiet time. He stops in front of a bicycle locked to a fence. “It only looks bourgeois-hipster because of the saddle,” Driver says, adding that he’s only just added the leather Brooks seat. “I bought the bike for $200 back when I was at Juilliard,” Driver says. “Besides the seat, it’s the same crappy bike I’ve had for forever.”

Driver pulls his hoodie up over his head and as he starts pedalling off turns back to me. “Remember,” he says. “Pretend you’re down to earth. People love that shit. Right?”

The Last Jedi is out on 15 December.

#this is the ENTIRE THING #gah its so long #this took forever #adam driver #interview #gq #kylo ren #ben solo #star wars #the last jedi #the force awakens #long post

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lauradisantis-blog1 · 6 years

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Grandpa,

I can’t believe it has been a year already. A whole year without hearing your voice. A whole year without seeing you. A whole year feeling like a part of me isn’t here. It feels like just yesterday I was over at your house hanging out with you watching Ellen and talking about random things while we ate together. I don’t think I ever expressed to you how much I loved spending every single day with you for two years. I got to see a different side of you and you taught me so much. You were my first boss. You showed me how to take care of a garden. How to paint a wall. How to organize files. How to cook the most random, weird sounding recipes that always tasted amazing. But the most important thing that you taught me, was how to care and love others, in a true, loving way. You cared so much about others outside of yourself and that is such a rare thing to find these days. The world is filled with so many evil people who are selfish and do things for their own gain, but that was not you. You went out of your way to serve people no matter what cost. You spent every day thinking about others and that is something that I have always aspired to do. I’m sure you weren’t always this way, everyone falls short, but God was so apparent in your heart and His love was shined through your smile everyday. You went out of your way to help people, you helped me so much and I never told you how much that meant to me. You were one of my biggest role models. There are very few people that I look up to and you are at the top of that list. I still remember our last conversations. It was a few days before you passed. You called me about my damn car that broke every other month last year. Someone told you my car was in the shop, you called to check on me and offered to pay for the repairs. I refused to let you because you had already done so much for me that I did not think I deserved anymore help from you. I’ll never forget that conversation. I made sure to tell you I loved you before you hung up, you said it back, I would have never guessed that it would be the last conversation we would ever have. It’s hard for me to sit here and write this. The last time I cried this hard from thinking about you was my birthday. Your phone calls were always my favorite. I always missed your call but you would proceed to leave a voicemail playing some random ‘Happy Birthday’ song then say, “Hey Laura, it’s Grandpa” like I didn’t have caller ID. It hit me hard when I realized you weren’t going to call this past year. I cried uncontrollably and randomly mid conversation with a friend. Knowing you won’t be here on Earth hurts, and hard for me to even want to think about. But there can be so much freedom from that.

Death is such an unnatural thing. We were never meant to die. God never wanted us to die. But this world is so broken. Humans turned their backs on God, and now our lives seem so short on this Earth. But God frees us from this. He saves us from death. John 11:25-26 says “Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” I am comforted knowing that you have a relationship with Christ. I know I will see you again, and that is something that is so beautiful and takes away the pain from death. Not everyone gets this comfort that you and I have. Not everyone has a relationship with God and is freed from death. I pray that our loved ones can know Christ. That they can see and reflect on how you lived and want that for themselves. That they would want to spend eternity in heaven with you and God. God was such a light in your heart and you lived your life for Him. Romans 10:9 says “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” it’s that simple to get a one way ticket to Heaven, through Christ.

I have so much comfort in my heart knowing where you are, in Heaven with God, and that I will see you again. It takes away a lot of the pain of not having you here, but it doesn’t take away the fact that you aren’t here. I know God took you for a reason when He did. I wish I knew why, but that may not be what God has planned for me. I know He wanted me to rest in Him to work through this, it took a lot of fighting but I realize now that God is working through me in my struggles to help me be the person I need to be. To fully live my life for Him. To be a light like you were. Putting others first and giving more than taking.

I love you always and forever, and I can’t wait to garden with you and God in heaven one day.

Love,

Laura <3

“and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.“ Revelation 21:4

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luckyluciano2 · 6 years

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NY archery Whitetail hunting is high pressure and high competition for a small amount of public land this is the story of my 4 year quest to kill a mature NY whitetail I called Swamp Donkey….

Swamp Donkey a NY whitetail story

by John Stallone

Author of The Whitetail Hunter’s Blueprint

http://www.thewhitetailblueprint.com/

The Back Story:

I was born in NY and lived there till 1991 full time before I moved to Arizona. NY is where I was introduced to hunting, it’s where I learned to hunt, and Long Island is where I first learned to shoot a bow. As a kid I would spend my summers in NY and come visit for thanksgiving and rifle deer season Upstate almost every year. As I got older and archery became my main method of hunting I began working the small wood lots of eastern Long Island. Year after year I would return in October even after I had a family and children, and it has become our fall break family tradition.

Discovery:

It was a brisk, clear, October morning in 2012 I had gotten up several hours before day light to prepare myself for my first sit in a new stand set. I had been hunting in a 15 arce wood lot that was bordered on east and west sides by swamp, houses to the south and an old abandon junkyard to the north. The Junkyard had a 5 Arce field that the deer loved to feed in every evening. This was the jewel of this little honey hole. All the deer from the surrounding woods would congregate here in the evening allowing me to slip into my stand early in the morning undetected and they would return after day light back to the bedding on the edges and sometimes in the swamps. I had found a hub of converging trails just on the edge of the east swamp littered with buck sign. There were rubs as far as the eye can see down the trail and several scrapes within bow range of my tree. I had set my stand 20 ft up a big oak tree right at the crook of the V that formed where the two main branches shot out of the grand oak’s trunk. It was perfect…

At first light deer started to filter back into the wood lot mostly doe and fawn with a few small bucks. They continued to trickle in till about 8:30am when most of the deer activity seemed to stop. The birds and squirrels kept me occupied for the rest of the morning. Just about the time my stomach was trying to talk me into getting down I heard some movement in the leaves directly behind me. I stood up slowly and peered over my shoulder through the V of the oak and I could see the buck coming down the trail he was an 8 point with a kicker in the 125-130” range. I immediately thought to myself “shooter”. Bucks on long Island don’t typically get to live past 3 years of age there is a wide spread mantra in these parts “Brown is Down” so this buck was a trophy to be had.

The buck was working his rub line and slowly coming my way. He was already in bow range but coming in the only direction that I could not shoot to unless I unhooked my harness and stood up on the seat of the stand to shoot down through the V of the oak. It crossed my mind but I decided to not force it and wait till he came under my tree. He was 10 yards behind me at this point and I was frozen leaning on a limb with bow in hand slight tension on the string not even looking at him for fear he would make me and spook. He was licking a branch with head pointed in my direction when a squirrel decides to jump from the adjacent tree on to the limb that I was leaning against. He looked up and stood there looking through me for what seemed like an eternity. He then slowly turned and walked away back down the trail he came.

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NY Public land Buck

The Game begins:

I was beside myself, I wanted to scream, I drew back on that squirrel and almost let it fly when I reminded myself of the pact I had made several years prior not to shoot anything without a purpose. I sat in disgust for a few more hours. When I got down I immediately phoned my wife told her I had seen a big buck, a “Swamp Donkey” and asked her to change our plane tickets and extend our trip a couple of days. I knew I had to move my stand, that if I left it there every time he came by that tree he would look up. I began looking for another tree to hang my stand further up the trail leading from the swamp. I found two rub lines that came out of the swamp and down into this drainage and a tree that overlooked both. Plus it was in shooting range of the trail he walked down earlier that morning. I set the stand up high, about 25 feet to be exact in a beech tree, set so I did not need to stand to shoot. This tree would affectionately be called the killing tree over the next couple of years.. I felt good about this set. I spent the next few days sitting morning until night letting lesser bucks and doe slip by me. The last day I woke up to a Nor-Easter moving in which is the north easts version of a monsoon… Everyone told me I was crazy to go sit up in a tree with winds like that.. I didn’t care I had a mission. I sat from sun up to just about 30 mins before last light before I saw my first deer. It was a doe and she acted like she was being chased by a buck. Could it be? “This early in the season”, I thought to myself. Sure enough emerged the profile of an 8 point buck with a sticker on left side. “It’s him“, I grabbed my bow and began to will the deer to my stand with pointless pleading. It was getting dark and he was running her around in circles through the thick brush outside of bow range, I hit the doe bleat can. With about 3 mins left of light the doe started in my direction and pooped out 20 yards under my stand. I drew back, for what seem like an eternity and waited for him to clear the overhanging tree limbs. The wind was blowing me violently from side to side, I could hardly stay in the stand let alone hold the pin steady. He finally stepped out and I managed to muster up enough strength to hold it all together long enough to send the arrow right in his bread box… That was it! I had done it! I shot Swamp Donkey. I called my cousin to help me track and retrieve the buck. When he arrived we made quick work of the blood trail only to walk up on a buck that was not Swamp Donkey, I had shot a buck possibly a relative, younger brother maybe. I shot a 2.5 year old 115” 8 point with a sticker in the same place off the same tine as the big buck I was now calling Swamp Donkey. My disappointment was equally as evident as my happiness.

The Quest:

I returned home and immediately began pouring over topo maps and google earth. I spent countless hours talking to my cousin Mike who sat the same stand the remainder of the season. Two months had passed and the season was coming to a close I was starting to think that I had imagined Swamp Donkey that the buck I killed was the buck I saw and I just added inches in my head. Mike had not seen him or any big buck for that matter. I was devastated.

It was the last chance that Mike had left to hunt that season he slipped into the stand around 9am a few hours had passed and He was playing on his phone when he caught movement and turned to investigate. It was him, it was Swamp Donkey, he did exist and he was skirting along the swamp edge out of bow range. I immediately got a text “Swamp Donkey Lives”. I felt vindicated; I felt as if I had already shot him, someone else saw him alive and I wasn’t crazy.

Fast forward to next season I brought a camera with me and set it on the main trail, we don’t dare run cameras in NY because they always get stolen or vandalized even in bear boxes, but I had to get more intel. I spent the whole week spending morning till night in the stand. I had not seen hide nor hair of Swamp Donkey at this point so I decided to fill my tag the day before I had to leave on a 120” 3.5 yr old buck. I had shot this buck late in the evening and a little far back so I let him lay overnight. Late the next morning I went in to trail the buck I followed him out of my wood lot and across the road from the junk yard an into a piece of public wetland surround by private. I got permission from the lady who owned the land to track my buck and hunt there if I wanted. As I’m slinking through the woods quietly, looking down at the blood trail I get this crazy feeling like I was being watched so I looked up and there he was 40 yards ahead of me on the trail standing over my dead buck as if to say “gotcha again”… All I could do was laugh, no one was gonna believe me. He had grown into 145” buck was building character.

I was scratching my head! How was this deer using the area? After our standoff that morning I watched where he walked into the swamp. I followed him for a ways and starting gathering Intel. All the big rubs and his tracks told me this is where he lived and he just traveled across the street as part of his routine. It dawned on me right then in there how this deer using the area. Both times I had seen him and Mike had seen him were around 10am-12pm and After getting my buck back to the truck I decided to go pull the camera to fortify where my mind was going with this and after viewing the couple hundred pics the very last pic was a very degraded pic of Swamp Donkey in the middle of the night. He was making a loop!

Putting all together:

Like I mentioned earlier I don’t run cameras in NY so figuring out how he was using the landscape was much harder to do, it was based on a few sightings, and reading sign. It’s pretty hard to decipher what buck is making what rub and what scrape and leaving which track but I started to formulate a hypothesis based on my loop idea on how he was using the area.

In 2014 armed with my hypothesis I called “the loop” I decided to hang a new stand across from where my old stand was (the ridge stand) and after my encounter last year I had hung one off the swamp across the street ( the tree fort). The ridge stand was a morning spot when the wind was bad for the killing tree and the tree fort was for midday and evening hunting only. My plan was to sit the killing tree in the morning and the tree fort in the evening. I came up with this because after my encounter the previous year I had Mike sit the tree fort stand and we quickly learned that the deer were feeding in the oak flat adjacent the swamp in the mornings so you would blow them out when you entered the stand in the morning, thus making it better suited for the evening.

Two Bucks Two Days:

2014 was a crazy year for me and for our family trip, I had weddings and multiple family events to attend to, so my time to spend hunting was very limited in fact I only had 3 days to hunt. First morning of my hunt I slipped into the killing tree an hour before first light and anxiously waited for what the morning would bring. As usual at day break does and fawns trickled back in the woods followed by young bucks cruising the bedding areas. I got down at 11am because something told me I needed to get up in the tree fort stand before noon. I made the switch and about 1pm I caught movement behind me a buck working a scrape, “Swamp Donkey” I gasped. He was out of range and in a thick tangle of brush. I tried calling to him subtlety, without a response. I didn’t want to push it and have him pick me out of the tree so I changed my focus on trying to film him however my camera arm was not set up that I could get that angle so I quickly grabbed my rangefinder and phone and snapped a pic through it. He had gotten much much bigger and developed a matching kicker. He also had a bad limp and what looked like a scar on his left shoulder. It appeared he had been hit by a car, “the scar patch was too big to be an arrow wound” I thought to myself.

Let me digress for a moment, I know that those of you reading this are going to ask yourselves why would he have done this so let me explain in advance. I have an online TV show called Days in The Wild that I have been producing for the past 12 years I operate on a shoestring budget and an even stricter budget of time. I cannot afford to pass on opportunities to make an episode when presented. Back to my story, the next day went just about the same. I got in the tree fort stand by noon with the hopes of catching Swamp doing his thing midday. It was about 3pm when a buck emerged from swamp 70 yards from my stand and began walking the edge of the oak flat right to me. Now I had learned a trick from a guy many years ago that I kinda modified and made my own, that is to take a rake and fluff up the leaves 20-30 yards to your best shooting lane and shake the overhanging oaks to make as many acorns drop as possible. He told me raking the leaves makes it easier for them to get to and it makes it look like other deer were feeding there. I added my own little twist by spraying buck bombs acorn rage scent in the area as well and this seemed to work very well for me. Now this buck was walking right to my little trap and I couldn’t fight the urge so I decided to take him. He was quartering to me hard so I aimed between the neck and front shoulder he reacted and dropped a bit and I caught the spine dropping him on the spot. After getting him out I decided tomorrow was my last hunt I was going to hold out till dark for Swamp. And I did just that, only at dark a different mature buck stepped out and I decided to shoot him ever mindful of my contractual responsibilities to produce 12 shows a year. Swamp had made it another year.

Stellar Year

2015 was an amazing year for me I had drawn more tags than I ever had in the past one of which was a coveted Ibex tag in the Florida (Flo-reeda) mountains in New Mexico. Consequently this hunt fell during my normal scheduled trip to NY. Moreover the other tags I drew did not afford me the time to go back to NY. So I had to place my hopes of scoring Swamping Donkey on the shoulders of Mike. Mike started a new job and had virtually no time to hunt although we kept in contact watching the moon and weather and picking and choosing the best times to take a day off and other than a fleeting glimpse of him in Nov. our meek efforts proved futile. My season went on to being a stellar season filling 12 of my 15 tags but in the back of my mind he was still out there giving me the proverbial finger.

Redemption

Following such a stellar 2015 I had high hopes for 2016. I started off first of the year shooting a big desert mule deer in my home state followed by a 30” Barbary sheep in New Mexico in February. My son was born in March 2 days before my 40th birthday everything seemed to be going my way…Then 40 hit. It seemed like nothing was going right for me, losing business left and right, just one mishap after another, no time in the off season to practice or scout, and I was getting terribly out of shape. My first few hunts in the early season did not end up as I had planned and I was starting to feel a little bit down on myself. I needed a win. I knew that NY has always been good to me for providing success but I had taken the consolation prize home too many years in a row and I wanted to come home the old busier. Not knowing if Swamp was still alive at this point I didn’t know what to expect. I arrived to NY late in the evening and I had planned to hunt the following afternoon after checking stands and buying my license etc. but something told me to stay out of the tree fort stand and save it for the next day when I could slip in there late morning. I did not hunt the killing tree that morning as I had done in the past but instead I waited till 11am to slip into the tree fort. It had rained the night before and still was drizzling a bit that morning and I knew that meant the bucks would be out freshening up their scrapes mid-day. Walking into the stand I notice a giant rub that looked like an elk had made. The sapling was completely broke over and ripped to pieces. Logic told me “big buck” my heart told me “Swamp lives” filled with anticipation I climbed up into the stand but not before I squirted a little young buck scent into the two scrapes bellow my tree. The wind was blowing hard and steady and was in my face, I felt like something good was going to happen. Before long it was 1:30pm and something told me to check my backside I stood up slowly and peered around the tree and there he was working his way right to me. I knew he was coming to the big scrape, I got the camera set on him and he stopped dead in his tracks and I began to curse the camera under my breath. I thought maybe the sun had reflected off the lens and he had seen it. He stood there motionless for a lifetime flicked his tail and began to limp toward the scrape stopping every few yards to scan his environment. I quickly ranged everything in his path even though I had memorized every inch of my shooting lanes.. It was going to happen I could see it playing out, barring any stupid moves on my part or some act of God “it was coming together” I thought to myself. No sooner did the thought leave my mind he stopped in a place that I could not draw. “Don’t force it john” I told myself “let him go to the scrape”. He began to limp toward the scrape again and as soon as he cleared the lane I drew back, settled the pin and waited for him to pause naturally. He took a couple of steps than hesitated and I squeezed off the release and watched my arrow hit its mark. I knew what I had done. My knees went weak and I almost fell out of the stand. “ I just killed Swamp Donkey” I murmured to myself as if to make sure I wasn’t dreaming and then again louder “ I just killed Swamp Donkey” I could see the blood covered arrow glistening in the sun, so packed my stuff up quickly and got down to investigate the shot site. I walked up to where I shot “dead deer” I thought. Blood trail began immediately at the arrow and continued on straight toward the swamp. I took out my camera and documented the track. Fifty yards later just inside the trail I had followed him into in 2013 there he lay. I walked up to him, knelt beside him for a moment, put my hand on his back and began to feel almost sorry the game had ended. After making the calls, taking my pictures and the excitement settled I began to wonder where the next swamp donkey was and when the new game of chess would begin….

Be sure to subscribe to my podcast https://interviewswiththemasters.podbean.com/

[ebook_store ebook_id=”1877″]

Swamp Donkey John Stallone’s 4 year quest to shoot mature NY whitetail NY archery Whitetail hunting is high pressure and high competition for a small amount of public land this is the story of my 4 year quest to kill a mature NY whitetail I called Swamp Donkey....

#new york deer hunting #NY archery whitetail #Ny giant buck

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