#and my stepmom just immediately turns to me and goes well i think YOU SHOULD BE SONNY JAMES

[lupismaris]

So technically speaking the oldest son in our family should be named after an eldest son of the direct generations before per Italian American tradition (so one of the parents or grand parents/uncles) in this case but the eldest son died before my father got to meet him and thus the technical eldest son in our family was named after our great grandfather instead and not called Sonny as is tradition (he and my father refuse to admit that he is no longer the eldest son because i now exist)

i am tho realizing that if my Italian grandfather (god rest ya Joe) who half raised me and loved me deeply were still alive to be a part of my transition and were as supportive as i hope he would be, especially in spite of my father failing in the role of being a supportive father, he would no doubt see that our family lacks a Sonny of its own, bemoan the neglect of tradition, and anoint me the new Sonny, the true eldest son

#is this a personal fantasy that only came into existence yesterday after a conversation with my dad about a semifamous relative? yes #technically my brother was supposed to be named more directly and called Sonny and the idea made him want to die #my dad is going on and on about my brother being the eldest son and the first born son and the tradition of eldest sons #and my stepmom just immediately turns to me and goes well i think YOU SHOULD BE SONNY JAMES #she pauses and adds MAYBE JOE WOULDVE LIKED IT TOO WHO KNOWS HE MIGHTVE CALLED YOU SONNY #SEEMS LIKE SOMETHING HED CALL YOU #and my dad just doesnt know what to do or say my brother doesnt know what to do or say and i laugh and test out the name #and she and i just move on to how ill ask the university about my great uncle sonny's student records since thats how it came up #but the fuckin discomfort in my father and brother's faces was really really good. felt authentic. #so now im considering calling on nonno joe. havent done that before. but i think i will. #technically its good no one got named after the semi local famous colonel we were talking about imo #he worked for reagan and probably wasnt all that great in terms of someone id get along with #but the tradition is in this moment what matters!

[starrjournals]

i’m literally so annoyed. right so a couple of days ago me, my dad, and my stepmom went to the lake bc it was nice out and we had a cookout and whatever. it was nice. then towards the end my stepsister calls and asks if we want to go to the beach on sunday next week and my stepmom immediately goes yea and can we spend the night from friday and my stepsister goes yea of course. mind u,,, my stepmom didn’t even ask me she just immediately asked and assumed i’d be okay and i just looked at her and was like um … and she was like well what happened you don’t want to spend the night or go to the beach and i was like i can’t spend the night bc i have no one to take care of my cat and that’s when my dad says i can feed your cat. at this point i’m already uncomfortable bc 1. i wasn’t even asked, 2. she just immediately answered for me which is something i fucking hate that people do, and 3. she was guilt tripping me bc i clearly didn’t want to. like if my answer is no then no. but then she continued going oh well look your dad can feed your cat and i still was uncomfortable and went no bc then he’s going to eat it all at once and then throw up. you know usually id be down but i just don’t like to be thrown under the bus like this and forced to say yes. i knew if i go i’d be annoyed and irritated bc i didn’t even want to go and i still ended up going. so my answer was no but for some reason my stepmom thinks it’s gonna turn into a yes. Now to just now. So my stepmom called me and I didn’t feel like answering or talking to her tbh ever since the cookout she’s been calling and wanting to talk and i just don’t want to talk to her. She left a voicemail and then soon my dad calls. i wasn’t going to pick up but i was like whatever let me pickup. i worry anytime i don’t pick up my dads call something happened to him (which is what happened with my mom but that’s a story for another time). so i pickup my dads call and he immediately goes u didn’t pickup ur stepmoms call and i know that, they know i know that, but i just go i was showering and didn’t hear my phone. (i lied and i knew i said i was gonna work on that but i felt cornered). Anyways my dad is talking to me and i hear my stepmom in the background saying she never picks up my calls only her dads! and my dad puts her on and i’m like r u kidding me. and yea my stepmoms on the line and she’s like i have a question and by that point i’m already annoyed like i didn’t pick up bc i didn’t want to talk to u. i go yes what is it in the most monotone voice ever bc i genuinely cba. like i’m over it. and she’s like do u want to go to the beach tomorrow and then says i wanted to ask u or her sister just in case u wanted to go i know ur home. i said no and she was like why? immediately getting mad bc i said no. like first of all no is a valid answer and if i don’t want to go then that’s it. and i told her i got my period i don’t want to go. and she goes well don’t you wear pads, you can bring wipes and stuff there’s bathrooms. and i said no it’s going to be really hot and i’m going to be annoyed so i don’t want to go. and this is when she tries to guilt trip me saying oh you always have an excuse first it’s your cat and now it’s your period. like yea those are valid excuses and even if i said no that’s valid too. anywho now i’m upset bc i know she’s guilt tripping me for saying no and i’ve worked so hard on saying no like it’s so hard for me to say no and stay firm on it. and yea i’m upset and i want to cry bc it’s so frustrating. i’m so frustrated. i’m so glad i don’t live with them anymore and i can just hang up and go about my day. but it doesn’t mean it hurts less. like this is the reason why i’ve limited contact with my stepmom and i know i should tell her but then she’s going to get defensive and turn it on me and i just don’t want to deal with that. I was literally talking to a friend recently about how i would like to sit down with my stepmom and talk about she has harmed me in the past but i know she’s just going to get defensive and angry. and while i know what i went through i don’t

need validation from that it does hurt me to not have a good relationship with my mother figure. but i don’t think i’m able to even have a conversation with her about it. for now i’m just going to keep my distance again because it hurts me to talk to her like nothing happened in the passed and to continue on. so yeah, thanks for listening it felt nice to write this out. i do still feel like crying and that’s okay bc i need to feel my emotions. thank u again. 💖

#starrjournals #personal rant #problems with my mother figure #boundaries #they’re so hard to keep #i’m sad #journaling #yeah

[blank-space-daisy13]

Why I won’t invite my biological father to my wedding.

I wanted to post this on Instagram or Facebook but I don’t want to deal with people saying I’m “drama.” But I wanted to write this out just in case someone is ballsy enough to ask me.

Let’s start off with the fact that after he got with my step mom, he wasn’t really around. He also never really cared or tried to take care of us (my brother and me) unless he absolutely had to.

Before my step mom and when we still lived in the apartment, On nights he had us my mom would drop us off already fed, he’d turn the tv on and go play on his computer until we had to go to bed. If he had us on a weekend, same thing. We’d wake up and he’d feed us breakfast, then tv with him in his room on the computer, lunch, tv, dinner, tv, and bed. When we moved from the apartment we stayed at his buddy’s house where he rented a room but guess what? He’d send us down to the basement all day to watch tv, and let us up for meals.

When my stepmom came into the picture, we started going to Canada. On every single one of his weekends. She was nice, at first. Sooner or later everyone shows their true colors. But she started slowly to get a hold of my dad. (My dad had no boundaries with us and she wanted to “help” my dad learn to discipline, but she’s a little extreme.) I once got punished for saying the word “butt” because we only say, “bum” and he yelled at me. Yelled. I was about 7 or 8. Then I heard my future step mother telling him how good he did. Also while we were there, I remember very few times we actually hung out with my dad. It was always being shoved into the playroom with my brother, future stepsister, and sometimes future stepbrother. (Step mom never had full custody of stepbrother.) We’d never leave the playroom other than for meals like the TV. But at least we weren’t rotting our brains, I guess.

After awhile he decided he wanted 50/50 custody. My stepmom at this point could be brutal emotionally. I remember getting yelled at for not knowing any of my immediate family member’s birthdays. I was about 8 or 9. Kind of shitty don’t you think? Going back to the wanting 50/50 custody, he didn’t actually want us. Looking back I understand this now. He just didn’t want to pay as much child support, and that’s probably the only reason my step mom agreed to this. They treated us (my brother and i) horribly. He moved close to my mom’s to prove he’d be willing to do the 50/50 custody, and at that point it was hell. If we did something wrong, immediately we’d get soap in the mouth. My brother later on was getting hot sauce. It would be for things such as, “not sharing with your step sister,” (which she would’ve lied about) or “talking back,” when as a kid I was asking a simple question about their rules. They had so many rules to the point you didn’t realize you were breaking a rule until they told you it was one. My *fondest* memory was when they’d send us kids to the basement for a few hours during the weekend and then got mad when we went through boxes and such to find toys to play with. Because when they first sent us down there, they sent us down there with nothing at all. Sure we probably shouldn’t have gone through boxes, where my brother and I found our toys that they never put with our step sister’s toys, but they sent us down there with nothing at all. They expected us to “imagine” things with no toys. I also got yelled at one weekend because they asked us to clean our bathrooms. (Step sister and I shared a Jack and Jill bathroom and my brother had his own bathroom as well.) We went and picked things up and went back to play. They both yelled at us and said, “If I had meant pick up I would’ve said pick up. I said CLEAN.” At this point I had never cleaned a bathroom in my life. They gave us the cleaning supplies and we went to work. I did what I thought was the best I could do and then my stepmom yells at me, “That wasn’t nearly long enough!!!! Haven’t you ever cleaned a bathroom before?!” Uh no ma’am, I was literally 10. But that was her favorite way to make us feel like shit. To yell, “Haven’t you done XY&Z before?” Or “You don’t know (blank)?! So disrespectful! You should know these things!” (That was said about the birthdays. Again I was a decently young kid.) But going forward, towards the end of them living there, they had a baby together, my other brother J.

Luckily for my brother and I, he eventually gave up going for the 50/50 custody. But with doing this, he left and we didn’t see him for a long time. 5-6 years approximately. I was 15 when he decided he wanted to see us again, and because of everything we had gone through before, we didn’t want to. I had a choice but my brother didn’t, and I was forced to go.

At this point he had married my stepmother, and was living in the same subdivision, and one road away, where had had a house with my mom when they were married. Kind of awkward but ok.

And I have to say, they were better. To a point. They wanted us to feel bad that we didn’t want to be there. At the time I had a really old phone, not a smart phone, that didn’t lock, but they expected my phone to be on the counter at 9pm every night. They read my texts and held them against me, but when I called them out on reading my texts, they told me I was crazy. I would text my friends that I didn’t want to be there, and that I was uncomfortable. They asked me, “Why don’t you want to be here? Why are you uncomfortable? We understand what we did in the past was wrong, but the past is the past and you have to forgive us!” (One wrong thing I was always taught was you always have to forgive. You don’t always have to forgive for things that hurt you.) Finally at the end of this period, they sat us down and tried to make us feel bad by saying, “If you don’t want to be here, we don’t want you here. We want you to want to be here.” At 15 I tried to explain why this was hard, but they didn’t care. It wasn’t their way so they weren’t ok with it.

Fast forward to my Senior Year of high school, I don’t remember how, but my father and I got in touch. My step mom wanted nothing to do with me because of a dumb YouTube video I made at 14 where I “talked shit” about her daughter and herself. Yes, I did, but who didn’t do something dumb at 14? I wasn’t allowed around their house because HER son had a “drug problem.” (Marijuana) Whatever, I didn’t care. Slowly we lost touch because I was the only one calling, and I got sick of it. I was done. But I was still young.

Fast forward to me being a sophomore in college. I was 20 or 21. My brother had an issue that got the police and CPS involved. My father decided to text me and ask me what was going on. I called him and told him that he had “no fucking reason to know what was going on” because he was never around. He gaslighted me into feeling bad because I cussed him out for 10 minutes. But we kept contact after that because I had thought about it and I wanted to get to know my little brother J more. We did lose contact again but then we gain it back later on.

Skip forward a couple years and I’m talking to my cousin, (another thing was he kept us from his side of the family and I had lost contact with most of them until I was an adult.) my cousin told me he was going to MY little BABY sister’s 1st birthday. My father had been talking to me for a few months at this point and NEVER mentioned I had a baby sister. He told me, “I thought your aunt posted about it. I saw it on Facebook and assumed you knew!” It doesn’t matter whether I saw it on Facebook or not. He should’ve told me. But whatever, I let that go too.

Here is where I get frustrated. I wouldn’t call for a couple weeks because I didn’t think about it. I’ve only seen him twice in the past 9 years. But he would blame me for us not talking, when he’d never call or try to talk to me. It drives me crazy when people think like that. It’s not just my responsibility and mine alone.

Skip forward to a few months ago when he brought up politics. I hated this because I’m mostly liberal/democrat and he’s 100% republican. He called liberals “libtards” and goes, “you’re not a libtard are you?” And when I tell him it’s offensive he says, “It’s just a joke!” But now we’re here and yet again it’s been 2 or 3 months since we’ve spoken because he’s blocked my number. It goes straight to voicemail and my texts aren’t going through as iMessages. I’ve decided after trying for over two months, he’s uninvited to the wedding. He’s never met my fiancé, ever. We were only inviting him to be civil. But if he can’t even speak to me, I feel it’s not my problem, and it’s one less drama issue to worry about at the wedding.

My family can believe what they want. There are so many things left out of this 15 year drama circle of my father just disappearing. And I don’t care anymore. I hope someone asks why he wasn’t invited because I know for a fact he’ll be at least telling the whole family that he wasn’t invited. And I don’t mind sending them this so they can know why.

[noladyme]

La Cuervo - Chapter 3

She is used to the biker-life, having grown into a woman in the familiar embrace of SAMCRO. A bad decision and a gun-shot later, she gets whisked off to Santo Padre, and put under the protection of another club. What is supposed to be a short stint in the Mayan headquarters just north of the border to Mexico, turns into something more; when la quervo begins to develop feelings for el angel - and he seems to return them in kind...

TW: violence, blood, drug use, alcohol, smut, fluff, angst

In the spirit of "The Crown Princess of Charming", this is a story about O.C. Nina and Angel Reyes. It is obviously non-canon, as characters who have passed on on Mayans M.C. are present in it, and others have been excluded completely. Nina is written as a cis-female, but I have tried to keep her race and looks as ambigous as possible. Should you find any of this story offensive, please let me know.

3.

Bishop was standing outside the clubhouse, smoking a cigarette, when they rolled in. Nina got off the bike, feeling strangely like a teenager caught breaking curfew. She nodded at the president, and was about to move towards the trailer, when Angel grabbed her hand, and leaned in to kiss her cheek. “Thanks for… last night”, he said. “You too”, Nina said. He gave her a crooked smile, and was about to say something else, when Bishop called out for him. “Angel… Inside. We need to talk”. Angel nodded. “Daddy’s angry”, he muttered out of the corner of his mouth. “Yeah”, she replied, and Angel walked off.

“Yo, sweetheart!”, Bishop called after her, as she once again moved towards the trailer. Nina sighed, and turned to look at him. “I made a promise to Chibs. When you pull a stunt like this, you make it really fucking hard to keep that promise”. Angel halted behind his president, a confused look on his face. “I didn’t leave without a patch”, Nina replied. “Followed your rules”. Bishop narrowed his eyes at her. “His patch ain’t the one you should be worried about…”. Nina swallowed hard, and nodded; though slightly confused at his words. “Ok. Sorry”. Bishop’s expression softened. “Look, just… be careful, ok?”. Nina nodded, and he smirked slightly. “You know, you’re lucky I make him get tested every two weeks”. Angel frowned, and Nina chuckled; before finally turning around, and walking over to the trailer, letting herself inside.

She quickly got dressed in clean clothes. The heat hadn’t exactly waned, so Nina decided to switch jeans for shorts and a top. She reminded herself to ask someone about taking her to a laundromat; not having packed a lot. She’d been told to leave her small apartment at home in as normal a state as possible. In case someone did come looking for her, SAMCRO didn’t want to let them know she’d run. She picked up her jacket to hang it, and a shudder went through her body, as she fished her .38 out of the pocket. It felt heavier than it should, in spite of its smallness, and she felt bile rise in her throat. A hard knock on the door made her jolt, and she quickly hid the gun under her helmet; before she went over to open. EZ was standing outside, with a friendly smile on his face. “’Morning”, he said. “It is”, Nina replied. “I got breakfast-burritos in the clubhouse”, he offered. Nina shook her head with a smile. “You didn’t need to do that”. “I know what’s in my brother’s fridge. I doubt he fed you”, EZ grinned. “Come on”.

She followed the prospect back to the clubhouse, where EZ gestured for her to take a seat by a table. Nina noticed the ginger woman Coco had been spending time with the night before, was seated by the bar; legs crossed and tits pushed out, smiling at the biker, who was trying to ignore her, and focus on his game of pool with Gilly. EZ put a plate on the table in front of Nina, with a delicious smelling burrito. “Gabby… She’s a good cook”, he said, his voice adoring. Nina bit in to it, and couldn’t do anything but agree. “This is delicious. Tell her thanks”, she smiled.

The door to templo opened, and Bishop came out with Taza, Riz and Angel in tow. “She’s business, Angel. You treat her like any other business we have going on”, Bishop said, and walked over to the bar, accepting a beer from the girl behind it. “You wouldn’t shove your dick down the barrel of an mk47, would you?”, Taza asked. Angel stood with his back to Nina, not having noticed her. “It wouldn’t fit, anyway”, he shrugged. “Just, don’t complicate things”, Bishop said. “Bish, it ain’t like that”, Angel said. Bishop looked at him in disbelief. “We fucked, yeah; but…”. Taza noticed Nina watching them, and patted Angel’s shoulder. He turned around, and locked eyes with her; looking like a handsome deer caught in headlights.

Nina looked down, and chewed her lips. At least they were on the same page, she tried to convince herself. She didn’t know Angel from the next guy; all she did know, was that he was damn good in bed, and liked beers, babes and bikes. They’d had sex, that was it. Still, she couldn’t help but feel his words chafe a bit. There was a long moment of silence, before Nina decided to put Angel – and herself– out of their misery. “I was bored, and his shower has good pressure”, she said. Angel let out an embarrassed laugh, and shrugged, while his friends shook their heads, letting a roaring laughter fill the room.

Everyone went about their biker business, and Nina went back to her breakfast; having lost most of her appetite. She wrapped up the burrito, and pushed away the plate. A mug of coffee was set down in front of her, and she looked up to meet EZ’s apologetic eyes. “I’m… sorry, about that”, he muttered. “My brother… he’s a good guy, but…”. “I know how it is. Don’t worry about it”, she smiled in reply. “How is it, then?”, Angel asked, having walked over to them. EZ left them to it. “I got an itch scratched, and you got your dick wet. Life goes on”, Nina said. Angel made a labored sigh, and scratched his bearded chin. “Look, Nina. I’m…”. She got on her feet, and put a hand on his arm. “It’s fine, Angel. We’re good”, she smiled, and got on her toes, to kiss his cheek; doing her best to avoid enjoying his scent. “We had fun”. He chewed his lip for a moment. “Yeah, we had fun…”. Taza called for him, and Angel took a step back. “I gotta go take care of something. See you around, Nina”. He went off to talk to the VP.

Nina took a few sips of her coffee, before walking over to get behind the bar. She smiled friendlily at the blonde girl standing there – the same girl, in fact, that Angel had turned down the night before – who looked at her indifferently, and handed her a rag to wipe down the counter. This was familiar territory, and she smiled to herself, as she handed a pair of cold ones to Gilly and Coco; who’d finished their game, and came over to the bar. The redhead immediately pressed up against Coco, who looked like he wanted to dig himself into a deep hole. “Can I get you anything else, baby?”, she asked, making clear her intentions. “Nah, I’m good. Let me talk to my brothers for a moment, yeah?”, he replied. “Sure… I’m just gonna go fix my lipstick”, the woman winked at him, and walked towards the bathroom. “When’s the wedding?”, Gilly asked. “Fuck you”, Coco snarled, before nodding at Letty, who’d just walked in the door – looking hungover. “I can’t get her to leave”. “Who?”, Letty asked, and accepted a coke from Nina. “Just some chick. I told her the deal, but it’s like she didn’t hear me”, Coco said.

Letty rolled her eyes, and gave the woman a once over, as she came back from the bathroom. When she was once again pressed against Coco – who was looking more and more uncomfortable by the second – Letty took pity on him, and walked over to the pair; putting her head on Coco’s shoulder. “Are you my new mommy?”, she smiled innocently at the ginger; who froze in place. Suddenly, it was like she couldn’t get out of there fast enough. “Sorry, I gotta go”, she muttered, and scuttered of in haste. Coco smiled crookedly, and shook his head. “You’re crazy, mija”, he said. “Nah, I just don’t want a stepmom, who wears that shade of lipstick”, Letty said, and went back to her coke.

Bishop cleared his throat. “Well, if everyone’s got their dicks back in their pants, we got some business to tend to”, he said. The Mayans all scattered, and went to their respective jobs around the yard, and wherever else they went, when they did their business.

---

Nina spent the rest of the day getting her bearings around the scrap-yard, and its office. Chucky’s filing-system might have seemed chaotic to anyone else, but Nina knew it well, and was happy to be occupied with something other than thinking about a certain Mayan and his well-shaped body – especially how it looked naked. A gorgeous Latina girl showed up in the afternoon, carrying a fantastic smelling bag of Tupperware, and looking for EZ; and Nina was finally introduced to the person who had made her delicious breakfast. She immediately understood why EZ was smitten with Gabby, and couldn’t help but smile at the sight of the two of them dancing around each other like a pair of puppies in love. They took off after an hour or so, so EZ could drive Gabriella home. He returned with the largest smile she’d ever seen on anyone’s face, and went straight to work on a road king in the garage.

During dinner, feasting on Gabby’s delicious tamales with EZ, Nina asked about laundromats. “There’s one, but there’s only one functioning dryer, and it smells like feet”, EZ said. “I can wait a few days, but I still need to go at some point”, Nina said. “And I need to get a prescription filled. That’s kind of urgent”. Her inhaler was almost empty, she’d realized that morning. A roar of bikes came from outside, and Nina got on her feet, taking the plates to wash them behind the bar. EZ followed her, nodding at Bishop, Riz and Angel, as they entered the clubhouse. “Drug-stores round here are closed at this time of night, but I’ll ask Bishop if I can take you in the morning”, he said. Nina groaned, and looked out the corner of her eye at the president. “It’s like needing a fucking hall-pass if I even think about leaving this place”, she muttered. EZ chuckled, and wiped off the plates after she’d washed them. “Yeah, why is that? Are you on the run from the cops or something?”. Nina looked down at her hands, suddenly feeling the need to wash them thoroughly. Scrubbing them hard under the tap, she shrugged indifferently. “Chibs is just protective, I guess. And I hear this area is overrun by outlaw bikers”. “You know it!”, Riz exclaimed, having arrived at the counter with Angel. “Coffee, please; sweetheart. I’m gonna be spending the night prepping for the run tomorrow”. Nina poured Riz a mug, and looked at Angel. “Dos Equis”, he said, his demeanor cool. Nina served him the beer, avoiding eye-contact.

“Do you need me for the run tomorrow?”, EZ asked. “No. Why?”, Riz asked. “Nina needs to take care of some stuff in town, and I was gonna take her”. Angel took a sip of his beer, and looked between Nina and EZ. “What stuff?”, he said with an edge to his voice. EZ scoffed, and shook his head. “Bro, come on…”, he said. Riz raised his brows, and backed away from the counter; obviously uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was taking. “The drug-store, Angel. And then we might go have an orgy; I haven’t decided yet”, Nina said sarcastically. Angel raised his hands in mock defeat. “Hey, Bish told us to look out for you. I’m just keeping my eyes on business here”. “Yeah… I’m gonna turn in. See you tomorrow, EZ”. The prospect looked at her apologetically. “I’ll talk to Bishop”, he said. Nina nodded, and walked towards the door.

A strong hand grabbed her lower arm before she could walk outside. Nina scowled up at Angel, who looked remorsefully at her. “I’m sorry, Nina. That was shitty of me”, he said. “Don’t worry about it. You should be sorrier about suggesting that your brother would cheat on his girlfriend”, she replied. Angel looked back at EZ, and nodded solemnly. “Yeah. I know”, he muttered. “Are we good, cuervo?”. “Of course”, Nina said. “Goodnight, Angel”. She pulled out of his grasp, and left the clubhouse.

---

The next day, Taza, Riz, Creeper, Angel and Coco got on their bikes, and in a van, to go north for the SAMCRO-delivery. “Say hi to Rat and Quinn for me, would you?”, Nina said from the porch, unable to hide the sadness in her voice. “Will do”, Taza promised, and started his bike. “Let’s not keep reaper waiting”. Angel sent Nina a slight smile, before Coco patted his shoulder to make him start the van.

EZ had managed to convince Bishop of the urgency of Nina’s drug-store run, and after helping out at the office for a few hours, she got on the back of his bike, to have him take her in to town. Angel had lied about his brother’s ability to ride with a passenger – a fact that didn’t surprise Nina, by the way – because he was probably the safest driver she’d ever ridden with. Overly safe, some might say. The prospect avoided every bump, and kept well bellow the speed-limit all the way.

After Nina had used her fake ID – No paper trail, luv, Filip had said – to get her new inhaler, EZ asked if she’d be ok with a short stop by his pap’s. Nina couldn’t say no to meeting the elder Reyes; curious to see what kind of man had sired two such different men. Seeing Gabriella behind the counter of Felipe Reyes’ butcher-shop, Nina understood the prospect’s real reason for wanting to visit his father; though there was no lack of love between him and Felipe, that much was evident by the way they looked at each other.

“She’s playing pop-music again, Ezekiel”, Felipe said, gesturing at a small stereo that was blaring the charts, as he came over to greet his son. “Amas mi musica”, Gabby grinned. “Hi, Nina”. “Hey, Gabby. Thanks for all the food!”, Nina replied with a smile. “You’re welcome”. After EZ had kissed his girlfriend’s cheek, he gestured towards Nina. “Pap, this is Nina. She’s new in town”. Felipe shook Nina’s hand. “Is my boy giving you a tour of the potholes?”, he asked. “No, he’s the most boring biker I’ve ever ridden with”, she replied with a smile, getting a guffawing laughter from the man. “See, EZ? I told you!”, Gabby grinned. “Hey!”, EZ laughed. “I’m just safe”. “Boring!”, Gabby said.

As EZ and Gabriella went to whisper sweet nothings behind the counter, Nina went to examine the bookcase Felipe had exhibited in his shop. “Looking for some light reading?”, Felipe asked. “Always… And, giving the lovebirds some space”, Nina replied, and looked towards the smiling pair behind the counter. She picked up a picture of two smiling boys, each on a bicycle; smiling proudly at the camera. For a second, she felt a sting in her heart. “That’s EZ”, Felipe said, and pointed at the smaller boy. “And the other one is my eldest”. “Angel”, Nina said. Felipe chuckled. “You’ve met him”, he said. “I’m staying at the scrapyard”, she replied. Felipe raised a brow at her. “You’re the one who has EZ sleeping on my couch”. Nina felt her cheeks beginning to burn, and put down the picture again. “Yeah, I’m… sorry”, she said. “Don’t be. It’s good to have him home at least some of the time. That… club, takes up a lot of his time”. Nina chewed her lips for a moment. “You don’t like the club”, she said. Felipe met her eyes for a second, looking tired suddenly. “Sorry, it’s not my place”, she muttered. “No… No, it’s alright”, he said, a smile forcing it’s way onto his face. “I suppose all parents have higher hopes for their children, than…”. “Riding around on motorbikes, and wearing leather in the 100 degrees desert sun?”, Nina said, returning his smile. “That too”, Felipe said. “Are you what they call a… hangaround?”. Nina’s jaw almost dropped to the floor. “Pap, that’s rude”, EZ said, having joined them by the bookcase. “I’m sorry, Nina. I’m not clear on the lingo”, Felipe said. Nina laughed heartily. “It’s fine. Really”, she said. “I guess I am. Sort of. It’s a long story”.

EZ put a hand on Nina’s shoulder. “Angel called. They’re on their way back. We should get back to the yard”. Nina nodded, and went to follow him to the door. “Come back some time if you need something to read”, Felipe said. “Or a steak”. “I might take you up on that”, Nina smiled, and followed EZ out to his bike.

They rode back to the yard; this time with EZ hitting a few bumps on the way there.

---

The Mayans that had gone on the run returned to the clubhouse shortly after Nina and EZ. She got right to work behind the bar. It was easy to fall in line as a club hangaround; Nina knew the deal. Serve the beer, keep out of the way, smile, and pretend like you don’t hear or see any of the illegal stuff going on. Her role also made it easier to avoid eye contact with Angel. She was, for lack of a better word, furniture. It hadn’t been completely the same in Charming, though. There, she’d been far from the regular hangaround, and her status as family made it near impossible for her to be a croweater – god knows, Juice had tried, in his day. The memory of the biker made her frown in sadness for a second, before she shook herself, and served a round of whiskey to a Riz, Creeper and Angel; accepting a shot herself.

“Oh yeah. That scrawny guy, Rat, brought something you forgot at their clubhouse”, Riz said. He handed her a leather-bound journal. Nina sighed when she took it from him. She hadn’t as much forgotten it, as left it behind; telling herself it was by accident. Opening it was always a strange mix of warm emotions and pain. “Thanks”, she muttered. “Is it a diary, or something?”, Creeper asked. “It’s… yeah, something like that”. “Yours? Like; dear diary. Today I drank too much tequila, and lost my panties…”, he jeered. Getting a little tired of Creepers attitude, she smirked at him. “More like; dear diary. Today, a stupid ass biker kept bringing up an embarrassing drunk-story; so, I shot him in the head…”. Her heart dropped as she said the final words, and she cleared her throat. Riz and Creeper laughed at what they found to be a great come-back, while Angel seemed less amused, as he examined her face. She gave them all a strained smile. “I’m gonna go get some air. Leave you gentlemen to it”, she said, grabbed the journal, a cigarette and a lighter, and hurried out of the clubhouse.

Once outside, she went over to the cage she’d been told the club settled their internal arguments in. It was cooler now, and the sky was full of stars. She went inside the cage, and sat down on the ground; lighting her cigarette, before opening the journal. For a long moment, she just sat there, looking at the picture fastened to the inside of it; of two young boys, smiling. The youngest one was sitting on the back of a pony, that the older one was holding the reins of.

“You want me to kick Creep’s ass for you?”. Nina looked up at Angel, who’d followed her outside. He stepped inside the cage, and leaned against the fence. “I’ll fuck him up. I don’t care if he is a brother”. “No, it’s fine. He was just joking around”, Nina replied. Angel sauntered towards her slowly. “He’s trying to get in your pants, querida”, he said. “Well, add enough tequila to the equation, maybe he’s got a shot”. She raised a brow at the tall biker. “Ouch… Moving on so soon, cuervo?”, Angel said with a slight smile. “Jealous?”, she teased. “Always”, he replied – exactly as she’d hoped – and sat down next to her.

For a long moment, all that could be heard was the sound of cicadas. Angel ran a finger over the picture of Abel and Thomas. “These your kids?”, he asked quietly. “No… But, they’re family. Sort of”, Nina replied. “You got kids?”. “I fucking hope not”, Angel grinned. “I’d just screw them up”. “You’re not so bad”, she said, and nudged him with her shoulder. “Mind telling my pap that?”. Nina raised a brow at him, not wanting to push him to talk about something he wasn’t comfortable with. He took the journal out of her hands, and looked at the two smiling boys in the picture. “Family, you know. Shit… My old man looks at EZ like he’s the sun and moon combined. Me… I’m the fuckup. Even more now, that I dragged his golden boy in to the club”. “EZ’s a big boy. He makes his own decisions… we all do, at the end of the day”, Nina said, and took back the journal. She took a few huffs of her cigarette. “You look at him that way too, you know”. “I do?”, Angel frowned. “Fuck, I hope he hasn’t noticed”. “It’s not wrong to be proud of someone worthy of it. And in spite of your… bad-boy demeanor, he seems to be proud of you as well”.

Angel pondered her words for a moment, before looking at her “Sorry, I was supposed to make you feel better. That’s why I came out here. I saw how you looked when Creeper was talking about that thing”, he said, and nodded towards the journal. “It’s ok”, Nina said, and closed it; hugging it against her chest. “I’m just protective of it, is all”. “Like with the helmet?”, he asked. Nina nodded. “You wanna tell me about it?”. “What?”, she whispered. “Those kids… Whoever you got that helmet from… Why we’re sitting on you here, like you’re under witness protection or something…?”. He nudged her shoulder like she had his, and smiled a little. His expression was warm, like he actually cared about what she had to say. The closeness between them felt dangerous, at the same time as it felt perfectly safe, and right.

Nina took a breath, and was about to shrug him of – give him some half story, about being friendly with SAMCRO – when she met Angel’s eyes. His gaze was earnest; trustworthy, even. “The helmet used to belong to my… someone I used to be really close to. Those are his kids in the picture…”, she said. “I’m holding on to this until they get older. He asked me to give it to them when they're old enough to read it”. “And he died?”, Angel said. “Crashed his bike into an oncoming truck…”, she said. “Shit… I’m sorry. Who was he to you?”. Nina sighed, and smiled softly. “The sun and moon combined”, she said. “Your brother?”, Angel asked confusedly. “Not biologically”, Nina chuckled. “But he took care of me. Treated me like a sister. After he died, the club still kept me close, like family”. “So, you have a whole club of family back in Charming. Why leave?”, Angel asked. Nina’s throat instantly went dry, and she looked at the ground. “A bad break-up”, she replied, her voice breaking. “I needed a fresh start”. Angel didn’t question her; merely seemed to accept her words for truth, and moved on.

They sat in silence for a moment longer, before he suddenly looked like he was beginning to put two and two together. “Your… brother. He was SAMCRO…”. She nodded. “And he crashed headfirst into a truck”. “Yeah…”, Nina whispered, the air thick with the truth being exposed. “Holy shit… I fucked Jackson Teller’s baby sis!”, Angel exclaimed. Nina felt her stomach churn at his words. “That’s like… royalty! I should get my dick silvered or something”. Nina stubbed out her cigarette. “If he was still around, he’d probably do it himself; while it was still attached to you”. Angel winced. “Shit, yeah. That man had a reputation. He was like the boogeyman to Mayan prospects in my day. I heard that one time, he shot a guy in both legs for pinching some hangaround chick’s ass”. “He didn’t shoot him, he just broke all his fingers”, Nina muttered. Angel’s eyes widened. “That was your ass, huh…”, he said, more as a statement, than a question. “It wasn’t Chucky, was it? Is that why he’s got those…”. He wiggled his fingers in the air. “No… That was something else…”, Nina replied. “Jax wasn’t just that, though. He was a good man”. Angel nodded. “Yeah, I heard that, too”. He studied her face for a long moment. “You loved him”, he said, finally. “Like, loved him”. Nina looked confusedly at him, before she caught his meaning. “What? No…! He was family. Just that”, she replied truthfully. Angel smiled crookedly. “Good. It ain’t easy fighting a ghost over a girl”, he said.

Nina felt a smile tug at her lips, but wasn’t ready to be sweet-talked by the guy who’d openly admitted she was a one-night stand, just the day before. “I thought we agreed what this was…”, she said. “Did we? I didn’t agree to anything”. He raised his brows at her, and smiled wryly. “What happened to consent?”. “That’s not how that works”, Nina laughed. “Let’s agree to disagree about that, ma'”, Angel said. Nina sighed deeply. “You told Bishop; we fucked, yeah. But… “. Angel looked taken aback. “Are you like my brother or something? Do you remember everything?”. “I remember that”, Nina said, a slight edge to her voice. Angel frowned at her. “You never considered maybe I was about to say; we fucked, yeah. But I like this girl? Or; this girl is different?”. “You were probably about to say; she gives good head”, Nina scoffed. “You don’t know me well enough to like me, or think I’m special”. “We could change that”, Angel said. “Spend some time together… I get that you’re just passing through, and that you kind of belong to another club, because of this thing with Teller, but…”.

Nina felt a sudden rage bubble through her. “I’m not a goddamn trophy!”, she hissed. “You don’t get to use me like some big fuck you to SAMCRO, for tapping one of their girls. Fuck that!” “That’s not what I’m saying", Angel said. Nina got to her feet and backed away from him. Her breath was catching, and she felt an oncoming asthma-attack. She often got them when got upset, but couldn’t find it in herself to calm down. “Don’t try to bullshit me. I know guys like you; measuring your pride in the amount of pussy you can get to climb on the back of your bike”. She didn’t realize the harshness of her words, before she saw Angel’s expression. He got on his feet himself, and looked at her with hard eyes. “You should be careful sitting out here, Nina" he said, and looked at the cage-fence surrounding them. “Someone might thing you’re gunning for a fight". While Nina stood frozen in place, he walked out of the cage, and got on his bike; driving out of the lot.

“Fuck!”, she growled at herself, and stumbled towards the trailer. Once inside, she scrambled to find her inhaler, and took a hit; feeling her lungs return to normal function. “Fuck…”, she repeated, and collapsed on the cot; clutching the journal in her arms.

---

#angel reyes #angel reyes fic #angel reyes x oc #mayans mc #mayans mc fic #ez reyes #coco cruz

[itsadamcole]

all i want (for christmas) pt. 2

fem!reader x roderick strong

a month has passed since Christmas Eve. roderick had done everything he could to make up for leaving five months ago, including introducing her to his son. now it’s time for reader to make her decision with roddy

word count: 1.5k+

warnings: fluffy, kinda nsfw

— and here’s part two. i really liked this series and i’m proud of it. i hope y’all liked it too —

masterlist || part 1 || request an imagine here

***

It's been a month since Christmas Eve. It's now January 24th. Exactly a month since that night you stood outside with Roderick and told him you'd give him a chance to fix things between you and him.

He's done what he could. He's introduced you to Troy, who is the cutest thing ever.

The night that Roderick brought Troy back to the house, Troy spent the night in bed with you and Roderick. After Roderick put the presents under the tree, of course. Marina dropped them off at some point and hid them in the extra bedroom.

Troy woke up the next morning, excited to get presents. You smiled as Roderick helped unwrap presents with his son. Roderick smiled as you helped Troy unwrap a few as well.

After Christmas, Troy asked you to play with him and his new toys. You happily accepted and you spent hours playing with his toys. Roderick even joined in.

After two weeks with you and Roderick, Marina picked him up. Her and Roderick figured out a system in the four months you were apart from Roderick.

Roderick would get weekends and Wednesdays with Troy. Marina would drop him off Tuesday night and pick him up Thursday morning. The same thing would happen on the weekends. She'd drop Troy off Friday nights but pick him up Sunday nights.

It's a Monday when you wake up on January 24th. No Troy today. You told yourself that you'd give yourself one month to figure out if Roddy had done enough to fix things with you. Today was one month.

Carefully, not to wake Roderick, you slip out of bed and walk downstairs to make coffee. You pour yourself a cup and sit on the couch with it. You sit curled up as you sip off your coffee.

Roddy has certainly tried his best to make up for walking out instead of staying and talking. He's apologized several times, he's made sure you spent time with Troy, and he's made sure that you've properly met Marina. Marina even backed up Roddy's story about how it's been over since they decided to split two years ago.

You've even made the point to show that you fully trust Roddy in case he still had any doubts in his mind that you didn't trust him.

Things seemed to slowly be falling back into place with you and Roderick, but now there was a three-year-old involved in the relationship and you don't know how to handle a three-year-old. Especially a three-year-old that wasn't yours.

Sighing, you take a sip of your coffee as you hear footsteps coming down the steps. You look back over the back of the couch to see Roddy in his Undisputed Era t-shirt and pajama pants.

This is a sight you love and wish you could see every morning.

The messy hair, the sleepy eyes. Roddy makes the just waking up appearance look good.

"Good morning," Roderick says. "Where's the coffee?"

You smile and say, "The kitchen. It should still be warm. I just made some."

He nods and shuffles to the kitchen. You giggle and get up, walking into the kitchen. You put your cup down on the counter beside Roddy and wrap your arms around his waist from behind.

While you've never officially gotten back together in the past month, you've still hugged him like this and cuddled him. Roddy promised he wouldn't kiss you until you made your decision or until the two of you talked about starting the relationship again.

Roddy sips his coffee and says, "Now it's a good morning." You smile and look up at him.

"Seeing me didn't make your morning good?" you ask, teasing him. "Ouch. That stings."

He laughs and takes another sip before he turns in your arms, putting his coffee on the counter next to yours. "I wasn't fully awake but now that I've had my coffee, I'm fully awake, and now that I've seen you, my morning is perfect."

You giggle again as he wraps his arms around your shoulders. Normally this is when you'd kiss him good morning.

"So," you say. "I've been thinking while I've been drinking my coffee."

Roddy says, "Uh oh. I hope you were thinking about something good."

You smile and say, "I have been. I've been thinking about us and how you've done what you could to make up everything."

He looks down at you and asks, "And?"

You sigh and say, "And I'm terrified to be a part time parents to Troy but I want to try again at the relationship thing."

Roderick smiles and says, "So I've made it up to you."

Nodding, you say, "You have, but is Troy okay with having me as a part time parent?"

"Troy loves you," Roddy says. "When I took him out to get McDonald's the other day, he was saying how much fun he has with you when you play with his toys with him. I asked him what he thought about you being his stepmom and he said that he was happy. He thought you were going to be a mean stepmom like in Disney movies but he thinks you're nice."

You smile as Roderick talks about what Troy was saying. All your fears begin to wash away as Roddy talks.

Once Roderick's done talking, you say, "I'm glad that's what Troy thinks. What do you think about me being a part time parents to your son?"

Roddy says, "You're a natural when it comes to Troy considering I just sprung him onto you. Um, I can see us maybe having our own baby one day and giving Troy a brother or sister. I thought about us becoming a family. I only saw you when I thought about having a family with someone else."

You stare up at Roddy and say, "So let's start a family one day. I'm not saying let's go get me pregnant right now but let's do the relationship thing again."

Roderick asks, "Are you completely sure? Because this time I'm not walking away and you're not leaving because I don't let you."

Giggling, you say, "I'm sure. One hundred percent su-"

Before you can finish the sentences, Roddy's lips crash to yours. You gasp lightly into the kiss but immediately kiss him back.

This feels good. It feels good to kiss Roddy after five months without kissing him when you used to do this everyday. You've missed the feeling of Roderick's lips on yours.

It doesn't take long for the kiss to intensify. Both your tongues are in each other's mouths. After a few minutes of standing in the kitchen, you take Roderick's hands and walk backward toward the living room. Roddy happily follows you. The kiss doesn't break as the two of you stumble to the couch.

The only time the kiss breaks is when you push Roddy gently onto the couch. You crawl onto his lap, straddling his waist. Your lips quickly connect to his again, like a magnet. Your lips move quickly and roughly against Roddy's. Roddy's kisses are full of hunger, and so are yours.

You've wanted this for months. Especially the past month. Now that it's happening, you're hungry for more.

Subconsciously, you start to grind against Roderick. Your clothes core rubbing against his crotch area. Moans escape both your lips and Roddy's as you move your hips. His hands rise a bit so they're resting on the sides of your breasts before moving to your back.

Roderick pulls back from the kiss and says, slightly out of breath, "We better stop before it goes any further. Let's not rush this, Y/N."

You nod, agreeing with him. "I agree with that," you say. "How about an all day movie marathon and cuddles?"

He smiles and says, "I can agree to that."

You go get snacks while Roddy puts on Disney Plus. You put all the snacks on the coffee table in front of the couch before you crawl over Roddy so you're laying been Roderick and the back of the couch. Your leg is thrown over his waist and your head on his chest.

As you watch Cinderella, you lay cuddled up to Roddy. Occasionally you'll leave a soft kiss to his chest and he'll kiss your forehead or the top of your head instead.

Because you can't reach the snacks, Roddy grabs you what you want. Sometimes he pull it back so you have to fight for your snack. You'll give him puppy eyes and he'll give in, giving you the snack.

You smile as you lay with Roddy on the couch. You're happier than you have been in the past few months. You have the man you love back in your life and everything seems to be going well.

"Roddy?" you say, catching his attention.

He looks down at you and asks, "What's up?"

You peck his lips before you say, "I love you."

Roderick smiles and pecks your lips in return before he says, "And I love you, Y/N."

#roderick strong imagine #roderick strong fluff #wrestling imagine #wrestling fluff #wwe imagine #wwe fluff #imagines #imagine #fluff #christmas imagine #fluffmas

[hiccanna-tidbits]

5, 6, 7 & 8 for OTP asks with Hiccanna!!

HELL YEAH BRO

Soulmate AU: Who is eager to meet their soulmate? Who absolutely does not want to meet their soulmate?

Anna, hopeless romantic and “true love” fanatic that she is, is incredibly down to meet her soulmate. One of her biggest fears is being inherently unlovable and that no one will ever love her for who she is (parents dying and sister shunning you has to leave some abandonment issues babyyyy), so she takes a lot of comfort in the idea of a soulmate--at least one person is basically certain to love her, right?

Hiccup, meanwhile, is apathetic at best and annoyed by the idea of a higher power dictating who his girlfriend is at worst. Unlike Anna, he doesn’t really fear no one will ever really love him for who he is--rather, he just accepts it as fact. Growing up with no friends and an emotionally-distant father, Hiccup came to believe that he was never going to feel the kind of deep, boundless love he’d seen between other people--and he made his peace with it. Being a more introverted scientist and inventor-type, Hiccup tends to spend a lot of time alone anyways and believes (maybe not fully accurately) that he prefers it that way. Besides, the logician in him thinks the whole “magic cosmic soulmate” thing is probably bullshit, and he just can’t figure out how something like soulmates could ever be backed or supported by modern science. Ultimately, Hiccup figures he’s going to date who he’s going to date (if he can even find any girls who are interested, that is), and he really couldn’t care less what the stars have to say about it.

When Hiccup and Anna do finally meet, and eventually start dating (knowing how shy and awkward they’d both be about confessing, it would take months to years after them meeting to actually get together, even in a goddamn soulmate AU), it isn’t revealed that they’re soulmates right away. Maybe it’s revealed by their hearts glowing a certain color when they first realize they’re in love with the other person? Idk. 

When Anna finds out they’re soulmates, she’s absolutely stoked. Like the girl probably runs around their home for a solid 15 minutes planning a soulmate reveal party or something. Hiccup, meanwhile, is just kind of like “Oh! Neat!” and then immediately goes back to whatever he was doing XD

Anna is a bit hurt that Hiccup is so, ah...unconcerned about them being literally destined to be together. She’s mainly worried that it means that he doesn’t like...cherish their connection enough and whatnot. After he picks up on the fact that she’s kind of upset about his definitive lack of a strong reaction to the whole thing, he explains to her that he didn’t really care because he’d 100% date Anna whether or not she was his soulmate. Saying their souls were deeply connected was basically just putting a formal title on what he already knew.

And Anna has to take a minute, because honestly? Hiccup confidently saying he’d be with her in any reality, even one where he risks angering cosmic forces to do so, is actually much more romantic than them being supposedly “fated for each other” since the beginning.

Single parent AU: Which one is the single parent? (Alt. if they’re both single parents: Which one is open to starting a new relationship from the start? Which one is never planning on finding love again… Until they meet the other and are instantly smitten?)

I think I’ll have Zephyr and Nuffink be the single parent kids because I Just Think They’re Neat! That, and I honestly can’t bear to make lovechildren for Anna with anyone but Hiccup XD (those of you who know me will know making Krist/anna lovechildren in any context is RIGHT OUT).

So in this AU things didn’t work out with Astrid and Hiccup is pretty heartbroken over it :( I imagine she ultimately left him because she wasn’t really feeling the spark anymore, and they have joint custody of the kids. Meanwhile, Hiccup and Anna were neighbors growing up, and were pretty close friends as kids until Anna moved away and they lost touch. She eventually comes back to their hometown as an adult, and she and Hiccup reconnect. They’re also both like “ah shit, my old buddy got HOT” XD

I actually think Anna and Zephyr would really hit it off, mainly because Anna sees a lot of what she loves the most about Hiccup in Zephyr. Zephyr has Hiccup’s anxiety, cynicism, inventive streak, overall social awkwardness--and because Anna knows Hiccup so well and knows how to best accommodate all of his quirks and oddities, it’s not hard for her to extrapolate how best to befriend a younger version of him XD Zephyr, meanwhile, has had trouble befriending kids her age due to her bluntness and general “nerdiness,” so she’s always happy to find someone who accepts her unconditionally and takes a genuine interest in her wacky inventions--even if it’s her dad’s new girlfriend, who by all accounts should be a weird person for her to get close to XD Zephyr also devours science books like they’re going out of style, and is very pleased that Anna is more than happy to listen to her ramble on and on about random science trivia. Zeph still loves her biological mom, for sure, but she starts thinking of Anna as a second mom. She brags to all the kids at school that she has two moms, which leaves them very confused and wondering if Astrid ended up marrying another woman after she divorced Hiccup (which, to be fair, wouldn’t be entirely out of character).

Nuffink, meanwhile, is a little more unsure about the whole situation, if mainly because I headcanon him as a bit of a mama’s boy. He doesn’t dislike Anna so much as he’s just...wary of her, and doesn’t know how to feel about his dad falling in love with someone who isn’t his mom. He also can’t help but feel out-of-place when he, Zephyr, Hiccup, and Anna go out on “family outings” because he kind of looks like he doesn’t belong. With her reddish-brown hair, her blue eyes, her aundance of freckles, and her fondness for wearing twin braids, Zephyr could definitely pass as Anna’s daughter (I’ve even seen Anna used as an older version of Zephyr in video edits, which is hilariously ironic). Although Nuffink has his dad’s eyes, he very much has his biological mom’s hair and doesn’t look like he’s related to Anna at all.

I think what helps them finally bond is that they both have a love of combat! Nuffink definitely does some kind of martial arts or fencing training if he can access it, and Anna is more than happy to teach him some swordplay and spar with him if he wants! Because Sword Anna is best Anna, fight me. Nuffink is also open-minded enough that hey, if his cool big sister likes someone that much, she can’t be that bad. Hiccup is just...continually super impressed with how much Anna knows about fighting--and it makes him fall all the more in love with her, because he loves that in a woman XD Once Nuffink warms up to Anna, he’s constantly trying to impress her ith how tough he is--mostly shown by him ramming his head into walls. Poor Anna worries about Nuffink a lot XD

I imagine there’s a little bit of tension between Anna and Astrid in this AU. Not really because Astrid resents Hiccup moving on--she’s actually pretty happy for Hiccup that he found someone better suited for him than her--but more because she worries Anna is trying to replace her as the kids’ “true mom” XD Anna, meanwhile, can’t help but resent Astrid a little for breaking Hiccup’s heart and doesn’t get why they kids can’t just have two moms! The more people who love them, the better, right???

I don’t imagine Anna and Hiccup having any biological kids in this AU, because I think two stepkids would be plenty for Anna! Of course, since Zephyr and Nuffink are Hiccup’s, she loves them with all her being and tries to be the best stepmom she can be. But I think having more than two kids would stress Anna’s ADHD ass the fuck out, and she doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who would feel a need to have biological kids with Hiccup if she already had Nuffink and Zephyr to parent. Our girl is perfectly happy adopting!

Doctor AU: Which one is the longsuffering doctor? Which one is the patient?

Hiccup is the long-suffering doctor, although not entirely by choice. Often he wonders if being a doctor is actually what he wanted, but his dad was like “WELL SON! YOU’RE SMART, SO YOU GOTTA BE A DOCTOR SO YOU MAKE BIG BUCKS!” (I’m headcanoning in this AU Stoick is a professional athlete of some kind, and has made BANK since he was young. He can’t really conceive of his son NOT pursuing a well-paid profession). Hiccup doesn’t really want to disappoint his rather intimidating dad, so he goes along with it.

It’s not that he dislikes it, when all is said and done. He does care about people and wants to help them, although he hides it underneath about 10 layers of snark. Still, it’s stressful and thankless work, and often he worries about whether he took the right path. Too late to pursue something else now, he supposes.

Then he meets Anna, rushed to the ICU with a collection of third-degree electrical burns. She tried to plug all of her Christmas light strings into the same power strip, and uh...it did not go well. Hiccup is there monitoring her vitals when she wakes up, and she just kind of wearily sighs and admits to him that living on her own wasn’t nearly as fun or exciting as she thought it would be. As it turned out, Anna had insisted she could be trusted with putting up her apartment’s holiday decorations, and she very much should not have been.

Anna ends up having to stay a couple weeks. She needs a small skin graft (yeah, she fucked herself up THAT bad), and then needs a bit of time for the surgery wounds to heal. Hiccup is assigned to do checkups on her regularly, and starts to look forward to it. Her perky disposition (despite being stuck in the hospital with burn wounds) is contagious, and she never fails to make him laugh after a long, draining shift. As stressful as his job is, Anna becomes his one respite.

He has to admit, it’s nice to have at least one thing to look forward to.

Hiccup is a little sad to see Anna go. Of course, bumbling, socially awkward foot-in-mouth fool that he is, he doesn’t have the courage to ask for her number so they can keep in touch. That would, uh...probably be unprofessional or something. Besides, it would probably crush his heart and soul if she was weirded out by his soft spot for her so like...maybe best not to even open himself up to the possibility.

Then, not two weeks later, Anna shows up at the hospital again--this time having broken three bones in a hiking accident. Apparently she got too excited about a particularly nice view, and toppled right off the top of a very steep bluff. He, once again, takes on her care, and is delighted (albeit guiltily) to have her back. He, once again, has something to make work not suck as much!

Oddly enough, this turns out to be the first of many hiking accidents. Anna comes in next month claiming to have nearly burned her arm off in a rogue campfire, and then again the next month claiming to have been mauled by a bear (although Hiccup is pretty sure those bleeding gashes were just left by a very big dog, and Anna is too embarrassed to admit it). Odder still, Hiccup distinctly remembers talking to Anna during her first hospital stay about how much he loved hiking and the outdoors, and now all of her new string of injuries just happen to be hiking-related. He can’t help but be baffled about how her insurance even covers all of this, but apparently having a family lineage distantly related to Norwegian royalty has its perks.

On roughly her 7th hospital stay, Hiccup finally gathers up the courage to ask Anna for her number, if only because he figures it would be nice for them to see each other without Anna having to nearly get herself killed first every time XD

Bodyguard AU: Who is the bodyguard? Who are they protecting? Which one is secretly pining for the other?

OMIGOD SO

I HAD AN IDEA FOR THIS

What if Anna was sent to bodyguard Hiccup in an AU where Arendelle is a lot more militaristic???

Basically what I'm thinking is that this is in an alternate timeline, Hiccup didn't injure Toothless's tail when he shot him down. The beginning of HTTYD plays out the same, but Toothless can still fly and just yeets off after Hiccup frees him, supposedly never to be seen again. However, this still leads Hiccup to believe he may not be dragon-fighting material after all. The poor boy still yearns to find a way to prove his worth to Berk, though.

As Hiccup gets older, his strength doesn't really improve, and it becomes clear to Stoick that he's always going to be pretty scrawny. Because of this, he's hesitant to put Hiccup in dragon training for the sake of his son's own safety--and hey, Hiccup seems to have lost interest in dragon-fighting anyhow, so it's not like Hiccup will fight him on it. Nonetheless, the dragon raids are getting worse, and Stoick worries about Hiccup being able to protect himself at all. Knowing most of the older villagers are busy with dragon-fighting and other jobs, and honestly doubting any of the village's teenagers would protect Hiccup if push came to shove, Stoick sends out an appeal of sorts to neighboring villages and kingdoms requesting a bodyguard for his skinny disaster of a son.

Back in Arendelle, shut-in princess Anna is surprised yet intrigued when a messenger from the Viking village of Berk shows up at Elsa's coronation. In a timeline where Hans and Anna don’t have their chance encounter, Hans sets his wooing sights on the newly-crowned Queen Elsa (and fails), and no push ends up being strong enough to make Elsa lose control of her powers at the ceremony. Anna, however, still feels hurt by her sister’s seemingly reasonless rebuke earlier in the evening and finds herself aching to explore the world outside her castle and be close with someone--anyone--again.

When the Viking messenger requests a bodyguard for the Chief of Berk’s son, Anna is quick to volunteer. The messenger scoffs at first, but to his surprise, the soft-looking princess isn’t entirely unqualified. She filled many of her long, empty childhood hours training with the Arendelle guard, and her swordplay is admirable. To prove her worth, Anna faces off with one of the Berkian warriors in a duel--and holds her own shockingly well. While Queen Elsa is hesitant to let her sister run off to a faraway nation, Anna vehemently insists that Arendelle doesn’t need two monarchs, and this will be great for diplomatic relations in the long run. Of course, she also longs to explore and get away from the place she’s been trapped her entire life, but Elsa doesn’t need to know that part.

When Anna arrives in Arendelle, Hiccup has absolutely no idea what to make of his new bodyguard. On the one hand, a girl who’s good with a sword is hot, and he’s long since given up on Astrid anyways. On the other hand, Hiccup is definitely irked that his dad sees him as so weak and incapable that he’s the only Viking in the village who needs a full-on bodyguard, and he hates feeling like he’s being babied and coddled (not that this is Anna’s fault). Still, his bodyguard is essentially the only person who’s ever seemed to actually want to be friends with him in...well, his whole life, and honestly? He’ll take it.

Anna, meanwhile, still aching for love and connections of really any kind, is nigh-instantly smitten. His brains, his creativity, his constant snide jokes, his snark-coated good heart, his weird, messy hairdo--all of it has an 18-year-old Anna completely over the moon. Hiccup, feeling hopeless in the world of romance after being rejected by Astrid, is honestly just relieved to finally have a friend--to the point that it doesn’t even occur to him that Anna’s a girlfriend option.

Not long after she arrives in Berk, Anna is put into dragon training to prepare for raids. She does a bit of training of her own with Hiccup, teaching him some swordplay to try and boost his confidence. It’s not hard to tell that he has mixed feelings about having to have a protector, and Anna hopes that by teaching him some basic fighting skills he can at least feel a little better if he’s ever in a situation where she isn’t there to defend him.

As she gets deeper into her dragon training, Anna asks Hiccup why he never gave dragon training a go. Granted, him being as physically small as he is would be a disadvantage, but he could still learn to hold his own decently well using speed and stealth. It would help him be able to protect himself, if nothing else. Hiccup seems very reluctant to talk about the whole subject, but he says Anna needs to trust that he knows he can’t kill dragons. He tends to give the shortest answers possible to her questions, and nigh-instantly changes the subject. When Anna presses too much, he gets snippy.

As they get closer, Hiccup finally opens up to Anna about the time he shot down a Night Fury and couldn’t bring himself to make the final kill. He admits to cutting the creature free, and how the dragon nearly killed him--only to spare Hiccup just as Hiccup had spared him. “I saw more than just a ruthless killer when I looked into that dragon’s eye,” Hiccup tells her. “I saw myself. I think there’s so much more to them than anyone knows, but...you’re the only person I feel like would actually give me the benefit of the doubt on that.”

During the next raid, Anna pays closer attention to the dragons than before. She watches how they interact with the villagers, and notice that they never seem to go out of their way to go after people. They only fight Vikings when Vikings initiate, and the dragons’ main concern always seems to be taking sheep and fish. Left to their own devices, they don’t seem to want to hurt anyone.

Unfortunately, Anna standing off to the side and trying to watch what all the dragons are doing leaves her distracted--and vulnerable. She’s not prepared for a camouflaged changewing to melt out of the wall behind her, whipping around and backing her into a corner. Anna grabs for her sword but can hardly move, frozen in terror as the massive dragon stares her down.

She holds up an arm, bracing herself for a wall of fire, but none comes. There’s a swish of wings and a gust of wind blows her back. When she looks up, the dragon is gone.

It would’ve been beyond easy for the dragon to kill her. The creature clearly saw her--could have taken advantage in her moment of frozen stupor and burned her to a crisp. And yet...the dragon spared her. Just like the Night Fury had spared Hiccup.

Anna realizes Hiccup might be onto something.

Together, Hiccup and Anna decide they’re going to get to the bottom of what dragons are really like--and why they’re stealing the village’s food. While claiming to go out for “battle practice,” Hiccup and Anna track down dragons and study them in secret--observing them, writing about them, seeing how they behave and how they interact with one another. They’re surprised by what they see: left to their own devices, dragons are good-natured and compassionate, and they take care of their own. Strangely, they never seem to feed the stolen food to their young. Hiccup predicts they’re not actually keeping it for themselves, and taking it somewhere nigh unreachable for humans. For what actual purpose is anyone’s guess.

Anna starts using the info she gathers observing dragons with Hiccup in dragon-training. She finds ways to sooth them and calm them down in the ring by using things they seem to enjoy in the wild. Scented grass, bits of fish, soft touches, slow, gentle movements. The village marvels at her newfound skills, and can’t help but wonder where she developed such a knack for controlling dragons despite spending basically all her time around “Stoick’s little runt.” She couldn’t be training with him, of all people...could she? Astrid, for one, is definitely none too pleased about her spot at the top of the class being threatened.

Meanwhile, Anna and Hiccup can’t help but grow fond of the dragons they watch. They start becoming more bold, and leaving snacks of trout and mutton for the scaled creatures. Anna is delighted when the food ends up attracting none other than what she’s pretty sure is the same changewing who spared her, as well as a curious snaptrapper. She’s never gotten to see a snaptrapper up close before, and is completely undeterred by the triple-jawed four heads. Rather, she is far more preoccupied with coming up with the perfect name for each head.

“Omigod, he’s so PRETTY! And he smells like CHOCOLATE!”

“...you know they probably emit that scent to lure in prey so they can slice it in three, right?”

“CHOCOLATE, HICCUP!!!”

With each new meal, the local dragons grow more and more comfortable with Hiccup and Anna. After a while, the changewing and the snaptrapper even let Anna touch their noses. Anna falls in love with watching the changewing seem to melt around the forest as she camouflages, and rolling in the mud with the snaptrapper after a summer storm. Hiccup starts catching what seems to be glimpses of the Night Fury he freed, and it appears that the curious creature has come back to investigate him.

The Night Fury appears more and more, drawn in by Hiccup’s trout feast. Hiccup notices the dragon’s wing is injured, likely shot by someone from the village. Although he’s not completely helpless, he’s having trouble. Hiccup sets to work on his most daring project yet--making a “brace” of sorts that can mend the ripped wing.

When Hiccup and Anna attempt to distract the Night Fury long enough to climb up and put the wing brace on, something unexpected happens. The dragon shoots up to the sky, both unwitting passengers clinging onto his tail for dear life.

Once they get their bearings and clamber up to his back, the Night Fury (who Hiccup has nicknamed “Toothless” for his retractable teeth) takes them on a flight through the clouds. Unable to help herself, Anna laces her arms around Hiccup’s waist--if only so she can supposedly “hold on better.”

Hiccup, of course, still doesn’t get it.

The flight takes a sinister turn when Toothless takes them to the dragon nest, and Hiccup finally gets his answer about where all of the villages food has been going--to their queen. Unsure what to do or how to free their new friends from the Red Death, Hiccup and Anna promise each other one thing or sure--none of the rest of Berk can know about the dragon nest. If they attack it, it spells disaster for both dragons and Vikings--not to mention the question of how they got there is sure to dig up their secret dragon-related activities as of late.

With each dragon raid, Anna finds herself more and more reluctant to fight dragons--especially now that she knows what’s actually going on. She only does the bare minimum to protect the food and the village, never going out of her way to attack a dragon or landing a killing blow (although by this point, she’d definitely be skilled enough to). During one particularly intense raid, Anna is finding it harder and harder to fend dragons off without doing lethal damage. While driving out a particularly tenacious monstrous nightmare, Anna happens upon the same changewing she’s befriended in the forest, limping to safety.

It would be incredibly easy to finish the dragon off, but Anna refuses. The dragon knows she’s beat, and so Anna lets her leave without so much as a swing of the princess’s sword.

Unfortunately, Astrid sees.

After the raid, Astrid storms up to Anna and chews her out in front of the whole village, yelling about how weak she was to not go for a dragon kill when she had the chance. It turns out Astrid’s also been noticing Anna going intentionally easy on the dragons, and how much the Arendelle princess seems to hold back when fighting him. Astrid knows it’s not physical incompetence, or a lack of skill--she’s seen Anna subdue plenty of dragons in training.

No, it seems to be the princess’s heart that’s weak. Her kingdom must be nothing but a bunch of bleeding-hearted morons, and she’ll never be tough enough to really belong in Berk.

As he watches Astrid yell and the Berkians all turn to sneer at the scene, Hiccup feels a sudden rush of protectiveness for his friend. Tears are starting to form in the corners of her eyes, and something gives in him seeing her subjected to the very ostracization that left him completely alone for so many years.

He walks up beside Anna, and suddenly he’s shouting like he’s never quite had the courage to before.

“You’re wrong, Astrid! You’re all wrong!”

Before long, he’s spilling everything--how dragons are intelligent and caring creatures, how they’re only stealing food to feed a ruthless queen, how he’s sure humans have killed far more dragons than vice versa. The village stares, horrified. When Stoick storms forward, Hiccup and Anna know it’s nothing good.

Stoick is disgusted. The very bodyguard he had brought all the way out to Berk to give his son strength did nothing but fill Hiccup’s head with softness and dangerous lies. He banishes Anna, warning her never to set foot in Berk or speak to his son again.

Hiccup will not have it. He says if Anna’s leaving, he’s coming with her. He’s made his choice, and he’s standing by the only person who ever really treated him with unconditional love and kindness.

“Fine,” Stoick says simply. “We’ll be rid of two traitors, then.”

Cast out from Berk, Hiccup and Anna find themselves with a new mission: Find the nest before the rest of Berk does, and take out the Red Death once and for all.

With the help of Toothless, the Changewing (who Anna has nicknamed “Flicker”), and the Snaptrapper (whose heads Anna have very creatively named Leafy, Greeny, Spiky, and Badbreath. It’s beyond Hiccup how she tells all of them apart, but she’s very adamant about which is which.), they find the dragon hive again, and attempt the impossible--attacking the queen. It seems hopeless at first, but once more and more malcontented dragons see what they’re doing, they join in and rebel.

It’s a tough fight, but the two humans and the revolting dragons come out on top. Not before the Red Death has one last hurrah, though--letting out a final, massive blast of fire that knocks Hiccup askew and sends him tumbling down into the flames. Toothless, Flicker, Anna, and the Snaptrapper dive after, and are quickly engulfed in red and orange.

Meanwhile, the Berkians have sent out ships following Hiccup, Anna, and their dragons, guessing the nest is where they were headed. By the time they get there, the fight is over--and Stoick and Gobber just manage to catch a glimpse of Hiccup plummeting into the flames.

Anna screams Hiccup’s name until the smoke burns her throat so much she can’t anymore. She remembers swooping underneath him and just managing to grab hold of his limp body before everything goes dark.

When she comes to later, it’s still dark--but she feels something soft and warm in her arms, and feels scales pressed against her back. Her arm is searing with pain, but she barely notices it as her eyes adjust to the darkness. Hiccup is curled up against her--groaning, but alive.

Not sure she’ll ever get another chance, she puts a hand on his cheek and finally tells him the truth. “I love you.”

He opens his eyes and looks, gaze shocked until a slow realization washes over him. He smiles. “I love you, too.”

They both pass out, still wrapped up in each other.

When the flames clear, Stoick sees what looks like a pile of dragons, all pressed together with their wings folded in. Slowly, they lift their wings to reveal two humans--charred in places, but alive.

Wracked with guilt, Stoick realizes he was wrong. Hiccup’s new bodyguard helped his son become stronger and braver than the chief of Berk ever imagined.

It turns out taking down the queen saved the dragons and the humans, and thanks to Hiccup, Anna, and their dragon friends, Berk will never have to worry about dragon raids again.

It turns out Hiccup’s leg and Anna’s arm didn’t quite make it out of the fire. Luckily, Gobber has always been handy at prosthetics--and Hiccup manages to make a fairly dextrous and functional metal hand for Anna. Anna is utterly delighted with how cool it looks.

After the whole Red Death incident, it’s decided that Hiccup is probably competent enough that he doesn’t need his own bodyguard anymore. Nonetheless, Anna is welcome to stay in Berk as long as she likes. And with new dragon friends and an incredibly cute new boyfriend, she’s not going anywhere anytime soon!

***

This is in reference to this post! I’ve already done these questions for Moanida. Theoretically still willing to do any questions I haven’t yet for Hiccanna and Moanida, although these were exhausting to write out so I might not give as long of answers XD

#hiccanna #hiccup x anna #anna x hiccup #hiccup #anna #otp questions #hiccup haddock #princess anna #hiccupxanna #annaxhiccup #rotbtd #rotbtfd #httyd #frozen #crossover

[miafic]

Lucas is sitting with Brad in the waiting room while Brody is in with Rian for his hour of therapy. Brad is chatting Lucas’ ear off about robotics club and how he thinks it’s so funny that he and Thrasher figured out the night before that they competed in the same robotics tournament once and had no idea that they’d later become best friends. 

Lucas has hit that post-lunch exhaustion that he knows too well, so even though he’s listening and nodding along, he feels like if he closed his eyes for about nine seconds, he could be nodding off instead. 

Then there’s muffled yelling. Lucas’ eyes drift toward the door that leads to the hallway with all of the therapy offices, and Brad stops talking immediately. Lucas glances at him and sees that he’s noticed the noise, too. 

“That’s Brody,” Brad says, getting to his feet. He looks worried. The yelling grows louder, and with a pleading look, Brad repeats, “Lucas, that’s Brody.” 

Lucas isn’t sure, but Brad looks serious. “Okay,” he nods. “Sit down, please. I’m sure it’s under control.” 

Brad obeys even though his anxiety is written across his face. 

But then the shouting gets louder and - Lucas realizes belatedly - closer. Suddenly, the door bursts open, and Brody storms into the waiting room. “-my fucking family!” he yells. 

Lucas is immediately out of his chair and moving across the space. Brody’s never been violent, but Lucas isn’t about to allow this to become the first time. 

“Hey. Hey!” Lucas calls, loud to catch Brody’s attention through his emotions. 

Brody starts toward the counselor but points back at Rian. “He’s a shit-head,” he growls. 

“Okay.” Lucas stands his ground as Brody quickly approaches him. 

“He’s asking me questions.” 

Lucas nods.

“Personal shit.” 

Lucas has to hold back a smile. “That’s his job.” 

“Well, I don’t wanna TALK ABOUT IT,” he says, his voice incredibly loud. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Lucas can see people getting up and quickly leaving the waiting room. He doesn’t blame them; if he didn’t know Brody, he’d leave, too. A woman goes over to Brad and says something, but he shakes his head says something back. She leaves. Brad stays. Lucas gives him a subtle nod.

“Brody, I’m just trying to get to know you,” Rian says patiently (Lucas gets the sense that Rian’s told Brody this about five times already). 

“What, like my step-mom tried to get to know me?” he demands, his face turning red with anger. “Or like my dad? Huh?” He turns to face Rian. “You wanna get to know me like my dad? I can arrange that.” He starts undoing his belt. 

“Brody,” Rian warns. 

“What? We’re getting to know each other,” Brody spits mockingly. He rips the belt open and reaches for the button of his jeans.

Lucas moves forward, takes Brody by both shoulders. “Enough.” 

“What the fuck do you want me to do here?!” Brody shouts at him. “You dump me in some room with a stranger, and you expect me to share my whole life story with him?”

“No.”

“Yes you fucking did! You want me to tell him everything about me so he can ‘get to know’ me. Well guess what, Lucas?! Nobody knows me! NO ONE! And I like it that way. Nobody gets to know who I am.” 

Lucas nods, just listening. This is the most he’s heard out of Brody in two entire weeks, and he’ll be damned if he isn’t going to take in every single word. 

“You think you know me, but you know this much,” he snaps, holding his thumb and pointer finger two inches apart. “That’s it! My mom is gone! She doesn’t know shit. My dad doesn’t fucking know me, and my step mom doesn’t fucking know me, and my friends? They don’t know me either.”

“Why is that?” Lucas asks calmly. 

“Because I DON’T FUCKING TRUST ANYBODY!” 

“Nobody’s given you a reason to.” 

“Yeah!” Brody takes a heaving breath and starts his list over again. “My mom’s gone! My stepmom knows what’s going on with my dad, and she does nothing. Nothing! She married a fucking pedophile, and she doesn’t give a shit! My dad’s a - a...” Brody struggles for a moment to find a word. “He’s sick in the head! And he doesn’t love us, not really! He never has! Why would he hurt us like that if he did?!” 

Lucas catches the deep pain that flashes momentarily across Brody’s face. It’s gone as quickly as it appears. 

“I don’t have anybody! Anybody! You want me to trust Zakk, and you want me to trust you, but I don’t!” 

“It’s barely been three weeks,” Lucas says calmly. “I would never expect you to trust me that quickly.” 

“Brad’s the ONLY person I have! He’s all I have!”

“Do you trust him?” Lucas asks. 

Brody nods, and he looks over at his brother across the room. And then Brody takes off toward him. “Shit, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he’s muttering urgently. He leans down when he gets close, but Brad holds his hands out to stop him from coming nearer. 

Tears are streaming down  Brad’s pink cheeks, and Lucas sees all over again how young he is. Too young, Lucas thinks to himself, but it’s too late now. And maybe it’s better for Brody to have someone instead of no one. But then again, maybe it’s not fair to Brad. He doesn’t just exist to comfort his older brother. 

“What’s wrong?” Brody asks softly. 

“You’re being scary again,” Brad whispers. 

It reminds Lucas of a movie, the way that Brody’s posture instantly relaxes. It’s like someone’s waving a magic wand, and all of his anger dissipates. Quietly, he tells Brad, “I’m done. I’m not gonna yell anymore.” 

Brad looks at him like he’s not sure whether he should believe him. 

“No more,” Brody promises, and Brad slowly sits up and leans forward. He latches loosely onto Brody and wipes at his own face. 

“Stop doing that,” Brad commands. 

“I will.” 

“No, you won’t. But you need to stop, okay? You scared everybody out of here. Look.” 

Brody pulls back and glances around the waiting room, which is now completely empty. He looks back and Brad and frowns. “Why didn’t you go with them?” 

Brad just shrugs, but even from across the space, Lucas can understand the Cause you’re my brother, written on his face. 

#brody #brad #rian #lucas #tw #hcs

[heauxplesslydevoted]

Family (Thomas x MC)

Summary: Thomas and Marissa ask Luz an important question. Inspired by my post here

Word Count: 2K

Warnings: None. I think this is pretty fluffy.

Tags: @canknot @lapisreviewsstuff @akacalliope​ @senseofduties​ @badchoicesposts​ @ao719 @princess-geek​  @chetachisblog​ @dorishi-desu  @hatescapsicum​ @annekebbphotography​ @drakewalkerfantasy​ @seriouslybadchoices @zambazeus @loilko​ @blackcoffee85​ @randomchoicesblog​ @fortunatelywaywardsandwich​

As always, let me know if you want to be tagged in my Thomas fics. And enjoy!

~~v~~

Marissa silently goes over all of her talking points one more time in her head as she walks into the ice cream parlor with Thomas and Luz. The father-daughter duo is walking ahead of her, happily talking about their sundae toppings while she’s trying not to have a panic attack.

While Ivy is away at science camp for the week, Thomas and Marissa decided that it would be the perfect opportunity to have a talk with Luz. With the wedding coming up in just over a month, they thought they’d see how Luz felt about Marissa officially adopting her.

Thomas and Marissa have talked about it at length, weighing the pros and cons, considering all possible outcomes, trying to put themselves in Luz and Ivy’s shoes. But they finally decided to stop ruminating and simply talk to Luz. She’s a smart, insightful kid. And she deserves to have her voice heard.

“You don’t want any ice cream, Marissa?” Luz asks, as she and Thomas sit back down, two hot fudge sundaes in hand.

She’s way too anxious to eat anything at this point. She’d probably throw up if she tried. “No, I’m good for now.”

“Okay, but you’re missing out,” Luz says, her voice taking on a singsong tone. 

Marissa smiles at the 10 year old in front of her. “I can tell. Your sundae looks delicious.”

“I can share it with you, if you want.”

“I just might take you up on that offer.”

A few minutes pass, and they talk happily over the bowls of ice cream. After a while, Thomas reaches under the table and squeezes his fiancée’s hand, a silent signal that they should probably start talking. She squeezes his hand back.

“So Luz,” Thomas starts, “we have the wedding coming up soon. Are you excited?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you most excited about?”

“We get to ride in a cool limo, right?”

Marissa chuckles softly. Of course the limo is the main draw for a kid. “Yes, there will be a limo. Are you and Ivy are still set to be the coolest bridesmaids ever?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well with the wedding coming up, your dad and I just wanted to...get your opinion on a few things. After your dad and I get married, I’ll become your stepmom.”

“Like Cinderella,” Luz concludes.

“I think Marissa is much nicer than Cinderella’s stepmom, though,” Thomas adds.

“I think so, too.”

“And while I’ll be your stepmom, we wanted to know how you felt about me adopting you,” Marissa says, looking Luz in the eyes. 

“What does that mean?”

“It means that Marissa won’t just be your stepmom, she’ll be your mom mom, officially,” Thomas explains. “And if anything ever happens to me, she will still be your mom, nothing can change that.”

“Is something going to happen to you?” Luz asks. A sense of panic settles into her body. “Are you dying?”

“No! No, of course not, I’m sticking around for a very long time. I was speaking hypothetically, baby.”

“Would that be something you’d be interested in?” Marissa asks.

Luz looks down at her bowl, avoiding the gaze of the two adults. Tears prick the corners of her eyes, and she blinks furiously in an attempt to get them to go away. 

She goes silent for a long while, mulling over what they just dropped in her lap. The longer she thinks about it, the more she wants to leave.

“Luz, sweetheart, can you say something?”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Luz says, her voice taking on an uncharacteristically quiet tone.

“Oh.” Thomas and Marissa share a quick look with each other before turning their attention back to Luz. “We don’t have to talk about it anymore if you don’t want to.”

Luz pushes her sundae bowl away. “I don’t feel like eating ice cream anymore. I want to go home now.”

“Are you sure?” Marissa prods. Luz doesn’t say anything back, but she nods.

Marissa wants to push further. They were having a great day and Luz was her usual bubbly self. The way she shut down concerns Marissa, but she doesn’t want to scare the young girl away by forcing her to continue a conversation she clearly doesn’t want to have.

Luz quickly wipes a tear off of her face with the back of her hand. She slides out of her seat and stares at the adults. “Can we leave now?”

For the entire ride home, the three of them sit in a tense silence. The only sounds that could be heard were the tiny sniffles Luz was making in the backseat.

And it only makes Marissa feel like the most horrible person on earth.

//

Later that night after Luz is tucked into bed, Thomas watches as Marissa gets ready for bed. She moves from their closet to their en-suite, to her bedside table and back to the closet. She’s not doing anything productive, he finds out rather quickly. She mostly just anxiously flitting from one spot to the next. “Sweetheart, can you please stop pacing?”

“I’m not pacing,” Marissa argues.

Thomas closes the book he’s reading and tosses it aside. “Come to bed.”

“Not until–”

“Come to bed, Marissa,” Thomas repeats, taking on his stern lawyer voice. Marissa stops in her tracks and looks at him, an eyebrow raised. “Yeah, I used my lawyer voice on you.”

Marissa reluctantly walks back to bed, grumbling the entire way. She gets in next to him, immediately curling into his side. Thomas wraps an arm around her waist. “You’re so bossy.”

“Tell me what’s going on in that head of yours, Day.”

“I just feel really bad about what happened today with Luz. I made her cry.”

“I don’t think you made her cry. I think the situation was stressful and that was her first reaction.”

“I just thought it would go differently,” Marissa admits. “And what if even bringing up the topic of adoption turns her against the idea of us getting married all together? What if she hates me? What if–”

“I love you,” Thomas says, cutting her off. “I love you so much, it makes my head spin sometimes.”

“I love you too.”

“And I know you love Luz.”

“Of course.” Marissa can’t possibly love Luz any more than she already does. 

Thomas kisses the top of her head, burying his face in her copper tresses. “So, we asked a question and we got our answer. We always knew there was a possibility of Luz saying no.”

Marissa sighs. She knows Thomas is right, but she still can’t settle down. After tossing and turning a few times, she gets up. “I’m going to make some tea. You want anything from the kitchen?”

“No, thank you.”

“Be back in a few minutes.”

“Okay.”

Marissa makes her way through the dark house, fumbling the entire way. Even though she’s been living here for months, it’s still a lot to learn and get used to. The house is just ridiculously large and full of fancy buttons and switches.

After flipping a few light switches in the dark, the kitchen is instantly filled with warm light. Marissa rummages through the cabinet, looking for a mug and when she turns around to head to the pantry, she nearly drops her mug in surprise.

Luz is also in the kitchen, silently sitting at their breakfast nook.

Marissa puts a hand over her beating heart. “Luz, sweetheart! You scared me.”

“Sorry.”

“What are you doing up so late?”

“I couldn’t sleep.” She holds up a pack of Oreos. “And I wanted some Oreos.”

“Are they double stuffed?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you mind if I join you?” Marissa asks. After a moment of hesitation, Luz slides over in her seat, a silent invitation for the older woman to join her. Marissa sits down and takes an Oreo as well. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

A tense silence hangs in the air and Marissa doesn’t know how to handle it. She’s always had a great relationship with Luz, and she doesn’t know how to navigate this newfound awkwardness.

“Luz, can we talk about what happened earlier? At the ice cream parlor?”

“What about it?”

“Can you tell me why you started crying? I didn’t mean to make you cry, and I want to apologize if I was the cause.”

“When you and my dad started talking about the adoption and you becoming my mom, I got sad. Because I already have a mom, and what will happen to her if you adopt me? Am I just supposed to forget her?”

And suddenly everything makes sense. Of course Luz would feel loyalty to Soledad. “Oh honey.”

“I love you, Marissa,” Luz continues. “And I’m really excited that you’re here and that you’re marrying my dad, but I don’t want to do anything that will upset my mom in heaven.”

Marissa grabs Luz’s hands tightly. “I love you too. And I want you to know that no matter what happens, Soledad will always be your mom. I will never try to replace her in your heart or erase her memory.”

“Me potentially adopting you will never change that fact that Soledad is your mother. It just means that I’ll also be your mom forever. The cool thing about love is that you don’t have to pick and choose who receives it and when. For example, I love Ivy with every piece of my heart, and I never imagined that I could love someone as much as I love her. And then this smart, tough, funny, loyal, incredibly sweet girl named Luz came along and bam! My heart instantly doubled in size and I love you just as much. I’ll always love you, and if you’re not okay with the adoption, that’s fine with me. Nothing will change about our relationship and how I feel about you.”

A tear rolls down Luz’s face, but Marissa quickly wipes it away. “Can we still keep her pictures up?”

“Of course!  We can still keep her pictures up, and we can celebrate her birthday if you want, your dad can tell you stories about her, the whole nine yards. I never want you to feel like you can’t openly love and embrace your mom because I’m around.”

Luz nods thoughtfully, taking in Marissa’s words. “Can I tell you something?”

“Anything.”

“I think my mom would really like you.”

Marissa smiles and dammit, she feels tears pricking in the corners of her eyes. “And I think that is very high praise. From what you and your dad say about her, your mom seemed like an amazing lady.”

“She was.” Luz inhales deeply. “If it’s still okay, I’m okay with you adopting me.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Marissa wraps her arms around Luz and hugs her tightly. “It’s more than okay with me.”

The two of them say locked in a tight embrace until they hear Thomas clear his throat behind them.

“What’s going on in here?” He asks.

“Just having a good, much needed talk,” Marissa says.

“I told Marissa that she could adopt me,” Luz explains.

“That’s great!” Luz nods and then stifles a yawn. “Alright, little lady, I think it’s time to go to bed.”

Luz grabs another Oreo out of the sleeve and hugs both Marissa and Thomas. “Goodnight!”

“Goodnight, sweetie!”

Once Luz is out of the kitchen and back upstairs in her room, Thomas turns to his fiancée. He walks over to her and pulls her out of her seat.

“What are you doing, mister?”

Thomas doesn’t reply, opting to kiss Marissa instead. She responds instantly, pulling him closer and threading her fingers through his hair.

After breaking the kiss, Thomas plants another one on her forehead. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I might’ve overheard most of your conversation with Luz.”

“You snoop.”

“I was told that my gorgeous fiancée would be back in a few minutes. So after a few minutes had passed, I had to see what the hold up was,” Thomas explains. “And I walked in on your talk, and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Well, I guess I can’t be too mad.”

“And listening you talk to my daughter just reaffirmed the amazing decision I made when I proposed. And I’m very lucky that you said yes.”

“You have a way with words, you charmer.”

A warm blush spreads across his cheeks and he drops his head, so Marissa can’t see. “You bring it out of me. Thank you to embracing my daughter with open arms and loving her as much as you do. I could not have asked for a better partner.” Thomas takes Marissa’s hand and examines her engagement ring. The 3-carat diamond shines brightly under the kitchen lights. “I cannot wait to marry you, Marissa Day.”

“I can’t wait to marry you either, Thomas Mendez.”

#choices: stories you play #playchoices #mother of the year #moty #thomas mendez #thomas mendez x mc

[terfhunter420]

“how ya holding up?”

This is about how I'm “holding up” how I'm “doing” and if I “need anything” as a covidclerk because so many beautiful kind amazing stellar friends and otherwise have been asking me that more times than I can muster to answer, at some points. The long story short is “fantastic!!” because that's true – every letter of the word FANTASTIC has about a million facets intertwined within them.

Betwixt grief and global pandemic there is an incredible relationship. I have been through the standard stages of grief that I wholly know – I expect to cycle through them in multiples the longer this goes on, while always growing despite/in spite – I created new stages of grief that are probably related to the new type of cognitive dissonance I have mastered, and I have re-grieved the loss of my partner due to the fact that I can feel Nhiki laughing about the most reptilian parts of all this. The word GRIEF and the place of grief is not a triggering word or a scary place, rather, a declaration of floating just above the Earth – place of rest and reflection, a powerful position to be in for action and clarity. I don't want anyone to feel unsettled approaching me knowing I am cycling through a grieving process and I don't want anyone to feel spooked that I am answering with raw emotion.

DENIAL: what denial in a pandemic setting looks like is not true denial, per se. I'm not hoaxin' out or making light of the severity of the pneumonia and organ failure and cardiac arrest perpetuated by this virus. I am trying to absorb as much new information about how the virus behaves in the body and regurgitate harm reduction practices and efforts from each piece of new study. What denial has shown itself to be for me, as time has moved on and on and on, and every day I keep showing up to work in a fucking contagion zone, and I continue to remain healthy – even though I DID get sick when this all started – the more I am (hopefully, productively) twisting what must be fear into believing that I will be okay. I will stay alive. I am not dying from this. I can FEEL the sickening aura of tremendous outsider grief, and it's not colliding with my own. Which is interesting – I am empathic, and I have isolated my own grief from the rest? Is this something I can consider a level-up, or a form of denial? Have I sharpened a tool in my coping toolbox or have I dulled one?

ANGER: there is so much and it is not harmful. I am made of fire – my heart exists on fire – I am surrounded by salty chicks because they throw salt on my heartfire – I am knives – my knives are on fire! – I have a prayer to Lord Shiva tattooed on the base of my neck and it is vibrating constantly. OM NAMA SHIVAYA  – wild destruction for the sake of wild growth. I WANT TO SEE THIS FAILED SYSTEM COLLAPSE. I MICRO/DOSE BELLADONNA TO BECOME ONE WITH THE ENTROPY. THERE IS NO FULL, CONTINUOUS UNITY and holy fuck is that scary or what! The response my own store took for basic safety measures was drip drip blackstrap molasses slow. The response the state has been unrolling has been drip drip pure unfiltered honey thick. The inappropriate responses of the TRUMP administration has been a maniacal outpouring of American vomit and bile foam. WHYYYYY of all presidents did this have to happen under this one? Well, some folks I know say it's because that's part of The Plan. I know what they're talking about. I hear them wide and clear – and it does not make sense for me to focus my energy exertion on processing the Grand Scheme of the Bourgeois and how it relates to global elite efforts. You begin saving the world one person at a time, after all. My biggest anger I have felt relates to the social conditioning that I felt like a threat to everyone around me, and everyone around me felt like an even bigger threat. That conditioning is nauseating so I have broken it.

BARGAINING: Should I keep my nails long or keep my nails short? Should I call out of work today? Should I lie about symptoms? I could keep my mouth shut at being placated or I could open it up and let the words fly out. Should I leave the cats to my mother or to a friend if I have to die? Should I spend time with this thoughtful chick? What if I cut most of my fingernails short? How do I get this guy to stop calling me a frontline hero and thanking me for my service? Can I trade spots with Nhiki for one day? What if I called out of work and said I needed a mental health day? What if I lied about symptoms just to get three days off and not two weeks off? What if I bought some scratch off lottery tickets? What if Nina met Death with me? How did I get here and how can I assure that I am never here again? HOW DO I GET OUT OF HERE?!?!? AM I TRAPPED WITH A METAPHORICAL GUN TO MY HEAD OR AM I JUST UNAFRAID? What if this is God (God is short for Good) placing me in a situation that I know I am meant for? How do I convince God (God is short for Good) that I am not meant for this? What if I convinced myself I am meant for this? Oh fuck it turns out I'm meant for this and it was insane to doubt thyself so much in the first place.

DEPRESSION & EXHAUSTION: My strongest trauma-bond is with the experience of helplessness. Living in a big helpless fury for weeks will lead to the inevitable: YANG flame snuffs and YANG must reignite itself. My candle wobbled, the YIN spilled everywhere. Now I have to carefully chip out the wick from the pool of wax, YIN poured up and out and over – tears, tears, tears – I had one night alone since this all started and I spent it in a heap on the ground full of trauma, remembering the way eyes with no life behind them roll in any direction that gravity takes 'em, being terrified that my baby would find me dead because that is the most horrific thing to go through, especially if that corpse wasn't supposed to die any time soon – tears, tears, tears – mourning the loss of our already fucked normalcy and expressing the fears of the future through screaming out to absolutely fucking no one. My face is puffy – and I need to work quick – because I'm too tired to keep going without my flame. What's that? I'm out of time?! TIME TO START TAKING TREMENDOUS AMOUNTS OF CBD. Oh god, perfect. All the serenity, without the cognitive hinderance... yeah baby, a global pandemic is what this shit was made for. At least something is made for this. Oh fuck, I have to remember I was made for this too. Not today – oh fuck, every day is today.

ACCEPTANCE: I am passionate. I am passionate for what my life means. I feel everything and everything and it is very beautiful. I love taking care of people, Nhiki taught me how to be taken care of. My life means help. My life means protection. My life means others are better from my existence – Yes – IT IS SYMBIOTIC, because that is WHAT MY LIFE MEANS. I am indeed a vessel for your sorrows and euphoria of all to flow through one side and come out the other sparkling and validated and warmed. How did I end up working in a vitamin department of a grocery store during a fucking global pandemic? HOW DIVINE THE NATURE OF TIMING – GOD IS SHORT FOR GOOD – ALL THINGS GOOD IN GOOD TIME. I assure you, dear customer, you will do everything I can so you won't die on my watch. My girls... you will not die because you are here, with me, and I love you. I have four beautiful girls in my house, and if I can keep them all fed, Dad is happy. I have a very important woman who has graced me with her presence, and if I can keep her feeling warm and smiling and appreciated, Dad is happy. The normalcy and it's failing systems can be collapsing all around me – somehow my world remains strong, remains in love, and remains standing – REMAINS GROWING AND PATIENT AND PROTECTIVE, as does my nature.

PASSIVE-AGGRESSION: I get passive aggressive at people who actively ignore the public health and safety standards imposed around me... apparently. You know I breathe in my own air for 40+ hours every week so it shouldn't be that much trouble for someone stopping by my store to do that for 40 minutes. Public Health is Selflessness. I feel like I work in an airport with the placating, gentle overhead announcements stuck betwixt the stepmom radio tracks reminding everyone of CDC guidelines and in-store signage instructions. The bright-but-not-abrasively-bright signage directing the flow of the public becomes such background noise that I almost forget it is there until I clean my glasses again or bump into it. I got a “talking to” by my bosses that I am passive aggressive. I probably am... Passive, Aggressive. This whole thing has been a balancing act between the two of these states and I think most moments I'd rather hop off that beam except I can't hop off it so it's a good thing my cautious vibe has taught me how to stay still.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: I was raised with the understanding that patience is the best virtue and the only acceptable state to operate from is “calm, cool, collected” –  my whole life I've done hard work on balancing the importance of operating from that state with the equal importance of allowing my heart-on-fire to steady burn. Since pandemic started at the grocery store I have become LOUD AND OBNOXIOUS AND DANCING AND PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE ABOUT PUBLIC SAFETY AND HIGH AS FUCK ON CANNABINOIDS and have managed to balance that with MY REQUIREMENT to stay helpful and calm and knowledgable. I do active harm reduction with people that find themselves standing in front of me and a row of incredible forces of nature, looking for the slightest of anecdote for their respiratory/immune/blood/stress systems. And, WOW, gaining that footing in this new balance within a two month period of time has not been always graceful, or easy. Cognitive dissonance was required to achieve it and that's all on my brain's capacity to immediately shift my thought flow, like I have an internal sensory overload kill-switch.

LOVE: My Glorious Baby of Buttercups. You will thrive. I am your dad. I love you. You will always eat before me. I know you know that I know Death, baby. I convene with Death eagerly, and not one morning begins without immense gratitude to Death for Just. One. More. Day. “THANK YOU DEATH FOR SPARING MY LOVED ONES OF THE TRAGEDY THAT WILL BE THE LOSS OF ME. I LOVE YOU – BOOM SHANTI!!” The tip of my iceberg-on-fire of Love is a base idea that I want to give the world everyone... because every one deserves the goodness and glory of the world, and all it has to offer. God is short for Good. Beneath that sea surface, oh my god. It is inexpressible at best, the depths of passion I hold for the well wishes of everyone who has touched my soul. I thought before this pandemic I was already grieving everyone I know and love. I was attuned to mortality salience as sharply as could be. As I continue to know and love ANYONE, the more I grieve. Grief and Love is a tandem ride, and that is the most important lesson I have ever realized. Now, the tuning has only gotten FINER – like discovering a new energy wave that is actually measurable, the edges of my sword of feeling everything all the time are thinner and shinier and more deadly – Here and Now, I am digging pits of love and sorrow for strangers like never before. Reaching new rock bed foundations of my soul's capacity to care about the world and wanting everyone to be okay. Sparkly rock-beds! The infinite vast in my grief for my family, for my chosen family, for my Eastside community, for all of my girls leaves me in awe. I am unabashedly unafraid to speak to everyone and anyone. I MAY SAY I HAVE ALL OF THE TIME – I MAY SAY THAT YOU HAVE ALL OF THE TIME – THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOU AND I HAVE ALL OF THE TIME. I refuse to squander all of this time not connecting.

And then – ohhh and then – as if Grief and Death and Life and Love have not unraveled me and twirled me back up often enough, the brightest softest Violet found herself around me, and I am stumbling, then falling, then floating for such a beauty and my grief for her is already so immense – despite all this newness, my grief for her feels ancient. Where she landed from I don't know – and where she'll go – I can't know. I think of her so gently, softly, and it turns out SHE IS GENTLE AND SOFT – so much meditation has been wishing I could more consciously grasp onto the first moment I saw her because that was the only point in time where I wasn't grieving her so immensely yet – because we caught on like my heart on fire and she can do anything she puts her mind to and she deserves to do anything she wants to do and I am privileged that it seems to be me that she wants to be held by and I'm really proud of her and I want everyone I love to meet her – sometimes it can feel really sad to be always grieving the people you love, and sometimes I question it by wondering if it pulls me away from the present – except when I realize, this practice is a mindfulness practice. GRIEF TEACHES YOU BALANCING PRESENT WITH PAST AND FUTURE BUT NOBODY ACES THESE PRACTICES ALL THE TIME, NOT EVEN DADDY.

AFTER YOU'RE GONE: NHIKI WHY DID YOU LEAVE US – OM NAMA SHIVAYA – NAM MYOHO RENGE KYO – it is always unfair (the word UNFAIR in this context is my inner child speaking) that no matter what is happening that you are not here experiencing it with me. Everything I have experienced since you left our Earthly bond (despite the beauty or despite the turmoil of it) has a permanent burnt tinge of envy of your celestial nature, with your concave shadow (this reformation of my heart) upon it. We could have pandemic'd successfully together – although we may not have known how to do this so easily as I have been without the knowledge I gained from the Death of You – now its just me and my Dad Energy digging all this out, and feeling you're just above up next to me – my missing you is so TANGIBLE it can manifest the whole energy of a room into the shape of your eyebrows, your teeth with the light from the window hitting the spit on them, your hands cracked/tracked open, or healed back shut – whatever you want. I can hear you: “You're so beautiful, Ems!” – and I can hear your bells go off and your tuning fork go off and I can feel you holding me and I can feel the REGRET IN EVERY NUCLEOUS REPLICATING WITH EACH NEW STRAND OF RNA – (REGRET HAS BEEN AN EPIGENETIC TRAIT OF MINE FOR FIVE HUNDRED AND SIXTY DAYS) – regret! about missing our night-time snuggle on our last night together! October 25 2018 was my last chance to hold you and I squandered it – because I fell asleep early – because you were high high high and the next day you finally got high enough and I am here, NOW: sometimes floating over this ground made of griefy-lovey sand dunes not wanting to use the full effort of my toes to keep my feet on the ground for too long, anymore. I do it anyway, with a full understanding of how to fix exhaustion. My grief for you is just love, with nowhere to go – and my grief is thusly my safest resting place. To wander my thoughts in my boundless love for you is to reset, relax, detach from any superficial misery and behold the most powerful thing: EVERYTHING. I remember what the soft edge of your ear feels like on the tip of my nose. I remember feeling the soft edge of your ear with the tip of my nose, and thinking, I need to remember this feeling for the rest of my life because you might not be here for it.

EUPHORIA: I grew a mustache. I left peak fertility and I have never felt more FULL of life.

CREATIVE OVERTAKING: I can see how one may deduct the opposite of “fantastic” based on the raw emotion I openly spew up and out and over. Except... thinking deeply, I couldn't feel so outwardly expressive and creatively fired if I wasn't feeling fantastic. I hold rage and serenity together, I hold grief and love together, I hold water and fire together, I hold anxiety and creativity together. Since the pandemic settled, my creative outlets have expanded into almost every thing I am up to. I made a crossword, I am making collages, I made a painting, I am wandering the neighborhood and being in awe of how lucky I am, I am making up silly songs, I am reading, I am making up love songs, I created a prettier place to sleep, I am wool felting, I am stringing my thoughts together with a new mindfulness level-up, I am etching new facets to listen with in my ears. That's the coolest part...

LISTENING: Throughout my life, I have admired most the people who can make you feel like the only person in a crowded room with how intently and wholly they listen to you. My grandparents, several grandparents. Nine times out of ten, these inspirations in the mastery of listening are people are significantly older than me. Listening is a lifelong practice, after all, so I am naturally in awe of those who have had the most time to practice. I have made it a point to cultivate this ability from an early age. Sometimes, it takes a fucking pandemic to further sharpen your coping skill tools – and your listening skills, too. I think as well, with fleetingly meeting Death more and more often as time goes on, the ability to listen more sharply naturally strengthens. Nothing is worse that not being able to remember what someone sounds like, feels like, looks like – and most importantly, their unique characteristics and mannerisms displayed when talking about something they love.

So these are the classic stages of grief and the newfound stages of grief that I am cycling betwixt and down and over and out. That may or may not answer the question of “how are you doing?” and it's the best way I can answer that one.

I get asked “how ya holding up?” and I'm wondering if that is the same inflection as the previous question, although I could take it for a spin relating to my direct physical position during these moments in time. My back hurts, but it's not terrible most days. My feet hurt, but not most days. I am fed, for most days. My menstruation got wild. My world is not collapsing, I am getting paid, the state gave me back my tax dollars and sent me a cheque for some future tax refunds of mine, I have four beautiful critters to quarantine with. I cook for them, I buy us everything we want, we get El Oasis sometimes, and I come home and the dishes are done.

I come home and the dishes are done was a thing that hadn't happened to me since my Nhiki stopped spoiling me on this plane of reality, so, it's a really special and thoughtful thing that I am treated to – and have been treated to for two months. For a long time after Nhiki left us I unconsciously stopped accepting help with physical things like bringing groceries from the car or carrying things or chores or having my food paid for or help on house maintenance and it has become a new complexity of my grieving process: to allow others to give me physical help that they believe I deserve from them, even if the thought never crossed my mind to ask. No I certainly don't have to do everything just because I don't mind doing everything. It is a special symbiosis and I have been so humbled by my baby buttercup. I love taking care of her – without feeling like I am literally taking care of her, because she loves taking care of me, without feeling like she is literally taking care of me.

Taking care of others – LOVE AND CARE is the only thing that moves me and things and time along. Time suspends when I am useless. And time suspension, well, that's a creepy fucking thing when you live majority of your consciousness on a linear plane of reality. Luckily for me there is literally/technically everyone available to love and care for. Even more luckily, I need not seek anyone. They are dancing down their own paths and those paths happen to collide with mine, and it is beautiful. How am I holding up? Um, considering I have so many fantastical souls I have the honor of caring for – I AM holding up. Not how, just am.

My boss quit our job a few days ago, and I was welcomed into her magical home. There is a deep ethereal bond between two people who have lost big loves to an untimely tragedy. Hers was five years ago – her heart aches for my measly eighteen months. My heart aches for her knowing what she's felt for so long. We talked about the guilt of waking up every day feeling good about being alive. Our loves wouldn't want it any other way, and yet... the void left behind when their suffering finally changed from theirs to ours is a big and trippy one. “Strong people” choose to fill that void with joy, we are both “strong people” although, if anyone asked us personally if we feel strong... we may disagree. Strong is the wrong word. The fact of the matter is, there is no other choice – except to crumble. And, when you are needed – when you have people to care for and attend to, the choice to crumble becomes a non-issue, a non-reality. LOVE IS EVERYTHING, and I feel everything – I am a fully feeling being. DEATH does not stop the fire that tells its story and moves within me. Absolutely not, it only makes the blues deeper and heartier, and the bright more blinding in its awe and heat. In heaven there is no heat, I've heard. Until then: I AM BURNING AND COVERED IN SALT and my business card says “Call me if your love drops dead, I know how you feel.”

The question of “do you need anything?” directed at me will only move me to flip that question back at the bearer. Do YOU need anything? Because baby, I have everything. Other than flipping the question back I tend to tell people “what I need is for you to follow the public health and safety guidelines to the best of your ability” and “stay safe” and “if you think of anything I need or want I would be honored” and I like to hope that is a creative prompt. The kind gestures and thoughtfulness I have experienced off my friends? Oh, they have taken flight with said prompt – soared! – and have filled my heart up!! Lovely!

People intuitively understand kindness, care, love, compassion. Yes these things are practices and yes they are mindfulnesses and every person still has all of this within them. This is the key understanding I try to keep at the forefront of my head, especially when protestors/outsiders storm my city to hold a Trump rally. Their anger is misdirected. Damn every safety net that was spun of illusion and damn every systemic failing that has led to a dramatic display of these human beings wearing their rifles around my downtown. Maybe because my world is so full of kindness, and love, and beauty, and patience... that I failed to remember these sorts of protests/gatherings would indeed happen the longer this shutdown went on. And HEY that’s WONDERFUL fuck remembering that.

Clearly the trifecta of my existence is LOVE and ENTROPY and MUTUAL AID – so to all of you wonderful humans who only reach out to ask me “how i'm doing” and “how i'm holding up” I want you to remember that simply you, thriving in all your glory, makes me proud to be alive and knowing you – and remember that I am constantly betwixt the sparkles of grief and love and anger and serenity and exhaustion and vibrance. So, nothing much with me has changed, even though I have overheard once or twice the theory that “everything” has changed, except the world that changed is not mine – because EVERYTHING IS LOVE. Remember to tell me about yourselves to me. I want to know how you feel, too. Because you matter, and you are essential, and so am I, and we are EVERYTHING.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

#covidclerk howareyoudoing howareyouholdingup doyouneedanything love mutualaid entropy

[cora-ill]

Dear Parents,

Next time you call me ungrateful or a “bully,” I invite you to take a look at our interactions throughout my life. I have had to deal with the conflicts between us for as long as I’ve been able to speak. You’ve always been too caught up in your own problems to properly handle mine, I get it, parenting is hard, your life was hard-- but can you pause (I’ve asked this of you countless times) and think about how that affected me?

I grew up accepting domestic violence instead of love, affection, and emotional support as a familial norm. When you two got divorced, violence and instability persisted in my life from two separate sources, neither of which I could find an escape. Most of my childhood memories consist of screaming and anger and crying, both of you losing your tempers, Dad turning it into violence against us. I was a violent, angry little kid. I hurt my friends and I even tried to hurt you, Mom. Neither of you did anything to help me. I had no one to guide me through all of this. Did you really think it was okay to raise a child under such conditions? What kind of person did you expect me to become? You’ve always seen the worst of my temper because it’s always been directed at you. You two had the audacity to ask me who taught me to act like that. Who do you think? Did you think that I wouldn’t grow up and make my own realizations? That you’d be able to pretend I was always going to be young and naive and not understand what you did?  

You gave me horrible anxiety growing up. Mom, you taught me to react to things irrationally because you always put me in invasive or ridiculous situations. Your tendency to be so quick to anger and suspicion towards me affected me daily and impacted me deeply. You ask now why I don’t trust you; that if I don’t trust you, then I must have things to hide. I never did have things to hide until you eliminated all hope of an environment in which I could come to you for support or help. Any time I would try to tell you how I was feeling, how you might have hurt me, how I was hurting, you would take it personally and immediately become defensive and attack me. I am livid just thinking about how little you cared about my emotional well-being that you felt obligated to make everything about yourself. You don’t take accountability for your actions and how you’ve impacted people (me, and probably my little brother). You call me a “monster” when you don’t like what you see in me; when I point out your failures as a mother. The way you behave in front of your children is so important. It affects their behavior and how they grow up to see the world. How can you still not see how huge of a responsibility that is? For a while, I thought maybe I imagined this, that it wasn’t as bad as I thought, but you did not raise a stupid girl. I realized. I could go on and on about things you’ve said and done, like saying “Nobody’s perfect” in response to any confrontation against you about something you’ve done wrong, or telling me before college that you didn’t think that I “suffered enough” in life, so you wanted to make it harder for me because “life is hard.” Thanks to you, I already knew that. You made life hard for me.

Dad, you used to hit us and that is never okay. I’ve always thought of you as a little boy in a grown man’s body because you’ve just always thrown tantrums when things haven’t gone your way. You’ve never known how to comfort someone, and it’s always someone else who has to talk you down. You yell at crying children to “stop crying--” need I say more? The world as you see it very much revolves around you. When discussing any conflict in which you definitely hurt someone you love, you can’t seem to take responsibility. You say, “they misunderstood me. That’s not what I meant. I had good intentions,” ignoring that fact that your actions and words directly hurt someone, and that the impact cannot be changed by your intent. Any time I bring up your behavior in the past as a huge factor of how I feel about you today, you act confused. Both of you do, actually, as if the past just goes away once it passes. Both of you took out your frustrations on me in the form of verbal and physical abuse. It’s disgusting and disgraceful behavior, and the fact that you tried to call it “discipline” would be laughable had it not damaged me so much. That’s not discipline. Neither of you could control your tempers, so you just got angry. No self-control. Neither of you tried to guide me, point out my mistakes and teach me how to fix them. Neither of you ever learned how to be good people, so it makes sense that you couldn’t teach me. I had to learn for myself.

I outgrew the violent tendencies that both of you rubbed off onto me. I am not a violent person. You constantly accuse me of having these bad habits when it comes to dealing with people, but it’s only because you bring out my worse side. No one else really sees me in such a bad emotional state. It’s hard for you to understand my perspective because you know so little about who I am as a person and you haven’t tried to understand. I figured out that the behavior that I used to partake in was simply behavior that you taught me. Today, I’m learning more and more about who I am, and I am as far from you as I can get. I’m constantly defending myself against you because you belittle my problems and try to make me out to be the antagonist in every single argument we have. When will you realize that you can’t keep treating me like a clueless child? I have had to take on the role of a parent scolding an inconsolable child in situations with both of you, don’t act like you’re somehow more mature than I am. I have wasted so much time and energy and effort on you, and you blame me for all my shortcomings and your failed relationships with me, saying it’s “all your fault.” Grow up. I have to repeat myself so much, and you never listen.

My dear stepmom, I thought you could at least try to understand me. You seemed to care the most. But even after I repeatedly tried to tell you what I’ve had to deal with all my life, and that I’ve had depression for who knows how long, you tell me that “parenting is hard and you should be grateful to your mom.” All of a sudden, you think you have the right to keep such close tabs on me and act like you’re “teaching me a lesson,” when all you’re doing is imposing another toxic, strict, controlling parental role into my life. I’ve made it so clear that what I need most is and always has been emotional support, and just when I thought I had one parent who’d try to help me, you turn around and assume that you know me. You do not have the right to control me like this. Growing up, my parents would always tell me that I’d understand when I got older, that I would learn to appreciate them, in response to my stubborn “I hate you and I always will” claims. My feelings about them remain negative. I understand them very well now, but I have very little power to change them. I can’t bring myself to love them for the food, shelter, and whatnot when my quality of life has seriously been tainted by the poison that is their parenting.

I have been bullied by you my whole life. You have no right to call me a “bully” when I decide to stand up for myself. I had to figure out myself that my experiences and feelings were valid, and that I had every right to be angry at you for how you continually treated me. You still don’t seem to mind how you’re treating me now, and if you continue to treat me like this, I will leave you as soon as I possibly can. If one of your goals in life was to have a daughter and push her to hate you and never come back to you, then you’re on the right track. I can’t tell you any different than you want to hear, and I can’t make you change if you don’t want to. You have always been my biggest source of anger and emotional trauma; my biggest heartbreak when I realized I’d never have the loving and understand parents I needed. When I don’t need your financial support anymore, I’m not coming back. We all know that’s all you’ve ever had to offer.

Sincerely, your daughter.

#my story #letter #parents #emotional abuse #child abuse #mental health

[jennycalendar]

regarding honor and honesty in the workplace (33/43)

read it on ao3!

more timezone-reliant chapter posting shenanigans BUT it’s still going up according to schedule. go me

from the personal files of Jenny Calendar:

I feel…lost. I feel like I keep coming to a conclusion that satisfies me, and then something upends me and sends me flying. I thought I could just go without telling Rupert how I feel, and then he kisses me. I thought maybe Rupert and I might be able to have at least some kind of a romantic connection, and then he goes and says our kissing was a mistake. I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing, and I hate that this absolute mess means that I can’t talk to the one person I’ve always trusted I would have by my side.

I wish I had been honest with myself about my feelings for him. If I hadn’t known him for so long, telling him I love him might not have been so terrifying. But this is the kind of love that you have for someone you want in your life for the rest of your life, and telling him something like that would genuinely freak him out—especially if kissing me was a mistake.

I want to end this entry on a decisive note, but everything feels so hopelessly up in the air that I don’t know if I can even manage that.

The girls had spent nearly a week and a half haranguing Jenny about the dwindling supply of food in the fridge, but it was only when they ran out of produce that she decided something had to be done. Making sure Rupert had his cell readily available, she got dressed, applied some makeup in the hopes of making herself look less like a mess, and shepherded the girls into the car, Rupert hanging apprehensively on the front porch. He had a bit more color in his cheeks as of late, though he still moved slowly and relied on a walking stick that the hospital had recommended, and he was watching them all with a mixture of nervousness and a strange kind of guilt.

Jenny buckled Dawn in (“jeez, Jenny, I’m thirteen, not four,” Dawn complained), then headed over to Rupert, taking the keys from him and giving him a small smile. “Call me if anything goes wrong,” she said. “Before 911, you call me, you got that?”

“You’re worrying overmuch,” said Rupert, and smiled back, still with that unusual guilt. “I’ll be fine. If anything, I’d honestly prefer that you take your time; there are a lot of things on that list, and you haven’t been out of the house in—”

Jenny reached up and placed her hand right over his heart, watching as Rupert’s smile fluttered and his face went slightly pink. His eyes didn’t leave her own. “Call me,” she said again, “if anything goes wrong.”

“All right,” said Rupert softly.

“Okay.” Jenny drummed her fingers lightly, affectionately, against his chest, then let her hand drop. They stayed looking at each other for a few seconds longer, and then she turned, walking back to the car and doing her very best to not look over her shoulder.

“You guys are such a mess,” Buffy said as soon as Jenny had shut the car door. “You seriously need to just talk it out.”

“He doesn’t seem all that interested in talking it out,” said Jenny, which was definitely a lie. Rupert had attempted to start at least five conversations about the kiss, and had been immediately shut down by some truly impressive subject-changing on Jenny’s part. “And I know I definitely don’t feel ready to.” This was the truth, though it was slightly tempered by Jenny’s lie. She started up the car, still doing her best not to look at Rupert (he was still on the front porch, watching them go), and pulled out of the driveway.

“You know,” said Dawn, “when not one, not two, but all of your kids combined are telling you that you guys need to talk things out, maybe you should consider talking things out.”

“I’m handling it,” said Jenny evenly. “And as much as I love you all, I think you missed the memo with regard to what you can and can’t bother your dad’s associate about, all right?”

“Stepmom,” said Buffy. “Our mom.”

There was a surprised silence, and an involuntary smile spread across Jenny’s face before she could really think about it. “I’m not married to your dad,” she said, the smile still lingering even while she was trying to tell it not to; part of it, of course, regarding the concept of being married to Rupert, but part of it very much because Buffy and Dawn seemed to enjoy that concept just as much as her.

“Yet,” said Buffy.

“You have a lot more optimism about that possibility than I do,” said Jenny as lightly as she could.

“Yeah, well, we live with him,” said Dawn. “We have to put up with him talking about you all the freaking time. Oh, Jenny said this at work today! Jenny took down this guy without even blinking! Jenny has the most astounding sense of humor!”

Jenny bit her lip, furious at herself for continuing to grin like a little kid. “I’m his associate,” she said, “and he makes a lot of friends—”

“Funny, that’s what he always says when I tell him you’re crazy about him,” said Faith matter-of-factly.

Jenny very nearly ran a red light. “What?”

“Okay, when you say it like that,” Buffy was saying to Faith, “you make it sound like you directly told him she’s in love with him.”

“Fair enough,” Faith agreed. “Gotta work on my delivery a little. Uh, Mom, I’ve been telling Giles how much you mean to him for years. He gets this sad-puppy face sometimes when you’re out of the room and it’s the most annoying thing in the world.”

“It really is,” Buffy agreed. “Seriously, Jenny, you have no idea how much he cares about you.”

“He got shot for me,” said Jenny. “I’d say I have at least some idea.”

The car went uncomfortably quiet. In the rearview mirror, Jenny saw Dawn’s smile slip and slide off her face, her eyes flickering down to her hands as she began to twist the hem of her tank top. Buffy seemed to be going for the opposite approach; her smile became bright to the point that it looked plastic.

“I’m sorry,” said Jenny awkwardly. “I didn’t—”

“No, you’re—you’re right,” said Buffy finally. “He did. And you do.” She laughed, a strange, wobbly sound. “I’m starting to get why this whole thing is such a mess, huh?” she said.

Jenny smiled exhaustedly. “Yeah,” she said. Then, “I think Rupert was right. Going for groceries sounds like a really nice break.”

The rest of the drive passed in a more comfortable silence, the girls leaning on each other in the backseat as Jenny focused on getting to the grocery store. She hadn’t realized it until now, but being cooped up in that house—and only that house—had felt stifling and miserable, especially after that fiasco of a kiss with Rupert. Maybe he’d been misguided when it came to kissing her, but he hadn’t been wrong about her needing that break. She’d have to tell him that when she got home.

As she parked the car, her phone began to ring. Fumbling to look at it, she saw that it was from Lilah, and her heart jumped into her throat. “Hold up, I gotta take this,” she said to the girls, doing her best to keep her tone breezy, and hastily raised it to her ear. “Hello?”

“You should keep a better eye on your partner.” Lilah sounded honestly exhausted. “Jenny, the stuff he wants to get himself into isn’t something I can save him from.”

“What?” said Jenny stiffly, holding back a line of furious, panicked questions that she knew would frighten the hell out of the girls.

“I’m at your house—”

Without hesitation, Jenny hung up, half-threw her phone into the glove compartment, and pulled out of the parking space, tearing out of the lot at an almost frightening speed.

“Jenny, what—”

“We need milk!”

“Mom, there had better be a good reason—”

“I forgot something at home,” said Jenny in a high, thin voice, and all she could think about was holding Rupert as he bled out for real this time. Or maybe she’d get there and she’d be too late, and he’d die, and she’d never have told him because she hadn’t learned anything from almost losing him that first time—oh, god, if he was alive, she was going to kiss his face off, she really was. Please.

“You ran a red,” said Faith, who seemed to be picking up on the nuances of the situation faster than Buffy and Dawn. “What’s going on?”

“I can pay for the ticket,” said Jenny. They were about eight minutes from home. God, she should have picked the grocery store a few blocks down, but no, she had to listen to Rupert when he had said he wanted her to have a real day away from the mess that was the house, a day away from him, what was she thinking? Of course he was going to do something stupid, of course he wanted her out of the house, take your time, there are a lot of things on that list—

“JENNY!”

Jenny swerved, narrowly avoiding the curb. In the backseat, Dawn had started to cry, and Buffy and Faith both looked genuinely frightened. “It’s Dad,” Buffy said, in a high, shrill voice. “That’s why you’ve got crazy eyes and you’re speeding and you won’t tell us—Jenny, tell us it’s not Dad. Tell us it’s not Dad.”

They were seven minutes from home.

“Jenny please just stop just stop and tell us what’s going on please,” Buffy was begging. “Please. Please.”

Jenny was pretty sure she’d lost all ability for coherent thought past Rupert. She kept on thinking about that blood on his dress shirt and on her hands and his soft smile and his sweet eyes and the way he’d kissed her, so gentle, so soft, and how she would do anything for him. Anything.

“Mom,” said Faith quietly.

Jenny stopped the car, then looked back at the girls, and remembered: she had them with her. She could keep them safe. “It’s your dad,” she said.

Something in Buffy’s expression hardened, and she nodded, pulling Dawn into her side. “Then floor it,” she said, and Jenny did.

The front door was ajar when Jenny arrived, and she felt a rush of nausea when she saw Lilah’s car in the driveway. Part of her almost didn’t want to enter the house—leaving herself in a perpetual state of not knowing—but she saw the girls behind her, waiting, and knew she had to go in. “Stay here,” she said quietly, and walked unsteadily up the porch steps, then entered through the still-open door.

She could hear voices from the kitchen. Stepping through the foyer and the hallway, Jenny stopped in the doorway of the kitchen, staring at Rupert and Lilah, both of them sitting at the kitchen table.

“Jenny,” Rupert began.

Lilah held up a hand and gave him a reproachful look. “I’m the one who called her,” she said. “I should explain.”

“I’m the one who called you,” said Rupert shortly. “I should explain, and you don’t have any right to make things worse than they are—”

“What,” said Jenny unsteadily, and couldn’t really think of a question succinct enough to get her all the answers she wanted.

“Your idiot of a partner here,” said Lilah helpfully, gesturing to Rupert with a thin, annoyed smile, “called me in to ask me if there was any way I would consider trying to reconcile with you, and then said that if there wasn’t, he was going to take down Wolfram and Hart on his lonesome.”

Horrified, Jenny looked first at Lilah, then at Rupert. “Jenny,” he said apprehensively, “I-I just—wanted—”

“He said I’m incredibly important to you,” said Lilah, and her smile became so tight and hurt it looked almost painful. “I told him he’d better drop his solo investigation or I’d shoot him for real next time, and then—” Abruptly, her smile faded, and Rupert’s eyes became very wide. “Jenny,” Lilah said in a very different tone of voice.

Jenny raised a hand to her cheek, and it came back wet, just on the fingertips. “So this is a professional courtesy, then?” she said. “You not shooting my associate is a gesture of goodwill?”

“Jenny,” said Rupert, and tried to stand up, but Lilah pushed him back down so roughly that Jenny visibly saw him wince. And for some reason, this was what made Jenny finally lose her grasp on whatever was left of her emotional control. “Jenny,” said Rupert, still in that horribly pained tone of voice, “Jenny, you’re crying.”

#fic #regarding honor and honesty in the workplace #giles is such a fucking idiot you'll see more behind his Idiot Logic in the next chapter #(i say this with all the love in my heart. he's very smitten)

[alice-in-every-land-blog]

Lakeside Talk / Lyddel Lions

In which Alice and Kiara have a serious talk.

Trigger Warnings: So much Gay, self-deprecating thoughts, mentions of physical abuse, shitty childhoods, therapy, and death/grief.

Alice spotted Kiara first. Admittedly, there was a long while where she didn't know how to approach the girl. Her initial reaction was to smile and go up and surprise Kiara in a cute way, but then her heart sunk to the pit of her stomach a tiny bit when she remembered Jenny. And the club. Still, she didn't want to rush into assuming Kiara was a cheater, despite all the girl had said. After all, she didn't know Jenny any better than she knew Kiara. So if Kiara was a bad person, Alice would learn that. And if Kiara was a good person, Alice would learn that too. She had to go in with the benefit of the doubt or she would ruin her own opinion before it was fairly formed. So with a deep breath, the blonde pushed herself forward and snuck up behind the girl, placing her hands over her eyes. "Guess who," she said in a low voice, curious if Kiara would guess correctly the first time or not.

Kiara actually startled as her vision left her, two hands over her eyes-- and she reacted without thinking, elbowing the person in the gut, just hard enough for her to release her. Kiara whirled around and saw who it was immediately. "Ooooh, my gosh, no, I'm so so sorry," she blurted, reaching out and grabbing at Alice's forearm. "Did I hurt you? You scared me, sorry I--" I thought you were my stepfather. "I'm uh-- jumpy." She chuckled a bit nervously, hoping to pass it off as a joke.

Alice let out a harsh grunt as sharp pain hit her stomach, and for a second, it was hard to breathe. Eventually, she gasped, free hand on her abdomen while her other arm stayed locked in Kiara's grip. "W-What are you jumpy for? My goodness, that packed a punch. I-I didn't mean to frighten you."

Kiara didn't want to go into why she was jumpy, so she decided to just ignore that. "Oh no, it's okay! I didn't mean to wallop you in the stomach. I owe you one, huh?" She said. "You got a drink already sooo... maybe I can get you somethin else?" She grinned all innocent, tempted to even flutter her eyelashes (would match the butterflies in her own stomach, that made her feel all giddy, like jumping up and down now that Alice had appeared).

Alice couldn't help the way her body relaxed and her own eyes fluttered in response, smile twitching on her face. What was it about this girl that was so magnetic? She pulled her in a natural way that Jenny hadn't. "O-Oh?" she stuttered, a bit caught off guard, but soon her face scrunched up as she teased the girl. "Is that what you do? You hurt me just so you can make it up to me?" Wait. Too close to being passive aggressive? She hoped not. She didn't want to start accusing Kiara of anything. She threw in a laugh. "But really, I'm not entirely sure what you could mean." Alice took a step closer to the girl, pretending to pick something off the shoulder of her shirt.

Kiara smiled even wider. The whole hurting/making it up to her bit sort of slid off her if only because Alice was so close, and so sweet, and Kiara could count all her freckles. (If she thought about it, she'd think about Zella. She'd think about Zella and get empty inside, wishing Zella would come and fill her up again, knowing that it would only dig the holes deeper). "Well I can think of a few things. If you need suggestions," said Kiara coyly, and she reached forward and gently curled one of her fingers around Alice's.

Alice couldn't take it. She was being too fucking cute and she felt all tingly and filled with exploding glitter and was Kiara wrapping a single finger around one of her own? God, if she was a cheat, she was a damn charming one. Her smile widened and became more genuine, a soft blush tinting her cheeks. "Mmm, suggestions are always nice. But perhaps I could use my imagination." She leaned forward, brushing her nose against the other girl's, back and forth. "I've been told I'm quite good with it."

Kiara wanted to grab this girl's face and snog her right there. She wanted to snog her for ages. Her toes curled in her converse. "And what's you're imagination sayin' right now?" She asked in a light voice, just above a whisper, as she resisted all those urges of hers.

Alice had to admit, there were a lot of things suddenly going through that very, very big imagination of hers. "I could tell you," she said, looking down at Kiara's lips for a moment, "-or show you." Giggling, Alice did a little push up on her toes and quickly placed a kiss on the girl's nose before settling back down on her feet with a smile. She had to resist the way her brain whispered she would happily 'take this somewhere more private' if asked. "But that's no fun. Come- tell me about London Pride. I do wish I could've gone. Very much so. I would've loved to spend it with you."

Kiara wanted to squeal and jump up and down, but she managed to contain all that energy and just take the girl's hand, giving it a squeeze. "Sure! It was magic, lemme tell you. Like-- not magic in that sort of way, but in a whole different kind of way. Everyone felt it," she said as she tugged Alice along, looking for somewhere to sit down.

Alice let herself be tugged and guided, having serious deja vu to when she'd met Kiara the first time. "That reminds me of a quote, actually," she laughed in response, thinking of the very lines she had just posted on her brand new instagram. Her first post, in fact, but apparently people were very into their social media here. And she needed friends. "Maybe I'll read it to you sometime. That sounds bloody amazing, though. I didn't have near as fun a time as you."

Kiara looked back at Alice. Didn't that sound romantic-- getting read to? Maybe she could put her head on her lap and Alice would stroke her hair and Kiara would fall right asleep. "I wish you woulda come then. We coulda marched in the parade together. Or skipped in the parade," said Kiara and she skipped then and there as if to prove a point, giggling a little.

Alice waved Kiara off with her free hand. "While that sounds just lovely, I'm sure you had an excellent time while I worked. I'm sure you met some lovely girls. I was very sociable at the last night of Pride at Pixies. I had a few strange encounters, but I'm glad I experienced it." Read: Please tell me you snogged someone else so I don't feel bad for snogging someone else even though there's no reason for that to be a bad thing since we aren't in a relationship.

Kiara looked back again, tilting her head. Her steps slowed back down to walking speed. Because well, she wasn't stupid, strange encounters definitely sounded like-- well. Hook-ups. Not that Kiara owned Alice. She didn't. They weren't...anything (Kiara had no idea how to feel about that, just knew that she probably shouldn't be with someone anyway). "I mean, not really. I was with my cousin and his boyfriend, and my uh, sort of...stepmom," she said with a shrug and an easy smile. "Was all very PG. Yours sounds more, er, thrilling, huh?"

Alice was afraid to say she regretted this immediately. No, no. She shouldn't regret. She had told herself she wouldn't. After all, that was the good advice, wasn't it? She should be following it. Just like she was when she told herself they needed to talk about this. "Um..." Alice bit at her lip, and brought Kiara's hand up so she could play with her fingers idly. She had a way of playing with hands, all the time. She felt as if she could see little, tiny glimmers of the soul in them. Auras, maybe. That was one word for it. Energies? She didn't know if that was accurate. But she did know she liked trying to find someone in their palms. It's what she did as she took a deep breath, and brought up Jenny. "Well, I wouldn't exactly say thrilling. It was... unexpected. I met a girl who said she knew you."

Her and Alice had sort of meandered to a stop now. Kiara kinda found this a bit weird-- because she knew that Alice was gonna tell her she kissed someone else. Which, y'know, was totally fine. It really was. Kiara didn't feel jealous. She just wanted to be able to kiss Alice too, at least, until she figured out the shapes of all those butterflies and what they meant. And then she mentioned that she knew the girl and Kiara blinked rapidly. "Oh? Uh, who was it?" she asked.

"Er- she said her name was Jenny, I think?" Alice tried to remember features in the darkness of the club. "Dark hair, light eyes. And she... said some things. I didn't want to believe them blindly though without hearing from you, first." Alice flicked her gaze nervously up to Kiara's, heart fluttering a bit anxiously. "I just want honesty, really. I'm not so judgemental anyhow. There's nothing to worry about as far as me not wanting to talk to you again goes. She just... mentioned that you got into fights. And... that you had a girlfriend. A serious one?"

First, she was shocked because, uh, Jenny? Of all people. And then she said dark hair and light eyes neither of which red-haired-brown-eyed Jenny had. And Kiara didn't think she knew any other Jennies. And then she said that OTHER bullshit that made the smile drop clean off Kiara's face. "What? I -- I don't. Have a girlfriend, a serious one," she said, rather bluntly. "I um, I'm kind of dating someone but we're taking it really slow. You said her name was Jenny?" She said, her voice turning a little sharp. There was no way it was Jenny. Jenny was a bitch but Jenny didn't have anything against Kiara. Why would Jenny say that? The answer: she wouldn't. Kiara had that empty feeling again, the one that had Zella's name all over it.

Alice wasn't sure what reaction she expected, but regardless she was a bit startled. A part of her wanted to shush Kiara calmly and so she kept playing with her hand, rubbing circles into the lines with her thumbs. "Jenny, yeah. I'm certain, now. That tone clears right through drunk memories." Tilting her head, Alice's brows furrowed in a mixture of confusion and worry. "Are you alright?"

Kiara was not alright. She didn't know how to describe it and she didn't want to because she should be alright, she shouldn't be, well, her, little Miss Fuck Up , little Miss Emotion. She wanted to push away the thunderstorm growing inside of her. She wanted to just concentrate on the way Alice played with her hand. It wasn't even that Alice had kissed someone else, it was that it might have been (it was it was) Zella. Her whole brain wanted to combust. It was just another one of Zella's fists flying. Kiara bit down on her own lip and looked sideways. "I just-- don't know any Jennies with dark hair. I only know one Jenny, and she's ginger." She looked down at their hands still entwined. She felt limp. "I think it was-- this girl, Zella. Who like, hates me or whatever." She shrugged and tried to roll her eyes like it wasn't a big deal.

Alice didn't know what to do with this information. Kiara only knew a Jenny with red hair. This girl definitely hadn't had red hair. That would have stuck out. It would have been noticeable. Memorable. Instead, this girl's dark hair and aggressive come-on’s had been what made an impression. "Zella?" she asked, shaking her head. "She definitely said her name was Jenny. Jenny... Foxworth, I believe? Something with foxes being of worth. I recall that much. But she definitely wasn't ginger." And she didn't like the way Kiara looked, like a kicked puppy. She didn't want to be stupidly buying into an act, but what if Kiara was telling the truth and this 'Zella' was the one who had acted? Instinctively, she squeezed the other girl's hands. "Why does she hate you? And why would she give me a fake name?" It just... didn't make sense.

Kiara let out a harsh breath-- half a scoff, half a laugh. Why did Zella hate her? What a great fucking question. Why, when all Kiara had wanted was  to help her and be with her and kiss her and... whatever. She was a fool. She'd always been a stupid fool. Zella probably hated her for that. Kiara just shrugged again, blinking fast as she felt stupid tears appear. She drew her hand away from Alice's so she could rub them away. "I dunno, because I'm me, I guess," she said. She dropped her hand and forced a smile. "It's whatever-- it's-- I dunno why she gave you a fake name. Maybe because she knew that you knew me so it was gonna be a prank or something, I dunno." Her insides felt twisted up. She wanted to leave, she probably had already ruined this. Which is what Zella wanted.

Alice reached out instinctively as her warrior princess seemed to be fighting the urge to cry. No, no, that was definitely not good. Hands released, she brought them up to Kiara's face instead, wiping away tears for her and caressing her cheek with all the care in the world. If Kiara really was this person 'Zella' had made her out to be, then she was a very good actress. An instinct tugged at the blonde's heart and Alice couldn't help but feel like Kiara was the one being as truthful as possible here. That didn't mean there might not still be problems, but that would come later. Right now, she needed to know why her warrior princess was brought to tears. "Hey, love, don't cry. Please don't cry. I'm awful with tears. You'll make me cry too," she attempted comfort, twitching a small smile. "Do you want to get away from the crowd, sit by the lakeside and get some privacy? I don't like you upset. The sun should never set early."

Kiara was ready to be strong and push through the tears and fake her way through her night. Really, she was. Until Alice's hands came up to her cheeks. Her touch was so so soft, her voice even softer, and though Alice told her not to cry, Kiara did the opposite. She let out another shaky breath and the tears pushed forth before she could stop them. She tried to look down again, though there was no hiding it. "Sorry, sorry I-- " I'm so stupid, really I'm stupid, the words swam in front of her but she didn't want to give in to them. They weren't true, they were just her depression, that's what Dr. Phillips would say. "Y-you're so nice, I shouldn't-- I don't w-wanna ruin your night, I shouldn't even be crying over it, h-honestly." She took a deep breath and then shook her head, trying to stop it from getting worse.

Oh, that hadn't been what she wanted. Alice’s eyes widened, and immediately, she embraced Kiara, one hand on her back and the other on her hair. She squeezed her eyes shut at all of the girl's crying, feeling just awful. Whatever had happened, here, it had been worse than she would have thought or come up with on her own. Pulling back, she slid an arm around Kiara's shoulders and kept the other rested on her arm, rubbing up and down as she whisked her away to a more private section of the shoreline, away from any onlookers. "Come on. Don't apologize, there's no need for that. We feel what we feel and there's no getting 'round it. I just feel bad to have made it happen to begin with." Once they were far enough away, Alice turned back to her and continued trying to wipe away the girl's tears. "Now, don't worry about ruining my night. I came here hoping to see you. That hasn't changed. Please... You want to know something else about me?" She squatted a bit so she was looking up at Kiara, smiling cutely. "All I care about is honesty. Really. Honesty to what you're feeling and honesty to those around you. I'm not saying that to pressure you or anything, just-" Alice ran her hands down the girl's arms and took one hand, gesturing to the sand at their feet with the other. "Sit with me? Please? I'd love to know what's wrong, and how I can help it."

Kiara let herself get led away, though all the while the shame was rising in her. She didn't want to be like this, she didn't...she wanted to be a warrior princess. That's what Alice called her. She wanted to feel strong and brave instead of ugly and broken, which is how she felt now, shaken up just because Zella has inserted herself back into her life, slinking in like an intruder. All Kiara wanted was to get over her and leave her behind. It's all she wanted. And now here she was on the bank with a beautiful girl with freckles like the stars and she was ruining it ruining it ruining it. Kiara tried to blink back more of those tears (to no avail), sucking on her bottom lip as Alice talked. She didn't even know how to begin. It was horrible. All of it was horrible. She wished Bambi were here, and yes, she wished Callie was here too, so she could hold her hand and find strength there. That was probably even more fucked up. Still, Kiara sat down and stared out at the lake, taking a few more seconds of silence to try to be that...that warrior princess-- that she wanted to be. She tucked her knees against her chest and curled her arms around them. "I... Zella and me used to...hook up," she began slowly, her voice still wet. She couldn't look at Alice. "And basically, I uh, I liked her and she didn't like me. And I tried to-- I wanted her to like me." The words were catching in her throat. She didn't want to say the bit how it all ended. "I-- I asked...her to..." she looked down at her knees. "I pissed her off." Again, the words were stuck. Kiara could still feel the punches, every one. She didn't know how to say it, it felt so pathetic.

Alice sat as Kiara did, a hand going to her back where she rubbed small circles into the fabric of her shirt. She still felt terrible to have steamrolled the moment like this. If she had known it would bring them here, she probably would have avoided it. Still, a tiny voice reminded the blonde that this was important and it was even more important now if it had made Kiara cry. 

Now, Alice couldn't lie. A part of her froze, hand stilling, when Kiara finally spoke. But it was only for a moment before she forced herself to relax again and continue the circles as the girl went on. After all, it wasn't as though Alice wouldn't have guessed that part herself. She would have wound up there eventually. It was just a small surprise to hear, quick to catch up to. What wasn't quick to catch up to, however, was what Kiara was trying to say. "You don't have to tell me the details. But I'd be denying my natural curiosity if I didn't at least ask... This girl, 'Zella'- she said you had a big mouth, and that pissed people off. Is that what she meant? You asked her something and she didn't like it? How could a question possibly be so awful to make someone hate you?"

Kiara let out another half scoff, half laugh-- really it was her crying though. It hurt. It burned, actually, like Zella had lit a match and pressed it against her skin with just those words. Yes, big mouth, that was Kiara. How could Kiara ever have thought Zella wanted her for anything more than a closet shag? All Kiara could do was shrug. She knew she had to try to find the words, but this felt like ripping the stitches out of a wound that hadn't healed. "I dunno. I guess. Everything I said pissed her off. That's why she wanted to shut me up." And she giggled at that, though she was still crying, feeling the punches again and again.

"Shut you up?" Alice didn't like the sound of that. Her body tingled with some very, very bad energy. Like she had every time she went to see another "specialist." Swallowing thickly, she tried to see the answer in Kiara's eyes, but it was difficult when the other girl wouldn't look at her. "I don't like the sound of that. Of any of this, really. I know I'm only getting snippets, and again, you don't have to say anything you don't want to. But I am so sorry, love. For... all of it happening and for bringing her up. If I had known..." Well, if she had known, she definitely wouldn't have kissed that girl, that's for sure. Pressing her lips together for a moment as she held her breath, she winced as she asked "Was she your first?"

Kiara shook her head quickly. No, Zella was not the first. She was just one in a line of girls who, in the end, didn't think Kiara was good enough or worth it. She really didn't know why she tried, why she thought Callie wasn't gonna get bored with her or that Alice was gonna stick around. Why would she? Zella obviously told her all about her thousands of flaws. Why would Alice even want her? "It's okay. It's just-- it's over. It's done." She shrugged again. She kept shrugging, like she could hope that this would roll off her back.

No. Not the first. Alice would reason maybe not as much sting, but, she'd only ever really come close to sort of having two people. One hadn't even really been anything. Just a girl Alice was silly enough to think liked her. That had ended... terribly. 

Sliding the arm back around Kiara's shoulder, she rested her head against the other girl's as they both stared out at the waves. "It is. It is over. I don't need you to say anything more about the matter unless you want to." She let a moment of silence go by before sucking in a deep breath and pulling back to look at Kiara. "If it makes you feel better, I could never hate you for a simple question. And I'd never want to shut you up. Except, maybe with a kiss." She tried to give her another smile. "As long as that's alright with the other girl you're seeing. Can you tell me about her, maybe? Assuming she's not a right cunt like this other girl was."

Kiara actually laughed for real this time. Just a little giggle, but still, it was genuine and she turned her head to peek at Alice and gave a smile. "Um...Callie? Sure, yeah. She's great, she's uh, she's my best friend." That smile turned softer then spread. Because Callie had only ever made Kiara feel stronger. "That's why we're er, taking it slow. Plus other stuff. Lots of other stuff. I'm sort of a mess, y'know. I'm not trying to be self-deprecating or anything, I just-- I'm going to therapy, and I had a shitty childhood and I-- I don't... feel great about myself all the time." She shook her head again, eyes darting back to the lake. She didn't know why she'd just tangeted her way into that. Not smart. "Sorry, I-- you asked about Callie, not me. She really is great, you'd like her loads. She's so...bright and fun and good. She's really good. She tells amazing stories."

Alice smiled, hearing about Callie. "She really does sound lovely. I'd love to meet her sometime, if you're okay, and she's okay with that." She wanted to say, And if she's okay that you kiss me sometimes, too, but she held off for now. "As for feeling a mess, I know a bit about that myself. I haven't exactly had the greatest go of things lately. My life's been in a downward spiral ever since I was a child, it's been nothing short of a shit show since I turned seventeen." She bumped her shoulder against Kiara's. "But, you know, my father- he always used to say that everyone has something wrong. The best people usually seem the most broken. I always liked that thought."

Kiara liked that thought too. Again she smiled, and she bumped her shoulder back against Alice's. "Your father sounds real wise," she said. Her smile spread a little more. "And hey, at least you're-- here, now. Maybe things'll get...better for both of us."

Alice looked down at the sand between them, thinking of her father. His features were harder to remember, but she always saw his smile, mustache curled around it and all. "He was," she replied softly. "Wisest man I ever knew." She looked back out at the waves then, and thought of him, on his ship. He died as he lived, on the sea, her mother had said to try and comfort Alice at the funeral with no body to bury. Alice couldn't help but want to go out the same way. Her own eyes grew misty, then, and even more so at Kiara's optimistic little comment. She laughed, brushing away a stray tear. She just missed him so much. 

"Now that I'm here, I'm hoping loads of things will get better. You've already helped with that." She reached out, then, for Kiara's hand, her own palm up so that the girl could come to her. "All your worries about ruining my night with your tears, but I really, really hope that I haven't ruined anything. I didn't know if that girl could be trusted, and it worried me about trusting you for a moment. I'm not very good with that, you see. I.... She did.... I do need you to know we snogged a bit. It wouldn't be right if I didn't tell you that bit and then she tried to stick your nose in it later." At least Alice was listening to her own advice, for once, even though the moment had passed and she could have let it slip easily. "I won't be snogging her again. That's for sure. Right now, you're currently the most snoggable person in this town."

Kiara listened and felt her emotions wax and wane like the moon above. First she felt better, then rapidly worse, hearing about Alice not trusting her and all the snogging she'd done with Zella, Zella who wanted to steal any bit of happiness Kiara had, Zella who wanted to wreck her. Kiara blinked at the tears, wondering if after this was over, Alice would still think she had a big mouth-- and wasn't to be trusted. And if Zella would lurk like a storm cloud over this whole thing, whatever this thing was. 

And then just as fast, all those bad feelings halted because Alice was-- Alice. Somehow, she made Kiara feel light inside, like those bad things could not penetrate and the storm clouds would clear. Maybe not tonight, but soon. "Yeah?" she said with a shy smile. She was blushing badly. "Prove it."

Alice held her breath as she watched Kiara's face and waited. It all flooded out in a long sigh of relief as she moved in quickly to lock her lips with Kiara's. That blush. Those words. She kissed her slow, and steady, and breathless, for a very fast and yet long moment all at once, feeling alight with sparks and happiness that this wasn't ending badly. With a gasp for air she pulled away, and worked to regain her breathing while she whispered, forehead against Kiara's, "Challenge accepted."

#oneshot #lyddel lions #s: the sun shouldn't set so early #s: most snoggable person in this town

[ralphmorgan-blog1]

The Most Embarrassing Attempts At Throwing Shade During The VMAs, Ranked

The 2017 VMAs might go down as the most blatant attempts at shade-throwing per minute since the East vs. West Coast rap wars in the 90s. It seems like everyone and their drugged-out stepmom came to the show with the intention of getting some press squashing beefs. For anyone who wasn't watching Game Of Thrones actually tuned in last night, you honestly might have forgotten the whole thing was supposed to be about music videos. Honestly, we might as well change the name of the show from the Video Music Awards to the Thinly Veiled Attempts At Making Money Off Fake Drama Statue-Giving Festival. Sure, the TVAAMMOFDSGF doesn't have quite the same ring to it, but it is definitely a more accurate description of what goes on. So for those of you who turned the show off at 9pm because of didn't catch all the shade, here's a ranking of the shadiest moments, from most to least embarrassing. 

Katy Perry To Trump

Look, I’m as much for shading the Trump Administration as anyone (sign up for The Betches Sup!), but whoever told Katy Perry to kick off the VMAs with five minutes of political standup is seriously disturbed. Like, yes girl, we get it, you voted for Hillary. So did a majority of America.

^^^ See. That’s how you throw shade at the Trump Administration. No need for some bizarre story about being on a spaceship that tries to roast fidget spinners, Russian meddling, and Fyre Festival all in one cringeworthy bit. Did anybody else notice how they kept cutting to Ellen during Katy’s opening? I think the camera guy, like all of us, was hoping that Ellen would just jump on stage and take over.

But seriously Katy, in the future if you are looking for seasoned political comedy writers, my email is [email protected] and my rate is $7 Million p/hour. Thanks.

Adam Levine To Lorde

You probably didn’t even realize this shade was thrown because Adam Levine is over it didn’t happen at the actual event, but only-member-of-Maroon-5-anybody-cares-about Adam Levine was not feeling Lorde’s performance, or like, any of the VMAs for that matter. Levine tweeted “Julia Michaels gets cut off while she’s singing and Lorde gets to NOT sing her whole song,” because apparently Adam Levine is a messy bitch who lives for drama. He also tweeted “It’s always exciting to see how utterly horrible the VMAs will be. They really delivered so far this year.” Agreed. But like…damn Adam, somebody seems salty that they didn’t get an invite this year. You’d better chill on some of the industry shade. Any person at the VMAs could take your cushy job in a second. Also, leave Lorde out of this. She had a fucking cold. 

Taylor Swift To Everyone

The most highly anticipated moment of the VMAs was the release of Taylor Swift’s new Monster Mash "Look What You Made Me Do" music video, and she certainly did not hold back on the shade. The whole video was a graveyard smash mashup of all of Taylor’s recent beefs, with digs at Kimye, the media, Katy Perry, Tom Hiddleston, and anyone who has ever wronged Taylor in her lifetime. And if an opening shot of a tombstone with the words “Taylor Swift’s Reputation” wasn’t subtle enough for ya, Taylor brings the whole thing home with a bizarre Taylor-on-Taylor sketch comedy moment where T-Swift (dressed as all the Taylors of Christmas Past) attempts to address all the mean things people say about her, but really just proves she’s like, a terrible actress.

Remy Ma to Nicki Minaj

I mean, of course she did. Remy Ma did not waste any of her .5 seconds of VMA camera time blatantly trying to get some attention dissing Nicki Minaj. I guess Remy needs a new reason for talk shows to book her is still pretty pissed. The VMAs brought in Remy as one of the C-List celebs they trot out to lead into the commercial breaks, and Remy wasted no time trying to make it to the B list by coming for Nicki, adding “Nicki what’s good?” to her outro.

A year-old beef that references a 2-year-old beef?

Fifth Harmony To Camilla Cabello

Perhaps the least subtle shade of the night occurred with Fifth Harmony took the stage. The girls appear with five silhouettes, with one being immediately booted off stage in what was obviously a dig at Camilla Cabello, who left the group last year. Um…yeah…did I say this moment was “shade”? What I meant to say was that this moment was a whole fucking eclipse.

Cersei To Danearys

I mean, we all knew that Danearys was going to show up to the big meeting on her dragon, but Cersei wasted no time shading the dragon queen for her lateness with an epic eye-roll and “We’ve been waiting her a long time” combo—oh wait. This is the wrong show. My bad.

The finale was dope, though.

Cardi B To The Police

Cardi B won the “most controversial moment” award this VMAs by using her mic time to shout out kneeling football guy Colin Kaepernick. The up-and-coming rapper took the opportunity during one of her intros to say “Colin Kaepernick, as long as you kneel with us, we’re going to be standing for you.” See Katy Perry, that’s how you do mid-VMA political commentary. You just fucking say what you mean. No spaceships. No bullshit. And maybe a nip slip just to keep things fun.

Honestly, all of these adult babies people should be glad that nobody watched last night because of . The whole thing was embarrassing. Except for Cardi B. Cardi B can hang. 

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