#get 36 thousand | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

Tumblr is available in 18 languages.

best24news · 2 years

Text

सिर्फ 45 रुपये का करें इनवेस्मेट, पाए 36 हजार, जानिए पोलिसी की फायदे -Best24news

नई दिल्ली: एलआईसी (LIC) की जीवन उमंग पॉलिसी आपके परिवार को आय और सुरक्षा दोनों प्रदान करती है। यह योजना प्रीमियम भुगतान अवधि के अंत से परिपक्वता तक वार्षिक उत्तरजीविता लाभ प्रदान करती है, साथ ही परिपक्वता पर या पॉलिसीधारक के जीवन भर एक समान भुगतान करती है। अगर आप कम पैसे में ज्यादा बजत करना चाहते है तो हम बताते है आपको ऐसी पोलिसी। जिसमे आप हरदिन महज 45 रूपए सेविंग करके सालाना 36 हजार रूपए पेंशन…

View On WordPress

#get 36 thousand #Invest only 45 rupees #LIC jeevan umang #LIC news

0 notes

allinllachuteruteru · 8 months

Text

Duolingo is NOT what it used to be.

“Duolingo is ‘sunsetting the development of the Welsh course’ (and many others)”.

I’ve used Duolingo since 2013. It used to be about genuinely learning languages and preserving endangered ones. It used to have a vibrant community and forum where users were listened to. It used to have volunteers that dedicated countless hours and even years to making the best courses they could while also trying to explain extremely nuanced and complex grammar in simple terms.

In the past two years it feels like Von Ahn let the money talk instead of focusing on the original goal.

No one truly had a humongous problem with the subscription tier for SuperDuolingo. We understood it: if you can afford to pay, help keep Duolingo free for those who couldn’t.

It started when the company went public. Volunteers were leaving courses they created because they warned of differing longterm goals compared to Duolingo’s as a company; not long after it was announced that the incubator (how volunteers were able to make courses in the first place) would be shut down. A year goes by and the forums—the voice of the users and the way people were able to share tips and explanations—is discontinued. A year or two later, Duolingo gets a completely new makeover—the Tree is gone and you don’t control what lesson you start with. With the disappearance of the Tree, all grammar notes and explanations for courses not in the Big 8 (consisting of the courses made before the incubator like Spanish/French/German/etc. and of the most popular courses like Japanese/Korean/Chinese/etc.) are removed with it. Were you learning Vietnamese and have no idea how honorifics work without the grammar notes? Shit outta luck bud. Were you learning Polish and have absolutely no clue how one of the declensions newly thrown at you functions? Suck it up. In a Reddit AMA, Von Ahn claims that the new design resulted in more users utilizing the app/site. How he claims that statistic? By counting how many people log into their Duolingo account, as if an entire app renovation wouldn’t cause an uptick in numbers to even see what the fuck just happened to the courses.

Von Ahn announces next in a Reddit AMA that no more language courses will be added from what there already is available. His reasoning? No one uses the unpopular language courses — along with how Duolingo will now be doing upkeep with the courses already in place. And here I am, currently looking on the Duolingo website how there are 1.8 million active learners for Irish, 284 thousand active learners for Navajo, and even 934 thousand active learners for fucking High Valyrian. But yea, no one uses them. Not like the entire Navajo Nation population is 399k members or anything, or like 1.8 million people isn’t 36% of the entire population of Ireland or anything.

And now this. What happened to the upkeep of current courses? Oh, Von Ahn only meant the popular ones that already have infinite resources. Got it. Duolingo used to be a serious foundational resource for languages with little resources while also adding the relief of gamification.

It pisses me off. It really does. This was not what Duolingo started out as. And yea, maybe I shouldn’t get invested in a dingy little app. But as someone who spent most of her adolescence immersed in language learning to the point where it was literally keeping me alive at one point, to the point where languages felt like my only friend as a tween, and to the point where friendships on the Duolingo forums with likeminded individuals my age and other enthusiasts who even sent me books in other languages for free because they wanted people to learn it, the evolution of Duolingo hits a bitter nerve within me.

~End rant.

#duolingo #langblr #huge language rant feel free to skip #evolution of duolingo #luis von ahn #duolingo welsh course #language learning

17K notes · View notes

dycefic · 1 year

Text

Tom Saves The World

Everyone knows that it’s super-heroes who save the world. They fight the aliens, or the monsters, or the bad guys. And mostly, that’s true.

But not always.

I’m a psychic. The thing is, my range isn’t that great. I don’t have much detail more than about 36 hours out, 48 for something really big. I’d had a nebulous sort of bad feeling for about a week before this one finally hit, and it was big. Something very tough and very supernatural was going to come up out of the harbor of Nova Roma, and the death-toll was going to be high. Crazy high.

I did all I could. I told the Unaligned Supers Job Placement Agency, and they put the word out to everyone on both sides of the Line. The Henchman’s Union don’t like natural disasters any more than anyone else, and they’re often quite helpful against eldritch horrors and stuff like that. Things that don’t hire henchmen and ruin the property values.

The trouble was, nobody big was around. The only really big team of heavy hitters on the West Coast were away dealing with some sort of doomsday cult - I never was clear on what that was about - and Guarde and Dog Fox were out of touch and even Mx Frantique was out of town at someone’s wedding. It was going to happen in less than two days and we couldn’t find anyone to help and I was seriously considering calling in some kind of bomb threat or something to get people away from the docks, at least.

And then, about eighteen hours out, it just… went away.

Which never, ever happens.

My powers might be short range, but they’re reliable. I don’t get stuff wrong, and I hadn’t been able to find any way to prevent what was going to happen, or even been able to identify anyone who could. But someone did. Someone had done something to stop the threat, something that happened literally while I was opening my car door. When I reached for the handle, thousands of people were going to die. By the time the door was open, there was no threat at all.

At first I thought it must have been a ranged thing. Like, whatever I’d been seeing (all those teeth, I saw them in nightmares for months after) had been distracted by something tasty on its way here and gotten off track, that it’d come up somewhere up or down the coast. My range isn’t that big, either. Anything outside about thirty miles might as well be on Mars for all I know about it. So we kept a watch out, and warned the chapters of the Union and the Agency in other cities.

But nothing happened. Nothing at all. I couldn’t explain it, and I was really unpopular for a while. Supers do NOT like people who cry wolf. There’s enough freaky shit we have to deal with without someone panicking everyone with a dire prophecy that fizzles out.

Thank all the gods that Tunny showed up. Nobody’s really sure what Tunny actually is - sentient fish creature, some kind of really mutated human, an alien, or what. She changes her story a lot. But she’s pretty friendly, especially for a twenty-foot-long horror-movie-mermaid-thing with four arms, so when she came into harbor to pick up some supplies a guy from the Agency went out to tell her what I’d seen. I’d gotten a wharf and dock number, so she went down to check.

I don’t think anyone had ever seen Tunny scared before. Her English wasn’t good enough to really explain what she’d found hibernating down there, but it was something very old and very powerful and very dangerous, and if it’d been woken up my vision would just have been the start of the crisis.

She rounded up a bunch of whales to help her move it, once she was sure it hadn’t been agitated and wasn’t likely to rouse if moved carefully. They towed it out before dawn, not wanting to scare the civilians, and when I saw the footage from the helicopter the Union sent up, when I saw how big the swell was, how many whales were pulling, I swear I nearly crapped myself. No wonder I’d been getting hints a week in advance. Somehow we dumbass humans had built a whole fucking city almost on top of some kind of Ancient Old… THING, and eroded the sea-bottom until it was exposed, and if someone hadn’t done whatever it was we’d all have been dead long before Tunny arrived. And not just all as in ‘all of Nova Roma’, it could have taken out half of the continent... or all of it.

It took me years to find out what happened. YEARS. It turned into a kind of hobby, tracking everything that might possibly have come into contact with Wharf 38 on that particular day.

And what I found, eventually, was a city employee named Thomas Briggs.

I’d found out early on that 38 wasn’t in good repair. Not that bad, but not great. It was old, things were getting a bit saggy in a few places, but there’d been no sign that anything was likely to fall off on the day. It had sat there for a couple of years after the crisis that never happened,, doing its job without problems then been rebuilt without any drama at all.

Entirely, completely, and totally because of Thomas Briggs.

The story, when I finally pieced it together, went like this.

There’d been some project or other to build some sort of high-budget science project over on the other side of the harbor, hanging it off’ve Pier 8, the furthest out on that side. Something about tracking sea-life or ships or something. My conversational English is near perfect, I’ve been here for years, but I don’t speak science nerd in ANY language. It’d all been approved, some university was covering most of the cost, it was all gonna be fine. And it was gonna be over on 8 because that side of the harbor is the shallow end. It’s where the sailboats go. All the big stuff that would block visual sensors and deafen the thing with engine noise was over in the thirties, in the real deep water.

They were almost ready to install the thing when a bunch of rich dudes suddenly got their panties in a bunch over having a big sciency tower thing ruining the view from their yachts, and tried to get it moved.

To, and I’m sure you guessed this, Wharf 38.

Which was completely insane. It wouldn’t be able to do its job over there, it’d be way more in the way, and (although they couldn’t have known it) the installation would definitely have woken up the Thing sleeping by the wharf and we all would have died. But rich dudes with yachts don’t care about that stuff. They’d bitched out and bribed up their friends on the city council, and those friends had done their thing, and the scientists had been left in the dark, and it’d almost gone through. They’d figured to install it right away, so that when the science guys found out it’d be too late and they’d either have to pay a lot to move it or just use it where it was.

Enter Thomas Briggs.

Mr Briggs, Tom to his friends, didn’t give a crap about the yachts or the science. He was a senior money guy for the commercial wharfs, the one who figured out things like how much money they’d take in in a quarter, and what the repair budget should be, stuff like that. He found out about this thing two days before the disaster would have happened, and sat down and did the math.

Then he sent out an email to the guys trying to push this through, and he ripped into them like they’d threatened to knife his mother. I got my hands on that email, and I didn’t understand a lot of it any more than the council guys would have. It was ALL numbers. But at the top he wrote it out in plain English. Pier 8 was new, and rated to handle the weight of the thingy. Wharf 38 was going to be scrapped in a few years, and it was NOT rated for that kind of structure. Pier 8 had plenty of room around it. Wharf 38 was already a tight fit for the big commercial ships, and adding a structure sticking out on one side would block off at least half of the wharf to those ships completely.

Bottom line, putting the thing on Wharf 38 would cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars more per year than putting it on 8, AND the city would have to eat the cost if 38 collapsed under it which it could easily do, AND the city would have to pay to move it in a couple of years anyway when 38 was due to be rebuilt.

And he cc-ed every important person he had an email address for, including the mayor, the anti-corruption people, and several reporters.

He must have sent that email right when I was opening my car door.

The whole plan collapsed right there, and some people got fired. There was no news story because the whole plan got killed before the reporters even got to the right office. The installation was started on Wharf 8 a few weeks later and I never connected it to a commercial wharf on the other side of the harbor.

One email, and a man who I never could have located in time, a man who had no powers at all, a man who was just conscientiously doing his job looking after the city’s money saved the city, and the continent, and maybe even the world.

Who could have predicted that? Not me, that’s for damn sure.

I can’t deny that I went home and got drunk off my ass that night. Just thinking about how close that had been made my hands shake. One man. One honest man who’d done the math.

I put the word out, once the hangover wore off. What had happened. That Thomas Briggs was the reason we were all alive and everyone better make his life real nice from now on, because he’d done what none of us could do and nobody but the supers would ever even know it.

He’s got a lot of luck coming to him, I can tell you. We don’t forget debts like that.

And I knew that’d freak him out, because honest men don’t like it when people start doing them a lot of favors for no apparent reason, so I tracked him down at the little bar where he likes to have a quiet beer on Friday nights before he goes home. Hell, I was the one who’d gone through it all, back then. I should get to tell him.

I sat down beside him at the bar and looked at him. I saw a thin, small, balding man who looked like he worried too much and didn’t get enough sleep, with lines around his eyes. Yeah, he looked like a man who’d do the math. “Thomas Briggs?”

He blinked at me through his glasses. “Yes? Do I know you?”

“No, you don’t. My name’s Barkhado Omar, and I’ve been looking for you for a long time.” I offered him my hand and he shook it, still looking confused. Which was fair, ‘cause I doubt a lot of seven foot tall Somali women came up to him in bars even when he was young. He’s got to be close to retirement now.

He frowned. “Looking for me? Why?”

I smiled at him. “Tom, let me buy you a drink and tell you about the day you saved the world.”

It’s usually us who save the city, or the world. We have all the intel, all the advantages, all the powers.

But sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s someone like Tom Briggs, doing the right thing at the right time and never knowing that he changed the course of history.

Wild, huh?

This story is a direct result of me and my ex chatting about how different the entire Marvel Universe would have been if Jean’s first ‘resurrection’ - being found in a life pod under a wharf, IIRC - had happened at like... any other time. Earlier. Later. It would have changed SO MUCH.

And we speculated about how it could happen, how someone just puttering around in middle management might have unknowingly saved countless lives, prevented Madelyne’s corruption, the legacy virus, all of it, just by postponing that particular set of repairs a bit longer.... and I couldn’t resist writing a version of the story in which Tom does, in fact, save the world.

#short fiction #dyce's supers universe #comics inspired #sometimes something just goes right #horseshoe repair

9K notes · View notes

spacelazarwolf · 28 days

Text

before yom hashoah ends, i want to remind folks that sephardi, maghrebi, and mizrahi jews were also deeply affected by the holocaust.

this is by no means inclusive of all communities who were affected by the holocaust and its aftermath, i do not have the emotional bandwidth for that, but hopefully this gives you some insight into jewish experiences outside of what's usually talked about.

the jews of morocco, algeria, tunisia, libya, and italy were all subjected to the racial laws of the vichy regime or fascist italy, which prevented them from attending educational institutions, holding public office, and owning businesses and sometimes property. moroccan jews were protected from some of the violence faced by other jews of the mediterranean and north africa because of the moroccan sultan mohammed ben youssef, who was vocally opposed to the anti jewish laws. he reportedly told the vichy government, "there are no jews in morocco. there are only moroccan subjects." he believed he had a god-given responsibility to protect moroccan jews. "moroccan jews are my subjects, and it is my duty to protect them against aggression."

unfortunately, other jewish communities did not receive that kind of protection. algerian jews faced a pogrom by the local arab population in constantine, killing 25 and destroying several jewish homes and businesses. 2000 algerian jews were sent to concentration camps in bedeau and djelfa, where many died from hunger, exhaustion, disease, or beatings. 5000 tunisian jews were forced into labor and detention camps where over 400 of them were killed. in libya, there was a violent pogrom which killed 500 jews out of a community of 4000. 2600 of the survivors were sent to the giado concentration camp, of which 526 died. in tunisia, there was a violent pogrom which killed over 130 jews (including 36 children), injured hundreds, and left 4000 homeless. italian jews faced pogroms, the jewish ghetto in rome was raided and over a thousand jews were detained and sent to concentration camps. a total of 7680 italian jews out of a population of nearly 45,000 were killed.

in greece, thousands of jews were deported to auschwitz. as many as 50% died en route, and only 10,000 out of over 75,000 survived, a nearly 90% death rate. their homes were looted and their property was stolen, and when the few survivors tried to return after the war (a difficult task as the greek foreign ministry attempted to delay or prevent their return to greece), most were unable to regain their property and possessions, forcing most to seek asylum in israel or other countries.

egyptian jews were not directly affected by the axis powers, but extremist organizations like young egypt and the muslim brotherhood sympathized with the nazis and even secured nazi funds to distribute thousands of antisemitic propaganda pamphlets. sporadic pogroms took place throughout the 40's, stoked by political leaders like mahmoud an-nukrashi pasha who said to the british ambassador, "all jews were potential zionists" and dr heykal pasha who said "if the u.n. decides to amputate a part of palestine in order to establish a jewish state, ... jewish blood will necessarily be shed elsewhere in the arab world ... to place in certain and serious danger a million jews." this political extremism prompted the 1948 cairo bombings that killed 70 jews and wounded 200, with many more being killed in the riots following, and eventually led to the expulsion of nearly all egyptian jews, whose money and posessions were all confiscated by the egyptian government.

similar political persecution was directed at iraqi jews, leading to the farhud, a pogrom which killed 180 jews and forced tens of thousands to flee. though there were many who did not support the nazi regime or agree with their views, there were just as many in arab countries who did, in no small part because of active effort by the nazis to gain sympathy from arab populations who already did not get along with their local jewish populations. this led to several other pogroms that took place in the 30's and 40's across lebanon, syria, and british mandate palestine, including a pogrom in jaffa which killed 9 jews and forced 12,000 jews to flee, and another in tiberias which killed 19 jews (including 11 children), most of whom were stabbed to death.

it's understandable that most of what the general public knows about the holocaust is the stories of ashkenazi jews from central and eastern europe, because they comprise the vast majority of the victims. hopefully, this encourages you to do further research into the ways other parts of the diaspora were also affected.

#yom hashoah #jewish #jumblr

1K notes · View notes

devildomwriter · 8 months

Text

Mammon Birthday Special 100 Fun Facts

1. Mammon states that he sleeps in the nude

2. Mammon despises witches and was nearly chopped into pieces by them once but Lucifer rescued him (although Lucifer was also the one to recommend they cut him into pieces)

3. When Levi tried attacking Mammon in his sleep, before he could even bring his foot down on Mammon, Mammon had him in a headlock

4. Mammon has a habit of stripping while drunk

5. Mammon does not like it when bath’s smell like flowers

6. Mammon’s dream for the future is having a carefree and playful life

7. Mammon starts his baths by washing his head

8. Mammon’s fear of ghosts and monsters originates a little after a year of living in the Devildom when he is possessed by a ghost

9. Mammon hates a Devildom song called “Corpse Rock”

10. Karasu refers to Mammon as noodle-boy

11. In earlier chats and Devilgrams Mammon is said to be a cat person, in later stories he is said to be a dog person, but his birthday information card again states he is more of a cat person

12. Mammon’s motto is “Money will makes the Devil turn millstones.”

13. Mammon’s daily activity is procrastinating in MC’s room

14. Mammon is obsessed with his shades and when he accidentally breaks them he’s devastated

15. According to Beelzebub, Mammon is bad at cooking and doesn’t make good peanut butter sandwiches

16. When Belphie and Beel helped Mammon pick out his human world outfit, he was so touched he bought them their human world clothes

17. Mammon states if the Devildom disappeared tomorrow he’d borrow as much money as he wanted to spend and not have to pay any of it back

18. Mammon’s favorite food in hell is Soy Sauce flavored cup ramen

19. In a love survey in B’s log, Mammin is said to be the active one pursuing love

20. Mammon is said to attract the “sassy and outgoing” types

21. The first thing Mammon does in the morning is check his stocks

22. In the love survey in B’s log when asked if he’d want to be bound by or bind his lover his response was “what do you want me to do? What did you say? Idiot!”

23. Mammon’s car is a Demonio 666 Lexura. The specific type was very rare and (unbeknownst to him originally) only with Lucifer and Diavolo’s help was he able to get it

24. Mammon easily forgets anniversaries and special dates of remembrance

25. Mammon is unable to express himself frankly

26. Mammon likes R&B music

27. Mammon is not a morning demon

28. One of the first things in the game said about Mammon by his brothers is that he’s a masochist

29. The results of a demon brain scanning app showed that Mammon’s thoughts are 90% money

30. Mammon’s worst RAD subject is Hexes and Curses

31. Mammon became Lucifer’s attendant in the Celestial Realm before Leviathan had even been born

32. Mammon was once almost roasted alive by hellfire

33. Mammon is a very bad liar and often admits exactly what he did when explaining that’s not what he did

34. Mammon was almost the one to tame Cerberus but Lucifer rushed in as he was about to confront the dog

35. Mammon is extremely protective of his little brothers

36. When forced to be honest, Mammon admits how much he admires and respects Lucifer

37. When Lucifer has a bad day, Mammon will bring him a drink and sandwich without being asked

38. Mammon was almost kicked out of the celestial realm thousands of years before the fall until Lucifer got through to him

39. Besides the people who were told what Simeon was going through in season 4, Mammon was the first one to notice something was wrong with him

40. Once Mammon was punished by Lucifer by being tickled until he laughed so hard he was humiliated

41. Mammon was given a serum with unknown results that caused him to tell MC he wanted to do many explicit things with them

42. Even Michael was unable to handle Mammon as an angel

43. Mammon is so fast that not even Diavolo and Lucifer can catch up to him

44. It’s been mentioned multiple times that Mammon uses crows as familiars

45. When Lucifer cannot trust Diavolo, he turns to Mammon

46. Mammon once called up Simeon to ask about significant lines in the TSL series so he could successfully hack into Leviathan’s akuzon account

47. Levi and Mammon sometimes perform standup comedy

48. When Mammon tried making a cake for Lucifer on his birthday in the Celestial Realm, he accidentally destroyed the kitchen, infuriating Michael

49. Mammon works as a model occasionally

50. In lesson 11 of the game Mammon claims he is well over 5,000 years old

51. In the celestial realm Mammon would often watch over the younger angels

52. Mammon once tried selling bird feathers to the lesser angels, claiming they were seraph feathers

53. In the celestial realm, Mammon once used the lesser angels to play a game of life-size chess

54. Mammon is said to have been the one who rallied and encouraged the angels in the Celestial war

55. Unlike his brothers, Mammon doesn’t often lose control of his powers

56. Whenever Mammon comes up with solutions to a crisis, they usually make things worse

57. Mammon struggles with math unless he thinks about it as calculating money

58. Mammon loves pandas because they’re profitable

59. Mammon always lets his brothers know about sales and deals going on

60. Mammon is the one who told Lucifer to always have pride and not regret his decision about the war

61. Mammon was cursed to speak like a cat during season 4 and Satan was unable to leave his side even getting Mammon to play with cat toys.

62. The first time Mammon lost control of his powers and transformed into a demon in the game is when he misunderstood a conversation between Levi and MC and assumed they had “relations”

63. Mammon is one of the only people who will indulge Asmodeus and watch his one-man fashion shows

64. When Mammon put too many meals on Satan’s tab, Satan called up Solomon and told him Mammon wanted to try his new recipe

65. Mammon has kidnapped MC multiple times

66. Mammon sometimes goes clubbing with Asmo after part time jobs

67. After Mammon sold all of their silverware he was fired from Ristorante Six

68. Mammon is sometimes referred to as MC’s pet

69. Mammon continues to insist he’s MC’s master not the other way around

70. Mammon sees Luke as his little brother

71. Student council members used to oversee detention until Mammon kept getting detention himself

72. Mammon once accidentally cast a spell on himself that made him burst into song

73. Mammon once accidentally turned himself into a dog

74. Mammon accidentally cursed himself and became extremely small. He was scared of how Beel was looking at him

75. When Mammon made the Miss’em dolls he became extremely wealthy but later blew it all on gambling

76. Mammon is too scared to watch horror movies alone and asks Lucifer to watch them with him

77. Mammon once attacked Lucifer with a three-prong pitch fork when he embarrassed him

78. Mammon has cried from fear of Simeon multiple times

79. Mammon was unable to even pretend to break up with MC

80. Mammon is one of the reasons you need a permit to get to the human world rather than do so freely

81. Mammon got a Mohawk once but his brothers teased him so much he immediately got rid of it

82. Mammon loves the Devildom version of Harry Potter

83. Mammon often threatens lesser/younger demons to hand over all their money

84. Mammon once stopped a bank robbery and demanded the money as compensation

85. Mammon accidentally cut down a Christmas tree gifted to Lucifer from Diavolo

86. Mammon was tricked by Lucifer to gamble against everyone he’d ever screwed over all at once

87. Mammon calls going to the horse races “seeing the horsies” to try and convince MC to tag along

88. When he was Lucifer’s attendant, Mammon sought for a rare Crystal Lily flower to gift him but got lost and Lucifer had to come find him

89. Mammon used Serenity Manor as collateral in gambling as soon as he got to the human world, almost forcing everyone to go right back to the Devildom

90. When coming up with proposal’s Mammon forced Simeon, Solomon, and Luke to participate in a flash mob

91. Mammon has a blood oath with MC and Leviathan

92. Mammon accidentally won Henry 1.0 while trying his first Devildom ice cream. He was nearly eaten.

93. Mammon owns an AK-47 after winning it over in a game against Leviathan

94. Mammon fees guilty that he didn’t have a grand reason to follow Lucifer to hell rather than just feeling like it

95. Mammon once lost a bet to a bunch of rabbits

96. Mammon prefers spicy foods to sweets

97. Mammon extorted Satan for 50,000 Grimm in exchange for throwing him a baseball

98. Mammon’s highest known rank in the celestial realm within the game is a Throne

99. When Mammon was turned into a Test Name box he got used to it immediately, disappointing Beelzebub

100. Mammon died in season 4 for a few minutes but was brought back by Barbatos

#obey me shall we date #obey me mammon #obey me fun facts #obey me lucifer #obey me diavolo #obey me simeon #obey me solomon #obey me leviathan #obey me asmodeus

1K notes · View notes

wandaspup · 1 month

Text

Sinners

Summary: In a small town, you try living up to your mother’s expectations while encountering Wanda Maximoff, a mysterious woman and a childhood friend of your mothers. It leaves you questioning her intentions and your beliefs.

Parings: Wanda x Fem R

Warnings: Fictional mother is an asshole

Author notes: Things to consider before reading: You are 19 years old while Wanda is 36. I'm not familiar with the bible so please do not take this seriously. It's only fiction.

Warnings will be added as I update more chapters! ♥️ Happy reading

Part 2

The handles are warm as you push the double doors open of the church, their hinges creaking softly in response to the intrusion. As the door swung apart, it revealed the dimly lit interior bathed in sunlight whistling through the skylight. Thousands of dust particles scattered around the beams, casting a glow. On either side of the church, the stained-glass windows painted with vivid patterns, painted their shadows on the polished floor.

As you lingered behind your parents, hands clasped together at your front. The four walls of the church momentarily silenced the bustling streets before more people entered, quiet murmurs spreading across the churchgoers. People passed by to take their seats, some offered greetings to your parents, while others remarked on how you have grown into a fine young lady. Your family was well known for the small church gatherings they hosted, always extending their hospitality to the community. However, you could not shake the feeling your parents’ ego was involved, driven by their desires to keep their status. Your mother seemed intent on being the best, regardless of the situation, while your father followed her lead.

Lost in your head, you hadn’t noticed the priest approaching your parents until he stood before them, a gentle smile on his lips. “Good morning, everyone,” he greeted, his voice warm and inviting. “I trust you all found yourselves well?”

“Certainly, Father Steve. It’s always a pleasure,” your mother affirmed with a nod, her hand briefly resting on the priest’s arm. Beside her, your father offered a gentle squeeze of

Father Steve’s hand.

His eyes landed on you, a wide grin reaching his face as he moved between your parents. Your feet shuffled beneath you, a slight bow to your head as he addressed you directly.

“My child, you are growing quite fast,” he remarked warmly. “I’m sure your mother and father must be so proud of you.”

You nodded, a faint uncertainty lingering in your response. “I hope so,” you murmured softly. Your gaze flicked over to them, your mother’s stern facade causing a tightness in your stomach. Before the tension could linger further, the priest politely excused himself to begin the ceremony. You followed your parents towards the front row, Father Steve took his place at the altar.

Your mother, focused on the moment, spared no mind at you, her hushed reminder to keep your posture straight and your head forward as you took your seat beside her.

The urge to roll your eyes was strong, but you fought against it, instead clenching your fists tightly against your thighs and felt your jaw tense and your teeth grind together in frustration. A flicker of movement draws your attention. A woman sitting on the right far end at the fourth row lingering on the edge of your sight, compelling you to get a glance.

Father Steve gently echoes through the church, drawing your focus back to the front with swift precision. “As we gather here today, let us remember the grace and mercy of our Lord, who is our eternal Savior. With his love God watches over us, guiding and protecting us. We strive to lead by good deeds by following his teachings and commandments, we can trust him for his protection.”

“But let’s not forget we are human, mistakes are bound to happen. God will not judge for our mistakes and in his eyes there is always the opportunity for redemption. Through prayers we can seek forgiveness for our sins."

The final sigh of amen hangs in the air, marking the end of the prayer. You can sense your mother stares before she gets up along with the rest from the row. Your thoughts briefly drift to the encounter with the mysterious woman before refocusing. You got up and followed behind your parents, still you couldn’t keep your eyes forward as you searched for the woman.

Approaching the altar, the chalice tipped gently down as you savored the taste of bitterness on your tongue. You move for the next person, your head down fixed at the worn out tiles.

A sudden collision made you come back to reality. “I am so sorry.”

“No harm done, honey,” she chuckled softly, so husky yet smooth. “I’m Wanda.” She happily says and extends her hands for a greeting.

You gave your name and took her offer, your hands met in a firm grasp. Wanda was undeniable beauty, her cheekbones formed natural crowns on her face. The strange sensation from earlier startled within, however you pushed them aside and ignored it.

“Well I should be getting back to my parents.”

“Of course don’t let me keep you.”

Everything about her kept you wondering who she was. Her face was so recognizable, you pushed yourself to remember where you had last seen her.

With everyone getting their share, you navigated past the rows where your parents were engrossed in conversation near the doors. Your mother’s words echoed at the tip of your ears, reminding you how impolite It is to interrupt. So you lingered on the side, fidgeting with your hands as your gaze remained fixed on Wanda. You didn’t know how long you stood there before your mother called out your name, finally getting your attention on the third call.

“You’ve been out of it all day, pull yourself together now.”

“Yes, mother, I’m sorry,” you gritted out, feeling anger settle in you.

You squinted as you emerged out of the doors, stuffing your hands in your pockets as you jogged down the three steps. Families and friends crowded outside while you watched, your parents, well your mother couldn’t help but throw her sentimental joy at people's faces. With a sigh, you kicked a small pebble across the ground.

Just then, they’ve come to join you where you stood, thankful to be leaving. But as you all started towards the car, the small shriek of your mother’s voice halted both you and your father. You looked up seeing Wanda heading towards you, her presence alone twisting your insides.

Surprised, your mother’s eyes widened as fixed on the red head. “Wanda?" she exclaimed, her voice tinged with disbelief.

Shaking off the feeling, you reassured yourself that you were just being paranoid about Wanda. There’s no way you could forget a face like hers. It’d be ridiculous not to remember meeting a woman with such elegance. Wanda appeared as a flawless Barbie doll, ravishing with politeness and beauty. Her demeanor seemed almost too perfect to be real.

Wanda chuckled, her arm draping over your mother’s shoulder with a sharp but soft expression. “Surprised to see me?” She teased.

“You never told me when you were coming.”

With a casual shrug, she stepped back, her gaze briefly landing on you and your father before focusing elsewhere. You tapped your feet, swaying one of them back and forth by your heels. Something about her still didn't settle right with you. It seemed she knew your mother well, what a consequence. You observed your father and can tell he knew her as well.

“Well, you know me. I always enjoy making an entrance. Arrived yesterday morning and managed to snag a room at that quaint little motel. Your town is absolutely lovely.”

Your father greeted Wanda with a firm handshake before turning to you. "This is our daughter," he said, his hand gently patting your shoulder, urging you forward as though you were still a small child.

Wanda waved her hand, dismissing the encounter. “Oh, we already met in the church.” She gave you a little pat on your arm, leaving her hand there for a little second longer.

She winked and you felt goosebumps scatter through your body as you stood confused why this woman who you never met before besides a brief encounter was making you feel this way.

“How about you coming over for dinner tomorrow? We’d love to have you.”

Wanda nodded and clasped her hands together, a smile broke out on her lips. “I’ll be there.”

#wanda x y/n #mommy wanda #wanda maximoff #wanda x fem!reader #dark wanda x reader #wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff smut #wanda x you #wanda maximilf #wanda x reader

825 notes · View notes

macfrog · 6 months

Text

secrets cowboy like me chapter fourteen

one day i'll rein my chapters back in. today is not that day. thirteen thousand words of...a little bit of fucking and a lot of fighting. i love you all and i still can't believe the love you continue to show this series. you're all actually insane. i present to you: the penultimate chapter of cowboy.

pairing: dbf!joel miller x fem!reader

summary: the one where...everybody finds out.

warnings: age gap (reader is 23, joel is 48), a big argument, a lot of guilt, angry disappointed dad, one mention of alcohol consumption, lil bit of sub!joel, unprotected piv, tiny bit of degradation, tiny bit of praise kink, creampie, cursing, smut, fluff, angst

word count: 12.9k (dry heaves)

series masterlist | main masterlist | playlist | follow @macfroglets w notifs on to be the first to hear when i post 🧡

You haven’t slept a wink. Not one second.

You and Joel were awake until one in the morning on the phone; you – panicking, spilling words into the receiver, watching different cuts of your dad realizing everything as though projected across your blank ceiling, and Joel – monotone as fucking ever, batting every single theory away.

He doesn’t know a damn thing, he’d said. You didn’t miss the way his words hung over the edge of the sentence, trembling almost.

You scoffed and hissed back down the line. You don’t fucking know that! How can you know that?

You think he just found out about us and thought, Hey, better get some shut-eye before I deal with this? Really, baby?

I think he doesn’t know what he found out. I think he’s probably tryna convince himself that he’s wrong.

So, let him. He’s wrong. We go with that.

Joel knew he wasn’t doing anything to calm you down. Wasn’t offering anything you could seriously take on. You know he wasn’t trying to.

He was as worried as you were – he was just pretending not to be, because what fucking good would it do to have the two of you bouncing off one another with panic?

Still, he stayed on the phone the entire night. When he fell asleep, you lay in bed and tossed everything over in your head like tearing back the pages of a diary. Last night, then Frank’s, then the weekend before that, then the Hillcrest – all the way back to that first ride home. The pissing rain, the boxes of nails rattling in the glove compartment with each sway of the truck. Recalling every word spoken, every move made, every expression pulled and glance stolen and fucking breath taken.

Any sound from beyond your door shot a bullet of adrenaline through your veins, coursing through your body like ice. As if it was your dad, barreling in at 3AM to have it out with you.

You reckon you’d be ready if he did. Wide-eyed, fists clenched, heart hammering.

Joel groans back to life at eight. You hear the ruffling of bedsheets, the crackle down the line as he drags the phone across his mattress and pins it to his ear. You lift your own. Joel and 08:43:36, 37, 38 underneath it on the screen.

His voice drums low and groggy from the speaker. “You are gonna have my phone bill through the damn roof. I’m exhausted, darlin’.”

“I can’t think of anything else. He knows, Joel.”

He sighs. You can see his head falling into his hand, see his thumb rubbing circles into his temple. “Let’s just see what happens, alright? There ain’t any chance you left your phone in the living room ‘n he came across it, thought he’d keep it for you comin’ home?”

“I’ve barely left my room all week. Why would it be down there?”

Joel’s quiet. He just breathes down the line. After a minute, he clears his throat.

“Come over, would ya?”

“Huh?”

“Come over. I wanna see you. I wanna make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine, Joel, I’m –”

“Hey. Don’t make me ask again, alright? C’mon, now. I got some errands to run; you’re coming with me.”

He doesn’t have to say much else to convince you; you’re already pulling your bedsheets back and hanging up. Your hoodie and shorts are still hooked over the foot of your bed. The sun filters through the drapes, edges you nearer the door. Your chest fills with something calling itself bravery, and slowly, quietly – you click the door open.

The hallway is silent. A blushing gold in the morning light. The house is still – eerily still. Your dad’s room door is open, bed made, sheets tucked neatly under the mattress. Like he had time to spend on it. Stuff to mull over as he made it.

The carpet softens your footsteps when you finally move for the stairs. The birds are singing outside. The wallpaper canvases your shadow, a little monster creeping along one step behind you, passing picture frames which dazzle with sunrays and mirror a half-lit reflection back to you. One side you – the other, missing.

You lean over the last step, craning your head and shoulders into the hallway. The clock on the wall opposite ticks to no one. Tick tick tick tick. And aside from it, from its taunting tutting, there are no other signs of life. His jacket hangs from the peg. His boots lying below, laces tangled.

The sun separates into brittle shards through the window, illuminating the way to the kitchen. You’re not fucking prepared to follow it.

Shoulders hunched, like it might make a difference, you step forward and lower your thumb and index finger over your keys, aiming for them like a shaky arcade claw machine. Tick tick tick. They jingle as you hook your fingertip through them. Your nose wrinkles.

“Hey.”

He appears around the corner like an apparition. The keys drop back to the unit with a violent clatter.

“Jesus!”

“Woah, woah.” Your dad holds a palm up, laughing nervously. “Sorry. Where you headed?”

“Uh, J– Sarah’s. Some errands she wants some help with.”

He nods. “Yeah? You don’t want breakfast first?”

You drag your eyes to meet his for the first time. He looks drawn, skin like webbing, as though it’s just draped over his skull. As though you could put your finger through it like parchment, just push straight through. He looks like he’s had about as much sleep as you have.

“No, thanks,” you say, the sunken, sullen sight of him crumbling your voice to dust. Your lips move wordlessly, waiting for another lie from your tongue to offer over. But between the way he looks, weary and forlorn, and the thin veil of truth left between you – nothing materializes.

“Why don’t you – why don’t you hold back a second?” Dad beckons you forward, folding his fingers to his palm. “Got somethin’ I wanna talk to you about.”

“Dad, I really gotta go, I –”

“Just – come on. I’m sure Sarah won’t mind.”

He disappears without waiting for a response. Shifts back into the living room, shadow following him like a cloak across the door. You hear the creak of his chair as he settles down into it, the unsettling squeal of leather and spring.

Your feet are planted to the hall floor. To move in either direction feels like a trap. To follow after him – sit opposite and swallow back what you think you know is coming. All of his suspicions stuck in your throat like a bitter, powdery pill. Or to turn away – leave him in an empty house, nothing but the sound of his own breathing and that tick tick tick affirming your guilt.

No more excuses filter through – none of Joel’s ideas, none of his explanations. You let your shoulders drop and your eyes close. The only image behind them is that six-foot, graying, droning idiot who’s probably sat waiting for you to pull up so he can take you to fucking Trader Joe’s or whatever.

And his shirt, which he’d probably drape over your shoulders before he’s even said hello. And his smile, which would draw you onto your tiptoes, draw your lips to his. And his hands, and his waist, and his pulse in step with yours as you follow him around the quiet store, the Saturday morning air daring you to hook your fingers around two of his every now and then. The longing a gnawing in your chest, burrowing deep beneath the cage of your ribs.

He's not here, though. It’s just you. And if you call him now, if he shows up unannounced – it’s only going to confirm what your dad thinks. Fuck it – what he knows.

So you unstick your sneakers and haul yourself through to the living room.

He’s rocking in the chair when you sink back into the couch. Balls of his feet pushing him back and forth. His fingers to his lips, like keeping the words at bay for now. Like feeling the jagged shape of them through his skin.

You throw a pillow over your legs, shaggy ivory fringe tickling your bare thighs. Your dad doesn’t speak. When you lift your head, his eyes flit from yours down to your restless fingers knitting the tassels of his pillow.

“What is it?” you croak.

“Mind if I ask you somethin’?”

You shrug. “Go for it.”

He waits a beat. A hesitation. Like he doesn’t want to ask the first question. He’s at the edge of a cliff. One more step and he’s plummeting down the rocky side, into a fog of cloud. Nothing will ever be the same. Only – you’ve already pushed him. He’s already falling. He just hasn’t realized it yet.

Maybe he feels the drop in his stomach, right now. Maybe the wind screams in his ears. He finally asks, “When were you gonna tell me about y’all gettin’ into a barfight on Friday night?”

Unexpected. But keep your fucking cool.

Your fingertip whitens, blood halted by the knot of the cushion fringe. You chew on a torn leaf of skin from your lips. “What?”

“You ‘n Joel. When he picked you up. What the hell happened?”

Your eyes slide from his to the patio door behind him, garden lighting up with the sun scaling higher in the sky. You stare there until it burns, until it’s all just a blur of color in your vision, and then pull a half-blinded gaze back in his direction.

You’re frozen, as if he has you at gunpoint. Shoulders tense, eyes wide. Dontshootdontshootdontshoot. “Who –? Who said that?”

“Hank. Was on the phone to ‘im last night. Anna said Joel was squarin’ up to some kid in Frank’s. You wanna tell me exactly what happened?”

“Nothing.” Liar. “Nothing happened. It was just some asshole. Joel was just lookin’ out for me. For us. Me ‘n Anna.”

“She told Hank he knocked the kid out. That Sam had to stop it from gettin’ outta control.”

He stares at you, and there’s no mask on his face. No cover, no disguise. He’s suspicious. And he doesn’t care that you know it. He’s not just asking about the barfight.

“Are you gonna say it or am I, hon?”

“Say what?”

Your last thread of insane hope that he’s innocently wondering about Frank’s is snapped in two by the words that tear out of his mouth, so quick they rip into your skin like shards of glass.

“What the hell’s goin’ on between you two?”

Your body suddenly drops further into the couch, the weight of your blood freezing to ice in your veins. Your joints seize, your jaw locks. Air passes across your open lips with no intention of carrying words back out the way it came. You forget any ability you had previously to come up with excuses, to cover up, to lie. Hell, you’re not sure you’d remember your own fucking name if he asked that next.

You say nothing. And he cocks his head, drums his fingers on the arm of his chair.

Say something.

“Nothing.”

Say something more convincing.

“Nothing?” you repeat, a shrill pitch in your voice like it’s a question. Like he’s dumb for even thinking there might be something weird going on. Like he’s the idiot.

The clock in the hall ticks to itself, amused. Fifteen little snaps. Each one sounds like a plate of glass beneath your feet, cracking a little more, a little deeper, a little wider. The abyss opening its wide, dark jaws beneath you.

Your dad’s expression doesn’t change. He crosses his arms, head leaning back a little. He almost looks sad. Almost looks like he might give in. Send you on your way, on your errands with Sarah.

But something recharges him, something must flicker behind his eyes, because he sits forward again and watches your reaction intently as he says –

“Then explain the text messages you been sendin’ each other.”

Another blow hits your stomach, rippling waves of white heat through you. You feel hot, a scorching panic right beneath the surface of your skin so hot that it mistakes itself for ice cold. A panic which radiates from your heart, pulsating through your entire body, every limb beginning to shudder involuntarily. Your silence is answer enough.

He sighs. Sits forward with his elbows on his knees. “I knew y’all were close, knew you cared about each other. You sure always talked to ‘im more ‘n you ever talked to me, even before you went off to college. But I’ve been noticing things lately…Something’s different. Something’s changed.”

Your eyes trace his form as he talks. It’s fucking dizzying. He’s animated, like a character from some eighties cop show who finally solved the mystery. He knows. He knows everything. Your jaw won’t move to answer.

“Seeing you two together – talking, laughing. The way you look at each other these days. ‘n you’re always near each other, ain’t you? Always hoverin’. It ain’t anything like before. That day the three of us went to Costco, that – I –” His anger seems to boil over, cascading from his lips in an angry burst of hot breath. “I felt like a spare tire in the back of the truck that day.”

“We’re…We’re just…f-friends…I don’t –”

He holds a finger up. Doesn’t want to hear it. Not until his speech is done. The sun moves behind a cloud; the living room suddenly drains of light. “That day you said you were spending the night at Anna’s. Said you were havin’ a pool day, right?”

“Right,” you whisper, eyes closing over. They feel heavy. Tired and teary.

“Right. Except,” he brings his finger down, aims it straight at you, “Hank says you weren’t never there. Anna was at Sal’s all day Sunday.”

Fuck.

“Dad…”

You’re pleading with him now. Enough, I’ve heard enough. I know you know. As if you might still be able to stop the train, dig your heels in and hold on tight to derail it. Derail his thoughts. Salvage the situation, string it back together with shame and atonement.

But he doesn’t listen. He doesn’t even hear you.

“’n that’s when I got to thinkin’ – last Monday, at Joel’s. I went over to fix his sink – you remember I told you about his sink?” He doesn’t wait for a response. “I went over there, and he’s cookin’ this great big breakfast – pancakes, all of it – and there ain’t no one else in his house. Just him. Sarah was in Nashville, you remember?”

You take a deep breath. This is it. The ship’s beginning to disappear beneath the black waves.

“I thought maybe he had someone over, maybe expectin’ that girl from the plant hire…Anyway,” he bats his hand, bats the hopeful glint in Lois’s eye from his mind, “I’m walking downstairs, on my way out, and I notice somethin’ on the floor by the door.”

His chair squeaks timidly as he moves, his right arm lowering, scooping for something you can’t see yet. But when he shakily lifts it, your eyes fall to your knees. It hangs before you, apologetic and ashamed.

Joel was right. He knew it. You palmed him off. You told him your dad wouldn’t – couldn’t – put two and two together. And here he is, sat feet from you, holding the final piece to the puzzle in a quivering fist. Proof that, when he was in the house that day, you were only feet from him. Wrapped in his best friend’s shirt, dripping wet from his shower.

“This bag,” he hisses, and the tears finally drop onto your cheeks. They scurry to your chin, gathering and throwing themselves to your chest. Your shoulders drop, your eyes still low. You can’t look at him.

He speaks slowly. Speaks through his teeth. Every word like its own poisonous jab.

“Now you tell me: what in God’s name is your bag doin’ in Joel Miller’s hallway, at ten in the mornin’, when you’re supposed to be at Anna’s?”

Your fingers touch your forehead, a burning pain beginning to sting through your skull. You can feel your pulse in your temples. You’ve never wanted Joel to be stood in front of you so badly in all your life; just to deflect some of the interrogation off of you, just to give you breathing space. Just to protect you from the onslaught of questioning from your dad.

“No,” he mutters, shaking his head. The bag hits the carpet with a thud. “No, there ain’t no way. You were at Anna’s, right? You ain’t with Joel Miller, no way. I’m thinkin’, Please, God, don’t let that have been my daughter’s bag that day. But I’m right, ain’t I? You were there, weren’t you?”

You blink rapidly. The tears multiply quicker. The room is glossed in a protective film of salt and adrenaline. Give me something to say back. Give me something to say back.

“Where were you, hon? Musta been hidin’ somewhere, right?”

Give me something please think of something please come over please walk through that door please tell me what to say.

And then it comes to you. You blink the mist from your eyes. He said…he knew about texts you’d been sending Joel. How did he…?

“How did you know about the texts?”

“Pardon me?”

You straighten up and look him dead in the eye. Your voice feels hoarse. It sounds nothing like you. “How – did you know – about – the texts?”

“That’s your concern right now?”

“How – did you know?”

He begins to sputter, like the heat turned up under a pan on the hob. “Look, hon, you had me worried sick. Disappearin’ and I got no clue where you are. Always having an excuse to go off somewhere alone, no explanation. Don’t even get me started on those marks on your neck.”

Your hand immediately clamps around your throat, hot skin stained pink hissing into your palm. Joel’s teeth on you last night. His words cushioning the sharp bite. I love you. The heat hurts, now, when it felt so comforting just a few hours ago. It burns. It throbs. It feels like shame.

Your dad’s voice brings you back into the room.

“There’s another thing – last night,” he flings a laugh to you, “you were so quiet. So damn quiet. Didn’t say a word the entire time, and then I leave for all of ten minutes, and suddenly the two of you are headin’ over to his for – what was it? UCLA pamphlets?”

There’s a break between his words, a gap which makes you think that he wants you to answer. Like he’s giving you a chance, extending his arm. But he fills the space with a jeering laugh, and keeps talking.

“Where are they, huh? These pamphlets? ‘s why you were at Joel’s, right? Go on, go get ‘em. Show them to me.”

Your face solidifies. Lips tremble. There’s a scowl pulling your brows together. You’ve no right for it to be there. “Stop it,” you seethe. “Tell me what you did.”

“He’s the only one. The only one who could get you to talk. I had to check, kiddo. I had to know.”

Your stare doesn’t let up. Your lips bolt shut, refusing to say another word until he confesses. Which he does. Almost breezily.

“I looked through your phone. While you were gone. I – I went upstairs, ‘n I took it.”

He says it casually, as though he’s simply checked the newspaper. As though he’s just relaying the columns to you. Someone’s had a baby. Someone else won three grand on a scratch card. By the way, I know you’ve been messing around with Joel.

So it takes a minute for what he’s said to hit you. But when it does, the wave crashes over your shoulders so violently that it throws you to your feet, tasseled pillow whipped to the other side of the couch.

There are tears searing across your eyes. A twisted grimace of a smile on your face, a laugh breaking roughly from your throat. Some crazed, disbelieving, ugly little laugh.

“You – you checked my…my fuckin’ phone. You – you fucking –”

His head jerks back, offended. “Hey, now, listen to me –”

“I’m not listenin’ to another word! Am I twelve?”

You stalk over to the kitchen. The rattle of your dad’s chair tells you he follows.

“Well – you tell me, hon, ‘cause right now, you’re making a lot of real stupid decisions.”

That same ugly laugh echoes around the house. You grip onto the kitchen island. The room starts to wheel.

“Who the hell are you to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do?” you pant, eyes tight shut. Your thumbs begin to slip, sweat gliding between your skin and the counter.

“I’m your father! I’m lookin’ out for you, damnit! You think I wanna be havin’ this conversation with you right now?”

The granite countertop blurs in and out of focus when you open your eyes. You hook onto it, using it to haul yourself around the island until there’s distance between your wobbly figure and his. And you remember one week ago, when the same counter separated you and Joel, and you think of Joel, and think of his fingers around your wrist, and his fist against Knox’s jaw, and his teeth in your neck.

“Look,” your dad’s voice floats somewhere over the image of Joel’s eyes, “let’s just – let’s calm down. You ‘n me – we’re gonna talk this out. We’re gonna have a calm, mature discussion about all of this. You’re gonna tell me exactly what’s been goin’ on, and then I’m gonna head over to Joel’s – alone – and talk to him.”

But his voice doesn’t sound calm. There’s a tremble to it – a tremor as fragile as glass, as thin as ice. It’s crackling as he speaks. He can hardly keep a hold on it himself.

If he goes over to Joel’s – this you know – there ain’t anything calm or mature that will come of it. Suddenly the images in your head warp, and it’s your fingers around Joel’s wrist, someone else’s fist against his cheek, someone else’s teeth and the venom spat between them.

“Dad,” you pant, “it’s over. He ended it. It’s been done for, like, two weeks now. It was nothing.”

“Oh, nothing, was it?” He steps closer. You retreat. Edge further around the counter, further from him. His head tilts, eyebrows curl. He looks like a vulture, eyeing its prey. “Then what were the two of you up to last night?”

“We – we went for ice cream, that’s all. He wanted to make sure I was alright.”

He’s not convinced. And he shouldn’t be, either. He coughs a laugh. “For three hours? You were eatin’ ice cream for three Goddamn hours?” His cheeks wobble as he shakes his head. Then, in a softer voice, like he’s arming himself with a chisel to prick at the weakest parts of the sculpture, “What’d he do to you, girl?”

The marble cracks and snaps wide open. Anger floods out in hot waves. Any composure you’d managed to scrape together flushes clean out of your body.

“Nothing I didn’t want him to fuckin’ do. Stop treating me like I’m some kid who’s – who’s been tricked, or something. I’m twenty-three, Dad, I’m an adult.”

His silence sends another misdirected shot of panic through you.

“I was in on it just as much as he was,” you weep, fingers searching for a scratch of beard or kiss of flannel.

Your dad scoffs then, hands slapping against his thighs, and turns away. “There ain’t no gettin’ through to you,” he announces to the timid living room.

Still bracing yourself against the island, you take the break in his tirade to catch your breath. The only thought running through your head, losing velocity with each circuit, is Joel walking through that door. His face when he notices you with your flushed cheeks and wide eyes. His hands reaching for yours, through all the lies and hurt. Your dad, stood opposite, tight as an arrow and ready to fucking fly for him. Fists balled, teeth bared.

“He doesn’t even know,” you realize, staring at the glow on the floor cast by the front door. “You haven’t told him you know, have you?”

“’course I ain’t told him. I wanted to talk to you first. Not that it’s gotten us anywhere, huh?”

“I’m gonna text him.”

“Hon, don’t you d–”

“I am not having this conversation on my own. There are two people involved here.”

You pull your phone from your pocket and scrawl some messy message to Joel. Three messy messages. Something like he knows everything, can you come over? I need you. Some needy, dramatic, helpless message.

The typing bubble appears for a fraction of a second. So fleeting that you almost miss it through your tears, before it drops back to nothing. He doesn’t reply.

Doesn’t pick up, either, when you call him. Three times in a row. Three missed calls; three Hey, it’s Joel, sorry I missed yous.

The phone rattles off the counter when you drop it, your head falling into your hands. Your dad wanders back over to his armchair and collapses into it with a sigh, his fingers massaging his temples. The two of you mirrored, the same storm circling between you, only ice in his veins and fire in yours.

Fear keeps your feet planted to the kitchen floor; adrenaline alone keeps you upright. Your fingers push hard into your forehead, an ache sat directly behind that dizzies you. Blood thudding its fists against your eyes, screaming in your ears.

How the fuck did this happen? It feels ridiculous to ask, but it’s all you got. When did the two of you get so lazy? Start forgetting to cover your tracks? Or – maybe worse – stop caring enough to even try?

Of course, saying you were with Anna was a dumb fucking move. Her dad is one of your dad’s buddies. One of Joel’s, too. That was always going to fuck it all up. And you were too caught up, too hellbent on seeing Joel, too fucking horny to stop for five seconds and keep your damn story straight.

There’s nothing to say, nothing that might fix this. There’s no winding your way out of it. The trap has you by the throat. Your jaw aches from trying to free yourself.

Your dad sways side to side in his chair, staring silently at the wall ahead of him. Your face burns with shame, with anger, with embarrassment. Your heart stings from the hurt, from wanting Joel here, from his ignoring your pleas for help. And, most annoying of all – from letting your dad down.

It doesn’t matter what you tell yourself. How you spin it. Sure, you’re twenty-three. You can make your own decisions. That much is fucking clear now. Doesn’t mean they’re always good. Even when they make you laugh until your cheeks hurt, make your stomach flip with excitement, make you scream from pleasure.

Make your heart do things you’ve never felt it do before. Things you never knew that it could do.

You let your dad down. He can barely look at you for it. You know damn well that it was worth every second, and yet, right now, nothing but thick, awkward, unbreathable air between the two of you – it feels like it should never have happened.

You’re bent over the counter, head resting on your folded arms, breathing still staggered – when you hear it. The squeal of brakes outside. An engine cutting. A door slamming.

Two knocks on the door, and Joel pushes it open. You’re already in the hallway, watching his heavy head and loose shirt cross the threshold.

He looks up and your eyes meet. His hair’s a mess, he’s in the same tee from last night. He’s gotten straight out of bed and into his truck, and he’s braced, like he doesn’t know what’s coming. Which direction to expect the first punch from.

Your knees weaken at the sight of him. The safe haven of his arms, the home of his chest. The beating pulse behind it whose language you’ve become fluent in. Even now, when everything’s fallen apart, his being here washes relief over you like cool water dousing an inferno. Your body relaxes, your breathing quietens.

Joel nods towards you. You okay?

You shake your head lightly, and he flicks his fingers. You’re in his arms before your brain tells your limbs to move.

“’s okay,” he breathes, lips lined with your ear. His chest is soft, warm; you take fistfuls of his shirt. He strokes your hair, mumbling, “Told you we’ll be alright, yeah? It’s goin’ to be alright.”

You weep into him, lips dripping with salty tears. They part to reply, when a low growl rips between your bodies. Joel loosens his grip and you step back, turning around to face the ghost of your father at the end of the hall.

“Get the hell away from him.”

He advances, takes a few steps forward. You meet him halfway, gripping onto his shirt, planting yourself firmly between him and Joel.

“Woah, woah,” you say, pushing on his small chest, “let’s all just calm down. Dad.”

He’s smaller, scrawnier, older, and weaker than Joel. He’s never going to lift a fucking hand to him. Not if he wants to keep it intact. He wouldn’t square up to a fly, never mind an actual worthy opponent – but your gut tells you to make damn sure he doesn’t even try.

“Get out of the way, hon.”

“No. No way. And let you –? No.”

He’s not even looking at you. You’re nothing but an obstacle. He’s staring a few feet behind.

“Baby,” Joel says, voice weary and surrendered. “It’s alright, now. C’mon, outta the way.”

“Baby?” your dad seethes. “You just call my daughter baby?”

“Called me it as long as he’s known me, Dad.”

“’s different now,” he spits. “What the f–? I mean, what the fuck, Joel? What were you even thinkin’? Putting your Goddamn hands on my daughter?”

You don’t usually hear your dad curse. All through growing up, even when you left home – you could count on one hand the number of times you’ve heard it. It sends a bolt of fear through you as if you’re five years old again, and he can’t do much worse than say bad words in front of you.

You don’t usually see your dad do any of this stuff. Raise his voice, ball his fists. Lean forward, feet planted on the ground, like daring Joel to make the first move. Joel – his best friend. The guy he was supposed to be able to trust more than anyone in the world.

Angry. Furious. And you think: if there were a time he had a right to feel this way, to act like this and throw threats around as though they’re light as air, if ever there were a moment – this would be it. A betrayal. A secret this big.

Joel takes a step forward. He doesn’t seem scared. More – placating. Letting the tantrum run its course. He holds his hands out. “Let’s just – let’s just talk.”

“Talk,” your dad repeats, spitting the word like it’s rotten in his mouth. “You wanna talk? Let’s talk. What the hell have you been doin’ to her? Hm?”

Joel shakes his head, shoulders lifting. “I ain’t been doin’ nothin’ to her. That’s not what this is.”

“Hell,” your dad scoffs, “not what it is. Why don’t you explain to me exactly what it is, then, Joel? If it ain’t you takin’ advantage of a young girl? Takin’ advantage of my kid?”

Your head whips back to face Joel, hand lifting in a bracing motion. He sees it – sees the way your head shakes, imperceptible to your dad. Please don’t tell him. Not yet.

It’s bad enough that he knows you’ve been messing around. It hurts enough that he knows you’ve been lying for the entire summer. Telling him the full story – the conversation in the truck, the words exchanged over ice cream and the quiet tick of traffic lights across the street – would only hurt more. Would only sharpen his anger. He’d ask more questions; he’d drive his dagger deeper.

Joel pleads with you. His eyes do his bargaining. You don’t relent. Please.

“You know what I keep thinkin’ about,” your dad interrupts, “you know what’s runnin’ through my mind? That damn garden party. Those cupcakes. You puttin’ your thumb on her lip. I should’ve known the second you touched her what was happening. You arrogant, shameless son of a bitch, Joel, you got no idea what you –”

“Dad. Enough.”

Sure, you’re trying to calm him down, palms outstretched and motioning like he’s a wild horse, rearing frantically and threatening to crush you. But it also stings to hear him talking about Joel like that. Talking to him like that.

The same Joel he’d sling an arm around, knocking their beers together when the Rangers won. The same Joel you know he’d spent hours sat out back with, talking into the night and sharing stories and secrets with the stars.

The same Joel who covered your legs with his jacket last night, who held you when you were hurting, who reminded you what it was like to feel your heart again, beating rapidly in your chest.

He’s not talking about the same Joel. Not the Joel you know. Yours.

He’s still rambling. “…’n all this time, you pair have been closer ‘n you were lettin’ on.”

“You don’t understand,” you plead, “you don’t know him like I do.”

Your dad scoffs, twisted smirk on his face. “Oh, I know ‘im. I’ve known him a hell of a lot longer and a hell of a lot better ‘n you have, hon. Known him since he was fifteen, askin’ me ‘n my buddies to buy ‘im a case of beer from the liquor store. His little brother in ‘n outta jail like God only knows what. I know exactly what he’s like.”

“What he’s like?” you huff, exasperated. You spin on your heel, arms coming down on your sides with a slap. “Joel, help me.”

“Don’t you dare look at ‘im! Listen, kiddo, I know him. Know what he’s like at Frank’s, takin’ women home left ‘n right, then forgetting their damn names. Know he sure as hell can’t remember that schoolteacher’s name, can you, Joel? You remember her?”

“Quit it,” you tell him over your shoulder, still facing Joel.

Your dad laughs from behind you. It turns your stomach. “I’ll bet he never told you about that one, did he? That’d turn you off ‘im in a heartbeat, wouldn’t it?”

“Nah, he told me about Jess.”

Your dad’s voice cuts. Joel’s head finally lifts, his eyes ungluing from the floor to look at you.

You shrug back. “I figured it out. Sister’s name is Mia – she’s a year younger ‘n me.”

You swear he almost fucking smiles. Almost. It’s funny, or at least, it would be if you weren’t both in the middle of tearing your entire dynamic apart. Any other time, he’d nudge you, or tousle your hair, and say you were too clever for him, or something about being old again.

When you turn back to face your dad, he looks like he’s run out of words. So, he repeats ones he’s already said.

“I…Well, I know him, honey. And he ain’t someone you oughta be with.”

“How’d you figure that?”

He sighs. “I just told you my reasons.”

“’cause he wanted beer when he was a kid and he’s slept with people before? ‘cause Tommy gets himself into trouble – trouble that Joel then gets him out of?”

“No, I –”

“You don’t know a damn thing about any of this. You won’t listen to me. If you’d hear me out – hear us out, then you’d –”

“Don’t you dare tell me I’d change my damn mind. Don’t – you – dare.” Your dad’s voice is quiet and slow. Dangerous. Laced with something you’ve never heard in it before. It’s not worth finding out what.

Your head shakes, knee jerking with nerves. “I don’t…I don’t know what else to say.”

The fire flickers, loses light for a second. His voice softens. “Honey…This –” he waggles his finger between your body and Joel’s, “this thing y’all have been…It ain’t right. It is not right, what y’all have been doin’. You are far too young for him. He should know better, and the fact that he doesn’t – well.”

Your brows tighten, eyes pinching around painful tears. “I know why you’re mad. I get it. I’m sorry. But I can’t –” You sigh. “You are suffocatin’ me, living here.”

His façade drops instantly. He pushes his fingers into his eyes, groaning. “Hon, you’re not hearin’ me.”

“I hear you loud and clear, I –”

He cuts you off, throwing his arms up into the air with another loud yell. The words melt into one long drone, a mountainous ramble which peaks and falls in pitch; one minute low and angry and the next high and frantic.

You sigh, shoving by him for the living room. Joel reaches for your hand, your fingers brushing against his.

“Baby,” he says.

“Ah!” Your dad blocks his advance, shaky finger held to his chest. “You dare, son.”

You’re swipe the bag from the floor by your dad’s chair, your change of clothes still in a crumpled heap at the bottom. Slinging it over your shoulder, you whip past your father and lock your hand with Joel’s.

“Hey,” Joel says, slowing you down. “Darlin’, where are you –?”

“I wanna leave.”

“Huh?” he asks, brows raised.

“I want to go,” you whisper.

He glances over to your dad, dumbfounded by the stairs. “Where d’you wanna go?”

Your shoulders roll. Anywhere. Just take me away.

He doesn’t hesitate; barely thinks it over. He tightens his grip on your hand and pulls you toward him. Your feet stumble over the carpet.

“Where in the hell –?” Your dad’s snarling picks up again, his final chance. “I don’t think so –”

Joel’s backing up towards the front door, led by the pull of your hand. “Emotions are pretty high,” he announces, “why don’t we have this conversation once everybody’s calmed down?”

“Joel, if you take her, I’ll–”

“I ain’t takin’ her anywhere. She’s an adult.”

Liar. His hand wouldn’t let go of yours if you tried to pry it from his clutches.

“I’m leavin’,” he says, “she’s just coming with me.”

Your dad barks your name, and you freeze. Joel stops, too, allows you the time to turn. Like a deer in the headlights.

“I’m going, Dad,” you shakily tell him.

“I swear to God,” he says, “if y’all walk outta that door…”

“I’m sorry,” you whisper. “I didn’t mean for any of this.”

He shakes his head. “Stay, hon. Let’s talk.”

“You’re not talkin’, though. All you wanna do is argue. I wanna go with Joel.”

“You ain’t goin’ nowhere with no one! ‘specially not him!”

You shrug, give your head a solemn shake. “Stop me.”

Joel hears the exhaustion in your voice, the scratch of your throat. The way the words melt into one another. He tugs on your hand, leading you through the front door. Your dad doesn’t speak again, and you don’t turn back to check on him.

The neighborhood is silent in the early morning. Yards empty, curtains still closed. No one, not even the sun, tucked behind a thin veil of cloud, sees when you pile into the front seat of Joel’s truck.

“Baby,” he says, pulling your seatbelt over your body.

Your eyes fix on the asphalt ahead. “Just drive.”

“Hey. Look at me.”

When you turn to him, he takes your jaw in both hands. “I love you,” he says.

“Still?” you squeak, eyes heavy with sleeplessness and tears.

“More.”

“This is fucking insane, Joel.”

He nods. “Yeah. ‘n you’re worth all of it.”

“Hey,” Sarah calls when the two of you spill in through the front door. She’s on the couch, Switch console in hand. “What’s up?”

“We have a – a lodger, for the next…little while,” Joel grumbles, tossing his keys onto the sideboard. He kicks off his boots and slides them to the wall, straightens up and looks to you.

You follow suit wordlessly, slipping out of your sneakers. Joel places them by his.

“Cool,” Sarah says, standing up. “How come?”

“Just – dad trouble,” you whisper, deflated. She’s wandering around the couch. A defeated sound rings from the console hanging from her thumb.

Her head tilts. “I…I got plenty room for you,” she flashes you a warm grin, “it can be like a big-ass sleepover.”

You return her smile, a slow, grateful breath filling your lungs. Joel’s arm wraps over your shoulder as your mouth opens to answer.

“No, uh…” He clears his throat. “She’ll be in my room. With me.”

Sarah’s expression is blank. She blinks between the two of you, arms limp either side of her hips. Your eyes flit from Joel to her and back again, wide, waiting. Waiting for someone to move, or speak, or yell.

Joel looks indifferent. Unbothered. As if he just told her it’s sunny outside.

She takes a step forward, and by instinct, you draw back. “Sarah…” you mutter, and she swings around the newel post. She dodges your outstretched hand, whether accidental or deliberate – you’re not sure.

“No, it’s…Okay. Yeah. I’ll – I gotta…Yeah.”

You watch as she climbs the stairs backwards, still looking from your pleading face to her dad’s stoic. She shrugs, wiggles the Switch and mumbles something about it needing charged, before she’s spinning and taking the last few steps two at a time.

When her bedroom door closes, you slump back. Joel doesn’t let go of your shoulder, catching you and pulling you into his chest.

“Fuck,” you whisper, lips pressed against his tee. He smells like pine, like mint, like you.

“’s okay,” he says into your hair, hand curving the shape of your skull. “She’ll come around. You know Sarah.”

You turn, ear against his chest, listening for his heartbeat. It doesn’t tell you anything new. You miss the days you used to listen for secret messages in the soft rhythm.

Joel’s chin rests on the crown of your head. “I’m sorry, baby,” he says. “None of this is your fault, you hear? None of it.”

“Now you’re just lyin’ to me. You know that ain’t true.”

A hum rumbles against your cheek like the earth readjusting, rearranging beneath your feet. You lift your head, loosen your grip around his waist.

“You need sleep,” he tells you, thumb swiping gently beneath your heavy eyes.

You don’t protest.

Joel takes your hand, leads you mutely upstairs and into his room. His bed’s not made. The shades aren’t even open. He lifts the sea of sheets, tosses them twice in the air and then pulls the corner back, letting you sit on the edge of the mattress.

He undresses you carefully, like your limbs might crack and burst at the slightest touch. He replaces your hoodie with a fresh tee of his own, one that still smells like the world before its end, and you lay back into bed slowly.

It’s shaped like you – the divot in the mattress. You slot back into it like you never left. The curl of your back and the fold of your knees. You’ve left little pieces of evidence all over the place – all over Joel.

He runs a delicate hand across your head, the repetitive movement lulling you off to sleep. Pushing the boat out.

“You need anythin’?” he asks.

You shake your head, arms wrapping tight underneath your pillow. “I’m good,” you whisper, and the waves pull you under.

His bedside lamp is on when you stir, the left half of the room a glowing honey color. His bare leg slotted between yours, your hands intertwined on his chest. His finger drifts back and forth against your palm, the strokes matching your breathing.

You’re still tired, eyes still rolling beneath heavy lids, but when some commentator screams at the game playing on the TV screen, you snap awake.

Joel curses under his breath, begins tearing the bed apart for the remote – but by the time he turns the volume down, your head is propped against his pillow, knuckles rubbing your eyes.

“Sorry, baby,” he sighs, kissing your forehead as he sits on the edge of the bed.

“’s okay.” You flash him a lazy smile. “What time is it?”

“Almost five thirty.”

“Damn,” you mutter. “Slept all fucking day.”

“You needed it,” he says, tucking a piece of hair behind your ear. “You want some dinner? Or – breakfast?”

You nod. “Sounds good.”

He disappears downstairs. The echoing of pots and pans and the hum of the extraction fan follow in his wake. You groan, stretching out like a starfish across the messy bed, forgetting for just a moment why you’re here, and what’s happened, and how different everything is.

It feels the same, even after eight hours sleep. Same guilt, and shame. Same anger and resentment towards your dad. Same punch to your gut anytime you picture his face, the wrinkled frown. The trembling fist holding your bag in midair.

The blow is soothed only by the swelling of warmth across your chest, looking around the room. The safety you feel here, as though you’re cut off from the rest of the world. Your father on pause the second you left the house; Joel’s room and his bed giving you time to catch your breath and recalibrate.

You’re not thinking about when you’ll have to go back home. You’re just not.

You knot your shorts back around your waist, take one huge swig of the water Joel left for you, and open his bedroom door, your head throbbing with each movement.

There’s a figure at the end of the hall, frozen in space like a phantom.

“Morning,” she says. Her hair is tied back, oversized hoodie over her shoulders.

“Hi.”

“You sleep good?”

“Must’ve. Missed half the day.”

Sarah smiles.

“Are you gonna kill me?”

“Hm,” her head tips back and forth, “not today. Don’t have the energy. Watch your back tomorrow, though.”

For the first time in almost twenty-four hours, a genuine laugh pushes its way past your lips. The knot in your stomach loosens, even if only a little.

“You wanna come help with dinner?” she asks, nodding to the stairs.

You smile. “Please.”

The three of you settle on pasta with some tomato sauce from a jar mixed through. You sit opposite Sarah as Joel sets the plates down, sliding into the seat next to yours with a gentle squeeze on your knee under the table.

The three of you talk. About nothing in particular – college, Rita and her cross stitch, some client of Joel’s whose wife got caught having an affair – but it soothes the ache in your heart. It feels like a blanket over your shoulders, a spot by the fire, a voice in your ear promising you that things are still okay. That they can still be this way: light, alive. The earth is still moving, the stars are still pinned up in the sky. Tomorrow will always come, and the day after that.

Sarah asks about LA. You tell her you didn’t know she knew. She grins and says, “Well, now that I do – you better put an application in.”

You hum around the fork between you lips. “Maybe.”

“Come on. The two of us out there together? For six whole months? You gotta do it. Tell me you don’t wanna do it. Are you gonna do it?”

Joel casts her a glower, his stony expression pushing her back in her chair.

Your eyes shift from hers over to his. He runs a slice of garlic bread around the curve of his plate, coating it in sauce, before he notices you staring. His face breaks into a tiny smirk.

“I don’t know,” you decide, turning back to Sarah. “I still gotta think it through.”

She nods earnestly. “Yeah, you should sleep on it. And then, first thing tomorrow, we’re doing it.”

The two of you let her have the final say, falling quiet until some new conversation is shifted onto the table, and then another, and then another. When you’re done eating, Sarah takes your hand and drags you back upstairs.

Sarah Miller’s bedroom has been baby pink for as long as you can remember. Joel painted it one summer while she was at camp, eliciting help from your dad to shift all the furniture. As she grew up, she covered the walls in posters, changed the sheets, changed the curtains, strung fairy lights to distract from what she saw as a kiddish color.

But she never asked to change it. Always wanted the same blushing pink her dad had picked out when she was ten – even if secretly.

Her blinds are tilted, golden light from the slowly lowering sun filtering through onto her carpet, stained with tiny dabs of nail polish. She throws herself down onto the bed, her curls igniting brown in the summer light, and you slowly sink down beside her.

“Nice Zayn poster,” you note, pointing to the straight-browed, dark-haired figure painted in a moody grayscale on her ceiling. “Interesting placement.”

“Was so I could dream about him every night.”

“You didn’t wanna take him to California?”

“Didn’t have to,” Sarah smiles, tapping her temple, “he’s all up here, baby.”

You snort. Your eyes flutter closed; hands clasped on your stomach. She sighs contentedly by your side, listening to the chatter of birds out front.

“I miss this,” she says eventually, her voice smooth and soothing. She elbows you lightly.

“Me too,” you reply. And then, with a deep breath: “Sarah…are you okay?”

When she turns back, the sunlight catches in her eyes. They twinkle, like she’s some doe-eyed Disney character. Someone who might be able to wiggle her fingers and make the last day disappear.

“Am I okay?”

“Yeah. With…everything.”

She shrugs, mumbles an I dunno. “What can I do about it? It’s weird, but…it’s none of my business. I guess…I guess if y’all are happy, then – you know. I’m gone half the time, anyways.”

“It is your business, too, though,” you tell her. “I don’t wanna make you feel weird.”

“I think you got bigger things to worry about right now. Sounds like your dad’s pretty mad.”

You sigh, looking back up to the boyband poster. “Yeah. He’s pretty mad.”

“My dad told me what happened. Well, parts. I can kinda guess the rest. Can’t really blame him, I guess.”

You shrug. “Guess not, but then…I am twenty-three, y’know? I’m not a kid. I can make my own mind up.”

She’s still staring at you, but you don’t return her glance. Something tells you that you already know what it says. Still, she verbalizes it.

“Would you be okay if I slept with your dad?”

That is so not what I thought you were gonna fuckin’ say.

You shoot her a look. “What?”

“’m askin’. Would you be okay with it, if I –”

You lift your hand to shut her up. “That is…so totally different.”

“How is that different?” she scoffs.

“Because…because…my dad’s not hot.”

Sarah gags.

“And – and also you’re not friends with him. It’s just different, alright?”

“You were friends with my dad?”

You’re laughing with her now. You can hear how pathetic your justification sounds. “Kinda, yeah. I was close to ‘im.”

“Yeah, that much is obvious, now, babe.”

You smack her arm and she giggles.

“I think he’ll come around. Your dad.”

“I don’t. Not ever.”

“Why wouldn’t he? His best friend would become his son-in-law, I would become his granddaughter-in-law –” She gasps and props herself up on her elbow, staring you down. “Does this make you, like, my stepmom?”

You spit out a laugh, and Sarah throws her head back against her pillow, clutching her belly.

“You’re my fuckin’ mom, dude!”

“Don’t you fucking dare!” you reply, covering your face with your hands. “Aw, fuck,” you breathe, giggling.

You settle back into the bed, your heads leaning against one another as you stare up at Zayn and his audience of glow-in-the-dark stars. Sarah hums something softly to herself, her ankle rocking, her fingers tapping.

The two of you were raised together. Sisters, when neither of you knew what that word really meant. You figure she’s as close as you could find – someone who reflects all of your favorite parts of yourself and who calls out the uglier ones without hesitation. Someone who comforts you with a punch to the arm, a mocking quip about your hair or the something in your teeth. A safe little secret keeper, for all of your wildest dreams and biggest fears.

“I guess this is all why you were so down in the dumps last night, right? Your dad knew then?”

You shake your head. “Not at that point. He found out after we all left. Realized it all on his own. It’s all just…so fucking stupid…”

She sighs. “My dad – if he…if he makes you happy, then I don’t even know. As long as I don’t have to see it – we’re cool.”

One cinderblock of weight lifts from your chest, allowing a rugged breath to escape. “Wish my dad would take a leaf outta your book,” you mumble.

“He’s just mad,” Sarah says. “He’s just mad, and he’ll eventually calm down.”

“Doesn’t matter even if he does calm down,” you reply. “My dad has more of a…restrictive parenting approach.”

“Can you really parent a twenty-three-year-old?”

“He finds a way to try.”

She scoffs, saying, “I get it. My dad’s more, try it ‘n see. Your dad is, like, try it ‘n see…what your punishment is.”

You both erupt into laughter, and Sarah reaches for the TV remote.

“Exactly,” you tell her, tugging on the hem of Joel’s shirt. “Although, if your dad found out you were with my dad, I don’t think he’d be cool with it, either.”

“Yeah,” she smirks, flicking through Netflix titles, “y’all got what you deserved.”

The sound of Sarah’s bedroom door closing over stirs you. Her room is the color of rust; the stream of amber sunlight on the carpet replaced by that of the streetlights. Beneath the door, the sliver of light is shifted by the sway of a silhouette walking off down the hall.

Sarah’s snoring quietly beside you, still in her jeans. Keeping an eye on her, you roll off the bed and creep towards the door, a slow groan coming from the handle as you twist it. Joel’s at the opposite end of the hall, disappearing into his room as you shut Sarah back into her warm slumber.

“Thought you were sleepin’,” he whispers when you slip into his room. He’s already sat in bed, leant against the headboard. The room a thick darkness, a black cloud of dusk spiraling around you and cutting you off from the rest of the world.

“Heard you come in.” You wander over, pausing at the side of the bed. “Wanna stay with you.”

“C’mere,” he says, holding a hand out. You take it, pulling yourself into his lap. He slips his hands under the hem of your shorts, fingertips brushing the crests of your hipbones. “You okay?” he asks, thumbs swiping gently on the seam of your thigh.

“Never better. You?”

He sighs in response and looks off to the window, the light catching his eye. You tilt your head and bend forward, kissing below his ear. He smells like whiskey. You breathe it in, inhaling like the sharp scent might fold you under a numb blanket of inebriation, too.

Joel takes a fistful of your hair and pulls you from his neck, watching the shift in your expression before he kisses you – steady, bracing. The first time since everything went so wrong.

For a few minutes you pretend nothing has changed – you’re still sneaking around, shushing one another; someone’s in the next room, there are still secrets to be kept. You slip your shorts down your legs, kicking them over the side of the bed; Joel’s sweatpants follow soon after. His hands surrender and you push up on his chest, dragging your core against his stubborn crotch, lips never losing contact. Tongues rolling against one another, noses bumping; a tangle of breath between you until you’ve no idea which is yours and which is his.

It’s all you know how to do, after all. It’s how this started, it’s how it got out of control. The two of you taking out your needs on one another. Right now is no different. You need to feel something other than the dread in the pit of your stomach, the ache in your heart anytime you look at him and know he feels it, too.

You come up for air and suddenly the feeling dissipates; doubt sets back in and fear washes over you like ice water. Your hips cease, Joel’s hands lift from your body. He pushes the hair from your face to find his own expression mirrored in yours.

Everything has changed.

You watch his movements, the light trace of his finger on your bare skin, the pinch of fabric as he adjusts his boxers. The careful movements of his own hips, trying not to incite anything more.

“I love you,” you offer, when he doesn’t say anything. Whispered, like it’s a question, like something to dangle in front of him to make him bite.

At the very least, it unsticks his gaze from the cotton print over your chest and back up to your face – where he softens and says, “Oh, darlin’. I love you, too.”

He gives you a squeeze and pulls you by the shoulders closer, letting you feel his lips on yours again and again, until you’re out of breath. You nuzzle your head under his jaw, the rise and fall of his chest and the steady beat of his heart at your ear.

Joel trails his hands up and down your spine. He breaks the silence first – stammers his way through a question you’re not sure how to answer.

“Was I – was I hurtin’ you? All this time?”

You lift your head, looking blankly at him. “What –?”

“Was I hurting you?”

“Hurting me?”

He nods. “Everythin’ we were doin’. Everything we’ve done. You wanted me to be doing it, right?”

He looks…scared, as though forty years have been shaved from him over the course of one day. Eyes glassy like he might burst into tears; bottom lip almost trembling with uncertainty.

You sit up and cup his face; he breathes a sigh of relief when you look him dead in the eye and say, “I wanted you to be doing all of it.”

“All of it?” he repeats.

“Yes,” you nod, “nothing you ever did ever hurt me.”

He lowers his gaze. “’cept when I left.”

“You came back.”

His thumb curves beneath the slip of fabric on your hips, toying with the elastic. There’s more in his question, you know it. He’s not convinced by a word you say.

“It’s just…all such a fuckin’ mess,” he groans, fingertips massaging his forehead.

You hesitate, unwilling to agree and unable to disagree. It is a fucking mess – that much is true. But if that’s all it is, then why does your heart pause for breath whenever you see him? Why does the mere thought of his presence, the tiniest glimpse of him – why does it all send your stomach somersaulting?

How can something supposed to be so bad, make you feel so fucking good?

“It was wrong of me,” Joel says, “to flirt with you that night I first saw you again. To put you in that position. But I did, and we ended up here. And I’m glad we did, baby, you know I am, but…it’s on me. This thing with you ‘n your dad.”

“You don’t think he should back off a little? Don’t think he’s oversteppin’ a mark, even a tiny bit?”

He shakes his head. “I’d do the damn same, ‘n you know it. I shoulda known better. Shouldn’ta let it happen. You mean more to me than the world, and I – I caused all this hurt for you.”

Sure, it’s real noble of him to take all of the blame, but it wasn’t just him. You had a part in it, too: your batting eyelashes, your hands where they shouldn’t have been. Your jaw tightens when he says it, holding back from telling him you want as much responsibility in this as he’s taking, even if he won’t allow it.

But an argument with Joel, right off the back of one with your father, isn’t really something you need. It wouldn’t help anything. So, you swallow your words and whisper new ones.

“You shouldn’t have flirted with me?”

His eyebrows flick, concern knotting them together. He sits up, scooping you in his arms. “I meant I should’ve never let it get to this point.”

“’n what about the first time you touched me?”

The memory plays between you: the weight of him on your body, the sound of the stereo system firing up downstairs. One hand between your legs and the other pinching your heart.

The light in your eyes starts to bleed through your body into Joel’s, distorting the projected image of that scene in your bedroom. It ignites somewhere low, travelling upwards until his stare locks with yours: an understanding weaving between you both.

You lean back from him, drinking in the sight. “Nothin’ but trouble, right? That’s what you said, that first night. You knew damn well where it might go. ‘n you still wanted it, just as bad.”

“Darlin’, I’m not sayin’ I didn’t, I –”

“No, no, I get it. I get it.”

You push his shoulders to the mattress. Fire in your belly, some kind of twisted energy pumping through your veins, you grind down on him again.

That thing, about this being all you know how to do? About taking your needs out on each other?

Right now, you need distraction. You need something to tire you out, to drain you of energy, to stop your thoughts for five minutes. You need someone to hold you, and love you, and make you feel good. Joel’s the perfect distraction.

He’s still hard. You’re still wet. It’s easy.

You drag your hips lazily over his, cotton riding against lace. He’s growing harder, bigger; he’s pushing up into you. You respond by pushing down, and Joel groans.

“Hey,” he takes hold of your thighs, “baby, we don’t have to –”

“Then, let’s stop.”

He says nothing.

You reach down past the band of his boxers and take him in your hand. He bites back a moan, his head falling into the pillow. You’re stroking him: long, hard strokes, fist tightening around him, fingers dipping between your folds to apply your slick to his length.

“Say the word, Joel. We’ll stop,” you pant, unsure if even you buy the words you’re saying. “You said it: none of this should’ve ever happened. You should’ve never laid a finger on me.”

His arms lift, throbbing biceps curving around his pillow and crumpling it against his skull. He doesn’t tell you to stop, because he doesn’t fucking want you to. He needs this – needs you as much as you need him, needs you more than he needs the air in his lungs.

And you’re right: it is different now. Now, it’s out in the open. The whole world could know, for all the two of you care. And maybe that’s the kick to it, now. No more hiding. No more fleeing from shadow to shadow.

You tug his underwear down and lower yourself, dragging your folds up and down the width of him while sticky precome gathers at his tip, dappling the trail of hair from his navel. And when you can’t do it anymore, when the mere sight of him drenched in your arousal threatens to send you over the edge, you line him up to your entrance and sink down, slow.

He moans into the pillow, fabric muffling your favorite sound in the world. And he doesn’t stop, his chest doesn’t stop rumbling until you reach his hilt, where he gasps.

“Darlin’,” he whimpers, hands coming back down to hold you in place.

You bat them away. “Uh-uh,” you tut, pinning his wrists above his head. “Not a – fuckin’ – finger.”

Joel grits his teeth, eyes locking onto yours, directly above him as you slide up off his cock, hips circling as you do, and then back down. Your free hand curves around his ribcage, the solid flesh of his torso stabilizing you.

“Poor baby,” you coo, pouting your lip. “Can’t even touch me. Can’t put a hand on your girl when you need to most.”

“Fuckin’ – whore,” he grunts, and your hips grind to a halt. You release his wrists.

“That what you think of me?” you ask, sitting upright on his lap. Joel’s still buried deep inside you.

“No,” he’s breathing, lips curling, “no, baby. Keep goin’.”

“I’m not the one goin’ back on my word here.”

He flashes a thick, filthy smile. “I know, I know. Go on. Make me proud.”

You lean forward again and he sighs, the feel of your wet cunt wrapping like satin around him.

“You think he’d trust you, anyway, after everythin’?” you mewl. “Think he thinks I’m in a different room right now? Tucked up in bed, safe ‘n sound? Nah, baby, he knows. He knows what you’re doin’ right now. Keep your hands off me? You can’t keep your cock outta me.”

Joel moans in agreement, hands gripping into the sheets to ground himself, hips bucking up against yours. You place your hands either side of him on the mattress and start to bounce, skin slapping, bed shaking.

“You like that, huh?” you moan, feeling the sharp kiss of his head at your cervix. Nudging, nudging, nudging. Blunt pain, blissful pleasure. “Like me riding it. Takin’ what I – oh, fuck – what I need.”

He lets out a guttural moan, writhing around underneath you. It’s like he’s forgotten where he is, forgotten you guys aren’t alone in the house; drunk on the sight, smell, sound, and feel of you on him, not even trying to stifle his sounds anymore.

You close your eyes and hope Sarah doesn’t wake anytime soon.

You’re keeping the façade up for Joel, but on the inside, you feel the exact same. His words echo in your ears, shouldn’ta let it happen, and how quickly that melted into make me proud. Your head starts to swim, your eyes heavy, your body trembling.

The thatch of hair at the bottom of his cock brushes against your clit, a gasp drawing between your teeth. Pain begins to rip upwards on the inside of your thighs, forcing you forward.

“Joel,” you pant, leaning over him. “Fuck.”

“Gotta let me touch you, baby,” he whispers, hands lifting beneath the fabric of your shirt. His fingers ghost across the curve of your shoulders. “You need it, don’t you?”

You whimper in response and Joel slips past the moment of weakness, taking a strong grip of both shoulders and pulling himself upright on the mattress. The tee slips from your body in one breath, and his hands follow the incline of your neck to your jaw, holding you steady as he fucks up into you.

“You want me to fill you up?” he asks, leaning back with a palm flat on the bed behind to watch himself disappear between your legs.

You’re nodding desperately. “Mhm.”

“Gotta ask nicely, remember? Be a good girl for me?”

“Dick,” you hiss, draping your arms over his shoulders.

He pouts. Sweat gleams on his upper lip. His voice cracks, weakens like stone beginning to crumble. “’s not v-very n-ice, baby.”

“Comeinme,” you beg, your fingers swirling around the dark hair at the bottom of his skull. “Please, come in me.”

“Atta-girl,” he groans, and his hands instantly lock on your hips. You don’t stop him this time, letting him push you down as hard as he can onto his cock, coming as deep inside you as he can.

And then – that familiar feeling of being his. Filled with him, your eyes and your nose and your mouth and your cunt spilling with the sight, smell, taste and feel of him. He coats your walls, throbs deep inside you as he claims every tiny corner of your body.

He growls as his cock twitches, and you watch his expression go from determined, to blissful, to fucking exhausted when he stills and his head rolls forward into your chest. His breath hot and staggered between your breasts; light kisses peppered onto damp skin.

You watch him through a post-sex haze, the air between you thick and blurry, as he presses his lips into your chest. He sucks along the cushion of your breast until he reaches the nipple, lips cupping around it, tongue flicking with all the effort he has left in him.

When he lifts his head again, one final kiss to your sensitive flesh, you balance his chin under your thumbs.

“You come?” he asks, the words propelled by a heavy exhale.

You shake your head slowly. “I’m tired, anyway.”

“Alright,” Joel groans, flipping you over. He pushes your thighs apart, his spend leaking from your slit and running southwards.

“Joel,” you giggle, “c’mon, I’m tired. You don’t have to –”

He’s already pushing himself lower, whipping the dark cotton tee from his shoulders and brushing his naked chest over your stomach. You lower your arms to hook under his.

“Hey. Come here a sec.”

Joel blinks up at you. “What’s up?”

“Just – come here.”

He kneels back up to you, hovering over you with his hands under your shoulders. His limp cock lies against the inside of your thigh as he lowers his weight onto your hips. You tilt your head, mapping his face.

Your knuckle runs across his cheek, the jagged bristle of his beard on your warm skin. Like running your hand under water, unable to tell whether it’s scalding hot or freezing cold – there is no saying whether you’re so used to him now that the feel of him is unaffecting, or entirely all-consuming. There’s no middle ground. Not anymore.

“I know –” You sigh, your voice swollen with a soft cry. There’s no stopping the tears anymore. They just come. “I know you think you should’ve known better. But I am so fucking glad that you didn’t.”

It’s done nothing but pour all day. You woke up this morning to the rain battering against Joel’s window, your body hooked against his by his arm.

Day four. Still no call, no text, no nothing from your dad. You haven’t exactly returned the favor – the closest you dared was having Sarah drive you to your house while he was at work so you could dip into the hallway, grab your car keys, and drive straight back to Joel’s. You pulled up in his driveway alongside each other and she rolled her window down, checking your expression before snorting.

It’s like a damn Mission: Impossible film, she jested.

The pain feels blunter, more distant than it did on Saturday. Like your father has bowed his head, faded some into the dark background of upstage. You realize, a few days in – the movie nights and the meals homecooked by three chefs; the way Joel’s scent starts to become yours, his T-shirts hanging loose over your shoulders and his boxers snug against your hips – that you forget to check on the shadow of your dad. Forget the spot he once stood in, the thunderous cloud cast over his head. The same one that so regularly used to pour rain over you.

Sarah went out with her friends a few hours ago. She called to say she’d miss dinner, so you and Joel ordered Chinese. You’re sat with your legs in his lap picking away at some noodles, scrolling mindlessly on your phone while he catches up on some baseball highlights show.

“Fuckin’ – idiots,” he mumbles, fork angrily picking at rice.

Your eyes don’t lift from the Instagram caption you’re reading. “Fuckin’ idiots,” you flatly agree.

Joel’s head turns. “Alright, Miss Big Rangers Fan. I remember a time you pretended to be into ‘em to get my attention.” He attempts to grab your phone, and you swipe it from his grasp.

“Shut up,” you giggle, grabbing hold of your takeout box. “Joel – be careful!”

He snorts, settling back into the couch, changing the TV channel. You give his thigh a little kick, tugging your blanket up. As the TV switches from one showing to the next, your phone buzzes.

You glance down, chopsticks halfway to your mouth, and freeze.

Dear Candidate…

“Joel.”

“Hm?” he asks, eyes glued to the flickering screen.

“Joel.”

“Yes, darlin’?”

You unstick your stare from the phone, looking up to meet his perplexed expression. “They got back to me.”

He squints for a second before the remote is dropped to the cushion. ��And?”

“I don’t know, I just saw the first line.”

“Open it, baby. C’mon. Whatever it is, you gotta know.”

“You know what,” you shrug, “I’m good. I don’t need to know. It’s all good.”

“Hey.” Joel snaps his fingers scooping your gaze from the floral, bohemian name on the header of the email and up to his own. “Open it, or I’m kickin’ you out.”

You mock gasp. “You’d put me out on the streets?”

“Worse. Put you back to your dad’s. Now open the email.”

Your thumb trembles as it hovers over the screen, one tap away from the biggest change in your life since you left for New York. Like it’s five years ago, and you’re sat in front of your laptop, psyching yourself up to open the response to your college application.

“Okay,” you breathe, slamming your thumb down. Joel leans in, staring at the screen from upside down.

It swipes across and your eyes flit down, focusing hard on the sentence beneath the opening line. You blink rapidly, waiting for the wash of tears to clear and dissolve it to Unfortunately, or After careful consideration, or We appreciate your interest.

But it never does.

Invite to interview stares back up at you, waiting for your face to break. Expectant, a little nervous. Jittering inside your shaking fist. Joel breaks first, when he spots it.

He almost throws his food onto the coffee table, taking your container from your hands and bundling you up in his. He pulls you into his body, presses heavy kisses to the crook of your neck as you laugh, your entire body quaking with joy and terror and relief and anxiety.

“What’d I tell you?” he says, kissing you roughly. “I knew it, babygirl. I knew you would – Fuck, I am so fucking proud of you.”

“It’s just –” sniff, “– it’s just an interview, remember. I might not get it, in the end.”

Joel shakes his head. “I don’t care. You’re a damn sight closer to gettin’ it than you were three days ago.”

You sit for probably twenty minutes, laughing and then weeping and then laughing again – until the food is cold, there’s a new episode of South Park rolling on TV, and Joel’s T-shirt is soaked with your tears.

“I gotta call Sarah,” you whisper, finger sifting through his hair. Your head buried in his neck, your knees either side of his hips.

“She’s going to lose her fuckin’ mind,” he mumbles into your shoulder, laughing to himself. “She’ll sit off-camera in the corner of the room, so they can’t see her, ‘n hold up cue cards.”

You giggle, letting it dissipate into something weaker, something unconvinced. In a small voice, you say, “We just got one step closer to being four states apart.”

He looks up at you, curving a hand around your jaw, and pulls your lips against his. It’s slow, tender – his every thought and feeling translated into physical movement, transformed into a spin of butterflies in your chest.

When you pull away from him, smiling dumbly, he clips your cheek. “That scare you?”

You hesitate, afraid to tell him the truth. But it’s Joel. He knows every thought that passes through your head. You nod, eyes filling with a salty sting.

“Why?” he asks.

You glance out to the street. “’cause I love you. I don’t wanna leave you.”

Joel nods. Considers it. Then says, “You know why it doesn’t scare me?”

You lift your eyebrows in response. Why?

“Because I love you. And we are gonna be just fine.”

And you believe him.

#joel miller #joel miller fic #joel miller x reader #the last of us #tlou #tlou fic #dbf!joel miller #dbf!joel #joel miller smut #pedro pascal #pedro pascal joel miller #cowboy like me

1K notes · View notes

aettuddae · 8 months

Text

hole in one — karina [smau]

⌕ pairing: karina/yu jimin x fem!reader/oc

⌕ synopsis: at one of the most prestigious universities in the country, where everyone is battling to be the center of attention, yu jimin is just a regular. people want her because of her beauty, but all she cares about is sharing her freaky stuff with her friends and passing her subjects. although there's one thing that might push her out of her comfort zone, revenge. when nakamura kazuha, one of the richest and most well-known students of NCU, starts to spread gossip about her for thousands of followers to see, jimin decides to get back by taking away the thing kazuha cares about the most: her perfect girlfriend, the young golf star, kwon haru.

⌕ genre: social media au, college au, sports au, high class au. comedy, fluff, angst, slow burn, non-idol.

⌕ warnings: main character is an original character. insults, swearing, kms/kys jokes, suggestive jokes grammar mistakes (english not my first language), will add on.

⌕ status: finished.

⌕ featuring: aespa, and members of le sserafim, seventeen, wjsn, monsta x.

— profiles.

karina's friends | haru's friends

— chapters.

• chapter 1.

• chapter 2.

• chapter 3.

• chapter 4.

• chapter 5.

• chapter 6.

• chapter 7.

• chapter 8.

• chapter 9. part 1 - part 2 - part 3.

• chapter 10.

• chapter 11.

• chapter 12.

• chapter 13.

• chapter 14. part 1 - part 2.

• chapter 15.

• chapter 16.

• chapter 17.

• chapter 18.

• chapter 19. part 1 - part 2.

• chapter 20.

• chapter 21.

• chapter 22.

• chapter 23.

• chapter 24.

• chapter 25.

• chapter 26.

• chapter 27.

• chapter 28.

• chapter 29. part 1 - part 2.

• chapter 30.

• chapter 31.

• chapter 32.

• chapter 33.

• chapter 34.

• chapter 35.

• chapter 36.

• chapter 37.

• chapter 38.

• chapter 39.

• chapter 40.

• chapter 41.

• chapter 42.

• chapter 43. part 1 - part 2.

• chapter 44.

• chapter 45.

• chapter 46.

• chapter 47.

• chapter 48.

• chapter 49.

• chapter 50.

• chapter 51.

• chapter 52.

• chapter 53.

• chapter 54.

• chapter 55. part 1 - part 2.

• chapter 56.

• chapter 57.

• chapter 58.

• chapter 59.

• chapter 60.

• chapter 61.

• chapter 62.

• chapter 63.

• chapter 64. part 1 - part 2.

• chapter 65. part 1 - part 2.

• chapter 66.

• chapter 67.

• chapter 68.

• chapter 69.

• chapter 70.

• chapter 71.

• chapter 72.

• chapter 73.

• chapter 74.

• chapter 75.

• chapter 76.

• chapter 77. part 1 - part 2.

• chapter 78.

• chapter 79.

• chapter 80.

• chapter 81.

• chapter 82.

• chapter 83.

• chapter 84.

• chapter 85.

• chapter 86.

• chapter 87.

— chapters 2.

[can't put more than 100 links in one post, so to see the rest of the chapter list, click here]

549 notes · View notes

slayingfiction · 1 year

Text

How I push through writing when I don't feel like writing.

Here are some of the techniques that I use to help me write more often or more consistantly when my laziness/depression/anxiety starts to take over.

I watch TV. I don't do it with the purpose of zoning out though. I watch something popular and well-liked such as the LOR or Harry Potter to get new ideas on how I can develop my story and apply their in-depth world-building ideas to help develop mine. Without plagarizing of course!!!!

Zoning out and daydreaming. As I have mentionned before, daydreaming is a huge part of my story outlining and world-building process. I'll stand in the shower, or take a walk and think about how my charcaters would act/react/behave in situations, mundane or not. Doing this gives me a better sense of my characters, and sometimes gives me ideas for scenes I use later on.

Work on writing related projects. These work well at keeping me distracted while still being productive on my writing goals. Example, I have one story I am working now, I made a new language (alphabet and numbers included) to include as a cool and fun component for the book. So, at times when I don't wan't to write, I continue creating the dictionary (very fun, 8/10 would recommend). Also, for the same book, my characters don't work off the Georigian calendar and 24 hour clock, so I've been working at creating a new calendar (harder than it seems, 2.5/10 dont recommend). These are side projects that help my story, without having to write.

Reading. You saw this one coming, I know. Reading is great, especially when you're editing, your writing style will unconsciously change to be more similar the author you were just reading. Also, most importantly, I'll be reading and think, "this story is really good, but you know what story I like even better? Mine." then change to writing.

This one is my biggest life saver!! I learnt about a year ago that sometimes I'll get bored of writing a story, and have difficulty keeping on track. That's why I finished my first book in 2016 and just started editing the first draft last week. The solution for me was to work on multiple projects at once, because it was much harder to be bored of multiple stories. I stick to 2, but will sometimes add a third. This is easy for me, because I have a list of over a dozen series I want to write. Don't abandon one project for another, use them as a distraction/ motivation for each other, so you're always furthering at least one project. I've never heard someone say, "oh no, i accidentally worked on this other writing project for three months instead of the other writing project I was doing. Dammit." No, we're just happy we have written something. Be sure to have well outlined story lines before starting, don't just start writing randomly or you'll reach a point where you don't know where to go from there.

Author/ writer projects. Maybe this is building a following, or community to share your projects and engage with. Tumblr, Insta, Reddit, whatever it is. My hope this year is to start up my website to offer publishing services (editing, graphic design, short writing courses) and build a following as a writer. (See what I did there? Never a bad time to self-promote ;) ) Having your own projects like this will help you in the future when you're going to try to publish and sell your books!

Talk with friends and a writing community. Never underestimate the passion that will burn inside you when talking about your story, or when others are talking about theirs. Surrounding yourself with a positive writing community can be the best thing for you as a writer.

Write or read (your story) every day. I'm not going to be one of those people that say you need to write 1000 words a day, that's a lot. But maybe try for 100? That could maybe only take 5 minutes, and at the end of the year that's still over 36 thousand words of a novel. Or just read your story, and I've always found it helped me get in the creative mood.

Make a playlist of songs that remind you of your characters, your story, or just puts you in the mood to write. Then play it ONLY when you're having trouble writing. Playing it while writing will not help, you'll get annoyed with the songs.

Just really can't do it today? That's okay, take a break. You deserve it. There's always tomorrow.

Does anyone else have ways they push themselves to keep writing? Let us know in the comments!

Happy Writing!

2K notes · View notes

acowboynamedasa · 1 month

Text

Ok I know I already made a post about watchertv and how it’s a horrible idea and no have not had a change of heart about that- but I really just want to get into the math of everything because like, they we’re making a LOT of money.

(Full disclosure this post has been edited to be more accurate with help from commenters)

Patreon: they have 12,000 supporters, but only 5,900 paying supporters (at the time of me checking today. Many definitely unsubscribed when this video dropped). The tear options are 5, 10, 25, and 100 dollars. Assuming that most people are in the 5-10 range, I’ll average it at about 7 dollars. Witch is 41,300 a month.

Merch sales: they have a very devout fan base that buys a lot of merch, they sell a plastic paper weight for 36 dollars. All of their hoodies are 80 dollars. Their shirts are 35-50 dollars. They sell a pack of 7 patches of their different show logos for 65 dollars. The posters are 80 dollars. To my knowledge They do not publicly share what they make from merch sales, but I know that they have sold out of certain styles, witch means that people are buying these. The merch is without a doubt at a very steep profit margin- no where in the world will it cost 80 or even 40 dollars to make these- so we can just assume that whatever assured total we come too, it will be higher by 10-20 thousand(just an estimate, I’m not an expert on YouTube merch).

Sponsorships: (this info is from moist critical who runs a company who specialize in setting up brand sponsorships with YouTube channels.) watcher is/was a very big and successful channel, with 2 minute sponsorships adds on every video I could find- they are with out a doubt making 20-30 thousand dollars from every one of those sponsorships. They post weekly, meaning they make about 100,000 a month from that. This doesn’t include any money they received from discount codes either, only about 2% of viewers use discount codes so it’s fair to say they receive a few thousand dollars from that, we can just total it to about 101,000 to be conservative.

views: YouTube has always been very hush hush about what they pay. Different YouTubers have stepped forward and said what they make on views alone but watcher is not one of these channels. With watchers average views being about 800,000 per video (very ‘about’, some get 3 million and others only reach 500,000) and YouTubes policy being about .018 cents per view we can say they comfortably make 14,400 per video, 57,000 a month.

Add cents: add cents and views are a different thing, for every add that is seen in a video you get a adicional .018 cents, watchers content is very monetizable, and with it being long form content 30-45 minutes, they have a lot of adds. Let’s just assume 1-2 mid roll ads on every video and that’s an additional 20,000 per video, 80,000 a month.

Adding ALL of that together

Watcher makes 279,300 dollars a month. Flat out, no merch added.

If you think you can’t afford to pay 25 people a month with 279,300 dollars- I literally don’t know what to tell you.

#watcher #watcher tv #ryan bergara #shane madej #steven lim

308 notes · View notes

meownotgood · 2 years

Text

new message !! / CSM x reader

the texts they send you when you're away.

includes: aki, denji, & yoshida

genre: headcanons / fluff

note: this post is sfw, but this account contains nsfw content. please do not follow if you are a minor.

☆ AKI basically never uses his phone. He doesn't have any social media; you can coax him into installing some if you want, but he's not going to use them. If he wants to speak to you, he'll usually opt to call you rather than send a text because he prefers to hear your voice. But in situations where he can't, or when he just wants to let you know he's thinking of you, he'll send a message your way.

14:22 [ aki <3 ]: Hey.

14:25 [ aki <3 ]: I miss you.

14:29 [ aki <3 ]: Do you want to go out tonight? We can go anywhere you'd like. My treat.

Even though Aki pays little attention to his phone, if you ever text him, he's usually quick to reply. If you call him, the phone will never go more than three rings without an answer. For one, he's memorized your special ringtone (it's a song you texted to him the first time he gave you his number). And for second, you, Denji, and Power are the only ones who ever send him texts, so he knows if he gets a notification, it's probably important.

In the rare cases where he happens to miss your call though, the texts he sends immediately after are always extremely apologetic.

22:46 [ aki <3 ]: I'm sorry I missed your call.

22:48 [ aki <3 ]: Are you okay? Do you need anything?

22:51 [ aki <3 ]: Call me back when you get the chance.

Sometimes Aki sends you goofy pics of whatever mischief Denji and Power are getting up to, or pictures of Meowy when he's sleeping on Aki's lap. He also loves to send you pictures of the view from his balcony when he's having a smoke.

7:14 [ aki <3 ]: (1 image attachment)

7:17 [ aki <3 ]: The sunrise over the city is really beautiful today. I wish you were here to see it.

Aki rarely takes or sends pictures of himself. He'll take pictures with you if you ask, and if you beg to see him hard enough, maybe he'll send you a selfie. Maybe. Only after he re-takes it a thousand times to make sure it's perfect.

Aki's texts are always professional and proper, just like his demeanor. He always capitalizes his sentences, always uses correct grammar, and never uses any emojis or abbreviations. The one exception to this rule is if he's drunk. Aki tries to stay away from his phone when he's plastered, but if he manages to get his hands on it, you can expect to wake up to several incoherent drunk texts.

2:35 [ aki <3 ]: hi sweeetheartv

2:36 [ aki <3 ]: im drunk sorry

2:36 [ aki <3 ]: but I lpve u so much

2:36 [ aki <3 ]: myy anwgel

2:38 [ aki <3 ]: miss u terribly. come out 2 drink w us nextt time yeah??,

After texting you for a while, Aki developed a small habit of texting you good morning and good night. When you told him you liked it, he made certain to never forget to send you a good morning and good night text every single day. Your contact in his phone is the first thing he sees when he wakes up and the last thing he sees before he goes to bed.

23:41 [ aki <3 ]: Goodnight. Sleep well and have sweet dreams. Text me when you wake up tomorrow.

☆ DENJI asked you for your number as soon as Aki bought him a cell phone. He had absolutely no clue how to use it at first, but thankfully, you were there to teach him. And double thankfully, phones have built in autocorrect, so he doesn't have to worry about spelling everything wrong (most of the time).

Now he can talk to you whenever he wants! And boy, does Denji send you a lot of texts. If your phone is vibrating like crazy, you know it's probably Denji. He essentially uses your inbox as his way to tell you everything he's thinking at any given point.

10:34 [ denji ^^ ]: Dude at work rn SOOOO BORED

10:34 [ denji ^^ ]: I wanna hang out with u

10:34 [ denji ^^ ]: This suckkkkzzzzzzzz

10:35 [ denji ^^ ]: What are u doin?

10:36 [ denji ^^ ]: Hey check out what Power just showed me lol 8====D~~~~~~

10:36 [ denji ^^ ]: It's a dick

Once Denji figured out how to send pictures to you, he had his heart set on sending you pictures of literally everything. He sends you pics of all the stuff he comes across that he thinks you might find cool. He also sends lots of pictures of Power and Aki. Sometimes Meowy too, if he can get the cat to hold still.

They're all blurry and incomprehensible most of the time, but you suppose it's the thought that counts. Besides, you can still make them out... kinda.

18:19 [ denji ^^ ]: (1 image attachment)

18:19 [ denji ^^ ]: Shit its blurry

18:21 [ denji ^^ ]: (1 image attachment)

18:21 [ denji ^^ ]: Look dude I beat Powers ASS at mario kart

18:21 [ denji ^^ ]: You should come over and play its really fun

18:22 [ denji ^^ ]: If u want to

Of course, Denji loves when you send pictures to him, too. It's crazy to him that he can see what you're doing and where you are through his little phone screen. He saves every picture you send (after he bothered Aki to show him how), but the pictures you send of your face are his favorite. Denji will never leave you on read, so if your message says opened for a while, trust that he's just admiring your picture.

13:57 [ denji ^^ ]: CYTE

13:57 [ denji ^^ ]: CUTE

13:58 [ denji ^^ ]: I mean

13:58 [ denji ^^ ]: Your cute

14:07 [ denji ^^ ]: Hey how do I make it my background???

Denji hasn't quite figured out how to use all the features on his phone. Honestly, you're not sure he even knows what Google is. You don't really want to tell him though. You won't admit it, but you secretly like when he comes to you with every single question he has.

17:25 [ denji ^^ ]: Do u know what 12 x 7 is

17:25 [ denji ^^ ]: I dunno

17:26 [ denji ^^ ]: Aki tell me to look it up but idk how

17:32 [ denji ^^ ]: Can u come over

☆ YOSHIDA is super popular and super cool, so it took you a while to work up the courage to ask for his number. Although he gave it to you gladly, you weren't sure if he would even bother to text you after the exchange. You know he's in a ton of group chats with his classmates, and he has a lot of followers on social media. He probably didn't care to text someone unimportant like you... right?

Well, you soon found out that you were very wrong. Yoshida was waiting for this for a long time, actually. And he has no problem ignoring all of his other messages and notifications just to text you back.

15:26 [ yoshida ❀ ]: hey, you weren't in class today, what's up?

15:28 [ yoshida ❀ ]: i can come over and show you what we went over today if you want

15:29 [ yoshida ❀ ]: i'll bring iced coffee too :)

Yoshida uses the fact that you two are classmates as an excuse to text you more than necessary. He sends you pictures of the white board or last night's homework answers, even if you didn't ask for them. Somehow, he always ends up as your partner on group projects. He's just texting you a lot 'cause he wants to get to know his partner, that's all.

His favorite pass-time in class is texting you instead of paying attention. He knows he's going to ace this test anyways, and the current lecture is soooooo boring. The time will definitely go by quicker if he spends it messaging you and stealing glances at you when he can.

9:15 [ yoshida ❀ ]: im totally gonna fall asleep

9:15 [ yoshida ❀ ]: i hate this professor

9:17 [ yoshida ❀ ]: hey. look over here

9:18 [ yoshida ❀ ]: did you see me wave? :)

9:18 [ yoshida ❀ ]: your outfit today is cute btw

Yoshida is no stranger to sending you pictures of himself, too. He has a little bit of smugness about it. Yoshida knows that he's handsome and he knows that he's effortlessly photogenic, so whenever he sees a photo opportunity, he's going to take it.

18:04 [ yoshida ❀ ]: (1 image attachment)

18:06 [ yoshida ❀ ]: (1 image attachment)

18:07 [ yoshida ❀ ]: which one should i post? or which one do you like more?

18:10 [ yoshida ❀ ]: next time i see you, you should take a picture with me. i want to post a pic of the both of us. ^.^

Yoshida really enjoys texting with you, even if you end up texting back and forth late into the night, when he should be sleeping so he can get up early for school tomorrow. He's a night owl anyway, so honestly, he's fine with sacrificing on the sleep so he can talk to you. And if you call him? Even better. He could listen to your voice forever.

Speaking of, his favorite thing is sending you voice messages. It's a bit more convenient than texting, plus he knows you're a sucker for his smooth voice. He almost always sends you a voice message in the morning while he's walking to class.

7:25 [ yoshida ❀ ]: (1 voice note)

7:28 [ yoshida ❀ ]: (1 link)

7:28 [ yoshida ❀ ]: here's the playlist i was talking about in that voice message

7:29 [ yoshida ❀ ]: give it a listen when you can, i think you'll like it <3

#aki hayakawa x reader #aki x reader #yoshida x reader #yoshida hirofumi x reader #denji x reader #csm x reader #chainsaw man x reader #aki hayakawa #denji #yoshida #yoshida hirofumi #chainsaw man fluff #chainsaw man headcanons

7K notes · View notes

octuscle · 2 months

Text

Total and life-changing solar eclipse

Michael was more than pissed off. He had been planning this April 8, 2024 for over two years. Almost all his friends from astronomy class had gone to Mazatlan, Austin or Niagara Falls. Despite all the logistical challenges, Michael wanted to see the solar eclipse at the Epi Center in Nazas. He was on the road for over 36 hours. And now his luggage with all his equipment had not arrived. And he was three and a half hours late. All he had was his special sunglasses. No telescope. No binoculars. All lost somewhere between Dublin and Mexico City… The sky was already darkening. The excursion he had signed up for was long gone somewhere in the mountains. Here, right in front of the airfield, it was full of amateurs. Idiots who didn't understand the significance of this eclipse from the Saros cycle. They probably thought it was a miracle. Michael checked Google Maps. He didn't have time to drive to the hotel first. There was no cab. But according to the satellite image, there was a large parking lot or something similar not far away. Good north-south orientation. Michael should have a good view. And hopefully it was emptier and quieter there…

He cursed the fact that he had to watch the eclipse with the naked eye. He cursed the fact that his sun cream with the sun protection factor was God knows where. His red hair shone in the sun. And he could feel himself getting sunburnt. He probably stank of sweat. The last shower had been during the stopover in Chicago. Maybe he should have flown to Toronto after all. But now he was here. And totality was getting closer and closer.

Michael had been fascinated by astronomy ever since he could read. And he had taught himself at the age of four. Michael was the epitome of a nerd. Unathletic. No friends. Assistant in the computer science department at Dublin University. And now he was standing here alone in the sweltering heat in this parking lot. His head on his back. Above him, a spectacle that rarely existed in this form. His anger evaporated. His fascination with the play of sun and moon prevailed. He no longer felt the heat. In fact, it was starting to get cooler. Cooler and cooler. And it was also slowly getting noticeably darker. Until it was as if someone had switched off the light. Michael stared open-mouthed at the sky. He was overwhelmed. The Black Sun was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. All his exertions were forgotten. The thousands of euros he had spent on the plane tickets: all a trifle for this spectacle in the sky. He put his head back even further in fascination. And he fell backwards onto the ground.

Maldita sea, Miguel thought. He must have fainted a few seconds after falling to the ground. He held the back of his head. That could be a nasty bump on the head… His sunglasses had fallen off his face… He looked at the sun with a wink. Yes, you could still see the shadow of the moon in front of the sun. And? What was so special about it? It got dark every evening. Today it was also noon. Miserable astronomy crap… Even his kunkels had all gone out to a hill outside the village… He didn't care.

His ball had rolled a few meters further. Miguel took it and practiced shooting baskets. By the time his buddies got back before that nerd thing, he was in shape. And then he would beat the losers. Like every time. Miguel was simply the basketball star of his village. And he was happy when all the strangers had finally left and things were quiet again.

#male tf #muscle tf #reality change #race change #ai image

177 notes · View notes

lady-harrowhark · 1 year

Text

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Gideon’s blood and the Tomb. I’ve got two points here that dovetail somewhat…

Let’s review some key events. I realize these probably seem a bit all over the place, but I do believe they come together. I’ve tried to put these in roughly chronological order.

John attempts to consume the soul of the Earth, and then creates a physical body for Alecto: “I ripped half my ribs from my body and made you from the dirt, my blood, my vomit, my bone.”

Ten thousand years later, Gideon and Harrow duke it out. The initial recollection of the fight says that “Harrow had scratched until she’d had half of Gideon’s face beneath her fingernails.” The more candid HtN version has Gideon telling us, “You clawed my face so bad that my blood ran down your hands; my face was under your fucking fingernails.”

Harrow opens the Tomb with Gideon’s (read: John’s) blood on her hands.

Harrow sees Alecto, falls in love with her, and decides to live.

At some point while in the Tomb, Harrow apparently kisses Alecto: “She hadn’t come on purpose; the scrap of black-eyed meat had asked for it—the chain of a kiss: the ice that burnt the flesh of the mouth that had stuck to the mouth that was frozen.”

At Canaan House, Ianthe ascends and tells the others that step six of the process is to “consume the flesh. Not the whole thing, a drop of blood will do to ground you.”

Harrow’s letter tells her she owes Ianthe “the favour of the chain”, which extends “into the House, but NOT into the Tomb.” The agreement takes precedence over any oaths sworn to others, including John, except for the Holy Corpse.

Harrow kisses Ianthe to inspect her jaw and re-swears the oath.

Harrow’s Nova AU has her retrieving the chain of Samael from the Anastasian. This is considered a sin severe enough that the Reverend Father whips her, but she is allowed to keep the chain. Denied the role of Reverend Daughter, Harrow tells Ortus that she is “the unfulfilled vow and the bloody teeth of the unkissed skull.”

Alecto kisses Harrow, bites her, and recognizes her by her blood - the blood of Anastasia’s line. Alecto tells Harrow that she is very sorry about Samael, and she vows the favour she had promised to Anastasia to Harrow.

We see over and over this theme of consuming another life, whether body or soul: we get two sides of this coin when we compare Gideon’s “All I ever wanted you to do was eat me” to John’s statement that “it’s the human instinct, to take.” Consuming the flesh is, per Ianthe, one of the steps to taking in a cavalier’s soul and becoming a Lyctor, directly paralleling John consuming the Earth, both physically when he eats dirt and spiritually when he takes in her soul. Thus far, though, we don’t know how or if Harrow consumed Gideon’s flesh in the interim between chapters 36 and 37 of GtN.

But here’s what I’ve been wondering: assuming Ianthe is correct (and telling the truth) about the steps to becoming a Lyctor, to what extent does the order and timing actually matter? I think there’s a distinct possibility that Harrow had consumed Gideon’s flesh years before they even came to Canaan House.

Because Harrow had Gideon’s face under her fingernails. And Harrow bites her nails.

HtN, chapter four:

You held your left hand up before your face, before the light, the even white light with its hot tungsten filaments. The thumbnail was whole and even. Too even? Were you wont to chew your fingernails still, that unattractive tic of your girlhood?

And again in chapter twenty-one:

She took off her gloves, and with the edges of her fingernails - bitten to the quick, and never much help - she started to prise open one wrinkled corner.

If the steps do not have to be completed strictly in order, Harrow may very well have already checked off step six if she were biting her nails with Gideon’s flesh and blood still clinging to them.

The other thing going on here is that we get these repeated connections between chains and favours and kisses. I don’t feel like we have quite all the pieces yet to draw any definitive conclusions, but it seems that the favour of the chain may have something to do with the Reverend Family’s vow to protect the Tomb. Particularly, Harrow describing herself, sans Reverend Daughter title, as “the unfulfilled vow” as she wields the chain of Samael lends itself to this interpretation. I also find it very interesting that this unfulfilled vow is paired with “the bloody teeth of the unkissed skull” given that upon waking, Alecto kisses Harrow, bites her, and draws blood which then allows her to recognize Harrow as one of Anastasia’s descendants.

Before that kiss, though, there was another. Alecto describes being called back by Harrow’s kiss, presumably when she broke into the Tomb as a child. I have to wonder if blood was playing a role here too. Alecto says that Harrow’s flesh stuck on her frozen lips, that the ice burned her. If this kiss also drew blood, it could be that the blood of Anastasia’s line was the key to calling her back. However, there may have been someone else’s blood on Alecto’s lips that day. If Harrow had been biting her nails, which she’d earlier used to claw Gideon’s face, she very well may have had Gideon’s blood in her mouth as well. As John’s daughter, her blood was able to open the Tomb. Was it able to call Alecto as well? Could “the chain of a kiss” be referring to Harrow transferring John’s blood between Gideon and Alecto?

Overall, it seems like we’re circling something akin to a blood oath or living blood ward. The thalergetic nature of blood certainly aligns with the symbolism of life and light that we see connected to the Earth and Alecto, in contrast to the thanergy that John cultivates. Alecto’s physical form is derived from John’s blood, and his power is derived from her soul. If indeed a kiss and a few drops of John’s blood, shepherded into the Tomb by Gideon and Harrow, are enough to call Alecto, I cannot even imagine the pyrotechnics show that we’re in for now that he’s had a run-in with the business end of her sword.

#i've had the nail biting = step six thing percolating since pre-nona days #but the chain of a kiss part didn't hit me until the other day #at which point i quite literally froze in my tracks to process #i can't really blame harrow though. breaking into an apocalypse-initiating tomb would be a real nail-biter #(sorry i just think puns are funny automatically)#i do think there's a good chance they were already partway to lyctorhood by the time they got to the First #pre-lyctors. if you will.#nona the ninth spoilers #ntn #harrowhark nonagesimus #john gaius #gideon nav #alecto #alecto the ninth #the locked tomb #tlt #tlt meta

2K notes · View notes

Last Seen Blogs

maxidango

max💥

love-spanking

題名未設定

itsheroictraveler

HERO TRAVELER

diaryofarunninglady-blog

Run,Yoga,Vegan, Love

wickedwitchoftera

Wicked Witch's Adventures in TERA EU