#i do 12 hour days at school 3 days a week and then work 12-close at my job the other 4

[munson-blurbs]

Single Dad!Eddie x Fem!Reader Series

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

Summary: A trip to the thrift store becomes overwhelming for Harris, and you and Eddie have to work as a team. But the real test of your relationship's strength is the crisis that unfolds days later.

Warnings: financial insecurity, school lock-in, missing child, police presence, mention of kidnapping, mention of drug addiction, blood (no gore)

WC: 8.5k

Chapter 19/20

Divider credit to @saradika

Eddie has already been awake for two hours when the phone rings. One part of parenthood that he hadn’t anticipated is that children do not understand the concept of weekends. Harris had flung himself out of his racecar bed promptly at 6:30 in the morning, crawling under Eddie’s sheets and poking his nose until he woke up.

“Har, go back to sleep,” Eddie had grumbled, the last word extended in a whine. One cheek was smushed against his pillow, muffling his complaint. “It’s Saturday; you don’t have school.”

In response, Harris pursed his lips into a perfect pout and used his thumb to peel Eddie’s eyelid open, getting as close to his face as possible. His morning breath was tinged with the scent of chocolate; Eddie groggily made a mental note to better supervise his nighttime teeth brushing routine. 

“‘M hungry.”

That’s how Eddie finds himself pouring his third cup of coffee while his son keeps his eyes glued to the TV screen, watching Doug stutter and stammer in front of Patti. Eddie smiles, a blush creeping into his cheeks when he realizes that that’s probably what he looks like around you.

“‘Lo?” He cradles the receiver between his ear and his shoulder, wincing as he clumsily clinks the carafe into place. There isn’t enough coffee left to slosh over the side, a small miracle in and of itself, although he’ll have to brew some more if the caffeine doesn’t kick in soon.

“Hey, baby.” Your voice is sleepy yet sweet, smoothing all the creases of the morning. “Did I wake you up?”

Eddie laughs and takes a sip from his favorite mug, the one that proudly declares #1 Dad. It’s stained and chipped, but he’ll never throw it out. Wayne had bought it for him on his very first Father’s Day; ironically, Eddie had bought him a #1 Grandpa mug that year, probably from the same kiosk at the mall.

“Not even close,” he says, tongue flicking to the corner of his lip to catch the drip of coffee that’s pooled in the crevice. “Someone was up bright and early this morning.” His gaze flits over to the bowl of Cheerios snug between Harris’s criss-crossed legs, mostly uneaten despite his earlier protests that would make an outsider believe he was starving. “How was your sleep?” he asks, swinging back to your conversation.

You switch the phone from one ear to the other. “It was good. Would’ve been better if you were next to me, though,” you add, twirling the cord around your forefinger. If you could, you would capture the safety of his embrace and bottle it, releasing a bit each time you craved his gentle touch. “I might’ve even let you be the little spoon.”

He balks at this with a playful scoff, nearly spilling his coffee with the sudden movement. “Yeah, right,” he chuckles, licking the side of the mug before the bitter liquid can slide off and hit the ground. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

Admittedly, his skepticism is rooted in truth; whenever you do get the chance to cuddle in bed, he’s always the one wrapping his arm around your waist, often taking the opportunity to snake a hand up your shirt and let the pads of his fingers brush over your breasts. It isn’t always a display of sexuality or desire–though you can’t say you mind that–but a connection, a way of ensuring that you stay close. 

“Just a few more weeks until we get to find out for ourselves,” you tease, though he needs no reminding. Only sixteen days remain until you officially move in together, and he’s not ashamed to admit that he’s counting down. “Speaking of which,” you continue, glancing at the clock, “I was wondering if you and Harris wanted to do some furniture shopping for his new room.” You knew that he would be keeping his racecar bed; it’s unlikely he’ll part with it until he’s outgrown it completely. “Y’know, a new dresser or nightstand or something.”

There’s an extended pause on Eddie’s side of the line. You think the call dropped and are about to hang up and redial when you hear him say,  “I, um…I don’t get paid until next week…” He nervously scratches the countertop with one fingernail. 

“Oh.” You grapple with a response, trying to strike a balance of empathy without condescension. “Well, I was going to surprise you, but I sold some of Grandma’s old—”

“No way,” Eddie interjects, firmly but not harshly. “I’m not having you spend your money on me. We can just wait until payday.”

“I want to buy this for Harris. I…I probably should have cleared out Grandma’s room months ago, but I couldn’t. I mean, I could, but it felt wrong because I had nothing to put in its place.” You don’t care that you’re babbling on, forging ahead with your impromptu monologue. “It would’ve been too empty, but with you and Harris here, it won’t be empty anymore.”

Eddie tucks his thumbnail between his teeth. “Are you sure?” he prods, not wanting to sound ungrateful. 

“Positive.” You’re much more assured in your reply. “If she knew Harris before she got sick, she would’ve spoiled the hell out of him, anyway.” The moment she saw him happily digging into the Oreos, she would have ensured that the cupboard remained stocked with Double Stuf. “In a way, s’like she gets to spoil him now.”

You can sense Eddie’s resistance tempering with an audible exhale. “He’s an easy kid to love, that’s for sure,” he muses, buying time to process the influx of emotions flooding his body. There’s the obvious gratitude that you’re so eager to take care of his son, but it’s cut with the insecurity of him not being able to do so. If you’re going to buy Harris furniture, it should be because you want to, not because he can’t. What if you hold this against him? What if, in the future, there’s an argument and you fire back with a retort about his shortcomings as a father?

Except…you have never done that. Ever. Not that night in the emergency room, or when you’d found out about the CPS report filed that evening. Not even when Eddie had made it his personal mission to tear you down, pulling insults from the depths and hurling them at you with reckless abandon. 

You hadn’t brought up the way he’d helplessly panicked when confronted with the possibility of Harris’s learning disability, or how he’d let anxiety overtake him when he officially received a classification. With everything the two of you had endured, you’d never once echoed his anxieties about his parenting abilities; it was quite the opposite. With you by his side, he feels as though he can take on whatever challenge life chucks at him. 

“Eds? Is everything okay?” Your tone is thick with concern; Eddie realizes that you probably think you’ve upset him. “We don’t have to go—we can do something else, or—”

“Sweet girl,” he says in one exhale, both to reassure you and to remind himself that you’re his, and he’s yours. Love surges through the phone lines when he speaks. “We can pick you up in an hour, if that works? I should be able to wrangle Harris by then.”

“Y’sure?” And, Christ, how his heart sinks when you shrink inward, reflexively making yourself smaller when you’re worried that you’ve offended someone.

Eddie doesn’t answer you directly, instead, calls out his son’s name. “Hey, Harris?” He frowns when Harris completely ignores him in favor of watching the cartoon. Using his free hand, he cups his mouth in a makeshift megaphone, amplifying his voice. “Harris Wayne Munson!”

The sudden sound jolts him out of his TV-induced stupor. “Huh?” 

“Go get dressed and brush your teeth; we’re gonna go shopping with Ms. Sweetheart!” Eddie grins as Harris turns to him with a wide smile of his own. “C’mon, let’s go!” 

Harris jumps up without further hesitation, inadvertently tossing his bowl from the makeshift table of his legs. Milk splatters, instantly soaking into the carpet, and the Cheerios topple out and land in a soggy pile. “Nooo, my bref-ist!” His big eyes well up with tears. “Daddy, you made me drop my bref-ist!”

“You, uh, wanna deal with that?” You can’t hide your amusement at the usual Munson chaos. 

“Probably should, huh?” Eddie jokes back, stretching the phone cord as far as he can and reaching for the paper towel roll. “I love you, babe. See you in a bit.”

“I love you, Eds,” you tell him. “And Harris, too, of course.”

Some more static and shuffling; then, an energetic voice greets you. “Hi Ms. Sweetheart! Daddy made me drop my bref-ist,” the little boy reports. 

“I’m sorry to hear that, Har.” You’ve perfected the art of mustering up sympathy for children’s not-soearth-shattering issues, a skill that every preschool teacher must possess. “Why don’t you help him clean up? That way, I can see you even faster.”

Harris pauses, mulling over his options. “Yeah, okay! Gotta go! Bye!”

You hear the clunk of him struggling to replace the phone on the hook, followed by Eddie saying, “Let me say good-bye before you hang—” click. 

Pulling your own receiver from your ear, you stare at it with mild amusement. Never a dull moment with my boys. 

Your boys drive up to your building just over an hour later. You stand up from the bench outside the entrance and smooth down your shorts where they’ve creased. 

“Hey, Sweetheart.” Eddie lets the pet name roll off of his tongue. He wants to kiss you as you slide into the passenger seat, but he withholds his affection for Harris’s sake. It seems silly, considering you’ll all be living together, but he doesn’t know how his son will react to the romance aspect of it. Will he be happy? Excited? Disgusted by any display of affection?

You give his hand a subtle squeeze, turning around to greet Harris. “Ready to shop till we drop?”

“Till we drop?” Harris wrinkles his nose, glancing between you and his dad. “Why would we drop?”

“It’s just an expression,” you explain, catching a glimpse of the smile tugging at the corners of Eddie’s mouth. “Just means that we’re going to shop until we’re too tired to shop anymore.”

“I never get tired,” Harris declares, sticking his legs straight out so his flexed feet push up against the back of the driver’s seat, nudging Eddie slightly forward. “Grampa Wayne calls me an ‘Energizer Bunny.’” He bounces up and down in his booster seat to prove his point.

Eddie reaches his right arm around, keeping his left firmly gripping the wheel, as he moves Harris’s feet from where they’re planted into his lower back. “So, Har,” he starts, easing his weight onto the brake as he approaches a red light, “we’re gonna look for a new dresser for you, and maybe a nightstand.” He takes a deep breath as he delivers the news: “That means we’re not making any pit stops for toys. Got it?”

You want to interject, to let Eddie know that you don’t mind splurging on a small treat for Harris, but you bite it back. Whether or not you have the spare funds is irrelevant: this is the boundary he’s set for his son, and you have to respect it, regardless of your desire to spoil him.

Harris, however, does not accept the announcement as readily. “Not even, like, a little one?” he presses, holding his thumb and forefinger a millimeter apart. “Even if I’m really, really good?” He gives a hopeful smile, eyes blinking expectantly.

Eddie looks at you, serving as your cue to provide your input. You nod your approval, trying to hide your delight in being asked to make a parenting decision, regardless of how menial it may seem. He peers up through the rearview mirror at his son’s waiting face. “If you’re really, really good,” he acquiesces, features pinching into a grimace when Harris’s exuberant squeal echoes through the sedan. “You have to use your inside voice and stay next to us the whole time. Deal?”

“Deal,” Harris confirms. “Deal, Ms. Sweetheart?”

“Deal.” Laughter bubbles up inside you and you let it spill out uninhibited. You know that telling a child he can get a toy is an easy part of parenthood, but you silently swear to never take for granted being included in that choice. Harris joins you, though he’s not quite sure why he’s laughing, but your joy is contagious. 

You lean your head against the car window, listening to the buzz of the radio filling the silence. Harris hums along, more on-key than the average five-year-old, which you can safely attribute to him having a musician for a dad.

“I’m not getting a new bed, right?” Harris says with sudden urgency. “Because I wanna keep my racecar bed.”

“Mhm,” you affirm, smiling when Harris relaxes back against the headrest. “Your racecar bed will be in your new room, don’t you worry.”

“Okay.” That response satisfies him until he thinks up another question. “An’ you’re bringing your bed, Daddy?”

Eddie chuckles as he pulls into the Goodwill parking lot. He picks a spot close to the store, right next to a green Ford with a faded “Clinton ‘96” bumper sticker. “Um, no. I’m not bringing my bed.” 

“So are you getting a new bed?” His eyes dart from side to side as he assesses the size of the car. “Where’s it gonna fit?”

“I’m, uh, not buying a new bed, either.” Eddie kills the engine and unbuckles his seatbelt, swiveling to face Harris, who is more confused than ever. “Ms. Sweetheart and I are going to share her bed.”

Harris kicks his feet, processing this new information. “But you didn’t get married yet,” he points out, “so how can you share a bed?”

You rest your palm on Eddie’s forearm in quiet reassurance. “Some people share a bed before they get married,” you explain simply, knowing that less is often more when talking to young children.

“When are you gonna get married?” he asks, more curious than meddling. “Because it’s taking forever. My friends’ mommies and daddies are already married.”

Eddie doesn’t acknowledge the fact that Harris essentially referred to you as his mommy; instead, he slowly exhales. “I’d like to marry Ms. Sweetheart someday, and I think she’d like to marry me, too.” He looks over at you with a sheepish grin, and you give his hand an agreeing squeeze. “But, for now, we’re just going to try out living together. How does that sound?”

“I guess that’s okay.” Harris isn’t completely thrilled with his dad’s response, but he relents anyway.

“While, we’re, uh, on the subject,” Eddie continues, the tips of his ears flushing pink as he carefully considers his words. He chews on the inside of his lower lip. Is he really doing this? Is he opening his son up to this relationship? “You know that Ms. Sweetheart and I love each other very much, right?”

“Mhm.”

“Sometimes,” Eddie continues with only some trepidation, “sometimes, when grown-ups love each other a lot, they hold hands o-or kiss. Would that be weird for you? If Ms. Sweetheart and I held hands, or kissed?”

You avert your gaze, partly from bashfulness but mostly so Harris doesn’t feel any pressure from either of you. 

The little boy looks at the car’s ceiling, centering his focus on the overhead lighting. Finally, with utmost certainty, he declares, “just no tongue-kissing.”

You snort out a laugh while Eddie goes bright red and sputters, “where did you learn about that?”

“Young and Restless,” Harris reports nonchalantly. 

Eddie rubs his eyes, pressing his thumb and forefinger to his lids until his vision blurs. “Remind me to tell Wayne to stop letting him watch the soaps,” he grumbles to you, turning back to his son. “Yeah, no tongue-kissing.”

You easily lace your fingers with Eddie’s as you walk through the front doors of the Goodwill. Harris starts making a beeline for the toys, but Eddie uses his free hand to pivot him in the direction of the furniture department. Harris huffs but complies, trudging alongside you. 

There’s a bright blue nightstand on display that immediately catches his eye. “Look!” he points, smiling so wide that all of his baby teeth are on display, “can I get it? Please?”

Eddie smiles warily, flipping over the white tag hanging from one silver drawer handle. He breathes a small sigh of relief when he sees the price is within the range of what he’d like to spend; rather, what he’d be comfortable asking you to spend. 

“Looks like we’ve got a winner,” he says, posture straightening with the announcement. He runs his fingertips over the surface, checking for any chipping paint or splintering wood, but the finish appears to be intact. “I’ll go tell someone to set it aside for us.”

He sets off in search of an employee, leaving you alone with Harris. You swallow the nervousness building in your throat. You spend nearly every day taking care of children, but you’re suddenly inundated with the memory of losing him at the flea market. Those few minutes when you couldn’t locate him were some of the scariest of your life. 

And yet, it hadn’t prevented Eddie from giving you another chance.

“Are you excited to move in with me, Har?” you ask, reaching out to ruffle his curls.

He nods, then looks straight up at you so that you’re staring at his nostrils. “Ms. Sweetheart?” The position of his neck changes his voice’s pitch so it’s froggy. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“Can you marry my daddy?” His eyes shine with potential. “And then you can be my mommy for real?”

You crouch down to his height, heart melting at his request. “Harris, I love your daddy very, very much. And I love you very, very much, too.” You poke his nose gently, and he giggles. “Being married is a big responsibility—”

“‘Sponsibility?”

“Mhm. Responsibility. It means a really important job.” You slide your heart pendant across the chain on your neck anxiously. “And your daddy and I want to make sure that we’re ready for that kind of responsibility before we do anything, okay?”

Harris nods, but you can tell from his crinkled nose and furrowed brows that he doesn’t fully understand. You can’t blame him; it’s an abstract concept, one that even you often have trouble comprehending. “But I can tell you one thing: whenever your daddy wants to propose, I’ll say ‘yes.’” You smile at the thought of Eddie asking you to be his wife. 

“Is that where he gets down on one knee and asks ‘Will you marry me?’” You’re about to respond when he adds, “and then someone runs in and yells about being their long-lost ‘dentical twin?”

Yeah, no more soap operas for Harris. 

Finding a dresser proves to be a much more difficult task than picking out the nightstand. Everything that Harris likes is out of budget, and everything within budget is too worn down or small. There’s one that’s in good condition and isn’t too pricey, but it’s covered in hand-painted unicorns. 

“That’s for girls!” Harris groans, stomping his feet. The last word is stretched in a whine. “I can’t have girl stuff!”

“We can paint over it. Whatever color you want,” you quickly jump in, trying to avoid a meltdown, but your efforts are fruitless. Fat tears stream down his cheeks; he’s already determined that the dresser is tainted. 

“No! No, no, no!” he howls, throwing himself on the floor. He smacks down on his tailbone, fanning his tantrum’s flames. He quiets for a moment, too shocked to cry, but then he’s screaming louder than before. 

It’s as though he’s lost control of his body, arms and legs knocking into the lower shelves without care. You can’t block him in time before he knocks over a lamp—a Nickelodeon-themed one that would have been perfect in his new room, ironically—and it shatters on the ground. Ceramic splinters, scattering across the linoleum like roaches in the light. 

People start to stare, some with sympathetic looks, and some glare angrily at the child daring to interrupt their shopping. Eddie’s face blazes, vision swimming as he wracks his brain for a solution. 

You’re faster, slapping a few bills into Eddie’s palm and jolting him from his thoughts. He watches you scoop Harris off of the floor, trying to avoid his flailing limbs. 

“Go get the nightstand and pay for the lamp,” you tell him, straightforward and precise. “I’ll get him to the car and calm him down. Keys?”

Eddie blinks, the information swirling around him but not quite penetrating the surface. It’s when you hoist Harris onto one hip and balance his weight in one hand, using the other to make a ‘gimme’ motion that it registers. 

“Y-Yeah, sorry.” Eddie fumbles for the car keys and tosses them to you, the two of you working in tandem. A well-oiled machine. You nod gratefully, wincing as Harris’s foot makes contact with your thigh. “I’ll be right out.”

You’re able to bring him to the car, struggling to unlock it and hold on to Harris. After a few failed attempts, you manage to open the passenger door and sit him on the seat. 

“Harris, hey, Harris?” you start, keeping your voice soft and even while trying to pull his attention. His sobs are slowing down but he’s definitely breathing too rapidly for your comfort. “Hey, bud. You’re okay, all right?” You extend your hand and he tentatively places his own palm on top of it. “You wanna give my hand a squeeze?”

He does it, the motion grounding him enough that he can focus on your body in front of him. You don’t want to touch him, knowing that his senses are already overstimulated from the tantrum. Instead, you relax as his squeezing grows stronger and his breaths gradually even out. 

“There ya go, Har. Just like that.” You smile warmly. “That was a really big feeling, huh?”

“Uh-huh.” His voice shakes and hiccups. He swipes at the tears on his cheeks, smudging them into his skin. 

You reach into the center console and grab a tissue, wiping the mucus from his nose and lips. “Good as new.” With no trashcan nearby, you shove the used Kleenex into your pants pocket. “Can you tell me what made you so mad in there?”

“D-Don’t want girl…girl st-stuff,” he stutters through ragged breaths. 

There’s a time and place to discuss the optics of categorizing interests into ‘boy’ and ‘girl,’ but you know better than to have that conversation now. “Oof, that’s why you were angry! That’s a lot to handle.” You gingerly tuck a curl behind his ear. “But, Harris, did you see what happened when you started hitting and kicking?” He shakes his head. “Well, you knocked over a lamp and it broke. You could have gotten hurt, or someone else could have gotten hurt.” 

Harris’s face falls as you speak, absorbing what you’re explaining. “I-I didn’t mean to,” he sniffles. “‘M sorry.”

“I know you didn’t mean to,” you sigh, “sometimes, when we have big feelings like getting angry, we do things we shouldn’t without even realizing.” You pause for a moment, biting your lip as you consider your words. “Do you want to hear what helps me when I have really big feelings and I can’t scream and cry?”

“Mhm.” He nods again, little tongue peeking out to swipe up the tears above his mouth. 

“I take a deep breath and close my eyes,” you start, demonstrating both actions. Inhale for three, exhale for three, and repeat. “And then I picture myself being in my favorite place in the world.” You smile at him, blinking back the sadness that comes with memories of holidays at Grandma’s. “Wanna try it together?”

Harris responds by closing his eyes and breathing in slowly. “Good job, Har,” you softly praise him. “Now breathe out; make sure you’re thinking of your favorite place, okay?”

“Thinkin’ about the zoo,” he whispers, voice raspy from shrieking for so long. “Daddy taked me there and we saw so much animals.”

“Zoos are a lot of fun,” you agree with a laugh. “I’ve never been to the one in Hawkins. Maybe we can go over the summer?”

“Yeah! I wanna show you the flamingos!” His grin stretches across his cheeks “Do you like flamingos?”

Like most people, you don’t have a strong opinion on flamingos, but you respond with an enthusiastic, “I love them!”

“Love who?” Eddie’s voice breaks into the conversation. He’s rolling out the nightstand in a cart, keeping one hand on top of it to hold it steady. “Me?”

You laugh, opening up the back door so he can wedge the furniture next to Harris’s booster seat. “Yes, Eddie. I love you very much, don’t worry,” you tease, seizing the opportunity to inconspicuously check him out. His biceps flex as he maneuvers the nightstand, and you have to tear your gaze from his denim-clad ass when he stands up and triumphantly wipes his hands on his pants. 

“C’mere.” He pulls you in, pursing his lips in an exaggerated pout and planting a smacking kiss on you. 

While you giggle, Harris is not as amused. He claps his hands over his eyes and groans. 

“No tongue-kissing!”

You’re wrapping up storytime, your students fidgeting with their shoelaces—some fidgeting with their friend’s shoelaces—eager to move onto the corresponding art activity Will has planned. 

“Okay, we’re going to use our walking—” Your announcement is cut short by Principal Sinclair’s voice coming over the loudspeaker. Her tone is typically warm and excited, but the way she speaks so sternly sends chills through your entire body. 

“This is a lock-in. All staff and students must remain in their classrooms until notified. I repeat, all staff and students must remain in their classrooms until notified.”

You breathe out, though you’re still concerned about the cause of the lock-in. It’s usually some kind of medical issue that requires emergency services to have unblocked access through the halls. You hope that whatever it is isn’t life-threatening. 

Will locks the door wordlessly, and you repeat your directions to the class. The kids walk to their seats, asking non-stop about what a lock-in means. 

“We just have to stay in the classroom,” you find yourself repeating, losing patience with each iteration. You’re thankful for small miracles; your class has already gone out for recess, which means you don’t have to break that news to them. 

Will is helping the kids glue multicolored strands of crepe paper in the shape of a rainbow, complete with cotton ball clouds. You’re unclogging a bottle of Elmer’s when the classroom phone rings, startling you. You place the glue bottle on the table, promising Joshua that you’ll be right back, and answer it. 

“Hello?”

“We need you to come to the office immediately,” the secretary’s clipped voice informs you. “Bring your personal items. We’ll send someone to assist Will.”

Stupidly, you nod before remembering she can’t see you. “Y-Yes, of course. I’ll be right there.” You hang up, tell Will the plan, and bolt out the door. 

What the hell is going on? Why are they having me break the lock-in to go to the office? You hike your purse higher up your shoulder, trying to ignore the dread pooling in your stomach and creeping up your throat. 

Something is wrong. Something is really, really wrong. 

Your feet can’t carry you fast enough. You nearly stop breathing when you see Eddie pacing in the lobby, Marion and Paula standing off to the side and speaking with Chief Hopper. The two teachers wear matching worried expressions. 

As soon as Eddie spots you, he’s charging over. “Oh, thank God,” he murmurs, throwing his arms around you and hugging you tight. You can feel the tears falling from his eyes, wetting the crook of your neck. His hands squeeze against your back and your shoulder blades as his body is wracked with sobs. 

You weave your fingers through his hair, holding him as close as you can. You’re desperate to know what’s going on, but you doubt he could explain if he tried. Instead, you continue comforting him while Principal Sinclair walks over. 

Her strides are long and purposeful, and she meets your own terrified gaze with her own. “Harris went missing during recess,” she says quietly, “and Mr. Munson let us know that you might be an asset in locating him.”

Harris went missing. Bile inches up your esophagus and you swallow it, wincing at its burn. “Why would he—” You stop mid-sentence; his motive is not important right now. All of your focus needs to be on finding him. 

Chief Hopper approaches you and Eddie, tapping your boyfriend on the shoulder with two fingers. Eddie looks up, wipes his face with the heel of his palm, and clears his throat, but a fresh batch of tears threatens to spill over anyway. 

“We’ve just collected statements from his teachers,” Hopper reports, looking down at his notepad. “They said that nothing seemed out of the ordinary, that Harris was just playing with his friends one moment and then gone the next.”

“No,” Eddie shakes his head. “No, something had to have happened.” Harris had wandered off plenty of times, like at the flea market. The difference was that he was easily found. “If you haven’t found him, then he’s either hiding, or someone…” The thought is too painful to finish. 

Hopper looks over at the principal. “You’re certain that the playground is secure?” He asks her, not accusing, but waiting for confirmation. 

“Yes, absolutely secure,” she affirms, nodding her head. “The gate can only be opened from the inside, so no one can access it off of the street.”

You know this, of course, but it doesn't bring you closer to finding Harris. 

“We’ve taped off the playground,” Hopper continues, “and we’ve got a search squad going now. Considering that Harris has been diagnosed with a disability, we’re beginning this investigation right away.”

“Mr. Munson,” a second officer chimes in, “is there anyone who would be inclined to take your son? Perhaps a non-custodial parent or an estranged relative?”

Eddie’s blood runs cold. “His mom, um, isn’t in the picture. Never has been.”

Hopper cocks one brow. “Never?” he asks disbelievingly. “How soon after he was born did she relinquish her rights?”

“She, um,” Eddie swallows, rubbing his nose in embarrassment, “she never did. Never relinquished her rights, I mean. She just kinda split.”

“So there was no formal agreement that she could no longer be involved in Harris’s life?”

“N-No,” he stammers, shame seeping from every pore. He’d always meant to start the legal proceedings, but that takes time and money…and maybe a small part of him had always hoped she’d come around and do the right thing. 

He looks over at you now, the way you’ve stepped into a mothering role like a puzzle piece. Like any parent, you’d made some mistakes, but you’re also the most compassionate person Eddie has ever known. 

He thinks of the times he’d tried to make his ex get clean, to want to get clean, and to be there for Harris. The weight of disappointment caused his chest to ache every time she’d mumble, “I’m gonna, but not right now” or “I don’t need help.”

Perhaps it’s unfair to compare the two of you; after all, you hadn’t struggled with addiction. But Eddie can’t help himself. You’d loved Harris before you’d even loved him, he realizes. And he’d never had to ask you to. 

“Do you have any contact information for her?” Hopper taps his pen against his notepad. “Nine out of ten times in these situations, the child is with someone they know.”

What about the ‘one’ time? What happens then? Heat pulses in Eddie’s cheeks, sweat beading on his forehead. He doesn’t need Hopper to answer the question; he already knows what that means. 

“It’s from five years ago, so I don’t know if it’s still accurate.” He stumbles over his words, thinking about the last time he’d called her; it was the invitation to Harris’s birthday. “I don’t know it by heart, but I have it in my address book at home.”

Hopper gives a brusque nod to his colleague and to your boss. “We’ll give you a lift. And, uh, it’ll be good to set up your place as a home base.”

“Yeah, yeah, right,” Eddie mumbles, simply going through the motions without processing them. He’s on autopilot, a robotic version of himself. If he was able to fully absorb his surroundings, he would note the irony of him sitting in the back of the cop car because they’re helping him instead of escorting him to the county jail. 

You don’t let go of his hand the entire ride there, your thumb rubbing the soft hairs on his knuckles. “We’re gonna find him,” you whisper reassuringly, pressing a kiss to the back of his hand. 

But Eddie is too embroiled in his own thoughts, imagining every possible tragedy that could have befallen his son. As soon as Hopper pulls up to the apartment complex, Eddie is flying up the stairs, two at a time, unlocking the door as fast as he can. You run in behind him, watching as he flings loose papers and pens from a kitchen drawer. He’s kicked over the boxes he’s already packed; clothes and some of Harris’s toys are scattered across the floor like a poorly-designed booby-trap. 

He holds up the tattered black book, flipping through it until he lands on the right page. “Here. Right here.” He frantically points to an entry at the top, fingertip jabbing into it over and over. 

Hopper takes the book from him, careful not to rip the already weathered materials. He dials the digits and frowns when he’s greeted by the automated we’re sorry, this number is no longer in service, far too chipper for the circumstances. He tries once more in case he dialed incorrectly, but he gets the same message. 

“Disconnected,” he says gruffly, hanging the receiver with a clank. “Is there anyone else?”

Eddie can only shake his head somberly. If Wayne got Harris from school early, he would have told him. He wasn’t even sure how much of Harris’s maternal family knew of his existence, let alone his location. If someone took his son, it was more than likely a complete stranger. 

Hopper’s walkie crackles with static; you and Eddie stiffen with anticipation. “Hey, Chief?” comes from the garbled voice on the other end. 

“I’m here.”

“We’ve got a kid here at the school who says he spoke with Harris Munson right before he went missing today.”

Eddie stands up, walking closer to Hopper. Part of you expects him to grab the walkie and try talking straight to the other officer, but he doesn’t. 

Hopper presses the small black button and speaks. “Copy. Does he know where we might locate him?”

There’s a deafening silence for a few moments; no more than ten seconds pass, but it feels like a lifetime. Finally, there’s some information: “No known location; just says that Harris told him he was having ‘big feelings’ and needed to go to his favorite place.’”

“The zoo,” you murmur aloud, drawing confused looks from both men in the room. “When he got upset on Saturday—at Goodwill—I taught him to do some deep breathing and picture being in his favorite place, and he told me it was the zoo. But I…” you swallow, furrowing your brows, “I told him to picture it, not actually go there.”

“Zoo’s too far for him to walk, and no bus driver is going to let a kid that young ride by himself,” the chief points out. 

You nod, biting your lower lip. “He might not be at the zoo, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t trying to get there.”

Hopper thanks the other officer and turns to you and Eddie. My guys are deploying the search party as we speak.” He takes a deep breath and makes direct eye contact with you and Eddie. “We’ll do everything we can to bring your son back safely.”

Eddie buries his head in his hands, collapsing back against the living room wall and sliding down to the floor. 

You look over at the police chief. “Can we help? Join the search…or something?” Anything besides sitting around and waiting for answers. 

“Absolutely. We’ll keep an officer stationed here in case Harris comes home.” 

You nudge your foot against Eddie’s. “C’mon, babe.” You try to keep strength behind your words, to be what Eddie needs right now, but it gets harder with each passing second. “We’re gonna go look for him.” He looks up and notices that you’ve extended your hand, and he takes it, pulling himself up. 

He doesn’t say a word, but he follows you and Hopper out the door. He’s gnawing on his lips so violently that some skin peels off between his teeth; flecks of blood dotting his usually perfect mouth. 

“We’ve got some time before sunset, so that’s on our side,” Hopper says as he drives back the way he came. “We’ll start in the woods near the school, and we’ll move from there.” He peers back at the two of you through the rearview mirror with a determined gaze.

“My uncle,” Eddie says suddenly, no certain expression on his face. He’s practically catatonic when he talks. “I want Wayne to wait at the apartment. I need to tell him…” If Harris does return home first and sees police officers surrounding the place, he might get scared and run off again.

Hopper scratches at his beard. “We’ll let him know, all right? Don’t worry about that.” He radios the instructions to a colleague, who confirms them and signs off, before pulling into a grassy area and killing the engine. “Let’s go. If Harris is going to come out for anyone, it’ll be you two.” He slams his door and then helps you and Eddie out of the backseat. 

Before you can even begin, you hear a group of people shouting Eddie’s name. You look over to see Jeff, Jess, and Robin waving and walking towards you. 

“We came as soon as we heard,” Robin says, giving you and Eddie a hug. “We’re gonna help you, and we’re not leaving until we find him.”

Jeff offers a tight smile, one hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “We’re here for you man,” he promises, sincerity in its purest form. “Viv is gonna stop by later and I’ll take care of Ettie.”

It’s a kind gesture, but Eddie’s stomach sours at the thought of still searching later. He needs to know that his son is safe now. 

Harris’s name is echoed over and over, bouncing off of trees and shaking the leaves as you and your friends call out for him. 

“Harris!” you cry out, throat raw from your constant shouting. “Harris, it’s Ms. Sweetheart!”

“Harris!” Eddie’s voice is even louder than yours; the power behind it is palpable. “Harris, it’s Daddy! Please come out! You’re not in trouble!” he adds, cognizant of the little boy’s fear of making people mad. 

Every squirrel that darts across the forest floor has you whipping your head around, heart leaping at the prospect of Harris emerging from where he’s hiding. 

He has to be hiding; your mind won’t let you imagine what could happen if the wrong person saw him walking by himself, determined to get to the zoo…

“Harris, Aunt Robin and I will buy you any toy you want!” Jess yells. “And all the ice cream you can eat!”

The five of you take turns making promises to nobody; they’re secrets shared with the wind. Each unanswered call leaves you feeling more defeated, especially with the sun hanging lower in the sky. It will be dark soon, leaving Harris even more vulnerable than he already is.

Will joins the group a few moments later, bringing granola bars, water, and flashlights. You can only stomach about a quarter of your snack, having completely lost your appetite. Eddie doesn’t even bother to eat, fueled by adrenaline rather than food.

“Principal Sinclair is also looking,” Will tells you and Eddie. “She’s with Lucas and Erica over at Merrill Wright’s farm. It’s closer than the zoo, but he’s got some animals, so they wanted to check there.” He pauses, casting his eyes down for a second before looking at Eddie. “Everyone’s helping out with this. They all want to find Harris.”

Tears well up along Eddie’s lash line; he blinks them away to keep his vision clear. “Thanks, man.” He coughs to clear his throat, emotions forcing their way through. “That means a lot.” For a moment, he sees Will as he was when they first met: an overwhelmed little freshman, unsure of his place in high school, let alone in the world.

What if Harris never gets the chance to find himself? What if he doesn’t get to grow up and learn new things, make his own mistakes, figure out who he is?

You put an arm around Eddie, unknowingly pulling him from his intrusive thoughts. “Can you try to drink some water? Please?” You know better than to nag him about eating right now, but the last thing he needs is to get dehydrated.

He cracks open the bottle and takes a few sips, not realizing how thirsty he was until the liquid covers his tongue. He downs it all without taking a breath, the plastic crinkling as he siphons out every last drop of water.

“Take mine,” you tell him, offering it with the best smile you can possibly muster, but he shakes his head.

“You need it, too.” He’s not wrong, but you have no issue letting him drink from your bottle if he’s still thirsty.

You take a sip and pass it to him. “We’ll share.”

Another hour passes, the pink and orange hues becoming deeper purples and reds as the sky darkens with night. Some people start to call it quits, returning home to their own children, breathing secret sighs of relief that they have children to return home to. Your group remains intact; no one is even considering leaving until they physically cannot move any longer.

With just overworked flashlight bulbs illuminating your path, you continue trudging through the woods. Hopper’s shift was over hours ago, but he’s steadfast in his pursuit to find Harris.

Eddie’s exhausted physically and emotionally, feeling like every part of him has been drained and can never be replenished. His son is missing; he might have been kidnapped, and he doesn’t know if or when he’ll see him again. All he wants is to hold him again, to hear his little laugh as he tells a cheesy joke he learned at school, to watch him sound out new words or draw a picture or just fall asleep in his own bed.

Hopper’s walkie crackles; he clutches it tight and holds it so he can hear it clearly.

“Chief, we may have a sighting.”

A light flickers behind Eddie’s eyes; he doesn’t want to get his hopes up, but he can’t help himself. He listens intently as the other officer relays the information.

“Doris Driscoll just went outside to let her cats in for the night, and when they didn’t go inside, she went looking. Found them behind a bush, eating crackers out of a little boy’s hands. He told her his name is Harris. Matches the descriptions the father provided.”

Eddie grabs your hand, gripping it with whatever strength he has left. You feel a surge course through your veins as Hopper motions for you to follow him to his car. He turns on his siren and guns it down the road, swerving in and out of traffic to get to the old woman’s house as fast as he can.

Please, please let him be here, you silently pray, subconsciously screwing your eyes shut and holding your breath. The only thing worse than not knowing where he is might just be a false alarm that he’s been found. 

Hopper slams on the brakes behind an ambulance parked in front of the Driscoll residence, their open doors allowing the fluorescent lights to stream through. Eddie watches, wide-eyed, as an EMT wheels a stretcher over to it. 

A stretcher carrying Harris. 

“Harris!” Eddie cries in simultaneous relief, exuberance, and fear. He instinctively reaches for a door handle, quickly remembering that he’s in a cop car and had to wait for Hopper to let him out from the outside. 

You’re already crying; everything you’d been holding back to maintain a solid resolve for Eddie is crumbling as soon as you’d seen his son. You scramble out of the car, right behind him, and run to where the emergency technicians are treating Harris. 

He’s awake and alert, and he spots the two of you right away. “Daddy! Ms. Sweetheart!” He tries sitting up, but a technician gently guides him to lay down again. “No, that’s my daddy and my almost-mommy!” he protests. “I gotta see them!”

You and Eddie reach him at the same time. He’s covered in dirt; it’s smudge along his cheeks, his arms, and his legs. He’s even managed to get some on the tip of his nose. Some blood is smeared on his right knee where he’s seemed to have scraped it, and the EMTs spray some antiseptic on it and apply a bandage before he can even feel the sting.

“Oh, thank God.” The words rush out of Eddie’s mouth, and he puts his palms on his son’s cheeks and presses kisses all over his face. “You’re okay, you’re okay…” He turns to the technicians, worry pinching his brows together. “He’s okay, right? There’s nothing wrong?” He pushes some of Harris’s damp curls from his forehead. There aren’t any visible bumps or bruises on his face, which eases a bit of his nerves.

One technician nods. “Right now, it seems like he’s just got some minor lacerations, but we’ll run the gamut of tests to rule out more severe injuries.” She looks over at the police chief, who stands a few yards behind you. “We’ll take it from here.”

Hopper gives a small, sad smile; it’s then that you remember that his own child had passed away nearly twenty years ago. She was only a little older than Harris is now. 

Eddie follows your gaze with red-rimmed eyes, the realization setting in for him, too. “Thanks, Chief,” he says, just loud enough so Hopper can hear him. Hopper nods, placing his hat atop his head before walking away.

The EMTs check for any broken or sprained bones, shine lights into Harris’s pupils, and ask him a few simple questions to assess for a concussion. “We’ll have to take him to the hospital, just to be sure,” they say to you and Eddie, “but barring any extenuating circumstances, you should be able to bring him back home tonight.”

“Okay, yeah, okay,” Eddie breathes, crouching down a bit so he’s eye-level with his son. “Har, can you tell us why you ran away from school? You’re not in trouble; I promise.”

Harris looks down at the blanket draped across his lap. “I had really big feelings, and I tried thinking about the zoo like you told me,” he glances at you, “but then the feelings didn’t go away, so I decided to go there.”

You take his small hand in yours. “What were the big feelings?” you ask gently, free of judgment and filled with concern.

He thinks for a second, then states matter-of-factly, “Mad and sad.”

“Mad and sad?”

“Mhm,” he mumbles, wiping at his nose with his free hand. “‘Cause of Ms. Marion and Ms. Paula.”

You freeze, trying to regain your composure before Harris can pick up on your uncertainty. “What happened with your teachers, Har?”

“They were saying mean things about you and Daddy, and it made me mad and sad.”

At the sound of his title, Eddie speaks up. “Mean things about us?”

“Yeah, like, that Ms. Sweetheart is probably teaching you how to read, too,” Harris explains, “and I said that they’re lying, that you’re really smart and read to me all the time. And that Ms. Sweetheart isn’t your teacher; she’s my almost-mommy.”

Eddie clenches his fists, veins prominent as his body goes stiff. His anger isn’t at the insult, but at the way they could speak so brazenly about a child’s family, disregarding the hurt it causes. He doesn’t care what those women think of him, but he’s furious that they upset Harris.

“They keeped laughing and telled me to go play,” Harris continues, getting choked up at the memory. “I tried to do my breathing and my favorite place remembering with Charlie, but it didn’t work. And I got lost going to the zoo–the real zoo, not the one in my imagination–so I hided with the cats until the nice lady found me.”

You and Eddie share heartbroken looks, pushing aside your respective emotions as you tend to the little boy laying in front of you. “Get some rest, Har Bear,” you murmur, kissing the top of his head. “You had a long day.”

He falls asleep after a few minutes, constantly checking to make sure that the two of you are still by his side. As soon as his breathing steadies and his eyes remain closed, Eddie turns to you, exhausted and running on fumes. Wet brown doe eyes pleadingly gaze at you, lids heavy with sleep. You wrap your arms around him, unable to get close enough. He moves slowly, every action a delayed reaction, but he gradually embraces you, too.

“Stay. Please.” The words are muffled by the way his mouth is mashed into your scalp, but you hear them perfectly fine. “And if we get to go home tonight, come back with us. I need you both close to me.”

“Of course.” Your own lips press against his perspiration-soaked shirt collar. “I’ll stay as long as you need me to.” You pull back ever-so-slightly, brushing tears from his cheeks. “He’s safe. He’s safe, and he’s here, and we get to keep spoiling and loving him.”

Eddie absorbs this as best as he can, mind still spinning as the adrenaline crash hits. There’s so much he wants to say, but for right now, he just carves out space in his body for yours. Your light whisper keeps him grounded, pulling hi away from the spiraling that usually overtakes him in times of crisis.

“I’ve got you.”

--

#eddie munson #eddie stranger things #eddie x reader #eddie x you #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson x f!reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson angst #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson fanfic #stranger things fanfic #fanfic #eddie munson stranger things #stranger things #tui

[ncis-yp]

may i request sugar daddy!gibbs? <3

Money, Money, Money (Sugar Daddy! Gibbs x Reader)

Late night, black coffee, handsome man, all alone. Third time this week, 5th week in a row you’ve seen him. You flirted often fishing for bigger tips, trying to pay bills you couldn’t even afford to have. You lived on your own. 18 years old, last 2 months of high school, and barely a plan and money to plan life with.

“See you’re here again!” You say happily topping him off.

“Hey! Rough week” he sighed, eyeing you gently.

“You work at… don’t tell me” you say trying to remember. “NCIS!” You exclaim.

“Good memory” he smiles. “How are you (y/n)?” He asks.

“Ah I’m alright. Just trying to get off work as soon as possible, you know” you shrug. “Later it gets the scarier it is outside.”

“Well, what time do you get off?” Gibbs asks.

“12” you sigh, looking towards the clock. Only 9:45. “Got about 2 hours left”

“Yeah, remember the goal kid.” Gibbs smiled. “Say, what college do you plan on attending? I remember you saying you were a senior and it’s almost the end of the year.”

“Oh, college.” You say quietly. “I can’t afford it, so I won’t be going. Maybe in the future” his phone began ringing. He clicked it silent before turning to you,

“Ah I see… well (y/n) have a good night. I’ve gotta get back to work” he stands.

“See ya around, Jet” you saluted him.

“Jet…” he said thoughtfully. “I like that!!”

Time skip~

The clock hit 12 and your shift was over. You walked out to see a familiar face leaning against a car. You smiled as he approached you.

“Hey Jet! What’re you still doin out?”

“Driving you home” he shakes his keys. “Scary out here” you can see a smirk.

“Coming from a guy who’s packing” you roll your eyes as you approach the car. You were gonna let yourself get a ride with a man who had a gun… a lot safer than walking an hour without a gun. That was how you justified getting into that car.

“Oh shut up” he opened the door and you got in.

When you arrived at your shitty apartment that you could barely afford you saw Gibbs eyes search the perimeter.

“I’ll walk you in… I don’t like the looks of that guy on the corner” he motions with his head.

“It’s really alright. Thank you for the ride!” You say opening your door. Jethro reached across and shut it before you could step out. Silently he got out and walked around the car. Opening it.

“Let’s go” he grinned sweetly. You caved and bring him up. His eyes fell on your small apartment. Clean, organized, your life could fit in a box. He made notes of things to buy you.

“Well since you’re up here” you say as you take off your coat. “Coffee? Tea? Might actually have a bottle of soda in the fridge…” you trail as you thought about it.

“Coffee’s great, yeah” he accepts. The two of you stayed up talking late into the night before he left. Your insecurity of what you could afford present in the back of your mind.

A few days later~

You woke up to a knock on your front door. You opened it to see a delivery guy at your door.

“Delivery for a…” he looked at his clipboard. “(Y/n)(l/n)”

“Yeah, yeah that’s me” you say. “What is this?” The man shrugged.

“A car? If you didn’t order it, not my problem. I can’t take it back.” He said as you signed the paper. He handed you the keys. “Beautiful car by the way” he walked away. You closed the door behind you, walking downstairs. Outside you eagerly clicked the key, looking around for the car, your eyes finally settling on the black dodge challenger sitting in a parking spot a few meters down.

“Oh my god” you say nearly in tears. You ran back upstairs and hurriedly got dressed for work, hoping to see Jethro there. And sure enough when you pulled up in your new car, there was Jethro, leaning on his car again.

“You fucking bastard” you run and hug him, you cry happily into his shoulder. He laughed as you did so.

“Wait wait, I get you a car and you call me Bastard!!!” He exclaimed. “I got something else for you…” he digs his hand into his pocket, another key coming out on his finger.

“Jethro…” you say looking at it as a bright green address tag danced in your eyes.

“Coffee first. Key later” you nodded as you lead him inside.

Time skip~

You ended your shift early to go with Jethro. You blindly tailed him into a nicer apartment complex in a better part of Quatico. Your heart began to flutter as you parked.

You walked into a nice apartment on the 3rd floor. Beautiful black granite kitchen tops, newly installed appliances.

“So…” he says. “What furniture were you thinking you wanted for your new apartment?” He says handing you magazines.

“Holy shit.” You whisper. “This is mine?” He nodded. “This place is mine?” You gasp.

“All paid off. So is the car. And so is your degree.”

“Degree?” You ask. “No you didn’t”

“Yes. I did” he smiled.

“Shut up” you tear up as he passes you a folder. The big words ‘WELCOME TO VIRGINIA TECH’ inscribed. “How did you-“

“Pulled some strings… I think your 1560 SAT score and perfect GPA helped a lot…” he said.

“Oh my god” you cry out jumping into his arms. “I will pay it all back” you say.

“Nope. No need. Just keep being a good girl and I will give you the world” he says.

“Thank you so much!!”

“Of course! You deserve it” he winked. “Now pick out some furniture. It’s your reward for getting into Virginia Tech” you kisses your cheek.

#ducky mallard #jethro gibbs #ncis #tony dinozzo #x reader #ncis fandom #ncis fanfiction #ncis x reader #ncis x readers #tony dinozzo x reader #timothy x reader #gibbs x reader #jethro gibbs x reader #anthony dinozzo x reader #ncis reader insert #ncis imagine #ncis smut #ncis gibbs #ncisverse #reader insert #fem reader #tony dinozzo smut #smut #tony dinozzo fluff #fluff #x yn #yn

[clearlydiamondz]

Can you do Erik with a bratty gf glasses wearing girl ????

Rule #1: Refer to me as only daddy or sir

Rule #2: No panties

Rule #3: No cumming unless given you permission

Rule #3: No touching unless given permission

Rule #4: Always be honest

Rule #5: Don't be a Brat, Punishment will meet actions

(Y/N) sadly looked at Erik as he got ready for work. She knew that he was going to be busy all day for his 12 hour shift, probably not being able to see her for the rest of the day but that didn't matter. She needed him. She was mad at herself for being tired when she came over. Her classes had her stuck in her laptop and books, so as she soon as she saw his bed she was out like a light.

Erik didn't mind though, he knew that (Y/N) was working hard to become a RN, and he also knew that she needed her rest. Matter of fact, he needed her to have all her rest for Spring Break that was ahead. He was determined to use her to his content, (obviously with her consent) and he needed her to have all her rest. He took off the entire week just to spend time with her. This was the last day.

"Don't look at me like that." he told her. Her pouting, and her eyes enhanced by the glasses made him want to just call out and fuck her senseless now.

"I just miss you. I haven't had you in what.. two weeks?" she complained. He closed his eyes sighing. The way this girl was so persuasive didn't help his need for her. He grabbed her by his cheeks making her look at him. "Please daddy, I just want to put my mouth on it. Two minutes, please?" she pouted again. His squeeze tightened as her glasses moved on her face, being crooked. She fixed her glasses by pushing them with her middle finger in the middle.

"Be a good girl, okay? Daddy will take care of you when he gets home if your good okay? We will go to one of your favorite restaurants, I promise." he told her grabbing his coat and his lunch. He was dreading going into his 12-hour shift at the hospital as a neuro-surgeon.

The two of them met at a medical convention in L.A almost a year ago. Her school decided to do a field trip for all medical students to be able to have a chance of networking. He was a speaker at the convention, and immediately she caught his eye. She was in the front row, taking notes with her iPad with her red zee-loo framed glasses. She asked the most questions, and was the most entuned in the conversation. Obviously, a lot of the girl students were asking questions about him personally because of how good looking he was. (Y/N) was different, she wanted to get all of the details on the health field.

Now, here they are almost a year later, and Erik has have her heart and he has hers. Helping her with her studies, letting have a place to lay her head when she didn't want to be with her roommates.

Her pouting face was now angry, Erik automatically realized it. "Fix your face." he gave her a kiss on the lips as she rolled her eyes. Luckily, he didn't see it as he turned around walking to the door. "Break a rule and your ass is mine! Daddy loves you!" he yelled and he was out the door. She turned around looking at his empty apartment.

12 fucking hours.

She was on hour 8 and she did everything she could think off. She turned in some last minutes assignments, did the laundry, clean out his refrigerator, and cleaned up the entire apartment. She still had time to herself, so she decided to have a little fun. She'll start of small.

Recently just getting out the show, she sat in front of his wide body mirror taking pictures of herself. Some were innocent, some were not so innocent.

Erik sat down exhausted from the five hour surgery of a a traumatic car crash. Grabbing his phone, he saw that their was a few text messages from his dear (Y/N) grabbing it. Opening the text, he immediately put it back to his chest as he saw glimpses of what she was doing.

He turned around to make sure that there was no one staring from behind, before lowering his brightness and looking at the photos. "My God..." he whispered to himself.

There she took an innocent looking picture on the bed with nothing on. He could even see in the picture how she sat where her thighs and ass making her thickness more provident. The only piece of clothing (more like accessory) was those same red framed glasses that made him fall in love even more. The things he wanted to make her do was dangerous.

The next photo was her sitting on the floor, leaned against the bed with her spreading her pussy wide enough for him to see but not enough to see everything. The hints of red on her toes, on her fingers, and her glasses was something that was sending him on edge, especially with her dark skin.

Erik : Did I not tell you to touch yourself.. you tryna get that ass spanked I see.

(Y/N): Daddy I haven't touched myself, I just sent you pictures.

(Y/N): But it's so hard, can I play with one of your pillows daddy?

(Y/N): Technically I wouldn't be touching myself...

Erik : No little girl, what the fuck did I tell you

It was a minute before he received a response. He assumed she was upset with him for denying her a rightfully and much needed orgasm but he didn't care.

He was sadly mistaken.

There in their text thread, was a video of her riding one of his pillows, nipples hard, and clitoris grinding against the pillow. She was definitely in need of a orgasm with the way her clit was swollen and moving against the pillow.

Her eyes was to the back as she continued winding her hips, gripping onto the pillow with one hand and playing with her titties on the other hand.

With his eye twitching, his dick damn near pulsating, he knew he couldn't finish the rest of the shift.

#erik kilmonger x reader #erik stevens #erik stevens smut #erik stevens x reader #killmonger fanfiction #erik killmonger smut #erik stevens ua

[theextratreefairy]

The Prey of a Hawk - P.1

they/them Teacher winged - reader, Yandere!Hawks Purge Au warnings: Dark themes, toxic relathionship dymanics, yandere themes I do not condone yandere actions, and if you have thoughts of harming anyone or your s/o I urge you to talk to a professional Will become a series to test my yandere romantic writing, this is very long <3, tell me what ya think p.2

Reader couldn't prepare for the Purge, the Purge would start at 12 am Friday and end 12 am Saturday.

The school wouldn't give them the day off, even if they did get a letter. 'The children need to feel as if everything is normal, even in the purge week.' Was the school's reasoning, Reader taught seniors at a middle school, of course they knew what the purge was! But as their co-teacher got off Reader felt like the yandere bought off the school.

Which was correct, not like the school would admit it tho

"Teacher (l/n)! Did you get a purge letter?" One of the students asked randomly. "Why do you ask?" Reader questioned as they looked up from their paperwork. The whole class was talking about the Purge, some family members had gotten a letter and some had just reached the age they could be taken by platonic yandere's. "Well, you aren't married and from what we know a yandere doesn't have your custody!"

"Yes, I got a letter." The class fell silent. "Then why are you here? Didn't Teacher Kim get off?" A male student asked concerned. Reader was everyone's favorite teacher, so these questioned weren't a surprise. "From the evidence I have been gathering, the yandere bought off the school." Reader tried to speak as casual as possible. "Will you go with them peacefully? My papa had given my mother the letter, and they are happy now..."

"I will be damned if I go down with a fight, if someone wants a relathionship with me they can ask me out as a sane person." The students looked at Reader, they had never been looked this serious. "Will you use your quirk?"

"If I must, I must. Now, with all these questions I will almost believe your working with the dear stalker of mine." Reader teased their students, knowing full well that some of them would. "Now pack-up, my dear students, as the school day is over."

The Students did as told, and when they were about to leave Reader said; "If I do not see you after today, don't get stuck in the rats den."

Did they understand what Reader meant? Absolutely the fuck not.

Reader had locked the door of the classroom, closed the blinds and quickly changed to a comfy track suit that will allow their wings to grow.

Their quirk allows them to walk on clouds and sleep on clouds, basically their quirk makes them a fancy angel. So Reader's genius plan is to find a comfy ass cloud and stay there until the Purge is done. Since almost no one has a quirk that allows them to fly that high. Even if their yandere is one of the highest ranking Yandere's ever- so most likely a villian who decided to be 'nice' or a pro-hero.

When Reader was flying in the air they heard the, oh so similiar, broadcast warning.

'This is your Emergency Broadcast System announcing the commencement of the annual purge. For 24 hours every yandere action will be legal except Murder and causing any permantely bodily harm to your darling, 'marking' however is allowed. The police cannot be called, the parmadics can only be called in deathly situations'

"How wonderful." Reader muttered as they flew up to a cloud. "How comfy, I missed this..." The clouds are lovely to sleep in, to hide from all the busy streets.

Something Hawks adored, Reader's anti-social nature when over-worked means; cute Reader sleeping in clouds~! So when Hawks sent a form to the goverment, he knew were his little darling would hide.

The skies :D

Not that Reader knew that the pro hero Hawks would be a yandere. Especially with his obsessive fans. But once registered as a Yandere, always a Yandere in the laws eyes. "Oh how, desperate you must feel~ to fly so high, my dear angel."

But Reader is a better hider then Hawks gave them credit for. It took him around 13 hours to even find the cloud Reader was tagging along on. Reader was sleeping on the cloud's.

'How adorable, a sweet angel sleeping on the clouds!' Hawks was really lovesick, the obsessive look in his eyes could pierce through Reader as he flew to Reader, using his feather's to pick them up from the cloud. Hawks pulled out a rag of choloform and before he could gag Reader, Reader woke up immediately trying to get out of his feather's.

"I suggest you don't struggle Angel. Unless you want to become my Prey~!"

My, this feels so shitty ngl.

#yandere #male yandere #yandere purge #yandere bnha #soft yandere #yandere mha #yandere my hero academia #yandere x reader #yandere x darling #yandere hawks x reader #yandere hawks #yandere keigo #yandere keigo takami #keigo x y/n #hawks x reader #keigo takami x reader #bnha x reader #mha x reader #boku no hero academia #yandere boku no hero academia #bnha hawks #wing hero hawks #toxic relationship #gender neutral reader #yandere themes

[sturniolo-rat]

Too Sweet: Prologue

Matthew Sturniolo X Reader

A/N: I did a poll to see if y’all wanted this but I already had it written so it was a trick question 😌😌😌💕

Contains: literally nothing, no smut no fluff just story

TW: alcohol abuse?, drunk driving, existential dread

Matt is an optimistic do gooder on his way to Redwood University to start his masters degree. He’s far from home but he feels like the world is at his fingertips.

Cricket is a high school drop out going nowhere fast. She’s deeply unhappy with her job as a bartender at a tavern frequented by Dungeons and Dragons larpers.

They can’t help but feel drawn to each other, but is he too sweet for her?

This is what they were doing the morning of the day they met.

Y/N’s Pov

It’s 8 am on a Tuesday. I take a shot of fireball in preparation for my 12 hour shift at The Enchanted Mushroom Tavern and Inn. It is a belief commonly held that taverns and inns only exist in dungeons and dragons. This is false, as all well loved imaginary things come to life with time. That’s a fancy way of saying this place was built for people who LARP and I have to pretend I’m a medieval bar wench.

I squeeze myself into my costume that consists of an off white shirt with puffy off the shoulder sleeves, a mossy green skirt with a tattered and uneven hem, and a brown corset over top that I will note is Elizabethan and not medieval. The woefully inaccurate uniform isn’t the worst part of the job though. While at work my name is no longer Y/N it’s Petronella Epworth the fucking third and I wear the dumbass name tag to prove it.

“Let’s go, Phoebe!” I yell from our living room. I’ve never been a patient woman. Not even when we were kids. We met in kindergarten when she was hesitant going down the big slide at the park and I decided she was taking too long and pushed her. I’m bitch but I’m an insanely efficient, hardworking bitch that gets what she wants.

“Give me a minute!” She’s been working at the Tavern with me for a year and a half, and I’m always 15 minutes early for work. Because we carpool, she is always 15 minutes early for work, which has given her a reputation of reliability that she does not deserve. Phoebe has a few redeeming qualities to make up for her flakiness. When I need her, and she actually shows up, she’s unreasonably nurturing. One time, when I got sick after I dropped out of high school, she played hooky and stayed in my family’s trailer to take care of me. She brought ingredients for homemade soup and blankets. Nice blankets, too, the fleece ones that go on sale around Christmas time. The book she stole from her mother’s collection to read to me was the highlight of my week. It was called “My Alpha Mate.” The main character was an omega, and her love interest was an alpha. I think they were like werewolves or something. It was extremely smutty.

“I’ll just wait in the car, then!” There’s a loud thud as I close the front door. My van is objectively shitty. It’s a 1998 Nissan Quest that I’ve named Ted. I do, however, feel that if you’re 24 and own a van, you ought to be either a mother or a hippie with that cool Volkswagon. My vehicle doesn’t match me at all, but at least he carts around all the shit I own that doesn’t fit in my apartment. While I wait in the driver’s seat, I take a swig from the flask I keep in the car—fireball, of course, always fireball. I take a long look at myself in my rearview mirror and wonder what I’m doing with my life.

Matt’s Pov

It’s 8 am on a Tuesday and the sun is shining down on me through the sunroof of my car. My phone vibrates in my pocket and I already know it’s one of my brothers.

We’re triplets and have never been apart for more than 3 days at a time. When I was getting my bachelors degree they got an apartment two blocks away from my dorm. Chris and Nick never went to college and started a clothing brand called Fresh Love and a chapstick brand called Space Camp. Safe to say my lips are well moisturized. I’m actually wearing gray Fresh Love sweatpants right now. They’re very comfortable and perfect for long drives. I’m embarking on a 10 hour road trip to my new apartment near Redwood University where I will be studying for the next 5 years. My brothers think I’m absolutely insane for moving this far away from home.

“Chris, you know I hate answering the phone while I’m driving.” He does this on purpose to piss me off, but when I get into an accident because he divided my attention, he’s going to be sorry.

“Dude, did you know Red U’s mascot is a booby.”

“Yes, I did.” I most certainly did not know that.

Nick chimes in because, of course, Nick is there too. They’re never far apart. “Okay, but, listen to me when I say this, Matt, it’s a blue-footed booby at Red U.” He puts emphasis on blue and red. “Doesn’t that bother you? It bothers us!”

“Why on earth would that bother me? I’m not going for the sports anyway.” It bothers me a great deal. I can’t believe I have to rep the Redwood blue-footed boobies. This will surely tarnish the Sturniolo family name.

“Shut up!” says Chris. “I know it bothers you, and that’s why you have to turn that car around immediately and come back home.”

“Chrissy, I love you and Nick the most, but I have to go. I’ve got a scholarship and a once-in-a-lifetime internship.” Red U is home to one of the most prestigious research labs in America, and I have an internship there. It’s the whole reason I applied to the university; the scholarship was just an added bonus—the perks of being a straight-A student.

He groans, “I know. We know you’re going to go out and do great things.”

We’re just gonna miss our little Mattmallow,” adds Nick in that weird baby voice people use sometimes. My heart sinks at the use of my childhood nickname.

“I’m gonna miss you guys too.” More than I’ve missed anyone ever.

“Alright, man. I’m gonna leave you alone. I know you hate talking and driving,” Nick says, and I know he’s feeling a little uncomfortable.

“Love you, guys.”

“Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

The line goes dead and I know I should feel some sort of sadness but really I just feel loved. I am deeply loved, my future is bright, and I feel like today is an omen.

Masterlist

Taglist

@wurlibydominicfike @yourmumscar69 @69isabella69 @mattsturniolosgf @mrsmiagreer since you guys liked the Too Sweet poll post

#matt sturniolo #matt sturniolo x reader #matt sturniolo imagine #sturniolo #sturniolo fanfic #sturniolo smut #sturniolo triplets #sturniolo x reader #chris sturniolo #nick sturniolo #chris sturniolo x reader #matt sturniolo smut #matthew sturniolo #christopher sturniolo #chris sturniolo fluff #chris sturniolo imagine #matt sturniolo fanfic #matthew bernard sturniolo #nicolas sturniolo #sturniolo edit #sturniolo triplets smut #the sturniolos #Spotify

[joekeeryswife]

Bad Day - E.M

hi my loves! i’ve had this in my drafts for a while but i think now is the perfect time for my first dad!Eddie fanfiction. i really hope you guys enjoy! has a few mistakes but don’t forget to like and reblog and comment <3

Eddie hated going to work. he absolutely hated it. it meant that he wouldn't be able to see his two girls all day. Tommy, your four year old daughter, had started nursery three weeks ago and it had been going okay so far. every day Eddie came home from work and see Tommy with a huge smile on her face as she waited for Eddie so she could tell him all about his day.

seeing her smiling face after a long day at work made his heart melt and it would make him forget about his shitty customers in the shop. it was 6:30pm and Eddie had just finished his shift and to say he was knackered was an understatement. he has worked on nine different cars all with horrible drivers but what could he do, it was his job to deal with the customers and finish the jobs on the cars that were brought in.

he got into his car which was parked around the back of the mechanic shop, sighing to himself as he finally sat down after a 12 hour shift. he was always rushed off of his feet and felt like he had no time to see his girls. on the drive home, Eddie wondered what Tommy would speak about today. he didn't like that his baby girl was growing up so quickly, it was like one minute you'd woken him up in the middle of the night saying your water had broken and now she was going to be turning five.

Tommy could be waiting at the door with two dolls in her hand. she could tell him about her friends Amanda and Joanne and how they learned about numbers up to 20 or how they played chefs in the nursery toy section but he honestly couldn't wait to hear about her day. he finally arrived home after 20 minutes, seeing the main lights in the trailer off but the lamp and tv were on. he hoped that Tommy wasn't in bed already, he needed to see her before she went to sleep.

he locked the car up and quietly walked toward the trailer incase Tommy was actually asleep, he did not want to wake her. he knew how cranky she was if she was woken up early and he did not want to deal with her being mad at him. he opened the trailer door and saw you and Tommy both on the sofa, the TV playing reruns of Pingu.

Tommy was on your lap, her head on you chest with her hand slightly covering her face. your left hand was on her back, rubbing small circles on the pyjama top gently whilst your right hand was running through her hair. Eddie watched intently as he heard his little girl sniffle with every breath, obviously trying to calm herself down.

"it's okay baby" he heard you whisper as you kissed the top of her head. she cuddled into you more, both of her arms now wrapped around your waist. Eddie walked over, anxiety filling his body as his eyes never left his Tommy.

he carefully sat down next to you, putting an arm around your shoulders, bringing the two of you close to him. "hi sweetheart" he whispered, kissing your forehead gently and he got comfortable on the sofa. you turned your attention away from Tommy to look at him, lips pouted as you waited for him to kiss you properly for the first time that day. Eddie reciprocated the kiss before you both turned your attention to the little girl cuddled into you.

"what's the matter with her" Tommy didn't stir out of the position she was in on your lap making Eddie frown. usually as soon as she heard him come in she would always gravitate toward him, but not tonight. she stayed in that same position just taking everything in. something really bad must have happened.

"she just had a bad day, a few of the kids at school were picking on her. the teacher called me saying she was asking to come home so i went to pick her up and she was sobbing. i have no idea what was said or who said it because she won't tell me. all she wanted me to do was cuddle her so that's what i did" Eddie's heart sank. his baby girl was being picked on and he had no idea why.

it was silent for a few minutes in the trailer, the only noises that could be heard were Tommys sniffling and Pingu on the TV. both you and Eddie wanted to know what was said and what made her upset but you didn't want to pressure her. pressuring a child to tell you what was wrong didn't teach them patients and that's the one trait you wanted Tommy to have.

after you all sat there contently for a while, you needed the toilet. it was obviously going to ruin the family cuddle time but after you had Tommy your bladder, like many women, was not what it used to be and when you needed to pee you had to go immediately. you slowly passed Tommy to Eddie, kissing her forehead gently before running off to the bathroom down the hall, leaving Eddie and Tommy alone for the first time that night.

Tommy groaned as she was passed over to Eddie but settled down quickly on his lap, head pressed against his chest. Eddie was not a patient person. he wanted to get straight to the point and find out who upset Tommy. "sweetheart" he whispered, stroking his hand up and down Tommys back.

she looked up from his chest and for the first time that night she looked in Eddie's eyes. he could see the sadness and worry in them and he just wished he could take away her bad emotions and just give it to himself. he looked at her with a sympathetic look, making her face almost crumple as she tried to keep her tears in. "you wanna tell me what's the matter? why you had a bad day?"

she looked at him with her chocolate brown eyes which matched Eddie's completely. she sighed before turning away from him, making them lose eye contact. "they said mean things" she whispered, looking down at her pyjama covered lap. Eddie frowned slightly, not really understanding who she was talking about. he tucked a piece of her slightly curled hair behind her ear before he stroked her cheek.

"what do you mean princess?" he questioned, his hand never leaving her face as he tried to calm her down, making sure she didn't cry anymore then she did before. "David called me a freak. they said because you are my dad it also makes me a freak but you aren't one daddy. and everyone laughed at me" she said, rubbing her right eye as more tears formed. Eddie sighed. so many years later and he's still being called a freak and now it was happening to his daughter.

Eddie needed to know who's David's dad because he felt his anger boiling up inside his body for some little shit making his daughter upset but he couldn't let her know that he was angry, she may think it's her that he's angry when it's not. it's the parents. the parents are allowing their children to become evil and bullies.

no one else really calls him a freak except from the old jocks he went to high school with and they were now teaching their kids to say it to his own daughter. “do you think you could tell me David’s last name?” she thought for a moment. her little forehead frowning as the went deep into thought. you’d come out of the bathroom ages ago but heard Tommy finally opening up to Eddie. you didn’t want her to go all shy again so you left them to it, going into Tommys bedroom to put away the clean washing you’d done earlier.

“i think carter or carder. something like that” she whispered, the frown on her face still apparent as she kept trying to think of David’s last name. Eddie had a light bulb moment. the name that he didn’t think he’d have to remember ever again was here, causing problems like usual. “Carver?” he questioned and her frown dropped as she nodded. “you got it daddy, it’s Carver” she clapped but her excited persona was quickly changed when she remembered what David had said.

his anger grew as he realised his enemy from high school was getting his child to pick on his own and he wasn’t going to tolerate that. he took it in high school but if anyone was rude to his baby girl they immediately had an issue and they did not want to mess with Eddie when he was mad. “motherfucker” he whispered angrily, Tommy could just about make out what he said.

he couldn’t believe that this child was going out of his was to upset Tommy and he knew how it felt. his face softened when she saw the scared look on Tommys face, she thought he was angry at her but he could never. never in her four years old living did Eddie or you raise your voices at her. you felt that soft parenting was the perfect solution for any problem when she was upset and it had worked.

“i’m sorry daddy” she whispered, twiddling her hands together as her nerves grew. what if Eddie was angry at her and she should of stuck up for herself. “don’t say sorry sweetheart. it isn’t your fault. i just know David’s dad is all. please don’t apologise baby” he said, bringing her into his chest before leaving a small peck on her forehead. he knew he shouldn’t of let his anger show on his face but he did.

he was so angry that Jason could carry on victimising his family for just existing. he wanted to drive to Jason’s house and beat the shit out of him, but he couldn’t, there was one thing Eddie needed to do right now and that was comfort his daughter, he knew he would deal with Jason another day but right now his baby girl needed him and he wasn’t going anywhere.

#fanfiction #imagines #joseph quinn #joseph quinn imagine #joseph quinn x reader #joseph quinn imagines #stranger things #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson x reader #dad!eddie munson #dad!eddie munson x reader #eddie munson #joseph quinn character #joseph quinn fluff #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson angst #joseph quinn x fem!reader #fem!reader #eddie stranger things #mechanic!eddie #eddie munson blurb #eddie munson x you

[ukrfeminism]

3 minute read

Right now it feels like every public service employee is having to resort to strike action to gain acceptable standards of employment. Who’s next? If we’re talking about labour that is woefully undervalued and unsupported, it should be mums.

Statutory maternity pay, at £156.66 per week, is less than half of minimum wage (£384 for a standard 40-hour week). New mothers (and their child) have to survive on 41 per cent of the minimum we consider acceptable to live on. 30 hours per week of subsidised childcare is available for three-year-olds, but maternity pay ends at 39-weeks-old. During that two-year gap, nursery fees cost 65 per cent of the average parent’s wages, and many mothers are falling into debt, or dropping out of the workforce, as a result.

Moreover, 54,000 women lose their jobs in the UK every year because of maternity discrimination. Maternity is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, but only for the first 26 weeks. Any claim for maternity discrimination must be brought within three months – almost impossible in the midst of the physical and mental upheavals of matrescence. During which time, 31 per cent of mothers didn’t have confidence in their postnatal care. And, according to the Office of National Statistics, in heterosexual couples women still perform 77 per cent more childcare and 62 per cent of the domestic work.

Surely that’s reason to strike!

There is precedent. In Iceland in 1975, women refused to go to work, cook, clean or perform childcare, during what was termed “the long Friday”. Many schools and nurseries had to close, forcing fathers to bring their children to work. Banks, factories and shops simply couldn’t function. Even the next day’s newspapers were shorter than usual. 

Ninety per cent of women in Iceland took part and the next year Iceland’s parliament passed a law guaranteeing equal rights to women and men. Five years later, Vigdis Finnbogadottir became Iceland’s president – the world’s first democratically elected female head of state. She insists this couldn’t have happened without the strike, which paralysed the country and demonstrated women’s importance to society. She served for 16 years, and, having introduced initiatives such as all-women shortlists and paid paternity leave ahead of the curve, Iceland became known as the world’s most feminist country.

Collective action amongst mothers is happening here. Women’s Strike asked women to refuse all work on International Women’s Day 2022. Then, just six weeks ago, charity Pregnant Then Screwed led 15,000 parents onto the streets across the UK in March of the Mummies. Founder Joeli Brearley told me, “There is such power in protesting. We were under no illusion that the Government would immediately fix the issues, but it is a signal that unless they act soon they will lose votes at the ballot box. Make no mistake – Westminster heard us that day.”

So, what do we want? I propose: maternity pay brought in line with minimum wage; childcare free for parents (and properly paid for by the Government) from birth until starting school; parenthood made a protected characteristic for life; and parents given 12 months to bring discrimination claims. When you consider that more mothers in work could be worth £28.2 billion to the UK economy, this is just sensible. The birth rate has now dropped below the level needed for a stable population, fuelling fears of economic decline. We need investment in motherhood.

As Iceland showed, when women stop, everything stops. In the UK, women are the vast majority of childcare workers, administrative staff, care workers, cleaners, hospitality staff, HR professionals, teachers and nurses. If they refused to work for just 24 hours, the impact for society and the economy would be crippling. Then there’s women’s domestic work, which is estimated to be worth 56 per cent of GDP. Strike once – that includes paid employment as well as cleaning, childcare, cooking, organising and so on – and it’s unlikely we would need to again.

What made Iceland’s strike so successful was so many women took part. But mobilising primary care givers is a nightmare, given the burden of domestic responsibility. We’re missing the cornerstone of effective industrial action – a union. Unions provide support, mobilise large disparate groups, and lobby for members’ rights. We need a union for parents. There are amazing campaigning charities, but unions are protected by legislation, forcing employers (or governments) to negotiate, and keeping workers’ jobs safe if they strike. Unions have teeth.

When do we want it? According to research from YouGov more than half of women say they do the majority of Christmas tasks, 51 per cent of women feel stressed at Christmas and according to Action for Children one in six parents said they would cancel the whole thing if they could. Ancient Anglo-Saxons celebrated Modranicht (“mother’s night”) on 24 December. What if mothers honoured themselves this Christmas Eve by doing absolutely nothing?

No last minute shopping. No festive food preparation. No present wrapping. No stuffing of stockings. No ringing round to coordinate family members or clarifying dietary requirements. Just putting our feet up with a mulled wine and watching It’s a Wonderful Life while someone else takes responsibility for the over-excited, sugar-hyped children. We baulk at the idea, because Christmas would fall apart. But isn’t that exactly the reason to do it? To show how much motherhood matters.

Allegra Chapman is a diversity and inclusion consultant, and co-founder of Watch This Sp_ce.

[fleshdyke]

in honour of april fool’s day (even though its over in my timezone) and also the amount of insane shit that goes on in my life im gonna list a bunch of things that have happened to me and i want you to guess which one is a lie. i would make this a poll but i dont have those yet

when i was like 7-ish i went to the zoo with my neighbor and went to this bird show they put on and i got to race with like 20 other kids against 15 i think turkey vultures. in a footrace. the vultures outran every single one of us. also the zookeeper lady said “don’t trip and fall or they’ll start eating you!” and it scared the shit out of me

when i was in grade 3 i went on a field trip for school and on the bus home my bus driver literally got arrested for drunk driving. with like 30 8 year olds on the bus. it was like 2:45 and we (all age 8) had to stand outside for almost an hour in november. also it was like three blocks away from the school and my house was literally across the street. the distance back to school was very walkable but for some reason they made us wait for another bus to come pick us up and take us back. but the bus was one of those ones that went to each house individually and the neighborhood it operated in was literally across the main street from my school and for some reason instead of taking 5 minutes to drop us off first they made us wait an additional half hour dropping all the other kids off at home before taking us home. then i had to walk almost a km home anyways

also when i was in grade 3 we all had to take a diagnostic test to see if we could get into the gifted program. i got one (1) below the threshold for getting into it and i was so pissed. like two weeks later they changed the score you had to get to get in so they invited everyone who got close to do it again and i got a higher score than i did before but then i STILL got one below because they raised it. in hindsight i’m glad i didn’t get in because i know it would have been bad for me but i’m still so pissed about it bc of the principle of it

literally my first day working at the aviary there was a snake in one of the birds’ feeders just chilling there. we spent like half an hour trying to catch it and it scared the absolute shit out of like 7 birds

i was a niche internet microcelebrity on reddit when i was literally 12

when i was in grade 8 we had a water hydraulics project and my class was a split class with mostly 7th graders so my teacher just sort of left us alone with a bucket of little tube syringes while she did something else with the grade 7s. then i found 3 actual needles in the bucket for some reason. one of them was in that little wrapper but the other two were just loose in the bucket that we were rummaging around in. i went out to tell my teacher bc she was in a different room and she literally told me she didn’t care and to leave her alone bc she was working with the 7s (they were reading a textbook). i was like ??? but i didnt know what else to do so i just went back into the room to keep working. then this one guy grabbed one of the open needles and stabbed two different girls with the same one like uhhh what the fuck. i went out to go tell my teacher that two people had been stabbed by the same needle and she told me she didn’t care AGAIN like GIRL. honestly i wasn’t too worried about the girls because they both bullied me honestly but yk. then later the teacher came in and berated us for not telling her like I LITERALLY DID TWICE im still so mad about that honestly

when my mom and i were watching the last two episodes of ofmd together (this was before i came out) when ed and stede kissed she turned around and looked directly at me

i was in scouts when i was younger and there was exactly 5 people in my troop and it was me, 2 of my friends (one of them ended up being one of the girls that bullied me and got stabbed with a needle in grade 8), and two boys that i absolutely fucking hated. one time one of the boys said i was dumb and i threw a rock at him

when i was in kindergarten during recess i had to shit really bad and i asked the teacher on duty to let me go inside and she refused so i asked the other teacher to let me in and she didnt have keys. i tried to hold it but i could not go inside and i was 4 so i shit my pants and i was absolutely never a kid who had accidents so i didn’t know what to do and i was so embarrassed i just tried to ignore it. i just walked around for the rest of recess with a massive shit in my pants. when recess ended the teacher told us to come sit down on the carpet in a circle. you can guess what happened next

last year i had a substitute teacher for math and i ticced fuck while she was handing something out and for some reason she refused to believe me when i said i had tics. she sent me to the vice principal’s office and he didn’t believe me at first that i didn’t know what i was there for because she had sent me down for lying to him. when he did realize that i actually didn’t know what was going on he told me that she sent me down for disciplinary action so yk. he walked me back up to my class and took the teacher out in the hall to talk to her and i was losing my fucking mind with my friends for like 15 minutes while she was getting an absolute dressing down for not believing me. then when she came back in i was expecting an apology at the very least and she literally didnt. we waited for like 10 minutes and she said nothing. then my friend actually raised her hand and said she owed me an apology and this old lady started fighting for her LIFE. also she was only a little bit polite to my white friend who was standing up for me but didnt have an OUNCE of respect for either of my other friends who were standing up for me who were black and mohawk. like literally what the hell. my friend did record it though and i have that video now so

when i finally came out to my mom i was literally in a costco parking lot. my brother was in the car and he already knew bc he just guessed it ages ago and i said “did you know one in three people are gay” and my mom said “yeah i know”. also i made a cake for my dad bc he wasn’t there and he said “when do we make the ‘we know’ muffins”

i made my 13th birthday cake and right after i finished frosting it i dropped the entire thing on the ground

when i was like 4 i made a mess of paper in the kitchen and my mom told me to clean it up so i went in there and ate all of the paper

in grade 5 my teacher found out i was self harming and for some reason she decided to talk to me about it while we were doing kindergarten buddies. my kindergartener was literally just left alone in the room. i dont know why she decided to use that time

when we were selling my old house it was during covid so we had to leave during all the open houses and one time we came back from driving around the city during one and i went to the bathroom and there was a puddle of piss on the floor. some lady brought her toddler in and she pissed on the floor and she tried to clean it up with toilet paper but for some reason put it in the garbage instead of the toilet so the whole room smelled like piss

in grade 7 i was walking home from school with my partner and i guess i ate something bad and i ended up shitting my pants halfway home

someone here called me a terrorist for lying about gay sex in bathrooms

#some of you already know these for sure #theres more i just cant think of any right now #rambles #long post #best

[sir-arlieosaurus-lung-struggler]

the holidays are always really fucking weird, i dont like many of them but specifically December is just- ew

Anyway ill just thro my mini pitty party real quick:

These song explains how I feel about christmas time *perfectly*

Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas by mother mother (christmas playlist)

From heres basically a trauma dump about being in the hospital, but i typically talk about this in a tone more like "oh yea! i nearly died lmao"

When i was like, just turning 6 I had 💫pneumonia💫 & needed to go to the 💫hospital💫. So I spent like, 12/11-31/15 in the hospital. along the way i had these treats happen (not really in order, 💜=story from family member, ❤=i actually remember this)

💜being diagnosed by my sisters 16 yo boyfriend by looking at my gums, whereas medical staff took 4 days

❤Some mcdonalds, cool auntys banana bread, jello & making popin cookin sets w/ my older sister

💜a 5 day medically induced coma

lung surgery therefor cool fuckin scars on my back (WHICH I CANT FUCKING SHOW ANYONE CAUSE I WAS CURSED W/ TITS AND 2/3 ARE UNDER MY BRA)

💜waking up from said coma periodically only to say "im scared" w/ my mom trying to comfort me but i had ear shit going on

💜Finnaly actually woke up, yelled "IM DEAD", which is reportadly the scariest shit my dad has ever heard, my mom asks if i hurt, i say yes, she like "ur not dead honey" again i was 6 & in & out of a coma 😂 (idk why but I've always found that story funny)

💜my parents being thretened w/ truancy by my dumbass school

❤Christmas, I had *2* mini christmas trees in my hospital room 💅 1 was cool but my cool uncle & aunty got me a pink 1 which I still have to this day as a lamp

💜only trusting 1 of my doctors cause he looked like my grandfather who'd been deceased for 2years at that point

❤💜going on walks around the kids floor in a wheelchair & stealing a little gingerbread beanie baby ornament but they didnt care so they just let me keep it & i still have it somehwere.

💜my mom met a lady who had a son who was a few months old & they didnt expect to live past a couple weeks but he *did* (more on that later)

💜had food in the cafeteria and i proceeded to rub the pizza i got *into my hair*. My response? "Its just cheese" my family and I quote that to this day lmao.

💜being reverted to a toddler for a good minute (someone asked my age i said i was 3, i was not) & needing to relearn walking, talking, the little bit of reading i knew & getting into a shower w/out being scared of being pulled down the drain

❤said dude who asked my age worked at the hospital cafeteria & we visited him after most of my appointments. miss u uncle (that was what he went by), wish u well. Dont know where he since covid cause the part of the building cafeteria was in was torn down.

❤and after all that later and i got releaced on new years eve :>

results:

From there forward i had a 20-30minute nebulizer to do every 4 hours (which my parents had to wake up at like 2am for a half hour for), 2 twice daily inhailers, 2 nasil sprays, "the tire" (tastes like shit and makes me feel anxious) (that isnt even all of it my mom counted 8 meds at one point) and i slowly dropped them year by year till they had me down to just rescue inhailer as needed & if my lungs r really shit for a min i go on the tire. (Tire=prednisolone but what 6 year old is remembering that name lol)

specialist appointments every week, then 2 weeks, then every month, 3 months, 6 months, now im at checkup every year and check in as needed

"Look whos inside again" by bo burnham is my life in a nutshell

To this day the smell of a consentrated area of hand sanatizer just has me stop in my tracks lol.

seeing a picture of tiny me on my parents facebook feed yearly of me unconscious in a hospital bed w/ tubes in mah face

couple of close friend i met post hospital (keep in mind i was like 7) didn't believe me so i ran around the playground cursing them the fuck out (never did get in trouble for that 😂) ((I still talk to 1 of them shes cool))

Idk where to put this but about that kid I was talking about before, I found out last year around this time he had just died- of 💫pneumonia💫. yea that fucked me up for a good minute, he was around 6 too which didn't help, I never even met the kid and I still had a weird form of survivors guilt.

Anyway have a merry fucking christmas i really dont get this holiday lol, treat yourself kindly, feel free to be the grinch you are and explain in detail why u hate the holidays u arent alone lol

#tw hospital #cw hospital #health #hospital #medicine #tw medication #tw medical #asthma #Asthmatic #Im a grinch #the grinch #fuck christmas #xmas #christmas #holidays #merry fucking christmas #good afternoon #vent #personal vent #tw vent #trauma dump #vent post

[enny43]

Most people who know me are aware that I work in electoral politics and have for years. While a lot of the work I spend the year doing involves direct community outreach working on projects like voting rights restoration for felons, each fall I spend 12-13 weeks canvassing for the general election (I live in Virginia, so there are no off years)

This year I knocked on about 6,000 doors, talked to hundreds of voters, and contributed to a small impact in voter turnout. I did this with the expectation that Election Day would go poorly for the Democratic Party. Engaging with voters honestly to get people energized to care about a low energy party that consistently fails to rise to even the most basic of tasks is grueling work, especially when you expect it to not amount to much. Last year, Election Day brought the end to a campaign against Glenn Youngkin, which we lost. That is the expectation going into basically every election when you work for Democrats. From what we could tell in the lead up over the past few weeks, this was our anticipation headed into yesterday and into the evening hours.

Thank god we were wrong. Democrats over-preformed expectations just about everywhere, and there were some major wins that shouldn’t go unnoticed. Aside from the obvious with Fetterman in Pennsylvania, Tony Evers holding in Wisconsin, or Warnock coming out ahead (though facing a likely runoff).. I wanted to highlight some of those achievements most people will probably overlook.

Starting in my home county, where about half of my canvassing efforts were focused.

In the Arlington Country School Board election, Bethany Sutton was running against James Rives.. an anti-trans candidate who has given testimony to the board sharing inaccurate medical information and representing fringe psychiatric research as mainstream opinion. He had said he would stand by Youngkin’s efforts to discriminate against and dehumanize trans students, something the board has taken a strong stand against and refuses to comply with. Bethany ran in strong opposition to this, and her campaign had a large focus on protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ students in our county. She kicked his ass, winning by a margin north of 40 points and 30,000 votes!

Moving to Indiana in another school board election, Matthew Keefer (who advocated for the forced outing of trans students and has made pro-Nazi comments) was defeated by pro-LGBT candidate Christy Wessel-Powell

Two other Indiana School Board candidates who advocated for the banning of “pro-LGBT” books also lost their elections

I won’t mention them all, but there were also some huge wins in North Carolina where anti-LGBT candidates took losses in multiple school board elections

Falcon Heights, Minnesota sends Leigh Finke to the state legislature in a decisive 62 point victory. She becomes the first openly trans legislator in the states history!

Alice Kozlowsky also earned a decisive 40 point victory to become the first openly non-binary representative elected to the state legislature

In Montana, Zooey Zephyr earned a decisive 64 point victory to become the states first trans woman to serve in the state legislature!

and lastly, while this remains too close to call.. it seems CO-3 will be ousting Lauren Boebert 🫡

While the GOP will likely win the house, I am pleasantly surprised to be going to sleep on Election Day with an optimistic feeling. While there’s still a lot of work to be done, and things are still not looking great in general.. this was far from the outcome we expected coming into today. We can’t afford to give up this fight, and tonight showed the will to show up exists out there.

Our odds aren’t great, but we can still win. If they want us to stop fighting, they’ll have to kill us.

#politics #election #2022 midterms #school board #house of representatives #senate #lgbtqia #trans rights #democracy

[wednesdaytoo]

@coffinbutch tagged me for this! 15 questions + 15 friends! (coffinbutch you are so brave for doing all 15 tags. im gonna take the coward's way and ask any mutual to consider themself tagged if they want to do it!)

long under here

1. Are you named after anyone?

yea! im named after my abuela who died waaay before i was born

2. When was the last time you cried?

3 days ago

3. Do you have kids?

nope! i work with kids (teenaged) and they're fine, i enjoy them, but that's plenty of Kid for me -- i don't need to have my own in my home everyday. id love to be a lesbian uncle tho! which i already kno is Not gonna happen from either of my brothers, so my only chance is my wife's younger sister haha (we were just talking abt this yesterday lol)

4. What sports do you play/have played?

hahha i don't think i've ever played a sport like Officially, like outside of PE classes. i like badminton tho, and B and i are trying to learn how to play pickleball (we suck)

5. Do you use sarcasm?

i suppose on occasion i sarcast

6. What is the first thing you notice about people?

hair & clothes? face? im a simple guy

7. What's your eye color?

the inner part of my irises are yellowish-brown and the outer edges are grey-blue. ppl dont usually notice it unless theyre quite up close tho. from a few feet away i think they look grey and that's what i'll usually mark for eye color, or blue if that's not an option

8. Scary movies or happy endings?

i could go for either, but i think i lean slightly more toward scary movies, especially bc i love vampire movies so much. like when we watch a dracula movie and u have one of those "the monster is defeated! hooray!" endings, does that count as a happy ending movie?? we root for drac tho so it's a let down!

9. Any talents?

idk im pretty good at whistling !

10. Where were you born?

california

11. What are your hobbies?

movies, video games, insect/arachnid related things (catching, collecting, pinning, reading abt, etc), sewing/embroidery when the mood strikes me, reading (trying to get back into it at least!), listening to music/discovering new bands, sorting/cataloguing things

12. Do you have any pets?

3 cats (hopey, bullets, and cocoa) + a baby tarantula (avocado) <3

13. How tall are you?

5'6.5" or 168 cm!

14. Favorite subject in school?

in high school my favs were probably trigonometry and ceramics

in college i'd say science (esp entomology, ecology, botany, and astronomy) and foreign languages (i took french, japanese, ASL, and spanish)

15. Dream job?

see one of the above hobbies and then pay me $100/hr to do it :-))

no but fr even tho my current job has its annoyances, it's usually so chill. some days i just text B from work like "here's a bracelet i made today" "made u a candle today" "it was slow and i mostly just read in the library" "i drew a cute poster." two weeks ago we came in for a couple hours to decorate little pouches with custom vinyl designs on our new cricut. the next day we went roller skating lmao. even the actual "work" is enjoyable (i help students w/ their schoolwork, mostly math, which is fun to me, or entering info into forms/spreadsheets, also kind of fun to me bc i can listen to music while i do it). buuut i dont make a lot of money. if they paid me $100/hr and gave me some benefits, i'd be set!

#i should post the pouch i made it's cute as hell #on q14 i had to stop myself from listing more sciences lol #shout out to chemistry and geology... microbiology is dope too #wt.txt #abt

[purplesurveys]

1846

1 - What have you been up to so far today? Is that a typical thing for you to do on this particular day of the week?  It was definitely a busier Saturday than usual; I never spend the weekend squeezing in like 10 errands in a day unless I have a work event to begin with.

2 - Did you get a decent night’s sleep last night? How many hours sleep do you consider a decent amount?  It was okay! I fell asleep a little earlier than I thought I would, so it was nice to get a few extra hours in. The only thing I didn't like was that I woke up disoriented; I thought it was Monday and that I was running late for work, so I pretty much woke up with my heartbeat spiking.

3 - What is one silly thing that really gets on your nerves?  When people try to make small talk at the start of work calls. That was fine during the pandemic, but at this point, I swear I won't take it against you if you don't ask me how my weekend was or where I traleved during the Christmas break.

4 - Who was the last person you saw who wasn’t family? What did you guys end up doing together?  I saw my workmates and other agencies when we had to go to our client's office for a face-to-face meeting. We essentially went through like 70+ slides to brief the client on the final flow of our large-scale event this Sunday.

5 - Do you prefer hot or cold drinks overall?  Cold. I hate feeling like my tongue's getting burned.

6 - Do you own a decent set of waterproofs? If so, what do you use them for the most? If not, do you think that would be something you’d find useful?  Waterproof...what? Clothes? Phone case? Shoes? Hahaha. Anyway I don't think I own anything that's waterproof.

7 - Do you have any plans for the rest of the day?  I just need to finish this doughnut I'm eating lol, maybe take another survey after this...then I'll need to turn in early because I have an early start tomorrow.

8 - How often do you get your hair cut? When hairdressers were closed due to COVID, did you try cutting it yourself at home?  Probably like once a year. I never cut my hair during the Peak Pandemic Era – it helped that I had it trimmed literally a week before it all began, not knowing it was going to start.

9 - What did you wear the last time you left the house? Is that different to what you’re wearing at the moment? I went out today and haven't changed out of my outfit yet so I'll just enumerate what I have on – a purple cropped top + jeans.

10 - Would you rather have a relaxing beach holiday or a more active holiday in the mountains?  I'd love the beach as I can't remember the last time I had a beach trip + the mountains sound super isolating. It also reminds me of hiking, and there is no activity I hate more.

11 - Do you know how to tie a tie?  No. I kept the knot on my school necktie for like 14 years so that I could just always wear it like a necklace, lol.

12 - How old were you when you first had a sleepover at someone’s house? Did you miss home?  I think I was like 15 or 16 when I had my first sleepover. No, I was just mostly excited to finally be in a sleepover lol as I was never allowed prior. Woes of being a firstborn Asian daugher – you're 100% Test Subject A.

13 - How often do you spend time with your extended family? I would say once a month. We live very near each other.

14 - When you get up in the morning, do you have a set routine?  Yup. It's nothing special but it is my routine that I like to follow; any missing step and I'll get super bothered hahaha. Anyway, I'm an early waker, so I usually allot an hour to properly wake up and stay in bed catching up on social media/news.

Around 30 minutes before work, that's when I make my bed, take a quick shower and brush my teeth, fix myself a cup of iced coffee, then spend the remaining minutes clearing up emails that came the night before. They're simple things but it helps me SO MUCH to start work in a good/relaxed mood.

15 - Do you remember the last time you cried? Were they sad or happy tears?  Happy tears! I cried a little bit this afternoon watching a video of this kid reacting to Cody's win from last Sunday. I didn't cry watching him cry, but then he said "Everybody helped, everyone helped him" which was what broke me. That was such a wholesome thing to hear!

16 - What do you have planned once you finish this survey?  I really want to take one more of these but we'll see.

17 - What was the last thing you cooked? Did you cook from scratch or just heat something up? I don't cook. I buy most of my food.

18 - Are you a fan of hot chocolate? Do you like it plain or do you prefer to add things like whipped cream or marshmallows?  I'm picky. It needs to be like artisan hot chocolate and I'm usually willing to pay more for premium options as most hot chocolates here are really just Milo :(

19 - What caused your last injury?  Cooper nicked a bit of my fingernail when he got a little too excited play-wrestling with me for his toy.

20 - How many tattoos and piercings do you have? Do any of them have an interesting story behind them?  Zero tattoos. I got my earlobe piercings when I was a few months old so there isn't really a deeper story behind them haha.

21 - What kind of flowers do you like the best? When was the last time someone bought those for you?  I've always liked peonies. I can't remember the last time I got flowers.

22 - What’s the smallest thing you’ve ended a relationship over?  I've only experienced a failed relationship once.

23 - Would you rather order a starter (appetiser) or a dessert? Or would you be able to manage a full three courses? Appetizers. I don't like sweet things too much, so it's rare that I ask to stay long enough for dessert.

24 - How do you get most of your news, if you pay attention to it at all?  These days, Reddit.

25 - Have you or a member of your family been diagnosed with COVID yet?  My mom and sister had it simultaneously but fortunately they were asymptomatic as it could've possibly gotten. I got the worst experience of the bunch.

26 - Are you a vegetarian? If so, what persuaded you to stop eating meat? If not, is it something you’d ever consider?  No. I would consider it, yes, but I honestly don't have faith in myself to commit to it.

27 - Do you prefer rice or pasta? RICE. A day legitimately feels incomplete without rice...

28 - Is anything you’re wearing a gift? Who bought it for you?  Nah.

29 - What’s the dominant colour in the room you’re in at the moment?  White.

30 - Did you do laundry yet today? If not, do you need to do any before you go to bed?  Nope and nope.

[laceyeb]

Let me tell you about my day...

It's barely 2PM, but it has been an adventure. It started when I woke up 12 HOURS AGO at 2AM. Because I have all week off work, I decided it was worth it to set my alarm for 2:45AM to tune into the Eras Tour in Sydney and watch the surprise songs because I just know they're going to be amazing this weekend. But I woke up early and then couldn't fall back asleep. I checked where she was at in the setlist and adjusted my alarm accordingly to get a bit more sleep, but I was wide awake. Surprise songs ended at 3:50, so what time do you think I finally fell back asleep? If you said 5:45AM, you would be right. I don't know why I thought I would be able to go right back to sleep as if I've never met me before. It was absolutely a mistake, but I will be doing it all weekend and I do not care.

So as a result of this, I stayed in bed longer than I planned this morning and skipped my walk. I had plans to go to the local zoo this morning, but I was going to put it off until tomorrow since I was so tired. (As if I won't be even more tired tomorrow.) I also thought about going for my walk anyways and getting to the zoo later. However, I decided I would go first thing for when they opened like I had planned. For some reason I decided that I needed to look nice for my trip to the zoo. I wore my cutest outfit and put on some makeup and spent way too long trying to get my hair looking decent. I thought, "Why am I looking so cute for the zoo? I'm not going to see anyone know. Like I'm going to run into my work crush by the flamingos?!"

Tangent: My school district has some sort of like day camp type program this week since we're out of school. It's intended for younger students and some people (primarily like classroom aides, playground monitors, etc.) work during this time for extra pay. I don't know anything about this program and forgot it even existed, but evidently it does. Do you see where this is going? End tangent.

So I get to the zoo this morning just a few minutes after they open, looking extra cute. I'm waiting in line for a couple minutes at the entrance and I look in toward the first exhibit and WHO DO I SEE?! I thought, "Certainly not. There is absolutely no chance. Clearly I'm sleep deprived." But then I saw another employee from my district and a small group of young kids and I realized it must be her!

I could not even believe it. What are the odds?! So I kind of watched their group and they're taking the same path I do, but moving slow because they have a guide with them. I give them enough time to get ahead of me and then continue on. I'm wandering around a bit and see that they're now up on this skywalk attraction. (Bridges up in the trees. Very cool and the whole reason for going to the zoo.) As I casually glance up there, I see someone else from work waving to me. And then I see another person from work at the skywalk entrance and I said hi to him and asked what they were all doing there and that's when I realized it was the day camp thing. So I follow the group up the skywalk from a considerable distance and as I get close, I see they're stopped because their guide is explaining things to the kids. I will have no choice but to catch up to them. And then I hear someone call my name. (Let me tell you. It made me feel some type of way to hear her call me by my first name since she obviously only uses my last name at work.) So I catch up to her and the group and I said something like, "Did you guys plan a party and forget to invite me?" And we both kind of laughed and then I continued on my way. That was the entire interaction, but it made the whole trip worth it. And now we have something to talk about when I see her at work and I will absolutely be mentioning that I go to the zoo all the time and see where things go from there.

#zoo is a generous term and I could make it through the whole thing in like 35 minutes #but the weather today is basically like summer and I couldn't just stay home #also went to the mall (also a generous description) and spent my paycheck on candles #then got mcdonalds for lunch and had a picnic by the water #all in all a fantastic day #if you read this whole thing thank you and im sorry 🙃

[emmashouldbewriting]

I'm sorry but work behind closed doors as an excuse doesn't cut it. They have staff a lot of staff who do that work. How many hours of behind closed doors did it take to plan a month off? Earthshot has dedicated staff so does EYI and the Foundation as well as the 12 to 15 KP staff positions. They are workshops and always have been. Excuses have always been made for them.

It is an excuse. If they're having private meetings they should be reported. Like do I believe they've both gone off the grid and have been unreachable for the past 3 weeks? No. They both would have done some form of work for EY/DoC and it should have been reported. Meetings for unannounced projects could be added to the CC retroactively (or at least included at the end of the year.)

It's a problem of their own creation. They will have to start doing more in-person engagements to counteract the workshy narrative which is then a problem in itself for their kids. If they were just more consistent, they'd be fine. Heck, I'm sure they could manage a phonecall or two while tag teaming the kids.

And, I'm sorry, but anyone who comes at me about it is going to get their head bitten off. My kids just went back to school and I am acutely aware of how much time I didn't get to spend with them over the past two weeks because I've been working, some 13 hour days, and how much I will have to do in the next few to make sure I can take the May half term off with them. I genuinely don't want to hear anyone excusing them.

[zukkaoru]

20 questions for fic writers

tagged by @starrynightarchive and @feralshadowdemon, ty for the tag!! putting most of this under a cut since it's long lol

tagging (with no pressure): @that-was-anticlimactic @backhurtyy @rejectscanon

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

167 linked to my main ao3 account. maybe some others floating around that have been made anonymous or orphaned or something. who knows

2. what's your total ao3 word count?

965,845 - okay wow i did not realize i was that close to 1mil. huh

3. what fandoms do you write for?

well right now the bsd brainrot has taken hold of me and i cannot think of much else. but i do have a handful of zine fics for other fandoms that are in progress / will be posted eventually. i have a very long list of fandoms i have written for in the past; however, i would not recommend reading anything posted before 2021

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

plum blossom

you clutched my brain and eased my ailing

my calamitous love & insurmountable grief

five times ryan came out (and one time he couldn't)

(just wanna be) somebody i'm proud of

my disclaimer here is that these are absolutely nowhere even close to being by best fics and i kind of resent them being my top five

5. do you respond to comments

i'm trying🫠 i let like 600+ pile up in my inbox over the course of a year and a half (or more) and so i recently went through and just marked everything as read instead of actually responding. BUT (almost) all comments on fics posted since ~august 2023 will get responses. exceptions are if i literally don't know what to say bc i'm bad at talking to people sorry

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

you don't even want to know the horrors that showed up in my google docs this weekend. but also either if one of us dies or may we stay lost on our way home

7. what is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

i'll go with this ultraviolet morning light just bc it's probably the greatest payoff since it takes longest to get to the happy ending

8. do you get hate on fics?

not typically but there have been a few mean comments over the years. actually i got one bookmark on a fic that's in a series for a fanweek that says "ignore the others in this series but this one is good" and honest to god it just made me laugh. like.. you do realize i can see that, right?

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

i can barely write kiss scenes

10. do you write crossovers? what's the craziest one you've written?

i don't usually BUT when i was in middle school my friend and i created The Megacrossover, which consisted of us putting a bunch of different book characters into a hunger games arena. and we just kept adding more fandoms, and having new characters be transported into the arena. it was a good time. this was also entirely handwritten as all fanfiction should be when you're 10-12 years old

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

not to my knowledge. definitely found one fic that was like. heavily influenced by mine back in my ouat days though

12. what's the longest you've spent working on a fic? and the shortest?

longest: over a year, at least shortest: a couple hours (not including editing)

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

not technically since the megacrossover but corey and i co-come up with ideas like. at least once a week

14. what's your all-time favorite ship? from all fandoms?

outlaw queen has to be my answer to this forever and always. never forgive never forget 🏹🍎

15. what's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

too many to answer. probably the biggest one is the azula-centric sequel to tuvml that i simply do not have the attention to write bc the hyperfixations have travelled elsewhere :( there are many many others though. i have an endless amount of ideas and not enough time

16. what are your writing strengths?

people often tell me i'm good at characterization and tbh i do pride myself on knowing characters better than 97% of the rest of the fandom. not all of the characters. but most of them.

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

short attention span </3

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

do whatever you want forever. but like.. respectfully

19. first fandom you wrote for?

probably percy jackson when i was like 10. no you cannot find that anywhere online because i, like an idiot, deleted it without saving a backup copy

20. favorite fic you've written?

definitely (i am) the whisper of a memory. i love a lot of my fics, but that is one i am especially proud of because i tried new things with the formatting and i think it worked really really well

#can't remember if i've done this one before or not but if i have it has been a While #tag game #idk what else to say here. i'm tired

[krustworld]

I’m a special type of lonely cuz I’ve been naturally popular my whole life.….technically I don’t know that’s not the case for everybody. Anywys My parents never let me have friends (cuz of religion) so I never learned how to cultivate my ppl skills. Now I’m behind and even tho ppl want to like me…im strange and most ppl don’t fuck with that. Even tho they say they do/will I swear so few ppl

Are even 1% open minded ! It’s chill it’s so hard forme to actually connect w people it’s not worth it rather throw myself into my art. Plus I can be myself around my few friends. It sucked growing up not being able to do anything I wanted to do it definetly made my mental problems worse for context I got taken away from my birth mother at a young age I don’t wanna say why bc I love her so much don’t wanna put her on blast but she lost custody had no visitation rights and I didn’t even talk to her on the phone until I ran away at 17! By that time I didn’t remember what she looked like I used to cry about that all the time cuz I thought she was gonna die and I’d never rememeber again I just remembered that she was beautiful and had the greenest eyes in the world! When she picked up the phone I fell to my knees and cried for the first time in 8 years my chest was going crazy is all I could remeber. Anyways My dad and stepmom raised me across the country and they were super super religious and never let me out of their sight it oh yeah we also had this family restaurant that no kidding! I worked at every single day even after school until close and every single day of the summer from open to close ! Which during the summer we would close at 10 pm or later sometimes lollll we would consistently get home at midnight cuz all the cleaning everyday (during summer) was way more than 12 hours everyday god it makes me sad I should’ve been having a childhood bro and oh yes I was the only one in the family who didn’t have a day off every week[or ever!!! Not even once!) cuz young =strong and oh yeah it’s my fault they’re in debt cuz my mom crazy this was something that was regularly said to my young impressionable heart! I would tell u more but I don’t want anybody to get in trouble lollll for real u guys have no idea it was torture especially after being able to do whatever I wanted in the early years of my life it’s so hard to be nice to myself cuz I’ve been treated with such hostility by the ppl supposed to nurture me they literally used me for money and getting their anger out lol yeah living with my mother had it’s problems but I had already learned to deal with them and found identity/security in them and taking me away from her just stripped me of my identity not to mention MY MOTHER and gave me new problems that were just too much with all the other shit that doesn’t just go away cuz I’m not actively there anymore! Ur souls lives everywhere you go that’s why u have to be careful with yourself and with ur kids </3 also for the record I love my dad and stepmom don’t think they meant to be so cruel to me they’re just hurt

#drug art #my art #doodlysketch #doodles #high art