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unrequitedloveletter · 1 year

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The Fire That Burns Within- N.L x fem! reader Chapter Four

Masterlist

all right! After a day of delay, here’s the fourth chapter! I tried to go really in depth with all of this so if any of the math I’ve done is wrong, I apologize. The hope with this fic is that it’ll be all posted in the next nine or ten days, provided that no more delays occur

Fic type- this is hurt/no comfort (hurt with an angsty ending)

Warnings- mentions of debt, mentions of death, there is one direct mention of what the king did to genya and a use of the word rapist, (y/n directly tells nikolai his father is a rapist)

“To start, your great line of kings is the entire reason Ravka is broke,” You said a week and a half later. It’d been a week of half-baked attempts on Nikolais part to get you to like him, and at that point, you were just ready to make your disdain for his bloodline clear as water. “They emptied the war treasury and the countries funds and fucked over every single person in Ravka at that time. The fact that your father has continued to dig Ravka deeper in it’s pit of debt is not exactly a point won for your bloodline, is it?”

You’d been going on a walk through the corridors of the Spinning Wheel, Nikolai a respectable distance behind you. If he ever took another step closer, you took two further away. You refused to let yourself be beguiled by him, be won over by his charms.

“I knew that was going to be your first object of disdain,” Nikolai said. “However, what makes you think you can bring that up if you have no offerable solutions for us to get out of debt with the other countries?”

“How much debt has the Lantsov line accrued with each nation in the time since they took the reins?”

“About thirty million with each country, and I’m saying that in confidence,” he said, a warning tone clipping the end of his sentence. You liked your home too much to ever tell any spies how much debt he’d accrued with the countries his bloodline had borrowed from, though you did understand the concern. You would’ve said it the same way, even if it pained you to admit you would’ve done the same as Nikolai had.

“A hundred and fifty million coin?” You asked, not at all shocked by the number. “My theories about you Lantsovs pushing your luck even when there is none left are correct indeed.”

“A solution would be preferrable to the bite of your sarcasm.” Nikolai said, his voice a bit clipped in his irritation.

“Get volunteers,” you said. “Hold events, galas, dinners. Charge money for a ticket or a seat. Put the money to the debts you owe. Events wherein you can host a crowd of 10,000–though, considering the debt, I do doubt you have the money to rent a space so large–can have thirty thousand in coin going towards the debts if you pay them off one by one and charge thirty coin for a ticket or a seat. Putting a price on the food you serve or adding that to the ticket pricing can have you at 150,000 coin after one event if the food is of good quality and good taste. If you held an event every two months–”

“I could have the first of the debts paid off in roughly a year and a half,” Nikolai cut. “All of the debts themselves could be paid off in seven years, maximum. You’re a genius.”

“Big events aren’t the only way,” you said. “You could start a couple of things in the city, a couple of city festivals. Live music, dancing, kvas and tea from golden samovars. Less would be charged for a ticket but it’s an easy way to make 10,000 kruge and the money piles quickly if you hold multiple events throughout spring and summer. Festivals weekly from May through to early September would land you a lot. If you went from the first of May to the fifteenth of September, that’s twenty three weeks and 200,000 thousand kruge if you can manage to have ten thousand people gathering for live music every single week. It’s a stretch, but it could work with proper planning and correlation with all of Ravkas cities.”

“Anything else?”

“Palace tours,” you suggested. “You’re to be the king and the tourists will find it a fun item to check off their itineraries. You can overcharge for them if you like, too. You’ll be the king. People will expect it.”

“Thank you for your insight.”

“I resent myself for giving it to you.”

“Here I thought you were finally starting to like me,” Nikolai said. You scoffed.

“I would never,” you said. “I detested your father, I detested Vasily, I detest the Darkling, and I will detest you in turn.”

“The Darkling is not my relative.”

“He worked closely with your rapist father,” you said. “Just because you are not related to him does not mean your family has not worked closely with him. I detested your father, I detest the Darkling, and I will detest you in turn.”

Nikolai laughed. “And if you come to work with me in the next few years?”

“I will not,” you said. “And if I do, then that is to mean that I will have changed my mind based upon the actions of one Lantsov compared to a line of at least twenty five of them. Thinking of it now makes me think that the woman I will be–provided that I do decide to work with or for you in any capacity–will have turned out to be quite the magnificent fool.”

You turned, caught a glimpse of the devilishly handsome smirk. “You speak like him,” he said. “the Darkling.”

It was a jab. It was designed to hurt you.

Still, even though you were determined that it would not, the words hurt like a knife being plunged into your chest and killing you instantly.

For a moment, you were a girl of seventeen, one of the Darklings charges, one of Genya Safins closest friends and a girl blinded by what she thought was greatness.

You were a girl who had seen so much and had managed to live through more than that even still.

You were a girl who did not know that the Darkling wanted to use fear as his weapon, not respect, not admiration or love or the adoration of the world en masse.

You were a seventeen year old girl who hated Nikolai Lantsov and daydreamt about killing his father when you were meant to be training with Zoya. You were the girl who would’ve shattered and killed the prince the moment you heard the words fall from his mouth.

But, you came back to yourself. You were not a girl blinded by percieved greatness or the Darklings looks, the mystery in his darkness. You were not a girl who thought the Darkling would find a way to destroy the Fold and rejoice in his effort when it was done.

No. You were Y/N L/N, a twenty year old Inferni, and you wanted to die.

“Please do not draw that comparison again,” you whispered, a part of you shattering internally. A deep pain had settled in your stomach, nausea crawling through your chest and warming your skin. “I could not bear it if you did.”

You’d rushed to your rooms before Nikolai could utter a response, had objected to curl up into your bed and cry silently until you fell asleep.

#nikolai lantsov #nikolai lantsov x reader #shadow and bone #shadow and bone netflix

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mgmirani · 2 years

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Warm Winter

AiYusa Month 2022 - Week 2

(I realise we’re on week 3 now but last week was VERY BUSY and I only managed to complete this today. Better late than never! Also I’m very proud of this - hope everyone enjoys!)

Prompt: How long are you planning on standing there?

Pairing: AiYusa (Ai/Yusaku)

Rating: T

Fandom: Yugioh Vrains

Word count: 3450

Tags: post-canon, canon-divergence, fluffy fluff fluff, Ai being adorable, gift-giving, Ai taking care of his human because Yusaku is incapable of doing so himself.

——-

Why did his apartment have to be so damn cold?

Yusaku pulled his blanket more snugly around his shoulders, attempting to burrow into the increasingly flat pillow and hoping that it would help ward off the chill of late autumn turning into early winter.

His apartment was a place of bare necessities and, clearly, the landlord had decided that decent insulation to prevent their tenants freezing was not a necessity. Granted he could have turned on the heating but, realistically, he couldn’t do that if he wanted to afford food this week. He could only be grateful that his scholarship meant that the school paid for his rent which meant that wasn’t an additional bill he had to calculate into his meagre funds each month. They weren’t willing to pay for a great place but Yusaku didn’t care overly much. It was a roof over his head and that was all he really needed.

Maybe if he grabbed his spare uniform jacket and wore that, it’d help? He was pretty sure he’d done that a time or two last year.

He glanced to his duel disk resting on the bedside table and had the thought that Ai was lucky that he couldn’t really experience temperature in the same way humans did. Though, speaking of Ai, he was being awfully quiet. He’d said he’d wanted to tinker with something earlier and, though dubious and marginally suspicious, Yusaku had let the A.I. do his own thing while he finished up some homework he’d been putting off in favour of other things for the last few days. It had been predictably easy and hadn’t taken him very long so, feeling cold and not having anything else to occupy himself with, he’d decided to turn in early in hopes of falling asleep.

That clearly wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

Yusaku rolled over onto his other side, eyes focusing on the small analog clock by his bedside. Had it really only been twenty six minutes since he’d gone to bed? He tossed and turned for approximately another 17 minutes before sighing and rolling out of bed. His current approach wasn’t working so it was time to try something else.

Takeru had bemoaned that Yusaku’s flat was so Spartan the last time he visited (though his word choice had been far more colourful) and insisted on providing Yusaku with what he deemed ‘the essentials' - those being hot chocolate, various teas and sweets, and some food items which weren’t instant noodles or hot dogs.

Currently, Yusaku’s mind had fixated on the possibility of a warm drink. He wasn’t overly fond of sweet things but the ability to wrap his hands around a warm mug sounded appealing.

His body moved on autopilot as he entered the kitchen, retrieving his usual mug (one of three - the other two kept there for emergencies or the very rare occasion he had guests over) and selecting a ginger tea that, apparently, was meant to be a sleep aid. Yusaku had his doubts.

The first sip was almost too hot and he grimaced slightly but, as he’d thought, the mere act of holding the cup was soothing. The heated ceramic made him realise that, yes he had started losing a bit of feeling in his fingers. That wasn’t really the cold’s fault - apparently repeated shocks as a child had an impact on your circulation. It was fine though; the tea was helping. He’d need to thank Takeru the next time he saw him again.

He was brought out of his thoughts by the sound of shuffling. He turned, raising an eyebrow as he caught the tail end of the ridiculous cloak Ai insisted his SOLtis wear. Apparently whatever he’d been doing was completed and he’d decided to spend some time in the animatronic body instead of returning to the duel disk.

It had been a bit of an adjustment, getting used to Ai’s large and very humanoid form, but he thought he was handling it very well…barring the odd occasion where Ai would just leave the body sprawled out in the middle of the room, dead eyed and lifeless because he’d decided to hop on the net or return to the duel disk.

Yusaku had not been impressed the first time he’d returned home from running to the nearest grocery store to find what was, for all intents and purposes, a dead body in his living room. The flashback to after their duel was not appreciated and, upon realising his mistake, Ai had apologised profusely and tried to be more thoughtful about where and in waht state he left his body.

At least if the eyes were closed, it looked like the SOLtis was just sleeping. Ai had also taken to laying on the couch or, on occasion, folding the body away in a cupboard when he didn’t think he’d be using it for a while. Yusaku had had to endure so many ‘coming out of the closet’ jokes for the first two weeks that he had given serious consideration to banging his head against the nearest hard surface repeatedly.

No matter what Ai thought, he was not subtle. Also, it was bold of him to assume that Yusaku had ever been in any kind of closet.

Deciding that he’d like to find out exactly what the chaotic gremlin of an A.I. was up to, Yusaku follows the sounds of shuffling towards…his bedroom? Well that was rather ominous. He could only hope that Ai hadn’t decided that he needed to update Yusaku’s wardrobe…again.

Ai was fiddling with his fingers nervously, broad frame blocking Yusaku’s view of the room. Before Yusaku could ask what was going on, Ai was yelling “Surprise!”

Ai turned dramatically, cape whipping up and obscuring Yusaku’s bedroom for a moment more before falling back into place. Yusaku stepped forward, scanning the space for anything that looked out of place. His eyes focused almost immediately on his bed.

There, spread out over his too-thin duvet, was a new blanket. It was black with purple lines reminiscent of Ai’s smaller avatar. Along the edges were what looked like flowers and, as Yusaku looked more closely, he realised they were wisteria blossoms.

“So…uh…” he dragged his eyes away from the blanket to look at eye. He could tell that his eyes were wide and Ai, clearly growing more and more nervous the longer Yusaku stayed silent, began to babble in his usual Ai fashion. “I noticed that you were shivering like, a lot over the past couple days and humans don’t do good in cold temperatures and according to everything I’ve read, this apartment is suboptimal - I mean really? It’s not much warmer in here as it is out there! And it’s still only Autumn so it’s only going to get colder but you’re so much of a cheapskate you’re not gonna put on the heating unless there are literal icicles growing from the ceiling so I thought to myself, Ai you clever and perfect being, what can you do to help your human not freeze to death?”

“Ai-“

“And so Ai, being me and therefore unimaginably brilliant, thought that the best solution would be to make it easier for you to stay warm1 But Ai, I thought to myself, how should I do that? And then it occurred to me - you need extra layers! And since the coldest part of the day is at night, a blanket was just the most sensible thing, don’t you agree?”

“Ai-“

“But it couldn’t just be any blanket, you understand. It needed a bit of style! Some pizazz! Something that could help make this drab, drab room just that little bit brighter!

“Now, to give some credit, a certain little helper bot did give me the idea to…ah…experiment a bit with the design. Also do you know how much wool I went through learning how to knit? It was a lot I can tell you but it needed to be perfect. Well actually pretend I didn’t say that. There was very little wasted wool as I am, of course, brilliant and effortlessly talented at everything that I do.”

Yusaku took a moment to process the works.

“You…made this?”

“Yes! Isn’t that what I just said? Really humans and their inferior brains. Does the cold slow down your processing?”

Ai stopped talking as Yusaku moved closer to the bed, setting the mug down on the bedside table and reaching out to run his fingers gently over the blanket. It was soft, really soft. He could feel the stitches, so carefully knitted that there wasn’t a thread out of place. He moved to feel the wisteria blossoms, their green and lilac colouring standing out boldly against the black and purple of the background.

“Did you embroider these?” There were a few blossoms which were more simple and, to Yusaku’s untrained eye, maybe a little wonky but as they crept around the border of the blanket, they got more detailed and refined.

“You actually know what embroidery is? Oh my Yusaku! You’ve been holding out on me!

“Of course I did - while my colour palette is, of course, wonderful and beyond reproach, there just needed to be that extra something to give it a little oomph! And well…” Ai trailed off and Yusaku turned to look at his partner. He was pretty sure that, if the SOLtis allowed it, Ai would be blushing based on the sheepish look on his face and the hand rubbing the back of his neck. ‘Well…I couldn’t resist adding a bit of a pun. Though is it really a pun when your name literally means wisteria? Such a pretty name for such a grump.”

Yusaku continued to stare at him, not exactly sure what expression he was making but taking the time to process everything he was thinking and feeling. Ai, while used to this, was still clearly nervous and his fidgeting only increased as the silence dragged on.

“Well…how long are you planning on standing there?”

The answer, it turned out, was not long at all as Yusaku stepped forward and reached up, enfolding Ai in a hug. Ai froze and, had Yusaku not had his face buried in Ai’s shoulder, he was sure he’d see an utterly shocked stupid look on his face. While Yusaku had become more accepting of physical contact, he very rarely initiated it. Tentatively, he felt Ai’s arms circle his waist. Yusaku tightened his own arms around Ai’s neck, enjoying the fact that Ai was just taller than him so that doing this felt comfortable, felt like they fit.

“Does this mean you like it?”

Yusaku wasn’t sure how long they’d been hugging when Ai spoke up, his voice slightly muffled from where he’d turned his face to nuzzle against the top of Yusaku’s head. Yusaku lifted his head and looked into Ai’s golden eyes, their rectangular pupils alien yet familiar after all this time.

“I do.” Like wasn’t really strong enough a word for all the effort Ai had gone to, the doubtless hours of work put into creating something wholly for Yusaku, something that, through its colours and pattern, symbolised their partnership in a way that Yusaku couldn’t describe. Perhaps his thoughts were overly poetic.- he’d blame it on how little sleep he’d actually gotten this week - but he didn’t care.

“You gonna give me three reasons why?” Ai was grinning at him now, eyes crinkling as he hugged Yusaku tighter. Yusaku, for his part, rolled his eyes and hit Ai gently on the back of the head. Ai just laughed at him and Yusaku sighed, exasperated but not fighting the upwards movement of his lips as he smiled at his partner. Ai, seeing this, took it as an invitation and before Yusaku knew it, Ai had gripped him more firmly and was spinning him around, his feet no longer touching the ground. Yusaku yelped and clung on even tighter which, predictably, only made Ai laugh more.

The idiot.

…his idiot.

Finally the spinning stopped and Yusaku was gently placed back on the ground. Taking the chance to get away before Ai decided to do it again, Yusaku unwound his arms from around the SOLtis’s neck and pulled away. Ai pouted at him but nevertheless let Yusaku go.

“So…you gonna try it out?”

Try…oh. He meant was Yusaku going to go back to bed and use the new blanket. Yusaku turned and faced the bed again. He ran his fingers over the embroidered flowers again before pulling the blankets (both his old and newer, thicker one) back so that he could slip underneath.

He immediately felt a difference. The new blanket had a certain weight to it, pressing down on him slightly in a pleasant way. He could also immediately feel the difference. Looks like he wouldn’t need that extra jacket after all. He let out an involuntary sigh at the feeling, shifting to curl on his side facing the room and Ai who was staring at him, watching his every move like he was committing it to memory. He probably was.

“Thank you, Ai.”

Ai smiled, even bigger than before (though that hardly seemed possible). He reached out, to do what Yusaku wasn't sure, but stopped himself at the last minute. Yusaku blinked, confused. Ai didn’t restrain himself from engaging in physical interaction often. This was odd.

“I’ll just…” Ai trailed off, still smiling but now looking more awkward. “I know you find it weird when I watch you sleep so I’ll just…go watch something in the living room maybe? I’m sure I have some soaps to catch up on - data knows I’ve been busy enough the last couple weeks.”

Ai turned to leave but Yusaku, instinctively, reached out and managed to snag a corner of Ai’s ridiculous cape. He must’ve felt the tug and turned before Yusaku could pull back, embarrassed at his behaviour. What was he doing? Ai was right - he did find it creepy when the Ignis just watched him sleep.

But…

But they’d been dancing around this for a while now and Ai’s gift seemed to have chipped away at some intangible barrier Yusaku hadn’t even realised was there. Instead of saying anything, Yusaku moved so that he was practically pressed against the wall his bed was set against, lifting the covers in a clear invitation.

Ai just stared at him, uncomprehending. Was he going to have to say it?

“You can stay, if you’d like.”

The implication finally seemed to have sunk in because Ai stuttered, trying to speak but only managing to produce inarticulate babble. Soon even that stopped, his mouth moving but no actual sound was forthcoming. His eyes were as wide as Yusaku had ever seen them. Had he actually managed to render Ai speechless?

His amusement at the situation was short-lived as Ai continued to stare at him, no longer trying to produce sound but his mouth was slightly open, eyes wide as he stared at Yusaku. Yusaku frowned. Had he been misreading the situation? No he was quite sure he wasn’t. There was no way he had been misinterpreting the signs Ai had been giving…bright neon and waved in front of his face multiple times a day as they were…so then why was he hesitating?

“Well…how long are you planning on standing there?”

As he’d hoped, repeating his words back at him seemed to jolt Ai into moving. Hastily, he reached up and practically tore his cape off his shoulders. His movements were rushed, almost frenzied as he tried to rid himself of as many layers as possible. It was like he assumed that if he took too long, Yusaku would rescind his offer. He wouldn’t of course. He’d committed himself to this course of action, but the mad scramble Ai had become had brought the amusement back full force.

Finally, Ai had removed everything except his shirt and trousers. Would they be comfortable to sleep in? Then again Ai didn’t really sleep in the same way as a human. He claimed that he didn’t need sleep at all but Yusaku had seen him enter ‘low power mode’ a few times in the SOLtis while he processed data or completed some mandatory task. It looked very similar to sleep to Yusaku.

Ai hesitated a beat before inching forward, putting a knee on the mattress and then freezing, seemingly unsure what to do next. Yusaku rolled his eyes and reached out, grabbing Ai’s nearest arm and tugging downward. Ai yelped and tumbled to the mattress, half on top of the blankets.

“Hey!” He protested, wiggling and grasping for the blankets even as Yusaku attempted to do the same. It took a moment, Ai’s squirming more hindrance than help, but eventually they were both settled under the covers. They lay on their sides, facing each other.

Considering how narrow the bed was, it was a tight fit but that was fine - Yusaku had planned for this. Reaching out, he tugged Ai forward. He wrapped his arms around him and Ai, getting the hint, did the same. He even took it a step further, intertwining their legs so they were pressed as close as possible.

Yusaku ended up with Ai’s arm under his head, acting as a pillow. Ai had also thrown a leg over Yusaku. The weight was strange but not in an unpleasant way.

“Is…this okay?” Ai had rarely ever sounded so unsure.

“Yes.”

“You know…” Ai trailed off and Yusaku raised an eyebrow in question. “Well…when I said I was tinkering…I wasn’t entirely lying…”

Yusaku didn’t like where his brain went at those words, considering their current position. Ai must’ve seen where his thoughts had gone because he lifted his free arm from where it was rapped around Yusaku’s waist, bringing it up to press against his chest, eyes widening comically.

“Yusaku! Oh my! I never would have thought! To think my human could be such a perve-“

Yusaku didn’t let him finish the sentence, reaching up to cover Ai’s mouth with his palm, glaring at him.

“Do not make me change my mind.”

Ai pouted at him but, when Yusaku removed his hand, thankfully didn’t continue. Instead he just grinned again.

“Such a grump, even while cuddling. Fine, fine. Well…I can’t say I didn’t hope for something like this, if not quite so soon but…well…I may have tinkered with the heat dispersion from my processors, configuring it to flow a bit more evenly over a larger area.”

”You…made yourself able to give off body heat?”

SOLtis, by and large, were machines and so gave off some heat, primarily in the chest and head regions because of the more complex machinery and processing in those areas. This meant that their limbs were, by contrast, rather cold even with the solid vision system Ai had built into his own SOLtis allowing him to program in the actual texture of skin and hair.

“…maybe?”

There were three reasons Yusaku could think of why Ai would do such a thing.

1 - it was another way to blend in with humans. He had taken to wearing a thick choker when outside to hide the glowing diamond in his neck. The rectangular pupils were explained by Ai saying that he was wearing contacts and they had come like this and, though strange, he could still use them so didn’t see a point in switching them out for now. Having his limbs actually read as a human-like temperature would help with his disguise.

2 - Ai would often become bored and could regularly be found making small changes to his SOLtis just to see if he could. This definitely seemed in the realm of possibility of something which Ai thought of randomly and decided to implement with little thought behind it.

And reason number 3 - he intended to, at some point, cuddle with Yusaku for extended periods of time and wanted to provide warmth similar to a human rather than being cold and making Yusaku uncomfortable by mirroring the room’s temperature.

“Thank you.” Yusaku felt like he needed to say it again.

“Anything for my Yusaku,.” The normally teasing lilt of that statement was absent, Ai’s expression soft and open. He genuinely meant it and Yusaku knew that he’d do the same for Ai,

Yusaku leaned forwards, nose brushing against Ai’s but not quite making contact yet. His intention was crystal clear and, as Ai leaned forward that last little bit to meet him in the middle, Yusaku felt something intangible slip into place.

He fell asleep curled against Ai’s chest, wrapped in his warm arms and feeling the comforting weight of Ai’s gift.

Looks like this year, he didn’t need to worry about the cold after all.

#aiyusamonth #aiyusamonth 2022 #YGO #ygo fanfiction #aiballshipping #AiYusa #yusaku fujiki #ai vrains #fanfiction #yugioh #yugioh vrains #Yusaku x ai #ai x Yusaku #fluffy fluff fluff #this is really cute #i regret nothing #I’m very proud of this #AiYusa month #aiyusa month 2022

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anthonybialy · 1 year

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A Taxing Day

Numbers are tricky for advocates of sanctioned looting. Fans of the IRS can’t even understand calendars. The pillager on behalf of counterproductive claptrap is beloved by statist goons who treat January 6 like September 11 and Tax Day like their birthdays. The unnecessary evil of making a rather mandatory payment should stick with coerced participants for the rest of the year. We’re paying all that time, anyway.

Levy haruspices examine sheep entrails to determine your burden portion. The utter randomness of determining returns sums up government work in its way. Guessing how much you owe leads to a different answer every time and depending on who prepares it, which keeps life surprising.

Any figure is guaranteed to be wrong. The ability to interpret the code like a painting is great news as long as you work for an entity determined to use the alleged rule of law to grab as much as they please. Capricious rulers use Alice in Wonderland as a guidebook.

You’re not allowed to know you ever had those funds in a rather obvious trick. Losing access to all those bills will hurt less if the bookie takes the vig instantly. Withholding means

never seeing what’s yoinked, which is the sneakiest way to steal. The mob specialty becomes lawful once cabal members get elected and proclaim such.

Grabby collectivists think currency can never be private property. The ghastly mentality fits right in with every other horrifying notion about how our loving leaders see peasants as hosts. Using the excuse of wartime to withhold a massive chunk was a knee-jerk solution to current events that naturally never expired.

Keeping currency someone else gave you for your tasks is just like any other right. Federal goons should have to justify what they take. By contrast, the autonomous don’t need to provide a reason for using free speech to describe their guns in a dwelling with no cops prowling about. “Free people” is redundant even as grabby politicians try to make living costly.

Only one way can make thieving worse, namely framing what’s plundered as inadequate. Giving away the booty from an unfathomably high percentage of work hours comes nowhere near paying for all the useless waste inflicted. Preeners about governmental intervention boast of helping others and communalizing responsibility, which are nice ways of framing how awful people won’t do nice things voluntarily.

Taxing consumption and not income is the least worst option even though they of course both suck. Noting we get ripped off to fund dreck shouldn’t be breaking news.

There’s a better solution to fund the worst government. A national sales tax is hideous and also marginally less repulsive than the present system of guessing one’s way out of an audit. If we have to pay something, make it almost nothing. Get the vampiric draining over with at the time of purchase.

Shutting down the IRS is only the start of the fun. Firing agents will create far more employment if you want an investment that’ll pay off. Crazy dreamers want to figure what you owe using math so simple that even Democrats can comprehend it. Remind them most fancy modern glowing screen phones are equipped with calculators.

All of what you earn is yours. That shouldn’t be controversial. Galt’s Gulch residents want a crazy liberty-based country where the results of valuable toil are no longer seized so hideous autocrats can overspend on garbage you don’t want or need for your benefit.

It’d be paid. Your federal financial burden ought to be right there on the receipt. Ask for one printed out to keep records while helping the paper industry. A flat percentage would result in the fairness Democrats always claim they crave. To class warfare warriors, everyone should end up equally poor in order to have a just society.

The philosophical benefits of free people taking home what someone gave them monetarily in exchange for labor match the practical effects. The huge spike in economic activity would be a sign to meddlesome politicians, namely that they’re worse than useless. Anything that makes what should be temporary governmental workers fear unemployment helps everyone else. There’d be enough prosperity from full paychecks to make it harder to suffer in poverty, which scares dispensers of compulsory aid.

Liberated funds would make the living wage preeners always demand possible. Compassion junkies don’t grasp the irony of making it more difficult, which makes it like everything else. Legislators and executives don’t need to keep yanking up the minimum hourly rate to compensate for financial woe. We have to keep explaining to liberals how the economy will improve once they stop trying to improve the economy.

A retail tax would same percentage for everyone, which should have been the goal all along. By contrast, punishing those who make more brings down more than envy. Proclaiming that rich bastards can afford it is lame justification for legal thieving from criminal allies who have done the same with the formerly illegal version. Taking at a higher rate because that currency should belong to all of us is the same excuse used for confiscating all rights, so at least beliefs are stable.

Seeing just how much all this government costs should be much easier. Besieged Americans construct lives based around budgeting in order to fund a leviathan that never bothers. A direct bill would spur spending people actually want, what with the novel concept of seeing the price. The percentage listed of how much they’re getting ripped off would stand in contrast to the items taken home from the cart.

The downside is a benefit. Taxing purchases is going to look like a fortune. And it should. Sanctimony about relinquishing funds to fund more of it should be much harder to pull off. Seeing just how much those who exploit authority charge for the privilege will keep the cut low. Market incentives are the last thing your rulers want applied to levies, which is why we should implement them dozens of Tax Days ago.

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realestateliberty · 2 years

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Liberty Real Estate

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terzos-edibles · 3 years

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Silver Linings

1. Gotta Keep On, Keepin' On

Summary: No kid, no tribe, and avoiding his responsibilities, Din Djarin has gone back to bounty hunting and mercenary work under the watchful eye of Boba Fett. After a job on Ibaar goes very wrong in more ways than Din would like to count, he is forced to flee with a very peculiar New Republic doctor. He is determined to get enough credits and fuel to drop the doctor off on her home planet and be done with it. But will he be able to part ways with her after she finds all the right and wrong ways to push his buttons?

Words: 1.8k

Rated Mature: language, canonical violence, depression, mentions of suicidal behavior.

“I don't know if I'm scared of dying But I'm scared of living too fast, too slow Regret, remorse, hold on, oh no I've got to go There’s no starting over No new beginnings time races on.” - My Silver Lining, First Aid Kit

Ibaar-

The fist of the Empire reached far, sweeping across the farthest reaches of the Galaxy; the deepest corners seemed to have felt its influences. Even the smallest, poorest planets had Stormtroopers deployed to them - a formality to further oppress the planets’ occupants and show their might - and dissuade any sort of rebellion from sparking. The destruction of the second Death Star and subsequent death of Emperor Palpatine at the hands of the Rebellion had shown that plan hadn’t, well, panned out. Still, in the five years or so after the fall of the Empire, the New Republic was just now starting to finally make its way into the Outer Rim Territories after ensuring that the more strategically essential planets were well taken care of. Remnants of the Empire still clung to those planets, holding out hope that the Empire would somehow revive itself and their loyalty would be rewarded. Many felt that the New Republic had abandoned them, that things hadn’t gotten any better since the Empire had fallen. It would be the same as it had always been. The Outer Rim would continue to be forgotten, continued to be terrorized by Remnant Stormtroopers, continued to be terrorized by pirates, and continued to be terrorized by gangsters. People had given up hope once again.

But, aid was coming. Slowly, but it was coming. New Republic troops were starting to make their way back out towards planets that needed them, bringing with them much-needed supplies and rations. Marshals were installed in the major cities and villages to help keep the peace and bring a sense of law to an otherwise lawless territory. Medical teams were dispatched to provide much-needed tautology assistance to planets that were unable to get the care they needed.

Doctor Gertrude Ásketill was the first in line to sign up for those peace operations. She was coming hot off of her time as a rebel medic. She was bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and full of hope as they deployed her to the first assignment. She had an entire team - plenty of assistants and droids to ensure that everyone got the proper care they needed. They were able to start a proper clinic, train the locals, and establish a line to the core planets to ensure they could get all the medicine and vaccines they would need. Trudy felt good when she left that planet for the second.

The second planet saw fewer supplies and resources. She thought maybe it might have been a mistake. This planet had a bigger population than the last. Perhaps they didn't realize they needed to send more supplies, but then the third and fourth planets came. Supplies and resources were stripped as funding got cut, and slowly her team was redistributed to other projects.

And that left Trudy on the fifth planet - Ibaar.

It was just her and a few other doctors spread across the Outer Rim that was left of the program. She was sure that they would be recalled back to Chandrila - the capital of the Republic, but that had been almost a year ago. She had been on Ibaar for about as long. She was alone; at least, it felt that way. The only other two in her clinic with her was an older model R4-7 droid named A9-C that had been reprogrammed to help in the medical field. The humanoid-shaped, bug-eyed droid was built in the early days of the Empire and complained more than he assisted. The other was a teenager named Max, who had taken an interest in medicine. Whether it was because he liked Trudy or wanted to become a medic was to be answered. He was a good assistant and listened.

The only other Republic representative on Ibaar with Trudy was the Marshal: Baxley Morgan. How that man ever got the job of Republic Marshal was beyond her. It was probably why he ended up out here. He had a good heart, but the boy was dumb as a brick, and while she was no fighter - she could at least shoot a blaster well enough to hit whatever she was pointing at. It might not have been where she wanted it to go, but at least it’d hit its target.

The Empire had put blockades up to punish the Ibaarians for being sympathetic to the rebel cause. The aid that had been promised to the Ibaarians had finally come, and it was a little lackluster. The locals were friendly enough, but they felt a little betrayed. Trudy couldn’t blame them.

Trudy had become jaded herself; things were back to the status quo. There weren’t any more Imperial blockades, but with the lack of resources and supplies coming in - there might as well have been.

Ibaar, all-in-all, wasn’t a bad planet. It was a mountainous, temperate planet. The capital village, and the one that Trudy was in, was nestled in a valley - built into the side of the mountain while the rest of the land in the valley was used for farming. The natural cliffs that reached their stony fingertips to the sky provided a natural defense for the village, and the hundreds of waterfalls that cascaded down their sides gave the village and farms much-needed water. On a clear day, you could see for miles around. Though for all of Ibaar’s beauty, the weather was the worst. They could be lucky to see the sun one, maybe twice, per month. The rest of the month was plagued with overcast clouds, fog, daily rain, and nightly thunderstorms. It took some getting used to, and Trudy had ordered extra vitamins to help with the lack of sun.

Despite being the capital village of Ibaar, Laakso Village didn’t even have its own docking bay within the village’s boundaries, especially - making already scarce supplies harder to get. Luckily speeders made that journey a bit less complicated, though it was still rough going. A local warlord and his gang - a former Imperial commander and his troopers - had taken it upon themselves to decide that the Ibaarian Mountains were a great place to hide and run their smuggling business out of, using the old rebel tunnels from the war.

It made things dangerous.

Unsuspecting travelers going to and from the port or any of the other smaller villages in the mountains would be ambushed. Those lucky to survive had their property stolen. The bandits would look for anything from blasters, food, credits, various forms of technology they could get their hands on, and medical supplies. Trudy didn’t know how many villagers and travelers she had patched up in her time there, injured by ambushes. While the gang kept the locals terrified, they still hadn’t been bold enough to make their way into Laasko Village, choosing instead to raid the smaller outer villages - ones not protected by a marshal.

Baxley was having a hell of a time dealing with it himself and had brought up hiring some extra help. Trudy had nipped that in the bud; hiding behind hired mercenaries wasn’t going to do anyone any good - that he really needed to call in support from the Republic. The conversation tapered off after that, and the emergency seemed to have died down. However, as it always did, there was no downtime. The newest crisis cropped up - the report of the flu on a neighboring planet in the same system. A planet Ibaar happened to trade with. Which meant Trudy had to work to get vaccines to Ibaar before everyone was sick. She had ordered them about a month ago. Thank the stars someone was on her side, and the vaccines only took a month to get to her. Someone had made the shipment hastily, and they were currently waiting for someone to pick them up. Trudy couldn’t pull her boots on fast enough when the docking attendant called her to report they had been dropped off. Within fifteen minutes, she was in a speeder with a blaster and Max in the passenger seat. They would get there by nightfall - if they were lucky. Trudy just hoped to the stars above that nothing happened on their way.

----

It seemed as though Trudy’s silent prayers were answered. She pulled the speeder around to the docking bay and left it idling as Max hopped out of it, striding up to the attendant’s office and rapping his knuckles on the glass. He had grown like a sprout since Trudy had been there, now easily towering over her - though that wasn’t exactly hard to do. Brownish red shaggy hair constantly fell into his eyes, much to his mother’s dismay, and he was a lot less intimidating than he liked to think he was, especially with those freckles. Trudy waited as they exchanged words, waving a hand as the attendant poked his head out of his office and motioned to where the vaccines were - clearly annoyed he had been interrupted from his dinner and whatever wrestling match was on the holo. Trudy moved towards the vaccines, scanning them in with the datapad she pulled from her pack and happy to see that they didn’t have to quite rush back with them. Their cooling system had enough charge to allow them to rest a little bit - though they would still have to make the trip back by night. Max helped her load the crates into the back of the speeder and went out front to buy them both some roasted tip-yip and drinks from the food cart out front. Trudy turned around, eyeing the gunship docked in the bay the vaccines had been stored in. Annoyance twisted in her stomach that the valuable vaccines were stored where some random visitor to the planet could just poke through them. Though, the presence of the gunship made her raise an eyebrow. Not many ships like this made their way out here; either the owner was here for a quick refuel, or they were up to something no good. She scowled at it as Max returned with the tip-yip on a stick and a couple of cool bottles of water. “We didn’t get harassed today,” Max observed as he sat down on the roof of the speeder, and Trudy took a seat inside. “You think somethin’ is goin’ on?”

She nibbled at the meat on the stick and offered a shrug, turning to look back at the gunship. “Who knows. I just hope they keep whatever they’ve got going on out of the village. I want to sleep peacefully when we get back.”

You know the phrase famous last words? Those were Trudy’s.

--- Miles away, a Mandalorian clad in beskar armor was about to attempt to take down a stronghold of bandits and remnant stormtroopers all on his own. Maybe Fennec Shand was right. Maybe he was suicidal. ** Chapter 2: But I Ain't Dead Yet Taglist: @novemberrain221, @blackdogdesignuk, @mistyfur5, @thepoisonofgod

#din djarin fanfiction #din djarin fic #the mandalorian #din djarin #the mandalorian fanfic #the mandalorian fic #din djarin x oc #boba fett #fennec shand #din djarin x female oc #oc characters #oc character #grogu #the mandalorian x female oc #let me know if you want to be added to the taglist!

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mr-entj · 3 years

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Hi Mr. ENTJ! I wanted to ask you about the Google certificates. I’m interested in Project Management and UX/UI designing. According to the website, after finishing the program Google will help with finding a job (something like that if I’m not wrong), I’d like to ask if the job is only for US citizens as in jobs located only in US or worldwide? I’m currently living in Asia and I was thinking if I could get a job here after finishing the programs! It’d be great as it will be extremely difficult if I have to move to US. Also I’ve never been there.

Also I want to ask, in your post earlier about the certificates you mentioned that $10 million in scholarships will be available for those who qualify, however, on the website it says $100,000 though. Was the amount changed?

__________________

These certificates will provide pathways to jobs located in the US and worldwide, it's not specific to America, but there's no guarantee of job placement and Google won't help you find a job. The certificate program makes role-specific education accessible to everyone through online courses, it provides skills based training that's affordable, and it grants a certificate that signals to employers you're trained in certain knowledge sets which can give an advantage when applying to jobs.

I'm not sure what updates were made to the financial aid fund but due to Covid they heavily discounted the price of the certificates. It now costs $39 per month for access to the online courses with an average completion time of 6 months so each certificate should cost approximately $240 USD out of pocket. Google makes no money from the certificates, but they did fund the design of the training curriculum, paid for the professionals who teach the courses, and partnered with Coursera to attach their brand name and reputation on the certificates to give them weight in the professional world.

Apply for financial aid directly on Coursera and see what they say. If Coursera doesn't give any aid and you're serious about furthering your education/completing these certificates but you're not financially able to afford them, then reach out to me off anon and I'll pay for your tuition.

#Google #certificates #job training #project management #UX/UI design #UX design #UI design #career #careers #education #faq

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maliciouslycreative · 3 years

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How I played damage control to an anti in a small anime fandom and may have led to her ultimate downfall

I know I had a really nice write up of this at one point but oh well. I’ll spill more of the tea in this one because honestly the tea was so hot.

There are a few things that I have to give context to first. Gaia online was like THE mega forum of the 2000s, you made a little avatar and through posting and doing other activities on the forum you made money to buy clothes for your avatar. There were forums for everything but the fannish portions were really what drew in most of the people. The anime I was into was Beyblade. It was a shonen anime about fighting with tops that were possessed by the spirits of magical creatures. The story was honestly pretty average but the characters were fantastic and the fandom is to this day still one of my favourites. The series had a primarily male cast and didn’t even have a female lead until the second season. This led to the fanfic for the English fandom being about 70% canon/OC, 10 % canon m/f, and 20% slash. The most popular character in the English fandom was by far Kai Hiwatari, the loner badboy of the team.

Also before we get started I would like to add that one of my best friends was neck deep in this and the two of us were more or less fandom married. This is the same friend that I fake dated, had feelings for, and she nearly got me into kpop in 2011 so like if you haven’t read that story please read it too because it will give you a good idea of how stupid I am and how much of a fanfic I have truly lived.

To set the stage I was 16, soon to be 17 when I joined the fandom and it was 2004. In September of that year I wrote a humour longfic that became an absolute smash hit and I found myself somehow fandom famous. It was around this time that I joined Gaia online. I made my little avatar and immediately went looking for the beyblade thread so that I could make new friends. I found the main thread, made my little introduction and at the end of it mentioned that I was a slash writer but I supported all ships. This is where I met C. She had declared herself the authority on Beyblade in these parts and I had just committed the crime of mentioning slash which was very obviously not canon and we did not discuss in this thread because we only discussed canon things. I was like well that’s a bit severe but like sure whatever I just want to hang out and have fun.

Oh boy did I have no idea what I was in for.

C was a year older than me and unfortunately that made her older than the majority of the fans at the time. Her favourite character was Kai, and she was not shy about talking about this fact. She stanned Kai above all other characters, and often at their expense. She was also a fanfic writer of a popular canon/OC series. Actually, she was so full of herself that she didn’t even call herself a fanfic writer, no her stories were in fact novels and were apparently very good. I never read them. But more on that later.

Eventually the slash fans got tired of her being rude to us in the general thread so we made a Beyblade slash thread. There was a core of like 8 or so of us and we honestly had sooo much fun. When C would be too unbearable in the main thread the people from there used to come over to our thread and we’d chat with them about non slash stuff because we were honestly all multishippers and just wanted to have fun. We’d get comments like “wow, I’ve had more pleasant canon het ship discussions in the slash thread than the regular thread”. We never worried about C coming over and getting upset about comments like this because she refused to be associated with anything related with slash lmao.

I tried my best to keep the peace between C, myself, and the rest of the fandom because ultimately I hate being in fandom drama. I just want everyone to have a good time. I’m a people pleaser. Unfortunately my newfound fame put me in the awkward position of being the most fandom popular person in our small community aside from C. Virtually every fan that read fanfics that came into our thread knew one of us or the other by reputation and C HATED this. Especially because people would come in to the thread, recognise me and go “oh my goodness I love your fanfics!” and I’d be super sweet with them and it’d lead into “I can’t believe how nice you are, I love you” which would lead to us crying at each other. This was not the kind of fan interaction that C got, no her fans were more kind that were there to praise her and worship her like a deity that had blessed them with some gift. Rarely did they tell her how kind she was.

Back in the mid 2000s there were really commonly those commercials (usually by Christian organisations) asking people to sponsor say children in Africa or to help build schools or provide drinking water. You all probably know the ones; know the language that they used in those commercials. My fandom wife, who I suppose I shall call wifey because yes we were THAT couple back then, once said that C described her fics like those people described donating money to save the lives of Children in Africa. So we used to joke that her fics were so good they’d save lives in Africa. Looking back at it all, she almost had a very fundamentalist Christian approach to bringing people into her fanfics. She of course tried to get all the slash people into reading it. None of us read canon/oc fic mostly due to our poor treatment at the hands of their fans and creators. Getting fed up I one day told her that if she would read any one of my fanfics that I would read the entirety of her novels. Yes, I was willing to commit to read a couple 100k of canon/oc fanfic that I’d never touch normally if she would even read one of my 1k 1 shots. Heck, I had a fic even that shipped 2 minor characters so she didn’t even have to sully herself reading about one of the main characters. It was honestly a good deal in her favour. I kept this up until the day we all left the fandom. Sometimes I do wonder if her fics were even ¼ as good as she claimed, but I will never know because she refused to read my fics.

She wasn’t all bad and a tyrant all the time. As long as people kept the conversations on track and didn’t come in to the thread saying things like “KAI IS SO HOT ND T3H BEST N I AM GUN 2 MARRY HIM” she stayed mostly civil. It was always hilarious watching InuYahsa or Naruto fans try to come in and bad mouth Beyblade because they’d unleash the dragon and C was great at chasing off undesirables in the thread.

The real apex of goings on though on Gaia was the guild drama. So guilds were like exclusive themed mini forums within Gaia. Anyone could buy one and run it however they want, as long as it still adhered to Gaia’s ToS. C of course was the owner of the only Beyblade guild. The fandom wasn’t really big enough to support 2 guilds so we just kind of let it go. Technically she allowed people to post slash fanfics but like everything had to be explicitly tagged and there was absolutely no slash RP. Wifey and I controlled a handful of minor characters together in the forum RP and definitely used to try to push the boundaries a little bit. Some ambiguous flirting here, a stray comment there. It was such a fragile balance though because C was heavy on the ban button. The active portion of the guild was just people that were in the cult of C and worshipped her writing.

Understandably the other slash fans and myself were getting disheartened by this. So we pooled our funds together and decided that we’d open a second guild that though it was run by slash fans we would welcome anyone into our ranks. We just wanted to have a fun place for everyone to hang out, and to hopefully run a few events out of. In hindsight, we should have seen what would happen. When we opened the guild, with me as the guild leader, it was like somebody blew up the whole dam protecting the delicate ecosystem we had cultivated. Every single person in the Gaia fandom that was not a zealous follower of C applied to be in our guild and left her guild. We of course figured that we’d attract some of the gen population but we did not expect to accidentally poach all of it. All of the moderators were getting messages from people thanking us for giving them a place where they could say whatever they wanted without fear of getting their faces ripped off or banned.

C lost her shit. She was so mad that we went behind her back to ruin her guild. We literally had to show her posts in the very public slash thread that we had been planning this in public and that it was not to ruin her life. We just wanted a place where we could freely post slash. The two of us had some spicy comments back and forth and then she dropped an absolute bombshell on me. Since Gaia’s mail system is terrible I unfortunately no longer have exactly what she said but it was something along the lines of “Ok, you win. I’m going to close my guild.”. Us slash fans had never been doing this to win anything. We had never been competing. We just wanted a safe space to be ourselves.

C never joined our guild. The fandom slowly faded out within the next year anyway. We weren’t getting new content so naturally people just drifted into other fandoms. C kept up with the main Beyblade thread for a lot longer than most of us but eventually that eventually faded into obscurity too.

I learned a lot about fandom bullies from those days. But honestly the thing that stuck with me the most out of everything was that if you provide a positive safe space for people they will flock to it. It may seem like there are so many hostile people out there, but there really aren't. They're the minority but they just make sure that their voice is the loudest. The best way is to ignore them and just do your own thing. The bullies just want attention and if you don’t give it to them and prove to them that their opinion doesn’t matter to you then they’ll move in and find something else to yell at.

#malicious musings #stacey's adventures in fandom drama #lol #honestly it was such a fucking wild time #if i think of any other specific instances of drama i'll add them #god i wish i had screenshots of some of what went on #but sadly going through archived gaia posts is easier said than done

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write-orflight · 4 years

Text

Galileo. Prologue

**Gif Not Mine**

Next Chapter

Pairings: SpencerXReader, enemies to friends to lovers trope

Rating: M

Words: 1.5K (She’s a smol Prologue)

Warnings: None right now. but will eventually be smut.

Request: OPEN/CLOSED

Summary: Y/N is an astronomer with her head constantly in the stars. But when a serial killer is threatening NASA’s top scientists, she is left in the protective custody of a man who’s gravitational pull threatens to pull her back down to earth.

A.N Hey, my children! This is an idea that’s been plaguing me for weeks and I just had to get at least the prologue out (This series is mainly just my excuse to get my pointless knowledge about space out there). I’m probably not going to update this until I finish ‘trouble’ which should be in this next coming week. I’m just really excited about this one and wanted to put it out there too. Message to be on the taglist! -Cia

Prologue: Mercury

There are 400 billion stars in the galaxy.

Some insignificant, some small, some large, and some with great potential.

Humans were the same way. Though most were insignificant to you, which is why you didn’t indulge in the trifles of relationships and companionship. The stars were far more interesting to you.

And you spent your life studying them.

Ever since your dad bought you your first telescope at age 7, you knew exactly what your purpose was. To study and find out what else was out there. And for a while that was all you did, all through school, no time for boys, friendship and trivial prepubescent things, your mind was literally in the clouds. That carried you all the way to Yale where you graduated Summa cum Laude with 3 Phds in Astronomy, Engineering, and Physics.

Getting the job at NASA wasn’t surprising to you at all.

Meeting Jonathan was.

Your first day together had been uneventful, you had been introduced and told your assignment which was to just track the movement of a comet that came every fifty years. A couple of months in and by pure accident you saw her.

It couldn’t be.

You immediately yelled at him to come over, to confirm that you were just crazy but he had seen it too. You had just discovered a planet. And not just any planet one that through your research could very well sustain human life. Jonathan, though not knowing you long, picked you up in a giant hug and swung you around. You couldn’t help the smiles and tears that had fallen from your eyes. This was exactly why you were doing this, for the art of discovery and the overwhelming feeling that came with it.

After weeks of convincing the boards and getting funding, you and Jonathan were now heads of your own department solely designed for tracking and finding new information on Gaia, the planet the two of you graciously named. Now your nights were filled with solving equations and trying to get more than a glimmer of Gaia from your telescope. Alas, as much as you loved her, she was very slow. Jonathan would play his old jazz records and sing off-key dancing around the planetarium gifted by NASA. You didn’t know exactly when they happened, but you started to feel like maybe all humans weren’t insignificant and you started to feel like that about Jonathan. You found yourself watching his bright smile as he danced and singed around, often asking you to please dance with him, which you always declined.

Now you wish you had.

If you knew it’d be the last time, you for sure would have.

But no one could’ve predicted a serial killer coming after NASA scientists.

And no one could’ve predicted you walking into work and seeing your best friends throat slit ear to ear.

—————————————————

The months following Maeve’s death were hard on Spencer. He was a man of science, he knew probability and often relied on statistics for his job. The predictability of it was what made it easy to cope.

But sometimes it wasn’t. And sometimes he hated the unpredictability of his job.

Losing Maeve had definitely been one of those days.

On one of his first couple weeks back, he’s called into the briefing room.

“We don’t have to go far for this case.” JJ says manning the slides to show the team “Four NASA scientists at the Goddard Flight Center in Maryland have been found in their offices, throat slit and hands bound with duct tape behind the back.”

“Execution style…” Morgan says with a grimace. “Brutal.”

“Obviously someone angry too.” Emily adds. “To just do it like that, no sign of remorse. But the jaggedness of it makes it look passionate.”

“The police and NASA believe they know who the next target is as well.” JJ adds moving to the next slide which showed a beautiful girl standing in front of a whiteboard of equations. Long silky hair tied up in a bun, glasses on her face and bright white teeth shown through the smile. You could obviously tell the picture was taken for an article or sort. Spencer thought she was cute but didn’t dwell on it long. “This is Dr. Y/N Y/L/N. She worked alongside Victim #4, Jonathan Brewer as co-head scientists of the Terra-Mora project.”

“They think the Unsub is specifically targeting her department and people who have done work for her department. And if he’s already killed the partner...” Hotch trails off.

“He’s escalating…” Spencer adds.

“Which puts her under extreme risk. Which is why I’m putting her in protective custody.” Hotch adds. “Reid, I’d like you to do that.”

Spencer looks confused. “Why me? Shouldn’t someone like Morgan or Prentiss go?”

“I’ve been told Dr. Y/L/N is very reluctant about having security. I figured having someone as intelligent as her would cushion the blow.”

Spencer leaned back in his chair. Great… just what he needed.

—————————————

“No, Clifton.”

“It’s not up for discussion, Y/N.” Cliff says walking away from you down the hall. You speed up to catch up with him.

“I’m 31 years old! I don’t need a babysitter.” You said, angrily.

“You’re not getting a babysitter, Y/N. The FBI is being gracious enough to provide you extra security. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you people are dying.”

“You know you don’t have to remind me! I lost Jon!”

“Then you know why you have to take protection, Y/N. You know what important work you and Jonathan were doing. You’re the only one left to finish it. Please just let someone take care of you while they catch the sick man who’s doing this.” You sigh, Cliff takes that as compliance. “Now get to work. I’ll show him to your office when he gets here.”

You walk into work and look at the time, 10:30 PM, peak time for planets to be seen. And if you were lucky, you’d probably get a glimmer of her again. You were right because just as soon as you stepped up to the telescope there she was, or more like there was a sliver of her. You’ve never been able to get a full look at Gaia, but just past Saturn was the curvature of the dwarf planet you adored so much. You pick up your tape recorder, and begin to speak into it.

“January 16th, Terra-Mora logs. This is Dr. Y/N Y/L/N. Dr. Jonathan Brewer has passed and will no longer be making logs.” You choke up a bit but clear your throat and keep going. “Gaia’s Southwest region is visible from earth tonight. Seems her clouds are finally dissipating, and you can see some of her icy plains, I am pretty positive it’s a lake. Hopefully with the Approval of SPOT, we’ll be able to know for sure what’s up there.” You look at your door to see your boss, Dr. Clifton and a man standing watching you. “Y/L/N out.” You say into the tape recorder.

You get up to walk over the two men.

“You know everyone does their logs into the computers now, no one uses an actual tape anymore.” Clifton says.

“I’m old fashioned.” You cross your arms.

“This is Dr. Spencer Reid with the Behavioral Analysis Unit. He will be watching you while we figure out what’s happening.”

“This is who’s supposed to be protecting me?” You ask. “You look like a strong wind would blow you over.”

The man looks at you annoyed. “I can assure you, I’m more than capable of doing my job, Miss--”

“Doctor.” You say.

“Excuse me.”

“It’s Dr. Y/N Y/L/N. And I worked very hard and paid a lot of debt for the title so I’d prefer it if you used it.” You looked annoyed right back at him. Something about the man rubbed you the wrong way.

Dr. Clifton looks at the both of you uncomfortable. “Well I’ll leave you both to it.” He nods at you both before leaving you alone.

“I think we got off on the wrong--”

“Listen Dr. Reid.” You cut him off. “This is probably going to be hell for the both of us. I expressed heavily to my boss about not needing protective custody which of course fell on deaf ears, so I’m going to make one thing clear. We’re not here to be friends. I’m here to do important work that I now have to do single-handedly because you guys failed to do your work in the first place and my coworker had to die because of it.” Tears threatened to choke you but you didn’t let them. “And to be frank, I don’t know what exactly you’re here for besides being a pain in my ass so I suggest staying out of my way and not fucking touching anything. Keep that in mind and we’ll get along swimmingly.” You say, turning your back to him, heading back to the telescope and looking at him as if daring him to challenge you. For a second it looks like he might, he’s standing trying very hard not to look like he’s completely fuming. Then he just blows a frustrated breath and sits in a chair halfway across the room.

You didn’t know why, and you didn’t have a real reason.

But you decided that you hated Dr. Spencer Reid.

Which you guessed was another thing humans could be.

Message to be tagged!

#spencer x reader #spencer reid x reader #spencer x you #spencer reid x you #criminal minds #bau x reader #spencer x reader smut #spencer reid x reader smut

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neopuff · 3 years

Text

title: geneva word count: ~3500 ship: six/holiday summary: Six decides to visit Holiday. Takes place during/immediately after Grounded. warning: sex is mentioned and referenced to ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29868594

The Global Field Exercises were meant to test Providence soldiers and scientists for the possibility of more worldwide events - problems that could lead to necessary collaboration between agents of Providence and the hundreds of other smaller, national organizations dedicated to taking care of EVOs within each country.

Though they had the funding to be the international superpower of EVO containment and curing, Providence couldn’t handle everything and not everyone wanted to play nice. And so they started the biannual field exercises in the hopes to smooth over any rough patches with more reputable organizations and to remind the world that their mission was all about peace and a cure.

As Rex had so aptly stated before Six took off to Tokyo - his mission involved ninjas. Specifically, he was asked to reach out to one of the largest EVO-fighting organizations in the world. They were not ninja in the traditional sense, but the rest of the world referred to them as such and they seemed to enjoy the comparison, so they’d named their organization NINJA just a few years after The Event.

The exercises were supposed to be just three days - Holiday complained that it wasn’t enough time for her to get any real work done while Rex whined that he’d be alone and bored for too long. Six felt it was an adequate amount of time since their relationship with NINJA was already very good. Providence had a few bases in Japan and made sure to reach out regularly from their California headquarters.

Six stuffed his hands in his pockets at the realization that he was finished earlier than expected. There wasn’t much for him to do, and White Knight was busy dealing with some Rex nonsense back at home so he didn’t feel a desperate urge to come back and help with that.

He headed back to his jump jet and pulled out his phone to check the time. Immediately he was distracted by a missed text from Dr. Holiday - all it said was ‘Have fun in Japan!’ but he felt bad for having not responded to it for so long.

The words stared up at him and Six huffed out a loud exhale. She was in Geneva at the moment, and if he left Tokyo right that very second, he’d arrive at CERN a little after dinnertime.

He felt his face heat up as he thought more about this. They had recently made...a change to their relationship. Six wasn’t sure what to make of it entirely. Her feelings for him had been obvious for a while and though she seemed generally aware of his feelings, she’d always kept things professional and respected his need for space. It was just another in the long list of things he appreciated about her.

Showing up at her hotel while not technically on assignment was a whole different thing, though. There was a certain expectation for that sort of thing and though he definitely wanted that with her, he didn’t want to rush things. They hadn’t even kissed yet, thanks to an EVO interrupting their first attempt at a date and Rex interrupting the second.

There were certainly a number of reasons why he shouldn’t go to Geneva during his unexpected free time. But...

...he did want to see her, though. No question about it. Perhaps he could just stop by on his way back to the States and tell her he felt like taking the long way home.

She wouldn’t believe him but she wouldn’t call him out on it, either.

With that thought in mind, and remembering the new life rule he’d adopted after his brush with death just a few weeks earlier - Six started up the jet and made his way west. He needed to be more honest with himself and focus less on why not to do something. He could die any day, with or without the Nanite Event, and both he and Holiday deserved to figure out where this could go.

Thanks to being one of the highest ranking officers in Providence, Six enjoyed the clearance to learn exactly where Holiday was staying without having to notify anyone that he was looking. And thanks to his face and suit being the most famous part of Providence at the moment (thanks to that stupid news program), he was able to make his way into the hotel without much trouble.

It was right as he reached her door that Six started to think this was a terrible idea. What was he going to say to her, exactly? That he was in the neighborhood and wanted to say hi? That he couldn’t stop thinking about her and desperately wanted to see her after barely a weekend apart? His thoughts drifted between too casual and too romantic and he didn’t want to push her away by not getting this right.

It’d been over half a decade since he was with a woman and he’d never - not once in his entire life - had a real romantic relationship. Holiday was important to him and if he disappointed her, he’d be tremendously ashamed.

He stared at his slightly raised fist and took a deep breath. He was already here, so there was no turning back. Might as well dive in unprepared and let his brain work its magic in real time.

Three knocks later and his heart skipped a beat at the sound of her voice.

“Just a second!”

True to her word, she opened up the door a moment later and her eyes immediately widened in shock.

“Six?” Holiday exclaimed, quickly poking her head out of the doorway and looking down the hallway. “What are you doing here? Is something wrong?”

“No,” he said with a frown as he realized he should’ve brought her flowers or chocolates or something like that. “I just...finished early.”

Holiday stared up at him, one eyebrow furrowed and one raised as if she thought he’d said something very very strange. “So you...came here?”

His hands went right back into his pockets. “I wanted to see you.”

The tinge of pink that hit her cheeks did not go unnoticed and Six was happy to know he must’ve said something right. Holiday smiled and tugged some hair behind her ear. She looked down at the floor for a minute, clearly considering her next move, before looking back at him. “Do you...wanna come in?”

He nodded and made his way inside her room as soon as she moved out of the way. He wondered if the intimacy of this situation was about to become an elephant in the room. Holiday closed - and locked - the door before walking past him to her desk and sitting down to continue what she was working on.

“Sorry, I just need to finish writing something down, give me two minutes,” she mumbled and started scribbling faster.

Six watched her work with slight interest and took a moment to look around the room. With no other chairs available, he sat on the edge of her bed, hands still in his pockets. He thought back to when he was younger and more suave and wondered if Holiday would’ve preferred someone more like that - someone who could really sweep her off her feet.

“Were you able to test your anti-matter theory?”

Holiday finished the sentence she was writing and turned to him, smiling. “Yes! I can’t believe how much I’ve managed to get done in the past two days. Everyone’s been so cooperative and helpful and I worked through the night to quadruple check everyone’s work on the particle accelerator and it’s looking great.”

He raised an eyebrow at her and chose not to comment on how she needed to sleep better. “Last time you were here you said it wasn’t enough time to get anything done.”

She laughed and shrugged. “Well, last time was different. Dr. Moses was here presenting some theories and everyone was so focused on him that I was mostly working alone. Not much of a team exercise.”

Six straightened his back and frowned. “Has anyone here heard from Dr. Moses? Any clue to his whereabouts?”

Holiday placed her hands on her lap and glanced off to the side. “No, no one seems to know anything. They’ve all heard he was a fraud but that’s about the extent of anyone’s knowledge.”

She stood up and walked over to the bed, taking a seat next to Six. “I’m trying not to advertise my gullibility so I haven’t said anything.”

Six turned to her seriously. “He took advantage of you when you were vulnerable. That’s not your fault.” If he was being honest, he did fault her a little bit, but he knew how difficult it was to think clearly when you felt like you don’t have any hope left.

Holiday breathed out a short laugh, staring down at her hands. “Yes, well, my fault or not, I won’t be going on any expensive vacations for a long time.”

Thinking about her emptied bank account set him on edge. Without realizing exactly what he was doing, Six reached out his right hand and placed it gently on top of her left. “I’ll make sure you get your money back. Moses won’t get away with it.”

She turned to him and smiled shyly, a light blush gracing her cheeks again. He couldn’t will himself to look away from her face even as she opened her hand and interlocked her fingers with his.

“Thank you, Six, I really…” She glanced away from his gaze as she considered her words. “...I really appreciate it.”

He turned to stare at their hands. “Don’t thank me til I find him.”

“No, I mean…” She paused and scooted a little closer to him, then leaned against his arm with her head on his shoulder and he could practically hear her heart beating faster. She moved her right hand on top of their locked fingers and squeezed his hand tighter. “...thank you for everything. And for being here now.”

He squeezed back and wondered if his heartbeat was just as loud.

Holiday continued to stare at their hands and took a few moments to consider the situation she was in. The man of her dreams had flown 6,000 miles to visit her and now they were completely alone, for the first time in ages, in her hotel room which was locked and relatively soundproof and oh god she was not prepared at all, she hadn’t been with anyone in years and this was Six and it had to be absolutely perfect and she was so tired but she was so excited to have him here and if they didn’t do this now then when could they? There couldn’t be a better time and place.

“Holiday…”

“Hm?” she responded as she pulled away from him.

“I...um, I realize that my being here is...suggestive.” He was mumbling a bit, which Holiday found adorable for reasons completely beyond her. “But I didn’t come here with any expectations. I just...thought it’d be...nice.”

Nice. She had such mixed feelings about that word, thanks to him. But everything else he said was adding to the warmth in her chest and she knew she had to say something or do something before he got the wrong idea and left. Expectations or not, she had to try.

Holiday ripped her hands away from his and without giving him even a moment to miss the sensation, she’d moved them to the sides of his face and tugged him down just the slightest bit so she could meet him halfway.

Six’s reflexes were faster than most, but it did take him a second to register just exactly what was happening. Holiday’s lips on his felt better than he ever imagined (and he had imagined it quite a lot more often than he’d care to admit). Her thumbs rubbed gently against his cheeks and he quickly wrapped one arm around her waist as she adjusted herself to face him entirely, one of her knees bent under her and her other leg dangling over the side of the bed.

Almost instinctively, Six reached down and grabbed her dangling thigh to pull her fully onto his lap. He would’ve worried that was too forward if not for Holiday immediately grinding against him and lightly biting his bottom lip.

She was going to be the death of him, he could tell. And he really didn’t mind.

Her hands made their way to the back of his head while his hands snaked up her thighs, stopping with his fingertips just under her skirt as she distracted him with her lips and her tongue and her groans.

While one of his hands finally made its way under the fabric to properly squeeze her thigh, he brought his other arm around her waist again and slowly turned them around to lay her down on the bed. Her legs had wrapped around his waist and she kept her lips moving against his, simply humming in affirmation as he kissed her back with fervor.

She tugged at his jacket and Six quickly tore it off without moving away from her, tossing it somewhere and thinking about how he wanted her coat off, too.

Rather than focus on herself, Holiday reached down and started to untie his tie, which proved to be more difficult from her angle than she anticipated. He broke their kiss and backed up a few inches to give her more space to work and as the fabric finally came loose it really hit him that this was actually happening.

Just as that thought came to mind, Holiday seemed to freeze. She was still breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling rapidly, but her hands were unmoving against the top button of his shirt.

He wrapped a hand around one of her wrists. “What’s wrong?”

She blinked up at him and shook her head. “Nothing, sorry, sorry!” she said nervously, moving her fingers back to his button.

Six squeezed her wrist and pulled her hand away from him. “Maybe we should...slow down.”

“N-no, no,” Holiday yelped, shaking her head. “It’s nothing like that, I just-” She was interrupted by her own yawn, which she kept small and hidden under a hand, but her face lit up in embarrassment all the same.

He smirked down at her. “That’s certainly not my best review.”

She moved her hand up to cover her face but knew there was no point in hiding it now. “It’s absolutely not that - I do want y-this, I…” She couldn’t look him in the eyes and turned her head away while moving her hands to his shoulders. “...so much. But it’s just…”

Six moved one of his hands to her face, pushing her bangs out of the way and cradling her temple so his thumb rested under her eye. She looked tired - not the most tired he’d ever seen from her, but certainly not awake enough for this. He thought back to what she’d told him just ten minutes earlier and asked, “When’s the last time you slept?”

Holiday smiled guiltily and squeezed his shoulders. “Um...38 hours ago? Give or take?”

He shook his head and leaned down to kiss her, just briefly, before leaning up again and rubbing his thumb against her cheek. “You should go to sleep, Doctor.”

She nodded reluctantly, a deep red still visible across her cheeks. “I know this is terrible timing when this is literally the best possible time and place for this but I really want our first, um...well, I’m just rather not be so out of it.”

Six wrapped his arm around her waist again and tugged her up into a seated position, feeling awkward trying to have an entire conversation while leaning over her. “I meant what I said before. And there’ll be plenty of other...opportunities.”

Holiday smiled at him warmly. “It’s hard enough to get a full night’s sleep without interruption at Providence, I can’t imagine trying to work sex into my schedule.”

He almost laughed at that - almost; relationship or not he was still Six - and instead leaned closer to her, his mouth hovering less than an inch from her ear. “We’ll just have to go on a trip together, then.”

She shuddered at the feeling of his breath against her ear and blushed somehow even deeper at his words. “I guess we will.”

Six smiled at her and she smiled back warmly, feeling the awkwardness and anxiety of this relationship development completely fading away. She wasn’t unconfident about Six’s feelings for her but she never knew exactly what that meant for them or what he was comfortable with and she didn’t want to push him too far, but god did she want him badly. She had for years and now that she actually had the chance, she was too tired for it. That was just great.

He leaned down and pressed another brief kiss against her lips. “I should head back to headquarters,” he said as he stood up.

“O-oh?” Holiday mumbled. “You don’t have to go. I mean, if you want to stay, that is.” She groaned internally at her own nervousness. Wasn’t she just thinking about how she was feeling more confident about their relationship?

Six stared down at her, glancing at her bed and then back at her. “Do you want me to?”

“Yes!” she answered quickly - a bit too quickly and enthusiastically for her own liking but it was too late to change that now. “I’d...I’d really like you to stay.”

He nodded and sat back down next to her. “I’ll head back in the morning, then.”

Holiday tucked some hair behind her ear again, having just noticed how messed up her bun got during their little make-out session. “That sounds good. If White noticed us coming back together he’d probably make a huge fuss over nothing.”

“He would.” Six didn’t need to regale Holiday with stories of all the things Knight had suggested about their relationship over the years, and he certainly wouldn’t be informing his former partner of this new development.

He stood up and reached down to grab his jacket and tie off the floor. “You should get to sleep, Doctor.”

She followed suit. “And where are you going?”

“Just have to grab some things from my jump jet.” He took a step closer to her. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Holiday stood up on her tip-toes to kiss him again, realizing at that moment that was going to get addicted to the feeling of his lips on hers. Keeping this from Rex was going to be a challenge, that was certain.

Six nodded at her and grabbed her room key before heading out the door. Holiday watched him go and sunk back down onto the bed so she could properly soak in everything that just happened.

Her heart started beating faster and she couldn’t stop smiling. He was…! They were…! She laid down on the bed and closed her eyes, trying to will her heartbeat to settle down, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the feeling of his lips and his hands and his…well. His everything. She stayed like that for a minute and then tried to sit up, but her entire body had shut down and decided it was time to go to sleep.

When Six entered the room again, he was not surprised to find Holiday fast asleep, still in her work clothes, and only halfway on the bed. He put his overnight bag down and walked over to help her out.

Dragging her into her bed after she overworked herself was something he’d done a hundred times before, but the domesticity was really hitting him and Six felt himself blush as he tugged off her labcoat and boots and picked her up into his arms. He managed to get her under the covers and hesitantly reached down and tugged at her hair tie until it snapped and her bun fell apart.

He stared at the broken elastic and tossed it onto the table. He thought about just leaving anyway, but...she’d asked him to stay. So he quickly changed and put his sunglasses down on the nightstand before quietly crawling under the covers. He felt oddly exposed next to her despite her being fast asleep, and started his usual pre-sleep breathing exercises.

A few moments later, he felt Holiday reach out and grab his arm. He looked over at her and saw she was still very much asleep - even as she tugged him closer and scooted herself over she didn’t seem to have any awareness of her actions. She stopped moving once her head had reached his shoulder and Six felt himself blush at how comfortable and natural she looked.

He could definitely get used to this.

#generator rex #holix #agent six #rebecca holiday #dr. holiday #carrofics #ok after reading this think about six minus six taking place like 2-3 days later #heh

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flyonthewallmedstudent · 3 years

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Day in the life videos on youtube.

I didn't realize this was a thing. Until today.

Quite the rabbit hole.

Watching med students. Other doctors in other parts of the world. interns. Even undergrad.

Some are really high quality and well done, as some of the most highly watched youtube videos are. But these actually tend to be more boring, they're almost too happy. Some of the time it's their first day of "X". Which could probably be why they're still so upbeat. The lower quality ones tend to feel more real and interesting.

My fave is Dr. Mike. As he's just great to look at and so likable.

And then I finally come across the one of the med students floating around our wards did. They're a bit odd in personality, but otherwise fine. Then word got around the interns and residents that, hey this student has a youtube channel with day-in-life-videos. It was pretty awkward to watch. So of course, we probably collectively bumped up their views and they'll likely have no idea it was us - easily dozens of us by the end of the day.

If you going to do stuff like that. Know that when people you work with on rotation find out, we'll be all over it. We'll all be judging it too. We may even be sharing it with our friends.

If I were to do a Day in the Life - and I wouldn't, as it'd cost my anonymity, it would admittedly be utter trash.

I don't go to the gym. Even though I should.

We live across where we work, which I don't recommend.

The toddler will wake us up, usually by slapping us in the face. Daycare provides all meals, so drop off is pretty much after we all roll out of bed, on the way to work.

It's always a mess at home. Maybe it's clean or tidy once a week. There's a reason why the toddler's nickname is Chucks and we own a Roomba or robot vacuum.

I'll attend handover, where someone inevitably is getting grilled. Gently. (Hopefully not me eventually when we rotate). Then it's rounds, and seeing patients. I'm in IM, so most of my patients are in their 70s and 80s. 90s isn't unusual, 60 is considered young. They're crumbly, they have 20 medications (which we always pare down), 50% will be demented, delirious or both.

This makes for really boring TV. It's also a reason why most in medicine find this area really unfulfilling, it's almost like working in acute geriatrics. Our ED recently told us that most of their traumas now are older people falling over and fracturing everything.

The interns will take most if not all the ward round notes, then go do jobs, like request an Xray. Which all magically happens on EMR. We also hover a lot over computers to look at results.

I might have clinic later. Where I spend more time reading patient files and typing up letters after seeing them, than I do actually talking to them.

I'll find the interns and we'll look at more results. We might tweak some medications that nurses administer.

Like 60-70% of what I do is "paperwork." Because after all, if you don't document it. It never happened. Thank goodness for EMR though, if I had to hand write notes and request physical files I'd probably explode.

The unsung heroes that never get the limelight in the media are social workers, occupational therapists and physios. IN many cases, they do the vast majority of the "work."

There may be no medical issue at all. I'm not starting any new medications, usually I'm removing them. In many cases, we're looking at elderly individuals no longer able to live independently at home and now have to look at nursing home or enhanced services to help them out at home. All if not mostly government funded by the way, all of which is a form of socialism which somehow got so politicized despite its existence for decades in most Western countries.

Drama is family meetings where we all as a team, sit down with the kids (who are often in their 50s and 60s) and say, I'm sorry, but it's time we talk about safety for your loved one to remain home on their own. Let's look at these other options.

This is the reality of practicing medicine with an aging population in the first world. This is where your taxes go. You work a lifetime paying them, then when you hit the twilight years of your retirement, a small fortune goes into your care in those final years of life. A single night in hospital costs $2000 if not more. You can spend a lifetime never seeing a doctor or going to hospital, but I guarantee you will in your last decade. A lot.

If I didn't have kids, I'm finally comfortable enough now in my skills to say, I'd love to go overseas and do humanitarian work and help struggling countries establish their own local healthcare. Then I think about what I have to offer. It really isn't much to the 3rd world where they're still struggling with covering basic needs. Forget the expensive regimens, medications and rehab I regularly recommend or prescribe. If you live in poverty, it's still pricey despite government subsidy.

If I really wanted to implement change, I'd go into politics. Be a public servant and work on legislation or lobbying. That's where real change would come from. But as of yet, I often feel like I'm just shoving bandaids on the titanic.

I love what I do. But it's very unsexy for TV.

It's very first world country. I wouldn't glorify the career anymore than it already has been glorified, there's many lofty careers out there that aren't nearly as competitive to get into as medicine and net more public service.

#medblrs #medblr

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piercethevic-idk · 3 years

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hermannsthumb · 4 years

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star crossed lovers and curses? TYSM for writing these btw I love your writing

64. Star Crossed Lovers & 98. Curses

from fanfiction trope mashup here

ANOTHER 2 YR OLD PROMPT….this concept seems sufficiently fairy tale enough for a little Mermay, perhaps 👁👁

so like. this got a lot longer than I intended because I was having so much fun with it. OH WELL

———————-

It was a real slap in the face–Newt has to admit–for the institute to deny him funding for this one. Ten years of thorough, groundbreaking, devoted research–ten years of PhD after PhD–ten years of no vacations, or weekends off, or even dating–Newt just assumed all he’d have to do was waltz into his supervisor’s office and they’d shell out however much he requested, no questions asked. That’s how it’s always been.

And yet here he is now, solo-manning a rented skipper with rented diving gear and a backpack full of disposable waterproof cameras, sunburned and dehydrated and miserable, all just because–

(“It’s stupid?” he said. “You think my idea is stupid?”

“With all due respect, Dr. Geiszler,” his supervisor said, not even pretending to be apologetic about it, “yes. We’re not going to pay for you to chase after the Loch Ness Monster.”

“That’s in Scotland!” Newt shouted, and then Newt started shouting some more, and he maybe had to be escorted back to his lab, but he wasn’t fired, at least, and the next day he cashed in ten years’ worth of hard-earned vacation and declared he’d be fucking off to the coast to pursue a completely legitimate doctorate in crypto-marine-zoology. Or whatever it’s called. He’ll worry about the name once he gets it.)

Two weeks into his spite-fueled expedition in the middle of the fucking ocean, Newt begins to wonder if this isn’t a mistake. He’s running low on food, for one thing, and what little fishing he learned as a Boy Scout can only take him so far. For another, it’s really hard to do this sort of work by himself. Though Newt usually goes solo for shorter expeditions, he’s used to having an intern or two tag along to help him take pictures on longer ones like this–or at the very least, provide enough conversation to keep him from going nuts.

But the biggest indicator so far that this is one giant waste of time is the fact that in the course of those two weeks at sea, Newt hasn’t found one single, solitary shred of evidence. No giant squid tentacles. No sea monster humps rising from the waves. No mermaid tails. He hasn’t even seen a shark fin, for God’s sake. Just endless, deep, blue.

Starting to thing this might be career suicide, Newt writes in his field journal on the fifteenth day.

And then his boat is capsized.

Well, not really. His boat is almost capsized. Low in the list of Newt’s priorities for trip preparation–so low, in fact, it came in after pack razors and do laundry–was check weather report. It just didn’t seem important at the time, you know? He had other shit on his mind. It’s why the storm takes him by complete surprise.

Newt woke at dawn today to the sound of rain tapping lightly on the roof above his cramped quarters. The drizzle quickly became a thunderstorm. The thunderstorm quickly became–well, whatever this is. Waves smacking against the sides of the boat. Water sloshing onto the deck. A perfectly good cup of French press coffee upended all over Newt’s only map.

His boat isn’t capsized, but it gives a great, shuddering jerk that sends Newt sprawling to the wood planks and grasping for anything to steady himself–his bedposts, the ruined map, a chair leg–and a great flood of water rushing in. Newt manages to scramble up in time for his jeans to spare being soaked. (He probably should’ve packed more than one pair.)

It’s at this moment Newt finally allows himself to panic a little.

“Fuck,” he hisses. “Shit. Okay, fuck. This is–” Another shuddering, wood-creaking jerk of his boat. Newt takes a few sloshing to the door and forces it open against the wind.

Iron-grey sea to his left; to his right; behind him; in front of him. The waves are angrier than anything Newt remembers from Boy Scouts. He flips up the hood of his rain jacket and stumbles out into the gale to lower the sails, or weigh down the ship, or something, anything to just–

There’s something pale bobbing out in the ocean some thirty feet away from his boat. A head, Newt realizes, a human head, a human head attached to shoulders, and his shock mingles with horror because oh, God, it’s a person! Their boat must’ve been wrecked by the storm–or they must’ve been thrown overboard–or both, Newt has to do something.

He cups his hands around his mouth and bellows in the direction of the mysterious bobbing head. “Do you need help?!”

Nothing.

“Hello!” Newt shouts.

Whoever it is suddenly disappears under the water; without thinking, with nothing on his mind but saving the drowning stranger, Newt shucks off his leather jacket and dives under.

At least this time, he knows it’s a mistake.

Newt is warm when he wakes up. Warm, and dry. The sun is shining overhead; the boat is still; the waves are calm. There’s someone touching his neck–a hand, damp, and oddly chilly.

“Stop,” he mumbles, and swats them away. He’s trying to sleep.

The hand returns. “Stop,” Newt says, and swats again, more. viciously this time.

He hears a small, offended huff. The hand retracts, though not before depositing his glasses on the bridge of his nose and swatting back in return. “Well, I’m terribly sorry for attempting to return these,” someone says.

Newt’s eyes shoot open.

There’s a man above him–sharp-cheeked, brown-eyed, shirtless and pale, his short, dark hair plastered to his head like he’s just gone swimming. He’s scowling at Newt. There’s something familiar about him that Newt can’t quite put his finger on–until he does. “You were in the water!” he says, sitting straight up. “You were drowning!” He wracks his brains for the memory of that morning: a head bobbing in the water, Newt going overboard, the cold, dark rush of the ocean, his frantic, wheeling arms– “I saved you!”

“Not exactly,” the man says.

No, that’s not right. There was the dark rush of the ocean, his wheeling arms, and then two cold, sturdy hands pulling him up, onto his boat, pressing down on his chest, a cold, wide mouth breathing air into his lungs. “Holy shit,” Newt says. “You saved me! What were you even doing out here, dude? It’s–”

Then Newt looks down.

The head leads to shoulders, which leads to a torso, but below that– “Holy shit,” Newt squeaks again, and then, at a loss for anything else to say, “Can I take a picture of you for my field journal?”

Where there should be hips and thighs and calves below the waist is nothing but a long fish tail, curving and shimmering and brightly-hued enough to make Newt’s eyes sting. It tapers into two large, translucent, fanning fins, the left of which is misshapen, almost as if it were wounded somehow. The overall effect is gorgeous, frankly. Newt’s never seen anything so gorgeous in his entire life.

“No,” the man–merman–says. “Goodbye.”

He begins to wriggle to the edge of the boat. Newt reaches for him frantically. “Wait, wait!” he says. “Don’t go! I want to talk to you, please!”

A foot from the edge of the boat, one hand on the railing, the merman turns back to Newt. His eyes are narrowed. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Well,” Newt says. “You, obviously. You’re–” He sweeps his hand in a broad gesture across the merman. “You’re not human.”

“Yes,” the merman says.

“And you saved my life,” Newt says.

Another scowl. “Yes. You’re bloody lucky I was passing by,” the merman snaps. “What on Earth were you doing out here in the middle of a storm like that? You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”

Newt shoves his glasses up higher and scoots closer to the merman. “I’m a scientist. A marine biologist, technically.” And, if you were to get even more technical, only a fifth marine biologist. Newt tended to look at his doctorates in a glass-half-full way. “I was, uh, gathering research.” Suddenly it occurs to Newt that he and the merman might have cultural differences he never even dreamed of, and he flushes with embarrassment. “Wait, do you know what a scientist is?”

“Yes,” the merman snaps again.

“Right,” Newt says. He coughs. The merman’s scowl hardens. Frankly, legends of sirens luring sailors to their deaths aside, Newt didn’t expect merpeople to be quite so…bitchy. Maybe he just got stuck with the most foul-tempered one in existence–it’d be just his luck. “Well. Uh. My name is Newt. It’s nice to meet you?” He holds out his hand, and then remembers himself. “Uh, this is how humans greet people. You shake it.”

“I know,” the merman says, and then (in a way Newt can’t help but feel as somewhat condescending) shakes Newt’s hand with a firm “Hermann.”

Newt snorts before he can help himself. Hermann pulls away. “Hermann,” he echoes. “You know–”

“I know,” Hermann says again.

“It kinda sounds–”

“I know,” Hermann says.

“It’s just kinda funny,” Newt says, and begins to snicker.

“So is ‘Newt’,” Hermann huffs, and then, before Newt can stop him, he dives back into the ocean with a splash and a flick of his shimmering tail.

Newt rushes to the railing and peers into the murky depths below, but it’s no use. Hermann’s long gone. His first real, solid evidence of crypto-marine biology, and he couldn’t stop being himself long enough to ask a few simple questions.

“Shit,” he sighs. He makes note of the meeting in his journal anyway.

He sees Hermann again four days later. It’s a bright, sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, and–in a better mood than he’s been since he started out–Newt decides to take the opportunity to do some maintenance around the boat. Turns out Doc Martens don’t offer the most amazing traction on slippery decks, especially when you’ve somehow managed to wrap ropes from the sails around yourself and lose the ability to move your arms. Newt learns this the hard way.

Luckily, Hermann is there to catch him.

“You are a bloody menace,” he scolds, as a half-soaked–but safe–Newt blinks dumbly at him in the safety of his surprisingly sturdy arms. “What were you even attempting to do?”

“Uh,” Newt says. “Fix the sails?”

Hermann rips the ropes off of him effortlessly, then lifts him higher. Newt stays still, blinking, before he realizes he’s supposed to be climbing onto the deck, and then scrambles up over the railing. “There we are,” Hermann says, sounding equal parts smug and satisfied.

“Thanks, dude,” Newt says. “If you hadn’t been here–” He frowns. “Wait, what were you doing here?”

“Nothing,” Hermann says, too fast, and Newt grins.

“You were totally spying on me!”

“I was not,” Hermann snaps. “I was merely passing by. You’re awfully hard to miss. So–noisy.”

“Uh-huh,” Newt says. “Well, lucky coincidence. Can I interview you for my journal now?”

For a moment Newt expects Hermann to dip back beneath the waves, but–glowering up at Newt–he folds his arms and rests them against the side of the boat. “What would you like to know?”

Newt digs his tape recorder from his pocket and switches it on. “Everything.”

Hermann is a begrudging interviewee, but he’s an interviewee none the less, and answers each of Newt’s questions with only a small dose of sarcasm. He eats fish, like some larger fish might. He speaks English, like most fish don’t. He lives in a city populated with other merpeople, who have jobs and families and houses, though significantly different from the jobs and families and houses humans have. “Technically,” Hermann says, with a strange, furtive glance around, “I shouldn’t even be telling you these sort of things. Interacting with humans is considered highly taboo in my society.”

“Oh, shit,” Newt says, and inches forward. “Seriously?”

Immediately, Newt’s brain works overtime to concoct an exciting, Little Mermaid-esque scenario: Hermann’s dad as the strict king of the ocean, wary of humans because of some ancient feud, Hermann longing for freedom, Newt–well, Newt would be down with kissing Hermann to help him get rid of that fin. He’d be down with kissing Hermann regardless. Newt’s scientific interest in him aside, Hermann is pretty good-looking. And–well. The forbidden, star-crossed aspect of it all is kinda exciting.

“Yes,” Hermann says. “Humans have hunted merpeople for centuries. Or so I’ve been told. But…” His face twists strangely–the corners of his eyes crinkling, his teeth flashing into view–and Newt realizes he’s smiling. Awkward, and shy, and unpracticed, but smiling. “You seemed different. I took a gamble.”

Newt blushes, just a little. “Hunted,” he echoes. “Is that what happened to your fin?”

“My fin?”

“It’s injured on the left side,” Newt says. “Like something attacked you. Did a human do that? Or another predator, like a shark or something?” Do merpeople have to worry about sharks? Maybe they keep them as pets. That’d be cool. If Newt was a merman, he would have three pet sharks.

“Oh,” Hermann says. “Oh, no, nothing so dramatic. That happened when I was human.”

Newt drops his tape recorder. It narrowly avoids bouncing overboard. “When you were what?”

“When I was human,” Hermann repeats. “Did I not mention I used to be human?”

“Uh, no,” Newt says.

“Ah, well,” Hermann says, “yes, it was some time ago. Perhaps a hundred years.”

“You look good for a hundred,” Newt says, because Hermann can’t have more than a couple years on Newt’s thirty-five. To his surprise, Hermann snorts.

“Yes, see, I was involved with a man,” he says, “and–well, he wasn’t pleased when I wanted to put an end to things, move on, you know, pursue other relationships. Only there were a number of things I didn’t know about him. He practiced–mastered, really–a strange kind of magic. He cursed me. I’ve been stuck this way–half-human, never aging another day–ever since.”

Merpeople, magic, curses–this is too fucking good. No one is ever going to believe Newt if he publishes this paper. “What kind of curse?” Newt says. “Like, one that can be broken?”

“Presumably,” Hermann says.

“Do you have to learn a lesson?” Newt says. He pushes up his glasses and leans closer. “Does someone have to kiss you? Like a true love’s kiss?” Newt was never one for reading fairy tales as a kid–having preferred the much more interesting alternatives of poking slugs with sticks and rolling around in the dirt–but he knows that’s a pretty big deal in those kind of stories. Frog princes and shit.

“I don’t know,” Hermann says. “All I know is that this has been very irritating. I had a laboratory, you know, with all sorts of fascinating equipment. I was a scientist. And now–”

“Can I try kissing you?” Newt interrupts.

Hermann flushes and shuts his mouth. “Ah,” he stammers, “I–I’ve got to–”

He disappears, in another splash and glint of fin. It was worth a shot.

Hermann comes back a few days later, and he comes back after that, and after that. Sometimes Newt asks him questions about being a merman. Sometimes Newt asks him questions about his previous life as a human. Hermann seems to like talking about being a human more, for reasons that aren’t very hard for Newt to guess. He was born in Germany, like Newt, though was schooled somewhat prestigiously in England (which explains the stuffy accent). He walked with a cane and a slight limp. He owned a very nice and very expensive telescope, which he misses, and worries about the well-being of, constantly. Sometimes Newt tells him things about himself, too: about his myriad of tattoos, his studies, how the human world has changed since Hermann’s time.

One day, as Hermann watches Newt eat potato chips and transcribe one of his numerous interviews from audio to pen, he suddenly reaches out and touches the corner of Newt’s notebook. “May I read this?” he says.

“Sure,” Newt says, hoping that Hermann doesn’t flip back to last week and read Newt’s entry where he described, in great detail, his attraction to Hermann, and the incredibly steamy dream he had about him as a result of that attraction.

Hermann skims Newt’s notes quickly, politely ignoring the grease stains Newt left behind, then pushes the book back towards him. He didn’t read about the dream. Thank God. “You called me a specimen,” Hermann says. His eyes crinkle in amusement. “How impersonal.”

“Yeah, well,” Newt says, heart pounding a little, because if he didn’t know any better he’d say Hermann is being flirty, “can’t let my institution know I’m on a first name basis with my subject. Conflict of interests.”

“Now, tell me,” Hermann says, “what do you plan to do with the information you’ve gathered when you return home? A book? An article? An exhibition? If you’re going to ask to put me on display, my answer is a definite no.”

“Nah, nothing like that,” Newt says. The truth is that Newt has no idea what he’s going to do with his significant compilation of research about Hermann. It’d be one thing if he found evidence of Hermann’s whole colony, or even a merperson besides Hermann, but to go zooming back off to his superiors with nothing three weeks’ worth of tapes and maybe a photograph or two–and after that tantrum he threw last month–he has a feeling no one is going to buy a single bit of it. Maybe he’d have a chance if he took Hermann back with him and did display him, but throwing his friend on the mercy of a society that would gladly dissect him without a second thought is completely out of the question. Maybe he’ll just write a weirdly detailed children’s book. “I might just keep it for myself, actually.”

The answer seems to please Hermann. He toys with Newt’s chip bag for a few seconds before–cheeks going a shade pinker–he says “I feel I ought to confess something.”

“Be my guest, dude.”

“I was following you the other day,” Hermann says. “I was following you that first day, too. And–” His eyes dart down, away from Newt’s. “Before then, even. You intrigued me, and I wanted to know what you were doing all the way out here.”

Newt grins. “I intrigued you. Ha! Cool. Well, now we’re even.”

Hermann smiles at him.

The last Friday before Newt is due to turn back and set course for home, he finally gets his first sign of other human life out here in the middle of the ocean: a fishing rig, at least twice the size of Newt’s tiny little rental, motors up not too far away from him and begins to cast its nets. Newt, an extrovert at heart and only mostly sustained by conversations with Hermann (who has a tendency to disappear for days at a time), is so starved for social interaction that he bolts out from his cabin when he spots it and begins waving frantically at the crew.

“Hi!” he shouts. “Beautiful out here, isn’t it?!”

He gets a friendly wave back. Newt expects he looks half-crazed, from his wild hair, to his unshaven scruff, to the explosion of freckles across his cheeks and neck, so he can’t really blame any of the crew for their hesitance.

“How are the fish?” he continues to shout.

A thumbs up.

“Cool!”

A net is drawn up; it’s a decent catch, but nothing too impressive. Earlier in the week, Hermann explained to Newt that, this close to mer-territory, anyone would be hard-pressed to find anything but smaller fish. Merpeople are much better hunters than some humans with a boat could ever dream of being. “I’ve been out here for over a month,” Newt continues his one-sided conversation. “I was looking for sea monsters. Have you ever caught anything like that before?”

No, they haven’t. The net is thrown back into the ocean.

“Okay!” Newt says. “Just wondering!”

The faint sound of groaning wood makes him stop in his tracks as he turns to head back into his cabin. Groaning wood, and splashing. Loud splashing. Excited shouts. It looks like the fishing rig netted something big.

Newt–determined, still, to be sociable–cups his hands around his mouth to call his encouragement over, but the words die on his tongue almost instantly. There, tangled up and flopping around in the rig’s netting, is a very familiar glimmering tail with a very familiar tattered left fin. “Hey,” Newt shouts, “stop! You’re–that’s my friend, you have my–!”

For the second time, Newt dives into the sea for Hermann.

He closes the distance between the two boats in no time at all, and–powered by pure adrenaline, ignoring the yells of surprise and anger above him–begins hacking blindly at the net with his pocketknife. A few more pieces–a few more strands–

It spills open. Newt feels a Hermann-sized shape graze past him, and a moment later, Hermann breaches the surface of the water. He doesn’t look very happy. “They caught me in their net,” he spits. “As if I were–!”

Newt hugs him. It’s not very graceful, considering the circumstances, but it’s something he’s wanted to do for a while, and he’s too happy that Hermann won’t be dissected or stuffed or something to care. “You caught my friend in your net while he was swimming,” he tells the fishermen over Hermann’s shoulder, now moderately more calmly. “I thought he was–uh–going to drown.”

The fishermen are profusely apologetic, to the point where Newt actually feels kind of bad for them, and it takes him waving them off with assurances they won’t sue or anything for them to hastily speed away. Hermann doesn’t look away from Newt once the whole time, his expression soft and just a touch unreadable. “You came to my rescue,” he says.

“Well,” Newt says, puffing out his chest, “a little bit, yeah.”

Hermann kisses him. Newt responds enthusiastically.

He’s so worked up over it all–grabbing Hermann’s hair, biting his weird frog mouth–that he doesn’t notice that the gentle fanning of Hermann’s tail against him has become the slide of skin against denim until Hermann suddenly grips at his arms. “Newt,” he says, eyes widening, “Newt.”

Well, even then it takes a bit. Newt kind of has a one-track mind when it comes to this sort of stuff. “Mm, yeah, Hermann,” he groans happily. He goes back in for another kiss, but Hermann dodges it.

“No,” he says, “I’m–” He gives a little kick.

Oh. “Oh, holy shit!” Newt exclaims, and laughs in delight. “Legs! You have legs!” Naked legs, in fact. Long naked legs–of course he’s taller than Newt. Hopefully he has some clothing that’ll fit the guy.

“Legs which don’t swim very well, I’m afraid,” Hermann says. He’s giving Newt another broad, awkward smile. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” Newt says.

There goes Newt’s paper, he guesses, but–strangely–he can’t really bring himself to care.

#newmann #maria's fanfiction tag #Anonymous

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