#she’d space a LOT but she actually is the best driver of the gang

[fenharel-apologist94]

#and by science I mean fic research #hush hush hush its impt to me #but i think yes #she’d space a LOT but she actually is the best driver of the gang #only beat by Aveline #dragon age #da2 merrill

[wordsinwinters]

Then Again, Part 26 (Peter Parker x Reader)

Masterlist (with AO3 links)

Total word count: 50,293

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25,

Summary: After an intense argument and a forced-to-share-the-bed situation during their junior year decathlon trip, Peter and the Reader examine their faults and failings. As they attempt to fix their mistakes and improve their friendship, that friendship quickly begins to evolve into something else.

Slow burn fic in which all characters are included and their dynamics explored; multiple character POVs.

Betas: @girl-tips-from-satan and @fanboyswhereare-you

A/N: This isn’t my favorite chapter, but it’s been sitting in my drafts for over a year and I figured if I don’t post it now, I’ll never move on to the next. Additionally, as always, I live for feedback. 😉

Without further ado,

Then Again Part 26:

(Words: 2,825)

The bus ride will probably get boring soon, or at least as long as the girls stay asleep, but even as quiet as it is, it’s almost a perfect morning. Being early (around 6:00, I think?), there’s barely any light except street lamps and car lights, but some of the clouds on the right have caught a pretty bluish purple tinge. It reminds me of that Rainbow Fish book Aunt May used to read to me as a kid. To make it better, the morning air is chilly enough that the driver turned the heaters on low so it’s wrapped-in-a-blanket-while-it-snows warm in here. Although that also might be why, apart from general dirt and old gum, the strongest smell on the bus is salty grease— since the nearest heater is under the seat Flash spilled french fries and chicken nuggets in yesterday. It could be worse, though. I mean, it’s not necessarily a bad smell and the traffic isn’t horrible. It’s not the best, but it could definitely be louder and a lot slower. The field of flowing red tail lights ahead of us is oddly comforting, like a snail-slow pasture of mechanical color. 

All in all, it’s a pretty cozy start for a dreaded five hour bus ride. It’s giving me quiet time to think. So that’s where I’m at. Or should be. I got some stuff organized in my head last night even if I keep getting distracted now. Well, it was more like a couple hours ago, since I wasn’t able to get to sleep for so long after we said goodnight. But anyway, I’m trying to focus. It’s just hard, even with both of them sleeping.

From my and Ned’s spot behind them, watching the girls’ heads gently shake and bump against each other as the bus shudders through potholes is kind of calming. They seem so peaceful from this angle, like two people who’ve never pranked me and Ned to the point we were nearly suspended, or kept us awake and annoyed by asking paradoxical hypothetical questions because they know how Ned and I will argue for days if we don’t agree on an answer, or anything else like that. It’s like finding two mischievous cats sleeping, curled up on a chair. It’s easier to appreciate them when they aren’t causing chaos. But it’s not that hard to appreciate them when they are anyway.

Though Ned and I won’t admit it when they’re fully awake, seeing their heads smack into the seat in front of them each time the bus lurched to a halt at stoplights (during the first ten minutes after they’d fallen asleep) was funnier than it should’ve been. Even knowing then that we wouldn’t mention it later didn’t stop us from exchanging silent laughs when they leaned back up, muttering unintelligible complaints before settling their heads back onto one another. For the last couple stoplights before the highway, at least, we decided to be better friends. We both stood up with one leg on the floor and one knee on our own seat so we could easily hold their foreheads back each time it happened. Again, I wouldn’t admit this out loud, even to Ned, but it’s a little bit funny that Ned was a split second slower than me, so while I kept catching MJ’s head before the stop, he half-smacked Y/N’s forehead, like a really-close-to-the-floor basketball dribble, and made a wincing face each time. A lot of times. But it did stop her from colliding with the seat, and she didn’t wake up or complain. 

As nice as it is with them and almost everyone else sleeping through the dark, quiet first hour of the bus trek back to New York, I am excited for her and MJ to wake up. Whenever that is. I’ve missed them. 

But anyway, I really need to focus. God. I’m not doing a great job of that this morning. Apparently. So I’m focusing now. It’s like Ned said. I need to be honest with myself. 

Okay. 

Alright. 

No distractions. 

I’m going to set myself straight now, before we get back, so I can make a game plan and be more decisive and make less mistakes. Fewer? Yeah, fewer mistakes. She’s told me that half a dozen times this since she read that grammar book last summer. But that’s not important.

If I’m being honest... I think I’ve avoided the real possibility that things could work out between us because it felt too risky. And I make some dumb, impulsive choices. So that’s saying a lot. If she said no, what’s the worst that could happen? May and Ned have been asking me that for months, and it’s been so frustrating. The answer should be obvious. The worst thing wouldn’t be the rejection, it’d be if it made her uncomfortable and she broke off our friendship. Or, even if she stuck around, if our friendship changed and I had to watch her get more and more distant, knowing it was my fault and nothing would ever go back to normal. 

Those were the worst — and, I thought, most probable — possibilities. For months I��ve been certain that if anything changed, everything would, and it’d all go to shit. So I kept dodging it. And dodging her before the trip. But, then, things did change this weekend. Things are changing. We fought, and it was super shitty and awful and a total nightmare fiasco, but we made up. And she seemed almost as relieved as me when we did. Now we even have this pact about spending more time together. I know it’s officially only in the name of friendship, but something’s… different. I feel it, and I think she does too. And it doesn’t seem bad. That’s the craziest part. I mean, she even kissed me last night. On the cheek, but still. “Keep it.” Maybe May’s not ridiculous: she really might feel the same way. 

I’ve been texting her this morning, actually. Aunt May. I had to admit that I’m happy she forced me to do the forehead kiss thing last night. As annoyed as I was that she and Ned ganged up on me like that, I can’t dispute the results. She kissed me! Kind of. (To be fair, she did hit my mouth a little bit even if it was an accident.) At first it made me wonder if she heard any of Ned’s shout-comments before I could turn the t.v. up to cover what he was saying. But I doubt it. Even if she felt the same way, I know her too well to think she wouldn’t freak out more and enough that it’d be noticable. Yeah, no, I’d definitely have been able to tell if she’d heard him saying things like, “Nobody’s saying you have to tell her that you googled the probability of high school sweethearts getting married that time she saved your ass on that Bronte essay, but yeah, Aunt May’s right! Just ask her to come over and either talk to her or do the hair/forehead thing!” Anyway, May’s on board with her coming over a lot this week and next week and giving us some space. So are Ned and MJ. Ned said they agreed on giving us two weeks (starting tomorrow) without them hanging out after school. And who knows, if the dance goes really well, maybe it’ll be normal for us to hang out, just us, without the whole group. Because… well, I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself. 

I’ll admit, they’re the best friends I could ever have. All three of them. 

And it’s nice to have them all here now, Ned to my left and the girls in front of us. It’s even nicer to be outside of class or the city or crazy study sessions and have had a short breather from all that (despite the shitshow before we smoothed things over and could enjoy it). To be somewhere chill together. Yesterday and today probably feel even better because the last few days, or even weeks… no— months, if I’m being honest— have had me in a kind of less than happy place. But that’s over now. We’re all here and things are finally good. I just wish the girls would wake up, especially since Ned’s back on his phone. Again. 

Yesterday, everybody hung out for most of the afternoon, but being in the whole decathlon group isn’t the same as just being the four of us. Or two. 

Speaking of two— Ned being away during this next week or two is going to make everything so… unfiltered. New. Without his interference and being able to talk to him as often as normal, it’ll mostly just be her and me. Nobody to distract attention or blame stuff on or help me out when I’m doing something dumb (which is often). Like, for example, last night when I maybe let my excitement get the better of me and I might’ve jumped on the bed and thrown a pillow that accidentally broke the lamp on the nightstand. While I don’t really think writing that “Bill Mr. Harrington” note with the school’s address was Ned’s best idea, it helped me not care too much, enough that I didn’t do something dumber like actually tell Mr. Harrington. It might come back to bite us, though. Still, he was genuinely helpful this morning when Flash showed up too. 

While we were hanging out in the girls’ room waiting for them to finish packing, there was a knock on the door. I figured it was Mr. Harrington about to yell at me and Ned for the broken lamp, so I motioned to Ned to shut up and move closer to the head of the bed we were already sitting on where, courtesy of the wall between the bedroom and bathroom, he wouldn’t be able to see us as long as he stayed by the doorway. MJ gave us an odd glance before she got up to answer it. Her annoyed, “What are you doing here?” didn’t immediately disqualify Mr. Harrington, but the sound of Flash’s voice saying, “I, uh, brought you guys some muffins,” made me tense at the first syllable.

“The free muffins they give us for breakfast?”

MJ’s dripping sarcasm nearly made me laugh even though I couldn’t see her, but Y/N turning from her suitcase and walking over to join them killed it still in my throat. 

“Nope,” he said. “They’re fancy muffins from a bakery a few miles away.”

I wanted to roll my eyes out of my skull.

She may not like him, but that doesn’t mean I was wrong about him being into her. What a dumb way to impress someone. “Fancy muffins.”

“Expensive?” MJ asked. Even without seeing her face, I could tell she was giving him the squint death stare. It’s scary to have to respond to that face if you don’t know what the right answer is.

“Yes, especially with the delivery fee,” he said, sounding prepared for the question, “but they’re from a small local place, not a chain, which I figured you guys would appreciate. Actually, I think you’d like the woman who owns it, she was super grouchy and hard to convince.”

“Convince?”

“They don’t normally deliver at 5 in the morning.”

“Oh, so you thought you could just—”

“What kind did you get?” 

That’s one of the things I like about Y/N. She knows how to manage tempers and when to jump in; she has Flash and MJ down to a science. In that moment, though, I wanted MJ to fire her most confrontational questions at him with no mercy.

“Well, they’re all apology muffins—” I heard MJ scoff. Exactly. She gets it. “But I got blueberry, chocolate, obviously, coffee, cranberry orange, maple, I think that one has chicken in it or something, and banana nut.”

Ned and I turned towards each other with silent smirks at the last one. It’s a dumb joke, but under normal circumstances we’d never resist—

“Cool. Since you’ve brought so many, you can come in.”

Sometimes MJ drives me up the wall. This was one of those times. 

I mentally took back my agreement with her scoff.

The three of them came into the room, and for a couple seconds, Flash didn’t see us. The girls were closer to the window than they were to the wall and the bed Ned and I were sitting on, and he didn’t look behind him. Until MJ pointed us out directly.

“You can give them some too,” she said, her expression bordering on smug. “Apology muffins, right?”

Flash froze for a second. I straightened my back. Neither Ned or I said anything.

“Yeah, yeah,” he nodded. “Of course.”

Surprisingly, he shook his shoulders like a bug just buzzed by his head and walked over, opening a giant rectangle of a box up to us. 

“Take however many you guys want.”

I stared at him, not moving. Nobody flinched. Then I realized he was tapping the side of the box with his thumb. Not in an asshole come on, hurry up way, but in an anxious way. Just as I started to reach toward the box, Y/N asked:

“Why’d you get so many of the coffee ones?”

Flash looked away at just the right second. 

Did I technically cave first by reaching into the box? Yes. But did anyone see? No.

Although, I guess he technically caved by offering us the muffins in the first place. Ha. All the same, I took a blueberry one. 

“They’re my dad’s favorite. I wanted to surprise him, you know? But I can’t even get a hold of.... Um, are your guys’ parents going to pick you up when we get there, or are you actually staying for school?”

“Staying.”

“All of you?” 

He looked around to ask all of us, even me and Ned. We all nodded. When he looked at me, though, his eyes twitched. It’s a face I’ve gotten a lot before. He realized he said parents. 

“You said these are orange cranberry?” Ned asked, pointing. 

Flash nodded. 

“They’re solid, though the banana nut ones are probably the best.”

As I said, under normal circumstances, like if one of the girls had said it, I would’ve laughed right then, but I’m not used to laughing around Flash. Ned, who usually follows that same rule, shook his head and grinned, if a little bit... nervously?

“Hell no!” he said, pretending to be mildly outraged. “I’m not eating banana-bust-a-nut muffins.”

A second surprise: Flash tilted his head and paused, clearly as stunned to be told a joke by Ned as the rest of us were to witness it— and laughed. So did everyone else. It was only for a few seconds, like literally three quick seconds, but for the first time for as long as I can remember, all of us were laughing with Flash. It stopped almost as soon as it started. 

Tension crept back in soon so he left pretty quickly after that with an awkward, “See you guys in a few.” Thank god. 

The girls finished tidying their room and going over the homework that’s due today (which we did last week since we knew we’d never get it done on the trip), before forcing me and Ned into the hallway so Mr. Harrington wouldn’t need to check our room for us and potentially find the broken lamp. 

And then, pretty soon, we ended up on the warm bus, loaded in with everyone else. It seemed like everybody but Ned and I were too quiet and sleepy and squinty to be able to talk much before dozing off or staring blankly out the window or scrolling social media on their phones, the latter two options leading to the first in most cases. At this point, I think Ned, Flash, and I are the only ones still awake. 

I’m going to work at tolerating him. As long as he doesn’t cross any lines with anybody from now on, I won’t bait him either. (Admittedly, I’ve been guilty of that, especially recently.) I mean, his comment about his dad was hard to miss. And even when he said it, it wasn’t a shock. Everyone in our grade at some point has had to listen to Flash’s rambling excuses for his parents ignoring or forgetting to show up for school events. Maybe being a dick is just hereditary for him. Or a family tradition. 

I don’t remember how I got so off track. Where was I before? Oh yeah. Risk. Possibilities. The almost-worst case scenario that turned out not so bad. It’s been a messy weekend with plenty of re-evaluating, but the point is simple: I think I’ve got to give a few new things a try, and I’m excited to have a chance over the next couple weeks.

Next update: God only knows.

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[thejostenator]

The Foxhole Cinema: Chapter Eight

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Neil slotted the dustpan and brush back where they had been at the beginning of the day, which already felt like it had been years ago. If working at The Foxhole was like this every day, he might actually start sleeping well again. He’d never gotten a good night’s sleep whilst on the run, but then again, he hadn’t at his Father’s house either. The last time he got a good night’s sleep was probably the one night he and his Mother spent at Uncle Stuart’s house in England after fleeing.

Even though Uncle Stuart was nice enough, his job as a lawyer was just a cover for gang work. It seemed like everyone in Neil’s life was embroiled with criminals somehow- Neil's Father had been a shady man playing at the big leagues by kidnapping Kevin, but Stuart was a genuine gangster. Neil’s mother hadn’t wanted them to go from one crime family to another so that had been a temporary stay, and even though he had Stuart’s number memorized, he had never called it.

Wymack watched him in stony silence before beckoning him closer. “Alright Josten, get a move on. We need to reach Abby’s before midnight so I can stop Kevin from doing something stupid whilst drunk.”

Neil nodded. “Sounds like a difficult task.”

“Don’t I know it,” Wymack sighed, and turned to leave the Cinema. Neil followed him out, close enough to look polite, but also far enough to avoid any malevolent hands or feet.

They were the last two to leave, so Wymack locked the door behind him. Everyone else had left earlier in the day, as their shifts ended, but Neil was forced to wait for Wymack to finish up whatever he was doing so they could leave together. Nicky had left first, wishing him a teary farewell as if they weren’t going to see each other tomorrow. Kevin and Aaron had ignored him as they took their leave, and Andrew had given him a two-fingered salute. Allison had been preoccupied with Seth, but Renee had flashed Neil another of her sugar-sweet smiles and offered to stay with him whilst he waited, but he had turned her down- he didn’t want to spend any more time with her than he had to.

She had accepted that without question.

Unfortunately for Neil, he couldn’t keep up the safe distance from Wymack once he was in his car, which was a two-seater and far too small for a man Wymack’s height. He had to stoop to fit through the driver’s seat door, but luckily Neil had no such issue. His issue lay with Wymack’s hands, and tracking their every move has he adjusted the rear-view mirror and shoved some fluffy dice dangling from it out of the way.

“Abby’s car,” Wymack said as an explanation.

“That explains a lot,” Neil said drily.

“Look,” Wymack said slowly, “You’ve only been here for one day, but you’re still a member of the team, got it?”

Neil nodded, despite the fact he disagreed. He may work at The Foxhole, but he was not part of the team.

“So,” Wymack continued, “Don’t let Minyard push you around. If he starts some shit, you come to me. Christ, if anyone starts some shit, you come to me.”

“Do we need a heart to heart right now, Coach?” Neil huffed, borrowing Andrew’s nickname for Wymack, who groaned in frustration at its use.

The rest of the drive passed in tense silence, and when they reached Abby’s house Neil clambered out of the car as fast as he could, unwilling to be trapped in an enclosed space with a grown man for any longer than possible. Wymack was not as oblivious as he had seemed when they first met, so he placed himself resolutely out of Neil’s personal space now that the option had arisen, holding out that little olive branch.

Neil took it as the peace offering it was and rung the doorbell. The front door swung open within seconds as if the woman inside had been sitting by the door waiting. She had a motherly smile and she looked Neil up and down with a gaze that was somehow both critical and comforting.

“You must be Neil,” she said, moving aside to let him in. “Please make yourself at home.”

Neil slipped off his shoes, and although he was wearing socks, they had enough holes that he could feel the cool floor against his feet. Running away from assailants constantly hadn’t left any of his clothes in the best shape (although these were the only ones he had left now, courtesy of Lola- he was starting to regret not taking the few seconds to kill her). Abby took in his threadbare socks with something akin to pity in her eyes and ushered him into the kitchen, Wymack following at a safe distance.

“We’ll get something in your stomach and then show you to the guest room,” Abby said, pulling a tray of steaming Mac n’ Cheese from the oven and heaping a serving of it into a pastel pink bowl- Neil wondered if she was the one who had chosen the Break Room’s colour scheme.

“Thank you,” Neil said, digging in.

Wymack and Abby both scooped out their own servings and sat down together, opposite Neil.

If there was one thing Neil didn’t miss from before being on the run, it was small talk at his Father’s dinners. Abby seemed determined to draw him out into conversation, commenting on her favorite popcorn flavor (salted caramel) while Wymack grumbled about Allison dumping her job on Neil since it was his first day. At that, Abby sweetly pointed out that Allison was under a lot of stress, and although it wasn’t the right thing to do, she was only doing it to go help Seth.

Neil zoned out at that point- he’d never met Seth, and if even his girlfriend called him ‘the dick’, he probably wasn’t that good of a person.

“Neil?” Abby asked, and it sounded like it wasn’t the first time she’d said his name. Neil snapped back out of his head. “You seem tired. Do you want to head to the guest room now?”

Neil nodded, edging away from Wymack as the older man rose from the table. Wymack noticed the action and sent a meaningful look to Abby, who shot one right back before leading Neil from the table.

The Guest Room had a dark colour scheme, in stark contrast to the rest of the house, with steel-grey curtains that hung down over the windows and coal-black bedspreads, but the walls were covered in movie posters and star decals that matched the gold highlights on the sheets and pillows. A door in the side lead to a conjoined bathroom. It was clear they’d put a lot of thought into it. Abby sat down on the bed and patted the spot next to her. Neil sat down next to her, just out of the reach of her hands. He automatically trusted her more than Wymack, but his Mother hadn’t been afraid to raise a hand to him if it was necessary for his safety.

“Neil,” she said slowly, “You’ve only known Wymack for just over a day, and me for about half an hour, so you have no reason to trust us yet.”

Neil nodded. That was something he understood- not trusting anyone, always being ready for a betrayal. Maybe Abby understood that too.

“But,” she continued, “I hope you give us a chance to earn that trust. I don’t know what you’ve been through in the past, except that it probably wasn’t good.”

“An understatement,” Neil said wryly before he could stop himself.

Abby fixed him with a gaze Neil couldn’t quite interpret, somewhere in the thin realm between pity and compassion. “As soon as you started working at the Foxhole, you became a valued part of the team. But, that also means you will have to spend time around Wymack. I want you to understand that you are in no danger from him.”

Neil sighed. “It’s instinct.”

Abby nodded, some semblance of understanding in her eyes. “I may not know exactly what you’ve gone through, but everyone at the Foxhole has a had a hard past, and this is all about giving people chances. But that’s not just for teenagers. You need to give us adults chances too- chances to show you we won’t be like the people from your past. That’s all we ask of you.”

Neil sighed. “I’ll try.”

That seemed to be enough for Abby, as she rose from the bed and made her way towards the edge of the room.

“Thank you. There are pyjamas on the bedside table, and toothpaste and toothbrush in the connected bathroom,” she paused in the doorway. “Goodnight Neil.”

“Goodnight Abby.”

#aftg series #aftg trilogy #aftg fanfic #aftg fandom #all for the game #all for the gay #the foxhole court #the foxhole cinema #neil josten #david wymack #coach wymack #dadmack #fanfic #ao3fic

[fanficsfromyesteryear]

EVEN STRANGER THINGS - CHAPTER TWO: DON’T YOU WANT ME

"So, this is Family Video," Robin said as she stepped out of her car.

Andi got out a moment later and squinted up at the storefront. "It's no Blockbuster," she observed.

Robin fetched her Family Video vest from the backseat of her car and slipped it on over her blue shirt. "Wow, what a difference." She walked up to the front door and pulled it open, waiting for Andi to enter before following her inside.

The interior of the store smelled like a strange combination of wet carpet, Cheetos, and VCR head cleaner. A red neon sign bearing the words 'Family Video' cast a faint glow onto the figure standing behind the counter, who was doing his best to wipe the smudgy, orange fingerprints off a stack of video tapes. Steve Harrington didn't bother to look up when he heard the door open. He knew Robin was coming in. What he didn't expect was Andi Marsh, but he'd find out about her soon enough.

"Hey, Dingus," Robin greeted Steve. She leaned over the top of the counter. "Having fun?"

Steve stopped what he was doing long enough to glare at Robin. "I'll have you know—" He cut himself off. Movement caught Steve's attention from across the store. He turned his head in that direction and for the first time noticed Andi standing there. "—that I'm about to be."

With furrowed brows, Robin followed Steve's gaze until it landed on Andi. She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. "Wow, Steve," she said. "Drool much?" She laughed a bit before grabbing Steve's arm and adding, "Look, don't get your hopes up. I don't think you're her type."

Steve scoffed. "What do you mean I'm not her type? I'm irresistible. Have you seen this hair?" He ran his fingers through said hair and gave Robin a cheeky grin for emphasis. "Who could resist this?"

"I don't know," Robin said thoughtfully, "maybe someone who doesn't like boys?"

"What makes you think she doesn't like boys?" Steve asked, studying Andi. She didn't strike him as someone who liked girls—sure, she had a bit of a tomboyish look to her and carried herself with the same sort of confidence that was notorious among high school guys, but so had Carol, and there was no doubting her love for men. Robin had some variation of those same qualities too though, and she hadn't struck him as someone who liked girls, either, but look how that had turned out. Maybe his lesbian detector was broken. Then again, what was a lesbian supposed to look like?

"Because," Robin said, breaking Steve's train of thought, "the last guy that tried flirting with her got punched in the face, kind of like you did last summer."

Steve considered this for a moment, wincing a bit at the memory Robin’s words brought up. "Well, that doesn't sound good for me."

"It sure as hell does for me," Robin said.

For a while, Andi was too busy perusing the aisles to pay Steve and Robin much attention. She was vaguely aware of Steve watching her every now and then. Once, she'd glanced over and they'd briefly made eye contact, but from then on, she'd made a point of ducking behind shelves in an attempt to stay out of his line of vision. Still, she could hear them talking, and she was pretty sure they were talking about her. She tried to drown out their conversation, and at last, it stopped altogether. She thought she was finally in the clear until, once again, she felt eyes on her. With a huff, Andi spun around only to find both Steve and Robin looking intently at her—Steve, with his elbows rested on the counter top and his chin in his hands, and Robin, with her palms on the counter as she leaned forward to get a better view. Andi rolled her eyes. "Can I help you guys with something," she called, "or are you just looking?"

Steve smiled as he waved at Andi. "Nah," he said, "we're just looking."

Andi scrunched her eyebrows as the corners of her lips turned down to form a frown. "Well, let me know if I can find anything for you," she said, her gaze settling on Steve, "like, I don't know, your brain? You've been staring at me for the past five minutes, and if you think I'm gonna find that cute and fall instantly in love with you, you've lost your mind."

From beside Steve, Robin laughed, bringing her hands up in slow applause. Steve couldn't help but chuckle as well. Robin had warned him, after all, and he'd walked right into that one. "I'm Steve," he called from across the store.

Andi's frown softened a bit. "Andi," she said. "Are you always this stupid?"

"Sometimes," Steve replied with a shrug. "Are you always this pissed?"

"Only when provoked."

As the next hour passed, the three of them made conversation—Steve, leaning against the wall, Robin cross-legged on the floor, and Andi seated on the counter. Throughout the course of it, Andi realized that Steve may not have been the self-adoring asshole she'd initially taken him to be. Sure, he liked his hair too much and thought he was way funnier than he actually was, but he was somewhat tolerable, which was more than Andi could say for Chris and his gang of morons.

Andi glanced at the clock on the wall. "I should probably get going," she said. "I need to get home before my parents start asking questions." She hopped down and started towards the front door.

"What, are you going to walk back to the school?" Robin asked, getting to her feet.

Andi shrugged. "Yeah," she said as if it were obvious and no problem at all. Before either Robin or Steve could object, she pushed open the door and stepped out into the afternoon sunlight. She had almost made it out of the parking lot when she heard the door swing back open and Steve yell, "Hop in!"

With a sigh, Andi stopped in her tracks and turned around. "Aren't you supposed to be working?"

Steve waved a hand dismissively. "My shift ended an hour ago," he said. "Besides, I can't let a pretty girl like you walk alone in this cold all the way back to the high school." He unlocked his car door and looked at Andi expectantly. "You coming?"

Andi rolled her eyes. Reluctantly, she closed the distance between her and Steve's car. Steve moved as if to open the passenger side door for her, but Andi pushed him back. "I've got it," she said. She climbed in, and soon after Steve was sitting beside her in the driver's seat. Andi glanced over. "Touch me and you die," she warned.

As they pulled into the school parking lot, Andi pointed her car out to Steve. He pulled to a stop in the space beside it, and Andi grabbed the door handle, but Steve stopped her. "Wait," he said.

Andi glanced at him over her shoulder. "What?" she demanded, an eyebrow raised over the top of her sunglasses.

"Look," Steve said, "I hope we can be friends. I mean, I get it that you like Robin, and I don't want to come between the love of two lesbians—"

"What? No!" Andi stared at him in disbelief. "I'm not a lesbian, Steve."

Steve couldn't have hidden the relief that washed over his features if he tried. "Oh, thank God," he said.

"That doesn't mean I like you, though."

"No," Steve admitted, "but it means I have a chance."

Andi pursed her lips. Technically, he had a point.

"The Hawk is showing a scary movie on Halloween night," Steve continued. "People are gonna dress up, they're giving away free candy—it’ll be great. If I can get you to like me by then, will you go with me?"

Andi laughed. "There's no way you'll get me to fall for you in 3 weeks."

"You've never been seduced by Steve Harrington before."

Andi opened the car door. "Right," she said, getting out, "and you've never tried seducing Andi Marsh before. Good luck with that." She closed the door with a cold smile and watched him drive away.

With crossed arms, Andi watched his car as it faded into the distance. There was no way she was going to give in to Steve Harrington.

#wattpad fanfic #fanfic series #stranger things series #stranger things #robin buckley #steve harrington #steve harrington x oc

[requiemofamemory]

Caught in the Middle

Los Angeles, the city of flowers and sunshine, capital of “entertainment”, these are surely nicknames worth of movies, Oscar-winning ones more precisely. Despise the flamboyant sleepless aura that L.A inspires, at its’s core, the city has a busy underworld and if you’re lucky enough one can make twice the money and fame than my more licit ways, but only the smartest chose to never get involved in the first place.

1753 E Olympic Blvd, 2:14 AM

The name of the “club” was Alexandria, the perfect mix of social classes interacting for the sake of quality entertainment, heavily guarded and located on the underground of a stripper club, the only access to it is a steel soundproof trapdoor and the password. The ventilation system was the best in the market, commissioned and meticulously designed, yet to the ones with a more refined sense of smell, Alexandria’s scent was a blend of alcohol, cheap cologne, blood and sweat masked by refrigeration from the huge air conditioners and cleaning chemicals making it...bearable to stay for 2 hours or so. Andrea arrived 1 hour earlier, as requested by "boss", Ramon Cortes (owner and administrator of Alexandria), she wore a tight white dress, gladiator high heels, simple makeup, and a hand purse. The doormen didn't even bother to request the password, simply nodding and opening the trapdoor for her, one them even offered her his hand so she'd walk down the stairs safely, Andrea replied with a charming smirk. -"Evenin' boys." The doormen smirked and complied with a nod. As she walked the stairs, Andrea could see how crowded it was today, as it usually was on Fridays. Alexandria was 200 meters long, and 70 meters wide with two levels, a regular club would have a lesser space but, regardless of looking like a regular VIP club, Alexandria was far from ordinary. With a stage, the lower floor for the dancers and upper open level for the more “privileged” clients, several private big rooms for various purposes. The lights were dim with red and blue nuances and flashes here and there, it was enough to hide the client’s faces (if you’re not too close to them), but visible enough for the staff to see the source of any ruckus or anyone trying something “funny”. 

The blonde entered the left red door corridor, the main access to the owner's office and consequently the safest space in the whole club. Hugo, “captain” of Alexandria’s security, Ramon’s driver and private bodyguard, was at the door watching the movement. 

“Hey, Hugo. How're the kids.” Andrea asks as Hugo opens the door. 

“All fine, ma’am. Thanks for the tickets for the game by the way.” 

Andrea gave the  6′2″ man a smile as she walks inside the office - “Nah, you guys deserve it.”

Once the door closed, Andrea was faced by one of her favorite visages. Ramon with lots of dollar bills, a glass of whiskey and packs of various drugs on top of his desk. “Andy wendy! Love of my life!” The man in red suit replied as he opened his arms, walking his way to Andrea and hugging her, soon after grabbing her face and giving the lady two “besitos” on her cheeks and one on her lips. 

By the stench of whiskey, cigarettes and old pizza in his breath, Andrea was starting to connect the dots, giving a suspicious close smile. “You asked me to come early. What’s up?” She replied, sitting on a fancy chair on the other side of the table. 

“Well...you have a big one today, I don’t need to remind you of that, right? The other girl is kinda feisty, not the regular skinny ones...and from Boston.” Ramon, on the other hand, sits on the side of his table, hands resting upon its surface.

Andrea nodded with her head, crossing her arms. “Uhum.” There was something off about Ramon and she gave him the “motherly” stare for him to spit it out.

“Aaaaand...” He replied, now clenching his hands together, the man’s facial expression started to change from jolly to secretly desperate. “I might need your extra services on something.” 

“What did you do?” Andrea started, Ramon immediately replied with- “Hey, in my defense I was doing my duty, okay? Providing security for the masses. And by masses I mean my share of the town...things just got a bit out of hand.”  Andrea looked at her “boss” up and down, bending her head slightly to the right. “You need a bodyguard? Isn’t Hugo doing that already? He’d be offended if he finds out you’re replacing him.”

“I talked to him. The man has a wife and children, I need someone 24/7. Actually, he’s glad it’s going to be you.” 

“I didn’t even accept it!” 

Ramon replies with puppy eyes - “He said you would.” Andrea pondered for a few seconds, then let out a sigh. - “Yes, sure. What gang and what’s in for me?”

“I’ll raise your salary to 18.000, I’ll give you all the weapons you need and a new bike, anyone you want. Oh, and don’t worry about it, its just one guy.” 

“Bullshit.” Andrea replied with a higher tone, rising up from her seat. “Four times my salary, full armory for one guy? No gang? Who’s after you? Rambo?”

“Hey mami, take it easy! You’re not alone in this. Got my best team to take care of the rest, you’re not getting killed or anything. I just need a top-trained, highly trusted bodyguard to stay with me all times and thought of you! I’m sure we’ll have lots of fun together.” Ramon replied, side-hugging the woman with a big smile. “So? What do you say?” Andrea never saw Ramon this nervous, he was trying so hard to hide it , maybe it to make her feel more secure and accept the deal, maybe to make him look strong and confident in the eyes of others during a life-threatening situation. In the end, she couldn’t deny his offer, needless to say Ramon was far more relaxed, relieved even, he kissed her goodbye and let the woman do one last “show;” before taking the role of his private bodyguard. Again.

.-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.-

 The only person who refers to Andrea’s caged catfights is Ramon, maybe he likes to distort the idea of violence by just an act of entertainment. But the truth is, people love violence, they didn’t pay 80 bucks to see to hot girls pretending to be fighting just to turn them on, no one in Alexandria is satisfied until they see either one of the chicks down and bloody. And that’s why Andrea was their favorite.

Andrea Muller had all the proper skills to knock the new girl’s teeth in 10 minutes, but she knew that wouldn’t please her fans, so she makes it last, building up till the other girl is exhausted to finally pin her down and finish her with a sequence of punches. By the end, Andrea’s knuckles were red and bruised, her nose was broken, no one knew which blood was whose her adversary was completely knocked out, but the crowd was cheering, so it was indeed a good day.

As usual, Andrea walked to the changing room accompanied by George, a very sweet unlicensed doctor, who skillfully replaced her nose and made sure she didn’t break anything else. Andrea always apologized for every time she cursed him when he cleaned and sewed her wounds or when he relocated her members. After, being properly treated Andrea took off her clothes with difficulty, although it was just a sports bra and a lycra shorts. Bringing her painkillers with her to the shower and turning it on, at first the water was cold, then she gradually made it warmer. Andrea cupped one of her hands, placed the pills on her mouth and swallowed it with the water.

“Hmmm.” She closed her eyes, feeling her muscles and joints screaming for relief. When she opened her eyes she could see the blood and water going down the drain.

( @vizlla​)

#rp #oc #andrea muller #duncan vizla #polar #sorry for the late starter #hehehe #character intro

[emotionally-imbruised]

1 | Lights, Camera, Organized Crime.

Word Count: 5.9k

“And finally, I’m thinking upon entrance to the gala there will be a spot in the lobby displaying the information of the charity the proceeds of the entire night will be going to. Miss Benson, has your family decided on said charity?”

All eyes of the people sitting in the large boardroom move to the blonde-haired woman sitting at the head of the oversized oak table however, Veronica’s attention is not on them. Instead, the young businesswoman is sat on the edge of the seat with her left knee shaking anxiously as she stares down at the phone sitting in her lap, hoping it will light up with a notification from one of her brothers very soon. A silent moment passes, and her phone screen remains dark, which causes her to groan internally. Still not paying attention to anyone else, she lets out a sigh before moving her gaze to look out the large floor to ceiling window that exhibits the bustling streets of Manhattan below; allowing her mind to wander.

“Miss Benson?”

“V-.” A hushed voice sounds to her left while a foot firmly comes in contact with her shin; finally gaining her attention.

“What?” Veronica snaps her gaze to Alison, her cousin and business colleague with a harsh tinge in her voice; unsure of what she could possibly want right now. Ali doesn’t answer but rather just nods her head in the direction of everyone else who is intently watching the two of them. With a quick breath and adjustment to her posture; Veronica politely addresses them as professionally as she can. “I’m sorry, what was the question?”

“We were just finalizing everything for your parents’ memorial benefit on Friday night, have you and your brothers agreed on a charity for the event?”

She observes the board that is displayed behind Carly, the event planner that was hired and sees a number of different charities listed for her to choose from. “Uhm yes actually. All of them.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Carly asks incredulously, and everyone else looks at each other questionably. “But there’s only ever been one charity chosen each year.”

“Well maybe it’s time to switch it up, don’t you think?” Veronica challenges with a straight face. “This gala raises an obscene amount of money every year and my parents were very charitable, as you all know. So instead of donating some of the proceeds to one charity, donate all of the proceeds to multiple. All the charities you have listed sound great, but also add in New Alternatives if you could please.”

“New Alternatives?” The planner asks as she quickly starts frantically typing on her laptop. “The one regarding LGBTQ+ homeless youth?”

“Precisely.” With one last look around the boardroom, V begins standing from her chair; smoothing out her silky white blouse and black pencil skirt before slowly inching her way towards the door and continuing. “I have no doubt that your plans will allow the night to be a success like always, Carly. This all sounds fantastic and I appreciate everything you’ve done but if you don’t mind, I am needed elsewhere.”

“Oh, of course. Thank you for your time Miss Benson.”

The click of her pointed black heels that sounds as soon as she steps out of the boardroom is almost deafening in the empty hallway, but she pays no attention to it as she is now on a mission to get back home to The Upper East Side of the city. Once she’s made it about halfway down the hall, a door clicks shut, and she hears footsteps following after her — but she couldn’t be bothered to look back and see who it is. “V, wait up.”

There’s no need for her to turn around to know that Alison has come after her and she really doesn’t have the patience to either. But still, she pauses her movements and slowly turns to face her cousin. “I really don’t have time to get grilled right now.”

“Okay, then give me a quick summary of what’s going on because you’re clearly distracted. Everything alright?”

Knowing she’s not going to be able to get out of this one, V quickly glances around to make sure nobody else is listening before replying in a hushed tone. “Spencer and Logan still aren’t home.”

“Still? Ronnie, it’s been almost three weeks.”

“I know,” she responds and shakes her head, making sure to lower her voice before continuing. “When they said they had business to take care of in London, I didn’t know what the hell they were getting into and fuck, I just want my brothers back.”

“Those two are going to be the death of this family I swear to god,” Alison groans as she drags her hand down her face aggravatedly. “And I’m assuming this business is the business I think it is and not what everyone else assumes. Oh, let me go out on a limb here and guess that my brother has something to do with it too.”

“Wouldn’t doubt it. They’ve been so focused on everything related to our other line of work and I’m starting to get concerned. I’ve been covering for them in meetings and press interviews for the past three weeks now with the news buzzing about this damn gala, but for all I know the two of them could be dead somewhere in Europe because of some gang related thing… I don’t know Ali. I’m actually going to go insane if I don’t hear something soon and Chase hasn’t told me anything.”

An awkward silence inflates the space between them, but it’s short lived as if on cue Veronica’s phone buzzes with a notification from her oldest brother saying ‘home.’

“That’s Spence, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is. I’m going to go see them,” Veronica tells her and starts walking towards the elevators again. “If it comes up in the news that my brothers or yours were found dead, don’t be too alarmed. It’ll be because I was the one who murdered them. Actually no, I’ll leave Chase to you.”

Alison remains quiet as she watches her little cousin storm down the remainder of the hallway and disappear out of sight, before silently muttering to herself. “Oh, those boys have no idea what’s coming for them.”

The rainy, windy air whips Veronica’s ponytail around as she pushes her way through the heavy revolving door that acts as the main entrance to her family’s establishment. Rolling her eyes to herself, she lets out an aggravated sigh as she looks up to the cloudy sky above and pauses for a second; taking in the building she just walked out of.

It’s not the largest skyscraper that shadows the streets of NYC by any means, but the infamous Benson Buildingis definitely a staple with its unique structure and appearance that still allows it to stand out even with being in vicinity of other popular attractions such as the Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall. The best part of it, however, is that it is only a few short blocks away from The Sterling; the Midtown located hotel that Veronica’s family owns and operates.

Of the many things Benson Inc. has ownership of, The Sterling hotel chain is of the most successful and has grown internationally. Having only one other location in the US, that being in Los Angeles —The Sterling has expanded into numerous countries; having locations across the world in large cities such as Toronto, London, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, Sydney and Dubai just to name a few. The Benson family has truly become an empire of sorts; one that is under the control of three young adults, but an empire nonetheless — even though ⅔ of those said adults might be regretting their entire existence once their little sister is done with them.

Veronica loves her brothers, she really does, but when they pull shit like disappearing on her for three weeks to take care of her family’s so-called ‘gang’ related issues without even a simple text; it’s best to run for shelter once she shows up to confront them about their stupidity. Just like she’s about to right now.

She gains a bit of attention from the people standing outside of the building she just exited, including that of a sole paparazzi that tries to get the latest scoop on the upcoming benefit as well as the whereabouts of her brothers. Veronica knew this would happen. Regardless of how hard she tried to cover for Spencer and Logan, their absence is easily noticed when it comes to meetings and other serious affairs that the three siblings are expected to attend; which is something that the last three weeks has consisted of a lot and is what happens to be fueling V’s internal fire as she ignores the pap and blends herself in with the crowds of fellow New Yorker’s littering the sidewalk, until she rounds a corner and is able to get into the fancy black car that sits there waiting to take her to see her brothers.

It’s a short drive to The Sterling, but with the way Veronica is gnawing on her bottom lip and anxiously shaking her leg once again; it really doesn’t seem that way. As soon as the driver finally pulls up to the main entrance of the hotel, she wastes no time in scrambling out of the vehicles backseat and muttering a quick thank you before making a beeline for the front doors.

Normally she’d take the private entrance located on the opposite side of the building that gives her quick and easy access to the elevators without gaining much attention, but she doesn’t. Right now, she’s on a mission and couldn’t care less about who sees.

Some of the hotel employees recognize her as soon as she steps foot through doors however, they don’t try to engage in conversation like they usually would as she sends them a quick nod and smile before continuing on her way to the elevators; even gaining the attention of some guests as she flawlessly strides over the lobby’s tiled floor. Her impatience is evident in the way she aggressively presses elevator button and taps her fingers against her crossed arms; letting out a huff once the lift doors finally openand making way into the small space alone before pressing in the code that allows her access to the penthouse floor.

There’s a handful of people scattered around the living room talking and helping with the adjustment of bandages that are covering the skin on a few of the guys, but all eyes snap to Veronica as soon as she steps off the elevator; some of them even exchange nervous glances with each other while she continues walking further into the room in an oddly calm manner.

“Where are my brothers?” Everyone stays silent and that feeds her annoyance even more. She waits another moment to see if any of these grown ass men standing in front of her will grow a pair and tell her what she’s wanting to know. As they all remain quiet, V audibly sighs as she shifts her weight from one foot to the other and narrows her gaze at them. “Seriously?”

They still say nothing and just before Veronica can lose her cool, a voice rings from down the hall. “Oh, hey Ron. What’s going on?”

“Chase.” She greets her cousin through gritted teeth as he waltzes into the room nonchalantly, pausing once he sees her cold glare. “Where. Are. They?”

“Well uh, they’re-,” he stammers as he takes in just how truly pissed off she is and tries to think up a quick excuse to cover for his cousins. However, he doesn’t have such luck and ends up letting out a defeated huff. “Logan is in the kitchen.”

“Thank you,” she responds curtly before walking away from them and grabbing one of the pillows off a nearby sofa; but pausing after a few steps so she can look back at Chase over her shoulder. “I’ll deal with you after...That is if your sister doesn’t beat me to it.”

Veronica can see the internal panic he has at the thought of Alison reaming him out and knows she’s done her job. Without anything else to say, she continues onwards to the kitchen with the pillow in hand before coming to a halt in the doorway to give her brother a quick once over.

Of the three Benson siblings, Logan has always been the wild card. Impatient, unpredictable, and sometimes (usually) irresponsible, but with the biggest heart of gold; he grew up driven to get what he wants, even though he may have had an odd way of doing it. Being the middle child, he was always one to follow in his older brothers’ footsteps but also be a huge influence when it came to his younger sister. Veronica grew up adoring both of her brothers, but Logan has always been her partner in crime; which is what makes her even more pissed off when she takes in his current state.

He hasn’t noticed her yet, so he mindlessly continues roaming through the cupboards he’s standing in front of while sipping on what appears to be a glass of rye and coke — based on the bottles that litter the counter nearby. He isn’t wearing a shirt which allows V to see the various cuts and bruises that cover his skin that are clearly from whatever the hell him and Spencer got up to; all of which compliments the swelling around his left eye that undoubtedly will be bruised by tomorrow.

Veronica remains silent as she watches and waits for him to turn around. After a brief second, he finally does turn and immediately widens his eyes once he sees her standing there glaring at him. “Oh fuck.”

“Are you kiddingme!?” She yells before hurtling the pillow at his head — internally cursing herself when he dodges it.

“Hey woah woah woah, chill out for a second and let’s talk about this.”

“Chill out? Logan, how the hell do you expect me to be calm after you just disappeared for three weeks huh?”

“Ok I get that you’re mad, but it was Spencer’s idea,” he tells her while holding his hands up in defence. “There’s a reason and you can blame him for it.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck who-.” She stops as she glances down at a large piece of gauze that has remnants of dried blood splotches covering the right side of his stomach, one bandage she didn’t notice before. “Wait, did you get shot?”

“No, don’t be dramatic,” he scoffs casually. “I was stabbed.”

“Oh my god.” She groans and drags her hand down her face, aggravated by how he’s so unbothered by all of this. “You stress me out, where’s Spencer?”

“Upstairs.”

“Great. We’re going to go talk to him because this is bullshit.”

Logan really isn’t given any time to respond as Veronica backs away from the doorway and starts making way to the living room again; expecting that he’ll follow with the quick glance she sends him before she disappears out of sight. “Guess I don’t have much of a choice.”

Spencer has always been the voice of reason when it comes to the Benson kids. This is why Veronica knows she’ll be able to express her concern and actually get through to him about it, unlike having to deal with Logan’s thick skull. Although he is the most stubborn person she’s ever known, Spencer has always had this soft spot when it’s come to his younger siblings; especially his baby sister. They share a mutual respect and need to protect one another, which just so happens the most comforting yet frustrating part of their relationship.

Without exchanging any words, Veronica and Logan head up the winding staircase to the next level of the penthouse and down another hall to the room that acts as Spencer’s office. When they enter the room, they see their eldest sibling sat behind his large wooden desk mindlessly ignoring their presence. He doesn’t bother looking up from the papers he seems to be so focused on but senses their staring. Another moment passes as he patiently waits to see if Veronica will calm down at all before slowly collecting all the papers spread out around him and pushing them to the side; finally moving his gaze to meet his sisters. “Alright, say what you need to say Ronnie.”

“You two are idiots! Do either of you not realize what I’ve gone through while you were gone? The meetings, conferences, the deals I had to take on just so I could cover your asses while you were off doing god knows what in London? Yeah, that was great. Hell, there was even one deal that went wrong just last week that Ihad to clean the mess up from and cover for because you two were nowhere to be seen. People notice stuff like this, but it’s whatever right? Just leave it to me to make sure everything is seemingly running smoothly and none of this gang bullshit is actually happening, when in reality it is, and it’s fucked. Everything is so fucked, and I just spent the last three weeks worried that I may never see my brothers again because of it… But neither of you really care about that, do you?”

“Of course we care,” Logan speaks up from beside her. “How could you even say that?”

“Because you left!” She yells and frustrated wipes at the tears that have formed in her eyes. “You both left with no explanation and I was thrown into this entire mess. You two know how I like to stay away from this part of everything. I just can’t do it, not after what happened to-.”

“Mom and dad.” Spencer finishes before clearing his throat and looking at her sympathetically.

“Didn’t like any of this before their deaths either, but we couldn’t let what dad built crumble.” She continues with a shaky breath. “We’re supposed to be a team when it comes to anything regarding the family business, but you two left me completely in the dark. Logan’s been stabbed for fuck sake and neither of you have made the effort to tell me why or what happened, so am I just going to have to guess what’s going on? I really hope not. The leastthe two of you owe me right now after everything that’s happened these past weeks is an explanation.”

“You’re right, and we will give you one.” Spencer replies with a sigh as he takes in Veronica’s tense body language. “But I need you to not freak out.”

“Ronnie? Freak out? Cause that never happens,” Logan says sarcastically as he plops down in one of the leather seats placed in front of Spencer’s desk; earning an all too familiar cold glare from his sister.

“CaUSe tHat NeVEr haPpeNs,” Veronica repeats in a mimicking voice before looking back to Spencer. “Please just tell me what’s going on before I throw something at him.”

“Ah yes, because we all know how good your aim is already.” Logan chimes in once more just to push her buttons.

“Would you shut up?”

“Would you stop being a control freak?”

“Would both of you grow the fuck up for once and not act like children?” Spencer groans and rakes his hands through his short hair. “Holy shit.”

Both V and Logan fall silent as they look at their older brother, deciding it’s best that they do as he says to not aggravate him any more than he already is. They remain quiet as Veronica slowly sits down in the seat next to Logan, and they send each other knowing glances before muttering an apology in unison. “Sorry.”

“Mhm,” Spencer replies with an eye-roll. “Now that we can all act somewhat like adults, I’ll get right into it. Long story short, prior to me and Logan leaving there was suspicious activity happening around the city. Every job we sent our guys out to do, failed. Drug deals, product movement, or just a simple meetup — everything was going wrong and they were being attacked by people who would disappear without a trace afterwards; leaving a lot of people hurt or killed in their wake. It was starting to get out of hand, so the two of us looked into it. After some digging, Logan had suspicion that there was an internal source giving away our location information to the attackers.”

“Ok so hold up,” Veronica cuts him off and shakes her head. “Someone close to us?”

“We still don’t know.” Logan answers while shifting his position to look at her better. “We had our suspicions which is what led us to London in the first place, but it was all a setup. Took us the whole three weeks to figure anything out and ended in a crossfire where this gang we came across showed up out of nowhere but knew our every move. The leader of the group we faced knew who we were, where we were from… knew of you too and tried to use your safety as a threat to us.”

“That all happened last night,” Spencer finishes. “We called Chase to make sure nothing happened to you and got on a plane back as soon as we could. We’ve only been home for two hours.”

“And neither of you thought that maybeyou should give me a heads up about any of this?” She asks incredulously while looking between her brothers. “What the hell?”

“We didn’t want to worry you.” Spence tells her firmly. “So, we made sure people were nearby to keep an eye out for you until we got back.”

“I can take care of myself, Spencer.”

“I know you can, but we needed to make sure nothing happened Ron. Not to you. I can’t break my promise.”

Veronica holds his gaze for a minute before slowly having to look away. Her, Spencer and Logan made a promise to their parents to protect and watch out for each other no matter the cost; which is exactly what her brother is referring to. “So, what now?”

“We need to be careful.” Logan pipes up. “Stay on the downlow, try not to attract any attention to us until we figure how we’re going to take these guys down.”

“Maybe stay out of the public eye for a bit,” Spencer adds. “Just focus on the hotel and businesses while trying to make a plan come together.”

“I- that’s going to be a lot easier said than done guys.” Veronica explains and they look at her questionably. “Mom and dad’s benefit is on Friday night.”

“Shit.” Logan mutters before the three of them fall silent, considering this and what it could entail. A few moments pass as they all try to think of something to do before Spencer speaks up again.

“Guess we’ll just have to wing it for now.”

Roughly two and a half hours later, Veronica is sat in the bar that is connected to the hotel’s lobby alone as she impatiently taps her nails against the counter. She glances around at the oddly crowded room for a Wednesday night, as her urge to just go home grows; but she ends up ignoring it as she reaches up to pull her long hair out of its ponytail and lets out a loud sigh.

Her mind has been racing since the talk she had with Spencer and Logan about the threat of imminent danger that seems to be targeting the three of them. It’s not news she was expecting to hear with everything else she’s dealing with in life, but alas, this gang is part of her life too and since it adds so much extra stress — she thought some alcohol could help take a little bit off the edge she’s feeling.

“Thank you.” She mouths to the bartender as he slides her a fourth Cosmo that just so happens to be on the house, again — one of the many perks to owning the place and all. The three drinks she’s already had are definitely creeping up on her, but she couldn’t care less as she picks up the new one and swirls it around a little bit before taking a sip. Normally she wouldn’t go for this type of drink because of the hangover she knows will come with it, but again, she doesn’t really care at this point.

As soon as she sets the cocktail back down onto the bar, her phone chimes with a new notification. Without much thought, she immediately swivels her body to the side so she can grab her purse from the barstool next to her and dig the phone out. It’s just a text from Alison saying she had heard about what happened in London with Spencer and Logan, as well as if there was anything she could do to help.

Smiling at how much her cousin truly cares about her wellbeing, V responds to the message by inviting Ali to meet here for drinks. After a few back and forth convincing, Alison finally agrees to meet up; saying she’d be there in ten minutes and to not ‘get into any trouble’ until she gets there. With one last ‘ok’ text, Veronica puts the phone back in her bag and spins back around to face the bar; only to be met by a stranger sitting in the seat rightnext to her.

“Oh my god,” she blurts and jumps back slightly at the sudden presence.

“Bit jumpy are we, love?” The young, handsome, curly haired man asks in a deep British accent; a playful smirk dancing on his lips as he does so.

“Uh, I- no, I was just distracted.”

“I can tell,” he responds with a slightly raised eyebrow before nodding to something behind her. “Seeing as you completely missed that guy spike your drink.”

“What?” She gasps and turns around to see a man in a black hoodie fleeing from the bar; watching him until he makes a sharp right and disappears out of sight. With a quick shake to her head, she moves her gaze back to her cosmopolitan that is now fizzing with what looks to be a pill of some-sort. Once whatever is in her drink finishes dissolving, she looks back to the stranger as he sips on his water and shrugs. “How did you-?”

“S’ not very hard to be observant,” he chuckles as he waits for the bartender to turn back around so he can wave them over and slides the Cosmo across the counter, away from her. “A water for the lady, please.”

Veronica takes a second to observe him but has to shake her head again, so she doesn’t lose her trail of thought. “How do I know you weren’t the one that spiked it?”

“Because there is a camera right there that I’m sure will show you everything I’m sure you’ve already pieced together in your mind, if you ask for it,” he tells her confidentially, and points to the small security camera that is positioned by the door facing them. “You seem like a fairly smart girl, m’sure you know I wouldn’t have told you if I was the one who did it.”

The bluntness of his words has her taken back for another moment, as he just studies her — observing as she jumps when her phone dings with another notification. She immediately reaches for her phone again, this time to see a text from Logan.

‘Are you home? Shit is happening, Spence is stressing. Are you safe?’

Is all it reads, and she can feel her skin physically go pale. She sits there in silence, staring at the phone and not realizing her hands have started shaking until a larger pair of ring-clad hands reach over and gently place over them; causing her to snap her gaze back up to the man.

“You ok, love?”

“I-uh yes,” she stutters as she stares at his enchantingly beautiful green eyes. “I have to go.”

He watches as she pulls her hands away from him and reaches over to grab her purse — scrambling off her stool as quick as she can and tripping over one of the legs in the process. In an instant, the man is there to steady her from toppling to the ground; making her internally groan as she glances up to see him looking at her with a stupid knowing grin. She takes this time to look him over and absorb in the fancy blue button up shirt he wears that isn’t done up all the way. It’s is doing a horrible job in covering the many tattoos that are etched onto his skin, but she just can’t seem to look away.

Two symmetrically placed sparrows that are inked just above his chest can be seen from underneath the fabric of the shirt and V finds herself overly entranced by that, as well as the cross necklace he wears for a few more seconds before he decides to speak up again. “I think you’re lying.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Sure you are,” he agrees dismissively and straightens the two of them out, removing his hands from her arm and waist. “Now either you’re very drunk, or something bad is going on. Can’t tell which, but with how pale you just got… s’gotta be one of them. Can I help with anything? Call you a cab? Wait with you until someone you know can take you home?”

“I’ll be fine,” she repeats with narrowed eyes. “I appreciate the offer and for the heads up about the drink so, thank you, but I don’t talk to strangers as much as I’ve talked to you and it needs to stop… and I really do have to go.”

“M’Harry, nice to meet yeh,” he tells her in attempt to change the subject and extends his hand towards her, which she looks at skeptically before finally reaching out and shaking. “And you are?”

“Leaving.”

With a quick turn on her heel and a small hair flip, she has her back to him and starts walking away; trying to send a text to Alison as she goes about what is happening and to not bother coming anymore. Her heels click loudly against the marble flooring of the lobby once she steps into it, and just as she’s about to make the sharp left that will take her back to the elevators — a commotion coming from the right catches her attention instead.

Outside of the hotel, what looks to be a full-on showdown is going on. It takes a second for her eyes to adjust to the slightly blurred figures that stand outside the glass doors of the hotel, but she is quickly able to make out one of people as an unfamiliar man wearing a black hoodie, pointing a gun at… Alison.

“Oh no,” Veronica says to herself and instinctively heads right for the doors.

“Miss Benson, you can’t go out there.” A security guard tries to stop her, but it’s useless as she just walks right around him and continues towards the sliding doors.

“You don’t want to do this,” Ali tries to talk down the hooded figure with a shaky voice. Anyone who was nearby on sidewalk has fled the scene upon seeing this guy pull out the gun and has left just them along with the passing cars on the street. Police sirens can be heard in the distance, indicating their eventual arrival — but Veronica knows she needs to act now, and Alison is quick in noticing that. “Ronnie, go back inside!”

“Hey!” She yells to gain the attackers attention, which works, and the gun is soon pointed at her.

The man looks at her with a surprised look before collecting himself and bringing the watch that’s placed on his wrist close to his mouth. “I’ve got eyes on her.”

“Do you?” V challenges and continues walking towards him; making sure to keep her eyes locked on the guns trigger and how his finger is nowhere near it. “What for hmm? What do you want?”

“Stay back or else I’ll shoot.”

“Alright, go for it.” She challenges and continues stepping towards him, pausing for a split second before bringing her foot up to his groin. Hard. “Awe, too slow.”

The man hunches over in pain and Veronica uses this as a chance to knee him in the gut, making sure to knock the rifle out of his hand before he can use it. Just as she’s about to reach down to grab it and go, her attention is diverted when yelling sounds from down the street and two more hooded people round the corner — coming towards them at full speed.

“Ron, we need to go now.” Alison states as she grabs a hold of V’s arm and starts pulling her in the opposite direction.

Veronica just nods in response before reaching down to grab the other man’s gun and taking off. The two girls only make it a few feet before they’re ridding themselves of their heels so they can get away faster, but then a gunshot goes off from behind them; causing them both to jump. Alison doesn’t stop, but V pauses quickly to glance over her shoulder in time to see Harry standing there with a gun pointed towards the other two people. His gaze locks with hers momentarily before he breaks into a sprint to go in the same direction she is. “Run!”

Ali is ahead, but Harry and Veronica aren’t far behind as they make a sharp left and keep going as fast as they can in attempts to get some distance from their pursuers. V knows the other guys aren’t too far behind and isn’t doubtful of there being more nearby; which also has her feeling rather panicky. With a glance over her shoulder to see the very little ground they’ve made; she looks to Harry and decides to voice her concern. “What the hell do we do now?”

“See that car up there?” He breaths out and points to a black Mercedes Benz parked on the on the side of the road about a block and a half up. “Get to it.”

Alison and Veronica both nod in agreement and continue the final sprint to the awaiting vehicle. Once they reach it, Harry instructs them to get inside; which they do, before motioning for the driver to roll down his window so they can speak to one another. “Yes Mr. Styles?”

“I need you to get these two women out of here, ok?” He says between breaths and keeps his eyes trained on the men that are catching up to them again. “Take them wherever they need to go and then meet me at the spot in fifteen minutes.”

“Wait, what about you?” Veronica asks and looks up at him as if he’s gone absolutely insane. “You can’t just take on those guys alone.”

“I’ll be fine,” he tells her with a wink before shutting the door and knocking on its window as a way to tell the driver to go. The car speeds off and Veronica is left speechless as she watches the man she just met, and nonetheless just saved hers and her cousins life; turn around another corner and disappear out of sight.

#harry styles imagine #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles #harry styles fanfic #harry styles writing #harry styles au #harry styles smut #harry styles angst #harry styles fluff #1dff #in the still of the night #gang!au

[valdezmisfits]

hey there demons it’s me, ya boi. yoooo. i’m caitlin. the only interesting things about me are my fifteen tattoos and green hair. i’m a mess of an awkward turtle girl other than that. i also have a ridiculous book collection and lack of knowledge of how gravity works. this post isn’t about me though. it’s about my potato babies casper and sabrina. so on to them under the readmore. i working on getting their pages completed and connections thrown up but i’m open to a lot of things so hit me with your best shot????

⋆ ◦ ° ☾ seychelle gabriel + cisfemale + she/her — have you met sabrina salazar? they are a twenty-five year old known around town as the misfit. they currently work for the savages as a race driver, though they are also a mechanic. they are a greysexual cancer, which means they are resourceful + loyal, as well as emotional + secretive. graffiti, tire marks, arcade racing games.

sabrina irene salazar. people call her sab, brina, or salazar no one’s ever dared to use her middle name as a nickname.

she’s the girl that was primarily raised by her father and brothers. her mother was in her life and still is she just never imprinted on her daughter the way a lot of mother’s do.

her childhood was normal and spent in Salazar Car Garage passing her dad various tools and watching his every move. sabrina idolized her father. 

after high school she had no plans of going to college. she already had a job she knew she’d love at it had her families last name attached to it.

when she was nineteen her dad got sick and had to spend more and more time in the hospital and less and less time in the garage. while yes there were plenty of hands to help out and keep the business afloat there the family was still feeling the pinch money wise.  

she took upon herself to enter her first street race and while she didn’t place first the first time around she still made a little money from it and found an almost high that came from speeding through valdez’s streets.

six months after her first race and shortly after her twentieth birthday she found herself mixing with the savages and she actually didn’t mind.

at twenty-one the man sabrina had idolized all her life passed away. Salazar Car Garage is still open and sabrina works there with her brothers when she’s not working with the savages. 

her car of choice is her prized 1989 nissan 240sx with some modifications of course. she can talk your ear off about cars and their proper care and scolds anyone who doesn’t take care of their ride.

a blunt and sarcastic girl there’s hardly anything sweet about sabrina. she does give the savages a good deal when they bring their wheels through the Salazar garage though. her loyalty is endless and while she’s usually one to choose her words carefully in more stressful situations she’s been known to let her heart rule over her head.

⋆ ◦ ° ☾ devon bostick + cismale + he/his — have you met casper stark? they are a twenty-seven year old known around town as the techie. they’ve been in the gang life for eight years, and currently work for the cobras as a hacker. they are a heterosexual taurus, which means they are independent + persistent, as well as stubborn + lazy. empty cup of noodles, full ashtrays, wires. 

casper adrien stark. cas, ghost boy, the friendly hacker, tony stark wannabe, is winter coming? he’s heard all the clever things dealing with his name. he even keeps a tally of how many jokes are made about his first and last name.

not originally from valdez he’s been here long enough that people seem to forget that fact. he was born in toronto to a mother and a father, he didn’t have any older siblings and never got any younger ones. his family moved when he was sixteen for a reason he never got a straight answer about.

he’s always been fascinated by computers and taking things a part when he was younger he thought he’d be working for the government making gadgets for their secret agents or some shit like that. it’s funny how life works out.

he’s smart maybe a little too smart for his own good sometimes. he dropped out of high school as soon as he could. his grades were good but his attendance was atrocious. he toyed around with thoughts of college but found interesting things to do in valdez that were worth sticking around for. one of those things being the cobras.

casper lives in a single room apartment by himself it’s a rather small space and always littered with empty cup of noodles containers or takeout boxes. not a huge fan of pizza he lives on takeout considering he doesn’t really know how to cook. his apartment has a little patio area with a table and a single chair that has an always overflowing ashtray.

his room is a mattress shoved in a corner with blankets piled on top of it and his beloved computer set up. he has four monitors and everything you’d imagine a hacker to have. when he’s not digging into things he’s playing an obscene amount of video games and drinking monster like it was water. his lifestyle isn’t exactly screaming someone whose going to be around to reach fifty.

casper seems down to earth. seems being a key thing there. because of the things he’s involved in he’s in actuality a rather paranoid human being. he has three sets of locks on his door and a tendency to always check the sliding glass door to make sure it’s locked.

he’s almost always joking around and if your a friend looking for information of any kind all you have to do is bring take out or a monster to his cozy little home. 

#valdez.intro

[ekedolphin]

Sample RP for the World Wrestling Alliance

San Francisco, CA December 9, 2009 8:34 a.m. PDT

“Once there was a way to get back homeward… Once there was a way to get back home… Sleep, pretty darling, do not cry… And I will sing a lullaby…”

Listening to the remastered Abbey Road album by The Beatles on his iPod as he jogs down a sidewalk in the middle of San Francisco, California, John Grant—who, in the ring, called himself “The Lion”, as in a hungry young lion eager to prove his supremacy to the pack—lightly sings the words along with Paul McCartney about midway through the fifteen-minute-long medley that ends the last album The Beatles ever put together.  John unfortunately inherited his mother’s sense of pitch, and so he’s slightly off-key, but he’s focused enough on his jogging that he doesn’t notice.  Besides, in this part of town (and in this kind of cold) there aren’t really a lot of people out to care.

Wearing a light, black jacket with the letters “DV” in flaming blue letters on the back of it, along with black jogging pants, mittens, and Converse running shoes, John is protected, somewhat, from the near-40-degree weather.  He could see his breath in front of him, but it didn’t bother him—he’s learned that battling the elements, whether they were the sub-zero temperatures of his father’s native Juneau, Alaska, or the ninety- and hundred-degree days of the California summers—is the best way to truly tell how someone will hold up against real physical pressure.

Not to mention that singing while jogging was a good way to practice breath control.

In this instance, John wasn’t just jogging for his health; he was jogging to the Inferno Wrestling Academy, the place where his uncle had spent six months from April to October torturing him and fifteen other kids in an effort to churn out the wrestling superstars of tomorrow.  At least, it had started out as fifteen other kids.  John remembered speaking with one of the Academy’s most notable graduates, Antonio Mason, who had gone on to a quite successful career in Japan and Mexico, and having Tony tell him that the Academy was one of the hardest physical regimens he’d ever been through.  Antonio had been a three-time All-State linebacker in high school, so John had known what he’d been getting into when he applied…

…or, at least, he thought he had.

Any illusion that the five-time World Champion was going to take it easy on John just because he was his son was shattered in the first five minutes the younger Grant had spent on the mat.  Steve had forgotten more wrestling moves than most people will ever know, and damn if he hadn’t applied more than a handful of them on John.

As usual, the Academy had a high washout rate for 2009:  Steve Grant demanded nothing but excellence and the deepest commitment from his students, and many people weren’t prepared for that.  But in the end, three students prevailed and graduated from the Academy:  Barry Andrews, a guy who’d started out hating John’s guts (and nicknamed him “Spoon Boy” after the silver spoon John allegedly was born with in his mouth) but had ultimately come to respect him; Violet Waters, the first female graduate in the Academy’s four-year history; and John.

It’s Violet who greets John by raising up on her toes and shyly kissing his lips when she sees him just outside the Academy’s door.  True to her name, Violet was wearing purple; purple, yellow and white were all she seemed to wear, in fact, from the Lakers warm-up jacket to her purple sweatpants and white tennis shoes (with purple highlights).  The 5’7”, bespectacled, cream-colored African-American looks much more like a chemistry major at the University of San Francisco than a future professional wrestler.  But she was, in fact, both.  The shy kiss she greeted John with was an acknowledgement that they were still in the early stages of a romantic relationship.  They’d actually met at the university, ironically; John had just finished some homework at the library and was killing time with a Sudoku puzzle book when Violet saw him and commented that she loved Sudoku.  Their friendship had started quite easily after that.

Though she’d been friends with John for a month or two before they separately came to the Inferno Wrestling Academy, Violet had been stunned to learn that John was the son of “Blue Inferno” Steve Grant, whom Violet had grown up watching and admiring.  John, in turn, had been amazed that the admittedly-nerdy Violet had any interest whatsover in professional wrestling.

Going through the fire together tends to leave the survivors much closer, and that was certainly true with John and Violet, who’d started dating two weeks before graduating the Academy.  They’d agreed to let things progress at their own pace, and thus they were still a little shy, a little tentative around each other.  Violet had had no serious boyfriends in high school; just a couple of disastrous first dates, but she liked John and wanted to make sure this relationship went right.

“You’re up early this morning,” John comments as he gave his girlfriend a light hug, and upon breaking the hug he slips a hand into his jacket to turn off his iPod and then removes the earphones.

“Yeah well, Harry told me you’d be showing up to view your first promo video in its completed form.”  For her part, Violet had already completed a promo video and sent it to ten wrestling federations across the country, but had yet to hear back from any of them.  If she was disheartened by it, she’d never shown it around John; besides, the chemistry degree she was working towards would ensure her a job in any number of fields when all was said and done.  At the moment she was holding down employment with a start-up paint company.

“If nothing else, that 25-minute classic I had with Antonio on Halloween night should be more than enough to impress the scouts,” John says, feeling a burst of confidence as he remembered the night that he and Antonio Mason had put on a masterpiece of high-flying, brawling and technical wrestling at Shane’s Pub in Alameda.  The shows that his father put on weren’t designed to replicate the big-time feel of the major pro wrestling federations of yore, but more the cult feel of the old ECW and small-time bingo-hall operations.  But he stressed more than anything the ability to wrestle and the ability to entertain; he would have nothing to do with “garbage wrestling”.

“Hell, the highlights alone would convince me,” Violet says with a smile.  “The Flying Space Tiger Drop that missed and wiped out the referee and the guy at the concession stand… the reversal of the Death Valley Driver that ended in a Tiger Suplex… and you got so much elevation on the Superfly Splash at the end I thought you’d never come down.”

John kisses Violet again, and says, “I’m glad to see my girlfriend, anyway, isn’t lacking in confidence.  What about the actual interview?  What’d you think of that?”

Violet, perhaps sensing that John wanted an honest critique of his interviewing skills, takes a moment or two to think before replying.  “It reminded me a lot of your father in the latter days of his career,” she decides.  “If you had butterflies up there, it certainly didn’t show.  You displayed a level of confidence in your abilities that’s remarkable for someone who’s only had a handful of actual professional matches.”  Violet takes a slight stutter-breath here, and John already knows her well enough to know that the constructive criticism was about to come.

“You may have shown a little bit too much bravado, in fact,” she adds.  “You put a lot of pressure on yourself to succeed in the business—and, really, in everything you do.  Almost like you’re afraid that if you don’t work hard every moment of every day, someone’s going to come and snatch everything away from you.”

John purses his lips, nodding slowly.  Violet’s honesty was one of the things he’d come to admire about her, and that honesty was always couched in tact.  “You might be right about that:  I do put a lot of pressure on myself.  I do want, very much, to succeed in the wrestling business.”

“Because of your father?” Violet asks, her tone making it pretty obvious that she already knows the answer.

Again, John nods.  “And Uncle Brian.  And even Uncle Adam.  The three of them combined won just about every championship in every division—heavyweight, light-heavyweight, tag-team—that they set their minds to getting.”  Indeed, it was the style of John’s uncle, “The Tiger” Brian Grant—far moreso than his father’s—that John had emulated in developing his own wrestling abilities.  A lot of that had to do with the phyiscal differences between Steve and John:  John was 6’3”, 227 pounds—tall by normal standards but about average among his wrestling peers.  Steve, on the other hand, was 6’9”, 295 pounds in his wrestling days (though he was about 305 pounds in retirement).  Steve Grant had been able to do insanely high-flying moves that were nearly unprecedented for a man of his size, and it was because of his martial-arts training and tremendous flexibility and conditioning.

John had no martial-arts training to speak of, and he also lacked Steve’s sheer power and size.  Therefore, he had to rely on his technical mastery, speed, and high-flying ability.

“My father and Uncle Adam were so driven and determined to reach the absolute heights of the business,” John continues.  “Even though they were best friends most of their careers, and later family, it didn’t matter to them if they were fighting alongside one another or against each other.”

“‘In this business, you can make friends or you can make money,’” Violet quotes, repeating the words that Chief Jay Strongbow once said to Scott Hall and Kevin Nash.

“Right,” John says, nodding in agreement.  He’d always wondered, though, whether Uncle Brian agreed with that philosophy.  Based on his more modest list of career accomplishments compared to Steve, he doubted it was so.

“Well, let’s get in there,” Violet says, “and see the video that Harry and the gang have put together for you.”

Smiling, John takes Violet’s hand and walks into the Inferno Wrestling Academy with her, his calm demeanor belying the anxiety he felt at this moment.  This video could either kick-start a career for him, or, in twenty years’ time, lie covered with dust at the bottom of a moving box somewhere.

~*~*~

A few minutes later…

Having removed his jacket to reveal a Sgt. Pepper album cover T-shirt underneath it, John sits with Violet in the darkened film room of the Academy, watching the video that he’d put together.  Highlights of his match with Antonio Mason at Shane’s Pub start the video off, showing, of course, the offensive and defensive moves that were in John’s favor.  In real life, the match had been far more back-and-forth than one might assume by watching the highlight video.  But highlight videos weren’t meant to emulate real life; they were meant to spotlight one individual in particular.

John knows that the complete video of the match will also be sent to the wrestling promotions that he’s applying for, and so he doesn’t feel bad that the highlight video shows Tony (whom he had tremendous respect for) getting his ass kicked.  And anyone who really knew wrestling would know that Tony’s ability to take those bumps was just as impressive as John’s ability to perform the moves in the first place.

So John watched, seeing these highlights for the first time.  He’d consulted Harry Jaffee, the video editor—as well as Steve and Brian Grant—as to what moves he would like to have spotlighted, but he hadn’t yet had the opportunity to see himself wrestle on video.  They’d certainly spared no expense, either:  The video was a dual-layer DVD/Blu-Ray combo, presented in 1080p, and displayed on a large flat-screen television.  The film footage had been shot in anamorphic widescreen format.  “Blue Inferno” Steve Grant was a multi-millionaire several times over, and he wasn’t afraid to use that money to provide the best for his students.

John watched as he springboard-vaulted off the top rope, and was caught by Antonio.  Tony had prepared to hit a fallaway slam, but John had grabbed the back of his knee and pulled him down to his back.  There was another highlight of the Death Valley Driver reversal into a Running Tiger Bomb; the Flying Space Tiger Drop that took out the referee and the concession stand guy, sending popcorn and soda flying everywhere (but missing Antonio completely); the STF, figure-four leglock and Sharpshooter he’d applied at various points during the match; and, finally, a high-elevating Superfly Splash that ended John’s first professional match with a win.  John lets out a whistle as he realizes for the first time how close he’d coming to slamming his head against the ceiling.

Then came the promo part of the video, during which announcer Alex Yost interviewed John following his match, while “Hells Bells” by AC/DC played lightly in the background to compliment it.  John knew that this last bit showed some technical mastery from Harry and the gang:  When the interview had been taking place, “Hells Bells” was blaring from the sound system.  John had had to strain to be able to hear Alex’s questions over the din.

Alex Yost was dressed nattily in a brown sports coat, blue-and-silver tie and pants, and was about fifty years old.  His neat appearance contrasted considerably with John, who looked like he’d just come through hell—but at least he’d come out triumphant.

“Thanks Quinn, and I’m standing here now with the winner of tonight’s epic main event, ‘The Lion’ John Grant.”  Turning to angle towards John now, Alex continues to speak.  “John, you were born and raised in this business.  You’re the son of the great, former world heavyweight champion ‘Blue Inferno’ Steve Grant, and a graduate of the Inferno Wrestling Academy in San Francisco.  What does it feel like to win your first professional match?”

When John spoke, his breath was still quite elevated from the hard work he’d put in, but he wasn’t out of breath.  “Well, Quinn, it’s the culmination of months of hard work training to become one of the bright young stars of the business.  The Inferno Wrestling Academy churns out only the most capable, most determined individuals, with the strongest, most disciplined minds.  As you can probably tell by the way Tony and I brought down the house tonight, I didn’t breeze through the Academy just because my father was teaching me.”

“And I know you’re not satisfied with simply one great match,” Alex replied, stating the obvious.  But then, it was supposed to be a leading question.

“Absolutely not; the Grant family of wrestlers has always been a family that strives to be the unqualified best at what we do.”  John spoke with a steady intensity, and while he’d organized his thoughts in advance of the interview, he was, generally speaking, improvising what he was saying.  “At the peak of his career, there was no wrestler, in any federation, whom my father couldn’t beat.  I know I’ve only had one match, but I’m hungry for more.  I want to prove myself against the greatest competition in the world, and establish my name as a champion just like my father, my uncle, and my uncle-in-law.  Hell—I want to one day surpass all of them.  

“So to every professional wrestling promoter in the world—if you’re looking for someone who will push himself every day to put on the highest-caliber, most entertaining matches, someone who’ll come in early and stay late, and do whatever it takes to make himself—and the company—successful, you’re looking at him.  And for every one of the guys in the back, you’d better start worrying about protecting your spots, because this hungry young Lion is coming, and he’s not playing with kid gloves.”

Both Johns—the one on-screen talking to Alex, and the one in real-life sitting next to Violet—chuckle softly at his use of a mixed metaphor there.

With that, the screen fades to black, and “Hells Bells” by AC/DC continues to play, a little louder than before, before it, too, fades.  Then the lights come up in the film room.

“Looks good, Harry,” John says to the very talented, albeit a little skittish, technical manager before the latter could utter a word.

“I agree,” Violet opines, giving John’s hand a light squeeze.  “I know you’re gonna be sending it to, like, fifteen different places, but where do you hope to end up?”

“Well, the World Wrestling Alliance is gonna be starting up again in mid-January,” John tells her.  “They’re gonna start off slowly, kind of having more of an independent feel to it, so it’ll be ripe for opportunities for a young wrestler to prove himself and move up the ranks.”

“Looks like you’ve already got this all mapped out,” Violet tells him, and a sheepish grin and shrug from John confirms that without words.  “Well, wherever you end up, I know you’ll put on a show, and make your family—and me—proud.”

John blushes lightly, and gives Violet a soft kiss on the lips.

#johngrant #rp #oc rp #e-wrestling

[dauntless-gothamite]

An Aroace In Need of Space...and Hamburgers [5/8]

Part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | ao3

A/N: there is a small chunk of Archie/Veronica in this chapter where they kiss. It's mildly suggestive, but there is no smut, and the majority of the chapter is Betty and Jughead.

Chapter 5: The Morning After (It’s Not What You Think)

Jughead woke to the pleasant smell of eggs and bacon wafting through the trailer. Wait, he thought and looked around, quickly realizing his was not the trailer; it was betty’s house. He remembered what had happened last night and how he’d planned on going home but his dad called and told him to stay put because the ghoulies were out making drug runs. He grabbed his phone from the table next to the couch he’d slept on and quickly sent his dad a text to make sure everything was fine and let him know he was still at Betty’s.

“Well, look who’s finally awake,” someone said from the kitchen in a judgemental tone that could only belong to Mrs. Cooper.

Rolling his eyes, Jughead said “Good morning Mrs. Cooper,” trying to sound as nice as possible. Normally, he wouldn’t bother, but she’d let him stay over last night and, more importantly, she was cooking breakfast, and Jughead was intent on getting some of it. “Is Betty up yet?” he asked her casually and she shook her head no.

“You can wake her up if you want, but don’t stay up there too long; I don’t want any fooling around going on!”

“Not a problem, Mrs. Cooper,” he replied, bounding up the stairs. He turned down the hallway and knocked on Betty’s bedroom door. “Betty? You up?”

“One second!” she called from the other side of the door, and a few moments later she opened it. “Hey,” she smiled.

“Your mom is making breakfast,” Jughead explained, motioning to the stairway toward the kitchen.

“You got me up to tell me that my mom is making breakfast?” she said in a disbelieving tone. Jughead paused and whisper-yelled “and so that I wouldn’t have to be alone with her; we both know she doesn’t like me!”

“That is not true!” Betty said to comfort him, but as if on queue, Alice Cooper called up to them moments later.

“Jughead? Betty? Get down here, you know what I said earlier!” Jughead gave Betty a look as if to say ‘told you so’ before racing down the stairs.

“I am right here, sorry for the delay,” he said with mock pleasantness. A second later, Betty appeared behind him.

“Good morning, mom.”

“Good morning; I just wanted to let you know that breakfast is on the stovetop and you can eat it whenever you’re hungry, but I have to head out to the Register. There’s been a sighting of gang activity on this side of town and I need to write an article speculating as to who the buyer or buyers might be.” “Okay, see you tonight.”

“Bye,” Alice said with a wave as she walked out the door. Betty turned to where Jughead had been moments before only to see that he’d moved to the stove and was helping himself to the food. Betty grabbed some food for herself and sat down at the dining table, motioning for Jughead to do the same.

“So,” she said, filling the semi-awkward silence. Jughead turned to look at her and raised his eyebrows in question as he continued to eat. “Do you want to do anything fun today? We could go ahead and publish the online version of the Blue and Gold, and then maybe we could do something after that?”

“Actually, I was going to go over to Archie’s to listen to a few of his new songs later. I’m sure he’d appreciate it if you came too, though!” Shaking her head, Betty said “he’s over at Veronica’s all day; he texted me earlier and said to tell you he wouldn’t be available.” Jughead scowled; Archie seemed to be bailing on their hangouts a lot recently. First, he’d skipped the road trip this summer for Ms. Grundy of all people, and at the beginning of the school year he’d been busy with football as usual, only now he’d added what he liked to call  ‘jam sessions’ with Josie and the Pussycats to his schedule. Now, he was over at Veronica’s to help her unload her moving boxes. It was all a little much for Jughead, but hopefully Archie would show up to the Wyrm tonight and they could talk about it.

“Oh, ok,” he said dejectedly. As soon as he said it, he realized how it could come off and said “it’s not that I don’t want to hang out with you or anything, I just was excited about it.”

“It’s okay, I understand. Maybe I’ll just go look for a dress for the next school dance or something. I’ll see you later.”

“Wait! I know what I said seems like I was covering for not wanting to hang out, but I didn’t mean it like that. You know I’m just upset he hasn’t had time for me in a while, and he’s my best friend. At least he was, but I don’t know if you could call us that anymore.”

“Aw, Jug, don’t say that. He still cares about you, he’s just caught up in the need for a romantic partner or something.”

“What a waste of time,” Jughead muttered under his breath so Betty wouldn’t hear. She heard anyway and smiled. “So, what do you want to do?” he asked, changing the topic.

“Well, I really do need to go shopping.”

“Seriously?” Jughead asked and rolled his eyes.

“It will be quick, and we can go to the library, movie theater, or Pop’s afterwards!”

After a moment of hesitation, Jughead responded “fine. But only if you pay for my food.”

“Deal!” Betty said and ran to get ready to leave while Jughead freshened up and waited downstairs.

***

Meanwhile, at Veronica's house, Archie Andrews was moving boxes and shifting furniture, flashing a smile at Veronica every once in a while.

"Thank you so much for doing this, Arch, I don't know how long it would have taken me to do it myself," Veronica said as he carried yet another box up the stairs and to her bedroom.

He reappeared at the to top of the staircase and said "It's no problem, really. Besides, there are only a few boxes left, so it shouldn't be much longer before I'm out of your way."

"You are not in my way, Archiekins!" she insisted as he walked past.

"I was just saying no one wants a sweaty guy walking around their new, clean house."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Veronica said, watching Archie go up the stairs yet again. The jeans he was wearing were just tight enough to show off the muscles in his thighs and his fine ass but not so tight they looked uncomfortable or like skinny jeans, and his white shirt had gotten more and more see-through as the morning went by, giving Veronica a perfect view of his toned abs. He flashed a smile at her as he walked back down. Instead of walking to the now-small pile of boxes by the door, he stood in front of her.

"Is that so?" he asked teasingly, stepping a little bit closer.

"Depends on the guy," she said and bit her lip and leaned in. Archie did the same and the second their lips collided, it was like someone had lit a fuse: once it had started, there was no stopping it. Veronica's hands were in his hair, around his neck, and then they slid down his chest. Her lips opened slightly, allowing Archie to throw a little tongue in there before Veronica pulled away.

"What's wrong?" he asked, genuinely concerned.

"Nothing. I just thought you might want to know that my parents won't be home anytime soon. Meaning, we have the house all to ourselves," she smirked before leaning in again and kissing Archie, her hands on his waist pulling his shirt off as he slid his own hands down her back and a little bit lower as well. This was going to be a good afternoon, he thought to himself as Veronica's back lightly hit a wall and she lifted her hips, wrapping her legs around him.Very good indeed.

***

"No. No. Definitely not that one. No," Jughead said from a chair as Betty held up different dresses.

"You aren't even looking, Jug. You're on your phone." Jughead looked up guiltily, not bothering to lie to Betty.

"I'm sorry, it's just that this is so boring!"

"Ok, well don't forget there's a trip to Pop's with a paid burger in it for you later, so you might want to actually help."

"Fine," Jughead sighed over dramatically. "Just try the ones you really like on so we can go." "You're the best!" Betty called as she took a few dresses back to the changing room.

She tried them on one by one and Jughead took photos and a few videos with him in the background pretending to be some sort of announcer as she showed him the dresses. "And this one is real special, folks! It is a signature look for model Betty Cooper: light pink! The question is if she will stick to the classics or switch it up for this season's edition of Lame High School Dance." Betty laughed and gave a little twirl, and by the time they were done shopping, Jughead decided this could've been worse. It still wasn't his favorite activity, but Betty had let him be his cynical yet goofy self and hadn't taken too long, so it wasn't as horrible as he'd expected. If he'd gone with anyone else it probably would have been awful, he thought, approaching the passenger side of Betty's car.

"Where to next?" Betty asked, climbing into the driver's seat and giving Jughead a bright smile. He gave her a knowing look and she laughed, shifting the car into reverse. "Pop's it is, then," she said and Jughead nodded in approval.

"Ah, Betty, you know me so well," he said with a smile, looking forward to the rest of the day.

Notes:

as some of you may have noticed, there are now going to be eight chapters in this fic. As I was writing this chapter, I realized that because there are going to be a lot of scene changes and so many characters to focus on in the last few parts of the story, it would just be better to have more chapters, even if they're not as long. more chapters does not necessarily mean more time until the story is completed, though, so do not despair! I will try to update soon (for real this time) and once again, thanks for reading!

#motherfxking-flannel #riverdale #riverdale fanfiction #riverdale imagine #riverdale thoughts #riverdale ship #jughead jones #aroace jughead #betty cooper #demisexual betty cooper #archie andrews #veronica lodge #bisexual veronica lodge #fangs fogarty #sweet pea #kevin keller #cheryl blossom #cheryl bombshell #toni topaz #josie mccoy #josie and the pussycats #reggie mantle #fred andrews #fp jones #jellybean jones #gladys jones #southside serpents #serpents imagine

[junaeneous]

Jeffrey’s Hill (M) Part Seventeen

SUMMARY: “Don’t go to Jeffrey’s Hill,” he warned. “A lot of shit goes on there. Even the police ignore crime reports that surface from there.” You rolled your eyes. “What is everyone so afraid of?”  

Your brother sounded grave. “The power of the Chimera.”

GENRE: violence, angst, a little bit of humour (because it’s me) and the occasional tonsil-hockey.

MEMBER/GROUP: EXO + BTS

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

A/N: helloooo! it’s been 84 years, I know, I know, and I’m sorry! the recap is below for those who don’t want to read the entirety of the previous chapter. :D

RECAP: OC’s mother, Reina, has been killed by Jae Hyeon. Yoongi has been critically injured and is yet to wake, while all units of the gang abroad have been dismantled, awaiting further orders. OC + Junmyeon got a lot closer, as did Desiree and Namjoon. They want to end the fight with Ava before they proceed to transition from a gang into a video-technology business. Kris, Tao and Luhan have made their appearances and are helping with the transition. 

YOONGI WOKE TO THE SOUND OF HIS OWN HEARTBEAT.

He gasped, head falling back onto the pillow as the heartbeat monitor beside him settled back into its monotonous beeping. Seconds later, a nurse stumbled in, eyes wide in shock. “Mr. Min, you’re--you’re awake!”

Yoongi nodded. “Could you--get me a glass of--” He coughs, struggling to swallow the dryness away. The nurse caught on and grabbed the glass on the table, filling it and handing it to him. The water cools his throat and chases away the dryness, enabling him to speak. “Is everyone okay?”

“We’ve had a lot of losses,” the nurse spoke softly, lowering her head, “and few recoveries. Most are still fighting for their lives. We’re told to expect the worst at the moment.”

The older’s jaw clenched. “How many losses?”

“I’m not sure, sir, but the number is large.”

Innocent lives that had nothing to do with the personal battle between the members, you and Jae Hyeon. They’d paid a price not cashed in their names. Yoongi dismissed the nurse, waiting until she left to grab the his phone from the table closer to his reach. He dialled Jimin’s number, smiling slightly when the younger answered on the first ring.

“Yoongi?”

“Yes, hello.”

“You’re awake? Holy shit. You’re actually--oh my god I’ll be right there--”

“No, Jimin, wait. You don’t need to come here, I’m on my way there.” Jimin immediately whined in protest, saying it would be better for him to rest. To that, Yoongi countered, “Jimin, I’m sure I’ve been resting for longer than necessary. They’ve reduced the size of my bandages, it’s clearly been a while. Stay put, I’m on my way.”

“You’re so goddamn stubborn,” the younger grumbled, making him chuckle. “But hey, should I update you as you make your way here?”

“That’d be wonderful.”

And so Yoongi learned of all that he’d missed. The successful dismantling of the units. The cheesy name of the new company, and its sleek logo. Desiree and Namjoon finally taking the step into a relationship, you and Junmyeon following closely behind. The subtle hunt for Jae Hyeon. Finding a body near the west border that later identified to be Marcus, who had shot by one of Jae Hyeon’s men. His daughter was being watched over by Jongin. They’d relocate her to Canada soon.

“And lastly, how everyone’s been worried sick about you.” The younger’s voice grew soft. “Do you know how terrified we’ve been? Every time the doctor called, we feared the worst. You were dead for ten fucking minutes. Dead.”

“I tried to reverse his shot, but I was sloppy.” Yoongi admitted defeatedly. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s not what I care about. Take better care of yourself, do you honestly want to die a bitter, single, loner?”

“Did you just call me bitter?”

“I also called you a loner,” Jimin added, chuckling. “But I’m serious. You need to watch out when you head on into missions. Treating them nonchalantly may be your way of handling the seriousness of it, but this is a good example of why you should have, at the very least, a little bit of caution.”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” Yoongi rolled his eyes. “I’ll be careful, happy? I mean, it’s not like we’ll ever have to do missions again if this goes successfully.”

“Not if,” Jimin corrected. “When. It’s already been put into motion.”

Yoongi managed a genuine smile at that. No more missions. No more fearing that one day he’d be burying one of his brothers. No more recruiting and selling things that repulsed him. Despite everything, they were going to begin anew.

That was the only thing he could offer to the ones who’d given their lives for it.

“Y/N!”

You spun around to face Namjoon. “Junmyeon’s stuck in a meeting, so he can’t drive you back home. I’m your designated driver once again.”

 “He texted me.” You confirmed, smiling. “Hey, before I go home, can we drop by my old house by any chance? I just want to get one last look at it before it’s cleared out and sold to someone else.”

 He nodded. “Sure. Come on.”

 The drive to your old house was filled with minimum chatting. You teased Namjoon about Desiree and he, in turn, backhanded by bring up Junmyeon. It felt nice to indulge in normality, despite everything around you.

 Once Namjoon pulled to a stop, you exited the car, doing your best to block out the emotions that were slowly rising to the surface. Without thinking too much, you entered, Namjoon following closely behind.

The living room was empty. All of the pictures that hung on the walls were gone. The furniture had been taken out. No sign of you or your family remained. You sucked in a breath to help with the overwhelming sadness that you felt. This was going to be harder than you’d imagined.

You made your way to your parents’ bedroom, remembering what Junmyeon had told you. Namjoon chose to stay in the living room, giving you the space you needed. The room was almost empty, save for the bed, which had no mattress. You walked towards it, remembering how angry your mother would get when you’d place your hands on the sides of the bed. Upon closer inspection, you noticed something odd about the base of the bed. A portion of it seemed strange in comparison to the entire base. You placed your hands on it, freezing with realisation.

 A false base.

Your fingers were quick to search for an entry, prying the wood away when they did so. Underneath, in a secret compartment, was a box.

This was what your mother had meant.

You pulled out the box, seating yourself on the floor so you could uncover what was inside.

Several letters addressed to your brother, father and you were placed neatly inside. You frowned. What could she have possibly written in there that she hadn’t already said?

You left the letters addressed to your brother and father alone, only pulling out the envelopes that had your name scribbled onto the front.

Hesitantly, you slid your finger under the lip of the envelope, tearing it open to get to the papers inside. Hands trembling, you smoothed out the papers, taking a deep breath before reading.

To my sweet, sweet daughter,

If you’re reading this, then I’m dead. Or maybe this is someone else holding this. I sincerely hope it isn’t.

I would like to start off by saying I’m sorry.

I wasn’t meant to be a mother. That, in no way, excuses what I’ve done and continue to do, but it’s just the one fact that no one is willing to accept. I’m not someone who can give herself up for others. I’m selfish and cruel, I ran a gang with a man who ruined me.

People like us can’t love, sweetheart.

But somehow, I loved you. I loved your brother. I loved your father. Your father’s love for me was pure but it wasn’t enough. Nothing could have ever fixed me.

However, for the briefest moments, it felt like we were going to be okay.

I remember your twelfth birthday, when you cried because I’d remembered. You looked so happy and you reached out to hug me. When I held you, I felt like I could finally be at peace. I could try to be the mother you two wanted, I could try to fix everything and forget my past.

Clearly I failed.

There was just too much I was running away from. It drove me insane and I took it out on my undeserving family. I’m sorry.

I understand if you choose not to forgive me.

It feels nice to get this all out somewhere. I hope you do read this.

Love,

Mom

Even then, you found yourself reaching for the next envelope.

As you read on, you found that the letters were getting less and less apologetic, and more instructive. Your mother had known you were going to be recruited by the gangs someday. She knew your aunt would come to the field too. She had seen it coming all along. She knew you’d fall for the leader’s son, a sick twist of history repeating itself, but perhaps for the better.

The only thing she couldn’t predict was the winning side.

But, she had left you vital information on being one step ahead of your aunt. Something that would be useful to taking them all down and walking away to start off fresh. Your mother proved to be of no use or comfort while she’d been alive, but with these letters, you grew to understand that perhaps she’d offered a lot that you’d missed.

When you got the last portion of the final letter, your eyes widened. A tactic move, the checkmate you’d all been looking for.

“Namjoon!”

You stuffed all of the other letters back into the box, lifting it quickly as you rushed out of the room to meet the startled leader.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yes.” You handed him the letter. “It’s better than okay. My mom just told me how to take Ava down.”

Namjoon’s eyes slid over the words on the letter, eyes widening as he got to the end. He lowered the paper and met your gaze, looking incredibly stunned.

“Holy shit, Y/N,” his voice was full of disbelief. “Your mother just gave us our checkmate move.”

previous  // next

#AYYY #SHIT'S GONNA GET REAL FAM #woo! #two to three chapters left!! #bts #bangtan boys #bts scenarios #bts imagines #bts fanfiction #bts angst #bts fluff #gang!bts #exo #exo scenarios #exo imagines #exo fanfiction #exo angst #exo fluff #gang!exo #gang!au #mafia!au #mafia!bts #mafia!exo #exo bts #bts exo #bts x exo #exo bts jeffrey's hill #exo bts scenarios #exo bts imagines

[fitnesshealthyoga-blog]

New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/how-rosie-acosta-says-yoga-transformed-her-life/

How Rosie Acosta Says Yoga Transformed Her Life

Here’s how our December cover model, Rosie Acosta of the Radically Loved podcast, went from troubled teen to enlightened yogapreneur. 

Ashley Turner

On a sunny afternoon in the Hollywood Hills, Rosie Acosta sits on the sofa in her bright living room, knees to her chest, facing best-selling author and Ayurveda practitioner Sahara Rose Ketabi. The two women are friends, and they’ve greeted each other warmly with hugs and excited chatter. They dish for a few minutes about Acosta’s herbal tea obsession and Ketabi’s recent engagement, but the pair have come together on official business—Ketabi is making a guest appearance on Acosta’s wellness podcast, Radically Loved, to discuss her new cookbook, Eat Feel Fresh, which features modern spins on traditional Ayurvedic recipes. 

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Both Ayurveda enthusiasts, Acosta and Ketabi have recently returned from a six-day panchakarma, the most intense detoxification ritual in Ayurvedic medicine. The process consists of five aggressive therapies said to eliminate doshic imbalances in the body. (In Ayurveda, doshas are the three energies believed to govern physiological and mental activity.) To hear them describe it, it’s purging, pooping, and bathing in oil until you come out anew on the other side. Oh, and there’s a ton of ghee: “They put ghee in your eyes to clarify eyesight. They clean your ears with it,” Ketabi marvels. “I mean, there’s ghee in every crevice.”

Thanks for watching!Visit Website

Thanks for watching!Visit Website

Of course there’s also meditation and self-reflection and carefully prepared Ayurvedic meals of kitchari (and more ghee), and it was during a panchakarma lunch that Ketabi discovered something rather radical about Acosta: “She’s literally a psychic guru,” she tells me.

See also How to Use Ayurveda to Get Healthier Every Time You Eat

Acosta and Ketabi swear it happened like this: They were at the panchakarma retreat with two other friends. It was a virechana day—designed to clear toxins from the GI tract. They all took laxatives and were confined to their individual rooms. Around three o’clock in the afternoon, Acosta took a nap. When she woke up at 4:30, she decided to meditate “for like, two hours straight,” she says, adding that it was the longest she’s ever sat for a meditation at one time. “I started to feel this weird thing happening—like an out-of-body experience,” she says. “All of a sudden, I wanted to go visit the girls and see what they were doing.”

Without leaving her room, still deep in meditation, Acosta checked in on her friends. She saw one of them curled up on her bed, naked, and lying on her left side. Another was propped up on her stomach, journaling. Acosta didn’t see Ketabi in her room at all. Instead, she envisioned the petite brunette at the gym, running on an elliptical, talking on her cell phone in Spanish (she’s fluent) to what sounded like a wedding planner. “At the end of the conversation she goes, ‘OK. ¡Hasta luego!’ And then hangs up,” Acosta recalls.

By the time Acosta met Ketabi for lunch the next day, she’d already confirmed with the other two women that her visions of them had, in fact, been accurate. But when she started telling Ketabi what had happened, things got even weirder. Ketabi had indeed been Skyping with her wedding photographer on an elliptical the day before, ending her conversation with the Spanish farewell hasta luego. “And I remember thinking after I hung up, That so did not sound like me. Why did I say that?” Ketabi says. “I sounded like an American trying to learn Spanish.” As they hashed out the events of the day before, they discovered that Acosta’s vision had actually occurred hours before Ketabi’s conversation with her photographer took place. “It’s like she put the words in my mouth,” Ketabi concludes.

We spent a week in Los Angeles with December cover model, Rosie Acosta of the Radically Loved Podcast. Here’s how yoga helped her transform a troubled adolescence into an abundant adulthood.

Christopher Dougherty

From rags to richness

At 35, Acosta has come to terms with supernatural phenomena such as clairvoyance and manifesting her deepest desires—in fact, she’s built her career in the yoga space by leaning into them. She believes that practicing gratitude and intense optimism (and living a life guided by the Yoga Sutra) can lead to dramatic transformation, because she’s experienced this herself. Today Acosta lives comfortably in a two-bedroom Craftsman overlooking Laurel Canyon with her fiancé, upscale-accessories designer Torry Pendergrass; her teenage sister, who was born when she was 15; and her two dogs. Acosta admits feeling extraordinarily lucky to be making a living teaching yoga and meditation in Los Angeles. Hosting self-discovery retreats and teacher trainings, plus inspirational speaking, keeps her constantly jet-setting—and her self-help-heavy podcast, in which she’s waxed poetic on topics ranging from the importance of forgiveness to the power of intention, has recently reached 120,000 followers. But things weren’t always coming up roses for Acosta, and there was a time not too long ago when she likened yoga to a cult.

See also Rosie Acosta on How to Take Down Your Inner Critic

After a tumultuous childhood growing up in South San Gabriel in East Los Angeles, Acosta suffered from depression, anxiety, and a binge-eating disorder throughout her late teens. With two immigrant parents (her mother from Spain and her father from Mexico) trying to make ends meet amid gang violence and the racist drug war that defined Los Angeles in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Acosta learned early on that there was a price to pay for being Latin American in her part of the world. “There was never any, ‘Oh, you have to grow up and go to school and have aspirations to be successful,” she recalls. “No. It was, ‘Your job is to stay alive.’”

Often referred to as the decade of death, 1988–1998 in Los Angeles County was marked by record homicide rates and violence. Gangs terrorized the neighborhoods surrounding Acosta’s home, where she lived with her parents, her older sister, and a revolving cast of extended relatives. One evening in March of ’88, Acosta’s 16-year-old uncle, charged with babysitting her and her cousin for the night, promised to take the pair of five-year-old girls to the arcade. Instead, he parked his black Camaro outside of Skateland U.S.A., a roller rink by day, music venue by night, that’s notable for launching hip-hop supergroup N.W.A. The concrete depot on Central Avenue in Compton was situated deep in Bloods territory, and although a sign reading NO CAPS — NO COLORS adorned the entry door, the crowd was frequently a stormy sea of red. Peering out from the back seat of the Camaro, Acosta could see a gaggle of high schoolers and gangbangers drinking and shouting in the noisy lot. “Wait in the car,” her uncle told her. “I’m just gonna go watch this show, and then I’ll be right back.” An early N.W.A. fan, her uncle had brought her to the controversial rap group’s now-legendary first performance, immortalized in the 2015 biopic Straight Outta Compton.

“He left, and we just looked at each other, so freaked out,” Acosta recalls. The girls hid under a Saltillo blanket as violence erupted outside—until their uncle emerged, hours later, with a bloody face and a busted left eye. “I still have no idea how that happened, but then nobody asked him,” Acosta recalls. “He was like, ‘We were at the arcade,’ and my parents were like, ‘OK.’ It was literally like Lord of the Flies, you know?”

Exactly 10 years later, in the spring of 1998, Acosta sat in the driver’s seat of a running cop car, surrounded by six or seven officers with their guns drawn, all screaming for her to get out of the car. She was a sophomore at Mark Keppel High School, and she and some friends had decided to ditch sixth period to hang out at Sierra Vista Park in northeast LA. The small grassy park is home to a basketball court and a primary-colored playground, and while the teens were en route, a car chase was going down nearby. A police car had been in pursuit of a red Honda Prelude when both cars screeched to a halt at the edge of the park. The chase continued on foot—the abandoned vehicles left running on the pavement. “I was like Dora the Explorer, looking in both cars, trying to be a badass because all these people were watching,” says Acosta. “And someone was like, ‘Oh, you should get into the cop car.’” Clad in fingerless panda-print gloves and a chunky black sweater, Acosta hopped into the front seat, unaware that the place was crawling with undercover cops. The incident resulted in her arrest for attempted grand theft auto.

After several traumatic events growing up, Rosie realized she needed to change the direction her life was headed. 

Christopher Dougherty

Rosie from the block

Ventura Boulevard is humming with hipsters as Acosta and I sit beneath a bright-blue umbrella, amid teal bistro tables, outside Australian-inspired coffee shop Bluestone Lane. The chain is new to LA, and Acosta is hoping this outpost will be as good as the one she frequents in New York City. We both order avocado toast, and over coffee and matcha discuss her forthcoming memoir and how she came to find yoga. She’s animated and easy to talk to, with an attitude and mannerisms that are a little bit JLo. (Case in point, as Ketabi walked out the door at the end of her podcast recording session with Acosta, she turned to me and said, “The way I’m envisioning the [YJ] cover is, she’s wearing little pigtails on her head, like buns. And she’s doing a handstand on one hand. And wearing those pants that have the straps, but instead of ‘Calvin Klein’ it says, ‘Rosie from the Block’”—a direct reference to the 2002 Jennifer Lopez chart topper “Jenny from the Block.”) In short, Acosta is the real deal, and she practices what she preaches because she believes it saved her life.

Acosta tells me that if she hadn’t been booked that day in 1998, things may not have turned around quite like they have. Traumatic episodes such as the one that unfolded at the N.W.A. concert colored her childhood, and it was only after her arrest that she was truly able to reflect on how her upbringing was wreaking havoc on her adolescence. Living through a never-ending reel of teen deaths, hold-ups at grocery stores, and other violent scenarios eventually led to debilitating panic attacks, depression, and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. And after her arrest, court-ordered probation meant she could no longer cut school to blow off steam with her friends, most of whom were on a similar path of self-destruction. Discovering meditation and self-inquiry, plus a dramatic shift in attitude, is what revealed to her that she didn’t have to buy into what other people expected of her, which by her account, wasn’t much. “Nobody around us was trying to cultivate growth of any kind,” she says. “For me, the unpopular decision was to succeed. It’s fucked up, but the unpopular vote was to move out of my environment and become something else.”

During her senior year of high school, her mom, who supervised the cleaning staff at a local hospital, returned one night from work with some literature for the Self-Realization Fellowship temple in Hollywood—a white-stucco sanctuary with gold architectural embellishments and arched stained-glass windows—founded by Paramahansa Yogananda, an Indian yogi often credited with helping bring meditation and Kriya Yoga to the West.

“My mom said, ‘Hey, one of the ladies at work says she was stressed out and meditation worked for her—you should try it,’” recalls Acosta. “I took the little pamphlets, and I started to read about affirmations, and meditation, and manifestation, and the Law of Attraction, and all these things, and I really liked it. I was like, Oh, it’s like magic.”

But when she showed up at the temple a few weeks later, it wasn’t exactly love at first sight: “I was like, ‘This is a fucking cult. Get me out of here,’” she says. Even so, something about the lecture she heard that day resonated with her deep down, and she decided to stick with it. “The sermon was about how we were responsible for our own happiness,” Acosta says. “That really caught my attention, because I was like, Whoa, whoa, what does that mean? I was having this spiritual awakening of sorts, and it really spoke to me—this idea that I needed to be responsible for creating the life I wanted. I needed to be the person who rectified my bad behavior,” she says. “Somebody else couldn’t do that for me.”

Gradually, the path toward yoga revealed itself. When Acosta was 22, she grew interested in the physical aspects of the yogic lifestyle she was beginning to adopt, and she decided to attend a teacher training that, she would later come to realize, was unconventional, to say the least. “I found this little Kundalini Yoga studio in Pasadena that offered a weekend-long immersive training led by this sweet couple,” she says. As it turned out, they were followers of Osho, the controversial leader of the Rajneesh movement, recently popularized by the Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country. “They had Osho posters everywhere,” Acosta recalls. “I took away a ton of information, but I remember thinking, There’s no way I can teach yoga. But after that, yoga started becoming more of a daily practice.”

She began regularly frequenting the Center for Yoga (now YogaWorks) and attending workshops and 200-hour teacher trainings with the intention of both deepening her practice and eventually becoming a yoga teacher. Yoga was where everything made sense, she says.

Rod Stryker, the founder of ParaYoga who became Acosta’s teacher in 2011, was surprised to learn of the adversity Acosta overcame to become the warm and wise yogi she is today. He says of their early days together: “I didn’t hear anything about hardship. I experienced this amazingly present, vibrant, mature, full soul.” But Acosta says that when she started studying with Stryker (her favorite teacher was a student of his, and encouraged Acosta to try his class), she had really only just begun her journey into yoga. “Things were resonating, but I couldn’t put the pieces together. It was like having a compass, and seeing signs—just trying to figure out how to bring all the clues together,” she says.

Rosie encourages students to commit to their own ability and potential while not comparing themselves to others.

Ashley Turner

Reflections from the other side

Today, after seven years of Stryker’s tutelage, Acosta certainly appears to have found her way. She teaches her own students at Wanderlust Hollywood and the newly opened Den Meditation studio, and recently, she and Pendergrass have been talking about starting a family of their own. The lessons she imparts on her students she’s learned from Stryker and from her own transformation. First and foremost, “practice for a long period of time without interruption and with an attitude of service”—wisdom from Patanjali (author of the Yoga Sutra) that’s so important today, she says, when most of us can’t even read an email on the computer without reaching for our phone. “I always say, this is a marathon, not a sprint. There are no freeways to enlightenment,” she says. The other mainstay of her teaching is something she’s gleaned from her own life: Commit to your own ability and your own potential, and quit comparing yourself to others. “Devote yourself to your own gifts and you’ll achieve success,” she says. “And remember that it’s going to look different from everyone else’s, because it’s supposed to.”

From the Mulholland Drive Scenic Overlook, where Acosta takes me one blistering-hot LA afternoon, we can see the entire metropolis sprawled out in front of us. She points out where she grew up, all the way on the right, the East side of the horizon. She recalls how she used to skip school and take the bus to downtown, then hike all the way up here and imagine what life would look like on the other side of the city—the life she’s living today, as if deep down, she knew what it would be like all along. “One of my girlfriends, she wanted to be an actress,” she recalls. “So she’d say things like, ‘I’m going to buy that house over there and be famous.’ But for me, any time I had to think of what my life might look like if it were something else, I would stay quiet. I didn’t have a vision of a career, per se, but I had a vision of what I wanted to see. And it was this.”

See also Doshas Decoded: Learn About Your Unique Mind & Body Type

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[cedarrrun]

Asana and meditation teacher and popular podcast personality Rosie Acosta says yoga and a sunny outlook saved her life. Here’s how.

Here’s how our December cover model, Rosie Acosta of the Radically Loved podcast, went from troubled teen to enlightened yogapreneur. 

On a sunny afternoon in the Hollywood Hills, Rosie Acosta sits on the sofa in her bright living room, knees to her chest, facing best-selling author and Ayurveda practitioner Sahara Rose Ketabi. The two women are friends, and they’ve greeted each other warmly with hugs and excited chatter. They dish for a few minutes about Acosta’s herbal tea obsession and Ketabi’s recent engagement, but the pair have come together on official business—Ketabi is making a guest appearance on Acosta’s wellness podcast, Radically Loved, to discuss her new cookbook, Eat Feel Fresh, which features modern spins on traditional Ayurvedic recipes. 

Both Ayurveda enthusiasts, Acosta and Ketabi have recently returned from a six-day panchakarma, the most intense detoxification ritual in Ayurvedic medicine. The process consists of five aggressive therapies said to eliminate doshic imbalances in the body. (In Ayurveda, doshas are the three energies believed to govern physiological and mental activity.) To hear them describe it, it’s purging, pooping, and bathing in oil until you come out anew on the other side. Oh, and there’s a ton of ghee: “They put ghee in your eyes to clarify eyesight. They clean your ears with it,” Ketabi marvels. “I mean, there’s ghee in every crevice.”

Of course there’s also meditation and self-reflection and carefully prepared Ayurvedic meals of kitchari (and more ghee), and it was during a panchakarma lunch that Ketabi discovered something rather radical about Acosta: “She’s literally a psychic guru,” she tells me.

See also How to Use Ayurveda to Get Healthier Every Time You Eat

Acosta and Ketabi swear it happened like this: They were at the panchakarma retreat with two other friends. It was a virechana day—designed to clear toxins from the GI tract. They all took laxatives and were confined to their individual rooms. Around three o’clock in the afternoon, Acosta took a nap. When she woke up at 4:30, she decided to meditate “for like, two hours straight,” she says, adding that it was the longest she’s ever sat for a meditation at one time. “I started to feel this weird thing happening—like an out-of-body experience,” she says. “All of a sudden, I wanted to go visit the girls and see what they were doing.”

Without leaving her room, still deep in meditation, Acosta checked in on her friends. She saw one of them curled up on her bed, naked, and lying on her left side. Another was propped up on her stomach, journaling. Acosta didn’t see Ketabi in her room at all. Instead, she envisioned the petite brunette at the gym, running on an elliptical, talking on her cell phone in Spanish (she’s fluent) to what sounded like a wedding planner. “At the end of the conversation she goes, ‘OK. ¡Hasta luego!’ And then hangs up,” Acosta recalls.

By the time Acosta met Ketabi for lunch the next day, she’d already confirmed with the other two women that her visions of them had, in fact, been accurate. But when she started telling Ketabi what had happened, things got even weirder. Ketabi had indeed been Skyping with her wedding photographer on an elliptical the day before, ending her conversation with the Spanish farewell hasta luego. “And I remember thinking after I hung up, That so did not sound like me. Why did I say that?” Ketabi says. “I sounded like an American trying to learn Spanish.” As they hashed out the events of the day before, they discovered that Acosta’s vision had actually occurred hours before Ketabi’s conversation with her photographer took place. “It’s like she put the words in my mouth,” Ketabi concludes.

We spent a week in Los Angeles with December cover model, Rosie Acosta of the Radically Loved Podcast. Here’s how yoga helped her transform a troubled adolescence into an abundant adulthood.

From rags to richness

At 35, Acosta has come to terms with supernatural phenomena such as clairvoyance and manifesting her deepest desires—in fact, she’s built her career in the yoga space by leaning into them. She believes that practicing gratitude and intense optimism (and living a life guided by the Yoga Sutra) can lead to dramatic transformation, because she’s experienced this herself. Today Acosta lives comfortably in a two-bedroom Craftsman overlooking Laurel Canyon with her fiancé, upscale-accessories designer Torry Pendergrass; her teenage sister, who was born when she was 15; and her two dogs. Acosta admits feeling extraordinarily lucky to be making a living teaching yoga and meditation in Los Angeles. Hosting self-discovery retreats and teacher trainings, plus inspirational speaking, keeps her constantly jet-setting—and her self-help-heavy podcast, in which she’s waxed poetic on topics ranging from the importance of forgiveness to the power of intention, has recently reached 120,000 followers. But things weren’t always coming up roses for Acosta, and there was a time not too long ago when she likened yoga to a cult.

See also Rosie Acosta on How to Take Down Your Inner Critic

After a tumultuous childhood growing up in South San Gabriel in East Los Angeles, Acosta suffered from depression, anxiety, and a binge-eating disorder throughout her late teens. With two immigrant parents (her mother from Spain and her father from Mexico) trying to make ends meet amid gang violence and the racist drug war that defined Los Angeles in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Acosta learned early on that there was a price to pay for being Latin American in her part of the world. “There was never any, ‘Oh, you have to grow up and go to school and have aspirations to be successful,” she recalls. “No. It was, ‘Your job is to stay alive.’”

Often referred to as the decade of death, 1988–1998 in Los Angeles County was marked by record homicide rates and violence. Gangs terrorized the neighborhoods surrounding Acosta’s home, where she lived with her parents, her older sister, and a revolving cast of extended relatives. One evening in March of ’88, Acosta’s 16-year-old uncle, charged with babysitting her and her cousin for the night, promised to take the pair of five-year-old girls to the arcade. Instead, he parked his black Camaro outside of Skateland U.S.A., a roller rink by day, music venue by night, that’s notable for launching hip-hop supergroup N.W.A. The concrete depot on Central Avenue in Compton was situated deep in Bloods territory, and although a sign reading NO CAPS — NO COLORS adorned the entry door, the crowd was frequently a stormy sea of red. Peering out from the back seat of the Camaro, Acosta could see a gaggle of high schoolers and gangbangers drinking and shouting in the noisy lot. “Wait in the car,” her uncle told her. “I’m just gonna go watch this show, and then I’ll be right back.” An early N.W.A. fan, her uncle had brought her to the controversial rap group’s now-legendary first performance, immortalized in the 2015 biopic Straight Outta Compton.

“He left, and we just looked at each other, so freaked out,” Acosta recalls. The girls hid under a Saltillo blanket as violence erupted outside—until their uncle emerged, hours later, with a bloody face and a busted left eye. “I still have no idea how that happened, but then nobody asked him,” Acosta recalls. “He was like, ‘We were at the arcade,’ and my parents were like, ‘OK.’ It was literally like Lord of the Flies, you know?”

Exactly 10 years later, in the spring of 1998, Acosta sat in the driver’s seat of a running cop car, surrounded by six or seven officers with their guns drawn, all screaming for her to get out of the car. She was a sophomore at Mark Keppel High School, and she and some friends had decided to ditch sixth period to hang out at Sierra Vista Park in northeast LA. The small grassy park is home to a basketball court and a primary-colored playground, and while the teens were en route, a car chase was going down nearby. A police car had been in pursuit of a red Honda Prelude when both cars screeched to a halt at the edge of the park. The chase continued on foot—the abandoned vehicles left running on the pavement. “I was like Dora the Explorer, looking in both cars, trying to be a badass because all these people were watching,” says Acosta. “And someone was like, ‘Oh, you should get into the cop car.’” Clad in fingerless panda-print gloves and a chunky black sweater, Acosta hopped into the front seat, unaware that the place was crawling with undercover cops. The incident resulted in her arrest for attempted grand theft auto.

After several traumatic events growing up, Rosie realized she needed to change the direction her life was headed. 

Rosie from the block

Ventura Boulevard is humming with hipsters as Acosta and I sit beneath a bright-blue umbrella, amid teal bistro tables, outside Australian-inspired coffee shop Bluestone Lane. The chain is new to LA, and Acosta is hoping this outpost will be as good as the one she frequents in New York City. We both order avocado toast, and over coffee and matcha discuss her forthcoming memoir and how she came to find yoga. She’s animated and easy to talk to, with an attitude and mannerisms that are a little bit JLo. (Case in point, as Ketabi walked out the door at the end of her podcast recording session with Acosta, she turned to me and said, “The way I’m envisioning the [YJ] cover is, she’s wearing little pigtails on her head, like buns. And she’s doing a handstand on one hand. And wearing those pants that have the straps, but instead of ‘Calvin Klein’ it says, ‘Rosie from the Block’”—a direct reference to the 2002 Jennifer Lopez chart topper “Jenny from the Block.”) In short, Acosta is the real deal, and she practices what she preaches because she believes it saved her life.

Acosta tells me that if she hadn’t been booked that day in 1998, things may not have turned around quite like they have. Traumatic episodes such as the one that unfolded at the N.W.A. concert colored her childhood, and it was only after her arrest that she was truly able to reflect on how her upbringing was wreaking havoc on her adolescence. Living through a never-ending reel of teen deaths, hold-ups at grocery stores, and other violent scenarios eventually led to debilitating panic attacks, depression, and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. And after her arrest, court-ordered probation meant she could no longer cut school to blow off steam with her friends, most of whom were on a similar path of self-destruction. Discovering meditation and self-inquiry, plus a dramatic shift in attitude, is what revealed to her that she didn’t have to buy into what other people expected of her, which by her account, wasn’t much. “Nobody around us was trying to cultivate growth of any kind,” she says. “For me, the unpopular decision was to succeed. It’s fucked up, but the unpopular vote was to move out of my environment and become something else.”

During her senior year of high school, her mom, who supervised the cleaning staff at a local hospital, returned one night from work with some literature for the Self-Realization Fellowship temple in Hollywood—a white-stucco sanctuary with gold architectural embellishments and arched stained-glass windows—founded by Paramahansa Yogananda, an Indian yogi often credited with helping bring meditation and Kriya Yoga to the West.

“My mom said, ‘Hey, one of the ladies at work says she was stressed out and meditation worked for her—you should try it,’” recalls Acosta. “I took the little pamphlets, and I started to read about affirmations, and meditation, and manifestation, and the Law of Attraction, and all these things, and I really liked it. I was like, Oh, it’s like magic.”

But when she showed up at the temple a few weeks later, it wasn’t exactly love at first sight: “I was like, ‘This is a fucking cult. Get me out of here,’” she says. Even so, something about the lecture she heard that day resonated with her deep down, and she decided to stick with it. “The sermon was about how we were responsible for our own happiness,” Acosta says. “That really caught my attention, because I was like, Whoa, whoa, what does that mean? I was having this spiritual awakening of sorts, and it really spoke to me—this idea that I needed to be responsible for creating the life I wanted. I needed to be the person who rectified my bad behavior,” she says. “Somebody else couldn’t do that for me.”

Gradually, the path toward yoga revealed itself. When Acosta was 22, she grew interested in the physical aspects of the yogic lifestyle she was beginning to adopt, and she decided to attend a teacher training that, she would later come to realize, was unconventional, to say the least. “I found this little Kundalini Yoga studio in Pasadena that offered a weekend-long immersive training led by this sweet couple,” she says. As it turned out, they were followers of Osho, the controversial leader of the Rajneesh movement, recently popularized by the Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country. “They had Osho posters everywhere,” Acosta recalls. “I took away a ton of information, but I remember thinking, There’s no way I can teach yoga. But after that, yoga started becoming more of a daily practice.”

She began regularly frequenting the Center for Yoga (now YogaWorks) and attending workshops and 200-hour teacher trainings with the intention of both deepening her practice and eventually becoming a yoga teacher. Yoga was where everything made sense, she says.

Rod Stryker, the founder of ParaYoga who became Acosta’s teacher in 2011, was surprised to learn of the adversity Acosta overcame to become the warm and wise yogi she is today. He says of their early days together: “I didn’t hear anything about hardship. I experienced this amazingly present, vibrant, mature, full soul.” But Acosta says that when she started studying with Stryker (her favorite teacher was a student of his, and encouraged Acosta to try his class), she had really only just begun her journey into yoga. “Things were resonating, but I couldn’t put the pieces together. It was like having a compass, and seeing signs—just trying to figure out how to bring all the clues together,” she says.

Rosie encourages students to commit to their own ability and potential while not comparing themselves to others.

Reflections from the other side

Today, after seven years of Stryker’s tutelage, Acosta certainly appears to have found her way. She teaches her own students at Wanderlust Hollywood and the newly opened Den Meditation studio, and recently, she and Pendergrass have been talking about starting a family of their own. The lessons she imparts on her students she’s learned from Stryker and from her own transformation. First and foremost, “practice for a long period of time without interruption and with an attitude of service”—wisdom from Patanjali (author of the Yoga Sutra) that’s so important today, she says, when most of us can’t even read an email on the computer without reaching for our phone. “I always say, this is a marathon, not a sprint. There are no freeways to enlightenment,” she says. The other mainstay of her teaching is something she’s gleaned from her own life: Commit to your own ability and your own potential, and quit comparing yourself to others. “Devote yourself to your own gifts and you’ll achieve success,” she says. “And remember that it’s going to look different from everyone else’s, because it’s supposed to.”

From the Mulholland Drive Scenic Overlook, where Acosta takes me one blistering-hot LA afternoon, we can see the entire metropolis sprawled out in front of us. She points out where she grew up, all the way on the right, the East side of the horizon. She recalls how she used to skip school and take the bus to downtown, then hike all the way up here and imagine what life would look like on the other side of the city—the life she’s living today, as if deep down, she knew what it would be like all along. “One of my girlfriends, she wanted to be an actress,” she recalls. “So she’d say things like, ‘I’m going to buy that house over there and be famous.’ But for me, any time I had to think of what my life might look like if it were something else, I would stay quiet. I didn’t have a vision of a career, per se, but I had a vision of what I wanted to see. And it was this.”

See also Doshas Decoded: Learn About Your Unique Mind & Body Type

#sleep sounds #sleep music #white noise app #nature sounds #relaxing sounds #rain sounds for sleeping

[krisiunicornio]

Asana and meditation teacher and popular podcast personality Rosie Acosta says yoga and a sunny outlook saved her life. Here’s how.

Here’s how our December cover model, Rosie Acosta of the Radically Loved podcast, went from troubled teen to enlightened yogapreneur. 

On a sunny afternoon in the Hollywood Hills, Rosie Acosta sits on the sofa in her bright living room, knees to her chest, facing best-selling author and Ayurveda practitioner Sahara Rose Ketabi. The two women are friends, and they’ve greeted each other warmly with hugs and excited chatter. They dish for a few minutes about Acosta’s herbal tea obsession and Ketabi’s recent engagement, but the pair have come together on official business—Ketabi is making a guest appearance on Acosta’s wellness podcast, Radically Loved, to discuss her new cookbook, Eat Feel Fresh, which features modern spins on traditional Ayurvedic recipes. 

Both Ayurveda enthusiasts, Acosta and Ketabi have recently returned from a six-day panchakarma, the most intense detoxification ritual in Ayurvedic medicine. The process consists of five aggressive therapies said to eliminate doshic imbalances in the body. (In Ayurveda, doshas are the three energies believed to govern physiological and mental activity.) To hear them describe it, it’s purging, pooping, and bathing in oil until you come out anew on the other side. Oh, and there’s a ton of ghee: “They put ghee in your eyes to clarify eyesight. They clean your ears with it,” Ketabi marvels. “I mean, there’s ghee in every crevice.”

Of course there’s also meditation and self-reflection and carefully prepared Ayurvedic meals of kitchari (and more ghee), and it was during a panchakarma lunch that Ketabi discovered something rather radical about Acosta: “She’s literally a psychic guru,” she tells me.

See also How to Use Ayurveda to Get Healthier Every Time You Eat

Acosta and Ketabi swear it happened like this: They were at the panchakarma retreat with two other friends. It was a virechana day—designed to clear toxins from the GI tract. They all took laxatives and were confined to their individual rooms. Around three o’clock in the afternoon, Acosta took a nap. When she woke up at 4:30, she decided to meditate “for like, two hours straight,” she says, adding that it was the longest she’s ever sat for a meditation at one time. “I started to feel this weird thing happening—like an out-of-body experience,” she says. “All of a sudden, I wanted to go visit the girls and see what they were doing.”

Without leaving her room, still deep in meditation, Acosta checked in on her friends. She saw one of them curled up on her bed, naked, and lying on her left side. Another was propped up on her stomach, journaling. Acosta didn’t see Ketabi in her room at all. Instead, she envisioned the petite brunette at the gym, running on an elliptical, talking on her cell phone in Spanish (she’s fluent) to what sounded like a wedding planner. “At the end of the conversation she goes, ‘OK. ¡Hasta luego!’ And then hangs up,” Acosta recalls.

By the time Acosta met Ketabi for lunch the next day, she’d already confirmed with the other two women that her visions of them had, in fact, been accurate. But when she started telling Ketabi what had happened, things got even weirder. Ketabi had indeed been Skyping with her wedding photographer on an elliptical the day before, ending her conversation with the Spanish farewell hasta luego. “And I remember thinking after I hung up, That so did not sound like me. Why did I say that?” Ketabi says. “I sounded like an American trying to learn Spanish.” As they hashed out the events of the day before, they discovered that Acosta’s vision had actually occurred hours before Ketabi’s conversation with her photographer took place. “It’s like she put the words in my mouth,” Ketabi concludes.

We spent a week in Los Angeles with December cover model, Rosie Acosta of the Radically Loved Podcast. Here’s how yoga helped her transform a troubled adolescence into an abundant adulthood.

From rags to richness

At 35, Acosta has come to terms with supernatural phenomena such as clairvoyance and manifesting her deepest desires—in fact, she’s built her career in the yoga space by leaning into them. She believes that practicing gratitude and intense optimism (and living a life guided by the Yoga Sutra) can lead to dramatic transformation, because she’s experienced this herself. Today Acosta lives comfortably in a two-bedroom Craftsman overlooking Laurel Canyon with her fiancé, upscale-accessories designer Torry Pendergrass; her teenage sister, who was born when she was 15; and her two dogs. Acosta admits feeling extraordinarily lucky to be making a living teaching yoga and meditation in Los Angeles. Hosting self-discovery retreats and teacher trainings, plus inspirational speaking, keeps her constantly jet-setting—and her self-help-heavy podcast, in which she’s waxed poetic on topics ranging from the importance of forgiveness to the power of intention, has recently reached 120,000 followers. But things weren’t always coming up roses for Acosta, and there was a time not too long ago when she likened yoga to a cult.

See also Rosie Acosta on How to Take Down Your Inner Critic

After a tumultuous childhood growing up in South San Gabriel in East Los Angeles, Acosta suffered from depression, anxiety, and a binge-eating disorder throughout her late teens. With two immigrant parents (her mother from Spain and her father from Mexico) trying to make ends meet amid gang violence and the racist drug war that defined Los Angeles in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Acosta learned early on that there was a price to pay for being Latin American in her part of the world. “There was never any, ‘Oh, you have to grow up and go to school and have aspirations to be successful,” she recalls. “No. It was, ‘Your job is to stay alive.’”

Often referred to as the decade of death, 1988–1998 in Los Angeles County was marked by record homicide rates and violence. Gangs terrorized the neighborhoods surrounding Acosta’s home, where she lived with her parents, her older sister, and a revolving cast of extended relatives. One evening in March of ’88, Acosta’s 16-year-old uncle, charged with babysitting her and her cousin for the night, promised to take the pair of five-year-old girls to the arcade. Instead, he parked his black Camaro outside of Skateland U.S.A., a roller rink by day, music venue by night, that’s notable for launching hip-hop supergroup N.W.A. The concrete depot on Central Avenue in Compton was situated deep in Bloods territory, and although a sign reading NO CAPS — NO COLORS adorned the entry door, the crowd was frequently a stormy sea of red. Peering out from the back seat of the Camaro, Acosta could see a gaggle of high schoolers and gangbangers drinking and shouting in the noisy lot. “Wait in the car,” her uncle told her. “I’m just gonna go watch this show, and then I’ll be right back.” An early N.W.A. fan, her uncle had brought her to the controversial rap group’s now-legendary first performance, immortalized in the 2015 biopic Straight Outta Compton.

“He left, and we just looked at each other, so freaked out,” Acosta recalls. The girls hid under a Saltillo blanket as violence erupted outside—until their uncle emerged, hours later, with a bloody face and a busted left eye. “I still have no idea how that happened, but then nobody asked him,” Acosta recalls. “He was like, ‘We were at the arcade,’ and my parents were like, ‘OK.’ It was literally like Lord of the Flies, you know?”

Exactly 10 years later, in the spring of 1998, Acosta sat in the driver’s seat of a running cop car, surrounded by six or seven officers with their guns drawn, all screaming for her to get out of the car. She was a sophomore at Mark Keppel High School, and she and some friends had decided to ditch sixth period to hang out at Sierra Vista Park in northeast LA. The small grassy park is home to a basketball court and a primary-colored playground, and while the teens were en route, a car chase was going down nearby. A police car had been in pursuit of a red Honda Prelude when both cars screeched to a halt at the edge of the park. The chase continued on foot—the abandoned vehicles left running on the pavement. “I was like Dora the Explorer, looking in both cars, trying to be a badass because all these people were watching,” says Acosta. “And someone was like, ‘Oh, you should get into the cop car.’” Clad in fingerless panda-print gloves and a chunky black sweater, Acosta hopped into the front seat, unaware that the place was crawling with undercover cops. The incident resulted in her arrest for attempted grand theft auto.

After several traumatic events growing up, Rosie realized she needed to change the direction her life was headed. 

Rosie from the block

Ventura Boulevard is humming with hipsters as Acosta and I sit beneath a bright-blue umbrella, amid teal bistro tables, outside Australian-inspired coffee shop Bluestone Lane. The chain is new to LA, and Acosta is hoping this outpost will be as good as the one she frequents in New York City. We both order avocado toast, and over coffee and matcha discuss her forthcoming memoir and how she came to find yoga. She’s animated and easy to talk to, with an attitude and mannerisms that are a little bit JLo. (Case in point, as Ketabi walked out the door at the end of her podcast recording session with Acosta, she turned to me and said, “The way I’m envisioning the [YJ] cover is, she’s wearing little pigtails on her head, like buns. And she’s doing a handstand on one hand. And wearing those pants that have the straps, but instead of ‘Calvin Klein’ it says, ‘Rosie from the Block’”—a direct reference to the 2002 Jennifer Lopez chart topper “Jenny from the Block.”) In short, Acosta is the real deal, and she practices what she preaches because she believes it saved her life.

Acosta tells me that if she hadn’t been booked that day in 1998, things may not have turned around quite like they have. Traumatic episodes such as the one that unfolded at the N.W.A. concert colored her childhood, and it was only after her arrest that she was truly able to reflect on how her upbringing was wreaking havoc on her adolescence. Living through a never-ending reel of teen deaths, hold-ups at grocery stores, and other violent scenarios eventually led to debilitating panic attacks, depression, and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. And after her arrest, court-ordered probation meant she could no longer cut school to blow off steam with her friends, most of whom were on a similar path of self-destruction. Discovering meditation and self-inquiry, plus a dramatic shift in attitude, is what revealed to her that she didn’t have to buy into what other people expected of her, which by her account, wasn’t much. “Nobody around us was trying to cultivate growth of any kind,” she says. “For me, the unpopular decision was to succeed. It’s fucked up, but the unpopular vote was to move out of my environment and become something else.”

During her senior year of high school, her mom, who supervised the cleaning staff at a local hospital, returned one night from work with some literature for the Self-Realization Fellowship temple in Hollywood—a white-stucco sanctuary with gold architectural embellishments and arched stained-glass windows—founded by Paramahansa Yogananda, an Indian yogi often credited with helping bring meditation and Kriya Yoga to the West.

“My mom said, ‘Hey, one of the ladies at work says she was stressed out and meditation worked for her—you should try it,’” recalls Acosta. “I took the little pamphlets, and I started to read about affirmations, and meditation, and manifestation, and the Law of Attraction, and all these things, and I really liked it. I was like, Oh, it’s like magic.”

But when she showed up at the temple a few weeks later, it wasn’t exactly love at first sight: “I was like, ‘This is a fucking cult. Get me out of here,’” she says. Even so, something about the lecture she heard that day resonated with her deep down, and she decided to stick with it. “The sermon was about how we were responsible for our own happiness,” Acosta says. “That really caught my attention, because I was like, Whoa, whoa, what does that mean? I was having this spiritual awakening of sorts, and it really spoke to me—this idea that I needed to be responsible for creating the life I wanted. I needed to be the person who rectified my bad behavior,” she says. “Somebody else couldn’t do that for me.”

Gradually, the path toward yoga revealed itself. When Acosta was 22, she grew interested in the physical aspects of the yogic lifestyle she was beginning to adopt, and she decided to attend a teacher training that, she would later come to realize, was unconventional, to say the least. “I found this little Kundalini Yoga studio in Pasadena that offered a weekend-long immersive training led by this sweet couple,” she says. As it turned out, they were followers of Osho, the controversial leader of the Rajneesh movement, recently popularized by the Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country. “They had Osho posters everywhere,” Acosta recalls. “I took away a ton of information, but I remember thinking, There’s no way I can teach yoga. But after that, yoga started becoming more of a daily practice.”

She began regularly frequenting the Center for Yoga (now YogaWorks) and attending workshops and 200-hour teacher trainings with the intention of both deepening her practice and eventually becoming a yoga teacher. Yoga was where everything made sense, she says.

Rod Stryker, the founder of ParaYoga who became Acosta’s teacher in 2011, was surprised to learn of the adversity Acosta overcame to become the warm and wise yogi she is today. He says of their early days together: “I didn’t hear anything about hardship. I experienced this amazingly present, vibrant, mature, full soul.” But Acosta says that when she started studying with Stryker (her favorite teacher was a student of his, and encouraged Acosta to try his class), she had really only just begun her journey into yoga. “Things were resonating, but I couldn’t put the pieces together. It was like having a compass, and seeing signs—just trying to figure out how to bring all the clues together,” she says.

Rosie encourages students to commit to their own ability and potential while not comparing themselves to others.

Reflections from the other side

Today, after seven years of Stryker’s tutelage, Acosta certainly appears to have found her way. She teaches her own students at Wanderlust Hollywood and the newly opened Den Meditation studio, and recently, she and Pendergrass have been talking about starting a family of their own. The lessons she imparts on her students she’s learned from Stryker and from her own transformation. First and foremost, “practice for a long period of time without interruption and with an attitude of service”—wisdom from Patanjali (author of the Yoga Sutra) that’s so important today, she says, when most of us can’t even read an email on the computer without reaching for our phone. “I always say, this is a marathon, not a sprint. There are no freeways to enlightenment,” she says. The other mainstay of her teaching is something she’s gleaned from her own life: Commit to your own ability and your own potential, and quit comparing yourself to others. “Devote yourself to your own gifts and you’ll achieve success,” she says. “And remember that it’s going to look different from everyone else’s, because it’s supposed to.”

From the Mulholland Drive Scenic Overlook, where Acosta takes me one blistering-hot LA afternoon, we can see the entire metropolis sprawled out in front of us. She points out where she grew up, all the way on the right, the East side of the horizon. She recalls how she used to skip school and take the bus to downtown, then hike all the way up here and imagine what life would look like on the other side of the city—the life she’s living today, as if deep down, she knew what it would be like all along. “One of my girlfriends, she wanted to be an actress,” she recalls. “So she’d say things like, ‘I’m going to buy that house over there and be famous.’ But for me, any time I had to think of what my life might look like if it were something else, I would stay quiet. I didn’t have a vision of a career, per se, but I had a vision of what I wanted to see. And it was this.”

See also Doshas Decoded: Learn About Your Unique Mind & Body Type

#sleep sounds #sleep music #white noise app #nature sounds #relaxing sounds #rain sounds for sleeping

[amyddaniels]

Rosie Acosta on Her Troubled Past and Finding Yoga

Asana and meditation teacher and popular podcast personality Rosie Acosta says yoga and a sunny outlook saved her life. Here’s how.

Here’s how our December cover model, Rosie Acosta of the Radically Loved podcast, went from troubled teen to enlightened yogapreneur. 

On a sunny afternoon in the Hollywood Hills, Rosie Acosta sits on the sofa in her bright living room, knees to her chest, facing best-selling author and Ayurveda practitioner Sahara Rose Ketabi. The two women are friends, and they’ve greeted each other warmly with hugs and excited chatter. They dish for a few minutes about Acosta’s herbal tea obsession and Ketabi’s recent engagement, but the pair have come together on official business—Ketabi is making a guest appearance on Acosta’s wellness podcast, Radically Loved, to discuss her new cookbook, Eat Feel Fresh, which features modern spins on traditional Ayurvedic recipes. 

Both Ayurveda enthusiasts, Acosta and Ketabi have recently returned from a six-day panchakarma, the most intense detoxification ritual in Ayurvedic medicine. The process consists of five aggressive therapies said to eliminate doshic imbalances in the body. (In Ayurveda, doshas are the three energies believed to govern physiological and mental activity.) To hear them describe it, it’s purging, pooping, and bathing in oil until you come out anew on the other side. Oh, and there’s a ton of ghee: “They put ghee in your eyes to clarify eyesight. They clean your ears with it,” Ketabi marvels. “I mean, there’s ghee in every crevice.”

Of course there’s also meditation and self-reflection and carefully prepared Ayurvedic meals of kitchari (and more ghee), and it was during a panchakarma lunch that Ketabi discovered something rather radical about Acosta: “She’s literally a psychic guru,” she tells me.

See also How to Use Ayurveda to Get Healthier Every Time You Eat

Acosta and Ketabi swear it happened like this: They were at the panchakarma retreat with two other friends. It was a virechana day—designed to clear toxins from the GI tract. They all took laxatives and were confined to their individual rooms. Around three o’clock in the afternoon, Acosta took a nap. When she woke up at 4:30, she decided to meditate “for like, two hours straight,” she says, adding that it was the longest she’s ever sat for a meditation at one time. “I started to feel this weird thing happening—like an out-of-body experience,” she says. “All of a sudden, I wanted to go visit the girls and see what they were doing.”

Without leaving her room, still deep in meditation, Acosta checked in on her friends. She saw one of them curled up on her bed, naked, and lying on her left side. Another was propped up on her stomach, journaling. Acosta didn’t see Ketabi in her room at all. Instead, she envisioned the petite brunette at the gym, running on an elliptical, talking on her cell phone in Spanish (she’s fluent) to what sounded like a wedding planner. “At the end of the conversation she goes, ‘OK. ¡Hasta luego!’ And then hangs up,” Acosta recalls.

By the time Acosta met Ketabi for lunch the next day, she’d already confirmed with the other two women that her visions of them had, in fact, been accurate. But when she started telling Ketabi what had happened, things got even weirder. Ketabi had indeed been Skyping with her wedding photographer on an elliptical the day before, ending her conversation with the Spanish farewell hasta luego. “And I remember thinking after I hung up, That so did not sound like me. Why did I say that?” Ketabi says. “I sounded like an American trying to learn Spanish.” As they hashed out the events of the day before, they discovered that Acosta’s vision had actually occurred hours before Ketabi’s conversation with her photographer took place. “It’s like she put the words in my mouth,” Ketabi concludes.

We spent a week in Los Angeles with December cover model, Rosie Acosta of the Radically Loved Podcast. Here’s how yoga helped her transform a troubled adolescence into an abundant adulthood.

From rags to richness

At 35, Acosta has come to terms with supernatural phenomena such as clairvoyance and manifesting her deepest desires—in fact, she’s built her career in the yoga space by leaning into them. She believes that practicing gratitude and intense optimism (and living a life guided by the Yoga Sutra) can lead to dramatic transformation, because she’s experienced this herself. Today Acosta lives comfortably in a two-bedroom Craftsman overlooking Laurel Canyon with her fiancé, upscale-accessories designer Torry Pendergrass; her teenage sister, who was born when she was 15; and her two dogs. Acosta admits feeling extraordinarily lucky to be making a living teaching yoga and meditation in Los Angeles. Hosting self-discovery retreats and teacher trainings, plus inspirational speaking, keeps her constantly jet-setting—and her self-help-heavy podcast, in which she’s waxed poetic on topics ranging from the importance of forgiveness to the power of intention, has recently reached 120,000 followers. But things weren’t always coming up roses for Acosta, and there was a time not too long ago when she likened yoga to a cult.

See also Rosie Acosta on How to Take Down Your Inner Critic

After a tumultuous childhood growing up in South San Gabriel in East Los Angeles, Acosta suffered from depression, anxiety, and a binge-eating disorder throughout her late teens. With two immigrant parents (her mother from Spain and her father from Mexico) trying to make ends meet amid gang violence and the racist drug war that defined Los Angeles in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Acosta learned early on that there was a price to pay for being Latin American in her part of the world. “There was never any, ‘Oh, you have to grow up and go to school and have aspirations to be successful,” she recalls. “No. It was, ‘Your job is to stay alive.’”

Often referred to as the decade of death, 1988–1998 in Los Angeles County was marked by record homicide rates and violence. Gangs terrorized the neighborhoods surrounding Acosta’s home, where she lived with her parents, her older sister, and a revolving cast of extended relatives. One evening in March of ’88, Acosta’s 16-year-old uncle, charged with babysitting her and her cousin for the night, promised to take the pair of five-year-old girls to the arcade. Instead, he parked his black Camaro outside of Skateland U.S.A., a roller rink by day, music venue by night, that’s notable for launching hip-hop supergroup N.W.A. The concrete depot on Central Avenue in Compton was situated deep in Bloods territory, and although a sign reading NO CAPS — NO COLORS adorned the entry door, the crowd was frequently a stormy sea of red. Peering out from the back seat of the Camaro, Acosta could see a gaggle of high schoolers and gangbangers drinking and shouting in the noisy lot. “Wait in the car,” her uncle told her. “I’m just gonna go watch this show, and then I’ll be right back.” An early N.W.A. fan, her uncle had brought her to the controversial rap group’s now-legendary first performance, immortalized in the 2015 biopic Straight Outta Compton.

“He left, and we just looked at each other, so freaked out,” Acosta recalls. The girls hid under a Saltillo blanket as violence erupted outside—until their uncle emerged, hours later, with a bloody face and a busted left eye. “I still have no idea how that happened, but then nobody asked him,” Acosta recalls. “He was like, ‘We were at the arcade,’ and my parents were like, ‘OK.’ It was literally like Lord of the Flies, you know?”

Exactly 10 years later, in the spring of 1998, Acosta sat in the driver’s seat of a running cop car, surrounded by six or seven officers with their guns drawn, all screaming for her to get out of the car. She was a sophomore at Mark Keppel High School, and she and some friends had decided to ditch sixth period to hang out at Sierra Vista Park in northeast LA. The small grassy park is home to a basketball court and a primary-colored playground, and while the teens were en route, a car chase was going down nearby. A police car had been in pursuit of a red Honda Prelude when both cars screeched to a halt at the edge of the park. The chase continued on foot—the abandoned vehicles left running on the pavement. “I was like Dora the Explorer, looking in both cars, trying to be a badass because all these people were watching,” says Acosta. “And someone was like, ‘Oh, you should get into the cop car.’” Clad in fingerless panda-print gloves and a chunky black sweater, Acosta hopped into the front seat, unaware that the place was crawling with undercover cops. The incident resulted in her arrest for attempted grand theft auto.

After several traumatic events growing up, Rosie realized she needed to change the direction her life was headed. 

Rosie from the block

Ventura Boulevard is humming with hipsters as Acosta and I sit beneath a bright-blue umbrella, amid teal bistro tables, outside Australian-inspired coffee shop Bluestone Lane. The chain is new to LA, and Acosta is hoping this outpost will be as good as the one she frequents in New York City. We both order avocado toast, and over coffee and matcha discuss her forthcoming memoir and how she came to find yoga. She’s animated and easy to talk to, with an attitude and mannerisms that are a little bit JLo. (Case in point, as Ketabi walked out the door at the end of her podcast recording session with Acosta, she turned to me and said, “The way I’m envisioning the [YJ] cover is, she’s wearing little pigtails on her head, like buns. And she’s doing a handstand on one hand. And wearing those pants that have the straps, but instead of ‘Calvin Klein’ it says, ‘Rosie from the Block’”—a direct reference to the 2002 Jennifer Lopez chart topper “Jenny from the Block.”) In short, Acosta is the real deal, and she practices what she preaches because she believes it saved her life.

Acosta tells me that if she hadn’t been booked that day in 1998, things may not have turned around quite like they have. Traumatic episodes such as the one that unfolded at the N.W.A. concert colored her childhood, and it was only after her arrest that she was truly able to reflect on how her upbringing was wreaking havoc on her adolescence. Living through a never-ending reel of teen deaths, hold-ups at grocery stores, and other violent scenarios eventually led to debilitating panic attacks, depression, and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. And after her arrest, court-ordered probation meant she could no longer cut school to blow off steam with her friends, most of whom were on a similar path of self-destruction. Discovering meditation and self-inquiry, plus a dramatic shift in attitude, is what revealed to her that she didn’t have to buy into what other people expected of her, which by her account, wasn’t much. “Nobody around us was trying to cultivate growth of any kind,” she says. “For me, the unpopular decision was to succeed. It’s fucked up, but the unpopular vote was to move out of my environment and become something else.”

During her senior year of high school, her mom, who supervised the cleaning staff at a local hospital, returned one night from work with some literature for the Self-Realization Fellowship temple in Hollywood—a white-stucco sanctuary with gold architectural embellishments and arched stained-glass windows—founded by Paramahansa Yogananda, an Indian yogi often credited with helping bring meditation and Kriya Yoga to the West.

“My mom said, ‘Hey, one of the ladies at work says she was stressed out and meditation worked for her—you should try it,’” recalls Acosta. “I took the little pamphlets, and I started to read about affirmations, and meditation, and manifestation, and the Law of Attraction, and all these things, and I really liked it. I was like, Oh, it’s like magic.”

But when she showed up at the temple a few weeks later, it wasn’t exactly love at first sight: “I was like, ‘This is a fucking cult. Get me out of here,’” she says. Even so, something about the lecture she heard that day resonated with her deep down, and she decided to stick with it. “The sermon was about how we were responsible for our own happiness,” Acosta says. “That really caught my attention, because I was like, Whoa, whoa, what does that mean? I was having this spiritual awakening of sorts, and it really spoke to me—this idea that I needed to be responsible for creating the life I wanted. I needed to be the person who rectified my bad behavior,” she says. “Somebody else couldn’t do that for me.”

Gradually, the path toward yoga revealed itself. When Acosta was 22, she grew interested in the physical aspects of the yogic lifestyle she was beginning to adopt, and she decided to attend a teacher training that, she would later come to realize, was unconventional, to say the least. “I found this little Kundalini Yoga studio in Pasadena that offered a weekend-long immersive training led by this sweet couple,” she says. As it turned out, they were followers of Osho, the controversial leader of the Rajneesh movement, recently popularized by the Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country. “They had Osho posters everywhere,” Acosta recalls. “I took away a ton of information, but I remember thinking, There’s no way I can teach yoga. But after that, yoga started becoming more of a daily practice.”

She began regularly frequenting the Center for Yoga (now YogaWorks) and attending workshops and 200-hour teacher trainings with the intention of both deepening her practice and eventually becoming a yoga teacher. Yoga was where everything made sense, she says.

Rod Stryker, the founder of ParaYoga who became Acosta’s teacher in 2011, was surprised to learn of the adversity Acosta overcame to become the warm and wise yogi she is today. He says of their early days together: “I didn’t hear anything about hardship. I experienced this amazingly present, vibrant, mature, full soul.” But Acosta says that when she started studying with Stryker (her favorite teacher was a student of his, and encouraged Acosta to try his class), she had really only just begun her journey into yoga. “Things were resonating, but I couldn’t put the pieces together. It was like having a compass, and seeing signs—just trying to figure out how to bring all the clues together,” she says.

Rosie encourages students to commit to their own ability and potential while not comparing themselves to others.

Reflections from the other side

Today, after seven years of Stryker’s tutelage, Acosta certainly appears to have found her way. She teaches her own students at Wanderlust Hollywood and the newly opened Den Meditation studio, and recently, she and Pendergrass have been talking about starting a family of their own. The lessons she imparts on her students she’s learned from Stryker and from her own transformation. First and foremost, “practice for a long period of time without interruption and with an attitude of service”—wisdom from Patanjali (author of the Yoga Sutra) that’s so important today, she says, when most of us can’t even read an email on the computer without reaching for our phone. “I always say, this is a marathon, not a sprint. There are no freeways to enlightenment,” she says. The other mainstay of her teaching is something she’s gleaned from her own life: Commit to your own ability and your own potential, and quit comparing yourself to others. “Devote yourself to your own gifts and you’ll achieve success,” she says. “And remember that it’s going to look different from everyone else’s, because it’s supposed to.”

From the Mulholland Drive Scenic Overlook, where Acosta takes me one blistering-hot LA afternoon, we can see the entire metropolis sprawled out in front of us. She points out where she grew up, all the way on the right, the East side of the horizon. She recalls how she used to skip school and take the bus to downtown, then hike all the way up here and imagine what life would look like on the other side of the city—the life she’s living today, as if deep down, she knew what it would be like all along. “One of my girlfriends, she wanted to be an actress,” she recalls. “So she’d say things like, ‘I’m going to buy that house over there and be famous.’ But for me, any time I had to think of what my life might look like if it were something else, I would stay quiet. I didn’t have a vision of a career, per se, but I had a vision of what I wanted to see. And it was this.”

See also Doshas Decoded: Learn About Your Unique Mind & Body Type