#we always sea stars when we look at shrimps but now you can know which stars SPECIFICALLY

[montereybayaquarium]

It’s time for Zodiac signs as shrimp (and other close shrimp-like relatives)! 🦐✨

🌜☀️✨ Part 2 ✨ ☀️🌛

Sea the rest in 🌜☀️✨ Part 1! ✨ ☀️🌛

Thanks to our fronds at NOAA for the image of the goblin shrimp!

#monterey bay aquarium #shromp week 2024 #we always sea stars when we look at shrimps but now you can know which stars SPECIFICALLY #shrimps are technically all water signs #petition to make all zodiac signs crustaceans #cancer is lonely up there #think of it as carcinization but for the stars #the sea is coming for you NASA

[witchlyboo]

Definitely, maybe.

Part five: The one who belongs to someone else.

Introduction. Part one. Part two. Part three. Part four.

Paring: Latina!reader x Logan Lerman x Tom Holland x Ben Hardy x Timothee Chalamet x Pedro Pascal x Michael B. Jordan

Warnings: Swearing, angst, misspellings, some Spanish, me learning how to write properly, and NY stuff that I've learned from movies that we all agree to pretend are real.

Word count: 6.4 k

a/n: You been asking for smut, I know, I know, I just wanted to introduce you to all the boys first, and we're getting there, just one more ahead. Also, I'm working on a masterlist because we are getting too many parts already.

All body types and skin tones friendly. You can also enjoy it as a no Hispanic reader. Constructive feedback and misspellings correction is always welcome.

Red and blue lights flash the driving mirror.

—No, no, no, por favor que no sea a mi—You beg to the sky looking at the patrol that is asking you to park, or someone else, there's a lot of cars in this part of the city, there's a big chance is the panic who's controlling your senses.—Dios, mi abuela fue a la iglesia cada domingo de su vida y nunca te pidió nada, please let me have some of her divina recompensa.—But that's not how it works, you end up parking with just a few seconds to think what to say. There's a perfect explication of why you are driving a car that is not yours in the middle of the night and smelling like a minibar.

Then this ridiculous thought comes to your mind, you look expensive, you've never seen the daughter of a senator but you must be close to it, it would make you less of a feminist if you just use your attributes? Ugh, you feel sick just to think about it but don't have enough money to pay a fine, and the constant paranoia of being chased all the time as an immigrant will only get stronger.

You pull down your dress a little so your neckline can do its job but you regret it immediately, and you're pretty sure you look more like an expensive prostitute who stole the car of his lover than some influential men's daughter.

—License and registration.—You hear him say when he approaches your window. You don't like this but you have to play the dumb tourist, the pretty foreign girl that is too stupid to be dangerous, with the look you have tonight it shouldn't be hard. But damn you hate cops, any uniformed man that works for the government is your eternal enemy, and you don't know how long you could keep the nice dumb Latina game before spit on his face.

—There's something wrong, officer? ...You?!—Your sexy and fake high voice is ruined when you see the face of the man who stopped you. This night couldn't get worse.

—Wait, what happened with the party?—Evan interrupts you while you finish some notes for work, little remainders for later when you don't have an eleven years old kid running around you, he's not usually this energic and you have to blame yourself for that, you're describing a life of excess and eccentric fun, something you let behind so many years ago that your own son doesn't know even a bit of it.

—Ugh, a nightmare doesn't worth telling.—You remember vaguely most of it but what keeps fresh in your mind is bad enough to don't want to bring it back.

—But if Timothée is my dad I have to know the important things, including the bad stuff.—Sounds perfectly reasonable and that's what makes you groan at him. Sometimes you feel blessed that your kid is better than you in any possible way, and sometimes you want to kill his brain with video games and reality shows like the rest of the parents.

—Ok, cool, but I'll keep all the +18 content for myself, so this part of the story might be blurry for you.—It kinda is for you anyway.

You should’ve known this night was cursed, you had a feeling because a) your earring fell off at the same time Timothée texted you to give you the party address and say he can't pick you up. And b) he won’t pick you up. Your mother would say that’s reason enough to not go, a real gentleman wouldn’t make you go to an unknown place in the middle of the night on your own in a city like this. But you decide to ignore it because you are a modern woman and because it’s worth it. It better be.

The outfit must be something special. You always take your time to choose what to wear, even if just another regular day, and since this isn't the case you thought about it for hours, that made your mind busy enough to not thinking about Tom and the whole love confession. He texted you saying he'll come for you to go to class together on Monday, which is completely impractical because he's way closer than you but is progress and you're going to take it.

You wanted to ask for Sheep's opinion but you thought she might not care, has been a few days since she started acting strange like she's bothered just to see you breathe. You want to blame his boyfriend to take all her time and attention from you but is probably just her new job, she got a small role in a Netflix show, and even when you're so happy for her, that's the event that has changed her into someone completely different. But you give her time, stress can do bad things to people.

The winner is the exact copy you made of the black and white striped dress Cameron Diaz wore in "The Mask" beautiful, classy, and sexy enough without being too scandalous, not that you have any problem with that, but this isn't the occasion, you don't want to feel like you're being too much or too little, just enough, it's supposed to be easy, right? you were born for this. Just adding some big shiny earrings you got on a thrift shop that look like real diamonds and you're ready, not that you own any to compare. Red lipstick, dark eyes, and a messy bun to get that disinterested pitch every look needs.

Getting there wasn't a problem, you were in the rich part of the city, everyone know who, where and what just to brag about it. The excitement is growing with every second, you check your makeup like thirty times in the elevator and send texts to your mom just to let her know where you are, and because you have to share that moment with someone and you are limited of friends these days.

Timothée opens the door with red eyes, drunk, high, or somewhere in between, you know then you were right about the bad feeling. He jumps on you to kiss you and no matter how much you try to explain the delicacy of your lipstick, he does it anyway, leaving a taste of alcohol and shrimps in your mouth. Taking you by the waist he walks you to a group of people you don't know while you're trying harder to fix the red color of your mouth without a mirror.

—Here is the companion I bought, look at her, that's how five grand per hour look like.—They laughed but you were too disoriented to process all the things he said, it was supposed to be a joke? if it is, why isn't he correcting? Instead, his hand goes straight to your ass and presses it to get you closer to him.

—I'm actually an intern in the costume designer department of the new version of "Sense and Sensibility".—You wanted to mention your recent promotion to hairstylist and makeup artist but that might be too pretentious. Anyway, they don't seem to care what you are or not, in fact, they don't even see you, all eyes are on Timothée

—Oh, well, is easy to forget when you're paying them—All laughs again. Who is this person? Who are all these people, actually? You recognize some influencers, a few cast members but there's no sign of the director, other main actors, not even his co-star. You feel like an extra in a movie where someone will be killed in a luxury party, hopefully not you. You take his hand from your body and clear your throat.—I'm just joking my love, she looks stunning, isn't she? I’ll get you a drink.

He leaves and the group of people surrounding you suddenly dissipated like boiling water, you were on your own again and despite some judgmental gazes is like you’re not there, you’re sure you could just take your dress off and throw it to someone’s face and unless Tim says something about it, no one would care. You’re there as his companion, an ornament, and that’s not enough to earn their attention because it’s too obvious you’re the one in turn.

You walk to the only window no one is smoking and check your phone, you know, the thing you do when you pretend you have important issues to attend, but no, you end reading some old messages, pictures, texting your mom of how much fun you’re having at the party, and somehow you check your filed Facebook messages to find Logan’s name. You cover the screen so fast you hurt your nail, his name is enough to make you tremble like a Chihuahua, you haven’t talked to him since that night, you know from his sister he lives in the house he bought for you two and he’s having the happiest life without you. You want to believe that because that means you took the right decision but deep inside… no, you can’t be that person, you want him to be happier than ever.

You find the guts to open the message, and you read as slowly as is humanly possible. “My angel, I hope this finds you in perfect health…” Dios, just Logan could start a message like that, your smile is almost too big to fit in your face so you bit your nail to cover it a little. “I recently found one of the human body drawings you made for me to study, you’ll be happy to know…”

—That’s a fucking long-ass message.—Tim appears behind you and takes your phone from your hand, spilling some of his drink on your dress in the process. Apparently, he's been there long enough to read part of the message.

—Give it back.—You command in the most severe voice you have, your magical moment got ruined and you remember the hole of hell you are.

—"My angel, I hope this finds you in perfect health. I recently found one of the human body drawings you made for me to study, you must know I still use them now and then"—Timothée starts reading the message, and even when no one is close enough to hear it and you don’t really care about this people’s opinion, that’s not for anyone to read, that’s one of the few parts of your life you treasure the most and you’re not ready to get over it.—You little slut, are you cheating on me with a med student?

—Give it to me.—You repeat trying to take the phone from his hand but he’s faster and walks away putting it out of your reach.

—"I meticulously preserve them, I certainly know any piece of art made by you will be priceless in the near future"—You don’t want to hear it coming from his drunk mocking voice, so you try to ignore what he’s saying and put more effort on chasing the phone.—Should I had kept the jeans where you left the wet spot on? I didn’t know you were an artist, my love.

—Timothée, por el amor de Dios.—Now you're trying to climb him, it wouldn't be that hard to take him down, he's skinny and you're fierce. That's what you thought but he's not moving even with you are on top of his shoulder and his opposite long arm keeps the phone away from you.

—Who is this guy and why is he talking to my girl like this?—You see the olive eyes getting darker and the tone of his voice went deeper than you thought he could do. You desist from taking the phone, you know the bullies love the attention, maybe that's exactly what he wants and give it to him just makes it worse.

—I'm not your girl.—You claim fixing up your dress having enough of games, and you have no reason to keep worrying about losing your job, the filming is done, and apparently your relationship with him too. You don't care about any of that anymore, just want to read Logan's text.

Even behind all the alcohol and the eyes injected in blood thanks for who knows what kind of drug, you can see the disappointment and anger, but it's not a broken heart, Is the hissy fit of a child that loses his balloon and now everyone will pay for it, especially you.

—Are you sure about that?—You can see him swallow hard, almost looking vulnerable, but his voice is defiant and threatening to prove you wrong. He just has to stretch out his arm to reach the open window with your phone in hand, his intentions are clear and the only thing you can do is raise your hands as a reflex.—You were mine the moment you put a foot on my trailer, and I don't fucking share my stuff.—Before you can say a word he drops the phone from the fourth floor.

You know is senseless but you find yourself running out of the party and going to search the device, using it also as an excuse to get away from that place. This is the first time someone makes you feel meaningless, you know the famous' world is cold and lacking in empathy but this is ridiculous, they're a bunch of parasites fed by attention and power. By Timothée.

The screen is crashed and the rest of it is probably beyond repair, not that you're surprised, its life is longer than you've been in the country and you admit you should have replaced it much earlier but you're not the kind to throw away things that still work. However, is not the phone you are worried about, not as much as what it contains.

—That was obsolete anyway, I'll get you a better one.—You didn't know he was following you, his voice interrupts your self-wailing. He sounds calmer and a little embarrassed, but not enough to say sorry, you don't think he's capable of saying it.

You shake your head and start to walk away without a word, you don't want anything from him, not materially, at least.

—Don't make a scandal out of it, it's just a phone!—He yells erasing any trace of regret in his voice. He doesn't see the reaction he expected and that's when he runs after you and with a hand on your upper arm pulls you back, you gasped for the sudden bluntness.—That annoying habit you have of leaving when I'm talking to you.

You push him away with all the strength you have, which resulted in him almost falling on the ground.

—I don't care about the stupid phone!—You finally break, but sadly is not as satisfactory as you thought it would be.—You are mean, vain, arrogant and the worst part is that you enjoy being this despicable human because you have absolutely no consequences to it. Everyone around you just accepts it and I feel so sorry for you because the only possible way for you to fill the void inside is to be surrounded by that crowd of mules licking your steps—To your surprise, he has nothing to say, he's just standing there with no facial expression, whatever he feels is easily covered by his years of experience acting, even drunk.—I can't give you that and it's obvious they don't want me either. What am I even doing here?—You ask yourself thinking where would be the best way of getting a cab, is a rich zone, must be easy.

—Everything is better when you're around—His voice is thin and fragile, you have to process what he said three times in your head to understand his words. You're not willing to look at him yet.—You're not like the others.

—Pure bullshit. You love to repeat that misogynist discourse of girls being in a certain way because is easier than be responsible for the people you choose to be—You were hugging yourself the whole time, is a cold night, but not enough to be bothersome, you enjoy Fall weather—You got me for a moment, I give you that, you fooled me but I'm too tired of guessing what version of you is real—When you return your gaze at him, he doesn't try to hide the guilt anymore, but there's still haughtiness in there.—Now, if you don't mind Mr. Chalamet, I need to get a cab.

—No, you came with me, you leave with me.—There's no trace of alcohol in his voice anymore, a good scolding is enough to put you sober, you know that thanks to your mom. Oh god, you're becoming her.

—You didn't bring me here, gigantic head—You look at him and put your hand in front of him with the palm up. He stares at it for several seconds before put his own on it—Not that!—You shake it and start looking inside his jeans pockets until you feel the metal of his key car.—You can't drive and I have to get home. You'll find it in the studio tomorrow.

That's how you ended with a car way more luxurious than you expected, driving so slowly and carefully that the police stopped you. What a night, but at this point, you couldn't care less about anything that is not that message, is been months and you can't get over it, over him. Not even Ben moans, Tom's comforting arms, or fight with a movie star at 3:00 am. is enough to get him out of your mind.

—So is true, you don't wear anything that hasn't appeared in a movie, huh?—Michael B. Jordan is leaning on the car window with a mocking smile and a sparkle of satisfaction that you would love to punch but his uniform keeps you in line, where you come from police is not equal to justice, most of the times is oppression.

—You know where it's from?—That was kind of comforting, no one at the party noticed. Not that you care.

—Is The Mask, not some Adam Hitchcock's blurb.—He smiles and even when you really don't like him, it's nice to be with a familiar face, you are really tired of running away, scaping for problems that are a result of your null capacity to deal with emotions. Ugh, what a word.

—Is Alfred Hitchcock, actually.—You didn't want to sound priggish, but you correct him with no time to stop yourself, an old habit.

—You got me, smarty, you know more than movies than me. Where did you get this car?—You feel really nervous even when you got this legally, you have your documents and license on time and he's being nice enough to not want to run away in a car that you technically borrowed for yourself.

—It's not mine.—No shit, Sherlock.

—No shit, Sherlock, I was asking where did you steal it.—You wanted to laugh but there's something with the uniform that just doesn't allow you to be yourself.—Are you drunk?

—No, no, fuck, no, it's just, I don't feel comfortable with cops—He raises his eyebrows but that is his only reaction.—Listen, is my boss' car, I'm doing the favor to take it to the studio, and I'm really nervous because is fucking expensive, he's an asshole, I haven't drive un almost a year because you people only use cars if you're rich or your work and lives depend on it. I'm starving.—The last part came out of nowhere, you haven't eaten anything in almost 13 hours, maybe that's the actual reason why you are that moody.

He doesn't answer right away, takes his time to look at you, what makes you blush, he's really close, closer than he's ever been. Does he smell like green apples? Not the actual apples, the artificial smell they had given to them.

—Get out of the car.—Oh no, is he arresting you? Is he finally taking revenge for every time you make fun of his Hawaiian-type shirts? You know you have too much karma accumulated and a cop making you pay for it when you don’t believe in their sense of justice is kinda poetic, and evil.

You don’t want to discuss with someone with a taser, gun, pepper spray, or who knows what else. So you take your bag, the key car, and get off defeated.

—My turn is almost over, I’ll take you to eat something, c’mon.—He walks back to his patrol and you stay still for a few seconds still processing his words, you must look totally devastated for him to offer that. How you see it you have two options, go with him and spend an awkward hour with a person you don’t like or risk getting a fine, Tim can pay it, it’s not a big deal but you don’t want to owe him even the minimal thing.

You get in the car holding on to your bag to feel calmer, this is the first time you’re fully alone with him since you found him half-naked in your kitchen. Those defined abs may never leave your brain.

—Are you cold?—He interrupts your thoughts with his question, you didn’t notice you were shaking. He looks for something under his seat and gives you an NYPD hoodie, you hold it doubting your next move, is not like you don’t appreciate the gesture but it’d be easier to take if it doesn’t get that words printed—Is clean.—He says chuckling when he sees the way you’re looking at it.

—Is not that, just, you know, fuck the police, defund the NYPD, demilitarize the pigs and that stuff.—You say putting on the hoodie anyway, is a cold night and you won't help the institution wearing their propaganda.

—Yeah, I get it, but you can't change the system just from within.—You decide is not the right moment to have a political conversation so you shrug your shoulders and discreetly smell the hoodie, a mix of cologne, green apples, and cheap soap, you know is cheap because you buy the exact same, do its job.

—I'm in the mood for pizza.—You say casually, making a deal to yourself to try to be his friend, he is a small part of your life anyway.—Domino's is open at this time of the night?

—Tell me you're not consuming that shit, dear Lord, you been here for how long, two years? I can't believe your idea of a good pizza is Domino's. Stella hasn't taught you anything?—You're surprised by the level of condescension with a pizza and you mirror his smile, suddenly feeling embarrassed. Your school program includes people from all around the world so you don't have that much experience with actual new yorkers. Logan is rich, so he doesn't really count.

—What's wrong with Domino's? I don't buy much street food, is cheaper to buy things on the food market. Besides, all pizza is good.—The mention of Sheep makes you a little tense, so you don't say anything about it, is not a conversation to have with him.

—Don't blaspheme in the patrol, I just washed it—You laugh, finally, after a terrible weekend. You can see why she likes him, there is something about his voice, smile, and his eyes that feel... calm, like watching Friends after a marathon of Lord of the Rings.—There are rules to survive this city, and I'm surprised you have made it this far without a proper guide.

—Chill out Mr. Miyagi, I'm not from the jungle, and I've learned a lot by myself.—He gives you a lopsided grin as a request, and you put your fingers up ready to enlist your acquired knowledge.—Walk fast, like you're about to be stabbed, something that actually happened to me, with an umbrella—He nods and laughs being related to it.—Number two, no small talk, no one cares, even if they ask. Number three, if you look a stranger in the eye, especially a homeless person, you have essentially invited them to approach you.

—Number four, we never eat from Domino's, Papa John's, Pizza hut, or any other chain restaurant, only trucks and local places are allowed.—You roll your eyes but you get the point, is just, again, you're not much into street food, it doesn't taste like home and the only way to eat food like that is preparing it yourself.

—Fine, fuck capitalism, let's support local places—You make an obvious fake enthusiastic tone but he nods proudly.—Number five, you don't need a car to live here, not even know how to drive. I would have successfully avoided this police brutality if I had followed that rule.

—For someone who is about to eat for free, you whine too much.—He parks the car and gives you a sign to go with him. You see him go to a pizza truck and order, you realize at the moment how ridiculous you look, so before chasing him you let your hair down, take your huge earrings off, and roll up the skirt of your dress until your mid-thighs letting the hoodie cover the rest, and clean the red lipstick with a Kleenex from your bag. Now you look more like a college person and not a rich girl who just got seized.

—Here you go.—He says giving you a slice as big as your head, looks oily and spreading cheese everywhere. Perfect.

—Is it vegan?—You ask receiving the food with an obnoxious face. His kind grind turned into a dread expression and you give him your second laugh of the day.—I'm kidding.

You are about to give it a bite when you see passing next to you a huge rat with the exact same slice as yours in its mouth, running into the dark of the night happy to have obtained the food for its family. They use to scare you when you just moved out but now they're like any other pigeon in the sky.

—Rule... whatever, a rat with a slice of pizza is a symbol for good luck, congratulations.—He pets your head awkwardly, not sure if you're ok with the physical contact, which, surprisingly, you are.

—I see rats with bagels all the time.—Pizza and bagels, that's the main culinary wonders of the city, you like it, not much to object but is hard not to compare it with your home's food.

—Is easy to confuse a rough diamond with a simple rock.—You both eat in silence, enjoying the mixed sounds of the city and all the different smells, the whole situation feels like one of those lofi music videos. You remember thinking about moments like this before getting the scholarship, what would it be like to feel normal in the city of your dreams.

—How do you know that much about movies?—He asks after a few minutes when you take a break to drink something, that pizza is not easy to take.

—When I was a kid a spent much time on my own, so my dad bought me a used DVD reproducer, and at the corner of my neighborhood was this movie store where you could buy 5 pirate movies for one dollar. They were blurred, with a terrible sound, and most of the time with the wrong movie inside but they helped me to not feel lonely. Eventually, the store closed but I've watched everything in it by then—He gives you a warm smile, you never told that story to anyone, not because is too intimate to share, but because no one asked, it doesn't sound like a question with a complex answer.—Anyway, I watched Marie Antoinette when I was like eight, and I decided at that moment that however is done I wanted to be part of that magic.

—You hear all kind of people chasing dreams in this city but is hard to find someone who actually deserves it.—You blush and you cover it with your hair but the smile on your voice is impossible to hide.

—Is that a compliment? You must really want me to like you to date Sheep.—You laugh but you can see his face tense, so you can guess your friend has been busy breaking everyone’s hearts.

—She hasn’t returned my calls in three days so I don’t think there’s much you can do—You nod, all this time you thought he was the reason she is ignoring you but apparently you are both in the same boat.—But yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking, what I should have said is, Marie Antoinette at eight? I can see where all the damage started.

You gasp and throw your napkin at his head, he easily catches it without even looking at it and laughs; that was unexpectedly attractive.

—Why a cop?—You ask, not sure where that question came from, maybe you authentically want to know more about him, he just bought you food, and honestly, that's the easiest way to win your trust.

—I wanted to be an actor when I was a child. This is the city of opportunities so you may think that if you want to chase the big wonder, this is the perfect place to do it. But I grow up surrounded by these people giving their entire lives to get something just given to one in a million so I decided is not worth it. For many years I wondered what I wanted to do with my life and the answer was really clear, my dad was a cop, a good one, or that’s what people say. I don’t remember much because he died when I was seven—Conversations about death are not your strength, everything can turn out uncomfortable if you choose the wrong words.—It might not be that glamorous but if my father died for it, it surely worth it.

—For the good ones.—You raise your almost empty can of Coke and he does the same with a grin that warms the cold weather of the night.

—For the good ones.

The next two hours passed like minutes talking about anything and everything. It just felt right to talk freely with him, you didn’t feel judged for your awkward family moments or your random thoughts, not even once because he told you his too. At some point of the night he borrowed you his gym sweatpants, any of you could just suggest going home but that was off the table, end that peace just for weather reasons would have been a tragedy.

—I read Timothée Chalamet is a dick. Is that true?—The mention of his name remains you of your life and everything that comes with it, including the middle semester project that you must dedicate your entire day, one that is about to start.—What, you can’t talk about it?

—He is a complete dick with no sense of privacy or human decency—And when he interrupts a deep kiss to look at your eyes, smile, and caress your chin, you feel like a character of his Victorian movies. But he didn’t ask that.—But the next week he’ll be no longer my problem.

—That’s why we have rule twenty-three, don’t ask for a picture of a celebrity unless they are local—You have heard about it before but you haven’t got the opportunity to decide if you like that rule because the only celebrities you have seen are from work and that club’s party opening.—That means you’ll be free to go to the Stephen Kings’ movie projection there will be for Halloween.

You don’t know if that was a proposition, a suggestion, or just a simple recommendation, and whatever it is, you noticed he was nervous to ask. Is it wrong? It feels wrong like you were betraying your friend accepting to hang out with his boyfriend without her consent. But he didn’t ask you to go with him so is safe to answer.

—Yeah, I guess—You get a moment, four seconds top, where you shared innocent, curious, and tenting gazes like three graders in the playground. And that’s the further you will allow yourself to go.—We better leave, if the sunlight touch me I’ll turn into dust.

You get off the car hood and go to the side door, but this time he opens it for you. You give him a “seriously?” Look, receiving a little push in your arm as a response.

↬☀︎︎

A distant voice asks you to wake up, softly whispers that turn into caresses on your cheek, your eyes feel so heavy, even when you are well aware of your environment your eyelids keep closed.

—Good morning, Princess—This is the first time Tom calls you that way, the change from silly nicknames to Princess is enough to get you out of hibernation. He is squatting beside your bed, his smile is the promise of a better day, and chasing that idea you give him one small back.—Your mom has been texting me desperately all day, she said you're not answering her calls and is worried.

—Fuck, my phone broke last night, can I call her from yours?—That’s an oversimplification but in the search for a better story, that's what you decide to believe and tell. Tom nods and gives it to you, he looks happy, beyond that, this is the first time you see that subtle blush on his cheeks and the eyes sparkling. You sit on the bed next to his body looking for your mom's number, slowly he moves between your legs, you have shorts and an oversized Back To The Future t-shirt, you got took the time to prepare yourself to bed last night and keep Michael’s clothes inside your closet to wash them, like The Tell-Tale Heart, a little innocent secret who feels dirty somehow

The conversations with your mom are always long, nostalgic and the tears are hard to hold for both parts; after a long life sharing almost every day with her, her absence never feels smaller. But this time is different, Tom is exploring the bare skin under your knee with his warm hands, asking for permission with curious eyes, and when you don’t object to the touch the British boy keeps his exploring mission cautiously, giving special attention to see your eyes in case something change. Is time to hang up when he gives a long and loving kiss to your knee, the less erotic kiss you could think of but so intimate to bristle your skin.

—Not nice to touch someone's daughter when is talking to her mom.—The protest of your voice loses strength at every word, he heard that and just straight his back to reach your face, the gap is almost extinct.

—We're okay, she likes me.—He assures holding your hips and pulling you a bit to him. Tom looks very comfortable with the new closeness authorization, you like it but are not very sure about it yet, most of you still think of him as your best friend.

—Did she tell you that? Are you talking with my mom behind my back?—You laugh when he does, almost like nothing changed.

—She adores me, I swear, I'm invited to Christmas, you know?—You're not surprised, she invites everyone, Logan was too but the first time he got family plans and didn't make it to the second.

—You should go, maybe we can do...—His lips touch yours in a peak at the middle phrase and makes you forget what you were about to say.—Man, the audacity to interrupt...—Then he kisses you again, deeply, using his tongue to taste your inner lip and his hands holding your shirt in fists. That's a twist of events.

—Is that ok?—You hear a weak whisper coming out of his voice but you got so mesmerized on his lips that decided to ignore it and kiss him back instead. He responds to your touch and starts to lean over you to make you lay on the bed.

Jesucristo bendito, is this happening? like, actually happening? you must look like trash, you barely took all the makeup from the night before and didn't take a shower, you start to get so worried about smells, feelings, and what that'll mean to your already too much-spoiled friendship.

However, the time of doubts is done when Sheep starts yelling in the living room, you both reacted running to the sound and looking for your blonde friend. Michael is there but doesn't look like the same as a few hours ago, is annoyed and tired for the lack of sleep, a look that doesn't match him at all.—What did you do?—You ask him fast assuming she's mad for something he did.

—Just in time, the star of the movie, I was wondering how much it will take you to be the protagonist of this.—That is Sheep's voice talking about you and what must be your heart breaking from her words.

—Excuse me?—You wish your tone would be less savage but you can't help respond the same way she did.

—Logan wasn't enough, then you got the drummer, fucking Timothée Chalamet, Tom and now my boyfriend. I'm so glad I didn't leave you alone with my dad or I'd be calling you mom now.—You have no words to that, Michael doesn't even dare to look at you, he must have told her something she misunderstood, but Sheep, or well, Stella is saying things she actually thinks and keep to herself. Tom walks in front of you whispering things to her to calm her down but she is not looking at him, you didn't tell her anything about Tom either so he's taking responsibility this time.—Go ahead and fuck the whole city, Michael if that please you but you're crossing the line with Tom and you know that, you're going to ruin him as you ruin every man that enters in your life.—She has a very you moment having the last word of the dispute and getting out of the apartment with Michael going after her but not putting much effort in it.

✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧

Taglist:

@eridanuswave @cjand10 @deluxeplanteater @rorodendra @navs-bhat @coxxxxxpi @leviosatothestars

Thanks for all the love and support, if you have opinions, suggestions, or want to be part of the tag list (Or don’t want to be part anymore) let me know, I appreciate every message.

#ben hardy imagine #michael b jordan fc #tom holland x reader #timothee chalamet fanfiction #pedro pascal #logan lerman fc #definitely maybe #fluff #angst #timothee chalamet #Tom Holland #Ben Hardy

[remmushound]

Curse of the Clan chapter 65 FINALE!!

Tags: @scentedcandlecryptid @selfindulgenz

“LEOOOO!” Michelangelo ran over to Leonardo out of breath, colliding with his brother before he could stop himself. “Leo Leo Leo Leo Leo Leo—“

“Woah woah woah!” Leonardo laughed and put both hands against Michelangelo’s shoulders to keep the excited turtle at bay, “Where’s the fire?”

Michelangelo took a long, deep breath. “I traded face painting for a snail and traded the snail fir a painted rock and I traded the painted rock for a cane and I traded the cane for a ball and I traded the ball for a basket of muffins and I traded the basket of muffins for a kitten and I named him Klunk!”

Michelangelo shoved a tiny orange and white kitten in Leonardo’s face; Klunk gave a tiny mew and batted curiously at Leonardo’s nose before quickly being pulled back against Michelangelo.

“That’s great, Mikey—“

But Michelangelo was already running away again on the trail of a bright butterfly, which left Leonardo once more wandering in search of something to do. Everywhere he looked was something new— young yokai playing games or families swimming in the river or flying flips through the air either on wings or paragliders. Everywhere they all seemed to be having the time of their lives. None of the activities caught and kept his attention though until he happened to look over to an ice cream cart manned by a slime yokai. The current customers were a calico nekomata and an old rat.

“Dad?” Confusion came first, and then came a sneaky, mischievous grin. He rubbed his hands together not unlike a supervillain, “Ohhh this is good~”

Slowly, like he was walking across a cloud, Leonardo glided behind a tree. He pulled himself onto a higher branch to get a vantage point, watching as Splinter and the strange woman passed under; he caught a snippet of conversation.

“I can barely handle my four boys; I don’t know how you manage so many!”

“It’s not all fun and laughter that’s for sure, but most of them get adopted really quickly…”

Leonardo jumped the next tree over, silently cursing himself as a falling leaf made Splinter stop and look up. His nose twitched, eyes narrowing just the slightest bit as he stared directly at Leonardo, but perhaps not seeing him; Leonardo remained like a statue.

“Splinter, what’s the matter?” The woman came to up wrap her arms around Splinter’s arm, looking up and trying to see what he saw.

“Nothing.” Splinter said quickly, “Just thought I saw something.”

Slowly, with Splinter dragging his feet, they moved on. Leonardo saw no point in hiding anymore. Before they could get far, Leonardo dropped down in front of them.

“So do I get to be the flowergirl?”

“AH!” Both rat and cat screamed, but Splinter quickly fell to grabbing his sandal and repeatedly slapping Leonardo with it. “YOU! DUMB! DIRTY! YARO! Scared me half to death!”

Leonardo bunched himself at the assault, laughing harder with each slap as he did his best to protect his face. “I’m - sorry! It was too good to resist! Besides, flower girl is more for Mikey, I wanna be ring bearer!”

“You get to be NOTHING!”

“Now That’s just unfair!”

Splinter swung his arm around the cat to guide her quickly around Leonardo, trying his best to ignore his son's taunting presence.

“Was that your son?” The cat asked, trying to look back and steal another glimpse of Leonardo.

“Don’t look at him and maybe he’ll go away.”

***

“RENET!”

Renet stopped long enough to look around, giving a curious hum at the familiar voice. “Michael?”

“ME!”

Renet gave a startled yelp that was quick to turn into giggles when she recognized Michelangelo had come up from behind and wrapped his arms around her in a tight hug.

“HUG! Hi Renet!” Michelangelo skirted around to her front, smiling brightly, “I traded face painting for a snail and traded the snail for a painted rock and I traded the painted rock for a cane and I traded the cane for a ball and I traded the ball for a basket of muffins and I traded the basket of muffins for a kitten and I named him Klunk!” Klunk gave a soft meow. “Also! I caught a butterfly and traded it for a balloon and traded the ballon for an ice cream cone do you want it?”

Michelangelo offered a strawberry ice cream to Renet, who accepted it with a confused but excited smile. “Uh… thanks. I’ve never had ice cream before!”

She looked over the frozen treat for a curious moment, then took a big bite out of it before Michelangelo could stop her. The cold immediately seized her body and she brought a hand up to cover her mouth against the drool that tried to escape from the shock.

“Mm… cold.” She shivered, wiping her mouth once more before she let herself giggle.

“You’re supposed to lick it, not bite it.” Michelangelo encouraged.

Renet did as asked, swiping her tongue across the length of the dripping ice cream, “Mm! It’s good.”

“It’s ice cream, of course it’s good!” Michelangelo beamed, “What are you doing out here? I didn't think you left your mansion all that often.”

“Yeah I uh… I don’t.” Renet said with a giddy laugh, “Today’s actually the first day. I’ve never seen the sun before.. It’s just as beautiful as I imagined. But hot…”

Renet swiped a few beads of sweat off of her forehead. Michelangelo gasped and, out of an innocent want to help, went to grab the back of her wheelchair to push her. Renet pulled away from the attempt, rolling back around to face him while Michelangelo looked confused, and then startled at Renet’s uncomfortable expression.

“Actually I can roll myself.” She said slowly.

“OH! I— I’m sorry!” Michelangelo squeaked, head shrinking, “I was just going to bring you into the shade…”

Michelangelo motioned to the shade of a nearby tree and Renet started to roll herself over to it while Michelangelo trailed behind.

“I’m sorry.” He repeated again, “Was the hug bad too?”

“O-oh, no, you’re fine just… don’t grab my chair unless I ask you, okay?”

Michelangelo nodded quickly. “Yes Ma’am! And thanks again for, you know, making sure we don’t burn a fiery death in TCRI.”

“Oh yeah, no biggie.” She nodded; the ice cream in her hand was quickly disappearing. “I really enjoy being out here with all the sun and the grass and the bugs! Maaaan I love the bugs!”

“I didn't get out much as a child either.” Michelangelo related, “It was so fun when I got to learn about all the critters and— and watching the stars and the sun rise! And it never gets old because it’s always so different!”

“Well I’m glad to finally experience it.” Renet finished off her cone and then rolled a little further so her front was in the sun; she closed her eyes against the warmth, the light bouncing off her scales in a flashy display, like sunbeams on water. Her skin seemed to glow radiant like light amber, the baby blue headscarf catching the breeze. “The wind is like the sweetest honeydew on my skin… and it’s like I can taste the colors of the world!”

“Well, if you wanna enjoy even more of the world…” Michelangelo started, rubbing his head, “Maybe you want to come eat with me and my family?”

Renet opened her eyes and looked to Michelangelo. “I’d love to!

***

While his brothers were exploring, Donatello was content to stay at the table near the girls. He had been away for so long that there was a seemingly endless amount of social media he needed to catch up with, so he took the opportunity to get a head start on it. Occasionally April or Sunita would throw a shrimp or a burger his way to use him as a taste tester, but he didn't mind. Scrolling was certainly working up an appetite.

Something hit him in the face. Donatello groaned and reached up, having to swipe a few times before he was able to pull it off, and when he did he was hit with a wave wave of confusion. It was a cherry blossom flower— not just a petal, but a full, blooming flower! Even as Donatello held the stemless thing in his hand, it seemed to open a little wider, the dew drops on its petals dripping down and dampening his palm.

Donatello looked around and saw no tree, nor anyone carrying such flowers that could have been lost. Carefully, his fingers traced along the pink curves, soft as melted butter. He stood up, and when he did, he looked down. In the grass just ahead of him was a trail of flowers, blooming before his very eyes and stretching toward the warmth of the sun. The trail was expanding closer to him until the flowers came to him, gentle stems tickling his ankles as he lifted his feet to see the spectacle better. The blooming flowers led to a golden rift at the end of the trail, similar to Draxum’s except with flowers instead of vines. A rift identical to the one that had rescued Donatello and his brothers from The Sea of Trees.

“I told you your brothers would come.” Said a familiar voice— the kirins voice!

And then the flowers were gone, and so was the rift, and so was the voice.

“Don, food’s done.” April called, then put a hand on her hip and gave a frustrated huff when it seemed Donatello wasn’t listening to her.

“Y-yeah, be there in a second.” The hand that once held the cherry blossom felt empty now in its absence, and it took Donatello several long heartbeats to turn back to his meal. “Thanks April… it looks great.”

“It better!” April laughed, “Then again I’d bet anything looks great to you given the past two weeks you spent alone.”

“Yeah…” And Donatello looked to the table and saw a basket of berries sitting there for him, shining with a heavenly glow, “Alone.”

#the End #Leo lives to bother #and Mikey lives for his new kitten #Kirin makes a reappearance #tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt #tmnt au

[spiltscribbles]

Oooh! Prompts! Remus and Sirius moving in together please! 💛

Notes: Thank you SO SO much gorgeous<3 I’m like kinda embarrassed that this is kinda shit, especially because you’re writing is so fucking gorgeous, so I’m sorry.

.-

A Reblog Is Worth A Thousand Stars  |  Send Me A Prompt 

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“YOU!”

With a start that almost makes him drop the vase in his hands, Sirius turns around to find his surly looking  boyfriend glaring daggers straight at him, lips pursed and nose wrinkled ever so fetchingly. “Me?”

“You!”

“ Is this a Muggle game of semantics or something Moons, because for the life of me I’m not following.”

Remus’s glower only deepens, radiating a distinct sort of disapproval that could only ever be  honed in by years of prefectness. “You thief!” He squawks, hands perched on his hips, and mouth twisted up mutinously.

“Is this the part where you say I stole your heart?” Sirius goads with a cocked brow, resuming their unpacking.  “Because love, that line gets old after the millionth recital, but I do appreciate the spirit.”

“Wha? Na—no that is not what I was going to say you egotistical prick!” Remus scoffs— just a bit flustered with a dusting of pink touching the tops of his sharp cheekbones. “You ate the last spring role!” He accuses emphatically, almost tripping over the over a dozen boxes that are strewn across their newly furnished living room. Sirius can’t help but be endeared by Remus and his everythingness. 

“Yes, yes I did Wise Guy,” He confirms distractedly. “I also dipped it into some spicy mustard and drank a bottle of water while I was at it… Your point being?”

“My point you utter berk is that it was mine! I called dibs!”

“I remember no such thing,” Sirius sniffs haughtily, moving to rearrange the photographs  on their mantel. (And yeah, it’s still fucking insane to him that he’s become so domestic that he’s got a mantel over the fireplace that the man he loves more than any other had insisted was absolutely crucial to have if they were to move in together—probably for really romantical love making sessions in front  of it’s flames with the bliss of  no worries of anyone barging in on them, or griping  if they were being to loud—Which by the way, James honestly  had no right in complaining about considering his track record with his and Lily’s on again, off again mating ritual.

“Liar!" Sirius honestly  wouldn’t be surprised if Remus started stomping his feet right about now, and pouting up a storm if the childishly  cross expression    on his pretty face is anything to go by. (And honestly how could one man be so adorable and sexy all at once.)  “You were finishing up the shrimp tempura— because you are a posh idiot without any tastebuds— , and I said that I’ll be right back to get some of the boxes in the spare room, and to save it for me! And then I come here, and I find this! This breach of all we’ve built together!”

Sirius barely conceals his snort. “Is that right? The foundations of our whole, entire bloody relationship? And right after this afternoon, when I made you—“

Two spots of color blotch high on Remus’s cheeks and he cuts him off before Sirius can completely recount the frankly remarkable romp they had just finished with before deciding they needed some nourishment before getting back to unpacking. “Don’t you try to change the subject you stealing stealer who steals!”

“That insult leaves something to be desired Moonbeam.”

“You’re a prick.”

“And you wound me!” Sirius mock sobs, slamming his fist against his chest and swinging back his arm against his forehead. “A plague on you, and your family! And another on your family’s cow.”

Remus’s face morphs into his painfully unimpressed expression, (Hint, it’s very, very flat). “I’ll take your intentional dodge as an admission,” He scoffs, arms crossed tight against his chest.

“I admit nothing!” Sirius shouts in an overdone accent that would better fit the set of Downton Abbey. “Nothing Lupin!”

Remus rolls his eyes at Sirius’s hyperbolic attitude, and okay. Yes. Perhaps Sirius remembers a similar conversation akin to what Remus had described  occurring only ten minutes prior. But to be quite honest, Sirius was hardly listening. Remus’s got on one of Sirius’s oversized t-shirts, a pair of boxer-briefs,  and nothing else. So yeah, he should definitely not be expected to be paying anything any mind while his beyond gorgeous boyfriend is sitting there, impossibly long legs put out for display, and one perfectly alabaster   shoulder bare where the shirt has slipped right off, effectively derailing  Sirius's thoughts to how he’d teasingly kissed across his collar bone just earlier that night, nibbling on the hinge of his jaw while Remus had been  writhing beneath him. so   Really and truly, he should’ve never been expected to remember anything— let alone something as trivial as dibs—  if his utterly perfect partner is right there for the taking, a determined dent between his brows, and intermittently rinsing his hand through his disheveled locks of hair like  spun gold, excited  over the prospect of fixing up this flat that is now their home.

Dear Merlin above   does Sirius love this bloke with every fiber of his being.

“Well,” he relents, swaggering up closer to Remus so that they’re standing only inches apart.  “Even if I did remember that such a discussion had taken place how you’ve described it—“

“It did, and you know it Black!” He harrumphs, using Sirius’s  surname just to get a rise out of him.

“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now love, is There?.”

Sirius’s sure that he’s won the argument and they could just move on, until he catches the glint in Remus’s impossibly luminous eyes—a glint that always means trouble, a glint that’s never failed to make each one of Sirius’s nerve endings go ablaze.

“Is that right?”

“I reckon it is Moonbeam,” he leers, is momentarily distracted by the downright angelic smile Remus casts his way right then, but suddenly, an onslaught of fingers are piercing into his ribs, wiggling and tickling him into submission.

“Say you’re sorry!” Remus demands, an effortless grin of his own swept across his lovely face, brighter than the morning sun. And yeah, maybe Sirius should just admit that it was his bad, apologize a thousand times over in the form of lingering kisses and caressing hands.… But the thing is, Sirius’s  stubbornness  has always been too rigid for his own good, and he’s always loved prodding at Remus till He just went off like the world’s most darling firecrackers.

“Never you absolute wanker!”

“I won’t relent till you profess an apology to my satisfaction,” Remus scoffs— a playful giggle lilting his overly formal words.

“And I won’t surrender!” He parries with a leer. Sirius tickles back  harder, and Remus  shimmies around so much that He ends up jabbing him in the eye,  ramming straight into his chest, and  effectively sprawling them—all long limbs and crooked angles—onto the wooden floorboards.

“Just say you’re sorry!” He insists, strangled laughter starting to gargle his words while Sirius just gazes down at him, mercilessly besotted.

“”S not my fault you didn’t take it with you Lupin, i’ve committed no grievance.”

“Oh come off it pretty boy.”

“Oy! I’m ruggedly handsome you arse!”

“Testy, testy.”

 “You’re the pretty one.”

“Oh suck my cock.”

“Been there done that.”

Remus seems to be fighting down another laugh before he knees him lightly in the abdomen enough that Sirius tenses, giving Remus the chance to  switch their positions once again, so that  He’s back  on top. 

“My have the tables turned,” He taunts with one of his most dazzling smiles, dimples in full effect, and crinkles around his pretty sea glass eyes.

“I like how you think I’m at all opposed to this position,” Sirius says with a pixilated gleam, arching back enough so that their cotton clad dicks buck up against each other.

“Perv!” Remus scolds, smacking his chest playfully. “Now admit that I won!”

“Never!”

 Somehow, amidst all the thrashing bodies and choked peals of laughter, Sirius flips him over— slight body beneath his own, with Remus’s wrists pinned over his head and his legs wrapped around Sirius’s waste.

“Now, now Monsieur Moony, I reckon that spring has rolled into winter for you,” Sirius most definitely does not laugh raucously    at his own pun.

“That’s not even the direction that the seasons go in,” Remus frowns, nose wrinkled indelicately, a tell Sirius’s picked up on whenever He’s mad over an outcome.

“You still lost though,” Sirius barbs with no real bite, pecking a quick kiss to his lips in solace.

“You’re awful, and I’m breaking up with you,” Remus sniffs in turn—wiggling underneath him to try and get loose.

“Oh, you love me really.” Sirius preens like the cat who’s caught the canary— the world’s most beautiful and brilliant and ruffled canary that is.

“Lies and slander!” Remus waggles his tongue between his teeth, and Sirius dips down to bite it teasingly. 

“Hmm, now isn’t this cute,” the pair scramble away from each other, utterly stunned once spotting Lily of all people, gaze twinkling and lips set into a firm smirk, eyeing them while leisurely lounging against the door frame. 

“You two really can’t keep yr sodding hands off of each other, can you?”

Remus completely reddens, totally flustered, while Sirius only follies back a smug sort of grin at the force of nature  that is Lily Evans, his practical sister-in-law, remus’s best friend, and all around genius.

“How long have you been watching Red dearest,” Sirius asks wryly, making it so now Lily’s the one who’s flushing..

“I hate you Black.” She says shortly, and Sirius’s beam doesn’t falter. “Re, as your spiritual older sister—“

“You’re barely a month older Lils,” Remus interjects, but Lily just goes on as if he hadn’t.

 “I think it’s my job to remind you that he’s not the only bloke in London with a decent shoulder to waste ratio and nice hair. We can snag you someone with a bit of brains even.”

Sirius tosses her a V shaped salute, and Lily sticks her tongue out in retaliation,  but for his part, Remus only tries to cut through the tension with one of his friendlier grins, though it just comes out as an awkward grimace. “I forgot that you’re dropping off the boxes tonight.”

“Evidently Ace,” she snorts, strutting further into the apartment and setting down the box of photos Remus had asked her to bring over from their old place. “Far too busy snogging with the boy who single handedly received the most detentions in Hogwarts history, while also, somehow— by the grace of God— threatened our stances as top of the class.”

“Oy Evans, can’t take all the credit for myself. Jem was my better half, till he moved on to the likes of you.”

Lily ignores him, save for the way her pretty face gets a bit scrunched out of irritation. “Ace, I ask you, what would McGonagall say if she saw her favorite prefect gallivanting around with such a delinquent.

Remus lets out one of his rare and beautiful laughs, something that feels buoyant and is really more breath than sound, but is still so vibrant and splendid and it never fails to thrust Sirius back to the Hogwarts Express, where he and Remus had first met as a couple of wide eyed eleven year olds, and all the contradicting emotions Remus had provoked upon first sight. Wonder, and confusion. Intrigue, and diffidence. Wanting, and fear. It’s an attribute of Remus's that Sirius will never not be amazed by.

“Ah, Minnie my love, how I do miss her so, now where were we Moonbeam?”

“I’m still standing here Black,” Lily reproves with a scoff.

“I think it was about here,” Sirius continues, dipping down to kiss at Remus’s protruding  collar bones.

“Settle down mutt,” Remus rebukes with no real heat, a gentle hand carding through Sirius’s hair.

“God, you two are already an old married couple.”

“You really do know the best moments to interrupt sweetheart.” Sirius snipes with a playful roll to his eyes, his hand discretely resting over the small of Remus’s back.

“And you have no decency, corrupting   Remus the way that you do.”

“Okay first, I take fucking offense, you know better than me that Moony here was the mastermind behind most of our delightful pranks.”

“You mean your childish inconveniences you plagued on the unsuspecting public?”

“And secondly, we didn’t even get to the fun, currupting   part because of your oh so lovely interruption.” Sirius retorts moodily, though he soon suspects the joke was a wrong play to make  when Lily’s smile suddenly goes predatory and sHe flips back a lock of her wind blown curls, ready to pounce. 

“Well perhaps I just stopped by to make sure you weren’t further defiling   my dear Remus. But I guess that giant love bite on your neck proves that I’m too late.”

Sirius can’t help the chuckle that pours out of his lips at her needled observation, smacking a hand to conceal the hickey sHe’s taunting him about, knowing exactly where it is, it’s been a topic of teasing all morning long from a smug Sirius to a properly indignant Remus.

“He-he just marks easily,” Remus pipes out, cheeks completely infused red and worrying on his bottom lip. Sirius suspects that Lily just knew that the one chink in his armor is prodding at Remus’s less than poised acts. 

Lily rolls her eyes in a way that convinces Sirius that sHe doesn’t believe it for a second. “Whatever you say oh Saint Remus,” sHe smirks with no more argument. “but pray tell, are you guys about done swapping spit around me? Or is that going to forever be a regular occurrence in the Remus and Sirius show?”

“Now I’d reckon that’ll get a sold out crowd every night, don’t you?” Sirius asks, directing his question at the pair of  of them while taking Remus’s hand, and pushing him even closer— just always preferring to have some sort of contact with him.

“Oh put a sock in it,” Remus harrumphs, finally starting to return to his normal coloring in the midst of Lily’s unrestrained cackles.

“Aw, don’t be shy love, it’s only the truth.”

Remus presses the pads of his fingers to Sirius’s lips and glares at him for good measure, “Some things are better left for private.”

“Hah,” Lily scoffs, weight slung to her left hip. “As if I don’t get a front row seat every time  you two are within even in a ten foot radius of each other—OH hey, I know that look Ace! The one eyed squint, and the teeth. Well your “I’m about to kill my gorgeous best friend,” look has no place here, i’ll see my way out now. Just promise not to christen every room in this place, kay? We’d all like to visit without the residual specs haunting us! And I know how moody you get without your daily dose of my scintillating company.”

Sirius thinks that Remus’s trying to skewer a whole in the spot where Lily was just standing, if the terribly cross look on his face says anything. It’s precious, Sirius can’t help but snicker.

“Don’t laugh at me! I’m your boyfriend for Merlin’s sake! You’re s’pose to be on my side!”

“I wasn’t laughing at you Moons,” he kisses the fingers Remus has still got on his mouth, mock consolatory.  “Just incredibly turned on.”

That dent between Remus’s brows is back again for a moment, but then his beauteous features smoothen out and He just pecks a quick kiss to Sirius’s lips before rifling through the box Lily brought over, muttering a light,”Whatever,” as He does so.

There’s a quick wrapping to the window, and Sirius glances over to find his owl— Odysseus— with a bundle of letters attached to his left leg. By rote, Sirius feeds him some of the pellets they keep  there for convenience, and unwinds the bundle of parchments, beginning to shuffle through them.

There’s a copy of the Nightly prophet with the murder of another Muggle family splattered all over the front cover in a sickeningly gauche manner, a free trial subscription to the Quibbler with a reading for Scorpios in the month of October, a letter from Peter about his mum and sisters driving him up the rails, an invitation from Marlene for he and Remus to come out to dinner with them for Dorcas’s Birthday, and a ominous letter from James of all paper that simply says a gift for Moony.

Bewildered to why he hadn’t just sent it along with Lily, Sirius tares off the attached photograph only to find something truly, horrendously vile. a photograph of himself. One that was definitely taken fifth year— Sirius’s worst year where he absolutely could not stand being around his family for a moment longer, and James was getting more settled with his studies, an Remus was dating that prefect prick from Ravenclaw and was exceedingly elusive from Marauders nights out.  This was so obviously taken on one of those aforementioned nights out that it’s comical.  Sirius’s hair is as long as it’s ever been— touching the tops of his shoulders— and he’s chugging down a fruity, pink concoction— the type  that Rosmerta was always cooking up for them— hand over fist, and he’s got on puppy ears and a fake nose. In layman’s terms he looks like a complete and total pillock. Drunk off his ass so much so that you can see the stars in his eyes even through the clunky glasses he had stolen from James— convinced that he was sporting them for purely esthetic reasons and not because the knob is actually as blind as a bloody bat— and his finger is pointed and mouth is open in the way it always is when he’s ranting about something or the other.

It’s perhaps the only photograph in history where Sirius isn’t looking his typical, jaw dropping gorgeous self.

There’s about a thousand different retorts he wants to scribble on a spare parchment and  shoot right back to James— ranging from nasty to downright despicable— but then he catches the familiar peal of laughter coming from behind him. He’s not surprised when he sees Remus—beautiful, ingenuous, perfect Remus who’s physically incapable of taking a photograph less than effortlessly lovely, even while pissed— peering over his shoulder in utter amusement.

“Oh My God I need to ask James to send me one of the hundreds of copies he surely has.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Sirius retorts darkly.

“I’ll use an enlarging charm and hang it up above the mantel, for prosperity. The one time Sirius looks the way he acts,” he moves his hand over an invisible marquee and looks so damn smug that Sirius could kiss him, and in fact, that’s exactly what he does.

“I hate him,” is all he says afterwards, once he’s pulled away.

“I can’t believe that’s you!” Remus continues with eyes full of mirth.

“I want to banish him, no. No I want to banish all of them. All of our friends, we can make knew ones Moons. I mean look at us! We’re a catch!” He tosses the letters onto the newly acquired sofa as if they have personally affronted  him and all he stands for.

“ Oh brilliant idea love.”

“That sounds like your sarcastic voice Moons.”

“No, you’ve got my full support. this’s our castle Pads, we can banish whom ever we like,” Remus balances on his tiptoes,  and smacks an exasperated kiss onto his cheek. Sirius can barely contain the glee that’s dancing in his eyes at the thought of this being their own personal castle— a fortress just for the pair of them to escape within—  causing another swell of fondness to pound in his chest.

“Well maybe we can give’m another chance,” he relents, melting into how Remus’s locked his arms around his neck, and is smiling up at him with all the love in the world shining unadulteratedly in his lovely eyes. “I mean they did help us move all those boxes and all.”

Remus hums his agreement while he presses his forehead against his own, endlessly endeared.

“What a generous king,” He goads, words hugged with fondness. 

“Ooo, I like that, call me that in bed and I might bless you with my royal sector.”

Remus thumps his nose, “Your more tolerable when you don’t speak and just stand there being pretty.”

“Aw, you think I’m pretty Moonykins?”

Remus shakes his head ruefully, the smile on his face one that Sirius knows well— one that means he’s reluctantly endeared. “Dork.”

“Plonker.”

There lips meet for another kiss and it feels like all the resplendence in the galaxy being distilled between just the two of them.

#Wolfstar #Remus Lupin #Sirius Black #marauders #spilt ink #sugarplums #kattlupin #so totally completely fluff #RIP #life's been total shit this week #so I guess this is a thing #I'm sorry sweets

[queenofnohr]

Twisted Wonderland: Floyd Leech Birthday Suit-up (SSR) - Voice Lines + Personal Story

Voice Lines

SSR Summoning Quote: Today, me n’ Jade are the stars of the show~ You’re looking forward to giving us presents, right? Summoning Line: Hey, isn’t it a landweller tradition to sing a birthday song? Then let’s hop to it. Start on three, okay? Groovy: Thanks for celebrating with me. I’ll give you lotsa interesting things on your birthday, Shrimpy. Set Home: Happy Birthday to me! I’m excited to see what kinda birthday this’ll be. Home Idle 1: Azul shined my shoes for me, so I wanted to put ‘em on right away. Look, they’re so shiny you can see your reflection in ‘em. Isn’t it great? Home Idle 2: I got a lot of birthday presents from my parents. But the dorm rooms are small so they stopped sending big ones. Hmph~ Home Idle 3: *yawn*...... All the excitement’s making me sleepy. Wonder if I should go get someone to gimme a present to stay awake. Home Login: Can you guess who the first person who wished me happy birthday was? The correct answer is…… Jade! Every year we’re the first to wish each other happy birthday. Home Idle Groovy: Shrimpy, isn’t that plate bad for serving food? Fufu, it’s okay, you don’t have to start over. It’s funnier this way. Home Tap 1: Professor Knifejaw said that since it’s my birthday, if I don’t do my homework, he’ll give me extra “presents.” He’s so meaaaan. Home Tap 2: Otter gave me a percussion instrument from the Land of Hot Sands! He also gave Jade a string instrument, and the main color on them matches our hair. Home Tap 3: I pestered Goldfish for a gift and he gave me a shoehorn even though he was super mad. It’s even engraved with an F! It matches Jade’s. Aha! Home Tap 4: Sea-snake and Crabby hit me with pies at club practice. It was lotsa fun in the end, with everyone throwing them at each other~ Home Tap 5: What is it, you curious about my brooch? It’s got the same design on it as the shoes I wear with my dorm uniform~ It almost looks like it was shrunk down by magic. Home Tap Groovy: Hey, what’re hiding behind your back? Aha, you’re so obvious, acting all suspicious like that. Go ahead and hand your present over now.

Personal Story

Birthday Suit-up Chapter 1

Happy Birthday, Floyd Leech

-Octavinelle Dorm - Birthday Party Venue-

NRC School Newspaper Special Edition Interview with the Birthday Boy ~Floyd Edition~

> —Happy Birthday.

Floyd: Oh, you came to wish us well, too, Shrimpy. Thanks~

Please tell us how you feel after celebrating.

Floyd: It was real lively and suuuuuuper fun. We’ve had parties at our parents’ house, but it was never this boisterous. I liked how this one wasn’t so stiff n’ stuffy.

—I’ve heard that you always have sweets in your room; is that true?

Floyd: Huh? Isn’t it obvious, Shrimpy? Even if you eat dinner, dontcha get hungry before bed? It’s ‘cause both me n’ Jade are still growing.

—What are your favorite sweets?

Floyd: Mmm, it kinda depends on my mood that day…… A while back I used to really like peppermint candy. A week ago it was melon soda-flavored gummies…… and yesterday it was almond biscotti. I think chewiness matters more than flavor when it comes to the stuff I like. I also like stuff I can only find on land. If you find some rare treats, lemme know will ya, Shrimpy?

I will. Semi-related— what’s your favorite food?

Floyd: That would be~...... takoyaki! Oh, do you know what takoyaki is? Eh, you don’t know, Shrimpy? I didn’t expect the people at school to know, but you’re like a walking dictionary, aren’t ya? Just the other day, after the Mostro Lounge closed, me n’ Jade got together with some other Octavinelle guys and ate some. They’re pretty hard to flip when you’re making them, but I’ve done it so many times I’m reallyyyy good at it now. Also, even though it’s called takoyaki, if you use other ingredients for the filling, you’ll never get bored of it.

What kinds of ingredients have you tried?

Floyd: First was shrimp and cheese! Then sausages, then oysters....... Tomato, broccoli, shoots, fresh cream, chocolate, anchovies, potato salad, and konjac......

You’ve sure tried a lot of things.

Floyd: Yeah, I have. In the end, it turns into a game of who can make one with the weirdest combination…… They all turn out so bad it’s funny! I ate everything properly ‘cause Azul got mad that we made all that gross food. Next time, I’ll invite you too, Shrimpy. It’s a promise.

Birthday Suit-up Chapter 2

—You often leave your collar open; do you have difficulty keeping it closed?

Floyd: I wouldn’t say it’s difficult, just annoying. Just ‘cause I’m good at squeezing people, doesn’t mean I like being squeezed, ya’know? When I first got on land, I didn’t like clothes either. It felt like there was seaweed clinging to my body all the time. And on top of that, you gotta wash your clothes every time you wear them, right? I wondered why humans would bother with such a troublesome thing. But now I like picking out my clothes. Being able to wear lotsa different colors is fun. Shrimpy, did you know? Even if it’s a flashy color on land, it’ll look dark under the sea. Besides, with stuff like clothes, shoes, accessories…… It’s fun to get all dressed up on land. But I get in trouble when I buy a bunch of stuff and load it all up in the room. ‘Cause Jade cleans the room, we got a lot of empty space, so I asked him if I could use it for my stuff, but he cut down my request with a single, “No.” Ahhhh. I wonder if I can use another dorm room for storage.

Is there anything you like to collect?

Floyd: Eh~? Well, Jade likes collecting plants, and Azul likes collecting coins, but…… I tried collecting stuff, but I got bored of it…… Oh, I guess there’s that. I don’t really collect them, but I did buy stuff with moray eels on them.

What kinds of things did you buy?

Floyd: A T-shirt with a loose sketch of one, and a mascot keychain with a goofy face. Because there’s a legend that says the Sea Witch has super-competent moray eels as henchmen, in the sea eels have a kinda rough image attached to them. They’re carnivorous fish, after all. But it’s really weird how moray eel merch sold on land is strangely cute. I wonder if that’s how eels appear to humans. Anyway, I gave the T-shirt I bought to Jade and he happily put it on. Aha. But Azul said, “Don’t you dare go out wearing that.” Even though it’s soooooo cute, isn’t he so mean~?

Birthday Suit-Up Chapter 3

—Which do you prefer - your human form or your merman form?

Floyd: When I first got into my human form, I didn’t know how to move my tail fin- er, legs- and my body felt so heavy…… “I swear I’m gonna turn back into a merman and jump into the sea right now,” is what I was thinking. But lately I’ve been thinking this form isn’t so bad. There are only fish and merfolk in the Coral Sea, but there are lotsa different types of people in the school. So it’s not boring at all. Also…… it’s fun being on land ‘cause I can do stuff like play basketball and dance. Recently, I’ve gotten suuuuper into parkour.

What’s parkour?

Floyd: Oh, you don’t know? It’s when you do stuff like kick off of handrails and walls or climb buildings…… It’s a sport where you head for a goal while keeping your movement as fluid as possible even if there are obstacles.

It sounds difficult.

Floyd: I guess I’ve never really thought of it as easy or hard. I’ve always liked doing obstacle races since I was a kid.

You have obstacle races under the sea……?

Floyd: Yeah. The goal is to swim through a sunken ship on a fixed route. The inside of the sunken ships are broken all over, which makes it complicated to get around since there’s lots of stuff that gets in the way while you’re swimming. You gotta avoid obstacles with minimal movement so you don’t lose your speed while swimming. Then, the one who reaches the goal first wins! ……See, it’s kinda like parkour, right? That’s why I like it. I’m happy I learned to do something new, and it’s fun ‘cause it’s like swimming on land. There’s no set way to avoid stuff or head to a goal, so I guess you could say it’s really…… free? I hate when there’s stupid stiff rules...... Oh, that reminds me, there was a day a while back where I overslept, and when I got to class through a window using parkour, the professor got suuuuuper mad at me. I tried real hard not to be late, so shouldn’t I get praised instead? Next time I’ll try not to get caught. Aha.

Thank you very much for sharing so much with us. And happy birthday, again.

-

*For those unaware, Floyd nicknames everyone after aquatic creatures. (Barred) Knifejaw is Crewel, (Sea) Otter is Kalim, Goldfish is Riddle, Sea-snake is Jamil, Crab/Crabby is Ace, Shrimp/Shrimpy is Yuu/the protagonist.

#twisted wonderland #disney twst #floyd leech #jade leech #.......sorta. by proxy. #octavinelle #my translations #long post

[buzzdixonwriter]

Spock Grok Shock Squawk

Lemme get my main thesis out in the open first thing:

The search for intelligent life in space is a quasi-religious endeavor.

The unstated hidden hope is that we will find up in the sky people who are better and wiser than us, and who will prove they’re better by sharing that wisdom, ushering in, if not exactly a golden age, then one of shiny brass.

The unstated assumption is that they will be like the Vulcans in Star Trek, more advanced than we are, but impressed by our courage and our curiosity and our just plain ol’ fashioned humanness so that even though they are technologically and culturally far superior to us, they’ll toss the keys of the galactic federation in our lap, letting us run things for everybody’s betterment.

Snowflake, please…

(I mean let’s acknowledge this is a white and / or Anglo / European colonial fantasy from the gitgo, okay?  No sane species will let us anywhere near the torpedo room, capice?)

The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is a harmless enough exercise, and I’ll be honest, it would be cool if they actually found something, but at its core it’s no different from going into a place of worship and attempting to contact the divine.

(Mind you, I have absolutely no objection to that in principle, either, but I know how a lot of supposed spiritual searchers are actually searching for cudgels to batter their fellow humans into submission; and besides, as will be pointed out below, the search for the divine shares some similar issues with SETI, so read on, MacDuff…)

My next major thesis is this:

Nobody knows what they’re looking for, SETI or conventional religion.

They dress it up in fancy costumes but when you strip both groups’ sky beings naked, you find they’re looking for people just like us in every important way (i.e., we understand them, they understand us, and they don’t hold us accountable for our bullshit).

Here’s a few issues I have with the current state of SETI affairs:

We don’t know what alien life would look like.

We don’t know how alien life would think.

We don’t know what alien life can sense that we can’t sense.

We don’t know how alien life would process information.

We don’t know how alien life would adapt to its environment.

(There’s more -- much, much more -- but these will do for the moment.

Point 1: I’m not talking about green skinned Martians with six limbs, I mean we don’t even know if alien life would have a cell structure or pass along generational information via DNA.

Personally, I think there’s a remote possibility life on Earth did not evolve but is a product of panspermia, in which case any life we encounter on other planets in this solar system may indeed use cell structure, DNA, etc.

But that’s just “a chance greater than zero” not hard evidence.

We literally have no idea what other life would look like so we have no way of knowing where or what to look for.

Someone familiar only with North American forest insects might have a hard time identifying life found at the bottom of the Marianas Trench -- and that’s part of the planet we all share.

There’s a fringe science called shadow biology that wonders if there may be life on this planet that we can’t identify because it looks and behaves so differently from us.

That’s another one of those “greater than zero” speculations -- but the fact we can define right now what would constitute alien life means all we’re doing is looking for Vulcans.

Point 2: We don’t even know how we think; howda %#@& can we anticipate how alien intelligence would think.

I got into this discussion decades ago at a sci-fi con and the fan I was talking with blithely assumed we would recognize one another as intelligent based on whether we used mathematics and my question then and now is:  ”How would you know?!?!?”

Math is a symbolic language that (apparently) interprets basic underlying principles in a way that humans can grasp and apply.

The principles exist whether or not they are expressed, or how they are expressed.

We humans “see” 2 + 2 = 4 as “logical” because out symbolic language links the concept of two distinct objects added to another two distinct objects as being the equivalent of four distinct objects, but we have no way of knowing if an alien intelligence grasps the concept of distinct objects.

For them it may all be just part of a continuum.

There could be aliens desperately trying to contact us right now, using methods we can observe, and we just can’t grasp that there’s even a message to be grasped! 

Point 3: Holy cow (no, not a religious exclamation), this point is huge and we just keep glossing over it.

Humans possess better color vision than canines.

We see three primary colors, they see only two (blue and yellow).

There are other terrestrial species -- butterflies and mantis shrimp, to name two – who see colors far beyond human range, well into what Dr. Seuss would call the “on beyond zebra” range.

Even if we could talk to dogs, we couldn’t tell them what green looks like:  There is literally no place in their brain to process that color.

Or consider binocular vision, i.e., depth perception.

Most humans have depth perception but many -- for any number of reasons -- do not.

A lot of animals lack binocular vision (indeed, on Earth encountering a creature with binocular vision is fraught with danger because they’re almost always predators of some sort, using depth perception to attack prey).

Try explaining depth perception to someone who’s only had vision in one eye since birth.

“Well, it doesn’t have a color or a texture or anything like that, you really can’t ‘see’ it except…well…you actually can see it insofar as you can ‘see’ the actual space that exists between two objects instead of just guessing based on visual clues…”

Again, we may be bombarded with messages from space all the time that we simply lack the ability to sense.

Point 4: This is a lot like Point 2 but different enough to enjoy its own category. 

I mean a couple of things when I refer to processing information.

First off, there’s the actual processing time.

Remember the sloth DMV scene in Zootopia?

Imagine we contact a life form that takes a standard terrestrial year just to express “2 + 2 = 4”.

The entirety of human history would pass before it could get to basic trigonometry.

How do you communicate with that?

(And what would you talk about?) 

Conversely, we would be like ferrets on espresso, the worst form of cultural ADHD imaginable to them

And the script could be flipped!

We could be the ones taking forever to respond, their elaborate and erudite answers might flash by in less than a nanosecond.

We also don’t know what an alien species would value.  We have Maslow's familiar hierarchy of needs but there’s no guarantee these would motivate any other species.

Thigs that would be extremely vital to us might be wholly unimportant to aliens and vice versa.

The fact our sky is blue is just an interesting fact to us, to aliens it might be the single most important thing they’ve ever encountered.

We simply have no way of knowing!

Point 5: Europeans encountering North American native peoples dismissed them as “primitive savages” because they didn’t smelt ore, they didn’t use wheels, and most of their cultures lacked a written language.

Ignore the fact they had well traveled trade routes stretching from the Bering Sea to the Gulf of Mexico, ignore the fact many of them governed and protected well organized territories the size of France or Germany, ignore the fact they lived in an environment not only abundant with easily available natural resources but also possessed the time to work those resources at a leisurely pace.

The European interlopers sure ignored those facts.

SETI looks for machine based physical communication from alien life (physical here including any form of energy used to convey information such as a telegraph or a laser beam).

Presuming alien life exists it may never have occurred to them to attempt to communicate in the manner humans do!

It would be like putting a mime on the radio.

The great unuttered chauvinism of the Drake equation and Fermi paradox is this: That there exists a basic template to intelligent life that’s so common the law of averages says we must find examples of it just like us wherever we look.

That’s an awfully big assumption, folks.

And we’re nowhere close to proving any of it.

  © Buzz Dixon 

#SETI #alien #science #religion #philosophy #intelligent life

[brooklynislandgirl]

Beth and UARF!Billy - ❤♡❥ღ💕💘💝💓💌💟💙💚💜💛

Heart-Eyes || -

Five A.M.

Beth’s barely awake as she comes into the office, coffee in hand, only to come face to face with the widest grin she has ever seen on Hal Gates’ face. Dark eyes dancing, he relieves her of her thermos cup, takes both her arms in his hands, and swing-dances her around the cramped space where they work.

“We’ve done it, girl!”

Though abjectly confused, Beth can’t help but grin in return. “Wha’ve we done?” She wants to be just as thrilled, wants to share in the old man’s joy. “We’ve got data on white pointer mating! I’m running the compile now, we should be able to parse it and watch the video footage within an hour or two!”

She’s floored.

The shock is clear on her face, even her mouth drops open a little. Often bandied about as the Holy Grail of marine biology, great-white mating is known to exist. Despite decades of research into the habits of the species, that particular bit of knowledge has eluded marine biologists.

“Wha...? How?”

“Mate of mine, Crawford down in New Zealand has taken a fisherman’s eye-witness account on our elusive little friends, and shared video. Crawford sent me all of the data.”

“Oh, Hal.”

Dr Gates nods at her eagerly and once again promenades her around some tables, brushing past a stack of hastily shoved aside folders with charts of migration patterns, weather reports, and feeding data. Then, far more carefully, he hands her into a seat and plops down into an office chair, slapping his knees in pleasure and pride.

“Speaking of mating rituals...”

Beth laughs but blushes at the same time, eyes askance. She suddenly knows what he’s going to ask, or at least of whom.

“...And since we have so little to do until all the research is collated and complied...”

“Must we?”

“No finer time, girl.”

She holds her hands up to stave him off until she gets up, crosses the room and takes a sip of her coffee. Not exactly how she wanted to start the day, but there’s no real reason not to humour her mentor.

“Have at, den.”

“Excellent.” Hal Gates really is an inveterate old gossip.

~*~

❤: who is more affectionate in public? in private?

Beth laughs. Okay, so this isn’t really so bad. “I t’ink I gotta say...I’m more affectionate in public. Mos’ of da time, Doctah Manderly... just doesn’t know what t’ do. Very stiff, hands in his pockets or stand at parade rest.”

The last cocktail party had been a half disaster, between trying to get William to mingle with the public attendees and not leave to check on his seals at first opportunity. The one time he surprised her was when he put a hand on the small of her back though the illusion was broken when she found that the six-foot-six man was trying to ultimately hide behind her. No amount of mock-tails were going to spare him any acute discomfort.

“Probably for da best. No offence, but he’s very definitely...ah....British.”

“None taken.” Hal offers her a wink and taps the side of his nose.

“But even behind close doors? He just... lil uptight, I guess. I sometimes wonder if mebbe he’s worried about havin’ an episode, and some affections are difficult when you have a service dog nearly t’ree-quarters ya size intent on doin’ her job, but I’d say he at least tries when it jus’ da two of us. Fingahs in my hair, brush against my arm. Da kine.”

Hal nods, knowing the specifics without having to drag them out of her.

♡: who is the bigger romantic openly? secretly?

"I t’ink,” she begins, carefully considering this one. “Dat anyone who loves da sea so much dat dey would give up a whole life to dedicate demself to it...got a big romantic soul. What is da ocean, if not love an’ life, an’ all dat we dream of in songs an’ poetry? I only t’ink it’s harder for him to express dat because well..”

She makes a dismissive gesture.

It isn’t that he grasps the concepts of language and expression, they’ve certainly entertained passionate arguments, verbal jousts that have filled the air with sign and countersign.

“Romantically speakin’ I jus’ don’ see him as da type dat I’m gonna find outside my window wi’ an ole boom box, playing In Ya Eyes by Petah Gabriel, ya know? But I also don’t believe he wouldn’t t’ink about it. So secretly? Him. Openly, me.”

❥: who is more likely to plan something big for valentine's day?

“Honestly, Hal...I’d have t’ say him. He’s a planner. Wants every detail to be perfect, will second guess himself a hundred times jus’ to make sure dere no wrinkle in the research. Me? Always been da spontaneous kine, except when it came to really wantin’ to work wit’ you.”

Hal pats her lap, his face soft.

ღ: who is more likely to initiate hand-holding in public?

“Again, it would be William. I don’ know wha’ he’s t’inkin’ a lot of da time, if he’s even aware dat I am dere sometimes. An’ I don’ really wanna make a big deal about it, don’ wanna ovahstep. For me, it’s a much more difficult proposition, is like...touch is where I’m most comfortable, outside of typing endless notes or readin’ data.”

She nods toward the words scrolling along the screen. She fully disclosed her disabilities when she applied for the position so thankfully she doesn’t have to explain now. Most of the other people at the facility don’t even really notice. Except for maybe Ben who sees too much and maybe says too little. That’s to be expected though when you gather a bunch of scientists and stick them in one beautiful place.

“You want him to initiate more, don’t you?”

“I would, yeah. But dere always more important kine and so really guess it nevah really matter.”

💕: who is more likely to make huge declarations of love in front of other people?

“Fair question an’ I guess dat would be me. We...we agreed not to make a big t’ing about any of dis, you know how quirky everyone here is, an’ in case it doesn’t work out, we don’ want da kine t’ get weird. Especially wi’ James an’ Miranda. So if somet’ing like dis were t’ happen it’s probably because he push all my buttons an’ my tempah got da best of me, right? Could see it happenin’ over breakfast. On da beach. Mebbe by da pools.”

Which is why she tries so hard to keep her passions in check. She doesn’t want to blurt out anything that can’t be taken back.

💘: who developed a crush on the other first?

“Couldn’t say,” and in those two words it is the breadth and depth of her honesty. Beth doesn’t have crushes in the same way most people do. She’s never seen anyone and instantly found herself immersed in fantasies, desires, a desperate need to be around them. She might find someone intellectually stimulating and enjoy the conversation. She might notice that something about them calls to her artist’s eye and be aesthetically pleasing in its symmetry, someone might make her laugh but she doesn’t dwell. And by the time there is the first inkling that she might want more out of a situation or relationship, she’s already become close friends. Or she watches as that object of her affection drifts beyond reach and she tells herself she’s happy because they clearly needed something more than she’s even capable of giving.

And sometimes, Beth wonders if she isn’t really broken or damaged in some way. Because she can’t even say she ever had a crush on Billy. She doesn’t know that she can say she has any expectations other than they look good together on paper, and it’s been drilled into her since birth that appearances *do* matter. “Mo’beddah you should ask him.” Gates doesn’t say anything, he only nods.

💝: who spends more time (possibly overthinking) what presents to get the other?

“William. For same-same reasons as Valentines Day, an’ da need for everyt’ing to be as exactin’ as he can make it. Like, how hard and how long it take him to find...or more likely, *breed* dem two purple neocardinas in my office?” Shrimp like the two in her tank, deliriously happy and spoiled and free of predators, are rare in size and colour, and yet… there they are. Then there’s the allegorical evidence of his severe and frothing dislike of mass consumption marketing, the complete commercialisation of every secular and religious holiday, the pastiche of feelings tacked on almost like an afterthought.

💓: who initiates most physical contact?

Beth hesitates. That’s slightly more personal than the other questions so far and truth be told she’s a little ashamed of having to answer without specific parameters. But it is a question, and she did agree to answer them with the same honesty as she offers Hal in all their other work and conversations. “I’ve always done well wi’ sensory input dat was based in kine oddah dan auditory. Smell, taste, seeing… but of alla dem, touch has always been important to me. Textures, near imperceptible data processed t’rough skin. An’ I guess dat I use dat wi’ him. Way to express ideas or sensations dat might not come across ordinarily. Enthusiasm, excitement, humour, rage, disappointment. I wan him to feel an’ understand when I don’ have da words in me, or know how to express. A lot of da time, it’s accidental or at least….subconscious.” A beat goes by. “I don’t believe he really cares much for it.”

💌: who is more likely to send cutesy texts to the other?

This one is hard for her to answer because they aren’t really cutesy text people. Most of their days are too filled with very real world drama, service to the greater good, the understanding and conservation of the most vulnerable environments and animals within. There’s weather, there’s reports, there’s an entire litany of experiences that don’t leave much time to play around until well after hours when they can finally seek well deserved liberty. However, Billy does sometimes send her pictures of the seals doing very cute seal things, or Annie shepherding him and his charges with the boss-vibes of the Queen Mother. In the end she only offers her mentor a smile and a shrug.

💟: who spends time reading their zodiac compatibilities?

“Oh absolutely I do. Find da whole pseudo-science of it fascinatin’, especially when da stars are not in da same position as dey were when it was invented an’ da psychological impact it has on our species is jus’ totally wild, you know?”

Beth knows that she’s the textbook definition of a Cancerian woman, and Billy does a good job providing a counter-argument on being a Libra. Further there’s a bit of an annoyance factor; he thinks junk science ‘belongs in the bottom of the bin with the rest of the rubbish.’ And he has a point, to some extent, even if she doesn’t agree with him. Not everything can be cold facts and numbers. Sometimes a little playfulness was in order and he absolutely needed to be reminded of that.

Hal laughs and shakes his head. “You’re going to do my chart then, aren’t you?” “Wit’out a doubt, Doctah Gates.” She wiggles her brows.

💙: who is more protective?

“I think objectively, I am. You know William’s troubles, and I have to keep them all in mind dough it’s not like he can forget dem, right? Some of his facts aren’t… I’ve consulted with some medical doctors and if we are careful, dere’s a lot he can experience dat he sees out of reach but I don’ like bringing dem up because I don’ want to agitate him. Only can lead t’ problems.” She does wish though that he’d trust her a little more, that he’d let go of some of his well deserved fears. That he’d let himself out of his shell and accept that even with limitations he can do many of the same things as the rest of the group does. But he seems content enough to hang back, ever the observer. And she doesn’t know if it’s her place to try to drag him into things though she might be better at it than anyone else. Miranda has told her as much.

💚: who tends to get sick more often? who is better at taking care of the other?

Hal’s question is really a continuation of the previous one and once again she has to call Billy out on it. Because she’s never really been sick a day in her life, not since early childhood and the culmination of that was the test bite that nearly lost her the leg she keeps tucked away, hidden out of sight whenever possible. “Dat seems a small kine ingenious, he no can help his seizure disorder. An’ I feel like he really ought to have a good psychologist. I t’ink some t’erapy would do him good. Spends too much time in his own head an’ mebbe not enough taking charge of his life. I know he can be afraid of lots of t’ings but it nevah really *has* to be dat way. But I also don’ wanna push him, for same-same reasons I mention before. You can lead a shark to chum but no can make him frenzy, know what I mean?” The analogy is silly. Billy wants so much more than what he feels he has. And a darker current in the back of her mind wonders if they would still be the same if he felt he could reasonably have them. That feels so selfish and toxic and she really has no place casting judgement on him when maybe she’s no better off than he is, only expressing it differently.

💜: who said "i love you" first? or, if neither has said it yet, who is more likely to say it first?

It’s strange how perceptive he is and goes in for the killing bite. The honest truth is that neither one has said it. And neither one likely will. Billy has layers of guilt and trauma, has beliefs that she cannot get a single foothold to try and tear apart. He doesn’t feel deserving of such a finer emotion. And Beth? She has her own reasons. She doesn’t even know if love is a thing that exists or if it’s some fairy-tale people tell themselves to make it easier to get by. She believes in affection, and she believes that people bond the same way packs and pods and herds do. But she feels the concept of love is poisonous. Ruinous in the way it can destroy someone from the inside out. And how any time she’s ever thought she’d felt it, it was ripped out from her grasp. She won’t say it. She won’t hear it.

She doesn’t answer him immediately, but instead gets up and paces away, appearing as though she’s checking on some of the cameras situated around the bay. The wall that she’d left down for Hal goes back up, slamming into place.

“Research from both psychology and neurology fields have found that there are twelve different areas of the brain that light up and work together when two people are attracted to one another, releasing chemicals like dopamine, adrenaline, oxytocin and vasopression. All the symptoms people experience are simply animal-instincts provided to guarantee that we as a species survive by either wanting to mate, or flee.”

💛: who believes in soulmates?

And Gates understands he’s made an error in judgement, though he’d only been trying to be helpful in a meddling kind of way. Anyone at the facility could see that Billy and Beth were two sides of a very quirky but ultimately needed coin. That they’d both changed each other in the two years she’d been a research fellow, and how they’d both blossomed for it. Well, anyone but the two of them. And this had seemed like such a good idea at first, tied into shark mating habits which he’d hoped she’d take better than she is.

Her answers have thus far matched up quite nicely with the boy’s.

Sadly, especially this one. She doesn’t turn to look at him. “There are no such things, Doctor Gates. And even if there were, statistically it would be almost impossible to meet a soul mate. Within the same general age group there are about a half a billion potential companions all over the world. One would have to travel the entirety of the world, every remote pocket of the planet. Secondly, there’s no scientific proof that souls even exist, and enough studies across various disciplines to prove that they don’t. Believing in such nonsense only makes a person unhappy. And all that aside, most mammals are not biologically programmed for monogamy and I doubt human beings are either.” Because if they were, why would anyone leave someone they claimed to love?

#Mahalo!Crow <3333 #A Star to Sail Her By|Doctor William Manderly #No Man's Land|Billy and Beth #Urca Aquarium and Research Facility #Aloha'aina|Hawai'i

[sabraeal]

In Plain Sight, Chapter 3

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Obiyuki AU Bingo Any AU of Your Choice (Witness Protection AU)

The thing about lying is: Shirayuki is terrible at it.

“So, Claire.” There’s no way her neighbor can know it’s a fake name, there’s no way she can be stressing it, not this perfect-picture Texan housewife who probably hasn’t thought about Witness Protection since the last time she watched Witness. “What is it you do?”

Shirayuki stares dumbly, mouth dry. She has a-- a brief or whatever, sitting somewhere in her luggage since it seemed silly to just whip it out during the flight, letting everyone seated in row eight see her new identity, but she--

She has no idea who she is. Who Claire Roos is.

“Um,” she manages, scuffing the edge of her sandal on the curb. “I, ah--”

Don’t have a job yet seems like a terrible way to start a conversation, especially right in front of a dream house that is too big for one single academic and definitely cost quite a bit of cash, so thankfully she’s saved the indignity by the unmarked white van that skids straight up to where they stand.

Oh, good. Now would actually be a great time to be kidnapped. Anything to save her from this.

“Excuse me, young man,” Mrs Kino calls out stridently as a man twice the size of them struts out of the driver’s side, her mouth pulled into a disapproving frown. “This is a neighborhood with children!”

Shirayuki stares at her. So does her kidnapper, popping one of his earbuds out. “Come again?”

If anything, this only makes Mrs Kino’s countenance more forbidding. “We have children here, sir.” When he continues to stare blankly, she clarifies, impatient, “Please drive with more care!”

“Oh.” He shrugs a shoulder. “Yeah, sure, whatever. Roos?”

His gaze swings between them in question, but his slouched posture gave the impression he wasn’t all too concerned with the answer.

“Not me,” Mrs Kino says, sending her an expectant look, and--

Oh. Roos. That’s her. She’s Roos.

“That’s me. Roos!” she blurts out smoothly. “Claire Roos.”

“Okay. Great.” He slides open the side of the van, and she braces herself--

For him to drop a half dozen boxes at her feet. White boxes, with the word WALMART emblazoned on the side.

“What?” she murmurs, toes shying back. “I didn’t--”

“Have a nice day,” he says, slamming the door. “Make sure you give the delivery five stars, okay?”

“O-okay.” She stares down at the siege of low-quality home goods around her. “But I really didn’t--”

He’s already got his earbud back in, strutting around to the driver’s side and-- and she’s stuck with whatever is in these boxes. Probably pin-up girl shower curtains and whatever the doormat version of The Kiss poster is, if her handler had a hand in this.

She glances up at her house, dread squeezing her chest. He might have decorated the whole place. He might have even picked this house out for her. There might even be a galley kitchen in there.

“Well now, looks like you planned ahead!” Mrs Kino remarked, surveying her sea of boxes. “Wouldn’t have even thought to get a delivery on moving day.”

“Oh, I didn’t--” she bites down on the words-- “even remember it was coming.”

“Ain’t that just the way.” Mrs Kino shakes her head, giving a wry laugh. “Moving just gets everyone all turned around, doesn’t it? Anyway, you best get those inside. Don’t want anything to go bad right out here on the lawn, do we?”

Shirayuki just stares, wondering how cheap home goods could expire any more than they already have. “Ah...right. Of course.”

“You need help carrying these up?” her neighbor nods at the winding steps up to the door. “Might save you a trip.”

Oh gosh, the stairs. They’re nothing now, just a lovely little accent built into her yard’s natural hill, but in the winter, she’ll have to--

Her whole body jerks to a stop. She’s not in New England anymore, she’s in-- in Texas. The South. She won’t have to shovel them.

“Claire?”

She wipes the grin from her face. “Um, yes! If you don’t mind.”

Mrs Kino smiles up at her brightly. “Why, not at all. It’s the neighborly thing to do! Around here, we’re all as close as family.”

“Oh.” Her lips pulls tight against her teeth. “Just perfect.”

“That looks like all of it,” Mrs Kino pants, dropping the last box up at the door.

It takes every last ounce of willpower for Shirayuki to not just collapse on the stairs. She knew it would be warmer here-- after all, going south mean getting closer to the equator, and the equator means hot, so it made sense that the further south she went the more heat there would be, but--

Garack once had to do a timed experiment for four hours in the warm room, and sometime around hour two, when Shirayuki thought that if she dared to move she would collapse like melted ice cream held together by the magic shell of her skin, Garack announced that this was as miserable as Satan’s asscrack, and well--

This place is worse than that. By at least an order of magnitude.

Mrs Kino casts a pointed look to where she clenches the wrought-iron rail and asks, “You sure you don’t want help bringing them in?”

“Oh, no!” Shirayuki waves her hands, keys jingling against her palm. Even the sound is strange, like how room keys jangle when on vacation, hollow and far too few. “The house, it’s really--”

She doesn’t know what it’s really, because she’s never seen a single piece of it. Which is part of the problem, since presumably people look at the houses they’re going to buy, even if they’re clear across the country.

“Messy,” she settles on. That’s safe, at least. “I’ll need a few days to get it into ship-shape.”

“Oh, of course!” Kino gives her a wide smile, more earnest than she deserves. “I know just how it is. But you just holler if you need anything. Me and Harold are just a hedge away!”

“Ah, yes! Right!” She edges back toward her door, fishing for the keyhole. Holding this smile is starting to hurt. It’ll be the last thing left of her if she melts, just a pearly white set of teeth on top of a pile of vaguely Shirayuki-ish goo. “I’ll...holler.”

“Good.” Kino makes it nearly two stairs down before turning back. “Oh, I clear forgot to mention. I always have the ladies of the neighborhood by Thursday afternoon. Just a small little get-together. You’ll have to come.”

Oh no. No.

“Of course.” The reasonable part of her watches in horror as instinct takes over and her body nods. “I’d love to, Mrs Kino.”

“It’s Martha, please,” she laughs, waving her off. “I’ll have to let all the girls know you’re coming by. They’ll be pleased as punch, I can tell you.”

Shirayuki watches her walk away with a pit of dread growing in her gut. “Great. I...can’t wait.”

With a grunt, Shirayuki hauls the last box into the foyer. She’s half tempted to just crawl the last step in rather than walk. As it is, she barely stumbles over that hurdle, hauling herself up the last half foot before she collapses against the door. Its cool surface is a godsend; she slides down it with a long, loud squeak, leaving a trail of sweat behind her. She’d be horrified, if it didn’t feel so good.

The AC is blasting, and the vent hits her where she sits, cold air cooling the slick surface of her skin, turning it blissfully sticky instead.

Well, those are words she never quite thought she’d use in that order.

The sweat she’s been dripping onto the beautiful natural wood floor beneath her slows to a stop. With a sigh, she leans her head against the door, grimacing as her hair sticks to her neck. She needs a shower.

But first the boxes. Then she can think of a way to thank Mrs—Martha for her help, and next Thurday when she goes to—

Oh no. Lunch. A ladies’ lunch. What was she thinking?

She needs an adult. Ridiculously, she wonders if Agent Jiang would pick up.

No, not him. Agent Jiang-- Obi was probably the one who thought ordering home décor from Walmart was the pinnacle of adulthood. He’s the sort of man who has one kitchen towel, and it has chili peppers on it.

A sweaty palm claps to her cheek. A ladies’ lunch. Oh gosh, she’s going to have to make something.

She doesn’t even have groceries. She’ll have to-- to go out and find a store and buy them. The produce might not even be local. They might have a bad organic section. There may not even be a Whole Foods for miles. The World Food’s aisle might only have pasta in it.

Shirayuki isn’t cut out for this-- this whole moving thing. She likes knowing that the Roche Brothers on the corner buys their produce local, but that the Market Basket has the better selection of spices. Or that the Whole Foods is cheaper but the Trader Joe’s two towns over has a better freezer section. Now she doesn’t even know if there is more than one store, and she--

She breathes. In. Out. She’ll just have to live with it. One step at a time.

Step one: open up these boxes. Better to find out now what inappropriate shot glasses her handler got her to christen the kitchen.

Slipping her key between her knuckles, she slices the first box open, flipping the lid to find--

Shirayuki blinks. Tilting the box, she reads Walmart, right on the side, big star in the middle. That...can’t be right.

She peers back inside, but the contents haven’t changed: fresh produce, still leafy and green. Carrots, spinach, a couple of cheerful looking eggplants, and even a clamshell of strawberries is tucked underneath.

“Well,” she murmurs, stymied. “That’s...unexpected.”

She turns to the next box, a heavier one, and it’s packed to the top with spices. Cinnamon, coriander, garlic, oregano, basil, thyme, curry, cumin-- big bottles she would have had to buy out of the Goya section back home. And now they’re all sitting in this box from Walmart.

Settling back on her heels, Shirayuki surveys the last four boxes, just as big as the first two. One of them is cold to the touch.

She blinks. “Walmart sells groceries?”

The only answer is her echo, but that-- that’s fine, because every box she opens is packed to the gills with foodstuffs-- chicken and beef and shrimp in one; flour, sugar, a dozen other baking needs, including two bags of chocolate chips; another filled with butter and eggs and milk. By the last box, she has a fully stocked kitchen, plus or minus a few personal needs.

“Well,” she breathes, “looks like he might know his way around the kitchen after all.”

That, or he has a very helpful coworker. Either way, she has food, and a--

“Kitchen!” She peers down the hall, curious. “I need to find the kitchen.”

Hauling herself to her feet, she lifts the box of dairy and detours past the stairs, leading into--

Oh, well. That’s a surprise.

Shirayuki can admit it: Marshal Jiang has outdone himself. Or at least, whichever agent vetted this house for purchase.

The kitchen could be straight out of one of those home and garden magazines Oma liked to have laying out around the B&B: track lighting hung right over the kitchen island, granite countertops, a double oven with separate range. It’s every improvement Opa had vetoed to their own, saying it was all a pipe dream when they still had repairs to do to the bathrooms, and the roof would need to be redone in the summer--

A summer that never came. And never would, now.

Her hands tighten around the box. There’s no time to dwell, not now when she has perishables to rescue and a kitchen to organize.

Start with what you can fix, Opa would say, the content of his tool box littered around him, and forget about what you can’t.

“Right,” she murmurs, setting the box on the counter. “Dairy first.”

The entire house, once she’s showered the sweat off and is finally able to explore, is as impressive as the kitchen. The whole first floor is open concept, kitchen flowing into the living room on one side and the dining area on the other, bathroom and home office tucked down a small hallway-- and every inch of it is homey, done up on soft fabrics and warm woods, looking both lived-in and clean.

But the pièce de résistance is the master bedroom, because--

“Oh gosh.” The words are muffled through the world’s fluffiest duvet. “It’s memory foam.”

Shirayuki flips onto her back with a sigh. It’s definitely not home-- nothing could be-- but it’s something. Something she can try to make into one.

“Hot in!” someone yells, muted, and Shirayuki bolts upright, heart pounding in her chest.

“So hot in here!” they continue, a siren blaring behind the words, and she realizes-- it’s her phone. Her phone is...singing to her.

She frowns, reaching across the bed to snatch it up from the nightstand. There’s no picture on the caller ID, just the words Sugar Daddy.

She definitely does not know anyone named that.

“Hello?” she squeaks, dragging herself further onto the bed. “Who is this?”

“It’s me,” says the man on the other end, and the quick jolt in her belly identifies him better than a name could: Marshal Jiang. Obi.

Anxious butterflies beat against her rib cage. He must have some-- some reason for calling. Official reasons. Marshals don’t call their charges just to chat.

Probably. “Is something wrong?”

“No.” He sounds amused through the speaker; she can almost imagine the smug grin he has on his face. “I just wanted to check in. Make sure you’ve settled in all right. Hear any complaints.”

“Oh, right.” She rolls upright; they might be on the phone, but lounging on a bed while talking to Obi seems...weird. “I’m...good?”

He hums, amused. “No trouble?”

Besides him abandoning her to her fate on her front lawn, and her inability to lie for more than three minutes at a time?

“Well, I don’t think I said anything strange in front of my neighbor,” she says instead, stomach clenching as she rifles through her memory. “She invited me to meet the other neighbors at lunch, or, um, tea? Something like that. I’ll have to make something, I think.”

“Oh,” he murmurs. “That’s something.”

“It’s the neighborly thing to do,” she informs him. “I think I might go with cookies. That’s simple, and everyone likes cookies.”

“I know I do,” he agrees, and she has no idea why it sounds like he’s on the verge of a laugh. “But I mean: no signs of Umihebi or her people? No one lingering outside your house? No unmarked vans? You feel safe?”

“Oh!” Right, because that’s what he’s worried about: her getting shot. Or kidnapped. Or whatever it is that mob bosses do to girls like her. “Yes. I mean, no. No one hanging around. Though the Walmart van was unmarked, but-- groceries.” She lets out a laugh. “Did you know they deliver groceries?”

He’s definitely smothering a laugh. “I sure did, miss.”

Right, because he’s probably the one that ordered it. Or had a PA order it, or whatever. “I didn’t realize they had, um, food.”

“Yeah,” he hums. “It’s popular around here.”

She goggles. “For groceries?”

“Sure is.” There’s a pause, and she can just feel his shrug, even if she can’t see it. “There’s Kroger’s too, and I think a Stop and Shop a few towns over, if you look real hard, and a Wegman’s that just opened in the strip mall--”

“Do you live here?” She cringes. She could really do to sound less interested. “I mean, close by? Nearby?”

“Close enough.”

She raises a brow. That was more than a little cagey. “Close enough to know all the grocery stores.”

“Close enough for you to tell my boss I’m a very helpful handler when review time comes around.” He lets out an amused huff. “I can tell you who has the best pizza too.”

“Oh, um.” She’s half-tempted to ask, but that seems-- personal. He might like that greasy Mediterranean style, and she just-- she doesn’t need to know that about him. “Well, you can give my compliments to the person who decorated the house. It’s lovely.”

“O-oh?” He’s suddenly removed, almost shy. “You think so?”

She runs a hand along the duvet, floral and yet somehow not grandmother-y. “Very. She did a great job.”

“Right. Yes. She did.” He hesitates, clearing his throat. “Anything in particular you like? For, uh, feedback reasons. She loves to hear specifics.”

“Well, the kitchen is--” Shirayuki sighs, content-- “heaven.”

“The kitchen is the heart of the home.” He coughs. “I mean, that’s what she says. A lot.”

Shirayuki smiles. “Well, she’s right.”

“Mm,” he hums, absent. “And the couch is okay?”

“It’s the perfect softness,” she enthuses. “I don’t disappear into it, but it still hugs you, you know?”

“Good, great.” His fingers drum in the background. “That’s the hardest part.”

“Oh?”

“I mean--” he hesitates, so long she can hear him breathe-- “so she says.”

“It’s perfect.” Shirayuki settles back onto the pillows-- there’s a thousand of them, just like she likes, all different sizes and shapes, a veritable army of throw pillows like any self-respecting bedroom should have. “And I haven’t slept on it, but the bed--”

Shirayuki stops herself. He isn’t-- Obi probably isn’t the best person to be talking about beds to, not when her lips still tingle from touching his. That’s not...safe.

“It’s fine,” she finishes lamely. “Is there anything else she’d like me to compliment? I’d be happy to get her into heaven, if she wanted.”

“I think she’d be happier with a raise.”

She cocks her head, pressing the phone between her ear and shoulder. “Something to mention around review time?”

He sniffs. “Only as an addendum to how handled you feel under me.”

He doesn’t mean it as-- as anything, just trying to be funny, but something sweeps through her, not heat but-- but something like a shiver, like the tingle of a limb waking up, and she’s not sure if she likes it.

“Well,” she manages, mouth utterly dry, “I don’t know how they’ll feel about the nickname Sugar Daddy...”

“Ah, well.” He at least has the grace to sound contrite, even if it’s in no way sincere. “You’re welcome to change it. You’ll be paying for all this yourself anyway, soon.”

It’s good they’re on the phone; he can’t see her grimace. All this on what will probably be an adjunct’s salary. She feels faint just thinking about it.

“Which reminds me,” he continues, “I’ll send over your new resume tomorrow. You’ll probably want that when you apply for jobs.”

Shirayuki bites back a groan. It’s a herculean effort not to ask why the government could pay for all this upfront, but somehow not arrange for a tenured position. Or at least an interview. “Great.”

“Is there anything else you need?” he asks. “I’m here to serve.”

“Aren’t you here to handle?” The words just fall out of her before she can stop herself. “I mean, ah...”

This is terrible, how much she wants to impress him. Shirayuki’s known him for less than twelve hours, and her palms are sweaty just talking to him. Every time his voice drops, she thinks about how he laughed as her mouth chased his, how he’d said I’ve missed you too--

Ugh, if this is what middle school was like for everyone else, they can have it back. This is torture.

“Handling you is already the most fun I’ve had in years,” he remarks, so casual, like he doesn’t even know how that’s going to make her heart misbehave in her chest. “But nothing else.?”

She doesn’t want to end on this, on her just blurting out an innuendo and letting him think she means things, so she grabs at the first thing she can think of. “Can I change the landscaping?”

“Wha--?” he replies, eloquent.

“It’s just…” She clears her throat. “Lawns consume a lot of water, and just are for show. If I put in a garden, or natural grasses, I could—“

“Sure,” he chokes out. He’s laughing. “I think you can do whatever you want.”

“Great.” Now he thinks she’s--weird. That’s fine. That’s...probably accurate. “Good. So, um, good night?”

“Yeah.” It’s quiet when he says it, a little more than a breath. “Good night.”

Shirayuki thumbs the End Call button, watching as Sugar Daddy flashes before disappearing from the screen. That went...well. As well as could be expected, considering how all she can think about is his hand threading through her hair and his hand at her back and--

Things. Professional things. Professional things she can totally handle. Because she is not thinking about how her handler could definitely handle her, and--

She takes another breath. In. Out. It’s fine. She may be experiencing this whole-- attraction, but it will pass. Hopefully. And if it doesn’t, well... she only has to deal with this for the rest of her life.

Shirayuki drops the phone like it burns, claps her hands over her face, and screams.

#obiyukibingo2020 #obiyuki #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #witness protection au #my fic #ans #this whole fic is just shirayuki being an awkward turtle in every situation #i'm sure she'll find her footing #at some point #but it won't be any time soon #and obi just thinks it's adorable #and also a problem #his own personal problem

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #337

“if i showed you my soul, would you cover your eyes?”

What's your favorite brand of chips? I like Lays best. Are you a good painter? My Painting teacher when I was in college last said I did wonderfully, but I definitely beg to differ. Before buying a car, do you usually test drive it? N/A Have you ever written a poem and then read it aloud? No, but a teacher has. It was so fucking awkward; it was very pacifist, the topic being about war, and it had some depressing tones of death; there was just silence at the end of it, and I still don't know if it was shock or "what the fuck, she's messed up." There was this one guy that went, "Nobody is going to clap at that?", though, which I thought was pretty nice and reassuring. Do you like pineapple? Yeah, I do. Have you ever met your favorite author? I don't have a favorite author. Have you and your best friend ever liked the same person? No. Do you have any freckles? Not on my face (though oddly enough, I did as a kid?), but on random parts of my body. How many different languages can you say goodbye in? English, German, and then Spanish. Do you like or hate the smell of fish? I hate it. Have you ever been to Sea World? As a child, yes. I'd never go as an adult. Do you know someone who suffers from short-term memory loss? I don't know how this is actually diagnosed, but my memory is absolutely fucking nightmarish, almost exclusively in short-term situations. I can remember the most obscure events from my childhood, but not what I said to you five seconds prior. I'm rather sure my medications have made it worse over time. Have you ever read any of John Green's books? I got like, one chapter or less into The Fault in Our Stars before the book got replaced with the Wings of Fire series, so I never finished it. Are you a protective person? I'm an immensely protective person over those that matter to me. Have you ever experienced an earthquake? No, thankfully. I'm terrified of earthquakes. What's one thing that makes everything in life worthwhile? The fact that to our proven knowledge, this is the only one we'll ever experience. What type of waffles do you like? (Plain, blueberry etc..) I prefer plain, but I can eat chocolate chip ones as well as blueberry and strawberry. Have you ever seen the show Wife Swap? Yeah, I actually quite like it. Do you like chicken or beef better? Or do you not eat meat? Chicken, I think. I eat meat, but wish I didn't. What brand of dish soap do you use? Dawn, usually. Do any of your neighbors have dogs? Yes, and they never shut up. Do you believe in fortune tellers? They're money-driver bullshitters. Have you ever been to one? No, and judging by the fervor in the above question, I hope you can tell I never would do so and thus monetarily support them. Do you like regular or chocolate milk better? Chocolate, of course. But I love normal milk, too. Once again, wish I didn't, though. Forcing a cow to constantly reproduce to lactate is pretty fucking cruel. Growing up, did you listen to country music? I actually did. Do you normally wash your hands in warm or cold water? If it's just a quick wash, it's usually cold because our water takes quite a few moments to warm up. However, if I'm looking to thoroughly wash my hands, it's gotta be relatively hot. Do you believe in mediums? I see them in a worse light than I do fortune tellers, so... Like sure, manipulate grieving people for profit, sounds great. Have you ever been to one? Obviously not. Have you ever dated someone on the football team? No. Do you have a gazebo at your house? No. Do you like tomatoes? Solely when straight from a garden and on a bacon and mayonnaise sandwich. Otherwise I am noooot a fan. Are you a competitive person? Not very, but there's a tiny spark in me, really when it just comes to photography. I hate it. Google or Bing? Does literally anyone use Bing? What's your favorite brand of bottled water? Essentia. Do you have any ceramic animals in your house or outside? Ummm I don't think so. Have you ever given someone flowers? Yes. What is something you might eat with a hamburger? Fries or mac and cheese. What is a sport that you’ve always wanted to play, but never got a chance to. None. What is a fruit that you might eat in the morning? A banana. Who might you send a selfie to? I don't send selfies to anyone. About how many pages is the longest book you’ve ever read? I THINK it surpassed 1,000? At least in the high hundreds. Who would you call first after getting engaged to tell them the news? Probably Mom. Around what time do you start feeling tired enough to go to sleep? Truth be told, it's usually arouund 7-8. I rarely make it to 9:00 nowadays. What trends do you refuse to give in to? I don't even know what's trendy right now. What subjects in history interest you most? As dark as it is, I find the Holocaust interesting to learn about. Are you superstitious in any way? No. How do you get rid of anxiety? What a relevant question, being in a partial hospitalization program right now. Coping skills that help me are doing deep breathing, mindfulness exercises, and a little jerk back to reality is splashing freezing cold water on my face. It also helps to talk it out with somebody, just get my feelings into words. Then if it's a true anxiety or panic attack, I have my "emergency" anxiety prescription. Are there any items of jewelry you never/rarely take off? My lip and tragus piercings never do, and I always wear two rings. Do you find yourself correcting people’s grammar often? Not really, no. It just seems rude and snobby to me, honestly, if it's not in an educational setting, like helping someone with an essay. Correcting someone in your average conversation is just... unnecessary, imo. Now if you're talking like in surveys and stuff, I definitely do in questions and such, but I don't point it out. Gummi worms: Yay or nay? Yay, love 'em. What do you do when you have ‘me time’? I only ever have "me" time, so what I always do... Do you lack common sense sometimes? I have a horrible lack of common sense, shit's embarrassing. Have you ever poured glue on your hand just to peel it off for fun? No. How do babies make you feel? "Nervous. They’re so damn breakable." <<<< Mood. Would you/Have you milked a cow? No, and I'm not interested. What really gives you the creeps? #!: seeing a baby move inside its mother's stomach. It will actually make me scream and/or cry because it just grosses me the fuck out. Whale sharks' mouths also creep me out big time. Do you ever eat leftover pizza cold? Yeah, I love cold pizza. When you're wanting a midnight snack, what do you normally get? We normally have cashew bars that I like if I'm really hungry. Which cartoon character would you want to keep as a pet? Obviously Pikachu. My niece loves Pikachu anyway, so she'd be ecstatic to see a real one. Or well, maybe I'd go for an Eevee. Not as dangerous with electricity and all but just as cute and small. Do you like marshmallows? Yeah. If you had the opportunity to live forever, would you take it? No. It would ruin so many factors of the temporary nature of life. Things would lose meaning, get old and boring, it'd be much easier to take advantage of things... There are many reasons why I have no desire to live forever. Hell, I even wonder if I want an afterlife for those same reasons. Did you ever really believe in Santa Claus? As a little kid, yeah. Do you like quesadillas? I like cheese, chicken, and shrimp ones. What's the greatest/most influential song you've ever heard? Ozzy's "Life Won't Wait." Do you prefer to pull off band-aids slowly or quickly? I tend to do it slowly. What was the last thing someone told you that had you at a loss for words? Uhhh I feel like Sara said something, but I don't remember what. What was the last health scare you had? Ugh... I'm kind of living in one now. As my legs have been worsening, I'm becoming increasingly concerned I'm eventually going to need a wheelchair for "walking" longer distances. And mind you, "long" for me is probably short for the average person. My knees do nothing but crack incessantly and burn when I use them, and they frequently feel like they're going to give way, and in a few rare instances, have. It's my own fucking fault for not sucking it up and exercising with my mom in the room, so I'd like to move on. What is your favorite filling for a piece of chocolate? Caramel. Do you enjoy the sound of birds chirping? I do. If applicable, what’s your favorite drug, and why? I don't do drugs, so. What was the last TV show you binge-watched? Avatar: The Last Airbender with Sara. Would you rather eat burgers or tacos? Definitely burgers. I don't like tacos. Did your mother change her maiden name when/if she got marred? Yes. What was the last job you applied for? Did you get the job? Deli worker, and yes. Do you use TikTok? No. What decorations do you have in your bathroom? None. Our bathroom is pretty small. Well, the one we use, anyway. The one attached to the master's bedroom isn't cleaned up yet, but we'll use it in case of emergency. What year was your favourite band formed? (Before people think I'm smart, no, I looked the dates up, haha.) Well Ozzy was Black Sabbath's vocalist, and the band formed in 1968, but Ozzy became a solo artist in 1979. What's your favourite fruit? Strawberries. Have you ever had an out-of-body experience? No. Do you prefer gory horror films or the psychological ones? I prefer psychological. Are you easily paranoid? Yeah. Do you have a favorite obsession? Meerkats and Mark are kinda tied, haha. Are you a workaholic? No. Have you ever given a tattoo before and would you like to? No and no; that would be an awful idea, given I have bad tremors in my hands. Have you ever seen the movie Labyrinth? I actually have not. Would you rather be called pretty or hot? Pretty. Have you ever gotten a serious injury at school? What happened? No. Have you ever performed in front of my large group of people? Yes; I was a dancer for many years. Have you ever fundraised? If so, what for? You know how Facebook recommends making fundraisers for a charity of your choice for your birthday? I've done that for the Trevor Project and two charities for ovarian and pancreatic cancers. Are you wearing earrings right now? Ugh, no, even though I want to be. The first holes in my ears are just too stretched for normal earrings because I wore heavy ones too often, and I just don't have nice earrings. I still want to get very small gauges to put in the stretched holes. Name a singer whose voice makes you swoon? Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump can do that, holy shit. "America's Suitehearts" does it for me, man. Y'know, when his voice goes all deep. Do your pets follow you when you walk around the house? My cat Roman is quite literally my shadow. Where I go, he goes. What do you do online? I seem to only exist online, really, so I've got a lot on my plate to choose from, yet I'm still bored half the time, haha. I'm essentially always watching or listening to YouTube, I play World of Warcraft for varying amounts of time depending on the day, I scroll through deviantART, check KM periodically, do surveys obviously, "work" at the wikis I contribute to, wander around on Facebook... idk, that's all I really do at least semi-regularly online. Haha oh, wait, I also check Craigslist like... every day for tarantula and hognoses even though I can't currently get either. Let me dream. Do you have any scars on your face? I have a couple on my chin from when I fainted and busted it open. What countries were your grandparents born in? In the US. What was the most damaging relationship (romantic or not) that you’ve ever been a part of? Ultimately, with Jason, because of how it ended. The relationship itself wasn't at all damaging to me, but the breakup shook my entire fucking world. When in your life was your self-esteem at its lowest point? Self-esteem? Now. I'm very unhappy with my weight going back up, my body is just in poor health in general, I'm not employed, not in school... I just feel like a lowlife. Who was the last person you cut out of your life? Do you regret it? I want to say my sister's mother-in-law. Sure don't, considering she revealed her disgusting support for conversion therapy. I'm civil around her in person, but I kicked that woman off my Facebook so fucking quick when I saw that shit. Who is the most attractive person you know personally? That I know personally... I would say Alon, but I haven't seen even a picture of her in forever. Summer, though, shares selfies frequently, and by god is she gorgeous. I know a lot a lot of beautiful women, asldkjf;awe. It's funny that I'm blanking on men, at least involving people I still "know"/are somehow present in my life. Would you rather look older or younger than you are? I'm fine looking my age. Have you ever dated someone who was very vastly different from your “type”? No. What is the biggest project you’re currently working on? I suppose you can count an RP plot as a "project." I'm procrastinating so bad on it because it is going to be A LOT of writing. Is there a person from your past that you wonder about frequently? Who? Take a shot in the dark for me. Who knows you best, excluding romantic partners? My mother. What are your thoughts on human creation? I believe we evolved. How many people have you had sex with? One. Have you ever had a yard sale? Yeah. Have you ever been surfing? No.

#survey #surveys #questions #lyrics: ''voices'' by motionless in white

[montereybayaquarium]

It’s time for Zodiac signs as shrimp (and other close shrimp-like relatives)! 🦐✨

🌜☀️✨ Part 1 ✨ ☀️🌛

Sea the rest in 🌜☀️✨ Part 2! ✨ ☀️🌛

Thanks to our fronds @mbari-blog for the image of the transparent shrimp! (which is technically an amphipod, but shhhhhh)

#monterey bay aquarium #shromp week 2024 #we always sea stars when we look at shrimps but now you can know which stars SPECIFICALLY #shrimps are technically all water signs #petition to make all zodiac signs crustaceans #cancer is lonely up there #think of it as carcinization but for the stars #the sea is coming for you NASA

[helgaw321]

Takeru’s 155 Q&A

To start off things, let me share (again) one of my most satisfying works from last year, that is Takeru’s Q&A section from his 30th birthday anniversary book. Looking back, I think I worked on this one for almost one week, and It felt really satisfying to finish it on Takeru’s 31th birthday ❤️

Once again, enjoy!

(Disclaimer: All translations are done by myself, pls don’t repost without permission, thank you!)

===========

These are the questions sent by fans through Takeru's official LINE account. Thank you for all of your participation!!

1. Is there anything you would like to do or achieve in 2019? I'd like to do anything good for my body

2. If there is one day you're not Satou Takeru anymore, what will you do? Go to sauna

3. If there is one day you become a girl, what will you do? Sing Sheena Ringo's songs in the original key

4. If you can travel back in time, when would you go? Middle high school

5. If you are being reborn, do you want to be yourself again? Not really

6. If there is an "Anywhere Door", where would you like to go? The world's best views

7. Do you think aliens exist? Not in this solar system I think

8. 10 years from now, what kind of father do you want to be? I want to avoid using weird emoji

9. If you move abroad, which country would you choose? Maybe America or Canada

10. If you got the chance to direct a film, what kind of film and who are the casts? Horror. Because it seems difficult to explain, I'll do it myself.

11. If you have to become one of the characters you've played before, who will you choose? Shishigami Hiro

12. Among of the movies created in the past, is there any movie you like to have acted in? (Anything from) Ghibli

13. Who would you like to meet the most right now? And what will you ask him/her? Hanyu (Yuzuru)-kun. "Do you want to join Amuse (Takeru's agency)?"

14. Anything you want to overcome in this year? Coughing out when sleeping

15. If you can go with your mom on a trip, where would you like to go? I don't know. I'll go where she would want to go

16. When you see food with the name you see for the first time, do you dare try? Or you tend to play safe? I tend to take the challenge.

17. If you can meet your 20-year-old self, what would you like to say? Nothing in particular

18. What kind of present you would like to receive in last year of Heisei-era? Speakers that can be used in bathroom

19. Where would you like to go on honeymoon? The world's best views

20. What would you like to do in your last day of your life? I don't want to know that day is the end of my life

21. If you can take a long holiday, what would you like to do? Watch movies. Escape room games.

22. I love Takeru-kun's singing voice. If someday you get to sing in your next project, do you want to do it? I don't mind

23. If you weren't in the entertainment world, what would you do? I imagined myself to study something related to science-field in university, but I don't know what to do next

24. What else you like in sushi other than Kohada (gizzard shad)? Between tuna and salmon, which one do you like? Tuna. I also like squid and uni (sea urchin). And also button shrimp

25. If you become an invisible person, what would you want to do? State secrets investigation

26. Favorite movie? Kimi no Na wa (Your name)

27. Do you like sweets? I like it but I rarely snacking

28. Favorite smell? Morning forest

29. What do you like in osechi (traditional Japanese new year food)? Kamaboko (fish cake)

30. Favorite manga? Tenshi na Konamaiki (Cheeky Angel) (note: he said in Yakai before that his first love is the heroine from this manga XD)

31. Do you like to go to onsen? Yes

32. If you have your own favorite/most disliked body parts, please tell us! I won't say because it's embarassing

33. Favorite color? Navy blue

34. Favorite kind of noodles? Cold soba

35. Favorite season? Winter

36. Do you like horumon (cuisine made from pork or beef offal)? I like it more than average people

37. You went to lots of places during filming or doing promotion for movies, do you have favorite region? Also please tell us if you have a must-eat food there! Hitsumabushi in Nagoya

38. If i remembered correctly, you've said that you like your home, is there any other place you like? I also like hotel

39. Any recommendation for foreign drama? Friends

40. Favorite novel? Shigatsu ni nareba Kanojo wa (also titled April Girlfriend - by Kawamura Genki)

41. What do you usually add when you eat medamayaki (fried egg)? Salt and pepper or Shoyu

42. What do you usually add when you eat freshly cooked white rice? Karashi (spicy) mentaiko

43. Please tell us your order of eating sushi! Omakase (literally meaning "I'll leave it up to you", a special course when the customer leaves it up to the chef to serve)

44. What are your memories of doing Kamen Rider? Commuting in a crowded train

45. Please tell us a happy episode from filming Den-O! We sometimes would go to Jojoen near Oizumi Studio

46. Who is your favorite Imajin from Den-O? Ura(taros)

47. If you act as (Nogami) Ryoutarou right now, what kind of person you think he will be? I think people will not change that much

48. If you have a child, what name will you give him/her? I think 2 letters would be nice

49. Among the actors-actresses you haven't co-starred with, who would you want to work together with? Fukatsu (Eri)-san

50. Among all of your projects, which role is the most fun/memorable? Rookies was fun

51. Do you still continue to learn English? Yes

52. Among all of roles you've played, was there a moment when you think it resembles yourself? Probably no

53. Is there any place inside Japan you want to go? Never-visited islands

54. Is there anything you want to learn right now? I want to learn to dance

55. When you first meet a person, what is the first thing you will look at? I got this question a lot and until now I don't know the answer. I wonder what I will look at first

56. What role you want to try this year? As a runaway child

57. Among all of your projects, is there anything you wouldn't want to watch? Basically I don't want to watch it. I don't watch most of it.

58. If you can do a sequel, is there a work you want to do? Rurouni, Kanouso, Gibomusu

59. Is there any villain role from movie/drama/manga/novel that you want to do? I'd like to if there's any (interesting roles)

60. Before you do a crying scene, how do you usually spend your time? Depends on the scene

61. What is your description of "Kakkoii"? Taking the initiative in what people hate, and don't show off your action

62. You said that you didn't like saba no misoni (mackerel with miso), was it because you didn't like mackerel itself? When I saw "saba no misoni" in school lunch menu, I would be very dissapointed. I like mackarel though.

63. If you got an offer for main cast in Taiga drama, will you take it? I like that kind of question where you don't think "If it's the main cast for Taiga I'll definitely do it"

64. Something to do to keep you healthy? Sleep 12 hours

65. Do you have any actor friends? Everyone that gave their comments in this book

66. How do you feel when you work in Rurouni Kenshin kiri (` ・ω・‘) (note: this is the actual answer (i only changed hiragana to romaji/alphabet), kiri/kiru is to cut/slash in japanese, so maybe he just felt like slashing ppl all the time XDD)

67. Something that makes you feel "I can die peacefully after doing this"? Become Ajin

68. What is the scariest thing in the world? Please see video original version of "Ju-on"

69. Have you seen Aurora? No

70. When you take a bath, what part of the body you washed first? Head

71. In what moment do you usually can be yourself the most? I am myself mostly everytime

72. If fans reach out to you in your private time, how far can we go e.g handshake/photograph? It'll be embarassing to take a photo, so only handshake is good

73. We always see Takeru-san in the acting side, do you ever think of creating a movie? If I create a movie, I also want to act in that movie

74. You showed us for a short moment in Horoyoi ads, but I want to hear more of your singing voice! Recently, is there any song that you will definitely sing in karaoke? Marigold, no I'm lying. I don't have such song.

75. You always give your best during promotions for dramas/movies, but was there any tough times? Ehh you're so kind.

76. You said that you want to take a break in this year because you've worked hard in last year, did that feeling change? It's not like I want to take break, but I think my exposure level is decreasing compared to last year

77. In Kanouso, during the moment when you weren't supposed to cry but tears suddenly fell down, how to control such emotion? I looked at her (Riko) face

78. Is there any actor/actress you admire? If I tell you, you will be more aware of that person, so because I don't want you to have such thought, I won't tell you.

79. How did you spend your time during 2019 new year? I watched Unnatural with my family at home

80. What is your special skill? Othello

81. Do you use perfume? I don't usually use it but because we're making it (as anniversary goods) this time so I'm using that.

82. When thinking about Takeru-kun, your image is strongly tied with solving riddles, how did you get into it? Also how much time did you spend in 1 day? My first time was when my friends invited me to play escape games. As long as time allows me to do it, I can do it all day.

83. Among all of Hanbun, Aoi cast, who is your best friend? Kan-chan (Suzume's daughter)

84. If you meet a person that you want to befriend, are you the type who reach out to him/her, or wait? Reach out

85. Regardless of gender, what kind of person you're not good at? People who makes mistakes

86. What is your decisive factor when choosing a project? Whether I want or I don't want to do it

87. By any chance, is Takeru-san the type of genius person with photographic memory? I'm not that kind of person

88. What do you sing when you go to karaoke? Radwimps

89. Do you do any muscle training? I do but depends on the timing

90. When you go out with somebody you like on a date, in what situation do you like? Autumn leaves

91. Has anybody said to you that you resemble someone (in entertainment world)? Shouhei's wife (Kiritani Mirei) (note: why he won't say her name directly XDD)

92. Do you have any age restriction for marriage? I'd like to do it in my 30s if I can

93. Why do you become "a man lost in love"? What a good word to express it. Love is not something you experience several times, isn't it?

94. What kind of hair type do you like for girl? I like natural, not shaped ones

95. In what moment do you think girls are cute? When you see they are excited when I choose her in SUGAR

96. When you found a girl you like, do you actively "attack" her? Of course if I like her

97. Do you like a woman who will casually do body touch, doing upward gaze, and sort of the aggresive type? I don't like it at all

98. In what moment you think you can't help but liking a girl? When she casually do body touch, do upward gaze (note: so which one do you actually like LOL -- refer to Q97)

99. Between older and younger woman, which one do you like? I like both

100. What kind of girl do you like? Girls with narrow "strike zone"

101. What is the minimum requirement for your partner to marry you? I no longer have such requirement

102. As a man, what do you think of a man who keeps looking at his phone, keeps looking at the clock when dating a woman? It's not a good thing to do, it's like he doesn't care about his partner.

103. What do you think about a fun and easygoing girl? Girls with good sense of humor are good

104. When you have a girlfriend, what kind of homemade food will you make for her? Miso soup

105. What kind of make up do you like for girls? As long as she doesn't overdo it

106. I have a person I can't forget even after so many years, Does Takeru-kun have that kind of experience? Yes for a few years, but I don't know what will happen for 10+ years

107. I called my nephews and nieces with nicknames. Does Takeru-kun have any nicknames you want to be called with? I like Takeru-san rather than Takeru-kun

108. What sound do you use as your alarm ringtone? Default settings

109. You have a really beautiful skin. Do you have any advice for it? Moisturizing

110. Any activities you've been into lately? Alternate baths (also called contrast bath therapy) (note: a kind of bath therapy where you alternate between hot and cold baths.)

111. Where do you usually go? Most recent is gym

112. Do you still hate caterpillars? Sorry, but yes

113. Do you cook? Do you have any specialities? Nope

114. Where and how you usually memorize your script? I usually memorize it with my costars moments before shooting in the set

115. For Takeru-san who loves reading, how do you usually choose books to read? I'd usually pick friends' recommendation

116. When you sleep do you prefer to turn on or off the lights? Turn off. I can't stand even the lights from humidifier

117. In what moment do you think it's nice being an actor? When people are being nice to you

118. Things like clothes, bags, shoes, is there anything that you have to make sure it's in good quality before you buy? Towel

119. If you have one full day with your beloved cats, what will you do? Cuddling its cheek

120. If you are being reborn as a cat, who do you want to take care of you? Do you want to play together with Kochirou and Puchirou in Satou's family house? Yes. (note: Kochirou and Puchirou are his beloved cats currently living in his parents' house)

121. If you can have one more cat, what name will you give? At least not names in katakana

122. Are you a dog person? Cat person? Cat

123. As a cat-lover, which part of a cat do you like? Face

124. What is your favorite Kochirou and Puchirou's pose? When they become rounded like a ball

125. If you can have a dog, what kind of dog do you like? Shiba-inu

126. Beside cat, do you have any other animals you'd like to have? Dolphin

127. Where do you want to live? Shiodome maybe

128. Have you give your mom presents from home bakery? Yes. I think you can also make mochi with those

129. If you're doing a solo trip, where will you go? Canada

130. How do you get along with Nobu-san (from Chidori)? We were working together in a variety show and I ask for his phone number

131. You were famous among the older people from long ago, what do you think about that? I don't really care about the age as long as I still got the "waa" and "kyaa"

132. In what moment do you feel happy? When I solved a riddle

133. What is your favorite song from Takahashi Yuu-kun? Hachigatsu Muika (August 6) (note: he sang this song in his 30th birthday event)

134. If you have to give a score for your acting career up until now, how many points out of 100? 60

135. In the future, can you create an event where fans can meet you directly? Yes

136. You've said before that because you can't tidy your room up so your mom had to visit your house to tidy things up, is it still the same now? I've become independent now

137. I'm still a kid, an elementary school student. When I talk about Kamen Rider, there are some kids who get along with me, but there also kids who call me weird. Is it alright that I still love Kamen Rider? Please tell me. I was also called weird by my friends in my school days so it will be alright

138. Do you plan to go to Kyoto in this year? I already go there few times

139. In what moment do you feel the happiest? I can't decide between the moment when I saw at Ruroken's (sales) performance or when I managed to clear an escape game challenge, or when I was in elementary school when I got into Yu-Gi-Oh, I got Summoned Skull from a booster pack.

140. Was there a moment when you cried while watching a movie? Usually I cried watching touching movies

141. Between the roles you've played almost simultaneously, such as Ritsu in Hanbun, Aoi, Mugita in Gibomusu, and Kazuo in Oku Otoko, which one is the most difficult to play? Kazuo

142. Recently, is there a moment when you laughed so hard? I was hitting my knees laughing while watching Aiseki Shokudou (Chidori's show) at home

143. Please tell us an episode from Kouhaku! When I hesitated to wave my penlight, but then I saw Nomura Mansai-san was waving his so I decided to follow

144. Please tell us your recommended places to visit from "Rurouni-hon Kumamoto e". Nature is always recommended. Negative ions are good for the body. (note: "Rurouni-hon Kumamoto e" was a book about Takeru doing a trip in Kumamoto, promoting places especially those which were affected by Kumamoto earthquake. A portion of the sales were donated to support Kumamoto recovery)

145. You said in the past that you couldn't sleep for a long time, how is it now? Hm it's complex but I think my internal body clock feels off

146. When telling our thoughts about your movies/dramas, do you have any preferred ways that makes you happy? When you shared it in the internet

147. My son is telling me that he wants to be a voice actor and wants to go to a vocational school. As a parent, should I support him? Did Takeru-kun get your parents' support when you want to be an actor? My parents had no objection at that time. It didn't cost me any money. By the way, do professional voice actors learn in vocational schools? I support him to become a voice actor, but I'm not sure if it's the right decision to enroll in a vocational school to become a voice actor.

148. Among all the places you've visited during your work or private trips, do you have any recommendation for us? Salar de Uyuni (note: he went to this place for X photobook)

149. When you watch a movie, do you prefer to read the original story first or straight to the movie? If I want to enjoy the movie, I'd watch the movie first. If I want to enjoy the book, I'd read the book first.

150. Can I hug you when I meet you? Maybe no

151. Do you use washing machine for drying your clothes? What will happen to your clothes after that? Wrinkled

152. What is the most important thing or person to you? People who put their faith in me

153. Are you looking forward to expand your career overseas? Rather than wanting to work in a Hollywood movie, I prefer to think more on how to make Japanese movies more visible to the world.

154. Is there anything you'd like to do in your 30s, any target or resolution? I have a few in mind, but I'll tell you when I manage to accomplish them

155. Please tell us about your vision of living your life from now on! I hope I can do more of what I want to do.

(pic: https://satohtakeru.amuseblog.jp/blog/2019/03/30th-anniversar-1c47.html)

#Q&A #can-we-have-more-of-this-pleasee #30th-anniversary-book #photobook #佐藤健

[anewkaiju]

Top Chef Los Angeles Recap: Episode 1

These are strange times. There has always been an element of the unknown to our day-to-day, but typically it's only ever discussed or thought about in terms of limitless potential and never-ending, never-ceasing possibility. Of course, there's also always been a flip side to that element of unknown. You know it. The dread-inducing one. The one no one ever wants to bring up, delve into, wrestle with, or even talk about really. It's hard to say for sure, but that may be where we are now. Or maybe it isn't, and all will be well eventually. This shit is so strange and is going to take time to figure out, but we all have to figure it out and our best chance at figuring it out is considering our community and working together. So, we got that going for us.

These are also strange times that require certain measures to be taken to keep everything hammered down and in place. Put another way, a little TV is needed in order to provide some sort of sense of stability. Put yet another way, it'll help keep shit together. Which is how, we have ended up here. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me (yet) an idea formed in front of me that this latest season of Top Chef (the 17th one) needs to be written about. So, here we are.

The first thing to note about the new season of Top Chef is that it is an All-Star season, which just means that these are all contestants who have been on the show before and have now been invited back. This raises immediate questions in my mind concerning how one becomes a Top Chef All-Star. On what basis exactly is a chef measured to make this sort of call? This doesn't feel like something we can compare to the NBA's All-Star selection process. There, they have the fans for the starters and then league coaches and members of the press vote for the reserves. So, with this cast, are we supposed to believe these are fan favorites or have these chefs been chosen because the people who watch food most closely believe them to be the best? Little of both?

One of the other things about Top Chef and watching Top Chef, at least for me, is that maybe that stuff doesn't matter. You could try to handicap this show and identify the frontrunner and the number one contender and track everyone's progress through that lens, but that grows old eventually. In my mind, the show is at its best when someone is dialed in and making what feels like the best food they've ever made in their entire life. A lot of the time this individual making what feels like the best food they've ever made is painted as the underdog, and that's fine. Watching an underdog zig and zag their way through a competition, defy the odds and then take the title makes for pretty good entertainment. It's also one of those things where there's a lot of talk about James Beard nominations and "features in Food & Wine magazine" and it all sounds really impressive, but what do those accolades actually mean, and more importantly for our purposes, what do those accolades mean for TV? Where's your resume when you're cooking in the snow on the side of a mountain? Also, what does pedigree matter when so often on this show the judges slam someone for cutting corners or ignoring fundamentals? It's also important to note that I know almost nothing about food aside from what I have discerned from watching this show.

How food is thought about and talked about on TV and the internet has changed considerably over the last few years. In the early to mid 2000s, 'good cooking' was more often than not presented and defined as all about splashy presentation, style and a million other things going on at once. The term "celebrity chef" originated around this time to describe someone who is now famous because they cook. Your signature could just be a wild looking plate. This isn't meant to put down food artists, but perhaps some passes were given that shouldn't have been. It's like if you could talk it up enough and find the right wrapping for it then, magically, no questions are asked and what you are putting out into the world doesn't have to be fact or quality checked. This all works on the timeline too as this was also a period in history were there lots of bad rappers at the top (50 Cent, Ja Rule, etc) and the NBA was mired in this weird post-Jordan funk.

It's almost as if things had to pivot back in on itself. These days, simplicity is celebrated. Or maybe it has always been essential and I am just dumb. Either way, let's call this foggy idea the Chef's Table Effect. Now, with chefs, you want to know about their approach to food and what their mindset is like. We want to know how they look at food and how they get it. We want to learn about real, living, breathing chefs and not just be told about someone who is now famous because they cook. In early seasons of Top Chef, there were more personalties, people who just wanted to rub elbows with celebrities and put their names on restaurants. Over time, that has subsided some and when it does happen it comes across as much more transparent. The good chefs emerge no matter what. Their personalties reveal themselves in their own time (call this the Kawhi effect if you must,) and because they are making 'good' food it's all that much more enjoyable/rewarding to watch. We are in this time where food is considered in more serious terms, and as a result, we get more grounded, thoughtful food TV programming. I like to think of it as more of an actual uprising. Everyone collectively all at once had one too many exploding shrimp cocktails bathed in brandy and bedded in dry ice and began asking questions about what we are doing here exactly. With that in mind,

The episode itself was fairly straight-forward. The chefs show up. They are asked to do a mise en place, which is like a prep work drill essentially but since this is a competition show there's a real emphasis on speed and accuracy. There were artichokes, oranges and almonds, and it was explained, that the first five chefs to break down their artichokes would form a team and be allowed to leave for a kitchen right away. When this happens, all remaining chefs would stop with whatever artichoke business they may have left and shift their attention to the oranges. Once five chefs had handled their oranges sufficiently they would then become the second team and then be allowed to head for the kitchen. Everyone left with the almonds would take on the mantle of the third team, and be allowed to move to the kitchen once they were all finished. This opening challenge served mostly as a shakeout session to get things moving and for viewers at home to see if anyone is trying out a new style, whether it be a cooking flourish or a new haircut.

After the mad dash mise en place, the chefs are once again sorted into teams, although, this time around, they go into five teams of three as opposed to three teams of five. For the main challenge of this episode, each team has been asked to make a cohesive, family-style seafood meal over a single open flame and an open flame only for a table of esteemed, established chefs and cuisine writers.  

here is what they presented:

Melissa: Grilled Swordfish with hot & sour sauce, ember grilled radicchio and fresno chiles

Karen: Grilled scallops, gingered plums, nuoc cham and nappa cabbage slaw

Angelo: West coast oyster with smoked bacon rice porridge

Bryan: Sea urchin, spot prawns with hibiscus ponzu and burnt avocado

Joe: Sesame and semolina flatbread with clams, fried garlic, sea urchin, pickled peppers and miso parmesan aioli

Lee Anne: Shoyu Tare Glazed Halibut with charred sweet corn and cabbage, sea urchin and uni miso beurre blanc

Gregory: Charred salmon with grilled peaches and roasted chili dressing

Jamie: Steamed mussels with ember scaled cream and toasted bread

Stephanie: Brined prawn with charred tomato sauce and roasted corn dressing

Jennifer: Spiced tuna loin over grilled kale with red pepper tahini sauce

Nini: Grilled scallops, carrots, tomatoes with charred brussels sprout & fennel salad

Kevin: Eye of swordfish braised in chorizo with coal-roasted onion, olives and peas

Lisa: Charred shrimp and scallop ceviche with candied squash, mushrooms and avocado

Bryan V.: Sablefish with corn porridge and charred leeks

Eric: Chesapeake boil with grilled prawn

It's striking looking at all of these dishes written out. Granted, this is being written from a position of hindsight, but it's so clear which dishes were a hit and which were not. Again, I'm not very bright so this isn't a food know-how thing. It's just a words thing. The most composed, concise dishes were the ones that elicited acclaim. This should maybe be a working rule. If the description of your dish runs over a line long, then you might be in trouble. (You might be looking at Lisa's dish and noticing that it runs over, but it's just barely. She's a great chef who is being oddly slept-on already. She went all the way to the final in her season and has a very no nonsense, quiet drive.)

Anyway, the judges loved Gregory, Jamie and Stephanie's meal with Gregory taking the overall win. Joe, Lee Anne and Bryan had far and away the least liked dish. The challenge called for a family-style meal, indicating that everything will end up on the same plate, so the two sauces made that one flatbread mad soggy. Joe went home for it. (Lee Anne ran into some issues on the grill, but these things happen and Padma said there was a lot to like about her dish. Lee Anne was also on the very first season of Top Chef and the last time anyone saw her was a few seasons back when she surprise-returned. In that episode, the challenge was to cook over an open flame in four feet of snow on the side of a Colorado mountain. Lee Anne was four months pregnant. After she knocked out her dish, she seemingly achieved clarity and announced to everyone that she was going home to prepare for the birth of her child.)

For whatever reason, it tends to take a few episodes before the show really starts moving. There will probably be a few more wild-sounding challenges under even more wild-sounding circumstances. Based off of the "this season on Top Chef" tease shown at the end of the episode, the competitors visit at least one museum and at least one stadium. The official title of this season is Top Chef: Los Angeles which would suggest that everything will be contained to the city of Los Angeles as opposed to the entire state.

There was also a moment in the tease where actor Danny Trejo, star of Machete, Machete Kills and the forever-stuck-in-development Machete In Space, can clearly be seen visiting the Top Chef kitchen which is wildly encouraging.

#bravo #tv #top chef #recap #review #writing

[hermannsthumb]

Hey dude!! Never done this before so I’m sorry if I screw it up but love the prompts you reblogged and thought I’d give it a try. Newmann wedding fics are the cutest things in my opinion so I thought possibly write a combination of 16, 7, and or either 2 or 9. Your newmann fics are the absolute best, I read them whenever I’m having a really bad day and they always cheer me up. Your a fantastic writer and you have such and amazing personality! I Hope you have a lovely day

16: Weddings, 7: Beach, 1: Fireworks, 2: Sunburn AND 9: Stargazing, 

from summer prompt memes here

combining yours with @francissaintgermain​ for a double whammy of wedding...AND THANK U BOTH for the really sweet words :’)

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“Seems a bit of a hassle, if you ask me,” Hermann says. “All this bloody planning, and money, and effort—”

“It’s not a hassle,” Newton says. “I mean, it is, but—it’s gotta be worth it, you know? It’s romantic.”

It takes Hermann a great deal of effort to not roll his eyes. Newton’s idea of romantic includes necking on the couch while Ghostly Encounters plays on the television set and showing Hermann how many pieces of sushi he can cram into his mouth at once. (His record is ten, and he would’ve kept going if Hermann didn’t remind him that they were in a very nice restaurant and he paid quite a lot for the reservation.) It isn’t what Hermann meant, anyway. “I’m not talking about weddings in general,” he says. “I mean this sort. With all the—” He waggled his hand vaguely. “Extravagance.”

Extravagance did not fully encompass everything this wedding was. Hermann’s cousin and his fiance—wife, now, Hermann supposed—-had rented out a massive chunk of beach for it, with all the trappings of the sorts of things you’d expect for a beach vacation. Bouquets of tropical flowers. Bridesmaids in flip-flops. Seagulls swooping down every few minutes. Tiki torches at the end of each aisle of chairs, one of which had nearly caught the sleeve of Newton’s gaudy Hawaiian shirt (“I have to dress for the theme, babe,” he insisted) on fire when he passed it. It would’ve been nice if they hadn’t set the damned thing at midday, with the sun broiling overhead and making everyone squint and almost certainly burning Hermann alive, despite the long-sleeved linen shirt and sunhat he donned, and the fine layer of sunscreen Newton took a bit too much sensual pleasure in applying to him back in the hotel room. None of the other Gottliebs (genetically predisposed to pastiness) appear to be faring much better: Hermann spies his aunt a few rows up, who’s beginning to resemble a surly, dark-haired tomato.

Still. Hermann’s the only one of his immediate family to be invited, and his cousin paid for their airfare and hotel room, which is in some outrageously expensive resort with a spa and mimosas at the complimentary breakfasts that Hermann thinks Newton would call bougie, and they’ve got it for a week at that, so Hermann can’t bring himself to complain too much. It’s not as if he’s had the chance to go on many vacations in the last decade. The break is well-deserved and nice.

Newton leans in close with a grin and a nod to the front of the aisle, where the bride and groom have taken each other’s hands. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Gottlieb that happy in my life.”

“Nonsense,” Hermann says, and then realizes Newton does make a fair point: it’s not just Hermann’s aunt on the groom’s side of the aisle who’s surly. (Genetic predisposition to pastiness and melancholy, he supposes.) He goes for a different approach. “I’m certain I looked that happy on our wedding day.”

“You were kinda just crying the whole time, dude,” Newton says.

Hermann flushes. He had cried a little bit. “It was—er—overjoyed crying.”

“It was cute,” Newton says, grin softening out into something a bit dopier. He slings his arm around Hermann’s shoulders, and Hermann can’t help but lean in to his touch and smile back.

They both startle a moment later when the crowd suddenly begins clapping; the couple have finished reciting their vows, it appears. “Thank fuck,” Newton whispers. “I’m starving. I hope they have those tiny cream puff things at the reception.”

They don’t, but they have plenty of seafood (apt for the theme). Newton settles on filling a plate with a comical amount of jumbo-sized shrimp and some crab legs. The reception is likewise on the beach, under a great big tent lit up with lanterns and more torches only a short walk down from where the ceremony took place, and Hermann has to admit he’s beginning to see the appeal of the extravagance of it all. The oppressive heat’s dissipating, finally. The sea breeze’s picked up enough to ruffle the ends of Hermann’s hair and even make him shiver (and lean in a touch closer to Newton). The sunset’s gorgeous on the horizon. Even the live band is pleasant, and Hermann recognizes one song as something Newton’s played for him on the guitar before.

After dodging a fair number of his relatives, most of whom give Newton (with his tattoos and ear piercings and tiny Godzillas patterned on his shirt) side-eyes even before he lunges in and catches the bride’s bouquet, only to guiltily throw it back when he realizes it’s for the unwed partygoers, Hermann and Newton find their assigned table at the edge of the dance floor and sit down to watch the fireworks show overhead. Because of course the wedding party sprung for fireworks. “God, I fucking love this,” Newton says, beaming like an overeager child. “We should’ve had fireworks at ours.”

“Ours was indoors,” Hermann reminds him.

“I didn’t mean inside the building,” Newton says.

He downs a third of the frozen daiquiri he got from the bar and offers the rest out to Hermann, who shakes his head. “Do you wanna dance?” Newton says. His lips look sticky, vaguely red, and terribly inviting, so Hermann steals a quick kiss before he bothers responding.

“In a bit, perhaps,” he says. His hand drifts up to cup the side of Newton’s face. His cheeks are rougher than usual: he forgot to pack his razor, and they haven’t had the time to find anywhere that sells disposable ones yet. Hermann doesn’t mind it, though it’d tickled like mad in bed last night when Newton tried to kiss his throat. “I think I’d like to go for a walk.”

Newton nods and unhooks Hermann’s cane from the back of his chair, then, almost as an afterthought, crams several of the shrimp from his plate into the top pocket of his shirt. Hermann makes a face. “No use in wasting them,” Newton says. He holds the cane out to Hermann.

They walk, arm-in-arm, far enough down the beach that the tent becomes a dim glow and the music barely audible before they ease themselves down on the sand and spread out. Above them, stars are beginning to appear. The night sky is far clearer and far more devoid of light pollution out here than anywhere else Hermann has been before; Newton, excitedly, points out three shooting stars before Hermann’s even made himself comfortable. (Another pleasant benefit of this all.)

Newton’s shirt is unbuttoned enough to give Hermann a glimpse of the kaiju piece that spans across his chest. Hermann used to hate it. Hermann used to hate a lot of things about Newton. “I ran into your uncle at the buffet table,” Newton says. “Mustache. Looks just like your dad. He didn’t believe me when I said I was your husband. What constellation is that?”

“Hercules,” Hermann says automatically. “Do you regret it?”

Newton turns to frown at him. “Do I regret what?”

“Our wedding,” Hermann says. “It wasn’t very—flash.”

It’d been quick. In and out. Courthouse affair barely even two months after they closed the Breach. Newton wore a bow tie borrowed from Tendo, Hermann slacks with a coffee stain on the left leg. They didn’t even have a honeymoon. It seemed romantic at the time, almost as if they were eloping—they loved each other, after all, they had in silence for a decade, they saved the world together, they drifted together. They’d been in each other’s heads. It seemed foolish to wait.

“Oh.” Newton laughs. “Of course I don’t regret it.”

“You wouldn’t have preferred all this?”

“Dude,” Newton says. “We have, like, two friends, and you hate half your family. Who would we have invited?”

“Fair point,” Hermann says, satisfied.

“Besides.” Newton rolls onto his side and drapes his arm over Hermann’s waist, and he rubs his scratchy cheek against the crook of Hermann’s neck. “You gotta know I would’ve literally married you anywhere.”

“Ah, Newton,” Hermann stammers, “stop—”

“Nope,” Newton says, mistaking Hermann’s reticence for bashfulness over the public display of affection, and nuzzles and kisses at him this time. “No way. Anywhere.”

“‘S not that,” Hermann says, and winces in pain, because Newton’s stubble is suddenly feeling a hell of a lot sharper, “Newton, it’s—sunburn—”

Newton rolls off of him, giggling madly. “How?” he says. “I put a whole fucking bottle of sunblock on you. You were wearing that stupid hat.” He prods at the sunhat, resting on the sand a few inches away with Hermann’s cane.

Hermann ghosts his fingers over the skin of his neck gingerly; it’s hot and tender to the touch, as is the skin of his shoulders and upper arms through his clothing. Bloody figures. If it’s this bad already, mere hours after the ceremony, he doesn’t even want to know what it’ll be like tomorrow. “I certainly don’t know how,” he says.

The kiss Newton leaves on his reddened skin is far more delicate this time, without a hint of his stubble. “Poor baby,” he says, with a mocking pout. It turns suggestive in seconds, aided by the hand that he slips up under the hem of Hermann’s linen shirt and massages circles with over his abdomen. “I’ll just have to rub aloe all over you when we get home tonight, yeah?”

“Mm,” Hermann agrees, eyelids drifting shut. It’s nice, more than nice, and, for a moment (there’s no one around to see, after all), Hermann is considering indulging Newton in some light touching and kissing in return. Then he wrinkles his nose. “You smell like shrimp, darling,” he says. It’s killed any lust that Newton may have been inspiring in him. Newton retracts his hand.

“There’s still one in my pocket,” he admits.

#newmann #maria's fanfiction tag #i had so much fun with this one....... #francissaintgermain​ #creaturecartoons

[grailbot143]

I chose last week's closing credits as this week's featured image. This is meant to be a statement.

Welcome Back Everyone!

As I was not the biggest fan of last week's episode and had every intention of wiping it entirely from my memory, this week, we are going to do something a little different. Instead of a recap of last week, we are going to focus on:

Briefcap Frybo

Consolidated lingering Questions

The Steven Universe World

Characters

Places

Things

Likes and Dislikes So Far

Briefcap from Steven Universe: Frybo (S1:Ep5)

Frybo opens with Steven looking for his pants. Pearl comes in looking for a missing crystal shard. She explains to Steven why the shard is important, but he is too busy thinking about other things.

Pearl leaves to go to town and look for the shard. Steven finds his pants running around on their own and catches them and puts them on. Then he discovers the shard in the pocket and goes out looking for Pearl.

He runs into PeeDee in a Fry suit getting hammered by some birds. After some discussion, he decides to use the shard to animate the Fry costume. PeeDee tells the costume to go make people eat fries, and he and Steven go to hang out in front of the arcade. Existentialism ensues.

There is screaming from the fry place. Steven and PeeDee run to see what's going on. They find a super-testosteroned fry costume force-feeding people. There is a moment when PeeDee's dad, believing the costume is still on PeeDee, apologizes to PeeDee for forcing him to be Frybo and tries to have a touching moment with him. Then the costume attempts to force-feed him fries too.

Pearl shows up and tries to fight the costume, but is beaten by ketchup shot from the costume's eye. Steven takes matters into his own hands (clothes) by animating all his clothes with the other 8 shards. When he adds his underwear to the fighting garment army, Frybo is at last defeated.

They have a Viking style funeral for Frybo and send him off to sea. PeeDee and his dad talk.

Episode Over (thank goodness)

Episode Random Noticings

There is a picture of Rose Quartz on the wall in Steven's house. I don't recall having seen it before this episode. Her gem was her belly button, as it is now Steven's.

I like the whole father/son relationship building plot line. These types of plot lines are far less cheesy once you've seen them play out in real life.

I would like to have heard the story of the armor, the infantry, and all the death that Pearl told at the beginning, but alas it was not to be.

I think this is the first episode that does not have an appearance by each of the 4 Crystal Gems. Both Amethyst and Garnet are missing from the episode.

I am a huge norse fan. I have been my whole life. I love Norse mythology and have always been enamored by the Viking's exploits and amazing feats. I had a 23andMe ancestry test done a while back. According to the test, I am likely descendant from Vikings. I realize this is irrelevant, but the 'Viking' `style send-off was a plus for me. So I thought I would explain why. And I told you guys at the beginning that I love lore and history, and you are reading the blog anyway, so I must assume you don't mind too much.

Consolidated lingering Questions

The Gems:

Where do they come from?

How is power derived from them?

Are all the gems the same, but act differently according to. . . something?

How is magic embued to the gems?

Who is chosen to wear them and why?

Why is a pearl considered a gem?

How is the body placement determined?

by the gem?

by the bearer?

random?

based on the attributes of the user?

What about the gemmed enemies? How do they get gems? Or are they created out of gems?

Rose Quartz:

Why does Rose have to die to give Steven his superpowers?

Is Rose even dead?? I don't remember that explicitly being stated

What would make her choose that?

a prophesy?

desire to give Greg a kid?

gonna die anyway?

Did she give up her gem to HAVE a kid or to EMBUE a kid with the gem?

Did she get to KNOW Steven?

The Crystal Gems:

Assumption: each has unique powers, i.e., Garnet doesn't shapeshift like Amethyst, Amethyst can't project a plan from her gem_

If the above assumption is correct, what exactly is Garnet's superpower?

How old are each of them?

It's suggested that Pearl is over 100.

Amethyst acts a bit like a teenager.

Is she that much younger than Pearl?

Where does Garnet fall?

Why is Steven the only boy? How many boy gems are there everywhere?

The World:

The Lunar Sea Spire was known as the Oasis for Gems on Earth, so I know it's Earth, but. . .

Is it in the same Earth that we are in, but hidden from us, or some sort of alternate universe

Are the gems ONLY on Earth? This would make the nomenclature Oasis for Gems on Earth redundant, so probably not

So far, everything seems to be happening in this town. . . are there other Gems in other towns?

Like every town has a team of Crystal Gems protecting it?

Or is this town some center for universal negativity, so the Gems are focused here?

The House on the Beach:

This is more a curiosity, but I wouldn't mind seeing the fight that took off that statues hands

What is up with the living temple inside the house? Beating hearts, waterfalls, a pool for getting rid of evil spirits. Need much more history and understanding here.

The Steven Universe World

This is just a quick list of things that make this place unique. . . no explanations.

Characters

The Crystal Gems

Pearl

Garnet

Amethyst

(dead) Rose Quartz

Steven

The Townsfolk

The Donut Girl

The Fry Man

Lars

PeeDee

PeeDee's brother? (same hair assumption)

Greg

mailman (I know they mentioned his name, and he mentioned a woman's name. . . darn my memory)

Monsters/Creatures

Centipeedles and their mother

Red Eye

(offscreen) A giant bird with a giant polka-dot egg

The Spirit from the painting that possessed *Together Breakfast*

The Crystal Shrimp

(deceased) Frybo

Places

Around Town

Big Donut

the fry shop

the arcade

the boardwalk (home to fry shop)

Greg's van

the car wash

the storage facility

the Crystal Gem's house on the beach

Mystical

The Temple with a beating heart

the storage unit? Greg said it was magical

(destroyed) The Lunar Sea Spire

the teleporter thing in Steven's living room

Things

Gems

Rose Quartz

2 Garnets

Amethyst

(not a gem) Pearl

Centipeedles' Mothers gem

(pants animating) Gem Shards

(maybe? pretty sure) The Lunar Goddess Statue

Mystical Items

Summoned Weapons

Laser Light Cannon

Red Eye?

Lunar Goddess Statue

Cursed Painting

Food (as it's seemingly important to our little hero)

(discontinued) Cookie Cats

Fry Bits

Together Breakfast

(offscreen) Pizza

(unmentioned) Cupcakes in jars

(not food) Cheeseburger backpack

Likes and Dislikes Far

Dislikes

Not a fan of the important role junk food plays in the show

Haven't found much in the way of music I like, outside of arcade sounds (which I dig)

I don't relate to Steven much. He mostly annoys me.

Why is there not a main antagonist? Are we going to be playing monster of the week forever? Surely we'll get one antagonist we can loath. . .

Season 1: Episode 5 Frybo

Likes

I like that all the answers to everything are not conveniently packaged in an episode

I like Garnet. . . and sometimes Amethyst. . . and I often relate to Pearl

I like Greg and his super awesome van

I like that it seemed like we landed in the middle of a life, rather than the beginning of a story

I like the townspeople and their relationships with Steven

I appreciate that though there are some references a kid wouldn't understand completely, there is so far no blatantly adult humor or sexuality even in undertones

I like the whole living temple thing.

Frybo is, in my opinion, the worst episode so far. I consider taking down the star rating every time I think about it.

I just want to remind everyone, I write these recaps after having seen the episode once, a week ago, and often interrupted by my whole blogging thing. I mainly do it for myself to refresh my memory for the next episode, but since I post it, I thought I should ask your forgiveness if it isn’t exactly perfect (or even close).

#Steven Universe #liveblog #suliveblogchrono #listoflists #recap

[chrysaliseuro2019]

Sandy Shore

Next morning it was time to move on from Nea Moudania. There was more peninsula to discover. After another hearty breakfast this time augmented by another Theodora specialty cake. This time a sort of chocolate cake. It did not seem to involve much sponge though Liz advises there was a base of it. Above that was chocolate mousse and on top of that about 2 cms (looked like 3) of whipped cream. My heart sank about the only thing that I found appetising about that was the sponge which was thin on. Liz had to pull her weight for two of us. I was beginning to understand why the sweet section of breakfast was more extensive than the savoury one. Clearly Theodora had a sweet tooth though the spanakopita was excellent, flaky and very tasty and she said was her favourite. Time for us to move on and Liz bade farewell to Theodora which apparently involved a big hug to her ample bosom. I did not know this at the time but as I separately went to say my farewells and thank you I stuck my hand out and was on the end of a Lathamesque fist pump. Apparently Theodora gave some last pieces of advice to Liz on destinations but finalised with "after a couple of days, if it's not working you can come home ie to the Sokratis as she had rooms coming free". It felt a bit like home too. On Theodora's advice we were heading for a town called Chanioti well down the Kassandra peninsula. Very booked out so we had had to take a large hotel for 3 nights not really our preference. However it had free cancellation right up to midnight on check-in day (which seemed by odd) and so we determined that if we saw anything better on the way to it we would switcheroo. The peninsula has a very narrow channel which separates it from the mainland. We drifted down slowly trying to stick to the coast. Got out at the little town of Nea Fokea and had a look at the byzantine tower and a little chapel. It had possibilities as a little Marina there and beach but a bit too early in our journey so kept going. We stopped for a coffee at a fairly ghastly place. A beach bar where there were wall to wall umbrellas cushions and sun lounges. Average age 25 and the music pumped up to a high level of decibels. Close to the bar you had to yell to make yourself heard. We made the coffee a take-away. Further on we saw a sign to another beach but as we pulled off the road we saw a couple of buses and then in the car park there were around 5 more. Clearly a venue for day trippers. We passed on and this was the ongoing story really. Nothing really jumping out at us. Either the odd big town which did not really look the goods or quite remote places where you don't know where you might get a feed. Didn't see many vacancy signs either. One slightly disconcerting thing is there seemed to be far more apartments for rent than hotel rooms. For us, the one or two night stayers, this is less than ideal as they really want week long bookings. Also you can't always walk up and find someone on the premises though in some places the owners are on site and have just sub-divided their house. We also hit some heavy traffic as basically there is one road in and one road out. At least on this side of the peninsula. We had been warned about that but we could see perhaps a 2-3km queue of dawdling traffic heading out with congestion in various other places too. Hopefully they were going home because the weekend was looming and it was back to work Monday. Could be painful for us getting back out if this is the norm. We finally arrived in Chanioti which was a small maze in itself and very lively but found our way to the hotel. It was every bit as soulless as we feared. Smart enough but a dozen people hanging around a pool with very little atmosphere. 3 nights here would not be fun. We went and had a look at the beach which was about 200 metres away and things went from bad to worse. Umbrellas and beach beds as far as the eye could see in either direction with the music going loudly as well. Not much serenity here. We retreated thinking - where to next? This joint was a last resort if we drew a blank elsewhere but we had now been going for 3 hours+ without a sniff re ally. On we went towards the bottom of the peninsula. Went down several back roads pointing to little towns but either nothing much there or on one occasion the 5 star resort complete with a fleet of Greg Norman yachts and the $$1000/night price tag. As we crossed over and started to make our way up the other side (western side) of the peninsula we found a nice little town called Loutra Beach (not to be confused with a similar place that seems to be on an island). Liz googled away looking for a room while I knocked on several doors where apartments were for rent. Liz had one possibility while I drew blanks. We headed into the centre of town to check Liz's lead but she had been led up the garden path by someone she spoke to. Nothing. We hadn't eaten anything since breakfast except for a few nuts so stopped for a Greek salad and soft drinks. Now around 5.00 and no closer. We tried one final hotel on the outskirts which was up a very steep hill, so great view, but nada. On we went steadily heading down the peninsula but nothing much jumping out. Tried a couple more hotels by walking up at Fourka Beach but again nothing and then Liz's perseverance on booking.com paid off. The hotel Paralio at Possidi beach which was close by had a room free with sea facing balcony. We whipped down there Liz took a look while I waited with the car in an area which didn't allow you to park ie residents parking (a local nicely tried to shoo me away but was happy when I said it would only be a few mins). Thumbs up from Liz and we were in. It was around 6.00 pm and a big day really but soon realised that the effort was worth it. Dinky room right on seafront ie sea across the road with balcony just above street level. Immediate dip in the sea as we were pretty hot. Enjoyed some drinks on our balcony post that. Also we decided that we weren't going to find anything much as user friendly and well located as this so booked a second night. For dinner we tried a couple of the nicer restaurants in town but both fully booked (as they were the following night which was Saturday). A very nice couple of locals who had just sneaked onto the last table in one of the restaurants sympathised with us. As soon as he heard where we were from he broke into a "throw the shrimp on the barbie" routine. Life must have been a bit too easy as there was no sense from the guys in the restaurant that a table might free up if we came back in 20 mins. It looked like one sitting even though some people were clearly going to finish in the near future. Even the young couple had had to talk them into giving them a table which was free but sort of in the passageway. We ended up going to the restaurant 50 metres away which was not as flash but just as full. Total bedlam as it was quite large. Seating seemed to be arbitrary. In fact also went there the next night and after I enquired of the boss lady who took all payments if we could sit at a certain table I was told if it's free just sit there. Service took a long time and we didn't choose particularly well. Liz had the stuffed peppers which can best be described as ho hum. I had the moussaka, tasty enough, but the copious amount of béchamel sauce fixed me up big time. The digestive system is not fond of creamy stuff. Also of course had a Greek salad. Very amusing young waiter who was not allowed to take orders (he was a meal deliverer and table setter upper) though he could get me a beer. As he spruced the table up by putting the table cloth down and separately brought the meals he stopped us if we tried to assist him in any way, saying - "that's my job". All with an infectious smile to go with the braces on his teeth. Despite the fare we enjoyed the ambience and were right by the sea. A short stroll around the very small village before heading home. The béchamel kept me awake and even tried a minnie heave (unsuccessfully) so have sworn off that. The next day was all about the beach. Breakfast was a disappointing event. Because the breakfast room was small we were encouraged to take our breakfast back to our own room. No hardship that as we had the balcony. Choice was very ordinary. Three sweet cereals no muesli, fried eggs sitting in a Bain Marie together with minuscule saveloys, cold pancakes. One of the pastries with custard was good as was a slice of cake with jam. Greek yoghourt was good though not much effort required there. We felt they are just going through the motions. Breakfast was included in the deal so they had to provide it but had skimped and didn't give a "toss", breakfast was not winning then business. Their location across the street from the sea was. Off to the beach though for a pretty full day of relaxation. I did go past the two flasher looking restaurants and managed to book one of them for the Sunday night. We also adjourned to a neighbouring cafe for lunch as our hotel was not serving food that day due to some kitchen issue. A very healthy club sandwich and chips was shared. That night we decided we liked the previous night's place enough to return. Just would choose differently. In truth its slim pickings in terms of choices in this town (with a number of clone restaurants) once the two main restaurants are full (and neither was very large). It was bedlam again and chokkers. A table was free literally near the entrance so away from the seafront which wasn't so bad as the wind had got up and it was a bit cool. After our advice to grab wherever is free from the boss we jumped in but we were so tucked away that service was not forthcoming. Not that it was fast in this place at any time. Luckily a table became free at the front by the sea we moved swiftly to grab it just ahead of others and we braved the wind which wasn't too bad as it turned out. Service eventually came and we shared grilled squid and sardines and a salad. Another pleasant evening and at the end the manic maitre de did spend a few minutes chatting to Liz which was nice as he had seemed pretty disinterested. Just run off his feet. Next day Liz was up earlier than me and walked to a neighbouring sandy promontory. Probably a couple of kms walk and it jutted out about 400 metres into the sea. She returned for breakfast and then I did the same. Very nice to walk out there and by the time I did it was pretty hot so I got right to the tip and had a quick swim to cool off. Water very clear around there and a bit cooler as more exposed. The rest of the day followed the usual routine of a beach day. We did have a pork gyros and chicken souvlaki for lunch. Pork good chicken not so. That night after drinks on the balcony we headed to the nicer restaurant. Food was undoubtedly better quality as was the clientele. Maitre de also charming. Liz's seafood pasta, more risotto like was plentiful and very tasty and I had octopus marinated in onions, tomatoes and whatever. Very very nice. Our time at Possidi was at an end. It had been painful finding it and as often is the case a combo of perseverance and luck got us there and in particular in our very pleasant room across from the sea. Just the right size of town/village (small) with enough action and good beach. Liz made a good point about the beach (they all seem to be sandy in this neck of the woods) which was that it was narrow, perhaps no more than 20-25 metres where we were, but that stopped there being masses of beds and umbrellas. We left wanting a little bit more which is always a good way to go.

[noona-clock]

iKonic Fairy Tales: Aladdin - Part 2

A modern fairy tale series in collaboration with @cramelot - stay tuned next week for the next story featuring a new member! ✨

Genre: Office!AU

Pairing: Hanbin x You

By Admin B

🧞 Part 1, 2, 3, 4

“Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho,” One chuckled as he stepped back from Hanbin, a more than satisfied smirk pulling at his lips. “You. Look. Incredible. If I do say so myself.”

When he stepped away from in front of the mirror, Hanbin almost jumped when he saw himself.

Hanbin’s typical wardrobe consisted of slightly worn-out jeans, lots of button-down shirts, sweatshirts, t-shirts... y’know. The kind of clothes he could actually afford.

But One had lent him an almost brand new, very well-fitted suit. A very shiny watch. And he’d combed his hair away from his forehead, a look he’d never actually tried before.

And... he had to admit.

He looked good.

You knew this whole party was for your benefit, but you still didn’t feel bad for hanging around the refreshments.

Because you were absolutely certain you would not meet your future spouse here tonight.

You honestly weren’t sure why your father thought you would because... well, he knew you.

He knew how independent and ambitious and career-focused you were. He knew being in a relationship was not quite the last thing on your list of priorities, but it was pretty far down there.

You gazed around the room as you popped another shrimp dipped in cocktail sauce into your mouth (you knew you wouldn’t be kissing anyone tonight, so what was the point in trying to keep your breath fresh?), your eyes searching for someone - anyone - you could talk to.

But... you knew nobody there.

Probably because you spent most of your time working instead of actually having a social life.

Just as you were reaching for another shrimp, though, you caught sight of...

Again, you didn’t know who he was because you didn’t know who anybody was, but...

Well, let’s just say you were intrigued enough to at least find out his name.

He was wearing a very well-fitted suit, and his dark hair was combed back, away from his forehead just the way you liked. (Yes, you didn’t have much of a social life, but you still knew how you liked a guy to style his hair, okay?) He looked somewhat nervous, but he also somehow looked confident and intelligent and sophisticated.

Before you could second guess yourself, you began to make your way over to him.

When you were about halfway to where he was standing, his eyes shifted and locked on yours. He immediately looked nervous, so you slowed your pace. You tended to have a bit of an authoritative walk which could probably be seen as intimidating; the last thing you wanted to do right now was to intimidate him. 

“Hi,” you greeted when you were close enough. You held out your hand, a soft, almost shy smile pulling at your lips. “I’m Y/N. I... don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

“H-hi,” he stammered, shaking your hand and gulping anxiously. “I’m... I’m Hanbin.”

“Hanbin,” you repeated. It felt nice to say. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” he grinned.

And then you asked the typical question you asked anyone upon first meeting them: “What do you do?”

“I --” He paused for a few moments then continued on. “I’m... I founded an app. I’m the CEO -- or... whatever.”

“Oh, really?” you asked, intrigued. “Which one?”

“It’s, uh... it’s called Lamp.”

“Lamp,” you repeated, nodding slowly as you gazed at him in interest. “What’s the purpose?”

“It helps you determine if your house is running at peak efficiency, especially when it comes to the light bulbs you’re using,” he explained, seemingly becoming more comfortable. But you always did when you talked about your work, too.

“Oh, wow,” you gasped. “That’s really cool. I’m all about efficiency and being kind to the environment.”

“Well, of course,” he chuckled. “You work for AgriBar, the leader of eco-friendly alcohol.”

You paused, biting your lip to hold back a huge, goofy smile. “So... you know who I am.”

Hanbin’s eyes widened slightly, and his mouth opened and closed like a fish’s. “I -- I mean, I --”

“Do you like wine?”

“W--wine?” he stuttered.

“There’s this amazing wine we source. It’s made from a local vineyard about five miles away, grapes all organically grown... Do you want to try some?”

“I, um... I probably shouldn’t,” he chuckled awkwardly. “I drove here, so I -- I shouldn’t.”

Your eyebrows raised slightly, and you couldn’t help but be impressed. A man who respected the law and the safety of himself and others.

You instantly wanted to know more about him.

“So, would you like to... talk? Somewhere?” you asked a bit shyly.

Despite the surprised expression on his handsome face, Hanbin immediately answered, “Yeah. Yes. I would love to.”

It took you less than half an hour to decide you liked Hanbin.

Maybe not like that yet, but... you were definitely attracted to him. And very interested.

But besides his outward charm, he was very down-to-earth, extremely intelligent, and incredibly complex. He made you laugh, he made you think, he made you want to keep on talking to him.

When the party began to get too crowded and loud and stuffy, you suggested going for a walk outside. Hanbin agreed immediately, and your heart pounded as the two of you stepped through the doors.

You ended up where all the cars were parked, and you randomly remembered Hanbin saying he drove here tonight.

“Which one’s yours?” you asked, gazing out over the sea of Lexuses and BMWs and Audis and Teslas.

“Oh, umm... Th--that one,” he answered as he pointed to a jet black Nissan Leaf. “It’s nothing fancy, but Lamp is pretty small right now. And it’s electric, so easier on the Earth and my wallet.”

“Very commendable,” you grinned, nudging him a little with your shoulder. “I’ve actually never been in an electric car before. I usually take the bus or walk to work since I live pretty close by.”

“Really?” Hanbin asked, obviously surprised.

“Yes,” you chuckled. “I may be an ‘heiress’ but I’m not a spoiled, rich kid.”

“I -- I never said --”

“But you probably thought it.”

“...Actually, I was never really sure what to think about you. Besides the fact you’re --” He suddenly cut himself off, so of course you were dying to know what he’d been about to say.

“Besides the fact I’m what?” you asked with a smirk.

“Do you wanna go for a ride?”

Well, if his intention was to distract you, it worked. Tremendously.

“Ooh,” you gasped. “Yes, please!”

He fished his keys out of his pocket and led you over to his car, opening the passenger door for you once you got there.

“Do you get around the city much?” he asked after he took his spot in the driver’s seat.

“Honestly? ...No,” you blushed. “I’m too busy working, I’ll admit.”

“Good,” Hanbin grinned. “There’s a spot I’d like to show you. I go there when I want to clear my head or when I just want some peace and quiet.”

Aha. So he wanted some peace and quiet with you? That was a good sign.

“I would love to go there,” you said softly. You were tempted to reach over and take his hand, but 1) it was most likely too soon to make that move, and 2) he just put both his hands on the wheel as he began driving.

As Hanbin drove through the city, you had to admit you were thoroughly impressed with this car. You knew you sounded like a dork, but you couldn’t stop exclaiming about it.

Hanbin was blushing and constantly smiling and chuckling at your reaction, and that might have been a reason why you kept on going.

Because he was just so cute.

“Okay, where is this secret place of yours?” you asked after almost half an hour of driving.

“We’re almost there, I promise,” he assured you. “And I swear I’m not, like... driving you to some deserted spot to kill you.”

You were about to retort back with a teasing remark, but Hanbin spoke again before you could.

“Oh my god, that makes me sound like a creep. I am so sorry, I don’t know why I said that.”

“No, it’s fine,” you giggled. “You don’t seem like a creep. Trust me, I can spot one from a mile away. Especially guys who are only after me because I’m rich.”

But Hanbin was a CEO; even if he wasn’t as rich as you, he still wouldn’t be in need of more money. He was dressed nicely, and he drove a fairly nice car.

“Sometimes I just try to be funny and it comes out... dumb,” he chuckled.

“Hey, we all have our moments,” you assured him with a smirk.

“Okay, we’re here,” he announced, still looking a bit embarrassed. “Thank God.”

He stopped the car, and when you opened the door to get out, you saw he’d taken you up one of the small mountains along the border of the city. There was a scenic viewing area with benches, and Hanbin led you over to sit on one.

“Wow,” you breathed as you took in the lights of the city and the darkness of the sky sprinkled with twinkling stars. “This is... gorgeous. I can see why you’d want to come here to clear your head.”

You were both silent for a few moments, your eyes drinking in the peaceful view... but then Hanbin shifted, turning slightly toward you.

“Can I be honest?” he murmured, his voice just barely above a whisper.

“Of course,” you answered immediately. “I value honesty more than anything else.”

He paused, and you turned to look at him, your brow furrowed softly. He looked a bit nervous, so you wondered if he felt the same attraction as you did.

“I, um... Earlier. When I said I wasn’t sure what to think about you besides the fact you’re... What I was going to say was, ‘besides the fact you’re beautiful.’”

Your heart stopped momentarily, and you weren’t sure what to say in response...

So instead of saying anything you simply leaned in and - despite your shrimp breath - you kissed him.

Part 3

iKONic Fairy Tale Series: Aladdin | The Little Mermaid | Sleeping Beauty | Cinderella | Snow White | Rapunzel | Beauty & the Beast

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