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jaehyunfirstlove · 3 years

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Highway to Heaven - Ch. 7

Your best friend Johnny wants to go on a road trip. The only catch? He wants to bring his roommate, Jeong Jaehyun, someone you just couldn’t stand.

Genre: e2l, fluff, angst, smut (18+ only)

Warnings: unprotected sex, dirty talk, swearing

Taglist: @jaehyunnie77 @sehunniepot @jaejoongiewifey-blog @glxwingstar @sleep-is-all-i-seek @vgirlfrixnd @nicolai28 (send me a message if you want to be tagged)

Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5 | Ch. 6

A/N: So here it is, the smut chapter :)

The next morning you were the last to wake up again, Johnny and Jaehyun running the suitcases back to the car. You were alone in the room, so you sat up in the bed to take stock of yourself. Were you really willing to go there? Were you really willing to do it? Were you really willing to open up your heart again? The pain of your breakup came back again, but you noticed it wasn’t as strong as it had been. Instead of a stabbing feeling in your chest, it was more of a dull throb, like a bout of indigestion that didn’t linger. You heard Johnny and Jaehyun talking and laughing outside, and you were filled with an overwhelming sense of happiness. Your best friend who could always lift your mood and loved you like family, and his roommate, someone who knew how (wrongly) you felt about him but still treated you kindly and respectfully. They certainly weren’t the solution to everything, but they helped you see that there was more to life than heartache.

“You better get out here before we leave without you!” Johnny yelled from outside, and you smiled. You got out of bed, dressed hurriedly and walked out the door.

---

You drove the first shift, with the window down so the wind could blow through your hair. It was a beautiful late summer day, the sun warm on your face from the open sunroof. Johnny sat in the passenger seat, drumming on the dash with his fingers and singing along loudly to the song playing. Jaehyun sat behind you, the wind fluttering his bangs into his face but he didn’t seem to mind. He sang along with Johnny, and even though they were exaggerating and playing around, their voices blended beautifully.

“You guys sing so well,” you exclaimed, “I’m jealous.”

Jaehyun laughed, “No way, we were terrible!”

“No I’m serious! I know you guys were just joking around but your voices are beautiful.”

Johnny started to rib you again, but Jaehyun was quiet. You snuck a look in the rearview to see him smiling to himself, staring out the window, the tips of his ears a bright red.

---

You spent that afternoon at the beach, the two of them managing to convince you to add an extra day to your trip. You could’ve been home in your bed that night, but the weather was too nice to spend it cooped up in the car.

“Just one more day,” Johnny pleaded, “We’ll camp tonight so we don’t have to agonize over motel rooms again. Please?”

He didn’t have to work so hard, you were already convinced, but you made him work for it anyway just to amuse yourself. When you made a big show of giving in, he yelled in triumph, picking you up for a bear hug and kissing you on the cheek, before he ran off towards the beach, stripping his clothes off as he went.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Jaehyun didn’t know you as well as Johnny and took your reluctance seriously. “I’m sure I can convince him to just head home.”

“Oh I wanted to stay,” you giggled conspiratorially, “I just did that to make him suffer.”

Jaehyun laughed, before looking over at you and smiling. His cheeks puffed out, dimples deep, the bright afternoon sun making his eyes sparkle. You smiled back, something in your chest shifting. He swept out his arm, motioning for you to walk on ahead of him, and together you made your way towards the ocean.

This time, you joined them in the water, and even though the water was cold you couldn’t help but have a great time. You tried not to go deeper than your waist, or even get your hair wet, but Johnny had different plans for you, dunking you or splashing water whenever you got too close. You eventually gave up and dove in, swimming towards the crashing waves. Jaehyun was already there, the waves cresting over his shoulders, his wet skin glistening in the afternoon sun. His arms were outspread, his face turned towards the sky, eyes closed. The water crashed over him, running in rivulets down his chest, but he was immovable. It was a sight you couldn’t take your eyes off of.

“Isn’t he hot?” Johnny teased, coming to stand beside you in the water.

You rolled your eyes at Johnny, but it was definitely something you couldn’t deny. “Yeah, he is.” You sighed.

“So? What are you waiting for? Go get him!” He nudged you with his broad shoulder, almost making you lose your balance and fall into the water.

“I don’t know, Johnny,” you hesitated, “What if it doesn’t work out?”

“Well then it doesn’t work out? Then you eat two tubs of rocky road with me and call me at three o’clock with your drunken rants.” He shrugged.

“I don’t think my waistline can handle that anymore,” you joked.

“Listen, Y/N,” he took on a rare serious tone which made you perk up, “I know both of you really well, and I happen to think you two would be amazing together. Not that I think you ‘need a man’ or anything like that, but your personalities just fit, you know? Besides, I need you to get over that asshole of an ex you had, so even if you just use Jaehyun for sex I wouldn’t mind.”

You elbowed him in the ribs and he laughed.

“But seriously, Y/N, let yourself be happy. You deserve it.” He patted you on the shoulder, and then dove into the water and swam to where Jaehyun was standing.

You watched them again, your heart swelling in your chest. Overcome by emotion you let the tears fall, thankful that your face was already wet so it wouldn’t be so evident that you were crying.

---

The campfire that night took a little longer to light, probably because your hand shook like a leaf and you had trouble calming yourself down. You didn’t know why you were so nervous, until Jaehyun sat down beside you and your heart rate skyrocketed.

“Need some help?” he asked, sweeping his damp hair away from his face. You were aware that he was handsome, you weren’t blind, but you had never really looked at his face before, like really looked at it. He had eyes that could hold the depths of the universe but were still kind, a perfectly shaped nose, and cheeks that looked like soft bread that you wanted to squish. He was the weird, perfect blend of hot, sexy, cute, and goofy. To look like that, and then be sweet, humble, and thoughtful too, it had to be illegal.

“Uh, yeah, thanks,” you handed him the matches, and when your hands touched you felt a jolt of electricity run through your body, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight,” you laughed nervously, rubbing your hand where his hand had touched.

He lit the fire with ease, before he handed you back the matches and regarded you with concern. “Do you feel sick or anything?” He lifted up his arm and made to touch your forehead with the back of his hand but before he did, he asked you for permission. You nodded, and the warmth of his hand against your head did wonders to soothe you.

“You don’t feel hot, that’s good,” he determined.

“You don’t think I’m hot?” you couldn’t resist the joke, but he just smiled.

“Oh I know you’re hot,” he leaned close to you and whispered, because Johnny was walking into earshot. You choked on air.

“Tents are up, hot dogs are here, and no beer for Y/N tonight!” Johnny exclaimed as he plopped himself down and divvied out the hot dogs.

“I don’t want any beer tonight anyway,” you scoffed, as much as you wanted to defy his self-righteous ass you wanted your head to be clear.

“Good, because we only had two left!” Johnny laughed, passing the other beer to Jaehyun.

“You sure, Y/N? I’m sure one beer would be fine.” Jaehyun held out his beer to you.

“No really, I’m good,” you smiled at Jaehyun, “Thanks for offering though.” You gave Johnny a pointed look but he just scoffed.

“Ignore Jaehyun, he just wants to get you drunk so he can get into your pants.”

Both you and Jaehyun started coughing, before exchanging guilty looks. Johnny stared between the two of you.

“Is there something I should know?” he narrowed his eyes at both of you, “have you guys been screwing around behind my back? Please don’t tell me, I actually don’t want to know.” He took a swig of his beer and stuck his hot dog into the fire.

---

The three of you stayed up late into the night, talking about anything and everything, laughing till your sides hurt at Johnny’s jokes and stories, and sometimes had quiet bouts where the crackling of the fire was all that was heard. It was during one of these quiet times that Johnny finally stood up.

“Well, that’s it for me. I have first shift tomorrow so I’m going to bed,” he mock-saluted you and Jaehyun, “Good night, losers.”

You watched him walking away, shaking your head, as Jaehyun laughed and wished him a good night.

“What about you, Y/N, you tired?” he asked.

“Not really,” you poked at the fire with your stick, the embers were dying and you tried to get them going again. You shivered at the lack of heat, and Jaehyun came over and draped a blanket around your shoulders.

“I guess I’ll go to bed,” he said, turning towards the tents.

“Actually, do you mind staying?” you didn’t look at him as you asked, but you were glad when you noticed him turn back and take his place beside you.

“I don’t mind,” he said, helping you restart the fire again. The two of you were quiet for some time before you finally spoke up.

“Can I ask you a question?” you started.

“You already did, but I’ll let you ask another one,” he replied cheekily. You nudged him playfully with your shoulder and he smiled. “Of course. What is it?”

“Do you think I would make a good girlfriend?” your question took him off guard, because he looked at you for a long time before answering.

“Do you think you would make a good girlfriend?” he countered.

“You’re not supposed to answer a question with a question,” you grumbled.

“Okay fine, since you’re asking my opinion, I’ll say yes.” He stated firmly.

“Why, though? I thought I was good enough, I thought we were happy, I thought he was happy, but it still didn’t work out. So was I really a good girlfriend then, in the end?”

“I can’t speak for him,” Jaehyun said quietly, “I can only speak for myself. And all I can say is that you may not have been good enough for him, but you are more than good enough for me, leagues more, galaxies more.” He made figure-eights with his stick in the sand so he wouldn’t have to look at you. “Theoretically speaking, of course.”

You couldn’t help it, you couldn’t believe you were that easy, but in your defense he had been breaking down your walls for the entire trip. You turned to him, took his face in your hands and looked deeply into his eyes. He started at the sudden contact, his eyes swimming with apprehension and wonderment.

“I want to kiss you,” you said resolutely, “is that okay?”

He broke into a wide grin and nodded, so you jumped off the proverbial cliff and pressed your lips to his. His lips felt exactly the way you thought they would feel, all those times you permitted yourself to wonder. He moved softly against you, his lips gentle, and except for your hands on his face you weren’t touching each other anywhere else. Yet it ignited something in you. You pulled away, knowing yourself and how you could get carried away. He was breathing heavily, his eyes closed, lips kiss-stung. He was so beautiful in that moment you wanted to cry.

“Do you want to be my boyfriend?” you asked, feeling like a middle-schooler asking out her crush. He still hadn’t opened his eyes but he smiled widely and nodded.

“Yes I do, I really, really do.”

Your heart soared at that moment, and he finally opened his eyes. He looked at you with so much admiration that you thought you would melt on the spot. He took your hands in his, bringing them down to your lap before he leaned in and kissed you again. He started out gentle again, but when you tentatively swiped your tongue into his mouth his movements became more urgent. He slipped his arms around your waist and your hands went up to clasp around his neck. He deepened the kiss, his tongue in your mouth heating up your body more than any campfire ever could. He moved to lay you on the blanket but you stopped him.

“Not here,” you breathed, and he looked at you questioningly. Standing up, you took his hand and led him towards your tent.

You went in first, lying down on top of the sleeping bag, and he followed you in, carefully lowering his body on top of yours. He propped himself up on his elbows, mindful of not resting his entire weight on you.

“Is this okay?” he asked, his eyes roaming over your face, “I know it’s not the most comfortable place.”

You didn’t care at that point, you’d lie down with him in a canoe if this was how it felt. You just nodded, pulling him more towards you, wanting to feel more of him because you knew he was holding back.

“Careful,” he laughed, “I don’t want to squish you.”

“Squish me, I don’t care, you feel too good,” you answered, wrapping your arms around him and squeezing. He nuzzled into your neck, the tip of his nose ghosting lightly on your skin.

“Mm, you smell so good,” he whispered, and soon his lips were on your neck. You shuddered as his lips painted a trail on your skin. When he swiped his tongue goosebumps erupted and you inhaled sharply. “Taste good, too.”

You involuntarily bucked your hips, and felt him hard against your core. He groaned at the contact, sucking harshly at the skin on the base of your neck. The sound of him groaning and the feeling of the mark he was probably leaving on you turned your brain to hazy mush. The only thing you knew was that you needed more.

“Take this off,” you ordered, tugging at the hem of his t-shirt. He reached back with one hand and pulled it off with one go, and you would never get over how sexy he looked doing it. You put your palms on his chest, wanting to feel the firm muscle there, moving down to his abs, down his stomach, past his belly button to the trail that led down. You gripped the waistband of his jeans and he groaned again. “These too.”

He leaned away from you to pull his jeans off, leaving him in only his boxers, his eyes never leaving you the entire time. You took that opportunity to flip him onto his back on the sleeping bag, thankful for the years of martial arts training that gave you the ability to do it. He yelped in surprise before breaking out into a wide grin.

“Shit, that was hot,” he admitted, and you straddled him, pulling your own shirt off in the process. You reached back to unclasp your bra, but he suddenly sat up and stopped you.

“Can I?” he asked, and you nodded. He started kissing your neck again, making you throw your head back at the feeling, while he reached behind you and unclasped your bra, throwing it to a corner of the tent. His hands moved over your bare breasts, cupping them in his hands. Your breathing picked up as he held them, chest heaving when he rubbed the pads of his thumbs over your nipples.

“Jaehyun,” you breathed, grabbing his shoulders to keep yourself steady. You wrapped your legs around his back, grinding your hips against him and he groaned loudly in your ear. He tugged at the waistband of your jeans.

“Your turn to take these off,” he growled, and you sat back, taking your jeans and panties off in one go. He took that opportunity to pull off his boxers, and even in the dim light you could see the tip of his cock glistening with precum. He looked at you with hooded eyes but didn’t make a move, as if to say you could still stop this if you wanted to. But you knew in that moment there was nothing else in the world you wanted but him. You straddled him again, your hands on his shoulders, kissing him deeply. When you pulled away you were both panting.

“I want you,” you said firmly, a different ache in your chest forming, “I want you, Jae.” He looked into your eyes with so much emotion you wanted to cry, so you just grabbed his face and kissed him again, this time rubbing your pussy against his cock. You were so wet you slid easily against his hardness, and he moaned into your mouth at the sensation. On the next pass you caught his tip against your opening, and pushed down.

You broke from the kiss to moan loudly as the tip of his cock parted you. You moved your hips slowly so you could feel every inch of him enter you, stretching you so deliciously you couldn’t stop the moans coming from your mouth. His hands were on your ass, gripping the flesh there, watching your face as you lowered yourself onto him.

“Oh Jae,” you moaned, the pleasure almost too much for you to handle. He filled you so well, you could feel the tip of his cock touching your sweet spot and you knew once you started moving it would make you crazy. You started a slow rhythm at first, his cock dragging in and out of you at a measured pace. But when he started moaning, his voice low and sexy, you lost yourself.

“Fuck, baby, you feel so good,” he groaned, his head dropping to the crook of your neck. You snapped your hips harder, grabbing his shoulders as you could feel the knot in the pit of your stomach forming. Your thighs were burning which made your hips stutter, so he grabbed a hold of your hips and decided to help out, pumping upwards into you. The combined force ramped up your pleasure, making your eyes roll to the back of your head.

“Oh Jae!” you screamed, his cock hitting your sweet spot repeatedly.

“Hey! Keep it down over there, some of us are trying to sleep!” Johnny suddenly yelled from the other tent. That made Jaehyun stop his movement completely, which made you want to kill Johnny.

“Put your airpods in and go back to sleep!” you yelled back. You heard him grumble before he was silent again, presumably asleep. You sighed in frustration, dropping your forehead onto Jaehyun’s shoulder. He laughed softly, kissing you on the side of the head.

“This isn’t over,” he whispered, holding you and flipping you onto your back. He was still hard inside you and he gave you a moment, staring at you with that look again, caressing your cheek with his hand, before he started to slam into you again.

You bit your lip to keep from screaming, wrapping your legs around him, your fingers digging into his back. It all felt so good, and along with your oncoming orgasm you felt something shifting in your chest. As he held you, his eyes on yours, it felt like your heart was being pulled from your body. A panic filled you, your eyes pooling with tears, pleasure still coursing through you at the same time, threatening to explode. You didn’t realize it but you were whimpering, from pleasure or heartache you couldn’t decipher.

He watched all of this play out on your face, before he kissed you softly. When he pulled away, he whispered low in your ear, “It’s okay, baby, let it go. I’m here. I’ve got you.”

You came with a cry then, not caring if Johnny heard you. It was the most intense orgasm you’d ever had in your life, and with it came a release of a different kind. The tears that had pooled in your eyes finally fell, your chest finally light again. Jaehyun cradled your face in his hands, kissing your tears away.

---

A/N: I know it’s not a commonly held notion that Jaehyun is a sub in any way, but I just liked the idea of Y/N just throwing him for a loop and turning his world upside down like that (literally, lol). So anyway, just suspend your disbelief for that moment :)

#jaehyun imagines #jaehyun x reader #jaehyun smut #nct imagines #nct smut

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elliepdf · 4 years

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Corona-spondence

It has now been 7 weeks since lockdown started for me. Judging by the fact I have just restarted a tumblr, that also means it has taken about 7 weeks for my depression to really start fucking me off. But then, you’ve got to bear in mind, the world is falling apart, and I haven’t left the house for anything other than food or a walk in over a month. I’d almost say 7 weeks is quite good going!

But why a blog? Why not just drink like everyone else is? Well, for those who don’t know, I currently work in a University as a Communications Officer. Among other things (and not just sending emails as Bodhi thinks), it is my weekly responsibility to produce an email newsletter talking about the events and news going on that week for students. Since the rona hit, the newsletter has stopped being about the week’s events (because there aren’t any) and has turned more into a self-help/looking after your mental health/revision tips bulletin. Which has been really fun because I’ve had the chance to create a newsletter that I, myself am interested in reading. However, it’s also meant I spend a solid chunk of each week writing and researching how to maintain your mental health in lockdown. And as the weeks have past and my depression and general mood have worsened, I’ve decided that the least I could do is follow my own fucking advice. So here I am, I’m writing a blog in the hopes I’ll feel better and more productive. And also, to use all the excellent puns I think of for the newsletter but can’t use because they’re too edgy. Corona – spondence was an early creation of mine. I personally think the news channels missed a trick, but I am also biased.

In the beginning, I’d tentatively say that lockdown wasn’t so bad; working from home, getting paid but spending less, pub quizzes over Skype and an excuse to do fuck all. But it’s now been weeks, and I’m bored and grumpy as fuck. The worst thing about being this bored is that now I get bored even if I’m doing something that isn’t boring? It seems a big extrovert like me can only survive so long without hearing people laugh at my jokes.

I think, in reality, the reason my mood has dropped so much is that actually, Coronavirus is a big fucking deal. And it seemed to become a big fucking deal very fucking quickly. Lots and lots of people are dead. There will probably be a recession. It's also likely that the world won’t return to normal for the rest of the year. Going out won’t be like it used to be, the pubs won’t be the same, festivals will be cancelled etc. It seems CRAZY to me that at the beginning of March, I was sat in a theatre watching Wicked having just gotten the tube and at that time, corona was barely on my mind and now it's literally the ONLY THING GOING ON.

The rona has also got people talking about climate change again and how fucked we all are. It turns out staying home, stopping air travel and reducing everyone’s movement still isn’t enough to reduce our carbon emissions to avoid the 1.5c of global heating. Looks like we really do need structural change after all *insert girl shrugging emoji*. But judging from this Governments shocking response to the rona, I don’t have much faith in their ability to deal with climate change.

So yeah, the worlds gone to shit, and it probably will never be the same again. So, I’m here to cure my depression, 600 ish words at a time.

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someinvisible-string · 5 years

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Magnificent and Furious Ch. 10

Summary: After many years, rumors swirl that the Evil Queen is back and filled with more vengeance than ever. But instead of setting her sights on Snow White she goes for the thing Snow loves most, her beloved daughter Emma. For her own safety, Emma is to be transported to safety on an unassuming merchant ship, where she meets two indentured servants hoping for a way to find their freedom

A/N: I am so so SO sorry about the late chapter update, I'm going on my 6th day in a row of opening at my job and I've been exhausted and I totally forgot to post yesterday. But I hope this extra long and action-packed chapter makes up for it! Huge props to @justanotherwannabeclassic for betaing this chapter and helping me make it as good as it can be! Also as always be sure to go to my blog and check out the chapter header @princesse-swan made!

CW: battle, but not like game of thrones level violence, more like The 100 or The Hunger Games level of violence

last chapter/ AO3

picset

Emma woke the next morning to Killian pressing soft kisses to her shoulders and collarbone, she giggled when he brushed over where her neck met her shoulder.

“Someone’s awake,” he smiled. She rolled over nestling her head on his shoulder, fingers absentmindedly trailing over his chest. The day’s plans started to sink into her. “Hey,” Killian said tapping her on the shoulder. “You’re going to be great today.”

She nodded, letting out a long breath. “Well, I guess we should get up then.”

“Hold on there,” he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, leaning into her ear and whispering. “Last night was…”

“Incredible,” she smiled.

“Aye, that it was. But I just need to know, why last night?” Emma could see his unasked question in his eyes. Did she want to make love to him because it was going to be her one and possibly only chance to?

“Because, it all clicked for me,” she ran her fingers through his hair. “You’re really in this for the long haul, and it’s a longer haul than we both expected. And I know that you’re to be with me through it all.” She took a deep breath, “And I know that I love you and that when this is over whether that be 3 months, 3 years, or 3 decades from now I will still want you by my side for whatever adventure awaits us.”

Killian’s soft smile grew larger, “I love you too and I vow that I’ll be right here with you no matter what.” He tilted her head up, his kiss was tender and soft. Emma let that kiss fortify and strengthen her for the day ahead.

“Let’s do this,” she whispered as they broke apart. He chuckled and rolled over, fetching his clothes from where they were scattered across the tent, throwing hers in her direction.

The air was still cool and the grass still dotted with dew as Emma and Killian trudged across the camp in search of breakfast. A few people from each faction had come together and restarted last night’s fire, the scent of ham smoking slowly making its way throughout the camp.

“Good morning,” Elsa smiled at them as they approached. She was perched on a log, daintily eating some fresh berries. Merida sat beside her digging into her plate of ham with gusto.

“Morning,” Emma smiled stretched tight over her mouth. She noticed her friends’ eyes flicking over to Killian. She could practically see them putting two and two together and when Elsa and Merida looked at her with wide eyes she couldn’t help the blush rising on her cheeks. She and Killian sat down next to them, plates of food balanced on their laps as they tried to make small talk. As the sun rose more and more people gathered around them, nervous energy soon filling the camp. No one wanted to sit still, the blacksmiths worked on sharpening razor-sharp weapons, archers tested their bows and examined their arrows with frantic attention, Emma sat her knee jiggling up and down.

A loud caw broke through the hustle and bustle of the camp; Emma looked up, her raven from last night fluttered down to her, a scroll tied to his leg.

“Well, what does it say?” Merida asked as Emma unfurled the scroll.

“She’s agreed to the parlay,” Emma said, her voice shaking. This was it, it was now or never. “I’m to meet with her at the prearranged spot by midday.”

“Emma!” Roland said running up to the campfire, flanked by Robin and a few merrymen and Merida’s archers. “I have some pretty important news, we all snuck down to Regina’s castle and-”

“I didn't tell you to do that!” Emma bristled. “What if you were seen? What if Regina hurt any of you?”

“She didn’t and you said you needed us for reconnaissance so we went out and you really need to hear this. Regina has men, loads of them. Way more than she could get if she was just ripping out their hearts and controlling them.”

“She has allies? But how? Who in their right mind would ally themselves with her?” Merida asked.

“They were separated into factions,” Robin described. “One seemed to be made up of these big burly blokes with furs. Their flags had some purple and green and the soldiers seemed to be led by 13 generals.”

“The Southern Isles,” Elsa whispered. “They must have heard that Arendelle was joining you Emma and joined Regina. They have been trying to overthrow my kingdom ever since I took the throne.”

“Who’s in the other faction?” Killian asked.

“They had flags with dragons on them, a big sword down the middle with 2 on either side. But that’s all I could really get from them, I’m sorry,” Roland explained.

“That has to be Camelot,” Emma said stunned. Camelot while never a strong ally, was also never hostile with Misthaven. “Why would Arthur join Regina?”

“Perhaps they have some sort of agreement between them?” Killian offered. “He helps her here, she helps later down the line.”

“Regina doesn’t exactly work like that,” Emma bit down on her thumbnail nervously. “Something isn’t right about this but there’s not much we can do right now to figure it out. Regina agreed to the parlay but I’m not going to be so naive as to think she won’t go in without backup. I say we move out, get into the formations I went over last night.”

“Agreed your highness, all right, men!” General Abarca boomed out. Emma tried to hide her surprise at his approval. “Get ready to move out.” All around them, King Thomas’s men scurried about, some wolfing down food, others running back to their tents to get their armor on.

“Emma, I have something for you,” Elsa said taking her hand. She could feel her friend’s hand shaking, Emma squeezed her hand tight hoping to comfort her slightly. “Follow me, it’s back at my tent, Killian can come too,” she smiled knowingly. The four of them walked quickly to Elsa’s tent, Elsa still holding on to Emma’s hand tightly, Emma couldn’t tell if it was she or Elsa who was shaking.

“What is it?” Emma asked.

“You’ll see,” she said quickening her pace to put some distance between them and Killian and Merida. “Now tell me about your friend Killian.”

The question felt so out of place for what they were all planning on doing later that day that Emma couldn’t help but laugh. “Sorry I just wasn’t expecting that,” she giggled and held her friend’s hand tighter. “He’s… well, I don’t quite know what to describe him as. He’s smart and kind, and he’s stuck by me throughout this whole adventure.”

“And?” Elsa said, her excitement palpable.

“And I love him,” Emma turned her head to look back at Killian who was being interrogated by Merida. He nervously scratched behind his ear but caught her looking at him and smiled softly at her.

“I’m really happy for you, Emma,” Elsa said, squeezing her hand and pushing her way through the flap of her tent. Inside was spacious, just enough room for the four of them and a blacksmith who was polishing some armor. The breastplate shone brightly, the plates extending up to cover the collar and shoulders. Matching gauntlets shone on a nearby table with a new shield polished bright enough that Emma could see her reflection in it.

“Oh, Elsa, this is beautiful,” Emma said in wonder, holding up the gauntlets for a closer look.

“You like it?”

“Of course, this work is exquisite,” Emma responded, looking down at the shield. “But these flowers, those aren’t your insignia?”

“No, they’re yours,” Elsa smiled. “It’s yours.”

“Elsa I can’t,” Emma stuttered.

“I’m not letting my best friend walking into a parlay with the queen without something to protect herself,” Elsa said firmly.

“You’d have to be daft to go in there with nothing but that vest on,” Merida piped up.

“And I can’t say I disagree with them,” Killian said.

“Killian, I didn’t know you were coming, so I don’t have anything that will be as fitted as this is,” Elsa gestured to Emma’s armor. “But I’m sure we have some pieces that’ll fit you well to give you some protection too.”

“You’re giving me armor?” he asked, stunned that someone would even feel bad for offering second-hand armor when he had nothing.

“Of course, I doubt Emma wants you down there with no protection,” Elsa shrugged.

“Can’t say I disagree,” Emma smirked.

Midday came, Emma waited in the pre-agreed spot, her eyes trained on the horizon. From atop her new steed, a bay colored mare the Merida’s camp had brought, she could see for miles. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, her nerves on edge, her mare pawing at the ground clearly feeling her rider’s tension. Emma tried not to have her new armor clink and clash against her shield and sword, it had been so long since she’d wielded a sword and shield while wearing armor that it took some getting used to. She had decided against the leg gauntlets, instead choosing to wear thick leather breeches so she’d be more mobile if she needed to make a quick dash up the mountain. She glanced over her shoulder, she knew Merida and the other Merrymen were hidden just out of sight and even further back Killian waited with General Abarca. She wished she could just look at him, she knew all her doubts and uncertainties would melt away if only she could look into his ocean blue eyes.

Up on the hill she finally saw movement, Regina also mounted on a black steed clad in decorative chainmail. She was flanked by two guards, one on each side. Emma’s heart sank, everything inside her screamed that this parlay was going to end in battle. She held her head high, shoulders back, she was prepared. She knew Regina might do something like this, Roland’s news had basically guaranteed it, her eyes scanned the mountain further behind Regina and sure enough, Black Knights and soldiers were picking their way through the trees and brush trying to remain unseen. If Emma could see them, no doubt Merida or Robin or even Roland could see them and hopefully send word to her foot soldiers. Slowly, painstakingly, Regina made her way to the clearing.

“Well well, the Savior in the flesh,” the queen smiled. Emma shivered, her parents had been right. There was something off with her, very off.

“Regina,” Emma said, easing her steed forward. “I believe we had the matter of my parents to discuss.”

“Yes and here’s the discussion,” the queen cleared her throat. “I will keep them alive but only just, they will suffer like I did for years but only after I tear your still beating heart out of your chest.”

“Regina you don’t have to do this,” Emma said, hoping to reason with her. “Let go of your revenge, you have the power to end a cycle of violence and abuse that started with Cora and continued with the Dark One. You can end this.”

“Don’t you dare mention my mother,” Regina bristled, bringing her hand up. A ball of fire formed and before she could even think Emma’s steed reared in fear and turned and ran towards the forest. Emma could feel the heat of the fireball before she could see it, thinking quickly she rolled sideways off her saddle and landed on her feet. She watched her horse disappear into the woods as her reinforcements began pouring in on all sides. Arrows whistled over her head from high above, several grunts told her they found their targets. Quickly unsheathing her sword Emma turned, Regina’s Black Knights running quickly towards her. She took a deep breath and raised her sword, a quiet calm falling over her as she ran out to meet them. Her sword clanged loudly against the first knight’s, he was tall and broad but relied too heavily on brute strength. Emma kept low, using her shield to obscure his vision and dancing out of his reach. The thundering of footsteps and war cries filled the air as King Thomas’s men poured in from all sides. Emma found an opening in the knight’s chainmail where his leg was exposed, she ran her sword through, trying to ignore his howl of pain. He fell to his knees, Emma ran on trying to close the space between her and Regina’s castle as quickly as possible.

“Emma!” Killian’s voice was high and panicked, Emma looked around frantically searching for him. She spotted him, dueling two knights at once, his sword a mere flash of steel as he wielded it back and forth. She sprinted over to him, terrified that she wouldn’t make it in time, that he’d take a wrong step, when an arrow spliced through the air striking one of the knights in the neck. She saw Roland drop down from above them, already pulling another arrow from his quiver.

“Thank you,” she said as she ran up to him.

“Don’t thank me quite yet,” he said, letting loose another arrow and hitting a knight on horseback. His horse whinnied as it’s rider fell, lifeless from his back, galloping on through the battle.

Killian wheeled around, heaving his sword into his opponent’s side and slashing upward. He turned and ran towards Emma and Roland, blood shining on his armor. “We need to get you to the castle,” he yelled over the din of battle.

“What about Merida and Elsa?” Emma asked she wasn’t about to ditch her friends here.

“They have to be around here somewhere, but Emma we have to make some moves if we’re going to get up to the castle,” Roland said already leading the way through the mass of fighting. As quickly as he was firing arrows he was picking them up or pulling them out of the fallen around them, Emma and Killian followed quickly behind him, cutting down any black knights that tried to get through. Emma tried to keep her eyes peeled for Merida’s mass of red curls or Elsa’s light blue armor.

A sudden coldness fell over them, Emma knew that Elsa must be close. Sure enough, Elsa was there, wielding her magic unlike Emma had ever seen before. Elsa stood with her arms outstretched, ice and snow flowing from her fingertips freezing soldiers in their tracks and shattering their steel.

Roland, Emma, and Killian called out to her, Elsa turned and nodded to them. “Hold on!” she called as she twirled her hands through the air, ice and snow swirling higher and higher until a great roar echoed across the field. Soldiers and knights turned to see a giant ice monster roaring and swiping men across the ground with a flick of its enormous wrist.

“Marshmallow, cover us,” Elsa called as she sprinted towards Emma and the boys.

“What on earth is that?” Killian said, holding his sword at the ready while Roland readied an arrow.

“Oh, he won’t hurt us-” Elsa assured them, almost drowned out by Marshmallow’s bellowing. A thick fog burst from his mouth, surrounding them with slight cover. “But he will cover for us, now let’s go!” Elsa urged. The others didn’t need telling twice, with Marshmallow in tow the men parted giving them a clear path up the mountain. Emma was getting worried, she still hadn’t seen Merida anywhere since the start of the battle.

“You fools, don’t let her get away,” Regina screamed as she spotted Emma. A flash of red was the only warning Emma had before another fireball was shot at them.

“Get down!” she grabbed Killian and Elsa and tried to reach Roland as they fell to the ground. Emma could feel her hair ripple as the fireball passed over her. Marshmallow was hit directly; with a mighty scream he bust into pieces, large pieces of ice fell all around him as he crumpled to the floor,

“Ahhhh!” Roland screamed, Emma looked up to see that his sleeve had caught fire. He quickly rolled around to get the flames out, but Emma could tell his skin was badly burned. “Go!” he yelled as they went to help him.

“No we’re not leaving you here,” Killian said, fiercely.

“Just go, you’re wasting time!” Roland’s eyes were full of fear and pain as he tried to get up. His clothes had fused to his skin, if he wasn’t trampled to death then an infection was going to do him in for sure. Marian’s sweet face swam before Emma’s vision.

“No, I’m not leaving you here, Killian help him up,” she commanded. Roland screamed as Killian hoisted him up. Emma ducked under and supported his other side, Elsa fought off any approaching guards with her magic as Emma and Killian dragged Roland off into the woods. “Lay him here,” Emma said, pointing to a boulder covered in soft looking moss. Roland was grinding his teeth together, trying not to scream as Emma bent close and inspected his burn. It was as bad as Emma expected, his skin red and raw. Flesh was burned away and what remained was now fused to his clothes.

“Please just leave me,” Roland begged, tears starting to form in his eyes.

“Not a chance,” Emma said, placing her hand on his shoulder.

“Emma,” Killian said, his voice thick and raw. “Look.” Emma looked down, her hand was glowing, a golden light coming off of it in waves. She held both her hands up to her face, both glowed, a slight warmth spread from her fingertips all the way to her chest. Instinctively Emma held her hands over Roland’s skin before their eyes the skin healed. Blisters faded and skin repaired itself. Emma withdrew her hands and Roland held up his arm to his face, blinking in disbelief.

“You have magic?” Roland looked up at her in awe.

“Yes,” Emma panted, her energy drained. She looked up to see Elsa and Killian staring at her.

“I never knew you could do that,” Elsa said, looking down at her own hands.

“Is this part of-” Killian began to ask, his voice low, raspy, and awestruck.

“I think so,” Emma nodded. The four of them stood in silence as the battle raged just beyond the trees. Emma breathed in, trying to ignore the scent of blood and burning wood that perfumed the air. “We need to get back out there, Roland are you sure you want to come with us?”

Roland took one last look at his newly healed arm before nodding, “I’m sure. Let’s go.” He got to his feet, slinging his quiver over his shoulder and white knuckling his bow, his brown eyes hardened as he faced the field. The other three followed behind him as he marched out of the woods.

“Emma,” Killian whispered as he fell into step with her. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she huffed, holding her sword higher. There was no time to discuss her magic, they needed to get up that mountain, she quickened her pace to catch up to Roland and Elsa.

The sound of battle had been muted in the forest, but as they set foot back on the field the din of battle rang in their ears. Men screamed, horses whinnied and bellowed, their hooves pounding the earth, swords and shields clashed together ringing their ears. The flames from Regina’s fireballs had spread, the smoke thick and black and stung everyone’s eyes and throats.

One voice rang out over all the rest, Merida riding on her warhorse Angus firing arrows and bellowing at the other riders following her.

“Merida!” Emma yelled, pointing at her friend so that the others would follow her. She ran through the crowd, pushing and shoving people out of her way.

“Come on lassie, jump on,” Merida shouted when she saw Emma running towards her, she looked over to her other riders. “Give them your horses, make me proud!” Her men instantly demounted their horses, allowing Elsa, Roland, and Killian to quickly mount them. Emma hoisted herself onto Angus, gripping tight to Merida’s waste.

“To the castle!” she dug her heels into Angus, spurring the horse faster. The horses moved so fast it felt as if they were flying through the battle, it was all Emma could do to hold on let alone fend off any Black Knights who tried to unseat her or Merida. One growled at her as he tried to grab her by the leg, Emma kicked him and heard the satisfying sound of crunching bone as his nose broke. She looked over her shoulder and saw Elsa casting her ice magic, freezing Regina’s men in place.

“Once we reach the trees it’ll be harder for them to follow us,” Emma screamed in Merida’s ear.

“Come on Angus, just a bit further,” Merida urged her horse on and up the steep terrain. Higher and higher they climbed, the sound of war sounding more and more distant. The late afternoon sun hung low and bright in the sky, the smoke rising turning it red.

Before Emma could even properly formulate anything resembling a plan, she could see the gates of Regina’s castle. Merida pulled on the reigns, slowing Angus to a walk then stopping just out of sight of the castle.

“So what’s the plan?” Roland asked, sliding off his horse. “I counted around 20 guards still guarding the castle.”

“We’re going to need some kind of diversion,” Emma said. “Lead all or most of them to one spot while we sneak in somewhere else. Elsa, think Marshmallow is up for it?”

“It’ll be his pleasure,” she smirked, she inhaled deeply and threw her arms in front of her, ice and snow swirling higher and higher as Marshmallow formed. He roared and stomped off towards the castle, smashing trees and throwing boulders towards the left side of the castle. Emma peaked between the trees, Black Knights were running full speed towards the giant snowman leaving their posts unattended. She spotted a balcony leading to a glass door, the wall outside of it easily climbable. She pointed it out to the others.

“Let’s go,” Emma darted out, running quickly towards the wall. Roland and Merida both fired arrows connected to ropes into the wall, both getting caught in between the grout of the wall. Emma tested the ropes and finding that they would hold her weight began to climb up the wall.

Up the wall, over the low balcony wall and through the glass doors, Emma and her friends made it into the castle with ease. Emma crossed the room and opened the door out on to a deserted hallway. She looked around, her sword held ready for an attack but none came.

“So which way love?” Killian asked. Emma froze; she didn’t know. She had been so focused on getting into the castle, she’d barely spent a thought about what she would do or where she would even begin to look for her parents.

“Um,” Emma bit her lip, turning and looking in all directions. “They’re probably down in the dungeons.” She started towards her right, figuring at some point they’d find a staircase that would take them down below the castle. She silently prayed the dungeons were somewhere downstairs as she raced down the hallway.

“Slow down!” Roland panted as he jogged to keep up with her. “If we make too much noise, the guards will find us.”

Emma whirled around and faced him, “I’m this close to saving my parents, I’m not slowing down until I get them the hell out of here.”

Roland looked down at his feet, hushed into silence as Emma started down the hallway once again, she opened a door she found at the end of the hallway and to her relief, she found a stairway. She hurtled herself down it, hoping that at the bottom would be the dungeons. Around and around they went, everyone silent and looking nervously over their shoulders or squinting into the darkness ahead of them.

Finally, she reached the last floor, Emma didn’t wait for the others to catch up to her; she opened the door and walked into the large entrance hall of Regina’s castle, filled with Southern Isle soldiers who all turned as she burst in.

“It’s her!” one shouted and the guards began to move towards her. Emma’s friends stood behind her, each pulling out their weapons to defend themselves. Elsa froze the floor in front of them, several guards slipped and fell but more moved around the ice and were still coming. Merida and Roland fired some arrows into the wave of knights but were only able to strike down a few of the many. Emma swung her sword as soon as one came close enough and got lost in the chaos.

“Keep her alive, the Queen needs her for later,” another guard shouted at the one fighting Emma. She took advantage of her knight’s temporary distracting, slicing him across the shoulder. No sooner had he slumped out of her way then another grabbed her from behind, Emma struggled against his grip trying to stamp on his feet.

“Emma!” Killian shouted, running towards them, his sword held high as he ran towards them. The knight held Emma close, using her as a human shield, knowing that Killian wouldn’t do anything that would hurt her. She saw Elsa discreetly froze his foot to the ground, Killian quickly maneuvered around him, ramming the pommel of his sword into the knight’s helmet. He groaned and let go of Emma as he fell to the floor, his helmet ringing with the force of Killian’s blow. He took her by the hand and began to run across the room, ducking and dodging around knights, not even sure where they were going.

“Hey princess!” a knight yelled, his voice full of self-satisfaction, Emma recognized him as Hans, the youngest of the Southern Isle princes. She whirled around and saw Merida, and Roland all behind held by several guards each. Elsa appeared to be unconscious, her guard roughly holding her head up by her hair. Emma stopped dead in her tracks, rounding on them with her sword raised. “Ah ah ah,” Hans held his hands up. “Wouldn’t want to do something that’ll get your friends hurt would you?”

“Let them go,” Emma lowered her sword but kept on her toes.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he shrugged sarcastically. “You see the Queen is very interested in these friends of yours. She needs you and at least one of your friends here alive. So I’ll offer you a deal, you come quietly with us and all your friends live or you try to fight us and we let you pick with one lives while we kill the rest, sound good to you?”

Emma hesitated for a moment, her eyes glancing at Elsa’s limp form, “All right.” Her sword clattered to the floor as she raised her hands over her head.

“Your friend too,” Hans pointed to Killian.

“Emma-” he started.

“It’s okay, it’ll all be okay,” Emma wasn’t sure if she was telling Killian that or herself. Killian dropped his sword and raised his hands over his head, mirroring Emma. Several guards ran over to them, they roughly shoved Emma’s hands behind her back and bound them with rope. “What did you do to my friend?” Emma asked, her eyes still on Elsa.

“You’ll soon find out,” a knight roughly said, as he hit her over the head. Emma felt pain bloom in the back of her head as stars danced before her eyes before it all turned to black.

#csbb #captain swan #csff #cs au #cs fic #get comfy because this is a longer chapter #but I still hope yall like it!#my fic #m + f fic

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hxmmatron · 6 years

Text

Hireath -part 5 (Epilogue/Valentine special):

Daddy!CEO!Luke

A/N: Here it is :’) the last last part. *sigh* this took a while, it was actually supposed to be for last year’s Valentine but life just had other plans :’) um, I guess this is a thank you to anyone who has ever read the story, anyone who has ever liked it or reblogged or left a comment. I can’t ever begin to express how thankful I am for that. I am so so grateful for the time I spent here,and the community that surrounded my blog. Thank you for all the love, and for all those lovely people who still cared about the story and asked about it.

Here it is.

Thank you.

Word count: 3.2k

Plot: A divorce is not so easy to go through when your lingering feels and son keep getting in the way.

part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4

The tentative rays of sunlight peeked through the colossal windows taking up the whole walls, falling smoothly against the desks and chairs lettering the office in an organized puzzle. The atmosphere was still quiet, unbelievably quiet in comparison to the usual commotion shaking up the office, in the form of footsteps shuffling around, phones ringing periodically and voices merging into an undeciphered chaos.

As your heels clicked against the flooring early in the morning, you were only met with soft good morning’s, voices still partly heavied down with sleep and with the fresh, mouthwatering smell of coffee seeking to kickstart the day with a much needed dose of caffeine.

With the office still drowning in the quietness and slowness of a sleepy morning, it was hardly surprising to see that the red circle marking today’s date on the calendar remained ignored. Even more so, you would easily expect it to remain that way an hour later, when the office comes back to life, regaining its full, hectic atmosphere and falling into its usual fast pace.

But the little heart marking your own February calendar has been present on your mind for the past week, making your footsteps livelier and much more energetic than the whole office combined.

Your original destination changed halfway through the long corridor leading towards the grand office, the unmistakable gold plate stapled to its door. It was the slightly ajar door that lured you in, making you peek your head inside, fingers following (right on tow) to knock on the wooden surface.

“Good morning!” Your voice chirps happily through the office, pushing the door open and making your way inside.

Ashton’s head shoots up from his morning paper, a smile stretching his lips to greet you.

“___!”

His hands work on folding the newspaper in his hands, attention focused on you -more precisely,on the gleeful tone in your voice. “I wonder what’s gotten you so cheerful this early in the morning.”

There's a teasing glint in his eyes, but you're hardly bothered. Instead, you move closer to sit down, smile still bright.

“I can list a thing or two.”

Ashton seems to let this slide, despite the way his eyes narrow and a chuckle leaves his mouth. The conversation falls into a pleasant talk about how his family’s doing, before you're leaning against your elbow, on the wooden desk and ask;

“So, you’re still up for babysitting Jace tonight. Right?”

Ashton’s face suddenly breaks into a huge grin, and it's almost like a lightbulb went off inside his head.

“Aaah, I get it now.” He manages between breathy laughs, adding with a wink, “A little valentine date, with Mr. CEO?”

Your only reply is a chuckle, because you can’t really deny that he is actually right. But even that is enough to get him smiling wider, highly amused by this conversation.

“But aren't you guys past the dating stage?” He comments, lifting his hand up and pointing out his ring finger, “Like, way past it?”

That draws a scoff from you, almost in defense. Because you know that, technically, the papers had never been signed. You were still

But Ashton was very right. Your relationship did not fall under the category of your typical married couple, and the reason behind that was more than just you living separately. It was the late night dates, driving you home and kissing you at the door. It was the random movie dates, and daily texts. It was the slow restart, the tentative steps and the fear of diving in too soon.

It was all the little things you had lost the habit of doing, along the way.

It was, as Ashton pointed out, everything that made it seem as if you were a new couple still basking in their honeymoon phase, rather than a husband and wife with a long line of history.

Yet, despite the accuracy of Ashton’s words, you only lift a hand up to shoo him away, eyes rolling; “we are not dating.”

“Oh really?” He taunts, seeming to take that as a challenge, leaning over his desk on his elbows. “Cheesy dates on the weekends, flirting shamelessly on the phone -during work hours, mind you. And let’s not forget,” He stops with a smirk you know well enough to dread whatever’s coming next, “Hot, steamy, not-so-secretive sex in his off-”

You most certainly don't allow him to finish his words, interrupting him with a loud shout of his name and threatening to throw the closest thing at hand -the framed picture on his desk, hardly effective as a weapon- at his face.

“Ashton! What are you- where did you even get that from?” the flustered face you make, along with the way you trip over your words only manage to rile Ashton up further. And not even the hard stare you shoot him (or at least try to, unable to fight back a smile) makes his incessant laughter come to an end, as he seems to find immense pleasure in your reaction.

Ashton only gives you a knowing smile, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against his chair. “Like I said, not so secretive.”

“Ash!” You try to sound scalding, but a chuckle still breaks your frown, Ashton joining you as well. “Would you not?”

“Anyway,” You are quick to add, getting up from your seat and fixing your skirt, “I have to get going. I’ll wait for you tonight!”

Protests from Ashton follow you even as you close the door, about how you’re ignoring your friend to go flirt, and you can barely hold back a laugh at his words.

The light knocking on the door makes Luke lift his head up from his papers scattered over his desk, and a smile quickly takes over his face when your face comes into view.

“Good morning~” You greet, stepping inside and closing the door behind you. Getting up from his desk, Luke meets you halfway, arms wrapping around you naturally and bringing you into a hug.

Pulling away just slightly, Luke’s lips meet yours with a kiss.

“Happy valentine’s day, baby.” The words are whispered against your lips, Luke’s hand moving to hold your face, before leaning in for another kiss, deeper this time. And it’s only when he’s had enough that he pulls away, his hand holding yours, leading you back towards his desk. Luke sits down on his chair, facing you as you settle on top of his desk.

“Did you sleep well?” You ask, lifting your hand and running it through his hair, just the way you know he loves it.

“Yeah”, Luke nods, eyes momentarily closed, enjoying your touches. “I had to stay up late, but that’s ok . Did you n Jace have a good night?”

Before you manage to reply, the ringing on his phone breaks through the silence, getting him distracted momentarily by it. But Luke only spares a single look at the caller ID, before he silences it. Turning back to you with a smile, his hand moves to rest on top of your thigh.

“Do you want some coffee? Some breakfast?”

“No, no need.” You answer, “I need to get to work in a bit.”

Your reply draws an involuntary frown from Luke. One he doesn’t notice, but you do, making you lean in for a kiss. You keep it short, leaning away too quickly for his liking.

“Baby, I think you need new blinds for your office.” You whisper, making Luke’s eyes open.

“Why? What’s wrong with these ones?” He asks, genuinely confused.

His eyes move away from you, focusing on the mentioned blinds behind you. But your hands cup his face, redirecting his attention back on you, and explain; “Apparently, they let out our steamy, hot sex out to the open.”

Luke’s startled for a moment, before he breaks into a laugh. Getting up from his chair, he leans over, settling his arms on each side of where you sat.

“Baby, I think it’s more about your state when you walk out.” Luke whispers, lips touching yours with every spoken word, before he gives in and goes for a deep kiss. Eyes closing, your arms move from his face, to wrap around his neck and pull him closer,legs opening up just a little bit more to bring his body closer. It’s almost as if time freezes, and everything else escapes your mind, until Luke pulls away.

“Say,” another kiss, “did you talk to Ash about babysitting tonight?”

“Yeah” you nod, “he’s talking Jace over to yours, so we-” you pause, a flirty smile on your face and your hands moving back to Luke’s face, -”can can go back to mine and have it to ourselves. All night.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Leaving Luke’s office, that day, was something you couldn’t get out of your memory. The moment you had stepped a foot outside, all eyes fell on you. It had taken a solid minute of silence for everyone to look away and carry on with their work, trying to act subtle. But you knew that everyone had heard what was supposed to happen in the privacy of Luke’s office. Sympathetic smiles followed you as you exited, along with concerned eyes and hopeful hearts.

It was a while before Luke’s assistant went into his office, too worried to be barging in too soon. The whole office walking on eggshells, holding their breath and sharing hushed murmurs about what had went on.

On Jace’s birthday, Luke had showed up, but almost an hour late. You had opened your door to find him breathless, cheeks flushed and words of apology rushing out, explaining how the traffic had been slower than he expected.

Truly, Luke had expected you to shut the door at his face. Because you had given him only one task and he had failed it already.

But you smiled at his state, and lead him inside.

A loud evening was promised, of birthday songs and happy wishes, of little kids giggling and running around while adults lounged around and exchanged their news. But when night came and everyone had left, your little birthday boy soundly sleeping in his room, Luke stayed back, offering to help you out with the cleaning.

Luke had never felt as hesitant as he did that night. He only knew to keep enough of a safe distant, waiting for you to determine the next move, to choose where to go. But, as he let his eyes linger on you, standing oh so close to him, drying the dishes he finished washing; it had filled him up with an overflowing feeling of homeyness, making him want act upon it. He had wanted nothing more than to have his hands rest on your waist, and lean in to kiss your lips until it was all marked into his memory.

But he did not kiss you that night.

Or the next time he saw you, when you had invited him for lunch. It was at a restaurant close to his office, and you had picked up Jace from his school as well.

Or the time after that, when you had all met up at Calum’s house for a little gathering.

He was walking on thin ice, Luke knew that. And he would be damned if let himself ruin things again. But he was determined to work hard to prove himself, to be there for whatever his family needed. Until then, he would let you lead, at your own pace, and hope that you wouldn’t want to push him away.

Luke had only gotten a taste of your lips the night he stayed over for a movie night, helping put Jace to bed.

It had felt like the first drop of water he had in a year of drought, making his whole body come back to life. You had pulled away far too soon for his liking, but then you asked him for a coffee date at his office, and Luke’s heart felt like bursting at your words, oh-so sweet to him.

As expected, the tables were crowded with couple holding hands and making oaths for forever, the waiters rushing back n forth, from table to other. Rose petals decorated each and every table, along with red candles and heart shaped candies.

But your table was in the far back, private enough to feel like it was just you, and just him.

The lace dress you wore was a gift from Luke, chosen with care and left on top of your bed for you to find, along with more packages that you didn’t get the time to go through just yet. It suited you to a wonder, and Luke couldn’t have felt any more blessed, his hands finding it harder to stay away from you for too long.

“It’s been a while since we last celebrated Valentine’s this way.” The comment leaves your mouth without much thought, smiling in contentment. But then your eyes lift up from the menu you were reading, and the look on Luke’s face instantly makes you regret it.

It’s a look you see on his face more often than you wished. It was a look that betrayed his thoughts whenever he was falling into the pit of remorse and regret.

Last Valentine, you couldn’t even remember the day clearly. You’re sure that it was nothing but a delivered bouquet of roses and chocolates that had a card too bland to be personally sent by Luke. You knew that it was a last minute order after his assistant -most likely- reminded him of which day it was. You’re not sure if the year before that was that special either.

It had indeed been long since you both celebrated the day this way. You knew that. And he knew that.

“Hey,” You whisper, frowning. Your hand reaching out to hold his, giving him a gentle squeeze. But Luke only shakes his head, replacing the look on his face with a smile instead.

He knew that he wouldn’t find a way out of the maze of regret any time soon. He knew that his mind would always go back to little details and remind him of every wrong decision he wasn’t aware of at the time.

But for tonight, Luke wants it to be special. He wants it to overpower the memories of times he didn’t take the time to celebrate special days with you.

For tonight, he just wants it to be just you.

The lights in the living room are kept to a low dim, an old record softly playing in the background.

Once dinner was over, exquisite dishes savored and sweet desserts shared, it was time for you both to go back home and enjoy a little more privacy. The ride back was just you two and your wandering hands, the driver disposed for the night.

Your drinks remained on the table, long forgotten as you got drunk on each other’s lips instead.

“I don’t like this house very much” Luke breaks slightly away from your lips, his mouth moving to pepper light kisses on your jaw.

“What?” You ask after a little too long, his lips distracting you from his words, “why?” You draw out, pulling away a bit more and looking around your apartment. “I think it’s fairly nice.”

Luke hums, resting his arm on the back of the couch, around your shoulders.“It is nice. But it's not home.”

A minute of silence follows his words, Luke’s eyes simply gazing into yours and studying your reaction. The beats of his heart drum against his ear, so loudly that it drowns out the music still playing from the corner of the room.

Fear slowly makes its way into his heart, sending strings around it and caging it in, making it throb painfully in his chest. It’s the same fear that keeps creeping up on him; the fear of taking a wrong step, taking it too fast and potentially breaking down everything you have been rebuilding. The fear that he would once again risk losing you.

But then you look into his eyes, with that special way of yours, and the words just tumble out of his mouth.

“Come back home.”

Your heart flutters again at his words, stronger this time. Not only because it’s the first time he bring this up, but it’s in the way he spoke his words. Hesitant and unsure. Just like the very first time.

“I- I don’t know. Are you sure?” You question, mind feeling unprepared.

The look Luke shoots you is enough to tell you that he is more than sure. And the small smile on your lips knocks a little more confidence into him.

“Come on, think of all the positives.”

You squint your eyes at his words, smile getting wider and your hand moving towards the side of his neck, allowing your fingers to run through his hair.

Luke’s smile grows at your words, lifting his hand to rest on your forearm. His thumb moves in little circles against your skin, his head turning slightly to meet the patch of skin and land a soft kiss, before he leans away. “Hm..” he pretends to think, “We get to have breakfast in bed?”

“I don’t think you really thought this one through,” You tease, “Mr. I-wake-up-in-the-ass-crack-of-dawn.”

Luke chuckles at that, shaking his head, “On Sundays then, how about that?”

An attempt to tame your smile goes down the drain, so you simply let it be.

“Carry on..”

“No more driving late at night, or having to pack clothes.” Luke continues, “We’re always over at each other’s anyways.”

You lift your eyebrows, slightly nodding your head, a teasing smile still playing on your lips. Luke shakes his head with a laugh, just as amused by your behavior. Deciding to play along, his head dives in, lips finding the skin of your neck and leaving featherlight kisses.

“You get to wake up to this lovely face every morning.” He hums against your skin, kisses punctuating his words. “Slow, early morning sex before-”

A loud giggle falls past your lips, your hands holding Luke’s face and pulling him away. But he still goes for a kiss on your lips, before leaning back into the couch.

“___, …”

The tone of his voice drops all its playfulness, getting serious. With honest eyes never once leaving yours, he speaks; “I mean it, I want you to come back home. I miss you being home. It’s not the same anymore. You don't have to do it anytime soon, I’ll wait. But I just need you to think about it.”

His words knock the breath out of our lungs, leaving you struck for a moment too long, before warmth overtakes your heart. You can feel tears starting to pool in your eyes, and your hands reach out to pull him in for a deep kiss.

A little shaky, teeth clashing and breaths mixing together. But it’s nothing short of perfect.

“Ask me again” You mumble against his lips, hands still holding his face.

“Please come back home.”

Your answer comes in the form of another kiss.

(Bonus: Luke proposes again, 6 months later.)

#I hope this is acceptable :') sorry :') I was behind schedule #thank you everyone #goodbye~#Hireath #luke hemmings #5sos #5sos writing #luke hemming imagines #5sos fics #luke imagine #ceo!Luke #daddy!Luke #ceo!5sos #mine

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bintaeran · 4 years

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Welcome Back!

Welcome Back! Nina Zolotow by Nina

Above the Fog by Brad Gibson

I started this blog way back in 2011, having no idea what it would become or where it would lead me. Originally, it was a project conceived by three of us, me, my husband, Brad Gibson, and our friend Baxter Bell. We simply felt between us we had so much useful information to share about yoga, aging, and yoga for healthy aging that we should start sharing it! (See In the Kitchen.) In the end, the blog led to a book deal for Baxter and me and quite a number of followers, some of whom I’ve been hearing from recently.

Over the years, several other writers came on board, some temporarily and some permanently, and Brad kind of faded into the background, though he’s always been there when I needed advice. Then, at the end of 2018, after seven years of blogging, I decided it was time for a break. This break was interesting and productive for many of us—I got a book deal to write a new book, which I’ll tell you about below—but some of us also realized we missed sharing we what know and what we’re thinking about with all of you out there. And with this pandemic, it seemed more important than ever to provide free, helpful information about ways yoga can help you cultivate physical, mental, and emotional health as well as peace of mind. So we decided to restart the blog again. Here’s our current staff:

Nina Zolotow is returning as Editor in Chief and featured contributor.

Bridget Frederick is returning in new role. As our Acquisitions Editor, she’ll be in charge of selecting and posting practice videos contributed by our readers on our blog and maintaining our YouTube channel. She’ll tell you more about this soon.

Beth Gibbs is returning as a featured contributor. You’ll be hearing from her soon about what she’s been up to and what she plans are for upcoming articles.

Ram Rao is returning as a featured contributor. You’ll be hearing from him soon as well about what he’s been up to and what his plans are for upcoming articles.

In addition to these returning staff members, we will have three new writers on our staff. Sandy Blaine, Leza Lowitz, and Barrie Risman will all be contributing articles on a regular basis. They will soon be introducing themselves to you. Finally, a number of new writers have offered to provide occasional articles (if you’d like to do this, too, contact me at [email protected]) so you can look forward to hearing some fresh voices in the weeks to come.

With a different staff, the blog will be evolving. We won’t be so focused on topics related to aging or medical conditions, although they may come up. Instead, you can think of this blog as simply being about yoga for real life, with aging, of course, being an important part of that. We also plan to post just three days a week, instead of five.

For those who are wondering what I was up to during the break, I’m happy to announce that my editor at Shambhala Publications asked me if I wanted to write a book for them. The idea I came up with—which I pitched to her in the summer of 2019—was a book about yoga for adapting to and accepting change. Shambahla loved the idea and in the early days of the pandemic they offered me a deal for a book tentatively entitled “Yoga for Times of Change.” By then, of course, we were all going through a big change together, so my topic, seemed more relevant than ever. At this point, I’m still deep in the midst of writing the book, but no doubt you’ll see some posts on some of the topics I’ll be covering in the book. And if you have a good story about how yoga has helped you navigate through physical, emotional, mental, or societal change, please let me know.

And for those of you who were following my meditation project, after six months of regular practice and weekly reports on my daily practice on my personal blog Delusiastic, I was able to establish a daily habit of meditating that I’m still maintaining. In fact, I’m meditating now seven days a week and for longer periods of time. I think the public commitment I made to commit to this practice was actually very helpful so a big thanks to all of you who supported me. You can find posts about the first six months of my meditation practice on Delusiastic, where I also published a number of one-sentence stories and creative non-fiction pieces.

I'll wrap up by saying that I'm writing this at a very difficult time. Not only is the pandemic still raging in the US, but the state that I call home, California, has been on fire for weeks. During this period, my practice has been invaluable. I meditate every single day and also practice 20 minutes of Legs Up the Wall pose daily. I also practice asanas to cultivate strength, flexibility, balance, and agility, especially on those days when the air quality is too poor for me to take a walk. I also find comfort in studying yoga philosophy. I hope you, too, are finding yoga helpful during these challenging times.

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#http://yogaforhealthyaging.blogspot.com/2020/09/welcome-back.html

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a-woman-apart · 5 years

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Release the Outcome

Yesterday, I applied for a full-time job working for the library system of the city that I live in (my other job is one city over). I probably won’t hear back from them until after August 2nd, because that is when the posting comes down. This works perfectly for me, though, because I really do not want to leave my current position until the new people are more settled. It could be a long shot; I applied to library jobs in my city before and have never been selected for an interview. I also know that I limit my opportunities by only applying for jobs in one section (out of 6) of the city, but my only other economically reasonable option is also applying at the downtown branch and I cannot see my anxiety-ridden self making that drive daily.

My main goal right now is to just keep pursuing opportunities while remaining detached from the outcome. I am tentatively looking into more volunteer opportunities, but nothing is jumping out at me. Sometimes, I think about the types of volunteer positions that would look better on a resume, or help to give me “marketable skills or “build identity capital” but my boyfriend scolded me about that and encouraged me to just volunteer for whatever I care about, regardless of whether it will benefit me in the workplace. He is right. I have been so caught up in the hustle culture (albeit more focused on academics) that I have started to lose sight of what is important. We need to be able to strike a balance between working to survive and achieve things we genuinely want and being work-obsessed.

I realize that in my position, even as a neurodivergent and marginalized person, I hold incredible privilege. Friends and family have helped support me financially, and although it will be going away in a few years (or very soon, depending on my income), I receive assistance from the government in the form of my SSDI. It is both temporary and not nearly enough by itself to survive on in a city like this, but it provides something to fall back on, and has enabled me to work part-time while pursuing my education.

As far as education goes, I know that my original goal to complete my COREs (gaining my Associate in the Arts in the process) can still be completed next year, but I am going to just observe myself and how I am feeling. It is likely that I will be working full-time by then, and if that happens, goodbye SSDI. That is ultimately the goal—and there would be a way to restart benefits if I fell into a rough patch—but that would mean keeping a decent job would take even higher priority than before. I was a part-time—sometimes full-time—student before and a part-time worker, but then I would be a full-time worker and part-time student. My disability does not allow me to go to both work and attend school full-time; many healthy people can’t even manage that, and it is not recommended by instructors.

Ultimately, though, these plans are very tentative. I have really been reevaluating what I want and why I want it. I have always loved writing. To me, turning what I loved into a career seemed like a no-brainer, but now, I can see that I always hesitated. I took a detour and went to school for music instead of just getting an Associate in the Arts (with the goal of transferring to a university to get my BA in English). Do you know what studying music for four years did for my passion for learning about and creating music? It utterly killed it. I had all the knowledge, but now I had no drive to create. I am only now starting to record little demos and play with concepts over a year later.

I can see now that I have been afraid of getting similarly burned out on writing. Yes, there is some element of being afraid that I am not a good enough writer to make a career in editing, publishing, and writing. Those fears are rather faint and distant; I am mostly confident in my writing ability. What I am seeing now, is that we live in a society that encourages us to monetize our passions, and that might not be healthy. On Adventures in Roommating, Meghan Tonjes and Keith Battista talked about being careful about making the thing you love into the thing you depend on to survive. I used to be perplexed about my youngest sister’s decision not to pursue culinary arts as a career, even though she loved it so much, but I can see that maybe she had a lot more wisdom than I do. Maybe we should hold our passions a little more sacred to ourselves. Maybe 2+ years of reading boring 1800s literature and churning out essay after soulless essay for picky English teachers just so I can have an English degree is not what I need to be doing. It doesn’t mean that I’ve “given up on my dreams”. Capitalism will extract value from you in any way that it can, but you can say, “No, this is mine.”

So many amazing writers majored in things other than English. So many English majors started off in other fields. Po Bronson, author of What Should I Do with My Life?, was told by teachers that his writing was so poor that he would never succeed as a writer. His proficiencies were in math and science. My own English teacher— one of the best teachers I have ever had—started off as a pharmacy tech.

My “back-up” plan if I was not able to succeed in writing, editing, publishing, or journalism, was to go to school and get my Master’s in Library Science. Working in libraries is a happy medium for me. It is not my absolute favorite thing to do, but I like it enough that I would not mind working in or around libraries for the foreseeable future. Some people say that the library field is shrinking, but that is not the whole truth; libraries are evolving, and the people that work in them are needing to be more flexible and to have greater variety in their skillset. Being a school librarian also means being adept with media; a reference librarian might also assist with writing grants, ordering books, or budgeting. Jobs are largely becoming more automated, but people who work in libraries are often required to supervise these systems and make sure that everything is working smoothly.

Maybe that “back-up plan” would be a lot better as a “main plan.” There are plenty of library jobs that just require a Bachelor’s. There is great flexibility in what my Bachelor’s degree can be, so now I have to be like “what would complement my Master’s the most, but still be a ton of fun?” I might as well enjoy whatever I am studying, and to be honest, I do not always enjoy English classes. If you have a great teacher, the hard work always feels worthwhile, but a persnickety, nit-picking teacher can turn the experience into a living hell. I do not want to see my love for writing turn into hatred. Yes, it would be great to “be a writer”, but I already am. I do not need a degree to confer that title on to me. I would also just love to explore writing conventions on my own, take independent classes, and continue blogging. I want to network with other writers and see if we can spark off some new ideas.

I could even just be undeclared for a while (AUDIBLE GASP) and just see what speaks to me. I could go to a smaller school that is closer to me. Once the time comes, I can move where I want to move without feeling under pressure to move closer to campus. I can take my sweet time with classes. In fact, if I get a good enough job, they may just pay for me to get my Master’s and that would be lovely.

You can have it all and still be miserable; I think we millennials, who are wrought with anxiety, student debt, and underemployment understand that more than others. We have been fed this lie about working hard and “making it”, and we are utterly disenchanted with the status quo. We are always questioning our identities. We ask ourselves “Is this it?” and we are always looking for meaning and purpose in our lives.

My 20s are almost at a close, so my “quarter-life crisis” is going to need to wrap up soon. If I learned anything from my 20s, it is that so much can change, and that a lot of the things you worry about now will be non-issues down the line. Relationships of all types come and go and people and situations evolve and shift. In fact, you probably experience the most changes in your life in your 20s, and you are laying the foundation for who you will be down the line. Your brain is not even fully developed out of adolescence until you are 25. So, while you are considered an adult in the eyes of the law, there is a reason why you still engaged in a lot of childish bullshit in your early twenties. Not to mention that if you have a mental illness or experienced trauma as a child, you can become “developmentally arrested” (I don’t have a good specific source on this one sorry, but look up “arrested development psychology” and there will be lots of interesting articles.).

Look, growing up, or as we say, “adulting”, is very difficult. As more of us are staying home and/or still financially dependent on our parents or other family members, it is hard to truly feel like we own our own lives. Ultimately, though, we never know how things will change. We just need to keep exploring new opportunities. Don Estell said, “If it doesn’t work, try something different.” It may feel like you have tried everything, but the only other alternative is to give up. Don’t do that. Don’t relentlessly pursue achievement at the expense of your mental health, but do not lose hope. Take a break, dust yourself off, then get back out there.

You will find a way, I promise.

#release the outcome #detach from the outcome #living with anxiety #living with mental illness #struggling student #pivot #changing majors #changing directions #working for the library #volunteering #dropout #roommate pod #adventures in roommating #capitalism wants us to monetize our passions

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celticnoise · 4 years

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Another day, another waste of everyone’s time as yet another league reconstruction plan is floated on the back of tentative support and the wishes of a select few.

Why do I get the impression that a 14 team SPL, with the pie split between an additional two clubs, and on a permanent basis, is an idea that will die on the vine before Monday’s vote on it comes?

This whole thing is farcical. It continues to be about saving a handful of clubs.

Sympathy for the fate of these clubs seems to be still high, but the ruinous behaviour of one of them in particular – said club being Hearts – has all but doomed the whole endeavour.

This will be the fourth attempt at league reconstruction in the course of the summer.

Three have been roundly defeated already.

Neil Doncaster talks optimistically about the fourth, but I really don’t think there’s much chance of it.

There seems no reason to support this proposal when none of the others was deemed worthy of it … so why won’t this die?

There are two reasons I think; the first is that the SPL fears Hearts and their legal threat.

This is pretty weak, but we’re dealing with an organisation that has not yet run Stewart Robertson out of his seat on their executive, and which has not yet brought Sevco and its board up on charges of bringing the game into disrepute. I find it incomprehensible.

The second reason is that some of the members on that board are legacy shopping.

Nobody has been able to tell me what good it will do clubs facing debts and imminent administration to re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic like this.

Clubs who are in the top flight might get some protection from the virtual season ticket scheme, but below that there’s none and the act of putting on games and paying footballers with no money coming in … it’s a non-starter.

But SPFL executives know that if they can get through some form of reconstruction, when the leagues and clubs have resisted it for years, they’ll have a feather in their caps and they’ll be able to say “look, we did something!”

Even if that “something” doesn’t make much difference, except to the small handful of clubs who will derive some benefit from it.

League reconstruction appears to be a beloved cause for members of the media too; I find some of their support for it to be absolutely barmy, and inconsistent with what some of them have been writing for years. How many times have you read them say that Scotland already has too many clubs?

These proposals will elevate two extra Championship sides to the SPL and two others to the bottom tier of the game.

So a crisis which threatens to kill some clubs stone dead if they are made to play in front of empty stands is, instead, going to conjure up the perverse outcome of increasing the number of teams in our professional ranks instead?

Who believes this ludicrous nonsense? Who thinks it’s actually a good idea?

The people pushing this scenario are out of their minds. The bottom two tiers in the game would be better shutting down for a season entirely; instead these changes will make that impossible, even if it’s what some of the clubs believe they should do, and will perhaps need to.

If football in Scotland restarts, at every level, with things as they are there are teams who will not see the end of the campaign.

That’s as certain as anything can be.

The SPFL says that this proposal should gain support because it will be permanent, unlike some of the temporary solutions which have been mooted.

I very much doubt that they’ll be able to guarantee that it’s lasting if clubs end up going to the wall.

The whole thing has become a farce.

Monday is supposed to be D-Day.

If clubs vote this down then the idea is dead for the summer.

I bet a lot of clubs wish it was.

To me, this has become the hydra; cut off one head and another two grow out of the stump.

Nobody can kill this thing, not forever.

As Scottish football goes through the current crisis it is important to keep up with developments and the key issues. We are determined to do so, and to keep you informed as well. Please subscribe to the blog.

https://ift.tt/30yYSuk

#CelticNoise #Celtic #CelticFC #TheCelticBlog #News

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vsplusonline · 4 years

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Coronavirus: New York City posts sharp spike in deaths after untested victims added

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/coronavirus-new-york-city-posts-sharp-spike-in-deaths-after-untested-victims-added/

Coronavirus: New York City posts sharp spike in deaths after untested victims added

New York City, the hardest hit US city in the coronavirus pandemic, revised its official Covid-19 death toll sharply higher to more than 10,000 on Tuesday, to include victims presumed to have perished from the lung disease but never tested.

The new cumulative figure for “confirmed and probable Covid-19 deaths” released by the New York City Health Department marked a staggering increase of over 3,700 deaths formally attributed to the highly contagious illness since March 11.

The 60 per cent spike in reported deaths underscored the enormous losses endured in the nation’s most populous city, where the sounds of wailing sirens have echoed almost non-stop through largely empty streets for weeks.

The city’s revised count, 10,367 in all, raised the number of coronavirus deaths nationwide to more than 28,300 – New York accounting for the biggest share of deaths.

With only a tiny fraction of the US population tested for novel coronavirus, the number of known infections climbed to more than 600,000 as of Tuesday, according to a running Reuters tally.

US public health authorities have generally only attributed deaths to COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, when patients tested positive for the virus.

New York City’s Health Department said it will now also count any fatality deemed a “probable” coronavirus death, defined as a victim whose “death certificate lists as a cause of death ‘COVID-19’ or an equivalent.”

March 11 was used as the starting point because that was the date of the first confirmed coronavirus death, the city said.

“Behind every death is a friend, a family member, a loved on,” said Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot. “We are focused on ensuring that every New Yorker who died because of Covid-19 gets counted.”

The new approach in New York City could pave the way for similar policies elsewhere across the country, possibly leading to a surge in reported U.S. coronavirus mortality.

Even before Tuesday’s revision in New York City, the number of new US deaths on Tuesday had reached at least 2,228, the highest toll yet in a single 24-hour period.

‘NOT A COMFORTABLE PLACE’

Louisiana, another coronavirus hot spot, and California also reported record daily spikes in deaths on Tuesday, despite tentative signs across the country in recent days the outbreak was beginning to ebb.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, whose state’s healthcare network was strained to breaking point by a wave of Covid-19 hospitalizations, had said on Monday it appeared “the worst is over.”

Health officials have cautioned that death figures are a lagging indicator of the outbreak, coming after the most severely ill patients fall sick, and do not mean stay-at-home restrictions are failing to curb transmissions.

New York state and some other hard-hit areas continue to report sharp decreases in hospitalizations and numbers of patients on ventilators, although front-line healthcare workers and resources remained under extraordinary stress.

“The plateau is not a very comfortable place to live,” David Reich, president of New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, said in a telephone interview. “So I don’t think people should be celebrating prematurely.”

That cautious note was also sounded by President Donald Trump’s top infectious disease adviser, Dr Anthony Fauci, who said Trump’s May 1 target for restarting the economy was “overly optimistic”.

Fauci, echoing many governors, said in an Associated Press interview that health officials must first be able to test for the virus quickly, isolate new cases and track down new infections.

At his daily White House briefing later in the day, Trump said he was close to completing a plan for ending America’s coronavirus shutdown, which has thrown millions out of work and may forge ahead with restarting the battered U.S. economy in some parts of the country even before May 1.

The president took renewed aim at the World Health Organization at the briefing, saying he has instructed his administration to halt U.S. funding to the Geneva-based institution over its handling of the pandemic.

MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY

Trump, a Republican who before the outbreak touted a vibrant economy as a pillar of his Nov. 3 re-election bid, earlier lashed out at Democratic state governors, after Cuomo said he would refuse any presidential order to reopen the economy too soon.

“Tell the Democrat Governors that ‘Mutiny On The Bounty’ was one of my all-time favourite movies,” Donald Trump wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, referring to a classic film about an 18th-century rebellion against the commanding officer of a British naval vessel.

But Donald Trump toned down his remarks at the White House briefing saying he would “authorize” governors – despite doubts from some experts that the presidency has such powers – to implement plans in their states at the appropriate time.

Cuomo, a Democrat, and governors of six other northeastern states have announced they are coordinating on a regional plan to gradually lift restrictions. The governors of California, Oregon and Washington formed a similar West Coast regional pact.

California Governor Gavin Newsom and Oregon Governor Kate Brown, both Democrats, on Tuesday, offered frameworks for eventually restarting public life and business in their states.

Some Republicans, including the governors of Ohio, Maryland and New Hampshire, also said states have the right to decide when and how to reopen.

IndiaToday.in has plenty of useful resources that can help you better understand the coronavirus pandemic and protect yourself. Read our comprehensive guide (with information on how the virus spreads, precautions and symptoms), watch an expert debunk myths, check out our data analysis of cases in India, and access our dedicated coronavirus page. Get the latest updates on our live blog.

Get real-time alerts and all the news on your phone with the all-new India Today app. Download from

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trustafarian-theserialfiction · 4 years

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“trustafarian” part 14: you meet girl, you move in, she go March 22, 2016 1:17 pm

Just under four months: that was the safe decompression time in his mother’s head? Four months and it was the incoming call alert he’d been dreading. He’d accidentally gone online on skype when he’d restarted his laptop and it had automatically detected the hidden wifi network before he could close the auto-starting messenger. "Why don’t you ever call, I know your service provider does free long distance within Canada, now.” Looked that up did you? “Well that’s all right, you’ve probably been busy looking for a job out there—have you tried applying for a job at a bank? There are so many banks and you can really climb the corporate ladder starting in a bank. You know Sharon Mitchell?” Dan did, his parents drank wine every new year at Sharon Mitchell’s house. They never saw her except at these parties. He and his sisters had had to go to their grandparents place for new year’s, to be kept out of trouble (right until he’d moved out), because it wasn’t really a everyone-bring-your-kids kind of soiree and Sharon Mitchell’s kids didn’t attend either. “Her daughter just graduated highschool and she’s been promoted at her after-school teller job to a desk job talking people through their insurance. She could end up as a bank manager or…oh I don’t know, it’s just something to think about.” It’s just something you think about. “You know, I’m glad you’re not…I’m glad you made this change in your life,” I didn’t make this change. “I know you’re not planning on going back to school but you should really consider it, you could pay off a student loan in a few years. You’re so smart, Daniel,” no, I’m not “you could do anything you want,” as long as it’s something-to-say at new year’s, about your perfect year and perfect family and life and how well everything is going for everyone close to you because of your own phony perfection, “and I just think you’d do better in the academic stream than you think.” She was starting to slip, her Betty Crocker buoyancy was turning into irritation. He guessed he was making a sour face at her that translated despite the video quality. He was sitting in the empty kitchen, his laptop next to the bowl of crumble he’d found left for him on top of it when he’d come upstairs a few minutes ago. He really wanted to eat it and wished he hadn’t opened the laptop to watch youtube while he did. “Look at your sisters, they’ve both been published, even though they’re in the private sector now,” sure, published, whatever the hell that means. Blog posts were a kind of publishing, who cared. “Don’t get me wrong! I never wanted to be a trail-blazer either, I know exactly how you feel.” Fuck you. “The pressure is—well. But I’m so worried about you,” all in her glazed-ham blissed-out Martha-Stewart-doing-a-séance voice, the one she'd learned to say all her phoniest passive aggressive shit in, "you don’t have any savings, Daniel, and you're getting on towards 30. It’s time to grow up." It’s time to hang up, he yelled silently at her and himself. But he laughed and told her he loved her and asked her not to worry so much and told her about how Jean-Paul was doing, although not much about what Jean-Paul was doing, because she thought the little rich boy she’d met ten years ago had been so refined and polite and upwardly-mobile and so obviously socially desirable for both her and her son—except that Jean-Paul’s mother had never had the time (or interest, probably) in responding to his mother’s “our sons are friends and I was thinking we might meet for coffee sometime and get to know one another” (because I hear you’re a respected legal expert and that’s so distinguished sounding and I don’t have one of those for floating the canapé tray to at my occasional dinner parties yet) emails. It was a pleasure, in a way, that he and Jean-Paul were in exactly the same place these days, from her point of view. Neither of them worked at a bank, quelle tragédie. They both lived somewhere she would never get a slow, panning view of. His mother had never liked his ex’s mother, either, for similar reasons.

After the call—during which he’d asserted that his cell contract didn’t have a clause for “magically update to include new policies in new area codes,” and no, this call hadn’t been free because they were on a fixed-rate low-monthly-data plan with crazy overage and add-on fees (he lied), and could she please stick to emails—Dan returned to his bed and lay there feeling worse than he had in weeks, maybe a month. He’d been lying about the long-distance, actually—he’d looked into it online about a week prior and found out where to change numbers and contracts with his provider after moving, which he hadn’t done yet and didn’t really want to at this point. What was the point of paying for it to have call-in or a data plan, he didn’t want calls and he didn’t need data. He had wifi. And he couldn’t afford anything else really because he had no income, even though Torontonians seemed to get better plan options and prices than Islanders. More carriers meant more undercutting prices but it was also an exhausting amount of information with very minor differences to track before figuring out the least screwjobiest option. He’d given up; by the time he wanted or needed a more functional phone, all the plan details would be different again, half the companies would be rebranded. There was a lot about Toronto that made it seem like the future. Futuristic. He was glad he wasn’t in the past, where it was time to be a banker. Grow up and do what? Get what job? He was still replaying the conversation with his mom, before complaining that he hadn’t called, and before she’d started bringing up job-hunting more pointedly, she’d been saying "we'd pay for you to go to trade school while you’re out there, there are so many options for you, Zoe's son is getting work using his welding certification out in Alberta right now," the way she talked drove him nuts, like she wanted particular words to stick in his head, like someone telling a kid how not to get lost. Dan remembered his mother's friend Zoe’s son--he’d eaten twelve grams of mushrooms at a grade twelve grad pre-party the night he accidentally met his birth-dad at a rave in Nanaimo. Dan had been at the pre-party and heard about the rave later via facebook posts; his ex hadn’t wanted to go, she’s said it sounded like it’d be a tent full of juggalos. Turned out it was true about the guy being Zoe’s kid’s birth-dad. Zoe was a yogamom who had remarried some insurance lawyer friend of Dan’s dad when her kid was in diapers, and he hadn't been old enough to wonder whether the guy in the pictures was actually dead or just presumed dead, until he'd met him. So that guy was working on some rig in Alberta now, and Dan was supposed to follow his good example apparently, except that Dan knew via facebook what his mother apparently didn't know or didn’t think was important, which was that Zoe’s son hated it there and regretted the career path he was now committed to by the mortgage he was paying off on his dream home in the Okanagan. He liked kiteboarding and scenery a lot. Wanted to retire and kiteboard and look at scenery. Four months was the leeway, Dan thought. And here we are again in bullshitville. Or at least, it had astralprojected its way east too vividly for him to not be transported fully in turn, back to bullshitville. He tried to clear his mind for a while until it occurred to him that a change of topic was better than pushing a topic away without a distraction from it. He started thinking about what he was actually going to do with the spring since he didn’t intend on trying to spit-shine his way into a job he couldn’t stand and wasn’t qualified for.

The days were getting longer, but it didn’t feel like spring to him. Earlier in the month it might as well have been summer already for a few days and now it was winter again—to be fair, the last couple years there’d been an end of March cold snap on the coast, too, with a day or so of snow. But when it snowed out west it was somehow warmer then than during the usual winter rain, no matter how low the temperature said. Here, though, it still felt like a sharp bite on the ass from an ice sculpture every snowy evening. That was why, presumably, Bruce wasn’t sure it wouldn’t snow again this year and hadn’t started gardening; he’d said it always snowed on April Fools now, which he liked, for some inane reason. It didn’t seem wildly funny to Dad for there to be snow on any day in April. Today it seemed possible there could be snow in a week; was all weird outside, murky and kind of opaque, unlike the past few days. Overall the weather this month had been a return to form for Toronto sunshine-wise, in Dan’s eyes, and it had been seriously buoying his spirits. Although, he also suspected that the prematurely summery feeling that had made him mourn not having a patio beer, had contributed to his prematurely summerbreaky approach to working on music for Thuh Dope Show. Interrupted from his deeply concentrated considerations of the weather, he heard and felt a jumbling thumpriff begin as some someones came in the side entrance by Jean-Paul’s place and started up the stairs. He planned to ignore it, whoever it was, and thought about the crumble he’d brought down to his room, now sitting on the bowed top of his suitcase waiting for his appetite to not be ruined. His appetite felt unruined now, in fact.

He got a nasty shock when a curtain of braided hair attached to a pretty face appeared like the face in snow white’s step mom’s mirror in the portal above him. “Thinger Minge,” Andreah greeted him.

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He was still in bed hours later, thinking about how much he didn’t want to get up. Andreah had come over with Andre and stuck her head down into his room, and he’d been confronted with an outside eye on his sleeping situation—and his spending-all-day-in-an-ugly-pit-in-bed situation, which had been kind of awful for Dan. He was thankful it never happened ordinarily, but less thankful for that than he was for Andreah bothering at all. She and Andre were bringing back the bowls and cutlery from the park, where he guessed Andreah had met up with Andre and Jean-Paul and had crumble. He’d eaten his own ladling of it after she’d shot the shit with him a few minutes from his ceiling. She said he looked like a little doll in a shoebox. She thinks I’m cute, he heard claymated Rudolph nasally cheer in his head, as he lay there reconsidering her description. He got his phone out and opened facebook messenger, and looked her up using the name she’d told him, a TOS-violating pseudonym, of course. Her userimage was a black square, of course. He had no idea what to say. A witty, sexy, really fun type of thing to start a chat with, was not jumping into his noggin. He tried “you looked nice today” but deleted it after seeing it typed out.

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Andre came back the next day with a thick, queen-sized fleece blanket for him. There was a starry night scene of wolves on it—coming from Andreah it seemed different than it would have from someone else, like there was more to it than just circumstantial selection, because maybe wolves were a thing for her culturally or something. That seemed like kind of a woefully uninformed thought, and Dan figured he’d keep it to himself in case it was. He appreciated the gesture; the blanket was warm and kind of heavenly, and he wished he’d had it all along. He wished he’d had it when he was sick, or one better, when he was passed out drunk with a low body temperature the night he’d gotten sick in the first place. He felt drowsier under the wolf blanket, like it had a magically charged force-field of cuddliness and security—a scaled-for-size baby-blanket was how it struck him, like he hadn’t felt so truly swaddled by one textile since the crib. He wiggled slightly in the cocoon he’d made, enjoying having his feet bare and trying to wiggle out of the imaginary second-skin of resentment he’d felt crawling under his flesh ever since being skyped unawares the previous day. Things were good. Looking up and up, even. Here he was in this big room with this big blanket, not a care in the world. Holding on to that feeling of weightless satisfaction as uncrushingly as he could, he felt himself slowly doze off, and had a last conscious sense like it was going to be the most restful sleep he could remember.

He dreamed about Andreah, about the two of them hooking up again. It’d all been fun and fond, but then they were having a talk about how Dan wasn’t sure exactly where Andreah saw things going, because her old answer wasn’t appealing enough to be sure she’d meant it. And she was angry at him, she shoved him and he thought she might just vanish out of thin air, which made sense in the dream, although he thought he was awake. She told him again that she saw things going no deeper, barring some miraculous shift in his whole attitude towards sex and dating and life in general. She told him it was a problem that he and Andre didn’t get along, which was so confusing and frustrating that he sort of halfway woke up, and feeling it happen, he swam back down into the dream to try to finish it, maybe go back to the sex part.

Awake again, having jerked off to pleasant effect, he was actually concerned that if he saw Andreah more often, he’d feel like he was performing a relationship, for her, because that was how being around his ex all the time had felt. He found himself worrying for the first time that he was so habituated to resentfully caving to some projected pressure rather than acting on whim, that he’d feel that way in another relationship even when the reality was there was no pressure, no caving, no resentment. It sort of had a foresight kind of a feeling, or it was somehow linked in his mind to what she’d been saying in the dream, about his attitude; he could envision that she would start to take on a skewed persona in his mind—more ordinary, less companionable, less fun, more annoying. Schoolmarmish, somehow. He’d realized several years ago that girls who wanted to be in relationships were people who didn’t appear, to him, to have or feel the need for lives apart from managing their partners behaviour, and in that way dating them was an inescapable emotional burden, like having really nagging parents or some kind of nanny. Someone like Andreah, who didn’t need his company, who had her own schedule, friends and life, basically unentangled with his life, seemed more like his ex’s ideal self than her actual self—someone aloof until approached, un-needy of his time or attention. But willing to spend her time and attention on him, all the same, with the sole aim of improving his mood. That was desirable company. And it would stay that way the less of it he tried to monopolize. The less of it he successfully monopolized, anyway.

The train of thought coupled with some noises above him brought him to thinking about Andre, who might have still been upstairs. He dug earbuds out of his suitcase and started an episode of Bruce’s show playing on his phone, not really listening but wanting to block out the sort of aggravating vague sounds of people upstairs.

Andre seemed like neither type of girl, not giving or needing, just a person who didn’t want to be around him and didn’t seem to really like being around him, less than an emotional burden or bolster: a minor sink. He thought about the rest of the household; in highschool and now, Jean-Paul had been someone who didn’t even slightly come across as needing him but was willing and pleased enough to be friends anyway. Dan had never really craved friendship until middle-school had burnt him out on his peer group, and his sister who was second oldest had been willing to attach him to the periphery of her social life because he was just starting highschool and she was finishing and it apparently made her more magnanimous than she’d been about being in the same elementary school; in hindsight he saw himself as an accessory. Little brother, tiny Tim. Charity. So, he’d wanted his own friend who didn’t treat him like an afterthought, or a friend-circle nepotism case, and Jean-Paul was a person who had wanted to be friends with just him, not the people his sister knew, although they all went to see his band play community centre showcases and basement gigs. Jean-Paul was a person whose company Dan had truly enjoyed, also, which he probably hadn’t encountered before because he didn’t remember a previous time of having that feeling. Jean-Paul was a person he’d been proud to be friends with, too; he’d actually felt inspired by Jean-Paul as a person, when they’d first met. He wasn’t sure he felt as drawn to him now as then, or even as he had in January, but the feeling was still there, when he really thought about it. Why didn’t he ever try to spend any time with his friend who he liked so much? But that question brought him back to what he’d been thinking about Andreah; it was becoming obvious to Dan that being able to approach people according to his own schedule was important. People weren’t appealing if they didn’t appear to have an existence strictly independent of him, or if they seemed to need anything from him.

Bruce, he supposed, also fit the bill of friend-appeal. Bruce had a peculiar vibe all his own, in Dan’s musings just then—he wasn’t quite someone Dan went out of his way to spend time around or would specifically think to spend time around, but he’d found himself enjoying Bruce’s company each time they saw one another. Bruce’s relationship with Andre was still something of a mystery; he could easily picture them platonically spooning on nights Andre stayed over, or in a tangle of tantric debauchery halfway-on and halfway-off the couch he’d sat on the first time he’d seen the back rooms. That couch seemed suspiciously easy to clean, now that he thought about it. Probably a lot of their old furniture was salvaged because it wasn’t textile, ergo easier to delouse, but was curbed because of some event that had wiped off the upholstery fine but also ruined the unit itself somehow.

Shaking out the flesh-flower image of Bruce and Andre tying in knots, he reminded himself that his grasp of the sexual identities at play was flimsy at best—he frequently failed to see anything straight about Bruce, but there wasn’t anything particularly gay about him either. He mostly acted like a six year old. Mouse, he realized, wouldn’t have caused him to think twice except for his social group and his inherent out-of-step-with-everythingness. Pete was straight, or at least, dated girls, by popular report, and Mouse and Pete were tight, but what did that mean about Mouse, was that an indication he was or wasn’t gay? He seemed to have a radar that let him avoid being around at the same time as Andre but if Dan had been in the same scene as her for years he might have moved in the same direction, on that front. He wondered if Jean-Paul’s sexual identity and line of work were any evidence one way or the other about the house population as a whole; hadn’t Alice come up in that context, when he was high on Bru-brew and Jean-Paul had told him about being an “independent male escort”—he couldn’t really remember that part at the moment. That whole conversation hadn’t processed entirely, he could feel himself sort of behold the memory of it as a whole and it was hazy, hard to make sense of. He decided to divert around it and get back to essentially kinsey-scoring everyone he knew in Toronto, since it was pretty diverting.

Andre, who he had a more confirmed read on than the others, wasn’t an outlier to the not-straight trend, though Dan wasn’t willing to bet that she’d ever actually dated another woman since apparently she and Andreah weren’t dating like how she and Bruce weren’t dating. He didn’t think he knew any girls-who-liked-girls who actually had long-term committed relationships with each other. Maybe Andreah did, or had, but like she’d said, not with girls like Andre. Too white-acting. Even Andreah herself seemed to be too white-acting for Andreah. White-sounding, whatever. Maybe part of it was that she didn’t like girly-girls; she’d been willing enough to get casual for a night with him. Maybe she liked being the girl but, with a girl. A mental image appeared, of Andre styled like one of the obvious butches he’d seen while walking through pride celebrations downtown one summer or the couple times Winks And Grins had showcased at Paparazzi. His ex had basically only gotten bookings for them by offering to take an hourly off the door cover. It didn’t seem to get them more shows and it definitely had never made them money. She seemed to think it would grow them some hype but Dan suspected it did the opposite and made them seem unprofessional and desperate, which, frankly, was close to being exactly what they were. Unprofessional for sure. Desperate for exposure, okay. She had been, at least. He hadn’t really cared. They’d never had any income worth declaring from these shows, otherwise they might have wanted to figure out how to legitimize the revenue up, like Jean-Paul had been saying the other night. Seemed like “legal consulting” ran in the family as well, after all.

He realized he was roaringly hungry, then. It occurred to him to message Andreah or walk down to Higher Grounds in time for maybe a lunch break, but in the spirit of avoiding over-affiliation that might murky up their relationship waters too soon after the blanket—and the dream—he decided to head upstairs and eat something from the fridge. There’d been a recent gold medal dive, he knew, at a Portuguese bakery nearer to Andreah and Andre’s place. She had told him the other day when they’d chatted and when Andre had shown up with the blanket she’d said there was a box of custard tarts for them all. He thought about hanging around to eat upstairs, but the idea of the others and spending time with them was deflating, and he resolved to eat grab food and come right back, possibly to do some more music work. He pulled out the earbuds, cutting off Toichiro’s fey-sounding line of banter mid-bant. There were definitely still people upstairs. Dan climbed the ladder into the upstairs hearing a conversation as it came into view—Andre was hanging off Bruce seeming kind of zoned out and dead-eyed the way she'd been the last time he'd seen her but more upset, and Bruce was saying something about feminism, and Mouse was upset already but Bruce was keeping it chill, and he was asking “...so what if you get misconstrued, man, you’ve got feminist values, and one really positive feminist value is to align yourself with something after looking at yourself and looking at it and seeing how you need to side with the non-dominant force to help it survive, otherwise it might not survive and then your reality is a little dimmer!”

By the end he’d gotten an annoying edge to his voice and the whole scene was kind of fucking ugly in its makeup somehow, more singularly than usual—and Dan said “Jesus fucking Christ” out loud, and Bruce looking over at him sticking halfway out of the hole in the floor and laughed and looked kind of sympathetic, which Dan guessed was because Bruce knew Mouse was at the breaking point for whatever deeply tormenting person code he had about people ‘misconstruing’ him, and was about to flip his shit. Mouse flailed in his direction and flipped the longboard they had used as a table, starting to scream something in Russian at him. It was actually terrifying, the little guy looked like his head was about to pop off. Dan slid back down through the hole and went to sleep with his earbuds in, hungry.

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licencedtoretire · 4 years

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Time to move on from Bulmers Landing. Not because we had too instead, we were keen to continue exploring the area. The road map shows a couple of possible routes alongside the Waikato river one closer than the other. Deciding to hug the river on the narrower backcountry road, we found ourselves almost alone on the fabulous scenic road. I say practically alone because despite there being no other cars, there were numerous cyclists.

We did wonder where all these cyclists had appeared from and where they were all heading. It wasn’t until later on this trip, when we got to Mangakino, that we found out they were riding the 2020 Tour Aotearoa. This is a 3000-kilometre cycle ride from Cape Reinga to Bluff following most major cycle trails as well as lots of back roads. There are over 1000 cyclists taking part with the ride needing to be completed within 30 days. Start days are staggered to prevent too many cyclists on the road in one place at one time, but it still seemed like a lot to us. If you would like to find out more or maybe even take part next year, you can visit their website here.

As we progressed along the road, we arrived at the turnoff for the Arohena DOC Camp. In the back of my mind, I remembered reading about a rather narrow access road. That’s never stopped us before and wasn’t going to stop us this time either. My memory was correct, it is a rather narrow access road, but thankfully we met nothing coming the other way. What the reviews neglected to mention is that to get down to the camp, there is a reasonably steep hill to drive down. That probably wouldn’t be too much of a problem if there weren’t two hairpin bends on the hill. I was closely observing the back of the motorhome in the mirrors as we negotiated these bends. At 9 metres long we are probably the maximum length for these corners.

We made it to the bottom of the hill. Where we couldn’t quite shake the worry that we would need to make it back up the hill rounding those corners again to exit the camp. But that would be a worry for the next day when it would be time to leave. Much better to not let these things bother you when there was a charming DOC camp to enjoy.

The campground is massive with a technical limit of 50 unpowered sites. I would, however, imagine that in the height of summer quite a few more would squeeze in here. On the day we visited we had our choice of spots with only a few other campers here.

There are two primary levels to the campground, with us choosing one on the upper level affording some great views over the lake. An interesting feature of this place is way areas have been divided by massive bollards. These are quite a distance apart and would allow for multiple campers between them. We wondered if the reason for these was to prevent “boy racers” tearing up the ground when the camp was empty.

Will my usual efficiency, I neglected to take any photos of some vital infrastructure in the camp. On-site are some really modern, well maintained, clean toilets along with a decent cooking shelter for those staying in tents. There is water here but on a boil water notice and only 2 taps that we could find.

Even though I was blocking out thinking about our return journey back up the hill, Sarah was still concerned. So much so that she tried to convince me to take a walk up the hill to inspect our return journey. Thanks to my lymphoma, I have a lung condition that makes this sort of thing difficult, so I declined to accompany her. The following day I would realise what a mistake this was, more about this later. Anyway, she took several photos of the road, the corners plus this one of the motorhome looking tiny parked up at the campground.

We spent a very relaxing time here wandering around the camp and just sitting watching the world go bye. As you can see from the few photos I have published this camp has plenty of space for some decent R&R and is well worth a visit.

I decided against a swim in the river whereas Sarah was in and out 3 or 4 times cooling down on a sweltering day. She assured me that the water was “lovely”, but I remained unconvinced.

You can see in this photo that there are fireplaces here. You are allowed to use them under normal circumstances except there is currently a total fire ban. Just bring your own wood next time and away you go.

The following morning it was time to brave the steep hill and depart the camp. Not having walked the route the previous day I wanted to get up the hill, slow and steady, but not so fast that I would have difficulty getting around the first hairpin bend. We almost made it with the motorhome running out of puff only a metre or so from the top. But as they say, a miss is as good as a mile. I backed down slightly and tried to restart, but the tyres only chewed up the road surface. The big problem here is that the steepness of the road increases just before the corner. A real momentum killer.

Sarah and I had a discussion deciding that I would back down the hill, then walk back up so we could plan a better exit strategy. Huffing and puffing I walked back up where we looked at the corner. We both realised that actually, I didn’t need to get around the corner I could drive onto grass beyond. This would then enable a new start at the second corner. Sarah stayed at the top of the hill to watch for oncoming traffic.

Back at the bottom of the hill, and back in the van, I got out my lead-weighted boots and pressed the accelerator of the motorhome to the floor. Rocketing up the hill (Imagine, Bat of hell by Meatloaf at full volume in the background.) was somewhat unnerving, slightly worried about bouncing sideways and then down the cliff. In a cloud of dust, I blew past Sarah and stopped on the grass verge. Part one – Mission accomplished.

Still shaking somewhat I got out to rejoin Sarah and have a look at the next hill/corner we would have to surmount to leave the camp. We again wandered up the road to inspect the corner noting that this time there wasn’t a big run-off area. There was however a bit of swing leeway onto the grass that I hadn’t noticed the previous day.

So once again, Sarah stayed at the top, and I walked back to the motorhome. The lead-weighted boots certainly did their stuff with me rocketing around the second corner and onto the road back to civilisation. When Sarah joined me in the van, she relayed how my left front wheel became airborne as I rounded the corner. She wished she could have taken photos of her mad husband playing rally driver with the motorhome.

This story might set off a debate about the benefits of rear-wheel drive over front-drive. Maybe in this situation, they may be correct. I do, however, believe that any motorhome of 9 metres or more would struggle with these corners. The traction control on the Fiat definitely helped, especially when one of the front wheels became airborne. We have only ever been truly stuck twice in 30,000 km’s. One of those times it wouldn’t have mattered what we were driving so I don’t mind that we are driving a front-drive, in fact, I am very happy with it.

Anyway, it all add’s to the fun as well as giving me something to write about. I should also mention that it wasn’t just us with problems a few campers leaving in cars could be heard wheel spinning as they tried to leave the camp. Another camper with a trailer told me he started his run from the lake getting up enough speed to get around the corners.

I don’t know what we would have done if we hadn’t made it. With no phone signal to call anyone for help, it could have been interesting. Maybe we could just have waited for a 4WD to arrive and then asked for their assistance. Although without a tow rope in the van that could have been interesting as well. Something we now need to go out and buy.

Just one final point if like us you have a long low slung motorhome don’t try to turn right back on to the main road. The camber of the road is such that you will get stuck, we almost did. So turn left then reverse into the driveway next door and then accelerate away 😀😀😀

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What Goes Down Might Not Come Up Time to move on from Bulmers Landing. Not because we had too instead, we were keen to continue exploring the area.

#campervan blog New Zealand #campervan holiday New Zealand #Doc camps #Motorhome Blog New Zealand #Motorhome Holiday New Zealand #Rail trails

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