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10pm-cafe-lattes · 1 year

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hikaru nara; if it shines

in which the project sekai stars are beginning to make waves- and their fans are letting them know. (VBS and nightcord edition)

alternatively, the fic where i sit VBS and nightcord down and make them look at nice comments about their work.

Vivid BAD SQUAD - ready steady

It starts when Akito gets home from a show. It’s not much, a normal show, but he gets home a little later than usual and catches Ena closing the fridge door.

That is where it starts- Ena looks him up and down, and says, “You did another show, didn’t you? Honestly, you should stream them online or something. Once the show finishes, it’s gone forever.”

She closes the fridge and heads back to her room. Akito considers her suggestion.

Days later, new accounts are created for the band- one on a video platform, and one on a social media site, just for kicks. An and Kohane both on-board with the idea, and Toya going along with it; Kohane smiles and says that she can finally show her parents and her friends their shows, while An grins and cheers about how this will document their rise to stardom. Toya smiles a little, and tells Akito that he thinks it’s a good idea.

Months later, the group of four is gathered in their Sekai, a common occurence. Meiko is brewing coffee and making drinks, Kaito and Luka off somewhere, and Rin, Len and Miku crowding around, listening to them talk about their experiences.

When Kohane mentions that they’ve started uploading their shows, the Virtual Singers gasp, and the Kagamines begin demanding to see them. Toya taps at his phone and relinquishes it to Len, with Rin and Miku pressing in to watch the screen.

“You have a lot of comments,” Miku says, after the video finishes. An blinks at her, tilting her head, “You focus on that?”

“There’s a lot, though!” Rin defends, Len joining in, “Yeah! Have you ever read them?”

“Not really,” Akito says, “We usually just log in, upload, and log out.”

“Read them, then!”

like to claim your 'i was here before VBS became superstars' badge

I've seen them at vivid street before!!! They're even cooler in person

These kids are going to go far.

An looks at Kohane. Akito looks at Toya. None of them are quite sure how to feel, how to react. Because, well… these are actual people, taking the time to leave their thoughts. It’s one thing to turn up at a show and see people grinning, excited, and it’s an entirely different thing to sit in a cafe and see the thoughts and the feelings of strangers who somehow, someway, stumbled upon their music.

To the group of students with a dream that used to feel larger than life, it feels strangely personal. The Virtual Singers have fallen quiet, too- Len squeezes himself in-between Akito and Toya to look back and forth between their phones, Rin ducks under the table and pops up beside Kohane, and Miku pushes her way into the booth next to An.

Anyone else notice how the singer with the twin-tails always does this tiny hop-jump before she leaves the stage?? I think it's precious, she must be protected

the girl with blue hair has such a powerful voice and presence, she brings so much ENERGY to the shows i love it

Can we talk about their style please idk who their stylist is but I would like them to know you're doing great

i could listen to the blue-haired boy's voice for 24 hours and not get bored it's so soothing?? and then you pair it with the other boy's voice and i could listen to them for forever they're so GOOD and it's such a perfect match

OK LIKE I KNOW THIS IS STREET PUNK BUT CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW PRETTY AND MUSICAL IT IS???

how do they dance and sing like that,,,, i would die from exhaustion so quickly,,,,, i'm so impressed,,,

Kohane looks at the comments she sees- ones about how they love Kohane's singing, encourage her to keep going. How she works with An, when they sing together, manage the movement and the music and how every show seems to get even better.

An sees people who don't see her as idiotic, or just a girl chasing her dream. They chatter in excitement, talk about her energy, wonder just how far the band can go together. She sees them supporting her, the power she brings to the stage and to the band, how she and Kohane are perfectly in sync together.

Akito doesn't say anything as he scrolls through the comments and the thoughts, gazing at the people commenting. One or two of his acquaintances from the live house, cheering about how far he's managed to come since he was looking for a partner; complete strangers, who wish him all the best in going even further, compliment his style and his singing, the power and the emotion.

Toya, beside Akito, gazes quietly at what he sees- support, from people they don't know. Compliments about their voices, their teamwork, their energy. Some people he vaguely recognises the names of, from their shows as BAD DOGS and from before he met Akito, cheering them on and supporting them.

There's really not much to say. They all spend some time in silence looking at comments. Some of the more touching ones are screenshotted, saved away on phones; after awhile, the Virtual Singers pipe up- Rin and Len argue over which one of them should be allowed to DJ at the next show to make it even better, Miku and Meiko head back to make everyone drink refills, and Vivid BAD SQUAD exchanges small smiles.

It'll be a long road ahead, they all know it. But they'll be okay- they're not alone, not by a long shot.

Nightcord at 25:00 - composing the future

On some level, Mizuki knows that Nightcord at 25:00 posts their songs online, and obviously that means people will see the songs and react to them. On the other hand, it's not like any of them all care that much about the group's standing and performance, especially after everything with the Sekai, and Yuki, and Miku.

But when they're online early, and have nothing to do... well, what else are they supposed to do, huh? There's still about ten or so minutes until 1 am, and Mizuki has nothing to do (for once), so... they open up one of their videos, and begin scrolling.

Amia's style of editing is so cool... anyone know what program they use?

i love their music so much i hope nightcord knows that

I'm not sure if they'll see this, but if you do, I hope Enanan knows they're my biggest inspiration!

so anyway, in this essay i will explain why yuki is a lyrical genius and i hope they sleep well tonight-

K fanclub rise up where you at

"Oi, Amia, where are you? Even Yuki is here before you!"

Mizuki is dragged back into reality by Ena- and as they grin and tap their keyboard, they know what the day's session will consist of (or at the very least, what twenty or so minutes will).

"Missed me, Enanan?" Mizuki chirps, and they can practically see Ena roll her eyes as Mizuki keeps talking, launching right into it, "So you guys know how we post our videos online, which means people can see."

"Where is this going?" Kanade asks, confused, and Mizuki grins, "Oh, my dear sweet K. You didn't switch off the comments when you posted, so people have been leaving comments. Wanna see some?"

Mizuki's announcement is met with an eerie silence, before Mafuyu, of all people, breaks the quiet with a simple, "Show us."

There's no protest as Mizuki taps away, opening up a screen-share and heading up to the top of the page they were looking at, scrolling down slowly so they can see everything.

nightcord's songs always hit different, if you're seeing this nightcord i hope you know your music has helped me so much

Enanan is my favourite artist. They inspired me to start drawing, too!

i could listen to yuki's voice singing forever like the video if you agree

AMIA EDITING SUPREMACY

To be honest, Mizuki's never really clocked comments about them. They just brush it off and keep going, the things the people they walk past say. This, though, this is different- because these are people who don't know Akiyama Mizuki, they just know Amia. And they like it, the work Mizuki pours their effort into. It's nice to know that, they think. Amia and Mizuki have always been the same person, after all. It's nice to know that Mizuki can be seen.

Kanade has always focused on saving people, with her music. Her father's voice echoes in her head, and she's always worked non-stop on it- first just to save people, in general, and then to save Yuki. She's still working on it, but... maybe it's not hopeless. Not when strangers leave comments, thanking her for her songs and her music. Saying that she's helped them, in some small way. Maybe she will be able to save Yuki, save Mafuyu, after all.

Ena maybe, kind of, wanted to shoot down the idea of looking at the comments. But when Mafuyu, of all people, wanted to look at it... well, Ena would have been mean to shoot it down at that point. She didn't expect to see the support, the encouragement. The people who call her an artistic inspiration. Sometimes, Mizuki has good ideas. Ena can admit that much.

Mafuyu doesn't really know what to think. Why would she? But she doesn't hate this, looking through the comments with the rest of Nightcord- it's interesting to see how other people think. What other people think about the group, and the music, and the lyrics. She can classify this as an emotion, probably- maybe the rest of the group is right. She's not beyond saving, yet.

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nerdieforpedro · 2 months

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Angel in Disguise

Javier Peña x plus size female reader

This fic and blog are for readers 18+ MDNI

Word Count: a little over 1k

Summary: It's raining and it reminds you of your recent interactions with your best friend Javier Peña.

Warnings: unrequited love, angst, one person you work for should not drive, slight self-esteem issues?, possessiveness

Notes: I haven't posted anything for Javier Peña for a long time. I'm glad I was able to write something. This is one of two for @undercoverpena 's April Showers Challenge.

Main Masterlist/ Javier Peña Masterlist/ Writing Challenges Masterlist

Leaning against your desk, you’re looking out at another rainy day. Thankful that you keep a pair of rain boots in your office and at home. You’re thinking of last month and last week, how you’ve lied to Javier and yourself. It’s for the best though.

Large drops remain on the window as the sound of the water falling intensifies. Last month you had finally worked up the, well with a shot or two of liquid courage to tell him. Tell Javier Peña that “yeah, we’re friends Javi but I want more from you. Have wanted more from you. I could make you happy, because I know you. We know each other. I can give you something simple, a life together.” One of your favorite dresses, your deep violet one that had the open shoulders you liked. Pretty and not too sexy you felt, just right.

Nothing was right that night. He walked in with a woman you were pretty sure was at least ten years younger than him or maybe she had excellent skincare and always used sunscreen. His hand looked perfect on her waist and so did hers on his. He introduced her to you as his girlfriend of the last six months. You’d heard him mention someone but didn’t think it was the same person. Was she the one that had large mood swings? Javier would never admit it but you know he craves a bit of drama. Something you rarely have any of. Dinner was nice at the bar. She seemed nice. Neither of them stopped smiling nearly the entire night.

The only silver lining is that you live on a lower floor than Javier so you don’t hear that. You’d go insane if you heard them doing that. You’ve heard the rumors and have gotten the sense (though given your feelings you could be biased. Highly doubtful,) that most of them are true.

That night you went home by yourself, threw off your dress and flopped across the bed. You weren’t sure if the rain came down first or your tears but you do know that you cried yourself to sleep and woke up cold.

That was last month. Now they’ve been together for seven months.

This week at work you were legitimately busy given that the ambassador you work for has decided to drive drunk and hit a lamppost, damn idiot. Of course he wants to use his diplomatic immunity and the policia would like to make an example out of him. Negotiations are led by you as you represent the embassy. Javier was able to catch you one day, say hello, how are you and ask what you thought of Camilla. Her name is even pretty, like her. She was polite and complimented your dress that night. Nothing bad to say about the woman except she exists or is doing so next to Javi.

You lied right to your friend’s face and told him that you like her, she seemed very sweet, that you three should go out for drinks and that she’s beautiful. The last one wasn’t a lie, she was stunning. The rest of it you’re still unsure how you made it all drop from your mouth so easily. His eyes light up and Javier says something that is as honeyed as it is a stab, “I’m glad you like her. I was worried you might not and then I’d have to wonder if she’s really right for me. You’re the best ángel.” You think you smiled and gave him a hug before going back to dealing with the ambassador issue. It’s a blur. Getting back to your office and stopping yourself from yelling took priority over before getting back on the phone about this drunkard’s problem which is yours.

Finally into the next week, you’ve settled the dispute between the policia and the ambassador. He’s required to pay for the damage and a substantial amount of money to the city of Bogata with a suitable donation to the policía as well. You should have left a few hours ago, but then you might have run into Javier on your way out. You need to steady yourself before seeing him. ‘Just act like I did two months ago. It will be fine.’ That’s what you tell yourself but you know your body will betray you when you see him. You feel the melancholy and longing again.

The gray skies match your mood. Subdued. Drippy. Unsettled. Foreboding. Closing your eyes, you feel them fall against your cheek again, the tears rolling down. Twisting your body to reach for the tissue box you now keep on your desk, you pat your eyes to see Javier Peña in the middle of your office.

“Hey amiga, qué paso? (friend, what’s up?) You’re crying.” It’s kind that he asks, Javier is always kind. Before you can tell him you’re fine, he’s got an arm around you and kisses your forehead. “What’s wrong?” You won’t tell him why, he’s happy and you know he deserves it. Given the small pieces of how he came to be at the embassy. Broad strokes and rumors are what you know. Javier doesn’t talk about his time in Columbia or pursuing the Cali cartel. When it’s mentioned his face hardens, letting people know to change the subject.

“Just a tough day today, that's all Javi. Thanks.” Your head leans against his chest, breathing in his scent. Keeping your hands around the tissue you’d been dabbing your eyes with. A thought you immediately regret enters your mind:

Could she be an angel in disguise and leave him broken on a rainy day such as this? Maybe Javier would be standing out in the rain? Could you take him against your chest like he’s doing with you now?

No. It wouldn’t be the same. Javier is being a sincere friend to you right now. You would have an ulterior motive.

A few more tears fall across your cheeks as a gust of wind blows the rain loudly against your window. Even the sky is scolding you:

Leave that man be, you’re the angel in disguise.

Peeps who want a hug from Javier 😭:

@guelyury @yorksgirl @angelofsmalldeath-codeine @javierpena-inatacvest

@theywhowriteandknowthings @goodwithcheese @maggiemayhemnj @readingiskeepingmegoing @bitchwitch1981

@harriedandharassed @bishtrouille @schnarfer @katw474 @megamindsecretlair

@tinytinymenace @magpiepills @pedroshotwifey

#pedro pascal characters #javier pena fanfiction #pedro pascal fanfiction #pedro pascal #fanfiction #javier peña #javier pena x you #javier pena x plus size reader #undercoveraprilshowerschallenge

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starlostseungmin · 1 year

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it's so fun reading them! I hope u don't mind another one.

skz x moots as anime ships?? (if u do watch anime hehe)

anon i'm so sorry 😭 i barely watch anime but this is the best i can do, most of these are old movies/series tho. i hope could still answer this ask properly 🥺 but ngl i enjoyed this so much and thank you for letting me know that you enjoy them. ALSO TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU! 🫶🏻

@l3visbby x jeongin (weathering with you - hina x hodaka) : *cries* okay so, how do you like that someone would really fly to the clouds just to get you back from being taken?? jeongin can be a rebel sometimes and he do what he wants but when the moment he knew about ola, he'd be like "i protect" because hodaka did the same for hina.

@zoe8stay x chan (your name - mitsuha x taki) : the amount of love taki has for mitsuha that he really went to Itomori, only to find out that they're 3 years apart of time. *cries* but during that time they see each other on that mountain where chan would ask zoe's name but instead of writing his name on her hand, it said "i love you" *screaming intensifies*

@asters-abditory x changbin (fireworks - nazuma x norimichi) : ngl i have been planning to write something about this for changbin last year but i don't think it will never see the light of dawn aaaaa. but anyways let's look up to the plot where aster is kinda rebellious and changbin finding a magic ball just to have second chances and spend some time with them 😳

@cosmic-railwayxo x hyunjin (howl's moving castle - sophie x howl) : i don't need to explain how much howl suits hyunjin so much and i think the aesthetic of the movie fits perfectly for deni. magic and amazing friends, the moving castle that deni would explore whenever hyunjin is not around. and the way deni would take care of sick hyunjin, it would be so sweet. hsksksks

@seungly x seungmin (kaichou wa maid sama - misaki x takumi) : one of my favorites, i love how takumi would do everything for misaki. i bet seungmin would do the same for sunny because he's a sucker for her! and have you seen how he kissed her before jumping from the rooftop?

@comet-falls x minho (the wallflower - sunako x kyohei) : i can consider this as an enemies to lovers trope, a slow burn kinda type of anime. imagine living under the same roof with four hot men and honey will lose her mind over it. since the sunako loves horror too, honey is perfect for the role. and minho would be that rebellious male lead. this anime is so old, i need to rewatch it.

@lix-ables x felix (kimi ni todoke - sawako x shota) : okay this is anothe slow burn trope but even if they don't have feelings at first yet, just look at the bond and how thoughtful felix can be even if not everyone is warming up to kriss just yet.

@starseungs x han (your lie in april - kaori x kosei) : let's put a tradegy for you guys shall we? han's a pianist and cielle would be a violinist. they're a perfect match ok? too bad someone died in the end. hsksksk.

#🍒 ；anonie. ❜#✉️ ；mails. ❜#LOVE ；けいじ。❞

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clone-whore-99 · 2 years

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A Gonk To Remember

Gonky x gn!Reader

Warnings: Smutty mcsmutterson, MINORS STAY THE FUCK AWAY Smut with no plot

Authors note: No (✿◡‿◡)

It was so typical you. Really.

Here you had 5 strong, tall, handsome men, all fighting for your attention and affection and yet, none of them had the same effect on you as he did.

The way he walked, the way he talked, the way he seemed to always be of use for everything, the way his legs kicked the air as Wrecker used him for deadlifting.

Yup. You had fallen for Gonky. And you had fallen hard.

But there was nothing you could do. He was a droid and you were a human. A forbidden love.

Even then, you couldn't help but to lie at night, fantasizing about what could be between the two of you. How happy you could make each other. Stars, you were in deep.

The Havoc Marauder was laying low in the forest, while the squad was finishing the mission. You had been along with them yesterday, but had accidentally tripped and broken your ankle.

So now, you were forced to sit out the mission, all alone on the ship. Or, almost alone.

"Gonk."

"No thanks, I don't need anything," You answered, while looking out at the trees.

Gonky stepped closer, until he was right next to you and trapping you between the ship and him.

"Gonk." Stars, you felt like your heart was about to leap out of your chest, how did he always know just the right thing to say?

"Yea, you know how clumsy I can be sometimes..." You shrugged, trying to keep your cool.

"Gonk."

You looked at the droid searchingly. Did he really just say, what you think he said? You weren't just imagining it?

"Gonk." A small gasp escape your lips.

"G-Gonky, you really don't have to, it's just... How did you even know?" You stammered, feeling the heat rise in your body at just the thought of it.

"Gonk," the box-shaped droid pulled it's feet into it's shell in order to give you easy access to get on top of it.

This had to be a dream. Or a prank. There was no way this was actually real. And yet, here you were, climbing onto the droid that had occupied your fantasies for so long. It was barely believable.

Once you were properly seated, Gonky lit up again and began taking painfully slow steps, sending vibrations through your entire body.

"Gonky, please," You gasped, fighting the moans that desperately wanted to escape your throat. "I-if you do this, I-I.."

"Gonk."

You bent over, grabbing the edges of the cold metal beneathe you. The vibrations that was coursing through your sex seemed to only intensify at this.

The more you tried to fight your moans, the harder Gonky decided to vibrate. But it wasn't enough, not yet.

"Hold on!" You quickly ordered and Gonky quickly stopped his vibrations.

"Gonk?"

"No no, it's just.. I needed a bit more." You kicked off your pants, leaving only the thin fabric of your underwear to shield you from the cold metal.

As you straddled the cold metal with your now bare legs, Gonky continued his walk through the ship, making sure each step was painfully slow and vibrated so much more.

"Oh, Gonky..." You moaned, incapable of holding back the lewd noises the droid was drawing from you.

"Gonk."

"Shoot!" You once again grabbed onto the edges of his exterior, as your hips started to automatically grind back and forth, desperate for that last friction your sex needed.

"I-I-I'm close, G-Gn-Gonky.." You stuttered through moans, as your vision started blurring from the pleasure.

"Gonk."

That was it. That was all he had to say, before you become undone on top of him. Wave after wave of pleasure shot through you and all the strength in your upper body abandoned you.

You onto your back, gasping for air as you were trying to come down from your orgasmic high. Your hand slid down to the side, slightly clapping the droid in a form of celebration.

"Gonk?"

"No," You laughed breathlessly. "It's was better than even my wildest fantasies could imagine..."

This was definitely going to be a Gonk to Remember

Not putting anyone on a taglist, because this is an Aprils Fools fic and I am so sorry if you read through it all

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kemetic-dreams · 3 years

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Never been a beef between Africans and African American it was a plan to divide us.

I have notice, whenever you speak or act proudly about being African. Everyone who is non African becomes an expert. Your not a real African, “they don’t like African Americans or African American hate you etc.

You never been to Africa, you don’t look like them!!!!

They feel comfortable when your Christian, because they feel they can control you and tame you, and in the end fight for their cause.

They feel comfortable when you wear their names and feel proud to wear their names. Makes them feel like their ancestors may have been rough with us, but did a good job that was needed.

Notice their are no African languages in most public schools

Notice how African religions are demonized!!!

This Document is Exhibit 10 of U.S. Supreme Court Case No.00-9587

NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL MEMORANDUM-46 MARCH 17, 1978

Presidential Review Memorandum NSCM/46 TO: The Secretary of State The Secretary of Defense The Director of Central Intelligence SUBJECT: Black Africa and the U.S. Black Movement

The President has directed that a comprehensive review be made of current developments in Black Africa from the point of view of their possible impacts on the black movement in the United States. The review should consider:

1. Long-term tendencies of social and political developments and the degree to which they are consistent with or contradict the U.S. interests. 2. Proposals for durable contacts between radical African leaders and leftist leaders of the U.S. black community. 3. Appropriate steps to be taken inside and outside the country in order to inhibit any pressure by radical African leaders and organizations on the U.S. black community for the latter to exert influence on the policy of the Administration toward Africa.

The President has directed that the NSC Interdepartmental Group for Africa perform this review. The review should be forwarded to the NSC Political Analysis Committee by April 20.

(signed)

Zbigniew Brezinski cc: The Secretary of the Treasury The Secretary of Commerce The Attorney General The Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff

Objective of our policy toward Black Africa is to prevent social upheavals which could radically change the political situation throughout the area. The success or failure of our policy in the region depends on the solution international and internal issues whose importance of the United States is on the increase.

II. A. U.S. INTERESTS IN BLACK AFRICA

A multiplicity of interests influences the U.S. attitude toward black Africa. The most important of these interests can be summarized as follows:

1. POLITICAL

If black African states assume attitudes hostile to the U.S. national interest, our policy toward the white regimes; which is a key element in our relations with the black states, may be subjected by the latter to great pressure for fundamental change. Thus the West may face a real danger of being deprived of access to the enormous raw material resources of southern Africa which are vital for our defense needs as well as losing control over the Cape sea routes by which approximately 65% of Middle Eastern oil is supplied to Western Europe. Moreover, such a development may bring about internal political difficulties by intensifying the activity of the black movement in the United States itself. It should also be borne in mind that black Africa is an integral part of a continent where tribal and regional discord, economic backwardness, inadequate infrastructures, drought, and famine, are constant features of the scene. In conjunction with the artificial borders imposed by the former colonial powers, guerilla warfare in Rhodesia and widespread indignation against apartheid in South Africa, the above factors provide the communist states with ample opportunities for furthering their aims. This must necessarily redound to the detriment of U.S. political interests.

2. ECONOMIC

Black Africa is increasingly becoming an outlet for U.S. exports and investment. The mineral resources of the area continue to be of great value for the normal functioning of industry in the United States and allied countries. In 1977, U.S. direct investment in black Africa totaled about $1.8 billion and exports $2.2 billion. New prospect of substantial profits would continue to develop in the countries concerned.

IV. BLACK AFRICA AND THE U.S. BLACK MOVEMENT

Apart from the above-mentioned factors adverse to U.S. strategic interests, the nationalist liberation movement in black Africa can act as a catalyst with far reaching effects on the American black community by stimulating its organizational consolidation and by inducing radical actions. Such a result would be likely as Zaire went the way of Angola and Mozambique. An occurrence of the events of 1967-68 would do grievous harm to U.S. prestige, especially in view of the concern of the present Administration with human rights issues. Moreover, the Administration would have to take specific steps to stabilize the situation. Such steps might be misunderstood both inside and outside the United States.

In order to prevent such a trend and protect U.S. national security interests, it would appear essential to elaborate and carry out effective countermeasures.

1. Possibility of Joint Action By U.S. Black and African Nationalist Movement.

In elaborating U.S. policy toward black Africa, due weight must be given to the fact that there are 25 millions American blacks whose roots are African and who consciously or subconsciously sympathies with African nationalism. The living conditions of the black population should also be taken into account. Immense advances in the field are accompanied by a long-lasting high rate of unemployment, especially among the youth and by poverty and dissatisfaction with government social welfare standards. These factors taken together may provide a basis for joint actions of a concrete nature by the African nationalist movement and the U.S. black community. Basically, actions would take the form of demonstrations and public protests, but the likelihood of violence cannot be excluded. There would also be attempts to coordinate their political activity both locally and in international organizations.

Inside the United States these actions could include protest demonstrations against our policy toward South Africa accompanied by demand for boycotting corporations and banks which maintain links with that country; attempts to establish a permanent black lobby in Congress including activist leftist radical groups and black legislators; the reemergence of Pan-African ideals; resumption of protest marches recalling the days of Martin Luther King; renewal of the extremist idea national idea of establishing an "African Republic" on American soil. Finally, leftist radical elements of the black community could resume extremist actions in the style of the defunct Black Panther Party.

Internationally, damage could be done to the United States by coordinated activity of African states designed to condemn U.S. policy toward South Africa, and initiate discussions on the U.S. racial issue at the United Nations where the African representation constitutes a powerful bloc with about one third of all the votes.

A menace to U.S. economic interests, though not a critical one, could be posed by a boycott by Black African states against American companies which maintain contact with South Africa and Rhodesia. If the idea of economic assistance to black Americans shared by some African regimes could be realized by their placing orders in the United States mainly with companies owned by blacks, they could gain a limited influence on the U.S. black community.

In the above context, we must envisage the possibility, however remote, that black Americans interested in African affairs may refocus their attention on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Taking into account; the African descent of American blacks it is reasonable to anticipate that their sympathies would lie with the Arabs who are closer to them in spirit and in some case related to them by blood. Black involvement in lobbying to support the Arabs may lead to serious dissention between American black and Jews. The likelihood of extremist actions by either side is negligible, but the discord may bring about tension in the internal political climate of the United States.

3. Political options

In the context of long-term strategy, the United States can not afford a radical change in the fundamentals of its African policy, which is designed for maximum protection of national security. In the present case, emphasis is laid on the importance of Black Africa for U.S. political, economic and military interests.

RECOMMENDATIONS

In weighing the range of U.S. interests in Black Africa, basic recommendations arranged without intent to imply priority are:

1. Specific steps should be taken with the help of appropriate government agencies to inhibit coordinated activity of the Black Movement in the United States.

2. Special clandestine operations should be launched by the CIA to generate mistrust and hostility in American and world opinion against joint activity of the two forces, and to cause division among Black African radical national groups and their leaders.

3. U.S. embassies to Black African countries specially interested in southern Africa must be highly circumspect in view of the activity of certain political circles and influential individuals opposing the objectives and methods of U.S. policy toward South Africa. It must be kept in mind that the failure of U.S. strategy in South Africa would adversely affect American standing throughout the world. In addition, this would mean a significant diminution of U.S. influence in Africa and the emergence of new difficulties in our internal situation due to worsening economic prospects.

4. The FBI should mount surveillance operations against Black African representatives and collect sensitive information on those, especially at the U.N., who oppose U.S. policy toward South Africa. The information should include facts on their links with the leaders of the Black movement in the United States, thus making possible at least partial neutralization of the adverse effects of their activity.

V. TRENDS IN THE AMERICAN BLACK MOVEMENT

In connection with our African policy, it is highly important to evaluate correctly the present state of the Black movement in the Untied States and basing ourselves on all available information, to try to devise a course for its future development. Such an approach is strongly suggested by our perception of the fact that American Blacks form a single ethnic group potentially capable of causing extreme instability in our strategy toward South Africa. This may lead to critical differences between the United States and Black Africa in particular. It would also encourage the Soviet Union to step up its interference in the region. Finally, it would pose a serious threat to the delicate structure of race relations within the United States. All the above considerations give rise to concern for the future security of the United States.

Since the mid-1960s, when legislation on the human rights was passed and Martin Luther King murdered, federal and local measures to improve black welfare have been taken, as a result of which the U.S. black movement has undergone considerable changes.

The principle changes are as follows:

*Social and economic issues have supplanted political aims as the main preoccupations of the movement. and actions formerly planned on a nationwide scale are now being organized locally.

*Fragmentation and a lack of organizational unity within the movement.

*Sharp social stratification of the Black population and lack of policy options which could reunite them.

*Want of a national leader of standing comparable to Martin Luther King.

B. THE RANGE OF POLICY OPTIONS

The concern for the future security of the United States makes necessary the range of policy options. Arranged without intent imply priority they are:

(a) to enlarge programs, within the framework of the present budget, for the improvement of the social and economic welfare of American Blacks in order to ensure continuing development of present trends in the Black movement;

(b) to elaborate and bring into effect a special program designed to perpetuate division in the Black movement and neutralize the most active groups of leftist radical organizations representing different social strata of the Black community: to encourage division in Black circles;

(c) to preserve the present climate which inhibits the emergence from within the Black leadership of a person capable of exerting nationwide appeal;

(d) to work out and realize preventive operations in order to impede durable ties between U.S Black organizations and radical groups in African states;

(e) to support actions designed to sharpen social stratification in the Black community which would lead to the widening and perpetuation of the gap between successful educated Blacks and the poor, giving rise to growing antagonism between different Black groups and a weakening of the movement as a whole.

(f) to facilitate the greatest possible expansion of Black business by granting government contracts and loans with favorable terms to Black businessmen;

(g) to take every possible means through the AFL-CIO leaders to counteract the increasing influence of Black labor organizations which function in all major unions and in particular, the National Coalition of Black Trade Union and its leadership including the creation of real preference for adverse and hostile reaction among White trade unionists to demands for improvement of social and economic welfare of the Blacks;

(h) to support the nomination at federal and local levels of loyal Black public figures to elective offices, to government agencies and the Court.

This would promote the achievement of a twofold purpose: first, it would be easier to control the activity of loyal black representatives within existing institution; second, the idea of an independent black political party now under discussion within black leadership circles would soon lose all support.

One more thing. I was on a program in Illinois recently with Senator Paul Douglas, a so-called liberal, so-called democrat, so-called white man, at which time he told me that our African Brothers were not interested in us in Africa. He said, the Africans are not interested in the American Negro. I knew he was lying, but, during the next two or three weeks, it is my intention and plan to make a tour of our African homeland, and I hope that when I come back, I’ll be able to come back and let you know how our African brothers and sisters feel towards us. And I know before I go there, that they love us. We’re one, we’re the same. The same man who has colonized them all these years colonized you and me too all these years, and all we have to do now is wake up and work in unity and harmony and the battle will be over -Malcolm X

And the reason this tendency exists, the strategy of the white man has always been divide and conquer. He keeps us divided in order to conquer us. He tells you, I’m for separation and you for integration, and keep us fighting with each other. No, I’m not for separation and you’re not for integration, what you and I are for is freedom. Only, you think that integration will get you freedom; I think that separation will get me freedom. We both got the same objective, we just got different ways of getting’ at it.-Malcolm X

#malcolm x #who killed malcolm x #malcolmxquotes #martin luther king #african #africans #fbi #cia #freedom #kemetic dreams #unit #unity #x #trending news #african culture #african languages

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maggotzombie · 4 years

Text

needy ; henry cavill

CONTINUATION: UNTAMED

PAIRING: Henry Cavill x Reader (fem) SUMMARY: You want Henry to pay attention to you but he keeps playing WoW and TikTok give you some ideas. TIME PERIOD: April of 2020 (midst of the rona [covid-19] quarantine craziness); WORDS: 3,2k TW: fluff, teasing, smut, dirty talk, daddy kink, punishment. A/N: I’m writing this very late, I know. Also, this is my first take on a few subjects I’m not comfortable with (such as daddy kink and punishment), so bear with me, please!! 🙃 This gif (nsfw) was a reference for this 3,2k smutt lol thanks @could-be-cavill for my inspiration. — 𝕸𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙

HENRY IS playing World of Warcraft.

Again

He’s playing that stupid game again.

Usually, I’m not bothered by that. He rarely has time to indulge himself with it anyway. But I usually have something to do, too. Well, usually.

This quarantine is lasting an awfully long time and I’ve run out of things to do.

Here’s a list of what I’ve done so far:

I’ve reorganized everything (bookshelves, closet, cabinets, etc.);

Scrubbed every inch of the house to perfection (I still have a few scratches on my hands from the chemicals of the cleaning products);

Kal has never been this well-groomed before.

I’m honestly tired of watching TV and looking at my phone. Actually, I’ve been spending a lot of time on the device lately. All of this because of the persistent and annoying ads of an app called TikTok.

My biggest mistake was downloading it out of curiosity.

It. Is. Addictive. Simple as that.

I sigh softly, twirling a strand of hair on my index finger as I watch my lovely, brawny, and completely fuckable boyfriend from the sofa. He’s talking complete nonsense and sometimes even speaking loudly, with his blue eyes fixed on the screen instead of me.

Kal’s head is resting on my lap and he glances worryingly at his best friend when he raises his voice.

An idea pops up in my head (thanks to the aforementioned app) and I smirk. Henry doesn’t even blink as I place a hand on his shoulder, he’s one-hundred percent focused on that stupid game.

He frowns when I pop my head in between his arms. “What are you doing?” He asks, letting go of the mouse so I can go through. “What’s this?”

I smile, making myself comfortable on his lap while facing him. Finally some eye contact. Without a reply, Henry shakes his head and goes back to the game, adjusting me to not get in his way.

After a minute or two, it seems I’m not an obstacle at all. In fact, Henry is now shouting directly to my ear due to our position. A pout forms in my lips as I reassess the strategy and I nuzzle my face into his neck in thought, making goosebumps flash over his skin.

Oh.

As my soft lips brush against the crook of his neck, more goosebumps rise. Still testing the waters, I graze my teeth at the same spot. Suddenly, my boyfriend is very quiet and I can even hear the people he’s playing with on his headset.

Henry’s breath shallows when I plant a kiss on his weak spot; just below his earlobe.

“Stop it,” He whispers to me as his cock twitches against me.

“I don’t think you want me to,” I move his microphone away from his lips.

I push my tongue into his mouth boldly and I receive an appreciative moan back. I explore his mouth slowly but sensually and I can feel his hard-on starting to growl against my groin.

Suddenly he breaks the kiss and shoots me a warning glare, clearing his throat. “Yeah, I’m here,” He says after adjusting his mic. “Just got slightly distracted.”

Scoffing, I buckle my hips hard against his boner and Henry hisses at the friction.

“Y/N...” Henry whispers warningly with heavy breathing.

In response, I give him a smug smile before attaching my lips back to his neck. I slip my hands under his shirt and my boyfriend groans, contracting his muscles. As my eager fingertips brush against his hard and well-defined abs, my tongue darts out to caress the sweet spot under his ear.

Ignoring his scolding and protest, I take off his headset from his left ear and take his earlobe in between my lips. My man’s breath gets caught up in his throat and his hand grabs my hip to stop me from grinding against his hard cock.

“Fuck,” He curses through gritted teeth.

Confusion takes over his face as I climb down off his lap but then he tenses again when I kneel in between his legs. Hands flat on his thick thighs, I’m able to move it very little towards my goal before Henry grabs my wrists.

He throws the headset onto the keyboard carelessly and gets up from the chair, taking me with him. I giggle in amusement as he pins me down on the sofa, hands above my head.

“What are you doing?” Henry asks in all seriousness.

“I’m bored!” I say honestly, looking into his eyes with mischief. “Play with me!” I pout and open a smirk at his expression.

“I’m busy right now,” He points out and I ignore it by trying to kiss his lips. My boyfriend moves his head away from my reach and gives me a stern look. “Wait for your turn, kitten,” Henry says.

“Since when do kittens do what they’re told to?” I ask, raising my knee to rub against his crotch. “They do whatever the fuck they want to,” I purr, watching his concentration faltering for an instant.

My boyfriend blinks and shakes his head before growling. He pins my leg down with his knee and applies more of his weight on my wrists, making it a bit uncomfortable but without hurting me.

“This kitten will obey. Otherwise, daddy will punish her later,” Henry provokes back but it makes me all tingly.

“Hmmm,” I hum, trying to reach him once again. “How about now? I misbehaved, right?”

“Later,” He says pointedly.

Before I can say or do anything else, Henry lifts his weight off me and moves away. I sit on the sofa to see him sitting back in front of the computer, completely ignoring me.

I hiss at him, just like a cat, and he throws a smirk my way while putting his headset back on. Pissed off by the rejection, I get up and leave the room. By the time I reach the stairs to the second floor, I can hear the shouting about the game resuming.

First, I jump on our big bed and just scream my frustration on a pillow. Eventually, I lie onto my back and stare at the ceiling pondering what to do next.

I’m SO bored.

Then I strip down and get into the bathtub where I watch even more TikToks. Thirty minutes later, after the water got too cold, I step out of it and wrap a towel around my body. I am about to carry on my daily routine when another idea provided by the beloved app pops into my head.

Ignoring the fact that I’m leaving small pools of water at each step I take, I walk down the stairs. Henry is exactly where I left him: on the stupid computer, playing the stupid game and shouting stupid things to children.

Ugh!

He doesn’t acknowledge my presence as I stand at the foot of the staircase and I open my towel. Nothing yet. I remove it completely from my body and I’m still invisible. Praying for some good aim, I throw the wet towel at him.

I call it a strike as it lands on top of his head. Huffing to gather some patience, Henry takes the towel off of his head and slowly turns to look at me. From where I’m standing, I can see the change in his eyes.

Without saying a word, he closes the game and throws the towel onto the floor. He’s up from his chair and sprinting towards me in a heartbeat. I turn hot on my heels to run upstairs, but my boyfriend’s arms wrap around my waist as I’m about to climb the second flight of the stairs.

“Nuh-uh,” He says against my ear, trapping my body with his against the wall. “You wanted my attention,” He continues and I can feel his hand shuffling something on my lower back. “Now you got it.”

My hands struggle to find something to grab and I lose my breath as Henry plunges into me without so much as a warm-up nor a warning. He groans at the sensation of my walls squeezing him angrily and pulls my arms to my back, locking it so I can’t move.

“Ah! So tight, baby girl,” He whispers without moving.

I don’t reply and it makes him grab my face by my jaw and turn it to the side. Nuzzling my temple, he produces the sexiest sound ever into my ear.

“What happened? The cat got your tongue?” His baritone voice hits a new low.

I clench around him. “Jesus Christ, Henry,” I breath out, wiggling my backside towards him and inciting a new moan from him. “Touch me,” I plead.

“Where, kitten?” Henry asks, letting go of my arms. “Use your words,” One hand travels down to my clit while the other grabs my left breast. “Here or here?”

First, he toys with my nub, making me get wetter. Then, he squeezes my boob and pinches my nipple. I moan, pressing my forehead against the wall. Each move gives me different waves of pleasure, both very welcomed and appreciated.

“Kitten?” He calls when I don’t reply.

“Y-Yes,” I reply, already weak resting my head back on his shoulder.

“You’re such a tease, but it doesn’t go beyond that, huh?” My boyfriend chuckles, calling me out.

“Baby, please,” I whine, clutching to his wrist.

Chuckling slightly again, he nuzzles his face into my neck and starts to toy with my clit. Slowly, Henry starts to bulge his hips against mine, making both of us moan. His hand comes down from my boob to squeeze my hip as he intensifies his thrusting and the movement of his hand.

In a swift move, he peels off his shirt, discarding it to the ground. I take the opportunity to move my hips at my own pace now that he doesn’t have his hands on me. But his strong grip returns to my hips and I see stars at the speed of his thrusts.

The obscene sound of our bodies fills the house along with our lewd moans. My boyfriend slows down when I rest my head back against his shoulder, eyes screwed shut as little spasms start to run over my body.

“You take my cock so well, baby girl,” He says against my temple, breathing heavily. “You like my big, fat cock tearing you apart, don’t you, kitten?”

My lust-filled brain can barely register the question as his throbbing cock gently caresses my G-spot. However, a loud and tingly smack on my right ass cheek startles me, prompting my wrecked neurons to put together a reply.

“I fucking love it,” I say through gritted teeth, raising my head and glancing at him over my shoulder. “Go faster, daddy,” I moan and bite my lip. “I want to come all over your delicious cock.”

Henry’s eyes darken by my request and he grabs my jaw, crashing his lips against mine. Our kiss is a bit rough, tongues battling for control until he pulls my bottom lip with his teeth.

“I’ll make you come so hard that you’ll regret interrupting my game,” He tells me.

The excitement of his words gives me chills and I chuckle with mischief. “Do you promise?” I glance at him seductively, my teasing self returning to the game.

“Cross my heart,” My boyfriend reassures me, one of his hands sliding back down in between my legs. “Are you ready?”

The question is ignored as my brain is reduced to mush once again. More than before, my legs spread apart and my ass is up in the air for easy access. All of that balanced in my tiptoes that are becoming numb by now.

My pussy clenches around his cock as he massages my clit and restarts to pound into me senselessly. I moan, feeling my orgasm close. Henry groans louder, throwing his head back as his hips crush against my ass, the slapping sounding immoral and loud like both of us.

His hands finally give some attention to my boobs, kneading both of them. Like an expert, he teases my hard nipples, making me shiver from pleasure and I reach down to rub myself as I feel the first sparkles of the orgasm.

Lips come in contact with the sensitive skin of my nape and I start to lose it. “Oh, my God,” I breathe out, rubbing my clit faster. “D-Daddy,” I stutter as my toes start to curl up.

“Yes, kitten. Come all over daddy’s cock,” Henry growls into my ear, fucking me harder.

“I’m so close,” I whisper, completely out of breath. “Ah!” My moan reaches a note higher when he takes over and starts to rub my clit again.

Both his hand and hips move at an absurd fast pace and I literally see stars, coming hard on his cock. My legs buckle and Henry catches me before I fall without stopping his movements. My pussy clutches him so hard that I bet he’s gonna come anytime soon.

“Aaaah! Shit.”

My eyes are screwed shut and I squeeze my thighs together. It makes my pussy tighter around Henry’s girthy shaft, making him moan, but he still doesn’t stop thrusting hard into me nor rubbing my clit. I try to move his hand away just to fail miserably.

“Come on, kitten,” He pants, holding me against his body. “I know you can do it.”

“Oh, Henry!” I nearly shout as all my muscles tense up before becoming jelly.

I come once again and my thighs feel wet. Henry finally slows down his thrusts before sliding out of me. I feel the bliss of the orgasm and, if it weren’t for his strong arms secured around my waist, I’d fall to the ground.

“You did so well, baby girl,” My boyfriend praises me.

I try to catch my breath and rest my head against his chest. “Did you come?” I ask, feeling his hard cock on my lower back.

“Not yet,” He squeezes my overly sensitive boobs.

“What?” I frown, exhausted. “What is this?” I ask, looking at the water pool on the floor that I stepped on.

Henry chuckles, feeling amused by my confusion. “You squirted, kitten,” He explains.

This surprises me. “Seriously?”

I have never done this before.

“Yeah,” He muses, balancing my weight in between his arms. “Come on,” Henry says, nudging me to climb up the stairs.

“I can’t walk,” I giggle, looking up at him from over my shoulder.

His brow is furrowed as he looks down at me with his attentive azure eyes. Then, Henry flips me around and picks me up like a doll, throwing me over his shoulder. I gasp at the slap he lands across my ass but he quickly makes it up by spreading kisses on my thigh.

The air is knocked out of my lungs once again when he throws me onto the mattress. I look up at the Greek God boyfriend that I have and smirk, running one foot over his torso. He pushes my leg down and hovers over me, taking my lips possessively in a heated kiss. I moan into his mouth and my hands slide down from his back to squeeze his ass.

However, Henry takes both of my hands and pins it down above my head. “Keep it there,” He orders. “Do not move it.”

Biting my lips, I nod while looking into his eyes. In a swift move and still pinning my hands above my head, he flips me on the mattress. A quiet squeal followed by a giggle escapes my lips and I wiggle my ass, adjusting myself in the new position. Henry kneads my butt cheeks as I feel his lips on my back and I sigh, feeling the familiar chill running down my spine once again.

He goes lower and lower until he isn’t holding my hands anymore. Bending my knees slightly, my boyfriend makes me pop my ass up, exposing my pussy to him. I let out a long and obscene moan as I feel his mouth latch onto my very sensitive core.

Henry’s tongue is merciless. He devours my pussy, licking all my juices and flicking my clit with expertise. My hands clutch at the comforter in pleasure and I moan at the vibration of his groan, pumping himself while eating me out.

“B-Baby, I’m gonna…” I start, feeling the wonderful sensation building up again. Henry simply hums and starts to massage my clit with his thumb. “Fuuuck,” The shaking begins and, in a matter of seconds, I come hard on his mouth.

Another appreciative moan comes from my man while he licks me clean. This time, he has to hold my thighs tightly so I don’t move.

My breath is rapid and I’m still feeling the aftermath of my third climax when Henry pushes into me. I instantly clench around him a bunch of times, my walls too sensitive from the intense activity it's experiencing.

“Fuck, kitten,” Henry moans into my ear, lying on top of me. “If you keep doing that, I won’t last long.”

I try to say something, but my brain is so overwhelmed by now that I can’t put together a simple phrase. And, if it was bad before, it gets worse as he starts to thrust. He picks up the speed quickly and, once again, the slapping sound of his hips hitting against my ass echoes in the room.

Henry’s moans and panting in my ear are way too much to handle and I’m coming into his cock almost right after he began ramming into me. He slows down, prolonging my fourth orgasm and adding more fire to it by nibbling my earlobe and reaching down to rub my clit.

I can’t close my legs because one of his is right between mine, but I try my best. My eyes nearly get stuck on the back of my head as I come yet again. All my muscles feel sore from tensing up and relaxing repetitively and my throat hurts from moaning.

When I think I can’t take anymore, Henry tenses above me, his thrust becoming irregular and rougher. He moans, a very dirty moan, finally coating my walls with his warm, thick load. A few more pumps and he eases out of me, giving me a sweet kiss on the cheek before he rolls off me and crashes to my side.

My body is too exhausted to move and I just stay in the same position he put me in, trying to regain my breath. Aftershocks still make my limbs tremble then and there and I feel numb.

“That was awesome,” Henry says, trying to catch his breath too. “Baby?” He asks when I don’t say anything. “Are you okay?” His hand feels cold against my skin.

“You’re a pussy destroyer,” I breathe out with my eyes closed, making him laugh.

“You squirted again,” My boyfriend points out, feeling very proud of himself.

“I figured I would,” I say, trying to move only to moan at the discomfort coming from between my legs. I end up rolling to the side, resting my back against his chest. “I won’t be able to sit for days.”

“That’s what you get from interrupting my game,” Henry says playfully, squeezing my boobs.

“Oh, I’ll do that more often, then,” I tease, making him laugh again.

1K notes · View notes

sarahjkl82-blog · 3 years

Note

Ok, so the little line about Marcus being sad that Nush didn’t wear his hoodie gave me thoughts...and thots.

This would definitely be further down the line, maybe they’ve already confessed their feelings to one another but they’re taking their relationship slow, so dates mostly consist of movie nights, dinners at casual places, etc. But one movie night, they fall asleep on Marcus’ couch and he wakes the next morning to Nush coming back from getting them pastries & coffee...in his hoodie. And boy does it do something to him. He’s never felt this way about someone wearing his clothes before; it makes him possessive and all he wants to do is see her in his hoodie and nothing else.

My brain goes two ways on this: heavy make out session where Marcus let’s her know just what seeing her in his clothes does (lots of dirty talk) OR full on dom!Marcus picking her up and putting her on his kitchen counter so he can get his mouth between her legs and telling her what seeing her in his clothes does to him. I can’t decide which I thot I like more!!

These two give me so many thoughts and thots...it might be a slight problem

Please note that this work is not suitable for those under 18. Themes of consensual sex and swearing.

Beta thanks to @yespolkadotkitty ❤️❤️❤️

You think you are possessing me but I’ve got my teeth in you.

Angela Carter

What could be more coincidental than pouring rain greeting the pair of you as you leave the Prince Charles Cinema’s matinee of Singing in the Rain? The deluge that pours onto the street below invites a bloom of colourful umbrellas twisting and turning through the Soho streets- umbrellas that neither of you had thought to bring despite it being April in London. Enjoying the last few moments of relative warmth and dryness, your eyes flicker between a deep-in-thought Marcus, and the puddles outside those black rimmed glass doors that lie in wait for the pair of you.

“You are thinking very loudly, Mr Pike,” you remark shaking your head as a wave of consternation washes across his face, “Don’t you dare think about where the nearest shop is to buy an umbrella. It’s barely a ten minute walk to Charing Cross from here.”

Marcus releases a small chuckle as he shuffles his feet embarrassedly, his eyes shifting sideways, “How did you know I was thinking that?”

“At work, when you are questioning people- you’re entirely closed off which you need to be in for our profession but as soon as you go into hometime Marcus, your thoughts and emotions are painted across your face as clear as words on a page.”

A shy boyish grin creeps across his face, “Ok, I am a bit of an open book but you have the ability to read me better than anyone else,” he reluctantly owns, “I kinda wish I was a better liar and could come up with something else on the spot.”

Grabbing his hand tightly, you give it a small squeeze and a tug to let him know that he never needs to lie to you- a gesture that Marcus returns with a gentle kiss upon your forehead. “Come on you, let’s go run between the raindrops and head back South of the river before anyone notices that we came without our passports.” Your eyes sparkle wickedly at him as you raise your finger to your lips pretending to drag him into the silly North/South London divide.

“Still tickled by your version of the redneck, iced tea, Southern manners versus skyscrapers, yellow cabs and cold winters”,” he shakes his head slightly.

“My love, there is a lot you don’t get in regards to Britishisms- you still giggle like a teenage boy whenever I mention the word knickers,” you kindly reprimand him, “You’ve not even been here two months yet, give yourself time to realise that our version of pancakes are better than yours!”

You hear a sharp gasp emanating from Marcus in mock hurt as you blaspheme over his favourite food group. Cocking your eyebrow at him, you pause for a moment as you step towards the double doors that lead into roads where the coloured lights bleed across their oily surfaces. Marcus reaches around you to open the door, “I got you. Not letting you walk into doors today.”

It seems as if the moment that the two of you step outside, the heavens truly decide to open upon you, drenching through every layer of clothing right to your bones. Running through the winding streets with your hands tightly wound together, you and Marcus dodge in and out of the sprawling crowds of tourists with their leisurely pace and humongous golf umbrellas. When you are faced with a particularly large group, you split apart with Marcus diving towards a shop but you go too close to the curb when a taxi drives through a massive puddle, sending an icy tsunami over your head.

You stand there and gasp as the water constricts every blood vessel in your body, the shock coursing through your veins. Blinking the water from your eyelashes, you become aware of two hands bringing warmth back to your cheeks and two brown orbs gazing at you, “Hey, you ok?” Marcus scans your face, worriedly checking you over as he slides his worn leather jacket over your shoulders to try to bring some warmth back into your body.

Brimming with tears of mirth, your eyes crease into tiny crescents until the smile tugging at your lips forms the biggest grin as your whole body roars with laughter, “I don’t think there’s much point in trying to run between the raindrops anymore,” you gasp out between the giggles.

When you notice that Marcus isn’t laughing, you pause to draw a deeper breath, searching his face for clues. Your heart beats faster and faster as you notice that his eyes are black holes, pulling you towards him until gravity and time cease to exist. Heat rises through the chill of your skin- from your stomach to your throat- as his lips call to yours. When the sensitive skin meets, there isn’t a moment of hesitation to drink each other in as the taste of Marcus silences all of your thoughts.

All of your kisses to this point had been the tentative kisses of a new relationship. The kisses of two broken hearts starting to mend and learning how to allow yourselves to love again.

But this. This. This was different.

Marcus withdraws his mouth slightly from you, resting his forehead against yours as his breath dances across your lips, “Wow.”

And then he’s back. Fingers tangled in your hair, lungs forgetting to breathe as without a moment’s hesitation he deepens the kiss, parting your lips and searching for the soft sweetness brought by your tongue. As the moment swiftly intensifies, your hands seek him out as the only solid thing in the swaying world around you. Your fingers seek out the warmth of his skin beneath his drenched Henley. You feel him. All of him presses against you so that you can inhale the woody scent of his aftershave, the citrus notes of his shampoo and that smell that is just so utterly Marcus.

“So beautiful,” he whispers against your now swollen lips. His words ground you, placing a solid surface beneath your feet before he sweeps you away again.

The kisses eventually slow, becoming infinitely more tender than the raw need that pulses between you both. You are breathless, dazed and needing so much more. Your body aches for more than the Soho streets can offer you, confident in the knowledge that Marcus feels the same as you feel his powerful body tremble like yours. All that exists in this moment is feeling, wanting and needing each other.

A half growl, half moan comes from the back of Marcus’ throat as he finally breaks the kiss, “I have to get you home before I take you right here.”

Heart still racing, you just about manage to form words but your lust-filled brain mangles them making you feel drunk and slurred, “Whose home?”

“Mine. S’closer,” he murmurs into your mouth, “Don’t wanna be arrested for acts of indecency. Right now, everything I wanna do to you, falls into that category.”

It takes all you can muster, hearing that admission spill from his lips. All the willpower in the world, not to just find a darkened doorway and just take him there.

His fingers find yours again, peeling your hands away from the soft skin under his t-shirt- intertwining in undoable knots- but your bodies still press together as if you cannot bear to separate yet. You both take a moment to catch your breath, the rain still falling upon you in some heavenly benediction- mouths twitching into grins as your breathing relaxes and slows to a pace that allows for thoughts to re-enter your mind.

Marcus is the one to break the bodily contact, turning to one side, dropping one of your hands to start walking towards the station. You catch a slightly confused look on his face, “Not sure where the station is, are you? Come on, I’ll let you take the lead when you know where you are a bit better,” you snigger with a saucy wink in his direction.

As you go to walk away from him, he pulls you in closer and rumbles deeply in your ear, “You know I don’t have a problem with you taking the lead.”

The tone of his voice echoes through your skin, setting fireworks off through every synapse in your body and oh how it gladdens you to realise that he needs you as much as you want him.

✪✪✪✪✪

The journey home has been one of not daring to look at or touch each other too much. Sitting next to him on the train, your thighs leaning into each other, you both desperately try to focus on messing around with your phones. Him showing you various forthcoming art exhibitions in town and you showing him silly TikToks sent by your nieces and nephews of dogs being dubbed with computerised voices, giving their thoughts on cats and other dog breeds. Anything to take your minds off what you’d actually like to do with each other.

As the train pulls into the station, you pull him up from his seat and head towards the exit. Tapping out at the ticket barrier, you turn towards Marcus, going up on tiptoes to place a small chaste kiss upon his lips, “I’m popping to Sainsburys to grab some wine as I think we finished that bottle on Wednesday, didn’t we? Do you need anything else while I’m there?”

“Sweetheart, I can’t let you do that,” Marcus tries pleading with you.

“I cannot get any wetter than I am at this moment in time,” you implore before pausing as Marcus raises his eyebrows at you, licking his lower lip, stepping closer to close the minutismal space between yourselves.

“Quit making me stand in the rain, thinking impure thoughts,” he groans.

You push the heel of your hand into his chest, “Then go upstairs, run me a bath and find something dry for me to put on, then you can have your wicked way with me.”

Putting his hands on your hips and dipping his head to playfully nip at your neck, Marcus gives in as his lips mutter into your skin, “Ok, be quick. I’ll order some pizza and ice cream ready for you getting out of the bath.”

Your eyes roll back in your head and you release a satisfied groan at the thought of a warm bath and pizza. Especially that beauty of a bath in Marcus’ apartment where you can actually stretch out and entirely submerge yourself beneath the hot soapy water. You remove Marcus’s hands from your sides and turn towards the small store with its bright fluorescent lights blaring out at you through the plate glass storefront. As you go to step inside, you turn your head and see that Marcus has turned at the same time with that look in his eyes again. With a small wave and a grin, you step inside to find snacks and wine, not entirely sure that they would be necessary this evening.

✪✪✪✪✪

Bottles clink and packets of Haribo rustle from within your bags as you walk up to Marcus’ front door. You give the bottom section of wood a small thud from your boot, to which it opens with a significantly dryer Marcus, who takes the bags from you before ushering you in. As the warmth of his flat encircles you, you release a breath you hadn’t realised you’d been holding.

“Strip,” his firm, familiar baritone commands, holding an arm out for your soaking clothes, “Your bath is run and I’ve left you some clothes on my bed. You’d left a pair of panties from the last time you stayed over- I’ve washed those so they’re in the pile too.”

Peeling back the layers of clothing that had been so utterly useless against the torrential rain and draping them over Marcus’ arms- tiny droplets dripping onto his hardwood flooring, you soon stand there completely naked. Tossing your clothes in the general direction of his washing machine, he gently guides you with his warm hand placed in the small of your back towards the bath, which true to his word, is full, bubbly and welcoming.

As you step in, you look over towards Marcus inviting him in with your eyes.

With a small shake of his head, Marcus turns to leave you to soak. The quietude envelops you, so much that you are barely able to hear Marcus padding softly around outside this sanctuary. You lie back allowing the water to cover your ears- a complete sensory deprivation when your eyes draw shut too. Images that swirl with the heavenly taste and scent of Marcus, his velvet touch and the sound of his voice dance behind your closed lids as you allow the water to wash away London pollution and puddle water.

✪✪✪✪✪

Having reheated your body enough, the bath water turning tepid, you clamber out onto the deliciously soft bath mat that you know Andy picked out prior to Marcus’ arrival. Wrapping one of the towels Marcus has left out for you around your body and the other around your hair, you walk into his impeccably neat bedroom. Bed made, clothes ironed, folded and put away- the polar opposite of yours. Even the pile of clothes with your knickers on top, is neat.

The morning after the night when Marcus had first stayed over at yours and needed an iron for his shirt, you’d barely been able to locate in your memory where you’d last seen it- pointing him in the direction of the cupboard of doom- the place where half-baked ideas and good intentions go to die.. Everything is generally haphazard and a little topsy-turvy about you but Marcus, his sense of order calms your busy brain and you are noticing it rub off on you.

You hang your coat up on the hooks that you’d drilled in when you’d first bought your flat but never used until a month ago. You only now have one hanging chair, rather than utilising every surface available. You also attempt to only buy one bagged salad each week instead of pretending that you will eat more greens but then them definitely losing that green tone, fading into a brown slush before you remember their existence in that pathetic salad drawer.

Pulling up your knickers and sitting, no- sinking into the glorious mattress of Marcus’ bed, you haul the t-shirt over your head and shrug your arms into the sleeves of the hoodie before zipping it up at the front. You smile at a flicker of a memory where Jasper had moaned at you for stretching out his hoodies with your woman boobs. You also find it very sweet that Marcus honestly thinks that his shorts will fit over your thighs and hips so you leave them on the bed, choosing to leave the room in just the hoodie, t-shirt and underwear- albeit just on your bottom half as your bra was utterly soaked too and was probably going through his washing machine. That poor underwire! Nevermind, perhaps it’s time for something a little less utilitarian and a little more sexy.

Softly padding out from his bedroom, you spy Marcus’ broad back twisting in the kitchen as he seeks out plates and glasses in the cupboards. Pizza boxes lie on the side, their contents sweating condensation on the table below.

“I’m finally decent,” you declare with a flourish as you bounce into the kitchen, almost bounding directly into his chest.

Marcus spins at the sound of your voice, making sure to catch and steady you after your clumsy entrance, “No. You are very wrong there,” his breath hitching as he rumbles deeply into the shell of your ear, “No way. You could never be classified as decent, not looking like this.”

Another step and a slight twist of your body, and Marcus has your hips pinned against the cupboard. He places his hands either side of you, trapping you between the carpentry and the solid wall of him, his dark eyes flashing with lust as you feel him memorising every detail of you.

“Talk to me, Marcus,” you ask of him, running your fingers through his dark curls, “Tell me what’s going on.”

“You sure you wanna know?” he questions, stroking his fingers down the side of you, the sensation causing you to twitch under its tenderness.

“I want you to tell me everything,” you demand unblinkingly. Desperate for Marcus to finally tell you what he wants rather than constantly looking to please and pleasure you.

“Ok,” You see Marcus nod, his bottom lip slightly trembling, “It takes a superhuman feat of strength not to call you into my office everyday and fucking rail you right there into my desk, in front of everyone.”

Holy fuck, Marcus. Let it go.

“Monday, when we were working late and you grabbed my jacket to throw over your shoulders? Seeing how the shoulders swamped yours, there was... There was just this moment when I wanted to run my hands up that skirt, rip your panties off, slide into you and bite your neck, leaving marks for everyone to know you’re mine. I just wanted to possess every part of you and all because of you wearing something that’s mine.

“When we’re walking around galleries or sitting in cinemas together, it is all I can do to not find a cupboard to push you into or take advantage of the lowlights.I just want you to be mine all the time. I want to be surrounded by your scent- your hair, your perfume and your cunt - they’re this drug that I can’t get enough of. When you wear my clothes, they smell of you - makes me want to possess every part of you. I need all of you to belong to me.”

Your heart thuds in your chest as you allow Marcus’ primal growl to fill you with a searing heat that burns through the very depths of you.

“And now. Right now? Seeing you now in my hoodie and just your panties is so fucking tempting- so don’t you dare give me that comment that you are decent now.”

His hands finally move from their position on the counter to your hips as he lifts you, your legs wrapping around his waist unconsciously. The pizza unceremoniously gets dumped onto the floor as he settles you onto the cool work surface, pulling your hips slightly towards him. Unlocking your calves from around his waist, he pushes your thighs a little further apart, thumbs brushing upon the sensitive skin as he lowers his face so that you can feel his hot breath through the material of your knickers.

He withdraws slightly, pressing his lips in sweet kisses along the inside of your thighs whilst his teeth graze and nip at you, setting off a string of fireworks in your skin.

“Right now, I want to inhale you. I need to have your scent filling my lungs.”

His nose nuzzles into your lightly clothed slit searching out your sweet heady scent, brushing the damp material back and forth over your sensitive clit making it throb in anticipation. The sensations brought from his nose causes your core to pool around him, the small nudges sending your pulse racing through the roof.

Very few thoughts are able to exist in your mind other than the way you desperately want to wrap your legs back around him- this time around his head to lock him in place and keep his face glued to your pussy, stopping him from continuing this tantalising teasing.

“Now? Now, I want to taste you. I want drink that sweet fucking nectar from right here.”

Dipping his head lower, he licks teasingly at the aperture of your cunt, stiffening his tongue slightly to press the material between your folds. Your breath catches in your throat wanting to scream at his slow pace. You hook your thumbs into the elastic of your knickers at your hips, trying to awkwardly shuffle them off.

Abruptly, he stops. Pulling away from you, moving your hands away from trying to remove your underwear, “No,” he growls, “Leave them on.”

“Do you wanna know why I didn’t sneak those panties back to you at work or any of the other nights I’ve seen you this week?” He raises an eyebrow at you from his crouched position between your legs as you nod helplessly, your heart pounding in your throat, “I’ve been smelling them, thinking of your hot cunt as I rub my cock in the few moments we’re apart.”

Leaning forward, fingers sinking into the soft flesh of your bottom and kissing you hard through your knickers, he exclaims joyously, “Ah, honey, I fucking love your smell and taste! Sometimes, I can still smell your juices on my fingers at work and it makes my cock fucking throb, knowing that you are only two steps away from me. Professionalism with you so close is impossible.”

Your pussy throbs and yearns for a consistent touch as he returns his face to between your legs. Resting his forehead against your pubic bone, he returns to burying his nose into the dampest point of the thin fabric. This time, as he drags it upwards, he pulls his tongue stiffly upwards until he reaches that sensitive nub of nerves, catching it between his teeth gently tugging it.

You swear that every nerve in your body is on fire and nothing exists except you and Marcus. No one has made your body sing like this in its neediness. The rush of wild sensations sweeping across your body are equally thrilling and maddening you.

Teasing the material to one side of your pussy lips, you watch a smile unfold across Marcus’ face as he gazes upon you.

Never have you felt so wanted before.

Then with the same joyous abandon he has shown in kissing your pussy, he throws your thighs over his shoulders before sinking his mouth onto the sweet, bare flesh. The way that his tongue flickers so gracefully across your clit leaves you gasping. That familiar knot of pleasure building deep inside your tummy as he edges ever lower, preparing to tongue fuck you. Licking deeper and deeper into your cunt, you can hear the pleasure spilling from within you onto his tongue and oh how he drinks like a man dying of thirst.

You cry out in surprise as Marcus encircles his lips around your clit, sucking rhythmically and gently. The scruff of his beard tickling pleasingly the sensitive flesh as he works you towards your release. A guttural groan against your delicate skin is the point that sends you truly spinning over the precipice into pleasure, howling his name into the night air as your thighs tightly clasp him around his ears, his tongue still working you through that blissful high until your body drops every ounce of tension, relaxing into the afterglow.

When he moves back into softly kissing your thighs, you tug his glistening face towards you with barely a moment of hesitation passing between the two of you. Your lips meet again with the tenderness of an artist’s brushstrokes, Marcus painting the taste of you into your mouth with exquisitely delicious kisses.

He brings his forehead back to rest against yours again, with a total calmness drifting across his features. You shut your eyes and rest with him, safe. From his lust drenched words to the experienced motions of his tongue, you utterly resign yourself to the truth.

You have always belonged with Marcus.

You always will.

@yespolkadotkitty @astroboots @danniburgh @disgruntledspacedad @green-socks @zukoyonce @sirowsky @bison-writes @tardisfangurl @agirllovespancakes @leonieb @mrsparknuts @absurdthirst @pedropascalito @lunaserenade @mouthymandalorian @the-ginger-hedge-witch @theravenreads @lv7867 @songsformonkeys

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secretshinigami · 3 years

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Phototaxis

Author: @kiranatrix For: @baranedizille Pairings/Characters: Light Yagami, L Lawliet, Ryuk, Sayu Yagami, Sachiko Yagami, Socihiro Yagami // Lawlight if you squint, or not Rating/Warnings: Gen // no warnings Prompt: To-Oh timeline. L visits the Yagamis to work on a project with Light, L has a dinner with Light’s family and it’s awkward. And ofc, Ryuk is also there commenting the situation. Author’s notes: I hope you enjoy the story! This occurs on the evening of April 11 while Light and L are both at To-Oh. Soichiro has been resting at home following his heart attack on April 7 (the day of Light and L’s tennis match). The Japanese legend mentioned in the fic (The Fire Quest) is a real one. Sayu gets it mostly correct, but the traditional version in English is here: https://www.worldoftales.com/Asian_folktales/Japanese_folktale_49.html.

—–

Hideki Ryuga– L –was coming over tonight and Light hardly knew how to handle it. L, with his too-long fingers and his too-intense stare, his perfectly enunciated Japanese and teeth unrealistically white for an all-sugar diet, was coming to Light’s house for dinner and, purportedly, to study.

It was a lie, but that was their preferred currency when shifting closer. Stepping together to a stage, a classroom, a tennis court, a cafe– each time the way was paved with lies, petals they threw at the other’s feet and pretended not to notice. It made getting to the destination sweeter when the end was had only ever been death for one or the other. And still, they couldn’t stop. Light was so glad L hadn’t stopped.

L would be arriving any moment but Light couldn’t help but take out his Death Note from its hiding place, just to touch the pebbly leather of his ace in this game. The Death Note was no proper diary but the handwriting in it betrayed plenty about the emotional state and thoughts of its owner these past months. There was the first casually-scrawled name, jotted off like the joke Light believed it to be. Kurou Otoharada. A long, jagged pen mark bled across the rest of the page, a horizon of surprise when that first death dawned. The next name had been carefully written several times with the spelling slightly shifted, the last instances hurried and impatient. There was an exclamation point by the third experiment, exactly 40 seconds from when he’d inked the right combination. Takuo Shibuimaru. It had probably been added in shock, but Light chose to remember a different reason. I got it right, I won.

The names filling the following pages were unremarkable except that they looked exactly like the handwriting on Light’s homework. Studious, easy, and correct without the requirement of much thought. This was a different kind of work, performed as professionally as an accountant. A roster of the worst murderers of the world, the lowest hanging fruit, and Light plucked them nightly when he wasn’t sure how many more nights he’d have. Surely there had to be some price for what he was doing? Aren’t you going to take my soul? Ryuk laughed at him, was impressed by him, and that was a good sign for a shinigami; he would take something but not for a while.

It wasn’t until about ten pages in that things got telling again. A name written diagonally, frantically, and taking up nearly an entire page– Lind L. Tailor. Light’s adrenaline and fury and glee stained the paper as much as the ink had, from a pen that he didn’t use often and had grabbed as quickly as possible during L’s broadcast. Everything about this name was different, just as L was different from all those who had come before. This name was the hook that pulled Kira out of the shadows and thrust L into the light, a breadcrumb for both of them to devour and hunger for more.

This elaborate name was immediately replaced in Light’s mind by a single stark gothic letter, so much so that even when he looked back on that day, he didn’t recall a suited nobody slumped over a desk and dragged away on-camera. He only recalled ‘come find me, come find me, kill me if you can.’ Light was so accustomed to everything and everyone being boring and easy, to nothing getting to him. L’s challenge had wormed into his mind and he felt alive for the first time in his life.

Perhaps the smart thing to do would have been to go silent a while, wait it out until the heat died down and he could find out more about L and his methods. Light had tipped his hand a little but not enough to give the game away, only to set it in motion. Yes, he probably should have played it safe. But he couldn’t stop and he couldn’t help but taunt L further, just to keep chasing that new and intensifying feeling of being alive. The danger was part of their dance, and Light wanted to play with L for as long as possible before Kira killed him.

Lind L. Tailor. The ‘L’ had been darkly underlined, reminding Light of the dark half-moons shadowing the eyes of the real man when Light finally met him. The slant of Light’s scrawl, like the hunch of L’s back. The letter ugly and infuriating and fascinating and shouting at him from the page, drawing his finger to trace over it…

Light pulled his finger back like he’d been burned when he heard his mother calling up to him, heartbeat thudding as he bit his lip and grinned. He quickly snapped his Death Note shut and carefully placed it back in his rigged desk drawer. He’s here.

“Light! Sayu!” Sachiko leaned to call up the stairs from where she was washing her hands in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on their meal. “Would one of you get the door, please?”

She gave Soichiro a stern look as he shifted on the couch. “Not you, Soichi. If you insist on going back to work tomorrow I want you resting tonight.” Her husband had only come home from the hospital a few days ago after his stress-related heart attack and she was anxious about letting him go right back.

“Coming!” Light bustled out of his bedroom as the doorbell chimed again, nearly barreling into Sayu. “Whoa!” He gripped her shoulders to steady himself, smiling and flustered. “Don’t worry about it, Sayu. I’ll get it.”

“Oooo, who’s coming over tonight?” Sayu grinned up at her brother, noticing a rare faint blush on his cheeks. “You look so nervous! Is it a girlfriend?”

Ryuk floated through Light’s bedroom wall, chuckling at the insinuation. “Pfft, not exactly.” It hadn’t escaped Ryuk’s notice that Light had taken even more care than usual with his appearance tonight and that he’d been mulling over the Death Note in a rather odd way. “Ya do look a little flushed, though. Hyuk hyuk…”

“No.” Light rolled his eyes as he made his way downstairs, ignoring both his sister and the shinigami. Do I really look nervous? He smoothed his features and said, “It’s just Hideki Ryuga from Ecology class. We have a project to work on tonight.” His father was the only other person who knew who Ryuga really was. L, the infuriating detective spying on him at To-Oh. Ryuk knew even more than that; namely, that Light was the very person L was looking for, but a shinigami was the best secret-keeper.

“HIDEKI RYUGA?! Light! THE Hideki Ryuga?!” Sayu bounded down the stairs excitedly after Light, squealing with delight and clutching her hands over her heart. “I want to meet him, too! I’m his biggest fan! I know a lot about ecology and maybe I can help you–”

“Shhh! Sayu, please.” Light shot Sayu a good-natured warning look as he opened the door then forced himself to smile cordially at L. “Hi, Ryuga.” He heard a soft noise of disappointment from Sayu as well as peals of shinigami laughter. It would have been Light’s reaction if the movie star had actually been there instead of his rival.

“Hello, Light-kun. Good to see you again.” L was wearing his usual attire, a white long-sleeved shirt and baggy jeans, and he had a backpack slung over one hunched shoulder. He’d made a half-hearted attempt to brush his hair tonight, but the effort had been rewarded with a fluffy black halo that was even more wild-looking than his usual spikey bed-head.

“I see you managed to find the house.” There was a faint note of sarcasm in Light’s voice. As if L hadn’t gathered all the information he could about Light, illegally, invasively, or otherwise.

A small, wry smile tugged at L’s lips and he answered, deadpan, “Yes, seeing that I am here, I apparently managed just fine. Are you impressed?”

“Incredibly. Please come in.” Smartass. Light held the door open for L to enter and gestured to Sayu just behind him. “This is my sister, Sayu.”

Sayu had been peeking around Light, eyes wide with curiosity about the odd-looking person who was most definitely not the idol she’d been hoping for. She’d met lots of Light’s friends over the years but no one quite like this. “Wow…I’ve never seen anyone’s hair do that before. Where are you from? Are you older than Light? How does-”

“Sayu!” Sachiko rubbed her hands on her apron and sighed in fond exasperation. “Hideki-san, please forgive my child’s rudeness. She’s just excited to meet Light’s best friend at school.”

Best friend? L’s eyes cut to Light, who immediately looked away. It amused L to hear their lies mirrored by other people.

Sachiko bowed politely and gave him a warm smile. “You are very welcome in our home. I’ll be serving dinner in a few moments.” She arched a brow at Sayu, “Please go set the table, Sayu.”

L gladly toed out of his worn sneakers, padding along barefoot behind Light through the foyer and into the living room. “Your home is very cozy, Light-kun.”

Ryuk snorted, “Like he hasn’t already seen every inch of it on camera.”

Exactly. Light clenched his hand in his pocket but didn’t let his expression falter. “Dad, Hideki Ryuga is here for dinner. We have a project to work on tonight.”

Soichiro looked up from the newspaper he’d been reading on the couch and gave L a polite nod. “Forgive me for not getting up, Hideki-san, I’ve been confined to the couch until dinner on my wife’s orders.” It was slightly uncomfortable to have L here in his home given that he knew his son was under some suspicion. Soichiro dismissed those suspicions out of hand, but he dreaded that L might turn his searchlights on Light during family dinner.

“Please call me Ryuga.” L gave Light a crooked grin. “That’s what my friends call me.”

Sayu skipped into the living room with a fist full of chopsticks. “Mom says you can go ahead and sit down. It’s yakisoba tonight!” She grabbed the guest’s arm and dragged him over to the table. “You can sit beside Light, Ryuga.”

L blushed faintly but let himself be pulled along. “Ah…alright.” It was strange to realize that he’d never had a ‘real’ family dinner inside someone’s home before. Of course, he’d never had a family or friends, so perhaps not so surprising. He dropped his backpack to the floor and climbed into the seat beside Light, crouching as he usually did.

Light and Soichiro didn’t bat an eye at that but Sayu couldn’t help but gape at him. “Isn’t that an uncomfortable way to sit? My legs would fall asleep!”

“Sayu.” Soichiro sat down at the place opposite Light. “Ryuga is our guest, and he’s welcome to sit how he pleases.” He knew from experience that whether L, Ryuzaki, or Ryuga, the peculiar man would do things his own way.

Sachiko came in a moment later with the dishes for dinner, including yakisoba, miso soup, rice, and pickles. “Please help yourselves. We’re not very formal around here, Ryuga.”

Ryuk floated behind Light, one clawed hand curled around the back of the human’s chair. “Dunno why you humans go to so much trouble when ya could just have apples.”

“Hmm.” L peered at the various options, one finger perched on his lip. “I’ve never had yakisoba before. I admit I don’t eat many noodle dishes.” He’d brought some candy bars and a slice of cake in his backpack in case he didn’t like the food. Wammy had told him to at least wait until he was up in Light’s room studying to eat it, though. Apparently it was rude not to at least try the meal (although he still wasn’t sure if he cared).

“I bet you’d like it.” Light served L some noodles and then put some on his own plate. He whispered to L, “Don’t be difficult. It’s sweet.” He wasn’t about to tell L that he’d suggested yakisoba to his mother tonight for that very reason, or that there were vegetables hiding in it. Why in the hell do I care about pleasing him?

“Hmm.” L tentatively picked up his chopsticks and poked at the noodles, looking between them and Light. “Is it spicy?” It was also becoming clear that he’d never used chopsticks before and they kept slipping from his hand. Why hadn’t he asked Wammy to show him how to use them?

“No, it’s not–here, you’re not holding them right.” Light set his own chopsticks down and took L’s hand, gently molding the fingers into the right position to hold the utensils. He’d done the same thing for Sayu when she was small and learning, so the offer felt automatic. It wasn’t until he looked up and saw L staring at him that he felt self-conscious and pulled away. The gesture had felt too genuine and that made it suspicious. “Well, that’s how to do it. I know you’re a quick learner and will pick it up.”

L looked down and murmured, “Was that a pun, Light-kun?” He concentrated and managed to pinch a bite of yakisoba, quickly shoveling it into his mouth before it fell off. “…mmm!” He didn’t bother to completely swallow the mouthful before saying, “It is sweet. And quite good.” He picked up another bite with slightly more dexterity. “I like it.” Perhaps the cake in his bag could just be for dessert.

Light smiled across the table. “It really is good, Mom, thank you.”

“Oh, you’re always welcome.” Sachiko beamed happily as L quickly devoured his noodles and took another helping.

Soichiro relaxed a little, seeing as things were going more smoothly than he’d expected. “So, boys, what is your project about?”

“It’s for Ecology. We have to collect an insect and bring it to class tomorrow since the lecture is on local entomology.” Light took a sip of tea to hide his amused smile; L was handling the chopsticks perfectly now. Of course he’d be good at that, too.

“Eww.” Ryuk scrunched up his nose, he didn’t much like bugs and creepy-crawly things. “Hope it won’t be flappin’ in a box all night cause that would creep me out.”

“Not just on local entomology, Light-kun.” L chewed a few times, loudly, and swallowed his mouthful. “It’s also on insect phototaxis.”

Sayu, tilted her head and asked, “What’s that?”

L suddenly wished he hadn’t spoken up at all. “Well….” He looked down at his meal, stabbing at the noodles. “…an attraction to light. Some insects, like moths, use the moon to navigate and become confused by artificial light. That’s why they flap around outdoor lightbulbs at night.”

“Oh! Like the Fire Quest!” Sayu nodded sagely. “I know all about that.” When Ryuga just looked at her blankly, she added, “You haven’t heard that story? It’s a famous Japanese legend!”

Soichiro sighed, “I’m sure Ryuga doesn’t–”

“I have not heard it.” L set his chopsticks down and leaned forward in his crouch, hands on his knees as he stared at Sayu. “Please tell me the legend.”

“Sure! See, Light, I told you I could help with your project.”

Light grinned and laughed softly. “Just tell the story, Sayu.” Japanese folktales weren’t going to help them but he was happy to indulge his little sister.

“I’m getting to it!” Sayu sat up straight in her chair, trying to look and sound more official. “There was a queen of the fireflies who lived in a lotus blossom in the middle of a peaceful pond. She was so beautiful that all the moths, dragonflies, and other bugs who lived around the pond were constantly bothering her, begging to marry her. But she didn’t want any of them so it was very annoying.”

L nodded seriously. “Yes, I can see why that would present a problem. Did she tell them all to go away?”

“Oh, she tried! But they wouldn’t listen and there got to be so many bugs on her lotus blossom she was afraid it was going to sink. Completely messing up the whole peaceful pond aesthetic.”

Light snickered and dropped his chin into his hand, smiling at Sayu. “I don’t remember that little detail from the story.”

“Shhh!” Sayu stuck out her tongue at Light and continued. “Anyway, she thought up a way to get rid of them all. She told them that since she was a firefly, she could only marry the bug that brought fire back to her. Whatever bug did that was worthy to be with her forever.”

L gave her a lop-sided smile. “I can’t imagine that turned out well for the insect suitors.”

“Nope! But they couldn’t help themselves. They fluttered and flew around candles, torches, bonfires, all trying to catch the fire that the queen had told them to find but every one of them burned up instead. Nobody completed the Fire Quest and the firefly queen and her pond were left in peace.” Sayu smiled proudly. “The end.”

Ryuk had been hanging on Sayu’s every word, half-sitting on the table. “Hahaha! What a great queen!” He hadn’t been aware that fireflies were so sneaky but there was still a lot about the human world he didn’t know. “Now I wanna see a firefly!”

Light hummed thoughtfully, recalling the legend from his own childhood. Sayu had embellished a bit but it was mostly accurate. “Serves the suitors right, I suppose. They should have listened when the queen told them to go away.”

“The queen sent them on a quest she knew would result in their deaths.” L turned to look at Light, a small smirk on his lips. “Their annoyance hardly necessitates murder, Light-kun.”

“Murder?” Light laughed in a charming way but there was shrewd interest in his eyes. “She didn’t tell them to burn themselves up. They should have known better.” They couldn’t help themselves. Just like we can’t. “Anyway, it’s just a silly legend.”

Soichiro quickly changed the subject.

—-

After dinner, Light showed L up to his bedroom where they could catch an insect from his balcony. His mother had given them a large glass jar and he set it down on his desk, thrilling at having L so close to his secrets. “There’s a bright light on the balcony but it might take a few moments to attract anything.” He switched on the light, dimming the desk lamp so they could see outside better. He leaned against the glass door, watching L mentally cataloging the contents of his room. “I was surprised when you asked me to help you with this project, Ryuga. It’s not very difficult to catch your own bug.” I know you just wanted to see my room for yourself.

“I have never done it before.” L crouched in Light’s desk chair, opening up his backpack and taking out the slice of cake he’d stowed inside. Tonight had been full of firsts for him– chopsticks, yakisoba, legends, bugs. “I didn’t want to kill it since we’re supposed to bring it in alive.” He forked a piece of the strawberry cake, staring at Light while he ate it. Mouth full, he grinned and said, “Think we’ll catch a firefly?”

Light laughed softly and shook his head. “Not really the right time of year for them. They come out in the summer.” He gazed out the glass door, noticing a few flies and mosquitos starting to circle around the caged bulb. “Sometimes we see them in our backyard. Sayu and I would catch them when we were kids.”

“Pity. After hearing your sister’s story, I wanted to see one.” L ate the last bite of cake, placing the empty plastic box in Light’s trashcan (after glancing to see what else was in there).

Light asked over his shoulder quietly, “Don’t they have fireflies in England?”

L smiled slyly, getting up to stand beside Light at the glass door. He recognized the bait and only gave the line a tug. “They do, but doesn’t mean I was there to see them.” In truth, he’d been too wrapped up in his cases to venture outside much as a child. Such single-minded focus had benefitted him in some ways and set him apart from a normal childhood in others. “Perhaps Light-kun will invite me back in the summertime.”

“Of course, Ryuga.” Light smiled at him, catching his reflection in the glass. How long would their game go on? Into the summer, the fall? What season would see it end?

“Look.” L tapped the glass just over Light’s reflection, but what he was pointing to was on the other side. A large green-winged luna moth had landed on the cage surrounding the light bulb and was lazily flapping its wings and warming itself. “The first suitor has arrived.”

“Still haven’t learned the ‘murderous’ queen’s lesson.” Light laughed and grabbed the jar off his desk. “Lucky for them we have electric lights and not fire.” He unscrewed the top and handed the jar to L. “Cmon, you do it.”

L looked down at the jar as if it were Kira’s power instead just an old pickle jar. “The jar is too small.” He shifted to the other foot. “I’ll crush it.”

“No, I think it’s plenty big. We can put it in a shoebox after we catch it, anyway.” Light smirked at him. “You’re just making excuses. Or maybe you really can’t do it?” He knew L wouldn’t turn down a direct challenge.

“Alright.” L sighed and took the jar, frowning as he plotted his approach. Sliding the door open carefully so not to startle it, he crept forward very slowly until he was right beside it. Turning back to Light, he whispered, “Now what?”

“Just scoop it up in the jar. Try not to touch its wings, though.” Light watched as L brought the jar up to the luna moth, delicately prodding to encourage it to go into the jar by itself. Amazingly, it worked, and the moth calmly settled into the bottom of the jar.

“Light-kun!” L hurried back inside Light’s room, smiling broadly down at his captive. It looked like a miniature angel with its gracefully tapered wings and fluffy golden antennae. “It was easy after all.”

“Everything’s easy for you, isn’t it?” I know the feeling. Light screwed the top onto the jar, poking generous air holes in the lid with a pair of scissors. He held it up for both of them to see, L leaning in closely, chewing his thumb at the undamaged and placid moth. “It’s a nice catch, too. I bet no one else will bring in anything this big.”

L didn’t answer him for a long moment, just stared at the moth and the slow up-down, up-down of its wings. “What do you think would have happened if one of the suitors brought fire back?”

Light blinked. “Huh?”

“In Sayu’s legend. What might have happened if one of the suitors completed the Fire Quest and brought back fire to the queen?”

“I…I don’t know. I guess she would have burned up too if one managed to make it back to her. Would have been suicide.” Light gave L a puzzled look. “That’s impossible though. It never would have made it.”

“It might have.” L took the jar, setting it on Light’s desk and turning his full attention to his human specimen again. His hand fluttered from his mouth in a parody of a moth or a name written diagonally, frantically, and taking up nearly an entire page. “If he was a firefly, too.”

Light’s gaze followed L’s hand, those too-thin fingers that had gently ushered the moth to its prison. “So he would trick the queen and allow all the other suitors to get burned up instead of warning them?” He laughed a rare, genuine laugh. “Wouldn’t that make him as bad of a terrible, unfeeling ‘murderer’ as the queen?”

“It’s just a silly legend, Light-kun.” L stuck his hands in his pockets, giving Light a cryptic smile. “But he’d win, wouldn’t he?”

#fanfiction #submission #death note #Light Yagami #soichiro yagami #Sayu Yagami #Sachiko Yagami #l lawliet #l #lawlight #kiranatrix #baranedizille #Mello's Birthday Mayhem 2020

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thiswasinevitableid · 3 years

Note

feel free not to take this but it is still technically march so. vampire sternclay nsfw, a hungry submissive vampire being so, so good in the hope that their human will let them have a taste?

Here it is! I guess it’s april now but eh, on this blog it’s always monster time.

Content Notes: Mentions of blood, since we’re dealing with vampires. The roleplay in this could read as dubcon, since Stern has something Barclay needs, but aftercare is shown and even in the scene it’s clear Barclay feels safe and happy.

“I thought we could act out that, um, request you had for me tomorrow night”

“The one where you let me…”

“Yes, big guy, that one.”

------------------------------------------------------------------

Barclay waits in Mt. Sterns study, clock on the mantle reading three minutes to six. Lamps are being lit up and down the street as the citizens of London flock out into the first warm night of the year. Barclay will not be joining them; Mr.Stern has other plans for him, and the crosses over the windows and doors to the street ensure Barclay doesn’t go anywhere without his permission.

It could be worse. Much worse.

Mr. Stern frequents the gentleman's club where Barclay is (was) a cook, is polite and charming when he discusses the latest evidence of monsters in the Himalayas or the depths of the sea. He’s American, like Barclay, which meant someone appreciated the pies he made for dessert. Every visit, he stopped by the kitchen to compliment Barclays food, insisting was the best in the city.

So imagine Barclays’ horror when, half-starved and foggy-brained, the man he pounced on in an alley turned out to be none other than Joseph Stern. The fear intensified when the human easily overpowered and pinned him, revealing that he was an agent of the crown, a member of the Royal Order of Vampire Hunters.

“I can’t let you free, not in good conscience given you attacked me and could attack someone else. But I don’t want to hurt you, Barclay.”

The agents solution was to bring the vampire home with him, lock him in the safety of the cellar (so he wouldn’t get burnt), and use him as a subject for his research. Mr. Stern prides himself on being the preeminent scholar on the subject of vampirism (“Dr. Helsing’s research is sorely lacking, but everyone goes to him because of the Harker Affair”), and couldn’t pass up the chance to make use of his live-in vampire. Generally, he peppers Barclay with questions or submits him to minor medical tests, always giving him a glass of blood to drink while they work. That glass is conspicuously absent tonight, as was the note Mr. Stern usually leaves him detailing what to expect.

Barclay bounces his knee as his stomach growls; they ran out of blood last night and a new supply has yet to arrive. Then the door opens, and he perks up like a bloodhound offered a bone.

“Hello, Barclay, thank you for being so prompt.” Mr.Stern is in his full suit, hair styled as if he just returned from the office.

“Of course, sir. I, uh, I’ve been looking forward to this all day.” He smiles, licks his lips as the human removes his jacket, revealing more of his throat in the process.

“You like being my research assistant?”

“Very much sir.”

Mr. Stern rolls up his shirtsleeves, “I think you’ll like tonight's experiment quite a bit. On the desk.” He pats the strangely empty hardwood and Barclay sits on the edge, tall enough that his feet still touch the floor. The human opens his dictograph, stops before turning it on, “lie down.”

Barclay does as he’s told, jolts in confusion as Stern pulls three leafs of wood from the desk; one on either side of Barclay and one at his feet, meaning that his whole body is on the table with a few inches of room to spare on all sides.

“This isn’t your normal desk, is it sir?”

“No, I had it made just for us.” The dictograph clicks on, “April 14th, experiment twenty-nine; determining the relationship between sexual arousal and bloodlust in vampires.”

“Wait, what?” Barclay bolts upright, starts climbing off the desk only for Stern to firmly cup his cheek.

“Barclay, you want to be a good specimen, don’t you?” Something sharp and wicked as a scalpel glints behind the clinical curiosity in his blue eyes.

“Yes, sir.” He does, he really does, but he’s so hungry. Hungry and terrified that whatever Stern is planning will cause Barclay to admit the feelings he has to keep reburying in his chest thanks to their reemerging whenever Stern smiles at him.

“Then do as you’re told.” He takes his hand away, Barclay mourning the loss of contact as the reclines back onto the desk.

“Much better.” Stern walks around the desk, patting Barclay’s head along the way, “If you’re good tonight, I’ll give you a special reward. One you’ve never had before.”

Barclay resolves to be better than he’s ever been. Stern's rewards are well planned and generous, leaving Barclay positively spoiled when he’s done. He buys him the expensive draught that lets vampires consume non-blood foods without illness, then takes him to dinner. Brings him rare teas and books to read while he sips them. When he learned Barclay liked theater and opera, evenings out in finery became part of the rotation. He can’t imagine what the extra special reward will be, but he hopes it involves more of Sterns gentle touches on his skin.

“I’m starting the experiment now. To establish our baseline, how aroused are you?”

“Like, a little?”

“Are you craving blood?”

“Yeah, I’m kinda hungry, but not like, crazed or anything.”

“Good. I’ll keep checking in with the subject throughout the process.” He pulls a notebook from his shelf, and Barclay can see a checklist running down the page, “I’ll start by relaxing the subject.”

The detached manner in which Stern refers to him should aggravate him; instead, his cock twitches in his pants and he squirms, hoping the human will say it again.

Stern rolls Barclays pants up to his knees, picks up his right foot and kneads his thumb along the arch. He finds all the sore spots with ease (almost as if he’s done this before), Barclay moaning softly as he works his way up one leg and then other. The vampire is so relaxed by the end he almost misses Stern guiding his wrists into the cuffs on either side of him.

“Sir?”

“It’s for your safety and mine; you may get agitated later on, and I don’t want you injuring yourself. Arousal level?”

“About the same.”

Stern raises his eyebrow.

“Uh, I mean, about the same, sir.”

“Hunger?”

“The same, sir.”

The agent turns back to the dictaphone, “Subject is now restrained. Proceeding to step twoOW, shit.” He sets the notebook down and shoves his right pointer finger into his mouth.

It’s only a small paper-cut, bleeding a bead of red when he pulls it out to examine it. To Barclay, it’s like someone cracked open a fine wine and is taking their sweet time pouring.

Stern notices his interest immediately, “Is this what you want, Barclay? To taste me?”

He whines, nodding his head. Stern’s hand hovers over his face; he could reach it with his tongue, but if he takes it without permission the human will no doubt revoke his reward.

The cut finger strokes his neck, leaving a faint trail of red that he can smell but neither see nor reach.

“Then I guess it’s convenient that’s your reward for tonight.”

“Ohfuckyes, sir, thank you sir.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, we’re only through step one. Where was I” he flips to the same page in his notes, “Oh, right. Addition of even a faint trace of blood lead to increased arousal in the subject. Testing the reverse pathway now.”

“Ohhhhhhfuck” Barclay bucks his hips as Joseph palms his cock through his pants. The warmth and pressure are enough to tease, to coax his cock up, but too little for him to do anything but rut like a needy dog on his hand.

“It looks like stronger stimulation is required.”

“AHahgodOWfuck” tears prick his eyes and he wishes, not for the first time, that he’d been less prone to taking the lords name in vain when he was human. The habit is hard to break and the word burns his tongue whenever it’s uttered.

Sterns eyes flick up to his face just long enough for him to see Barclay isn’t hurt, then they return to his cock. His hand moves in calculated, steady strokes, his voice calm even as Barclays grunts of pleasure fill the room.

“Good boy, Barclay. Let’s see what happens if I…”

“Fuck, ohfucksir.” He jerks his hips as Stern quickens his hand, pre-cum slicking the shaft.

“Subjects fangs are emerging, salivary glands seem more active, eyes-Barclay, be quiet, you’re going to drown out my notes.”

This statement does not have the desired effect, as the thought of the device picking up his moans, of Stern playing them back with a clinical ear or fucking himself to them or letting other hunters listen to just what a vampire will do in order to feed, makes him moan louder.

Stern stops entirely, his tone a warning, “Barclay.”

“S-sorry sir, it, it just, it feels so good, wanted you to, to know I like it. It’s, it’s an honor to feel your hands on me.”

“That’s very sweet. So sweet that I’ll make you a deal; if you can be quiet until after you cum, you can make as much noise as you want afterwards. Understood?”

“Yes sir.” He clamps his jaw shut, fangs pricking the inside of his mouth. Stern works his cock relentlessly, smiling as Barclay’s legs begin jerking and twitching with his impending orgasm.

“That’s much better.”

Barclay smiles, proud, swallows down a moan, and cums all over Sterns waistcoat.

“Messy boy.” Stern wipes himself off, then covers Barclay’s mouth with a cum-streaked hand, “clean it up.”

He obeys, ambivalent to the bitterness of his own spend and elated by the taste of Sterns skin on his tongue. When he’s done the human ruffles his hair with his other hand, smiling down at him.

“I’ll be right back.” Stern leaves his view and Barclay only just keeps himself from whining at his absence. The agent returns with a case which, when opened, reveals a vibrator.

“I’m not hysterical, sir.”

“Not yet.” Rather than hold it himself, Stern straps the device so it rests against Barclays cock and switches it on.

“AHFUCK, sir, it’s, how many times-” His cock, which was soft only a moment ago, perks back up even as the nerves in it scream for it to stop.

“As many as it takes to complete my study. Let’s see.” The human turns Barclays face this way and that, frowns, and digs his finger and thumb into his jaw to keep his mouth open as he moans, “subjects fangs are now fully out and he” Stern snickers as Barclay’s beard tickles his wrists, the vampire licking and nuzzling at his inner arm, “he’s increasingly submissive and blood focused.”

“N-no, I’m you focused sir, want you, be so good for youAHannn” he cums, cuffs clanking on the table as he arches off it. Stern drags a chair over, sitting near Barclay’s head and leaning with his elbows on the desk to watch as his cock continues leaking and shuddering under the onslaught of sensations.

Barclay recalls a myth, Greek he thinks, where a man is punished in the afterlife with intense hunger and thirst. He doesn’t remember why it happens, he tends to skim tragic stories. The part that stuck with him was the man being trapped with food and water just out of reach. With Joseph so close and Barclay so aroused and hungry, he can see the veins in his neck, can almost crane his neck to reach them.

Then he cums a third time and his vision whites out, taking away the temptation for a few moments of mercy. His brain gives up on coherent thoughts after that, and all he can do is moan and sob as Stern forces two more orgasms out of him. His feet and legs go from kicking and thrashing to laying so limp he’s not sure he’ll be able to walk when they’re through.

“I think I have what you need.” Stern shuts off the vibrator, removing bringing a water basin and pitcher over to the vampire. He dips a handkerchief into the warm water, guiding it along Barclays forehead, “you’re doing well, Barclay. I’m so proud.”

“Thank you sir.

“I have one more test to run, okay?” His voice is so gentle, his touch so soothing, and Barclay would do anything for him like this, all he wants is to serve him, to make him happy so he’ll keep looking at him like he’s something precious instead of dangerous.

The agent checks the dictaphone, clears his throat, “Final test: role of discomfort in the arousal-bloodlust dynamic.”

Barclay swallows, so turned on he couldn’t be scared if he tried. The agent pulls a loose page from the notebook, mischief in his eyes and menace on his fingertips. Only Stern could make the snap of a freshly inked piece of paper erotic, and Barclay adores him for it.

“I will now have the subject read a passage and record my observations.”

Letters fill his view and it takes his eyes a second to focus on them. His tongue, likely out of self-preservation, fights to stay behind his teeth.

“We don’t have all night, Barclay.”

The vampire takes a deep breath, “O God, accept me in penitence. O God, l- leave me not. O Lord, lead me not into temptation” his tongue flinches even as his chest burns with pleasure “O God, grant me good thoughts. O God, grant me humility and obedience.”

“I’d say you’re doing well on that front already,” Stern murmurs, saying more clearly, “the subject responds positively to pain associated with holy words, and looks increasingly thirsty.” He gives Barclay a pointed look, “subject should continue if he wants his reward.”

“O Lord, grant me patience, courage and meekness. O God, grant me to love Thee with all my mind and soul.” Tears run down his cheeks; the pain is right on the edge of what he can take, and even in his submissive haze he’s certain this alone is deserving of a reward, “Sir, please, please, I’ve been so good, please say you’re satisfied so I can, I can-”

Stern sets the paper aside, “can what? Specificity is important, Barclay.”

A dozen types of hunger well up in his throat as he whimpers, “please say I can taste you.”

An indulgent smile, “Of course. Give me a second to prepare.”

The vampire closes his eyes, breathes as slowly as he can manage as his tongue ceases tingling. There’s a scuff and thud of Stern touching the desk, and Barclay assumes he’s being freed until warmth straddles his chest and a shadow blocks the lamplight from his face.

“Ohfuck.” He opens his eyes, finds Stern--naked from the waist down--bracketing his ears with his knees.

“Is this the taste you wanted?” Stern guides his head up and Barclay eagerly kisses his cock.

“N-no I wanted to feed but, but this is so, so perfect sir.”

“You think you deserve to feed from me?”

Barclay nods, too busy teasing his tongue along his folds to respond further. The hunter is wet, and the thought of him soaking his tailored trousers just by watching Barclay cum is almost as heady as the scent of the blood beneath his skin.

“Well, I think this is what you deserve, for being so careless as to attack me, and for having to rely on my hospitality to survive.”

“Uhhummm” Barclay closes his lips around his cock and Stern moans, a sound Barclay would gladly swallow holy water to hear again.

“Nnn, oh lord, that’s it, you’re doing so well big guy.”

He purrs at the praise, mouth watering as Stern’s body sends more blood south. The skins so sensitive here, so thin, he can practically taste iron through it. He grazes his teeth along Sterns thigh, hoping for the smallest of scrapes, yelps when the agent pulls his hair hard enough to slam his head back against the desk.

“If you bite without permission, I will leave you here, like this, with that vibrator strapped to your cock, until the morning.”

Barclay whimpers, licks plaintively at his cock to show he’s sorry. Stern’s voice softens, “That’s better. I know it’s hard to restrain yourself, but you--oh lord--you must. I hate having to discipline you my sweet boy, I’d much, much rather-” his hips gain speed, smearing slick across Barclays mouth, “fuck, I’d rather spoil you and then do whatever I want to this perfect body, oh, ohlord, ohyes.” He tenses, gasping, and Barclay wishes his hands were free so he could hold him, keep him safe and steady while he takes his pleasure.

The hunter eases off of him, undoes the cuffs and helps him upright. They move on equally shaky legs to the settee, the human undoing the top buttons of his shirt once they do.

“Barclay…”

“Yes, sir?” He grips the edge of the cushions to keep from pinning the agent to their deep blue surface.

“You can have your reward now.” Stern tips his head sideways, revealing a welcoming patch of throat. Barclay growls, lunges forward as Stern makes no attempt to stop him. His teeth pierce willing skin and hot, sinfully delicious blood flows across his tongue. Stern goes rigid in his arms, voice cracking in a moan. Then he relaxes, clinging to Barclays shoulders as the vampire pushes him down, licking and sucking and smearing crimson kisses across his neck.

Nothing in the world compares to fresh blood, freely offered, swallowed down while the most handsome man you’ve ever seen lets out softer and softer moans of ecstasy.

Two taps register on his shoulder and he pulls away, lapping at the wounds so they’ll stop bleeding and be protected from infection. Joseph groans, gingerly shaking his head to clear it.

“You feeling okay, big guy?”

“Y’know how pythons will eat a cow once a month and then sleep for days? That sounds really fucking good right about now.” Barclay knows some vampires feel energized after feeding, but for him it’s always followed by the need for a nap.

“Let’s go upstairs first, the bed is better than the couch for that. Last time I fell asleep here my back hurt the whole next day.”

“Someone feeling being in his thirties?”

“Barclay, you’re three hundred.”

“And I don’t feel a day over two hundred and fifty.” He smiles as Joseph chuckles and kisses his cheek.

They make it up the stairs, Barclay easing his way under the covers and trying not to let them touch his sore cock. Joseph brings two water glasses and a damp cloth. Barclay uses the latter to clean the last traces of blood from his skin, patching over the punctures with the bandages they keep in the bedside table.

“Fun as it is to pretend to be your, like, pet vampire, I really glad you decided you just needed a roommate after I was stupid enough to attack you.”

Joseph polishes off his water, “You were starving, not stupid. Most vampires who go after humans are. It did put a damper on my plans to proposition you in the club kitchen the next night, but it worked out in the end.”

“They did warn me the clientele might try to bribe me into earning a few extra pounds with uh, ‘special services.’”

“A few pounds is barely a fair price for a kiss from you.” The human kisses him, somehow more sincere and loving than the equally tender kiss he gave him before leaving for work. Then he rubs his leg through the blankets, “do you want some tea? Indrid dropped off a new one he found while traveling with Duck, and it smells amazing.”

“Sounds great, blue eyes.”

“I’ll go make a pot of it while you rest; you did so well tonight I’m inclined to spoil all weekend.”

“No complaints here. You take such good care of me, Joseph.”

“You deserve it, big guy. Don’t go anywhere.” He kisses his brow and leaves the bed, whirling on his dressing gown as he goes towards the stairs.

Barclay watches him with all the love his unbeaten heart can muster and murmurs, “I won’t. Not when everything I need is right here.”

#sternclay #agent stern/barclay #vampire au #victorian au #reader requests #TAZ amnesty

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rosy-cheekx · 3 years

Text

Heat Without Warmth, Light Without Sight

This fic is for the @tma-valentines-exchange and was written for @barnabasbennett (pretty sure, at least!) AO3 link is in the source! Based on the prompt: rewrite episode 159 to feature Tim and Archivist!Sasha.

I’ve been waiting SO LONG to post this! I hope you like reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Chapter One: Embers

The archives are quiet. So quiet. Sasha can hear the tick of the clock on her desk and the hum of the radiator she had brought in so many months ago, back when her biggest concern was how cold her Archivist office was. Before the idea of heat reminded her of Tim in oh-so-many painful ways.

The Unknowing had been…bad. Daisy had been imprisoned in The Choke, Sasha left unconscious and Basira forever changed. She had seen it, she told Sasha later, the way Tim had stood amidst the rubble of plastic mannequins and brick and mortar, unscathed as smoke billowed into the sky, silhouetted in greys and blacks. It was terrifying, she said, in a completely different way than the Unknowing had been. Basira described Tim as unstoppable in that moment, a train bulleting towards destruction and revenge, a rage in his eyes that only intensified when he saw the unconscious form of Sasha James, bruised and lying in the rubble.

In Sasha’s six-month coma, she had missed a lot. Martin had explained things to her; a sad compassion in his eyes as he stirred sugar into tea. Tim had fallen to the Desolation, The Cult of The Lightless Flame calling him home after they had heard about his sudden resilience to heat and flame. It made sense. Tim had experienced so much loss and destruction in his life, losing Danny and Jon (and, temporarily, Sasha) due to the machinations of The Stranger. His connection to the Desolation had probably been growing when none of them, not even Tim, had noticed. Sasha tried reaching out to him; Tim was still employed by the Magnus Institute after all, but he was sullen at his desk, the air around him smelling faintly of burnt hair and the iced coffees he used to love now simmering slightly in his mug. Sasha didn’t think he could’ve been any more withdrawn than he had been in the ramp up to stopping the Stranger. But here he was, prickly and cold and altogether uninterested in Sasha’s attempts to reconnect with him.

Sasha unfolds the letter, singed at the corners. She must have just missed him. Again. Her heart pounds in her chest as she reads the words, written the slanted, neat print she knew so well.

Sasha,

If nothing else, I will miss you. But that loss is essential, Jude says, to feeding the spark that binds us all. They think Agnes Montague’s spark passed to me when I decided my loss of life was more important than the survival of The Stranger and their ritual. Something about total commitment to pain, self-destruction, etc. There is some satisfaction in knowing how unhappy they are about it, especially Jude. I think she really wanted to be special. You’d hate her. Maybe it’s cliché, but I don’t think I’m coming back from this. It all began, and it all must end. Who knows? Maybe I’ll finally be able to quit.

I You are truly unforgettable, boss,

Tim.

Sasha had seen so many of the people she loved fall to the fears of this world in which they find themselves trapped. The loss of Jon had come first, when the thing that Was Certainly Not Jon had stolen him away under their noses. This discovery had come with the loss of the heart of their office: Martin. Realizing he had been in love with a lie had broken something in him, and while Sasha did her best to show him compassion, she couldn’t imagine going through it all in his place. The nature of Gertrude’s death had shocked her; Sasha had known her, had seen such a strong woman she had been. To see (or rather hear) her death reduced to a few cowardly gunshots felt…inadequate. Daisy had become softer after surviving the Buried, kinder to Sasha, but there the Hunt was still there, deep in her. Basira and Melanie were fine, but evasive, suspicious, too eager to wield a knife. And now?

Sasha had no friends, no one she could truly trust, no one left besides Tim. She hadn’t stopped trying to care for him, to make herself available, but she refused to keep her heart open for someone so clearly eager to move away from it all, even if that was motivated by a cult of fire and destruction and pain. But that love she had for Timothy Stoker was still there, the idiot who took her out for drinks and dressed up as her once for April Fool’s and had them all over for Guy Fawkes Day (should she had guessed it then, his eyes illuminated by the pyre, drinking in the light and heat of the flames?) and insisted he cook for everyone whenever he got the chance.

Eyes sweeping over the letter over and over, she read the words, trying to hear each of them in his voice, feeling something in her gut twist as she read her name is his handwriting, in his voice, over and over. Tim had said it so many ways: with mirth, frustration, exhaustion, and warmth. There was still so much left to say. There were so many more ways for him to say her name, and Sasha wanted to hear them all.

This letter? This would not be the last time he said her name. Sasha James, the Archivist, would make damn sure of that.

Sasha is hurrying through the Institute when she almost collides with Elias Bouchard. His hair is unkempt, shaggy from his time in prison, but he is dressed immaculately, black dress shirt rolled to his elbows and a tie that seemed to shimmer yellow-green when it catches the light.

“You-Elias, what the hell?” Sasha takes an involuntary step back, hand ghosting to the letter opener she had instinctively tucked into her waistband.

“Save the effort, Archivist. I’m only here to help, after all. My sources say Tim has left?”

“Sources?” Sasha spits the word, fingers resting against the mottled blue handle of the blade. “Please. There’s no need to hide what you are anymore, Elias.”

“Hmm, very well.” His fingers drum patiently on his jaw, one elbow elegantly balanced on the opposite wrist. He looks too calm, too relaxed for the anxiety and anger thrumming its way through Sasha’s chest. “So, you don’t want to know where he’s gone?” Fuck. Elias’s eyebrow arches expectantly, eyes staring past her as he focused on what she could now recognize as what she called the Knowledge.

“Elias Bouchard, t̶̡̟̲͓̩̜̣͕͇̟̱͉̹̽̋̑̑̅̊͒́̔̂͠ͅe̶̝͍̜̲̘̙̤̰̬̞͒͗l̴̛͕̜̟̟̰͑̿̎̎́͛͌̽̆͆̓̋̾l̴̟̤͚͉͔̼̄̈́̆̌̏̇͝ ̷͖̙̠͕̜̮̬̟̝̰̫͍̆ṁ̶̨̗̮͍̖͍͖̱̟̍̽͜͝e̴̗̩͒̈́͛̊̽́̿ ̷̧̨̡̦̻̙͎̬̪̞͕͙͖̓͂͂͂͂̊̔̊̕̚͜w̴͈̖̦̒̾̀̽͑̓̑̎̂̇͗̂͒ḩ̸̩̺͎̤̳̰̘̱̣̍ę̵̫͚̖́̇͜r̷̢̘͍̣͚̠͚̫̦̭͌ͅͅͅẻ̵͓͖̆̀̒ ̵͇͕̱̬̻̖͔̲͇͇͊̓͊́̽̍̋̓̈́̎̿̆̕͘͝h̷̨̡̧̨̻̝̲̱̬̻͙̻͋́͒̈͆͛͛̒͂̉̈́̎͜e̴̡̪͓̘̳͇͙̪̠̳͈͔̳͕͗̓̉̎ ̵̢̡̟͍̬͖͔͎̹͇̞͗̓́́i̶̲̬̰͙̖̘̮̠̘̜̙̗̍̈́̀̌̔͌̊͋́̍͌̑̚͝s̶̞̱̥͚̽̔̏͠͝.”

Her voice echoes with persuasion, the smooth words rolling off her tongue before she could consider it. Elias sighs, seeming almost tired with her. “He’s in the Desolation.” Elias sighs, seeming almost tired with her. “Honestly, Sasha, I would have told you without you needing to ask like that.”

She tunes him out, her own Knowing searching for Tim and landing her only with a burning inside her skull. She hisses her pain through her teeth and focuses back on Elias, who seems almost amused.

God, what a bastard. “Ȟ̶̡̱͈̖̱̱̱̤̮̖̳̬̆̿͐͛̾́͗͠͝͝ͅͅo̷̡͎̙̓͗̋̂͊̏̏̅̚͘͝ẅ̶̢̨̧̝̖͚̦̱̟̹̼͕͌͌͌̋̒̆͑̈́̓͛͠ ̶̱̩̜̖̫̼̰̐d̴̢͈͍̗̱̀̉̽͋o̷̢̡̫͈̼̺̹̩̥͕͕͘̕ ̵̢̭̦͍̬͖̪̹͍̬̝͝I̶͕̥̱̤̽̿̃̃̂͐̔͒̒̇̆͗̚̕ ̴̛̞̜̘̥͓̙̗̫̰̙̼̝̀͗͋̊́̕ḡ̴͈͈̗̜̦̇͐̏̿̾̅́̆̎̂̊̕͠e̷̡̡̲̘̞̟̤̗͓̺̱̣̘͐̆̈́̔̎̃͋́ṯ̶̨̺̜̪̺̼̼̟̽̽̍̾̊́͊́̒̕͘ ̵̢͔̟͈̘͚̫̩̭͑̃͘ͅt̸̪̊͛̽̀͒h̴̘̫̖̤̜͕̻̺̯̼̦̟͔̋̍̋̈̌̃͐̈́̍̋e̶̢̛͚͉͕͓̪̖̘͖͇͇̫̲͉̐̀̈́̋̄̃̆̽̃̍͊̓ͅr̵̨͍͖̜͕͈̱̤̤̭͈̳̯̜͈̆͒̾̎̓̓̀̐̈̀̂̉̕͠e̴̦̱̺͓̝͕̥͔̮̓͐͛̚?̸̛̝̞̦͈̦̿͐͌̂̌̆͂̆̔̋͗͒̊”

“Honestly, Sasha, you’re wearing yourself out. Timothy and Jude just left. They were in the library; I’m sure you can follow them. Let your mind follow theirs. Find the right string, if the Mother will pardon my analogy, and pull it. I’m sure they left the door open for you.” He winks, as if enjoying a private joke, and turns on a polished leather shoe, striding towards the Archives with purpose.

Sasha redirects her course and hurries to the library. Is this a trap? Almost definitely. But honestly, she doesn’t care. Rosie, head of the institute while Elias had been “previously occupied," had been the last to leave the Institute, Sasha Knew as she ran, clocking out at 18:02. The librarians and assistants were gone. It was just her. Well, she and Elias, certainly. She was already a pawn in this fourteen-way game of chess; she may as well take down some bishops if this was going to be her end. She has never met Jude Perry, but Tim was right about one thing: she certainly already hated her.

In the library, Sasha halts in the doorway, taking in the scene in front of her. The heat is excruciating on her cheeks as she sees a blazed trail of singed books, paper, and manuscripts. The burning in her face and soul is caused not by any fire, but by the sheer anger that someone dared mar her memories of this library, where she had met so many of the people she loves. Loved. No, loves, she decided with certainty. Jon is gone, the true memory of him lost to everything but the errant polaroid, Martin is all but gone, a shell of the warm man they had known, and Tim is just out of reach. But despite all this, maybe in sheer spite of everything they’ve been through, Sasha still present-tense loves each of them.

It is that love, she thinks, that guides her now, more so than the omniscient Eye that paves her way to the Desolation, the scar on reality widening and opening for her before it swallows her whole, the library crumbling into ash around her.

One way or another, she was going to end this.

#tma #the magnus archives #tma fanfic #tma valentines exchange 2021 #timsasha #archivist sasha #desolation tim #fanfic #sasha james #tim stoker #fanfic to a tea

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tinyshe · 3 years

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Why I’m Removing All Articles Related to Vitamins D, C, Zinc and COVID-19

source

Over the past year, I’ve been researching and writing as much as I can to help you take control of your health, as fearmongering media and corrupt politicians have destroyed lives and livelihoods to establish global control of the world’s population, using the COVID-19 pandemic as their justification.

I’ve also kept you informed about billionaire-backed front groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a partner of Bill Gates’ Alliance for Science, both of whom have led campaigns aimed at destroying my reputation and censoring the information I share.

Other attackers include HealthGuard, which ranks health sites based on a certain set of “credibility criteria.” It has sought to discredit my website by ensuring warnings appear whenever you search for my articles or enter my website in an internet browser.

Well-Organized Attack Partnerships Have Formed

HealthGuard, a niche service of NewsGuard, is funded by the pharma-funded public relations company Publicis Groupe. Publicis, in turn, is a partner of the World Economic Forum, which is leading the call for a “Great Reset” of the global economy and a complete overhaul of our way of life.

HealthGuard is also partnered with Gates’ Microsoft company, and drug advertising websites like WebMD and Medscape, as well as the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — the progressive cancel-culture leader with extensive ties to government and global think tanks that recently labeled people questioning the COVID-19 vaccine as a national security threat.

The CCDH has published a hit list naming me as one of the top 12 individuals responsible for 65% of vaccine “disinformation” on social media, and who therefore must be deplatformed and silenced for the public good. In a March 24, 2021, letter1 to the CEO’s of Twitter and Facebook, 12 state attorneys general called for the removal of our accounts from these platforms, based on the CCDH’s report.

Two of those state attorneys general also published an April 8, 2021, op-ed2 in The Washington Post, calling on Facebook and Twitter to ban the “anti-vaxxers” identified by the CCDH. The lack of acceptance of novel gene therapy technology, they claim, is all because a small group of individuals with a social media presence — myself included — are successfully misleading the public with lies about nonexistent vaccine risks.

“The solution is not complicated. It’s time for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to turn off this toxic tap and completely remove the small handful of individuals spreading this fraudulent misinformation,” they wrote.3

Pharma-funded politicians and pharma-captured health agencies have also relentlessly attacked me and pressured tech monopolies to censor and deplatform me, removing my ability to express my opinions and speak freely over the past year.

The CCDH also somehow has been allowed to publish4 in the journal Nature Medicine, calling for the “dismantling” of the “anti-vaccine” industry. In the article, CCDH founder Imran Ahmed repeats the lie that he “attended and recorded a private, three-day meeting of the world’s most prominent anti-vaxxers,” when, in fact, what he’s referring to was a public online conference open to an international audience, all of whom had access to the recordings as part of their attendance fee.

The CCDH is also partnered with another obscure group called Anti-Vax Watch. The picture below is from an Anti-Vax Watch demonstration outside the halls of Congress. Ironically, while the CCDH claims to be anti-extremism, you’d be hard-pressed to find a clearer example of actual extremism than this bizarre duo.5

Gates-Funded Doctor Demands Terrorist Experts to Attack Me

Most recently, Dr. Peter Hotez, president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute,6 which has received tens of millions of dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,7,8,9 — with funds from the foundation most recently being used to create a report called “Meeting the Challenge of Vaccine Hesitancy,”10,11 — also cited the CCDH in a Nature article in which he calls for cyberwarfare experts to be enlisted in the war against vaccine safety advocates and people who are “vaccine hesitant.” He writes:12

“Accurate, targeted counter-messaging from the global health community is important but insufficient, as is public pressure on social-media companies. The United Nations and the highest levels of government must take direct, even confrontational, approaches with Russia, and move to dismantle anti-vaccine groups in the United States.

Efforts must expand into the realm of cyber security, law enforcement, public education and international relations. A high-level inter-agency task force reporting to the UN secretary-general could assess the full impact of anti-vaccine aggression, and propose tough, balanced measures.

The task force should include experts who have tackled complex global threats such as terrorism, cyber attacks and nuclear armament, because anti-science is now approaching similar levels of peril. It is becoming increasingly clear that advancing immunization requires a counteroffensive.”

Why is Hotez calling for the use of warfare tactics on American citizens that have done nothing illegal? In my case, could it be because I’ve written about the theory that SARS-CoV-2 is an engineered virus, created through gain-of-function research, and that its release was anticipated by global elites, as evidenced in Event 201?

It may be. At least those are some of my alleged “sins,” detailed on page 10 of the CCDH report, “Disinformation Dozen: The Sequel.”13 Coincidentally enough, the Nature journal has helped cover up gain-of-function research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, publishing a shoddy zoonotic origins study relied upon my mainstream media and others, which was riddled with problems.14,15

So, it’s not misinformation they are afraid of. They’re afraid of the truth getting out. They’re all trying to cover for the Chinese military and the dangerous mad scientists conducting gain-of-function work.

You may have noticed our website was recently unavailable; this was due to direct cyber-attacks launched against us. We have several layers of protective mechanisms to secure the website as we’ve anticipated such attacks from malevolent organizations.

What This Means for You

Through these progressively increasing stringent measures, I have refused to succumb to these governmental and pharmaceutical thugs and their relentless attacks. I have been confident and willing to defend myself in the court of law, as I’ve had everything reviewed by some of the best attorneys in the country.

Unfortunately, threats have now become very personal and have intensified to the point I can no longer preserve much of the information and research I’ve provided to you thus far. These threats are not legal in nature, and I have limited ability to defend myself against them. If you can imagine what billionaires and their front groups are capable of, I can assure you they have been creative in deploying their assets to have this content removed.

Sadly, I must also remove my peer reviewed published study16 on the “Evidence Regarding Vitamin D and Risk of COVID-19 and Its Severity.” It will, however, remain in the highly-respected journal Nutrients’ website, where you can still access it for free.

The MATH+ hospital treatment protocol for COVID-19 and the iMASK+ prevention and early outpatient COVID-19 protocol — both of which are based on the use of vitamins C, D, quercetin, zinc and melatonin — are available on the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance’s website. I suggest you bookmark these resources for future reference.

It is with a heavy heart that I purge my website of valuable information. As noted by Dr. Peter McCullough during a recent Texas state Senate Health and Human Services Committee hearing, data shows early treatment could have prevented up to 85% (425,000) of COVID-19 deaths.17 Yet early treatments were all heavily censored and suppressed.

McCullough, in addition to being a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the Texas A&M University Health Sciences Center, also has the distinction of having published the most papers of any person in the history of his field, and being an editor of two major medical journals. Despite that, his video, in which he went through a paper he’d published detailing effective early treatments, was summarily banned by YouTube in 2020.

“No wonder we have had 45,000 deaths in Texas. The average person in Texas thinks there’s no treatment!” McCullough told the senate panel.18 Indeed, people are in dire need of more information detailing how they can protect their health, not less. But there’s only so much I can do to protect myself against current attack strategies.

They’ve moved past censorship. Just what do you call people who advocate counteroffensive attacks by terrorism and cyberwarfare experts? You’d think we could have a debate and be protected under free speech but, no, we’re not allowed. These lunatics are dangerously unhinged.

The U.S. federal government is going along with the global Great Reset plan (promoted as “building back better”), but this plan won’t build anything but a technological prison. What we need is a massive campaign to preserve civil rights, and vote out the pawns who are destroying our freedom while concentrating wealth and power.

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oreranoneiro · 4 years

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Matsumura Hokuto 10,000 characters interview (Myojo 2020 May Edition)

When we formed a circle that day, it was the moment we promised, “Let’s go on with the 6 of us, forever.”

If it's these 6 members, we'll be even greater.

Once again, congratulations on your debut.

Thank you very much. But we'll go further from now on. I'm super passionate right now. I want to keep working and do something every day. Many thoughts are running through my head; what more I can do and what is coming from now on, about the group and about the members. From there, I realised that if it's these 6 members, we'll be even greater. That's why it's only the beginning.

You're not satisfied with the current situation?

Satisfied!? Honestly, right now I'm not. Not at all. I’m glad when people go, “Amazing!” at the current SixTONES, but I also want to tell them it's nothing yet. I want to tell them to keep watching the six of us. Because it's from now on. I say that but it's not like we have a fundamental vision of anything (laughs). It was like that from our Jr. era. We would go all out for one concert, but when the next one comes around, we’d have zero ideas. We can't conjure up a vision for the next thing. We might have zero ideas, but the passion of the six of us is driving this whirlwind. We don't know what's coming or what we'll do next, but if I think about our potential, it's isn’t only this.

I think being the main character is cool.

We’d like to backtrack on your path to debut. Do you have a memory from childhood?

Is it okay if this one isn't an experience? I vaguely like french toast. If I look for a deeper reason, it seems like I often ate french toast when I was a baby. After becoming an adult, I’d often eat it on the streets as it became popular, and it really is delicious. But what I like the most is buying plain bread at the supermarket, cutting the edge, and making a simple french toast by adding egg, milk and sugar, then pouring maple syrup on it. It feels like something my mom made.

You also like cooking, right?

I have liked it for a long time. I always watched my mom cook, so maybe it's the effect of that. When I was a kid, I used to dream of having a curry shop or a ramen shop. Apparently, I couldn't pronounce it properly, so at kindergarten I said, "I want to be Karen-san and Ramen-san!" (laughs) After that, I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to help people in trouble.

When you started learning karate in first grade, was it because you wanted to be a hero?

I don't remember the reason, but it wasn’t because of someone else’s suggestion. "I want to learn karate!" was something I said myself.

Wasn't the training strict?

It was strict, but I was completely absorbed in it soon after starting. However, around 3rd grade, I plateaued and couldn't advance. I didn't win matches, and I considered quitting a couple of times. My worried parents told me, "After going on this far, we think you should continue. But the final decision is yours." In the end, I didn't quit. It isn’t a cool story where I went on because I hated to lose. It was because if I quit, I felt like I would have lost something inside me. Also, the fear of betraying my parents' expectations was really strong.

Did you have any interest in the entertainment world?

None at all. In 5th grade, by chance I watched the drama 'Kurosagi'. I don't normally watch drama, but I think the protagonist is really cool. I wanted to imitate him, I wanted to be someone like that. But I didn't even know his name. When I talked about it in class, someone said "That's Yamapi (Yamashita Tomohisa)." Everyone knew him. I suddenly felt enthusiastic and asked my parents to register me in the fanclub. I also went to NEWS’s concert. He was also really cool during concerts.

Then you send an application to Johnny's.

The first time I sent it was in grade 5. I sent the second one a year later. There was no reply to both applications.

But you didn't give up?

I didn’t. That's why I sent my third application in the first year of middle school. At that time, I consulted my parents. Maybe they saw how impatient I was and thought, if I didn't have a deadline, how long would I suffer for? Just like back then with karate, instead of pushing their opinion on me, they told me to think about the possibility of it not working out. So I came to a decision. If they did not reply by April 1st, the beginning of my second year, then I will give up. It was because in the second year, I would have to focus on high school preparation. That's why even if an answer came after April 1st, I wouldn't go to the audition.

When did the response come?

February. Just barely before the time limit. We have a video of that. I came home after the end of term exam, and somehow my mom is recording with a handycam. Then she gave me a sheet of fax. But instead of Johnny's Audition, written there was The Shounen Club back dancer auditions. It is a program in which only Johnny's could perform, so it was actually a Johnny's audition. For a moment I couldn't wrap my head around it. I felt sorry for my mom because she couldn't get the reaction she expected. (laughs)

Shimekake and I were made into a pair.

How was the audition?

We went from Shizuoka to Tokyo in a car. Dad driving, mom by his side, me in the back seat. As we came closer to Tokyo, the mixed feeling of nervousness, happiness, and uneasiness intensified. It would have been decided on that day whether or not my three-year-long dream from grade 5 will come true. It's not simply three years. For I who was thirteen, it was 3 years out of my 13-year-long life. But I’ve never done anything like dancing, and I don't know how many will pass the audition. The only thing I understood was that if the insignificant me made one mistake and they told me to go home, that will be the end of my dream. Realizing that, I started crying. I tried to hide it, but mom realized it and looked back at me, then I thought she might cry, too. When I saw her face, I shouted, "Don't cry!". I tried to be intimidating, so my tears stopped just like that. Now when we look back at it, mom told me, "You were really angry at that time, huh." I laughed it off and said, "It was because everyone was so cool in the audition, there was no way I would have passed if my eyes were swollen."

What happened after you arrived?

We put on name labels. At first, we formed lines and someone taught us the choreography, and we danced intently. Then gradually we were told of our positions. "You, go forward. You, in the back.” The most vivid memory was when Shimekake (Ryuya) was by my side. I thought he was cute, but also really good at dancing. Then, Johnny-san called me over. It might be because I wrote my English proficiency level on my application, but suddenly he started speaking English. His pronunciation was really like a native speaker so I didn't understand anything. I thought 'Ah, I'm in danger'. When we were on break, I got called over by Johnny-san and the choreography teacher and they told me, "You, go and keep practicing without rest." I felt down. I wanted to practice but I didn't have any dancing experience, and I couldn't remember the choreo, either. At that time, I relied on Shimekake. "I don't remember the choreo, can you teach me?" When practice started again, Shimekake and I slowly went forward, and in the end we stood on the foremost center, in the position that's like partner.

How was the result?

The day after was the recording of The Shounen Club, so when Johnny-san asked if I could come, I answered "I will!". However, the night after the audition there came a phone call from Johnny-san. "YOU don't have to come tomorrow." When I asked why, he said "YOU are in Shizuoka, that's really far. I'll let you do something even greater." Doesn't that make you wonder what that greater thing would be? I thought it was a lie so that he could turn me down without hurting me, because I believe there's no way that kind of Cinderella Story would happen. If it was that good, everything would have gone smoothly from a long time ago. Even I know that such a convenient story would only happen to people who don't wait. That's why I keep on saying that I will definitely come, and in the end, it was like Johnny-san gave in.

You kept pushing and came to the recording.

Yes. in front of everyone, Johnny-san said in a loud voice, "YOU, why did you come!" and I was really embarrassed. But then he laughed and said, "You're really determined, huh." Suddenly he told me to appear in 'Jr. ni Q' corner. I tagged along to the waiting room, and there he told Goseki (Koichi)-kun. "Goseki, bring this kid with you." Goseki-kun agreed indifferently. When the time came, Goseki-kun pulled my hand to the stage and over there were Koyama (Keiichiro)-kun from my favorite NEWS and Nakamaru (Yuichi)-kun. I always watched 'The Shounen Club', so I can't believe I could stand there myself.

It’s because you are that; It’s because it's like that.

Right after you joined the company, you were added to B.I.Shadow, so the 'great thing' Johnny-san said really did happen.

I think it was the Shokura practice 2 weeks after I joined. Johnny-san told me "There's this kid who’s a great star, you should always be with him. Be in his group." and introduced me to Nakajima Kento. "That's B.I.Shadow, and you're in that. It was 3 members but now it’s 4 members. It's like that," he said. I'm already panicking, so I was like "What do you mean like that? I'm joining this group? There's no way I'm in B.I.Shadow, right?"

So you yourself were doubting it.

Yes. During the next week's rehearsal, when the choreographer called "B.I.!!" I tagged along. Everyone around me went "eh!?" and became a bit noisy. But Kento and (Kikuchi) Fuma really treated me well. There were times when I asked about the choreo and they told me to wait but didn't teach me, and for a while I thought they were unreliable, though (laughs). Looking back now, it was only a year after they joined but they still looked after me. When they were free, most of the time they would be checking my dance.

After that, you were active as a part of Nakayama Yuma w/ B.I.Shadow and NYC Boys. You also accomplished a CD release and a Kouhaku performance.

All of that was in my first year. What an exciting first year.

Any conversation with Yamada-kun and Chinen-kun from that time that you still remember?

We barely talked with each other, so close to none. Because I was really shy.

But in a magazine interview back when you just joined, you said never feeling shy is your strong point.

I was probably trying to look tough. I just joined and want to be an innocent, sociable little brother who anyone can fawn over, but I was actually forcing myself. I'm basically pretty cheerful and chatty, but also annoyingly shy toward strangers.

After that, there was a period where your workload lessened.

There was. At first, it was just a faint sense of discomfort, but gradually it became stronger. For example, I thought "Huh? There's no interview for B.I.Shadow this month, but Kento and Fuma went to an interview together."

I see.

I was a junior high schooler, but still realized the intention behind the upper and lower case letters of ‘NYC boys'. The three of them wore red costumes, while we're in the back wearing different costumes. The workload was indeed decreasing, but I was just holding on desperately. Even on the song where Kento and Fuma are supposed to sing with just the two of them, I memorized the choreo so when the time came, I could say "I can dance it too!" and they would let me perform it with them. Of course, I didn't get the mic, and for a while I thought it couldn't be helped anymore. I struggled to think of a way to escape this world of leftovers. I didn't want to disappoint my parents and hometown friends, but more than anything, it was a world I really yearn after, so there was no way I'm giving up easily.

Getting into a group right after joining, you may look like one of the elites but in fact you were struggling too.

Yeah. I want to get even a bit more work, so I moved to Tokyo. When I talked to someone from the agency, they said "You can work from Shizuoka, too." I said it's not for work, but the school I want to enroll in is in Tokyo. Then after moving, I reported to the agency that I now live in Tokyo.

But then Sexy Zone's debut was decided, and B.I.Shadow's activity came to a full stop.

In a flash, any work was gone. My dancing position was pushed to the back too, and there was a month where I had no job at all. It was a really terrible time.

But you looked forward without giving up.

It sounds cool, but I became sulky inside. It clashed with my need to prove myself when I got called. In short, I strayed from the path. I didn't cut corners when it came to dancing, but be it as senior group's dancer or something else, I stood on the stage thinking "Hey! Look, look! Look at me!" I remember singing KinKi Kids' 'Family ~Hitotsu ni naru koto' with glittery makeup and jingling accessories on Junior corner of Hey!Say!JUMP's concert. It's a lovely ballad, but I sang it with a piercing glare and skull ring on my finger. I was desperate to show how good I was. Even though I know better than anyone else that I'm not a special human.

You really struggled.

If the current me can meet me back then, I will warn him for sure. Of course, I could hear, "What a bad sense," "Such a bad image," "He got carried away," from all around me. But with that thorny appearance, the producer of 'Shiritsu Bakaleya Koukou' saw me and thought, "What a sour-looking guy, how interesting." And that was how my position in the cast was decided.

So that was the story of your selection.

Yes. But just because I got chosen by it, doesn't mean the stupid things I did back then were forgiven. But the me back then did go full force. Everything in life is connected. Right and wrong is a different matter altogether, but if you do something desperately, something will definitely come from it.

Even if this group will succeed, do I have it in me...

The drama 'Shiritsu Bakaleya Koukou' that gathered all SixTONES current members was a big hit. Did you feel like you will debut with these 6 members one day?

There was no premonition (laugh). But I did think what a random bunch we are. We left an impression of a group with six mismatched members. There were moments when I thought being with them was somewhat interesting. Like homemade hamburg steak. Even if we're wrong together, it wasn't a steak nor was it a restaurant-level hamburg steak with 100% cow beef. Made with different compositions, it was a homemade hamburg steak for a barbecue we ate together. But it was really delicious.

So slowly something like a group consciousness grew within you?

Yes. We got to sing together in 'Shokura', also appeared together in 'SUMMARY' and concerts. However, I could strongly feel that at first, each of us was focusing on personal success or were clinging desperately to this group as a way to survive.

In 2013, you won no. 1 in 'Jr. You Want To Have As A Lover' category of the Jr. ranking held by Myojo, right.

I was really happy. I totally didn't expect to win it. With what happened after Sexy Zone's debut, along with the push of the Bakaleya franchise, I wondered if there were still people who wanted me to debut. There's a superstition that the Junior who won will be able to debut, right!? As I had won it, it became an encouragement in my heart that even someone like me will be able to debut.

Then, in May 2015, SixTONES became an official group.

19 years old. I thought no matter what kind of future awaits this group, this will be my last group. There's no ‘later on’ if this ends in failure. The last chance.

Right after the formation, did you think you could debut?

At first, not at once. Rather than feeling like we couldn't debut for sure, it was a worry because we were not gaining popularity at all.

I see.

It might have been because I was already worried about myself. Even if this group succeeds, do I have what it takes? What if one way or another I end up quitting?

As you brooded over it, what happened?

Slowly, a lot of things made me feel 'Huh?!' toward the group or members. I didn't try to be liked, and also didn't think anyone liked me. I thought everyone was struggling because it's our last chance and we don't have enough composure. Even though we're in this together, we hurt each other; we went against each other indiscriminately. When something went against our expectations, we looked for someone to blame.

For example?

This is just an example. Currently, in choreography, even if we match you can see our individual arrangement, and we respect each other for the way we dance. However, back then, with one arrangement, someone will go "Isn't that wrong?" and looked for a mistake. "He's doing it wrong." Each of us felt like we were right and blamed someone else, even though there was nothing wrong with it. I also did it to other members. I can't stand the situation where it was like we had an internal discord.

I see.

It's a world where no one knows what is right. That's why I built a wall so I could decide everything for myself. Be it advice or direction from other members, I isolated myself from everything. I finish everything so I don't have to talk with the others at the dressing room, I kept on reading books while putting earphones on.

Did you consider quitting?

My chatty yet shy nature kind of complicated the situation... But even with that attitude, I actually wanted to talk with them, and I didn't think about quitting, not once. I keep on thinking that even if we don't have what it takes as a group, let's go on with what we’ve got. However, I couldn't hide it and made my parents worried. Maybe I barely concealed my situation. "Just think of it as a circle or club activities. Because you got paid, you can also think of it as a part-time job. It's okay if you want to end it. If it's too hard then it's okay," they told me. "Yeah, yeah," I always answered lightly, but deep inside, I always felt sorry for making them worried. "Sorry, but I will go on. I don't have any intention to quit."

All other members said "Hokuto really changed," but was there a trigger to your change?

It’s because now in the dressing room, I'm the most talkative one (lol). But it wasn't only one happening that changed my whole world. It was more like many points that linked into a line. From my point of view, rather than being the one who changed a lot, it's the others who changed and slowly made me conscious that I can show my honest self to them. Everyone really changed. Saying we became adults sounds nice, but I think it was because we kept going on as these six members and slowly gained self-assurance.

Do you have an example of those points that linked together into a line?

Hmm. For example, I’ve always thought that acting is fun, but I'm really bad at it. It became somewhat of a preoccupation. When asked what I want to do, I will feel pressured to answer only with the things I can do. That's why I couldn't say I want to act. In interviews right after the group formation, when asked, "Hokuto-kun, what do you want to do from now on?" I couldn't answer anything. At that time, Jesse will definitely answer "He wants to act. He also looks attractive when acting, so from now on I think he will grow as an actor too," always. There was an instance when I think I can't let him keep saying it for me, I have to be able to convey what I want to do by myself. "I want to act more, but I know that I'm not good. So, I would like more opportunities to practice it." Then, I have to watch more movies, I have to do that, I have to do this. My activities, behavior, and interests changed. Not just Jesse, I also accepted small gestures from other members as the points became a line. I realized those things given to me were what made me change.

Forming a line with the 6 of us and bawling our eyes out.

In 2018, your activity broadened with the 'Johnny's Jr. Channel', you were on magazine covers here and there, managed to get a rare reprint, and the group rapidly gained exposure. Were there any moments that you think changed the wind's direction?

We did 'Amazing!!!!!!' in 2017. With that song, the direction the group is going for became clear. I think that was the culmination of everything. It was at that point that everyone evolved. In a way, 'Amazing!!!!!!' might have been the starting line for SixTONES.

But you repeatedly said you were not focused on debuting, right?

Honestly, rather than not focused on it, it was more like we gave up on debuting. I think there are only a few differences between debuting and not debuting. The biggest difference for me is if we couldn't debut, this group will disappear one day. There's also the possibility of the members changing, because debuting means we are recognised as a group. However, debut or not, SixTONES won't disappear. We will go on forever. Somewhere along the line, I began to think like that. No one said it to us nor did we promise anything between us. But that's the biggest reason why I wasn't worried about debuting.

Then on 28th June 2019, you were informed of the debut in Johnny-san's hospital room, and also the fact that you will announce it on 'Johnny's Jr. 8.8 Festival' on August 8th, wherein a total of 300 Johnny's Jr. will perform.

That place on August 8th felt solemn. That day, on top of our joy, we had to properly tell everyone who attended about our debut. The friends who fought alongside us as Jr, fans who supported them. Of course, our fans are there too, also those whom we regarded as rivals. That announcement was supposed to bring joy for some of us, but also cruelty for the others.

What kind of existence is Snow Man who debuts at the same time as you?

They are our rival, of course, but also completely our comrade. It feels like our only difference is the group.

How did you convey it to the family that had always worried about you?

That day, I called them right away. They casually told me "That's great," I will never forget those words. I can't put it into words, but all my life, thank you for entrusting everything to me. Thank you for letting me live this life with my own choices. I want to tell them thank you for believing in me.

Do you have something you want to say to the members who went through joy and sorrow together with you? First, Kouchi Yugo-kun.

Johnny-san told me "There's a guy who's really compatible with you," and that was Kouchi. Even after the B.I.Shadow's cessation of activities, we keep on being a pair. So from now on, let's be together all along our life.

To Jesse-kun.

From now on too, I'll keep on relying on you. Of course we will work hard too, but you are the face of our group, our center.

To Tanaka Juri-kun.

Juri, our engine starter, you are the strongest. Juri, you are amazing. Have some confidence, okay.

To Morimoto Shintaro-kun.

As the youngest member of this group, you still have things holding you back. But let's go through the years with everyone else and become an adult. Then that gap will feel like nothing.

To Kyomoto Taiga-kun.

… Keep showing me your figure from the back, maybe. More than anyone else, Kyomoto has always been a stimulus for me to have an awareness that we are professionals. Because you're the person who made me think that artists are great. If we are in different businesses, maybe I will be able to tell you honestly that I respect you.

The last question. When did you feel the happiest that SixTONES are these 6 members?

Probably this year's January 7th. During 'TrackONE IMPACT' Yokohama Arena, the last part of double encore, our last stage as Jr., the last moment on that stage. From when our debut was decided, I keep on thinking 'SixTONES is a group that started on May 1st 2015, debuting on January 22nd 2020. But we're not a group that ends one thing and starts something else on our debut.' However, at that double encore, we formed a circle on the stage, met each other's eyes and shouted 'Thank you!' as we cried. We bawled our eyes out to an embarrassing extent. I looked at the members' eyes and thought, "I've been saved by these guys. I'm glad it's the six of us," while my tears keep on flowing. I really love them, that's how I feel from the bottom of my heart.

Doesn't matter if we debuted or not, I believe we will always be together. I’ve been stuck at certain points. Will we be able to stay together forever? When we formed a circle that time, it's not like we confirmed it with words to each other. But I think that was the moment where we promised "let's go on forever with these six members." At that time, I accidentally thought, "Ah, it ended...", even though I had said that a debut is not the end of one thing and the start of something else. It was really fun, and also manyfolds so very difficult. We hurt and helped each other. But no matter when, we will always go full throttle. That day, at that moment, the Jr days ended, and these 6 members will walk on with a new promise in our heart.

#sixtones #translation

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klapollopilled · 5 years

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Guess what I found?

One of my favorite hobbies/time killers is going to Honkai Impact 3rd's Wikipedia page and looking at the Filmography of every character's voice actor/actress, a little creepy, but hey, whatever.

What I like doing is going through the list of voices they've done in other media and stuff like that to see if they've done voices of any other character I recognized, and THESE are my findings:

Kiana Kaslana's VA, Rie Kugimiya, also does the voice of Shana from Shakugan no Shana, I'm not really interested, but I do recognize the character, she also does the voice of Touka Satomi from Magia Record!

Raiden Mei's VA, Miyuki Sawashiro, also does the voice of Toko Fukawa from Danganronpa, Cammy from Street Fighter, Dynatron from Mighty No. 9, Sinon from SAO, and Female Robin in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Bronya Zaychik's VA, Kana Asumi, also does the voice of Felicia from Darkstalkers, whom I recognized due to her role as a Solo Unit in Project X Zone 2, funny, since their voices are extremely different.

Himeko Murata's VA, Rie Tanaka, also does the voice of Ciel from the Mega Man Zero series (!!!), and Morrigan Aensland from Darkstalkers, wasn't super surprised she voiced Morrigan, their voices are very simillar.

Theresa Apocalypse's VA, Yukari Tamura, also does the voice of Mii Koryuuji from Project X Zone (!!!), and Bounce Man from Mega Man 11 (!!!)

Fu Hua's VA, Minami Takayama, also does the voice of DETECTIVE CONAN, which was a huuuge shocker, AXL FROM THE MEGA MAN X SERIES (Fangirl squealing intensifies, I love MMX so much) Pit and Dark Pit from Kid Icarus: Uprising, AND HAJIME HINATA FROM DANGANRONPA 2 (!!!). Fu Hua was always one of my favorite Valkryies in the game, but I had NO IDEA she did all these voices! Shame that Fu Hua died in Chapter 9, oh, well, at least she still appears from time to time as a ghost.

Yae Sakura's VA, Ayane Sakura (coincidence?), also does the voice of Tsubaki Sawabe from Your Lie in April (!!!), Felicia Mitsuki from Magia Record, and Kasumi from Pokemon Masters.

Kallen Kaslana's VA, Nana Mizuki, also was the Japanese dub VA of Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, interesting...

Rita Rossweisse's VA, Aoi Yūki, also does the voice of Yuuki Konno from Sword Art Online, Maya Fey from Ace Attorney (!!!) AND MADOKA KANAME FROM PUELLA MAGI MADOKA MAGICA (!!!)!

Seele Vollerei's VA, Mai Nakahara, also does the voice of Estelle from Tales of Vesperia.

Liliya Olenyeva's VA, Yuu Serizawa, also does the voice of Nijimi Anazawa from Magical Girl Site.

Rozaliya Olenyeva's VA, Aoi Koga, also does the voice of Akemi from JoJo's Bizzare Adventure.

MiHoYo certainly did not go cheap hiring voice actors/actresses.

#gaming #anime #honkai 3rd #honkai impact 3 #honkai impact #hi3 #hi3rd #houkai 3rd #voice acting #seiyuu

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peraltasames · 5 years

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he’s the earth and heaven to you

a pre-relationship one shot entirely inspired by me listening to ‘i won’t say i’m in love’ from hercules on repeat (set not too long after boyle-linetti wedding)

read on ao3

It is truly through no fault of Caleb Donovan, a handsome man in his late thirties with a job at the Museum of Natural History, that Amy decides to abandon their first date before she’s finished her first cocktail.

It would be easy to blame Captain Holt, who asked her to join Jake on a stakeout in Prospect Heights, or Charles, who had to leave said stakeout due to food poisoning from the sketchy seafood truck they’ve all suggested a million times that he avoid. She could peg it on her dedication to her career, though surely her name on the arrest report for a low-level marijuana dealer won’t make or break any future promotions.

(By far the most likely option is the text she got from Jake as soon as her call with Holt came to an end - u coming to stakeout? i’ll let you choose the music - which made her brain short-circuit longer than she would care to admit.)

So she bids the smart, sexy historian that Kylie swore she would like (and she probably should like) goodnight, gives him ten dollars to cover her drink and mumbles an apology about her work emergency. She sincerely hopes he didn’t overhear her insisting that she didn’t have any plans and was “free as a bird” when Holt offered to send Rosa instead.

It doesn’t occur to her to swing by her place and change or remove her bright red lipstick or even pull back her curled hair before she’s parking behind Jake’s Mustang and sliding into the passenger seat. The realization that she probably should’ve changed doesn’t dawn on her until Jake’s eyes linger on her for a second longer than they usually do and he, rather quickly, jerks his head away and fixes his eyes on the parking lot in front of them.

“Why, um - why are you dressed like that?”

“You look nice too, Peralta,” she says teasingly, with a small eye roll that she hopes distracts him from the blush creeping onto her cheeks at his flustered reaction. “I was on a date.”

He doesn’t respond at first, his eyes remaining glued to the completely empty lot where their perp isn’t expected to show up for another hour.

“Oh, I got you a coffee, you take seven sugars and four creams, right? I wasn’t sure if I mixed up the numbers.” He glares at her seriously while she narrows her eyes, eventually cracking a smile. “Just kidding. It’s only got milk.”

Amy smiles gratefully, reaching to grab the steaming cup he’s holding out for her. She takes a small sip, furrowing her brows in confusion at the slightly different taste.

“Wait, is this-”

“Decaf, yeah. It’s almost nine, and a crazy person once told me that drinking regular coffee this late is ‘sleep schedule suicide’, so…”

She rolls her eyes again, and she’s pretty sure the affection behind it is even more poorly restrained than the last one.

“Thanks.”

It takes a few minutes for him to brief her on the details of the case, after which they fall into a familiar, comfortable silence while closely watching the spot where Jake’s CI told them his dealer would show up between the hours of nine and ten. True to his word, he allows her to select a soft alternative station on low volume that is far less distracting than his usual picks - she never guessed that she would become so familiar with Taylor Swift’s discography at thirty-one.

“So, I take it the date didn’t go well?”

The coffee she just sipped catches in the back of her throat the question, making her cough unceremoniously. The topic of her love life has been unofficially off-limits since the dreadfully awkward demise of her and Teddy’s relationship. Her dates since then have been few and far between, and she really doesn’t want Jake to piece together why none of them have turned into anything more before she can fully understand it herself.

“Um, it was fine,” she mumbles, playing with the hem of her dress. “He was nice and he has a good job and everything-”

“He was boring, then?” Jake infers, a smug look on his face.

She purses her lips. “Actually, no. He’s really into sports and he plays guitar and-”

“Then why’d you ditch him for a boring stakeout?” He raises an eyebrow, making her cheeks burn under his questioning glare. “Rosa would’ve covered for Charles if you said you were busy.”

“I-I don’t know,” she stutters as it becomes increasingly harder to breathe. “I guess there was just something missing.”

She isn’t sure if the chill running up her spine is a result of the chilly air and her exposed arms or purely a biological response to the feelings threatening to burst out of her chest, but she busies herself with adjusting the dial to turn up the heat.

“Oh, the heating’s broken,” Jake says apologetically, even though there’s no way he’s cold in mid-April. “I was gonna fix it, but ya know, crushing debt and all…”

“It’s okay,” Amy interjects, running her hands up and down her goosebump-clad arms.

Her sharp, clear tone would normally indicate to him that the conversation is over, but his eyes don’t leave her shivering frame until she sees him begin to shrug off his leather jacket in her peripheral vision.

“Jake, it’s fine-”

“You’re clearly cold,” he mutters, wrapping the jacket around her shoulders and unintentionally grazing the skin of her forearm in the process.

With his coat draped over her, the sleeves noticeably too long, and his body so close to her that she can feel his warmth emanating, she can’t control the sudden burning desire that he was her date tonight. She’d sworn before that being one of the girls in his car was her worst nightmare, but it feels more like an idyllic fantasy right now to be able to lean over and press her lips to his and run her fingers through his hair.

“Thanks, Jake,” she says, voice lower than before.

His face softens as their eyes meet, a small lopsided smile creeping onto his face that barely offsets the earnest, thoughtful look in his deep brown eyes. Their faces are even closer now, so close that it would take very little effort for her to kiss him.

“Any time, Ames.”

He smiles a little more after using the nickname, which has become almost a regular thing lately, and she tries not to try to find correlation with his breakup with Sophia or the number of times he’s asked her to grab a drink after work or the secret glances she’s noticed him take while he does his paperwork. It’s the same look that he gave her a couple weeks ago at Charles and Gina’s parents’ wedding, and this exact smile has not left her mind since.

The thought of kissing him is now so tantalizing that she’s about to drop everything, every charade and excuse and lie that she’s told him and everyone and herself to try to prove that she isn’t crazy about him. Any consequence that could possibly come from it is overshadowed by the long-growing need to be closer to him, to tell him and show him how much her feelings have intensified.

She moves about half an inch in his direction before she spots a flurry of movement in the corner of her eye.

“Is that your guy?” she asks, still waiting for Jake to snap out of the magnetic trance they had both just fallen under.

Blinking fast, Jake spots the man stepping out of the sedan a few dozen feet away and nods quickly.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

The arrest takes about thirty seconds, transporting the perp back to the precinct occupies another ten minutes, and they’re forced into another premature goodnight by the time the clock strikes ten. She settles back into her car and checks her phone, leaving the confused texts from Kylie about why she ditched her date for the morning.

It’s not an easy feat to explain to her best friend, who she’s spent hours complaining to about her annoying coworker that she’s constantly competing with and his childish antics, that she could set her up with the nicest, smartest, most interesting guy in New York and she would still choose Jake Peralta. In a heartbeat, in any version of reality, she would choose Jake Peralta.

She thinks she made that choice a long time ago, and all that’s left to do at this point is to work up the courage to act on it.

#jake x amy #b99 fic #peraltiago #i've like never written pre relationship so this is possibly garbage but !! enjoy !!#we love pining! amy #myfics

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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How New Jersey’s First Coronavirus Patient Survived https://nyti.ms/3bOZjD5

How New Jersey’s First Coronavirus Patient Survived

James Cai’s case was completely new to his doctors. When he grew severely ill, he tapped a network of Chinese and Chinese-American medical colleagues who helped save his life.

By Susan Dominus | Published April 5, 2020 | New York Times Magazine | Posted April 11, 2020 |

On the evening of March 4, James Cai, a 32-year-old physician assistant, was languishing on a cot, isolated in a small, windowless room on the emergency-room floor of Hackensack University Medical Center, when the television news caught his attention. Before that moment, Cai had been in a strange medical limbo, starting midday on March 2, when he left a medical conference in Times Square because he had a bad cough. Instead of heading to his home in Lower Manhattan, he texted his wife that he was going to spend the night at his mom’s place in New Jersey. His mother was out of town, and if he had the flu, he could spare his wife and their daughter, a cheerful 21-month-old who clung to him when he was home, the risk of catching whatever it was. That was Cai: cautious, a worrier, overprotective, the kind of medical professional who liked to rule out the worst-case scenarios first.

At his mother’s home that evening, he waited until about 8 o’clock., when he thought the urgent-care facility nearby would be relatively empty, then headed over for a flu test. If it was not flu, he could think about going home. He put on a mask before the doctor examined him and learned that his heart rate was elevated, which did not surprise him: He could feel the palpitations. He got a flu and a strep test and asked for a Covid-19 test as well, only because they might as well be exhaustive; but the doctor told him he did not have the test, and neither of them thought much about it after that.

On March 2, many doctors on the East Coast still saw Covid-19 as an ominous but distant threat. Although several elderly people had died by then of complications from coronavirus in Washington State, the outbreak seemed mostly contained to that part of the country. Only two people on the East Coast had tested positive: a health care worker from Iran and a lawyer from New Rochelle, N.Y., whose results were reported the same day Cai went to the doctor. At the urgent-care center, the doctor reported that his chest X-ray looked normal, and the flu and strep tests came back negative. But the doctor was worried that Cai’s symptoms — that cough, surprisingly powerful for something that had kicked in so recently, and an elevated heart rate — were consistent with a possible pulmonary embolism, a clot in an artery in his lung that could prove fatal. He advised him to go immediately to the nearest emergency room, H.U.M.C., where they could give him a CT scan, which would provide a more detailed picture. Cai drove to the hospital and waited for his scan on a cot in a hallway. Not long after, he was moved to the small, windowless room, where he started to feel even worse: short of breath, feverish. He had diarrhea, and the brief walk to the bathroom nearby left him exhausted. He took a video of himself to show his wife, and in it he looks a little wild-eyed; he is breathing fast, as if he has just been chased and whatever was chasing him is right outside the door.

The next morning, March 3, not long after his CT scan, a nurse came to give him a Covid-19 test. The nurse was wearing full personal protective equipment, which typically includes eye protection, a respirator mask, gloves, a long gown and a head cap. The hospital had not tested him earlier because the C.D.C. guidelines at the time suggested that testing should be reserved for those who had recently traveled to China or come into close contact with someone believed to have the virus. Cai had not been there for years and to his knowledge had not been in contact with anyone who had tested positive. Now he thought they were just being thorough.

The following day, an infectious-disease doctor, Bindu Balani, a calm woman with a gentle delivery, came to see him in his room, also wearing P.P.E. She explained to Cai that he did not have a pulmonary embolism, but that they could see on the scan that he did have pneumonia, and that she would start him on antibiotics. Also, it became clear to Cai that something about the CT — a shading in one lung — had given them cause to test him for coronavirus.

Balani was measured when she explained this plan — they wanted to rule it out — but after she left, Cai started Googling symptoms from his stretcher in the small room and asked his wife to do the same. He saw that his symptoms, which had intensified since earlier that day, matched up almost perfectly with those of Covid-19: cough, heart palpitations, fever, diarrhea, chills, fatigue, shortness of breath. It would almost have to be coronavirus, except that there was no way it could be coronavirus: What were the odds that he, James Cai, 32-year-old mediocre basketball player, doting father, conscientious physician assistant, intrepid foodie, would be the first person in all of New Jersey to come down with it?

Cai hated being in that room on the emergency-room floor, where all night long he could hear people crying out in pain or wailing in grief. He tried to tune it out, to take in the consoling texts from friends who knew he was at the hospital. His fever kept spiking to around 102 degrees. The isolation only made him feel worse.

The next day, the hours passed slowly as Cai awaited the results of his test — until that evening, when Cai looked up at the television in his room. The evening news was showing a large image of a post that had just shown up on the Twitter feed of the governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy. “Tonight, Acting Governor @LtGovOliver and I are announcing the first presumptive positive case of novel coronavirus, or #COVID19, in New Jersey,” the tweet read. “The individual, a male in his 30s, is hospitalized in Bergen County.” Cai’s heart rate, already too fast, sped up, and he felt the chill of his own sudden sweat. Please, God, don’t let that be me, he thought.

He held up his cellphone, shaking a little — from fever, from shock — and took a photo of the image of the tweet on the television news. He was sure that the governor was talking about him, and yet he was praying that he wasn’t. Soon after that, an emergency-room doctor came in and told him what he’d already known in the deep part of his psyche that always prepared for the worst: Cai was in fact the first patient in New Jersey to test positive for Covid-19.

Cai worked about six days a week for a medical practice that had four offices around the metropolitan area, most of them in heavily Chinese and Chinese-American neighborhoods like Flushing and Chinatown. Many of his closest colleagues and friends were immigrants and medical professionals like him. As soon as he saw the television news, Cai had texted the photo he’d taken to one of them, his close friend Yili Huang, a cardiologist in private practice and affiliated with Mount Sinai. “It can’t be,” his friend wrote back. Now Cai let him know that it was true: The test was positive. Earlier, Balani, trying to reassure him, said that even if he had it, he was most likely past the worst phase of a coronavirus infection: the first two days. “She didn’t lie to me, right?” he asked his friend. Huang tried to be comforting, “Of course not,” he wrote. But now that Huang knew that his friend really had tested positive, it dawned on him that Cai was alone in a room facing what could be a life-threatening virus, in a hospital where no one had ever encountered it.

Cai and Huang met five years earlier at a professional dinner. Each came to the United States when he was young, Cai at 14, Huang at 11. They instantly bonded over their love of the Shanghai waterfront and their similar accent (“a charming accent, very smooth,” is how Huang describes it). Huang had, among many of his friends, a reputation as a big-brother type — someone who followed up to see how your mother was feeling if she had been ill; who always finessed picking up the check; who lent money to his friends if he thought he could help them with a good investment. Cai called Huang his brother and considered him part of his extended family.

Just a few weeks earlier, Huang and Cai were catching up on the phone when the subject of the coronavirus came up. Huang, an optimist, reassured Cai that he didn’t think Covid-19 would ever be a crisis in this country, an opinion many of their colleagues shared. SARS, Ebola, MERS — none of them ever posed a public-health threat here. And soon it would be warm, when many viruses seemed to disappear. Cai was relieved to hear Huang’s assessment, but at the urging of his wife, he prepared for the possibility that the pandemic would reach the East Coast and do real harm. As early as late February — when people in New York were still flying around the globe, clutching poles on the subway, hugging friends hello — Cai made two trips to Costco in Brooklyn to buy provisions: frozen vegetables. Frozen fruit. Twenty pounds of rice. Protein shakes, just in case. Huang might have been sanguine, but his former supervisor at Mount Sinai, Paul Lee, a cardiologist, had posted warnings about what was to come. Many of Cai’s friends who were fellow Chinese immigrants were also stocking up. Like Cai, their family connections and exposure to Chinese media drove home how dangerous the disease was and how quickly it spread. If the virus became prevalent in New York, Cai knew what his family would do: They would lock down for two full months. No one would have to leave the house for anything.

The medical offices where Cai worked had put up a sign directing patients with a cough or fever to wear a mask, and to self-quarantine for two weeks if they had traveled recently to China. Cai never failed to wear a mask and gloves at the office. And yet he still did not see the virus as an imminent threat: He made plans to attend a medical conference and took the subway around the city to his various offices without wearing any protection. He and some of his Chinese-American friends, most of them first-generation, wore masks in public starting in January, reminded that it was a common-sense precaution by the devastating news from Wuhan. But then, in early February, a video ran on the local news showing a man violently attacking an Asian woman who was wearing a mask near a subway turnstile in downtown Manhattan. Cai — and many of his friends — stopped wearing them.

Now he felt he had let down his guard, and the worst had happened: He had tested positive. He felt real terror, as did the rest of his family. His father, who lives in Shanghai, reached out through various connections to doctors who had managed the illness there. His wife’s family was doing the same. Huang also was getting in touch with everyone he knew who he thought might be able to help. “I called up all my pulmonary friends, I.C.U. friends, infectious-disease friends — people I hadn’t spoken to in 10 years,” Huang says. He spoke to Chinese doctors from Shanghai who had been deployed to Wuhan, all of whom painted a dire picture of the damage the virus could do. He came to understand that many people recovered quickly on their own, even after a long illness; but he also knew that the disease could go from progressing slowly, seemingly harmlessly, to moving unfathomably quickly, even in otherwise-healthy people. The antibiotics Cai was given might help with a secondary infection, but they could not fight the virus. And there was no way to know what course Cai’s case would take.

Cai was anxious, and it seemed to him that the doctors were trying to keep him calm. They assured him that he was a young, healthy man. He remembers many telling him this would feel like a bad flu. But by March 6, his fifth day at the hospital, this no longer felt to Cai like any other flu. By then, he’d been moved to the third floor, into a negative-pressure isolation room — a room whose atmospheric pressure was so low, air outside flowed in, theoretically preventing any potentially contaminated air from flowing out. He had a pulse oximeter on his finger and could keep an eye on his own oxygen levels. He could see that they were unstable, sometimes dropping momentarily to a unnervingly low level of saturation — 85 percent — before shooting right back up. In a healthy individual, saturation levels typically remain above 95 percent. “I have difficulty breathing now, too much phlegm,” he wrote to Huang. Especially when he lay flat, his oxygen levels fell. “I need to get up and take a deep breath.” He felt as if he had been swimming under water, then surfacing to try to get relief — but his breaths were never deep enough to provide it.

The care he was getting was not always comforting. A nurse came in at some point to take his blood pressure and temperature, but his voice was fearful. “Turn your face away,” he told Cai. He placed a thermometer on the tray and told him to use it himself.

But his main anxiety was that his condition would deteriorate — that his lungs eventually would be so compromised that his oxygen levels would drop to a degree that endangered his life. The mechanism is both complicated and simple: If not enough oxygen reaches the organs, the intricate gears and motors of the human body start to fail. He frequently texted Huang. He was scared, he told him. He asked for reassurances that his friend would not let him die there. Of course not, Huang replied. Huang hoped he was telling the truth.

Cai’s world was reduced to the size and reach of his phone. To pass the time, he watched videos of his daughter over and over and stared at a picture of her in his arms. He would have yearned to video-chat with her but was afraid that it would be too upsetting for her — and maybe for him. They could never explain to a young toddler where he was and why he couldn’t come home, and so he and his wife decided not to tell her anything. He knew she had to be confused and suffering, and the thought of that was bound up with his own confusion and suffering.

The evening of Saturday, March 7, Cai was afraid to go to sleep. He was barely able to talk without collapsing into coughing fits. Earlier that day, he started receiving oxygen from a tank through a nasal cannula, a flexible tube that sits just inside the nostrils. But as he monitored his oxygen levels from his bed, he could see they were dropping. Even with the extra oxygen, his saturation level was as low as 88 while lying down, suggesting his lung functioning was weakening. He started to worry about acute respiratory distress syndrome. From there, he knew intubation could follow, a procedure that involves putting a tube down a patient’s throat and connecting the lungs to a ventilator. Cai knew that the I.C.U., where the ventilators were kept, was on a different floor; if he started to crash — if his vitals indicated that his organs were in imminent danger of starting to shut down — how were doctors going to intubate him and transport him to the ventilator in time to save his life? He’d seen patients die from respiratory failure in less than 10 minutes.

Cai’s family and friends were continuing to communicate with doctors in China and passing on their advice and suggestions. It was common practice during the Covid-19 outbreak there to give patients a second CT scan to provide a clearer view of the progression of lung damage; the so-called ground-glass opacities on the lungs common with Covid-19 could easily be missed on an X-ray or mistaken for something else.

Earlier that morning, Cai told the infectious-disease doctor on call that weekend that he wanted a second CT scan, a suggestion made by top doctors in China, who thought they could help his doctors in New Jersey understand the progression of the illness. The doctor seemed disinclined. They would determine treatment based on oxygen levels, which they were keeping an eye on. Simply moving Cai to the scanner risked exposing health care workers to the virus. Decontaminating the room that held the scanner would also take time, during which the scanner could not be used. (H.U.M.C. did not make some doctors involved in Cai’s care available for comment but responded in an email that they followed “C.D.C. and/or evidence-based protocols” that were “different from protocols physicians from China were advocating.”)

At around 10 a.m., Cai’s phone rang. His friend Huang wanted to talk with the infectious-disease doctor on call. He spoke to her on speakerphone so that Cai could hear. We are formally requesting a second CT scan, Huang told her. She explained, as Cai recalls, that it wasn’t necessary and most likely wouldn’t change the course of treatment, whatever the results. He pressed her on how confident she was about their treatment — and if so, on what basis? She had never treated a Covid-19 patient. How could she dismiss the collective wisdom of doctors in China who had seen thousands? Cai’s oxygen levels were not getting better, despite the antibiotics; Huang had the sense that the doctors at Hackensack did not fully appreciate how quickly patients could take a turn for the worse. The doctor said she would bring it up with Cai’s physicians.

Cai’s boss, Dr. George Hall, also made a call, not long after Huang spoke to the infectious-disease doctor on call. He spoke with another doctor on Cai’s caregiving team, a hospitalist named Danit Arad. Arad had agreed to share her phone number with Cai’s mother, who had passed it on to Hall. Hall, who is 64, studied at one of the most prestigious medical schools in China before immigrating to the United States in 1987 and opening up four medical centers throughout the city. A father figure to Cai, he, too, had been in touch with contacts in China, including a nephew in Yangjiang, who ran an infectious-disease hospital, to get insight into Cai’s case.

Hall explained to Arad that the Chinese National Health Commission had just published the seventh edition of guidelines on how to treat coronavirus. It was true that they were based more on clinical experience than on published studies, but he urged Arad to follow some of its protocols, which included prescribing two drugs that were commonly given to patients in China soon after they showed symptoms like shortness of breath: chloroquine, an antiviral drug once used to treat malaria, and Kaletra, another antiviral that had once been used to treat H.I.V.

At the time Hall and Arad were speaking, practitioners were struggling to gauge the utility of treating coronavirus patients with chloroquine or a derivative called hydroxychloroquine, which is used to treat autoimmune diseases like lupus. Since then, the picture has hardly become more clear. Two small studies from Marseille, France, published in March found that hydroxychloroquine and azythromycin, an antibiotic, yielded encouraging results in patients with advanced disease; but a close replication in Paris, published soon thereafter, found the drugs ineffectual. Yet another study, this one from China and published online March 30, found that patients who were mildly ill and took hydroxychloroquine fared better than the control group of mildly ill patients who did not receive the drug. When Trump called hydroxychloroquine “a game-changer” on March 19, many researchers considered his enthusiasm premature and possibly dangerous. Practitioners started stockpiling the drug, and doctors worried they would not to be able to provide it to autoimmune-disease patients who relied on it. On March 28, the F.D.A. approved the emergency use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in treating patients with Covid-19, but European regulators are awaiting more data.

As for Kaletra, a study in March in The New England Journal of Medicine found it did not help patients suffering severe illness related to coronavirus, though researchers left open the possibility that it might be more effective earlier in the course of treatment.

Arad knew at the time that neither drug had been through extensive clinical trials or had F.D.A. approval. She listened patiently to Hall and expressed her concern that his suggestions did not conform to standard medical procedure or C.D.C. guidelines.

Hall understood the need for evidence-based medicine as well as she did, he told her. But this was life and death. Under those circumstances, sometimes you don’t wait for standard procedure, he said. If it came to it, he was sure Cai would assume the risk. Hall suggested that he could provide Arad with a full translation of the guidelines, which had not yet been published in English; Arad, Hall said, took him up on the offer.

Lying in bed that night, Cai feared that he would close his eyes and never wake up — that he would slip away, essentially drowning in his sleep. He was being given oxygen, but even still, he saw his numbers trending downward — in the 80s. Concerned, he messaged a WeChat group that included his father and a doctor his father knew in Shanghai, who had been advising that Cai be put on a high-flow nasal oxygen cannula, a device that allows for a more intensive and stable delivery of oxygen into the lungs. Cai requested that treatment, but the nurses on duty said that they didn’t have the clearance to make that decision. Cai called Hall to ask for help in getting a doctor’s attention. Hall contacted a prominent local doctor, Henry Chen, who oversaw a sprawling network of community-health doctors in New York, in the hope that he could get in touch with someone at the hospital. Chen says he was told that because he did not have admitting privileges, he would not be put through.

Cai had never felt more alone. He repeatedly called for the nurse, and when she arrived, he spoke as harshly as he ever had to a fellow medical professional. “I am not going to sleep until I see a respiratory therapist,” he told her. He wanted closer monitoring; and he wanted the expert care of someone who could provide a higher level of oxygen dispersal. He dropped Chen’s name, even though he knew the name likely meant nothing to the nurse; he reminded the nurse that he was a physician assistant and could judge for himself his risk. Finally, at around midnight, a respiratory therapist arrived with a Venturi mask, providing a treatment that was not as powerful as high-flow but that still provided higher concentrations of oxygen than Cai had been getting. The therapist also took blood for a test that would assess Cai’s lung functioning.

Once he received the oxygen treatment, Cai allowed himself to drift off, though his dreams kept him on high alert. Sometimes he dreamed that he’d woken up — it was morning, and he was alive, which he knew because he was staring at the clock on the hospital wall. Sometimes he dreamed that the Chinese experts were telling him that they had seen the results of the blood test and that the numbers were not good. All night, he drifted between consciousness and slumber, his very dreams trying to make out whether he was going to live or die.

The morning of Sunday, March 8, Cai woke up. He knew he was alive. There was the clock. There was his phone with the photos of his friends and family, the beeping machinery above his head. And yet he was still afraid. He prayed to God; he prayed to Buddha. He bargained: He would save so many lives if only his own could be spared. He would stop working so hard so he could be a better father to his daughter. He read over and over the cards that friends had sent him, tangible objects from the outside world that let him know that he had not been forgotten. He continued to text with Huang, who by then was having his own anxieties. He was worried about his friend, but also about the new cases cropping up every day. “The reality was setting in,” he says. “We will become Wuhan, Milan.”

Later that day, around noon, Hall sat down in the study of his Long Island home to translate the Chinese medical guidelines. It was no small task, but he was not aware of any other translation, and he believed it was important. “No one had any experience here,” he told me. He opened a Microsoft Word document and started translating: the symptoms, the signs of mild cases, severe cases, the course of the disease, the methods of oxygen delivery, the recommendations for follow-up. Just before midnight, having worked for close to 12 straight hours, he sent it off to Arad. His sense of urgency extended beyond Cai’s case. If a health care professional like Cai could not be saved, he explained, his patients — many of whom speak almost no English — would feel they had no possibility of surviving the virus, should they catch it and experience complications.

Around the same time that Hall sat down to work in Long Island, Cai, lying in bed in his room in Hackensack, was surprised when a technician arrived in full P.P.E. He was going to get his second CT scan. Two hours later, when Dr. Balani came to see him with the results, Cai listened to her speak with some fascination and a little bit of fear. She seemed different. She sounded scared to him, but like someone trying hard to sound confident; he had the impression she had rehearsed what she was going to say. She was speaking more quickly than usual. And she was telling him that now it was time to take more aggressive measures. Eventually, Cai saw the scan himself. Instead of just that one white spot on one lung — something with the look of a dandelion gone to seed — there were dozens. The onslaught of the virus could be described as a toxic lava flow of infection that ravages the alveoli, the fragile, thin-membraned air sacs where gases are exchanged in each breath. It looked as if close to 40 percent of Cai’s lungs had succumbed in just five days.

(IMAGE: Cai’s second CT scan showing a rapid proliferation of the “ground glass” spots common in Covid-19 cases. He had lost close to 40 percent of his lung function to the virus in just five days.Credit...From James Cai)

Balani said that they were going to try to put him on a drug called remdesivir. The drug, a descendant of a broad antiviral medication developed a decade ago, was tried in treatment of Ebola with little success. It was more effective in inhibiting MERS in infected monkeys, according to a study published in February in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The medication, which fools the virus into incorporating a modified building block into its RNA that stops it from replicating, is still in clinical trials. Many doctors have been cautiously optimistic about some promising research, including one case study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in late February. The first patient in Washington State to be found to have Covid-19 was severely ill when Gilead Sciences, the pharmaceutical company that made the drug, provided him with remdesivir for compassionate use — an effort to use a promising drug for people who are gravely ill when no other treatments are available; the patient recovered. Now Cai’s health had deteriorated to the point at which the hospital could apply for remdesivir for compassionate use. Just a few weeks later, overwhelmed by international demand, Gilead announced that it would stop approving new requests for compassionate use but greatly expanded its clinical trials at various hospitals.

That day, Cai was given chloroquine and Kaletra; he was also put on high-flow oxygen, that high-concentration oxygen delivered through the nose. The method allows patients at risk of respiratory failure to stave off intubation and ventilators; but because the patient can breathe and talk through the mouth, the oxygen mixes with the virus in the patient’s nose and windpipe and, especially at highest pressures, can be breathed out into the air. Doctors in the United States have been forced to weigh a medical option that might spare a patient ventilation but could expose medical practitioners to far greater risk. Cai — as the first patient in a hospital that would be, weeks later, flooded by other patients in even more dire circumstances, including their own staff members — received the treatment.

Cai was simultaneously reassured and distressed to see how grave the doctors suddenly looked, how quickly their stance toward his condition seemed to change. Later he learned that the results of that blood test was cause for real concern. They informed him that they had established a plan for getting him to the I.C.U. if need be. They also assigned him a dedicated critical-care nurse. He hated having those conversations about an intubation plan, hated that they had to talk about it as a realistic possibility. If the disease continued to progress at that swift rate in the next few days, he would almost certainly be intubated, his odds of recovery dropping precipitously.

Later that day, March 8, he asked the nurse to bring him some paper. He wanted to write a letter to his daughter about all the things he would want her to know about him if he did not survive this virus. Tearing up, he started to write. He said he was sorry he hadn’t been a better father. He wrote that he understood what it was like to grow up without a father present — his lived in Shanghai — and that he was sorry she would suffer the same fate. He wished he could play with her and her friends, pick her up at school, walk her down the aisle, solve her problems when she had any. He wanted her to know how much he loved her. He carefully folded the paper, slipped it into an envelope and placed it on the bedside tray where he took his meals. He did not have to tell the critical-care nurse what he was doing for her to figure it out. “I’m so sorry,” she told him.

Cai hoped the remdesivir might help. The hospital had made its own request. But he knew that getting approval for compassionate use — which required the manufacturer’s approval as well as F.D.A. approval — could take time, and he was worried that it would be too late. That day, Huang reached out to every Gilead representative he knew and called on all his doctor friends to do the same. His former supervising physician at Mount Sinai, Paul Lee, had already written an unsuccessful email to an associate director at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on Cai’s behalf to try to get him access to the drug. Huang posted on a large WeChat group for Chinese and Chinese-American cardiologists: “My name is Yili, great to meet everyone, unfortunately on this occasion,” he introduced himself. “I usually don’t post, but my good friend, only 32, health care provider, became this first case in New Jersey. Please help me with some inputs.” With Cai’s permission, he included a photo of Cai’s CT scan. He also forwarded the scans to another friend, Felix Yang, a cardiac electrophysiologist.

Yang replied with a question: Can I put this up on Twitter to show the severity of the disease? He had been frustrated in the previous days by other doctors’ refusal to take the possible spread of coronavirus seriously. At a minimum, Yang thought, the scan would show his colleagues just how quickly the disease could move. Yang made a quick video that showed the deterioration from one scan to the next and posted it on Twitter, asking people to help get in touch with Gilead, to help this patient with “sudden, rapidly progressing resp failure.”

Within 12 hours, half a million people had watched the video. C. Michael Gibson, the founder of the open-source textbook WikiDoc and a top cardiologist with nearly a half a million followers, helped by quickly retweeting Yang. Hundreds of doctors from around the world shared whatever they knew in comments; one doctor, an American who had been traveling back and forth to China, paged Yang at his hospital to share with him what she had learned. Yang believes hundreds of individuals tweeted at Gilead to try to get the company’s attention on Cai’s behalf.

Balani had already been laying the groundwork with Gilead to apply for remdesivir from the time Cai tested positive. His condition now made him eligible for compassionate use. Less than four hours after the image was first tweeted out, Gilead informed Cai’s doctors that the company was shipping the medicine out. Bill Pulte, a philanthropist active on Twitter, also posted a video of Cai that night that circulated widely; other media soon followed. (Gilead declined to provide details, saying it could not comment on individual compassionate-use cases.)

Around 3 a.m. on March 10, Balani arrived at the hospital. The medicine had come in, and she did not want to wait until the morning to administer it. With Balani in the room, a nurse woke Cai up so that he could sign the legal papers. Soon after, he was hooked up, intravenously, to the drug.

The next day Cai’s fever, which he’d had for at least nine days, finally broke. Even before he received the remdesivir, his oxygen levels started to stabilize. Now they indicated he was on the mend. He was still so weak in the following days that he could barely speak without exhaustion; every time he tried, he was racked by coughs. But the progress was steady, and about a week later, he was able to speak to his wife more easily, to start to feel confident walking around his room; he began to let himself picture himself back at home. His daughter would come running, he imagined, with his slippers when he walked through the door, as she always did. Now that he was recovering, his wife admitted to him that his daughter had been running to the door with his slippers for the last couple of weeks every time she heard a noise beyond it, then cried in disappointment when her father failed to arrive.

To date, there is no known cure for Covid-19. It is impossible to know what elements of Cai’s treatment — the high-flow oxygen, the medications, the passage of time, the sense of wraparound community support, the powerful injection of last-minute hope — helped pull him through. On March 21, Cai learned that he had now tested negative twice in a row for the virus. His lungs would need time to recover, but he was alive — and the virus was dead.

He left the hospital that day, nearly three weeks after he arrived. During that time, the number of known cases of Covid-19 in New Jersey had ballooned from one to 1,914. Twenty people in New Jersey had died. And in the weeks to come, the number infected would rise to more than 29,000, and members of the medical staff, now treating hundreds of sick patients, would fall ill themselves. “I intubated my colleague today,” tweeted David Zodda, a Hackensack emergency-room doctor, on March 27: “a young, healthy E.R. doc like me.”

The next day, at home, Cai would tweet out his gratitude to the staff of the hospital, thanking many of them by name, including Balani and Arad, “for saving my life.”

Before he left the hospital, he put on a soft gray hoodie, sweatpants and clean socks, all of which his mother had left for him. He put on a mask. As he walked out of the room that had been like a prison, he looked back at the bedside tray where he took his meals, where he had placed that letter to his daughter in an envelope. He left it behind. Someone would throw it away and clean the room, and another patient would take his place.

*********

#u.s. news #politics #covidー19 #covid 19 #covid19 #covid2019 #covid2020 #covidquarantine #corona virüsü #coronavirus

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elvendara · 5 years

Text

April Challenge 2019 Day 7

Just a thought about how sexy Saeran would be in glasses! Yoosung finds it very sexy too! I might finish this later, I can’t just leave them unclimaxed!

Yoosung dropped his book bag on the floor and leaned against the front door after closing it. He was even too tired to try and take his lab coat off. He closed his eyes and rubbed at them with thumb and forefinger. Clinicals were taking everything out of him. He always came home exhausted and spent. He barely even ate dinner before falling into bed.

“Another long day?” Saeran asked. Yoosung looked up and laid eyes on his boyfriend sitting on the large armchair, book in hand, a single leg draped over the arm.

“Stop.” He breathed, pushing off the door and holding a hand out to the red-head. Saeran froze, hand on his light blue eyeglasses, halfway to pulling them off. Saeran had groaned and moaned about getting those reading glasses and this was the first time Yoosung had even seen him wearing them. The image was turning him on. Why did a pair of glasses wash away his exhaustion, making his heart race?

“Don’t move!” he hissed, taking slow steady steps towards Saeran.

Saeran furrowed his eyebrows, confused. He had already dropped his leg to the floor, his fingers gripping the frame of his glasses.

“Don’t take them off.” Yoosung ordered as he knelt before the other man, his hands placed lightly on Saeran’s jeaned knees. Saeran pushed the glasses back up the bridge of his nose and sat back, staring at his boyfriend, a smirk on his face.

“I…I…was hoping you would give me an extension on my essay professor.” Yoosung licked his lips, taking the bottom one and biting it gently. His eyes were wide, and he blinked slowly, a pink flush spreading across his cheeks and nose.

Saeran’s grin widened as he leaned against the soft back of the chair, steepling his hands, arching his neck and looking down at the man at his feet.

“I’m not sure that’s possible Mr. Kim. The deadline has come and gone. If I made an exception for you, I would have to make one for everyone else.” He cocked his head and thinned out his lips as he narrowed his eyes behind the glasses.

“They don’t have to know. I’ll…I’ll do anything!” Yoosung straightened on his knees and slid his hands up Saeran’s thighs to his groin stopping tantalizingly close using his thumbs to make small circles against the jeans and the flesh beneath.

“Anything?” Saeran asked as he sat up straighter, cocking an eyebrow.

“Absolutely.” Yoosung answered breathily.

“I don’t normally do this Mr. Kim.” Saeran quipped, fiddling with his glasses. “Can I trust you to be discreet?”

“Yes! Very!” his chest rose and fell heavily as he gazed lustily up at the older man.

“Good. You’ll have to be completely obedient. Can you do that?”

“Completely!” Yoosung sat back on his heels, wiping his hands up and down his thighs, Saeran glanced at his crotch, noticing how constrictive the cloth had become.

“Stand up.” He commanded. Yoosung sprang up instantly. “You seem to be in a bit of discomfort Mr. Kim, would you like some relief?”

“I would.” Yoosung licked his lips again, his breathing harsh and heavy.

“Take your clothes off. Slowly, so I can enjoy every second of it.” Saeran sat back, resting his arms on the chair arms. He wanted to palm himself but denied himself, relishing the show Yoosung was giving him.

Yoosung’s entire body felt flushed as he pulled the blue hoodie over his head and tossed it aside. He watched Saeran as his eyes hungrily traveled up and down his body. He felt heady and hornier than he’d felt in months. Intimacy had been declining between them, not because they weren’t still attracted to each other, or they had become too complacent, but because Yoosung’s work load had intensified to the point that as soon as he got home, all he wanted to do was fall into bed. Because of his clinicals, he didn’t have a day off either. He really wanted to graduate earlier than normal, but that came with a high price. And a lot of lost time.

He pulled his shirt off and dropped it on the floor. He let his fingers caress his body, even pinching his nipples, making his cock twitch. Saeran let out a soft low groan as his mint green eyes drank him in. He made his way slowly towards his crotch, palming himself briefly, his legs trembling, before unbuttoning the pants. Saeran sat up straighter, his eyes glittering in anticipation.

“Is this what you wanted Professor?” Yoosung breathed heavily.

Saeran nodded, keeping his gaze on his crotch. “Show me what you have to work with Mr. Kim. Your grade depends on it.” He grinned.

Yoosung let out a deep chuckle as he pushed his pants down and stepped out of them. He kicked them away and ran his hands up his thighs, pushing his fingers under the waistband of his underwear. He was so hard, the tip was fully out, as he slid his underwear down, his cock swung downwards and sprang back up, fully erect. Saeran licked his lips, watching him eagerly.

“That appears to be an A+ worthy cock Mr. Kim, now, can you use it?”

“In any way you want me to use it Professor.” He stroked himself, the fire in his belly raging into an inferno.

“Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves Mr. Kim. I said I would give you a chance to substitute something else for a grade, but, since you didn’t turn in your assignment at all, I’m afraid I’m going to have to punish you first.” Saeran scooted to the edge of the chair so his lap stuck out far enough. He patted it with his hand and quirked an eyebrow at Yoosung. Yoosung moved closer to Saeran and leaned over the lap, laying across it. “What a good and compliant boy.” Saeran whispered as he ran his hand gently over Yoosung’s ample ass, the other hand on the blonde’s head, beginning to dig into the hair. He pushed Yoosung’s head down as he slapped his ass.

Yoosung let out a loud yelp, his thighs trembling, his cock vibrating with need. Saeran slapped him again, harder. The red marks rising on Yoosung’s white flesh had Saeran almost hyperventilating. He moved to the other cheek, savoring the soft creamy flesh before striking it leaving a red handprint. Yoosung jumped, digging his fingers into Saeran’s thigh. He felt a sharp bite as well. He hissed and slapped him again. He ran his fingertip over the red mark, tracing the shape of his hand before leaning over and giving the bruised flesh soft gentle kisses. Yoosung hummed and murmured under the attention.

His own erection was beginning to strain against his jeans, and he couldn’t hold off any longer. He stood, Yoosung sliding off him, his legs practically jello. “That just won’t do Mr. Kim. If you can’t handle your punishment, I’ll have to fail you.” Saeran grinned.

“No, please professor!” Yoosung pushed himself up onto his knees. He fumbled with Saeran’s jeans, pressing his lips against his cock. “I…I need this A.” Saeran let him unbutton his jeans and push them down. Yoosung opened his mouth and took the bulge into it, humming against the erection through the cloth of the underwear. He kissed it, pressing forcefully against the resisting flesh. Saeran grabbed his hair and yanked his head back, then pushed Yoosung away from him. Yoosung fell back with a whine.

Saeran unbuttoned his shirt and dropped it at his feet, he finished kicking off his pants and the underwear and stood above the blonde, his cock perpendicular to the floor. He stroked himself, the anticipation of filling Yoosung’s ass with it making him feel dizzy.

“On your hands and knees Mr. Kim. I’m going to make you earn that A, and by the end, you’re going to beg me for more!” Yoosung rushed to obey, shoving the metal coffee table out of his way. He spread his legs apart so Saeran could slide comfortably behind him. He pushed his ass in the air and mewled as he felt Saeran’s fingers begin to explore his opening. Without any lubrication Saeran shoved two fingers into Yoosung. His scream was cut off by Saeran yanking him back by the hair again, twisting his neck enough to capture his lips. Yoosung kept his eyes open, enjoying the feel of the intruding digits forcefully entering him, Saeran’s tongue invading his mouth, and those mint green eyes behind the glare of those damned nerdy blue glasses. He hummed with pleasure and then gasped as he was shoved back onto the floor.

“Scream for me Mr. Kim.” Saeran ordered and Yoosung obeyed. “You like this don’t you? Have you been fantasizing about me Mr. Kim. Have you been dreaming about me fucking you?”

“Yy…Yes…yes…Oh god yes Professor Choi!”

“You’ve been a bad boy Mr. Kim. You didn’t turn in your essay on purpose isn’t that right?” he slammed into Yoosung as his nails dug into the soft flesh of his ass. The sounds of groin against ass, slapping flesh against flesh rang loud in Saeran’s ears. He watched as his thick cock slid into Yoosung’s ass, the sweat falling off the red strands of his hair with the exertion.

“No…no…professor…I…”

Saeran raked his fingers across Yoosung’s butt cheek, eliciting a loud and feral groan from the blonde. “Don’t lie to me Mr. Kim. You have to be honest if you want that A.” he continued to pump forcefully against Yoosung’s bruised behind.

“Ah..hnghhh…please…forgive me Professor Choi…I…I…ahh! I just wanted your cock in me!” Yoosung wailed.

Saeran slowed his thrusts, running his fingers along Yoosung’s sides, then sliding around his waist to grab at his gloriously hard cock.

“Hahhh…” Yoosung’s head spun, he felt as if he would explode with that simple touch.

“You like this?” Saeran whispered close to his ear as he bent over his heaving body, stroking slowly up and down Yoosung’s shaft.

“Hmmm…hngghhh…” Yoosung threw his head back, too breathless to answer coherently.

#my posts #Yooran #Yoosung Kim #Saeran Choi #roleplay #mysme #mystic messenger #lemons #did I do that right?#Yooran fanfic #mysme fanfic

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