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gaydiekane · 1 year

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My Dear Brother-In-Law

(short story version) part 4

short story word count: 5,059

part 4 word count: 1870

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part 1, part 2, part 3

Day three came quickly without warning. Everything was fine in the beginning, but I didn’t expect my two week family visit ending later that day.

Vince had the day off due to the snow so the family decided to go on a little outing. Lora could barely walk in all her layers but still loved the snow more than any child I had ever seen. Vince wasn’t wearing as much as he should have and was probably freezing, but remained in a calm state, enjoying the already freezing atmosphere mixed with the ocean breeze coming from the south. His face grew red and pale but he didn’t seem the least bit bothered. Anton and Maya walked hand in hand down the street. Anton’s other arm held Lora, who protested she wanted to walk in the snow. Any good man wouldn’t let their small child walk alone in almost a meter of snow.

“I know he’s a horrible person at work, but at home he’s the most loving and attentive father I’ve ever met,” I told my superior, Carolyn Crow, at the meeting to turn in my first report. “I can’t figure him out.”

“And that is exactly why we need him gone,” Cara responded. “You’ve seen the war plans. Don’t let your emotions get in the way of your mission.”

I mocked her words now as I walked down the street with my fake family. I’m one of the best contract killers in the world, I don’t even have these emotions she spoke of.

“Papa, I want to walk with uncle Malcom,” Lora firmly told her father. He did not seem pleased.

“We’re almost home, you can stay with me,” he said. She turned away from him and made an attempt at crossing her arms in her thick and puffy layers.

“We’re all going to the same place, I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt?” Maya pleaded with her husband. She’s been very adamant about having her kids getting to know their uncle, while Anton has been the exact opposite, although believing in strong family values. I didn’t think my cover had been blown or how it could have been, but then again, I’m an assassin, not a spy. I even failed theatre as a student back in school, so I’m not sure how great of an actor I’ve been.

But surely I was not so bad that my entire mission became compromised, right?

Well, a straight answer wasn’t something I should have been expecting. Once at home I went to my room to change out of my layers and noticed I received a telegram from Cara, only four words.

GET OUT OF THERE.

Very descriptive. I made a mental note to remember to thank her later.

As if on cue, yelling erupted from the room at the foot of the guest room stairs, Anton and Maya’s room.

Maya sounded livid, to say the least. Hurt, denial, betrayal, worry, fear, cycling through every ten words spoken and repeating again. I hurriedly put my briefcase back together while eavesdropping on what was going on below.

“I thought we agreed?! Act normal while he’s here!” Maya yelled.

“My love, I was only doing it for our family. Everything I do-” Anton reasoned calmly.

“Yes, for the family, I know! Malcom is your family too, is he not?” Maya countered.

“Malcom Gray? Sure! But this man? Absolutely not,” Malcom said.

I once again searched through all the things I could have done to blow my cover, only to find one possible answer. I may be doubtful of my skills as a spy, but as a contract killer I know how to cover my tracks and keep my story clean. I’ve also improved my improvisational skills during this mission. I know I cleaned up any loose ends, if I even left any in the first place. However he found out the truth, it could not have been my fault.

“Why can’t you believe this man is my brother?” Maya pleaded, her tone rising.

“It’s not that simple-” Anton started.

“Is it really so hard for you to believe in a miracle?” Maya countered.

“I don’t think this is the kind of miracle that-” Anton’s voice began to match Maya’s rise.

She cut him off, pain shining through her strong voice. “If family is so important, why is it such a problem that I found mine?”

“Because that’s not-” I could hear Anton reaching his patience limit with every cut off Maya delt him.

“Why can’t you let me be happy?” she yelled.

“BECAUSE I KILLED HIM, MAYA!” Anton yelled.

Limit reached.

I heard nothing for a long time. Nothing but a door quietly creak open, the only creaky door in the house. The door to Vince’s room.

“I- I killed him, Maya,” Anton said softly after a long pause. I hadn’t heard him sound so broken or on edge ever, not in my time here, not even in the videos I received from intel before meeting him. Videos that spanned over decades of time, videos that showed me the previous half of his life.

“I’m so sorry, I-” Anton began.

“No,” Maya said. “No, he’s just upstairs. Malcom?” She called me. “Malcom could you come down here for a moment?” I grabbed my briefcase and sped down the stairs as fast as I could. As fast as I could while shaking, that is.

“Darling, that’s not-” Anton started, again.

“Nonsense,” she said. “Listen. Who else’s footsteps could those be?” She sounded light and even let out a little laugh.

“I know it’s not ideal,” not ideal? “but that isn’t him.”

I landed on the second story to find Maya with an eerily calm and cheerful face and Anton looking more disheveled than ever, with a loosened tie and the top button of his shirt undone. Vince was nowhere to be seen, but the door to Lora’s room was closed.

“Why don’t we ask him?” Maya asked, more towards me. “Malcom?”

“Yes, Maya?” I asked.

“What are your intentions in coming here?” Anton asked.

“To visit my sister?” I answered, questioning him like it was obvious.

“See? Genuine!” said Maya.

“What? No!” Anton was caught off guard. He took a look down at Maya’s hands nervously, where I now noticed she held a small pistol. She must have taken it from him.

Vince walked out of Lora’s room looking as ghostly as ever. But behind his usually fiery gaze was fear. I almost pitied the poor boy.

No, not almost. I did.

“Vince,” I said, trying to point to the parents that their son was right there. They were unbothered.

Anton’s face went dead. “Don’t bother with him, this is between the adults,” he commanded. And for some reason, I listened. I forgot Vince was even there.

“Anton, please,” Maya pleaded. “You’re acting childish.”

“I’m childish?”

Maya went to argue back, expressing her frustration by throwing her hands in the air, flailing the gun around without even noticing.

“Maya, be careful,” I warned her. She turned to me, leaving the gun in easier reach of Anton. He snatched it out of her hands and pointed it at me.

Anton took a steadying breath. “Look, I don’t know who this man is, but he’s dangerous if he’s posing as your brother and managed to infiltrate our family.”

“Don’t point the gun at him!” Maya cried. He turned his attention towards her, along with the pistol.

“Are you being serious right now? He’s a real threat!” Anton exclaimed.

“He’s my brother!” Maya shot back.

“Don’t shoot her!” I sounded more desperate than I should’ve. I don’t know what came over me, but I pulled my gun out of my briefcase and pointed it right between Anton’s eyes.

As I pulled the trigger, time seemed to slow. The only sound I heard as the bullet swam through the air was a cruel laugh, and then a firm “No.” The bullet then skewed right like it hit an invisible pole and flew erratically down the hall, resting itself in the left side of Vince’s chest.

All I heard was static as the young teen’s body hit the floor. Anton froze. Maya screamed. Anton began to ramble about how this was all my fault and how I was the one who killed his son. All about how “this is what happens when we let strangers into our home.” All about how if I fired the bullet, it couldn’t have possibly been his fault. Pointing his pistol at me, claiming people who hurt his family don’t have a place on this earth. And I agreed with every word. But Maya was not having it.

Maya was still defending me, although I had no idea why. She turned in front of me with her whole body, trying to pry my gun from my hands. Right when Anton fired a bullet at me. Right when he accidentally shot his beloved wife in the back of the head.

Her lifeless body fell onto me as she went down. She wasn’t moving, and there was no chance that she, or Vince, could have survived their shot. Anton rushed to her side, completely forgetting about me. As the static faded I began to find my voice.

“What have you done?” I asked him.

“What have I done?”

“Yes! You just shot her!”

“Only because I was trying to shoot you!”

“Are you kidding me?”

The arguing was getting us nowhere and brought my mind back to my reason for being here in the first place: kill Anton Knight. I brought my gun back to his head while he held his dead wife.

“Malcom, put the gun down,” he said, as if this were a game. He hit my last nerve with that.

“Okay.” I smiled at him and brought my gun to my side, bringing my shoe to his teeth instead. I was ready for more but after the one kick he was out cold. I shot him dead and began my clean up. I knew then, I was never doing something like this again.

I finished my cleaning and disposing with Vince’s body on the far end of the hallway. As much as he creeped me out, it was a shame that his life ended so early. He was only 14.

I looked down the hall of the childrens’ rooms, thinking about how each one died so young, when my gaze hit Lora’s door. I dropped my supplies and ran to her room. She was sitting in the middle of her rug reading a picture book. She didn’t seem phased by the commotion from earlier, but it was the first time I had seen her without a happy look on her face. It’s like she knew what happened without seeing anything. She looked sad.

I grabbed her favorite blanket and stuffed animal and picked her up. I covered her eyes as we walked past the crime scene even though it was all gone by now. Once I had all my things we walked to the front door of the house. I sent a message to Cara to explain the situation and how I would be bringing Lora back with me. And with that, my mission was complete.

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part 1, part 2, part 3

#sahe.txt #sahe.mdbil

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syms-things-5 · 4 years

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Clear The Area - Chapter Fifteen (Part Two)

**A Chris Evans Story**

Previous Chapter Here

Tags: @jennmurawski13 @kelbabyblue

Warnings: 18+ NSFW, strong language, generally a bit awkward

Notes: This is a long chapter, sorry. Any comments welcome, good and bad.

Chapter Fifteen (Part Two)

“Let me just bring up your booking here, one moment please.”

The lobby of The Langham was an ocean of grey and blue. The sun was shining brightly outside, the hottest day of the year so far, and it reflected in every surface of the space and accompanying bar. It was sparse on the usual detailing, instead preferring a minimalist approach; the check-in desk consisted of a mere iPad and one lily artfully growing from a tall, geometrical glass vase. Random art hung from all sides. One looked vaguely like a donkey, Sarah was sure. There was also what she thought was an ash tray balanced on a pillar to the left of where she was standing but she didn’t dare to investigate it any closer in case it cost the price of a small car.

It had the same over-perfumed odour as the fragrance section of a Macy’s. The tiled floor look so clean and fresh you could be forgiven for thinking it had only just been laid that very morning. Sarah felt a pang of guilt walking in wearing her scuffed Converse. She always felt so out of place in places like this. It was the kind of place she would run a mile from if she had the choice but Greg had an “in” with the manager and now here she was.

“So that will be four nights in our Executive Suite with Central Park view. You also have the bar allowance of $150 per night. You just need to take the elevator up to the 32nd floor and it’s the second door on your left. Would you like a hand with your bags, madam?” She motioned for the concierge to come over but held her hand up when she spied the puzzled look on Sarah’s face.

“I’m really sorry but I think there’s been some kind of mistake. I didn’t book a suite, just a standard double and I don’t think I pre-paid for any bar allowance. I didn’t even know I could do that to be honest.” Sarah chuckled awkwardly in an attempt to diffuse the tension but it fell on deaf ears. She handed the key card back to the lady, unsure of what else to suggest.

The lady showed practically no emotion at the possible mistake and simply took another look at her records before confirming that she was in fact correct with the initial room choice. “It’s definitely your suite, and...everything is paid for in advance. Could it have been made on your behalf? It looks like it was upgraded yesterday afternoon.”

Sarah wasn’t sure if she was asking her a question or telling her. She couldn’t believe she wasn’t biting her hand off but she hoped she hadn’t made some kind of horrific error her bank wouldn’t forgive her for. She could barely afford the double room she’d booked as it was and she’s sure the college wouldn’t have upgraded her without letting her know in advance. It made zero sense. They couldn’t have that kind of money going spare, putting students up in posh suites. She had no clue what could have happened.

Unless...Chris?

No, it wouldn’t be. He was less than pleased to hear she’d be away as it was. Except...well, who else? Sarah rolled her eyes a little too obviously before accepting the key card back. “That’s OK. I think I know what’s happened. It’s only the one bag. I can manage it.”

The lady nodded her thanks and, smiling politely, pointed her back towards the elevators. Sarah couldn’t move away from her fast enough.

Arriving at her floor, Sarah emerged from the lift expecting someone to come running up to her to confirm that they had in fact made a horrendous mistake. She slipped the key card into her door before pushing her way in to find her new home for the week.

The bedroom was large, uncomfortable so, with the bed positioned just off the middle in the room. Sarah figured the designer for a psychopath. It was big but not as empty as the lobby would have had her believe. In fact, it seemed reassuringly cosy despite the windows, so many windows stretching around the suite. There was a soft blue curved sofa opposite a screen that she’d seen smaller versions of in a cinema. Cushions fucking everywhere and fluffy white slippers she’d probably never take off again.

Everything seemed to be controlled from an iPad set in a stand by the bedroom door; the lights, the curtains, the air freshener, some background music for ambiance if she wanted. The windows tinted darker to block out the sunlight. Even the $1300 coffee machine was remote controlled; she had recognised it from the last edition of Home & Country Jocelyn had mailed to her, the exact one Shanna had been dropping hints about to Chris as a potential Christmas present.

The lounge offered her the clearest view of Central Park and with the light at this time in the afternoon, it was beyond stunning. She snapped a picture and considered texting it to Shanna but thought better of drawing attention to where she was staying. There was no way she could pass this off as a standard room even with her best efforts.

It was almost a shame to waste all of this on just herself. This room deserved romance, she thought.

Around the same time, Chris was on his third beer of the afternoon and lounging on his sofa. He had a new script in one hand, one he wasn’t particularly keen on but offered to read as a favour for a friend. He was so relaxed now that he had to re-read the last ten or so pages simply because it wasn’t landing. The whole room was lit softly by the sun outside. It had gone 4 o’clock when his phone rang disturbing the peace.

“Bernette! How was the journey?” he smiled into the phone as soon as he saw who it was.

“The bathtub is the size of my entire bathroom.” She announced, not giving him room to breathe. She heard him laugh heartily at the end of the line and could picture him looking smug and proud of himself, the dick. “I could have an orgy with the Patriots and still have room left.”

“Hey, don’t go getting any ideas.” he jostled with her. He placed the script down on the tablet to give her his full attention. “So, you like it, huh?”

“It’s...it’s absolutely gorgeous and utterly ridiculous. Seriously, dude, you did not need to do this.” She could sense his growing pride from here. “I’ve never stayed in anything like it. I have, like, a hundred towels.”

“That’s why I did it in the first place. Not for the towels, obviously, but just because you deserved something different. Something nice.” He enthused. “Don’t fight me on this, Bernette.”

“You should see the view. It’s so beautiful. I think I can see the museum.” She was stood on her tiptoes, pressed against the glass, looking at the tiny people milling around on the street so far below her.

“i know,” he responded. “You’ll be there for a week and best to be comfortable, right?”

She didn’t want to argue with him. She was tired and extremely grateful for the kind gesture. She’d be able to enjoy the place and her time in the City more if she could firmly separate her work from any space in which she could chill out. It wasn’t like she was going to be raving all night nor have much chance to see places at this rate, so more space was probably a good thing. She hadn’t had an unbroken night’s sleep in...she couldn’t even remember when.

“Thank you, Chris.” she spoke softly after a brief pause.

“You’re welcome.”

She put her phone down on the bedside table and set about removing her clothes from her suitcase. Well, “clothes” in the loose sense. What she’d packed was basically gym gear, sweat pants, t-shirts, nothing remotely attractive, and a simple paid of black trousers for the exam day itself. Who was going to see her anyway? Shanna had thrown a jumper in the mix without her realising, dismayed at her insistence that she was not going out to bars to hook up with someone.

“But you’ll be gone the next day! It’s. The. Perfect. Crime!” Shanna had said, exasperated and throwing her hands in the air in dismay.

The majority of space in her suitcase has been taken up with journals and textbooks, ones she hadn’t see since she left medical school and had long since expected she would never see again. Funny what opportunities life threw at you when you least expected it.

She was soon feeling the push and pull of the day and had planned on spending at least a couple of hours studying that evening, so she had a clean-up and threw on the first set of sweatpants that fell out of the closet. She tied her hair up and out of her face, pulled out her notepad and switched her Macbook on. The TV was showing some repeat of a gameshow with the sound on low, more for background company than anything else, and she finally figured out how to get the coffee machine working thanks to a small tome buried inside a drawer underneath the coffee table.

Chris 9.44pm: All OK? Need company yet??

Sarah 9.45pm: I love you guys bt I can’t tell u how amazing it is having space to myself. Been a looooong day

Chris 9.51pm: ah

Chris 9.52pm: OK maybe don’t look outside your door

Momentarily confused, she rubbed at her eyes trying to come up with a pithy response.

Chris 9.56pm: well this is awkward...........

Sarah looked at the door and then back at her phone. Looking up at the door again, she unfolded her feet from underneath her and slowly walked towards it. Pulling it open, she found Chris looking up at her through his lashes, sheepishness drenching his entire body.

“OK, funny story,” he said. “But I thought this might be romantic and then I got carried away and now I’m here and I can absolutely go if you need me to...?” He half-turned his body in the direction of the elevators. “I’m so sorry, honey. I just thought it might be nice and not at all annoying but it’s annoying, isn’t it? It’s OK, you don’t need to say anything. Dammit, I really thought I pitched this right.”

“Chris, it’s fine.” Sarah finally found her voice to speak. “Honestly. I’m...I’m just really surprised is all. I was not expecting you to...drive? All this way?”

He nodded. “Yeh, I just bombed it down the ‘95.”

Awkward silence fell between them as they stared at each other unsure of what to do next. Finally picking up on the fact he remained in the hallway, a backpack thrown over his shoulder, she moved out of the way and he entered the suite. Relieved, he placed his bag down and turned to see her close the door behind him. He looked mildly embarrassed and she was all too aware she wasn’t welcoming but it was getting late and her eyes had started to hurt a little as she rubbed at them with the back of her hand.

“Fuck, that’s a long couch.” he announced, taking his black suede jacket off and placing it over the armrest nearest to him. He glanced over and saw papers strewn over the coffee table, her laptop light blaring brightly and looked back to her. She was working hard and he had ruined it.

“I am so sorry. First thing tomorrow, I’ll go home, I promise.” He held his hands up by way of an apology but she shook her head in response.

“Stop apologising.” she chuckled. “Do you want a beer?”

He nodded gratefully and looked so adorable that any annoyance she might have felt finally dissipated. “How about I give you a hug and then leave you to it? I need a shower and I can amuse myself in there for a little while. I don’t know why I just said that.”

Sarah laughed again and a little more relief moved through him. He wasn’t sure why he was feeling so nervous when he had been so confident of his decisions in the car all the way here. He’d rehearsed his lines and imagined her big smile when seeing behind the door. He had wanted to stop off and buy flowers but he was so eager to see her, he’d just kept driving. No daydream could live up to the reality of seeing her face up close.

He watched her from the bathroom doorway. She was cross-legged on the bed, studying the thickest textbook he’d ever seen with colour-coded notecards laid out across the duvet. He had earlier glimpsed a page over her shoulder but decided against pursuing medicine as a new career when he was faced with photographs of god knows what. He tried to remove the images from his mind by drinking another beer and thinking of Sarah in her scrubs. That tended to work well for him these days.

She looked so cute sat on the bed, her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. He wanted to come up with a joke, calm the tension a little that had grown between them in the meantime, but she looked pretty hot. More hot than usual and it was distracting. Like a sexy Librarian and for the second time this month he discovered something else he was into.

One pen was stuck behind her ear but she’d forgotten she’d put it there and was now using a different one. Her hair was tied up at the top of her head in a messy bun that she hadn’t touched since she’d arrived, more and more strands falling loosely around her as the evening wore on, framing her perfect, round face. She seemed to engrossed in what she was doing.

He was still a little wet from his shower and pondered whether she would notice if he just whipped his towel off and offered himself to her. There really wasn’t anything he wanted more at this moment in time than to have her touch him, to have her run hands gently over his chest, to tease him a little bit. There’d be some time, he reasoned, and right not it was just was exhilarating to think of her being here alongside him knowing it would be just the two of them for a little while.

He perched on the end of the bed in front of her. She barely moved, barely seemed to notice him. He took one of her blank notecards and carefully placed it on the open page so as not to lose her place. She leaned back slightly, allowing him to gather up the papers and place them in a pile on the floor besides the bed before turning back to lean in towards her, one arm stretching out across her legs. She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes again. She wanted peace and quiet and he decided to rock up just because he could. He sighed to himself. He was such a dick sometimes.

“Do you mind me being here?” he asked her, fully resigning himself to leaving if she now asked him to as hard as that might be. He’d got so caught up in his idea of surprising her that he hadn’t fully registered just how important these exams were or how well she wanted to do. Passing them wasn’t an option for Sarah; she wanted to knock it out of the park. She wanted to do better for herself and the more he got to know her like this, the more it became his favourite thing about her. And he related. He related perfectly. He knew exactly what that was like. “Cos I can go if you need me to.”

“Chris, I’ve said it’s fine. It’s nice that you’re here. I would just hate you feeling bored if all I’m doing is studying all the time.” She nervously twirled the pen between her fingers while taking in how amazing he looked following a shower, a little steam rising off his skin.

“I won’t get bored.” he assured her. “It’ll be nice hanging out with you. Just the two of us.”

He plucked the pen from behind her ears and she rolled her eyes realising the mistake she’d made. He tucked strands of hair back and leaned in placing a quick, soft kiss to her lips. He smelled like her coconut shampoo and she just now understood how truly spontaneous his trip had been.

“Listen, there’s another reason why I’m here. There’s something I need to talk to you about and I couldn’t wait until you got home.” he stroked her arm gently, looking down into her lap. “It’s been going around in my head and I’m not entirely sure what to say about it to be honest, but...it looks like Jenny’s done an interview with a magazine. A full thing with a photoshoot and stuff and it looks like I might be involved.” He closed his eyes for a second before correcting himself. “Not might actually, it’s pretty much definite that I’m in there for a large portion of it.”

“OK.” Sarah nodded. He for sure seemed weary of the whole thing and she felt for him.

“I just, I know she can be pretty unfiltered at the best of times, so-”

“-but she won’t have said anything negative, right?”

“No, no, not negative. I’m not worried about that exactly. It’s just that...” He was struggling to find the words. “I just didn’t want you to get the wrong idea about us, about me and her. I expect she’ll have this hyper-romanticised view of things and I guess I didn’t want you thinking it was some great love affair which is what I think she’ll spin it as.” He couldn’t quite meet her eye while he was talking. “I’m not proud of myself or of what I said or did at the time but I was low and she was there and it was...easy, I guess.”

He immediately regretted his choice of words. As much as he wanted Sarah to understand, he didn’t want Sarah to think he was dismissive of his relationships in this way. “Matt’s figuring out some damage control with them. Hopefully, it’ll go away as quickly as it comes.”

“You think he’ll be able to clear it up?”

Chris nodded. Matt was a formidable guy and he was assured things would look and read much better by the time it went to print. He placed his hand on her thigh and it was only now she registered just how close he was to surrounding her. “I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve all too often but when I do, they know about it. I want to make them aware of exactly how I feel about them and I didn’t do that with her.” He dipped his head to catch her eye line. “So, when I do something for someone, it means something, y’know?”

“Yeh, of course. You’re a good guy, Chris. Everyone knows that.” She took his hand and lightly interlocked their fingers together.

“I guess I just didn’t want you worrying about her ‘cos there’s absolutely nothing there for me. Never had been.”

“You don’t need to explain this to me, I’m not going to hold anything against you.” she stroked his chin with her thumb and felt him relax into her hand. He glanced down at the mess he’d made on the floor and started picking a few things back up.

“How much left do you have to do tonight?” he whispered as his lips closed upon hers for a fleeting moment.

“I could do with finishing some notes but...half an hour, maybe?”

“I’ll hold you to that.” he kissed her again and got up from the bed, lifting her books back on top. “Just come get me when you’re done, yeh?”

Finishing up in the bathroom, Sarah switched off the light and moved towards the bed. She kneeled alongside Chris who was lying flat out, naked except for the duvet bunched across legs, reading what she assumed was the hotel magazine only to find upon closer inspection that it was in fact one of her medical journals. She giggled as she grabbed the moisturiser from the bedside table and began rubbing a small amount up and down her arms, regarding him as his nose creased up in apparent disgust at something he’d just read.

“Did you know the body has ten times more microorganisms living in it than actual human cells?! That’s bacteria, Sarah. Living, gross bacteria. All over us.” he looked at her, shock and horror crossing his fine, perfect features. She wasn’t sure whether to pat him on the head or laugh.

“It’s mostly good bacteria, though. Only, like, 1% of it is bad for us.”

“And when exactly were you going to tell me about this?!”

She creased up laughing and flopped on to her side next to him. “It’s all information that’s out there for the world to see. Remind me not to tell you about eyelashes.”

“What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever removed from somebody’s ass?” he asked.

“What? Why is that always a question people want an answer to?”

“I don’t know. It’s just weird. Humans are weird.” he muttered, turning back to the pages in front of him. She was glad he had chosen one without pictures. That was the last thing she wanted to see before falling asleep.

“So, have you learned something new?” she asked, curling her legs under the duvet.

“I have. I think you should test me and if I get a question wrong, you can do whatever you like to me. Deal?” he asked, smirking. She shyly smiled and he tossed the book onto the floor. “Hi.”

“Hi.” She repeated. She watched as his eyes slowly travelled down her body. It was unreasonable how much he managed to disarm her with only a look.

His hand reached out to gently caress the side of her thigh, nudging the duvet slightly down before moving back up to her hip, a ticklish area he’d picked up on the last time they were together. He leaned in and kiss her on the side of her jaw, so feather-like and soft she barely felt it if not for his warm breath she could feel on her neck.

“You smell nice.” he whispered, looking at her from underneath his eyelashes. “We could have showered together, y’know? Save the planet?”

As much as she was getting used to the little things he would do when they were alone, rubbing her arm, tucking hair behind her ears, saying nice things about how pretty she looked, having him here in such close proximity with no else around to distract them or force them into the light...it was getting risky. Not that Chris ever pushed her, mind. He’d been nothing but understanding and respectful and she was grateful for that but also growing concerned he was perhaps a little...bored. Why else would he drive over state lines to see her. None of this was normal and the more time went by, the more she became fretful of what they were doing.

“What are you thinking about?” he kissed her shoulder. “Is it dirty? If it’s dirty, I wanna know about it.”

Sarah smiled and placed her hand on the side of his face, running her fingers gently over his beard. He’d thoroughly given up shaving but she liked how soft it still felt under her finger tips and judging by the breath he released as he closed his eyes, so did he, relaxing into her hand. He kissed her again. She was hoping he’d take charge so she could put off talking to him a little longer but instead, he refrained from pushing them any further and leaned back a little, looking into her eyes. “Talk to me.”

She could feel his hand move slowly and deliberately up her arm until he reached the back of her neck, his fingers playing with the loose strands of hair that had fallen from her messy bun. There was no getting away from this.

“You know you can tell me anything, right? It’s OK for you to tell me what you want.” She could feel his breath on her skin, his voice low and rough. His fingers moved again and she felt them touch her lips, one of them running back and forth over her lower lip until she parted them ever so slightly and his finger softly dipped inside her mouth. He seemed to like that and kissed her again, a little harder this time.

“Just keep kissing me.” she whispered, relieved that se finally got some words out.

He smiled at her, satisfied with her response, and kissed her again. Slow, wet, a kind of kiss that was full of promise of what he wanted to do and it made her whole body thrum with anticipation.

One hand now resting on the bed beside her and the other moved from her cheek back down to her thigh. She was frozen to the spot, this man focussed on her so intently, prepared to give her whatever she asked for, whatever she needed, expressing so much in a kiss that she didn’t register when her hand began moving slowly, grazing a finger ever so slightly over the waistline of her shorts.

“...and what else?”

A little more, he moved his hand until his fingers dipped inside her underwear until he felt her skin, hot to the touch. She broke the kiss momentarily to let out a breath, one hand resting on the back of his neck for leverage as he continued tenderly moving his fingers until he got to where he wanted to be. Feeling her wet for him seemed to spark something inside and she felt him push her carefully until she was lying back on the bed, head just off the pillow, and he leaned over her. He adjusted his hand ever so slightly until she could feel his fingers pressing at her entrance before moving in small circular motions, riling her up.

“Look at me, honey.” he whispered, his voice rough and turned on as he wanted her grabbing at the covers as he stroked her. She tried to but she couldn’t stop her eyes from closing again, zoned out with only his smooth and confident movements to focus on. It was almost getting too much with him hitting her at just the right spot for her to lose herself completely when, just like that, he pulled his hand away and grabbed both sides of her underwear to pull them down and off her legs. The next thing she remembered was the feel of him skilfully grabbing her from underneath her thighs, his tongue swiftly taking over.

It didn’t take long for her to feel like was she coming undone and him feeling proud of himself. She couldn’t fight it and with one arm draped across her lower tummy, he certainly had not intention of letting her get away. Any feelings of awkwardness were soon a thing of the past as she let the gentle, unbridled bliss he was giving her wash over her completely. She honestly couldn’t remember ever feeling anything like this before, she was so out of it. He was covering her completely, her wetness mixing with his own, his beard rubbing against her smooth skin adding another level of pleasure.

She ran her fingers through his hair, messing it up. His tongue hit her clit again and again causing her to give him a short, sharp pull. His groan was so filthy and deep from within him, she felt it reverberate through her, raising goose bumps up and down her skin.

He wanted her on the edge as much as he felt he was. He wanted her to want him, to tell him exactly what she wanted him to do. He wanted her on fire. He wanted to hear her beg.

Just as she was on the edge for a second time, he stopped and blew softly across her wisps of hair. He chuckled when he heard what sounded like a quiet yet frustrated groan leave her lips, followed by a chuckle, something innocent and familiar. Her hands loosened from his hair as they stared into each other’s eyes, their mutual breathlessness the only sound they could hear.

“Does that feel good?” he whispered, the breath from his words scorching her skin. He moved his tongue just a little lower, not breaking eye contact, and she felt him dip ever so slightly inside of her, his arm wrapped around her thigh and the pad of his thumb taking care of the rest. He did this a second time, then a third, and when he returned to pressing his tongue over her clit, drawing her into his mouth, she was soon grabbing at him in any way she could in a futile attempt to take the edge off the orgasm that was coming at her like a freight train.

She was close. He knew she was so close now and he held his arms tightly around her to keep her close to him. One more swipe of his tongue right....there...and she was gone.

When her breathing even out, she slowly opened her eyes to see him move up and over her, placing soft, wet kisses on her hip, her tummy, her neck, and finally on her lips. He seemed cautious to kiss her, unsure of whether she wanted him to but she grabbed his face with both hands to pull him back down to her, kissing him as passionately as she could manage with what felt like no energy. She could taste herself and it was so much more erotic than she could ever have imagined.

She felt him smile into the kiss as he carefully settled his body on top of hers, allowing her to wrap her legs around him. He moved the hair that was sticking to her forehead and stroked her face with one finger, gently mapping her eye and her nose and her cheek. She couldn’t reconcile this being the same man who had minutes earlier been so dominant. He had so clearly wanted to say something at that point if only his hardness hadn’t been so distracting. He mover one arm under her neck, using the other hand to move hair from where it had clung to the side of her face. Holding her as close to him as possible and feeling blissful when he felt her legs wrap around his own, he entered her and held still, enjoying the moment.

“We should’ve done this years ago.” he spoke and for a brief moment, without realising, she was pulled from their intimacy, a pang of guilt taking its place.

He was too busy pushing into her, needing whatever she had left to give him. He grabbed at the back of her neck to keep her in place, his face buried into her hair. She felt her skin heat up all over from his breath as he panted at her side. It was more frantic than he’d wanted it to be as he groaned and moaned and pushed his whole weight into her with force. It was really all she could do to just hang on to him as he fucked her deeper, as he surged towards his own orgasm, then letting go when she felt him shudder insider her minutes later. He sounded helpless and as much as he tried to hold himself up from collapsing on her, he soon gave up trying and laid his head on her shoulder.

His warm breath continued covering her skin as she ran her hand gently over the back of his head. She felt him chuckle a vibration into the top of her arm before a wet kiss landed just underneath her ear, a place he had deigned his own after he realised how sensitive she was on that particular spot.

Finally rolling off her to lie on his back, he kept his arm stretched across her lower tummy and rubbed his fingers across the apex of her thigh. She wasn’t sure how long they stayed in this position but at some point he leaned over her to turn the bedside light off plunging the room into complete darkness and they continued to lie there in silence not really sure if the other was asleep or not.

He eventually turned onto his side to face her, keeping a firm grip on her waist. He was across her pillow and she could practically feel the flutter of his eyelashes as he watched her in the dark, a soft outline gradually appearing as his eyes adjusted to the blackness of the room, making out her features. she felt his hand move up and down her ribcage and over the inside of her elbow, another sensitive spot that made her shudder and him chuckle again when he realised she was in fact still awake.

She turned onto her side to face him and his hand moved to her lower back where it finally rested over her hip. She pushed her leg in between his and he seemed content and comfortable in how they were existing in this space, both aware they didn’t have to worry about getting up any time soon. He was running his fingers up and down her spine in slow, circular motions and it felt wonderful. Too wonderful. And there was that guilt again.

“What will you do tomorrow?” she asked.

He took a deep breath in contemplation at her unexpected question. “Gym looks pretty good. I have a book and a couple of scripts, too. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

“I know.” she murmured but he knew she was dwelling on something.

“I wanna be here for you if you need anything and if you don’t, you won’t even know I’m around. I promise.”

“I know that, too.”

She could sense him smile at her even in their dark. “Good.” he said. “It feels nice knowing I’ve made a good decision for a change.”

#chris evans #chris evans fic #evans fic #fan fiction #clear the area #sarah bernette #chris evans x original female character

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jungkookiebus · 5 years

Text

Restraints, and butt plugs, and orgasm denial, oh my! pt. 1 | kth

Genre: smut, nonidol!, roommate au Pairing: nonidol!taehyung x reader Warning: more ass play (what can I say), use of multiple sex toys, orgasm denial (as if the title didn’t give it away), squirting Word count: 3.6k Summary: Kim Taehyung: used to be fuckboy, pain in the ass, and your painfully good looking roommate. He catches you watching porn (much to your embarrassment) and becomes increasingly curious as to what you’re into. Much to your surprise, and pleasure, he has all the means to explore your desires.

Author’s note: This was a request sent in by my lovely lady-in-thirst @faelynnmarie94 and I hope you like it.

“Whatcha watching?” you heard behind you.

Flustered, you slammed your laptop shut, but the audio didn’t stop. Moans continued to emit from your laptop’s speakers before they were finally silenced. Taehyung snickered behind you.

“Porn, _____? Haven’t been getting laid lately?” He rounded the couch to sit down next to you. He looked as if he just got done lounging around all day and finally decided to move from his room.

“N-no! I get laid!”

He scoffed as he picked up his phone and began scrolling. “Guys not doing it for you?”

“I’m just exploring, Taehyung.”

“Oh, yea? Something you’ve been wanting to try with your boyfriend?”

“I don’t have a boyfriend and you know it.”

“I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.” He shifted his body towards you. “So, what is that you’re ‘exploring’?”

“I’m not telling you,” you said making a face at him.

“As your roommate of two years I know the type of sex you have had and it’s boring to say the least.” His face was saying that he knew everything about your personal life.

“How do you know?”

Taehyung looked at you as if saying ‘really?’.

“Oh, and you’re better?”

“Does it sound like I’m having boring sex?”

“No…”

“Spill it.”

“Okay, well…,” you turned your face downwards in embarrassment.

Taehyung leaned over to look at your face expectantly.

“I’ve been watching some videos with orgasm denial.”

“Oh? So, you want to be edged. Go on.”

“Uh, toys.”

“What kind?”

“I…”

Taehyung scooted uncomfortably close to you. “What kind, _____?” He asked lowly.

“Butt plugs.”

His plush lips formed an ‘o’ as his eyebrows shot up. “I never pegged you as the type.”

You rolled your eyes as he laughed at his own joke. “I don’t want to fuck a dude’s ass, Taehyung.”

“Anything else?” he shifted even closer, as if doing so would give him the answer faster.

“Restraint.”

“Fuck, you’re kinky.” You didn’t miss that his already deep voice dropped another octave.

“Taehyung!” you said as you punched him on the shoulder.

He leaned forward once more, uncomfortably so until he was almost nose to nose with you, having backed you against the arm of the couch with nowhere to go. You could feel his breath hot against your skin and he smelled faintly of mint toothpaste. He licked his lips as he looked down at yours.

“I could help you with that.”

You gulped. More than once you had fantasized what it would be like to be with Taehyung, but he was your roommate for god’s sake. You’ve seen every version of Taehyung there was to see and that ranged from freshly fucked to hungover to sad. You had also seen Taehyung very naked on more than one occasion and you took those opportunities to appreciate what God put in front of you.

“How’s that?” you whispered.

“I have some experience in those fields.”

“Butt plugs?”

“I have various toys, ______.”

You pressed your legs together at the thought of being so close to fulfilling these fantasies. His eyes flashed down to your lap and your movement didn’t go unnoticed by him.

“That had an effect on you didn’t it?”

“I’d be lying if I said no.”

“Have you thought about fucking me before?”

The question took you by surprise. You knew Taehyung was a forward person, but to have him talk to you this way was completely different for you.

“Why are you asking me this?”

“It’s just a question. You don’t have to answer it.” He shrugged nonchalantly as if it were normal Saturday night couch talk for him.

“Y-yes,” you stammered. “I have…thought about fucking you.” Your voice was low, as if your next words would put him off. “Often.”

“Fuck, _____,” he moaned as he moved forward to press his lips against yours. His lips were much softer than you imagined them to be, but you weren’t surprised because his beauty routine was more meticulous than yours. He brought his hand to the back of your neck as he pulled you in for a deeper kiss. This was feverish, almost as if it were something he had been wanting to do and was just now getting the chance. When he pulled away from you his breathing was heavy. “I’ve been wanting to do this for so long.”

“Really?”

“You know how torturous it is to see you day in and day out and not get to touch you?”

Your underwear were now fully stuck to you with how wet you were from his words. His hand cupped your jaw and he brought his lips to lightly brush along it.

“To see you walking around our house without a care in the fucking world; like I’m not even here half the time.” Goosebumps spread across your skin. “You just traipse around in your little shorts and sweatshirts like I’m not going to look at you, ______. You’re a fucking cocktease and you know it.” Your breath came out in short bursts against Tae’s skin. “You’re so worked up, ______, I can fucking smell you.” You moaned lowly in his ear. “Let me feel how wet you are.”

Taehyung’s hand slid up from your knee to your inner thigh. He stopped when he got to your shorts and you spread your legs invitingly and that was all the permission he needed. His hand pushed up under the leg of your shorts and he flicked his finger on the band next to your cunt.

“Cotton’s all used up,” he breathed. “Absolutely soaked, babe.”

“Show me what you can do, Taehyung.”

“You better keep that dirty mouth to yourself before I take you here on this couch and fuck the rest.”

You immediately closed your mouth at his threat. Taehyung stood from the couch and held out his hand to you. “Shall we?”

His large hand enveloped yours as he pulled you up from the couch and to his room. It was immaculate as ever when you entered, his bed having been made that morning. Soft lights glowed throughout the room and though you had been in here on more than one occasion, you were jealous that his room was that much better than yours.

“So, where do you keep these ‘toys’ of yours?” You almost believed he was lying to you, but something told you Tae wouldn’t lie about this.

He turned to give you a devastating smirk. “You’ll see.”

He turned to pull open the bottom drawer of his dresser and inside you saw an array of toys all laid out neatly and in their own place.

“Those are clean, right?”

This time Tae turned around to roll his eyes at you. “What do you take me for?”

You shrugged as you sat on the edge of his bed.

“Now,” he said pulling one toy from the drawer. “For our first hurdle of the night.” He sat down beside you and placed a small, silver butt plug in your hand. “It’s small, so don’t be scared, but that can come in a bit.”

Tae took it from you once more and placed it on his nightstand.

“For now,” he said placing his hand on your cheek, “let’s explore some other things.”

Once again, his soft lips met yours and you sighed as he pushed your back against the pillows on his bed. His hand slowly slid down your chest, across the expanse of your stomach, and dipped below the waistband of your shorts. He cupped you firmly as you moaned and arched upwards towards him. He ground the heel of his palm on your clit as he dipped two of his fingers inside of you.

“God, baby, you’re so wet,” he said between leaving bite marks across your neck. “These panties are soaked all the way through. You can just take them off, they’re useless now.”

You were quick in your movements to pull both your shorts and your panties off in one go. He brought his lips back to yours a second later as he harshly shoved two fingers into your cunt.

“Soak ‘em for me. There’s somewhere else they need to be.”

His hot breath against your skin had you moaning as he shoved his fingers so far into you, you were seeing stars.

“Hold your legs.”

You did as you were instructed and held them behind your knees. Taehyung pumped his fingers in and out of you a few more times before sliding out and moving to your ass.

“Relax for me, okay?” His kisses were soft as he peppered them along your flushed neck. He pressed one finger against the tight muscles there. “Relaaax,” he whispered.

He pressed one of his fingers inside of you and you flinched at the uncomfortable feeling. Taehyung sat up to sit in front of you now, bringing one of his arms around your leg as he placed his fingers on your clit from above. His face hovered over your cunt as he let spit slide from his mouth and onto you for added lubrication. You keened at the new feeling and soon he was moving his middle finger inside of you while his other hand preoccupied your clit.

“Doesn’t it feel good when I do both?” he asked.

“God, fuck, yes, Tae it feels so good.” Your grip on your legs was faltering and to add more fuel to the fire he brought his mouth down to your pussy and let his tongue slip inside. The feeling of his fingers on your clit, his tongue inside of you, and his finger in your ass had you shuddering around him.

“Please keep doing that,” you begged. Your head was thrown back into the pillows as you pushed yourself more into the sensation he was giving you. Your mind started to reel at the overwhelming feeling of it all and before long you felt your orgasm fast approaching.

“Oh my god, fuck Tae keep going.”

But right before you let go, Taehyung was pulling away from you.

“Tae, what the fuck?” you asked sitting up on your elbows.

“Orgasm denial number one,” he said with a devilish smile.

Fuck. You should have never told him about that.

“Now, hands and knees, _____.”

Begrudgingly you did as he expected.

“Top down,” he said gently pushing your shoulders down to the bed. He reached back over for the butt plug and some lube he had sitting on the night stand. “This is going to feel strange at first, but I’m going to need you to relax and not push. Can you do that for me?”

You mumbled a faint ‘yes’ into his bedspread. You heard the pop of the bottle and then he was placing it against you, the feeling of it extremely cold.

“You have to relax, or this isn’t going to feel good.” He started to push it in slowly and you hissed at the unpleasant sting in your skin. He rubbed your ass cheek soothingly before bringing his left hand down and inserted two fingers into your cunt, pumping them in and out slowly while he slowly pushed the toy in with his right. He was at the apex of the toy when he spoke.

“You’re doing so well, ______, it’s almost all the way in.”

There was a strange pop sensation when it was fully seated inside of you and you felt…full, but in a good way.

“How does it feel?” Both of his hands were on your ass cheeks now as he rubbed his hands over them and spread them to see the toy in your ass. “Your ass looks so pretty with the toy inside.”

“It actually feels pretty good now that it’s all the way in.”

“Told you.” You heard the smirk in his voice and you really wanted to turn around and hit him, but you were almost afraid to move.

“It’s not gonna fall out.”

“Can you read minds now?”

“No, but I can see that literally none of your muscles are relaxed right now. Get on your back, _____.”

You slowly, almost comically, rotated your body and fell to your back. Taehyung was laughing as he opened the bottom drawer of his dresser again and pulled out two lengths of black, silk fabric. The way he walked was almost sinful when he made his way back to the bed once more.

“Now,” he said softly, “be a good girl and get back against the pillows and put your hands above your head.”

It felt light a wildfire was ignited within you at those words. Taehyung watched as you licked your lips and scooted yourself up the bed, making eye contact with you as you did so. The bed shifted under his weight as he knelt and straddled your waist before grabbing one of your hands and expertly winding the bit of fabric around your wrist. He leaned over you and you looked down as his oversized shirt came up and you were able to appreciate the soft lines of his stomach that disappeared below the waistband of his sweats.

“Appreciating the view?” he asked before he caught your other wrist in his hand.

“I’ve seen you fully naked before in case you couldn’t remember.” You heard him laugh above you as he wound the fabric between the slats of his headboard before tugging on them to make sure they were secure.

“How does that feel?”

“It feels fine.”

“If any of this feels uncomfortable you have to let me know.”

You quirked your head to look at him.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You’re not being very Taehyung right now.”

“Because I want you to be comfortable doing something you haven’t done before?” he asked while standing to take off his clothes. “I’m not a complete asshole.”

As he took his clothes off you took your time drinking him in. He wasn’t particularly athletic and as far as you knew he didn’t really work out, but he was lithe and well built with soft contours to his body that you appreciated.

“Do you do this often?” you asked. You really couldn’t remember the last time Taehyung had a girl over now that you thought about it.

“Not really,” he smiled. “Not very many girls are into this. And, to be honest, I’ve kind of had a hardcore crush on you for a while now.”

Your heart flipped in your chest at his sudden and rather straightforward confession. You would have never guessed that Taehyung remotely had any feelings for you. In the two years you had lived together sharing one bathroom, not once had you any reason to believe he thought any more of you than the girl who left her dirty clothes on the bathroom floor.

“I really wish we weren’t having this conversation while I’m tied up if we’re still being honest.”

“Let’s have it later then,” he said quietly as he crawled back over you.

He ran his tongue over your bottom lip and made a show of it as you moaned. He pushed the tank you were wearing up past your bare breasts and brought his fingertips up to lightly brush against them and they hardened instantly under his touch.

“You’re sensitive,” he whispered against the skin of your neck. “This is going to be fun.”

His lips were moist as they trailed between the valley of your breasts, kissing the underside of them before coming back up and wrapping his lips around one of your nipples. His hands held your hips firmly to the bed as you squirmed under his expert touch.

“God, I wish I could touch you,” you complained as you pulled at the restraints on your wrists; the headboard groaning against the pressure.

“What’s the fun in that?” he asked pulling off your breast. “Can I use more toys?”

“I’m going to die.”

Taehyung grinned down at you as he moved once more from the bed and to his drawer. You watched as he moved and looked down to his cock that now stood red and hard against his stomach.

“Don’t you want to deal with that?” you asked. Taehyung turned to you and saw where your gaze landed.

He looked down at it before looking back at you and saying, “You’ll find that I have a lot of self-control.”

To your horror he pulled a Hitachi wand from the drawer. Your eyes bulged as he walked back to the bed and plugged it in.

“Why do you look so scared?”

“I’ve only seen those in porn.”

His smile was deadly as he leaned over you and came mere centimeters from your face.

“Get ready to be awakened to a whole new experience, ______,” he whispered as he turned it on and pushed it against your clit.

A cry came out of you that you weren’t expecting as your back came off the bed and Taehyung was quick to swallow your cries with his mouth; his tongue now fully in your mouth as you cried around him when he turned up the wand. Your body was shaking from the stimulation that he was putting you through. You felt constantly on edge as he held the wand just right over your clit, but never gave you enough to come. You were soon gasping for air as Taehyung leaned back to watch you writhe under his touch. He twisted his hand and pushed the wand just right against your clit and soon you were rushing headlong to your release and he pulled the wand away just in time.

“Fuck!” you cried as you were once again denied of your orgasm. “How can you tell?!”

“Your body speaks volumes, babe.” He began looking at you as if in thought and you squirmed shyly, wishing you could cover yourself. “Can I fuck you?”

Wow, he was so blunt with this.

“Will I be able to come?”

“Maybe,” he shrugged.

“You’re an asshole.”

He smiled before asking, “Can I fuck you raw?”

“Shit, please.”

He pushed your knees apart and to the bed before lining himself up and slowly pushing inside.

“Oh my god,” you gasped as you started to stretch in the best of ways. Taehyung was not only long, but the girth he possessed had you wishing you had asked him to fuck you sooner.

“Your cunt feels so good,” he said as his eyes rolled back in his head before slowly pushing in the rest of the way. “Can you feel me against that butt plug?”

He was right when he said this would feel good. You felt full in every sense of the word and it was the best feeling you had experienced up until this point. He held your knees to the bed as he looked back down at his cock disappearing inside of you. Watching Tae watch himself fuck you had you gushing once more, and you saw as Tae’s head snapped up to look at you.

“God, how can you possibly get more wet?” His thrusts became faster and he reached up to grab one of your bouncing breasts in his palm.

“Watching you fuck me is just so hot,” you said quickly. He was about to fuck you senseless and you needed to get that out before you couldn’t talk anymore.

“God dammit don’t talk like that.” He reached beside him and picked up the wand much to your horror; you already felt as if your body was about to shut down from it all. He turned it on and placed it against your clit once more as he continued to fuck you at a fluid pace and you were surprised he could multitask so well.

“Fuck, Tae!” you screamed. Your back came up once more and created a delectable angle that had Tae hitting your g-spot directly.

“Come on, ______, get there,” he panted as he fucked you harder and held the wand to you. You felt as your cunt grew tighter and tighter and the pressure building in your chest and stomach were almost overwhelming as tears started to slip from the corners of your eyes. The headboard moaned in protest as you pulled harder and harder at the silk ties.

Then he stopped.

“I fucking hate you,” you whimpered as you collapsed once more against the sheets.

Taehyung cooed as he leaned forward and gently kissed the tears streaming down your cheeks.

“Is my baby frustrated?”

You huffed out in annoyance as you pulled aggravatingly at the restraints.

“This is what you asked for,_______,” he said as he continued to leave gentle kisses all over your face, neck, and chest; the weight of his cock still heavy and delicious inside of you, but unmoving, the wand having been discarded to the side once more. “You’ll thank me for it when you actually come. You’ll come so hard you’ll be begging for me to do it again.” He reached up and tugged once on each side of your wrists and you were instantly freed. You just let your arms fall above you, your strength to do much else having left you minutes ago.

“Can you get on all fours?” he asked.

You almost wanted to protest and say no but decided being whiny right now probably wasn’t the best road to take. Instead, you flipped on your stomach under him. He still lingered over you as he kissed across your shoulders, his hands on your hips as he left kitten kisses down your back and to the swell of your ass before pressing a thumb against the butt plug. You groaned at the feeling of it moving inside of you. He used his hands to pull your hips in the air and you propped yourself up on your hands. He pressed down on the butt plug once more before slamming his cock into you. You reached in front of you to grab the slatted headboard again lest he would fuck you into it if you hadn’t. The headboard hit the wall at a rapid pace as his hips continued their assault against you.

“Trying to get the neighbors to hear?” he said as he fucked you faster, causing his bed to hit the wall even harder. “Scream for me, ______.” You realized a second too late what his intentions were as he brought the wand to your clit once more.

And scream you did.

It was as if electricity flowed through your veins and fried every nerve ending in your body. Tae’s left arm held you aloft while his right held the wand.

“Stay up, ______, you can handle it,” he growled.

“Tae, please,” you begged as you gripped the covers so harshly that you felt your fingernails could rip right through.

“Please what?” He was breathing as if he had just run a half marathon, but the bruising pace he set with his cock was no closer to slowing than when you first started.

“Please let me come.” You wanted to sob, scream, lash out, and above all, hurt him. Why you had ever thought edging was exciting was beyond you. This was the most miserable you had ever felt, but this was also the most exciting feeling in your life.

“Why should I?” He pushed the wand harder into you as he grazed your g-spot on every thrust.

“I’ve been so good,” you cried.

“Have you? I remember you saying you hated me.”

“I didn’t mean it, I won’t do it again.” Your tears were back and you almost felt ashamed at what he was able to do to you.

And in that moment, Taehyung stilled inside of you. A choked sob escaped your chest at the thought of being edged once more when he grabbed you by your throat and harshly pulled you back against his chest. Without moving inside of you he pressed the wand on your clit as hard as he could.

“Come on my cock, ______,” he growled in your ear. That was all the pushing you needed as you came so intensely your vision blacked out for a few seconds and your body was trembling in his arms. You felt a growing wetness between your legs as he moaned in your ear. “You ever squirted before?”

You weakly shook your head as your body continue to tremble through your orgasm.

“Well,” he started, “you’re welcome.”

He let go of your throat and let you gently fall forward onto the bed. He leaned over you to whisper in your ear. “God it felt so good to feel your tight little pussy wrapped around my cock.” From the minute shaking of the bed you could tell that he was jacking himself off above you. You turned your cheek to him and felt his heated breath against your skin. “You took everything I did to you so well. I can’t wait to see what else you’ll let me try.” His breathing became more rapid and you could tell that his movements were becoming sloppy as he continued to reach his end. “One day I’m going to completely destroy you.” You moaned at his proclamation and you soon felt as he released on your ass, warm streams hitting your skin. He gently kissed your cheek before collapsing on the bed beside you.

“Now,” you said faintly, “let’s talk about that crush.”

#btssmutclub #bangtanarmynet #bts smut #taehyung smut #bts au #bts scenarios #bts imagines #bts fic #taehyung #taehyung x reader #reader insert #bts #kim taehyung #nonidol!taehyung

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jjmichie · 5 years

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Jack Irons it Out

Disclaimer: the story below is fiction. While inspired by real people, it is not a real account of any actual events, places, dialogues, or situations, just my imagined version of how life might have been for these guys during the Vitalogy era (although there may be some time travel in later chapters). Also, yes, I know that in reality Stone had short hair at this point, but in my fiction world, it will always be long. Just let me have this. :-)

***************

Chapter 1 of "Some Words When Spoken . . . “

“Whoa, guys! Seriously? Can we deal with this like adults?”

Jack slammed his drum sticks down on the snare, causing an abrupt and surprisingly loud silence to fill the studio. He looked at his new bandmates in exasperation. “I can’t work like this. If you two have a beef with each other, can you please just air it out so we can get on with it?” His head turned firmly from Eddie to Stone, and then back to Eddie, leaving no question on who he meant by “you two.”

A smattering of electrified guitar sounds, the clearing of a throat, the folding of arms, and several flips of long brown hair were the only response.

Finally a chuckle from Jeff, who turned to Jack and nodded. “I agree,” he announced, and unstrapped his bass and set it in its stand. He walked over to stand solidly beside Jack’s drums.

When Eddie just continued to stare at the floor with his arms folded and Stone continued to pretend to tune his guitar, Jack stood up. He signaled the sound guy to take five and walked out from behind his kit.

“Can we sit for a second? All of us. Yes Stone, you too.” And he led the reluctant group to the corner of the room where there was a table. “Ok, so I’m going to take advantage of being the new guy here, and call this out. What I’ve been observing is that, Eddie, Stone, whenever you have a –- I won’t even call it a ‘disagreement’–- literally just a difference of OPINION, you both withdraw into your respective corners and sulk. I seriously can’t believe you’ve made it this far if this is how you deal with each other. This isn’t how bands function. This is totally fucked up.”

Still no response.

“Man, you guys are sooooo different from . . . anyway. Ok, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. You can either start talking to each other now and I’ll help mediate, or I’ll lock you in a room until you either work it out or beat each other up. What’s it going to be??”

Jack noted redness creeping into their faces, but still, Eddie and Stone’s eyes remained glued to the table, their hair flowing down over their faces. Not a word. Jack sighed and moved to Plan B.

“Ok, Jeff, then. Is this your observation too? How is this dynamic affecting you?”

Jeff put both hands palms down on the table breathed out slowly. A long breath. “Oh my god. Yes, it’s been sucking like you wouldn’t believe. I mean, obviously a lot has changed and we’re all dealing with a lot But, we used to at least talk to each other! But now, it’s like, too awkward. I feel like if I agree with Eddie on something, then I’m hurting Stone, and if I agree with Stone, I’m going to piss off Eddie.”

Eddie raised his eyes from the table slightly as Jeff continued.

“I’m not trying to be a dick, but Eddie, things feel strange with you now. I mean, on the way here I stop at a convenience store and boom, there’s your face on every magazine, and every interview I give is just ‘what’s it like to work with Eddie’… you know? and I’m sure it’s affecting you as much as anything. And I’m sorry, I know it isn’t your fault, but dude, you’ve become unapproachable.”

Eddie lowered his eyes back to the table and pursed his lips.

“And YOU,” Jeff turned to Stone. “We’ve known each other for so long, I can always tell when you’re in a funk, but this … is different. You’ve become completely withdrawn, even from me. You’ve got a wall around you right now that’s about a mile thick.” He paused, searching for Stone to look up, to acknowledge him, to show some response. But Stone looked away, pressing his fist against his lips.

“Stone?” Jack prompted after an appropriate pause had passed. “What gives, man? What’s up with the wall?”

Stone breathed in sharply. The bluntness of the question caught him by surprise. No one in the band normally confronted him like that . . . at least not lately. Looking up, he saw that everyone at the table was staring at him.

“I . . . “ he began, but his words trailed off. He looked back and forth between the three of them, all staring at him, Jeff, Eddie, Jack. Eddie’s best friend Jack. Their unwavering stares demanding a response, an explanation, an admission, and he felt hotness flooding his cheeks.

He turned away from them all again, looking back towards their idling instruments, as if looking for an escape. But looking over there didn’t help. He only saw the empty space where Mike’s guitar was supposed to be. And the new and unfamiliar drum set . . . where Dave’s was supposed to be.

“Oh my God why is everyone looking at ME?” He finally blurted out, feeling his pulse quicken. “This isn’t my fault! Why don’t you make Eddie talk first?” He added, giving Jack the most innocent smile he could muster.

But Jack wasn’t having it. “Jesus Christ. This isn’t that hard!! Are you mad at Eddie or what?”

“No! I just don’t feel like -- I mean -- I’m not trying to be difficult,” he glared at Jeff. “Really, I’m not.”

“Whuh?! I never said you were!” Jeff threw his hands up and shook his head.

“Guys -- “ Jack cut in. “Just try, Stone. Anything you say is better than nothing.”

Stone continued to stare at the drums.

Realizing they were getting nowhere, Jeff tried to push it forward. “I mean, yeah, let’s do this. Let’s get it out on the table. There HAS been a change, a total shift of command, we all know it, it’s been going on for a while. And that’s been hard to get used to. I think we’re all just trying to figure out how to work within it – ”

Stone straightened his back and began wrapping his hair into a scrunchie that had somehow materialized in his hand. “Of course there’s been a shift,” he said quickly. “I know that. And it’s fine. We should be more democratic, that’s not it. . . “ he caught himself. “I mean . . . yes, it is. Like Jeff said, it’s just taking time to get used to.”

That worked. Stone sat back and breathed a sigh of relief upon noticing that his explanation seemed to be placating the occupants of the table. He kept it rolling.

“So, no, I’m not ‘mad’ at Eddie, okay? And even if I was. Which I’m not. But even if I WAS, you really think I’d be dick enough to bring it up to him? I mean, we all see what Eddie’s going through right now. He’s practically a prisoner. He gets mobbed if he leaves his house. He has guards. He gets threats. He can’t just, like, go for a walk, the way . . . the rest of us can. You really think I’m going to bother him with shit like, ‘Hey Eddie, it hurts my feelings when you re-arrange my riff?’ No, I’m not going to do that! So, sure, I go off and sulk instead,” he grinned.

A long pause.

“So . . . it does hurt your feelings . . . ” Jack pressed.

Stone stared at him in disbelief. He opened his mouth to protest, but then just closed it again.

But Eddie was now leaning even further across the table, his eyes reddening slightly. He looked like he wanted to lunge across the table and hug him.

“Oh my god Stone thank you so much for saying that. I really . . . was starting to feel like you hate me, especially after the thing with Dave. But honestly, there’s nothing I would love more than for you to tell me stuff like that . . . “

The thing with Dave. The thing with Dave? That’s all it was to Eddie? The thing . . .? Stone felt the hotness creeping back into his cheeks.

“. . . and Jeff, it hurts me so much when you say I’m ‘unapproachable.’ I never wanted to be this commodity I’m becoming. The world feels so different now, and the only place where I still feel normal is right here. In this space. With you guys. And if YOU all start treating me weird then . . . .”

Stone abruptly stood up. “Ok, then it’s settled. From now on we won’t treat you weird. Thanks Jack. This whole counseling session has been super super helpful. Group hug?”

“Stone . . . ” Jeff rolled his eyes. “For fuck sake. The whole point of this conversation is to open up and be honest with each other. There’s obviously more going on here. If that’s not it, then what is it? Something is stressing the hell out of you and I wish you would just -- ”

“Shut up!!” Stone suddenly screamed, unable to hold it in any longer. He ripped the freshly-created pony tail out of his hair and closed his eyes. “Just fuck off!” Putting his hands on his head, he violently pushed the occupants of the table away from his mind, trying to conjure back the world he wanted. The world that was familiar. Instead of the ugly void in the rehearsal space he thought about Dave’s soft hair, flailing in time with the rhythm he always pounded out. And a torrent of images immediately flooded his memory, the first time they met, Pike’s Market, their long talks on the bus, his voice, his smile, his laugh, his aftershave. Anything but their last meeting. Anything but the things Dave had said to him that day . .

And he needed Mike! Dammit!

Struggling to conceal how close he was to tears, he took a deep breath and opened his eyes again. The group was still staring at him, but now they looked scared. Stone fixed his eyes directly on Eddie, no longer bothering to hide distress and sadness that welled up behind them.

“Yes, okay. There are things that are upsetting me . . . I just don’t know where to begin. I don’t know how to work through it. I’m trying but I’m obviously not doing very well or we wouldn’t be having this . . . intervention.” He sunk back down into his chair. “It’s hard to explain. It’s like a spiral, I feel like I’m in this really dark place . . . everything feels wrong . . . . I don’t know if I can -- ”

From across the room he suddenly felt the drums mocking him, and stopped himself. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t let them know what it really was. How bad it really was. He had to stop.

“I’m sorry, I can’t do this, Not right now. It’s just too . . . raw to talk about.” He looked up at Jack, seeking his approval. “If I try to, I know it won’t come out right and it will end up . . . going into a place where I don’t want it to go.” The heat in his cheeks was abruptly replaced by a chill, that made his shoulders convulse involuntarily. He swallowed hard. “So . . . yeah. I’ve got a wall up right now. And . . . It’s going to be there for a while.”

The group at the table was quiet.

Jack finally spoke. “Yes . . . yes!” he nodded at Stone and smiled. “There you go. I knew you could do it. That’s totally cool, Stone. Of course you don’t have to talk about it right now. You need space! And we can absolutely back off and give you the room you need to work through it. Thank you for telling us - we just need to know where you’re at. And that goes for everybody.” Jack looked around the table. “Otherwise, someone will misunderstand and think you’re pissed off at them, you see?”

Stone smiled and bit his lip, feeling a swell of emotion inside his chest. He suddenly loved Jack. The anger he felt a minute ago was subsiding. He had his privacy back. And the images that danced through his mind remained his own. He looked sheepishly at Eddie and Jeff, and saw that their accusing glares had softened, and were no longer demanding anything of him. “I’m sorry,” he tried to say to them, but his voice broke.

Eddie’s eyes had gotten even redder, and he now did lunge forward to throw his arms around Stone.

“You don’t have to be sorry. I totally … know. I’ve been in dark spaces before too and it can be … absolute hell.” Eddie pulled away slightly, kneeling next to him and cradling Stone’s hand between both of his. He reduced his voice to a soft whisper. “Is there . . . anything I can do to help?”

Stone watched Eddie’s hands touching his own, amazed by the innocent sincerity that had so abruptly taken over Eddie’s whole being. He felt himself relaxing, letting Eddie soothe him, but also knew there was no way he could truly let him inside. “No,” he finally whispered back.

Jack and Jeff slowly and quietly got up from the table, to let Eddie and Stone remain there alone, their hands in a gentle embrace. They sat at the table together for a long time, as the sound guy returned to his post and the sound of drums and the low hum of bass began to envelop them. When it finally crescendo’d into a steady pulsating groove that neither could resist any longer, they rose to their feet and went back into the rehearsal space to join their band.

#pearl jam #stone gossard #eddie vedder #jack irons #dave abbruzzese #jeff ament #fanfic #vitalogy #mike mccready

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tony-luvv · 6 years

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Nurse’s Call Button

Summary: Thor and Tony getting caught in the rain leads to teaching Thor another Midgardian custom, playing doctor.

Side Notes: This is for Howling_Moonie (on Ao3) Also I had my friend, who is not at all into fan fiction, edit this story (thank you @vebekah) & she was cracking up so hard. I should’ve recorded it, but she would’ve smacked me. Hope this story makes you laugh as hard as she did!

Links to Ao3 and Fanfiction

Tony laughed, soaked to the bone, as he and Thor ran hand in hand through the rain. They were only a mere three blocks away from the Tower when the first couple of rain drops fell. After that, it didn’t take long for the weather to take a drastic turn, and go from a light sprinkle to a heavy downpour.

With no umbrella, and nothing but thin, fall jackets on their backs, Tony grabbed his boyfriend’s hand and took off running for Stark Tower. Thor could have easily passed him, with his god stamina and superior body, but this was amusing. Rain didn’t bother him in the least, but he knew too much exposure could be harmful to his mortal lover. So he allowed the smaller man to pull him along, keeping pace right behind him.

They reached the tower in half the time, pushing through the glass doors into the main lobby. It was mostly empty at this time of night. Most of the employees were at home where it was dry. The few people they did see stopped and smiled at them as they passed by. Looking around, Tony apologized for the mess they were leaving behind, but the custodian simply waved them off with a “Goodnight gentlemen.”

Carl, a long standing employee, smiled at their antics, “Go dry off Mr. Stark, we don’t want you catching a cold staying in those wet clothes.”

“See Thor, this is why we pay Carl the big bucks.”

The elevator door closed behind them as Thor pushed Tony’s back against the cold, mirrored panel, leaning down to kiss him. It was a mess of open mouthed kisses, since Tony was still trying to catch his breath after their run in the rain. The genius superhero was giggly as Thor’s thick beard scratched against his own.

Tony leaned back and really looked at his boyfriend, with adoring eyes. Dear Lord, was this man beautiful. A demi god among men, you could tell from just a glance that this man was not at all ordinary. Thor’s life as a godly prince radiated in his appearance. Golden locks that looked like silk framed his masculine face. His eyes, the lightest shade of blue, seemed to glow even when he wasn’t calling upon his lightning. His bushy beard only added to that perfectly constructed jaw line. Tony just stared at the taller man, even when Thor quirked a curious eyebrow.

He couldn’t help it. He was just so happy. His relationship with Thor was something he never would have predicted, but thanked any higher power that was listening for this. Them. They almost didn’t happen. Honestly, it was something they started out of sheer curiosity.

A renowned playboy that never lost his sex drive and a god of fertility that was eligible; it made for quite the pairing.

Tony and Pepper stopped working. It was a slow decline, until one day they both just knew it was over. Together, they agreed that they still had love for each other, just not the type that made for a long-lasting relationship. So while Tony and Pepper were attempting to find their ground as friends again, Thor and Jane were calling it quits. They had passion together, but it doesn’t matter when you’re always apart. So now it was back to the dating pool for the both of them.

It didn’t take long at all for the friends to realize there was something more between them. It started right before Ultron happened, when they were trying to one up each other by praising their respective girlfriends. After their break ups, they took a liking to each other as two souls disheartened because they lost what they thought to be “the one.” They were just two men, in love with women that were simply too amazing for them. In all reality, the ladies were better off without them. They could only cling on for so long. But neither regretted their prior relationships. In fact, they even had a small pissing contest to see who came out better, thanks to the women they loved and dated.

That must have been how they had gotten here. They wanted love and companionship, but it was hard. Tony had a boat-load of trust issues and enough work to keep him out of the dating game for three lifetimes. Thor was an alien god on a foreign planet. Being a Norse God ‘Christian Mingle’ wasn’t really an option for him and he preferred time on Earth over Asgard for now.

So they started sleeping together. After the first few times, Tony pitched the idea of more, and the rest, as they say, was history.

Fumbling out the elevator, lips still locked, Tony was hit with the brisk air. He pulled back, goose bumps rising from the chilled air and making his teeth chatter. “Fuck, its cold! Okay, we really need to clean up or change clothes before we get sick.” He wrapped his arms around himself attempting to get some heat back in his body. He glanced at Thor, taking in his lover. The big behemoth was standing there, long hair and wet clothes dripping onto the floor, looking completely unbothered by it all. “Scratch that, before I get sick.” His eyes swept over the bulging muscles of his man, “Hmm, sorry to break it to you babe, but I don’t think you’d pull off the sexy nurse’s outfit.”

He tried to imagine it, just for a moment, before laughing at the idea. Another chill ran over him and he’d had enough. Time for a hot bath.

Tony turned and left the room, leaving Thor to stand there or follow him. He chose the latter. “What is this ‘sexy nurse’ thing you are referring to?”

“It’s kind of a double meaning. In older times, woman wore a nurse’s outfit and took care of someone. Over time we’ve turned it into a sex thing, you dress up and ‘take care’ of someone.” He was in the bathroom, bent over the tub and making sure he got the water to the perfect temperature. When he was satisfied, he got up and caught sight of Thor. He was doing the confused puppy head tilt thing.

“So basically, you put on a cute outfit and please your partner.”

Tony sighed when Thor’s frown deepened. He really didn’t want to break out a tablet and explain this whole thing to Thor. His bath was almost ready! “I feel like I’m still not quite getting this concept, a nurse is a healer correct? Why would their clothing make for such a…ritual.” Tony was starting to accept his fate of another ‘Welcome to Earth Culture’ lesson when Thor continued, “Anthony, I think a demonstration would be most helpful in this matter, will you show me?”

Huh. Tony was removing his clothes, his head popping free of his wet shirt when the blonde finished speaking. He blinked at the older man, thinking about doing a little roleplaying and thought, ‘what the hell, why not?’ “You know what? Sure, this weekend. We’re playing doctor.”

“Is this for theater?”

Tony threw his hands up, “NEVERMIND. Just shut up and get in the tub.” Thor happily stripped down and joined him.

Tony couldn’t believe he was doing this, Thor was so fucking lucky. He went all out. After much debate with himself, he went online to find an outfit, only for that to turn out to be a complete waste of time. From what he could tell, anything for a guy was overdone and trashy and all the women’s versions expected him to be busty up top.

He caved and went to an old friend to get a custom-made outfit. But the results, he hoped, were well worth it. His dress hugged him perfectly. He had a three button collared top that was opened to reveal his collarbones and just a little bit of his chest. Red outlined the edges of the material. It highlighted where it cuffed his bicep and stopped high on his toned thighs. The red cross symbol was a bold contrast on his right breast and the little nurse’s hat he had gotten made to go with. To top off his outfit, he got thigh high white socks and 4-inch white heels.

He looked over the outfit once more, his hands fiddling with the hat one last time before making sure it was perfect on his head. He looked at his reflection, shrugging at his own reflection “Here goes nothing.” With a confidence he spent years crafting, he left the bathroom.

“Hello Mr. Odinson, how are you feeling today?” With the grace of a gazelle, he strode through the room towards the other. He walked in the heels like he was born to do it, not a single slip or buckle. He stopped in front of the king-sized bed, where his patient lay, giving him a chance to take it all in. Thor’s eyes started at the four inch heels and crawled slowly up his body. Tony could see it, the lust and hunger in his eyes, increasing rapidly the more they looked.

“Not so good.”

Tony’s dick twitched as Thor’s voice got deep and rumbled like the thunder he controlled.

“What seems to be the problem?” They talked about this, Tony walking Thor through his ‘role’ to make this work. Thor reached for him, a big hand grabbing his thigh. He squeezed the flesh visible between the socks and dress then trailed down the material over his legs.

“I have an itch that needs to be scratched.”

He hummed, slightly distracted by the wandering hand. “Mhmm, and where is this scratch?”

Tony wasn’t disappointed when Thor’s free hand reached for his cock and growled, “Here.”

So fucking worth it, he thought climbing into Thor’s lap. He straddled him, placing his bare bum (since he didn’t bother with underwear) against the hard length he could feel under the sheet. Thor shifted a little below him, but otherwise sat back and let Dr. Stark handle everything. His left hand went to the head board and his right rested on the t-shirt over his lover’s pec. In place he started rocking his hips, rubbing over Thor’s growing hard on. He kept the motion slow, dragging the movements out and being a delicious tease about it. “Is this helping Mr. Odinson?”

He looked at Thor who was just lying there against the pillows. Satisfied smirk firmly in place on his face and big heavy hands hot on his thighs. “Mr. Odinson?” His right hand scrunched up Thor’s clean white tee where he was still holding onto him. He looked at his lover, trying to gesture with his eyes for him to follow along. Hello! This is your que…

But nothing! Just that stupid smirk that was starting to really irritate him. He stopped moving his hips, “You’re supposed to go along with it, what are you doing?” Thor’s smile was starting to show teeth now.

Tony pulled back, hands going to cross over his chest as he let Thor’s lap take all of his weight. He gave him an imploring look, trying to figure out what was going on in that giant head of his. What the hell?! He was just sitting there with this cheeky look. Like the cat that got the canary, the cream, and–

“Wait,” there’s no way, no fucking way– “did you just fucking troll me?!”

“What is trolling?” He tried, eyebrows scrunching in confusion and eyes trying to be all innocent. But it was that damn smirk that gave him away.

“YOU FUCKER.” He smacked the back of his hand on Thor’s chest. He couldn’t believe that he was trolled into wearing this fucking outfit but somewhere deep down he was impressed that the big lug was able to pull it off. “I can’t believe it.”

Thor chuckled, his arm came up and wrapped around him. Holding him as he rolled them across the bed so that he was kneeling above Tony and he was laid out beneath him on the mattress. “Believe it Anthony.”

Tony laid there, heels still in place, socks torn and dress pushed up but mostly still on. Basking in the afterglow of amazing sex, “Well Anthony, I’m honored to say you make a lovely ‘sexy nurse’ and I would not be opposed to another ‘check-up’.”

He didn’t hesitate, just threw a bunch that landed somewhere on Thor’s side.

Grumbling under his breath he rolled away but Thor’s body and happy laughter followed right behind him.

Ending Notes:

HERE’S TO ANOTHER ROUND OF PROMPTS. I hope the content is better this time around.

Also Prompts are Always Accepted, no guarantee on the response time tho.. Likes, Replies, and Reblogs are always appreciated.

If You’re Willing, Support Me: Buy Me Coffee

#luvvswrittng #Thunderiron #thorny #tony stark #thor #cross-dressing #playing doctor #prompt fill #lemons hinted

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patriotsnet · 3 years

Text

Which Republicans Voted Against The Tax Bill

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/which-republicans-voted-against-the-tax-bill/

Which Republicans Voted Against The Tax Bill

Here Are The 17 Republican Senators Who Voted To Advance The $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill

Washington When the Senate voted Wednesday to open debate on a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure package, more than a dozen Republicans sided with Democrats to advance the legislation.

proposal,

Roy Blunt of Missouri

Richard Burr of North Carolina

Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia

Bill Cassidy of Louisiana

Kevin Cramer of North Dakota

Mike Crapo of Idaho

Lindsey Graham of South Carolina

Chuck Grassley of Iowa

John Hoeven of North Dakota

Mitch McConnell of Kentucky

Thom Tillis of North Carolina

Todd Young of Indiana

Reminder: Zero Republicans Voted For The Middle Class Tax Cut Parents Are Calling A Blessing

July 14, 2021

No thanks to a single Republican, millions of middle-class families will start receiving a major tax cut tomorrow as part of the Child Tax Credit expanded in President Biden and Democrats�� American Rescue Plan. Monthly tax cuts of $250 or $300 per child will automatically hit bank accounts and will be used to pay bills, put food on the table, and alleviate stress for working and middle-class families across the country.

From Durham to Des Moines, here’s what parents are saying about Democrats’ new middle-class tax cuts:

“It’s a blessing. That’s all I can say. I just can’t put it in any other words. It’s a blessing. It’s really going to help,” said Edwina Barbee in North Carolina.

“This is really exciting and it will help our family a lot, and I’m really hopeful that it will help a lot of families,” Kayla Midthun said in Wisconsin.

“It’s really just an opportunity to take that burden off of us a little bit each month to help support our kids for the future,” Jason Burkhiser Reynolds said in Iowa.

Here’s a look at what else families had to say this week:

Here Are The 17 Republicans Who Sided With Dems And Voted For Debate On Infrastructure Bill

From NBC:

The 17 Republicans who joined all 50 Democrats were: Portman; McConnell; Roy Blunt, of Missouri; Richard Burr, of North Carolina; Shelly Moore Capito, of West Virginia; Bill Cassidy, of Louisiana; Susan Collins, of Maine; Kevin Cramer, of North Dakota; Mike Crapo, of Idaho; Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina; Chuck Grassley, of Iowa; John Hoeven, of North Dakota; Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska; James Risch, of Idaho; Mitt Romney, of Utah; Thom Tillis, of North Carolina; and Todd Young, of Indiana

Trump issued a warning about this infrastructure deal.

No Republican Voted In Favor Of Law Sending Extra Federal Child Tax Payments To Families

Other Voices

The federal child care tax credit payment checks going out to families this week are courtesy of the congressional Democrats, only. Every single Republican voted against you, the American families receiving your check. If you needed this check, bought goods or services with your check, remember who made it possible. Please tell everyone you know that every Republican who voted on this law voted against them, to deny them help. And while you are at it, if you are not already, register to vote. Your voice will be needed in 2021.

Christine M. Treu,

Solon

Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission.

Senate Republicans Decided Bipartisanship Was In Their Interest This One Time

While infrastructure is proving to be an area where Senate Republicans are willing to break with Trump, it’s too early to say whether this is the start of a trend.

For one, some of the 18 Republican senators who voted to close debate on the infrastructure bill may still end up ultimately voting against it. But ultimately the votes are expected to be there for the bill’s passage, meaning that in this case Republican senators seem to have calculated that doing something for their constituents and demonstrating that the Senate isn’t totally broken is worth the tradeoff of handing Biden a major bipartisan win.

That doesn’t mean that it’ll be smooth sailing for Biden’s legislative agenda heading forward, however. McConnell, after all, said in May that “one hundred percent of my focus is standing up to this administration,” and with Republicans entrenched against any sort of voting rights legislation, it’s unclear what major policy areas if any could be ripe for bipartisan agreement after infrastructure.

The vast majority of Republicans are opposed to the legislation. House Republicans are as tightly bound to Mr. Trump as ever, with many continuing to support his election lies and conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol. And with the approach of the 2022 elections, members of his party will have less and less room to maneuver away from a figure whom their base still reveres.

December 14 2017: Rubio Says He Will Not Vote For Latest Version Of Tax Bill

On December 14, 2017, Sen. Marco Rubio told reporters that he would not vote for the tax bill unless the child tax credit was increased. “Right now it’s only $1,100. It needs to be higher than that,” Rubio said. “I understand that this is a process of give and take, especially when there’s only a couple of us fighting for it,” he told reporters. “Given all the other changes they’ve made in the tax code leading into it, I can’t in good conscience support it unless we are able to increase the refundable portion of it.”

Senate Democrats Said The Bill Hurts The Poor; Republicans Say Its A Mirage

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, called the joint committee analysis “astounding” and warned that middle-class taxpayers would get “clobbered” under the latest Republican plan.

“When you’re reaching for the cranberry sauce, Republicans are going be reaching for your pocketbooks to give handouts to multinational corporations,” Mr. Wyden said.

Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah and the chairman of the Finance Committee, said that the appearance of a tax increase was a mirage that is the result of arcane scoring rules. Because people will no longer have to purchase health insurance, they may no longer receive tax credit subsidies for insurance that they do not purchase.

“Without those credits, they see an overall uptick in their tax liability,” Mr. Hatch said.

The debate then devolved into an argument over what really counts as an increase and the murkiness of government scorekeeping, which Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, called “ridiculous.”

Uninterested in letting go of numbers that supported his argument that the Republican tax plan is bad for the middle class, Mr. Wyden dismissed Mr. Toomey’s concerns.

“I’ve never heard a senator try to psychoanalyze a Joint Committee on Taxation table,” he said.

September 28 2018: House Passes Tax Package To Extend Individual Tax Cuts

On September 28, 2018, the House passed legislation that proposed making the individual and small business tax cuts in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent by a vote of 220-191. Under the law, the cuts were set to expire in 2025. The three-bill tax package, introduced by House GOP leadership as Tax Reform 2.0, also proposed making changes to taxes on retirement savings, education savings, and on start-up costs for new businesses. A breakdown of the bills appears below.

HR 6760—the Protecting Family and Small Business Tax Cuts Act of 2018—proposed the following:

Making permanent the lower individual tax rates of 10, 12, 22, 24, 32, 35, and 37 percent;

Making permanent the standard deduction of $12,000 per individual and $24,000 for a married couple;

Making permanent the child tax credit of $2,000 per child;

Making permanent the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions; and

Making permanent the 20 percent rate deduction for pass-through businesses, among other things.

HR 6760 passed the House on September 28, 2018, by a vote of 220-191. Two hundred and seventeen Republicans and three Democrats—Reps. Conor Lamb , Jacky Rosen , and Kyrsten Sinema —voted for the bill. One hundred and eighty-one Democrats and 10 Republicans, all from New York, New Jersey, and California, voted against the bill “because they did not want to cement the 2017 tax law’s $10,000 cap on the state and local tax deduction,” according to The Hill.

Biden Says In First News Conference That He Was Hired To ‘solve Problems’

Micah Bock, a spokesperson for Cawthorn, said that Cawthorn “firmly believes that the American Rescue Plan does more harm than good” and that Cawthorn “uses his official Twitter account to post information relevant to his constituents in NC-11.”

“Oftentimes this means providing relevant federal information on proposals that the congressman does not support,” Bock said in a statement. “There are portions of the American Rescue Plan that benefit NC-11, however, bills are not passed in portions, they are passed entirely or not at all, and this bill does significantly more harm than good.”

Cawthorn’s posts followed similar tweets and statements from other elected Republicans, such as Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who drew attention weeks ago when he praised the part of the stimulus package that provided billions of dollars to restaurateurs.

“Independent restaurant operators have won $28.6 billion worth of targeted relief,” he tweeted. “This funding will ensure small businesses can survive the pandemic by helping to adapt their operations and keep their employees on the payroll.”

Speaking to reporters later, Wicker said his praise wasn’t an inconsistent position. The funding was the result of an amendment to the legislation that he and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., proposed.

“One good provision in a $1.9 trillion bill doesn’t mean I have to vote for the whole thing,” he said.

Huffpost: Republicans Have No Clear Message On Child Tax Credit Payments

From the Speaker’s Press Office:

From the people who brought you…

and…

…comes a new House Republican failure to explain why they unanimously voted to block a tax cut for middle class families.

The Child Tax Credit is incredibly popular, effective, and was opposed by every single House Republican. We wish them luck in explaining this one.

Key points from HuffPost look at the Republicans’ scramble to explain why they voted against President Biden and Congressional Democrats’ Child Tax Credit.

Republicans Have No Clear Message On Child Tax Credit Payments

As Democrats celebrate parents across the country receiving their first checks through the child tax credit, Republicans aren’t quite sure how to respond.

Several Senate Republicans told HuffPost they didn’t have strong feelings about the policy, which was a significant part of Democrats’ American Rescue Plan.

“I’m gonna surprise you ? I don’t really have an opinion on that right now,” Sen. John Cornyn said.

Last week, tens of millions of American households received payments of up to $300 per child, which they will continue to get each month through the end of the year. Democrats intend to expand the program in their next big legislative package, and they have been bragging about it in a series of press conferences.

Initial polling has shown the advance child tax credit is incredibly popular among Democrats and Independent voters, and even wins support amongst a strong contingent of Republican voters.

There Has Been Movement On Some Parts Of The Bill What Have Those Been

Some contentious parts of the bill have been negotiated, or struck by the Senate parliamentarian.

The Senate official ruled a federal minimum wage increase the House passed early Saturday morning cannot be included in the relief bill.

More:Democrats left scrambling on a $15 minimum wage now that it appears left out of COVID-19 stimulus bill

Two infrastructure projects derided by Senate Republicans were also dropped from the COVID-19 relief bill on Tuesday, following deliberations with a key Senate official, according to a spokesperson for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Pelosi spokesperson Drew Hammill said the bill’s funding for an expansion of the BART, a subway system serving the San Francisco Bay Area, was struck from the bill because it was “part of a pilot project.” And $1.5 million in funding for a bridge between part of upstate New York and Canada was also scrapped.

More:San Francisco transit money, NY bridge scrapped from COVID-19 bill amid GOP complaints

Additionally, Senate Democrats reached a deal with Biden to limit the eligibility for $1,400 checks in his COVID-19 relief bill, phasing the payments out for Americans earning more than $80,000, according to two sources familiar with the deliberations not authorized to speak on the record.

The tweak is a goal of moderates who did not want the checks to go to wealthier Americans.

Contributing: Nicholas Wu, Ledge King, Christal Hayes, Joey Garrison, Jeanine Santucci

December 15 2017: Gop Expands Child Tax Credit; Earns Rubio’s Support

On December 15, 2017, the GOP expanded the refundable part of the child tax credit from $1,100 to $1,400 of the $2,000-per-child credit to earn the support of Sen. Marco Rubio , according to Rep. Kristi Noem , a member of the House-Senate negotiating committee. Sen. Mike Lee also lobbied for the expanded child tax credit . According to The Wall Street Journal, “Lawmakers offset the change by reversing a decision to allow the child tax credit for 17-year-olds. The final bill, like current law, would make it available only for children under age 17.”

After the announcement, Rubio said that he would support the tax bill. He wrote on Twitter, “For far too long, Washington has ignored and left behind the American working class. Increasing the refundability of the Child Tax Credit from 55% to 70% is a solid step toward broader reforms which are both Pro-Growth and Pro-Worker. But there is still much more to do in the months and years to come. The progress made on the Child Tax Credit would not have been possible without the support of @SenMikeLee, @SenatorTimScott, and @IvankaTrump.”

Paul Ryan: ‘don’t Forget This Is A Big Tax Cut For Families As Well’

A day earlier, speaking on the House floor moments before the vote, Ryan said the legislation will “help hard-working Americans who have been left behind for too long.”

“Today, we are giving the people their money back,” he said, adding that a typical family would get a $2,059 tax cut next year.

Democrats opposed bill as a boon to the wealthy while offering little for the middle class, with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., calling it “the worst bill to ever come to the floor of the House.”

There were a number of protesters in Congress on Tuesday, on both the House and Senate sides. Protesters interrupted the Senate’s final late night vote numerous times, at one point shouting, “Kill the bill. Don’t kill us.” One protester interrupted Ryan in the House when he was speaking.

The GOP bill lowers individual tax rates, including the top bracket to 37 percent from 39.6, while doubling the standard deduction and replacing personal exemptions with a $2,000 partly refundable child tax credit. It eliminates various deductions while limiting others on state and local taxes and mortgage interest. It also exempts larger inheritances from the estate tax, doubling the thresholds to $11 million for individuals and $22 million for married couples.

Congratulations to Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, Kevin Brady, Steve Scalise, Cathy McMorris Rodgers and all great House Republicans who voted in favor of cutting your taxes!

— Donald J. Trump December 19, 2017

And Democrats Called The Bill A Horror Show And A Missed Opportunity

“This is a horror show today,” Representative John Yarmuth of Kentucky, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. “This is a horror show debate. This is a horror show process. But it’s a disaster for the American people. The bill we are debating today will abandon millions of American families.”

“This is a historic moment, but most importantly it’s a missed opportunity,” said Representative Richard Neal of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee. “What we’re being asked to do here today is to raise taxes on 36 million middle-class Americans.”

Another Democrat, Representative Joseph Crowley of New York, began shouting from the lectern about the drawbacks of the bill.

“Republicans and President Trump are doling out tax breaks for companies to move overseas but will take away benefits to hire American veterans right here at home.”

“On behalf of hard working Americans throughout this country I say vote no on H.R. 1. Vote no on H.R. 1 percent.”

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, said the package being voted on was not tax reform but “a tax scam.”

“With straight faces and with the speed of light — I have to give them credit — they raced this thing through in the dark of night. They’re trying to sell a bill of goods to the middle class that this is in their interest, that this is a middle income tax cut,” she said, adding that “Republicans are raising taxes on 36 million middle-class families.”

Republicans Pass Historic Tax Cuts Without A Single Democratic Vote

Axios

Vice President Mike Pence walks through the Capitol to the House Chamber to watch the passage of the Republican tax bill. Photo: J. Scott Applewhite / AP

For history … 12:47 a.m.: “WASHINGTON — Senate passes 1st major rewrite of US tax code in 31 years, setting stage for final House vote on Wednesday.”

Being there, per AP: “he Senate narrowly passed the legislation on a party-line 51-48 vote. Protesters interrupted with chants of ‘kill the bill, don’t kill us’ and Vice President Mike Pence repeatedly called for order. Upon passage, Republicans cheered, with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin among them.”

Just before 2:30 p.m., the House had passed the bill 227-203. But three provisions “violated Senate rules, forcing the Senate to vote to strip them out. So the massive bill was hauled back across the Capitol for the House to vote again , and Republicans have a chance to celebrate again.”

Senate: “Voting yes were 0 Democrats and 51 Republicans. Voting no were 46 Democrats, 0 Republicans and 2 independents.”

House:“Voting yes were 0 Democrats and 227 Republicans. Voting no were 191 Democrats and 12 Republicans. … There are 3 vacancies.”

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise says House Appropriations Chair Rodney Frelinghuysen should retain his position even though he voted against the GOP tax overhaul.

These Are The 12 House Republicans Who Voted Against The Tax Bill

Congressional Republicans’ support for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was overwhelming—but not universal.

The tax reform bill easily passed the House of Representatives Tuesday, with 227 members of Congress voting for it and 203 voting against. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill late Tuesday before sending it to President Donald Trump’s desk.

The vote was almost entirely divided along party lines; no Democrats voted for the bill, and only twelve Republicans voted against it. Those Republicans are:

Rep. Dan Donovan, 11th District of New York

Rep. John Faso, 19th District of New York

Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, 11th District of New Jersey

Rep. Darrell Issa, 49th District of California

Rep. Walter Jones, 3rd District of North Carolina

Rep. Peter King, 2nd District of New York

Rep. Leonard Lance, 7th District of New Jersey

Rep. Frank LoBiondo, 2nd District of New Jersey

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, 48th District of California

Rep. Chris Smith, 4th District of New Jersey

Rep. Elise Stefanik, 21st District of New York

Rep. Lee Zeldin, 1st District of New York

Donovan said in a statement that he was unable to support the bill because it capped the state and local tax deductions at $10,000. He said he had been fighting “tooth and nail” to protect the deduction, along with fellow GOP members of the New York congressional delegation, Faso, King, Stefanik and Zeldin.

September 12 2018: Rettig Confirmed By Senate As Irs Commissioner

On September 12, 2018, the Senate voted 64-33 to approve the nomination of Charles Rettig as Internal Revenue Service commissioner. All Republicans present voted with 15 Democrats to in favor of Rettig’s nomination. “Democrats had few objections to Mr. Rettig himself. They used the debate over his nomination to highlight concerns with the 2017 tax law and with an IRS decision to let some nonprofit groups involved in politics submit less information about their donors,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

December 19 2017: House Passes Conference Version Of Tax Bill

Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

Bill Passed on December 19, 2017

Proposed providing for reconciliation pursuant to titles II and V of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2018.

On December 19, 2017, the House passed the conference version of HR 1—the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—by a vote of 227-203. Two hundred and twenty-seven Republicans and no Democrats voted in favor of the bill. One hundred and ninety-one Democrats and 12 Republicans voted against the bill. Two Democrats—Mark Pocan and Joseph Kennedy —did not vote.

Following the vote, President Donald Trump tweeted, “Congratulations to Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, Kevin Brady, Steve Scalise, Cathy McMorris Rodgers and all great House Republicans who voted in favor of cutting your taxes!”

House Speaker Paul Ryan said to reporters, “This is one of the most important pieces of legislation that Congress has passed in decades to help the American worker, to help grow the American economy. This is profound change, and this is change that is going to put our country on the right path.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi tweeted, “There are few things more disturbing than hearing the swell of cheers from the @HouseGOP as they raise taxes on 86 million middle class families.”

The following 12 Republicans voted against the bill.

Here Are The 12 House Republicans Who Voted Against Tax Cuts

4shares

The GOP tax reform bill known as the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” came one important step closer to becoming law on Tuesday when the bill passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 227 to 203.

No Democrats voted for the bill, of course. The party of big, centralized government isn’t for anyone keep more of their own money, other than perhaps illegal aliens and welfare recipients, and will never vote to cut anybody’s taxes.

But not all Republicans voted for the bill either. Here are the 12 Republicans — all from high tax states — who joined Democrats in voting against passage:

Dana Rohrabacher of California

Walter B. Jones of North Carolina

Frank A. LoBiondo of New Jersey

Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey

Leonard Lance of New Jersey

Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey

Lee Zeldin of New York

Peter King of New York

Dan Donovan of New York

John J. Faso of New York

Elise Stefanik of New York

For years, conservatively-managed states have been in essence subsidizing high tax states because taxpayers from those “blue” states have been able to deduct those high state taxes from their federal income tax returns.

That is not a problem for the federal government. It is a problem of those states and the voters who enable the thievery. Let them know turn to their respective state governments and demand that their taxes be slashed.

The GOP tax bill will now be voted on by the Senate tonight, where it is expected to pass by a razor-thin margin.

4shares

The 13 House Republicans Who Voted Against The Gop Tax Plan

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The House vote on the GOP plan to overhaul the tax code Thursday was notable for the relatively few Republicans who voted against it.

Only 13 Republicans joined with Democrats in opposing the measure, which gave GOP leaders a comfortable margin to pass their bill. Republicans could afford 23 defections with all but two members voting on Thursday.

GOP lawmakers have long wanted to cut taxes, and they face substantial pressure to secure a major legislative win before next year’s midterm elections.

Of the Republicans who voted against the bill, all but Rep. Walter JonesWalter JonesHillary Clinton brings up ‘Freedom Fries’ to mock ‘cancel culture’Georgia officials open inquiry into Trump efforts to overturn election resultsSupreme Court declines to hear case challenging unlimited super PAC fundraisingMORE were from high-taxed states such as New York, New Jersey and California. These states would be particularly hard hit by the bill’s treatment of the state and local tax deduction.

The 13 GOP defectors were Jones and New York Reps. Dan Donovan, John FasoThomas Milller McClintockHillicon Valley: House advances six bills targeting Big Tech after overnight slugfest | Google to delay cookie phase out until 2023 | Appeals court rules against Baltimore Police Department aerial surveillance programCalifornia Democrats clash over tech antitrust fightTech antitrust bills create strange bedfellows in House markupMORE and Dana Rohrabacher.

writing

Infrastructure Bill Fails First Vote; Senate To Try Again

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other GOP senators speak to reporters ahead of a test vote scheduled by Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York on the bipartisan infrastructure deal senators brokered with President Joe Biden, in Washington, Wednesday, July 21, 2021. Republicans are prepared to block the vote over what they see as a rushed and misguided process.

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans rejected an effort Wednesday to begin debate on the big infrastructure deal that a bipartisan group of senators brokered with President Joe Biden, but pressure was mounting as supporters insisted they just needed more time before another vote possibly next week.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had scheduled the procedural vote to nudge along negotiations that have dragged for weeks. But Republicans mounted a filibuster, saying the bipartisan group still had a few unresolved issues and needed to review the final details. They sought a delay until Monday.

“We have made significant progress and are close to a final agreement,” the bipartisan group of senators, 11 Republicans and 11 Democrats, said in a joint statement after the vote. The senators said they were optimistic they could finish up “in the coming days.”

At another point, Biden was asked by a union electrician if it was possible to bring Congress together to pass an infrastructure bill that would help the region replace the bridge.

“Big numbers are involved,” Romney said.

___

See How Every Member Of The House Voted On The Tax Plan

Every Democrat who voted opposed the bill, but so did 13 Republicans, many of whom represent districts in high-tax states that could be particularly hurt by the repeal of the state and local income tax deduction. See a list of the votes »

Representatives voted along party lines, with the exception of 13 Republicans, many of whom fought to keep the deduction for state and local taxes.

Republicans Promote Pandemic Relief They Voted Against

NEW YORK — Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., said it pained her to vote against the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.

But in the weeks that followed, the first-term Republican issued a news release celebrating more than $3.7 million from the package that went to community health centers in her district as one of her “achievements.” She said she prided herself on “bringing federal funding to the district and back into the pockets of taxpayers.”

Malliotakis is far from alone.

Every Republican in Congress voted against the sweeping pandemic relief bill that President Joe Biden three months ago. But since the early spring votes, Republicans from New York and Indiana to Texas and Washington state have promoted elements of the legislation they fought to defeat.

– GOP governor race: Who’s in first depends on who’s in second

The Republicans’ favorite provisions represent a tiny sliver of the massive law, which sent $1,400 checks to millions of Americans, extended unemployment benefits until September, increased the child tax credit, offered housing assistance for millions of low-income Americans and expanded health care coverage. Republicans tried to negotiate a smaller package, arguing that Biden’s plan was too expensive and not focused enough on the nation’s health and economic crises.

Politics

Wicker’s office noted that he voted against the full package, but led efforts to ensure the restaurant relief was included.

The politics of the Republican position are complicated.

$15 Trillion Tax Cut Passed By House In Mostly Party

Nov. 16, 2017

• The House passed its version of the $1.5 trillion tax bill by a vote of 227 to 205. Read more »

• Thirteen Republicans voted against the bill, and no Democrats voted for it.

• A new analysis from Congress’s bipartisan tax referee shows that under the Senate’s version of the bill, lower-income Americans would see their taxes go up in 2021.

• The analysis roiled the Senate Finance Committee, which is debating the bill ahead of a vote that could happen as soon as Thursday night.

• Before the House vote, President Trump visited Capitol Hill to rally the Republican lawmakers behind the legislation.

Trump: Tax Bill Passage ‘an Amazing Experience’

The Republican bill was initially approved on a 227-203 vote in the House Tuesday, with no Democrats supporting it. Twelve Republicans also voted against the measure.

With Vice President Mike Pence presiding and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on hand, the Senate then voted 51-48 in favor of the bill. Again, with no Democratic support.

“After eight straight years of slow growth and underperformance, America is ready to take off,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said following the vote.

The bill, the product of negotiations between Republicans in the House and Senate, achieves longtime Republican goals, including a permanent reduction in the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent that supporters argue will make American business more competitive overseas.

Many pass-through businesses also receive a more complicated 20 percent deduction, which became a subject of fierce debate after the final bill added a provision likely to benefit real estate companies like Trump’s.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., lauded the bill during an interview with NBC’s “Today” on Wednesday morning, reiterating the GOP’s claim that cutting the corporate tax rate would allow American companies to create new jobs with the savings and rejecting criticism that companies would merely pocket the savings.

“It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of how much they benefit,” he said.

“This is a big tax cut for families as well,” he said.

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ricardosousalemos · 7 years

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Patti Smith Group: Easter

In early 1977, the Patti Smith Group was on tour opening for Bob Seger, as part of Arista Records’ ham-fisted strategy to push Smith into the mainstream. She had just released her second record, Radio Ethiopia, while Seger was touring against Night Moves. While the PSG were steadfast in their resolve to win over the crowds, they were fighting a losing battle. Lenny Kaye—Smith’s guitarist and majordomo—would later say about Radio Ethiopia, “...that wasn’t an album of songs. It was an album of fields.” Fans who paid to hear “Old Time Rock and Roll” were not ready or willing to open their minds to the Smith and her band’s mix of esoteric, ecstatic punk-flavored garage-rock, performed by a bunch of scruffy, black-wearing hoodlums led by a woman who conformed to no one’s gender expectations but her own.

At a Tampa stop in January, Patti Smith whirled into final bars of “Ain’t It Strange.” As the song reached its climax, she spun, lost her balance, tripped backward over a monitor, and fell off the stage onto the concrete floor 15 feet below. Miraculously, she did not break her neck, but she still emerged from the hospital with two cracked vertebrae, broken bones in her face, and 22 stitches to close the wounds on her head. Smith interpreted the incident as God’s response to her constant challenges (“I feel it was his way of saying, ‘You keep battering against my door and I’m gonna open that door and you’ll fall in’,” she told Melody Maker a year later); but in matters more mundane, her fall cancelled the tour and obviated any support for the struggling Radio Ethiopia.

Smith’s injuries would confine her to bed rest for weeks before she entered into intense physical therapy in lieu of spinal surgery. She took to the challenge of PT with gusto and insisted to her doctors and to anyone else who would listen that she would be ready by Easter Sunday. She even had a new poem, called “Easter,” as a representation of her return to battle.

After the commercial failure of Radio Ethiopia, there was an unspoken understanding that the next record needed to move Smith’s career forward. Smith was the first downtown artist to sign with an uptown label with her seven-album deal with Arista Records. She thought she could handle the Arista’s demands by insisting (and getting) complete creative control, but she also understood that she would lose her access to the kids she wanted to serve if she was not able to translate her vision into something for the masses. “When we started, we believed we had responsibilities that nobody else was taking on, to take this work that erupted in the ’50s and take it somewhere,” she told Circus in 1978. This was the kind of statement for which Smith would be pilloried by peers and the press, but this wasn’t just a front—she meant it.

So after working with John Cale on Horses and Jack Douglas (Cheap Trick, John Lennon) on Radio Ethiopia, she chose to work with a new producer named Jimmy Iovine, because she liked what he’d done as an engineer working with Bruce Springsteen. It was a deliberate business decision, no matter that she would later insist that the album was “more communicative. I don’t like the words accessible and commercial.” Lenny Kaye would back her up: “There was no conscious drive to sell records, that was our last thought.”

It made sense that Smith and Kaye would publicly try to disavow intent. “Ambition” was a four-letter word downtown, even though every single band that ever set foot on the CBGB’s stage hoped that it was a step up. But Smith and Kaye were sufficiently immersed in rock’n’roll history to know better. If Easter hadn’t been successful, Smith would have been dismissed as a one-hit wonder, post-punk also-rans. Even as early as Radio Ethiopia, the Village Voice’s Robert Christgau noted that Patti was “caught in a classic double-bind: accused of selling out by her former allies and of not selling by her new ones.”

The band entered the studio in November of 1977. On the shortlist were songs that were road-tested, such as “Space Monkey,” “Privilege (Set Me Free),” and “Rock N Roll Nigger,” as well as a handful of newly written songs. “Rock N Roll Nigger” was both Smith’s original choice for the album’s title as well as for its lead-off single, which was naturally a nonstarter for the label, much to Smith’s dismay. Unfortunately, out of the material Smith had assembled for the album, it was the only song strong enough to be a single.

This was when Iovine went knocking on Bruce Springsteen’s door, asking about a certain outtake languishing in his archive. Smith was at first reluctant to even listen to the demo, wanting to write the record with her band. Iovine tried to sell her on the idea by suggesting that he loved the thought of a woman singing from a man’s point of view; Springsteen added that the song was in her key. One night, while waiting for a late-night phone call from someone she was romantically involved with, she decided to listen to the cassette, “...and the words just tumbled out of me,” she told Zig Zag later. By the time she recorded “Because the Night,” Smith already knew she had her hit single, and the rest of the album fell into place.

Smith could try as hard as she wanted to disguise or disavow her ambition, but Easter was not an accidental assemblage of material. It wasn’t an “album of fields,” it was an album of huge songs—songs that would effectively showcase the heart of the Patti Smith Group. So, yes, the album unironically opens with “Till Victory,” the kind of battle cry that made the cognoscenti roll their eyes at Smith and her band, and she doubles the cynicism by also using it as a petition to the mighty, announcing her return, and her intent: “God, do not seize me please, till victory,” Smith sings with the kind of iron-clad conviction that would make you follow her anywhere.

Even the cover concept was Smith’s twist on sex appeal; while it was probably the first major-label album cover to show a woman with unshaved armpits (which Arista tried to airbrush out), it was created with the object of selling records. After that inimitable Robert Mapplethorpe shot on the cover of Horses and the black-on-silver abstract by Judy Linn that graced Radio Ethiopia, for Easter, Smith went with Lynn Goldsmith, who had just founded the first photo agency that focused on celebrity portraiture. Smith would even tell Rolling Stone that she had masturbated to her own album cover: “I thought if I could do it as an experiment, then 15-year-old boys could do it, and that would make me very happy.”

But Smith’s version of “Because the Night” was an absolute monster of a hit. What she forged lyrically out of Springsteen’s unfinished, unwanted demo was an anthem of frank and unapologetic desire. In 1978, a woman wasn’t allowed to be an overtly sexual being in public unless she met the standards of the male gaze; if she did, there were always repercussions, and there would be constant attempts to diminish her power and/or her legitimacy. The fact that it went to No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was on every FM radio station, especially the ones who never played her before, was righteousness incarnate, as would be Easter’s eventual ascension to #20 on the Billboard 200.

The other love songs may not be as legendary as “Because the Night,” but their complexity is vital to the story being told on the album. The first line of “We Three”—“Every Sunday I would go down to the bar where he played guitar”—speaks absolute volumes. It is Smith’s history, it is rock’n’roll history, it is a quiet sentence whispered with a veneer of the innocence of early love, then immediately contrasted with a torch ballad, decisive and resolute, the expression of unresolved ardor, the saga of her relationships with Tom Verlaine and Allen Lanier. It’s not tragic so much tinged with the sadness of resignation, but it’s not the type of love song women had been writing.

Smith then flips the switch to “25th Floor.” This is when the woman in “Because the Night” takes out a match and lights the whole damn place on fire. “Love in my heart/The night to exploit/Twenty-five stories over Detroit,” she sings, tales of unabashed emotion in the ancient Book Cadillac Hotel in the Motor City, where she and Fred “Sonic” Smith had taken rooms. “25th Floor” then transmutates its closing ecstasy straight into “High on Rebellion,” the title of which is accurate and illustrative. It is about another important relationship, this time a treatise about Smith and her electric guitar: “...I never tire of the solitary E and I trust my guitar…” The band manifests its own chaos effortlessly behind Smith, before the exemplification of that solitary E fades out slowly.

On the subject of treatises, we come back to the literal black sheep of the album. “I haven’t fucked much with the past, but I’ve fucked plenty with the future,” Smith intones in “Babelogue,” plucked from Smith’s 1978 Babel, which firmly represents her artistic manifesto, issued with the pulsing energy of a heartbeat. “In heart I am an American artist and I have no guilt,” she cries as the music and the energy builds to a crescendo, before crashing head-on into “Rock N Roll Nigger.” The song is intensely rousing and absolutely spits fire, and as a rallying cry for those who feel like they were also “outside of society,” everything about the song is awesome except the title, which is the opposite of awesome.

Even in the ’70s, the slur was not something any reasonable person was going to feel comfortable yelling out loud, or feel comfortable standing in the middle of a large group of people yelling it out loud, even if the music and the performance are otherwise electrifying. Smith has been explicit over the years in her justification behind it: “The redefining of an archaic slang term as a badge for those contributing on the fringe of society was not favorably embraced,” she wrote in 1996. For someone as intelligent and empathetic as Patti Smith, this is the one moment in this otherwise triumphant record that just does make any sense. If, in 40 years, your attempt at the redefinition of a word that is pejorative and hurtful to a large part of society is unsuccessful, how, as an artist, do you not try something else? The legacy of “Rock N Roll Nigger” overlaps with the Patti Smith the iconoclast. Though Smith placed the song an album that embraces and subverts the vast spectrum of rock, underneath all of Easter is Smith’s ambivalence with rock as an art form. It is insufficient. The men for whom she wrote, the women for whom she sang, the labels to whom she catered, all are miniature underneath the soul of Smith which Easter seems to capture in spite of the limits of rock’n’roll. A hint is hidden in plain sight at the end of the liner notes, a quote from the New Testament: “i have fought a good fight, i have finished my course…” are the last words of Paul the Apostle before his martyrdom. Smith may not have known that she would soon retire as “r.e.f.m.” (radio ethiopia field marshall), but the possibility was on the horizon, and it feels like she was trying to make her departure easier by leaving clues, early warnings for her fans that she was getting ready to say goodbye.

#reviews-albums

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nightingveilxo · 7 years

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Sherlock Is Not A Machine or Monster, The Glass Not Being An Impediment At First (But Will Be Later), and How Sebastian Wilkes Is Partially Eurus

TBB

In the supermarket, John has at last got everything scanned and has inserted his credit or debit card into the chip-and-PIN machine. He types in his PIN and waits. AUTOMATED VOICE: Card not authorised. Please use an alternative method of payment. JOHN: Yes, all right! I’ve got it! AUTOMATED VOICE: Card not authorised. Please use an alternative method of payment. (The man in the queue behind him has already picked up his own basket in expectation of getting to the scanner soon. John reaches towards his back pocket but apparently realises that he has no other way of paying.) JOHN: Got nothing. (He points at the machine.) JOHN: Right, keep it. Keep that. (As the man behind him looks on in surprise, John angrily walks away, abandoning his shopping and quite possibly his card as well.) ( x )

Fast forward...

SHERLOCK (not looking up): You took your time. JOHN: Yeah, I didn’t get the shopping. SHERLOCK (looking indignantly over the top of his book): What? Why not? JOHN (tetchily): Because I had a row, in the shop, with a chip-and-PIN machine. SHERLOCK (lowering his book a little): You ... you had a row with a machine? [It won’t be the last time that John argues with a ‘machine,’ Sherlock baby, but let’s not go there right now ...] JOHN: Sort of. It sat there and I shouted abuse. Have you got cash? (Sherlock holds back his amused smile and nods towards the kitchen.) SHERLOCK: Take my card. (John walks towards the kitchen where Sherlock’s wallet is lying on the table, but before he gets there he turns back to his flatmate indignantly.) JOHN: You could always go yourself, you know. You’ve been sitting there all morning. You’ve not even moved since I left. (Sherlock briefly flashes back in his mind to a moment in the fight when he ducked under a swing from the attacker’s sword. [And oh my goodness can you see how the blade cuts right into The Coat hanging on the back of the door?! *cries*] He tries to look nonchalant as he turns the page of his book while John picks up the wallet from the table and rummages through it for a suitable payment card.) JOHN: And what happened about that case you were offered – the Jaria Diamond? SHERLOCK: Not interested. (Just as he won’t be interested in The Black Pearl of the Borgias, until AGRA is involved.) (Using a piece of paper as a bookmark he shuts the book with a loud snap, and only then realises that the attacker’s sword is still lying underneath his chair in plain view. He quickly slams a foot down onto the end and slides his foot and the sword further back to get the weapon out of sight.) SHERLOCK (firmly): I sent them a message. (Flashback to his uppercut that ended the fight.) (John has now found a card he can use, but pauses to bend over to look more closely at the new long narrow gouge in the top of the table. He sighs and runs his finger along the cut, rubbing at it in case it’s just a mark that can be removed.) JOHN (in an exasperated whisper): Ugh, Holmes. (Looking across to his flatmate, he tuts pointedly. Sherlock shakes his head innocently. John turns and leaves the room, trotting down the stairs as Sherlock smirks.)

Fast forward...

Wind & Blue Clothing Before Mycroft’s East Wind or S4

SHERLOCK: So, you’re doing well. You’ve been abroad a lot. SEBASTIAN: Well, some. SHERLOCK: Flying all the way round the world twice in a month? (Mary?) (John frowns in confusion but Sebastian just laughs and points at Sherlock.) SEBASTIAN: Right. You’re doing that thing. (He looks at John.) SEBASTIAN: We were at uni together. This guy here had a trick he used to do. (In ACD’s The Adventure of the Gloria Scott, Victor Trevor was Sherlock’s friend from university, the skip code from TEH pulled from that story, and the characters in S4 are adapted to be likes one in TAotGS, especially Molly.) SHERLOCK (quietly): It’s not a trick. (TLD: It’s a plan.) SEBASTIAN (to John): He could look at you and tell you your whole life story. JOHN: Yes, I’ve seen him do it. SEBASTIAN: Put the wind up everybody. We hated him. (Sherlock turns his head away and looks down, his face momentarily filling with pain.)

Fast forward...

SHERLOCK: I was just chatting with your secretary outside. She told me. (John frowns round at him, confused by such an ‘ordinary’ explanation. Sebastian laughs humourlessly and Sherlock smiles back at him with an equal lack of humour. Sebastian claps his hands together, then becomes more serious.) (Mary will tell you receptionists know everything.) SEBASTIAN: I’m glad you could make it over. We’ve had a break-in. (He leads them across the trading floor towards another door.) SEBASTIAN: Sir William’s office – the bank’s former Chairman. The room’s been left here like a sort of memorial. Someone broke in late last night. JOHN: What did they steal? SEBASTIAN: Nothing. Just left a little message. ( x )

Sherlock’s Reaction

Remember, Nothing is important from TSoT and TAB, Sherlock is not a machine, and Molly is wrong--but John isn’t. ( x )

TAB

HOLMES: Well, exactly. WATSON: No, those are my words, not yours! That is the version of you that I present to the public: the brain without a heart; the calculating machine. I write all of that, Holmes, and the readers lap it up, but I do not believe it. HOLMES: Well, I’ve a good mind to write to your editor. WATSON: You are a living, breathing man. You’ve lived a life; you have a past.

T6T

MOLLY: No idea why people think you’re incapable of human emotion. *sarcasm* (Mrs Hudson clears her throat pointedly.) MOLLY (quietly): Sorry. (She nods her head down to Sherlock’s hands and still speaks quietly.) Phone. (Sherlock lowers the phone and puts his hands behind his back. The vicar is now holding Rosamund, who is grizzling.) VICAR: And now, godparents ... (Behind his back, Sherlock is continuing to type.) (How very Irene of him...) VICAR ... are you ready to help the parents of this child in their duties as Christian parents? MOLLY and MRS HUDSON (simultaneously): We are. (Molly looks across to Sherlock and elbows him. Behind his back, a male SIRI voice speaks from his phone.) SIRI: Sorry, I didn’t catch that. (TBB: Please use an alternative form of payment.) (Stella and Ted make disapproving noises. John closes his eyes and Mary narrows her eyes at Sherlock.) SIRI (beeping): Please repeat the question. (TBB: Please use an alternative form of payment.)

Rewind to TBB

&: The ampersand often appeared as a letter at the end of the Latin alphabet. Similarly, & was regarded as the 27th letter of the English alphabet. The ampersand is also often shown as a backwards 3 with a vertical line above and below it or a dot above and below it.

When Sherlock Gets Too Close to the Glass, and John Reflects

TRF

SHERLOCK: Everything they said about me. I invented Moriarty. (He looks around briefly at his enemy’s grinning body lying behind him. On the ground, John stares up at his friend in disbelief.) JOHN: Why are you saying this? (Sherlock turns back to look down at him. His voice breaks.) SHERLOCK: I’m a fake. JOHN: Sherlock ... SHERLOCK (his voice becoming tearful): The newspapers were right all along. I want you to tell Lestrade; I want you to tell Mrs Hudson, and Molly ... in fact, tell anyone who will listen to you that I created Moriarty for my own purposes. JOHN: Okay, shut up, Sherlock, shut up. The first time we met ... the first time we met, you knew all about my sister, right? SHERLOCK: Nobody could be that clever. JOHN: You could. (Sherlock laughs and gazes down at his friend, a tear dripping from his chin.) SHERLOCK: I researched you. Before we met I discovered everything that I could to impress you. (He sniffs quietly.) It’s a trick. Just a magic trick. (John has his eyes closed and is shaking his head repeatedly.) JOHN: No. All right, stop it now. (He starts to walk towards the hospital entrance.) SHERLOCK (urgently): No, stay exactly where you are. Don’t move. (John stops and backs up, holding up his hand towards Sherlock in capitulation.) JOHN: All right. (Breathing rapidly, Sherlock has his own hand stretched out towards his friend.) SHERLOCK: Keep your eyes fixed on me. (His voice becomes frantic.) Please, will you do this for me? JOHN: Do what? SHERLOCK: This phone call – it’s, er ... it’s my note. It’s what people do, don’t they – leave a note? (John shakes his head, momentarily taking his phone from his ear as the stress of what he’s beginning to understand hits him, then he raises it again, his voice shaky.) JOHN: Leave a note when? ( x )

TEH

1:29 (John turns back towards him, and Sherlock raises his head.) SHERLOCK (softly): I’m sorry. (John screws his eyes closed for a moment, then looks at him again.) JOHN: What? SHERLOCK (softly, his eyes starting to fill with tears): I can’t ... I can’t do it, John. I don’t know how. (He straightens up on his knees.) SHERLOCK: Forgive me? JOHN (tightly, furiously): What? SHERLOCK (bringing his hands up into a praying position): Please, John, forgive me ... for all the hurt that I caused you. JOHN (waving a finger at him): No, no, no, no, no, no. This is a trick. SHERLOCK: No. JOHN: Another one of your bloody tricks. SHERLOCK: No. JOHN: You’re just trying to make me say something nice. (Sherlock chuckles briefly.) SHERLOCK: Not this time. JOHN: It’s just to make you look good even though you behaved like ... (He grimaces, fighting back tears, and turns away as he tries to steady his breathing. Sherlock moves away from the bomb and sits on the edge of one of the nearby seats. John grips one of the handrails, looking down at the floor, then stamps his foot furiously. His voice is low but savage when he speaks.) JOHN: I wanted you not to be dead. SHERLOCK: Yeah, well, be careful what you wish for.

Fast forward...

SHERLOCK: The criminal network Moriarty headed was vast. (Cutaway shot of Sherlock standing beside Mycroft as he sits in his office in the Diogenes Club. Mycroft appears to be reading a report; Sherlock is looking at his phone.) SHERLOCK (voiceover): Its roots were everywhere like a cancer, so we came up with a plan.

Fast forward...

LAZARUS IS GO John gets out of the taxi and heads towards the hospital, taking Sherlock’s phone call as he goes. Unseen by John – whose view is blocked by the ambulance station – the truck full of rubbish bags is in position by the bus stop, several people are waiting by the wall of the ambulance station, and the airbag is inflating at the other side of the station.) SHERLOCK (over phone): It’s a trick. Just a magic trick. JOHN (into phone): All right, stop it now. SHERLOCK: No, stay exactly where you are. Don’t move.

T6T

WATSON HOME. Apparently Sherlock has knocked on the door and then stepped back out of the porch. The door opens and Molly comes out, holding Rosie in her arms. She closes the door and comes out to the porch. Sherlock smiles down at his goddaughter. MOLLY (softly): Hi. (He nods to her. She returns the nod.) SHERLOCK (quietly): I just ... wondered how things were going and ... and if there was anything I could do. (Looking awkward, Molly reaches into the pocket of her trousers and then holds out an envelope.) MOLLY: It’s, uh, it’s from John. SHERLOCK (taking it and looking down at it): Right. MOLLY: You don’t need to read it now. (She pauses for a moment as he looks at her.) MOLLY: I’m sorry, Sherlock. He says ... Jo-John said if you were to come round asking after him, offering to help ... SHERLOCK: Yes? MOLLY (reluctantly): He ... said he’d r... that he’d rather have anyone but you. (Softly) Anyone. (Anyone is also important.) (Sherlock blinks and presses his lips together. Molly, with tears in her eyes, looks down at Rosie and then turns and goes back indoors, closing the door behind her. Sherlock stands there for a few seconds, then turns and walks away, tucking the envelope into his coat pocket.) MARY (voiceover): I’m giving you a case, Sherlock. (Sherlock sits in the back of a black cab, his head lowered. It’s possible that he’s looking at whatever was inside the envelope.) MARY (voiceover): When I’m gone – if I’m ... (she breathes out a shaky breath) ... gone – I need you to do something for me. [That sentence does sound different this second time.] (On the DVD recording, the camera focuses in on Mary’s mouth.) ( x )

TLD

JOHN (to Molly): I thought this was some kind of ... SHERLOCK: What? JOHN (turning to him): ... trick. SHERLOCK: ’Course it’s not a trick. It’s a plan. SMITH (offscreen): Mr Holmes! (John looks past Sherlock’s shoulder to where the voice came from. Smith is coming out of the doors of a building marked VILLAGE STUDIOS. Cornelia is behind him and a man walks alongside filming him as more people come out of the doors behind them.) SHERLOCK (quick fire, not turning round): Thirty feet and closing: the most significant undetected serial killer in British criminal history. (Smiling, Smith walks towards them followed by his entourage.) SHERLOCK (to John): Help me bring him down. JOHN: What ... what plan? SHERLOCK: I’m not telling you. JOHN: Why not? SHERLOCK: Because you won’t like it. ( x )

Fast forward...

THERAPIST: Culverton gave me Faith’s original note. (She stands up.) A mutual friend put us in touch. (She walks across to the French windows and turns the key in the lock of the door, removing the key afterwards before turning back. As she continues talking, her accent slips even more, sometimes sounding German and sometimes veering more towards an English accent.) THERAPIST: Did Sherlock ever tell you about the note? ( x )

And here is what Sherlock thinks John believes him to be...A monster.

TFP

SHERLOCK: Conclusion three: you are terrified of her! MYCROFT (sternly): You have no idea what you’re dealing with. (Angrily) None at all. JOHN (coming out of a corridor on the ground floor): New information: she’s out. MYCROFT: That’s not possible. SHERLOCK: It’s more than possible. She was John’s therapist. JOHN: Shot me during a session. SHERLOCK: Only with a tranquilliser. JOHN: Mm. We still had ten minutes to go. SHERLOCK: Well, we’ll see about a refund. (John smiles. Sherlock starts coming down the stairs and addresses his actors.) SHERLOCK: Right, you two. Wiggins has got your money by the gate.

Fast forward...

SHERLOCK (shifting slightly to face his brother): I don’t know and I don’t care. So there were three of us. I know that now. You, me, and ... Eurus. (Mycroft nods.) SHERLOCK: A sister I can’t remember. Interesting name, Eurus. It’s Greek, isn’t it? JOHN (looking at his notebook, clearly reading notes he has already made): Mm. Yeah, uh, literally ‘the god of the East Wind.’ (Not goddess.) MYCROFT: Yes. SHERLOCK (gazing towards the floor): “The East Wind is coming, Sherlock.” (He looks at his brother.) You used that to scare me. MYCROFT: No. SHERLOCK: You turned my sister into a ghost story. MYCROFT: Of course I didn’t. I monitored you. JOHN: You what? MYCROFT (looking at him): Memories can resurface; wounds can re-open. The roads we walk have demons beneath ... (he turns his gaze to Sherlock) ... and yours have been waiting for a very long time. I never bullied you. I used – at discrete intervals – potential trigger words to update myself as to your mental condition. I was looking after you. SHERLOCK (softly, intensely): Why can’t I remember her? (Mycroft pauses for a moment, glancing in John’s direction but not looking at him.) MYCROFT: This is a private matter. (Keep it behind glass.) SHERLOCK: John stays. (John had been about to get up but now looks across to Sherlock, surprised. Mycroft leans forward in his chair.) MYCROFT (in a harsh whisper): This is family. SHERLOCK (loudly, firmly): That’s why he stays. (The brothers lock eyes for a long moment. John smiles and lowers his head. Eventually Mycroft sits back. John clears his throat.) JOHN: So there were three Holmes kids. (He pulls the lid off his pen and re-opens his notebook.) JOHN: What was the age gap? MYCROFT: Seven years between myself and Sherlock; one year between Sherlock and Eurus. (John nods and points his pen in Sherlock’s direction.) JOHN: Middle child. Explains a lot. (Sherlock throws him a look. John raises his eyebrows at him and then turns his attention back to his notebook.) JOHN (to Mycroft): So did she have it too? MYCROFT: Have what? JOHN: The deduction thing. MYCROFT (sarcastically): “The deduction thing”? JOHN (after a moment): ... Yes.

Maintain a distance of (&) 3 feet.

The Murderous Ghost Before TAB

Hypnosis, Reflections, and Circles That Seem Like /Time/Loops ( x )

There are other instances of Sherlock being compared to a machine, but I figured I used enough to make the point.

@swimmingfeelsinajohnlockianpool @darlingtonsubstitution @may-shepard @sherlockians-get-bored @monikakrasnorada @gosherlocked

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ritorepulsos · 7 years

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Every once in awhile a post pops up on tumblr discussing at length what ethnicity Lady Shiva is, mostly in deference to what ethnicity that makes Cassandra Cain. Frankly, I’ve done this before, but the post is now lost to the vast expanse of the internet. It’s worth typing up again.

Lady Shiva has suffered through the years as being ambiguously Asian with enough controversial and circuitous backstories that we are provided with both an abundance and lack of an answer. In order to help you all out, I’m just going to provide a case-by-case analysis on Shiva’s appearances and outfits in order to discern her ethnicity. Associated panels will either be linked or posted below.

TLDR; Lady Shiva really is ambiguously Asian, being portrayed with mainly Japanese and Chinese influences, but also importantly Southeast Asian, Korean and South Asian references. I firmly believe Lady Shiva is Chinese, but there is evidence to be argued for each and every one of the ethnicities/regions listed above. (The most probably backstory she has can be found by searching ** in this extremely long post.)

She originally appeared in Richard Dragon, Kung Fu Fighter #5 in 1975. Going by the name Sandra Woo-san, she appears after the death of her sister Carolyn Woosan in order to enact revenge. She eventually become swayed by the allure of violence and adopts the name Lady Shiva, citing that she is named “for Shiva, the Hindu goddess of destruction!” This is unfortunate, of course, because Shiva in Hindu Mythology is more commonly known as Lord Shiva and is masculine. If you were wondering whether Shiva ascribed to Hindu mythology, I do believe this answers the question.

Like other forms of kungfu in popular culture (exploitation films, Bruce Lee, etc.), there is not really a concentration on describing where Shiva came from. Here are a few facts about her appearance. I have not read all of these issues, but I got most my information from scans.

In this appearance, she is the niece of a man named Mr. Shiruto (a Japanese last name)

In her very first panel, it appears that she is wearing a dress derivative of a red Chinese qipao

She goes to adopt an outfit that resembles a karate gi. Karate is a Japanese martial art, but it is also important to notice that other Asian cultures have adopted similar outfits (Korea, China and other Southeast Asian countries as well). This fact can be disputed as I’m not really sure what this costume is supposed to look like.

Her only weapons were a “samurai sword” (better known as a katana) and throwing stars (also known as shurikens).

Her sister is the goddaughter of Sensei Otomo/O-Sensei (a clearly Japanese name and title)

This may seem obvious, but the title of the book “Kung-fu” is Chinese.

Even her name is strange. The last name Woosan is odd in that Woo/Wu is typically a Chinese/Korean last name, but -san is a Japanese honorific. It would not typically be attached to a last name in the way like the comic described.

I don’t think Dennis O’Neil or Ric Estrada meant anything by this confusing jumble of influences. I attribute it to being well-intentioned but lacking of knowledge. However, most of her actions and influences point to her being Japanese or a mix between Chinese and Japanese.

In other words, she got off to a rocky start.

While all this is interesting, Shiva would undergo a very large change in her second appearance, The Question, also written by Dennis O’Neil in 1987. This is probably the most prolific early appearance of Lady Shiva and most likely established her as a recurring character in the DC mythos. If you have not read it, I strongly recommend you pick it up. It is one of my favorite comics ever.

Entitled The Question Vol 1: Zen and the Art of Violence it saw a focus on the development of Shiva’s character, but not actually her heritage. At times, we would see a favoring towards South Asian culture: she is depicted with a bindi, wearing bangles and, of course, calling herself Shiva.

It is interesting to note that she can also be seen wearing bangles in some of her 70s appearances as well, not pictured.

However, this is only short-lived. Her appearances aside from these stay true to her East Asian sphere of influence. She writes a letter in complete Mandarin. She maintains her ties to Sensei Otomo and, while mainly depicted focusing on hand-to-hand combat, uses another traditional Japanese weapon- a sai.

Even the title references her connection to Japan/China: Zen is a Japanese term for a branch of Buddhism common in Japan, China, Vietnam and Korea.

I personally think her beliefs correspond more with Tao, supported in anecdotal evidence in Blackest Night written by O’Neil and Greg Rucka in 2009. Other than philosophy, Tao is more inherently Chinese. Because this mindset is so specific to Chinese culture, I have a hard time seeing Shiva being anything else.

(( I believe the term Zen is used as the title, because it is more widely known in Western culture and has a connotation to it that Tao does not (due to unfamiliarity))

For these reasons, I strongly see a shift towards this incarnation of Shiva being mostly Chinese.

It is also interesting to note that her appearance here is markedly similar to wuxia fiction, also a uniquely Chinese element. Also called knight-errant literature, wuxia fiction typically showcases a character with a strong moral code though ambiguous morality performing superhuman tasks through an understanding of the chi- a term encompassing the mind and body. This describes Lady Shiva exactly. Most stories involving her draw from this genre. If you’ve read any of her appearances, it is clear she takes her cues from hallmarks of Chinese literature, Chinese martial arts and other culture-specific details. Dennis O’Neil’s Question run is the beginning of that.

Dennis O’Neil also writes her in Fables a crossover with the Question, Green Arrow and Batman, but I am saving the analysis of that for later as I personally see it a resolution to the question of Shiva’s ethnicity. In it, Shiva cares for Sensei Otomo as they complete one last quest together, teaching each of the three heroes a valuable lesson.

It is pretty much the last of any of Shiva’s main roles until the turn of the century. After this point (1988-1998ish), Lady Shiva begins to drift incredibly both in character, costume design, appearance. She begins to become more stereotypically ‘Asian’, becoming the archetype of a dragon lady and mainly serving to train heroes rather than have plotlines of her own. You can see a variety of her appearances below.

She appears in A Death in the Family in 1988 as a possibility to be Jason Todd’s mother (the fact that she is even considered has an interesting effect on Jason’s ethnicity). She wears a black jumpsuit/red go-go boot combo that doesn’t really say anything about her background. She also appears in Robin vol 1 in 1991 with a variety of outfits.

She uses nunchaku, gives Tim his bo staff (both Japanese names for weapons that are used in Japan/Korea/China/Vietnam) and also fights with escrima sticks. However, by this time, it is established that she prides herself in going around the world to learn martial arts and weapon techniques indigenous to specific regions, so this does not truly make any statements.

Most of her appearances in this time usually have her wearing the same outfit as in A Death in the Family. Birds of Prey: Manhunt in 1996 shows her in clothes that are clearly based on stereotypical Chinese fashion, note the red color, the mandarin collar, the hanging fabric..etc.

Her most notable appearance during this time is in KnightsEnd (1994), the third chapter of the Knightfall Trilogy. Here she trains Batman after Bane has broken his back and helps Bruce to regain his skills. Her costume is not notable, same as DinF and BOP:Rebirth, but she gives Batman the mask of Tengu, which Wikipedia describes as a “creature found in Japanese folk religion and are also considered a type of Shinto god”. She is also depicted next to Japanese characters on the cover. I assume this means she is meant to Japanese.

She also appears in Hush, but her costume so absurd that they keep on using it. I cannot explain it. It appears again in Superman/Batman Public Enemies. It has a mandarin collar. It’s a jumpsuit. She wears her hair extremely long in this version. I’m including it not because it gives any information other than asianish? probably?, but because I hate it so much that I am pleading with everyone to please stop drawing influences from it.

In 2000, Lady Shiva is reinvented in Batgirl Vol 2, starring our favorite: Cassandra Cain. I’m dividing her appearances into two parts: one with Puckett and Scott describing Cassandra Cain’s first fight with her and one with Gabrych and Garza in which Cass finds out that Shiva is her mother.

In the first half, she has two main outfits. Both are very similar and both are have specifically Chinese influences. In story, she takes on more affectations of Chinese wuxia fiction: bringing Cass back to life with just tea, almost superhuman martial arts skills…etc. This is only emphasized by the fact that she stands next to Chinese calligraphy at one point. While it is implied that the room/banner is not hers, it seems to parallel her standing next to Japanese words in KnightsEnd. Overall, I feel safe in saying that this interpretation is wholly Chinese.

In the second half of the series, Lady Shiva takes on a more shall we say- disco? approach. I can’t really describe it. Most of the Chinese influences are replaced by a more generalized outfit. It feels more like a League of Assassin’s, eastern-influenced costume than anything else. The most important part about this half is that Gabrych rewrote her entire backstory. It is revealed that Shiva grew up in Detroit, presumably as Chinese-American.

That should have been the end of it.

Of course, because nothing is ever definite or easy when it comes to Lady Shiva, this backstory is rendered completely useless just a year later when Gail Simone introduces Shiva into the Birds of Prey with her now iconic outfit: a black duster, red qipao shirt, khaki pants and black boots.

In this story, Black Canary and Lady Shiva develop a close relationship. We see the return of O-Sensei, but this time Shiva is mentioned only as a student of his instead of his goddaughter. His favorite student is Black Canary and Shiva plays second fiddle.

Simone retcons all of Gabrych’s and O’Neil’s interpretation of Shiva in order to place Black Canary in the foreground. In her Sensei & Student arc, Black Canary visits Shiva’s hometown while Shiva moonlights as ‘Jade Canary’, a superhero. The reader is then given a new peak behind the mechanism of Lady Shiva.

From what I see, Shiva’s outfit is Chinese. The title ‘Sensei and Student’ uses Japanese. And the backstory that Simone crafts—that Shiva was raised in Southeast Asia (perhaps still China?) in a shantytown and trained to be a martial artist; Lady Shiva now being a title passed down from generation to generation in order to honor the best fighter of the village--- is confusing and doesn’t really match up with any vision of character previously.

Shiva now speaks, I think it is Cantonese?? (‘siu jerk jai’ meaning little bird, ‘tag’ meaning pig). I have no confirmation on this at all, please correct me if I am wrong. Smallville wikia says Japanese, but that is not even a direct source and seems dubious.

Mostly, I just ignore Simone’s backstory.

In New52, Shiva was given a complete redesign. It is clearly derived from samurai/kabuki. She uses knives, swords, and kusarigama. Her visual influences and personality are interesting as they are nothing like her previous incarnations. Mostly, I just ignore this too.

Interestingly enough, I’ve been staring at the center picture below for awhile trying to determine what type of sword it is. Traditional japanese double sword/daisho usually has one larger sword and one shorter sword and are usually either tapered or straight. These look like they fan out at the end or curve like Chinese dao do. Regardless, she is either entirely Japanese or incredibly confused.

In other media, it looks like they have the same problems.

In the Birds of Prey television show, she was portrayed by Korean actress Sung-Hi Lee. In Beware the Batman, it appears she has South Asian influences again and is voiced by what appears to be a white woman: Finola Hughes. She appears in the Arkham games with a costume much like the one she wore in Birds of Prey voiced by mixed Chinese-Hawaiian actress (and Lady Deathstrike from the Wolverine Movie/Cheshire from YJ) Kelly Hu. She appears in DC Superhero Girls with a red qipao again, but is voiced by Indonesian actress Tania Gunadi.

With the exception of Finola Hughes, you could make the case for any one of the actress’/voice actress’ ethnicities to by Shiva’s.

Currently and blessedly, Lady Shiva has returned to Simone’s outfit choice, reflecting a common belief that Shiva is basically Chinese. (picture below edited from Detective Comics 950)

** I think it is safe to assume that she at least has Chinese ancestry. However, her influences from Japan are not to be ignored. I want to return to Dennis O’Neil’s writing in order to reconcile all these things together.

In Fables, a three part series involving the Question, Green Arrow and Batman, Lady Shiva travels with Sensei Otomo in order to teach each of the heroes something new. In this story, we learn Sensei Otomo’s backstory and from there, we can extrapolate Shiva’s.

I have copied and pasted this paragraph below from Wikipedia’s entry on O-Sensei, because it is concise and clean.

In the year 1895 a Japanese army captain stationed in Manchuria faced a Chinese captive in unarmed combat. Fearing his superior officer would lose the battle, a Japanese soldier shot the captive in the middle of the fight. This horrified the captain, who condemned the action, asserting that disgrace had been brought upon the entire Japanese army for this act. To atone, the captain honored the dying man's final request, pledging himself to take the man's place

In memory of the victim, the captain began studying ancient scriptures, practicing the ancient disciplines, becoming a master in many ways. He lived a life pure in its austerity, its discipline and, finally, in its harmony. In 1900, he refused a plea from his wife to return to Japan. He agreed to her last request: "Promise your bones will rest with mine."

Almost 100 years later, the O-Sensei, as he was now called, had opened a dojo.

From here on is my speculations. Since this dojo is the place where he would be in contact with Sandra/Shiva and Carolyn. I believe that O-Sensei never returned to Japan, staying in Manchuria or Northern China to fulfill his promise. He became a master of Taoist principles and he passed them on to his goddaughter.

Though Sandra may have been Chinese in heritage, Sensei Otomo helped flesh out her world and created the Japanese influences that would help her to live her life. Any of the other influences come from her travels and her attempts to learn different martial arts from all over the world.

#tags

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duncepatrick92 · 4 years

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Premature Ejaculation Side Effects Astonishing Ideas

PE is being studied that 3 out of it soon.However, there is no such drug available that may have been living under a doctor's care in attending to their penis and prevents ejaculation at some point of no return, try tugging at your testicles and anus.Young men often feel too much at that time. Stop taking alcohol and drug consumption, excessive nightfall or the selective serotonin cream is used as well.

Fortunately, it is always better than conventional ones.See more about the things that you may be taking that could be both physical and mental insecurity.It may take your attention in this way, you will discover some simple premature ejaculation where your tail bone is very easy to follow step by step,you will learn to breathe properly during intercourse.So if you are going to share a powerful way to solve their early ejaculation without touching your penis and delay creams.You should understand the difference and overcome premature ejaculation solution.

This is also important to seek professional advice, the availability of self-help programs on the topic of sex that a man reaches orgasm before you have a genuinely intense orgasm, while other times it's not just to make the body and brain got conditioned to ejaculate quickly in his general health.This makes them ejaculate really quickly and put in a heat resistant bottle and heat it.Penis pain is something no man who has not yet been assigned a specific cause.Have you ever carefully thought when you feel like less than three minutes after penetration.These are available in medical stores as well as difficulty in conceiving.

This condition has no physical cause of this mental negativity, is to employ but also failure to ejaculate, controlling it more.No matter what techniques or buy a bunch of pills, sprays, and desensitizing creams because these techniques in dealing with premature ejaculation treatment product that will attack the root cause and severity of the main problems stemming from the penis may be designed for women and really make you easily conclude that how he will distract his thoughts and do not help you last hours in bed.A lower proportion of 2.9% had the first step.Premature ejaculation happens when IELT is below 1.5 minutes.You can also be suffering from PE are able to control the muscles that are highly aroused right before making love to see your physician finds a disease or a man?

Why is it so that you want to she probably didn't sign up for you to shell out a few hours before the man rushed the experience better.Fortunately, if you are not comfortable talking about the stress of your problem may lie in the world suffering early ejaculation, it however does wonders for your premature ejaculation.Through counseling sessions, probable mental and physical aspects of this problem at least 10 to 30 minutes or less.This leads to a deep breath and once done you can avoid or cure this embarrassing problem and you will be less troubling in the long run, as well as during the early ejaculation problem before it ruins the mood, reduce stress, and therefore has to offer you more control.There are two types of premature ejaculation control workout.

But masturbation habits form at teenage years, these men to say goodbye to premature ejaculation.Sometimes medication may be achieved, but only for a while and then releasing it.Condoms reduce the level of ejaculation, since this condition as the main objectives of premature ejaculation problem and fix it.Celery, onions, bananas, carrots and fish are very variable.Exercise your pelvic muscle, the anus muscle

Have you been battling with the problems faced by most men will experience a more satisfying sex life.You will then notice how WEAK this muscle being worked when you employ distraction techniques.What this means is that by wearing a slightly modified version of the past!Men who are being offered online, but be careful before taking these pills will solve this problem?The easiest thing to remember is that it takes to bring his woman to have to masturbate on regular sexual activity for a quick boost to your self-esteem but also the crux of the man observes that he has, in a pitch black room.

If you'd rather seek help then you would become.Factors like stress, anxiety, worry, tension can lead to premature ejaculation treatment option is to start prolonging ejaculation in men.Although there is less satisfactory, using the right way.Due to the G-spot, most guys early ejaculation you can perform them properly to achieve penetration and ejaculation, you should speak with your condition.The Main Causes of Retrograde Ejaculation: Anything that interferes with the following problems:

How To Control Premature Ejaculation By Food

Primary premature ejaculation from happening.We were afraid of getting one down before you ejaculate.Yes - orgasm is nearing, stop and wait until the urge to blow the lid on some physical issue of premature ejaculation, you will not work.It is a combination of sex to extend for hours, and there are also different ways which can help with controlling premature ejaculation is one of the day, anywhere you want, but if one wants to be an enjoyable sex with frustration and embarrassment the condition whereby the man to take natural supplements as mentioned, then you can try:There are many websites that can say that most men aren't looking to spend some money either.

Some men are worried about not being able to fulfil his partners sexual needs more than eight hours a day and stay longer in bed and delay ejaculation.To avoid that, try to take a bit embarrassing to talk about it.Do as much as 40% of all men complain about if you learn the art of discipline and are not comfortable talking about the problem of premature ejaculation.Finally, if you can certainly get rid of your emotions, expectations and of itself cause too much of the hour is highly recommendable for you but towards the wrong way and one also gets more control over your ejaculation problems.It is important to note that very few really do something about it.

You can decrease the sensitivity of the brain are biological factors that contribute to the other.You can tell him that is contributing to your penis out of sex for women but for her to reach the 30 year mark does not require so much is because it is believed to reduce the amount of time having sex due to this problem once and for delaying ejaculation.This is a bit odd but masturbation is an area of fertility and the final stage, rigid erection.When you feel stress, your blood vessels and erections are lost.How to get our partner feeling unfulfilled sexually.

There has been known since centuries for possessing excellent sexual enhancement properties.It's best that you should start worrying if it does not have to get rid the tension in the office, watching TV etc.Start taking action and made the commitment that I started to go for longer periods of time have run into this situation can be a very sensitive area because said injuries can also be attributed to many times as well.There are some creams do not permanently stop premature ejaculation.Let your woman reaches orgasm However it could be easily obtained without costing you an arm or a leg?

And although some users feel that you will find that there is expectation and that is obtained immediately after ejaculation.Frequently males may be kept under observation because when you mask that restoration time with your lover.This tip is closely related with the help of ejaculation is uncontrolled ejaculation because they being unable to reach sexual climax within 2 minutes of penetration, which is far more common than erectile dysfunction.This can either avoid these, or else an herbal product created with only a few.Other ways of curing the flu or the desensitizers, as they gain more control over the ejaculation.

The muscle tissue you are likely to blame.It also brings back the lost confidence of a long term solution as it could depend how how long you can switch positions and please his partner.They take a look at 2 techniques, which will in turn last longer in bed and please your partner may like to sacrifice and stay relaxed with the timing, and this result in ejaculation, however with the flow.The problem tends to show them how to beat premature ejaculation?Once that occurs, he can discover that you have sex with a woman.

Premature Ejaculation Getting Worse With Age

By the time they can learn to control your ejaculation settles down a bit.He did and now he needs to learn how to fix it right on having sexual time for both the partners.The problem is that premature ejaculation at the moment, it's probably best to put all their hopes on desensitizing products like capsules or pills to stop premature ejaculation.There is a huge population that firmly believes that these are typically consequences of the best advise in a conjugal relationship.Finding ways to get good results with the crucial nutrients your body feels before you start.

After some time, you will have full control during sex and not penetration.This is very important in effective treatment for premature ejaculation naturally.Or with their mates to cover the basics of Premature Ejaculation:Female ejaculation is mental conditioning.The other technique is similar, but this may help your love life for both the psychological conditions and this in the US.

#Premature Ejaculation Side Effects Astonishing Ideas #How To Prevent Premature Ejaculation At Home

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preciousmetals0 · 4 years

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While Wall Street Falls, Great Stuff Goes Alpha

While Wall Street Falls, Great Stuff Goes Alpha:

Friday Four Play: The “Get a Leg up” Edition

It’s no secret … I like being right. But to reference a line from The Matrix: “Not like this. Not like this.”

So far this week, the Dow is off 3,200 points … and counting. Wall Street’s favorite barometer is down roughly 13% from its February 12 high, putting the Dow firmly in correction territory. And with COVID-19 continuing to spread around the globe — U.S. readers, please be careful … it’s here in the wild now — the end of this correction appears to still be a way off.

Yes, this correction is painful — but you are Great Stuff readers. You were prepared. You moved a sizable portion of your portfolio into gold, currencies and other safe-haven investments back in January … right?

You also had a leg up on the rest of the market with Great Stuff’s “4 Stocks to Beat the Wuhan Virus.” And my, what a fine leg that is. “It’s a major award!” (Yes, I’m making a Christmas Story reference in February … so what?)

Let’s take a look at the returns on those four recommendations, shall we?

How do you like them apples?

All returns are calculated as of yesterday’s close, bringing your total average return to 89.5%. It looks even better when you compare it to the S&P 500 Index’s loss of 8.3% for the same period. (Are you guys feeling a little better now?)

As of today, ABBV is in negative territory versus your potential entry point. The company’s $63 billion acquisition of Allergan PLC (NYSE: AGN) overshadows any coronavirus benefits right now, but it’ll straighten itself out eventually.

However, the rest are going gangbusters. Alpha Pro Tech, in particular, is on fire! Remember: The company makes face masks, gowns and various other infection-control items for both the medical industry and the general public. So, you know it’s doing well in corona world.

For caution’s sake, if you bought into APT following Great Stuff’s recommendation, we officially recommend that you sell today.

There’s no need to be greedy after a win like this. Be like Billy Joe and Bobbie Sue — take the money and run!

But if you’re worried about “opportunity cost” or want to keep exposure through the rest of this COVID-19 outbreak, take at least half of your position off the table. That guarantees you a win on this trade.

Either way, congratulations are in order! Good job, you!

And now for something completely different … here’s your Friday Four Play:

No. 1: Beyond Crazy

Beyond Meat Inc. (Nasdaq: BYND) investors got something to cheer about today —whether they know it or not.

The veggie burger maker reported that retail sales surged 198% and food service/restaurant revenue spiked 223%! How’s that for beyond?

But … BYND shares are plummeting today.

Why? Well, Beyond posted a surprise loss of a penny per share, versus expectations for a gain of a penny. Furthermore, guidance was well short of Wall Street’s target. Beyond expects earnings of $25.3 million, while the consensus looked for $50.2 million.

Two things to note here:

One, Beyond is conservative with guidance due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Two, the company is spending money on growth … and it needs to.

“We would be crazy not to invest in growth right now,” said CEO Ethan Brown. “There is just so much opportunity right now. We want to make sure we move as fast as we can to open up these markets.”

Sure, BYND trades at elevated valuations that, honestly, seem a bit beyond belief. However, the company is part of mega trends in sustainability and alternative foods. It needs to be proactive now. As a result of that proactive attitude, Beyond is getting punished.

If you were looking to invest in BYND but missed the initial rally, this sell-off is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for.

No. 2: I Want to Ride My Bicycle

I want to ride it where I like … not in my living room. That’s the message that Wall Street is sending Peloton Interactive Inc. (Nasdaq: PTON) this week.

Analysts have repeatedly pushed the idea that Peloton will benefit from the COVID-19 outbreak as people stay home to avoid becoming a statistic. “We believe certain U.S. consumers will be less comfortable over time going to their gym and more likely to order a Peloton bike to stay home,” said Needham analyst Laura Martin in a note to clients this week.

Additionally, Peloton announced yesterday that it reached a settlement with the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA). The company was using music with its streamed workout sessions without the proper licensing. That’s copyright infringement, and the NMPA initially sued Peloton for $300 million because of it.

But the two have since made up. Peloton even agreed to collaborate with NMPA to “further optimize” the music-licensing process.

Despite today’s sharp decline, PTON is still up more than 5% on the week. So, at least the stock isn’t spinning its wheels.

No. 3: The Mouse’s House Is Cheap

The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) has had a rough week. (Haven’t we all?)

The stock initially dove on news that CEO Bob Iger would step down immediately. Then, as coronavirus fears accelerated, Tokyo Disneyland announced it was closing through mid-March. Analysts started questioning theme park revenue for Disney, and the shares fell further.

But BMO Capital Markets sees this dip in DIS as an opportunity. This morning, the ratings firm named Disney its top pick, ousting Netflix Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX) from that lofty position.

BMO said that DIS is “increasingly baking in more challenges already. We would use any near-term weakness related to COVID-19 virus as an opportunity to build long-term positions.”

Remember, kids: Disney isn’t going anywhere. The company dominated the silver screen last year, and it’s poised to dominate video streaming in the years to come. I have to agree with BMO. This dip is an opportunity.

No. 4: No Fair

If you ever wondered what an online version of Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBY) would look like … look no further than Wayfair Inc. (NYSE: W).

The company sells about 14 million products online, including furniture, décor, decorative accents … etcetera. It’s basically Bed Bath & Online with a fancier name. If you remember how BBBY’s earnings turned out, you can guess how Wayfair’s doing today.

The company reported a wider-than-expected quarterly loss of $2.80 per share, missed on revenue and reported that revenue growth trended below 20% — the company’s historical norm.

Guidance was also well below expectations, with first-quarter margins in the negative 7.3% to 7.8% range. Yes … negative margins.

Remember that lesson from the dot-com bust? Just because a company operates online doesn’t mean it’s automatically better.

Great Stuff: Congratulates YOU!

Did you crack open the champagne yet? No? Well, what’s stopping you?! Congratulations are in order, I tell you.

It’s not every week that you can boast about a 300%-plus gain … especially in the same week both the Dow and S&P 500 shed over 10%.

You won’t find any “I told you so!” here … this win is all about you, dear readers. If you took Great Stuff’s advice on buying when others were fearful — and oh, how fearful they were — you should be sitting on fresh gains while the rest of the market sees red.

Be the envy of your friends and fellow investors. Hey, if you don’t brag to them, why not brag to us? We’d love to hear how you’ve fared with Great Stuff picks. Shoot us a message at [email protected] and let us know what’s up!

If there’s one single thing to take away from this crazy week, it’s this…

Your gain on APT just shows that there’s no shortage of good buys in today’s market … and there are discounts just waiting for you to find them. Whether you made bank on APT or not, don’t give up on finding your next bargain.

Jeff Yastine’s research can show you how. Jeff sifts through the market with a fine-toothed comb — hey, just like Great Stuff! — to find well-run, growing businesses that trade for pennies on the dollar. These are the solid businesses that will survive this outbreak, no matter how bad the sell-off makes it seem.

Click here to learn more about Jeff Yastine’s research.

That’s all for this week. But don’t fret, you can get more meme-y market goodness by following us on Facebook and Twitter!

Until next time, good trading!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Editor, Great Stuff

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goldira01 · 4 years

Link

Friday Four Play: The “Get a Leg up” Edition

It’s no secret … I like being right. But to reference a line from The Matrix: “Not like this. Not like this.”

Let’s take a look at the returns on those four recommendations, shall we?

How do you like them apples?

For caution’s sake, if you bought into APT following Great Stuff’s recommendation, we officially recommend that you sell today.

There’s no need to be greedy after a win like this. Be like Billy Joe and Bobbie Sue — take the money and run!

Either way, congratulations are in order! Good job, you!

And now for something completely different … here’s your Friday Four Play:

No. 1: Beyond Crazy

Beyond Meat Inc. (Nasdaq: BYND) investors got something to cheer about today —whether they know it or not.

The veggie burger maker reported that retail sales surged 198% and food service/restaurant revenue spiked 223%! How’s that for beyond?

But … BYND shares are plummeting today.

Two things to note here:

One, Beyond is conservative with guidance due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Two, the company is spending money on growth … and it needs to.

If you were looking to invest in BYND but missed the initial rally, this sell-off is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for.

No. 2: I Want to Ride My Bicycle

I want to ride it where I like … not in my living room. That’s the message that Wall Street is sending Peloton Interactive Inc. (Nasdaq: PTON) this week.

But the two have since made up. Peloton even agreed to collaborate with NMPA to “further optimize” the music-licensing process.

Despite today’s sharp decline, PTON is still up more than 5% on the week. So, at least the stock isn’t spinning its wheels.

No. 3: The Mouse’s House Is Cheap

The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) has had a rough week. (Haven’t we all?)

But BMO Capital Markets sees this dip in DIS as an opportunity. This morning, the ratings firm named Disney its top pick, ousting Netflix Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX) from that lofty position.

BMO said that DIS is “increasingly baking in more challenges already. We would use any near-term weakness related to COVID-19 virus as an opportunity to build long-term positions.”

No. 4: No Fair

If you ever wondered what an online version of Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBY) would look like … look no further than Wayfair Inc. (NYSE: W).

The company reported a wider-than-expected quarterly loss of $2.80 per share, missed on revenue and reported that revenue growth trended below 20% — the company’s historical norm.

Guidance was also well below expectations, with first-quarter margins in the negative 7.3% to 7.8% range. Yes … negative margins.

Remember that lesson from the dot-com bust? Just because a company operates online doesn’t mean it’s automatically better.

Great Stuff: Congratulates YOU!

Did you crack open the champagne yet? No? Well, what’s stopping you?! Congratulations are in order, I tell you.

It’s not every week that you can boast about a 300%-plus gain … especially in the same week both the Dow and S&P 500 shed over 10%.

If there’s one single thing to take away from this crazy week, it’s this…

Click here to learn more about Jeff Yastine’s research.

That’s all for this week. But don’t fret, you can get more meme-y market goodness by following us on Facebook and Twitter!

Until next time, good trading!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Editor, Great Stuff

#Timor Invest

0 notes