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feyreswaterybowels · 3 months

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Shadows Dance🐦‍⬛ (#2)

Azriel x Reader

Summary: A letter is received with information about Sarah. (Y/N) makes a life changing decision.

Warnings: very lightly implied assault

Word Count: 2.1 K

1 | Part 2 ↓

Azriel and I are up in a flash, heading into the house—Cassian, Mor and Feyre already gathered around him.

“What is it?” I asked as we approached, a look of concern on his face.

His eyes met mine, jumping to Azriel before landing on me again. My High Lord stepped forward a look on his face I couldn’t place…fear? Dread? Angst?

“What is it, Rhys?” Azriel asked, his shadows whirling around me protectively.

“This just appeared. It’s made to you, (Y/N), but addresses to all of us,” He speaks, reaching out to hand me an envelope, my name written in a script I didn’t recognize to be from anyone I knew.

I flipped it over, it was unopened yet Rhys seemed to already know what it said on the inside. His urgency left me feeling nervous and I forced my hands not to shake as I opened the flap and slid the letter out.

I read the short letter quickly, my head snapping up to meet my High Lords pained gaze.

“Who did this come from?” I breathed, letting Azriel take the letter from my hands.

“I don’t know, (Y/N),” He said, voice strained.

“What doesn’t say?” Feyre asked gently, stepping up to her mates side. My eyes met hers, then Cassian, Mor and back to Rhys. But my throat felt like it was close up and I felt the tears welling in my eyes.

I tugged harshly on the bond, silently begging Azriel to speak for me.

“The letter is regarding Sarah,” He said, his voice sounding rough with emotion. There are soft gasps and he continues. “It sates she’s been held prisoner since she went missing—that she’ll be set free but the person that has her wants to meet with us to discuss the requirements of her release.”

“Requirements?” Cassian snarls, arms crossed over his chest, eyebrows drawn into a scowl.

“Az,” I grit out, feeling his attention completely on me. My initial shock of emotion replaced my anger. Anger so strong I felt my body shaking with it.

“Hey, sh,” He speaks through the bond, grabbing my face. “Breath.”

“I can’t.”

“You can. Breath for me, my love,” He says, shadows comforting me by caressing my skin, easing me into taking a breath into my lungs.

“We will get her back,” He speaks allowed this time and I feel something in my chest loosen. “Requirements be damned.”

“When are we supposed to meet?” Mor asks.

“In two days,” Rhys answers. “Go retrieve Amren, fill her in, we’re all to attend this meeting.”

“Rhys, I will kill whoever this is. If she’s been hurt all these years…”

“My dear, (Y/N) the kill will be yours to make. Let’s see what this is all about but make no mistake Sarah will be coming home.”

────────

Two Days Later

I didn’t sleep. I could barely eat. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I sat in silence at the window of mine and Azriel’s room, overlooking the city below—a shadow perched in my shoulder.

All I could think about was Sarah. How she had looked the last time I had seen her, so excited to get changed for a night out with everyone for her birthday. Her 16th birthday. So young. So full of life. It had been when I went to see if she was ready to leave that I found her gone, room empty, her new dress still hung in the bathroom.

My sweet girl, my sister who was basically my daughter. A child my mate and I raised together with our family, suddenly ripped away from us without a trace as if she had never existed.

It hurt.

I hadn’t realized I was crying until that shadow slid against my cheek, wiping my tears away before wrapping itself around my hand. I cried and cried until my throat burned and my eyes felt swollen. At some point strong arms wrapped around me from behind enveloping me and cocooning us in dark wings allowing me a safe space to let out my emotion.

Sobs turned into soft cries then barely there sniffles. Az rocked me in his tight embrace, kissing my head and filling our bond with nothing but love.

I hated that I couldn’t control my emotions long enough to ask him how he felt, after all Sarah was practically his child too.

“Sh, you don’t need to worry about me,” Azriel spoke out loud and I pressed my face into his shoulder, taking a deep breath of his scent. “Rhys and the others are ready? Are you?”

I look up at him, my eyes meeting those hazel orbs and I nod, letting him wipe away my tears. “Let’s go get our girl back.”

────────

“There’s nothing here,” I growled angrily.

It was hours later. Arriving at the spot given in the letter before searching the forest for hours, the boys even took to the skies. Nothing.

“Do we know if the letter is real?” Amren asks, arms folded, silver eyes narrowed into slits.

“What? You think someone would send that letter to…to what? Get our hopes up? To mess with us?” I asked, I hadn’t even considered that possibility but why? Why after all these years would someone just now torment us with this?

“The letter is real,” Rhys assured, sending a look my way.

“How do you know?” I ask, nearly pleading, feeling as if he knew more than he was saying.

“The letter was sent with a vision attached, when I touched the letter I saw her. I saw Sarah, of course she’s older now but it was her,” Rhys explains and my jaw drops open.

“Why wouldn’t you tell me? Can you show me?” I asked, stepping forward.

“I didn’t want to get your hopes up—”

“Show me,” I demanded, staring up at him. “Please, Rhys. Please, I need to see it. I need to see her,” I begged, ready to drop to my knees if I needed to.

“Okay,” he nods, “Okay.”

Then large hands are reaching forward, grasping onto the sides of my face. My eyes fall shut, a flash of white then I see it. I see Sarah and a sob escapes from my mouth. I feel as if my knees will give out but Rhys holds me steady.

She looks exactly how I always imagined her to look in her adult age. Moving gracefully around a field, flowers pinned in her hair, flowing blue dress fitted to the curves of her womanly body. She looks back as if there is someone else there and then she’s smiling. A smile that I had missed dearly.

The vision ends there and when my eyes finally open to meet glowing violet I realize I’ve been crying. His thumbs wipe them away before he hugs me tightly.

“Oh, I do hate to break up at such a sweet moment,” A voice echoes around us—that voice…I know that voice.

Everyone is on alert. Rhys is at Feyre’s side in an instant and Azriel replaces him at mine. His shadows locking us together.

Then there’s a man standing there in front of us. Tall, broad, dirty blond hair slicked back and I recognized him instantly. I know everyone else does too. Azriel jerks at my side, shifting so he’s half in front of me.

“Jarek…” I breathe.

He turns to me with a leering smile.

“(Y/N), it's been ages,” He says with a sneer in his voice that’s less than friendly. But could it be anything else with the reason we’re here.

“Jarek, is it you that sent us a letter to meet?” Rhys asks, taking a step forward, his place as High Lord. “You took Sarah?”

“I’ll fucking kill you,” Cassian sneers. Jarek laughs, a loud obnoxious thing that makes me nauseous.

“Rhysand, keep control of your dogs,” Jarek rolls his eyes, folding his arms behind his back. Rhys holds a hand up and Cassian falls back a step with a growl.

“Yes, it was I who took, Sarah,” the blonde male nods, dull eyes finding each person in front of him, landing lastly on me. His lip curled up angrily. “I worked my ass off for you people for years, decades. Day and night, I spilled blood for you all and I was never accepted into your little group. I loved you all, especially you, (Y/N) and you all played me. Used me. Took me for granted. Didn’t even bother to find me when I left, tired of the mistreatment. Tired of fighting for the girl I loved and chose a…a bastard born.”

“Enough!” I snarled. “Where is my sister? Why did you take her? She wasn’t even born when you lived in the Night Court. She had nothing to do with any of it.”

“I took her, (Y/N), because she was easy to get to. It was easy to find her alone in the night court, to court her in secret, convince to keep it quiet and make her to fall in love with me. I took her because I couldn’t have you. I took her because I knew it would kill you everyday not knowing where she was. You broke my heart so I took yours.” Jarek smiles then, a curl curve of his mouth that made me sick. “You’ll be happy to know after the first three years she stopped fighting, she was in love with me after all. We even have a child together—”

I was lunging toward the male, dagger in hand before I could decide against it, tearing out of Azriel’s gasp hell bent on killing this man for what he had done to my baby sister. She was a child. So sweet and innocent and he had—

Before you could reach his hideous, smug face you were ripped away, grabbed away and winnowed to the other side of the forest opening. Azriel holding you tightly against his chest.

“Calm, my love, we need him alive to tell us where Sarah is.”

That was enough to calm me.

“Jarek, what is it you want from us? These so-called requirements for giving us Sarah back—and why now? After all these years and having a child together?” Rhys asked, his voice strong and powerful.

“I’ve become bored with her.” I snarled again, Azriel tightened his hold on me. I could feel the anger and hatred radiating from my family.

“If you are so bored why not just let her go?” Rhys asked, fists clasped in front of him in an attempt to not tear this horrible male to shreds.

“Because, Rhysand, where’s the fun in that?” Jarek asked, a beat of tense silence before he continued. “I want (Y/N).”

Azriel goes tense behind me and I’m frozen in place. Me for my sister?

“No.” Rhysands answer is quick and firm.

“See, I already knew you’d say that. That’s why my one and only offer is you give me (Y/N) or Sarah and the child die today,” Jarek snarls, shoulders squared back.

“What’s to stop us from killing you here and now?” Mor asked, the first she’s spoken since his arrival. The answer is so simple to Jarek that he rolls his eyes.

“Go ahead. But if you do you’ll never see Sarah again,” he shrugs.

It's silent. Everyone is silent. And it sounds as if every creature in the forest has gone silent.

I winnow out of Azriel’s hold, I can feel him stumble as I disappear.

“No!”

“I’ll go—” A chorus of protests cut me off but I ignore them, I ignore my family and focused on the man in front of me, leering at me.

“I’ll go but I need to see her first. I need to see her with Azriel now before I go anywhere,” I demand.

“Done.” Then with a snap of his fingers another male appears and she’s there—beautiful as ever with a child clinging to her. She looks disheveled, tired and scared.

“Sarah!” I rush, her head snapping in my direction.

“(Y/N)!” She snatches the child up and lurches forward melting into her sister's embrace. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she cries against my shoulder.

“Sarah, my sweet girl,” I cry, pulling back to grab her face, taking in every detail but before anything else can be said between the two of us the other male had grabbed me in a tight hold pulling me away.

I watch as Feyre winnows to Sarah and the child, appearing next to Azriel in an instant who looks in utter pain.

I fight against the near painful hold on my arm as I’m dragged to Jarek and passed off like an object. I feel a stinging pain on my arm and i don’t have to look to know he’s marked me, binding me to him.

“Time to go,” He smiles at me, grabbing me with his arm. My eyes scan over my family, landing on Azriel.

“I’m sorry, my love. Take care of our girl.”

#acotar #azriel fanfic #azriel x reader #azriel #shadows dance

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erenxfrieda · 1 year

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I keep thinking about this senario where five has recently developed a fixation on reader and has been stalking them for a little while, following them home and watching them from outside their apartment. But oneday, after watching you leave your apartment he decided to teleport inside and have a look around only to discover your small walk in closet is full of photos of him covering the wall and youve obviously known about him longer than hes known about you. Hearing you enter back into your apartment, you cant have been gone anywhere that long, were you watching *him* and perhaps hoping he would break in if you left? Did you want him to find out about your secret? But as you stand in the entrance to the room hes in, a smile on your face, he cant help but wonder.. has he walked right into your trap or, are you walking into his?

Also i wanted to say i love your contentt!!! I get so excited when i see youve posted you always have such interesting senarios <3

Yandere! Five x (Yandere?)Reader

warnings: yandere/dark themes, yandere Five, obsessive behaviour, blackmail.

a/n: sorry if it's not what you expected ":v

You know, it's always very embarrassing for a yandere (I'm not talking only about Number Five, but in general) to find out that they're the object of another yandere's obsession. Like you said, anon, Five could have been following you for some time, which means you've already took his heart, haven't you? Cool! But once he finds out that his methods of "defending" his lover are being used against him, he'll be... not entirely happy at first.

At first he will act like a hypocrite in such a situation. He will find it strange, your incredible obsession with him,he will think that you are obviously not okay and that this is disgusting. At least this is what he will feed himself and you in his first moments of awareness.

F: “What the hell? What the hell does that mean?”

Y: “Sorry, but it was you who broke into my house and I have to ask these questions-”

F: “Don't change the subject.”

But the more he thinks about it, the more he understands that you are the same as him, he has slightly conflicting thoughts.

1) How cute! You love him so-so much, which means that the chances that you decide to run away from him or find for yourself someone else are incredibly low. This is a good chance for Five, but we move on to the next paragraph. ↓

2) You. Followed. Him. Everywhere.

You have photos of him from different angles, they were taken at different times and circumstances. You know almost everything about him. Is he afraid of you? No. Rather, it will be feared that you are very well informed about his personal life. Yes, old Five is unlikely to live a very interesting life if this happens when he is on his "retirement", but Five, who is still a member of the Commission, Five, who kills people for a chance to see his loved once — not a good man;

2.1) How can he be sure that your obsession with him is incredibly strong? Let me remind you that he didn't know about your interest in him before, only after he made his way into your house. Yes, he followed you before, but YOU did it MORE than him. How could he, the best of the best assassins from the Commission, fail to notice this?

2.2) I like to think that Five would never want to talk with his obsession about his past. He doesn't even tell his family everything, but there's probably a slightly different reason than the one he keeps for you. Five wants to distance himself as much as possible from his past, from his work there, about those people who forced him to do all these horrible things. He just hates to remember it, because he no longer considers himself a hero, and even more so, he is not yet insane enough to consider himself your hero.

2.3) As soon as you find out what he did, his world may shudder at this. He's not sure enough to know if you'll change your mind about him after this. You will surely leave him and then everything will be much, much worse. He will again do something bad that you and he will not like, but it will be just as necessary as it was then.

3) The last point is the most interesting. He is the first to use your obsession against you.

You smile slightly as you notice the real shock and confusion on face of your obsession. The more he silently stared at the walls covered with photos of him that you carefully pinned one after the other. It's hard for you not to smile even wider, like a proud Cheshire cat, when this all lasts on for some more time.

“Oh, you don't like it, honey?” you chirp sweetly, blink a few times, and stretch forward a little.

“And why the hell am I supposed to like it?” Five frowns as he rips off some photos before throwing them on the floor. “Is this some kind of fucking joke?”

You shivered a little in place, looking at all this view. In fact, who wouldn't be offended when the love of your life doesn't appreciate your work so much? Nevertheless, you maintain your pretty, smiling face, even if inside you are still feel a little sad by such a response.

“Come on, don’t react like I’m the only one doing this!” you move closer and lean down, picking up what Five threw out.

“I know that you love me too.” you tease, trying to hug him, but in return, he gives you his cold reaction, like a grumpy cat that fights against his owner who tries to pet.

As soon as your hand touches his body, almost instantly for you, he twists your hand, after which, he presses your cheek against the wall, holding both of your hands behind your back. To be honest, just a little more and you would be sure that he would just easily break your arms with just more force. It makes you hiss in pain at first, but as soon as you look over your shoulder to look at Number Five's cold expression, you can't help but smile. He, your love, holds you so close to himself!!

“Try to touch me one more time and I'll shove your hands so deep down your throat...” he threatens, clenching his jaw tightly. His gaze on you is almost murderous, as if he caught a dirty petty thief right at the scene of the crime. Noticing your smiling face only makes him more angry.

“Ouch, ouch, ouch,” you complain quietly, feeling his grip on you only grow stronger. “Sorry Sorry! I really won't do that again! Please just let me go, it really hurts, you know?”

Five scoffs, rolling his eyes in annoyance. However, that didn't make him let go of you, just ease the pressure quite a bit.

“Yeah, I noticed it, idiot.” he clicks his tongue, speaking in a tone that barely hides his complete superiority over you in this position. “But listen to me here, I'm not going to tell you this twice. You fucking creep, been following me all this time and doing this lunatic bullshit in your house without a shred of shame. You have so much evidence here that no real lawyer can get you out of this shit, so you have two choices.”

You silently look at him the whole time he speaks. Was there any point in saying something against? He's right, all the walls in your room are covered in pictures of Number Five. Some would consider this just a fun obsession, because come on, Umbrella Academy fans are definitely still left in their universe, so it's no surprise that some comic book fan fell in love with a completely nice guy like Five. But your photos were taken in places where no normal sane person has ever taken. You just invaded his personal space. Not to mention, if the police were actually here, they would definitely be able to find a bunch of items that would get you in more trouble.

“I just call the cops and then they put you in a mental hospital for a couple of decades, injecting you with a dozen drugs at a time every day. Believe me, I know what it's like,” it was Five's turn to smile contentedly, this time not from obsession with you, but from the fact that he outplayed you. “Or, you obediently do what I tell you and no one will know about your dirty little secret except me.”

You tenses up, your eyes are wide open at the very idea of what he offers you. In his hands it has become so comfortable now, even the pain that he caused you, even threatening to break a couple of your bones just like that, but now it doesn't bring painful pleasure, sweat flows down your face.

“So what will you choose?”

#yandere tua #tua x reader #five hargreaves x reader #yandere five hargreeves #yandere five hargreeves x reader #yandere x reader #five hargreeves #umbrella academy x reader #yandere umbrella academy #tua imagine #yandere number five #number five x reader #number five

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imagines-by-a-typical-fangirl · 2 years

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The Key to Your Heart (Part 08 of 18)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes X Reader | The Winter Soldier X Reader

Word count: 2.1 K

<- Previous part (07)

Next part -> (09)

{Marvel Masterlist}

Summary: Joining the Avengers wasn't on your plans. Not until Steve asked you to help his best friend. Bucky was Bucky, but the Winter Soldier still came from time ti time, bringing with him chaos and destruction. And you was supposed to keep that side of him away... But what happens when both Bucky and the Winter Soldier start to enjoy your company more than anyone else? Should you turn your back on the Soldier, ignore his own fears and traumas? That's exactly what everyone wants. But you were never known for following orders...

A/N: Special thanks to my wonderful friend @multific for all her help through this story. I love you, girl!!

Didn't Happen

The place is beautiful, like it came out of a 40's movie. The lighting, the people all dressed up, the food, the music. Everything is perfect.

But Bucky is beyond perfect.

He's not only handsome in his military uniform, but happy too. His smile lights up his face, makes his eyes shine. And it warms up your heart.

The small conversation has you sharing new parts of your life, as you get to know him better as well. The cellphones were left at the reception, which means no interruptions.

“So. How did you do it?” He asks after the waiter takes your finished deserts.

“How did I do what?” You innocently ask, crossing your legs under the table and accidentally kicking him. “Sorry.”

“This place looks so good that I feel like I got into a time machine. I can smell Stark's finger on it.”

“I might have made him call the owner with a special request.” With a smile, you shrug your shoulder. “I wanted to make you something nice and, well, I think you like it because your eyes are shining, James.” You choose to use his first name for a change, taking in the happy song playing and deciding to be brave, you stand up, gesturing at the dance floor. “Now, come. You own me at least one dance as a thank you.”

Bucky smiles before standing up, and when you reach out your hand, he takes it. “I'm the one who's supposed to take you dancing.”

“Well, you didn't.” Pulling him to the middle of the dance floor, you're just about to say something sassy and start dancing when the music stops, replaced by a different one, much, much slower. “Oh...” You mutter, looking at the couples around you moving closer. “We can sit this one out and wait for another song.”

He shakes his head slightly, a hand on your waist as he pulls you closer. “I don't see any problem with this song.”

Blushing, you step closer, both your arms around his neck. “I may not know how to.”

“Just follow my lead.” He says in a low voice, both hands on your waist, as you both start to move, from side to side, back and forth. Somehow you manage not to step on his feet, and soon enough you get the hang of it, getting more confident.

“I–” You mutter, but you're cut off by a low giggle coming from his lips, that makes you pinch your eyebrows together. “What?”

“Nothing, I just...” He smiles, blue eyes locked on yours. “Here I am, back in the 40s, dancing with a girl from the future.”

You're way too close, and there's an idea popping in the back of your mind. Thanks to the high heels, you're a lot closer to his lips. And if you move a little, standing on your toes a little more, you could kiss him. The thought itself makes you blush, so you look away, giggling. “Well, I came here to tell you're on the right side, Sergeant.” Moving your arms, you rest both your hands on his chest. “And that even though you'll go through hell, you'll walk it off, because you're strong, and you have a good, brave heart.”

When you look at him again, Bucky's eyes are shining, as if he didn't believe what you just said. “Are you sure about all that? Maybe I'm not–”

“You are more than I can put in words, Bucky. You don't see it, but I do.” Still swinging from side to side, you smile when Bucky takes your hand, spinning you around before pulling you into his arms again. “I told you, I can believe for both of us.” You say when you're close again, arms around his neck. “I'm here to help you. And I'll do everything I can to shove it in your head that you're an amazing man. And I... I really enjoy spending time with you, Bucky. You're an awesome friend.”

He's silent for a while, eyes on you as if trying to read you, understand you. “You're...” His voice fades, and you chuckle, tilting your head to the side. “Thank you, (Y/N). For everything, since day one. You've been a wonderful friend and I... I love being around you. I wish I could be around you all the time.”

“Well... We are basically around all the time.” You say, smiling at him. “We live under the same roof after all.”

He chuckles again, seeming a little embarrassed. “Yes, I guess you're right but...”

“But?” You ask, involuntary stepping closer.

“Maybe it's not enough yet.” His voice is low, barely audible. There's something on his tone, that you just can't understand. But it makes you nervous.

And it gets even worse when he starts bending down a little, and when he's too close, you just close your eyes, anticipation burning on your skin, in your core. The butterflies are flying everywhere, and you suddenly feel hot, like you could burst into flames.

But then, you feel his lips on your face, on the apple of your cheek. Sighing, you open your eyes again when he pulls away.

It feels odd because it felt like the kiss would mean something different. But maybe you misread things.

“It's late. The restaurant will be close in half an hour so... I guess we should get going.” You mutter, stepping away, and walking back to the table. “And I have training tomorrow. I should probably rest a little.”

“Of course.” Bucky agrees, gesturing for a waiter to bring the check.

Surprisingly, the dinner was courtesy of Tony, so you didn't have to pay for anything. And to take you back, the same car that brought you here is already waiting outside.

The ride home is more silent than the dinner, and for some reason, you feel weird. But that's probably your fault. You were the one expecting a kiss on the lips, maybe Bucky wasn't even considering it.

But now, the night is over, and as usual, Bucky walks you to your bedroom, leaving you at the door. “I had a very nice evening, Miss (Y/N). Thank you for the lovely time.” He says, and you can tell he's still doing this the 40s style.

“Me too, Sergeant. Hope I'll get to see more of you soon.” You say, standing by the door. Bucky smiles, waving at you and making the way to his room.

You move to go inside, but instead, you give him one last look. He's already staring, also standing by his door. Furrowing your eyebrows a little, you wave again, smiling before going inside.

You take the dress off, waste some time in the bathroom, naked, checking the pictures the restaurant people sent you. Since there was no phone, the only pictures you have are those the waiters took. But they're beautiful, and every one of them makes you smile.

After a shower, you lie awake in bed, thinking. The only thing in your head is the kiss that didn't happen. And as much as you try to understand it, you just can't. And you can't sleep either.

“Shit.” Muttering under your breath, you push yourself up, leaving the bedroom and going for the one person who can help. You'd love to get a girl's time, but Wanda is too far and you don't trust Vision with that information, walking through walls and about to spill it out. So you'll have to do with Nat alone, so you head to her bedroom, softly knocking on the door. And when she doesn't answer, you knock again, louder this time.

“What the–” She mutters, pulling the door open quite violently. “(Y/N)? Did something happen?”

“Yeah.” You mutter, not waiting for an invitation to go inside, sitting on the edge of her bed with a sigh. “I need your help or else I'll lose my mind.”

“Couldn't you wait until morning?” She says, pushing the door close and turning the lights on.

“No.” It sounds like a little whine, to which she rolls her eyes.

“Spill it.”

Taking a deep breath, you try to make it short, to get to the point you actually need to talk about. “So, Bucky and I went out to that restaurant where they had a 40s night. The one I told you about.”

“Mhmm.” She nods sitting next to you, and you turn your body towards her, crossing your legs.

“We had an amazing time. Seriously, it was... It was so freaking amazing, Nat.” You smile, putting a strand of hair behind your ear. “He was such a gentleman, his eyes were shining and he was so loving and caring and–”

“If it was so perfect, why do you seem so troubled?”

“...When we were dancing things got... Heated. I said some things, he said some things and I thought he was going to kiss me but he kissed my cheek instead.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.” You repeat, both hands on your head. “I thought it was the moment. A-and maybe I misread things? Maybe he doesn't even consider kissing me and I stood there like an idiot, looking at his lips and...” Breathing in, you lie back down on her bed. “...Waiting for him to kiss me.”

“You sound like you're in love with him.” She giggles, using her arm to sustain her weight as she looks down at you. “And about the kiss... I don't think it didn't happen because he doesn't like you. Because it's pretty clear to me he does.”

“Maybe not, Nat. Maybe he just likes to be around me and I misread his old-school manners.”

“Bucky is a gentleman, yes, mostly with woman, but it's different with you.” She lies down next to you, facing the ceiling. “The way he stares at you when you're not looking. How he smiles and blushes like a teenager.” Nat giggles and you do the same rolling your eyes.

“You've been paying attention.”

“Everyone notices. It's not like he's trying to be subtle about it. Steve came to talk to me. Asking if you told me anything about it.”

That makes you sit up, looking down at her. “Don't tell Steve. He'll make a big deal out of it. And he'll talk to Bucky.”

“I won't say anything, don't worry.”

“So, what's you're verdict about the whole thing?” Nat puts her hands together, folding her fingers to make a heart shape. “Hey! I taught you that.”

“You didn't teach me, you just set the trend over here.” She sits up, taking both your hands. “Bucky has been through a lot. He just got his mind back and a pardon for as long as he helps the Avengers keep the world safe. And there's the Winter Soldier too, who keeps coming back. It's crystal clear to me that he has feelings for you. But with all that in his mind... It might take a while.”

Looking down, you nod, taking a deep breath. “I really like him, Nat. I liked guys before, but this time... It's real. It's... Strong.” You didn't want to admit it, but the words come out anyway, so low you can barely hear it. “I think this could be something. I want it to be something.”

“Then give him time. If this is supposed to be, it will be.”

“Thanks, Nat.” You smile, pulling her into a hug before getting back up. “And sorry for waking you up. I just had to talk to someone.”

“Don't worry. I'm glad I could help.” She walks you to the door, and you give her one more hug before going back to your room.

This time, you manage to fall asleep, even though you still have a lot in your mind. When the morning comes, you go around with your routine, showering and dressing up for a gym with light grey leggings and a black tank top with a pink sports bra underneath.

You're a bit hungry when you leave the room, smiling to find Bucky on the lounge, looking through the window. “Hey, Buck.” You hear Steve saying, coming upstairs. “Won't you eat any–” Bucky stands up suddenly, making his way over Steve.

And that's when you notice it isn't Bucky. The Soldier is back.

@hi-im-fan-trash @takeabreathdeath @pre-google @thespeeder @heavenly1927 @marvel-fanfic-writer-8675 @insidxangel @winters1917 @plethoravellichor @meggiesposts @hollie911 @saranghaey @lexi-anastasia @lechaircharles @mememe7147 @sofi1sstuff @lokisasgardianvampirequeen @sophiaj650

#bucky imagine #imagine bucky #bucky x reader #bucky x you #bucky x y/n #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky fanfiction #imagine bucky barnes #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes x reader #the winter solider x reader #the winter soldier fanfiction #the winter solider imagine #the winter soldier x reader #imagine the winter soldier

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makima-s-most-smile · 8 months

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Trigun Maximum 10.2

How can it get worse and worse?! When did this manga take a turn to despair… I know, like 11 volumes ago… *flops facedown* I am hit critically in the feels.

Trigun Ultimate: 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 Trigun Maximum: 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1, 4.2, 5.1, 5.2, 6.1, 6.2, 7.1, 7.2, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 9.1, 9.2, 10.1, You are here!

03: Sudden Change

Oh, how this chapter title took me for a spin in my first read through. Yes, the tides of the battle turn, but not completely and at what cost? There is a change in Wolfwood, too, physically, but also mentally.

Yeah, as if you were his best friend and he couldn’t live with the idea of losing you. Especially with what you sacrificed for him repeatedly.

But behind that, there is Wolfwood’s core problem. He sees himself as a burden. Not only is everyone else more important, his existence is a burden for others. Something he has to make up. That’s why Chapel got his claws around him so easily. Remember back at Vash’ and Wolfwood’s first meeting?

He left the place either as a young teen or a preteen… And even there he constantly worked as a caretaker for the other kids, to lessen the load on Miss Melanie and the other staff.

While there is a cold logic to Wolfwood’s decision: Vash needs to save the whole world, Wolfwood cannot risk him for my much smaller problem. Though, in reality it boils down to: I cannot burden him. Wolfwood cannot take into consideration that he himself is an important person that not only needs, but is allowed to have someone at their side that protects them. He is that to other people, because he never had it himself.

Okay, it seems my question in the last volume got answered. When Wolfwood received his Punisher (the tenth), it was the tenth Punisher that has been ever made. Question is, did Razlo get new ones made or did he inherit those from the former members?

I can’t. Does Vash ever have nightmares about this after all is done? That Wolfwood stared at him with panicked eyes and then chose to kill himself for Vash, the kids and Livio?

This scene has so many different interpretations and I have a different one each time I read it. Right now I read it as: Vash is in trouble and Wolfwood is too hurt to help, so he makes the choice to sacrifice himself so Vash can protect the children. And with Vash being the shield for the children, Wolfwood has another chance to get through to Livio. If he fails, Wolfwood trusts that Vash can take him on.

A few pages later we see that Vash gets a punisher bullet through his side. So, Wolfwood’s assumptions seems more like a keen observation.

Speedwagon again… Why… would Chapel care in this situation if Wolfwood survives? Oh, no, that’s not it. It is that Wolfwood is in a position to stand up against Chapel and fight him, again. Chapel was so close to breaking Wolfwood down, but he failed and that’s what makes him call out to Wolfwood like he is an idiot that does not understand these vials and their workings. But Wolfwood does. Chapel cannot understand that something is more important for Wolfwood than his life.

Another reason why I think taking vials back to back amplifies their effect to the better and worse. Did Wolfwood grow, too? The cracking and bulging sounds imply that.

He turned into a breakdancer! *okay, jokes aside*

*sobs*

Does… Does Wolfwood headbutt Chapel to death?!? Naice.

In the end, Razlo is a little, bratty kid that had no one. He is dependent on Chapel. Chapel fostered the dependency to have control over Razlo. He used him. But Chapel was still Razlo’s safety anchor.

One more point for the team: Vash can hear thoughts of people who are dying.

Poor Wolfwood, that he is a monster is just so ingrained into him that he cannot bear the thoughts of the people he loves so dearly see him. He cannot even fathom that they’d see something completely different than he does. And the return of the glasses! The glasses hide his true self, they hide his fear. They are his crutch that helps him to put distance between him and others.

I KNOW that this is Razlo being totally irrational, but I shouted out: “Oh, come on! You two just tortured the big brother of your other self!�� Razlo is so strong, he never had to deal with the fear of losing, either his life or just a battle. Wolfwood goes into battles with the knowledge that he can not only die easily, it was one of the reasons why he reprimanded Vash for the risks he took. This is the first loss Razlo has experienced.

And fitting to that, Razlo did not care for Chapel as a person, he needed to be needed. Chapel filled that desire. It is about the loneliness that comes at the loss, not the loss itself.

Oh, now we get an insight into Vash?! NOW! So it hurts even more?

Vash, if you truly listened to Wolfwood and tried to understand why he does the things he does, you would have understood that your beliefs aren’t that opposed. In the end, it is the scale that is different. But you never asked. You are so used to doing your own thing, that you trust what you get by your observation skills and do not really interact with the people or with the conflict that ensues. The whole “You give up hope too easily” stuff is a perfect example of this.

One of the reasons why I have a growing annoyance with Vash while the volumes go on is that we do not get his insight, we do not see him grow much. As much as he puts up distance between himself and others, we as readers are kept at a distance, too. That’s why the characters Wolfwood and Meryl are so important, because they are there for the readers as a point of reference. But that way we also grew incredibly close to them. I’d say closer to Wolfwood, since we get so much more insight into him and Meryl gets sadly pretty sidelined. We see them struggle with Vash and what he is and what that means for them, we see Wolfwood in constant conflict with his reality and how it opposes his morals. We do not get that from Vash. That often makes him seem aloof, stubborn and judgemental, at least to me. There are little flashes like the talk on Home, but those are very rare.

And back to the bird high in the air. It fits here, too. It is unreachable, up in the air. Wolfwood was seemingly free to do as he liked towards everyone. Freer than Vash could be with the chains Vash has put around himself to punish himself, robbing himself of so much agency to act in his own defence or defence of others. But Wolfwood was struggling the whole time to survive. His morals and his chosen responsibilities slowly suffocate him.

Battle buddies, my favourite trope.

The only way Wolfwood can show care or thanks. He hides behind his abrasiveness and the obvious problem looming over all of them. As he justified his leaving to himself, Vash is needed there and Wolfwood’s problems are just a negligible distraction. It is the fate of the world that is in Vash’ hands.

The obvious answer is that Wolfwood is just so much more important for Vash than the fight with Knives. I’d even go so far and say that he needs his assistance in the fight, even if it is just for the mental boost. But neither of them is able to tell the other what they truly feel, they hide it behind banter, not speaking the most important words.

04: Death Omen

Uh… didn’t we have a chapter with the same title? Eh… But fitting… 4 and death omen..

It is the only time he has… Wolfwood is so happy that Vash is there. He is grateful for their time together.

Wolfwood’s face behind the glasses. Vash does not understand what or why Wolfwood acts that way symbolised by the way Wolfwood’s eyes are hidden. And he throws Wolfwood’s words back into his face, how Wolfwood is a realist, how he has to survive at any cost. For the kids. Even for their friends.

And it clicks. Vash starts to realise that something is deeply wrong with Wolfwood. That Wolfwood is truly believing that he will die here. Vash may have even forgotten for a while that Wolfwood is in the end human. His childhood was exchanged for a fighter’s body and he has the vials. But has really ever understood what that meant? Did Vash see the wounds as something he has been already through, so Wolfwood would survive them, too? Vash is still in denial. But it starts to dawn on him. Are the wounds on Wolfwood too dire?

The expressions of sorrow on Wolfwood is so… so… good. The sorrowful Wolfwood’s are with the best expressions he ever drew.

It… It’s the page. Them desperately reaching out for each other. Vash finally had realised how important Wolfwood is to him, either during the arc-rescue or when Wolfwood ghosted him. And Vash finally stopped avoiding the connection they had, he seeked Wolfwood out, breaking a series going on for 150 years.

But it is too late.

And Vash understands that Wolfwood is dying. He was too late.

How his fingers dig in… That is the side where Chapel shoved his weapon into, Wolfwood was speared there. There may be not much left under the suit.

(Sidenote, since bible fanfiction. Jesus has been speared into the side, too, after the crucifixion to check if he was truly dead.)

Vash always does his best to not shoot in anger. But all is lost to him at that moment. The only reason why L/R survives is because Vash cherishes Wolfwood’s wishes too much to do more. But if Wolfwood would have been unsuccessful in saving Livio, I have no doubt that Vash would have murdered him in cold blood.

What else but leaving a man his dying wish?

This hurts so much. They finally got together, they finally bridged the gap that kept them apart for the whole time. They finally found understanding in each other. And now Wolfwood’s looming death parts them. The last panel shows the growing distance.

Wolfwood is the bird and the one longing at the same time. He has no real freedom, he never had, but had to struggle the whole time to survive. He wanted rest and peace, but his life did not offer him any of it. His only real choice was to be the protector for others. So that others have a place to rest and feel safe. So that their safety is not a cage, but that they gain both freedom and a home. And that led him to an early and brutal death. Is there true freedom in this decision? He chose his own path here. But at the same time, it was the only path he could take. The only way for Wolfwood to stay Wolfwood was to die. Breaking his morals here to save himself over Livio, would go against his whole person. He has to protect. Without being the protector, Wolfwood is not Wolfwood.

Vash is the bird and the human, too. Vash longs for the first time to be with a human, but he can only look in longing, since his wish will never be. After his long and painful existence, he truly wished to find peace with someone (platonically or romantically), but the bird that is Wolfwood has already passed him and he can only look at him in longing, because he has no way to reach him or make him stay.

Wolfwood is in full big brother mode. Razlo gets treated like the brat he is. It is funny that I wrote that Razlo is a brat before reading this.

The way Wolfwood’s eye is shown, tells us that he is serious. Very much so. Razlo is in for a hell of pain.

Nightow is *chef's kiss* at cool expressions and poses.

Wolfwood not only received his death omen, he is a dead man walking. But he is the death omen, too. He will end the hold that Chapel has over Livio, over Razlo’s dead… uh… not body, since it is Lilvio’s. But Wolfwood will find a way.

#trigun bookclub #trigunbookclub #Trigun Maximum #Trigun #Trigun maximum Vol. 10.2 #gimme a rest please q-q #and it is not showing in the tags again #graaaaaaaaaaah

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mariacallous · 1 year

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Last week, one of the stories that most caught my attention in the sort of random but uniquely fulfilling way one can get from browsing newspapers was an item from Italy that said, with more than 7 million of the country’s 60 million people over age 75, some are turning to small, cute-looking robots to attend to older adults. Looking forward to coming breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, some experts there are already predicting that this will produce a revolution in caring for this cohort.

“We all have to look for all the possible solutions, in this case technological,” Loredana Ligabue, the president of Not Only Elderly, an Italian advocacy group for family caregivers, told the New York Times.

Another story that seized my interest in this same unexpected manner a week or so before was the news out of the U.S. state of Arkansas that lawmakers there, as in a few other states, were rolling back child labor protections to make it easier to employ children under age 16.

Later, as I wondered what could connect such seemingly disparate topics—the one about a socially costly and hard-to-manage surfeit of older adults and the other, the urgent need felt by some to employ minors, even in dangerous industrial settings—an answer arrived in the name of a country that has been much in the news itself lately due to mass street demonstrations against changes in government policy toward people whose age places them between the extremes of young and old: France.

This European nation, which has long been admired as something of a lifestyle superpower, has been locked in an explosive social and political crisis over a modest adjustment to its retirement age, from 62 to 64—a figure still to the envy of many others, notably including Americans. For decades, the trend in France had moved in the other direction, meaning devoting less time to work, starting with the push decades ago by former President François Mitterrand to whittle away at the 40-hour workweek, which culminated with the voluntary adoption of a 35-hour workweek in 1988.

So what does France have to do with the desperate turn to robots in Italy or children in sweatshops in the United States? Like almost all wealthy Western countries (and not a few rich, non-Western ones, too), France is suddenly being forced to come to terms with brutal new demographic realities that are placing enormous stress on social security and retirement systems and calling into question basic assumptions about the comforts that a long period of prosperity once seemed to guarantee them.

Part of the problem in France is that its people are living longer and longer. This is a blessing shared by growing numbers of highly developed countries—but not the United States, where average life expectancy is experiencing a stark decline. In France, people can expect to live approximately 25 years after they retire, the most of any country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

For most people, living longer will mean needing to rely on the financial support of the state longer, and this creates steadily increasing fiscal pressures. This difficulty is compounded by another trend that has been unfolding alongside it: people wanting to have fewer and fewer children on average. In Italy, which ranks near the bottom of the scale in the European Union, only 1.29 children were born per woman in 2022. In France, close to the high end, that figure stood at 1.79. The bad news for people who have to plan state budgets and future outlays for national retirement and health care systems is that even that number is far below the average number of children per woman that can sustain a population without shrinkage, known as the population replacement rate, which is usually put at 2.1.

Having enough children to stave off population decline has nothing to do with bragging rights or old-fashioned nationalism. Rather, its importance lies in what demographers call population structure and, most specifically, making sure that there are always enough young people entering the workplace to sustain a social compact built around guaranteed support for older adults in retirement.

France’s ongoing showdown among street demonstrators, opposition parties, and President Emmanuel Macron can be looked at in countless ways, from the democratic deficiencies some have denounced in a constitution that concentrates excessive power in an almost monarchical presidency to the shocking violence employed by the police as they try to restore order in the streets and suppress the protests. However one looks at things, though, one unavoidable reality stands out: France simply needs more working-age people or to have people work longer in order to finance the kinds of benefits in retirement that its citizens have long come to regard as their birthright.

And although the surface manifestations and political and social tensions will play out differently in each rich Western society where fertility rates are in retreat and people are already living far longer than when today’s retirement systems were drawn up, here and there throughout this economically privileged part of the world, the basic problem—of needing more workers or for people to work more—is much the same.

Notwithstanding the statement of the Italian advocate quoted at the top of this column about everyone needing to search for possible solutions, in most of the rich countries that are starting to experience the gravity of their demographic conundrum, few are looking to the most obvious places for relief from the looming fiscal problems that drastic shifts in population structure will bring. Indeed, that is the common message one can distill from stories about care robots and 14-year-old factory workers: People in rich Western societies will go to almost any length to avoid the readiest and most humane solution available, which involves steady but substantial increases in immigration from parts of the world where young people are eager to learn and work, with decades of productive life ahead of them.

Immigration, in fact, kills two birds with one stone: Bringing billions of humans more deeply into the global economy, with the possibility of building economic security and uplift for themselves while also contributing to the financial stability and overall prosperity of the places they migrate to.

An ugly paradox comes into play here. The part of the world that offers the greatest reserves of such young, energetic, and ambitious labor—Africa—is the same part of the world that arouses the strongest aversion among the rich. The continent situated immediately to Europe’s south, and the source of over one-tenth of the U.S. population, has a median age of a mere 19.7 years, meaning that it is utterly dominated by precisely what the old rich world increasingly lacks: youth.

During a visit to Brussels last spring, though, a liberal Belgian intellectual told me: “I fear that the threat of immigration from Africa will drive people here to extremism. They will do anything and everything to avoid being inundated by Africans, and even though I oppose extremism, I completely understand them.”

But in a world where an overwhelmingly disproportionate number of young people are African, the question that will increasingly confront Europeans—and, indeed, all Westerners—is whether clinging to self-identities deeply bound up in race (or, to be more explicit, whiteness) is more important than economic growth; prosperity; competing with the obsession of the day, China; being able to retire with a pension; or, ultimately, maybe even economic survival? Scarcely polite today, sooner or later, questions like these will become unavoidable.

There is another way to frame them, though, that may be helpful. During the four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, mass commerce in people brought in chains from Africa had been justified on the basis that they were not fully human. In the United States, the era when people of African descent were legally treated as less than fully human is still well within living memory. Going forward, will rich Europeans and Americans be able to overcome their aversion toward Africans, who may hold the key to their economic salvation, and embrace them as their fully human equals? As I told my Belgian friend, their future will depend on it.

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nevergonnasimpyoumikey · 5 months

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2023 one line a day journal/writing prompts

2.1. You'll be my demise, dear. 3.1. Sometimes he wishes they had never met. 21.1. I keep drinking from dirty mugs 30.1. In the grey I see blues and reds

1.2. Are we going forward or just changing? 8.2. When I say I will, I mean I would 9.2. Bridges over the pain 17.2. After nothing, there is more nothing 20.2. Death is a powerful drug 23.2. I fear I can't help you 28.2. I wish I hadn't met you because I fucked you up.

8.3. You twitch like an animal in your sleep. 9.3. You fell asleep waiting for me 12.3. And I missed you with every fiber of my being 17.3. I was left behind but I survived 23.3. Paint my skin with your touch 29.3. Please tell me I'm worth something

13.4. Beautiful man with soft skin 14.4. Why me, fearing revenge 15.4. Terrified of making mistakes — rather, admitting them

11.5. You may be the king but your people follow me 13.5. But no matter what, you can't have him

7.6. He was the love of her life 8.6. I shared my life with you, mistake or not

1.9. I remembered that you like the sound of rain 4.9. I just miss you, what else is there to say? 11.9. I can't risk ruining it, can I? 12.9. Defective. You're just defective. 18.9. Feels like I'm a bit high all the time, under your influence

23.10. He always did like stories. 25.10. You ruined it. You. Not me.

1.11. Tell me something that makes me want you less

12.12. It was worth it, in the end.

#Doing something daily??? Nearly impossible. Can't keep a routine to save my life #But it was fun to do these whenever I remembered or thought of a cool line #A lot of Trikey stuff there and many inspired by dreams I had #Gonna use some of these in fics probably but if anything feels inspiring feel free to use them too x)#It's not the end of the year yet but I had these in my work calendar - thank you Personal Planner - and I'm off work until next year so #Might as well post these now #my fics #Kinda my fics lol

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vettelsvee · 15 days

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YOU'LL FIND ME IN THE STARS | Sebastian Vettel

f1 masterlist | history series masterlist

summary: sebastian can't get di out of his head even though he's back home with hanna, his girlfriend. that's why the young man decides to step up with his decision: doing everything possible to have the austrian continuing her internship alongside him, now at redbull. little did he know that does news weren't the only ones that diana wagner not only would receive on christmas, but also would change her life.

word count: 6919

warnings: brief mentions of sexual activities, anxiety attacks, sickness, death and suicide. bad language, curse words.

taglist: [@theseerbetweenus @annewithaneofthegreengable @vincentvanshoe @formulaonebuff] if you wanna be tagged in each part just tell me in the comments <3

a/n: last part of history season 1! hope you liked it because this is just the beginning of seb and di's story. they're my very own fave characters i've ever created and i hope you liked them as much as I do :)

¡! you can read the fanfic as diana or y/n, but the faceclaim will always be my girl emma stone :)

feedback is truly appreciated!

2008 Berlin, Germany

Only two days, actually one if they considered it was already Friday, were left for the meeting with Red Bull and Sebastian, who complained to his public relations that he seemed to have no vacation during the winter break, insisted on driving to the German capital despite the six long hours ahead.

"Are you sure you don't prefer to go by plane?" his girlfriend asked, settling into the passenger seat as Sebastian placed the suitcase they would share in the trunk. "Britta can find us a last-minute flight, I'm sure."

"Hanna, I'm a professional driver, and I have a license to prove it," the blonde replied, getting into the car. "I've spent about nine months driving a single-seater at over three hundred kilometers per hour; now I need to drive like a normal guy, with my girlfriend by my side, while I calmly drive on roads I don't know, enjoy the scenery, and feel the wind on my face."

"You better not open the windows at three degrees we have out there."

"Wait and see."

As soon as the driver started the car, he turned the heating to the max and directed it towards Hanna, who just rolled her eyes at the gesture. Although she knew her boyfriend like the back of her hand for years, there were many occasions when his antics surprised her.

"Okay, okay," Prater finally responded, raising her hands in redemption, followed by a yawn. "I understand you want to act like a normal twenty-one-year-old guy, so go ahead," she indicated, pointing her index finger at the road ahead.

They had only been on the road for about an hour and Hanna had already given up, falling into an immediate sleep that had interrupted the conversation she and Sebastian were having about the apartment they planned to see in Berlin and intended to buy. Although the German enjoyed driving, he didn't like doing it alone, at least not outside Formula 1.

The music playing in the background, coming from a local radio station, along with the constant roar of the engine, was what kept him from dwelling too much on why his mind had been so distracted since the end of the season or, more precisely, on the person who had occupied all his thoughts.

No matter how hard he tried, Vettel's mind was elsewhere, immersed in that unnatural blonde hair and blue eyes that conveyed both security and fear, from the girl who had a brighter future than many people made her believe.

Since that victory in Monza, the German's judgment was completely clouded and filled with confusion. He couldn't overlook any of the interactions they had had since then. The spark in the girl's gaze and her desire to see him succeed, regardless of what happened to her, left Sebastian completely bewildered.

Did the Austrian see the possibility of going beyond a simple friendship between them? Or was it him, seeing in Diana what he would like to see in Hanna?

Possibly the latter: the problem was him.

The night wind entered gently through the window, which the blonde had opened slightly shortly after her girlfriend fell asleep, who was unaware, thankfully, of all the possible scenarios Sebastian was creating and would like to experience with Wagner. The last thing he wanted at that moment was another jealous outburst from his girlfriend, although he deserved it.

While his love for his girl was the most important thing to him, he couldn't help but feel remorse for realizing that there were certain things his girlfriend seemed to lack, but that Diana shared with him. It wasn't just their passion for motorsport anymore, but also the concern the intern felt every time the pilot got in and out of the car, when he finished a press conference or an interview, or even those moments when he saw him with few friends. Prater rarely did that, even if she made an effort to show a minimum of feigned interest.

Diana Wagner was the kind of person whose world could be falling apart, and yet she would worry more about the person in front of her.

For months, Sebastian had been wondering if his mind was playing tricks on him by comparing the two girls. Was it fair to Hanna for him to think of Diana as her replacement? Even for the Austrian: was it normal for him to see her as the idealized version of his girlfriend? Sebastian found himself in completely unknown territory from which he couldn't find a way out, and the more he thought about it, the more lost he became in his feelings.

Hanna shifted slightly in her seat, turning her head in the opposite direction, now facing the pilot. Vettel took a few brief seconds to turn his gaze toward her while still paying attention to the road ahead. He loved the girl beside him and would do anything to make her the happiest woman in the world.

A knot started forming in his stomach: he didn't want to hurt her, but it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to clear his head, the mental block growing stronger as the hours of the journey passed, even when they had already entered the German capital.

Friday had passed faster than Sebastian expected. As soon as they parked their car in a nearby hotel parking lot and checked in with autographs and a photo session with the hotel staff included, they dropped off their few belongings in the assigned suite and took a short nap to recharge. Within hours, Vettel and Prater were roaming the streets of Berlin incognito, heading to the apartment they had in mind to buy. Sebastian's impulsivity, driven by guilt, led him to say yes without giving the blonde much chance to decide, making the pilot start convincing himself that the future with his girlfriend, Hanna, was what he should have in mind. They also enjoyed an early dinner at one of the blonde's favorite restaurants in the city.

The new Red Bull star wanted to do everything possible to make his partner happy and distance her from all the insecurity she gained because of him. At the same time, he wanted to get rid of intrusive thoughts that, no matter how hard he tried to ignore them, were meddling too much in every aspect of his life.

When they returned to the room, a sense of calm invaded them. Hanna left her bag on a chair near the main door, stretching as Seb took off his coat and delicately hung it on one of the racks, his yawns filling the room. After that, the blonde approached the girl from behind, embracing her tenderly and holding onto her as if he was going to lose her.

"I'm very happy about everything we're going to do together from now on, love," he whispered in her ear, planting a gentle kiss on her cheek.

Hanna turned carefully, still hugging him but now looking directly into his eyes while her hands rested on his sturdy chest.

"I am too, Seb," the girl replied with a smile that perfectly reflected her fatigue. "This is just the beginning of a new chapter in our story."

The driver held her even closer, stroking her hair and removing some strands from her face, placing small kisses on her crown. Hanna leaned in decisively, and their lips met. The tenderness that initially seemed to characterize the connection between the young couple gradually turned into passion, their mouths moving in such perfect synchrony that it seemed rehearsed. Sebastian's hands began to explore his girlfriend's back, deepening the caress that was interrupted by the blonde, who was looking at the guy with ulterior motives.

"Do you want me to do something to you?" the girl suggested mischievously. "I'm at your disposal for whatever you want. Just ask."

Prater started taking off the sweater she was wearing, throwing it on the floor, and kissed Vettel again, now with more desperation. At the same time, while trying to dedicate time to his girlfriend, Sebastian once again had visions of the Toro Rosso intern in his mind, remembering the last times they had been together and, especially, how he wished things were different between them.

How his life could be different.

"I'm sorry, Hanna," he said, pulling away from his girlfriend and taking a step back. "I'm very tired... and I can't take it anymore, I need to rest a bit," he tried to articulate as calmly as possible, pretending to lie on the bed.

"Come on, Seb, don't spoil the fun for me," the girl encouraged him, raising an eyebrow, pushing him to lie on the mattress and positioning herself on top of him. "Now we have no one to bother us, and you can make me scream as much as you want."

Hanna wasn't giving up easily, and Sebastian knew that perfectly well.

"Hanna, I'm being serious..." the pilot began to say, trying to get her off him. "It's not that I don't want to, it's just that I've been driving for almost seven hours all night, and I've only slept about two hours since last night," Seb explained, using the journey as an excuse. "I need to sleep for twenty hours straight. The Red Bull I had is not enough."

Hanna looked at him, changing her expression to a more serious one as she tried to extract something beyond her boyfriend's words. Her expression reflected concern, which upset the pilot even more than he appeared.

"Are you okay, Seb?"

The mentioned sighed, running a hand through his hair.

"Yes, don't worry. I just need to sleep, at least, two days in a row and sort out my thoughts... about tomorrow's meeting."

"Relax, sweetheart," the girl began to say, caressing his cheek. "I don't want to pressure you if you're not comfortable. And don't worry about tomorrow's meeting: I'm sure everything will go smoothly."

The German simply nodded slightly, trying to act as normal as possible.

"Tomorrow everything will be over, so calm down. Everything will be more than resolved, and I promise I'll devote myself body and soul to everything you want until the season starts."

Hanna convinced herself that this would be true, calming down a bit when Vettel approached and gave her a peck, then got into bed. The girl was curious about how events would unfold the next morning with Marko and Horner, especially regarding the famous intern, but she wouldn't find out until much later because she couldn't be at the meeting. Moreover, she preferred to stay studying there; she had too many assignments and final exams to prepare to be up and down. She had accompanied Seb to Berlin to enjoy his company as much as possible.

Determined, she got up to remove her makeup and get ready to go to bed herself, although at the same time, she did it so Sebastian could have some time alone and calm down without pressure. She tried to keep the lights off and not make much noise: there had been few occasions when the pilot had had an anxiety attack, but Prater knew perfectly well that when it happened, the last thing he wanted was to talk, wishing to escape from everyone to hide his vulnerability.

When she was ready, she slipped carefully between the sheets, staying behind Seb's back while trying not to disturb the calm that seemed to have finally consumed him. The room would be immersed in a sepulchral silence if it weren't for both of their breaths, which always became synchronized after a few rigorous minutes. Seeing the scene, Hanna felt the urge to move toward Vettel. Gently, she approached him until she was close enough to put an arm over his waist, pulling him toward her protectively. She felt how the boy relaxed, encouraging her to continue: instinctively, she rested her head on the shoulder she had free, closed her eyes, and let sleep take her to a world where, perhaps, Sebastian Vettel didn't have so many doubts about their relationship.

[...]

Sebastian

The landscape visible through the tinted windows of the van taking Britta and me to the hotel for the meeting to finalize my six-year contract with Red Bull was more than memorized in my memory from all the times I had traveled it. I guess that's the advantage of having photographic memory. But it's also a disadvantage because I remember perfectly every single moment I've shared with her, moments that I'm not supposed to have so vivid.

The so-called power of Diana Wagner, I suppose.

Her face, her smile, her voice... everything seemed to have moved into my mind with no intention of leaving for a long time, and I hated it immensely because I felt an indescribable emotion when I saw her. But at the same time, the confusion was huge because I couldn't understand what role her presence was playing in my life. Add to that, the fact that I felt like a complete idiot for Hanna, who deserved none of this, no matter how many scenes of jealousy she made or how much insecurity she emanated; after all, I understood her—I behaved like a Neanderthal on many occasions when I saw her classmates too close.

Britta was by my side, delivering a speech that my mind didn't seem to grasp because it was already working hard, thinking about the intern.

"Seb, are you listening to me?"

The poker face she threw at me when she seemed to realize I wasn't listening was indescribable. I just nodded quickly.

"Why are you so concerned about Wagner?" she asked, cutting the tension that had formed between us.

My hands turned into a fist automatically, my knuckles turning a shade of red that even worried me.

"I don't know," I admitted, looking at her briefly before returning my gaze to the city's buildings. "Since we said goodbye, I haven't been able to stop thinking about her..."

"It's normal to have feelings for other people," she interrupted, not giving me the opportunity to continue explaining myself. "But you have to know perfectly well what you want and, more importantly, who you want."

If my mind was a whirlwind, after her words, it was even more so. Why was it impossible for me to forget, even for a few months, about Diana? But that's not all: most importantly, I didn't know why everything I did with Hanna or everything I wanted to say to her, I wanted to say to the adopted Barcelona girl. I felt like I was somehow being unfaithful to her.

My public relations continued talking, only sending me another small thread of everything she was saying, repeating as if it were a mantra that I had to take into account what having Di on our team would mean. She even emphasized strongly that, before making a hasty decision, I should think with my brain and not with my penis.

It seemed she didn't know me, and that's what made me dislike her in moments like these.

"Vettel, come here!"

As soon as we stepped into that meeting room in one of Berlin's most luxurious hotels, Christian opened his arms for a hug, setting aside the formalities I had seen from him until then. Marko was in one of the corners, holding a folder with the team logo in his hands, completely still and with a distant look, although I knew he was analyzing everything I said or did; I could see him occasionally commenting to Guillaume Rocquelin, who would be my new race engineer, better known as Rocky, while I talked to Horner about what I had done during the only free week I had had so far.

When Helmut finally deigned to greet me, I stood straight as a candle, just as I did in school whenever I was reprimanded. No jokes for now; Roeske had already warned me about that. I was too young to be out of a job.

"I'm glad to see you again, Sebastian," he said, offering a handshake that I gladly accepted. God, he was so sweaty. "We're delighted to have you here. Let me introduce you to Rocky," he turned to the man next to him, who already had a big smile on his face, "from now on, if you decide to sign the contract, he'll be your race engineer at Red Bull."

How could I not sign the contract? I wanted my favorite girl from the paddock to be with me wherever I went. I didn't want to be out of a job.

Damn it, thinking about Diana again.

"Pleasure, Sebastian," the engineer said, giving me a hug that left me completely out of place. "I'm thrilled that we'll be working together from now on. I know you have potential."

"Thank you."

I couldn't say more because, even before finishing the word, Marko was already demanding that I sit next to Britta, who already had an impressive pile of papers in front of her. I did that, also asking her with my gaze what it was; she didn't answer, of course, but threw another one of her many phrases at me with her eyes that I knew perfectly. In this case, it could be something like "stop being a teenage jerk and focus on being an adult for once."

"All right, Sebastian," Helmut Marko began to say, "you already know well what the contract entails because, if I recall correctly, we publicly confirmed your entry into the team at the German Grand Prix this year, 2008," I nodded, "and we agreed that you would replace Coulthard about two months earlier, in May," I affirmed again, "so you must have read the contract around February or March, but it was confidential."

God, how annoying.

"Exactly."

"Well," he continued, making me more nervous. I don't know how he could live from the calm he always carried with him, "let's review the terms and everything you'll be facing for the next six years."

"The contract will last, as I've already mentioned, six years, from 2009 to 2014, with the possibility of extending it, which will allow us to establish a solid relationship with you and, especially, to develop your potential to the fullest. You already know well that during this time, you will be the number one pilot, the most important member of the team, without intending to belittle Webber," he clarified, although I knew it was an excuse as thin as a demon. "This will give you the opportunity to demonstrate what you are capable of and, above all, achieve what we believe you desire most: accumulating podiums, victories, and even winning a championship or two. Regarding responsibilities," he changed the subject to one that seemed infinitely more boring to me, "we only expect you to integrate into the team and contribute both to the development of the car and to race strategies," he said, looking at the engineer beside him, "alongside Guillaume. We're not just looking for the best driver for the coming seasons, nor the fastest, but someone who can provide the necessary feedback to make us a rocket."

"And how much are you going to pay him?" Britta impatiently wanted to know, eliciting a smile from me that didn't amuse the company owner as much. "I believe that's what my client is most interested in and what we haven't discussed yet, I'm afraid."

For those reasons, I knew I couldn't easily let this woman slip away.

"He'll have a base salary and, from there, bonuses based on the results he achieves, especially if they're P1," explained the older man, earning mere murmurs from Britta. "But don't worry about that, Roeske, we'll provide everything necessary in terms of facilities, personnel, and resources so that your client, as you've called him, walks away satisfied every year."

"And would that be all?"

"Don't play dumb, woman," now Christian was speaking, whom I both loved and hated in equal measure. "You read the contract even before Sebastian did."

The expression she made seemed like she wanted the ground to swallow her. I knew nothing about her knowing what would be in the contract before I did... Should I be worried, or should I be calm because that was her job?

"Do you have any questions or concerns about the contract?" Horner asked with interest. "We want you to have everything clear before you sign anything. If you regret something, you can tell us with complete sincerity, you know you're the new star and we want you to feel at home."

Britta's gazes were penetrating me even before I knew she was looking at me because I knew what she was going to ask. Was it the best decision? Probably not, but sometimes the heart wants what it wants and mine, in those moments, wanted to do everything possible for Diana Wagner to have the opportunity to show the world what she was capable of. The woman looked at me, making faces so that I wouldn't say anything of what she knew as well as I did that I was going to end up saying.

"Yes," I said, taking a breath before explaining what had been going through my mind for so long. "I would like Diana Wagner, the Toro Rosso intern who was subordinate to Alex last season," I told them as I saw their faces turn into completely different expressions, "to be with us, on the team, doing something more than what she has done this year."

Roeske observed me impatiently, while the two big shots from Red Bull exchanged somewhat uncomfortable looks. The engineer simply remained silent, watching the other three as much as I was.

"Why would you like this Diana to join us, Sebastian?" Helmut wanted to know, which seemed very odd to me.

"I know what she's capable of," I began, "but since she's not given a chance to demonstrate her talent, it's impossible for you to see it. Each and every one of us, myself included, has underestimated her at some point because she's a woman and inexperienced, when all she's doing is fighting to learn, carve out a place for herself, and above all, try to be the best at what she knows could be her future profession," I declared with a tone increasingly angry from the rage contained within me. I had to learn to control it as my mother had told me so many times, but it was impossible in cases like this.

Christian Horner and Helmut Marko glanced at each other again, but unlike before, now they seemed to have a clear decision, and it didn't give me a good feeling. Before they could say anything, Britta interrupted them, showing no consideration for how much I disliked talking about my personal life in public:

"Sebastian..." she commented, knowing perfectly well the doubts that had been plaguing my mind for so long, "don't act like Diana is Hanna. Don't do this out of pity because it will end very badly."

I couldn't say anything because I knew she was right. Britta Roeske once again had bloody well hit the nail on the head, and I couldn't take it away from her. Her words echoed in my mind constantly, along with every single conversation we had had on the subject. I had a serious problem, and making another impulsive decision wasn't the best way to act.

But I did it. I ended up doing it for that bright-eyed girl whose eyes turned dark every time they trampled on her, threatened her, insulted her, or suggested she do another job than the one she was there to do, among thousands of other words and gestures that surely made her feel like crap in the area of her life that stood out the most; surely Toro Rosso hadn't selected her from thousands of candidates if they hadn't seen the potential she had. I wasn't the only one who could think that.

"This has nothing to do with me feeling sorry for Diana or not," I tried to calm my anger, "but these are professional matters that I would like to address because, just as something, I don't know what, was seen in me to run for this team, I also see that this girl can succeed when given the opportunity to do so," I turned to Helmut eagerly, and I swore his eyes began to penetrate him like no one had ever done before: “You are the ones who claim to have a young team. Don't you think it would be good to have a more rejuvenated vision of engineering, to learn from each other? No offense, man," I ended up looking at my engineer.

I could feel the doubts of everyone present, but there had come a point where I didn't care anymore: I was determined to fight for what I believed was right, regardless of the consequences that all this fuss I had created based on a slight obsession with a colleague might bring.

"Seb, please," the blonde replied authoritatively, but at the same time with affection as she looked at me with concern, "take things slowly. You're not thinking clearly, your feelings are doing it for you."

"No, Britta, I'm thinking very clearly," I replied firmly. "I can't turn my back on someone who has passion and potential for this sport, and that was clearly seen with the victory I achieved in Monza because she was the one who designed the strategy since Alex decided to leave after psychologically abusing her."

Shit, I had gone too far revealing details, but I didn't care because their faces, which had been completely impressed, except for Roeske's, were the sign that made me affirm that I had made the right decision.

"Diana was the one who prepared it?" Rocky wanted to know, and I nodded. He was the most surprised person in the room, and that gave me a little hope.

"If it hadn't been for her, I probably wouldn't have finished the race."

Everyone in the room was even more surprised. I don't blame them, I was too at the time, but I was bored: I needed Diana Wagner to surprise me even more.

"To be honest, we had no intention of continuing to trust Miss Wagner for the next season," Helmut Marko confessed, and my heart began to race. What if, after all, I had messed up even more? “To be honest, the internship program we set up turned out to be much worse than initially thought. If you are so determined for this girl to join the team, then we will establish some conditions for her to join," announced the man, "and if she doesn't meet expectations, she will be expelled immediately."

Marko's voice was firm, but behind it, I knew he wanted to test Di and me for what I had proposed. His look conveyed to me that, as much as he trusted that I could make Red Bull Racing shine, he didn't trust the opinion of a twenty-one-year-old kid; the same could be said of Horner, Rocky, and Britta, who probably weren't giving credit to the kind of debate the team advisor and I were having.

"Agreed," Roeske sighed beside me and crossed her arms. I knew she was angry and that she would scold me as soon as we left there, but I didn't care. WI don't know what Diana will think of all this, but I'm sure she's more than willing to prove more than she's worth; just as I know she won't disappoint you."

"I hope your words are true, Vettel. You'd better not do this because you have some kind of fling with the girl, because if you mess up, she'll be out on the street with you right behind her."

My lungs seemed to have disappeared because at that moment I didn't feel the air flowing through my body. Her look made me feel like a lost child, with no one to help him and not knowing where to go. I had defended Diana tooth and nail and didn't regret it; in fact, I would do it as many times as necessary, but... was it just because of the innate talent I had seen in her from the very beginning?

I had to prove at all costs from March onwards that everything I had said had been from a professional point of view, and emphasizing that there was no future life that we planned to have together because I had Hanna for that.

Diana's and my future, our future, was now more at stake than ever, and if we failed the Austrians, we would fail ourselves more than anyone else.

However, no matter how much I tried to calm my mind and forget them, Christian Horner's words stuck to me like darts because I knew that, deep down, I had just brought out a truth that I myself wasn't ready to face yet.

[...]

2008 December 25th

Barcelona, Spain

The dreaded Christmas Eve had arrived, marking the beginning of another ridiculous Christmas at the Wagner family home. Since Rosalie's departure, those festive times filled with music, food, gifts, and, especially, love, had turned into a routine that had to be celebrated no matter what in Bernhard's eyes; for Diana, however, it was quite the opposite.

After her mother's suicide, the girl had done everything in her power, without anyone's help, to ensure that Christmas wouldn't be ruined for her six-year-old sister. The redhead was in charge of preparing the decorations during the famous December festivities celebrated in Spain from the sixth to the eighth of December, where she set up the Christmas tree and various other ornaments. Also, well in advance of the 24th, she prepared a dinner different from the usual with care, trying to make it more elaborate as the years went by; and she even bought gifts, saving money for months thanks to sporadic jobs that she managed to get.

All of this took a lot of effort, and sometimes she thought about not doing anything to avoid conflicts with her father during those two weeks, but the desire to keep the excitement alive in little Amelie was what ultimately won.

That year, thanks to her salary as an intern, she had been able to exceed her initial budget. The food was of better quality, and she had even made enough to eat in the days to come. At the same time, there were more gifts for the youngest of the house, and even for their father, who always rejected any presents they gave him.

Although the little one was now 12 years old, she still had as much excitement for Christmas as they did when they were a normal family, thanks to the efforts of her older sister.

"Amelie, come get the foie grass and grab a beer for dad!"

The girl quickly obeyed her elder sister's orders, taking what she had been told and bringing it to the head of the household. As she watched her sister walk away and finished finalizing the details of the main dish, she felt her mobile phone vibrate in her pocket.

She took out the device and saw messages from Sebastian. To say that her heart didn't skip a beat would be lying to herself.

It was Sebastian, telling her that they would see each other on February 9th in Jerez. That she was going to continue in Formula 1, now as a Red Bull intern. With him.

"Diana, come to dinner now!"

As soon as she heard the voices in her native language from her father, she quickly tucked her phone into her pocket and returned to the living room, carrying a tray with the roast she had been preparing all day. Upon crossing the door, she saw her father sitting in his armchair watching the Christmas programs on Spanish Television, trying to hum along to a few carols he liked with his limited level of Spanish. Diana placed the food in the center of the table and sat to the right of her sister, leaving Bernhard at the head of the table.

At that moment, Sebastian Vettel had given her the best Christmas gift she had received, and the only good news that would resonate in the Wagner family unit for quite some time.

"Dad, Amelie..." the girl began, unable to hide her excitement. Barely a few minutes had passed since she had received the messages from the German, and maybe she should inquire a bit more in case it was a joke, but she couldn't wait. "Sebastian sent me a message a couple of minutes ago saying they have decided to promote me to Red Bull alongside him to be his track engineer's assistant."

The father's face lit up, something Diana hadn't seen for quite some time. Her younger sister jumped out of her chair and bounced around, completely euphoric, rushing to hug her instantly.

"What do you mean, an engineer?" Bernhard wanted to know, taking a sip from his beer can and trying not to choke on what seemed to be excitement. "Does that mean you won't be an intern anymore?"

Diana nodded, shaking her head faithfully. "That seems to be the case. In the end, getting fired by the other team seems to have worked out."

"By the way, Diana," the man said again, steering the conversation to a completely different topic, "I'd like to tell you and Ame something."

The sisters' faces paled a bit, not knowing what their father might be referring to. He straightened up in his seat and looked them directly in the face. Tears began to well up in his eyes, and the redhead had a premonition that what would come out of the mouth of the man who gave her life would not be good.

"I've been facing some health issues lately," he announced. "Your sister knows that I've been to the doctor more times than I'd like to count," he recounted, looking at the younger one, who agreed with her father, "and if we haven't told you anything, it's because we didn't want you to abandon the season for a father with less and less time left."

Diana, who was drinking Coke, spat out the soda she had in her mouth, staining her burgundy-colored dress a shade of brown. Amelie was in shock, and her gaze began to alternate between her father and her sister.

"Excuse me?"

The words that came out of the adult's mouth couldn't be true.

"The doctors have diagnosed me with ALS, and besides having a late diagnosis, it seems to be progressing faster than expected."

That was impossible. She couldn't lose her father too.

Tears began to form in the girl's eyes as she felt arms wrap tightly around her waist. The muffled sobs of her younger sister on Christmas Eve were the last thing she expected. Trying to process the news, Diana could only blame herself for not being there with her father, thinking if she had been, none of this would be happening.

"I know this is difficult...," Bernhard continued, his voice trembling slightly, "but I want you to know that I'm taking the appropriate measures, listening to the experts, and I'll be joining palliative care in the coming days."

"What's palliative care, Diana?"

Ignoring her sister's question, Diana carefully pushed her away. She couldn't believe it; this couldn't be happening to her.

"Does what Dad said mean he's going to die, Didi?" the girl insisted again, this time tugging forcefully at her dress sleeves.

Diana couldn't deny her sister, not because she wanted to deny her the truth, but because at that moment, she couldn't say anything. Faced with her sister's deafening silence and her father's growing anxiety, Amelie opted to leave the room in tears, ignoring what might happen next in the living room.

"Hey, Dad..." Wagner tried to say, but it was completely impossible. That day felt like a dream, and neither what Vettel nor his father had said was true.

It was difficult for her to articulate words now that she was alone with someone who would leave her sooner rather than later. She tried to stay calm to maintain the family's composure because if it wasn't her, no one else would. Inside, her body was a bundle of nerves, on the verge of collapse. She wanted to scream, to hit something, and above all, to die in those moments so she wouldn't have to watch her father die.

She couldn't become an orphan at her young age of twenty.

Who would walk her down the aisle if she ever got married to someone who loved her enough, as her father had promised her so many times?

Especially that question, and a thousand more, began to swirl in her mind, only causing her to sink deeper into her newly found misery.

"You need help in these moments. If that means I have to leave Formula 1, don't worry," she managed to articulate at last, drawing strength from where she didn't have it.

Bernhard jumped up as best he could. He wasn't going to let his daughter give up the dream she had been waiting to achieve for so long, and for which she had fought for years.

"Don't you dare say that, young lady!" he exclaimed with an authoritative yet sweet tone. "Listen to me," he continued, trying to capture the girl's attention. "When I'm no longer here, I want to see you succeed, do you understand? I want to see you at the top, from the top," his eyes turned to the ceiling of the house, knowing Diana would understand where he was going with this. "I want, when you manage to stand alongside the driver you direct and collect a world title, to look up and be aware that I'm watching you from a better place."

"I can't bear the thought of losing you, Dad," the young woman was sobbing, unable to control her tears. "Saying goodbye to you too, in such a short time, isn't fair... Six years ago it was mom, and now you."

"Diana Wagner, I want you to know that wherever you are, you will always find me in the stars," the man gently took his daughter's face in his hands, wiping away the tears that covered her cheeks. "You were born for this, so don't let my situation make you abandon everything you're fighting for."

"But, Dad..."

"I know this is very difficult, little one, but I want you to know that I am very proud of you and the woman you have become," he paused to catch his breath due to the difficulty he had with it, "and the woman you will surely continue to become. I know your mother would be very proud of you too."

Tears flowed freely again, and the sobs increased. Diana hugged her father tightly and wished to die right there with him.

"I don't know how I'll be able to do it without you," she revealed, leaving the man stunned. "It hurts to think of losing you."

"Well then, don't," he declared.

Immediately, Bernhard sat back on the couch and patted his lap, indicating to his daughter to sit on it. Despite hesitating for a moment due to her father's well-known delicate health condition, Diana eventually complied, feeling like she was five years old again.

"You know? I like this Sebastian guy you've talked so much about. I don't think I've ever told you," the man said.

The girl felt a slight blush beginning to creep onto her cheeks. Diana had shared everything she had experienced with Sebastian day and night with her family, but they had never reached the point where they questioned whether she had a slight crush on the German.

"Do you think I'll ever get to meet him?" the brunette continued to insist.

The redhead knew that question would come up at some point, but not minutes after her father had told her and her sister that he was dying and that there was nothing to be done for him except to wait for his life to fade away.

"Of course, Dad. You'll get along great, I'm sure," she lied, knowing it would be very difficult for that to happen.

"And will he like me enough to have him as a son-in-law?"

Diana laughed. Her father always had to match her up with someone, regardless of what happened between them.

"Sebastian is just my friend, Dad," the redhead clarified, getting off her father's lap. "Plus, I'm not sure he would ever come to love me in the future as anything more than... his friend. Well, I'm not even sure about us being friends, to be honest," she corrected herself.

She knew Bernhard was putting on all this show to calm her down and make her forget the devastating news that not only ruined their holidays but possibly their lives; but at the same time, a fervent desire arose in her to tell him the whole truth about how she had felt in recent months with the blue-eyed German who had been so kind to her, unlike many others.

Tears welled up in Diana's eyes again when she realized that her father might never know that she was slowly but earnestly falling in love with Sebastian Vettel, and that there was nothing she wished more at that moment than for him to meet the man she wanted to be her future son-in-law.

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fumpkins · 2 years

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‘We can’t eat a new road’: Fears over the true cost of Exxon’s oil bonanza in Guyana

This story was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Anette Arjoon is not anti-oil. The marine conservationist calls the vast new oil fields off Guyana’s coast a “blessing” that will earn billions of dollars for one of the poorest countries in the Caribbean, even as she recognizes that pulling yet more fossil fuel from the ground will deepen the climate crisis.

But Arjoon does have a problem with who is drilling the oil. She has seen firsthand what happens when the United States’ largest petroleum company descends on a small country bearing the promise of riches.

As ExxonMobil began drilling a vast oilfield offshore two years ago, the Guyanese government called in the Amerindian marine conservationist to help monitor the environmental impact of what is expected to become the company’s biggest source of petroleum by 2025, outpacing even its wells sprawled across Texas.

Arjoon, who leads the Guyana Marine Conservation Society, was not impressed. In time she grew to believe that Exxon was indifferent to the dangers of an oil spill to the coast and rivers of one of the best preserved parts of the Amazon biome, and of misleading her about its preparations to deal with such a disaster. She found the company’s behavior “thuggish and disrespectful.”

“I can only judge Exxon by my direct and deeply personal relationship with them so far. They are not an honorable company,” Arjoon says.

Suspicion about the oil firm does not stop with environmentalists. Guyanese politicians have accused Exxon of fleecing the country of billions of dollars by bouncing an ill-experienced government into a contract that pays far less than other countries earn from their oil.

Then there is the pressing question of the future of the planet. With Guyana increasingly threatened by rising sea levels, Arjoon is conscious of the impact of Exxon opening a huge oilfield at a time when governments are being warned there can be no new oil or gas fields or coal mines if the world is to reach net zero by 2050.

Fishing boats docked at Liliendaal, Georgetown. Some fishers say vibrations from oil exploration are driving away the fish and shrimp. Fidal Bassier / The Guardian

Liza-1 project, in the prolific Greater Liza area, was the first stage to begin production, with Liza-2 coming on line this year. The Greater Turbot discovery was announced in 2017, but is still not yet in production. Both areas are identified in research to be published this month into the world’s biggest so-called carbon bombs – gigantic fossil fuel projects that would each result in at least one billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions over their lifetimes. Together they would contribute more than 2.1 billion tons of CO2 emissions over the course of the project, according to the study, which identifies 195 similar oil and gas mega developments around the world. The Center for International Environmental Law has also warned Exxon’s drilling and gas flaring “may turn Guyana from carbon sink to carbon bomb.”

Yet for all that, Arjoon is glad to see the oil flowing because right now, she says, Guyana does not have any other way forward. “As an environmentalist with 35 years of experience in coastal communities through the length and breadth of Guyana, I see extreme poverty. Oil gives us a way out of that.”

This drilling bonanza promises to earn Guyana roughly $150 billion over the life of the oilfields, estimated at 30 years. For good or ill, that represents a huge change in fortune for a country of 800,000 people, where more than 40 percent live below the poverty line of $5.50 a day.

“All of those that have exploited their oil resources to develop their countries should not be telling Guyana ‘leave your oil in the ground’,” Arjoon says.

“Norway is always used as the best example of a nation that utilizes oil, and it is said that they have the best model for natural resources. So why should Guyana be any different? Who is to say that little Guyana, which has been blessed with so much abundant resources including oil, should not take advantage?”

Others agree. There is a bittersweet sense that Guyana needs to hurry and get the oil out of the ground if it does not want to miss the fossil fuel party.

After years of failed attempts, Exxon made one of the biggest offshore crude discoveries of recent times when it struck oil off Guyana’s coast in 2015. Four years later, the then president, David Granger, proclaimed a public holiday, National Petroleum Day, to celebrate the first oil flowing from its wells. “Guyana’s future is brighter with the beginning of first oil,” he said in a speech to the nation. “The good life for everyone beckons.”

The government promised to set up a sovereign wealth fund, similar to Norway’s, to transform the country with investments in roads, education, and hospitals. Fossil fuel money is also being earmarked to develop renewable energy sources such as solar and hydroelectric for when the oil runs out, an irony not lost on Arjoon and others. There has even been talk of a $5,000 cash handout to every citizen, a small fortune for many Guyanese.

Yet the hopes pinned on oil are tempered by Guyana’s divisive politics, shaped by tensions between the descendants of enslaved Africans and Indian indentured laborers, and concerns about official corruption.

For some Guyanese, their first encounters with Exxon have left them skeptical of the promises. A short drive east of the capital, Georgetown, George Jagmohan used to run seven fishing boats. He might be less angry about selling them off one by one since the oil drilling began if he believed in the declarations of a golden dawn for Guyana.

George Jagmohan: ‘People aren’t stupid. I’ve been fishing for 40 years and it’s not been like this before. Fidal Bassier / The Guardian

“Since the drilling started, the fish have gone. It’s the blasting and vibrations,” says Jagmohan, sitting on a sea wall next to a clutch of idle boats. “In another couple of years it will be finished. It never used to happen. People aren’t stupid. I’ve been fishing for 40 years and it’s not been like this before.”

A few miles further up the coast, Steve Outar says his catches are down by about 80 percent but he has not laid up any of his four boats because he feels a responsibility to the crews.

“The fish production in neighboring Suriname and Venezuela is still 100 percent, so why is it falling here? Because the vibrations are driving the fish and shrimp away. Some of my boats spend 18 days at sea but still don’t catch enough fish,” he says as he cleans red snapper ready for processing as dried fish for shipment to China.

“Each boat has a captain and six men. That’s 28 crew, and each of the crew has a family to support. If they don’t catch, they get nothing. If we’re out of business, they are out of bread.”

Arjoon says overfishing and other factors have played a part in the decline, but she agrees that “the massive seismics that were done in the early stages did have an impact on marine life, especially marine mammals. That was when you had an unprecedented amount of strandings of sperm whales.”

But she says that when she tried to talk to Exxon about the timings of seismic explosions, to see if they coincided with the stranding of whales, she was fobbed off.

And, like others, Arjoon fears not enough has been done in case of a spill that could devastate this coast. “Exxon’s modeling showed an unmitigated spill could impact the north-western part of the Shell beach protected area all the way to the Orinoco delta. What lies in between is a very special place, especially because that is where the largest national repository of blue carbon exists, at a time when our low-carbon development strategy has been expanded,” she says.

Vessels carrying supplies for an offshore oil platform operated by ExxonMobil at a wharf on the Demerara River, south of Georgetown. Luc Cohen / Reuters via The Guardian

The government says there is no evidence Exxon is responsible for reduced catches and notes that Guyana’s overall fish production has increased by more than 10 percent from 2020, and exports for the fisheries sector have surpassed $4 billion Guyanese dollars. And Exxon said its “first priority for every project is to put in place mitigations and processes that help to prevent adverse events by utilizing the best technologies, equipment and people in our operations.”

“The Bank of Guyana summarizes landing quantities in their annual reports on Guyana’s sector economies; according to the data provided in those reports, fluctuations in the quantity of finfish and shrimp landings have been observed for many years. Oil and gas activities have not been included as potential factors.”

“We work diligently to avoid any spills. But should one occur, we are prepared to mitigate and resolve it as quickly and comprehensively as possible,” the company states.

But Outar waves away officials’ claims, saying that is not the experience of local fishers. And he does not have much faith that the promises made for oil will make up for the decline in fishing. “Oil isn’t going to help. It can make the country rich but the people won’t be better off. We’ve still got to live day to day. We can’t eat a new road,” he says.

Jahmohan is blunter. “Are you fucking crazy or what? It will all end up in the politicians’ pockets. They’ll be sitting there drinking champagne and whisky,” he says. “They told us oil will make us rich. We’ve got gold, diamonds, sugar in this country. We should be rich from that but we’re not. So why will oil be different?”

Those concerns are more widely shared. Frederick Collins, the head of the anti-corruption organization Transparency International Guyana, warned that oil “can end up being more of curse than a blessing.” He points to the behavior of big oil in the Niger delta, where millions of people live with flaring and spills but see few benefits.

Others look to the experience of Equatorial Guinea, which enjoyed an oil bonanza that in less than a decade transformed it from one of the world’s poorest countries to the highest per capita income in Africa by 2008. But Human Rights Watch describes Equatorial Guinea’s oil wealth as “squandered and stolen” by the government, resulting in declines in healthcare and access to education.

Vincent Adams, the former head of Guyana’s Environmental Protection Agency, says that should serve as a warning to Guyana as payments to its oil fund soar to nearly one billion dollars this year, permitting the government to increase its budget by 44 percent.

“It’s not about the oil, it’s about how you govern the country and how you govern the management of the oil industry. Oil is not going to be around for more than maybe 30 years. So the governance part of it is to make sure that we invest now so there will be a sustainable economy after oil is gone to attract foreign direct investment, to lay the groundwork in education, infrastructure, national security, health, agriculture,” he says.

“We are definitely not prepared for it. And the biggest frustration is that the government just does not understand what it takes to be prepared, and what it takes to govern under these circumstances to make the country a better country.”

Confidence has also been undercut by the widely held belief that Exxon bounced a government lacking in expertise and desperate for money into a contract that serves the country badly, with the global human rights group Global Witness estimating that Guyana will earn about $50 billion less than it would have done under a more common type of agreement.

A Guardian/Floodlight investigation last year found grave concern among experts about the contract signed by the Guyanese government. Adams said he warned the government against the contract but it was afraid Exxon would walk away.

The deal allows Exxon to deduct up to 75 percent of the earnings from its Guyanese wells as costs before the balance is split between the government and the company. It recently presented Guyana with a bill of more than $9 billion for those costs, which the government admits it does not have the resources to audit.

The offices of Guyana’s president and natural resources minister did not respond to requests for an interview.

According to Exxon, “the terms of the contracts are competitive with other agreements signed in countries at a similar resource-development phase.” It added: “Guyana’s resources have been brought on line at a record pace for the industry, resulting in significant financial benefits for the government and its industry partners.”

The project, after all, is steaming ahead. Guyana’s vice-president, Bharrat Jagdeo, played a leading role in developing a low-carbon strategy and protecting the rainforest but is pushing for as much oil as fast as possible, telling a recent conference: “Because there is this climate change imperative to decarbonise, our policy is to get as much oil out of the ground as quickly as possible. It sounds a bit harsh for those who think you should be environmentally sound, but that is the reality of it.”

Arjoon will be watching closely. She calls the gap between Exxon’s claims to prioritize environmental protection and the reality a “disgraceful deficit,” adding: “I am not unaware that Exxon is here to ensure the best returns to their shareholders.

“Exxon is not here because they care about Guyana. But that does not mean they can treat us as an uneducated nation. We don’t drink the Kool-Aid so easily.”

This story was originally published by Livescience.Tech with the headline ‘We can’t eat a new road’: Fears over the true cost of Exxon’s oil bonanza in Guyana on May 21, 2022.

New post published on: https://livescience.tech/2022/05/22/we-cant-eat-a-new-road-fears-over-the-true-cost-of-exxons-oil-bonanza-in-guyana/

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antiporn-activist · 3 years

Text

The Children of Pornhub

Why does Canada allow this company to profit off videos of exploitation and assault?

By Nicholas Kristof, Opinion Columnist, Dec. 4, 2020, New York Times

This article contains descriptions of sexual assault. It’s also really long.

Pornhub prides itself on being the cheery, winking face of naughty, the website that buys a billboard in Times Square and provides snow plows to clear Boston streets. It donates to organizations fighting for racial equality and offers steamy content free to get people through Covid-19 shutdowns.

Yet there’s another side of the company: Its site is infested with rape videos. It monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags. A search for “girls under18” (no space) or “14yo” leads in each case to more than 100,000 videos. Most aren’t of children being assaulted, but too many are.

After a 15-year-old girl went missing in Florida, her mother found her on Pornhub — in 58 sex videos. Sexual assaults on a 14-year-old California girl were posted on Pornhub and were reported to the authorities not by the company but by a classmate who saw the videos. In each case, offenders were arrested for the assaults, but Pornhub escaped responsibility for sharing the videos and profiting from them.

Pornhub is like YouTube in that it allows members of the public to post their own videos. A great majority of the 6.8 million new videos posted on the site each year probably involve consenting adults, but many depict child abuse and nonconsensual violence. Because it’s impossible to be sure whether a youth in a video is 14 or 18, neither Pornhub nor anyone else has a clear idea of how much content is illegal.

Unlike YouTube, Pornhub allows these videos to be downloaded directly from its website. So even if a rape video is removed at the request of the authorities, it may already be too late: The video lives on as it is shared with others or uploaded again and again.

“Pornhub became my trafficker,” a woman named Cali told me. She says she was adopted in the United States from China and then trafficked by her adoptive family and forced to appear in pornographic videos beginning when she was 9. Some videos of her being abused ended up on Pornhub and regularly reappear there, she said.

“I’m still getting sold, even though I’m five years out of that life,” Cali said. Now 23, she is studying in a university and hoping to become a lawyer — but those old videos hang over her.

“I may never be able to get away from this,” she said. “I may be 40 with eight kids, and people are still masturbating to my photos.”

“You type ‘Young Asian’ and you can probably find me,” she added.

Actually, maybe not. Pornhub recently was offering 26,000 videos in response to that search. That doesn’t count videos that show up under “related searches” that Pornhub suggests, including “young tiny teen,” “extra small petite teen,” “tiny Asian teen” or just “young girl.” Nor does it necessarily count videos on a Pornhub channel called “exploited teen Asia.”

I came across many videos on Pornhub that were recordings of assaults on unconscious women and girls. The rapists would open the eyelids of the victims and touch their eyeballs to show that they were nonresponsive.

Pornhub profited this fall from a video of a naked woman being tortured by a gang of men in China. It is monetizing video compilations with titles like “Screaming Teen,” “Degraded Teen” and “Extreme Choking.” Look at a choking video and it may suggest also searching for “She Can’t Breathe.”

It should be possible to be sex positive and Pornhub negative.

Pornhub declined to make executives available on the record, but it provided a statement. “Pornhub is unequivocally committed to combating child sexual abuse material, and has instituted a comprehensive, industry-leading trust and safety policy to identify and eradicate illegal material from our community,” it said. Pornhub added that any assertion that the company allows child videos on the site “is irresponsible and flagrantly untrue.”

II.

At 14, Serena K. Fleites was an A student in Bakersfield, Calif., who had never made out with a boy. But in the eighth grade she developed a crush on a boy a year older, and he asked her to take a naked video of herself. She sent it to him, and this changed her life.

He asked for another, then another; she was nervous but flattered. “That’s when I started getting strange looks in school,” she remembered. He had shared the videos with other boys, and someone posted them on Pornhub.

Fleites’s world imploded. It’s tough enough to be 14 without having your classmates entertain themselves by looking at you naked, and then mocking you as a slut. “People were texting me, if I didn’t send them a video, they were going to send them to my mom,” she said.

The boy was suspended, but Fleites began skipping class because she couldn’t bear the shame. Her mother persuaded Pornhub to remove the videos, and Fleites switched schools. But rumors reached the new school, and soon the videos were uploaded again to Pornhub and other websites.

Fleites quarreled with her mother and began cutting herself. Then one day she went to the medicine cabinet and took every antidepressant pill she could find.

Three days later, she woke up in the hospital, frustrated to be still alive. Next she hanged herself in the bathroom; her little sister found her, and medics revived her.

As Fleites spiraled downward, a friend introduced her to meth and opioids, and she became addicted to both. She dropped out of school and became homeless.

At 16, she advertised on Craigslist and began selling naked photos and videos of herself. It was a way to make a bit of money, and maybe also a way to punish herself. She thought, “I’m not worth anything any more because everybody has already seen my body,” she told me.

Those videos also ended up on Pornhub. Fleites would ask that they be removed. They usually would be, she says — but then would be uploaded again. One naked video of her at 14 had 400,000 views, she says, leaving her afraid to apply for fast-food jobs for fear that someone would recognize her.

So today Fleites, 19, off drugs for a year but unemployed and traumatized, is living in her car in Bakersfield, along with three dogs that have proved more loyal and loving than the human species. She dreams of becoming a vet technician but isn’t sure how to get there. “It’s kind of hard to go to school when you’re living in a car with dogs,” she said.

“I was dumb,” she acknowledged, noting that she had never imagined that the videos could be shared online. “It was one small thing that a teenager does, and it’s crazy how it turns into something so much bigger.

“A whole life can be changed because of one little mistake.”

III.

The problem goes far beyond one company. Indeed, a rival of Pornhub, XVideos, which arguably has even fewer scruples, may attract more visitors. Depictions of child abuse also appear on mainstream sites like Twitter, Reddit and Facebook. And Google supports the business models of companies that thrive on child molestation.

Google returns 920 million videos on a search for “young porn.” Top hits include a video of a naked “very young teen” engaging in sex acts on XVideo along with a video on Pornhub whose title is unprintable here.

I asked the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to compile the number of images, videos and other content related to child sexual exploitation reported to it each year. In 2015, it received reports of 6.5 million videos or other files; in 2017, 20.6 million; and in 2019, 69.2 million.

Facebook removed 12.4 million images related to child exploitation in a three-month period this year. Twitter closed 264,000 accounts in six months last year for engaging in sexual exploitation of children. By contrast, Pornhub notes that the Internet Watch Foundation, an England-based nonprofit that combats child sexual abuse imagery, reported only 118 instances of child sexual abuse imagery on its site over almost three years, seemingly a negligible figure. “Eliminating illegal content is an ongoing battle for every modern content platform, and we are committed to remaining at the forefront,” Pornhub said in its statement.

The Internet Watch Foundation couldn’t explain why its figure for Pornhub is so low. Perhaps it’s because people on Pornhub are inured to the material and unlikely to report it. But if you know what to look for, it’s possible to find hundreds of apparent child sexual abuse videos on Pornhub in 30 minutes. Pornhub has recently offered playlists with names including “less than 18,” “the best collection of young boys” and “under- - age.”

Congress and successive presidents have done almost nothing as this problem has grown. The tech world that made it possible has been mostly passive, in a defensive crouch. But pioneering reporting in 2019 by my Times colleagues has prodded Congress to begin debating competing strategies to address child exploitation.

Concerns about Pornhub are bubbling up. A petition to shut the site down has received 2.1 million signatures. Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, called on the Justice Department to investigate Pornhub. PayPal cut off services for the company, and credit card companies have been asked to do the same. An organization called Traffickinghub, led by an activist named Laila Mickelwait, documents abuses and calls for the site to be shut down. Twenty members of Canada’s Parliament have called on their government to crack down on Pornhub, which is effectively based in Montreal.

“They made money off my pain and suffering,” an 18-year-old woman named Taylor told me. A boyfriend secretly made a video of her performing a sex act when she was 14, and it ended up on Pornhub, the police confirmed. “I went to school the next day and everybody was looking at their phones and me as I walked down the hall,” she added, weeping as she spoke. “They were laughing.”

Taylor said she has twice attempted suicide because of the humiliation and trauma. Like others quoted here, she agreed to tell her story and help document it because she thought it might help other girls avoid suffering as she did.

IV.

Pornhub is owned by Mindgeek, a private pornography conglomerate with more than 100 websites, production companies and brands. Its sites include Redtube, Youporn, XTube, SpankWire, ExtremeTube, Men.com, My Dirty Hobby, Thumbzilla, PornMD, Brazzers and GayTube. There are other major players in porn outside the Mindgeek umbrella, most notably XHamster and XVideos, but Mindgeek is a porn titan. If it operated in another industry, the Justice Department could be discussing an antitrust case against it.

Pornhub and Mindgeek also stand out because of their influence. One study this year by a digital marketing company concluded that Pornhub was the technology company with the third greatest-impact on society in the 21st century, after Facebook and Google but ahead of Microsoft, Apple and Amazon.

Nominally based in Luxembourg for tax reasons, Mindgeek is a private company run from Montreal. It does not disclose who owns it, but it is led by Feras Antoon and David Tassillo, both Canadians, who declined to be interviewed.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada calls himself a feminist and has been proud of his government’s efforts to empower women worldwide. So a question for Trudeau and all Canadians: Why does Canada host a company that inflicts rape videos on the world?

Mindgeek’s moderators are charged with filtering out videos of children, but its business model profits from sex videos starring young people.

“The goal for a content moderator is to let as much content as possible go through,” a former Mindgeek employee told me. He said he believed that the top executives weren’t evil but were focused above all on maximizing revenue.

While Pornhub would not tell me how many moderators it employs, I interviewed one who said that there are about 80 worldwide who work on Mindgeek sites (by comparison, Facebook told me it has 15,000 moderators). With 1.36 million new hours of video uploaded a year to Pornhub, that means that each moderator would have to review hundreds of hours of content each week.

The moderators fast forward through videos, but it’s often difficult to assess whether a person is 14 or 18, or whether torture is real or fake. Most of the underage content involves teenagers, the moderator I spoke with said, but some comes from spy cams in toilets or changing rooms and shows children only 8 to 12.

“The job in itself is soul-destroying,” the moderator said.

Pornhub appears to be increasingly alarmed about civil or criminal liability. Lawyers are circling, and nine women sued the company in federal court after spy cam videos surfaced on Pornhub. The videos were shot in a locker room at Limestone College in South Carolina and showed women showering and changing clothes.

Executives of Pornhub appear in the past to have assumed that they enjoyed immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet platforms on which members of the public post content. But in 2018 Congress limited Section 230 so that it may not be enough to shield the company, leading Mindgeek to behave better.

It has doubled the number of moderators in the last couple of years, the moderator told me, and this year Pornhub began voluntarily reporting illegal material to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. After previously dragging its feet in removing videos of children and nonconsensual content, Pornhub now is responding more rapidly.

It has also compiled a list of banned content. I obtained a copy of this list, and it purports to bar videos with terms or themes like “rape,” “preteen,” “pedophilia” and “bestiality” (it helpfully clarifies that this “includes eels, fish, octopus, insects”). Diapers are OK “if no scatophilia.” Mutilation depends on context but “cannot depict severing parts of the body.”

So while it is now no longer possible to search on Pornhub in English using terms like “underage” or “rape,” the company hasn’t tried hard to eliminate such videos. A member called “13yoboyteen” is allowed to post videos. A search for “r*pe,” turns up 1,901 videos. “Girl with braces” turns up 1,913 videos and suggests also trying “exxxtra small teens.” A search for “13yo” generates 155,000 videos. To be clear, most aren’t of 13-year-olds, but the fact that they’re promoted with that language seems to reflect an effort to attract pedophiles.

Moreover, some videos seem at odds with the list of banned content. “Runaway Girl Gets Ultimatum, Anal or the Streets” is the title of one Pornhub video. Another user posts videos documenting sex with teenage girls as they weep, protest and cry out in pain.

While Pornhub is becoming more careful about videos of potentially litigious Americans, it remains cavalier about overseas victims. One Indonesian video is titled “Junior High School Girl After Class” and shows what appears to be a young teenager having sex. A Chinese sex video, just taken down, was labeled: “Beautiful High School Girl Is Tricked by Classmates and Taken to the Top of a Building Where She Is Insulted and Raped.”

“They’re making money off the worst moment in my life, off my body,” a Colombian teenager who asked to be called Xela, a nickname, told me. Two American men paid her when she was 16 for a sexual encounter that they filmed and then posted on Pornhub. She was one of several Pornhub survivors who told me they had thought of or attempted suicide.

In the last few days as I was completing this article, two new videos of prepubescent girls being assaulted were posted, along with a sex video of a 15-year-old girl who was suicidal after it went online. I don’t see how good-faith moderators could approve any of these videos.

“It’s always going to be online,” Nicole, a British woman who has had naked videos of herself posted and reposted on Pornhub, told me. “That’s my big fear of having kids, them seeing this.”

That’s a recurring theme among survivors: An assault eventually ends, but Pornhub renders the suffering interminable.

Naked videos of Nicole at 15 were posted on Pornhub. Now 19, she has been trying for two years to get them removed.

“Why do videos of me from when I was 15 years old and blackmailed, which is child porn, continuously [get] uploaded?” Nicole protested plaintively to Pornhub last year, in a message. “You really need a better system. … I tried to kill myself multiple times after finding myself reuploaded on your website.”

Nicole’s lawyer, Dani Pinter, says there are still at least three naked videos of Nicole at age 15 or 16 on Pornhub that they are trying to get removed.

“It’s never going to end,” Nicole said. “They’re getting so much money from our trauma.”

Pornhub has introduced software that supposedly can “fingerprint” rape videos and prevent them from being uploaded again. But Vice showed how this technology is easily circumvented on Pornhub.

One Pornhub scandal involved the Girls Do Porn production company, which recruited young women for clothed modeling gigs and then pushed them to perform in sex videos, claiming that the videos would be sold only as DVDs in other countries and would never go online. Reassured that no one would ever know, some of the women agreed — and then were shattered when the footage was aggressively marketed on Pornhub.

Girls Do Porn was prosecuted for sex trafficking and shut down. But those videos continue to surface and resurface on Pornhub; last time I checked, videos of six victims of Girls Do Porn were on Pornhub, which continues to profit from them.

One of the Girls Do Porn women I saw on Pornhub is now dead. She was murdered at 20, allegedly by an angry ex-boyfriend who is about to go on trial. I’m not disclosing her name because she should be remembered as a vibrant college athlete, and not for a sex video that represented her most mortifying moment.

VI.

So what’s the solution?

I had expected the survivors to want to shut down Pornhub and send its executives to prison. Some did, but others were more nuanced. Lydia, now 20, was trafficked as a child and had many rape videos posted on the site. “My stomach hurts all the time” from the tension, she told me, but she doesn’t want to come across as hostile to porn itself.

“I don’t want people to hear ‘No porn!’” Lydia told me. “It’s more like, ‘Stop hurting kids.’”

Susan Padron told me that she had assumed that pornography was consensual, until a boyfriend filmed her in a sex act when she was 15 and posted it on Pornhub. She has struggled since and believes that only people who have confirmed their identities should be allowed to post videos.

Jessica Shumway, who was trafficked and had a customer post a sex video on Pornhub, agrees: “They need to figure out who’s underage in the videos and that there’s consent from everybody in it.”

I asked Leo, 18, who had videos of himself posted on Pornhub when he was 14, what he suggested.

“That’s tough,” he said. “My solution would be to leave porn to professional production companies,” because they require proof of age and consent.

Right now, those companies can’t compete with mostly free sites like Pornhub and XVideos.

“Pornhub has already destroyed the business model for pay sites,” said Stoya, an adult film actress and writer. She, too, thinks all platforms — from YouTube to Pornhub — should require proof of consent to upload videos of private individuals.

Columnists are supposed to offer answers, but I struggle with solutions. If Pornhub curated videos more rigorously, the most offensive material might just move to the dark web or to websites in less regulated countries. Yet at least they would then not be normalized on a mainstream site.

More pressure and less impunity would help. We’re already seeing that limiting Section 230 immunity leads to better self-policing.

And call me a prude, but I don’t see why search engines, banks or credit card companies should bolster a company that monetizes sexual assaults on children or unconscious women. If PayPal can suspend cooperation with Pornhub, so can American Express, Mastercard and Visa.

I don’t see any neat solution. But aside from limiting immunity so that companies are incentivized to behave better, here are three steps that would help: 1.) Allow only verified users to post videos. 2.) Prohibit downloads. 3.) Increase moderation.

These measures wouldn’t kill porn or much bother consumers of it; YouTube thrives without downloads. Siri Dahl, a prominent porn star who does business with Pornhub, told me that my three proposals are “insanely reasonable.”

The world has often been oblivious to child sexual abuse, from the Catholic Church to the Boy Scouts. Too late, we prosecute individuals like Jeffrey Epstein or R. Kelly. But we should also stand up to corporations that systematically exploit children. With Pornhub, we have Jeffrey Epstein times 1,000.

#if you use pornhub you're complicit in this #sorry i don't make the rules

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esther-dot · 3 years

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If you can see that not every attempt to understand Cersei or sympathize with her qualifies as excusing her actions, can you also accept that not every attempt to understand the Hound or sympathize with him qualifies as excusing his actions? Make no mistake, there are fans who whitewash and romanticize him, but there are plenty more who simply find him interesting and can sympathize with what happened to him as a child. Yet there are so many blanket statements coming from you and your mutuals about his fans, so many posts acting like any show of compassion towards him is a personal attack on you and a disgusting attempt to romanticize one of Sansa's abusers. It's an attitude that is lacking in any nuance and is really astounding in its hypocrisy, coming as it does from defenders of Cersei, the one abuser Sansa continues to fear and hate the most even in AFFC.

You’re right that it isn’t necessarily romantization of the Hound (or any villain) to talk about what he suffered.

Someone can be abused and also be an abuser. Cersei is both. Tyrion, the Hound…they’ve suffered and they have turned around and had their own victims. This is something Martin likes to write, and there’s no problem with understanding that and caring about villains. He wants you to. I think it’s why he makes so many of them victims first. But, I think this is something the fandom has misconstrued, even if you personally haven’t. Martin is writing histories for his characters to explain why they are who they are, believe what they do, act as they do. He isn’t saying they aren’t who they are, they don’t think what they’re saying, they haven’t done what they did.

I talk about the Hound in the context of what he did to Sansa to push back against the idea that he didn’t do what he did. If you aren’t one of those who denies that he threatened Sansa’s life/intended to rape her, I have no issue with you. But, seeing as I have only written about the Hound in the context of people shipping him with Sansa, in the context of their misrepresentation of him, how they do deny his actions to facilitate the romance, it feels like you’re trying to shame me for something I never said? I am not responsible for the words of every Sansa fan/Cersei fan/Jonsa, I’m not even aware of all of them, but from what I’ve seen, 97.9% of what my circle says about the Hound is directly tied to the idea of shipping him with Sansa and refuting the misinterpretation of their scenes. The other 2.1% is probably also that, simply less directly. I have nothing to say about the Hound outside of that because my interest in him only extends to how he has impacted Sansa.

I know I am not routinely talking about his fans because I wasn’t even aware that there were active Hound fans on tumblr who don’t ship him with Sansa. So, I think you’re taking offense at something that wasn’t talking about you? I don’t deny what he experienced in his life, I don’t dwell on it either. It isn’t the case that we’re randomly hating on the guy, and I am skeptical that any of us criticized the concept of sympathizing with his trauma. I think you’ll find we are fully capable of acknowledging the tragedy of those experiences, but are adamant that it doesn’t change the fact that he goes on to become a threat to Sansa. That’s the point we harp on. Either you misunderstood what I’ve written or you’re misrepresenting me…to me… in my ask box…👀 So, I will repeat what I have previously said, just in case you misunderstood. Every Cersei fan knows she’s a villain. We don’t think sympathizing with her changes anything. This is in contrast to most of the fandom. They pick a villain, and love him so much they no longer believe he’s a villain. For Hound fans, they then decide the child he threatened to kill/attempted to rape should marry him.

Let that idea sink in.

You know why we find that triggering. You understand why we answer asks about it to reassure people they are not alone in being disturbed by it, and that no, we don’t think that’s where Martin is going. Shipping Sansa and the Hound has been accepted and is championed by some of the biggest fans in the ASOIAF fandom, so even if you aren’t a shipper, I know you have loads of pro-Hound content at your fingertips. If a dozen or so of us no-names want to explain why we disagree, we aren’t detracting anything from what that fandom does. You will still have that/those fans to enjoy. Since I only write about the Hound in this context, I have to assume that’s where you read my view of him, so I think it’s obvious I’m talking about the group that minimize how he wronged Sansa to facilitate their desired end? That simply isn’t the case for Cersei fans. We all know Cersei is a) a villain, b) dying. I don’t know what others are saying, but I’ve never claimed she deserved anything other than narrative justice. And it certainly makes no sense to compare my feelings about her to the feelings of people who ship Sansa with Tyrion, LF, or the Hound or any other person who mistreated her because no Sansa fan argues that she should end up in the vicinity of Cersei. (This reminds me a little of this ask so I won’t repeat all of that here).

For some people, seeing Sans@n fan art is triggering. So, yes, they may feel personally attacked. This doesn’t detract from your enjoyment of the character. It’s upsetting to them, they say so on their own blogs, they filter the ship content, and move on. It’s unreasonable to ask that we all just pretend it’s cute or that we don’t know what the shippers are doing when they reframe the Hound threatening Sansa’s life as a panic attack or awkward flirting, and those are only two recent examples of people putting that kind of nonsense into the inboxes of Jonsas. There was someone else denying that book Sansa had ever been sexually assaulted. The fandom is so full of fans of LF, the Hound, Tyrion, that people truly don’t even see what Sansa has suffered at their hands. This is what Sansa fans are trying to rectify. Every character has fans, it’s great that you have a fav, but I’m allowed to be annoyed that others were so effective at whitewashing him (+ LF, Tyrion), that Sansa has been kicked out of her own story.

So, I don’t feel bad about what I’ve said about him/the ship. I think it’s fair and based in the text. I don’t think it’s lacking nuance to not give his life story when talking about what the Hound has done to Sansa, just as no one expects people to talk about the abuse Cersei suffered before criticizing her actions. I told a Tyrion fan something similar the other day, but I am talking about these characters in the context of Sansa’s experience--I’m not trying to give the entire picture of their experience because I’m not writing about them. I’m writing about Sansa.

If you are in fact, not a shipper, I understand how what we say may not make sense without context, but there is a context, and the context in which I talk about him is the trauma that he caused Sansa by attempting to rape her, and the fact that there are people who deny it, and I know why they do. If you don’t do that, there is no need to be offended.

#anti the hound #anti sansan #dot chat

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remsmoonlight · 3 years

Text

— title : battle scars

— word count : 2.1 k words

— pairing : daryl dixon x reader

— summary : during a quick run, you fall into some trouble with some walkers though daryl’s love language is spoken with actions and not words.

— warnings : mentions witnessing death, near death experiencing, extremely minor cursing, mentions of blood and gore

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　requested 　/ requests are open *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

okay so i requested this a while ago to someone else and they said they’d write it but i never found it and i forgot who i asked so i might of missed it, but maybe a walker grabs readers hair or something so she looks for something to tie it up with and daryl gives her his bandana and she just decides to claim it or some cute shit like that??? it’s okay if you don’t wanna♥️♥️

Shap rays penetrate effortlessly through the barred windows, the tatty scraps of cloth providing little protection against the blinding morning sunshine. You pull your arm to cover your eyes, not quite ready to be released from the grips of your slumber.. the nights before a run have always been the most troublesome. Your mind running through every which way the day could turn out, pleading to your mind to focus on the positive outcomes that are always on the table of possibility. Both the positivity and negativity keeping you awake into the late hours.

The only consolation being when you were gifted the image of a blanket of stars over the dark sky, free from any light pollution that was known among many.

“ time to get your ass up, sleepy head. “

You don’t need to remove the arm that lays heavily draped across your head to know who’s familiar drawl that belongs to. Daryl Dixon. His voice in being a quite distinct quality about him. Though there’s more than that you think humorously as a smirk that lazily snakes its way onto your lips.

“ yeah, yeah. I’m up. “ you respond to him as you find yourself focusing on his form in the doorway, clutching the bed linen that serves as a makeshift door in his grip. Your mind wonders if you’ve ever seen him in a state of inactivity that held no tension .

Members of the group continue to filter into the main hall at a leisurely pace, sleep still clinging to their backs in a losing battle.

Sitting off to the side, your gaze settles to the lone male. Daryl nods from you to the space across from him, a bowl laid across from him.

“ thanks for saving me some breakfast. “ you speak, breaking the silence as you pick up the spoon and lifting a heap of oats onto it. Knowing you would need the energy, of course, the world ending brought a new meaning to breakfast being the most important meal of the day.

“ yeh, don’t need ya collapsin’ on me now. “

Amusement tugged at both corners of your mouth as you peer at him, even after all the time had passed, he still doesn’t want to show how much he cares for the people in the group. Even the newcomers from the Woobury group. Of course, you know.. you see what it means to him see everyone safe, to avoid losing yet another member of his new found family to the rotting fingers of death. The finality of death landing heavier blows on his already bruised heart over again is not something he wishes to fall victim to.

“ you know you’ll never get rid of me, I’ll haunt you from my grave! “ you say, joy lighting up your features as you chuckle, momentarily forgetting your breakfast.

A silence embeds itself comfortably between the two of you, something that becomes less and less awkward every time you find yourself in the vicinity of the man. Human contact and communication had to be quickly developed and it wasn’t long before you became comfortable chatting with everyone as if you had known them for years, but Daryl isn’t completely like those members in your group. He speaks with his actions and it took you long enough to realise that, which is why you found no awkwardness sneaking itself around your throat to force words to fall from your lips unwillingly.

“ so, where are we going first? “

“ ‘saw there was a sports store a few miles out a few days ago. they’ll have some’a those bike chains for those fences. “

Nodding in response, you understand it’s nothing more than a simple task. Though, nothing is truly simple now, even something so minor can cost you your life. The first few days you had spent up at the quarry were plagued with nightmares, every day when you saw the sun begin to dim roused a deep fear that bled into your heart, opening a deep pit in the bottom of your stomach, thinking about the rotting corpses and the frenzied deaths of those you loved. The night time cradled your worst moments, to have to close your eyes and to only be left alone with your thoughts would haunt you endlessly.

Shaking your head to yourself, you rid yourself of that dark energy clouding above you. You have dedicated a lot of time and drive to make progress, it’s not something you yearn to be thrown away as if it were nothing.

“ are we going to pick anything else up, or is it just those? “

“ nah, no use gettin’ ourselves killed. “ he responds, focusing on eating breakfast.

You nod your head swiftly, you certainly can’t argue with that logic! Knowing others have lost their lives or have been horribly injured attempting to go the extra mile.

“ well, I won’t be disagreeing with that plan. quick and simple. “

“ sounds like.. “

He lifts his line of sight to stare at you as his sentence trails off into silence, a passing moment crawling along almost uninterrupted before the realisation of what he meant erupted in your mind. He’s talking about you!

“ that’s so rude! “ you say with wide eyes, creasing up and shaking with laughter.

“ I ain’t wrong. “

Even Daryl begins to ease up and chuckle to himself, a small part of him had been cowering in the corner thinking that his words may have been too offensive, even for you. But seeing the sparkle in your eyes as you find amusement is enough to banish it permanently.

The two of you leave the confines of the prison, your arms are locked around his midsection as you are settled behind him on the motorcycle. The speed of it hit a steady pace, the scenery around you nothing more than passing blurs merging into a melting pot of Earth tones.

Slowing to a stop, the two of you get off the bike and make your way into the abandoned store, your eyes scan it in its entirety. Confidence fills you in the thought that it is older than you and definitely had seen better days. Dirt and grime lined the structure from the bottom, sliding up the walls to the top of it. Your brows burrow in repulsion, though surely it can’t be as bad as the prison. Or how it used to be..

“ stay back. “

You watch as he bangs a hand against the grungy window, hardly anything could be seen through the layer of dirt that had made its home there. A visual picture certainly would not be helping either of you this time.

It took around two minutes for a series of slams against the windows to startle you, your heartbeat begins to speed up slightly at the suddenness of the noise. Even when you’re expecting the arrival of walkers, they still manage to catch you off guard. The two of you nod to one another, you move to open the door for four walkers to pile out. Your attention is kept to the two who made a beeline for your body. You step backwards with your knife now in your hand, hoping to create distance between the two of them for you to be able to stab one of them.

One of them grabs your shoulders, immediately your hand goes to shove one of its away from yours. Momentarily it loses grip and trips into you, luckily your hand with the knife is faster than you realise and you feel the resistance its skull and brain give you but you’re stronger and ensure it hits the mark. The change is instantaneous, the walker descends quickly, taking you with it. All your strength and fight is dedicated to pushing the dead weight off of you, your arms make progress as it falls next to you with a thud.

Scrambling to the space next to you to retrieve the knife still sleeping snugly within its head, your breath is ragged from the physical exhaustion and stress of the situation. Your eyes are wide with fear and it takes more strength than you realise to pull it out with a sickly squelch, a darkened liquid coats the once shining blade. Though you have little time to study its form before you feel fingers clawing at your hair, the surprise causes you to drop the knife and your hands to move towards the decaying ones who have secured their grip.

Screams erupt from your lips as your fingers move upwards, pushing what you guess is the walker’s snapping mouth that feels so close. Close enough that you’re unable to distinguish if the breaths you feel close to your neck is from the walker or your imagination. Never before had you felt like a prey animal before, you’re too close to death for your liking, you’d seen people turn from being bitten and to be seconds away fills you with dread. Your fight becomes less and less by the passing second, your body is too tired to fight itself and the walker at the same time, incapacitation is becoming your reality.. warning to confront you one step at a time.

One moment all you can hear are snarls and a warm pain that shoots through the roots of your hair, the next it feels like time has stopped. The grip that was once securely locked is now absent, you don’t know where to look.. all you know is you don’t want to look behind you.

“ y’alright? “

Your sight moves upwards, squinting as you take in the face in front of you. It’s Daryl.

“ uh, I -- “ your voice breaks at the end as you reply, shock overwhelming your body. You drop your head towards the ground in disturbance, refusing to allow your emotions to spiral, you focus on a spot on the ground.

Daryl moves towards you, his gaze checking you over, though begins to search through your hair to make sure the walker has not scratched or punctured your skin with its filthy teeth. Seeing you in that state with the walker so close to dimming your light pushed him, pushed him to fight harder than he has with a few walkers. He knew he could have sent a bolt through its skull, but rage filled his entire being as it drove him. Sending him in its direction and sending a blade through it with his entire force.

“ hey, it didn’t get ya. y’hear me? it didn’t get ya. “ he says, bringing your attention back to him. Though whether it was confirmation more for his benefit or yours, he can’t tell.

“ I never even.. I knew, I.. “

“ y’ain’t got your battle scar yet. “

“ not with you around, luckily. “ you reply with a shake of your head, a soft tone is all you can muster in that minute.

Even in spite of yourself and how you feel, a light chuckle coming from you dusts the air gently as if it never occurred. Shaking your head with a smile that barely registers you push yourself onto your knees and make a move to stand. He’s there to help you up, a tender force clutches your upper arm that you almost fail to associate with him.

The both of you share the same thought unknowingly, that your entire being feels nothing but sensitivity. Shock from enduring the ordeal leaving your body made from nothing more than glass that could shatter at a moment’s notice.

“ hey.. “

A bandana is dangling in front of your vision, confused, you take it into your fingers. Your touch feels the rough material as you run your fingertips across it. Like a light bulb, understanding lights your features up with the power of a thousand suns. Your hair is gathered over to one side, collected to form something of a braid now rests over your shoulder.. with the bandana keeping it together.

“ thank you, Daryl. “ gratitude coats your words, you are extremely thankful for his intervention “ this is mine now though.. “ you inform him, a hand moving to finger the material that now has a new home in your hair.

“ yeah, y’wish. “

“ I meant what I said though, thank you. if you weren't here I’d be one of them. “ a sigh from your mouth releases, a shudder crawling its way through yourself. The shake being easily visible.

“ that ain’t ever gonna happen, I ain’t gonna let it. “

A dull smile pulls at the corners of your lips, a sadness coating your expression at his words. Moving towards him gradually, your arms slide around his midsection. Knowing that those promises can’t always be fulfilled, but that’s Daryl a thought crosses the centre of your mind. He always wants to save everyone. You barely register the light weight of two palms on your back, but a warm light grows in size within you at the realisation.

“ you can let this bandana be mine though.. my good luck charm when you’re not around. “

“ fine. “ Daryl gives in, a hint of laughter in his response as he speaks to you.

#daryl dixon imagine #daryl dixon x reader #daryl dixon fic #the walking dead imagine #twd imagine #the walking dead fic #twd fic

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afictionalwhore · 3 years

Text

Extra Spicy Curry

Vanderwood x MC/Reader

Rating: 18+

Words: 2.1 k

A/N: This is extremely self-indulgent Vanderwood smutty mess. I have been simping for this man since 2016. Please, just give him a route already. In the meanwhile, enjoy some smut of our favorite secret agent daddy. 🥵

Disclaimer: I haven't played Another Story yet.

♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡

In a miraculous change of events, Seven decided it would be safest for the girl to leave Rika’s apartment and stay with him while he worked on catching the hacker targeting the RFA. Vanderwood would be the last to admit that he was glad she came to stay with them. In the beginning, he was vehemently against the idea, fearing Seven had personal feelings for the girl. It was as if God and every other celestial being was making a joke of his life as Vanderwood was the one who ended up developing feelings for the girl.

It started simply at first. She helped him keep the place clean and did the cooking. Lord knew Vanderwood needed the help. How Seven managed to dirty the place up so badly was beyond him. Her help freed up Vanderwood's time to babysit Seven, or attempt to get work for the agency done while Seven was distracted by the RFA. Personal feelings in his line of work was extremely dangerous. All his time with the agency, Vanderwood had been careful not to get involved with anyone. Vanderwood had enough self control to crush his feelings, hide them. Or he thought he did.

The way she moved made him realize that she was fully aware of his feelings, and was teasing him, testing him. He felt his heart speed up whenever she bent over to pick up after the messy hacker, giving him a perfect view of that round ass. She would often bring him coffee, leaning over him, to make sure her chest pressed flush against his back, wearing the thinnest shirts so he could feel her perky nipples. Sometimes as she cooked, she would dance, swaying her hips right in his line of vision.

She couldn’t deny her growing feelings for the secretive man. As soon as she met him, she was entranced by the cold agent. She had spent the same amount of time fantasizing about tangling her hands in those long, brown locks, pulling on them as he touched her in all the right places. She could feel the heat rising in her as she imagined his scarred and muscular body holding her flush against him. She made sure to carefully calculate her movements, knowing exactly what would give Vanderwood the most tempting view of her. It seemed like her hard work had paid off as rough leather gloves grabbed her waist as she danced in the kitchen while cooking dinner. Tonight was curry, extra spicy.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Vanderwood’s low voice growled in her ear.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she gasped, her smirk and blush hidden from Vanderwood.

He leaned in to whisper to her.

“I know what you’re up to. You think I don’t notice the way you move? The way you bend over, giving me the sweetest view of your ass? The way you press yourself against my back when handing me my coffee, instead you lean over me from behind to set on the desk instead of just handing it to me in front of me like a normal person? Or how about the way you dance, the way you dip and bend and sway? You drive me crazy.” He punctuated the last statement with a rock of his hips into hers, pulling a moan from her, before turning her around to face him.

A blush colored her cheeks. She was too flustered with their closeness to speak, his deep brown eyes seemed to pierce right to her soul. But Vanderwood didn’t give her the time to speak before he was kissing her greedily.

This is wrong, Vanderwood thought as he crashed his lips down on hers. I can’t have these feelings.

Despite whatever the highly-trained logical side of him said, he couldn’t deny that he had dreamt about this moment. He spent countless nights laying awake fantasizing about her. He dreamt of what her soft skin under his rough, calloused hands would feel like. He could have creamed himself imagining the pretty noises that would leave her pretty lips. Those lips he’d spent long nights dreaming about, thinking about those soft lips wrapped around his thick cock. He even dreamt of holding her in his strong arms after.

He drank up her wet kisses as she reached to wrap her arms around his neck. He reached around to grab her ass, kneading the soft skin over her jeans. He pulled her in closer to him, and she moaned the feeling of his hardness against her.

A burning in her lungs caused her to pull away, gasping for air. For a few seconds, the world seemed to stand still as they gazed into each other's eyes, both pairs glassy with need. She nodded, and it didn’t take long for Vanderwood to lift her up into his strong arms, shrugging off his jacket before he carried her off to the spare room that unofficially became his own with how often he stayed to supervise Seven. They kissed along the way, hurriedly, sloppily, needily, bumping into walls.

Finally, they made it to Vanderwood’s room. It was exactly as she would have expected: flawless, not a crumb or stray paper on his floor and not a wrinkle in the sheets of his perfectly made bed. He used her weight to close the door and slam her into it, lips never parting. As he held her against the door, he bucked his hips into her.

“Vandy!” she whined, breaking the kiss to tug at the hem of his deep purple v-neck, signaling for him to take it off.

He couldn’t stop the chuckle and smirk as he broke away to quickly remove the offending garment, tossing it to the side.

"These too," she pulled at his pants.

"Someone's needy," Vanderwood commented, his voice and eyes darkening in a way that made her pussy flutter and thighs squeeze together.

He complied, pulling off the leather. Once he was down to his black briefs, he faced her, stripping her bare with his eyes before laying a hand on her clothes.

"Strip," no hesitance in his low voice as Vanderwood commanded.

Her hands immediately pulled the hem of her own shirt up and over her head, tossing it to the side to meet his own discarded clothes. She tugged her jeans down and stepped out of them, effectively bare save for the purple lace bra and matching panties.

“What a naughty girl,” Vanderwood comments, his voice heavy with lust as he drank in the sight of her. “Did you plan this?”

“Yea? So what if I did,” she smirked and gazed at him through her lashes. “What are you going to do about it?”

Vanderwood couldn't help the chuckle that escaped him as he approached her. Once again, he lifted her up in his strong arms, only taking a few steps before tossing her onto his bed, crinkling the perfect sheets.

His lips attacked her neck, small sounds of pleasure hummed in her throat. He moved down, leaving purple marks in his wake. When he reached her chest, she lifted herself up to unhook her bra, throwing it out of their way. Her tits bounced with their release from their lacy prison.

He was mesmerized by her perfect breasts. Soaking the sight of them into his memory before diving down to greedily suck on one of her nipples. His hand reached up to pinch and flicker the other. The actions pulling soft sighs from her.

Once he was satisfied, Vanderwood moved down to trail kissing along her stomach. When he reached her panties, he pulled them down, meeting slight resistance as they stuck to her already soaked core.

“You’re so cute, getting this wet already,” Vanderwood teased. He chuckled at the flush of her cheeks at his praise. “Baby, we just got started.”

With that, Vanderwood lifted himself off the bed and pulled her so her legs dangled off the edge. He hiked her legs on her shoulder as he crouched down to face her hot core.

“What a pretty pussy,” he cooed as he spread her folds apart. “Mind if I have a taste?”

She hummed her approval, and Vanderwood wasted no time. His long tongue flicked at her clit. He lapped at her soaked entrance, dipping his tongue in every so often, before moving back up to suckle at her clit. He slipped a long finger in her, causing her hands to dart into his hair. After a few pumps, he added another finger, curling the two against her gummy walls before dragging them out. The motion caused her to tug at his long locks, the roughness causing him to moan against her sensitive bud.

"God. You have such a pretty pussy," he moaned into her, the praise sending a jolt of pleasure straight to her core. "Fucking delicious."

"Please," she begged, her orgasm creeping up on her. She was so close, just a few more thrusts of his fingers against her, a few more flicks of his tongue. Her thighs clenched around his head.

At this, Vanderwood pushed her legs back open and pulled away, effectively ruining her orgasm.

"Please, what?" Vanderwood teased. His lips tugged into a smirk while her slick gleamed on his mouth and chin."You have to tell me what you want, babydoll."

"Oh just fuck me," the irration of her lost orgasm evident in her voice.

"Gladly." Vanderwood stood and backed away just enough to give him the room to remove his briefs.

With nothing separating them, Vanderwood lifted her legs up so her ankles rested on his shoulders. He rocked himself up against her pussy, dripping with her own arousal and his spit, his head grazing her clit, pulling another sweet moan from her lips. Her walls clenched around nothing as the heat radiating out of her core invited him in. She felt his tip at her entrance, the head of cock large enough to split her in two, and bucked her hips to pull him in.

Vanderwood never thought she looked more beautiful as he pushed his thick cock into her hot cunny. She rolled her head back against mattress. She felt as though she were going to be split in half in the most delightful way. This was exponentially better than what either of them could have dreamed on those long nights alone fantasizing about each other. Vanderwood would take her warm, dripping pussy over his rough hand any day. Her fingers would never be able to replicate the feeling of Vanderwood's large tongue, long fingers, and hot, thick cock.

Despite the romantic feelings that had developed between the two, there was nothing about this that could be called lovemaking. Everything about them screamed desperation. Her cries as he merciless pounded her, every grunt falling out of his mouth causing her to clench around him.

As if driven by instinct, Vanderwood lowered her legs in favor of folding them against her chest. The new position allowing him to reach even deeper within her. With every thrust, he reached her cervix. His eyes met hers as he looked down at her through his bangs that had fallen in his face.

"Oh god," she cried, as his cock dragged in and out of her tightness, hitting her sweet spot with each push and pull of his hips. "Oh Vandy, I'm so close."

"Francis," he panted, sweat sticking his tousled hair to his pale skin. "Call me Francis."

"Francis?" she tested the name. It felt natural, right. "Francis!"

Hearing her use his real name, the name he chose for himself, pushed him closer to falling off the edge into what he believed would be the blissful, intoxicating orgasm of his life.

"Fuck. Fuck," his thrusts grew more frantic, losing his rhythm as he pounded into her soft cervix. With a final, whispered "fuck", Vanderwood found himself coming undone. His grip on her legs would surely leave bruises in the morning as he snapped his hips against hers, his warm seed filled her to the brim.

Watching his face contort with absolute bliss and the feeling of his warm seed in her most intimate parts was all she needed to reach her own peak. With a cry of his name, her back arched deliciously off his bed as she gripped his sheets hard enough for her knuckles to turn white.

They stayed like that for a moment, gazing at each other while climbing down from their highs and trying to catch their breaths. A small whine escaped her as Vanderwood finally pulled out his softened cock, white dripping out of her spent hole.

”Let me get you something to clean up," Vanderwood turned, but she had reached out to grab his wrist.

"Stay," She whispered.

How could he deny her? It was as if God and every other celestial being had answered his unvoiced prayers. The mattress caved under Vanderwood's weight as he gently laid himself besider her, pulling her into him for her to nestle against his chest. She could have fallen asleep there, warm and safe in his arms. He could have just as easily fallen asleep holding her if it were for her harsh, sudden cry.

“Fuck!” she bolted up.

“Oh. Again?” Vanderwood joked, before noticing the look of fear in her face. “Hey. What’s wrong? Do you...” he was worried she regretted letting him finish inside, both of them fully aware of the consequences.

“I forgot about dinner!” she jumped out his bed and ran out his door. “Shit shit shit!”

As she rounded the hallway corner, the sight in the kitchen caused her to come to a grinding halt. Vanderwood, who had been following closely behind, crashed into her.

There stood Seven, with an apron tied around his waist, at the stove stirring the curry and dancing, humming along with the music she had left playing when Vanderwood whisked her away. Without turning to face them, Seven chuckled.

“Next time you two decide to get your freak on, please turn off the stove. I don’t want my house burned down because you couldn’t keep in your pants like a couple of hormonal teenagers

“Now go get dressed; dinner’s done.”

#vanderwood #vanderwood x mc #vanderwood x reader #mystic messenger #seven makes a small appearance #give my man some love pls #self indulgent trash

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