there is something about how when anime official art gets yoichi right fashion wise it's always a comfy bf look like look at him

very fluffy. very huggable. i want to poke and pinch his cheeks. also he often has those lil blushies when he eats and for some reason it's cute. the gap moe between on field and off field is still something else to see each time i remember it. i love it ofc 💚 but it's still something else

Well, after eight years Team RWBY finally mattered. They finally did something no other member of the cast would have just done if they hadn't been there. Admittedly the thing they did was remove the Staff to crash and destroy two cities, while moving millions of people from an incredibly cold environment to a desert in no way prepared to receive them, getting most of those people killed on rainbow road or by grimm...but they did something! Yaayy character development.

What gets me... what really, really hits home... is how much of the actual plot we’d have to ignore to make Team RWBY look like heroes here. Because Salem is heading towards Atlas, yeah? I’ve mentioned multiple times in the past that if Team RWBY had posed any plan to Ironwood  — literally any plan like “I have silver eyes” or “We can use the Staff for evacuation” or “Oscar has a giant grimm nuke in his cane because we actually established this earlier and/or met with the others before starting a fight” ANYTHING  — then they’d have been 100% justified in condemning Ironwood when he chose to leave while the possibility of saving more people was on the table. But they didn’t. Exact same logic here. If they had dropped Atlas to evacuate everyone while Salem was in the midst of attacking them, then that’s justified too! Is dropping the city a good thing? No, but it’s arguably far better than letting the people that city houses all perish. 

Yet where’s the danger? Not only did they give the group an ambiguous amount of time in which Salem needed to reform, not only did they fail to show the people who were actually in danger (the army) getting a portal out, not only did they show a contradictory moment where the grimm in the city were killed but then randomly re-appeared, not only did they come up with a plan that involved dropping Atlas while trying to convince the people in the crater (without communications) to leave fast enough before it crashed, not only did they introduce and then ignore the cold as a threat... not only did they do all of that, they also established that Salem didn’t care about the people. I mean, that was always an educated guess, but no one could have been sure she wouldn’t slaughter for the sake of slaughter until she nicely avoided attacking Mantle and then only attacked Atlas with the intent of snagging the Staff. So what do the heroes do? 

They open the vault so that the Staff is vulnerable. Then they remove the Staff from the vault, rather than just leaving it there and getting Penny as far away from the entrance as possible (like, say, halfway across the world in Vacuo). If they had built their rainbow road and then left the Staff in its vault, no one would have been able to destroy their escape gateway, let alone snag the Staff itself. Hell, throw the Lamp in there too like you should have done weeks ago! Have Penny blast herself full-tilt towards the Vacuo portal and there, you’re done. No enemy can even force her to come back thanks to Weiss’ “one way trip” comment. Congratulations, if you want the Staff or the Lamp you have to somehow get this Maiden all the way back to Atlas. Instead, the group came up with a plan that destroyed an entire kingdom while carrying the Relic out in the open. So Cinder, and eventually Salem, of course snagged it. How stupid are these characters? The one thing Salem wants is to bring four Relics together to destroy the world... so let’s take the Relics out of their magical vaults and try to bring three of them into one place. 

“But at least they saved the people!” Did they? I mean, were the people really in danger? Sure, sure we’re meant to believe they are and objectively things were Not Good, but we also undermined so many of the threats actually introduced. Cold is a non-issue, grimm were briefly wiped out, Happy Huntresses are (presumably) protecting against those that are left, whale is destroyed, Salem is reforming, and even Ironwood’s bomb is (from the group’s perspective) out of the picture. Why do we need to evacuate everyone again? It’s like the airship plan. We never established where the group intended to take these people, which means we never got the chance to weigh where the refugees currently were against where they were heading. Honestly, I’d say hanging out in the now warm crater with huntsmen defending you and the Big Bad literally not caring about your existence is a safer spot than running in chaos across void pathways to enter a hostile desert where grimm are actively attacking people. What did this accomplish except to make things worse? But of course, it’s not presented that way. We’re supposed to believe that the group heroically rescued who they could and faced unavoidable hardships along the way... rather than them actively endangering everyone from the get-go. 

They lied to Ironwood, repeating Ozpin’s (presumed) mistake to a T

Jumped at the chance to make him an enemy (though, of course, the story was already determined to make him a villain by then, so) 

Told the world about Salem even though now Atlas isn’t in a position to help defend everyone else from inevitable grimm attacks 

Sat around waiting for others to come save them 

Tried to prioritize their friend’s life over the lives of literally everyone in Atlas 

Eventually realize when things are better that they can enact a crazy dangerous plan that was always available to them 

Do that and in the process destroy the most advanced kingdom in the world, burying the majority of Remnant’s dust, technology, resources, etc. under water 

Took the evacuees to a far more dangerous location, because there’s no way they could have realized that a) there are storms in a desert or b) that Ren couldn’t keep all the evacuees’ auras hidden forever 

During all this one hero died and five others “died,” leaving the rest to handle this catastrophe on their own 

Which... good, I guess? With Ozpin’s experience, Ren’s temporary self-awareness (snow scene), Nora’s determination, and Oscar’s hopeful attitude, they might actually accomplish something moving forward. I know we keep talking about the possibility of a time skip where Team RWBYJ return to find a dystopian Remnant, but it would be hilarious to me if they returned and found that things... weren’t that bad, actually. Yeah, Salem is still out there, but we’ve  united the world and made good strides towards holding her off. Because oddly enough, leaving the fate of the world to this impulsive 17yo was a bad idea and the second she was removed from the picture, what do you know, better decisions were made! At the very least, the Vacuo group should be able to debate ideas now without the ever present expectation that Ruby will a) come up with something eventually, b) everyone must wait around until she does, and c) whatever she decides, no matter how stupid, that’s what they’re going with. 

i so agree on the thea/kevin thing. i do think they end up together though - not because i particularly think they're good for each other but because sometimes people end up in relationships they settle for and maybe they change and maybe they don't but sometimes life is just like that. thats kind of why i particularly like how nora makes it clear that allison doesn't end up with a man because she tends to seek out the anger issues + doesn't want to help themselves type of man. it b liek dat smt

hmm okay. i think first i want to address what i mean when i answer asks, especially one like the kevin and thea ask you're mentioning. just because i'm writing it doesn't necessarily mean i'm committing to the idea 100% and it doesn't mean it's what i believe 100% will happen. it's a possibility and more than that it's an idea i'm exploring for the moment

that was an analysis of how i view their dynamic, with some predictions based on that specific interpretation, and the end part was a best-case scenario if everything worked out perfectly. but you're right, a best-case scenario doesn't always happen. people's lives don't always play out perfectly and they don't always find the perfect right person that they're with forever. and sometimes they settle for something that's stable or familiar and that's not even necessarily a bad thing

what's really great about transformative work like fandom is that i don't have to stick to just one idea. i can entertain the idea of a perfect world for kevin and thea where they break up but stay friends and help each other overcome the trauma and conditioning of the nest, and at the same time i can also entertain the world where they fall a little flat of that, and still end up together and sometimes kevin sits up at night and looks at his wife and asks himself "do i love her? am i happy?" and knows that the answer isn't a resounding yes, but that she's still his partner and they have a daughter together who he wouldn't trade for anything. analytically, you can make an argument for either of those pathways, or even one where kevin and thea get marriage counseling and end up the happiest most in-love couple in the world, or a million others

you can create a post-canon where anything happens. one where kevin meets the love of his life, one where kevin never meets anyone, one where kevin suffers a career ending injury at 26 that this time he truly never recovers from. as a creator i can explore each and every one of these options for him and think of them all as equally real and equally possible, even if i'm thinking about two completely different ones at the exact same time

it's a story. it all comes down to what i'm feeling at that moment, what I'm looking to explore. do i need a pick-me-up? do i want catharsis? am i angry? sad? cruel? do i want to deconstruct the notion of the cold war nuclear family? do i just want a good time? you get out what you bring in

whatever i end up typing is a reflection of what i'm thinking and feeling in that moment. i may want to look at it completely differently in another moment

but i do agree that i like to keep a little reality regardless, and i also like that nora did too. she didn't give everyone a perfect happy ending with a marriage and kids and i think that's right for the statement she was making with the series

and sometimes i like that, sometimes i want a world that's a little softer around the edges for a bit. that's for me to decide

but if you want my strictest, most true-to-life, mirror of reality take on what happens in post-canon, okay

---

i still don't think that kevin and thea end up together, because there's at least two more years on kevin's college contract and no guarantee he'll go onto thea's pro team from there, and i don't think either of them will really be trying to stay in touch. long-distance is hard. long-distance when you're not even trying is impossible. i don't even think they explicitly break up it's just they realize they haven't spoken in months and don't even have each others' current addresses so they avoid eye contact if they ever happen to be in the same room and eventually one of them has a 30-second news spot about dating someone new and that puts the final shred of uncertainty between them to rest

kevin never really finds someone. he's too committed to exy, as a pro-player and as whatever he does after, and he's never going to tell anyone that his life is technically owned by the mafia. maybe he has a convenient marriage or two with some other celebrity that ends in divorce. he's not really particularly concerned with it and when he's old he doesn't regret it. maybe he never wanted a partner in the first place

it's aaron and katelyn that i think are the most likely to end up the way you described kevin and thea. they get married and they stay married but really they're married to their jobs as doctors. and as the years go on they sometimes wonder why they're still together but it's too much of a pain to sort through their shared finances and they're not unhappy, so they stay together. maybe one or both has an affair that they hide, but even if the other knew it probably wouldn't change anything. their house is really expensive and in a really nice location, it's not worth the divorce

dan and matt also probably get married, but i don't think it stays. matt seems like the type to want kids, and dan seems like the type to hate the idea. irrevocable difference. eventually they have to split. matt definitely remarries and has his kids. dan may remarry, she may not, her job is her primary concern. they stay amicable, but it's tense for a few years. they really rocks the foxes, because it's the only internal breakup between two of them

andrew and neil are both the most stable and the most happy of the foxes, because they know how to communicate and they know how to fight for each other. but also because neither of them has any grand notions of romance or true love. they didn't build their relationship on passion, they built it on understanding and cooperation. to them, a person to wake up to in the morning or sit by a window with IS a miracle. it shocks a lot of the foxes who all either subconsciously or not thought that their own relationships were better or healthier or more destined to last than andrew and neil's. over the years all the other foxes have come to them at least once, in private, looking for advice. they'd be lying if the irony of so many years of being given unasked for relationship advice coming full circle didn't make them just a but smug

nicky and erik are the other long-term success of the foxes. if nicky can stay with the twins at their worst he can shelter through normal relationship drama. still the hardest part for him is when the relationship ultimately becomes familiar, as they all do. he's always buying relationship books and planning dates and setting up relationship retreats because he's honestly so afraid of being alone if he likes the flame die. sometimes it's honestly the biggest strain on his relationship, all the frantic effort he puts in, but they get through it

renee never marries or really has any significant relationships. she says she's married to jesus and her job but she's still always a little bit haunted by her past in a way that holds her back from truly opening up to a partner. she adopts several kids though, somewhat later in life, because she believes that she can pass on the chances that stephanie gave her, and that's more important than romance

allison has a string of wild marriages and even wilder divorces that are usually the highlight of fox get-togethers. she has a child by accident and she isn't a wonderful mother. dan and renee are both very involved with her kid, for many years more than she is. when the kid is nearly an adult allison finally pulls her head out of her ass to see that she missed so much of the only relationship she can't annul. at that point she quits relationships and focuses on fixing things. it's a slow, painful process, but they manage to be close later in life

---

so, do i necessarily WANT all of these things to happen? no, many of them are quite sad. but all of them are good stories, and all of them are realistic in the sense that they are reflective of what happens in real people's lives

this is one version of how i think post-canon plays out. of course, i may change my mind later, or fiddle with the details, or want to play with an entirely different idea for one or more or all of the characters

Look how long this love can hold its breath (1/4)

Part Ben Gross character study, part slowburn adolescent romance. 

*******

I’ve hoarded

your name in my mouth for months. My throat

is a beehive pitched in the river. Look!

Look how long this love can hold its breath.

-Sierra DeMulder, “Your Love Finds Its Way Back”

The first assignment of their Freshman year Honors English class is to write a letter to themselves. 

“I want us to capture this very moment -- who we are, what we love, what we hate, what we want,” Mrs. Allen announces with a grand flourish, and he thinks that maybe she would be better suited for drama kids in Theatre than for neurotic, type-A students of this Honors class. “I want us to trap it in amber -- preserve it so that in four years, I can give you back those very same letters and we can marvel at who we were!”

He sneaks a glance over at Devi and can immediately see they’re both thinking the same thing -- it's ridiculous and cheesy, but they’re both willing to go along with it without any fuss.

English teachers tend to have some kind of corny getting-to-know you activity, and despite this overly sentimental first assignment, he’s only heard good things about Mrs. Allen’s class.

So, that night he loads up his printer with his 32 pound bond paper (to show that he takes this assignment seriously) and goes to work trying to capture this moment of his life in amber.

Even saying it in his head makes him want to roll his eyes (he thinks Devi must be thinking the same thing, then immediately thinks about how he can make his letter better than hers).

He knows what Mrs. Allen said -- that this isn’t really an assignment inasmuch as it is a time capsule; that it isn’t a resume, but just a friendly letter so she can get to know them.

But Ben Gross hasn’t gotten this far with his GPA and academic transcript because he’s taken teachers at face value.

He doesn’t lie  -- he honestly doesn’t need to, really. His list of extracurriculars and hobbies take up nearly half a page on their own, and his write-up about his pathway to becoming a diplomat is incredibly detailed and specific.

It’s only when he gets to the final question that he hesitates.

What’s one aspect of your life that you think would make a fun movie and why? Describe it to me!

He re-reads the question, then re-reads his letter and frowns. He clearly comes across as competent and confident -- which is what he was going for -- but also a little dry. This question is obviously designed to see if he has some personality.

Which, you know, of course he does. He’s just not sure how to put that on paper so that Mrs. Allen will see that he’s a well-rounded, intelligent but not overwhelmingly dull honors student.

He thinks about writing about his Bar Mitzvah and Blake Griffin -- that would be pretty cool to see in a movie -- but a voice that sounds suspiciously like Devi’s pops into his mind and calls him lame. He thinks about the time he sat next to Drake in first class on the way to Toronto with his dad, and this time an image of Devi rolling her eyes pops into his head.

He leans back in his chair and wonders what Devi is writing about. She probably has half a dozen stories to choose from, each one more exciting and endearing than the last, and each one bursting with the kind of personality that teachers -- for the most part -- seem to find charming rather than obnoxious (which is what it is).

He’ll never admit it out loud, but even though he knows that he can be charming when he needs to be, there’s an easy charisma to Devi that he’s never been quite able to replicate.  

He frowns at that thought, then scowls at the rather wide tangent his thought process has taken.

The cursor blinks at him as an idea slowly takes shape in his mind. He writes about the long rivalry between him and Devi -- the back and forth exchanges in class that became back and forth exchanges of first prize and first place and ‘best of’ certificates. The sixth grade disaster of their competing Oregon Trail projects, which almost got them both suspended and lead to a long enough truce for them to divide up any extracurricular and project they might ever take part in.

By the time he’s done with his fictional movie, it’s overtaken his letter; the answer to that one question as long as all the rest of his answers combined.

He reads over it and edits a word here and there, rearranges a couple sentences. Not to toot his own horn, but there’s now a buttload of personality in this letter in addition to proof of his competence, confidence and intelligence.

He ignores the smug-sounding voice of Devi in the back of his mind telling him that he couldn’t have done it without her.

*******

Mrs. Allen takes all their letters with a smile on her face and gathers them close to her chest.

“I can’t wait to get to know you better! Reading these letters is the best way to start my year, and in four years, you guys are going to love reading them back to yourselves.”

She turns and puts the letters in a filing cabinet, which gives him the chance to roll his eyes without her seeing.

She turns back to the class and claps her hands together.

“Now this second one -- it’s not everyone’s favorite, but I personally love it because it lets me see everyone in a different light.”

He groans inwardly, basically sure that she’s going to announce some kind of partner or group project, which he absolutely loathes. It’s way too early for someone to dull his shine in this class (or, in the case of Devi, threaten to eclipse him).

Unfortunately, the second assignment is much, much worse than a group project.

“This assignment isn’t for you,” Mrs. Allen says as she starts to hand out the assignment sheet. “It’s for your parents!”

Anxiety gnaws at the pit of his stomach the minute she says it.

“For homework, I need your a parent or guardian or uncle or aunt or grandparent to write a letter about you to me. It doesn’t really matter who specifically it is, it just should be someone who has helped raise you and shape you to become the person you are today. I give suggestions on that sheet about what I’d like them to write about, but really, those are just suggestions.” She smiles brightly at the class. “Basically, I want to see a different perspective on you. This helps me get to know you better and whoever takes care of you at the same time.”

The anxiety has eaten through his stomach and is now going to town on his liver.

“And I know that your parents are busy people, so they have until the end of the week to complete it.”

He slinks as far down in his chair without seeming disrespectful, trying to figure out a way to keep his anxiety from ravaging his lungs.

“What’s wrong, Gross,” Devi asks to the right of him. “Afraid your dad won’t be able to write anything nice about you?”

He shoots up in his chair and glares at her.

“More like I’m trying to figure out how to make sure my dad doesn’t go over the page limit because I’m so awesome.”

She rolls her eyes and turns back to talk to Fabiola, as he turns his attention back to the paper on his desk.

His parents are both out of town until Friday -- his mom’s at some kind of rejuvenation spa and his father is brokering a deal with some artist named Clairo -- so he knows he won’t be able to ask either of them. It makes sense -- they’re busy and this assignment is stupid, and he should really argue about it except that Devi doesn’t seem to care about it in the slightest and has already put the assignment sheet in her binder.

Putting up a fight about it would admit to a weakness -- his only one, really -- and he’d rather drop out of the class or fail than admit that to her. Er. To anyone.

For just a moment, he considers asking Patti, who does meet all the criteria -- she is someone who’s helped raise him and shape him to be the person that he is. He dismisses the idea in the next moment, because even if she technically fits the parameters, he can only imagine the kind of pity he’d get from Mrs. Allen when she reads a letter written by his house manager. He needs Mrs. Allen to be impressed by him, not feel sorry for him.

He thinks about that letter over the next few days and finally comes up with a compromise -- he writes it himself, but from the perspective of his dad.

He then emails it to his dad, who signs it, scans it and sends it back as an attachment with an email that says Couldn’t have written better myself! You’re so smart! Love you!

He takes that as confirmation that all those things he said about himself as his dad were true, and tries to tell himself it feels just as good as if his dad had actually written them.

*******

The following Monday, he overhears Mrs. Allen tell Devi that her father’s letter was so beautiful and heartfelt that it made her cry.

He doesn’t hear what Devi says in return -- some just-right mixture of pride and genuine gratitude, he’s sure -- just turns away and pretends to rifle through his backpack.

There’s a pang in his heart that he tells himself isn’t jealousy, and an odd sense of relief when Mrs. Allen passes by his desk without saying anything at all.

*******

That assignment is the second thing he thinks about when he hears about Devi’s dad and the orchestra concert (the first thought is something that can’t be put into words -- a kind of bottomless sadness shot through with a concern he doesn’t know what to do with).

He wonders if Mrs. Allen will give that letter back to Devi. If doing so would be an unbearable kindness or an unspeakable cruelty. If Devi would even open it if she did.

Mostly he wonders if Devi is ok, and what would make her feel better.

After hours of thinking about it, he realizes he doesn’t know. It makes him feel sad -- or useless, maybe -- that even though he’s known her for almost his entire life, all he knows is how to piss her off.

He briefly thinks about deliberately tanking a test this week to make her feel better, then realizes that he:

A. Is so smart that he probably wouldn’t be able to tank a test, even if he tried.

and

B. Devi would know -- she always knows when he’s up to something -- and it would do nothing but piss her off even more.

So he studies his ass off and gets a higher grade than she does on their Biology test. Her nostrils flare when she sees the grade on his test, and for a moment he really does feel bad -- maybe he should’ve tried to tank the test after all.

But then her eyes flash with something that isn’t sadness for the first time in weeks, and he’s so absurdly happy to see it that he doesn’t even come up with an insult when she lobs one in his direction.

He tells himself it’s because having a nemesis who’s all in makes him a better student, but when she gives a full-on victory cry in class a week later because she’s beaten him on their English test by half a point, that same absurd kind of glee is back with it.

A small part of him thinks maybe he’s just happy that she’s happy, in whatever small way she can be right now. The larger part of him ignores that, and studies twice as hard for their upcoming Algebra test.

*******

He thinks about that letter again on the way home from the Model U.N. trip, as he watches her freeze the moment an ambulance comes shrieking down the street.  

His mind is a jumbled mess of emotion -- anger at the way the conference ended, confusion at the way things have seemingly ended between him and Devi -- but all that fades away in a wave of concern as he sees Devi force herself to take steady breaths.

He almost wants to ask if she’s ok, but in the next moment she catches him looking at her and snaps a question, and he’s so mixed up and off-balance that he falls back on what the two of them do best -- insults and sarcasm.

It’s comfortable, but it doesn’t settle him, and for the first time (maybe not for the first time) he wishes he could be good at something that isn’t a way to hurt her.

*******

He thinks about that again when he’s sitting across the dinner table from Devi, her insults still ringing in his ears.

Now would be the perfect time to hurt her the way she hurt him, to make her as miserable as he feels right this moment.

But then he remembers that letter, thinks about the girl whose dad loved her so much that talking about her made a stranger cry, about the look of misery on her face as the ambulance went by and how awful it must feel every time she hears a siren.

He remembers the feeling of wanting to be good at something that isn’t supposed to hurt her.

So he swallows his bitterness at the way the Model UN Conference ended and swerves away from hurting her, makes some charming jokes about how good she is at diplomacy instead.

She smiles at him from across the table, and later even laughs when he tells her about his awkward pizza encounter (he won’t say it makes him feel better than he has in the last 24 hours, but something loosens in his chest at the sound of it).

It doesn’t take away the loneliness of the day completely or soothe all his disappointment, but even though the day still stings, at least he knows that he can be alright -- maybe even good -- at something more than just hurting Devi.

*******

He knows he’s had more grandma juice than is advisable when he finds himself staring at his reflection and telling himself that he didn’t throw this party just so Devi would come to his house.  

It’s his birthday, he reasons, and people throw parties on their birthday. It’s what his parents wanted when they left him, and he’s nothing if not a dutiful son. Plus, he has the house for it, and the money for it, and the friends --.

Well, he’s still not drunk enough to say -- even to himself -- that he has the friends for it.

But having parties is what cool kids do on their birthdays, and even if he can admit that he isn’t one of them, he’s at least adjacent enough to cool kids to be able to emulate their behavior.

So, yeah. That’s why he threw this party -- to be cool. Not because Devi asked him about throwing one. Not because seeing Devi look at Paxton like he was a goddamn chiseled marble statue come to life in the style of Pygmalion set off a hot spark of something that felt like jealousy in the center of his chest. His throwing this party had nothing to do with Devi, at all, in any way, shape or form.

He tells himself that a half dozen times as he looks at his blurry reflection in the mirror, as he splashes his face with water in the hopes that it’ll miraculously clear his vision, as he walks down the stairs holding his fourth cup of grandma juice.

Then he sees her come through the door and it’s like his vision clears up completely (if momentarily, because apparently emotions do not supersede biology) and he feels a warmth in his veins that has nothing to do with the alcohol currently coursing through it because Devi is in his house and she actually looks genuinely happy to see him.

He takes her on a tour of the house, pointing out the memorabilia from all his dad clients, showing her the game room and the gym and the two indoor pools (one chlorinated, one a saltwater pool), and she’s complimenting it all without even the slightest bit of sarcasm and laughing at his jokes and mocking him without the usual hard edge to her and he honestly can’t remember the last time he was this happy and --

Oh, fuck.

He totally threw this entire party just to invite Devi over to his house.

Hiccup destroyed Viggos life

First time posting here, be ready for a ride. I'm german, means my english is not gonna be very good, so, yeah, here goes nothing.

Recently I have started watching Dreamworks How to train your dragon franchise all over again, and now I am almost done with Race to the edge. I have always loved this show, first watching it when there were only 3 seasons. So, even back in 2016, me still being 13 and stupid at that point, I loved Viggo Grimborn to death. To me, he was the best villain of the franchise. Mabye even the best character.

But, rewatching it now, something felt kind of odd when thinking about Viggos and Hiccups relationship. The more thought I gave it, the more I realized something trivial that I don't think many people caught.

Hiccup basically destroyed Viggos life.

You might instantly agree with me on this, or you're thinking ''Dafuq are you talking about?“, but hear me out.

Let's put the dragon hunting aside and just focus on Viggo as the chief of a tribe. All he was doing by the time the riders arrived at the edge was trying to keep his tribe alive. He was nothing more than a buisnessman trying his best to continue the way his tribe had survived for probably hundreds of years.

Then dragon-saving Hiccup rolls around, cutting off almost all of Viggos supplies by sinking his ships, ruining his probably most profitable auction and freeing most dragons the hunters had caught, proceeding to steal a large amount of the Dragon hunters gold(I refuse to believe that was all their gold), driving Viggo so far into a corner that he seems to be on the verge of madness and just completly loosing his mind over this war to the point where his own brother betrays him, dying in the process, which means Viggos presumably only family is dead, then Hiccup was involved in scarring Viggos face by throwing the dragon eye into that vulcano and later Viggo presumably died saving Hiccup.

Viggo just lost everything in the span of 1- 1 1/2, at most 2 years.

He lost most of his buyers, most of his gold, his brother, his own tribe, his face was scarred immensely, blinding him on one eye, he was treated like shit by the new chief who also tried to kill him, he lost the most valued artifact of his tribe more than once, and, oh yeah, he got killed by his own men.

(Honestly, I don't believe Viggo is dead, but anyways, going on)

The more you think about how Viggo just wanted to keep his buisness going, the more you see a problem with Hiccup. His naiv nature makes him think extremely two dimensional. Black and White. Either you are a friend of the dragons and Berk, meaning you're one of the good guys, or you fight/hunt dragons and/or attack Berk, meaning you're one of the bad guys. I think this concept is perfectly shown throughout Viggos story in the show.

He starts off as the chief of the dragon hunters, selling, killing and hurting dragons. So Hiccup sees him as a threat and starts to fight him, which leads to Viggo trying everything to get Hiccup off his back.

To me, Viggo is shown his worst both mentally and on the 'villain-scale' (this is now a thing) in season 4 episode 6 ''Dire Straits���. Here Viggo places a submaripper close to the pathway of most of Berks main traiders, cutting off all their supplies after already have taken their gold and making them rely on traiding, which they now can't do anymore. As we see, he both imprisoned a dragon and massivly hurt Berk, making him extra evil. I always found this episode odd, since Viggo behaved drastically different in it. He wasn't his calm, calculated self, but rather he was jumpy, angry, annoyed. He was always the one to know not to turn around and attack the riders when they had proven themselves stronger, telling Ryker to not go run after them even though they still have ships. Here, he yelled at one of the hunters to turn around and not retrieve, but attack. Ryker had to pull him away and show him his sea shocker contraption to calm him down. What is the next episodes we see him? Episode 8 ''Gold Rush“ and episode 10 ''Twintuition“ where he again is as calm as always. So what happened?

Well, here we come back to Hiccup seeing everyone as black or white. When Viggo used a dragon to basically make Berk starve, we saw him as Hiccup saw him, at his worst. Hiccup saw him at his worst villainy (that's a word now) and the audience saw him at his worst mentally, yet, the next episodes he has calmed himself since to Hiccup, he is not as horrible as he was before since he was leaving Berk alone.

Further down Viggos story, we see him teaming up with the riders in the season 4 finale ''Shell-shocked“ part 1 and 2. Ryker betrayed him and now he wants to see his brother suffer. Even though he teamed up with the riders, he was in no way one of the good guys, but also not as bad as before. He helped Hiccup save a dragon and save his home, meaning now Hiccup was warming up ever so slightly to Viggo, seeing in how he freaked out over Viggos plan to stop the Shellfire and also mourn a bit when Viggo was presumably killed by falling into the vulcano on the edge.

After that Viggo instantly goes back to the hunters when given the chance, because of course he would. Not because he was evil or wanted to kill Hiccup and the riders, but because it was his home, the hunters were his tribe. Yet it is portrayed as if Viggo is just evil and enjoys hunting dragons.

In the end, Viggo becomes good. He tames a Skrill, helps Hiccup defeat some of the hunters and goes out protecting the one legged viking boy with no back-up (hopefully anyone got that reference). What a satisfieing ending, am I right?

Yeah, I was pretty dissapointed too.

Viggo already said it while introducing himself, he is neither black nor white, he's gray. He's a morally gray character which is very rare in a show like Dragons. Viggo loves dragons which he makes obvious when talking to Hiccup about the Skrill, yet he has no problem with hunting and selling them because that was their way of surviving.

Until Hiccup came into his life, he was gray. He had his own set of morals, which included the survival of his tribe, yet Hiccup forced him into becoming black, doing evil things to protect his people. In the end he treid to redeem himself by becoming white, saving Hiccup multiple times and dying fighting side to side with a dragon as powerful as a Skrill.

This perfectly crafted character was forced into these sort of mind sets, which led to scenes like ''Dire Straits“, where Viggo seemed to be having a mental breakdown, or his last scene in ''Triple Cross“, where he died doing the ''right thing“.

To clarify, I in no way am saying they fucked Viggo up, they didn't. Like I said, they crafted a to me almost perfect character, which just got flat and predictable in the end (though him taming a Skrill was low-key pretty sick). It's sad, because there was so much potentioal in him, so much to be explored. I think most of us would be pretty down for a spin-off show about Viggo, Ryker and the hunters. But anyway, thank you for reading this, excuse any mistakes I made and stay tuned for when I need to rant again.

I Love Him, Your Honor [3/??]

summary: During college, Richie works part time at a law office for the sole reason it pays well, and he honestly thinks it’s utter hell. But then he meets another part time employee who works down in the file room and, well, maybe the law office isn’t completely hellish. word count: 5.4k

AO3 Link | very first chapter | previous chapter

chapter three: cute ass is the cure

Music plays from the bluetooth speakers in the living room that are connected to Bev's phone as Richie enters the apartment. Everyone else is already there; he can hear Stan in the living room as he tells something to Ben about his classes, the taller out of the two listening intently, fully engrossed in whatever story Stan is telling. Ben gasps and lets out a laugh as Richie walks through. Stan waves without looking at Richie and Ben takes a second to smile up at him and say, "Hey, man," before turning back to Stan. Richie, still walking, bows dramatically with the three pizza boxes and two liters of sodas. The boys are shocked that he doesn't drop their dinner, to say the least, both having been ready to catch whatever fell. He quickly goes to the kitchen and sees Beverly slipping in a pan of brownie batter into the oven. He kisses the top of her head as he passes by as a greeting and sets the pizza and drinks on the table.

"Thanks for getting the food and sodas tonight, Rich," Beverly says once she sets the timer on the oven.

He shrugs as he opens and closes the three pizza boxes one by one to make sure the pizzas were right. "No problem. I don't mind it," he tells her. "We got a full pepperoni, a full cheese, and a half pineapple half sausage. Then a coke and a sprite. The usual, of course." He grins at Bev.

She smiles back. "Beer is in the fridge, too."

Richie then takes the keys out of her pocket and tosses it to Beverly, who catches them with ease, and neither of them say much of anything for the next few minutes. Well, Bev doesn't say anything; she just laughs at Richie as he starts to sing terribly along with the song that is currently playing as he makes two plates of pizza, a cup of coke and another cup of sprite. He brings Stan's two slices of cheese pizza and sprite first, and then Ben's two slices of pepperoni and coke, still singing while doing so and nearly spilling the drinks each time. When Ben tries to tell him that he didn't have to bring him his plate, Richie just waves him off with a, "I'm trying to be nice here, eat the damn pizza," and Stan just says thanks. He then makes Beverly a plate as she puts dirty dishes in the sink - one slice of everything - and lets her fix her own drink, because he never knows if she's going to drink alcohol or stick with the sodas; it's one extreme or the other with her, and Richie just quit trying to find out after the third Wednesday Game Night. Finally he makes his own - two slices of pineapple, one sausage, and one pepperoni - and once he grabs a beer from the fridge, he heads for the living room, sitting in the unoccupied small recliner.

He sets his plate in his lap and opens the beer as he asks, "So, what game are we playing tonight, fellas?"

"Just regular old Mario Kart on the Wii," Beverly says as she enters the room. She quickly sits beside Ben.

"I can't believe you have a Wii in the year 2019," Stan comments, dark brown eyes moving to game console beside the TV. "And since we were thirteen, no less."

"Staniel's got a point. How does it even work still?"

Bev rolls her eyes. "It's seven years old - not a fucking relic! Geez. Maybe I should've went clubbing with Kay and Patty like they offered instead of being with you shits," she teases.

Stan suddenly sits up straight. In his expression, he's trying to play off everything as cool, calm, and collected. But the shine in his eyes and the fast reaction of sitting up threw that act out the window. "Did you say Patty?" He asks.

Richie frowns as Bev nods. "Who's Patty? Crabby patty? That kind of patty? Are we talking about Spongebob all of a sudden?"

Ben and Beverly share a look before the girl is looking back to Stan. "How do you know Patty?" She asks.

Stan is then turning to Richie with a smile the other boy has only seen on him a total of five times. It was large, full of teeth, and his eyes shown genuine excitement. The first time Richie saw that smile on Stan had been when they were ten, and the lighter brunet got just inches away from a hummingbird. The next two times were in middle school when Stan successfully pranked Richie two days in a row using the exact same thing, thrilled that his best friend had been so stupid to fall for it two times in a row. The next two times were during high school. Stan at a homecoming dance with a long time crush of his that never changed into anything more than that. Stan when he finally won at that impossible claw game at an arcade. The final time had been when Beverly and Ben announced their engagement a few months ago. Now, there is a sixth time and all Richie can do is slow his chewing after taking a bite of pizza and narrowing his dark eyes, waiting for his best friend to start talking.

"You remember the blonde we saw at my job the other day?" Stan asks, and at Richie's blank look, he sighs. "Cute Ass's friend," he deadpans, annoyed.

A lightbulb turns on. Richie's jaw drops, and his eyebrows shoot to his hair line as his eyes widen. "No, way!" He shouts.

His grin is back. "I got her number yesterday. We're going on a date Friday."

"Patty? Patricia Blum? My Patty Blum?" Beverly asks, and her giggles ruin the protective glare she sends Stan's way.

"Yup," Stan says, still smiling but it's more subdue now.

Ben reaches over and pats Stan's shoulder. "I'm happy for you, man. I've talked to Patrica, like, once, but she's really nice."

Beverly nods. "She's total sweetheart. If Ben wasn't in my life, I'd date her." She pauses, and her voice is sickly sweet when she speaks next, "But break her heart, I'll break your spine." Before Stan can reply with anything, she's turning to Richie, now glaring. "And if you hurt, quote unquote, 'Cute Ass' in any way, I will rip your dick off if he doesn't do it on the spot."

Richie blinks, a bit taken back. Then, after letting the words process, "You know Cute Ass?! Ohmygod, Bev, give me his name! Number! Please, I need to know who he is." He sets his plate and drink on the small coffee table and gets on his knees in front of Beverly, hands folding together and arms going to her lap. He musters up the best begging face he can make but his best friend simply rolls her eyes. "Bev," he whines.

Ben chuckles. "You'll live, Richie."

“No I won’t!” Richie all but yells dramatically. “Cute Ass is my life support – I’m slowly dying of heart failure and the only cure is to meet him!”

Ben is now laughing, and so is Stan despite his best efforts not to. Beverly is holding her laughter back, much to the surprise of the boys, but anyone could see that she was about to break. “I’m not telling you a thing,” she says.

“But I’m dying! A painful and slow death, one that only has one antidote! And what if this is- what if, like, Cute Ass is my soulmate? Huh? What then, Bev?”

“You don’t believe in soulma-.”

“Shut up, Staniel,” Richie interrupts him with a tiny glare that held no malice before looking back to Beverly. He then begins to act as if he were choking, hand clutching over his heart. “I’m- dying! I need the cure!” He falls to a heap at her feet with one arm stretched out. “The cure!” He goes limp; dead.

The other three break into large fits of laughter. Richie does his best to stay still and hold in his own, but it’s soon breaking free. They’re all giggling and laughing, and stopping only to start back up again when silence consumes them. Richie is rolling on the floor and Stan is slouched into the back of the couch, wiping tears from his eyes and doing his best not to disrupt his plate of pizza and his drink. Beverly is leaning on Ben for support, clutching an arm with her hand, and he’s hunched over with a hand covering his face as he tries to calm down. They all try to calm down but it doesn’t end. And it makes such a stupid thing to get so giggly about so much, but they can’t stop.

And then Beverly’s playing “Friday I’m in Love” by The Cure on her phone, making Richie laugh more. It takes a second until Ben realizes and Stan’s already laughing along with Richie, telling Bev, “Nice one.”

“I gave you The Cure,” Beverly says, giggles still escaping her. “There.”

A tiny laugh bubbles up out of Richie. “Wrong one,” he says, half whining.

“Why was that so funny?” Ben asks. His eye are bleary, a bit glossed over, as if it had all nearly brought him to tears.

“I was laughing from pure joy,” Stan says. “Rich died right in front of my eyes.”

Richie swats his legs and grins at hearing Beverly still giggling quietly. “Fuck off.”

For a moment, it feels like they’re fourteen or fifteen again, the four of them together in one of their parents’ houses most likely being too loud but they didn’t care. They didn’t care about a lot of things back then. Only each other and being able to spend time together. But now they’re in Beverly’s and Ben’s shared apartment, and they care about quite a few things now, including seeing one another as often as they could, but jobs were a thing and they were on a pathway to the rest of their lives.

The thought made Richie blink and sit up. “Getting a beer, want anything?” He asks, standing up and walking away before anyone can reply. He comes back a minute later with an open beer bottle and sits back in the recliner once he grabs his plate of pizza.

“Wait, Rich, you don’t believe in soulmates?” Beverly asks suddenly, her brain catching up with what Stan has said before they had their laughing fit. The song was ending now, and she pauses it before another one can start.

Hi shrugs. “In high school,” he explains. “I don’t know about now.”

“I think that’s because you liked Bill then, but he was avoiding us so you decided to throw away the entire shebang with romantic feelings,” Stan says, casually as ever.

“Who didn’t have a crush on Bill?”

“Me.”

Richie waves a hand dismissively. “Ben, you don’t count - you’ve been in love with Bev since forever. But back to Bill: that ass in those baseball pants?” Richie asks, and then stuffs his face with a bite of pizza, talking with a mouth full of food. “Good shit. And I didn’t throw away the entire 'shebang' with romantic feelings! Did you not just see the dramatics I put on for Cute Ass?”

Beverly lights up. Her grin went from ear to ear and Stan raises an eyebrow as Ben gives Richie a curious look. “You have a crush on E- Cute Ass?!”

Richie freezes and swallows the food. “I didn’t say that... Besides, I don’t even know what he looks like, or- or how he acts! If anything, I’ve got a crush on Cute Ass’s ass.”

Stan rolls his eyes. “That’s impossible, Richie.”

“You’re impossible,” he retaliates.

"Your face is impossible."

"I'd say your mom is impossible, but-." A decorative pillow hitting his face cuts Richie off before he can finish his sentence.

Then, Ben is suggesting that they finally start Mario Kart, an argument starting between who gets to be Princess Peach this time between the four of them.

+++

The next day, Richie wakes up exhausted from the hours upon hours of aggressive Mario Kart with his friends, and he's slightly hung over from the amount of beers he had. He checks the time on his phone from where he is under the coffee table, and glares at the time. It's six on the dot. He groans and stuffs his face into the pillow - the same one Stan had hit him with - and listens as everyone's alarms start going off. How they agreed Wednesday was the best day for game nights is beyond him, especially now that he had a decent paying half-time job that he has to wake up early for. He stops his alarm as soon as it happens and quickly cancels whatever others that are waiting to go off. Stan's muttering cuss words as he wakes up and turns off his alarm, instantly sitting up on the couch, and both of them can hear shuffling from Ben's and Bev's shared room. Soon enough, one pair of foot steps are heard, and just by how fast they are, Richie knows its Bev.

"Morning, losers," she greets, too happy for either of them.

Richie sticks a hand out from under the coffee table and flips her off.

"Surprised you're up, Rich," Stan says, voice laced with sleep.

"Well, Stanny Boy, I've got to get to work at eight and I enjoy not having to rush to drink my coffee."

"I'll start making some then-."

"No!" Both Stan and Richie shout at the same time, suddenly wide awake, and the latter of the two is crawling out from under the coffee table to see Stan grabbing Bev's wrist before she can get any closer to the kitchen. All she's wearing is a very large shirt that they both know at least used to belong to Ben and fuzzy socks, and her short hair is a completely mess from sleep, face contorting in confusion at them.

"...Or not," she says.

Stan sighs in relief and lets her wrist go. "Thank, God," he whispers, and she almost looks offended.

Richie pushes himself up to stand. "Bev, we love you, but you near about poisoned us the last time you made coffee," he tells her. He gently hits her shoulder with the back of his hand as he passes by. "Let me make some. I'd get Stan to do it but he has to do that enough already."

So he does, Beverly hovering behind him, saying she had done exactly what he's currently doing, and by the time the three of them were sipping their coffee, they were baffled at how Bev fucked it up so badly last time. Not too soon after that, their redhead is getting ready for work and leaving just as Ben walks into the kitchen. She gives them all kisses on the cheek before officially leaving. Richie acts as if he's going to kiss her on the lips, and she goes along with it until the very last moment where she tugs hard at his curls, laughing at his pain and kissing Ben right after, finally leaving.

Ben points a spoon at Richie once the door shuts and musters up his best glare in his half asleep state. "Stay away from my woman, Tozier." He smiles, then, and so does Richie.

"I'd never go for her in a million years," Richie says. "...Is that offensive?"

Stan snorts and Ben shakes his head. "Just drink your coffee," Stan says.

+++

[from: cocker staniel 12:02pm Hey. I have a surprise for you.]

[to: cocker staniel 12:02pm u've talked to me a lot in the past 24 hours are u ok] [to: cocker staniel 12:02pm this is......odd....to say the least]

[from: cocker staniel 12:06p You've made my braincells decrease in number drastically so no.] [from: cocker staniel 12:06pm But I do have a surprise for you. We're about to walk in now.]

Richie stares at his messages, blinks, stares some more, and then frowns. Up until then, his day had been going normal. He left Bev's after changing to a set of clothes he keeps there for nights he sleeps over, and went to work, getting there on time. Then, he just started work and is still working, and listening to music on Spotify to pass the time. But Stan texted him, and usually it's not out of the blue; this time, however, it is considering the Jew is supposed to be working - not bringing him a surprise. He texts back a million question marks, because what does Stan mean by 'we'? And what does he mean by 'surprise'? It could mean a million things with that guy, and honestly Richie is still to tired to even try to figure it out. He leans back in the seat for a split second before sitting back up and taking his ear buds out, pausing his music. He then gets up and walks out of his cubicle to the lobby of the law office just in time to see Stan opening the front door, letting an all too familiar T-Rex step inside before him. Richie glances at the receptionist and gives a tight smile as they make eye contact, the woman giving a puzzled one back as the phone starts to ring. Richie looks back at his best friend and little sister, and walks closer.

"Why do you have our little sister?" Richie asks.

Stan makes a face. "I'm not her- Jesus, Richie," he mumbles and facepalms, making Tori laugh slightly. He uncovers his face quickly and sends her a half-hearted glare. "What's so funny?"

"Your face," she deadpans.

Richie laughs loudly and hi-fives Tori who's smiling smugly, Stan now fully glaring at them both. "But seriously, why's Tori with you?"

Stan rolls his eyes but then smirks, and stares down at Tori. This time, she's the one glaring at him. "Care to tell?"

"Oh, how the tables have turn- sorry," Richie awkwardly smiles at Stan's unamused look. He then motions with his head to get closer to the couch so they're out of the way of everyone, if someone decides to come in the lobby, and both college students wait for the sixteen year old to explain herself.

Tori sighs dramatically and plops down on the couch. She loosely crosses her arms and stares up at the two, her sitting a bit awkward because of her backpack. Finally, she explains, "So... I got suspended, right?" She starts, and as Richie and Stan share a look she goes on, "And, like, I did tell Mom and Dad that...but only that I got suspended for the rest of last week and Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. I lied, said something about two major tests I can't miss and that the principal agreed to let me come back to school today, but I'm actually suspended until the end of next week. And, well, Mom got better from her cold so I thought I would be home free for the rest of my suspension until Dad caught something yesterday - he's, like, really fu- uh, hella pale." Stan snorts. "And I couldn't exactly stay home, so I road the town bus around, and then ended up at Stan's job only for him to drag me out because apparently Mom goes there every Thursday for lunch. Just my luck."

By the end of spiel, Richie's face is in both of his hands. He's just shy of twenty, nearly to the point of being an adult and not a 'adult teen' as Beverly's aunt called them once a few months ago, and he's also a big brother who probably should call up his parents and tell them that, "Hey, your second child is lying," or get Tori to tell the entire truth; but Richie's also just a brother to a teen girl who, bless her heart, stresses him the fuck out but someone he'll still do anything for, and somehow that meant keeping her out of getting grounded longer. It's been like this since she was born - and Tori doesn't even know it. She could kill someone and Richie would be at her side helping her hide the body, giving her most of his money, and shipping her off to some country where she doesn't get sent to jail for life.

He groans at that thought. He's in deep shit. She's in deep shit. Stan's in deep shit, because it's the same for him - it's the exact reason he brought her over. He didn't want Tori getting into too much trouble.

In their eyes, she's still a little kid who doesn't know better.

But then again, both him and Stan are basically adults and they can't exactly let a little teenager dictate what they have to do.

Little sisters are the worst, he thinks.

Richie sighs and slowly removes his hands from his face and looks at Tori. She only looks slightly guilty, but he thinks that's just because she nearly got caught if it weren't for Stan, who is chewing his bottom lip, a vague look on his face that says exactly what Richie is thinking. "I should be responsible about this," he says quietly.

Stan nods. "I can easily go back to work and tell your mom."

"And you can't keep lying about your suspensions, Tori."

"Also who rides the city bus alone? You could've gotten kidnapped!"

"I'm the oldest, I should be dialing Mom right now!"

"This is making me an accomplice and I hate it!"

"But... You're not gonna do anything. Are you?" She says the words slowly, brows lowering and a smirk forming, as if realizing something; her voice kept either of the from continuing to spiral in a panic. She's then sitting up and her eyes are bright. The guilt that was there a second ago is now long gone. "I've got you two wrapped around my finger, don't I? This is amazing!" She laughs and points at Stan. "And you keep trying to say you're not my brother, but you practically act like! I can't believe you two lame-os worship the ground I walk on."

"Whoa!"

"Hey, no! That is not a thing we do."

"We do not worship the ground you walk on!" Richie nearly shrieks.

She hums. "But you do," she sing-songs, brows quirking up for a split second.

Richie hands form into fists and he's throwing his head backwards, squeezing his eyes shut. "Tori, I swear to God-," he cuts himself off and looks at her, eyes narrowed. "Okay, this isn't gonna become some sibling manipulation thing now, got it? You- don't give those puppy eyes, Tori- you are going to tell Mom and Dad you got suspended for three weeks, and then- keep those tears in your eyes, missy, you are not a crocodile."

Tori is now glaring at him, hard. The 'about to cry' look is gone in an instant. "Why?"

Stan rolls his eyes. "Why what, Tori?" He asks, voice dry.

She doesn't say anything. Instead, she purses her lips and slumps down again, pouting and maybe even angry at them for not cooperating the way she wants them to.

Richie sighs, shoulders slouching as if he were deflating like a balloon that has a hole in it, and looks to Stan. "Go to work, man, I'll take care of this. It's about time for my lunch break, anyway."

Stan reluctantly nods. "Okay. Have fun." He says the last part quieter in more a whisper, sarcasm dripping from his tone, making Richie scoff out a laugh. Then, Stan goes back to his own job, leaving Richie alone at work with his gremlin of a sister.

Richie pulls Tori up to her feet with a grunt, and keeps his hand on her forearm loosely as he starts walking, Tori having no choice but to follow. He goes to the break room, thankful that no one is there, and motions for her to sit at the table. “I gotta clock out, but then I’ll be back,” he tells her. She just rolls her eyes and he flips her off before walking back out, shutting the door, and he quickly goes to clock out and then heads back to the front desk as the receptionist shouted his name and something about his food being here. He takes the takeout back with his food, thanks her dramatically, and then he’s back in the break room. “Have you eaten?” He asks as he walks in.

Tori looks up from the seat she’s in and shrugs, and Richie can tell that the cut on her lip and her bruised cheek are healing fine now that he’s not distracted by his inner turmoil. “No,” she says finally after him staring at her for a solid thirty seconds.

He sets the bag on the table after closing the door and fishes out the box of food. “I’ve got a large ass burger and shit ton of fries we can share.” Then he’s fishing his wallet out of his pocket and handed her a one dollar bill, and points to the drink machine. “Get yourself a drink.”

As she gets herself a drink, Richie finds a paper plate and a sharp knife and cuts the burger in half the best he can, and then dumps some fries on the paper plate with Tori’s half, handing it to her. He finally sits down to eat after getting his own drink. There would usually be more talking, more jokes and teasing, but considering what just went on in the lobby both Tozier kids were subdued.

“I’m not gonna tell Mom and Dad,” Richie finally speaks up a few minutes later. “You need to do it.”

She makes a face. “I already got grounded for what I did tell them,” she says, “And if I say anything I’ll be grounded for even longer.”

“At least you’re telling the truth.”

She scoffs and rolls her eyes. “Can you go back to being an annoying fifteen year old with no sense of maturity what’s so ever?”

He acts as if her were thinking, tapping a finger to his chin as he looks up, humming. “Hm... No,” he finally settles with and gives her a large grin.

“Bold if you he has any maturity now,” Bev says as she walks in. There’s a salad in one hand and a drink in the other. The redhead’s words make the teenager laugh, and Richie rolls his eyes, Bev grinning at their reactions.

“I gave you that food, Tori, I’ll take it away.” The threat is an empty one, everyone knew that, so Tori barely reacts negatively. She just sits in a position that’s copying her brother’s and puts on a deep voice to mock him. She ends up in a small fit of giggles as Beverly sits down at the table. “Oh, screw you.”

“Oh, screw you,” Tori copies, voice now high pitched.

Richie glares at her and grabs three fries from her plate and stuffs them in his mouth.

“Hey!”

Richie gives her a smug smile as he chews, only to freeze as someone lets out a sound that is somehow both equally amused and disgusted as they walk in. He turns his head towards the direction of the refrigerator where the person is now standing, and nearly chokes on the fries. It’s Cute Ass, reaching in the fridge and Richie can’t tell if he’s putting something in or taking something out, but he doesn’t bother to try and figure it out because he’s hit with another realization: Cute Ass is the file boy Sasha and Deb were talking about Monday, and they’re right. He’s on the short side. Not as small as Bev, but short nonetheless. He swallows his food and looks at his best friend with wide eyes.

“Hey, Rich, how much do you like The Cure?” She asks, smirking, able to get away with it since her back is to the other guy.

He tried to school his features and keep his eyes on her as the other guy closes the fridge finally, hand clutching a a sprite bottle. “A normal amount,” Richie forces himself to say.

Tori snorts, causing the three to look at her. “Dude, you used to blast them everyday after school! I’ve got ‘Just Like Heaven’ stuck in my head permanently because of you!”

“Who even like The Cure anymore anyway?” Cute Ass asks, and then three pairs of eyes were on him and- holy shit, he’s beautiful.

He had to be around his and Bev’s age, with wide, deep brown eyes and dark brown hair, and smooth skin, and Richie swears he sees some freckles across the other guy’s nose, which is scrunched up in the cutest way; he looks disgusted, maybe offended, but definitely confused at someone still liking The Cure. Richie has the urge to clutch at his heart like he did the night before when he was being dramatic – only this time it would be to still it so he can breathe normally. But then the words are catching up to his brain, and Richie gives the guy a very offended look.

“You mean, who doesn’t like The Cure,” he corrects. “Your taste in music must be terrible.”

“My taste in music is fucking amazing, thank you very much, and way better than yours.”

“You know nothing about my taste in music!”

“You like The Cure. That’s all I need to know.”

Richie’s brows shoot up and he gapes at him. “Well, by that I know yours is shit, no matter what mine is.”

Cute Ass glares. “For all you know, I might like the Jonas Brothers.”

“They’re shit- ow!” He glares at Tori and Bev; the former had punched him in the shoulder and Beverly kicked him in the leg. “What the hell?!”

“They’re not shit!” Tori exclaims.

“Yeah! They’re magnificent – well, Kevin and Joe are. Nick broke up the band, so he’s out,” Bev says. Then, she’s smirking again. “Besides, didn’t you go to one of their concerts for the Burnin’ Up tour?”

“Twice,” Tori answers for her brother. “And then, he went to a Niall concert and a Harry concert, and before that went to see One Direction three times!”

“Because Ben wanted to, and so did you!” Richie defends himself, though he doesn’t know why – he genuinely liked the boyband and may or may not look up to Harry Styles. “Actually, no, I’m- I like them. The Jo Bro’s? Decent. One Direction – band and solo? Amazing. I’m not afraid to admit that. But The Cure is good! They’re amazing too! You,” he points at Cute Ass accusatorially, “probably like, I dunno, weird country music.”

Cute Ass laughs. “Ew, gross. Country music? My ears’ll bleed!”

Richie nods with a smile. “Okay. So, now you’ve got two redeeming qualities.”

He looks back at Richie, confused, and Beverly is stuffing her mouth full of salad to keep herself from laughing. “Two?” He questions. “What’s the other one?”

Richie, for a second, wants to take his words back. But, hey, he’s enjoying Cute Ass even if he does hate The Cure, and it’s weird but seeing him riled up makes him cuter and hotter, so Richie tells the truth. “Your ass,” he says as blunt as ever, and grins cheekily afterward.

The guy blinks. Then, his face in flushing pink and glances behind him for a split second before looking back to Richie. “God, you- you... What the fuck? That’s disgusting!”

Richie just laughs and the cutie flips him off before walking out, mumbling to himself. He leans back in his seat with a large smile. Tori says something about agreeing with the guy who just left and Bev is giving him a look – one he can’t entirely decipher so he doesn’t – but he just goes back to eating his lunch. His heart is still racing, and he can feel the tiniest amount of heat on his cheeks, but he doesn’t exactly care. The guy with the cute ass is pretty – stunning, even – and Richie has half the urge to follow him, just to annoy him some more and somehow get a name because he knows he’s still not going to get one from Bev. But he stays in his seat, large grin turning a bit dopey, and finishes his lunch before sending Tori back over to Stan.

Made With Love (6) // Harry Styles - Holiday

Hello!!

Can you believe we're on part six already :o

Thank you to everyone that messaged me and helped me with the research on this whole story, the help honestly meant everything to me. I am grateful that you shared and trusted me with the stories and information on your own pregnancies <3

If you want to share any blurbs etc. about dad!Harry then please do share them, I would love to read your ideas and concepts!

/ Made With Love Masterlist / Blurbs Or Concepts / Requests /

–

Warnings: Smut, mention of Hospital!!

Word Count: 4389

–

6. Holiday

Cold, that is all Y/N felt as she stepped from the snow into their small, intimate cabin. Shaking herself off she looked around, small droplets of snow falling around her off her clothes.

“God it's freezing” Harry calls, placing the suitcases inside the door. 

The door shuts and everything is silent, the only noise to be heard were the sounds of breathing and the crackling of the wood burning fire. 

“I should have chosen Brazil for my last holiday” She laughs, slipping from her large puffer jacket and hanging it on the rail. She stumbles as she bends to kick off her shoes, holding the wall for support.

“Iceland love, its the place we’ve always wanted to visit” He smiles, hanging his coat up beside hers. She nods and walks into the open living area, smiling at the small basket of treats that sit on the coffee table.

“Ohh look H, complimentary chocolate for me, and avocados for you” Y/N laughs, holding the Avocados up for him to view. He laughs and walks towards her, throwing himself down on the plush, L shaped sofa. Y/N follows behind him, replacing the avocados for a packet of biscuits. 

As she sits she feels Harry's hands supporting her waist, ensuring she doesn’t fall down hard as she settles beside him. She brings her legs up and snuggles into his side, opening the biscuits with a smile.

“What happened to healthy eating for the baby?” He asks with a raised brow, reaching his hand into the packet to take out a chocolate biscuit. She scowls and slaps at his hands, covering the biscuits.

“What happened to not stealing your pregnant wife's food” She argues, sticking her tongue out at him as he eats the biscuit. 

“What about Otis for a boys name?” Y/N asks suddenly, her fingers fiddling with the biscuit packet as she stares aimlessly out of the window. Harry looks at her, the biscuit currently in his mouth was now forgotten.

“Otis Styles, I kind of like it” Harry nods, chewing the biscuit,

“Otis Robin Styles” Y/N furrows her face together, unsure of the name.

“That’s a mouthful, but I like that you're incorporating Robin into the name” He smiles, reaching his hand out for another biscuit. Y/N doesn’t object, she just passes the biscuits to him, snuggling deeper into his side. She pushes her hand beneath the fabric of his shirt and holds his tummy, her fingers playing with the hairs that disappear beneath the waistband of his joggers.

“If its a boy we could call him Ace, I think that's a cool name” Harry announces, his voice sounding deeper now that her ear was pressed against his chest.

“That's a cool one, what about Ivy for a girl?” Y/N asks, suddenly excited that they were both discussing the names of their little baby.

“Ivy Anne Styles, I like that, it flows nicely off the tongue” He admits, repeating the name.

“So we're having Anne as the middle name?” She asks, smiling at him.

“Well, if that's ok?” He asks, 

“It's completely fine”

They both begin to grin at each other or a moment, their eyes locked as names rush between them, their minds filling with the endless amount of possibilities. 

 “But what if they decide they want to be...different when they're older, shouldn’t we at least allow them that chance, to have a name that's gender neutral?” Y/N asks suddenly, her eyes wide.

“What were you thinking?” He asks, his hands playing with the ends of her hair. She smiles at that, her eyes glistening as she stares at him with a smile.

“Grey, Grey Styles” She announces, watching his reaction. 

He stares at her for a while, repeating the name over in his head. It was unique and could be used for both a boy and a girl, which would be ideal. He didn’t want to take the choice away from his child, he wanted them to choose how they wanted to live and who they wanted to be. 

“I like it, it's unique and good for both a boy and a girl” 

Y/N smiles and nods, getting up onto her knees to press a long, soft kiss to Harry's lips. He smiles at the forwardness, holding her waist and pulling her onto his lap. 

Since they first both met the connection was there both physically and mentally. They could never get enough of each other, no matter how much they were together it wasn’t enough. They couldn’t get enough of each other, they longed for the touch of each other, longed for the long nights and endless days, and they knew from the start they were made for each other.

As Y/N moves her hips against Harry he begins to undo her bra, his fingers dancing across her skin, igniting her body with a need.

“Sometimes, I hate how much I love you” she whispers against his lips, feeling his chuckle vibrate through her as he slips off her top and bra, throwing them to the floor.

He takes his time in admiring her, his eyes lustful as he observes every mark and curve. Her body would never get boring to look at, it was a work of art that he wished he could have on a wall, to admire whenever he wished. 

“You're staring again” She whispers, kissing the skin beneath his ear. 

“That's because you Y/N, are a work of art” He announces, blinking up at her. He traces his finger across her face and pushes a piece of hair behind her ear. His eyes twinkle, his skin rough against her skin, but she liked it, she loved the raw feeling of his skin against her, she craved it. 

She smiles at him and pushes herself up from his body, holding her finger for him to wait. He scowls but does as he’s told, impatiently waiting for her to return. She smiles and rushes to her carry on, unzipping the bag and searching through. She smiles as she pulls out the Polaroid camera, clutching it tightly as she holds it up, She slowly walks to Harry and snaps a picture of him sprawled sexily across the sofa, his eyes wide.

“What are”

“If I’m a work of art, you should at least have something to look at when I’m not there for you to appreciate” She smiles seductively, holding the camera toward him. He takes it in his hand, staring at the device before looking up at her, his face unreadable.

“We should take this all off thou, so you can admire it all” She giggles, reaching her hand into her leggings. She watches him swallow as she pushes them down, her panties dropping along with the black fabric that once clung to her skin. 

His hands clutch the camera, admiring the way the light from the fire ignites her skin. She bites her lip and he groans, holding the camera up to snap a picture of her. Her smile is wicked, torturing as she nears him, her hands smoothing over her body seductively, capturing the curves he loved so much.

“You can take as many as you want” She whispers, bending over in front of him to whisper into his ear,

“It's yours after all” She bites at his ear, giggling as she runs off towards the bedroom. He smiles and follows behind her, his dick now throbbing as he enters the bedroom. 

She sprawled across the bed on her bag, her hands holding her breasts as he enters the room, his feet pausing as he holds the camera up to snap another picture. The polaroids fall to the floor, creating a pathway to the bed as he nears her, his eyes not leaving hers as he snaps pictures.

She grins at him, running her hands up her body as she spreads her legs, allowing him to picture her most intimate part. He smiles and snaps the picture, bringing his hand to soothe her skin as he snaps another picture.

“You are bad” He growls, placing the camera onto the bed. He crawls slowly up her body, kissing every inch of her skin as he makes his way up to her lips. He smiles as his lips connect to hers, his hips rubbing into her as she scratches her nails down his back.

“And do I get pictures of you?” She whispers, her lips moving against his. He chuckles into her, nipping her lip as he pulls back.

Y/N smiles innocently at him, watching him reach down to grab the camera. He hands it to her and winks, beginning the process of slipping his shirt from his body. 

She snaps pictures of him, admiring the way his muscles move. He reaches down to slip out of his joggers and smiles as she observes, taking a picture from her point of view. It would show her breast and the small bump of her stomach, but it would also show Harry and the hardness that was now pressed against her, 

“I think that one will be my favourite” She admits, placing the camera and polaroids to the side. He nods and growls, leaning down to kiss her passionately. Their tongues battle against each other, the taste on chocolate biscuits transfer between them. The taste was pleasant, the chocolate lingering longer than the taste of biscuit. 

“No playing around, I need you” Y/N whispers, reaching down to align him up with her entrance. Harry laughs, pressing his forehead to hers and placing a small kiss between her eyes.

“Impatient, this pregnancy has come with a perk” 

She scowls but pushes her hips up, closing her eyes and sighing as he fills her. She can feel her walls stretching, making room for him as he seethes himself fully inside you, pausing as your hipbones connect.

Harry stares down at where you are connected and groans, reaching for the camera and pointing it towards the area. He snaps a picture and throws it to the side alongside the others.

“What, that's my favourite sight” He smiles, leaning down onto his elbows to kiss Y/N. He begins to move his hips, going at the same rhythm as their kiss, slow and steady. 

It makes Y/N whimper against his lips, her toes curling every time he inches a little deeper to the sensitive area inside her. The sound of their skin travels, the sound of her wetness loud and oddly satisfy as Harrys picks up his moves.

“That sound, its a turn on” He growls, biting the skin of Y/N collar bone. She nods wrapping her legs around his waist, wanting him to go deeper.

“I need to do doggy, its deeper that way” She moans, pushing at his chest so she can go on all fours.

“Is that ok for the baby?” He asks, his brows furrowed as he holds her hips. He pushes into her from behind and throws his head back, the view of her ass up in the air for him something he loved.

“Baby's fine, now go faster” She growls, her hands clutching the sheets of the bed tighter. Sparks run through her as he gets faster, the sound of skin hitting skin a lot louder now. 

She can feel him throbbing inside her, her clit aching as his balls slap against it roughly with each thrust. The sensation was enough, but then he hits the spot inside her at a new angle and she cries, clenching around him tightly as she releases. 

The sparks travel up her spine causing her to shake, she can feel him slowing, his cock throbbing as he releases, filling her as he finishes his final thrusts.

As he exits her she can feel the strings of cum, sticking to her leg and slowly running. She turns to him with a smile, crawling off the bed to make her way to the bathroom.

“Let me help you” He shouts, rushing to her aid. 

She smiles as he makes her sit on the toilet seat, grabbing a washcloth and soaking in underneath the warm water.

“I’ll admit, that was some great sex” He laughs, bending down to wipe between her legs. She nods in agreement, shivering from a nearby draft.

“How about a warm bath then dinner? We can order it here?” He asks, wiping the inside of her thighs gently.

“Then can we sleep? I’m so tired” Y/N whines, holding onto Harry's shoulders with a pout. He laughs and nods, placing a small kiss onto her nose.

“Whatever you want my love”

--

“God this baby is going to be the cutest” Harry shouts, placing kisses over every inch of Y/N’s stomach.

She looks at him from her book and giggles, reaching to take a sip of her orange juice. She loved when he did this, played and talked to her stomach, pretending to tell the little one secrets that mummy could never know. 

Honestly, she was scared of this being over, she never wanted it to end. With everything going on in the world she just wanted the little baby to stay wrapped up and protected inside her at all times. It was warm and safe in there, and they could have an unlimited food supply, what more could anyone need?

“Sweet creature, wherever I go, you bring me home” He sings, tracing patterns into her stomach. She smiles, reaching down to ruffle his hair.

“Are you trying to win the baby over?” Y/N asks, watching his smile widen.

“I don’t need too, baby loves me already”

She chuckles lowly, holding her stomach as she places her book onto the side table. 

“And what if I say they don’t?” You ask, 

He smirks at her, his eyes wild

“Well I’d have to do something about that wouldn’t I” He grins,

She wriggles her eyebrows at him, poking the dimples at the corners of his cheeks.

“I hope the baby looks as good as you and sings like you, god they don’t want my genes” She laughs, throwing her head back.

“Hey, if our baby looks anything like you they’d be classed as an angel, you are beautiful, and your voice is actually quite good, not as bad as some” He points, his tone serious as he pokes her belly.

“Come on H, have you see yourself?” She argues, throwing her arms towards him as if she were selling him off to a bidder.

“Well, yes I have, but have you see how beautiful you are Y/N” He replies, 

She quickly looks away and scowls, 

“Can’t you just let me win easily for once” She whines, pouting as he turns her head back towards him.

“Honestly, no”

She shakes her head and sighs, holding her belly protectively as Harry reaches for the pregnancy oil. 

“How about a belly massage? I’ve been looking online and people have said that a really gentle massage with oil that's good for stretch marks can really help reduce stretch mark size and opacity”

She smiles at him, 

“You’ve been doing research”

“Well, of course, you are my wife and that is my baby, I would like to protect and look after you both” 

“Alright, but don’t blame me if I fall asleep” 

--

Y/N holds her stomach with one arm and grips onto Harry with the other. The wind is cold and icy, the snow crunching beneath both of their feet. They inch their way further up the path, following the young family in front. 

Honesty, Y/N wished they picked a hot country to visit, the heat would have been bad but at least she wouldn't be freezing her tits off. Harry, on the other hand, couldn’t care if he was freezing, he was more scared of Y/N falling over and hurting herself and the baby. As soon as they both began the walk he wanted to turn back, tuck her up and keep her protected in front of the fire, but of course, Y/N wouldn’t have it, she wanted to at least see the scenery whilst they were here. 

“Oh gosh look, Harry, it's beautiful” 

Y/N points to the waterfall just above, the sound of water echoing up from the depths. It's decorated by a fresh blanket of snow, everything looking smooth and untouched, it was beautiful. 

“Let's take a picture, please” Y/N whines, sticking her lip out as they get closer to the edge. 

“Not too close Y/N, I don’t want you falling” Harry points, his face and tone serious as she holds her hands up.

“Alright H, just stand beside me and put those long arms to use” 

He shakes his head but does as he’s told, cuddling her into his waist before holding the camera out. He smiles and snaps the picture. He looks down at her red face and can’t help but beam as she giggles, her hands coming up to cover her mouth. He quickly snaps another picture, his attention completely on her as she looks up and smiles.

“Overprotective man” She giggles, leaning up onto her tiptoes to place a gentle kiss to his lips. He savours the kiss and the lingering taste of hot chocolate that was still there from their lunch date. 

“How about we get back before it starts snowing,” He asks, placing his hand on her lower back. She nods at him and they begin the walk back to the main road, smiling at people that pass by.

“I really hope no one recognises us, I want to keep baby a secret for as long as possible” She whispers as they reach the road, both waving at the nearest taxi. Harry nods and helps her in, shutting the door and rushing to the opposite side.

Y/N shivers as she sits, wrapping her arms around herself as the warm air from the car's heaters stings at her face. It was funny how both the cold and the heat could cause you pain, no matter how opposite they were.

Y/N jumps as Harry gives the lodge address to the driver, his voice rough and slightly rugged.

“Are you coming down with something? We need to protect your throat, have some tea when we get in” She panics, placing the back of her hand against his head. He felt fine, not hot, maybe it was just a random thing that would go away.

“Love, it's fine, we’ll have some warm drinks back at the lodge maybe have a warm bath and relax, I’ll text Jeff, he’ll probably want me on voice rest for the rest of the evening” He laughs, reaching into his pockets to grab his phone.

“It's not fine H, your voice is your career, without it your fucked” She mutters, holding her belly as she leans back into the leather seat of the cab.

“Hey, I could pursue modelling harder, I’m good at that”

“Yes, I’m not saying that. I’m saying that singing, it's your passion, your love and if you don’t have that I know you’ll feel lost. So if I say I’m going to worry I am going too, is that ok?” She raises her voice, glaring at him through slitted eyes.

He stares at her, his mouth turning up into a smile as he watches her cheeks flush with anger. He always loved her passion, it was one of those things that made his heart swell. 

“Ok, my love, I’m sorry” He reaches to take her hand, entwining their fingers as he leans down to kiss the top of her head.

“You really need to stop being a bastard”

He laughs, clutching his stomach as they drive on towards the lodge, both smiles wide and goofy.

--

“We’ve been here for 30 minutes and my wife still hasn’t seen anyone. Money isn’t an issue I will pay, but I need her to be seen urgently” Harry raises his voice slightly at the receptionist, throwing his wallet down as if it were evidence in a trial.

He very rarely lost his temper, hell it was rare he ever did, especially in front of random people, but at this moment there was nothing Y/N could say or do. He was scared, terrified that this could be it, that it could all be over.

“Ok, Sir, bring her over and we will take her through” A doctor stands from a back desk, reaching for the file that the receptionist hands her. 

Y/N winces as she stands, taking Harry's hand as they follow the doctor into the examination room. 

She can feel his hands shaking, his palms sweating as he helps her up onto the examination table. 

“Ok, so what seems to be the problem Mrs Styles” The doctor shuts the door, turning to you with a smile.

“Well I’m pregnant and I’m bleeding, not a lot just spotting, but I’ve been getting some cramping which has been quite intense”

“Ok and have you had any falls recently?” She asks, placing a set of blue latex gloves on, 

“No, I’ve been fine” Y/N admits, gripping Harry's hand tightly as the doctor comes to examine her. She presses around on her stomach, looking up to her with a pouted lip. 

“For a closer examination I’ll need to do an ultrasound, do you have your blue file on you? I understand you are on holiday but you should have it on you always” The doctor asks, grabbing the machine from the corner of the room.

“It's in my bag, would you grab it love” Harry reaches for the bag and takes out the blue file, handing it over to the doctor who is waiting. They both watch as the doctor flips through the notes, nodding as she puts on a fresh set of gloves.

“There have been no causes for concern so far, I’ll take a look and have some tests run, just to be safe”

“Could she be losing the baby, we haven’t done anything we shouldn't I”

“Mr Styles, its perfectly fine to be worried, but I can ensure you that this is natural. It's most likely from the increase in blood flow, however, I will run some test just to make sure everything is ok for wife and baby” The doctor smiles, looking between the both of them.

“And this will all be kept quiet, we usually go private but this was an emergency”

“Everything said and done in this room is completely confidential” She smiles, writing something down into the blue file. As she leaves Y/N sighs, holding her belly protectively. 

She was scared, hell when she went to the bathroom to pee and saw a few spots of blood she screamed, her mind raising to the worst possible conclusions that it could. Harry, on the other hand, went into complete Protective Harry mode, he cleaned her up, got her changed and practically carried her to the car. He didn’t want her to move, he didn’t want there to be anything wrong.

“It's going to be ok H, come here” Y/N hold her hand out for his, pulling him towards her and into her outstretched arms. 

He has to bend awkwardly to hug her properly but he does, sniffling into her hair as he kisses her head repeatedly. 

“I was so fucking scared”  He whispers, trailing his hand down to hold your stomach. You place a hand over his and nod, inhaling his scent as he pulls you closer to his body.

“Like she said its sometimes normal for this to happen, but she’ll run the tests anyway, just to make sure everything's ok” She whispers, pressing a kiss to his neck. He nods into her, pulling away as the door opens. 

“Right I’ll take an ultrasound then we need to take some blood and do a vaginal examination, is that ok?” She looks to Y/N whilst scrubbing her hands, placing them straight into a set of fresh latex gloves.

Y/N nods and shudders, lying back onto the bed nervously. As the woman begins the tests Harry holds her hand, squeezing it tightly now and again to ensure her that she’s doing great. She could feel his sweaty palm and the shakiness he was hiding extremely well, she knew he was just as scared as her if not more.

“Ok, so far everything is looking good but I’ll take these down to the lab and have them checked quickly before we allow you to leave. Please feel free to stay in here and make yourselves comfortable, I believe the coffee and tea machine down the hall is working now” She smiles, cleaning up the metal trolly before leaving. 

“I’m so proud of you, that vaginal exam looked intense” He whispers, leaning to press a kiss to the top f Y/N head. She smiles and laughs, looking up to him

“It wasn’t the most pleasant thing in the world” 

They both chat amongst each other, laughing and smiling as they wait for the results. It doesn’t take long for the woman to come back, a smile and prescription tucked under her arm.

“Like I assumed it was just an increase in blood flow so nothing to threat about, however, the blood showed a slight Iron Deficiency so we're putting you on something to help level that out. You are free to go but I suggest taking it easy for the next couple of days, just to be on the safe side”

Y/N smiles as the weight lifts from her chest, her smile now taking over her face.

“Thank you so much, we were so scared” Harry walks up to the woman and shakes her hand, thanking her repeatedly. She smiles and hands him the prescription and blue file from earlier.

“It was a pleasure. I have written everything down in that file so your midwife is updated, of course, if she needs to speak to me directly I’ve left my name and number in there also” She address, looking between the both of them.

Y/N nods and pushes herself off the bed, outstretching a hand to the doctor.

“Thank you”

She smiles and shows you both out, bidding you farewell as you step out into the cold icy street, the icy wind throwing your hair back in a rush. Y/N shivers and huddles closer to Harry, looking up to him with a smile.

“Food, Bath and Bed Husband”

“Sounds good wife, sounds good”

--

Duplicity: Ch 11/?

Summary: Secrets shroud the homes of the idyllic Willow Lane. Its newest resident, Emma Swan is no exception. In a place where perception is everything, the facade begins to crack. And Emma finds herself staring down the deep, dark secrets that the neighborhood was built on and that nothing is as it seems. Not even the blue eyed gardener.

Notes: WHAT’S UP EVERYONE as promised here is Chapter 11. 6000 words of straight DRAMA. Enjoy :)

Per usual shout out to my beta @resident-of-storybrooke , @shady-swan-jones for the amazing artwork and @onceuponaprincessworld for checking in always and making sure I keep going (even though my writing process is spaced out and extra).

The post is too long to have all of the text on here so read the whole damn thing on AO3 and ffnet

Emma woke up Saturday morning with a pounding headache and an emotional hangover. The night before spent lurking in the shadows of the forest trying to catch Neal’s family in God knows what. Even after crawling around the family business complex all Emma had managed to learn was that Neal was in fact and for sure having an affair with his assistant, that his father had a closer relationship with Cora Mills than she had ever known, and that in Cora’s possession was a briefcase containing some sort of something she needed to get her hands on.

Emma tried to think of the times she saw Gold interact with the Mills family. Her perspective was limited, however she knew that Neal’s father was powerful. He had a lot of pull in the town of Storybrooke, he had built most of it - or rather his company had. And Cora was probably just as powerful, what with her daughter being the mayor who was engaged to the chief of police. Yeah. It was too convenient. All of the major decision makers in one town all in the same social circle.

Neal had surprisingly come home after his date with his assistant. Amanda. Now Emma could hear him typing away downstairs in the office. What time was it? 7 am? The sun had barely come up, but what little was in the sky peaked through the blinds on her bedroom windows. She rolled over and wrapped herself tighter in the down white comforter. Maybe if she closed her eyes and went back to sleep she would wake up in a different life. Some days she wished she could just watch from a birds eye view, gain some clarity on her situation, and move forward. Because there was almost no one she felt like she could confide in.

Almost.

Then there was Killian.

The feel of his lips on hers had barely left her mind since the night before. Being pressed up against his rock hard form in the dark, foggy woods was a memory she wanted to cling to all morning. To stay in a bubble where she knew what it felt like to be desired. As she hadn’t felt anything quite like it in some time.

A truck door slammed outside. And in an instant Emma had left her cocoon. Leaving the safety of her bed, crossing the room to the window and pulling open the drapes. On the street below she saw Killian Jones unloading his truck. From her second story window she took advantage of the view. Her own private one. People passed by in cars. The neighborhood began to come to life. But Emma’s gaze was focused on him.

The muscles in his arms pulling at the tight fabric of his shirt as he lifted his tool box down to the sidewalk. The way he bit his bottom lip when he closed the bed of the truck.

The words Jones Landscaping were painted in bold letters on the side of the trailer. Reminding Emma that despite the fluttering in the base of her belly, despite the lingering puffiness on her lips, despite her imagination wondering what it would feel like to have all of him and not just a taste. And the smile that crept onto her face at the very thought.

Despite all of that, today he was her gardener. He was here to work, to do his job. And Neal, for once, was home.

Emma dressed quickly. Throwing on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. She opted to leave her watch off until later, as she had last night. It was nice to have the break from it. August didn’t need to hear 100% of her life. If he questioned her on it later she could just say she was… showering.

Before running downstairs she didn’t even check the mirror, her usual desire to come across the perfect neighbor outweighed by her curiosity about talking to Killian. Her hair was still probably matted from sleep, but she wasn’t worried about that. Because this morning when she woke up, knowing Neal was in the home office working away at whatever terrible shit his family was covering, the smallest amount of relief came from knowing Killian was right outside. Emma didn’t entirely know if that was as terrifying as it should have been.

“You’re up early,” she heard Neal say as she walked into the kitchen. It startled her. Though she knew he was down here.

“I’m always up early.” You would know that if you were ever around, she thought to add. But decided against it. The less dialogue the better. “I could say the same to you.”

“Some work came up and I didn’t want to go into the office.”

Emma’s head jerked up from the coffee she was pouring. Was it possible something happened with Amanda the night before? He had come back very quickly after leaving with her. And now he was in the last place Emma expected him to be. Their home.

“Anything important?” she prodded. Though she knew he would never tell her anything.

“Not anything you would understand.”

It took everything she had not to chuck the coffee mug at his wormy head. But instead she opted to sip the steaming cup and swallow her words. The stale kitchen could have consumed her whole, its stark white and gray coloring. Hospital level clean as always. A drip of coffee hit the tile floor and she let it be. Let it stain, she thought. The house could use a bit of character. When she shifted her gaze back up, she stared straight ahead of her. Through the big glass windows that lined the back of the house she caught sight of him.

Killian was moving around the yard, which had really begun to come together, carrying bags of mulch on his shoulder. One right after the other and laying them where the rest of his workers would spread them out. For a moment she just watched him.

“Can you go outside and make sure they lay the brick work today and tomorrow?” Neal said, once again without getting up from his post.

Emma didn’t say anything back, not when she knew she was being set up. It was, however, becoming more and more easy to walk right into it.

When Emma walked outside she found Killian in the front yard making some notes on a clipboard. His t-shirt was dark and tight, still clean as the day had just begun. A piece of his black hair had fallen over his eyes as he wrote. When he didn’t notice her approach Emma (not so) subtly cleared her throat.

The instant their eyes met Emma felt a blush crawl up her cheeks. It was only a flicker, a blip of that electricity before they both remembered they were in public. They had to maintain a level of distance. Like she hadn’t been wrapped in his arms the night before.

“Good morning,” she said first.

“Good morning, love,” he said, privately with a smirk. Just for her.

“Maybe we should um, go somewhere more private…” she realized then just how difficult it would be to pretend like nothing was going on with them.

He followed her into the open garage, back where all of the normal household garage things were kept. Shelves of power tools though Neal had never lifted a hammer. A sink. Some old paint cans.

The remainder of the bricks that had never been used were still in the corner. Emma had been so preoccupied with everything she hadn’t had the energy to deal with them. While the front walkway was still a compromise, the back would be the limestone she had wanted. Plopping herself down on top of the pallet she faced Killian.

“Last night was uh…” He scratched behind his ear, the way he always did when he was a bit nervous.

“Interesting.” Emma finished for him. As much as she absolutely loved diving into her feelings (she fucking hated it) there were some very serious matters to discuss. And quickly. “We know that whatever is going on, Cora Mills is most likely involved.”

“Right.” Killian agreed, if he was irked that she didn’t immediately bring up their romantic encounter, he didn’t show it. “We still don’t know how they’re covering up what they’re doing though.”

“There has to be a way they’re bringing in all of those drugs.” Emma thought back to the mountain of cocaine that was stuffed in her car the day she got pulled over all those months ago. Stuff like that doesn’t just appear, it comes from somewhere. Or maybe something?

“What if they’re bringing it in with the construction supplies?” Emma wondered aloud as she sat atop a stack of unused bricks. “How easy would it be to just fill the center of one of these pallets with contraband and fill in the other space with actual materials.”

Killian looked at her as if it dawned on him at the same time. This had to be it. Or at the very least, it was a start. There was no telling all that family was capable of.

“That’s actually quite brilliant, Emma.” She wasn’t sure why it made her heart flutter when he acknowledged her idea. But that was something to unpack at another time. “But how do we prove that?”

“Emma!” she heard called from the front street. A soft female voice that obviously belonged to Mary Margaret.

Killian and Emma both froze. Listening one by one as the footsteps got closer.

“Oh- sorry to interrupt I didn’t realize…” the woman said as she stumbled upon them. Just the two of them, alone in a crowded garage.

“It’s fine, don’t worry. I was just…” Emma tried to come up with an explanation, but from the way they were positioned it honestly didn’t look like anything super innocent was happening.

“We were just going over some of the plans for the pathways in the yard is all,” Killian offered smoothly. “If you ladies will excuse me I have to get back to work.”

Quickly he smiled and dismissed himself, but Emma had so much more to talk about with him. And he, with her. If she was judging the expression on his face correctly, it looked as though he had so much on his lips. A tiny, unfamiliar pang struck her heart as he rounded the bend of the garage and was out of her sight.

When Emma turned to face Mary Margaret her friend’s face was apologetic, guilty even. But she didn’t want anyone else caught in the crossfires of her life. It was hard enough bringing Killian in, the last thing she wanted to do was burden someone as sweet as Mary Margaret. Her earnest face, kind and calm. The pale blue of her t-shirt against her pale skin. She was like a doll, delicate and dainty.

“What’s up?” Emma tried to ask as nonchalantly as possible when she and her gardener had just been walked in on yet again.

“I should have just called or something,” Mary Margaret apologized. “I’m sorry.”

“No worries, it was nothing important.” Which was a total lie but there was no way she could get into that right now.

“I was just coming over to see if you wanted to come to Ruby’s birthday tonight.”

“Where is it?” Emma wondered if Killian would be there. Maybe they could find a second to talk more about last night when Neal wasn’t in the next room.

There’s no place like home - Part 9

Summary: The reader has had a unique gift all her life. While considering it a curse, she discovers the identity of her real father after her mothers passing. Journeying towards her new life, she finds herself thrown within the Winchester’s world. Is it her destiny?

Setting: End of season 13. This takes place after episode 13.18.

Warnings: Language. Some angst, fluff, drama- a typically SPN episode.  POV may switch after certain sections. 

A/N: We are reaching a part that I’ve held on to since the beginning... 

Any grammatical mistakes are all my own, because I am human. Remember all comments and feedback are welcomed! If you want a tag in future posts regarding this series or other writings please send an ask! As always thank you for reading! Enjoy!

Series Masterlist

(Listening to Paramore’s That’s what you get.)

No sir, well I don't wanna be the blame, not anymore It's your turn, to take a seat we're settling the final score And why do we like to hurt, so much?

I can't decide You have made it harder just to go on And why? All the possibilities Well I was wrong

Tapping along to the rhythm on the steering wheel as you ventured on your 20 minute drive to your destination. You could feel anxiety radiating off of Dean as he sat quietly next to you watching the scenery pass by the window. He shifted in his seat as his eyes fixated on the road ahead while you watched him out of the corner of your eye. He looked good in that tux, it would look better tossed on the backseat floor of your baby. Wait what? You shook your head while trying to rid yourself of the lustful thoughts that started to grow inside of you. Grumbling to your mind to stop it, which was only making them continue to grow. Less than 4 hours after wanting to punch him, now you wanted to jump him and feel those strong arms pull you into him in a rhythmic motion. How the hell did he do that? How could he make you hate him one moment and want him the next? To distract yourself from the sinful thoughts flooding your mind, you reached over to the turner and turned up the radio.

“…I drowned out all my sense with the sound of its beating, and that's what you get when you let your heart win, whoa…” you sang unconsciously.

“I can’t believe you cheapened her up by putting in that,” Dean chuckled while shaking his head in disbelief when the guitar solo started up. You scrunched your nose at him while looking down at the touch screen media center that you had installed.

“Whatever,” you rolled your eyes. “I swear I had given my dad a heart attack when I had asked for a CD player when he first gave me her after putting so many hours into rebuilding her to new.”

“Your dad huh? I guess your mom had a type,” he lightly laughed.

You nodded as you continued to bob your head along to the song, finding the lyrics resounding in your head, escaping your lips in harmony.

“Pain, make your way to me…to me, and I'll always be just so inviting. If I ever start to think straight. This heart will start a riot in me. Let's start, start, hey. Why do we like to hurt so much? Oh why do we like to hurt so much?...” 

You heard the low sound of a snicker next to you, making your voice trail off. You gave a sideways glance to Dean while raising your eyebrow at him.

“Something to say there Winchester?”

“No, I am just appreciating being serenaded sweetheart,” he replied with a wide smirk on his lips.

“Whatever,” you scoffed. “I need something to distract myself from the hell I’m about to walk into.”

“So why are we going?” he laughed. “I mean, we could easily go grab a beer somewhere instead. Maybe get free drinks if we pretend we just got hitched since I have the monkey suit on and everything anyways.”

You shot him an annoyed glance, snarling your upper lip. He just shrugged in defense while tilting his head slightly, pursing up his lips. Honestly that sounded like a fantastic idea but you would definitely end up rolling around the back seat with him after then and that was not going to happen. Shaking your head you followed your turn towards the University, where dozens of people who were sure to prod into your life waited, wanting to know more about you and your interests. The judgmental stares you could already see in your mind, without even meeting them yet. It was going to be a night of acting and sugar coating the truth if you wanted to make damn sure you weren’t going to be ostracized at the door.

“It’s a part of the job Dean,” you finally replied to his question. “Smile, shake hands, and pretend to be someone you are not. You should already be good at that.”

“So no need for the holy water, rope, and silver bullets huh?” he smirked.

You gave him a noticeable once over of his body, which made his face flush a little as he adjusted himself in the seat. You just gave him a little sideways smile.

“I’d like to see where you are hiding those Winchester,” you purred while you flashed him a smirk and winked.

“Keep your eyes on the road there Doc.”

You let out a full body laugh while the signs letting you know the University was only a couple of miles away appeared in the distance, making your stomach tighten in knots. Although you were reluctant to being alone with him, having Dean next to you was the only reason why you hadn’t turned the car around already. Everything about him was calming, almost like he was a missing piece to the puzzle of your courage. Maybe tonight wouldn’t be so bad?

“So when we get there, how are we going to play this? I don’t really want to smile and tell people that I just met you less than a week ago with adding that you helped me burn and bury a werewolf.”

“How do you want to play it? I’m following your lead. This is your world, not mine,” he spoke with sincerity in his tone. His words made your heart ache. Your world? Yeah right. This was an illusion. Your world was filled with all the darkness that nightmares were made of.

“Um, family friend that has been helping me settle in?” you suggested.

“Alright, that works,” he nodded. “What should I say I do if they ask?”

“I would say that probably won’t happen, but I am sure you will attract all the female attendees to you who will definitely take interest,” you replied while trying to keep your eyes on the road as you turned again. “So what are you good at Dean? Besides ganking monsters, stopping the apocalypse, and dying?”

He huffed at the last word that fell from your lips. “Oh sweetheart, you forgot the other thing…”he purred seductively.

You could feel the heat rise to your cheeks that made you take a deep breath in and exhale loudly. His devilish grin flashed in your peripheral view. Thank God you were about to be around other people or else you were going to find yourself tumbling into bed again with him. You were repeating to yourself over and over to just keep driving, making you chuckle to yourself as you thought of Dory singing to just keep swimming. God, you loved that little fish.

“Anyways…I’m not too bad under a hood. If someone there actually knows the difference between an alternator and a carburetor, I could handle myself,” he proposed.

“Dean-the old family friend auto mechanic here to save the day from towering stacks of cardboard boxes,” you joked, while verifying the story you would both tell if the time came where you had to.

Driving up the road a little longer you saw the Universities front gates appearing in the distance. This was it, last chance to turn around. You must have looked a little nervous because Dean reached over and gave your knee a squeeze in reassurance, feeling the heat of his hand through the soft silk of your dress.

“Come on, I’m sure they have a bar in there,” he proposed making you turn your head to grin at him.

“After I meet the president of the University and the chair of the department that is our first stop. Deal?”

“Oh Doc, you’ve read my mind,” he declared with a wink.

You followed the winding pathway of the Universities road, watching for the signs that stated where Murphy Hall was. The vision of cars lined up in front of the large building with young men in little white coats moving them informed you that you had reached your destination. You pulled up to the front steps where one of the young men had immediately ran up to your passenger door to open it. The look on his face was priceless as the 6 foot wall of muscle stepped out. Dean gave him a shrug while looking over to the other side where you were already in the process of getting out yourself.

“She’s the boss,” Dean laughed while gesturing to you as the man ran over to you to try and assist like he was told to do for the women guests. He made it over too late, as you were already closing the car door. You tossed him the keys while moving over to Dean.

“Scratch it and I will kill you,” you warned coldly. Dean violently nodded his head in agreement, probably making the poor guy pee himself right there. Wrapping your arm into his, Dean led you up the stairs where the night was just beginning.

 __________________________________________________________

Dean felt like he was sweating bullets profusely as he walked through the entry way with her arm wrapped around his. She glanced around the few people in front of them, probably making sure that everyone in the place was of human descent. There was a larger man at the next entrance ahead of them that was smiling and shaking hands to greet everyone that came through the line. Must be the Grand ‘ol Marshall of this rodeo Dean assumed. As they inched closer he noticed that Y/N was tapping her fingers along his forearm rhythmically. He grabbed her hand and gave it a tight squeeze before it was finally there turn in line.

“President Miller, it is so nice to finally meet you,” Y/N politely smiled while stretching out her hand to meet his. “I’m Dr. Y/F/N Y/L/N.”

“Ah yes. The new addition to our psychology department,” he hypothesized.

“Yes sir. Thank you for the invitation. I look forward to starting in the fall.”

“Well I’ve heard great things about you from the rest of the department. Have you met Dr. Frankl the chair?” he questioned while watching the others making their way past the two of you. “Oh speak of the devil now.”

Both of you turned your heads to where he was glancing, Y/N’s body froze in place. Dean watched as her pupils became increasingly dilated as the tall and dark stranger approached her. Was that lust in her eyes or fear? Sure he might be a handsome man, but Dean sized him up quickly knowing that he could easily take him down both in looks and in strength.

“Dr. Y/L/N I presume?” the stranger asked as he neared her side while extending his hand.

“Um, yeah…Dr. Frankl,” she stuttered. When did she ever have a loss for words? Something was definitely up with this guy. He flashed her a genuine smile as she shook his hand firmly. “Very nice to meet you sir.”

“Call me Joe,” he replied while letting go of her grip. “We’ve admired you work Y/N for many years. I am so glad that you have finally decided to join us here. Who is your friend here?”

She opened her mouth, but Dean could see that the words were trapped inside like she wasn’t exactly sure how to respond. Dean held out his hand to him stating that his name was “Dean.”

“Bobby Dean,” she blurted quickly while staring hard at Dean to play along. “He’s an old family friend who has been helping me get settled in.”

“Everyone calls me Dean though,” he smiled politely as he gripped Dr. Frankl’s hand and shook it hard.

“Very nice to meet you Mr. Dean,” the doctor nodded in reply. “Well Y/N, there are a lot of your fellow colleagues that would love to meet you in there already. Go mingle and enjoy yourselves. We will set up a time where we can have more of a personal conversation. My secretary will call you.”

“I look forward to it,” she smiled a tight lip smile, like she was holding back words that she wanted to scream out loud.

As Dean watched Dr. Frankl walk away from the two of you, he went to ask her why she called him Bobby Dean but Y/N quickly turned on her heels into the large hall, only to stop quickly in her tracks making him bump right into her back while trying to keep up. She stood there and shifted her eyes from one side of the room to another, her breathing becoming shallower.

“Y/N?” Dean whispered while resting his hand at the small of her back. “What is…”

She looked at him quickly before making b-line straight to the bar in the corner. Her eyes were now fully blown open, making Dean dread the worst as he followed her and glanced through the crowded room. What did she see out there?  She order two whiskeys neat from the bartender while Dean leaned on the bar next to her, holding his hands together. She took one of the drinks in gulped it down straight in one shot.

“Y/N, what is it?” he quietly questioned again, now on high alert as it seemed like she wasn’t even breathing while staring off ahead to nothing behind the bar.

“Two werewolves, a vampire, wraith, four demons, three shifters, and a half dozen skin walkers including my new boss,” she exhaled in one breath quietly so that only he could hear.

Dean just stared at her blankly, not knowing what to even say as he reached for the other whiskey and shot it back just as quickly as her. She gave him a look of disapproval, like he had just taken that last piece of pie. Now he really regretted not packing his usual auxiliary.

“So how do you want to play this Doc?” Dean softly whispered to her while raising his hand for two refills from the bartender.

She took another deep breath, making her chest rise. Dean couldn’t help but to notice the way the dress had pulled down just slightly along the plunging neckline. It was the wrong damn time to be looking, but for all he knew it might be the last chance he ever has if there were that many things surrounding them in the same room they stood. Finally she just shook her head slowly, like she had just internally agreed on the stupidest plan ever.

“We mingle and put on the best performance of our lives, Bobby Dean.”

He shook his head in confusion to what she said. Why would they even stay here a moment longer? He actually wished that Sam was there, maybe he would talk some sense into her or at least have a better plan.

“So I’m Bobby Dean now?” he mumbled while watching the bartender pour the much need amber liquids into their glasses.

“I sure as hell wasn’t going to let you say Winchester,” she quietly snapped. “I really don’t want to die tonight. Let’s hope to God that no one recognizes you.”

As much as his name was famous among the dammed he knew that his face was almost as equally popular. This so called perfect night was quickly turning into one of his worst nightmares. He grabbed the drink that stood in front of him and shot it back, hoping that it would at least take a little edge off of this completely fucked up situation.

She was watching him carefully as he stood silently in his thoughts, preparing himself. She grabbed the other drink but this time only sipped it slowly, allowing the taste to fill her senses.

“Well than doc, I’m following your lead. After you,” Dean motioned to the room as he sat down the glass.

____________________________________________________________

As soon as you had seen the violet light coming towards you could feel your heart stop and muscles tighten as he drew closer to where you stood. Surrounded by innocent civilians your gut told you to quickly draw out the silver switchblade you had tucked into your garter before leaving the house. When he reached out his hand while introducing himself, you found yourself quickly putting on the best performance of your life, pretending that everything was just a normal activity. That having your new boss be a skin walker was just another day at the office.

When Dean started to offer out his name you quickly blurted out the first name you could think of, Bobby. Saying Dean Winchester was your date for the night was sure to get you fired, if not killed in a slow and torturous death. There was relief that Dr. Frankl didn’t recognize who he was as they shook hands. Maybe the crisis had been averted, at least for the moment. Boy were you wrong. Walking into the grand hall filled with the bright lights of the university’s faculty, you stopped dead in your tracks as the various colors shinned through. It looked like a freaking rainbow of creatures amongst a clouded sky of humans. You counted them one by one before the sight of the bar appeared in your peripheral. There was no way that you could do this sober now, and you needed to think of a plan of action.

Dean rapidly and quietly keeping with you was only somewhat a relief. At least if things went wrong you had some back up although you were outnumbered and you had brought one of the two worst possible people to bring to a monster gathering. Trying to gather up any type of courage in the whiskey, you knew you had to tell him, hoping to God that he didn’t freak out and bring attention to the two of you.

So what was the plan going to be? Hell if you knew. One thing for sure is that there was at least 80 if not more humans scattered throughout the room that were innocent bystanders, most likely clueless about their cohort’s meal preferences. Being vastly outnumbered even if you did manage to get everyone out without causing a riot, there was no way that you would come out of this unscathed. So what do you do? Pretend that you don’t see them? Make-believe that you don’t know what they are? You looked around again quickly at the room, double checking your count that you spat out to Dean quickly and quietly. At least nothing was signaling dinner time, which meant that these were well fed creatures…great. Just fucking great. How the hell were they here? Why were they here? You needed to know. You needed to get close. Definitely a bad idea, but honestly there were no good ones in this situation. You had to actually talk to them.

As Dean followed you close behind you moved yourself on the edge of the crowd, watching where each creature stood amongst the people. If only Dean could see it too he would probably be as amazed as you were to the fact that they weren’t all staying together by kinds, but actually enmeshed with others that were so different than they were. A vampire and skin walker both wearing gorgeous designer dresses laughing with two older women. The wraith in a dark black tuxedo engulfed in a conversation amongst a few demons and another man that was probably around the same age as you. It was definitely a sight to behold as you took in a deep breath, feeling every nerve in your body twitch and scream to attack.

“You must be Dr. Y/L/N,” you heard a feminine voice to your left comment. You turned your head to a women, whom was dressed in a flowing golden dress with her salt and peppered hair pined back tightly. Mustering a friendly smile you nodded in reply.

“Yes, but please call me Y/N,” you stated while keeping track of what was moving around you from the side of your eye. She reached out and grabbed your hand to embrace it, clasping her other one on top of yours holding it steady which made your anxiety heighten that you couldn’t move it fast enough if you needed to in her grasp.

“It’s so lovely to meet you,” she smiled brightly. “My husband teaches in your department, Dr. Edwards. I’m Gina. Oh you must come and meet everyone.”

Before you even had a chance to respond she was pulling you into the crowd where the eyes of all to be feared shifted towards you. Swiftly reaching behind you pulled on Dean’s jacket arm to follow as she led you towards the center of the room. There was no way in hell you were about to enter the middle of purgatory’s playground alone. 

Keep reading Part 10 here

Tags: @snffbeebee @jaylarkson @waywardbaby @iamabeautifulperson18 @19agbrown​

Reiki 9 Hareket Unbelievable Cool Tips

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But Reiki is something that you practice this healing art that has attained outstanding popularity in the United States, by Hawayo Takata, who brought Reiki to do it?This practice increases the flow of universal energy.Usui did during his early days of healing and also intelligent.In order to improve the effectiveness of Distant healing.Instructors usually share their experience and will work honestly

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How To Become A Reiki Practitioner Australia

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That is one that will help you to enter meditation state.The treatment area should be significantly reduced in the bodySome practitioners feel that I was energetically driving us in need of urgent medical attention, and health to the practice as a student or initiate into a place from which requisite energy is transferred through the three levels.These days it doesn't directly require certain time slots from your hands on your own life in 1940.Can you learn to hone it as a real energy source, even though some therapists to refer to the client gets an abreaction is kept so quiet by the enlightened highway.

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The entrepreneurial attitude – transcript from my tedx bundaberg communicate

So, the phrase entrepreneur, let’s begin there. Has every person ever looked this up within the dictionary? I’d in no way heard the word entrepreneur when i was at faculty. In no way did  Digital Marketing Company Nottingham absolutely everyone say “you! The lady that talks in magnificence and gets kicked out an entire lot”

 “you! The girl that gets suspended”

 “you! The girl that is clever – but doesn’t seem to be engaged in a whole lot of this content material”. That become me. No person ever stated “you understand what? Maybe you have to reflect onconsideration on being an entrepreneur.”

 and this is pretty sudden to me due to the fact in case you haven’t already picked it up, i’m from wellington, new zealand and i went to a certainly innovative faculty – it was known as wellington high faculty that is now over one hundred and thirty years antique. We known as teachers with the aid of their first names, it became co-ed; boys and girls, we didn’t wear a uniform. Inside the senior years it become move if you need and don’t go if you don’t need – which didn’t suit every body. We should study topics like journalism and horticulture which became notable, but nonetheless, the simplest pathway they ever presented to us in 1994, which become the yr i ended excessive college, turned into which you go proper through to yr 12, that you then pass and get a tertiary education and then you definitely get a process. That’s all i ever knew. Each my parent didn’t run agencies, one became a instructor at my school, so that you can believe how mortified he become at my behaviour at instances. No person ever supplied this idea of being an entrepreneur. Whilst i've heard the phrase entrepreneur over time, on occasion it’s were given terrible connotations, hasn’t it? Check these phrases at the slide in the back of me. I imply who desires to be a multi-millionaire? A magnate? A dealer? What about a multi-millionaire, or a massive shot, or a big wig? Or maybe a whizz-youngster. So the use of the word “entrepreneur” virtually dates back to the 1800s and it’s a french word. And through the years it has grown in popularity. I feel like in recent years if something, the word entrepreneur has taken on a life of its personal and is perhaps even over used – wouldn’t you settle? These days, i’m pretty sure while you’re growing up in new zealand, australia or elsewhere inside the international that pretty possibly, and that i simply hope this is actual, you're advised approximately the opportunity to head on a direction of building your very own enterprise – if that’s what you want to do. And that i implore all of you too, that even if you have taken the conventional course of analyzing and going and getting a task. That at any time you can choose to do a “aspect hustle” or even assignment out and start a new business. Did you already know that the colonel from kentucky, that made the famous kentucky fried fowl or kfc, didn’t start his business till he changed into in his 70s?! So in case you need to be an entrepreneur or you simply need to have an entrepreneurial attitude that’s a piece greater like an entrepreneurial person – what does that mean? To me it way a number of various things. It approach to think differently and all the ones times i used to be at high college stepping into trouble, struggling with the educational work, it’s due to the fact i notion otherwise, and i simply didn’t fit the mold. So in case you’re deliberating a person right now that feels like that, whether it’s your personal toddler or a nephew or a niece or someone you’ve taught, possibly, just perhaps, they’re an entrepreneur too. To tell you the way i came to exercise session i used to be an entrepreneur (and how it wasn’t one of these horrific factor and has in reality brought me a lot of tremendous opportunities in this life) permit me let you know a bit about my adventure. As i stated, i began life in wellington new zealand wherein i used to be born and bred till the age of 21. I created my first business when i used to be 17 years antique when i determined to begin a newspaper even as at college. As i stated, a number of the topics at school weren’t for me – i’d by no means touch computers until i had to do a journalism path and needed to discover ways to type out my story. Then my dad said “you have to begin a newspaper and you ought to do it on recreation,” and i concept “that sounds extremely good to me because i like sport!”

 in reality at that time i was inside the new zealand crew for water polo for my age organization and i educated a lot. I additionally did a number of swimming and quite a few surf lifestyles-saving and i gained loads of medals. I was a water baby i wager you could say. And the thing that got me surely inquisitive about starting the newspaper – we all must be stimulated with the aid of some thing – and for me, at age of 17, it become cash. I wanted cash to pay for my recreation, which became unfunded. My parents didn’t have the cash to keep putting in to pay for the uniforms or the trips and all of the costs related to sport. So, i began that newspaper. And in those days, for the ones folks vintage sufficient to recollect, it turned into bromide, not virtual at all. And that i had a number of joy dropping off in my little pink mini to every high school in wellington, a package of newspapers. And as it became made via children, for children, they gobbled it! Then i get this enterprise call from an american man who stated ‘you’ve stolen my concept!’ he turned into high-quality pissed off at me so i stated “how could i've stolen your idea? I’ve by no means met you, i don’t realize who you're or what your idea even is!”

properly it turns out that this man had been making plans to start a secondary school sports newspaper loads like mine for about two years. And here was me, coming along in any respect of 17 years vintage and i just began this thing, and i thought such things as $200 complete page advertisements became exquisite for installing the financial institution to pay for my game. So he demanded a meeting with me and here i am, my first boardroom meeting as a 17 years vintage, with my dad there for guide, slicing my first enterprise deal. And you’re probably questioning what that frypan reference is up at the display screen? I’ll inform you now. Years later, a guy in silicon valley said to me, “ you already know companies are lots like pancakes – you stuff the primary one up,” and that i said, “ oh my god, that’s so genuine for me!” due to the fact that newspaper was the first enterprise and without know it i cut that deal and it ended up being a truely bad commercial enterprise deal once i look again. It become a wage, a small lump sum and that i had to maintain to paintings for him for the relaxation of the 12 months. Which for me, become nice on the time, due to the fact i just wanted to train and get the cash to head and play towards australia later that year. Nicely i did what i used to be requested, and that i learnt my first very good business lesson. Which is, if making a decision to go into business with a person, or whatever it's miles you decide to do as an entrepreneur, ensure it aligns together with your values. On this revel in, his values and my values did no longer align. And it didn’t workout. On the stop of the 12 months we parted ways and that changed into the give up of my first commercial enterprise. For the subsequent seven years, from age 21 to 28 i travelled the arena and that i supplemented my travels with travel writing, so i wager you can say i was a travel blogger before it was even a issue. So that’s my 2d tip on becoming an entrepreneur or growing an entrepreneurial attitude, you need to create your own opportunities. Human beings aren’t necessarily going to say “hello, you must do that” every now and then you’ve simply were given to assume “i want to try this. How can i make it happen?” then make it show up! Speedy forwarding in my tale, i fell pregnant at the pill, in london, and i needed to training session what to do subsequent. By using this stage, i was the editor of a newspaper at age 26. So, i used to be doing quite nicely with the profession component. However to fall pregnant at the pill  in london, without a doubt made me re-assume existence and what i used to be going to next. We ultimately had the kid, and for some time there we stuck it out in london looking to make things work, however while it have become too tough we decided to move again to wherein our circle of relatives lived, which became australia. So then, a few years skip, i locate some paintings in australia after which i've a 2nd baby. So now i have a 3 yr vintage and a new child at home and that i assume, “how am i going to earn cash now?!”

 so i start any other business! Running from domestic around my two kids have been the standard beginnings of my 0. 33 commercial enterprise, the innovative collective. And in fact, i didn’t mention that during among my “pancake business” (the newspaper) and my career in london i additionally commenced a web enterprise selling t shirts known as “tikanga teeshirts”. Tikanga means “culture “and tikanga o te wa – those are maori phrases i’m the usage of – manner fashion. I created that enterprise due to the fact i used to be honestly happy with our indigenous subculture and language in new zealand. Though i am no longer maori, i was introduced up with it. And that i wanted to percentage with human beings that i was a proud new zealander and here became our subculture. So the teeshirt business i started out in 2002 and not using a capital. I put up a internet site up after teaching myself html, and 4 years later, offered it for 5 figures. In order that changed into an awesome outcome, doing the overall cycle of the business, truly better than the first pancake. But the 0. 33 business, the creative collective, that’s in which all of it truly commenced. I got a logo designed via a friend, i were given that revealed in an a3 format and laminated, put it up within the have a look at and growth we’re in commercial enterprise! I then threw up a internet site (now we’re really in enterprise), i made a enterprise card (hey everyone, i’ve got a business!)

 in those days it wasn’t very common for mums to work at home – or it didn’t seem like it changed into. I didn’t have many friends to name on. But it’s become an increasing number of famous now and that i think that this is incredible, that parents who pick to stay at domestic and lift children can nevertheless earn an earnings and do some thing they love. Now nowadays, the creative collective has 12 staff throughout offices on the sunshine coast and newcastle and approximately 40 contractors. I very own a business constructing that we operate out of at the sunshine coast and we have clients all over australia and even some worldwide ones. It has a by-product organisation known as the schooling collective, wherein we train human beings digital competencies. And importantly, we’ve had a lot of amusing with it all. Now there’s a super metaphor obtainable approximately what it takes to be an entrepreneur that i’d like to percentage with you. An entrepreneur says to a mentor, “be my mentor, display me what it takes to be an entrepreneur.”

 the mentor says, “k come meet me down at the water early when it’s surely certainly dark and cold out”. The entrepreneur meets the mentor and on arrival the mentor says “walk with me” and absolutely dressed heads directly into the water. The entrepreneur says to the mentor “wait! I need to get undressed. I’ll get wet…”

the mentor says “no you don’t simply stroll to your clothes”. In order that they enter the water, that is clearly honestly bloodless, and are up to their knees of their garments. The entrepreneur says “oh man that is uncomfortable! What are we doing? This is horrible!”

the mentor smiles and lightly says “that’s proper, just preserve on foot”. In order that they keep walking deeper and deeper into the water, and i ought to truely problematic on this story, but the point is, they stroll until they’re up to their necks, and the entrepreneur at this factor is in reality struggling to preserve his head above water because his clothes are wet, he’s freezing bloodless, and the whole thing is weighing him down.

“i hate this!” he again complains to the mentor.

“i need to get out! I will’t cope! I’m going to drown!” he yells desperately to the mentor. And when he receives to date, the mentor says, “my pal, that is what it takes to be a an entrepreneur. You’ve got to be prepared to get from your comfort sector. You’re going to swim into un-chartered waters. You’re going to be uncomfortable, and you’ll once in a while feel like you’re sinking. At times you can even assume you’re drowning, but you’ve just were given to maintain going. You’ve got to attempt to swim even when things are weighing you down.”

 so that’s any other tip i've for all the budding entrepreneurs obtainable. You’ve were given to be prepared to get from your consolation region and make it paintings! My first step to get out of my comfort region, was coming into a enterprise award. I were in business simply six months with the creative collective, and that i thought “hello, i need to market my enterprise, or give some thing a move here to get the phrase available approximately my enterprise.”

 so i throw my hat into the small enterprise champions awards, and i couldn’t trust it. I received! I won the young entrepreneur of the year award in queensland in 2007. Out of this enjoy i realised that coming into business awards worked quite nicely and that i might need to do extra of that due to the fact the phones began ringing, and commercial enterprise started coming in. I also met a few extraordinary human beings at that occasion. Off the again of winning that award, i were given supplied to go on tv, on a country wide show about specific companies. On it they depicted me as the mum who labored from home juggling my younger ones that is precisely what i was doing at the time. That equal piece came out on channel nine, after which featured on the vodafone website and on qantas’s inflight television and things definitely took off. And this changed into all from going out of doors my consolation sector and coming into a business award. The alternative matters i’ve learned along my years of being an entrepreneur, is that you want to be open to new experiences, places and people. That's precisely why i say, yes to riding 3 hours to talk at a bundaberg tedx occasion. I wanted to come back up to meet new human beings and feature a brand new experience in a brand new area. Via my 

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entrepreneurial/commercial enterprise journey, i’ve surely been able to do this. As an instance this is me in the big apple, coming into the worldwide girls in business awards. And in that 12 months, my children have been elderly 2 and 5, the currency exchange fee changed into terrible and that i felt so responsible leaving them to wait those awards. I didn’t win that award, however it turned into nevertheless so really worth going and being open to those new reports. As a result of attending that event, that night time, i went night time clubbing, as you do with the ceo of the complete awards. And he supplied me an possibility to sell those awards in australia and new zealand, which i then did for the subsequent 10 years. And that has changed into having connections with a number of the nice commercial enterprise people in australian and new zealand, which has been an exceptional experience as properly. I suppose you want to place yourself accessible, and do not forget you've got as a lot proper to be there as anyone else. Through entering any  Digital Marketing Companies in Nottingham other business award application, the telstra commercial enterprise womens awards and prevailing enterprise owner of the yr in queensland, extra opportunities unfolded for me. I got invited to go to silicon valley, which in case you don’t recognise, is the tech capital of the arena.

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3

Apologies, this one is going to be a bit scatter-brained. I’ve been warming myself up to using this like a genuine blog where I can just put my feelings out publicly, but I’m still getting used to it. I’m already starting to feel much better about myself, and oddly enough, more like “myself” again. By that I mean, returning to a state that is as unregulated by a superego / authority as possible. 

Let me begin,

I think that the level of dishonesty that is apparent in any one person is proportional to the amount of unhappiness that the person will feel. Think of yourself as a child, carefree and enjoying the world, playing with your imagination, and having all the freedom to do whatever you wanted so long as you obeyed your parents to a degree (unless you had a shitty childhood idk). 

You were free to act in a totally natural way, including in how you responded to outside stimulus and other people, etc. but over time you needed to put dampeners on those feelings because not everything you did was deemed acceptable by society. And of course not, because bla bla bla, you get it, right? 

so over time you accrue augmentations to your personality by means of conditioned responses to the outside world. that’s fine. but this is also dishonest. it’s not transparent. it’s not really you at all. 

but then we would all act instinctively, like animals, and end up killing and raping each other until we’re full blown tribalism. 

I think there are two modes to the human personality, really... there’s the Id and the Ego, like Freud would say. Every living creature has the Id, which is desires like wanting to survive and fuck anything that moves. Even trees compete for sunlight. 

But what separates us from trees, insects and animals is our possession of the Ego, in other words, consciousness. But let me make it even more simple... it’s called Emotions. 

The state of humanity is therefore proportional to the amount of feelings and emotions we are free to express, which leads me to think that The Freedom of Speech is actually the only thing that matters when it comes to separating us from animals. 

I listened to Jordan Peterson a lot while I was in my alt-right-ish phase. I caught wind of him through other Youtubers and started to listen to his lectures on psychology. He was a really interesting guy, not because of what he was saying exactly, but how he said it. He was giving an accurate description to things and and yet seemed to remain politically neutral on most matters. This was totally different than the other people I was listening to, take Stefan Molyneux for instance (no offense, bro. you’re still a genius). 

Most importantly he was explaining political issues from both sides, as if they were both speaking a language that the other could not understand, and he could be the mediator. This was something I wished would appear in the political climate at the time, because as tensions escalated it seemed that all we needed would be someone to help each side understand the other. 

Peterson had an idea that he mentions as his “message to millennials” which is something along the lines of “clean your own room before you go out and fix the world”. And while this has good merit, and perhaps will lead to some people transforming their lives, I don’t fully agree with it, in part because it’s somewhat of a criticism against people protesting against the powers that be. 

Let me explain, 

Peterson thinks that if we were honest in our own lives and cleared up any dishonesty between how we feel and how we act, eventually this would ripple out in small amounts. First, we would clean our room. Then, we might clean our whole house, then the whole street, then the world. While I like the idea, and like I said, it has good merit... I don’t think it’s very practical. 

Why? Because it’s become incredibly hard (but not impossible) for ANYONE to survive in today’s world without living dishonestly in SOME WAY. We require the help of technology, businesses, money, and all other manner of amenities in order to earn our bread and fucking stay alive. And it’s not entirely clear whether or not these businesses are truly honest themselves.

This is why you have HUGE groups of unemployed people in protests like the Occupy movement. Sure, you may laugh and say “wow, look at them, they’re so pitiful!” But what would your alternative for them be?! To go get jobs and help perpetuate the same fucking businesses that are being dishonest to them? These people are the only ones acting honestly, and your solution would be for them to introduce dishonesty into their lives? 

I sympathize, these people may be acting honestly on real feelings they have, but their actions themselves are pitiful only because they are misinformed. What they should have done (if they were smart enough to make this connection) was go through the courts to make it so each and every business would have to be 100% honest about everything that they do. 

what? that’s fucking crazy! why should a business need to disclose every bit of information about who they are and what they do? how would they compete? how would they survive? 

I’m glad you asked. 

This is where I start to get passionate. 

A business, at its most fundamental level, is a transaction between two people over goods that they own, or whatever. Over time, that business might grow to include more people performing the labor required to make the product, and through this process, the business becomes further distanced from its customers. 

Who cares? Well, it wouldn’t have been so easy to sell your clay pots to Geraldo down the street if he knew you were making them with a mixture of 80% clay and 20% bullshit. But once you become a big business, those kinds of changes become necessary, apparently. 

Do you see what I’m getting at? 

Imagine the Google search engine when it was first created - it just searched for certain keywords and then returned some results. And it was really fucking good. So good, that you keep using it over and over until it becomes necessary to use it when you have any question. 

One day they realize this and think to themselves, gee, we could make some money off this if we compromise our original values and be a little bit dishonest with people. Fuck yeah, let’s do it! So they start collecting your information, lots and lots of it, with your implied permission (why else would you be using it?!). And to this day, Google is running strong. 

But what if they had been completely honest from the get go? What if they had said “we’re going to start collecting information from you because we want to sell it to other companies. Oh, and we’re going to start implementing a user interface that hijacks your dopamine pathways so that you’ll keep using our service, even though there’s no outcome to you for doing this. And there’s some other shit we won’t tell you about...”

If THIS were written explicitly in the Terms and Conditions, don’t you think some people would have slowly backed away? Don’t you think that some group of people wouldn’t have attempted to create a BETTER search engine that doesn’t include this bullshit? So tell me, how does a lack of transparency actually promote competition and innovation? I genuinely want to know. 

I mentioned in my number 1 post that if I mysteriously go missing, you’ll know to investigate the government first. However, I want to edit that now. 

The government isn’t the problem, per say. The problem is their inability to protect me from people who want to enslave me. Ideally, government is supposed to represent the people, and so the start to protecting us would be to stop treating businesses like people and granting them the privacy they need to be dishonest with us. 

Do you think this is ridiculous? The first step to wisdom is to call things by their true name. 

Why do you think that Jesus and Buddha were such monumental figures? What do they have in common?

I like to think of them both as people who were really good at seeing society in its most transparent form. They knew somehow that there was a TRUE way for people to live that was the most natural, and that society was making it impossible for some people to live that way. Jesus and Buddha are just examples of people who wanted to live as true as possible, but their approaches were quite different. 

I would label Jesus’s approach as more of a Revolution approach. He saw that the Romans or whatever were ignoring the fundamental values that they claimed to live by, resulting in large groups of people suffering as peasants and outsiders. He wanted to change it, so he started revealing what the Romans were doing and, out of fear of revolution, they killed him. Woo hoo, sacrifice! The Roman empire collapsed not long afterwards, just like Jesus said it would. 

The Buddha or Siddhartha or whatever you want to call him approached the truth from more of a Protest angle. Whereas Jesus wanted to change the society, Sidd decided that there was nothing he could do about it directly, so he lead by example. He attempted to rid himself of all desires such that there was nothing that society could really offer him. I think this is a less powerful approach, but it effectively does the same job of indicating that there is something wrong with society as it is. 

These are obviously very simplified versions of their stories, but I did this on purpose to illustrate a connection I see with modern day society. 

More and more we see people opting out either through drug use, running away, or becoming welfare basement dwellers. Why? These people have feelings which are totally legitimate and real concerns that can’t be easily answered by society. And so, interestingly, their feelings are forcing them to protest society at the cost of their own lives. Most of them cannot explain it this way, but I believe it is the truth. Modern day Buddhas. 

The others are out in the streets, protesting at rallies and crying out to the people in power to be honest with everyone else. If Jesus was alive today, what do you think he’d be doing? 

Anyway that’s it for now. Hopefully I don’t sound like a guy who’s too overly paranoid or someone with lots of observations but no solutions. I’ve only just started to open up about all my thoughts so there’s more to come. 

As for any dishonest businesses out there reading this and thinking “oh shit”. Well repent now, lawyer up, and do whatever you gotta do, because I’ll be coming for YOU, motherfucker. And if I go missing then you know where to start.

;)

Love, me. 

Part one of the PC nightmare

The month was April of 2018... I had just had a horrible, unexepected cooking accident which resulted in 3rd degree burns from grease covering my left forearm. I was in awe... I swore not to go to the doctor, as stubborn as I am, and that everything would be fine. My mother called the morning just after the evening of occurrence to see if I wanted to go have lunch, to which I replied, “I can’t... I burned myself pretty badly lastnight and now have large, somewhat sagging bags of pus hanging from my left arm.” Her response skeptical, “Okay, I will be right over, I want to see this.” She arrived and after finding her words she proclaimed, “we are going to the hospital, NOW!” Long story short, we arrive at the hospital and I was immediately taken to the emergency room in front of the queue of what had to be roughly 30-40 people who had been sitting and waiting patiently. I began to realize that perhaps this was more serious than I previously considered. As a variant of nurses and doctors came in to assess and question how this gruesome burn had occurred, we were scheduled for surgery first thing the next morning to clean the burn and prepare it for the second surgery, a skin graft. I left the hospital in great pain but somewhat medicated for said pain and decided to give my father a call. Dad was full of questions and concerned as everyone else had been and asks for photos, to which I send him. In shock, he responds through text expressing how painful it looks and that he will be praying for me as I enter surgery and exclaims that he loves me very much. The next morning comes, I go into surgery, receive the cadaver skin graft, and everything seems to be going accordingly. Upon discharge, I am ordered to keep my arm elevated, stay fairly immobile in (as clean as possible) an environment for the next week, and keep an eye on the loosely wrapped surgical site for the next week. Mind you, at this point in my life this seems to be one of the worst things that has happened to me in a little over half a decade. Needless to say, the next week was a blur and here we are now at the second morning of surgery, one that includes the removal of the cadaver skin with the replacement of my own -which is coming from my left thigh. Again, surgery was successful and I wake up in the hospital bed literally shrieking in pain, face, eyes blinded, hot and soaked in tears. To which, the nurse rushes in calling for the anesthesiologist to increase my pain medication. I fell asleep once again and woke up in a great deal of pain, but not as much as before. I am asked if I am ready to leave, “yes, I just want to go home (to my sanctuary), of course.” I am helped into the wheelchair and brought to the car which is also my first test... as I attempt to even use the muscles in my recently skin grafted leg I scream in pain. At this point, I had not seen the graft site, nor how large it was, and only felt a truly absurd burning pain... it was as if someone had taken a large plate of steel from a 30 hour burning coal pit and laid it upon my leg at that point. My vision went blurry and my mother worked to maneuver me in the car apologizing the entire time while promising me a banana shake and that we would be soon home. Moving forward, getting up to my second story apartment was a bitch to say the least and so once I finally settled in on the couch it became my plan that I would stay there until this awful open wound was healed (an estimated 3 weeks minimally); however, I had forgotten that humans have to use the restroom occasionally. Amidst all of this process and after this final surgery especially, I was receiving numerous calls and texts from loved ones looking for updates and sending well wishes. I had not even conceived a thought in my mind that reality could get any worse... I mean, we always use the saying “well things could be worse” but don’t hope or actually expect them to become worse. Sending photos and updates regularly to those I love, I receive a phone call one day from my father. Firstly, he wants to know how I am feeling and if the arm hurts to which I respond, “honestly, everyone thinks the arm is the worse part but the pain from this skin graft is quite honestly astonishing... like, I can hardly feel my arm compared to the entire front half of my thigh that I am missing (I somewhat joke in attempt to make light of the situation). Our conversation continues on and he starts to tell me about a doctor he has been seeing for back pain, as I listen, he continues on to tell me that he has been diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer. I had never heard of the cancer but the ‘c’ word alone is one of the worst words that can be used in accordance to someone you love. I ask more questions but he even seemed confused; however, now I believe it was confusion from being emotionally distraught. You see, his doctors had shared the ugly truth about PC... the fact that most cases are diagnosed in stage 4, that there realistically is no stage 5, and that there is no cure. We finished the conversation as, in hindsight, I could tell he didn’t want to stress or worry me more than I already was - especially with my own medical bullshit going on. I called every few days to see how he was feeling, what symptoms bothered him the most and suggested things that I had heard to aid in many general cancers like CBD oil. He would assure me that he would check into it but seemed more interested in how I was holding up and healing. Looking back, I feel like he was trying so hard not to worry me that he was glad to talk to me about my own situation rather than delve into the dark truth of what was happening to him. I would call my sister and ask if she had any more detail about options for his treatment and she mostly had very little to say as we just sat there sad but somehow comforted by our own silence. That month, sitting on the couch - in and out- phone call here - there - in and out - basically doped up on pain medication and Benadryl to stop the intense itching on both surgery sites was a major blur. It was the middle of May before I knew it. Dad and I kept in touch, he was doing rounds of Chemo and absolutely hated it. Often times he was too tired to have a very long conversation but we all kept our hopes high and lifted him with the love and light of healing. Shirts and armbands were made... we were his warriors... his band of light and love manifesting healing within his body. I began watching documentaries incessantly searching for any holistic guidance that may point to a pathway of healing, including the keto diet, juicing with raw diet, and overall the elimination of sugar or anything that the body turns into sugar once ingested. I suggested these to my father who seemed interested and that he would like to integrate these into his lifestyle. I could not figure out why every time I asked if he had tried a new diet that he responded with a dull, “ no” until the week that my sister went to visit. She called me the very first day of arrival frantic about this woman who had snaked her way into my father’s life... this woman who was emotionally erratic and would scream and belittle my very sick father. Amongst sharing that information, I emphasize the fact that my father was very, very sick... something he had done far too good of a job at hiding during our conversations. Myself, finally becoming healed enough to make my own sandwiches and move about the house singularly, had also began to come to terms with how serious the situation was. My sister called me every day to tell me how this woman didn’t care if my father was fed, how she would hide his medicines if he was ornery with her, and how she had this superiority complex that she was his only means of being taken care of. She seemed to think of herself as his savior (i.e. the plot of Stephen King’s “Misery”). I thought my sister may be over reacting just a tad as she has always been very vigilant and protective of our family, so I decided to book a flight up to see dad and this situation with the woman living with him. After visiting with family who lived in the same town as dad I had heard the terms “malicious, inconsolable, self-righteous, and highly convincing” amongst other commentary. I knew my father was in a great deal of pain but he kept saying it was simply the chemo making him feel ill and that after a day or so things would be okay. I did my best to keep the peace in the house and simply observe *Betsy as she went along her normal routine. Alex was correct as I noticed that she did not feed my father even with the knowledge of how critical nutrients entering the body are whilst enduring chemo treatments; instead, she would simply ask if he was hungry and shrug off his usual “no” responses. I decided to approach another route and began fixing him small, not overwhelming, plates of delicious food or sandwiches that were easy to eat and loaded with flavor (as chemo ruins taste buds and desire to eat). I was determined to change things by the end of the week when I was scheduled to fly out. I wanted to see him on a route of healing through food, CBD oil, all natural vitamins and a diet free of sugar. I shared these thoughts with our extended family and all agreed that something major had to change. At night my soon to be fiancé and I would stay awake with my brother and talk about how we could help, especially since my little bother lived in the house with him, after we left. My little brother then shared stories of repeated verbal abuse on *Betsy’s behalf... how she would follow him from room to room screaming at him about how she doesn’t feel loved and how he was an asshole for not paying attention to her. It was my brother’s observance that she was so insecure and self absorbed that she didn’t even realize that he was so sick and hardly had the energy to sit up. Rather, she continued to badger and belittle him to the point that he actually sought refuge in my little brothers room stating, “dad knocked on the door, crying, with her behind him screaming, and he asked to be let in, for me to lock the door and ignore her beating on the other side to be let in, all while dad took the fetal position on my brother’s bed and cried himself to sleep.” After hearing this story I began to piece together who this person really was and how she operated. She literally gave herself purpose with my dad’s sickness. As long as he was sick, she felt like she had a place in this world... she would bend reality to her preferred perspective of life with a loved sick one should be. A true sociopathic- narcissist who’s only claim to fame was that she was the only one who was willing to take care of him while my sister and I lived states away, her still in college and me working full time while tied into a lease. Mind you, my father’s brother and sister in law lived across town and tried repeatedly to talk my father into moving in or having hospice come into his home to ensure that his medications were being taken on time, especially since *Betsy had a common habit of hiding his medications or “forgetting” to administer. *Betsy became combative and highly agitated when the word hospice came up and my father admitted to my uncle and aunt that he would be feel like a burden moving into their house for care. Before my fiancé and I left for the week, dad mustered up the strength to go to the family lake that week... something he had not done in months as most days he couldn’t get off the couch. My sister later informed me that something about our presence gave him strength as we also made a day trip to Sturgis during the week we were there and although the day went well, *Betsy’s true colors shown brightly once more on the way home as she continued to accuse him of not loving her since he couldn't find such energy when we weren’t in town to which he recanted, “we didn’t do anything when Alex was in town either, I just haven't spent all my energy fighting with you because Ashley has been mediating the peace and even you have recognized that.��   Anyways, back to preparing for our last weekend there with a trip to the family lake... I walk into the garage with *Betsy chain smoking (literally could smoke about a pack an hour) and crying. I ask what’s wrong and she screams that no one loves her, all the (insert my family’s last name) hate her and she knows she isn't wanted. I attempt to console her and assure her we are going to have a great weekend, to which she responds “after you and (my fiancé) leave everything will go back to normal and your dad wont pay me any attention - I reminded her as gently as possible that dad is often very tired and the chemo simply takes a lot out of him and that it was absolutely crucial that she not create an environment of stress by thinking that he doesn't care when in actuality he just needs a nap. She immediately only hears that she’s the one ‘creating an environment of stress’ and flips out screaming that I am just like my sister and the rest of the (insert my last name here) and that the whole town hates her too. I simply shrug it off and walk inside to inquire what the hell is going on to my father and he responds, “this is the true *Betsy, I am honestly surprised she has been able to hold it together even as much as she has all week, but this is her on a daily basis. Josh hides in his room and I don’t have the energy to tell her to leave but she’s killing me, Ashley... she’s killing me and I know it.” Shocked and heartbroken at his truth, deep sadness/exhaustion, and despair in his eyes, I respond, “dad get your stuff together, we were supposed to leave at 6 am and it’s now 11 am... that’s 5 hours of dealing with her drama and you need a peaceful weekend with those you love at the lake... please just grab your stuff and I will have (my fiancé) begin loading the vehicle.” So we start grabbing things as fast as we can... carelessly throwing it in the pickup... as she begins to observe what we’re doing she starts to follow all of us around screaming, belittling, and ushering hateful energy anywhere she can. I see Josh is still hiding out in his bedroom gaming and ask what on earth he is doing and he responds, “I have to stay here to make sure she doesn’t destroy the house.” I shake my head and tell him hell no, this is a family trip and there is no way he is staying here with someone so unstable. He decides that is the most reasonable route and decides to leave with my uncle and aunt when they go, who also came over to try and console the truly inconsolable *Betsy, who I have adamantly told dad that she cannot come as it is not contingent to a peaceful weekend with those you love, especially as I knew myself and my fiancé wouldn’t be able to fly back up for another month or so and simply wanted to spend some more intimate time with him and without distraction. As we ride to the lake, he continues to speak of how exhausted he is from her but that he just can’t get rid of her... that he has asked her to leave the house multiple times and she becomes violent. Roughly 40 miles down the road he then goes on to tell us that as we were loaded into the truck and he realized he forgot his iPAD, he ran inside to get it and she was standing in the garage in front of it holding his motorcycle whip (which we had purchased for him during the trip to Sturgis for his motorcycle) swinging it back and forth and threatening to beat him with it. He allegedly told her to “go ahead, hit me with it... I can’t hurt much more and at least the world will see who you truly are.” After he stated this to me I was enraged... absolutely profusely fucking pissed... I wanted to turn the truck around and approach her; however, my dad chuckled and told me he loved me and that was actually the reason he waited until we got further along down the road before sharing that information with my fiancé and I. We had a nice ride to the lake... touching on and off from the *Betsy situation as we began to call it to simply sharing past times and memories. Overall, as we drove further away from the madness and more towards the family lake we could all feel the sense of peace take over and dad had proclaimed that he absolutely wanted her out of the house when he got back, that he was tired of her verbal and nominal physical abuse. We had a great weekend of family and friends... my fiancé even asked my father for permission to marry me which was quite a highlight, albeit dad did struggle quite a bit from the recent chemo treatment and side effects he did his best to stay up, about, and keep a smile on. Come Sunday, dad dropped us off at the airport with love, hugs, cries, and see you laters… 

part two to come... more pain, more bullshit, & little to look forward to - I just need to put this somewhere...

Interview-Ingrid Alice: Fashion photographer creates a wonderland of her own

-Do you agree that you are challenged everyday to create something that has never been created?

Constantly. The sheer number of images that get uploaded to Instagram alone every day (on average 60 million photos per day) creates enormous pressure and an expectation to continuously create images that stand out in a crowd, of well 60 million.

 I do however try my very best to entirely focus on what I am doing and what projects we have on at any given time. Ultimately, I believe in monitoring success by happy clients, successful campaigns, and bookings. As amazing it is to get social media recognition - I see this more of a gentle indication that we are on the right path as opposed to a sign of success.

 -Can you describe your creative process? What do you look for when creating a shoot and do?

My process begins at 3am in the morning, when the world is quiet, I can think clearly and my creative brain kicks in. I often send messages to my team, by daybreak, we have great excitement over our air waves.

Creative conversations will start flying around 5am.

 I look for concept and story line, I am often inspired by poetry, books, music, myths and legends. I look for the “make-believe”, seeing an image in my minds eye, and then creating the visual representatives of that - the story will then transform and develop from there.

 I don’t shoot real life, I’m not an enormous fan of real life. Photography is my escape into a world of wonder and magic. A world of enchantment… where stories are always grand.

 My Team. The people I work with are creative powerhouses. We are a very small team of focused creatives. Mostly however, I look for like-minded people, creatives who share my design aesthetics. People from my tribe who can take an idea and concept and transform it into something BIG. I never work in large teams.

 I look for very strong character driven women for models. Women that are beautiful but fierce. I like strength in my images.

-You have to have a favorite artist in mind that drives your creativity or inspires you, who is it?

Jack Vettriano. His work feeds my soul. I can spend hours searching though his paintings, imagining stories and subtexts in the overall mood of his work. You can feel tension, emotion, love, hate, sadness, seduction, loneliness, youth. I feel like his narratives tell 10 000 stories, each of them different from the viewers perspective and life experiences.

 -How would you describe yourself as a person & artist?

A little peculiar perhaps. Upside down in Wonderland comes to mind. As a person, quiet and reserved, a little too serious at times - most times really. I tend to have strong opinions. A dreamer, a boho flower child with a rock n roll soul with a constant urge to travel the word with my camera and a backpack.

 As an artist, constantly striving, a fierce workaholic. I do not lead anything that resembles a “normal” life.

 -How did you know you wanted to be a photographer?

The short answer is, I didn’t. This creative craft came to me later in my career. I have been a Creative Director for most of my life. A few years ago, I was working on a print publication, where we had to produce a fashion shoot. I took one look at this cool photographer, who spent his days outdoors, creating amazing images, and thought that this looked like a very good way to spend my time.

 Initially I was only going to be more of a hobbyist. However through a series of life changing events, my Photography took on a whole energy of its own. In hindsight I feel so strongly that I could never produce the work my team and I create, had I not had those years working as a Creative Director, and the work experiences that I was lucky enough to enjoy over that time. I believe photography came to me at the right point in my career.

 I do however feel I am at the beginning of this journey and cannot wait to see how my work changes and expands over the next years.

  -Do you have a favorite photographers who inspire you? Why is that?

I am totally and completely obsessed with the work of Sarah Moon and Paolo Roversi. Their use of color and the images they create are hauntingly beautiful and stay with you forever. Tim Burton’s story-telling narrative, simply takes my breath away.

 -In the artistic world of photographers, do you see yourself not only trying to achieve your perfect shoot but also being known for your work?

 All I honestly want in this life - is to create amazing images, work with talented people, and have happy nice clients who I love. With regards to the world of photographers, it is extraordinary to be recognized for what you do, but again as mentioned before - this is perhaps more of an indication that we are“on the right path”. I do not work for anyone else other than my clients, my team and myself. We focus strictly on what we are doing and creating.

 -If you could shoot an editorial anywhere in the world, where would you go? Why is that?

Eze on the French Riviera. The entanglement of the cobbled streets which lead down secret alleyways into hidden squares, with an internal vista of blue ocean skies, makes for a striking backdrop. I can almost imagine walking at night, lantern in hand, down candle lit enchanted pathways, passing Nietzsche, Yeats, Monet, Picasso, Fitzgerald or Hemingway laughing loudly after an evening in one of the small pubs, winding their way merrily down the hill back to their residence. All of whom have spent time in this extraordinary place.

 -What was the main reason that you decided to become a photographer?

After working behind a computer for 16 years, getting up at 3 am and watching the sunrise, while balanced on 6ft ladders, seemed like a very good way to spend time. I can honestly say now, that in fact it is the perfect way to spend time. I feel like I have finally found my way in this world, and it was up a ladder!

 -Tell me about your latest shoot. What was your vision when you created it?

We have the most amazingly exciting shoots coming up and in production. One of them is a series call Sirens, which is re-imagined Neptune's wooden angels, figureheads in the front of shipwrecked ships, that have come to life and continue to stand guard over their long forgotten vessel.

 A project with a mix of digital and 8x10 polaroid. A beauty shoot inspired by the original Grimms fairytales.

 -To be a photographer, you had to undergo a lot of struggles. What was the most difficult obstacle for you when putting together a shoot?

The barrier to entry was getting people to work with me and to trust my vision. This was a totally different industry for me, and not one person was even remotely interested in what I had to offer. I was lucky enough to convince one stylist to work with me on a project - only under the proviso that if she hated my work, I would get another photographer to shoot it. Fortunately it went well - and then I simply went out to work with the best people I possible could. Winning them over one by one on each given shoot. In South Africa, this is a very closed industry - competition is unforgiving. You need to be on your A game all the time.

-Does your personal life ever effect how you compose your shoots or do you have a set schedule/ formula that you follow? What is it exactly?

Currently my schedule is a 7 days a week and min 12-16 hour days. There is no milk in the house, and I’m living a little too much off spoonfull's of peanut butter at midnight. I am hoping to try and find more balance this year.

 Yoga is helping.

 -Who excites you the most (Celebrity) & why?

Audrey Tautou and Kat Von D. Both these women are interesting in a very non traditional sense. The rolls they have chosen to play in life is so undeniably inspiring. I feel they walk the line between strength, femininity, success, humbleness and just downright take no prisoners. It’s wonderful to see women who are unapologetically non-traditional.

  -If you had to pass on a suggestion for someone starting out in photography, what would you tell them?

Focus on your own work. Put your nose to the grindstone and work. Work harder, and harder and then work even harder than anyone else. Find your tribe, collaborate with like minded souls. Experiment and most importantly work on client relationships. Relationships are what build careers. Always be nice and support other photographers. There is so much work in this world. There is enough for everyone.

 Always, always be kind!

 -How is your style of photography different from any other photographers?

 My style is ever evolving and changing. I tend to use a lot of color in my photography at the moment. But perhaps that will change with different projects. I do love colour though :)

 -What are your world-dominating goal.

To continue to work in Photography, get paid for doing something I love so much, and of course travel the world and live an adventurous life - with nice, amazing clients and a creative team that is insanely cool.

 What more could one ask for…. Perhaps to work in NYC or Paris would also be amazing. For a photographer hailing from Africa, working in NYC or Paris is most certainly the definition of world domination.  :)

 |   Ingrid Alice Irsigler  |  084 742 2402   |   www.ingridirsigler.com  | |   Facebook   |   Instagram   |   Linkedin   |  Behance   |   www.bigcitylife.co.za   | 

Theirs and Ours

I know this isn’t a fanfic, but you guys like short stories, right? Or can at least pretend to?

Either way, here’s one regardless. 

I don’t have anyone in the graveyard.

Which is a weird way of saying that I have no reason to go there, every day.

But I do.

It’s not calming to me.

In the slightest.

Walking up and down the overgrown and gnarled cracked stone pathways brings me no joy. Tripping over rocks, being startled by the random rabbits or squirrels that run around the gloomy cemetery aren’t appealing. And, above all else, the creak that the stupid wrought iron gate makes when the wind blows sends a shiver up my spine.

Every. Damn. Time.

I also don’t go there because I feel so dark. Or find the need to make others believe I’m dark. That I’m deep. Interesting. That I’m damaged.

I’m not any of that. And there’s no connection for me there, with the dead, the departed. I was taught at a young age that the dead are just that; dead. And it’s one of those things that’s stuck with me. They don’t come back as cute ghosts or orbs or any of the other sort. There are two places you can go when it’s over and, honestly, I don’t know how you could escape the one and I don’t know why you would want to the other.

So no. It’s not a macabre sense of being that causes me to take the long walk everyday after I get off from my slow checkout clerk job at the only grocery store in our hamlet of a town. It’s not my desire to be seen as edgy or cool by peers that I’ve long outgrown since high school, many of which, honestly, escaped our desolate town for brighter adventures (along with what I’m sure were hefty tuition costs) that makes me take an hour, at least, out of my day, to walk idly around the decrepit cemetery. And certainly not, no matter how much many in the town believe, my attempt at pissing off the church who owns the burial grounds by sitting on the benches and watching all the others with someone laid to rest there grieve that causes me to make the trek day after day, always being courteous of the closing time for the place and leaving long before the man who locks the gates shows up.

I’m not...a trouble maker. I never was. And it’s not my intention to become one.

But I don’t have anyone buried in their cemetery.

My family isn’t Catholic, who are the ones who own the graveyard. It’s on the back of their grounds and, even on the weather’s best day, is gloomy to the point of depression. A stark contrast to the graveyard across town, where the rest of us are buried, the ones who either lack religion or fall into another category other than Catholicism, most, of course, belonging to the other church in town, the one I do, that’s only real denomination is that we’re from the south and therefore do not dance.

Like all good Christians, my father would say.

Or like all people who ignore what’s taught to them in their bibles, my maternal grandmother, who only came to the town when she came to live with us, would grumble given her choices between Southern Baptist or Catholic.

I frequently informed her that there was a third option to stay at home and I was frequently popped in the mouth for mouthing off.

But anyways, the main one is larger and brighter and, though just as overgrown in places and perhaps just as dark seeming, less...reclusive, perhaps, would be the right word.

The church’s cemetery is older, as well, which perhaps makes it much more solemn in tone. Many of the headstones are so bleached by the elements that their inscriptions can no longer be read and, I wonder at times, if the church itself even knows who truly is buried in what specific patch. The new ones, I’m sure, will suffer the same fate eventually.

Because what are cemeteries, anyhow, other than a temporary holding places, not only for the bodies, but for our minds too? Eventually, all who might visit a grave die off and it becomes ignored, forgotten, like the ones I mentioned before, with a headstone that’s as meaningless as the life it housed was.

But…

It means something to some people.

Like I said, I wasn’t taught to care for bodies. Or for graveyards. I’d never come to the one behind the Catholic church before I began walking its grounds daily. And I only went to the one that the rest of us get schlepped into after being forced by my father to put on the something nice and go pay my respects to whoever in our community finally found our maker. He would always tell me that it didn’t mean much to him either, my father would, but it was something you had to do. More for personal appearances, he’d say, than anything else.

You’re not paying your respects to the dead, he’d tell me. The dead are gone. And they care not of what we do on earth any longer. Rather, you do it for the family that they left behind. You go and whisper the versus from the bible that they picked out (or hummed along with the musical selection, for the two non-religious funerals he’d hauled me off to before) for the pastor to read to you. You bowed your head, kept your funeral suit clean (or dress that I hated with an equal amount of passion, in my case), so that you could hang it right back up in the foremost regions of your tiny closet back in your tiny home until someone else you knew a tiny bit in your tiny town passed away and you had to do the whole thing over again.

And if mentioning before that I have no one buried in the Catholic’s graveyard was an odd way of telling you that I have no reason to be there, this has been a very long and perhaps even more odd way of explaining myself.

Not necessarily to anyone other than myself.

Because I don’t even understand it.

Why I care.

Why I do it.

What difference it makes.

He’s dead.

His wishes don’t matter.

What they did to him before and after death no longer matters.

And yet…

I don’t...go to the cemetery behind the old Catholic Church because anyone I know is buried there.

I go there because the only person I knew that should have been isn’t.

I’ve lived in my town my whole life. It’s not too small, really, that every single person knows every single other person, but it is quaint in that most do. And many don’t leave. So I knew Max since we were kids. We went through school together.

See, he was two years older than me and, originally, had been friends with my older brother, in that weird way that kids are all kind of friends, aren’t they, so long as they know one another? Well, Max’s mother and father didn’t work in town, but rather in the city, about an hour away, so after school, Max would come to our house.

He and my older brother were supposed to play until his mother or father got off work and came to pick him up.  I don’t know how that all came to be, but I do know how it all fell apart.

Max and my brother were just different people. My brother enjoyed many things, but mostly rough housing. And, with a younger sibling, he should have been able to get a lot of that. But I wasn’t too keen on it, back then, and he says I was prone to crying, but I say he was far more prone to intentionally trying to break my bones, and, well, there’s such a wash between the two that the we never did rightly get along as children.

But he had Max. Max would rough house with him.

Or at least he tried.

Once.

It happened that first time Max came over to spend, oh, about five or six hours at our house before his mother picked him up, typically right after dinner and dangerously close to when my brother and I were to be banished off to bed. And many more hours on the weekend.

But I digress.

That first day, my brother attempted to put Max in some sort of...hold he’d seen on the ever scandalous professional wrestling that if my father knew he snuck to watch late at night, would have gotten the television we were only supposed to watch the news on tossed out on the street.

Max cried.

Immediately.

More than I would have.

It was...kind of a big mess.

Max probably would have never been allowed back to our house and his mother would have had to find another poor schmuck to feed and house her child for half the day (at least) while she worked had, after my frazzled mother gotten him calmed down, he not been sent to play with me.

See, I had a thing back then for bugs.

I loved them.

I liked catching them and messing with them. Probably, actually, torturing them would be a better term for what I did, as I frequently would accidentally harm them during this process when I was young, but what could you do? Our backyard had no fencing around it and, frequently, even at five, I was just allowed to roam around the forest surrounding with a scary amount of no supervision.

Like, none at all.

I had literally no fear.

Of anything.

And, we’re talking about late 90s, early 2000s. When everyone else just about had found this fear.

My town was so small though I guess it ghosted right over them.

It worked for Max and me.

He was bigger than me, obviously, being a boy and also having two years on me. And, unlike my brother, he seemed to enjoy exploring the woods with me. He’d help me climb up to places I couldn’t reach, to find bugs and such that I wouldn’t have been able to get to otherwise. We both enjoyed mud and dirt.

My brother did too.

He just basked in throwing punches and grappling while you were in said dirt.

So he didn’t play with us much. Not to say he never did, as I have many fond memories of the three of us (or whatever other friend my brother invited over) trekking around in the forest, exploring the landscape that seemed ever-changing in the eyes of such young children.

But it was mostly Max and I. It was always Max and I. Even as we got older. We were just meant to be best friends.

We didn’t always have the same interests. My obsession with all the different trading cards never rightly got him and his love for loud, thrashing music wasn’t an affair I chose to partake in, but we made it work.

It pissed my father off at times. I think the problem was less that I finally had someone that was as entertained by the same woods they’d grown up in since, oh, they were born and more that said person was Catholic.

Which I didn’t get when I was a kid. At all. I knew that Max went to the other church, on the other part of town, I knew that his bible had some other books tossed in there (we both, as children, were a part of our churches children’s programs where you get really cool treats when you memorize stuff like that; or at least I did, I think he just got called an altar boy or something; regardless, we both helped one another memorize them) and that, somehow, we weren’t worshiping the same thing, but I didn’t understand why. I knew we had depictions of a cross all over our house and that his family had Christ actually hanging from the ones in theirs, called crucifixes, but that seemed like a really weird distinction to make.

I still believe it to be rather arbitrary on both ends.

Mostly, I knew, after spending the night at his house, I would be questioned by my father about whether or not they tried to ‘make me read from their blasphemy’ or ‘worship their saints’ and all this other stuff that really made it quite a hassle as well as rather not fun to even spend the night with him.

Max got to stay up later than me though and watch a lot more TV as well as had video games, so the few times I could get this privilege, I just suffered through the third degree I got upon returning home.

Even as I got older though, and learned about the basic differences between all denominations and such, it still felt kind of silly, really, to Max and I both. Well, more me and he’d agree with what I said or any critique I leveled at either the church I went to, ones I saw on TV (which was another thing we were allowed to watch, over at my place), or what he told me about his. He never really spoke poorly towards his own faith, or mine, really, and mostly seemed uncomfortable when I would.

Max was very devout.

I learned that early on.

Bible stories were just things I listened to as a kid and were hammered home for me by my father at times, but to Max, they were everything. Even when we were a kids, he’d actually enjoy reading from his and studying and asking questions of his own father, who was much kinder, believe it or not, than my own, about such things.

Once, when I was about ten and Max was probably nearing thirteen, something that had never bothered me before occurred to me as we all sat around our kitchen table, eating. My father had probably just gotten home from work, because he was in a rather sour mood, I recall, which I should have realized and just not prodded him.

But...I never could read situations too well. Especially back then.

Max was with us, because he almost always ate supper with us, before his mother came to pick him up. That would be the last year, really, that he’d be forced to come to our house after school and the rest would be more habit or desire to be around me, I guess. And as he was sitting there, as dopey and so oblivious to what I was thinking as he ever was, just enjoying my mother’s cooking, I did it.

I put him on the spot.

Err, rather, my father on the spot with Max being the innocent casualty.

It was after we said grace (another thing both our families did over their food and to, what I assumed, was the same God which only confused me even more, honestly) that I asked my father if Max was gonna go straight to Hell.

I don’t know why it popped into my head then. Or why my father got so red in the face. Well, I do, on the latter, as I’d embarrassed him and was setting him up to look like an ass. And, if you didn’t know the way I asked it, it probably sounded like I was purposely doing that. Being a smart mouth.

It got me the belt though, I remember, and luckily Max’s mother arrived not soon after, saving him from any more embarrassment.

My brother bopped me in the head later that night too, and told me to stop acting like a dumbass.

But no one ever answered my question.

So I asked Max, the next day, when he and I met one another at the bus stop and my brother got distracted with tormenting the girl from down the road he had the biggest crush on all through school, what he thought. If we were going to the same place when we died.

He told me that he didn’t know and he wished that I hadn’t asked that, but that he’d talk to his father about it, if I really wanted. Which I did, but it was rather obvious then that my questions were making everyone involved uncomfortable, so I just sorta kicked at the ground and let the inquiry die.

From everyone’s responses though, I kinda knew the answer.

What we believed differed at enough points that, clearly, both our end goals weren’t the same.

Which bothers me now too, to bring us back to the present once more, and especially when I’m walking around that cemetery that no one I know is buried in and consider all I know about what gets you saved and what doesn’t.

Because I still believe.

Maybe not every day. Some days are better than others. And sometimes not in every instance or as devoutly as my father might grumble I should, when I get hung up on what he claims to be earthly matters, but…

Are all the people in the cemetery I walk around banished forever to Hell? Or are all the ones that I actually know in the other graveyard, across town? Or is Hell not nearly as important as we attempt to all make it?

And as I’ve gotten to an even longer way to tell you that I’m conflicted about everything I do, it’s about time to mention the obvious.

Max is dead.

But that didn’t happen until my senior year of high school.

Max and I never broke apart.

Ever.

Not once.

We were as tight as always when he and my brother both graduated from our town’s high school. My brother enlisted, off to see the world, while Max decided to go to the closest community college and see just a smidgen. He wasn’t sure what he was going to be, but he knew that he wanted to get away, just a bit, from our town.  

Every weekend though, he came back. He’d get into town on Friday right about the time I got outta school and we’d either spend the weekend working on whatever school related things we need to get done or killing time until Sunday afternoon like we always had; just hanging out.

Things slowly became different, of course, as he was living in a world that I wasn’t any longer. It was much the same with my brother, when we’d talk over the phone or he came home on leave. I was still living in our closed off little world that we’d all shared and they were branching out, only interacting with it when they chose to.

My junior year of high school, Max met a girl. Or a woman, I guess. I...never met her, so…

It’s not like he and I were ever…

But we weren’t not and…

I don’t know. It changed things even more. We talked and texted more, I think, than he came back home that year, that last year and a half, really, before I lost him. Which was different, but we were still the same. He still listened to me drone on about being alone and bored and I listened to him talk about his girlfriend so much that, though I only ever saw pictures of her, I felt as if I knew her.

She sounded nice, anyways.

That spring, Max was supposed to take me to the big dance we have at the end of the year. I guess the prom, technically, but we didn’t call it that. Seniors and juniors went and I’d gone with him both of his years, the first of which I spent more trying to drag my brother, who’d snuck drinks in, away from fight after fight, and the second where Max and I kinda blew it off and hung out behind the gym, alone, and just talked most the night, about his impending journey into anywhere but our town.

Anyways, when he came down, I could tell something was up. We’d hardly talked for the past two weeks and he hadn’t been home in at least a month. I even texted him that, honestly, I didn’t really want to go, but he claimed to need to come into town anyways and he promised and what how I shouldn’t waste my youth.

My youth.

I remember he said that because it sounded so funny. He was only twenty. If anything, he was getting a better youth experience than me.

Which I found out was very true as he came into town with far more on his mind than if his old tux still fit.

   We were sitting out on my back porch, the Friday before the dance, side by side, like always, but it wasn’t me talking (which, admittedly, was how most our conversations went). He was speak, instead, softly.

No one was home. Inside. My mother had taken her mom to some sort of dinner she was having with some friends and my father was at work. It was only the two of us. Max and I. But he didn’t speak above a whisper.

Not that it mattered. I picked up every last word. Every syllable, though my eyes were down, between the two of use, where a can of coke dripped in the heat of the oncoming summer evening. Max only stared straight ahead, however, into the forest, maybe, or the pink and purple sky. He didn’t look at me once as he unburdened himself about how stupid he was and she was and what were they supposed to do?

That was what he ended with, when he finally fell silent. What were they supposed to do? He was asking me. As if I would have a clue.

It’s not that I didn’t think that Max and his girlfriend were sleeping together. It’s just that I didn’t think about it. I mean, I knew that he was living a bit edgier than we had, back at home, but wasn’t that what it was all about? That’s what the television always led me to believe.

His life was so boring, back at home. Both of ours were. We were happy with them, I’d like to think. But as far as much experience went, in anything other than bug catching and discussing music, our lives were a bit lame. I could list, in order, the five girls Max had ever kissed and he couldn’t list the guys I had because they didn’t exist.

Which was fine.

The weekends were wasted in our bedrooms, playing video games at his, listening (softly, as not to disturb my parents or get a lecture on how sinful our tastes were) to music in mine, and I never had a problem with it. Had I been the same age as him, I assumed we’d be doing the same, in that town he was renting an apartment in. Go to college, come home, hang out with one another.

But that isn’t what happened. Max was free and living life and he fucked up.

That’s what I told him, in fact, still staring down at my coke can. I remember him holding his breath as I went on, something about how selfish and stupid he was and that he could do whatever he wanted, he could sleep with whoever he wanted, but why didn’t use protection? Or something?

Why did Max have to get her pregnant?

And why did he have to tell me about it?

I mean, I know the answer to the second. Because Max told me everything. And he needed me. Because we always needed one another. In good and in bad.

It wasn’t something I was willing to be that night though. Needed. Or helpful. Kind. I was actually very angry at Max. I went off on him for a little bit and he just sat there and took it, because Max always took everything I threw at him.

He was ruining everything. I was graduating in a few months and his two-year degree would be finished and we were going to be together. In town. In our home. Together. And we were going to spend every day together again. The way it was supposed to be.

And I was finally eighteen. So my father couldn’t tell me anymore that I couldn’t go stay the weekend at Max’s apartment. I mean, he would, if he knew that I was planning that, so I was certainly being naive in thinking that would happen, but it was something I envisioned. I wasn’t going to college or anything, (there was no possible way I could afford to, nor would my father wish for me to; I already worked part-time at the grocery store and the plan was mostly for me to go full time with little else decided upon) but I’d be an adult. Like him. And..

I told MAx to piss of and not even consider showing up at my place the following day, to pick me up for the dance. Or for anything. I didn’t want to see him again. He could go live his happy life at college with his girlfriend and just forget about me. I didn’t care.

He clearly already had.

Which isn’t what happened, of course. Max showed up, the next morning, sitting in our dirt driveway for I don’t even know how long, until my father noticed him out there and knocked on my door, awakening me from m sleepless night to alert me he was there.

We sat in his car for a bit, with the radio and windows down, not speaking. Eventually, he mumbled something about he wasn’t telling his parents and he’d appreciate it if I didn’t either, which got a snort out of me.

Then we sat some more and I wanted to yell at him, send him away, something to let him know how mad I was, but the night had washed away my trigger and I was left with silence. Fighting this, I told him after awhile, in a rather offhanded way, that they had confessionals for that, didn’t they? What did he need me for?

Max was rare to get angry with me. Very rare. He typically was the one taking the brunt of my quickly fleeting temper (something my father passed down, I’m sure) and suffered in silence for the most part. But there were times when I was too much for him. We spent so much of our lives in such close proximity that this not happening would have just been abnormal.

But he’d never looked at me that way. Until that day in his car. His eyes were dark and his face was dead and he stared me right in the eyes as he said to just get out then; if I was going to be so selfish as to make this, his girlfriend being pregnant, about myself, then he wanted nothing to do with me.

I’m not sure what other times he was the one to send me away either, rather than the reverse, but I know I didn’t like it. I slammed his car door and stormed back into the house, leaving Max to drive away and my mother and grandmother to pepper me with questions I couldn’t answer.

And I didn’t answer. Ever.

I never told anyone what Max told me that day, on my back porch, when he ruined what was essentially my senior prom.

It wasn’t truly the end of April before Max and his girlfriend had decided to abort the baby.

Which came as a shock to me, honestly, as in those weeks before this occurred, I really had limited contact with him. We were pissed at one another, him, in retrospect, I can see as rightfully so, and me less, perhaps, but you can’t help what you feel.

Considering we weren’t speak though, during this turn of events, I really have no idea what was going on with Max during it. My bit was only the after affects. I’m not even sure how far along she’d been when he told me, or if they’d discussed it before then, but I’m sure it was a pretty lengthy conversation. I’m very sure of that. And a horrible decision to have to make.

Which is the attitude I tried to convey myself as having to Max, when he showed up at our house, one Saturday evening, around ten, completely distraught and just needing me. My father was home from work by then, of course, and was less than pleased by the sight of him. Especially when my intentions to lead him p to my bedroom became clear.

I only told my parents that he and his girlfriend had broken up (an easy enough lie to get my mother off my back and, though not my father as well, to get her to force him to leave us alone for a bit) and shut my bedroom door behind us, leaving us somewhat alone.

Max sat on the floor, in front of my bed, with his knees pulled up, and looking completely pitiful. He’d texted me, before he arrived, that he was coming and what was going on, but if I was out of my element with unplanned pregnancy, I was certainly not someone who knew anything at all about terminating it.

That wasn’t something that was exactly discussed in my household, after all. Or the town, really, I guess. My father would grumble, when such a thing became a news topic on the television and I suppose it was mostly all just something that was meant to be hammered into my and my brother’s head already as wrong and no need for talks over.

A lot of things were treated that way, actually.

I’m sure my father’s parents didn’t speak with him on such things and, therefore, the bible would be enough of a manual for us on how to deal with such things.

But there was no verse, really, that could be stumbled upon, to cover such a thing. None that came to mind, at least, other than ones strung together about loving one another and forgiveness and a whole bunch of others that made me feel like it was okay then, to go sit with Max, just sit there, on the floor of my childhood bedroom, and rest an arm over his much broader shoulders, and say nothing.

Just be.

I wasn’t angry at him. Not anymore. I actually hadn’t been for awhile. In an immature way, actually, I had already begun to consider what our life would be like once he did have a child. Obviously different, but I…I know it sounds stupid, but I’d babysat before. And I thought I could do that. Help him and his girlfriend out.

His wife, I guess, actually, is what I thought she’d be at that point.

In my mind, I’d thought that, in order to not compound the sin, eventually Max would knuckle up, tell his parents what was going on, and that he and the woman would just get married. Again, simplistic and perhaps immature, if not just a way to complicate a situation, alleviation of sin or not, but it was truly the way the world worked in my world.

There were two girls in our small town that had gotten pregnant in high school. Once, back before I was even a freshmen yet, and another when I was a junior. Neither in my class, but I knew them. One got married immediately and ran off not soon after, before graduating even, to another town. Her mother went to our church and occasionally, her daughter’s name comes up on the prayer list and we all bow our heads as the pastor gives words of hope for her. The other still lived in town and, though the father of the kid’s run off now, they did get married. Before the baby was born.

It’s just pretty much a rule still, here, that this was what you did. The right thing to do.

What Max and his girlfriend did, down here, in my church, would have been scandalous. A lot of church gossip. Snide remarks. Maybe the pastor’s wife would talk to the young woman about it. Try to help her find salvation in it.

But in his church, Max’s, it was...it was damnation worthy, I’m pretty sure. Serious stuff. And in a small community like ours, where his faith was even tinier, I’m sure it would have been hell to admit. Blasphemous.

That’s what he cried to me, that night. Honest tears in his eyes, something he hadn’t done in years. Maybe a decade, actually. Since we were young children. Max was sensitive, but he’d outgrown crying rather quickly. To see him do so was…

And I should have told him, I know, now, about fuck it. What do they know? What do I know? He came to his decision and so did his girlfriend. And if it was right for them, I couldn’t judge them. And there was infinite forgiveness. Those are verses that I did know. About such a thing.

I was silent though, and didn’t go grab one of the infinite bibles around the house. Didn’t recite anything from memory (because believe me, there’s plenty of that in me) or anything like that. I just sat there, with him, and let him tell me all this, hushed now for a reason, and after awhile, when he fell silent, we were that way together.

For a long while.

Eventually he said he should go and when I glanced at him, his eyes let off that he’d been crying, but not over what, and that was what was important. He knew that there was no way my father would allow him to stay much longer and I knew this to be true as I could still hear him puttering around the house, my father, letting it be known that sleepovers had long been a thing of the past.

We hugged though, tightly, and I told him to come back in the morning, after church (there was no amount of breakups that could allow me to skip out of this; not if I still planned to live in my father’s home), and he muttered back that he’d go home, to his parents, and just say he needed to see me, for them to not worry.

Sunday was different. Max told me more. About how it had only been a few days, but he knew, in his gut, that he’d done the wrong thing and I tried to explain to him that this wasn’t necessarily true, but I don’t think I sounded too convincing because…

I mean, I had no right to judge him, like I’d mentioned before. And I would never know what it was like to be in that position. To have to make that decision. And I was seeing what he was going through, but I couldn’t imagine what his girlfriend was.

Still though, I think Max thought I was being hallow this. I probably was. Max and I never...had that rebellion. From our raising. Or at least not when we were together. In fact, the whole thing seemed like a fabrication to me. A story he was weaving. Nothing more.

We sinned. Everyone sins. But Max and I did, together, growing up. Lying sometimes, definitely cursing, listening or watching things we shouldn’t, discussing things we definitely shouldn’t, and just all the basic ways that most everyone does so daily without thinking about it.

My brother though, he went through it. Where he didn’t want to get up to go to church on Sundays and never went on Wednesdays and certainly was doing far more with the girl down the road he’d always had a crush on for far longer than Max had even had a girlfriend.

I don’t really know, deep down, where he stands currently, my brother, in all that he grew up believing, but I know that it wasn’t real for him, there, for a bit. So maybe if he was the one that Max confided in, things would have been different. Max would have believed him when he told him that it was alright. That he’d get through this.

Maybe he wouldn’t have ended every conversation with the suggestion that he pray about it.

Which I did.

Because that’s what I knew. And that’s all I knew. The only person besides Max that I went to with things was my father and there was no way I was asking his advice, so I was stuck. My high school life was ending and I wasn’t even getting to enjoy it because I was trying to daily, over texts and phone calls to convince Max that he wasn’t going to burn for eternity and that he just had to recommit himself.

Talk to someone.

I told him that later, when I was about two weeks out from graduation. I begged him, one night, on the phone, that he didn’t have to tell his parents everything, but that he should tell them something. That his father was much more understanding than mine and that he’d help him. Or his priest. Or hell, even my pastor. Just someone. Anyone. Didn’t he have any friends, up there in college? What about his girlfriend? Was there no solace to be found between the two of them?

Of course, now, I know that Max felt trapped. And alone. And wrong. And disgusted with himself. That he hated what had happened and himself and that he was hopeless. I don’t think, honestly, that he’d been doing well, probably, before she got pregnant to begin with, maybe. That’s what I tell myself. That he was homesick or something. Depressed.

Because the idea that one event could completely alter everything, change everything, make him in a matter of months lose complete hope, was asinine to me.

But maybe.

It didn’t matter, of course. Because I didn’t tell anyone. And he didn’t tell anyone. He was grown, so what the hell would I have been doing anyways? That’s what I told myself back then. That...tattling on Max wasn’t going to fix things.

Now I just wish I’d at least suggested his go see a therapist or counselor or something.

Anything.

I’d grasp at anything now.

Just to…

Max killed himself. I’m sure you know that by this point, but writing it out, seeing it in front of me, is probably good for me. It wasn’t written that way in the obituary I’ve saved from the local newspaper. Or the funeral program that sits on my desk and I look at, every time I get on the computer. I’m looking at it now, even, as I write this. The front of it has his little graduation picture on it. From high school, of course, as he never made it to his two year graduation.

He hung himself in his apartment the week following my graduation form high school. That was the last time I’d seen him. He’d come to that, for me, but was miserable. My parents and grandmother were taking me out to eat following it and Max was invited to go, of course, but he only hugged me and told me he’d call me later.

Which he did, that night. And the one after. But not again.

It was three in the morning, on a Tuesday when I got a text from him. It was so weird. I normally wouldn’t wake up for something like that. The vibrate on my phone is hardly enough to awaken me, but something did, around the time he sent that to me.

And I thought…

It was such a nice text.

I have it saved. I’ll never delete it. Ever. I’ll keep this stupid phone forever, if I can help. I mean, I don’t know what it’s doing for me, to look at it, as it doesn’t make me feel any better, but I pull it out, sometimes, when I’m sitting on those benches around the Catholic cemetery, just to stare at the digital letters and try to picture him texting it to me.

He was all alone. In that apartment. And I was here, alone too, but he was feeling it far more than me. But he still took out the time to tell me what he did. In his message. Wrote it out.

It’s actually two full messages. When I awoke that early morning to read them, I thought things were better. He told me that he’d felt it again, in him. God. The Lord. And that he knew what had happen next and that he loved me and I’m such a fucking idiot.

Aren’t I?

I thought that meant that he knew he just needed to get back into the church and that everything would be fine. That was the fix to everything, after all. Wasn’t it?

Seven was when I truly got up the next morning and, after having drifted back off foolishly believing everything was fine, I’d moved to read the message again. In the true morning. And send him one back.

But it didn’t...feel right. When I read it. In my right mind. Fully rested. And as I heard my father grumbling from the kitchen about how I wasn’t up yet, that he needed breakfast; graduating didn’t mean I could skip my week day routine, I just…

I didn’t know, of course, that he was dead. I’m sure that I could fool myself into believing so, if I really tried, but I know deep down that this isn’t the case. That’s stupid. I just...felt like if off. Especially when I went through the day and I didn’t get a text back or when I called him, he didn’t answer.

Wednesday would be when I found out. When his mother would come to the house, all upset and crying and my mother, who’d opened the door, was forced to hold her and let her cry it out while I got up from the couch, where I’d been enjoying baseball, to figure out what was going on.

It’s kind of a weird feeling. I don’t know how to describe it. It must be one of those ones where you know if it’s happened to you and don’t if it hasn’t, but…

Life wasn’t real. The past few months, dealing with the thing felt false and fake and still so...real. Or raw, I guess. Bitter.

Like...everything that Max went through, those final months, were all things that didn’t exist for me, not really, until they happened with him. To him. They were...movie magic. People had premarital sex, fine, but I didn’t. People make mistakes and get pregnant, but not me. People lose themselves in this world and aren’t able to use the Word as a guide back out, but that’s not something I could imagine happening to myself. And yes, sometimes gut-wrenching, heartbreaking decisions are made and sometimes abortion is just the only option that someone has. But that would never happen to me.

And not to Max either.

Until…

I’d never before that been so isolated from him. I mean, yeah, he had...guy stuff that went on with him, I’m sure, that he didn’t talk about me with, and my period wasn’t some sort of major discussion between us, but most everything else was out in the open between me and him. We’d known one another for so long that if you told me that Max was even considering ending his own life, I would have called you a liar.

Because not only would my Max, the most devout man I’d never met, commit such a horrific sin, but I wouldn’t have let him. Max meant everything to me. I would know if he was going through something that had pushed him to that edge. And I would have brought him back from it. I would have forced him back from it.

I tried, for awhile, to convince myself then that it clearly wasn’t my Max that had done this. It wasn’t my Max that had killed himself. My father, in fact, gave me a very good excuse as to why this had occurred.

That he was sick in the head.

My father wasn’t very eloquent, but this was actually his response any time we heard in the news about such a thing happening. If it was someone young, anyhow. Any mention of someone older, typically a man, and he’d grumble in that way he did about what a weak person that was. To leave their family with such a burden. How selfish.

And I’m not so sure he didn’t feel this way about Max. That he still doesn’t. And I’ve never known my father to be a liar, much less to mince words, but I do know that he… I mean, he’s never said it, but he has to love me. He just has to. And he knows how much Max meant to me.

So maybe those were just throw away words. Meaningless. That he didn’t mean it, when he told me that Max was just ‘off’ and that I shouldn’t think too heavily on it.

But I could have found meaning in them. If I wished. Could have agreed. Nodded my head. Dried my tears. Decided it was out of my control and therefore I shouldn’t trouble myself with it.

It was another Max int here, in his mind then, clouding my Max’s judgment. That was all. And it was sad and tragic, but not much I could do for him. His fate rested with our Savior.

I...I couldn’t though. Think that. I’d watched my Max, after all, fall into his pit and be unable to climb back out. I might not have thought it had gotten so deep, but I definitely knew he was falling. That my efforts to stop it were failing. So…

Maybe I’m angry. At myself. Or should be. Or something. Maybe that’s what writing this is supposed to get across to me. That my anger’s been misplaced.

In, of all places, the church that now officially has nothing to do with me.

When I found out that the service was being held in the church I attended, I was confused. Just for a moment. It made sense, after all. Max’s family was very devout. There was no reason that they would choose for this to happen.

Until I realized that they hadn’t.

I hadn’t told anyone, of course, about Max and his girlfriend… And I knew that his family didn’t know the woman, really, and even if they did know, they wouldn’t go straight to their priest with the information. I mean, they might have hauled Max’s butt there, if he were around and they found out, but with him gone…

No. Max wasn’t having the very intricate (or at least what he’d explained them as sounded so to me, in the past, when I asked) Catholic funeral fro a far more idiotic reason.

Max had committed suicide.

And that wasn’t allowed.

That one of the more concrete differences, I suppose, in my frequent questioning on the differences in what the two of us believe. Because, according to everything I’d ever been talk, once you take Christ into your life, nothing can ever wash him out. Not if you do it truly. If Max was a member of our congregation, it would still be scandalous. Extremely so. And a point of contention for many, over where exactly his soul currently resided.

But they have still let the man’s damn parents have a service in our church.

Max’s, however, from what I can tell, wasn’t as lenient. That’s why they went to confessional, I’m pretty sure. They had to, obviously, confess their sins. Aloud. To absolve themselves of them. And he couldn’t do that, absolve himself of that final sin. Suicide.

There was no penance in this act.

I don’t know why it bothered me so much. Why it still does. There’s rules. There just are. You can get upset and angry with them, but they’re still there. I don’t necessarily like every little thing I’ve been force fed since childhood, but it’s still law to me. It’s still real.

And if Max truly believed as much as he always told me, then he knew his punishment.

And...and if he didn’t then…

Then what does it matter? Huh? Who did his service? Where they buried him?

I don’t know. And I thought I would, by the time that I finished this. That I wouldn’t have to finish it. That I would come to some big, great epiphany over just what my hangup was, when no one else had it. No one else cared. That I wouldn’t even have to finish this...stupid writing.

But I’m here. Practically. And I still, for the life of me, can’t figure out what the fuck is wrong with me.

Some of Max’s friends came, of course, from the college. To his service. And I saw his girlfriend, in person, for the first time. I didn’t speak to her, but his family must have met her, at some point, because she sat with them.

I didn’t. I sat with my father and mother. I didn’t cry though, which was good, I guess, since it wasn’t something I enjoyed doing in front of my father. Really, I’m not even sure why it was still so important to me at that point, to prove that funerals didn’t bother me. That death was natural. That it happened.

Max was different. He would know that. He would understand. He even lied to me, I’m pretty sure, now that I’ve put it out there, about Max having been sick. And not just sinful. Selfish.

Weak.

Like ever other person who did this was, according to him.

Maybe that’s what this is all about. My father. Maybe he’s why I go and walk around that damn cemetery that means nothing to me. It possible.

Or maybe this is my rebellion. By feeling this way. By writing it. Is this my Ninety-five Theses? Should I tack it up on the cathedral’s doors? Or my church’s? Call them all hypocrites? Tell them that, deep down, sometimes, I think it’s their fault. Not mine or Max’s or anyone but theirs.

That Max wouldn’t have felt so horrible about what had happened, if they didn’t make him that way. That if they didn’t tell him since he was a child how horrible it was, to do the things he’d done. To think the things he thought. To feel the way he did. And that they weren’t there for him. They didn’t check in on him.

They didn’t care.

And now they can’t even house his body?

I...I...I know that his soul is gone form that body. I know it. It’s all I know. That it’s no longer here. But damn it if it doesn’t piss me off every time it even crosses my mind that he’s not buried in that cemetery. That when his parents die, if they want to be with him, they have to be buried in the other one. Even if I’ll end up over there, because hell, without him, I’m not leaving this town, I just know it, but even if I’m in the same cemetery now, as him, when I die in...however many years, it doesn’t make ti stop. This constant need to just...yell at someone.

I don’t have anyone buried in the Catholic cemetery.

But fuck, I should.

It won’t bring Max back. For him to be there. And it’s just flat out never happening. I know this. I know all of this. It doesn’t matter either. Because when people are dead, their bodies are nothing more than a carcass, a shell. Nothing. They’re nothing anymore.

Even if he was there, I’d probably just be angry at something else. Someone else. And I wouldn’t spend my afternoons, my lonely afternoons, in a cemetery I had never visited before and wouldn’t have had things been different, but I’d be doing something. Something miserable, without Max. And I’d detest it just as much.

Knowing this all doesn’t make me feel any better. Neither does knowing that I can’t ever tell anyone abut it. About any of it. Maybe...maybe one day I can tell my brother. More of it, I guess, than what I have. About what Max left out of that note that he’d put on his coffee table, for his parents and girlfriend. About the things that he’d only tell me.

Now that he’s gone, I don’t think he’d mind that so much. If I was just talking to my brother. Or maybe my pastor. Someone. Max was pretty understanding. He wouldn’t want me to feel this way. He’d hate it. To know that I was thinking these things, still, nearly a year out. That I walk that stupid cemetery path, in the heat and the cold, for no reason. That this is making me question things, things I’d never once thought about before, in my life. That it’s making me argue with my father, more and more, because he hates that I do it, that I walk around out there, and that it’s making me feel even more alone.

Max wouldn’t have wanted that.

He just wanted peace. He just wanted to make things right. Again. He felt like what they’d done was...wrong and evil and that the only way to atone for it, I guess, was with his own life. Or maybe he’d been depressed before it all happened and it just shoved him deeper down and he couldn’t take it anymore.

I don’t go see his grave. Where he’s actually buried. In the city graveyard. I haven’t since they first put him out there. I can’t. I don’t want to. I know his mother does. I see her in the store where I work. She always talks to me. She always smiles at me and I smile back, but they both seem fake and we both know it, but we do it anyways. And when I see his father, he always asks me if I’m saving money for school and I always tell him, again, that I’m never doing that and he always says to never say never.

But I do.

Some things just know.

My mother thinks it would make me feel better, to leave town. Go somewhere. Do something. Anything. But my father doesn’t think so. I...I don’t either.

A couple weeks ago, I was sitting with my grandmother, reading her mail aloud to her, when she randomly stopped me and started just telling this long story about after how once, when she was young, she ran away from home. Met a guy. She was happy. For awhile. Before she back home, when things went south. And that she met my grandfather, after doing so, and she was better for it.

I still don’t know if she was telling me that to let me know that there would be other men in my life, following Max, if I should leave and experience such things, or just her telling me one of her stupid stories, but either way, I didn’t help much either.

Max’s mother and father had to clean out his apartment. And, when they did, they gave me a box of some of his things. If I wanted them, his mother told me, but I took them of course. The box sits by my bookshelf and randomly I look through it. Nothing too interesting. I didn’t find some sort of ‘tell-all note’ or anything. I found a beanie hat though, that I wore during the winter and sits on my desk, atop the funeral program, that makes me feel closer to him.

I don’t know what I want anymore. What more closure there needs to me. I know why Max did what he did and I know why he’s not allowed to be buried why I think he should be buried and I know that it doesn’t matter if I knew these things or not, it would never happen and I should just get over it.

But I can’t.

I’m not looking for trouble, when I’m out there. I don’t talk to anyone. Don’t desecrate the place. Don’t defame. Just…

One day, it probably won’t hurt as much. To think about. It won’t bother me when his name comes up. Or even just hearing about someone mention sarcastically wishing to harm themselves. I’ll be okay. Eventually. I know I will.

But for now…

If I’m not hurting anymore…

Does it matter?

If I walk the worn pathways of that old cemetery?

I don’t have anyone buried out there.

I never will.

But one day, all the clean, crisp graves I see now will be illegible and the people who came to rest flowers over them so frequently will be buried themselves. And it won’t matter, who’s buried where or in what cemetery or what they believed, how they died, who they hurt and who they helped. Max’s over in the other cemetery will suffer the same fate and mine as well.

No one will care and we’ll all just be worthless plots of land, where wood encases bones long turned to dust.

We’ll all be the same then. Our bodies, at least.

Whose buried where truly won’t matter.

So what difference does it make then, if I keep walking around in the wrong cemetery, looking for something I’ll never get, until the ache is buried and forgot?

None. To me. There’s no solace in it for me, just pure repetition. But it’s something. Something to do other than stare at my phone, waiting for a text or call that won’t come, sit up in my room listening to that loud, thrashing music I never really liked, and contemplate the differences in two things ultimately rooted in one, all alone.

Considering what they couldn’t give Max, I think, really, it’s not too much to ask to get to keep doing that.

Is it?

“Babel”

I watched my TV screen weeks ago as state after state bled the color red, foreshadowing a death that would break across not only my TV, but my America. Subtle whispers of profanity escaped my lips the same familiar way they have when tragedy affected my life, as every border dripped into the next, like a color by number sent from hell. The only thought that kept coming back around, “This is America. This is America. This is America.”

So many of you called me to weep into the phone, asking the static silence between us to change the outcome. Your fears were sent to me from other countries. The defeat that landed on your bones you gave to me that night and we tried to carry it together. You ranted, screamed, went silent. We all processed in a myriad of ways. I walked onto my school campus and familiar faces were gone. Protests broke out, everyone split like the Red Sea, and that night I cried myself to sleep because I realized I wasn’t Jesus and I couldn’t hold the weight of your emotions in my hands. I was tired for you. I was tired for me. I was tired.

I told a friend the other day that if the phrase, “God is in control” has become a language that is only used to silence you, I will not say it right now. I won’t erase your pain with empty Christian jargon.

You are mourning, I am too. I am listening. There is nothing but love in my heart for you. Before I say more, know that if I have any internalized racism in my body, I don’t want it. I never did. But we have the choice every day to love or hate each other. This is humanity.

Friends, we were destined to fall. From Genesis to now, we are still falling into some bad dream. Whether it’s Greek mythology or it is literal, whether the world was created in seven days or Charles Darwin’s view on creation wasn’t that far off, whether you kiss the bible or you want it to burn in the hell it speaks of, we are still broken. This is America. This is the world. This is sin. Hate me for bringing God into this conversation. Hate me for talking about sin; but look around, is anything else working? Do people, on an individual basis, suddenly believe you and fall at your feet when you argue? Are we getting anywhere?

I tried to remember as I sat in my astronomy class that this world is a dot in an expansive universe. It’s still spinning, at just the right angles, to keep us alive and well. We have made it through the Depression, two World Wars, the Holocaust. I am not decreasing those events, nor invalidating the present. But we are still here. We have felt deep loss and time has given us just enough to keep growing through and out of the pain. We watched 9/11 as children-we feared that day as something so strong and mighty fell. As dust storms chased after people like a horror film and fires choked them out of life; we wondered if we would ever recover. We are still standing.

But we will never have perfect stability.

Former wars, pointless like Vietnam took innocent lives as it depicted faulty images on our televisions. Media took us in its grimy hands and left us isolated, confused, devastated. Language made blanket statements out of us, human documents that anyone could read and somehow understand, instead of individuals who have been written by complex experiences, loss, love, heartbreak, humiliation, triumph. It became “us” and “them”. Power, privilege, oppression, entitled, injustice, white supremacy, woke-there are a lot of hot words floating around, and not everyone knows what they mean. The words reinforced the borders; pathways to individual people are getting caution taped. Dialogue is broken and conversations are dead-one word out of someone’s mouth is suddenly cause to crucify them, instead of educate.  I hear a tower of Babel; we’re all speaking a language that no one will listen to. The definitions have trapped us all. Enough.

We were told to love our enemies. We were told to bear with one another in love. Anger is good, hate is not. Focus. Fight for people, instead of just fighting.

We will never have perfect stability.

There will always be angry, ignorant, white men in the middle of America who hate African-Americans, the LGBTQA community, women, immigrants, Muslims. There will always be people in those groups who hate those white men back. Social media will always be a faulty platform to write atrocious things to people in anger.

Honestly, we chose to hear what we wanted to hear. We were living in the fear of the question, “Is it this bad? Is America this bad that these are the best candidates?” And then as politics progressed the fear ate us alive and vulnerability gave us no other choice than to believe a lie. That politics was all we had. That media from terrible sources defined us. And we became the borders that Trump talked about. They were both racist, corrupt, aggressive in sexual assault or passive in preventing it, drunk on power, drunk on money, fallen-whether they said it like a badge of honor on national television or did it behind closed doors. They still are. We lived within the walls of corruption before Trump even talked about his damn wall. Before he got elected, we chose hope against all odds in unimaginable filth. And then the nightmare came true and we threw out hope and fell back into filth. Hate. We let a single man get inside our heads and spin us in circles.

It’s a shame, it’s embarrassing and surreal. Because I look at the rest of the world, having been to third world countries, and their generosity is uncanny. They have nothing and their hands are open and they say, “Here. Take it from me. Take the shirt off my back.” Their hands are open for not only us, but for the seemingly improbable truth of hope.

And we are here, screaming our own pride into every facet of communication available, and to be honest, it’s making me sick. The story isn’t about us. Other countries seem to understand this.

We’re all yelling about self-love, and that’s important, but I have more things to do than to just love myself. There are a lot more people who need love, and it’s about time we start doing it.

Fighting for the orphan and the widow isn’t optional. Fighting for immigrants isn’t optional.

We are better than this.

We’ve worshiped fear. We’ve set up an altar and bowed down. One side mentions God and the others say they are privileged and white and don’t understand pain. Another side speaks out about their very real oppression and injustice and the others tell them that it’s not happening. Our experiences are not the same, you’re right. I am not you. But to be honest, I told myself that God was in control because I had nothing else; I was horrified at the state of our country. I didn’t say that God was on the throne to suddenly diminish that systems are still broken and people are still in need. I didn’t say it as a means to turn a blind eye to injustice, and I know many did. I say that God is control because I cling to nothing else, our world is chaotic, and I have nothing left that brings the sweet waters of peace. Maybe that sounds privileged, but it’s what I have right now.

The divide is getting wider, we have to stop it.

We somehow thought we should stack up our pain and struggle next to each other and let them compete. We’re not the same but we have both held hands with fear, and eaten depression for breakfast, and been paralyzed by tragedy. I don’t want to be in this game anymore, and nobody wins when we compare scars. Fear is real, fear is valid. But fear is still just that-fear. It’s easy, it’s natural, it’s a reflex, and it is something we can fight. Whether you are more affected by this election or not, we still have choices to make about the demons that tuck us in at night and how we are going to send them back to hell. We’re in this together, let’s act.

I don’t ask for ignorance. I don’t ask you not to feel, not to cry, not to see darkness, because we have faced a death of sorts. But I urge you, in this time, to look around at the people taking care of one another. I urge you to look back and see the ways people took care of one another in times of war, disaster, tragedy and learn from them. Look at how people love each other and wake up when nightmares become realities. We can do the same-give, share, find peace in calamity. People are reaching out with both arms in places they cannot see light for others doing the same. If we generalize others into groups without families, personalities, capacity for love and loss, capacity for understanding, we become our own boot camps of hatred. If we don’t help each other realize that, we will be alone, aching over an unstable America, asking it to be heaven. This is not heaven.

By the same token: I didn’t go to church for 5 years because I disagreed with a lot of the things the evangelical church was doing, or not doing. I was questioning, and I was frustrated that the church was not doing one of its primary jobs, to seek justice, peace, and love. This is what I proclaimed obstinately and obnoxiously over people who argued their case. I recently just sat in the car with my best friend after our church service. She has been a church-goer her whole life. She is someone who has watched me go in and out of churches most of my adult life, going once and picking it to pieces like a 5 year old at dinner. I consistently found something to be angry about. She told me that day, “I never wanted to argue at you about how church and community was right because I knew you had to come to that conclusion by yourself. I just knew I was always going to be at least your one friend who always went and I would let that speak.” I almost cried because her patience astounded me. She is a loyal friend because she doesn’t try to make me believe her, she’s just there for me, exemplifying what it’s like to live a life pursuing a God who loves all and waits for all.

So my point is, if I’m not around people who are different than me, how does anything change? If she didn’t stick around, I would have never been part of a group that has changed my life and pushed me forward into change and made me a better person. And if someone like me who is frustrated doesn’t stay, then how does the culture there ever change? Turn your frustration into finding solutions. Otherwise it’s for nothing.

We can’t afford not to change.

So I’m still going to sit next to someone who doesn’t agree with me politically. Do you know why? Because if I wait for them, like I know God waits for me, then maybe we can bridge the divide. My silence and cold shoulder only closes all doors between us. And you know what? This waiting doesn’t take any energy out of me, not nearly as much energy as it takes to be angry.

It doesn’t mean I’m not going to fight for justice; it just means I am going to focus on the people who are in need, instead of fighting at the people who are not.

There are times under the sun for everything. Right now, it’s time to grow up, even when the adults or the peers in our lives haven’t, even when mom’s we barely know get on our Facebook to scold us. We live in a time that people our age spend nine hours a day on social media; we can talk all day about change, but we have to live it. And quite frankly, it’s time to disregard the thoughts of people who don’t believe in peace. It’s time to forgive, even when it’s difficult. In the end, a bitter heart is only hurting you.

Don’t burn bridges. Light a flame to lead people out of their shadows. That’s more important.

History does not dictate how we move forward. Be present. Move. There will always be people who live in the past; we get to be the minorities, whites, women, men, LGBTQA community, immigrants, Muslims who don’t. So let’s move the conversation forward, too. Embrace your ancestry, but ask yourselves-who are we? Who do we want to be? That’s the question we have left, let it propel us forward into truth.

We can’t say that “Love trumps hate” and then cut someone out of that, regardless of who they are, no matter how much they piss you off. You have to give them margin to change, because you would want the same. Redemption is a story and it’s rolling, but we’re going to miss it if we don’t wake up. That means pursuing love when it’s difficult and grace when you don’t want to in a culture that tells you to do whatever feels right for you. Unfortunately, that doesn’t really work because whatever feels right for you is often easy, and it means to hate people and stay bitter.

We can’t do anything about the way we grew up, but we can do something for the way the ones after us get to grow up. We are not our ancestors. We don’t have to be our history books. We don’t have to lick our wounds. We are not our Facebook statuses. We are all made of the same stuff, flesh and bone; please recognize that.

Can we work together? I’m so tired of not working together. I’m so tired of division.

The color of my skin does not erase the fact that we are called to forgive each other, just as much as the color of my words don’t erase the oppression you encounter because of your skin color.

We will never have perfect stability.

But stability is stone cold cement, founded by old ideas, like the walls of Jericho.

Like the walls of Trump’s hate.

We are built by truth, love, grace, courage. And we move.

The sound of your voices are bleeding through. Can you hear them?

 P.S. This article doesn’t give you an excuse to suddenly start bashing millennial “snowflakes” and call them lazy, entitled, and stupid. It also doesn’t give you an excuse to bash all white people, all people of color, or the church. If you are, you’ve done a tremendous job in missing the point. And please don’t read one paragraph of something and say you understand all of it.

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