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kelyon · 3 months

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Courtship 5: Outfit

Lacey figures out what she's going to wear on her date

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The pile of clothes covered Lacey’s twin bed. She’d spent the better part of an hour matching blouses with slacks with sweaters in a vain attempt to find the magic combination that would make her look less like the president of the student council and more like Mr. Gold’s perfect slut.

Nothing worked. So far, her best options were to wear her summer sundress in the middle of winter with no coat, or to take a pair of scissors to the long black skirt she had worn to her mother’s funeral. That last one might have been an option, if she had a sewing machine like Mara. But she didn’t, and showing up at Mr. Gold’s house wearing unhemmed rags was probably as bad an idea as showing up wearing pants. If she had a sleeveless top, she might consider wearing the skirt as it was. She could try to go for a sort of hippy, Bohemian look. But the most revealing blouse Lacey French owned had puffed-up sleeves, like a fucking five-year-old.

Groaning, she fell backwards onto the pile. Some of this stuff she had got in middle school. The fact that they still fit her had been an advantage every time she’d decided to spend her limited funds on books instead of clothes, but it also meant that Lacey had never aged up her personal style. She didn’t have anything that made her look or feel like an adult.

The purple-blue dress shimmered in her dirty clothes hamper. She had jumped the gun by wearing her only sexy outfit on her first date with Mr. Gold. She had set the bar too high. Now he would have expectations of how Miss French liked to dress. More than that, Mr. Gold in his suits had standards. If she met him looking like a mess, he’d drive off and leave her on the curb.

At least he didn’t seem to mind if she left him looking like a mess. He hadn’t minded bringing her home with a wrinkled skirt and no stockings or underwear. She wanted that to happen again, but before it could, Lacey had to look presentable. None of her clothes were cutting it. She had to take action.

She pulled a white button-up off the pile and rubbed a smear of foundation over her hickey. Then she went downstairs into the shop. Dad was sitting by the cash register, looking through a faded design book.

Mom had known all the designs for bouquets and arrangements by heart, but Dad always needed to double check with the book.

“Anything happen today?” Lacey asked.

He shook his head, didn’t look up.

“We should call up everyone who ordered from us last year and remind them that V-day is in less than three weeks.”

“They know,” he grumbled. “This time of year, no one has any money. The men at Fish King will get paid on Friday, that’s when the orders will start. But they won’t really pick up until the next payday, the eleventh.”

He was right. It happened like that every year. All the orders came in at the very last minute. Valentine’s Day weekend was two solid days of constant work getting everything put together.

And it was too far away to do Lacey any good.

“So I’m guessing this is not a good time to discuss the subject of me ever getting paid for the hours I put in?”

Her father looked at her like she had just told an offensive joke that wasn’t even funny. Had his eyes always been so bloodshot? Had he always looked like a sad cartoon dog?

“You keep your tips.” He looked down at the book again. “You have money when the store has money, when we’re not racking up daily fees from that bastard Gold.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Lacey rubbed her hands on her jeans. “Just thought I’d ask.”

Of course Dad didn’t have any money to give her. That was their whole problem. Game of Thorns was a family business, the only income any of them had. For as long as she’d worked in the store, her pay had come in the form of food and shelter. Her reward for helping keep the place open was that it stayed open. It might not have been unreasonable to ask for more, but she knew it was unattainable.

“Ask again when Valentine’s is over,” Dad said. “We get out of this hole… I’ll try to make something work.”

She’d heard that before. Her father always had all kinds of plans and dreams for when things got better. Not that things ever did get better. Not that they ever would. The only thing worse than knowing that fact would be admitting it. So Lacey gave her father a tight smile and pretended she believed him, just like she always did.

****

She made her way over to Marine Automotive, where her Uncle Manny was locking the front doors from the outside. When he saw her loitering, he beamed.

“Hey! There’s my favorite niece!”

Uncle Manny looked like Dad if nothing bad had ever happened to him. He had the same height and stocky build. He had the same curly hair that was also the bane of Lacey’s existence. But where Moe French was loud when he was angry, Manny French was loud when he was happy--and he was always loud. He wrapped Lacey up in a bear hug.

“How you doing, Ace? What brings you by?”

She cut to the chase. “Are you going to the Rabbit Hole tonight?”

Her uncle wasn’t a huge drinker, but he was the only person Lacey knew who regularly went to Storybrooke's only bar.

“I wasn’t planning on it. They’re aren’t any games tonight. But I take it you need an escort?”

Lacey raised her shoulders in a half-apology. “They won’t let me in without a parent-slash-guardian.”

“Ah, to be young again!” Uncle Manny wrapped one arm around her. “You’ll miss it one of these days, I promise you. But yeah, we can have a night on the town. I’ll even buy you a Shirley Temple.”

“Oh come on,” she gave him a playful nudge. “I am an adult, even if I can’t drink. I should at least get a Coke and Coke.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

****

The Rabbit Hole was dead. Between the lack of sports on TV and the town-wide lack of money until payday, most people were staying home. The only ones here were people like Leroy Miner, people who had nowhere else to go. Like the old song said, sharing a drink they called loneliness was better than drinking alone.

Undeterred, Lacey took her uncle-approved non-alcoholic beverage over to the pool table by the fireplace. She took off her hoodie and unbuttoned her blouse a little. This whole thing was a risky move, but it was the best plan she had. Hustling pool paid off more often than it didn’t.

Eyeing the room, she bent over the pool table, just far enough to get a little attention. She lined up a shot and missed on purpose.

“Oh crap!” she said too loudly. “Must not be my night.”

After ten minutes of staged failure, Lacey let herself land a shot. She squealed when the ball went into the pocket. The sound made people’s heads turn, and she treated them all to a too-wide, too-apologetic smile.

Only one person smiled back. Keith Sherwood turned on his bar stool to watch her. Lacey tried to remember her other encounters with Keith. Did he usually stare more at her ass or her boobs? For safety’s sake, she did both. She leaned far enough over the table that Keith could look down her cleavage, then moved around to the other side for the next shot. She stuck her ass in the air, practically humping the felt to keep his attention.

“Boys always make it look so easy,” she pouted after another ball just barely missed the pocket.

When Keith began to walk over to her, she turned her back to him. That way she could pretend to be surprised by his arrival. With careful concentration, Lacey managed to get a ball a full foot away from what anyone watching would have assumed was her target. It was actually harder to be bad on purpose, but it paid off.

“You having fun, sweet thing?” Keith leaned against the pool table, beer in hand, right in front of her.

Lacey giggled. “It’d be more fun if I had someone to play with.”

Keith chuckled. A lock of his hair fell down into his eyes. “I bet it would be. You had a lot of fun playing with me last time, didn’t you?”

How much money had she taken from Keith the last time she had tried this? Sometimes she got cocky and her marks got mad about being taken. Lacey couldn’t remember if she had ever crowed about fleecing Keith. Unfortunately, he probably did.

She fluttered her eyelashes. “It was a lot of fun,” she cooed. “I think I got lucky that night.”

“I bet you’re gonna get lucky again.” He was standing too close to her. “I bet your luck will get better and better all night, especially when we start playing double or nothing.”

Crap. She had definitely rubbed Keith’s face in it last time. Now he was wise to her. That was the problem with a small town. Oh well, at least she’d tried.

“So is that a bet?” she said in her real voice. “Do you wanna put money down on whether or not I’m actually hustling you? Cuz I’ll take you up on that one.”

Keith shook his head. He put his hand down on top of hers on the edge of the pool table. He was still smiling.

“You know there’s another game we can play together. It’s a lot more fun than pool.”

Ugh.

Lacey backed away. “It might be fun for you, but I don’t think I’d get much out of it.”

He followed her. “How do you know? Maybe it’d be more fun if you hustled me. That’d make things interesting, wouldn’t it? Twenty bucks says I can make you see heaven.”

She snorted. “Did you just say you’ll pay to screw me?”

Keith kept smiling. “You were gonna screw me all over this table and take my money anyway. I like my version better.”

Lacey’s blood suddenly went cold. This wasn’t funny anymore. It wasn’t a game. This asshole would seriously give her money if she went home with him. It would be so easy to go along with it. Twenty dollars for two orgasms--his would be real, hers would be fake.

Would that be enough to buy a new skirt? Was she seriously fucking considering this?

She clenched her jaw.

“I’m not a fucking hooker, Keith.”

He raised his arms in a pacifying gesture. “No harm, no foul,” he said. “I just don’t see how it’s any different from taking a girl to dinner first. Man pays for sex either way.”

Turning away, she slid her pool cue back on the rack.

“You’re a pig.”

“Go ahead, darlin’, keep talking dirty. See what happens.”

Lacey kept her head held high as she went back to the bar where her uncle was nursing a beer.

“I need to get out of here,” she told him.

“Sounds good.” Uncle Manny took out his wallet and tossed a few crumpled fives onto the bar. “I’ll walk you home.”

****

Outside, Lacey pulled her arms out of the sleeves of her hoodie and hugged her arms over her chest. This stupid button down was too frumpy to make her sexy and too thin to keep her warm.

“Pool wasn’t any good for you tonight?” Uncle Manny asked casually.

“No,” she admitted. “Fricking Keith threw me off my game.”

“What do you need money for anyway? That dad of yours not feeding you?”

“I need money cuz I don’t have any.” Lacey kicked at a chunk of dirty snow. “Nobody does.”

“I’ve got a little, for the smartest kid in Storybrooke.” He stopped walking and turned to face her. “You wanna tell me what it’s for?”

Lacey bit the inside of her mouth. She didn’t want to lie to her uncle, but she sure as hell didn’t want to tell him the truth. She walked in silence for a minute. He stayed with her. Finally, she said it.

“I wanna get some new clothes.”

“Like a real coat?”

She shrugged. “I mean, maybe. I could. If I had enough.”

“And this is a sudden yearning that couldn’t wait?”

She shrugged again. There was nothing like being around a parent-slash-guardian to make her feel like a complete child.

“Ace, what’s going on?”

She took a breath. “I… don’t want to tell you.”

He put his hand on her shoulder. “Lacey French, if you’re doing things you don’t want people to know about, then you shouldn’t do them.”

“It’s nothing bad!” Lacey pushed him away. “It’s just… personal.”

“That’s not reassuring,” he said. “What’s going on? What do you need money for?”

“I told you, to buy clothes!”

“Clothes for what? You can tell me, Lacey. I’ll help you out if you’re honest.”

“I just want to look nice on a date!” She shrieked the words out into the night. They hung in the air with the cloud of her breath.

Uncle Manny looked at her, confused and sympathetic at the same time. Eventually, he broke out into a broad smile.

“But that’s great, honey! You should go on dates. Why-- why didn’t you say so to begin with?”

She pulled her hands up through the neck hole of her hoodie to rub her face.

“I’m… It’s because of who I’m going out with.”

Uncle Manny scoffed and put his arm around her as they walked. “You shouldn’t be ashamed of dating someone. Unless it’s someone you should be ashamed of, but then you just don’t date them. It’s not a girl, is it?”

Lacey shook her head, to which Uncle Manny nodded.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that, not in this modern world. You know I’m with you no matter what.”

She nodded.

“And of course, no boy is ever going to be good enough for you. But as long as he’s not married, or some kind of asshole like that bastard Gold, there’s no reason to sneak around like--Lacey?”

She had stopped in her tracks. She looked up at her uncle and chewed on her lower lip.

Realization dawned. Uncle Manny let out a long breath.

“Lace.” His voice was rough. “Tell me you’re dating a married man.”

Lips pressed together, she shook her head. “Don’t tell anyone.”

Standing in place, Uncle Manny stomped his work boots onto the sidewalk. The intent seemed to be half to warm his feet and half to cool his head.

“Gold,” he whispered. He pointed in the direction of Mr. Gold’s pawn shop. “That Gold? The guy that has every working person in Storybrooke by balls? The guy who’s practically the reason all of us are living paycheck to paycheck? You’re going on dates with him?”

She shrugged. “It’s only been one date so far, but he asked me to come to his house on Friday.”

“And you said yes? What, does he have something on you? Is that why you need money?”

“No!” Lacey insisted. “I was telling the truth! I just need clothes that are good enough for him.”

“‘Good enough for him?’ He’s not good enough for you, Lacey! That man is a scourge. He’s a parasite. He’s--he’s old enough to be your father!”

“If he was my father, I wouldn’t be in this situation. I’d actually have a good life.”

“You have a good life.” Uncle Manny wasn’t angry anymore. Or if he was, his anger had become still and stern. “Your parents worked every day to give you a good life.”

“And where did it get them?” Lacey snapped. “Where did it get me? Yes, we work hard, but our only reward is getting to work even harder. And I’m so tired.” Her face was hot. God, she was sniffling. “Being with Mr. Gold feels like a break, and that’s all I want anymore. Just a freaking break.”

Uncle Manny’s arms were around her. He pulled her against his coveralls that smelled like motor oil and sweat. He squeezed her tight and patted her back as she tried to stop crying.

“Sorry,” she sniffed when they broke apart.

“Hey,” he tilted her chin up and looked her in the eye. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

Despite her tears, Lacey laughed. It was an old joke for them. She knew what her next line had to be: “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

He hugged her again, kissed the top of her head. They didn’t talk until they were in front of Game of Thorns.

“I’d stay for dinner, but I’ve had Moe’s cooking before.”

She snorted at another joke she’d heard a thousand times, then she turned serious. “Um. You’re not going to tell anybody, are you?”

“About your…” he searched for the words, then shrugged, “love life?”

“Yeah. You know my dad will blow a gasket if he finds out I’m even talking to Mr. Gold, let alone--”

“Yeah, I know.” Uncle Manny cut her off. Clearly, he didn’t want to hear what she was doing with Mr. Gold.

“So, please don’t tell him? Promise?”

Her uncle sucked his teeth and slowly shook his head in silence. It took a long minute before he looked at her again.

“Okay,” he said. “You’re an adult. You know your own mind, you can make your own decisions. It’s just--be smart, okay? You are an adult, but you’re also our little girl. Me, your dad, your mom, rest her soul--we don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“I promise I won’t get hurt, if you promise not to blab my business all over town.”

“Aright,” he sighed. He pulled her in for a tight hug. “I promise. Just--please, take care of yourself.”

She squeezed her uncle, then headed for the door. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

****

Lacey spent the entire working day on Thursday psychically willing the phone to ring with orders, preferably orders that had to be filled as soon as possible. Doing a rush job would give them an excuse to charge extra. She wouldn’t wish a funeral on anyone, but wouldn’t this be a great weekend for an impromptu wedding? So many of Lacey’s problems would be solved if just one panicked bride would come in and beg them to fill Dodci’s Dance Hall with centerpieces and garlands, not to mention all the bouquets and boutonnieres and flowers for the church too. Or maybe someone important could get sick and everyone in Storybrooke would send flowers to the hospital. Wasn’t there anyone in Storybrooke who was celebrating anything? Did people not have birthdays in late January? There were so many reasons people could need flowers. But this wasn’t a day when people did.

Hustling at the Rabbit Hole wasn’t an option anymore. If this were any other occasion, she would borrow a skirt from Mara or Janine, but that didn’t seem like a possibility. They wouldn’t take the news of her going on a date with Mr. Gold any better than Uncle Manny had. Mara’s store, where she also lived, was rented from Mr. Gold, and Janine had taken out a loan to pay for her beautician supplies. Both of them--really everyone in Storybrooke--saw him as the enemy. As far as they cared to think about it, he was the reason they were poor. If Lacey told her friends how much she wanted to be around him, they would think she was crazy, or morally degenerate.

Maybe she was.

Or maybe they were wrong. Had her friends ever eaten at Bella Notte? Had they ever worn a dress that made them feel like sex on two legs? Had they ever watched a hapless waiter get strong-armed into breaking a stupid law for them? Had they ever been inside Mr. Gold’s house? Had they ever taken clothes off just because a man had asked them to? Had they ever known the thrill of promising to do whatever another person told them to do? Had they ever known the peace of being an object, of kneeling silently at someone’s feet?

Could they even understand why that was something anyone would want? Let alone that it was something Lacey craved in a place deeper than her bones? Some dark, hidden part of her soul wanted Mr. Gold, like she had never wanted anything else.

And not having enough money to buy a stupid fucking skirt might keep her away from him forever. She could not abide that thought.

When Friday was another dud--a few orders came in, but they wouldn’t pay until delivery--Lacey knew that she was out of options. Since Mr. Gold would be picking her up tonight at eight, she was also out of time. So she did what everyone in Storybrooke did when they had nowhere else to go.

She went to the pawn shop.

****

Lacey had always been intrigued by the phrasing of Mr. Gold’s store. The sign said Mr. Gold Pawnbroker and Antiquities Dealer. Most stores advertised the goods sold inside, but Mr. Gold advertised himself. This was who he was, this was what he did. No one came to this store because they needed things, they came because they needed what only he could offer them. Usually, they needed it enough to pay whatever price he set.

When it came down to it, Lacey really wasn’t that different from any other desperate soul who came to Mr. Gold. The only difference was what she wanted.

It was three in the afternoon. Not technically her lunch break, but it wasn’t like she was getting paid to stick around the flower shop. Lacey changed into some gray dress pants and covered her work shirt with her least-frumpy cardigan. She stuffed her purse full of old toys and oddities that might--cumulatively, optimistically--be worth about ten dollars. She yelled at Dad that she was going out for a minute and then walked over to Mr. Gold’s.

The bell rang over her head when she walked through the front door. Mr. Gold was behind the counter, writing something in a ledger. He looked up at the sound and gave the slightest grin when he saw that it was her.

“Miss French,” he said, with just a touch of warmth. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Lacey bit her lip, but forced herself to stay cool. She looked around at the shelves and display cases, slowly making her way forward. Another time, she would have marveled at the art and jewelry and historic do-dads, but now she slunk past them.

“I…” she dragged out the word, unsure of what she was saying as she said it, “was wondering… if you have any clothes for sale.”

Mr. Gold raised his eyebrows. “Clothes?”

“Yeah.” She stopped in front of a spinning rack of necklaces. She couldn’t look at him. “You know, like vintage stuff?”

He walked over to her, behind the display case. “I’ve got some historic naval uniforms, but nothing that would suit you.”

He was in front of her now, so they were separated by nothing but two feet of glass and gadgets. She didn’t raise her head. Some of these necklaces were really pretty. One gold chain with a mother-of-pearl pendant spoke to her for some reason.

“What do you need, Miss French?”

His voice was gentle, coaxing. He understood how much she hated what she was doing. He probably talked to a lot of people who were feeling what she was feeling. At least he didn’t seem to be enjoying her discomfort.

Lacey took a breath, and looked up at him.

“I need a skirt,” she admitted. “I don’t have anything to wear on our date tonight.”

He blinked. Then his face grew infinitesimally softer.

“I see,” he said.

“I brought some stuff.” She set her purse on the counter, began to pull out the junk she’d brought from home. “I thought I might--”

“Please,” he held up a hand. “You don’t need to do that. I’m more than happy to assist you, Miss French.” He turned away from her, went back over to his antique cash register.

“I can pay you back…”

“Oh you will,” he grinned. He took a bill out of the cash register and set it on the counter. Lacey came closer and saw that it was a fifty. “Will this be enough?”

She fought the urge to snatch the money and run all the way to Modern Fashions. It was the same feeling she’d had when he’d given her the money to tip that stupid waiter. The thrill, the rush, of having cash and knowing she could do anything with it. Fifty dollars was more than she had spent on clothes in the past year. Fifty dollars could cover the bill at Granny’s for her whole family--or at least for Janine and Mara to have real lunches.

Fifty dollars was more than twice what Keith had offered her to have sex with him.

Lacey pulled her hands back. She dug her fingernails into her palms.

“I… I shouldn’t accept this,” she said.

“Why not?” Mr. Gold asked, unperturbed. “Are you worried I’ll take advantage of you? Wouldn’t you say that ship has sailed, Miss French?”

She looked down at the dirt-stained sneakers she wore for work. In a resigned whisper, she told Mr. Gold the same thing she said to Keith at the Rabbit Hole.

“I’m not a hooker.”

“Of course not.” Mr. Gold’s voice was smooth and confident. He came out from behind the counter to stand in front of her. Slowly, he raised his hand to cup her cheek, subtly forcing her to look at him. “You’re a woman who knows what she wants and who will do whatever she needs to do to make it happen.”

Lacey’s breath shook. Her eyes were hot and she was trembling.

“What do you want?” he asked her. He really was being very patient.

“I want to go on another date with you, Mr. Gold.”

“And what do you need to do in order to make that happen?”

“I need--” she stopped. I need a skirt wasn’t the right answer. Mr. Gold had asked her what she needed to do. “I need to get some money, Mr. Gold.”

“Ask me for it.” He gave the order like it was a caress. “Ask me for the money and I’ll give it to you, Miss French.”

This wasn’t like with Keith. This wasn’t being so desperate for money that she’d have sex with a stranger. This was being so desperate for sex that she’d take money to make sure she’d get it. She’d let Mr. Gold pay her like a whore just to make sure he kept treating her like a slut.

She swallowed. She had to swallow a few times before she was brave enough to speak.

“Please, Mr. Gold, will you give me fifty dollars so I can have something suitable to wear for our date tonight?”

“I would be happy too, Miss French.” He lowered his hand from her cheek and picked the bill up off of the counter. Gently, he took her hand by the wrist, placed the fifty on her palm, and closed her fingers over it.

He grinned at her.

“Buy yourself something pretty.”

Lacey clenched her jaw. Now he was enjoying this. She bit back words that would make him take the money back. Instead, she said what she knew he wanted her to say.

“Thank you, Mr. Gold.”

“You’re quite welcome, Miss French.”

He turned around then, went back behind the counter. Lacey understood she was dismissed. Facing the door, she took a breath and checked to make sure none of her tears had spilled out onto her cheeks.

Before she opened the door, Mr. Gold called over to her.

“Miss French,” he said. “If you happen to buy a red skirt and wear nothing underneath it, I will eat your cunt for dessert tonight.”

Lacey’s eyes went wide. Her shock was less for what Mr. Gold had said and more for his nonchalant tone. He was talking about sex in the same way he would talk about running errands.

“Do you understand me, Miss French?”

What about it did he think she didn’t understand? Then Lacey realized she hadn’t answered him. Mr. Gold expected an answer when he spoke to people.

“Yes, Mr. Gold,” she said. Shock had made her voice a little breathy. “Thank you for telling me, Mr. Gold.”

He gave her a nod.

Dazed and excited, Lacey left his shop and made her way down the street to Modern Fashions. She had a red skirt to buy.

#courtship #rumbelle #golden lace #rumbelle fic #golden lace fic

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justmybookthots · 3 months

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The Bear and the Nightingale

One good thing (among others) this book had going for it? The MMC doesn't really show himself in great detail until the last third of the book. If he'd shown himself so much earlier, I'd have lost interest fast. He was pretty underwhelming as a winter king/demon, and I'd have felt demotivated to continue. But because he showed up late, the main plot of the story got to shine, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

I was really sceptical about this book at first. Everyone on Goodreads said it was slow-moving and very dense and sometimes it felt like nothing was happening at all in the first half, and even though that was partly true, I kept turning the pages. The slow, subtle plot beats had some kind of grip on me, and even now I can't tell you exactly why they did.

This book plays on tropes I'm not the biggest fan of: the heroine embracing more traditionally masculine traits and being lauded as better than the other women in the story because of that. But it's a tricky situation because if she was submissive like the other women, I'd have felt unsatisfied too. I don't know what the right move is.

Nonetheless, I liked Vasya a lot. She was pretty likeable for the most part, especially as a child. Sometimes I just wanted to give her the biggest, tightest hug for the stuff she was going through. I hated Anna, her stepmother, who I'd sympathised with at first but grew to loathe. It was unsatisfactory how Anna just died in the end without realising how wrong she'd been about Vasya. I wanted her to wallow in her awful decisions but that never happened. She just died after getting attacked by the Bear and there was no reflection on her part.

(Also, I saw a reviewer feeling sorry for the priest and I'm like, ARE YOU SERIOUS. Guy was the second worst person after Anna. Or maybe the first. I don't know. They take turns to vie for the foulest existence in the book.)

Overall, a pretty solid read, even if not the most memorable. There's some stuff that gets glossed over (marital rape, blatant misogyny) but I guess it's an evocation of its time period and makes sense. I don't think I'll be picking up the next book because it concludes quite nicely and the winter king was meh, but we'll see.

- 5 February 2024

I Hope This Doesn't Find You

I'm really, really sad.

This book was one of my most anticipated books this year because This Time It's Real was my five-star favourite last year, but this just… did not make me feel the same way.

I'm torn about my feelings in two parts. One part believes that if I had read this some time last year, I'd have enjoyed it more. I'd been desperately craving some story with an academic-rivals/hate-to-love relationship. I'd felt Divine Rivals lacked the anger and heat I was looking for but now? This had all the anger and tension I had craved but I just found it tiresome after a while.

The other part of me just didn't get the swoon factor I was looking for in Julius that I got from Henry and Caz. I guess in romances I've always liked proactive heroes who were sweet on the heroine later into the story (not right away, but preferably through a slow burn)—and I don't mean by just doing things for them. Yeah, Julius did some things like running the race for Sadie and cleaning up some of the mess in her house… but for some reason, those actions didn't really move me.

Maybe it's because Julius just isn't proactive about his feelings the way Sadie is. He does those nice things for Sadie—but you know he's still holding back, that he hasn't come to term with how he feels. In the end, all his kind acts do is make Sadie more emotionally beholden to him, and I don't like that.

Sadie is the one who realises she likes him, who decides she's going to have the maturity to try to confess to him, but he fucks it up anyway. He assumes she's nice to him because she pities him, and he makes it about himself, and plays a victim in this situation. All this, when Sadie was the one who stood up for him in front of his brother, who took the courage to take the first step outside their decade-long feud by being nice to him and trying to confess, and he makes it about himself. And he says horrible things about her in retaliation.

There's one part that really got to me: when Sadie says she's been thinking the best of him, and he's been thinking the worst of her. That line hit me REALLY hard, and made me disgusted.

And how does it get resolved? By him overhearing her confession of her feelings towards him. Only when he has concrete proof that she likes him back that he allows himself to be proactive. He doesn't take a risk, doesn't let himself take the first step into the unknown like Sadie did. Never once does he let himself believe the best in her. He only believes that when he gets proof.

This book left a horrible taste in my mouth, and I'm gonna admit I'm quite upset. I don't know how This Time It's Real was 5 stars and this book is like… 2. I was also disappointed by Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands and I wonder if I'm just gonna be met with disappointment after disappointment with all the releases I'm anticipating this year.

The last one that I was really looking forward to is The Prisoner's Throne, so I shall see. I'm no longer feeling as pleasant as I did about it before this book.

- 6 February 2024

#book review #ann liang #i hope this doesnt find you #romance #the bear and the Nightingale #katherine arden #this time it's real

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eyelinerda3euro · 3 years

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The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

In the temperate and tropical regions where it appears that hominids evolved into human beings, the principal food of the species was vegetable. Sixty-five to eighty percent of what human beings ate in those regions in Paleolithic, Neolithic, and prehistoric times was gathered; only in the extreme Arctic was meat the staple food. The mammoth hunters spectacularly occupy the cave wall and the mind, but what we actually did to stay alive and fat was gather seeds, roots, sprouts, shoots, leaves, nuts, berries, fruits, and grains, adding bugs and mollusks and netting or snaring birds, fish, rats, rabbits, and other tuskless small fry to up the protein. And we didn’t even work hard at it — much less hard than peasants slaving in somebody else’s field after agriculture was invented, much less hard than paid workers since civilization was invented. The average prehistoric person could make a nice living in about a fifteen-hour work week.

Fifteen hours a week for subsistence leaves a lot of time for other things. So much time that maybe the restless ones who didn’t have a baby around to enliven their life, or skill in making or cooking or singing, or very interesting thoughts to think, decided to slope off and hunt mammoths. The skillful hunters would come staggering back with a load of meat, a lot of ivory, and a story. It wasn’t the meat that made the difference. It was the story.

It is hard to tell a really gripping tale of how I wrestled a wild-oat seed from its husk, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then I scratched my gnat bites, and Ool said something funny, and we went to the creek and got a drink and watched newts for a while, and then I found another patch of oats.... No, it does not compare, it cannot compete with how I thrust my spear deep into the titanic hairy flank while Oob, impaled on one huge sweeping tusk, writhed screaming, and blood sprouted everywhere in crimson torrents, and Boob was crushed to jelly when the mammoth fell on him as I shot my unerring arrow straight through eye to brain.

That story not only has Action, it has a Hero. Heroes are powerful. Before you know it, the men and women in the wild-oat patch and their kids and the skills of makers and the thoughts of the thoughtful and the songs of the singers are all part of it, have all been pressed into service in the tale of the Hero. But it isn’t their story. It’s his.

When she was planning the book that ended up as Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf wrote a heading in her notebook, “Glossary”; she had thought of reinventing English according to her new plan, in order to tell a different story. One of the entries in this glossary is heroism, defined as “botulism.” And hero, in Woolf’s dictionary, is “bottle.” The hero as bottle, a stringent reevaluation. I now propose the bottle as hero.

Not just the bottle of gin or wine, but bottle in its older sense of container in general, a thing that holds something else.

If you haven’t got something to put it in, food will escape you — even something as uncombative and unresourceful as an oat. You put as many as you can into your stomach while they are handy, that being the primary container; but what about tomorrow morning when you wake up and it’s cold and raining and wouldn’t it be good to have just a few handfuls of oats to chew on and give little Oom to make her shut up, but how do you get more than one stomachful and one handful home? So you get up and go to the damned soggy oat patch in the rain, and wouldn’t it be a good thing if you had something to put Baby Oo Oo in so that you could pick the oats with both hands? A leaf a gourd shell a net a bag a sling a sack a bottle a pot a box a container. A holder. A recipient.

The first cultural device was probably a recipient.... Many theorizers feel that the earliest cultural inventions must have been a container to hold gathered products and some kind of sling or net carrier.

So says Elizabeth Fisher in Women’s Creation (McGraw-Hill, 1975). But no, this cannot be. Where is that wonderful, big, long, hard thing, a bone, I believe, that the Ape Man first bashed somebody in the movie and then, grunting with ecstasy at having achieved the first proper murder, flung up into the sky, and whirling there it became a space ship thrusting its way into the cosmos to fertilize it and produce at the end of the movie a lovely fetus, a boy of course, drifting around the Milky Way without (oddly enough) any womb, any matrix at all? I don’t know. I don’t even care. I’m not telling that story. We’ve heard it, we’ve all heard about all the sticks and spears and swords, the things to bash and poke and hit with, the long, hard things, but we have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained. That is a new story. That is news.

And yet old. Before — once you think about it, surely long before — the weapon, a late, luxurious, superfluous tool; long before the useful knife and ax; right along with the indispensable whacker, grinder, and digger — for what’s the use of digging up a lot of potatoes if you have nothing to lug the ones you can’t eat home in — with or before the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home. It makes sense to me. I am an adherent of what Fisher calls the Carrier Bag Theory of human evolution.

This theory not only explains large areas of theoretical obscurity and avoids large areas of theoretical nonsense (inhabited largely by tigers, foxes, and other highly territorial mammals); it also grounds me, personally, in human culture in a way I never felt grounded before. So long as culture was explained as originating from and elaborating upon the use of long, hard objects for sticking, bashing, and killing, I never thought that I had, or wanted, any particular share in it. (“What Freud mistook for her lack of civilization is woman’s lack of loyalty to civilization,” Lillian Smith observed.) The society, the civilization they were talking about, these theoreticians, was evidently theirs; they owned it, they liked it; they were human, fully human, bashing, sticking, thrusting, killing. Wanting to be human too, I sought for evidence that I was; but if that’s what it took, to make a weapon and kill with it, then evidently I was either extremely defective as a human being, or not human at all.

That’s right, they said. What you are is a woman. Possibly not human at all, certainly defective. Now be quiet while we go on telling the Story of the Ascent of Man the Hero.

Go on, say I, wandering off towards the wild oats, with Oo Oo in the sling and little Oom carrying the basket. You just go on telling how the mammoth fell on Boob and how Cain fell on Abel and how the bomb fell on Nagasaki and how the burning jelly fell on the villagers and how the missiles will fall on the Evil Empire, and all the other steps in the Ascent of Man.

If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it’s useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then next day you probably do much the same again — if to do that is human, if that’s what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time.

Not, let it be said at once, an unaggressive or uncombative human being. I am an aging, angry woman laying mightily about me with my handbag, fighting hoodlums off. However I don’t, nor does anybody else, consider myself heroic for doing so. It’s just one of those damned things you have to do in order to be able to go on gathering wild oats and telling stories.

It is the story that makes the difference. It is the story that hid my humanity from me, the story the mammoth hunters told about bashing, thrusting, raping, killing, about the Hero. The wonderful, poisonous story of Botulism. The killer story.

It sometimes seems that the story is approaching its end. Lest there be no more telling of stories at all, some of us out here in the wild oats, amid the alien corn, think we’d better start telling another one, which maybe people can go on with when the old one’s finished. Maybe. The trouble is, we’ve all let ourselves become part of the killer story, and so we may get finished along with it. Hence it is with a certain feeling of urgency that I seek the nature, subject, words of the other story, the untold one, the life story.

It’s unfamiliar, it doesn’t come easily, thoughtlessly, to the lips as the killer story does; but still, “untold” was an exaggeration. People have been telling the life story for ages, in all sorts of words and ways. Myths of creation and transformation, trickster stories, folktales, jokes, novels....

The novel is a fundamentally unheroic kind of story. Of course the Hero has frequently taken it over, that being his imperial nature and uncontrollable impulse, to take everything over and run it while making stern decrees and laws to control his uncontrollable impulse to kill it. So the Hero has decreed through his mouthpieces the Lawgivers, first, that the proper shape of the narrative is that of the arrow or spear, starting here and going straight there and THOK! hitting its mark (which drops dead); second, that the central concern of narrative, including the novel, is conflict; and third, that the story isn’t any good if he isn’t in it.

I differ with all of this. I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.

One relationship among elements in the novel may well be that of conflict, but the reduction of narrative to conflict is absurd. (I have read a how-to-write manual that said, “A story should be seen as a battle,” and went on about strategies, attacks, victory, etc.) Conflict, competition, stress, struggle, etc., within the narrative conceived as carrier bag/belly/box/house/medicine bundle, may be seen as necessary elements of a whole which itself cannot be characterized either as conflict or as harmony, since its purpose is neither resolution nor stasis but continuing process.

Finally, it’s clear that the Hero does not look well in this bag. He needs a stage or a pedestal or a pinnacle. You put him in a bag and he looks like a rabbit, like a potato.

That is why I like novels: instead of heroes they have people in them.

So, when I came to write science-fiction novels, I came lugging this great heavy sack of stuff, my carrier bag full of wimps and klutzes, and tiny grains of things smaller than a mustard seed, and intricately woven nets which when laboriously unknotted are seen to contain one blue pebble, an imperturbably functioning chronometer telling the time on another world, and a mouse’s skull; full of beginnings without ends, of initiations, of losses, of transformations and translations, and far more tricks than conflicts, far fewer triumphs than snares and delusions; full of space ships that get stuck, missions that fail, and people who don’t understand. I said it was hard to make a gripping tale of how we wrested the wild oats from their husks, I didn’t say it was impossible. Who ever said writing a novel was easy?

If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic. “Technology,” or “modern science” (using the words as they are usually used, in an unexamined shorthand standing for the “hard” sciences and high technology founded upon continuous economic growth), is a heroic undertaking, Herculean, Promethean, conceived as triumph, hence ultimately as tragedy. The fiction embodying this myth will be, and has been, triumphant (Man conquers earth, space, aliens, death, the future, etc.) and tragic (apocalypse, holocaust, then or now).

If, however, one avoids the linear, progressive, Time’s-(killing)-arrow mode of the Techno-Heroic, and redefines technology and science as primarily cultural carrier bag rather than weapon of domination, one pleasant side effect is that science fiction can be seen as a far less rigid, narrow field, not necessarily Promethean or apocalyptic at all, and in fact less a mythological genre than a realistic one.

It is a strange realism, but it is a strange reality.

Science fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast stack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story. In it, as in all fiction, there is room enough to keep even Man where he belongs, in his place in the scheme of things; there is time enough to gather plenty of wild oats and sow them too, and sing to little Oom, and listen to Ool’s joke, and watch newts, and still the story isn’t over. Still there are seeds to be gathered, and room in the bag of stars. by Ursula K. Le Guin

#ursula k leguin

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daleisgreat · 3 years

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Speed

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Today’s entry will mark the first official 4K home video release I am writing about. I already own a few other 4K UHDs, and a couple of months ago, I watched my first 4K video at home with 2001’s The Fast and the Furious. However, I already covered that movie’s BluRay release here several years ago, so I will not be dedicating another entry for it, other than to say that the 4K upgrade pops and makes it look like a new release. Today’s entry is for 1994’s Speed (trailer). Before diving into this movie, I noticed one of the tracks from this film’s score repeatedly used throughout sounds awfully like one of the main themes I primarily associated with the Metal Gear Solid franchise. I have no idea if this was pointed out before, and I just overlooked it all these years, or maybe I am grasping at straws. Click or press here to take a listen and decide for yourself. 1994 was a hell of a year for Hollywood movies primarily transpiring from a highway with The Chase, Speed, and the OJ Simpson Bronco chase….oh wait (although I highly recommend the ESPN 30 for 30 on it, simply titled: June 17th 1994). The majority of Speed has a straightforward premise: serial bomber and local madman Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper) planted a bomb on a bus rigged to explode once the bus drops below 55 miles per hour. Police officer Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) is alerted to this by the bomber himself to exact revenge on Traven after successfully rescuing hostages from an elevator Payne armed at the beginning of the film.

From there, for the middle hour of this nearly two-hour film, the action almost entirely takes place on the bus. Traven makes a grand entrance onto the bus by commandeering a Jaguar and having its owner (Glenn Plummer) take the wheel so Traven could heroically leap onto the bus and save the day. It would not be that easy of a rescue mission as Payne has eyes on the bus, and Traven has to play by his rules and get him his $3 million ransom to disarm the bus. Without question, the middle hour on the bus is the best part of the film. The opening half-hour is an excellent appetizer with the elevator hostage crisis that Traven and his partner, Harry (Jeff Daniels), successfully foil. However, once the action shifts to the bus is when Speed takes off. Shortly after taking control of the bus, one of the passengers freaks and inadvertently shoots the bus driver, and a fellow passenger, Annie (Sandra Bullock), takes over the wheel. Throughout the film, Annie and Traven have wonderful chemistry, and I could not help but root for the duo throughout. Every couple of minutes, there is a new potential conflict to overcome to keep the bus going over 55mph. The film wisely peppers in brief dialog exchanges to let the movie breathe just enough before the next hurdle makes itself present.

The film's standout moment is the major obstacle for the bus to overcome when it encounters a stretch of unavoidable highway under construction and missing a hearty chunk of the road. Traven’s solution is that since that stretch of a road is on an incline, they may clear that gap if they build up enough speed! That epic stunt hits all the right notes, and I got goosebumps all over again re-watching it, and odds are, I bet you did too if you have seen this movie. If you have not, then watch this scene and see for yourself by click or pressing here. A lot of the critical discussion in the aftermath of this movie was if that jump was realistically possible. The best thing I can do is to compare it to another film, Road Trip, which is likely a better indicator of what could happen when attempting such a feat. Once the middle bus portion of the film is over, there are still about 20 minutes left where Traven tracks and chases down Payne in a subway station. The movie felt over once the bus portion had such a satisfying conclusion that it almost feels wrong to keep sticking with the film by this point, but I recommend you do since there is a satisfying payoff in the form of Payne’s demise. I have to share a story now when I first saw this film at around 13 or 14 on VHS. My dad’s VCR had what seemed to me at the time was a revolutionary feature where if I kept pressing the pause button repeatedly, it would slowly, frame-by-frame, play the film in super slow-motion. At that age, I thought this was a fantastic way to get the most out of the biggest stunts in action scenes. My favorite moment exploiting this feature was seeing Traven and Payne wrestle around on the top of a subway train until Payne was not watching his field of vision, and a warning light lead to his sudden beheading. I slow-motion replayed that sequence countless times in my awkward, early teenage years. Suffice it to say, Hopper plays the out-of-his-mind bomber perfectly, going so far as to make sure he receives his appropriate cinematic comeuppance.

The director ensures the many passengers on the bus maximized their minutes to the point I where it feels like you are right there with them!

Two audio commentaries are the only extra features of the 4K disc in this 4K/BluRay combo pack. One is with the director, Jan de Bont, and the other is with producer Mark Gordon and writer Graham Yost. Props are to whoever decided to subtitle the commentary tracks. I very much appreciate it! I first started to bounce back and forth between the two commentary tracks, but Bont was way too relaxed and had too many pauses to hold my attention, and I finished up with his track within five minutes. However, Yost and Gordon are very much engaged from beginning to end and have fun cracking jokes and sharing memories throughout. Some quick takeaways I got from them were how they wanted to film a major scene outside of a sports arena, dealing with critics poking holes at how unrealistic their stunts were, and how watching the movie felt very different at the time of the commentary recording just two months after 9/11. The BluRay disc contains the remainder of the bonus features. Inside Speed is a four-part feature lasting just under an hour breaking down the visual effects, stunts, and location sequences, but half of it also contains an HBO First Look special hosted by Dennis Hopper that hits all the right kinds of cheesy mid-90s EPK nostalgia that it is worth checking out. Aside from 12 minutes of extended scenes and a Billy Idol music video that seems totally off base with the tempo of the film, there are a couple of Action Sequences mini-features breaking down some of the stunts. I highly recommend watching the one dissecting how they did the bus jump, as it shows raw footage of what really happened when they shot it, and showed footage of some of the specific safety measures they instilled to make that stunt as safe as possible and had some eye-opening interviews with the stunt driver before and after.

After watching that old VHS copy nearly a dozen times, Speed wound up being one of my favorite action films I got burnt out early on and never bothered upgrading to a DVD or standalone BluRay. Watching it again in 4K all these years later breathed new life into it for me. I am not an expert at breaking down video quality by any means, but watching the 4K disc on my 4KTV gave the impression of this having far more current production values. The editors somehow managed to remove all the old film grain defects for a smooth 4K upgrade. If you have not seen Speed yet, then it has everything you could want out of a mid-90s action movie with explosions, gripping thrills and stunts, dramatic rescues, plenty of zinger one-liners…..and a Billy Idol theme song. Pardon me while I attempt my best Dennis Hopper impression here, “Pop quiz, hotshot, which 1994 blockbuster that takes place primarily on a bus is a perfect candidate for beer and popcorn movie night at home?” Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street The Accountant Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron The Avengers: Endgame The Avengers: Infinity War Batman: The Dark Knight Rises Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: Civil War Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve The Clapper Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Countdown Creed I & II Deck the Halls Detroit Rock City Die Hard Dirty Work Dredd The Eliminators The Equalizer Faster Fast and Furious I-VIII Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Grunt: The Wrestling Movie Guardians of the Galaxy Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 Hell Comes to Frogtown Hercules: Reborn Hitman I Like to Hurt People Indiana Jones 1-4 Inglourious Basterds Ink The Interrogation Interstellar Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Jobs Joy Ride 1-3 Justice League (2017 Whedon Cut) Last Action Hero Major League Mallrats Man of Steel Man on the Moon Man vs Snake Marine 3-6 Merry Friggin Christmas Metallica: Some Kind of Monster Mortal Kombat Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpions Revenge National Treasure National Treasure: Book of Secrets Nintendo Quest Not for Resale Old Joy Payback (Director’s Cut) Pulp Fiction The Punisher (1989) The Ref The Replacements Reservoir Dogs Rocky I-VIII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery Scott Pilgrim vs the World The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Shoot em Up Slacker Skyscraper Small Town Santa Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Sully Take Me Home Tonight TMNT Trauma Center The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars Vision Quest The War Wild The Wizard Wonder Woman The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Apocalypse X-Men: Days of Future Past

#random movie #speed #keanu reeves #Sandra Bullock #jeff daniels #dennis hopper #glenn plummer #jan de bont

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petekaos · 4 years

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a concept: man/boss

this was all started by this little ask. welcome to my dumbass brain. i hate it here.

i wanna say that man and boss got together last year of high school, the year when sarawat was desperately in love with tine. they didn’t pine for each other for a very long time, and neither did they ask the other one out. they weren’t even drunk when they first got together. sarawat was out doing a rehearsal for his first small gig and man invited boss over to play video games. somewhere in between, boss went downstairs to get snacks--and suddenly in between the temporary absence of his laughter and his glorious return bearing seaweed, man realised in that second that he was kinda, sorta in love with him.

in true man fashion, he tries to keep it under wraps but ends up blurting it out before boss leaves. in true boss fashion, boss laughs at him for a solid minute before putting on his serious!boss face (which actually is just a ploy to get man to laugh--and it always works), says “i have been in love with you since the day we met, you fucking idiot” and kisses him.

what happens when you put two teens together who have maybe a quarter of a fluctuating braincell combined? they try to hide their relationship from their other best friend, just for as long as it takes for them to come to terms with it themselves (which ends up not being long at all, turns out dating your dumbass best friend still means sitting up till 3am in your socks and boxers eating soggy cereal and watching final destination movies, just with a little bit of delay cause you can make out now).

said best friend, a dumbass in his own right but not when it comes to man and boss, figures it out in a week. sarawat and man are sitting together and boss shows up with man’s favourite drink, sitting down next to him and stretching ridiculously. wat takes one look at casual arm boss is trying to put around man and says, “you know you two can just tell me that you’re together, right?”

their first date is at a fancy restaurant. boss spends two days harassing google about best restaurants to take your boyfriend to????? and where can i take my best friend turned boyfriend on our first date?? and oh my god i am so stupid what do i DO like it’s a real person. he tries to harass sarawat but gets nothing but a “he’s your best fucking friend you eighth braincelled moron he’d watch a freshly painted wall dry with you and i know that for a fact because remember last year when i painted my wall and you both stared at it for an hour” and then blocks him.

they both dress up in shirts and jeans. they stay in the fancy restaurant for all of five minutes before they realise that they can’t pronounce any of the fancy french words and the prices cost more than their kidneys. so they book it the fuck out of there at 9pm and find the nearest mcdonalds. man stuffs his face with mickey d’s and boss has never been more in love.

(their second date is them in each other’s ratty old t-shirts and basketball shorts as they watch more action movies together.)

boss would never admit it but one time as they had started uni and man was playing a game where he was benched (for being too rowdy, which boss thinks was unfair, wat thinks was completely fair, and man had just snickered at), he ended up pacing on the sidelines and having to restrict himself from marching over to man and kissing him right in the middle of the game. because he’s always been attracted to man, but there’s just something about him when he’s sweaty from playing football and pushing his hair back in the sunshine.

man is the only one (apart from sarawat) who sees boss when he’s tired. he’s always been the comedic relief, cracking jokes and not letting people see too much into his emotions. but when boss is tired, he goes soft and emotional, clinging onto man and telling him he loves him. he doesn’t seem like it, but in reality he’s just a big puppy who wants to be cuddled 24/7.

the comedy continues through to sex. whenever they have it, and boss makes a tired old joke, man has to decide between laughing and looking up at the ceiling like he could shake god through it. usually, it comes out as more of a disappointed snort and a fond “you idiot.”

they share so many clothes! they move in together for uni and have one closet, neither of them is sure which t-shirt belongs to who but they wear it anyway, and whenever they go out to buy new clothes, they always make sure it’s something the other one would wear as well because it always ends up being worn by both of them.

man gets buff so he can carry boss everywhere, bridal style or piggyback ride. sometimes people watch them as they trudge slowly along campus, tears in their eyes from laughing too hard about this insider or the other.

for all their dumbass-ness, they give stellar advice on relationships, especially for friends who move on to becoming more. when sarawat confesses to them that he’s fallen for tine, they talk to him about telling him and how to do it best. when he and tine enter a relationship, they talk to him about having to put in effort to make it work! when earn comes to them, bold-faced and strong, about liking another girl, they cheer for her silently on the sidelines as she asks pear out. it’s the little things.

and slowly, everyone in their faculty and in their friend groups and the same parts of their uni figures out they’re together. it’s not like they make out in public, but the way they joke around with each other and tease each other; the way man is always seen wearing boss’s jacket when it’s the winter months; the way man always has his arm slung around boss’s shoulder, and the way they have their pinkies linked while sitting down at a table, man leaning into boss as he shakes with laughter--well. it’s just obvious, isn’t it?

#2gether the series #2gether #manboss #man x boss #man (2gether)#boss (2gether)#omfg PLEASE rb i spent way too much time on these hcs #what a silly ship!!! i love these boys lmaoo #the mickey d one is inspired by mine and my partner's first date! fun fact #rahul.txt

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velkynkarma · 4 years

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Karma’s Recommended Reading List

Hello, friends!

So the world is a little crazy, and it doesn’t look like it’s gonna get uncrazy any time soon. To that end, I figured I’d throw together a recommended reading list of some of my favorite book series. Because there’s a lot more time for reading when we’re all stuck indoors, right?

So here’s some of my favorite series, which will hopefully keep you entertained for a good long while! They’re pretty much all fantasy, which is what I adore the most.

Anything by Brandon Sanderson I’ve explained why a hundred times, so I’m not going to go into a ton of details here. I have a whole post explaining why you should read his books, so feel free to check that instead. What I will say here is he has a lot of books, so if you want to be kept busy for a while reading through his collections, you will for sure.

Incryptid Series by Seanan McGuire A fun urban fantasy series that has action, adventure, and of course cryptids. Once upon a time there was a monster hunting society called the Covenant of St. George, who hunted monsters that threatened humanity as a sacred calling. Then a few of its members went, “Wait...monsters are people too. Most of them have an ecological function on Earth and aren’t really trying to hurt anybody. Why are we killing them?” The Covenant didn’t have an answer, so those members ran away to America, and their descendants are now cryptozoologists doing their best to help the cryptid community not get exterminated. Has a clever and punny writing style and features points of view from multiple characters. Currently 9 books in the series, so it will keep you busy for a while.

The Myth series by Robert Asprin Do you like Terry Pratchett’s Discworld? Then you will probably adore this series as well, since it’s got the same tongue-in-cheek clever humor, just the American version. A surprisingly underrated series that I think really should be more well known. Features a kid named Skeeve who, when apprenticed to a magician, accidentally summons a demon—who promptly adopts him. Also a baby dragon who can only say his own name, trolls who pretend to be idiots but are quite well read, the magical mafia (complete with fairy godfather), a gargoyle who runs a McDonald’s, and dimension hopping to weird places on a regular basis, and more besides! Clever humor and surprisingly good adventure, along with an unexpected huge dollop of found family.

The Abhorsen Trilogy by Garth Nix A really excellent young adult series with some wonderful world-building and a more nuanced approach to a traditionally ‘dark’ form of fantasy magic, necromancy. Features summoning and controlling dead and undead monstrosities with specialized, magical bells carried in bandoliers, and one of the most intriguing renditions of the underworld I’ve ready about to date (just check out this gorgeous art for it). The world-building in this series is definitely unique (also, one of the side books to this series features a blatantly asexual character, which was always a big plus for me, an ace reader).

Garth Nix also has some other great series worth checking out as well. I particularly enjoyed The Seventh Tower series. I’m told the Keys to the Kingdom is excellent as well, although I personally haven’t read it yet myself.

The Epic Series by Conor Kostick Do you play video games—especially MMORPGS? This series will definitely appeal. The first book, Epic, features a fully immersive fantasy MMORPG that the inhabitants of a colonized planet log into every day—because at some point after moving to a new planet, the currency of the game became the currency in real life. Your character dies in the game and loses all their gold? Congrats, you’re now destitute. So people play it safe and never have adventures anymore, until one kid decides to actually have fun with the game and unlocks a whole conspiracy in the process. The rest of the books in the series go into concepts like ‘real’ vs ‘AI’ and how it’s blurred, and what the games are ultimately for.

The Nursery Crime books by Jasper Fforde I suppose this would be categorized as ‘urban fantasy,’ but I find it hard to fit the Nursery Crime series (which is sadly only 2 books) into any particular niche. Takes place somewhere in England, where most of the world’s nursery rhyme characters seem to live. The Nursery Crime division is responsible for investigating crimes that happen in relation to this particular population. The first book is investigating the murder of Humpty Dumpty; you can probably guess how weird this series gets. It’s clever and fun though, and it makes me chuckle every time I read it.

Wings of Fire series by Tui T. Sutherland Do you like dragons? Look no further. This book series is all about dragons. A cute young adult series that starts out about a prophecy where five baby dragons will ultimately stop a war amongst all of dragon-kind. It progresses into further stories down the line, once the war storyline is addressed, too. What’s interesting is there’s never a repeat point of view. Each book takes place from the perspective of a different dragon. There are multiple tribes of dragons, each with different physical characteristics that give them strengths in different areas; for example, SeaWings can breathe underwater and see in the dark, and SandWings do well in heat and have poisonous stingers. It’s a cute series, and I had fun with it this past winter.

Six of Crows duology by Leigh Bardugo Do you like heist stories? Six of Crows is one giant heist story, and so is its sequel, Crooked Kingdom. Has a kind of dark, crapsack world kind of mentality, but all the characters are intriguing and have some interesting character development throughout. The world-building is pretty solid; I’m always impressed by the level of detail in this, down to cultural details in clothing or language between characters from different countries. Also features some blatantly non-straight characters which was a nice change of pace. Warning: There’s nothing explicit, but there are a lot of repeated references to sexual assault, or emotional/mental/physical abuse. If that’s something that would make you uncomfortable, you shouldn’t try this series out.

I hope you have an opportunity to try some of these out! Enjoy and stay safe out there :)

#Velkynkarma rambles #books

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desiree-harding-fic · 5 years

Text

Cold Hands, Warm Heart

Based on that one post by @thepensword about how Taako is always cold. Can be found here. Plus an idea I’ve had for a long time but never written about.

Cw for swears, kids. Be safe out there. But other than that it’s light angst with a fluffy chaser and a dash of Lore.

Enjoy!!!

*~*~*~*~*

Positively stomping through the streets of Neverwinter, Taako, for the thousandth time, curses the city for its positively idiotic name.

“Neverwinter”, his ass. Maybe they should have gone with “UsuallyWinter,” or “JustAsMuchWinterAsAnywhereElse,” or “CanWeReallySayThatAnythingOnThisOneSunnedPlanetIsn’tWinter.”

Because, you see, Taako is cold.

Taako is always cold.

It’s a holdover from a plane long behind them. Two-sunned elves have different traits than those of Faerun. Ears that move. Different colored eyes.

Different body temperatures.

Taako is a sun elf. A sun elf from a planet with two suns. He was made for warmth. More warmth than here. And even on two-sun he ran a little colder than the other elves he knew. But there, the extra warmth was enough to compensate. He’d tan in the summer, he’d soak up the rays and wear sleeveless shirts and live for the suns.

Faerun has one sun. On Faerun the long sleeves and pants, the heavy coat with the dozens of pockets he wore adventuring were more than just good sense - they helped him stay fucking warm.

It’s not even fair because Lup isn’t even cold all the time. Lup feels fine. Mostly. She gets a little chilly but it’s nothing a jacket can’t fix, and now she’s a Reaper and something about that helps too (Taako doesn’t know what). Taako’s body doesn’t work that way. And to top it all off, ever since Wonderland, when those fucking liches stole some of his vitality, it’s gotten even worse.

The snowy winter days in Fucking Neverwinter are hell to the multiverse’s favorite wizard, because no matter how many layers of coats and scarves and gloves and enchanted wizard hats he throws on, he can’t get warm.

He turns off the road, starts making the hike up the hill to his house which looks out on the Stillwater sea. He liked the walk when he bought the place. Lined it with trees and flowers that Merle and Pan blessed to grow big and beautiful.

He bought the place in the summer.

Magic should help. It doesn’t. First lesson he ever learned on the road with Lup: no matter how good a wizard you think you are, you never directly influence body temperature using magic. It’s too powerful, too volatile. Transmutation on the body was a risk they were willing to take. Watching your sibling’s blood boil just because you got a little chilly was not.

He finally makes it up to his front door, pushes inside, and sighs in relief.

Ever since the first chills of autumn in the city, every fireplace in Taako’s home, of which there are many, has been running almost nonstop. Is it a fire hazard? Probably. Does Taako give a shit? Maybe ten percent of one. He’s got more money than anyone else in the damn planar system. He can buy a new house.

(But he likes his villa-styled sprawling house by the sea. Likes the herbs in the window boxes and the flowers in the front and back. Likes the view of the water. It would be a shame if it burned down.)

The fireplaces help. But not enough. Never enough.

He takes off his outermost layer for the sake of the snow caked on it, but keeps on everything underneath it. Stupid, he thinks, to wear a full coat and scarf inside of his own house. But he doesn’t know any other way.

He walks through the foyer, and there.

The man of the hour.

Kravitz.

He’s reclining on the couch, close by the fire, book in one hand and glass of red wine in the other, wearing his usual suit without the jacket and shoes. He looks...

Well.

Taako knows how he looks (miraculous).

The worst thing about the winter is the space it’s put between him and his boyfriend.

Six months after Story and Song, and Taako, against all odds, is living with Kravitz. As in, Kravitz lives in his house. Kravitz drinks his wine and moved in his books and plays piano here and sleeps in Taako’s bed.

Well, most of the time.

Kravitz, who’s hands were ice cold on his and Taako’s first date, who tried to warm himself up for their first kiss, is fucking freezing to the touch in the winter.

It’s been a solid couple of months since Taako and Kravitz have cuddled without at least three or four layers between them, and by then Taako could pretty much have just bought a weighted blanket for all the good it does him. It’s hard to satisfy that craving for skin contact from the person you... care about when said skin contact feels like hugging an ice sculpture.

Kravitz looks up, puts down his glass of wine.

“Evening,” he says, mildly, as though testing the waters. And that’s what does it for Taako.

“Hey,” Taako says, immediately turning into the kitchen, not looking at Kravitz, because he just can’t.

Ever since the winter started, and Taako, out of necessity, started shying away from Kravitz’s touch, things have been... weird.

Taako knows that Kravitz isn’t the kind to speak up about this kind of thing. They’re working on it, but it’s been so long since he’s been in a relationship, so many mortal things are new to him. Taako knows this. And yet... breaching this issue, to which Taako has no solution, trying to communicate to Kravitz that he wants him while constantly having to push him away is... frustrating. What Kravitz wants is for Taako to be happy, for Taako to be comfortable. He says it constantly. He insists. And it’s the insisting that’s the problem.

Because Taako knows that even if he’s not saying it, Kravitz isn’t happy either.

And now when Taako comes home, and tries to spend time with his boyfriend, there’s all this horrible... space between them. When Taako’s cold, it seeps into his words and his actions, until all of him is cold, not just his body, not just his skin. Until he’s cold to people he cares about, and apologies come slow and with difficulty, and then the damage has been done.

Taako starts on a simple soup, no energy to make anything flashier, and still refusing to use magic in the kitchen. He hates the way all the extra clothing gets in the way of cooking. Hates the way the warmth of the stove only does so much.

Kravitz eats with him that night, and they talk, but it’s a weird, shy conversation, both of them anticipating what comes after.

What comes after is Kravitz sitting on the other side of the couch pretending to read while Taako shivers and pretends too.

What comes after is Taako going about his evening routine before slipping into bed in a full onesie and under about five blankets. It’s Kravitz dressing in flannels to try to shield Taako from the coldness of his skin, and then the two of them, side by side. Lying on their back and staring up at the ceiling, as they wait for sleep to come.

It’s a long wait, when one of them is an elf and the other doesn’t sleep naturally.

And there’s the thing about Kravitz: he’s not just without warmth. He’s actively cold. His body radiates cold like a living person’s radiates warmth. It’s only been a few minutes and Taako’s already shivering.

“I’m sorry,” Kravitz says from his side of the bed. And he sounds so fucking defeated and sad and Taako feels bad but he also feels annoyed. Because he’s cold. Because why can’t Kravitz just be a normal fucking person. Because Kravitz won’t talk to him and he won’t talk to Kravitz and this whole situation is just a goddamn nightmare.

“Not your fault,” Taako says, but the words have been said so many times they hardly mean anything anymore. He can feel how flippant they sound. He can feel the way they don’t sink in, how they bounce off Kravitz’s skin like Taako doesn’t care.

I do, he tries to broadcast. I promise I do.

“I think maybe it would be better if I stayed up tonight.” Kravitz says, like it’s an idea he’s only just had, not something he’s been saying nearly every night these days, like it’s not the new normal, like he truly believes that they still sleep in the same bed and touch each other and they aren’t on the verge of -

Kravitz slips out of the bed, pads gently out of the room and shuts the door behind him. And Taako turns over in bed, ignoring the tightness in his throat and trying, desperately, to get warm.

*~*~*~*~*

Candlenights comes, as it always does, despite the coldness in Taako’s house and his heart.

And Taako’s happy for it, really. He didn’t harbor any delusions about everything being beautiful and shiny and sparkly so close to the apocalypse, and in the aftermath of it. The world is still healing from a colossal wound. But he’s hosting, at least. He’s always been a good party planner. Lup is there and so is Barry. Merle comes up from the coast with his kids. Magnus and his dogs. Angus, visiting on his break from school. Davenport is still abroad, and Lucretia is conspicuously absent (no amount of begging from Lup could convince Taako to let her into his house), but it’s... good. Cozy, almost.

Taako even cooks for everyone, Lup assisting, and ignores the careful distance Kravitz keeps from him and from most of his family. The meal goes off without a hitch, save Taako’s shivering. He can see the sympathetic eyes Magnus keeps making at him, wants to glare and snap and tell him to fuck off, but he doesn’t. Just because the cold makes him crabby doesn’t mean he has to be an asshole.

He has a thick will blanket wrapped around him elegantly, like a shawl, while they’re unwrapping presents. Lup smiles brightly at the diamond earrings Kravitz got her, and Taako’s heart swells a little. Angus loves his books. Kravitz gets Taako a set of jewelry done up in gently curling silver and sapphire and pink tourmaline, because he’s a romantic, and Taako tries to ignore how... wiggly it makes him feel.

He wants to kiss him. He doesn’t.

Taako saves Lup’s gift for last, as is tradition.

It’s a tiny little box, which Taako had first been terrified was from Kravitz and then relieved wasn’t, and it’s as light as a feather.

Because, Taako discovers, there’s nothing inside.

Nothing, that is, except a tiny ivory card with scrolling golden text on it. It reads:

Command word: flambé.

Love, Barry and Lup! :)

“What the fuck, Lulu?” Taako asks, turning the card over and over in his hands.

“Oh fuck off, Taako,” Lup says good-naturedly from Barry’s lap. Gross. “You’ll thank me later. Well, thank us.”

And isn’t that fucking cryptic, he thinks. But Lup is Lup. His sister is fucking weird, and he brushes it off in favor of drinking more wine.

It’s a good day, mulled wine and carols and gift-giving, but as all good days do, it winds down sooner than expected. The guests go off to their many rooms, Taako’s house big enough to host them all (by design), and before he knows it, he and Kravitz are headed to bed.

It’s the same old charade. Kravitz goes through the motions, and Taako does too, and it’s awful and stilted and he just wants it to end.

It’s not fair, he thinks, staring at the the bed while Kravitz is still futzing around in the bathroom, a charade of mortality. Kravitz is good. Taako likes him. He’s nice to talk to and doesn’t make Taako feel like he has to perform. He’s a big old nerd and actually really compassionate and sometimes an entity of absolute chaos and he’s perfect for Taako, he really is. So why can’t he just have this? Why does there have to be fucking... roadblocks in the way?

Taako expected things to be hard. He expected having to make things work. Sometimes Kravitz is gone for days going after bounties and Taako can deal with that. There are elements of mortal life Kravitz has to re-learn, and he doesn’t know how to interact in just.. normal society sometimes, and Taako can deal with that. Sometimes he’s a real asshole and gets prickly and offended and impatient after a bad day and Taako can deal with that.

He doesn’t know how to deal with not being able to touch him for months at a time.

He’s shivering just standing there. He needs cover.

But when he pulls back the comforter the sheets are a deep fuchsia. And while it’s a nice color, it looks nothing like his usual ones.

There’s a piece of paper like a letter, there, on his side of the bed under the comforter. It’s the same as the card he found in lup’s gift, and all that’s on it, in that same gold ink, is a winky face.

Taako sighs, long and deep. Because with Lup these things are always a gamble. Is it a gag gift? If Taako says the command word, will his bed explode? He has a horrible flashback to the memory of his first conversation with Kravitz, which was about tentacle porn, and Lup heard it from the umbrastaff, and now she’s given him enchanted bedsheets. Taako pales at the thought.

But here’s the thing: it’s late, and he’s tired, and he can always shut it off because he’s the best wizard in all planar systems, and he’s curious.

He stands, contemplating, cold as balls, for another minute.

And then he says, very deliberately,

“Flambé.”

And for a second it looks like nothing happened. And then it really looks like nothing happened. And then...

Taako can feel the warmth just from standing next to the bed.

It takes him about 0.04 seconds to hop in after that, to pull the sheets up around his shoulders and bury himself under the covers up to his chin.

It’s heavenly. Warmth from all sides, and Taako sighs, long and deep, as he feels tension in his muscles all over his body, held from weeks and months of being cold all the time. Already he can feel the chill in his veins slipping away. He can feel the warmth reaching the core of him, strong and comforting.

He can feel his face flushing, and the warmth rushing up into his long ears.

And then it gets warmer.

And warmer.

Uncomfortably warm.

Taako’s sweating, he realizes. He’s flushed, not in the comfortable way of sitting by the fire. He’s hot like a beach day, hot like a desert plane. He throws the covers off above the waist. It’s not enough. He’s too hot. Much, much too hot.

The door to the bathroom opens up and Kravitz steps out.

“Oh thank god,” Taako says, without thinking, “get the hell over here.” He holds up the blankets on Kravitz’s side of the bed, gestures for him to get in. Kravitz is staring at him like he’s grown an extra head. He slides into bed, slowly, tentative, and Taako practically throws himself on top of him.

The relief of his cold skin isn’t enough through the flannel pajamas Taako’s wearing. He goes for his shirt buttons.

“Taako,” Kravitz says, “what’s happening here?”

“Damn enchanted sheets from Lup are too fucking hot,” Taako grumbles, pulling his shirt off and squirming around with his pajamas pants until those are off too. He tosses them across the room.

Laying across Kravitz’s chest is such a relief. It’s like cold water on a hot day, and Taako spends a luxurious moment running his hands over his chest and shoulders, nuzzles into his neck and revels in the coolness on his face. He sighs, goes boneless against his boyfriend. He feels wonderful.

Kravitz’s arms come up around his back, tentatively holding him, and it hits him.

“Oh shit,” he says, half sitting up. Kravitz looks him in the eyes, questioning.

“That was Lup’s Candlenights gift. It was...” he licks his lips. Why is it so much harder to say things than it is to feel them? “It was this,” he says, running his hands over Kravitz’s chest again.

Understanding dawns in Kravitz’s eyes, and he smiles at Taako, and his smile is like the sun on a warm day.

“Glad I can be your ice pack,” he says, smiling.

“Shut up,” Taako says, resting his head back down, feeling more than hearing the happy little hum Kravitz makes. He snuggles a little closer. Kravitz’s arms tighten around him.

“I missed you,” Kravitz whispers.

And what can Taako do in response to that but kiss him?

“I missed you too, handsome,” he whispers into Kravitz’s lips.

#taz balance #taakitz #taz taako #taz kravitz #taako taaco #kravitz #my fic #desiree: the tumblr sessions #thepensword

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black-wolf066 · 4 years

Text

AU where Five dies young in the apocalypse part 3

[Part 1] [Part 2]

[A03 link if it’s easier to read]

Our Place to Call Home

Being homeless had never truly bothered Klaus after he had left the academy behind him. Especially not when he had chosen it of his own free will.

At the ripe age of seventeen years, four months, and twelve days old (“Yes Ben, I remember the exact date I left. No one can forget that week of utter fun; no matter how hard one tries.”), Klaus hadn’t had very many choices laid out for him to pick from. It had been either leave everything behind for the streets (where he had a better chance of making it on his own) or stay and deal with a cruel man who had never cared for him—or any of them for that matter—and never hesitated in reminding him of his uselessness in that household.

Sure, leaving would have entailed wandering into the unknown, with food, shelter and his next fix not ever being a solid guarantee, but staying hadn’t exactly been an option for him either (not after Five, and certainly not after Ben—still so very fresh in his grave at that point in time). Staying would have required him to accept the knowledge that Reginald would end up killing him—or his remaining siblings—with the missions the old man continuously forced them on.

In the end, the streets were the lesser of two evils in Klaus’ opinion.

(As he crept out late in the night with nothing more than a knapsack, three hundred some odd dollars pilfered from Luther’s shoe box hidden under the floorboard beneath his bed, and the clothes on his back; Klaus spared one fleeting thought to the rest of his brothers and sisters; hoping they too would be smart enough to leave before it was too late.)

Once out there, he—and by extension, Ben—had finally been free to do whatever he had damn well pleased. To go wherever his feet led him, without a single care in the world. Sure it hadn’t been easy; some days worse than others (a fight here, a drug deal gone south there, the lack of food or a warm place to sleep when the nights would get too cold), but he had finally been handed the reigns of his own destiny and nothing anyone could do or say would have stopped him from enjoying that high (not even a concerned Ben dogging his every step).

It took plenty of trial and error on his part (but Five wasn’t the only one capable of adaptability in the family), and plenty of months honing the skills he had learned for a different purpose then what they were originally intended for. Nevertheless, Klaus had made his new lifestyle work.

And for seven blissfully, foggy years, it did work.

Then Five up and died, came back from the future (“Called it!” “Congratulations, you’re not a complete idiot.” “Hey! I could deal without the sarcasm, Five-y, but I’ll still take the compliment!”) to haunt him, and suddenly Klaus’ blissful little world went up in figurative smoke and flames.

His lifestyle, he knew, was no longer a viable option; not with his resolve to stay relatively clean for Ben and Five’s sake. Not with the streets being a vixen of temptation he would succumb to the longer he was out there, and certainly not with the end of times looming like a distant gale in the background of what his life had apparently become.

God, no one told him being a responsible adult would suck quite this much.

(***)

“Sorry, occupancy is full.”

With a tired sigh, Klaus turned on his heel and left the shelter for the park.

“You could try another one rather than just giving up, you know. It’s not even that late out.” Five griped.

No, it wasn’t late at all, but Five didn’t know the streets like Klaus and Ben did. Five didn’t know each and every shelter within the city limit or that that particular establishment didn’t have a very reputable reputation to begin with. Herman Housing was usually the homeless’ last pick; the staff habitually rude and ill-tempered, the food border-line questionable, and the water from the showers leaving one feeling dirtier then when they first walked in. So, if Herman Housing—of all places—was full at this early hour of the day, then there was no point in wasting his time and energy trying for a bed somewhere else.

He was too tired and grumpy to communicate any of this information to Five.

Ben—bless him and his knack for knowing just what he’s thinking—voiced this for him.

“Well, you still can’t just sleep out here on the bench, Klaus.”

“Watch me.” He flopped back dramatically in his seat for added effect and grinned as Five looked for all the world like a riled cat.

“Klaus,” Ben cut in sharply before the argument could start. “You saw the news at Griddy’s. A blizzard’s coming and it’s going to be bad. Just go to Diego or Vanya, please—you know they won’t turn you away.”

No, they wouldn’t (not with the incoming threat of four feet of snow looming on the horizon), but his wounds were still fresh from their blatant dismissal when he tried to tell them Five had finally showed up to haunt his pathetic ass. It shouldn’t hurt, not when none of them every really believed him to begin with (even before Ben), but it did and still does. Ghosts were his thing after all, it shouldn’t have been that hard to believe. Sure, the drugs fundamentally nulled his powers almost completely, but his siblings should know by now that nothing he put in his system would stop Ben—or Five or any of them—from manifesting if they wanted too. His siblings were just that right side of stubborn pain in the asses that Klaus hoped none of the other spirits ever caught on too or he’d really be in trouble.

As the temperature continued to drop, and his brothers continued to pester and hound him like the mother hens they freaking were; he threw up his hands in defeat with a frustrated “Fine, I’m moving, I’m moving, you happy?”

He went to Diego.

(***)

The next incident, was just two weeks before Vanya would begin writing her book (not that Klaus would know that). It was just a normal night, the chill not as biting despite it being the dead of winter, when Klaus’ past actions finally came to bite him annoyingly in the ass.

He fought as hard as he could—he can honestly say that he did try—against his ruthless ex-drug dealer, but hand to hand combat had never been one of his strong suits growing up, and even if it had been; eight pitted against one simply wasn’t a fair fight (and a little over kill if you asked him). Being nimble and light on his feet also didn’t help when his exits were being blocked at every turn.

He managed to take out one fellow and roughed up two more before he was down for the count; knocked out cold and still being beaten and shaken down for what little money he had left in his pockets.

Ben and Five watched it all happen fearfully and angrily; helpless to do anything but be silent witnesses as their brother was beaten black and blue in the alley he was chased into.

When he eventually, and thankfully, awoke the next morning, he didn’t go to the Emergency room despite their concerned prompting (“You could be bleeding internally, Klaus!” “Don’t care, Ben, still not going.” “You’re a dumb-ass, you know that?” “Why thank you, Five.” “That’s not a compliment asshole, go to the damn hospital!” “Nope.” “You are insufferable!”). Hospitals were as bad as graveyards, and Klaus avoided them both like they would give him the plague.

Instead, in the early hours of the morning, with the streets and sidewalks still quiet with the sun not yet out to wake the living; he shuffled and limped his way slowly and blurrily towards Vanya’s home; her apartment being closer than Diego’s place of current residence or an emergency room either way.

Vanya took him to the hospital anyway.

(***)

Within a span of five months after the incident, bouncing from homeless shelter to endless homeless shelter (occasionally crashing at Diego’s or Vanya’s when the nagging got to be too much) and applying for whatever aid the government would be willing to give him; found Klaus with his very own studio apartment to call home.

The building was washed out and unkempt, the neighborhood he was located in looking as though it had never seen what better days even looked like. The apartment itself made even his old room seem bigger, but it was affordable with the temporary grant given to him (and would continue to be affordable once he found a job to better sustain himself) and that was enough for him.

No matter how small, it was his, and between the three of them, they filled it with everything their father would have hated. With bright colors, tacky furniture (that was cheap, and well used, but still comfortable to sink into) and wacky patterned curtains, pillows and throws, that shouldn’t normally go together but somehow Klaus had made work (despite Ben’s and Five’s obvious doubt before seeing it themselves).

Ben finally had the library of his dreams. It wasn’t nearly as big as the one back at the mansion, but it was an ever growing collection that Klaus continued to enable (sure he had to hold open the books for Ben to read, but if it made the book-worm happy, he was willing to do it; a small price to pay for all the shit he’s put him through over the years). There was even a section for Five’s theory and mathematical volumes and an even smaller section for Klaus’ own collection (nothing noteworthy, just a few comics and fictional works of fantasy and romance).

The rest of Ben’s knick-knacks were just as random and odd as Klaus’, but the Polaroid camera and the photo albums Klaus began to fill up for him; were definitely among Ben’s top favorites.

In the beginning it was hard to figure out what Klaus could bring home for Five to make him feel included. Five’s interests geared more toward having to be tangible to do them (much to his displeasure). That still didn’t stop Klaus from buying the chalkboard easel he later found at a second hand store, and on days when Five would get restless and fidgety, Klaus would humor him for a few hours and write whatever complicated and convoluted equations he wanted written out on that very same easel (“No Five, I’m not writing on the walls.” “I don’t care if there isn’t enough space left on the chalkboard, you aren’t gonna be of any help when I have to paint over it now will you?”). He ends up buying another chalkboard and a white board to appease the irritable gremlin.

The dart board he had found not long after, had also been a nice addition as well; it wasn’t as nice as the one Five had back in his old room, but it still played a melancholy homage it (to the fonder memories Five had of challenging Ben or Diego or Klaus during their down time between training—more so Ben and Klaus, since Diego’s power was essentially cheating).

Ben and Klaus also learned—along with Five himself it would seem—that the forever stuck thirteen-year-old held an interest for anything nautical or tropical in nature; having seen him eye certain pieces every time they’d walk into some of the antique stores Klaus liked to frequent.

The spyglass, the random colorful sea shells, the oceanic themed paintings, and the little anchor shaped paper weight— the metallic object situated on Five’s side of the bookshelf—went without much fanfare, but that was okay, the smile on his brother’s face when he placed them in their home was reward enough.

Their place might not be much worth noting—maybe even a little crazy, and a little over-crowded with nonsensical junk to the outside looking in—and though his brothers really didn’t need the space or any of the knick-knacks Klaus continued to buy for them; it was their home regardless.

It was the home the three of them were making for themselves and it was enough.

(Oh, and they bought a coffee machine that Klaus honestly has no idea he will even use, but said why the hell not anyway ‘cause fuck you dad!)

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kanlara · 4 years

Text

Reform pt 3

Don’t forget to read parts 1 and 2

It had been just over a week since Liam had moved out of my apartment. Neither myself or the cats had adjusted to his absence. My time away from work was now spent avoiding the convenience store where he still held a job and comforting screaming cats looking for their large friend. In short it was hell.

The situation was my own fault. I knew that he didn’t like to be reminded that he had once been one of the greatest heros in the city. That his old name and title reminded him just how far he had fallen. Hero to homeless. All because he had chosen to have mercy on one last villain. On me. It had taken me painful weeks to stop calling him the Azure Torch out of habit. The smile he had given me when I finally re-trained myself had been worth the trouble. Now all I could think of was if he had found somewhere to live or if he was living on the streets again.

Another five days would pass before I worked up the courage to visit him at his job. My plan hadn’t been to come in. I’d been taking a walk when my feet decided to enter the store before my brain caught up to what was happening. I ended up standing at the freezer so that I could come up with a reason that I was here. After what seemed like an eternity I opened the door and pulled out my favorite icecream. When I got to the counter I was surprised to find the owner standing behind it waiting for me: she looked angry at me.

I slid the icecream to her with a polite smile, “just this please.”

She didn’t spit at me as she rang up the purchase, but it seemed like she wanted to, “He deserves better than you. Someone who doesn’t think too much of themself.”

I was speechless as she pushed the bag at me. Not knowing what to say I fled back to my apartment. The icecream bag and all was thrown in the freezer past the last carton that Liam had brought home. The same one he served us both from the day I gave him a reason to leave.

Turning I looked around the apartment, if I looked too closely there were signs that someone else had been living here. An extra blanket on a chair, a book I hadn’t been reading laying on the coffee table, and the stray sock that Liam had missed when he packed his belongings in the middle of the night. The door to his room was still cracked open, I’d assumed he’d left it that way for the cats and hadn’t gone in. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking of it as off limits yet. Eventually I’d have to go in and change the bedding and make it my own space again.

The next day I changed my work commute so that I could walk past the convenience store. Some days I saw him but I didn’t go in again. I didn’t know what to say to him.

It was three weeks later when I almost walked into Liam as I was looking through the window trying to spot him. He was carrying his uniform shirt in his hand. If I had to guess he’d just finished his shift. We both stood there without speaking for a moment until someone shoved between us from inside the store. Jumping back I took stock of my surroundings, we’d been standing in front of the narrow door. Liam glanced at me and started to turn away.

“Liam, wait…” the words slipped out before I could figure out what I was going to say next. He paused, giving me a chance to speak. Breathing deep, “I’m so sorry for what I said.”

“Forget it,” He didn’t turn around or look at me again, “next you’ll tell me you didn’t mean it. And I don’t really want to hear it Ryn.”

“I didn’t mean to say it that way… but I did mean to say you were worth the trouble.” I sighed, “Looks like you have somewhere to be, Goodbye Liam.”

He shook his head as he walked away without saying anything. This time I let him go. I’d start taking my old route to work again tomorrow. It would be better for both of us.

When I got home I pushed open the door to the spare bedroom. Soot was wrapped in what I recognized as one of Liam’s old shirts. Leaving him and the shirt alone I tidied up the room. The bedding would get changed when Soot left the bed, right this moment I didn’t have the heart to move him. Checking the drawer I noticed a familiar envelope. He’d left the ‘rent’ money he had tried to give me before. Opening the envelope I noticed a small slip of folded paper tucked inside. Pulling it out with a shaking hand I sat on the edge of the bed. Carefully unfolding the paper I scanned the note before me;

Ryn,

I don’t have the words to thank you for giving me a home again. You arrived in my life when I needed you most. Even though I don’t feel that I can stay in your apartment any longer I will always be here for you.

Liam

Defeated I flopped backwards, almost squashing soot who looked at me reproachfully. I waved the note at him like he would understand where I didn’t. What had changed? After an hour of self pity and petting Soot I resumed cleaning up the room. I packed the few forgotten items in a small box along with the envelope of money. The shirt remained under Soot and I didn’t care enough to take it from him. I put the box on the table next to the door and forgot about it for several weeks.

As the weather began to warm I started to settle back into my old routines. One night while I was reading after dinner a light knock came on my door. Getting up slowly I thought back trying to remember if I was due to be visited from the masks anytime soon. Looking through the peephole, I discovered that I was indeed due a visit. Standing on the other side of my door was The Pencil. She could draw solid lines through the air and trap unsuspecting villains in corners that didn’t exist a moment ago. Sighing softly I opened the door, “Evening Pen, is everything in order?”

She brushed past me. Technically I didn’t have the right to say no to any of the masks. Which is what I get for having been a villain. She turned and smiled brightly, “we heard you had a house guest for the winter Hand.”

Wincing as she used part of my old name, “I did, he left. Just a bum I didn’t want freezing on the sidewalk.”

“As if we’d believe that the Unseen Hand would take a bum in out of charity? Please, we’re all smarter than that.” She smirked at me, knowing full well that I hated my old name, “So who was it? An old friend? A Co-worker maybe?”

“Just a bum, he left when the weather got nicer.” I looked at her levely, “I go by Ryn now, the Unseen Hand is gone. Rehabilitated into a contributing member of society.”

“Just know that we’ll be watching,” She opened my door, “You’re only not back in prison for your type because you’ve been so good up until now.”

She even slammed the door behind her. As soon as I heard her leave the hallway I started shaking. Was this what had changed Liam’s mind? I needed to let him know that something was going on. Not that I actually knew what that was. The Masks were going to be watching me. I needed a plan. The only place I knew that Liam visited was the store that he worked at. Since I hadn’t gone in weeks I couldn’t start going out of the blue. My shaking slowed as I formed my plan. I’d start jogging since the weather was nice enough now. Every day I would expand my route until I was going by the store daily. After another week or so I’d have to figure out how to get Liam’s attention.

The next day I bought jogging shoes and started my new exercise routine. It was absolutely terrible. My expansion plan was slower than I would have liked as I had to wait for my stamina to allow me to go further. As it was stopping in the store occasionally for a drink became routine. The owner continued to glare at me as she made snide comments. Liam was worse, he didn’t speak at all and focused somewhere over the top of my head. It made me wonder why I was risking myself with this half assed plan to tell him something he probably already knew. Whenever I had doubts I remembered how comfortable it had been living together.

I wrote a short note summarizing what I knew, which wasn’t much, and slipped it into my pocket before my run after a week and a half of stopping at the store. It stayed in my pocket for three more days until I was alone at the counter with Liam. Carefully I wrapped it in my money and slid it across to him. As I took my drink I tried and failed to catch his eye, “keep the change for the next guy.”

After that I started carrying my own drinks, it would save me money anyways. On the days I forgot a drink I stopped at the store. I stopped trying to catch Liam’s eye and let my own thoughts take over more and more. The abuse the owner spat at me rolled off of my unhearing shoulders. Occasionally I would catch a glimpse of one of the masked heroes that didn’t normally patrol this part of the city. I kept to my routines that had kept me safe in the past and pretended not to see the masks.

It was summer before another mask visited my apartment. This time it was on my day off and they knocked before I could leave on my now daily run. Looking through the peephole, I was relieved to see that it was the hero that normally checked up on me instead of the pencil. Opening the door I gave the man a genuine smile, “Raven, how have you been?”

“Caught up with paperwork, but otherwise fine. How have you been Ryn?” The older man smiled in return.

With a sigh I shrugged, “bit of an odd story, tea?” when he nodded I gestured towards the table and set about the kitchen to get a pot of tea ready as I spoke, “I took in a homeless man this winter. I tripped over him and it was so cold that day… He left when the weather got better. I don’t know where he’s living now. The Pencil came to see me last time, she was digging for information about the man. But I don’t really know much. Is there something that I should know Raven? I like the life I have.”

He took the tea cup that I offered and poured himself a cup, “The younger heroes have been keeping me out of the loop lately Ryn. You know I can’t tell you anything more than that. I’ll keep your life as safe as I can. I know you mean well with your actions.”

After that we fell into small talk about the weather and pets. When the tea was finished Raven stood to leave, “be careful Ryn, I don’t know what’s going on but I doubt it’s something you want to be in the middle of. Stick to your routines.”

With a smile I reassured him, “I don’t think we have to worry about me being in the middle of anything. I don’t know where my house guest went when he left, not much I can do for the heroes.”

Heeding Raven’s advise I stuck to my routine and went for a run. In an effort to clear my thoughts I stayed out longer than usual. When I got back to my apartment the door was unlocked. Knowing that I’d locked it behind me I cautiously crept in. No cats ran to greet me but I heard a low voice and the crunching of cat food. Looking into my kitchen I saw Liam sitting at the table holding Soot. The keys in my hand fell to the floor loudly. Several cats gave me a dirty look but none left the food bowls. Liam looked up and smiled. My traitor mouth smiled back before I managed a frown. The reaction made me angry.

“I think I owe you an explanation.”

“You don’t think you could have given me one when you left in the middle of the night?” I was failing to keep calm. “There’s a box of your things by the door. I’m taking a shower, if you still want to talk after that I’ll consider not kicking you out.” With that I walked back towards my bedroom. I did need a shower, I stunk.

His voice followed me down the hall, “Ryn, I’ll be here. Take your time.”

#Story #short story #short #hero #villain #reform #heros #mask #misunderstanding #writing #writing promt #write #read me #wordsnstuff #words #part 3 #part three #third

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katehuntington · 5 years

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Title: My Brother’s First Hunt Fandom: Supernatural Timeframe: Pre-series (1993) Characters: Dean Winchester (POV), Sam Winchester, John Winchester (mentioned), Jessica Moore (mentioned) Pairing: Dean & Sam (platonic) Summary: Fourteen year old Dean takes his younger brother on a simple salt and burn, but soon regrets his decision when the hunt goes sideways and Sam finds himself in harm's way. Warnings: angsty, canon typical violence, swearing, mentions of smoking. Further than that Weechester feels and brotherly love. Word Count: 2427 words. Author’s note: I love to write these little insights of their lives before 2005. Thank you so much @littlegreenplasticsoldier for beta’ing this one shot! I gave it a once-over before posting, though, so all errors still in there are on me.

“Wait, I thought you were supposed to bring that.”

My ten-year-old brother Sam stared at me with wide open eyes, curtained by his fringe. He had frozen mid-action, holding the jerrycan over the six-foot deep hole in the ground as the last drops fell. Beneath our feet, the remains of Josephine Henrey were bared for the stars above to see for the first time in over a twenty-five years. Gasoline shimmered upon the bones, and enough salt to keep the road to Hell from freezing over covered the body like snow on a winter’s day. Because on my first hunt without Dad, I just had to be safe. I’d stuffed enough supplies in my backpack to light up this entire graveyard... If I only had a lighter.

“Why am I supposed to be the one with a lighter, Dean? You’re the one who smokes!”, Sam returns annoyed. “I do not!” I denied, lying through my teeth. “Do too!” Sam countered, triumph in his stance. “I saw you with Jenny under the bleachers after practice.” “That was one time!” “Uh-huh.” I glared at him, not too happy with the attitude my little brother was giving me. Maybe he wasn’t as tall as me just yet, but the days I could have fooled Sam were in the past. “Fine. So maybe I do. But don’t even think about snitching on me and telling Dad, because I’ll kick your ass,” I warned him. “Is that really the point now? Because we just dug up a body of an angry spirit without anything to start a fire,” my clever brother reminded me.

He had a solid point. The fact that this situation was going from bad to worse became clear as soon as the atmosphere around us changed. A cold wind sent shivers down my spine and the temperature dropped below freezing point in only a few seconds. Suddenly the local cemetery did not seemed like such a peaceful resting place anymore. The pitch black shadows of the trees and crypts drew long silhouettes, creeping closer, like they were trying to gulp us down. Something was coming, and we had to hurry.

“Dean?” Sam whispered, scanning his surroundings. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure this out.” I kneeled down next to the backpack, pulled out an iron steel pipe and started searching the extra pockets for anything that could ignite the fuel. My little brother held the flashlight above me so that I could see what I was doing, his unsteady hands giving away his fright. Truth be told, he wasn’t the only one, because I was scared shitless, too.

At the age of fourteen I’d had a couple of hunts under my belt, always with Dad. He would track the thing, he would figure out what it was, he would kill it. I was just there to watch and learn, maybe assist if it was easy enough. Never had I ever hunted on my own, but when I read a suspicious newspaper article in the local newspaper, I was crawling the walls of that motel room. Dad was on a job in Minnesota and was gone for at least three weeks, so I couldn’t wait for him to get back. Something had to be done. I lasted one day after reading that article. My old man was going to kill me, that was a sure thing, but I couldn’t let anyone else die.

Research turned out to be tough, and that’s where Sammy came in. In no time, he’d figured out whose ghost was haunting the old warehouse and where she was buried. But now that he’d had a part in the case, the little pain in the ass wanted to come along. I was gonna get in a lot of trouble for hunting solo at the age that didn’t even allow me to drive a car, let alone if I took a ten year old with me on the job. But Sammy begged, gave me that puppy dog stare that I have always been a sucker for.

Those same eyes shimmered fearfully now, trying to read in mine if I had a plan to get us out of here. Boy, little Sam must’ve been regretting this field trip. The beam from the torch began to flicker and soon our only lightsource died. Sammy slammed the flashlight in the palm of his hand a couple of times, but it wasn’t faulty batteries, nor the wiring, that caused it to fail. I stood up, my brother mirroring me, as we alertly scanned the cemetery. Suddenly Sam yanked the sleeve of the leather jacket that Dad gave to me, and stared at a dark figure about thirty yards away; a bony old woman with dark messy hair hanging in front of her face. I gulped, my eyes widening, but before I could respond, the image vanished into thin air.

Seeing her was scary, but not knowing where she was now ignited a whole new level of anxiety. Shit! This was so not how I planned this. For a few terrifying seconds the spirit was gone and I gripped the pipe. “Listen to me, Sammy,” I said, keeping my voice down. “I need you to think of everything that Dad taught us so far. Don’t be scared, okay? I’ve got your back. We need to keep our heads together now.” He only nodded, jaw clamped shut as his eyes darted from shadow to shadow. Then, out of nowhere the elderly woman flicked into my sight, right behind Sam, claws out to get him.

“Sam, get down!”

Without hesitation he dropped as I swung the iron bar over his head, tearing through the spirit of Josephine. She dissolved into smoky fog and reappeared, obsessively focusing on Sam again. Then I remembered the connection the victims had: all were younger siblings. In shock, I watched my little brother stumble back until he tripped over the backpack at the edge of the grave and fell. “Sammy!”

The helplessness, the desperation; I could see it in his eyes. Even at ten years old, the little guy knew he was facing death. No way in hell I was gonna let that bitch touch my brother, so my instinct kicked in. Every fiber in me suddenly knew exactly what to do. I had to fulfill the task Dad gave to me when I carried my baby brother out of the fire ten years ago. I had to protect him, with my life if necessary. That urge pushed all the fear that I carried for this supernatural being out of the way and I marched on the ghost, my weapon above my head as I lunged at her. Furious, the spirit threw me off her back, but I got on my feet and held the line. “You wanna kill someone that bad? Pick someone your own size!” I challenged her, arrogantly spreading my arms.

A frightening hissing murmur erupted from her throat. Her eyes sank deeper into the dark holes of her sockets and her mouth opened so wide that I heard her jaw crack. Moving faster than my eyes could register, the spirit sped towards me and then froze. Suddenly I was lifted from the ground like a feather and I found myself in mid-air, being thrown several yards away. My course of flight was interrupted by a tree and I hit it head first. A sharp pain shot through my skull, a wave of nausea disorientated me. The impact made me lose long vital seconds.

Sammy? Where’s Sammy? It was all I could think of. I had to make sure the ghost kept her focus on me, I had to give Sam a fair chance to get away. Fighting to keep my ground I sat up at the roots of the tree, trying to blink the black spots and odd colors from my blurred vision. By the time I’d managed that, the spirit of Josephine Henrey was hovering over me and there was no way I could escape her grip. She placed her hand on my chest and I felt every muscle in my body tense, my heart rate increasing to a pace that was just plain unhealthy. The pain was unbearable and I cried out as her nails penetrated my skin. This is it, I realized. My first solo hunt was destined to be my last, I was going to die.

Then without a sign, the ghost backed off, arching her back as she let out a horrifying scream. Flames engulfed her until there was nothing left but a few burning embers that twirled up the night sky. Unsure of what just happened, I laid my head back against the bark, out of breath as the discomfort wore off. Then my eyes caught Sam, standing next to the grave from which an orange light shimmered on his features. His innocence didn't seem compromised by the setting nor by his actions, but nevertheless he looked years older. His hair, due for a haircut was messy, and the hoodie I used to wear got muddy at the cuffs, the sleeves too short for him now. Although my brother was only ten, right there on the spot I became aware of how fast he was growing up. That growth wasn't just physical, it was his bright mind too.

Sammy’s hazel eyes now jumped to me, still wild. “You okay?” “Yeah, yeah....” I muttered as I got to my feet. “What took you so long?” “You try starting a fire without a lighter or matchsticks with a angry spirit looking over your shoulder,” Sammy scoffed. He crouched down, collecting the empty jerrycan and his flashlight from the ground. After testing my balance first, I approached the fire pit slowly, feeling my forehead. “How did you light up Josy anyway?” I wondered. Sam picked up two pieces of rock and showed them to me. “Two strike stones. Oldest survival trick in the book. Dad taught us, remember?”

That he thought of Dad’s survival lessons was impressive, but how he stayed calm enough to get a spark while I was under attack by that spirit, I didn't know. I was sure, though, that Sam had what it took to become exceptionally good at this job. He would fill Dad with as much pride as I carried in that moment. Sammy was an outstanding hunter in the making. I smiled at my brother, but masked my true feelings with my usual bullshit. “Awesome. But then, of course, you had all the time in the world, while I had that ghost on my ass.” “No, I didn't,” Sam objected, as we started walking back to the road. “You would have been dead if I hadn't been so fast.” “I was handling it,” I shrugged. “Really, huh? Yeah, you dad everything perfectly under control.” “I did!” I kept it up, resting the wooden handle of the shovel on my shoulder. “Sure. You weren't scared either.”

Sammy now glanced up at me, victory shining in his eyes. Of course, I wasn't going to admit that I was so frightened I nearly pissed my pants when that spirit worked me over. Fact is, though, that I love my little brother, and it unleashed a new form of bravery I never thought I had. Fear never stood a chance. “I wasn't,” I returned, cocky. “Why did you scream like a girl then?” “I didn't scream like a girl!” “You so did.” “She was trying to rip my heart out, jerkface!” “You still screamed like a girl.” Bickering, we strolled down the path, our walks synchronized like siblings often do. When we arrived at the main road, the lamppost shined a light on my brother much like one does now on Halloween night in Palo Alto, California, twelve years later. Sam is taller, he even outgrew me, but he still has the same hair, the same lean posture and that same innocence. These days he wears clothes that fit him, not my hand me downs. He’s his own person now.

We just wrapped up a case considering a Woman In White, but since we didn't find our Dad like we set out to, I’m forced to drop him off at campus. An interview tomorrow morning is the reason our paths separate once again and there is nothing left for me but to face the road alone.

From behind the wheel of my car I watch him walk away towards the apartment he shares with his girlfriend Jessica and I sigh as I lay my arm on the back of the seat. The passenger’s side already seems cold and empty and a tightness in my chest brings to mind how badly I want him to get back in the car and help me find Dad. But I can’t, I can't expect him to. This is the life Sam wants. A normal one, without monsters, weapon training and shitty motels. How many hunters get out? How many hunters get to go to university and live a normal, apple pie life? Few, but Sam is one of them. And if there is anyone who deserves that chance, it’s him.

“Sam?” I call out. He turns around, questioning eyes meeting mine. There’s a breath that escapes his throat when he sways and shifts his balance, a trace of annoyance, even though he tries to hide it and be patient with me. His body language makes me hesitate, but I tell him either way.

“Y’know we made a hell of a team back there.” Sam keeps a hold of my gaze, then nods slightly as a small smile forms on his lips. “Yeah…” he acknowledges.

I grant him a few seconds to change his mind, but then I straighten my back, put the car in ‘drive’ and steer the Impala back onto the road. I bite down the frustration, my jaw flexing as I do so, doing my best to cast out my emotions. I've been here before, when Sam left for Stanford in the first place. An uneasy feeling settles in my stomach now that we’re apart, torn between what I’m supposed to do and what I truly want. Pain stings my heart now that I find myself alone, without my brother by my side. And as I drive off only accompanied by old tunes on cassette tapes, I don't see that Sam watches me leave. I don't hear the shuddering sigh that leaves his lips as the rumble of the engine fades in the distance.

I don’t know that deep down, Sam feels it, too.

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to send me a message or leave a comment!

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until-theend-oftheline · 6 years

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When They Had Nothing - Part 2: Boys and Their Fathers

Pairing: Stucky (Eventually)

Warnings: Alcohol Abuse, Child Abuse, Domestic Abuse, Distant father, Character Death, Implied PTSD, Kids arguing a bit.

Word Count: 3200ish

A/N: This is my new Stucky series. It starts with the boys as kids in Brooklyn and follows CAFA but from Bucky’s POV rather than Steve’s. I am sooo excited about this series which I have been working on for about 6 months as it’s written for @cabigbang

Art Inspired by WTHN by: @ischa-posts - thank you so much for taking the time to create art for my series! - Ischa also made the amazing drawing below

Betaed by: @blacktithe7 @emilyevanston and @ifyougetkilled-walk-it-off - Thank you so much for all your help!

***My fics are not to be saved nor posted on any other sites without my express written permission.***

MASTERLIST - CABIGBANG MASTERLIST + AO3 LINK

November 2nd, 1930

Over the passing two years, the boys had grown closer. At first, Bucky’s wrestling buddies had made fun of Steve, but Bucky wouldn’t have any of that. He put a solid stop to their remarks and cruel behavior within the first few months. Bucky had never abandoned his old friends, but they had never really become friends with Steve either. They accepted him hanging around just like they accepted that Rebecca did. She on the other hand quickly became fond of Steve, keeping him company whenever Bucky was busy with wrestling or when his other friends dragged him off. Bucky ignored the comments they would make when he excused himself to return to his sister and best friend’s side. All they saw when they saw Steve was a sickly, odd boy that their friend had taken pity on.

What they didn’t understand was that the relationship between the two boys had nothing to do with pity. It was everything but. The two of them seemed to raise each other up and make each other stronger. Steve brought out the righteous, brave side in Bucky that was always there but that he had often hidden away out of fear of getting in trouble with his old man. Granted, Steve’s do right attitude had earned him a few whippings over the years, but he had held his head high through all of them. Somehow Bucky suspected his dad respected him a bit more for it.

Bucky, on the other hand, was able to bring out the slightly more adventurous side in Steve, and even if many of their shenanigans and mischief were done under great protest from Bucky’s younger friend, it always ended with both of them laughing and having a great time. Together they were both at their best, and together they faced everything, including when the stock market crashed and the word they had known started to crumble around them.

Bucky’s family had never been rich, but they had been well off. His dad losing his job when the bank he worked security for closed meant they had to move out of their house and into an apartment building. Still, they weren’t poor. They had his mother’s monthly paychecks, and his dad, a decorated ex us lieutenant, didn’t have trouble finding security jobs to work from time to time. So even if their income wasn’t as high or as stable as it once was, they were still doing better than Steve’s family.

Joseph, Steve’s father, couldn’t hold down a job, and the work at the harbor became further and further in between. Even living in the small apartment they always had and keeping the light and heat on was becoming harder and harder on only a nurse’s paycheck. Bucky always suspected there was more to their troubles than just that judging by the smell of Joseph when he passed him on his way out the door when he was coming home. He had always been drinking. Bucky knew that even if Steve had never told him. He also knew he slapped Sarah around, and there was no doubt in Bucky’s mind that Steve’s slower movements at times didn’t have anything to do with his health.

Bucky had hated Joseph from the first moment he had laid eyes on him as a five-year-old boy, and that hatred didn’t ease as he grew older and got to know Sarah and Steve better.

Steve didn’t hate. He always chose to see the best in people, even when Bucky was sure there was none. He didn’t push it though. There was nothing Bucky could do but keep his eyes open and be there to catch Steve if he needed him too. Just like he always had and always would.

It was a promise Bucky would live to keep on the evening of November 2nd, 1930. The short November day had long ended, and 13-year-old Bucky was sitting on the living room floor reading when Rebecca’s voice called to his attention.

“Steve’s outside.”

Bucky instantly looked up at his sister, seeing the snow fall outside the window behind her and hoping with everything he had she was wrong. It was freezing outside, and Steve, as small as he was, had grown out of his winter jacket. He had no business being outside in the cold like this. Most people would get a cold while Steve being Steve would most likely end up with pneumonia if he stayed out in weather like this for too long.

“Where?” Bucky dropped his book and jumped from the floor to stand next to his sister sitting in the window case. She pointed, and Bucky’s heart dropped when he saw him. He was sitting against the wall curled into a ball, trying to keep himself warm. A part of Bucky wanted to open the window and yell at him, ask him what the hell he was thinking. He wanted to scold him for being out in the cold in the first place or for not knocking on their door the instant he got there, but a greater part of him was just concerned. Bucky ran across the apartment. He grabbed his jacket from the hallway but didn’t put it on. Instead, he kept it in his hands as he ran outside and along the building until he reached Steve. Without a word, Bucky knelt down, wrapping the jacket around his best friend, rubbing his arms up and down to try and get some warmth into him.

“Let’s get you inside punk.”

Bucky gently guided Steve, who still hadn’t looked up at him, onto his feet. Steve didn’t have to meet his eyes for Bucky to see the wince of pain his movement caused him. He was hurt but still trying his best for Bucky not to see. A silent war raised inside Bucky. He wanted to let go of his friend and run back to his house, shove Joseph’s drunk ass against the wall, and beat the crap out of him until he knew what it felt like.

It wasn’t what Steve wanted. Hell, Steve didn’t even want Bucky to know what his dad was really like, otherwise he would have told him already. So instead, Bucky rained in his anger and wrapped his arm around Steve leading him towards the door.

“You’re staying here tonight,” Bucky promised him, knowing that it would take some convincing with his mom, given Steve had come here on his own so late in the evening, but he also knew she trusted Bucky’s judgment when it came to the Rogers.

His family liked Steve and Sarah. They always did whatever they could to help them out with food or clothes. They never handed them money though. Bucky suspected it had more to do with them knowing those would end up in the hands of a bootlegger than it was them not being able to accept the handout.

It hadn’t taken Bucky as much convincing as he thought it would for his mom to call Steve’s mom at the hospital to let her know her son was spending the night at their house. Bucky had however been convinced Steve would need a trip to the hospital himself after George had handed the frail boy the brandy glass and told him to drink. Steve had been coughing and Bucky banging his back with a flat hand before rubbing gentle circles while Winifred had scolded her husband loudly for his stupidity.

After having gotten a bit of warm soup into Steve, with all the Barnes fussing around him for the better part of an hour, the apartment had gone quiet. Rebecca had been dragged to her own room by their mother while Bucky had grabbed the sofa cushions and arranged them on the floor next to his bed for Steve to sleep on.

The boys weren’t sleeping though. They were arguing about who was going to the baseball World Series and if the Dodgers were actually going to win that season. The conversation took a turn when Bucky asked Steve if he ever thought about moving away from Brooklyn. While Steve didn’t want to leave his home for good, he did dream with Bucky about places in the world they would wanna see. Like two explorers, they laughed and mapped out the adventurous they would go on together when they grew up.

Eventually, they both quieted down, but neither of them seemed to be able to sleep, so Bucky turned to his side looking down at Steve. He felt a pain to his heart when he thought about Steve suffering outside in the cold instead of knocking on their door. Bucky hated there was a part of Steve’s life that he felt the need to keep secret from him. They were best friends, and there shouldn’t be anything that Steve couldn’t talk to him about.

“Steve, why did you come here tonight?” Bucky asked and Steve froze staring into the ceiling without saying a word. Most other days Bucky would have backed off, but the image of Steve sitting frozen against the wall of the apartment building haunted him. Without giving it a second thought, Bucky slid off the bed and down next to his friend. Steve looked up at him in surprise which quickly turned into horror when Bucky started tugging at his shirt.

“What are you doing? Stop!” Steve fought back but was no match for Bucky’s strength. It wasn’t much of a struggle before Bucky managed to lift up Steve’s shirt to reveal the rainbow of bruises covering his chest and ribcage. The second Bucky saw, he let go of Steve, letting him pull down his shirt and scatter backward against the wall. Steve pulled his legs up under him, wrapping his arms around his knees, staring at Bucky with a look of utter betrayal on his face, and instantly Bucky regretted his actions.

“Steve, I’m sorry pal. I… I know he beats you and your mom okay? I know he drinks,” Bucky tried to explain himself. He couldn’t look into the painfilled blue eyes any longer, so he hung his head. “I just wanted to see how bad it was. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry,” Bucky pleaded with Steve without looking at him but meaning every single word. He had been frustrated with the secrets Steve had been keeping from him, but he had never meant to hurt him or betray his trust.

“I just needed to get out of there,” Steve sniffled, and Bucky looked up.

The betrayal was gone from his face and left was only pain. Bucky didn’t hesitate as he scurried towards his best friend, wrapping his arms around him, embracing him as tightly as he dared in fear of hurting him. It didn’t take long for Steve to return the hug, and the boys stayed quietly in each other’s arms, allowing the safety and reassurance that the two of them were okay wash over them. When they released each other, Bucky didn’t crawl back into bed. He stayed on the cushions on the floor next to Steve, promising him he would always have a place to stay whenever he needed it. He stayed awake listening to Steve’s breathing as he fell asleep next to him. He told himself he didn’t move back to the bed because he wanted to make sure Steve was alright. He wanted to keep him safe through the night, which was the truth, but it wasn’t the entire truth. He needed to be close to his friend just as much as Steve needed to be close to him. They were too old to sleep so tightly against each other, but it didn’t feel wrong to either of them and when Bucky finally fell asleep, he felt more at ease with himself than he had in a long time.

December 20th, 1931

Bucky’s room had become Steve’s hideout after that. He never left his place if his mom was home. He took the beatings to spare her, but whenever she was working evenings and nights, Steve was in Bucky’s room, hiding from the wrath of his drunken father. Over a year passed like that, and the two boys friendship grew stronger.

Bucky never questioned or pushed Steve again, but once in a while, he opened up to his best friend anyway. He told him about the times he had hidden in the back of the closet when his dad roamed the house with a baseball bat. He told Bucky of the times he had stepped between his parents to save his mother. With every story he heard, Bucky hated Joseph a little more. The hate within him built and built. So much so that the day the news of Joseph’s early demise reached the Barnes household, Bucky didn’t grieve. He smiled, relieved and happy that the bully had gotten what he had coming. Fallen into the East River and succumbing to hyperthermia seemed like a just end in Bucky’s eyes. He knew it was wrong, but picturing Joseph die a slow painful death brought him immense satisfaction. Bucky was a kid. He could protect Steve against the bullies at school, but he had never been able to protect him against the one at Steve’s own house. Knowing Steve would never suffer at the hands of his father again eased Bucky’s mind. Which was the reason Bucky was a little confused to see Steve and Sarah’s tears at the funeral a few days later. How could they grieve for someone that had only ever caused them harm? Bucky didn’t push the matter though. He stayed by Steve’s side. Close enough to touch without actually touching.

That entire day Steve didn’t leave Sarah’s side. He stayed close to his mom, making sure she had everything she needed, while Bucky stayed were Steve could always see him. Their eyes met every now and again. With every encouraging nod and smile Bucky mustered to send Steve, he got a relieved grateful one in return.

Even after everyone else had left and Steve helped his mom to bed, Bucky stayed that day. He knew that Steve was holding himself together. He was being strong for his mom and for everyone around him, but Bucky also wanted him to know that he didn’t have to be. Steve didn’t have to hold back a single emotion when it was just the two of them. He didn’t care if Steve wanted to grieve the man that Bucky hated. He just wanted to be there for him and for Steve to know he didn’t have to be the strong one for a little while.

No words were uttered between the two boys as Bucky followed Steve out the door, sitting down next to him on the front stairs. He just took the two sodas Steve handed him. Bucky opened them both, handing one back to Steve without a word. He wanted to ask a million questions, but he didn’t. He just waited for Steve to be ready to speak on his own accord.

“He wasn’t always like that,” Steve said quietly. “Not according to mom anyway. I don’t remember anything else.”

Bucky’s eyes rested on Steve as he moved a little closer, letting Steve feel him against his side. Bucky didn’t ask. He just waited. Steve wanted to talk to him, but he needed a minute. Bucky knew that as much as Steve always saw the good in people, trusting didn’t always come easy. Bucky was his only friend, and truthfully, Steve was Bucky’s only friend too. Yes, he surrounded himself with a lot of boys at school. Girls were starting to take an interest, which was very much returned, but Steve was different. He knew Bucky in a way that no one else did. Steve knew what Bucky was thinking even before he opened his mouth. No one else understood him or even tried to understand him the way that Steve always seemed to. Honestly, Bucky wasn’t sure he wanted anyone else to anyway.

“Mom said he smiled a lot before the war. He took her dancing and made her laugh. He never hurt anyone, especially not her.” Steve didn’t look at Bucky. He just stared down at the bottle in his hands. “He lost everyone in the war. He saw things I guess…”

“My dad went to war to Steve. He’s not exactly easy to live with, but he never broke my bones,” Bucky spoke in a low voice.

He did his best to mask his disdain for the dead man, but it was hard after having seen the array of colors on Steve’s body or having supported him when he walked around on a broken leg. Steve was always sick. He was frail. The man that was supposed to look out for him had been the one that had done him the most harm while Bucky had been powerless to do anything about it. He could protect Steve from the bullies their own age or even older, but how was he supposed to have kept him safe from a parent that decided Steve and Sarah were as good a punching bag as any?

“I know Buck. I’m not saying that what he did isn’t on him. I’m just saying that there is a reason for it,” Steve’s voice was more firm now, and he looked up, meeting Bucky’s eyes. They looked at each other for a while, before Bucky nodded, accepting that maybe war had done something to Joseph neither of the boys could understand.

Bucky took a gulp of the soda, staring out into the cool afternoon air, wondering what his father might have been like before the war. George wasn’t abusive like Joseph. He didn’t drink, but he was dominant and bossy. It was his rules all the time and no matter what Bucky did, he never felt as if it was good enough in the eyes of his father.

“I wonder how my dad was before the war?” Bucky muttered, feeling guilty the moment the words had left his lips. He should be comforting Steve right now, and no matter how difficult George was, it was nothing compared to the things Joseph had done to Steve.

Steve didn’t judge Bucky though. Of course, he didn’t. He didn’t even ask what he meant, because despite Bucky not talking about how he felt pressured by his father, Steve seemed to know. Instead of saying anything, Steve just reached out, taking Bucky’s hand, giving it a squeeze, causing Bucky to look down at their hands. This should feel weird. They were most certainly too old for this kind of thing, and they were guys, not chicks. Guys weren’t supposed to hold hands like that, but Steve didn’t seem to care. The warmth rushing from their joined hands throughout Bucky’s body, causing his heart to beat a little faster as he squeezed Steve’s hand back.

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moodboardinthecloud · 3 years

Text

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

Ursula K. Le Guin

Not just the bottle of gin or wine, but bottle in its older sense of container in general, a thing that holds something else.

That’s right, they said. What you are is a woman. Possibly not human at all, certainly defective. Now be quiet while we go on telling the Story of the Ascent of Man the Hero.

The novel is a fundamentally unheroic kind of story. Of course the Hero has frequently taken it over, that being his imperial nature and uncontrollable impulse, to take everything over and run it while making stern decrees and laws to control his uncontrollable impulse to kill it. So the Hero has decreed through his mouthpieces the Lawgivers, first, that the proper shape of the narrative is that of the arrow or spear, starting here and going straight thereand THOK! hitting its mark (which drops dead); second, that the central concern of narrative, including the novel, is conflict; and third, that the story isn’t any good if he isn’t in it.

Finally, it’s clear that the Hero does not look well in this bag. He needs a stage or a pedestal or a pinnacle. You put him in a bag and he looks like a rabbit, like a potato.

That is why I like novels: instead of heroes they have people in them.

It is a strange realism, but it is a strange reality.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ursula-k-le-guin-the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction

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multi-fandom-geek-deal-with-it · 6 years

Text

Hi, I’m Ginny Weasley and This is my story-Fanfiction

AN: Hey there, I am Ermory nice to meet Y'all. So this story is a story that is originally translated from Italian so I am terribly sorry if grammar or dialogue that comes from the book is wrong.

Disclaimer: I do not own either the plot or the characters, the plot is from EmPotter and the characters are from JK Rowling's mind

Link to the original story: https://efpfanfic.net/printsave.php?action=printall&sid=1166371#17

Fanfiction Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12927209/1/I-m-Ginny-Weasley-and-this-is-my-story

Prologue

The frogs croaked in the small green pond, the hens below amusedly cackled here and there creating havoc among the chickens, as the warm summer breeze blew pleasantly, rippling through trees and grass. A red-haired figurine was facing her window sill, absently looking out over the garden at the pond - the same pond in which her elder brothers had tried to drown her if it had not been for his mother's hoarse screams.

Ginny Weasley had just turned eleven: she was a thin, petite girl, her pretty face sprayed with freckles, below her big brown eyes and thick red hair: a flame red that went on orange, which Ginny liked to compare with the sunset.

Although she had received the letter a few days ago, the girl wanted to try herself to control her magic, and, furrowing her brows in contraction, made the petals of flowers on her windowsill open and close like a kind of submarine coral.

If only her mum had seen it!

Her mother would have certainly disintegrated her and since Ginny had received her letter she had become, if possible, even more, paranoid and hysterical. Not to mention the thrashing screams thrown into the kitchen when the girl had waved her Hogwarts letter all over the house, shrieking with happiness.

One thing that had made her crazy was the fact that her older brothers, Fred, George and Ron, had been spending hours making bets to guess which house their sister was going to end up with.

In short, it was bad on their part to reiterate that she would never be a Ravenclaw because she was too stupid, and the girl nearly burst into tears and cursed for that because now she should have to learn that her brothers liked to joke, even if she was not sure that this was really a joke.

Although it was hard to make her parents proud when their six sons had already done everything before her, the little Weasley had confidence in herself and would never let them down.

"Empty beds!" the mother's voice from the courtyard echoed in the room. "You could have crashed ... I was out of anguish ... But what did you care?"

What else had her brothers done?

Although curious to immediately rush down to investigate what they had accomplished this time, she was too angry. Angry with them for the fact that they excluded her yet again, like playing Quidditch.

She dominated her impulse of curiosity, giving way to pride and arrogance dominate, but she could not. After five minutes, she had opened the door impatiently and ran downstairs.

"The sky was overcast, mum"

"Do not talk with your mouth full!"

"But they were starving him to death, mum"

"The same is for you!"

Ginny quickly entered the kitchen, even more, intrigued by the words she had just heard, but stopped short: her eyes were immediately drawn to a boy, a boy who had no red hair of the Weasley, a boy who looked incredibly like... the famous Harry Potter …

She could not believe it.

The mysterious boy turned to the girl and Ginny saw that it was him, she let out a little scream and ran away again.

She made the stairs two at a time, even three at risk of falling and breaking all her teeth, and immediately shut the door to her room hoping not to have attracted too much attention, even if it seemed impossible. The girl noticed that the floorboard outside the door is still bobbing, because she heard the noise against the wooden door.

She tried to focus on the 'Ginevra's Room' name plate to change it in her mind - she hated her entire name of baptism (not to mention the second 'Molly'), but failed.

So, Ron, Fred and George had flown to Harry Potter's house to take him here to the Burrow? Was that why my mother was so angry? Yes, and Ginny should have imagined it. She had heard her brother scoff at the fact that his best friend did not answer the letters, while a certain Hermione Granger did. The reason for the lack of answers to all those letters, Ron attributed to Harry's bad guardians. She had to expect something like that.

However, at the moment, it's needless to say that her little heart was beating at a thousand miles per hour: she had seen the most famous wizard of the world, live!

Not that she had not seen him before, because Ginny Weasley and Harry Potter had met once on the first of September of the previous year, at the King's Cross station before taking the run-up and emerging on the track nine and three quarters.

"Excuse me"

A trembling voice came faintly behind Ginny's shoulders and the little girl turned around: a thin boy, with messy black hair and shining green eyes, looked at her and her family through his round glasses.

Ginny stared at him for a long time, childishly attracted by that boy ... but she did not have the slightest idea that it was Harry Potter. She knew nothing about him but it seemed he had already left a mark in her mind ...

"Hey mum, let's see if you can guess who we just met on the train!" exclaimed Fred excitedly, getting off the train. "You know that black-haired boy who was near us at the station, do you know who he is?"

"Who is it?"

"Harry Potter!" the twins answered in chorus.

Ginny's heart gave a somersault.

Who would have thought that the boy she had long observed was Harry Potter?

"Oh, mum, can I get on the train to see him?" the little girl asked her mother in her most desperately pleading tone, because the boy's eyes had almost stunned her. "Mum, please ..."

"You've already seen him, Ginny, and that poor boy is not a zoo animal!" the mother blurted out and Ginny told herself that this was absolutely a lost case, and that it was probably not worth the trouble.

She thought desperately that maybe he would see her again in passing in the corridors at Hogwarts, when it was also her time to go to school, the following year …

But she was wrong. He would see her again, yes, but at her house for a month!

She turned towards the window and leaned over to see what was going on downstairs, past the kitchen garden that could be seen outside her bedroom: the twins and Ron were teaching Harry Potter how to get rid of the garden gnomes.

She even had the idea to get on the desk for a better view, but then told herself it was a bad idea. If Mum came right in then she could even think of suicide! She would not have thought the girl was looking at Harry Potter, right? Even if she had done nothing but talk about him all summer with her brothers ...

Daydreams of the two falling in love reigned in Ginny's mind indefinitely …

Life with Harry Potter at the Burrow was a paradise for Ginny Weasley, even if the girl did not remember not to making a fool of herself in the boy's presence: she tended to drop everything when he was around and so appeared more clumsy than usual; she got used to going purple and not saying anything, which was not in her nature; otherwise, if she had to say something, it was mostly nonsense.

But the worst moment was when Ginny caught Harry looking at himself in the mirror above the fireplace, and the mirror roared, 'Put your shirt inside your pants, shaman!'. Ginny began to laugh like crazy, much to the irritation of Percy (who was trying to study who knows what) and the impatience of his brothers.

On Wednesday, Mrs. Weasley woke up early to go to Diagon Alley. But at that moment, the group, which also included a certain Hermione Granger and her parents, had split up.

Ginny and her mother, after going to Gringotts with the others, were walking alone into Diagon Alley to buy all the school supplies that she needed - except the books, which they would buy all together at Flourish and Blotts.

"Mum, Madam Malkin's!"

"No, we will not go there," said the mother. "Your uniform will be second-hand. Remember, we've already talked about it!"

"But mom ..."

"Ginny, do not act spoiled! I'm sorry, but this is decided. Here we are!"

She dragged her daughter into a shabby-looking shop that seemed to be standing solely by magic. If the mother had not dragged her there, Ginny would never have noticed that there was a store at all: it didn't have a sign, and inside there were very few lights that made it seem all dark and claustrophobic.

"Hogwarts?" asked a smiling little witch. "I have what you need ... follow me, follow me"

Ginny obeyed and followed her into the back, where she was made to try the ugliest tunics she had ever seen. Even those of Ron (which were also second-hand) were not so ruined! In the end, she had to settle for a grey and little frayed tunic, as well as a pointed hat (as the list said) a pair of gloves similar to those in dragon leather, and a winter coat.

Leaving the shop, Mrs. Weasley noticed her daughter's afflicted face.

"Well, when you grow up I'll buy you a new, shiny black tunic," she said encouragingly, and Ginny smiled as she consulted her list.

"Um ... uniform, textbooks ... accessories yes, then: brass scales"

"We already have it at home"

"Telescope"

"You will use Bill's"

"Set of glass or crystal tubes"

"Charlie had so many ... and we do not even miss the main ingredients for the potions!"

"A cauldron?"

"We have to buy this, the store must be right ... here, around the corner"

They entered a shop crowded by students, which was full of scales, telescopes of mixed sizes (Ginny was immediately fascinated by one that was very large) as well as cauldrons of all kinds: from solid gold to pewter.

Despite the crowd that were there, they got out quickly. Ginny, in the joy of having finally bought something new, bumped into a tall, thin girl with thick, brown hair and big hazel eyes, making the girl's cauldron shatter by her feet.

There was a terrible noise and everyone turned to them: some boys, who also seemed to be of the age of Hogwarts if not of Ginny's age, giggled loudly. Ginny helped the unfortunate girl pick up her cauldron, ignoring the puffs and laughter of the others. Mrs. Weasley shouted reproach at her daughter as the other girl's mother tried telling her that it could happen to anyone.

"Sorry ..." Ginny muttered embarrassedly, red to the root of her flaming hair. "Did you get hurt?"

"Oh, it's nothing!" the girl replied gently.

"Let's go, Ginny!" Mrs. Weasley hissed.

"Demelza, let's go too: this place is too crowded" echoed the girl's mother, much softer than Mrs. Weasley, and the two girls looked at each other.

"Then we'll meet at Hogwarts," said the girl named Demelza, with a gentle smile.

"Yes ... see you!" Ginny greeted her and hurried out of the shop hoping that the crowd will already forget everything.

They did not talk about what had happened in the store, and Ginny only tried to imagine what was going on in the mother's head: having children making more noise than a Centauri herd was exasperating.

They walked for more than ten minutes without saying a word, only throwing occasional glances at each other.

They passed theEeylops Owl Emporium, which sold all kinds of animals, though owls dominated. Ginny's eyes were immediately caught by a white and fluffy cat, but did not dare to breathe: she know that her mother would never buy it. They also went by the pharmacy and then back to the Leaky Cauldron, then Ginny, stopped short and rushed to the window of Quality Quidditch supplies.

"Oh, Quidditch!" blurted her mother with disapproval.

"Look mum, look! The new Nimbus Two thousand One! Mum, look!"

The handle of the racing broom gleamed in the sunlight, and it was the last one still unsold. Ginny, knowing as much as she did about Quidditch and brooms, saw from a glance that it was far ahead of the old Two thousand model.

"Just like your brothers ... come on, let's not waste time with these broomsticks!" Mrs. Weasley said impatiently, but Ginny did not seem wanting to move from the window. "Come on, you can't even ride a broom like that!"

How many things you do not know about me, thought the girl irritably. Her mother didn't know that it was since she was six that she snatched, whenever she could, her brothers' brooms to train for Quidditch: she wanted to be prepared for when, one day, she would present herself to audition for her House at Hogwarts.

Her mother now got mad and Ginny told herself maybe it was time to move.

They continued to the end of the street, where a cramped and dirty shop stood. A sign, with faded golden, said Ollivanders, wands of superior quality from 382 BC.

The two entered and a little bell announced their entry.

The shop was just like itself on the outside and an old man with big light eyes peeked out of the gloom.

"Hello, Mr. Ollivander!" Mrs. Weasley said cheerfully.

"Good morning," he replied softly. "So what do we have today? A Weasley, is it not ?"

Mrs. Weasley nodded vigorously.

"What's your name, miss?"

Ginny stared at him puzzled, then said her name specifying to call her with the diminutive.

"Oh, Ginny ... short for Ginevra ..." Mr. Ollivander pulled out a long measure tape. "So, what's the arm with which you use your wand, Miss Weasley?"

"The right one, sir," she replied.

The wand maker set about taking measurements from the shoulder to Ginny's fingertips, then from the wrist to the elbow, from the shoulder to the dusty floor, from the knee to the armpit and finally took the head circumference while Ginny had her fist in her mouth to stifle the laughs: her mother gave her a look of pure threat.

"Here, that's enough," Ollivander announced. "Miss Weasley, try this: maple and dragon-heartstring, ten inches, very flexible."

Ginny took it, with shaking hands, and waved it.

The disaster was imminent: the shelves burst into the air and Ollivander snatched the wand from her hands.

"Try this"

The girl obeyed but caused the destruction of an oil lamp.

Ginny tried, tried, tried again and finally ...

"Eleven-and-a-half inches, willow and phoenix tail feathers." Ollivander handed her a beautiful black wand and Ginny grabbed it.

She realized that it was the right one when a sudden heat ran through her arm with a pleasant tingling and from the tip of her new wand a trail of red and blue sparks emanated like miniature fireworks. Mrs. Weasley smiled and Ollivander had a satisfied expression on his face, he then said in a croaking voice:

"It's the wand that chooses the wizard"

After paying seven galleons of gold for Ginny's wand, the two hurried through Diagon Alley to reach the others at Flourish and Blottsfor the textbooks: Ginny obviously would have them secondhand, like all the stuff she owned.

They met Fred and George in Gambol and Japes Wizarding Joke Shop and Percy's in a crowded, junk-filled shop, and they headed off to the bookstore where they were sure they would find Mr. Weasley in the company of Mr. Granger.

"Oh, that sounds like a fascinating book," Fred mumbled, chuckling and pointing to Percy's new book: Prefects who gained power, A study of Hogwarts prefects and their later careers.

"Stop it," he snapped.

"Oh-ho, very ambitious, boy," George said back.

"Stop that nonsense"

"But Percy!" Ginny intervened, who could not help eavesdropping on their conversation, leaving her mother's hand. "Did you not always say you wanted to be Minister of Magic once Fudge was dead?"

"Ginny, for God's sake!" her brother hissed, looking around in terror. "Shut up too and walk with mum!"

The girl could not understand.

They walked for more than five minutes (Fred, George and Percy argued all the way but that wasn't really new) and reached the bookshop, which was crowded with an unusually long line. The boys could not figure out what that crowd of middle-aged ladies like Mrs. Weasley was doing, but Ginny had guessed it from a big sign, hanging from the windows of the upper floor:

Today, from 12.30 to 2.30

GILDEROY LOCKHART

will sign copies of his autobiography

Magical me.

Mrs. Weasley was now fixing her hair very nervously.

"What's wrong with her?" Fred said, widening his eyes, amused.

Ginny laughed and pointed to the sign.

"Oh, damn it!" Fred moaned, too disgusted to laugh, "If I knew I would have came in ..."

"Guys, here you are, good!" said her mother while Ron, Harry and their friend joined them. "In a minute we'll see ..."

The girl craned her neck: Gilderoy Lockhart emerged from the shelves and sat down gracefully at a table. The wizard had a head of blonde and wavy hair, and wore a turquoise dress bringing out his eyes. He showed a radiant smile, while winking to every witch.

Ginny blinked, thinking he was really beautiful.

The first words of the man were:

"Is it ever possible, but is that Harry Potter?"

Ginny turned to the boy but Lockhart leaned forward, took Harry by the arm, and dragged him until he found the boy with himself in the front row: Harry went as red as Weasley's hair; Lockhart shook his hand; the photographer of the Daily Prophet took countless photos one after the other; and the audience burst into loud applause.

Ginny joined the applause in an excited way and Hermione Granger smiled at her, clapping her hands. Ron gave her a look of profound contempt as Fred and George laughed at Percy, who was livid, covered with dense gray smoke from the cameras.

It seemed that the vision of Harry and Lockhart was perfect.

"Smile, Harry!" the man exclaimed, exposing his very white teeth. "You and I, together, are worthy of the front page. Ladies and gentlemen what an extraordinary moment this is! When young Harry entered Flourish and Blotts this morning to buy my autobiography, which I am now happy to present to him", the crowd applauded again. "He had no idea that he would go away with the entire collection of my works, for free. Ladies and gentlemen, I have the great pleasure and pride of announcing that in September I will assume the position of Defense against the Dark Arts Professor at the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry of Hogwarts! "

Lockhart put a stack of books in the arms of the boy. Harry came out of the crowd, staggering slightly and approaching Ginny, who clutched her cauldron (full of second-hand books that were bought by her mother) in her fingers so hard that her knuckles went white. Harry Potter threw her Lockhart's books into the container, gasping from the effort.

"You take these, I'll buy them ..." he muttered.

"I bet you liked it, did you not, Potter?" Suddenly said a shuffling voice, and Ginny turned: a thin, pale boy with a pointed chin and blond hair that was nearly white turned to Harry mockingly with a perfect grin on his face. "The famous Harry Potter can not even go into a bookstore without making the front page!"

Ginny stared at the boy: how dare he? Now it was not Harry's fault that even a famous writer of works, Gilderoy Lockhart, admired him because he was famous. She noticed that she hated that blond to death and didn't even know why that affirmation gave her so much trouble, so much that ...

"Leave him alone, he did not want all this!" she snapped and the boy turned to her.

"Oh, look Potter ... you got yourself a girlfriend!" he exclaimed and Ginny blushed violently.

Why had she intervened? Yes, the blond's statement had bothered her particularly without a reason and it had been very brave of little Weasley to rebuke him, since it was the first time she went by saying something logical in the presence of Harry Potter... but now why did she have to become an all-one with her red hair?

"Guys, it's crazy inside, let's go out!" said Mr. Weasley struggling through the crowd, with Fred and George on his heels.

"Well, well, well ... Arthur Weasley," said another shuffling voice, and Ginny looked up.

"Lucius" greeted her father in an icy tone.

A man identical to the blond boy was standing behind him and holding a hand on his shoulder with a sneer exactly identical to what his son had: Lucius? Then it was him Lucius Malfoy! But then... the kid with the pointed chin must had been Draco Malfoy, the bitter enemy of her brother Ron!

"Overwork at the Ministry, Arthur? All those inspections ... I hope they pay overtime," said Lucius Malfoy mockingly, and taking the second-hand Transfiguration Practical Guide for Beginners from Ginny's cauldron, then continued. "Of course not, what's the point of dishonoring the wizard name if they do not pay enough?"

"We have a very different idea about what dishonors the wizard name, Malfoy"

"It seems clear to me ... Going around with Muggles ... I thought this family could not fall any further"

Ginny opened her eyes, mortified and horrified, then her cauldron flew in the air: her father had rushed onto the man, hurling him against a shelf while dozens of books fell on their heads.

"Take it, dad!" Fred and George shouted in unison.

"No, Arthur, no!" Mrs. Weasley shrieked.

Ginny, Harry, Draco, Ron, and Hermione all stared at the scene, frozen and speechless as the crowd withdrew: Hagrid was telling others to step aside as he separated the two injured men. Mr. Weasley was cut on his lip and Mr. Malfoy in one eye, still clutching Ginny's Transfiguration book.

He looked at her with malignant contempt and gave it back to her.

"Keep this little girl ... take your book ... it's all your father can give you!"

Ginny, whose eyes were full of tears, thought she had never had a worse day than that.

When they got home, Ginny immediately dived into her bed, flipping through the pages of her second-hand books with curiosity and forgetting what happened at Flourish and Blotts even though she did not really want to read them all like Hermione Granger, whom Ron had often talked about how much of a nerd she was.

She was amusedly went through the images in Thousand Herbs and Magic Mushrooms, then took the Transfiguration one, and something slipped out from inside, landing with a thud on the floor.

Ginny picked up a diary.

It had a shiny, shabby black cover with a date that was fifty years old and the girl wondered if it was worth opening. Her father had told her so many strange stories, like a little book that burned your eyes when you opened it, or there were books like Sonnets of a Sorcerer that caused the unfortunate to speak in verse for a lifetime ... maybe Ginny would have made the end of the old witch who lives in Bath: forced to stay with her freckled nose glued to the pages.

But mum would never have put a diary like that in her cauldron!

Ginny opened it and noticed that on the front page was written 'T.M. Riddle '. She flipped through the pages but realized, with dismay, that there was nothing written. The pages were yellowed and was visibly empty.

So her mom had not bought it! Someone had bought it to the bookstore and in the joy of seeing Gilderoy Lockhart had forgotten it in her cauldron. Yes, it had to be like that.

The girl still flipped through the pages impatiently, as if expecting to see any message appear, even just 'Dear Diary' or "Eleven thirty: Hogwarts library' or maybe a name, a surname and an address- but nothing. So, she took her quill and ink and wrote something on it.

My name is Ginny Weasley.

Ginny's eyes widened: her writing was gradually disappearing, as if the page had been of an absorbing material. She felt the point where her quill had made contact to see what was wrong but quickly withdrew her hand: on the page, there were forming other words she had never written and with a different writing from hers, a firm and neat writing.

Hi, Ginny Weasley. My name is Tom Riddle. How did you get my diary?

Her eyes in fright and surprise, and went almost close to screaming.

How the hell did that journal answer? What was she supposed to do? Should she show it to someone before using it? What was that little diary that looked so harmless, dangerous or bewitched?

She could even hear the screams of her mother inside her head; her father's reproaches; the snorts of her brother Percy who repeated to her that she had been too unwary, that she ought to grow up someday... but she could also hear the applause and the congratulations of the twins for listening to her instinct, without worrying too much about the consequences, like a real Gryffindor.

I found it by mistake in my cauldron in Diagon Alley, she replied. When I went to buy school supplies for Hogwarts.

Oh, Hogwarts! First year?

Yes, it's my first year but I already know a lot of things: I have six brothers older than me.

Are you excited?

Very. I've dreamed of going to Hogwarts since my older brother went there. But I must say that I'm also a little nervous for this first year.

Why should you be?

Well, I have to live up to my parents' expectations: Bill was a head boy; Charlie captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team; Percy is a Prefect; Fred and George are a bit 'combines school disasters but have good grades and everyone loves them; and Ron has a fantastic best friend. Do you understand? In the family, it is expected that I will live up to the others but if I succeed then, nobody will consider it a great thing. Above all, because I am the only girl. I just want to make my parents proud and I will succeed in spite of everything!

Oh, but you're very smart, Ginny Weasley! Tom Riddle commented. We must always have confidence in ourselves, that is how we achieve our goals and goals.

Ginny smiled happily: gullible, idiotic, paranoid ... the diary was absolutely harmless!

What was wrong with a diary on which someone had imposed a spell to make sure that it answered and that, moreover, it gave advice? It could not do any harm, in fact, it would be of great help to let off the pressure and to tell all the things she could not say to anyone but it, which certainty would not have opened his mouth otherwise. It had been fortunate that someone had forgotten it.

Sbe decided not to discuss it with anyone, a wise decision too, because surely Fred and George would have confiscated it: an object so curious certainly would not go unnoticed, especially in the eyes of all her brothers.

"GINNY! LUNCH IS READY!" her mother cried out suddenly and the girl winced.

I have to go, they're calling me for lunch. See you soon! she threw down a few lines and answered her mother.

"COMING!"

But before doing anything, she hid the diary beneath the bed for good: that thing was hers. It was the first time that she possessed something exclusively of her own and she would give it her heart.

So that is the end of the first chapter, nice. Do you like all the hints?

Please do a review but don't be too harsh, English is not my mother language and I still need an editor, I will try to update every week but I have my GCSEs starting in two days, so wish me luck.

Again the link to the original story in Italian is this: ?action=printall&sid=1166371

Have a nice day

~Ermory

Editor: Helena Haansilton

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deddyinfo · 3 years

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How to Tackle Problems in the Vegetable Garden | Ultimate Gardening Skills Series

Hello and a very warm welcome back to the garden. Gardening is a relatively simple process. However, during the growing season, we can often come up against challenges that can hinder our progress or even worse cause stress and overwhelm. And these could be things for example pest issues, not having enough time, or realizing that you’re lacking a particular resource, for example compost. So in this video, I’m going to show you the method that I use to turn challenges into opportunities that will benefit your garden for years to come.

When I initially come across a challenge in the garden, it usually goes one of two ways. It’s either an opportunity or it’s a bit of a hassle, and I’ll give you a prime example of a hassle and a challenge. And these beds are nearly 20 years old, and you can see that they are falling apart and need replacing this winter. And initially, I just see this as a hassle. But I always challenge myself to see what opportunity can come even if at first there’s a lot of negative feelings.

And whether a challenge is a hassle or an opportunity, I use the same method to create a plan and to bring clarity and purpose to overcoming that particular challenge. The method consists of three key parts which are to recognise, research, and then respond. So I’ve recognised that I need to solve the issue with these broken raised beds. Then I need to research, and this is where I will find a solution and potentially opportunities that can come from solving this solution.

And the third is to simply respond.

This method provides you with a great template to create a solid plan to overcome that challenge and make it feel a whole lot more achievable. The first step is simple, and that’s to recognise that you face a challenge. And this usually happens when you hit a barrier or you become frustrated. I can remember back in 2018 during the summer when we had that terrible drought, I faced a real barrier which was running out of water and not having enough water for our seedlings.

With running out of water, I needed to find a low-cost solution to make sure that the same thing wouldn’t happen in future years and I’d have water for the seedlings.

And when you are faced with a challenge that’s a bit of a hassle or is kind of a negative one like running out of water, it’s really easy to try and solve it and approach it there and then. But this is where mistakes can happen that can be more costly both in terms of time, money, and effort later on down the line. So it’s vital that you step back and give yourself a bit of time to research to find a solution and to bring clarity to what needs to be done so this will minimise potential mistakes and maximise the potential opportunity that comes from solving that challenge.

The first thing you want to do is get yourself your notepad and just make a note of the challenge that you’re facing. However, this isn’t usually necessary because with me if I have a gardening challenge, it’s always there looming in the back of my mind.

And then go make yourself a tea or coffee, and find a nice space to sit down, and get a blank bit of paper. And what you want to do is write the challenge in the middle of the bit of paper. So you have your challenge in the middle of the paper, and now you want to just do a bit of a brain dump and a bit of a brainstorm. So just ask all of the questions that you have related to the challenge.

What kind of budget if you need to buy anything do you have for it?

What are the questions that you have unanswered that you want to find out? And what potential opportunities and also drawbacks as a result? You can use this bit of paper to then influence the research that you do. You now want to use free resources to help you find a solution and to answer all of the questions that you have regarding solving the issue of the challenge or the potential opportunity and the best way of going about. Now things like books that you have, gardening books are a great place to look at.

Also the internet, that’s a wonderful place. But if I was to recommend one resource, it would be other gardeners in your area. There is nothing more powerful than the knowledge of gardeners in the same climate as you who have probably or are perhaps experiencing the same kind of challenges that you do.

And it’s great to just ask for their advice, or their recommendations, or they may give you almost a different way of thinking or looking at that potential challenge. And you want to end up with at least three potential solutions, preferably a couple more, and then whittle them down to the one that makes the most sense to you.

Let’s look at the drought example. The first thing that I explored was the potential of getting some more big tanks like this. However, it’s pretty difficult to carry big things like this down our driveway. So I looked to other solutions such as bladder packs for example. And then I remember speaking to Liz and going and seeing her garden, and she had IBC tanks.

And then I did a bit of research, and I saw that these were a really affordable solution so long as there weren’t any harmful chemicals in them before. And that’s exactly what I did. I bought six IBC tanks for the fraction of the price of what the equivalent water tank would cost. And it’s always a really good idea if you do feel that you have the golden solution to just sleep on it for a night and to come back the next day because often you need to give your brain a little bit of time to process, and that will just draw out any final questions or worries you might have about that solution.

Once you’ve agreed on that one main solution that you want to go for, it’s time for the most important step of the whole process.

And that is to put it down in a clear and concise manner to act as your blueprint as you respond to that challenge. So what you need to do is get yourself a blank piece of paper. And on this, you’re firstly gonna write out what the challenge is. And then you’re gonna have one to two paragraphs detailing what the solution is that you’ve decided to overcome and solve the challenge or the potential problem. And then after you’ve done that, you’re just going to write down what the outcome is.

So just have a bit of a think about how you’ll feel once the challenge is completed and what kind of benefits you’ll get.

And here’s an example of what I did of the blueprint that I wrote for the drought issue and how I was looking at overcoming that challenge. Challenge, our water supplies could dry out again if we have another severe drought, and I don’t have enough water storage to keep seedlings going for at least two months. The solution, I need to purchase six used IBC tanks for the equivalent water storage capacity of 6,000 liters of water or 600 full watering cans. The tanks must only have contained safe material beforehand, and I will not take a risk in purchasing contaminated tanks.

The tanks will be placed at the north end of the new garden and supported on top of heat-treated pallets to allow space to fit watching can underneath. And I will need to buy a tap that will fit the thread size of the IBC tanks. The tanks will be filled from one inlet that carries water from the stream on the other side of the parking area. (water trickles) I’ll use a small pipe to attach each IBC tank.

Once the first tank is full, the connection pipe will start filling the second and so on.

This needs to be completed by February to not interfere with spring sowings and to be filled with water and ready for action as and when needed. And then the outcome. Once completed, I will have storage capacity of 6,000 liters of water ready for action in case of a drought. And I will feel far less stressed when dry weather does stay around longer than usual. So from this example, you can see that I’ve got all of the basics covered for what needs to be done, and the important thing is to keep it concise.

So it’s an easy reference point as you’re doing the challenge or looking for products that you might need to just quickly go back, have a quick glance at the page, and then you can carry on with the project. And you can add in a bit more detail if you want underneath. But the important thing is just have a bite-size blueprint and plan.

And finally, it’s vital that you add a target date because you don’t want to kind of not have a target date and keep pushing it back. And suddenly you’re left with a big buildup of challenges that all need to be solved around the same time.

Once you’ve completed your plan, it’s time to respond, and put everything into action, and complete what’s needed to overcome that certain challenge. So I’ve got five IBC tanks here for 5,000 liters, and there’s another IBC tank in the garden. Now just a couple of tips. Firstly, if you’re doing it and it involves a lot of materials, and a lot of moving, and perhaps heavier things, then it’s always worth getting someone else involved.

The extra pair of hands and someone to talk to as you’re doing it makes it a lot more enjoyable.

Now if you’re doing it by yourself, one of the simplest things you can do is to look at the big project and then create a very simple to do list of lots of small, manageable, bite-sized tasks. And then you can just cross them out as you go along, and that’ll be the motivation to push you forward in terms of completing it. Now if you go into the video description and have a quick look, I’ve included two other blueprints that I’ve created for other gardening challenges.

So you can use those as well as this video of recognise, research and then respond to help create a really solid template for whenever you come across challenges in the garden. And if you enjoyed this type of content which is looking more towards being more efficient, and productive, and time management, then you’ll really loved my course More Food, Less Effort.

It’s an online course designed around how to make you a more efficient gardener. So if you want to check it out, head to morefoodlesseffort.com.

And in the meantime, I will see you again next week, goodbye..

Read More: Do’s and Dont’s of Seedling Care – Indoor Gardening Tips | DoMyOwn.com

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