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fireproofphoenix · 2 months

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So I've been playing Palworld and it's scratched that itch I had back when Ark was also new and wonky as all hell. I love finding wonky shit that will be patched soon enough that I otherwise would never had seen if it was a polished game already. That's not the point. The point is the day I reached 365 in-game days on my character, I was taken to Hell and God spoke to me.

This is a somewhat long tale because I can't seem to tell a story without lots of details but ehh.

Now I know it wasn't intended as such but I know what I know man. See I'm all about breaking games. I enjoy speed running and clipping objects, and let me tell you about unintended files stored as magic boxes behind a fireplace in Skyrim! Naturally then, I have used some less than authentic things in the year.

Have I maybe held a conversation about the pros and cons between two Chikipi in the inventory of a Black Marketeer while my Quivern roasted him alive in the background so I could loot his corpse of 35k gold? Perhaps.

Have I ever intentionally instigated a riot in one of the only civilized parts of this island of nightmares? Have I led that bloodthirsty mob then against the leaders of the cults and/or organizations that control the island with the intent of forcing their leaders and their partner creature into a sphere thanks to an exploit allowing me to catch them? It's possible.

But no, instead me and Immortal the Shadowbeak decided to visit his home realm. See I was doing the now-known trick of butchering a pal and then riding them to prevent them from dying. Didn't realize how it worked, really, i just knew to try riding him during the second loop of the animation. I'd discovered this from dropping the controller in a panic as my cat made a mad dash and knocked over my coffee.

I figured out the rhythm of it. I was killing and harvesting this beast endlessly! It refused to stay dead under my guiding hand. Sure it was eternally blurred out with that pixil-y cloud, but that's because we should not gaze directly upon the divine, as this death transcendent hippogriff clearly was. I explain this in a sleep deprived mania to my roommate. They suggest a nap. I disagree. Another coffee means I can continue the immortal butchering.

Then we Fell the first time. I'm no stranger to being out of bounds in a game mind you. Hell my favorite mining route meant clipping through a mountain in another game. This is Fine™ so I land in the water under the map. Recall people saying online that the dungeons and whatnot are just hidden pockets under the world. Maybe that's where I was? Didn't care. Immortal Shadowbeak was there with me still. I continued the butchering unimpeded. Must get technology books for unlocking more shelves.

Over time I have repeatedly entered the Undersea. Sometimes its from exploring, but no, I have a Rushoar and he is called Sæhrímnir and he will take me to the Undersea every time. No matter what. Every other Immortal has regenerated every reload of the save and lost their pixel cloud, but remains censored to this day. But a man needs bacon for his eggs so I butcher him like his namesake to feed the people.

Now, like every good casserole recipe, the backstory is finally set, so onto the tale. On the day of my character's 365th day I rolled out of my bed and walked out of my keep. I did a full tour, remembering my tiny three walls and a roof to how far I'd come with my Pals. It'd been a long year, but I decided a feast! We must celebrate! Not just me and my party, but all of us shall enjoy Sæhrímnir! No salads for breaks today!

So me and Sæhrímnir get into position on the Bloodstone. I'd read having one stone foundation away from everything helped with not falling through the ground and while it worked for everyone else, Sæhrímnir is more Divine and thus immune to that so once again I'm riding his not-a-corpse down to the Undersea. I figure I need more meat to fill everyone, what with food level 7s everywhere, so i continue meat making.

Sæhrímnir decided I'd been flaunting his immortality I guess because later at the party he suddenly burst from his palsphere and I was like "Weird, but okay" and decided I'd try "petting him and calming him down" before tossing him back into the sphere. I was still holding the butcher knife I guess and started disembowling him on the table in the center of the picnic area in front of everyone. Only the Immortals knew what they were, having been killed at the Bloodstone far from the eyes of the rest, and now they knew.

But I wasn't gonna let Sæhrímnir die, so I went through the rituals the same as always and down to the Undersea we went. I prepare to go back to base via the keep inventory option in conjunction with the die and respawn button in the menu. It's routine at this point.

"Come" I hear an older man and younger woman say at the same time. I just happened to be looking at Sæhrímnir, about to return him to his sphere. His pixilation ended at that one word and then we started falling through the Undersea. In that short fall, I wondered if we'd fallen somehow into one of those dungeon pockets. As we landed I knew this was truly not somewhere I was supposed to be.

See, the grass was much more gray than green, but there was grass and ground under my feet in every direction I could see. The issue was, I could not see that far, only about five to ten feet through the thick white mist that was static and yet animated. No wait, that part just moved, but the smoke texture wasn't animated. I cautiously begin moving through the mist, careful that the ground may end yet again. Try finding Sæhrímnir, but he's gone. My palspheres aren't working, my character not even trying to throw an empty hand.

On the side of the screen, I see my character has eaten another plate of bacon an eggs. I'm still alive and eating, so that's a bonus. Means this isn't unsalvagable, but curiosity has me. I check and I have all my weapons. The firearms shoot into the White Void and my ammo count went down, so they work. I reload and set off further and faster into the mist.

Even fully sprinting there's nothing but knee high gray grass and flowers and the mist that is everywhere. I opened the map and it says I haven't left my base. I know I've been running in the mist for easily five minutes. I encounter a tree. It's texture is on inside out and is more or less just a mass of spiky vectors in a dead tree shape. I continue. Minutes pass, more trees appearing in the fog. I saw a pal fragment node but it vanished as I approached.

eventually as I get bored, I notice the day is about to end and I consider respawning and going back. The Sun turns into a Moon in the dial and I hear a crashing sound like a felled tree. Everything flashes and the grass is suddenly green, but the mist is turning black like ink. Horror movie vibes as hell. I'm rooted in place watching this glitch and needing to know how it ends.

The double-voice says something again, but they're no longer saying the same thing. Too brief to comprehend what it was. Haywire audio files, no big thing. Happens a lot. Sæhrímnir then appears, or perhaps another boar like him. It squeals and does its death animation as the fog finishes becoming black. Night must've finished falling in the Overworld---

Lights start coming to life around me, brightening and dimming slowly. Lifmunk Statue green and data log/fast travel blue lights started pulsing in the void. I made the mistake of trying to run to one. The camera spins as I start running. Moving is controlling the camera now and the camera is moving the character now. No problem, lemme just unlearn decades of gaming muscle memory real quick.

"COME" the Twin Voices cried suddenly, static accompanying the word. Feel backdoor room vibes and get goosebumps. My nerves are suddenly both taught and shot at the same time. My character has fallen into the distortion world ffs. Time to abort. I select Respawn in the menu. My character doesn't die. Try several more times to no avail. Try double jumping and my Galeclaw still refuses to answer my summons. Palspheres are still not working.

As I get the idea to just hard-close out the game, the sun begins to rise. Like a disney movie, rays of gold and orange shoot through the black and dispel it....why are the rays of light twisting? They start bending around and twisting around invisible objects my character doesn't collide with. Wait, that thing over there kind of looks like part of the assembly machine---

The entire screen suddenly turns white and I hear a sound like a dozen digital demons as the game crashes. I reboot the game and I'm standing in the middle of the party, still in full swing around 4 in the afternoon on the 365th day. Nevermind my night going through the Shadowrealms like I'm mfing Ra crossing the Duat. Nevermind that I saw beyond the veil as many Islanders wish for and I found only horrors.

I prepare to log out when I check my party. Sæhrímnir is gone. He never returned with me.

The Immortal Pal Experiments have been halted at this time.

#long post #palworld #game adventures #real long post so sorry if it mucks up anyone's feed i just had to tell someone this #glitches #video games

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cebwrites · 1 year

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what a mess i’m in, you’re so masculine

a/n: something very self indulgent for me, but i did keep my promise in that the next writing post i made wouldn’t be angsty sooo (ﾉ∀＼*) i didn’t expect it to be this long either but in any case-- i hope all three of you within this niche on my page enjoy and have a nice day~ (〃‿〃)つ･*:.｡. .｡.:*

gnc transmasc reader, he/they law minor PenShachi, suggestive but not explicit word count: 1k

The party was loud; a celebration of their beloved Penguin’s birthday.

Older Heart Pirates teased one of the acting first mates - a position shared between him, Bepo, and Shachi since the inception of this crew - for finally reaching the big three-o.

Music blared from every corner of the ship, far away enough from any island to cause a disturbance, but this much noise would usually upset the captain themself. This time, though, you watched Law fondly across the room as he afforded his childhood friends bemused smiles, even squished between them as other Hearts gathered round to share the joy.

You had your fill of it all earlier, drinking Fang and Ani under the table, listening to Hoki tell exaggerated tales of his cunning before Hake cut him off and enlightened the round table with actual stories they’d heard as a tattoo artist from folks long before joining this not-so-little ragtag crew of misfits. It was enjoyable night, so fun that you had to recharge your social energy sooner than expected on one of the loveseats on the sidelines not too far from everyone else.

There was something missing, however.

Your gaze absentmindedly drifted like the leftover contents of your drink swirling in its glass. From the corner of your eye, you can make out Uni and Clione sneaking away from some privacy - one of them catches the knowing smile thrown their way, flustering a bit before disappearing down the Tang’s echoing halls.

Of course there were sweethearts slinking off to get it on after all the booze everyone had. Even Bepo had fallen asleep with his partner cuddled close atop his fluffy, warm body. You were almost envious of the two, so open about their affections despite the crowd. Then again, being the most obvious lovebirds on board, aside from two certain childhood friends, also meant that they were the easiest targets for the others teasing so you were grateful that Law erred on the conservative side of things when it came to publicizing their affections; even if it was only ever in good fun.

Penguin and Shachi were the next couple in your sights; you always felt comforted around them, even more so when they were together - a warmth that seemingly radiated from the spaces between them washed over anyone in their immediate vicinity. As of now, it looked like your partner was absolutely smothered in it.

Ikkaku made herself comfortable on the other side of the sofa, neither of you spoke but the pleasant buzz still running through your systems kept awkwardness away.

Not that you’d ever feel awkward around Ika-chan anyway.

Shachi’s bright laughter at his own joke filled the air just as you closed your eyes for a bit, taking your mind back to the week prior when the two of them had linked one of your arms with theirs and cheerfully announced that you were accompanying them on a shopping trip. Truthfully it just was an excuse for Shachi to get something nice to wear on Penguin’s birthday, Ikkaku had offered to tag along and with you in tow, presumably also picking out a new fit, it was hard for Law to argue in the few seconds Shachi and Ikkaku afforded them to even reply before the three of you were long gone from the port.

It was a day full of gossip, giggles, and gorging on whatever snacks your captain would otherwise nag at them for indulging too often between trying on a third of the clothes available and making every sales assistant in each store consider crying or hitting the button underneath their counters to alert the navy.

As the sun set on that summer island, you finally found an ensemble that was to your liking; a mesh top that exposed muscular arms, your tits cupped by comfortable black material that matched the black choker you wore, adorned with a small metal heart, all pulled together with at last form fitting skirt, sitting just above mid-thigh - though everyone was nothing but supportive and complimentary, Shachi couldn’t help but tease,

“Can you even bend down in that thing?”

Adjusting your skirt in the present, you huff at the orca’s good natured jest floating around in the back of your mind, pulling heat to your ears and cheeks. When you open your eyes the couch is vacant again, but you do catch a familiar set of footsteps coming towards you.

“Haven’t seen much of you tonight,”

“Sorry, I’ve been preoccupied.”

Law catches the bemused lilt in your returning hum, leaning up for a kiss as you stand. Their hands trace well-worn paths around your waist, the swell of your hips - you feel the breath leaving you following every gasp, your chest fills with fairy floss instead - your fingers tug gently at his hair, trying to find some kind of way to ground yourself before you get lost it in all too quickly. Far too soon - even after all this time, they’re able to affect you like this so easily.

Thankfully, you muse, he’s not much better.

It doesn’t take more than a slight nudge for you to be seated again, although this time it’s within the confines of Law’s room instead of that beat-up old loveseat in the Tang’s living room. Your smile widens as flickers of blue light fade quickly.

“Aww, too shy to show me off, captain?”

“You’re gorgeous, darling, I’ve been waiting all night for this.”

They don’t rise to the bait, you would pout if their want wasn’t so palpable, their need so apparent when Law smooths down your thighs, positioning himself between them. Your feel the way their heart stutters when you put a hand on his chest, rubbing against the comfortable fuzz there, relish in the damn near whine your captain makes when you brush your fingers against the soft underside of their neck.

What the hell. You had the rest of time to tease each other into oblivion. For tonight, you’d grant him permission to do as he pleased.

So long as Law kept making those sweet, tantalizing noises.

#cebwrites #one piece #one piece law #one piece imagine #one piece x reader #one piece x you #one piece x y/n #male reader #transmasc reader #trafalgar law #trafalgar d law x reader #law x you #law x reader #law x y/n #law x masc reader #law x male reader #gnc transmasc reader

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markadoo · 2 years

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Best of the Ballbusting Collections

I'm gonna regret this.

Back in May I read a collection of about 1300 hetero ballbusting stories. (back then I said “over 2000”, but I re-calculated and found I’d been pretty off.) I already gave some awards for the worst, and kata4a suggested I give awards for the best. At the time, I said no, but now here they are. Just like I said then, the only “merit“ that I’m considering is the extent to which it arouses me, Markadoo. I will not be considering literary value, moral acceptability, or anything else except insofar as they impact my enjoyment. Oh, and, uh, don’t go read the stories just because I say I like them. For my sake. They reflect very poorly on me. Honestly this whole thing reflects rather poorly on me. Viewer discretion is advised. Non-viewership is also very much an option, I remind you.

Demolished by an Eight Year Old Girl: Right off the bat with a very bad sounding title (“Amn’t I the one who posted–“ yes but that was a drawing which isn’t as bad as writing) but don’t worry, the eight-year-old has about the same narrative role as the proverbial skateboard. The story really focuses on a group of women (referred to as “the hot moms“) who witness the titular demolition and fall into hilarity at his expense and then proceed to mock him for the remainder of the party.

According to the preface, the story is based on something that really happened to the author, although highly embellished, and I 100% believe it, because no writer would write a story this unglamorous (the story takes place at a birthday party for his girlfriend’s niece in their backyard rather than at a college party or behind the scenes at a concert or marooned on a desert island) or a narrator this insecure (The story literally ends “My ex-girlfriend and I dated for another couple years after that, but I SWEAR she never quite showed me the same amount of respect that she had before the day of my humbling in the eyes of her and her friends.”)

Futuristic Beach Bust: This story concerns a woman at a town plaza rollerskating back and forth, blowing a whistle that’s at just the right frequency to cause intense pain in any testicles its sound-waves penetrate. With all the men out of commission, it is up to three of these men’s female partners to take down the menace. This story is notable for having some of the only female characters to oppose a ballbusting. Practically every other female character in the collection is either a ballbuster, a bystander or not involved in any busting scenes.

Usually I don’t like when stories rely on fantastical ballbusting devices for the simple reason that it lacks relatability (What are these characters feeling? I can’t imagine what “sound waves that induce testicular pain” feels like). However the story I think generally makes up for the relatability by focusing on the men’s physical reactions and body language. Also a big fan of the way their partners attempt to console them.

Tanya’s Introduction To Busting: A simple story. Two female friends, one a ballbusting veteran, the other never touched a testis in her life. The vet discusses with the naïve various things about her experiences with testicles and the busting thereof and the naïve generally exhibits her naïveté and concern about the morality of the prospect. They go to a concert, get high, and the vet leads them into the men’s room. She kicks some guy in the balls while he’s taking a piss. And then he falls down. The end.

Men Are Such Crybabies: A young woman shows her friend some cool testicle tricks, using her friends boyfriend as a prop. tricks include “kick“, “pinch this one specific nerve that feels like a ton of bricks hit him“, and “pinch this other specific nerve that makes him get embarrassingly blubbery and maudlin”. And the guy is like,“why is my girlfriend letting her do this?” But it’s like I said, that’s just how most female characters in the stories are. They are of one (or similar) mind, and if they’re not, like the naïve in the above story, they end up of that mind.

This story definitely has an underlying theme of demasculization (I don’t say “emasculation” because that refers to a completely different theme). The girlfriends friend is continuously described as slight; this serves not only to emphasize the efficacy of her knowledge, but to hyperfeminize her, which is why the author has her be a dancer rather than having no athletic background (of course, many men wouldn’t even think to consider dance to be an athletic activity, because it doesn’t signal masculinity). He comes under the control of these small women, and the final humiliation is him crying and being emotional.

Part 1 of the Tracey quadrilogy (not gonna say the name yet): This isn’t really a ballbusting story, not in the main. There is ballbusting in it, but that’s just one element.

I have a different relation to the story than I have to all the other stories on this list. The other stories I read masochistically; this one, sadistically, homosexually projecting onto the heterosexual female main character. The word “invert” comes to mind. Now that I have established that, I can tell you that the story, called “Schoolgirl Tracey Busts Hard”, tells the classic story of an evil underage girl who uses her sex appeal to seduce and terrorize an innocent adult pervert teacher, branding him a pedophile for life just because he lusts insatiably after her and has for a long time, and also tried to have actual sex with her.

Again, the fantasy for me isn’t “what if you met someone so attractive that you committed one of the worst crimes out there and went to jail”, it’s “what if you were so attractive that you could make someone commit one of the worst crimes out there and send them to jail.“

Also key to my enjoyment of this work is the character of Tracey. She is by far the best instantiation of the “sexy minor girl who ruins the lives of unwitting child predator” character I have read, for the simple reason that, unlike in Lolita or Corrections, there’s no unreliable narrator to subvert the trope nor moralist author to want it to be subverted.

Tracy‘s character gets even better in the second part, where she has her star line, “Girlfriends come and go, but a friend who can make you mess yourself like that is forever.” (She’s an adult there) The reason that story isn’t on this list is that it it’s mostly a foot story. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a foot person. The first story also has podiatric themes, but not as much, and there’s no indication that Tracy (me) is into feet, she’s merely wilily exploiting the victim’s fetish.

The Real World (Part 1): To contrast with the previous story, this is a ballbusting story through and through, with very little else. A bust every hundred words. And it’s much longer than the other stories on this list. AND it’s part of a trilogy.

The story is told from the perspective other woman who hosts a men’s self defense class as an excuse to… do you see where this is going?

The first chapter details the first day of class, where she and her two assistants break in the students. The chapter gives a detailed description of the first busting of each student.

There is one part of this chapter where she kicks one of the students for the first time and thinks she has accidentally destroyed a testicle, to find that she had actually just popped a homemade packer The student, a female cross-dresser, is immediately revealed to also be an avid ballbuster, and essentially becomes a fourth teacher. Especially considering that these stories are from the 90s and 00’s, you’da thought I’d have some thing interesting to say about this, but I don’t.

The second chapter I won’t detail, but it involves high school girls in a locker room. Huh, I wonder why these authors like writing about high school girls so much. 🤔

(“But Markadoo, didn’t your story also take place in high school?” Yes, but out of all the places I have experience with (and thus can knowledgeably write about), high school is clearly the best option. I could have set it at home but thatta been incestuous, I could have set it at wilderness but thatta been alien to most readers, I could have set it at the farm but there are already way too many stories with egg imagery. Also I’m 20.)

Actually, rereading the story for this post I was surprised to find that they were high schoolers (aged 14-18), and not middle schoolers (11-13). They hardly talk like high schoolers, and none of them evinced any familiarity with the appearance of testicles or even knowledge of their sensitivity.

Chapter 3 is the second day of class, the “no targeting of the testicles” day. There is a lot of targeting of the testicles. Because what else are they supposed to write about.

----

There’s one more that I’d like to add but couldn’t find about a guy going to a bar, a bunch of girls beat him up (nutwise, of course), he goes home, a bunch of girls beat him up (nutwise), he gets to his apartment, a bunch of girls come in and beat him up (nutwise), another bunch of girls beat him up (nutwise), his girlfriend comes, lightly taps him nutwise in a friendly way, he goes out, girlfriend checks him, sees how poorly they look, is horrified at herself for doing so much damage. Great setup, well-executed punchline, very arousing.

----

Well that’s it. Post over. Weight off my chest.

#yikes #unsafew #ballsposting

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bopinion · 7 months

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2023 / 38 - Brief compromise edition

Aperçu of the Week:

"Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer."

(Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish writer of the Victorian age, author of classics like "Treasure Island" or "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde")

Bad News of the Week:

The classic plot from a scary science fiction movie: an alien species invades your homeland, takes over, and displaces the resident species. Of which only a few remain, because they hide themselves particularly well. Meanwhile, that's exactly what's happening here and now: Invasive species. Which, due to climate change (or stupidity - but let's leave aside those who smuggle in a baby crocodile in their in-flight luggage), are encroaching on biospheres that are surrendering virtually without a fight due to lack of time to adapt. We already have the first ecosystems tipping. The raccoon is one of my all-time favorite animals. But actually, the cute little crook has not to be in Germany. Just as little as the tiger mosquito, the camper crab or the red fire ant. They not only displace native species, but also bring parasites and diseases that we can't handle here. The dengue fever outbreak at Lake Garda could be just the beginning.

Good News of the Week:

Ukraine is making progress in reclaiming its homeland. Although experts (true and self-proclaimed) disagree on whether the long-awaited counteroffensive is going according to plan, one thing to note is that terrain gains have been made only by Ukraine for weeks now. The highlight of the last few days: the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol in the Crimea was severely hit and partially destroyed. Since it is or was the nerve center of the Russian "special operation," this could actually be a turning point.

Personal happy moment of the week:

On Friday evening I was at the "Wiesn" - vulgo Oktoberfest. And it was fun. With colleagues who had fun. Danced on the tables without falling down. Drank a lot but not too much beer. Talked a lot but hardly at all about their work. It's nice to be positively surprised. Thank you.

I couldn't care less...

...that Rupert Murdoch is stepping down. At the age of 92. The Australian mogul has taken the political impact of the media to a new level. Trump or the Brexit would not have been possible without the tendentious continuous fire from his journalistic cannons. It is unlikely that his son who succeeds him will change course or even return to the real roots of serious journalism: critical reporting based on objectivity and neutrality.

As I write this...

...I am dog-tired. Because a special project for the boss is keeping me unexpectedly busy for a long time, I'm currently not only overworked, but also late with my blog. And I have to shorten it, otherwise it won't work out at all this week. Sorry.

Post Scriptum

In less than two weeks there will be an election in Bavaria. That the government will continue to be led by the conservative CSU (Christian Social Union) is no question. The only thing that will be interesting is how it performs - especially in comparison to its previous and designated coalition partner, the Free Voters. Prime Minister Markus Söder has never left any doubt that he wants to continue in this "bourgeois coalition." And he is fighting primarily against the Greens, whom he ruled out early and definitively as a potential partner. The party proves him right: with 96.6%, he was re-elected as party chairman on Saturday. That can be seen as a deliberate manifestation of the status quo. Without any vision. And aligned with the supposed will of the voters, who see migration as a four times bigger problem than climate change. Well, every nation gets the government it deserves. One day we will have to look at ourselves in the mirror. And admit that we have made it too easy for ourselves.

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xtruss · 1 year

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The Real Purpose of The Fake 'China Threat' Narrative in Australia

— Roland Boer | May 07, 2023

Illustration: Chen Xia/Global Times

Let me begin with a personal note: I have at long last been able to return to Beijing from Australia. With a view from afar, you can see things in a different light, and this applies in particular to the talk in Australia of a "war with China." This talk has always struck me as strange, and indeed misleading. Back in Beijing, I am beginning to see why it is misleading, and what its real purpose is. Let me explain.

To do so, let us use an important methodological principle. The realms of thought, culture, philosophy, and politics, are part of what we may call the "superstructure." However, one cannot have a superstructure without a foundation. The foundation is economic.

In light of this distinction we may ask: in terms of the economic base, what are the objective conditions that may lead to a conflict? There are two primary conditions: economic depression and geopolitical changes. As for the geopolitical situation, despite provocations by the US concerning the Taiwan question and despite Japanese provocations concerning some islands, there have been no significant geopolitical changes.

I would like to say more concerning economic realities, specifically with regard to China-Australia relations. For many years now, China has been Australia's No.1 trading partner. The two economies are highly complementary, and any Australian business that is serious about its bottom line is seeking to deepen its engagement in China. At the forefront of these activities are organisations such as the Australia-China Business Council and the Australia-China Chamber of Commerce, respectively based in Australia and China. As China has stepped out of the COVID-19 pandemic and sprinted into 2023, these organisations are increasingly busy.

From my own experience of applying for a visa and returning to Beijing, I can attest that I had to wait weeks for an appointment and that the visa office I attended was processing 700-800 applications per day. Even with extra staff, the visa office would often work until after 6pm every evening. Further, the plane on which I flew was full, and one can assume that the many other flights on the China-Australia route are also full.

Clearly, from economic realities to person-to-person exchanges, the situation is improving day by day.

To return to the objective conditions for conflict, it should be clear that in the region of East Asia and Southeast Asia there is neither geopolitical change nor economic depression. These objective conditions mean that war is highly unlikely. To be sure, the US would love to see third parties engage in a useless conflict with one another. However, without the basic conditions, it is unlikely that Australia or any other country in Southeast Asia will engage in conflict soon.

What then are we to make of the talk in Australia of "war with China" and the "China threat." A rational observer can see that this is empty talk, without foundation in reality. To use my earlier distinction, this talk is very much part of the "superstructure."

But the talk does have a purpose. If we look back five or so years, we will find that one or two "think tanks" were established with funding from major US and UK weapons manufacturers. These began promoting the fake "China threat" narrative and the "war with China" line. With thousands of variations on the same theme, they gained traction in the Australia media and began to gain some influence. In the end, it was less about influencing the Australian public and more about swaying the politicians in Canberra. These politicians have eventually responded with increases in military spending to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. For the weapons manufacturers, this result would be seen as a very good "investment." Hype a fake threat, gain traction with the power-brokers, and the result is a massive amount of taxpayer dollars - taken from health, education, and so on - disappearing into the bottomless pockets of weapons manufacturers.

One may wonder what business leaders seeking to deepen engagements with China think about these developments. Let me put it this way: among the economic and political elite in Australia there is a profound contradiction. One the one hand, we have many businesses deepening their engagements with China and they are certainly against any provocations since these would interfere with their core interest; on the other hand, we have a smaller number aligned with the military and the overseas weapons manufacturers, and they are keen to grab as many taxpayer dollars as possible.

This contradiction is a profound challenge for the current Labor government in Canberra. Currently, the government is swaying this way and that: seeking to improve relations with China and at the same time committing huge amounts of money for military spending. This approach is certainly not a way to manage a significant contradiction. Only the future will tell if they can learn to manage the contradiction in a better way.

— The Author, Roland Boer, is a Marxist Scholar From Australia, Distinguished Overseas Professor at Renmin University of China, and on Editorial Board of the Australian Marxist Review.

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dollycas · 1 year

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#FlashbackFriday featuring The Tell Tail Heart: A Cat Cafe Mystery by Cate Conte #Review #Giveaway

On Flashback Fridays I will share with you the books I was not able to review when they were first released that have been screaming at me from my To-Be-Read bookshelf.

The Tell Tail Heart: A Cat Cafe Mystery Cozy Mystery 3rd in Series Setting - Island off Massachusetts Minotaur Books (June 25, 2019) Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250072085 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250072085 Kindle ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07J4SZ293

Welcome back to the charming New England coast, where Maddie James’s cat café is at risk of becoming a crime scene for the purrfect murder. . . Maddie is hoping to have some downtime during Daybreak Island’s off-season to tackle her to-do list. Her grandfather’s house-turned-cat-café is under construction and she’s also scoping out places to open a juice bar on the island. On top of that, her relationship with adorable dog groomer Lucas has taken a pawsitive turn. But easy is getting harder every day for Maddie, especially when a big-name writer who’s on the island working on a new project winds up floating in the canal. This, on the exact same day an eccentric woman shows up at the cafe claiming Maddie’s cat, JJ, is hers. As the investigation into the dead writer picks up, Maddie realizes that even the neighbors she’s known all her life might be keeping secrets that go deep into the heart of this small seaside town. Meanwhile, a killer remains at-large...and on the prowl. Dollycas's Thoughts A dead author, a crazy lady, and a big storm really throws Maddie James's life off kilter. The person who she now knows is a famous author had been coming into the cat café for days working quietly with a cat on his lap. Then a strange woman comes in, has weird eye contact with him, and then proceeds to tell Maddie that her cat JJ, the face of JJ's House of Purrs, belongs to her. So she has lost one of the few paying customers she has during the off-season, she has to protect JJ from being stolen, she has to run the café while the renovation continues, and the Nor’easter coming could shut down the ferry and wreak havoc on the island. Oh, yes there is also a murderer on the loose. Maddie's sister Val is busy too planning a huge Thanksgiving celebration for an island legend who also ropes her in an investigation of their own. They even get Maddie involved. Both investigations may be connected which could make things on Daybreak Island very interesting. I am so happy to return to this series. It is really character driven with Maddie, her former police chief grandfather, sister Val, and Ethan, Maddie's business partner, and now Val's boyfriend. They all usually work together like a well-oiled machine for the most part. Maddie inherited her grandfather's zest for investigations but this time he is keeping her out of the loop. This adds a whole different dynamic to the story. I felt for Maddie because of the strain created by her grandfather holding back and keeping secrets. Maddie's boyfriend Lucas was away for most of this story too which made the strain even harder. I really enjoy that a character mentioned in previous books took a bigger role in this story. We were able to learn much more about him and his past and how he fits into life on the island. The mysteries were all tangled together along with just a bit of real-life happenings. The book flowed nicely with several twists and red herrings. I knew early on who I wanted the guilty party to be but it took time for all the clues to fall into place to make my wishes a reality. It was fun to follow along with Maddie but I missed the closeness of working with her grandfather. She has a vivid imagination and theories that don't pan out but when the clues start to come together and facts are revealed Maddie's stubborn streak reared its ugly head which sets up a very dramatic ending that could have gone so wrong, but I liked it :-) . You would think Daybreak Harbor would be quiet in the winter with hardly any tourists or businesses open but Cate Conte proved that wrong. She whipped up quite a mystery and through in a Nor'easter to top it off. The Tell Tail Heart was an entertaining read with a very satisfying ending until you reach the final sentence. Yes, a cliffhanger. That just means I need to read A Whisker of a Doubt soon.

Your Escape Into A Good Book Travel Agent About the Author Cate Conte writes the Cat Cafe Mysteries and the Full Moon Mysteries. As Liz Mugavero, she writes the Pawsitively Organic Mysteries, the first of which was an Agatha Award nominee for Best First Novel. She lives in Connecticut with her rescue pals.

Coming August 22, 2023

Also by Cate Conte

Written as Liz Mugavero

I am giving away 1 Kindle Copy of The Tell Tail Heart The contest is open to anyone over 18 years old. Duplicate entries will be deleted. Void where prohibited. You do not have to be a follower to enter but I hope you will find something you like here and become a follower. Followers Will Receive 2 Bonus Entries For Each Way They Follow. Plus 2 Bonus Entries For Following My Facebook Fan Page. Add this book to your WANT TO READ shelf on GoodReads for 3 Bonus Entries. Pin this giveaway to Pinterest for 3 Bonus Entries. If you share the giveaway on Twitter or Facebook or anywhere you will receive 5 Bonus Entries For Each Link. The Contest Will End June 28, 2023, at 11:59 PM CST The Winner Will Be Chosen By Random.org The Winner Will Be Notified By Email and Will Be Posted Here In The Sidebar. Read the full article

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blackswaneuroparedux · 3 years

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Anonymous asked: I enjoyed reading your posts about Napoleon’s death and it’s quite timely given its the 200th anniversary of his death this year in May. I was wondering, because you know a lot about military history (your served right? That’s cool to fly combat helicopters) and you live in France but aren’t French, what your take was on Napoleon and how do the French view him? Do they hail him as a hero or do they like others see him like a Hitler or a Stalin? Do you see him as a hero or a villain of history?

5 May 1821 was a memorable date because Napoleon, one of the most iconic figures in world history, died while in bitter exile on a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Napoleon Bonaparte, as you know rose from obscure soldier to a kind of new Caesar, and yet he remains a uniquely controversial figure to this day especially in France. You raise interesting questions about Napoleon and his legacy. If I may reframe your questions in another way. Should we think of him as a flawed but essentially heroic visionary who changed Europe for the better? Or was he simply a military dictator, whose cult of personality and lust for power set a template for the likes of Hitler?

However one chooses to answer this question can we just - to get this out of the way - simply and definitively say that Napoleon was not Hitler. Not even close. No offence intended to you but this is just dumb ahistorical thinking and it’s a lazy lie. This comparison was made by some in the horrid aftermath of the Second World War but only held little currency for only a short time thereafter. Obviously that view didn’t exist before Hitler in the 19th Century and these days I don’t know any serious historian who takes that comparison seriously.

I confess I don’t have a definitive answer if he was a hero or a villain one way or the other because Napoleon has really left a very complicated legacy. It really depends on where you’re coming from.

As a staunch Brit I do take pride in Britain’s victorious war against Napoleonic France - and in a good natured way rubbing it in the noses of French friends at every opportunity I get because it’s in our cultural DNA and it’s bloody good fun (why else would we make Waterloo train station the London terminus of the Eurostar international rail service from its opening in 1994? Or why hang a huge gilded portrait of the Duke of Wellington as the first thing that greets any visitor to the residence of the British ambassador at the British Embassy?). On a personal level I take special pride in knowing my family ancestors did their bit on the battlefield to fight against Napoleon during those tumultuous times. However, as an ex-combat veteran who studied Napoleonic warfare with fan girl enthusiasm, I have huge respect for Napoleon as a brilliant military commander. And to makes things more weird, as a Francophile resident of who loves living and working in France (and my partner is French) I have a grudging but growing regard for Napoleon’s political and cultural legacy, especially when I consider the current dross of political mediocrity on both the political left and the right. So for me it’s a complicated issue how I feel about Napoleon, the man, the soldier, and the political leader.

If it’s not so straightforward for me to answer the for/against Napoleon question then it It’s especially true for the French, who even after 200 years, still have fiercely divided opinions about Napoleon and his legacy - but intriguingly, not always in clear cut ways.

I only have to think about my French neighbours in my apartment building to see how divisive Napoleon the man and his legacy is. Over the past year or so of the Covid lockdown we’ve all gotten to know each other better and we help each other. Over the Covid year we’ve gathered in the inner courtyard for a buffet and just lifted each other spirits up.

One of my neighbours, a crusty old ex-general in the army who has an enviable collection of military history books that I steal, liberate, borrow, often discuss military figures in history like Napoleon over our regular games of chess and a glass of wine. He is from very old aristocracy of the ancien regime and whose family suffered at the hands of ‘madame guillotine’ during the French Revolution. They lost everything. He has mixed emotions about Napoleon himself as an old fashioned monarchist. As a military man he naturally admires the man and the military genius but he despises the secularisation that the French Revolution ushered in as well as the rise of the haute bourgeois as middle managers and bureaucrats by the displacement of the aristocracy.

Another retired widowed neighbour I am close to, and with whom I cook with often and discuss art, is an active arts patron and ex-art gallery owner from a very wealthy family that came from the new Napoleonic aristocracy - ie the aristocracy of the Napoleonic era that Napoleon put in place - but she is dismissive of such titles and baubles. She’s a staunch Republican but is happy to concede she is grateful for Napoleon in bringing order out of chaos. She recognises her own ambivalence when she says she dislikes him for reintroducing slavery in the French colonies but also praises him for firmly supporting Paris’s famed Comédie-Française of which she was a past patron.

Another French neighbour, a senior civil servant in the Elysée, is quite dismissive of Napoleon as a war monger but is grudgingly grateful for civil institutions and schools that Napoleon established and which remain in place today.

My other neighbours - whether they be French families or foreign expats like myself - have similarly divisive and complicated attitudes towards Napoleon.

In 2010 an opinion poll in France asked who was the most important man in French history. Napoleon came second, behind General Charles de Gaulle, who led France from exile during the German occupation in World War II and served as a postwar president.

The split in French opinion is closely mirrored in political circles. The divide is generally down political party lines. On the left, there's the 'black legend' of Bonaparte as an ogre. On the right, there is the 'golden legend' of a strong leader who created durable institutions.

Jacques-Olivier Boudon, a history professor at Paris-Sorbonne University and president of the Napoléon Institute, once explained at a talk I attended that French public opinion has always remained deeply divided over Napoleon, with, on the one hand, those who admire the great man, the conqueror, the military leader and, on the other, those who see him as a bloodthirsty tyrant, the gravedigger of the revolution. Politicians in France, Boudon observed, rarely refer to Napoleon for fear of being accused of authoritarian temptations, or not being good Republicans.

On the left-wing of French politics, former prime minister Lionel Jospin penned a controversial best selling book entitled “the Napoleonic Evil” in which he accused the emperor of “perverting the ideas of the Revolution” and imposing “a form of extreme domination”, “despotism” and “a police state” on the French people. He wrote Napoleon was "an obvious failure" - bad for France and the rest of Europe. When he was booted out into final exile, France was isolated, beaten, occupied, dominated, hated and smaller than before. What's more, Napoleon smothered the forces of emancipation awakened by the French and American revolutions and enabled the survival and restoration of monarchies. Some of the legacies with which Napoleon is credited, including the Civil Code, the comprehensive legal system replacing a hodgepodge of feudal laws, were proposed during the revolution, Jospin argued, though he acknowledges that Napoleon actually delivered them, but up to a point, "He guaranteed some principles of the revolution and, at the same time, changed its course, finished it and betrayed it," For instance, Napoleon reintroduced slavery in French colonies, revived a system that allowed the rich to dodge conscription in the military and did nothing to advance gender equality.

At the other end of the spectrum have been former right-wing prime minister Dominique de Villepin, an aristocrat who was once fancied as a future President, a passionate collector of Napoleonic memorabilia, and author of several works on the subject. As a Napoleonic enthusiast he tells a different story. Napoleon was a saviour of France. If there had been no Napoleon, the Republic would not have survived. Advocates like de Villepin point to Napoleon’s undoubted achievements: the Civil Code, the Council of State, the Bank of France, the National Audit office, a centralised and coherent administrative system, lycées, universities, centres of advanced learning known as école normale, chambers of commerce, the metric system, and an honours system based on merit (which France has to this day). He restored the Catholic faith as the state faith but allowed for the freedom of religion for other faiths including Protestantism and Judaism. These were ambitions unachieved during the chaos of the revolution. As it is, these Napoleonic institutions continue to function and underpin French society. Indeed, many were copied in countries conquered by Napoleon, such as Italy, Germany and Poland, and laid the foundations for the modern state.

Back in 2014, French politicians and institutions in particular were nervous in marking the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's exile. My neighbours and other French friends remember that the commemorations centred around the Chateau de Fontainebleau, the traditional home of the kings of France and was the scene where Napoleon said farewell to the Old Guard in the "White Horse Courtyard" (la cour du Cheval Blanc) at the Palace of Fontainebleau. (The courtyard has since been renamed the "Courtyard of Goodbyes".) By all accounts the occasion was very moving. The 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau stripped Napoleon of his powers (but not his title as Emperor of the French) and sent him into exile on Elba. The cost of the Fontainebleau "farewell" and scores of related events over those three weekends was shouldered not by the central government in Paris but by the local château, a historic monument and UNESCO World Heritage site, and the town of Fontainebleau.

While the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution that toppled the monarchy and delivered thousands to death by guillotine was officially celebrated in 1989, Napoleonic anniversaries are neither officially marked nor celebrated. For example, over a decade ago, the president and prime minister - at the time, Jacques Chirac and Dominque de Villepin - boycotted a ceremony marking the 200th anniversary of the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon's greatest military victory. Both men were known admirers of Napoleon and yet political calculation and optics (as media spin doctors say) stopped them from fully honouring Napoleon’s crowning military glory.

Optics is everything. The division of opinion in France is perhaps best reflected in the fact that, in a city not shy of naming squares and streets after historical figures, there is not a single “Boulevard Napoleon” or “Place Napoleon” in Paris. On the streets of Paris, there are just two statues of Napoleon. One stands beneath the clock tower at Les Invalides (a military hospital), the other atop a column in the Place Vendôme. Napoleon's red marble tomb, in a crypt under the Invalides dome, is magnificent, perhaps because his remains were interred there during France's Second Empire, when his nephew, Napoleon III, was on the throne.

There are no squares, nor places, nor boulevards named for Napoleon but as far as I know there is one narrow street, the rue Bonaparte, running from the Luxembourg Gardens to the River Seine in the old Latin Quarter. And, that, too, is thanks to Napoleon III. For many, and I include myself, it’s a poor return by the city to the man who commissioned some of its most famous monuments, including the Arc de Triomphe and the Pont des Arts over the River Seine.

It's almost as if Napoleon Bonaparte is not part of the national story.

How Napoleon fits into that national story is something historians, French and non-French, have been grappling with ever since Napoleon died. The plain fact is Napoleon divides historians, what precisely he represents is deeply ambiguous and his political character is the subject of heated controversy. It’s hard for historians to sift through archival documents to make informed judgements and still struggle to separate the man from the myth.

One proof of this myth is in his immortality. After Hitler’s death, there was mostly an embarrassed silence; after Stalin’s, little but denunciation. But when Napoleon died on St Helena in 1821, much of Europe and the Americas could not help thinking of itself as a post-Napoleonic generation. His presence haunts the pages of Stendhal and Alfred de Vigny. In a striking and prescient phrase, Chateaubriand prophesied the “despotism of his memory”, a despotism of the fantastical that in many ways made Romanticism possible and that continues to this day.

The raw material for the future Napoleon myth was provided by one of his St Helena confidants, the Comte de las Cases, whose account of conversations with the great man came out shortly after his death and ran in repeated editions throughout the century. De las Cases somehow metamorphosed the erstwhile dictator into a herald of liberty, the emperor into a slayer of dynasties rather than the founder of his own. To the “great man” school of history Napoleon was grist to their mill, and his meteoric rise redefined the meaning of heroism in the modern world.

The Marxists, for all their dislike of great men, grappled endlessly with the meaning of the 18th Brumaire; indeed one of France’s most eminent Marxist historians, George Lefebvre, wrote what arguably remains the finest of all biographies of him.

It was on this already vast Napoleon literature, a rich terrain for the scholar of ideas, that the great Dutch historian Pieter Geyl was lecturing in 1940 when he was arrested and sent to Buchenwald. There he composed what became one of the classics of historiography, a seminal book entitled Napoleon: For and Against, which charted how generations of intellectuals had happily served up one Napoleon after another. Like those poor souls who crowded the lunatic asylums of mid-19th century France convinced that they were Napoleon, generations of historians and novelists simply could not get him out of their head.

The debate runs on today no less intensely than in the past. Post-Second World War Marxists would argue that he was not, in fact, revolutionary at all. Eric Hobsbawm, a notable British Marxist historian, argued that ‘Most-perhaps all- of his ideas were anticipated by the Revolution’ and that Napoleon’s sole legacy was to twist the ideals of the French Revolution, and make them ‘more conservative, hierarchical and authoritarian’.

This contrasts deeply with the view William Doyle holds of Napoleon. Doyle described Bonaparte as ‘the Revolution incarnate’ and saw Bonaparte’s humbling of Europe’s other powers, the ‘Ancien Regimes’, as a necessary precondition for the birth of the modern world. Whatever one thinks of Napoleon’s character, his sharp intellect is difficult to deny. Even Paul Schroeder, one of Napoleon’s most scathing critics, who condemned his conduct of foreign policy as a ‘criminal enterprise’ never denied Napoleon’s intellect. Schroder concluded that Bonaparte ‘had an extraordinary capacity for planning, decision making, memory, work, mastery of detail and leadership’. The question of whether Napoleon used his genius for the betterment or the detriment of the world, is the heart of the debate which surrounds him.

France's foremost Napoleonic scholar, Jean Tulard, put forward the thesis that Bonaparte was the architect of modern France. "And I would say also pâtissier [a cake and pastry maker] because of the administrative millefeuille that we inherited." Oddly enough, in North America the multilayered mille-feuille cake is called ‘a napoleon.’ Tulard’s works are essential reading of how French historians have come to tackle the question of Napoleon’s legacy. He takes the view that if Napoleon had not crushed a Royalist rebellion and seized power in 1799, the French monarchy and feudalism would have returned, Tulard has written. "Like Cincinnatus in ancient Rome, Napoleon wanted a dictatorship of public salvation. He gets all the power, and, when the project is finished, he returns to his plough." In the event, the old order was never restored in France. When Louis XVIII became emperor in 1814, he served as a constitutional monarch.

In England, until recently the views on Napoleon have traditionally less charitable and more cynical. Professor Christopher Clark, the notable Cambridge University European historian, has written. "Napoleon was not a French patriot - he was first a Corsican and later an imperial figure, a journey in which he bypassed any deep affiliation with the French nation," Clark believed Napoleon’s relationship with the French Revolution is deeply ambivalent.

Did he stabilise the revolutionary state or shut it down mercilessly? Clark believes Napoleon seems to have done both. Napoleon rejected democracy, he suffocated the representative dimension of politics, and he created a culture of courtly display. A month before crowning himself emperor, Napoleon sought approval for establishing an empire from the French in a plebiscite; 3,572,329 voted in favour, 2,567 against. If that landslide resembles an election in North Korea, well, this was no secret ballot. Each ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was recorded, along with the name and address of the voter. Evidently, an overwhelming majority knew which side their baguette was buttered on.

His extravagant coronation in Notre Dame in December 1804 cost 8.5 million francs (€6.5 million or $8.5 million in today's money). He made his brothers, sisters and stepchildren kings, queens, princes and princesses and created a Napoleonic aristocracy numbering 3,500. By any measure, it was a bizarre progression for someone often described as ‘a child of the Revolution.’ By crowning himself emperor, the genuine European kings who surrounded him were not convinced. Always a warrior first, he tried to represent himself as a Caesar, and he wears a Roman toga on the bas-reliefs in his tomb. His coronation crown, a laurel wreath made of gold, sent the same message. His icon, the eagle, was also borrowed from Rome. But Caesar's legitimacy depended on military victories. Ultimately, Napoleon suffered too many defeats.

These days Napoleon the man and his times remain very much in fashion and we are living through something of a new golden age of Napoleonic literature. Those historians who over the past decade or so have had fun denouncing him as the first totalitarian dictator seem to have it all wrong: no angel, to be sure, he ended up doing far more at far less cost than any modern despot. In his widely praised 2014 biography, Napoleon the Great, Andrew Roberts writes: “The ideas that underpin our modern world - meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, and so on - were championed, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoleon. To them he added a rational and efficient local administration, an end to rural banditry, the encouragement of science and the arts, the abolition of feudalism and the greatest codification of laws since the fall of the Roman empire.”

Roberts partly bases his historical judgement on newly released historical documents about Napoleon that were only available in the past decade and has proved to be a boon for all Napoleonic scholars. Newly released 33,000 letters Napoleon wrote that still survive are now used extensively to illustrate the astonishing capacity that Napoleon had for compartmentalising his mind - he laid down the rules for a girls’ boarding school on the eve of the battle of Borodino, for example, and the regulations for Paris’s Comédie-Française while camped in the Kremlin. They also show Napoleon’s extraordinary capacity for micromanaging his empire: he would write to the prefect of Genoa telling him not to allow his mistress into his box at the theatre, and to a corporal of the 13th Line regiment warning him not to drink so much.

For me to have my own perspective on Napoleon is tough. The problem is that nothing with Napoleon is simple, and almost every aspect of his personality is a maddening paradox. He was a military genius who led disastrous campaigns. He was a liberal progressive who reinstated slavery in the French colonies. And take the French Revolution, which came just before Napoleon’s rise to power, his relationship with the French Revolution is deeply ambivalent. Did he stabilise it or shut it down? I agree with those British and French historians who now believe Napoleon seems to have done both.

On the one hand, Napoleon did bring order to a nation that had been drenched in blood in the years after the Revolution. The French people had endured the crackdown known as the 'Reign of Terror', which saw so many marched to the guillotine, as well as political instability, corruption, riots and general violence. Napoleon’s iron will managed to calm the chaos. But he also rubbished some of the core principles of the Revolution. A nation which had boldly brought down the monarchy had to watch as Napoleon crowned himself Emperor, with more power and pageantry than Louis XVI ever had. He also installed his relatives as royals across Europe, creating a new aristocracy. In the words of French politician and author Lionel Jospin, 'He guaranteed some principles of the Revolution and at the same time, changed its course, finished it and betrayed it.'

He also had a feared henchman in the form of Joseph Fouché, who ran a secret police network which instilled dread in the population. Napoleon’s spies were everywhere, stifling political opposition. Dozens of newspapers were suppressed or shut down. Books had to be submitted for approval to the Commission of Revision, which sounds like something straight out of George Orwell. Some would argue Hitler and Stalin followed this playbook perfectly. But here come the contradictions. Napoleon also championed education for all, founding a network of schools. He championed the rights of the Jews. In the territories conquered by Napoleon, laws which kept Jews cooped up in ghettos were abolished. 'I will never accept any proposals that will obligate the Jewish people to leave France,' he once said, 'because to me the Jews are the same as any other citizen in our country.'

He also, crucially, developed the Napoleonic Code, a set of laws which replaced the messy, outdated feudal laws that had been used before. The Napoleonic Code clearly laid out civil laws and due processes, establishing a society based on merit and hard work, rather than privilege. It was rolled out far beyond France, and indisputably helped to modernise Europe. While it certainly had its flaws – women were ignored by its reforms, and were essentially regarded as the property of men – the Napoleonic Code is often brandished as the key evidence for Napoleon’s progressive credentials. In the words of historian Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon the Great, 'the ideas that underpin our modern world… were championed by Napoleon'.

What about Napoleon’s battlefield exploits? If anything earns comparisons with Hitler, it’s Bonaparte’s apparent appetite for conquest. His forces tore down republics across Europe, and plundered works of art, much like the Nazis would later do. A rampant imperialist, Napoleon gleefully grabbed some of the greatest masterpieces of the Renaissance, and allegedly boasted, 'the whole of Rome is in Paris.'

Napoleon has long enjoyed a stellar reputation as a field commander – his capacities as a military strategist, his ability to read a battle, the painstaking detail with which he made sure that he cold muster a larger force than his adversary or took maximum advantage of the lie of the land – these are stuff of the military legend that has built up around him. It is not without its critics, of course, especially among those who have worked intensively on the later imperial campaigns, in the Peninsula, in Russia, or in the final days of the Empire at Waterloo.

Doubts about his judgment, and allegations of rashness, have been raised in the context of some of his victories, too, most notably, perhaps, at Marengo. But overall his reputation remains largely intact, and his military campaigns have been taught in the curricula of military academies from Saint-Cyr to Sandhurst, alongside such great tacticians as Alexander the Great and Hannibal.

Historians may query his own immodest opinion that his presence on the battlefield was worth an extra forty thousand men to his cause, but it is clear that when he was not present (as he was not for most of the campaign in Spain) the French were wont to struggle. Napoleon understood the value of speed and surprise, but also of structures and loyalties. He reformed the army by introducing the corps system, and he understood military aspirations, rewarding his men with medals and honours; all of which helped ensure that he commanded exceptional levels of personal loyalty from his troops.

Yet, I do find it hard to side with the more staunch defenders of Napoleon who say his reputation as a war monger is to some extent due to British propaganda at the time. They will point out that the Napoleonic Wars, far from being Napoleon’s fault, were just a continuation of previous conflicts that arose thanks to the French Revolution. Napoleon, according to this analysis, inherited a messy situation, and his only real crime was to be very good at defeating enemies on the battlefield. I think that is really pushing things too far. I mean deciding to invade Spain and then Russia were his decisions to invade and conquer.

He was, by any measure, a genius of war. Even his nemesis the Duke of Wellington, when asked who the greatest general of his time was, replied: 'In this age, in past ages, in any age, Napoleon.'

I will qualify all this and agree that Napoleon’s Russian campaign has been rightly held up as a fatal folly which killed so many of his men, but this blunder – epic as it was – should not be compared to Hitler’s wars of evil aggression. Most historians will agree that comparing the two men is horribly flattering to Hitler - a man fuelled by visceral, genocidal hate - and demeaning to Napoleon, who was a product of Enlightenment thinking and left a legacy that in many ways improved Europe.

Napoleon was, of course, no libertarian, and no pluralist. He would tolerate no opposition to his rule, and though it was politicians and civilians who imposed his reforms, the army was never far behind. But comparisons with twentieth-century dictators are well wide of the mark. While he insisted on obedience from those he administered, his ideology was based not on division or hatred, but on administrative efficiency and submission to the law. And the state he believed in remained stubbornly secular.

In Catholic southern Europe, of course, that was not an approach with which it was easy to acquiesce; and disorder, insurgency and partisan attacks can all be counted among the results. But these were principles on which the Emperor would not and could not give ground. If he had beliefs they were not religious or spiritual beliefs, but the secular creed of a man who never forgot that he owed both his military career and his meteoric political rise to the French Revolution, and who never quite abandoned, amidst the monarchical symbolism and the court pomp of the Empire, the republican dreams of his youth. When he claimed, somewhat ambiguously, after the coup of 18 Brumaire that `the Revolution was over’, he almost certainly meant that the principles of 1789 had at last been consummated, and that the continuous cycle of violence of the 1790s could therefore come to an end.

When the Empire was declared in 1804, the wording, again, might seem curious, the French being informed that the `Republic would henceforth be ruled by an Emperor’. Napoleon might be a dictator, but a part at least of him remained a son of the Enlightenment.

The arguments over Napoleon’s status will continue - and that in itself is a testament to the power of one of the most complex figures ever to straddle the world’s stage.

Will the fascination with Napoleon continue for another 200 years?

In France, at least, enthusiasm looks set to diminish. Napoleon and his exploits are scarcely mentioned in French schools anymore. Stéphane Guégan, curator of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, which, among other First Empire artworks, houses a plaster model of Napoleon dressed as a Roman emperor astride a horse, has described France's fascination with him as ‘a national illness.’ He believes that the people who met him were fascinated by his charm. And today, even the most hostile to Napoleon also face this charm. So there is a difficulty to apprehend the duality of this character. As he wrote, “He was born from the revolution, he extended and finished it, and after 1804 he turns into a despot, a dictator.”

In France, Guégan aptly observes, there is a kind of nostalgia, not for dictatorship but for strong leaders. "Our age is suffering a lack of imagination and political utopia,"

Here I think Guégan is onto something. Napoleon’s stock has always risen or fallen according to the vicissitudes of world events and fortunes of France itself.

In the past, history was the study of great men and women. Today the focus of teaching is on trends, issues and movements. France in 1800 is no longer about Louis XVI and Napoleon Bonaparte. It's about the industrial revolution. Man does not make history. History makes men. Or does it? The study of history makes a mug out of those with such simple ideological driven conceits.

For two hundred years on, the French still cannot agree on whether Napoleon was a hero or a villain as he has swung like a pendulum according to the gravitational pull of historical events and forces.

The question I keep asking of myself and also to French friends with whom I discuss such things is what kind of Napoleon does our generation need?

Thanks for your question.

#question #ask #napoleon #french #french history #history #military history #bonaparte #france #historiography #republic #historians #personal

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zuko-always-lies · 3 years

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Unpopular Opinion: Zuko’s treatment of Mai is deeply toxic.

Mai is a character who is often maligned in the fandom, with it even occasionally being claimed that she was “abusive” toward Zuko. Any objective analysis of Mai’s behavior in her relationship with Zuko will instead find that she was, in fact, a shockingly good romantic partner, generally treating Zuko very well and being loyal to him far beyond reasonable expectation. Claims that Mai behaved toxically toward Zuko seem to be instead founded in misogynistic expectations that women be perfect caretakers for the men in their lives.

That is not to say that the Zuko-Mai relationship isn’t still deeply toxic. However, its toxicity stems from the manner which Zuko badly mistreats Mai, often in ways which devalue her. Much more under the cut.

Our story begins in the first half of Book 3. The vast majority of episodes there don’t show anything particularly toxic going on in the relationship. The most you can say is that they suggest that Zuko tends to dump his problems on others and doesn’t have best understanding of his girlfriend.

However, inevitably we must turn to “The Beach,” the episode which, by far, gets the most into the Zuko-Mai relationship. To say that Zuko doesn’t behave well toward Mai in this episode would be an understatement. I don’t speak here of Zuko’s unsuccessful attempts to please Mai early in the episode, but instead how badly he starts treating her beginning at the party:

Ruon Jian: Hey, first ones here, huh? Zuko: (cut to shot of Zuko and Mai walking side by side) Pft. He thinks he's so great. (to Mai) Well, what do you think of him? (they stop walking) Mai: I don't have any opinion about him. I hardly know him. Zuko: You like him, don't you? (Mai sighs and walks away, as Zuko looks angrily in the direction of Ruon Jian. The camera zooms in on Ruon Jian)

And

(Cut to shot of Ruon Jian leaning over Mai. Zuko rushes toward them angrily and pushes Ruon Jian away from her. Cut to shot of Ruon Jian straightening his hair.) Ruon Jian: Whoa. What are you doing? Zuko: (close-up shot of Zuko, angry) Stop talking to my girlfriend! Ruon Jian: (Ruon Jian approaches Zuko) Relax, it's just a party. (Zuko pushes Ruon Jian hard, sending him flying across the room, breaking a giant vase.) Mai: (Mai stands up and grabs Zuko's shoulder. He turns towards her.) Zuko, what is wrong with you?! Zuko: What's wrong with me?! Mai: (angrily) Your temper's out of control. You blow up over every little thing. You're so impatient and hot-headed and angry. Zuko: Well, at least I feel something...as opposed to you. You have no passion for anything. (raising his arms is the air) You're just a big "blah". Mai: (turning away from him) It's over, Zuko. We're done.

And:

(Zuko follows her and the camera pans down to the handprint, left alone on the porch. Cut to wide view of the camera panning down Ember Island Beach. Zuko and Azula are walking side by side toward Mai and Ty Lee. Close shot of Zuko looking toward Mai and then looking away. Close shot of Mai looking angry and a bit sad.) Mai: Hey... (Interrupted) Zuko: (close shot of Zuko) Where's your new boyfriend? (Mai turns away angrily. Zuko comes and sits next to her) Are you cold? (he puts his arm around her, but she slaps it away)

Zuko is acting in a massively controlling fashion toward Mai, motivated by his violent and rage-filled jealously. She literally can’t talk to a boy without Zuko flying into a jealous rage, trying to separate her from the person she’s talking to, and accusing her of emotional infidelity. In real life, this is considered a warning sign for an abusive relationship(although I don’t think Zuko has crossed the line into abusive yet).

“The Beach” also gives us this:

Mai: Oh, well, I'm sorry I can't be as high-strung and crazy as the rest of you. (Cut to over-head shot of the four teens. Zuko walks closer to the fire and Mai.) Zuko: I'm sorry, too. I wish you would be high-strung and crazy for once, (Close shot of Mai looking away and Zuko standing over her) instead of keeping all your feelings bottled up inside. She just called your aura dingy. Are you gonna take that?

Zuko tries to provoke Mai into having a fight with her best friend Ty Lee just so he can watch her express strong emotions. Zuko very much wants to Mai to be and act like someone she’s not, which has its own issues.

Overall, Zuko treats Mai quite poorly in “The Beach.” The episode ends with this:

Mai: I know one thing I care about... (Cut to shot of Mai smiling at Zuko) I care about you. (Mai and Zuko kiss. Azula claps, causing them to separate and turn toward Azula. The camera pans left to include her.)

Mai forgives Zuko and accepts him back without him acknowledging his behavior was wrong, apologizing for it, or giving her any guarantee that he will treat her better in the future. That’s unfortunate, as Zuko soon ends up treating her far, far worse than he ever did in this episode.

Zuko’s disregard for Mai cumulates with the manner he commits treason on the Day of Black Sun. Let us start our understanding of what he did wrong from the beginning. Breaking up with Mai via a letter which didn’t give her a real explanation was a real asshole move, but it’s not at the core of what he did wrong. For that, we need to turn to this conversation from “The Headband”:

Zuko: Can't you see we're busy? (He and Mai resume their "business".) Azula: (not to be put off) Oh, Mai... Ty Lee needs your help untangling her braid. Mai: (complaisantly) Sounds pretty serious. (She gets up and leaves. Walking past Azula, towards the camera, she shoots the princess a quick, poisonous glance behind her back.) Azula: So...I hear you've been to visit your Uncle Fatso in the prison tower. Zuko: (standing, incensed) That guard told you. Azula: (smugly) No, you did. Just now. Zuko: (sitting back down) Okay, you caught me. What is it that you want, Azula? Azula: (solicitiously) Actually, nothing. Believe it or not, I'm looking out for you. If people find out you've been to see Uncle, they'll think you're plotting with him. Just be careful, dum-dum.

Zuko has proven his loyalty to the Fire Nation beyond doubt, yet Azula is still very worried that him spending time with Iroh will get him accused of treason, because having a close association with traitors puts oneself under almost automatic suspicion of treason.

“Day of Black Sun, Part II”:

Zuko: First of all, in Ba Sing Se, it was Azula who took down the Avatar, not me. Fire Lord Ozai: Why would she lie to me about that? Zuko: Because the Avatar is not dead. He survived. Fire Lord Ozai: (alarmed) What?!

Zuko deliberately throws Azula under the bus, hurting her and reducing her status with Ozai as much possible while effectively accusing her of deliberately committing treason. He also deliberately pisses off Ozai as much as possible.

So where does this leave us? Mai is Zuko’s known girlfriend and extremely close associate. Automatically, the suspicion of knowing of Zuko’s treason ahead of time or being involved falls upon her. She’s in grave risk of being imprisoned, tortured, or executed, especially since Ozai seems not the type to be strictly concerned with ensuring those he punishes are guilty beyond reasonable doubt. The Fire Nation seems like a society which might have collective punishment(as historical East Asian societies, Nazi Germany, and the Stalinist Soviet Union did), and Mai might be under risk from that direction. Finally, Ozai might hurt her simply as way of retaliating against Zuko.

Normally Azula would almost certainly be able to protect her friend, even under these trying circumstances, given Azula’s prestige and accomplishments. However, Zuko has deliberately undermined Azula as much as possible and effectively accused her of committing treason herself, dramatically reducing the probability that she will be able to protect Mai. In fact, Mai stands risk of being accused of being involved in Azula’s effort to “conceal the fact that the Avatar survived,” given Mai’s close association with Azula and her close involvement in the events where the Avatar “died.” She’s thus under danger from two different directions.

“But Zuko had to betray his father and become good through aiding Team Avatar.” Yes, it’s a good thing he did so. But Zuko had other options than the course he adopted. He could have avoided confronting Ozai at all and instead focused on rescuing Iroh(interesting AU idea right here). He could have confronted Ozai but not thrown Azula under the bus, and that alone would have vastly reduced the risk to Mai(and also made Zuko out to be a better person, because deliberately throwing your younger sister under the bus and then abandoning her to the mercy of your abusive father is not a good look). Zuko could have killed Ozai right then and there during the eclipse. He even could have tried to lead Team Avatar to the bunker and tried to end the war right then and there.

“Zuko didn’t understand that he was placing Mai in danger.” Quite possible, but Zuko being so self-centered that he is unable of understanding that his actions can have negative effects on other people is a mark against him, not for him.

Now we turn to the Zuko’s behavior toward Mai in the rest of the third season. Let us start with “The Boiling Rock, Part 1”:

Sokka: (emphatically) I think your Uncle would be proud of you. Leaving your home to come help us, that's hard. Zuko: It wasn't that hard. Sokka: (Cut to a side view of the basket) Really? You didn't leave behind anyone you cared about? Zuko: Well I did have a girlfriend. Mai. Sokka: (He goes closer to Zuko with a surprised look on his face) That gloomy girl who sighs a lot? Zuko: (Cut back to show Zuko grinning goofily) Yeah. (his face turns serious) Everyone in the Fire Nation thinks I'm a traitor. I couldn't drag her into it. Sokka: (Cut back to Sokka who leans back on the basket) My first girlfriend turned into the Moon. Zuko: (looks up) That's rough buddy

There are two things to unpack here. First, Zuko claims he “couldn’t drag her into it,” yet he already did, as I’ve illustrated above. Second, Zuko seems to expect that Mai would have followed him into treason if he asked her, that she would be willing to betray her nation, ideology, family, and friends just for the sake of her love for him. That’s an insane and pretty toxic expectation for Zuko to have for her relationship with him, especially since he wouldn’t do the same for her.

We also get more confirmation that Zuko doesn’t care at all about Ty Lee or Azula.

I don’t have a lot to say about the Zuko-Mai conversation during Boiling Rock, Part 2. The only things I would like to note are that Zuko is not very sorry for what he did, not very empathetic toward Mai’s pain, and doesn’t give Mai a real apology for his actions.

Of course, Mai proceeds to save Zuko’s life through committing treason in front of dozens of witnesses at Boiling Rock, something which places her own life in serous jeopardy. How does Zuko react to this?

Zuko: (Cut to a shocked Zuko) It's Mai. Azula: (Cut to a furious Azula) What is she doing?! (Cut to the backs of Azula and Ty Lee as Ty Lee shrugs and makes a "I don't know" noise. Cut to the gondola as it reaches the outer part of the crater. Cut to the inside of the entrance tower as the door opens and Suki rushes out followed by Sokka, Zuko, Hakoda and Chit Sang. Hakoda turns towards Chit Sang and points to the inside of the gondola. Chit Sang proceeds to throw the warden back in.) Hakoda: (Cut to the back of Hakoda's head looking at the warden lying on the floor) Sorry Warden, your record is officially broken. (Hakoda walks off screen while the warden continues to struggle on the floor. Cut to a front shot of the group as they run up a rocky incline.) Suki: Well, we made it out. Now what? Sokka: (Sokka stops and looks back at Zuko who pauses in his tracks, thinking) Zuko, what are you doing? Zuko: My sister was on that island. Sokka: Yeah and she's probably right behind us. So let's not stop. Zuko: What I mean is she must have come here somehow. (He runs to the edge of the rocks and looks down) There. (Cut to an area looking up at the edge of the cliff) That's our way out of here. (Camera pans down to reveal a Fire Nation zeppelin docked at the shore.

Zuko says Mai’s name once and then abandons her (to die?) with zero hesitation. This is probably objectively the correct decision. It would probably be extremely difficult and dangerous if not outright impossible to save Mai. The prison-break crew do have access to an airship, but it’s difficult to fly an airship over the lake’s thermals.

Yet that’s not my point. Zuko abandons Mai with zero hesitation, with zero anguish, with zero angst. He doesn’t even to seem consider the possibility that he should save her. Something tells me if Iroh had just saved Zuko’s life under identical circumstances and then was in imminent risk of harm, Zuko would act very differently, that Sokka, Suki, and Hakoda would have to drag him off that island.

Zuko’s complete disregard for Mai continues for the rest the series. Remember this exchange from “The Cave of Two Lovers”?

Zuko: (losing his patience) We're not taking any more chances with these plants! We need to get help. Iroh: But where are we going to go? We're enemies of the Earth Kingdom, and fugitives from the Fire Nation. Zuko: (musingly) If the Earth Kingdom, discovers us, they'll have us killed. Iroh: But if the Fire Nation discovers us, we'll be turned over to Azula.

Zuko considers being captured by Azula a worse fate than death!

But do we see Zuko worry once about Mai’s fate? Do we see angst about what might have happened to her? Do we see him make any effort to even discover her fate, much less rescue her?

No. In fact, Zuko launches a sophisticated operation to infiltrate a Fire Nation information center so that he can gain intelligence in order to help Katara murder someone so that she’ll like him, but he doesn’t even consider doing the same to find out about Mai’s fate so that he could potentially rescue her. Zuko doesn’t even mention Mai once after Boiling Rock until the very end of the series finale, even though she sacrificed herself to save him. Remember this exchange(“Sozin’s Comet, Part 3”):

Zuko: Sorry, but you're not going to become Fire Lord today. (jumps off Appa) I am. Azula: (laughs) You're hilarious. Katara: (standing beside Zuko) And you're going down. (The fire sage motions to crown Azula, but she raises her hand, signalling him to stop.) Azula: Wait. You want to be Fire Lord Fine. Let's settle this. Just you and me, brother. The showdown that was always meant to be. Agni Kai! Zuko: You're on. (Katara turns to Zuko, surprised. Cut to a close up of Azula's lips as the curls into a smile. Cut back to Katara and Zuko.) Katara: What are you doing? She's playing you. She knows she can't take us both so she is trying to separate us. Zuko: I know. But I can take her this time. Katara: But even you admitted to your Uncle that you would need help facing Azula. Zuko: There's something off about her, I can't explain it but she's slipping. And this way, no one else has to get hurt. (Fade to a shot of the courtyard from the side. The camera pans from Zuko kneeling on the right end to Azula kneeling on the left end. Cut to a shot of Zuko rising and turning around, then cut to a shot of Azula rising. Each can be seen behind the other. Cut to a shot of Azula from the front turning and removing the Fire Lord robes.) Azula: I'm sorry it has to end this way, brother. Zuko: (in his stance) No, you're not.

Notice something? Zuko doesn’t demand to know what happened to Mai! It’s almost like he forgot she existed!

Now we turn to the final infamous exchange(“Sozin’s Comet, Part 4”):

Mai:(off screen) You need some help with that? (He looks up surprised and moves aside to reveal Mai leaning against the doorway. Cut to a close up of Mai as she walks towards Zuko.) Zuko: (Cut to a delighted Zuko) Mai! (Walks off screen) You're ok. (Cut to an area behind Mai's back as Zuko opens his arms out in a hug) They let you out of prison? (Mai walks behind Zuko and lifts up his empty robe sleeve.) Mai: My uncle (Zuko puts his arms through the sleeve) pulled some strings, (she proceeds to fasten his robe) and it doesn't hurt when the new Fire Lord is your boyfriend. (She walks in front of Zuko and places a hand on his chest) Zuko: So does this mean you don't hate me anymore? Mai: (she blushes) I think it means... (Cut to a close up of the couple) I actually (places a hand on Zuko's cheek) kind of like you. (They lean in for a kiss and part a fewseconds later, looking into each other's eyes happily) But don't ever (She jabs a finger into Zuko's shoulder and Zuko's eye traces the movement of her finger) break up (She lifts her finger into the air and Zuko's eyes still follows it) with me again. (She jabs her finger into Zuko's shoulder one last time and Zuko smiles goofily. They embrace and the camera zooms out slowly.

Zuko seems surprised to learn that Mai is OK, almost like he made no effort to find out her fate once he took charge of the Fire Nation. And indeed, his first acts as leader of the Fire Nation were not to find out what happened to her or, if he actually knew, to get her released from prison. Mai only got released from prison when her uncle and his connections got sufficiently confident that Zuko had been completely accepted as the new leader to release a massive traitor completely on their own initiative. This was quite possibly weeks after Azula-Zuko Agni Kai, yet he made no apparent effort to get her released. It’s almost like Zuko completely forgot about Mai, even though she sacrificed herself to save him.

And, of course, Zuko doesn’t accept responsibility for any of the awful ways he treated Mai, much less apologize to her or offer any guarantee he will behave better in the future. Mai still forgives him anyways, just like she did in “The Beach,” only for Zuko to continue to screw her over. There is something deeply depressing here, as there’s every reason to believe that Zuko will screw over Mai over, devalue her, and disregard her well-being, desires, and interests again the moment it’s convenient for him to do so. He certainly has not recognized that his toxic behavior here is something he needs to stop doing. Ironically, the comics get this right by having Zuko try to use his power as Firelord to order Mai to stay his girlfriend.

Ultimately, Zuko loves Mai and cares about her deeply, yet he still treats her as a tool and acts like she exists to serve him. It reminds me how show! canon Ozai genuinely loved show! canon Ursa, but still used her as a tool and threw her away. Honestly, I doubt 16-year-old Zuko is really ready for any romantic relationship at all, given his often toxic behavior, his trauma, and the incredibly stressful position he’s placed in at the end of the series.

#Azula #Zuko #Mai #Ty Lee #Dangerous Ladies #Ozai #Zuko meta #ATLA meta #meta #Unpopular opinion

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stopeatingwhales · 3 years

Text

real estate x damon albarn

THIS REQUEST WAS SO CUTE TYSM ANON <333

Pairing: 1998 damon albarn x reader

Warnings: none :))

Word count: 3.104

Requested by anon x

༉‧₊˚✧

Searching for a home to share with your partner is one of the most fulfilling yet extremely stressful experiences. To prior discussion and awareness of the reciprocity of feelings you have for one another, a mutual agreement is conformed in the idea of wanting to invest in a space where you both can start anew, and begin a segment in your lives which in hope can progress until the very last breath. From being in a relationship with Damon for quite a significant amount of time - and having him inhabit my apartment for many a year - it was quite transparent that we had both worn out the flat, to the point that it was wearing us down. To be able to start fresh, in a new space, grants the ability of us to create the life that we had always manifested together - notwithstanding the fact that we had loved where we had lived at the time, it was simply the element of growth and the need for a change between our relationship. As you get older, mature more into your thirties, simple doings like getting drunk every friday night after a long, dragging day of work and intoxicating your body with countless shots of pure ethanol, losing all ability of processing any cognitive skill, becomes more of an impediment than going out to release the burden placed on your shoulders from the entire week of pure hindrance - and not to mention the hangovers. If we had perpetuated ourselves in the same routine that had been occupied as long as the decade induced in our twenties lasted, not only would it morph a lifestyle of monotonous sadness, but it leaves no ground for the chance to mature, the chance to experience all else that this world, this life can provide. It defeats the purpose of life, as existence is never steady; it is a continuous development between life stages, and an inevitability. To not accept the philosophy of life, proves a lack of purpose in your existence. Life is fleeting from the moment a baby opens its mouth for its first cry, and to distract one’s self from the thought of the end, we comply with life as it blossoms.

Me and Damon were visiting the second home that the real estate agent had been showing us. It was beautiful; a much larger space in comparison to the apartment we had in the heart of Camden - a place where the life of the party never comes to a halt, so getting to sleep was quite a challenge some nights, as well as it being an actual house. We decided upon the fact that we should search for houses instead of another apartment as we had endured living in a one-floor apartment for years on end, and to be able to have more space where you could rest your feet, not have clutter at every corner of the room, would be a dream. As I wandered around the upstairs floor, I walked into the master room, where I had found Damon standing, gazing out of the window which conveyed the most picturesque landscape of freshly cut grass, accompanied with the sun’s glisten to allow the richness of the green pigment to blossom even more. It felt like a stupor admiring the beauty that was portrayed forth, like an over emphasised memory from your childhood, in which every little thing seemed to be so enticing, full of pure feelings of euphoria, where there had been not a care in the world for anything except your own - merely just that significant moment that had been playing out. From the repetitive reminiscence towards those specific memories, things seem to feel a little more bright, full, happy, than it had been before, as if it was your mind toying with the fact that you may not feel as elated as you were when everything had been handed to you from unconditional love and care. “What do you think of it?” I asked Damon, as I sat myself on the mattress laid on the bed frame.

His figure didn’t move from his admiration of the nature. “It’s alright,” he mumbled, just audible, before stepping away from the window and turning to face me, his back now resting against the warm glass surface. He seemed quite uninterested with the house itself, which had happened with the house we visited beforehand. All he seemed to do was pull faces or rest on the couch after looking around a couple times. “Let’s go visit the last place, see if we get anything better.” A hint of annoyance had been laced in his words, confusing me slightly. I had the urge to question him, see if there was anything bothering him, or if he had begun to doubt wanting to get a house together. The simple thought had shattered my heart a little, as if it had been trodden on by accident, though accidental pain seems to hurt the most. Attempting to brush the everlasting thought away from my mind, I nodded slightly, getting up from the mattress and walking out of the room with him.

As we reached the last property, it had only seemed as if things had gotten progressively worse in Damon’s demeanour. He walked around the building alongside me, leaving snide comments here and there about specific things that didn’t appeal to him from the interior. However, the home that had been presented to us seemed almost perfect for the both of us, a place that was created out of the utmost creativity and affection for the right couple to walk in and begin their lives together. This home was illustrated to have your heart sink into the ground, seep into the mud underneath as if it were quick sand and completely engulf your mind with it, a hypnosis so intense that regardless of the pricing you would sign any form sent your way. By having been with Damon for the past couple years, I knew him more than a reasonable amount to understand that there had been something else causing him to project such a detest towards our property-searching the entire day. There was not a single flaw in the architecture, as if the residence had been created as a welcome to Eden’s garden subsequent to your soul’s departure, except it had been built in the wrong heaven. A single step in the building had your jaw cascading to the wooden flooring, your mouth empty yet so brimmed with compliments, mesmerisation aching to escape your throat, though you could not muster any form of ability since it had been utterly hushed by the construction’s elegance that you didn’t want to damage any part from speaking, even in a mere whisper.

“What do you think of it?” I asked, my mind gaining déjà vu from the question I had repeated at every residence we had stepped forth into. We were wandering around the kitchen, which had an island separating it to the living room. It was a very large, open space, and the thought of not dividing rooms with brick walls, like the kitchen and living room, having them conjoined except separated with a countertop was very thoughtful. It removed the feeling of being trapped into such a small room, needing to wander through many doors twisting knobs and pushing the wooden frames in order to get into another corner of the premises, and made living much more free and easy. It's extremely draining by living in a space for many a year that it begins to close in on you, as if every single time you walked in it had gotten tighter, more smaller.

Turning my gaze to watch Damon wander around the living side of the room, I placed my hands on the countertop, sucking my cheek in as I attempted to think of something that may be bothering him, minus the stress of the entire house hunt we were doing today. Stress from work? Perhaps he got into an argument with a friend? Got up on the wrong side of bed? It was a pure mystery. My gaze was fixed on him until he connected eyes with me, a hand placed on his neck as his fingers grazed the back of it lightly, an attempt to relax himself. “It’s the nicest one we’ve visited,” he replied, walking over to me slowly, also scanning the large room as he did. “The amount of detail that went into designing this is mad.”

A small smile crept up on my lips as he stopped by the countertop, that now being the only thing in which dividing us at that point. “It’s perfect for us, don’t you think?” I asked quietly, admiring the craftwork that had been delicately carved into the ceiling.

“I think we should think over what we want before we make that decision,” he replied as our gazes matched once again. Looking up at him, a confused expression spread out on my face, but before I was able to speak up he had carried on. “Don’t take that the wrong way, but I don’t want us to rush into things and have us regretting something we could’ve easily thought of if we gave ourselves time.”

“We have spoken it out, haven’t we?” I questioned him, now taking a step back and folding my arms together. Everything about Damon today felt so off, the thought of him not wanting to share a place with me sinking into my thoughts again as I tried my hardest to battle it out of my mind. “You agreed that it was time for us to search for something new, together, and that’s what we’re doing, is it not?”

An exasperated sigh left his lips as he stared at the ground. At this point I had begun to get frustrated with his overall mood - this was supposed to be a fun experience together, but the feeling of him weighing the cons was more visible than his thought of the pros. “I don’t want to argue here, let’s just keep looking around.”

The build-up to the argument had seemingly debunked itself, at Damon’s command. Indeed, we carried on looking around, though this time I had decided to admire the place alone, which had been made very clear when I had pushed past him, not with much strength to cause damage, but enough to cause a point once I left the room. The upstairs floor was no different in beauty and elegance as the ground floor embodied. It would be a simple wonder to think how much time, dedication would be taken into creating such a masterpiece; it was so magnificent that you’d practically feel guilty for stepping foot inside. Glad I took my shoes off once I walked in, then.

After spending what seemed like all eternity having my eyes fixated on the embellishment surfaced all around, picturing what furniture would suit in far right corner, the middle of the room, what would hang on the wall, I headed to the ground floor, refreshing my memory of the delicacy that had been portrayed everywhere. My pace was slow, as if my mind was taking mental pictures of the palace to be able to look back in my memories for later, when me and Damon would discuss which place suited us the most. The market was quite tight at the minute, seemingly every person in the industry and in our lives growing up and deciding upon starting new chapters of their lives, which is why we were extremely lucky to be able to have such a place offered to us at the minute, surprising as it had not been taken by some conservative wanting to waste their money on a place where they probably wouldn’t walk inside. I saw the estate agent in the living room, who immediately made eye contact with me as I stepped into the room, a grin spreading out across her cheeks almost instantaneously. “Nice, right?”

“Oh, it’s absolutely beautiful,” I replied back, engaging myself in the ceiling’s artwork once again, thinking for a moment before choosing the right thing to reply. My thoughts had then been distracted from Damon’s footsteps heading towards the pair of us. He stood beside me as I gazed up at him, swallowing lightly before I knew what to say. “I think we’re going to head home and think about everything first, before we make any big decisions.” I added, my gaze never leaving Damon’s side profile.

“That’s completely alright, you have until the end of the week to make your decision, I’ll put this place on a reserve.” She replied, followed by our thanks as we walked out of the elegant building and headed home.

~~~

Me and Damon hardly spoke after we got home as I needed to finish up some work that was overdue from my job. Damon had nothing else planned for the rest of the night, so he stayed in the living room, providing no extra distraction for me to prevent any extra pressure or stress so I could be able to complete everything as quickly as possible. I overheard the television in the background, and the occasional phone ring, every call being for Damon it seemed as his deep voice followed after the repetitive rings of the phone line had come to an end. Oftentimes I envied his freedom due to his occupation being a musician, however a lot of the time his job seemed quite enclosing and tiring. Having to constantly be away from home, not being able to have an easy way of stability from the constant movement to a different country every couple of days, sometimes even every single day. Though, arriving in a new country every morning does seem quite fun.

After I had finished up all my work, I changed into my pyjamas and headed to the living room, welcoming me to the sight of Damon, who had now dozed off on the couch, his hair quite messy from shuffling around in the same spot, his skin illuminating a golden glow, courtesy to the warm light being omitted from the lampshade beside him. Part of me didn’t want to wake him due to how relaxed he looked, though I knew he would be more comfortable waking up on a mattress rather than an old leather couch. I turned the television off, quietly tiptoeing around his sleepy body, then crouched down slightly to shake Damon so he would wake up. “Come to bed, love.” I whispered, causing his eyelids to flutter open softly as he stretched his arms out unintentionally, conveying his exhaustion, a small smile spread out across his lips once he was greeted by me in his sight. Helping him get up, I allowed him to walk into our bedroom in front of me, turning the light off after we both left the room. There was no light on in the bedroom, except the shine of the moon seeping onto the bed covers due to the curtains never being shut. Once we both made ourselves comfortable under the duvet, we turned our bodies to look at one another's, Damon’s tired eyes evident due to the eyebags surrounding them, though he was more awake now after moving around a little. “I know you’re tired, but what was wrong with you today?” I asked quietly, regretting speaking as soon as the sentence had rolled off my tongue.

A large sigh escaped his throat before mustering a response towards my asking. “I’ll be honest, the houses were very nice, but I didn’t like any of them.”

“None of them? How come?” I replied, attempting not to raise my voice out of shock.

“Because I want to start this part of our lives with a house big enough for us to raise children,” he admitted, staring deeply into my eyes. “I want the perfect house for us, but I haven’t been able to find it at all, and it’s so frustrating.”

A grin spread across my face as I reached to embrace his face with both my hands. "Damon, it doesn't matter the style of the doors, how big the living room is, or whether there's two or three bathrooms," I began, allowing my thumbs to lightly graze over his cheeks. “What matters is enjoying our time together, and the lives that we'll lead together as parents, raising our children,” A large beam spread across his face from my reassurance, compelling me to give him a soft peck on the lips before carrying on. "If you can picture the house of your dreams, it isn't your dream house. Your dream house is something that you shouldn't be able to picture, something that you can't fixate upon in specific, because it carries such beauty that you will only know you have achieved, once you've got it."

“Does that apply to everything?” he asked, mumbling, his voice now soft as if the love of the moment had been seeping out of his mouth.

“I’d say so, yeah.”

“Then that means I’ve got the girl of my dreams.”

“Oh shut it you softie.”

“What? It’s true, love.”

“I can’t wait to start a family with you.” I mumbled absentmindedly, a light sigh leaving my mouth, repeating all that had just happened these past couple minutes.

“Likewise, darling,” he replied, bringing his lips to my face to kiss my temples gently, the feeling of his kiss lingering on the skin, my heart filled with pure elation and adoration for the man in front of me. “Spoke to your mum today.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, she called whilst you were doing your work so I just told her you were busy, then she decided on having a conversation with me instead,” he replied, taking a hold of my hand and playing with my fingers, his gaze focused on the action. “I love your mum.”

A laugh rumbled out of my throat. “You say that every time you speak to her.”

“Wow, I can’t believe I love your mum more than you do.” he jokingly replied.

“What?” I scoffed, a smile spread on my lips. “I never said that!”

“Well you certainly implied it.” he joked, raising his eyebrows as he awaited a response.

“Shut up, go to sleep.” I laughed, partly serious as the fatigue from all the walking we had done began to kick in my body.

“Only if you give me a kiss.”

“I just did!” I answered back, shifting my body so my back was to him.

“You’re the worst.” he replied, annoyance laced between his words, causing my smile to widen.

“Thanks, lovely.”

#this was so cute guys im dead #keep sending requests :)#damon albarn x reader #britpop #blur #blur band #90s #nineties #my writing #fluff #damon albarn #band imagines

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finn-ray-nal-beads · 3 years

Text

A Tight Squeeze

A/N: You all can blame @contesa-lui-alucard for this monstrosity... I literally am in love with this character now and I will never stop... I slept on him SO hard and I REGRET IT! Thank you for the inspiration and this fic is so self indulgent I wish Pat was my true baby daddy... Enjoy loves!🖤

Warnings: tw: pregnancy, tw: pregnancy kink, obscene amounts of marital fluff and love, tw: breeding kink, tw: unprotected sex, tw: doggystyle, tw: very slight edging, tw: body image, tw: slight depression (regarding body image and self esteem), lots of fluff (because Pat is fluffy), tw: daddy kink, tw: hair pulling, creampies (I mean when am I NOT doing a creampie?) a smidgen of Dom!Pat because I CANNOT control myself

(PLZfor the love of Satan lmk if I miss a tag or TW... I am only human and I make errors all the time)

“Goddammit!” you practically cried, seeing the thousandth piece of clothing you owned barely fitting around your new curves. The look of defeat and sorrow running across your pretty face from the mirror as you twisted and turned to somehow wish the new poundage away.

“Honey?” a sheepish voice called from the kitchen in your quaint home, his heavy footfalls coming steadily as he padded back to your bathroom.

His precious features gracing the floor-length mirror as he crowded the edge of the molding on the frame of the closet.

He gasped slightly, surveying the scene before him. His cock stirred in his jeans as he appraised your body, the new planes from the growing baby inside you making you glow with an effervescence he had never seen before.

His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he caught his breath, your tits plunging out of the small tank top, bouncing as you frustratingly tried to pull it over your growing bump, to no avail as the bottom half and your belly button poked from under the hemline.

The leggings barely fitting on your thighs as they clutched onto your globe of an ass. He wished on all the stars that you couldn’t fit into your underwear and had forgone them all together so he could rip the seam and go to town on your backside.

“Pat,” you whined his name, running your hands over your belly, clearly upset you had a dwindling wardrobe as the days progressed.

“I need to get some new stuff honey,” your pretty lips going into a full pout as the tears rolled down your cheeks. You never had any reason to feel as unattractive as you had just now. He had never given you any indication he didn’t think you were the most beautiful creature on this planet. In fact, when he and you had found out about the baby, he was completely overjoyed and more touchy than he had ever been in the years he’d been married to you.

His feral instincts had kicked into hyperdrive when he became a father-to-be. Making sure you were well taken care of in all aspects including but not limited to cleaning, cooking, foot rubs, nightly baths, and of course reading poetry to you and your unborn son as he grew bigger and bigger.

He loved every detail of it. The gross and good parts, and ebbed and flowed with every single mood swing and nauseous feeling you had. He was the perfect husband, and here he was, looking at you as if you were the most gorgeous goddess he had ever seen. In fact, you were to him, no matter how many times he had been in utter disbelieve that you gave him the time of day let alone let him fuck you three or more times a day.

“Okay baby,” he cooed, coming over to wrap you in the biggest hug he could, rubbing your back as you sobbed over this minor detail in your pregnancy.

He hushed and rocked you, petting your hair, while you inhaled his fresh scent, rubbing your face in his cotton t-shirt as he whispered the sweetest nothings into your ear.

“It’s gonna be okay honey,” he murmured, “you still look absolutely perfect to me my sweet love,” the words making you tear up even more as he kept with his praises.

“You’re absolutely amazing,” his chorus kept going, the baby suddenly joining in the party as he kept talking, “we both think you are, mama,” the sobs catching in your throat as your son kicked a series in your stomach, his low baritone only encouraging the movements as he kept on.

“In fact, I think mama could use a nice bath and something sweet to eat… What do you think?” he arched back to see your head pop up from its place, his precious smirk making you smile with glassy eyes while you nodded.

“That’s exactly what I think too,” kissing your forehead with the lightest effort, “okay, go get out of these, and I’ll get it going for you, deal?” his eyebrows raised as he ran a hand over the expanse of your bump, cradling underneath while you wiped your cheeks off with your hands.

He kissed over your face before heading to the bathroom to run the tub, the lavender scent emanating as the water filled the basin.

You struggled out of your clothing, cursing the companies who made your clothes as you did so. You felt like burning them in a fire or ripping them to shreds but settled on maturity rather than violence as the clothes weren’t the issue.

Your body ached from the weight of everything. The baby of course wasn’t your average-sized fetus, being that his father was a whopper when he was born. You never assumed, however, that he could be as heavy as he felt the more he grew inside you. And you also didn’t take into account the toll his size would take on yourself as the months dragged on. But willful ignorance is what you went with, and with that came karma in its truest form.

No matter how much you hurt and complained, you loved your boys, size and all, and you knew you wouldn’t do this for any man except for your precious Pat.

He was truly just the best partner in every sense of the word. And this simple gesture of making sure you practiced some self-care was his way, amongst many, of showing you how much he appreciated the sacrifices you were making for him and your growing family.

You waded into the steaming water, the enveloping hug of warmth shrouding your emotional state into numbness as the floral notes caressed your senses. This was heavenly, you thought, submerging your body as far as possible into the water, the top of your belly poking out like a small island in the ocean as you relaxed.

You closed your eyes, trying to take in the serenity, rubbing slow circles on the sides of your taut stomach as the baby relaxed within you.

Your meditation was so deep after a few minutes, you never heard Pat come in to check on you.

His hand found the exposed skin, calloused fingers enveloping it in a heated touch as he whispered to you, “how are we doing now mama?” he cooed, his soft smile in the warm light bringing you to tears again.

He was the sweetest thing on this planet. You hoped to any entity that was listening that your son had his perfect features. Those golden eyes, his soft lips, the freckles that speckled his body, his calm demeanor.

“Better,” you whispered back, unconsciously pushing your body into his touch, “thank you, daddy,” smiling at his sweet face.

“Good,” holding his gaze for a moment to peer at your perfection for just a second longer, his smile widening as yours did too.

“When you’re ready to get out I’ll help you get all lotioned and dressed… I’ve got one of my shirts and sweats out for you babe,” his lips pressing against your forehead again as you exhaled a relieved sigh.

“We’ll go get you some new stuff in the morning,” rubbing the top of your bump as you smiled brighter and brighter, “that okay?”

You nodded, peacefully, not wanting him to leave this spot until you were finished.

___________________

You spent about twenty more minutes in there until the water became too cold, his cue to get you and little man from the tub.

He helped you get dried off, making sure to gingerly rub your skin before grabbing the lotion from the cabinet. He knew you liked the lavender scent, so he had picked up a bottle when he was at the store earlier in the month. The fact that it was just about gone being an indication of a good purchase on his part.

He rubbed your relaxed muscles, making sure to massage the cream into every crack and crevice he could reach for you, the primal instincts rising within as he ran his hands over the curves and dimples on your skin.

He tried to shake the thoughts, thinking of the task at hand, but being hopelessly derailed after you let out the fifth or sixth moan in pure bliss.

He snapped then, the ambient lighting in the room looking so good on your naked body as you laid out perched in the best way for him.

“Pat?” his sudden stop causing you to look up from your spot, the pillows you had stacked so you were comfortable during his massage able to push you to see his looming body over your belly.

“What’s wrong honey?” gazing at him in the warm light, his hair tousled from the work he had been doing, his lips quivering as he gulped a dry swallow upon seeing your eyes meet his.

“I need you to get on your hands and knees and arch that perfect back of yours before I paint my jeans,” his tone deep enough to cause a stir in your nether regions.

Your eyes dilating immediately upon his sudden domineering behavior, “like this baby?” you made a show out of it all, wiggling your ass as you crawled up the bed, gripping the sheets in both hands as your back arched just the way he liked it.

“Such a good fucking mama,” he cooed, the sounds of his pants unzipping and the clang of them on the floor, coupled by the bed creaking slightly from his weight on the edge, “back up to me honey,” his hands gripping the sides of your hips as he helped you ease your body to meet his.

His tip barely touching your ass, causing a hiss to leave his chest, and a moan to leave yours upon feeling his pubic hair graze your mound.

“I’m gonna destroy this pussy of mine,” he growled, his voice getting deeper and deeper as he grabbed and rubbed his tip in your wet folds, “fuck this wet little pussy until you can’t take it anymore,” gritting as your hole sucked the head in, your warmth coating it so perfectly.

“Fuck Pat,” you whined, his hold on your hips bruising as he stilled his tip for a moment or two before sheathing it to its base, “y-you’re s-so f-fucking b-bi,” not able to even finish as he plunged even further, pushing your hips so you both let out a chorus of groans.

“Y-you t-take t-this b-big c-cock of m-mine s-so w-well m-mama,” he gasped out, picking up his pace as he fucked further and further into you, his hand pressing into your lower back as you arched more and more.

“I-I’m s-such a g-good g-girl,” you mused back, “I-I l-love p-pleasing m-my b-baby,” feeling his dick harden even more in your squelching cunt as he plummeted further into your hole.

“S-such a g-good g-girl,” he recanted, “k-keeping m-my c-cum s-so g-good,” speeding up even further, your moans picking up as he found your G-spot.

“Y-you l-love b-being all f-full of m-me,” the slaps of sweaty skin and balls hammering the room as the moans turned into feral screams.

“I-I l-love c-carrying y-your b-baby P-Pat,” the tears streaming as you felt the shroud of warmth begin to expand from your cunt to the rest of your body.

“T-that’s f-fucking r-right y-you d-do,” he growled, his teeth snarling as the sweat dripped in a waterfall from his short locks, the songs of your cries opening his senses to overdrive as he watched you writhe under him.

“Y-you c-cum on t-this m-monster c-cock of y-yours,” he grunted, feeling your walls vibrate around him and your screams emanate. As a last-ditch effort, he moved his hand on your back to grab your messy bun, pulling the hair to cement your rapture.

“F-fuck P-Pat!” you came, and you came hard. The damn breaking to coat his dick in your sweet sticky release wave upon wave, the wet sounds sending him over the edge as he pummeled the last of his efforts into your spent pussy.

He grit his teeth again, pushing in two more times before emptying his large load into your occupied cunt, the overload spilling out in a thick mixture while he pumped lazily in and out, musing at the sight.

He pulled out slowly, holding your hips so you could relax a little bit before guiding you to the side and surrounding your body with an abundance of pillows once more.

“So much for a bath,” you sighed and laughed, fanning yourself in a sweaty haze.

“I’m sorry honey,” he chuckled too, grabbing a towel to wipe you and then himself off, “I wasn’t even thinking about it… I just got too riled up from the clothes you were wearing earlier, and I…” he trailed off, watching a smile creep over your face as he talked.

“Really?” your curiosity getting the better of you, “you liked me in those clothes?”

“Ummm,” he sheepishly blushed, “y-yes?” itching the back of his head trying to avoid any eye contact with you.

“Well....” you adjusted as the baby began to make himself known for the night, “I guess I know what I need to do in the future,” winking as he found the other side of the bed, curling up to run his hand over your belly.

“Honey,” he whispered, “you don’t have to be doing anything for me to get turned on by you… I’m just in love with you either way,” his admission making you misty-eyed while you felt his light touches on your skin.

“But I have to admit… I really like this kind of look on you,” gesturing to all of your figure from head to toe.

“Well, you made me this way,” inching in to kiss his plush lips, him returning as you both pecked each other for a few seconds.

“I’ll keep you this way if you want me to,” his voice barely loud enough for you to hear, “keep you all knocked up and gorgeous for as long as you let me,” his words going straight to your cunt again as he kissed you again and again.

“As many times as you wish… Daddy,” winking and kissing him deeply, a smile inching over his lips as yours met.

“I love you,” his faint words cutting into your soul as if he was saying it for the first time.

“I love you,” returning it with a smile and a nuzzle into his neck as you began to drift off together in sticky paradise.

___________

Well... What did we all learn today? That I have a total fucking issue with not being his baby mama and that I have staples that I stick to and will not waiver from in my deepest darkest fantasies... Goodnight everyone I love you and I'll be crawling back into my festering hole to think about what I have done.

Oneshot Taglist: @maybe-your-left, @safarigirlsp, @clydesfavoritegirl, @thepalaceofmelanie, @hopeamarsu, @caillea, @historyandfandoms50, @mariesackler, @millenialcatlady, @thepriceofstars, @roanniom, @kathorax, @driversmutbucket, @clydes-hole, @xxcatrenxx, @paper-n-ashes

(Plz lmk if you would love to be added/removed from the taglist... Thank you all for the love and the support for this absolute garbage)

#paterson #paterson x reader #paterson x you #paterson fluff #paterson smut #tw: pregnancy #tw: breeding #tw: daddy kink #tw: unprotected sex #tw: hair pulling #tw: edging #tw: pregnancy kink #tw: body image #tw: self esteem issues #tw: slight depression #Dom!Pat

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queenofspades20 · 3 years

Text

Birthday Boy

Happy birthday to my favorite fictional boyfriend. Just some fluff in honor of Bucky’s birthday.

Word count: 2k

Warnings: this is just fluff, maybe a few curse words. Enjoy!!

_____________________________________________________

Bucky and Y/n were sitting on the couch watching Hot Tub Time Machine.

“I’m telling you, Buck. The douchey ski patrol guy looks just like you!” Y/n insisted. Every time the actor popped up on the screen, Bucky just shook his head.

“I don’t see it, Doll.”

“Then you need glasses, old man!”

“Old man?” Bucky’s head snapped in Y/n’s direction. He had an incredulous look on his face. “You weren’t calling me old man last night.”

“Not my fault you’re going blind, Babe. Sebastian Stan is clearly your doppelganger. Your younger doppelganger,” Y/n said with a smirk, putting emphasis on younger. She knew she was picking a battle with Bucky but she wanted to see how far he would let her go before putting an end to it.

Bucky knew what she was up to. He loved seeing her smile, even if it was at his expense, but he was only going to let her go so far.

“I see how it is.” He leaned over and pushed her to lay down, climbing on top of her. Bucky grabbed her hands and pinned them above her head with his metal hand, his flesh hand moving down her sides, tickling her.

“Bucky, NO!” Y/n yelled out. “I was just teasing. With your birthday tomorrow, I gotta get my shots in while I can! You know I can’t help myself.” She squirmed her body, trying to move away.

Bucky shifted so his legs were on either side of Y/n’s, effectively trapping her. He started tickling her sides.

“NO! BUCKY!!” Y/n tried to pull her body away, but he was too heavy on top of her.

“I’ll show you old man.” While tickling her, he started kissing her face and neck. They were laughing, Y/n trying to desperately get away from Bucky’s hand, when Bucky felt cold water hitting his back.

“HEY!” Bucky yelled, turning around. He saw Sam and Steve standing there, laughing.

“I had to cool you off,” Sam said. He held up an empty glass and shook it. “No sex on the couch.”

Bucky let go of Y/n and got up to run after Sam. “Get over here, Birdbrain.”

Sam took off running to his room with Bucky close behind him.

Y/n looked at Steve. “He was tickling me because I called him old man. But he refuses to acknowledge he looks like the actor in Hot Tub Time Machine!”

The movie was at a scene with Blaine, the character Y/n was referring to. She pointed to the screen and Steve looked.

“I don’t see it.” Steve shrugged and walked off.

“Argh! Thor save me from old men who need glasses!”

The next morning, Y/n got up before Bucky to cook him breakfast. She had a day planned of doing activities Bucky loved. She made pancakes, bacon, and eggs with some coffee and loaded up a tray with the food. She made her way back to their shared room. Bucky was not in bed, but she could hear him in the bathroom.

“Doll?” Bucky called out.

“I have breakfast. I was hoping you’d still be in bed, or did I not tire you out?” Y/n cheekily answered.

Bucky stuck his head through the doorway. “I thought I had tired you out.”

Y/n just rolled her eyes. “Get out here, birthday boy, so I can give you your first present.”

Bucky quickly made his way over to the bed. “Breakfast with you is a good present.”

He settled onto the bed and Y/n placed the tray over his lap. “A hearty breakfast to get through the morning, because we’re going on a little trip.”

Bucky looked intrigued. “Are you going to tell me where?”

“Nope. I did think we could take your bike, since it’s a gorgeous day out.”

“You know how to drive a motorcycle? And who said I would be okay with you driving my bike?”

“One, rude. Two, I got lessons from Steve. I can get us to where we are going no problem. I even did a test drive with Steve a few days ago.”

Bucky looked impressed. “I still don’t know.”

Y/n looked at Bucky with a pout. “Please, Baby? I promise I know what I’m doing and I really want this to be a surprise.”

Bucky hesitated. He had a hard time saying no to her but he also loved his bike. “Fine, but if you seem hesitant at all, we pull over and switch.”

“Deal!” Y/n smiled widely. “Now dig in, Baby.”

They ate their breakfast and then got dressed for the day. As they made their way to the garage, Y/n held up a blindfold.

“You’re not wearing that while driving,” Bucky joked.

Y/n gave him an unimpressed look. “You’re wearing it first. I want this to be a surprise. I’ll wear it later if you’re a good boy, though. Let you do whatever you want.”

Bucky felt his pants get tighter. “Careful, Doll. Keep talking like that and we won’t make it out of the compound. But I’m going to hold you to that later,” he said as he took the blindfold.

They settled on the motorcycle and Bucky put the blindfold on. “Can you see anything, Bucky?”

“Nope.”

“Okay then. Hold on.” Y/n started the motorcycle and Bucky wrapped his arms around her waist.

They took off. It was a weird feeling for Bucky to not know where they were going, but he trusted Y/n. After a while, Bucky felt the bike slow down. He could hear crowds and screams of joy in the background. After the bike was stopped, Y/n looked over her shoulder.

“You can take off the blindfold now.”

Bucky slipped of the blindfold and smiled when he saw they were at Coney Island.

“Good surprise?” Y/n asked and bit her lip.

“Best surprise.” Bucky hugged her close.

“Good. I wanted you to have fun and not worry about the world and this seemed to fit what I wanted.”

“It’s perfect.” Bucky got off the bike and helped Y/n off.

They spent their morning at Coney Island, riding everything they could and playing several games. Y/n made sure to win a stuffed bear for Bucky. Bucky really enjoyed the Cyclone and regaling Y/n with the story of how he made Steve ride it back in the day. They had lunch and then decided to finish their visit with the Wonder Wheel. At the top of the ride, they shared a kiss.

“Good birthday so far?”

“Best I think I’ve ever had.” Bucky looked at Y/n like she hung the moon.

“Ready to head back to the compound? The team has a small party planned for you.”

Bucky had a hesitant look on his face.

Y/n rushed to assure him. “Nothing like Tony’s usual parties. It’s just the team and significant others. We want to celebrate you turning 104.”

Bucky looked relieved. “That’s fine. As long as you promise to not leave my side all night.”

“Like I would leave you anyways.”

Bucky and Y/n made their way back to the bike. Bucky immediately got on and looked at Y/n. “I’m driving back. You did a good job but I wanna drive.”

Y/n laughed and climbed behind Bucky, wrapping her arms around his waist. “I figured you’d want to drive back. I only cared about surprising you here. And maybe after the party.”

Bucky reached down and squeezed her hands. “I love you.”

“Love you too, Bucky.”

They made their way back to the compound and got ready for the party. Y/n put on a deep red knee-length dress that fit her body in a way that showcased all her favorite assets. She kept her hair and makeup simple, since the party wasn’t going to be crazy. She made her way out of the bathroom and saw Bucky buttoning up his shirt. He looked up as she walked in to grab her shoes. As she passed him, he grabbed at her hand and pulled her close.

“You look delectable,” Bucky murmured. He leaned down and brushed his lips against hers. His arms slid around her waist, his hands moving down until they cupped her ass. Y/n smiled at Bucky and put her arms around his neck.

“Glad you like. I bought the dress just for tonight.”

“So, another present for me? I don’t know how I’m going to keep my hands off you.”

“Well, that is a perk of it being your party. We go for a while and then leave early and you can unwrap me and put that blindfold to use.”

Bucky groaned. “Can’t we just skip the party?”

Y/n threw her head back and laughed. “No. You know they’ll just barge in here. If we make an appearance, then we won’t be interrupted later.”

“Fine.” Bucky grumbled. He pouted as they left their room and made their way to the common area where the party was set up. Bucky was hoping if he pouted enough, Y/n would let him leave extra early.

“Your pouting isn’t going to work, Baby.” Y/n said over her shoulder, smiling.

Bucky gave up the pout and smiled back. “Worth a shot.”

When they entered the room, it was filled with the team and their partners. Steve had brought Sharon, who was happy to have made it in time, having been on a mission for the past few weeks. Clint and Natasha stood together, Clint’s arm around Natasha’s shoulder. Wanda and Vision were holding hands. Bruce had excitedly brought Betty Ross, who had recently come back into his life. Sam and Peter stood with their girlfriends and Tony and Pepper were happily hugging.

“Happy birthday, Bucky!” everyone yelled as Bucky and Y/n entered the room. Bucky felt so happy to be surround by his friends. Tony and Steve had hung up a banner that said “happy 104th birthday” and there were streamers all around the room. On the coffee table was a cake with a pile of presents for Bucky. Tony had set up a bar to the side, fully stocked with a bartender there to make everyone’s night easier. Though Thor couldn’t stay, he had dropped off some Asgardian mead for the super soldiers earlier that week. There was also a buffet table with various foods that Bucky loved, both from back in the 40s and from now.

The party had been going for a few hours and everyone was having a good time. Bucky and Steve had gotten into the mead and were feeling its effects. Bucky had opened his presents, loving everything he got, especially his new knife from Y/n.

“Doll, you already did breakfast and Coney Island. This is too much,” Bucky said as he admired the tactical knife. It had a black and blue carved handle with a steel blade that had a blue sheen.

“I saw it and thought of you,” Y/n said with a shrug. “The blade reminds me of your eye color.”

Bucky leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I can’t wait to use it on my next mission.”

“Only you would be that excited for a knife,” Sam said with a laugh.

“Shut it, Pigeon.”

Sam just rolled his eyes with a smile. After presents were done and the cake was eaten, Bucky decided he was ready to finish his night in the bedroom with Y/n, wanting to make use of the blindfold. He looked over at Y/n and caught her eye. Bucky gave her a smirk that signaled he was ready to go.

“Well, thank you everyone for a truly great birthday. I can’t thank you enough for everything.”

“You deserve it, Punk,” Steve said, Sharon cuddled into his side.

“Definitely my best birthday yet.” Bucky pulled Y/n close and kissed her temple.

Y/n smiled, ready to start trouble. “I think that’s my cue to get this old man to bed.”

Everyone laughed while Bucky looked down at her in faux shock. “Old man??”

Y/n laughed as she stood up. “I mean, you are 104. I’m surprised you lasted this long.” She slowly made her way over towards the door. “Do we need to get you a cane or maybe a walker?”

Bucky jumped up and moved quickly towards Y/n. She let out a yell and ran towards their room. “I’ll show you old man, Doll,” Bucky yelled out as he chased her.

Everyone heard Y/n yell, “bring it on, senior citizen!”

Sam looked at Tony. “Thank you for soundproofing their room.”

“That was a present for all of us.”

#Bucky Barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky x y/n #Happy birthday Bucky Barnes #birthday boy #just wanted some fluff

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maddiwrites · 3 years

Text

Secrets of the Shore

Pairing: Pogues x OC, eventually JJ x OC

Summary: This is just my rewrite of the show Outer Banks with my own twist by adding another main character which also happens to be John B’s twin sister.

Note: Thank you so much for all the nice things you guys have said about chapter one! A couple people have asked to be tagged for every update so I started a tag list. If you would like to be tagged, please message me! I hope I got everyone who asked and if I didn’t please let me know. Next chapter, you’ll learn more about Marleigh and her personality so bare with me (: Gonna post updates every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday (:

Another Note: Apparently my hashtags didn’t work the last time so I’m reposting this. I don’t know what happened. Sorry! Let me know if they worked this time (:

Word Count: 7.9k

Warnings: None

Chapter One

I wake up to the rustling of John B walking through the Chateau, kicking over empty beer cans and muttering to himself. He mentions something about service, but I can barely understand through the fog in my own head that's still heavy with sleep.

"Yo, JJ," He says and I hear a slap against bare skin. "You been outside?"

"I have polio, bro," JJ grumbles into his pillow. "I can't walk."

I peek one eye open. The sunlight coming in through the window blinds me for a second. I'm curled into myself with my back to JJ. He's sleeping on his stomach, his left arm slung over my side.

I groan as I pull myself up and lean against the back of the couch. Stretching my arms, I turn to look out the window. Even with just a quick glimpse, I can see the mess in our back yard Hurricane Agatha made. A wash of frustration runs through me when I think about all the work we're going to have to do to clean it up. Not just here but on Figure Eight too. No way those Kooks get their hands dirty for this.

I swing my legs over the mattress and follow my brother outside after hearing JJ mumble something about me leaving. His morning voice sends a rush of warmth to my chest and I have to hold back the grin that's fighting it's way on my lips.

The first thing I see is the giant tree that now lays across our yard, ripped out of its roots. Had the wind been blowing the other way, it would have landed on our house and we would have been screwed.

"Damn," I whistle, still scanning the damage. John B's pulling branches out of the HMS Pogue. Somehow our small boat has managed to survive the storm. I look over to the chicken coop that's to the side of our home. The roosters are crowing which means they're alive too.

"Agatha did some work, huh?" JJ says from the porch door. He already has a beer in his hand as he studies our yard. I know he's already thinking about the labor he'll have to put into other people's yards too.

"Yeah, she did," My brother says, looking out into the water.

"What you thinking?"

John B looks back with a smirk on his lips. "I'm thinking that storm surge pushed all the crabs out on the marsh maze. All those drum are gonna chase the crab."

"What about the DCS? Wasn't that today?" JJ asks, looking between my brother and I.

He shakes his head. "Nah, they're not getting on a ferry." He hops down from the boat and approaches us. "Come on, think about it. It's God tellin' us to fish."

JJ smirks back at him. "Yeah."

"Let me get changed first," I tell them before turning back into my house.

No lights turn on when I flick the switch on my bedroom wall. Now I know what John B was muttering about when he first woke up. I pull up the blinds on my windows to let some kind of light through my room. Then I hold up two bathing suits in my mirror, trying to pick between the blue one or the floral one.

"I like the blue one," JJ says, welcoming himself into my room. I swivel around in surprise. I thought I locked my door. I glare at the intrusion but he ignores it, his smirk only growing. "Matches your eyes and if I remember correctly, the bottoms are more cheeky than the other ones."

I throw the floral bikini top in his direction, which he skillfully dodges. I don't know if it was JJ's opinion or if I was already leaning towards the blue bathing suit, but that's the one I choose.

As JJ ruffles through his duffel bag on my dresser, I go to the bathroom to change. I throw on another pair of jean shorts and a T shirt and follow the boys out to the dock where they're already getting the boat ready.

Its kind of routine when the Pogues have a boat day. We make our way through the marsh, first picking up Pope and then Kie, who will more than likely have a cooler packed with drinks and snacks. We'll stay on the water for hours, getting sunburnt and drunk until the sun goes down or one of us wants to go back to surf.

I look over the damage that Hurricane Agatha as tortured onto our side of the island. Everyone's yard looks just like mine. Fallen trees and branches litter their back yards. Some boats have sunken into the water, and not a single house looks like they have power.

"Good morning!" John B yells to the residents as we drive by. Always the friendly face he is.

"Sure hope Guffy's boat didn't sink," JJ says, standing on the front of the boat, looking into the yards. "He doesn't have insurance."

"Yeah."

"Hi, Miss Amy!" I wave to the woman raking the leaves and picking up sticks. She looks up at us and waves back, taking a break from the yard work. "You guys get through it?"

She motions to her yard and shrugs her shoulders. "Still here!"

She goes back to her yard work and JJ immediately turns around and looks at John B with a proud smile. "She totally looked at me."

"I saw it." John B smirks back, playing along.

I roll my eyes and lean further back into the boat, pulling my sunglasses over my eyes and muttering the word 'idiot.'

"Dude look at this place." JJ whistles. "Agatha what did you do?"

"She is a crazy lady."

"Hard-core Hurricane surge. We'll be cleaning this all summer."

"That's my nightmare."

"Well, look who we have here," JJ says, making me look up at the dock we're closely approaching.

I make my way to the front of the boat to stand next to JJ as we get closer to Pope's dock where he is standing with his father already on clean up duty.

John B talks into his shoulder like a cop radios his partners and changes his voice to sound like he's speaking through a megaphone. "We have a safety meeting. Attendance mandatory." He even mimics the static noise those horns make.

Pope looks at us defeated. "I can't. My pop's got me on lockdown."

"Come on, Pope!" I groan.

JJ does the same thing as John B and talks into his shoulder, using the same voice. "Your dad's a pussy. Over."

Heyward approaches the railing of his deck and points at JJ with a glare. "Oh, I heard that, you little bastard."

I can't help but laugh at the interaction.

"We need your son!" I add.

"Yeah, and island rule. Day after a hurricane's a free day," JJ says.

"Who made that up?" Heyward continues to glare at him.

"Uh, Pentagon, I think. We have security clearance." JJ pretends to check his pockets. "I have a card."

"Think I'm stupid?"

Pope turns to his father with pleading eyes. "I'll do it tomorrow. I promise. Tomorrow."

Immediately his father shakes his head. "You think - no. No." Pope looks at us, silently conflicted. "Hell no," His dad says, reading his son's face. "You doin' it right now."

Pope looks back at us. When he finds my eyes I nod my head and wave him closer to me. "Come on. Get in the boat."

"Make a run for it," JJ says too.

Heyward glares at us. "Boy if you get in that boat -"

Pope doesn't wait to hear the rest of that sentence. He's already taking off towards us. JJ's there, ready to help him in before his dad can catch up to him. I clap my hands and wrap my arms around his neck in a tight hug when he makes it in. John B immediately starts driving away.

"How does that feel?" JJ says.

Pope can't even enjoy the moment completely. His dad yells at us as we float away and he's waving to John B to drive faster. "Go, go, go, go."

"Bring your ass back up here!" Heyward continues to yell at us.

Pope turns to yell back at his dad. "I promise I'll do it tomorrow, Dad."

"You're gonna clean shrimp, clean fish -"

"Love you pops!"

"Love you pops!" I repeat, falling back in my seat at the end of the boat and laughing up at the sky.

"We'll bring him back in one piece!" John B yells. "I promise."

"And I don't like your friends!" Is the last thing we hear from him.

A couple minutes later, we're driving down Kook land. Kie is already at the edge of her dock, holding a cooler like I knew she would. Her curly brunette hair falls behind her shoulders. I wish I had hair like her's.

JJ walks to the side to help her in. He holds out his hand for her to take. "Oh, top o' the mornin' to ya."

"Good morning," She says, moving to the end of the boat to take a seat next to me.

"Morning," John B and I say.

"Whatcha got?" Pope asks her. "You got some juice boxes?"

"You know, just some yogurts and carrot sticks," She replies sarcastically, using her shoulder to shove me slightly when I scoff.

"How about my kind of juice box?" JJ says, falling on the seat on the other side of me.

"Yeah." Kie pulls out the bottles of beer and hands them out. The three of us cheer when we pop the cap off. I let the carbonated bread water, as I like to call it, slide down my throat. Beer always taste better in the boat in the summer.

John B and Pope switch seats, leaving Pope behind the wheel.

"Brace for impact," Pope says as he picks up speed now that we're past the 'No Wake' zone. My hair flies behind my shoulders as the wind rushes past me.

JJ stands up and holds out his hands in the air, basking in the breeze and morning sun. "Bet you can't do this. Party trick." I narrow my eyes at him, glaring through the beaming sun. "Hey, Pope. Can you go a little faster?"

"Here we go. I'm movin'," Pope says.

John B shakes his and watches JJ hold out the beer in front of his face. "Doesn't work."

"We've tried this like six thousand times," I say through my laugh. I look back down at Kie who is also rolling her eyes playfully.

"I got this. It's gonna work," JJ says.

JJ tilts the beer bottle towards his mouth letting the momentum and the wind pull the beer out of the bottle and splash on his face, barely hitting his open mouth like he intended it to. The excessive beer splashes down on mine and Kie's skin.

"You're getting beer in my hair!" Kie complains, moving to the other side of the boat next to John B.

JJ doesn't stop. He keeps moving his head to catch the liquid but he will never move fast enough to catch the mess he's creating.

"All right. All right. You're done." John B says.

"All right, stop!" Kie says, everyone somewhat annoyed that they're going to smell like beer for the next twelve hours.

Before JJ could even consider listening to any of us, the boat comes to a complete halt, jerking us forward and sending JJ flying off the boat. I slam onto the floor of the boat on my side. A small groan escapes my lips as a dull pain shoots through my hipbone.

"Jesus, Pope!" Kie yells. When I look up, she and John B are also on the floor. The steering wheel broke Pope's fall.

I pull myself up and fall back on my original seat. I twist my body around to look for JJ in the water. John B calls for him, asking if he's okay. His head peeks out from the water's surface and squints back at us with a grimace.

"I think my heels touched the back of my head."

I laugh at the exaggerated statement.

"Kie, Mar, you guys okay?" John B asks.

I look back to see Kie pulling herself off the ground and falling next to John B in the seat next to him. He rubs the skin on her back comfortingly. She smiles at him gratefully and nods her head. I keep my stare there for a few more long seconds. Recently Kie and John B have been hanging out more closely with one another. Obviously, they're best friends like the rest of us, but they're always picking the seat that's next to one another. Touches linger on the other's skin, and even Kie is laughing at John B's not so funny jokes.

"Pope what did you do?" JJ swims back to the boat.

"Sandbar," Pope says, looking out into the water. "Channel changed."

"No shit."

"This is probably gonna mess this whole place up," John B says.

"Hey, I saved the beer, though."

A sarcastic scoff blows past my lips and I shake my head. "Congrats, JJ."

"Guys..." I look back over at Pope who's fixated on something in the water as he stands on the side of the boat, unmoving. Barely blinking. "I think there's a boat down there."

"Shut up. What?"

"No way."

"No, no, guys. I'm serious. There's a boat down there," Pope says.

I follow the others to the side of the boat to find what Pope is staring at. I'm ready to tell Pope he's seeing things and needs to get a couple more hours of sleep, but to my surprise he is right. A couple feet below the murky water is the silhouette of an overturned boat.

"Guys...is this..." John B says slowly.

"It's a boat!" Kie says.

I'm the first one to start stripping out of my clothes, curiosity overwhelming me. I want to see what's down there...if someone is down there.

"Guys, wait up!" I hear Pope yell as soon as I dive into the water next to JJ.

I swim deeper into the water, ignoring the thudding pain in my ears as I sink further into the marsh. The salt water slightly stings my eyes, but it isn't anything I'm not already use to. You kind of get use to it after wiping out in the ocean every time you surf.

The boat's bigger than the water's surface made it out to be. I don't think it's real until I feel the smooth exterior under my fingertips. I push myself a little deeper before I run out of air. I try looking through the open bars into the driver's seat. A part of me is afraid of what I might see, but I have to know. I have to make sure there's no one in here. Trapped and decaying all alone. My biggest fear is that my dad is somewhere in the middle of the ocean submerged in that same position.

However, I'm relieved when I don't see a dead body floating around the steering wheel.

When I feel my chest tighten, I push myself up to the surface. I gasp for air the second the cool breeze hits my face.

"You guys saw that?" JJ pants.

"Yeah!"

"Yeah I did!"

"Yeah!"

We swim back to the boat. John B climbs up first then holds out his hand for me to take. JJ is right behind me and pulls himself up.

"See?" He smirks at me when John B moves to help Pope and Kie up the boat. "Cheeky."

I shove his chest back with two hands. He falls back into the seat I had originally occupied, laughing to himself. I roll my eyes and throw my jean shorts back on when my legs are dry.

I both love it and hate it when JJ makes comments like that. It makes my heart flutter every time and fireworks explode in my stomach. But every euphoric feeling I get dissipates within seconds when I remember that the two of us will never happen. Because he's my brother's best friend. Because he's my best friend. And I can't ruin that like I ruin everything else in my life.

JJ turns to the rest of our friends and runs his fingers through his wet and tangled hair. "That's a Grady-White. A new one of those is like 500 Gs, easy. That's a primo rig."

"Yeah. That's the boat we saw when we surfed the surge." John B says, catching my attention. "Maybe it hit the jetty or something."

The memory of last night sprints to the front of my brain. The boat. I should have expected it to sink, but shouldn't have someone been behind the wheel? Whoever it was, I hope they made it out alive. I can't help but feel a small sliver of hope for that person since I didn't find them trapped inside the boat. With that sliver of hope came the reminder of my dad's disappearance like a slap in the face. Maybe if something had happened to him, he could have made it out alive too.

No. He is dead, I tell myself.

"You surfed the surge?" Kie's voice brings me out of my head. Her voice is strong and laced with disapproval.

"That's my boy. Pogue style!" JJ cheers.

"Why are you only looking at me? It was Marleigh's idea!" John B points an accusatory finger my way, hoping to take some of the blame off of motherly Kie.

Kie turns to glare at me. "What the heck?"

"Pope was there too!" I follow John B's lead by pointing my finger at someone else. This in return earns Pope a glare from our curly brunette friend.

"They guilted me into it! Said if they didn't have another pair of eyes, they'd probably drown and no one would be there to save them," Pope says with a glare. "They're lucky I was there. I was the one who saw Mar go under."

"I was fine!" I roll my eyes at Pope's dramatized version of events.

"Wait, wait." JJ interrupts the bickering. "Do we know whose boat that is?"

John B shakes his head and walks to the back of the boat where JJ and I are standing. "No, but we're about to find out."

"Dude, it's too deep."

"Oh, for the weak and feeble, JJ."

JJ makes his way to the opposite side of boat next to Kie and Pope. He digs into the cooler for another beer and takes a long swig. "Well, I'm not resuscitating you. I'm just making that clear up front."

John B pulls the anchor up and untangles it from the chains. "That's fine." He holds the anchor close to his chest, using the extra weight to drag him down further into the water. He catches Kie's disappointed glare and sighs. "What?"

Pope looks between the two and brings his hand up as a salute to my brother. "Diver down, fool."

John B nods. "Diver down."

JJ walks up to him and shoves him in the water by his chest before he can change his mind. "Yeah, he is."

John B's body disappears behind the muddy water. No one says anything as we wait. Kie bounces anxiously next to me on her toes. Her hands grip the edge of the boat until her knuckles turn white. I want to say something to her, to make her relax, but I don't want to embarrass her in front of the other two idiots on the boat.

"Should we go get him?" Pope asks after it's been a minute.

Before Kie can jump into the water, John B resurfaces, coughing water out of his mouth.

"Oh my God." Kie scowls. "That took forever."

I shake my head with a small smile on my lips and take the anchor from his hands.

"Any dead bodies?" Pope asks.

"Looting potential?" JJ follows up.

John B pulls himself into the boat. I hand him a towel.

"No. No." He shakes his head but holds something small in his hand. "But I found this motel key."

"A key," Pope says with no emotion, clearly not as excited as John B.

"Yeah, a key, Pope."

"Great!" JJ snags the key out of his hand and looks at it. "We salvaged a motel key."

"Guys, we should report the wreck to the coast guard," Kie says.

I agree with Kie. "Maybe we'll get a finder's fee."

"Yeah and not work all summer," JJ says. "Thanks Agatha, ya batch."

John B drives us back to the shore, but we don't go to the Chateau. We go to the coast guard to report the boat.

I'm not surprised to see the coast guard's post surrounded with people, shouting complaints and concerns. There is no designated line for people to professionally line themselves up. At least, if there is, no one is following the order.

I decide to wait with Pope and Kie in the boat while John B and JJ try to report the sunken boat. I rest my legs on the cooler and bask in the late morning sun with the spare couple of seconds I have in silence.

However those seconds are short-lived when I feel someone kick my legs off the cooler, almost knocking me off my seat.

"What the -"

Then I feel an upward slap to the back of my head. "The surge!"

"Ow, Kie!"

"You could have died out there!"

"But I didn't." I offer a guilty smile. When she doesn't smile back, I sigh and sit myself up straighter. "It's fun, Kie. You'll never know until you try it. You should come out with us next time."

"Your brother would have never let you do it, let alone join you."

Her words make me pause. It's true John B use to be more responsible. Out of the two us, he was always the one to keep us both in line. Sometimes he would be like a second father to me. He always protected me, bandaged me up, and took the fall for mistakes I made. Now he is following in my footsteps. Taking more risks with an act-now-think-later mentality. All of our friends know he's doing this to deal with our dad's disappearance. Unlike Kie, I don't think what he's doing is wrong. He's having more fun, and he's not going to kill himself doing it.

It's better than what I was doing when I tried forgetting about what might of happened to my dad.

The boys return with blank faces. I can already tell that the coast guards couldn't care less about their problem, let alone if they even listened.

"Well, that went well," John B says.

"So what's the plan?" I ask, ignoring Kie's deadly stare on the side of my head.

"I know how we're gonna find the guy who owns that boat." John B holds up the key with a mischievous smirk.

"We don't know who's room that is." Pope is quick to try to stop him. "It could be anyone."

Shockingly, Kie doesn't take Pope's side. She slaps her hands to the back of his shoulders and giggles. "Come on. I'll be lookout."

After JJ unties the boat from the dock, John B steers the boat in the direction of the motel.

"Finder's fee," John B shrugs. "Just saying."

"And hey, at least you'll only be an accomplice," JJ says as he stands next to John B, smirking down at a disapproving Pope.

"Man," Pope complains.

"Come on, bubba," John B laughs.

A couple minutes later, we pull up to the dock outside the motel, in front of the parking lot. I've seen run down motels before, but this one looks like it could be used in a horror movie. The wooden siding is peeling off, littering the pavement below. The railing on the balcony looks less than stable, most slabs even missing.

JJ whistles. "I thought the Chateau looked bad."

"This place is a shit show," John B agrees.

"Motel or meth lab?" Kie says.

"You be the judge," says Pope.

"Doesn't look like a place somebody with a Grady-White stays," I say, confused as to why a man living here had a boat as expensive as the one we found.

"No. Looks like a place someone with a Grady-White would get killed," Pope says.

JJ walks to the edge of the boat to tie us to the dock. I come up behind him to help.

"This is your captain speaking. HMS Pogue comin' in for landing," JJ announces.

"We good?" John B asks as I tie the last knot.

"Yeah, we good," JJ replies.

I get out of the boat first and flip my sunglasses on top of my head. There's only two cars in the parking lot, which is good news. Less chances of us getting caught.

"All right. Here goes nothin'," John B says, hopping out of the boat next to me. JJ follows.

As we turn to walk away, Pope calls out for us to stop. "Hey!"

"Yeah?" John B asks.

"Don't let them do anything stupid," He tells my brother, nodding towards JJ and I with his head. I stick my tongue out at him but he doesn't acknowledge it.

JJ wraps his arm around my shoulder and pulls me into his side. "Oh, we will."

I laugh and shove him off of me.

John B laughs too before turning to Pope. "I'm not making any promises."

"Yeah I know," Pope finally sighs.

"Hey!" Kie walks to the side of the boat that's next to the dock. Neither John B or Kie say anything for a moment. They both just stand there, looking at each other for about two seconds too long. If I were any closer, I'd be able to see them blushing like crazy. "Uh, be careful." She looks over his shoulder at JJ and I who are watching them with raised brows and amused expressions. "I mean it."

"Yeah," John B chuckles and follows JJ and I out to the stairs that will bring us to the second floor of the motel.

The smell of the motel is almost as bad as it looks. Like a sweat box drenched in urine with a hint of cigarette smoke. Stacked on the side of the building near every room is a bare mattress, not one of them without a yellow or brown stain.

"Why are all these mattresses out?" I ask.

"After a hurricane, they ditch 'em 'cause they're moldy," JJ answers me before turning to slap his hands on John B's shoulders. He raises his voice an octave higher to mimic Kie and pretends to fawn over him. "Just be so careful, John."

John B pushes him away and rolls his eyes. "God, you're so weird."

"What was that about?" JJ continues.

"I don't know. Maybe she wants us to be careful." My brother plays dumb. It makes me roll my eyes. I don't know if he's just trying to avoid the conversation or if he's just that blind.

"Since she heard you're being threatened with exile, she's just been, like -" Again JJ raises his voice and clings onto John B's arm. "Oh be careful John B."

John B pushes him off again. "Get off."

JJ continues, "Oh, give me that John D already." He drops his voice back to normal. "When are you gonna swoop on that, man?"

I roll my eyes and lead the way. Most of the curtains are pulled down on every window. The doors lining the walls look thin enough that I could fall through them and accidentally whip them open. Even the wood I'm standing on doesn't seem sturdy enough. I feel like I'm going to fall through it with every step.

"Bro, you know the rule. No pogue-on-pogue macking."

"Yeah, trust me. I know that rule."

I look over my shoulder at the blonde boy, only to find him staring straight back at me. He quickly winks at me before I turn back around. Something flutters in my stomach.

"You're the one always hitting on her," John B retaliates.

"Of course I'm always hitting on her," JJ says. And just like that, the flutters are gone and replaced with something that more resembles nausea. "She's a super-hot, rich, hippie chick slumming with us. Why? I can't figure it out either, but who cares, bro? I know that door's locked because I've tried it. Have you?"

"You need help."

"You both need help," I say, keeping my eyes on the numbers on each door. We're getting close.

"Not a little help, you need a lot of help," John B continues, ignoring me completely. "It's like every girl who just has a heartbeat, you're like...'Uhh.'"

We finally reach room twenty nine and I turn to look at the two knuckleheads with a glare. I love being their friend and all but sometimes the bro talk needs to stay within the bros.

"What? It's not a big deal," JJ says more to me than John B which only makes me roll my eyes more. "You do the same thing."

"Shut up. This is us. Twenty-nine," I say.

JJ sighs and walks to the other side of me to peek into the window. When he doesn't see anything he knocks on the door. In an even higher pitched voice he says, "Housekeeping." I look behind us to make sure no one is looking.

"Should we try it?" John B asks.

"Yeah," JJ and I say at the same time, taking a step back so John B can use the key to let us in.

"No power. No security cameras. No one's gonna know," JJ says as a final push to invade this guy's privacy and ransack his room. Find out why he has a Grady-White and how we can get equally as lucky.

The door opens with a loud creak. The inside looks just as bad as the outside. Musty, dirty, and smells like the actual housekeepers haven't visited for weeks. Maybe months. As suspected the power is out and the windows are so dirty that barely any natural light can peek through them.

On the full size bed is a small green duffel bag and a pack of cigarettes. Next to it is a pillow I would not trust laying my head. Dirty laundry surrounds it on the floor and if I listen closely, I'm pretty sure I can hear a mouse squeaking away in a corner.

"Check the bag. See if there's a name on there somewhere," John B tells me.

I grimace as I reach my hand below the zipper. I don't know what I'm going to find in there but my mind immediately thinks there's a severed head laying in the bag. In a motel like this, the idea isn't far fetched. But instead, I pull out a coat.

"A jacket," I tell them. Nothing special but at least it's not a head.

John B holds up a pair of shoes. "Denim slides."

I look at the tag and run my fingers through the pockets. There's nothing that tells me who it belongs to. "No name on the jacket."

"It's a nice jacket though," JJ says, walking up next to me and taking it from my hands to look at it. "Definitely over 50."

John B holds up another pair of shoes. "He's got New Balances."

JJ finds a small map on the night stand and holds it out to the light. "Yo, dude, come here. Maybe this is where they were fishing."

John B grabs the map to look at it. "Let me see."

"Right there." JJ points at the part that's circled in red pen.

"No, that's off the continental shelf. That's Big Swell. Nobody fished there."

John B tucks the map in his back pocket and moves to the other side of the room. He picks up a cup and sniffs it, immediately pulling it away with a cringe. "Coffee?" He offers me the mug.

"Yeah," I reply sarcastically, turning away to shuffle through the random pieces of paper on the nightstand. Just a couple of receipts from the donut shop down the street. Nothing that has a name on it. Plus a piece of paper that has random numbers on it.

"Standard. Tissues when you get lonely," JJ says from the bathroom, tossing anything that seems invaluable over his shoulder into the dirty bath tub behind him. "Oh!"

"What?" I look up at him, hopeful that he found something that we actually came looking for. Although, I don't really know what that is yet. "Did you find anything?"

"A really awesome Dopp kit your brother won't let me steal."

John B smirks at him. "Yeah, 'cause we're not stealing shit."

JJ groans and throws the kit over his shoulder with the other crap he's not taking.

John B opens the cabinet under the TV stand. He drops to his knees when he finds a small safe with a padlock protecting it. I walk up behind him and squat next to him, narrowing my attention at the codes he's trying. I roll my eyes at the first one. "One-one-one-one." The safe beeps at the incorrect password. Then he tries "One-one, one, two." Again the safe beeps at us three times.

"Punching shit at random. That will...definitely work," JJ says behind us. He bends down to pull the map back out of John B's pocket to look at it.

"Wait a second," I say, turning back to the nightstand with the paper that had the four random numbers on it. It suddenly makes sense. "Here."

"I don't know. I don't know about the second one," JJ says, more to himself because John B and I are more focused on the safe. "These coordinates, they...wait. My cousin said you could catch swordfish here."

"Six, one, six, six, six," John B mutters to himself.

"Six, six, six. That can't be a good sign," I say.

"Nah, that wouldn't make any sense," JJ shakes his head to himself. "What about a surf spot?"

The safe's lock clicks instead of beeps at us. The metal door pops open, inviting us in. John B looks at me with a proud and giddy grin. I can't help but let out a breathy laugh and open the safe completely.

"Holy shit," John B curses when we finally see what's in the safe. My eyes grow wide at what we find. Stacks of one hundred dollar bills and a gun. The find only confuses me more. If this guy had money like this, why was he staying here? "Uh...JJ."

"Hm?" JJ finally hums after having a long conversation with himself.

"You're gonna want to see this," I say, smirking up at him.

I stand up from my spot so JJ could get a good look. He crouches down next to my brother and the smile on his face is similar to a child on Christmas morning.

He reaches in and instead of grabbing the money, he grabs the gun. I can't say I'm surprised. This is JJ we're talking about.

"You grabbed the gun," John B scoffs but can't hide the grin on his face.

"This is a SIG Sauer!" JJ exclaims, holding it up in the air and admiring it.

"Put the gun back, JJ," John B says.

"This is a fucking spendy gatt, man. Just..." JJ points the gun in front of him and pretends to fire it. "Bam! Bam!" I duck out of the way. I know he's just pretending but I wouldn't be surprised if he accidentally shot it because he was too excited. "Bam! Bam!"

"Jesus JJ," I hiss. "Quit it."

"Hey, think about it! Bam! Bam!"

"We're not stealing anything," John B says.

"Just take a pic of me. Right here," JJ holds the gun to his chest and points it up at the ceiling, posing with it.

"You want me to take a picture of you?" I purse my lips and raise one brow at him.

"Yeah, like..."

"Make our own incriminating evidence? Is that what you're talking about?"

A light tapping from the back window stops us all from our tiny bickering match. All three of our heads turn to the window, confused.

"Wait what was that?" John B says first.

JJ and I follow him to the window. He pulls the curtain to the side and presses his face against the dusty glass. Pope and Kie are jumping up and down and waving their hands like two idiots and pointing at a car parked in the lot. Their voices come through the glass quietly, but just loud enough for us to hear them say, "Cops! Cops! Cops!"

"Shit," John B pushes off the window.

"What is it?" JJ asks.

"Cops."

On cue, there's knocks coming from the other side of the door. "Kildare County Sheriff's Department!"

"Shit," I curse to myself and push myself in front of the boys. The only way we are getting out is through the window. JJ and John B climb out first. JJ holds out his hand for me to take right as the door knobs squeaks.

The jump is too high. All three of us would break our ankles if we tried. The only option we have is to stick it out on the roof and hope the cops don't look out the window.

The roof is small since the window sits on the side of the building. The only way the three of us will fit is if I'm pressed against the siding with JJ pressed behind me. Which is the exact position we're in. My right foot dangles off the side of the roof to make as much room for JJ as I can so we're as flat against the building as possible. I can hear his racing heart against my back and I can't help but wonder if it's from the adrenaline rush of being caught by the cops or being pressed up against me.

I know why my heart's beating like mad.

I try to even my breathing so I can listen in on what's happening inside. The cops' voices are muffled through the walls. I glance at John B who is trying to peek inside. His brows furrow together in confusion at what he's seeing. When he looks up at me, I mouth "what" but he only shakes his head.

JJ tries to shuffle around his footing, which only makes him fumble more and lose his balance. I can't help the gasp that escapes my mouth. I grip on to both JJ and the corner of the wall so neither one of us fall. Unfortunately, as I try to save both of our lives, the gun slips out of JJ's pocket and creates an even bigger scene.

I squeeze my eyes tight and press myself deeper into the rotting wooden siding of the motel, praying that the police think it was only a bird or a squirrel. When I peek one eye open, I see John B grimacing against the building too. He shakes his head again for me and JJ not to move.

Minutes feel like hours as we wait, but eventually we hear the door close and the voices of the police officers on the balcony outside.

I exhale a deep breath and just about dive back into the room head first.

The boys follow me out the door the cops just walked out of and we meet Kie and Pope back at the boat. When they see us approaching, they both let out a sigh of relief.

"Well, that was fun," JJ says as we step back into the boat. My safe spot with nothing but water if we fall off.

"Could have warned us sooner," John B says lightly.

Kie rolls her eyes. "We would have except Pope was on the math team."

JJ turns to look at our geeky friend. "You were on the math team?"

"The cops took everything," John B says before another bickering fest could erupt between JJ and Pope. I turn to look at John B. That's what he must've seen in the room. "Like it was a crime scene."

"Did you guys find anything?" Pope asks.

"Did we find anything?" JJ says with a smirk. "No I don't think so." He holds up the gun and a stack of one hundred dollar bills. His smile grows wider. "Oh, yeah, we did."

Of course he stole them.

Pope and Kie jump up from their seats and look at JJ like he's grown two heads.

"What the hell?" Pope says in awe.

"What the hell?" Kie scowls.

"Dude, chill. Come on," JJ says, relaxed.

"Why take that from a crime scene?" Kie asks. She looks at me for some kind of explanation but I only shrug in response. I don't know what goes on in JJ's head.

JJ shrugs. "Better than cops having it."

"You serious?" Kie looks at John B who only gives her the same response I do.

Pope sits back down with his head in his hands. "I'm going to lose my merit scholarship."

JJ walks over to him and wraps his arms around his shoulders from behind him. "Hey, hey, shh, shh, shh. At least you have us, right?"

"I'm living the nightmare."

I laugh at Pope's theatrics even though I know he's genuinely worried about losing his scholarship - the only thing he has that will get him off of this damn island and make a name for himself. A selfish part of me hopes he loses the scholarship so he's forced to stay here with the rest of us, but I know that will never happen. Pope is the smartest guy I know and deserves to go off to a fancy college and be successful. The scholarship is going to give him that out we all desperately want. He's not going to lose that scholarship. I've already made sure so.

He just doesn't know it.

~ ~ ~

We dock our boat in town to grab something to eat before going back to my house. I am craving fish tacos and no one is going to stop me from getting them. As we wait outside with a couple other kids I recognize from school a couple years younger than us, paramedics and cop cars show up. Another boat pulls into the dock. A coast guard. Four men haul a stretcher off of it and wheel it up to the waiting ambulance. A sheet is drawn over the body so I can't see who it is but a sick thought races through my mind.

"Who's that?" John B asks the girl sitting near us.

"It's Scooter Grubbs. He was out during the storm," She says. I ignore the look John B casts my way and look at the girl's phone as she holds it out to us. "Check out this pic I got." She smiles sickly at it. "Dead body."

"Insane," I mumble, suddenly feeling sick and not in the mood for fish tacos.

"Holy shit." My brother says.

"What kind of boat did he have?" JJ asks her.

She puts her phone away. "Somehow, that dirtbag copped a brand new Grady-White. Everyone's out looking for it."

As soon as Kie walks out of the store carrying our food, we book it out of there. JJ tells her what happened on the ride back to the Chateau as I sit and think about how screwed we are if we get caught with the gun and money. They might think we killed him!

"So, um...we didn't see anything," Pope says as we walk into the Chateau. "We don't know anything. We need to have total and complete amnesia."

I fall on my couch and lean forward, biting my nails until I reach the nub - a nervous habit of mine. The smell of my tacos makes me queasy. They could have been swimming near that dead body yesterday. Who knows.

"Actually Pope's right for once," JJ says, plopping down on the seat next to me. He takes my hand away from my mouth and leans into the side of the couch, still staring at Pope who looks at him with raised brows. "See, I agree with you sometimes. Deny, deny, deny."

"Guys, we can't keep that money," Kie says.

"Okay, not all of us can afford unlimited data plans, Kie," JJ says which only makes Kie's scowl deepen.

"We have to pass that off to Lana Grubbs," Kie continues. "Otherwise, it's bad karma."

"Bad karma to be implicated in a felony, too," Pope adds. "We gotta go dark."

JJ shrugs. "If that means we get to keep the money, then I agree."

"I don't agree," John B finally pipes up and looks between all of us.

"What? Why?"

"Just think about it," John B says. "This is Scooter Grubbs we're talking about. Same dude that's buying individual cigarettes at the Porthole. Shit, one time I saw this dude begging for change in the Save-A-Lot parking lot because he needed gas. We're talking about a dirtbag marina rat who's never had more than forty bucks in his pocket, and all of a sudden, he's got a Grady-White?" He shrugs and holds out his hands in surrender. "Just saying."

I don't know what to think but I'm leaning towards JJ's idea. We should keep our mouths shut but roll around in the money that we risked our lives for. Finder's keepers isn't just a saying that dies when you've reached your teenage years.

John B continues, "All right, so think about it Pope. How does a marina rat get a Grady-White?"

Pope inhales sharply. "Prostitution."

"Square groupers, bro," John B says. He looks at JJ who will understand where he is coming from. "Okay, flying under the radar, no aerial surveillance. They don't do that stuff during a hurricane. What does that mean? JJ?"

JJ smirks. "They were straight smugglin'."

John B snaps his finger that's pointing at JJ, "Smuggling. And I guarantee there's a serious amount of contraband in that wreck."

"Hell yeah!" JJ stands up and slaps John B's hand in the Pogue handshake. "Fish on!"

Pope speaks up, "For the record, if that is a smuggling ship with illegal contraband on the inside of it...it probably belongs to someone else."

"Minor details."

"They could come looking for it," I say, not exactly taking Pope's side but just mentioning the risk so that everyone knows what we're up against. We don't know what kind of people could be looking for this shit too.

Pope nods. "Taking it would be catastrophically stupid."

JJ bends down so he's face to face with Pope and holds out the money in front of his face. "Right. Well, stupid things have good outcomes all the time."

"I wouldn't say all the time," I say, grinning when JJ looks over his shoulder to glare at me.

"All we need to do is figure out a way to get into the cargo hold of that wreck. Until then, we just lay low. Just act normal."

"Right. And how exactly do we do that?" Pope says.

When his eyes meet mine, a light bulb ignites in my head. My frown is turned upside down into a smile and I lean forward so everyone can see how exciting I am.

"Kegger?"

Tag List: @notyourcupofteax @acvross-the-universe @jjmaybankzz @jeeperky @realistic-breadstick

#jj maybank fic #jj x reader #jj fic #jj maybank #jj maybank imagine #jj mayback x reader #jj maybank one shot #jj maybank imagines #outer banks rewrite #outer banks imagine #john b routledge #outer banks #outer banks fic #outer banks imagines #kiara carrera #kie carrera #pope heyward

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themadlostgirl · 3 years

Text

Abandoned (11)

*That took longer than expected. Had to rewrite the beginning like five times cause I hated how it kept turning out. Bleh! But we got it now! Should have the next and final chapter of this mini-fic out soon! Love ya and enjoy!*

~~~

As the years passed I found myself growing even more attached to Neverland. I had called it home for years already but after Peter told me he loved me it felt more permanent. I guess a part of me was always sort of waiting for my father to show up one day and take me away. Worried that he would return and ruin the peace and happiness I had found on Neverland.

He was the last person I had ever loved before he abandoned me. As much as I hated him there would be nights when I’d sit in my hut and his face would come to mind. The sound of his voice singing a lullaby to me that I only half remember. I would sit there simmering in my hatred and feelings of betrayal but down deep in my soul there was a twinge of sadness. Memories that feel more like dreams reminding me that for as angry as I was at him there was a time that I loved him. He was my family. My papa…

But that’s all gone. He left me. Traded me. I have a new family now. I know real love. Unconditional love.

Peter loved me exactly as I was. He never asked me change. He never forced me to do things I didn’t want to do. We had fun together. We told each other everything. He knew my deepest darkest secrets and in turn I was entrusted with his. He held me close and kissed me softly. HIs arms were the safest place I had ever known.

He was patient with me and despite how badly he may have wanted to escalate our intimate relationship he never pressured me. If anything he may have been too cautious but given what he knew of my history I didn’t blame him. I’d rather he be courteous than to just assume he’s okay to take what he wants from me. So when the day came that I knew I was ready I asked him to make love to me. He had been so nervous and I couldn’t help but tease him a bit despite my own nerves. It felt nothing like the first time I had sex. It was so much softer, slower, and all of my partner’s attention was solely on me. It felt like love.

After that first time things got a little intense. We may have made it our mission to christen every inch of the island. Soft and sweet love making in the meadows to hard and rough in caves, there was nothing more we cared about. Peter didn’t even return to camp for an entire week once because we were too wrapped up in one another. His body became as familiar to me as my own.

That isn’t to say that we didn’t drive each other mad either. There were days where I wanted to throw him off a cliff and he wished that I had never set foot in Neverland. For as stubborn as the both of us could be the fights never drove us apart for long. We would come back together and everything would be right with the world until we got annoyed and started another fight.

Through all of it I worried though. From what Peter told me all that time ago, he’s dying. He creeps closer and closer to death and there’s nothing I can do to help him. I ask for details, I ask if there is anyway I can help, and Peter tells me it is not for me to worry about. He assures me he has it all under control. That sentiment loses some of its reassurance when he comes to me shaking and pale as a ghost. It’s always after he visits Skull Rock and looks at the hourglass ticking away his life.

One of these such nights he found me at my camp and held me close for a long while not saying anything. Not that he had to. I just wish there was something I could do to help. I hate seeing him like this.

“My love?” I whispered. Peter sat between my legs with his head resting on my chest and his arms wrapped around me. “You need to tell me if there is some way I can help you.”

Peter sighed. “I told you, my pearl, there is nothing about my situation that you need to worry yourself over. Now be sweet and keep playing with my hair. That is helping immensely.”

“I feel like I should be doing more though,” I carded my fingers through his hair, “I don’t want to just stand idly by while you…” I couldn’t finish the thought. “I want to help you.”

“You already are.” He gazed up at me with those clear green eyes I loved so much, “I don’t need you to fight or search or anything like that. I want you exactly where you are now. I want to know that you are safe here, waiting for me. That is all I need.”

“But--”

“Hush now,” he kissed my palm, “You worry yourself so easily. Things are already in motion. I will be safe and far from death by the end of the week if things go according to plan.”

“What? Why haven’t you said anything before?”

“Because I fear it may stir up painful memories for you. The Truest Believer will be here soon and I have a plan for when he arrives. You are not a part of it and that is how it is going to remain. Do you understand?”

“But I can help!”

“My love, my precious pearl,” Peter smoothed a finger across my bottom lip, “You already are. I want you right here where I know you are safe. Stay here. That is how you will help me.”

“But I could do so much more.”

“I don’t need you to do anything more.” He kissed me gently, “Now please, can you obey me in this one thing? I need you to trust me on this. You do trust me, don’t you, my love?”

“Of course I trust you.” I sighed, defeated, “But you will let me know if you need me to do more, right?”

“Of course,” He laid his head back down.

The night the Truest Believer arrived I didn’t see Peter at all. He told me he would be gone from my side for the majority of the time the Believer was on Neverland. It wasn’t unexpected but the sting of loneliness crept in still.

After the first night without Peter I became restless. Despite Peter’s warning to remain at my camp I decided to take a short stroll through the jungle. There were adults running about somewhere trying to rescue the boy Peter had. It is such a big island though and I know every inch of it. What were the odds that I would run into one of these adults? Still, I strapped my sword to my hip just in case. Adults or not Neverland was still plenty dangerous, especially at night.

I meandered through the jungle with no real destination in mind. Maybe I would go to Peter’s Thinking Tree. It had to be more fun than sitting all alone in my hut back on the beach.

“My young love said to me, ‘My mother won't mind and my father won't slight you for your lack of kind.’ Then she stepped away from me and this she did say, ‘It will not be long love till our wedding day.’” I sang quietly.

“She stepped away from me and she moved through the fair.” A voice from the deepest recesses of my mind answered with a melody as soft as it had been in my dreams. It was not a sound in my head though. It was much too real.

“And fondly I watched her move here and move there.” The foliage parted and in the moonlight appeared a troupe of adults but I only saw the one at the forefront. “Then she made her way homeward with one star awake. As the swan in the evening moves over the lake.”

He took a knee and gazed up at me, “Hello starfish,”

I opened my mouth to say something but nothing came out.

My father...my father was standing right in front of me after gods know how many years and I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. I just stared at him as my mind went through a million emotions at once.

“Hook?” One of his party asked, a blonde woman, “Who are we looking at here?”

“My daughter,” he answered simply, “I told you I had informants in Neverland.”

“You have a kid?” The other adults looked at him in shock. “You never mentioned that you had a daughter before.”

“Yes, well--”

“What are you doing here?” I said, my voice shaky and choked. All eyes swiveled to me once again. I gazed down at my father as all the sorrow and anger I had been harboring for decades started to boil over.

“Darling,” He reached out for me but I jumped back so he couldn’t touch me. He sighed, “Starfish, I know that what happened in the past must have been a shock but I’m here now. I’m back and I desperately need your help. Then all of this can be undone. Things can go back to what they were before.”

How dare he. How dare he come back. How dare he kneel in front of me and ask for my help. Did he not know? Did he not realize what he had done? How could he come back here after decades and pretend like nothing had happened?

He took advantage of my silence to reach for me again. I was still trying to think of what to say or do when he grabbed hold of my hand. “Starfish,” He whispered the nickname like a plea, “I am so happy to see you again. Please, can you help us? We can get you out of here.”

“No...” I pulled my hand from him. Tears sprung to my eyes and there was nothing to do to stop them. “NO!” I screamed, “No! No! No! No! No!”

“Darling, please--”

“You abandoned me!” I wailed, years of pent up anguish spilling out at once, “You left me here! That is not just a shock! That is not something you get to brush aside like it wasn’t a big deal. You traded me away for your freedom and now you have the gall to come back here and ask for my help?”

“It was a lot more complicated than that--”

“No it wasn’t! You had a choice and you chose your freedom over me! Your daughter! You didn’t even try coming back for me!”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know what I endured after I was forced to leave you.”

“Forced? You were not forced. You could have told Peter no when he asked you to trade me. You could have kept me and we could have stayed together. We’d be marooned here but at least we would have been together.” I kicked him in the center of his chest so he went falling backwards. The other adults tensed, weapons aimed but no one made a move to stop me as I towered over him.

“And do not tell me that you endured anything like it was a struggle. I spent months alone on the beaches praying that you would return. I cried myself to sleep and pleaded with the universe to send you back to me. When I was finally given a chance to be reunited with you do you know what I found? I found you in a tavern drinking and having a merry time without me. I wasn’t even a thought in your head!”

“Starfish--”

“I am not your starfish! I am not your daughter! You do not get to call me that after what you did. After what you put me through. You betrayed me! You traded me to our enemy and you didn’t even care!”

“I’m here now though.”

“But not for me.” I swallowed back the lump in my throat. “You knelt before me but it wasn’t with apologies or words of reassurance that you had come to rescue me. No. You returned and asked for my help like you have any right to it. Do not look for me again. Do not talk to me again. I want nothing to do with you.”

“Starfish, please,” He grabbed my arm, “Let me explain.”

“Let go of me!” I tried to pull my arm free.

“Hook, I think you should--” One of the other adults tried to intercede.

“No!” He pulled me closer, “Please, darling, I need you to listen to me. If you just give me the chance to explain then everything will be alright. We’ll get Henry and we’ll leave. You can leave this place and we can be a family again. I know I hurt you but we can still fix this.”

“You are not my family! I want nothing to do with you!” I kicked at him but he held me tighter.

“You don’t mean that.”

“Let go of me!”

“Starfish--”

“PETER!” I screamed. A hand was quickly clamped over my mouth but it was too late. Ominous clouds started to roll in casting the jungle into darkness. One of the adults conjured a ball of fire in her hands, the only source of light as the others strained to see in the dark. I felt a tingle go up my spine and relaxed.

“Get your hands off her.” Peter’s voice growled from the shadows. Father’s grip on me slackened for just a moment and I took the hesitation to rip myself away from him. I could make out Peter’s eyes glinting almost like a cat’s in the darkness and ran for him. He caught me in his arms and smoothed my hair, “Hush now, precious, it’s alright.”

“Pan,” Father barked, “Give me back my daughter!”

“And my son!” One of the women yelled.

“Neither of them are going anywhere. Especially not my Lost Girl.” Peter grinned. His thumb traced over my cheek wiping the tears that had fallen away, “Did the awful man make you cry, my love?”

I nodded. Peter pressed a soft kiss to my forehead.

“Love?” The other man in the group spoke his eyes wide in disbelief. He turned to father, “Your daughter is dating Peter Pan?”

“No…” Father looked horrified as he took in our body language. "My daughter would never--"

"Well she's not your daughter anymore. She ceased to be yours the moment you sent her to me.” Peter held me closer, “And I swear if you try taking her I will gut every last one of you.”

“Remove whatever spell you placed over her!”

“There is no spell. Did you really think that you could leave her here for decades and that she would still be the loyal pirate you had set adrift in a rowboat? I welcomed her to my island as an equal, I made sure she was provided for and looked after. Then in time she welcomed me as her friend and eventually as her lover.” Peter’s smile grew wide with that sadistic edge I loved. “She makes just the cutest noises.”

“You vile bastard!” Father charged at us with his blade drawn and murder in his eyes. The next moment Peter and I were standing on the beach by my hut.

“Was that last comment so necessary?” I asked.

“You can’t blame me wanting to torture him a little after what he did.” Peter chuckled lightly. “But how are you, my love? I told you to stay here. Why did you go wandering?”

“I was bored and lonely so…” I shrugged. My body was still shaking.

Peter sighed and kissed my forehead. “Hush, my love, I can’t imagine what you must have been thinking seeing him again.”

“I said what I wanted to. It doesn’t feel like it’s enough though. I don’t think I can accurately put into words what he made me feel. He could never understand what I endured because of him.” More tears started to slip from my eyes. Peter brushed them away.

“Come back to camp,” He said, “I want to be able to watch over you.”

I nodded, too emotionally exhausted to fight him on this. We drew curious glances when we entered camp. One of the boys I did not recognize and I realized I now had a face to pair with the heart Peter needed. Peter ignored everyone’s whispering and led me to his tent.

“Will you be okay in here?” Peter asked. “If you need me I’ll be right outside.”

“I’m fine.”

“One second,” he left and came back with a canteen and a bowl of food. “In case you get hungry. I also grabbed a couple books from your hut in case you wanted something to do. Do you need anything else?”

“Can you sit here with me for a minute? I just don’t want to be alone right now.”

“Of course, precious,” He sat down next to me and pulled me into his lap. “You’d tell me if you really aren’t doing well, wouldn’t you?”

“I would.” I buried my face in his neck. “Peter, I don’t know what game you are playing with these adults but if I can I want to be a part of it.”

“You already know why I won’t allow that.”

“Peter,” I fisted a hand in his tunic, “If you have the chance, leave Hook alive.”

“Why should I let that worm breathe after what he put you through?” Peter spat, “I should have killed him the second I saw him trying to take you.”

“No. Leave him alive and leave him to me.” Venom started to drip into my voice, “I want to be the one to kill him.”

---

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#peter pan ouat #ouat peter pan #ouat #neverland #peter pan x reader #peter pan imagine

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cryonme · 3 years

Text

fallingforyou- calum hood.

word count- 1.5k

tw- drinking, smoking, cursing, a couple of tears. other than that just calum being sexy and also cute.

mentions- calum, fiona, luke, michael

a/n- hi! sooooo, this is the first part in my “series” of Calum and Fiona. this series will not have to be read in any order, just a bunch of one shots of Cal and Fi been cute. BUT this ons should be read first, as its the start of their relationship. im very excited abt this and I hope you all are too!!! also, i know a lot of my followers are from the HP fandom but I've been really wanting to branch out with my writing so here's this little number. I still write for HP, btw! not to worry. anyway, I hope u all enjoy this. I love it a lot and I worked very hard!!!! inspired by fallingforyou by the 1975. I recommend listening to the song for dramatic affect.

—

Calum sipped on his drink as his eyes danced around the kitchen that was filled with drunk and high 20-30 somethings, unimpressed until his deep brown eyes landed on her. Dressed in a little halter top and flared jeans, head thrown back in laughter at God knows what, she laughed at just about anything, especially when intoxicated. Her dark hair cascaded down her back and her lovely brown eyes squeezed shut, she looked like a goddamn angel.

He told Luke a million times that he wasn’t coming to this party, just like he had done with every party that rolled around in LA, but once Luke promised her attendance, he still declined.

But snuck in anyway 3 hours in, trying to go unnoticed by his 3 idiot friends.

His plan failed, of course. Why wouldn’t it? Michael had caught him at the worst time, 4 jack and cokes in, grinning at her like an idiot from across the kitchen island.

“She’s your friend, mate. You know you can like, talk to her.” He had said, nudging his best friend with his elbow.

Calum rolled his eyes, “I’m not 7, Mike. I’ll talk to her when I want.”

“You’re never gonna land a girl like Fiona if you don’t say anything.”

“Who says I’m trying to land her?”

Michael nearly choked on his drink, “Good one, Cal.” He patted his friend's shoulder and pretended to wipe a fake tear. “Hey, Fi!”

Calum had known Fiona since 2013 when 5 Seconds of Summer first toured with One Direction, when she was an assistant to their tour manager. She was the same age as the guys and they all bonded quickly, and to this day she still tours with them. She’s still just an assistant, says she doesn’t want to take on the responsibility of manager, she mostly just makes sure the guys are all where they’re supposed to be at all times.

Fiona turned away from her friends and smiled at the two Australian goofs, excusing herself from the group of girls and making her way over.

“Calum Hood? Enjoying himself? At a party? Insanity!” She smiled that radiant smile of hers and took Calum’s cup from his hands, treating herself to a sip.

“3 of those things are true, and I’ll give you a hint, I’m not enjoying myself.” Calum retaliated and Fiona raised her eyebrows at Michael.

“Hi, Fi.” Calum smiled and slung his arm over her shoulder.

She playfully rolled her eyes and leaned into Calum, “Hey Mr. Buzzkill.”

“I’m gonna go play pong with Luke, you know how he gets when I’m not his partner. Bye Fifi!” Michael rushed out and ran out of the kitchen, no doubt going to gush to Luke and Ashton about Calum and Fiona being cozied up in the kitchen.

“You look pretty tonight.” Calum said flatly, not making eye contact.

He could say those kinds of things to her, they had been friends for 7 years, but the drinks definitely helped him get it out.

“Don’t look too bad yourself, Hood.”

Calum brought her small frame around in front of him so he could look at her. She rested her chin on his chest and looked up at him with her doe eyes, and he made a vow right then and there that he would absolutely get to call her his one day.

This happened often. Calum and Fiona would cozy up to each other when drunk, hugging and touching, never once kissing, and nothing ever came of it.

“Like, you look really pretty.”

Fiona threw her head back again and laughed, “You, Mr. Hood, are drunk.”

“Yeah,” Calum took her hand and spun her around so her back was to his chest and rested his chin on her shoulder, “And you’re really pretty. Look at us stating facts together.”

Fiona giggled again and grabbed Calum’s cup from him, taking another sip.

Calum slowly snaked his arms around her waist and she held onto his arms with her hands, Calum swore he would have melted on her right there.

Fiona spun again and looked up at her friend of 7 years. She wanted to know what went on behind those intense eyes of his. Ashton, Michael and Luke confided in her with almost everything, she knew all about what went on in their heads, but Calum had never told her a thing. Not one detail. She had no idea that Calum was falling for her, on that night, in that shitty lighting, and he was falling for her hard.

“Beer pong?”

The two had been waiting for their turn in beer pong for 20 minutes and finally decided to sit down on a nearby bench and just watch. Calum pulled her onto his lap and she hummed happily, with her arms around her once more.

The brown eyed boy took his arms off of her for one second while he dug through his pockets, then put them back in their rightful place, holding a joint up to her lips. She gladly took the weed into her mouth and allowed Calum to light the end for her while she took in a drag.

She held the joint between her fingers and blew out. “You’re a good friend, Cal.”

Calum frowned at that. He had been drinking a little bit more than usual and the word “friend” made his heart drop.

“Don’t wanna be friends.”

Fiona snorted, “Shut up.”

“M’serious.” Calum mumbled against her shoulder. “I don’t wanna be your friend.” He turned his head so he could place her lips on her neck, “I wanna kiss your neck.”

“Calum…”

“I’m falling for you, Fi.”

“You’re drunk.”

“So?”

“So you don’t get to do that!” Fiona suddenly jumped up off of Calum’s lap and faced him, catching the attention of a few people, but no one seemed to care enough.

“Fiona-” Calum started and reached to grab hold of her thigh but she slapped him away.

“Fuck you.” She spat and stormed away. She was probably just going to sit on the front steps. She was too drunk to drive and she left her phone with Calum.

The dark haired boy sighed and hoisted himself up off of the bench to follow after her, at least to give her her phone. He made his way through the crowd of people and was stopped by Luke right before he made it to the door.

“I don’t know what you did, but fucking fix it.” The blond poked his finger into his chest so hard he stumbled back.

“Wha-” He started but by the time he could he finish the one syllable word Luke was long gone.

Calum shook his head and pushed the door open, finding his favorite girl slumped over on the steps with her shoulders shaking. He hurried so he could crouch in front of her and rest his hands on her knees, and refused to move when she tried to push him away.

“I know you’re mad at me but you’re crying and nothing hurts me more than that.” He said softly, trying his best to get the girl in front of him to stop shaking.

After a couple minutes of letting Calum stroke her knee gently with the pad of his thumb, Fiona finally brought her head up and Calum wanted to kick himself for making her cry like that.

“I have loved you” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, “For 7 fucking years Calum.”

Calum felt like he just got all of the wind kicked out of his lungs, but he didn’t move a muscle.

“I’ve watched girls who treat you like shit come and go and I don’t even get to pick up the fucking pieces because you don’t fucking talk to me, then one night you have a little bit too much to drink and suddenly you’re falling for me?”

“I love you.”

Fiona froze.

“Fuck, Fiona I’ve loved you for 7 years. Every girl who’s come and gone has been a distraction from you because in my head, you’d never feel the same way. I never opened up to you or talked to you because I was scared that if I did I’d let it slip that I love you and I’d lose you. Every time I see you my chest feels tight and I feel like I can’t breathe, every time you laugh I can’t help but smile to myself like a fool and whenever you cry I can’t look at you because I’m afraid I’ll cry too. Screw falling for you, Fiona. I fell for you.”

Fiona didn’t move, she felt like she couldn’t move. Calum had just shared more with her in 30 seconds than he had in 7 years, she was shocked.

“What the fuck took you so long.” Her question came out as more of a statement.

“I’m an idiot.” Calum breathed out before finally leaning in and kissing the girl he had loved for so long.

//pls remember to leave a comment or reblog if you enjoyed it, kind words mean a lot🖤and so begins the life of cal and fi, i can’t wait! hope u all are excited too. xx roxie

#calum hood imagine #calum hood #5sos imagine #5sos fic #calum hood one shot #calum hood fanfiction #5 seconds of summer #calum hood blurb #ashton irwin imagine #luke hemmings imagine #michael clifford imagine #5sos fanfic #5sos fanfiction #luke hemmings fanfic #5sos #luke hemmings #michael clifford #ashton irwin

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comfyswitcherblanketfort · 3 years

Text

A Good Deal

lets not talk about what day it was bogizens... 👀 this is part of the hallmark june weddings event we did in the bog!

it’s also on ao3 here!

Warnings: insecure eskel, stressed triss, honestly its pretty fluffy., could be classified as mild emotional whump.

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Triss was frantic when Eskel trudged up the stairs to the back door in the kitchen. He paused for a moment, leaning against the railing where he could just see her through the window in the door, box braids falling out of her loose bun, some sort of sauce smudged on her forehead, her arm muscles standing out and furiously beating the ever-loving shit out of whatever was in her bowl. Fuck, he thought she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. A little scary too, but that was his type.

“Afternoon, Gorgeous,” he called through the screen door, waiting for her to unlock it.

Instead of her normal ‘Afternoon, Handsome,’ he got a snappy, “If any bit of your clothing has been at the fire station, take it off out there. I just got the floors clean, and I don’t have time to do them again before the wedding.”

“If you wanted a striptease you could have just asked,” he chuckled, pulling his shirt over his head and kicking his boots off. All of him had just come from the station.

“Eskel, please,” her voice was about an octave higher than when he liked to hear those words normally, and the tightness at the end of her words made him worried.

“I’m clean, ish, can I come in?”

When she let him in she only gave him a quick peck before it was back to what Eskel could now see were egg whites.

“What’s wrong?”

That was apparently the wrong question. Triss dropped the bowl back onto the counter and braced herself against it, hanging her head. Her shoulders looked so tense Eskel thought the muscles might snap, “Fucking everything. Yen’s parents are getting in tomorrow and I only have the middle floor flipped because Annalee called in sick and Taylor is nowhere to be found, and I have to get this breakfast prepped because I have to make sure there’s food for the girls to eat while they get ready. Then I still have to call Jaskier and see when he’s bringing the cake and décor over and I have to run into the store to get the food for the next three days while they’re here and one of Yen’s aunt’s is allergic to everything under the fucking sun! Oh! And I also need to tell Jask to do everything last minute as far as the cake goes because I don’t have the fridge space and-and there’s still a goddamned molehill in the backyard where they’re having the ceremony and-“

Eskel wrapped his arms around her from behind, placing one hand over her sternum and one over her stomach, and held her tight while he whispered, “It’s gonna be okay. We’ll figure it out. Just take a minute to breathe for me?”

She took a shuddering deep breath and let it out as she rested her head back against his chest, brushing a stray braid out of her eyes, “…and I have a headache…”

“That,” Eskel mumbled, pausing to press a kiss to her forehead, “we can fix quickly.” He pulled them over to her medicine cabinet and handed her some ibuprofen and a large glass of water, also insisting she sit and eat something.

After a minute or two of Triss picking at some leftover pasta salad she groaned and shoved it away, “ and my mother called.”

“How’re Sheila and the dogs?”

“Fucking unbearable,” she grumbled, pitching her voice up and scrunching her nose to imitate her mother’s nasally voice, “ When are you settling down? I was so excited when you said wedding! Haven’t you hired an inn manager yet? Why do you still clean rooms? Did you read that diet book I sent you?”

Pushing her pasta back towards her after the last question, Eskel did his best to remain casual and calm, “I thought she hated me?”

“She hates all of my partners on principle, but you’ve made the top spot for ‘least hated’,” Triss shot him a little smirk as she aggressively stabbed some more pasta, “I told her I’m quite settled and we’re happy for now and to get her nose out of other people’s business- yes I see the irony .”

Eskel forced a bit of a laugh and tried not to bite his lip. He’d been thinking about this since Yen and Renfri’s engagement party. The way Triss looked at him while the couple gushed about how they were so excited to spend the rest of their lives together (and torment some relatives with making it official) had settled in the back of his mind and refused to leave. Every day, he flip-flopped on whether there was a little hope there or if she just thought it was sweet. And every day he berated himself for not bringing it up, but he had never even entertained the idea of marriage. Hell, his main relationship had been a friends-with-benefits arrangement with Geralt, and the few before that had been rocky at best. He wasn’t cut out to be a husband. Certainly not to someone so kind and gentle and fiercely loyal and sharp as Triss. What did he have to offer? A dangerous job and nasty burn scars for their wedding photos?

She must have sensed his hesitation and pushed her pasta over to him, “Eat. I need to keep cooking… and clean the top floor.”

He hooked an arm around her waist as she walked around the little kitchen island they sat at, pulling her close and stealing the keys out of her pocket, “I’ll go get groceries after I clean the top floor. Is the laundry started?”

“You’re too good to me, Teddy Bear,” she sighed, placing a kiss on his forehead.

“Not good enough.”

She frowned, resting her palm over his jaw and searching his eyes, “We’ll come back to that when the inn is ready.”

As he stood, he stole a quick kiss and darted up the stairs, “You’re taking a nap when the inn is ready!”

It had all come together in the end. Triss even got some impressed looks and glowing reviews from Yennefer’s family when they arrived. The periwinkle went beautifully with the gardenia Triss had woven through the lattice around the backyard and Eskel had managed to make the moles disappear and patch the grass so even she couldn’t tell where they’d been.

Eskel watched Triss dart around the property, even after her job was done, making sure everyone was comfortable and everything ran smoothly for the girls and as much as he tried to push it down, he was just reminded of how she deserved so much more. More than a scarred, overweight firefighter with a killer therapy bill and a studio apartment that looked more like a hotel room than a home.

As he was watching the different couples swooping around the tiny courtyard dance floor, hands materialized on his shoulders, immediately digging in right where he held tension.

“Now it’s really over,” Triss whispered in his ear.

“Oh? Will you take that nap now?” Eskel shot her a grin over his shoulder as he covered one of her hands with his.

She smiled at him as if he’d said something adorably cute and inaccurate, “I’ll take a dance ?”

Standing up and spinning Triss once before pulling her close to his side, Eskel sighed, “I guess I’ll have to settle for that then.”

Giggling a tad bit deliriously, they made their way onto the dance floor and snuck into a space between the other couples. Eskel did his best to relax and stay in the moment. He took deep breaths and mentally listed little observations about his surroundings, most of which revolved around Triss, and he even tried to distract himself by making some rather suggestive advances, but no matter what he tried, he was still thinking about what she deserved and how it was everything he wasn’t.

Triss rested her hand on his cheek and gave him her trademarked wide-eyed worried look, “Are you alright? Is your knee acting up?”

“M’fine,” he lied, “Just the champagne.”

“Bullshit.”

He should have known she’d call him on it, even in the middle of a wedding she wouldn’t let him get away with anything. Just another reason he wasn’t good enough for her.

Glancing around nervously, Eskel whispered in her ear, “Can we do this later?”

“Absolutely not. You’ve been acting strange for weeks now and it’s making me crazy,” Triss tapped on the point of his chin firmly, calling his attention back to her as they swayed and stepped in a small circle like everyone else.

“Been making me crazy too…” he mumbled, only receiving a furious glare that urged him to continue, “You’re… Triss you’re perfect. I love you more than anything and anyone I’ve ever loved before…”

Tears welled in her eyes as Triss brought them to a standstill, gripping his arms for dear life, “But?”

Eskel couldn’t help tucking her long thin braids behind her ear and caressing her cheek, “But I don’t know why you’re with me. Every time this wedding gets brought up I think about how you deserve someone so much more… whole than I am. Someone who can give you what you want and who doesn’t have a horribly dangerous job and doesn’t look like the Pillsbury doughboy…”

“First off,” Triss started, almost growling as she dragged him off the dance floor and in through the back door to the kitchen, “I thought you were breaking up with me so please lead with what you’re nervous about next time,” Eskel followed, absolutely dumbfounded as he was sat down on a stool like he was in trouble with the principal, “Second, I find your extra weight sexy as hell- no arguments! That is my opinion and it is final . Third- and this one is important- you are the most thoughtful, caring, kind, and gentle person I have ever had the absolute pleasure to share a room with, let alone sleep with. I decided you’re what I wanted a long time ago. No one else has ever told me to take a nap before” she giggled, pausing to hold his face between her hands, “You don’t need to be anything other than you for me to be happy.”

She wiped a tear from his cheek with her knuckles, a fond smile playing on her lips as she drew him in, hugging him tightly so his head rested on her shoulder. His arms wrapped around her waist and squeezed like he was scared she might disappear if he didn’t hold her tight enough.

“Thank you,” He whispered.

“You’re welcome,” Triss whispered back, trailing her nails over his scalp and through his soft hair, “Anytime you need a reminder you tell me. Deal?”

Eskel sniffed and pulled himself back together, leaning back to give Triss a quick kiss, “Deal.”

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