#Computer Applications Subjects

[mangalayatanuniversity]

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[chatdomestique]

Stayed up past midnight (usually sleep at 10) just to call dibs on the spring classes I wanted

[catominor]

also re: lucius furius house. one i will show and that i like is the description of his study actually

Study/library: Coming off from the passage between the atrium and peristyle, this room is wider than it is deep, with a small hallway to enter it, making it T-shaped. There is a heavy wooden door which can be locked from the inside. The walls of the room proper are plain, a light-brown-ish color, and covered in wooden shelves for holding scrolls. The scrolls are neatly arranged, labelled, and meticulously cared for. Most of the books are of Stoic philosophy, although there is also literature and historical works. The floor is a mosaic, which has a pattern in black and white tiles. Lucius' desk and chair are newer, quite nice, made of carved wood. Above the desk is a window. On it is usually something he's working on writing, kept very neatly; the desk has spaces on either side of the writing surface for storing reference works. On either side of the desk are two bronze stands for holding lamps. Next to one of these is a bust of Marcus Camillus. Next to the desk is a smaller stone-topped table; this is for food, when Lucius eats in his study, which he often does. On one side of the room (perhaps in a niche surrounded by the bookshelves?) is a soft, red upholstered couch with a table next to it, and a trunk with blankets and pillows at its foot; Lucius keeps this area in his study for when he's feeling too under the weather to sit at his desk but still wants to read or work. haunted level: 5/10. It's haunted in a different way than the other rooms of the house so far; haunted in the way all libraries are, rather than by the ghosts of the family's past. Lucius redid this room soon after inheriting the house from his father.

[bhavneetverma123]

What is BCA: Subjects, Eligibility, Benefits, Job Opportunities

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[universeberrigarden]

A small sketch I made on a computer.

On a side note, drawing without a stylus is actually crazy. That touchpad was out for my lines

[suppermariobroth]

On April 7th, a Nintendo Today update featured a blurb about Donkey Kong that was subject to some manner of text-related error, which resulted in the description for Donkey Kong to read "He's always hungry for baaa has room for more", inadvertently making an onomatopoeia for a sheep bleating sound.

This was updated a few hours later to read "He's always hungry for bananas, and always has room for more."

It is speculated this might have to do with some sort of automated system removing the "nan" string of letters, since "NaN" (Not a Number) is a common error string in computing and would not be desirable to display to the end user, though a straightforward application of this would have resulted in it being "baas" instead of "baaa". The exact nature of the error is still unknown.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source

[jadagul]

The post on that reading comprehension study is good (and reminded me of some of my complaints about GPT a couple years ago, although the LLMs have gotten much better since then).

But the thing that really stood out to me is that I feel much this same way about math instruction:

i have seen this repeatedly, too - actually i was particularly taken with how similar this is to the behavior of struggling readers at much younger ages - and would summarize the hypothesis i have forged over time as: struggling readers do not expect what they read to make sense. my hypothesis for why this is the case is that their reading deficits were not attended to or remediated adequately early enough, and so, in their formative years - the early to mid elementary grades - they spent a lot of time "reading" things that did not make sense to them - in fact they spent much more time doing this than they ever did reading things that did make sense to them - and so they did not internalize a meaningful subjective sense of what it feels like to actually read things.

One of the big problems I have primarily in Calculus 1 (which is the lowest-level course I've taught) is that students just don't expect math to make sense. There's a bunch of rules to follow, which you have to memorize, and then you look at an expression and use some rule that seems like you could use it.

But that's not how competent mathematicians (and I use that word in the broadest possible sense) interact with mathematics. Mathematical formulas mean things. They have syntax, and semantics, and you can break apart a computation and talk about what individual terms mean and are doing, and what manipulation you're doing and what that corresponds to.

(Sometimes, of course, that's easier than others. Calc 2, in particular, involves a lot of "tricks" where it's hard to explain the logic in the middle of using them. But that's why I'm focusing on Calc 1 here, which is mostly not like that but does have a lot of application-y problems where this semantic understanding is important.)

But if you've never worked through a math problem and felt like everything was meaningful, you don't expect meaning in what you're doing, and you don't expect your own work to make sense. And then, well, it won't, and you'll struggle and get lost in the middle of every problem.

[thewinter-eden]

That Your Man? pt. II

pairing: Lee Minho x fem!reader rating: mature, dark themes summary: mugger!Minho patrols his usual haunts, one of which being the parking lot where you first met. One night, mid-mugging, he sees you through the window of the coffee shop where he first bought you cake--but you're there with the man he thought you were going to break up with. He decides stealing girlfriends (or, rather, you) is now included in his job description.

warnings: Mugging, Minho still has a gun, asshole bf (still), evidence of past successful muggings, cats, fake boyfriend, angst, Ateez (one member), more crack/slice of life than horror.

Author's Note: I don't even know what to say about this. It just kind of happened and then it kept going. Oh well. Here we are.

Word Count: 15k

series info PART 2 INFO

< part 1

You’re newly single, newly apartment-broke, newly jobless. Happy birthday to you. Your alarm wakes you at 5am even on Sundays, your phone battery refuses to last longer than two hours unplugged, and your printer is sick of spitting out wads of mangled cardstock for your resumes.

Three weeks after that fateful birthday night in the parking lot, when Jake gave you the last bit of persuasion you needed to stop putting up with his cool detachment from your relationship, and you’re already struggling to make ends meet. You hadn’t quit your job, nor would you ever have dreamed of it. You’d worked and schooled infinite hours to get it, at last landing the vet tech job of your dreams in a private boutique clinic, only to lose it with one phone call.

You’d never realized how very small Jake was until he coped with your breaking up with him by informing your place of work that you were implicated in an armed robbery.

It’s not true; the police never even looked you up after Minho called them and reported that some nondescript, unidentified woman had been robbed; your name wasn’t in any reports or investigations, but Jake had decided since it was his company card that had been stolen and maxed out on gift cards, you must have given it to the mugger (and, technically, true enough).

But the phone call was more than enough reason to your vet clinic, and they let you go without even a week’s warning.

You’re halfway through a stale, microwaved breakfast burrito, sitting in the dark at your kitchen table with only the painful light of your laptop screen beaming stubbornly through the tinted lenses of your blue light glasses when an email pops up in your inbox. The subject line reads INTRODUCTORY INTERVIEW - WAYWARD STREET CAT HOTEL.

You’ve never clicked into an email so fast.

A quick scan tells you they liked your resume, they want you to come in for an interview tomorrow afternoon, and their address is only four blocks away from your apartment—a major plus when you don’t have a car and you’d rather avoid public transportation if at all possible.

Typing back a hurried—and quadruple spelling checked—response accepting the invitation, you immediately add the appointment to your calendar. It fits snugly between two other interviews, one with a coffee stand that just barely promises to pay minimum wage, and the other for a receptionist position at the biggest commercial vet clinic in town, that made sure to inform you in their very first email that there were over a hundred other applicants being considered.

You don’t want to be a drive-through barista, and you don’t want to diminish your college degree to a receptionist job (although a foot in the door is a foot in the door), so your heart is fully set on Wayward Street Cat Hotel. There’s so much bubbling hope in your chest that you have to close your computer and eat the rest of your burrito in the dark, praying with all your might that the hope doesn’t pop.

Trudging through your full day of first interviews (and one second interview that definitely doesn’t seem like it’s going to lead to a third), you finally make it back home and crash into bed, barely managing to change out of your day clothes and brush your teeth before sinking into disappointed slumber.

Night turns to day, and after another chalky burrito and another cup of cheap coffee, another fruitless morning of refreshing your email inbox, you step into a fresh set of professional interview attire and try to face the day with renewal. It’s not like you try to anticipate another booked schedule of unsuccessful interviews, but after so many days of getting punched by one rejection after another, it’s difficult to approach each appointment with an open mind.

After a pleasant but uninspiring meeting with the manager of the drive-through coffee stand, you leave the interview with basically the promise of the job if you want it, but you don’t see yourself jumping at that opportunity until you absolutely have to. After the two remaining interviews of the day, you may reassess, but you withheld your commitment until you could actually be sure that it was your only chance.

The Wayward Street Cat Hotel is a charming little house-like structure on the corner with a picturesque coffee shop and a small business ice cream shop on one side and a positively blooming little florist on the other side.

As you approach the door, there’s a number of cat-related signs on the window. “No dogs allowed,” “This property is protected by attack cats,” “Free range cats at work, please knock before opening.” The soft and quaint feel of the warm green door and front step of the facility draws you in immediately, thinking of those hand-drawn greeting cards or water color canvases that portray little cottages surrounded by flowers. You knock on the door.

Not even a full minute later, a young man’s face pops into view, dimples cratering his cheeks as he tosses you a wave and then gestures for you to wait. You smile back awkwardly, watching as he bends down and scoops up a small white cat into his arms, cradling it to his chest and hurrying to close it into a room in the back. Moments later, the man comes jogging back, unlocking the door, and letting you inside.

“Hi there,” He greets cheerfully. “You’re the interview?”

You nod, pressing your hand into his palm to shake, and tell him your name.

He gestures for you to come in and sit with him at the tiny desk in the back, picking up a clipboard and brushing cat hair off of his black shirt. “I’m San. I’ll be heading our conversation today, is that okay?”

You’re confused. “Um. Yes?”

“It’s just that I’m only an employee, and that the owner won’t be in until tomorrow. But I promise I’ll be thorough in my notes.” He grins at you, encouraged by the polite laughter you give him as you wave off his concerns.

“That’s completely fine, no worries.” You spend the next few minutes discussing your education, your work history, and your personal experience with animals. He’s polite, charming, and pleasantly engaging as he runs you through a list of scripted questions, pausing between each one to pen down your answers and offer kind little comments as you bounce back responses.

“Okay!” He sets the clipboard down at last and fixes you with another dimpled grin. “Well, I feel good about this. You seem great, and I love your background for this. Why don’t you accompany me on my rounds this morning and we’ll see what you think of the actual work?”

This suggestion thrills you. No polite, tight smiles and tense handshakes and empty “We’ll be in touch” promises. Even if he decides that you can’t be trusted to work in cat boarding, at least you get to meet some kitties before you go home and cry into a vat of ice cream. You get up, leaving your bag on the chair you were just sitting in, and quickly follow him back towards the door.

The facility is a single large room, one half wall dividing the front from the back, with the desk you just had your interview at set on the back side of said wall. At the front of the room, there’s a sink, a set of cabinets, and a supply closet on the same wall as the door you entered through. To either side of you, the walls are lined with doors, all the way to the back of the room.

Each door is solid on the bottom and grated at the top so you can look in and see the kitty guests lounging in their own private rooms, blinking lazily at you as you pass by the windows. It’s not what you would have thought—all of the cat boarding facilities you’ve seen online look like sterile vet environments, with boxes in the wall that have barely enough room for a cat bed and a portable litter box.

This is small and cozy, but genuinely akin to a hotel for cats.

“So we have two shifts per day—but the boss said maybe we’d add a third since we’re looking for another worker. Every morning I come in around six am and check on everybody.” San begins, peeking into all of the rooms. It’s almost noon, so you figure he must have done all of this already, but that doesn’t stop him from chatting blithely about his entire morning routine.

When he’s finished his spiel, he guides you to a room about halfway down the row. “This is how far I got before your appointment. This is Bbam.” He steps aside so you can peer in and find the big gray tabby lounging comfortably on a plush bed. “He’s either an animatronic cat or a changeling.”

You give a shocked laugh at his playful words, but as you look at Bbam, you realize exactly what he’s talking about. The gray tabby has perfectly round eyes, about half the size of golf balls, which he pins to you the moment you appear in his line of sight. He meows at you, and when he does, his mouth hinges down at the jaw like a robot kitty. He does look like an animatronic cat. “Oh my god, he’s kind of freaking me out.” The moment you speak, Bbam’s eyes flick to the side, then down to the floor, then back at you—like he’s actually understanding your words.

San laughs at the sudden look of discomfort on your face. “Yeah, he appears in my nightmares sometimes. I frequently ask him not to answer me, if he has the ability to do so. Just in case. But he’s a huge sweetheart. Step back.” San turns the knob and swings the door open, and Bbam immediately jumps down from the bed and winds himself around your feet. “He’s a total love, once you get past the horrible expression on his face. So, he’s here for three more days—his owners went to Costa Rica.” He tells you every detail about the cat as he shakes out the blankets and the bed, sweeps the floor, cleans the litter box, changes the water, and then fills the food dish. “He gets totally nutty about meal times so he gets a Prozac at dinner.”

“Aw, poor Bbam.” You’ve spent the entire demonstration crouched in the doorway, letting the kitty bonk his head against your knees and curl himself around your hand and purr deep guttural grumbles at you. “He’s just a hungry little guy.”

“Bbam weighs thirty-one pounds.”

“He’s a hungry big guy.” You’re totally in love. Bbam the freaky animatronic changeling cat is the sweetest thing you’ve ever put your hands on, and every little mew he gives you digs right into your heart.

San notices the dumbstruck puppy love look on your face. “You haven’t even met the kittens yet. Come on.” He takes you all through the facility, introducing you to each of the cats and talking to them sweetly in a low, soothing tone. Some of them jump out and practically maul you for affection, while others tuck themselves safely under the stools that are set up specifically for the purpose of hiding. Every time one of them hides from you, San seems to know exactly why.

“She just got here this morning,” He’ll say. “That’s Bobae, she’s still nervous. She probably won’t eat her food tonight but I put just enough in to cover the bottom of the bowl, so I can see if she’s comfortable enough to try.”

Or— “That’s Kyong, he’s a little nervous. He hisses but as soon as we open the door he’ll run over here and start demanding affection, hissing all the while, see?—yep, there he goes. He won’t hurt you, just wants to make sure you know he’s a big scary cat.”

You follow along, soon jumping in to hand him things or going ahead to read the charts and starting on the food prep, even taking a few litter boxes from him to clean so he can focus on tidying up the rooms. By the time you’ve helped him finish his shift, your head and heart are chock full of cat information and your interview clothes are positively covered in kitty hair.

“Yeah, so that’s the morning shift. Evening shift starts at 4, and we do pretty much exactly the same thing, and then in between washing dishes and doing laundry we take care of emails and phone calls. It’s really simple, really rewarding if you like cats—you just have to hope the clients are nice. Most of the owners are little old ladies, and it’s kind of hit or miss with their temperaments.” San beams at you, standing back after letting you wash your hands and borrow one of the many lint rollers. “So? What do you think?”

“I think you must be the most peaceful person on the planet, if this is your day job.” You respond, somewhat in disbelief at the calm atmosphere and the instant gratification of seeing all of your efforts be either appreciated or at the very least quietly tolerated by all of these cats. “But I was wondering how our schedules would work? Like would we swap mornings and evenings, or do you do full days?”

He passes you a towel to dry your hands. “Since right now it’s just me and the boss, we’ve been trading days. I do the first half of the week, we both work Wednesdays, he does the second half of the week, and we alternate so that we can have weekends off. If he likes you and hires you on, then we’ll have more flexibility, which I’m excited for.”

You can’t think of a single better place to work right now, where your still emotionally-reeling brain can take a break and get 6-8 hours of kitty love as your day job. “That sounds great. So, um…” You clasp your hands. “I guess you’ll call me, or?”

He flinches a little, like he totally forgot that you weren’t a done deal yet. “Oh, gosh, yes. Hold on.” He runs back to the desk and returns to you with your bag, passing it to you as he scribbles a note on his clipboard. “The boss told me if I like you for the interview and the rounds both to go ahead and invite you for the morning shift tomorrow. I get here at 5:30, drink my coffee, look at emails and the schedule for the day. You’re welcome any time between then and 6am. Just knock on the door and I’ll let you in. If he signs off on you by the end of the day, I’ll get you your own door code. This is my personal cell number in case you need to reach me, and the internal email address for employees.” He gives you the piece of paper.

You hold it like treasure, your hands shaking as you tuck it carefully into your bag and then double check that it’s safely inside one of the pockets.

“I say employees,” He laughs at himself. “Right now it’s just me and the boss. But we both check it every day, so don’t hesitate to email for any reason. I’m kind of a stickler for punctuality, so please shoot an email or a text if you’re going to be late for traffic or something. Sound good?” He sticks out his hand, and this time you’re greeted with a warm and friendly handshake rather than the tight ones that reek of hand sanitizer from all of the other places you’ve been to this week.

“It sounds great. Thank you so much for having me in, and I’ll see you tomorrow.” You’re practically vibrating with excitement. He sees you out the door and waves through the window as you head for the sidewalk, and as you all but bounce your way home, you couldn’t pry the toothy grin off your face with a crow bar.

You don’t go to your next interview.

Instead, you finally take the time to cook yourself dinner. The first real meal you’ve had since the night you got robbed at gunpoint by a strangely considerate criminal who bought you cake on your birthday. You actually use pans and cutting boards and the oven fan and an egg timer and by the time it’s done, your stomach is growling so loudly that it’s automatically the best food you’ve ever eaten.

You take the time to shower, and wash your hair and shave your legs and then moisturize your skin until you’re glowing and pink in the dingy light of your cramped bathroom. You’re five seconds away from tumbling into bed in a set of matching cotton pajamas and a microfiber towel turban and the book you’ve been dying to read but haven’t had the energy to even look at when your phone dings.

Your heart slams like a jackhammer.

What if it’s San? Or the owner of the cat hotel?

What if they changed their mind?

You can just see the text—’sorry, we’ve selected another applicant. Don’t bother coming in tomorrow.’

You snatch the phone off the nightstand, thumbing past the password and blinking hazily down at the dim screen. It’s not San, or anyone who works at Wayward Street Cat Hotel.

It’s Jake.

‘911—need to talk to you. It’s urgent.’

Your eyes reflexively well with tears, the raw edges of your heart still bleeding from the difficult emotions of breaking off your lengthy relationship, and you feel a clenching in your chest. Despite knowing that nothing Jake has ever thought of as urgent has ever been actually urgent, you glumly type back a response and get an address in return.

You blink at it in disbelief.

It’s that coffee shop.

The one in the parking lot that you got robbed in. The one in the parking lot that Jake left you in, with an armed robber. The one across from the McDonald’s where Jake tried to make you eat (and pay for) your birthday dinner. The one across from the movie theater where he made you feel like a child for crying through a sad movie on your birthday.

The one that Minho took you to and begged you to eat from after your heart broke into a million little pieces.

It doesn’t matter. Jake says it’s urgent, so you have to go. You toss back your covers, dig through your drawers for something to wear—and you’re far too committed to the comfort you’re currently wrapped in to go for any of the jeans, so you pull out your coziest sweats and swap one cotton set for another.

Shaking out your hair, scrubbing your fingers through the stringy wet tendrils, you fold it into the fastest, sloppiest braid you’ve ever embarrassed yourself with, grab your purse, and head out the door. Cool air wraps around your damp throat, digging fingers into your dripping scalp, laying it’s icy palm against your back where your hoodie is catching all of the water from your hair.

One hasty Uber and about twenty minutes of anxious hand wringing and mentally chanting reassurances to yourself, you arrive at the coffee shop with almost rock-solid certainty that you’re going to be able to face Jake without completely falling apart.

Yeah, you’re the one who broke up with him.

Yeah, he definitely had it coming, and you definitely deserve better.

But you’ve been with him for so long that sometimes you still feel like he’s missing from you, and to see him again after three weeks might just be the straw that breaks you. Running your hands over the awkward fly-aways that float around your hairline, already feeling the knobby lumps of your terrible braid but not wanting to prolong the inevitable by stopping to fix it, you make your way up the sidewalk, adjusting your jacket collar under the hood of your sweater.

In the darkening light of evening, the coffee shop glows a warm golden light out onto the sidewalk, and you take a deep breath to brace yourself. You can see him just inside, in a thin t-shirt and a pair of jeans that you’ve seen a million times before—clothes that he barely manages to drag on before going out in public without a care.

You feel just a little miffed. This meeting had better be an actual emergency if he pulled you out of bed to spend money on an Uber and didn’t even bother to dress appropriately for the high-dollar coffee shop.

A bell rings softly when you push the door open and step inside, instantly enveloped in a rush of warmth. The air smells like hot sugar and cinnamon and rich coffee, and your eyes automatically slide to the display case full of aesthetic cakes.

Even after your hard earned dinner, your stomach grumbles at the thought of that cake.

You make your way to the small table where your ex is seated, going around to stand across from him, one hand gripping the straps of your purse in a fist. “What is it? What’s wrong?” You didn’t realize your voice was going to come out with such a hard edge, but it’s too late to soften your approach now.

Jake looks up from his phone, brow furrowing at your words. “Can we talk?”

Frustration fills your entire chest cavity. “You said it was urgent. What’s wrong?”

He pushes his phone away and drops his hands into his lap, staring at you pitifully. “I just want to understand. I don’t get it. Why would you throw everything we had away like that? How could you do that? I thought we loved each other.”

You want to scream with disbelief and anger and the heartbreak that is rapidly evaporating to be replaced by incredulous resentment at the utter gall of this man. “What am I doing here, Jake? What do you want?”

He gestures for you to sit, and you stare at his hand blankly. “I need closure, babe. Please. I want to understand. I think we could give this another chance if we just talk about it.”

You slam yourself down in the seat and have to stop your body from lunging across the table and strangling the living daylights out of him. “You texted me 911 so that you could get closure? I was in bed, Jake. I have work in the morning—and don’t call me babe.”

His lips twist in confusion. “What work? I thought you got fired.”

You’re about two seconds away from having a psychotic episode in the middle of a coffee shop. “Yes. I got fired. Because you lied to my boss. And you expect me to come here and hold your hand?”

“I called your boss after you broke up with me. That’s not why you ended things. I want to know why. Was it the mugging? You know I called you all night long. I was worried sick about you, babe, I just wanted to make sure you were okay, and you ignored me.”

All you can do is breathe.

Just keep breathing.

“I just think you could have at least talked to me before you ended it. I took you out for your birthday. I gave you a scarf, do you know how much that cost?”

“Yeah, about a buck fifty.”

He blasts right past the revelation that you somehow knew he thrifted it out of the clearance bin. “I was up the whole night just hoping you were okay, and the next thing I hear from you is a full 48 hours later, breaking up with me. How can you think that’s fair? How can you say I deserve that after everything we’ve been through?”

A waitress swoops by the table then, smiling sweetly at you. “Can I get you guys anything? Our cakes are incredible, or we have savory options as well.”

“Just a coffee for her, but I’ll take a slice of the chocolate cake, please.” Jake says softly, giving the waitress his most pitiful smile, and then fixes you with the same look. “Babe, please. Please, I just want to work this out.”

Your mind is so completely blown by everything that’s just happen that you can’t even pull a facial expression to reflect the shock consuming you. “What did you do?”

He blinks. “What do you mean?”

“For the 48 hours. What did you do?”

Stammering, surprised by the question, he lifts one hand in a pointless gesture. “I…I waited around. I mean, I had to go to work, of course. And then I caught up with a friend for dinner, because they were going out of town the next day, but you understand that I had to go. But I waited around for you the whole time, just hoping. I couldn’t even sleep, baby, I was so worried.”

“You left me. You left me there.”

“The guy had a gun! Everybody makes mistakes. Not everybody responds well under pressure. I was stupid, and I regret it, and—oh my god I’m just so glad you’re okay.”

His gushing words fill you with revolted disgust. “Please stop.” Nausea floods your senses. “Seriously, just knock it off. We’re done, Jake. There’s no talking about this, there’s no fixing anything. I will never consider it okay, or just a mistake, that you left me with an armed robber in a dark parking lot. You left me there.”

You don’t say anything about the fact that you ended up feeling safer with the armed robber than you had felt with Jake in a long time, because that’s entirely beside the point.

He doesn’t need to know that.

“I would never do that again. I could never dream of leaving you. Please, baby, please, I swear—”

“So this is the jackass, huh?” Somebody slips into the booth next to you, and you’re startled to find a warm arm looping around your back, fingers tickling you where they brush softly at your sides. “He looks like an accountant.”

Both you and Jake turn to the newcomer, wide-eyed, but you recover first.

Minho is sitting next to you.

Minho, the armed robber who held you up on your birthday. Minho, who took pity on you when you cried your eyes out in the cold. Minho, who took you to this very coffee shop and bought you warm food and a warm drink (with your boyfriend’s card) and told you that you were worth more than he made you think.

For a second, your gaze snaps to Jake, terrified that your cover is blown and that he’ll only be further convinced that you and your mugger were in cahoots against him—when you remember. Minho had taken his mask off only after Jake had burned rubber out of the parking lot.

You recognize him.

Jake does not.

Your ex straightens, instantly offended by the cool smirk and downward gaze of the criminal who currently has his fingertips playing with the hem of your sweater. “Who is this?” Jake snaps at you, scooting his chair back. “You moved on from me already? You were cheating on me, weren’t you? Who are you—what the fuck are you doing with my girlfriend?” He’s practically combusting with derision.

Minho just blinks lazily up at him, reminding you of the way the cats from the boarding facility earlier calmly stared at you as you walked with San. “I’m the one who knows everything about you, and, may I say, this charming display is entirely consistent with what I’ve heard.”

You gawk at him, only managing to close your mouth and swallow your surprise when he gives your side a little pinch. Clamping your jaw, you let him tug you into his side and smile smugly at your ex as the other man sputters angrily.

“This is why you broke up with me? You had some fucker on the side?” He snaps at you, and you really wish you had an answer for him, but you’re just as surprised as he is.

“I never cheated on you, Jake, this isn’t—”

“I think you should leave.” Minho says simply, interrupting you. “You’re disturbing the customers here, and your voice irritates me.”

“You expect me to stand here and believe that this guy with his arm around your waist isn’t some secret boy toy that you’ve been screwing while I’ve been taking care of you? Do you know how hard I worked to provide for you? I was going to give you safety and security and—”

“And McDonalds every year for her birthday? That she pays for and you bill your company for?” Minho finishes lightly. His hand slides up your side to smooth over your shoulder and then drag back down to your hip. Every inch of his touch is possessive and unthreatened by Jake’s presence. “I think she can do better. Can’t you, jagi?”

Your stunned expression meets his cool smile, and he blinks at you in a way that somehow very clearly and very subtly tells you to stop your gaping and pretend that you’re comfortable in his arms. Strangling the part of you that wants to ask just as many questions as Jake is asking, you force your eyelids to lower to a normal degree and finally turn to face Jake again. “We’re done, Jake. You should leave.”

Jake bursts out of his chair with frenzied outrage. “I asked you here to give you another chance, but that’s over.” He snaps, jabbing a pointed finger at you.

Pressed against you, you feel the solid muscles along Minho’s side tense as he closes his hand firmly around your hip and narrows his eyes at your ex.

“Don’t call me. Don’t text me. Don’t even fucking try to explain.” He yanks his jacket off the back of his seat and then slams the chair up so hard that the edge of the table thumps harshly against your ribs at the impact.

“Then stop throwing a fit and get on with it.” Minho says harshly. “And calm down before I make you.”

From anyone else it would sound like your average amount of masculine posturing, designed to make the other man uncomfortable and test the boundaries of respect, but from Minho—the man who spends his nights holding people at gunpoint—it strikes you as a sobering promise.

Jake shoots you one last petulant glower and then storms out of the coffee shop, slamming the door behind him.

The moment he’s gone, you twist yourself to face Minho, seeing the cool smile drop from his face as his arm slides away from your back. “What are you doing here?” You hiss. “What was that? Last time I saw you, you were robbing me. And now you’re pretending to be my boyfriend or some shit? Are you bipolar?”

His eyes are hooded, and he picks up the coffee that the waitress left for you and sips at it quietly. “So you do remember that night,” He says. “And do you happen to remember the part where we discussed getting rid of assface?”

Your mouth falls open. “Excuse me? The part I remember is you pointing a gun in my face.”

He rolls his eyes, leans forward, hooks his finger on the lip of the plate with Jake’s untouched cake, and drags it towards you. “Eat. I saw you eyeing the cakes when you came in here.”

You push the plate away. “Minho.” The name is hissed through gritted teeth.

He pops an eyebrow at you. “And you remember my name. I’m flattered, jagi, you’ll make me blush.” The smirk drops once again and he scoots the plate back towards you. “It’s nine o’clock at night and you look like you got your hair caught in the door of a car. Eat the cake and go home.”

“I don’t want to eat the cake. I want you to tell me what the hell you’re doing here—and how long have you been watching? What do you mean you saw me eyeing the cakes?”

“I’ll tell you if you eat it.”

“I don’t want to eat it. I don’t eat in public, remember?”

“You do with me.” He’s watching you, expressionless, firing back responses as quickly as you can scrounge up an argument.

“I was under the unique pressure of being held at gunpoint.” You snap under your breath.

“I wasn’t holding you at gunpoint when we had birthday cake together. Eat it while I’m still trying to persuade you unarmed.”

You grab the fork on impulse, a jolt of fear striking you before you realize he’s kidding. His eyes are tracing your face, reading the reflexive terror as it rises and then fades slowly, and he settles on a small smile when you breathe again. “I don’t feel like eating this here.” You tell him quietly. “I still have the—” You break off, filled with frustration. “Look, I’m already thrown off by you being here, sitting here, I don’t really want to feel even more vulnerable by eating in front of you, too.”

“I want you to. See? I can be vulnerable too.”

“Why are you being so damn pushy? Who cares about the cake? Why won’t you just tell me what the hell you’re doing here?”

“Because you’re shaking. And you’re uneasy, and eating the cake will distract you. And you deserve it after that prick didn’t let you order one for yourself.”

God, how long had he been watching?

“That’s because it’s embarrassing.”

“It’s cute. Your face scrunches like a baby’s, like you’re afraid of what you’re eating but you want it anyway. It’s cute. Eat it, jagiya, I’ll answer your questions.”

You scoop a bit of the cake onto the fork and stare at him, heart pounding. “Are you sure?” Like you’re giving him an out. This fucking criminal who has inserted himself into your personal space and considered it a personal favor that he’s not pointing a gun at you while he’s doing it. There’s no reason for you to be offering him the chance to not be seen in public with you, twitching every time you take a bite.

“I’m sure, babyface, just eat it.”

You scowl. “Don’t call me that.”

“Then eat it.”

You do. Finally, after practically wearing yourself out arguing over your biggest, deepest insecurity, you begin to eat the cake, and do your best to ignore the warmth you feel when Minho’s arm settles against your back again.

“I was outside with…some friends, when I saw you show up. I recognized you, I got curious, and imagine my surprise when I see you meeting good ol’ assface for coffee, like we hadn’t already promised each other we were gonna break up with him.”

“We?” You mumble around the tiniest bite of chocolate cake. “I don’t remember us being in that relationship.”

“Tell me you haven’t been dating him all this time.” Minho leans back with a sigh, watching you pick daintily at the cake, his fingertips walking up your spine to tug at the lumpy, damp braid that’s still soaking through your sweater.

“I haven’t. He said he needed to talk to me. Said it was urgent.”

“It’s always urgent.” Minho mumbles, and you feel him picking at the end of your braid. Suddenly the elastic is gone, your hair stiffly unwinding against your shoulders. “Tell me you didn’t go back home to him that night.”

“I didn’t.” You twist your neck around to see what he’s doing, but he puts one finger to your temple and turns your head back to face your cake, and then continues unraveling your hair. “I went home. To my apartment. I didn’t talk to him for two days and when I did, I broke up with him. I didn’t even get my iPad back from his house.”

“Good girl.” He twists your hair into a firm knot at the base of your skull and fastens it with the elastic. “There. Try not to contract pneumonia next time you get played by your ex.” He pats your back firmly, and it’s jarringly platonic after the tenderness of his hands threading through your hair. He pushes himself to his feet and holds his hand out, palm up. “Come on. Bed time.”

“Bed time?” You repeat, absolutely stunned.

Whatever he’s expecting from you right now is nowhere near what you’re prepared to give to the man who has at one point pulled a gun on you.

He turns his hand and flicks your arm softly. “Stop your blushing. I know you took an Uber here. I’m taking you home. You said you have work tomorrow, so let’s go.”

You just blink at him. “I’m not riding home with you. You have a car?”

“Of course I have a car, I’m not destitute.”

“You rob people.”

“It’s really more of a hobby.”

“Yeah, I’m definitely not going home with you.”

“Again,” He flicks your arm once more. “I’m not taking you home with me, I’m taking you home. Your home. Finish your cake and get up.”

Moments later, you are making the second inexplicably foolish decision of your life to follow Minho across the parking lot to the small gray car in the shadows. He opens the door for you, waits for you to get inside, and then closes you in to spend the next few seconds wondering if you’re going to survive the rest of the night.

Because there is stuff everywhere.

Purses. Backpacks. Wallets. A gun in the floorboard. A small document safe, busted open on the back seat. A crowbar. Numerous disposable masks. Multiple boxes of latex gloves.

The instant that Minho crosses around to the driver’s side and gets in, your fingers are grasping for the handle, seconds away from leaping out into the night. He frowns at you as he puts the keys in the ignition. “What? Where are you going?” As you gawk at him, terrified, his eyes skate the condition of his car. “Oh. Shit. Right, sorry.” He leans into your space, scraping up a handful of purses and wallets and tossing them in the back seat. He ducks back down one more time, grabs up the gun, tucks it in the glove compartment. “You can put your feet anywhere, it’s fine.”

You gape at him. “Minho, this is—”

He rolls his eyes. “Don’t be such a prude. I robbed you, too, and look at us now. I’m a nice guy, I swear.”

“Have you ever killed anybody?”

“Would you believe me if I said no?”

“I…don’t know.”

“Well, let me know when you figure it out, and I’ll give you my answer.”

He wheels the car smoothly out of the driveway, and when he asks for your address, it takes an infinity for you to decide to give it to him. You live in a nice apartment building, with good security, and watchful neighbors. Even if he’s been nice to you so far, possibly scoping you out and getting you to trust him, it should be difficult for him to actually gain access to your apartment later.

“Block his number.” He tells you quietly, one elbow propped up on the window sill. “Don’t go chasing after his 911 texts anymore.”

“Why do you care?”

Silence.

Streetlights and traffic signals shine into the space between you, flashing over his face and illuminating the quiet consideration that he wears in place of the smug expression he had only moments ago. “I care.”

“Why?”

“God knows.”

He drops you off at your apartment, peers at you quietly through the window as you back away from his car, your eyes dubiously fixed on him as you scoot backwards into the building, and then he’s gone, racing off into the night, and taking all the evidence of his transgressions with him.

By some stroke of cosmic grace you get yourself to bed and convince your brain to abandon all thoughts of Minho and get a bare minimum amount of sleep. By the time your alarm sings its obnoxiously cheerful jingle at you, it feels like you only just closed your eyes. But it’s 4am and you have a day of kitties ahead of you, so you put your feet on the floor and trudge to your bathroom to get yourself awake.

Two pieces of toast, the last of your Folgers instant coffee, and one glass of water, off-brand orange juice later, you’re bundled up in your favorite winter jacket, watching your breath appear in the dark of morning as you walk to the Wayward Street Cat Hotel.

By the time you knock on the warm green door and watch San’s head pop around the corner of the half wall, your nose is pink and your fingers are cold but it’s only served to get your heart pumping and your brain wide awake.

San approaches the door with a sauntering gait and a dimpled smile that is far too kind for 5:30 in the morning, but he unlocks the door and ushers you into the golden warmth of the facility. “Good morning!” He greets, standing back as you unzip your jacket. “You are prompt, right on time.” He holds out a hand and takes the garment, showing you to the storage closet where he hangs it next to his own jacket.

“I hoped you might be punctual, so I brought you a coffee. Cream and sugar on the side, you can fix it how you like. Is that okay?”

You’re warm all over. “That sounds amazing, thank you.”

He leads you back to the desk and pulls up your chair for you. “So right now I’m just going through emails—oh, here.” He passes you a blue paper to go cup and a handful of cream and sugar packets. “If all goes well today, give me your usual coffee order. The boss pays for coffees on Wednesdays to warm me up for when he comes in and extends the shift by two hours.”

“By two hours?” You repeat, popping the lid off and dumping four of the creamers into the dark liquid that smells about a thousand better than your Folgers instant. You’re halfway through wondering if you should be reassessing your excitement for this job, adjusting your hope for success today and a contract by evening, mentally filing through labor laws, when San waves your worries away with one hand.

“Accidentally. He doesn’t make me stay, but I usually stick around and do emails or laundry and it gives me two more hours on my time sheet, so who cares? If you work here, he’ll let you go home at your normal time, don’t worry.”

“How does he make it so much longer? Is he a slow cleaner or something?”

“No, no, not at all. He’s the one who taught me how to be as efficient as I am, and he can still clean a room about two minutes faster than I do. No, he runs an Instagram page so owners can see their kitties while they’re gone. So when he comes in on Wednesday, he takes all kinds of photos and videos—plus he’s a total lush for cats so he spends like ten minutes with each one, just hanging out with them.” He sips from his coffee and lets out a slow hiss as the heat hits his tongue.

“Oh.” You blink, pressing the lid back onto your cup. “That’s sweet.”

“Yeah, he’s really great. I think you’ll enjoy working with him, if you’re good with rolling with a wry, dry sense of humor. He’s super chill and easy going and even though he looks at you sometimes like he can’t remember your name, he’ll listen to anything—even if you’ve forgotten for the fifth time how to print out the daily schedule.”

“Is this…experience speaking?”

San chuckles, ducking his head and sighing at his keyboard. “Ahhhh, yes, unfortunately. I was so nervous my first day. I thought he hated me until I asked him my hundredth inane question of the day and he noticed how bad I felt about it and he just took the time to kindly walk me through it again.”

You’re a little nervous now, both about the complexity that the shifts must be if San was so psyched out about it, and about the apparently closed off demeanor of your potential boss. “So, he’s nice about it, though?”

“Oh yeah.” San clicked through a couple of emails and then leaned back in his chair, spinning it lightly back and forth. “No he will full on stare at you like you’re speaking another language and then just when you think you’re going to cry for being the dumbest person on the planet, he starts talking to you in this very sweet, like, don’t-spook-the-kittens voice and answers whatever you’re unsure about and then tells you that you aren’t completely hopeless.”

“Aw,” You’re laughing at the utter embarrassment on San’s face.

“I had such a hard first day. I was so nervous. So please, whatever you feel about today, barring a medical emergency, it can never be worse than mine.”

You’re at ease almost immediately after that, relaxing in your chair and sipping at your coffee as he chatters about the process of checking emails and showing you where the form letters for rote responses are, and showing you how to use the database to check the schedule and make bookings and check kitty records.

By the time 6am rolls around and San pushes himself back from the desk, he’s finished his coffee. He shrugs out of his hoodie and gets up, instructing you to start on one of the rooms while he gets started on the other. For the next hour, you clean kitty rooms, check the database for feeding and medicating instructions, refresh water bowls, and clean litter boxes, all the while getting positively coated in kitty affection.

San keeps up a regular dialogue, occasionally breaking off to laugh as you react to whichever cat you’re interacting with at the moment, from a couple of calico kittens who jump on your shoulders while you clean their litter box, to Kyong hissing at you whilst demanding affection, to a little old lady cat who meows at you like she’s been smoking for fifty years.

“Why don’t you go do the last room and I’ll start washing the dishes.” San suggests at some point around 7, gesturing for you to go get started on a little black cat named Jia, who has been not so patiently waiting for her turn to be fed since you started. He begins pulling on dishwashing gloves and setting to cleaning the previous night’s dinner dishes while you hurry to comply.

“Hi Jia.” The moment you open the door, the older cat scoots out into the hallway, winding around your legs, whisper-meowing up at you constantly. She follows you back into the room, pawing and headbutting you as you shake out her blankets and sweep the floor. It takes you a few minutes to clean little splatters of her drool off the floor and sift out the litter box, but finally you scoop her up in your arms and begin the less pleasant task of giving her her daily medications.

“This is gonna be so fast, baby.” You whisper, letting her lean her head back against your chest. “Just a couple of nasty pills and then it’s canned food galore, I promise.” She squirms and cries at you as you push the pills into her mouth, and in a matter of seconds she’s swallowed both of them. “See? You did so good, and now it’s all over. What a good girl,” You lean over and pick up her bowl of wet food before she can get too upset about swallowing the tablets. “See? There you go, pretty girl.”

You lean back on your heels and stroke her as she abruptly forgets all about the terrible medication and chirps her way through her breakfast.

“Look who the cat dragged in.”

Before you can shoot San an unimpressed look for his very unoriginal one-liner, you realize that that wasn’t San’s voice. And the not-San voice sounded very, very familiar.

You twist around, nearly falling on your ass in the middle of Jia’s room, to see fucking Minho staring down at you through the window in the door, that smug smirk on his face. His eyes glance to Jia, then around the room, then to you. “She’s sweet, isn’t she?”

Jumping to your feet, thoroughly appalled by his sudden appearance, you glare through the grate. “What are you doing here?”

He blinks at you. “I’m the owner.”

Your eyes fall back down to Jia. “Oh. Yes, she’s very sweet. She took her medicine very well and her appetite is fantastic this morning. Are you checking her out?” You don’t remember San saying that Jia was going home this morning.

Minho’s smirk widens. “Isn’t it cute the way she whispers?”

Your patience is thinning. “Yes, Minho. She’s very cute. Can you just take your cat and go?” You’re praying, hoping beyond hope that San or the boss doesn’t show up and watch you snarl at a client, but you cannot cope with running into your robber for the third time.

This is it.

You’re going to lose another job before you even get the chance to have it, all because of the same night that lost you the first job.

You hate him.

You hate Jake.

You hate Minho.

You hate everybody right now except for Jia, and the knowing look on Minho’s face is not helping matters.

It is too early in the morning to be playing mind games with a criminal.

“Why are you still here?” You hiss. “Why are you even here at all? If you want your cat, take your damn cat.” You see San approaching from behind Minho, tossing a dish towel over his shoulder.

“Maybe I just can’t stay away from you.” Minho raises an eyebrow at you, eyes trailing down your body to examine the long sleeve button-up and soft, stretchy slacks that you’re wearing whilst crawling around on your knees in cat rooms. “You’re just so damn enchanting.”

“Do not bullshit me right now—” Your hiss is broken off and transformed into a sweet smile as San sidles up next to Minho and smiles that cratered smile at you.

“Looks like you’ve met the boss, huh? She’s pretty great, right, hyung?”

Your entire body stops functioning. Minho’s lips are spreading into a cheshire grin, watching your face go through all the stages of grief, looking one hundred percent pleased with your sudden inability to form words.

“Like I said, I’m the owner.” Minho tells you. “Of Wayward Street, not Jia. Though she’s quite the little sweetheart. I could just take her home with me.” The significance of his words settles on you with horrible weight, and your mouth falls open.

“Right, right, yes, this is Minho, he’s the boss. Hyung, this is our new prospective worker. She’s already done half of the rooms by herself, and I gotta be honest, she just took the routine and ran with it. She’s got it down.” That means a lot coming from him, especially now that you know his first day had been an utter disaster.

“Is that so?” Minho’s humored eyes haven’t left yours. “Does she maybe want to let Jia eat her breakfast and come back to the main room now?”

You scramble to grab up your cleaning supplies, leaving the kitty with one final scratch between the ears, and follow the men back to the desk. Minho sits before the computer, glancing at the empty email inbox, and sets his own coffee down next to your cup. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come in at 6 this morning, San, I had a task to do. Looks like the rooms are already done?”

San nods proudly. “All done. I just finished dishes and I was about to fold the clean laundry. Other than the floors, we’re pretty much good to go.”

Minho glances to the schedule. “Any appointments this morning?”

“Dakho and Hei are going home at eight, Ppang goes home at ten, and we get Mihi into room 4 at nine thirty.” San rehearses easily. “I’ve got Dakho and Hei ready to go, and I just need to prep Mihi’s room.”

Minho glances between you and San, San who is eager to get through the rest of his tasks, and you who is both too mortified and too frustrated to meet his eyes. “Alright, teach the newbie how to get Ppang ready to go, and show her how to reset room 4 for the new one. Then have her greet clients with you.” His eyes settle on you. “You can stand there and listen, just let him do it and pay attention.”

You nod quietly. “Will do.”

“Alright. You two get to work and let me know if you need anything. I’ll be reaching out to upcoming reservations so just give me a yell.” Minho meets San’s gaze, ensures that he’s been heard, and then shoots you another sideways glance. That same wicked smirk plays at the edges of his lips as you turn to follow San to Ppang’s room, your shoulders hunched almost painfully.

So much for your fresh beginning.

So much for your new start.

So much for Minho being an isolated incident—or even two isolated incidents.

You spend the rest of the morning shift doing exactly as you’re told, expertly finagling Ppang into his kitty carrier—a skill you acquired at the vet’s office and impressed San with when you completed the task with a few soft words and firm hands and got away without a single even attempted scratch. He chit chats companionably as you clean the room and start a load of laundry with the old blankets and beds that Ppang had used, washing the dishes and sanitizing the entire room from floor to ceiling.

Minho’s eyes can be felt on you as you move back and forth from the sink and the supply closet to Ppang’s room, hurrying to do San’s bidding, careful not to disturb any of the other cats with any clanging noises or anxious energy. The two of you handle both of the kitty pick-up appointments and Mihi’s intake, settling her into a freshly prepared room and leaving her to hide under her blankets until she feels comfortable enough to come out on her own.

When the shift is finally over, Minho dismisses San for the day and then turns to you with a levelling stare. “While I admit that we have a rather unconventional relationship that we just can’t seem to get away from, I want you to know that your performance is being fairly assessed.”

He’s giving you the courtesy of professionalism (sort of), so you relax into the role of prospective employee and fold your hands in front of you. Even so, you’re not entirely sure that you’re hoping you get the job anymore. While the work is simple and the cats are thoroughly enjoyable to be around, you can’t see yourself reporting to a known criminal every day.

That’s not ethical, right?

Shouldn’t you report him?

“Wayward Street is very important to me.” Minho says solemnly, eyes hooded as he speaks to you in a lazy drawl. “I won’t have some stranger come in and automatically be given trust over my cats without consideration for her existing or non existing ability to properly care for them.” His eyes scan you again. “No matter how intriguing I may find her to be.”

Heat rises in your cheeks and you look away. It bothers you that he’s speaking so frankly, but you’re not decided about your plans for the job yet, so you don’t say a word.

“I’ve arranged for San to take the evening shift off so that I can watch you work more closely. Come back at 3:30 and be prepared to take the reins. I’ll be available for any questions you might have. It’s not a trap, the work is just as straight forward as you’ve seen so far. I want my cats and my people and my company to be cared for. Do you understand?”

You nod soberly. “I understand.”

“If your work tonight satisfies me, I will be happy to offer you the job.” He leans forward in his desk chair, the cunning gleam finally disappearing from his eyes. “I also want you to understand that you can choose not to take it. It will not be offered with some kind of implicit agreement that you are expected to keep silent about my extracurricular activities. If you choose to go to the police, then so be it.”

You’re surprised by the sudden claim of accountability. Perhaps it’s some form of manipulation, that he’s wanting you to shirk away from accusing him while he’s being so kind to you, or that he thinks you’ll take pity on his boarding business and save it from going under if he were to go to jail. Either way, you’re now watching him with guarded interest.

“Additionally, if you choose to take the job and work here, with me, you can consider our previous interactions a wash.” He observes the slight confusion on your face and taps his fingers on the desk. “My behavior towards you to this point, extracurricular activities notwithstanding, would be inappropriate for an employer to express towards a subordinate. I will not be pursuing any kind of dynamic which might make you uncomfortable. Do you understand?”

You feel strangely calmed by this. “I understand.”

He leans back in his chair and slides his eyes back to the computer. “Come back at 3:30. Dress for comfort and utility. This business casual get up you’re wearing now is fine but it’s unnecessary. San prefers to work in a t-shirt and joggers, as the job requires us to be down on the floor quite a lot. You’ll see me in jeans most days. Please represent my company appropriately and choose attire that reflects self-respect, and that will suffice. Do you have any questions?”

He’s not looking at you, not smirking at you, not even treating you like he’s witnessed you bawling your eyes out and being humiliated by your ex boyfriend. “I don’t.”

“You can go, then. I’ll see you this evening.”

You check your watch. It’s only 10am. With hours of 6am to 10am and 4pm to 7pm, you have a good majority of your afternoon to do with as you please. You collect your things from the closet and head out into the bright, sunshiney morning.

When you return for evening shift, you’ve changed your clothes. Minho lets you into the facility with a quick glance at your cotton sweatshirt and breathable pants and gives an approving nod. “Did San show you how to answer emails?”

You nod.

He gestures to the desk. “Go ahead and start there. Ask me if you have any questions.”

You sit at the desk and spend half an hour shooting back emails, updating bookings, making reservations, and filing vaccination records. He watches in silence, occasionally spending time on his phone to give you space. When you finish, he follows you as you begin the rounds. He lingers quietly, doing little tasks like refreshing water and handing you supplies, but he lets you take the lead.

When clients arrive for pick-up and drop-off appointments, he chats with them pleasantly but lets you discuss care instructions and payment info on your own.

At seven o’clock, you’re standing in front of him, hands clasped once again in front of you, surprised to find yourself hoping that he’s pleased with your work. He sits at his desk and pulls a few pages off the printer. “I think the first thing we should talk about is whether or not you want this job.” He says quietly. “I think we’ve assessed each other fairly well today, don’t you?”

He’s right. His constant presence today has been one of steadiness and stability, not at all someone that you were worried to turn your back to or feel nervous questioning. He had been polite, unassuming, helpful, and temperate all day—excluding your brief fiasco with Jia.

“That depends.” You hear yourself say softly.

“On what?” His eyes are gentle, wondering, searching.

“Have you ever killed anyone?”

A light smile plays at his lips. “You’ll trust my answer?”

You will. He can see that on your face.

“I’ve never hurt anyone. I swear on my cats.” The words are delivered with a playful smirk.

You take a deep breath. “I don’t appreciate your extracurricular activities.” He watches your eyes dart around the desk, watches your mouth form the words. “But I do love your business here. I think I demonstrated a fair command of the work today, and if you’re willing to take me on, I would be grateful for the opportunity to be employed here.”

Minho grins at you. “I was hoping you’d say that.” He slides the pages from the printer towards you. All of a sudden you’re signing your contract, setting up your banking information, receiving a door code. He discusses a schedule with you, and the next time you meet his eyes, you have a job.

“Thank you, Minho.” You tell him quietly.

“I’m glad you want the job.” He responds. “I liked the way you handled Jia this morning.”

Your face scrunches in confusion. “The way I handled Jia?” Trying to think back to the moments before he made his presence known and made you assume he was here to take the little black cat home, you struggle to come up with whatever he’s referring to.

“She gets nervous when she knows the pills are coming. You were sweet with her, and she recovered with no hurt feelings. You’re good with them. You’re kind. I want someone like that taking care of my guests.” He leans back in his chair and places his palms flat on the table. “Now, if you’ll walk me out to my car, I’ll let you get home and we can start over again in the morning.”

You balk immediately. Follow him out to his car? What happened to him not trying to make you uncomfortable?

He sees the apprehension in your eyes and he gets to his feet, a chiding expression on his face. “Don’t look so scandalized. You’re safe with me. I just have something of yours in my car.” He scoops up his keys and tosses his jacket over his arm, gesturing for you to follow. “Keep your distance if you must, but it’s really no big deal.”

Resentfully, you follow him to his car.

He digs around in the passenger seat for a minute and then turns back to you, producing a familiar purple case. It’s your iPad. The one you had left at Jake’s house and never gone back to get. You gawk at him, snatching the device from his fingers. “Where did you get this?”

“You don’t want to know.” He’s smirking again.

“You robbed him? Again?”

“Shhh.” His eyebrows lower, glancing around the dark sidewalk. “I’d rather not announce it in front of my place of business.”

“Oh my god.” You can’t help the grin that tugs at your cheeks at the thought of him breaking into your ex’s house and robbing him without a care. “Thank you, Minho.” You shouldn’t be thanking him. You really, really shouldn’t be thanking him. But god, does it feel good to be holding your iPad and knowing that it’s only back in your possession because a smarter man than Jake got it back for you.

Minho struggles to control his own smile, forcing an aloof shrug. “Couldn’t have you coming up with any more excuses to see the assface again.” He shuts the passenger side door and moves away from you, around to the driver’s seat. “Go home. I’ll see you in the morning.”

You walk home with the iPad clutched to your chest, shocked and a little disappointed in yourself that you’re actually excited about how the day turned out, despite everything that’s happened to try to persuade you otherwise.

The next few weeks are spent accompanying San and Minho on their shifts, working under their supervision while they finish training you and getting a solid feel for your ability to manage the dynamic workspace and client concerns. San grows fond of your presence rather quickly, and soon enough you’re often getting lunch together after your morning shift.

Minho maintains a strict air of professionalism with you. He’s gentle, available, and cautious about your space, and it doesn’t take long for you to all but forget about the strange way in which you first met him.

Finally, at long last, you’re given your first independent schedule away from both San and Minho. It’s your first weekend by yourself, and the facility is yours to run and enjoy in solitude. Everything goes peacefully and beautifully well, until Sunday morning, when you step into your last room of the shift, and little Jia doesn’t wake up.

Your heart shatters.

You call San first, weeping over the phone in garbled words that he barely understands, until suddenly he gets the gist. “Calm down, it’s alright. I’ll call hyung, and I’ll be over there in two minutes. It’s alright. It’s not your fault, alright? I’ll deal with it. I’ll come deal with it. Sit down at the desk and wait for me.”

Less than a minute later, the phone rings, and it’s Minho. You answer in a storm of tears and apologies, your heart breaking into a million pieces over the phone. “I’m going to call the client,” He tells you. “I’ll handle it. I’m a little farther away than San is, so wait for him to get there. Just sit tight and wait, okay?”

You can’t stop crying. You can’t stop apologizing.

“Just wait for San. I’ll call the clients.” He hangs up the phone.

San arrives shortly after and finds you slumped over the desk, pouring out your tears into the keyboard, fighting the memory of discovery. He immediately shrugs off his jacket and pulls you into his embrace, letting you fling your arms around him and cry. “She was an old cat. She was old, it’s not your fault.” He holds you tightly, rubbing your back, letting the moments pass slowly. “You didn’t do anything wrong, okay?”

It doesn’t help.

You know you didn’t do anything wrong, but it doesn’t help.

The little bell chimes and quiet footsteps approach the desk, and then San is easing away from you. You lean your weight on the counter and try not to listen to him telling Minho that he’s going to go back there and take care of Jia so you don’t have to. The next thing you know, Minho is kneeling in front of you, tapping your hand lightly with a finger. “Hey. I talked to them.”

You turn your eyes to his and find him tense with anger, and your heart sinks. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Minho, I don’t know what happened.” The clenching of his jaw and the tightening of his fists fills you with guilt. “I’m so sorry.”

“You did nothing wrong. You hear me?” He covers your hand with his. “The client told me that Jia’s been sick. She got a new diagnosis about two months ago, and they chose not to take her in for the treatments. They said they didn’t expect her to last until they got back.”

His words feel like a punch. “They knew she was going to die?”

“They left her to die with us.” He confirms. The outrage on his face makes more sense now, that it’s not directed at you, but rather at the negligent owners who preferred to send their cat away to live the rest of her weeks with strangers and keep their vacation plans. “You did nothing wrong, okay?”

Your head droops, tears rolling down your cheeks, and he tilts your chin up with a finger. “You hear me, jagi?” The words are barely a whisper.

He doesn’t have a chance to apologize or take back the endearment that he promised he wouldn’t use anymore, because you’re blinking at him tearfully. “Can I not be your employee?” You ask brokenly.

He blinks, disappointment flooding his expression.

“Just for a second?” The rest of your sentence breathes past your lips.

Now more confused than anything, Minho’s brow furrows in consternation. “Okay.”

In the next second your arms are around his neck, your face buried in his shoulder, clinging to the comfort of the person who chose to comfort you when he was supposed to be robbing you; searching desperately for the man who protected you from your ex instead of just leaving you where you stood.

Minho returns your embrace without hesitation.

He holds you so tightly that he pulls you out of your chair, falling to your knees on the floor in front of him, trying desperately to close your ears to the sound of San taking care of Jia. “It’s alright.” Minho murmurs. “It’s okay.” But he’s fuming. He’s on fire with rage, mind racing through a dozen plans to access client records and track down their address and make them regret ever doing such a cruel and calloused thing, and leaving you to deal with it.

It takes a few minutes for you to pull yourself together, awkwardly shuffling out of the half-in-his-lap position that you’d fallen into and seating yourself back at the desk. He kneels on the floor and remains quiet as you wipe at your face, sniffling pathetically into your sleeve. “I’m sorry.” You say again. “I’m so very sorry, I know that this weekend was my first time in the hotel by myself, and I know it was supposed to be an exercise of trust and faith and everything went wrong—”

“Jagi.” Minho lifts himself on his knees so that he can better look you in the eye. “Everything didn’t go wrong. Something happened that was out of our hands before you ever got a job here. Don’t put this on yourself.”

Your eyes close painfully. “Minho, you trusted me with your cats and one of them died. Tell me you don’t have even a second of doubt about trusting me.”

“Not a second.” He says immediately. He takes your hand again. “Not even a second.”

“You don’t know me.”

Minho’s gaze traces every inch of your face, slides down the shaking length of your arms, watches your fingers clench into fists on the surface of the desk. “I do now.”

“Here you go, girlie.” San puts your usual coffee order down on the desk in front of you, pulling up a chair to peer at the computer with you. It’s been just over a week since the incident with Jia, and you’ve finally managed to come to work without feeling heart-shattering panic every time you approach any of the kitty rooms. You smile at him, accepting the hot beverage with grateful hands.

“Thanks San, I’ve been jonesing.”

“I can tell, your foot is doing that twitchy thing.” He rubs your shoulder and props one elbow on the desk. “We busy this morning?”

“Looks like five appointments, most of them pick-ups. We’ll have a lot of rooms to clean.”

“I’ll help.” The voice is succeeded by Minho’s sudden appearance around the corner of the half wall, carrying a pink donut box. “We’ll get it knocked out in no time.” There’s a second of shuffling papers and office supplies around so he has a place to set the donut box, and then he comes around behind your chair to peek at the screen.

You fight a shiver as his breath hits the back of your neck.

“Oh, Ara goes home today.” He murmurs, a touch of wistfulness in his voice. “I’m gonna miss her.”

You’ll all miss the tiny Russian Blue who stares at you patiently as you clean her room, and then makes her request with a single, kitten-pitched chirp so that you’ll pick her up and let her snuggle her little head into your throat and purr all your troubles away.

“Have a donut, girlie, he got your favorite.” San picks up an old fashioned cake donut wrapped in a napkin and passes it over to you.

You accept the pastry in silence, feeling Minho’s eyes on the side of your face as you pick crumbs off of it and try to nibble as minutely as you can manage. “Looks like we also have a cat named Bong coming in at eight.”

“Bong’s a sweetheart, he sits on my lap while I do emails.” San says, glancing at you right as you take a small bite and feel your cheek twitch involuntarily. He gives a soft snicker, mouth opening immediately to comment on it, but he never gets the chance.

“Do me a favor and go get started on food prep, would you, San?” Minho requests abruptly.

Glancing at his watch in surprise, San lifts his eyebrows and stands slowly. “Sure thing. Don’t eat all the donuts.” He grabs his coffee and disappears to the front of the facility, leaving you with Minho at the computer.

The boss comes around to sit in the seat that San had vacated. “Can you print the client info for Ara?”

“Of course.” You click around the screen to do as instructed. It’s easy now, navigating the database and booking system, and San regularly complains about how much faster you picked it up than he did. “He wasn’t laughing at me.”

“Sorry?” Minho’s voice is a light hum, but he knows what you’re referring to.

“San. He wasn’t laughing at my face. He knows about the twitch. You’re not the only person I’ve ever eaten in front of.”

“You really know how to make a guy feel special, don’t you?”

You meet his eyes, surprised. “You are special. In an armed mugger kind of way.”

He nudges his knee against yours, jabbing a finger into your ribs at the risk of your voice carrying to San at the front of the room. “Would you shut up?”

“So sorry, boss, I thought you wanted to feel special.”

He frowns, rolling his eyes at you and focusing on the printout you’ve given him. The displeased silence is rolling off of him in waves of tension, striking you with sudden realization.

“Oh my god.” You utter, gaping at him. “You want to feel special.”

He scowls, closing off his expression entirely. “I want to feel like you’re about to get up and do your job.”

The interaction sticks with you for the rest of the shift, tumbling through your thoughts at every turn. No part of it is a surprise or revolutionary in anyway, not after he called you jagiya five minutes after meeting you, or after he basically took you on a sorry-your-boyfriend’s-a-douchebag-but-I-can-do-better date on the night of your birthday, and then he strongly suggested and fully intended for your ex boyfriend to believe that he was your new boyfriend.

No, his attentiveness and interest and softness towards you, while inexplicable, is not a surprise.

What is a surprise, however, is the girlish fluttering happening in your chest at the realization that this man, dubious morals or not, just became flustered in the place of business that he owns because you teased him.

An entire world of possibilities opens up to you.

Possibilities that will come with a very firm, very condition-heavy conversation, but exciting possibilities nonetheless.

Your entire demeanor shifts by the time evening shift rolls around. Punching in your door code, already knowing that San won’t be here since most of the appointments are already done, you shuck your coat and bag into the supply closet. Minho is already here, you can tell by the scent of his laundry detergent and subtle cologne, and for a minute you wonder if he ever left after the morning shift.

He’s in the back with two white kittens named Choco and Nabi, sitting cross-legged in the floor and letting them scamper all over him with frenzied energy.

“Look how cute.” You ease yourself down to the floor next to him, wiggling your finger at Nabi and smiling as she immediately engages in a series of pounces.

“Good evening,” Minho greets flatly, once again maintaining his detached mannerisms.

Your shoulder brushes his as you lean forward to play with the kittens, and you feel him immediately move away from you.

“You can go ahead and get started on rooms whenever you’re ready.” He says, and moves to get up.

“Oh, sure, but, Minho?”

When he turns around, he finds you looking up at him, hand extended for him to help you to your feet as well.

“What?”

“Help me up?” You smile at him, eyes wide and innocent.

He frowns at you, begrudgingly stabbing his hand out to hoist you upright. “Let’s get our work done quickly, I have some things to do tonight.”

“More people to rob?” You chirp cheerfully, like you’re asking him if he’s going to run to the grocery store.

Minho’s expression flattens into severely unimpressed. “Are you never going to let that go?”

“Are you never going to stop mugging people as a hobby?” You grab the broom, dustpan, and trash can, and move into the first room to begin cleaning.

“My personal hobbies are none of your business.”

“They became my business when you held me up on my birthday.”

“I didn’t know it was your birthday.” He steps into the room, leaving a bowl of food for Eun, a big brown tomcat who immediately bumbles over to bury his face in the dish. “And I didn’t mug you.”

“You did, too.” You fire back, sifting the litter box.

“I stole the assface’s company credit card, bought gift cards, and used them to buy kitty litter and latex gloves and cat food. Fucking sue me.” Minho takes the water dish and dumps it, filling it fresh from the tap.

“No, you robbed me, too.” You flash him a sweet smile as you move from Eun’s room to the next one, saying hi to Bobae as she stretches and comes out from her covered bed.

Minho’s face appears in the door window, frowning with confusion. “I’ve never taken anything from you.”

You fake a gasp, pressing one hand to your chest like you’ve been emotionally injured. “You stole the very thoughtful and expensive gift that my loving boyfriend gave me for my birthday.”

There’s a second of recollection before Minho rolls his eyes and scoffs. “Fine, you can have it back.”

You immediately hold out your hand expectantly.

He just gestures to the supply closet. “It’s in there. We use it to clean the litter boxes.”

Your mouth falls open, shocked laughter bursting from your lips. “Oh my god, you’re so bitter.” You turn back to Bobae, kneeling down to run your hands over her white coat. “He’s so bitter, Bobae, baby.” She blinks one blue eye and one green eye up at you. “I think he’s jealous of the assface.” Bobae purrs loudly, bumping your hand with her freckled nose.

“I am not jealous of the assface.” Minho’s voice comes from the front of the room, and then he’s grumpily bringing a bowl of Churu for Bobae. “Here you go, sweetheart, don’t listen to the bad lady.” He scratches her between the ears, shoots you a surly look, and leaves with the water bowl.

“I think he is jealous.” You continue, shaking out the blankets. “Big bad Minho couldn’t even point a gun at me without feeling bad about it, Bobo.”

“Stop lying to my guests.”

Your voice lowers into a sweet croon. “He bought me cake and coffee, and called me cute names, and he told me I deserved better than the sucky boyfriend who forgot I existed.” You pause in sweeping to scratch Bobae’s back. “I think he’s secretly a softie, Bobo.”

“Are you done being delusional?”

“And right when I thought I was never going to see this insane psychopath again, Bobo, you’ll never guess what happened. Guess what happened? That’s right, he found me in trouble again, and jumped in to rescue me again. Does that sound like a big bad man to you, Bobo? I don’t think so.” You get on your hands and knees to run a sterile wipe over the floor, keeping Bobae up on her shelf while it dries.

“Do you mind not feeding your lies to my innocent cats?” Minho glares at you as you exit Bobae’s room and step into Kyong’s. Past the lowered brows and clenched jaw, you can see a flush of heat tingeing his ears a delightful pink.

The big orange cat immediately jumps off his shelf to greet you, no longer hissing his empty threats as he winds around your legs and demands affection. “You would probably understand him better than anyone, wouldn’t you Kyong? Why would a big bad mugger have mercy on me and choose to keep helping?”

“Maybe because he’s used to pathetic charity cases and can’t help himself.”

You start the cleaning process on Kyong’s room. “Why do you think he insisted so strongly that I get rid of my ex boyfriend? Huh, Kyongie? Do you think he likes me? Do you think maybe the big bad mugger Minho likes me just a little, teensy, weensy bit?”

He’s had enough of your ribbing, all delivered in a condescending baby voice for the sake of your adoring kitty guests. Minho opens Kyong’s door, drops off a bowl of food, and stands there, glaring at you. “Are you done making a spectacle of your boss, or are you going to keep talking your way out of a paycheck?” His ears are bright, flaming red.

You turn your back on him, shrugging innocently. “I’m just wondering when my big bad boss is going to go back to being the guy with his arm around my waist who called me jagi like he couldn’t remember my name.”

Utter silence follows in the wake of the bravest thing you’ve ever said to another human being—who carries a gun.

You’re too scared to let the silence fester. “What do you think, Kyongie, do you think he doesn’t like me anymore? Did I put my big fat foot in my big fat mouth? Wasn’t that silly of me? Yeah, I think it was—woah!” You’re halfway through bending down to scoop Kyong up off the floor and set him on his shelf when a pair of hot hands land on your hips, yanking you backwards away from the big orange cat.

The hands slide to your waist, spinning you around, and then you’re pressed into the chest of your boss, who is both entirely fed up with your patronizing crooning and just barely containing his evident excitement at the words that you’re saying to the cat instead of him. “Say that again.” It’s almost a whisper, breath tickling over your cheekbones, arms circling your waist like he doesn’t actually need you to say whatever you’re supposed to be repeating.

“Say what?” You can’t speak, you can’t breathe, you can’t feel anything but the hard lines of his body pressed against the soft ones of yours, and the frantic slamming of your heart.

“The part you didn’t say. The part you implied. The part that makes me think that this is exactly what you wanted to happen.” His eyes are darting back and forth between yours, hooded and piercing as they search for the words you haven’t had the guts to say directly.

“I think you like me, Minho.” Somehow you manage to peel off your latex gloves without ruining the moment, resting your clean, bare hands against his chest and breathing in the scent of him, feeling the hammering of his heart against your chest. “I think you like me, and I wish you would stop trying to make me comfortable and just say it.”

His arms tighten around your waist. “And if I say it?”

“You can’t mug people anymore.”

“What about really, really bad people?”

“You can’t be mugging anyone.”

“What if the person is the assface and he definitely deserves it?”

“Maybe I make an exception for the assface.”

“And if I stop mugging people?”

“I’m serious, Minho, I’m not going to jail for aiding and abetting or harboring or whatever crime I automatically commit by doing this.”

“Tell me what you’re doing.” His hips are pressed into yours, his face so close to yours that you’re breathing the same air, and you’ve only got a few more seconds of strangled focus before he completely breaks.

“I’m really, really hoping that the guy I like won’t make me kiss an active criminal.”

You can feel when his heart starts thudding infinitely faster. “No more mugging.” He breathes.

“Just like that?”

“Nothing bad will ever happen to you because of me, jagi. Just like that.”

This is nothing like how you thought this would turn out. You thought you would test the waters, see if your assumptions were correct, spend a little time teasing him and see if you could get a reaction. You never thought you’d lay him bare to a bunch of cats and wait for him to shut you up. You never thought you’d be crushed to his chest, breathing him in, watching his molten eyes burn into yours.

“Are you going to keep distracting me from Kyong or are you gonna do something?”

He kisses you. Hard and feverish, tugging you impossibly closer, his hands gripping your waist like you’re about to slip right through his fingers. Your hips feel like they’re going to give, your knees pressing together to keep you up. This is everything you never thought it could be.

Your hands go around his neck, letting him drag you up against his chest. His mouth presses and sucks and moves against yours, closing around your bottom lip, pushing at your top lip, and when he pauses to see just how badly you regret teasing him, you chase him.

He’s walking back, hitting the wall, fingers kneading at your hips, uttering a low groan as your teeth scrape his lower lip.

“I hope you don’t treat all of your employees like this,” You gasp when you break for air, your body leaned against his and his hands holding you securely by the waist.

He smirks that cunning, catlike smirk at you. “San doesn’t usually pressure me to kiss him this much.”

You scoff, smacking a hand against his chest, only to bite your tongue as he ducks in for another kiss, stealing your breath away. “Just let me do one more job.” He whispers against your mouth.

Your brain physically blinks. “No, Minho.”

His nose pushes at your cheek, lips littering kisses across your jaw. “Please. I promise they’re really sucky people.”

“No, Minho.”

“I’ll bring you back something pretty.” His lips latch to your throat, tongue tickling your skin as you beat lightly at his chest in protest.

“No, Minho!”

“What if they’re really, really sucky people?” He’s making his way down your throat, back up your throat, across your jaw. “What if it’s something really, really pretty?” His lips seal over yours again. You melt into his touch, wishing it didn’t absolutely reduce your brain to mush to be kissed and held by this relentless deviant, but you are completely enchanted by the heat of his touch.

“No more mugging.”

“God,” He kisses you again. “Fine. No more mugging.”

“Are you going to let me finish Kyong’s room?”

“Kyong can wait five more minutes. I’m not done with you yet.”

< part 1 | part 3 >

bonus feature banner because I probably won't write a separate cat cafe Choi San fic but the vibes are too good:

tag list : @whatdoyouwanttocallmefor @estella-novella @babyphotos0325 @softfor-svtptg @furfoxsake22 @tubelightanyaa @kayleefriedchicken @rockstarkkami @sp1derst0rrr @eastjonowhere @its-stayville-forever @allenajade-ite @naraportokala @jinniejjam @blackberryrains @feetoffthemalfoy @highandalive @scarlet789 @ramadiiiisme @thecutiepieme @lemonn015 @darlingsoulbeautifulthoughts @dreamingartist13 @ebnabi @bangtan-sonyeondamn8 @lemonn015 @thepoeticpurplepotato @brbwritingfanfic @skzlover24 @stephanieeeyang @my-neurodivergent-world @xgridx @igotajuicyass @annovaz @robinnotgood24 @butterflybananabread @tirena1 @nougatjade @wickedbutlovely @justiceforvillains

[anyataylorjoys]

I just hit 8k followers in January, and I've never really done a celebration giveaway before. And not many do nowadays, but I figured someone out here may benefit from a new action or two!

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[faggotbeloved]

Failed Experiments | Scientist!Albert Wesker x M!Reader ~2-3k

Cw: porn with plot, obsessive wesker, sex pollen, dubcon (see sex pollen PLUS reader is threatened w a gun but is into it regardless), sub/brat wesker?, wesker is in love with reader, reader is not in love with wesker, nsfw, gun play if you squint, rushed prep, anal fingering, anal sex, belly bulge, creampie that reader didn't particularly want to give, aftercare included, angst at the end (?)

This work contains smut and is 18+. AN at the end.

└───────────────────────┘

Day after day, your boss has been cagier and cagier. You'd run him his coffee (a Ph.D required for the application, and you still have to remember how he likes his coffee?), get an assignment, then get shooed out of his lab to work while leaving him alone. He started intercepting you before you could enter his lab, so you hadn't even seen inside it for a week now. When you remembered you'd forgotten the spare key to your locker in there last month, you decided to go in, grab it, and get out. Damn you for losing all your keys.

You're not sure why you thought it would be so easy.

Wesker was hunched over at his desk, piles of paper almost forming a wall beside him, muttering something about testing. You would have told him of your presence, but he hated being interrupted and you didn't want to face his wrath for crashing his train of thought. When you got to the counter where you distinctly recall putting the key, you found it missing. Suddenly, Wesker growled your name more clearly than his previous string of sentences and you spun around to face him, but you were surprised to see that his back was still turned and his muttering was continuing.

"No, damnit, oxytocin, not norepinephrine. You think I just want a quick fuck?" You heard Wesker hiss as he typed angrily on his keyboard. "Haven't talked to him in nine days, and all I've got to show for it is a glorified aphrodisiac. Need more subjects."

Since when had Wesker meddled with hormones? Virology was his strong suit, but endocrinology? You were more used to mutative viruses than SSRIs when working with Wesker. You crept closer behind him and found the key hanging on his lanyard, which was most certainly not a normal place for your locker's key to be. However, you decided against any form of stealing it, since the noise would alert Wesker of your presence and you didn't want to deal with that. As you made your way to the door, a loud chirp came from your belt, meaning you were being paged by Wesker.

Wesker flinched at the sound, spinning around in his chair to see you. He looked unusual; his sunglasses were replaced with blue-light glasses, his hair gel had weakened from his constant running his fingers through his hair and a few strands fell on his face, and his eyes were as intense as usual but held a hint of instability.

"You're not supposed to be in here unless I ask you to," Wesker snarled, standing up and striding to you with powerful steps. "What are you doing?" He asked as he grabbed the collar of your lab coat. He seemed to remember he was wearing glasses, and tore them off to appear more intimidating.

"Alright—Doctor Wesker, I was just trying to find the key to my locker I left in here," you replied, prying his hand off. Wesker had lost his cool with you many a time, and it gets less scary every time he chickens out on killing or firing you. "Have you seen it?"

"Why would I care about a locker key? I'm working on things of actual importance," Wesker deflected, but you knew damn well he knew where the key was.

You strolled away from him and approached his desk. "What were you paging me for? More rats?" You questioned as you observed the work on his computer.

"Get away from that!" Wesker snapped, grabbing your wrist and tossing you from his desk. "Yes. Find me more subjects, I need to tweak this formula," he huffed after a moment.

"We don't have any more Norwegian browns. You've been using them all," you retorted. "Looks like the rats you have there are fucking. Wait three or so weeks, you'll get a whole bunch of them."

You were used to his coldness since you'd worked closely with him for ages, but the tenseness in your boss's back was mildly alarming. Maybe he would actually kill you this time, you joked to yourself. He seemed on edge by your mention of his experiments, but curiosity really was eating away at you. "So what's your formula aiming to do? I'm not bad at endocrinology, and this seems harmless enough so I'm happy to participate."

"How would you know it has to do with hormones?" Wesker glared as he sat back down in his chair. "Separate those rats. Just wait for the gas to—" Wesker sat straight up in alarm as you just opened the door, exposing yourself to lungfuls of his yet-imperfect serum. "Are you incapable of listening to directions?" He shouted, storming over to close the tank before anything too bad happened. Unfortunately for you, a sickly sweet smell invaded your nose while Wesker, who'd inhaled accidentally, tasted it in his mouth.

──────────────────────

You felt your brain grow fuzzy and barely remembered to put the rats away before Wesker uttered a weak "fuck" and opened the tank yet again. "This," he murmured between breaths, "this is my gift to you. More to me. It's not finished—fuck," he wheezed, staggering away. Did it affect him more than you? "I used my DNA as a placeholder until I could get yours. It's targeting me."

Wesker slumped down into his chair, shucking off his lab coat as a sheen of sweat broke out across his face. He panted and looked at the ceiling pathetically, his throat bobbing as he tried to swallow the saliva that had come up at the sight of you. "Come here. Come here, damnit!"

Your head in a trance, you hurried to his side and he enveloped you in a hug. "Don't you dare mention this after we're done," he hissed before burying his nose into your armpit and inhaling as deeply as he could. A keening whimper left his throat as your scent was all he could smell and taste and he moved his nose to your neck to smell there but then returned to your armpit where your musk was more potent.

"Wesker, what—fuck, what is that we breathed in?" You asked, snaking your fingers in his hair and enjoying the whine that escaped him as you tugged like he'd dreamed you would.

Wesker pressed a feverish kiss to your shoulder, then the crook of your neck, then your neck, throat, and repeated on the other side. "It's for you. You need to feel how I feel, to understand... it's not ready, but you already were exposed, darling, we can't waste it," he rambled. "It was supposed to be simple. Something to boost dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin when we were working together. Stimulate your brain, make it think you loved me and soon you really would."

"Wesker—" you tried to say, but he was too busy talking about his experiments to listen. "Wesker—" you tried again, but he still couldn't process it. It wasn't until a sharp pull on his hair that he looked back up at you, his pupils blown wide and nearly overtaking his debauched orange irises. "Wesker. Shut up and let me fuck you."

Wesker stopped dead in his tracks, his lip trembling as he processed your words. Did you love him? No. But that serum, whatever it was, made you unbelievably horny and Wesker was undoubtedly a good-looking guy. He'd take it for now, you were sure, but you'd have to deal with his feelings for you sooner or later. You chose later.

──────────────────────

Why did Wesker have lube in his desk? You weren't sure. But when he held a gun to your head demanding you finger him right there on the paperwork, with his legs over your shoulders and his tight hole right in plain sight, you couldn't resist. "Just two fingers. I want it to burn," Wesker groaned as he leaned back against the surface of the desk. His cock was an angry, twitching red and sticky with a mess of precum. He was sinfully pretty, but you resolved not to touch his dick until you were inside him, no matter how much that serum made you want to swallow him whole.

As your first finger swirled his entrance he choked out a gasp and his hips jutted forward. "Hurry!" He whined angrily as you took your sweet time in opening him up. His gun hand shook as you breached the rim, gasping once he felt a cold, lubed finger inside him. "There we go. Come on, halfway there, I want your cock," he babbled brainlessly.

When you didn't thrust the second in immediately afterwards, he growled and pressed the gun into your forehead. "Faster. I have things to—oh, fuck! Ha-ah, yes, thank you," he actually whimpered as you curled your finger right into his prostate.

"Still need to rush prep, or will you let me do this right?" You murmured in his ear while thrusting your finger, to which he moaned at the mixture of stimulation and your low timbre. "Put the gun down, Wesker. I'm fucking you either way, you don't need to threaten me."

Wesker nodded shakily, forgetting he had the gun in the first place, and leaned back while you slipped the second in, grinning sadistically as you watched a spurt of precum leak from his cock. Your head was buzzing with the lust that you were barely holding back just out of want to watch Wesker come undone. You sped up your fingers, hitting his prostate every time, until he was about to cum. Then, you abruptly removed your fingers and he growled.

"The hell are you doing?" He snapped as you drizzled lube your own cock. Once he realized what was happening, he propped himself up on his elbows to watch, grateful that he was superhuman and could flex without any resistance.

Once the head of your dick breached his hole, Wesker gripped his desk so hard he heard splinters. But you were slow, so painfully slow and he was already trying desperately to keep from orgasming. He tackled you, still spearing himself onto you, and landed you on the floor with your head cushioned carefully by his hand.

"Mmh, you're so much bigger than—ah!—than I thought," he murmured as he sank down on you. He'd already marveled at its look, and you had to push him off to fuck him instead of let him try to suck you off for the next fifteen minutes, but now that it was inside him...

When he encountered resistance halfway down your cock, he let out a pathetic sob-slash-moan and weakly tried to get to the base, but you gripped his hips. "Come on, you have more than enough in. Get up so I can—" you tried to say, then gasped as Wesker forced himself the rest of the way down. "Fuck, Wesker, you're so tight," you groaned as you helped him slowly develop a rhythm. He, however, ignored your help and began at a brutal pace, making the both of you arch and let out a string of moans and curses that mingled in the air. Damn his stupid superpowers.

"Ha-ah—christ, Wesker, slow down! Does that even feel good?" You gasped as he threw his head back and let out a manic laugh.

"Shut up—oh, god, I've wanted you like this for so long, ngh, we've got to do this again," he babbled with an uncharacteristic grin splitting his face. A grunt escaped his throat every time he slammed back down onto your pelvis, which was every second to half a second, what with his increased agility.

You grew annoyed with Wesker's impatience and flipped him over, starting at the same brutal speed but targeting his sweet spot. As you pistoned harshly, all he could do was moan your name and scrabble at the floor. All you cared about was your own release, but you pushed down on his stomach to feel your cock scrape his walls. "Feel that?" You panted. If he didn't have enhanced healing, he'd sure as shit have been bruised in the morning.

"Wesker, gonna cum," you warned. As you began to pull out, he clenched tight around you and wrapped his legs around your waist, forcing you to cum deep inside him. At the feeling of being filled, Wesker screamed (though if anyone heard, he'd kill them) out your name and spurted a heavy load of cum on your chest, dripping and pooling at his own pelvis.

You felt your head clear after you came and slowly moved to lie on the floor next to Wesker, still nestled inside him. "I'll clean up in just a bit," you promised hoarsely, "give me a minute."

──────────────────────

Wesker was more than happy to lie uselessly on the lab bed while you wiped down the scene. You thought you saw him stuffing your cum back into his dripping asshole, but you decided against calling him out. Soon, your mixed fluids from the floor were discarded in the trash and a warm wet towel dragged across Wesker's bare body. You gently dressed him as he murmured things you could hardly hear. "Wait, was—was I good?" He asked in a dazed voice.

You looked at him softly and noticed the aftereffects hit him hard; his hair gel had deteriorated completely, his eyes were low and adoring, and a weak frown stuck on his face. "Yeah. You were really good. Best I've had," you promised as you set his sunglasses and reading glasses beside him.

"Will you kiss me?" Wesker asked, avoiding eye contact. "Just once. You can pretend nothing happened tomorrow," he added. "I—I was doing the damn experiment so you would..."

You decided to kiss him; you're not sure why. He was your boss, he clearly had serious feelings for you, those feelings manifested negatively and obsessively, and you didn't reciprocate: all these were true. It was also true that he was hot, he was begging you so sweetly, and some part of you kinda liked the idea of stringing him along to see just how pathetic the proud head scientist could get in his affections before you decided to see where it could go.

Wesker let out a breathy, weak giggle into your mouth, grabbing your head to pull you closer. His smile could be felt, contagious through the kiss, yet when you pulled away, it faltered back into a bitter scowl.

Wesker pushed you away and stood up, brushing past you as he put his sunglasses on. Wesker swallowed before he spoke again, his voice colder than before. "You know, I really don't understand you. I'm a stellar sexual partner, I have wealth and power and strength you couldn't even dream of, and I'm set to start a new world order with me at its helm. Yet you still. won't. look at me. Metaphorically speaking," he mused aloud. "Clean yourself up and take the rest of the day off. Until further notice, you'll be serving as the lab rat for the..." he faltered as he couldn't think of what to call it.

"The love potion?" You guessed. Wesker shot a glare at your juvenile description but hummed out an affirmative. So your new job was to get hit with an aphrodisiac every day until someday it worked and you were chemically in love with Wesker. Oh, well. At least you weren't going to be doing grunt work. You could probably catch up on a book while you were at it.

"So, the sniffing from earlier—"

"Don't."

"I'm not! But I can't help but wondering..."

"Stop. Now."

"Was that why my locker key was on your lanyard? That's where I put gym clothes."

"I'm not talking about this."

┌───────────────────────┐

I write on mobile on tumblr so I'm not sure how many words I'm at. Anyways watching Aether's cinematic RE playthroughs and it's all I can think about right now 💔

Apologies if the mood and stuff is all over the place, i don't care to put much into something when the target audience is like 5 ants and a single dude in iowa LMAO. Wesker's probably not too in character but hey yk i really don't give a damn

Read my other Wesker works?

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Oh my gods, so many people seem to try to use AI at your university! Is this just the state of education now? It's been decades since I graduated and I've never been more relieved!

It's everywhere, in every uni unfortunately. Thing is, you can see why - it has always been true that uni is stressful and difficult and when deadlines loom and you don't have anything written, my god is it tempting, right? The answer to your prayers. When I did my first degree and the rampant undiagnosed ADHD meant I wasn't even starting to write until the evening before, I would spent hours sitting at a computer until the early hours of the morning, hating the assignment, hating life, hating myself, trying to squeeze words out of my stupid brain. And honestly, I think if the Magic Solves The Problem machine had existed, I honestly don't know if I wouldn't have gone for it. I was in a bad place, and it's an easy out.

It's just the absolute ultimate in "Congrats, you played yourself." Those all-nighters were work that was less good than it should have been; but I did learn those topics to be able to write about them. At the end of that degree, poor though it was, I knew the damned subject. If someone asked me about it, I could answer. The ChatGPT generation can't; they also cannot analyse anything. They simply can't. The drop in soft skills in the last two years has been stark and terrifying.

That said, though, higher education in the UK is now entering crisis anyway, because the UK government has spent years blocking student visas and stopping overseas students (with their much higher tuition fees) from being able to study. To give an idea, our Masters course last year had thirty (30) applicants from overseas; take a quick guess at how many were granted visas.

Did you guess one (1)?

You're correct.

And on top of that, there's a cost of living crisis that's halting domestic applicants. So everyone is now scrabbling for a diminishing pool of students, courses are closing, staff are being made redundant, and so on.

So. Whole thing's a fucking shitshow.

[mangalayatanuniversity]

Explore the dynamic world of Computer Applications at Mangalayatan University, Aligarh. Our cutting-edge program awaits aspiring minds for the 2024 admissions. Delve into a comprehensive syllabus covering key subjects, ensuring a robust foundation. Elevate your career with our top-notch Computer Application course, blending theory and hands-on experience.

[pearlprincess02]

academia sign as 𝔞𝔠𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔪𝔦𝔞 𝔞𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔱𝔦𝔠𝔰

academia (829)

𝔠𝔥𝔞𝔬𝔱𝔦𝔠 𝔞𝔠𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔪𝔦𝔞

aries / 1st house academia: aries in academia approaches learning with enthusiasm and a pioneering spirit. they thrive in competitive environments, enjoying subjects that allow them to take the lead, such as sports science, entrepreneurship, or anything requiring bold, innovative thinking. their learning style is hands-on and action-oriented, preferring to dive into projects rather than sit through lectures. quick to grasp new concepts, aries students excel in fast-paced, dynamic settings where they can showcase their initiative and drive. they are natural leaders in group work, often inspiring others with their energy and passion.

chaotic academia vibes: red bull, coffee, late-night study sessions, messy desk, sticky notes everywhere, highlighters galore, backpack overflowing, headphones tangled, running late, cramming, competitive studying, impulsive learning, last-minute cramming, energetic study sessions, motivational posters, pomodoro technique, study groups, mind maps, flash cards, music playlists

major & minor in college: history, english, psychology, theater, business, creative writing, philosophy, computer science, art history, sociology

𝔡𝔞𝔯𝔨 𝔞𝔠𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔪𝔦𝔞

taurus / 2nd house academia: taurus in academia is methodical and steady, approaching learning with patience and determination. they excel in subjects that involve tangible results or a connection to nature, such as agriculture, culinary arts, or finance. taurus students prefer a structured learning environment, where they can take their time to absorb information deeply and thoroughly. they have a strong memory and excel in retaining facts, often mastering subjects through repetition and consistent effort. their learning style is practical and grounded, focusing on real-world applications and long-term value.

dark academia vibes: leather-bound notebooks, vintage fountain pen, cozy sweater, warm coffee, comfortable armchair, candles, classical music, antique bookshelves, quiet library, natural light, slow & steady approach, consistent studying, structured routine, mindful studying, note-taking, reading extensively, researching deeply, essay writing, critical thinking, patience & perseverance,

major & minor in college: literature, history, art history, philosophy, classical studies, music, latin, greek, anthropology, environmental studies,

scorpio / 8th house academia: scorpio in academia is intensely focused and driven, diving deep into subjects that fascinate them, especially those involving psychology, criminology, or anything that uncovers hidden truths. they are natural researchers, drawn to mysteries and complexities, excelling in environments that require investigative skills and critical thinking. scorpio students prefer to study in private, where they can immerse themselves fully without distractions. they have a talent for uncovering details that others might overlook, and their determination to master a subject is unmatched. passionate and resilient, scorpio learners often emerge as experts in their chosen fields.

dark academia vibes: black coffee, leather jacket, intricate jewelry, vintage records, haunted library, gothic architecture, mysterious aura, intense gaze, quiet solitude, deep thoughts, intense focus, deep research, analytical thinking, critical analysis, debating, persuasive writing, problem-solving, independent study, night owl, passionate learning,

major & minor in college: psychology, philosophy, criminal justice, history, political science, sociology, anthropology, mythology, astronomy, creative writing,

𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔱𝔯𝔢 𝔞𝔠𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔪𝔦𝔞

gemini / 3rd house academia: gemini in academia is curious and versatile, thriving in environments where they can explore a wide range of subjects. they are natural communicators, excelling in fields like journalism, linguistics, or social sciences, where their quick wit and love for information can shine. gemini students prefer a dynamic, interactive learning environment, enjoying discussions, debates, and collaborative projects. their learning style is fast-paced and adaptable, allowing them to pick up new concepts with ease and shift focus between topics effortlessly. always eager to learn something new, gemini keeps their mind sharp by continuously seeking knowledge in various fields.

theatre academia vibes: script book, makeup bag, costumes, props, rehearsal space, stage lights, backstage passes, playbills, acting classes, impromptu performances, versatility, adaptability, improvisation, memorization, public speaking, character analysis, script analysis, ensemble work, storytelling, critical thinking

major & minor in college: theater, english, creative writing, communication studies, film studies, music, dance, history, psychology, sociology,

𝔠𝔬𝔷𝔶 𝔞𝔠𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔪𝔦𝔞

cancer / 4th house academia: cancer in academia is intuitive and emotionally connected to their studies, often drawn to subjects that resonate with their personal experiences, such as history, literature, or psychology. they excel in environments that feel nurturing and supportive, preferring to learn in a space where they feel safe and comfortable. cancer students have a strong memory, especially for details that evoke an emotional response, and they often approach learning with empathy and care. their learning style is reflective and deep, focusing on understanding the emotional and human aspects of any subject. sensitive to the needs of others, cancer can also be a compassionate and supportive peer in group settings.

cozy academia vibes: knitting needles, teacup, soft blanket, candles, cozy armchair, bookshelf filled with sentimental books, family photos, journal, soft music, homemade snacks, emotional intelligence, empathy, nurturing oneself, creating a comfortable study space, mindful studying, journaling, connecting with others, supporting others, patience & perseverance, emotional regulation

major & minor in college: english, history, psychology, sociology, social work, counseling, child development, family studies, art history, creative writing

𝔯𝔬𝔶𝔞𝔩 𝔞𝔠𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔪𝔦𝔞

leo / 5th house academia: leo in academia is confident and expressive, thriving in subjects where they can showcase their creativity and leadership, such as performing arts, literature, or leadership studies. they enjoy being at the center of discussions and excel in environments where their ideas and talents are recognized. leo students are passionate learners who bring enthusiasm to their studies, often inspiring others with their energy and charisma. their learning style is dynamic and interactive, preferring presentations and group projects where they can shine. with a natural flair for storytelling and self-expression, leo often excels in areas that allow them to be both creative and influential.

royal academia vibes: crown-shaped stationery, velvet robes, gold jewelry, vintage fountain pen, grand library, ornate furniture, elegant calligraphy, classical music, high-quality textbooks, personalized study supplies, confidence, leadership, public speaking, motivation, goal setting, networking, presentation skills, time management, creativity, passion

major & minor in college: history, political science, business, theater, art history, music, philosophy, classical studies, public relations, creative writing

𝔟𝔬𝔱𝔞𝔫𝔦𝔠𝔞𝔩 𝔞𝔠𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔪𝔦𝔞

virgo / 6th house academia: virgo in academia is analytical and detail-oriented, excelling in subjects that require precision and critical thinking, such as mathematics, science, or technical writing. they have a strong work ethic and prefer structured learning environments where they can methodically work through complex problems. virgo students are diligent researchers, often going above and beyond to ensure they fully understand a topic, and they have a knack for organizing information logically. their learning style is meticulous and focused, thriving on clear instructions and practical applications. with a keen eye for detail, virgo often excels in areas that demand accuracy and thoroughness.

botanical academia vibes: herbarium, plant journal, botanical prints, terrarium, gardening tools, natural light, plant-based stationery, herbal tea, nature-inspired décor, organized study space, organization, planning, time management, detail-oriented approach, note-taking, researching, problem-solving, critical thinking, patience, perseverance

major & minor in college: biology, environmental science, botany, horticulture, chemistry, agriculture, nutrition, health sciences, art history, creative writing

𝔯𝔬𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔱𝔦𝔠 𝔞𝔠𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔪𝔦𝔞

libra / 7th house academia: libra in academia is balanced and diplomatic, drawn to subjects that involve relationships, aesthetics, and justice, such as law, art, or social sciences. they excel in collaborative learning environments, enjoying discussions and group projects where they can exchange ideas and mediate differing opinions. libra students have a natural talent for seeing multiple perspectives, which makes them excellent at analyzing complex issues and finding harmonious solutions. their learning style is interactive and social, thriving in settings that allow for cooperation and mutual respect. with a strong sense of fairness and a love for beauty, libra often excels in areas that combine intellectual rigor with creativity.

romantic academia vibes: love letters, poetry collection, vintage jewelry, soft/pastel colors, romantic novels, flower arrangements, classical music, art galleries, beautiful stationery, cozy cafes, collaboration, harmony, diplomacy, balance, aesthetic appreciation, empathy, persuasion, critical thinking, creativity, open-mindedness

major & minor in college: english, history, art history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, communication studies, music, creative writing, design

𝔞𝔡𝔳𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔲𝔯𝔬𝔲𝔰 𝔞𝔠𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔪𝔦𝔞

sagittarius / 9th house academia: sagittarius in academia is adventurous and curious, drawn to subjects that expand their horizons, such as philosophy, travel, or global studies. they thrive in environments that offer freedom and exploration, preferring to learn through experience, travel, and broad, open-ended discussions. sagittarius students have a natural enthusiasm for big ideas and are often inspired by the pursuit of knowledge that challenges conventional thinking. their learning style is spontaneous and wide-ranging, excelling in areas where they can explore different cultures, beliefs, and philosophies. with an innate love for wisdom and truth, sagittarius often excels in fields that encourage lifelong learning and intellectual growth.

adventurous academia vibes: travel journal, global map, adventure novels, passport, backpack, camping gear, telescope, world atlas, foreign language textbooks, wanderlust-themed stationery, curiosity, open-mindedness, exploration, adaptability, risk-taking, global perspective, intercultural communication, problem-solving, independent study, passion for learning

major & minor in college: history, geography, anthropology, philosophy, foreign languages, international studies, environmental science, economics, creative writing, journalism

𝔴𝔦𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔞𝔠𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔪𝔦𝔞

capricorn / 10th house academia: capricorn in academia is disciplined and strategic, favoring subjects that offer practical applications and long-term value, such as business, engineering, or finance. they excel in structured, goal-oriented environments where they can set clear objectives and work methodically towards achieving them. capricorn students have a strong work ethic and are adept at managing their time efficiently, often thriving on detailed planning and rigorous analysis. their learning style is focused and persistent, with a preference for mastering foundational concepts before advancing. with a keen sense of responsibility and determination, capricorn often excels in areas that require patience and sustained effort.

winter academia vibes: thick coat, scarf, warm coffee, cozy sweater, planner, bookshelf filled with textbooks, quiet study space, pen & paper, minimalist décor, structured routine, discipline, time management, goal setting, planning, persistence, problem-solving, critical thinking, researching, note-taking, long-term planning

major & minor in college: business, economics, law, political science, accounting, engineering, computer science, mathematics, history, philosophy

𝔣𝔲𝔱𝔲𝔯𝔦𝔰𝔱𝔦𝔠 𝔞𝔠𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔪𝔦𝔞

aquarius / 11th house academia: aquarius in academia is innovative and independent, gravitating towards subjects that involve technology, future trends, or social change, such as engineering, environmental science, or sociology. they thrive in learning environments that encourage original thinking and unconventional approaches, often preferring to explore new ideas and challenge established norms. aquarius students are skilled at grasping complex, abstract concepts and enjoy engaging in collaborative projects that push boundaries and promote collective progress. their learning style is progressive and exploratory, with a strong inclination towards experimenting with novel methods and solutions. with a keen interest in improving the world, aquarius often excels in fields that foster creativity and forward-thinking.

futuristic academia vibes: smartwatch, laptop, tech gadgets, futuristic eyewear, minimalist design, neon lights, sci-fi novels, futuristic architecture, virtual reality headset, sustainable products, innovation, problem-solving, critical thinking, future-oriented thinking, collaboration, interdisciplinary learning, ethical considerations, lifelong learning, adaptability, social consciousness

major & minor in college: computer science, engineering, physics, astronomy, artificial intelligence, environmental science, sociology, political science, psychology, philosophy

𝔬𝔠𝔢𝔞𝔫 𝔞𝔠𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔪𝔦𝔞

pisces / 12th house academia: pisces in academia is imaginative and intuitive, drawn to subjects that explore the arts, spirituality, or the human psyche, such as creative writing, music, or psychology. they excel in environments that allow for introspection and creative expression, often thriving in less structured settings that encourage personal interpretation and emotional depth. pisces students have a unique ability to grasp abstract concepts and connect disparate ideas, making them skilled at synthesizing information in innovative ways. their learning style is fluid and adaptable, with a preference for exploring topics through personal experiences and intuitive insights. with a deep sense of empathy and creativity, pisces often excels in fields that involve understanding and expressing the complexities of the human experience.

ocean academia vibes: seashells, aquarium, ocean-themed stationery, beach towel, nautical decor, marine biology books, beach reads, ocean-inspired jewelry, dreamcatcher, calming music, intuition, empathy, creativity, imagination, meditation, mindfulness, visualization, dream journaling, connection with nature, emotional intelligence

major & minor in college: marine biology, oceanography, environmental science, psychology, art history, creative writing, music, philosophy, sociology, religious studies,

all observations belong to @pearlprincess02

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI’s “human in the loop” isn’t

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

AI's ability to make – or assist with – important decisions is fraught: on the one hand, AI can often classify things very well, at a speed and scale that outstrips the ability of any reasonably resourced group of humans. On the other hand, AI is sometimes very wrong, in ways that can be terribly harmful.

Bureaucracies and the AI pitchmen who hope to sell them algorithms are very excited about the cost-savings they could realize if algorithms could be turned loose on thorny, labor-intensive processes. Some of these are relatively low-stakes and make for an easy call: Brewster Kahle recently told me about the Internet Archive's project to scan a ton of journals on microfiche they bought as a library discard. It's pretty easy to have a high-res scanner auto-detect the positions of each page on the fiche and to run the text through OCR, but a human would still need to go through all those pages, marking the first and last page of each journal and identifying the table of contents and indexing it to the scanned pages. This is something AI apparently does very well, and instead of scrolling through endless pages, the Archive's human operator now just checks whether the first/last/index pages the AI identified are the right ones. A project that could have taken years is being tackled with never-seen swiftness.

The operator checking those fiche indices is something AI people like to call a "human in the loop" – a human operator who assesses each judgment made by the AI and overrides it should the AI have made a mistake. "Humans in the loop" present a tantalizing solution to algorithmic misfires, bias, and unexpected errors, and so "we'll put a human in the loop" is the cure-all response to any objection to putting an imperfect AI in charge of a high-stakes application.

But it's not just AIs that are imperfect. Humans are wildly imperfect, and one thing they turn out to be very bad at is supervising AIs. In a 2022 paper for Computer Law & Security Review, the mathematician and public policy expert Ben Green investigates the empirical limits on human oversight of algorithms:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3921216

Green situates public sector algorithms as the latest salvo in an age-old battle in public enforcement. Bureaucracies have two conflicting, irreconcilable imperatives: on the one hand, they want to be fair, and treat everyone the same. On the other hand, they want to exercise discretion, and take account of individual circumstances when administering justice. There's no way to do both of these things at the same time, obviously.

But algorithmic decision tools, overseen by humans, seem to hold out the possibility of doing the impossible and having both objective fairness and subjective discretion. Because it is grounded in computable mathematics, an algorithm is said to be "objective": given two equivalent reports of a parent who may be neglectful, the algorithm will make the same recommendation as to whether to take their children away. But because those recommendations are then reviewed by a human in the loop, there's a chance to take account of special circumstances that the algorithm missed. Finally, a cake that can be both had, and eaten!

For the paper, Green reviewed a long list of policies – local, national, and supra-national – for putting humans in the loop and found several common ways of mandating human oversight of AI.

First, policies specify that algorithms must have human oversight. Many jurisdictions set out long lists of decisions that must be reviewed by human beings, banning "fire and forget" systems that chug along in the background, blithely making consequential decisions without anyone ever reviewing them.

Second, policies specify that humans can exercise discretion when they override the AI. They aren't just there to catch instances in which the AI misinterprets a rule, but rather to apply human judgment to the rules' applications.

Next, policies require human oversight to be "meaningful" – to be more than a rubber stamp. For high-stakes decisions, a human has to do a thorough review of the AI's inputs and output before greenlighting it.

Finally, policies specify that humans can override the AI. This is key: we've all encountered instances in which "computer says no" and the hapless person operating the computer just shrugs their shoulders apologetically. Nothing I can do, sorry!

All of this sounds good, but unfortunately, it doesn't work. The question of how humans in the loop actually behave has been thoroughly studied, published in peer-reviewed, reputable journals, and replicated by other researchers. The measures for using humans to prevent algorithmic harms represent theories, and those theories are testable, and they have been tested, and they are wrong.

For example, people (including experts) are highly susceptible to "automation bias." They defer to automated systems, even when those systems produce outputs that conflict with their own expert experience and knowledge. A study of London cops found that they "overwhelmingly overestimated the credibility" of facial recognition and assessed its accuracy at 300% better than its actual performance.

Experts who are put in charge of overseeing an automated system get out of practice, because they no longer engage in the routine steps that lead up to the conclusion. Presented with conclusions, rather than problems to solve, experts lose the facility and familiarity with how all the factors that need to be weighed to produce a conclusion fit together. Far from being the easiest step of coming to a decision, reviewing the final step of that decision without doing the underlying work can be much harder to do reliably.

Worse: when algorithms are made "transparent" by presenting their chain of reasoning to expert reviewers, those reviewers become more deferential to the algorithm's conclusion, not less – after all, now the expert has to review not just one final conclusion, but several sub-conclusions.

Even worse: when humans do exercise discretion to override an algorithm, it's often to inject the very bias that the algorithm is there to prevent. Sure, the algorithm might give the same recommendation about two similar parents who are facing having their children taken away, but the judge who reviews the recommendations is more likely to override it for a white parent than for a Black one.

Humans in the loop experience "a diminished sense of control, responsibility, and moral agency." That means that they feel less able to override an algorithm – and they feel less morally culpable when they sit by and let the algorithm do its thing.

All of these effects are persistent even when people know about them, are trained to avoid them, and are given explicit instructions to do so. Remember, the whole reason to introduce AI is because of human imperfection. Designing an AI to correct human imperfection that only works when its human overseer is perfect produces predictably bad outcomes.

As Green writes, putting an AI in charge of a high-stakes decision, and using humans in the loop to prevent its harms, produces a "perverse effect": "alleviating scrutiny of government algorithms without actually addressing the underlying concerns." The human in the loop creates "a false sense of security" that sees algorithms deployed for high-stakes domains, and it shifts the responsibility for algorithmic failures to the human, creating what Dan Davies calls an "accountability sink":

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

The human in the loop is a false promise, a "salve that enables governments to obtain the benefits of algorithms without incurring the associated harms."

So why are we still talking about how AI is going to replace government and corporate bureaucracies, making decisions at machine speed, overseen by humans in the loop?

Well, what if the accountability sink is a feature and not a bug. What if governments, under enormous pressure to cut costs, figure out how to also cut corners, at the expense of people with very little social capital, and blame it all on human operators? The operators become, in the phrase of Madeleine Clare Elish, "moral crumple zones":

https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260

As Green writes:

The emphasis on human oversight as a protective mechanism allows governments and vendors to have it both ways: they can promote an algorithm by proclaiming how its capabilities exceed those of humans, while simultaneously defending the algorithm and those responsible for it from scrutiny by pointing to the security (supposedly) provided by human oversight.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/30/a-neck-in-a-noose/#is-also-a-human-in-the-loop

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en ==

[okay-computer]

Okay-Computer Relaunch

I am reactivating this blog. Rather than having individual weekly posts sortable by computer type with screenshots of each computer for sale, I am simply going to make one weekly post listing each of the following:

1 New Desktop

1 New Laptop

1 Refurbished Desktop

1 Refurbished Laptop

The posts will have a description of each item with the specifications and a link to where you can find the computer for sale. None of these are going to be affiliate links, and I will not be linking to Amazon.

If you're wondering why I'm qualified to do this, it's because I am the entire procurement department for a small MSP and I've been buying anywhere between five and three hundred computers a week since 2011. This blog is an application of my professional expertise.

You can see posts with recommendations by clicking here.

I will answer asks to this blog once a week, any asks that I don't answer that week will be deleted. Do not send me time-sensitive asks. I will not answer all asks. If I haven't answered your ask, feel free to re-send; I'm not mad I just get a lot of asks.

If you want me to tell you if a computer you're looking at is a good deal, send me an ask (add spaces after the periods to break up the URL) and I'll give it a look (subject to the same rules as the other asks).

This is a US-based blog and I'm familiar with US-based pricing; unfortunately I probably can't help you with pricing outside of the US.

I don't know anything about gaming computers, I will not give advice on gaming computers.

If you want to know why the recommended computers are so low on storage, check out this post.

If you want my general guidelines on computer buying in case there isn't a recent link, here are the specs that I keep updated on my Wiki.

[phykios]

Academic Dishonesty for Fun and Profit [read on ao3] 15k, rated G

Does Percy like his job? 

Of course. 

Well, mostly. 

Kind of. 

See, the thing is…

Percy is on his computer, which is half the problem. 

There were a lot of things he could have been doing right now. Like grading, or finishing next semester’s syllabus, or responding to the avalanche of emails from anxiety-ridden freshmen and overbearing admins. Or grading. Gods, he has a lot of grading to do. Why hadn’t he listened to Paul when he said there was so much grading!

But to be fair, he is, technically, actually working right now, proctoring his Latin 3 exam. Never mind that he can definitely hear the kids in the front row whispering the answers to each other. Absently, he notes that Jamie has made leaps and bounds since her first Latin class—she’s the one supplying the answers this time around, rather than Junie. 

But to be frank, the Minotaur could parade through the exam room in his tighty-whities and Percy wouldn’t care. Or even notice. He’s too busy refreshing his email over and over again, tapping Riptide against the wooden table. 

Fucking ADHD. 

He can’t focus on anything else, except for the fact that the mid-April soft deadline has long since passed, and he still hasn’t heard anything. Which could mean nothing. These things take time. Or it could mean he was rejected. Which would suck, of course, but it would also make things a lot simpler in terms of his immediate future. But there’s been no change to his application status since last December. So here he is. Not paying attention to the final. Refreshing his email. 

Quickly flipping over to the Mythomagic subreddit, he refreshes that page, too. Nothing new. 

He refreshes his email again. No news. 

“Professor?” 

Only years of battle training keeps him from jumping out of his seat. “Mm?” 

Sierra, one of his straight-As, is standing before him, brandishing her exam. “I’m finished,” she announces, proudly.

He can see that. What, does she want a medal? “Great,” he says, “you can leave it on my desk and head out.” 

“Actually, could I ask you a question?” 

“...Sure.” He set down his pen, cautiously. “What’s up?” 

She beams. “I was just wondering when you were going to post our last weekly quiz grades.”

Internally, he groans. “I'm working on it—promise.”

“Totally!” she chirps, “but have you gotten to mine yet? I was just wondering how—” 

“I’m sure you did fine,” Percy interrupts, gently. Behind her, another student drops off his paper, and, blessedly, leaves without comment. “I’ll try and get the last of the quiz grades up in the next few days. Sounds good?” 

Sierra nods, clearly disappointed. “Sure thing.” 

But she doesn’t leave. 

Percy rolls his tongue behind his teeth, counts to ten. “Was there anything else?” 

“Yeah, so, a couple weeks ago, you mentioned the possibility of some extra credit? I’ve been reading Cicero, and I thought that maybe I could…” 

But what Sierra was imagining she might do with Cicero, Percy will never know. Because, looking out of the corner of his eye, he sees that his email has just refreshed. And the subject reads “Application Update.” 

His heart starts racing. 

“...And so I have about three pages of an essay already written comparing him and Catullus and contemporary views on homo—” 

Percy lifts a finger, and she falls silent, her jaw closing with an audible clack. “Sorry,” he says, tongue numb in his mouth. “Sorry, I’m so sorry, I just… gotta read this real quick.” 

Fingers trembling, he moves his mouse, the cursor hovering shakily over the unread email. The email preview isn’t very long, a simple, “Thank you for your application to the…” which tells him literally nothing. He has to open it. All he has to do is press down, and open the email. 

But his thumb won’t respond. The email remains unbolded, unread. 

Just click already, he internally chides his thumb. 

His thumb does not click. 

Oh, for the love of—“Sierra?” 

“Yeah?” 

“I will give you one point of extra credit right now if you open this email for me.”

She blinks. “Seriously?”

“Two if you read it out to me.” 

“Okay!”

Percy scoots out of the way, pressing his eyes into the palms of his hands. He might actually be sick. 

He barely has a chance to hope that he didn’t leave anything embarrassing open on his computer, before her soft voice quotes, “Thank you for your application for the Campbell Fellowship for Bronze Age Research at the American Society of Underwater Archaeology. Attached is a letter about the status of your application.” 

His heart is beating so loud, he’s surprised she can’t hear it. “Is that it?” 

“Well, there’s also the letter.” 

With his face covered, she can’t see him roll his eyes. “Can you read the letter as well, please?” Undergrads. Di immortales. 

There’s a beat where Percy thinks he might actually explode, and then, her voice barely audible over the blood racing in his ears, he hears her read: “We are pleased to inform you that—” 

“Wait.” 

Pleased? 

He stands. “I got in?” 

“Uh—” 

Perhaps a tad rudely, he yanks the computer out of her hands, bringing it up to his face. For once in his life, his dyslexia doesn’t act up, entirely cooperative as he reads for himself, in neat, tidy, Times New Roman: We are pleased to inform you that the ASUA has awarded you the Campbell Fellowship for Bronze Age Research for the upcoming academic year.

He gapes. 

“Professor?” Sierra asks, shyly. 

He’s in.

He’s in!

“I got it!” He shouts. Every head in the exam room shoots up, staring at him.

“You got it?” echoes Sierra.

Brandishing his computer, he can only gesture to the screen, excitement bubbling up in him like a Coke about to explode. “I got the fellowship!” 

Fifteen pairs of eyes blink at him, uncomprehendingly. 

“Uh, I’ll be right back.” Inelegantly, he plops his computer back down on the desk, snatching up his phone. “Give me—give me five minutes. Stay put.” 

Bounding up the steps of the lecture hall, he already has the phone to his ear, dial tone ringing, and he barely makes it out of the room before his wife picks up. 

“Percy?” 

Now, Percy’s wife is a legitimate genius. She has known him almost her entire life, and in that time, she’s become a master at picking up the little nuances of his voice, the change in tone indicating the little undercurrents of emotion, no matter how hard he tries to hide it. She also knows that he knows that calling her in the middle of the workday is generally not helpful, as she’s usually in a meeting or deep in the zone, and taking her out of it is bound to mess up her flow for the rest of the day. 

But of course, Annabeth is a genius. She knows him inside and out. And she knows he wouldn’t call if it weren’t extremely important. 

“Annabeth—”

She doesn’t even let him finish. “You got in?”

He grins. “I got in!”

Over the phone, she gasps. “He got in!” Through the tinny connection, he hears her office cheering. 

And in the empty hallway, he jumps for joy, punching his fist in the air. 

***

Because his wife is brilliant, Percy doesn’t even realize that their walking date ends at the Greek Embassy until the three of them turn the corner. It’s just one of her many talents, making sure that Percy gets to his appointment on time. 

Percy wouldn’t exactly call it the perfect weather for a walking date. Gray clouds blanket the sky, enveloping the tips of skyscrapers in mist, and through the alleyways, the wind howls, whipping at their jackets, sending Percy’s messy hair into further disarray. Even Annabeth, who has recently taken to keeping her curls in a short bob with a rotating collection of headbands so that they don’t get in my gods-damned eyes so I can see what I’m working on, isn’t faring much better. Still, he’s out with his wife and daughter, enjoying a leisurely walk down the streets of New York, and it’s hard to be in a bad mood with that kind of positive energy around. “Alright,” he announces, slowing to a stop outside the consulate. “Here we are.” 

Automatically, Annabeth looks up, appraising the exterior, and Percy merely grins, awaiting her judgment. 

She frowns. “That’s the embassy?” 

Percy nods. “Uh huh.” 

“But it’s so… nothing.” 

He shrugs, readjusting his backpack, gripping the strap before it slides off his shoulder onto the wet pavement. In his other hand is his eldest daughter’s, squeezing it tight as she twirls around, her sneakers making little whirlpools beneath her feet. “That’s what I thought.” 

Now, technically, it is a Tuesday, and Junie should have been in Pre-K, wowing all her teachers and outperforming all the other kids by a mile. But, well… turns out the genes run a little bit deeper than just looks. The teacher had not been exactly sure how Junie had managed to flood the classroom via the little sink in the corner, but it seemed pretty clear that she had. She hadn’t been expelled, exactly, but it had been suggested she seek education and enrichment somewhere else. Honestly, Percy and Annabeth were a little charmed by it. Apples and trees and all of that. But they did worry that it heralded things to come. 

“I mean, there’s nothing,” Annabeth says again, craning her neck upwards. “No decoration, no sculpture… There’s nothing there!” 

“Nothing but pilasters.” 

She gags. 

“At least the one in Boston is next to the bar from Cheers.” 

She blinks at him, uncomprehending, and Percy makes a note to himself. 

“So how long do you think this will take?” she asks. 

“Dunno.”

“Because if it’s not that long we can just wait out here for you.” 

He shakes his head, kissing her on the cheek. “Don’t waste the rest of your lunch break on me.” Besides, his back itches in the way that means it’s probably going to rain soon. “I’ll pick up Lucie from my mom’s place, and I’ll have dinner ready by the time you get home.” 

Percy is long-since immune to the domesticity of such a statement. Or at least he thought he was, because the way Annabeth grins at him, leaning forward to capture his lips in a stronger kiss, makes him want to do a little jig with Junie, right here on the sidewalk. 

His daughter certainly seems to agree, if the way she spins faster is any indication. 

Annabeth slides her own bag off her shoulder, and pulls out a bulky file folder, handing it to him. “One last check?” 

“Hit me.” 

“Award letter?” 

“Check,” he says, thumbing through the pages. 

“Proof of insurance?” 

“Check.” 

“Background check?” 

“With fingerprints, and without allegations of underage terrorism.” That had been a fun and nerve-wracking experience, getting his fingerprints taken. He had been sweating bullets for a week, expecting his brief career in monument-related arson to have the FBI kicking his door down. 

“Visa application?” 

“Plus immunization forms, birth certificate with apostille, and two hundred dollars cash.” 

“Passport?” 

He blinks. “I thought you had it.”

Annabeth snaps her gaze to him, eyes blazing. “Are you serious?”

“Kidding!” Reaching into the folder, he pulls out his shiny new passport, flapping it in the air. “Kidding.” 

She swats at him. “Seaweed brain…” 

“Sorry, sorry,” he laughs, kissing her again. “It’s all good, promise.” 

“Don’t be an idiot in front of the ambassadors, or whoever it is you meet in there, okay? Save your dumbassery for something less high-stakes.” 

Scoffing, he slips the passport back into the folder. “Excuse you, my dumbassery is only reserved for the lowest of low-stakes operations.” 

“Just go and get your stupid visa.” 

Percy crouches down. “See you soon, Honey Dew,” he says, kissing her forehead. “Go have fun with mommy!” 

Junie’s only response is to kick water in his direction.

Yes, he stands and watches them leave, smothering a laugh, even as it begins to drizzle on him, until they turn the corner. 

After checking in with the security guard at the door, he is directed to sit in the hallway, on a low, uncomfortable wooden bench. The floor is not marble, but it has the same kind of glossy shine to it, in a black and white checkered pattern that makes his eyes hurt. Tapping his foot, he casts his gaze around for something to focus on, and finds very little but blank walls, dim, yellow lights, and a fake marble statue in the corner of the winged, headless Nike (he knows that one on sight—Cabin 17 had made their own replica with an intact-head and placed it on their cabin roof after a series of Hermes-related pranks gone awry). 

Directly across from him, mounted on the wall, is a large, nearly-square painting. From his vantage point on the bench, Percy can make out a brown landscape, a blue, cloudy sky, and… not much else. There are lines of white blobs, dots of red and green and blue, and it takes Percy an embarrassingly long time to realize that they are people. Okay, the blue blobs are cannons, and the white are soldiers, he presumes. The subject begins to take shape, clues falling into place before his eyes.

Percy is, after all, quite familiar with sieges. 

He checks his watch. He made sure to arrive five minutes before his appointment, but it’s been fifteen minutes, and so far no one has come to collect him. 

Returning his attention to the painting, for lack of anything else to do, he stands, leaving his folder on the bench, and walks over for a better look. He can see much more clearly this close, can much more easily make out the lines of attackers and defenders. The white-robed people, armed with curved swords, are defending some kind of castle on a hill, with walls and towers and… columns.  

He frowns, tilting his head. 

In the center, towards the top of the canvas, is undoubtedly a temple of some kind. He counts eleven columns, gleaming white, in a row, with a gaping hole in the middle, filled instead with a circular building with a terracotta roof. Beneath the temple, on the slope, are even more columns, and a wall unevenly dotted with arched openings. 

There is something eerily familiar about the image that he just can’t quite place. 

What the hell is it? 

But he doesn’t have too much more time to dwell on it. “Mr. Jackson?” 

An older woman with a shock of white hair strides towards him, her heels (her very tall heels, dang) clacking against the not-marble. 

“Yes. Ms. Georgopoulou?” 

She shakes his hand, firm despite her age. Her wrists have so many bangles, maybe it’s a covert kind of weight training. “Yes,” she nods. “Please, follow me.” 

He takes a step to follow, before remembering that he left all his shit on the bench. 

Swiping it from the bench, he turns, grinning sheepishly, only to see that she is already halfway down the hallway. Percy has to actually jog to catch up with her. 

Several turns and one staircase later, Percy is in her office, seated on a leather chair that has seen better days, all but twiddling his thumbs while she painstakingly types in his application information. Which seems kind of a waste of time to him. On Paul’s recommendation, Percy had filled out his application on the computer, as he did not want to subject some poor admin worker to his terrible handwriting. If she’s just going to retype everything, why don’t they make the whole system digital? 

Ms. Georgopoulou types slowly, precisely, her bracelets occasionally scraping against the ancient-looking keyboard. Every so often, she will gaze at him over the thick, brown rim of her glasses, appraisingly. 

He stretches his mouth in a not-quite smile, feeling, once again, like a little kid who’s been sent to the principal’s office, waiting for the inevitable scolding or dressing down or disappointed sigh at his “antics.” 

Squinting, she takes another look at his passport. “Ah!” Then she beams, years shedding from her face. “Perseus?” 

He pauses. Only monsters call him by his first name. 

Surreptitiously, he slips his hand into his pocket, fingering his pen, tensing his legs just in case he has to make a run for it. Wouldn’t be the first time an old lady turned into a demon, but boy does he wish it happened less often. It’s not even surprising at this point anymore. “Yes?” 

But then, she does something maybe even scarier than spit venom at him. 

She starts speaking at him in Greek. 

He’s sure he looks like a dumbass, sitting there, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. “Um,” he starts. “Uh, I don’t—I don’t speak Greek.” 

Which is true. He technically speaks ancient Greek because of magic genetic fuckery. But modern Greek? It’s about as foreign to him as Korean. Except he’s actually picked up some Korean just from the restaurant down the block from his mom’s first apartment. So really, it’s about as foreign to him as, like, Martian would be, or something. 

Ms. Georgopoulou hmms at him, a wordless judgement, and goes back to her typing. 

It feels like an eternity before she talks to him again. “You have somewhere to say?” 

Percy nods, grateful for English. “I’ll be living in, uh, Piraeus.” Though he imagines he’ll mostly be living on his boat, or whatever island he ends up closest to for however long it takes to re-survey whatever part of the ocean he’ll be in. 

More typing. She flips through Percy’s sheaf of papers, frowning. “Where is your proof of insurance?” 

For a heartbeat, he panics. 

Oh gods, did he forget the insurance? 

He snatches them out of her hands, his own trembling as he thumbs through them. There’s no way he forgot the insurance. He and Annabeth double-checked, triple-checked—

“Here we go!” Percy brandishes the lucky paper, relief so intense it almost makes him dizzy. “Got my insurance right here.” 

Thankfully for his nerves, the meeting wraps up fairly quickly after that. Percy hands over the cash for the visa fee (no card, no check, cash only, because of course), and is summarily shown the door, letting him know that he will be notified about the status of his visa application in no less than fifteen days. 

More waiting. Joy. 

Still, Ms. Georgopoulou is nice enough to lead him back out of the labyrinth of the consulate, rather than let him embarrass himself further by getting lost. Walking once again through the hallway with the painting and the checkered floor, he spies that same painting out of the corner of his vision, the one with the siege and the temple and all the little blobby figures—and it hits him, all at once. 

“Oh!” he exclaims, stopping dead in his tracks. “It’s the Acropolis!” Because what else would it be? 

Ms. Georgopoulou eyes him, oddly. “It is,” she agrees, with a tone that she probably uses on her grandkids. Her dumb grandkids. “See?” 

She gestures to the label, and Percy has to squint to read the tiny letters. 

The Siege of the Acropolis, reads the caption, once he manages to make the letters fall into place. Painting by Panagiotis Zografos, under the guidance of Yannis Makriyannis.

So he’s off to a great start. 

***

Frederick Chase takes them all out for dinner the evening his visa arrives—by which he means all of them, including his mom, Paul, Estelle, and Junie and Lucie. They get a big corner booth in the back of a fancy, Japanese-Spanish fusion restaurant that one of Percy’s grad student colleagues had recommended, for which Percy is infinitely grateful, as Frederick had suggested a Greek restaurant at first, before Annabeth commented that Percy would soon be eating his weight in Greek food, and would probably prefer something else for the time being. 

Some concern had been expressed about the littles one finding something to eat, but Estelle had taken to the chicken katsu with aplomb, and Junie had eaten enough of the tempura green beans that Percy wasn’t too sure there’d be room for dessert. 

She sits in Percy’s lap now, painting water trails with her straw on the wood of the table, while his mom holds Lucie so Annabeth can run to the bathroom. Frederick, on his third glass of wine and more animated than Percy can ever remember seeing him, is regaling them all with stories from his own research trips, a handful of which had taken him to the Mediterranean. 

“Let’s see,” he begins, counting off his fingers. “I’ve been to… Sardinia, Malta, Samos, Samothrace, Lemnos—oh, Lemnos!” The wine in his glass almost sloshes over the rim, and Paul has to move out of the way of his elbow. “Lemnos was wonderful. Such a lovely, remote island with all these incredible volcanic formations, and did you know that ANZAC used the island as a staging ground for the Gallipoli campaign?” 

“Oh, really?” Asks his mom, genuinely interested.

“That’s what I was there for—I wanted to see whether the Axis had used the geography in the same, or set up their bases and commands in roughly the same places, as part of a broader investigation into how the Axis built off leftover infrastructure outside of Germany. In any case, I had a letter from the Ministry of Culture, I had all my permits, I even had the Deputy Ambassador notify the local Air Force base when I would be arriving.” He pauses to take a sip of wine. “All I needed was one historical map from the 1910s—just one—but the local commander would not let me look at it!” 

Paul gasps, a little theatrical. The wine must be hitting him, too. “No!” 

“Oh, yes. The man would not budge. Kept citing national security concerns. I told him, in not so many words mind you, but I told him that I had come all this way to see this darn map, and that the Greco-Turkish war had been over for almost a hundred years at that point, and not only was there no reason to keep the contents of the map classified, but satellite technology made the whole thing moot anyway, so what was the harm in letting me take a look?” 

Chuckling, Percy spears the last of his potatoes, popping it into his mouth. He’s heard this story before, heard all about how Frederick managed to convince the stodgy Greek Air Force commander to let him study the map by promising him a citation in his article. 

“So,” he goes on, “I am arguing with this man for what feels like hours, until finally he’s called away for something or other, and that’s when I realize.” Frederick leans in, a savage glint in his eye that Percy instantly recognizes as Annabeth’s war games face. “I don’t know what they were doing with it, I don’t know why it was there, but there, on his desk, was the map—and there, in the corner, was a copier.”

“Wait,” says Sally. Percy takes a drink of water. “Did you—”

“Make an illegal copy of a classified map from 1917 and smuggle it back to Virginia? Of course.” 

Percy spittakes so hard it nearly comes out on his daughter’s head. Estelle thumps his back while he coughs, spots appearing in his eyes. 

“Alright there, Percy?”

“Yeah,” he wheezes, “I just never heard that version before.” 

Frederick blinks, cocking his head. He looks so much like his daughter it’s actually scary. “You haven’t?” 

“You told me you managed to convince him by promising to put him in your article!” 

“I did?” 

“Yes!” 

“Oh.” He flushes slightly, sheepishly dabbing at his mouth with a napkin. “Well, I, ah, must have given you the, um, undergrad version.” At Sally and Paul’s concerned look, he rushes to assure them, “Don’t worry, it was declassified the next year!” 

Looking plenty worried, his mom shifts her concern from Frederick to Lucie, a grin creasing across her face. “Aw, sweetheart,” she coos, “looks like someone needs a change.” 

Suppressing the last few coughs, Percy shifts Junie to Frederick, who is more than happy to take his granddaughter from him. “I got it,” he says, standing. “If the waiter comes back, make sure to order me some matcha brownies, yeah?” 

Luckily, they’re already in the back, so it doesn’t take too long for Percy, kiddo and new diaper in hand, to make his way to the bathroom, and summarily run into Annabeth, who is just coming out of the women’s room, flicking her hands clean of water. “Oh!” She laughs, “fancy meeting you here.” 

“Come here often?” 

She grins, then shifts her attention away. Not that Percy is upset by that. “Hi sweetie,” she coos, wiggling her fingers. Lucie laughs, and Percy falls in love all over again. “Everything okay?” 

“Just time for a diaper change.” 

Annabeth steps aside, with a grand sweep of her arm. “Be my guest.” 

The bathroom does not have stalls, and Percy breathes a sigh of relief. It’s not his fault that men’s rooms don’t generally have changing tables, and it’s nice not to get weird looks while taking care of his daughter. Or when Annabeth comes up behind him, and wraps her arms around him, hugging his torso, face buried in his shoulder blades. Like she is right now. 

“I love you,” she mumbles into his back.

“I love you, too.” He cleans and changes Lucie with all the speed and grace of someone who’s done this a million times, and as he looks at his daughter’s face, feels the warmth of his wife pressed up against his back, the muffled noise of the restaurant and all of New York city in the distance, the sounds of the city as familiar as a lullaby, he is struck with an almost painful pang of longing. “I’m going to miss you so much.” 

Annabeth tightens her arms around him. “It’s only for a few weeks. We’ll be there before you know it.” 

“I can’t remember the last time we’ve been apart for so long.” 

“Apart from being kidnapped by a rogue goddess?” 

“Yeah, exactly. I can’t remember it.” 

She snorts. 

Picking up his clean kid, he bounces her in his arms, and is rewarded with a giggle. She’s just about old enough to transition out of diapers. She’s growing up so fast. “It just feels so real, now,” he says, quietly. “The visa, the plane ticket… I’m really going.” 

“You are.” She comes around to his side, her hand never leaving his arm. “You’re going to go to Greece for twelve months, dazzle the crap out of the other archaeologists with your million shipwreck discoveries, and not have to deal with any grading or any undergrads the whole time. And we’ll be right there with you, the whole time.”

“Almost the whole time.”

“Almost,” she conceded.

“I just—I don’t want to waste this opportunity. I’m not…” 

“What? Not smart enough?” 

He shrugs. 

In response, she rolls her eyes, then gently cuffs him upside the head. “Ow!” 

“Percy,” she says, dead serious. “Do you know how many people apply for things like this?” 

“I dunno… a few?” 

“Try at least thirty per cycle. These are really prestigious grants. People apply from all over the world, in all stages of their careers. And you, seaweed brain,” she pokes him with her finger. “Beat out the competition.”

He feels the grin stretch across his face, slowly. “I did, didn’t I?” 

“We did.” She kisses him. “Half of that proposal is mine.” 

“The better half.” 

“Of course.” 

“Your name should be on this visa.” 

“And it would be, if I could breathe underwater.”

“I can’t wait for you all to join me,” he says, eyes going misty.

Annabeth kisses him again. “We’ll be right behind you.” 

They’re in the bathroom so long, dessert has already come and gone, but his mom manages to snag a matcha brownie for him before Paul gobbles them all up. Frederick leads them all in one last toast, to Percy’s great academic finds or whatever, but the true highlight of the night is when Annabeth nudges Junie, who, with a gasp of almost-forgetfulness, pulls out the little thing he’d seen her working at for the last few weeks, proudly presenting it to him. 

“I made this for you, daddy,” Junie announces to the table. “I hope you like it!” 

In her hands is a friendship bracelet, patterned with the Greek wave in blue and light green. Some of the waves are uneven, the crests a bit clunky, but in the center, Junie had woven an evil eye symbol in white. 

“I love it,” he croaks. “Thank you so much.” 

“Mommy helped with the mati, but I picked the colors.” She points at the band. “Blue is for the ocean. The green is for honey dew!”

He cannot stand it—he hugs his daughter, and doesn’t stop himself from crying. 

***

Percy, who in the last seventy-two hours, has suffered air travel, jetlag, a mattress as soft as a concrete slab, the Athenian metro system, and one really, really steep hill, now faces his final challenge of the day. Swallowing his fear, he runs a hand through his sweaty hair, and steps up to the front desk of the library. 

"Ah, signomi," he stammers, the word strange and unfamiliar in his mouth. The syllables are pretty close to ancient Greek, but the way they fit together is just… weird. "I have an appointment with, um, Aristides?"

The older lady at the front desk peers up at him over the rim of her glasses, her wrinkled hands resting on the pages of a yellowed book. With her red-dyed hair, large frames (are those Chanel?), enormous jewelry, and heavy eyeshadow, she reminds Percy of every school librarian he's ever had. 

She leans in, hand to her ear, one eyebrow cocked. "Eh?"

"Aristides?" he repeats, a little louder. It echoes throughout the main hall of the library, and he does his best not to wince.

"Ah, Aristides!" She perks up, babbling at him in Greek. "Edaxi," she says, "one moment, please," before rising from her seat, and floating across the hall, where she disappears behind a large, wooden door.

Unsure if he should sit at one of the tables, Percy elects to stand, hands gripping the strap of his backpack, tapping his heel against the floor. An older patron in the corner of the room, his table piled high with books almost tall enough to wall him off from the world, glares at him.

It's a beautiful little library. The attached museum had been a beautiful little thing, too, and if it weren’t the middle of the night on the east coast, he would have called her up himself, and shown her around via video.

He channels her now as he looks around, observing. The outside had been all neoclassical, almost beating you over the head with it, with perfect, fluted ionic columns, tapering gently at the top. Inside, beautiful, grand, wooden bookshelves surround the room, their contents locked behind glass. Some of them he can read instantly, of course—the library has a hefty collection of ancient Greek literature after all—but the rest swims in front of his eyes, scratchy gold lettering blurring together with blue and red leather. Wandering over to something that won't make his head hurt, he stops in front of a glass display of a book, open to a delicately printed page of text. 

It’s in Greek—ancient Greek, thank the gods—and to his delight, it’s the first few lines of the Iliad. Instantly, his shoulders unwind, and he relaxes enough to lean down and take a closer look, quietly mouthing the familiar words to himself. Percy doesn’t even bother with the label, instead tracing his eyes over the floral linework in the header illustration. He sees ram heads, fish, and pumpkins in the little cornucopia, and some kind of gorgon mask in the big, illuminated “Mu” that begins the poem. His master’s thesis had been a new translation of the Aeneid, but during that process he had come to appreciate the art of old, fancy editions of epic poems. It was kind of cool to see a physical, non-magical link to his past. He might be living proof of the Olympian gods, but plenty of mortals had dedicated their lives to carrying that legacy forward on faith and passion alone. And now Percy will carry it forward, too, without using his sword this time. It’s pretty cool, if you think about it.

A quiet voice behind him breaks the spell. "Mr. Jackson?"

Percy turns, and is greeted by a well-dressed man, probably in his early 40s. He looks as Greek as Greek can be, with a great beak of a nose and thick, wavy, salt and pepper hair. “Percy,” he insists, reaching out to shake his hand. “Thanks so much for meeting with me, Mr. Yiannopoulos.” 

“Please,” he returns, in a perfect American accent. “Call me Ari. Come on, let’s talk in my office.”

His office is huge, definitely bigger than Percy’s apartment back home, and covered wall-to-wall with books, in so many languages that it makes his head spin. As Percy closes the door behind them, Ari sheds his suit jacket, tossing it over a spare chair squashed between two teetering piles of books. He gets the sense that this guy and Frederick would get along famously. 

“You get settled in alright, Praetor? No problems with the apartment?” 

Percy sets down his backpack on the 70s-era linoleum floor. The things he’s picked up from Annabeth still astound him. “Yeah, it’s fine. But getting here was a journey, let me tell you.” 

“I’d bet,” says Ari, evenly. 

“That hill is killer.” 

“They’re building a new metro station in the neighborhood, but it won’t open for another few years probably.” 

“How do you stand it?” 

Ari shrugs, sitting down behind his desk. “Practice, mostly. But I live on campus here.” 

“Heh, must be nice.” Percy sits in the chair opposite him, zipping open his backpack and rummaging around for his documents folder… until something occurs to him, and he suddenly shoots his head up. “Did you just call me ‘Praetor’?”

“Took you long enough.” 

He blinks. “You’re a Roman?” 

“Yep.” Ari rolls up his sleeve, revealing the familiar, stark harp symbol, with twelve lines beneath it, signifying twelve years of service. “Third generation legacy.” 

Something in his brain might be broken. Or maybe it's jetlag. “You’re a Roman… but you work for the Greek government?” 

Ari raises his brow right back. “And you’re a Greek, but you teach Latin.” 

That does not at all clear anything up for him. “Did you know who I was when I applied?” 

He shakes his head. “I only learned you were coming after the review committee circulated the applicants. I saw your name, and I had to basically beg my supervisor to let me be your liaison.” 

“Okay… Why?” 

“I’m glad you asked.” Percy doesn’t think he looks particularly glad. “Because, Praetor, you,” Ari glares at him, as sharp and pointed as the finger he’s thrusting into Percy’s face, “have a bad habit of attracting attention.” 

Percy frowns. “Wait… Is this about the Gateway Arch? That was, like, fifteen years ago—”

“The Arch, Mount St Helens, the sinkhole in Rome,” he counts off his fingers. “Do you even know how much paperwork I had to do when you and your friends collapsed the Necromanteion in Epirus? Oh, and then you all decided that the best course of action would be to march on Athens and stage a battle on the Acropolis!” Ari slams his hand down on his wooden desk. “The Acropolis is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the entire world! We had to close the site for days! My bosses were about to have me crucified!” 

Percy would scoff, but Ari is a Roman. He knows exactly what he’s talking about vis-a-vis crucifixion. “Well,” Percy counters, “my bosses were going to have me—and also you—obliterated if I hadn’t gone there.” 

Ari glares again, a wolf stare so perfectly intimidating it could only have been taught by Lupa. It probably works on the skittish undergrads and beleaguered government employees he has to deal with on a daily basis. But Percy has also trained at Lupa’s knee. He’s faced the Titan king and the goddess of Earth. He has stared down Athena while hiding underneath a pastry cart—and has seen the exact same look on his two year old when she doesn’t want to be put down for a nap. 

Sensing, perhaps, that he is outmatched, Ari blinks first. “Fine,” he grinds out, “but I’m giving you an assistant.” 

“What? I don’t need—”

“Oh, yes you do. A grant this big comes with serious scrutiny, which will fall on my shoulders if you decide to trash another priceless heritage site.” He turns to his computer, quickly typing something out. “I’m sending you his resume right now. You are not to leave him behind or waste his time with useless data entry.” 

“But—”

“Don’t worry, he knows his way around a boat.”

Percy gapes, his whole day suddenly upended. In all his time preparing for the fellowship, he had not expected that he’d have a permanent hanger-on. Especially one he knows nothing about! “You can’t just saddle me with some mortal assistant and call it a day!” 

Ari levels him with another look. “Don’t be stupid—I’m sending you a legionnaire.”

“A kid?” 

“Yep.” Ari finishes typing with a final clack that brokers no argument, before swivelling back to face him. “You can pick him up from the port when you head out Thursday morning. He’ll be waiting for you at Terminal B.” From a desk drawer, he pulls out a folder, sliding it across to Percy. “I’ve booked you two tickets for an overnight ferry to Crete. You’ll have one day to settle in Heraklion before you start your first survey. Any questions?” 

Flabbergasted beyond speech, Percy can only take the folder. 

“Great.” He stands up, and goes over to open the door to his office. “I’ll be checking in with you next week. Have a safe trip, Praetor.” 

***

“How’s the kid?” Annabeth asks. 

Percy groans, dropping his head back. 

Over the Iris Message, Annabeth snorts. “That bad?” 

“No,” Percy admits. “He’s actually been really helpful.”

“Then what is it?” 

In truth, there isn’t a lot to complain about Arthur Taylor. A son of the Roman god Portunes, Arthur had spent the better part of his childhood sailing around the world with his mortal dad, before they settled in San Francisco when he was fourteen. After two years in New Rome High School, he had tested out of most of the classes, and was given permission by the Senate to take his senior year off for a long term Legion assignment—which, apparently, just so happened to be babysitting Percy. 

Still, he’s a good kid. He’s an excellent sailor, knows how to operate the very expensive diving equipment that Percy had to rent for appearances’ sake, and, to be quite honest, keeps Percy from going insane by giving him someone to talk to.

There is just one slight problem. 

“He keeps calling me ‘Mr. Jackson’!”

Annabeth, the heartless woman that she is, just laughs at him. 

“I’m serious!” He whines. “It’s weird!” 

“You know that I’m Mrs. Jackson, right?” She flashes the ring at him for good measure, like he’d ever forget one of the best days of his life. “What’s so bad about that?” 

“It makes me feel so old.” 

“I’m older than you.”

“And you’re aging beautifully.” 

“Ha ha,” she deadpans. Then she yawns. 

Percy frowns. “It’s not that late over there.” It’s only 8 AM here, and Annabeth seriously lives up to the night owl stereotype. 

“No, but I haven’t really been sleeping well for a few days,” she admits. “Taking care of all three of us is hard work.” 

A pang goes through him, cutting through the gentle morning sun filtering through the window. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay. Sally’s pitched in a few times, and my dad has started sending me those fancy microwave meals.” She shrugs a shoulder, her t-shirt sliding down and showing some skin. Percy tries not to stare like a teenager. “We’ve been getting by just fine.” 

“I know.” And he does. Annabeth wouldn’t let a little something like her inability to cook stop her from being the best mom ever. “I just miss you guys so much.” 

Smiling softly, she leans forward, and he copies the movement. “We’ll be there next week,” she reminds him, “which means we’ll see you in just three weeks.” 

“What if I just cut my survey short and met you in Athens?” 

“Don’t threaten me with a good time. Besides, yesterday you told me you were onto something?” 

Was it only yesterday? Gods, Percy’s sense of time is shredded out here. They’ve only been surveying for a little over two weeks, but it simultaneously feels like forever and no time at all. The only way Percy can really mark the passage of time is by his twice daily IMs back home. “Maybe,” he hedges. “I talked to some sharks the other day, and they said I should try and find this nymph who’s lived in this part of the bay since the twelfth century.” 

“Any luck yet?”

“Not yet, but they said she liked to scare the tourists sailing back and forth from Chrysi.” 

“Is that daddy?” Junie waddles into view, rubbing her eyes with her fists. 

“Baby, you’re up so late!” Annabeth hoists their oldest into her lap, so she can get a better view. “What’s the matter?” 

“Hafta go potty,” she mumbles. “Heard talking. Hi, daddy.”

“Hi, Honey Dew,” he says, almost tearing up. He misses his family so fucking much. “Are you being good for mommy?” 

She nods, her eyes still droopy. “Miss you.” 

“I miss you, too, kiddo. But I’ll get to see you in just a few weeks! And then we’ll have our big boat adventure!” 

Smiling, she snuggles into Annabeth, burying her face in her t-shirt. “Adventure,” she repeats, dreamily. 

“Come on, let’s go potty so you can go back to bed.” Annabeth took their daughter’s hand, waving at Percy from thousands of miles away. “Bye, daddy! Have fun on your survey!” 

“Good night, baby!” 

“Night night,” his daughter says, clumsily flopping her arm. 

“Night, Percy,” says Annabeth. “Talk to you in the morning.” 

“Sleep well.” 

Annabeth blows him a kiss through the IM, and he catches it, rubbing it on his cheek, before swiping a hand through the image of her sticking her tongue out at him. 

Good timing—from above, he hears Arthur ring the horn to signal they’ve arrived. Percy emerges from below onto the deck, shading his eyes against the bright morning sun. “Morning, Captain!” Arthur calls from the wheel. “We’re coming up on site 23B.” 

“Excellent.” That’s the other great thing about Arthur. Aside from all of his other skills, he is also a whiz at deciphering their legacy data. “How’s the weather looking?” 

“Another perfect day.” 

They are currently cruising off the southern coast of Crete, cruising easily over the most perfect, bluest ocean Percy has ever seen in his life, beneath a bright, clear sky. It’s hard for the weather to not be perfect here. 

“Alright,” Percy says, “if that’s the case, do you think you can head back to Ierapetra and pick up some more supplies?” Their little galley kitchen may be powerful, but it’s still pretty small, and they need to restock every few days.

“Sure thing,” says Arthur. “Any requests?”

“Just clear out their entire stock of peach juice for me.” It may not be blue, but it is delicious.

Arthur opens his mouth, as if to say something else, but then closes it, ducking his head, embarrassed. 

“What is it?” 

“Um,” Arthur hedges, hands gripping the wheel, “would it be okay if I took some time to go check something out in town?” 

Percy frowns. “Sure. Is everything okay?” They haven’t been accosted by monsters yet, but he figures it’s only a matter of time. “Do you need backup?” 

“What? Oh,” Arthur flushes. “No, nothing like that. I just wanted to sight-see a bit.” 

“Sight-see?”

He nods. “There’s this house—supposedly, in 1798, Napoleon docked in town, incognito, for a single night, before he headed on to Egypt for the Mediterranean campaign.”

The kid’s been all over the world, has docked in every continent except Antarctica, but he’s practically bouncing to go check out some random house that maybe has a connection to the Napoleonic wars. Grinning, Percy makes a note to introduce Arthur to Dr. Chase at some point. “Sure,” he says. “Have fun.” 

Arthur beams. “Thank you, Mr. Jackson!” And he looks so excited, Percy can’t even bring himself to be annoyed with the whole “Mr. Jackson” thing. 

And if Percy decides to give the boat a little push after he dives in so that Arthur can get to shore faster… Well, there are multiple benefits to this decision. Arthur gets to shore faster, and Percy gets to have some time to himself. 

Hey, just because having the kid around keeps him from going crazy doesn’t mean he doesn’t need some Percy-time. 

Percy lets himself sink further down, enveloped by the warm, crystal clear blue water. Eyes closed, he tilts his head up towards the surface, breathing out a stream of bubbles, his t-shirt gently wafting in the calm undercurrents. A school of something swims past him, tickling his arms and face like a soft breeze. 

Yeah. This is the life. 

For a few solid hours, he just lets himself be moved around by the will of the ocean. He moves in something approaching a circle, simply drifting around the island of Chrysi. Dappled sunlight drapes like lace over the rocky seafloor and patches of seagrass, while parades of colorful fish stop in their tracks to look for a second at the weird obstacle in their migration path, before continuing on around him. Eventually, the current takes him by the waist and draws him further from shore, into the deepening dark of the sea. Beneath him, he can sense the slowly sharpening descent of the ocean floor, stretching further and further, past the hunting grounds of squids and octopus until, he knows, some hundreds of meters further south, the ground suddenly gives way to a steep, sudden cliff. And what lies beyond, no one knows. 

Which is crazy to Percy. He’s seen the surveys, read the topographical maps, and even asked his dad, but despite the seventy or so years of dedicated surveying and the literal thousands of years of nautical travel and trade, there are still, somehow, unknowns in the Mediterranean. There are creatures down here even his father doesn’t know. There is magic here older than the gods themselves. 

And there is also a nereid staring at Percy from behind a tall rock. 

He yelps, tripping on himself. Yes, tripping underwater. It happens, and it’s just as silly as tripping on land. “Ahem. Hello?” 

The nereid pokes her head out further. She’s pretty in the way that all nereids are pretty, by virtue of being an immortal in a pantheon full of pretty people, but there’s something distinctly different about her. Her skin is pale, her hair somehow sticking to her face, like she had just emerged from underwater… despite still being underwater. 

Percy chances a swim closer. She doesn’t immediately run away, but she still seems pretty shaken up by the appearance of a sudden stranger. “Hey. Uh, I’m Percy. What’s your name?” 

Her eyes widen, and she squeaks, blushing blue to the roots of her glossy, black hair. “My lord!” She bows, nearly tumbling into a full front flip, her long, skinny tail flipping against the rock with a thump so loud, Percy can feel the vibrations. 

Oh good. She knows who he is. “Hi.” 

“Hello! Good morning! Um, afternoon? My lord!”

The water ripples out from around her, shaking so hard she’s starting to cause her own localized whirlpool. “Percy is fine. Please.”

The nereid nods, sharply. “Lord Percy!” 

Well, that’s about as far as he’s going to get. 

She stares at him, starry-eyed, but still nervous. Also, she doesn’t look like she’s about to make off with him and drag him to her undersea lair, so that’s a plus. “So… what’s your name?”

“Eunice, Lord Percy!”

“Great—wait. Eunice?” 

“Yes!”

Eunice. Huh. Well, he’s heard weirder. “Eunice. You live around here?”

She nods, her hair whipping in the current. 

“I’m looking for—”

“For shipwrecks! Yes! Your father told us!” 

“Right.” Oh he’s well aware. He’s had random nereids accosting him all summer to tell him about the incredibly fascinating sunken lobster fishing boats off the coast of Maine they had found, and how about they go check them out together, just the two of them? “Well, actually, I was talking to Kostas the other day—”

“The squid?” 

“The shark.” 

She nods. “I know him well! We are good friends!” 

That had not been Kostas’ version of events. “He said you might know something about a bronze age wreck around here?” Specificity is important, he’s learned. There are so many shipwrecks around Crete, mostly from the last forty years, and specificity means he’s not wasting time chasing Cold War-era fishing vessels. 

In lieu of an answer, instead she turns and bolts into the deep, almost smacking Percy in the face with her tail. 

He stares after her. 

Then, just as quickly as she left, she swims back, beckoning with one webbed hand. “Please, Lord Percy! Follow me!” And then she shoots off once more. 

O… kay. 

With only some trepidation, he swims after her. 

She’s fast, and the further they go, the more she blends into the environment, but the sea puts his senses into overdrive. He can easily follow her bubble trail, weaving in and out of spiky rock formations, inching ever closer to—where else—the edge of that underwater cliff. Because of course. “Hey, Eunice,” he calls out. “Where are we going?” 

“We seek the edge of the Minoan Crown, my lord!” She sends back. Which means absolutely nothing to him. 

But it’s not like he can get lost, so, onwards and upwards. Or downwards, as the case may be. 

The water grows colder, blacker, heavier. Pressure curls around his ankles and wrists like weights, but Eunice is not stopping, so Percy swims through the water as thick and heavy as molasses. He can still breathe down here, but something about the water is just… different. Awkward. Like it almost doesn’t fit in his lungs. More disconcertingly, he feels like he can barely see, the darkness is so impenetrable. 

“Nearly there!” Eunice calls cheerfully. Percy wipes his brow, suddenly sweaty. 

“Nearly there” turns out to be something of an overestimation, but eventually, she makes a right turn, and comes to a hard stop, Percy nearly barreling into her. 

“Here, prince,” she says, approaching a dark shape in the dark(er) water. “Look.” 

This deep, in this thick, complete darkness, he’s essentially blind. Still, he can sense that they are in an underwater cave, some five thousand or so meters beneath the surface. He has an impression of spiky stalagmites and packed sand. Cautious, he swims closer. His eyes essentially useless, he closes them, reaching out with his feelings instead. 

The water here is still, unnaturally so. There is no life, no movement, aside from the gentle wave of Eunice’s hair. A cold hand brushes against his arm, and his eyes snap open as he jerks away in shock—not at the touch, but at the fact that he can suddenly see. 

Eunice is softly glowing. Her skin, already so pale, is translucent, enough that he can see her bones, but now he can also see the bioluminescent spines protruding from her forearms, casting the cave in an eerie, almost ultraviolet light. “Be at ease,” she says, her voice lower, suddenly confident. “I shall be your light.” 

It’s not great. He’d rather have a flashlight. But it’s more than enough to see the smooth, wooden curve of the keel which rises up out of the packed sand of the cave floor, about six inches from his face. He places a hand on a plank, running his palm over the whorls and grain of a piece of wood which had somehow, miraculously, survived all this time. 

“Whoa,” he breathes, a stream of bubbles escaping his mouth. How has the wood not completely disintegrated by now? 

“You must take care, my lord.” Eunice waves a hand, redirecting the current. “This cave has never known the anemoi, and a hero’s breath is a dangerous thing.”

He frowns, and then it clicks. “This cave is anoxic,” he says. “There’s no oxygen down here.” And no oxygen means no wood-eating organisms. No wonder the keel is so intact. 

She tilts her head at the unfamiliar word, frowning delicately, a personality change equal parts eerie and sudden.

“Nevermind.” 

With his portable nereid spotlight in tow, he swims around the exposed body of the ship, his astonishment growing with every look. Not only is the keel intact, but so is the deck, as is the single exposed mast, rising up into the black water, a thick length of rope—rope!—attached to the top. Turning and swimming down, he examines the spot where the ship emerges from its sediment casing. If the wood and the rope had survived this long, what else might there be? A sail? Some paint? What if the ship’s cargo survived, too?

“Eunice,” he says, remembering to pull his face away. “How long has this thing been down here?” 

She shrugs. “I cannot say for certain, for I had not yet come into being when this vessel came to rest in this cave, its passengers long since drowned.” 

The question is out of his mouth before he has time to register that it might be a little bit rude. “How old are you?” 

But she doesn’t seem to mind. Eunice smiles, her mouth full of long, sharp teeth, glinting in the light of her spines, and Percy shivers. He vastly prefers the awkward, nervous Eunice from earlier. “I am old enough to have guided the Argo safely through the clashing rocks, to have been challenged by Cassiopeia, and to have mourned the swift-footed son of Thetis, pouring honey and ambrosia over the silver casket of the greatest of warriors.” 

So, about as old as the Trojan War, then. 

Which means this ship is even older. 

He places his hand on the wood, and closes his eyes again, focusing, a trick he’s picked up from Leo. 

Machines have stories, and so do ships. How they’re made, how they work, how they’re broken. Percy just has to be willing to listen. 

“It’s not a cargo ship,” he says, mostly to himself. “It was a warship.” He can hear it, the furious beat of drums, the rhythmic grunt of oarsmen, the sharpening of blades and the readying of bows. The wood, hewn from a cedar tree, is warm beneath his touch, even here in the freezing cold dark. “And it was sailing north.” 

“North?” 

“It was… running away from something.” Limping away from battle. The captain had cut his losses, and had ordered his men to retreat. “There was a storm.” No doubt his father and uncle had been fighting again, this sad little warship caught in the middle of an explosive family dispute they had no part in. Percy hears the crashing of thunder, the howling wind, the mighty crack of a mast as it splits apart. “And then it sank.” 

An all-too common occurrence. But where did it come from?

Percy frowns, stretching his senses further. 

He sees round shields and horned helmets, and people exhausted by constant war. There is the spicy, floral red lotus, and the earthy, woody papyrus. A mighty river floods in an endless cycle, giving life in a barren desert. And in him is a spirit that covets this bounty, a feeling of envy so hot and sudden, it almost knocks Percy off his feet. 

He has to—he has to write all this down. If this is what he thinks this is, then this could be the find of a generation. Maybe several generations. Frantically patting his pockets, he pulls out Riptide, converting it to normal pen mode, before he stops, and smacks his forehead, groaning. 

Di immortales, he left his notebook with Arthur on the ship!

***

“Absolutely not!”

“Ari—”

“No!” 

“Ari, this could be huge.” 

“You’re talking about causing an earthquake!” 

“A small one!” 

“Are you out of your mind?” 

“How else am I supposed to get it out of the cave?” 

“Arthur, tell me you think this is a bad idea.” 

“Um…” 

“Iuppiter dique te omnes perdant, Percy, you’ve gone and corrupted him.” 

“Look, it’s not Minoan or Mycenaean, it’s not Egyptian—it’s unlike any other ship I’ve ever seen before. The cave is anoxic, so the wood is so well-preserved, and Eunice says that it’s been there since before she was, so we’re talking 12th century, at minimum.” 

“CE?” 

“BCE.” 

“...And it’s not Mycenaean?” 

“Mr. Jackson thinks it could belong to the Sea Peoples!” 

“Arthur—!”

“Sorry!” 

“...The Sea Peoples. Really?” 

“I mean… yeah. I think so.” 

“...Let me make some calls.” 

***

Calls are made. And Percy waits. 

Luckily, he has a really, really nice way to pass the time. 

Annabeth, naked as the day she was born, lounges on the cabin bed, stretching her arms over her head, before she flops over onto her back, limp and boneless. Percy, drinks in hand and equally naked, has to force himself to set the bottle down on the little table, rather than drop the damn thing and jump her all over again. “Water or wine?” he asks, shamelessly leering. 

She shamelessly leers back. “Water, then wine,” she responds, already reaching for a glass. “I need to rehydrate.” 

Originally, the plan had been for Percy to go back to Athens to meet his family after they arrived. However, given the potentially paradigm-changing archaeological treasure stuck in the Hellenic Trench, Ari and Percy had both decided it would probably be best for Percy to stay put, and have his family come to him, rather than the other way around. Which is fine by him. They can explore Athens as a family any time, but the perfect weather off the coast of Crete will only last for so long. 

The tourists have begun to dissipate as the summer season gives way to a warm fall, so Percy, Annabeth, and the girls have the beaches and seas more or less to the locals and themselves. Junie is utterly enchanted by the Flying Dolphin, and has decided that her new favorite game is hiding in the various nooks and crannies aboard ship, then popping out to surprise him, giving her daddy a heart attack in the process. Lucie takes a little more time to adjust, laid low by a minor ear infection, made worse by the rocking of the boat. The only way to calm her, they quickly learn, is for Percy to hold her while they go for a dive, suspended in a little air bubble, her little eyes wide as she takes it all in.

Percy, Annabeth, and their family spend their days diving, fishing, making friends with the elderly women who come out every morning at sunrise for their daily swim, relaxing on the beach, and eating their way through the multiple gelato shops which line the promenade. Aside from a few hiccups, having this time with his family has been an absolute, perfect paradise. 

Percy is pretty sure he and Annabeth are guaranteed a spot in Elysium. Whenever they end up there, he hopes it’s exactly like this. 

Especially this part. 

After about a week and a half, Frederick, sensing that Percy and Annabeth were in desperate need of a little alone time, had graciously volunteered to take Arthur and the girls inland on a tour of Minoan ruins. Percy had essentially been put on shore leave while Ari did his bureaucratic, six degrees of New Rome separation thing to make sure Percy’s plan isn’t completely idiotic, and maybe even viable, and Frederick was already chomping at the bit to see some old rocks which had once been palaces, so it didn’t take much effort to convince Arthur to go along with them.

So, with the kids away and work on hold for the time being, Percy and Annabeth are engaging in some truly excellent sex. 

Like, a whole lot of it. 

Dehydration is a very real possibility for both of them.

“Tell me you have more of that cheese,” she says, after downing a glass and a half of water. 

“We finished off the graviera this morning. I’ll tell Arthur to pick up some more on his way back.” 

She pouts. “You mean to tell me that I’ll be cheeseless for two more days?” 

“Unless you want to get dressed and go get some yourself.” 

“Honestly, I’m considering it.” She lifts one leg, grasping her knee and pulling it closer, stretching out a cramp—and giving Percy one hell of a view. “I’m going to need some snacks if you’re going to keep making me come like that.” 

He grins. It had been explosive. “Hit your limit already?” 

“Not even close.” Percy settles onto the bed next to her, wine glass in hand, and she lifts herself to kiss him, slipping the glass out of his grasp. “But seriously, we should probably eat. I think we were fucking all through lunch.” 

“You hungry?” 

“Give me like half an hour. You’re not?” 

Percy frowns. He… really isn’t. “I’m fine.” 

Annabeth hums, thoughtful. “How much do you eat out here?” 

“The normal amount, I think.” Usually, he’ll have some yogurt and granola for breakfast, some cheese and salted fish for lunch, and whatever fresh fruit and cheese they had on hand for dinner. There’s an abundance of fresh fish, too, and catching some for a quick grill is comically easy out here. Arthur is largely in charge of grocery shopping, and he certainly doesn’t complain about the food, but he also seemingly has an endless supply of oregano flavored chips. Hopefully Percy isn’t accidentally starving him.  

“Hm.” 

“What?” 

“Just thinking.” 

“About?” 

“You.” With her free hand, she trails a finger up his chest, her nail ghosting over browned skin and white scar tissue, leaving a pleasantly tingly feeling in its wake. “Ocean life seems to agree with you.” 

“It certainly beats grading.” 

“Mmhmm.” Her fingers move further north, from his shoulder to his neck to the back of his head. “Your hair is getting long.” 

On reflex, he runs a hand through it, pushing it back from his face. “I can cut it.” 

“Don’t.” She tangles her fingers in it, tugging, and smirks at his quiet gasp. “I like it.” 

Thoughts of lunch are pushed to the wayside in favor of… other pursuits. 

It’s only much later, as the rim of the sun just barely kisses the horizon, that Annabeth puts her foot down. “We have to eat something.” 

“I can just catch us some fish,” he protests. 

But Annabeth shakes her head, pulling on her underwear. “I haven’t been on solid ground for forty-eight hours. I want to walk around the old town, eat my weight in stuffed peppers, and then get another twelve of those giant sfakianopita, so that the next time we have a two day sex binge, I’ll have something more substantial to snack on instead of just cheese and nuts.” 

“You can snack on my nuts,” he mutters, and is rewarded by Annabeth throwing his shirt at his head. 

Still, solid ground is a solid idea. As much as he enjoys living aboard the Flying Dolphin, she is one small ship. Ierapetra isn’t exactly the big city, but compared to his cramped quarters, it might as well be as bustling as Manhattan. To his chagrin, Percy hasn’t actually spent much time in town, rarely venturing further inland than the corner shop on the boardwalk. 

Annabeth laughs as he points it out. “Only you, seaweed brain.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Your first instinct is to go for the bodega.” She laughs again, bright and bubbly, her curls bouncing in the evening breeze. “Guess you really can’t take the city out of the boy.” 

Hand in hand, they wander the streets, Annabeth pointing out every architectural feature that tickles her fancy. She had used the flight to blast through an audiobook about Ottoman architecture, and she takes great delight in putting her newfound knowledge to the test. Almost as much delight as Percy takes in listening to her. 

“So why is this one square?” he asks, as they are admiring the remains of a mosque with its tower broken off. “I thought mosques were supposed to be rounder.” 

“It depends. Lots of mosques have unique layouts because of geographical limitations. This one is interesting, though. Look at the walls—see how they’re sticking out?” 

Percy nods. 

“And the tiled roof. This mosque is missing the qubba.” 

“The what?” 

“The dome.” She needs both hands to explain, and Percy tries not to pout at the loss. “Representing the vault of heaven. It’s not a requirement, but it’s still unusual for a mosque not to have at least one dome.”

“You know,” he says, “I have noticed that all the churches here have domes.” 

Annabeth smiles, proudly. “They’re definitely related. Most dome architecture can be traced back to the 6th century, and the construction of the Hagia Sophia.”

“There weren’t domes before?” 

“There definitely were,” she says. “Remember the Pantheon in Rome?” 

“I was a little busy fighting some nymphs that day.” 

“It’s basically a giant circle imposed on top of a big square. It’s the world’s biggest dome made of unreinforced concrete. But that means it’s also very heavy, and it needs a lot of internal support, which shrinks the available internal space. The Hagia Sophia, on the other hand, is so amazing because the architects basically invented an entirely new way to construct and support the dome. Instead of putting a sphere on a cube, the Hagia Sophia has pendentives in the corners to help bear the weight of the dome. They also reduced the weight of the dome by cutting windows into the bottom, which lets in a ton of natural light, and supposedly it makes it look like the dome is floating.” She sighs, happily. “I’d love to see it one day.” 

Percy is already mentally composing his vacation request. “I’m sure I can get Ari to get us some time off after we officially discover the paradigm-shifting archaeological marvel.” 

Annabeth takes his hand again, almost glowing. “I’d really like that.” 

With renewed energy, they finish their ramble, settling down at the first restaurant they see once they emerge from the maze of streets back onto the beach. True to her wishes, Annabeth manages to eat her weight in stuffed peppers, while Percy devours almost an entire grilled octopus, using his fries to mop up every last morsel. They share a couple bottles of wine, and endless plates of fried cheese, as the sky turns from purple to blue, the twinkling lights of the cruise ships off the port like stars. 

Percy has his arm around her waist as they walk back to the boat. He’s a little tipsy, and Annabeth is very sturdy. Still, he manages not to trip as they slow their roll, coming to a halt in front of the very annoyed looking young woman who waits for them at the dock, tapping her foot next to a giant package. 

She doesn’t look like a local. Percy’s spent enough time with the frequent fishers that he can easily pick them out of a lineup. But she does look mad. “Um… can we help you?” 

The woman sighs, tossing the sweaty strands of brown hair which have escaped her tight ponytail. “Percy Jackson?” 

“Who wants to know?” Annabeth adjusts his grip on her waist, giving her more room to draw her knife. 

“I need your signature for a delivery.” 

Percy is pretty sure he would remember making an order big and important enough to need a signature. “Sure…?” 

She hands him a clipboard and a pen. Then she stares at him when he does nothing. “Are you going to sign?” 

“Sorry,” he says, “I’m a little confused.” Annabeth snorts. “Who is this from again?” 

“Mr. Yiannopoulos commissioned the equipment from New Rome on your behalf.” 

Oh. Now that he looks, he actually does see the Senate insignia on the top of the delivery form. 

“What is it?” 

The woman eyes Annabeth suspiciously. “And you are?” 

“Annabeth Jackson.” 

“Hero and Architect of Olympus,” Percy adds. 

Turns out, that was the trick. The woman’s jaw drops open, her eyes widening. “You’re—you’re Annabeth Chase?” she gasps. 

“That’s me.” 

Percy chuckles, clumsily signing the form. The novelty of Annabeth having fans has long since worn off, but not the delight of seeing other people recognize her brilliance. 

After an autograph and a selfie for Drusilla, who apologizes profusely for her attitude, Praetor, she had just been told to wait by the Flying Dolphin for an unknown amount of time, and you know how the Senate doesn’t always give all the pertinent details, Annabeth is giving her directions to their favorite gelato spot while Percy crouches by the package. “So, what is it?” 

“I don’t know,” says Drusilla, still starry-eyed. “I only picked it up in Miami.” 

Percy frowns. “Is that a card?” 

Sure enough, there’s a Hallmark greeting card taped to a corner, nearly hidden beneath all the customs stickers. Tongue between his teeth, he gently pries it off, cleanly slicing it open with Drusilla’s pen. On the cover is a drawing of a dragon, lighting birthday candles with his breath. 

“Who’s it from?” 

“To Percy,” he reads the chicken scrawl inside. “Got a special request from NRU engineering to help make you a little present. As payment, I expect ten percent of every underwater treasure chest you find. (Babies are expensive!) Love, Leo.” 

“What does it mean?” 

“Who’s Leo?” Drusilla wonders. 

Percy stands, grinning. “It means that Plan Earthquake is a-go.” 

***

Plan Earthquake is pretty much exactly what it sounds like it would be. 

The Aegean Sea plate is surprisingly active for how small it is, and seismic activity is pretty common in this part of the world. If, say, for instance, there were to be a minor earthquake originating from the Hellenic subduction zone, maybe it could potentially dislodge any archaeological detritus from where it was trapped in an anoxic cave almost six thousand meters below sea level, sending it floating closer to the surface, where it could then subsequently be discovered by some passing ship surveying the area for wrecks. 

You know, possibly. 

But first they need to get it out of the rock. 

Unfortunately, Leo’s magic winch did not come with jackhammers, so Percy is warming up for the big act by gently shaking the packed sand apart. Eunice is helping, too, redirecting the currents to help clear away the loose chunks of rock. Annabeth is on standby on the surface, monitoring the seismological chatter, while Arthur mans the ship, and keeps an eye out for sea monsters. 

“How you doing, hon?” Annabeth says into his bluetooth earbuds. 

Percy shakes out his hands, jumping up and down. “Fine,” he confirms. “Think we’re almost ready to fire up the winch. How’s it looking up there?” 

“All clear,” she confirms, after a beat. “Arthur says we’re alone out here. No ships, no uninvited guests.” 

They should be. There’s no reason for tourist ships to come this far south of the coast, nor for shipping out of Cairo to come this far north. Also, the monsters have been leaving them alone for the most part. Hopefully they’ll stay away, instead of dropping in in the middle of Plan Earthquake and making things interesting. Percy breathes in, stretching out his arms. “Alright. Give me another hour.” 

It’s long, grueling work, but bit by bit, they uncover the wreck, freeing inch after inch of preserved wood. To his delight, he finds that he was right—the packed sediment did preserve the paint. There’s no way it will survive contact with oxygenated water, and there’s no way he could explain away any pictures, so he commits each color to memory, all the beautiful ruddy reds and browns, and the gold and white geometric designs on the prow. It’s truly a masterpiece of construction, shell-first with mortise and tenon joints, sleek and sturdy and beautiful.

Though, he thinks as he starts attaching cables to the boat, maybe a little too sleek. Hopefully it’s sturdy enough to withstand the pulling. 

“Eunice,” he calls, “you ready?” She’s not his first choice for an assistant, but he figures even she can’t screw up pressing a button. 

She frowns at the machine, the image odd on her delicate face. If he didn’t know better, he would say she was afraid of it. “Prince, explain again, what would you have me do?” 

Okay, nevermind. “You know what, just swap with me.” 

“My lord?” 

“Just keep the boat from shaking too bad, and try and slip water between the wood and the rock to help wiggle it out. I’ll man the winch.” 

The winch is automatic, but Percy still has to keep his attention divided more than he’d like between the cable and the boat and the rock, making sure nothing goes catastrophically wrong. It’s slow going, and sometimes they have to pause the winch to maneuver around a particularly stubborn piece of earth, but between Eunice and Percy, they manage to slide the hull out of the packed stone. Percy winces a t every groan and every ding of rock against the wood, but that’s okay. No wreck is perfect. 

A particularly spiky shard of rock scratches a deep line across the gold paint, and Percy kind of wants to cry about it. 

Then, the winch abruptly stops, the mechanics whining in protest. The cables pull taut, and the wood screams. 

It’s over in a second, but to Percy, it might as well be slow motion. 

The keel can apparently no longer stand being dragged over the rough earth. Percy watches in horror as a catastrophic looking crack races across the wood, shooting up from bottom to top. The internal pegs on the mortise and tenon joints must have been more corroded than he thought, because as soon as they touch water, they disintegrate, and the ship pulls itself apart. 

Percy swears. 

“Are you okay? Percy!” 

“I’m fine—it’s the ship!” 

Eunice races over to the machine, overcoming her fear of technology to slam on the brakes. 

“What happened?” 

The port side of the hull has split in two, sharp splinters of wood floating in the water, and based on the creaking, the starboard side is just about on the brink, the force of the winch leaving it hovering in an awkward bend, listing to the right. The ship’s cargo has spilled out onto the rock, coins and ingots glinting in the soft light of Eunice’s bioluminescent skin. 

“It broke,” he says, not at all able to keep the horror out of his voice. 

“How?”

“I broke it.” A life-changing find that could upend the entire field of archaeology, and Percy goes and breaks it. He swims closer to investigate, running his fingers over the exposed wood. 

“Talk to me.” 

“The pegs must have been in worse shape than I thought.” Hopefully Percy can salvage at least one of them for further study. “The hull cracked towards the stern, and the joints just came apart.” 

She swears. “How bad?” 

“It’s not great.” The front half, suspended in the water, seems to have emerged mostly unscathed, but as for the stern, it is deeply, firmly wedged within the earth. “The stern is stuck, and I’m not sure I can get it out.”

“So, what now?” 

Percy blows out a breath. “There’s nothing for it—we’ll have to keep going and excavate what we can.” 

And break the other half of the ship in the process. 

A lot of bad things had happened to Percy in his life. This doesn’t make the top ten, but it definitely makes the top twenty. Right in between getting kicked out of Goode and getting electrocuted by Thalia. 

He takes a moment to mourn the loss of a beautifully made vessel, his hand over his heart, before waving back to Eunice. “Alright,” he calls. “Fire it up.” 

Of course, he has to amend his list after he watches the winch rip apart the other side of the hull. This hurts way more than a lightning bolt to the chest. 

But Percy’s been a soldier longer than he’s been an archaeologist, so he can get his job done, and grieve at the same time. 

He takes a deep breath, calls on the power deep within him, and cracks a fault line. 

It’s over, quicker and easier than blowing up Mount St. Helens, and less than forty minutes later he’s back on the ship, sitting too close to his wife in the galley, feeling sorry for himself. 

“It’s really okay, babe.” 

He groans, dropping his head in his hands. “I can’t believe I Schliemanned it!” 

Arthur pokes his head in. “How are we looking on the scanners, Mrs. Jackson?” 

Annabeth really likes Arthur. More specifically, Percy thinks she really likes it when he calls her by her family name. So he’s not surprised at her warm tone with him. “Minimal tsunami risk across the coast. Thanks for the save earlier.” 

He blushes, mumbling. “It was nothing.”

She had sworn up and down to Percy that she had never been in any real danger. Percy did not believe Annabeth Ingrid Jackson about measures of danger (she feels the same about him, so it works out.) But his earthquake had rocked their boat more than a little bit. Annabeth hadn’t gotten far. And probably wouldn’t have made it over the side. But Arthur, all about safe harbor, had managed to grab her before anything too catastrophic occurred. 

He slides in across from the now, tapping his feet against the base of the galley table. “So, what now?” 

Percy pinches the bridge of his nose. “Now we wait. We’ll come back at some point in the spring, officially discover what’s left of the ship, and get it ready for surveying.” 

“What’s left of it?” he wonders. 

“I had to leave like a fifth of the wreck in the cave.” A whole fifth, including hull, keel, deck, and cargo. Annabeth rubs his back, and another wave of misery crashes over him. He can’t believe someone paid him over a quarter of a million dollars to come all this way and destroy the first priceless artifact he finds. 

Arthur frowns, thoughtful. “Isn’t that a good thing, though?” 

Percy lifts his head. “What do you mean?” 

“Well, intact shipwrecks are super rare, even for stuff sunk in the last fifty years.” 

“The Uluburun was mostly intact.” 

“Mostly,” Arthur points out. “And it wasn’t stuck in a cave. What are the odds of a three thousand year old ship surviving being ripped out of a rockbed by an earthquake?”

“He’s right,” Annabeth says. “Honestly, the fact that it’s broken will probably add to its authenticity.” 

Percy hums, noncommittally. They’re probably right. But he still feels bad about it. Bad enough that he feels like an hours-long swim to clear his head. 

Annabeth is waiting for him when he climbs up on deck around midnight. Just Annabeth.

“Where’s Arthur?”

“Arthur went to bed,” she says. “I ended his watch for him.” 

“You’re not the captain.” 

“There was a power vacuum, on account of the captain going swimming with the fishes.” 

He kisses her, the last dregs of his bad mood floating out to sea. “I’m so glad you’re here.” 

“Me, too.” 

They hold each other, swaying to the gentle motion of the waves, under a dark sky littered with stars, and Percy has a strange, distinct feeling that they’d done this before. Maybe in another life. Maybe in his dreams. But something about this moment, so peaceful and beautiful, feels eternal, immutable, like a cornerstone of the universe. 

“Guess what?” she murmurs into his collarbone. 

“Hmm?” 

“I’m pregnant again.” 

He goes warm, from the tips of his toes up to his chest and his cheeks. “Really?” 

“I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner, given how excited you get on the water.” 

Then he blushes for an entirely different reason.

“Sorry.” 

“So not a problem.” She kisses him again. “So, so not a problem.” 

***

Percy takes a sip of lukewarm water. It gets hot in Greece in early March, and this room, even with all the windows and doors open, is still pretty stuffy. “Excavation is currently underway at the Chrysi site, and is expected to continue through June, before resuming this coming September. By then, we should have completed both the trilateral and photogrammetric surveys of the site, and may be ready to begin excavating the cargo and other material for preservation.” He clicks to the final slide, a picture Arthur had taken of him, Annabeth, and the girls on the deck of the Flying Dolphin, and the audience politely coos, applauding while holding cups of hot tea. 

Which makes sense, since this is a tea talk, something that apparently exists. But why do they all drink hot tea for these things? It’s over sixty degrees fahrenheit outside! 

“Thank you so much,” says the moderator, an older woman with straight, white hair, who speaks fluent Greek in the most Jersey-ish accent he had ever heard in his life. “Really, really intriguing stuff. Shall we open the floor for questions?” 

The audience is made up mostly of young grads, dutifully scribbling away in their notebooks, with some older academics scattered among them. They sit on couches and armchairs and rickety-looking wooden seats, lined up in rows, and the unlucky ones who didn’t get a seat either are relegated to the porch outside the salon, leaning against the door, or squished three to a person on the piano bench in the back. 

A girl in the front row with dark, curly hair and a flannel shirt raises her hand. She doesn’t look that much older than him. Actually, she might be a few years younger. That’s kind of a sobering thought. “Thank you so much for such an interesting talk. My question is, you have all these different types of data, between the legacy data and the weather patterns—how do you keep it all organized?” 

“With difficulty.” His audience chuckles. “For something with this many moving parts, I have to do it manually. However, drawing my own maps gives me the freedom to adapt on the fly.” And add data that would be, uh, inconsistent with mortal abilities. “Plus, my wife helps me keep everything straight.” 

Annabeth flashes him a thumbs up from her front row seat. Junie flashes him two, and Lucie kicks her feet, distracted by the amphora on the bookshelf next to her. He hopes that Annabeth, at six months pregnant, still has her reflexes ready if Lucie tries to make the bookshelf baby’s first lava rock wall. 

From the back of the room, a thin, reedy man with round glasses and a scruffy black beard raises his hand. “How do you choose your areas to survey? What made you pick Crete?” 

The fish tell him. “I have specialties in deep-sea diving and open water sailing,” well, that’s one way of putting it, “so, the Aegean is just a little too shallow for my tastes. Plus, there’s been so much maritime traffic in the Levantine Sea since, well, forever, it seemed like a natural place to start.” 

To the left of the first girl, another girl raises her hand, her sleeve falling to show off her amazing red figure pottery tattoo. “Thank you so much for sharing. The colors are just so bright and so strong, do you know, or do you have any theories as to why it hasn’t degraded?” 

He and Annabeth have spent days hammering out the details Percy would fudge, drilling the answers so often they become automatic, but he’s still proud of himself for not tripping over his words when he answers, “It’s unclear as of right now. There’s still a ton of tests that need to be run, but my best guess would be that, after it sank, the ship ended up in some kind of anoxic environment, maybe like the Bannock Basin, that was able to preserve most of the organic matter.” He ducks his head, full of false modesty. “Of course, that’s just a theory.”

Annabeth smirks at him from the corner of his eye, and he really has to fight back the answering one which threatens to spread across his face.

The tea talk wraps up in due time, and the chairs and couches are summarily put back into place as the audience all moves out onto the porch, carrying plates of crackers and cheese and tall, thin bottles of ouzo. Percy hangs behind, lingering at the podium, entertaining the stragglers who come up with questions and “more of a comment, really” and whatever else, leaning against the wooden mantle now that the project screen which covered it has been retracted back into the ceiling. Annabeth has more or less let the kids roam the now-empty salon to their hearts’ content, allowing them to check out the art and artifacts with strict instructions to Junie not to touch, so she can hold court with Percy. He’s grateful, always, for her steady support. 

“So you think it’s more of a warship,” says an older man, with a shock of white hair but the energy of a college student. 

Percy nods. “At first glance, other than weaponry, the cargo looked like it was mostly looted material—jewelry, precious stones, that kind of thing.” 

“I saw, those raw sapphires? What an amazing find!”

Next to him, Annabeth surreptitiously covers her brand new sapphire bracelet with her other hand. 

“Where are you headed next? My wife and I have spent pretty much our whole careers excavating in Crete, so if you’re headed back that way in June, we’d love to take you two out to lunch.” 

Annabeth’s eyes light up, a calculating spark. “Your wife is an archaeologist, too?” 

He nods, proudly gesturing to a silvery haired woman, chatting in Greek with the moderator, her hand over her mouth as she laughs. “I study Bronze Age Crete, she does Hellenistic, and together, we’ve been excavating at Mochlos for, gosh, I don’t even remember how long.” Catching Annabeth’s expression, he asks her, “But you’re not an archaeologist, yeah?” 

“Unfortunately,” she shrugs, ruefully. “I’m an architect.” 

“Somebody has to bring in the bacon.” 

The man laughs. “Well hey, it’s handy to have an architect out in the field! And to get to bring your kids with you, too…” He shakes his head, his gaze, like a magnet, turning back to his own wife. “I don’t have to tell you how special it is to have someone you love doing this work with you.”

Annabeth takes his hand, squeezing, but Percy has no qualms about public displays of affection, so he does not hesitate to sling his arm around her shoulders and kiss her on the cheek, loud and sloppy. She shoves him, laughing, and as he hears Junie and Lucie start playing around on the old piano in the corner of the salon, on this beautiful warm spring day in Athens, Percy can’t remember if he’s ever been happier. 

***

They decide to extend their trip past the end of May. Estelle had been put out all year that she wasn’t able to live with her big brother on a boat and explore the Mediterranean for ancient shipwrecks instead of having to go to school, ugh, so Sally and Paul agree that they are all in dire need of some island time. Percy had to return the Dolphin at the end of his fellowship, and while he was sorry to see it go, the Amalia is a little bit nicer. The man he rented it from said it belonged to his yiayia, and he had brought it with him when he moved from Poros to the mainland. Where the Dolphin was all business, the Amalia is all homey, quiet pleasure. The man, Kostas (Percy had snorted, and Annabeth had had to kick him) had done his best to remove all personal traces to make her fit for rental, but Percy can still sense the love in every inch, from stem to stern. He runs his hand up the mast, and he’s nearly bowled over by the strong rush of emotions practically radiating from her—love, sorrow, and a pride so strong it makes his heart hurt. 

As nice as she is, she still won’t hold all nine of them—the family plus Arthur, who is well on his way to becoming Sally Jackson’s third child—so Percy is spending more time on shore this one month than he has all year. He’s had to move out of the Piraeus apartment, too, but Paul got an amazing deal on a vacation rental apartment in Kolonaki, so Percy wakes up every morning to the sight of the Acropolis from his balcony, sipping on a nice, cold glass of peach juice. 

Don’t get him wrong, it’s pretty nice. There’s not a lot to complain about. 

But he’s very excited to get back out on the water for one last ride. 

Just him and the love of his life.

He had no destination in mind, just somewhere far enough from shore to see if they could catch a glimpse of some dolphin pods. Annabeth, just about ready to pop, is lounging on the sun-drenched deck while Percy takes a call in the galley. “How do you feel about Nat Geo?” Ari asks in lieu of a greeting. 

“Like in general?” 

“Have you ever had media training?” 

“...No?” 

“Well, you’re going to.” Through the IM, Ari is happier than Percy’s ever seen him, his features smoothed out into a broad, happy grin. “The permit application just landed on my desk. I’m fielding requests from all over to get a glimpse of the Chrysi wreck.” 

“I thought my problem was that I attracted too much attention.”

“You keep making life-changing discoveries like this, Praetor, and you can attract all the attention you can handle.” 

“Hope so,” says Percy, “because Eunice told me that she heard from her sister that there’s another Bronze Age ship floating around Ithaca that needs discovering.” 

He squints, suddenly suspicious. “You’re not planning another earthquake, are you?” 

“Not currently, but who knows. There are a lot of subduction zones around Greece. Lots of places for ships to get stuck.”

But Ari just sighs, throwing his hands up in defeat, though his smile has come back. “Whatever, fine, whatever you need. Make your little earthquakes.” 

Then, from above deck, an earth-shattering scream rips through the peaceful afternoon. 

“PERCYYYYYYY!!!” 

“Whoops, that’s my cue,” says Percy. “Gotta run, send me the Nat Geo details later!” 

Swiping his hand through the image, he dashes up to the deck, expecting to find a pod of dolphins waiting in the water below.

Instead, he has to pivot, hard, and get down to work bringing his third daughter into the world. 

The dolphins return later in the evening to meet the new little sea princess, then graciously offer to escort them back to shore, where his family (and a doctor) gather at the docks, ready and eager to meet their newest relative, little Thalassa Amalia Jackson. 

“Thalassa?” Sally asks, holding the tiny thing, her voice soft with wonder. 

“Annabeth’s idea, actually,” says Percy, hovering as the doctor checks his wife over. “Born amid ships.”

“And made amid ships, I suspect.” 

Percy blushes, scratching his neck. “Guilty.” 

“I also get to name the next one,” says Annabeth, exhausted but proud and healthy

“You can name every single one of them.” A deal like that shouldn’t be made lightly, but Percy doesn’t care. He’d give her the world if she asked for it. A name is nothing. “Except Olivia.” 

But Annabeth just grins. “No take-backs!”