#if you’ve never seen Gayle

[an-adhd-infested-nerd]

The impact Chris Fleming's Gayle series had on my humor is insane. Not even just the obvious one with Company is Coming or the “was anyone going to tell me” meme. Her getting a manslaughter charge at Cinnabon. The fact she picked up her son after seeing him wandering around the Costco. The way she says WiFi in Episode 1 . The episode where she think Bonnie’s stealing her couscous and then it turns out Bonnie brings her own couscous from home and for that Gayle “can only respect her”. The entirety of the Mall teens episode. Her drop kicking a mailbox. The one episode where she goes fishing with Bruce and catches a fish with her bare hands and screams into the canoe. Actually any scene with Bruce, Bruce Burgwinkle does such an amazing job playing the straight man. Her smashing her head through a window and going “Hi Bruuuuuuuuuuuuce”. That long unedited scene of Gayle escaping in her sea kayak with her couscous chest. “TUESDAYS. AREN’T. GOOD FOR ME”. That shot of her sticking her middle finger out the roof while flooring it backwards. "Jerry Garcia and the lesbian Agenda". Her stealing a pig and then getting attached to the pig. "I'm angry. I'm aroused". Her smashing her head through a window. Ina Garten being a trickster god figment of her imagination. THE YANNI CONCERT SCENE. Chris and his mom dancing around in matching pink activewear. Gayle and Bonnie passive aggressively talking shit about each others dogs (“I read in the times they tend to be bisexual”) Gayle's feud with Zooey Deschanel. The entire Christmas musical special. Her dressing as an egret to help her husband DAAAAVE and then LAUNCHING him over the finish line at a birdwatching competition. The entirety of her wedding. Her electrocuting herself to cook an apple pie. That entire scene of her trying to fit in with the new development by talking about iTunes. Saving the neighbors son from the perils of Radiohead with Lou Bega Mambo No.5. Getting obsessed with Co-ED acappella. I could actually go on for hours.

[dr-spencer-reids-queen]

Amplification: Part Two

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~1.9k

Summary: A deadly spread of Anthrax is going around infecting and killing people. One of your own is affected that completely tears your world into two. How will you over come this?

Warnings: canon violence, canon language, canon talk of death, methods of kill

Author’s Note: I do not own anything from Criminal Minds. All credit goes to their respective owners. If there are any warnings that exceed the normal death/kills from the show, I will list them. If you’ve seen the show, then it’s the same level of angst unless otherwise stated

x

The bookstore has been closed ever since Albert died, and Gayle's purchase happened right before it closed down. It would explain why only three people were hit, and when General Whitworth sent his men in for testing, they came back positive for Anthrax.

Albert's bookstore was the unsub's test run. He's gotta have a history with the place, so Penelope needs to come up with a list of present and past employees of the place, customers with grievances against the owner, and if any of them had a science background.

An attack of Anthrax isn't meant to kill three people inside a bookstore, it wants to be out in the open where it can feed and multiply in the way that it wants to. Just a small amount can wipe everyone out, and they'd never see it coming.

Another hour goes by and the six survivors of the attack are now down to four. This attack is killing people left and right and there is nothing you can do about it. The more they die off, the more family members demand answers for what's happening.

"It feels like the plague of Egypt," Linda says.

"Ten scourges created by God. Plague six was unhealable boils believed by biblical scholars to be caused by Anthrax."

"You never missed Sunday school, did you?"

"Actually, I've never been before. How is she doing?" Spencer asks about Abby.

"She's a fighter. She's held on this long because she's young and strong, but she's started to bleed into her lungs. We're running into another problem, though. When the next of kin have questions, what do we tell them about the cause of death?"

That is a question only Hotch and General Whitworth can answer. You can't tell anyone anything without punishment if it didn't come from Hotch. Instead of thinking things like that, you can try and think of the unsub and profile you have on him. It might help your team catch whoever is doing this.

Because the locations aren't symbolically significant, the attacks are personal. Understanding the significance of the locations will be the key to identifying the unsub.

This personal element strongly indicates a home-grown terrorist like the Amerithrax case. This is someone from the science or defense community. That's why the CIA is here. Hotch thinks they may know him. These home-grown terrorists are myopic zealots that believe that their work is of the greatest importance.

He may have preached about the threat of an attack on America. His coworkers would describe him as histrionic, paranoid, and secretive. He may have logged excess hours at work in the past weeks preparing for the attack. He even might have taken the full dosage of Anthrax vaccines over the recommended eighteen-month schedule and had yearly boosters.

This guy has his own workspace where he makes his product in privacy. He also has access to large, expensive, industrial-grade equipment at work. He's written about the threats of Anthrax attacks and published papers about it, yet he feels no one is listening, and that angers him. Now, he may have recently experienced some sort of professional humiliation like being demoted or fired. Now, that would have been his trigger, the moment he decided to go rogue.

He may have betrayed his loved ones to his cause and may be recently separated or divorced. This is somebody who knows every detail of the 2001 Anthrax attack and has talked about what that suspect did right or wrong. He's watching the news very closely to see how the country reacts, and it's not a good one.

The CIA dug deep into their records and found a video of a classified hearing with the Subcommittee on Defense and Homeland Security in January of 2002. Dr. Lawrence Nichols used to work at the institution and left in 2002. The video is sent to your team at the hospital, Derek's team in Maryland, and the main office with everyone else. You and Spencer go into an empty hospital room to watch the video. Dr. Nichols went to the Senator to ask for money for a project he wanted to do with dangerous chemicals. He went to talk to the Senator about the attack in 2001 and why he should have funding for his project.

"Five people died. If you ask me, we're lucky it was just five. We're lucky that whoever sent these letters used cheap porous envelopes and not a crop duster. America's enemies are capable of wiping out entire cities, and we are woefully unprepared."

"I'm looking at your proposal--"

"Yes, sir," Dr. Nichols cuts the Senator off. "Every household needs gas masks and a two-month supply of Cipro for each resident. Every major city needs hospitals with bio-safety decontamination capabilities."

"Regarding the budget you propose for this operation--"

"Anything short of fifty billion would be grossly negligent."

"Dr. Nichols, you've got to realize how unrealistic that is. We can't justify spending that kind of money on an attack that may not happen."

"You people are in denial!" Dr. Nichols exclaims.

"Doing this would incite fear and panic among the public."

"This country should be panicked! We should live in utter fear of being attacked! We live in a time of war and WMD proliferation. If you continue to be blind to our lack of preparedness, then Americans will die, and I will have no problem in pointing the blame at you!"

The committee didn't fund his project and rejected him because he was becoming unstable and fanatical, which is why they removed him from Fort Detrick and blacklisted him from other prominent positions. Even though he believes in preparedness, he felt like people weren't listening. He might have done this to prove a point.

He fits the profile of the unsub to a T. He had access to research on Anthrax, had the resources available to do something like this, lost a highly respected job, and got divorced in the process. The job he has now is through a company called Bio-Design Technology that doesn't deal with Anthrax but with the Flu. If he got demoted from working with such deadly diseases to working with the flu, he might be angry enough to use Anthrax as a weapon.

Either way, you need to bring him in.

Derek pulled you and Spencer from the hospital to go to his house while Emily and Rossi went to his work to see if he was there. Along with you, Spencer, and Derek, a hazmat team joined you so they can clear the inside of his house. You have to wait outside until they're done with their investigation.

"It's clear so far," one of the members says when he hears from one of his men inside.

"Alright, keep me posted." Derek turns to you and Spencer. "This guy just had people over for a charity event last month."

"We should probably take a look around anyway."

You three walk to the backside of the property when Spencer hisses in pain. You look over to see rose bushes with thorns sticking out of the stems. He must have cut himself on the thorns but isn't too concerned about it. For someone who messes with Anthrax, his backyard isn't too sketchy. There is a pool with a beautiful gazebo area and lots of blooming flowers. Derek's phone rings and he answers whoever it is.

"Yeah, Princess, what's up? ... Uh-huh. Yeah, we're here now. ... Sorry. what? The lab is clean? ... You're sure? ... All right." You watch Derek as he talks to Emily. You're not paying attention to Spencer who goes off on his own. He turns to you and Spencer to tell you what she said. "They got nothin'--Where's Reid?"

You look behind you to see Spencer run into the large shed in the backyard. You and Derek quickly follow after him, but he slams the glass door to keep you and Derek out of some kind of lab.

"Spencer!" you gasp.

"Morgan! Y/N! Get back!"

"What the hell are you doing? What's wrong?"

"Believe me, get back."

"Reid, open this door!"

"Spencer, open the damn door!" you yell and slam your hands on the glass.

"I'm sorry. You can't come in here."

"No, open the door," you whimper. The only reason he would be trapped inside there and refuses to let anyone inside is that this is the place where Dr. Nichols created his Anthrax poison. "Spencer, no, open the door."

"I'm sorry," he sighs.

"Come on," Derek says and puts his hands on your shoulders.

"No!" you gasp. "I can't leave him. I'm not leaving him. Call Hotch and get people out here now! I'm not going anywhere!"

Derek has no choice but to listen to you. He needs people out here now if Spencer has any hope of making it out of this alive. Derek leaves and gets Hotch on the phone, and you look at your boyfriend with tears in your eyes.

"Open this door, Spencer, or I'm gonna break it."

"Don't, Y/N. There is white powder in here, and the air is blasting."

You let out a heartbreaking sob and put your hands to your mouth to quiet them. Spencer's heart breaks at the sight of you crying for him. Hotch and the biohazard team arrive quicker than you thought they would, and Derek tells Hotch where you are.

"Y/N, get out of there."

"I can't leave him," you cry. "I'm not leaving him alone!"

"Please don't cry."

"Spencer, I've seen what this does to people. There has not been one survivor and you're infected now. If the cure is not in there, then you're gonna..." You can't even say it. "I can't lose you. I love you so much."

You place your hand flat on the glass and Spencer puts his hand over yours.

"You need to get out of here."

"I can't leave you!"

"I will be fine."

He doesn't believe what he's telling you because he doesn't know if he's going to make it out of here alive or not. He's lying to protect your feelings but he forgets that you can tell when someone is lying. Your chest feels heavy and your whole body is shaking from fear. Your legs can't hold you up any longer so you fall to the ground in a heap of tears. Someone from the biohazard team comes in and places their hand on your shoulder.

"Ma'am, you need to leave."

"Y/N, listen to them."

"Spencer," you gasp.

The man practically forces you out of the shed to where Hotch and Derek are. Derek catches you when your legs wobble.

"I need to be in there, please. I can't leave him alone. He's scared, Hotch," you cry.

"Y/N, you need to calm down."

"I can't," you hiccup. "I can't lose him."

Hotch needs you to calm down so he calls Spencer and places him on speakerphone so you can hear his voice.

"Hotch, I really messed up this time," Spencer sighs.

"Reid, we need to get you out and to the hospital."

"No, I'm staying right here."

The tears won't stop rolling down your cheeks.

"No, Spencer, please leave. You need medical attention," you cry. "Please!"

"Y/N, I'm already exposed. It's not gonna do me any good to stop working on the case."

"He's already infected," General Whitworth says. "If Nichols created the strain, he may have also created the cure."

"Look, Dr. Nichols is in here but he's dead. Someone must have bashed something in his head. My best chance is to stay here, see if there's a cure, and try to figure out who killed Dr. Nichols."

"Hotch, say something to him!"

"He's right. His best chance is inside. We're gonna get a suit and mask into you right away."

"Don't bother. it's not gonna do me any good. I'm already infected."

This thing killed the first three victims within hours.

The thought of losing Spencer is something you can't even fathom. The thought hurts too much, and your chest starts closing up.

x

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[voidingintotheshout]

Chris Fleming: the snacks at Trader Joe’s that only women can see.

I will admit that I’ve never seen their stand up. I only caught some of Gayle but this is fantastic. If you’ve ever had someone describe something at Trader Joe’s that definitely sounds like they are just making it up, you will love this. 

[bananaofswifts]

HOW DO WE measure the impact of a musician in 2023? Streams can be bought. Awards can be finessed. Is it when demand for show tickets leads to a congressional hearing about Ticketmaster’s policies? Or when flight attendants shout out a fanbase making a pilgrimage to see a tour opener? Or when TikToks of merch inspirations and setlist predictions rack up millions of views? Nearly a decade ago, a headline ran declaring ‘Taylor Swift Is The Music Industry’ and those with even the slightest pulse on pop culture can tell she’s only grown more omnipresent since. It all led to a warm evening in Glendale, Arizona where months after delivering her most commercially-successful album to date, Midnights, Swift debuted a discography-spanning setlist that lasted over three hours and kicked off an aptly-named stadium run. The Eras Tour has arrived.

The sheer length of the set is a feat, but not completely surprising considering the breadth of catalog at Swift’s disposal. Watching the 12-time Grammy winner take the stage right at 8pm, and continue past 11pm triggers the often overused cliché: Who’s doing it like her?

After night had fallen and GAYLE and Paramore revved the crowd up with a mix of recent chart-toppers (GAYLE’s “abcdefu”) and cultural anthems (Paramore’s “Misery Business”), it was time for the main event. At 7:57pm, a timer appeared on a massive screen prompting screams from all corners of State Farm Stadium. Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” played as fans braced themselves for the arrival of Swift. When the timer hit 0:00, the house we’d seen in the “Lover” music video assembled on the screen, indicating that this evening was first and foremost about reviving the feelings each era evoked.

“So tonight, we’re going to be going through an adventure, one era at a time,” Swift said. “We’re going to be exploring the last seventeen years of music that I’ve been lucky enough to make and you’ve been kind enough to care about.”

It’s easy to compare one of Swift’s stadium shows to something you’d see on Broadway — never has that been more true than for The Eras Tour. The setlist is cut up into acts, grouped together by eras for each of Swift’s ten studio albums. For each era/act, Swift went full-send into that album’s look, feel, costume, color blocking, and more.

Many eras got a few songs. At one moment, it seemed like Swift’s soft spot for Folklore would mean we’d hear the entire album. On the opposite end, Speak Now’s part of the show was short but impactful. Swift played only one song from her third studio album, “Enchanted,” while wearing a stunning floor-length ballroom gown designed by Nicole + Derr. Hopping from act to act, Swift made it extremely clear when she’s taking the audience out of one era and into another. This isn’t a hastily put together setlist with a vague thread of connective tissue — Swift is taking her audience on a nostalgic extravaganza.

For both Swift and her fans, it’s been a long road to get to The Eras Tour kickoff. Friday night’s opener was four projects, millions of record sales, and over 1,500 days removed from the last tour stop on the Reputation stadium tour in 2018. Plus, who can forget the Ticketmaster fiasco in handling the sale of The Eras Tour tickets, which not only prompted an apology to Swift from the ticketing monopoly but also for Congress to investigate.

In perhaps a sympathetic nod to the canceled Lover Fest, Swift began the festivities with the Lover era. Wearing a jaw-dropping Versace bodysuit, Swift launched into “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince” for the opening number. Swifties eager to see “Cruel Summer” live weren’t disappointed, as Swift strutted down the catwalk towards the stadium’s center, belting out the fast-paced bridge eager to deliver what stans had snatched away from them due to pandemic-related cancellations.

For “The Man,” Swift completed her Versace look with a blazer and made sure everyone could see the red bottoms when she kicked her feet up on a conference room table as she delivered the masterfully written and scathing assessment of gender inequality in pop culture. Swift closed out the Lover era act with “You Need to Calm Down” and “The Archer,” the latter getting a beautifully stripped down rendition so Swift’s vocals echoed across the stadium: “Because all of my enemies started out friends / Help me hold onto you.”

At one point, as Swift ran through hits from her Fearless era, she flashed a smile and announced to the crowd that she was taking us back to high school with her. The nostalgia seeped into the show, resulting in some of the loudest crowd participation yet, especially from those old enough to have grown up with Swift and were in high school at the same time she was. The singer ran through “Fearless,” “You Belong With Me,” and “Love Story,” reminding us of a time when we discovered the pop phenomenon unbeknownst to the level of celebrity she’d achieve.

Something about Swift — she’s online. If the fact that she decided to end last night with the TikTok-friendly “Karma” doesn’t make that obvious enough, her joke about disliking Evermore hammers home the point.

“We’re currently in the middle of the Evermore album, which is an album I absolutely love despite what some of you say on TikTok,” Swift said with a grin.

Later on in the act reserved for her ninth studio album, in line with how theatrical the event was, Swift set up a beautiful dinner setting only to deliver a heart-wrenching rendition of “Tolerate It.” She also performed “Tis the Damn Season,” “Willow,” “Marjorie,” and “Champagne Problems,” giving fans a sizable taste of the Evermore live experience they weren’t able to receive when the project came out in 2020.

For the acts dedicated to Reputation and Red, fans were treated to a masterclass in visuals and hitmaking, two key elements that has assured Swift prolonged success for as long as she’s had it. The powerful, striking, snake motifs were an awesome callback for fans who attended the Reputation tour.

For Red, Swift went through “22,” “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” and “I Knew You Were Trouble. She closed out the act with a beautiful performance of the 10-minute “Taylor’s Version” of “All Too Well.” In the evening’s most ethereal moment, small white confetti made to look like snow blanketed the State Farm Stadium as she neared the end of her magnum opus, singing “Because in this city’s barren cold/I still remember the first fall of snow/And how it glistened how it fell/I remember it all too well.” Not only is Swift a savant for world-building, but she’s perfected the ability to translate those worlds into the live experience.

Swift wasn’t shy about making sure people got the full Folklore live experience. A makeshift cabin, not unlike the one made during Swift’s 2021 Grammys performance, sat on the stage with Swift perched on it during “Invisible String.” The star also discussed how she finally got comfortable crafting narratives for purely fictional characters, rather than ripping them from the headlines about her life.

“Folklore was such a different album for me. I start writing it about two seconds into the pandemic. I was just so very aware of how much time I was going to have to spend away from you,” Swift explained before launching into “Betty,” “The Last Great American Dynasty,” “August,” “Illicit Affairs,” “My Tears Ricochet,” and “Cardigan.” “With this album, I thought it would be so fun to create characters, and storylines, and they can live in different times, and then can do all of these things, and they could fall in love and hurt each other and go to war…”

1989’s era act turned the party up and restored the energy, with Swift donning a Roberto Cavalli top and skirt and going through “Style,” “Blank Space,” “Shake It Off,” “Wildest Dreams,” and “Bad Blood.”

To cap off the evening, Swift returned to Midnights, performing album highlights “Lavender Haze,” “Mastermind,” and more. It was hard to ignore the immense gratitude the singer continued to exude throughout the evening, with the “thank yous” coming more and more often the closer she got to the end.

Eventually, the singer asked the crowd if they had time for one more and launched into her finale, “Karma,” a track with a passionate chorus that’s begging to be scream-sung in a room of about 60,000 who’ve been waiting for this exact moment for years. Maybe it’s fitting that an artist who’s had more than her fair share of ups and downs, and at times has been the most polarizing musician alive, ends her stadium tour opener with a song about how she can finally protect her peace. Karma’s a relaxing thought, indeed.

The Eras Tour is a feat. It’s live music at its highest spectacle and greatest excess. And for most, without the catalog and showmanship of Swift, it’d be too much. But 17 years into her career, maybe we ought to stop being surprised when she finds a way to top her own efforts year after year. Towards the end of Paramore’s set, Swift’s good friend Hayley Williams said we had gathered that evening to celebrate Swift’s incredible career. There’s something funny about a greatest hits concert for someone who’s never been more in her prime, isn’t there?

[goldenavenger02]

Pillow Fights and Long Nights

5 Times Kai was in the hospital for Lloyd, 1 time Lloyd should have been in the hospital, and 1 time Lloyd was in the hospital for Kai.

Dedicated to @rosiehunterwolf

•••

1.

'I should've been watching him.' Kai thought to himself as they all stood in the waiting room of Ninjago City hospital. Since there were multiple doctors in Ignacia, he and Nya had never needed to be here.

However, hearing Jay's horror stories about multiple failed inventions landing him in here for days at a time, or hearing about Cole's failed dancing resulting in at least two different injuries, not to mention the Triple Tiger Sashay incident, was definitely not calming his nerves.

He shouldn't have left Lloyd alone with the training equipment he didn't know how to use, when there had been multiple other people who could've been checking where they were while waiting on a Serpentine sighting.

When he had been forced out of the Bridge because of Jay screaming, saying that Lloyd was bleeding on the deck, Kai had only ever felt that sinking feeling in his stomach twice before.

When Nya was taken by Garmadon, and when Lloyd nearly sank into the lava inside of the Fire Temple.

Which led to where they were now. The hailed "protectors of Ninjago" leaning against chairs and the wall of the hospital, staring at the door that Sensei, Lord Garmadon and Lloyd had disappeared behind, and pretending that they were not there at all in order to keep their heart rates from getting out of control.

"-which is why I stopped trying to climb the piles of junk." Jay's voice rang back in his head, snapping him out of his thoughts and he could feel fire against his hand.

"Kai, calm down," Nya's voice perked up, gently setting her hand on his arm, and Kai allowed himself to take a deep breath, the fire extinguishing from his hand, "I know you're upset, but if you burn down the hospital, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. This is probably a place we don't need to get banned from."

"Yeah, I'm just worried. He's been in there for over an hour and we haven't heard anything," Kai explained, letting his eyes flutter closed with worry, "I shouldn't have left him alone."

"You didn't know he would get hurt," Cole explained, putting his hand on his other shoulder, "you can't put that on yourself."

"But I knew that he was still getting the hang of the training equipment, and I knew that you guys were standing by and waiting for the Serpentine sighting." Kai argued, but Zane just shook his head before speaking up.

"We've gotten hurt multiple times using that equipment, and it wasn't this bad. You were probably just expecting a bump or bruise at the most, even if it was more so an instinct than an actual thought."

"Yeah, no one blames you, dude." Jay added, putting his hand against Kai's back when finally, the door opened and Sensei came out.

"He's going to be alright," he assured before any of them could say a word, and Kai couldn't keep his sigh of relief in, "He has a concussion, and he has to stay overnight so he can be monitored, but he's going to be just fine."

"Can we see him?" Kai asked, and had to swallow when Sensei shook his head "no", because while he knew Garmadon wouldn't hurt Lloyd after they just got him back, he still felt uneasy with him being around Lloyd by himself.

"He's sleeping now, and his father is with him. We'll come back in a few hours, but we still have to stay vigilant and make sure that Pythor doesn't get the last Fangblade."

"Yes, Sensei." All six of them groaned and made their way back to the Bounty, and Kai had to force his feet to go and avoid disrespecting Sensei yet again, no matter how tempting it was.

2.

"Well, the good news is that Cole's going to throw out expired spices now." Kai joked, sitting on the edge of Lloyd's hospital bed, phone in hand as he updated Nya on Lloyd's condition.

Due to a flu going around, only one person was allowed to visit at a time, and Sensei had decided that Kai should stay with him while he went to stock up on healing teas for this exact scenario in the future.

"Not funny, dude," Lloyd groaned, curling up on his side, "my stomach still feels like it's going to explode."

"I think it already did." Kai chuckled, immediately regretting it when he saw the look of pure misery on Lloyd's face, which had him shoving his phone in his pocket before looking right at him, "sorry, I'll stop. Can I get you another ginger ale?"

"I'm just going to throw it up," Lloyd sighed, rubbing a hand over his face before turning on the TV.

Unfortunately, they were immediately greeted by Gayle Gossip talking about how Garmadon had seemingly gone missing, which Kai reached over and turned off, seeing Lloyd put his head in his hands, "on second thought, I'd rather throw up."

Kai couldn't help but smile sympathetically at him, gently squeezing his hand. "You've got us, Lloyd," that's when an idea popped into his head, "let me text Zane, see if we can figure out a way to smuggle some of his chicken noodle soup in here."

"Don't let him use the expired spices," Lloyd groaned as Kai pulled out his phone again.

"It'd probably taste better than the food in here." Kai teased with a smile, receiving a glare from Lloyd; and in hindsight, the pillow he received to the face from Lloyd was most likely well deserved.

3.

"Just a sprained wrist, Kai," the doctor smiled softly as they wrapped bandages around the cut that covered his left arm, "you're very lucky."

Kai nodded, although he wasn't focused on the pain in his wrist, and more so on the fact that they maybe had two minutes of peace before Lloyd had passed out against him due to the absolute exhaustion from the final battle.

And while he knew that he had his uncle and parents, he couldn't stop the worry from clawing at his heart as the moment replayed in his head.

•••

"There's no way of knowing what's around the corner, but as long as there's something worth fighting for, there's always a need for a ninja. And we'll be ready." Kai insisted to Sensei, watching as his team approached him.

He couldn't keep the grin off his face as they looked to the brightness, one hand on Sensei's back and the other on Lloyd's shoulder. 'Little Lloyd Garmadon saved the day.'

However, just when they looked away from the sun, and the others started to spread out, that's when Kai noticed just how pale Lloyd was, even with a smile on his face. "Lloyd? You okay?" He asked softly, nudging his shoulder.

"My leg hurts…" Lloyd mumbled, his words slurring slightly, but before Kai could alert the others, Lloyd was already unconscious and slumped against his chest.

"Sensei!" He called out, gently maneuvering Lloyd so he was on his back, watching as the others ran back towards him, "Sensei, a little help!"

•••

Kai made his way to the waiting room with instructions to avoid using his left wrist, and kept back the disappointment when he didn't see Lloyd, but he couldn't hold back his relief to see Nya and immediately engulfed her in a hug which she returned just as tightly. "I'm so glad you're okay."

"I'm glad you're okay," she smiled before pulling away, glancing down at his arm before looking back at him, "well, mostly."

Kai couldn't ignore the bandage against her cheek, and when he looked back at his other teammates, it seemed as though Zane and his father were the only ones unscathed.

Cole was absolutely littered in bruises nearly everywhere that there was bare skin, both of Nya's eyes had bruises around them along with scratches that covered both of her arms, and he could tell that Jay's ribs were at least bruised by the way he was breathing, not to mention the stitches that were peeking out from the neckline of his gi.

"How's Lloyd?" Kai asked softly, unable to stop holding onto his sister, watching as her face switched from a smile to a soft frown. 'That was never good.'

"He's absolutely drained, not to mention his ankle was nearly shattered. The doctors think that it was the adrenaline that kept him from feeling it. They're not letting anyone who isn't family see him until after they do surgery on it."

"They don't have the right to call us anything other than his family." Kai scowled, pushing past Nya as his chest burned, determined to find Lloyd even if he burned the whole hospital down around them.

Luckily for the staff, Lloyd's room was easy to find and Kai immediately walked in, resulting in the turn of Sensei, Misako and Garmadon's heads.

"Kai, calm down." Sensei insisted firmly, holding a hand out towards Kai but he couldn't stop him from going to Lloyd, which forced him to swallow.

His skin was the palest he had ever seen, even compared to when he had gotten food poisoning a few months back, his ankle was wrapped up, but Kai could still see the bruises stretch up his leg, and his under eyes were dark, like he hadn't slept in weeks.

"Kai, it might be best for you to wait with the others." Sensei suggested softly, putting his hands on his shoulders, but he shook him off and grabbed Lloyd's hand instead.

"I made a promise to protect the green ninja, to fight beside him; with all due respect, Sensei, I can't do that in a waiting room. And if any of you try to make the argument that I'm not family, I'm going to fight you tooth and nail," Kai stopped for a moment to look at Lloyd's sunken face before turning back to his three parental figures, "Lloyd's my brother, just as much as Nya is my sister. I'm not leaving him."

To Kai's surprise, Garmadon was actually the one who approached him and set his hand on his shoulder before he spoke, "no one is going to kick you out, Kai. And if they try, they'll have to go through me."

Kai nodded, and despite the fact he was no longer evil, he was still a little shocked that he was agreeing with Garmadon.

But at the same time, as he held Lloyd's hand in his, he had never been happier to have him on his side.

4.

"I can't believe how awesome your powers are, Nya." Jay admired, resulting in a smile from Nya, which Kai watched from afar.

He knew that Nya viewed them as friends, but with the way Jay looked at her, he had a flicker of something telling him that they would get together again someday

"I can't believe that I'm still being put on the pediatric ward," Lloyd mumbled, throwing a crumpled up piece of paper at the trash can, "I'm one of Ninjago's protectors and I'm still being treated like a kid."

That brought Kai back to the present as all five of them had crammed themselves into Lloyd's hospital room after the events of what had happened in Stiix.

After all, nearly losing Lloyd to Morro was nerve wracking for all of them, and after the events of the battle against the preeminent, Lloyd had all but passed out on the way back to Ninjago City due to being sleep deprived and malnourished.

"In their defense, Lloyd, you are under the age of eighteen, which means unless there were special circumstances, you are required to be put with other minors." Zane supplied, which only received a sarcastic response from Lloyd.

"Thanks, Zane. Real helpful." And with that, he threw another piece of paper at the trash can.

Kai shot a glance towards Cole, silently telling him that he needed to talk to Lloyd alone and hoped that he got the newly turned ghost's attention, even though they were all still coming to terms with the change.

Luckily, Cole was still Cole, and got the message loud and clear before turning to the others; "Hey, let's go check out the cafeteria, see if we can find anything worth smuggling up here to Lloyd."

After Zane, Jay, Nya and Cole left, and Kai could no longer hear Jay's questions about if Cole even needed to eat anymore, he turned to Lloyd and sat next to him on the bed, taking in Lloyd's condition.

His under eyes were very dark, his skin was way too pale and Kai could see just how much muscle mass Lloyd had lost, and how he seemed like a shell of the lively kid who loved candy and pranking his brothers.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Kai asked softly, gently squeezing Lloyd's right shoulder since his hand had an IV in it that was currently pumping him full of fluids and electrolytes.

"My dad...is really gone," Lloyd stopped to wipe the tears that started running down with his left arm, even though more followed immediately after, "I-I don't know what to do anymore."

Kai didn't stop himself from pulling him into a hug, feeling the warm tears leak through his gi as Lloyd gripped onto him tighter. "I've got you, Lloyd," he felt the tears against his cheek while squeezing his brother tighter, "You've still got me."

5.

Kai couldn't keep his foot from tapping on the ground as he waited for Lloyd and Misako to get to the waiting room.

After Cole had become human once again, and Morro had disappeared, the majority of the group got to work on emptying out the Airjitzu temple, except for Kai, Misako and Lloyd.

When he saw the fact that Lloyd had a massive cut running from his left cheek to his jawline, and heard that Misako was taking Lloyd to the hospital despite his protests that "he'd have the coolest battle scar", Kai had offered to drive them to the hospital.

The only thing he knew about their Day of the Departed was from the hushed whispers that they had shared on the drive, which had the key words like "Pythor" and "my father", so he knew it was just as bad as what he and Nya had gone through with Chen, if not way worse.

The hospital was nearly empty, so his foot was tapping on the floor and he had his phone open to social media, trying to keep himself from losing his mind.

"Mom, I'm fine." He heard Lloyd insist as two sets of footsteps approached him, and he put his phone in his pocket, smiling when he saw the two of them, the younger of the two sporting a giant bandage against the left side of his face, which Lloyd seemed to take offense to as he snapped, "don't even start making jokes, Kai."

"Hey, hey, relax, Green Machine, I'm smiling cause you're okay," Kai insisted, wrapping his arm around Lloyd's shoulder as they made their way to the car before whispering, "if you need to talk to someone besides your mom, I'm here for you, okay?"

"I don't need to talk, but…" Lloyd trailed off, glancing at his mom before returning eye contact with Kai, "it'd be nice if I wasn't alone tonight."

"We'll figure it out, kid," Kai smiled, shuddering as they were met with the freezing air, feeling Lloyd get closer to him, "I swear."

5.5

"How could Lloyd be so...so stupid?!" Kai shouted, his hands going to his hair in anger, "he should've waited for us to come up with a plan!"

"You know that you did this once too, right Kai?" Cole piped up, and Kai couldn't respond with anything but a glare, because he was right.

Kai himself had fought Garmadon without a plan and even locked his team out of the room, but he thought that the golden weapons were being stolen, as for Lloyd…

Well, now that he thought about it, Lloyd had good reasoning as well; he wanted to bring his father, all of his father, back, and with how many nights he had fallen asleep in his arms, eyes full of grief, Kai couldn't even blame him.

He let out a frustrated sigh, the worry striking his heart like a loaded cannon that had just gotten new ammunition. 'I can't lose Lloyd, not now. Not after everything.'

Kai felt a cool, soft hand against his shoulder, and he didn't stop himself from clinging onto Zane while starting to chew on his lip, feeling his teeth start to make small indents against his skin.

"That's him!" PIXAL's voice rang in Kai's head as the Bounty slowed to a stop, Jay, Cole and Nya immediately rushing out, but Zane continued to hold onto Kai.

"Let me go!," Kai shouted, his vision going red as anger burned in his chest as he started to fight against Zane's hold, "I need to see Lloyd!"

"It would be unwise for you to see Lloyd until he's back on the Bounty, as we are trying to get out of here as soon as possible," Zane explained, the tight hold still feeling gentle against his shoulder, "they'll bring him aboard soon."

"Nya, how is he?" PIXAL asked over the comms, bringing Kai's attention to them as he focused in on his little sister's voice.

"We need the gurney, he's… He's in really bad shape," she explained, a sniffle cutting her off before she continued, "Kai, Zane, be ready to take him to control; it's still set up from where we fixed Zane."

"We're on it." Kai insisted, his heart beating so loud that he could hear it as he and Zane sprinted outside as the gurney was lifted on deck while the others climbed the ropes; Kai couldn't keep his gasp in when Lloyd's face hit the light.

His nose was definitely broken, both of his eyes were black, and the rest of his face was covered in scratches and bruises; he didn't even want to know what was under Lloyd's gi.

As he and Zane lifted Lloyd, the hot skin against their hands, he let out a groan that made Kai wince. 'Lloyd is the level headed one, he doesn't do this. He doesn't run off into danger.'

But as the two of them laid Lloyd down, Kai swallowed harshly, because Lloyd had in fact run into danger before...for his family.

As the others ran into the room, minus Nya who was calling Misako, and started to patch up Lloyd's injuries as best as they could, Kai couldn't help from speaking up. "He needs to be in the hospital. He's way too hot, and way too injured."

"Where would we even go? Harumi and the Sons of Garmadon are patrolling the city like crazy, we'll be lucky to even make it in, let alone get him inside of the hospital." Cole explained, gently wiping the sand off of Lloyd's face.

Kai relented; he knew Cole was right, there was no way to get him professional medical treatment, and he just had to hope that Misako had some idea of where to take him, cause he also knew that there was no way that Lloyd was going to live if they only used their limited medical knowledge and supplies.

Lloyd's wheeze was what brought Kai out of his thoughts and he instantly wrapped both of his hands around his left one before whispering in Lloyd's ear.

"It's going to be okay, we're going to save you. Just focusing on staying alive."

6.

He had pushed himself too far.

As Kai sat in his room in the burn unit, looking at his fully bandaged arms and wrists, he knew that. He also knew that he was extremely grateful for the pain medication that kept him from feeling both the burns and the frost bite.

"So this is what the normal ward looks like." Lloyd remarked as he got up from the chair and sat on the end of Kai's bed with a smile.

"Yeah, not as many fun decorations, squirt," Kai joked before going serious, "I don't wanna see you in here unless you're visiting someone else, you got that?"

"Unfortunately for me, being the "prophesied green ninja" doesn't give me that luxury," Lloyd lamented before glaring at Kai, "and don't call me squirt, I'm finally gaining up on you."

"You could be six four and I'd still call you squirt, it's my job as an older brother, ask Nya. As for staying out of the hospital, you're supposed to humor me, chosen one," Kai snorted, receiving a pillow to the face, "hey, I can't retaliate!"

"I'd prefer being a kid over being the chosen one and you know it." Lloyd explained, glaring daggers at Kai, to which he raised his hands in surrender before asking.

"Alright, I'll stop. Where are the others? They usually don't let you walk around unsupervised."

"PIXAL and Zane are on a date, Nya insisted that they hang out together after we got back from the Never Realm; Jay and Nya are working on some upgrades to the Bounty, and Cole and my uncle went shopping, something about chicken feed," Lloyd explained before smiling at Kai, "besides, I'm not unsupervised, I'm hanging out with you."

Kai couldn't keep the smile from spreading across his face as he managed to sit up and ruffle up Lloyd's hair, even though it was immediately followed by a rush of searing hot pain from the movement.

"Alright, hot head," Lloyd laughed, gently pushing Kai back against the pillows, "leave my hair alone and get some rest; for once, let me take care of you."

"Pretty sure that's illegal." Kai retorted, immediately being smacked with another pillow, although not as hard as the first one, "can you stop doing that?"

'You better think of a creative threat against him.' He thought to himself.

"What're you going to do about it?" Lloyd challenged, picking up a third pillow, which led Kai to smirk before putting on his best pouting face.

"I'm going to tell Nya that you were being really mean to me when I'm injured and weak, and have her deal with you accordingly."

Whatever punishment Lloyd had thought of Nya giving him was enough for him to drop the pillow immediately with a look of terror on his face, and Kai couldn't even blame him; Nya was never a force to be reckoned with, whether you were an enemy or family.

The room went silent for a few minutes after that, until Lloyd sniffled, which made Kai's ears perk up as he sat up again, wrapping his upper arm around Lloyd's shoulder so his wrist and hand wasn't touching anything, "hey, hey, what's wrong? If it's about throwing pillows, I-"

"No, not that…," Lloyd's voice shook before he turned slightly and hugged Kai around the stomach tightly, nearly knocking the wind out of him, "I can't lose anyone else. Not anymore. I almost lost you and Zane, and I… Not again."

Kai pulled Lloyd towards him closer so he could cry against his shoulder, despite the fact that it sent the same searing pain through his body again, "I've got you, Lloyd. You're going to have a really tough time getting rid of me, you know that."

After a few moments, Lloyd emerged from his shoulder, now glaring at him again, and Kai knew exactly why this time; might not be best to joke about loss to the kid who had been abandoned by his mom and lost his dad twice now.

"Yeah, throw the pillow at my head, I deserve that this time."

Kai didn't expect the hit to be so hard that his head almost spun all the way around, but seeing the smirk on Lloyd's face made all the neck and jaw pain worth it.

[missmaxime]

Is it funny how you can see the strong connection she have with Rio compare Dean ? And why you think she always Argue and talk back to Rio but she almost never argue with Dean like that and do you also think that have something to do with how strong feelings she have for Rio Compared to Dean?

To be honest I don’t really think it’s funny, I think it’s mostly sad.  I mean, can you imagine waking up a in relationship you’ve been building up for 25 years, four children between you, made a life with each other - only for it to explode and crumble even though you try to swipe that sandcastle back into shape time and time again. What a nightmare. And while I don’t particularly sympathize with Dean, he’s just as much awakened from the same pipe dream Beth has. He’s not who she thought he was, neither is she to him - and the real them? They both don’t like those people very much.  Over the course of the past three seasons we’ve seen Beth and Dean both trying to rope things back to ‘normal’. But we’ve also seen that they can’t, even if they’re both stubborn at accepting it. Both have been at points to let the other go or leave, but not in sync. Everything between them is bent or broken. Their marriage, their trust, their romantic feels, their personalities, their parenting - even their house that was once a home is a showroom furnished with meaningless stuff and falsities.  Before, the moments where Beth refrained from speaking up to Dean, or complying with his demands were still built on the promise of that there was something left to be fixed, or if she was too ridden with guilt towards him or their children. And when she did have moments where she was done with it, arguing might not have even been on the table at all. Because I feel like arguing is something people do when there’s something left to fight for, and both at a point seemed to have accepted that if they continue this marriage - there’s still nothing left. Beth could have exploded when Dean explained her in detail why he fell for Gayle and why he thinks her attractive compared to Beth, as should he have, when she used him to get pregnant - but why fight if the energy you’ll put into that never pays off. So, there’s a variety of reasons we don’t see Beth argue with Dean a lot. And when we do, like in The Dubby, Dean takes the first chance to put Jane’s disappearance all on Beth for no reason (he doesn’t know she even has reason to think it might be payback from those criminals) - while he, their father, was watching his own kids, didn’t pay attention enough to lose their youngest daughter, and didn’t even check the whole house before frantically calling the police. If this is a representation of their fights the past years who even wants to start doing that? It leads to nothing.  Counter to that, arguing with Rio actually has a point. He fights her for the right reasons, their banter gives them growth, or if not a change at the bare minimum - their arguing leads so something. I’m not saying that growth always has the intended results, most clear example in 2x13 - which led to the catastrophic polar opposite of what Rio intended. But even that event has pushed them forward as ugly as it might be, and not has them standing still or fall back like the arguments Beth had with Dean.  But to circle this all back to your initial question. Does Beth fighting Rio has something to do with her feelings towards him and the connection they share, opposite to how she feels about Dean. In a way, yes. But I think the most important difference is that arguing with Rio has a purpose - be it a deal, or personal growth, or a change in their relationship, or dredging through their muddled past and shared traumas - but a purpose none the less. Arguing with Dean is like yelling in a desert - you can be as loud as you want, but no one will actually hear you, and if you stay too long you’ll perish in the heat.

[curious-minx]

Review of the first episode of The Great North (plus some sad Bob’s Burgers’ news)

2021.

I was going to begin my review of the pilot episode of The Great North, the sister sister series of Bob’s Burgers, with my trademark  snarky and slanted curlicue wit... Instead, I am reckoning with the headline of the death of Bob’s Burgers character designer, Dave Creek.

Dave Creek.

Type his name out and put it in comic sans and you can see it’s a name meant to be involved with TV. One of the rare individuals to pass away from something other than Covid-19 or our rising totalitarian government. The artist contributed to the show in many ways, most profoundly with the design of Lady Tinsel from the Bleakening, one of Bob’s Burgers most visually ambitious episodes to date. I am ill-equipped to eulogize the man like his fellow peers are doing, but as someone who writes and thinks about the Bob’s Burgers series it is impossible to not address his passing.

//////

The Great North.

“Sexi Moose Adventure”

Look up there! What Do You See? Nature and stuff Like a rock And a tree Oh, The Great North Way up here we can breathe the air Catch some fish Or gaze at a bear Wow! Oh, The Great North Here we live, oh, oh Here we’ll stay, oh, whoo From longest night To longest day In The Great North

An Alan Thicke bop or the wimpy Cheers theme this aint. A jarring theme. I had to transcribe it to lay it out in front of me to see how wordy it is, but to my surprise the theme song looks more concise on paper. Still, I am not sold on this theme song. Mainly because I prefer the misheard lyric of “Here we’ll say (it’s actually “stay”): oh, whoo,” digging further into the regional grunts.

1:24, One minute and twenty four seconds in and there is already a  little bit of winking scatalogical humor by the ever youthful Paul Rust, or as I am sure he’ll be known for generations, Ham Tobin, the middle of the three Tobin sons. Compounded within these first two minutes is a stylistic swivel away from Bob’s Burgers comedic well with a Brokeback Mountain themed wedding cutaway joke with real-world celebrity cameos. Speaking of celebrity cameos, how about a side character conversation with an Alanis Morrisette  constellation (and she’s a recurring character!) you’ve never seen that in Bob’s Burgers! In the first three minutes and thirty seconds we have two instances of explicitly expositional dialogue, the first is the cleaner introduction of eldest Wolf Tobin (voiced by Will Forte) and his fiance Honeybee Shaw who has just moved to Alaska from Fresno and helps set up the reverse All in the Family Meathead and Gloria dynamic. What comes next is once again another moment I can only describe as jarring when the inexplicably normal named Judy Tobin explains to Alanis Morrisette constellation exactly what is wrong with sweetly overbearing father. The reason involving a somewhat convoluted background story about the former Tobin matriarch's  abandonment of the family and Beef, the Tobin patriarchy, is in denial of this  fact. Beef prefers to live in the reality where no wife of his would leave him she could only have been eaten by a wolf.  

What goes on throughout the episode is what I believe is a cardinal sin of episodic storytelling: Making jokes and observations at the expense of an off screen character. There are already WAY too many characters being thrown at me and not once throughout the episode was I able to identify any of the characters by any names other than the name of the celebrity voice actor. Minute six and yet again we are hit with Honeybee  generating another celebrity name for a joke and I really hope that the writers develop more of a game for her. Oh wait a minute the episode reminds me again at the eight minute forty sixth second mark that she is in fact from Fresno. More diarrhea and fart jokes snaking their way back into the scene as well, but Jenny Slate has always relished in the poopier jokes (see: any of her stand-up, Kroll work, or Obvious Child).

At the ten minute mark there is a quality character defining joke when Wolf distracts Beef by pointing out an indoor potted plant in a mall, which causes Beef, ever the Nature man, to take matters into his own hands by trying to rescue the potted plant. Beef is basically a combination of the two Rons from Parks & Rec, the emotional frugality of Ron Swanson and a touch of Sam Elliot’s Ron Dunn Earthiness. Julio Torres’ mall juicer character is also introduced with a perfunctory but enjoyable deadpan exchange with the awkward Judy, but it’s the kind of performance Julio Torres could give in his sleep (and probably did).

The eleven minute mark introduces a character that I was initially pretty jazzed about, Judy’s boss at the mall photography store Alyson Lefebvrere (gosh I hated typing out that name >.<) voiced by long-time Molyneux collaborator, Megan Mullally. On paper, much like the theme song, a heated exchange between an emotionally vulnerable Beef and a character voiced by real-life wife Megan Mullally should be dynamite, instead much like their podcast it feels like a wet fart in the sheets. Mullally’s work on Bob’s Burgers as Linda’s sister Gayle is terrific and with the power of animation having her play an unconventional looking character really works to her advantage. Alyson’s character design is boring and conventional cartoon  attractive as she’s clearly being set up as a potential love interest for our leading Beef man, but the whole thing in execution falls completely flat. The extended 69 joke between Beef and Alyson is supposed to be funny because we know it’s between a real life publicly beloved celebrity couple. You cannot coast on innate chemistry alone! The setting up of the love interest isn’t even coy, we see Beef get heart eyes and drool over Alyson, which is just the most predictable and least interesting choice. A route this show seems dangerously flirtatious with.

Finally, at minute:second mark 13:15 we get introduced to a potentially fun and quirky sitcom character, Londra the neighboring fish mongerer. Voiced by Judith Shelton, an actor I am sure we all remember as Sally from Seinfeld and Angela from the Gregory Hines Show. Instead she gets instantly shut down and shuffled by in favor of advancing the plot of the episode. Moving on to the birthday party. Yep Honeybee makes another pop culture reference this time the Minions (it was Squidward last time, but I was too faint of heart to mention it at the time). We also find out in a forced confession from Ham that he is gay. I am glad the show has hired an openly gay actor like Julio Torres to play a bit recurring character, but it feels weird having Paul Rust a thoroughly heterosexual actor portray a gay goofball character. I feel like there easily could have been an actual gay goofball Paul Rust type out there deserving of the job, but this show does do right by having Dulce Sloan as Honeybee and Aparna Nancherla as MVP, Moon Tobin (Who I’ll get into later). Therefore I should not let this irk me, but clearly this show and I are not seeing eye to eye. In an era of gestures towards meaningful representation I would just like to see some consistency. Rust will probably go on to join the ranks of the many other hetero men who have also portrayed perfectly competenent and sensitive gay characters, but with gay characters should come paychecks for gay voice talent. In the end of this dead end debacle I much rather  Paul Rust have the role  and be spared the unimaginative Randy Rainbow casting. Back on track.

There’s a four square action sequence of the four siblings that also feels like the show attempting another stylistic flourish to separate itself from Bob’s Burgers. The episode, all one straight ahead single narrative, comes to a happy ending to also establish that the Bob’s Burgers sister sister series is also interested in being a sentimental sitcom to its core. An unfortunately okay first episode that got worse for me with a repeated viewing. The only character and overall performance that sticks out to me is Aparna Nancherla playing what is essentially the show’s Tina and  Louise lovechild of a character Moon Tobin, an animal identifying gender flipped peculiar savant-like child. She’s one of those comedians that I will always root for and appreciate whenever she pops up and I really hope that this show treats her right. She really elevates the material. Everyone else does just fine. The first episodes and first seasons of any sitcoms are rarely all that innovative or memorable so I am certainly going to allow this show to grow on me.

For the time being, this first episode of the Great North is deserving of Two Sexy Moose Antlers out of Five Forced Pop Culture References

[marmolady]

Pride

Book/Series: Endless Summer

Main Pairings: Diego x Varyyn, Estela x MC

Summary: (Endless Ending– set after my longer fic, ‘Broken Chains’, if you’ve not read it, assume a happy ending).  Surrounded by a barrier of friends, Varyyn joins Diego as they march in their very first Pride parade.

Word Count: 1588

Tagging:   @saivilo, @edgydepressedchoicesthot, @sceptilemasterr,  @greengroove

Reviews and reblogs are hugely appreciated!

Cloaked in a dark hood, at odds with the popping attire of near everyone around him, Varyyn was wide-eyed with fascination as he stepped out of the Northbridge train station, Diego at his side. The streets were awash with colour, hues that were draped over countless flags, banners, even the skin of revelers.

Diego grasped his husband’s hand tightly. He was awash with emotion; anxiety at having Varyyn surrounded by so many people, but more than that, a feeling of belonging that he’d craved for as long as he could remember.

“This is it, Varyyn,” he uttered hoarsely. “Happy Pride!”

“I am always proud to be with you, my love.”

Taylor was grinning like an idiot-- for her, too, this was a first, as it was for Estela with whom her fingers were entwined. “We’ve got this, Diego, the rest of us should be enough of a barrier to stop anyone from looking at you two too closely.”

Giving his best friend a warm smile, Diego nodded. That he’d been touched to have ten friends putting themselves out there to give him the kind of Pride experience he’d wistfully imagined was an understatement. They had his back. “Yeah, we got this.”

He looked around. Friends surrounded him on all sides, dressed in their colours or else proudly wearing ‘ally’ pins. To think he’d felt so alone before--

“Hey!” Craig exclaimed, “If anyone gets to close to our V-Dog, I can pull off a killer diversion. I’ve been practising my moves for weeks…”

“It’s been fucking torture to watch,” Zahra said. “But, yeah, your dancing will scare anyone off, I’ll give you that.”

As they marched on with the parade, the smile on Estela’s face just grew broader. She’d never had a chance to do anything like this in San Trobida, and probably she’d have steered clear of all the fuss anyway. Since returning from La Huerta, her sexuality, the identity that came with it, meant a whole lot more. On La Huerta, no one gave a damn, and she hadn’t bothered herself with labels. Today,though, her wrist was adorned with a pink, yellow and blue bracelet.

“I didn’t know you identified as pansexual?” Quinn queried warmly. When they’d discussed these things previously, Estela had always been vague-- which had always been accepted without hesitation; but it seemed something had changed.

Estela nodded. “I didn’t think I wanted a label, but then I thought… words have power. They can make you visible. I like who I am, how I love; a lot of people where I’m from struggle with that because for so long they had to hide. Visibility is important.”

“That’s my wife! Fighting the good fight and making the world less shit, one PDA at a time.” Taylor jumped to give Estela an enormous smooch, delighting in the happy squirm she caused.

“So, uh,” Estela tried to continue, whilst her love continued to pepper her face and neck with kisses, “basically, I just… find some people attractive. And I don’t think it would have mattered if Taylor was a guy or a girl or both or neither. She’s my person. It was a weird feeling, like something deep inside me knew.”

“Aw, ‘Stel!” Taylor gushed. “As for me? Basically, I’m gay as the day is long. Useless Lesbian: Alien Edition.”

“Yeah, no shit, Sherlock,” Zahra scoffed. “You’re a walking fucking stereotype. If there were U-Hauls on La Huerta, maybe you wouldn’t have even needed to get hitched after what… how many weeks? Three? Four?”

Diego was quick to swoop to his friend’s defence. “Hey! La Huerta rules apply! Way too much wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff to untangle.”

Quinn smiled warmly. It wasn’t the first time she’d been to one of these events, nor even the third or fourth, but to be surrounded by the friends who’d become her family made for a very different experience. She was not alone, dodging pitying whispers while she tried to embrace a side of herself that was so much more than ‘the dying girl’. And now, she had Michelle.

“Life can be over so fast; if you care for someone, there’s no shame in putting yourself out there and showing it.” She gave Michelle’s hand a squeeze, and they exchanged an affectionate glance. “Being trapped at the end of the world can do a lot to put things in perspective. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m living without regrets. Who I am is who I am; and that includes the pieces I wished I could hide from.”

Grace looked to her friend with admiration. “That’s very brave, Quinn. Sometimes accepting yourself can be the hardest thing.” Especially when the people you love can’t look at the true you and do the same. “Honestly, you’ve helped me a lot.”

Walking beside Diego, Varyyn was beginning to see why they called it ‘Pride’; he could feel it emanating from his husband, creating a warmth that had nothing to do with the sun beating down. And the smile on Diego’s face? Varyyn was sure he’d not ever seen anything quite so beautiful. Though careful not to peer to far out from his hood, he took the time to look over each of the different coloured flags and ask about each one. A young woman jogged past, wearing a cape of black, grey, white and purple-- the same design that was plastered across Raj’s shirt.

“Raj,” he queried, “ I believe Diego told me about your colours. It is for… ‘ace’? For no romantic partners?”

“You got it! Basically, I get all the love I need from my bros. I never really felt like anything was missing, you know?”

“I understand. It’s not something my people have a word for, though I know several friends who have always felt the way you do,” he said, thoughtfully. “So much of this we don’t have words for; we just… be. I appreciate your sharing with me. And I am very grateful to be one of your bros.”

The whole experience was vastly different to anything that could exist among the Vaanti. Sexuality and gender was of so little consequence; there had never been much weight put on words and labels, there were no expectations that it be necessary. By the generally agreed upon human terms, Varyyn supposed he might call himself ‘pansexual’ as Estela did. The rainbow flag, though, was his favourite. In it he saw the jubilation of making it through a storm to something beautiful. Appropriate it was, that it meant so much to Diego, as he stepped out unafraid and loved. Varyyn looked at Diego, his husband, the love of his life; surrounded by a wall of friends, laughing on Taylor’s shoulder. He was truly radiant.

Varyyn put a hand on Raj’s shoulder. “Could I ask a great favour of you?”

“A personal favour for the elyyshar of the Vaanti? I think I can swing that….”

Taylor was chuckling as she ruffled her best friend’s hair. “So, how is it? Everything you dreamed of-- if you’d even dreamed you’d have the Knights’ bi legend Sean Gayle as part of your pride posse?”

“Pretty sure Past Diego would think you’d hit your head too hard if you’d tried to tell him this was coming. I mean, the time travel, the monsters, my best friend being some sort of knockoff ET, are unbelievable enough, but these kind of squad goals…? I…” Suddenly, he found himself choking up. If it was a life-altering adventure, he’d got it. What was left at the end of it was something that could never be truly grasped by outsiders, some bond, sacred even, that had helped him find his own strength. As he struggled to come to grips with the tatters that remained of his family life, it was that strength that would keep him afloat, and that bond that would see his heart start to heal. “I… didn’t think this feeling was possible for me.”

And Taylor hugged him tight. “You’d better get used to it, because you’re stuck with us. You deserve this. Just for being you… and also for being the world’s best wingman. The best thing that ever happened to me happened because you helped me believe in taking a leap. Diego Soto, I will never not owe you one,” she laughed.”So, for my next trick, I will pass you off to someone who wants his arms around you even more than I do. You’re welcome.

With a wink, Taylor spun Diego into Varyyn’s waiting arms, which draped an enormous rainbow flag around the two of them.

“My love,” Varyyn crooned,  “you bring my world more beauty than I believed possible. You showed me hope and light in my darkest hour. Diego, you are my rainbow.”

Cloaked in a fluttering of multicoloured fabric, they kissed, long and tender; the pounding of music and marching, the chants of ‘Variego!’ fading far into the background, beyond their own private euphoric celebration.

Varyyn came away slowly, his expression warm as he stared into a look of fierce affection. How could he ever have dreamed what had been held in store for him, when this lion-hearted storyteller was beyond anything Vaanu had yet shown him. A whispered ‘I love you’ from his beloved Diego set his heart, once again, all aflutter, dancing like the rainbow flag around their heads. “And I love you.”He quirked an eyebrow. “Best Pride ever?”

Diego gave a short laugh and pecked a kiss to his love’s gentle lips. “Best Pride ever.”

[holycatsandrabbits]

Dead Eye

Original fiction ficlet, rated G

Written for the Morning Coffee zine, a free, original art and fiction zine on the topic of coffee. The art pieces were even painted in coffee! Thanks to @yummi-gummi-zines for modding!

It took Gayle an embarrassingly long time to realize that something was off about a certain customer at the coffee shop where she worked. It should have been rather obvious. For one, the man, Craig, spent time every day in the shop, but he didn’t drink any coffee. Craig carried a silver travel mug with him, but he never bought anything to go in it. He didn’t even use the free creamer like a lot of rude people did, bringing coffee from home just to help themselves to what extras the shop put out for free. In fact, Gayle had never actually seen him take a drink from his mug.

For another thing, Craig didn’t talk to anybody. That in itself wasn’t so strange, some people just weren’t social. But it was also the case that nobody ever talked to Craig. When people sat at the table he was occupying, no one ever said Excuse me or Mind if I sit here? And if Craig continued to sit by them instead of moving, they completely ignored him. Gayle only knew his name because she’d tried to strike up a conversation once. He’d given her a bit of a surprised look and introduced himself, but he hadn’t seemed to want to talk to her either.

And finally, Craig was dressed like someone who was employed— nice slacks, dress shirt, and a tie— but he showed up in the coffee shop at all kinds of weird hours, and he never brought any work with him, not a computer, or notebook, or even a phone. He just sat in a chair, usually the one by the window, with his mug in his hand, and watched people.

Even with all that, it still didn’t dawn on Gayle that the man was dead. It took her co-worker Maggie mentioning the coffee shop ghost for Gayle to finally put it all together.

“What ghost?” Gayle asked, as they were cleaning up after closing.

“Oh, I should have figured you hadn’t seen him,” Maggie said, with a dramatic sigh. “You don’t have a psychic bone in your body, I can tell.” She pointed to the table by the window. “I saw him, right there. Wish I hadn’t, though. He’s bad luck. Right after that I broke two china mugs. Jess saw him and she twisted her ankle on her way home. Grant dropped his phone and cracked the screen. It was a couple of days later, but it still counts.”

“What’s he look like?” Gayle asked.

“Nothing scary. Just like a customer. Brown hair, brown eyes. Handsome. Grant saw him twice, and says he carries a silver mug. Nobody ever sees him come in or leave, he’s just in here sometimes.”

“So how do you know he’s a ghost?” asked Gayle.

“Because he doesn’t order anything, doesn’t work on anything, and doesn’t talk to anybody.”

“Oh,” said Gayle. “Huh.”

Maggie went into the kitchen then to mop the floor, and a voice spoke up behind Gayle. “The ankle and the phone weren’t my fault. But I may have been responsible for the mugs. I don’t like Maggie. She always makes the half-cafs full-decafs.”

Gayle turned around to see Craig sitting on the counter she’d just cleaned, his mug beside him and his feet swinging in space.

“You, on the other hand,” he said, “I like. You only sabotage the orders of rude people.”

“Huh,” said Gayle, again.

“Want to know what happened?” Craig asked.

“Sure.”

“I had a heart attack.” Craig pointed to that table by the window. “Right there. Five years ago, before you or Maggie started here. I never saw it coming. I was an athlete, ate a good diet. Maybe I drank too much coffee.”

“You do look healthy,” Gayle said. “I’d never have guessed you were dead.”

Craig nodded. “I was wondering how long it was going to take you to figure it out.”

Maggie hollered from the kitchen. “Who are you talking to out there?” She poked her head out into the seating area. “You better not have let in a customer—” She looked around— counters included— and apparently saw no one.

“Just thinking out loud,” Gayle said, and Maggie went back into the kitchen.

“Nobody sees or hears me as well as you do,” Craig said. “Not a psychic bone in your body, my ass.”

Gayle started cleaning the glass display case. “So how come you didn’t pass on? You know—” She waved her hand. “Go upstairs? Downstairs?”

“No idea.”

“No grander purpose? Unfinished business? Didn’t commit some atrocity and get damned to stay here until you make amends?”

“Huh,” said Craig slowly. “I didn’t think of that last one.” He slid himself off the counter. “I mean, it wasn’t an atrocity.”

“What did you do?”

Craig put his hands up sort of defensively. “Well, look, nobody died. But I may have… possibly… robbed a bank.” Craig looked slightly remorseful.

“You robbed a bank,” Gayle said.

“Well, I worked at a bank. Made it easier. I just used a computer program.”

Maggie came out from the kitchen. “That’s good enough. Let the morning shift handle the rest.” She frowned at Gayle. “Are you okay? You don’t usually talk to yourself about robbing banks.”

Craig popped up again the next Saturday morning when Gayle came in by herself to start the baking. He appeared by the oven, wrinkling his nose at the orange-cinnamon scone batter. “I never liked those,” he complained. “So how does one make amends?”

Gayle gave him a surprised look. “Why are you asking me?”

“Because there’s literally no one else I can ask.”

“Well— I guess you apologize to the bank.”

“Can’t. Most people can only see me for a few minutes at a time, and nobody can hear me except you.”

“Well, then you swear not to to it again.”

“Can’t do it again, I’m dead. What would I even do with money now?” Craig scowled at a platter of blueberry muffins. “This doesn’t make any sense. If I’m supposed to make amends to the bank, why am I not haunting the bank?”

“It does seem like poor organization,” Gayle agreed.

Craig looked thoughtful for a moment, and then he said, “Well, maybe I’m supposed to help you. Since you can see and hear me so well. I mean, you don’t want to work in a coffee shop all your life, do you? You’ve got to have dreams.”

“Oh, I do,” Gayle assured him. “One of them is owning this place. I’ve always wanted to have a coffee shop. I’m going to school for my MBA right now.”

Craig stared at her a moment and then said, “Huh.” He seemed to sort of phase himself through the counter until he was sitting on it again.

“I’ve already included you in my plans,” Gayle said. She pointed out toward the seating area. “When the shop is mine, I’m going to put a sign on that chair you like— Reserved for the Ghost.”

“A haunted coffee shop?” Craig said, looking rather impressed.

“If we get TV crews in, could you give them a bit of a show?” Gayle asked.

Craig nodded. “I can do stuff like with Maggie and the mugs if I try really hard.”

“I’ll probably have themed drinks, too,” Gayle mused. “Ghost white. Phantom Frapp. Dead eye already works.”

Craig cocked his head. “That all sounds nice, but I have to say that helping you make money doesn’t really seem like a good deed on my part. Not exactly making amends.”

Gayle frowned. “Well, I was thinking of having a policy of giving all my day-old food to the needy.”

Craig snapped his fingers. “That could work.”

Gayle paused halfway through filling a muffin tin. “Do you think you’ll move on, then, when I’ve got it all set up?”

Craig shrugged. “I guess we’ll see. I’d almost hate to, though. Sounds like it would be fun. So how long do we have to wait for all that?”

“Well, I’m almost done with school. But I’m going to have to save up enough to buy the place.”

Craig looked thoughtful. “You know— I might know where you can get the funds.” When Gayle raised her eyebrows at him, he said, “The bank never caught me! I died before they could. Money’s just sitting around in an account I set up and nobody even knows about it.”

“Well,” said Gayle, “it’s certainly not doing anything sitting around in some account, is it?”

“Definitely not feeding the needy,” Craig agreed.

The door to the kitchen banged open as Maggie came in. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “I didn’t want to be here. Are you talking to yourself again?”

“No,” said Gayle. “I’m talking to the ghost.”

Maggie gave her a confused look. “Don’t try to be funny. You aren’t.”

That day Maggie broke three mugs.

Find me at DannyeChase.com and on my Linktree

[three-drink-amy]

Sweet Creature

I’m so glad y’all are still with me on this! I hope you enjoy the new chapter! 

master list - AO3

Chapter Eleven

Claire was all but ready to go for their date the next evening. She looked into the mirror by her door as she applied her lipstick. Smacking her lips, she gave herself a once over to make sure she looked good enough for the date. It was a tricky situation. She was going out with someone she’d been friends with for ten long years. Jamie had seen her at her most formal (as his date to Jenny’s wedding) and also at her most disgusting (finals during medical school). It was difficult to try and put together a look that seemed special enough for an occasion like this. 

Her curls were restrained, but not straightened. She didn’t have the time for that. A navy blue dress that fell to her knees with sheer sleeves and a v-neck cut seemed like a fine option. She was dressed up, but not too much. 

It was still ten minutes before the time they’d agreed on and yet she was completely ready. She paced back and forth in her flat, willing time to go faster. This date — for her at least — had been ten years in the making. He just needed to show up. 

A knock at the door paused her pacing. She glanced at herself one more time in the mirror before she turned to open the door. It wasn’t Jamie, though. 

“Joe? What are you doing here?” 

He walked in and closed the door behind him. “Well, Gayle’s at a movie with one of her friends and I hadn’t heard from you in a couple of days. You never even told me how your date went. If I didn’t know Peter better, I’d have been worried he killed you.” 

Claire laughed nervously, not sure how to tell him all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Joe finally seemed to notice her appearance. “Wait, are you going somewhere?” 

She nodded. “Actually, I am. I’m going on a date.” 

“With Peter?” 

“No.” 

Joe’s raised an eyebrow at her. “Before Friday, you hadn’t been on a date since Frank and you’re going on your second date this weekend with a different guy? Damn, girl.” He stepped closer to her. “So, who is it?” 

Claire was about to answer when a second knock sounded at the door. She glanced at her watch, knowing he was early. Joe beat her to the punch and opened the door for her. It made her glad that she was going on a date with a friend and Joe wasn’t going to intimidate some stranger. 

“Jamie!” he greeted. “I’m glad you’re here. Did you know Claire was going on a date tonight?” 

Jamie chuckled, clearly surprised to see Joe. “Uh, aye, I did.” 

Joe looked over at her and glared. “So, you told Jamie, but not me? Is this because I got engaged? You think I don’t have time for you anymore?” 

“Not quite,” Claire said, waiting for Joe to get the hint. 

“You never told me, who’s the guy,” Joe pressed. 

Claire looked over at Jamie and shot him an amused grin. He slowly moved one hand out from behind his back and handed her a bouquet of flowers. “So, here ye go,” he said in an almost shy tone. 

She laughed as she leaned her head to smell the flowers. “Thank you. They’re beautiful.” They both glanced at Joe to see his shocked expression. 

“It’s...it’s…” he sputtered, pointing at Jamie. They both nodded. Joe pointed to a spot behind Jamie. “Hey, Jamie, who lives in that apartment?” Jamie turned to look and Joe slammed the door. 

“Joe, what are you doing?” Claire asked, gaping at him. 

“Why the hell did you not tell me that you’re going on a date with Jamie?” Joe asked. “This is a big deal!” 

“It’s not a big deal!” Claire lied. “Look, I don’t want to put too much pressure on things. Okay? So just drop it.” 

“You’re wrong, Claire. This is a big deal. It’s Jamie. The guy you’ve had feelings for for a very long time,” Joe argued. 

“You realize this door is not a rock, right?” Claire asked. “He can probably hear you on the other side.” 

“Aye,” Jamie called through the door. “And this is rather weird.” 

Claire closed her eyes and sighed. 

Joe took a step closer to her. “Just be careful, okay,” he whispered to her. “I know Jamie’s a good guy, but I don’t want you to get hurt. You’ve got a lot riding on this.” 

Claire smiled, stepping forward to give Joe a hug. “I won’t get hurt. But I appreciate the support.” 

He nodded, patting her on the back before he opened the door. Jamie at least looked amused by Joe’s antics. “Listen,” Joe started. 

“I dinna need the speech, Joe,” Jamie said, cutting him off. 

“The speech?” Claire asked. 

“Aye, the “She’s a great woman and ye better do right by her” speech both of us have given to various men in the past,” he informed her. “Most recently, I think was to Frank.” 

“That tool,” Joe scoffed. 

“Aye. But I dinna need it,” Jamie repeated. 

“Fine,” Joe said with a sigh. “But that better remain true, Fraser.” Jamie nodded with a small smile. “Alright, I’ll go. You guys have fun.” He walked out the door, flashing Claire a significant look before he walked down the hall. 

Jamie looked back to Claire, an awkwardness settling in the air between them. Neither seemed quite sure what to say after Joe’s presence. “Hold on,” Claire said, grabbing the flowers. She gave them back to him. “Let’s just try this again.” Jamie grinned as she shut the door on him. A few seconds passed before Jamie knocked on the door again. Claire ran a hand over her hair before she opened the door. “Hi,” she said softly. 

“Hi.” He held out the flowers to her. “These are for ye.” 

Claire smiled just as she had before. “Thank you. They’re beautiful. Come on in. I’m going to put these in some water before we go.” She walked over to her kitchen as Jamie stepped in, not walking past her entryway. “So, did you decide where we’re going?” 

“Aye. How do ye feel about Antonio’s?” 

She dropped the scissors she was holding, looking over at him with wide eyes. “Jamie, that’s too much.” 

“Ye love that place!” 

“I’ve only been there one time because it’s so expensive.” 

“Aye, I was there,” Jamie reminded her. “And ye loved it.” 

“The only reason I agreed to go there the last time was because you’d just won the lottery and demanded we go. And yes, the food was excellent, but that’s far too much,” she said, putting the flowers in a vase. 

“Well, tis too late. I already made a reservation.” 

Claire walked over to him. “Reservations can be cancelled.” 

“No’ at Antonio’s,” Jamie lied with a smirk. 

She rolled her eyes at him. “Why are you so insistent on going to this restaurant?” 

Jamie sighed, reaching out to tuck an errant curl back behind her ear. “We’ve been to dinner at all of our favorite places so many times. I suppose I just wanted to pick a place that might make it seem...special. Ye ken?” 

Claire felt a blush creep over her. She looked back up at him and nodded. “Yeah, I get it.” She reached out and fiddled with his jacket. “However, on most first dates, I do tend to go dutch.” 

Jamie laughed, leaning forward to kiss her forehead. “I wouldna have let ye.” He smiled down at her. “Come on, we dinna want to be late.” 

Claire nodded, grabbing her purse before they left her flat. They walked hand in hand to Jamie’s car, all the while in a comfortable silence. A nervous excitement ran through both of them, even if they’d done the basic parts of a date a million times. This time would be different and there was no denying it. 

As they started driving, Claire broke the silence. “I was worried about it too,” she said. Jamie glanced over at her with a confused look. “Wondering how to make this seem different from all the other times we’ve just gone to dinner.” 

“Aye, and did ye come up with any grand ideas?” 

Claire laughed. “No. I just started worrying about what to wear.” 

Jamie laughed with her, grabbing her hand in his. “Well, ye did a good job wi’ that. Ye look beautiful.” He raised their joined hands and kissed the back of hers. 

She was smiling at him before nodding toward the road. “Light’s green.” Jamie nodded and continued driving, but didn’t let go of her hand. 

As they walked from his car toward the restaurant, Jamie stopped her. “I thought of a way to make this different from all the other times.” 

She looked over at him, an eyebrow raised. “Oh yeah? What’s that?” 

He didn’t reply, but instead drew her close until his lips touched hers. His hands gently slid around her, bringing her closer. She reached up and rested her hands against his chest, sighing into the kiss. Slowly, they came apart, foreheads touching. “Sorry, I just couldna wait til the end of the night,” he breathed. 

She smiled, almost to herself as her hand moved to rest at his neck. “No need to apologize.” She leaned in to kiss him quickly again, still amazed that after all these years, she could finally do so. “I am rather looking forward to eating, though.”

Jamie laughed, taking a step back and grabbing her hand again. “But of course. Let’s go.” 

They were seated at an intimate, candlelit table by the window. Claire tried to prepare herself as she opened the menu. She never let herself spend this type of money at a restaurant. When the waiter came to the table, Jamie ordered a pricey bottle of wine for them to share. Claire tried to protest, but Jamie shook his head at her. “Look, I mean it, order whatever ye want. Dinna look at the price.” 

Claire rolled her eyes. “Like that’s going to happen.” She glanced up at him while he looked over the menu. “Can I ask something?” He nodded. “Something that might be potentially awkward.”

His eyes flicked up to hers. “Ye can ask me anything ye want, Sassenach.”  

She took a deep breath. “Do you usually do this?” she asked. He looked confused for a moment. “The whole ‘order whatever you want, who cares about the price’ type thing?” 

Jamie shook his head. “No. I dinna broadcast my money,” he reminded her. “They may know if they found the article, but I dinna do that, no.” 

“You know you don’t have to do that for me just to make things special.” 

“I ken,” Jamie said with a nod. “But we’re already here and I’m no’ letting ye order a salad that costs 20 pounds. That’s jus’ ridiculous.” 

Claire laughed at his outrage. “Thank you,” she said in a small voice. 

He reached across the table and held her hand. “Well, thank ye for agreeing to come tonight.” 

Claire hid a smile behind her other hand as she looked back down at the menu. The rest of the night carried on most of the same way. They’d vary back and forth between the comfortability they’d been used to for ten years and the awkwardness of new feelings they were trying to express. Jamie was much more open than she was about sneaking in small comments that pushed them further into “date mode.” It still felt a bit unreal to her. They’d gone out to dinner hundreds of times in the last ten years. And even though they were both trying to make it feel different, she still had a hard time believing it all. 

After their expensive, but delicious meal, Claire expected they’d just go back home. When they left the restaurant, Jamie took her hand and walked in a different direction from the car. Instead of ending the date, they just strolled together, her arm linked through his. They talked about everything and nothing, simply content to just wander side by side. 

Jamie paused as they approached an ice cream shoppe. He waggled his eyebrows at her in excitement as he dragged her inside. She laughed loudly at him, squeezing his hand in hers. Walking away with overflowing cones, they headed back the way they’d come as they ate their ice cream. When Claire raved about how good hers was, Jamie didn’t hesitate in leaning over and eating some of hers. She stared at him, scandalized as he licked his lips. 

“Ye’re right, that is good.” 

“You just ate some of my ice cream. Right off the cone!” 

He held his cone out to her. “Ye want to try some of mine?” 

“Just right off the cone,” she repeated. 

“So? We’ve kissed. What’s the difference?” 

Her walking slowed as she thought through his point. “Damn it, that’s a fair point.” He nodded with a smug grin. “But, the stealing of ice cream is still unfair.” 

“What are ye going to do about it?” 

Claire watched him for a second. When he went to eat more of his ice cream, she shoved the cone in his face, smearing it over his mouth and cheek. He stared at her in an amused outrage. “Claire!” he cried. 

“Serves you right,” she retorted. 

He motioned to his face where the ice cream started to drip. “Really?” 

She took a moment to build up her nerve before stepping closer. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.” Closing the distance between them, she licked the melting ice cream off his face, starting with his cheek and ending at his mouth. Her tongue played at the corner of his lips before seeking entrance. He sighed as he pulled her close, kissing her deeply. They kept kissing until a horn honked in the distance and they remembered where they were. Separating, Claire looked up at him with a grin. “Your ice cream was pretty good as well.” 

“Christ,” Jamie breathed, walking after her as she turned and headed back to his car. 

When they got back to their building, Jamie walked her back to her door. They stopped, giving each other the same nervous looks from earlier as they stood outside her flat. “I had a good time,” Claire said, feeling a bit silly. 

Jamie chuckled. “Aye, so did I.” 

His gaze lowered to her lips and she leaned in closer to him. Her hands reached up to rest at his neck as his hand touched her chin, guiding her into him. Their lips met again, moving slowly. It progressed quickly, though, fueled by sighs, tongues, and hands. Claire’s back pressed against her door and she pulled him closer to her. 

Quicker than she wanted, Jamie stepped back. She took a look at the state of him — with his hair mussed and his lips kiss swollen. Yet again, it felt unreal that it was because of her. “Anyway, I have to work in the morning, so I should go,” Jamie said, his hands in his pockets. 

“Seriously? You’re leaving?” 

“I just said I had to work,” Jamie reminded her. He reached out, stroking her hair back. “Believe me, I’d rather stay. But I shouldna. Besides, that would be tacky on a first date.” 

Claire rolled her eyes. “Wow. Well, I would just like to remind you that you were the genius who suggested a Sunday date.” 

He laughed, stepping back to her. “I was right to,” he told her as he leaned in close again. “I couldna have waited til Friday for this.” His lips pressed against hers once more. Claire’s hands came up to cup his face and he stepped back again. “No, I should be going. I could stay here all night just kissing ye.” 

She couldn’t fight the smile on her face. “I can’t say I’d mind all that much.” 

“Aye, me either. Another time though,” he said with a pointed look. He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed the back. “Good night, Sassenach.” 

Claire smiled back at him. “Good night, Jamie.” He started to walk down the hall and she let herself into her flat. She closed the door behind her before she leaned against it, letting out a contented sigh. That was when it finally hit her. She’d told Jamie of her feelings and the world hadn’t ended. Instead, it felt like it was all just beginning.

Next chapter

[absalomabsalom]

Coming and Going: Misrecognition and Identity in Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge”

Professor Richard A. Garner The Human Situation, April 15th, 2020

Outline

I. The Best Title in All of Literature

II. Misery Like a Coastal Shelf

III. The Injury of Intelligence, the Insult of an Education

A. Intelligence is a curse

B. A Martyr to the Desire of the Other; or, that St. Sebastian Painting One More Time

C. The Terror of Identity; or, Meeting Yourself Coming and Going

Richard Sexton,Oak Avenue, Wormsloe Plantation, 2009

I. The Best Title in All of Literature

 “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”

 —William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

 In a second, I’m going to talk to you about the literary genre called the Southern Gothic. It’s the best. It’s weird and uncanny and disturbing, and it’s all ours. After that, I’m going to talk about the cursed intellectuals of O’Connor’s stories in general, and more specifically of our story for today, “Everything That Rises Must Converge” (1961). You might want to read the last one first, as it does the most close-reading, or the second one, which has lots of maps and stuff. But first, I want to tell you that “Everything That Rises Must Converge” is the best title in all of literature.

From the moment I read it on the syllabus as an undergraduate—circa the turn of the millennium— it took on a life of its own in my head. It’s one of those phrases we encounter in life that returns over and over again, coming to mind unbidden in situations that have nothing remotely to do with the themes of the story. Indeed, every time I go back and reread the story I am struck by how the title, like many of O’Connors, creates this tiny bit of cognitive dissonance, this strangeness that makes it at once both absolutely perfect and deeply unsettling: a stark line of poetry that stands over and above the story, its own little work of art.

And I say this knowing—as you may as well, if you read Giroux’s introduction—that the phrase comes from the Jesuit philosopher Teilhard de Chardin: “Tout Ce Qui Monte Converge” (xv). Robert Giroux relates that the phrases appears in French, in an anthology he had sent O’Connor of the philosopher’s work. Yet, if anything, going back and reading Teilhard de Chardin and how he uses the phrase makes O’Connor’s usage of the phrase embettered, not worsened, by the repetition. Here’s the version of the passage most often quoted, which is not actually the philosopher’s but one of his students/anthologists. From Max H. Begouen’s Foreword to Building the Earth: “He gave each of them this watchword: ‘Remain true to yourselves, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge’” (13). Here’s one version in his own words, from the essay “Faith in Man,” expressing a major theme in the philosopher’s work: “Followed to their conclusion the two paths must certainly end by coming together: for in the nature of things everything that is faith must rise, and everything that rises must converge” (186). In other words, where Teilhard de Chardin is saying something about the nature of our common humanity converging in ever-greater complexity and perfection, O’Connor is injecting something insistent, something dark into this message of hope. In doing so, she is not trying to negate the utopian vision of the philosopher, but to transform it by way of adding in the full range of human experience. For O’Connor, thinking about convergence means thinking about life in a place where sectarianism is stuck on the Catholic/Protestant divide so strongly that to be a Catholic is so alien that one might as well be Jewish (and anything further afield would be meaningless to the young Church of God boys); where buses had only been desegregated in Browder v. Gayle five years before she wrote the story; and where the number of women receiving PhDs in Philosophy in the 1950s—much less in the South—was vanishingly small. In other words, O’Connor injects a certain Southern peculiarity combined with a bit of Gothic uncanniness into this convergence. Faith, theological or not, is easy when it does not have a world to contend with, and if it is easy, it is no faith at all.

But before we talk about the Southern Gothic, I want to return to the title, because I love it so much. Ultimately, beyond any particular meaning it derives from and alongside the story itself, it’s the beauty of a phrase that lingers in one’s mind, insists on coming back again and again, that I want to discuss. I want to discuss it because it gets at the heart of something about literature. For instance, when I say it’s “the best,” on what criteria am I basing that judgement? Are those objective, or purely subjective? Am I repeating a mistake we see from so many of O’Connor’s characters, of assuming that their personal preference can stand in for everyone else’s (and that those who disagree must be wrong)? Short answer: no. I’m saying this for effect. I know it’s just me. But the longer answer is that the particularity of my judgment on this title does give us a clue to the universality of something about language. Our psyches are, ultimately, linguistic; all the sense-experience, emotions, and logic that we deploy emerges out of and is filtered through language. Language makes possible what we can know of our world, and some of the greatest tragedies of our lives are marked by our inability to find a language that fits our experience—of love, of friendship, of betrayal, of death—often because someone else is imposing their language on us, or because there is no language at all for it. Sometimes we have to invent it. I don’t know what part of my self, per se, needs the phrase everything that rises must converge, but some part does. Thank you, Flannery O’Connor.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 1955

II. Misery Like a Coastal Shelf

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

—Philip Larkin, “This Be The Verse”

What is it about the South that lends itself to the gothic? Ever since Edgar Allen Poe’s American reinvention of that European genre—of ancient curses, crumbling castles, monsters and murderers, of innocent women in distress and dark and stormy nights—Southern literature has often veered of into the uncanny and horrific as it’s modus operandi. And the answer as to why? Well, it’s not all the decaying castles scattered across the countryside. The answer is obvious: it’s slavery. The deep secret, the obscure past, the meaningless descent into gratuitous violence, the uncanny return of repressed trauma and desire: slavery.

Let’s take a tour of some maps… First, what do you think this one is?

If you answered “a map of which parts of America started socially distancing when during the pandemic,” then you are a winner. Here’s the key I excised from the original New York Times article the map appeared in (Ganz et al).

You’d be forgiven for mistaking this for a map of a lot of different things, but let’s cut to the chase. Here’s the second map:

In case you’re having difficulty reading the title, let me help with this U.S. Coast Survey from 1861: “Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the southern states of the United States.”  But just in case the point is not clear yet, here’s map number three:

That, everyone, is a map of the United States as it looked during the late Cretaceous period, many millions of years ago (126-65 mya, to be geologically precise; see Krulwich). That inland sea left rich alluvial deposits that became the fertile crescent of land known as, first geologically and then politically, the Black Belt. Needless to say, the agricultural quality of the land correlates strongly with the intensity of slavery practiced in the American South.

In Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents (a book we read often here in The Human Situation), the psychoanalyst uses the metaphor of the ruins of Rome to talk about the deep history of our own human minds. He wants us to understand how, even after they’ve been totally erased and are irretrievable, our earliest experiences shape who we are, just as the long-obliterated strata of Rome each successively dictated what was built after them. For me, when Larkin evoked misery deepening like a coastal shelf, Freud’s ruins of Rome and the cretaceous South sprang immediately to mind; I took it not as simile, but something that could be, often is, literally true.

This is what is meant in Faulkner’s famous epigraph about the past never being dead. Southern Gothic emerged as one of the most distinctive genres, blending mystery and murder and a deep sense of a looming violence in the world. Flannery O’Connor’s stories, as we have all seen, could easily be turned into horror movies, and William Faulkner’s work also includes many of the same themes. If we include Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy (e.g., the hauntings in Beloved or the demonic Judge of Blood Meridian), then the genre is easily the defining movement of twentieth century American literature.  And it is not only slavery, but the history of violence that is the warp and weft of the institution, that colors our Southern Gothic. The Civil War is still the deadliest war in American history, and it’s not even close. Indeed, scholars have argued, often convincingly, that the region has to this day not recovered from the economic, social, and political devastation caused by the military conflict alone, not to mention its aftershocks, the devastation like a modern war fought 75-100 years before its time.  “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”

III. The Injury of Intelligence, the Insult of an Education

A. Intelligence Is a Curse

As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, O’Connor’s stories are chock full of characters for whom their intelligence is a curse. Hulga almost causes her mother an existential crisis because the pleasure- reading she leaves lying around is Heidegger’s “What Is Metaphysics?”; The Child is clearly the smartest one in the room; even The Misfit was marked off at a young age: “‘You know,’ Daddy said, ‘some that can live their whole life out without asking about it an it’s other has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters’” (129). So, too, Julian.

Julian is a writer who does not write. Like Hulga, whose philosophy is solely for herself, Julian’s fantasy world is solely for himself. And he seems to know that he is not a writer—he never expects to make a life/career/money out of it—which forces us to ask: why does he identify as a writer? But before we answer that question, let’s get right to the stakes. The clue is in the title, and O’Connor doesn’t make us wait too long. Immediately after she tells her son that he should be proud that his ancestors owned hundreds of slaves, Julian’s mother gets down to commentary on civil rights: “They should rise, yes, but on their own side of the fence” (408, emphasis added). So, rise: yes; converge: not so much for Julian’s mother. It is no mistake that this story takes place on a bus, the public space Rosa Parks made famous and which the Supreme Court desegregated in its 1956 ruling in Browder v. Gayle, five years before this story was published; the bus, for O’Connor, is again not a metaphor for race relations, it is the thing itself. Thus, unlike for Hulga, Julian’s fate and choices are going to extend far beyond himself—to the status of racism in America, the history of slavery, and reparations therefore—although they will extend to himself, too. Perhaps O’Connor is saying that the repercussions of the choices of the two, philosopher and writer, have different stakes. Perhaps.

Which brings us back to all these emotionally fraught intellectuals here, decaying slowly, like fish out of water, in their Southern hometowns. This theme is important for O’Connor because it argues intelligence, reason itself even, can serve not as something that enlightens, but something that closes off, distances, and deceives. The dark of reason. Like The Child in “A Temple of the Holy Ghost,” they can only see the difference in all things, and not the sameness; there are parts of everyday life that they have utterly rejected, and thus cannot connect to; they are alienated on their own soil, homeless in their own homes. And often with good reason! Julian’s mother is an out and out racist, and she represents the norm. He should reject her racism. But, for some reason, he cannot reject her herself. And he cannot reconcile the one to the other. I love her: she’s a racist; I must reject racism: I must reject her. His very love for his mother is a source of immense guilt for Julian, and that right there is the essence of the Southern Gothic.

There is a deeper lesson here, one that we don’t really have time for, about how Julian is actually trying to inhabit two different symbolic worlds, ones with different rules that justify themselves in different ways and that are ultimately incompatible. It’s like he speaks two different languages, but thinks they’re the same one  and so often gets hopelessly confused. And the truth is something like that, when we recognize that culture is like a language that sets up rules for what and how we make meaning of the world. Heidegger famously said: “Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells” (217). Hulga and Julian, justifiably reacting to the smallness and violence of the world they grew up in, have learned another world, but tragically cannot see their way back across the divide they have built; they’re emotionally attached, but intellectually distant, so they take refuge in that distance and decay psychologically, along with the old plantation mansion that Julian can’t help but dream about. Perhaps this is a problem O’Connor understood all too well. Her writing teacher in the Iowa MFA program had to ask her “to write down what she had just said” the first time they met her Georgia accent was so thick (vii, all emphasis mine).

B. A Martyr to the Desire of the Other; Or, that St. Sebastian Painting One More Time

When I worked in that highly suggestive, very famous painting of St. Sebastian into my lecture on Voltaire, I had totally forgotten that our erstwhile saint figured into our story for today, even though I had been reading O’Connor again over break. Sometimes the Unconscious, to paraphrase Larkin, fucks you up, but every now and again it does you a favor.

One of Julian’s fantasies is that he is a martyr to his mother. This should right away give us some pause. Take this for instance: “Everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him” (405). There is something deeply wrong with Julian’s relationship to his mother here; in fact, this is not a healthy relationship to have with any human being. Why on earth does Julian care what gives his mother pleasure? Shouldn’t he be happy that she is happy, despite it being over a ridiculous hat? Why would you ever arrange it so that, in the most important relationship in your entire world, anything that makes the other person happy makes you sad? That, my friends, is a recipe for disaster, death and disaster and tragedy. You don’t even have to read to the end. This is not going to end well.

To understand characters, you have to understand their motivations. This can be tricky. We can’t assume the characters are us, or anyone else but who they are. There are many possibilities for why Julian does what he does—alien mind control, for instance—but very few plausible ones. What, then, are Julian’s plausible alternatives here to his misery. Alternative one: leave his mother and move far away. He wants to be a writer? New York City, Paris, hell Houston or Atlanta: get thee hence. Anywhere but here (Hulga, too). Why, then, does he stay? We can be very, very cynical and say that Julian is broke and his mom’s supporting him. True! But not really enough. A lot of life can be lived in cheap apartments with ramen noodles, even on the commission of a typewriter salesman. This would be an excuse he would be telling himself, though we should also assume that many of the jobs he might be qualified for he would reject because they would conflict too heavily with his identity (as a writer), or just embarrass him (as being beneath him and his college education).

I think the real clue is in the saint imagery. But it’s not him who’s the saint, it’s his mother—a fair description for her achievements vis-à-vis Julian, which are not small, and which she is justly proud of. Even if taken literally, if he is suffering for his mother, as a saint, that means his mother is Jesus! His non-sacrifice of riding on a bus with his mother—“the time he would be sacrificed to her pleasure” (406)— is really her sacrifice. The problem is that, in this twisted relationship, his mother-the-saint is also a racist. Moreover, he knows that she’s not doing this for her pleasure: her doctor has told her she might die if she doesn’t become more active. Yet that’s how he frames it, which makes no sense … unless, here again, we should take this more literally than he means it: she’s staving off death, and as long as she is alive and enjoying life, then of course he cannot enjoy it. Ipso facto, he wants her to die, so he can move on. Again, her very existence is a source of guilt for him. Not because he hates her, but because he loves her.

C. The Terror of Identity; Or, Meeting Yourself Coming and Going

What does the phrase “you won’t meet yourself coming and going” (407) even mean? I had to pause at this phrase after O’Connor repeats it in the story, making sure to remember, as Professor Charara reminded us, that just because it is a cliché for the characters doesn’t mean that it is one for O’Connor. In short, it signifies a desire for uniqueness. If you do not meet yourself coming or going, you will not see someone else that looks like you on your journey.

This desire—to be singular, unique—is a pretty basic one. We all need some manner of distinguishing ourselves from others, otherwise the difference between self and other breaks down, and what it means to be uniquely our self does with it. This loss of self is, in almost all cases, terrifying for us. It is terrifying for Julian, because it is precisely what he fears in relation to his mother: he will never have his own desires, his own identity, but merely be an extension of hers, subsumed by his mother’s identity, her view of him. He will always be, as Professor Wallace discussed, an object and never a subject. (At the same time, to have nothing in common with other human beings is an opposite extreme, untenable as well. What it would even mean, to share no qualities with other people, no common bond over which you could unite, no language, aspirations, or anything else? Nothing.)

Of course, his mother does indeed meet herself going to the reducing class, in the form of a black woman with her child, angered about … something. Long story short, this woman hits Julian’s mother and storms off when she tries to give her child a penny. There is much to be wrung interpretively from whether or not it is this blow that causes his mother’s death, or Julian’s reaction to it. But I think this is a bit beside the point, much as the hat is. The truth of the situation is in Julian’s belated realization of his unacknowledged love for his mother—he calls out to her as a mother would to a child, or even a lover to their beloved, at the end, “Darling, sweetheart, wait!” (420)—and with that, his imminent “entry into the world of guilt and sorrow” (420). His coded wish for his mother’s death has been granted, but in so doing all the compromises he has made will no longer be tenable. He will, of course, blame himself for the way he acted vindictively toward her, even in her last moments, and he might even blame himself for her death.

Most of all, though, he will lose his ability to maintain that ironic distance that he has adopted toward the world, the one that has kept him locked into a fantasy world. There is compensation here: that fantasy allows him to live the life he secretly desires—not incidentally, the one where he can acknowledge his mother’s love and sacrifice, if not in word, then in deed. He does devote himself to his mother; despite what he says he is on that bus. The “in word” part is crucial here. Julian wants to be a writer because it allows him to keep an ironic distance toward the world as the detached observer who can catalogue all the worlds foibles while imagining that he is the hero setting them aright. But not in the real world, which is a bit too messy. When he imagines marrying a black woman, he tempers this fantasy by writing his fictional lover as not too black, her race only a suspicion (414). When he befriends black folk in his fantasies, it is only “the better types” (414). And when he imagines joining a sit-in, this is “possible but he did not linger with it” (414). Of course the possible is not something he lingers with! There is no ironic distance in the possible. Only jail, maybe even death. In fact, in a very real sense, Julian needs injustice to continue, because if it disappeared he would be forced to confront everything that he is fobbing off. Thus: “It gave him a certain satisfaction to see injustice in daily operation. It confirmed his view that with a few exceptions there was no one worth knowing within a radius of three hundred miles” (412).

I think a more interesting question than whether or not the child’s mother is responsible for Julian’s mother’s death is why she is angry to begin with. Julian is probably not wrong, that negotiating the casual violence of an antiblack society has shaped her outlook, and primed her for confrontation as an understandable survival strategy (compare her to the man who buries his nose in a newspaper, learning about the world at large while ignoring the world at hand). But perhaps we should look closer to home. If you were a mother negotiating public transit with your child, might you be annoyed if a grown man—a white man, in this very specific instance—forced you to split yourself off from your young child? And, assuming that she’s as good a reader of the world as Julian is, when you realize that he’s forced you into this situation because of some tiff he’s having with his mother? Julian delights in the fact that the children have been split from their mothers; he is himself keenly aware of the dynamic at play here. But because he is trapped in his own bubble—his own decaying mansion of the mind—he cannot see that maybe she does, too. And if Julian’s desire to separate himself from his own mother is achieved in this awkward social situation, it is imposed upon the mother and her child. Yet the stakes for each are different, and Julian knows this, too. He sees it coming from a mile away, but what he can’t see is that the cause is not his mother, but himself, and he cannot see it because then he would be the one thing he cannot be, his mother. He would see himself coming and going, in her.

Bibliography

Femia, Will. “Paleo-Politics: The Really Long View.” MSNBC, 24 Aug. 2012. Msnbc.com, http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/paleo-politics-the-really-long-view.

Glanz, James, et al. “Where America Didn’t Stay Home Even as the Virus Spread.” The New York Times, 2 Apr. 2020. NYTimes.com, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-social-distancing.html.

Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings: From Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964). Rev. and Expanded ed, San Francisco: Harper, 1993.

Helms, Douglas. “Soil and Southern History.” Agricultural History, vol. 74, no. 4, Agricultural History Society, 2000, pp. 723–58. JSTOR.

Krulwich, Robert. “Obama’s Secret Weapon In The South: Small, Dead, But Still Kickin’.” Krulwich Wonders. NPR.Org. 10 Oct 2012. https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/02/162163801/obama-s-secret-weapon-in-the-south-small-dead-but-still-kickin. Accessed 14 Apr. 2020.

Mullen, Lincoln. “These Maps Reveal How Slavery Expanded Across the United States.” Smithsonian Magazine. www.smithsonianmag.com,

Faulkner, William. Novels, 1942-1954.  New York: Library of America, 1994.

O’Connor, Flannery. The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1972.

Reni, Guido. Saint Sebastian. Circa 1615. Musei di Strada Nuova, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Guido_Reni_-_Saint_Sebastian_-_Google_Art_Project_(27740148).jpg.

Sexton, Richard. Oak Avenue, Wormsloe Plantation. 2009, https://richardsextonstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/19-c070.jpg.

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. Building the Earth. Wilkes-Barre, Pa. : Dimension Books, 1965. Internet Archive, http://archive.org/details/buildingearth0000teil_y0u0.

——. The Future of Man. New York: Doubleday, 2004.

——. The Phenomenon of Man. New York: Harper Perennial, 1955.

[hystericalrogertaylor]

Reconnecting (Chapter Seventeen)

Pairing: Ben Hardy!Roger Taylor X Reader

Word count: 1693

Summary: (Y/n) and Roger have been friends since the cradle. When they’re suddenly pulled apart and reconnected years later, they both can tell that the relationship has evolved. They lead very different lifestyles now. Can they continue what they had, or go for something more, with this gap between them?

Warnings: Talking about anxiety/anxiety attacks, mentions of sex, cussing

A/N: Pffffff I’m way off of my updating schedule. I’m updating this from a hospital bed lmao. Nothing bad, just having a minor operation tomorrow morning. I’ll make a post about this, but I probably won’t be that active tomorrow, and that’s why. Enjoy this chapter!

My masterlist with all my other stories and the previous parts of this story can be found there! Reblog this with feedback if you liked it! Or if you didn’t like it and want to vent about how shitty it is, reblog it anyway! 

~~~

Three months after first laying in bed with Roger as a couple, you were squeezed into his bunk on the bus as the vehicle rumbled down the road, away from Market Square Arena in Indianapolis. He had his shirt off, with the curtain drawn to give you two some privacy. He was sweaty, but you didn’t care as you lay on top of him, kissing him passionately. He had his hands up your shirt, his fingers almost tickling you as they gently ran up and down your sides.

You broke the kiss, panting heavily as you buried your face in his neck. “You looked really good tonight.”

He let out a low chuckle, reaching a hand down to squeeze your ass. “I always do better when you’re watching.” You tried to make it to every show, but sometimes Reid needed help with some manager stuff, or sometimes you were in pain and wanted to lie down. The wound had healed really well and you rarely needed to take it easy anymore, but there was the odd day when you had to sit out of the day’s festivities.

You smiled, pressing a gentle kiss onto his jaw. “No, I mean you looked really hot. I just couldn’t stop thinking about kissing you.”

He smirked, slowly rolling over until he was on top of you. “Well, to be fair, I’m always thinking about kissing you.”

You blushed, turning your face to the side. “Stopppp.”

He used a finger to tilt your face back towards his, pressing a short kiss on your lips. He sighed, twirling a piece of your hair. “God, you’re beautiful.”

You bit your lip, bringing his face back down to yours a few seconds later. He moaned quietly into the kiss, putting his hand on the wall of the bunk above your head.

“Ugh, guys, there are other people trying to sleep here,” Brian grumbled, rustling around in his much-too-small bunk. “I was gonna let it slide, but you guys sounds like you’re dying to fuck each other. Not cool.”

Roger broke away, rolling his eyes. “I’m well aware that these bunks are too small to fuck in. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

You sighed. “Rog, I’m right here.”

“Oops, sorry.” He grimaced, remembering you don’t like hearing about his past hookups, which was reasonable. “Brian, I’m allowed to kiss my girlfriend.”

“Until it wakes us up,” Freddie chimed in. “I love that my favorite couple are happy, but I’m exhausted. So please, speak quietly.”

You chuckled. “Goodnight, Freddie.”

“Goodnight darling, use a condom.”

“FREDDIE!” Roger shouted, eliciting a loud shushing noise from Brian. John continued to sleep soundly.

---

A couple weeks later came a series of three concerts in Santa Monica. Reid decided it would be best for the band to stay in a hotel for that time period. Freddie researched the most lavish hotels in the area, and found one similar to the hotel in Liverpool. He purposely got four rooms so you and Roger could share. Not that you minded; it would mean less cramped sleeping than on the bus, and you still got to be with your boyfriend.

The concept of having Roger Taylor as your boyfriend still baffled you sometimes. James had made you feel worthless in the final months of your relationship, and now someone as amazing as Roger was willing to publicly admit to being in a relationship with you. The thought made your heart swell.

And Roger couldn’t understand how he managed to end up with you, either. He was a notorious womanizer of the rock world, which made long-term relationships very difficult; look at his relationship with Gayle. All they did was shag and fight. Now, he was able to do normal relationship things, like staying up late and giggling, kissing whenever, talking about deep topics, and cuddling. You were a serial cuddler, and Roger loved it. He loved holding your body against his and feeling the warmth radiating off of you. It was the time spent with you, in those intimate moments, that made Roger happier than he’d ever been.

“I have an idea,” Roger said, sitting down next to you on the couch in your room.

You pulled your knees to your chest, setting your book down on the table next to you. “Well, do tell.”

He cleared his throat. “So you know how the pier is only a few minutes’ walk away, right?” You nodded. “Well, what if I took you there tomorrow, after the show, as our first official date as a couple?”

You’d been talking to Roger about a date, but he’d been so busy during the whole tour that he hadn’t been able to put anything together. You were okay with it, you just wished it could’ve been different. Now, you were smiling as wide as you could. “I would love that,” you said.

Roger returned your smile, tackling you into a hug. You both fell off the couch, lying on the floor next to each other. You began to laugh, while Roger pushed his hair out of his face, staring up at the ceiling.

“Whoops,” he breathed, chuckling. “Sorry.”

You grimaced, trying to ignore the pain in your stomach; the scar didn’t like aggravation like that. “It’s fine.”

He rolled over, hovering over you with his elbow on the floor. “Did it hurt the scar?”

“A little, but it’ll be fine tomorrow morning.” You tried to sit up, but before you could, Roger brought his lips down to yours. You put your head back down on the floor, pulling him on top of you. He put his forearms on either side of your head, holding himself up. Your hands explored his chest over his shirt, feeling the muscles bulging after the exercise he got by playing the drums at the concert. He broke away, moving his lips down to your neck. You groaned, digging your fingers into his hair.

“Let’s go to sleep,” Roger murmured into your skin.

You nodded. “My scar hurts.”

He placed a kiss on your forehead before standing up, holding his hand down to help you up. You pulled yourself up and walked over to one of the beds, gently laying down on your side. Roger lay down next to you, pulling you into his body. You sighed in contentment, drawing circles on his chest with your finger.

“Goodnight, love,” Roger whispered.

“Goodnight, Rog.”

---

The pier was scaring you, if you were being honest.

For some reason, you were worried you’d turn around at any moment, and he would be there, a knife in hand, ready to end you. You knew it was irrational, he was in prison on a different continent. But your anxiety was flaring up, and all the people around you didn’t make it better.

“What’s wrong?” Roger asked as you nudged the hot dog he’d bought you, not even taking a bite.

“I’m anxious,” you answered honestly. You didn’t see any point in hiding your worries from him.

He sighed. “Do you want to go back to the hotel?”

You shook your head. “I love being here with you, I just don’t like being around all these people.” You took a shaky breath. “I’m too worried he could be in these crowds.” Roger’s sad eyes made you wish you hadn’t said anything. You didn’t want to be a burden to him. “Forget it, let’s just--”

“Wait.” He grabbed your hand, squeezing it. “You know how we can get out of these crowds?” You frowned. “Let’s go on the Ferris wheel.”

You smiled. “That sounds fun,” you whispered.

Roger held you close as you made your way through the throngs of people towards the giant wheel. You stared at your feet, not looking up at anything until you were in line for the ride. Roger had his arm around your waist, trying his hardest to make sure no one bumped into you.

Once it was your turn, Roger paid a small fee and guided you towards the compartment that would be yours. You sat down next to him, placing your head on his shoulder as the machine began to move.

“Thank you,” you said, looking into his eyes. “I feel like I would’ve had an actual anxiety attack if I’d stayed down there longer.”

“No problem.” He wrapped an arm around your waist. “Your fears are not irrational. But just know I’m here to help you and keep you safe. No one’s gonna touch you.”

You sniffled, a few tears running down your face. “You’re amazing.”

He smiled. “Only for you.”

The ferris wheel stopped, and you noticed you were at the very top. “They must be letting someone else on,” you reasoned.

Roger looked over the side of the car. “Wow,” he said. “You’ve gotta check this out.”

You peered over the same side, gasping at what you saw. All the lights, the skyline, and the ocean at your back all worked together to create the most beautiful scene you’d ever seen. It was breathtaking. The world had never seemed so beautiful.

“Roger, this is…” You looked over at him, finding him staring at you. “What?”

His eyes flicked down to your lips before meeting your eyes again. “You are the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen.”

You hid your face in your hands. “Ahh, I’m blushing.”

He grabbed your wrists and pulled your hands away gently. “Can I kiss you?” he asked slowly. You nodded, and he slowly placed his lips on yours.

It was something else. The cold breeze gave you goosebumps, causing you to shiver and move closer to Roger. He wrapped both arms around you, almost pulling you into his lap. You wrapped your arms around his neck, tilting your head to the side.

“(Y/n)?” he asked, pulling away and placing his forehead on yours. His lips still brushed against yours, and you wanted nothing more than to kiss him again.

“Yeah?” you responded.

“I…” He trailed off, moving his eyes to look at the ocean before looking back at you. “I’m having a great time.”

You nodded. “I am too.”

He reconnected his lips to yours just as the wheel began to spin.

Taglist:

@thessxoxo @roger-bang-the-drum @slavsher @sabbrrriinnaa @i-ship-it-ironically @blissfully-queen @oyoke@borhapqueen92@girlpluto @secretsweetscollectionblog@bentaylorrogerhardy@16wiishes @emmieliabedelia @onevisionliz@mr-stank-i-dont-feel-so-dank@rebelrebelyourefaceisamess @cosmicsskies@thewinchesterchronicles @florenceivy @benhardyseyes@letmelivetaylor @destiel-stucky4ever-loki-queen @holding-onto-cas

[a-pervy-nerdy]

Summer Fling (Freddie Klein x reader smut)

A/N: Here's the deal, no I'm not back just yet. Update: I just got a new job! Which I'll be working as much as possible but during my winter break I will be back to finished some bowers requests! This fic however, is a Devon Bostick character from the 2014 movie Small Time which takes place in the 90s.

Go check out @trickkombowerskru 's fic! I requested this plot and she did a great job, I just had the urge to make a detailed oriented adaptation. She did an amazing job, and I just wanna develop it a lil' more because I love her!

For those of you who like Devon, but haven't seen this movie, thats cool! Heres all you need to know!

Freddie Klein is the awkward college student:

The son of Al Klein, a car salesmen. In the summer between high school and college, Freddie decides he would like to become a car salesmen like his father. Al hates this idea because he and his coworker Martini (Ash), have had to work YEARS to get where they are and even now its small business car lot where they make good, not amazing.

BASICALLY

Freddie works over the summer, gets good but he's surrounded by "the guys" a group of sleazy salesmen Martini and Al are friends with and Freddie starts to become a lil' shit as a result. And poor Al, has to tell Freddie that he's fired and he should go to college like his mom (Barbara) and stepfather he hates (Chick), want him to. Freddie's upset but does so and eventually his father and him make up. Its a very touching story. (@trickkombowerskru thinks its okay. I love this movie.)

Also, Gayle is the office receptionist thats irish and an airhead. And Barlow is the lot's jazzy, barly english speaking cars repairman. Linda, is Al's new girlfriend thats there for him throughout the whole mess. Its very touching.

Now that you know all that! This fic is going to start where the movie leaves off. Where Freddie is now in college but visits often and is trying to help his dad extend the buisness.

So here we go! ✌❤

P.S. Thank you for being patient with me, and letting me do what I want. Ya'll mean so much to me and I hope @trickkombowerskru and I can stick around 💕

Warnings: NSFW, cursing, mild sexism? That shit gets corrected don't worry.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

See, you're Martini's niece. The daughter of his sister, and being his one and only niece, you're fairly close with your jokster of an uncle. You attend a local community college because, not everyone can afford the University. And after a slue of food service and retail jobs, you're on the hunt for another summer job to get you through until the next semester. How convenient! Martini, and his close friend and co-worker, Al, are looking for a new receptionist since their current has just been promoted to sales associate.

Uncle Martini assures you its an easy job, just processing paper work and filing. You're thankful for the 9 to 5 work, which is drastically better than the minimum wage scraps you were making before.

So you're sitting there at your desk which sits right out front in the office. You're alone at the moment, filing paperwork, starring down at the numbers and letters on the paper. Your eyelids droop and you take a deep breath and let it out in a huff. If only this job wasn't so boring.

"You're not Gayle!" A nasaly voice announces from above. Your tired eyes shoot up, your heart leaps out if your chest, and your hands begin to shake. You were startled.

Standing there is a young man roughly your age, if not a little bit older. He's nerdy, in a button up and khaki pants, he's incredibly out of place. You stare at his face for a moment, and if it wasn't bad that he startled you, he's attractive. He stares back at you, confused.

"What?" You eventually ask.

"Where's Gayle?" He asked you, almost offended by your presence.

"She’s in the back- can, can I help you with something?" You ask him, still just as confused as he is.

"I'm looking for my dad."

"Your dad?"

"Oh hey! Freddie," Al walks through the door with a coffee in hand and smelling of the local deli, "I see you've met Y/N."

"Oh! Oh YOU'RE Freddie!" Suddenly the connection goes through. You've heard stories of Freddie from Al, who couldn't be a more proud father. You stand up from the desk, thankful for the exscuse to stand. You throw a hand out and shake his awkwardly. He watches you, brows still furrowed.

"You're working the front desk now?" He asks you.

"Yeah. Been here for a few weeks. Hey Al, wheres Uncle Ash?" You ask in passing.

"He caught a sale, should be in in just a moment." He spoke as he walked around mindlessly as he sifted through paperwork and coffee. Freddie stood there awkwardly as you sat down and tried to go back to work. You didn't know Freddie was as cute as he wass. The only picture Al ever showed you was the one on his desk from when he was a kid. He resolved to pour himself a cup of coffee which sat out for customers along side a plate of untouched cookies. Gayle made then herself.

"So uh, you're Martini's niece?" Freddie asked in an attempt to make conversation.

"Yeah." You nodded, flashing a look at him. He made you nervous.

"How come we've never met befor?" He asked, lifting a brow. Clearly a little more comfortable with you than before. You shook your head and shrugged.

"Don't know." You resolved. The door flew open with a smiling Martini who swayed from side to side with triumph. He tossed a few papers on your desk, which slid, messing with the pile of papers currently on your desk. You sighed.

"Which one?" Al asks from behind his desk.

"Chevy," Martini says as he sits at his own desk, "oh! Freddie!" He cries and gives the young man a rather rough hug. "Didn't know you'd be back so soon. Oh, this Y/N by the way."

"We've met." You announce with a tight lipped smile.

"Good...good.." he nods off to his work on the desk. Eventually, Al starts a conversation with Freddie again. From this, you learn Freddie will be working as a salesman over the summer again. You curse, you didn't need such an attractive distraction during this job.

He started that next Monday, and oh boy, you didn't expect it to be that hard with him around. You find yourself watching him walk around the lot and talking with customers. In fact, he's the first one to hand you any paperwork that day. And when he does, your fingers brush against each other and you nearly panic. You avoid eye contact with him, you honestly try to avoid extended time around him, you eat lunch at your desk so you don't have to be alone with him in the break room. Unfortunately for you, Freddie finds this incredibly endearing to him.

You see, Freddie was less surprised by a new receptionist, and more surprised that she was actually cute, attractive, hot when you unbutton your shirt a little because of the California heat. It wasn't that Freddie didn't have other options than you, Martini had taken him to a bar or two, but those girls were nothing like you. He finds himself starring at you a lot, and even fantasizing about you.

One afternoon, about a month into Freddie's start, you're in the furnished breakroom of the office. Which is one small room with one small fridge, sink, counter, microwave, and table with chairs. You pull out your lunch from the fridge and stand, only to be startled once again at the sight of Freddie leaning on the counter to your right.

"Sorry, didn't mean to startle you." He apologizes and holds his hand in front of him as he giggles.

"It's fine. I didn't see you." You exscuse yourself before going to leave.

"Wait a minute," Freddie calls, "I've had lunch alone everyday this week, keep me some company will ya?"

"Thats not true, you went to the deli Monday and Wednesday." You correct him. He chuckles and shrugs.

"Alright, you got me. Come on, take a break." He insists. You sigh and sit with him. He's pleasant, funny, and smart. He makes a comment about how you're waisting away at the community college, you belong at the University. You give a shrug. As lunch comes to a close, and you throw your trash away, you once again go to exscuse yourself and go back to work. But Freddie, refuses. "You're lunch break isn't even over yet!" He argues.

"I gotta get back." You leave him alone, and sad. He didn't even get the chance to ask you out. So he makes a plan. That night, he volunteers the two of you to close for the night so Martini and Al can leave early for a drink. You're not pleased by this at all. Usually, you're shift ends before any of theirs. Its late, you're tired, and more than a little fustrated. You're closing the back door, and wonder back to the office where Freddie is locking up out front. When you got back to pick up your things at your desk to leave, you're with Freddie wondering around very nonchalantly.

He's leaning against the counter in the office beside the coffee maker. He fiddles with it for a moment as you watch him, he's trying to act cool n' shit.

"Goodnight." You say, a little weirded out.

"Um, Y/N, before you go...I just wanted to apologize."

"Apologize for what?" He then pushes himself off the counter and begins walking towards you.

"I don't know, I guess if I made you feel uncomfortable or upset in anyway." He's closer now.

"What?" Closer, oh no, too close...too close. But you can't move, you're frozen. He gives a shrug and looks down at you.

"Has anyone ever told you how pretty your eyes are?" He asks you with a soft voice. Your furrow your brows.

"What-" He reaches a hand around to grab your neck and pull you into a passionate kiss. You're shocked st first, your heart is buring, your head spinning, your mind blank. You're helpless...and yet you're melting. Your eyelids flutter as they close and you begin to move. Your lips move back against his as you kiss him back. Its out of the blue, passionate, wild, rough, raw, pure. You want more, its only fueling your adrenaline rush, you can feel the endorphins in your head flying. You feel alive as the kids intensifies. Freddies hands are on your waist while your are on his shoulders.

But then, his hands slide down to your ass and he runs his palms across your shape. You're almost startled by this until he gives a slow, sweet grope. You pull away from the kiss, and give a small yelp as you lean into him. He pressing his face into your neck and leaves small kisses on your neck. Your hands fall down, and wrap around his back. He pulls up your skirt and gives your bare ass a good grope as he kisses your neck. He makes you moan as your gently run your nails down his clothed back. Suddenly you're very aware of his clothes, and it annoys you.

"Fuck you're so hot." Freddie whispers into your neck. Your chest heaves as he feels you up and now, he's pressing his hips against yours. Without a word, you start to unbutton his dress shirt. He slips out of it with ease and his hands quickly go to yours to get enough to reveal your bra. He gives a pleased sigh as his hands reach for your breasts and eventually unhook your bra. He spends a lot of time groping your breasts and sucking your nipples. In doing so, he's pressing you up against the desk until you put an end to the hip grinding by hopping on.

"F-Freddie.." you moan out as he kisses back up your collar bone to your neck. Your skirt hiked up to your waist, he spreads your legs around his waist. Your shirt, unbuttoned, still around your arms with your breasts exposed. You're completely vulnerable to him. He looks you up and down again and then into your eyes. "We shouldn't-" again, he kisses you. He grinds his hips against yours and gives needy moans. You can only cling to his arm as he reaches down. He flatly runs a fingers up the damp cloth of your panties. He does this a few times before he reaches in and plays with you further. He watches as you throw your head back and moan, grasping his arm as he pleasures you. He kisses your neck as he starts to finger you, almost bringing you to orgasm before he pulls away. You give a sad whimper before he pulls your panties off completely and takes a knee. He holds your thighs apart for a moment ask he begins to eat you out. Mostly playing with your clit, again almost bringing you to orgasm.

You'd like to think this is because he knows what he's doing. Its not. He just loves to hear you moan until he gets antsy. Finally, he stands and gives you another kiss. He pulls his cock out of his pants and quickly he has arm on each side of you on the desk as he slides deep inside you with ease. Fuck, he has to hold himself back. He has to be careful. So he starts slowly, which just drives you crazier. You cling to him as his thrusts are slow and deep. Fuck, you're close, too close.

"Fuck-don't stop." You beg him as he gives a grunt. He can't stop himself. You're driving him absolutely up the wall.

"Oh fuck," he moans between thrusts, he begins to speed up "oh fuck." He starts fucking you harder, faster, until the desk below is being rocked bakc and forth.

"Oh god!" You cry, throwing your head back again and clinging to him, leaving ligbt scratch marks on his back. Your mouth hangs open as your orgasm washes over you. Freddie gives a few more good thrusts, before completely losing it and letting himself cum too. You're both a panting mess as you try to regain your sanity.

"Fuck.." Freddie sighs happily with a smile. You take a breath and nod. He pulls away and stuffs himself back in his pants and you proceed to get dressed.

"That was..."

"Great." Freddie finishes with a goofy grin. You nod, and look away from him.

"That...that can never happen again." You tell him, and he agrees. But thats a lie. It happens again. The next day in fact when everyone is out at lunch as you're alone in the break room. Then in the women's bathroom. Then on the office's couch when you lock up one night. Its a passionate and purley sex driven afair you tell yourself. Its just, work friends with benefits sort of deal.

But that abruptly ends when one day, Freddie is a little more grumpy than usual. Instead of handing you paperwork, he throws it on your desk and gives an order. You pause, but he's gone before you can address it. Then, he's rude to you when you ask about some other paperwork. He brushes you off and tells you to ask Martini about it. And then, when you're left alone at lunch...a time when he's usually jumping to get you alone, he practically ignores. You tried to argue that he was having a bad day. But when he's rude a second day, third day, fourth...

On the fifth day of all that bullshit, your car breaksdown on your way to work and Freddie has to get you for work. The ride there is practically silent other than a short conversation about a caset tape in Freddie's car. The way home however, you can't take it. You're about halfway there when your pot just boils over.

"So what the fuck has been your problem latley." Freddie appears unchanged and doesn't even look at you. He takes a fiew seconds too long to answer. "What am I not good enough for you anymore? Can't even be handed shit anymore, you have to throw things at me!?" He doesn't answer. "Hey, Im fucking talking to you!" He just swallows. You lean back in your seat and stare at him. "Guess I'm just another whore then, huh? You fucked me and now you're done with me. Jesus christ. You're such a fucking hack! You're just a fucking loser with no respect for others! Fuck!!" You shriek, angry and fustrated with him on so many different levels. Mostly, because you actually liked Freddie and you had always craved him since that first day. You were mostly angry at yourself for liking him so much. You held your face in your hands. "Pull over." You tell him. Its raining, and you're miles from your apartment complex.

"What?"

"I said pull over!" You demand. He does so, hesitantly. You throw off your seatbelt and throw the door open. "I can't even fucking look at you."

"Y/N! Y/N get back in the car, its raining!" He calls after you as you slam the door and begin walking down the dangerous street towarda your home. But Freddie insists that you get back in the car and drives beside you slowly and yells from inside the cat. "Please, get back in!"

"No! I don't fucking need you! Clearly you didn't care about me before!"

"Yknow what....fine!!!" Freddie breaks, he shouts, and speeds off. Leaving you there in the rain to walk back home. You almost slip and fall a few times because not only is it raining, its pouring and cold, and its also a sketchy part of town. You sort of regret your decision, sort of. Fuck Freddie, if he wasn't going to respect you then you didn't need him.

Freddie, having sped off and now in the smoldering aftermath of his terrible decision, starts to regret leaving you there. In fact, looking around at this side of town...he's get worried. A pretty girl like you, that isn't safe. He curses himself and hopes he can turn around and find you. Eventually he does, and that sinking feeling he had stops. He drives slowly next to you and roles down the passanger window.

"Y/N..." he calls. You stop, and think for a moment and decide its best to just get in the car. The rest of the ride is silent. You're still upset with him. When he pulls up to your apartment complex, he opens his mouth to speak. "Look, I'm sorry I-" you slam the car door shut and quickly run inside. He's really fucked up now. He knows that.

It's just...he's never felt this way before...ever. And he got scared, he panicked. No girl has ever been so loving to him, been so good to him. He's never been in love before. And he didn't know how to react. He knew it was wrong in the moment but...it was classic "i dont know how to express actually love so I'm gonna be mean" syndrome. That night when he gets home, he calls you. But you, unsurprisingly don't answer the phone. So, he leaves a voicemail.

"Hey Y/N...its me, I just...god I don't know what to say. Sorry I guess, well, I don't guess. I'm sorry. For everything. I've been a totally asshole latley and I just...I want you to know I'm sorry and um..." the words get caught up in his throat, he wants to say it, but, "...you were right." And then he panics again and hangs up the phone.

"Y/N huh?" Al calls from behind him, having heard the whole thing. Freddie and you have actually kept your little fling a secret from everyone at the lot. This is his first time putting two and two together.

"Yeah...Y/N...I fucked up real bad, dad."

"Okay well, at least you know you fucked up."

"I don't want to lose her, I just...I panicked and I really hurt her."

"Why don't you call her back and tell her that?"

"She's not gonna listen to me." Freddie argues.

"Listen Fred, you can't give up. Not when it comes to someone you really care about. And unless she's told you no, then you can't just roll over everytime. Call her back and leave another message. Tell her how you feel."

"Thanks, dad."

"No problem. Go get em' Tiger." As soon as Al left the room, Freddie called again and left this message:

"Hey, its me, again. Look Y/N, I know that sorry won't fix anything and I can't blame you. I was a real ass. But I...its because you just, do something to me. I can't explain it exactly. But its like you've got a hold on me even when you're not around. Like, all I could do was think about you. And not just sexually, you're not like any other girl. You're...you're smart and sweet and funny and-" he exceeded the time of a voicmail. So he called back. "Me again. Anyways, you're also really sexy in a different way. Like, you're just...so amazing. And that, that scared me. I got scared and I started being a dick and thats no exscuse but thats what happened. And you just really mean so much to me. I really care about you and I just want to be with you because-" Suddenly there was a loud click on the other end. "I love you." He said awkwardly as you listened on the other end. You had picked up the phone on the other end.

"You love me?" You ask after a long pause.

"Y-Yeah...I love you Y/N. And I've never really, been in love before."

"Wow." You gasp.

"So uh...could I take you out sometime?"

"Like...on a date?" You ask, and Freddie chuckles on the other end.

"Yeah, like on a date."

"When?"

"Tomorrow, after work?"

"It can't be to a sleazy bar."

"Right. No sleazy bar. A restaurant, a nice restaurant."

"Okay. Tomorrow. See you then."

"See you then." He smiled.

[sabraeal]

Merry & Bright: Chapter 7

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

He should be over this.

(Doc makes him pull off the highway somewhere near Florence, South Carolina; she’s got an actual travel itinerary that Yuzuri helped her program into some app that includes mandatory stretch breaks because she’s concerned about good circulatory health, and – god, that really shouldn’t be doing anything for him, but it does, it does, and he’s a real idiot thinking that this is a good idea –

“It’s an overlook,” she tells him proudly as they park, smile stretching far too wide for the amount of time they’ve been in a cramped car with a week’s worth of stuff and a Christmas’s worth of gifts. “A stretch and a view!”

He swallows down a protest that it hasn’t even been two hours since they grabbed lunch – some little place that served fish in Switzerland, the only one where the whole menu wasn’t deep fried – and heaves himself out of the car, only to find that it’s – it’s not as easy as it should be.

“Yowch,” he mutters, rubbing at his back. He’s been a total knot of stress since they started north, he’s aware, but –

But god, his back is reminding him of every hit he ever took, and when he throws his arms up, bending back, he has a real moment of worry that it’s going to take an uncomfortable drive and an emergency room bill to get him upright. He’s only twenty-five, he shouldn’t be worrying about this shit.

“Obi?” she chirps, skipping over to him with a concerned look on her face. “Are you okay?”

A choir of angels sing Hosanna when his back relents, letting him snap upright. “Yeah, just fine. Had to, uh, get a kink out. You know how it is.”

Doc gives him a skeptical look, and – listen, he knows she won’t do anything but tut at him and fish out some all-organic Icy/Hot or whatever she’s got hiding in their pharmacy bag, but she’ll also tell Yuzuri, and he knows, he knows that will mean he’ll get a half dozen :3 :3 :3 texts followed by something like, gotta keep that back healthy if ur gonna rob that cradle already, and he doesn’t need that. Not this trip.

“Okay,” she says finally, mouth in a thoughtful pout. “But let me know if you need anything.”

He just manages to close his lips around, for us to turn south already. “Sure thing, Doc. I’ll be the first in line for your tender ministrations the second I have an excuse.”)

It would’ve been a hit to his pride to have turned around before he ever got here, before he even attempted to walk through the door, but Obi would have taken it if it meant dread wouldn’t be his constant companion.

That’s what he’d thought being in this house would be; just constant dread, like realizing he’s in the wrong bathroom, or watching his favorite movie as a kid again as an adult, wondering if it would still hold up. Just a week of waiting for the other shoe to drop, and wondering if it would right in front of Doc.

He’d survived it though, cookie in his mouth and arm slung around Doc’s shoulders, with nothing worse than a flash of hesitation before walking straight back into his childhood.

But now, with Todd and Kelly Ann trailing behind him and the stern set of Gayle’s mouth looming in front of him --

It’s different. Like being right back in high school, black cocert T-shirt for a band that broke up before he was born and jeans ripped at the knees, just waiting to find out how he’s been a disappointment today.  The past is a ghost he can’t shake, something that clings to him even when he tries to step out from under it’s shadow.

Doesn’t help that there’s so many people waiting to see him fail to do it, either.

“Obi!” Doc springs up from the floor, all coltish limbs, practically tripping over herself. God, this is really what he’s into now; messy hair and thick tights, barely able to keep her balance with her shoes off, someone who watched vegan cheese not melt and still could say something nice about it.

She tucks herself against his side, head fitting against the girdle of his shoulder like it was meant to be there and –

And he doesn’t even regret it. Who the fuck cares about girls with Barbie heels and legs for days; Doc can barely keep her hair in a barrette and he just – wants it. Wants the way he hooks her hair back around her ear to be real.

She stares up at him, all eyes. “You’re --?”

“Yeah,” he grunts, letting his fingers linger on the hollow behind her ear just a second too long before adjusting his hold on her, his arm draping over the line of her shoulders like it belongs there. “Everything’s as sorted as it’s gonna get.”

The worry won’t shake from her, not like he wants it to. There’s no way he’s going to be able to relax in this house, not with memory waiting to ambush him around every corner, but he just – doesn’t want her to worry about it either, about whether everyone here likes him enough, or is recognizing his accomplishments, or – whatever it is she’s looking for. He doesn’t know how to tell her that it’s fine, that he’s done enough to know that forgiveness doesn’t grow on trees, and there may not be enough for what he’s done.

He drags his gaze away, trying to escape the worry, the guilt – only to find the same on Gayle’s face, that tight-lipped concern that makes him want to squirm right out from the microscope he’s under.

Luckily, he doesn’t have to survive it for long.

“Laila!” Kelly Ann rounds the couch, hands on her hips. “You’ve been letting Shirayuki play too, haven’t you? You can’t be all the animals.”

“I let her be the baby,” the girl says, unconcerned, making giraffes escape their pen to play with penguins.

“Laila --”

“It’s fine!” Doc is quick to assure her. “The baby had fun watching all the animals play.”

The distraction may have gotten Doc’s look off him, but Gayle isn’t deterred, not the slightest bit.

“Well, I was just about to start in on dinner,” she says, gaze shifting behind him. “Todd, Obi, do you boys think you could see your way to helping out an old woman?”

Todd’s not standing anywhere near close to him, but Obi knows he tenses like he does, knows that they both looks like cats with their backs up –

“Oh, Gayle!” Doc lurches under his arm, like she’s torn between staying right where she is and shoving herself forward. “Please, let me help! Todd just got here.”

“I couldn’t possibly,” Gayle huffs, waving her off. “You’re a guest, and Todd’s used to being put to work. Besides you should save up your strength – I’ll have you in the kitchen tomorrow, anyway.”

“Some guest,” Todd laughs. “Can’t work tonight but you’ll be putting her through her paces in the morning?”

“You know how it is around here,” Gayle tells him airily. “Two days and then you’re family.”

God, his chest shouldn’t ache like this. “It’s fine, Doc,” he says, rubbing her arm before he steps away. “What could go wrong in a room full of knives?”

She looks anything but convinced. “But --”

“Oh, leave them to it,” Kelly Ann says with a roll of her eyes. “Take advantage of the reprieve now – you’ll wish you had it in three days, once Gayle’s got you.”

“I don’t --”

“Come on, you can help me,” she says, catching Doc by the shoulders. “I have so much Doc McStuffins to watch.”

Laila shrieks, hands slamming on the floor as she turns to look at her mom. “I love Doc McStuffins.”

“Fancy that,” Kelly Ann deadpans, mouth twitching at the corners.

“Go ahead,” Obi murmurs to Doc when she hesitates. “I’ll live.”

She gives him a long look, then nods. “Sounds great.”

Obi’s not quite sure what possesses Gayle to put knives in their hands, but here they are, Todd on one side of the island and Obi on the other, butcher block cutting boards abutting each other as they dice vegetables. She’s even gone and turned her back on them, humming along with the Christmas songs on the radio, water steaming up from the sink as she hand-cleans her kitchen aid attachments, made back when Eisenhower was probably president.

“Truck still treating you right, Todd?” Gayle asks, lifting her voice over the stream.

“Yeah, yeah,” he calls back, shooting an uncertain glance at Obi. “Haven’t had any trouble with it since the last time.”

“Well, Bob’s already talked to Jesse,” she presses, like always. “He says he’ll look at it when he comes.”

“Aw, Gayle,” Todd sighs, suffering. “He shouldn’t have said anything. It’s fine. All Jesse’ll do is tell me I don’t take care of it right --”

“He would know,” Gayle reminds him.

“—And he’ll give me, you know, a talk.” Todd huffs. “Probably try to say something about women being engines on top of that.”

“Jesse still works at the garage?” Obi asks, know the moment he says it that it’s – dumb. It’s been six years, no one’s who he remembers except in the worst ways.

“Didn’t we tell you?” Gayle cocks her head at him. “Jesse owns his own now. Went into business with that friend of his. You remember – Scott?”

“Shane,” Todd and Obi supply at the same time. Todd glares.

“Right, Shane.” Gayle smiles. “They’ve been doing well.”

“You’d know that if you stuck around,” Todd mutters, just loud enough for Obi to hear him, and for Gayle to not.

“You done with those onions, Obi?” she asks, bright.

“Yeah, got them all chopped up here.” He points at a bowl that’s seen more of his tears than the past six years all together. “You need them somewhere.”

She drops a metal bowl between them and shoves a few handful of onions in. “Why don’t you boys mix that up and start putting the meatballs on the tray to bake. I’ll get the rest of this in the sauce.”

They give each other a wary look, but they drop their knives, mixing meat and veg and breadcrumbs up until it’s even –

“And now that you boys can’t get away,” Gayle says, hands coming down hard on the island. “Let me tell you how things are going to be.”

“What?” Todd says, the same time Obi manages an, “Erk?”

“I know you both have never seen eye-to-eye –“ Todd opens his mouth to protests, and Gayle holds up a hand – “don’t care whose fault y’all think it is, or why. That’s between you boys, ‘less you make it involve me.”

They both nod.

“That being said, you’re gonna get along this Christmas,” she tells them, firm. “You’re men, not boys, and I won’t have you ruining the whole thing for everyone just because you think you have bad blood between you.”

“But --”

“And Lord help me, if I catch either of you sniping at each other in my hearing, I will put you both into the dog house.”

Obi coughs, nervous. “Well, the Baron’s got some nice digs --”

“Not the Baron’s,” she clarifies with frightening calm. “Millie’s.”

Obi grimaces, remembering the dilapidated old thing for a dog he’d been too late to see.

“We took that down, three years back,” Todd protests, “you can’t --”

“Then I will make you put a tent in its place and share it until you both can act like civilized people.” Her hands fist on her hips. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes ma’am,” they both chorus.

“Good,” she says, firm. She turns back to the sink, like the last three minutes of threats have all just been a figment of their imagination. “Now remember, those meatballs are supposed to be tablespoon-sized, boys.”

It’s a blessing that kids’ shows don’t have any sort of continuity at Laila’s age; Shirayuki doubts that she’d be able to say a single thing about what’s been happening on the screen for the last hour, let alone tracking some sort of – of plot. It’s been hard enough to not to find some excuse to put herself in the kitchen, to make sure that Obi isn’t just suffering his slights silently, trying not to make a circus out of it for Gayle –

A hand presses firmly against her knee.

“You’re shaking the couch,” Kelly Ann tells her, voice pitched low. “Worrying about it won’t make it go any better for him.”

She knows that, she does, but not thinking about it won’t help either, and she feels like she owes him a little bit of suffering, if she’s making him face it alone –

“Besides.” Kelly Ann settles back, her arm sprawling over the back of the couch. “Gayle’s raised Todd half his life. Don’t think she doesn’t know what his sniping looks like.”

That…is a good point.

“Don’t want to interrupt your girl time.”

Shirayuki startles, twisting up on her knees to see Obi leaning in the doorway, mouth rucked up in a smirk.

“You’re not interrupting,” she assures him, a little too breathless. “Just -- watching some stuff?”

“Doc McStuffins,” Laila corrects huffily. “Not stuff.”

“Right, well.” Obi shrugs his shoulder. “When you’re done with that, Gayle says it’s time for dinner.”

Laila’s head whips around, eyes narrowed. “What’s for dinner?”

“Worms,” he says easily. “She said it was your favorite --”

“Ewwwww.” She looks at Kelly Ann. “Mommy, I don’t want to --”

“It’s meatballs and pasta,” Kelly Ann sighs. “Not worms.”

Laila glares at Obi. “But why would he say --?”

“He’s teasing, Laila-girl.” Kelly Ann glances back at him as well. “That’s what he likes to do best.”

“Well, I do like pasta and meatballs,” Laila tells him magnanimously, getting to her feet. “We can have dinner now.”

Obi gets that look in his eye, but Shirayuki is much, much to far away to whisper don’t and have him hear. “Thank you for your permission, your majesty.”

Without a single hint of irony, Laila lifts her chin, imperious as any royal. “You’re welcome.”

For once, Obi seems speechless, just watching the tiny girl sweep past. Kelly Ann barely muffles a snort.

“You should know better,” she tells him, patting his cheek as she walks by. “You don’t need to encourage little girls to be princesses.”

Shirayuki means to grab him in the hall, before dinner, but with Laila and Kelly Ann just ahead of them, there’s no privacy, no good way to pull him aside and ask – ask –

If he’s okay. If this is all getting to be a little too much for him, now that there seems to be an endless stream of disapproving siblings added to this already full emotional powder keg. If –

If it’s all right that she knows about Shannon. If this is a thing she’s supposed to talk about, or – or if she should forget she ever heard anything. Families have secrets, she knows that; every one has things they all know but pretend they don’t, just to keep the peace, but --

But she’s not used to being a part of that, not when it was always just her and Oma and Opa, and –

And it’s not until she sees it – dining room table with the leaves in, covered in a tablecloth and festive runner, dishes steaming where they sit on the table – that she realizes how long it’s been since she’s done this. Since she’s had a family dinner.

Obi’s elbow jostles her in the doorway. “Can’t eat with your eyes, Doc. C’mon, let’s go sit.”

She stumbles in, feet numb, sliding into a chair next to him. There’s been dinners out, of course, times she and Obi have cooked for Yuzuri and Suzu and Ryuu, times she’s been at Shidan’s house at dinner time and been fed a little of what everyone’s having, the team dinners that involve either pizza or barbeque being shipped in from across town, but –

That’s not this. That’s not – that’s not family stuff.

It’s like she has two left hands, both of them too dumb and clumsy to do anything but clutch at the napkin in her lap. She doesn’t trust herself to touch anything, not when she can feel them shaking in her lap, when the thorny prickle of tears sits in her throat.

“Hey.” Obi’s familiar warmth bumps into her side. “Would you like some pasta, Doc?”

It’s a relief to look at him, to see the warm smile on his face and concern in his eyes, and just nod.

He doesn’t say anything else, just grabs the serving bowl full of penne and starts rolling a few onto her plate.

“That fine, D--?” He hesitates, knuckles whitening on the serving spoon. With a quick glance up, he angles a little more toward her and corrects, “--Babe?”

He...really does not need to drop his voice like that, if he’s going to -- to call her that here. There’s a child, for goodness sake.

She glances quickly across the table, and there’s Todd, watching them with an expression far too smug for her liking.

“Um, yeah,” she manages, hoping everyone thinks her blush is from how warm the room is, and not -- not anything untoward. “Thanks, um...” She can feel Todd’s eyes on her, interested, and -- and what would Obi’s girlfriend call him --?

She panics. “...Sexy?”

The sauce ladle clanks noisily against her plate, but Obi catches the handle before it can topple over into her pasta.

“Good,” he coughs, setting it safely away from him. It’s always hard to tell with Obi, but she could swear there’s pink dusting over his cheekbones. “Glad to be of service.”

Shirayuki ducks her head, trying to focus on the food in front of her. If she’s cutting her meatballs into precise quarters, she can’t be -- be blushing over Obi, and as long as there’s food in her mouth she doesn’t have to talk or look at anyone --

Laila clears her throat, pointed. “Aren’t we gonna do grace?”

Shirayuki jolts, dropping her fork to her plate, and – and there’s not a single adult at the table who isn’t wearing an identical grimace of guilt. There’s forkfuls of pasta already en route to mouths, drinks raised to lips, hands tearing off bits of steaming garlic bread. Even Bob is trying to subtly swallow a mouthful of meatball, which at least makes the penne hanging out of Obi’s mouth less of a transgression.

All eyes shift, looking towards the authority at the table, and Gayle sighs.

“Now, honey,” she says, smoothing her napkin over her lap. “You know that when we have guests, we don’t make anyone say it.”

“But I wanna do it,” Laila whines, shrinking in her seat.

Kelly Ann sighs. “Laila --”

“I don’t mind,” Shirayuki offers, setting her fork aside, trying not to drip sauce onto the tablecloth. “Please don’t feel like you can’t on my account.”

“Me either.” Obi grins down at Laila, giving her a wink. “Take it away, kid.”

Their only warning is the cock-eyed grin she gives, before she launches into, “Good food, good meat, good God let’s eat!”

“Laila --”

“AMEN,” she tacks on, shoving a meatball straight into her mouth and grinning at her mother.

Kelly Ann is fit to be tied, hands on her hips, cheeks blown out with all the scolding she’s fit between them –

Bob breaks first.

His shoulder shake, his eyes screw shut, and for a good second Shirayuki’s afraid he’ll fly apart like a motor under too much strain, until –

Until his laugh bursts out of him, so hard he’s hitting his hand against the table, like he needs to tap out.

“Dad,” Kelly Ann gasps, scandalized, but it’s too late, now that Bob’s broken the seal, none of them can keep it in.

Shirayuki has to bury her face behind a napkin, trying to cover up the tears running out of her eyes, trying to avoid the glares Kelly Ann is trying to send all of them.

“That’s a good one,” Obi tells Laila, and then shoves in his own mouthful.

Kelly Ann glares. “Don’t encourage her.”

Obi shrugs, shooting her a bolder grin than Shirayuki would dare.

“So,” Todd interjects, stabbing his pasta with a bit more force than necessary. “How’d you two meet? I haven’t heard the story.”

Obi has never looked happier to have his mouth full. Shirayuki sighs. “We met sophomore year. I transferred in a month into the first semester. Obi and I shared a coffee shop.”

Because he was following me, is the part of the story she leaves out.

“Transferring a month in?” Todd takes a drink. “Sounds like a story.”

Her fingers ache where the edge of the fork digs into them. “I --”

She doesn’t know how to do this, how to make black fingernails and Rohypnol and weeks of fruitless litigation into dinner-talk, into a nice little package that somehow leads to – to this. To a long term boyfriend and romantic moments and family dinners.

Especially since it didn’t.

It’s easy to leave out the worst parts of things between her and Obi, to leave out what remains of Zen in those first few years, but she doesn’t know how to invent something wholesale that isn’t just…a complete lie.

Because that’s important, somehow. That she doesn’t lie. That even with all the pretending, Obi’s family knows her.

And they can’t do that, not if she makes up some story about -- about switching majors, or moving closer to home, or whatever reason someone could have that isn’t potential sexual assault.

But she doesn’t have to.

“It is,” Obi says, with the sort of finality that says the topic is done.

She’d expect Todd to pick, to pry, but his gaze shift to her, assessing, and instead says, “So y’all live in Florida?”

“For now,” Obi says, letting her pick at her meal. “We’re doing our PhD down there, but I think the eventual plan is Boston.”

-- It’s just disappointing. Zen sighs, and she knows she deserves it, deserves his frustration. It just feels like you aren’t even planning on coming back, sometimes --

She nearly bites her tongue. “I mean, maybe. That’s – a good place to start looking.”

Obi’s head snaps toward her, a question in his eyes, but she looks down, finding her side salad engrossing.

“You live close by to each other?” Todd asks, so innocent.

“Oh, we – we share an apartment,” she says, not even thinking. Todd’s eyes take on a triumphant gleam, and she knows she’s given him exactly what he wanted.

His gaze darts to Gayle. “Oh, so you live together?”

Obi’s mouth pulls flat, but with a look at Laila, he keeps it shut.

“Did you hear that?” Todd presses, when Gayle doesn’t even blink. “Obi and Shirayuki live together.”

“Todd,” she says, turning the most unimpressed, motherly look on him. “Of course they do! You know expensive rent is.” She turns a bright smile to the both of them, radiating approval. “And I must say, they keep the place looking lovely. Don’t they, Bob?”

“Well, we didn’t get the grand tour,” Bob allows, reaching for the garlic bread, “but they got quite a cozy nest for themselves, from what I’ve seen.”

“Doc’s got a gift,” Obi tells them, sending her a wink. “If it was me, the whole place would be in black.”

Gayle rolls her eyes heavenward. “Don’t we know it.”

That sends a laugh around the table -- all except Todd, who throws himself against the back of his chair, arms folded, and lets out an annoyed huff.

“What about you, Toddy?” Obi’s grin takes on a sharp slant. “Bringing home anyone special, lately?”

Shirayuki’s half-afraid dinner is about to come to blows -- by his look, Todd does not have a special someone, and Obi clearly knew better than to ask -- but she’s saved by a timely buzz against her stomach.

“My phone!” she gasps, pulling it out from the pocket of her hoodie. “I’m so sorry! I forgot to turn it off.”

Gayle smiles. “Happens to everyone, baby girl.”

It’s not fair that -- that Obi’s family knows how to do this to her, how to make her feel warm, melty, like she’s really one of them --

She looks down, if only to blink away the sting in her eyes, and she sees big blue one staring up at her.

“Oh!” She smiles, flashing the screen at Obi. “It’s Ryuu. He just was asking if we were going to call tonight. Kirito is driving him crazy, I think.”

Obi coughs out a laugh. “Poor kid. We did warn him.”

“Ryuu?” Gayle prompts.

“He’s someone else in our program,” she says, at the same time Obi offers proudly, “He’s a kid prodigy.”

Shirayuki glances up at him. She’d been playing it safe, not giving any information Obi doesn’t offer, if she doesn’t have to, but --

But one look at him, at the pride radiating from his face, and she knows -- Ryuu isn’t someone he has to hide. That he wants to hide.

“He’s sixteen now, and starting his PhD with us,” she explains. “He was our TA, my first year at Clarines.”

“He’s not great with people,” Obi offers, “but we’re getting there with the whole…being a regular kid thing. Our boss has a nephew his age, and that’s sort of…made him normal out, a bit. You know, get used to other kids/”

“He’s a really sweet boy,” Shirayuki tells them, aware she might be -- be gushing, just a bit. “He likes to snapchat flowers to me when he’s doing fieldwork. Here, I saved a couple.”

She hands her phone down the table, and Obi pulls out his own.

“Hold up, I think I got a few of his videos too.” He flicks through his phone, engrossed. “Kirito -- his friend -- has been teaching him how to skateboard, and they’ve been recording some of it -- ah, here it is.”

He sets his phone in front of her too, eager and -- and Gayle just looks at them, eyes shining.

“Well,” she says, soft. “Doesn’t that sound nice.”

Bob reaches over, squeezing her hand. She springs to life at that, patting at her pockets.

“Let me just find my glasses,” she tells them, smile so wide it nearly splits her face. “And I’ll get a look at your boy.”

[badchoosey]

Endless Summer, Book One. Chapter 1: This Must Be Heaven

???: Stay down! It’s coming this way!

??? 2: Tim! Give me your hand!

??? 3: You don’t understand, do you? Of course not. But you will… in time.

The plane shudders, jolting you awake. You blink away the strange dream as your eyes adjust to the bright sunlight outside…

Tim: Wow…

Your best friend Diego gives you a goofy smirk from the seat beside you.

Diego: Morning, sleepyhead.

Tim: I’m not still dreaming, right?

Diego: Doesn’t feel real, does it? But we’re finally on our way!

The chatter of the ten contest winners from your school fills the small plane…

Quinn: One magical week in paradise, here we come!

Craig: All expenses paid, what whaaaat!

Raj: Good thing too. I’m so deep in student debt I couldn’t even afford instant ramen right now.

Diego: Hey… you okay, Tim? Bad dream?

Tim: Just a really weird one. I dreamt about… about him!

You instantly recognise the guy walking down the aisle toward you.

Diego: You had a dream about Sean Gayle? Well, what are you waiting for? Go talk to him!

Diego pushes you out into the aisle, right as he passes by! You bump into each other.

Sean: Whoa, hello there!

Diego: My friend Tim here wants to say something.

Time: Outta my way! Think you can take up all that room with those big muscles? Think again, bud!

Sean: How, uh, rude of me...

Sean excuses himself as he slips by you.

Diego: Oh man, got that whole thing on video. You’ve gotta see your face… Huh, weird. Is it really 5:15? We should’ve landed an hour ago and it didn’t feel like you’d been snoring that long.

Tim: Hilarious. I’ll go ask the pilot if something’s up.

As you make your way forward, you pass by the other students talking loudly over each other…

Aleister: Excuse me, will you all please cease your babbling?! The tour guide is trying to speak!

Lila: Thank you Aleister! As you tour guide for the week, I just want to say that we should all try to… you know, be friends! It is an island after all, so… you’re kinda stuck with each other! Hee hee!

Zahra: Is it too late to jump out of the plane?

The pilot has his combat boots kicked up on the dashboard.

Tim: Excuse me. It’s Jake right? Weren’t we supposed to have landed by now…? Wait, are you asleep?!

Jake: Hrn?

He opens his eyes and looks back at you. Instantly you recognise his face too… from that same bizarre dream…

Jake: Listen, Boy Scout, don’tcha know it’s rude to wake someone who’s taking a nap?

Tim: ‘Boy Scout’?

Jake: What can I say? I give nicknames to people who annoy me.

Tim: In that case, I’m calling you Jared Leto.

Jake: ‘Jared Leto’? Whoa, hang on, I do not look like Jared Leto! I had this haircut before Jared Leto did, okay?

Tim: No judgement here. We all get our style from somewhere.

Jake: Alright, comedian, when I come back in a week to pick y’all up, you, my friend, are riding in the cargo bay.

Time: Okay, okay. What if I just called you Joker?

Jake: Fine. But I’m picturing the Heath Ledger one instead. Anyway, relax. We ain’t landing ‘til… The hell? That time ain’t right… And that ain’t right either.

He whacks the instrument panel on his dash a few times.

Tim: You sure you know what you’re doing?

Jake: If you knew half the things I’ve survived, you’d bet on me to get you through anyth--

Out of nowhere, turbulence hammers the plane! You’re thrown into the wall of the cockpit!

Tim: Aah!

Jake: Aw, just great! This stormfront’s coming in quick.

He leans in and grabs the yoke.

Jake: Get your ass in a seat, hear? And tell everybody to buckle up.

Tim: But--

Jake: Now, Boy Scout!

Dark clouds close in around the plane, gusts rocking it side to side. Everyone starts shouting…

Raj: Ohhhh, I am really regretting that airport Chipotle!

Craig: Don’t puke, bro! If you puke, I’m gonna puke!

Michelle: Where the hell did this storm come from?! It was a clear day!

Jake: It happens, okay? This is totally normal!

Zahra: Yeah. Sure. THAT looks normal.

Outside, balls of orange electricity coalesce out of the dark sky and explode in a crackle of sparks!

Grace: It looks like ball lightning… but I’ve never seen anything quite like this!

Aleister: This is all wrong! I can’t die here, surrounded by these morons!

Sean: Everyone, just breathe! We’re gonna get through this!

Quinn: Oh god, Oh god…

A blistering crack of thunder deafens you as lightning strikes the plane! Sparks fly in the cockpit!

Jake: Welp, engines just lost power! Bringin’ her down manually! Everybody, hang on!

The shouting grows louder as your classmates start to panic… all except one. A girl with a tight ponytail and a long scar across her eye sits alone in the back row of the plane, silent and unfazed.

Lila: Tim! Safety first! Please find a seat!

You look for an empty space around you… You tumble into the seat beside Quinn as the plane lurches violently! Quinn’s face is drawn tight, refusing to look.

Quinn: Hff… hff…

Tim: Just breathe. It’ll pass.

Quinn: This can’t happen… not yet… it’s too soon.

Quinn grips the armrests tightly. Her chest rises and falls shallowly, as if she’s having trouble breathing. You rest your hand gently on top of hers.

Tim: I’m here. You’re not alone. We’ll be okay.

Quinn: I…

She relaxes and lets out a deep sigh. When she opens her eyes, they meet yours.

Quinn: Thank you…

She offers you her hand. You take it. She smiles sweetly, and it somehow makes all the shouting and alarms fade to the background.

Quinn: I’m Quinn.

Tim: Tim.

Jake: Just a little farther! I think we’re almost out!

Just as the lightning reaches fever pitch, the plane bursts out of the storm clouds into clear sky!

Raj: Woooooooohoooooo! We’re alive!

Quinn: Tim, look! There it is…

Jake: Get a good look now, ‘cause we’re coming in fast! Welcome to La Huerta.

The plane sinks toward the gorgeous, sprawling island. At its center, a volcano rises above the rainforest, breathing a white column of smoke.

Jake: La Huerta Tower, this is tail number XC-DMK, requesting emergency priority to land!

Radio: …

Jake: Carlos! Pick up, you lazy bastard. It’s Jake!

Radio: …

Jake: Ignoring me won’t make me forget the hundred bucks you owe me. Like it or not, we’re coming in!

The plane lands on a dirt airstrip at the edge of the island, pulling into a hangar. You step down the stairs into the warm tropical sunshine.

Tim: Rough landing, Joker. Hope you don’t work for tips.

Jake: You kidding? I’m a damn hero for even getting you on the ground! Carlos, I need a tune-up! … Carlos!

As Jake marches off, the rest of your group pulls their luggage from the plane’s cargo bay…

Quinn: This island’s supposed to be one of the most beautiful places on earth. The beaches, the waterfalls…

Grace: It’s also home to a plethora of rare flora and fauna!

Craig: Only ten spots on the trip, and they had to give one to this dork…

You reach for your suitcase handle just as Sean does.

Sean: Oh, sorry!

Tim: If you wanna carry my bag, go right ahead.

Michelle: Oh my god. Could you be any more desperate?

A pretty girl in heavy makeup drapes her arms around Sean.

Michelle: People like you always hover around the spotlight like moths.

Tim: Spotlight?

Michelle: Yeah, right. As if you don’t know who Sean is.

Craig: Seriously? Our superstar quarterback? … The Heisman frontrunner?

Sean: Guys, it’s cool. Chill out--

Michelle: Look, Sean doesn’t need any famehounds hanging around, got it?

Tim: Exactly. So what are you doing here?

Michelle: Ex-cuse me?!

Tim: You heard me. You’re just stalling to think up a comeback. Don’t worry. I’ll wait.

Michelle: You--

Sean: Michelle, can you chill? And I don’t mean Netflix and chill. I mean actual chill. Please.

As Michelle starts arguing with Sean, you back away. Your foot clinks on something.

Tim: Huh? What’s this?

Diego: Is that… a tranquilizer dart? The vial’s nearly empty. It must’ve hit its target.

Tim: Yeah, and this is a pretty big dose. Whatever animal they took down must’ve been huge.

Diego: You mean, if they took it down.

You look up and see someone watching you from nearby, listening to your conversation.

Tim: Hey, Diego… who is that?

Diego: Dunno. Got eyes for the mysterious hottie, huh?

Tim: There’s something… off about her.

Diego: What gives you that idea?

Tim: She’s too quiet.

Diego: Quiet? So what? I’m quiet. Well, when I’m not around you.

Tim: I guess you’re right. I don’t know why I’m being suspicious.

Diego: Huh… well, there is one thing.

Tim: What?

Diego: We were told that ten students from our college had won this trip, right? Obviously we’re not counting the pilot or the guide, but… Count us off. She makes eleven.

You look in the girl’s direction once more, and this time she’s staring directly back at you. Your eyes lock. You try to look away, but for some reason you can’t, as if she’s pulling you in with her gaze.

Jake: Hey, Lila! Where the hell are your people?

Jake storms back, and at last the silent girl looks away. The strange hold over you dissipates. You shake it off.

Jake: There’s nobody here!

You all look around. You and your group are still the only people at the airstrip.

Lila: They should be here in a shuttle to take us up to the main resort, but… I’m sure it’s just a slight delay! No need to fret! They’ll be here any minute.

Jake: The hell with that. I’m going up to that control tower to get some answers.

Tim: What do you think is going on here?

Jake: No idea… Call it a gut feeling, but whatever it is, it ain’t good. So, Boy Scout? You comin’ or not?

Michelle: I could go with you--

Jake: Wasn’t talkin’ to you, Maybelline.

Lila: Um, okay! I guess, the rest of you, please follow me? We’ll take the short walk up the hill to the resort. Sounds fun, right? Yay! Um, Quinn? Where are you going?

Quinn is skipping past Lila, unbuttoning her blouse.

Quinn: Some of us want to explore the beach a little first! We’ll meet you guys at the hotel! Oof, this button’s stuck. Tim, could you help me?

Tim: Oh! Sure…

Quinn draws close to you, and you help her undo the last button. She slips out of her top.

Quinn: Ahh, that’s better! You’re coming to the beach with us, right?

Tim: I’m tired. I’ll just head up to the hotel now.

Your group gradually winds your way up the paved road, rolling your suitcases. You’re beginning to fatigue when you come around the bend and see it…

Lila: May I be the first to welcome you all to The Celestial!

Grace: We get to stay here?!

Zahra: Huh. Maybe this trip won’t suck.

Sean: Well? What are we waiting for? Let’s check out our rooms.

Your group excitedly heads toward the lobby, passing under a long, ornamented overhang, while Lila launches into her rehearsed speech.

Lila: ‘The Celestial Hotel and Resort, the jewel of the Caribbean, boasts 25 stories and 1,200 suites of the finest tropical accommodations you can imagine. Built on the island of La Huerta, which means ‘The Garden’, the Celestial ranked in Travel and Leisure’s top ten global hotels last year.’

The automatic doors slide open welcomingly, and you enter the crisp air conditioning of the lobby… Every last one of you freezes where they stand.

Tim: Um…

Lila: I… I don’t understand.

The silence is deafening. The front desk stands deserted. Suitcases and luggage carts lie unattended. On a table, a half-finished wine glass gathers dust.

Zahra: If this place is supposed to be so great… Then where the hell is everyone?

[alsjeblieft-zeg]

316 of 2023

Unique Words and Uniquely Spelled Words [True or False]

Created by joybucket

You've purchased something from a mall kiosk. You like the name Rhiannon. You've gone kayaking on a lake. 🛶 You've gone kayaking on a river. 🛶 You own a kayak. 🛶 It's been a long time since you've last kayaked, and you'd love to go again. 🛶 You enjoyed kayaking. 🛶 You like the Japanese name Kaori. You've met someone named Naomi. You enjoy renaissance festivals. You've been to Utah. You've been to Saskatchewan. There is a shop in your town called Serendipity. You've met someone named Saoirse. You have a grandma named Lois. You like avocado toast. 🥑 You'd never heard of avocado toast before until you heard YouTubers say they liked it. You've been to Azerbaijan. 🇦🇿 You've been to Uzbekistan. 🇺🇿 You've been to Guyana. 🇬🇾 You shopped at Aeropostale when you were in high school. You own something from Abercrombie & Fitch. You've walked through Abercrombie & Fitch, but you've never purchased anything from there, because they're too expensive. You've heard Aeropostale pronounced different ways. You've wondered what the correct pronunciation of Aeropostale was. You've wondered why the word "aardvark" has two A's next to each other. (ever heard of Dutch and Afrikaans language, though? Long vowels are normal here) You've not sure if you've ever seen an aardvark in person. Your bra size is bigger than your mom's. You think broccoli tastes good in soup, pasta, and cheesy rice. 🥦 You went to high school with an Ashley, an Ashleigh, and an Ashli. You've been friends with an Emily and an Emilee, Emilie, Emeli, Emile, Emmaleigh, or Emma Leigh. You like the name Brogan for a girl. You feel like your life has consisted of one big catastrophe after another. One of your favorite worship leaders is Charity Gayle. 🎶 You like the name Skylar. You have your bed catawampus in your room. 🛏 [Catawampus= positioned diagonally] You own a lava lamp. You can think of at least one song you like by Christina Aguilera. You've owned an album by Christina Aguilera. 💿 You've made a dreamcatcher. You've driven down an Avondale Road. You own a pair of galaxy print leggings. You like the name Alexa. You don't think you've ever met anyone named Siri. You've been to Papa New Guinea. 🇬🇳 (isn’t it “Papua”, though?) You've been to Guam. 🇬🇺 You've been to Ethiopia. 🇪🇹 You like the name Brynn better than Lynn, because it's unique. You've met someone named Gardenia. You've met someone named Gloria. You like the name Veronica. You're claustrophobic. You've been put under anesthesia for a procedure. You like the names Chloe, Carlotta, and Carmen. You went to school with a Simone. You've read the book of Ecclesiastes. 📖 You've spun a dreidel. You've looked through a kaleidoscope. There is a gazebo in your backyard. You like garbanzo beans. You've been to Kalamazoo, Michigan. You've played a kazoo. You own something made of bamboo. You're feeling bamboozled at the moment. You know the meaning of the word "ecclesia." You know the meaning of the word "acquiescence." You listened to Evanescence as a teenager. (I still do) You like eggnog. You've wondered why so many medications start with a Z. 💊 You take Zofran. 💊 You take Zoloft. 💊 You take Zyrtec. 💊 You remember learning about Count von Zinzendorf in school, and you thought he had a funny name. You've tried escargot. 🐌 You've been to Zimbabwe. 🇿🇼 You've been to Botswana. 🇧🇼 You've been to Guinea-Bissau. 🇬🇼 You've played the oboe. You've met someone with the last name Odorzynski. You like the name Cheyenne. You've met someone named Shariah. You love the name Bianca. You've been to Cincinnati, Ohio. You went to school with a Suzy. You own a pair of Lularoe leggings. You think Lularoe is a scam. You like the name Azteca. You've been to Venezuela. 🇻🇪 You learned Venezuelan history in school. 🇻🇪 You know what a shaman is. You've met someone who claimed to be a shaman. You've played the shofar. You like flamingos. 🦩 You're wearing a fluorescent color right now. You like the smell of potpourri. You've mixed together your own potpourri. You like the name Felicity. You've played with a ouija board. You've seen the aurora borealis. You've been to Australia. 🇦🇺 You've rocked a baby to sleep while singing a lullaby. You've owned a gecko or iguana. 🦎 You've been to Israel. 🇮🇱 You like the name Spencer. You've worn a fedora. You've attended a university as a student. 🏫 You own a varsity jacket. You've seen a real live jaguar in person. 🐆 You've met someone named Tatum. You know someone who pronounces "February" funny. (probably every Dutch person lol) You feel that so far your life has been a complete fiasco. You have asthma. You've watched Jeopardy. You think you'd rather be a contestant on Family Feud than you would be a contestant on Jeopardy. You like zucchini bread. You've tried guava. You'd like to try guava, because you think you'd like it. You were born before the start of the new millennium. You were born in the new millennium. You have to pay mortgage payments on your house. 🏡 You like jacaranda trees. You were born on a Wednesday. You're taking this survey on a Wednesday. You frequently take medicine for nausea. 💊 You've recently eaten a bologna sandwich. 🥪 You like the color fuchsia. You've met someone named Loralei. You've vacationed on an island. 🏝 You've been to Chicago, Illinois. 🏙 You've been to Iowa. You've been to Ohio. You've called someone a nincompoop. You've had pneumonia. You've experienced anaphylaxis. You frequently feel flabbergasted and flummoxed. You've heard the name Aislinn pronounced different ways. You like the name Brigitta. You've recently done something scandalous. You've been an exchange student in a foreign country. You've recently experienced a calamity. You've recently received an epiphany. You've been called a wild hooligan. You've met someone named Esther. You've joined a sorority. You've gone to a Presbyterian church. ⛪️ You've gone to an Episcopalian church. ⛪️ You've tried papaya. Your parents nicknamed the neighbors "the buffoons." You like jalapeños. 🌶 You've worn a sombrero. You've tried kumquat. You've been feeling lackadaisical lately. You spend a lot of time lollygagging. You're often scatterbrained. You've explored the Amazon rainforest. You thought this survey was unique.