#Baitings Reservoir

[castingbythemoon]

Scrapbook #August 2022

[completeoveranalysis]

[1]

*appreciative gay sounds*

Ooooooh!

See now this fucks. 

It’s a bit of a treat to get a cover like this that’s so BEAUTIFUL and DELICATE and actually include characters not directly involved in the plot anymore. It’s like BONUS ART: Fai and Kamui in a tender and deadly gothic vampire embrace for no particular reason :D 

And we LOVE to see it!

I love the fragile looking archway behind them. It looks very Art Nouveau (I say, guessing. Please correct me) and the pose between Fai and Kamui could EASILY be on a romance novel. And in fact it SHOULD be!

We get some stunning visual contrasts, like the dark sweep of Kamui’s cape looking demonic in nature, like bat wings - which, like, vampire - but the thin white arch behind him ALSO spreads out behind him like it could be wings. Or even better, it forms more of a halo - a complete circle above his head in thin white lines. The contrast in the angelic and the demonic really speak to his role in the narrative a couple of times over; he protected Acid Tokyo but purely out of self interest; he's a dick to everyone, which is frowned upon, but he does it to protect Subaru, which is understandable; he killed Syaoran but he saved Fai; even the act of saving Fai was technically a bad thing, turning him into a vampire, but it was the only way he would stay alive, which was what we wanted! 

That contrast continues into Fai’s pose here as well. He’s within the circle of Kamui’s arms, which is traditionally a place of affection or protection, but here it’s almost predatory with Fai as the prey. There's a clear indication of danger laced throughout every inch of it. Kamui’s nails stretch out in front of Fai in a way that COULD be protective, but also form a cage he will never be able to escape from, and the nail of his index finger trails SO CLOSE to Fai’s throat it could kill him with a slight twitch. The nails of his left hand also trail across the wing of his coat, becoming the traditional veins that you would see in bat wings and completing the metaphor of the monstrous. Fai, too, plays with this dichotomy - his head is tilted upwards towards Kamui, neck exposed, in a pose natural for a lover, or for someone giving access to their neck, like the vampire’s victim he is. The clear shadow across his neck (The ONLY shadow in the cover) shows just how close he is to harm, indicates the exact danger this pose puts him in, and yet we can also see him clutching at Kamui’s arm - not hard but gently, coaxing, guiding. Then again the closer I look I think the line of Kamui’s arm is actually a little bit further to the left, which might indicate that Fai is actually holding his waist, which is even more intimate again. 

All in all it’s FANTASTIC, it’s GORGEOUS, I want this as a gothic creepy tapestry I hang in a castle somewhere while lightning strikes somewhere in the distance.

Oh and the splash text, where is that.

The flowing blood whispered

even if you'll defy your own destiny

protect that person --

Which slams home the theme on BOTH of these two - how much of their own intended fate they sacrifice for the people they choose to devote themselves to. But, when combined with the art, just how much this devotion and protection can actually add it's own inherent form of danger, even if they aren't aware. Kamui's protectiveness of Subaru is HARDLY balanced after all, and Fai's devotion to Sakura leads his curse to killing her. Then again, you could easily say the same thing for Sakura, who chose to put herself INTO that danger DELIBERATELY to save the people she cared for.

And so the complicated feelings and consequences that come from "protecting" someone continue to swirl around in the moral grey.

[in1-nutshell]

Hello!! I hope you're doing alright. I was wondering if I could request for cubertronian! Buddy whos a fox and has a sly personality, and wondering if you can make it as a one-shot in TfMtmte with drift, ratchet, and rodimus! Thankyou

I was slightly picturing The Pet wen I saw the fox alt mode.

Hope you enjoy!

Bot Buddy with a fox alt mode with Ratchet, Drift and Rodimus

SFW, Platonic, Cybertronain reader

MTMTE

To be fair, Rodimus did tell them that there was going to be running involved.

But he never told them how much running.

Earlier that day…

Rodimus had recruited Buddy to help prank Drift.

Why them?

Easy, because they could get out of the splash zone quicker than he could.

And he needed someone who would play bait for a couple of shanix.

Rodimus sets up the bucket of oil and rope.

“Rodimus, why are you doing this again?”--Buddy

“Drift bailed out on our hang out to go be with Ratchet. We had planned this hang out for cycles! He needs to know that there are consequences to his action.”--Rodimus

“Just putting that out there Captain, but aren’t there going to be consequence to your actions?”--Buddy

“Not if I run fast enough.”--Rodimus

“…Fair enough.”--Buddy

The plan was simple.

Lure Drift to the door, Rodimus would see him and let the giant bucket of oil land on his helm.

Get a few laughs out of it and maybe go to Swerve’s when this is done.

So far, the plan has been going smoothly.

Until someone new came into the mix.

Buddy walking with Drift in their alt mode in the hallway.

“Hey Drift, do you mind standing there for a second? I have a trick I want to show you. You’ll see it better from there.”--Buddy

“Okay.”--Drift

Drift happily stands in the splash zone as Buddy does some flips waiting for Rodimus to pull the rope.

Rodimus meanwhile had gotten distracted by the rope fibers.

Ratchet walks up to Drift.

“Move a bit, I have to get some equipment in the room.”

Drift smiles and moves to the side letting Ratchet get into the splash zone.

Buddy mid flip looking in horror.

“WAIT!”--Buddy

Rodimus flinches and pulls the rope letting the bucket fall down on Ratchet.

Drift tackles Ratchet down, and they both get covered in oil.

“…”--Everyone

Rodimus comes around the corner with a huge grin on his face.

“That’s what you get—oh.”—Rodimus

Rodimus takes a step back.

Buddy hightails it out of there.

“…Rodimus… did you do this…?”--Drift

“To be fair I had help from Bud—and their gone.”--Rodimus

“Drift if you catch him in the next 5 minutes I will take the next 2 cycle off.”--Ratchet

Drift already on his pedes ready to start sprinting.

“You don’t have to tell me twice.”--Drift

And that’s how Rodimus ended up taking a dip in the oil reservoirs and Buddy paying for the pair’s drinks for a full month.

And they still didn’t get their shanix!

What a rip off…

From now on, if anyone was going to ask them to be the bait, they were going to take payments first then the work.

[themirokai]

now I wanna know- why isn't drinking water free in the US?

Hi there friend! Thanks very much for taking the bait from this post. Buckle up, this is a long one.

If you want to put out a cistern and collect rainwater and use that, congratulations! Your water is free! Plus the cost of maintaining your cistern and keeping it clean. If you’re lucky enough to live somewhere with a high enough water table to have a well, then your water is also free + the cost of the well and well maintenance.

But if you want water to come out of your tap on demand and you can’t or don’t want to maintain a cistern and you can’t or don’t want to have a well… you need public water!

How do we get public water? Well, a government entity (usually. there are some private utilities, but that’s a different post. I have strong feelings) has rights to take water out of a river or a lake, or they have a reservoir, or they have access to an aquifer. Then they have to transport the water out of the source. This generally requires aqueducts or massive pipes, which are expensive and need to be maintained, which is also expensive. The pipe leading out of one of my utility’s reservoirs is 12 feet in diameter.

Does the water go directly from the source to your home? Nope! It gets piped to a water filtration plant! The process of modern water filtration is complicated but it involves both physical and chemical treatment to make sure the water isn’t carrying any parasites, harmful bacteria, or pollutants and it has the right pH. Not only are these filtration plants extremely expensive to build and maintain but the process of operating them is extremely expensive, both in terms of hiring skilled staff and having appropriate materials for the filters and chemical treatment.

After the treated water (called “finished water” in the biz) is ready it does get piped to your house.

If you use public water, do you know where your local water filtration plant is? No? That probably means it’s not in your immediate neighborhood, which probably means it’s several miles or more away. To get to your house, the water needs to travel through an extensive pipe network. These pipes are smaller but they have to remain pressurized so that no contaminants can get into the water on its way to your house. But pipes break! Especially if you live somewhere with a freeze/thaw cycle. Maintaining this pipe network is, you guessed it, expensive! It requires materials and extremely skilled workers who perform in very very difficult conditions. Plus lots of engineering to keep the whole system pressurized even when one part of it breaks. Oh, and you know what lots of pipes were made out of in the early 20th century? Lead! So all around the country utilities need to make extensive and costly infrastructure upgrades because now we know lead pipes are really freaking bad.

Okay, so you get the basic picture. And I haven’t even gotten into Safe Drinking Water Act compliance, but most of that happens at the filtration plant. Oo! Or desalinization because some utilities pull their water from the sea and need to take the salt out. I know basically nothing about this except that it is likely complicated and expensive to do at scale.

This is essentially why I get frustrated by people who argue “why should we pay for something that falls out of the sky?” Because finished water doesn’t fall from the sky and it sure as hell doesn’t fall from the sky into your faucet. (Side note: as a public utility official I have been screamed at by the “it falls from the sky” people. A thing I like about the private sector is that people scream at me a lot less.)

Now, there is a very strong argument to be made that because water is necessary for human life, it should be provided by the government for free to everyone. And just like the costs of roads or public education, this should be part of the public budget and paid for by taxes and no one should have a water bill. I don’t disagree with this. I’m sure that’s how it’s done in some countries.

I don’t have a well-researched answer on the history of water utilities but I do have some facts and some (very) educated conjectures. Water rights in the US are complicated (another separate post!) but they’re based on private ownership. Ever since white people came to this country people have been claiming ownership over water and charging each other money for taking water out of rivers or lakes or the ground. You can measure how much of it someone uses and charge them for it. Water is treated like a commodity because unlike other public goods, it *can* be treated like a commodity and then, you know, capitalism. Again, I’m not saying that’s right.

But as a society, if we believe that no one should have a water bill, then we need to figure out how to pay for all the very expensive steps in the process I outlined at the top. Could that just be taxes? Sure, if you have a system that supports taxes at that level. Do I believe that public funding of water infrastructure would be a fuckton better than a lot of things we use taxes for now? Absolutely! But that requires massive institutional change and this isn’t generally an issue that people know enough about to demand change.

If you read this far, congratulations! You now know more stuff about drinking water!

[defining-skyology]

Finding the Light. (Defining Megabird #1)

I've mentioned the term 'loremoth' quite a lot, but haven't really elaborated on my definition of it. Within Sky's in-game social community, being a 'moth', or a new player, is a visually traceable status, showing on their backs and of their clothes, showing by the lack of seasons they've experienced and glitches they've overcome. But the Lore community is a Space held externally from the game, leading to it not being so much of a visual dogma, but rather more of... An Experience.

Hungry new lore theorists are fueled by their own personal preferences of thumbnails, baits, and key words; pulled in by what they find interesting, and after they devour that magical initial subject, they hopefully will look and then find the next thing.

Each of these sudden lore hooks end up being their Drive to have more, to dig for more, and to understand more. They feel it's become special to them; that they're in on 'the secret' now.

And one of the best topics to make loremoths feel like they're in on an absurdly colossal secret... 

Is the topic of the Megabird.

[[[Continue Reading]]]

In the early crazes of Lore, during the first year of Launch, interest in the Megabird skyrocketed, and when curious Sky players asked others who seemed more involved and invested in theorizing about the story, many users of Lorechat in Skycord would casually reply, "Well it's basically the god of Sky". 

Most murals and concept art depict the Megabird as a giant flowing golden angelic thing, with extravagantly long wings or tails. Sometimes it would be made of feathers, sometimes it would seemingly be shown as made of Creatures of Light. 

Early concept art refers to it as "One", some concepts say "Megabird", while others say "The Megabird", and late-stage concepts begin to refrain from calling it Megabird or 'The Megabird' at all, instead detailing a concept of "The Light" that was still unarguably the same 'character' from before. Post-launch content has never described it as The Megabird.

Despite this, Megabird ended up being heavily personified from 2019 to late 2021 by the community, and fans gobbled up anything about Megabird, especially Megabird as a character; as a god who would interact with the Elders and skykids. Megabird's fanbase grew to the point where it'd be given nicknames; it's most famous moniker being "Megan the Megabird". If only for the sake of having a character to use as a foundation for bountiful headcanon and fanfics, people seemed to cling fanatically to the idea of Megan; to the idea of having a deity. Perhaps there are or aren't some further psychological takeaways from the eagerness of the fanbase to have a 'god of Sky', but let's move on to a different notation for a while, and head back into the game.

Picture posted to Tumblr by lowkey-loki245

For the 4 years that players found themselves in the Descendant's era, creatures of Light have always been seen migrating at all times towards the beacon of Ascension in the Eye of Eden, but this isn't an absolute rule. Creatures often will be found frolicking and soaring wherever they want, far from the main path to Eden. Mantas will take elegant laps around wide open areas, and rarer creatures are either hardly or never seen ascending up into Orbit. 

But water doesn't halt its cycle, and Light shouldn't either. Water rushes down mountains, through valleys, flooding plains and reservoirs, yet not all of the water gets to the Ocean like it should. But though it gets stuck in spots, underground rivers and evaporation ensure the water cycle will always occur. It has to be the same for Light.

The lore community has long since determined that all beings in the world of Sky (so far) all are made of Light. {There can be a post explaining that on another day, because not everybody is so willing to believe this.} This includes: creatures of Light, Ancestors, Descendants, and yes, even dark creatures are made from Light; just warped light, to be exact.

If we're to continue with our comparison to the water cycle, then this means all of those living Beings are made out of {metaphorical} water. Water flows from the Source and descends until it reaches the Main Body of the ocean, and all Light cycles throughout the world until it can get to Orbit again. This cycle of the life energy of Light flowing in and out of a main body is exactly what we need to focus on, and lo and behold, quite a few pieces of concept art confirm this.

The meaning and purpose of some of these concepts have been long forgotten, and don't reflect the lore of the game today in post-launch, but there is one big theme going on here that they still intend to this day; all Beings of Light will eventually journey to rejoin the Megabird.

We talked before about how they slowly transitioned towards using a simple base word to describe the megabird instead of giving it an almost characterizing name, and I believe they had to have done this intentionally. (Well, as intentional as TGC ever gets.)

We can and may still call it 'the Megabird', but from now on we understand that we are referring to 'the Light'. So, why did they depersonalize Megan into a character-less thing? As we ascend through orbit and into the Ocean of Light, the Main Body of our life energy; lore theorists all over the interwebs would still be looking for the character Megabird. "Where is Megabird? Surely it's that constellation above us? Maybe it's the giant gate that sends us towards rebirth? Maybe it just hasn't shown itself?" But as the voice of Aurora calls to us and the warmth of the ultimate Light pulls us in, vaporizing darkness as we come, I just have to ask:

"Isn't that the Megabird that we're entering?"

A pure, deep, limitless orb. We are drawn in by its intensity, and as we get closer to being Absorbed we can see creatures swimming in and out of its surface. In the Sea of Light. All things here in unison, all things belonging to One; each moving speck of Light, a drop of water in an endless pond of pure harmony.

Whenever we enter the Light; when we enter the Megabird, we become dissolved into that sea, and we join One in it's neverending song.

You might notice we're not going to end with any solid Defining going on, and that's because you're supposed to take this in and think about what you make of it. It'll be important for part two.

But we'll have to research further into proving THAT on Thursday, because unfortunately, this post has gotten way too long.

{{{Megabird Part #2 is out! Click here to continue Our journey.}}}

Thank you to the two readers who got this far, and I hope you can all think critically, never perspire, and have a wonderful rest of your week.

[okfisherman]

Fishing with live bait series

Using minnows to catch crappies

There is nothing more exciting than using live minnows as bait for catching crappies. Crappies are a freshwater fish found throughout the United States in lakes, reservoirs, rivers, streams, and ponds. There are two species of crappie, the white crappie and the black crappie. Though both will eat worms, insects and water insect larvae (nymphs), their favorite food is minnows.

When fishing for crappies in shallow water, one strategy is to use a 1/0 hook tied to an 8lb test fluorocarbon leader. Pinch a small split shot sinker about six inches above the hook and attach a bobber two feet above the sinker. Next take a live minnow and run the hook point up through the minnow's lips starting with the bottom one. Now cast this rig out into shallow water (depths from three feet to ten feet) and watch the bobber. The best areas to fish for crappies are areas that have plenty of nearby structure, (submerged rocks, logs, tree branches etc.). When the bobber starts moving quickly or takes a plunge, set the hook.

Black Crappie Hook minnow through lips

[workersolidarity]

🇵🇸🇮🇱 🚨 UPDATE ON THE WAR ON GAZA AND ISRAEL'S ETHNIC CLEANSING OPERATIONS TARGETING PALESTINIAN CIVILIANS

• Israeli Occupation Forces were responsible for 10 major massacres in just 10 hours in the Gaza Strip, killing 231 civilians

• Hezbollah launched two Burkan rockets towards an Israeli Military outpost

• Palestinian Resistance launched an Ayyash 250mm long-range rocket towards Eilat settlement

• In response to the recent speech by Hezbollah Commander Nasrallah, multiple Western officials have made attempts to contact Hezbollah's leadership for clarification on the speech's details

• Israeli Occupation Forces claims they have intercepted a missile fired on the occupied Jordan Valley using a high-altitude Hetz/Arrow system interceptor

• Rockets were fired from Southern Lebanon towards Israeli positions, activating the Iron Dome air defenses

• According to representatives of Hamas' military wing, al-Qassam Brigades, Resistance Forces have damaged or destroyed 24 Israeli armored vehicles and tanks

• Channel 12 Zionist media reports confrontations occurring between the family members of Israeli hostages and Israeli Police in front of Prime Minister Netanyahu's resident in occupied al-Quds

• Arab country envoys and foreign ministers are feuding with United States Secretary of State Antony Blinkin over their support for a ceasfire

• Hezbollah Brigades of Iraq say US Secretary of State Antony Blinkin is not welcome to Iraq, and he will be met with escalation if arrives

• Security Official for the Hezbollah Brigades of Iraq, Abu al-Askari says Resistance Forces will work to disrupt US interests in the region if the Massacres on Gaza don't stop

• Abu al-Askari also said his forces will arrive in an “non-peaceful” way to shut down the American embassy in Iraq and said that the forced removal of American troops from the area is inevitable

• 🚨💥Al-Mayadeen News correspondant reports that Israeli air strikes that targeted al-Shati Refugee Camp in the west of Gaza resulted in "shortness of breath, pain in the throat, and a feeling of nausea and drowsiness."

• Israeli Occupation Forces have launched 15 raids and strikes in the vicinity of the Indonesian Palestinian Friendship Hospital in Bait Lahia, northern Gaza

• According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, large numbers of civilians are trapped under the rubble in the al-Maghazi Refugee Camp in central Gaza after an Israeli air strike targeted the residential neighborhood

• Israeli Occupation Forces raid the village of Qasra, southeast of Nablus in the West Bank

• occupation forces bombed the bridge linking Nuseirat Refugee Camp with the village of al-Mughraqa in Central Gaza

• East of Khan Yunis, in the al-Farahin area Qassam Resistance Forces managed to destroy two Zionist armored vehicles using the domestically produced Yassin 105mm rockets

• al-Qassam Brigades ambush targets and destroys two Israeli Merkava tanks penetrating the Khan Yunis area of central Gaza

• Occupation Forces stormed the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank

• Clashes recorded between Occupation Forces and the Palestinian Resistance after an attempted raid on a home in Abu Dis, east of occupied al-Quds

• Israeli occupation snipers seen on top of buildings during the raid on Jenin

• More intense shelling was later recorded around the proximity of the Indonesian Hospital 🏥 in the northern Gaza Strip

• Israeli media confirms an explosive device detonated in an occupation bulldozer being used in the raid on Jenin

• Hezbollah fires ATGMs from southern Lebanon towards the Israeli "Misgav Am" military site northwest of Kiryat Shmona

• Al-Quds Brigades: an occupation bulldozer was destroyed using a domestically produced "al-Tamer" explosive device

• Israeli Occupation Forces injured a young Palestinian man during clashes at his besieged home in Abu Dis, east of al-Quds

• Israeli Occupation Forces continued collective punishment against Palestinians by bombing a water well and two water reservoirs in the Tal al-Zaatar area, affecting up to 70'000 people with water shortages

• 50 were killed and another 100 missing under the rubble after the Israeli air strike that targeted the al-Maghazi Refugee Camp in central Gaza

• Islamic Resistance of Lebanon downed an Israeli Military drone flying over southern Lebanon

• Israeli Occupation Forces have committed 24 massacres in 24 hours, killing a confirmed 243 with many more trapped under the rubble

• Al-Qassam Brigades announced the destruction of another Israeli Merkava tank penetrating Gaza in the area southwest of Tal al-Hawa using the Yassin 105mm rocket

• According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, 9'770 Palestinians have been killed since October 7th, including 4'800 children and 2'550 women

• Palestinian Authority Traitor President Mahmoud Abbas in a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinkin says the Palestinian Authority is ready to “fully assume our responsibilities within the framework of a comprehensive political solution that includes all of the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip."

#source1

#source2

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[lizardywizard]

the 'friends' of rabies are mostly the massive reservoirs of infectable nonhuman mammals, particularly the bats, which means it's not possible to eradicate with currently existing means, because you would have to catch an impossible amount of wildlife to create enough herd immunity to make it die out. you can do it in small areas though, there was a rabies outbreak in new york in 2009 among the raccoons in central park and it was fixed by catching and vaccinating enough healthy raccoons the rabies eventually wasn't able to find enough viable hosts to spread and burned out.

oh interesting!

yeah i was like "we can vaccinate them so why don't we" but lack of ability to get the bait to wildlife makes sense. this place so gotdamn big

[cchapsticck]

This is so belated but Happy Birthday @bettiebloodshed! They gave me a prompt a while back and and I wanted it to be for your birthday birthday but. You know how I get.

---

It was funny before; when the cult leader allegations were more of an implication than an outright condemnation, and then, honestly, it was kind of funny after when he was Actually The Prince Of Darkness Apparently that he was born on the longest day of the year. Prince of Darkness born on the day with the least amount of darkness. 

Amazing. 

Failing upward since birth. 

Anyway, that said, he spends his first birthday as the undead under too much daylight still laid up Good Samaritan Bloomington, still sticky with skin grafts and trying not to itch at his stitches - both hands being once again available for his use - mourning the partial loss of at least 3 of his tattoos, bored out of his mind, and a kind of miserable that he’s still not sure he’s managed to scrub off him yet. 

Wayne kept making those drives up to Bloomington like he wasn’t missing shifts on the regular and running his sick time into the red but Wayne still comes that June, when he’s finally out of his fun little coma, like they’re gonna do anything. Like he can stand and support his own weight for more than minutes at a time, like he’s still not bleeding into his bedsheets now that he’s moving around at all. 

But he does, doesn’t say that’s why. Wayne’s not necessarily a festive guy but it’s not that he doesn’t care a whole hell of a lot so he shows up and they both know why and they don’t say much about that. Feels a little fragile. Made it another year but like. Just fuckin’ barely, asshole. 

So All That Shit is still a little too close to feel like doing much beyond watching daytime soaps on the pink wavy picture’d 10” TV bolted to the wall, eating saltless hospital cafeteria food in irregular silence. Wayne sneaks him a shitty black coffee that makes him feel like there are knives in his guts an hour later from the machine in the lounge but it definitely feels worth lying to the nurse later, and brings him one of his books from the house that survived the collapse. He doesn’t look at which one. Not sure he can stand it, knowing where it came from.

It's not awful, all things considered. 

When he was a kid, living with Wayne, he wasn’t so much a birthday guy. Didn’t have a lot of friends growing up, too weirdkid for that. And the date of note being in the armpit of June and the window unit AC at the trailer doing its damndest at doing not much at all making the house inhospitable for human life even on full blast - even if he had the friends to make a whole typical thing of it he wasn’t so much in the position to host. (Story of his adult life too honestly ha ha fucking ha) Not unless anyone cared to deal with a not insignificant selection of sweaty pre-teens in the already a little cramped for two single wide for a few hours at a time - and having now experienced that in, at least, an adjacent capacity since being released from the hospital and various criminal investigations he wouldn’t retroactively wish that on Wayne. 

Anyway he’s never been much of an outside cat but Wayne used to take him out to Yellowood or Hoosier or Interlake just to get out of the house and they’d get up to what the fuck ever. He’d hop out of Wayne’s old Chevy, roll his ankle in the gravel parking lot at a trailhead tripping over his own ass running full tilt out of there and just. Release the beast. 

Honestly it was probably like letting the dog run around the yard off leash until it tires itself out, for Wayne. Only with like. A 13 year old human. 

He’d jump in weed tangled, freezing cold lakes too murky to see the bottom of, he’d get bit to shit by mosquitos running through long grass with burrs all stuck in his socks and shoelaces, waste a shitload of bait sitting on a bulwark at a reservoir while Wayne fished and he threw hotdog chunks at turtles. 

They’d drive back just as the sun starts to go down, stop at whatever roadside diner they find first on the surface roads eat burgers and undercooked, limp, fries and whatever desert special the place has - places like those always have one - while Eddie would rip the paper napkins and straw wrappers into little shreds and dumping 6 little plastic containers of creamer and however many packets of sugar he could pinch between his fingers from the cramped little dish on the table into his essentially white, by that point, annual cup of coffee (as his stimulants problem started early, apparently) while he’d tell Wayne about whatever book he was reading at great incoherent length and Wayne smoked in the corner booth. Always a corner booth. Get back for Forest Hills after dark, his adolescent ass valiantly trying to fight off sleep out on the porch with the fireflies and crickets and Wayne’s last silent cigarette of the night. That was just. Kind of always how it went for them. Just him and Wayne and another year.  

So Steve doesn’t know any of this, so far as he knows. 

But Steve’s wailing on the goddam horn out front at the unholiest hour of 7am and he’s just standing on his stoop and gives him the universal arms out stretched what the fuck, people live here jackass look and Steve just gives a him winning smile and the finger out the open driver’s side window. 

Fucker. 

He’s got nowhere to be and no one to notice if he’s gone and Steve didn’t say what they were doing, just that it was gonna be a long drive and he was picking him up early. 

And it's not, like, Steve doesn’t know. Like he knows what day it is. He knows what this is about. 

And it's cute and all, whatever it is, he just figured he wouldn’t be 22 and not-dead and doing this kind of shit. Like the cutsey-surprise-make a day of it-whatever. Like there’s diminishing returns with getting older and the days that denote it - old enough to drive, old enough to die in a war, old enough to vote, old enough to drink, end of list, exciting birthdays over - not that he’s got a lot of room to talk re: time spent maturely, considering his hobbies largely consisting of a very elaborate game of pretend but like you grow out of this particular kind of thing eventually, right? Just like, one day you’re gonna stop feeling no different than you did when you were 17, right? Like some threshold of adulthood achieved surely exists, and there’s some point when you know you’ve crossed it? 

Right?

But Steve’s got a plan and he’s not really the greatest at keeping things to himself, transparent and careless to a very measurable fault, as evidenced by the paper grocery bag sitting on the floor of the passenger side. Top wide open, something soft and pale wadded up in there barely obscuring six of something else, and Steve sort of hurriedly going, like, shit don’t look in the bag once he negotiates his legs around the obstacle on the floor of Steve’s car. 

And, like, sure, he’s kind of a dick before the hour of 11 am but he has at least a shred of a capacity for restraint so he just rolls his eyes a little and shoves the bag further up the floor under the dashboard and something glass clinks together in there and keeps his shittier thoughts to himself about how precisely bad Steve is at his little birthday subterfuge since Steve’s bothered to even like. Give a shit. 

“So is this an official kidnapping or do I get to know where we’re going?”

“This is, at best, a consensual kidnapping.” Steve says, a little distracted, arm around the back of Eddie’s seat fingers kind of tapping against the leather headrest as he waits, the heat of his wrist inches from Eddie neck, absolutely blistering with proximity - twisted at the waist to look out the back windshield as he backs out of the little square of gravel out front of the trailer and he tries not to feel like a giggling maniac about it. Like, he’s never had a deep well of dignity but Christ Almighty. 

Steve throws the BMW into drive with a fully unnecessary flourish, car kinda clunks into gear with the lack of finesse in the showmanship of it all, and Steve kinda swings around to look at him all excited about fuckin’ something, arm still behind the passenger headrest. “And no.”

He’s so fuckin’ smug. Actually, y’know what? Actually, fuck this guy. He doesn’t really love having shit held over his head and Steve thinks this is really cute and Eddie’s not gonna let him just have that for free, even if it's been exactly whatever this is for months now. Him and Steve and their weird flirting to cope they’ve been doing now that the life or death adrenaline has worn off. 

He can fuck all the way off at 7 in the goddamn morning so he just digs through Steve’s glove box through the like - fuck, only like 3 tapes in there, what the fuck. Born to Run. Rumors. And huh. Parallel Lines. 

Smart money’s that’s Buckley’s. 

“Looking for something?” Steve asks all conversationally, not really looking at whatever state he’s making of the glove compartment as he turns on to 69 North. 

“Yeah, music.” because he’s gotta be a dick about something.

“Okay. No? Shotgun does not pick the music?” He is appalled, his sensibilities assailed, his most holiest of held beliefs blasphemed. “Who raised you?”

Eddie flips the compartment closed, it catches with an instant and satisfying click. Not like his van. His van, his shitheap van. You kind of have to slam it closed a couple times, hard enough until it sticks. Which is an arbitrary number of slams. Just until it goes. For a split second he feels like Steve’s showing off then he reminds himself he’s insane. 

“Not the wolves that raised you, apparently.” Steve laughs, it's dry and it’s skeptical, but he laughs “Shotgun absolutely picks the music. Shotgun is Sentinel, man. Shotgun’s watching traffic, shotgun’s calling out shit in the road, shotgun is distraction proof. Shotgun’s Navigator, shotgun knows the exits, shotgun’s on the maps, shotgun is destination oriented. Shotgun is getting us there. Shotgun is the Gatekeeper, shotgun is keeping the driver free of distraction, shotgun is running interference from the backseat fuckery. Shotgun is indispensable. Shotgun is doing so much for you, the least they can have is a pick of the fuckin’ music, man.”

“Yeah but I’m driving.” it comes out of Steve all unimpressed and that’s final and also obvious but also Steve’s just fucking laughing at him now, and honestly he can’t imagine why. Not a joke. 

“Steven, they let 16 year olds drive cars, whose responsibility is really greater here?” and to punctuate the moment he jams Rumors right into the deck. Like checkmate. The defense rests. Take that.

Guess it wasn’t rewound before it got tossed into the compartment because it picks up in the middle of Songbird, Christine McVie and the softest-soft rock piano so sweetly proclaiming some avian conspiracy that:

Like they know the score And I love you, I love you, I love you

And that sort of hangs weirdly in the sudden silence of the cab because Steve’s not laughing anymore he’s just biting his lip looking straight ahead into the Sunday morning church traffic because he’s maybe embarrassed, maybe being caught out at some arbitrary point in the album, like it's anything more than a coincidence, or its shock that Eddie’s considers this music at all. 

He could make up less and less plausible expositions for the look on Steve’s face all goddamn day but instead he just pulls and pushes the door lock up and down like a clunky loud asshole until The Chain saves them both from themselves and whatever emotional complication Fleetwood Mac committed to audio engineered eternity.

He hums along a bit (metal gods may ye be merciful upon his hellbound soul but, like. C’mon) punctuated by idle stunted small talk (how’s Wayne doing? - fine - how’s running your dork game again going? - clandestinely organized in various local basements but also fine) until he ends up falling asleep with his head against the window for the better part of the ride. It is, after all, well outside his personal hours of operation. The fact that he’s made it even this long is commendable. Everyone clap.

For the better part of the drive and despite his whole manifesto on the responsibilities of shotgun, apparently, Steve doesn’t wake him up, just lets him sleep and subsequently wake up on his own with a cramp in his neck, shoved down low into the passenger side with a numb hand shoved between the seat and the door, and the vibration of the wheels against pavement resonating in his teeth. So, whatever little surprise Steve’s got that takes 4 hours to drive to gets to remain a surprise after all because he wakes up disoriented and sore and all there is to see out the window is the high noon sunshine through some green trees surrounding some rumbly, chewed up, lineless, backroad and The Carpenters playing low on the radio. 

“What part of the kidnapping are we on?” He manages to get out, his tongue thick in his mouth and his skull still vibrating minutely off the window, after indulging in seconds of being unseen, unnoticed, to just watch Steve look to the road ahead, restlessly fidgeting with the stitching on the wheel. Exactly where he left him.

Steve flashes him a look - quick - to him and then back to the road - like he hadn’t expected him to be awake so soon. Like he’s been checking in and just missed. Like maybe he’s surprised, or he was caught out at. Something.

“Dismemberment.” Is what he says instead of whatever soft thing seemed to be behind his teeth. 

Eddie hums at him, still a little groggy. Cool. 

“Oh you can just, uh, cut on the dotted lines.” he says, shoving himself up the seat a bit, kicking whatever is glass and clinking at his feet with a mumbled shit as he gestures towards his chest and sides, vaguely. “Pre-portioned.”

“Or you could just ask ‘Are we there yet?’ like a regular person.” Like Steve didn’t just commit to the bit, like, instantly. 

But anyway, he absolutely will not be doing that.

“Thought I’d spare you the flashbacks - afternoon amongst peers and all.”

“Gee thanks.”  

“Don’t mention it.”

Steve snorts, smiles a little, looking straight ahead to the raggedy backroad while Eddie’s still kind of crammed between the shoulder of the seat and the passenger door. Steve’s sunglasses are pushed up on top of his head, the front of his hair sticking up in all directions over and under the frames, brushing against the upholstered headliner of the BMW.  It’s not cute. 

He’s so fucking fucked.

“I won’t.” 

Shithead.

So eventually they park, they get out of the car, and Steve’s looking at him expectantly, presentationally, like he’s supposed to know what he’s looking at. And what he’s looking at is mostly the sand logged scrubby low reeds edging the cracked, sun warped asphalt he’s parked on. He snatches Steve’s coolguy wayfarers off his head, in part to spare himself his ongoing private humiliation of whatever’s going on in his chest and brain watching Steve squint into the sunlight and, in similar not unrelated part, to spare himself from the reflection off all the sand blasting his eyes into little shrunken raisins. 

Steve doesn’t even fight him. Doesn’t even bitch at him a little. Just pulls the bag out off the passenger side floor, didn’t even ask him to grab it when he got out - circled the car to pick it up like he was going to get the door for him. Like he forgot who he was with for a minute. And the something-glass clinks together again in the bag. It's bright. The sound. The sun. Whatever. Something inside him cracks a little. 

There’s a path that goes down, a steep decline that seems to just drop off into nothing from where he stands. Grey bleached wood slats with sand and tufts of spiky grass oozing up between the boards and pooled in the knotholes and Steve kind of gives him an after you kind of hand/arm gesture like there’s something just waiting for him just out of sight.

And there is. Sort of. In the way that it would have been there whether they were standing at the crest of this hill or not is waiting for anything. Something he sort of guessed at. Had enough of the information to guess at. 

He has this kind of puzzle pieced memory of being in elementary school, like third or fourth grade - the pre-Wayne times - and there was this whole week or month or whatever of lessons that were just kind of about the place they were, the place they were all growing up. And y’know, it’s like, industry and shit, its invention and innovation. Gary, Chicago, Dearborn. Capitalists’ wet dreams sold to third graders. And the rest of it was lakes, like why wouldn’t it be? What else is there? 

Some of it was industry, again, things ingenuity learned to make on the lake and the feats of it. Some of it was science, how cold, how deep, how old. Some of it was spooky shit, ghost ships and storms and whatever Gordon Lightfoot had going on about lakes that don’t give up their dead. But he remembers a story - because of course that’s the part that stuck with him - a story that isn’t really his to tell about loss and love and weathering the storm of grief and the passage of time to wait forever that made the dunes. 

And it kind of does. Have a kind of forever, that is, and a going on forever. The lake is there, a steep slope from where they stand at the crumbling edge of the asphalt down right into the water but the reedy clumps of greenery get fewer and farther between and every direction he looks up that lakeshore edge is rolling hills with sharp and soft edges, millions of years of grains of sand and the sun beating down. 

There are a few people up the beach, sliding down the hills of sand, standing in the surf, digging around in the muck for sea glass or shells or beach garbage or who knows - not close enough to make out any kind of meaningful detail. And so they are, for the most part, alone. And the sun beats down on them and the sand and the lake the same. 

He skids down the dune, shoes filling with sand as he tries to look like he’s any kind of control over the descent. Like all present parties don’t have a pretty good grasp on exactly what control looks like to him in various applications. Not like Steve and his casual confidence he just gets to, like. Have. Apparently. 

Steve whose ex swim team lifeguard years never really seemed all that distant - in surprising and nightmareish contexts the last few years; how strong a swimmer are you? bottom of a lake strong enough? not sure if he remembered how hard it really is to administer CPR but apparently it came back to him, if his own bruised ribs were any indication. 

Anyway he does eat shit about two thirds the way down, ass right into the sand and skids a few feet down, and he’s never been so glad to be one of those jeans all summer morons because his shoes are flooded and tight around his feet with the sand pouring in and he knows he’d be in a similar situation elsewhere less dignified were it not for the barrier and he’s suffered enough indignity in the last 27 seconds, thanks. 

And also anyway Steve holds a hand out to him, one foot braced up the hill to keep balance, the brown paper bag from the car balanced on his hip, where the bare, soft, skin above the inside of his knee is right near Eddie’s shoulder and he isn’t even looking, he’s looking out to the lake but he knows - knows it's not the embarrassment that’s making his face burn. He knows. 

“Seems like the kidnapping is going great, like, congrats man, I’ll break my legs on my own at this rate.” 

And Steve gives him this amused look with his outstretched hand that for sure isn’t denial or anything resembling dismissing any of the embarrassment he might be feeling about the situation. The fall. The proximity. Whichever. 

Sometimes he thinks Steve likes watching him squirm. It's not like he’s ever been like. Subtle. About anything. At any point in his life but probably about this specifically. So even if Steve’s entirely clueless, it's at least, apparently, fun for him. Something about it. It, whatever this is. Whatever it's been since he came back to life and they don’t talk about.

Anyway he takes Steve’s hand and it’s warm and it's broad and he already knew that because he’s thought a lot about it. 

He wins the remaining battle with gravity and momentum and sits to dump his shoes off and see if there’s any saving his socks from grit filled sensory nightmares in a few hours time and he’s pretty sure he’s already out of luck there with even the most cursory of assessments while Steve digs this white folded thing out of the paper bag. And as he sort of shakes it out he sees its scalloped edges, the eyelet delicately embroidered around the edges, the yellowing cream color of it all, and it occurs to him this is a tablecloth. An old one. 

Steve seems to notice that he’s sort of taken stock of what Steve’s laying out and how, if one were so inclined to take a lot of Steve Harrington at face value, it almost looks like his affluent upbringing has him so out of touch that these are the choices he made with confidence about beachside protocol so he clears the air with a;

“Biggest thing I could find in the house.” 

“Seems uh. Heirloom adjacent.”

Steve just shrugs and rolls his eyes. Like that means anything at all. 

There was a time he could, and maybe still can sort of, imagine Steve in one of those white pristine lake houses. The kind people go Up North for, the sweaters over shoulders, shoes without socks kind, catama-whatever sailboat-with-extra-steps dickheads. The country club Cape Cod wannabes of Midwestern lakefront property. The places that aren’t here. 

People don’t really live in the dunes, sand too high and malleable to put foundations down. Millions of years of shifting pushed out anything beyond the temporary, everything but themselves. And he thinks that, remembers that thought, and then has it instantly obliterated while Steve lays out what is almost certainly an antique that holds value to fuckin’ someone, digs the corners in with his bare feet - can’t even be bothered to treat it gently or with anything resembling differential respect - so he doesn’t get sand in his asscrack and just rolls his eyes about it.

Huh.

Steve reaches for the bag, something glass clinks together again, and he pulls something out, kind of clutched in his fist and because Eddie’s still mostly preoccupied with his socks because if he looks directly at Steve he might as well be looking directly at the sun he doesn’t really see Steve coming, hitting him in the arm with something solid but inconsequentially heavy. 

He looks up.

It's some trashy dimestore pulp paperback. Second hand. The cover sort of water warped and still damp from the company it’s been keeping in the paper bag. The binding is cracked and creased whited out on the edges where the printing has worn thin, pages yellowed and dogeared. The cover art is in that overly sexed painterly style meant to appeal to a very particular audience that he doesn’t as neatly fit into as one might assume. Devices of Archeron in yellowed white text across the top in some curly serif font meant to denote the medieval-adjacent legitimacy of whatever fantasy schlock is contained between its covers. 

It’s got these swirling green clouds revealing the shape of black eyes and a skeletal void of a nose, that yellowgreen lighting shoots through like a scar behind where, in the foreground, the overly muscular ostensibly sweaty looking one-would-assume hero of the novel stands. Feet apart, shoulder width, standing in power, dark shoulder length hair blown to one side in a presumed illustrative invisible breeze. Spear and shield in hand as he looks into the far distance off the cover into the realm of reality.

“It's not much, but it reminded me of you.” Steve says softly with no amount of shame. Like saying it out loud is embarrassing enough. Like thinking of him at all is embarrassing. Which it probably objectively is and Steve’s done it anyway and there’s physical proof now.

His skin feels all tight and tingly and he knows it’s not just the sunburn he definitely has. 

But it's funny that Steve says it isn’t much. Like he hadn’t driven for 4 hours while Eddie slept against the window, like he hadn’t made the trip, like he isn’t prepared to spend a whole 17 hours in his company because he had the time or made the time, like that alone isn’t anything and this little bargain bin find is the only something Steve has to offer. 

Fucking.

Fuck.

“I thought about, like, drawing a bandana on it but I can’t draw for shit so…” is what Steve says when Eddie realizes he hasn’t said dick or shit for way too long and this is actually Steve’s nerves talking.

“Shit, man.” is what Eddie says which is actually his own nerves talking. “Fuck, thanks.” 

“It probably sucks.” is what Steve says, not that he’s necessarily a connoisseur of the genre, but he’s also probably not wrong. 

“Here’s hoping!” and he actually means it. 

There’s no shade, not until the sun goes down and the dunes are behind them and the lake in front and the sun still rises in the east. So that’s just a geopositional loss for them. The longest day of the year in broad, cloudless, daylight and Steve pulls still sort of cold gas station sandwiches, fetched while Eddie slept uninterrupted against the window in some parking lot somewhere, apparently, and room temperature beer in the noisy glass bottles. Made the trip all the way from Hawkins for the occasion as the apparent primary concern, their sweaty lack of refrigeration clearly a misstep as Steve kind of grimaces at the soggy, drooping labels. 

And they sit in the sun and he can feel his skin peeling off in the future. It's different from feeling his skin peel off in the past. Having, now, a certain. Uh. Perspective. On that.

Having not been informed of their destination he did not come properly prepared for lakefront activities but dignity has no power here when he’s stripping down to his boxers and making a break for the shallows, sitting in the chilly shallow water - Lake Michigan is never really warm - to escape some of the brutality of the heat even with the sun dipping lower. Cross legged on the sandy bottom, Steve across from him better prepared and opening the beer with his keys, all muscle memory of Cool Guy of yore as he squints into the sun reflected off the lake. Like he’s thinking. 

And what he comes up with is:

“Did we ever. Talk? At school?” 

He knows what he means. He doesn’t mean talk and maybe doesn’t feel good enough or past it enough to call the spade a spade. Like he’s hoping for the best but expecting the worst. It's the growing pains. The getting older and thinking about other versions of yourself and who they were and who they did. Maybe it's just the spirit of the season, for Steve. 

“There he is, there’s old King Steve! This guy thinks I’ve cataloged every interaction I’ve ever had with him.” reaching through the water to snap his knuckles against Steve’s knee. His skin is slick under the water, the hair on his knee rasps against his knuckles and Steve is warm even in the cold water.

And he says it like a joke, because it is, a little. Mostly. Steve chokes on his beer a little, drools down his chin while he mumbles a fuck you through his messy indignity. Almost like Steve had been ready to be properly serious and penitent about whatever answer he was going to come up with and the joke startled the tension out of him. 

Like, he doesn’t actually want Steve to feel like shit about this, to be shamed for a momentary resurgence in self importance, or feel shamed for the answer they already both know, he knows he doesn’t actually mean it like that. 

But, y’know, despite the answer, it's also not a completely insane question to ask. The answer isn’t a hard and fast how the hell should I know. Steve Harrington had, and maybe still has but matters less, a reputation. A Hawkins Institution Of A Certain Age. Like, you could have been disdainful and disinterested as humanly possible - and oh boy he sure did try to hit that particular metric - but the pipeline of gossip and social worth isn’t something you just get to opt out of. Not when Steve Harrington’s got a reputation, and there on the other undesirable end of that particular spectrum is Eddie Munson’s reputation. So like, yeah. They. Interacted. 

Like maybe a little bit in a punching down way, like in an easy target way because that’s how order’s maintained. But mostly in a there is no conceivable common ground way. A way that mostly just had them existing in proximity to each other like two like poles of a magnet constantly shoving each other apart. There is no possible adhesion. Rulers of their own social orders. It is a law of nature. They cannot and will not make contact unless enacted upon by incredible force.

(Fuck.)

He’s got one clear memory of Steve before the identical maimings and end of the world averting, and they don’t talk in it. 

Sold weed to Carol Whats-Her-Ass in the driveway of some suburban house party because she clearly thought flirting might get her a deal over Hagan’s typical noxious personality - like the hair around the finger twirl big blink blink babydoll eyes fake as hell pretty girl attention surely has mileage with the insufferable dork virgin. (He let her think it worked. They always think it works.) Steve was there, looking bored leaning on the same BMW that’s baking in the sun just out of sight, Hagan just hanging off his shoulder, already trashed. And at the end of it Eddie says, all shitty to them “don’t do anything I wouldn’t do” and Carol throws her head back and crows with laughter at the implication, while Hagan gives him the finger over his retreating shoulder and Steve doesn’t say anything at all. 

“We talk now.” is what he says instead of, ultimately, answering Steve’s question.

Steve snorts, unimpressed. Knows he’s been deflected. 

“Sure.” 

“Look. It. Doesn’t really matter, man.” he doesn’t say the now. It dosen’t matter now. 

It's suffocating how All That Shit hangs over everything, colors every way they all interact with each other and the world. And probably will forever. The way they all don’t trust any of it, that nothing can possibly be the way they remember when all of their memories up to that point of particular damnation were always incomplete. Just a corner of a whole picture. And the frame’s all zoomed out now. Too far, honestly. He’ll look at a lake and he’ll always see, at least a little bit, a crumpled body crashing through the blackened surface and feel the pressure of water on his ears swimming towards something he doesn’t understand but knows now is death in his mindseye. And it's not all that hard to see that Steve’s made whatever version of that is true for him into a whole redemption road trip he’s put himself on. He’s started to see it a lot, how Steve’s always apologizing for something, even when he isn’t saying sorry. It's with Wheeler, it's with Byers, it's with Mad Max, it's with Robin and now, sometimes - it's him too. 

And it's always like, things are okay, Steve’s doing okay he’s like. Happy or having a good time or something and he’ll realize it - aware that life goes on even when it shouldn’t - and then need to twist that little knife he’s left in himself. Bring it all back. All this shit he hasn’t let go of. Like he can’t trust it's all over. So, he feels like now, with the sun beating down on them in a moment of ostensible celebration, that he has something to apologize for.

“I think I remember hearing about you more than I remember you.” Steve says, like he’s still got a few bones to pick with this dead horse but then he’ll be on his way. “Which is weird…” and like, y’know, the joke tells itself. Weird that I didn’t remember you then, what with how loud and annoying you are just like everyone’s said. Weird that I didn’t remember you when you were such an unrepentant unhumbled jackass. Weird that I didn’t remember you when I would watch you die later. “…’cause I don’t really remember anything anyone ever said about you either.”

And it's not over, not for him anyway. The shit Steve’s talking about but not saying. Maybe the supernatural and unexplained aren’t opening rifts through his late stage childhood home anymore but he’s still not well liked by the town he can’t leave. He was one thing to a nebulous Them for a long time, and that was a thing he was used to being - embraced being, if he’s honest with himself, which he hasn’t loved being lately but alas. 

But this new thing is worse. It's not something he wants, but it's not something he has any power to refuse. 

Long story short, skipping the pity party part (which he would be entitled to, honestly, it's his party and he can - quote - be a miserable little piece of shit if he wants to); people have always said things about him, had their opinions, and maybe it's worse now, but it's always been pretty much the same. 

“Well then let me fill you in: I’m bad news. Headline bad news.”

“Sure, but I like you.” 

Sure, like he agrees. But, like it doesn’t matter. 

He fucking cackles. Spooks some seagulls loitering around for the hope of leftovers tossed their way. 

“How unfortunate for you.”

“Not really.” he doesn’t even hesitate.

And he can’t take this, he can’t even try. What’s he gonna do? Smile right in Steve’s face about it? Blush? Look fucking touched? Fuck right off. So instead of anything productive or honest he just bolts. He flops backwards, bare back and upper shoulders making a cold, stinging, slap against the softly rolling waves in their little kiddy pool area of the lake. Pushes the air out of his lungs and sinks slowly to the bottom, but he keeps his eyes open, even though the sand he kicked up from his histrionics clouds the water hanging just inches above his upturned face. He can see the sun, an abstract and constantly moving yellowwhite and the little wrinkles the shape of it. Can see his hair floating in front of his face just as his chest starts to burn from keeping his gut and his lungs sucked in. 

And like. He knows. He knows how close Steve’s knees are to his own, he knows that Steve’s probably leaning forward to look down at Eddie’s retreat - he can feel the cold hover of his shadow over his chest even if he can’t see Steve from his perspective from across their little aquatic embarrassment buffer. 

He knows if he sits up exactly where he will be and exactly where Steve will be and his eyes are starting to sting from the sand in the water and his heart is starting to seize from the lack of oxygen and he’s died and wanted to be dead again and he’s been patched back together with foreign parts and he’s lasted another year past his expiration date and he just keeps coming back to the lake - any lake - and maybe that’s a sign, maybe that says something about something but there are little black floaters in his vision now and he knows that Steve’s always been exactly where he expects him, in his memories where they don’t talk exactly where he expects him, standing at the end of the world shoulder to shoulder exactly where he expects him, sitting in his car outside his uncle’s trailer just like he said he would be, leaning over him at the cold bottom of the lake maybe exactly where he expects him and his ears are ringing and he flings himself upright. 

There’s air, cold, and flooding back into his collapsing lungs and there’s water in his ears and his hair clings to his face, his neck, like the weeds they’ve been brushing away as they float to shore in the waves and with his hands outstretched like Karloff off the slab, like the Creature from the lagoon and his hands find Steve right where he knew he would be, his hands find his hair and his mouth finds his skin warm and dry from the sun and the sand when misses a little because he’s dizzy and maybe that’s the lack of air or maybe it’s exactly this now. 

Steve lets out this, soft, indignant grunt. Which, even in the euphoria of oxygen returning to his brain he has the brainwaves to concede that he’s earned that. His vision is swimming and he feels wrung out and boneless and he feels Steve’s teeth against his closed mouth - he’s smiling, he realizes in a daze. Smiling against his closed lips. Steve’s hand finds his wet tangled hair, sightlessly, plastered to his cheeks and neck with the cold lake water - drags them away with a firm press of his blunt fingers against his cheek, through stubble and scar tissue to clear the way, pushes his chin up into him instead, noses the juncture of his cheek and presses an open mouthed kiss to his jaw. Eddie shivers.

He’s never been to the ocean before, never really been farther than a state or two in either direction, and despite the fact that The Lakes fall within that geographical range he somehow hasn’t done this either. So he’s got nothing to compare it to necessarily but there is something arresting about something so big. 

He has seen and looked into a hellish forever. Red skies and ashen rain and a ruination that stretches for all of reality. The water here stretches to the horizon, a grey blue and points of light out to a cloudless sun bright sky. There is color here. There is green water and lavender sky and yellow sand and an orange sun and Steve’s pink mouth and another year in full color. 

[irregularbillcipher]

was going through old files and found the start of a resident evil village fic... idk if i'll ever finish it, so here's the start for posterity. maybe i'll finish it someday if there's any interest warnings for descriptions of animal harm, gore and surgery, along with some emotional abuse also also, if anyone here speaks french and would be willing to tell me if the tiny bit of french in here sounds correct, i'd appreciate it! i went through a few channels that were more advanced than google translate, but i don't speak the language myself and didn't really have any way to verify

Salvatore Moreau was a very good doctor. At the very least, his mother had always said so.

                To be fair, she wasn’t the only one who said so, but she was always the one who was the most adamant about it, even before he could speak.

                Stories fed to him when he could barely hold his head up of his grandfather, his namesake, who had left Italy for France to study under the Louis Pasteur— or at his university, at least— and Salvatore had learned by age two and a half that he should always pretend that he understood why that was a big deal.

                By age four, he really did understand why that was such a big deal, and by age five, after lengthy stories from his mother of his grandfather’s most gruesome surgical endeavors and hints that his namesake had been prepping since he was half Salvatore’s age, he had started performing medical experiments of his own, shaking, pudgy hands rifling through his father’s tackle box, taking out the worms and insects, using a hook to open them up and see how they ticked.

                His father never liked it, seeing the boy tear his bait apart on the docks of the reservoir, but his mother was thrilled, and tutted away his father’s concerns.

                “It’s a surgeons instinct,” she would coo, pressing a kiss against the boy’s cheek and placing a needle and thread in tiny hands, so he could stitch everything back together. “I just want him to have a head start. He’ll need hands-on experience before he goes to Paris!”

                “Of course,” his father would say, never one for arguments, “but couldn’t we stick to creatures that are already dead?”

                “He’ll have plenty of time to work on cadavers in school,” she would retort, and sometimes the discussion would become a bit more tense, a back and forth babble of French and Italian that Salvatore could make out if he focused, but rarely bothered to focus on. The Italian always won, anyway.

                “Just…” he would finally hear in tired French, “nothing that feels. Nothing more than bait… Nothing with fur, or a real brain…”

                And Salvatore was happy to agree with that— bigger things would squirm or scream, and he didn’t like to feel like he was hurting anything. He was practicing being a doctor, he wasn’t trying to cause harm.

                But by age seven, his mother started handing her little surgeon field mice and toads from the lake, speaking breathlessly about how his grandfather had once amputated a leg in five minutes flat, and he knew she wanted him to try to do it in four.

                A mouse’s leg was so much thinner, after all.

                She was ecstatic when one of his tiny patients finally survived the night, and had gleefully told him that his father wouldn’t have to know they were expanding their medical practice.

                “He’s a sweet man, your father, a good man,” she would say, with genuine fondness, patting her son’s cheek, “just…not ambitious. We both want you to be the best you can be, tesoro, we just don’t agree on how to get you there…”

                And Salvatore wasn’t sure how he felt about her dismissing his father— he seemed happy with his life, after all— but it was hard to act as if he was living up to his potential.

                He was sure, after all, that when his father had told his mother he had a Lordship waiting for him if his family ever returned to Romania, she was not expecting the man to remain a fisherman after he had accepted it. A Lord usually made more of himself.  

                When he asked his father though, on one of the quiet, early morning boat trips he took his boy on so often, the man had simply laughed quietly.

                “A Lordship is just a title, Salvatore,” he’d said, wrapping another blanket around the boy’s shoulders— Salvatore always forgot how chilly the morning mist on the boat was, and his father always kept spare wool blankets by the tacklebox, so the boy wouldn’t have to remember. “I’m sure some old Moreau was great some hundred-odd years ago, or at least found a way to make some money somehow, but it doesn’t mean much nowadays. A bit of land, a crest…”

                “A boat,” the boy had giggled, kicking the bottom of the old thing, and his father had laughed.    

“No, no, the boat I built.”

                Salvatore had squirmed a little, confused, hands gripping his fishing rod. “We… we owned a reservoir, but not a boat?”

                And the man had chuckled again. “Your brains come from your mother’s side of the family, mon chou. Not the Moreau side, even if someone long ago managed to be great on a reservoir without a boat.”

                “Well. You were smart enough to build a boat.”

                The man had hummed softly and nodded in humble agreement, standing up to cast his line out again.

                “… So if we’re Lords here,” the boy continued, gnawing on dirty fingernails, “why did you ever live in France?”

                “Well, we have family there, of course,” his father had said, chewing on his cigarette, eyes glued to the lake, “but it was mostly the weather.”

                “… Your family gave up being Lords because of the weather?”

                “We’re cold-blooded creatures, us Moreaus,” his father had whispered conspiratorially, piling another blanket on the shivering boy and sticking out his tongue when he snorted. “We do better where it’s temperate.”

                “But it’s still cold here. It’d be nicer in France. Or Italy.”

                “Hm, it is, but your mother’s enough of a firecracker to keep anyone warm,” the man had said, half exhausted and half lovestruck, and Salvatore really couldn’t argue with that. “And besides. She liked the idea of being a Lady… found it romantic, you know.”

                The boy had nodded again, kicking his legs and reeling in experimentally, just to see if he could catch any fish’s attention. It didn’t work.

                “But there’s no expectation for you,” his father had said, tugging on his own line. “There’s no, ah… role you have to play, because of my family.”

                “Mama says being a doctor would be be-befitting of a Lord.”

                “And it would be if that’s what you’d like,” he’d said, patting his son’s shoulder. His jaw had set, just a little, and Salvatore regretting bringing it up. “We both want you to be happy, Salvatore, we just—”

                “Don’t agree on how to get me there,” he’d finished quietly.

                “No, we don’t,” the man was reeling his line in now, having felt a tug. “But nobody does, really, for anybody. Ready with the net now.”

                The boy had nearly dropped his own pole in the water in the rush to get the net for what ended up being a much smaller than average fish, but his father never chided him for that sort of thing.

                Despite his mother’s aspirations, stories of how his parents met never included the Lordship.

                “We met at the market,” his mother would say dreamily, whenever her son asked. “He tried to sell me a tiny trout for three francs…”

                “And?” Salvatore would always prompt giddily, despite knowing how the story went.

                “And I told him that for that price, I’d better get it fully cooked with wine and dessert… and he was happy to do it.”

                “The dinner,” his father would always add from his armchair, “was more than three francs—”

                “And the trout was very good,” she would concede, kissing him on the cheek and patting his arm as he blushed furiously.

                “Was it worth it?” Salvatore would ask his father, as if he didn’t already know the answer, as if he weren’t essentially reciting a script, and he was never surprised when mother would reply instead.

                “Was a wife worth three francs?”

                “I think I could have spent less on the dinner if I’d thought it through more,” his father would always say, smiling the whole time.  “But the date was well worth the seven francs I spent.”

                There were many stories like that, back and forth skits of things his mother had already told him— everything from his grandfather’s most harrowing surgical endeavors to the hectic day that he was born— but the day his parents met was always his favorite. It was the one they seemed the happiest to tell, the one they always remembered new details of.

                His mother would always tell him later, while tucking him in, that she would have insisted on dinner with his father even if he’d charged a single centime for the trout, because her demand for dinner and wine hadn’t really had anything to do with the trout itself, and his father would always tell him the next morning on the boat that he’d deliberately overcharged for the trout just to have an excuse to haggle with a pretty girl, which had worked out far better than he ever could have imagined.

                “So, it was love at first sight?” he would ask them both, without fail.

                “Of course it was, tesoro,” his mother would sigh, brushing his hair out of his eyes and taking off his glasses, setting them on his bedside table. “Why else would I have made him take me to dinner?”

                His father would always be asked the next morning, back on the boat, and he would breathe air out of his nose and smile softly, shaking his head.

                “I wouldn’t call it that, Salvatore… love takes time, work, you know? It’s a… process,” he would say, baiting his hook. “But I knew I wanted to know her better.”

                Salvatore decided from an early age that he liked his mother’s answer best, but he never said so, at least not to his father on those frigid, foggy mornings.

                “He changes the story, doesn’t he?” his mother would ask, needle and thread and a rabbit bundled into her arms, and he would relay the conversations on the lake, to drown out the rabbit’s screams. To stop his hands from shaking.

“No,” he would say, hoping to avoid the inevitable. This was another script, but one he liked much less, and it was hard to recite his lines when his hands were slick with viscera.

 “He doesn’t say it was love at first sight,” she would sigh, looking intently at her son’s handiwork.

                “He says love takes time,” he would say, wrist deep in gore, “and work.”

                “So it takes work to love me, does it?” and the teasing note in her voice would never be enough to stop his queasiness from building.

                “No,” he’d say over the rabbit’s screeches, or mouse’s, or the toad’s, “of course not.” And his voice would quaver even though he’d mean it.

                She never noticed the hesitancy, and he was glad, because the minute his patient was stitched up, that nervous note in his voice would wash over him in a wave of shame. He’d shake and snivel after every procedure, and he was convinced it had to be because of that hesitancy over the woman convincing him to tear apart the local fauna, and not the act of tearing them apart. He refused to entertain the idea it could be a little of both.

                Her son’s trembling was something she could not ignore, and she’d take his hands, still dripping from surgery, still pudgy with baby fat, and smile softly. “A surgeon’s hands,” she’d sigh, squeezing. “You’ve done such a good job, Salvatore, you have a surgeon’s hands.”

                It was almost enough to make him feel better.

                “Now, let’s get you cleaned up before your father sees.”

                That was what really made him feel better, at the end of the day, wiping off the gore. He tried not to think about it too much. There wasn’t much use for a squeamish surgeon.

                Even as he got older, as his hands started to shake less, as he learned how to quiet the animals’ screams and as he developed an appreciation—or at least a fascination—with the work his mother was pushing him towards, he was still relieved every time he got to clean his hands and be done with it.

                He was ten when his father found him, halfway between the makeshift surgical center and the lake, rushing to dip sopping red hands in murky water. His father had looked at him, hunched over and bloody and crying, and his face had gone gray, and he’d docked the boat and headed up to their house without a word.

                The din in the house started almost immediately and for once, the French overpowered the Italian.

                He tried not to listen, as he scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and tried to drown out the noise, washing until his hands were sore to try to feel clean, to avoid going into the house.

                The yelling carried, though, no matter how loudly he splashed, no matter how much he muttered to himself. The only sound he could hear was his father, angry like he’d never heard before, so angry Salvatore was sure he was sobbing, refusing to back down for once.

                Vous pensez que c’est ce qui est le mieux pour lui? Vous pensez que c’est ce qui le rendra heureux? Il est trempé de sang, il tremble! Mon Dieu, il n'a que dix ans!

                Dear God, he’s only ten!

                When he pulled his hands from the lake, they were still bloody, and it took a good few seconds to realize that this time, it was his own blood. From the state of his hands, raw and cracked and trembling—God, he wished he could stop the trembling-- scrubbing any more would only make things worse, so he just sat on the dock miserably, holding his fingers above the water and waiting for them to dry.

[drhoz]

#1984 - Rattus rattus - Black Rat

The name of the blog might be Things I Get To ID At Work, and my work might be pest control, but the work I actually do is almost entirely termite prevention (and there’s only two or three species that are actually threats to buildings in Western Australia). Nearly everything else I see while’s out or about, or that people have sent me for ID. 

That said, I DO occasionally see well known pest species like this one, and used to have to put baits in roof cavities.

The Black Rat, or Roof Rat, or Ship Rat, is a now cosmopolitan species that probably originated in the Indian subcontinent, and subsequently spread along trade routes and in ships. They very likely arrived in Australia on the First Fleet, but are now found in all coastal regions here, both in cites and adjacent bushland. They’re extremely adaptable, feeding on a very wide range or food, and avoid poisoning by only eating a little of each when its available. If one kind of food such as bamboo fruit becomes available in superabundance, rat populations can explode.

Despite the common name, they are also often grey or brown, or even greenish.

Notoriously, black rats and their fleas were a vector for Bubonic Plague during the Black Death, but it now seems likely that most transmission outside of ports and trade centres was human-to-human. That said, black rats are also reservoirs for typhus, leptospirosis, toxoplasmosis, trichinosis, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Corynebacterium kutsheri, Bacillus piliformis, Pasteurella pneumotropica, and Streptobacillus moniliformis, among others.

[simoncardonefishes]

Issue 177 of Freshwater Fishing Australia is out now and features some great articles including my piece on chasing cod at Happy Valley reservoir. I actually had a 4 month break from fishing the ressie since writing this, so earlier in the week l thought a quick session to see how the fish were going was in order! I’m pleased to say I caught 3 plump cod in 15 minutes, 2 on the swim bait and one on the soft plastic 😎 #missionaccomplished✔️ #murraycod #goodoo #freshwater #fishing #catchandrelease #happyvalleyreservoir #fishingaustralia #jarviswalker https://www.instagram.com/p/CqZS_jpSWrE/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[flatstarcarcosa]

They’ve barely had time to register the alarm ringing when Soldier Boy’s hand is clenched around their throat as he slams them into the wall.

“Who sent you?” he growls. His grip tightens, and Reese tries ineffectually to pry at his fingers.

“No one,” they gasp.

“Bullshit,” he snarls. “You show up asking very specific questions about very specific topics, and two hours later we’ve got infected inside my fucking fence?”

He bounces their head against the wall, and pulls the knife at his hip.

“Unless you want me to gut you and use what falls out as redirect bait, you better start answering,” he says.

“No one!”

“Bullshit!” he snaps again.

It’s then that he suddenly notices the emblem on the arm of their sunglasses; a small, silver V that makes him pause. His hold on them loosens.

“I- I didn’t-” says Reese.

“Close your eyes,” he says, gruffly.

Behind the black lenses, they blink.

“What?”

“Close your fucking eyes,” he snaps.

Confused, but acutely aware of the blade against their ribs, they comply. He lets go of their throat to yank the glasses of their face. Snapping the arm causes a small silver disc, roughly the size of one of the screw heads holding the frame together, to fall to the floor.

“Fucking Vought,” he hisses, before calling over his shoulder, “someone get me a pair of goddamn UV blockers!”

A moment later the uncomfortable, albeit familiar, feeling of plastic pinching the bridge of their nose and corners of their eyes settles into place.

“I liked those fucking sunglasses,” Reese snaps, opening their eyes. There’s a brief moment of disorientation as they adjust to the UV blockers. As the name implies, they block more light than glasses do, at the cost of feeling like they’re peeling the skin from your fucking face.

“Those sunglasses were bugged,” he says. He sheaths his knife, picks up a .45 from the table, and checks the magazine. “Someone’s known every move you’ve made since you bought them.”

“I didn’t,” they say. “I got them as a gift.”

He stops. “What?”

Gunshots echo faintly from outside. It’s a matter of seconds until the screaming follows them. Later, when the dead are ash and the ashes are bleached to the point of rendering the entire area lifeless for decades, he’ll find time to be pissed about several years without an outbreak getting ruined within three short hours.

“The retinal KA group, the whole reason I started on this, a bunch of us got them as gifts,” says Reese, adding, “anonymously donated.”

Soldier Boy’s lip curls.

He’d wanted to tell them they were chasing delusions, getting caught up in patterns that weren’t there, and have them fuck back off to wherever they came from. They show up with anecdotal stories and, at best, circumstantial evidence that people with reservoir conditions are disappearing at higher rates than normal people and he knows he wants nothing to do with it.

Ten minutes ago he could have confidently told them they were imagining it, but an entire group of the bastards getting an anonymous gift from Vought that’s carrying tracking devices is the kind of simple math even he can’t brush off.

The screaming begins to follow the gunshots. He passes them the .45 and crosses the room to pull another one from a weapons rack.

“You certified for that?” he asks, not really caring about the answer either way.

“Much as I can be while going blind every day,” they drawl.

“I’m gonna find where they broke through the fencing and plug the hole,” he says, pulling down a second gun.

“By yourself?” asks Reese.

“Cull whatever’s dead inside, and anyone about to be dead,” he continues, ignoring their question.

“Don’t your people need to know this, too?” they ask.

“They’re not my people,” he says sharply, adding, “and you’re the only one here who doesn’t know our outbreak protocol.”

“What?” they ask again.

Soldier Boy offers no further instructions, nor explanations. He pulls a shield from a spot closer to the door, and then kicks it open. Gunfire and screams amplify in volume, and Reese can’t help the way their gut flips in response.

They were born after the Rising. They’ve done enough field training for their weapons certifications, but it’s still not the same as a real outbreak. They blink, and Soldier Boy has disappeared into the chaos, leaving them no choice but to ready the weapon and step into it after him.

[amarresorrt-3144]

Best Fishing Rig For Bass

When it comes to bass fishing, choosing the best fishing rig for bass can make all the difference between an average day on the water and landing that trophy catch. With various options available, finding the right rig can seem overwhelming, but understanding a few key setups will help you greatly improve your success.

One of the most popular setups is the Texas rig, which many anglers consider the best fishing rig for bass. This weedless rig allows you to fish in areas with heavy cover like grass, wood, or brush piles. With the hook buried into the soft plastic bait, the Texas rig ensures your line doesn’t get snagged while effectively mimicking prey.

Another contender for the best fishing rig for bass is the Carolina rig. While similar to the Texas rig, the Carolina rig has a weight positioned further up the line, which helps your bait move more freely and attract bass in deeper waters. This setup works especially well when bass are feeding on the bottom in lakes or reservoirs.

For those fishing in clearer water or targeting more finicky bass, the drop shot rig might be the best fishing rig for bass. This rig suspends your bait slightly above the bottom, presenting it in a way that often tempts even the most reluctant fish to bite.

When creating your bass fishing strategy, consider the wacky rig. Some anglers argue it’s the best fishing rig for bass because of its simple design and irresistible action. The hook is placed in the middle of a soft plastic worm, which creates a fluttering motion as it sinks. Bass love this movement, and it can be incredibly effective in a variety of fishing conditions.

Whether you're a seasoned angler or just starting out, using the best fishing rig for bass tailored to your environment and bass behavior will give you a significant advantage on the water. Experiment with these rigs, and soon you'll see why they are the go-to choices for bass fishing enthusiasts everywhere.

[themaynard]

Explore the Best Fishing Sites in Hope Valley

Discover the top fishing spots in Hope Valley, from Ladybower Reservoir to the River Derwent. Whether you prefer fly fishing, spinning, or bait fishing, these serene locations offer something for every angler. After a day on the water, unwind at The Maynard in Grindleford. Book your stay today for an unforgettable fishing getaway.