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thecandywrites · 5 years

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Isthantari- The Series- Panda

Oh my god guys! So I got to work with the amazing super amazing @pandainfinitely but in particular her under her writing blog @pandaswritingandmonsters and THAT’S ACTUALLY A PICTURE OF PANDA, ISN’T SHE GORGEOUS?! Panda gave me SO MUCH to work with while also giving me license to do whatever the hell I wanted which was super fun and my imagination went WILD. It was so fun, this was SO MUCH FUN and DELIGHTFUL to write and I’m so sorry for taking so long to give this to you because I’ve been working on it (*cough* hording it *cough*) because I got to include one of my dream passions, lamp work beads and jewelry which is a hobby I WISH I could indulge in but alas my finances could never support it. BUT I CAN DREAM. So this piece is also really self indulgent for me and we have a lot in common. so that made this commission even better, also why I got a little crazy with the length. Hope you like it!

Isthantari Series- Panda and Jinx

You sighed in boredom as you dusted the space behind the counter at the jewelry store you worked at. It was actually an artisanal bead store that had a lot of artists who worked with lamp work beads or even carved beads and ceramic beads too and each section of the store belonged to each artist as well as being organized by color and the owner was very good at making sure if your beads sold, you got paid commission for them thanks to an amazing cataloging system. You worked the counter in addition to providing a small patch of beads to the store itself. You preferred to work in strictly black and white beads and the problem was...was that your beads were popular with only a few people who liked the black and white aesthetic but otherwise, the more colorful beads sold better than yours did and you earned more money from the hours you worked at the shop more than you did from the sales of your beads, which was getting a little depressing.

At least the music on the shop’s radio was good, you had the freedom to change the station and listen to what you wanted while you worked and there was an essential oil diffuser on the counter that you could control the scent of the essential oils that were used while you worked to keep the place smelling nice and fresh and you could read when there was a lull in foot traffic or if the store was dead and all the tidying up was done and you could have your phone on you at all times and even had your own business cards and you got to indulge in the little bistro’s extremely good coffee and food every time you worked since it was right next door and the pay was actually decent because it was technically a small business but your boss was amazing and made sure that all her employees were paid well, like better than a living wage including health insurance and happily let you and the other artists work the front counter and work in her work shop in the back, letting you use her vast array of tools for free and her stock pile of materials at a deep discount in exchange for a percentage of your bead sale commissions and actually paid you the same hourly wage for working in the work shop that she did working the front counter because she was an avid lamp work bead maker herself and it was a very mutually beneficial arrangement where everyone made money and the business would take turns featuring each artist and their work in the front window for a week at a time or during the festivals the front window would feature everyone so everyone got a bump in sales. The business itself was located in a little strip of stores right across the street from the park so even the views were lovely and you had decent foot traffic in the spring, summer and fall when the weather was fair, and the air conditioning made working the summer months great and the heater was more than adequate in the winter, really, other than your beads not selling well, you didn’t have much to complain about your job, the hours were nice, the pay was nice, your boss was super nice, granted some of the other artists were kind of snobby but you didn’t really deal with them often, the owner did and she would work the counter so you could get your breaks and she was always prompt, taking her own breaks around yours when she wasn’t creating in the back herself and she worked almost every day and the business was closed on Sundays and the other artists liked to work on the weekends when there was more business and they got a chance to showcase their own beads to the customers so that left you working Monday through Thursday and technically it was part time but you still got benefits as if it was full time and you made enough to pay all your bills and support yourself well all on your own and feed yourself well and even save a little bit of money here and there and splurge on yourself every once in a while (*cough some amazing high end chocolate from the chocolate shop a few shops down, nail polish, your growing collection of shampoos and conditioners because you liked to experiment with any and all you could and sushi cough*) so you couldn’t complain and your apartment was relatively close by and was a decent aparartment too so even the commute was nice. And one of your favorite things was on your way to work, listening to a morning show on a local radio station called ‘Second Date Update’ that showcased the sometimes hilarious exploits of other single people trying to date and reminded you to stay picky when choosing a boyfriend because there was some creeps and crazies out there. I mean some guys (most in your gentrified down down area) who actually still think they’re entitled to their dream girl who’s a solid ten while themselves barely crested a three and had nothing to offer but shallow and manipulative personality traits, fidoras and a neck beard while thinking they were the alpha males and a dream of a catch while the only women on earth to think that were their mothers and literally no one else. And from those you learned to stay far, far away.

You got done dusting before a mother and her toddler came in and you watched them, mostly keeping your eye on the toddler to make sure they didn’t start grabbing the beads and mixing them up or trying to ‘steal’ them. Not that kids were naturally malicious and out to steal everything they could get their hands on but kids that size and age usually liked shiny things and those shiny pretty things sometimes found their way into their little pockets. But the kid was surprisingly well behaved and actually listened to it’s mother when she told him ‘not to touch’ all the beads and you were impressed when the kid actually listened. She put together a really pretty necklace using some really nice beads from a variety of artists as well as the others that were simply in stock and belonged to the store itself as the little kid happily hung onto it’s toy and simply stayed close to his mom which got you to smile proudly. However when she went to check out, you noticed the kid become enamored with the glass case that was part of the front counter and proceeded to lick it and smear it’s face and hands all over it and made it’s own ‘masterpiece’ out of it’s spit.

“Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry, do you have a wet wipe or something?” The mother asked as she noticed what her son had done and gently scolded him for it.

“Don’t worry about it, I got it, he’s fine, have a great day and come back soon!” You invited her warmly as she nodded and got her son and got out of there and you took a Clorox wipe to wipe it up. Hey, it could have been much worse and the kid had actually been adorable. You wished more kids were more like him than some of the little monsters that came in.

As you finished wiping it up, the door chimed as another customer came in.

“Welcome to Artistry Beads.” You offered robotic-ly as you finished wiping up the mess before you stood back up and turned to face the new customer and dropped you Clorox wipe when you saw what had come in, a Jika, not just any Jika, but an unusually tall one, Jika were usually six feet tall and black and yellow and had a green sheen to their black, this one had to be seven feet tall though. It’s black having the prettiest purple sheen to it.

“Hello.” He greeted you and you forgot how to talk for a moment, that voice. His voice was smoother than black velvet.

“Hi, I’m Panda, sorry, sorry, my real name is Mary, friends call me Panda.” You stammered nervously as you took in the sight of him as you watched him bend over and pick up the discarded Clorox wipe on the floor and hand it back to you.

“Oh, thank you,” you thanked him as you watched him, completely unable to take your eyes off of him like he was hypnotizing you and you didn’t mean to stare, staring was supposed to be rude but you couldn’t help it but he didn’t seem to mind. Not by the super charming smile he was giving you.

“Can I call you Panda then?” He asked as a giggle suddenly left you as your face stained raspberry.

“Sure.” You nodded as you bit your lips to keep your face from splitting in half from smiling too widely.

“Do your friends call you Panda on account of your hair?” He asked as he tilted his head to consider your black and white hair. The left side of your hair was so platinum blonde it was practically white while the right side of your head you colored black and your hair was chest length and your glasses were thick black rimmed glasses and your blue eyes popped form your super pale complexion, you had a black nose ring and two silver lip rings.

“Yup.” You nodded even though there was more to it than that but most people assumed that about you and because of your naturally shy personality, you weren’t usually comfortable telling everyone everything about you, you usually guarded your personal life pretty fiercely.

“Uh, so, what brings you in? Can I help you look for anything in particular?” You asked, trying to get back into your customer service mode.

“No, just passing by, the store looked interesting, thought I would stop in and check it out.” He said as he gestured to the store.

“Oh, well, in that case, look around and if you see anything you like, let me know or if there’s a project you’d like to work on, just let me know.” You invited as you gestured to the shop before you went back and stepped behind the counter again and took your seat in the very comfortable chair behind the cash register. Another wonderful thing, you got to sit at work as he moved throughout the store, looking around at everything, all his hands clasped regally behind his back as he did so before he stopped right in front of your section and seemed to look at your beads with great interest which normally excited you and made you happy but this made you very nervous for some reason as you hoped and prayed he liked them before he reached out hesitantly and picked four of them up, one in each hand and studied all four at the same time with help from his compound eyes as he turned them in the light.

“So...people make..jewelry then, from these beads?” He gathered as he looked from the beads to the sample jewelry that hung artfully on the displays.

“Yep.” You confirmed from the front before he put one of the beads back and picked up your business card that was with your bead section.

“You made these?” He asked curiously as he compared your business card’s picture against you.

“I did.” You confirmed as you just couldn’t help yourself as you came over to stand next to him.

“How?” He asked which got you to laugh as you went over to a ‘how to’ book, one of the better ones you had and flipped it to the pictured diagrams that showed some of the techniques that were common and showed him that as he quickly read the page before he seemed to flip through the book, reading all the pages incredibly quickly.

“Fascinating.” He breathed in awe and you snorted a laugh as he looked at you curiously.

“Sorry, that’s what a character on a TV show, his name was Spock, that’s what he said about things that intrigued him.” You explained.

“I know, I’m very fond of the show ‘Star Trek’. In fact it was that show that tempted the Jika to make contact with humans to begin with. Jika and Vulcans are very similar in many respects.” He explained with a wry grin. “Excuse me,” he excused himself to go get a large basket to put the book and several others in before he bought out all of your stock. Like, he literally bought- Every. Single. Bead.

“So...what are you going to be making with all of these?” You asked as you rung him up as you tried not to become overwhelmed because this had literally never happened to you before.

“A truly great thing.” He smiled proudly.

“Ok,” you nodded in agreement with a bashful smile.

He happily paid for everything and you literally had to print the receipt twice, a copy for you to keep and a copy for the owner Jackie and when he left the store, he quickly flew away instead of walking down the side walk and you literally squealed in delight and just had to jump up and down in excitement.

“Jackie!” You squealed as you took her receipt and ran to the back of the store to her.

“Jackie, Jackie, Jackie!!! Look! Look! Look!” You squealed as you showed her the receipt as she paused in making her own beads to look at you and then the receipt before her eyebrows shot up.

“He bought all of my stock, like he bought some books but otherwise bought all of my beads!” You squealed in delight before she followed you out to the front of the store to see that your section did indeed get cleaned out and even the few demonstrative necklaces that had your beads on them sold.

“Holy shit, I have some supplies to order so you can make more.” Jackie giggled as she checked the business account on her phone to see the money already in her account and cleared and went ahead and made an order for supplies for you and got other artists to come in and work your shifts so that you could spend your time in the work space to make more.

“Congratulations Panda!” She gave you high five which you readily returned and mentally already made plans with what you were going to do with the money and how you were going to celebrate and the whole day you felt like you were floating on air and you wore the brightest smile ever. Looking over at your section and seeing it bare was so exciting, that had never happened before. Usually you could make the few beads that sold throughout the week on a Friday, but now you had an entire stock pile to replenish and you eagerly looked forward to those weeks where you would feel so accomplished.

Then you looked at the receipt. Prince Jinx Kizu. OH GOD HE WAS A PRINCE. A PRINCE LOVED YOUR BEADS AND BOUGHT YOUR BEADS, ALL YOUR BEADS. OH THIS WAS THE GREATEST THING EVER. Oh you couldn’t wait to rub Samantha’s nose in this. Samantha was the snobbiest of the snobs and always seemed to be so god damn smug because her beads sold on a regular basis and she made more in commissions than hours at the store and rubbed that in everyone’s faces. Ha! A royal Jika liked your beads. That just made this victory even sweeter. You took yourself out to eat after work, stopping first at the coffee shop to get a bag of your favorite coffee then at the chocolate shop down a few stores down and got yourself a box of your favorites, even the chocolate covered strawberries and the chocolate baskets, little hand held baskets made out of pure premium chocolate that were full of berries and then went to the hair salon and got yourself a new set of shampoo and conditioner then you went to the Asian fusion bistro a little further down and got yourself all the sushi you could eat. Really, it was the perfect day, like the greatest day ever.

For two weeks, as soon as you seemed to get more beads to get into stock, he seemed to return to buy them all out again and he only wanted your black and white beads which was an ego boost you were not expecting but that you embraced whole heartedly. Each time he came in, you talked a little more as he asked polite yet very thoughtful questions which you readily answered.

“Seriously, what are making with all of these?” You asked with a laugh as you cashed him out yourself.

“A sculpture.” He finally admitted.

“Really? Wow.” You blinked in surprise.

“I don’t mean to be creepy or perhaps obsessive or...” he paused as he seemed to struggle to find the right words to use, usually he was always so composed. It was actually very adorable to you.

“I don’t find it creepy or obsessive, I find it complimentary.” You assured him as he seemed very relieved to hear that.

“Oh good.” He breathed in relief before he seemed to want to say more and seemed to debate with himself for a moment.

“Is there anything else?” You asked once you finished.

“Actually, yes, would you like to do go out with me or do you have a significant other yet?” He finally asked and you nearly choked on your own spit.

“No, no, I don’t have a significant other, I would love to go on a date with you.” You rattled off super quickly, as your felt like you were tripping all over your damn self.

“Great, when do you get off this evening?” He asked charmingly.

“Six,” you gulped.

“Great, and is there a type of cuisine you prefer?” He asked.

“Sushi.” You immediately answered as he grinned wider.

“Perfect, I’ll see you in a little bit then Panda.” He grinned victoriously and if you had not been sitting down your knees were sure to have knocking together and you would have fallen on your ass.

When he left you squealed in delight again as you quickly ran to the back.

“Jackie! I’m sorry, I gotta go home early today, I have a date that I need to get ready for.�� You told her excitedly.

“Uh, I really need you here...” Jackie grimaced.

“But I have a date! With Prince Jinx! He just asked me out! Tonight after work! Is there anything I can do?” You pleaded desperately.

“Tell you what, you got an hour because I have a doctor’s appointment in an hour and a half that will undoubtedly take the rest of my day.” She told you.

“Thank you thank you thank you! I’ll be right back.” You agreed as you got home and in a flurry got dressed in a really nice little black dress and tried to curl your hair and grabbed your makeup to do at work and came back just in time and did your makeup behind the counter, using the mirrors you had there to make it look amazing.

You ticked down the hours and you even closed five minutes early and waited anxiously for him to arrive and he landed right outside the door right at 6 and you scrambled to get to the door to unlock it for him.

“Hey! Let me just grab my purse.” You told him as you quickly went around the counter to grab your purse before you locked up the store again.

“So where are we going?” You asked excitedly.

“Well, if your comfortable, we could go to Momo.” He suggested as your eyes went wide with excitement. Momo was the best sushi place in the city. It was also nosebleed expensive.

“Yeah,” you agreed.

“Would you mind if we flew?” He asked as he nodded to the sky.

“Uh, I can’t...fly.” You frowned.

“I know, would you mind if I carried you?” He asked as he held out his hands towards you.

“Oh my god, yes please!” You giggled as he then bent over and picked you up bridal style before he took off as you held onto your purse tightly and squealed in delight as you looked out over the downtown area in awed amazement as he carried you so that one of his arms pinned the hem of your skirt to the back of your legs so that you weren’t exposed to the people below.

“This is so much fun!” You giggled in delight before he found the restaurant and gently landed and put you back down before he led you into the restaurant and sat down at the bar in front of the sushi chef who greeted him in Japanese and welcomed him back before Jinx introduced you to the sushi chef, Yato.

“Hi,” you waived before the chef suggested the private menu to Jinx in Japanese.

“Yato wishes to make us his special menu, does that sound good to you?” Jinx asked.

“Yes, please.” You nodded excitedly before Jinx continued to converse with Yato who smiled and nodded and got to work as Jinx gathered the menus and handed them back before a sake was brought out and served. It was by far, the best sake you had ever had the pleasure of drinking before you were served tempura, sushi and sashimi that you knew cost a small fortune but you didn’t care. You were on a date with a prince who could afford to buy out your stock of beads as fast as you made them. He could afford to treat you like a princess for a night at least.

Jinx was even impressed at your sushi etiquette and your appetite since you were able to keep up with him for the most part and the sushi was downright divine and Jinx was practically a perfect gentleman and his conversation was very amusing and delightful, he was funny and just a little mischievous and outgoing and gregarious and your mouth almost hurt from smiling so much while your sides almost hurt from laughing so much. He found your piercings to be very cool and was envious that humans seemed to be able to get all kinds of things pierced and tattooed and lamented that Jika would die if they even attempted such things and the fact that they could adorn their bodies in a myriad of ways and have things like clothing styles and preferences was very amusing to him and how he appreciated your affinity for just black and white. How you could still create such amazing variations with just the two colors astounded him and how he had fallen in love with the way you could still do so much- with things that appeared to be so simple and how you had perfected your techniques and usually you would been a little wary of so many compliments but you could tell he was actually completely sincere which had you swooning.

When you got to the point of being absolutely full did the food finally let up. But the chef made you a to go order to take home with you which you nearly started crying because you were so going to live on that for however long it would take to eat it all as Jinx got a to go bag as well and you were delighted when he took your bag and carried that for you as well and even though he only carried you with three arms this time, it was still more than enough for him to carry you back to your work before he kissed your cheek sweetly and left again, making sure you got into your car safely and had your to go order. You felt like you floated in your car all the way home and when you came into work the next morning, only a few moments after opening up, a giant flower bouquet was delivered from the flower shop along with practically a case of a few of every kind of chocolate from the chocolate shop a few stores down accompanied it. It was the largest bouquet of flowers you had ever gotten, ever. Like almost ridiculously large and you couldn’t help but giggle and laugh and when you found the card, your heart jumped and fluttered in your chest when you saw it was from Jinx.

It was a request to go out to dinner again along with his phone number to text him your answer and that if you were not interested in another date, to simply enjoy the flowers and the chocolate along with compliments on how refreshing and wonderful your company had been. It was literally the most perfect example of gentleman-like behavior and there was no way on earth you could refuse his offer of a second date, you wanted, no needed another date with Mr. Perfect Gentleman. It took less than a minute to get that phone number into your contacts and for you to text him your response and it took exactly 3 seconds for him to text you back. You got absolutely nothing done the rest of the day but texting Jinx, eating the case of chocolates until you playfully flirted with a diabetic coma and a stomach ache, drinking your coffee and adoring your flowers, appreciating the vast array of flowers he had chosen, appreciating their blooms and scents and artful way they were arranged. Jinx then texted you the circumstances around him wanting to date you along with the warning that it could be dangerous and that you would have to keep your relationship with him off of social media which was perfectly fine with you and you were completely undeterred by it. If anything the hint of danger was a thrill. Like one of those romance novels and all that fanfiction you inhaled on a regular basis. You closed up the shop and nearly dropped your flowers when you saw Jinx waiting for you by your car as a surprise.

“Hey! I loved the flowers and the all the chocolate!” You beamed happily as you practically launched yourself into his arms, setting the flowers on top of your car to kiss him eagerly and moaned and keened when he kissed you back hungrily and pinned you to the side of your car as all four of his arms and hands touched and caressed your body in a way that ignited a fire within you as you clung to him as you wrapped yourself around him and you pulled away just long enough to catch your breath because his kiss stole your breath away.

“Come with me,” he invited although it sounded like an order but you found yourself eager to obey whatever he would command you.

“Ok.” You agreed before he had you put the flowers and the left over chocolate into your car before he picked you up and had you wrap yourself around him and kissing him again and you were too lost in the kiss to notice you were now flying through the air and in a flash you were in a bright blue beam of light and then you were transported onto the Jika home ship as he flew you through the halls and to his room before he set you down onto your own feet again before he showed you the sculpture he was making out of all your beads and to your astonishment. It was...you. Almost a life size version of yourself with two large gemstones, which looked like glowing sapphires in place of your eyes, but otherwise it was of you. Almost a perfect replica. It was the most amazing thing you had ever seen.

“It’s me.” You realized as you reached out and touched the statue on the cheek noting how he had melted clear class over the surface of the beads so that it was smooth to the touch. The artistry needed to achieve this was greater than any you felt you could ever possess. You...didn’t feel worthy.

“Does it please you?” He asked as he watched you carefully.

“H-how did you do this? How did you make this out of my stupid beads?” You asked as tears rolled down your cheeks as you were in awe of it’s beauty.

“Your beads are not stupid, your beads are magnificent, each one is a work of art, greater than this, because you are magnificent and you take sticks of glass and transform them into little masterpieces all on your own. It seems like such a waste to use them on such a project when each and every single one should be showcased but you inspired me and I wanted to create something for you that would be magnificent enough to be worthy of you and your own magnificence. So I selfishly used your own creation to bring you glory. Would it be better if I tried to make my own beads for the sculpture?” He asked worriedly at the sight of your tears.

“No, it’s just...I will happily make you any and all beads you would ever want, I had no idea you were taking my own work and making it into so much more. Yes, this is magnificent and I am both honored and humbled by the fact that you would put so much effort into such a thing. Why? Why did you make this for me?” You asked as you walked around it, touching the sculpture in reverence and noticed how he had every single detail about you down perfectly. He had every kink in your wavy hair perfectly accurate, he had your height perfect, he had every curve of your body perfect too and he had built you in the black dress you had worn on your date while your face and hair was that of the first time he had met you as you realized he must have made your face first since that was the most done while your limbs were still under construction as you noticed he had his own small mountain of supplies too.

“When Jika meet our Isthantaris, there is a drive in us to make a gift perfect for her, to win her favor. It isn’t done yet, but hopefully when it is finished, you will still like it.” He explained.

“Isthantari? Like a soul mate?” You asked curiously.

“Kind of. In Jika culture, in a royal batch, there is only one future queen and dozens of potential consorts. I did not particularly like the queen from my batch, she was weak and she had the worst personality, she had no creativity and no imagination yet was severe against anyone who did. And even the current queen, who killed the last one, is vicious, remorseless, but stronger than any queen I’ve ever met. She demands respect and loyalty but besides the threat of death, does nothing to earn either despite her high intelligence. The job the former queen gave me pays very well because as a consolation prize for not being a consort which, in of itself is a joke, because while you get to mate with the queen and father offspring, your mind atrophies and you become little more than a drone with genitalia and completely at her mercy, which she has very little of to begin with, if any at all while all of yourself and all of your energies get used up in providing her and caring for her because she is the center of the consorts’ world.” Jinx explained. “But a couple of years ago, my brother grew close to a doctor he was working closely with and he promptly fell in love with her kind heart and he became completely devoted to her and she in turn is just as devoted to him which is a relationship dynamic no Jika could ever hope to dream of. Since then, others from my batch have found others, mostly human women who actually love my brothers for themselves and in turn my brothers refer to them as their very own Isthantaris that they get to keep to themselves and never share with another Jika while the Isthantari’s continue to have their own fulfilling lives and careers. Isthantari is usually reserved for the queen Jika. The English translation of the word means ‘one I am devoted to for life’ and devoted carries with it that you are devoted to them in all and every sense imaginable and that everything you are is devoted to them and the care of them but while we may be totally devoted to the Jika queen, they are never devoted to us. So when I met you, you were a being worthy of such devotion. You’re beautiful, you’re talented and creative even inside the parameters you give yourself. You’re gentle, kind and funny and sweet and your scent is outstanding. Like it’s so much better than any queen I’ve ever encountered and I admit I was extremely pleased to learn that you were single when I searched for you on social media and so I endeavored to try to make a good impression with you and tried to get to know you and make this for you so that I could win your favor and that you would like me.” Jinx admitted.

“Like you? I practically am in love with you at this point.” You confessed and faster than you were ready for he had picked you up again and was kissing you deeply as you wrapped yourself around him as you felt yourself surrender to him.

“Please mate with me,” he pleaded desperately as he tried to slow things down to give you a chance to say no, he just...wasn’t very good at that.

“Hell yeah,” you readily agreed as he used all four hands to undress you before he flew you over to a nest like bed that suddenly appeared out of the floor before he practically pinned you to the bed as his cock appeared from the seam at his base and your eyes widened in excitement and happiness. Oh yeah, this was going to work and you were going to have so much fun.

“Make me your Isthantari.” You purred as his duct seem to pop right out of his collar bone and a mango puree looking substance came out of it.

“What’s that?” You asked as you pointed to it.

“Royal jelly, we make it for the queen to eat while she mates with us,” he explained. “The other Isthantaris say it’s delicious and it’s unique among individuals.” He added hopefully and that was all the invitation you needed to lick it up and your eyes rolled back into your head from pleasure as you moaned loudly. You were not prepared for how god damn fucking good this was. Those chocolate berry baskets at the chocolate shop? Yeah, fuck those, this, oh thiiiiis, was like those baskets, super ripe berries, heavy on the blackberry flavor but with...like wine, like the berries themselves had been also drenched in wine with that divine premium chocolate, like super sweet black berry wine. Lord. Have. Mercy! You were in trouble. Fuck human men at this point, you were jumping hard over the species divide and those other girls were onto something big. Oh god then he entered and you moaned again as you sucked his royal jelly down, wrapping your mouth around the duct and sucking hard because your tongue and your brain was flooded with happiness and your tummy was overjoyed because while too many sweets could give anyone a tummy ache, oh no, your tummy was so happy to receive this and craved more as his touch left you feeling feverish.

His large manhood stretched you full while not being so large so as to be uncomfortable at all, there was a slick substance on the surface that left your womanhood feeling tingly and electric in the best way possible while heightening your own arousal and that bulbous head was rubbing against your G-spot perfectly and your own womanhood was gushing. It was like he was torturing you with sweet pleasure and you couldn’t get enough. You were pretty sure you would die if he stopped now. He rutted into you roughly and fuck all if you didn’t want it as you grinded him and your pelvis met his thrust for thrust and soon you were flirting hard with that knot at the base and you wanted that, all of it, inside you ASAP.

“Please, please, more, I need more, I’m so close, oh my god,” you managed to plead in between sucking down that heavenly and downright addictive royal jelly and panting through your nose as bliss and ecstasy overloaded all your senses. You loved the feel of his weight moving above you and pinning you to the divinely soft bed as one set of hands was scratching deliciously down your back to your waist and then your pelvis, hips and ass as the other set of hands had alternated between tweaking your nipples and squeezing your breasts while stroking down your front to tap your clit or simply try to spread your legs wider so he could get himself into you.

“From now on, you will be my Isthantari, you will never mate with another Jika and you will be mine. All mine.” He growled as he did his best to pop that knot into you and when he managed to finally grab you by the waist and hips and forced you down while thrusting up so hard, your whole body shook in recoil that threatened to break the suction your mouth had on his duct but it was exactly what was needed to finally pop that knot inside, making you cry out in a keening whine through your nose as your mouth was suddenly stuffed as full of royal jelly as your pussy was with his cock and besides the sensation of being stretched and stuffed, which was a tiny twinge of discomfort with the biggest dose of pleasure ever as his arms then wrapped tightly around your body, holding you in place as he emptied himself into you. Himself grunting and growling and snarling from the exertion which was a symphony of music to your ears as you gulped down all the royal jelly until his duct didn’t give anymore and you smiled smugly yourself when you played with the duct with the tip of your tongue which earned a giggle and a shuddering moan from him.

“Careful Love,” he playfully warned you which earned a giggle from you too. “How do you feel? Do you feel ok?” He asked attentively as you felt his antennae tap around your head softly as his hold on you loosened a little while his hands stroked your body lovingly.

“I feel better than I’ve ever felt before. That was the best sex I’ve ever had in my life too. Yeah, I feel better than ok.” You giggled as you nuzzled into his chest as he pet and ran his fingers through your hair affectionately. If it wouldn’t actually put you or him in danger you might as well put ‘Isthantari Panda’ on your business cards.

When his cock finally started to shrink and the knot receded, did it finally pop out place and a cascade of cum came flowing out of you, you watched it in surprised awe. All that should be hurting, having that much in your womb should have killed you with pain, but you felt nothing of the sort, simply sad that he wasn’t in you.

“No wait, come back, I want more.” You playfully teased as you gestured to his cock because you wanted to go for round two already even though you hadn’t completely come down from your first peak entirely yet.

“Well all you had to do was say so my Isthantari.” Jinx purred before he moved down to kiss you and get you heated up in no time, his fingers dipping side your pussy which threatened you with over-stimulation but fuck all if you didn’t want so much you’d beg for mercy. But you had a very good feeling he would give you anything and everything you could ever ask for, including mercy. After round three did you finally pass out in bliss, staying the night with him in his nest, curled up in his embrace and completely entangled in him as he wrapped you both in a thick blanket which kept you perfectly warm while still also breathing so that your body never felt over heated or suffocated or sweaty.

In the morning, he dressed you in dress made out of his silk which he had died black just for you with a white robe like coat/sweater and even a bra and panties made out of black lace spun from his silk too and despite having no underwire, cradled your breasts perfectly and was the best, most comfortable and breathable lingerie you had ever come possess as he Jinx explained that Isthantaris spent their lives surrounded by their consorts silk and insisted you should do the same and you couldn’t argue with that because was it not only soft but highly fashionable and fit your style perfectly while also fitting your body perfectly because it was literally made for you. He flew you back into work, you got your flowers and chocolate out of your car as he then treated you to breakfast from the cafe near by and he was absolutely doting.

It was a matter of weeks before he moved into your apartment with you, his weapons simply taking up a closet you weren’t using as he continued to spin you custom clothes from his silk, keeping to your either black or white clothing tastes, although that wasn’t to say he also found a way to detail the items with a touch of tasteful splash of golden thread in designs that had you be the envy of everyone who saw you, especially Samantha who was suddenly supremely jealous that not only had your beads become a sudden hit, the sales of them surpassing even her own sales but that they continued to sell out just as fast as you could make them as Jinx continued to buy them and make the sculpture at your apartment, using techniques that Jika tended to use in battle of super heating their weapons so that the ammunition was usually molten materials that melted or disintegrated their enemies and their ships and was one of the many factors in Jika being the most feared and respected armed forces. But instead of destruction, he was using these weapons and techniques for creative purposes and you couldn’t be happier or prouder of the results, just like you couldn’t be happier or prouder of him or your relationship with him and he even used his pay to get you a nicer apartment and he even got you a ‘wedding’ ring, black titanium and a huge white diamond with black and white accent diamonds and because of his interest in your beads meant that the other customers suddenly became interested in your beads too which meant that the price of them could go up since they had become popular and sought after. And now things couldn’t be more perfect, you were gaining recognition and popularity for your talent and passions, you still had a great job and promising career, you had a ‘fiance’ who loved and adored you and treated like a princess and indulged you every chance he got and even the other Isthantari’s were super nice and welcoming and you felt like you were in a secret yet inclusive and welcoming club. Everything was perfect.

#exophilia #alien boyfriend #monster boyfriend #monster lemon #alien lemon #Isthantari #Isthantari the series #aaah this was so much fun I really hope you like it #yes it got ooc and mary sue and I don't give a damn #I love it the way it is

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dig1710fall · 6 years

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Final Game Design Document

In teams of 2-5, create a video game concept and a Game Design Document to describe the following aspects of your game.

Due December 11th as a DOCX & PDF file in the dropbox.

The document should include a cover page with the title, logo, & your names, plus a reference page with links to your sources.

30% of your grade (300 points)

Introduction (25 points)

Style Guide (25 points)

Mechanics (50 points)

Story (25 points)

UI/UX documentation (25 points)

Systems Designs (25 points)

Technical Documentation (20 points)

Monetization Strategy (30 points)

Costing per features (25 points)

Production Guide (20 points)

Marketing Overview (30 points)

The sections below describe what is required, and will be updated.

1.Introduction

One paragraph describing the video game, think of it as a revised pitch.

This should be written last, after you’ve figured out everything else and have a good sense of what’s important to your game concept.

2. Style Guide

Create a Style Guide for your game design documentation. This plan should concentrate on visuals but also touch on other elements of Aesthetics. The primary focus should be: “What do we want our game to feel like?” Include rules for asset creation, common colors, etc. Include references from other games and if possible try to create some original art (like a main character turnaround, icon mockups, or branding). Remember visual references/examples are key here but must be supported by written justifications of your thought process (a bunch of images is not enough). .

What’s the seed?

Include 1-2 pages of concept art.

Aesthetics - What are you trying to say? All aspects of game aesthetics should drive toward what you want people to feel when playing your game. Extra Credits on Aesthetics vs Graphics

What player types will like your games?

Gamasutra Color in Games

3. Game Mechanics

Rules, player goals (realtime, each level, whole game). Actions the player can take in the world.

Camera perspective, gameplay type.

Modes (stealth, vehicle, swim, etc)

Dynamics: the emergent behaviors that arise from gameplay when Mechanics are put into use. They describe the runtime behavior of the mechanics acting on the player inputs and each others’ outputs over time.

Dynamics work to create aesthetic experiences. For example, challenge is created by elements like time pressure and opponent play.

How to we encourage emergent gameplay?

Add more basic actions

When basic actions combine there are opportunities for emergence. Be willing to discover emergent actions as you discover more about your game mechanics.

Set goals that can be achieved more than one way

Allow players to discover their way of doing things.

Have secondary behaviors in your game (side effects) that occur because of basic actions and change the constraints on a player.

4. Story

Story overview - 1 to 5 paragraphs

Character backgrounds & motivations (eg: hero, villain, party members)World overview (eg: magical crystals are power source, demons roam the land)Player choices

Story curve & Interest curves.

Typical Interest Curves for successful games rely on a pattern made up of a three tier system of interest::

Overall Interest curve -Something that grabs your interest early, followed by a series of interest peaking events and luls, ending with a major climax

Each level’s Interest Curve - New Aesthetics and/or challenges engage the player providing rising interest until the end of the level which is often finished with a final challenge like a boss battle.

Each challenge - Every challenge has a micro interest curve, high interest introduction, rising steps in the challenge, and a culminating pay off.

5. UI/UX documentation

What information we give to the player (health, score, stealth meter, etc).

Game mockup in Photoshop

UI Elements - describe which elements are on-screen all the time, part of the time, or only occasionally.

Control scheme - map out the control scheme for your game, include all systems you plan to ship to.

Localization - which parts of your game require translation? Are there symbols you will use in your game, list them (eg: warning signs, religious symbols,

6. Systems Designs

What will need to be custom coded for your game?

Describe in-detail:

combat systems (action or turn-based)

simulations

weather

map unlocking

crowd AI &/or enemy AI

player content creation

7. Technical Documentation

Platform, engine requirements, graphics technology, major technical hurdles.

Figure out which game engine is the best fit for your game design, consider the release platforms, and similar existing games. List your top two choices for game engines (only 1 can be proprietary). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines

Write about any Research & Development that would need to be done, where “out of the box” solutions aren’t available and would need to be custom coded (eg: hire a multiplayer programmer to make a Battle Royale type game).

Also look at the graphics requirements, what kinds of platforms are going to be able to run your game? List the type of graphics technologies you would need (eg: pixel art, high res textures, advanced lighting).

https://www.gamesparks.com/blog/game-engine-analysis-and-comparison/

https://www.websitetooltester.com/en/blog/best-game-engine/

8. Monetization Strategy

How will we make money off this game? Put it in a box & sell it, microtransactions, in-game ads, subscription, loot boxes, donations?

How does your monetization strategy fit your target market? Research similar titles & provide reasoning.

https://theappsolutions.com/blog/marketing/monetize-app/

9. Costing per feature

How much each the major features of your game will cost; for instance, if you’re going to use the Unreal Engine, how much does it cost to license?

Feature Costing template spreadsheet (use the Key Hires tab)

Staff: Will our game require a large number of artists, designers, or programmers? How many of each do we need to hire?

Do we need to purchase the rights to use real-world cars/guns/planes in our game?

Are we using specialized graphics technology like motion capture, photogrammetry, virtual reality? How much does it cost the company to setup?

Is there an online multiplayer component? How much do we spend to rent servers for players to game on?

After release do we keep part of the team around for bug-fixing or DLC?

10. Production Guide

Think of the iteration cycles, first we need a playable prototype.

1. Prototype - How many team members will it take to make the smallest possible version that we can playtest?

2. Demo - The second iteration needs to expand the game and add some graphics, think of this stage as Early Access games that only have parts complete, but could be sold to consumers if you needed the cash.

3. Game Development - Third iteration should include refining graphics & gameplay, and expanding the number of playable levels to make the game longer. This part is what the big studios do well, like EA, Activision-Blizzard, and Ubisoft. Lots of talented people all working on making the game bigger, prettier, and more appealing.

Once you know how many team members you’ll need at each dev stage, estimate the amount of time each stage will take & multiply that by the salaries of the required staff.

Also add the costs of technology, engines, licenses, etc.

Give me an estimate of how much each iteration will cost.

11. Marketing Overview

Who will be buying my game? What is the target audience?

Create a logo for your game to use on the cover page of your GDD.

What kinds of players does my game appeal to?

What merchandise can I sell to fans?

Where should I advertise to reach the maximum number of eyeballs for the minimum cost?

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novadreii · 7 years

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The Ancient Magus' Bride: A Review

Big spoilers ahead.

I’m not often compelled to write full-length reviews on series that I watch, but this one elicited an interesting response from me. I don’t think I’ve ever negatively changed my mind about an anime halfway through. If I like something from the start, I usually like it all the way through to the end. If I loathe something from the start, I try to determine if there’s room for development/improvement before continuing. And I’ve seen a good amount of shows turn it around.

But TAMG was really a strange experience for me. Everything pointed towards this being a quality show. All the signs were there. And I will commend it on what it did right. This show had gorgeous animation, lovely voice acting, and a breathtaking original soundtrack. As I said, all the signs pointed to this being a winner, maybe the best anime of the last 5 years or so.

But sadly, TAMG is, at its core, a reductive escapist fantasy for young girls.

I know, that is a bold statement. But I have evidence to support my claim! Promise.

We start off the show with Chise being bought by the titular Ancient Mage at a slave auction. It’s okay, though, because she willingly sold herself into slavery. Wait, you can do that? I guess. Anyway. This show’s big selling point is Chise’s growth from a sad girl with nothing to live for to...well, someone who is not that way. And it’s a relatable backstory for a main character. So far, so good.

But the rest of plot fails to sufficiently develop the rest of the world, lore, and characters in a way that makes Chise’s development interesting enough. Side characters are given at most one (1) episode of backstory before being utterly forgotten for the entire rest of the series. Plot points that you think will eventually loop back for an interesting game of Raise the Stakes just kind of wander out to sea and never come back (aka Chise’s family...um...her dad and brother are still out there!). The lore of the fairies and magic is just kind of there and never properly explored or utilized. Chise is supposedly there to learn magic from Elias as her teacher, yet we don’t really ever see him instructing her in the theory of it, or her magical skills progressing. All we’re really told is that Chise is both incredibly strong and weak as shit as the same time. Makes sense.

Elias’ origin is completely ignored, even that could have been an amazing addition to the story as it’s so shrouded in mystery and intrigue and often hinted at by several characters. So, at about the rough halfway point of the series, I had all these loose ends and unexplored areas of the story in my head that I was really excited about, but they never materialized in the second half. The main “villain” in the show was kind of sad and easily defeated.

The second cour of the show was focused almost exclusively on what is, in my opinion, the most mundane, cloying, and dull part of the story: the relationship between Elias and Chise. Yep, sorry friends. I don’t find these two even remotely well suited to each other in any capacity, least of all romantic. Try picturing them together when Elias is in human form; that creeps me out more than his usual form. From the very beginning, I have disliked Elias. I find him boring. Oh boohoo, you’ve been wandering around Earth for hundreds of years and still haven’t figured out what “sad” “happy” “jealous” and “angry” feel like? Are you stupid as well as inexperienced, or just willfully ignorant? Because he managed to study and become proficient in the art of magecraft, but never could figure out why watching Titanic made his eyes leak? How many times do we have to watch Elias clutch his heart and say, “Is this what _______ feels like?” Just shut up. I find it hard to believe that in between all the magic and failed cooking lessons with Lindel, they never talked about how they felt in the hundreds of years that Lindel was taking care of him? *Dr. Phil voice* Really now?

Elias’ cluelessness about basic human emotions is the basis for about 99% of the personal conflicts/drama in the story, and it gets tiresome and feels cheap. Why does anime love to center on characters who don’t know how to feel? Does it give them more agency to act like a dick? Do young girls swoon after men who don’t really care about anything? Elias is frustrating, because we never get to see him break through that monotonous “teach me how to feel” crap, except for when he’s having a rage tantrum. But we never see him buckle down and really unload on how he’s feeling in an open and communicative way. He’s very selective with what he shares, and when he does it’s because Chise is prodding him to do it.

What I found essentially disappointing about this story is how everything in it was just there to further the drama between Chise and Elias without actually furthering the story itself. Everything Elias does to Chise, from how he constantly touches/grabs/picks her up without her permission, how he looms over her menacingly in his monster form when he’s jealous, how he calls her diminutive pet names, irritates me. Chise is a child who has nothing; of course she is going to gravitate to someone who offers her the only thing she wanted: a place to call home. What’s his excuse? He is the one in the position of power, and does he ever use it to his advantage.

How many times do we witness Elias withholding information from Chise, policing her, acting shady, throwing a giant temper tantrum, and being generally creepy and possessive? The anime is masterful in that it succeeds in writing it all off as romantic and cute, because “Elias doesn’t know what emotions he’s feeling! It’s cause he must love her LOL” Again, this was a lame excuse so that Elias could have license to be an asshole. All they needed was a cool/handsome/monstrous character design and a smooth af voice actor to make it all okay. But it isn’t. Chise did not, and still doesn’t have the agency to choose differently.

And I almost fell for it too; that’s how good it is. Because it ropes you in with great production value. I admit that instinctively I am just a dumb ape who will go gaga over anything shiny and pretty. And this anime certainly is those things, but it doesn’t capitalize on the amazing potential it set up from its very beginning, choosing instead to focus on relationship drama between two people who really should not be involved romantically at all.

I ask this: would it have detracted from the story at all for them to have had an adoptive parent and child relationship, to which both characters’ age, experience, and power dynamic was a lot better suited? Would it have been less meaningful? Why did they have to be set up as husband and wife from the get go? What was the point, other than to provide a weak and frankly disturbing plot point? If parent/child is a no-go, how about we make the female main character older than 20 years old for once? Even that would have been preferable.

I did read the manga, and the author tries to dance around the issue by once again using Elias’ inexplicable lack of emotional intelligence as an excuse. He doesn’t know what a bride is, he doesn’t understand the concept of marriage, he means it innocently etc. Okay, BUT, Chise, the rest of the characters, the author of the manga himself, the readers, and literally everyone else understands exactly what marriage is and what it implies. That is the connection the author intends us to make with all the symbolism and mushy dialogue between the two of them (as well as other characters’ observations about them both). It doesn’t matter how ambiguous the author is being about something; if it’s there, it’s there. Let’s call the spade a spade.

So the story revolves primarily around the romantic development between an indisputably adult male who also holds all the resources/power, and an emotionally broken child who can’t refuse. TAMG did not develop the rest of its story enough to distract me from this point, and I was just never able to look past it. It was glaring at me with each episode I watched.

Sure, Chise gets mad sometimes, and Elias eventually comes around from pouting when he realizes he could lose her. He eventually offers a monotone apology and all is right as rain. Chise eventually develops into the Needlessly Self-Sacrificing Main Character that anime relies on just a touch too heavily. It feels disingenuous and not at all relatable. It’s tiresome.

Towards the end, Chise gets some resolution from an old painful memory during an arc where she finally breaks free of Elias so she can act of her own accord for once. Which I really liked. But then she just ran home, forgave Elias a little too easily for all his bullshit, and ended up “marrying” him (again, everything is shrouded in an infuriating layer of ambiguity because nobody wants to call it what it is, but alllllll the right symbolism is there, we can figure it out ffs). That came completely out of left field for me and solidified my hunch that this is meant to be a teen fantasy and little else: leaving everything behind only to be saved, controlled by, and obsessed over by an ominous, rich, handsome, and overbearing man who just won’t keep his hands to himself.

There’s so much more I wanted to know about, and I get that you can’t fit everything into 24 episodes. But people like Silky, Ruth, Renfred, and Alice were utterly forgotten about even though they had solid, developed stories in the beginning of the anime. It’s like they hooked me in and left me hanging; the whole time I was waiting for MORE from those characters. For Silky to say even one word or to have more of a relationship with Chise other than hugging her dramatically from time to time, for Chise and Ruth to have another mage/familiar moment (or even arc). Things like that would have added so much more depth and significance to the story than even one more minute of Elias and Chise awkwardly and needlessly cuddling (or sleeping in bed together....honestly, wtf).

So in conclusion (am I writing a thesis or something?), The Ancient Magus’ Bride felt something like a betrayal. It drew me in with the promise of a gorgeous and heartfelt story, only to focus on what I thought was an inappropriate and forced relationship. I’m sure 16-year-old me would have eaten all of this up like a six-course meal. It’s a Japanese twist on Twilight (therefore also reminiscent of the even worse Fifty Shades franchise). As I get older and automatically tend think a lot more critically about why I like or dislike things, something like this isn’t going to cut it for me. It pulled at the heartstrings with emotive music and pretty visuals, but left me wanting so much more. I don’t want the media I consume to make me feel like I should like it; I just want to.

To any teen girls who adore this anime, I’m not telling you what to personally like/dislike. But I do hope you’ll think about why you do, and contemplate the fact that just because something is wrapped up in pretty packaging, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s harmless. Love doesn’t have to mean being dominated, stalked, policed, or controlled. And you don’t have to be married before you’re 20 or it’s game over. Healthy relationships are balanced, with an equal flow of power, love, and trust between parties involved. They can happen at 17, 45, or never, and that’s all okay. My fear is that this anime will reinforce the exact opposite message with its audience, in a manner that is honestly kind of insidious. It was so well-made, the tone and ambiance they created is so lovely that the harmful messages will just fly over your head; like they almost did to me.

Or...just enjoy it without a second thought and leave me to my over-analyzing. I do admit I look very closely at things, but I don’t know any other way to be.

TLDR; A lot of style, not a whole lot of substance. 4.5/10

#review #the ancient magus bride #mahoutsukai no yome #beware if you liked the series you may not want to read this lol #diary of nova #i'm not even trying to be a contrarian or anything #this has been my genuine emotional and critical response and honestly i'm a bit sad #i really wanted to love it

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thescannerdarkly · 6 years

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Matthew's on the phone, as he always is. Rosie makes a joke by calling him our Mother of Perpetual help; Manny snorts derisively then, after a pause, mutters a rushed prayer. i've seen him by candlelight slowly fingering his rosary, so his half-hearted atheism always seemed childish to me. we had taken three caps of powdered mushrooms each, pawned off on us by some friend of Rosie's that was always hanging around smoking pills out of tinfoil pipes. she would smoke until she couldn't follow conversation anymore, and you'd see her sunken eyes start to wander about the room, tracing a distant path none of us could see.

eventually she would begin tearing off little bits of tinfoil and folding them into elaborate origami figures of shapes that seemed unfamiliar to us, then trounce off with whoever had the most downers on them by the end of the night. one night- it was cold, freezing, so it must have been around January, before Rosie had her episode- when Manny and i were wired, shaking to the touch, she sold us the caps under the guise of being a homemade mixture of benzos guaranteed to bring peaceful sleep- or at least an end to the endless anxiety, so we could pass into that transcendent Zen of slow brain death that comes after forty hours and too many amphetamines. i remembered watching her flow away like water, led by the hand away by some waifish deadhead that Terry knew who always had good hash, all long hair and skirt and whispering cloth disappearing into the woodwork.

manny and i took a cap each, then split the third; outside it began to rain, and the house began its familiar cacophony of creaking wood and percussive window panes. Terry came downstairs and shuffled about in his institutional flip-flops and a box of matches, lighting the many candles that he had stored in various makeshift containers around the house.

within a half hour it hit us, that shit Southern cow-pasture mushroom nausea, and we were both overtaken with horrible pains in our stomachs; but of course we hadn't eaten, so we could only retch on bone-dry stomachs as our legs began to feel weak. i thought of crying out to Terry, to warn him to seek help, that i had been poisoned by some malevolent bitch who flowed like water and left with that guy you know who sells hash- but i knew the only response that my exclamation would warrant was an annoyed thumping of Terry's sandalwood cane on the floor above, as i called out that sort of thing while in the depths of chemical fever dreams perhaps twice a week. Manny seemed to be choking, grasping with his hands at his throat, and i wondered if this is how we would be found in the morning- two purple and skinny things, covered in piss and bile, left to die through a learned tolerance for their insanity. i remember thinking that it was at least fortuitous that we hadn't eaten anything in days, so there wouldn't be much in our bowels to release when we died. i found the idea hilarious, and i reached out to Manny with crawling, oddly elongated fingers to tap him and tell him what i had thought of, but he bat my hand away with surprising aggression. Reaching further around his neck, he pulled out a crucifix that had been hidden beneath his clothing for God knows how many months, and, pressing it to his forehead, keeled over and faceplanted into the carpet, ass in the air. by this point i had entirely forgotten about my impending death by bitch poisoning and began to laugh hysterically; outside, the storm grew in intensity, and i felt it was God laughing along with me.

any attempt to stir Manny was met with catatonia, so i left him be in the shag carpeting- if he were dead there was nothing i could do for him now, and if he were alive he would feel suitably embarrassed with time- and stumbled off to my room. in the middle of the night i was roused by a particularly loud shock of thunder, and went down the hall to the bathroom; passing by his room, the door open a crack, i peered in, and saw him fingering a rosary by candlelight. the image held a strange sort of belonging for me, so i lingered; i thought, perhaps if i stay here long enough, in the presence of holiness, i'll begin to see it, too- whatever light that laid behind life that these people believed in so strongly. i wondered how the world might seem if i could see that light shining through everything. but the thought was interrupted by the cry of my bladder, so i turned away. in the unclean yellow light and dull porcelain of the cramped upstairs bathroom, i thought for a moment that i saw a light shining in me- it came out of me, and splashed into the toilet bowl. i wondered if perhaps it ran through all the fluids in my body, in my blood and in my aqueous humor, and maybe that's why i couldn't see that same light- because the receptors in my eyes had already tuned it out, suffused as they were in its omnipresent rays. it was a hopeful idea, and left a warm feeling in my stomach; but i could tell it was only the lingering afterglow of those shit mushrooms, so i returned to bed feeling contentedly unenlightened.

lying underneath thin cotton sheets and listening to the relaxed patter of rain against the windowpane, i decided to forgive that bitch of flowing water. she had done us dirty, i figured, but we had all done somebody dirty at some point, and if we had could never again rely on those people for a quick fix in a hurry, we'd all be done for. there might be a day when there's no more speed left in the county, i reasoned, and when the withdrawals came on and life began to reassume that dull sheen, i'd rather a few caps of poisoned mushrooms than nothing at all. i never told Manny about seeing his momentary lapse of religion, and he never mentioned it to me. it seemed to be one of those things that we all understood were better left under the surface. inside all of us large objects of this type floated in an endless murk, and we had all dedicated our lives to remaining above it, refusing to break the surface tension lest the world erupt and the murk consume everything. like Rosie and her scars, or Terry and the shotgun he kept in his bedframe, it was easier to just accept these things as a byproduct of the events that led us here than to consider them a part of ourselves that could be understood and shared with others.

Matthew's on the phone, as he always is, trying to rustle up a bag of something or other that he could pick up on the way back home. it might be for him, it might be for any number of other foreign agents, but regardless Matthew would end up richer for it. Rosie makes a joke by calling him Our Mother of Perpetual Help, but nobody laughs, afraid it might trigger the memory in Matthew's strung-out brain of some debt of theirs better left forgotten. i'm lucky enough to be here, i think to myself; there's no reason to test the waters and end up on somebody's bad side, be left back at the house with the latest batch of couch-surfers and pushers. i was only there because of Rosie; she had recently refused to continue interacting with any humans outside of her familiar group of us basers, for fear that they would discover that she was not the painfully skinny Hispanic woman of angles and bones that she appeared to be, but instead an elaborate psuedomechanical facsimile, designed by aliens to infiltrate human society and learn of its ways pending a future invasion.

she wasn't an android- she was, to the best of Terry's knowledge, a paranoid schizophrenic- but she was the only one among the core group with a valid driver's license, and thus was a necessary member of the expedition team. however, her refusal to interact with others meant that there was an open spot, and Rosie had vouched for me to come along. of the remaining three of us in the van, Manny was only along at Rosie's bequest for moral support, and due to his unfortunate birth, was underage and had too many face tattoos to make it past the faceless heavyset security guard that would inevitably be at the entrance, full of straight disapproval and backed by the full authority of the FoodMart corporate legal department- which led, through twisted marionette-string like mechanisms and assemblies, inevitably to the State, and its everconsuming gaping maw that swallowed fresh living faces into a deep labyrinth of concrete and metal and sickly yellow paint. Matthew had the relatively-freshly-shaven face and easy smile of a straight, but was barred by Terry from handling any group funds for fear of them vanishing into Matthew's gap-toothed smile and impulsive spending on impromptu business ventures. occasionally he would show up with some useful acquisition- a new microwave, or a couple boxes full of expired cigarettes- but usually that money would disappear, and return in the form of some favor or debt collected by Matthew in the far-flung future. Terry was lame, and fearful of recognition; so the responsibility fell onto me, along with ninety-six dollars of petty cash and a list in Terry's neatly elegant cursive.

#trying something new #prose #short stories #alt lit

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stevesellshomes · 11 months

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Licensed To Sell! Everything We Touch Turns to Sold!

#youtube #Licensed To Sell! Everything We Touch Turns to Sold! EverythingWeTouchTurnstoSold LicensedToSell BlufftonSCRealEstate Video SellBlufftonSou

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officialotakudome · 4 years

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New Post has been published on Otaku Dome | The Latest News In Anime, Manga, Gaming, Tech, and Geek Culture

New Post has been published on https://otakudome.com/jujutsu-kaisen-season-1-part-1-review/

Jujutsu Kaisen Season 1, Part 1 Review

The landscape of Weekly Shounen Jump is changing and one of the series responsible for that change is Jujutsu Kaisen which is showing tremendous growth in popularity in it’s source and anime adaptation. Following the story of Itadori Yuji a once normal teen who becomes a voluntary cursed vessel after saving his friends and a classmate from a monster attack. Itadori learns to harness cursed energy while trying to control the cursed spirit Ryomen Sukuna who’s attached to him with the help of jujutsu sorcerers.

Jujutsu Kaisen is a 2020 shounen anime series, it is produced by MAPAA, and licensed by Crunchyroll. It is currently streaming in English sub and dub on Crunchyroll.

Editor’s Note: Near complete to complete spoilers for the first thirteen episodes of Jujutsu Kaisen may be present within this review.

The current rising Jujutsu Kaisen receives a praised anime adaptation.

Debuting in 2018 Jujutsu Kaisen became a fast growing series for Weekly Shounen Jump. As of February 2021 the series has sold over 30 million copies making it one of the quickest to become a best selling manga in just under two years. Itadori Yuji who’s naturally gifted in athletics is only interested in the occult and paranormal joining his school’s local club. When his friends are attacked by a curse he voluntarily becomes cursed himself to save them and is forced to join a secret organization of jujutsu sorcerers who rid the world of curses.

Experience the Jujutsu Kaisen anime on Crunchyroll.

THE GOOD: The series starts off with a flash forward proposing Itadori’s supposed death. Afterwards it’s his school life that takes the scene we immediately get introduced to the ideas of curses when classmate Megumi Fushiguro sees one out in a field. Itadori is relentlessly being pursued by the school’s coach for track due to his uncanny athleticism, but prefers to be in the Occult Club due to them allowing him to come and go as he pleases. He is challenged by the coach to a competition in which if he loses he’d be forced to join track. Itadori easily wins and Megumi takes note of his natural physical prowess. Itadori’s two friends from the Occult Club find an item covered in talisman and open it to find a demonic looking finger. Soon after curses begin to attack the school after hours and attack Itadori’s friends. Itadori’s grandfather dies and has him swear to live his life helping others. Megumi informs Itadori of the situation at school and teaches him about curses. He forbids Itadori from entering the school as he goes in alone to destroy the curse and attempt to save Itadori’s friends. Megumi struggles against the curse while contemplating if saving Itadori’s friends is a viable option. As they’re about to be devoured Itadori jumps through the window and saves them. Unable to kill the curse himself Itadori swallows the finger and becomes cursed by the spirit of Ryomen Sukuna; a legendary & dangerous curse that Megumi’s organization has been looking to kill. Ryomen easily kills the curse, but loses control of Itadori’s body who regained possession of it. Megumi’s teacher Satoru Gojo suddenly appears and is briefed on the situation. Satoru asks Itadori to allow Ryomen to possess him again and challenges him to a fight which he wins effortlessly before Itadori regains control again.

Going back to the present Satoru explains that Itadori has been marked for death due to him being cursed by Ryomen. Itadori asks to wait until he eats all of Ryomen’s remaining fingers to which Satoru and his colleagues oblige. Itadori soon begins his training to become a jujutsu sorcerer after being transferred to Megumi’s school. Satoru takes Itadori & Megumi to meet Nobara Kugisaki a new jujutsu sorcerer transfer student from Japan’s countryside. Satoru task Nobara & Itadori with exorcising a curse that has a kid hostage. Nobara struggles to exorcise it when she and Itadori split up and the curse threatens the kid’s life. After Itadori interferes by punching through the wall Nobara is able to successfully kill it. Sometime later Satoru task the three student sorcerers with rescuing people from within a prison from a curse including the prisoners themselves. The prisoners end up dead and the curse is determined to be a special grade; an extremely powerful curse that mainly only pro sorcerers like Satoru can defeat. Itadori and Megumi are separated from Nobara and begin to argue about returning a prisoner’s corpse. Suddenly the curse appears stunning them. Realizing they can’t win Itadori has Megumi find Nobara so they can escape offering to be a distract until he can signal that the mission has been successful. Itadori fights the curse and gives control to Ryomen who proposes that he and the special grade curse work together. Upon noticing that the curse can’t understand his offer he kills it and demands that Itadori switches back. Ryomen is pleased to find that Itadori has lost control of his body seemingly for good and heads outside where he’s met with Megumi who’s shocked to see Ryomen. Ryomen tells Megumi that Itadori lost control and he removes his heart effectively killing him. Megumi fights Ryomen in an attempt to revive Itadori’s heart & life but is bested. Showcasing a glimpse of his potential Ryomen becomes invested in Megumi in his domain he & Itadori converse about their situation. Ryomen offers a pact with Itadori in which he’ll allow him use of his power for one minute as long as he has Ryomen in control for said minute. Itadori refuses so Ryomen challenges him to a death battle. Itadori regains control but “dies” as Megumi watches helplessly.

Megumi & Nobara mourn Itadori as they meet the second years Maki, Panda, and Toge. They reveal that an event involving the sister school in Kyoto will be held and has an impact on Megumi & Nobara’s future as sorcerers and they soon begin training. Itadori now living undergoes further training with Satoru in secret as the leaders of the organization are attempting to murder him. A man named Getou converses with sentient curses in a restaurant who are looking to reverse the status of humans and curses. Getou informs them that in order to succeed they’ll have to kill Satoru & convince Ryomen Sukuna to join them. Excited by the possibilities one of the curses Jougo kills everyone in the restaurant and attacks Satoru later that night. During their battle Satoru gets Itadori involved as a teaching moment. Satoru effortlessly defeats Jougo when he removes his blindfold revealing his true power destroying his body & only leaving his head which is still living. Jougo is saved by another curse working with Getou. During training Megumi & Nobara meet the rival second years from Kyoto one of which being Maki’s twin sister Mai & Toudou who challenges them to a spare, before it gets too bad Maki and the others stop it. A young man named Yoshino Junpei witnesses his school bullies being killed by Mahito another curse working with Getou. Junpei asks Mahito if he can train him which the latter obliges. Junpei’s bullying is explored through flashbacks as he bonds with Mahito. Itadori meets Nanami Kento; a former salaryman turned sorcerer who has history with Satoru. Junpei encounters Itadori who’s been asked to monitor him in case he becomes an enemy. They bond over movies Itadori had to watch as part of his training. Junpei’s mother invites Itadori to dinner who accepts. She is killed by a curse attracted to one of Ryomen’s fingers that was placed in Junpei’s home by Mahito. Mahito manipulates Junpei into believing the lead bully cursed him and his mother & Junpei finishes Mahito’s curse energy training.

Kento finds Mahito’s base in the sewers and fights him. Mahito has Kento on the ropes, but in reality Kento was holding back to stay in line with his routine schedule. Kento defeats Mahito releasing a curse technique and crushes him under rubble and realizing how dangerous he is he plans to exorcise him immediately upon their next meeting. Getou & Mahito seal the school with a curse barrier around Junpei’s school putting everyone but a teacher he hated and the lead bully to sleep. Junpei now with curse powers attacks the bully, but is stopped by Itadori against Kento & assistant supervisor Ijichi’s wishes. Itadori fights Junpei trying to get him to see reason and refuting Junpei’s own reasons for revenge. Itadori allows Junpei to attack him which causes him to return to his old self in regret. Mahito who was watching the fight reveals the truth about Junpei’s mother and berates him before turning him into a curse forcing him to fight Itadori again. Itadori refuses to fight back as Junpei struggles to hold on to his sense of self. Junpei soon dies as Mahito laughs enraging Itadori who thinks about the life Junpei could have had if they met earlier. Itadori states that he’s willing to throw away everything he’s become as a person to kill Mahito. Initially, Mahito is winning against him but Itadori’s rage and curse energy increases his already unnatural human strength giving him an edge. Itadori’s attacks also unintentionally effects the very shape of Mahito’s soul surprising him. Itadori’s will to kill Mahito gives him advantages in battle forcing Mahito to take it seriously. Kento arrives as back up for Itadori and the two surprise Mahito who is nearly defeated before trapping Kento in his domain. As Mahito attempts to kill Kento, Itadori breaks in stunning them both. Mahito angers Ryomen for touching his soul and he strikes him with a powerful attack. Realizing he can’t win Mahito runs away as Itadori once again swears to kill him. The teacher Junpei hates acknowledges the torture he suffered and condemns the lead bully stating they both must atone for killing Junpei’s heart. Itadori returns to the school promising to never lose again.

Itadori Yuji possessed by Ryomen Sukuna.

So with all the hype surrounding it I ultimately decided to give Jujutsu Kaisen a try out of curiosity. There’s some things I like about it mainly small in detail. For example, I love the martial arts based combat combined with energy based attacks. While that’s nothing new in shounen anime Jujutsu Kaisen from what I’ve seen kind of makes it a point to have actually martial arts in the combat for the most part. The energy based attacks aren’t even all that flashy compared to a Dragon Ball or Naruto. If you’re familiar with MAPAA they use some 3DCG here blended with the 2D. It’s not as much as in Attack on Titan season four which is good if that’s something that’ll bother you, but I really dig how good MAPPA is at blending the two styles together every time I see them do it in their work it’s nearly flawless. And I’ve mentioned in the past how I actually hated the 2D/3DCG thing. It often comes off as a cheap budget saver tactic. In regards to the characters on the surface they at times feel like one note shounen good guys. But when they really get fleshed out they’re actually a little complex who just so happen to be surrounded mostly by assholes. It’s like a reverse Always Sunny where the leads are assholes surrounded by good people who they poison & corrupt if they get anywhere near their daily lives. Nobara and Satoru are often used for comedic effect in addition to Itadori who’s the good-hearted dimwit; a shounen trope of course. However, in the Mahito arc things take a bit of a turn. It’s interesting seeing someone otherwise portrayed as caring willing to throw away his identity for the sake of revenge and even acknowledging & accepting that fact. Nobara is obsessed with living in Tokyo because she wants to be reunited with someone who was close to her that was shunned from her hometown. Megumi is interested in testing his own limits and Satoru is trying to rid the corruption going on from within the sorcerer school. The side characters have some intrigue to them two with the lore behind Maki & Mai’s beef, the sentient curses trying to increase the status quo for the curses, etc.

MPAA continues it’s superior mesh of 2D & 3DCG animation in Jujutsu Kaisen.

THE BAD: I’m really enjoying Jujutsu Kaisen but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel like the anime isn’t being toned down a bit. Like there are several scenes that make you think it’s partly in the horror genre, but they don’t go all the way with it. It often seems as though the show is being toned down as if they’re trying to aim it at kids for broadcast TV which was fairly popular in the late 90s-mid 2000s. Shows like One Piece, Dragon Ball, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Naruto were effected by this. Maybe I’m just so desensitized to horror that I’m expecting something that’s not there?

Jujutsu Kaisen has unrealized potential as a horror series.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: Jujutsu Kaisen is a great shounen series that showcases it’s potential in near complete display. At the same time there are instances where it feels like the anime it’s unintentionally holding itself back by often backing off a bit on some of the more horrific scenes. The series can always get darker in tone with age like most shounen do, but considering its story it is a bit puzzling as to way it would hold itself back from a darker tone unless it was trying to aim itself to a younger audience. Otaku Dome gives Jujutsu Kaisen an 80 out of 100.

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typetwofun · 4 years

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Adventures in Learning with A Vintage Motorcycle

this post should take ~9 minutes to read

My first ride on a motorcycle on a public road was terrifying. After obtaining my license via a weekend class that took place entirely in a high school parking lot, I had purchased a Honda CB250 Nighthawk on Craigslist. Get License - check, purchase motorcycle - check. Next item on the list is to take this thing on the road...

During my maiden voyage I came face-to-face with the reality that these 2,000 pound death machines some people refer to as cars were trying to kill me at every turn. This was unsettling at first but after a couple miles I gained confidence and felt more comfortable maneuvering around my adversaries who seemed to have every intention of ending my life. I also started to have a lot of fun and understand the allure of the two-wheeler. Although I mainly purchased a motorcycle as an affordable way to get around Atlanta, I was beginning to get the idea that riding a motorcycle was going to now be a part of my life.

“When you let a motorcycle into your life you're changed forever. The letters "MC" are stamped on your driver's license right next to your sex and height as if "motorcycle" was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition.”

"Season of the Bike" by Dave Karlotski

Fast Forward two years and I’m living in Brooklyn. I sold my Knighthawk before I moved and I was kicking around the idea of buying another motorcycle to allow myself some more freedom to explore NYC. In the year of learning how to ride in Atlanta I became attracted to vintage bikes. Every time I saw an old touring bike from the 60’s or 70’s I was envious and I had decided my next bike would be something from that era. After another period of scouring Craigslist and a couple friends persistently coaxing me to get a bike, I became the owner of a burnt orange 1977 BMW R75/7.

I thought I was purchasing a classic motorcycle that would take me to the farthest reaches of the NYC metro area and beyond. I would get plenty of looks speeding around the city on this museum piece as old guys nodded their heads in approval. But what I actually purchased was more like a new puppy that constantly needed my attention. Purchasing this BMW began a two year crash course on the fundamentals of the /7 (pronounced “slash seven”) and the proper care and maintenance required to keep it on the road.

The reason I share this long back story is because I never intended to do significant work on my motorcycle. I might have romanced the thought of changing the oil and doing little projects here or there but I grossly underestimated the time investment becoming a useful mechanic requires. These series of fortunate or unfortunate events, depending on how you look at it, led me to buying a bike that was going to need a lot of work. I started off small projects like replacing the fuel lines and adjusted the timing which gave me the confidence to begin working on larger and larger projects. Eventually I was tearing the bike down to the engine block and more importantly putting it all back together correctly. As someone who lacks significant experience working on engines, this kind of undertaking required a great deal of effort and if I have gained anything while refurbishing this classic motorcycle, it is how to learn a new skill.

When Was The Last Time I Learned A New Skill?

Learning any new skill is especially difficult when you are quite literally getting your hands (and clothes) dirty and spending long hours of your precious weekend in the garage with nothing to show for it except frustration, fatigue, and an unquenchable thirst for cocktails. As time goes on you have fewer and fewer days filled with frustration and eventually have enough knowledge that you might be so bold to consider yourself “useful” which is a rather satisfying feeling.

When I sat back and thought about it I haven’t learned a completely new skill in a meaningful way since I graduated from college. Sure I have learned little things like how to shoot a rifle, brine a turkey and how to catch a wave on a surfboard. But learning how to tear apart an old engine and put it back together correctly is a rather large undertaking and seemed intimidating to an inexperienced mechanic.

Why Learn a New Skill, Anyways?

As I expressed earlier, my intention was never to learn how to rebuild old engines. When you leave the part of life where you quit asking “will this be on the test?” there does not seem to be a great incentive to learn new things other than to make more money or for leisure activities and enjoyment. This may be the prevailing wisdom, but through this process I have discovered there is quite a bit to be gained by doing my own motorcycle maintenance beyond having a bike that works (most of the time).

Confidence to Solve Other Problems - Demystifying the /7 has helped me gain confidence that I can most likely find a solution when confronted with other technical problems. Armed with an internet connection we are able to find an answer to many of the technical challenges life throws at us. Almost everything we encounter in our world is part of a system or is a product of some kind of process that we can figure out. Whether it’s how to play a Beatles song on a guitar or play a Beatles song from your phone in a rental car via the touch screen display while driving, the answer is out there and you can probably find it.

The Pleasure of Figuring Things Out - Nothing quite beats the dopamine hit after having a breakthrough on a problem you have been working on for hours or maybe even weeks. There have been times where I thought to myself that I need to sell my bike and get something more modern and reliable. Every time a problem made itself evident I hunkered down and attempted to fix it and up to this point I have been successful and finding the solution (knock on wood).

Oh, one more thing, the beer at the end of the day always tastes better after finding a solution to the day’s problem.

It’s Good to Be Uncomfortable - there were many times when I got to a point in a repair job and I became nearly paralyzed with doubt. What if I break this piece? What if when I’m done I realize I need to go back in and redo it? What if I do permanent damage to the bike? What if I get in over my head and I need to burden a friend with helping me or pay a mechanic? And on and on it goes.

I learned somewhere along the way that this unsettling feeling is actually where the magic happens. You are experiencing the fear of the unknown and the only way to rectify that is to figure it out. We have many great resources like YouTube, User Manuals and experts that we can reference but sometimes the only way out is through.

The more I experienced this sensation the more familiar I became with it and the less intimidating the fear of the unknown became. Every other time I was at a supposed dead end I found a way out. Especially with a low stakes hobbyist project, it’s not scary, it’s just part of the process.

Use Your Brain In A Different Way - Like most of you, I spend my work days in front of a computer. Computers are incredible and allow us to get many things done in a short amount of time, but after a long day in front of the screen, my brain also feels like a giant pile of mush. When I spend an afternoon in the garage I may be physically tired at the end of the day but my brain does not feel like it needs to shut down and watch TV for an hour or two before bed. The tangibility of your progress and the ability to physically deconstruct and later reconstruct something is quite rewarding.

Enjoying the Fruits of Your Labor - There is an indiescribale feeling when you begin the day with a machine that is not functioning properly or sometimes at all and ending the day riding that very machine with an understanding of what is happening beneath you to make you go. Similar feelings are closing your first sale in a business you started or presenting a dish you learned how to prepare at a dinner party.

How I learned

I was a lousy student when I was in school. For me, the studying techniques of rote memorization or sitting through lectures don’t usually deliver the desired results of truly understanding new information that I have been presented. I have found that I absorb information much better by watching someone demonstrate the proper way to do something and then I attempt to to try to replicate it. This style of learning lends itself much better to the hard sciences than for other disciplines such as history or sociology.

YouTube - It’s hard for me to imagine what it was like to fix motorcycles or an issue with any appliance before YouTube. The catalogue of high definition videos on any given topic never ceases to amaze me and some even provide enormous entertainment value (exhibit A and Exhibit B). Access to this information is perhaps humanity's greatest achievement (sorry wheel and alcohol). I have gained a new appreciation for YouTube’s utility throughout the rebuild of my bike and its applications which are seemingly limitless. There is no greater resource for learning how something should be done than having a more experienced human walk you through the process on demand for almost no cost.

Mentorship - YouTube and internet forums are great for what they are, but when you’re really stuck there is still nothing that replaces a more experienced human to help you get unstuck. I have had the good fortune of making friends with several hobbyist mechanics who are far more experienced and knowledgeable than I am. Sometimes you can get yourself 90% of the way there, but it takes a “teacher” to uncover what you’re missing or to think of it in a different way.

The money you can invest in mentorship or lessons will return enormous dividends whether you’re learning how to fix a machine, downhill ski, or get that handicap into single digits. Especially for those of us who work 40+ hours a week your free time is invaluable and paying for access to an expert is almost always worth it.

Long Form Articles - Before I dive into a new project I like to read an overview that somebody else has written to give myself an idea of what kind of fun surprises I may be in for. Youtube videos are great as are forums surrounding a specific question. But in order to fully wrap my head around certain concepts nothing beats a well written long form article by an expert.

For instance, I wish I read this article before purchasing my Airhead.

Trial and Error - Despite all the tools, resources and knowledge we are surrounding with there are some questions the internet does not have answered in a 12 minute HD video. There are also days when nobody picks up the phone or your buddies aren’t able to help you. And for such occasions you have no choice but to figure it out.

There are several episodes in my mind's eye where I was floundering with bleeding my brakes, reassembling the throttle grip drive, or adjusting the points gap and on try number 50 something clicked and it worked and I now magically know how to do these things for the next time around.

Wrapping Up

Learning how to rebuild this motorcycle has provided me with satisfaction and enjoyment that have added an enormous amount of joy to my life. Undertaking the rebuild was never my primary intention and more or less a fortuitous accident. As Dan Gilbert outlines in his book “Stumbling on Happiness” humans are usually pretty bad at forecasting and we are particularly bad at predicting what will make us happy. I guess it should be to no one's surprise that my love of fixing motorcycles was serendipitous.

If there was one thing I would tell my 20 year old self what I should do differently it would be to try new things and learn more new skills. Preferably something you can really get lost in like cooking or woodworking. It makes your brain work in different ways and think about the world through a new perspective. You will meet interesting people whom you wouldn’t normally cross paths with and you will also have a lot of fun doing it.

I hope you find my experience interesting enough to go out and stumble upon your own project or hobby that will make your Saturday afternoons that much more incredible.

Trust me, it makes the beer taste better at the end of the day.

A view of the piston after the cylinder has been removed

Carburators, valves, valve covers, push rods, and nuts and bolts in a somewhat organized manner after removal

After several hours of soaking, scrubbing, and scraping she looks good as new!

First big ride of the summer after a long winter in the garage.

#motorycle #learning

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lilacmoon83 · 7 years

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Dreaming Out Loud

Chapter 23: Secrets

"Sister Astrid…" Mary said, as she approached her, as she sat at the counter, nursing a cup of coffee.

"Oh...hello Mary Margaret," she greeted in a depressed tone.

"Is something wrong?" Mary asked.

"Not really...just the usual, which is that I'm a complete airhead," she replied.

"No...why would you say that?" Mary asked, as she sat down beside her.

"I am...you won't believe what I did," Astrid fretted.

"I'm sure it's not that bad, whatever it was," Mary soothed.

"When I was ordering the helium for the Miner's Day celebration, I accidentally added an extra zero to the quantity and now we have no money for rent, because I blew it on helium we don't need," she sniffed.

"Oh...well, I'm sure there is a way to come up with the money," Mary said.

"I don't think so. Mother Superior was livid with me. The convent could be shut down, because of my blunder," Astrid replied.

"What about your candles? You sell them every year! They could help you raise the rent money," Mary suggested. Astrid scoffed.

"I sold ten candles last year and you bought half of those," she replied.

"Oh...well, let me help you sell them this year," Mary replied.

"I can't ask you to do that," Astrid said.

"I want to...and I'm sure Stephanie will help too! Please...let us help," Mary pleaded. Astrid looked truly touched.

"Okay...if you really want to," she relented, as she turned away and accidentally spilled her coffee all over Leroy.

"Oh...I'm so sorry! I'm so clumsy!" she cried. Leroy was about to lay into her, until he looked up and got a dreamy look on his face.

"It's...it's no big deal. No worries," he said gruffly, as she started trying to clean him off. Mary smiled, as she watched the exchange and helped mop up the counter with napkins.

"I'm such a mess," Astrid fretted, but Mary squeezed her shoulder.

"He doesn't seem mad at all and we'll get that money, you'll see," Mary said, as she carried one of the boxes back to her table.

"It's a good book, isn't it?" she asked her love, as she saw him reading it. He looked up at her with wide eyes.

"Are you okay, baby?" she asked and he quickly smiled.

"Yeah...I'm fine. You're right, it's a good book," he agreed, as he saw the box.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Oh...well sister Astrid needs to raise the convent's rent money to fix a mistake so I offered to help her sell them," she replied. He smiled and kissed her tenderly.

"That's very sweet of you," he said, as he pulled out his wallet and gave her money for one of the candles.

"Honey, they're only five dollars," she said, as she looked at the twenty, but he only kissed her in response.

"Keep it…" he said, as he got the box for her.

"Ready to go home?" he asked, as he tucked the book in his jacket pocket. She bit her bottom lip and hooked her hand on his elbow.

"More than ready, handsome," she purred, as they left the diner for the loft.

"Here it is! This is his bike!" Henry called, as Emma glanced at the license plate. It was a Maine license plate, but somehow she didn't quite believe he was a resident of this state.

"What do you think is in the box?" Henry asked, as he moved to touch it.

"Kid...we can't just go snooping and touching someone else's property without cause," she chided, as he pulled his hand away.

"Yeah...besides, you could just ask and I might tell you," a voice said, as they turned to find the rider of the motorcycle before them with an amused look.

"Uh...hi. I'm Sheriff Swan...and I guess you've met Henry," she said.

"Have I done something illegal, Sheriff?" he asked coyly. She smiled.

"No...I'm Emma and my kid is just really curious about new people. We don't get a lot of strangers in town," she mentioned.

"Nice to meet you, Emma. I'm August W. Booth," he introduced himself, as they shook hands.

"What's the W stand for?" she asked.

"Wayne," Henry answered and August chuckled.

"Kid has a good memory," he mentioned.

"Oh trust me, he never forgets anything," Emma added.

"So...what's in the box?" Henry asked.

"What do you think is in the box?" August asked. The boy shrugged and he chuckled, as he opened it, revealing a typewriter.

"Whoa...that thing is ancient," Emma commented.

"Hey…" August said in offense and she smirked.

"Sorry...but you do know this is the twenty-first century, right? They have laptops now," she mentioned.

"Oh yeah, because this town looks like it's the modern center of the east coast," he countered.

"Don't get my started on how this place is stuck in 1983," she joked, as there was an awkward pause and Henry looked between them.

"So...how did you find the town?" Henry asked bluntly.

"Kid…" she scolded, as she nudged him, but August only chuckled.

"Yeah, this place is a bit out of the way, so to speak," he mentioned and Emma gave him a scrutinizing gaze. She couldn't get a clear read on this guy, but her superpower was telling her he was definitely hiding something.

"So...you're a writer?" she asked. He nodded.

"Yep...just traveling up the coast looking for a good story," he replied.

"Yeah, well I'm not sure there's anything here like that," she deferred.

"Oh I don't know...good stories are usually in the places you least expect them," he replied.

"Does Granny's have good food?" he asked. She shrugged.

"The onion rings are pretty great," Emma replied. He nodded.

"Great...onion rings. I'll have to try them," he said, as he unhooked the case that held his typewriter.

"It was nice to meet you both. I'm sure I'll be seeing you around," he said, as he walked away toward the diner.

"Who do you think he is?" Henry asked.

"I don't know...but I think I'm more interested in what he might want...or what he knows," Emma replied, as she watched him go.

For a few short hours, David forgot about what he was reading in the old, leather bound book and lost himself in Mary. He wasn't exaggerating to his daughter earlier when he said he had fallen in love with her all over again as Mary, because he had. Never had he thought he could ever love Snow more than he already did. But meeting Mary, who was Snow, but not quite, was a unique experience. And he fell hard all over again. He loved being Mary's Prince Charming as much as he loved being Snow's.

Making love to Mary was like making love to Snow, though Mary had been much more timid and shy at first. Twenty-eight years of being put down required him to convince her how incredibly beautiful he thought she was and little by little, Mary had started to come out of her shell.

That was evident when she came out of the bathroom in a sheer piece of lingerie that he was pretty sure she bought just for him. Dressing in lingerie was a very Snow thing for her to do. It was something Snow had done on numerous occasions for him back in their land. The clothing and styles may have been different here, but no less sexy. The shy look on her face the self conscious way she had looked down as he stared at her in awe was all Mary. But as he took her in his arms and looked at her with love, her insecurities melted away, as he kissed her and clearly conveyed how aroused he was by her. Then a side of her he had only seen in Snow came out. She couldn't get his clothes off him fast enough and he became lost in a haze of pleasure, created by her. Being pinned beneath her and the vision of her riding him was something that would be etched in his memory forever. The joy and pleasure of undressing her completely became his as he returned the favor by taking her hard, as she begged him to.

He should have been sleeping as deeply as she was now after the several bouts of lovemaking they had engaged in. But the contents of the book kept him awake and he finished the entire thing, knowing by the end for sure that it was no work of fiction. He gazed at his beautiful wife, as she lay asleep on her stomach, still bare from sex earlier and then back at the book. He was still having trouble wrapping his mind around it all, but he knew his wife had no idea. No idea that, biologically, she was the daughter of Persephone, Queen of the Underworld. And now it didn't take much to realize that Stephanie wasn't Stephanie at all. He didn't know how he had missed it before, for his wife resembled "Stephanie" greatly. He needed to talk to Stephanie again, but first thing, he was going to go to Gold first. He knew that he must know and now Deimos' obsession with his wife was a bit clearer, yet no less unsettling. Persephone had given Snow up to protect her from Hades himself and to think that the Lord of the Underworld might be after his beloved was more than a little frightening. He also had to tell Emma, as well. Despite his restlessness, he managed to settle down so as not to wake Mary.

His eyes became heavy, as he put his arms around her and finally fell asleep, as if he could hear Snow calling for him from the dreamscape.

The Dreamscape

"Charming!" Snow called, as he finally appeared and she rushed to him.

"I'm sorry, my darling. I'm not sure why it took me so long to come to you tonight," he apologized.

"You're here…that's what matters," she replied, as she crushed her lips against his and he pulled her flush against him, kissing her back desperately.

"Uh hello…your child is still in the room," Emma complained, pulling them apart, as they shared an amused smile, before they hugged her between them. And Emma found solace, for no matter what was going on in her life while she was awake, somehow, they could always make everything okay, even when it wasn't.

"Are you okay, Princess?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she insisted and then watched her parents look at each other and have an entire conversation with their eyes. She rolled hers. Seriously, it was almost as bad as their eye sex. Almost.

"Sweetheart...you know we want you to tell us when something is bothering you," Snow implored.

"I...I just feel like I'm letting Henry down," she confessed.

"Oh honey...I'm sure that's not true," Snow reasoned.

"He just wants the curse broken so badly and I do too. It just seems like I'm not making any progress. I mean...I'm supposed to be the Savior. I feel like I'm failing everyone," she confessed.

"Oh sweetheart...no," Snow said.

"You're not failing anyone, Princess. If anything...we've failed you," David said sadly.

"What? Daddy...no," she protested.

"This isn't what we wanted for you. It's not what we planned. This burden...it's not fair to you," Charming lamented.

"Maybe not, but you and Mom are not to blame for this. Regina did this to us...to all of us," Emma said.

"I know you've been alone and we hate that. But we're still here to help you in anyway we can," Snow reminded.

"She's right and if I'm awake already in this town, then you need to lean on me, Princess. You may be the Savior, but you're our daughter first," he reminded.

"I know...I'm just not very good at asking for help or dealing with my feelings and all that crap," she muttered. Snow smirked.

"I know...you tend to try and internalize everything so you don't burden others and hide your pain. One guess on where you get that from," Snow said, side-eying her husband.

"She's right...you get that from me," he admitted.

"How do you guys do it? How do you guys not lose hope or doubt everything?" she asked.

"Love," Snow answered.

"She's right. We know it sounds simplistic, but love always wins in the end. Sometimes it also means sacrifice, but we've never doubted you for a second, Emma," he added. She looked at them and then dove between them for another hug. David cradled her head and kissed her hair.

"I love you guys," she said.

"We love you too, baby," Snow replied.

The next morning, after breakfast at Granny's, David kissed Mary goodbye for the day, as she went off to school and he made his way to Gold's shop.

"You're early today," he pawnbroker mentioned, as he came in and placed the book on the counter in front of him with a meaningful look.

"I see you've been doing some reading," he quipped.

"This...it's all true, isn't it?" David asked.

"I thought I had this well hidden until it was time. But I should have known Belle would have found it. She was always intrigued by rare, old books," he answered. But David still waited for a direct answer and it came from another voice.

"Yes David...it's all true," Stephanie said, as she walked into the shop.

"I might as well throw that closed sign away," Gold commented dryly.

"You're…" David started to say.

"Persephone...yes," she answered.

"Snow has no idea, does she? That you're her birth mother?" he questioned.

"No...I had to give her up to protect her from Hades and Deimos upon her birth, but I've always been watching over her from afar and protecting her where I could. My time in the Underworld limited my ability to do so much of the time," she confessed.

"And it's winter now...yet you're here," he said. She smiled.

"Very astute. Once Emma arrived in town, the realms were no longer frozen and time began to move again. I saw an opportunity to escape to this land out of Hades' reach. As you can imagine, he was probably livid when I did not return to the Underworld," she responded.

"You're here to protect Snow from him then," David deduced.

"I'm here to protect all of you...my family from him and Deimos. Hades will come," she warned.

"And when the curse breaks and Snow has her memory back?" he prompted.

"I will tell her everything," Persephone promised.

"Good...because I won't keep secrets from her. I'd tell her now if I thought she'd believe me," he replied. She smiled.

"I know and I know how much you love my daughter," she said.

"I'd die for her," he promised.

"And I'm here to make sure that's not necessary," she countered.

"Have you known all along too?" David asked.

"Yes...I commissioned this book as the only account of your wife's true origins so there would be a recording when it was time," Gold replied.

"And by commissioned, he means he made a deal with a writer at the time that was responsible for recording events," she clarified.

"You know that my deal with Isaac kept him from manipulating the story for his own volition and got him out of our hair," he reminded.

"I suppose you're right," she agreed, remembering how the little worm had planned to use his powers as the author to manipulate her daughter and son-in-law. Fortunately, they put a stop to him and sent him off to a place where he'd never bother their land again. David looked between them.

"Clearly you two have met before," he mentioned.

"We've had...dealings before," Persephone commented.

"Yet you still failed to tell me about the dreamscape," he countered. David's eyes widened.

"You're the reason we have the dreamscape?" he asked. She nodded.

"When I realized that the curse could not be stopped and my daughter faced losing her daughter and the man she loved for twenty-eight years, I went to Morpheus and begged him to create the dreamscape for my family," she explained, pausing for a moment.

"He agreed. It was a small consolation to know that at least in your dreams, you could be together," she revealed. He was stunned and grateful.

"It made all the difference. I mean, Emma was still alone, but not completely," he said. She nodded.

"That's why I pleaded so vehemently to Morpheus. And he fortunately agreed that the Savior should have every advantage possible," she added.

"I know you have many more questions, David and in time, I will answer them all," she promised.

"But Snow needs to hear everything too," he realized, despite his anxiousness.

"Yes...and she will once the curse is broke. Just know, that I am here to protect my family. That means Snow, Emma, Henry, and you," she implored.

"I trust you," he stated.

"You do?" she asked.

"I don't trust easily, but you're Snow's mother and it's obvious you'd never do anything to hurt her," he stated. She smiled, touched by his faith.

"It's not hard to see why Snow loves you so much," she mentioned.

"We all have the same goal too and that's breaking the curse, ending Deimos, and defeating Regina," he stated.

"And once the curse is broken, the final battle will begin," Gold reminded.

"You spoke once before about the final battle," David said

"Yes...and it could be one battle or many. Once the curse breaks, Hades and Deimos may only be part of our problem," he replied.

"Who else is there?" David asked.

"Many evils...but Cora for sure," Persephone interjected.

"Cora...Regina's mother?" he asked. She nodded.

"Like we don't have enough to deal with," he lamented.

"Yes...and she knows the truth. She stole this book years ago from me and exposed Snow's secret origins to King Leopold," Gold revealed.

"Snow's father knew?" he asked incredulously.

"She gave him the book shortly before his death. It was her plan to blackmail him into marrying Snow off to some prince twice her age in the southern Kingdom, so she could not challenge Regina for the Throne someday," Gold replied. That made David's blood boil.

"Surely he would never agree to something like that?" he exclaimed.

"He didn't want to...but Cora had something on him," Persephone replied.

"What was it?" he asked.

"Well...Leopold originally broke off his arrangement with Eva, because he and Cora were once in love. He found out she was lying to him about...something and ended up marrying Eva," Persephone revealed, as she and Gold exchanged a glance. Now was not the time to reveal what she was lying about. David felt like his head might explode.

"Okay...so he was going to marry Cora and then thirty some years later he marries Regina? He had to know who she was," he said, feeling a little disgusted.

"He did...yes. Leopold loved my Snow, even after he found out the truth...but he did questionable things in his life," Persephone replied.

"Cora was going to blackmail him with that little tidbit of information, but I intercepted her and promised that if she forced Snow into a marriage to get rid of her that I'd make sure Regina would never be Queen," Gold stated.

"No offense, but I'm guessing you didn't do that out of the goodness of your heart?" he asked.

"I had my own agenda, that's never been a secret. Seeing Snow White married off to some over the hill prince like a trophy wouldn't have boded well for my plans. But I assure you, neutralizing Cora was in the best interest of all," he replied.

"Your head must be spinning," Persephone mentioned.

"Just a bit. So...he still loved Snow, even when he found out she wasn't his biologically?" David asked. She nodded.

"I didn't like his choices, but yes, he did. As you can imagine, arraigned or forced marriages are not my favorite," she replied.

"Yeah...mine either," he said and she remembered that he too had almost been forced to marry someone he didn't love.

"I better get to the station, before Emma worries," he mentioned, as he went outside the shop. Persephone shared another glance with Gold and followed him out.

"I know this was a lot to take in. I have to say, you're taking it very well," she mentioned.

"I think I'm still trying to wrap my head around it all," he replied.

"Then can I ask you something?" she requested. He shrugged and nodded.

"How do you think Snow will take all of this when she learns the truth?" Persephone asked anxiously. He sighed.

"I only ask, because you know Snow better than anyone," she added.

"She'll be shocked at first, even more so than me. The parts about Leopold and Cora will be hard for her to hear, but Snow is the strongest woman I know, followed very closely by our daughter. We'll be there to get her through it and you're right, I know her," he said, looking over at her.

"She'll understand why you had to give her up, because we had to do the same with Emma. She'll want to know you and I think it helps that you're friends first. Be that for now and eventually she'll accept you as her mother," he advised. Persephone let out the breath she didn't even realize she had been holding.

"Thank you David," she said gratefully.

"You're welcome...I'll see you later," he replied, as he headed into the station, while she continued on to school. It was barely after eight in the morning and it had already been a very interesting day...

#Snowing #season 1 au #Daddy Charming #mama Snow #Swan Believer

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thetimelordbatgirl · 7 years

Note

Your Liv and Maddie post gives me life! I 100% agree with everything. I felt bad for Maddie during the Diggie and Josh mess. Jillow is beyond disturbing to me and the fact her behavior was played off for laughs and they got together (!!!!!!)! They gave her behavior a stamp of approval by pairing them off smdh. If it's not too much trouble, could you share your thoughts on Karen and her horrible parenting? Thanks!

Thanks! Last time I posted about something wrong with the show, I didn’t get a good response so this is kinda nice for once!

I felt bad for Maddie no matter what really, but specially during that BS and of course, the season 3 finale, but I aint touching that topic without putting a warning for Anti-Liv stuff.

Jillow was the shit I avoided- any time I saw a dam scene of it, I skipped the channel- SPEICALLY DURING THE NET EPISODE, LET ALONE THE EP WHERE JOEYS FORCED TO SING AND DANCE WITH WILLOW ON LIVE TV. And lord- I know….the only show I can name at this point pointing out the girl was toxic is Andi Mack- Liv and Maddie on the other hand: played it for laughs and then had the pair get together out of the blue despite me cheering when Joey looked relieved to be free almost.

Oh that scream was me btw- I love ranting about Karen Rooney, and half the time compare her to the fantastic parenting off Amy Duncan.

So uh, under read more cause it will be long as shit

So my problems play off with how she acts with her kids, obviously- and before anyone asks, while I have problems with Pete, I cant say hes a bad dad fully as hes a, been off screen fully since the end of season 3, and b, outside of a few incidents, he was a better parent then his wife at this rate.

Lets go with my most disgusted moment yet with Karen- when Evan turned Parker basically into a slave for Karen and Karen fucking went along with it and even smiled throughout it- WTF- im sorry, while I agree chores need to be done- YOU DO NOT GO ABOUT IT LIKE THAT- SHE BASICALLY HAD EVAN BRAINWASH HER SON INTO DOING WHAT SHE WANTS, AND IN THE PROCESS, MOCKED PARKER BY DOING INTERESTS HE ENJOYS IN FRONT OF HIM- LIKE WTF- THE SLAVE PART IS THE MOST DISTURING THING- PARKER ALONE IS A HATED CHARACTER NOW AND THEN, BUT I FELT SO BAD FOR HIM THERE AND THEN CAUSE AGAIN WTF-

Another moment? The first time the Chedder Cheese thing came in- and Pete also gets a bad grade here btw as he appeared in this episode too- but basically, the parents and twins are facing off against each other- so what does this loving mother do? Support them? Encourage them? Give them luck? Or how about she fucking messes with their heads, takes her daughters cell phone in school and then gets a daughter banned from the contest just so she could win DESPITE MADDIE DOING WHAT KAREN DID TO THE TWINS THE ENTIRE EPISODE AND MADDIES BEING SANE COMPARED TO KARENS. Im sorry, but you do not MESS with your daughters HEADS- you do not fucking try to make them late to the contest, you do not get them disqualified cause they gave you a taste of your own medicine and you do not fucking make it look like your love for them is false when you congraduate your husband for telling them he loves them and he just smirks- LIKE WTF-

A minor instance here- but why did she make Maddies college choices about herself? Like, no Pete, DO NOT SUGGEST KAREN FOR HELP- Karen literally made it out to Maddie that Karens more important then Maddie just choosing a college- like at this rate lady, if you were my mom, I’d move out the moment I get the fucking chance and not let you near the grandkids.

Another time- she forces her son Parker into a pagent despite him clearly not wanting to do it and even when he says he doesn’t want to do it, she makes him anyway- and in the same ep, was disgusted at the idea of her daughters being sick- like sorry lady, thought you knew what parenting would be like the moment you became pregnant- thought you knew to not act like your daughters being sick is a nuisance.

BTW, another minor thing but im petty- when your daughter says they fine and don’t need your help with French- don’t force it down her throat, fucking give her the space and let her do it her own way.

Oh and another one! Yep, theres another! In a certain episode, Maddie is selling stuff to raise money for a school trip- and its her own stuff or old stuff, which is fair enough to be sold really- but Karen proves to be a hoarder as she tries to stop her daughter selling her old stuff like, I don’t know, her old scooter and her old doll thing- like Karen is such a hoarder to the point she thinks shes right and therefore, goes to Maddie with the picture she and Liv made as children, you know, the thing that actually means shit compared to the shit Karen is hoarding? Yeah, Karen pushes Maddie into putting a price on it- and while at it, calling it junk and not meaning which is gross as fuck as that’s Liv and Maddies picture and actually means shit compared to Karens stupid toothbrush collection- AND SOMEHOW, KARENS RIGHT WHEN SHE WASNT? NO YOU DICK, YOU MADE MADDIE SELL A IMPORTANT PICTURE COMPARED TO YEARS OLD TOOTHBRUSHES THAT SHOULD HAVE GONG IN THE BIN BY NOW- YOU AINT TEACHING MORALS, YOUR PROVING TO BE A HOARDER.

One more minor thing: She when grounding Maddie and Liv not only bans Maddie from getting a license until shes 18 which is gross as that’s trapping Maddie further with these assholes but she also says Liv has to drive her anywhere where she wants and at Liv’s protest, LAUGHS AND SAYS SHE MAY EVEN HAVE LIV DRIVE HER TO PICK UP THE NEWSPAPER-WAY TO TAKE JOY IN BEING A BAD PARENT BITCH.

Two more points, last ones I swear as I didn’t tune in much for season 4 and these are all the moments I can remember being fully disgusted with:

*Karen trying all the time to get in her daughters space- like, she wont stop getting in on it, claiming shes apart of it when shes not- and yet, she forces herself in so many times and then forces Maddie to send off her Diggie stuff and claims Maddies missing Diggie cause shes wearing sweatbands he gave her….I agree with Maddie here- fucking not right at all.

*This was along with Pete, so again, bad mark to him too- in the ep that Joey and Parker use the Gift Card they gave the parents ages ago, when they via Joey leaving his ID at the place, Karen admits THEY WONT PLANNING TO USE IT MEANING SHE HAS NO RIGHT TO COMPLAIN- but both get into their sons heads later and fucking SURROUND Joey singing the Goofy Gary song madly until Joey fesses up- like WTF-

Ok, and my reasons for comparing her to mother Amy Duncan? Amy, while self asorbed now and then and more into getting herself on stage and sometimes letting the spotlight take over her- still gave a dam about her kids to the point she fucking chased Teddy’s teacher throughout the school, was willing to try and help her kids no matter what, loved her kids fully and always learnt her lesson when she stepped beyond boundries- she respected Teddy’s decision and reasonings for keeping the play a secret from her and in response to having a large family, said they wont quitters- she doesn’t care for numbers, she loves her kids- the only time she sometimes pays around with her kids is when they have done bad shit- aka Teddy sneaking out to that party and when the kids lost Charlie almost- like Karen has nothing above Amy.

And its sad to see such a mom existed within Karen- could have had something- but nope- to go with the disturbing Jillow, we had to get bad parenting jokes next that were never called out.

Jesus Christ that got LONG-

#liv and maddie #karen rooney #anti-Karen rooney #I love ranting about her it aint even funny

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yuckitup-jwd · 5 years

Text

Fulldekisms Part 2

He writes blank checks on a closed account.

He'd screw up a two-car funeral procession.

He'll eventually qualify as a Darwin Award winner.

He's a General Protection Fault trigger.

He's a man on a mission, but can't find his dossier.

He's as soppy as a sack. (British)

He's been invited to every party in town... Once.

He's completely West Ham. (Two stops short of Barking on theLondon Underground.)

He's diagnosable.

He's in a federal witless protection program.

He's not a complete idiot -- some parts are missing.

He's not stupid; he's possessed by a retarded ghost.

He's really into himself... His head is up his ass.

He's so dense, light bends around him.

He's so dense, the Titanic wouldn't sink in his head.

Hears everything that a dog can.

Hears more lyrics on records when they're played backwards.

Her access time approaches infinity.

Her ancestors came to this country looking for bananas.

Her ass is sucking swamp gas.

Her blender doesn't go past "mix".

Her body is rejecting her.

Her brain cells are as hard to isolate as <your favoritepolitician's> concern for his/her electorate.

Her brain comes with single-bit error detection and half-assederror correction.

Her brain has a corrupted filesystem / someone needs to runfsck on her brain.

Her brain is as useless as a mule's gonads.

Her brain is more like a Rube Goldberg device than a computer.

Her cache is incoherent.

Her career is just taking off -- she's never at work.

Her closet is full of hangars, but no clothing.

Her dentist went deaf from the drill's echoes.

Her dialing thumb must be broken.

Her display is always flashing 12:00.

Her driver's license says, "Picture continued on other side."

Her ears serve the same function as holes in a dribble glass.

Her face is a threat to clocks everywhere.

Her files are compressed 100%.

Her finals are burned out.

Her friends took her aside, and left her there. -- Ron Richards

Her gene pool could use a little chlorine / a good filter.

Her head doesn't cast a shadow.

Her head needs a periodic whack on the side.

Her input pipe is broken.

Her interrupt handler hit a loop.

Her IQ is the reason they had to invent negative/imaginary numbers.

Her kid is an honor student, but she's still an idiot.

Her leads need resoldering.

Her learning curve is fractal.

Her lint trap is full.

Her lists are unlinked.

Her memory is truly random-access.

Her mental function can be graphed with a single dot.

Her mere presence causes parity errors, power fails, and head crashes.

Her mind is not grounded to a logic supply.

Her mind might have spontaneously combusted.

Her mind would be unstable even mounted on a tripod.

Her modem lights are on but there's no carrier.

Her objects are not fully oriented.

Her only hope for brainpower is vacuum point energy.

Her personal problems can only be solved using high explosives.

Her phone doesn't quite reach her desk.

Her pool balls don't fit into the rack.

Her positronic matrix won't reboot.

Her purpose in life is to balance out the bell curve.

Her random access is the same as her sequential access.

Her sewing machine's been out of thread for some time now.

Her ski lift doesn't go to the top of the hill.

Her stack has been corrupted.

Her synapses are about |that| far apart.

Her system file has zero bytes.

Her tires are a little low.

Her wheels are turning but she's upside down. -- U2

Her wipers don't touch the glass.

Her word length is zero bits.

Hid behind the door when they passed out brains.

High relative humidity... He's lost in a fog.

His access light's on, but the drive isn't spinning / isstill spinning up.

His accumulator overflows at zero.

His actual mileage varies.

His antenna/radio doesn't pick up all the channels/stations.

His boot block is in a bad sector.

His boot ROM has a bad checksum.

His brackets are mismatched.

His brain could be the perfect dielectric.

His brain is sueing for neglect.

His brain was sold separately and they were out of stock.

His brain would rattle around in a gnat's navel.

His bread ain't done.

His buffer is full.

His clutch is slipping.

His data bus stops for red lights.

His deck has no face cards.

His elevator is stuck between floors.

His face is on a coin... On the edge.

His family tree is a telephone pole.

His family wasn't dysfunctional until he arrived.

His freelist is empty.

His future is behind schedule. -- Bob Thaves

His gene line isn't just dead, it's extinct.

His golf bag does not contain a full set of irons. -- Robin Williams

His grades were so bad, after school he couldn't even getinto prison. -- Shannon Sharpe

His grey matter is brown / doesn't matter.

His head whistles in a cross wind.

His home page is out of order.

His home planet is flat.

His IQ test results were negative / IQ is a false positive.

His jack can't get the car off the ground.

His military nomenclature is ID-10-T (idiot).

His mind is a few Hertz off its assigned frequency.

His mind is great at error magnification.

His mind is less substantial than the Emperor's new clothes.

His mind is on vacation but his mouth is working overtime. -- Allision

His mind is write-protected/write-only.

His mind reached escape velocity and achieved orbit.

His mind wandered and never came back.

His motto is: Space, the final frontier.

His mouth rarely makes calls to his brain.

His only hope for sexual variety is vegetables / to change hands.

His outgoing message starts with, "Hello, Mr. Answering Machine."

His page was intentionally left blank.

His picture is in the dictionary under "zero".

His pointers are null/uninitialized.

His puzzle is missing a few pieces.

His reaction time is longer than his attention span. -- Thaves

His root file system isn't mounted.

His seat back is not in the full upright and locked position.

His shared libraries aren't installed.

His signal-to-noise ratio is epsilon.

His signature is long, boring, and stupid, but it's the bestpart of his postings.

His spark can't jump the gap.

His spirit guide is a three-toed sloth.

His stack's not very deep / he has an eight-byte stack.

His strings aren't null-terminated.

His strip is demagnetized.

His system administrator is never in.

His train tracks aren't quite parallel.

His URL denies outside access.

His watch dog is sleeping.

His Wheaties have been in the milk too long.

His wisdom is stolen from bumper-stickers and T-shirts.

His wits have left the rails and are careening about the countryside.

His X, Y, and Z axes don't meet at the origin.

Hitler's evil twin.

Holds a grudge until it dies of old age, then has it stuffed andmounted. -- David Weber

Hyperspatially interconnected / permanently disconnected neural net.

Hypnotized as a child and couldn't be woken.

I like him; he reminds me of when I was young and stupid.

I would follow him anywhere, but only out of curiosity.

I wouldn't piss in his ear if his brain was on fire.

I'd like to buy him for what he's worth and sell him for what hethinks he's worth.

I've worn dresses with higher IQs than his.

If brains were bird droppings, he'd have a clean cage.

If brains were chocolate, he wouldn't have enough for an M&M.

If brains were dynamite, she wouldn't have enough to blow hernose / her hat off / the wax out of her ears.

If brains were farts, he couldn't stink up the inside of a matchbox.

If brains were gasoline, he couldn't ride a moped around a fruit loop.

If brains were grains of sand, he couldn't fill a dixie cup.

If brains were lard, he'd be hard pressed to grease a small pan.

If brains were leather, he couldn't saddle a flea.

If brains were taxed, he'd get a rebate.

If brains were water, hers wouldn't be enough to baptize a flea.

If dumb were dirt, he'd be an acre.

If fashion law is ever enforced, he'll be found guilty withouthope of parole.

If God tried to help him, we'd have an eight day week.

If he didn't exist, he wouldn't be worth inventing.

If he donated his brain to science it'd set civilization back 50 years.

If he gets any denser, the geocentric theory of the universewill come true.

If he had a lobotomy he'd depressurize.

If he had another brain (cell), it would be lonely.

If he had brains, he'd take them out and play with them.

If he had console lights, we would see only the idle loop patterns.

If he had half a brain, his ass would be lopsided.

If he were an Indian, Custer would be alive today / would havedied of old age.

If he were any brighter he'd be in the visible spectrum.

If he were any more stupid, he'd have to be watered twice a week.

If her brains were put in a hummingbird, it would fly backwards.

If his brain were a hard drive, it would back up on a single floppy.

If his brains were money, he'd still be in debt.

If his IQ was two points higher he'd be a rock.

If ignorance were bliss, she'd be orgasmic.

If it's not in his horoscope/tea leaves, he doesn't take it seriously.

If men were dominoes, he would be the double-blank. -- P.G. Wodehouse

If not for his scrotum, he would lose his balls.

If sex appeal were dynamite, he couldn't blow the cobwebsoff his balls.

If she had a disk we could upgrade her with DOS 3.0.

If she was any dumber, she'd be a green plant.

If stupidity hurt, he'd go through life on a morphine drip.

If stupidity were a crime, he'd be number one on the Most Wanted list.

If the government ever declared war on stupidity, he'd get nuked.

If there were a merciful God he'd be dead by now.

If they each had half a brain, they'd still only have half a brain.

If they knock heads, implosion will suck all the air out of the room.

If what you don't know can't hurt you, she's practically invulnerable.

If wit were shit, he'd be constipated.

If you called him a wit, you'd be half right.

If you give him a penny for his thoughts, you get change back.

If you stand close enough to him, you can hear the ocean.

Ignorant, and proud of it.

Immune from any serious head injury.

Immune to caffeine and all other stimulants.

In a tub of Preparation H, he'd shrink down to thumb size.

In his optimum environment, he'd be locked in a life and deathstruggle with mushrooms.

In line for brains, thought they said pains, and said, "No, thanks".

In line for brains, thought they said trains, and asked for onewith lots of steam / said his dad just bought him one.

In line for brains, thought they said were handing out milkshakes,and he asked for "extra thick."

In need of a ROM upgrade.

In serious need of attitude adjustment.

In the pinball game of life, his flippers were a little fartherapart than most.

In the shopping mall of the mind, he's in the toy store.

In touch with her higher power, but out of touch with the rest of us.

Includes a "thank you" note with her tax returns.

Infinite space between her ears.

Informationally deprived.

Inhabits her own private timezone.

Inspected by #13.

Inspired the slogan, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste."

Intellectually/synaptically challenged.

Intelligence somewhere between a pet rock and egg white.

Invented a pencil with an eraser on each end.

Invented a submarine with a screen door.

IQ = dx / (1 + dx), where x = age.

IQ lower than a snake's belly in a wagon-rut.

It's hard to believe he beat 100,000 other sperm.

Just another flash in the bedpan.

Just asleep, but others worry that he's dead.

Keeps his imagination on a long leash.

Kept an open mind -- and his brains fell out.

Keywords: generalizations clue get

Knitting with only one needle.

Knows his sports, but his understanding is limited to violence.

Landed with his gear/brain up and locked.

Leaky sunroof.

Left hand threaded.

Left his booster on the launch pad.

Left the store without all of his groceries.

Leveled off before reaching altitude.

Life by Norman Rockwell, but screenplay by Stephen King.

Lightbulb over his head is burned out.

Lights / porch lights are on but nobody's home.

Lights not burning too bright.

Like a barometer -- vacuum at the top.

Like a loose-leaf folder in winter.

Like a one-armed man climbing a rope.

Likes dunking for french fries.

Likes to execute his data.

Little red choo-choo's gone chugging 'round the bend /jumped the track.

Lives in La-la-land.

Lives in the same world, but a different universe.

Lives just up the street from the corner of Walk and Don't Walk.

Living proof of Einstein's theory that there is no limit tohuman stupidity.

Living proof that evolution CAN go in reverse.

Living proof that God did die back in the 60s.

Living proof that God has a sense of humor.

Living proof that nature does not abhor a vacuum.

Living proof that there's ALWAYS someone worse off than you.

Long on drywall, short on studs.

Looking for a nickel in the corner of a circular room.

Looks for the "Any" key.

Looks just like Bill Gates.

Loose chip on the microprocessor board.

Loose wire to his headset/ringer.

Lost his marbles.

Lots of silverware on his table, but no plates.

Loves a good insult, but can never remember any.

Low on thinking gas.

Low-bandwidth as an information source.

Luckily these types kill themselves before reproducing... Thinkof it as evolution in action. -- Larry Niven

Lugnuts rattling in the hubcaps.

Made a career out of mid-life crisis.

Mainspring's wound too tight.

Makes a black hole look bright.

Makes predictions that make weathermen/economists look good.

Meandering to a different drummer.

Memorized every Dr. Seuss story written.

Mental software is Version 1.0 / still in beta test.

Mentally qualified for handicapped parking.

Metronome needs oil.

Might look like he's doing nothing, but at the cellular levelhe's really quite busy.

Might still be a virgin except for what nature did to her mind.

Mind like a steel sieve.

Mind like a steel trap -- everything gets mangled / full of mice /nothing in, nothing out / rusted shut / someday it willsnap shut and swallow his face.

Missed her last four scheduled tune-ups.

Missed the last train to Clue Junction. -- Rev Billy Wirtz

Missing a few buttons on his remote control.

Missing a few catalog cards / gears / marbles.

Missing a layer of insulation in his attic.

Monorail doesn't go all the way to Tomorrowland.

Mooring lines don't reach the dock.

More armpits than brain cells.

More marbles in a spray-paint can than brains in his head.

Mouth is in gear, brain is in neutral.

Moves his lips to pretend he's reading.

Must have ignored a knock-down pitch.

Nearly lives up to her full potential as a dumb blond.

Nearly on a higher plane, but lost his boarding pass.

Needed a tutor to learn how to scribble.

Needs a checkup from the neck up.

Needs a little remedial evolution.

Needs a stepladder to pick his nose.

Needs an operating manual for a screwdriver.

Needs another brain to make half-wit.

Needs both hands to wipe his behind.

Needs front end alignment.

Needs his disk checked/reformatted.

Needs his sleeves lengthened by a couple of feet so theycan be tied in the back.

Neither left-brained nor right-brained. -- Bob Thaves

Nervous as a long-tailed bobcat in a room full of rocking chairs.

Network constantly loses packets.

Neurons are firing non-sequentially.

Never finishes a thoug

Never had a headcold in her life since diseases can't existin a vacuum.

Never misses an episode of her screensaver.

Next-day delivery in a nanosecond world. -- Van Jacobson

Nice color but not enough wattage.

Nice house but not much furniture / nobody lives there.

Nine pence in the shilling.

Nine rooms; no furniture.

Nineteen cents short of a paradigm.

No bubble in his gauge. (Refers to a submarine dive gauge.)

No charge in her synapses.

No coins in the old fountain.

No filter in the coffeemaker.

No grain in the silo.

No hands on the rudder/yoke.

No hay in the loft.

No one at the throttle.

No ROM basic.

No salt in his socks. (Land-lubber or green sailor.)

No tar in his hemp. (Tar preserves a hemp (marijuana) line; thisphrase means one has been smoking his rope.)

No wind in her mind's windmills.

Not all his dogs are barking.

Not an idiot, but plays one in his life.

Not as dumb as he looks, but that would be impossible.

Not digging in the same ditch with the rest of us.

Not done evolving yet.

Not enough brain cells for the Prozac to be effective.

Not enough brains to get anywhere NEAR the gutter.

Not enough bullets for Russian Roulette.

Not enough change to break a dollar/pound/deutschmark/yen.

Not enough sense to come in out of the rain.

Not enough sense to stay out in the rain. (Like a 60's flower child.)

Not firing on all four/six/eight cylinders.

Not firmly seated in the socket / screwed in tight.

Not hard-docked.

Not inflated to 90 PSI / head is stamped "inflate to 40 PSI".

Not Intel Inside. (Or, given Pentium problems, just: Intel inside.)

Not much to show for four billion years of evolution.

Not only rude, but ugly too.

Not playing with / dealing from a full deck (-- not even in the game).

Not ready for prime time.

Not running on full thrusters.

Not shooting pool on a level table.

Not so much of a has-been, as a won't-be.

Not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree / light in the harbor /crayon in the box.

Not the full quid.

Not the hottest burner on the stovetop.

Not the same since they took him off his medication.

Not the sharpest knife/spoon in the drawer / tool in the shed /nail in the box / quill on the porcupine.

Not Turing equivalent.

Not within a bull's roar. (A term used by lawn bowlers.)

Not worth henshit on a pump handle.

Not worth pissin' on.

Not wrapped too tight.

Nothing between the stethoscopes.

Nothing on her radar.

Numb as a post / pounded thumb.

Number 'n a hake. (New England expression; a notoriously stupid fish.)

Nutty as a fruitcake.

Of all the things he's lost, he misses his mind the most.

Off by one.

Off his rocker/trolley.

Oil doesn't reach his dipstick.

On permanent/unexcused leave of absence from his senses.

On the batting end of a no-hitter.

One anna short of a rupee.

One bead short in her rosary.

One bean short of chili.

One bean shy of full strength.

One beer short of a six-pack / a six-pack short of a case.

One bird short of a flock.

One bit short of a byte/word.

One blade short of a sharp edge. -- Nanci Griffith

One block short of a filesystem.

One board short of a porch.

One bomb/melon short of a full load.

One boot stuck in the sand.

One bottom short of a bucket.

One brick short of a wall/hod/load/pile.

One bumper/rail short of a bank shot.

One bun/donut short of a dozen.

One byte short of a checksum.

One byte short of a full 256K SIMM.

One car short of a chase scene.

One card/marble short of a full deck.

One chapter short of a novel.

One chicken short of a henhouse.

One chip short of a cookie.

One chip short of a megabyte.

One citation short of a footnote.

One clearance short of landing/take off.

One clown short of a circus.

One clue short of a solution.

One cold solder joint.

One color short of a full deck. (A half-wit.)

One color short of color-coordinated.

One couplet short of a sonnet.

One course short of a degree. (As in: "I've got a degree inhome economics, but I was only one course short of adegree in advanced nuclear physics.")

One crayon short of a full box.

One crouton short of a salad.

One cup and saucer short of a place setting.

One cylinder short of a full re-format.

One diamond short of a ring.

One dimension short of reality.

One doughnut short of being a cop.

One drool bib short of neat and tidy.

One drop short of an empty bladder.

One ear short of a bushel.

One electron shy of a full shell / noble gas arrangement.

One feather short of a whole duck.

One fish short of a string.

One floor below the poopdeck.

One flower short of an arrangement.

One flying buttress short of a cathedral.

One foot in the future, one foot in the past, pissing on the present.

One french fry / hamburger short of a Happy Meal.

One Froot Loop short of a full bowl.

One fruit short of a basket.

One gene short of a full chromosome.

One goose short of a gaggle.

One grape short of a bunch.

One guppy short of an aquarium.

One handle short of a suitcase.

One harmonic short of a tubular bell.

One hot pepper short of an enchilada.

One inch short of a foot/yard.

One inspection short of passing.

One kangaroo short in her top paddock.

One kernel short of an ear.

One key short of a piano.

One kopek short of a ruble.

One link short of a chain.

One live brain cell away from being a talking monkey.

One measure short of a staff.

One miracle short of being where he thinks he's at.

One miracle wouldn't be enough to help him.

One monkey short of a full hundred.

One node short of a network.

One nut short of a full pouch.

One of the early failures of electroshock therapy.

One open splice.

One pancake short of a stack.

One pane short of a window.

One pea short of a pod/casserole.

One peak short of a chromatogram.

One pearl short of a necklace.

One pickle short of a jar.

One pie short of a holiday.

One plane short of an Air Force / hangar.

One point short of a polygon.

One prayer short of absolution.

One press short of a CAPS LOCK key. (Types all uppercase.)

One punch/swing/hit short of a fight.

One quark short of a hadron.

One republic short of an empire.

One revision behind.

One sandwich/apple/ant short of a picnic.

One saucer short of a tea-service.

One scallop short of a seafood platter.

One screw loose.

One screw shy of a final assembly.

One sentence short of a paragraph.

One shade short of a rainbow.

One sheep short of a sweater.

One shingle short of a roof, and the water's getting in.

One ship short of a full fleet.

#fulldeckisms #nerdjokes #personalityjokes

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fitcareketo-blog · 5 years

Photo

Leptitox: Want to Buy? MUST READ THIS REVIEW! “IMPORTANT"

Vast numbers of men and women of the planet are afflicted by weight problems. It's a massive struggle for those who shed bodyweight. The bodyweight reduction business is getting lots of dollars due to the fact folks are prepared to perform anything and everything out of after a daily diet into exercising in fitness centers. But they don't receive any consequences that render them discouraged and emotionally miserable. But regrettably that this business is duping the weight problems, victims.

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#leptitox #reviews #keto #weight loss

0 notes

dig1710 · 7 years

Text

Final Project Guidelines

In teams of 2-5, create a video game concept and a Game Design Document to describe the following aspects of your game.

Due December 14th as a downloadable document linked on your Tumblr.

The document should include a cover page with the title, logo, & your names, plus a reference page with links to your sources.

Introduction

Style Guide (High & Low Level Aesthetics)

Lower Level Game Concepts (the nitty gritty)

Reviews of All Major Mechanics

Story

UI/UX documentation

Systems Designs

Technical Documentation

Monetization Strategy

Costing per features

Production Guide

Marketing Overview

The sections below describe what is required, and will be updated.

1.Introduction

One paragraph describing the video game, think of it as a revised pitch.

This should be written last, after you’ve figured out everything else and have a good sense of what’s important to your game concept.

2. Style Guide

What’s the seed?

Include 1-2 pages of concept art.

Aesthetics - What are you trying to say? All aspects of game aesthetics should drive toward what you want people to feel when playing your game. Extra Credits on Aesthetics vs Graphics

What player types will like your games?

Gamasutra Color in Games

3. Lower Level Game Concepts

Rules, player goals (realtime, each level, whole game). Actions the player can take in the world.

4. Major mechanics

Camera perspective, gameplay type.

Modes (stealth, vehicle, swim, etc)

Dynamics work to create aesthetic experiences. For example, challenge is created by elements like time pressure and opponent play.

How to we encourage emergent gameplay?

Add more basic actions

When basic actions combine there are opportunities for emergence. Be willing to discover emergent actions as you discover more about your game mechanics.

Set goals that can be achieved more than one way

Allow players to discover their way of doing things.

Have secondary behaviors in your game (side effects) that occur because of basic actions and change the constraints on a player.

5. Story

Story overview - 1 to 5 paragraphs

Character backgrounds & motivations (eg: hero, villain, party members)World overview (eg: magical crystals are power source, demons roam the land)Player choices

Story curve & Interest curves.

Typical Interest Curves for successful games rely on a pattern made up of a three tier system of interest::

Overall game curve -Something that grabs your interest early, followed by a series of interest peaking events and luls, ending with a major climax

Each level - New Aesthetics and/or challenges engage the player providing rising interest until the end of the level which is often finished with a final challenge like a boss battle.

Each challenge - Every challenge has a micro interest curve, high interest introduction, rising steps in the challenge, and a culminating pay off.

6. UI/UX documentation

Control scheme.

What information we give to the player (health, score, stealth meter, etc).

UI Mockup - photoshop your idea for the UI during normal gameplay.

7. Systems Designs

Combat systems (action or turn-based), simulations, weather, map unlocking, traffic, AI, player content creation.

8. Technical Documentation

Platform, engine requirements, graphics technology, major technical hurdles.

https://www.gamesparks.com/blog/game-engine-analysis-and-comparison/

https://www.websitetooltester.com/en/blog/best-game-engine/

9. Monetization Strategy

How will we make money off this game? Put it in a box & sell it, microtransactions, in-game ads, subscription, loot boxes, donations?

https://theappsolutions.com/blog/marketing/monetize-app/

10. Costing per features

How much each the major features of your game will cost; for instance, if you’re going to use the Unreal Engine, how much does it cost to license?

Feature Costing template spreadsheet (use the Key Hires tab)

Other questions to ask:

Will our game require a large number of artists, designers, or programmers? How many of each do we need to hire?

Do we need to purchase the rights to use real-world cars/guns/planes in our game?

Are we using specialized graphics technology like motion capture, photogrammetry, virtual reality? How much does it cost the company to setup?

Is there an online multiplayer component? How much do we spend to rent servers for players to game on?

After release do we keep part of the team around for bug-fixing or DLC?

11. Production Guide

Think of the iteration cycles, first we need a playable prototype.

1. How many team members will it take to make the smallest possible version that we can playtest?

2. The second iteration needs to expand the game and add some graphics, think of this stage as Early Access games that only have parts complete, but could be sold to consumers if you needed the cash.

3. Third iteration should include refining graphics & gameplay, and expanding the number of playable levels to make the game longer. This part is what the big studios do well, like EA, Activision-Blizzard, and Ubisoft. Lots of talented people all working on making the game bigger, prettier, and more appealing.

Once you know how many team members you’ll need at each dev stage, estimate the amount of time each stage will take & multiply that by the salaries of the required staff.

Also add the costs of technology, engines, licenses, etc.

Give me an estimate of how much each iteration will cost.

12. Marketing Overview

Who will be buying my game? What is the target audience?

Create a logo for your game to use on the cover page of your GDD.

What kinds of players does my game appeal to?

What merchandise can I sell to fans?

Where should I advertise to reach the maximum number of eyeballs for the minimum cost?

#final

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ladywolfmd · 7 years

Text

Ars Longa Vita Brevis

Summary: "The Art is long. Life is Short." - Hippocrates Jon is a fresh board certified Trauma Surgeon, attending conventions and workshops in between looking for a hospitals and moonlighting to start on a real practice. On one convention hosted by The Emergency Medicine Department of Casterly Rock Metropolitan Hospital, he chances upon seeing Dr. Sansa Stark, a fifth year Neurosurgery Resident. The last time Jon saw Sansa, she was a first year med student while he was a third year and were both attending a summer suturing workshop in Highgarden.

(You can read this in AO3 too: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11545893

"Attention passengers, this is your captain speaking. We are just about to touch down at Lannisport Airport in about 10 minutes, and we are on time. The weather around Lannisport is clear and sunny and will remain throughout this summer solstice. Thank you for flying with us today."

Jon had just woken up with a start, the weight of sleepless nights after taking on extra shifts from two hospitals he was moonlighting in at Storm's End, still weighed heavy on his lids. Ever since he passed the oral boards - the final frontier before he could officially call himself a licensed Trauma Surgeon - five months ago, he's been busy scouting hospitals that would take him on so he could start his practice. So in between applications and waiting, and of course, after a well-deserved, long overdue vacation he took, (He went sandboarding in Dorne, with his co-residents, Ed and Ned. Namely, Edric Storm, and Edric Dayne), he was moonlighting in different ERs, joining medical missions, and of course, attending many conventions and workshops to keep sharp.

And this time, he would be going to a postgraduate course in Casterly Rock.

While waiting for the plane to land, he lazily looked out his window and marveled when he saw the outline of the famous Rock come to view even from still high up. The massive stone hill was the second tallest structure in Westeros, second only to the Hightower Castle in Oldtown, while The Wall rounded up the three as the third highest.

The unmistakeable rock indeed looked like a lion staring up the sun, and much as I wasn't a fan of the Lannisters in general (because frankly who is?), the Rock was indeed looking beautiful the closer we approach. Jon thought. Especially the ostentatious castle, which looked like a golden beacon on top of the hill - like an offering to the gods.

As the plane descended, Jon watched as even the waters of the Sunset Sea gleamed ochre, proving its namessake with the sun setting over it while red sails with golden lions dotting over the bay, signaling that they were now approaching the famous docks of Lannisport.

As more of the walled city showed itself, more reds, golds and lions as adorned by the uniforms of the men of the City Watch were everywhere, making Jon fight the urge to roll his eyes.

At least you had to hand it to the Lannisters. Spare no expense indeed and this will only get more grand and obnoxious in an in-your-face-you-are-in-Lannister-territory obnoxious, the closer we enter the lion's den.

Jon suddenly thought of his uncle Viserys and aunt Dany - and this time he didn't hold back from rolling his eyes.

Dragonstone wasn't better. He shook his head and chuckled, the view of the runway coming closer and closer as they approached.

Dragons and Lions and too bold colors. He shook his head again.

I prefer Direwolves.

This time he smiled more genuinely.

Once they landed in LanX, Jon was impressed with the service, for indeed, it was truly one of the world's best, never mind that Jon has never seen as many blondes in his life and he was just at the airport.

It only took Jon barely ten minutes through luggage and the checks when he was already on a shuttle to his hotel in Casterly.

The twenty minute ride went without issue. Jon was thanking the old gods that his cabbie wasn't chatty so he was able to enjoy the view of the Sunset Sea as it stretched out from up the skyway.

He took a moment to pull out the brochure and program souvenir they mailed him after he registered.

"The Emergency Medicine Department of Casterly Rock Metropolitan Hospital, welcomes you to its 78th Annual Postgraduate Course with this year's topic: "Breaking Brains and Bones" An Update on Head Traumas and Fractures, Approaches in the E.R."

Venue: The Lann Regency Hotel

July 12-13, 2012

The course was open to all specialties and even general practitioners and all allied health professionals but most of those who were going were, of course, Emergency Medicine specialists, General Surgeons, Trauma Surgeons - like me - Internists, and of course, with the topic, Neurologists, Neurosurgeons, and Orthopedic Surgeons.

Neurology was always a waterloo of Jon since medschool and since he won't be able to avoid head and spine traumas in the E.R., he quickly grabbed the opportunity to attend when Rhaenys, his older sister by his father, showed the ad for it when she visited him in Storm's End while she was attending an Obstetrics convention held there.

"Try and explore The Rock while you're there. For all the pride the Lannisters have, it's well founded there. It's honestly beautiful once you get past the sea of blondes," Rhaenys chuckled. "Anyway, you'll see Dr. Tyrion there and maybe Sarella."

Jon smiled. Dr. Tyrion Lannister was one of his favorite professors at Dragonstone University where he studied. He was a Neurophysiologist but was more famous for being a Bioethicists. He was also scheduled to do a lecture for the course and he'd be sure to attend.

Sarella Martell, however, was his sibling's cousins from their mother. She was an Anesthesiologist who specialized in Orthopedic cases as well as a Toxicologist like her father, Dr. Oberyn Maryell.

His thoughts were broken his phone rang. Dany. Daenerys Targaryen, Jon's aunt.

"Hello?"

"Jon! Are you in Casterly already?" came his aunt's cheerful voice.

"Almost. Still in the cab. How'd you know?"

"Drogo saw your name on the listings. He's asking if you're also staying at the Regency."

Drogo was Aunt Dany's husband. They met when she was assigned as a diplomat in Pentos. Drogo, in turn, was an Ortho jock there and it was no surprise that he would also be attending. Why didn't I think of this earlier?

"I'm staying at the Regency. Give me his number, I'll call and maybe we'll get drinks later," Jon always liked Drogo. Sure he could easily murder an army with his bare hands, but he was actually a decent guy - and putty in Dany's tiny hands. He smirked.

"Great! I'll send it. We've actually been there before so he could show you around. Tomorrow's the start of your thing, right?"

"Aye,"

"Perfect. I"ll tell him. Enjoy your time there - but not too much! Remember, dragons are better than puny lions," she giggled. "And you are still a dragon no matter what."

He snorted. "Okay." I changed my name, okay! Move on.

"The next responsible thing to do is to tell you to go meet a girl while you're there but I don't think I could stomach you bringing a Lannister to join our bloodline," she gagged. "Soooo... the compromise is to say, have fun and don't forget to use protection!"

Jon hung up, embarrassed, before he could hear her cackling on the other line.

Trust Dany to take a jab at my on-again, off-again relationship with Ygritte Ryder, an EMT I met in Skagos where she lived. Sure we weren't labeled or constant, but long-distance would do that to you. She's still my first love or infatuation or whatever worked and we talked and met up as we could, but we both knew that we were just each others 'in-betweens' until 'the one' comes along. I was nothing but fond of her and we did try more seriously but we both knew there was something that was amiss.

Before Jon could think further, the cabbie alerted him.

"We're here sir."

Jon stepped out the cab, grabbed his bags, and paid the driver before turning around and facing the entrance of the hotel.

The entrace of the Lann Regency was just as lavish as most everything was at Casterly. It was fronted by a giant fountain with the bottom filled with golden coins as part of the decoration, while the red tinted double glass doors were framed with a pair of pouncing lion statues made of gold of course.

Cars and shuttles and even limousines with flags came and went, with people, some in business suits, some in more casual travel ones, mostly went up looking to check in. Like Jon, most of the doctors opted to fly in a day or night earlier.

With one last look behind him, Jon started walking up.

"Here we go."

Day 1

After two of three sessions in the morning, they were given a fifteen minute coffee break. And breaks like these usually meant making the rounds on the different booths of the sponsors, set outside the plenary halls which included, for the majority, the different pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies, promoting and selling old and new products.

Jon was looking at one booth that sold surgical instruments from the brand he favored. While he was comparing the different pocket minor sets, Drogo came up behind him holding two black coffees.

Jon accepted one and thanked the hulking doctor with the long pony tail to match his long beard. "Thanks."

Drogo nodded. "Minor sets?" He looked at the table Jon was examining.

"Aye. Can't have enough of them," Jon half-smiled.

Drogo answered with a nod again, moving towards the drills and rods. Like Jon, he wasn't much of a talker - well, a sober Drogo anyway. Jon almost smirked at the memory of Drogo slurring along last night and drunk calling Dany. Almost because he also remembered his wake up call this morning with Dany telling him off for not keeping Drogo in check.

He looked him over and was impressed that there was not a trace of drinking on him. "So, Dany woke me up this morning."

Drogo leaned back as he laughed boomingly, his ponytail almost knocking out a guy behind him. He slapped Jon's back a little too hard then that if it weren't for all those long hours in basic army training he had, he'd have flown across the room.

Jon glared at him but Drogo just shrugged at him sheepishly. "The moon of my life is a woman of many words."

Just then we heard a girly voice. "Jon! Drogo!"

The two of them turned around and saw a short young woman with olive skin, dark curly hair and equally dark eyes. Sarella. She grinned when she finally reached them. "Hi."

"Hi Sarella."

Drogo, again, just nodded but at least he was smiling.

"Rhaenys told me you two would be here. I was just talking to Tyrion when his bitchy aunt Genna cut me off and shooed me away," she grumbled.

Dr. Genna Lannister was another famous Lannister, and like all Lannisters who were doctors, her field was neurologic as well. She was a Pediatric Neurologist and like most Pedia Neuros, she was a cutthroat bitch.

"Where are they now?"

Sarella's eyes brightened then. "Oh! I saw them going to the Research presentations from the Neurosurgery residents in Hall B." She eyed me then. "You should come, Jon. I saw your cousin's poster presentation, and she's one of the presenters - also the highly favored to win at that."

Cousin?

She noticed my confusion and exchanged a glance at Drogo who just shrugged at her. "Your cousin, Jon? Sansa Stark?"

Sansa - Sansa Stark...

She sighed impatiently. "You know. Tall. Very Pretty. Blue eyes. Red hair."

Oh.

"Seven hells, right, right. Of course. She's on her," Jon paused and did a mental math, "Fifth year?" How could I forget?

Sarella threw her hands up. "Finally! Yes. Honestly Jon, and to think that Rhaenys told me you were more Stark than Targaryen. You forgot your own cousin."

Jon felt a little guilty then. But among his Stark cousins, he wasn't particularly close to Sansa even though she was the only one who joined the medical field among them. He knew her as the pretty one or the doctor one. Between her attending boarding school at Highgarden and training at Oldtown, they really didn't get to meet each other often enough. Just a couple of times and mostly never went beyond polite greetings. Frankly, Jon didn't know how to talk to her.

"Come on, lets show our support!" Sarella all but linked one arm each with Jon and Drogo.

Drogo looked amused as Sarella, petite as she was, was leading two broody men to the hall.

Sansa.

Jon tried to remember the last time he saw her. And then he felt even more guilty when he remembered it was roughly nine years ago. But to his credit, he practically lived in the hospital ever since he started his residency and he was sure it was the same for Sansa. Residency meant missing family occasions, social gatherings - everything that entailed you have a life, basically.

He knew that, he swore he did. He knew she was on a neurosurgery residency at the Citadel Hospital. If there was one thing he remembered at the top of his head, it was this one because her entering the program drew attention. First because everyone assumed that she was going to Plastics with her delicate almost invisible stitching skills or maybe even Dermatologic Surgery for her natural beauty and genius-level IQ. But no. She wanted Neurosurgery. The "top of the totem pole" in the surgical elite - Jon rolled his eyes muttering 'god complexes' - but also the specialty that was sexist, continuing to be the most male-dominated field. Robb, her brother though, cleared that up after he told Jon that she was doing it for their brother Bran who was crippled at an early age after a freak accident near The Wall.

Nine years though.

July 2003

Jon was practicing his knot tying when he heard a frustrated huff from the table next to his on his right.

He looked to his side and saw a girl with red hair tied in one long braid, who was also practicing her knot tying - her brows were drawn together in concentration as she started undoing the knot she made - a clear indication that she did it wrong because a good knot was one that held but could easily be undone with one strategic pull or cut.

He looked around and he wasn't surprised that there were no other people who are practicing. After the morning session, most were still out for lunch. They were in a two-day basic suturing workshop at Ashford.

After another sigh, Jon worked up the courage to walk up to the girl who, from the looks of it, was definitely younger than him, but somehow was oddly familiar though he couldn't place her. He was lucky that he already mastered knot tying last year when he was still a second year medical student. But that took many frustrating moments such as what she was experiencing now. He was only able to master it because he looked for someone to teach him better and figured maybe that's what she needed too.

"Um, excuse me," he tried to smile through his nerves.

She looked up at him then and Jon saw the bluest eyes he's ever seen, rendering him mute for a moment.

Seven hells, a pretty girl. What am I doing?

But the girl blinked and looked at him as if she was trying to place him too but she didn't say anything and that was when he remembered that she was probably waiting for him to proceed.

Jon rubbed the back of his neck nervously and tried to smile. "Hi. I'm sorry. I - I, uh, doyouneedhelp?"

Her cheeks colored as she looked down, biting her lip, muttering an embarrassed and slightly defiant, "I'm good. Thanks."

Jon was tempted to go back to his seat but something pushed at him to keep talking to her. Struggling for words, he looked down instead to her knot tying kit and guessed where she was having trouble. On the dummy was one perfect square knot. His guess would be she was having problems with tying the second knot.

"One hand or two?" Jon tried again.

She reddened some more and sighed before looking up at him and admitting in a small voice. "Both actually."

Jon smiled kindly then. "The second knot is always the hardest. Especially if you have two left hands," he tried to joke. Cursing himself right after for how corny it was but her reaction encouraged him to continue.

A corner of her lips turned up and her eyes were warmer, never mind that there was a raised brow at that. "You know how to do it then?"

Jon nodded. "I know how to do it...I can teach you, if you want."

She smiled at him more genuinely then and motioned for the seat beside her.

Jon took his own set and placed it beside hers. "Okay, I'll show you how to do it first and then we'll do it together, sounds good?"

She nodded. "Sounds good."

"We'll start with one hand," he said as he started on tying the first knot. "Now for the second," he made the mistake of looking at her to see if she was watching and saw that indeed she was. She was watching alright, and watching very very closely, he could feel her breath on him.

Her eyes met his then and she frowned. "Why'd you stop? Go on."

Jon's neck turned pink and he swallowed before showing her how to do the second knot. "See? The trick is to know the position of the thumb. Wanna try it now?"

She nodded and quickly went to her own kit, while waiting for Jon to undo the knots. Step by step, Jon taught her while she mirrored perfectly on her own and after a couple of doing it on her own she beamed up at Jon.

"See? It wasn't that hard," Jon laughed nervously but felt some pride that he made her smile happily. She was a quick study, this student of his. He was right in thinking she just needed better instructions and to be honest - the instructions for this workshop was too complicated.

"Thank you," She grinned at him.

He blushed. "You're welcome. It's Jon by the way."

Her smile fell a little and Jon panicked.

She eyed him curiously before breaking into a smirk. "You don't remember me at all, do you? I mean, we met just once before but still."

Jon's eyes bulged and he wracked his brain but came up blank. He was sure he'd remember someone as beautiful as her.

She giggled then and arched a brow. "I'll give you a clue since you were kind enough to help me. My name is Sansa. Sansa...Stark." She grinned and Jon cursed.

"Fuck. Of course! Seven hells, you're one of Robb's little sisters." Red hair. Blue eyes. She could pass as Robb's twin and she looked like Aunt Catelyn. Was this really the prissy little girl in pigtails?

She giggled again. "Took you long enough. But to be fair to you, we never really 'met' met, did we?"

He smiled sheepishly. "I guess not, but still, I should've known. I'm sorry."

She chuckled. "It's okay. Between boarding school and starting right away at Citadel, I wasn't home much, more so with my parent's functions." She shrugged. "We're not allowed to have lives, remember?" She winked conspiratorially.

He laughed back and nodded. "We don't have lives so we can save yours, and all."

She blinked at him then and grinned. "I want that tattooed on my body!"

"Sorry, but I already got you beat on that," he winked.

She pouted.

"I'm kidding," Jon grinned.

"Then we'll get a matching set when we both pass the MLE. Do you promise?" She held up her pinky.

"That means I'd have to wait - When do you start med anyway?"

"I'll be a freshman come September," she said proudly.

His forehead crinkled. "Aren't you in college still?"

"I skipped two grades and I went for the straight program, just like you," she said smugly.

"Oh! So you're the Know-it-all-Stark!"

She smacked him then. "That's Bran but I'm pretty smart too."

He rubbed his arm. "Right. Sorry. First year huh? Isn't it too early to learn suturing?"

She raised a brow again and her smile fell. "Too early?"

Great, I insulted her. "I didn't mean it that way, I meant, I - they teach you that on your second year."

That seemed to placate her. "You're studying in Storm's End, right? So you're...a third year?"

"Incoming," I nodded.

"Any sage advice then?" she leaned closer.

Jon thought for a moment before answering with a smile. "Take as many vacations as you can. Better yet, don't waste anymore of this summer. After tomorrow, fly off somewhere - anywhere. Start medschool when you start medschool. Either way, no matter how hard you prepare, at the beginning, you know nothing."

Her forehead puckered. "Really?"

Jon regarded her, and remembered being as excited as she was when he was finally going to medschool but quickly got a dose of cold water over how very unglamorous it was. It was a sleep when you're dead situation every day. "Well...not to ruin your excitement and all but... I mean, I love it despite how hard it is but... I just - I would've appreciated it if someone told me how hard it really is, you know? Not put it up in a pedestal and such. Everywhere there is a hierarchy even in the smallest way. Fuck - I'm sorry. Don't listen to me, I'm just rambling," he tried to backpedal when he saw the light in her eyes dimming.

He stopped when he felt a hand on his arm. He looked up and Sansa was smiling at him warmly. "It's okay...Jon. I kind of get what you're saying. I mean, I had an idea it's going to be tough but I had no idea it's like that. I mean, I was only worried about lack of sleep and missing out on family occasions but that's not all I'm in for, is it?"

He examined her. "You want the whole truth?"

She looked at him pleadingly and felt a squeeze on his arm - a reminder that she hadn't taken off her hand from him then. "Please. I...I'm not exactly from a family of doctors. Well...you're my only hope as my only medical relative, it falls to you then."

Shit. Right. Both of us would be the first Stark to be doctors. Well, more her than me anyway. "Okay. Why don't we get lunch first?"

She started beaming at him then. "Sounds great - so you know all these stuff already?"

Jon nodded uneasily. "Uh, somewhat. I want to be a surgeon."

"Yay! That means you are the best teacher! I want to be a surgeon too. Teach me when I get stuck again?" She asked looking up at him hopefully.

"I'll do my best," Jon agreed. As if anyone can say no to that look. Was this what Robb was telling me about? Bambi eyes? Or was that his youngest brother?

Once she was comfortable enough, Sansa talked Jon's ear off halfway through their lunch at a nearby diner they went to and he did his best to keep up and true to his promise, gave her all the tips he could think of to help Sansa adjust once she starts formal medschool while Sansa soaked it all up and asked many questions and hung on to his every word.

Jon thought her smart and witty, a fast learner, and of course, stubborn like the rest of the Starks, but she was also very passionate.

As he watched her wave goodbye at him before driving off the following day, Jon thought that Sansa would be fine.

As long as she holds on to that passion, she'll be a great doctor.

Jon blinked back at the memory of that one summer he got to know Sansa a little bit and wondered why that was the last they saw each other in person. Well, last that they actually interacted face to face anyway.

Sure he got the occasional messages - mostly her asking him about some subjects and topics and yes, he'd check in on her - he was, after all, her only relative in the field and he took that role seriously, well at first.

At first because, their medical lives really did get in the way. He couldn't check on her as much as he could - he could barely even take care of himself!

And he really believed that she was doing more than well and would only need him on her first year tops and barely even. At most, they'd message each other on holidays and occasions, asking if one was as stuck as the other - wishing each other a happy hospital/school holiday. But that stopped too by Sansa's third year - Jon's internship year. And from then on, nothing from both ends.

Robb always talked about her proudly, especially Uncle Ned. I only heard good things about her, surely she was doing fine - more than fine. I heard she graduated from Citadel at the top of her class and she did get into their Neurosurgery program - one of the toughest to get into.

Surely, she'd still be the bright-eyed go-getter girl she met that summer right?

Jon couldn't be any more wrong.

The Sansa that he saw was no longer the slow to warm, shy at first girl with her long red braids, curious blue eyes, and always with a ready smile girl he met that summer - filled with dreams and brimming with excitement for starting those dreams.

The first thing that he noticed was the hair.

Her long wavy hair that curled at the ends and shone with the prettiest shade of red he's ever seen (yes even better than Ygritte's and gods knew how much he liked hers too) was now cut so short, the back looked cropped - shaved even and though the tips still curled, they barely went past her ears.

Jon couldn't understand why but seeing Sansa's hair like that really took him back. But he shook that off and tried to see - hoped to see if that was the only thing that she'd have to change. But it wasn't.

Her hair only made her features sharper, her high cheek bones were more pronounced, and higher - her eyes - her eyes that were so warm and honest before, looked impassive, cold and firm just like the rest of her.

She was sitting with all the poise of a queen with ankles tucked into each other at the side instead of legs crossed, and her hands were primly set on top of her lap while she kept her chin slightly lifted as she watched the current presenter silently.

The only sign of hope for the girl he met was that underneath her long white coat - a requirement for some residents to wear to presentations like these so they could show their hospital logos - she was wearing a dress the same color as her eyes.

"Wow, Jon. Your cousin is gorgeous!" Sarella elbowed me. "But... oh her hair! She had such beautiful long hair then but she can pull this pixie cut too."

Jon nodded dumbly, unable to tear his eyes off of her. She was still beautiful. Even more to be honest. She'd be bald and still be beautiful. And Sarella noticed the change because she was three years Sansa's senior in Citadel U where she went too before going back to Dorne for her residency, he briefly remembered.

"Tough. She looks like she's ready to fight," Drogo added. "Fierce eyes."

I couldn't agree more. Jon nodded again. There was a toughness in her that screamed intimidation despite the cool and calm exterior.

And when she stood to take her turn at the stage, Jon started to understand quickly how the change came about.

A hush went over the crowd as she was introduced and remained while she walked towards the podium. She walked - no - almost floated so gracefully yet there was a confidence in her Jon hadn't seen before.

It was there that he heard the voices - all from guys while the moderator continued listing off Sansa's credentials.

"Oh she's up."

"Yes. The Ice Princess is next."

"More like frigid snob."

Jon's brow ticked and he was about to turn around and beat up whoever the voices belonged to when he felt a hand gripping his arm and saw Sarella shaking her head then giving the same look to Drogo whose jaw was clenched so tightly.

"I don't care how smart she is. I still don't think she's a good fit for the program," continued the airy voice. "There's only so far book-smart can get you. I mean, sure, she has skills yes, but if one has to work double time - give that much effort to do the job then maybe that extra effort would be better off in a...less critical field."

"He's only saying that because she was praised and he was scolded on one of Dr. Jaime Lannister's ORs they were both assisting in," the other voice pointed out.

A snort, probably from the arrogant one. "Please. Everyone knows he's only being sweet on her to get access to that ass."

Jon's jaw clenched while Sarella held back a disgusted sniff and Drogo was starting to get scarily silent more than usual.

"And now, he's just saying that because he tried and failed in tapping that ass too."

The assholes chuckled.

"I'm just saying that a woman is not cut out to belong in Neurosurgery."

"Shhhhhh!" Jon craned his neck at the direction of the angry shushing and saw a tall bearded guy with long red hair glaring at them. "Will you cunts shut up? We all came to listen to her not to you pricks gossiping like hens with cocks." A Northern accent. Jon smiled. Northern loyalty right there. He then glanced Jon's way and noted their tight expressions and glared back at the rude men. "Shut up, listen, and clap for your co-resident or get the fook out. Fooking cunts."

Who are you and can we shake your hand or give you a medal? Wait. Co-residents?

Jon looked behind then and saw that the seats two rows behind them were occupied by residents - Citadel Hospital Neurosurgery embroidered with the lighthouse logo on their coats. That only served to tick him off more.

Sansa was presenting for them! I mean, I knew neurosurgery was competitive as fuck but with each other and at home base at least! Not in fucking contests like these. Jon bristled.

Thanks to the redhead, they finally shut up and remained that way like good residents did when reprimanded by an attending and great timing too because Sansa was just about to start on her presentation. Still Jon couldn't get over it.

"Stop it," Sarella hissed. "It's just the jealousy talking - that and being threatened by a woman nonetheless," Sarella hissed in his ear. "Sexist pigs."

"Fine." Jon focused instead on the girl he thought to have a crush on that two-day summer they had and saw the woman she'd become the more he watched her speak.

"Good morning doctors. I'm here to present to you my research entitled: Invasive versus Non-invasive approach to treating CPSP or Central Post-stroke Pain, a Meta-analytic review..."

Jon couldn't believe the transformation. Sansa exuded a quiet confidence that was the right amount of pride and grace. Her presentation was clear, to the point, and though there were many technical stuff she discussed that he wasn't familiar with, she was able to present it in a way that anyone, no matter what specialty, could get unlike the first who didn't care about the audience as he kept dropping flashy jargons simply said to impress. Sansa didn't need any embellishments. Her topic alone was attention worthy. Neuropathic pain or nerve pain was the hardest pain to treat.

And this was also where Jon saw some of the old Sansa he met. When he realized that Sansa didn't just present a case to win, she was presenting a topic that she resonated with and something she wants to both educate and call more attention from for its importance and impact not just for her colleagues, but across the different specialties. It was the sincerity in her voice and the thorough research she put in that would win this for her and true enough, at the end of this event, she did.

As she received her certificate and the ten thousand dragon check for her department's choice of charity foundation, all three of them stood up and applauded her first before everyone else joined in.

Her eyes found Jon then and she grinned briefly before settling into a simpler and humbler close lipped smile.

She was still in there. Jon grinned in relief. They haven't transformed her truly yet.

He looked back to gloat at her less than supportive co-residents who were clapping either half-heartedly or just simply politely. Well, at least, half of them. Some were clapping more enthusiastically with actual pride in their eyes. There was hope for them too.

"She won. As if there was anyone else," Sarella said loudly while she nudged at me.

Jon puffed out his chest and agreed loudly too. "It was hardly a competition."

Drogo grinned wickedly directly at the residents.

"Now you see, you fooking greenboys. That's how it's done," came the redhead.

Drogo called him over and they grabbed each other's hands and pulled themselves together for the manliest hug Jon's ever seen. Somehow I'm not that surprised that they know each other.

"Drogo, you shite, how've you been? Heard you got yourself whipped by a woman," the redhead bellowed before taking note of Sarella. "So are you the woman who finally whipped the Khal's giant horse arse?"

Sarella only laughed and shook her head. "That's my aunt you're talking about and she does hold the whip for this one," she poked Drogo who didn't look one bit ashamed as he shrugged. Sarella offered her hand then. "Sarella Martell, by the way. Anes and Tox for Dorne." He shook her hand and introduced himself. "Tormund Giantsbane - don't ask. Trauma surg in Eastwatch Veterans." He leaned down then and whispered loudly while looking at Drogo. "And I'll only believe he's whipped when I see it," he winked, making her laugh and Drogo roll his eyes.

He then looked at Jon and offered his hand to him too. Jon took it and gave Tormund a firm shake. "Jon Snow. Trauma too, no affiliations yet."

"Ah. Fresh off the boards? Wanna consider taking it up North?"

Jon was about to say that he was in fact, looking to work in the Northern peninsula where he could be far away from being the political son in King's Landing - also, the same reasoning for changing his last name, when Sarella interrupted.

"He's also the cousin of the presenter you defended," she piped up.

Tormund grumbled then. "Couldn't let them get away with that. Where I'm from, women and men don't matter. As long as you can do the job, then by all means, do it. Besides, Northerners stick together and I wasn't about to let them badmouth a fellow redhead." He then punched Drogo and Jon. "Just as we bearded men need to stick together."

Jon winced a bit as Tormund belly laughed while Drogo raised his brows and crossed his arms before he looked at me. "Shouldn't you go to her?"

He reddened. "I - yes. Of course."

Sarella flashed a knowing smile at Jon that Tormund caught. "Why don't you go on ahead?" she suggested.

"Yeah, go try and steal her away from the horde," he grinned wickedly for someone Jon just met. "Little miss here needs to show me a picture of the woman whose got Drogo's balls in her hand."

Sarella's eyes lit up. "Ooh wait!"

Drogo gave Jon a knowing smirk before he whipped out his phone and showed Tormund pictures of Rhaego, his and Dany's two-year old son. "This is the Stallion that will mount the world," he said proudly.

"Good pecker on that one. Nice job, for Khal Drogo," Tormund looked up at Drogo impressed.

Shit, I didn't even ask about Rhaego and he's a cousin too. Wait - cousin. Right.

Jon scanned the hall and found her talking to his great-uncle Aemon who was a Neuropsychiatrist.

He gathered his courage and started walking over to them. It was his uncle who saw him first. "Ah, Sansa, have you met with my great-nephew, and if memory serves me correctly, your cousin?"

She turned around then and gave Jon a bright but shy smile. She's even prettier up close. "Jon," she said, his name a soft whisper on her lips.

Jon chuckled nervously. "Sansa, hey." Should I go for a hug? Wait, we haven't done that before, have we?

Sansa stepped closer but hesitated like Jon did before she finally went in for a brief hug. She smells great. Jon's first thought before remembering to hug her back. They pulled away quickly, looking at each other awkwardly with Sansa tucking her hair behind her ear twice and Jon rubbing at his neck.

Man up, Jon. "Congratulations, Sansa. You were great up there."

She smiled shyly. "Thank you Jon."

He cleared his throat. "You look great. I mean, how are you?" He cursed inwardly.

Sansa's corner lip quirked but she didn't call him out. "Thanks and oh you know. Alive and surviving," she lifted a shoulder yet Jon caught something briefly in her eyes but before he could say anything, she shifted the topic to him. "I however am unforgivably late with my congratulations. I saw you in the top ten for your specialty boards. Congratulations, Jon." She reached up and gave Jon a quick kiss on the cheek before pulling away and giving an apologetic smile. "Forgive me?"

"There's nothing to forgive," he immediately answered.

She pouted. "Well, forgive me for not keeping contact since - it's been too long and I've been rude."

He shook his head. "It's okay, for that I'm equally to blame. But how are you - really? You're almost at the finish line."

She blinked then and tried to give a too bright smile. "It won't be long now, yes."

We heard a cough behind us and to Jon's horror he forgot his great-uncle was still there and Sansa looked equally ashamed too. "So I take it you've met then."

"Of course. Jon helped me adjust for my first year in med school and he taught me how to stitch my first suture," she recovered quickly while Jon shifted uneasy with praise.

"I hardly helped. She would've done great with or without me," he shrugged.

Sansa was about to protest when we saw her co-residents approaching. Immediately, Sansa's demeanor shifted.

Her back stiffened and her face smoothened into her neutral mask.

There were five of them, all with closely cropped or completely shaven heads that was the signature of most neurosurgery residents across most programs - a sign of solidarity for their patients that they'd have to shave as part of the OR preparations as they say, but really it was just one more form of soft hazing. It didn't apply to female residents but Jon guessed Sansa parted with her long locks to prove a point. One of them was always flanked, moving ahead of their assembly like geese in the air - another show of hierarchy.

That one, had unfeeling violet eyes he trained at Sansa. "Congratulations, Dr. Stark," he managed but Jon couldn't see the sincerity and he also recognized that voice as being the arrogant one. Finally a face for the voice.

Sansa gave a nod and a small smile. "Thank you Dr. Dayne." Finally a name for the face.

She then turned to Jon and Dr. Aemon and introduced them. "Dr. Aemon, Jon, these are my seniors. This is Dr. Gerold Dayne, our chief resident," she motioned to the leader. "And this is Dr. Humfrey Hightower the deputy chief, Dr. Lyman Darry, and Dr. Horas Redwyne. Doctors, of course, you know Dr. Aemon. And this is Dr. Jon T-Jon Snow, Trauma Surgeon and my cousin." She almost slipped on Jon's name but it touched him all the same that even without communication, she was updated making him feel doubly guilty.

They of course, greeted Dr. Aemon readily and only politely regarded Jon who didn't really mind. Dr. Aemon excused himself and that was when Dr. Dayne started on Sansa.

"I hope I wasn't interrupting anything important, but I have need of you Dr. Stark," he raised a brow at her and Jon once again felt his brow twitching.

"Of course, Dr. Dayne," she nodded at him and shot me the subtlest apologetic look. "I - " she started.

Jon cut her off and smiled kindly. "Go. I'll see you around later or tomorrow. Sarella and Drogo said to say congratulations too but they're busy over there."

She looked where I pointed and for a moment Jon could see the look of longing in her eyes but was quickly gone when her seniors started leaving. With a final wave and a quick smile, she went and followed them. "Tell them thanks and I hope to see them too."

"I will." There wasn't much Jon could do. It was an unfair world but Sansa had to follow an order from her senior.

Groveling, kissing ass, humiliation, unfair hours, and underpaid work - that was residency.

There were stages and there were steps in medical hierarchy. It gets better eventually on the way up but the way up is often dark and full of terrors.

There was nothing to do but just stick it out because like all ladders, eventually you get to the top.

Jon found Sansa later that night at the rooftop.

The rooftop of the Regency as converted to a VIP rooftop bar which was open for the delegates these two nights though they closed the bar at exactly midnight. By quarter, the staff would lead the guests down the VIP lounge instead where it was open all day and night citing that it was unseemly to catch guests falling asleep or getting drunk at the rooftop - safety reasons as well as snobbish pursuits. But guests may still stay as long as they are not inebriated and remain awake.

Drogo, Tormund, and Sarella went ahead while Jon chose to stay and enjoyed the quiet.

It was half past one and he was leaning on a rail, puffing on a cigarette while he watched the view of the still lit docks of Lannisport they could still see from this high up the Rock.

He thought he was alone when he saw a flash of red from the shadows.

He snuffed out his stick and threw it before walking over to investigate and almost jumped when he saw it was Sansa.

She had her back to him while she sat on top of her coat on the floor, still in her dress with her legs pressed together and tucked to the side, typing away on her laptop while she leaned against the wall.

"Sansa?"

She jumped - almost dropping her laptop but she failed in catching the glasses she was wearing when she surged forward. She recovered quickly while I crouched down, picked up her glasses that I've never seen her wear before, and handed it to her.

"Jon!"

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. I'm as surprised as you are," offering her glasses once more.

Even in the dark Jon could tell she was blushing. She took the glasses from him and wore it back but she didn't look up at him muttering an embarrassed thanks.

Jon thought she looked cute with her silver frames. He bet it made her eyes looked bigger, if only she'd look at him.

"Working late, I see," Jon said before sitting down next to her.

"Yes - but, oh Jon, you don't have to sit down. You'll get your pants dirty!" she frowned.

Jon chuckled. "Says the girl sitting on her white coat."

She pressed her palms to her forehead, dislodging her glasses a bit. "I know. It's gross but can I get a pass tonight?" she tried to say cheerfully but Jon could tell she was exhausted.

"Anytime. Why aren't you in your room?"

She frowned again. "My bosses are on the same floor and I need the peace and quiet or I'll never finish," she sighed.

"What floor is that?"

"45th."

"Mine is at the 50th. You're welcome to stay there."

Sansa gave him a wry smile. "At least buy me dinner first."

It was Jon's turn to flush not realizing how he sounded. "I didn't mean - I

Sansa waved him off and chuckled. "A joke, Jon. I am still capable of it."

Jon ran a hand down his face and shook his head. "You're mean and here I was doing a -

Sansa cut him off with a kiss to his cheek. "Sorry. Thanks for the offer Jon, but I'm good here. I'm actually just polishing the report I have to hand over bright and early today," she rolled her eyes.

"Sorry," Jon could only offer.

She shrugged. "S'not you're fault. It's whoever invented hierarchy," she shivered and that was when Jon noticed that she was just in a short sleeved dress that only came down to just a little below her knees. It was a little longer than what he usually saw women wear but it only made Sansa look even more lady-like which suited her just as well in Jon's opinion.

He didn't ask just took off his coat and handed it to her wordlessly.

When she tried to protest, he raised his brow in challenge while she shivered again, causing her to bite her lip and accept it graciously.

While she shrugged it on, he walked over to the bar area and took a table cloth - the cleanest one and when he went back, he draped it over her legs before settling back beside her.

Sansa looked at him gratefully then. "Thanks Jon." She reached out and gave his arm a squeeze - like she did years ago. He smiled at her fondly then.

She dropped her smile. "You should head back and sleep."

"So should you."

She sighed. "I want to but I really need to finish this."

"Anything I can help with?"

"Do you know anything about deep nerve electrostimulation for sheep versus monkeys?"

"Uh..."

Sansa quirked her lip. "Thought so. Go on, seriously, I'll be okay. I promise I won't tell Robb you left me alone if that's what you're concerned with."

"Didn't think about him. Though that is a good reason to keep staying with you, threat of your brother and the whole Northern army," he grinned.

She sighed. "Fine, suit yourself. I might take another hour."

"Go ahead, take your time. I don't mind. it's nice up here. 60th floor and all."

"I won't be chatty until I finish," she warned.

"Shutting up now," Jon made a show of zipping his lips causing Sansa to laugh once before shaking her head and retrieving her laptop.

Jon tried not to watch her as she worked, briefly contemplating if he should get her something warm to drink since she was going to be stubborn about this.

Eventually after ten minutes, he excused himself to do just that, only earning a half-committed nod.

He came back up after fifteen minutes with two styrofoam cups filled with hot water and a takeaway bag filled with tea packets, condiments, and lemon bars (they were the only ones good to go) he bought from the lounge.

Sansa looked up at him surprised and adorable looking in his too-large coat and those damn glasses.

Jon sat beside her and pushed the bag of lemon bars at her while he took out the tea stuff. "Are you an Earl Grey or a Chamomile person?"

Sansa still looked at him stunned and possibly close to tears that Jon almost panicked. He didn't know a thing about comforting a woman in tears. He coughed and repeated his question.

Sansa looked down and played with the lid of the bag she was still holding, blushing. "E-earl Grey."

"Ear Grey it is," He started making her tea and was about to ask if she took it with sugar or honey when he saw her looking inside the bag with tears silently pouring down her face.

"S-Sansa what - "

Sansa quickly wiped her face but failed to stop the tears. She tried to smile wanly. "Sorry Jon...I don't know what came over me - it's just... it's lemon bars. I love lemon bars."

She started wiping at her face more furiously then looking annoyed at herself. "Ugh. Sorry. I'm okay, I promise. I just - I'm fine - this is stupid."

Jon understood what she's going through. She was tired, she was overworked and likely faced one form of humiliation today despite her win and now someone was being nice to her. He's been there too. Any kindness, no matter how small felt like water in a desert.

So he stopped what he was doing and crouched in front of her, gently taking her glasses off, setting them safely, then he took her hands in his before bringing her to his chest slowly, wordlessly just holding her still. Experience taught him that rubbing the back or stroking the hair only brought more hysterical tears - more less words.

Sansa stiffened at first until finally she relaxed and crumpled into his chest, just the touch of her cheek to his collar and nothing else.

This kind of crying, he knew well. It was the frustrated and tired one. It didn't need the sobbing or the hiccupping - that'll only tire you out more.

Sometimes, you just needed a good cry - just the right amount of silent tears to release some of the tension. Just enough to calm down.

After a solid five minutes, Sansa raised her head, wiped her eyes one last time and took a deep breath.

Jon released her slowly and gently but kept close in case she needed another minute. "Better?" he risked.

She smiled at him then and nodded. "Yes," she laughed nervously. "Thanks Jon. I needed that. Sorry I ruined your shirt."

Jon just shrugged. "A small sacrifice you can make up to me once you become rich and famous. My small contribution to your future success."

She laughed again, for real this time. "I'll add that to the list."

"You do that," Jon smiled. "So, ready to get back to work?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"Good," he reached out and placed her glasses on her. "So. Sugar? honey?"

Sansa blushed and Jon almost did too at her reaction but he managed a smirk. "For your tea."

"Oh. Just h-honey," he heard her utter a tiny fuck that he'll let slip now.

"Honey, it is," he teased while he added it to her tea.

"You're mean."

"Sorry. Tea for apology?" He handed her the cup.

"Thanks. Apology accepted. How'd you know about the lemon bars?"

"Honestly, they were the only ones I could get fast. A lucky move then," Jon admitted sheepishly.

"Well, according to the Alchemist, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it. It must be my lucky break," she grinned while taking a bite.

Or mine. Jon thought and was quickly embarrassed for even thinking it.

What followed was companionable silence as Sansa worked. Before Jon knew it, he had dozed off.

He woke an hour and a half after with a light shake from Sansa. For a moment he forgot where he was but then he quickly adjusted when he felt his back.

"Hey, sorry to wake you but I'm actually done," she was whispering and cradling her laptop, her coat was draped in one arm, while a hand stayed on hid shoulder and from this angle he was able to take her all in better.

Jon just blinked, too caught up in her eyes that looked midnight blue in the dark.

She bit her lip and looked apologetic. "Sorry to wake you from what I saw was a peaceful sleep but you'd probably be more comfortable in your bed than here."

Jon snapped out of it and rubbed his eyes while he stood up. "You're right. Are you really done?"

She smiled and nodded. "Yup. All done and I even cleaned up too."

Jon frowned as he took in everything. "You didn't have to do that."

She rolled her eyes. "Too late. Come on, let's get back."

They started walking back when Sansa stopped for a moment.

"What is it?"

She blinked and smiled again. "Nothing. You go back ahead. I think...I want to look at the port for a little while. I'll follow and sleep, I promise."

Jon eyed her then before holding out his hand.

Sansa looked at it and then his eyes confused.

He changed and offered his arm instead. "Come on. Let's look at the view for a moment."

Likely knowing Jon won't give up, she just smiled wider and held on to his offered arm and followed when he lead her to the view he was looking at earlier.

After watching the water break against the rocks below Sansa wrapped her arms around Jon. "Thanks for tonight, Jon. It's been a while since I've been treated like a human being."

Jon returned her hug. "Sure. Though you won't be thanking me for the many times I wanted to punch your chief today."

She looked up at him then and frowned. "You heard him and the others say nasty things about me."

"Sexist pigs," he spat Sarella's earlier comment.

Sansa chuckled then. "They're just threatened by me."

"The seven hells they should. You're brilliant and tough. Drogo thinks so too."

She grinned. "Yeah?"

"Fierce eyes, I quote."

She grinned.

"It's tough and unfair, but I have faith in you," Jon tucked a strand of her short hair, feeling mad again that she had to cut it just to prove a point.

Sansa noticed but let it slip, closing her eyes instead at the feel of Jon's fingers. "I know. I'm pretty tough too."

Jon chuckled. "I know. I was almost afraid that they've transformed you for good."

She tilted her head then. "Almost?"

"For one, you're still wearing the most lady-like dress ever, and another was your passion resonating with your research presentation," he ended with a shrug.

Sansa shook her head. "The passion, yes. I do love it - every little thing about this even the times I want to kill myself or murder them instead because why should I die when they should instead moments."

"You would've covered that up easy."

"But the dress? Really Jon?"

"Uh, I figured that was another way to prove a point. That they may take away your hair and call you mean things just because you're a woman in their sick man's world they've built up, but you showed them that you can do their jobs better in a skirt and heels too," he said proudly. "That and the fact that you're two years their junior to boot."

"Wow."

"Well, wow to you first. And I'm really glad you didn't transform into a heartless gunner," he said lightly but his eyes were sincere.

"Well the summer before freshman year of med, an incoming junior taught me more than just sewing sutures and tying knots. He told me that entering the medical world was going to be tough and unfair that I must be tougher but fairer and it stuck to me all these years," she eyed Jon impishly.

Jon couldn't hide an embarrassed grin. "Wise friend."

"Mhm," Sansa nodded. "But really, the true lesson was that, he showed me what truly made a difference between a good doctor from the rest."

"And what's that?"

Sansa took his hand and and squeezed. "Kindness," she said so softly.

Jon just looked at her with his mouth open, clearly not expecting that.

Sansa started tugging at his hand. "I'm beat. Come on."

Jon shook his head, and followed, with his heart impossibly full, and a smile he couldn't wipe off from the compliment.

Kindness.

He does know some things after all.

Day 2

When Jon woke up he decided to take a risk and ask her out when the opportunity comes within the day.

He felt that something that summer years ago but thought it was more on her adoring her excitement and zest for medicine. He figured this time, he won't wait nine years to realize it and give it a go.

But unfortunately for him, the opportunity never came.

Jon didn't see her all day and he finally found out where she was from Sarella when he met up with her in the afternoon sessions.

"Sorry Jon. I saw her earlier and she told me that she had to fly back to Oldtown right away according to the shithead boss of hers. No wonder the Daynes all but cut him off the family. Her boyfriend picked her up though and they rode his family's private jet. But before she left, she asked to give this to you," she pushed a small box at Jon's hands before he could process what she was saying.

He broke it down.

One, Sansa was on a flight back to Oldtown.

Two, she was flying with her boyfriend on her boyfriend's family's jet. How did he miss that?

And lastly, there was something in his hand.

"I don't - boyfriend?"

Sarella's eyes narrowed before widening with realization. "Oh shit."

Jon looked to her for answers.

She took his arm and sat him down. "Okay, calm down. Relax."

He didn't.

She rolled her eyes and gave up. "Apparently, it's still new. He works at Citadel Hospital too. He's Dr. Willas Tyrell, one of the Radiologists. I called my dad after I recognized him when Sansa introduced us quickly." Oberyn Martell was also an Anesthesiologist as well as an Acupuncturist among other things and he was friends with Garlan Tyrell, Willas's older brother. Jon tried to absorb as Sarella explained. "Dad said that Garlan was happy that his younger brother was finally dating."

Jon's heart dropped. "Is he...is he decent?" He didn't bother to ask about looks because he knew the Tyrells were generally good looking.

Sarella smiled sadly. "He's smart, charming, handsome, well-mannered, and kind."

Kind.

Jon felt crushed.

"But it's all still new like it's only been a month and they hardly go out with her schedule. They're probably still getting to know each other - "

But all Jon heard was kind. If he was truly kind, then it won't take long at all.

I was nine years too late.

Jon stood up then and sighed, before mustering up a smile and thanking Sarella.

"Wait! Before you go broody, she did leave you something," she pointed to the box I was still clutching.

Jon opened it then and inside was a note and something wrapped in a golden tissue-like paper.

He read the note first.

Jon,

I can't thank you enough for more than tonight. I won't forget it just as I never forgot the kind guy who took pity on me when I couldn't tie my knots. You taught me more than that though, if you recall. You told me that the sign of a good knot was for

1) how it held firmly and

2) how it could be undone by just one strategic pull only the surgeon who made it knows as well as the teacher who taught it

I didn't tell you but I kept the tie I used and stole yours when you weren't looking ;)

Now I'm giving it back attached to something that would always remind me of your knot pulling last night. (I used two handed knot tying!)

Good luck with your next step Jon! Sorry I had to go again.

Until the next time we meet then (Under better circumstances I hope)

Sansa

Jon unwrapped the other gift and held it up.

He smiled when he saw a golden replica keychain of the hotel with the blue practice tie, knotted in a perfect surgical knot twice on the chain.

"See? There's hope still. They're not married yet," Sarella grinned.

Jon rolled his eyes and shushed her when Dr. Tyrion Lannister started talking.

"Okay. Last session for this course, I hope you are still awake and alive. I shall try to make this as short and as entertaining as I can. In short, all my visual aids will be anatomically perfect for everyone and I've spiked the next batch of coffee," he grinned. "Alright, I have your attention now? Well if not at least even before I speak my topic I already have your money in my pocket so we're all good here."

Laughter.

"Let me start with a favorite anecdote especially since I see a lot of residents from all over here with eyebags darker than the balls of an elephant and I could pick out the fresh board passers from the crowd easy as pie. Okay, are you ready?"

Ars longa,

vita brevis,

occasio praceps,

experimentum periculosum,

lucidum difficile

"Hippocrates, our father of Medicine said, 'The art is long, life is short, opportunity fleeting, experiment dangerous, and judgment difficult.'" He paused. "It's a tough challenge, we chose to pursue for a living. And it never ends for we keep on learning. It's hard, and more often than not, as much as we want to save lives, we want to kill our fellow doctors just as much too," he paused again but this time from the laughter that erupted from the crowd.

He raised his hand for silence before he continued. "But in the end, it's still the life we chose and thus we have no choice but to keep on living it for as long as we can. We have failures, we have triumphs, but most of all we keep on trying. But also remember, not to forget the third line. 'Occasio praceps.'

"Some opportunities come once in a lifetime. In the occasion that you miss it once, and it presents itself again, don't be a dumbass and grab it by the balls, tie it up, and never let go."

Jon swallowed and clutched the keychain in his pocket.

"Now then, I can begin."

As Dr. Tyrion went on his lecture, Jon was only half-listening.

As much as he wants Sansa happy and he truly does even if it's with someone else, he'll still hold on and hope.

They were still young.

They still had time.

"Art is long, after all," he muttered as he glanced down at the knot Sansa gave him.

#jonsa #fanfiction #jon snow #Sansa Stark #jon snow x sansa stark #fanfic #doctors AU #modern westeros #ladymdfic

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canadian-riddler · 7 years

Text

‘The Usual: Part Two’ [Scriddler Canadian AU]

Part One

Note: I didn’t originally intend this to be longer than one part and it’s been a really long time since the first half went up, so friendly reminder: they’re in Toronto and Jonathan is from Newfoundland (pronounced ‘newfnlan’). They met at the Tim Hortons where Edward was working for funsies and when we closed off, Edward had just received the location of Jonathan’s office at the University of Toronto. In the Canadian AU, Edward is five three pretending to be five four.

He waited three days before going to the location indicated by the card. He didn't want to look too eager, too desperate. He had options, and a job, and many, many personal projects to boot. He didn't need to visit Jonathan anytime soon.

Nonchalant as he was trying to be, he still spent all night thinking of what to say when he got there, of what he should do. He'd have to make it clear he hadn't been waiting because he was nervous. He wasn't nervous. He'd done this before. Many times. With people far more breathtaking than Jonathan was.

That last part was only half true.

That last part was something Edward was having trouble with. Usually Edward was wary of breathtaking people because they had very, very high standards. One could afford to when so universally attractive. Edward often had to work hard to overcome his height, as even smaller women needed convincing to merely begin consider a man shorter than six feet. It wasn't really fair, as less than fifteen percent of men were even up there, but that's what other skills were for. He didn't exactly get the impression Jonathan cared, but... Jonathan was very tall, and Edward was very... slightly below average.

But none of that was even the most thought-inducing part.

Usually when Edward ran into a snag, he would outsmart it. He would put his considerable intellect to work and think of another way. Oftentimes, his intelligence was enough to impress, or at least distract. But Jonathan was smart too. He doubted Jonathan was as much so as he - he had never met anyone who even came close - but smart. And in such a field that he might actually be able to hold an advantage over Edward.

The thought was indeed breathtaking, both in a positive and a negative way.

So maybe he dawdled a bit on his way there. Because he was realizing that going any farther with this meant getting to know Jonathan, whom he already knew was very hard to get to. And that meant he would spend time redirecting any inquiries onto Edward himself, therefore forcing Edward to reveal more of himself than he wanted to. Edward's relationships were usually very... superficial. He was not quite so likeable on the inside.

The question, then, was whether or not Jonathan knew that already. Did he know that the Edward presented to the public was different from who he actually was?

After Edward had made his way through the grounds of the university to Jonathan's office, he hesitated in front of the office door. This was it. This was where he made the decision: did he want this to go forward? Did he really want to know Jonathan as more than a customer, as more even than a friend? Did he really, really want to get into this?

He knocked.

"It's open," Jonathan said, with unveiled bitterness and annoyance. He was definitely one of those professors.

Edward opened the door and stepped into the office, which... looked more like the reshelving room at a very disorganised library. There were books everywhere. There were shelves, yes, but they were overfilled and straining under the weight inflicted on them. There were books stacked on the floor as well, and where there were no books there were instead massive piles of paper. A good amount of it was in file folders of varying states of fray, but it was also just piled wherever Jonathan had been able to throw it. There in the back of the room was Jonathan, seated at an old wood desk of the sort only seen in schools with very low budgets. His face was set so severely into an angry scowl that Edward wondered whether he was as old as he looked, or if it was just a side effect of his habitual expression. And the shadows under his eyes were darker still than Edward had yet seen. Edward had stopped taking exams at the age of fourteen, so he didn't know firsthand, but it seemed they were taxing even for the teachers. When Jonathan failed to notice him, Edward took a breath and said, "Hi."

Jonathan looked up, largely in an unpleasant way, until he saw it was Edward. His face cleared somewhat, which went a long way to settling Edward's nerves. He put his pen down. "Ah. It's you."

"Yeah." He stepped hesitantly into the office, mostly because it was difficult not to step on anything. "If you're busy I'll take off."

Jonathan grimaced. "I'm always busy. Such is the career I've chosen. No, I... had begun to think you weren't coming."

Suddenly, his decision to play things cool seemed silly and juvenile. He shook his head. "I... don't worry about it." He didn't see anywhere to sit, so he just claimed a corner of Jonathan's desk. He noted that Jonathan was wearing a different pair of glasses; they looked very heavy, and the mottled brown frames were thicker than any Edward would have worn. He didn't even know they sold glasses like that anymore. He touched his own a little unconsciously.

"What brings you here, then?" Jonathan asked, folding his hands together. "I know it was neither my sparkling personality nor my stunning good looks." It was delivered in such a deadpan and self-aware way that Edward couldn't keep from laughing.

"No, neither of those. It was your education, actually. Don't see a lot of MD-PhDs."

Jonathan seemed satisfied enough with this answer. "And what would yours be?"

"My what?" Edward hedged. Jonathan, as he already knew, was an extremely judgemental man and he did not think his answer to the question would be satisfactory. Perhaps he could waylay it.

"Your education." He had the most intense gaze Edward had ever seen; Jonathan was going to evaluate everything he said on an individual basis. He had expected that, and yet he was not prepared. Jonathan was, in a word, terrifying.

But he was so because he was smart. Edward could live with that.

"Actually, I'm mostly self-educated," Edward started to explain, cut off when Jonathan rolled his eyes and looked back down at his papers with his mouth set in a disappointed grimace.

"Of course you are."

Edward's grip on the edge of the desk tightened. "I have reasoning -"

"You're a drop-out."

"I'm a genius," Edward said through clenched teeth.

"That's why you work at Tim Hortons, where the pay is competitive and the clientele of the finest stock."

"I work at Tim Hortons because there is no better place in this country to learn to be polite to some of the cheapest, rudest, most entitled assholes in existence." He let himself off the desk and set for the door. "I think you know who I'm talking about."

"Humour me. In which field exactly does your... genius present itself?"

"All of them," Edward answered, unable to resist a question. "My interests mostly lie in engineering and computer science."

"That pays well."

"It does." He turned to face Jonathan again. "Better than a university professor."

The other man's face had smoothed into polite curiosity. "I believe you make more at Tim Hortons than I do as a university professor."

Edward reapproached the desk. "I really do have a day job, you know."

"And what would that be."

"I'm a software engineer. I make security apps. I sell a lot of licenses to businesses." That was one of his legal avenues, anyway. "Very lucrative if you know what you're doing."

"An entrepreneur," Jonathan said, voice humming with approval. Edward was able to relax. He hadn't blown it.

"I don't like having a boss. As I said, working at Tim Hortons is more of a... paid learning experience."

Jonathan sat back in his chair, putting his hands into his lap. “Out of curiosity, where do you live? This isn’t the easiest city to make it on one’s own.”

“I have a condo down in the financial district,” Edward answered. “It’s worth what I pay for it.”

“A condo,” Jonathan repeated, somewhat to himself. Edward shrugged.

“I’ve been asked why I don’t just buy a house, for that kind of money, but what would I do with an entire house? The condo is in a well-maintained building and has plenty of space as it is.”

Jonathan picked up one of the papers on his desk and turned it around, sliding it towards Edward. "Can you read this?"

Regaining the desk again, Edward skimmed the first two pages, part of a collection held together with a badly-placed staple. He frowned.

"Looks like an analysis of Freud as pertaining to... relationships." He flipped to the fourth page. "They seem to have... gone out of their way to make this work."

"That's what I thought." Jonathan held a hand out, and as Edward returned the essay he noted the skin barely seemed to stretch over the bones of his hand. It was puckered with old scars and fading bruises. That struck Edward a little too deeply and he looked away.

"Why would you need to ask me that, anyway?" He watched as Jonathan inscribed an F and the phrase 'see me' on top of the paper, looking physically pained to be doing so. "In what capacity would I ever need to be able to - wait." It was suddenly occurring to him how odd some of these questions were, in this sort of context.

"Yes?" Jonathan said, without looking up from the next essay of which he had peeled up the front cover.

"Are you interviewing me?"

"I am." Jonathan folded his hands together. "And you might be thinking: that's a little picky, for someone who obviously can't afford to be."

He might have been thinking that.

"I value my time too much to accept whatever is thrown my way. Hence the interview."

"Did I pass?"

Jonathan's eyes were deconstructing him in not a wholly unpleasant way. "I have another question."

"Sure." Edward had yet to encounter a question he did not have an excellent answer to.

"Why me?"

Well. Except maybe that one. "Why you?" he hedged.

"I know what I am. I also know you're remarkably intelligent, very charismatic, and quite attractive. I am mildly surprised you aren't someone else's partner already, sharing that condo of yours with some young attorney-to-be with curves in all the right places. But you are single, you live alone, and you work one of the worst jobs in the country just for your own entertainment. What could I, a lonely and pathetic old man with no money, no social skills, and no redeeming features whatsoever, possibly do for you?"

Edward got off the desk slowly. The only thing that came across his tongue left his mouth bitter. "I don't know."

It seemed he hadn't succeeded after all. His hands were in his pockets and he was walking towards the door when Jonathan said, "Edward."

He looked over his shoulder.

Jonathan's voice was almost soft. "You passed. But I am not one of your projects. Make sure this is what you want."

"Of course," Edward said, opening the door, and it was only when he was walking down the hallway towards the doors he'd entered the university through that he realised he didn't know what he'd been saying 'of course' to.

He did go back though, every afternoon when his shift was over, and Jonathan did not talk much but he never told Edward to leave. Edward would bring his laptop and do his own actual money-making tasks while Jonathan frowned at his piles of essays to be marked. Apparently Jonathan only assigned essays, and he hated marking them so much he always left it until the last minute. For a couple of days Edward was helping him mark them, according to some very vague rubric he had not wanted to write but had been forced to by the university, until Jonathan had decided he was marking them too leniently and made him stop. Edward was confident it had more to do with Jonathan being jealous of his reading comprehension, which was at least thirty percent better.

It was the third week of exams and Jonathan had graduated from not really talking to solely directing his signature glower in Edward's direction, which Edward discovered was not all that bad once you got used to it. He was always angry and Edward was sure he hadn't actually left his office in the last three days. He was so miserable Edward asked, "I don't get it. Doesn't someone become a professor because they love teaching?"

"I hate teaching!" Jonathan snapped, and he pressed the pencil he was holding to the paper so hard it also snapped. He threw it across the room in exasperation. "I'm only here to do my research."

"There's no other way to do it?" Edward asked, moving his laptop aside. Jonathan shook his head.

"You must be a part of a scientific institution to do research. There are a lot of ethical hoops to be leapt through. The field is severely over-saturated and I am overqualified. This was all I could find."

"So... why do you assign essays if you hate teaching? You could just give out Scantrons."

Jonathan somehow frowned even more severely. "I could what?"

"Give out Scantrons. They're cards with bubbles printed on them. You write a multiple-choice exam and -"

Jonathan shook his head by way of interruption. "If you give students multiple choice tests they will not study. They will not even read the textbook. They will just borrow the notes of the one student who gives a damn and the answers they don't know will be a wild guess."

"But you wouldn't have to mark them. You'd just feed them into the machine and it would mark them for you."

"Edward," Jonathan said in exasperation, "I might hate my job but that doesn't mean I should do it badly. I will assign them their essays, and I will wait as long as I possibly can to grade them, and I will hate every second of it. That's the price of doing things properly."

Edward folded his hands together pensively. "I can respect that," he said after a minute.

Jonathan took a long breath.

"This cannot go on much longer, however.” He spoke with a measured calm, as though he had a mental store of it he used for such occasions. "Hating your life is no way to go about it."

"So what will you do? Find a private lab?"

Jonathan tapped one finger on the desk. "I would prefer that, yes. But I have to get something else of note published. Something that will prevent them from turning me down." He put the pen in his other hand down. “I’m getting there, but the nature of my research and the limited time in which I have to pursue it ensures that it is taking far longer than I ever thought it would.”

Given he had to be at the university to do his research, and that he did not appear for the next several days and made no indication as to why, Edward began to feel a little insulted. Hadn’t he spent valuable time he could have used someplace else gracing Jonathan with his companionship? Granted, Jonathan hadn’t really asked for him to show up there every day, and he had not really talked to Edward all that much, but he had accepted as a given that Jonathan just was not one for conversation. He was a listener, a careful and meticulous listener, and Edward could respect that. He had known few who had even pretended to listen to what he had to say. So taking all of that into account, Edward certainly had the rights to feel slighted by Jonathan’s unexplained absence.

Well. He was trying to feel slighted, anyway. He tried to be indignant over hurt as a general rule; life was a lot easier that way. He didn’t want to be hurt that Jonathan didn’t seem to want him around anymore, though he couldn’t truthfully say he’d really indicated as such in the first place. He’d tolerated Edward, that was for sure, but Edward was so tired of being tolerated. He’d thought –

It didn’t matter what he’d thought. He should have nipped said thought in the bud back when it had sprouted, and he’d known that, but he had ignored his quite excellent instincts on the matter and gone ahead with this recklessness anyway.

Well, this was that, then. It was over. He was done. He didn’t care about Jonathan’s rare intelligence, or his seeming absorption of a great deal of what Edward had said, or the fact that maybe if he’d had a little longer he would have gotten through to the miserable old loner. All of that was irrelevant and he was not going to give it a moment’s thought more. Not even one.

It had been three days since he had seen Jonathan last and it was on this fourth day he made this decision, and it was also on this fourth day that he made the entirely unrelated decision to take a bit of a roundabout route home from work that just so happened to pass by the staff parking for the psychology department. There was no reason for him doing this, of course. He just felt like it. He could do that. Feel like doing something entirely unrelated to something he was not at all thinking about.

Oh, but why did his breath have to catch when he saw that old blue pile of rust sitting in the lot? And why did he find himself pulling into the parking nearest, and getting out of his car without hesitation, and… well, there was little use denying it at this point. He was going to see Jonathan. No, confront him! He deserved a piece of Edward’s mind. The nerve, disappearing without so much as a text message.

He marched himself down to Jonathan’s office and did not even give the ungrateful bastard a courtesy knock, just flung the door open and declared, “And where have you…” The rest was in the back of his throat, somewhere, but Jonathan was staring up at him from beneath long fingers bracing his forehead, and for some reason Edward’s tongue dried up. Jonathan looked as tired and pale as he had when he had disappeared from the Tim Hortons for…

He was having the sudden realisation that perhaps he had overreacted. The saving grace here was that Jonathan did not know about it. “Did you get sick again?” he ventured. Jonathan took a long breath and sat back in his chair, removing his glasses.

“I did.”

“You could’ve… let me know. So I could’ve… known.” Well that was about the smoothest pair of sentences he’d ever constructed, wasn’t it!

“The thought crossed my mind once or twice. But I reasoned you would figure it out, and besides that, I’ve lost my phone again and it probably shut off anyway.”

Jonathan did know Edward had overreacted! Calisse. How in the hell –

Oh, but that was part of what made him so alluring. He should not have known, and yet he did, and Edward just had to know how he did it! And more importantly, how could he possibly let slip from his sight a man who could outmanoeuvre him? He couldn’t! It would be an insult to them both!

Edward closed the door behind him and shoved aside the usual pile of things Jonathan was not using so he could claim the corner for himself, but before he could place himself there Jonathan shook his head.�� He wasn’t even looking at Edward and he still felt compelled to stop. Incredible. Edward needed that skill for his own.

“I’m not staying much longer. I am very tired and have achieved very little.”

“Why did you come at all, then?”

Jonathan slowly slid the glasses back on. They only marginally disguised his exhaustion. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Wouldn’t I… what.”

“If you had something to finish wouldn’t you make strides to complete it, no matter how you felt at the time?”

Edward put his hand on the edge of the desk, having the sudden, terrible urge to steady himself. He didn’t want to answer. How could Jonathan know that of him already? It was unfair! And unheard of! And… and plenty of other negative premises he simply didn’t care to list at the moment!

Jonathan, of course, only nodded. But instead of remarking on it he merely said, “It will happen again, and further after that. I become ill approximately every other month. I’m sure you can gather why on your own.”

“But why?” Edward found himself saying. “Why would you not take preventative measures by now if you know – “

“Some people,” Jonathan interrupted, “find themselves at a place in their lives where certain things become unimportant. Where a choice must be made between the now and the future. Once such habits are lived for long enough, they are difficult to break. Especially when there is no particular motivation to do so.”

That sounded… sad. And that was not a sentiment Edward expressed lightly. On the one hand, he understood it. He’d been there, a long time ago. But never coming back from such a destructive place? One would have to almost… lose a part of themselves entirely.

Instead of feeling as though he had solved more of Jonathan’s puzzle, it seemed to him he had merely been handed a few dozen additional pieces. He was unsure of what to do with them. He was unsure he even wanted them.

But Jonathan had told him this was how it would be. I’m not one of your projects. Make sure this is what you want. And he had decided that he wanted it, had decided that every day he continued opening this office door and sitting himself down on Jonathan’s desk. Was he going to back out, now that things seemed more complicated than he’d predicted? Of course not. He wasn’t like that. He was better than that. He’d made this decision and he was going to stick by it.

Perhaps, though, it was time to provide a little proof of that. Dropping by Jonathan’s office per diem was all very well, but it really meant nothing. Even if Jonathan didn’t know that, Edward did. He wasn’t there for Jonathan’s benefit. He was there for his own. Jonathan had probably expected Edward to get bored during the days he’d been gone and abandon this endeavour entirely, and he couldn’t say the thought hadn’t occurred to him. It had. Several times. Jonathan would know that.

In fact, if he were to do something Jonathan would not predict, it would indeed be something Edward did not have entirely selfish motivations for. Somewhat selfish, obviously, but not entirely.

He breezed into Jonathan’s office the next afternoon and placed a four-litre storage container on Jonathan’s desk. Jonathan initially eyed it with reluctant disinterest, as usual, but it caught his attention enough that he sat up to look at it fully.

“That’s for you,” Edward said, making room for himself on the desk. Jonathan’s movement to look at him was unnervingly swift.

“What?”

“Any schmuck could tell,” Edward answered, removing his laptop from the bag he’d leant against the desk, “that one of those things you find unimportant is eating. A poor diet is a contributor to poor health, both of which you have. I decided to do you a favour and bring you something conducive to both problems: chicken soup. You’re welcome.”

Jonathan returned to staring at the container as though he weren’t quite able to see it. “You made that,” he said, a little dully.

“I did.” He opened his computer and directly went to check his emails.

After Edward had done that and proceeded to some work that did not require quite so much of his attention, he spoke to a Jonathan whom, as usual, did not respond in the slightest. He related the cold stare of the woman in the lobby who eyed him every time she passed him, and the broken lock in the foyer of his condo building the landlord refused to fix, and the man who sniffed the pineapples at the grocery store, and the entire time Jonathan stared at the paper in front of him. Well, he was trying to. His eye kept travelling to the container and snapping back. Edward kept careful note of this, even as he outwardly did not acknowledge it. It meant something. Was Jonathan suspicious of the contents? He trusted Edward, didn’t he? There was no need to suspect him. Well, there was, but Jonathan didn’t know that. Probably.

Abruptly Jonathan picked up the paper and stuffed it into his briefcase, and Edward took that as his cue to leave. As he was sliding his computer away Jonathan stood up and asked, “Have you anyplace to be?”

Edward looked up at him, frowning. “Not really. Why?”

Jonathan was very intently closing his case. “You seem to have brought quite a lot of soup.”

What a stunning observation. Edward zipped his own bag closed. “Don’t try to eat it all at once.”

“I won’t have to, if I somehow locate someone to share it with.”

Ahhhh. How clever! Edward should have seen that coming, but had been too distracted with the seemingly ignorant comment about the amount. He smirked up at Jonathan. “I might know someone. But I’ll need an address to pass along.”

Jonathan was trying very hard not to smile and not quite succeeding. It was, somehow, adorable.

Edward accepted the post-it Jonathan handed him and headed out alone. No doubt he drove faster than Jonathan did and arriving at Jonathan’s residence before he did would be distasteful. He would take care of a few things in his car with his phone and then head to the address on the paper.

It was beginning to snow as he stepped out of the university, to which he grimaced; the stuff was one of the more unpleasant things about this country. Well, at least now he had the added excuse of needing to wait for his car to warm up. Jonathan, no doubt, would just take off with a cold engine. How that truck was still running, Edward didn’t know. He would have to look it up, but he was certain it was at least twenty years old. It wouldn’t last much longer without diligent maintenance.

It took about five minutes before his own car was warmed to his satisfaction. The roads were already streaked with slush, the plows diligently patrolling the major routes. He frowned to himself. Plows meant road salt. He needed to get his car to Jonathan’s before there was too much of the stuff being flung around.

Jonathan’s unit was not terribly far from the university – in fact, he could have walked there in about twenty minutes, and Edward made a mental note to ask why he didn’t do so – and thankfully he was already there before Edward pulled into the lot, looking for the visitor spaces. The building itself was three storeys tall, built recently enough that it had not yet been marked in whatever way by drunken and disrespectful adolescent hoodlums, and five units wide. A private owner looking to make an easy buck off lazy college students, then. Edward wondered how Jonathan could even afford it, if he made less than Edward did at Tim Hortons.

The visitor parking was about five minutes’ walk from the occupant spaces, which were behind the building. He stepped around as many piles of gathering snow as he could and, upon reaching the building itself, tried the doorhandle. It was unlocked, due to Jonathan or to arrogant morons Edward didn’t know.

This door led only into a foyer which was scattered with various paraphernalia relating to young adults who left their things wherever it was most convenient, and there were two more doors beyond the first, each at the other end of a staircase. Edward took the stairs directed downward and was able to open that door as well. Once he had done so, however, he felt as though he had made some grave mistake. Not because he had chosen the wrong door. But because what was beyond it was irrefutable evidence that it was the correct door, and he should have been prepared for what he saw but he most definitely was not.

Jonathan’s apartment was cluttered, badly lit, and unkempt. The door opened onto a very open room with the main living area on Edward’s left and the boundary of the kitchen in the back right corner marked with a high marble counter. There were books everywhere, and papers, and books full of papers. Edward found his entrance a bit reluctant. This was just… sad. Incredibly, horrifically sad. Why did a grown man live like this? It was like a scene from one of those shows about people who just could not let go of their possessions, except that all Jonathan held onto was an endless array of books. Edward just stood there and tried to comprehend what he was looking at. It was ridiculous. This was the man he had become so smitten with?

Jonathan had turned around, and he was holding what seemed to be a very old cast iron pot, and he looked from Edward to his general living space and back again. “You can leave your shoes on,” he said finally. It honestly had not occurred to Edward to take them off. It didn’t look as though Jonathan had ever cleaned the floor since he’d moved in. “This will only be a few minutes,” Jonathan continued, lighting the brand new stove he had obviously not taken care of. Edward walked slowly into the apartment, wondering if perhaps he should just… turn around and leave. He hadn’t counted on this. This was too much. How was he even to know if Jonathan’s dishes were clean? He should just leave.

“You should probably leave.”

Edward’s head snapped up to look at him. He knew again! This was getting out of hand. He attempted to swallow back his annoyance. “Why is that?” he hedged.

Jonathan’s look over his shoulder was decidedly tired. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re not impressed. You’re disgusted, in fact. You’re wondering why you came here and how a person could live like this.”

Edward’s only answer was to fold his arms. Jonathan was stirring the soup with a long wooden spoon. God, even the kitchen counter was covered in books and papers, stuffed in between all the discarded dishes, that was. The apartment also had its fair share of scattered coffee cups Jonathan must have wandered off from the university with. “Do you have an answer?” he asked finally. The strained silence, punctuated only by the grumbling of the idling coffee maker, was beginning to wear on him, not to mention the general uncomfortable atmosphere. Jonathan paused.

“The place I come from is not much different from this,” he said. “It may not be tasteful, but it’s what I’m used to.”

Edward stepped forward. “But you came here to get away from that. To be better than that.” He was guessing, but people did not travel thousands of kilometres to a new beginning in a different province merely to act out the life they’d left behind. Jonathan stopped stirring again.

“I did.”

Edward did his best to be patient as Jonathan turned off the stovetop and opened one of the cupboards, white but streaked with spills and scrapes. It was mostly empty inside, with some dishes in the very back. Jonathan removed a pair of bowls and looked at them cursorily. They seemed to be clean, though of course Edward couldn’t be certain from this far away. Jonathan poured out the soup and added a spoon to each bowl, then reached back into the cupboard again to remove two coffee cups. “Do you drink coffee?” Jonathan asked, and Edward shook his head before realising Jonathan was not facing him and wouldn’t see.

“I don’t.”

“I don’t have anything else.”

Of course he didn’t. “That’s fine.”

Edward accepted the bowl Jonathan handed him and they walked into the living room. The couch, at least, was sloppily covered with a dark blue sheet that didn’t seem to have been there all that long. It was a foot or so from a sturdy but chipped wood table, of course piled with books and magazines and papers. Edward thinned his lips unintentionally as he pushed some of it out of the way, so as to make space for himself. Jonathan did not bother, instead putting his own on top of what was in front of him.

The soup was good, obviously; Edward was very good at cooking, both out of necessity and because it was easy to impress the potential partners he invited over to his condo with a homecooked meal. It was becoming a rare thing, for a young person to be able to actually cook, as opposed to softening ramen noodles with water from an electric kettle. Jonathan did not remark on it, which left Edward miffed.

“Why did you stay?” Jonathan asked, suddenly. Edward did not actually have an answer and busied himself with carefully placing his spoon back in the bowl.

“You told me not to,” was what he decided on, and Jonathan actually looked at him and smiled at the same time. He had to look away himself because the gentle amusement in those damnable eyes was doing something to him it shouldn’t have been. He should have left, and he should be leaving, right now, but that wasn’t what he wanted to do. He wanted to do something else, all of a sudden, something that would be very bad if his future were to include going home and never coming back here again, as it so rightfully should have. Why hadn’t he left? Why wasn’t he leaving? ‘You told me not to’, what kind of a reason was that? Had he really just told Jonathan he was so easily manipulated? Shameful. This was becoming a real problem.

“That’s going to get you into trouble one day,” Jonathan said.

‘One day’ seemed to have come sooner than even Jonathan had been able to predict.

When Edward was finished he just left the bowl there on the table – Jonathan was unlikely to care, after all – and since Jonathan seemed to eat just as slowly as he marked papers, Edward had to entertain himself. Which he did by talking. He was discussing what he’d have to do in the spring to undo the damage of winter weather on his car when Jonathan put his coffee cup down and said, “Does anything in the world prevent you from talking?”

He looked at Jonathan out of the corner of his eye. He still wanted to do it. He wasn’t going to.

Maybe he was.

He couldn’t. It was a bad idea.

Or maybe it was a fantastic idea. He wouldn’t know unless he did it, after all.

“Well,” he said slowly, still arguing with himself mentally, “there is one thing.”

“Pray tell, so I’m aware for the future.”

Oh, now he had to!

But wait. That meant he wanted there to be a future. He was really going to go through with this, even though he was still disgusted by his surroundings in the back of his mind. They were deplorable. He couldn’t live like this!

He couldn’t live like this? Was he planning on moving in already?

No need to think that far ahead just now. Besides. He could still keep this casual. He would stop before he went too far. He’d know when that was, and he’d stop.

So while Jonathan was still looking at him, expecting his answer, Edward leaned forward on the couch and placed one hand on the back of Jonathan’s head. Before Jonathan had the time to move away from his touch, Edward kissed him.

He tasted strongly of coffee, which was not one of Edward’s favourite things, but it wasn’t so bad, really. Even if it had been, most of his attention was focused on making this the best damned first kiss anyone had ever had. Oh, Jonathan was lucky. Edward was better practised at this than anyone else he ever would have met. He lingered as long as he thought was safe – if Jonathan came to his senses and pulled away, it would be ruined – and then sat back in his place on the couch as though he had never moved.

More quickly than Edward would have preferred, Jonathan stood up and collected the dishes. This shortly became so irritating that Edward looked over the back of the couch, with the full intent of demonstrating his annoyance at Jonathan’s lack of a reaction, but before he opened his mouth he watched as Jonathan put the dishes into the sink. He did it with confusing slowness, and with his other hand and with just as much delay he put his fingers to his lips. He was staring into the sink as though it would tell him just what it was he was feeling, and why. Edward smiled and turned around. There! Finally. He’d done something Jonathan hadn’t seen ahead of time.

But he needed to remember that Jonathan was not one of his casual acquaintances. Jonathan had interviewed him. Jonathan wanted something that would last, and Edward was not entirely sure if he wanted to go that far just yet, but he did know Jonathan was not meant to be one of his flings. This was a different game, and Edward had to keep the rules in mind.

When Jonathan returned to the living room Edward stood up. “I should get going before the snow gets too deep,” he said. Jonathan didn’t seem to understand what he’d said for a moment.

“Yes,” he said finally. He sat back down on the couch and Edward walked to the front door. Now he was a little confused. Was Jonathan really that dazed, or –

Maybe he hadn’t been dazed at all. Perhaps he’d merely hated it so much that he couldn’t believe it had been so bad. That did make him feel hurt, but sometimes people just did not click physically. Edward didn’t find Jonathan all that attractive. He hadn’t even felt anything from the kiss himself, other than personal satisfaction at his skill that was, since there had been no reaction at all from Jonathan.

Jonathan probably wanted him to leave. He’d hated it. It would be the first time in history that had ever happened to Edward, but if anyone was going to break his streak it would be Jonathan. He was trying to become angry but could only conjure more hurt. This was unfair. Why did it matter so much? He should have just left. He should never have sat down and never –

The front porch of the building was buried in snow, and the road in front of it had not been plowed. Great. He was going to have to shovel his way to his car, and hope it was able to get through the snow and out of the parking lot. He closed the door and went back down the stairs, entering the apartment enough that he could see Jonathan but no more. “Jonathan!”

“What.”

“Where’s your shovel?”

“I… don’t have one,” was Jonathan’s answer. Edward realised he should have thought of that, given that Jonathan did not seem to own anything that had the ability to clean things up. He sighed to himself.

“I’ll see if one of the other tenants has one.” He was about to turn back to the stairs when he saw Jonathan lean over the side of the couch.

“How deep is it?”

Edward pursed his lips. “Three feet or so. It hasn’t stopped snowing yet.”

Jonathan was silent for a long moment.

“You could stay here tonight.”

Edward’s head snapped up to look at Jonathan, who was studiously inspecting a book in his lap. As though Edward would fall for that.

“I have no problem with asking around for a shovel,” he said, to push Jonathan a little. To get him to admit just why he was offering, hopefully.

“I’m going to Tim Hortons in the morning anyway,” Jonathan told him. “They won’t have cleared all of the roads by the time you need to leave your condo. You can save yourself and your car some trouble.”

“Fine,” Edward said, making pains to act as though it were a hassle to stay there. It wasn’t, though he did hope Jonathan had something to put on the couch. Something clean. He sat himself back down on the couch and opened his laptop. Jonathan stood.

“I have some sheets someplace,” he said, moving towards the room opposite the kitchen. Edward decided to follow and almost instantly regretted it. There was a small washroom next to the bedroom, and both of these were in a simply horrendous state. How could such a clean and organised mind have produced this mess? It simply didn’t make sense.

The bedroom itself held only a bed, a dresser, and a nightstand, all of which were covered with books and papers, of course. This was punctuated by entirely random piles of clothes largely consisting of plaid flannel and jeans. Jonathan was already leaning into the closet, and when he stepped back he had some sheets that were actually folded over one arm.

“They’ve been in here a while, but they are clean,” Jonathan said. He handed them to Edward and began to walk away, but for some reason he glanced at Edward and then… closed the closet door.

How interesting! What did it mean? Was there something in there Edward wasn’t to see? He had the sudden realisation that perhaps Jonathan made no effort to clear up this mess not solely because he was used to such an environment, but because such chaos was extremely effective camouflage. There was a thrilled tingling in his stomach. Fascinating. Jonathan was fascinating. He followed Jonathan out of the bedroom but took as much time as he dared, scanning the scattered paper with great interest. What secrets were hidden, buried within the piles?

“What did you say your research was about again?” Edward asked, once he’d placed the bedding on the couch. Jonathan put one hand on the back of it.

“I didn’t,” Jonathan answered. Edward waited, but he didn’t continue.

“So what is it about?” he asked finally. Jonathan looked back at the book he’d been reading.

“Fear,” he said. Again, he did not elaborate. Edward frowned.

“What about it?” You couldn’t make theses out of just that.

“Everything,” Jonathan snapped, and the intensity of his stare at that moment stalled Edward’s breath. Now he remembered. Now he remembered why he was here. He climbed onto the back of the couch and scooted over to where Jonathan was standing.

“Tell me more.”

Jonathan studied him for a long moment. To assess if it was worth the effort to tell him, maybe, or to decide if he was worth the knowledge. He would pass this test too, of course.

“Once you know fear, you know everything,” Jonathan said slowly. “No motivation, no behaviour, no thought is beyond you. I can know everyone and everything on this earth once I know fear.”

Now that was a philosophy Edward had never heard before. He leaned forward as much as was safe. “Are you sure about that?”

Jonathan did not so much as blink. “Why are you here?”

Edward frowned. “Because you told me to stay here.” The narrowing of Jonathan’s eyes seemed somehow… predatory.

“You simply do as you’re told, Edward?”

“Of course not.” He faced forward again, suddenly realising he wasn’t sure where this was going.

“But to my larger point. Why are you here? Why did you come at all? Surely you knew what you were in for.”

He had. He had prevented himself from thinking about it, but he wasn’t stupid. He’d known. He opened his mouth to provide an answer but could not think of one he liked. Jonathan answered for him.

“Because you’re afraid.”

“Of what?” Edward snapped, which did not help his case whatsoever. Jonathan’s smile was minute but even so it hollowed out his stomach. He was trying to think of a discreet method of edging away, because it felt as though Jonathan were looming over him suddenly even though he was several inches away and not doing so at all, but whatever he did, Jonathan noticed. He was so very intelligent and somehow Edward had forgotten.

“That no one will ever understand,” Jonathan told him, and his low voice might have been soothing if Edward’s teeth hadn’t been ground together. “What’s the point of being a genius if you’ve no one to share it with? No one to truly appreciate it in the way that you do? And the people who do remark on it, well, they discard everything you do as effortless, don’t they? Your achievements have no true worth, because you didn’t have to work for them, did you?”

“Of course I did!” Edward found himself saying, even as his fingers were gripping the back of the couch with force. “I…” Jonathan was good. Too good, perhaps.

How could there be a such thing as ‘too good’? No, Jonathan knew things. Things Edward needed to know. Jonathan put a hand on his shoulder, and it… it felt nice. It should have added tension to the situation, given the context, but Jonathan had never touched him before. His hand was firm but… reassuring. Jonathan had a mastery of physical cues the likes of which Edward had never dreamed. He was becoming more convinced by the moment that Jonathan truly was disguising himself beneath all the clutter. It was simple and common to overlook a person who seemingly did not have themselves together, but Jonathan did. And he did in a far greater fashion than anyone Edward had ever known.

“I am not here to intimidate you,” Jonathan said, and just like that he seemed normal. Relatively, anyway. “There are doubtless several other reasons for anything a person does at any given time. But rarely is anyone truly motivated by anything other than their own private fears.”

“Why did you ask me to stay?” Edward ventured. He marvelled at the fact that Jonathan could convey so much with the barest motions; it was barely even there but his smile was at once gentle and scolding.

“Because I enjoy your company,” he said simply.

It was such a clean reason. Edward admired it. He himself had a sort of… checklist, of the requirements a person must fulfill to even really be near him, but Jonathan’s answer… he envied it. How clear and precise the mind that produced it must be!

“I cannot offer you anything you are used to,” Jonathan went on, “but you are welcome to what I have.”

Edward found that his hands were clasped together. He didn’t really know why that was. “Thank you,” he remembered to say. Jonathan nodded and left for the bedroom, and Edward swung his legs back over the other side of the couch. Standing up, he pulled the sheet off the couch and revealed a mismatched collection of cushions that clearly came from various other pieces. He sighed and neatly arranged a clean sheet overtop. The pile smelled a little musty but Edward wasn’t sure if that were because they’d been sitting in the closet for so long or because just about everything here carried the tint of old books. He stripped to his underclothes and sat down on the couch. As he pulled his laptop towards him he had the sudden thought that no one had ever simply enjoyed his company before. He paused in his accessing one of the online engineering journals he read.

Thinking about it made him… happy.

But why? He hadn’t done anything. It wasn’t a reflection of effort. Jonathan was content with his mere existence? Why?

How could anyone simply be content with Edward the way he was, without him even doing anything to earn it? It was a nice notion, but an unrealistic one. There would be a cost, and Edward would have to make a payment eventually.

He felt as though it would be nice, to allow himself to be deluded just for a little while and pretend it was all true and genuine and honest. Just this once. He settled himself into the arm of the couch and tucked the sheet around his waist and went on with his reading.

If he’d made a mistake, he would deal with it later.

Author’s note:

There is a part three. Someday. It’s started.

MD-PhD stolen from Codot.

#Scriddler #fanfic #fanfic from Indy #so says Indy

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