#Florida Man Strikes Back

[ratatatastic]

"Can I say something real quick though? I was worried a little bit on both of you guys going to the plate and throwing out the first pitch... 'cuz I evaluate that and a lot of people do too. And you've seen some guys that just—they don't know how to throw a ball!" "Yeah." "And they're unbelievable athletes and they don't know how to throw a ball! You guys both did the same time, you did a good job on that! But I was kind-of worried." "So I actually threw out the first pitch in Miami two years ago and I hurt—it was right after I was traded. And I had a shoulder injury, like, during the year before and first, like—we're athletes. Hockey players are great athletes! But very rarely are you, like, going out there and throwing the ball like you were with pops when you're, like, 5 years old! You don't do that anymore! So I had a shoulder injury and I'm like, 'I'm an athlete, right? Like I'll just go up to the mound and just chuck one in there, you know put a little sauce on it, whatever.' I tried to throw a little, like, oomph into it and, like, I didn't even get it to the plate from the mound! Like it's—when you don't practise and it's the first time throwing a ball, like, it was a hundred—" "Where was that?" "It was in Miami!" "Were you getting chirped?" "No, I wasn't getting chirped!" "At the Marlin's game? Nobody was there!" "It was—it was—" "No one was there, nobody saw it! It's not—" "No, I wasn't getting chirped! It was—" "You can tell everyone that it was a strike right down the middle!" "No! Somebody saw that! Some of the guys saw that and were probably like, 'Errgh...'" "It was—Yeah, whatever! But, you know, who cares! But I actually before the St. Louis one... I didn't know the setup if I was gonna be from the mound or not but I will admit that in the morning I went out in the backyard and just, like, threw 5—" "Oh, you have to!" "—just to loosen up. I'm way healthier than I was two years ago but it was just like, you know—it was fun! It was a great day!" "Did they—" "When your shoulder gets messed up though, man..." "I can't imagine these pitchers that throw so much in a year. Like they gotta be—I have a lot of respect for them. I used to be like, 'I pitch one every five days if you're a starter like whate—' If you're chucking in one hundred pitches and all your warmup and stuff like that's a tough supposed to do that—" "I don't think your shoulder is supposed to do that..." "No! And they snap it in there! Very impressive! And—" "That's why they get paid a lot of coin~ Dude, let's go 250 schmillions—" "I was gonna say that's why—yeah. Good for them!" "I know you do pretty well—" "It was cool seeing Ohtani hit a home run!* I think he's awesome! And driving around in the car before with Jayson [Tatum] like—that Ohtani's a big man."

Cam & Strick Podcast | 8.27.24 (x)(x)(x)

*funny that matthew mentions that he thought it was cool to see an ohtani moonshot irl the cardinals telecast was actually zoomed in on him in the stands before it happened so they had to cut from him to shohei trotting around the bases so its nice to know he enjoyed the sho as much as we all do XD

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

1968 [Chapter 1: Ares, God Of War]

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 5.7k

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Let’s begin with a definition.

Disaster is a noun derived from Ancient Greek: dus, a prefix meaning “bad,” and aster, or “star.” In the time when humans worshipped Zeus and Hera, Hephaestus and Aphrodite, it was believed that tragedies resulted from the inauspicious positioning of celestial bodies: a volcano erupts because of Jupiter, a returning comet brings with it a flood. There is a certain helplessness inherent in this mythology. There is predestined suffering that lies in wait until all the jewels of the sky have malignantly aligned.

Have you ever met someone who made you ache to change the stars?

~~~~~~~~~~

Gunshots explode through the lobby of the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida; you feel the wind of the bullets as they clip by, fragmented metallic rage. Aemond is on the marble floor, blood pouring down his face, blood all over the white shirt beneath his navy blue suit jacket when you rip it open, tearing a button loose. He’s reaching for you through the jostling and the screams, leaving crimson handprints on your mint green dress. And you think: He just won the Florida primary. He’s not supposed to die. He’s supposed to be the president.

“What happened?” Aemond murmurs, his right eye dazed and only half-open; the left has vanished beneath a cloudburst of gore. Perhaps ten yards away, people have caught the assailant and pinned him against one of the vast Venetian windows until the police arrive. They’re roaring at him in red-faced fury, their closed fists strike his ribs and his cheekbones, their knuckles paint him scarlet and indigo.

“You’re alright, you’re alright.” You brace both palms over the maroon stain spreading rapidly across Aemond’s chest and press down as hard as you can. Your fingers are drenched in seconds, warm fading life. He’s bleeding to death. You shriek through the turmoil: “Criston?!”

“Is he okay?” Aemond asks faintly. He means the baby; you’re six months pregnant with his first child, his greatest treasure, his Atlantis, his Holy Grail. Aemond has already decided that it’s a boy. Sometimes you fear what will happen if he’s wrong.

“Yes, honey, the baby’s fine, don’t worry. Criston!”

Aegon is here instead, sweating out rum and ruin like he always is, hair too long, veins full of pills, colliding with you and pawing at his dying brother with untrustworthy hands. “Aemond?!”

You shove Aegon away, splattering him with blood. “Get back, he needs air!”

“Where’s he shot?! Let me see—”

“I told you to get back!”

“Goddammit, you don’t own him! He’s mine too!”

Criston has battled his way to you and is yanking Aegon back by the collar of his frayed olive green army jacket, stolen from Daeron when he visited home after basic training, a uniform of embittered revolution worn by a man who’s never fought for anything. “Aegon, make sure someone’s called for an ambulance, then meet the paramedics at the door and help them find us.”

“But—”

“Go!” Criston yells, and Aegon scrambles to his feet and is lost within the crowd. You can hear Otto bellowing at journalists and hotel employees to make space for the fallen senator; there are flashes of cameras and prayers shouted aloud. Above your head are crystal chandeliers and a vaulted ceiling hand-painted by 75 Italian artists in the 1920s; swimming in your skull are visions of Jackie Kennedy in the pink suit filthy with her husband’s brains. It’s just before midnight on Tuesday, May 28th. Upstairs in their oceanfront Imperial Suites, nannies will be shaking awake the absent adults of the Targaryen dynasty, who retired with the children before Aemond made his victory speech in the hotel ballroom: Alicent, Helaena, Fosco, Mimi.

Criston’s hands—larger, stronger—replace yours over the gushing wound in Aemond’s chest. What did the bullet hit? His lung, his heart? He’s not speaking anymore, his right eye is closed. His bloodied hands rest open and empty on the floor. “Criston, he’s dying,” you sob.

“No he’s not. We’re not going to let him.”

“What’s the closest hospital?”

“Good Samaritan is just across the bridge on the mainland.” It’s Criston’s job to know these things, though he had been thinking of you when he plotted his meticulous notes in his day planner: in case you eat a bad cheeseburger, or trip on the stairs, or catch the flu and start burning up with fever. Aemond worries about the baby. Aegon has five children, Helaena has three, and Aemond will feel that he has been robbed of something if he does not swiftly procure a family of his own. He needs you on the campaign trail, but still, he worries.

Across the lobby, the police have arrived to arrest the aspiring assassin. He puts up a fight when they try to handcuff him and earns a nightstick to the gut, an elbow to the nose. He is choking on his own blood. Perhaps he is drowning in it. Good, you think.

“Don’t kill him!” Otto booms at the officers. “I want him alive for trial! I want him to ride the lighting up in Raiford, you keep that son of a bitch alive!”

“Aemond?” You thread your fingers through his blood-soaked hair. What happened to his left eye? Is it somewhere underneath all that carnage, or is it gone? “Please wake up. Please stay with me. We need you. The baby and I need you.”

“He’s going to live,” Criston promises, both hands still clamped over the bullet wound to slow the hemorrhaging.

“Aemond, please…” How can he be the president with only one eye?

An old woman in a yellow striped skirt suit is lumbering close with a homemade prayer rope clenched in her fist. “A komboskini for the senator!” For his last rites. For his soul.

“He doesn’t need it!” Criston says. “He’s not dying! No one is dying tonight!”

Still, you take the komboskini from the lady, each of the 100 knots a prayer unspoken. She is a devotee of Aemond, and you must show her gratitude. “Efcharistó, aderfí. O Theós na se evlogeí.” They are some of the few Greek words you’ve mastered; you’ve used them often since Aemond announced that he was running for president. Thank you, sister. God bless you.

The paramedics arrive, splitting the crowd like a laceration, white uniforms and a stretcher to ferry Aemond away. People are wailing, cursing, swearing vengeance. Aegon has returned and is peering down at Aemond with those large, glassy, muddled eyes, afraid to ask. “Is he…is he still…?”

“He has a pulse,” Criston replies. He helps the paramedics drag Aemond onto the stretcher and strap him to it. Your husband’s shirt is now drenched in red like garnet, like cinnabar, like the poppies that commemorate the boys butchered in World War I, like the wasted blood being spilled in Vietnam, men reduced to memory. “Good Samaritan?” Criston confirms with the paramedics.

“Yes sir,” the most senior one agrees. And then to you, with great deference, with compassion that transcends what somebody can harbor for strangers: “Ma’am, there’s a place for you if you want it.”

“I do,” you say, tear-streaked face, hands bathed in blood. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

The ambulance is idling outside the main entranceway of the hotel. Criston grasps your hand to steady you as you step up into the back, and you take a seat on the red leather bench beside the stretcher. The paramedics are placing IVs, holding an oxygen mask to Aemond’s face, muttering urgently into their radio, abbreviations and code words you can’t understand, a secret language of organic calamities. High above the stars are crystalline and radiant in a clear sky. In your own chest—unshredded by metal, unpierced by rage—your intact heart is pounding.

The lead paramedic turns to you again and says: “We can fit one more person.”

It’s your decision. You are the senator’s wife; you were supposed to be the next first lady of the United States. You look through the ambulance’s open doors. Aegon stares back expectantly, his hair falling in his face, his arms thrown wide, petulant, combative, useless, drunk. “Criston.”

“Bitch!” Aegon hisses at you as Criston climbs into the vehicle. The doors slam shut, the engine rumbles, the siren squeals as the ambulance races westbound on Breakers Row towards County Road, which connects with Flagler Memorial Bridge and the mainland.

Through the rear window you watch Aegon as he stands in the white-gold hotel luminescence, becoming smaller and smaller until he vanishes, and all you can see are streetlights, and all you can smell is blood.

~~~~~~~~~~

Every story needs its cast of characters. Here are the major players in the summer of 1968.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson is in the White House watching the clocks tick towards November 5th, when his successor will be ordained. He has chosen not to seek reelection. Since his ascension upon Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Johnson’s domestic focus has been unprecedented civil rights legislation and his War On Poverty, yet what has infected the media like blood poisoning is the war in Vietnam. On the television are napalm bombs incinerating Vietnamese peasants, caskets draped with American flags, riots being beaten down by police, college students torching draft cards and chanting “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Now the president is sick in body, in spirit, in heart, and this is not a metaphor: he suffered a near-fatal cardiac arrest in 1955 and another shortly after John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, Texas. He will die almost exactly four years after leaving office. Had he sought another term, he would have been unlikely to survive it. The public eye is something like a snake bite; it sinks its fangs in and you hope the venom burns clean before it can curse you with clots or hemorrhages or paralysis, before it can drown you in the dark waters of infamy.

In the void left by President Johnson’s surrender, four factions have emerged within the Democratic Party. The old guard—the same labor unions, congressmen, and local political machines who have steered the platform since the days of Franklin D. Roosvelt’s New Deal—has flocked to current Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey is competent yet uninspiring, a mid-fifties Midwesterner who flinches at the unpolished fury of antiwar protests and sedately lectures Black Power activists on the dangers of “reverse racism.” He is not a threat. He is a sheep in sheep’s clothing, and this is the time for wolves.

Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota is unapologetically opposed to the Vietnam War, a moral crusader, a reluctant warrior, a man who wears his lack of taste for the presidency like a badge of honor. He feels compelled to run, but he does not crave it. He thinks this makes him a saint; but Joan of Arc was burned at the stake and Saint Lawrence was roasted alive. Like Halloween candy plunked into a child’s neon orange plastic pumpkin, McCarthy has collected his own coalition, college students and posh urbanites who believe themselves to be the future of the Democratic Party. In 2016, people will conjure McCarthy’s ghost when drawing comparisons to a controversial left-wing senator from Vermont named Bernie Sanders.

If McCarthy is the future and Humphrey is the past, then former governor of Alabama George Wallace is downright archaic. He is the candidate of choice for Southern white supremacists, averse to Republicans since Lincoln and still reverent of Depression-era New Deal programs that kept them from starving to death. Wallace is best known for his promise of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” and pledges to end the chaos that has besieged America through strict law and order. Provided he loses the Democratic primary, Wallace plans to run in the general election as an Independent, hoping to peel away enough support from the major party candidates to force the House of Representatives to declare the winner and then leverage his votes to negotiate an end to federal desegregation efforts in the South. His devoted wife Lurleen just died of uterine cancer, a diagnosis which Wallace kept hidden from her for years; doctors are in the habit of informing husbands of their wives’ ailments and giving them carte blanche control over the treatment plan, which unfortunately in Lurleen’s case was nothing. She was 41 years old.

In his short-lived castle of red corridors like the marrow rivers of bones, President Johnson hides from the hippies who jeer and spit; Humphrey frowns at them, McCarthy tries to appease them, Wallace says the only four-letter words they don’t know are “w-o-r-k” and “s-o-a-p.” But Aemond climbs down from podiums to meet them like old friends. He is young, only 36. He has a brother serving in the swamps of Vietnam. He is focused, determined, insatiable; he devours every scrap of news that is printed about him and writes his speeches by hand. As the self-admitted runt of the Targaryen family, Aemond knows what it is like to be underestimated. He wants a better America, and he wants to be the president, and he wants these things in equal, relentless measure, each fueling the other until these ambitions become inseparable. He has grown up hearing slurs against Greeks and consequently has no tolerance for discrimination, which he contends is antithetical to the American Dream. He attends civil rights marches in labyrinthian cities, antiwar protests on college campuses, union meetings in coal mining towns of West Virginia and Kentucky and Wyoming, music festivals crowded with long unwashed hair and braless women, fundraisers flush with the deep pockets of the Northeastern elite. Aemond’s coalition grows each day, bleeding away strength from his rivals like a Medieval surgeon. Their flesh turns cold and anemic, while Aemond’s heart pumps scalding torrents of blood.

If Aemond wins the Democratic primary at the convention in August, his opponent will almost certainly be the Republican frontrunner Richard Nixon of California. Nixon wants the White House just as badly, and he’s much smarter than he looks. He was Eisenhower’s vice president for eight years in the 1950s and lost to the ill-fated John F. Kennedy in 1960 by a whisker; some say he did not lose at all, but instead was cheated out of 100,000 votes by Kennedy’s mafia connections in Chicago. But with the Democrats divided and their incumbent president floundering, Nixon’s timing has never been better. He was once a poor boy with two dead brothers who earned a scholarship to Duke Law. Now he will become whoever he needs to be to win the presidency of the United States.

1968 is the year of wolves. The fangs are sharp, and the bellies ache with hunger.

~~~~~~~~~~

A local deli has opened early and sent sandwiches to Good Samaritan Medical Center for the family and friends of the senator from New Jersey: ham and Swiss, cucumber and cream cheese, tuna salad, egg salad, pimento cheese, BLTs, Cubans. The lobby is filling up with bouquets of flowers and handwritten notes. You pace and count the knots of the komboskini over and over again as you wait; Aemond has been in surgery for hours. The nurses periodically bring you Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate, scalding watered-down sweetness to distract you from the fact that some surgeon is currently rooting around inside your husband’s ribcage.

Alicent—a convert to the Greek Orthodox faith just as you are, though far more zealous, far more sincere if you dared to admit it—is pleading for God to save her son as she clasps her own prayer rope. Helaena is seated beside her, eerily calm. Helaena’s husband Fosco is wandering around boredly and inflicting small talk upon the nurses, ogling out the third-story windows, playing with his red Duncan yo-yo. Otto is making a series of calls using one of the phones at the nurses’ station. Criston is there too, leaning over the countertop and speaking with Otto in low conspiratorial whispers.

Aegon is sitting alone and glaring at you. He takes a rattling bottle of pills—prescriptions that doctors are too afraid not to write for him when he asks—out of a pocket on the front of his green army jacket, spotted like a leopard with your bloody handprints. He opens the amber-colored, cylindrical container and pours two, no, three tiny white tablets into his palm. He tosses them into his mouth and washes them down with a swallow of his own mediocre hot chocolate, still glaring. You ignore him.

“How could this have happened?” Mimi says again from where she’s slumped in her chair. Aegon’s wife has a Snow White sort of beauty, but with a perpetual ruddiness in her nose and cheeks from the gin she sips constantly. You suppose it would make anyone a drunk, being married to a man like that. Her maiden name was Marina Marceline Leroux, but everyone has always called her Mimi, even the press on the rare occasions when she makes an appearance. Her children—Orion, Spiro, Violeta, Thaddeus, and little Cosmo, only five years old—are all back at the Breakers Hotel with the nannies, the same as Helaena’s. Mimi blubbers to nobody in particular: “How…? Who…? Who would want to hurt Aemond…?”

Someone needs to sober her up. You fetch a BLT off the platter of sandwiches and offer it to her. “Here. Eat.”

“I’m not hungry. Who on earth could be hungry at a time like this? I’m absolutely nauseated, I’ll never want food again—”

“Mimi, eat the sandwich.”

“Fine, fine,” she slurs morosely, then takes an unenthusiastic bite. She listens to you, all the women do. They listen to you, and you listen to Aemond, and the circle is closed and complete.

Criston is walking over now. You turn to him, needing good news, bad news, any news. “It was a Wallace supporter,” Criston says. From his seat, Aegon is watching Criston with his slow drugged gaze, listening intently. “Some bell pepper farmer from up by Jacksonville.”

“He’s been taken to the local jail for holding?” you ask, and then add: “Alive?”

“Yeah, and he already has a record. Assault and battery. His brother-in-law is apparently a Grand Dragon in the Klan.”

“What the hell is a Grand Dragon?”

“Well, it’s higher than a Goblin, but not as illustrious as an Imperial Wizard, does that answer your question?”

“Perfectly.” You smile at Criston, a pained, wry smile. He returns it and places a palm over your belly. You are still wearing the mint green dress Aemond picked out for you this morning, before he won the Florida primary, before he was shot twice by the disciple of a political adversary and laid at death’s doorstep. You are still covered in your husband’s blood.

“You’re feeling alright?” Then Criston smirks, knowing how ridiculous he must sound. “You know. All things considered.”

“We’re both fine. The baby’s moving around, I can feel it.”

“You can feel him, you mean,” Criston teases, knowing Aemond’s preoccupation with his unborn son; but you can’t bring yourself to appreciate the joke.

Aegon says to you suddenly: “How the fuck did you let this happen?”

“What?” you answer, stunned.

Aegon stands and approaches, lurching, raging. “You always have to be right beside him, in the photographs, in the headlines, in the soundbites, but you let some psychopath run up and shoot him? Twice?!”

“I thought he just wanted to shake Aemond’s hand, or maybe get a quote for an article—”

“You didn’t notice the gun?!”

“Aegon, sit down,” Criston orders.

“It happened in seconds,” you say. “You think you would have done better? You and your Valium, and your Librium, and your Percodan? You think your reaction time would have been so superior to mine?”

“Please,” Alicent moans, mopping tears from her pink cheeks with a handkerchief. “Please, don’t fight, not now…”

“We are all friends here,” Fosco adds in his thick Italian accent, yo-yoing by a window.

“You want to be the first lady so bad but you can’t handle it!” Aegon shouts, his voice echoing through the lobby. “You’re not some prodigy, you don’t have all the answers, you’re just a girl who stitched yourself to Aemond and then you let him get shot, he’s being operated on right now, maybe he’s even dying, and you still act like you’re so fucking perfect—”

“You’re mad because you know that everybody here is thinking the same thing,” you tell Aegon, cold and cruel. “That if someone had to get killed tonight it should have been you.”

Aegon’s mouth drops open; he stares at you with that slippery, opaque, stoned woundedness, pathetic, infuriating, illogically childish. Everyone else pretends they haven’t heard you. Alicent sniffles into her handkerchief. Fosco begins humming I Want To Hold Your Hand. Mimi chews sluggishly on her BLT. From the nurses’ station, Otto says, holding the phone to his chest: “It’s George Wallace. He’s calling for Aemond’s wife.” Then he waits to see if you’ll agree to take it.

Of course you will. You have to. You are acting in your husband’s stead. You go to the nurses’ station and grab the handset when Otto passes it to you. “This is Mrs. Targaryen.”

“Ma’am, I just wanted to offer you my sincerest condolences.” He has a pronounced drawl, born and raised in what he has praised as the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland. You animal, you think. You braindead bigot. “I do hope the senator makes a hasty recovery. I sure would like to beat him at the ballot box, but I have no stomach for anarchy. An act like this is repugnant to me, as it should be to any red-blooded American.”

“It was one of yours, do you know that?” you say, dripping venom. “One of your hateful ghouls.”

“I have no such knowledge. But if the shooter does turn out to be a supporter of my campaign, I disavow him utterly. He deserves a nice long sit in Old Sparky and then to meet his maker.”

“You inspire men to commit violence, and then you renounce them when they spill blood. I’m still wearing my husband’s. It’s on my hands, it’s on my dress, and I will not absolve you of blame. You are a gardener of discord. You grow it like roses or wheat. You tend to it until it blooms.” Otto is studying you, bushy eyebrows raised. “If you’d truly like to repent, perhaps dropping out of the Democratic primary would be a good start. And then you could find something useful to do, like drowning yourself.”

From whatever office he’s currently lounging comfortably in, his shoes kicked up on the desk, Wallace chuckles. “Aemond is very fortunate to have as ardent a defender as you, my dear.”

“Yes, a devoted wife is such a treasure. It’s a shame you killed yours.”

“Ma’am, once again, I just wanted to express how terribly sorry I am for your family’s hardship. I would never wish for an incident like this—”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be emboldening white supremacists then!” You slam the phone as you hang up.

Otto looks at you. He says: “Did it go well?”

The heavy double doors leading to the operating theater swing open, and a surgeon steps through them, still drying his hands with a dark blue towel. He has changed his scrubs and washed his skin, but you notice a spot he missed: a fleck of half-dried blood up by his temple. That’s Aemond, you think. That’s a piece of him.

Everyone rushes to gather around the doctor, even Mimi; she lists like a ship taking on water as she walks, gnawing at all that remains of her BLT, just a sliver of white toast crust.

“The senator is alive,” the doctor says, and Alicent cries out in relief. Criston rests a palm on her shoulder. “But we could not save the eye.”

“He’s half-blind?” you ask. There’s never been a half-blind president. There’s never been a Greek one either. And the only reason this is stuck in your mind is because you know it will consume Aemond’s.

The doctor nods. “We had to remove it. The bullet that struck Senator Targaryen in the head, fortunately, was more of a graze. It ricocheted off his skull and didn’t cause any trauma to the brain, but his eye was…” He hesitates, trying to find a more polite word than shredded, macerated, pulverized. “Destroyed.”

“You stopped the bleeding?” Aegon says, astonished. “He’s okay? He’s really okay?”

“The second bullet pierced the thoracic cavity and was lodged less than an inch from his heart. He was very lucky. We repaired the damage to the best of our ability, and I am optimistic that the senator will make a full recovery. He’s resting comfortably now, but he should be awake soon.”

“Oh, thank God,” Alicent says, glistening dark eyes raised to heaven. The salient points gathered, Fosco wanders off again, his yo-yo dangling from its string.

Otto asks: “When can he resume campaigning?”

The doctor is caught off-guard; it takes him a moment to answer. “That will depend on the senator’s stamina as he regains his strength. If he chooses to stay in the race at all.”

Otto scoffs. “Of course he’ll stay in. This is what he lives for. You really can’t give me a ballpark figure?”

The doctor is determinately impassive. “I would estimate a month or two before he can withstand the rigors of the campaign trail again.”

“California is June 4th,” Otto recalls, counting off dates on his fingers. “Illinois is the 11th, New York is the 18th…”

“Look, there are people outside!” Fosco announces excitedly as he peers through one of the windows. “Hello! Hello everybody!”

“Fosco, you idiot, stop waving,” Otto snaps. “Go sit down.”

“But they are cheering.”

“Not for you.”

Fosco, somewhat deflated, grabs an egg salad sandwich off the platter and plops into a chair to eat it. He’s dressed in a green plaid sport coat and tight white trousers, very chic, very European. You’ve never been able to imagine Fosco and Helaena being passionately romantic with each other. They’re both a bit too doll-like for that, closer to Barbie and Ken than flesh and blood, blank stares and vague ambitions.

“Someone should talk to them,” Alicent says softly. She means the crowd that is forming in front of the hospital: journalists, cops, local politicians, mutilated veterans, college kids, farmers, fishermen, women and children, the future and the past. Everyone turns to look at you.

“I’ll do it,” you volunteer. You will, you must. Aemond could have chosen a hundred similarly suited women to be his wife, but he chose you, and when he did your vows became a blood oath.

Criston accompanies you downstairs to where the crowd has gathered just outside the front entrance of Good Samaritan Medical Center. The night air is warm and humid, the stars bright. You had thought of so many things to tell these people as you’d stood in the elevator as it descended, but now your mind is empty, fearful. There are photographers with blinding camera flashes and apostles waiting with famished eyes. From the depths of injustice and poverty and war, they have come to pay their respects to the man they believe is destined to save not just themselves but their world. What should I say? What would Aemond want me to say?

“I am very pleased to share with you all that Senator Targaryen is out of surgery and regaining his strength.”

There are cheers and applause and prayers; you are still clutching the komboskini that the old woman gave you in the lobby of the Breakers Hotel. You see more prayer ropes in this flock, and rosaries too, Bibles and dog tags, copies of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Joanne Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

“We would like to thank you for your heartfelt support. Aemond and I are so very grateful, and he is looking forward to being back on the campaign trail soon.”

More clapping and whistling, and then the crowd waits. You aren’t sure what they want to hear as you stand in the glow of the hospital luminance; your hands are trembling wildly, so you clasp them together as you hold the komboskini. Criston glances over at you, concerned. You settle on the truth.

“The man who tried to kill my husband tonight is a supporter of former Alabama governor George Wallace and an avowed white supremacist. Any ideology that advocates for violence and prejudice is a threat to our bodies, our nation, and our souls. We will not surrender to it, not even when our lives are in jeopardy. We will not concede that hope for a better world is lost. We will press ever onward with the knowledge that God is on our side, and that the future of this country is worth fighting for.”

You are bathed in flashbulb lightning; your ears ring with the thunder of the applause. You are shaking hands now, nodding, beaming, Criston following you like a shadow as you move through the congregation. You stop to listen to a middle-aged woman in a floral dress who wants to give you marriage advice: never get bossy, don’t become selfish, remember that you are his safe harbor in the storms of life. It is your job to gift her your momentary veneration. You have beauty, but she has wisdom; or at least, that is the bargain that has been struck, that is the presumption everyone agrees upon. She must have some advantage over you, otherwise the decades she has spent in service of her parents and husband and children have been wasted, she has carved away pieces of herself to feed hungry mouths until she vanished like the doomed nymph Echo. In return, she tries not to envy you too much, not to dismiss you as foolish or frivolous or lustful. Sometimes you think that women are filled with such vicious, relentless self-loathing that it feels good to direct it at someone else for a while, to pick apart another body, to tally up the deficits of her spirit.

“Aemond is so lucky to have you,” the woman says. You can barely hear her over the roar of the crowd.

And you smile as you dutifully reply: “I think it’s the other way around.”

~~~~~~~~~~

There is a television mounted on the wall in Aemond’s room. The news coverage, the volume turned way down low, oscillates between his own near-assassination and the stalled peace talks in Paris. Representatives of the United States and North Vietnam cannot agree, and so each day more body bags are flown home to return the bones of the nation’s sons and fathers to Missouri, Alabama, Idaho, Maine, Wisconsin, Maryland, Arizona, California, New Jersey, everywhere else. Someone has to end it. Aemond will end it.

“I dreamed I won Florida,” your husband mumbles, and that’s how you know he’s awake, here in a hospital bed and wearing IVs like strings of Christmas lights around a pine tree.

“You did,” you tell him, gently smoothing back his hair from his forehead. His left eye—where his left eye used to be—is bandaged; his words are soft and labored. “Humphrey was second. Wallace got third. But you won. And you’re going to be okay.”

“McCarthy?”

“It seems you’re devouring his coalition.”

Aemond’s lips slowly curl into a grin, triumphant. “It is God’s will.” And this is what he always says. It is God’s will that he survives, it is God’s will that he wins the presidency, it is God’s will that you give him sons.

“Yes,” you agree, lifting his right hand to kiss his knuckles. Then you press the komboskini you’re still carrying into his weak grasp. It means more to Aemond than it does to you. “Yes it is.”

Aemond sinks into unconsciousness again, morphine and dreams that blur with reality. There will be pain soon, and plenty of it, but he is free from that impending truth for now. You rise from your chair to tell the rest of the family that Aemond is beginning to wake up. Alicent and Criston will want to speak with him.

When you open the door, Aegon is standing there: an eavesdropper, a trespasser. He glares at you with his large wet ocean-blue eyes, hazy with pills, glinting with resentment. Reluctantly, you step aside to let him in. Aegon wobbles as he passes you and has to grab onto the doorframe to steady himself, scrabbling like a trapped animal.

“You’re a disaster,” you say, caustic like acid, biting, repulsed.

Aegon whirls and jabs his index finger against your chest, bloodstained mint green wool bouclé by Chanel. “You’re a vessel. You’re a cow. And one day he’ll be done with you.”

You feel something hitting you like a bullet, cracking ribs, piercing lungs, tearing muscles and ligaments. Your lips have parted, but you can’t fathom words. Aegon has said many things to you—bitter things, belittling things, things in mixed company, things when you’re alone—but never this. For the first time since you met him two years ago, he has won one of your sparring matches. He has the upper hand. He has wounded you.

Aegon can see this, certainly. But he doesn’t seem pleased with himself. He looks a little shellshocked, like he can’t quite believe he said the words, like maybe if given the chance again he wouldn’t take it. But the moment is over now, and you can’t get time back, it is a thread that unspools until every inch is gone, spent, tangled in a thousand webs.

Aegon staggers into the hospital room. You flee from it. Out in the lobby the phone at the nurses’ station is ringing again. They’ll all be calling now to give their requisite sympathies. Humphrey counsels prudence, McCarthy prays for peace, LBJ offers the empathy of someone who has felt the cold gaze of Death in his own doorway, Nixon praises Aemond’s resilience and quotes the ancient philosopher Seneca: “There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.”

[godessanonymous]

Blame it on the Vodka - LN4

Request: No.

Genre: Fluffy (i guess)

Triggers: mentions of small injury

Summary: Partying in the Netherlands Lando gets a little injured. But you were there to fix it so its okay.

The picture of him on the boat inspired me to do this

Blame it on the Vodka – LN4 Martin Garrix had invited you to the king’s day celebration in the Netherlands, load so of people were there, famous influencers and artists and then there was you. Technically you could be categorized under the influencer division, yet you were nowhere as known as most the others here.

The invitation only got to you because you went to school with the DJ.

You were now a nurse working in a trauma center in the sunny state of Florida. A couple of years ago you and a friend started a podcast just for fun and your following on both the Podcast as well as your usual social media grew fairly quickly.

Though you were not even close to some of the people here it, your podcast and work was what made you happy.

The party was loud, you got on a boat around noon and were immediately greeted with a drink and an orange shirt to put on. You scanned the crowd around you once you had pulled the fabric over your head. The boat wasn’t huge, but It was big enough to fit a lot of people you didn’t know.

The whole city was a Party, boats on the water and orange things everywhere. You loved a little bit of partying so chances were you’d have some good fun out here. Able you probably needed a glass or two before you could truly come out of your shell.

You made your way through the dancing bodies, recognizing a face or two and giving people a big smile and muttered sorry as you squeezed past them towards the DJ Desk to greet Martin.

As soon as he spotted you his face lit up. Next to him was a familiar face, be it only from TV. F1 Driver Lando Norris, a glass in hand chatting to a girl next to him. You reached him and he immediately pulled you into warm hug. “How’ve you been? How is life in the sunny state?” he smiled.

“Oh its great! Work never stops, but I am really enjoying life over there. The Podcast has been going well.” You responded. That wasn’t the whole truth, your life was rather busy than chill and enjoyable. You were more or less working two whole jobs. Juggling being in the media and the chaos of the ER weren’t always easy.

“How’s Daniel?” he asked leaving you debating what to say. You and your boyfriend had recently broken up and it wasn’t a pretty one.

“Oh… yeah well I don’t really know” was all you said, pulling a confused look from Martin. “OK well I have someone id like you to meet, you still enjoy motorsport right?” he switched the topic. “Of course I do.” You said, you knew what was coming. He was probably going to call Norris over to the two of you. And that is exactly what he did. “Lando come over here really quickly.”

The Brit, clearly already a couple of drinks in waddled over, quickly excusing himself from the woman he was chatting to. “This is a old school friend of mine, Y/N. I think you two would get along well. She doesn’t know that many people here. Maybe you could put your chatty self to use and introduce her to some people around here.” He said half joking.

The curly haired man looked at you. “Well hi, I’m Lando and apparently I am your tour guide, its nice to meet you.” He smiled. “Well how about we go get you a drink.”

And with that you walked off with him to the bar.

“You strike me as a Aperol Girl.” He thought out loud. You chuckled, he wasn’t wrong. But you weren’t about to go easy today.

“Well you’re not wrong but ill take a Vodka-O, if I want to get through today ill need something strong.

“Alright then, ill take another one of this and a Vodka-O for the Lady please he told the man behind the tiny bar, sliding his empty glass over the counter.

You lost him on your way back towards the middle of the boat. The swimming party had set of and was cruising around in the calm water surrounded by a ton of other small boats with partying people on them. You had found some familiar faces to have small chats with but quickly returned to dancing to the music playing loudly.

At some point you were stopped and checked by some harbor police who wanted to make sure everything was safe.

The alcohol had started to make you feel just the right bit fuzzy.

You grabbed another light drink and walked back to Martin who was jamming out just like the rest. On your way back you noticed a small group of people all standing around one individual. You went closer to investigate whatever was going on.

Getting closer you were greeted with the slightly bloody face of the British man you were introduced to earlier. He was clearly more drunk than you.

“Well what happened here?” You asked. Still grinning he responded. “Weeeelllll, I was dancing and someone smacked their glass in my face and it cut my nose.”

Ok so nothing bad. “Well what do we do now.” Someone you didn’t know said next to you.

“Aright someone get me a first aid kit. That cut won’t need stitches.” You said grabbing a tissue.

“Mind if I have a closer look Lando?” He shook his head no so you stepped up to him and wiped a bit of blood away.

“Well at least its not in your eye.” Someone set down the first aid kit next to you. You quickly went through it checking what you got. Grabbing a little light, some gauze and tweezers you turned back to your patient.

“Aright let me just have a look.” You stepped even closer to him. He was sitting and you were not, so eventough you weren’t as tall he was looking up at you.

You just now noticed the pretty color of his eyes and long lashes that put most girls to shame. Now almost standing between his legs you shine the light at the wound. It looked fairly clean cut, though a small piece of glass was still lodged in the wound.

“There is still something stuck in there, ill have to get it out. Stay still.” You said before you grabbed it with the tweezers in one quick motion. It came out easily, it did also earn you a tiny wince from Lando.

“You look like you know what you are doing.” He said, eyes questioning.

“That’s because I do, I am a nurse.” You responded quickly while searching through the little medical bag for some disinfectant a bandage and some steri strips.

“Aright lets clean the wound quickly. Cover your eyes with you hands please. And this might sting a little bit.” You warned him before spraying to quick sprays of the disinfectant on the wound.

He flinched at the coldness.

In your half drunken state you rewarded him with a little pat on the head, like you would do to pediatric patients at your hospital.

You dried of the wound and leaned down a little further to better place the strips to hold the skin together.

“What a view that is.” Lando said, probably before thinking about it.

The comment made you blush a little. Your shirt was pretty but also warm and not too revealing but given the position you were in his eyes were on the same level as your boobs.

You quickly finished up placing a small bandage.

“Okay you are free to keep partying but watch out for dancing missiles.”

“Well thank you very much for your help miss nurse.” He smiled back.

“How about I say thank you with a dance.” A offer you could simply not decline. He didn’t waste any time pulling you towards a small free space to dance. His steps were a little wonky, but you got there eventually.

In all fairness the man knew how to dance, your bodies were getting closer to eachother with each song and the tention was getting stronger.

Maybe coming here, despite not knowing people, wasnt so bad after all.

[nightswatchdisbandmentera]

I’ve been rereading AGOT and this is how I’d summarize Jon Snow’s entire arc chapter by chapter

Jon l - Local teen bastard has a big realization that he has no social status while attending a royal party. He bursts into tears and goes to sulk in a corner.

[Interlude] Arya I - Local elementary schooler has an awakening about the unfairness of feudalism. She joins her aforementioned teen brother as they sulk in a corner.

[Interlude] Bran II - Elementary-age boy worried that his moody teen brother is sulking in corners far too much. He then has a terrible accident, which is a precursor to him sulking in corners as well.

Jon II - Local moody teen realizes that one should not make rash, life altering decisions while drunk. Now realizing that he has signed up for his local JROTC, which is a lifelong commitment to a frozen penal colony, he sulks around multiple corners as he says goodbye to several family members.

[Interlude] Tyrion II - Florida man makes fun of moody teenage military recruit who has just now realized that he has fallen victim to untruthful feudalist military propaganda. He laughs as the teen proceeds to sulk in a (fiery) corner.

Jon III - A local moody teen is forced to check his privilegeᵀᴹ after behaving in an appalling manner towards his fellow army recruits. Lonely, depressed, and homesick, he proceeds to sulk in a corner for a few days, but manages to make a few friends nonetheless.

[Interlude] Tyrion III - Perpetually drunk and annoying know-it-all Florida man strikes an unlikely friendship with a moody teen who has a tendency to sulk in corners due to issues making friends.

Jon IV - Local moody teen makes a new friend during JROTC training. Said friend is bullied for his exceptionally large frame, which makes for a rather poor soldier, but the moody teen stands up for him in front of the entire army base. The bullying eventually stops due to his efforts. Later, the two boys go to sulk in a corner, bonding over their shared sense of insecurity and rejection.

Jon V - Local moody teen finds out that his new bff is flunking JROTC. He proceeds to sulk in a forest, but still thinks of a solution to save said friend. Spoiler: he is successful and his friend graduates just fine.

Jon VI - Local moody teen graduates JROTC, but as a junior officer which is not at all what he wanted. He very angrily sulks out in the open, throwing a massive fit while he’s at it, until it is pointed out to him (much to his embarrassment) that this post will directly put him in the line of command.

Jon VII - Local moody teen learns that his beloved father has been imprisoned on grounds of treason. Incensed, he attacks a senior officer who makes fun of the situation. He is placed on house arrest by the army commander, which gives him plenty of time to sulk in a corner. However, his sulking is cut short when zombies attack the army base and he has to save the commander.

Jon VIII - For his bravery while fighting a zombie, local moody teen is gifted a special magic sword. He sulks about it because it should’ve been his father’s sword he’s getting. He is also conflicted because while he has already said his vows and bound himself to the penal colony, he still wants to go aid his family which is now on the brink of war after his father’s execution. Unable to do much else, he has no other choice but to go around sulking in several corners.

Jon IX - Local moody teen makes the foolish decision to dip out of army school to join his family that has gone off to war. He broodily decides to help his brother enact revenge for his father’s murder. However, he is unable to get very far because his friends catch up to him (with the help of his equally moody pet wolf) and is ultimately convinced to go back. Once he returns, the army commander gives him a good talking to and tells him that it’s time to grow up go on a real mission. This local teen has been looking forward to this the entire time, but he wants to go aid his family. He is forced to make a heartbreaking decision. Ultimately choosing duty over love, he has no choice but to make his way towards the north and sulk in whatever corners he will come across beyond the wall.

[starsandhughes]

Penalty Box Series— Bestie’s Weekend Edition

SERIES MASTERLIST

yourusername

liked by _alexturcotte, colecaufield, and 10,566 others

yourusername weekend trip to LA with my boys? say less!

i have missed hanging out with you two losers sfm🩵 i love you both with my whole butt!

tagged _alexturcotte and colecaufield

view all 217 comments

trevorzegras a notice more than “i’m not coming home all weekend” would’ve been nice! so would an invite!

_quinnhughes at least she told you this time

trevorzegras @_quinnhughes i’m just glad she’s an hour away and not in canada again

yourusername sorry baby, it was bestie’s weekend! you know the rules! i love you, always!

trevorzegras i love you, forever❤️

colecaufield the golden trio strikes back!

yourusername i love you luke!

colecaufield i love you leia!

jackhughes i’m scared to ask who turc is because i know he’s not han solo

colecaufield @/jackhughes he’s darth vader

yourusername @/jackhughes because he’s our daddy

_alexturcotte hell yeah i am!

trevorzegras this might be the worst thing that’s ever come out of a bestie’s weekend

jackhughes i should’ve guess that

user22 i’d kill to be a fly on the wall for this weekend

user47 i firmly believe they made their own “big three” tik tok edit

_alexturcotte you’re not getting your bong back! i love you, y/n/n!

yourusername you’re a human dildo <3

trevorzegras ah yes, my favorite y/n insult

_alexturcotte @/trevorzegras my favorite is “undomesticated rat”

lhughes_06 mine is “you’re the human equivalent of the humming noise lights make”

_alexturcotte @/lhughes_06 that’s a good one

jamie.drysdale i get it’s “bestie’s weekend” but am i not a bestie?!

_quinnhughes i’m her best friend and i never get invited

yourusername @/jamie.drysdale sorry jamie baby, bestie’s weekend has been a tradition since high school!

yourusername @_quinnhughes “no brothers, no boyfriends, no girlfriends” you know the rules!! you classify as a brother!!

jamie.drysdale @/colecaufield @_alexturcotte i protest this bs

colecaufield @/jamie.drysdale aren’t you in florida?

jamie.drysdale @/colecaufield that’s not the point

user12 be honest, how high did you three get?

yourusername we didn’t have a jumping competition this year. sorry!

_quinnhughes no one ended up in the hospital this time! so proud of you three!

yourusername just for you, quintin! @_alexturcotte you owe me $10!

_alexturcotte you just had to mention senior year, didn’t you, hughes?

_quinnhughes @_alexturcotte we were all thinking it

trevorzegras thanks, quinn! now i owe jack $5

_quinnhughes @/yourusername @/jackhughes YOU TWO AREN’T SUPPOSED TO BE BETTING

jackhughes @/yourusername deny everything

yourusername @_quinnhughes what’s betting?

jackhughes @/yourusername that’s not what i meant

user4 i have a feeling these three together give quinn a bigger headache than y/n and jack together

user33 y/n, how do you feel about the stars being down 2-0?

yourusername let’s just say it was not the best part of bestie’s weekend

jackhughes can’t wait for brother’s weekend!

yourusername i can

jackhughes bitch

yourusername man whore

edwards.73 @/lhughes_06 mom and dad are fighting again!

yourusername @/edwards.73 go to your room

lhughes_06 @/edwards.73 you need to learn how to watch the chaos in silence

edwards.73 @/lhughes_06 no this is more fun

jackhughes @/yourusername we got some nosey kids

yourusername @/jackhughes they get that from you <3

[lovelybucky1]

Neil trying to be cool to get the attention of a client (disinterested in him) being totally cringe and geeky with his movie recommendations

im a filmbro just like neil so i really resonate with this

my inbox is open for requests!

warnings: one mention of sexual content, mild mentions of violence, neil being a geek with zero rizz

masterlist

It’s not often hot people walk into Gumshoe Video. There’s the regulars, the families, the loser film bros who are there at least four times a week, the teens who try to rent pornos, and old people looking for the classics.

When you walked in, Neil almost dropped his fast food cup filled with Dr. Pepper. You’re exactly his type, and he pushed the other employees out of the way so he could be the one to help you.

“Hi, I’m Neil. How can I be of service?” he greets you, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically. You look down at his name tag and note that it says owner underneath his name.

“I don’t need any help, thanks,” you smile politely and continue walking. You aren’t trying to be rude, but you had a long day at work and this puppy dog of an employee is only going to get on your nerves.

“Are you looking for anything specific?” he asks, following you down the aisle.

You sigh. “No, just something to watch.”

“We have a huge selection. What’s your favorite genre?”

You resign yourself to the fact that this man is going to be up your ass until you leave the store.

“I don’t know. Action? Comedy?”

“Well, right over here we have Fast and Furious.” You wrinkle your nose. “We also have The Dark Knight.”

“Uh, no thanks. The villains in those movies are always so cheesy.”

Neil hums and scans the shelves, looking at the collection of videos for rent. “If you want a comedy we have Daddy Daycare, Superbad, American Pie…”

“I think I’ll just look around myself-”

“Or if you want something classic, we have Citizen Kane, Casablaca, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now-”

“Look, Neil,” you sigh. “I appreciate the suggestions but I really don’t need any help.”

Feeling rejected but not letting it show, Neil nods and steps away. “If you need anything, I’ll be behind the counter.”

You nod and watch him walk away before turning to browse the movie selection by yourself. It takes you a while to find anything that you were interested in, but you settled on Friday the 13th. It’s not what you’d usually go for, but your life needs a little excitement here and there.

From across the store, you could hear the other employees ridiculing Neil for “striking out”, though you’d have to argue that he never even got up to bat.

When you walk up to the counter to rent the movie, no one is to be found. You look around and find a bell on the counter labeled ring for assistance. You hit the button and the bell rings, and immediately following the chime is a thud and a curse. You peak over the counter to see Neil crouched underneath it, rubbing the top of his head.

He stands up and looks at you, putting on a charming smile like he didn’t just embarrass himself.

“All set?” he asks.

“Yep,” you reply shortly, handing him the box.

“Friday the 13th,” he reads. “That’s a good one. You didn’t tell me you’re into horror.”

“I’m not really. Just wanted a change,” you reply, figuring if you engage in his small talk, he’ll let you off the hook sooner.

“Did you know this was filmed at a real summer camp in New Jersey?” You shake your head. “It’s still operational, actually. The only set piece they had to build was the bathroom; everything else was already there.”

“That’s really interesting,” you smile, lying.

Unfortunately that was the wrong thing to say, because it made him perk up. “If you think that’s interesting, wait until you hear this…” He ducks under the counter again and comes back up with another movie in hand. “Scream was based on a series of real murders in the 90s. Ghostface was based of the Gainesville Ripper who killed five students in Florida. He wore a black ski mask, which was the inspiration for the movie.”

Neil must have noticed your concerned face and stopped.

“Uh, sorry. I guess giving a stranger facts about a serial killer is kind of weird,” he chuckles.

He scans your movie, swipes your card and prints out your receipt. Before he handed it to you, he scribbled something at the bottom.

“Thank you for renting from Gumshoe Video. Have a nice day,” he smiles.

You give him a polite smile back and on the way out of the door, you look down at the paper in your hand. He wrote what looks to be a phone number, but his handwriting is too messy for you to make out the digits.

[violetmuses]

No Switchin' - A. Aretas ❤️‍🔥

Title: No Switchin’ 

Fandom: “Bad Boys” Film Universe 

Character: Armando Aretas 

Pairing: Armando Aretas + Female Reader

Main Storyline: Regardless of what happens next, Armando will still find you.

@yeahnohoneybye

====

Flashback - 2016 

Veiled through bright spotlights at this club, Armando lingered near the bar and observed patrons who enjoyed time here in Miami, Florida. 

You caught his eye unexpectedly. Booming sounds moved around as you stepped out for the dance floor and swayed through your own world. 

Pulled from his spot like some magnet, he found rhythms for the first time in years and locked eyes with you, signaling this gentle yet striking power. 

“C'mere.” His voice nearly whispered despite the noise and you bit your lip, hiding this flirtatious smile. “What's your name?”

You don't respond, only taking his hand and guiding him until your ass meets the front of his dark pants. 

Armando caught on right away and you both grind to the music, darkened by chemistry as lights changed back and forth. 

By closing, he's standing in this parking lot with you still intrigued. The evening heatwave offered melting warmth, but he's worn all black. 

As you toy with his gold necklace, he admires beauty in return.

You're gorgeous. That lovely smile and sweet eyes drove him wild in silence. 

“Call me?” You ask. 

“Sure.” Fighting back his own grin, Armando took out his cell phone and you whispered digits, as if flirting again. 

“We're all set. That was fun. Good night.” You bid farewell as this car service vehicle rolls up to end the night. 

“Bye.” Armando quickly says. “Be safe.” 

Once the requested vehicle pulled off, Armando found himself alone. 

His own car waited right here, but he dreaded leaving without you. 

Forced to deal with countless thoughts, Armando Aretas just sat in silence as the car remained parked. His dangerous hands clutched the steering wheel, almost pained. 

Without you, that beautiful stranger, there was no time for peace. Not anymore. 

=====

2020

The Miami Harbor reeked of brackish yet putrid air during one summer night. Gangsters nearly huddled this large dock in search of veiled cash. 

“I knew stories about treasure in the ocean, but somebody lied to us.” Zway-Lo Rodriguez shook his capped head, disappointed. 

“Woah!” Moments later, catcalls and other sleazy remarks echoed around once you stepped up. 

“Hola, mami. We're trying to find cash. Could you help us out?” Zway-Lo moved closer to you and smiled, failing to reach your interest  

“No, thank you.” You quietly refuse the invitation for obvious reasons. 

Just before you considered gutting Zway-Lo, people dispersed when Armando Aretas moved forward. 

“She had every right to kill you, but now this group has to deal with me.” Armando offered this clear warning. 

“She looks fine as hell. Where did you find her?” Zway-Lo just kept talking. 

“None of your business. Just know that you'll work for us now. Fall in line, stay out of the way, and don't talk to her again. Listen to us and I won't kill you.” Armando whispered through dominance toward Zway-Lo. 

“How about this? Let's renegotiate our deal. Then, I'll take your lady down to the pimps and you'll still keep that money block.” Another idiot wore terrible sunglasses and pointed his gun toward Armando. 

“What you say?” Armando peered this double-take near the man with sunglasses. 

“You heard me. I know plenty of ballers who would love to see this pretty face.” The man in sunglasses walked around and nearly choked you, forcing your eye contact with Armando. 

“Let her go! You're asking for a death wish.” Given his new placement, Zway-Lo yelled out loud. 

The man in sunglasses released his grip from your neck and you fell to both knees, coughing through every breath. 

“My knife. Get my knife!” You rasped through more and more gasping anger while Armando bolted toward you, yanking the knife away from one sleeve latched on your hip. 

Targeting the man in sunglasses, Armando stepped without thinking twice and lunged your knife, almost slicing that same idiot's neck. 

“C'mere, look at me. After seeing what you just did to her, I won't renegotiate.” Several body drops later, Armando defended you and lifted the choking man's face,  taking this final bullet to kill him. 

“Shit!” Other voices mumbled through compliance and fear. Even Zway-Lo helps you stand up. 

“You know what to do now. Go ahead.” Aretas nodded toward Zway-Lo before vanishing from the dock with you. 

“Let's get this money, fellas. ¡Vamos!” Zway-Lo almost shouted toward other men from a distance to gather this prize. 

______

Steam lingered from the bathroom as you left that shower, wrapped in this towel. 

You're alone in the bedroom and planned to sleep through loneliness once more. 

From that living room, Armando faced the screen of this laptop and plotted more danger for his mother: Isabel Aretas. 

This text message pinged on your phone just as you lay down: 

Don't wait for me. Sorry. 🥺💋 

Again, you sleep without dreams, not even holding hands with Armando anymore. 

****

The next day, you wake up as extra weight  finally reaches this bed. 

Realizing that Armando is cuddling, you open your eyes and turn around, tangling your legs with his. 

“Good morning.” You smiled against his lips and kissed him to start the day. 

“You feel warm. Good morning.” He caressed your face, but the phone rang and disrupted this much-needed alone time. 

“Damn.” You grumbled, leaving this bed and taking a shower without him. 

Frustrated, Armando rolled his brown eyes toward the ceiling before sitting up and answering the call. 

“It's too early for this. What do you want?” Aretas chided Zway-Lo. 

“We can't make these drops with your girl around.” Zway-Lo considered pulling you from this operation. 

“She'll be there.” Armando defended you. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“She's not pulling that trigger, so what's your point?” Zway-Lo continued. 

“You won't pull the trigger and I'm not fighting you on this. Be there.” Armando hung up, still reasonably annoyed. 

______

There was only one rule: never target innocent civilians. 

Armando knew so much better than to heighten carnage based on who else stood around. 

All three of you veiled beyond this crevice of one towering building.  

Captain Conrad Howard and Detective Mike Lowrey of the Miami Police Department walked from this youth basketball game at the nearby park. 

Howard stood next on the farwell list, but Lowrey remained as this final plot. 

5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 

The suppressed yet lethal bullet pierced right into Captain Howard's vibrant shirt and his body fell to the ground, warning panic from every angle. 

“Bingo - get him! Take another shot. Lowrey's right there.” Zway-Lo clenched his teeth, even while this woman surrounded Lowrey. “What's wrong with you, man?” 

“We can't target innocent people. I already told you that.” Armando reminded Zway. 

“You're crazy.” Zway-Lo narrowed his eyes through bewilderment and acted colder. 

“Shut up.” You finally grilled Rodriguez and put your own weapon out of sight. 

“I don't care, bitch! You're dick-drunk for him, anyway.” Zway-Lo pissed you off even more slighted your bond with Armando, rude as hell. 

Unable to kick Zway's ass and correct what just happened, Armando leaves with his rifle in tow and you trailed right behind him, enraged. 

______

“This nightmare ends now.” Holding your cheek with his gloved palm, Armando would make the real drop on Detective Mike Lowrey. 

Uniformed to steer this motorcycle, Armando prepped last-minute items. 

“What happens next?” You questioned your best friend through each shadow of downtown lights.

This promising code would stand tall for each of you.  

“Go straight to the airport. I'll meet you back in Mexico.” Armando set his last words before walking away. 

****

That same night, your phone rings just as you plan on boarding the international flight to Mexico. 

“It's over. I got him.” Armando nearly muffled through the call, grounding this reality.

“Are you serious?” Holding back this smile for obvious reasons, you cleared your throat. 

“Yes, baby. He's out.” Armando offered his confirmation before hanging up and you reach this trip, planning the future. 

****

2020 - Six Months Later 

There is no celebration in the name of death. Only relief. 

“Thank goodness.” You whispered, embracing Armando as quiet yet profound tears moved down your face. 

He's yearned to move on, no longer plagued by thoughts of madness. 

You joined the truth and understand, but now could live through some peace, reunited. 

Overlooking the massive yet scenic view of this remarkable home, Armando held your waist from behind and set his face toward your neck. 

“Will you marry me?” His slightly accented English pulled you even closer. 

You turned around and watched Armando step back, reaching into his pocket. 

Covering your mouth, you nearly sob while realization hits. 

This new chapter could save everything. 

Not only would this unexpected yet genuine bond grow, but Aretas could step away from the darkness altogether, changing his life for you. 

“Yes!” You nod feverishly and accepted his question as the engagement ring slipped onto your hand. 

“¡Coño!” Zway yelled from inside the mansion and you raced inside with Armando, trying to figure out what's going on. 

“What the hell?” Armando shouted toward Zway, frustrated once more. 

“Just got off the phone with our crew working in Miami….” Zway trailed off, nearly sounding anxious. “Damn…”

“What happened?” Armando pulled Zway by his collar. Even you stood close holding another knife, fuming instead of rejoicing this time. 

“Lowrey just survived a coma. You didn't actually kill him.” Zway-Lo exposed this new bombshell to Aretas. 

By this very moment, you drop that knife and faint in Armando's arms. 

The plan failed. 

******

“What's your move?” You offered the question after “waking” again. 

“He's coming to Mexico.” Armando referenced Lowrey. “We should split up.”

“No!” You shout. “I'm staying with you.” 

Armando wants to keep you around and honor so many promises, but if anything else goes wrong…

“I can't risk it. Not this time, mi amor.” Aretas locked eye contact with you, genuinely terrified. 

“What should I do?” You somehow pulled together despite sniffling. 

“Ghost everything, even me.” Armando shattered from within. “If I don't make it out alive, at least you have a chance.”

Devastated, you take off the engagement ring, setting that gorgeous piece back into his jewelry box. 

“I love you so much. Be careful.” You lean inward,  kissing Armando Aretas for what could be your final time. 

Packing up without him, you have no other choice and book the earliest flight away from Mexico. 

=====

2024

Detective Mike Lowrey stood as Armando's biological father. 

Even Armando's mother, Isabel Aretas, died in the name of madness with that burning crossfire. 

Now rotting from prison, Aretas uniformed the orange jumpsuit while seated behind this lifetime cage. No turning back. 

“How you doing?” Stepping forward, Mike visited the dark room and noted Armando. 

“I've paid my debt. It's a big one.” Armando sighed. 

“An opportunity might help cut down some of that debt. Are you interested?” Mike offered this chance.

“Yeah, man.” Armando nodded, ready for the next move. 

“You might not trust me yet, but I found someone who still cares.” Mike stepped back and opened space, allowing other footsteps to echo in return. 

You walked toward the cell and fought this overdue smile. 

****

Following Captain's death, intelligence whispered that Conrad Howard muddled with the cartel himself. Armando knows plenty of information. 

Yet, Mike and Marcus refused this claim, set to prove Cap’s innocence. 

Planning to solve this case, Armando's prison escape tangled this hijacking nightmare around the federal transport, but all four of you survived that drop, landing water first. 

“We need to split up.” Armando took charge,  pointing toward Mike and Marcus. 

“We're staying together.” Mike clenched his teeth, arguing right here in the woods. 

“She was here before you!” Armando rasped through anger and stepped away from Mike, moving forward as you trailed behind Aretas once more.

“You are the only person who can identify whoever did this!” Mike barked. “It's the only way we'll survive this case.” 

“There's no us. Just her and me! Get out of my way.” Armando put his foot down, fed up. 

“Captain Howard left us files on the case.” Mike continued. “We just need to reach Miami again.”

“Y'all better not slow us down.” Armando warned the duo. “Either keep up with us or I'll leave you in the dirt. Lose your phones, too. You're in our world now.”

*****

“How did you meet him?” Mike offered this question as you held hands with Armando. 

“Stepped out one night.” You glanced over your shoulder to face Lowrey. 

“You partied with a killer?” Even Marcus seemed both puzzled and humored while addressing you. 

“We're still young, Marcus.” You quickly answered back. 

“Can Armando dance?” Marcus widened his eyes toward you again. 

“We didn't dance.” Aretas chimed in without looking at Marcus.

“Check your son, Mike. He's acting fresh with this girl.” Marcus turned near Mike and whispered. 

“We still have ears, man. Watch your mouth over there.” Lowrey furrowed his brow regarding Armando. 

God. You thought. Even nightfall would probably drag. 

______

Given no space to camp, all four of you settled on the ground. Nearby, this burning fire curls upward and Armando holds your hand again. 

“How did they find you?” Armando peered toward you without smiling. 

“My name was still logged in your files.” You revealed. “I went back to Miami after you stepped away.”

“What are you doing now?” Armando still questioned. 

“Lowrey pulled that debt line with me, too.” You went on. “If I work through their department, aid keeps me in the clear.”  

“Now that we got basics out of the way, who should I fight?” Armando nearly scoped you up and down. 

“No one. I'm still yours.” You absolutely told the truth. Damn-near marrying him locked that vow. 

“You sure?” Armando wouldn't show off for obvious reasons, but he missed you terribly. 

“Look.” You didn't wear the engagement ring anymore, but one tattoo marked your wrist:

Siempre. 

“Always.” Armando still whispered the familiar word in English. 

His broken heart warmed at last. 

[ofthecaravel]

Heaven In Time

Chapter 1

Chapter 2: Am I A Con Man Or A Brother?

Danny Wagner x Sam Kiszka

Summary: A year or so after meeting, Sam and Danny are on the road again and hope to get through Sam's home state of Alabama with no trouble. Easy enough, right?

Tags: Religious trauma, hella guilt tripping/mentions of religious upbringing, Fighting, sauciness but no outright smut, healthy ass relationship

Words: 5.6k

A/N: Welcome back! Sorry! Let me know what you think. Chap 3 is in progress 👀 Also this is kinda random but would any of y'all be interested in a playlist for this fic? Do people still do that?

~~

“You gonna be good while I go in?”

“Ye of little faith.”

“You, mister, of chatting mouth and wayfaring legs.”

“Since when do you complain about my legs? You didn’t seem to mind ‘em when they were over your sh-”

“Hey now, hey now, okay. What did I just say about behaving yourself? Jesus Christ.”

Sam laughed brashly as he hopped up on the hood of the truck and made a show of crossing his legs with an angelic smile. Danny, standing over Sam with a firm grasp on his chin, rolled his eyes with the beginnings of a smile spreading over his tan face. It had turned out that Danny’s initial baseless accusations of Sam’s rebellious attitude had proven to be mostly accurate, with the only difference being that Sam’s tendency to wander around fell more on the side of striking up friendships with random strangers and impeding their errands schedule rather than picking fights with vagrants and ending up in the back of sketchy white vans. Over the last year they’d spent on the road, Sam’s increasing confidence and grasp on individuality had given him a smart mouth and big opinions. Gone were the days of the meek, awkward preacher’s son with a guilty conscience that sat on his chest like a rock. Now he stood tall with a proud demeanor and, more often than not, in cut off denim shorts with a cigarette hanging from his bitten lips. 

Sam settled on the hood in that same fashion then, pulling a cigarette from the pack bulging in the front pocket of his tiny shorts and sticking it in his mouth, pleadingly pushing it out towards Danny with a calculated batting of his lashes to get the point across. Danny rolled his eyes again but quickly pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit it up, secretly very pleased to be the one to dote on Sam. Despite Sam’s drastic change in personality making him a far cry from the dusty hitchhiker Danny had picked up back in Texas, Danny’s affection only grew as the months passed them by. It was weird for him to look back on how this trip had begun: alone and directionless, setting off from his family farm in Florida with no one at his side. Sometimes when they were driving, Danny found it hard to recall a time without Sam’s passenger side chatter. How did he get as far as Texas without it? Silence was distressing to him now. Still, he found great fun in requesting it of Sam.

“Just stay here and be quiet,” Danny requested with faux exasperation. “I’m only gonna be in there for a few minutes for snacks and paying for gas and the bathroom. I don’t want to come out to you preaching to your huddled masses like that time in Santa Ana.”

“I know,” Sam whined. “How many times do I have to tell you those guys came up to me?”

“Watch your tone,” Danny whispered as he leaned in, his grasp returning to Sam’s jaw. “What you should know is that I want to get us through Alabama as fast as possible, okay? For you, Sammy, remember that.”

“Yeah,” Sam grumbled, removing the cigarette from his lips with a guilty frown. “I do know. Sorry, daddy.”

Sam batted his lashes again and watched Danny’s face flicker at his words. It was a cheap trick, but it certainly didn’t hurt to slip in Danny’s favorite nickname every once in a while to win his favor in a matter of seconds. 

“It’s okay,” Danny instantly assured him, melting like he always did at the title Sam had appointed him. It only ever trickled into their daytime conversations when Sam was being truly appreciative. He gave Sam a quick kiss before letting him go and taking a step towards the gas station itself. 

“5 minutes max, I promise.”

“Go already,” Sam grinned, waving with a royal flourish as Danny tossed him a wink and went through the chiming doors of the gas station, leaving Sam to take a drag from his cigarette and watch its smoke unfurl into the clear sky above. It was a still, sweltering summer day, the kind of familiar weather that kept Sam aware of their presence in his home state. There was no way to get to their destination of Danny’s Floridian hometown without going through Alabama, which Sam kept swearing up and down would be no issue to him, despite the both of them knowing that Sam would no doubt have at least one instance of grief. So far he was having no problems, and as he absently bounced his shoe and closed his eyes against the comforting sun, Sam started to actually feel optimistic.

After a minute, Sam became aware of the creeping feeling that he was being watched. With his eyes closed it felt unfounded, but when gut instinct and a rolling chill over his otherwise sweaty skin told him to peek and assess his surroundings, he realized that he had good reason for it. 

Outside the gas station standing on the ledge of sidewalk facing the last pump was a young man dressed in a short sleeved, cream colored button down staring directly at Sam. His features were blurry because of the distance and because Sam only had one eye open to assess him, but Sam could see that he had his dark, shoulder length hair pulled into a neat, low ponytail and that he grasped a stack of pamphlets in his hands. This tidy, modest appearance hit a little too close to home for Sam and he scowled remembering when something similar used to be his daily attire. Danny had joked about Sam’s preaching, but he and his brothers really did used to stand on sidewalk corners like the guy in front of him now, waving their hands and crying out with adolescent passion. His scowl deepened and he closed his eyes.

Great, Sam thought in annoyance, pursing his lips against his cigarette. Rookie mistake to actually make eye contact with the guy. Now he’s gonna be over here any minute now asking me about my relationship with God. That’s gotta be the last thing I wanna think about right now. No, thank you.

Another few minutes passed and the creeping unease remained in the pit of Sam’s stomach and kept his ears perked uncomfortably. With an irritated sigh, he opened his eyes again and saw that, sure enough, the sidewalk preacher was still staring him down. He had even moved up a couple pumps, now only a few feet away from Sam. Doing his best not to look at the guy, Sam groaned and slid off the hood of the car, flicking his cigarette onto the pavement and crushing it under the rubber sole of his Converse. The man took this as an opportunity to hastily approach. Sam couldn’t help but give a theatrical sigh at the sight, leaning his head back to stare at the sky for another moment as a last ditch effort to ground himself before the inevitable nonsense. 

He must have seen me and Danny, Sam concluded mentally. And now he’s here to save my soul from our sinful ways. Whoopee.

“Listen, man, I don’t want any trouble,” Sam started, already frustrated. “I know the spiel, okay? God didn’t work for me, it’s nothing personal.”

“Sammy?”

Sam’s head immediately jerked forward to properly face the man in front of him. In an instant, he was drowned in cold and felt his knees threaten to buckle. He struggled not to disassociate, breathing urgently through his nose as his lips shut and refused to part. 

How could he have stared right into this face and not seen who it was in an instant? There was no else whose voice would crack with such specific inflection over his nickname; a nickname never given freely, mind you. 

The round brown eyes constantly shadowed from worry and late night prayer. The combed dark hair and disciplined posture. 

It was Jake, his brother, a thousand times over.

“Sammy,” Jake repeated. He sounded worn down and nearly pleading, seemingly just as baffled as Sam about seeing his brother before him.

Sam couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. His thoughts were thick with shame and gave no more room for that last little spark of hope that he could make it through Alabama unscathed. All he could do was gawk at Jake, who gawked right back at him with what he knew was a near identical expression to his own. He had always felt he existed as some warped mirror of Jake, and here he was, pressed up against the glass yet again when he thought he’d shattered it long ago.

“What are you doing here?” Sam whispered. With their hometown miles out from the provincial rest stop they were at, Sam was becoming increasingly convinced that Jake’s presence was a mirage brought on by the heat.

“What are you doing here?” Jake countered. His eyes were wild and darted over Sam head to toe. A hand came up to grasp his forehead, a nervous tic that Sam remembered (of course) and found oddly comforting to see after all this time.

“Gas,” Sam answered dumbly. It was true, but obviously not the answer Jake was looking for. Sam felt close to tears in a manner of seconds when hurt flashed over Jake’s face, clearly from Sam’s cold brevity and…well, everything.  

“So, you have a car now?”

“I-”

“Come on, babe, what’d I say? No mingling!”

Sam had hardly registered the crisp bell of the gas station doors cheerily bursting open, revealing Danny with an armful of beers and wrapped sandwiches. He wore a bright smile as he usually did when he was with Sam, and Sam watched helplessly as it fell at the sight of Sam’s face painted with frozen desperation. Never taking his eyes off of Sam, Danny set his treasures down on his seat through the truck’s open window and was at Sam’s side in a second, a protective hand already up to shove Jake back if need be. 

“Can I help you, man?” Danny asked curtly, glaring down at Jake with his dark eyebrows furrowed menacingly.

“Who is this guy?” Jake asked Sam in an amused tone, as if he truly couldn’t believe that Sam would go anywhere near Danny. When Jake had known him, it would have been a fair assumption for him to make, but now there was nothing further from the truth.

“Who are you?” Danny shot right back, adjusting to stand partly in front of Sam. His shield and sword all rolled into one. Sam felt grateful for his protection but knew it was unnecessary. 

“Danny, this is, uh, my brother,” Sam introduced nervously, putting a hand on his bare arm and giving it a calming squeeze. “Jake, this is Danny.”

Jake held out a polite hand for Danny to shake, which he obliged with a mistrustful squint of his hazel eyes. In Sam’s stories about his childhood, Jake had never really been the enemy in any of them, save for silly childhood disputes. But his compliance never made him a hero either, and Sam knew that Danny was recalling all he could remember of Sam’s brothers from the rude way he pulled his hand back from the handshake. Jake didn’t appear to care at all, turning his gaze on Sam once more with a weak laugh.

“Have you been here this whole time?” Jake asked. “We read your note, of course, but forgive me for beginning to think the worst had happened when there was absolutely no trace of you anywhere. Mom started reading the news all the way up in Montgomery just in case there was mention of you.”

“No, uh, I’ve been traveling,” Sam explained, incapable of making eye contact. “Mostly stuck to the Southern states, but, yeah. We’re actually not staying, we’re headed to Danny's place in Florida right now.”

“Wow,” Jake remarked blankly, nodding thoughtfully. “Okay. We, huh?”

“Danny was kind enough to pick me up in Texas,” Sam clarified, nodding towards Danny. “We’ve stuck together since then.”

“Somebody had to keep him safe,” Danny said in a clipped voice, looking Jake up and down with an accusatory glare. Jake continued to not acknowledge Danny’s obvious distaste for him and pressed onwards. He gave another nod that turned into a disbelieving shake of the head.

“How in the world did you get to Texas with no ride? I have about a million questions, Sammy, forgive me for my impatience. I mean, for starters, you look…”

Jake gestured vaguely to Sam’s bare bones outfit composed of a maroon band tee more suited to Danny’s frame than his (which made sense, considering it was Danny’s), meaning it fell so low it almost entirely covered Sam’s very short shorts. It was a standard outfit for him now, but the last time Jake had seen Sam, he’d been dressed in something nearly identical to the outfit Jake wore, complete with the long tweed pants in the blistering heat. Sam’s hair, kept long to compliment his newfound appreciation for his androgynous features and to serve as something extra for Danny to pull when they were caught up in motel bedroom devotions, was pulled into low frizzy pigtails that Jake no doubt found bizarre.

 For the first time in a long time, Sam began to feel self conscious.

“Different?” Sam asked, putting a hand on his hip. “Is that cool with you?”

“I…of course, it’s just…definitely different,” Jake agreed, a hint of venom finally tinting his words. “I hoped maybe you’d gone off to, you know, spread the good word, but I can tell from your outf-”

“You wouldn’t have thought that if you’d actually read my note like you said you did. You know why I left, Jake.”

“Were things really so terrible?” Jake prodded, his condescending tone now entirely betraying his bright attitude. “So horribly bad that you just had to leave behind your entire family who has done nothing but love you, just by the way, and an entire church that you had responsibility in? I can’t think of a single person in Shady Grove that doesn’t pray for you each and every day. I can tell you didn’t have faith in us, Sam, but we had faith in you. Still do.”

“I wasn’t happy,” Sam hissed, tears finally stinging his eyes as he stepped forward and got in his brother’s face, still clinging to Danny’s arm as he waited for his chance to intervene. “Nobody listened to me! Or, yeah, maybe I didn’t speak up enough, but even if I did, you all would’ve just heard what you wanted to hear.”

“Come to dinner, Sammy,” Jake begged, putting a hand on Sam’s shoulder with a firm grip. “Come to my place. I won’t even tell Mom and Dad, but you’ve got to see Josh, at least. He talks about you in every single sermon, he-”

“You’re not listening,” Sam groaned defeatedly, flushing hot with frustration and humiliation. He felt Danny’s anxious eyes on him while his brother’s thick skull and saccharine words regressed Sam into a childlike tantrum. Jake shook his head as if it weren’t true, as if Sam was behaving completely out of line. That was something Sam really did hate about his brother sometimes; he could make him feel so stupid for nothing at all.

“Why can’t you ever admit that there are things about home that don’t work?” Sam raged on. “Just ‘cause they work for you doesn’t mean they work for me. I had to go, Jake. I, I have to go.”

“Let’s go,” Danny urged, his voice uncharacteristically cool and tense. “Ready when you are.”

“I’m ready,” Sam snarled, glaring at Jake one more time before turning on his heel and stomping to the side door. Jake followed with a frustrated huff through his nose, grabbing Sam’s wrist and yanking him so hard he stumbled.

“I love you, Sam,” Jake said firmly, passion flashing in his amber eyes. “That’s why I’m tough on you, okay? Mom and Dad love you. Josh loves you. Come home.” 

“No,” Sam barked, pulling his wrist away. “Get off, Jake, I’m fucking leaving.”

Jake stood and watched Sam climb into the passenger side and slam the door, pointedly staring through the windshield and ignoring his fuming brother as Danny hurriedly tossed the food and drink from his seat into the back. Jake smacked his palm against the door and won Sam’s attention again, who now saw that Jake’s furious expression had begun to devolve into tears.

“So, that’s it? That’s all you got to say?” Jake cried. “So high and mighty you can’t even say you love us anymore?”

“Of course I love you, stupid!” Sam yelled, grabbing an empty plastic water bottle out of the cup holder and smacking it on Jake’s head. “I just can’t love you here!”

Jake grabbed the water bottle out of Sam’s hand and tossed it right back at him, ducking when Sam fully threw it through the window. Jake crouched out of Sam’s reach as he pulled a pen out of his pocket and scribbled something urgently on one of his many disheveled pamphlets. Despite Sam’s flurry of smacking hands, Jake managed to shove it through the window and onto Sam’s lap. 

“That’s the address and that’s what time I’ll have dinner on the table,” Jake explained, his teary eyes flashing as he pointed at the pamphlet with vigor. “There will be two places set for you and your, your Danny, and I really hope to see you both!”

“I really hope you like disappointment!” Sam hollered, heart hammering like a jackrabbit as he and Jake launched into a new round of arguing.  

Unable to stand back and watch anymore, Danny rolled up Sam’s window for him and finally began to pull out of the gas station. Jake yelled something as they sped out of the lot, and Sam let out a frustrated scream in response. He was unable to look back at his brother, instead electing to fold at the waist and let out another muffled scream against his bare legs. 

Danny, frazzled from the sibling explosion that had just set off in front of his eyes, was honestly unsure on what the hell to do. He settled for a soothing hand on Sam’s back, rubbing calming circles and asking Sam to breathe and settle down in the most serene voice he could manage. Sam listened and managed to subdue his roaring need to shriek out his frustrations, but he stayed crumpled over with his head between his thighs. As always, Sam’s complete and utter silence was a million times worse to Danny, and he debated whether or not to ask him something just to get both their minds on a new track.

“So, you wanna go to that dinner, or…?”

Yeah, Danny regretted that the second it left his mouth. 

Sam’s silence persisted and Danny swallowed nervously, trying to appreciate the sparse scenery that surrounded the highway so that his brain had something else to do. 

-

5 entire minutes passed without Sam saying anything, which was probably the longest he had ever gone in the year Danny had traveled with him. He was never this quiet, not even in his sleep. But frankly, Danny couldn’t blame him. Danny’s heart broke for Sam, and he bit back regretful tears thinking of how he should’ve just stepped between them and pulled Sam into the truck before Jake got a chance to say anything at all. After another excruciating minute, he figured there wasn’t much use in spiraling, so Danny decided to pull over on the side of the empty road and turn off the truck.

“What can I do to help you, Sam?” Danny asked in a hushed voice, his hand returning to Sam’s back and tilting his head to try and catch a glimpse of Sam’s face.

Sam thought for a second, sniffling wetly before finally turning from the valley of his legs to miserably look up at Danny. Danny’s heart sank at the sight of his lashes heavy with tears and his nose and cheeks painted poppy red. 

“I don’t know,” Sam muttered, throat scratchy from exertion. “Take me out behind the barn and shoot me.”

“Sam,” Danny sighed at his dramatics, reaching over Sam’s head to click open the glove box and pull out a clean handkerchief. He presented it to Sam, who made no move to grab it, so he rested it on top of his head with a little smile. 

“Thanks,” Sam mumbled, still unmoving and sniffing pathetically. His gaze was blank and defeated and his face was still dotted with tears, which Danny lovingly swept away with a curled knuckle. 

“That was a lot,” Danny commented steadily, still trying to pry a productive conversation out of the ever stubborn Sam. “Definitely wouldn’t have picked that station if I had known your people would be anywhere near it.”

“He really shouldn’t have been,” Sam complained. “Shady Grove is, like, 10 miles out closer to the coast. But it’s not completely unheard of for him to go to the most random fucking places for his sidewalk preaching. Divine timing, I guess. Great.”

“I’m so sorry, baby,” Danny whispered, mirroring Sam’s posture as best he could to try and meet Sam’s eye. When he did, Sam’s bottom lip quivered and he clasped a hand over his face, letting out an exasperated groan that filled the entire cabin of the truck.

“I’m so sorry,” Sam apologized, his voice shaking with frustration. “You shouldn’t have had to see me like that. Fuck, he just makes me so crazy, it’s like I don’t even know what happens.”

“Don’t apologize,” Danny insisted, running his fingers along the soft hair at Sam’s temples to try and ground him. “He came at you pretty hard. I know he’s your brother and everything, but if you gave me the go ahead, I would’ve knocked him upside the head with the way he was talking to you.”

“I wish you had,” Sam grumbled. There was a sore pang when he said it, and Sam found himself falling quiet and staring into space again. “But, like…”

Danny had spent enough time with Sam to feel confident in his ability to read his mind, and from the mournful, longing glaze over Sam’s eyes, he made an educated guess as to where Sam’s head was at.

“But, like…you still kinda want to go to dinner tonight?” Danny asked, attempting to finish Sam’s sentence. 

Sam let out another theatrical groan and answered by gently banging his forehead against the pamphlet on his lap, which doubled as a nod in the affirmative. Despite the anxiety that the prospect of a dinner with Sam’s brothers stirred in Danny’s chest, he was happy to do whatever it took to get Sam through the night without trying to throw himself out of the truck. 

“Yeah, okay, we’ll do that,” Danny assured him, brushing his fingers against Sam’s flushed cheek. “And the second you say we need to go, we’ll go. Does that sound good?”

“Mmhm,” Sam hummed against the paper.

Danny watched Sam’s dejected body language for another minute before taking action again. With a quick jerk of the reclining lever, he laid his seat back and scooted until he was sitting in the backseat. After landing with a bounce on the leather, Danny shifted the beers and sandwiches once again while Sam sat up and gave him a quizzical look.

“What?” Sam asked simply, a confused smile very slowly seeping into his expression as Danny settled in the middle of the backseat and opened up his arms.

“Someone needs a hug,” Danny determined, beckoning Sam into his lap with a cheeky grin.

“You are so goddamn corny,” Sam whined. Despite his rolling eyes, he quickly scrambled out of his seat and clumsily landed in Danny’s embrace. Danny’s arms wrapped around him in an instant and Sam unraveled completely at the comfort, throwing his arms around Danny’s neck as he sank into his broad chest and nuzzled against Danny’s freckled shoulder. Danny held him tight and pressed kisses to the crown of Sam’s head as he felt the erratic cadence of Sam’s heart beating against his own begin to even out into a stable thrum.

“Feeling a little better?” Danny asked tentatively. Sam replied with a muffled hum against his skin and Danny laughed, smoothing the loose hairs that had escaped Sam’s pigtails and were waving wildly in the humidity. Sam pressed a kiss to his shoulder and Danny let out a happy hum of his own. Danny gave one of Sam’s pigtails a gentle tug to tilt his head back and met him halfway, closing his eyes with a smile that he pressed against Sam’s already puckered lips. While they got caught up in a lazy kiss, Danny carefully worked to slide the elastics from Sam’s hair and combed through his impressive tresses with his long fingers. Sam sighed into Danny’s mouth at the relaxing sensation, cupping Danny’s face and slipping his tongue into the equation while Danny indulged in a smug smile.

“I feel better,” Sam finally admitted, giggling when Danny mapped a trail of kisses from his jaw down his neck. “Much better, actually.”

“Yeah? You feel as good as you did last night?” Danny purred against his neck, grinning and bearing his teeth against his skin when Sam scoffed. Danny had found that this was another surefire way to keep Sam’s mind out of a dark place; tease the hell out of him. 

“Danny!” Sam squealed, batting his shoulders and squirming in his lap. “Shut up!”

“Oh, I’m sorry, who was the one talking about legs over shoulders no less than an hour ago?”

“I-”

“It was definitely you.”

“Hearsay!” Sam laughed. “Tell it to my lawyer.” 

When Danny lifted his head from his throat to smile at him, he could see the rosy glow had already returned to Sam’s face. Danny’s heart fluttered at the thought that he could be the person to do that to someone, much less someone as wholly deserving of joy as Sam.

“You wanna hear something funny?” Sam chuckled while Danny leaned back against the leather seat, one hand on Sam’s waist and the other still fussing with his hair.

“Hm?”

“We didn’t even get gas.”

Danny froze and blinked blankly. 

“...Fuck, you’re right!”

Sam’s raucous laugh filled the truck as Danny shifted and looked out the back window, staring longingly at the pump somewhere in the distance behind them despite it being entirely out of his sight.

“Damn. There goes my 15 bucks,” Danny grumbled. 

“You only put 15 bucks on the pump? Cheap bitch.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, do you have anything you’d like to contribute to the gas fund? Or would you like to keep dipping your sticky little fingers into it and spending it on cigarettes and cotton candy?”

“Absolutely,” Sam smiled triumphantly. “I mean, worse comes to worse, we can always stop in some seedy little town and get me a job working the pole. We’d have gas money for a year.”

“Fuck no,” Danny blurted. Sam cackled again when Danny bulged his eyes at the idea, his grip subconsciously tightening on his waist. “No, no, absolutely not.”

“Jealous?” Sam flirted, tapping the tip of Danny’s nose and winking. He rolled his hips as if he were straddling a stripper pole and Danny let out a suffocated groan at the sensation. Not allowing himself to dive into the salacious imagery Sam had conjured, Danny used his leverage on Sam’s hips to hold him still. 

“No, Sam, I’m super into the idea of you being half naked on stage in front of a bunch of podunk perverts,” Danny replied sarcastically, swatting his ass. “Of course I’m jealous, you little shit.”

“Well, you don’t have to be, ‘cause I’d never,” Sam cooed, clearly still delighted by Danny’s knee jerk reaction. “You know damn well I’m all yours.”

“Yeah, you are,” Danny hummed, chasing another kiss and mumbling against Sam’s lips. “And you know damn well you’re safe as long as you’re with me, right?”

“Since the day we met,” Sam confirmed, heart fluttering and racing as he recalled the first time he’d seen Danny. This was something he did almost every night to soothe himself to sleep, a practice that had replaced the psalm recitations he’d done for years after he steadily found them less and less effective at calming him. He’d picture Danny, nothing short of drop dead gorgeous in a ratty flannel and his combed out curls pulled into a ponytail, with his head tilted to the side as he regarded Sam and his pathetic little suitcase. Frozen in place, Sam’s thumb had stayed pointing up in the air for a beat too long as he assessed the amusing contrast of the gorgeous stranger in such a beat up hunk of junk. In the same way that something had urged Danny to drive through the thoroughfare in the first place, something had given Sam complete assurance that if he got into the truck with this total stranger, it would be the start of his life as opposed to the end. 

Despite the fact that they were far from being on speaking terms, Sam couldn’t help but thank God for it.

“Good,” Danny smiled. “Remember, the second you want out tonight, we’re outta there. You call the shots.”

“Don’t I always?”

Danny raised an eyebrow at Sam and Sam smiled with faux innocence, tucking a strand of hair behind Danny’s ear while Danny sighed fondly. Without the other knowing, both of them felt a sudden urge to tell the other one something. Something that had been on both of their minds for a long time. While it didn’t really need to be confirmed when the time they spent together spoke volumes about how they felt, it still had yet to be said. But Danny was worried Sam was a little too vulnerable at the moment to process the impact it might have, and Sam was worried Danny wouldn’t say it back, so they let the next few minutes pass with quiet chatting and kissing instead. Not that they could complain about that.

“What time is it?” Danny eventually asked, answering his own question by looking over Sam’s shoulder at the radio’s clock. “4:30ish? How long do you reckon it’ll take to get to Jake’s?”

“Only like 20 minutes if we backtrack and take some shortcuts,” Sam explained. “I’ll be our fearless navigator, of course.”

“That’ll be a first,” Danny muttered, which earned him a light slap on the arm. “Well, shit, what should we do for an hour? Anything fun to do in glorious Baldwin county, Mr. Navigator?”

Sam stared off into space for a moment, seemingly deep in thought as his eyebrows furrowed and his lips pushed out into a focused pout. However, when Sam’s eyes eventually fell on the space between their bodies and his eyebrow arched suggestively, Danny realized that he had fallen for an act. 

“Unbelievable,” Danny groaned as Sam smiled flirtatiously and pawed at his belt. “I thought maybe you knew some roadside attractions nearby we could go to. I should’ve known better.”

“I mean, we’re already back here,” Sam purred, sliding a hand up the front of Danny’s muscle tee. “And no one’s driven by since we pulled over.”

“Unbelievable,” Danny repeated, shaking his head slightly but obliging entirely when Sam’s lips found his and his hands made quick work of pulling off Danny’s shirt. 

This reckless nerve and seeming insatiability was one of many side effects of Sam’s newfound confidence. Ever since that inciting night at the motel where Sam had stayed under Danny until the sun came up and writhed nonstop from nothing more than kisses and hands on his hips, he had become hopelessly addicted to Danny’s touch. It was fully Danny’s fault for indulging him as often as he did, but he really had tried to take it as slow as he possibly could. Danny knew that Sam had no prior experience and very little knowledge of the body when it came to the pleasure it could provide, and he had wanted to give him a low stakes, enjoyable education.

However, this had become increasingly more difficult when he found Sam crawling into his lap time and time again with professedly innocent questions, all of which were whispered into his ear with hot breath that sent chills down his spine. Sam had insisted on hands-on demonstrations and begged so sweetly, which made it nearly impossible for Danny to continue the patient pace he had planned for him. This eventually cultivated in a “celebration” their first night in Los Angeles where Danny had caved entirely and awarded Sam his sacrament. He’d crossed the line between the divine and the Earth, called Sam his little lamb, and awoke the next morning with Sam’s head on his chest and his virginity (however conceptual that may be) locked up safe in the parts of his mind reserved for the most sacred sentiments. Deep down, Danny knew he’d be trying in vain for the rest of his days trying to replicate the ecstasy of truly feeling Sam for the first time. Fingernails dug so deep in his biceps he’d emerged with a single crescent moon scar, Sam’s hips bucking to accommodate Danny’s stuttering push into him, a pounding fist on the wall from outraged neighbors being drowned out from the rattle of the bedposts…that was a high Danny was going to chase to no avail. But he was more than happy to try. 

Plus, how could he ever say no to Sam? Maybe someday he’d regret letting Sam get whatever he wanted, but from the way Sam looked unbuttoning his jeans with his rosy bottom lip tucked triumphantly between his teeth, Danny was pretty sure regret was the last thing he was feeling. 

They were in for a hell of a night, so why not get as close to heaven before then? 

~~

Taglist: @holdingup-fallingsky @milojames16 @spark-my-nature

[theewokingdead]

The Wiener of My Heart - Benjamin "Benny" Miller x Reader

Pairing: Benny x Reader (1st POV, no descriptions) Rating: T (blog is 18+) Summary: You and Benny are brought together by your mutual love of dogs. Word Count: 1.4k+ Warnings: Some cringe-worthy puns and innuendos, but it’s Benny so are you really surprised? Language. A/N: I saw a decal on a car in a grocery store parking lot that read “Sometimes I trip over my wiener.” I immediately thought “Benny would 100% have that on his car.” This is pure chaos, and I’m not sorry. Hopefully this doesn’t get lost in translation for anyone, but wiener = wiener dog = dachshund.

{Masterlist}

I fucking hate grocery shopping. It’s one of those things I can’t seem to bring myself to do until I absolutely have to. There’s something about wandering through the endless aisles, searching for the things I need, finding the best price of those things, all while avoiding small talk that I find frustrating. It’s just not worth the hassle, the time, or the stress.

Today’s trip has been a nightmare; there are people everywhere, obstructing every turn and moving in all directions, and the shelves are being emptied as if the end of the world has just been announced.  I will not be surprised if I immediately hear the national alert system going off when I turn on my car.

God, please, if the world is ending let them be The Walking Dead zombies and not the fucking infected from The Last of Us.

I am on edge until I step out the doors and take a deep breath, the heavy, muggy air of Tampa somehow easier to breathe in than the air inside the stuffy store. I made it out alive, and so far, there aren’t any signs of any impending doom. I mean, no more than usual, considering Florida is a dumpster fire on a normal day.

I push the cart to my car, unlock the trunk, and rapidly load the groceries, eager to get home and pour myself a glass of much-deserved wine. I’m only halfway through when I turn and happen to catch sight of the most striking man walk out of the store, several grocery bags in each hand. He is tall, with broad shoulders and strong arms that seem to effortlessly carry the weight of the groceries. The sleeves of his jacket are rolled up enough to see his forearms flex with each step he takes. Something about him oozes rugged charm, and it’s impossible to not be captivated by him.

Fuck, he’s cute.

The man moves in my direction, and I quickly shift my focus and get back to loading my car. I watch out of the corner of my eye as the man approaches the Jeep parked beside me, shifting his bags to unlock it and and lift up the back window. My heart beats a million miles a minute, but I try to ignore it, figuring he’s too far out of my league.

He’s probably a douche anyway, I tell myself, trying to keep from being disappointed when he doesn’t even acknowledge my existence.

Unexpectedly, I hear a deep, quiet laugh, then a smooth, sultry voice speaks, “I’d rather be playing with my wiener too.”

My stomach twists, making me feel sick. The fuck did he just say?

“Excuse me?” I question, whipping toward the stranger faster than I thought humanly possible. My nose scrunches with disgust. The fucking audacity of this man. He’s not just a douche, but a fucking creep - which is a shame because up close this man is gorgeous. His blue eyes are like two pools of sapphire, glistening in the sunlight. A pair of sunglasses hang on the neck of his shirt, pulling it down just enough to reveal hair on his chest. Strands of blond hair peek out from underneath his hat, which he’s sporting backwards – a telltale sign of being a total douche.

I should’ve known.

However, the man seems to immediately regret what he said, his growing wide, cheeks as red as a traffic light.

“Oh shit! I-I didn’t mean it like that,” he exclaims, tripping over every word. “I meant…” He gestures toward my rear passenger window, which I know has a decal featuring the words “I’d rather be playing with my wiener” along with the silhouette of a dachshund. “I have one too,” he clarifies, pointing to his bumper, a sticker with a similar picture and the words “I trip over my wiener.”

My cheeks warm as realization settles over me. “Oh!” I exclaim, a nervous laugh escaping my lips. “I am so sorry! I thought you were-”

“An asshole?” he finishes for me, to which I breath out a “Yeah” with a small giggle. He chuckles awkwardly, reaching to grab the bill of his hat and pulling it off his head. While running his fingers through his tussled hair, he flips his hat around then puts it back on. “Yeah… Sorry. I didn’t exactly think that one through. Not my finest conversation starter.”

“It’s okay,” I assure him, offering him a genuine smile. “Don’t worry about it, uh-” I suddenly remember that I don’t know his name.

“Benny,” he replies, offering his hand to me.

“Benny,” I reply, repeating his name aloud once while it plays in my head like a beautiful song. I give him my own name, and as I shake his large hand, my mind immediately drifts to how his touch would feel on other parts of my skin. The thought of his hands exploring every inch of my body sends shivers down my spine. As I reluctantly release his hand, I can’t help but long for a moment when his touch could be more than just a fleeting gesture.

“Do you think maybe I could see your wiener?” Though my voice sounds meet, the sly smile spreading across my face shows that I’m well aware of what I’m doing.

“Right here? Right now?” Benny questions, pretending to be appalled by the notion, clearly playing along.

“Right now,” you demand. “Show me see your wiener.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replies with a smile.

Fuck, the things those two words make me feel.

After reaching into the pocket of his jeans, he whips out his phone and swipes across the screen with his thumb. Within seconds, he’s showing me a picture of a beautiful black and brown dog, sporting short legs and a long torso.

“This is Beanie.”

My eyes flick up to him. “Beanie the Weenie?”

“Sir Beanie the Weenie of House Teenie, actually,” he clarifies, trying to sound so matter-of-fact.

“Oh,” I gasp, trying to sound impressed. “I had no idea you know the star of Game of Bones.”

Benny lets out a boisterous laugh, sparkles in his eyes, seeming both shocked and thrilled by my parody. “Fuck! Yes! That’s exactly what I was going for!”

Smiling, I look back at his screen, watching as he swipes to another picture, then another.

“You know, I don’t show just anyone my wiener,” Benny admits after several moments of silence. “I hope he doesn’t disappoint.”

I snort. “Not at all. He’s very cute.”

Chuckling, he tucks his phone back into his pocket, then gestures to me. “I showed you mine, so why don’t you show me yours?”

“It’s only fair,” I reply, reaching for my phone. Happily, I show him a photo of my brown long-haired dachshund. “Her name is Leia”

“Like from Star Wars?” he questions, a hint of excitement in his tone.

“Well, actually…” I pull my phone back and quickly find a photo from last Halloween. I show him the picture of my dog in a Leia costume, fake buns and all, which causes Benny to bust out in a fit of laughter.

“Okay. You win! Your wiener is way cooler than mine.”

I shrug nonchalantly. “A princess does outrank a knight, so…”

He chuckles, and a giggle escapes my lips.

“Maybe we can set up a playdate?” I suggest.

“Yeah, absolutely,” Benny replies. “Maybe we can set one up for the dogs too?” He looks up from my screen to meet my gaze, the corner of his lips rising into a small smile. Fuck, his eyes are mesmerizing. They’re the kind that make you feel like you’re the only person in the room, as if he’s seeing into my soul and understanding me without even uttering a word. I could stare into them for hours, lost in their piercing blue beauty.

I smile, feeling my cheeks warm once again. “I’d like that.”

We exchange numbers and part with the promise that we’ll be in touch soon. While walking toward my car door, I feel a sense of anticipation for what the future might hold. Grabbing a hold of the handle, I pause, then look over at Benny as he climbs into his seat. Looking at him makes me feel calm, as if all my worries melt away in his presence. I almost don’t want to let him leave.

“Hey,” I call, grabbing his attention before he can close the door of his Jeep. “Make sure you play with your wiener for me when you get home.” Casting him a wink, I climb into my seat, satisfied by the pink that’s rising in his cheeks as he casts a shy smile.

I’m pretty sure a stranger just stole my heart in a Publix parking lot. But what can I say? Benny has one incredible-looking wiener, and that makes me weak.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Revs. Jan Barnes and Krista Taves have logged hundreds of hours standing outside abortion clinics across Missouri and Illinois, going back to the mid-1980s. But unlike other clergy members around the country, they never pleaded with patients to turn back.

The sight of the two women in clerical collars holding up messages of love and support for people terminating a pregnancy “so infuriated the anti-abortion protesters that they would heap abuse on us and it drew the abuse away from the women,” recalled Taves, a minister at Eliot Unitarian Chapel in Kirkwood, Missouri, as she sat on a couch at Barnes’ stately church in this quiet suburb of St. Louis.

“I thought: ‘Whoa, these people really are not messing around.’ But then I thought, ‘Well, I’m not messing around either.’”

So when Missouri’s abortion ban took effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, Barnes and Taves decided to fight back. Along with rabbis and ministers across several denominations, they joined a first-of-its-kind lawsuit arguing Missouri blurred the line between church and state, imposed a particular Christian idea of when life begins over the beliefs of other denominations, and threatened their ability to practice their religions.

As the nation nears the one year anniversary of the fall of Roe, the Missouri case is one of nearly a dozen challenges to abortion restrictions filed by clergy members and practitioners of everything from Judaism to Satanism that are now making their way through state and federal courts — a strategy that aims to restore access to the procedure and chip away at the assumption that all religious people oppose abortion.

In fact, many of the lawsuits are wielding religious protection laws enacted by anti-abortion state officials to target those officials’ own restrictions on the procedure.

In Indiana, a group of Jewish, Muslim and other religious plaintiffs sued over the state’s near-total abortion ban. Their argument: that it violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act signed into law in 2015 by then-Gov. Mike Pence. A lower court judge sided with them in December and blocked the state’s ban from taking effect — the most significant win the religious challengers have notched so far.

Then, earlier this month, the Indiana judge granted the challengers class action status, meaning a win for them could apply to anyone in the state whose religion supports abortion access in cases prohibited by state law.

“Even if the Religious Freedom law was intended by Mike Pence to discriminate against people, we thought: ‘Let’s use this for good instead,’” said Amalia Shifriss, a leader of Hoosier Jews for Choice, one of the Indiana plaintiffs. “It brings me joy to think how much this must upset him.”

A Pence spokesperson characterized the lawsuit as a “pursuit to legalize abortion up to and even after birth.” They added: “It will probably strike Americans as pretty tasteless to call the latest iteration of their abortion crusade as a cause ‘for good’ and a source of ‘joy.’”

Conservatives with a history of mounting their own religious challenges to state laws dismiss the effort as doomed to fail, arguing that even if people can prove the abortion bans violate their beliefs, it won’t be enough to halt enforcement.

“As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg explained in one Free Exercise case, the right to swing your arm ends just where the other man’s nose begins,” said Denise Harle, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group that has filed briefs defending state abortion restrictions, including from faith-based challenges in Wyoming and Florida. “Even if you have religious freedom, there is a line at which you are doing actual deadly harm and destroying human life, so it’s appropriate to limit what can be done in the name of religion.”

But with oral arguments and rulings in several of the cases expected this summer and fall, other legal experts say there’s a solid chance the challengers can persuade courts to grant religious exemptions to abortion bans if not strike them down altogether.

Shlomo C. Pill, a lecturer at the Emory University School of Law who specializes in religious rights, said the lawsuits have “a strong basis and should be successful,” particularly after a series of COVID-19-related cases paved the way for more religious exemptions. Pill pointed to multiple Supreme Court decisions during the pandemic that said whenever states create secular exemptions to laws — like indoor gathering restrictions or vaccine mandates — they have to justify not offering religious exemptions as well.

“So the fact that secularly-motivated exemptions to abortion bans exist — such as for rape and incest — means the legislature could also have to offer similar exemptions for people with religious objections,” he said.

‘REAL CHUTZPA’

Most of the cases, including those in Indiana, Kentucky, and Texas, are demanding exemptions from the bans for people whose religions support abortion rights. But a few, including the lawsuits in Florida, Missouri and Wyoming, are attempting to have the bans struck down entirely.

In Missouri, the plaintiffs argue that because lawmakers put religious language in the text of the abortion ban itself and made explicit religious appeals when voting on it, they violated the Establishment Clause.

“It took real chutzpah for the legislators to voice their own religious motivations, to wantonly and shamelessly purport to know what God wants or doesn’t want and to enshrine that into law,” said Rabbi James Bennett of Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis, another plaintiff in the Missouri lawsuit. “They’re entitled to their interpretation of when life begins, but they’re not entitled to have the exclusive one.”

Last week, the group faced off in a St. Louis courtroom with state officials who are pushing to have the case thrown out. A ruling could come as soon as this summer.

In Florida, clergy representing Reform Judaism, Buddhism, the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Church sued in state court both to overturn the state’s 15-week abortion ban, and — if that fails — to secure religious exemptions. Their case makes free speech arguments as well — claiming that state bans on “aiding and abetting” abortions are muzzling clergy members who want to offer counseling to parishioners grappling with whether to terminate a pregnancy.

In Kentucky, three Jewish women are arguing that the state’s near-total abortion ban violates their belief that life only begins when a baby takes its first breath, saying it’s preventing them from pursuing pregnancy through in-vitro fertilization.

“To have someone else’s religious belief that an embryo is a human being imposed on me in a way that’s so personal, that prevents me from growing my family, is just rude and un-American,” Lisa Berlow, the lead plaintiff in that case, said in an interview. Berlow had one child through IVF and was planning to have another before Dobbs made her and her fellow plaintiffs fear prosecution. “Discarding non-viable embryos could now be criminalized, or I could miscarry and not know what type of medical care I would get or whether I would be investigated for causing the miscarriage,” she said.

The Satanic Temple is in federal court challenging abortion bans in Texas, Idaho and Indiana, arguing that the laws infringe upon their congregants’ belief in bodily autonomy and right to practice abortion as a religious ritual. A Texas District Court ruled against the Satanists last fall, saying they didn’t prove the need for a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of the ban against its members. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is poised to rule on the challenge in the coming weeks.

These cases are unlikely to restore abortion rights at the federal level given the weaker religious rights protections in the U.S. Constitution compared to many state constitutions as well as the federal judiciary’s rightward tilt.

Elizabeth Reiner Platt, director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia Law School, stressed that the Supreme Court has a record of protecting the religious rights of some groups and not others, pointing to its back-to-back decisions in 2017 upholding the right of a Christian baker to refuse to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding and allowing the right of the Trump administration to deny entry to travelers from majority-Muslim countries.

“While I don’t like to read the tea leaves, I don’t have any hope that the current Supreme Court would, after ruling that there was no due process right or privacy right to abortion, would find a right under the Free Exercise Clause or the Establishment Clause,” Platt said.

Still, she and other legal experts see the state-level religious challenges as one of the best chances abortion-rights advocates have to chip away at bans on the procedure.

“The arguments are quite powerful for creating religious exemptions in the reproductive context under First Amendment doctrine and under state laws for Free Exercise,” said Micah Schwartzman, director of the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy at the University of Virginia Law School. “What Judges do with them is another story.”

In order to succeed, these lawsuits must prove: that the right to an abortion is central to the religious practices of the people suing; that they are sincere in their beliefs and have a track record of observing them; and that state abortion bans make it impossible for them to live according to their faith.

The cases challenging abortion restrictions in their entirety face an additional hurdle: proving that state officials stepped over the line separating church and state in crafting the bans.

“We have a really strong Establishment Clause argument because it’s clear that these bills were passed for religious reasons,” said Marci Hamilton, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Pennsylvania who is part of the legal team representing clergy in Florida. “The 15-week bill was signed in a church and members of the state legislature repeatedly referred to God when arguing why this had to be done.”

Other experts are skeptical, however, of the strength of these arguments.

“There are a million-and-one other explanations a state could give for their abortion restrictions,” Pill said. “They could argue it’s a matter of secular conscience, for example. And once you have any kind of secular justification, an Establishment Clause argument becomes more difficult.”

For their part, the states defending their abortion laws and the conservative legal groups supporting them have to prove that they have a compelling interest — unrelated to religion — in protecting fetal life, that they’re using the least restrictive means to protect that interest, and that the challengers’ claims are speculative and premature because none of them have actually sought an abortion or been blocked from obtaining one since the laws took effect.

“I think these are much more like political stunts than they are viable court cases,” said Lori Windham, a vice president and senior counsel at the Becket Fund, the legal firm behind the Hobby Lobby case that secured a Supreme Court ruling allowing many employers to opt out of covering certain forms of birth control for their workers due to a religious objection. “You can have a sincere political belief or policy preference, and it can be passionate and deeply held, but that doesn’t make it a religious practice.”

CITING SCRIPTURE

Judges have historically avoided questioning the sincerity of someone’s religious beliefs, but Becket and other groups have filed amicus briefs that do so.

To combat these accusations, the challengers point to scripture that lays out a case for abortion rights as well as support from religious leaders for their claims.

The Jewish challengers in Kentucky cite religious texts including the Mishnah that say life begins when a baby takes its first breath, not when it is conceived, and if medical issues arise during pregnancy, the pregnant person’s life “comes before the life of [the child].” They also submitted to the court letters from rabbis arguing that current state exemptions for life-threatening medical emergencies aren’t enough, saying Jewish law permits, and in some cases requires, an abortion when there is “a risk of poverty, abuse, addiction, or mental illness.”

The case challenging Missouri’s ban cites the United Church of Christ’s vote in 1971 to acknowledge the right to abortion and members’ “autonomy to determine what happens to their own bodies,” as well as the Episcopal Church’s “long-standing opposition” to any government attempt to infringe on reproductive choices.

“There’s a tendency to see these cases as kind of a clever, legal switcheroo. Like, here’s a way to take these laws that are often thought of as very conservative and use them to protect abortion rights,” Platt said. “But the idea of reproductive rights as a religious liberty issue is absolutely not something that came from lawyers. It’s how faith communities themselves have been talking about their approach to reproductive rights for literally decades.”

[witchofthesouls]

In regards to that prompt about a neutral bot being popular with the cons and possibly the bots; Damn…their spike/valve is literally a galactic war stopper and starter. I think we got the next Helen of Troy on our hands.

Oh no, they're not the most beautiful mech, they're an average MTO, but Party Goblin is striking in sheer chaotic confidence. No one knows what will happen, but it'll be an adventure... even if parties can only remember a third of what happened and walk out bow-legged.

Think of them like a mix of Brennan ("There is no corner of my heart I will not turn over for five points!") Lee Mulligan's raw intensity, John Mulaney's blackout shenanigans, and a good dose of Florida Man Energy. That's Party Goblin. A really competitive spirit that's there for a Good Time. Fun? Definitely. Legal? Something will be broken. Violence? Most likely. Interfacing? Always.

Party Goblin had single-handedly improved the Cybertronian reputation on a few other planets by playing on no-holds-barred gameshows. They're a fan favorite contestant by the locals. And blowing the backs out of the diplomats.

[louis--wifey]

Superhero AU but all the quotes are from Deadpool and Wolverine

~~~~~~~

Florida: What do you do exactly?

Louisiana: Charge the playing cards. Make them go boom.

Florida: You're power is close up magic, we're not fucked at all.

~~~~~~~

Florida: You ground and pound until he makes no sound because he's dead.

New York: Shut the fuck up!

Florida: Oh my God...

~~~~~~~

New York: Did you say you made an educated fucking wish?

Florida: They call me the Merc with a Mouth. They don't call me Truthful Timmy, the blowjob queen of saskatoon!

New York: One more word. Please give me one.

Florida: Gubernatorial.

~~~~~~~

IDC: Oh, honey, you don't really strike me as a world-saving type. Did I hit a nerve?

Florida: I didn't want it to come to this. Either you help us, or my friend [gestures to New York] here is gonna sing the entire second act of "Music Man", with zero warmup.

~~~~~~

IDC: And I've been trying to catch this little firefly for years, haven't I, California? You picked the wrong time to make new friends.

Florida: Oh, California told us all about you.

New York: Maybe shut up now.

California: Yeah, maybe don't-

Florida: We were just talking here. Yeah, Johnny told us you're a psychotic, megalomaniacal asshole. His word's not mine. Hell bent, on domination and pain.

IDC: You said all that about me?

California: No, no! I didn't say any of that!

Florida: Sticks and stones, California! Don't let her intimidate you. Like you said in the convoy. This finger-licking, dead inside, pixie slab of third-rate dime store nut milk can eat your delicious cinnamon ring and kick rocks all the way to bald-hell.

California: I have never said any of those words in my entire life!

Florida: The modesty! People think I'm a shit-talker, but this guy... next level.

California: What? I don't even know what half of that means!

~~~~~~

Nevada: You can't run. Everybody knows that.

California: You see anyone running, dick-for-brains? You're not going to love what happens next.

Florida: Oh, oh my God. Oh my God. He's going to say it. Ha! Oh my God! He's going to say it!

New York: Say, what?

Florida: Avengers, assemb--

California: Flame on!

~~~~~~

Louisiana: You know how long I been waiting for dis? Whooimbouttomakeanameformyselfere.

New York: I don't think you guys walk away from this...

Louisiana: Just make sure people know wha happened ere taday.

~~~~~~

Florida: What's it gonna be, girl, huh Original recipe? Or "Van Milder" here?

Ohio: Oh, it's funny. I can gently tap the fourth wall too. [Looks are the camera] The proposal.

Florida: The f*ck was that? Bitch, you think that's what I do?

~~~~~~

DC, to Gov: There's nothing you nor I can do to bring them back now.

Florida: He has risen, baby girl!

DC: Fuck!

Florida and New York: [walk into the room in slow motion as Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls plays in the background]

[dnfao3tags]

Monthly Fic Roundup - May 2023

ok look man this is the third fucking time i've had to redo this entire post i dont give a shit anymore i hate tumblr i hope it and i die a very painful death does anybody have any idea how hard it is to edit these things with the shittiest site and shittiest laptop in the world

anyways. nobody reminded me i forgot about mays roundup. betrayal. leave all the writers here a warm kudos and comment :]

— find me here by womanhunt (mat. | comp. | 9k)

Dream and George through various phone calls across time.

— All paths lead to you by Simplysmitten (teen | comp. | 28k)

When George is stressed, he has nightmares, and when George has nightmares, he sleepwalks. In a subconscious search for relief, George sleepwalks to the safest place he can find- Dream's room. Dream finds out more than he bargained for when trying to decode George's nonsensical sleep-talking, but he struggles to make conscious-George as comforted by his presence as unconscious-George.

— i want you, and that’s the way it is by pondsofkoi (gen | comp. | 4k)

Sometimes George combs his hair with enough force Dream thinks he’s trying to yank his scalp out. “Dude.”

— a wish, a child by heartinhands (teen | comp. | 3k)

George wants a child. If he and Dream wish hard enough, there's a chance.

— every sunset by indigoh (mat. | comp. | 10k)

when George goes to sleep, it’s June 2020. When he wakes up, it’s 8 years into the future.

Part 2 of the past, the future, and everything in between

— what a childish thing by tippysleeps (teen | comp. | 7k)

“What year is it,” George repeats. “Um,” Dream frowns. “It’s 2020?” George just stares at him. “It’s 2027,” he says, finally. “2027.”

Part 1 of not afraid of living on a faultline

— Some Other Beginning's End by Scoops (consciousness_streaming) (expl. | comp. | 5k)

George's family takes a holiday to Orlando to visit Disney. Just before George is set to meet Dream, disaster strikes in the form of a werewolf pack taking over Florida, and maybe more of America. While George struggles to survive, scavenging for food and materials for the few survivors, and at the end of his rope--a miracle happens. He might get to meet Dream after all.

— falling in love in the cruelest way by twostorms (teen | comp. | 7k)

Dream can't remember a time where he wasn't at least a little obsessed with George.

— Maw by shrewtz (expl. | comp. | 1k)

To combine their two selves in one way or another, to blur the line between hunger and arousal, to consume a piece of his lover— would it not be the most romantic gesture possible?

— when you kiss my lips, you'll make it stick by demonstars (mat. | comp. | 6k)

Dream's hero's (MUA) journey.

— Can you make it feel like home (if I tell you you're mine?) by JanetBaby99 (expl. | comp. | 19k)

Dream and George go on a road trip together and the tension between them becomes too much. Eventually, it snaps, and they can’t keep their hands to themselves any longer.

— unbreakable heaven by furculaed (teen | comp. | 5k)

“I didn’t mean for it to get so messy,” she breathes, “I thought we could, I don’t know, just do whatever and we’d be okay. I can live with just this, I promise. I can do with nothing, even. I don’t know. Just don’t ask me to stop.” Dream’s breath stops right at her chest. “Stop what, George?” “You know,” she whispers. George looks at Dream, beautiful and breaking at the seams. “Don’t make me say it, Dream. You know,” George begs.

— fall into me by havocrat (teen | comp. | 7k)

Handing the tube back, Georgina smacks her lips together, and they make a little pop sound. It’s a weird feeling, a little sticky, but she kind of likes it. She wonders if it’s anything like kissing Dream for real. “Nice chapstick,” she says, and her voice comes out a little hoarse. Dream’s throat bobs, and she wets her lips again. “Yeah?” “Yeah. Tastes good, too.” She’s aware she sounds like an idiot, but this is the only coherent thought in her head right now, the only thought that isn’t about Dream’s lips and Dream’s mouth and indirect kisses and direct kisses and– God. She needs to get out of there, before she does something they both regret.

— right through your bones by dizzy (teen | comp. | 3k)

George tries to kiss Dream, and it doesn't go as planned.

— tall man’s burden by alreadyhateyou (expl. | comp. | 4k)

Clearly Dream is tall, clearly Dream is taller and bigger than George, in a lot of ways. Clearly, George is really into this. First it’s Dream’s hands, then his shoulders and chest and thighs. Soon it’s everything. Soon George finds out Dream is big everywhere.

— what a fucked up reality show by brokenlikeastitch (teen | comp. | 13k)

“Have you started studying for the map quizzes?” George asks, shoving some of her stuff over to clear the table in front of the chair next to her like she’s making room for Dream. It’s bizarre, and Dream is caught off guard at the sudden conversation. She’s not sure what exactly she was going to say to George, but now she’s even more unsure what to say. “Not yet, I don’t really like thinking about that class.” George giggles, pushing a loose strand of hair back behind her ear as she does. “Me neither, but I don’t want to fail them because I think I’ll jump off a cliff if I have to take this class again, so.” The giggle makes Dream feel a little faint, and she sits down in the offered seat just to make sure she doesn’t accidentally actually fall out in the library in front of everyone.

— This Ambiguous Edge by Amoxil (expl. | comp. | 21k)

Dream and George don’t care about the label. For months, they do everything that couples do. Everything but sex. George is patient, but Dream’s beginning to skirt the line. George wants to see how far he can push him.

— it isn't new (but it's still you) by mocharex (teen | comp. | 15k)

The slow shift from friends to fiancés to having a family together may take years, but, luckily enough, Dream and George have all the time in the world.

— Reasons Not To Be An Idiot by VicIsWriting (expl. | comp. | 30k)

Dream and George– they used to be friends. Sandbox besties, cradle to grave, ride-or-die kind of friends. Now they’re nothing, just strangers on a college campus who barely look in each other’s direction as they pass by, neutral recognition in both their eyes. When their friendship is revived, something new develops too.

— get busy waiting by alreadyhateyou (expl. | comp. | 17k)

Dream claims he wants to wait until marriage, and while George does his best to respect his wishes, it seems like all Dream does is make them both so, so horny.

if you want a rec of your own on next month's roundup, send it in!

[thegoofyfanaticus]

(( Art is commissioned from the incredibly talented ArtReplicant. Original story by me. )) Greg entered the mat room to see Daniel standing in the middle of the mat waiting for him to arrive. Daniel struck an imposing figure in the light of the warehouse standing alone with the light striking off his tan body. Daniel stood with his arms on his hips dressed in basic black compression shorts. His 6-foot 1-inch frame was massively muscular. All Greg knew about Daniel was that Daniel was the gatekeeper of both the pack and the elites of the pack. To grow the pack, Garin, the GM, would send out Daniel, his Zeta, to go to underground fights using Scrap, the app, to scout talent. Daniel would then insert himself into the fights to work his way to fight the prospective talent. Daniel would invite the prospect to join the pack down in Florida based on the prospect's performance in the fight. None of the prospects that Daniel had invited ever beat him in those fights. In fact, Daniel only lost to one prospect: Wyatt and that was in a bar fight. However, if you ask Wyatt about that fight, he'll tell you Daniel won because of the damage Daniel did to Wyatt's face and the fact that Wyatt couldn't knock Daniel out. Daniel, conversely, contents Wyatt won because Daniel couldn't put Wyatt away like he's done to every other prospect he's come across.  However, Daniel hadn't had the chance to fight Greg out in the underground fight world. Garin and Daniel could never track Greg down until Garin used some contacts at the Pentagon. By then, Greg had already arrived here with the bogus invitation to fight. Daniel was forced to watch a prospect fight another guy. Greg had skills as a fighter, much like Daniel expected, but Daniel felt that Greg held back. Daniel convinced Garin to prohibit Greg from any other fights until Daniel could test Greg. Garin reluctantly agreed, having nothing but absolute trust in his closest friend. Daniel purposely waited a little bit to piss Greg off. But this evening, Daniel would force Greg to show all his cards or be humiliated. Greg stopped just short of Daniel looking slightly up at the taller man. Daniel moved right into Greg's face and brought his arms and fists up into a fight stance, "You don't belong here," Daniel glared trying to intimidate Greg. In reality, Daniel knew full well that not only did Greg belong, but he was sorely needed to move the club forward with the most recent activity in the surrounding towns. Greg's only response was to lean in and put his arms and hands up in a fight stance as well. The two looked each other dead in the eyes, their foreheads nearly touching. Daniel smirked, "I'm going to enjoy destroying you."  "You barred others from fighting me and you're preventing me from claiming what I want. You're an inconvenience at best, old man. Time to remove said inconvenience."

[breadvidence]

yay prompt time! love your writing. So: javert/grantaire hookup (perhaps stoned dammit versions?), dammit characters watch Les Mis 2012 and begin to come to an uncomfortable realization about their lives (have not been able to get this out of my head), and maybe musical javert fantasizing about getting choked out during the confrontation again (or post-seine, him explaining this fantasy to a bemused jvj)? wow this got really long. I hope one of these is exciting!

Pretend this is less than 1k (it is not). Dammit Javert/Grantaire, explicit, set during chapter 16.

⁂

He walks into Hal’s where the lager comes with a free shot of Jägermeister on Wednesdays and lets his feet take him back to the worst idea in the place without the kind of preparatory thought that he’s really truly trying to foster in himself on the principle that not knowing where you start makes it harder to find where you’re supposed to end but all the same with an intent he thinks that stems out of the decision to stand up—didn’t Combeferre go out of his way to extend the helping hand to this guy? Who he expects to find at Club Changes or one of the places that don’t hang Pride flags at all but attract the kind of man who calls you cocksucker, not right here in Oak Lawn in one of those mayfly bars that’ll come and go in a couple years max but in the meanwhile sucks on the queer nightlife energy that radiates off of Cedar Springs. Grantaire tosses himself down into the chair next to Mr. Fucked-Up Ex-cop’s, props an elbow on the table, and asks, “Did you move?”

Without a single motion of those stiff-held shoulders, he pivots his head around and stares, cold and intent. There’s two shot glasses in front of him and a sweated-out beer not even one-quarter down, something piss-thin and probably domestic. He’d been contemplating the scrim of foam on the side of the glass pretty intent for a man who didn’t want to be drinking, and he wasn’t watching the crowd like a guy who wants find a person to fuck, which seems uncharacteristic. 

“There’s no discretion in the pig,” he says, and watches Javert twitch, “who drops his load at the trough where he eats, and you strike me as a very discreet kind of hog. Never on the Dallas side of the metroplex, never with the car parked right out front, near the back exit like your might wanna make a hasty retreat should your coworkers come to check everyone’s at least three pieces in dress code, all told trotters ready to hit the bricks as soon as you rooted up the morel you were after. So: did you get a new job on the opposite side of town and have to swap around to the bars far enough from home to feel safe?” He remembers, having been clever, that he was here to be helpful. “Er. Are—also, uh, are you alright?” When this raises no response, he adds his first name in an inquiring tone, to remind him they’re familiar with each other.

They stare at each other some more, ’til he says, his tone flatter than sweet home Florida, “No. Also, I go by Javert.” 

“Ah, pre-empting the history book’s preference of calling a man by his sur—” Grantaire breaks off, with a great act of willpower, and frowns. “Wait. No to which part?”

“To you.” 

“I might not be trying to get into your pants,” Grantaire protests.

Javert raises an eyebrow.

“—this time. Right off. Unless it would help.”

“I’m not leaving until I finish this beer,” he says, tapping the side of the glass. “I’m sure you’ll have lost interest by then.”

How terrible, to be known! He goes to get his free shot and lager, comes back, dumps one in the other, and does most of the talking for the next hour. It’s a waste of both their times, probably, and it might be wrong of him too—but nobody’s glanced Javert’s way, not the right crowd for him in tonight, so Grantaire’s pretty certain he’s at least not cock-blocking the guy, and each of the comments he throws in whenever Grantaire’s stopped for a drink come across as a prompt to keep talking—he’s not being enjoyed, but he’s being engaged with, and that’s irresistible. He remembers, when Javert has about half an inch of beer left, that he’s supposed to be engaging back, and asks, “Why are you still here?”

He gestures to the beer glass.

Grantaire observes, “Last time we had a palaver, you stood up and walked away—a retreat—a neat military maneuver—and I admit, I didn’t mind seeing your backside, after having—”

“You,” Javert says, “are an adequate distraction.” He tilts a look at him. “And you sure as fuck look like you need one, too.” 

That quiets him, for a moment. “What, you’re being friendly?” 

“Evidently,” he says, chewing over the word, and finally finishes his drink. Grantaire has been through—several. “Go close out your tab. Yours or mine?” 

It throws him. “Is yours a seedy motel?”

He pulls a wry expression. “Is yours? I didn’t get the impression you were quite that pathetic.” 

“Pardon me, should I imagine you will sweep me away in a limousine to the Joule so that we can contemplate a Warhol or two on our way to cock-sucking? Because—”

“I did mean my apartment, you jackass, though I’m inclined to retract the offer. Jesus.” He glances away, unsettled, maybe with himself.

“I, ah, stay in walking distance,” Grantaire says, a little thrown, then rallies enough to lean forward and mock-whisper, “If there were theoretically illicit substances in open view, would you narc me out? Or can you be convinced to cut out the difficulty of stealing it from lock-up later and smoke it where you find it?”

“I would never have—” Then he stops, and shrugs. “You know what, fuck it. I’ve been told it would be good for me. Yeah.” 

Grantaire has no trouble backing out of a deal, and near does, but the intrigue is greater, his fuck its as ample as Javert’s evidently are. Outside the door, he says, “Do you want to stroll holding hands? A mile of pretending at some beautiful romance, one over which Nicholas Sparks would weep were he brave enough to depict a couple of fags as dear sweethearts struggling through the unkind world to come to some saccharine tragic finish.” 

It gets him a flick of a look, surprise. “I can walk a mile, yes.”

He’d been a little worried he would have to ask the question outright, rather than more comfortable implication. He shrugs, bundles his hands into his pockets against the cold—he can’t feel it, through the Jägerbomb he capped his drinking with, but he doesn’t want his fingers clumsier than they already are with booze, when they get where they’re going—and leads the way. Courf came by yesterday to help tidy up the place, pretending he was trying to find a copy of The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions that Grantaire borrowed years ago while he helped get trash bagged and sorted out the laundry-floor situation. It’s still not super clean, he sees, through a stranger’s eyes. Javert wrinkles his nose, a little, with a glance around, maybe like he’s got that middle class Boomer standard for everything looking like a stay-at-home wife keeps it neat. Half of Grantaire’s surprise to be invited to Javert’s place was an idle bet with himself about whether he kept up appearances by maintaining a heterosexual relationship, and he’s only just sober and smart enough not to say that aloud as he locks the door and goes to get the weed and rolling paper and lighter, which he’s not actually foolish enough to have sitting out, waving Javert to the couch—and he doesn’t even know what he’s talking about, idle chatter. His mind keeps wanting to go back to how he’s a lot fucking worse off since the protest, with Enjolras detained moreso than he even was before by the light of progress—does that shine still inside a cell?—and a lot fucking better, too, trying to find that light himself, rather than relying on seeing it in the aureole of pretty blond hair.

He turns, shit in hand, and—pauses, a moment, at the predatory interest leveled at him, and he’s netted so many men before by being generous with his drugs that his first thought is that it’s for the weed, but they didn’t talk about that until after Javert agreed to fuck around with him. His second thought is that his friends are gonna have to bail him out again, that this is some kind of weird honeypot sting, and Javert’s expression is for the satisfaction of catching someone with a felonious amount of marijuana on hand. Except—Javert’s thighs are sprawled out, one of his arms is thrown over the back of the couch, relaxed, his color’s high in a way that’s almost charming, a pale blondie’s inability to hide the blush of arousal, of one kind or another—he’s just a guy anticipating getting his dick sucked, probably. Grantaire never clarified what he’s actually into, but that one is always a fair bet.

Gesturing broadly, unsettled to be the object of desire, Grantaire says, “Have you ever reflected on the satisfaction of getting what you don’t want? I feel we might have our books open to the same page. You might say I’ve heard rumors to the effect.”

“You haven’t even lit up yet,” he replies, tone dry. “Can we keep the philosophical questions for when I care less? Besides, whoever’s on your mind, I’m here for cock, which I assume you can provide—unless there’s a terrible accident you’d like to tell me about.” 

Cosette’s poor papa. “I could tell you about a hundred thousand terrible accidents. I read them all in the news. I turn on the television—Ukraine, Palestine, our own New York City—death, murder, suffering, war, racism, you, sir, I’m sure you have your opinions, I certainly have mine, they diverge, but as to the thing you apparently are most invested in—” He tosses the lighter onto the living room table so that he can reach down and seize his own crotch, waggling his eyebrows. “—that is intact and can stand at the ready more or less on command, which is better than can be said for our social unity and all our international boundaries.”

“I wouldn’t call New York ours,” he says, idly. “You want to own the Yanks? But then, South Florida never does feel properly like the South. —Come here.” He gestures to the seat beside him.

“Spoken like a true Texan. I bet you want to secede. Beating your meat to dreams of Stephen Austin.” He’s not actually sure Javert is, now that he reflects on his comment and from the way he snorts, but he doesn’t have his grandma’s ability to pick out a person’s birth county hearing two words out of their mouth. One hand still full, he’s willing enough to sit down, anyway, and goes with it when Javert hooks a hand around his upper arm and pulls him closer. The kiss surprises him some—you get discreet guys skittish about the least hint of romance, though this ain’t really got a lick of romance in it, for all there’s lick aplenty, filthy, devouring. When he’s let go his breath whooshes back into him, and he gives an appreciative little, “Damn.” Before, “The mouth’s for consumption, and you—”

Javert curls a lip. “Christ, what was that last drink you had? I can taste cough syrup through the Jäger.”

“Then don’t stick your tongue so far down my throat,” he says wryly, then, “No, never mind, I can be self-defeating—it’s my little corner of righteousness, to own my faults—but I’m not gonna discourage that. Let me roll a blunt and we’ll have something better on our breath than Red Bull, anyway.” 

“Better,” Javert mutters, doubtful, and lets him go, thumbing spit off the corner of his mouth before he lounges back again. It’s surprisingly effective, the invitation in his posture.

Grantaire has the faint suspicion that this man has fucked often. He might even fuck well. It is a surprise, and peculiarly discouraging; thinks: one hates to have standards to live up to, in bed as elsewhere, and by one means himself. He focuses on rolling the blunt, for a minute—it takes a little attention, with his vision a little off and his hands wanting to wobble. When he takes the first hit, he waggles his eyebrow at Javert, hammy erotic gesture as he wraps his lips around the paper like it’s the worlds most delicate little cock. It gets him an unimpressed stare, which is unfair—he knows for a fact this man has a sense of humor. He breathes out smoke, tension easing out of his shoulders—he pretends it’s not there, and he’s real good at slouching despite it—before he hands it over. 

Javert breathes in smoke with the grace of a guy who’s had something in his mouth for most of his lifetime, that broad chest stills a moment as he holds it, but he grimaces some when he breathes out, squinting at the blunt before he hands it back over.

Grantaire says, lightly, “That expression! A virgin might so peek at what she’s presented with for the first time in person, having spent some time investigating the territory on video. I know mine’s not as shabby as that; I buy good bud. Do you buy better?”

“I haven’t bought at all,” Javert says. “Been around it plenty. Not in a long while, granted.”

Which—“Oh.” It’s been a while since he felt like a corrupting influence, and it’s not the context he expected in. He has a brief raised-evangelical twinge before he rallies and says, “A cherry could be an achene, in another world! Popped, my good man, I’m honored to do the honors.” And takes a hit.

Javert goes loose and glassy-eyed pretty quick, quieter, which is a better result than the vague concern over a bad trip that struck Grantaire—paranoia seems like a natural feature, given past profession. But it looks like he won’t have to summon help, given he’s not the man to manage someone in distress, though maybe he could take Courfeyrac’s direction on how to handle Javert and fetch the ropes, in that instance. It gets him giggling, imagining that, and he asks, “Do you, ah, you into being tied up?”

“Not by you,” Javert says. “No. Well. Never thought about it, actually. Never tried it. Maybe.” Which is a hell of a speedrun of personal development.

Grantaire makes a moue of disappointment, exaggerated, and puts the blunt in the ash tray—just for a minute; he’s realized he should, as the experienced party with a newbie, probably slow down and keep an eye out. Took him a minute, but look: he’s not gone for abandonment. “You’re a cherry tree in June, my friend, heavy with fruit. How unexpected.” 

“I ain’t. That fruit’s mostly harvested.” Javert pivots towards him—winces, maybe that broken-up back and hips of his, and gets hands on Grantaire instead, pulling him almost into his lap, which is novel sensation for a big man; not as big as this guy, as it happens. The kiss this time goes a little slower, a little easier, a precise nip, a flick of the tongue, parted lips, and it takes Grantaire a moment to understand the invitation there, to take him up on it, which earns him an approving rumbling groan, he feels it in the chest he’s braced his hands on to keep from falling too far forward. Which illuminates some questions of preference. He feels his own thoughtless clumsiness, a moment later, in how Javert draws back a little, guides the kiss without taking control of it, and he’d be embarrassed by that—he does, whatever his friends think, know how a blush feels—except that the other man doesn’t comment on it, just gets them on track, and Grantaire tries—he does know, he’s got experience, he’s just not often messing around with someone who cares enough to be good at this, he doesn’t normally care enough to be good at this. This isn’t where he was looking for care—or maybe it’s simply investment, like a retail employee who shouldn’t give a fuck but gives their all anyhow.

The fingers that pop the button of his jeans, undo his zip, the big hand that slides into his boxers and palms over his dick, the lightly-stroking thumb over the head of his cock—getting the feel of him, not at all polite, but measured—that distracts him, he loses track of what he’s doing other than chasing the sensation, restless uncoordinated hips bucking up because he doesn’t want it light at all. Javert gives up on him, a little, trails his mouth down to his ear, an obscenity committed against his earlobe, teeth scraping down his jugular in a way that only won’t leave marks because his skin’s a little too dark to bruise easy. Pauses long enough to spit into his palm, casual, to make it easier. Grantaire is faintly aware of commentating on all of this, but he’s never had to mind his own mouth for it to run. In one of the moments when he’s got his feet braced and his hips lifted Javert uses his free hand to shove his pants down properly, and Grantaire helps, uncoordinated, ass-out on the couch, feeling his legs bound up and unable to spread as much as he wants to and harder for it. He’s still talking.

Javert uses that hand to reach up and slide two fingers into his mouth, jacks his cock like he’s got serious intent to end this here. Which is Grantaire thinks faintly, a curious choice, maybe a sign he’s bored or wants to get out early, though he’s more fucked-up than Grantaire thinks he should let a person leave and drive. He sucks those fingers with a sloppy enthusiastic attempt to demonstrate he can reciprocate all this attention, catches up at last to the fact that he ought to be reciprocating—there’s so many things he should do in life, and he’s so belated all the time—he reaches out, gets his hand on an appealingly thick thigh, becomes disoriented and ends up at a knee, tilts his head back and laughs at himself, manages to reorient and squeezes over—well. That package is impressive, but it ain’t impressed with him, feels like. “Ah.”

Javert lets up, doesn’t take his hand away but merely cradles rather than strokes. Sighs, then drawls, “I hope you weren’t real committed to me topping tonight,” and gestures towards the joint. “Worse than whiskey, apparently.”

“I have so many dildos,” Grantaire says, amiable. “You still can. Hard is a mindset, my friend. Hard is a latent potential. Do you really think, before they went their separate ways, while Abelard still had the wound between his thighs, he didn’t consummate his love with Héloïse? She wouldn’t have sent all those letters, friend, if he didn’t offer some kind of hardness to her. When God turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt, it was a suggestion to us all for what the people of Gomorrah and Sodom got up to, when the flesh got tired, she saw those artificial columns and she could not resist mimicking them. Samuel L. Jackson himself says there’s no shame in a limp snake, and he would know. Yeah. So, you wanna, like, pick one out from my collection and do me?”

He leans his head back against the couch, eyes fluttering shut, and sighs. “Sure.” 

“That’s not enthusiastic consent,” Grantaire replies, scolding.

His brows bunch together, glassy eyes opened then narrowed, agonizingly he removes his hand from Grantaire’s dick, he says, “Wait, wait, wait. You know, I have been to a training session about consent and substance use. Is this okay, or—”

“I have fucked while high so many times. Shh. We agreed beforehand. It’s not a big deal. C’mere. Unless you don’t want to, now, I guess.” He tries to get his boxers and pants back on, but his coordination’s worse than he thought, and he reverses track and kicks them off instead, aware he’s being idly watched. He’ll try to remember to get them into the laundry basket later, so Courfeyrac doesn’t have so much to do, next time he visits. He reaches down and helps haul Javert up to his feet, both of them stumbling a little, and they mutually forget about the cane; he’s strong enough to keep them both on their feet when his left leg wants to give, surprised when Javert gives an appreciative moan and gropes over his arms and chest, where the muscles have tensed, hard enough touch to get through the fat and really feel what strength’s there. Kisses him, this time with as much enthusiasm as skill.

The things you learn about a guy, when you’re fucking him. Remarkable. He gets Javert’s cane for him, feeling uncomfortable touching someone’s mobility aid without having asked first too belated not to do it, and they get to the bedroom with a few stops to grope each other along the way. Javert mutters, at one point, “You don’t have to—”, with a shrug, and Grantaire takes it as a don’t, lets up on his prick. He’s got a standard white boy’s underwhelming ass, but it’s still nice to get hands on, when it makes him growl and grind up on him.

In the bedroom, Javert strips off his shirt, then pauses, tilting a look at Grantaire. “Am I staying long enough to bother undressing?” There’s nothing uncertain or sad or insecure in it—it’s just a straightforward question.

Grantaire makes a show of leaning close, an inspection, says, “You’re staying long enough to sober up, right?”

“Sure,” Javert says, and starts in on his pants. “I don’t actually care which dildo you take up the ass.” 

“Yes, yes, let the house sommelier determine which vintage to choose, wise man—”

“Got pretty strong opinions about wine, actually, though you shouldn’t discount a somm’s advice,” Javert mutters, then shakes his head. “Fucking Christ, no, please, I’m not taking any of your metaphors serious, don’t bother to clarify or expand.”  

Grantaire laughs, at that, weirdly pleased to be put down—none of his friends bother, anymore. He gets the twisty purple number out, and the warming lube, ’cause he does know how to be nice to himself sometimes. “Do you ‘got’ pretty strong opinions on how you want me positioned?”

“Yeah, actually.” He pushes himself up to the headboard, and, damn, Grantaire’s gay enough and honest enough to admit he’s pretty sad that he’s not gonna see what that cock looks like hard; it rests against his thigh, flushed though soft, and there’s a kind of optical illusion going on—it looks average enough, ’til you consider how big the hand is that Javert reaches down with to idly readjust himself. Looking at him nude, Grantaire’s acutely aware of their age difference: twenty years, a little more? He’s got a wolf’s pelt worth of hair on that chest, heavier than he’d expect of someone so fair, gone to mostly gray and silver, and his pecs have begun to sag a little over his belly, the skin of his lean stomach wrinkles over the cut of his hips, his feet are neatly-kept but thickly knobbed, maybe even arthritic. There’s a sadness in that Grantaire can’t quite grasp, that it’s them fucking, and it’s not his side of the equation that’s got him edging up on the cliff fall into maudlin, though average wisdom would say that it’s the old guy getting to bang a young thing who should celebrate. Neither of them, Grantaire thinks, are in bed with the person he wants. If he keeps on that trail he’s not gonna want to have sex at all, though, and if he’s done that plenty before—cut guys off and annoyed them right back into their pants—well, he doesn’t want that, tonight. 

He says, because he’s maybe gotten a little caught in the lingering weed-haze, “I’ll have to write you an apology note. Don’t forget to write down your address for me so I can send it. I didn’t catch a damn thing you just said.” 

Javert laughs, teeth and a heave of breath. “I noticed and stopped halfway through my explanation.” He stretches out his legs, cups his hands in front of himself. “Ass here, you self-described fag. Not the hottest position but I can’t kneel, so you’ll have to settle.” 

“It doesn’t feel like settling,” he assures him. “Y’know, we’re anti-ableism now. We fuck our disabled comrades how they want it, when they want it, in the position they want it.”

“I’m not—” He pulls an odd expression. “Come here.” 

“I intend to!” he says, brightly, and strips off his shirt, palming down the heft of his stomach for the sensation of coarse hair on his hand—he’s not too shy for all forms of self-gratification—to work at his own cock for a moment, making his expression appreciative as he looks Javert over. He’s done a lot of looking with desire, and he thinks he manages an echo of his usual, and it’s not his most sincere—sincerity he’s not always good at, outside certain company—it is with genuine intent, and yeah, it makes Javert’s cock twitch. Most people get off on it, being looked at with want, and if he’s at peace with the fact that it’s not the case for everyone—oh, he needs to not think about that. He gets up on the bed, brackets Javert’s calves with his knees, and before he can kneel up he’s pulled back by a long arm around his chest, face turned back with fingers on his chin, and this time there’s no invitation: the tongue pressed into his mouth makes promises. When he leans back, Grantaire plants himself, turns forward, and surprises himself saying, “This is going to sound stupid as hell, but don’t, um, I don’t like it real rough, actually.”

“Ain’t stupid,” Javert mutters, and gives his ass a little pat, surprising him with the niceness. It sounds a bit strained, but he’ll take it. “Bet I can still make all your words come to pieces, doing it easy. Gonna get you so worked up you can’t remember any of those obscure political figures. Yeah, you’re gonna lose the Bible, with my fingers fucking your ass.” There’s the sound of the lube cap; he takes the time to warm it up in his palm before he reaches around to give his cock an idle tug; a first slick finger teases around his hole. As Javert pushes in, he says, “And don’t touch my feet, please.”

That last bit is was said real quiet, during a distraction, but Grantaire pays mind. He tries to keep minding as his cock is wrung casual easy, as another finger slides into him, they press against his prostate, and for long minutes Javert’s taken that not rough as maddening soft, rocking against him so slow it’s just a tease, Grantaire glances down and there’s precome slick on the head of his own dick. He pushes up on his knees to get off those fingers, shoves Javert’s arm out of the way, and drops down into his lap—and it really is strange, to be the smaller partner—grinds down on him in an attempt to start something different. Gets rejected, totally and utterly, an annoyed grunt, Javert’s hands on his hips pushing him forward—back up onto his knees, a hand between his shoulder blades urging him to drop forward onto his elbows, a suggestion short of a shove—but only just. He feels the difference, there, very stark, between a good fuck and a considerate partner. He goes along with it, moans into the bedsheets, clutches at them, at the touch of the narrow head of the dildo against his hole.

Javert’s less practiced with one of those, he can tell, but he’s attentive—not so high anymore—and he gets an angle and rhythm steady and sure, there’s always an edge of control when a guy’s not using his own cock that does it for Grantaire, and he sees clear in that moment how much that’s because that’s as close as he thinks he’d ever get to the dick he wants, were he in bed with—yeah, he’s not gonna do Javert wrong, thinking about someone else while he’s thrusting down into the circle of his meaty thumb and forefinger and babbling at him about enemies who’ve fucked, did Simon Peter take Judas’ cock?, did Hector and Patroclus ever cross spears?, until with a huff of amusement Javert discards the dildo—Grantaire cries out into the sheets, broken off—shifts a little clumsily onto his knees, gets his hand between them and fucks three fingers in, slow push, his hips rocking forward, his weight on Grantaire’s back, and that does it, it’s all that hot sweated-up skin, it’s panting breath against his shoulder, the connection, the sense of being desired in that moment, this man hot for him, fired up, whatever body part’s not cooperative. Grantaire comes, bucks hard into air because Javert’s free hand is off his cock on his side leaned heavily there for steadiness, shudders and clenches and drops his head down between his shoulders. 

Javert pulls out, falls back onto his haunches. Grantaire glances over his shoulder, too unfocused to register much other than how relaxed Javert is, lounged back against the headboard, with his hand loose on his knee—’til he glances down at it, and gives a twitch. His cock’s chubbed up some between his thighs, fading fast as he swings his legs over the side of the bed, reaches over for his cane, and gets up to limp towards the bathroom to wash up. 

Grantaire shuffles around, drops onto his back, then groans at his own stupid decision—he’s almost sure they didn’t get too much lube on the sheets right until this moment, and now he’s planted his fucked-out ass onto them. Ah, well. He’ll smoke the rest of the blunt after Javert is gone, and then he won’t mind sleeping in the mess. 

Javert comes back as far as the edge of the bed, looks down at him with his eyebrows bunched.

“Leaving dissatisfied,” Grantaire says lazily. “Does it come as a surprise to you?”

“Dissatisfied with myself. You were talking right through your orgasm. Impressive, in a terrible way.”

“No, don’t judge yourself,” Grantaire advises. “Some promises aren’t meant to be kept.”

[oldguardleatherdog]

For Father's Day:

"The One Decent Thing I Ever Did"

This is a monograph from 2015, previously posted here some time ago, a tale of my maternal grandmother, a below-zero winter night, the New York City subway West Side express during post-9/11, that mentions my father only in passing... and it's about my father.

THE ONE DECENT THING I EVER DID.

I.

A long time ago, during a time of struggle, I did one decent thing:

I'd just gotten on the subway in Midtown Manhattan on a brutal winter night, the No. 2 uptown express, when a couple with a small child boarded the car I was riding.

They were having a very loud conversation with their child (about four years old, I think) who was crying or somehow behaving in a way that was "bad". The mother took the belt from her jeans and raised her arm to strike her child with it.

Don’t ask me why I did this, but I rose from my seat, grabbed the mother’s arm mid-swing, and said, “As long as I am on this train, you will not hit that child with that belt.” She and the child’s father were stunned into silence for a moment as I made my way back to my seat.

Immediately after I sat down, the mother and father began leveling all kinds of vitriol my way, calling me every name in the book, including all the variations of “faggot” in use at the time. I just sat there, smiled wide, laughed loud, and shined ‘em on:

“You can call me ‘faggot.’ You can call me anything you like. Because every minute you focus on me, you are not beating that child with that belt.”

The crowded train car fell silent.

II.

Yuletide, 1982. I was in the service in Germany and took leave to see my grandmother in Florida. My grandfather had passed away the previous March, and something told me to seize the chance to see Grandma while she was still with us. I was only 20, born late in life to my parents, and never got to know my grandparents in the way my older brothers did.

We were in my Grandma's airy, air-conditioned Fort Lauderdale kitchen having coffee one morning when the rest of the family had gone out for breakfast. “Would you like a little pick-me-up in your cup, dear?” I laughed. “No thanks, Gramma, it's a little early for me.” The joys of Florida.

I'd had a rough upbringing by any measure - my father was first-gen shanty Irish born in the early 1920's with a mean spirit and a violent edge, mother not Irish but still violent - but at age 20 I hadn't yet realized just how rough it had been.

“You know,” I said to Grandma, “Harold and Evelyn did the best they could. I mean, I turned out all right, right?”

Grandma leaned back in her chair, took a nice drag off one of her unfiltered Camels, and said in her declarative New England way the words that always meant Listen up, you're about to hear gospel truth:

“Well, I'll tell ya, Joe.” I was all ears.

She took another hit off of her cigarette. “I held my tongue. More than once, I held my tongue.

“But one day, your mother and father were in the front yard with your grandfather and me, and I walked up to your father and said, “Harold, I just want to tell you something. It takes a real man to beat a child with a belt.”

...Wow.

I only wish she hadn’t held her tongue!

I sipped my coffee, looked for palmetto bugs on the lanai. “Grandma,” I said, “I'm all right.”

She looked away, and I saw the colors of the rainbow in the prism of her pendant.

III.

What was I doing on the 2 train heading uptown in the bitter blistering freezing cold New York winter?

Heading “home” – that is, to one of the many rundown firetrap SRO hotels paid by the City of New York to house homeless people with HIV. The City's AIDS regulations set the policy: if you showed up at the HIV center at 30th and 8th before 7 PM on a given day, New York City was obliged to find you housing for the same night and for the next 30 days in a row at the very least.

Strange - in those days, New York would house you but not feed you, and San Francisco would feed you but not house you. Come to think of it, that's the way it is these days.

My dank, filthy, crawling with roaches and vermin crack-house "shelter" was way uptown, near 96th and Broadway. (I had always dreamed about making it to Broadway, ha ha.)

96th Street and Broadway stop was next. The train car was still silent as the parents sat sullenly and the child - Jesus, he can't be older than 3 or 4 years old, I thought - was staring at me, no expression on his little face, but eyes wide as saucers.

The train screeched to a stop. I got up and headed to the door, passing the couple with the small child and the loose belt. They were silent and did not regard me as I passed; the child, I think, might have glanced at me, but I’m not sure. I knew that after I got off the train, or after they got off the train, that poor kid was probably going to get beaten. Severely.

Out the door and onto the bone-chilling platform at 96th Street. A young woman who had witnessed the mother wield that belt came up to me and said, “I’m so glad you did that, I wanted to say something, but I was too…” Her voice trailed off as the pained look on her face finished her thought.

“I understand,” I said to her as our eyes met in that New York way of speaking the unspeakable, then made my way up the stairs into the below-zero winter breezes of the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

What the hell, I thought as I made my way out of the station, I had nothing to lose. Those were dark times, desperate days. I'm no angel. But just once, on that long-ago Number 2 train, I was granted the grace to do one decent thing.

Animal J. Smith San Francisco, California July 22, 2015 and June 18, 2023 v2.0

My maternal grandparents, Ed and Ethel (Schirmer) Olson, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, c. 1980