#I had to write this twice so this is the slimmed down version

[theanticool]

What are your thoughts on Charles vs Islam? Since we are so close I’d figure I’d ask again. I’ve gone back and forth on it and I feel we are gunna have to wait and see what actually happens because there is still a lot that remains to be seen. After listening to heavy hands and Charles being pinned down by other grapplers in the past gives me concern, though I feel as a grappler he’s improved since then. What do you think?

I had a whole thing I was going write for this fight. Took notes and everything, but life gets in the way of my MMA obsession so I’m going to dump it all here in your answer instead.

Charles’ guard is overrated, but only in the sense that EVERYONE’s guard is overrated in MMA. It just is not a winning position in this sport. If Islam gets Charles down and can keep him from instantly creating space to get up or sweep, he’s probably going to beat him up in that position. I don’t trust Oliveira’s gas tank. We’ve seen him wilt against big physical fighters before like Felder (granted, that was from Oliveira trying to push a ridiculous grappling pace on Felder but still) and dude fights like he has to be back in the locker room in like 5 minutes. Everything is a sprint with him, including his guard. So him throwing up armbars for like 3 minutes before Islam flattens him out and beats him down makes sense. And unlike against Poirier and Gaethje, the guard isn’t a rest area. If Makhachev hurts Oliveira in the clinch should they tie up or Oliveira falls down for whatever reason (KD, TD, tripped, etc), that’s not a rest position. 

BUT my question for Makhachev is how many people have engaged him on their own terms? Guys like Hooker, Green, and Moises just willingly gave him the center of the cage because, ironically enough, they didn’t want to get taken down. That’s also how they all fight a lot of the time but still, Islam is from a camp that specializes in cage wrestling. They’re entire identity is based around putting opponents up against the cage or near there and getting them down and using the limited space to not let them back up. Against Tsarukyan, Islam didn’t really need to chase a target either because Tsarukyan was actively trying to outwrestle him. Drew Dober is a bit of a boxer-puncher but he’s never been a guy with any type of serious range tools. He’s been known to be takedown-able. The only person I can recall being the aggressor against Makhachev is Davi Ramos. Ramos is a great grappler that Makhachev didn’t bother trying to takedown. That was in part cause Ramos is a limited striker who relies on big explosive movement and Makhachev was picking him off as he charged in. But how much of that was Ramos just not giving Makhachev the read he wanted to push the wrestling? Oliveira probably doesn’t fare well on the ground against Makhachev for long stretches, but if Oliveira’s confidence in his wrestling/grappling carries him to be the aggressor on the feet? If it leads to him throwing sharp strikes from range like he was doing against Poirier and Gaethje that forces Makhachev back? Maybe he doesn’t need to be.

A few weeks ago I said Khabib was a better striker than Islam. Islam has certainly become better as a striker from the days he got KTFO by Adriano Martins. He’s cleaner with his technique. He has more variety, especially with the kicks. But I said what I said because Khabib’s striking had strategic variety rather than weapon variety. It wasn’t always pretty or fluid, but Khabib’s offense was always able to engage an opponent on multiple levels. He’d be able to get an opponent to commit to a jab or paw out with his striking/feints before ducking under that lead hand to turn it to a takedown. He was able to take aggressive opponents and tie them up. He was able to use the threat of the level change to get his strikes off. He had a nice stiff jab that he was able to angle off of to take breaks slow the pace of fights down so he could gather his energy back after high paced rounds. I just haven’t seen that level of craft put into Makhachev’s game, in part cause he’s been fighting guys who are willing to give him all the positions he wants in the poor assumption that they will be safe from his wrestling there. It’s not really a knock on Islam but it’s a big question that is hanging over his head imo.

The smart money in this fight is on Makhachev. Oliveira is 100% capable of self sabotaging. I could totally see Do Bronx deciding “No, I’m the wrestler here” and then getting guillotined or being snapped down and getting his back taken. But I think I’m picking Oliveira by TKO. Sure we’ve seen Oliveira’s grappling wither under big wrestlers before but we’ve also seen Makhachev get KTFO. The man isn’t indestructible like Khabib was (Dude’s chin carried him through some stuff). If Islam was a slightly bigger or more active puncher, I’d probably pick him outright to be honest.

[donfadrique]

I've decided to re-watch “The Mark of Zorro” (1940) to cheer myself up. 

I have sort of a plan: 1) watch the black and white version (in the old Soviet dubbing) and write down an emotional brief review in the process of watching it; 2) watch the colorized version; 3) watch the movie in the original dubbing; 4) perhaps write a full review.

I watched this movie a long time ago for the first time (I wanted to watch famous films with Basil Rathbone). But unfortunately, I didn't get to watch the movie properly, and all I remembered were a few scenes. I didn’t like Tyrone Power then, and only this year, after taking a closer look at him, I changed my mind. So this is the first time I'm watching Zorro'40 carefully.

Before we start, a few words need to be said. (However, the film has my full attention from the very first frame, and I'll have a very hard time pausing and writing down these notes!)

First of all, I am not a native English speaker, so I apologize for any mistakes.

Secondly, after watching the movie I want to give my assessment of a) screenplay, b) cast and director’s work, c) posters, costumes, locations, camera work, soundtrack etc. Also, I wanna find the answer to the question, what makes the movie a masterpiece for me.

A separate topic is the homoeroticism of "The Mark of Zorro". We know that Diego's flirtation with Captain Pasquale was part of his plan to eliminate his enemies, but was there a "gay message" in the film, as some movie reviewers claim? Perhaps it was ambiguous humor or an analogue of modern fan service for those viewers who positively evaluate same-sex relationships? Let's try to figure it out.

So, let's start.

1/🗡️

Wow, Diego receives his military education (!) in Madrid (judging by his uniform, he is a hussar), he has a reputation as a duelist (he was nicknamed "Californian cockerel") and, probably, a womanizer. It is not yet known how old Diego is, but the actor (Tyrone Power) is 26, which means the screenwriters were most likely focusing on the canonical novel by Johnston McCulley.

I also really like the design of the credits, the preface and the first lines of the characters, as well as the costumes and the balance between realism and spectacularity of the movie (and this spectacularity is the result of the work of the film crew and fencing skill of actors, and not modern computer graphics etc).

2/🗡️

Aha, "Cadet Vega".

And, saying goodbye to his comrades, Diego thrusts his saber into the ceiling.

"Leave it there. And when you see it think of me in the land of gentle missions, happy peons, sleepy caballeros, and everlasting boredom. Wine! A toast, señores! To California! Where a man can only marry, raise fat children, and watch his vineyards grow."

The most amazing thing is that Diego gives the impression of a very mature and strong-willed person. Like a military general, not a young cadet :) I have three explanations: 1) Tyrone Power himself was like that, 2) he played Cadet Vega like that so viewers would later see the contrast between true Diego and his dandy mask, 3) both factors. But, of course, Power was not just a talented and good-looking actor, he was a charismatic person. A fine choice of an actor to play Zorro. Moreover, Power had a Spanish-like appearance, which is important, for my taste. And his slim body would allow him to convincingly play both a dandy and the "elusive ghost" El Zorro.

3/🗡️

Before I continue watching the movie and taking notes, here are a few interesting facts about actors and my thoughts out loud.

🎭 Everyone knows that Basil Rathbone was one of the best swordsmen in Hollywood. But perhaps not everyone knows that he was twice the British Army Fencing Champion, a skill that served him well in movies and allowed him to even teach actors Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power swordsmanship. (By the way, Rathbone was awarded the Military Cross in 1918.) And! He said about Tyrone Power, "Power was the most agile man with a sword I've ever faced before a camera. Tyrone could have fenced Errol Flynn into a cocked hat." Rathbone's opinion was worth a lot, because he was not only famous for his fencing and acting skills—he was a mega-celebrity (well, years ago I became interested in "The Mark of Zorro" precisely because Rathbone starred there; I had never even heard of Power xD). And yup, as we already know, the movie became a hit, and 20th Century-Fox often cast Power in other swashbucklers in the years that followed.

🎭 The fact that Flynn and Power were lovers can only be of interest to us because Power, due to his bisexuality and communication with homosexuals, was able to play ideally a man who pretended (?) to be interested in the same sex. But since Power's Diego was flirting with Rathbone's Captain Pasquale, I was interested in his views on same-sex relationships. Rathbone probably had a positive attitude towards them, since in 1926 he was very angry about the censorship because he believed that homosexuality needed to be brought into the open (Rathbone was arrested along with every other member of the cast of "The Captive", a play in which his character's wife left him for another woman).

🎭 So far, I like everything about "The Mark of Zorro", except that the screen image is reminiscent of "Captain Blood" (1935), not "Gone with the Wind" (1939), filmed in Technicolor. Perhaps modern viewers often underestimate Zorro'40 precisely because both versions of the movie, black-and-white and colorized, seem "old-fashioned" to them.

An interesting fact. According to Hollywood legend, Rathbone was Margaret Mitchell's first choice to play Rhett Butler in the film version of her novel "Gone with the Wind".

🔥References (if you need them)🔥

Rathbone, Basil (1962). In and Out of Character (Ebook ed.). Lanham, MD: Limelight Publishers.

Higham, Charles (1980). Errol Flynn: The Untold Story. New York City: Doubleday.

[cartograffiti]

July '23 reading diary

I'm reading so many books these days that I've decided monthly posts would be a fun way to think about what books are grabbing me and shove them in front of other people.

In July I finished 12 books, many of them really lovely.

This summer I've been reading all of Cat Sebastian's 20th century romances, because I'd already read all her 18th and 19th century ones. I like her work a lot, because it's full of really powerful romantic gestures and she writes domestic slice of life as well as crimes. In July I read the last three I needed to have read her whole body of work, and found a new favorite.

Peter Cabot Gets Lost and Daniel Cabot Puts Down Roots are the second and third in a romance series that can easily be read out of order, all about estranged queer members of a Kennedys-ish political family. Peter's is a 1960s coast-to-coast road trip about fresh college grads with outstanding grumpy for sunshine chemistry, and it's the one that became my new favorite (my previous favorite was A Duke in Disguise). It has a wonderful ease and warmth to it, and I would have cheerfully read a version twice as long.

His cousin Daniel's book has some odd pacing--the last several chapters all feel like bonus codas to the main arc--but I enjoyed it all so much I don't care. This one's a cozy plot of friends who everyone knows are couple except themselves, starring a music critic and a doctor in New York's East Village in the 1970s. This is a great pick for anyone who feels like romances tend to move too fast, since their relationship is well established when they decide to change it. Their attraction to each other has a lot of emphasis on each other's quirks and their opposing personal styles, which is deeply cute.

The third Cat Sebastian I read was We Could Be So Good, which is her new release. It's a touching story about New York newspapermen in the 1950s, with an astonishing amount of pining. Like, Pacific Northwest pine content. I remarked in my liveblog that I felt like I was watching pandas in a zoo: "Please fuck the whole world would love for you to fuck, top scientists are trying to set the mood for you." This was fun! I prefer her faster-moving and more explicit books, which is most of them, but it's nice to read about a personable couple helping each other over hurdles so they can kiss.

The English Eccentrics by Edith Sitwell is a book I read very slowly and finished this month. It's a very odd work of nonfiction from the 1930s, and I wish I could remember how I first got interested in it. It's an overview of a large number of historical people whose "eccentricity" ranged, for me, from delightful to pitiable to repellent. Sitwell's style is a bit dense and full of opinion in a way that made me question her research when she touched on figures I had some familiarity with, like the con artist Princess Caraboo. More intriguing than informative.

The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff is a more satisfying nonfiction pick, a memoir follow up to the hugely charming 84, Charing Cross Road. This book recounts American writer Hanff's visit to some of the long-distance friends she corresponded with in the first book. I find the first much more moving, as a person with many similar friendships, and I missed the additional voices of her friends, but it's a slim book and Hanff's humor and observations kept me entertained throughout.

And my favorite nonfiction in July was Girls Can Kiss Now, a book of essays on pop culture and queer identity by Jill Gutowitz. Gutowitz is older than I am, but we're close enough in age for events to feel very relevant to me as an individual, and she writes with a lot of approachability and lightness without sacrificing insight. If you're interested in how rapidly media handling of queerness changed in the last 20 years, this is great.

Threshold and Stormhaven by Jordan L. Hawk. I read Widdershins, the first in this series about Victorian boyfriends solving mysteries about eldritch horrors, in 2015. I never quite wanted to invest in buying the whole series, so I was delighted to find one of my libraries has an omnibus of the series in their e-collection. Hawk is very good at writing horror and sex, solid at writing mysteries, and maybe just okay at interpersonal arcs. These first books have some problems common to inexperienced writers and some pet peeves of mine (notably very irritating romantic jealousy), but they're loads of fun and a good amount of disturbing. Is it silly to nervously roll over in bed to cope with an alien shrimp's dialogue? Yes, but that's a selling point.

A Curious Beginning by Deanna Raybourn is the first Veronica Speedwell novel, and it took me a few months to read because I kept finding it a bit thin and putting it aside. I liked the resolution very much because it made the stakes I'd been missing real, and since Veronica and her love interest(?) have great chemistry, I look forward to reading the next. Pleasingly similar in tone and setting to Gail Carriger, though not Steampunk.

Frederica by Georgette Heyer. One of Heyer's best, I think. Heyer wrote a fairly narrow set of types for her main characters, and both of the romantic leads here are ones I like, who are natural and immediate collaborators and challengers for each other, plus great siblings and a chase after an out-of-control hot air balloon.

Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie, who only wrote books I've thought were great so far. This is a 1969 Hercule Poirot and Ariadne Oliver about the suburban murder of a 13 year old, preoccupied with generation gaps and 60s panics about the still fairly new concept of teenagers, ranging from marijuana and early computer technology to sex abuse and suicide. Great insights on the things people blame violent crime on because they don't want to consider malice, and lovely imagery about a famous garden designer's work. It's been adapted by Branagh as Death in Venice, and I'm very puzzled how they got from A to B. Don't pick this up expecting the vibe of that trailer. Do pick it up.

Thinking about young teens and murder brought me back to the Wells and Wong mysteries, an excellent recent middle grade series I started in the fall to surprise a friend with a treat for the Yuletide fic exchange. The second book is Poison is Not Polite in the US, originally Arsenic for Tea--you might want to look for author Robin Stevens instead of futzing around with varying titles to see whether you can borrow this series yourself. Anyway, both books so far are really strong, with cases that have enough subtlety and meat for me as an adult reader, and excellent writing on mystery tropes, race and class, and the particular frustrations of being about 13 years old. I'm deeply invested in Hazel and Daisy, and I loved this take on a classic house party case.

[pansyslut]

my daisy

draco x reader

summary: draco falls in love with his pen pal and when she transfers to hogwarts he becomes even more infatuated than ever

warnings: smut towards the end (innocent kink, skirt kink, thigh riding, praise, spanking)

a/n: well some of you *cough cough* (@futuremrsfelton20 @ch0kemedracomalfoy @yellowsuitcase @fa-me) have been waiting for this and i really hope it’s to your liking. y’all’s comments and messages had me laughing so hard you don’t even know. if y’all want a less fluffy version i would happily oblige.

you had been lingering in dracos mind for quite some time now. over the past few months, you and draco had been writing letters to each other for your writing class. it was only supposed to last a month but both of you quickly became accustomed to writing to each other, always looking towards the window waiting for the next letter to arrive.

he had instantly become intrigued by you and everything you had to say. at the beginning, the letters were short and to the point, only really doing them to receive a grade. but later on, you started sending little things in the letters. pictures, flowers, small gifts.

three weeks into the letters, you decided to send a picture of yourself to him. he kept complaining about not being able to put the name to a face even though it was just his curiosity getting the best of him.

dear draco,

you have been pestering me about this for far too long and i’ve finally decided to give in. i promised you i wasn’t some old hag with warts all over my face and i hope i’m to your liking.

p.s. please don’t take that last part too seriously. merlin knows you don’t need another ego boost :)

fondly,

y/n

draco had starred at your picture much longer than he had liked to admit. you stand there in a small green plaid skirt, knitted matching green cardigan, with a white crop top underneath, and your hair pulled back with a slim headband. the picture shows you standing there with a radiant smile he couldn’t seem to get out of his head.

after immediately writing you back and giving you an array of compliments, he sends you back a picture as well. along with an enchanted white daisy.

my dearest daisy,

i wish i could tell you you looked like an ogre and throw a handful of insults at you but i would be lying to myself. thankfully, we aren’t talking in person so you didn’t have to see my starring at you in disbelief. to say the least, you are a sight for sore eyes. i would be lucky to ever be able to see you in person. i hope you like the flower. my mother sent it to me from her garden and it reminded me of you.

fondly,

draco

the thing you didn’t know, and what draco had decided was best to leave out, was that the flower was in fact from his mother’s enchanted garden but she sent it specifically for you. draco had told her about you and his mothers sent him the flower with a message saying- so you can woo the girl.

you held his picture in one hand and the flower in another. although you would like to say otherwise, the boy is beyond handsome. and charming as well even though you’d never admit that in your letters.

this goes on for months. you continue to write back and forth until your mother came to you with news saying you would be switching school for the second semester.

saying something along the lines of, “this school holds a hand full of fine young witches like yourself. this is for the best.”

you immediately thought of draco. he wouldn’t know where to write you and you would never hear from you again. quickly, you pull out your pen and paper to message him.

as soon as draco read your message he was filled with joy. he had a pit of anxiety bubbling up in his stomach and his head couldn’t help but run through ideas. what if she doesn’t like me? what if she’s disappointed and realizes she never knew the person she was messaging all along?

his mind was filled with these kind of thoughts for days. he had written you back saying that he attended that school but never recieved an answer. he assumed you were too busy packing or were already on your way.

it wasn’t until a week later while sitting in the dinning hall that he saw you. you walked in in your new uniform and was in awe. with the outfit similar to your picture, you had on a small plaid skirt and knee high socks and draco couldn’t help but have his mind filled with dirty images of you.

watching you walk to your table, you plop down next to a group of students and give them a warm smile. they immediately bombard you with questions and you answer them politely and make conversation. draco watched you across the room in facination. of course she’s all polite and sweet and looks like that.

deciding against talking to you, he scuries off to his room. scolding himself for being some shy boy when that is the total opposite of who he is. interrupting his thoughts, blaise and crabbe walk in talking amongst themselves.

“she’s a total babe, man. i hope she’s at that party tonight,” blaise says peaking dracos interests. if you were at this party then that would give draco an opportunity to talk to you without seeming like some love struck stalker.

after combing his hair back and trying to make himself look as presentable as possible, he makes his way to the party. trying not to immediately look for you, he decided to take a drink or two to help him calm down.

that drink or two turned into three or four and as he sits on the couch he realizes how much he accidentally drank. as the tipsy buzz washes over him he feels someone wrap a hand around his shoulder. “you look much more relaxed,” he hears someone whisper in his ear. looking up, he’s met with y/e/c eyes as you look down on him with a small smile on your face.

“daisy,” he whispers more to himself. plopping down onto the couch, you sit directly next to him enough to feel the warmth radiating from his body. “it’s good to finally see you dray.”

“it’s good to see you too. i cant believe you’re actually here,” he replies. after that your conversation flows smoothly. your banter was like no other and throughout the night you seemed to scooch closer to him as the hours pass. eventually ending up in his lap, you continue the conversation uneffected.

with his hands holding your thighs, he can’t help but look at your body infatuated. not only were you as sweet as you looked but you probably tasted just as sweet, he thought to himself. you babbled on about your classes and new friends you’ve made while totally blind to the fact of dracos hardness. his whole body was embarrassingly needy for you. and as the nights moves on and you both have more and more drinks, he tries his best to prepare himself to actually make a move on you.

ultimately, you ended up closer to him on his lap, almost directly onto his growing buldge. caressing your thigh all nights, you’ve grown impatient. leaning down to his ear and pressing your chest suggestively on his, “when are you going to take the hint and fuck me,” you ask looking down at him with an innocent look on your face.

“you little vixen... and to think i thought you were all sweet and pure.” you smile down at him as his hands cup your ass pulling you down onto him more. he imitates your previous actions, pressing his lips to your ear, “why don’t we go back to my room, daisy?”

nodding your head, he hoists you up and carries you all the way back to his room. while he holds you, you press your center directly on top of his and grind yourself against him, thanking that because of the late hour no one was out of their rooms. kissing up and down his neck, occasionally biting or sucking his ear, you were too caught up with yourself to notice you now stood in the common room.

he sits on the sofa while you continue to grind in his lap. he groans softly, “you have no idea how much i’ve thought about doing this to you.” you did have an idea. because you had been thinking the exact same thing for over a month.

placing you on one of his thighs, he slides his hands up your skirt. “ride my thigh baby,” he says in your ear. he didn’t have to tell you twice before you started moving your hips on his thigh as he starts to bounce it. trying to get more and more pressure on your clit, you can’t help but let out a breathy moan and totally forgetting that you are basically in a public place.

while bouncing his thigh, he sporadically sends slaps to your ass in encouragement. “look at my innocent daisy getting herself off at the thought of me,” he says teasingly. his words sending you over the edge, you come all over his thigh, moaning in his ear. with your head now laying in the crook of his neck, “y/n i can say confidently that that is the hottest thing i have ever seen.”

“do you think you can take more?” he asks while kissing the side of your forehead. nodding, he hoists you up once more and leans you over a table. flipping your skirt up, he takes in the sight of you and licks his lips. “merlin y/n you’re wet.”

greedily pushing your ass against his cock, you moan impatiently. “draco i need you,” you admit sheepishly. “you need me to what, darling? use your words,” he says trying to egg you on. “i need you to fuck me,” you reply breathlessly.

that was all he needed to hear before plunging into you. he had had this fantasy play in his mind too many times to count and now here you are, bent over a desk displaying your ass to him with that tiny skirt of yours.

taking ahold of your hair, he pounds into you again and again. slapping your ass, he watches your cheeks turn tomato red with his handprint forming. both of your moans had grown uncontrollable as you scream each other’s names.

he pulls you up by your hair and smashes his lips on yours. “you have no idea how long i’ve been waiting to do that,” he admits, leaning his forehead on yours.

taking your hand, he leads you back to his room and begins to undress you. this time, his actions were soft and domestic rather than sexual. leaving you in your bra and panties, he shoves one of his tshirts over your head and holds you by your waist, dragging you to his bed.

he holds you in his arms while your breathing synchronizes. huffing, “y/n i don’t want you to think that i only want you for your body or- or that sex is all that this is. i want more. you’ve meant more than that for months, daisy.”

you look up at him and meet his grey eyes in the darkness. scooting up closer to him and laying your head in his neck you whisper, “i want that too.”

[sparklingpax]

The Art of Cooking, or...Not Knowing How

A/N:

-Based on my HC that Ginrai can't cook, has no experience since he never had the time to learn, and every time he tries it goes very wrong. On the other side, Hawk is a great cook, and usually ends up cooking for the base when no one else can. Shush, I like this headcanon ok--

-by this point theyre pretty much a couple :3 or at least, openly physically affectionate towards one another ^^

-oo yes also, set in canon, (hence the tags) but tbh, many of my HCs for canon versions of the characters carry into my Reverie stuff so...this exact thing could definitely happen in that universe loll ✨

-shoutout to anyone who has listened to me ramble about this exact scenario before because not only did you endure that bs but now you get a whole elaborate fanfic about it so....holy shit im so sorry jsdjsiskjsd 💀😳

-omg dont hate cloudburst btw I didn't know how to write this to make him look less bad but I swear hes not a bad person and none of the others are either they just. are used to letting Hawk do most of their paperwork for them & also the other three pretenders (not Hawk) have sort of, day jobs? So they are pretty busy....

-literally y'all I'm so sorry this exists, I blame the early morning hours of yesterday and a single cup of coffee this morning getting me from start to finish of this thing in record time. and my own inability to cook fueling this idea in the first place lmaooo I hope it's at least...somewhat enjoyable....so without further ado, here I go again with self-indulgent ginhawk content o///o''

-bruh it's been an actual age since I've written & finished a real fic-type thing...😳😳 again like, I'm praying I didn't miss anything in my grammar/typo checking 😅

-i sincerely hope you enjoy :]

///

“But—but I can cook!”

“You…can cook?”

“Yeah!”

“You can…cook?” Hawk repeated, as if this was impossible to believe.

“I—yeah? Well, I'm not all good at it, but it's food, right? It's edible…” Hawk raised an eyebrow at this as Ginrai pursed his lips and looked away, flushing slightly.

Suddenly, the kitchen seemed to fill again with the distinctive smell of burning chicken.

The image of large, misshapen chunks of it rather…creatively charred to ashy black and stuck to a Teflon pan.

Ginrai waving the smoke frantically, and then grabbing his cup of drinking water splashing it over the smoky meat, rendering it more inedible than it had already been….it was an amusing, yet depressing sight.

Hawk also recalled the price of the new pan he’d gone and ordered online an hour after.

He wasn’t joking when he told me it was dangerous to leave him alone in the kitchen. Was he aware it was burning before the smoke started up?

“Ok, ok…so I’m no world-famous chef...” Ginrai admitted hotly. He started to play with a stray fork from the newly-cleaned load.

Hawk stifled laughter and shook his head wordlessly.  Ducking below the counter to organize the lids of pots and pans, his lips played at a smile.  

“Yeah, that poor pan might have to agree with you—”

“But I would....like to…try again. Maybe, with some guidance this time,” he added more quietly.

“So that you don’t burn the food?”

“Pretty much,” Ginrai agreed, watching Hawk turn on the sink, continuing to unload the dishwasher.

Absentmindedly, he let his eyes follow the trail of water as it ran from the faucet next to him, freely touching on the items piled in the sink. From the upside-down bowl, down the slim, blue plates, pooling in another bowl, or heading further down to fill an empty red container….

“And…would you be aiming for somewhat of an edible meal this time around?” Hawk asked innocently.

“'Somewhat'—”

A sparkle flashed in the trucker’s gaze, and he reached forward to flick the running water at Hawk, who ducked to the side.  The water hit him anyway, but he didn’t mind.

Meanwhile, Ginrai attempted to defend himself.

Hawk began loading the dishes now.

“In my defense, I’ve only made chicken twice in my life, and that fiasco last week doesn’t count!!”

“Well, neither do the other two times, since those were microwaveable chicken dinners—”

“Shut up!”

But they were both laughing.

Hawk got to thinking all the same.

As it was, there weren’t many people left in HQ at the moment, and fewer who could actually cook. Ordering out was not an option since their budget for the month declared they were already $126 over that spending limit.

So, all that considered, the duty of cooking fell upon Hawk once again.

Well…I have paperwork to start on, but as long as nothing else comes up, cooking shouldn't be a problem.

A quick knock on the side of the kitchen’s entrance grabbed the attention of the pair, and they looked up to see Cloudburst standing on the wooden threshold, holding some papers.

Ginrai had no idea what they were, but from the look on Hawk’s face, one could guess he did.

“Oh—hey, Clouds,” Ginrai waved, grinning.

The man waved back a little sheepishly. It didn’t look like he was here to hang around for fun.

He quickly looked to Hawk, and before he could say anything, the Pretender commander straightened and closed the dishwasher, entering the settings for the load.  

“You…need those investigative patrol reports done, I presume?” He asked, not looking up. As the machine whirred into action, he moved to the sink and started to clean it.

The silence that followed seemed to suffice for an answer. 

And suddenly, Ginrai noticed, Hawk looked tired. Very tired.

After all, Ginrai remembered, it was Hawk who ended up doing most of the paperwork associated with their team. He was supposed to review them, too…

“I take it you forgot to do these, and they’re part of what’s due tomorrow?”

Cloudburst was beginning to look a little embarrassed, and he started to play with the edges of the papers for a moment before stepping into the kitchen and setting them down on the marbled counter.

Finally, he spoke.

“I—well, yes. And I was going to do them tonight, but my office called and, um, they’ve sort of—they’ve got a lot of guys out. Naturally, there need to be people at the desks doing stuff, but also someone to sit watch on the communications station, and I don’t know if my boss would be too happy to have me call in to let him know I can’t…go either…”

Cloudburst broke off abruptly as he watched Hawk slipped his apron off and turned to face him, a polite look tying his features to a mild, calm expression. He leaned over and rifled through the papers for a moment, then spoke again.

“Don’t worry about it, go and do your job.”  

“R-really? And…you’re ok with it?”

Hawk nodded. “This kind of thing can’t be helped.”

Ginrai made a slight face. He wasn't so sure about that one.

“I’m just glad you told me now rather than five hours from now. Remember to let me know immediately if anything important comes through the communications room tonight.”

Cloudburst smiled, saluted. “Yes, sir!”

He then gave a ‘goodbye’ nod to Ginrai, and quickly left the room.

Just a little curious, Ginrai leaned over the counter to take a look at the papers himself, then winced at the sight of nearly-illegible text scrawled in different places on the page, in different shapes, shorthand—

So….this is what they look like before they’re done. This is what he’s got to work with.

The young Autobot commander started to feel bad about the fact that clearly, he’d never even done the record-keeping part of reports, let alone the actual filing of them. In his opinion, they were a little pointless, but that didn’t mean someone wouldn’t get stuck with them anyway.

Yes, it technically wasn’t his duty as the leader of the team, but…he still felt guilty.

It looked like a lot of work, after all.

Hawk really did a lot for the team, Ginrai was always fully aware, just…he wondered if anyone else seemed to realize that. Like, really realize.

If they did, maybe they’d be more careful about their own paperwork stuff, instead of dumping it on Hawk all the time, who’s too nice to say no.

Next to him, Hawk was already starting to read the papers over. Ginrai vaguely recalled the list of projects the man was already swamped with, and came to a new resolve.

Ok, next team meeting, I’ll ask them all to start doing their own reports. I am their leader now, I can do that sort of thing.

Feeling good about this, he put an arm around Hawk, leaning over and giving him a soft kiss on his head. With a soft exhale, Hawk seemed to accept the gesture, letting his weight fall more limply on Ginrai. The smile on his features was a tired one, but it read of soft gratitude.

Neither said a word for a few heartbeats, letting the silence embrace them. No one needed to say anything, no one wanted to.

Outside, the autumn sky had begun to darken, making it seem much further into the night than it likely was. It was as if there was not a living soul in that base save for them.

Then, Hawk shifted and Ginrai stepped to the side to let him stretch.

“Do you need me to do anything?” He offered. The grin from earlier seemed to return.

“Well, Supreme Commander,” Hawk said, giving him a decidedly more sultry look.

“Well, my lovely subordinate?” Ginrai prompted, blushing lightly. 

“I’m going to need some help getting dinner done if I want to have time to file those reports before the deadline…”

Ginrai’s eyes sparkled. He knew where this was going.

“…you said you wanted to try cooking again?”

“Hell yeah!”

///

“Alright, now that we have our water…” Hawk motioned to the pot sitting in the sink, then the stove. “It’s got to heat up.”

Ginrai nodded, still rubbing his newly bandaged hand.

Minutes ago, the two had thought to prepare the vegetables going into the pasta before starting on anything else, just to get it out of the way.

Hawk had begun cutting things up while Ginrai watched, then after a few minutes, handed Ginrai the knife to give him a go at it.

Not a minute went by before the man decided to speed up the cutting pace, drop the knife, and well…the band-aid could speak for itself.

It was quickly decided that Hawk would handle all the other parts of this dish, and Ginrai would be on the pasta, and only the pasta.

What could go wrong there, after all?

“Um…you wanted the fire on high?”

“Yes.”

“So, I turn the knob this way?”

“Other way.”

“Oh, yes, right.”

“Alright."

Hawk quickly added, a little nervously, “And please, try not to burn yourself.”

Ginrai gave a thumbs up, then moved to operate the stove. He frowned at its lack of fire after turning the knob. After a moment or two of trying, he looked to Hawk again. He’d forgotten to push the knob inwards to get the fire going, but clearly wasn’t aware of that.

“Is…is this thing on?”

Hawk fought the urge to start laughing. It would be light-hearted, but he didn’t want to hurt Ginrai’s feelings, so he bit his tongue instead.

He must not be joking when he says everything he eats is store-bought and microwaved. 

What made this especially funny was how he did this wearing an apron Hawk remembered receiving as a Christmas gift from Waverider.

The front side read “Master Chef, Move Along” in English, written with big, red letters.

The irony of it was almost too much for Hawk. However, he composed himself and walked over to the stove.

“Push it first, hold,” as he did this, a rhythmic crackling noise sprang from the stove, “and then, you’ve got a fire. So now, turn it where you need.” He stepped back and watched as Ginrai tentatively held the knob, then nodded to himself.

“Alright, fire on high, here we come,” he murmured.  And with a gentle twist, the fire popped up under the smoky grates at what seemed to be the ‘high’ setting.

At last, they were getting somewhere!

A half hour had gone by, but perhaps the next one would make up for the lost time. And, thankfully, Ginrai hadn’t burnt himself on anything—or burnt anything—yet. The pot was carefully placed atop the fire with no troubles.

Now, it was time to for Hawk to focus on finishing the rest of the meal. Dumping the tomatoes into the bowl and beginning to crush them, Hawk called to Ginrai to add the pasta to the water if it seemed to be boiling.

“And…how do I tell it’s boiling?”

“Bubbles,” Hawk responded more quietly, seeming very focused on smashing the tomatoes in his bowl.  

“Got it!”

The trucker glanced at the pot and saw a couple bubbles. Two, he counted, probably from when he’d filled the pot with water.

Did he mean a lot of bubbles or a little?

Guess there was only one way to know.

He then looked to the unopened box of pasta lying near the edge of the counter. Quickly, Ginrai opened it and plopped it into the water, jumping back as it splashed out a little.

From where he was standing, Hawk called out to him.

“Could you grab the two bowls near the window? The water will need some salt, and this paste will need some flavoring.”

“Roger!”

Hawk thought about going to check the bowls, but his present task seemed to have all his concentration. He only hoped Ginrai knew the difference between the two ingredients.

And once again, Ginrai proved he could not be left to do anything alone in the kitchen.

He played a short game of eeny, meeny, miny, moe to decide on which bowl was going to the pasta, and which was going to Hawk. Then, feeling satisfied with his decision, he flipped one of the small bowls upside down, dumping the entirety of its contents into the pasta.

No, he had no idea which was salt, and which was the flavoring. He'd instead opted to hope it was salt he’d just added to the pasta.

As the water started to bubble more vigorously, the trucker stood and stared at it, thinking.

Huh. I didn’t know you put that much salt in pasta. Maybe that’s why they say it’s bad for your cholesterol or…something.

“Hey, before you bring the flavoring here, you might want to make sure the pasta fits the pot! It’ll be easier to work with if its been cut down to fit.” Hawk called over again, seeming to still be working on the tomato paste.

Ohh…well, that makes sense. How do I get that out of the pot to cut it, though?

Ginrai tapped his chin in thought, still staring at the murky, white water as it bubbled—viciously, now—and the pasta as it started to bounce and move.

I wonder if—

He reached in to pick up the pasta with his bare hands, then snapped back, hissing in quiet pain.

Obviously, it was hot by this point, and so it had burned him. But what really hurt was when the heat felt like it had seared through his band-aid and touched his cut from earlier.

Was cooking supposed to be this painful?

Calm down, you're just resizing it.

He exhaled slowly and carefully putting the pasta back in the pot so he could contemplate plan B.

Which was…well........those scissors near the knives looked pretty good.

Because maybe, he didn’t even need to take the pasta out of the pot?

Shaking out a hand to get rid of the burning sensation, he reached over with the other to take the scissors, and without a second thought, began to cut the tops of the noodles so they didn’t stick out so much.

“When you’re ready, I need that flavoring!”

Ginrai nodded and dropped the scissors on the counter, grabbing the unused bowl and heading to where Hawk was working.

He didn’t quite notice all the extra pieces of cut pasta had rolled all over the floor, the counter, and…into the grates below the pot. Right next to the fire.

“Here you are,” Ginrai said, grinning, brandishing the bowl and getting ready to pour it in. Hawk looked up to thank him, and was glad he did.

“Oh, that’s the salt, what I need for this should be in the blue one. Though, you can add some salt if we need it.”

Ginrai felt the heat rise to his face.

Oh no.

Hawk tilted his head at him, looking a little concerned.

“Did you put the flavoring in the pasta?”

Meekly, Ginrai nodded. He was sure his face was red by now. But Hawk just smiled.

“That’s alright. Pasta can have flavoring of its own,” he resumed stirring the tomatoes as he continued. “But I’ll need both for this, then. Just add as much of the salt in here as what you put in the pot over there, okay? Hold on, I need something from the fridge.”

It’s…okay. Alright. Ok.

As Hawk put the bowl down and headed for the fridge, Ginrai swallowed, staring at the salt sitting on the counter.

He was no cook, but…he wasn’t sure there should be that much salt added to tomato sauce?

But Hawk is a cook, maybe he has his own reasons. He said same as with the pot.

So, Ginrai lifted the bowl, and turned it upside down, same as before. Then, seeing nothing else to do, he started to mix.

Meanwhile, Hawk returned, but didn’t say anything for a moment as he noticed the empty bowl of salt. For a moment, he stood there, visibly piecing together a couple things.

Then it seemed to hit him all at once as he slowly looked from the bowl to Ginrai, eyes wide.

“Um. When I said 'the same as the pot'…”

“…yes?” Ginrai slowly stopped mixing and put the bowl down. He heard the slight uneasiness in Hawk's voice.

“Exactly...how much did you put in the pot?”

“Er….all of it?” He answered slowly.

“I see…so, I assume…there’s no more of the flavoring?”

“Um...and…no more salt, either,” Ginrai finished his train of thought for him.

"I...see...."

Ginrai touched the back of his head awkwardly, feeling the heat return to his cheeks.

Hawk stared at the bowl again, trying to figure out how to salvage this.

Perhaps if we start over, and I handle the pasta. He could crush up the tomatoes.

“Um, Hawk.”

But first there would have to be—

"Hawk."

Ginrai poked him timidly. Finally, he looked up, then followed his gaze to the other side of the kitchen. And promptly regretted taking those extra seconds of thought.

Oh, Primus, please tell me I’m hallucinating.

The deity seemed to answer through the pasta itself.

From under the grate, there was a violent crackling noise and a pop of light. And just as suddenly, smoke started to rise from the floor, the counter, under the grate.

All the while, the milky-white water in the pot seethed with bubbly rage, beginning to overflow and spill over, jostling the uneven pieces of pasta sticking out with such force that a few fell to the floor.

“It's burning!” Ginrai exclaimed, audibly starting to panic. Hawk blinked at it, somewhat amazed at the spectacle.

Yes, it was. It was definitely burning.

“Is—is it supposed to do that?”

No, it wasn’t.

Without responding, Hawk darted towards the stove and reached out to turn it off, but pulled back sharply with an utterance of pain.

The fire had burned him.

Judging by the pieces of pasta everywhere, he must have…literally cut the pasta off to resize it.

After a second try, he was able to switch the stove's fire off, and the two of them quickly stamped out the little flames started on all the pieces of burning pasta.

Then, Hawk ran over to the pantry to get the oven mitts, so he could get the pot into the sink.

But the smoke hazing their visions wasn’t hanging around for decoration. And Hawk realized that a little too late.

He looked over from the sink to see Ginrai carrying the bowl of tomato paste to the garbage and called to him.

“Um—Ginrai, my hands are full, could you open the window so the smoke doesn’t set off the—”

Before he could finish, the piercing, high-pitched sound of their fire alarm went off, startling Ginrai enough that he dropped the bowl he was holding. With yet another loud noise, the ceramic shattered, and the tomato paste went all over the floor.

But, rather than worry about that, he knew Hawk had been trying to ask him for something.

“The what?!”

“The window! Please!” He repeated, his voice rising.

"Open it?"

"Yes!!!"

The window was opened. And thankfully, the noise stopped after a couple beats.

Quietly, the two watched as smoke drifted out of the kitchen and into the night air. Then, they began to clean in silence.

Hawk began to think.

Pasta had been, in his opinion, the easiest option for a guided intro to cooking next to a literal salad, but at this point, he wasn’t even sure if that salad would have been a good idea.

“Hey, um…"

Ginrai’s tentative tone caused Hawk to stop what he was doing and he turned to see the 19-year-old fiddling with the cleaning rag, standing by the counter.

“I feel like an apology isn’t gonna cut it here, but…I wanted to apologize anyway…” he continued, looking to the floor, ashamed.

He was still wearing the apron with words that created such irony to the whole situation that Hawk couldn’t help but smile a little.

“I’m really, really—”

“It’s alright, Ginrai,” Hawk responded, setting the clumps of rubbery pasta back down in the pot and walking over to him.

He looked quite surprised, so Hawk elaborated. “We’re good at different things, and you tried here tonight. Plus, with practice, you’ll get it right someday.”

He then placed a hand on Ginrai’s arm, and squeezed lightly.

The young commander gave a flustered smile and blushed again.

"Well....at the very least, I'm glad we got to spend some time together, you know?" he murmured, still smiling.

“Absolutely. I’ve got a long night of paperwork ahead of me, which I’m dreading, so this was nice. As chaotic as it was, you know I’m glad for the time we spend like this…not fighting battles with Decepticons, not sitting through conferences for battle plans and upgrades…I’m...really happy right now, Ginrai…”

He hugged Ginrai suddenly, trailing off. And after a moment, Ginrai smiled and hugged him back.

“I’ll ask more questions next time,” he murmured.

“I’ll be clearer as well. I was at fault here, too.”

"No way..."

"I was. So don't be too harsh on yourself for it."

“I love you,” Ginrai whispered finally, squeezing Hawk lightly.

“I love you, too…”

And I’m glad both of us come away with only mild cuts and burns, nothing more.

After a period of silent affection, Hawk drew back gently and gave a slight smirk.

“I’ll always love you,” he repeated, “even if you can’t cook to save your life.”

And they started laughing again.

Standing in a messy kitchen with the window open and wearing aprons that read silly things in English. Hawk, with a small burn on his hand, and Ginrai with bandages on his.

The pair laughed about the whole fiasco.

Sure, they’d go into something like $200 over their “ordering food” spending limit after tonight. If there was nothing left to eat from their cooking attempt, then ordering was their only Plan B.

But…tonight was a night to remember, like many others.

And, Hawk would be going into yet another paperwork session feeling less stressed than before.

For that, he was also glad.           

Who knew the good that could be accomplished by, well, setting pasta on fire?

///

[laur-rants]

Schrodinger’s Game Theory: The Fate of Daud

Ever come up with a theory, and then halfway through creating it, the evidence changes and so you’re stuck with a lot of well-put-together ideas but nowhere to go with it?

Anyway, I did that with Daud. Lol.

I just rediscovered a whole ass rant in my drafts (which is now in the link above for private viewing and judgement PLS read it, if you’re missing some context to this post) that I clearly spent a lot of time and energy on, where I came to the conclusion that Daud in Death of the Outsider is actually a imposter/doppelganger, and it was because of the writing from the book contrasted the writing in DotO so poorly, that I came to believe this. I was like, VERY convinced prior to Billie’s book coming out that this was, in fact, a viable game theory. !00%. There was a chance that out there, somewhere, Daud was still stuck in his mind, and needed someone to come rescue him. Stranger things have happened to explain characters coming back from the dead in a video game, okay?

Somewhere along the line, though, it stopped being game theory and was more like, a fan idea. I had collected enough evidence to come to the conclusion that my theory wasn’t sound. That, and Billie’s book released, and there’s no way I could argue that. Instead, imposter!Daud moved to Fan Theory, something I could fictionally, write about, put into an AU.

But... Just because it’s probably not true in the scheme of the game doesn’t stop me from thinking about it, from wanting to talk and share those ideas with others. Even if, at the end of the day, they hold no water and it wouldn't matter because, well. If Billie’s book is to be considered post-DotO canon, then there’s no reason to believe my theory would hold weight. It wouldnt matter, because Daud well, he was left for dead either way. Nobody was coming to rescue him. I’m sure there’s plenty of questions people have in response to this, the most chief one being

“If its not Daud how is he in the Void talking to the Outsider and Billie at the end of DotO??”

And my usual response is: the end of Return of Daud saw Daud becoming trapped within his own mind, through a trap laid by witches from the very beginning of the book. That meant, even if his physical body was still, well, physical, he was trapped inside his mind.

I proposed that out of survival, well, a sliver of his mind would hole itself up in the Void, maybe even be stuck there (this is not so uncommon as it appears; think of what happened to Jessamine in the Heart). Once the spell on his mind and the Outsider were gone, the sliver could return back to his mind. And he’d still be alive.

From a gamer perspective, looking at the mechanics of the game, and everything else, it makes sense. I’m sure some people would say this theory would ‘cheapen Daud’s death’ and I would refute that by simply saying ‘all of DotO cheapened Daud’s death, and despite being a playable character in the franchise he dies unceremoniously off screen and we just take Billie’s word for his death to heart.’ Nothing cheapens a death faster in my head than ‘time to renege on this character’s entire past arch and have him die off-screen.’ His death was ruined far before they went into the Void. If anything, this would give Daud a change to explain himself. 

But I digress. I actually did do a stupid amount of research on this. And what it all really boils down to is that there was bad writing involved in DotO when it came to timeline consistency and quality checkers not checking for that, + the book having been rewritten like, twice, to keep up with what Arkane was changing in DotO in real time.

That’s post marked 9/25/18. I’ve had this theory sitting around for a long time. I enjoyed it. I find it compelling. But ultimately, it was me trying to save Daud, in my mind. Would it be cool for the witches to have stolen Daud, replaced him with a dummy body Eyeless/Envisioned, given that dummy body his memories, and then, when it had outlived it’s usefulness of sending Billie astray, the magic broke and it perished? Hell yeah it would have been cool. and honestly, according to the books, it was a viable option! They could do all those things. You can’t tell me that

Billie can steal faces,

Emily can create copies and

They witches had access to a gemstone that can make prisoners of their own mind/see the thoughts of others,

and NOT immediately think that they’d try and replicate one of the strongest Marked to ever live. The one that TRAPPED DELILAH, no less. And because the witches messed with Daud’s dreams at the beginning of the book (it’s subtle, but its there, its like, you see it on the reread sort of thing), that’s the whole reason he thinks the Outsider is supposed to die, so of course the double would fervently believe the singular obsession that brought Daud into a trap in the first place...

I’m digressing again. Anyway.

What does this mean for Dear old Daud?

It means Daud canonically died, and it was shitty and poorly written and I’ll be salty about that until the day I die because some schmuck on twitter wrote one singular essay and Harvey Smith decided ‘you. you’re the one who needs to write this story’ and then we got Corvosider fanfic in a Dishonored game and I wanted to die. It doesn’t help that this writer was notoriously pretentious and shit-stirring in the fandom at-large BEFORE their hiring-- anyway, this isn’t a salt piece on that. I AM SALTY ABOUT IT, but I’m not the person to discuss it at length. Just know that that’s why some of the narrative decisions in DotO are so out of fucking whack, and we all have to deal with it.

MOVING ON....

There is still... a very slim chance. To save Daud.

Realistically speaking, this chance will never occur. It’s clear and obvious that Arkane has no plans on returning to the Dishonored universe, so despite all these loose ends that Arkane left and all these pieces that need to be picked up and all this lore that’s been reneged on, there’s really not much of a chance that we’ll see, say, Billie, return in a game that is specifically designed to save the timelines. Which, honestly, would be fucking baller. I want a game where I play as Billie, where the shattered timespace of Dunwall is saved by her capable hand, and Emily is free to rule for decades without having to fear that the Isles will fall into the Void like it’s Deimos falling into Hell in DOOM. We KNOW the timelines are saved because we KNOW that Emily has a long and Just (or unjust, if you went high chaos lol) Rule over the kingdom. That can’t happen if, just three years down the line, Billy is running all over the place trying to make sure time doesn’t break at the seams.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Because of how Daud meets Billie in RoD, we know that a Billie three years into the future (’YOUR future,’ she tells him) is trying to save his life. There are other timelines she’s saved already, for sure. Including saving Daud in the past, saving Corvo and Emily in the past, saving Granny Rags in the past -- basically, saving all the Marked from coming to an untimely end. And then, after all that, she goes back in time and tries to save Daud, tries to save him from being poisoned by witch magic and falling into a trap that is triggered when he touches her Future version of the Twin-bladed Knife. She goes through a sort of Groundhog Day scenario, where she confesses that she’s tried hundreds of times to save him, and she couldn’t save that Daud.

But why show us Billie failing to save Daud, if she was destined for failure? Because, eventually, she must succeed.

And therein lies Daud’s (potential) salvation. Is it realizing the other Daud is an imposter? Well... let’s think of it this way. Is the Billie who regained her arm and eye an ‘imposter’ where the ‘real’ Billie is in a timeline where she lost those body parts? Is the Aramis Stilton who went mad in the basement of his mansion the imposter? Or is it the one that Emily saved and was able to keep lucid? These people aren’t ‘imposters’ to their timelines, but they kind of are to the timelines that are saved. Which means DotO could be an entirely separate ‘timeline’, one that we manage to play through and see the ending of. But the ‘true timeline’ may never be known. But at least, we know it happens, and we have Billie to thank for that.

FIN.

[itsclydebitches]

Discredit Pt. 2: More Recommended Reviews For A.Z. Fell’s

Alright, folks. Some notes first: 

1. You all rock. I’m sending out 20k+ virtual hugs for all the notes I NEVER expected to get on this nonsense. 

2. This is probably the final section, just because I’m not sure I can adequately follow up part one and it might be foolish to attempt it here. Let alone twice. But for now, here we go. 

3. Kudos to the anon who reminded me of Aziraphale’s cash-only policy <3 

4. Nicole Y’s review is based off an actual comment I read years ago, but heaven only knows where online it was. I’ve got the memory of a goldfish. 

5. Trigger warning for the use of a queer slur in this. It’s the same review as above, number 5 if you want to avoid it. 

6. There’s a text-only version of just the reviews at the end, after all the images. I’ll upload that to my Sparse Clutter collection on AO3 in a bit. 

Bonus 7. People thinking this is a real shop deserve all the good things in this world. 

That’s all I’ve got. Hope you enjoy! 👍

****************************************************************************

I’m a simple guy who likes simple jokes. If there’s a whoopee cushion I plant it. I will call you up to ask if your refrigerator is running and then tell you to go catch it. (Actually that one died out so thoroughly it’s actually capable of a comeback now!). Yes, I’m a dad and yes, I have a t-shirt that says Dad Jokes? I Think You Mean Rad Jokes! which I wear un-ironically every Saturday. All of which is just to say that my wife was well prepared for my stupidity when I walked into Fell’s.

I? I was not.

You see the bibles when you walk in? The ones to the left? Let them be. Don’t even look at them. Definitely don’t pick out the fanciest one you can find and absolutely don’t walk up to the owner with it held in your pudgy little fingers, grinning like a loon, cheerfully asking whether this should be in the fiction section. Just don’t. Mark my words you’ll regret it. Though your wife won’t. She’ll get a great old laugh out of it all.

In conclusion: it’s quite possible that mama did raise a fool and he just got his ass verbally whooped by a guy in a bowtie.  

***

Shout-out to Mr. Fell for being the only decent bloke in this city. I’ve popped in and out of his store for years—including before I started transitioning. So he knew my dead name, dead look, whole shebang and I was definitely nervous to play the ‘You know me, but this is what’s changed and are you gonna throw a fit about it?’ game.

You know what he said? “Oh, Rose! What a lovely choice. Crowley dear, why aren’t you growing any roses? Some white ones would look splendid next to my Henredon chair.”

That’s it. He just went straight into dragging his partner for not giving him roses. So hey, Mom? Next time you’re snooping through my social media why don’t you explain to all these nice people why the 50+yo book seller accepts me in ways you won’t. Don’t go telling me age is an excuse or that you’re ‘Stuck in your ways.’ I’ve watched Fell dress in the same damn clothes since I was ten!!

Yeah. Sorry. Rant over. Fell’s a gem. That’s my take. Rose out.

***

Anyone else in the shop when that guy started yelling about buying pornography? And then got escorted into the back room for some ‘private conversation’? Well done, Mr. Fell! Didn’t know you had it in you.

***

Alright alright alright alright I am TOTALLY calm about this.

Went into A.Z. Fell’s last Thursday. Not because I knew anything about the place. Just because I’ve been hitting up every bookshop within a twenty-mile radius, asking if they’re hosting any book signings. Long story short I self-published my novel Blight last month—which you can get for a mere £5 here but I swear this isn’t a promotional thing I’m just BROKE—and have been looking for networking opportunities, tips, stuff like that. So the owner listened politely as I explained all this. Then said he didn’t do anything of that sort, which didn’t surprise me given the shop’s vibe.

But then? Then??? He offered to let me do a signing there??????

As said. Totally calm about this. This man either plans to kidnap me or is actually giving me my first shot at an audience outside my blog. AKA totally worth the risk.

Tuesday the 9th. 7:00pm. Just in case anyone’s interested ;)

***

holy sweet baby jesus i was tripping balls last week you tryin’ to tell me that kING KONG SIZED FANGED FUCK SNAKE IS REAL

***

Witnessed the most perfect exchange the other day:

Grumpy Dude With No Manners: “You. Boy. Where’s the man I spoke with over the phone?”

Mr. Fell’s Partner Who Knows Damn Well Only Two of Them Work There But Clearly Doesn’t Like This Guy’s Tone: “Did this man give you his name?”

Grumpy Dude: “Might have. Don’t remember. Sounded like a fairy though.”

Me: “....”

My girlfriend: “....”

This Poor Sweet Startled Kid On Our Left: “?!?!?!?”

Fell’s Partner In The Drollest Voice I’ve Ever Heard: “None of us have wings. Out!”

***

This shop gets full stars simply because every time I walk in they’re playing Queen.

I mean, I’ve walked in once, but once is enough when you’ve got Crazy Little Thing Called Love blasting full volume.

***

Okay, I’m still kind of shaken up but I needed to write this out somewhere and this seemed as good a place as any.

I spilled my latte on a book. Just tripped on thin air, popped the lid, and chucked a venti’s worth of coffee all over a very expensive looking text. I didn’t mean to, obviously, but it happened and I just started bawling on the spot. Full on sobs because this semester has been absolute hell, I ruined this guy’s antique, there’s no way I can pay for it, I can’t even sneak away because I’m drawing the whole store’s attention...just all the things all at once. I really was straight up panicking and was seconds away from pulling out my inhaler. I couldn’t breathe.

And then Mr. Fell showed up.

Jesus it’s embarrassing to admit but I think I hit him once or twice. On the arms I mean, because he was trying to touch me and I figured, I don’t know, it was a restraint or something. He was going to call the police and hold me until they got there. But then he managed to start rubbing my back and I lost it like I hadn’t already been bawling my eyes out in this shop. Ever cry into a perfect stranger’s chest? I have! But if Mr. Fell seemed to mind he definitely didn’t show it. Just kept holding me while I probably ruined his shirt and then took me into the back and made me a new coffee in this cute little angel mug. He let me stay there while I called my sister and waited for her to arrive.

She’s a good twenty minutes outside of Soho, so we talked for a while. It’s not like Mr. Fell could fix my shit roommate or bio classes, but I guess just talking about it all really helped. I was a lot calmer by the time my sis arrived and Mr. Fell insisted I come back any time I wanted—for browsing or more coffee.

Of course, sis offered to pay for the book herself. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone look so surprised in my life. “Certainly not!” he said. “Contrary to popular belief, no one should pay for their mistakes. It’s what makes you all so wonderfully human.”

So yeah. Thanks, Mr. Fell.

***

This little shop must have started a book club for kids! Lately I’ve seen the same group of children hanging out at Fell’s. Three boys and a girl. They’re a bit rambunctious at times, but who isn’t at that age? So wonderful seeing literature passed down to the next generation. Even if some of it is rather questionable looking...

***

It��s an honest crime that more of you aren’t talking about what a wonderful bookstore this is.

I’m a book lover at heart and Fell’s always makes me feel like I’m coming home. I just arrived somewhere safe and familiar after a particularly harrowing day. I’ve slipped under the covers of my bed after dinner and a bubble bath. It’s something like that, but with an element of surprise too. One of the reasons why I adore private and used shops over chain stores is that little touch of chaos. You walk in and sure, there are general sections to browse, but everything is just a little bit disorganized from people leafing through books and then putting them back somewhere else. There’s no real record keeping, you’ve just gotta head to one particular corner and hope for the best. It’s not the sort of place you go to if you want something specific because the chances of them having it are slim—that’s just how the universe works—and even if they did no employee knows where it is anymore.

But if you wander the shelves for a while, crouch down low to get a look at everything on the bottom shelf, pay attention to the books that don’t have easy to read titles or any summaries to speak of... you just might find something you didn’t know you were looking for. That’s Fell’s: the comfort of the familiar and the excitement of the unknown.

*** A lot of people might assume that these stories are embellished or outright made up, but as a bookseller myself going on twenty years I believe every single one of them.

That being said, I accidentally moved a rug and found chalk sigils that look like they belong in a cult. Make of that what you will.

***

There’s a special place in hell for 21st century shop owners that only take cash. Who carries cash anymore? Not me! I haven’t bothered with that nonsense in years! You can get a card reader for 15 pounds on Amazon. Or you know what? Be stingy and pay 7 for the little attachment on your phone. This place is nuts if it thinks it’s going to survive much longer on a cash-only policy, especially with some books that look like they’re worth hundreds or thousands of pounds! Yeah, yeah, just let me pull out this giant wad of bills for you. I’ll carry them around a crime-laden city because there’s no ATM near you either.

I mean jesus, you’d think this guy didn’t want to sell anything.

***

I walked in. There was a man screaming at a fern while another threatened him with an umbrella. I walked out.

5 stars do recommend.

***

I once walked in on the same (?) guy yelling at a book for daring to fall on the owner’s head. I think that’s just a Thing over there.

***

Like a lot of people here I didn’t actually go to Fell’s for any books (flat tire, Angel Recovery taking forever) and ended up staying three hours (not because of Angel). No, I wandered towards the back and found this ancient CRT set propped on a table of books, the kind that my Dad used to watch Twilight Zone on. This lanky guy had a marathon of Gilmore Girls going... though how he was managing that with a broken antenna and no DVR, I really don’t know. But yeah. He told me to pull up a chair and I did. Guy gave me popcorn.

I wish I’d paid a little more attention to his name. Charlie? Curley? I really can’t remember, but thanks for the enjoyable afternoon, man.

***

I BOUGHT A BOOK HERE

Not sure how though. Just kinda happened. First edition of Just William. Frankly I didn’t even want the thing, but the owner basically shoved me out the door with it when I took two seconds to look at the spine. Odd that he was so willing to part with this one.

Update: ... hold up. I didn’t buy a book because I never actually paid the guy. ‘Basically shoved me out the door’ was literal. Do I go back??

***

This page has really gone feral the last couple of months so I’m just gonna bite the bullet and say it:

Anyone notice that Fell’s snake and Fell’s partner are never in the same room together?

***

I really don’t like the implications of this…

***

This is precisely why the Internet has turned into a cesspool. You all should be ashamed of some of the stuff you’re writing here. Can’t two men just be friends anymore? Two real life men? These guys aren’t some characters for you to ‘ship’ or whatever. Quit making outrageous assumptions about their sexualities and use this website for what it’s actually for: reviewing the bookshop. Honestly I’m so sick of this sort of this shit.

***

Dude. They run a queer-focused shop together with a flat on the second floor. Fell calls the guy ‘Dear’ and he’s always calling him ‘Angel.’ People have literally seen them kissing. If you want I can give you the number of my physician. He might be able to help you pull your head out of your ass.

***

What the hell is your problem? I’m literally just reminding people to stop making assumptions. It’s gross and insulting. These guys check their Yelp page. You really think they’re gonna be okay with this stuff?

Also: I’m not the five-year-old relying on insults, so.

***

Making an account purely to set the record straight: I’m the hot twink in question and I married that angel. Peace

[tsrookie]

This Is Me Trying

Pairing: Ethan Ramsey x F!MC (Dr. Alyssa Brooks)

A/N: Hey everyone! Soooo I was actually planning to scrap this fic, since I seriously couldn’t think about practically after Chapter 11. But then Chapter 12 came out, and boom! My brain finally decided to finish this! @kaavyaethanramsey Thank you so much for pre-reading! And a special thanks to @openheart12 for being totally chill with me taking this song for inspiration even though she had plans to do the same!

Song Inspiration: This Is Me Trying by Taylor Swift. I’m going to do some shameless promo for Taylor since her label ain’t bothering with that🙄

STREAM FOLKLORE!

Word Count: 3600+

Warning(s): One curse word

Summary: My version of Ethan’s thoughts after the MK heist. This man is NOT EASY to write!

——————————

Edenbrook was mostly quiet during the night shift. Most doctors left as soon as their time was up, not wanting to spend any more time in the hospital than they already had to.

But that wasn’t the case for a certain diagnostician.

The lamp on Ethan’s desk shone with a clear light in a stark contrast to his confusing thoughts. His mind was clouded. Clouded with thoughts of her.

Dr. Alyssa Brooks, the one he had hand selected from a thousand applications, the resident who had taken Edenbrook by storm as just a mere intern, and the woman who now held his heart.

He’d kissed her twice in less than two days. He couldn’t be the emotionless robot he had pretended to be for 10 years. He wanted to throw away everything to just hold her in his arms without a worry in the world. He didn’t want to just stand next to her. He wanted to be with her. But he had no idea how.

I’ve been having a hard time adjusting

I had the shiniest wheels, now they’re rusting

I didn’t know if you’d care if I came back

I have a lot of regrets about that

His mind automatically took him back to one of the most painful nights of his life: The night he’d returned from the Amazon.

“You’re an idiot Ramsey. An absolute moron. You know she’ll be there, then why the hell are you going there?!”, he’d scolded himself as his legs, as though they had a mind of their own, took him to Donahue’s.

He had no idea how she would react to seeing him. He was, after all, the man who was a complete coward and ran away from her and his feelings for her.

He wouldn’t have blamed her if she was in the arms of that scalpel jockey. At least he would treat her the way she’d deserved to be treated. Unlike him, who only knew to run. He had hoped that she would’ve buried her feelings for him.

The look on her face said it all. The pain, the betrayal, but also the care and concern, was plain to see in her brown doe-like eyes. Two months apart had done nothing to help either of them. He’d still cared for her way more than a mentor was supposed to care for a mentee. And then she’d kissed him.

In those few seconds, he’d felt more air in his lungs than he had ever felt in two months in the Amazon forest. He’d desperately wanted to kiss her back. He’d wanted to let her know that he cared about her more than she could possibly comprehend. But he didn’t.

It almost killed him to tell her that they had to reset. But he didn’t know what else to do at that point. That would forever remain one of his biggest regrets. He’d put them both through so much of pain that he could never forgive himself. He’d hurt her so much. Yet, she’d never given up on them.

He shook his head to bring himself back to the present. He looked into his wristwatch. 12:30 am. It was past midnight. He had to go home as he was past the point of trying to get any work done.

Pulled the car off the road to the lookout

Could’ve followed my fears all the way down

And maybe I don’t quite know what to say

But I’m here in your doorway

He drove out of the hospital and his eyes caught a flash of red walking on the pavement. “Alyssa?” She whipped her head around, recognizing his voice. She looked exhausted, but he wouldn’t blame her, knowing the day she had. Her ginger roots were all over her face and her clothes were completely wrinkled.

“Hey Ethan...”, she croaked in a raspy voice.

“Why on earth are you walking home? I thought you always took the train.”

“The station seemed overcrowded. Wasn’t in the mood to bump into any frat boys.”, she chuckled lightly.

“Get in. I’ll drive you home.”, he said. She opened her mouth to protest, but decided against it seeing the deadpan look on his face.

Her eyes were trained on the road. He glanced at her a couple of times but it didn’t seem like she noticed. She didn’t seem as lively as she was after they’d returned from Mass Kenmore. Something was nagging her, and he was determined to find out what.

“Is everything okay?”, he asked gently, not wanting to push her.

“Hmm... yeah it’s fine... everything’s fine.”, she replied unconvincingly.

“Alyssa...”

He took her hand in his and pulled over at her doorstep. “What’s wrong?”, he asked again, looking straight into her eyes. They were glassy and rimmed with red. His eyes slightly widened, realizing that she had been crying.

“It’s... a lot Ethan. First, it’s Kyra. She’s going to have major surgery. An extrapleural pneumonectomy. It could either save her, or...”, she trailed off, biting her trembling lip. He held her hand tighter, to try and give her the strength to continue. She took a deep breath and continued.

“I’m terrified about what could happen to her. I know I said that I could handle it this morning, but having her in this literal life of death situation... I just can’t”, she choked out a sob.

He immediately wrapped his arms around her on instinct. Her fragile frame trembled as she cried into his shirt. His heart broke to see her like this. He knew that Kyra had a slim chance of survival, but seeing the impact on Alyssa was too much to bear. He’d been through the same situation when Dolores died, and she’d helped him get through it. No matter what was to happen to Kyra, he was going to stand by her side through it all.

“And Raf...”, she suddenly said in receding sobs. “Raf’s leaving town and I have no idea why. It’s completely out of the blue and I’m really worried about him. He hasn’t been the same since the beginning of this year, and now he just decides to leave Boston.”

Ethan was surprised as well. He had known the paramedic only for a couple of months and even he was surprised at his decision to leave. He seemed to love his hometown and it seemed completely out of character for him to leave like this.

He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know that she was going through so much. It hurt him beyond anything to see her in her most vulnerable state.

I just wanted you to know that this is me trying

I just wanted you to know that this is me trying

“Alyssa, I...”

He searched for the right words to say. He had comforted plenty of patients in the past, but nothing had prepared him to hold Alyssa in his arms.

“I know that I can’t take all this away, no matter how much I want to. But if you ever need anyone to talk to, or just want me around, I’ll be there. That’s a promise.”

He owed it to her. He owed her the world and more. She’d stood by him and been his rock through all his issues with his mother. He wanted to be there for her. He had to at least try.

“Thank you Ethan...”, she said with a soft smile that was enough to light up his whole world. He reluctantly let her go with a kiss to her hand. “Sleep well Alyssa.”

They told me all of my cages were mental

So I got wasted like all my potential

And my words shoot to kill when I’m mad

I have a lot of regrets about that

His lips still tingled from touching her hand. “Heaven knows how I’m going to keep up this pathetic act.” As he drove along the nearly empty streets, his mind went back to the most stupid decision of his life...

“You can’t live life like this Ethan. You can’t keep isolating yourself from her.”, Naveen had told him when he had made the foolish decision to run away to the Amazon. The old man had always known what went on in Ethan’s mind. There wasn’t a day where Naveen hadn’t chided him for locking himself up in his own cage. But he didn’t know what to do. His walls were up too high for anyone to climb over them.

But then Alyssa barged into his life. She broke into the invisible cage he had alienated himself in. All his high walls came up short for her. No one else had broken through his soul like her. He watched the walls he had built for over twenty years come falling down for her.

But despite all that, he had majorly screwed up. He had been nothing but rude and cold for weeks in her second year thanks to Gwyneth Monroe and Leland Bloom. He was furious at the board, but deep down he had known that the team would change a lot due to the budget cuts. He knew that it was completely unfair to direct his anger at her and everyone else in the hospital. But he didn’t know what else to do. His values and Naveen’s vision had been compromised, and that clouded his mind from thinking of anything else.

The regret and guilt in her eyes had pained him immensely. As time passed, he had accepted the fact that the fault wasn’t hers and that he was truly thankful to her for making the decision he was dreading. But he had no idea how to tell her all of that. His words and actions had hurt her and there was no going back and changing them. And it wasn’t even the first time. Hurting her repeatedly was all he ever did.

I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere

Fell behind all my classmates and I ended up here

Pouring out my heart to a stranger

But I didn’t pour the whiskey

He remembered his days from med school. After Tobias had betrayed him by stealing Serena Jane, he didn’t bother with romance. He completely submerged himself in his studies. His peers found true happiness and love while he had accomplished more than anyone could have dreamed of, but stayed unhappy.

Whenever he opened up, he would just go through a world of pain. Tobias was the only person who he had truly trusted. But then he had stabbed him in the back in every way possible. He hadn’t planned to let Naveen in, but the old man had become like a second father to him. And then he had nearly died, which had terrified Ethan more than he had let on. He shouldn’t have let anyone in after that.

But then there was Alyssa.

His Rookie. He knew damn well that that nickname had become a term of endearment. That was why he rarely called her that after her second year began. He didn’t want to get her hopes up only to hurt her again.

He fell asleep with all these thoughts tormenting him.

The next day was pretty dull. He hadn’t seen her in the morning since the team didn’t have any new patients. He knew that she was probably working on Kyra’s case in her free time and didn’t want to impose. By the end of his shift, he was questioning his decision to even show up at work as it was incredibly tedious and monotonous without Alyssa by his side.

He found himself sitting at Donahue’s, with his eyes flicking to the door every once in thirty seconds in hopes that she would walk in. “You look like you haven’t slept properly in days”, said Reggie’s voice. “I mean, I know you’re busy as hell, but you at least used to look like you were a normal human back then.”, he chuckled. Ethan let out a heavy sigh as he stared at his untouched glass of whiskey. “You okay?”

Ethan considered Reggie to be a... good acquaintance, which was more than he considered three-fourth of the people in the hospital to be. But was he about to pour his heart out to him?

He looked down at his full glass and realized he didn’t even need the alcohol to express his agony. He just couldn’t take it anymore.

“It’s... Alyssa.”, he said as his eyes filled with pain.

“Tell me.”, Reggie said as he leaned on the bar countertop.

“I don’t know what to do about her. She’s a brilliant young doctor and my mentee. She has the skill and potential to become one of the greatest doctors the world has ever seen. And I need to push her to be that. Caring about her... that’ll get in the way. I might start being lenient with her if I’m with her. And I don’t want that to hinder her development...” He trailed off as a lump formed in his throat.

Opening up like this brought the bitter truth to light. There were too many professional obstacles for them to be a normal couple. But those were nothing compared to their emotional issues.

I just wanted you to know that this is me trying

I just wanted you to know that this is me trying

At least I’m trying

He took a deep breath as he continued, “I don’t even know why she would want me. I’ve done nothing, absolutely nothing but cause her pain from the very start. I was the one who first kissed her. I was the one who lead her on. I was, sorry, am the coward who broke her heart by running away to the Amazon. I dragged her into the mess that is my personal life. But she still wants to stay. She’s by my side whenever I need her and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to repay her for everything she’s done for me.” He choked out a small sob. He loathed himself.

She was the last person on the planet who he ever wanted to hurt, but that was all he had ever done. Trying to make up for all that pain seemed nearly impossible.

“I don’t deserve her Reggie... I just don’t. I don’t even know how I fell in so deep. It all just... happened. And now I’m stuck in a dilemma where I need to be the best mentor I can be for her but I also can’t live a life without her as something so much more than just my mentee! I want her to be my-”

He stopped as he suddenly realised what he was about to say. He was about to admit that he wanted her to be his girlfriend. He wanted an actual relationship with her.

Reggie smiled knowingly at him. “Say it Ethan. Say it out loud so that you can finally accept it for yourself.” “I... I want to be in a relationship with her.”, he said. He let out a breath that he didn’t realized he’d been holding. He felt free.

And it’s hard to be at a party when I feel like an open wound

It’s hard to be anywhere these days when all I want is you

You’re a flashback in a film reel on the one screen in my town

He suddenly heard a laugh. Her laugh. His favourite sound in the whole world.

He whipped his head towards the source of the sound and sure enough, she was there. She was in the middle of what seemed like a drunken dance off with Lahela. But he didn’t look even half as drunk as Alyssa. Her eyes were hooded and worn out. Her clothes were all wrinkled up, but she didn’t seem to care at all, which was quite a surprise.

Something told him that she had overworked herself and was drinking to combat the exhaustion. But the way she moved made him feel otherwise. The way her hips swayed slowed in the dim light of Donahue’s sent his thoughts into the gutter.

His mind flashed with memories of the night she had won her ethics hearing. The way she had flashed a lopsided grin at him when he’d lied to a resident while leaving the bar. Her incredibly messy yet perfect room. The night they’d last slept together. The night he’d last felt her body perfectly intertwine with his. It all seemed like nothing but a distant memory now, with all that had happened. But he could never forget that night, no matter how hard he tried.

He let out a sigh as he looked at Reggie. “I think it’s better if I left now... It’s for the best if she doesn’t notice me.”

“Too late for that, since your Rookie is on her way to the bar right now”, came a reply with a smirk. Ethan let out a frustrated sigh, but he found himself unable to suppress the slight smile on his face as she made her way towards him.

“Ethaaan! What a *hiccup* wonderful surpriiise! I had noo idea you’d *hiccup* be here!”, she said in a singsong voice.

“Dr. Broo- Alyssa, what exactly do you think you’re doing near the bar in this state?”, he asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Juuuust a few more *hiccup* drinks. I’m purrrrfectly fine.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. It seemed like it was now up to him to make sure she could at least walk straight.

“No. You are not having any more. I can’t handle a hungover member on my team when the Senator arrives.”

“You’re not the boss of me!”

“Actually I am.”, he smirked as he ushered her out of the bar.

And I just wanted you to know

That this is me trying (Maybe I don't quite know what to say)

I just wanted you to know

That this is me trying

The cold Boston air hit them in the face as they got outside. Winter was coming, and it seemed that his favourite resident had forgotten to bring a coat to combat the chilly weather.

It didn’t take him more than a second to realize she was shivering. Wordlessly, he took off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. She looked up at him in surprise, her glassy eyes filling with life. He looked away on instinct, but couldn’t suppress the smile at the corner of his lips on seeing her in his clothes.

“Hey... I dunno if I’ve *hiccup* said this before, but I’m really glad to have you in my corner *hiccup* ya know. The past few days have been... so overwhelming and... I would’ve *hiccup* lost my mind if it wasn’t for you.”

He turned to look at her. Her brown eyes were filled with sincerity and... something else. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something new. Something... affectionate.

If she could be wasted and still manage to talk to him with complete honesty, then his sober mind could do just the same.

He took her hands in his. They were cold, and sent a jolt of electricity through him. “Alyssa, I meant what I said yesterday. If you ever need me, for anything, at any time, I’ll be there. Nothing will ever change that, no matter what... changes between us.”

He saw her face light up at his words, and he realized that he had quite the same expression himself.

He didn’t know whether she was going to ask him anything further of the topic of... them. It seemed like she decided not to, and he was grateful for it. He still didn’t know what exactly to do, but he knew that it was foolish to keep pushing her away.

“Alyssa where on earth- Oh!”

Doctor Trinh’s eyes widened as she witnessed the tender exchange between them. Her expression morphed from shock to utter delight as she saw their joined hands. If it was someone else, Ethan would’ve immediately pulled away. But this was Alyssa’s best friend, and a doctor who he knew he could trust with their secret, especially since she had seen him come out of her room the previous year.

“I’ll umm... tell Jackie that it’ll take a while.”, she said sheepishly as she turned away from the pair.

“No it’s alright. I need to *hiccup* get some rest before tomorrow. We’re done here. Unless... there’s *hiccup* anything else you want to say?”, she asked as his eyes locked with hers again.

“Yeah... just that I don’t want you to worry too much. Everything’s going to be okay Alyssa.”, he said with a smile that mirrored hers. He leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to her temple, as she reluctantly pulled away from him for the night.

“Thank you Ethan... for everything.”

“Don’t mention it.”

The ghost of a smile adorned his face as he went back to his car. He wasn’t sure about how she felt about everything. Hell, he still wasn’t sure about how he was feeling. But it was something beautiful. Something he hadn’t felt for anyone he had been involved with. Something that filled his heart with joy. Something he had thought that was impossible for him to feel since his mother had left him at eleven.

Love. Ethan Ramsey was in love with Alyssa Brooks.

The very idea terrified him. The worry of losing someone he loved had been rooted his mind since childhood. But she was different. His heart opened up to her in a way it had done with no one before.

It was going to be a long road, filled with obstacles and barriers. He didn’t even know if she felt the same about him. But he wanted to try. His life would never be complete without her in it, and the thought of a reset could never cross his mind again. Changing his view on the world was worth a try when it came to her. Because she was worth the risk. “She always has been.”

At least I'm trying

——————————

A/N 2: Hope you guys liked it! I’ve shamelessly included Louis Tomlinson and GoT references even though it’s supposed to be inspired from a Taylor Swift song😬 Let me know if you found them! And I hope I managed to stay true to the fact that our man is super oblivious to the fact that MC is head over heels for him as well😅 I tried to make this one seem like an actual fic instead of a kinda boring narration that I did last time. As always, constructive criticism is much appreciated❤️

Taglist: @kaavyaethanramsey @ohramsey @aylamwrites @caseyvalentineramsey @ohvamsey @starrystarrytrouble @dxnicaramsey @decadentwinnerjudgedream @nithya @mrsmatsuo-ramsey @imonlybibecauseofethanramsey @rookiefromedenbrook @bratzlahela @eramsey28 @the-pale-goddess @ohchoices @wellhelloramsey @pitchblackstars @mvalentine @swiftlydarcy @utterlyinevitable @angela8756 @akshara16 @sushiharrington @drethanramslay @lion-ess24 @whippedforethanfreakingramsey

Sorry if some of the tags don’t work😓 Let me know if you want to be added or removed!

[blackswaneuroparedux]

The Many Lives of Lee Miller: Surrealist icon who photographed World War Two

If you were one of the few women photographers accredited by the U.S. Army at the start of World War II, chances were you were far from the front lines. Military regulations at the time dictated that female photojournalists, unlike their male counterparts, were not to enter combat zones.

But Lee Miller, the Poughkeepsie-born photographer and noted Surrealist operating as British Vogue’s war correspondent, was not one to be constrained.

Miller had made a habit of not taking no for an answer long before she accompanied American forces to document scenes such as the Blitz; nurses operating hospitals after D-Day; women serving across the armed forces; and just-liberated concentration camps.

Elizabeth ‘Lee’ Miller was born on the 23 of April 1907 in Poughkeepsie,  New York. She was the middle child of Florence and Theodore Miller, a mechanical engineer and avid amateur photographer. She was something of a tomboy, always ready for the next big adventure and to try the biggest stunt.

Her first coup was gracing the cover of U.S. Vogue in 1927 at age 19. Lee Miller was walking down a crowded street in Manhattan. She was ravishingly beautiful: blonde hair stylishly bobbed, lips painted red, her slim figure clad in the latest fashions from Paris.

Perhaps it was Paris she was thinking about so deeply. Whatever it was it absorbs her entirely that as she stepped off the sidewalk she didn’t see a car speeding towards her.

At the last minute a man whisked her to safety. He turns out to be none other than the publisher Condé Montrose Nast. As soon as he saw the woman he saved, he decided she must model for his magazine.

A few short months later, Lee Miller’s face, drawn by Georges Lepape with the New York skyline for a backdrop, stares out from the cover of Vogue.

That cover launched Lee Miller’s modelling career. Within months she became a fixture on the New York social scene, hobnobbing with the likes of Charlie Chaplin, George Gershwin and the Vanderbilts.

Fashion greats such as photographer Edward Steichen zipped her into Lanvin and Lelong, draped her in pearls, swathed her in velvet. In one picture she models a Chanel evening gown covered with geometric embellishments, her body resembling a glorious art-deco building.

Lee was fêted and pursued by suitors. A glassware manufacturer even moulded a champagne coupe in the shape of her breast. It was all very glamorous but, for Lee, not wholly satisfying. Later, remembering her New York years, she said, ‘I looked like an angel but I was a fiend inside.’

This contradiction – stemming from a traumatising childhood into early adulthood,

Her father, Theodore, was an amateur-photographer and had begun to photograph his naked daughter long before that, in 1914, when she was seven. According to Miller herself, in that year, she, then known as Elizabeth, had been sent to stay with family friends while her mother was in hospital.

During the trip, she had been raped by a sailor; the attack left her with gonorrhea. For the next year, the child was subjected to daily douches of potassium permanganate, and k twice-weekly visits to the hospital to have her cervix painted with picric acid. Everything she touched at home was immediately sterilised.

It was during this year that Theodore had begun to photograph his daughter in the nude, his first composition being a take on the French artist Paul Chabas' September Morn, a painting of a nubile girl bathing, which had caused a scandal when it was shown in New York in 1913.

For his own picture, Miller required his daughter to pose, nude but for slippers, in the deep Poughkeepsie snow: the resulting picture was called "December Morn". Theodore made it using a stereoscopic camera, so that, viewed through accompanying glasses, his naked child appeared three-dimensional.

The early childhood experience would plague her throughout her adult life, and arguably cause her to constantly try to reinvent herself, wondering if she ‘ever was meant to fit together’.

Those reinventions – as a key figure in the Surrealist movement, fashion photographer, muse and tormented war correspondent – have made her the subject of plays, film scripts (Nicole Kidman wanted to play her in a film written by David Hare that was never made).

Reinvention of otherworldly beauty was also so evident in all her photographs. But Lee wasn’t happy as a model. A sketch she drew in her journal in 1930 shows a woman standing against a studio backdrop, daggers pinning her into place, as another woman in a hat looks on. No wonder, then, that she was hungry to forge her own identity beyond the camera’s frame – a frame that, to a woman who had been looked at by men her entire life, represented an implicit power imbalance. 

She gave up her modelling career and set sail for Paris, intending, as she provocatively stated, to ‘enter photography by the back end’.

Bags of confidence, together with letters of introduction from Edward Steichen, convinced Man Ray to take her on as his assistant. He was instantly enchanted and their professional relationship blossomed into a love affair so tumultuous that it affected them both for years afterwards.

Miller was to befriend other iconic Parisian artists like Max Ernst and Picasso and intellectuals like Jean Cocteau. She would vacation with some of the most prominent figures in the art world at the time. Picasso would paint Lee six times and the two remained friends throughout the rest their lives. Picasso wanted to bed her but she held her distance.

It was Lee Miller, not Man Ray, who discovered the photography technique known at "solarisation" bu turning on a light in their darkroom before the negatives had fully developed. It creates a dark line around the subject of the photograph and created groundbreaking images at the time. Ray is often credited with this discovery and he used it often in his own work, but it was actually Lee Miller who made the first picture of its kind on accident.

Man Ray’s portraits of Lee are sensuous and romantic, but even he never seemed able to see her as a whole, often depicting her body broken up into pieces.

He painted her lips floating disembodied in a mackerel sky in ‘Observatory Time: The Lovers’, and in his photographs her breasts, neck and eyes are removed from their context, palpably humming with sexual energy, the ultimate surrealist objects.

In December 1930, Miller's father, Theodore, had come to Paris from Poughkeepsie, New York, to see his daughter. Like any good parent might, he had taken pictures of her. Unlike most fathers, these photographs were shot in the nude, in the bathtub of their shared hotel suite. Lee Miller was 23.

The shots Man Ray took of Lee and Theodore Miller, she in a demure print frock and curled, child-like, in her father's lap, are deeply weird. They seem less of a father and daughter than of an older man and his much younger lover.

Perhaps Ray had heard rumours that Theodore had been Lee's actual childhood abuser, or he may have imagined it for himself. (No charges were ever brought against the unidentified sailor-rapist.)

In terms of age, Ray's own relationship with Lee was also ambiguously paternal: he was 17 years older than her, a pattern that would mark all her relationships with men. At any rate, Theodore and Ray seem to have gotten along famously. Together, the two men photographed Lee, nude, lolling on a bed with three other naked women.

It is hard not to see all this in psychological terms, if not in moral ones. Cursed with a perfect beauty, Miller became a focus of Ray’s internal need to violate. For Man Ray, this was aggravated by the masculine drive to compete.

If the countless celebrities photographed by Man Ray – Wallis Simpson, Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf, Picasso, Chanel, Schiaparelli, himself – the one he went back to most obsessively was Lee Miller. You can see why. Miller was a physical ideal, the kind of perfectly moulded, ice-blonde beauty beloved of Hitchcock; flawless, or at least imaginably so.

Lee Miller and Man Ray's exciting, passionate and tumultuous relationship ended and Man Ray did not take it well. In fact, one of his most famous pieces, Indestructible Object, includes her eye ticking on a metronome.

Ray's instructions to fans on how to make their own version of the work suggest the violence of his anatomical method. "Cut out the eye from a photograph of one who has been loved but is seen no more," he writes, bitterly. "Attach the eye to the pendulum of a metronome and regulate the weight to suit the tempo desired. Keep going to the limit of endurance. With a hammer well-aimed, try to destroy the whole at a single blow."

That done, the photographer, ever the drama queen, sat for a self-portrait called "Suicide" with a noose around his neck and a gun pointed at his head.

Hell hath no fury like a Surrealist scorned.

When their affair ended, Lee moved back to New York and opened her own studio, where she worked ‘in the style of Man Ray’, as she advertised in a bold appropriation of his name.

She hardly needed the help. Clients such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Elizabeth Arden paid handsomely for pictures by the woman who was herself ‘one of the most photographed girls in Manhattan’.

But in just a few years the Lee Miller Studio closed when Lee married an Egyptian, Aziz Eloui Bey, and moved with him to Cairo. She felt stunted by Egypt’s restrictive society but produced some of her best work there, driving into the desert with her trusty cocktail kit in the boot to take photographs of the landscape.

Her husband, however, let Lee spend extended holidays in Europe with the Surrealist set, where she met painter and art collector Roland Penrose, the man who eventually became her second husband. They would be happily married for the rest of their lives until death. She at last found someone who accepted her whole. But it still wouldn’t be enough for Lee. 

By 1939, it was time for another reinvention. War broke out, the Blitz rained down on London, and Lee, urged on by her friend, the photojournalist, collaborator and sometime lover David Scherman, got accredited as a war correspondent for (of all places) British Vogue.

Her editor, Audrey Withers, expected soft-focus photo-essays about war privation, but Lee had other ideas.

Her reportage was gruesome, intimate and important. On the front lines at the siege of Saint-Malo, Lee documented the Americans’ first use of napalm and described a company ready for action, ‘grenades hanging on their lapels like Cartier clips, menacing bunches of death.’

She shot close-ups of the faces of German Nazis who had committed suicide in Leipzig and took powerful portraits of starving prisoners following the liberation of Dachau and Buchenwald.

When she arrived in Paris during the Liberation the first thing she did was go to Picasso's studio. There they are pictured smiling holding each other tight, probably beyond relieved that they were both alive. Picasso is quoted saying in astonishment "the first Allied soldier I should see is a woman- and she is you."

When Hitler fled Munich at the end of the war, Lee and Scherman were the first of the press corps to reach his apartment, where they drank his cognac and napped in his bed. They propped a picture of Hitler on the rim of his bathtub, set Lee’s dirty combat boots on the bathroom rug and took the now-famous photograph of her bathing in Hitler’s tub.

The war made Lee feel alive.

The image of Miller in Hitler’s tub was the one that led to the end of her Vogue career. The public was outraged at what they interpreted as flippant disregard for the ravages of war. Being accused of insensitivity inevitably took its toll, but it was what she saw, felt, and experienced during those years that would eventually send her into a struggle with depression.

She loved her uniform, tailored on Savile Row. She loved roughing it: washing in her helmet and subsisting on K-rations. And for a woman always searching for meaning in her life, documenting the war for readers back home gave her purpose. ‘Believe this,’ she cabled to Vogue, and the pictures she sent back were indeed horrifying. They came at a cost: Lee was never able to distance herself from her subject. She threw her entire self into her work.

Lee suffered mightily postwar.

The trauma of what she had seen haunted her for the rest of her life. Today we would call it PTSD. In postwar England, Lee was told by her doctor ‘we cannot keep the world permanently at war just to provide you with excitement’.

On her return to London after the war, she was feted. "Who else has written equally well about GIs and Picasso?" her editor said. "Who else can swing from the Siegfried line one week to the new hip line the next?"

Desperate to ward off a sense of anticlimax, she returned to eastern Europe. But soon she was pregnant at 40 years old and finding the prospect of motherhood scarier than any front line.

She missed the action, despite suffering post-traumatic stress. She also felt increasingly sidelined: in staid, patriarchal postwar Britain, her husband was the one in demand.

Finding the inspiration to write and take photographs became harder and eventually she gave it up entirely, hiding more than 60,000 negatives and contact sheets in the attic and becoming so tight-lipped on the subject that even her own son, Antony, knew nothing about her war work until he was an adult. An entire piece of herself was boxed up and placed out of sight.

Depressed at her loss of looks and gain in weight, she found solace in drink and cooking elaborate gourmet meals for her guests at Farley Farm House in East Sussex, her home until her death in 1977. 

She could have written a very good cookbook by all accounts. She was a virtuoso chef. 

She remained friends with the Paris crowd. In particular she was close to Picasso. Lee Miller's son recalls going over to Picasso's home as a child. He even wrote a book about the time he bit Picasso, as a child, called ‘The Boy Who Bit Picasso’.

Lee even reconciled with Man Ray. Lee and Man Ray last met in London in 1975, at Man Ray's retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. By now, he was in a wheelchair and Lee Miller was a drunk. 

Lee Miller died of cancer in 1977. By the end she was overweight, an alcoholic, ravaged by depression, and tortured by her husband’s affair with a trapeze artist. Anyone meeting Lee Miller then would have been surprised to know that she was once considered the most beautiful woman in the world, second only to Greta Garbo.

But just as she, and her reputation, went out of sight for years. There has in recent years been a resurgence of interest in Lee’s photography, bringing her legacy, and her enduring appeal, further into the light.

As a female icon she never saw herself as a victim. It's remarkable that Miller was able to delight in her body (and in the pleasure others took from it). She saw sex and love as two very different beasts. She was very comfortable living out the truth as she believed it."Emotionally, I need to be completely absorbed in some work or in a man I love," she wrote, but she didn't see why going to bed with someone should upset whichever man she was currently in love with.

Lee insisted that she couldn’t be kept and that women should be able to be as sexually free as men. She was radical, and people made her suffer for it  - Man Ray included.

Strikingly beautiful, she was used to submitting to the male gaze and even subverting it. A less spirited woman might have been crushed by these alpha males, but Miller, unfazed, determinedly transformed herself from passive model to active artist.

Her son, Antony Penrose, observed in his 1998 biography of his mother, The Legendary Lee Miller: Photographer, 1907–1977, her unique background capturing uncanny moments and haunting, bizarre portraits during the heyday of the Surrealist movement served her well in war photography. Penrose wrote:

“Unexpectedly, among the reportage, the mud, the bullets, we find photographs where the unreality of war assumes an almost lyrical beauty....On reflection I realise that the only meaningful training of a war correspondent is to first be a Surrealist—then nothing in life is too unusual.”

But it was the very nature of unconventionality of her career trajectory that hampered her historical reputation.

Her early association with the Paris Surrealists - particularly her role as Man Ray's "perversely enchanting muse" - overshadowed her own artistic accomplishments.

Her abandonment of photography, and the consignment of all her work to her own attic also limited her impact during her lifetime.

Her association with fashion also coloured the interpretation of Miller's work. As her biographer Carolyn Burke states, "to this day, her life inspires features in the same glossy magazines for which she posed...this approach turns the real woman in to a screen onto which beholders project their fantasies", and further perpetuates the legend of Lee Miller as an "American free spirit wrapped in the body of a Greek goddess".

The force of her beauty, effervescent personality and high octane biography will always remain central to interpreting her work.

Today Miller has been recognised as among the most original and ambitious photographic artists of the 20th century, and a subtly transgressive artist, who - as Lynn Hilditch asserts in Lee Miller, Photography, Surrealism and the Second World War - took off from her Surrealist background and "pushed the boundaries both of art and war photography, often using unconventional methods to comment on such multifaceted issues as sex, gender, death, and war"

[myheartrevealedocs]

Untouchable Ch 27: The Instincts (S4E6)

Warnings: kidnapping, murder of children, nightmares

Ch 26 | Ch 28

~ ~ ~

It took a few weeks of just talking. About anything and everything with each other. But Spencer was finally certain that Lydia was his other half. 

They were just so similar. It was eerie to him, because ever since he’d met her he’d thought she was everything he wasn’t: outgoing, brave, and impulsive. But in all the ways that mattered, they were exactly the same. Ambitious and moral and smart. And all his fears and anxieties couldn’t keep him from loving that about her. The good and the bad. They were perfectly matched in their passion and their stubbornness.

Eventually, Spencer had to leave for yet another case and it turned out to be far more difficult than he had foreseen. Upon boarding the jet, he’d fallen asleep, which was unusual enough as was. But he was woken up from a very strange nightmare by Rossi, who was concerned about him mumbling in his sleep.

He had almost forgotten entirely about his dream by that evening. The case they were working was a child abductor case. The unsub had kidnapped a 5-year-old boy and called the parents to torment them once or twice, before suffocating the child seven days later. They had just taken another boy, by the name of Michael Bridges.

Hotch had ordered Reid and Morgan to stay with the family that night in case they received another phone call. So Spencer and his coworker were drifting off on the couches downstairs when something caught his eye.

There was a door in the hallway parallel to the stairs. He could have sworn that hadn’t been there when they arrived, but nonetheless, he felt compelled to go check it out.

Quietly getting up, he walked over and found that the new discovery led down to a basement. As he stepped down, he reached for his gun, a sinking feeling coming over him.

The basement was for the most part empty. Directly across from the entrance was a washer and dryer, their bright white color standing out against the beige walls. And just peeking out behind the washer were two tiny feet with jeans and black tennis shoes on.

Spencer approached, but stopped short before he could see any more of the body. At the sound of footsteps, he turned and found Morgan and Rossi behind him. He didn’t for a moment question why Rossi was there.

“We couldn’t find any evidence of forced entry.”

“Why would that matter?” Spencer asked. Something was wrong. Everything about this was insanely familiar. He’d been here before. Seen this before.

“‘Cause it means he most likely knew his attacker,” Morgan argued, but at that point, Spencer had stopped listening.

There were strange lumps forming on his chest. Ripping open the front of his button down, he was horrified to find multiple leeches attached to his torso.

“Get them off me!” he shrieked. “Morgan, get them off me! Morgan!”

“Reid!” Morgan’s voice was fainter than he remembered. Morgan was right behind him, wasn’t he? “Reid! Wake up! It’s Morgan.”

Spencer’s eyes flew open and found himself back on the couch of the Bridges home, his arms crossed protectively over his chest. Morgan had turned on a nearby lamp and was hovering over him, concern filling his face.

It was the same dream he’d had on the jet. The only difference was the first time he’d woken up trying to get JJ’s unborn baby off the scene and this time, he’d woken up while covered in leeches. Reid didn’t believe in dream analysis… but why did it change?

“What the hell’s going on?” Mr. Bridges demanded, him and his wife rushing down the stairs.

“Sir, ma’am,” Morgan addressed, “everything’s okay.”

“You wake us up screaming and you think everything’s okay?”

“Look, I understand we startled you and I’m sorry for that.”

“You’re the FBI!”

Spencer ran his fingers through his hair. “You’re right,” he stuttered. “You’re right. I’m, just, I’m really sorry.”

Morgan watched him for a moment, seeing his shoulders shudder up and down as he caught his breath. Then he turned back to the couple. “Sir, please, go back upstairs and try to get some rest. It was just a misunderstanding. Everything is fine, I promise you that.”

Mr. Bridges stormed off in a huff, but his wife stuck around for a moment, shuffling her feet on the steps. “Are you okay?”

“It was a dream,” he said, then gulped. “I’m really sorry.”

“Was it about Michael?”

Spencer didn’t know. He hadn’t seen any more than a small pair of black sneakers. But for her sake, he shook his head.

“I’ve been afraid to close my eyes,” she continued. “I’m scared I’ll see him die.”

He opened his mouth. The words ‘Don’t worry’ died in his throat. They weren’t true. He didn’t believe them. The chances of finding Michael were so slim. So he stood there with his mouth hanging open.

“Ma’am, I know it’s hard,” Morgan interrupted, softly. “But I need you to go upstairs and try to get some sleep…” Her eyes never left Spencer. “Please. I am sorry for the disturbance.”

Finally, she turned on her heel and left, turning off the hall light as she went.

“I’m making everything worse,” Spencer sighed.

“Reid… these cases get to all of us.”

“I’m losing it in their living room. And I’m dreaming- I’m dreaming about dead kids and being covered in leeches.”

“What the hell is scaring you?”

It took a few moments for Spencer to phrase his feelings into a coherent thought. “This boy’s going to die and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

~ ~ ~

The next day was the funeral for the first boy who’d been kidnapped. With the amount of remorse the unsub showed with his body, they figured it was likely they’d be at the funeral to show respect to the child they’d killed.

Hotch wanted Michael’s parents there as well. It was possible they’d recognize the unsub or even just be able to tell if someone was watching them. And the unsub… The unsub would definitely by watching.

After getting changed into dark clothing, Spencer went upstairs to look around Michael’s room again.

“Hey kid,” Morgan called, appearing in the door not moments later. “We’re almost ready to go.”

“You know, they’re right. Odds are we’ll catch the unsub when he dumps the body or when he tries to snatch another kid.”

“I know the odds, Reid.”

It was so negative. Spencer wasn’t normally a pessimist, but the whole situation was bullshit. It was his job to save this kid. Why couldn’t he just… just save him? “It’s weird. Some things never go away.” He stepped away from his friend to pick up something off Michael’s desk to show him. “When I was a kid, every boy I knew had piles of dinosaur toys.”

He set down the green tyrannosaurus where he found it.

“Not you?” Morgan asked knowingly.

“I had books and notebooks. My mom filled hundreds of them with poems by W.S. Erwin and songs by Bob Dylan. She liked it when I memorized them. She was convinced that they were watching us and writing songs about our lives.”

Where are you going with this? he asked himself. What is bothering you so much that you’re sitting here tossing around a six-year-old’s dinosaurs?

“Basements are the first part of a house to be built, right?” he blurted out. “So, if you’re having a recurring dream about a basement, kinda speaks to the core fundamentals of who you are as a person.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in dream analysis?”

“Freud’s been discredited, but Jung still has his merits… My dream? The dead boy? I’ve been having different versions of it since I was a little kid.”

“Hey.” Morgan made a few steps closer to him. “Have you talked to Lydia about this?”

“Why would I talk to Lydia about this?”

“Because you trust her,” Morgan insisted. “You love her a lot and I have the feeling she might be able to talk you through some of this. You know, no one would think less of you if you took a little time off to talk with her and get your head together.”

Spencer knit his eyebrows together. How would that help? It was a stupid dream anyway, wasn’t it? “I just want to find this boy,” he insisted, then stepped around Morgan and headed downstairs towards the car.

~ ~ ~

As Hotch handed the young Michael Bridges off to his family, Morgan was frustrated to see Spencer standing apart from the group, clearly lost in his own thoughts. This is what he wanted. They found Michael alive.

He wondered if it was a mistake to show him the Riley Jenkins case. Riley Jenkins had died at six, when Spencer was four, and many of the case details lined up to Spencer’s dreams: he was found in his basement, behind a washing machine, and lived in Las Vegas, very close to where Spencer lived.

“You know, this is about as good a day as we’re gonna get on this job.”

“I know,” Spencer mumbled.

“And yet you’re still thinking about a boy you’re not even sure if you really knew.”

His grimace didn’t reassure Morgan in his statement. “When I was four, my mother had a sense that I was in danger.”

“Reid, your mother wasn’t well.”

“I know facts about the case,” he argued.

“Reid, you’ve got a photographic memory. Odds are, you saw the story-- he was just a kid like you-- and it caught your imagination.”

“I don’t really think that you believe that.”

Profilers. He should know better than to lie to Reid. “You want to know what I really believe?” he mended. “I believe you could have done anything in this world with your life, and you chose to do this job. Your man Carl Jung says our unconscious is the key to our life’s pursuits.”

It took Spencer a moment to confirm that what Morgan said was correct. “Yeah… Yeah.”

“So, for whatever reason, that case was stuck in your brain all these years, and it not only led you to this career choice but to the same city where your mother lives, and for us to have the opportunity to save this child.”

It finally seemed like he was breaking through. Spencer gave him the smallest smile. But Derek knew that he wasn’t going to really get through to him. That’s why he had a backup plan.

“Like I said, this is probably as good a day as we’re gonna get, man. Enjoy your moment.”

Hotch appeared from around Morgan’s shoulder to join their group and Spencer seemed to think of something. “Hey, Hotch? Do you think it would be possible to wait until tomorrow to return home?”

Hotch looked down as if contemplating, then turned to Morgan. “Do you think you could find something to do in Vegas for the night?”

Derek didn’t try to stop the grin that was spreading across his face. Hotch knew that no one on the team would argue about a night off in Vegas. Especially not him. So the two of them wandered off, but as they left, Derek could tell Spencer was still thinking about Riley Jenkins.

Alright, plan B then… 

Hotch gave him a questioning look as he pulled out his phone and dialed a familiar number, but Morgan didn’t care. The whole team could listen for all he cared, if it meant Spencer got out of this slump.

“Hello?”

“Lydia? When was the last time you spoke with Spencer?”

“Uh… he sent me a goodnight text last night? But that’s been our only communication while he’s been in Vegas. Why?”

“I think you should give him a call and ask about his nightmares.”

“He hasn’t told me about any nightmares…”

“I know. But he’s woken up shouting twice on this case so far. He told me about it, but I just can’t seem to help.”

“How do you propose I bring it up to him?”

“You can tell him I told you. He’s gonna know I interfered either way.”

“Okay… Thanks, Derek.”

“Good luck, kiddo.”

Tags: @kris-stuff​, @wooya1224​, @bispences​, @anotherr-fine-mess​, @eddysocs​

[illshowyourhurricanes]

Back to the Beginning

Who wants a little peek into the life of our favorite musician to brighten their Monday? Look no further! I hope y’all enjoy, and as always, thank you for reading!

Image prompt 6: Ryan Brenner x reader (requested by @thisisparadisemylove)

Rating: PG due to absolute and adorable fluff.

Word count: 1946

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This is related to (later down the line) A Familiar Face, which can be found in my masterlist.

The air in the city was dense and heavy. Before you could take anything in, to appreciate your time there, you had to train your lungs to breathe in the atmosphere; it was imperative to get acclimated to the moisture that hung invisibly around you. It was so thick, the humidity was almost strangling.

But when you hit that point where you could breathe again, to inhale that air with ease, the sensations surrounding you were breathtaking. 

The uneven, crumbling brick paving the sidewalks were littered with people: tourists with strands of colorful beads hanging from their necks, carrying styrofoam cups; older couples holding hands while taking leisurely strolls; giggling teenagers ducking into shops with signs in the windows boasting shrunken heads and Voodoo dolls. The air carried with it succulent smells from various restaurants, and dance troupes occupied the middle of narrow streets to entertain. People spray-painted in metallic tones from head to toe stood frozen like statues, so still it was as if they weren’t breathing. Depending which street you were on, the energy around you would flip between an electric buzz or a warm leisure--  the kind that was the reason behind the city being coined The Big Easy. 

But one constant in New Orleans, whether in the French Quarter, down Magazine Street, or lost just beyond the corner of Decatur and St. Peters’ expanse of the French Market—crowded with vendors selling silver jewelry or art, fresh vegetables and homemade soaps offered in booths at the farmers’ market further down the street, or finding hidden treasures buried deep at the flea market adjacent to the famous Cafe du Monde— was the music. 

Street performers playing various flavors of music occupied almost every street corner in the New Orleans area. But Royal Street— Ryan had told you it was pronounced roy-AL, like a duo of two male names sewn together— that was where the real music was, the music with heart and soul and life, no matter the sweltering heat and thick, suffocating humidity. Thirteen blocks through the French Quarter and several leading down toward Frenchman Street was the city’s epicenter of live music. It was where Ryan wanted to take you. 

“There’re all types of musicians down here, Y/N,” Ryan said, excitement apparent. Soft-spoken by default unless he was singing, full-bodied and soul on fire, Ryan’s smooth, soft drawl was a pleasure to hear, even if you had to strain to hear sometimes. But the enthusiasm of what he was set to explore with you— to share with you— added volume to his voice, thickened his drawl just a touch, and shifted his intonation to the point that his words sounded more like song than speak. “Jazz is the front-runner but you name it, and you’re goin’ to hear it.  I reckon there ain’t a place like it anywhere else in the world.”

Ryan tore his eyes from a two-story brick building, balconies adored by wrought-iron and punctuated with lush hanging plants. You’d read that most of the businesses in this part of the city hailed in structures that were built centuries ago. You smiled as your attention turned to Ryan’s face, lit up with a wide, Cheshire-like grin. His happiness was your happiness, and when he gifted you with that big, toothy, genuine smile,, you felt like a Mega Millions winner. You knew you’d hit the jackpot with this man. 

He’d ditched his pack in the bed and breakfast you’d booked days before, despite his protests.

”This was my idea, Y/N. “

“But I wanted to come.”

Slowly nodding his head in agreement,  Ryan gently pointed out, “I asked you to join me—“

“And I accepted.”

He eyed you with his eyebrows quirked, and you continued. “You let me come with you, and you let me live life your way for a few days. It’s been exhilarating and uncertain and I feel more alive than I have in a long time.” Your eyes were full of sincerity, and Ryan took a few steps toward you, only stopping as stood right in front of you. He reached to tuck your hair behind your ear. “So let me find us a warm bed to sleep in and cold air conditioning to lay under.”

Finally, he conceded. “If that’s what you want, Y/N, you know you got it. But I gotta tell you, it’s not a usual part of my way of livin’.”

You bit your bottom lip thoughtfully and narrowed your eyes playfully. “Maybe it’s your way of livin’ with me.”

He’d left his pack, but still carried his guitar case. His tattooed fingers were laced with yours as the two of you walked; you had a destination: the flea market just a few blocks away. But first, Ryan wanted to take a slight detour. 

“I really want to experience the music. Appreciate it. Take our time, if that’s alright.” 

You’d nodded immediately, agreeing with him. You wanted the same thing, wanted to be there with Ryan and join him in his elation and opinions and feel a bit of that love he felt for music. 

“And I know you want to go to the flea market—“

“I need to go to the flea market.” You interjected, and he laughed. You shrugged. and he shook his head 

“You’re somethin’ else.” The slight smell of coffee wafted through the air, and as the smell became stronger, it took on an almost sweet scent. Applause broke out from somewhere ahead of you, momentarily drowning out an increasingly loud dissonance of chatter. 

“You know, I think you’ve told me that before. Once or twice.” Before Ryan could answer, you found yourselves standing just outside the open-air, renowned Cafe du Monde. The scent, the chatter, and the perfect, faraway backdrop of a nearby trumpeter’s solo version of When the Saints Go Marching In was classic New Orleans. You felt a sense of nostalgia wash over you, and you knew at that exact moment that this city, so full of culture and history, art and Cajun food, voodoo and ghost tours, jazz and zydeco and blues and swing and swamp pop— this city meant something to you, and it was your first time visiting. 

Ryan gently led you to an occupied table, smack in the middle of the cafe. He pulled out your chair for you with a boyish smile before sitting in the chair across the small table, guitar case close by his side. He leaned forward on his elbows so you could hear over the noise. 

“The menu’s not your traditional menu,” Ryan warned you. His eyes danced from across the table, and he added, “Not that New Orleans skimps on tradition, but they do it their own way. ‘S their style.”

You found yourself leaning in as well, caught you in the cadence of Ryan’s voice as well as his words. Ryan wasn’t a huge talker, he didn’t need to be, but when he got on a roll about music or traveling or something that he was passionate about, he spoke up more than usual and you loved those moments. This was one of them. 

“ ‘Bout a half-dozen choices to choose from. It’s slim pickin’s, but you can’t go wrong with what they’re offerin’.”” Ryan had been to New Orleans many times; there was just no other place like it. He held up his left hand, calloused fingertips and vertical lines inked between mid and lower knuckles of each finger. “You’ve got coffee—cafe au lait. Fresh-squeezed orange juice, milk…”

You had started to shake your head as Ryan went on. He stopped before he rattled off a variety of sodas and coffee over ice; he knew what you were saying without words, and had known as much before he spoke. The two of you shared a smile, intimate with understanding. Opening your mouth to share a sentiment, you were stalled as a waitress appeared tableside, vibrant purple hair pulled back and piled atop her head. She was around your age and looked frazzled. You smiled at her. Many days at the diner had you in the same state at some point. 

“A cafe au lait and order of beignets, please,” Ryan said politely, inclining his chin to order while looking at the server, not just rattling off what he wanted. He was always attentive, and actually talking to someone rather than at them was something you valued at work. Ryan just did so naturally without a second thought. “Same for my girl here.” He looked at you adoringly with an expression asking for confirmation.

“You got it,” you said, meeting Ryan’s eyes for a beat of time, then looking to the waitress and nodding appreciatively. “Thank you.” 

In his typical fashion, Ryan followed immediately, offering the woman a small smile. “Thank you, ma’am.”

When she turned to walk away and Ryan’s attention was yours again, he immediately noticed the way the corners of your lips turned upward. He looked at you as you appreciated his features from across the table. 

“I’ll wait,” he teased gently. Leaning back in his chair, his long legs stretched out as much as possible beneath the table without invading your space, you nudged his knee with your own. 

“Wait for what?” It was a rhetorical question; it was all in your expression, the way you sometimes got as quiet as Ryan himself and just looked at him like he hung the moon. Ryan had called you his girl, and you supposed it was true, but to hear him say it was another thing entirely. He had you reeling. It took you a moment to get back on track. “I was just thinking about your thank you ma’am. How it sounded familiar, and how someone else is bringing us coffee instead of me bringing it to you… which, in hindsight,  is why we’re here. Together. It’s all come full circle in a sense.”

It seemed like a lifetime ago. As you and Ryan enjoyed your beignets, you relished in little memories, and that was what made your relationship so special. Ryan had taught you just how important simplicity was. He laughed as you balked, tasting your cafe au lait without adding sugar first, forgetting there was chicory in the drink. You stood from your chair to brush powdered sugar from a beignet out of the scruff on his chin. He taught you the difference between zydeco and swamp pop, and insisted on paying for your coffee and beignets. 

“There you go again, Ryan Brenner. Fighting me over sweets and tips, bringing it right back to the beginning. You’d finally made it to the flea market, but before you could walk in, he wrapped an arm around your waist and pulled you close, pressing a soft kiss to your lips. You let out a sigh.

“I like the present much better, Y/N,” he said, speaking into your ear. Your shoulder shrugged involuntary, his whiskers and breath tickling your ear.  “The beginning was real nice, but this,” he paused, pressing his lips to your temple, “What we have now, it’s been on my mind since that first cup of coffee.” You looked up at him with a look of awe; it was a confession he’d never made before, and it felt like the perfect moment for him to do so, there in this huge flea market in New Orleans. You had words on the tip of your tongue, but they were stuck there. 

When you didn’t reply, Ryan just smiled down at you. It was one of those small, simple, yet significant moments. You’d had so many with him. He let his arm fall from your waist to link his fingers with yours again, leading your further inside. “You make a damn good cup of coffee, Y/N.”

[efrmellifer]

Reclaimed

Aymeric’s gaze was intense as he watched Etien, perched on the loveseat, knitting needles flashing, the baby blanket she worked on taking the place of the usual blanket on her lap to keep her warm. She was nearly finished with this one, meaning that she would begin work on its twin soon.

Even so, as the yarn passed through her fingers, being woven into the blanket that grew and grew with every new row and the typical click of her switching the needles from hand to hand, he knew there was something else going on. Maybe it was the speed of her hands, or the tension of the yarn, but he could just tell. Something had gotten to Etien and now she was thinking.

So he rose from where he was sitting, so far away across the room, and sat down next to her.

“Get cold and bored over there?” she asked, not looking up from the tips of her needles. She had already cursed at a dropped stitch twice; he could only imagine she was trying not to see if the third time was the charm, and she had to rip up a whole row for it.

“Well, I do feel warmer sitting next to you,” he admitted.

She smiled, grip tight on the ends of the knitting so it didn’t unravel, and she turned to him. “And I thought you were trying to set my dress on fire with your mind. You had such a severe look on your face when I looked up. Is something wrong?”

Aymeric blinked, unaware that she had even looked at him. “Er, no. I was actually wondering the same about you. You look troubled.”

“Oh, that. I’ve been… turning something over in my mind ever since we got that last letter.”

“Another didn’t come, did it? I fully intend to make good on my offer to read them and relay their contents so you have no need to deal with the insults that come in addition.”

Etien shook her head, going back to her knitting for a few stitches before she spoke again. “No, I was thinking that there has to be a way to prevent any more of them from coming at all.”

Aymeric felt himself frown when he’d processed what she’d said. “And how would you propose to do that?”

“Well, I would have to go to Alder Springs, wouldn’t I?” She went back to the knitting, a little more aggressively now than she had been. So the idea agitated her. And yet she was going to do it?

Aymeric let it sink it, then roll over in his mind a few times. He couldn’t control Etien. He’d known for as long as he’d known her that was the case. Sometimes it reminded him of Haurchefant. Like they were blood siblings, almost, he thought. He couldn’t control her, but he had always been able to influence her, the way she influenced him. Changing each other slowly and Ishgard rapidly.

So he had to try to convince her. He came to a knee in front of her, hands folded on her knee, avoiding her bobbing foot and bouncing slipper. “Etien,” he murmured, waiting for her to look up at him. “Do not go to Alder Springs, dear-heart. Certainly not like this.” He didn’t say it, but what pressed at his lips, straining to be given voice was, “or I shall have to follow you.”

Her eyebrows dipped. “But what choice do I have? They’ve seen that the girl they once thought dead is in fact a living woman in a city not so far away, and now they bombard me with letters to rain more tragedy on my life. More never-ending tragedy.”

“Never-ending?” Aymeric asked, hand sliding up her leg until he rested it on her forearm.

She looked up at him again. “Broken up with moments of rapturous joy. Almost always when you’re involved.” She laughed lightly, but it dried out before she continued. “But I left the home in which I had spent my entire life heartbroken and made a fool of, only to be found by Hydaelyn with Lyse and Paplymo hot on Her heels to rope me into taking up the yoke. I fight the gods of the ‘beastmen,’ Ascians, dragons, imperial armies, and the embodiment of what happens when this tenuous balance is shifted, all without a break to breathe. At least, no break I don’t make for myself.”

Aymeric was silent, though Etien had taken his hand, so he squeezed it.

“But when I do, when I come back to you and I can relax, it’s as though I’ve never known sadness from all the happiness that I’m filled with.”

He squeezed her hand again. “Then please do not subject yourself to more of that sorrow. It’s as I told you—this is your fortress. If you leave it, I will happily come with to keep you safe, but I would rather not see you suffer so.”

She sighed through her nose. “All right.”

“All right?”

She nodded once. “All right. Stay with me, and I’ll stay here.”

He kissed the back of her hand, still clasped with his. “Happily, I again take the vow to do just that.”

_

“I worry about what being the Warrior of Light has done to her,” Aymeric remarked into his ale.

“Is she complaining of injuries?” Estinien asked, putting his own drink down. “She never mentioned anything like that to me.”

“No. But does she complain?”

“Not often,” Estinien conceded with a shrug. “So what concerns you?”

“She brought up going to Alder Springs.”

When he was met with silence, Aymeric looked over to see only confusion on Estinien’s face.

“Her childhood home. Where her parents still live. And ailing grandparents that they keep writing to her about.”

“Ah. Is it distressing her?”

“She thinks I haven’t noticed. But she wanted to go see them, hoping it would quell them, make them leave her—leave us—alone.”

Estinien sucked his teeth. “Not bloody likely.”

“I know. Moreover, she’s heavily expectant.”

There was a long silence between them. That, of course, was obvious, but its dark suggestion was a little less defined.

“Do you think her safety would be at risk?” Estinien asked finally.

“More like her sanity. She has gotten too used to having to be the one that takes responsibility, that does the most difficult and dangerous part of the plan. Now she immediately plans the hard part for herself and devotes herself to seeing it through. She still wakes up in tears from memories she didn’t ask to have awoken in her mind, from actions she was forced to take. She still flinches when people shout, when I clench my jaw, and yet she thinks she has no other choice than to go see her parents.” He took a long drink of his ale and put it down harder than he had intended, wincing when it met the table with a loud thud. His voice was weak and on the verge of breaking when he said, “She’s going to collapse under the weight. I don’t want it to happen.”

Estinien pulled Aymeric to his side, shushing him softly. “Neither do I.” He patted Aymeric’s back, hoping there would be no tears, and then let him go, though he made sure they were still sitting close. “Have you reminded her that she has a father here who would never hurt her that way?”

“Not in so many words.” Aymeric picked up the ale again, then put it down with a scoff. “I have the feeling it would make little difference. She has the right of it, when she says that they thought her dead. Reclaimed by the Black Shroud. But I think whoever she had been then… is. Dead, I mean. She didn’t leave them as the Warrior of Light.”

“Do you ever wonder what she might have been like before then? She had already been a lauded adventurer when we met her.”

“I try not to think about it,” Aymeric admitted. Now he drank again, just for something to do with his hands and his mouth. But it was true, he didn’t think about it, as much as he could. He knew that there was only a very slim chance that she had changed that much, but he didn’t like to even imagine that there was a version of Etien that wasn’t the one he loved so much.

The one who was so incredibly strong, but in the way once-broken bones were strong. Nothing could happen on a chocobo cart to have forged her anew, so adventuring had been the flame and the anvil.

Haurchefant had brought him—him and Estinien—a woman of bronze hair and steel resolve. What she had been before then was immaterial. What she was now was theirs. And wonderful. And deserving of the world, or as much of it as they could provide.

“I choose to love her as she is,” he responded at last. “When I met her, I loved her, and that has not changed. It would be a waste of time to speculate on whether or not I would love someone I don’t know.”

Estinien nodded. “And there are better ways to waste time, when she’s here now to be loved.”

“Precisely.”

They both drank.

_

That night, when Aymeric slipped into bed beside Etien, she curled up extra close to him, sniffling as she relaxed into his arms.

“Did you have another dream?” he asked, whispering into the flicking of her ear.

She simply nodded.

“What was it this time?”

“He”-- she never had to use his name, it was clear who she meant and that she didn’t want to name him-- “was telling me how I’d disappointed him. That I should be more like he remembered me, back when he’d loved me. ‘But how could he love what I had become?’ He said.”

Aymeric swallowed, hoping his upset at the notion would go down with the saliva. But oh, that rage was an unpleasant thing to have to quaff.

“How could he love what?”

“Me, now that I wasn’t… how I had been, so long ago. But I can remember back then, too. I didn’t- I didn’t return his feelings, Aymeric. Not then and not now. Which only makes it worse.”

He wanted to ask, made what worse? but he was silent, waiting for Etien to elaborate at her own speed and comfort.

“That he says, every time, that he’d never felt such betrayal in all his lifetimes. It’s all I was to him—a disappointment in an unattainable love, and now as a shadow of what he built me up to be. He expected more of me, and I can’t- I can’t live up to those expectations. Did—” she sobbed once—“it makes me wonder if he really ever knew me. Her. Us.”

“How could he love you if he did not know you?” Aymeric asked. “I could never speak to someone I loved that way.”

“I know,” she blubbered, turning to bury her face in his chest. She hiccuped. “It never made me feel loved. It made me feel…” she sobbed again. “I never asked for this.”

A loud knock on the front door startled both of them.

When they answered it, bleary-eyed in Aymeric’s case and red-eyed in Etien’s, Estinien just sighed. “I had a feeling it was one of those nights. May I come in?”

“Please,” Aymeric said, stepping back from the doorway, guiding Etien back with him so she didn’t stumble.

“Would some warm milk go amiss with the two of you?” Estinien asked as he stepped through. “You look like you need it.”

“None for me,” Etien mumbled. “It would upset my stomach.”

“Then warm tea?” he asked, tipping her chin up. “You’ve been crying. Maybe just a warm embrace.”

He drew her into his arms, and though she tensed for a moment, more tears slipped down her cheeks as she hugged him back.

When he let her go, he hugged Aymeric briefly with a squeeze to punctuate it, then headed to the kitchen to get them all their drinks.

The three of them sat on the bed when they were ready, steaming mugs occupying their hands. They all blew on the hot liquids in their cups, drinking slowly.

There were sighs of unburdening in the room, instead of appreciative hums. But when the cups were emptied, they laid in a loose tangle, sounding a little more contented when they were all together, the touch of loved ones soothing them maybe more than the beverages.

Some mix of the two helped the trio towards sleep, each with heavy eyelids that finally fluttered shut for the night.

It was easy to rest in one another’s arms, where they were known and loved, here and now.

[todorokiaimee]

An Interview with The Todoroki’s

A Blues In The Night After Story | Art by @raikiriart​

INTERVIEWER: Our readers want to know everything about your relationship and to be honest, I’m quite curious myself. Let’s start at the beginning. How did you two meet?

SHOTO: We met at our favorite coffee shop. I would always see her by herself reading a book and one day I finally got the courage to talk to her. Honestly, it was a bit of a disaster.

AIMEE: He almost killed me twice before he ever asked me out.

SHOTO: That’s a bit dramatic, Love. (An adorable blush flashes across his face)

AIMEE: He tired to one-up my snide comment with one of his own which resulted in me choking on my coffee. Then later I caught him off guard and he almost barbequed me with his fire. (She giggled while giving her husband’s hand a tight squeeze.) I had never seen such an adorable side of this usually stoic man. And the next day he asked me out on a date and the rest is history as they say.

INTERVIEWER: I see, then I have a question for you Mr. Todoroki. What would you have done if Aimee had decided not to go out on a date with you? Or worse, was currently dating someone else?

SHOTO: Hm, that would be obviously regrettable. I can’t think of spending my life with anyone else but Aimee. If she just turned me down, I would probably ask her again at a later time, try my best to win her over. If she was with another man, I would have no choice than to wait patiently in the wings until it dissolved.

AIMEE: Aw, you’d wait for me, cher? 

SHOTO: Without question.

INTERVIEWER: What’s it like being married to a top Pro Hero?

AIMEE: It’s a little weird, to be honest. I feel so incredibly safe. Between my husband, his friends, and my father-in-law, I know my daughter and I are very well looked after. But it’s a double-edged sword. We do attract attention, sometimes unwanted attention, but that’s part of the package. I was already used to the stares from being a minority here in Japan but it’s just intensified since I started dating Shoto. 

INTERVIEWER: Do you feel accepted by the Todoroki family, Aimee?

AIMEE: Of course! I couldn’t ask for better in-laws. Even King of the Grumps Enji. Although nowadays, we call him Pop-Pop which I find insanely adorable. I really feel like part of the family. They are my family since my mother passed when I was young and my father is serving his sentence in America. 

INTERVIEWER: Do you think your mother would have approved of Shoto?

AIMEE: Absolutely. He’s exactly the kind of man my mother would have wanted for me. I do think she would be surprised that I ended up with a Pro-Hero through. And let’s be real, I could do a lot worse. (She laughs, giving her husband a playful nudge.)

INTERVIEWER: Forgive me if this a difficult subject, but have you been in contact with your father since his sentencing and deportation?

AIMEE: I have. I can’t condone the things my father has done, but I understand why he did them. Grief can make a person do crazy unthinkable things. I give him a call once a month and send him letters with pictures of his granddaughter. He’s still my father after all. 

SHOTO: He’s still family. He’s remorseful and doing his time. We don’t want to keep him from Kiseki but we’re also not bringing her to a prison. So we send pictures, and she’ll talk to him on the phone. She doesn’t quite understand his situation at this age, but we’re doing our best as a family.

INTERVIEWER: How do your students feel about your marriage to a Pro Hero?

AIMEE: Well, not to brag but the kids get super excited when they find out they’re assigned to my class. They love it when Shoto stops by. A lot wonder why I still teach with my husband’s income but I would miss and worry about my students too much. I love my work. 

INTERVIEWER: How do you two handle the bridge between your two cultures? 

SHOTO: Aimee has lived in Japan since she was a preteen so she was pretty familiar with mine by the time we met. However, I had to give myself a crash course in hers. I think my biggest faux pas was touching her hair without permission. 

AIMEE: I keep telling him that he gets a free pass because he’s my husband. 

SHOTO: Even so. (He chuckled giving his wife a knowing smile.)

INTERVIEWER: How do you deal with unwanted attention as an interracial couple and family?

AIMEE: It’s never easy. My instinct is to tell the haters off but only makes the situation worse. Plus we’re trying to set a good example for our daughter. 

SHOTO: I often have long conversations with Pro Hero Rock Lock. He’s also in a happy interracial marriage with 10 years of experience over us. He stresses that as long as your family is safe, you should let the comments roll off your back. That being said, I’m not above intimidation if it saves my wife and daughter’s feelings. 

INTERVIEWER: Speaking of your daughter, you’ve chosen such a unique name for her. Is there a story behind that?

AIMEE: Well when we decided to have a baby, I struggled to get pregnant. My doctor diagnosed me with primary ovarian insufficiency or premature ovarian failure. It’s a scary way of saying I have lazy ovaries that don’t produce eggs as often as they should. We were told my chances of getting pregnant were slim. But after a year of fertility treatments, I was finally pregnant. Our miracle baby. So we named her Kiseki, the Japanese word for miracle. And we also gave her the middle name Anette, after my late mother even though it's not a Japanese practice.

SHOTO: Our little one is too special for only one given name.

INTERVIEWER: Wow, that must have been difficult for you.

AIMEE: Oh I was devastated when I found out. I felt like less of a woman. Here is this one thing that women are just supposed to do, are expected to do in many cultures and I couldn’t. My body was betraying me.

SHOTO: I felt so utterly useless to her as well. It broke my heart to see her in that state every month. Not being able to fix it and save the day nearly killed me. However, we pressed on. Starting a family was too important to us to give up. Actually, giving Aimee her hormone shots had become sort of a bonding experience. 

AIMEE: We used to have little dates where he would meet me at school during my planning period to give me my shot which was time-sensitive. We would look forward to it.

SHOTO: And of course, we enjoyed the other process of making our little princess. 

AIMEE: Cher! (They giggle with blushes on their faces.)

INTERVIEWER: Who does Kiseki take after the most?

SHOTO: She is her mother’s daughter for sure. So kind and curious. She also has a lot of her sass and smart mouth, but somehow it never meant to be that way. She’s just telling her unfiltered version of the truth. 

AIMEE: Oh, you should tell the Halloween costume story! (She giggles.)

SHOTO: (He chuckles.) Kiseki wanted to go as Endeavor for Halloween this year. Before I ordered it for her, I asked her again to be sure. “Are you sure you want to go as Pop-Pop? Not a princess or maybe even Daddy?” She just shook her head and said matter of factly, “No I want Pop-Pop. Your costume is boring, Daddy.”  

AIMEE: (She laughs.) That’s my girl! Telling it like it is. But to be honest, Enji’s costume does have actual fire.

SHOTO: Maybe one day she’ll appreciate her father’s minimalist style. (He chuckles.)

INTERVIEWER: Do you have any clue what her quirk might be?

AIMEE: Well her quirk hasn’t manifested yet but judging by her appearance, she’ll probably have a variation of one or both of her father’s quirks. She has white hair and blue eyes, so it’s possible she could have both fire and ice quirks.

SHOTO: She could also have a variation of yours, my love. As far as we know, your quirk isn’t tied to appearance. So I suppose to answer your question, your guess is as good as ours. We’ll love her just the same quirk or no quirk.

INTERVIEWER: What kind of father is Shoto?

AIMEE: He is such a doting, overprotective father. While I was pregnant, I wasn’t allowed to lift so much as a finger. Given our history struggling to get pregnant, he was so worried about every little thing during my pregnancy. It would have been cute if it didn’t drive me crazy. (She laughs.)

SHOTO: Pardon me for worrying about my wife’s and child’s well being. (He smirks.)

AIMEE: You would have thought I was suddenly made of glass. (She giggles.) But I couldn’t ask for a better baby daddy. Our little girl wants for nothing and there's nothing he wouldn’t do for her. If she asks politely, it’s done. She’s a total daddy’s girl too. Unfortunately, that often makes me bad cop and him good cop.

SHOTO: (A light blush forms on his face.) I can be firm too sometimes.

AIMEE: Sure, cher. Sometimes. (She smirks.)

INTERVIEWER: Do you think you’ll try for more children?

AIMEE: We’re open to the idea, I think. Right, mon cher?

SHOTO: We certainly wouldn’t say no to another child. I think Kiseki would be a wonderful big sister. I know my father would love another chance at a grandson.

INTERVIEWER: What’s your favorite thing about each other?

SHOTO: Her eyes. They’re so expressive. She can bend me to her will with a single look.

AIMEE: His voice. My husband’s a man of few words but he always knows just what to say. Plus I’m a sucker for his deep baritone.

INTERVIEWER: Many of our reader see you two as “couple goals.” For our last question, do you have any relationship advice?

SHOTO: Never stop trying to win your partner over. Don’t let the romance and intimacy die after you’ve been committed to each other.

AIMEE: I totally agree. It’s the little things that matter most. Cooking a meal for your partner, taking the time to write them a little love note on a post-it. The little things that say I love and appreciate you, go a long way. And of course communication. Every relationship needs good communication to thrive. 

SHOTO: Yes, you must acknowledge the good and talk through the bad. Enjoy the journey and cherish your loved ones. I know I do.

MASTERLIST

[apparentlynotreallyfinnish]

Night Before

Honestly, nothing happens in this fic but for some reason I was compelled to write it. If you read Morning After and liked it, you might want to read this one too. 

---

Rhett was trying to move through the office floor but he was constantly stopped and pulled into conversations he didn’t actually care about. He nodded his way through them, smiling a smile that barely reached his eyes and fled when the opportunity presented itself. His gaze jumped from person to person, hoping to spot the one he wanted to see. So far, no luck.

He wasn’t even supposed to be here. Office parties had never been his thing. He didn’t exactly enjoy crowds, and drunken crowds were twice as awful. One of his team members had asked him the previous day whether he was coming and he’d said no. At the time, he’d been telling the truth. He’d had no intention of coming.

But for some reason, a few hours ago he had found himself standing in front of his bathroom mirror, trimming his beard and trying to decide what shirt to wear.

Wondering what shirt he might like.  

“McLaughlin!” someone hollered and waved from a group of people crowding near the entrance of the lunch room. Rhett spotted the blond, smiling man and changed his course towards the group.

“Matt, hi,” Rhett greeted the man who had waved him over with a genuine, warm smile. He nodded to the other people in the group as well, getting a few friendly greetings in return.

“I thought you weren’t coming! Something about a scheduling conflict?” Matt asked leaning closer. He was looking at Rhett with glazed eyes and holding a beer that was definitely not his first one. He didn’t sound accusing, just curious and jovial.  

“Oh, yeah. The um… other thing. It was moved to next week. So, here I am!” Rhett lied trying to maintain eye contact with the man’s drifting gaze. Matt smiled at him and attempted to slap Rhett’s shoulder missing it and hitting his bicep instead. Rhett felt like sighing. Matt was a good guy, one of Rhett’s favorite team members, but Rhett had no interest on having a conversation with a drunken version of him.

“That’s great, man. You came at the perfect time. The party’s just getting started!” Matt hollered and lifted his bottle above his head sloshing the golden liquid on Rhett’s sleeve. A few people from the group hooted and cheered and lifted their drinks. Rhett nodded, brushed off the beer droplets and smiled tightly.

“Get yourself a drink! You’ve got a lot of catching up to do!” Matt said with a slight slur. He motioned towards the door behind him. Rhett took the offered excuse to leave and stepped inside the dimly lit cafeteria.

He immediately wanted to walk out of the room – possibly the whole party. A band consisting of employees Rhett didn’t really know was playing way too loudly and slightly out of tune. Strings of colorful fairy lights hung haphazardly from the ceiling and the whole room was drowned in tinsel. Some of the tables had been moved to the side at the far end of the room and there was a group of people gathered around the makeshift dance floor nudging each other and tittering into each other’s ears.

Rhett ignored the crowd and walked up to the buffet. He might as well have a drink since he’d come all this way. One drink, one walk around the office and then he’d go home. Link wasn’t here. Why would he be? He wasn’t exactly a people person. Always sitting alone at lunch and honestly, Rhett had never seen him talk to anyone about anything else but work. He’d been a fool to think he might find him here.

And come Monday, he would have certainly lost his nerve again.

Rhett eyed the drinks and grabbed an okay-looking bottle of beer from a cooler. He twisted the cap off and turned to go and do another round. As he was about to step out of the cacophony he caught a flash of dark hair and glasses between the aforementioned crowd. Rhett’s heart leapt and he changed course, heading towards the crowd. He’s here!

Loud laughter could be heard now and as he advanced on the dance floor, it was dawning on Rhett that it was not the nice kind. Rhett frowned and quickened his step.

A few people Rhett didn’t know by name passed him and he heard a snippet of their conversation.

“What an idiot…”

“Well, you’d be an idiot too if someone had spiked your drink!”

Heart in his throat Rhett abandoned his beer onto a side table and rushed forward pushing his way through the throng of on-lookers.

In the middle of the dance floor was indeed Link. He had on tight black jeans and a colorful button-down that hugged his shoulders in just the right way. His hair was mussed up and his eyes were closed behind his glasses that had slipped down his nose and hung crooked on his face. He was holding a half-finished drink in his hand and his lips were moving a little; he might have been mouthing the words of the song under his breath. He was dancing wildly; swaying his hips almost pornographically, the empty hand lifted above his head drawing invisible swirls into the air. Rhett’s mind only barely managed to note how gorgeous he looked before he was by his side and guiding him off of the dance floor.

“McLaughlin!” someone complained. “Let him be! He’s just providing us some entertainment.”

There were a few dirty laughs and Rhett threw the crowd a look sharp enough to cut glass.

“This is not over,” he growled and left the people muttering amongst themselves. His hand was wrapped around Link’s slim waist and they were fast moving out of the room.

“Wha – ?” Link muttered and his face tilted to look at Rhett.

“You’re okay. Don’t worry. I’ll get you home,” Rhett murmured as they passed the group of people outside the cafeteria.

Matt called after them but Rhett ignored him and pulled Link with him towards the elevators.

“Oh. Rhett. I – I didn’t think you’d… be here,” Link muttered. Rhett pushed the call button of the elevator and turned to look at Link. He seemed to be having trouble focusing his gaze; his blue eyes flitted from Rhett’s eyes to the wall behind him and then back to Rhett.

“Yeah. Me neither,” Rhett said more to himself than to Link.

The elevator doors opened and Link’s gaze jumped inside it.

“Are we going somewhere?” he asked, words tumbling out of him slowly and with obvious difficulty. Rhett still had his arm around him and he gently nudged him forward. Link moved as if in a dream, gliding towards the metal cage.

“Mm-hmm. Gonna take you home,” Rhett repeated softly.

“Oh. Yours or mine?” Link asked and giggled as if he’d told a joke. He was leaning against the wall of the elevator and Rhett was thankful that he could turn his back on him to push the button. The blush that was rising up his neck would be obvious even in Link’s altered state.

“Come on,” Rhett coaxed as they reached the parking garage. Link followed him without question, trailing behind Rhett as he strode towards his car. Good thing I didn’t have time to drink that beer.

Rhett opened the passenger side door for Link and watched as he slumped to the seat. Link’s head immediately lolled to the side and his eyes flitted closed.

“Seat belt, please,” Rhett instructed gently but Link just hummed a low sound and did not move a muscle. Rhett sighed, crouched down and leaned over Link. With a bit of grunting and maneuvering he managed to buckle him in. Rhett’s fumbling seemed to bring him to a bit and Link opened his eyes just as Rhett was backing out of the car. Their eyes met only centimeters apart, making Rhett’s heart race and his blush deepen.

Those eyes… They‘d been the first thing that had caught Rhett’s attention when he started at the company six months ago. They’d bumped into each other at the cafeteria and Link had apologized profusely even though it wasn’t his fault. Rhett barely heard anything he was saying; he just stared at those piercing blue eyes. They’d done something to him; kick started a part of him he hadn’t known existed.

After that first encounter Rhett couldn’t keep his eyes off of Link. It seemed like almost every day he noticed something new about him. How he kept mussing up his hair when he was thinking. The way his hips swayed when he walked. How his nose scrunched adorably when he was concentrating. How he sometimes smiled to himself when he was eating as if he had thought of something funny. How his collar bones poked through a particularly tight t-shirt. All these things and hundreds more crowded Rhett’s brain as Link took up more and more real estate in Rhett’s mind.

Everything about Link was fascinating to Rhett.

Everything about Link was terrifying to Rhett.

He’d never had feelings for a guy before and it took him a while to admit to himself that his feelings towards Link were romantic in nature. And even after realizing it and coming to terms with it in some way, he still didn’t have enough courage to go and talk to him. Link was something else; almost ethereal in his beauty. In what universe would he be interested in a hairy behemoth like me?

“Thank you,” Link whispered with a dopey smile, snapping Rhett back into reality. “You’re so nice to me. You’re so nice, Rhett. Have I ever told you that?”

Rhett bit his lip and tried to dampen the heat sloshing around in his belly.

“You haven’t,” Rhett said. “But what you really need to tell me is your address so I can drive you home.”

Link just stared at him with that adorable smile and nodded. Rhett frowned, closed the door and rounded the car before climbing onto the driver’s seat. It only took him a moment to get there but when he got settled, Link had already fallen asleep. His head was leaning against the window and his jaw was hanging slack. Rhett tried shaking him a few times but Link just muttered something unintelligible and pushed Rhett away.

Rhett had no idea where Link lived. For a few minutes, he toyed with the idea of going back inside and trying to find the info from Link’s employee files but that felt like too big of a violation despite the good intent behind it.

So, with no other choice, Rhett decided to take Link to his place. He could sleep off the effects of alcohol and whatever else was in his system and Rhett could keep an eye on him and make sure he was safe.

The city streets were almost empty. Rhett rolled down his window and dipped his elbow out of it, enjoying the cool night breeze. His gaze kept slipping towards the sleeping figure next to him. Link looked so serene and totally vulnerable. It was too much. The whole scene felt too intimate. It felt like Rhett had stolen this moment from Link and he was ashamed of how much he was enjoying it.

This was almost exactly what he’d wanted to happen tonight, though in his dreams Link would’ve been awake and excited to go home with Rhett. In some strange fit of self-confidence he’d decided that tonight was the night when he would tell Link how he felt about him. He’d been so ready and so certain he could finally do it.

But now the moment was gone; washed down a drain by some idiot who’d decided it would be fun to play a horrible prank on Link. Who would do such a thing? And why? Rhett had always thought that Link’s solitude was of his own volition but now he wondered if that was not the case. Rhett’s insides squirmed uncomfortably and anger flared in his chest. He was going to figure out who’d done this and make them pay.

The drive was soon over and Rhett parked the car in his driveway. Link roused as the engine cut off.

“Where‘re we?” Link mumbled and peeked out the window.

“My place,” Rhett said and got out of the car. He opened the door for Link who’d managed to open the seat belt himself this time. Rhett offered his hand to him and Link took it without pause. His palm was soft and warm and Rhett hated himself for the effect that Link’s innocent touch had on him. He felt like admonishing his overexcited dick. It’s not like that. Calm down!

“Come on then. I’ll get you some water and then you can sleep this off.”

Link followed him inside the house. He moved slowly. Rhett had to gently guide him again and when they got in, Link suddenly slumped forwards almost falling over.

“Wow there, slugger!” Rhett exclaimed and caught Link at the last second. For a moment that felt like eternity, they stood there, in the darkness of Rhett’s foyer, chest to chest. Link was holding onto Rhett’s shirt, making the buttons on it strain against the pull. He was looking at Rhett under his long lashes, his chin tilted up in the most inviting way. Rhett wanted to grab it and pull him into a kiss. Rhett wanted to take him to his bed and undress him and see if the things he’d been fantasizing about these past few months could ever measure up against reality.

But obviously he wouldn’t. Not with Link in this condition.

Link was oblivious to Rhett’s inner dialogue and he sighed.

“What?” Rhett asked and tried to prop him to stand on his own which Link refused to do.

“You’re so beautiful,” Link whispered, igniting a roaring fire inside Rhett’s belly. He felt the heat of it radiating all the way up to his cheeks that started to burn as Link’s words sank into his brain.

“You really are out of it,” Rhett said whit a forced laugh while silently hoping that Link was merely emboldened by his altered state not totally addled with it.

“No,” Link said and slowly shook his head.”No, I’m not. Well, yeah. I feel a bit funny. But I always think you’re beautiful. And have I told you how nice you are?”

Rhett’s cheeks burned brighter and he huffed a laugh.

“You might have mentioned. But I gotta get you to bed now.”

“Always wanted to get into your bed,” Link murmured and refused to let go of Rhett’s shirt.

Rhett swallowed. He must have heard wrong. Link couldn’t possibly mean what Rhett wanted him to mean. Rhett searched his face for clues, something that would tell him if it was really Link speaking or the drugs. Link just kept staring him, eyes soft and pupils blown wide. Rhett had to turn away. It hurt too much to think that this might be the only time he got to be this close to Link.

Getting him to drink a glass of water was easy. As soon as Rhett placed the chilled glass into his hand, Link promptly emptied its contents and let out a satisfied moan after the glass was empty. Getting him upstairs to the bedroom was another thing altogether. Link’s leg seemed to be losing a fight with whatever he had been dosed with and he wobbled on them, missing steps and swaying dangerously backwards. In the end, Rhett scooped him up on his arms and carried him the rest of the way.

Link’s head lolled against Rhett’s shoulder and his warm breath tickled Rhett’s skin. Rhett felt his weight in his arms, he felt the strain on his muscles and he made a point to record the exact feeling into his memories. Link felt like he belonged in his arms. It felt right even though the way he had ended up there was totally wrong.

Maybe some day…

Rhett gently placed Link’s pliant body onto his bed and kneeled down to take off his shoes. He placed them at the foot of the bed and turned to tuck him in. The sight before him stopped him in his tracks. Link had gotten up and was fast on his way to be completely naked. His shirt was unbuttoned half-way down and he was yanking down his jeans. Rhett caught the dip of his hipbones and the dark curly hair that they lead to before he understood what was happening.

“Oh! Wow, hey!” Rhett yelped and slammed a hand over his eyes. He could still hear tiny grunts and the soft thuds of clothes being thrown on the floor. Then his bed creaked and he heard some shuffling that might have been Link sliding under his covers.

Rhett ventured a peek from behind his fingers and let out a relieved breath. Link was snuggled up on his side of the bed. Messy hair fanned on his pillow and eyes already closed.

“Okay, well. That’s good,” Rhett said, voice trembling more than he cared for. He quickly picked up Link’s discarded clothes and folded them into a neat pile. He tried very hard not to think about the fact that Link’s boxer briefs were on the pile as well.

There’s a naked man in my bed! His mind screamed. The thought was not nearly as scary as the one following it. And I would very much like to be naked and next to him.

Rhett was almost out the door when Link spoke again.

“Hey,” he muttered and Rhett turned to look at him. His eyes were barely open and he was reaching towards Rhett with his hand.

“Yeah?”

“Can I get a good night kiss? Please.”

Rhett felt light-headed as he drifted back to the bed. He bent down and brushed Link’s hair off of his forehead. Link’s eyes closed and he let out a sound that could almost be described as a purr. Rhett couldn’t help but to smile as he placed the softest of kisses on his forehead. Link sighed.

“Thank you,” he murmured and then his face relaxed and his mouth opened to a tiny o-shape as he drifted off to sleep. Rhett stood there for a minute, marveling the beauty that had captured his bed and his heart. Then he slowly backed away.

“Good night, Link,” Rhett whispered with a wildly beating heart before stepping out of the room.

[shadowofadalekmightdeactivate]

Sanders Sides Ghostbusters AU

Why? Why not. I should be writing a 1,500 word short story right now but fuCK IT (A side note: unless stated otherwise, everyone is gay. This is obvious why am I even saying this)

Peter Venkman: Roman - The fuck is a gender, he loves everybody. If they have a pretty face he’s game - This has gotten him into trouble time and time again and made him bounce around from job to job until he FINALLY settled down to be a scientist, and even THAT didn’t last more than 2 years - ADHD riddled fucker - Still as snarky as ever but also still dramatic - First time getting slimed? Almost had a meltdown. HE WAS HAVING A BAD ENOUGH DAY ALREADY DAMMIT - That lasted 2.5 seconds until Patton (Ray) said he thought it was cool - Starved for attention but snarks at everyone regardless - Acts like a Prinxiety fusion at times (”love me but fuck off“ is the mentality that comes to mind)

Egon Spengler: Logan - Picture a Logince fusion that’s mostly controlled/led by Logan - The science behind ghosts has been his hyperfixation for y e a r s - He’s also been wanting to be a scientist for years so being a Ghostbuster is like a dream job to him - Used to be an English college professor until Patton roped him into hunting a ghost with him. He’s still not sure how he even met him (though it’s not impossible that Patton just walked up to him and said “Hi I’m Patton do you want to hunt a ghost with me?”) - “Might have Autism. Might not have a soul. We aren’t sure yet“ -quote from Roman - The brains behind the whole thing. He made the siren, the alarm, the proton packs, everything - Remy (Janine) has feelings for him and he Does Not Appreciate It - Did indeed try to drill a hole in his skull. He wanted to make essentially an early version of Bluetooth. Got as far as putting the drill to his head and finding out the thing’s battery had died. Roman was not amused when he asked him for more - This is going to just turn into Egon headcanons if I don’t stop

Ray Stanz: Patton - Has Autism, is lOUD AS FUCK - Has been kicked out of several libraries for this - Eye contact is a no-no. He won’t freak but he will get very nervous - He introduced Logan to Roman, was dismayed when they didn’t get along at first - Basically a little kid with a laser-shooting gun - Main cause of most of the damage at ghost busts - Roman looks up to him a LOT, even though he’s older (but he’d never say that out loud) - Is allergic to everything with fur - Feels pretty bad whenever they have to bust a ghost with a tragic past - Had been begging Logan to let them have some kind of mascot. Logan finally relented and built a kind of cage in the front office for Slimer - (Remy doesn’t appreciate having that thing watching him every day with it’s beady little eyes) - Loves getting covered with whatever crap ghosts may spew at them-slim, ectoplasm, anything. It doesn’t feel sticky to him, more soft like water-hence why he thought it was “so cool” when Roman got slimed. Besides the physical contact thing - Fiercely protective of Virgil (Winston). Heaven help whatever soul that’s dumb enough to taunt that man in his presence because Patton will grab them-with his hands or his proton gun’s stream-and throw them against the most solid thing he can aim for (which has included teammates. Logan was not impressed)

Winston Zeddemore: Virgil - Wanted to be a necromancer when he was a kid, now just wants a job - Trigger-happy when nervous/frightened, causes the second-most amount of damage during busts - Stupidly tried hiding his anxiety from the others at first, writing off any moments of panic as “just paranoia”, “just got startled”, etc. It takes a particularly nasty ghost putting him out of commission via panic attack that he finally opens up to them - Initially wrote off his anxiety out of worry they’d either A. not hire him/fire him or B. treat him like he was made of glass. B almost happened until Logan took his side when Patton was barring him from coming on a bust - Patton and Logan argued viciously over who was in charge of teaching him how to work the proton packs and guns. Virgil was confused as to why they both can’t do it until Roman told him they’re pretty much arguing over who adopts him - (Patton won that battle on the grounds that Logan gets to teach their next employee. Sadly for Logan no one else has taken up the job) - He fucking HATES getting covered in ghost gunk - Some captured ghosts have learned to fear him, he’s pretty scary when he learns their patterns - (I was going to make him a ghost that gets attached to Patton, but...Nah. Four Sides, four Ghostbusters)

Janine Melnitz: Remy - Only took the job because of Logan, likes to call him “Resident Eye Candy” - Logan can not stand him. At all. Remy’s really up front with how he feels about Logan and he finds it over-bearing - He’d wear a skirt if the boys don’t stop him. Hell he’d wear a crop top if they don’t stop him. (They always do. Buggar.) - If he doesn’t have a coffee at any time in the morning he’s a real bastard to whoever gets within 2 feet of him - Roman thinks this is hilarious and will sometimes withhold his coffee order to hear him cuss out people on the phone. He finds it less hilarious when someone tries to sue them for verbal abuse - Patton thought he was blind at first because he always wears sunglasses (”LOGAN WE CAN’T HIRE A BLIND MAN TO TAKE CALLS”)

Dana Barett: Deceit - Trans ftm - “Deceit” is more of a nickname for him, but he’s so used to it that he’s considering making it his legal name - Told off Logan when they first met because he misgendered him four times (the first time was an accident, the second time was a slip up, the last two started seeming intentional) - Legal name is still Dana, he hasn’t have the money or the time to change it yet-which is infuriating - Has heterochromia (left eye brown, right eye green) and vitiligo - Roman thinks he’s drop dead beautiful, Deceit thinks he’s just annoying. Despite this he happily goes on a few flings with him and enjoys the pampering - They don’t officially “get together”, but Roman stops skipping work to take “clients” out on dates, so the other ‘busters are happy - Roman absolutely will tell anyone who listens to him long enough how gorgeous Dee is. Virgil has told Dee about this. Snake man is equal parts flattered and frustrated - Speaking of snakes, he gets two after the Gozer incident: Zuul (female Ball Python) and Vinz (male Corn Snake) - Why he named them after demon dogs is beyond him but he couldn’t think of better names for them

Louis Tully: Remus - Take everything you remember about Louis and throw it out the window. Now go out that window, pick up the remains and stich them back together into a vaguely Louis-like character with bits of rat and garbage left in. That’s Remus. Still awkward beyond help, still a well-meaning hopelessly-in-love fool, but an absolute chaotic MESS that can’t hold down a job for longer than a month - Roman wants to disown him so very badly but there’s no relative left alive that wants to go near that man with a ten-foot pole and SOMEONE has to take care of him - Deceit thinks he’s charming, if a bit...Weird. - Like Deceit, Remus gets two pets after the Gozer incident: Zelda (female Fancy Rat, name is a play on Zuul) and Vince (male Pitbull Terrier, name is a play on Vinz) - He wanted two Pitbulls at first but then saw Zelda in an ad and suddenly decided he HAD to have a rat - The kind of guy that’s a horrible person but really damn good at his job so his co-workers have to put up with him (until the boss fires him for doing something insane like hanging out a window to freak out the people on the streets below) - He actually did the above incident. Twice. He was fired quickly and all window-washing companies were warned about him - Virgil met him a total of one time and said he wanted whatever Remus was high on - Remus, surprisingly, never takes drugs. He finds them icky-not the GOOD icky, like blood and mucus and all that fun stuff. The BAD icky, like forced mood-changes and forgotten events - You can bet your ass he sleeps around like nobody’s business - (I was going to make him Walter Peck but figured it’d be funnier if he was Louis. Be glad he made it in at all)

[wistfulcynic]

Honeysuckle

Summary: Emma finds herself in a precarious position while trying to return some library books and shy librarian Killian comes to her rescue. He’s sweet and kind and Henry’s bookworm hero but there’s also something about him that she doesn’t know. 

(Something good)

a/n: All the thanks to @shireness-says for letting me borrow the adorable cinnamon roll that is Librarian!Killian, and also for inspiring this fic with her actual life. Librarian!Killian is a bit Deckhand Hook, a bit Lt Jones, which is a version of Killian I’ve never written before. It’s been fun, and not coincidentally this is the only thing I’ve ever written with a G rating. 

(Thanks also to @katie-dub whose beautiful fic Her Happy Beginning inspired me to try a new style of narration.)

@whimsicallyenchantedrose @captainsjedi @kmomof4 @thejollyroger-writer @darkcolinodonorgasm @winterbaby89 @ultraluckycatnd @hollyethecurious @teamhook

Rated: G

On AO3

Honeysuckle: 

Life, as some wise person once said, is just one damned thing after another. It’s full of frustration and elation and misery and comedy and so, so much embarrassment. And sometimes, on those most rare and exquisite of occasions, all of these factors coalesce into one grand, transcendent experience that makes the person living it wish simultaneously to die of humiliation and live in that moment forever. 

Dear Reader, such was the experience of one Emma Swan, medical assistant and single mother, on the third day of the sixth month of the twenty-eighth year of her life. 

The day began as an unremarkable one. Emma dragged herself from bed at the unholy hour of six-thirty am, banged on her son’s bedroom door on her way to the kitchen, and spent the next ten minutes mainlining coffee and forcing herself into full consciousness. When Henry appeared she poured him a bowl of cereal, kissed his forehead, and headed for the shower. So far so ordinary. 

Things didn’t start to go wrong until Emma, showered and dressed and with her still-damp hair pulled into a practical ponytail, took the opportunity of Henry’s regular morning dawdling session to reread the latest letter from her secret pen pal. 

(Secret only because Emma was perhaps overly conscious that having a ‘pen pal’ in this day and at her age might be seen by some as rather ridiculous. Not even Henry knew, although she’d had the pen pal far longer than she’d had the son. Since she was ten years old, in fact, and her fourth grade teacher had arranged a writing exchange with a class in England. For reasons Emma could never fully articulate she had bonded instantly and strongly to the boy across the sea known to her only as ‘K’ —again for ‘reasons’, these best known to themselves, they addressed each other by their initials only— and throughout her life of foster families and failed relationships he remained the only person who had never left her. Virtually anonymous though it may be, it was by far the longest and most stable relationship of Emma’s life and nothing but Henry had ever been more precious to her. But she kept it secret because it was ridiculous. Yep. That’s what she told herself.)   

But back to the letter. 

On my way to work yesterday I came across what I think must be some of the first lilacs of the season and I thought of you, it read. I always think of you when I see flowers and I can never decide which one suits you best, which probably makes sense since I have never seen your face. Are you sweet and springlike as lilacs are, or are you more of a full summer flower like a rose? Maybe you are a slim and elegant calla lily, or perhaps a tall and slightly terrifying sunflower? (Don’t laugh, E, sunflowers are scary! Have you ever seen one? They remind me of Triffids (that’s a book reference, love, and before you ask yes there’s a movie as well. Read the book first) and the way they move to follow the sun is creepy.)

(I know you’re laughing at me. Stop it.)  

It is true I regret to say that Emma had laughed the first time she read the letter, also the second time and possibly the third. But this being the sixth or seventh (tenth) reading the words elicited a smile that came less from mirth and more from a sort of sighing wistfulness as she imagined her never-seen dearest friend sniffing lilacs and thinking of her. 

She wished she knew what he looked like. 

She had tried many times to paint his face in her mind, one that fit the beauty of his words, but found she very literally could not imagine it. Emma’s experience with men was one that is sadly not uncommon among beautiful women whose positions in society are tenuous. As a single mother with only a high school diploma Emma had encountered more than her share of creeps and assholes, men who mistook her vulnerability for weakness and attempted to take advantage of her.

It was a mistake they did not make twice, but the sad result was that Emma had soured on men and relationships and all but given up hope that she would ever find someone who loved her. And as for a man so sweet and kind that he stopped to admire lilacs and wondered what kind of flower she might be, well, he was an impossibility in her experience, simply too good to be true.

She knew of course that K was real. Someone had been writing to her for nearly twenty years. She had no desire to meet him, though (she did) for fear of the crushing disappointment if he didn’t live up to the image she had of him in her mind. No, he was much better left to her imagination and the pages of his beautifully written letters. She couldn’t bear to lose those letters.  

She was just indulging in speculation over what sort of flower he might be when Henry’s voice and the thud of the books he dropped on the table in front of her brought her back to reality. 

“Mom, these books are due back today,” he said. 

“What? Why didn’t you take them back yesterday?”

“I forgot them at home. I didn’t even remember they were due until Killian reminded me. But we can return them now, can’t we?”

Emma tried to remember that he wasn’t trying to exasperate her, he was just absent-minded. “Henry, we are already late. Can’t you take them after school today?”

“No, I have D&D after school.” 

“I’m sure you can miss it one time—” 

“No, Mom, we’re in the middle of a campaign and I have to be there.” 

Emma threw up her hands. “Okay, fine, but you’ll have to take the bus to school.” 

“Mo-om!” 

“No, I do not have time to take you to school, then go to the library, then work. I’ll drive you to the bus stop then swing by the library and put your books in the drop. Hurry up now, are you ready?”

“Yeah, just let me grab my backpack.” 

He ran to get it and Emma absently slipped the letter into its envelope and the envelope into one of Henry’s library books before gathering the books in her arms and slinging her tote bag over her shoulder and herding her son out the door and into her car. 

(I wonder if you can spot where this is going yet?)

Ten minutes later Emma pulled into the library parking lot with as close to a squeal of tires as her creaky Bug could manage and grabbed Henry’s books from her passenger seat. Hurrying to the book drop she tipped them in…

And remembered. Far too late. 

“My letter!” she cried, and without thinking of anything beyond recovering the treasured words, Emma dove headfirst into the book drop, trying to catch the book that held her letter before it fell. She was a slender woman and the book drop more sizeable than most, but it was decidedly not designed to accommodate the ingress of any size of human, and so all she accomplished was to wedge her shoulders tightly into the narrow space with one arm stretched out in front of her inside the chute and the other sticking out of the drop’s opening at an odd angle. With the toe of one foot she could just touch the ground while the other one dangled helplessly in the air. She kicked with her leg to try to yank herself free but succeeded only in sending her practical flat shoe flying off her foot and landing with a splash in what she felt certain was a mud puddle, just as the sound of Henry’s books landing in the bin at the bottom of the chute reached her ears. 

Perfect, she thought. Just perfect.  

This, as I’m sure you have deduced my lovely Reader, has been the embarrassment and yes also the comedy portion of our tale. The former feeds the latter until it is fat as we all know from our own lives, and in the years to come Emma would learn to laugh when telling and retelling the story of her predicament. Though it must be said that, as is often the case with embarrassing things, she saw absolutely no humour in it at the time.

The frustration came into play moments later as Emma made further attempts to extricate herself from the drop, only to find that the position of her shoulders and her hands and her legs left her entirely unable to get enough purchase on any solid surface to provide sufficient counterbalancing force to un-wedge her. She was well and truly stuck, profoundly uncomfortable, and by that time almost certainly late for work. 

It was then that the misery kicked in. 

“Fuck,” she shouted, and the word reverberated down the metal chute, echoing back to her in a way she considered almost insultingly on the nose. She closed her eyes and let her head fall against the side of the chute and wondered just what the hell she was going to do now. 

(It will not, I feel certain, have escaped your notice that we have not yet had elation. Fear not, gentle Reader, for it is to come, and far sooner than Emma expects.) 

Fortunately both for Emma and our story a rescuer soon arrived, not on a white charger as in a fairy tale but aboard a practical secondhand Volvo in a rather nice shade of blue. 

Now Killian Jones may well have wished, deep in his heart, in that remote corner where he kept his love of adventure stories and even fancied himself a bit of a rogue, for something sportier, something a touch more dashing. But Killian Jones was a librarian, and the financial realities of our world dictate that librarians do not drive sports cars. So Killian had sighed for what was never to be and bought the Volvo —and adamantly rejected the silver one, he was not a vampire, sparkly or otherwise— and it had to be said that he’d never regretted it. 

All he regretted that morning was the broken shoelace that had made him too late to walk to work and smell the lilacs. 

As he pulled into the parking lot he was surprised to see a yellow Volkswagen Beetle parked haphazardly in the closest spot to the door that wasn’t reserved for the differently abled. It looked very much like the car that he’d frequently seen young Henry running to, the one that would naturally be driven by his mother…

Impulsively Killian pulled into the space next to the yellow car instead of continuing to the employee lot. His heart had begun to pound and his mouth was dry. 

It’s probably not her, he told himself firmly. There have to be other yellow Bugs in the neighbourhood. 

(There definitely weren’t.)

But if it was her he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to stutter a few incoherent words before excusing himself awkwardly and fleeing to a private corner where he might catch his breath, which was what happened every time he tried to talk to Henry’s mother.

Now Killian Jones, as, dearest Reader, you well know, was a handsome man, and one not so caught up in books and fantasy that he was unaware of this fact or of the effect it had on women. He could be smooth enough with the female species when he put his mind to it but something about Henry’s mother —he didn’t even know her name— tied his tongue and stopped his throat and robbed him of every shred of eloquence he may otherwise possess. 

This didn’t stop him from trying, though. The humiliation was worth it to see her smile. 

He got out of the car as quickly as possible, cursing as he caught the strap of his satchel in the door, then hurried to the library’s main entrance, looking around in a way that he hoped didn’t make it too obvious that he was looking around. Where would she be? he wondered. If she was here that is, if it was her. Come to think of it, why would she be here? Why would anyone? Who went to the library an hour before it opened to, what, stand around in front of the door and wait? 

His attention was finally drawn, after a moment or two, to the after-hours book drop when the person stuck inside it began banging and shouting loudly enough for even the most distracted bookworm to notice. 

Wait… the person stuck inside the book drop?

Killian turned to look, mouth gaping open in astonishment, too taken aback to even feel ashamed that he very definitely recognised that arse. 

So that’s where she was. This simultaneously answered several questions and posed a good few more. 

He hurried over, knowing that he ought to do something, but very uncertain as to what that something ought to be. 

“Um, hello?” he ventured. “Excuse me?”

Her voice was muffled but the annoyance came through loud and clear. “Oh thank fuck, I thought you’d gone,” she said.  

“Um. What?”

“I heard your car door slam so I started banging to get your attention, but then no one came and I thought you’d left, or gone in another direction or something.” 

“Ah. Er, no. I’m, uh, I’m here. What, um, what can I do for you?” He winced even as he spoke the words.

(She robbed him of all eloquence, you recall, even when all he could see was her backside. Perhaps especially then.)

She paused just long enough to make her opinion of his question clear. “Get me out of here!” she shouted.

“Aye, of course, lass, but, er, um—” Killian assessed the situation from three different angles just to be sure that there was no other option, that it wasn’t simply his physical attraction to her getting the better of him “—I’ll have to, uh, there’s no other way except to, er, touch you—”

“Yes, yes, I know that’s fine, just get me out!” 

“Aye, all right, um, can you push on the inside of the chute at all?”

“Yes, but I can’t get enough purchase on the ground to counterbalance, so I can’t force my shoulders out.” 

“Ah, yes, I see. All right, well you push and I’ll just, um—” Cautiously he wrapped his arm around her waist and braced his hand against the wall of the library. “I’ll brace you. Are you ready?”

“So ready.” 

“Okay, on three. One… two… three!” 

Killian planted his feet firmly on the ground and he could feel her muscles tense and flex as she pushed on the wall of the chute, and with her body braced against his she was able to un-wedge her shoulders from the narrow space and then with a final heave she freed herself from the drop, the force of it sending her stumbling backwards against Killian, whose other arm automatically wrapped itself around her and held on tight. 

She smelled like honeysuckle, was all he could think.

Too soon she was straightening up and he forced his arms to let her go, and she turned around with a smile that nearly ended him. 

“Thanks,” she said. “I thought I’d be in there at least until the library opened.” 

Emma was trying to be cool but the truth was that even from inside the chute she’d recognised the voice and accent of Henry’s favourite librarian, his hero really, the man who had recommended all his favourite books and who always had time to discuss them with him. Henry talked about him almost nonstop. 

“Ah, it’s Killian, isn’t it?” she said. “We’ve talked a few times before, I’m Henry’s mother.”

Killian swallowed hard and forced himself not to panic. “Aye, I remember. Er— sorry, I don’t know your name.” 

He’s so cute, thought Emma. She’d always thought so, if she was honest, not just his face but the adorable way he couldn’t quite manage to talk to her. It was sweet, and frankly a blessed change from the way men usually acted around her.

“It’s Emma Swan,” she said, and held out her hand. Killian took it gingerly, like he was afraid it might bite him. 

The jolt of sensation that went through both of them at the contact seemed to confirm his fears.  

They both pulled their hands away, laughing nervously, and thorough the haze of his confusion something prickled in Killian’s mind. E. Swan, he thought, just like…

“You must be wondering how I managed to get stuck like that,” said Emma, interrupting his thoughts, attempting to brazen through her own jumpy nerves by talking.

“Well, yes, I confess it did cross my mind.” A complete sentence in her presence, that was a first, he thought. 

“Yeah, it must be a pretty weird thing to encounter first thing in the morning.”

“I assure you, lass, we’ve seen weirder in this library.” Two complete sentences, what had come over him? 

“That’s nice of you to say. Okay, here’s the thing. I kinda… left something really important in one of the books I returned, and… look I’m so grateful to you for rescuing me but would you mind maybe going to see if you could find it?” She kept her face calm but he could sense her anxiety in the way she twisted her hands together. “It’s, well, it’s personal and I don’t want to lose it, or you know have strangers reading it—”

He waved his hand to cut her off. “Say no more, it would be my pleasure to retrieve it for you. Um, what is it?”

Her smile shone relieved and brilliant, and Killian’s powers of speech abandoned him yet again. 

“It’s a letter. In an envelope. I mean, just like a normal envelope. But… open.” 

He nodded, groping desperately for his words. “Letter. Envelope. Got it. I’ll, um, go now. Uh, stay here.” 

“Where else would I go?” she asked his retreating back. 

Killian hurriedly unlocked the main doors and raced down the stairs to the bin at the bottom of the book drop’s chute. He realised he’d forgotten to ask Emma —he felt a small thrill using her name— which book she’d left her letter in, but fortunately he remembered which books Henry had checked out during his last visit. They’d had a long conversation about each, after all. He ruffled through the first one but no letter fell out, the same result for the second. The third, however, produced its treasure, an ordinary, unremarkable white letter envelope. 

One that looked strikingly familiar. 

Killian stared at the letter in his hand, addressed to one E. Swan, in a firm, flowing, elegant script.

A script he recognised. 

Because it was his own. 

Bloody hell. 

(Be honest, now, kind Reader, you aren’t going to tell me you didn’t see this coming?) 

Killian wanted to hyperventilate. (Is it possible to want to hyperventilate?) His favourite patron’s mother, the woman he’d admired (and yes, done a bit of pining for) from afar was also, somehow, the pen pal he’d had since he was ten years old. His dearest friend. 

It was too ridiculous. It was impossible. 

(It was actually just a very strange coincidence, and who among us hasn’t experienced one of those? But Killian was feeling rather dramatic in that moment, so we’ll give him a pass.)

 (Now Reader, you are likely wondering how it is possible that two people who communicate via letter, a medium of communication that requires the knowledge of one’s recipient’s address as a matter of course, could possibly be unaware that they lived in the same neighbourhood of the same small town, mere blocks from one another as it turns out? The simple explanation is this: Both some years ago had arranged P.O. Boxes for their letters to each other, finding it easier (and if we are honest, more securely anonymous) to simply ask the post office to forward their letters as they moved around rather than keep updating each other directly. Killian’s P.O. Box was in Syracuse, NY, where he had gone to library school and his first port of call in the USA while Emma’s was in Tallahassee, FL, where she had stayed for two years after Henry was born.

Could they have saved themselves a fair bit of time and no small amount of loneliness had they just used their real addresses? Or, you know, their actual names? 

Yes. Yes they could. But then we wouldn’t have a story.) 

As Killian reeled from his astounding discovery, Emma was sitting on the hood of her Bug, wincing as her shift supervisor (and friend) laughed, so long and so hard Emma feared she’d give herself an aneurysm. 

After a while she began to hope for an aneurysm. 

“Oh my God,” Ruby gasped, once she was finally able to speak through her mirth. “That is the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time. Years, probably.”

“Not helpful, Rubes. I only called to tell you that I’ll be in as soon as possible, I can probably get going in about five, ten minutes or so. I’m really sorry.” 

Ruby’s appreciation for a good joke did not affect her empathy for a friend in need. “Look, Ems, we’re not busy today, three patients have already cancelled their appointments. I can cover what’s left. Let’s just call this a sick day for you and if you want you can make up the shift this weekend. Go home and rest. You’ve had a narrow escape after all.” 

Emma groaned. “I hate you.” 

“You love me, and don’t forget I’m covering your shift today so you really shouldn’t be stuck up.”

“I mean, that’s just terrible.” 

 Ruby laughed. “Call me later. I’ll be waiting so don’t think you can wriggle out of it.” 

“You are the worst and I’m hanging up now. Goodbye. And thanks.” 

“Any time, doll.” 

Emma hung up the phone just as Killian came through the doors holding, she was relived to see, her letter. 

And with a very peculiar expression on his face. 

She felt her heart flutter. He looked… intense. It was a good look on him. 

She remembered how his arms had felt around her and the flutter became a gallop. 

He handed her the letter. 

“You’re honeysuckle,” he blurted. 

“I— what?” Emma blinked in surprise. 

“Honeysuckle. Not lilacs or roses, or sunflowers, thank goodness.” 

How could he… no! she thought wildly. He couldn’t, he wouldn’t have. He seemed so nice. 

“Did you read my letter?” she cried, somehow feeling more betrayed than angry.

“No! That is, I sort of did, but—” He ran a hand through his hair, looking distressed. “Oh, I’m doing this all wrong.”

“Just what exactly are you doing?” she snapped. 

He took a deep breath, and looked her in the eye. “Let me introduce myself,” he said. “We really haven’t been properly introduced. My name is Killian Jones. Killian with a K.” 

Emma gasped as the import of his name plus the fact that he knew what was in her letter hit home. K. Jones. 

“You— you’re K?”

“Aye. I mean yes, I am. And you’re E. Who smells of honeysuckle. I’ve always wondered.”

“You wondered what I smelled like?”

“I’ve wondered a lot of things about you, love.” He smiled, not the awkward, shy smile he normally gave her, but a bright and brilliant one full of joy and just a hint of mischief. It made her feel feather-light and ridiculously happy. This man she could definitely picture sniffing lilacs and thinking of her. He was real, and right in front of her, and her imagination had utterly failed to do him justice. 

“Listen,” he said, more confident than she’d ever seen him but with nervousness just creeping in at the edges, rubbing at a spot behind his ear and looking just over her left shoulder, “Would you, um, like to have a drink with me? You probably have to get to work now, but maybe later—” 

“I have the day off.” The words were out before she could stop them. 

Hope lit in his eyes. “You do?”

“As of five minutes ago,” she confirmed. “My boss said I’d clearly been through enough already today and told me to take a sick day. But, I mean, don’t you have to work—”

“I’ll take a sick day too,” he said hurriedly, pulling out his phone. “Just give me a minute.” 

The phone rang only twice before Belle picked up. She was nothing if not efficient. 

“Hi, Belle, it’s, er, Killian.” Of course she knows that you numpty she saw your name come up on the screen, he thought. 

(Killian is a terrible, terrible liar.)

He cleared his throat and continued. “I’m, um, so sorry but I’m not well today.” 

“Not well,” repeated Belle.  

“Er, no, I think I’ll have to stay home.” 

“You sound fine, Killian.” She sounded strict, when she was usually so kind. He forced himself not to panic, and attempted a little cough. “No, I assure you,” he said, “I’m very ill.” 

“Very ill, you say.” 

“Er, aye.” Why is she repeating everything?

“Too ill to come to work.” 

“Um, yes.” 

“Too ill to come to work and not in fact currently standing in the patrons’ car park with Henry’s mother?” 

He gaped. “How do you—”

She laughed, a familiar, warm sound, and Killian felt the knot of tension in his chest begin to melt. “I heard you come in through the main door and I came to see what was going on,” she said. 

Killian felt a stab of guilt. “Belle, I can explain—” 

“You don’t have to. At least, not yet. I’ll be demanding a full explanation tomorrow, when I feel certain you’ll be well enough to come to work.” 

“Of course. Thank you, Belle, you’re a treasure.” 

“Just be sure you actually talk to her this time.” 

“Aye, I think I can manage that.” It was easier now that he knew he’d actually been talking to her for the best part of twenty years. 

He ended the call and turned to smile at Emma who smiled back at him, and now, my darling Reader, we come at long last to the elation. The sheer, shining joy of experiencing something you’ve wondered about for years and finding it surpasses even your most elevated expectations. 

They went for coffee. They walked to the coffee shop, past the lilacs which were just beginning to fade, and they sniffed them together. 

Their conversation flowed with surprising ease, or perhaps not so surprising. In a way of course they had only just met but in another way they had known each other for years, and they were pleased to discover that there was no awkwardness between them other than that which results naturally between two people who are wildly attracted to each other and only just beginning to explore it. 

They explored it eventually. And thoroughly. 

And when the following year they stood in a country garden with Belle and Ruby and a Henry who was almost dancing with excitement and exchanged rings and promises of love and fidelity, the trellis above their heads was heavy and fragrant with honeysuckle in full bloom. And not a sunflower in sight. 

(Ah, I love a happy ending, I hear you sighing, beloved Reader. I do as well but I fear this is not one. It is of course a happy beginning.)